Chapter 27

 

 

Malcolm stopped kissing her and let his head sink down next to hers. He lay there, just breathing into her as he vibrated in the exquisite sweetness of her underneath him.

Vic kissed his ear. “You okay?”

How could he explain what he felt when he barely understood it himself? This whole thing between him and Vic took him so far out of what he understood, no words existed to make sense of it all. “I don’t want you to leave,” he whispered. “I wish you could stay here from now on.”

“You said that’s not a good idea.”

“It isn’t.” He slid his weight off her and propped himself on one elbow. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I’m just saying I want you to, even though I know you can’t.”

“We’ll be together sooner or later. As soon as we make the formula, we can be together without having to worry about the Falisa.”

“We’ll always have to worry about the Falisa.” He flopped over on his back. “Once we make the formula, they’ll be twice as dangerous and twice as determined to wipe us out, to stop us breeding. We’ll have to worry about the Falisa for a long, long time.”

He stared at the ceiling so he wouldn’t see her observing him. He didn’t want to disappoint her hopes, but he better learn to be honest with her, if not the rest of the world. He’d spent his life living a deception. He couldn’t let that infect his dealings with her. He held her sacred. He had to trust his heart and soul to her, no matter what else happened.

When she spoke, he heard the struggle to keep her voice steady. “When will we be together, then?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wish I could tell you something different, but I don’t want to lie to you. As long as the Falisa exists, they’ll keep coming after us.”

“Why do you have to work inside the Falisa?” she asked. “Why do you have to be the Angui’s man undercover? Why can’t you just quit and live a normal life like Ned and Ben and Louis?”

He twisted onto his side and draped one arm over her. “Come on, sweetheart. You know we can’t stand up to them without a man on the inside. We never would have survived this long if I hadn’t been on the inside.”

“That was before,” she countered. “You did all that when you were single and alone. You had no reason not to. You spent so much time around the Falisa, you understood how to blend in. You’re not single and alone anymore, and once we make the formula, you don’t have any more reason to stay undercover. Why can’t you just walk away from it? The Falisa will know you’re Angui. They’ll treat you as an enemy, and you’ll have to deal with that, but at least we’ll be together. Isn’t it worth it?”

He gave her a sad little smile. What an idealistic world she painted for him! If only he could walk away, he would do it in a heartbeat. “I have to keep working for Allied. I’m in charge of the whole company. I can’t walk away from that.”

“Why not?” Her voice started to rise beyond her control. “Don’t tell me Allied and the Falisa mean more to you than I do.”

He wilted against her skin shining with sweat. “Of course not. You know that’s not what I mean.”

She burrowed into his chest, his sternum muffling her voice. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I just wish like anything we could be together. I can’t stand the idea of leaving here and not seeing you. Ree has Ned and Ellen has Louis. It’s not fair.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He kissed her hair and held her close.

She lay silent for a long time. “I liked it better when you called me ‘lass.’”

Malcolm listened long after this statement ceased echoing in his head. A twisting tendril of scorching excitement licked through his gut when she said it. It kept twining around his insides every time the words repeated in his heart.

He kissed her again. “Would you like me to use a Scottish accent now too?”

Her shoulders started to tremble. At first, he thought she might be crying until she threw back her head. Her mop of curls shook away, and he saw her laughing.

“No. Just stay exactly the way you are, and don’t start calling me ‘lass’ again, either. I love you exactly the way you are now. You’re perfect.”

They kissed for hours. At last, Vic got up to go to the bathroom. On her way back, she stopped at a table in the corner of his bedroom, poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher, and studied the city lights outside. “This is a nice apartment.”

“It’s nicer with you in it,” he remarked. “I haven’t spent much time here since I bought the place. It’s too lonely. I spend most of my time at the office. It’s a pathetic life for a man.”

She held out the glass to him. “Do you want some?”

He drank it down, and she sat on the edge of the bed.

Placing her palm over his heart, she asked, “Now what’s this you were telling me about not seeing Boyd again after I left Scotland? What does that mean?”

“Just what I said. I never saw him again. I sent you back. I left the room. I went to his office to talk to him.”

“About what?”

“About sending you back,” he replied. “I couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting around for him to drop the hammer on me. I figured if he was going to kill me for being Angui, I might as well get it over with. I was going to…you know, I was going to turn myself in, but he wasn’t in his office. I waited around for the rest of the day, but he didn’t come. He never came back.”

Vic frowned. “That’s weird, isn’t it? Did he just up and vanish?”

“I have no idea. He never came back. And everyone there acted like I’d always been in charge, not seeming to miss the man, so I didn’t ask questions. It was like he was erased from history—I have no other way to describe it.”

“Did you become Guild Master after all?”

“No, but no other was assigned, either,” he replied. “I gave all the orders as if I had been all along. If anybody suspected, they never said anything. About a year later, I came over to the US, and I’ve been here ever since. Someone else took over in Britain.”

She crossed her legs on the bed. “I guess it’s good you never sent those teams to the future to track down Ned and Ree.”

“I didn’t, but Boyd did.”

Vic sat bolt upright. “What?”

“Boyd sent them behind my back,” he replied. “He’d figured out I couldn’t be trusted. He didn’t tell me anything about it. I found out about six months after they’d already deployed to 2018. I searched the Guild House for anything Boyd might have written down and found nothing.”

Her jaw hit the floor. “Are you serious? So they’re walking around San Francisco right now, looking to hunt us down.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, who are they?” she asked. “Who’s on the teams?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “He used different people I never met before. They could be anybody.”

Vic launched herself off the bed and flew around the room, snatching her clothes off the floor and fumbling her way into them.

“What are you doing?” Malcolm asked from the bed. “Where are you going? We’ve got the rest of the night together.”

“You have to send me back,” she barked. “You have to send me back to Stromness to find out who he sent.”

“You’re nuts,” he returned. “I just got you back after three hundred years on my own. I’m not sending you back.”

She tried to get her leg into her jeans and fell over. She collapsed onto her back on the mattress and kicked her legs out straight to slide her pants on. “You have to. Don’t you understand? It’s the only way to find out who they are. You have to send me back so I can get the information out of Boyd.”

Puppet strings yanked Malcolm off the bed to lunge at her. “You’re not going near Boyd again. You’re staying here.”

“And what?” She whipped around to confront him. “And sit around waiting for the teams to track us down, plus Ree and Ned and all the others? Don’t you get it? They could be anybody. They could be working inside Allied Chemical right now. They could be infiltrating Primary Industries to find out how far we’ve gotten on the formula. We can’t go on without learning who they are. They could kill us all while we’re sitting around hoping for the best.” She jerked her jacket around her shoulders—the jacket he’d bought her.

Malcolm glared at her, but he couldn’t speak. He just spent the most magical night of his life with this woman, and now she was demanding he send her away.

She grabbed her handbag and checked her phone. “Seventy-five percent battery charge. That should be enough. I’ll power it down now to save it in case I need it.”

“What do you think you’re gonna do—call in an airstrike to take Boyd prisoner?” He stretched out on the bed and stuffed a pillow behind his head. “You’re not going, Vic. No way.”

She paid no attention to him. She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. “Oh, crap. I forgot. I’ll have to change back into that dress I was wearing earlier. Where is it?” She whizzed around the apartment until she gathered up all her old clothes.

Malcolm studied her from the bed. She wasn’t going anywhere without his say-so. She couldn’t cast the spell by herself. All he had to do was lie here and do nothing, and she was stuck.

She went through the elaborate process of taking off her modern clothes and getting into her Highland dress. When she’d adjusted her skirts to her satisfaction, she halted at the foot of the bed and scanned Malcolm still lying there bare-chested. The blanket covered him up to his navel.

He returned her gaze with steady assurance that nothing could budge him.

She raised her eyebrows. “Well? Come on. Do the spell.”

“You’re not going,” he told her. “I’m putting my foot down. It’s too dangerous.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped. “You know perfectly well I have to go back. You probably remember me back there a second time. You would have had to. You would have had to cast the spell to send me home again afterward.”

He kept his face as impassive as he could. She stood above him in all her loveliness, looking so much more beautiful to him now that he knew she was all his.

“Well?” she asked. “Do you remember me back there a second time?”

He squirmed under the covers. “That doesn’t make any difference. If I don’t send you back now, you won’t be there a second time. You’re staying here. That’s all there is to it.”

She regarded him another long, tense moment. They faced off, her standing up and him lying down. He didn’t want to think about what was going on in her mind.

She sat down next to him, stroked his cheek, and kissed him. “Listen to me. The sooner we identify these teams and eliminate them, the sooner we can be together. Don’t you realize what this means? We can’t keep battling the Falisa, one generation after another. We have to destroy them. Send me back. It’s only for a little while. I’ll be back soon, and then we’ll be able to get rid of them.”

He did his best to hold firm, but she already knew she’d won. His soul cried against letting her go, even to cross town to her own house, much less sending her back to the Guild House and Boyd. Malcolm should have wrung Boyd’s neck himself when he’d had the chance.

He frowned at her. “What are you going to do? How are you going to find out who the teams are?”

“I don’t know yet,” she replied. “I worked out a way to pick my bedroom lock. I can get out of the room and sneak around the Guild House. Maybe I can overhear him talking about the teams, or maybe I can see him sending them. I don’t know. I’ll work it out when I get there.”

All at once, he couldn’t stand it. He grabbed her and crushed her against his chest and pressed his lips against her hair. “I can’t let you go. I can’t ever let you go again.”

She said nothing. She didn’t have to. She dragged her sacred lips across his heart, her red curls tumbling over him. They christened him with that excruciating love that changed everything. He could tolerate centuries working for the Falisa as long as he was alone. He couldn’t survive this heartbreaking separation from her.

He made up his mind then and there he would quit the Falisa to be with her. He couldn’t bear to do anything else. The instant she came home, he would walk away from thousands of years of work. He didn’t care anymore. Any benefit he might have gained for the Angui with this work couldn’t hold a candle to her.

He pushed her back, but his throat ached so bad he could hardly talk. “You promise you’ll come straight back?”

“I promise.” She kissed him one more time.

He couldn’t look at her gorgeous features alight from a thousand stars outside. It hurt too much. He closed his eyes and laid his hand on her head. He traced his thumb across her forehead and choked out the words.

“Eshmun Hamilcar hanno ashtzaph byblos rae

Zephon anana akilokipok silatuyok anik toe

Takiyok keorvik suluk yo

Uyarak ek chua lo.”

By the time he finished, he’d broken down sobbing and tears streamed down his cheeks.