Surrender (THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES) (20 page)

Drakkina
, she called in her mind.
Are you about? Where are you?
She waited for a moment but her birthmark did nothing. Kailin concentrated on the small dragonfly shape and imagined her pebble moving toward it, to lie upon it, opening and growing slightly.

The tingle that shot up her arm surprised her and she inhaled tightly.

“What is it?” Jackson said, his gun already out of its holster as he pushed his camel close to her.

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Just…my birthmark.”

In front of them, waves of heat lifted from the uniform crystal landscape, undulating and shifting into the folds and creases of a face. Large eyes sunk into the hill with shaped ridges for eyebrows. A nose pushed out like a mountain range down the length of the hill to molded lips out of sand. A face, a familiar face.

Kailin rubbed at her arm where the birthmark tingled and burned softly.
Drakkina
.

Jackson pushed the brim of his hat back and leaned forward along the camel’s saddle. “Bloody hell.”

Chapter Nine

“Daughter of Gilla, you called.” Several dragonflies launched out of clear air to encircle Kailin. She watched, mesmerized, by the disembodied face made out of sand. The camels flicked their ears and blinked but continued forward, basically unaffected by the apparition. Luckily Qeb rode behind. A glance showed he was still oblivious.

“Where were you last night?” Jackson asked quietly next to her. “We had a nighttime visit you could have warned us about.”

Drakkina frowned. “I have things to do.” She waved a hand toward them. “I see you survived. You are aware of the threat now. Between your guns and Kailin’s power, I doubt any mortal creature could kill you if you pay attention. Tracking and watching for the immortal threat is my purpose.” She looked closely between them. “Have you two realized your attachment yet?”

Kailin’s stomach clenched. “Mr. Black is helping me find a relic that I will trade for my father’s life. He is not here to become attached.”

“Regardless, you must,” she said. The sand shifted so that she appeared to shake her head. “You are beautiful. He is rugged, strong, and handsome. You should give in to the attraction between you two, the passion,” she instructed. How could eyes made from sand look piercing? The camels walked sideways up the dune and Drakkina’s face sunk away back into the slope.

“Kailin does not like passion,” Jackson commented. Kailin cut him a sharp look.

“Doesn’t like passion? Ha!” echoed in the wind. Drakkina reappeared as a floating form up ahead. “You have your parents’ blood in you, daughter of Gilla and Druce. Passion forged their power.” The spirit’s hand flapped toward her. “It forged you and your sisters. Passion is what fuels hope, love, the core of humanity. Not like it? You had rather say you do not like life then,” she chided.

“Of course I like life,” Kailin said, her eyes and lips tight. “And hope and all those wonderful elements of happiness. I merely said passion for me is dangerous, akin to waving a lit taper near explosives.”

“Perhaps you need to explode first and then judge the results,” Drakkina said, a twinkle in her eye.

Jackson coughed, and Kailin gripped her pebble hard as her blush rolled up her neck like a tide of lava. “The world may not withstand it,” Kailin grumbled.

“Nonsense,” Drakkina rebuffed. “Your magic does no harm when that man touches you. I would say that if you want to ever delve into the carnal world of passion, he would be the one to do so with.”

Kailin’s eyes closed as she fought the fire prickling her skin. After a moment she blinked open but stared straight ahead. She wouldn’t, couldn’t look across to Jackson. Certainly he’d heard Drakkina’s pronouncement. The tactless crone hadn’t shut him out of any conversation thus far.

“Where are you headed?” Drakkina’s gaze scanned the surrounding dunes.

“To find the artifact I mentioned,” Kailin said with a good dose of condescension.

“I see you’ve been practicing control.”

Kailin gave the slightest nod, her lips still pinched.

“Just one brush fire,” Jackson commented bringing round Kailin’s glare. It only made the grin on his face spread. “She seems to have an affinity to flames.”

“I don’t just set things on fire. I can produce water also,” Kailin defended. “If there is any to be found in the air. I also move things.”

“Just saying,” Jackson said, “that when you lose control, you tend to set things on fire.”

Drakkina pinched her lips and frowned. “I need to help you control it. If the power gets away from you during a battle with the coven, you could do more harm than good.” Her pale gaze shot toward Jackson. “She will be a target above her sisters. She holds the most power and once the demons realize that, they will attack her first. If they kill her and strip it away, we haven’t a chance of winning.”

A tremor slid along Kailin’s back at the spirit’s words. Not only could she fail herself if she lost control and fail Anthony at keeping it hidden from the world, but she could fail the entire human race if she didn’t learn how to properly control her mother’s gift. Or rather, her mother’s curse.

“When is this supposed to happen?” Jackson asked, his casual grin replaced with a chiseled expression.

“It is coming,” Drakkina answered. “Sooner than I originally thought. The demons are better attuned to what to search for among the lines of time. They know you will all return to the stone circle where the slab awaits.”

“The stone table,” Kailin said, watching Drakkina closely.

Drakkina nodded. “It has served as many things. The table in your family home for one, but it was created before the ring was formed, a sacred place dedicated to the Earth Mother. Some have said it was the Earth Mother’s resting place as she gave birth to the world. The ring was erected by her priests in the generations that followed. The priests wove great magic between them, protective magic. If the stones fall to Semiazaz’s coven, the stone table itself will be turned to the dark, used for sacrifices to the demons.”

“How do you know all this?” Kailin asked, suspicion narrowing her eyes.

Impatience pinched along the spirit’s features. “I have a bowl which I use to scry into the future. I see many outcomes. The clearer the vision in the bowl, the more likely that outcome will come to be.”

“And the demons taking over the world,” Jackson started.

“Is the clearest of any,” Drakkina said, emotion heavy on her brow. Kailin glimpsed sadness, regret, anger before the woman’s gaze snapped back to her. “You have a destiny, Kailin, daughter of Gilla. One that will either save or destroy human kind. You must master your power or it will be torn away and used to master you.”

“Then teach me,” Kailin said. Drakkina smiled, the darkness bleaching away to hope. Had the woman really thought she would say no, go away? “Did your bowl show me…not cooperating, refusing to learn?”

Drakkina’s gaze shifted slightly to Jackson. “It is one outcome that leads to her rapid death at the hands of the coven.”

Jackson’s face hardened beneath the brow of his hat. The set of his jaw reminded Kailin of the steely granite outcroppings in Scotland. “Teach her,” he clipped. “Are there weapons besides magic that can be used against them?”

“You’re the first warrior to ask.” She paused as if considering his question. “There are objects, but they too involve magic. However, I do not scry a positive outcome at all without all of Gilla’s daughters and their soul mates in the circle. If even one is missing, the outcome…” She shook her white hair. “So you all have something to do with fighting the demons.”

“Us, the soul mates,” Jackson said. “You’ve seen me there?”

“Yes,” Drakkina said with slow distinction.

Jackson didn’t say anything, didn’t smile, only stared straight out toward the fading apparition. Of course he wouldn’t yell out a proposal to wed Kailin and become her soul mate. Yet, some little teasing sign like before, as if he thought the idea was nowhere as terrible as Kailin thought it to be, would have been nice. Instead, the stone cold set of his shoulders, the firm grip of his mouth made Kailin think of the wild horses in the States that would rather be whipped than take a bit in their mouths.

“You will be there or the world will perish.” Drakkina’s ominous voice resounded around them as if it came from the infinite number of sand particles in the surrounding dunes.

The camels made an odd whining sound and twitched their ears. Qeb rattled off some sporadic prayer or comments while swiveling frantically around in his seat where he rode behind them.

They traveled southwest for several more minutes while Kailin waited for someone other than herself to say something. Even an Arabic comment from Qeb could start a conversation. Kailin tightened her lips as she subdued the tight ball of power in her chest as it begged to leach from her.

“Just because,” she started, the pent up pressure blasting the words from her mouth. She paused and dropped to a slow, distinct whisper. “Just because you might be at the stone circle for this hard-to-believe, end-of-the-world battle, even standing next to me, doesn’t mean we have to be…”

“Soul mates? I think the fact your magic doesn’t work on me backs up her claim.”

“I was going to say together, together forever, or in a relationship, or whatever.”

“I think soul mate insinuates a relationship,” he said back with flat indifference.

Damn that tone. She’d rather hear a roguish trace than apathy. As if she was trying to tie him to her, trick him into wedding her.

Kailin threw her hands in the air and huffed. A small twist of sand blew off a dune to her right and she clamped down on the lightning surging below her skin. She gritted her teeth. “You can leave at any time, Mr. Black.”

“I wouldn’t dare abandon the world, Dr. Whitaker. I happen to live in it.”

“I’ll send word for you when Judgment Day comes. I’m sure a powerful”—she indicated the warm air in front of them—“spirit, crone, witch, whatever she is, can get you to my stones posthaste to help us save the day. Until then, feel free to cut and run.”

His eyes continued to survey the sand in front of them. “You still need me, unless you’ve suddenly purged your severe claustrophobia.”

“I’ll just blow the whole mountain side away and lift up the orb from the ruins.”

He adjusted his hat to block the sun better. “Blowing apart a mountain is difficult to hide. What a powerful weapon to have under control.” He finally turned to stare her down. “Every government in the world will target Anthony and you, either to force you to do their bidding by threatening your family or to kill you so that you can’t be used against them. No, you won’t expose yourself that way. You need me to crawl in the dirt.”

She stared hard lipped at him. Pressure behind her eyes made her blink. She looked back out over the dunes. “Fine. Bring me the orb, take your treasure, and I’ll see you when the spirit brings you to the stones. We need have nothing further to do with each other.”

****

Jackson rode slightly behind Kailin for the next several hours. Her spine stiff, her eyes forward. He watched a stray curl dance along the gauzy confines of her
kufiya
as if it waved at him. Off to the sides of the dunes, he caught sight of small twisters of sand. Was she practicing her control? Bloody hell, what amazing power she had inside. If anyone discovered it, they’d use her.

Tension weighed at his shoulders and he mopped the sweat from the back of his neck. Wasn’t that what he was doing? Using her? To get to the orb.

What of this soul mate prophecy? Could they possibly be soul mates when one uses the other, when one despises the sight of the other without even knowing the whole horrible truth? Was there any way to fulfill his mission without making her hate him?

“There.” Kailin pointed a slender finger toward the left, to a spot where the Nile floodwaters still cut against the green bank. A sharp dune of desert rock, mud, and sand shot up from the green as if the water had been chafing into the hill over thousands of years. The top of the dune was obscured from the line of sight but it seemed to flatten out, running inland to the west for some distance.

Jackson waited for the thrill of near discovery to whiz through him and it did somewhat. But its companion was something darker, something he wouldn’t examine, wouldn’t name no matter how it ate at him.

“Let’s go then,” he said and tapped his camel into a faster trot toward the river bank. He’d bathe before crawling in the dirt like a snake. Somehow though, he didn’t think he’d feel clean.

Jackson stretched his arms as he sliced through the free-flowing water near the edge. A quick word from Kailin had rid the waters of crocs and critters. His toes found bottom and he stood, shaking his head so that his hair sent droplets in a shower around him.

Kailin stood in the shallows, her white shirt molded to her still-damp body. He’d let her bathe first, alone, while he and her pet guarded her privacy. Her long tresses dried in the arid wind, curls of blond and strawberry gold dancing around her lovely, unsmiling face. Even without the gentle upturn of her lips, Kailin Whitaker was breathtaking.

As if remembering that assumed autonomic function, Jackson inhaled and waded toward shore. Kailin studied her fingernails as he emerged and grabbed a clean shirt from his pack. He let the breeze dry his skin.

She looked up at the sharp hill where rocks and sand had caved inward. From the outside the slope appeared as any eroded bank of sand along the Nile. “You’re sure the tomb is here?” he asked.

She nodded. “There’s a…hum of energy, familiar.” She turned to meet his eyes. “I remember the feel. It’s similar to the stones in Scotland. Like there’s something near made of the same magic.”

Her gaze dropped to his chest a mere moment before she pivoted away. “Anthony calls the hidden tomb the secret monument to his greatest treasure.” She spoke quickly like she was nervous. “That would be me, his little Cleopatra, powerful enough to move mountains,” she said, glancing back with a sardonic twist to her lips as if quoting something she didn’t believe.