THE FIRE IN VENGEANCE
CHAPTER 1
Wallowa Mountains, Eastern Oregon
The battle was furious and would have been epic if anyone had known about it. The battleground was identified as a cabin hidden in the Wallowa Mountains, the destruction limited to a single room. Fortunately for the combatants—and there were only two—what happened in the Wallowa Mountains remained in the Wallowa Mountains, and dignity was preserved.
The victory, if there was one, should have been awarded to the enforcer of some repute. His opponent was the girl with whom he’d battled throughout several lifetimes. In the first lifetime she’d been Gaia; in the lifetime no one talked about she’d been Gemma. In both lifetimes the battles had been unique, with some debate regarding the winning side, but this battle was considered more significant by far. It dealt with issues neither combatant had anticipated, nor did they want. They were dealing with the consequences anyway, and no one was sure which way it would go.
Both had retreated to the hidden compound out of necessity, arriving together in the middle of the night. Their world had grown dangerous and their refuge was a lodge, with eight separate cabins, set in the middle of twenty thousand acres of privately owned forest land, surrounded by the largest wilderness area in Oregon. It was private and very secure. Access was by plane or by foot and monitored by the kind of security no one mentioned in public.
From satellites, the compound appeared quite ordinary, in deference to Google Earth technology. If anyone looked carefully they would notice a few outbuildings. Further investigation would link to a professional website, where it would be revealed that the lodge was offered for private and very exclusive retreats aimed at executives struggling with team-building fatigue. Unfortunately, reservations were booked out two years in advance and the lodge didn’t operate in the winter.
What was known about the compound remained minimal. But what was known about the battle was more extensive. Details were revealed by the participants, each to their own supporters and with some bewilderment on the part of one.
It seemed the opening skirmish had been an observation, made quite innocently in the enforcer’s opinion. The girl had countered the attack—which she considered underhanded and betraying their earlier peace accords—and said something along the lines of “Do not call me stupid.” Her finger had been shaking in the air, the enforcer recalled, and she’d been dancing backward in a movement he recognized quite vividly as the opening shot in her traditional tactics.
He had battled those tactics before and rarely won. But on this occasion the enforcer fought back, his mouth dropping open before asking, “Did that word come out of my mouth?”
To which she had answered, rather archly, he thought, “You said I couldn’t boil water, Christan, and in this century, it means you think I’m stupid.”
That was the point when Christan had crossed his arms and widened his stance and the battle went off the rails. He told her rather emphatically that if she’d paid attention to his instruction she could have boiled the water by lighting the stove with her telekinetic abilities, which he was trying to teach her if she’d bother to listen to him once in a while. Plates were thrown. Tears were shed and doors slammed. The peace accords went downhill from there.
In fairness to the participants there were extenuating circumstances. The woman was newly immortal but still thought like a human. The enforcer understood she was vulnerable, wanting only to protect her. She still moved like a wild creature, with the lithe grace he remembered from the first life when they met, when she’d been Gaia of the earth.
There were other lifetimes, when the woman had been known by the immortal G names, which she now rejected. She loved to say it with fire in her eyes; “I am me now!” But who she was, and had always been, remained etched in the tattoos that curled across the enforcer’s chest and down his left arm. Some of them throbbed as he’d watched her, his body growing hard with need.
He had tipped his head and studied her, he recalled later. Noticed that she trembled. She’d always been fine-boned, but there were new shadows beneath her eyes, an expression of exhaustion. She hadn’t been sleeping because of the dreams. He knew, because she still let him share her bed. He knew when she cried. When he needed to wrap his arms around her slim body to keep her calm. Some dreams were of past life memories, working to the surface. Other dreams were torture, implanted by their enemy to force the memories. The worst dreams came from six months ago, when they’d traveled to Italy. Dreams of a moon-lit road where she faced a truth about herself in a past life that nearly destroyed them.
He’d told her many times that she didn’t deserve the guilt. They’d both been sinners. Through some miracle they’d found their way back and received absolution in each other’s arms. But she had trouble believing him and he understood why. There were still secrets between them. She made a choice out of fear and blind faith, thinking she was saving his life. She performed a blood bond, a bond with magic that was transformative. It had transformed him into a weapon he didn’t want to be, and it had transformed her, too. The enforcer knew what she wanted, to feel normal again. Mortal again. But her life would never be the same.
She’d been so fierce, his warrior girl, fighting by his side. Now that fierceness was not with him but against him, and the consequences to her could be severe.
“Are you even trying to teach me?” she had demanded halfway through the battle, the accuracy of her accusation nearly forcing his retreat. Frustration had roared through him then. He was Three’s master of war, the goddamned origin myth for the most feared creature in the ancient world. And he couldn’t make her understand.
He had frowned, thought about it, and recalled saying, “I’ve never had to teach someone before. It’s just something I know how to do.”
It was a weak explanation and they both knew it. There were tears in her eyes, causing a stabbing guilt. He could be a royal bastard when he wanted, and—apparently—even when he wasn’t trying.
Later, Christan had explained his confusion to Marge—the one woman who knew Lexi the best. She’d been both friend and therapist, and now extended that role to include Christan. So he told her how out of control he felt. How Lexi could be arguing about one thing and mean something different until every word he said felt like quicksand. It was the day Marge had been listening sympathetically to his side of the current battle. Then she heard the details and like any true diplomat, she switched sides. A battle against the Calata would have been preferable at that point.
But what Christan had wanted to know and hadn’t discovered was how to reach Lexi when she stopped the fighting—which she’d done at the precise moment the battle shifted to his advantage. He’d watched, perplexed, as she bent to pick up a piece of shattered crockery from the floor. When she tossed it into the trash, Christan recognized the shift, knew she was retreating behind walls she’d built over a lonely lifetime, walls he could never breach. He wouldn’t let her drift away.
Just prior to that, she’d been accusing him of never listening, which he would admit was true. The weight of command meant accepting the responsibility and not questioning his own decisions. He was used to thinking on his own, evaluating and executing—a word he regretted using when he saw her flinch. There was something about crying in a bathroom, he recalled, because a claw was growing out of her hand, and he’d tried to dampen her fears by pointing out that the claw was a failed shift, a fluke, and had disappeared on its own. After thanking him for that half second of sympathy, there was a definite shift in her tone.
At that point, Christan had felt his best talents were being wasted. Under any other circumstances he would have simply destroyed his opposition and gone on with his life.
Instead he opted for a strategic retreat. He remained silent.
The result had been disastrous.
He recalled, now, the exact way she said the words. No asking permission. Just stating her decision. She wanted to go back to Rock Cove, to the cottage where they’d killed her cat. He’d felt the beat of his heart, slow and heavy in his throat, the anxiety twisting at a visceral level. What could he say? That I know your life has changed and I did that to you?
His mind had raced, running through the options. But he found no explanation, no argument he could mount to absolve himself or to make her want to stay. His sins began with the moment he’d condemned her to the Agreement without asking her first. He remembered that moment vividly, too. Standing in a shadowed hall with torches flaring from the walls. Three, dressed in white as she always was, explaining what she had done and what he would have to do.
“You have no choice, Enforcer. Your warriors rebelled. The women will be killed. The Agreement is the only way.”
“I have to ask her.”
“There is no time. Do you swear, Enforcer?”
He had dropped to his knees, his head bent, and Three’s voice had gentled.
“She will be safe, Christan. She will be alive. Do you swear?”
“Yes,” he’d said hoarsely, “I swear.”
He hadn’t considered the ramifications of reincarnation, the many attempts to start their love again while still dragging around baggage from past lives she didn’t fully remember. And he hadn’t anticipated the malicious intent of the Calata to disrupt what life they had. They’d fought so hard and come so far—he would not let her throw it all away because the blood bond had changed her and she was unhappy with her life.
But he had also changed, and she’d done that to him.
She had performed a blood bond in desperation and turned him into not just an apex predator but something beyond myth and legend. Something he’d never wanted to be. And his changes had also been irrevocable.
Christan’s expression shuttered as his muscles tensed. He might have understood her frustration if they hadn’t been fighting about it. Hell, he had the same frustrations. But there was no way either one of them could go back. Certainly not to Rock Cove, where her cottage still cried for the cat. Or the villa in Florence, where there was nothing but violence and death. Neither place could be called home—a place to go back to, if that was what she was talking about. He didn’t think it was.
He was leaning against the counter, arms crossed and watching as she put her back to the wall. He hadn’t realized she was preparing to leave the field.
“You could end this fight in a second if you wanted to,” she’d said with such finality Christan had straightened with a hard push of his hips, leaving the counter behind him. There were more attempted explanations. More tears and silent condemnation. That was when the outcome of their battle became seared in his mind. He remembered their conversation, could repeat every single word.
“I can’t live this way, Christan. Not anymore.”
“What would you have me do, cara?” he’d asked with brutal honestly. “There is war. You have enemies now. I cannot change the world back for you.”
“No,” she agreed bitterly. “We both made choices for the other without consideration and now live with the consequences.”
“I want you to be happy. I need to protect you. How can that be wrong?”
He’d forced himself to remain relaxed, watched the light in her eyes dim, knew she could never return to the innocence she had before, where there were no nightmares. He had his own nightmares—blood spilled on a road beneath a black moon, a broken body, pale in the starlight. He would not have her in danger like that again when he’d been unable to save her.
“It must be so easy for you.” She had shrugged as if it no longer mattered, and he moved his gaze to the dark window where the night was black. There were no stars visible in the sky. Silence filled the small kitchen they once loved.
“How, cara?” he asked softly. “How is it easy for me?”
“It’s all or nothing with you. You want. You need. Those are things that have no meaning to me anymore.”
“Do I have meaning to you anymore?”
“You once told me, Christan, not to look for happy endings with someone as far away from me as you are.”
The floor had heaved beneath his feet, heavy with the cold weight of dread. He looked steadily at her.
“What, exactly, are you trying to say?”
“All I asked was that you teach me how to protect myself,” she said as she turned to walk away. “And you have politely declined. I will go elsewhere for what I need.”
He wanted her mouth on his, her body pooling against him as he made love to her on a bed draped in white linen. He pushed forward, thrust a hand through his dark hair.
“Cara.”
“No.” She said it out loud, would not talk to him telepathically where their secrets were so easily shared.
“I could make you stay,” he had answered, deep in her mind, not even realizing he was speaking in Italian. “I would ask you instead.”
She had hesitated, but the battle had been won—if winning meant losing everything of value.
“Don’t destroy us over this, Christan,” she said without emotion, pausing in the doorway to the bedroom. One hand was braced against the jamb, her back so stiff he thought it might break. “Not this time.”
He wanted to reach out, bury his fingers in her hair and tuck her head beneath his chin. Just hold her in his arms.
But he was feeling a little too dangerous to risk touching her.
And she was too far away.