The Man from Forever (17 page)

E
yes not at all dimmed by age bored into her. She'd thought that only Loka's eyes had the power to turn her inside out, but maybe Indian eyes, no matter whose they were, would always touch her like that.

“You carry the general's blood in your veins?”

The softly asked question rocked her because Black's words so closely paralleled what Loka had asked. Did Black live in two worlds, one of attorneys and legality, the other primitive and basic, and maybe enduring? She started to nod, then decided to give him a more honest answer. “Maybe that's why I feel so drawn to the lava beds. The first time I came here, it was as if I'd waited all my life to see this country.”

“The first time?”

“Last winter. It was just for a day, but it whetted my appetite for—”

“Last winter?”

“Yes,” she said, wondering why that mattered. “I really didn't have the time. It was pushing it to come at all, but—”

“Tell me,” Black insisted. “When you came, what did you feel?”

Not what did she see, but how her emotions had been touched. Beginning to understand, she answered as honestly as she could, because on this quiet morning nothing mattered as much as learning the truth. Being part of the truth. “I'd bought some Indian flute music in Klamath Falls. I listened to it all the way out here, so I was feeling pretty tuned in to the whole Native American experience. It was cold. I remember a brisk wind and wondering how long it would be before it started to snow. There weren't that many other people around. A tour bus, I remember seeing that.”

Black was watching her so intently that she felt as if she were being scraped raw by him, but the past had her in its grip and she couldn't temper her words.

“I was going to go right to the headquarters so I could get oriented, but the sky was so incredible, clouds building on the horizon, the wind flattening grass and bushes. I wanted to know what it sounded and smelled like so I got out of my car.” She scanned her surroundings, seeing, not today's clear sky, but last year's clouds. It had been a feeling, something she might never have words for. All she knew was that she'd felt empty and had somehow known the feeling would go away only if she experienced, really experienced her surroundings.

“I heard birds, thousands of them. They were in and around the lake. I wondered if it had been like this back during the war. I hoped so, because the birds gave me a feeling of contentment, and I wanted the Modocs to have felt the same way. The air—” Tears gathered inside her, but she was helpless to fight what she was feeling. “I've never smelled anything so clean, so pure. Once the tour bus was gone, there were absolutely no sounds of civilization.”

Black hadn't once taken his eyes off her. She spoke to him, her heart exposed. “I turned so I didn't have to look at my car. It was so easy to pretend that I'd stepped back in time. I—I know it sounds crazy, but I reached out with my
mind looking for something, anything that might remain of my ancestor. Some sense of what he'd experienced and felt. I didn't find that.”

“What then?”

Black's question was gentle. It gave her the courage to continue. “Something. An essence, a presence. Later I told myself it was because I was standing where Modocs had stood for thousands of years and my imagination had gotten away from me. But for a little while…I felt as if I wasn't alone. That someone was watching me.”

Exhausted, she fell silent. She still couldn't take her eyes off the elderly Modoc, but she wasn't trying to connect with him. Instead, she faced herself and something she'd denied for the past six months.

For as long as she'd been at the lava beds, she'd felt part of a force greater than herself. Ancient and powerful. Living.

“You,” Black said. “You brought
him
back.”

“
Him?
” Fenton spat the word. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Black jabbed a gnarled but still powerful finger at her. “She knows.”

 

Tory was standing near the barred entrance to Fern Cave before she forced herself to go back over what had happened. Even though it had been a good two hours ago, she still shook from the impact of what Black had said. No matter how much Fenton had pushed, the Modoc had refused to explain himself. Not that she'd needed him to.

Yes, she could admit now, she did know.

That's why she'd come here, not just because she felt closer to Loka, but because she now knew she
was
responsible for his awakening.

“You don't know how to reach out to anyone,” she whispered. “You want to. You know your heritage is too rich to remain in the past, but who can you trust? So far there's only me because—because, maybe because we were destined to find each other.”

She shied a little from the word
destined,
but she didn't have to justify it to anyone, and in the end let it go. When she'd been inside Fern Cave earlier and had looked at what had been left behind by Loka's ancestors, she'd told herself he wasn't really, totally alone because he had history to sustain him. But that had been before they'd become lovers, before they'd both discovered the wonder of truly being part of another human being.

She still lived in the world of people. She could pick up a phone and call her parents. She had a job to go to, people she considered friends.

All Loka had was antiquity.

And memories of making love to the woman who'd taken him from there.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I wish I'd never come here. Never brought you back because maybe you don't belong here—because you won't let yourself belong.”

“Maybe I do not dare.”

Although she jumped, on a subconscious level, she'd been waiting for Loka to speak. Straightening, she watched him stride toward her. Someday, if she lived long enough, she might no longer feel as if she were coming to life simply because he was near, but that time hadn't yet come.

He looked different from yesterday, different and yet achingly familiar. She couldn't put her finger on what had changed about him. Maybe it was only that she now knew him in the most intimate of ways. And maybe…

“You were right to reach out to that Modoc,” she said, reluctantly concentrating on what he'd said. “I talked to him this morning. Black Schonchin. He cares about this land. He's going to do everything he can to keep it from being exploited any more than it already has been. Loka.” She stepped toward him, stopping just out of reach because she might fly apart if he touched her. “He believes in you.”

An emotion she didn't understand settled in his eyes. She wanted to ask him why he'd shown himself to Black this morning but couldn't hold on to the question. She'd been so
lonely without him beside her, had hurt so deep, she couldn't begin to tap its source. It was as if she'd lost part of herself while they were apart, and although it terrified her to realize how deeply he'd impacted her being, at the same time she never wanted that to change.

“I—there's something you need to know. Fenton James, the man you saw me with in Fern Cave, he might have seen us yesterday.”

Loka shifted his weight, drawing her attention to a dark length of naked thigh with his obsidian knife resting against it. She imagined her fingers on his flesh, looking into his eyes for his reaction, feeling it through her own flesh.

“I know,” he said.

“You—you were aware we weren't alone? Why didn't you say something?”

“It was too late.”

Because Fenton had already caught them in his binoculars or because Loka had been incapable of tearing himself from her? “You should have told me. The way he talked, I don't think he's sure of what he saw. If I'd known, I wouldn't have been so surprised when he said what he did.”

“What did you tell him?”

Loka didn't trust her. Damn it, considering what they were to each other, she deserved better. Didn't she? “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Was that true?

He folded his arms across his chest. Although she'd seen him do that before, her reaction was as total as it had been the first time. Nothing could harm this man. He was timeless, endless. Proud and powerful. Mist and substance.

“I dreamed of Grizzly last night.”

“Grizzly?” she repeated stupidly.

“Grizzly knows when a Maklaks has an enemy. He comes to him in the night and warns of danger.”

“Danger? Loka…” She couldn't tell him that he wasn't making any sense, that there couldn't possibly be anything to a simple dream, because everyone who knew of him or
suspected he existed might constitute a threat. “Did you ask Eagle for guidance?”

“Not yet. I came to you first.”

He put her before his guardian spirit? Feeling weak, she spread her fingers over his forearm. Although his flesh felt cool, she took warmth and strength from him, nearly lost herself in memories of when he'd taken her into his arms and more. “Why? To tell me of your dream?”

He didn't answer her. Instead, he briefly studied a bee, which was drawing nectar from a nearby bitterbrush flower. “At dawn I went to the mother lake. While I crouched there drinking, a water snake wrapped itself around my leg.”

“A snake?” Her attention flickered to his bare leg.

“When one does that, it means a Maklaks will have a long life.”

“It does?” Loka didn't seem aware that she was touching him. Feeling as if she'd somehow invaded his privacy, she drew back. “You have an enemy, but you will have a long life? I don't understand.”

“I must find my enemy. End him.”

Kill him, he meant. “No! Loka, you'll be treated like a murderer. If you're caught, they'll throw you in jail.”

She wasn't sure if he knew what jail meant, but when his eyes narrowed, she had her answer. “A warrior does not run from his enemy. A warrior is like Grizzly.”

“I know.” Looking at him, she believed that with all her heart. Thinking to remind him of the snake's promise of a long life, she again reached for him, but before she could say anything, an undeniable fact struck her. He had already lived longer than any other human being.

“Loka, I don't want anything to happen to you. The thought of you being hurt or killed…” Forcing her fear into submission, she went on. “Things can't go on the way they are. More and more people suspect you exist. And now that you've shown yourself to Black, he'll no longer have any doubt. Fenton told him who I am. He believes that my presence here woke you. Do you understand? He believes the
same as you do, that something in my genes or blood, or something, reached you. Loka, why did you let him see you?”

“I do not know.”

“I think you do. No matter what you say, no matter how he dresses and talks, he's a Modoc.”

The muscles in Loka's shoulders contracted, making her aware all over again of his strength. She'd bumped over a barely used road to get here. Because there was a fair amount of earth in with the lava in this particular place, the shrubbery was tall enough that it hid them from anyone who didn't know how to get back in here. Earlier today she'd told Black what it had been like that first day when she felt as if she'd stepped back in time. Except for the heavy metal grate over the cave opening, civilization hadn't made an impact. Not sure what to do with herself, she stepped back from Loka's impact. Her gaze fell on what she could see of Fern Cave beneath the grate.

“How did you get down there?” she asked. “You don't have a key.”

“No.”

“Then how?”

He gifted her with one of his rare smiles, then sobered. “It is not a thing for the enemy to know.”

“The enemy? Is that what you're saying I am?”

“I do not know.”

“Don't you?” She felt like screaming, like beating her fists against his chest until he understood, until he admitted that something rare existed between them. “We made love. We wouldn't have if we didn't trust each other.”

“Trust?”

“Yes,” she insisted. “If I believed you were a savage, I would have never gone up Spirit Mountain with you. Never spent the night with you.” She said the last without any hint of embarrassment. “But I did because…” Because what? If she told him she'd been ruled by nothing more than a phys
ical need for him, that would be a lie, but could she tell him she'd fallen in love with him? Had she?

“Loka, I've tried to talk to you about this before. I know how you feel about entrusting your knowledge of your people's tradition to someone. I understand. If I was in your place, I wouldn't want anything to do with those responsible for changing my world. But, Loka…” She couldn't stay where she was, not with him looking at her that way. Still, erasing the distance separating them took even more courage than it had the first time. She stood within reach and waited for his reaction. When he didn't move so much as a muscle, she went on.

“I want to know everything about who and what you are. For myself, not because I'm an anthropologist.”

“For yourself?”

“Yes. Loka, something is happening between us.”

That made him nod. After a moment he unfolded his arms, a thumb briefly grazing his knife before sliding toward her. When he took her hand in his, she thought she sensed a struggle within him and could only wonder at its cause. His hand slid up to cup her chin. He tilted her head so she was ready to receive his kiss. Their lips met, gentle as a butterfly's touch. She clung to the sensation, thinking of nothing except being with him, tasting the promise of more, living in the moment.

“I do not understand,” he whispered with his lips still on hers. “When I think of you, I do not know who I am.”

That's love,
she wanted to tell him, but the emotion felt too new and fragile for her to risk more. “I can't make myself leave,” she told him. “I have a job. I should already be there. But I can't walk away from you.”