The Prophecy (Daughters of the People Series Book 1) (23 page)

Her face paled
beneath its natural brown. “It wasn’t like that.”

He barked out a
laugh. “Right.”

“I swear, James,
it was never like that. I knew there was a chance, but I also wanted to get to
know you, just because,” she shrugged and glanced away. “I was attracted to you
from the start.”

“And you enticed
me here to, what? Test my mettle? See if I measured up?”

“You were
invited here solely to work on the artifacts and assist with translations of
other collections. The attraction between us was an unexpected bonus, for my
part, anyway, but it played no role in your being here.”

He shook his
head and rubbed the nape of his neck. How could he ever believe that after
she’d hidden so much from him?

“If you believe I’m
immortal, that the Sisters existed and their Daughters still live, why is it so
hard to believe I wasn’t using you?”

“I’m not so sure
I believe any of this.” Everything she’d told him, everything that had ever
happened between them, spun around and around in his head, and it was just too
much. He needed to be alone, needed to be away from her and the secrets she’d
kept. “I need to think.”

“James, please.”

She reached
toward him, and he drew back, stepping out of her reach, her flinch no more
than a tickle along his numb heart. One touch and he might just say to hell
with it, to hell with everything, and fall back into bed with her. That
wouldn’t solve anything. She’d still cling to her tale, and he’d still have to
deal with it.

She threaded her
fingers together in front of her. “You’ll have the time you need, but please
don’t take too long.”

“Sure,” he
agreed, though how could he possibly know how long it would take to deal with
the load she’d just slung at him? Hell, he didn’t even know if half of what
she’d said was true, and he hadn’t even begun to sort out his feelings for her.
A sharp pain set up residence in his left temple. Any way he went, he was
sc-sc-screwed.

Maya’s grip
tightened and the skin over her knuckles whitened. “Until you’ve come to terms
with this, please don’t leave the campus.”

He opened his
mouth, closed it again. Where would he go? Who would he tell? He finally
croaked out a shaky, “Why?”

“You’re a
security risk. We can’t have you wandering around unaccompanied until we know you
can be trusted.”

“Jesus, Maya.
Isn’t that taking the trust issue a little far?”

“Unfortunately,
we’ve learned this the hard way.”

“And if I can’t
be trusted?”

“That’s not a
situation you need to worry about.”

“Yeah, I think
it is, since it concerns me,” he shot back. “What would you do?”

She hesitated,
then admitted, “You’d be taken care of.”

“Taken care of.
As in eliminated? Killed? Wiped from the face of the planet?”

“Don’t be
melodramatic,” she said, her voice sharp and impatient.

“Then don’t jerk
me around.”

She gazed at him
for long moments. “I care about you, James.”

He searched her
face, looking for signs of duplicity, and saw only sincerity in the tense
paleness of her skin, in the worry clouding her warm, golden-brown eyes. It was
hard to believe this woman, sweet Maya with her gentle laughter and beautiful
touch, could be a cold, deadly killer. On the other hand, he’d witnessed her
fight with India. Maya had controlled the outcome, a sign of her skill and resolve,
and a warning to anybody foolish enough to cross her.

“That wouldn’t
stop you from
taking care
of me, would it,” he said slowly.

“Please don’t
put me in that position.”

“Ok.” He inhaled
deeply, exhaled on a huff. God, he needed to think, needed some space, needed
time to sort through everything. “I’m going now.”

“Take care of
yourself, James,” she said softly.

“Yeah, sure.”

He stumbled to
the room’s entrance, too overwhelmed to care how he must appear to her. What
did it matter? She was old, immortal, implacable, and he was just a man. He
opened the door, slipped through it, and glanced back. Maya skimmed her fingers
along the edge of the glass case. A lone tear streaked down her face and her
lips trembled, and God help him, he wanted to go back in there, pull her into
his arms, and tell her everything was going to be ok. He closed the door and
walked away, leaving her to her secrets and him to the task of mending the dent
she’d made in his heart.

A blessed
numbness settled over James during the walk to his apartment. He slipped inside,
grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and slumped into the sofa, one hand on his
stomach, the other holding the beer.

The sun dropped
behind the hills and the security lights came on. The beer grew warm in his
hand. Moisture leaked down the sides, pooling unnoticed on his skin. His
conversation with Maya played over and over again in his head, a never-ending
loop of revelation and disbelief.

Questions
battered him into exhaustion, about Maya’s veracity, her sanity, the
implications of a millennia-old culture existing in modern times, virtually hidden
from the rest of the world, and about the implications to himself and Amelia,
to his personal work, and to the work he was doing for the IECS.

Which had
probably been founded as a shelter for these women, a sort of sanctuary, not
unlike the one he’d found referenced in the Sandby borg artifacts. He scowled
at the darkened TV across the coffee table. He’d forgotten to tell Maya about
it. He’d forgotten to tell her a lot of things.

He lifted the
beer to his mouth and sipped, then grimaced. Damn it. It was too warm to drink.
He peeked at his watch and sighed. It was after midnight by a long shot and he
still hadn’t sorted out all the questions rattling around in his head. He
needed to get it out, maybe talk to somebody else, but who?

Phil and George
were out of the question. They were just too young and they probably had no
clue they were living among immortal Amazon-type women. Phil would probably
love that. He loved being at the center of the local singles scene, and that
scene suddenly made an awful sort of sense. The guys had been right. It was
kind of like a meat market.

Tom might be a
good sounding board, but he probably didn’t know about the Daughters, either,
and without him, James was stuck with too many questions and no way to resolve
them.

 A light bulb
went off in his brain. Robert Upton. Of course. James glanced at his watch
again and cursed under his breath. Still a long way ‘til a decent hour. First
thing after the workday started, he’d go to Dr. Upton’s office and quiz the
older man. Maybe
he
had the answers James needed.

He spent a
restless night staring at the ceiling in his bedroom, out the window, at the
closet door, and finally fell asleep in the predawn hours of morning. He awoke
groggy and irritable, shivered through a quick, cold shower, and dressed, then
set out in search of Dr. Upton.

The campus came
to life as he walked along the paths winding between the buildings. Dew clung
to the grass, carrying the chill of late summer. Fall would be there soon. He
could already smell it in the air, a comforting scent that triggered a wave of
nostalgia for his own days as a student.

Dr. Upton’s
office was located in the same building as his. James had discovered that not
long after Maya’s fight with India when he’d consulted with Dr. Upton on some
hard to read documents. He hadn’t been back since, but the building was well
laid out, not that large in the scheme of things, and virtually impossible to
get lost in.

He jogged the
last few feet to Dr. Upton’s office and groaned. The other man’s office hours
didn’t start until later that morning. He leaned against the wall and scrambled
for a way to fill his time, anything to keep his mind busy while he waited.

The museum.
Right. He could go there and do what he should’ve insisted on doing the day
before, attempt to authenticate the fragments of the origin myth.

The museum was
open, the air hushed, as if no one were in. He wandered through the exhibits, rereading
the posted descriptions. Several of the artifacts were ancient, others equally
as rare, and still others were displayed for no apparent reason. There was no
overt theme to the items on display. Maybe they’d all been owned by Daughters or
pertained to them in some way, or maybe some of them even dated back to the
time of the Seven Sisters Maya had told him about.

He found the
door to the room housing the origin myth, scowled at the security system, and
backtracked to the museum’s entrance.

A guard was
strolling through the first row of exhibits, her sable hair coiled into a bun
at the nape of her neck, her all black uniform sharply pressed. She smiled.
“Dr. T, hello. Maetyrm Maya said you might stop by.”

He shuffled to a
halt. One of these days, maybe he’d get used to everybody in Tellowee knowing
who he was, even when he hadn’t met them. “Er, she did?”

“Of course.
Director Upton, too. They said you might want to study the Legend of Beginnings
up close.” The guard swept her hand toward the back. “If you’ll come with me,
I’ll show you how to access it and key in a password for you.”

“Ah, thank you,”
he said, and followed her toward the rear of the museum, listening attentively
as she walked him through the procedures for entering the room. She opened the
door for him, nodded once, then closed it, leaving him alone.

He inhaled
slowly and moved to the display case. The plaque he’d paid scarce attention to
the day before contained a summary of the myth. Seven Sisters lived with their
parents in peaceful coexistence with the People, a band of Neolithic, nomadic
hunter-gatherers that included the sisters and their parents. The men of the
People murdered the girls’ parents and enslaved the women of the People. The
sisters fled and wandered the land for many days, finally coming to rest in an
oasis known as Sanctuary where they lived and trained for seven years.

The eldest
daughter, Kiya, dreamed of a way to free the women of the People. The sisters
set out, hoping to right the wrongs done by their fellow tribesmen. They located
their former tribesmen and slaughtered the men, then freed the women and
children. Upon seeing the blood of the men, the god An cursed the sisters to
immortality, never to bear sons, never to know peace. The goddess Ki saw that
An had been unjust and used all of her strength and power to modify the curse,
giving the sisters a way out.

Redemption, Maya
had said.

The myth ended
with a warning to remember the past. A small offset section contained a note
about rumors of a lost prophecy detailing how the curse might be broken for
good.

James rubbed his
eyes wearily. If Maya had shown him this from the start, it would’ve helped him
tremendously. He’d suspected as much, but now with the proof laid in front of
him, a slow burn roiled in his stomach. By holding this information back, she’d
deliberately jeopardized their work. His gaze fell on one of the smaller
fragments, on the symbol it had taken him so long to understand, vivid proof of
the harm she’d inflicted on their work.
Sanctuary
. Now he knew exactly
what kind of sanctuary the translation referred to.

But why? This
work was vitally important to her, so why not tell him from the start?

James thanked
the guard and left the museum, trudging toward Dr. Upton’s office, his mood no
better than it had been before he’d studied the legend. He knocked on the door,
tried the doorknob, and stuck his head inside.

Robert took one
look at James and sighed. “So, now you know, do you?”

James dropped
into one of the chairs in front of Dr. Upton’s desk. “Oh, yeah.”

“You’re
wondering if it’s all true or if there are a bunch of crazy women running
around pretending to be Amazons.”

James stared,
then scrubbed his hands across his face. Right. The other man had probably had
a very similar reaction to his own. He’d forgotten for a minute who Robert was
married to. “Is it true?”

“Oh, yes. Took
me a while to get my mind around it, too, but eventually I realized that
Rebecca is one of the sanest, most stable women I’ve ever met. And then, of
course, there’s the fact that I’ve known her immortal daughters for decades,
and they’ve never aged a single day in all that time.”

“Jesus,” James
breathed. “Really?”

“I wouldn’t
lie.” Robert threaded his fingers together over his chest and leaned back in
his chair. “Look, I know you have questions, but the best place for you to find
those is with Maya. It’ll be better coming from her because she’s lived it. I
just married into it.”

“No, I mean,
yes.” James slouched in his chair, regarding the older man carefully. The
questions humming through his mind were coalescing into a simple handful, and
with that narrowing came an uneasy acceptance. Maybe Maya was telling the truth
after all. Maybe she wasn’t as crazy as he’d thought she was, and maybe he’d
been wrong to jump on her the way he had. “I guess I just needed to hear
somebody else say it.”

“That helps,” Robert
said, grinning. “It also helps to get drunk. Nothing like seeing the bottom of
a cup to help a man make sense of things.”

James scowled.
He’d tried drinking and ended up pouring it down the sink. “Couldn’t go off
campus last night.”

“Maya put you on
lockdown, did she? Well, you should’ve called me. I’d’ve taken you out myself and
we could’ve gotten drunk with style.”

James hunched
his shoulders. “I didn’t think of you until the middle of the night.”

Robert’s chuckle
boomed through the small office. “Better late than never.”

James attempted
a smile. His mouth made it halfway, wobbled, and collapsed into a frown. “Did
Director Upton threaten to kill you when she first told you?”

Robert’s bushy
eyebrows shot toward his thinning hairline. “What? Surely Maya didn’t say that.
That’s not how the Daughters deal with men, I assure you.”

“Er, actually,
she said she’d have me
taken care of
.”

Robert’s
expression cleared and he threw back his head, laughing in earnest. “She’s
really got you by the short hairs, doesn’t she? Normally, if a man doesn’t fall
in line, the Daughters simply remind him of the consequences. A good thrashing
usually does the trick. Humiliating, yes. Life threatening, no. It’s been
centuries since they’ve actually killed a man for not falling in love with
them.”

Heat spread up
James’ cheeks and his shoulders hitched an inch higher. How was he supposed to
know that? “So, she won’t actually kill me, then.”

“Son, if you’re
stupid enough to let a woman like Maya Bellegarde slip through your fingers, dying
is the least of your problems.”

They chatted for
a few minutes more before James left. Dr. Upton had set James’ mind at ease in a
way only a man could. Ok, so it had been embarrassing, but he was a little more
grounded now. His mind was settling, and he was beginning to believe that Maya
had told him the truth, about the Seven Sisters, about herself.

The question
that stuck out to him the most, the one that really worried him now that he’d stepped
onto the long road to belief, was what this meant to him and Maya. How could he
continue a relationship with her, knowing that at least part of her was in it
for some sort of mystical cure? Or had she been truthful when she’d insisted
she was with him out of an honest attraction? Could he ever be sure? Did
certainty really matter?

He stuffed his
hands in his pockets and shambled along the path outside his office building,
head down, feet aimless. He’d done most of the pursuing. She’d been the
reluctant one and had only warmed up to the idea of being with him after
spending a lot of time around him. Maybe she really had been telling the truth,
about that part anyway.

All of that
aside, he wasn’t ready to forgive her and he couldn’t quite face her yet. His
stomach rumbled, reminding him of the time, and James veered off toward the
cafeteria. Food first, then translations, then lots and lots of sleep. Tomorrow
was soon enough to deal with Maya.

* * *

The hours ticked
by. Maya took her work home to avoid even a sight of James and vowed not to
cry. It was her own fault for not telling him sooner, before they’d started
dating. At the very least, she should’ve told him before they’d made love the
first time.

Dierdre had the
week off from school, so they had movie night, Dierdre’s choice. Naturally, she
picked the sappiest love story in their DVD collection. Maya’s vow not to cry
lasted right up until the part where it looked like the leading couple would
never get together. Tears trickled down her cheeks and she sniffed, trying to
hold them back. Dierdre laid her head on Maya’s shoulder, and they finished
watching the movie together, each silently considering a bleak, loveless future.

Sleep eluded
Maya. She rested in bed, her eyes following the light the moon cast into her
room as it moved through the shadows. James had every right to be angry and no
reason to believe her. She’d left instructions for him to have access to the
Legend and to any documents in the Archives he needed. He was a man of science
and he’d want something other than her word as proof. It shouldn’t bother her,
but it did. All his talk of her trusting him, and then he scoffed when she
finally told him the truth. Trust was a two-way street. Why couldn’t he see
that?

She avoided
dwelling on their relationship as much as possible and threw herself into work
and training, driving herself to physical exhaustion. Still, the hours bled
slowly by, sleep eluded her, and the dull ache in her heart refused to soften.