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  Somehow her pants came off and she was straddling his thighs, rubbing against the taut bulge of his erection. She felt herself floating, guided to the ground by strong arms, lying on her back with her thighs parted.

  The touch of his lips and tongue in her most sensitive place drew a muffled cry from her throat, quieted only by some distant sense of self-preservation. She seemed to recall something like this happening long ago, but the past was as unreal as the future. Garret knew exactly where and how to use his tongue to tickle and tease, drawing out each caress with rapid flicks and long strokes.

  She arched her back, begging him with her entire body. He turned his attention to her breasts and continued his ministrations while she felt for the waistband of his pants.

  “Garret,” she whispered, filling her mind with the emotional images of taking and being taken. His aura erupted around him, emitting tongues of flame that strained toward her. Her own aura flared for the first time, a blue-tinged amethyst radiance that opened to accept the thrust of his fire as her body was ready to accept his.

  Garret was more than ready. Her hand found him, large and very hard. The intensity of his need—hers—multiplied a thousandfold.

  For a moment there was nothing between them. Nothing at all—no boundaries, no barriers, no walls. He eased himself over her, gazing down at her with his weight braced on his hands and his hips between her thighs.

  Again she saw herself through his eyes, less a distinctive shape than an aura enclosing the interwoven strands of her emotions. But the image began to take form, and she glimpsed her face: eyes closed, lips parted, hair wild and tangled about her shoulders.

  And beautiful. Beautiful in a way she could never have imagined. It was the face she’d seen in mirrors before her exile and sometimes in the imperfect reflection of water, but bathed in a gentle light that softened the blue of her aura to a silky violet. Violet water, smooth and untroubled.

  Garret caught her lips with his, exploring the terrain of her mouth, coaxing her to open for him. With a low moan of surrender, she parted her lips, and his tongue found its way inside. He curled it around hers, sucked, kissed her more deeply than she would have believed possible.

  Violet transformed to deep, hot purple. She pushed her fingers into his hair and bit lightly into his lower lip, drawing blood. He adjusted his position so that a single thrust would make them one at last.

  Something remarkable happened then. Feelings she barely recognized bloomed in her mind, so astonishing that, at first, she didn’t know how to name them.

  But not all the memories were dead. There were no times, no places...only the joy and happiness and exhilaration of the single thing she had sought and found and lost before the change. The thing she wanted again, here within her grasp.

  Everything else vanished. There was no more need to struggle, to aspire to anything greater than this. Her emotions swelled to obliterate all other desires. She would float in this perfect world forever, in endless bliss and exultation.

  She had found what the humans called heaven.

  But there was a bubble of disturbance in the flawless pool of eternal rapture, a devil in this paradise. It picked and prodded at her, mocking her with warnings she could not quite shut out.

  There is no heaven for Opiri.

  “Artemis,” Garret said. His voice was hoarse and urgent, his mind spinning on the edge of euphoria. She knew that all she had to do was speak a single word, and every other voice would be silenced.

  So would her dreams and hopes for her people. She would no longer care about them, because she had what she wanted, all she would ever want.

  Forget them, she thought. You owe them nothing.

  But her past would not be silent. They are your people, it said. How can you abandon them for a human?

  “No,” she whispered.

  All we fought for destroyed, because of you. Because of him.

  Garret’s face came into sharp focus, blazing with elation. He could destroy nothing, but he could give her—

  “Roxana?” he murmured.

  She saw her own face again...saw it change, felt Garret’s bewilderment and her own turmoil as that other face slipped over hers like a mask. Eyes too dark, hair too long, features too...

  “No,” Garret said hoarsely. The stranger vanished, but the sheer weight of his emotions—regret, grief, confusion—bore down on her with such force that she thought they would crush her. Illusion shattered. Shock worked as no careful discipline could have done.

  She pushed him out—out of her heart, her mind, her very being—and slammed the wall down between them, severing all emotional ties, all the feelings that had tempted her into relinquishing the new way she had sought to win for her own kind.

  The feelings that had nearly made her surrender to a human who saw another face even as he prepared to possess her.

  Chapter 7

  Artemis scrambled to her feet, snatching up her pants as she bolted away from him. Garret’s face was drained of color, and though she could no longer sense his emotions, she saw the stark pain in his eyes.

  For her, or for himself?

  Roxana.

  Somehow Artemis dressed, gathered her weapons and fled without looking at him again. She ran recklessly toward the border of the woods, as if by simply putting physical distance between herself and Garret she might undo the past hour and forget.

  But she knew it was not possible to regain that safe sense of living in a fortress that could never be breached. There was no undoing this. The gate had closed, but she knew that she could never take Garret’s blood again. It wasn’t simply a matter of becoming dependent. Death would be preferable to losing herself, losing all she believed had made her what she was.

  Garret had asked her if she remembered what love was. She hadn’t been honest then. She remembered the physical and emotional closeness that accompanied complete faith in another: a lover, life partner, the one she could not live without. Garret had made her experience some of those feelings again. His blood, his touch, had engulfed her in passions she had left behind for a greater, nobler purpose.

  But there was no reality behind those passions, no foundation. Garret’s invocation of that other name was proof enough of that.

  Had that other woman been so different from her, though? Ivory hair, eyes the color of rich, purple wine—the distinctive traits of any Opir save for the newest converts.

  Artemis filled her lungs with pine-scented air, and then expelled her agitation along with her breath. The only purpose in analyzing her emotions was to rid herself of them. If she could not be an impartial, dispassionate teacher, she could not help her own people break the chains of savagery that bound them to lives of degradation and self-destruction.

  She slowed as she approached the field, focusing her attention on her surroundings. There was no sound, no movement in the sea of grass, but she knew the Freebloods and humans were still there.

  Stretching out on her belly, Artemis rested her cheek against the cool earth. This was a test. If she truly considered the fate of her kind more important than anything else, she could leave this place and let Garret find his own way to his son, facing the dangers of capture and death alone.

  But she could no more leave him than she could erase her empathic “gift.” The test did not ask her to choose which commitment was more important. It asked for proof that she could remain by Garret’s side and not lose herself again. If she succeeded, then she might be capable and worthy of carrying out her mentor Kronos’s great dream. The one he had died for.

  She was preparing to return to Garret when a flock of birds exploded from the tall grass, followed by the report of many guns firing in unison. She froze as cries of pain and terror and rage rent the night, and the thump of flesh meeting flesh accompanied the rising scent of blood.

  “Ti
mon!”

  Garret staggered up behind her, his pack dangling from his shoulder by one strap. His face was pale, his breathing shallow. Artemis trapped her concern in a cage of logic, grateful that she could not feel what he felt, trying not to imagine what he had thought when she left him without explanation.

  “I am certain that Timon is well,” she said calmly. “You have lost a great deal of blood, and you have been running. You must rest.”

  He looked at her as if she had lost her sanity, let the pack drop to the ground and knelt beside it. He fumbled inside with shaking hands, withdrawing a handgun.

  “You cannot go out there,” Artemis said. “Certainly not with that.”

  There was another scream, but Garret never so much as glanced up. He set the gun aside and withdrew several components of a weapon Artemis didn’t remember ever having seen before. He pushed the pieces together, pausing several times when his clumsy fingers lost their grip. When he was finished and raised the weapon to check his work, she knew what it was: the only projectile weapon the humans had produced that could kill an Opir with a single shot to almost any spot on the body.

  “No,” she said. “You will be killed before you can ever use that thing.”

  “There’s no other choice.” He met her gaze as he got to his feet. “Don’t try to stop me.”

  “I said the same thing to you once,” she reminded him. “I believe I managed to make it ten feet before I collapsed.”

  Jaw set, Garret stepped out into the darkness. He had gone perhaps three yards when one of his legs gave out from under him and he fell to his knee. Another spatter of gunshots blotted out whatever sound he might have made, and then a deep hush fell, even more absolute than the silence that had come before.

  Garret clambered to his feet, swinging the rifle back into position. Artemis joined him. She sniffed the air, and it was as if she could see what had happened as surely as if she had been in the middle of it.

  “Let me go ahead,” she said. “If there are any survivors, I can move more quickly to do whatever must be done.”

  “Together,” he said grimly.

  Artemis knew that trying to stop him would be pointless. He was already moving again, ready to shoot at anything with pale skin and sharp incisors. All she could do was hope that she was right about his son.

  * * *

  Before them lay a scene of utter carnage. Bodies were scattered across the field, mostly Opiri, seven or eight of them lying in pools of dark red. There were several humans, dressed in the mottled clothing of militiamen. Their annihilation had left abstract, scarlet patterns on the grass and shrubs around them, attesting to the violence of their deaths.

  Timon was not with them.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for his heart to resume its normal speed. After a few moments he opened his eyes again and examined the battlefield. He’d seen such violence before, but somehow this seemed worse, as if he might have prevented the killing with a few well-chosen words in the same way he’d once rallied and encouraged members of the human Underground in Erebus.

  He glanced at Artemis. Her face was expressionless. She, too, must regret the killings, but he had no way of knowing what else she thought.

  And she wasn’t going to tell him. Now he knew that she had been correct to hesitate before taking his blood again. If it had only been a matter of physical attraction, he might have been able to hold himself aloof. He had deceived himself into thinking he could donate without being affected by her the way he’d been the first time—wanting her, wanting to be inside her, to claim her for his own in a way he had no right to do.

  But it wasn’t just her beauty and his desire for her that had created the danger. It wasn’t even a matter of his admiration for her courage and determination, and for the compassion he had once believed no Freeblood was capable of feeling.

  There was more to it, much more. It had been as if they’d joined in some profound meeting of minds and hearts, a union of a kind he’d never imagined was possible, a bond stronger than any he could remember experiencing in his life.

  Except with Roxana.

  He had seen Roxana’s face, serene and untroubled, at the very moment when his inexplicable joy was at its highest. There had been no recriminations in that face, no censure of his need for Artemis, but the grief had come anyway.

  And he’d spoken his wife’s name.

  The strange connection between him and Artemis had shattered, and she’d run as if the mere sight of him disgusted her.

  He’d wondered then if she’d abandoned him. He wouldn’t have been shocked if she had. He’d betrayed her. They had both wanted comfort in the midst of fear and savagery, and he had denied her even that small relief.

  But she was still the same Artemis. Apparently they would go on as if nothing had happened. Go back to where they had begun.

  “Something is moving,” she said, cutting across his thoughts. She pointed west. “Over there, away from the others.”

  Lifting the rifle, Garret started forward, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn’t stumble again. A dozen yards on, he saw the grass quiver and heard the faint rustle of something still hidden from his view.

  “Come out,” he said, raising his voice.

  The grass stilled.

  Artemis glanced at him. “There are two,” she said. “One is human.”

  “Get up—slowly,” Garret said, breathing fast. “We won’t hurt you.”

  A pair of hands rose above the grass, showing themselves empty of weapons, and then a head appeared—white hair, pale skin, dark eyes. A young face, little more than a blur in the darkness.

  Garret aimed at the Freeblood’s head, vaguely aware of Artemis’s muffled protest.

  “There is a human with you,” he said. “Let me see him.”

  Another figure rose beside the Freeblood, much shorter and smaller, the head barely reaching the rogue’s rib cage.

  A child.

  “Move away,” Garret said to the Freeblood, gesturing with the barrel of the VS.

  The rogue hesitated, biting his lip, and then edged sideways. The child made a low sound Garret couldn’t quite make out.

  “She is calling for him,” Artemis said. “She’s not afraid.”

  She. Tremors seized the muscles of Garret’s arms, making the rifle shake. Not Timon, but given what had happened here...

  Artemis walked ahead of him. “It’s all right,” she said in a voice perfectly pitched to soothe and reassure. “You can come out. No one will hurt you or Pericles.”

  Pericles. Garret stifled his surprise. “Send the girl ahead,” he said.

  “Her name is Beth,” Pericles said, his hands still high above his head.

  “Beth,” Artemis repeated. Garret caught up with her and lowered the rifle. Slowly the girl emerged from the grass, her steps uncertain as she glanced back at the Freeblood.

  But not in fear, Garret thought. He shifted the strap of the VS, pushing it behind him. “It’s okay,” he said to the girl, beckoning cautiously. Once she was within reach, he swept her up and retreated several yards. Artemis went with him.

  “Pericles,” the girl protested in a thready voice. She felt as light as an infant in Garret’s arms, ragged and filthy, and with a face so dirty that he never would have known her gender if Artemis hadn’t told him. Aside from her apparent concern for the Freeblood, she hardly seemed aware of her surroundings. He pressed her head gently against his shoulder.

  “Artemis,” Garret said, “you take Beth back to camp. I’ll watch the rogue until we can figure out what to do about him.”

  “‘Do about him’?” she echoed, meeting his gaze. “Apparently we saved his life. He has shown no hostility, then or now.”

  “Or maybe he let us think he was dying. And now he has a human child with him. How do
you think that happened?” Garret heard the anger in his own voice and made an effort to moderate his tone. “I won’t kill him,” he said. “Not until we know what he has to do with this massacre.”

  “The child,” Artemis said sharply. “She can hear you.”

  “I doubt she understands,” Garret said, stroking the little girl’s hair. “Beth, will you go with this lady?”

  Beth blinked and met his gaze with bewildered brown eyes. “I’m lost,” she said.

  “We’ll take care of you now. I promise.”

  The girl’s unfocused stare shifted to Artemis’s face. “Okay,” she said, holding out her arms.

  With uncharacteristic awkwardness, Artemis took the child and cradled her against her chest. Beth sighed and snuggled closer, tucking her head under Artemis’s chin.

  Garret turned to look for Pericles, but the Freeblood had already slipped away. Garret cursed under his breath.

  “Go back to camp,” he said to Artemis. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Moving as carefully as if she were holding a delicate porcelain doll, Artemis made her way back into the woods. Garret held the VS ready until they had reached the camp. Artemis set Beth down on the blanket and arranged it around her, using one of Garret’s spare shirts as a pillow. She turned on his small lantern, poured a little water out of his canteen, wet a scrap of cloth and began to bathe the girl’s face.

  Memory cut through Garret’s mind like a blade through a barely healed wound. Roxana, leaning over Timon, smiling and whispering in his ear. Roxana, doting so tenderly on the child that had come of a forbidden yet enduring love.

  Garret saw that same tenderness in Artemis’s face.

  He cleared his throat and tried to focus on the child. In the light, he could see that Beth appeared to be about five years old, small for her age, and far too thin.

  “How is she?” he asked, propping the VS within easy reach against a nearby tree trunk.