Forever (27 page)

“Stop thinking. You’re going to end up in a corner you don’t want to be in and it’ll shut you down like Fort Knox under a bomb threat.”

“Okay,” she said. She lay there for all of two seconds. “I have a question. Let’s just say—”

“This is you not thinking?” he teased. “I hate to tell you but you’re doing it wrong.”

She made a face at him, coming just shy of sticking her tongue out. It made her take pause for another two seconds. There was something about him that relaxed her.
Well, beside orgasms
, she thought to herself. She’d had some nice relationships before meeting him, but … they hadn’t exactly been fun. They were hardly what she’d call a relationship in the traditional sense, but just the same it wasn’t “nice.” It was more cordial. Intelligent. Mature. Sedate. All the things she usually looked for when trying a relationship on for size. She didn’t like drama in her life … she had her ebullient sister providing more than enough of it, thank you very much. But all the push me, pull me emotions, the petty jealousies, the insecurities, they were not something she wanted to indulge in.

Since meeting him, she’d had nothing but drama where he was concerned. And the last couple of days had only exacerbated it. But she had thought she would have been very unhappy in a volatile relationship. Hell, she’d counseled enough people who were engaged in them. Some of them unhealthy to the point of danger and poisoning of the spirit. But … by trying to avoid all of the emotional pitfalls, she’d also managed to bleed out the joys, the passions, and the pleasure, she realized. The past hours in his bed had proven that to her. She’d spent so much time concerned about what type of life she didn’t want to have that she’d not been living much at all. She’d schooled herself not to take chances, but chances were what life was all about. Taking them or passing up on them, those chances meant something.

“Let me ask you this,” she said. “Let’s make the wild assumption that I agree to do something like this,
which, I’m still not inclined even the slightest to do. But let’s say I was. How would she know? I mean, if you’re down here and she’s up there in the Ether or whatever, how would she know that I’m the one you want her to take. I could be dead and stay dead, no Bodywalker, if she gets it wrong. What if she’s already found someone else and is on her way here?”

“She’s not here,” he said, reaching to smooth back the tumble of hair that seemed to be everywhere around them. “I would know. I expression on his face”

“Not even Ram and Docia. And they are very, very close to each other. And as to your first question, she will know. She knows everything I am feeling here, just as I know everything she is feeling there. She would feel me directing you toward her. She would feel how special you are to me. She will know instantly that you are my extraordinary gift to her … and she would be the most precious gift I could ever give to you. Oh I know it comes fraught with complexities and even danger, I won’t pretend that it doesn’t. But so does any other life, more or less. Look how this began … with Docia, a normal girl in a normal life, suddenly being pushed off a bridge. That should have been the end. It would have been the end.”

“If not for a Bodywalker. And I understand that. I think it’s … really something special to be given a gift like that. A second chance at life. But … it’s not a natural death if I do this consciously. It’s … just not.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what she meant. He did. She didn’t want a second life because she wasn’t done with the first one yet.

“I think you should know … it won’t be safe for you to leave here for a while … if ever,” he said, sitting up so he could put his back to her and not let her see the
disappointment that was clutching at him. Disappointment, but not condemnation. He wanted her so badly his souls ached for it. But he understood why she felt it was a disrespectful thing to do, to simply throw away a life in order to try on a better one. These were not things that could be discarded and put on like clothes. He never thought it would be and he never once thought this would be easy. But now he was tangled up in her and it was getting really complicated really fast. He wished they could just shut it out for a few more—

The sensation that suddenly ran through him was like a scream, an alarming, screeching thing that propelled him to his feet.

“Jacks—?”

“Shh!” He was listening, listening to try to understand what he was hearing.

Gargoyles
, his other half whispered to him.
The Gargoyles who are attached to us have arrived and there is something very wrong
.

Jackson grabbed for the nearest pair of jeans he could find and put them on as he was hurrying to the window. He couldn’t remember how to work the smart glass, glass with particles inside of it that, when excited by an electric current, made it completely opaque, blocking out the daylight while he—

Electricity!
He remembered the switch and turned it off. The glass became instantly clear and moonlight, bright and full, poured in. It lit the grounds very well, but even so it was amazing how much he could see, how much detail jumped out at him as though it were the light of day. Then he saw them, huge dark masses with wings, gliding to the ground in a deadly, beautiful grace of movement that should not have been present in creatures so big. And Menes knew these Gargoyles well.

Ahnvil
, he thought as Jackson’s eyes rested on the nearer Gargoyle. And as if he knew eyes were on him,
Ahnvil turned and looked straight up at the bedroom window. The Gargoyles’ eyes were red, something that happened only whe expression on his face their ihlyn they were in battle mode or being threatened in some way. Suddenly Jackson found himself wishing he could open the window, except it was a solid sheet of glass in its casement.

“There’s trouble,” Jackson said, turning to look at her. “Promise me you’ll stay right here,” he demanded of her as he went for his gun in his dresser. He whistled sharply, more habit than anything, and he heard Sargent bark from farther inside the house. He ran out of the room before she answered him, instinctively knowing there was no time to waste. He didn’t waste time with shirt or shoes. Sargent met him halfway down the hallway, whining excitedly, knowing something was happening as only an animal could know it. Jackson pointed to the bedroom door he’d just come through. “Stay, boy. You watch out for her.”

Sargent actually looked put out by the order. He even whined, the doggy version of
“Oh, c’mon!! I wanna go too!”

Marissa raced to the window, her heart in her throat as she watched for Jackson. This, she thought, is the other reason why I never wanted to date from within the police department. She knew she couldn’t watch someone she loved run headfirst into danger every single day of her life, never knowing if that day was going to be the day his captain would be at her door in his stead because …

… loved? She hastily rewound her thoughts. Had she just said …

Love Jackson? No! Of course you don’t love him! If for no other reason than he’s a damn minefield full of trouble just waiting to erupt beneath you! Marissa Anderson, you are way too smart for that! Jesus, you’d
think you were sixteen and crushing on the guy just because you’d just gone all the way with him!

Then the door to the house flew open, bright light flooding the frame for an instant and then it was gone again, Jackson having run through so fast he was hardly more than a blur. And that was when she saw who he was running toward. Or rather
what
he was running toward.

“Oh my god, they’re really real,” she breathed, her breath fogging against the glass as she pressed even closer to see. Despite the moonlight it was still dark out, but there was no mistaking the breadth of a wingspan on the back of a very large creature. Several creatures. What had Jackson said? That they belonged to him? Like possessions?

No. She remembered the story about the Gargoyles and their freedom. He meant … he meant that he was guardian over their touchstones for as long as he was on this earth. How many, she wondered, seeing three of them at present, did he have guardianship of? How many did he owe this great responsibility to? How many trusted Menes so implicitly that they pledged their loyalty to him generation after generation?

She heard the clicking of nails on the wood floor, then felt Sargent leaning his warm body and soft fur against her legs. He whined, clearly not happy his master took off without him. But Jackson would always look out for his dog first and he must know that whatever the trouble was, Sargent was too fragile a creature to get caught up in the middle of a situation that made powerful things like Bodywalkers and Gargoyles worry. He also thought she was too fragile a creature, she supposed, feeling a little put out by that realization. If she wasn’t so terrified of what was beyond the window, she would have stomped down after him and told him to quit treating her like a precious commodity.

Oh, but it was ” she stammered have betterkind of nice to feel like a precious commodity. There was something very compelling in the small, almost absentminded ways he took care of and with her. And she didn’t just mean these past couple of days. As if suddenly becoming aware of it all, she remembered all those times he’d handed her the first cup of coffee from the pot, having figured out she liked it dangerously hot. Milk and three sugars. He had figured it out and had always remembered. He’d known when her sister’s birthday was, she recalled. He’d walk her out to her car if she was working late, just to make sure she was safe. When she tried to decline he would ignore her. And he watched. She remembered all those times she’d felt him watching her. Especially since Chico had spotted the guy with a knife. He knew the precinct, even though it had a decent number of cops for a seemingly small town in upstate New York, was not as safe as one might think. Mainly because it doubled as central booking and holding cells until Ulster County Jail came and fetched them or they were transported out to them.

And now she knew why he had been watching her, what he had been feeling toward her. Or perhaps an impression of how he’d felt. It wasn’t love of course. More like lust. And she didn’t fault him for it because she had been lusting right back at him. But now she knew there was the potential for more, and as she watched him run out into the night bare-chested and barefooted and looking so damn in control and powerful she felt herself going weak in the knees and her breath becoming difficult to catch.

“God, let him be safe,” she said fervently. Regardless, she just didn’t have it in her to wait up in his room. He couldn’t expect her to just watch as something or someone tried to hurt him. Oh, she knew she would be insignificant to these creatures of power, but she just couldn’t
stand there knowing he was going out into danger. Not from so far away that she couldn’t get to him if he needed her. What someone like him would need someone like her for wasn’t even logically known. Then again, nothing she was feeling, thinking, or doing was rooted in logic anymore.

She hurried to the dresser, hoping that he had some clothes she could wear. Her blouse was tattered and torn, only her skirt remaining. She wriggled into it and her discarded panties as she checked every drawer and found them bare. Finally her eyes fell to his shirt where it lay draped over the back of a chair and she rushed into it, the garment big and as roomy as a nightshirt and, in spite of her height, it still dropped nearly to her knees. Rolling up the sleeves she raced out of the room and down the hall and stairs. She ran into one of the front rooms, shutting off the light so she could make out what was happening outside. She couldn’t see anything now that she wasn’t elevated and she found herself drawn to go out. Sargent was whining in earnest now, looking to her to take some sort of action. But in the end it turned out that he was the reason why she proceeded with much more caution.

“Stay here,” she tried to command the dog. He cocked his head and whined again. He sat down, but stood right back up again, his agitation enormous in the face of his craving to go to his master’s side. She wholly understood the feeling. But hers was the only life she was willing to be responsible for, so she made Sargent follow her to a nearby room, it too was at the front of the house with one of those large glass windows in it. But instead of looking to see if it was a better vantage point, she gently closed the door shut on Sargent, closing him safely inside. Then, after making sure the foyer light wasn’t on so she wouldn’t be seen leaving the house, she crept out of the front door.

*    *    *

Jackson ran up to Ahnvil who stood waiting for him, wings fully outspread, a mark of his tension. He looked as though he were spoiling for a fight. That was when a wave of fondness for the Gargoyle swept through him, as well as a few of the most prominent memories of him that Menes quickly gave him access to. They told him that Ahnvil was to be trusted implicitly, and that the Gargoyle was loyal to Menes, no matter who held his touchstone during those one hundred years he had to spend in the Ether between lives. Sometimes it had been Ram, other times Asikri. If not one of them then a powerful female who was less of a target than those in the governing seats.

“What is it?” he asked as soon as he was close enough.

“There is a powerful presence heading this way,” Ahnvil told him, his voice like gravel crunching under feet. “We are all feeling it.”

The Gargoyles were protectors for a reason. They could feel trouble coming, whatever it was. And though they were turned to stone by the touch of sunlight, the Templars could no sooner go out in daylight than any of them could, so their guardianship was only needed in the darkness. When they settled to their touchstones they could bear witness to everything crossing their path, to be reported at the full break of dusk.

“Powerful as in Templar?”

“Very close now. It won’t be long.” Ahnvil looked down at the gun in Jackson’s hand and raised a stony brow. “That will not do much against Templars if they are this powerful. They will be very strongly shielded.”

“I know. But until I got out here I didn’t know the nature of the trouble. If it was human,” Jackson retorted dryly, “I would think keeping a low profile and using a gun over my telekinesis would be the preferred course of action. You know, I wasn’t just reborn yesterday,”
he said, the light of humor entering his eyes when he saw Ahnvil’s sheepish discomfort. The big Gargoyle was known for his deep respect … as well as being hard on himself if he should fail in any way … even if it was just a simple misunderstanding. There was never a need to punish Ahnvil in any sense of the word, because the Gargoyle always proved to be much harder on himself than anyone else could be. The only exception, perhaps, being his former Templar master and creator. Ahnvil didn’t talk much about it, but Jackson knew well enough it had not gone easy for him. For any of them.