Date: 2012-07-22T14:00:00+00:00
Description: In a night of dreams and danger, a Crusader knight is torn from the past on a mission of honor--and deadly revenge. Only through magic can he protect the innocence of a stubborn woman who has learned to trust no one. While the deadly fog of a London graveyard closes around them, they will fight an eternal desire and test the strength of their trust - even as their oldest enemies wait.

Fallen
by
Christina Skye

Praise for Fallen

"A deserted English graveyard. A night of dreams and danger. Now a rugged Crusader knight is torn from the past on a mission of honor--and harsh revenge. Get ready for paranormal passion and ghostly suspense served up by a master. FALLEN is a riveting journey you won't want to miss."

---Denise Domning, Award-winning, best-selling author of WINTER'S HEAT

"Imagine a battle-weary knight summoned from the past. Picture a stubborn American beauty who has learned too young to trust no one. As the deadly fog of a London graveyard closes in, they will taste an eternal desire--while their oldest enemies wait in the night. FALLEN is a spellbinding tale with all of Christina Skye's special magic. I couldn't put it down."

---Jennifer Blake, New York Times best selling author of SILVER-TONGUED DEVIL

"Christina Skye knows what readers want."

---ABC Worldwide News

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

Other Books

Copyright

About the Author

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

PRAISE

TITLE PAGE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A NOTE FROM CHRISTINA

COPYRIGHT

2 AM.

London

West End.

Archer Sloan hunched forward, closing his thin overcoat against the rain. It was typical weather for October. He hated the drizzle and the fall cold. He hated the incessantly gray skies.

But he wouldn't have to endure them much longer. The thing that he had wrapped up in his briefcase would guarantee that.

As a senior researcher at the British Museum, Archer Sloan had access to restricted documents and locked storerooms. He knew every security guard and every curator. It was time that he was rewarded for all his years of drudgery and politicking.

They were going to boot him out next week anyway. Retirement would be a pleasant change, they assured him, and he would always be welcome to help out on special projects.

A sneer twisted his mouth. Damned right. He was going to enjoy being retired, but not the way they imagined. As it happened, his contact was waiting for him already. Every detail had been arranged. With luck, in two hours he would be on a jet tucked snugly into first class, bound for South America.

To hell with their ideas of retirement.

A sound echoed up the empty street. He frowned, glancing behind him at a nearby parked car. Something moved in the darkness, but he saw that it was only a box carried past him by the wind. Sloan told himself to stop being so jittery. If he let his nerves get the best of him, he would die the way he had lived, useless and inept, his life a lesson in failure.

Instead of that he was going to have 20 more years of pleasure, reveling in all the good things that a million Euros could buy—starting with a glass-walled mansion on a private island far off the radar of the British police force.

Yes, he had already planned how he would spend his reward for being very clever. He had found the perfect property. He would use his new Swiss account to wire through the funds and complete the transaction within hours.

He smiled as he pushed open the door to his building, lost in pleasant images of sun and wine and bare, tanned women. His flat was on the ground floor, in the same cheap building he had found right out of university. There had never been money for anything better.

But all that was about to change.

He glanced behind him, then unlocked the door’s three latches and went straightaway to the table, where he laid his briefcase down carefully.

He couldn’t be careless now. Not with a million Euros waiting for what was in that case.

Something skittered through the darkness behind him. Sloan swung around nervously, frowning as a tall figure separated from the shadows by the kitchen doorway.

“You’ve got it?” the low voice said.

“Everything’s here, just as I promised.” Sloan tried to act irritated. “Now I want my money.”

“Of course.”

The figure turned. The curtains moved beside him. Sloan heard the hiss of low voices.

Dozens of voices. The air seemed to hum. To churn. He was no longer alone.

No—

His face caught in a mask of terror.

By the time the cold wind from the window hit him, Archer Sloan was already torn to pieces.

The shrill cry of the phone woke him.

Izzy Teague rolled over with a muffled curse. 3:14 A.M.?

No one ever called with good news at this hour. It was always a security,, a missing agent, a bio-terrorism threat. And Izzy was always the one they called first.

He tried not to think about the warm leg anchoring his—or about the things they had done in the last two hours. It had been an amazing night—and it was just starting.

Or so Izzy had thought.

The warm, naked woman’s body turned, driving him down against the crisp sheets. It took more willpower than he imagined possible to sit up, grab the phone and trot into the bathroom.

“Izzy, come back.” The woman’s voice was husky, still half asleep. The sound was sexy as hell.

He wished he could drop everything and oblige her, but the number on his cell phone was highest priority. The coded message that came next signaled an alpha-priority threat level.

Hell. So much for his first real date in six months. This is what he got for being married to his job.

Grimly he pulled on his shirt and jeans, then coded in a response.

On the way.

Fill me in at HQ.

When he emerged, the beautiful, caramel-skinned woman was blinking sleepily. Izzy took an appreciative glance at the vision she made wearing only hot fantasies and cool air. He leaned down and smoothed a heavy strand of mahogany hair behind her ear. “Sorry, Kadra. I have to go.”

“Go? It’s almost 4:00 A.M.” She gave a sleepy, sated sigh. “Why now? I don’t want you to go yet. We were just getting…started.”

Hell, Izzy didn’t want to go either. But that was that. When you got the call you went. If you signed on for this particular job, you gave up any claim to free time or personal life. Izzy had known exactly what he was getting into—and he happened to love his job, loved the adrenaline highs and the constant mental challenge and the certain knowledge that he was making the world a safer place.

Well, most of the time he loved his job. Right now, watching his X-rated fantasies go up in smoke made him think about turning in his resignation.

“Sorry, gotta go. Just had a call.”

Her sensual eyes narrowed. Kadra worked for the same agency that he did. They had been circling each other carefully for months, both interested and yet trying to hide it. It was a relief for Izzy not to have to worry about everything he said. Her security clearance was actually higher than his - and that was saying something.

“Do you want me to call you a cab? I’d wait for you, but I—”

“No need. You'd better go. My apartment is just up the street. I’ll walk back, grab a change of clothes, and meet you at HQ.” Her eyes moved along Izzy’s long, rangy body, dark with regret. Then she sat up and reached for her blouse. “They haven’t called me yet, but they will.” She ran a hand through her long, black hair and then made a quick brushing motion. “What are you standing there for, Izzy? Get going.”

Izzy frowned and picked up the fully packed field bag he kept at his front door. “I—well, I’m sorry.”

She gave a crooked smile. “Well, at least we got half a night. It could be worse. No complaints from me.” She stretched a little, smiling as she watched his eyes move over her full curves. “But if you keep staring at me like that, all bets are off. I’m going to jump you and pull you back into bed, work or not.”

“I only wish,” Izzy muttered. But they both loved their work too much to give it a second thought. That was one of the reasons Kadra had impressed him so much.

He caught the elevator down to the lobby and dug in his pocket for a $20 bill, which he handed to the sleepy attendant at the front desk. “My friend will be down shortly. I'd appreciate it if you would call her a cab. And be sure that she takes it,” he said firmly.

Kadra had a lot of skills, but downtown DC was no place for a single woman to be wandering around alone at three in the morning. The least he could do would be to see that she got a cab to take her home safely.

Izzy was just strapping on his motorcycle helmet when a black sedan prowled around the corner and blocked his way.

A tall man got out of the front seat. His eyes were cold as they assessed Izzy's mode of transport. “Ditch the cycle, Teague. You’re coming with me.”

“I’ll make better time on this, sir.” Izzy hid his surprise. His superior officer never met him personally. What was going on?

“Not this time. Plus we have to make a stop.”

This was definitely not stardard operating procedure, Izzy thought. Where would they be stopping at this hour? But he knew enough to muzzle his questions. His boss was waiting impatiently by the car.

The details would have to wait.

Izzy studied the road as they headed south. There were no research facilities in this part of DC and no reason that Izzy could think of to be going in this direction.

He racked his brains, trying to think of any operatives in the area, but came up empty.

He turned and cleared his throat. “I haven't been in this part of DC since college.” Wind gusted around the car, tossing newspapers and garbage bags across the road. “Not exactly Alexandria, is it?”

“You could say that. But you should remember the area. You handled surveillance about a mile from the next intersection.”

Izzy rubbed his neck, working back through his various cases.

And then he stiffened. There had been that mess five years ago. The hackers. They had actually managed to breach security at the Pentagon before Izzy had tracked them down.

It still made him angry at the thought of this waste of talent. A waste of government manpower too, seeing that all of them had been less than fifteen years old when they were arrested.

He sat tensely, staring out at the dark and abandoned buildings marked by neon graffiti. The area was far worse than he remembered.

He took a deep breath. “Is this about Madisson Munro?”

“Good memory. Yes, she’s involved. We’ve targeted her for this operation and we need her active compliance and participation. That’s where you come in.”

“Me? The man who broke her and got her arrested? What makes you think she’ll listen to me?”

“Because you can be very persuasive when you want to be.” The department chief passed Izzy a thick file. “And we need her particular talents. We’ve tracked her online activities and discovered that she has been researching certain techniques that we have need of. They involve pattern recognition and historical cryptography.”

Early codes? That was interesting, Izzy thought. Not a subject that came up often in his field.

Izzy’s chief gestured at the heavy file. “Everything you need to know about Madisson Munro is in that file. According to our sources, she has shown exceptional skill at her private research, and we need someone who’s an outsider. Find something in that file to elicit her cooperation. I don’t care how you do it, just make it happen fast. You two have a jet waiting at Dulles.”

“You’re not going to tell me what this is about or what she’s getting involved in?”

“No time. Just get her aboard that airplane with a commitment to work. I have backup files waiting for you in flight.”

The powerful car eased to a halt at an alley lined with garbage cans that hadn’t been emptied in weeks. Something moved between the cans, and Izzy didn’t think it was a cat or a dog.

He felt a stab of guilt at the way things had turned out for Madisson. Why why the hell hadn’t he kept in touch with her after the sentencing? He had planned to, but Izzy remembered that there’d been a kidnapping in India and a biohazard threat in Italy. Things had been crazy for almost a year.

No excuse. Meanwhile he had a mission to run.

He took the file, shoved it in his bag, and opened the car door. “How much time do I have to persuade her?”

His superior looked at his watch. “Fourteen minutes. I suggest that you talk fast."

Izzy had a bad feeling as he walked to the heavily graffitied apartment building. The front door had been broken and repaired badly at least three times. The lock probably required the skill of a six-year-old to break in. Maybe not that much, Izzy thought sourly. He made a mental note to get the door fixed—or to get Madisson moved to a better location.

His anger grew as he walked up the stairs, where litter and urine were the prominent design elements. How in heaven’s name had she ended up here?

Another thing to look into.

He glanced at his watch.

A little after five. They had told him she was home but they hadn’t mentioned if she was alone. He tried to remember if she had been involved with anyone back in school. He couldn’t remember. But there had been some problem about her mother.

Her door looked like all the others on the hall. Grimy beneath layers of old graffiti.

He tried the buzzer, but it didn’t work. Izzy frowned at the broken cord hanging down uselessly. He knocked hard.

No sound inside.

He tried again. This time he put his ear to the door.

Soft rustling. A movement at the peephole.

“Madisson, it’s Izzy Teague. I need to talk to you.”

Silence.

"You need to let me in, Madisson. It's important."

“Izzy Teague. Well isn’t this a surprise.” Her voice was husky and angry, just as he remembered. “Got nothing to say to you, Teague. Beat it.”

“I wish I could. But this isn’t exactly a social call.”

He heard the slam of a hand against the inside of the door. “No? But let’s see, it’s been four—no make that five years. And you show up now? It has to be earthshaking if the great Izzy Teague comes to visit. But I’m not interested.”

Izzy studied the lock, frowning at the anger in her voice. She had always been angry. It was part of the reason she had gotten caught up in that stupid hacking episode as a kid all those years before. But this new voice from behind the grimy door was colder, flatter. And it was totally devoid of any personal feeling.

That worried him. “We need to talk. Open the door and give me five minutes. If you still feel the same way after that, then I’ll leave.”

There was a pause. “Talk outside. Right where you are," came the cold answer.

“You know I can’t do that. Not about this subject. Let me in.” He was working as he talked, pulling a small wedge of plastic from his coat pocket and sliding it along the outside of the door.

A loud buzzing sounded inside. Okay, her door wasn’t as flimsy as it looked. At least she had some security in place.

“Forget it, Teague. My door stays closed. I’ve got it wired. The next time you get a nice little shock. The time after that you get a nasty one.”

He had to smile at that. That was the old Madisson he remembered.

But he’d done what he could for her. If it hadn't been for his testimony, she might still be in a jail cell somewhere. She’d been a juvenile offender, but the government planned to make an example of the group.

“Come on, Madisson. We both know a few wires aren’t going to keep me out. And the clock is ticking. You still hoping to get your brother into that specialized aviation college in Florida? The deadline for his recommendations is next week, as I recall. We should probably talk about that.”

He heard a string of muffled comments inside. He could almost feel the snap of her anger. Silence fell. Then a chain banged. The door opened a crack, anchored by two more chains.

“So what? Don’t tell me you’re going to help, because I’ll believe that as much as I believe the other lies you told me five years ago.”

“Then you’d be wrong. I am going to help. I’m sorry how this all turned out. I should have kept in touch after your sentencing. I’m going to change that. Let me in and let’s get started. As I remember, you never liked to waste time, so don’t waste my time now.” She'd had a tough childhood and she wouldn’t expect sympathy or concern. So Izzy would give her exactly what she expected—a challenge and a threat. "Or maybe I should leave now and you can watch your brother’s dream go up in smoke."

She yanked the last two chains free and stood back, opening the door.

He saw the inside of the apartment first, navy blue walls brightened by Anime posters. Everything else inside screamed computer geek. There were at least a dozen hard drives arranged on the long table by the wall. Two bookcases with thick tech books. Izzy picked out two books on historical cryptography nearby.

Then he saw the girl he had arrested years before.

He wouldn't have recognized her. Her eyes were colder and her cheeks were thin, her bones almost too defined for her face. The oversized flannel Hello Kitty pajamas she wore made an odd match with her biker boots and torn leather motorcycle jacket. A single earring dangled beneath her multi-colored hair. She looked too pale. Too angry. Old at twenty.

“How old are you now, Maddie?”

“Nineteen – not that it’s any of your business. And don’t call me that. Only my friends call me Maddie,” she snapped.

The guilt slid in again and twisted hard. Izzy looked around, searching for a chair, but every surface was covered by books, schematics, and hard drives.

She saw his look, strode to the small table at the grimy window and knocked everything down onto the floor. “Have a seat. My decorator was busy this week. Ditto for the maid service,” she said flatly.

“Don’t suppose I could get a cup of coffee. It’s been a long night and it hasn’t even started yet.”

“Fresh out. There’s a Starbucks about five miles over. You probably don’t want to walk there alone. Anyone walking alone around here has a problem.”

Izzy raised an eyebrow. “How do you get by in that case?”

“We have an arrangement. I provide services on the computers when the street crowd needs it. In return, they leave me alone. In fact, they even provide protection on occasion. Works out nicely all around.”

Izzy made another mental note. “Why didn’t you move to a better place?”

She leaned against the wall, shaking her head. “Move? You really don’t know? I can’t move. That was part of the terms of my parole. I can’t leave DC. I can’t leave this apartment. I can’t take classes. All I can do is sit here and rot for three more years until the government decides it’s done with me,” she said bitterly.

Izzy hadn’t known that. If he had, he would have found the right people to get her situation changed. And he would do that now.

But it would probably come too late. She had lost her childhood in this dingy apartment, lost her idealism long before that, Izzy thought. She had never had much chance for a normal life, not with a drug addict mother and a father who had gone AWOL when she was four. He remembered the details now. Tough break for a kid.

No point wishing things were different. He was here now. He was going to make a lot of changes. But first they had to come to terms.

He sat down on the table, feeling it wobble. “Okay, scratch the coffee. How about some water?”

She gave a cold smile. “Sure. You want Evian, Perrier, or DC tap sludge?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Nope.”

He gave a shrug. “Door number three in that case.”

She filled a glass and slapped it down in front of him. “What do you know about my brother’s application to aviation school?” Her hands trembled and she shoved them quickly behind her.

“I saw your file. It’s not going to be easy to find recommendations. Then there's the whole tuition thing.”

“I don’t need your help, Teague.”

“Don’t you? Look at me, Maddie. This isn’t a pressure tactic. I should have stayed in touch. I should have seen what was going on with you. I didn’t. So I owe you. Whatever you decide, that won’t change.” He found a blank piece of paper amid the chaos at his feet and held it out to her. “Write down your brother’s name and his school information. I’ll do everything I can to help him.”

She crossed her arms tightly. Yet again Izzy saw the young-old eyes stare at him tensely. For a moment he had seen a flash of hope in those eyes. Then she looked away.

"I'd trust Osama bin Laden before I’d trust you." She shrugged her thin shoulders, looking impatient and very cynical.

Odd how she looked about fourteen. Fourteen going on ninety, Izzy reminded himself quickly.

“Sure, I’ll write down the information. It doesn’t mean I’m going to help you.”

“Understood.” Izzy waited until she finished writing, then scanned the sheet, folded it carefully and stuck it in his pocket. “They won’t let you go to college?” The punishment defied his imagination. That was another thing he was going to get rectified fast.

“No. They say I can't be trusted. I have to earn the right.”

“You did break the law. There’s no getting around that. But plenty of law breakers get to take classes.”

"I'm supposed to believe you didn't know about any of this?"

"That's right. If I'd known, I would have changed things."

Maddie moved around the table and toyed with an open can of soda. “So what's so important that you need me?”

“I can’t tell you. Frankly, I don’t know much myself. But it has to be crucial if they’re sending me after you like this. There’s a jet waiting for us at Dulles in—” he glanced at his watch. “Nine minutes.”

“No shit. A private jet?” She rolled her shoulders, frowning. Her fingers moved restlessly up and down her flannel shirt. “If I do it…you'll help my brother?"

"I will."

She hesitated. "And then you'll see if I can get out of my parole early and attend college? And get out of this dump too?”

“I intend to do both of those things anyway, Maddie. Your help will make no difference. That's a promise.”

"Right. I know all about promises." She drained the soda can and then shrugged. "It’s not like I have a whole lot of choices right now.” She studied the dingy room. “Sure. Okay. Whatever. Give me three minutes to grab my stuff. If there’s a dress code involved, we’re both up shit creek,” she said. Then she vanished into the one room beyond the bathroom.

Three minutes went by. Then four.

Izzy heard rustling and the muffled bang of a closet door closing.

“Maddie, we have to go. What’s taking so long?”

There was no answer.

Frowning, he walked to the door of the room off the little hallway. She was sitting on a narrow futon with a laptop opened beside her, typing furiously.

“What are you doing? You'd better not be emailing about any of this.”

She shot him a cold, measuring glance. “About what? I don’t know where the hell I’m going or what you’re getting me into. I’m just leaving behind a little insurance. If I don’t turn up in a week, there will be people asking questions about me. I’m pretty well known in the hacker world, even though my active days are behind me. So if you’re just screwing around with me, Teague—”

He shook his head. “I’m not.” At least, he didn’t think he was. At this point, he had no idea what they were getting involved in. But she would be safe. He'd make sure of that. “Finish sending your e-mails in the car. We need to move.”

She closed the computer, then stood up and dropped her pajamas bottoms in the same movement. Izzy cleared his throat and looked away, but the image of her thin legs and red bikini underwear burned into his memory. How could one person look so young and so old at the same time?

He walked outside, shaking his head. “I’ll be downstairs at the car. Get the lead out.”

Her voice rose in an angry sing-song. “Aye-aye, sir.” She clicked her heels together and pulled on a sweater.

Izzy’s phone rang as he walked outside, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t trust himself to answer, too angry from the things he had just seen and from what Maddie had told him.

Someone was going to answer for this mess.

But first they had a mission to complete.

He was already flooded with secure e-mails when he heard a tap at the window. Maddie gave a little snappy wave, a backpack over one shoulder and a brown paper bag in the other.

“What’s with the bag?”

“Computer. Books. Pajamas.”

“A brown paper bag? You don’t have anything else to carry them in?”

Her eyes went very cold. “My trust fund payment is a little late this month, Teague. Since I don’t do a whole lot of traveling, a paper Trader Joe’s bag works out just fine for me.” She tossed the bag inside and looked around the big limousine curiously. “Nice wheels. You got any alcohol in here?”

“I doubt it. You’ll be skipping the alcohol anyway." Izzy closed the door that Maddie had purposely left open to annoy him. "This is work, remember?”

It was all pretty overwhelming.

Staggering was a better description.

Not that she wasn’t grateful. She was going to enjoy every second of this luxury trip. Maddie’s life had been a closed box for too long, and she had prayed daily for an escape. She just hadn’t expected it to come like this.

As for the man who'd arrested her at fourteen? Izzy Teague looked just the same. Chiseled mahogany features. Cool, intense eyes. A strong, lean body. Not that she was paying any attention to that. But if he would actually do half what he promised—a quarter even....

If he helped her brother follow his aviation dreams, then maybe he could get her out of this crippling probation mess.

Empty promises, Maddie, my girl. You know all about them.

Maddie had stopped trusting adults when she was fourteen. The foster care system in a big, impersonal northeastern city had stripped away her innocence within the first week. She had fought to survive and keep her younger brother with her in their placements. Her only saviors during those years had been the smart group of friends she had met. Together they had studied programming books and stumbled across a hackers’ forum online. One thing led to another, as they usually did.

Maddie frowned at the gray sky, watching the rain begin. The memories that came next seemed to belong to someone else. She had been so stupid and gullible back then. Now those mistakes had ruined her life.

But there was no point in whining about it, because she couldn’t go back. And she had been no innocent victim in the scenario. She had known perfectly well that it was a crime to hack into a government site. But the challenge had been impossible to resist. The thrill of success had become a drug to her.

Now the man who had arrested her was asking for her help. Talk about payback. This time Maddie was going to be very smart in everything she did. She was not going to trust him, like him, or believe in him. She had learned how to play the game of appearances well in the last few years.

So she would use Izzy in any way she could to ensure that he helped her brother. And then he was going to help Maddie get her life back.

Her small hands closed to fists. He owed her that.

She frowned at the wet street as the car came to a halt. The driver rolled down the window and presented some kind of ID to a man in a uniform. Maddie didn’t know where they were, but it looked like a military base. That would figure, wouldn’t it? Izzy worked for the government, and if this project was as important as he said….

So maybe she was going to get some quality time in a secure government facility. Let them think she was bored, but she’d be paying attention to every detail. There might be something she could use later.

With the inspection complete, the car sped forward. Maddie's brain danced through possibilities of new ways to use the applications that were installed on the iPad Izzy had loaned her. With a jailbroken iPhone hidden in her backpack, she could stay in touch with her friends, in case the government types changed their mind and decided to lock her up. She wouldn't put anything past them.

The car slowed. She leaned toward the window, squinting out through the rain. “No way." She sat motionless. "This is so not happening, Teague.”

He looked up from his sleek laptop, which had a design that Maddie had never seen before. “What isn’t happening?”

“That.” Maddie rolled down the window and pointed out, oblivious to the pounding rain. The sleek private jet on the tarmac had three people working around it. It would barely hold ten people, she figured. The size made her stomach take another sharp twist. “You didn’t tell me that I’d be flying in a thimble.”

“That happens to be exciting new technology. I know people who would give their IRAs for an hour in that little beauty. Your brother's probably one of them.”

“Well you can take your IRAs and shove them. I’m not getting into that.” Her nails were on her knees, her fingers digging in hard. She’d only flown once, a short flight before she had been sentenced.

That had been on a full-size carrier, and even then she’d been rigid with terror most of the flight.

Maddie stared at the plane. "It’s not happening. File closed.”

Izzy blew out a sigh. “Scared of flying? Odd, that didn’t make your file. I’ll let you in on a secret - I used to be too. But I took a course that helped me. New age blah, blah, blah, but it worked. You can do this too.” His eyes narrowed. “If you want my help, I need your full commitment now, Maddie. I can’t build any kind of a case for helping you if you don’t bring your complete skills to the table.”

“I can’t fly,” she said between gritted teeth. “Not on a tiny plane like that.”

“We’ll get on board and then I’ll find something for you.”

“Like what? A lobotomy? Because seriously, that’s what it would take.” Maddie could already feel the nausea kicking up. “I’m not kidding about this, Teague. When you said jet, I thought you meant one of those huge things."

“Somebody really missed that in your file. It might have been nice to know,” Izzy said grimly. “But I’ll get you something. A drink. Hell, maybe muscle relaxers. We’ll get you through this, Maddie. There’s no time to get a commercial flight. Things have amped up.”

She tore her eyes away from the terrifying steel jacket of death waiting out on the runway. “Amped up how?”

“I’ll give you the files on the plane.”

Momentarily distracted, Maddie frowned at him. “This is happening too fast. You still haven’t told me what I have to do.”

“I still don’t have many details. As you can imagine, national security is involved. Actually, the security of at least three major countries is involved.” His voice hardened. “There have been two murders that we know of. Possibly a third. There will definitely be an element of danger. I want to be sure you understand that, Maddie. And if you really do want out, I’ll try to make it happen. Not saying it will be easy, but I’ll try.”

After the patchwork sort of life Maddie had lived, she knew a lot about people. She also knew how to spot a lie. Izzy wasn’t lying to her now. He would try to help her. The question was whether it would work—and whether she wanted it to work.

This project was aimed right at her ego. The thought of cracking a case that no one else had been able to handle was almost impossible to resist. Her ego had gotten her involved in that stupid government hacking all those years before. Yet in spite of that, Maddie felt a kick of excitement and maybe even something like happiness. Not that she paid much attention to emotions. They betrayed you when you needed them most. You could spend your whole life trying to understand them and get nowhere.

It was much safer to live in the moment, caught up in the flash on her computer screen and the clicks of her keyboard.

"If it’s danger you’re warning me about, forget it. It’s probably no worse than walking up the stairs to my apartment every night. We’ve had four burglaries this month in my building. Three of them involved lethal weapons.”

Izzy’s eyes tightened. “I’ll look into that too.”

Did he really mean it? After all these years he walked into her life and started making promises. Why in the world should she trust him?

A cold thought hit Maddie. Maybe he had a different objective. He was a powerful, vital man, and sometimes older men around Maddie got strange ideas and looked at her in a way that had nothing to do with computers and everything to do with hard hands and naked need. Was Teague going to pull some kind of lame trick like that?

After hard thought, she decided that was unlikely. A man with a face and body like his wouldn’t need to pressure a woman into anything. And since he’d never looked at her with any kind of physical attraction, Maddie was pretty sure this was just about work.

She shrugged. “A few bullets won’t scare me off. But I need facts. I can’t do any recognition work for you until I have somewhere to start." She eyed the jet with a look of pure panic. “Now would be a good time to distract me.”

She thought that Izzy looked relieved, though he hid it well. “Okay, I can tell you this much.” He rubbed his neck. “What do you know about the Crusades?”

“Like history? Uh—let me see. A bunch of angry guys running around in heavy chain mail and armor, grunting and trying to kill each other with big swords. Generally talking about religion while they murdered everyone in sight.”

Izzy’s lips twitched. “I’ve heard it put more elegantly, but yeah, that’s accurate.” He tapped at his cell phone. “I just sent you two files. Start working on them. That will give you something to think about. We're going to be looking for patterns."

"In what?"

"Don't know yet."

Maddie wasn't sure she believed him. "When will you know?"

"Don't know." Izzy closed his laptop. "And we'll keep the mini-bar for a last resort,” he said dryly. He actually held out his hand to help her out of the car when they stopped.

At first Maddie couldn’t figure out what he was doing. She wasn’t used to men helping her. Not used to anyone helping her.

And she wouldn’t get used to it now. She pointedly ignored his hand, scooped up her backpack and paper bag and climbed out by herself. This close, the plane’s motors were deafening.

She dug her nails into her palms and shivered.

Something told her she was really, really going to regret this.

By the time they got to London seven hours later, Maddie was white faced and frozen in her seat. Izzy had shown her some old documents that appeared to be in old French. Maddie wasn’t so great on languages, so she wasn’t sure. Izzy told her this was just a warm up, not the real files she would be analyzing.

The glasses of wine Izzy had given her were heaving in her stomach. One part of her brain had to admit that the small jet was an amazing piece of technology, and the luxury of the leather seats was beyond compare. But mostly her mind screamed at the unholy reality of shooting through the air at six hundred miles per hour.

Somehow she made it.

Now, groggy and nauseous, she followed Izzy into a cab through gray, rainy streets. From the cab she followed him into a big, bustling hotel.

Maddie was too tired to notice the sign. When he handed her a keycard and followed her to check her room, all she could see was a huge expanse of cool white sheets.

She yawned and gave Izzy a little wave. “Going to sleep now, Teague. I’ll give you a call when I wake up. Probably in about a week.”

He gave a dry laugh. “We don’t have a week. We’ve got an appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning.” He glanced at his watch. “Tomorrow happens to be in six and a half hours.” He glanced around the room, inspected the adjoining bathroom and then walked back to the door. “I’m right across the hall. Call me on that cell phone I left if you need anything. I’ll be back for you in six hours.”

She raised an eyebrow at his casual orders. “Okay, now I’ll ask some questions. What if I decide to run? What happens then?”

“It’s a foreign country and you don’t have money or a passport. Running would be tough. Plus, this case is challenging you and you’re not going to throw away your future on an immature, emotional need to run. But just in case the thought hits you, I’ll let you in on a secret. I’ve put a homing device on you somewhere. It’s tiny, with very new technology, so don’t hope to find it.” He gave her a wry smile. “Just thought you should know.”

He hadn’t got the door closed before Maddie picked up the nearest heavy object, which happened to be an ugly black leather binder filled with hotel details. It hit the door with a satisfying thud. “Creep,” she called out loudly. “So much for all that garbage about trust and commitment to the mission.”

Outside in the hall he laughed. “Sorry about that. But there’s trust…and there’s trust. I'm taking no chances.”

Exhaustion won out over anger.

Maddie rubbed the knot at the back of her neck and stumbled off in search of that big, soft bed.

One moment he had been caught in dreams, lost in memories of war and blood duty. And then the song of summoning had hit him, lancing through him like cold fire. He knew the pain of transition well by now, after five long centuries.

This world he found himself in was noisy and barbaric. Too many people in garments that were tight and oddly colored. The strange little boxes they held up to their ears looked ridiculous when they spoke to empty air.

But the Crusader drove away all these thoughts of discord, focusing on the gleaming silver trail. For only one reason would he be dragged from his sleep.

Honor had summoned him here.

The woman was close.

He dumped the garbage can in the cold alley and shifted through the mass of old books and stained clothes scattered on the ground. He found a loose surcoat that hung to his knees. Next he picked up a strange knitted object and leggings made from a stiff blue fabric. He shoved the garments under his arm and walked into the darkness at the end of the alley, alert to any intruders.

When he heard nothing, he stripped off his armor and tunic and hid them carefully within the leaves of an old rose bush hanging down from the floor above. He touched a petal slowly, and pain filled his eyes. Yet again the rose called to him, just as it had in every century. Once again it was his duty to obey.

Twelve roses would come. Twelve Guardians would hear their moonlit song.

And Lyon would be bound to the next rose, linked all through the remaining hours of his life and into death. Perhaps even beyond death.

The Crusader felt the brush of death every time he was pulled from his long sleep. After the pain and disorientation passed, he studied the quiet alley, aware of a sense of emptiness.

And then the swirling memories vanished. The silver thread pulled at him, dancing through the shadows in a restless trail of summoning.

Quickly, he tugged on the awkward clothing. It caused him great pain to leave his beloved sword behind, but he had no choice. The weapon would betray him as a stranger to this time.

In the darkness the silver cord danced wildly. She was so close now that Lyon could almost hear her breathe, almost smell her hair.

Almost close enough to taste their hot, dark joining.

She never would have found the monitor if it hadn’t been for the stupid British mystery on her room televShe never would have found the monitor if it hadn’t been for the stupid British mystery on her hotel television.

Maddie had slept for maybe two hours, then shot upright, totally awake. She had raided the mini-bar, then paced the room, then tried a hot bath. All had been delightfully novel experiences, since the room was luxurious beyond anything Maddie had ever experienced.

But none of those things had helped her go back to sleep.

So she had flipped on the TV and idly surfed through the channels. Every show had been a mystery. Didn’t the British watch anything else?

Half an hour later there had been a scene where an undercover officer ran surveillance by a bug hidden in a woman’s purse handle. And something about that made her get up to check the handle on her backpack.

And there it was. Teague had been right. It was unbelievably small. Definitely new technology. Maddie couldn’t wait to get it apart and see how it worked.

But not now. She was giving him no clue that she’d discovered his device. The lights and chaos of a new city lay right outside her window, the restless hum of energy seducing her like a drug. Maddie wasn’t sure if she was going to run or not. She definitely owed no loyalty to Izzy Teague.

Whatever. She figured she would walk a little and absorb the pace of London. If her jailer didn’t like it, he could go suck exhaust fumes.

“Yeah, she’s in her room. She was a wreck after the trip. She’s afraid of flying. Why didn’t anyone mention that? What? No, I’m sure she’s sound asleep.” Izzy leaned over and checked the schematic of the hotel’s ninth floor, just to be sure. As expected, the red light continued to blink on Room 906, right across the hall from his. His prototype monitoring device was working without a hitch. “But I need more data. How does the British Museum fit into the murders? I thought the curator was a specialist in documents from the Crusades.”

Izzy didn’t make written notes as he talked. He was too well trained to betray any secrets. All his notes were mental, carefully categorized and entered as he skimmed through the electronic files that had been arriving ever since they’d reached London.

His local handler, a stranger with no sign of emotion and absolutely no sense of humor, cleared his throat. “I’m relaying every file as it arrives, Mr. Teague. You must be aware that very high levels of security clearance are involved here. A Member of Parliament is involved, as are two U.S. Senators. Each file has to be cleared separately, and that is taking some time.”

“Hurry things up. I have a meeting with my contact at the museum tomorrow. I want to be fully briefed before that,” he said curtly.

“I will pass that information on. A team will be ready to pick you up at the hotel at 7:00 A.M. You’ll be fully briefed before the meeting. The girl will be given a separate briefing, of course.”

The man’s flat, emotionless voice made Izzy irritated. “She’s not a girl. She’s nineteen and she’s old enough to get killed in the armed forces.”

“Death comes to us all, Mr. Teague. Age has nothing to do with it.”

The phone clicked off. Izzy muttered an oath and stood up, stretching cramped muscles. He hated working these complicated bureaucratic jobs with multi-levels of security oversight. He did his best work alone, one man with one focused objective, but he didn’t often have the luxury of working that way.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a movement on his computer screen. He spun around and saw the red flashing light from Angie’s tracking device begin to move. Why hadn’t he been watching? The light was already halfway down the corridor, descending fast, probably via the main elevator bank.

He grabbed his jacket and cell phone and powered off his computer. The small, high-tech unit slid into a backpack that he swung over one shoulder. He’d warned her not to run. When was she going to grow up?

He closed his door and glanced up and down. Once he was sure the corridor was empty, he pulled a room key from his pocket and slid it into Maddie’s door.

The lights were on. Her paper bag was on the bed.

But her backpack was gone and the room was empty.

He swung the door shut and sprinted toward the elevators. As the doors closed he grabbed his cell phone and watched the light zigzag through the basement and then return to street level. Then it began to pick up speed.

Izzy scowled. He wasn’t the only one who would be watching the device. His handler would be receiving updates too. That gave Izzy about an hour to find Maddie. After that it would be too late to undo the damage.

Maddie pulled back into the shadows outside the hotel’s staff exit and glanced at her watch.

Suddenly the elevator door opened. Izzy Teague sprinted out, scowling, right on time. It had only taken him four minutes to follow the homing device.

He glanced down at his cell phone. So the sleek unit was equipped with some sweet technology, Maddie thought. She watched him sprint outside and cross the street, following the bus with the hotel maid whose bag Maddie had opened. The security monitor was now hidden in that bag. The bus picked speed and roared through a green light toward Piccadilly Circus.

Izzy Teague was right behind it.

Maddie didn’t walk with any particular plan in mind. She was savoring the sheer novelty and energy of London at night. Buses roared past and it began to rain.

She would have liked to stop for coffee, but she didn’t have any cash, as Teague had so helpfully pointed out. No credit card either.

She shoved her hands into her pocket, shivering in the damp air. London was colder than DC. As the temperature began to fall, the number of people on the streets thinned. She walked on in the night, listening to distant car horns and sirens, feeling her steps merge into the rhythm of the city at night.

Across the street she saw an ornate metal gate above a high stone wall. The metal designs were intricate and very old, and for some reason they called to her. She had nothing else to do anyway.

A hint of fog drifted through the trees beyond the gate, and Maddie’s eyes froze. The gray waves poured over the old stones, almost transparent.

And it was normal fog, Maddie noted. Only dampness and precipitation. Not the other kind of fog, the kind that left her white faced and shaking.

She crossed the street, admiring the stone carvings of ornate roses mounted on some kind of old shield. Heraldic, isn’t that what it was called? More of that Medieval stuff. That made Maddie remember the weird question Teague had asked her about the Crusades. What did the Crusades have to do with national security?

The night was silent and she slowed her steps, reaching up to trace the intricate petals of a stone rose. Some kind of a figure was carved above the rose, she saw. An animal? A man?

In the darkness it was impossible to tell.

Fog curled around her hand, veiling the wall, and Maddie drifted into an odd reverie. There were no sounds of footsteps or people nearby. She felt no sense of danger as the fog parted for a moment and she looked down a long row of ancient trees, where neat gravel paths wound past old metal benches. Ornate clay planters held lush roses that spilled across the ground, perfuming the cool air. Maddie meant to keep walking, to turn around and find her way back to the crowded, noisy streets near the hotel.

But she couldn’t. The shadows, silky and deep, called to some forgotten memory. She climbed the old cobblestones and walked into the shadows.

She had walked for three minutes before she realized this was no park. It was a beautifully tended graveyard. There was just enough light from the streetlights behind her to pick out the inscription on a nearby headstone

Emma Weatherstone. Beloved wife. Devoted mother.

Maddie leaned closer, trying to make out the date. 1620? Was that possible? Could this place be almost four centuries old?

Then the words vanished, swallowed up in a fresh wave of fog. Too late, Maddie realized this was not like the other fog.

This was the cold signal, the dark warning that came from her nightmares.

There was no other way to describe it. Maddie had lived with these strange bursts of intuition since she was four. The fog came without reason or warning, a cold blurring that began at the edge of her vision and slowly crept closer, blanketing her senses in a warning of death.

The fog had never once been wrong.

She turned and would have run back toward the entrance, but the fog was worse there, moving over the ground in a dense wall like an iceberg, headed straight toward her.

In growing panic she swung around and scanned the paths that led deeper into the darkness. On an instinct, she pulled off her boots and shoved them under her arm. So her steps would be muffled. Wincing as the cold bit at her feet, she ran over the uneven stones. Her toe struck an uneven stone, but she couldn’t stop. The fog was billowing up, more dense than she had ever seen it. No longer gray, its white restless fingers held ugly flecks of black.

Maddie’s heart pounded. She ran along a grassy slope toward a small ridge that overlooked the path. Below her the fog lapped higher, nipping at her feet.

At the top of the slope, Maddie lost her balance in the wet grass and sprawled forward. Her head struck the edge of an elaborate mausoleum. She pushed to her feet, trying to clear her thoughts, gripping the old stones.

Angry voices cut the night, followed by the tap of running feet.

Not good, Maddie thought.

There had to be someplace to hide. Maybe beyond the grass, where the light from the overhead streetlights did not penetrate. She moved along the rough wall, feeling her way blindly by the sharp outlines of designs that were probably names and dates and even noble crests.

The voices were closer now. She saw a beam of light flash over the slope, swallowed up by the gray fog that no one could see but her.

She had to find a place to hide.

Her elbows struck a recess in the wall and she slipped inside, wedging her body back as far as she could. More steps appeared to lead downward. There was no time to hesitate.

As the fog piled up at her feet, she followed the steps down into the darkness.

When Maddie looked back, she saw that the fog had stopped at the very edge of the mausoleum or crypt or whatever it was. She took that as a good sign.

Damp, musky air poured over her shoulders from a hidden crevice. She shivered, one shoulder pressed against the wall to guide her down into the darkness.

“She was here a minute ago. I saw her right over there past the bench.”

“A single girl out here alone? It’s a cemetery, fool. We’ve got more important things to think about. Our buyer should be here any minute. Go get into position. No slipups tonight. Too much lucre involved.”

Maddie’s heart pounded. Buyer for what? Did they have a drug deal planned? That made good sense. Not many witnesses would wander into a graveyard at night.

Only an idiot like Maddie.

She felt a little dizzy, and she leaned back against the cold stone. Her fingers trembled as she felt the curved shape of what might have been a flower. How had everything gotten so out of control?

“Just let me look one more place. You don’t want any witnesses tonight, do you?”

“Damn right. Go on. Make sure we’re alone.”

Maddie bit down a ragged breath as she heard footsteps tap over the stone path only a few feet away from where she hid. If the man shone his flashlight downward, he couldn’t help but see her.

Maddie touched the wall and felt the outline of the stone petals. All her choices had run out.

The only way was down.

With the sound of footsteps ringing in her ears, she inched forward along the narrow, uneven steps, through leaves and debris, the air musky with mold and dampness and the weight of death.

She dropped down two steps, no longer careful of her footing. A flashlight beam danced over the stone staircase, focused on the spot she had left only seconds before.

Maddie drew her body into a tight ball, sinking down behind what felt like an ornamental chair carved into the wall. She felt the curved outline of a chair leg with another flower that seemed to hold the petals of a rose.

Maddie felt disoriented, as if she had been here before.

Impossible of course. She grimaced, watching the flashlight beam crisscross the stones and stop on a pile of dead leaves. To her horror, Maddie realized her bare foot was outlined in the light.

“Got you, damn it.” The man’s voice was hoarse with excitement. Maddie pressed backwards, her hands to the wall, but there was nowhere to go. The wall behind her was solid. There were no openings.

“Think you can follow us and roll us for our money, do you? Or maybe you’re after the drugs.” A shadow rose up before her as the man came slowly down the steps. The flashlight traced her foot and leg. “She’s over here,” the man called harshly.

Where now?

Something rumbled deep in the ground beneath her. Musty air swirled up carrying dead leaves. And then, though it made no kind of sense, Maddie felt the brush of hard skin. Fingers locked tightly around her arm.

She was jerked backward with a hard snap and carried down into the bowels of an open grave.

“I told you it was a woman, Pike. I saw her in the light, clear as day.”

Small and fat and angry, the man shone his flashlight down the ornate stone recess decorated with a carved chair and a vase of granite roses.

Nothing moved now. His companion snickered. “Ain’t nothing down there, fool, and our buyers are waiting. Get your head out of your arse and get back over to the meet point.”

“But I saw her—”

“Forget her!”

The footsteps hammered away, back into the shadowed paths of the graveyard. Wind blew over the old stone monuments, ornate headstones and weathered graves, part of a forgotten past.

The night was silent again. There was no one nearby to hear the faint rumble of stone somewhere beneath the old mausoleum, the ancestral graveyard of the family of Alasdair, with holdings in France, Ireland and Greyhaven near Skye.

Maddie came awake slowly, wincing at the pain that locked around her forehead. She turned dizzily and then coughed, gulping in musky, dank air. Memories returned slowly.

The graveyard.

The man who had followed her through the shadows.

Most of all, she remembered the warning fog.

She sat up and studied the darkness. Where was he? She hadn’t imagined the hand that had grabbed her. “Hello?”

No answer.

But Maddie knew someone had rescued her. He had to be close by. “Who are you? Why did you—”

“Cease your clamor, girl.” The low voice boomed out of the shadows with such force that Maddie jumped. Okay, this was not funny. She was in a graveyard, dragged down into some kind of mausoleum. She had witnessed an intended drug deal, and the men nearby would be waiting for her.

This is going to make a really bad story for Teague—assuming she could actually tell him, which she couldn’t until she got safely out of this graveyard.

“I appreciate you grabbing me when you did. Things were getting ticklish up there. So…who are you?”

She heard the slow tread of feet in the darkness. “I might well ask you the same. Who are you, and why have you come to this place?”

“Some men were chasing me. I didn’t mean to trespass or anything. I just needed to hide until they went away. They had a drug deal going on up in the cemetery.”

Maddie had a sudden, horrible thought. What if he was part of the drug deal? What if this spot was a clever meeting place?

“I believe that I asked for your name, girl. I am not in the custom of being disobeyed.”

Okay, he might have rescued her, but the creep was weird. Maddie was getting angry now. His words were odd, and why didn’t he show his face?

“I don’t much care how you are usually treated. Who lurks around a graveyard anyway?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She slid an arm along the damp stone wall, feeling a trickle of water.

They must be underground. That would explain the seepage.

Quietly she felt her way forward. She didn’t have a clue where she was going, but staying where she was would be totally stupid. She didn’t like the cold, commanding tone of the man’s voice.

She didn’t expect to hear a sudden rumble of laughter. The sound seemed awkward, as if it surprised the man as much as it did her.

“A most amusing question. I am not certain how to begin explaining that.”

“While you think about it, how about you hold down the laughter? I don’t want those creeps to hear. I’m pretty sure they’re armed and dangerous.”

The laughter grew cold. “Armed? I think that their arms will pose no threat to me. But as you say, caution may be prudent.”

Maddie kept moving, her hand to the wall; but the voice moved too, as if he was following her.

She swallowed a knot of fear. “Want to explain why you talk so funny? I mean, it is 2012.”

Again the low, rough laughter. “Is it indeed? An age of noise and great chaos, not to my liking at all. But when duty summons, one must follow.”

More of this weird talk. Who the heck was he?

More important, how was she going to get out of this place and back to safety when she still couldn’t see a thing?

She could feel the brush of air. The air was fresh, and that meant there was an opening somewhere in front of her. Her fingers curved over a loose piece of stone on the wall, and she gripped it tightly.

When the steps followed her, Maddie tossed the stone behind her hard, listening to it strike the opposite wall. The footsteps moved away. Maddie shot forward, searching the wall for a handhold. She didn’t know who this strange man was, and she wasn’t staying around to find out.

She grabbed at a small ledge and climbed quickly, then pulled her body up to another recess in the stone.

The footsteps stopped. She imagined the man standing motionless, listening, trying to pinpoint her location.

Neither one spoke. Both were assessing probabilities.

Wind brushed her face, and she heard the rustle of fabric. She let out a yelp as strong hands clasped her legs and yanked her out of her hiding place, fighting and kicking. He didn’t wince when her foot slammed into his side. He made no sound when she slapped and clawed at his face. More than anything else this told Maddie he was a cold professional.

Then she toppled back, striking the wall. She managed to kick his head and break free. They both tumbled in a sprawl of arms and muttered oaths, collapsing onto the cold floor of the crypt.

Dimly Maddie realized he had twisted to brace her fall with his body. Her head struck not stone but his shoulder, solid with muscle. His hand gripped her waist, holding her at his chest.

Even then he made no sound. No curses, no accusations. Who was he?

She dug her bare foot into his ribs, fighting blindly. “Let go, you creep!”

His hand locked over her mouth. “Do not think to flee.” His voice was a cold whisper at her ear. “I am not the only one in wait for you. And I do not mean your inept criminals in the shadows. Others are close now—men of strength and true evil. I am not the only one who knows the gate. When you fought against me, the force of your emotions cast a net and that will bring them in pursuit. Now lie still. Make no noise. I must prepare.”

When Maddie gave another angry squirm, he pressed down hard in warning. He did not hurt her. He meant only to control, not to punish her.

Who was he, she wondered again. And what was that thing he’d said about the force of her emotions? “What do you mean by others?”

“Be still. I must listen.”

Against every instinct, she stopped fighting, listening just as he did. There had been something in his voice, some harsh warning that rang true. But what did he mean about these others—and a gate?

Be real, Maddie. The man is probably high on drugs. And you’re an idiot for thinking any of this could be true.

And yet, though her heart hammered, she waited without fighting, feeling his chest rise and fall beneath hers. She wished she could see his face. She was pretty good at reading people. She could have judged if he was liar—or a lunatic.

But the shadows were impenetrable. She could feel the hammer of his heart beneath her bare arm. She felt the locked line of his muscles that told of his readiness for attack.

“I don’t get it,” she whispered. “What is this gate thing?”

“Hush. I will explain what I can to you but not now.” He rose slowly onto an elbow, lifting her with him, her body still locked to his. “No more noise. It is not safe.”

Maddie heard a sound and felt his hand rise. He tossed something in the direction where she thought the steps were. A pale greenish light floated over the ancient stone, creeping up the carved wall.

How in the heck had he done that? She had a quick glimpse of his face in the pale light: lean cheeks. Intent eyes. Thick hair that skimmed his shoulders.

Then her questions were forgotten. Maddie saw fingers of fog cross the stones—not the natural fog that came from condensation and weather change.

This was the ghost fog that brought a warning of death.

They had to go.

She pushed furiously at his chest, but his hands tightened, holding her still. “What is it?” he whispered. “Have you heard them?”

She shook her head, swallowing panic, watching the fog grow. In the weak green light of his odd stones she could see the outline of the nearby wall. Water dripped down over carvings of lions and roses and shields. All of it looked very old.

Maddie felt the fog rise, climbing up her legs.

“Something has put fear into your blood. Tell me what you see.”

She stared at the lapping gray waves. She didn’t understand this gate he had mentioned or the men he said were waiting, but she knew one thing well.

Danger was close to them. Judging by the cold gray layer crawling over the stones around them, they were both about to die.

They didn't have time for explanations.

The gray layers grew, more dense than any Maddie had ever seen. Once late at night she had come upon a bad car accident. The driver had been thrown clear and lay in a pool of blood. Maddie had tried to help him, but the glaze of death moved into his eyes, and he took his last, gasping breath as she knelt beside him.

The fog that lapped around him had been far less than what she saw now.

"Listen to me. We have to go. There's no time. The fog –"

He pulled her close, not in care or lust but only so she could hear his whisper. "What danger do you see? I sense nothing."

"I can’t explain, but it's here. I've always been able to see it." Maddie had never told anyone about the visions that had dogged her from childhood. "You have to believe me. We are both going to die if we don't get out of here."

"You have the sight?"

“Don't you understand? We have to go.”

She tried to pull free, but his hand locked like steel across her ribs. “We go nowhere. If they come, they must walk single file, in search of the gate. I will meet them here, on my ground.”

“Okay, sure. Whatever you say.” Maddie tried to sound reassuring. The man was definitely a whacko so she would have to talk her way out of this. “You can stay. That's fine with me. But I need to go. My friends are expecting me. They’ll be wondering why I'm late,” she lied. "My husband. My children too," she said in a rush. Why not pile up a few more lies to make her case?

His arm tightened. "You are wed?"

"That's right."

He nodded slowly. “Then you must forget. For your sake and for mine,” he said.

Forget what? But she didn’t ask the question, too desperate to escape this approaching death. “Fine. Consider it forgotten. I have a very adaptable memory, believe me.”

“I will ensure that you forget. This is the only way.” She felt his hand move, tracing a spot at the center of her forehead.

“Hey—”

But the words snapped out of her mind as his fingers pressed in a slow circle. The air seemed to hum, and her vision blurred. When his fingers moved again, the touch seemed to burn deep into her memory, pulling up blurry images.

Signal fires on cold hills.

Stone towers.

Pennants that snapped in an autumn wind. A line of tired horses and lonely riders.

“But hold. Is it possible?” His voice hardened. "You have lied to me. You are not wed."

"Of course I am."

“No.” He ignored her struggling as his hand pressed at her forehead. "You remember the towers. You remember our oldest vows."

"No." But more images stirred, whispered words by candlelight in the fear of discovery. Something about him touched her memory in a way that frightened Maddie. “Who are you?" she whispered.

His touch felt almost familiar—and his words seemed to cut through to some deep part of her mind.

“I am the one you must forget. And you…are the one I must always remember,” he said roughly. “I find my rose and now must leave her. You are too small, too young for what would be asked of you,” he said harshly. “So forget.”

His fingers rose, gently tracing the skin along her neck.

Maddie shivered. The odd sense of familiarity grew. And then she felt her thoughts blur, lulled by that slow, masterful touch.

“Forget all this. Forget me,” he ordered. “I will seal the gate and release you. Once I am gone, none will follow. Nor shall we ever meet again.”

The words left her with an impossible sense of emptiness.

Suddenly he breathed a raw oath. He muttered low words in a fluid, foreign tongue as his fingers traced the skin above Maddie’s ear. “You wear the petal here on your neck. There is no mistake. You are the one I felt, the one I came to find.” His hands opened to cup her head gently. “Through the long nights I heard the whisper of your blood, calling to mine. A rose returned,” he whispered. “Given as in prophecy.”

Maddie’s eyes fluttered. Sleep and memories seemed to engulf her as she was caught by the power of his voice. He shook her lightly.

“This changes all. You must remember. You are needed here.” As he spoke, the fragments of sleep fell away and what might have been her own past poured over Maddie. She struggled to understand, caught by a sharp sense of belonging and purpose. What had he meant about the rosemark he had felt? She had always known there was a sensitive ridge of skin behind her ear, but it was just a simple birthmark, nothing more.

She had to think. She had to stop dreaming and be logical. She was in a crypt, for heaven’s sake.

Suddenly from the corner of her eye she saw an arc of cold light. The air began to hum, as if from a fallen power line. She heard what might have been angry voices echoing down a tunnel. Metal clanged against metal.

His arms locked around her. “They come,” he whispered. “Make no noise. They must not know you wear the rose. It would cause you gravest danger.” His voice tightened. “Do you understand this?”

All Maddie could do was shake her head blindly.

“Know this. They walk through time in search of all like you. For six centuries now each one they have found has died, slowly and terribly. Do you understand? They would tear you from me—and from time itself. You must stay silent,” he whispered.

“I—I understand.”

His breath eased out in relief. “Then do not fear. Without being called, they cannot pass me or my sword.”

But fear gripped Maddie’s chest as the light flashed again. Why was she falling for his delusional story? She was smart and tough and none of this crazy talk about rosemarks and danger could frighten her into—

There was no time to prepare. The air seemed to pull back in an icy wave, tearing the breath from her throat. Energy snapped and sizzled in the narrow space, thick with anger and the frenzy of violence.

And then Maddie saw them.

His name was Lyon of Greyhaven and he held his sword well, clasped by one scarred hand. The Rose was behind him, where she must always stand in his protection.

His code was implacable. The Walkers must never pass beyond him. It was law. More important still, it was honor, honor through the blood of his kind for generations, back to the mist before Arthur and the Romans. Back to foreign shores and some said back to the time of the Master himself.

Lyon did not interest himself in history. Duty was all that mattered to him.

And his duty lay clear before him now, burning in the silver air, blinding in the hatred of those who waited at the far side of the portal.

They must not find her. Others had failed to guard their Rose. Lyon would not fall among them.

The air grew brighter, burning, taking on the shape of an oval.

The portal opened.

Mail and cold metal quivered and shook from angry steps. “There!” A voice boomed, muffled as if cast through a tunnel or deep water. The boundary grew thin. Lyon felt the outlines of time and matter stretch and shift.

He did not answer. He did not move. The force of his will was unbending. His left hand, not his sword hand, stretched out behind him to wrap protectively around the woman’s shoulder. He would guard her with his life—nay, with his eternal soul as well. It was the vow of his kind. And that vow had only been broken once.

When the memory stirred anger, he shook it aside, focused on the danger nearby. Inside the burning air a dark face took form and then the outline of broad shoulders. Armor and a sword that seemed to cry shrilly with the blood of its victims.

Even then Lyon did not move.

“Always you. Always one leap before us.” The voice was a hiss, fierce with malevolence. “The wretched Lyon is found. If you are here, can a Rose be far behind?” Through the portal, the face turned, and Lyon felt the force of those inhuman eyes. “Search the darkness behind him. Look well for the Rose.”

Lyon did not move. He knew she could not be seen behind him, not with his energy raised to conceal her.

“What, no curses thrown in my face? It was not so at Culloden, when the Scots fell around us like maggots. One of yours fell too. I remember how he pleaded for you to end his torment before we could feast on him. Do you remember his cries, Guardian of Greyhaven?”

The Crusader gave no answer. That day and its pain were best forgotten.

“No answer? Nor was it so at Acre in the Holy Lands. Your kind begged to be killed while the Sultan’s advance guard did our work with slow brutality. And of course, we had taught them well. Their weapons were improved as only we could. And how quickly they learned.” Hard laughter spilled through the shining air. “The sands ran red with blood, Crusader. Do you remember? The game continues, does it not?”

Even then Lyon did not answer. His voice would give a source of attack, and Lyon would give this foul enemy no hold for his evil to pass. Without that hold, the portal could not be crossed. Time held firm, true to the old Laws.

“But another will call to you. Mayhap, her voice will be sweeter to your ears than mine.”

Lyon stiffened. He knew the voice to come. The sweetness of its foul betrayal had haunted him down the ages. Lovely, that voice, with grace to equal the beauty of her body.

And black as ash her heart.

“My dearest love. My sweetest heart.” The voice was a lush whisper, ripe with passion. Any mortal man who heard that voice would fall, stagger to his knees, ready to give the heart from his chest and even his soul. Others called her Siren. Morgaine le Faye. The temptress.

Lyon knew her only as Betrayer.

And he stood firm. He closed his mind and did not answer.

“You do not remember the sea, pounding on the cliffs outside our home in Gwynedd? You do not remember the child that sprang from your loins?”

Lyon’s jaw hardened. He could not listen. The pain of the memories would break him otherwise.

“The boy was your perfect likeness, my love. And he held all of your goodness.”

Dead, Lyon thought. Gone for long centuries. There was no reason that the words should strike him as if it had been yesterday and the loss of his son should drip like fresh blood.

“The blame weighs on your shoulders, husband. All you had to do was come to me. Was it such a great thing to ask? And did it equal the loss of your only son?”

Lyon held back an angry answer. She had no mother’s heart. No heart at all. She only used the worst weapon she had.

The death of innocence was her goal—the same goal of those on the other side of the gate.

His hands twisted on his heavy sword. There would be no accusation and no explaining. He could not give them passage through the gate.

He shuddered, drawn against his will by the force of that voice, once so loved. Once there had been happiness instead of duty and eternal searching.

Dimly, Lyon felt the slender shape behind him move and press against his back. Small fingers slid through his left hand, twined hard with his. The force of her will shocked him. For one so small, her power bloomed huge. As always, life surprised him with its magic. Now she guarded him.

Lyon focused on the grip of those small fingers locked around his free hand, fighting the low whispered words of false love carried from the far side of the gate. As Morgaine’s sorcery called him to cross back to her, the air seemed to hiss and scream with the forces thrown into this world. He heard the neigh of war horses and the clang of armor. He could taste the past as it fell around his shoulders like a cloak of death. And yet…if he returned, he could sleep. All his grave responsibilities would be forgotten. Rest, after so many centuries of watching and searching and guarding….

The small fingers jerked under his. Nails drove into his palm. The quick burst of pain caught him back from the dangerous edge of persuasion that he had not even seen.

Too close, Lyon thought grimly. Morgaine’s power grew apace. And the Rose—this strange, young/old creature—had caught him in time.

The furious cry that leaped through the portal was evil itself, evil thwarted, unbearably ugly as it must always be when its beautiful masks are put aside.

So much for the love Morgaine pretended, Lyon thought grimly. Now there was no more hiding.

Curses rained down, then stopped abruptly. “But hold. I sense someone with you. One of…light. I can almost taste the beating of her heart. How sweet it will feel beneath my teeth,” the gentle, awful voice hissed.

“Pull back,” a man’s voice ordered. “We cannot stay. If we are caught when the portal closes, we will all be crushed in its force.”

“No, wait. She is there. I can feel her. She carries the energy of a Rose.” Morgaine’s voice was shrill with excitement.

“Next time. We are losing the gate already.”

The air seemed to keen with frustrated hunger. Then the shimmering slowly faded and the air stilled, falling back into shadow.

Lyon released a slow breath. His sword was tight in his right hand, but he staggered a little, then braced his left shoulder against the cold stone.

The woman behind him leaned close and gave a shaky laugh. “Now that was interesting. That’s some evil ex-girlfriend you’ve got, pal. And I’m not sure I understood even half of what she said.”

“Just as well.” Lyon closed his eyes. In the aftermath of the gate closing, he was cold, mortally cold. It stunned him to realize what this meeting had cost him.

Was each contact with the Walkers growing harder?

“Hey, wake up.” A small hand bumped him in the shoulder. “Don’t fall asleep on me now. I want some answers, buddy. Starting with that part about ripping out the heart.”

It stunned Lyon to realize that she had no fear. Curiosity, yes. Irritation most certainly. But no shred of fear.

A true Rose, Lyon thought in wonder. He had found her without ever planning it. Yes, life worked with unfathomable magic and wonders. He had walked through days and centuries, and life’s turnings continued to surprise him. He tried to shake off his exhaustion, bracing one powerful hand to hold himself against the cold stone.

And to Lyon’s surprise and wonder, the female leaned beside him. Her legs locked and one small hand slid under his elbow to support him while her breath played against his neck.

She laughed softly. “Yeah, I’m a little shaken up too. We’ll both take a minute to regroup here. You don’t see something like that every day. And I gotta say, I’m glad for it.”

Her touch gave him strength and new energy, as did her laughter. He frowned at her strange words however. So much had changed in this time, clothing and customs and language together. And their noisy metal transportation boxes tasked all his comfort.

Yet Lyon knew well that he had to expect change. He had seen it before in every transit he had made. Shaking his head, he stood up slowly.

And so it was. He had found her. His Rose. His to protect after so many centuries of watching and waiting.

He would not fail her.

He felt her fingers, pale and slender, close around his arm. “You still seem a little shaky on your feet. Is there somewhere you could go? Someone I should contact?”

Lyon had to bite back a laugh. She wanted to find help for him? How long had it been since anyone had offered him assistance or support, Lyon thought.

“I am recovered. And I need no help, though the concern does you honor. You will be safe for one turning of the day and night. Twenty-four hours is your freedom. They cannot return before that.”

“They? I was going to ask you about that next. Who in the heck were those guys?”

There was too much to explain, and Lyon could see she was at the edge of her understanding. To say more tonight would only confuse her.

Now at least they had twenty-four hours to prepare.

“My order keeps an abode across the square. If you walk with me, I can begin to explain. Once we are there, we will be safe from all intruders.”

He heard her make a sound of low frustration. In the pale green light he had cast, the Crusader saw her frown uncertainly. Then she slid one arm around his waist. “Fine. Show me the way to this abode of yours. I’m not planning to spend the night in a grave, thank you very much. You can use that green light trick again to illuminate the way up those stairs I fell down.”

The light had gone out. Lyon cast the stones again and together they climbed up the damp, ancient steps. She walked beside him through the shadows, up to ground level at the opening of the crypt. There Lyon moved before her, sword clasped securely as he scanned the darkness in the event that someone had been left to watch.

The night was silent. No one followed.

Across the square, he saw the welcoming lights of the manse which had been in his brotherhood for centuries. An antiquities society, so the discreet gold sign on the door read. But Lyon knew it was far more than this.

He glanced up at the moon, thin and cold. Rain before morning. He could see the faint icy circle that boded foul weather. The last time he had seen such a moon had been in the Holy Lands, in the days before Acre fell, when the moon had glowed just so, a portent of evil to come.

For a moment, Lyon’s vision blurred. So many memories. The screams of the dying. The pleas of women and children, desperate to reach the ships in the harbor.

He had saved all he could. But the dead had been far too many.

The moon seemed to glow silver, cold and mocking.

Time and memories held him in their grip as his physical body fought against the shock of his time transit. Each leap grew harder for him.

He looked down at the moonlight playing over his sword. Cold light on colder steel. How many had this sword dispatched from life? And how many more would he cut down before he finally knew peace?

Somewhere in the darkness a bird cried shrilly. Pale fingers of fog twisted over the rows of ornate gravestones. The weather suited his mood, Lyon thought grimly.

What had the girl said about fog? What had been her urgent warning? One more question to ask of her.

He heard a rustle of fabric and felt wind on his face.

He turned around swiftly.

And saw that she was gone.

Maddie thought about the night’s weird episode all the way back through the darkness of the London streets. Twice she had gone still, hiding flat on the ground or against a wall when she sensed someone following her. Once she saw him cast down the odd green stones and murmur words in a foreign language. She had been lucky to find a spot out of reach in time. Some instinct, coming from a deep corner of her brain she had never sensed before, whispered for her to lie flat; that the earth would shield and protect her from all awareness. Still moving on a wave of fear and adrenaline, Maddie had not questioned the instinct.

All she knew was that those things were not from her world and they weren’t her problem. If the big man had a fight on his hands, too bad for him. She had enough of her own worries to take on anyone else’s. Her only objective was to get safely back to the hotel and work on a clever explanation for Teague. He was going to be furious of course, but she wasn’t going to apologize. She was entitled to a little time on her own. Thanks to her harsh parole terms she hadn’t left her corner of Washington, DC for five years. A chance to wander and soak up the sights of a foreign country? No way was she going to miss it.

She shrugged off a memory of the man’s rugged face. So what if it haunted her? He was probably a mental case. Maybe a vet returning from Afghanistan. She had heard that the strain was vicious on those coming back from this last war. Strain could make people think and do very weird things.

A man needed a shrink not a—what had he called it? A rose?

Maddie shook her head and sprinted across the evening streets, careful to listen for footsteps behind her.

None came.

She shoved her hands into her pockets. Whatever. So much for his whacko story, she decided. The man was probably high on drugs.

It took her fifteen minutes to find her way back to the hotel. She didn’t have a map or a cell phone with GPS, but Maddie had always been blessed with an excellent sense of direction. She returned the way she had left, using the small staff door in the rear of the hotel. Easier to avoid attention that way.

At least there were no police cars or uniformed officers in evidence, she thought wryly.

On her floor, she slipped in her keycard and opened her door quietly. Maybe she could manage this without a confrontation with Teague. Maybe she’d simply tell him that she had dropped the monitor on her backpack down the sink.

“I hope you had a pleasant evening.” The voice was low and tight with anger. Maddie couldn’t see him in the darkness, but the sound came from the chair near the window.

So much for sneaking by him.

“As a matter of fact, I did. Never been to London. I’ve never been outside of DC for the last few years either. I decided I was entitled to a little walkabout.”

“You decided that, did you?” The room lights came on in a fury, blinding her. Teague was near the window, his laptop cradled under one arm and his cell phone in the other. He looked—furious was the word that came to mind first. Worried too, Maddie realized. “In five more minutes I was going to call the London police. That would have meant you were going back to Washington in restraints, headed for jail. Again.” Fury snapped in his voice. “So I hope your junket was worth it.”

Maddie swallowed hard. Restraints? Well, she had known he was serious. No one ever seemed to trust her. Did they really think she was valuable enough to monitor and scrutinize all the time?

But she kept her face blank as she poured a glass of water from the pitcher near the bathroom door. “As a matter of fact, I did. This is a great city. Lots of history here, by the way. Isn’t that why I’m supposed to be here? You have some arcane history puzzle for me to solve?” She finished her glass and sat down, tossing her backpack on the floor beside her. “I just went out to start my research. So sue me, Teague.”

He strode across the room and put his laptop on an ornate, painted table.. “Let’s get this straight, Maddie. I can do a helluva lot more than sue you right now. In fact, I’m violating quite a few of my security oaths if I don’t.”

“So? Why aren’t you?”

It wasn’t simply bravado. Maddie really did want to know why he hesitated to turn her in. It wasn’t because of trust or affection, that much was for damn sure.

“I could lie to you right now, but I won’t.” His eyes were hard as polished mahogany—and just as hard to probe. “And I’ll tell you the truth. It’s because I feel guilty about what happened to you. And also because I need you. The government needs you.”

There it was again. Why did they think she was worth monitoring?

Teague glared at her coldly. “And while we’re throwing the truth on the table, let’s get this straight too. I know all about what you’ve been doing.”

Maddie cleared her throat. What the hell did he mean? Was he talking about the poker game she and her friends had started up on Friday nights with a group of guards at the Smithsonian? It had been innocent fun. An illicit pleasure to get sneaked into the museum after hours. Then one of the guards, probably driven by a crush on Maddie, had offered to sneak her into the conservation lab and let her spend the night. Oh, the thought had been tempting. Not that she had been stupid enough to take him up on it.

But maybe it was something to do with her recent jaunt inside the computers of a very famous and prestigious U.S. educational institution, where she had raised the reported SAT score for the younger brother of a friend? She hadn’t done anything totally stupid. She had only given him a boost of forty-five points and she had covered her tracks well. The papers had reported problems in the website, so Maddie had made her change the day after the report. If anyone thought to probe deeper, they would simply put it down to computer malfunctions.

But she didn’t think Teague was talking about any of those things.

Which left one possibility.

But how could Teague have heard about her whacko encounter in the graveyard so fast?

“What have I been doing? Why don’t you enlighten me?“ She wasn’t going to fess up to anything she didn’t have to.

Izzy pointed to the nearby chair. “Sit down. You’re making me nervous with all that pacing.”

Had she been pacing? Maddie hadn’t even realized it. With a snort of irritation she dropped into the chair by the window and put her booted feet up on the elegant coffee table, the picture of disdain. “Okay, I’m sitting. So what is this great secret you discovered about me?”

Teague steepled his fingers. “I know about your hack into the SAT scores and what you did for your friend. You did a moderately good job of covering it up, I’ll admit that. Of course I changed the score back.”

Maddie bit back a sound of irritation. He was slick all right.

“I also know about the card games with the guards at the Smithsonian. I’m very relieved you decided not to sneak into the lab for the night.” Izzy raised an eyebrow at the surprise that must have filled Maddie’s face. “Didn’t think I’d know about that, did you? But playing poker doesn’t break any laws that I know of, though you are not on the museum’s approved visitors list. But I’m more curious about that other thing.” He poured himself a glass of water, watching her face closely.

Maddie kept her features completely blank.

“What, no smart confession? Then let me fill you in. I’m talking about those books on quantum computing you ordered off the Internet. It was from a German subsidiary of eBay.”

Maddie slumped in the chair. He knew about that? Was there anything that man didn’t know?

She just shrugged. “So? Is it illegal to buy a few books? I paid for them. I didn’t use a fake credit card or anything.”

“I know you paid for them. I tracked the account records. And again, you were moderately careful to hide your tracks, I’ll give you that. But any books having theoretical value relating to quantum computing are carefully monitored by our government. By several other governments too. Did you honestly not know that, Maddie?”

As a matter of fact, she hadn’t. Holy crap. What sort of world were they living in? She met Izzy’s unreadable expression with a hard version of her own. “So I’ll repeat—what’s illegal about buying a few books? Thanks to you, and our beloved government — I’m not allowed to attend college. I’ve got to do something with my time. Something besides poker games,” she added angrily.

“I’m not pleased about that situation. I’m going to do what I can to rectify it after this mission is done. But you should remember that any books you buy of a theoretical nature relating to computing are scrutinized. And there are people in the government who would like to know why you are reading those particular books—and what use you may put them to.”

“Are you kidding me?” She huffed out an angry breath. “Don’t you people have better ways to spend your time? Why don’t you concentrate on tracking down terrorists with dirty bombs or solving the national debt problem?”

She hunched back even farther in her chair, her face a mask of disgust. The books had been an innocent purchase. She had only wanted to explore quantum computers in complex modeling problems.

“Like take down the government, you mean?”

“Don’t you get it, Teague? I’m small potatoes. I’m no threat to anyone—except maybe myself. I seem to keep shooting myself in the foot because I’m just a little too curious.”

“That’s the first thing we’ve agreed on in the last few hours,” he said irritably. “And I suspect there’s more to your little junket than you’re going to tell me. But so be it. What you do in your free time doesn’t interest me. It’s your work time I’m concerned with because I need three hundred percent from you, Maddie. I need your code skills, your pattern search skills and even your hacking skills. Is that understood?”

Maddie stood up and yawned broadly. “Understood perfectly. But since it is the middle of the night, why don’t you clear out so I can get a few hours of sleep before work starts in the morning. You did say we have an important meeting of some sort.”

“Afraid your sleep time is aborted. You and I have business to take care of.” Izzy picked up his computer and slid it under his arm, then headed to the door. “Bring your iPad and whatever arcane hacking tools you have hidden in that backpack.”

She blinked at him. “Are you kidding? It’s almost three in the morning. I’m tired and I want to sleep.” She was also developing one helluva headache, something to do with that weird episode in the graveyard, she suspected.

“Tough. I need you with me tonight.”

“Why?”

What do you need me for?” Maddie stood stubbornly in the middle of the room, glaring at him.

Teague turned around slowly. A glint of dark humor filled his eyes. “Because we are going to break into the British Museum. I can’t think of any better accomplice than you to help me. Now get moving.”

Maddie started to protest, but stopped.

They were going to break into the British Museum? Seriously, how cool was that? And if anything happened, she could simply blame it on Teague. Then he could get a taste of his own medicine.

She hid a smile of raw excitement and shrugged. “Sure. Whatever. I’m up for a little B&E. Just be sure you remember whose idea this was if we get caught.”

What Izzy said next made her frown uneasily.

“If we get caught, there won’t be any point in explaining,” he said coldly. “I’m counting on you to see that we don’t.”

Twenty minutes later, Maddie was sitting amazed, looking up at the imposing stone façade of the British Museum. They were in a parked van across the street; Teague was checking the rear service entrance.

He was in professional mode now, using that thousand-yard stare that all cops, firemen and military personnel did so well.

It drove Maddie crazy. Abso-freaking-crazy.

“Want to tell me what we’re waiting for?”

“Someone’s meeting us here. Stop talking, will you?”

Maddie opened the bag of chips she had grabbed from the hotel mini-bar and began to eat her way noisily through it. “Whatever.” She hunched back in the seat and closed her eyes. “Wake me up when I have to actually do something.”

Izzy gave a low grunt and went back to scanning his laptop. Man, Maddie would have given her right arm for a peek under that hood. Knowing Teague, it had to be rigged out with every kind of updated encryption and memory cards. Seriously, what she could do with a toy like that at her disposal.

She could hack back into the Department of Defense, for starters. Change a whole year of SAT scores.

Except those days were over. She wasn’t a stupid kid anymore. And there was something about this job that felt—weird. I mean, why did they go outside the normal chain of command? Why did Teague grab her and not one of the hundreds of tech geniuses on the NASA or DoD payroll? It didn’t make any sense.

Unless…

Maddie sat up slowly. “Okay, humor me, Teague. You want to explain again why I’m the one you choose for this job?”

He made an irritated sound, not looking up from his laptop. “I told you. You’re great with codes and pattern recognition. You’re also excellent at hacking, should it become necessary. We needed to move fast and you were available.”

“Bullshit.”

Maddie turned around in an angry burst of movement. The pieces were starting to fit together, and they painted a nasty picture. “No, you fingered me because you needed an outsider. And that would only happen if you had reason to distrust the people in your own organization. So tell me. You’ve got a traitor inside, don’t you?”

Teague’s fingers froze for a second on the keyboard. Then he resumed his typing. But his movements were slower.

He was trying to come up with a lie.

“Don’t bother to lie, I figured it out. And that’s why we’re breaking in too. You don’t want someone on your own team to know what we’re up to. Go ahead, admit it.”

When he didn’t answer, Maddie made a flat sound of disgust. “Yeah, I thought so. So much for all that crap about trust and responsibility. I guess that means I tell the truth and you say whatever the hell you want to say.”

Izzy stared across the street through the darkness. Halfway down the block, beneath an ancient oak tree, Maddie saw movement and the orange flare of a cigarette.

She dropped the unfinished bag of chips on the seat beside her, frowning. “Well? What about all that honesty garbage you’ve been feeding me?”

“Something’s wrong. That’s all I can tell you right now. Until we have solid evidence to the opposite, my orders are to presume that regular chain of command has been compromised.”

The potato chips that Maddie had wolfed down took a sudden, nauseating tumble in her stomach. “Compromised,” she repeated angrily. “In plain English—try it that way, Teague.”

“In plain English?” He closed his laptop, never taking his eyes off the street. “We’re in very deep shit.” He pulled on his jacket and reached for a small black sling bag. “Now are you coming or are you going to stay here and ask questions for the rest of the night? Because I’d like to get this over with.”

At least they weren’t going in alone, Maddie realized.

A tall figure was waiting for them in a parked car just beyond the museum service entrance. He wore a black tee shirt under what appeared to be a plain black utility jacket. No fancy bells and whistles, but the quiet, fluid way he moved told Maddie this was another man from Izzy’s covert ops brotherhood.

He got out of the car and motioned them forward. “Keep walking,” he said quietly. “I’ll brief you while we walk a few streets over. My wife will keep an eye on things here.”

His wife? This was starting to get really interesting. Maddie shot a quick glance at the rugged features of the man who had moved into step beside Izzy. He had to be at least six foot four. The few words he had spoken told her he was Scottish, with that lovely, rough mix of consonants that marked a Highlander.

“Sorry to bring you out on short notice, Ian. I can’t tell you the details, but we have to get in, and it needs to be tonight.”

The man—Ian—nodded silently. He glanced at Maddie and raised an eyebrow. “New partner?”

“Not exactly,” Izzy murmured. “It’s a long story.”

“Isn’t it always?” There was an element of humor in the man’s voice that made Maddie feel at ease. She leaned closer and pointed a finger at Izzy’s chest. “Partners? Hell no. He arrested me. Would you help someone who ruined your life?”

Izzy’s friend frowned, looking thoughtful. “I guess that depends on why he did it—and what you were doing to deserve it.” He glanced around at the silent streets and then opened a zippered pocket on his jacket. “I’ve got the schematic here. There are some updates for wiring changes in the last six months. Your plans are only ninety percent accurate.”

“You want to tell me how you got that information?” Izzy said quietly.

“That’s the easy part. My wife happens to work at the museum three days a week. There’s a big costume show in the works, and she’s the assistant curator.”

Maddie decided she really wanted to meet Ian’s wife – assuming they all got out of this business in one piece.

“I’ve noted the guard rotations and their break times.” Ian opened a small penlight and shone it over a detailed diagram of the museum. “This is our best access point.”

“Our? I thought I made that clear. You’re not going in with me. I don’t want you involved in this, Ian. Things could turn FUBAR really fast on this one.”

“I got that impression. Which is of course why you need me,” the Scotsman said calmly. “I owe you for your last visit to Scotland, remember? Now let’s not waste time in arguing.” He tapped one corner of the schematic. “The guard in this sector takes a break in twenty-nine minutes. I’ll fill you in on the security.” He tossed a thin black nylon jacket to Izzy and another to Maddie. “Sorry. I’m afraid yours is going to be too big. By the way, what’s your name?”

“I’m Maddie —”

Izzy cut her off. “No need to know her name. So what kind of alarm system are they using now, Ian? I was told they updated their old 8100 unit to a new German model.”

“Worse. They completely revamped the network last week. Now there’s a custom made override. Heat sensors and lasers. The royal family is expected at the costume show opening, and this is all new security in place .”

“Hell. I hate infrared,” Izzy grumbled. “You have a safe car somewhere? We need to get to work.”

There was an odd sense of camaraderie as the three slid into the gray van parked one street over. Fishing supplies and hiking boots filled one corner of the back. Maddie thought this was Ian’s family van. Something told her that he was rich enough to have a whole fleet of cars at his disposal.

“I can deal with the infrared,” she said quietly. “They will probably use a standard interface. But the lasers won’t be so easy to handle.”

“Nae, they won’t, lass. Which is why I decided to change the plan. We’re not going in through the janitorial access area.” The Scotsman glanced up at a sprinkling of lights three blocks over. “We’re going in through the roof.”

“I’m not afraid of heights, you know.” Maddie tried to sound like it was true, but actually she hated heights almost as much as she hated flying. Still, watching the men suit up and make their cool preparations left her feeling useless. “I could go along and help.”

“You are going to help — by staying on the ground,” Izzy said flatly. “We need you working those codes. I also want to be sure that the photographs I’m sending to your iPad come through okay. We’re going to have to study them later.”

“Sure, but—”

Izzy shoved a headset into her hands. “Put this on and stop arguing. Use the transmit button to contact us if necessary.” He looped a climbing rope around his shoulders and then pulled on tight, supple climbing shoes. He looked as if he had done this many times before.

“Seventeen minutes,” his friend Ian said quietly.

“There’s something I still don’t get,” Maddie interrupted. “What are you breaking in for? What do you need to find?”

“I’ll fill you in after we finish. Assuming the mission is a success.” Izzy punched a few keys on his laptop and then handed it to Maddie. “Keep an eye on the schematic. If there’s a security alarm, it will show up. Keep an eye on the third window, you’ll see the outgoing call messages there. If anything happens before we get back, use it to override them. That should buy us enough time to get back out. Whatever you do, stay on that headset. And Maddie?

“Yes?”

“Try not to get yourself arrested out here, okay?”

Maddie blinked at him. Yes, that had definitely been a sense of humor.

Who’d ever thought that she’d be standing next to a covert government operative getting ready to B&E his way into the British Museum?

“Better move.” Ian had a small bag draped over his shoulder and threaded tightly around his waist. It was perfectly weighted and did not move as he walked.

“Be careful,” Maddie whispered, then felt silly. Clearly, these two men knew exactly how to take care of themselves. They didn’t need her wishes or support.

Izzy turned the corner and gave her a little two finger salute. Then he vanished into the darkness.

The shadowed street was cold.

It was uncomfortably quiet, too. Off in the distance Maddie heard the sounds of buses and trucks and cars moving in the night, but here, near the deserted south wall, all was quiet.

She prayed it would stay that way.

She gave a little jump as static hissed through her headset. “You read me?”

“Yeah. Clear.” Maddie remembered she had to do something else to answer. She found the button, pushed hard and whispered into the headset feeling surreal, like a kid in a Disney movie.

“Good. Stay alert.” Izzy’s voice faded into a wave of static.

Maddie pulled her sweatshirt tighter as damp wind scoured her face. Rain soon probably.

She looked down at Izzy’s computer and maximized the top window with the museum’s security grid. It was a normal layout and she could see staircases and exterior entrances clearly marked. When two faint purple lights began to flicker along the top of the screen, Maddie realized she was watching the progress of Izzy and his friend in real time. She expanded the window, and then pulled an overlay of the actual museum interior right next to the security grid.

Their access point in the roof was close now. She really hoped this man Ian knew what he was doing.

She started to ask a question, then bit back the words. They didn’t need any distractions.

“Climbing.” Izzy’s voice was hushed. “Keep your head down out there.”

The purple lights continued to move, and Maddie slid the interior shots of the museum along too, following their progress. They appeared to be moving up some kind of a fire ladder that led to the roof. She listened intently, but there was no sound at all, not even the click of a pebble dropping.

Didn’t surprise her. These two were pros.

Suddenly a green triangle began to flash in the lower left of the screen. Maddie looked for a key or a code to the grid, but couldn’t find one. “Teague,” she said with soft urgently. “Green triangle in sector four. I’m repeating that. Green triangle. Sector four.”

Another green triangle appeared, this time at the exact opposite corner of the grid layout. “Another one. Sector nine.”

“Random alarm checks. No problems. They’ll be done before we hit the ventilation unit.” As he finished, the green triangles vanished. “Bingo,” Izzy whispered.

There was no hint of his exertion or stress in his voice.

Yeah, those two were good.

Maddie’s senses grew more focused, hyper alert. She scanned the darkness beyond the wall and along both neighboring streets. Why didn’t they hurry up? What if they—

“We’re in. I’ll call you in five.”

Maddie leaned uneasily against the wall, blowing out a breath of relief. Not that his safety mattered to her. The man would land on his feet regardless. But she definitely didn’t want to go back to jail because of some screwup that he made.

She turned out at the wind and leaned one arm against the stone fence, rubbing a knot in her shoulder. Then, she leaned over the laptop and checked the rooms near their access point. What collections were located beneath that area of roof, she wondered. She expanded one of the windows.

Now that was interesting. Roman Britain. Medieval Britain. Anglo-Saxon collections. Was one of those their target? If so, why was it so damn important to keep it a secret?

History, Izzy had said. The Crusades. Well, she would know where they were headed soon enough. Once she had the exhibit in question, she could run a search of her own and find out what Teague wasn’t telling her.

“We’re moving. The guard just went on break. We’ll contact you once we’re clear. Out.”

Sure. Fine. Great.

Out, just like that. As if he hadn’t screwed up her life all over again, Maddie thought angrily. Why was she standing here helping him anyway? Why didn’t she just leave him cold? He deserved it.

But… she couldn’t. Like it or not, she believed his promises. And she had to keep her own.

Wind stirred across her face. She pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt, shivering.

Something moved at the top of the fence. A figure dropped over the bushes and down onto the ground beside Maddie.

Hard fingers gripped her shoulder. By reflex, she started to scream, but stopped herself thinking of Izzy inside.

Another hand opened, covering her mouth.

“Quiet. There are two guards smoking just around the corner. If you scream, they will be alerted to your friends inside the museum.”

Maddie blinked, stunned by the familiarity of that rough voice. She tried to move, squirming wildly.

“No noise. Your friends are not safe.”

She nodded hard, watching the chiseled planes of his hard face shift in the dim light. He pulled her along the fence, stopping behind a red phone booth. His hands slid away from her mouth.

“You…” she breathed.

“Of course. Did you think I would let you walk away from me without following?”

“I don’t know what you thought.” Maddie hunched her shoulders and drove an elbow into his ribs. “I’m not listening to this. You’re a psycho. Get away from me.”

His fingers opened on her shoulder, holding her against the wall of the phone booth. “You will listen to me. Your life—and far more than that—depends on it.”

Maddie kicked him hard in the tender spot behind the knee and was rewarded by a nice grunt of pain. When he shifted slightly, she aimed a quick, furious blow to his collarbone with the outer edge of her hand.

Tough street experience had taught her that a good collarbone fracture ended most fights.

She heard a small grunt, but he did not take his hands from her shoulders.

No? Now for the money shot.

She kneed him hard in the groin, but this time he caught her knee and swung it away so the movement had no effect.

“Stop fighting,” he ordered in a voice of gravel and steel.

Yeah right. She wasn’t getting suckered into his psycho nightmare for a second time.

Abruptly he turned. Motionless, he listened to the night’s quiet. “An alarm across the street and four buildings down. I smell smoke.”

An alarm? Maddie wasn’t picking up anything at all. Only the silky velvet silence of the night. Certainly no smell of smoke.

In a quick movement he pushed her against his chest.

Maddie's protest died away as two police cars rounded the corner and raced past. Now she heard the whine of a distant alarm—and with it she caught the faint smell of smoke.

“How did you know that?” she hissed.

“It is of no importance. You must go. There will be many others here shortly. The fire is…” He stopped and his head tilted, as if he was reaching out to read the air. “The fire is on the third floor, but it is spreading. We must go,” he said flatly. "Unfortunate accident."

“I can’t go. My friends are inside. They need—”

“We’re clear. Rendezvous at the car in five minutes. Out.” Izzy's voice was calm and cool. Weird. Maddie had totally forgotten she was still wearing her headset.

The dark eyes measured Maddie's face. “Your friends are safe now, it would appear. But you are not.”

Another police car rounded the corner; this one stopped directly outside the museum steps.

“These men have not come about the fire. They are here to check the safety of the museum. They are from a different unit altogether, and they take their job very, very seriously.”

Maddie hesitated. The man might be nuts, but he had been right about everything so far. He had also saved her life more than once. Maybe…it was time to trust him. Just until she could get away from the fire and whatever else was going on here.

“Okay, fine.” She gripped Izzy’s laptop tightly. But another car growled up a service alley and stopped less than ten feet away from her. Two men in suits jumped out, silent and focused. At any moment they were going to see her.

One of the men in a suit stopped walking. His hands slid into his pocket as he looked across at Maddie and the man beside her. “Hold it right there,” he said flatly.

Maddie tensed and she prepared to run. But the man called Lyon held her exactly where she was, whispering a phrase in a language that sounded old and fiercely beautiful. And then the sky overhead filled with shadows that crossed the roofs and blurred for a moment in the streetlights.

Maddie saw shapes that she seemed to remember from her dreams. All wing and sinew, they swooped low, triggering a deep memory of respect and awe. One dropped before her. A gray limb unfolded, delicate in its strength as it curled around her shoulders.

The man in the suit cursed. “What the hell? Did you see that, Harris? Where did they go?”

The officer trotted right past them, barely eight inches away, running up toward the side entrance to the museum, with his partner in close pursuit.

“Well met.” Lyon looked up at the shadow. “Your help is given freely?”

“Given freely and with whole heart. It is an honor, as ever, Lyon of Greyhaven and Gwynned.” There was another ripple of movement, another drifting of sinewy limbs, and Maddie could have sworn—no, it was impossible—yes, it was a head with deep eyes and a hooked, craggy nose. She had seen faces like that in books. The same faces appeared on ancient churches.

“Your bidding, Crusader?” The stone mouth moved, intent on Lyon’s face.

Maddie watched in amazement as a great wing opened.

“I think we will leave this place. And perhaps my Rose would like a different view of London.” There was a hint of humor in Lyon's voice as he raised a hand, pointing up to the velvet sky. "Up there."

But the gray shape caught a hissing breath. “A Rose? You have found her in this time?”

The gentle hiss seemed to be carried through the air around them, echoed by a dozen more creatures of sinew and shadows. The figure beside Maddie drew up very straight and then bowed low with infinite dignity—in front of Maddie.

As if she was—well, some kind of royalty. It was all getting to be too much.

“This honor is great indeed.” The shadows seemed to ripple off the nearly transparent figure. Two great wings opened, unfurling slowly so that Maddie could almost see the rim of cartilage and bones and fierce, gleaming claws.

“I shall give you transport as you choose. All glory to the Rose. All praise to Lyon and to his return."

Before Maddie could protest at this strange acknowledgement, the wind seemed to move beneath her feet and she was caught gently in gray, powerful wings, rising, rising, her heart in her throat and the fence and the roofs of the museum falling away beneath her.

One minute Maddie felt a quick wrench of nausea, and then—nothing. She was aloft—weightless. Wind rushed in her face and she blinked hard, gasping. She hated airplanes and she didn’t like heights. But this silent gray whooshing of wings was like nothing else she had ever known. She felt the wind and power beneath her, while the gray wings cut through the air. Even the lights of the city were muted, visible through a sheer veil of feather and skin.

They turned sharply and dipped over a long row of park trees. Maddie gave a cry of surprised delight, reaching out to grip Lyon’s arm. He was right beside her, carried by the same powerful wings, a hand locked on her shoulder.

She should have been frightened, trying to fight her way free, but the experience was upon her too quickly. And there was too much grace in the slow rise and fall of the gray wings.

“This—I don’t believe this is happening,” she said hoarsely.

“You will in time. But tonight, no questions. Simply enjoy your ride. Our old friend knows the city as no one else does, for he has watched over it through long centuries.”

Another simple declaration that made no sense. But her questions fell away beneath a wave of wonder. They passed the bright lights of circular streets and flowing traffic. There were bright shops that gave way to the sudden darkness of a great park.

Then Maddie saw what had to be the palace. She craned her neck, trying to be sure, aware of people moving on the roof. Men were positioned at each corner. Snipers for royal protection, she figured.

She shook her head and realized she was still wearing the headset Izzy had given her at the museum. Better tell him she was okay.

She pressed the transmit button with fingers that shook a little. “Izzy —I left. There was a fire. I’ll meet you back at the hotel. Be careful. There are police everywhere on the street.”

“Copy. You sound odd.” Static growled. “—need assistance?”

Maddie almost laughed. Assistance up here? Only if she got struck by air sickness or passing geese. The whole night felt surreal. She was enjoying the exhilarating feeling of freedom. Maybe the race of the wind served to cut her nausea. “No, I’m fine. I’ll see you at the hotel. Hope you have those documents for me to work on.”

“I do. And we’re both going to be very busy for a few days, believe me.” His voice faded in a growl of static.

Afterward Maddie was never sure how long they soared through that silent darkness, in an exaltation of wings and power. Each detail burned into the next, as she was wrapped in the cocoon of those strong wings. And always she felt the pressure of Lyon’s body beside her and the reassurance of his hard hands at her back. She should have questioned everything, but her mind had simply shut down, overloaded by an experience that could not be explained or understood. Somehow during that rushing hour of flight, a door opened in her life and she walked right through it. Without even realizing the change, Maddie crossed a threshold.

She was different suddenly. Her world was different. She had seen too much and she could never go back.

She was as tough as she had always been. She was difficult and demanding and questioned all authority. But now…Maddie dared to dream. The world seemed full of surprises. So the questions that came from her lips were not sarcastic or angry, but filled with calm wonderment. “Some day you’re going to explain to me about these…friends of yours.”

Her shoulder was pressed against his chest and she felt as much as heard his soft chuckle. “Some day. I promise you that.”

“No one would ever believe this. I’d be carted off to the nearest psych facility if I mentioned it.”

“We are often afraid of what we do not understand. And the truth is, most of life is what we do not understand.”

“Nothing seems to frighten you.” Maddie studied the shadowed lines of his face. “You make me feel calm just being around you.”

“That is deep praise. I thank you. Time…along the passage of centuries…does carry certain gifts.”

“Centuries?” Maddie blinked at him. Surely she had heard that last part wrong.

“Look below, down to your right. I believe that is your hotel.”

“You followed me all the way back there from the cemetery?”

“Of course.” It was a statement of simple logic—and steely resolve. Maddie understood a great deal about this man in that moment. He would not threaten or shout in arrogance or snap noisy orders. His strength came from deep within.

She leaned back a little, letting her head rest on his shoulder.

Just for a moment. And having him behind her felt as natural as breathing.

Then she realized they were still moving south. “Wait. Aren’t you taking me to the hotel?”

“There is one more thing I thought you would like to see. It is Aeryx’s favorite place, where the southern cliffs jut into the sea. It’s not far now.” Lyon raised an arm and pointed south, into the darkness. “Can you smell the water?”

Maddie saw the vast network of lights pass away, vanishing into the satin darkness. There was only a dim trail of roads now and beneath her the race of great shadowy wings.

None of it should have been possible. Even in her wildest dreams Maddie would have laughed at anything as tangled and strange as this night’s events. But all her senses could not lie.

How could she accept what defied all logic? How could a world like this exist when she had never glimpsed it before?

How…

Muscles flexed. Lyon’s arm tightened beneath her shoulder. “You are worried?”

“Of course I am. This is all totally off the charts for crazy.” Maddie glanced over his shoulder as the creature he called Aeryx looped southeast. “I just can’t process this. None of it. If I weren’t so confused I’d be terrified right now.”

“But instead you are enjoying the flight.” His arm moved beneath her, and Maddie flushed. Sitting so close was…unnerving.

“Very little frightens you, I think.” His arm rose. He slid a curve of hair from her face as the land grew darker beneath them. “You feel the power of these wings, but they are nothing compared to the power that you hold.”

“Me?” Maddie gave a startled laugh. “I’m the last person in the world you could call powerful,” she said grimly.

“You will understand more soon.”

“You mean more surprises like this?” Maddie didn’t think she could take many more shocks right now. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face, suddenly tired and very lost. Lyon’s fingers lightly brushed her hair.

Even that small touch made her body stir with awareness. Maddie wondered if he had felt it too.

“There is time to make everything clear,” he said quietly.

She felt the sweep of the cold night air over her body. “Teague will be right behind me, you know. And the U.S. government will be one step behind him, waiting for their pound of flesh. I need to get back. I promised Izzy my help.”

“Soon. We are almost to the sea. And Aeryx sometimes enjoys a chance to show his skill.”

“I still don’t get why I’ve never seen these…creatures. How do they hide? Where—” Suddenly pain tore into Maddie’s throat like thrown acid. She cried out, feeling a violent weight press down on her chest. “H-elp. Lyon, I can’t—”

“Maddie, what is it?”

“I can’t breathe. Too much pain. What’s wrong—with me?”

Lyon caught her arm and studied it intensely. “We must land, Aeryx. I see the marks. It has begun,” he called out harshly.

“What has begun?” Maddie could barely force out the words.

Lyon didn’t answer her as Aeryx looked back at them.

“It is too soon,” the deep voice rumbled. “There are weeks yet before she must choose. It is her right by prophecy.”

“Then something has changed prophecy,” Lyon said angrily. “Set us down wherever you can. There is only one way to stop this.”

“And there is only one place safe to do that,” Aeryx boomed back. “Beyond the Witch’s Pool. Beyond the moat and the gray rooftops at Draycott Abbey.”

Lyon’s eyes filled with fury. But his fingers were yet gentle on Maddie’s face as she fought for breath. “Do it then. I swore never to return, but no place is closer. The cursed abbey ghost shall help us, whether he chooses to or not. There is no other choice. She is dying, Aeryx. Take us to the abbey.”

There should have been weeks before them to plan, Lyon thought grimly. There should have been quiet days and slow nights to prepare while Maddie came to understand the responsibility of the decisions before her. By prophecy a Rose was always given free and clear choice to assume her power—or reject it.

But something had changed. Lyon felt the sharp force of that change pound in his blood and drum through every muscle.

If prophecy had been shifted…

It was impossible to imagine. If this one thing was wrong, then everything was wrong. All his years of duty as a guardian would mean nothing.

Lyon cradled her gently, trying to calm her labored breath with his voice and touch as the great wings swept low, over dark woods and the circle of a shining moat.

To Draycott Abbey’s shadowed gray walls, where old, mullioned windows glistened in the faint moonlight. Somehow he would have to make her safe, using ritual words and his own power of binding. And once the ritual was done, there would be no going back.

For either of them.

“He will know you have returned.” The dark voice rumbled through the night as they winged east. “He will oppose you, of course.”

The man he had known centuries ago had once been a friend, but lies and secrets had turned him into an enemy. The hatred between them had begun over power—and after that had moved to a woman.

And the length of their enmity had been measured in centuries.

“We have no choice. Your island is too far. And my home is even farther.” Lyon bit back a curse as Maddie coughed up dark bits of blood. “Do it now. There is no more time.”

“Very well. It shall be so.”

They turned in a dizzying swoop and the moon seemed to lurch crazily as they soared east. Lyon gripped Maddie’s shoulders. “Just breathe, my heart. There is hope. You will be safe with me.”

He prayed it would be so.

Ahead of him he saw glistening water and then proud gray towers.

Draycott Abbey.

He had lived here once, long years before. He had been loyal to this family and to the powerful men who had held these lands.

He had sworn never to return.

They soared over the high hill and passed the great trees of the home wood. Aeryx knew the way. Aeryx had been here often. There was only one place he would take Maddie now.

To the cliff called Lyon’s Leap, where the Crusader had been betrayed long before.

Judging from the anger that stirred in the air around him, the abbey’s guardian ghost was already there waiting.

Aeryx plummeted, catching his fall mere inches above the ground. Lyon stepped down with Maddie in his arms and set her on the soft, cool grass. When she shivered, he covered her with his odd, modern jacket and then raised an arm to the air, beginning the chant of Welcome to a Rose. The words were as old as the gray stone walls beyond the moat—and just as powerful.

“By dawn and dust. By sun’s light and midnight shadows, I call you back. You are welcomed, held in light.”

Lyon had time to say no more.

A shadow exploded over the hill and burned into human shape. White lace floated above black velvet cuffs below the cold, aristocratic features of Adrian Draycott, the ghost who guarded these lands still.

“You dare to return here? You think that I have forgotten—or forgiven?”

Lyon steeled himself for the hatred he would see in the features of a man who had once been his closest friend. The hatred was there, most certainly. With it was the cold arrogance of a man well used to command. “I need your help,” he said coldly.

“Leave now. Otherwise I will shatter your body to dust.”

“I cannot.” Lyon looked down, feeling Maddie’s body growing cold in his arms. He held the binding words in his mind, pulling them around her like a warm shield. But he had little time left. “Enough of the past and its hatreds, Draycott. More important things are before us now.”

The arrogant ghost of Draycott Abbey sneered at the woman on the ground. “A woman? What surprise in that? You were always famed for your conquests. Your woman is of no interest to me.”

“But she should be,” Lyon said grimly. “She is the sixth of her kind. And if we do not hurry, she may well be the last.”

“She is…a Rose?” Adrian’s breath caught. “The sixth?” He dropped slowly to one knee, studying Maddie’s glazed eyes and pallid face. “It is not possible. She is too small. Her hair and clothes are odd. Bah—she is young. I feel no power in this one, but a Rose may command armies—even kingdoms.” It is a trick. He shook his head. “Leave now. Take your imposter with you.”

“No imposter. She commands me,” Lyon said harshly. “At one time that would have been enough to convince you.”

“At one time you deserved my trust. But no more.”

Lyon muttered harshly. He had no time for old hostilities while Maddie’s life hung in the balance.

Her eyes opened suddenly and she tried to sit up. “Stop arguing, will you? Do something—useful. Water. A doctor. Must you always—fight?” Her words broke off in a harsh wave of coughing.

Adrian Draycott broke into rich laughter. The sounds rippled over the dark woods and lawns. “She sees me? Though I am a ghost, invisible to all mortals? Then there is my answer. Only a Rose would know me. I can feel her light now. It is weak indeed. She has no understanding and no control yet. And her heart wavers…” He stood up in an angry rush. “By all that is sacred, make haste, man. She is shivering.”

“It happened too fast.” Lyon heard Aeryx settle, a gray shadow perched on a boulder nearby. “The night is cold, old friend. We need warmth. Will you give this?”

“Gladly, Lyon. For you—and for your Rose.”

Emotion burned around Adrian Draycott’s dark form, but he said nothing. He stepped away as Lyon knelt on the ground beside Maddie and lifted her into his arms.

Instantly Lyon felt something was wrong. Time itself seemed unstable. Her light was too dim. Yet when he had met her, light had burned all around her like a restless garment. His hands tightened on her waist. What if he lost her now? What if—

He heard Aeryx hover above his right shoulder. “Finish, while you still have time. Her heart is weak and her light is nearly gone. Say the words.”

There would be no going back after the words were cast, Lyon knew. The tides would reach out and wrap around them forever. And yet what other way was there to cheat her death?

Lyon gripped her hand and cleared his mind of fear or anger. There could be no darkness here or the magic would be lost. They all might be lost along with it.

“Maddie,” he began. “Traveler. Stranger and yet no stranger, Rose of Winter, Rose of Dawn. Heed this first calling and feel our power joined.”

Lyon waited, but Maddie’s low, labored breathing grew weaker. He wrapped her small hand in his big one and leaned down, touching her face. “I hold your light,” he said roughly. “I breathe it now and bind you here; with hand and heart I claim you, so let it be.”

At first there was nothing. No flutter of eyelids. No change in the deathly pallor of her face. She barely seemed to breathe in his arms.

Lyon waited, stiff and silent. Had he been fast enough? Had he been careful in his touch—and clear in his calling?

Her face was blue-white now, the color of icy driven snow, and her eyelids were lined with blue veins. Lyon turned her arm and felt her wrists.

A pulse skipped, but too faint and far too slow. He felt time shift again, and the dark moved closer.

“Has she roused?” Adrian asked softly.

“No. And be quiet,” Lyon muttered.

“Then you must try again. You must have done it wrong. Get it right this time. I’ll have no more death on my conscience.” Adrian glared at Lyon, then shook his head.

But Lyon nudged him aside, leaning down to listen to Maddie’s breath.

Faint. But the sound was steady, he realized. He felt her slight shiver.

Then Lyon saw light fall over her arm. Moving slowly, it settled against her palm. It was a circle—too faint for a tattoo. Too intricate for ink or pigment. And it was alive.

Lyon’s breath caught as he saw the ancient silver marks of prophecy form—and begin to move.

Lyon felt a surge of elation. The marks had returned. But he could still lose her. Her breathing was far too weak and irregular.

Urgently he tilted her face up to his. “Come back,” he said roughly. “I order it.” Lyon’s voice shook. “Nay. I ask it, with full and solemn heart.” The words were barely from his mouth when she coughed hard. Blood and foam dotted her lips and she lunged for him, taking deep, choked breaths.

Her fists shook. She was in clear and great pain, Lyon saw.

“Stop.” Her hands opened again, hammering his chest. “You’re hurting me. My throat is on fire. And there—what’s wrong with my hands?” She shuddered, dragging in hard, broken breaths.

The first hurdle past. Now for those to come next, Lyon thought grimly. For what came next would be far more dangerous to them both.

The calling should not leave her in this much pain, he thought angrily. Her marks had come far too fast, before she had any control over them. He could only wonder what else was wrong.

But his worry was cut short by Maddie’s wild struggles. When he released her, she stumbled to her feet, blinking hard. “I feel—drunk. Did you drug me?”

“I did not.”

“Liar.”

“It is no lie,” he said coldly.

“Then—then what happened?” She glared at him, weak and confused. “Where are we? This doesn’t look like London.”

“We are in a place of safety. At a house of great age. It is called—”

“It is called Draycott Abbey.” Adrian Draycott moved past Lyon. “I am Adrian, its guardian. I bid you deep welcome.”

Maddie frowned at him suspiciously. “Guardian? Is that some kind of rental agent?”

“Not precisely.” Adrian held out a lace-covered hand. “Let me help you up to the house. You look tired.” He smiled darkly, as if very pleased when Maddie accepted his hand. “You see me clearly, do you? It is after all very dark here.”

Maddie shrugged. “It’s dark but I can see you okay. What I’m having trouble with is that weird costume you’re wearing. I don’t see a lot of guys wearing lace in my part of DC.”

Adrian’s voice became arctic. “It is hardly a costume. I wore this garment on the day that we celebrated the first balloon flight across the channel. It was a most exciting day, to be sure.”

“Balloon? So you do that reenactment stuff?”

“The year was 1785, my good woman. And the day is as clear in my memory as yesterday,” Adrian said irritably.

Maddie turned slowly. “You expect me to believe that?” She frowned at him and then turned to glare at Lyon. “I feel…sick. My chest hurts. Why did you bring me here?” She rubbed her hands slowly. “Why are my hands so hot?” Maddie’s voice broke when she saw her palms.

Light danced and shimmered in restless spirals, drifting in slow circles that broke and reformed in the still air in front of her.

As if they were alive.

She took a shuddering breath and moved her hands back and forth. When she did, the spirals moved with her. “Make them s—stop,” she said harshly.

“I cannot.” Lyon took her right hand and watched the marks pulse at his touch. “You are coming into your power. Your marks have come alive, just as they ought to.”

Maddie wrenched free, flinching as the bright circles spun free and drifted past her face. “It’s a trick,” she hissed. “Some kind of fluorescent bands. How are you doing that?” Her face was white with fear. “Just—just make it stop.”

“You order what I cannot give.” Lyon frowned when Maddie backed away from him in confusion. The change was too abrupt, overwhelming in its force. But he could not stop what had begun. He sensed that dark forces were at work, and that somehow they had shifted the normal order of her change. If Maddie was to stay safe, her understanding would have to come swiftly. “They are your marks of power, Maddie. Only you may command them. None other may control or remove them now.”

Maddie knocked furiously at the glinting circles, but each time they floated back to her. “Then I command them—to go away!”

The spirals flickered at her words. Slowly they grew smaller and dimmer, until they were only scattered pinpoints. Lyon knew well what would come next. “You should not ask this thing. Once the marks take life—”

Maddie cried out in pain and anger and gripped her right hand. “They’re burning me. What have you done?”

“Anyone who tries to remove your marks now will feel this pain. Even you,” Lyon said roughly. “You have the choice. But there is a cost.” And the cost was a terrible one, Lyon knew.

Maddie flinched. “I don’t want the choice. I damn well don’t want these marks either.” She locked her trembling hands against her chest. “Explain it. You’re supposed to understand everything.”

“Not everything. And I’m afraid—you can’t go back. When you were dying, I called you back to life. The price of your return was those marks—and the powers that go with them,” he said quietly.

“Let me make this clear. I don’t want them. I just want to go back home and be normal again. I want to play video games and drink coffee and learn computer code—” Maddie gasped in pain. “Why didn’t you let me stay the way I was?”

“And let you die?”

“You’re lying.” Maddie raised her hands. Only a faint trail of light remained. “Why do they burn this way?”

She looked up as great wings cut through the air above her, swooped low and then circled past. “They need not burn you.” Aeryx’s eyes glinted. “As the guardian says, the marks are yours to command. You must accept their power—and your own—first. Until you do, they will search for their master, and their search will be unending and painful.” Aeryx glanced at Lyon. “You will not tell her the rest?”

“It is not required. She must choose for herself.”

Maddie glared at the scattered points of light. “They really won’t go away? Not ever?”

“They will keep searching for their home, as all sentient life does. We all wish in our hearts to go home.” Aeryx sank onto a grassy slope and furled his wings. “Those marks are yours forever. You are now their home.”

“This is a nightmare.” Maddie rubbed her head. “I’m arguing with a creature who stepped off a medieval church tower. And my hands are on fire. Just…tell me this is a bad dream,” she whispered.

“My apologies, but it is no dream,” the winged creature rumbled.

Maddie’s mouth locked in a tight, stubborn line. “I was really going to die?”

Aeryx glanced at Lyon, who nodded gravely. “I was almost too late. You had stopped breathing.”

“You—called these things. And now I don’t get to go back?” She looked accusingly from Lyon to Adrian to Aeryx.

None of them answered her.

“Fine. If they’re going to keep burning like acid—” She made a flat, angry sound of resignation. “They can stay. Just don’t expect me to like it. Do you hear that? And I’m going to find a way to go back and be normal again.” She stared down at the marks with hatred. “But for now, since I have no choice—they can stay.”

At her words the light flickered. Moonlight slanted down from a sudden opening in the clouds. The cold silver light seemed to arc down to Maddie, dancing over her shoulders and across her fingers, reckless and flashing with life.

But they did not settle on any spot.

“What’s wrong?” Her breath was ragged.

As she spat out the angry words, the spirals flared up like forged gold. They writhed in unstable bands through the air around her and brushed her face. Then they circled her head and stretched out in a glowing path down to her feet. And still they burned her, Lyon saw.

He shook his head sadly. “You must offer them haven with true heart. Otherwise they will not rest. It is Law, Maddie.”

She stood, caught in rigid anger. “So many stupid rules.” And then her shoulders slumped. “Okay, fine. I give them—haven. To stay.”

At her low words, the spirals blew out in dizzying wings of light. They chased back and forth around her body in streaming strands of gold and flashing silver. They twisted upward, forming six-fold braids that burned fiercely.

And then they settled with infinite grace across her palms.

Maddie stared at them, her face sickly pale. “I don’t believe this is happening.” Muttering, she moved her hands back and forth, watching the bands of light rise and fall. “This is—totally nuts. And I’m going to be really sick now.” She pitched forward, holding her stomach.

Only the quick support of Lyon’s hands kept her from falling as she spewed up all the contents of her stomach.

“Be careful with her.” Lyon’s face was grim.

“I am being careful. But by my oath, I am not well used to lifting humans. In all my memory, only one human could see me.” Adrian said gruffly.

Over their heads Aeryx raced through the night, amber eyes burning.

“What did your winged friend mean? What have you not told her?”

“Her marks have an effect on all around her. She will learn this in time. For now she has enough to bear in her own anger and fear at all that she has lost.”

“What loss? Normal life must pale next to the power her marks will give her.” Adrian shook his head. “How can she prefer weakness to that?”

“We all prefer what we know best. Would you give up this house and all of these lands to hold such powers as hers?”

“Of course I would not.”

“Because this is what you know best. You are no different from her, Draycott.”

Adrian started to argue, but his muttering was cut short by Aeryx’s rumbling of laughter.

“The guardian has caught you well, Draycott. And he has the truth of it.” The air vibrated with the deep force of that voice. “She will learn what she needs. I can feel her spirits struggle even now. When you bind her, Crusader—”

“I will not bind her.” Lyon’s face was stony. “She cannot accept the cost. It would require force and I will not use force against her.”

Aeryx’s breath drew out in a long sigh of understanding—and sadness. “You risk much in this choice.”

“Explain this,” Adrian cut in. “What is this choice that she must make?”

“It is none of your affair.” Lyon kept walking. “I can see the house now. What of the alarm, Draycott?”

Adrian gave a sniff of disdain. “You think I may not subvert a few wires and sockets? No one and no thing will hold me from my own house.” He glared at Lyon. “Take your Rose and I will deal with the entrance door. Carry her to the old gatehouse.” Adrian’s eyes narrowed as Lyon carefully took Maddie into his arms. “How much time does she have before her powers must be controlled?”

“Not enough. Something is wrong. You feel it too, Aeryx.”

The creature fluttered his wings restlessly. “It digs at my bones and shatters my rest. Yet I can find no source.”

Lyon stared north, past the great oak tree and along the dark cliff known as Lyon’s Leap. Memories clung and his eyes were like pools of darkness. “There is only one source. They are awake, stirred by Maddie’s power. They have not seen her yet. But they will. And now that her marks have begun to stir, her presence will be hard to hide. I ask your protection, Aeryx.” Lyon looked gravely at Adrian. “And yours too. Can you put the past aside for her sake, if not for mine?”

“She will be safe here. You have my vow. Abbey lands will be safe haven for the Rose. As for the enmity between us, it shall be put aside.” Adrian’s eyes were cold. “For now at least.”

No alarms challenged them on their passage to the weathered gatehouse. The abbey’s beautiful halls lay silent, dappled by moonlight.

The night seemed to muffle Lyon’s footsteps as he carried Maddie up the curved staircase to a bedroom that overlooked the moat. The glowing silk chairs and polished wood seemed to hold a welcome, the air perfumed by roses scattered in vases around the quiet room.

After Adrian left, Lyon smoothed a white coverlet over Maddie and sat down on a nearby chair. He had not set foot within the abbey’s walls for too many years to count. The rooms were strange and the furnishings new to his eyes, yet the shadows still held the warmth of old memories.

Lyon felt the age and weight of the house’s past seep into his spirit as he watched Maddie sleep. She had much to learn and little time to do it. He must carry the weight of most of that training. As if aware of his thoughts, the marks on her palm stirred, growing brighter. Lyon reached out, watching the restless silver lines move—and drift toward his hand.

They slid across his fingers, faint and glowing as they searched.

Wherever they touched him, his skin burned with their restless fires. His jaw locked with the wrenching pain. There could be only one peace, in an act of irrevocable passion that Lyon would not permit. She had been hurt and betrayed. He would not do the same.

He closed his eyes against the searing pain as her rosemarks cut deep into his skin, calling for union. Demanding a hot, breathless release. He could take her there as she slept, sealing their bodies by the fire of his terrible need, claiming her in form, spirit and soul for all time. He could refuse her the choice and spare them both this agony of separation. He watched her sleep and his blood stirred, hot with the awareness of her slim, exquisite body outlined in the moonlight.

He wanted her. His spirit called to hers.

He could bring her pleasures she could not imagine. The fire that seared him would also heal the old scars of their past. It would be so easy.

But to take her here and now would deny her what she valued most—her freedom.

Hard choices mocked Lyon. But hard choices were what the Crusader did best. So he looked away, and ignored his pain. He did not slip into the soft bed and stir her warm skin awake beneath him. He let her sleep, quiet and untouched. He guarded her restless dreams—even from himself. His hands glowed as her marks wrapped around him, searching.

Burning.

But he would keep her safe—no matter what it cost him to do that.

Lyon’s jaw locked against a fresh wave of pain as he stood slowly. Outside the French doors moonlight shimmered over the moat and a winged shape cut through the darkness.

“Guard her, Aeryx,” Lyon said hoarsely. At his words, the powerful form sank down on the stone railing above a bank of scented roses. The great wings closed, and Aeryx nodded gravely at Lyon, studying the silver marks that had followed the Crusader across the room, restless in their need.

“It is too soon,” the deep voice rumbled. “Take care, Crusader. Time is not as it should be. I feel the laws begin to shift again.”

It was nothing less than what Lyon had felt himself. But he valued the warning from a creature of Aeryx’s age and power. “I shall take care, old friend. For myself. And for the one who sleeps inside.”

A new wave of pain lashed Lyon as Maddie’s marks traced his neck and forehead. “I must go. She strains my control. We both need more time.”

“I will stay. None shall pass me.” The great body stilled, sinking to rest in the shadows. Now he was simply one more sculpture among so many that marked the abbey’s beautiful, weathered walls.

But the amber eyes gleamed, alive and brooding in the darkness.

Maddie came awake slowly, groggy and confused by a rich smell around her. Roses?

Blinking, she pushed to one elbow and glanced around her. Damask wing chairs flanked a mahogany chest. Roses of a dozen colors were arranged in silver vases beneath fine oil paintings. Where was she?

Abruptly the night’s memories returned in a searing rush. Maddie fell back on the bed with a gasp of anger and confusion. It couldn’t—shouldn’t be true.

And yet it was. All of it. The truth of the night whispered in her blood and burned at the skin of her palms, where even now she could feel the odd, restless prickling of the spirals of light. The marks were moving, almost alive as if they called her to do something—something Maddie couldn’t understand.

Or maybe she didn’t want to understand.

She sat up slowly, grim and focused. She had to check in. The last time she had spoken to Izzy had been hours ago. For all she knew, he had already called out the local police to find her and take her in to custody.

Except he wouldn’t know where to look.

Where was her wretched phone?

She pulled on her jacket and jeans and padded to the small adjoining room. She hadn’t slept long, because it was still dark outside. If she hurried, she could catch Izzy before he did something rash.

Like contact Interpol, the CIA, or the FBI.

But her phone was nowhere to be seen. Her backpack was gone too. Maddie glared at the beautiful room, vainly searching for any way to communicate with the outside world. No phones anywhere. “Don’t the people in this mansion believe in modern conveniences?”

She dug a hand through her hair, frowning as the floor seemed to tilt. Dizziness hit her in a crippling wave and she bent double, staggering. “S-stop spinning,” she gasped.

And just like that the spinning stopped. No more waves. No more dizziness. Maddie opened her eyes and put one hand on the ornate mahogany side table, thinking about what she had said. And about what had happened next.

“Start spinning,” she whispered.

Dizziness slammed over her. The floor tilted and she gasped with nausea and total wonder.

“Stop spinning,” she ordered sharply.

The room went still, utterly still. Command—and result.

“Okay, this is spiking crazy high on my weirdness meter, Toto. I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Maddie stared around her, searching for answers. And then she gave a cocky grin. “I need my phone,” she said very clearly.

Nothing happened.

She ran a hand through her hair and thought about what she had said. And what she had not said.

She thought next about what Lyon had explained to her earlier. Something about her … powers?

She tried again. “Make my phone ring.”

Brrring. The sound cut through the air to her left, low vibrations that came from inside a beautiful cherry bureau. Maddie followed the vibration. When she opened the drawer she found the sleek unit Izzy had given her at the museum moving in tight little circles right next to her backpack.

Total weirdness.

But it still could be a coincidence. Maddie watched the marks shift over her hands and tried to believe that all of it was a coincidence. She threw all her wanting into that thought, desperate to be normal again, playing music in her grimy little studio apartment and reading a computer manual while she gulped down her usual ulcerously strong espresso brew.

She didn’t want this, whatever it was, and she didn’t want to change and she didn’t want to make choices and she definitely didn’t want to think about Lyon’s callused hands when they had kept her from stumbling on the ridge, and how he had touched her hair and then slid his jacket around her shoulders when she had shivered and then thrown up. Those things made her body tighten and feel oddly restless.

Okay face the truth, she thought.

The man is smoking hot. How can you not think about him? And he’s somewhere thinking about you too, because you saw the way he looked, dangerous and hard, his jaw set in a tense line when you reached up to grab his shoulder.

Something was going on here.

Maddie closed her eyes, remembering how her breasts had pressed against his hand and how she had wanted to kiss him hard. No, she hadn’t imagined his dark look or the wave of hunger that had filled his eyes while neither of them had breathed for what felt like a few centuries. If she hadn’t gotten sick to her stomach, there was no telling what might have happened next …

So let’s forget this rubbish about you two not being hot for each other. When you’re in the same room the air pretty much goes radioactive.

No point in denying it.

Maddie gripped her phone, fighting those hot memories. She had to call Izzy ASAP before she became a face on police posters on at least two continents. Then she would get back to work on the question of what he had been doing at the museum in London. At least that would be easier than trying to untangle the rest of her chaotic and dysfunctional life.

When Maddie turned on the phone, she saw fifteen missed calls. Frowning, she hit redial, turning to watch dawn touch the eastern sky.

Izzy answered on the first ring. “Acme Repair Shop.”

Maddie shook her head. “Very funny, Teague. And before you start yelling, none of this was my fault. I got—sick and then they took me here.”

“Maddie, where are you! Damn, I’ve been calling you for three hours. Why didn’t you answer the phone? And what do you mean by sick?”

“It’s all been very…confusing. Then I lost the phone. But I found it. That’s why I’m calling.”

“First, are you okay? Really okay?”

“I’m fine. Sort of.” She wasn’t of course, but Maddie didn’t know where to start and besides there was no possible way that Izzy would believe any of what happened. So she would hold off on the details until she could explain to him face-to-face. Having Aeryx nearby would be a big help.

“So you’re not sick right now?”

“No. I’m not.” Assuming that you didn’t count the marks of light that wouldn’t stop moving around her, the sudden waves of nausea and things that did what she commanded them to do. How was she going to explain all that? “Did you get what you needed at the museum?”

“I’ll fill you in when I see you. We’re on our way. Are you near the hotel?”

Maddie wasn’t sure where she was, but she knew the name of this place. “No. I—we went farther than I realized last night. There were a lot of police near the hotel after a fire across the street. But this place is safe. It’s in the middle of some kind of big estate.”

“How did you end up at a private home? No, forget it. Just give me the location. We’ll pick you on the way to the abbey.”

“What abbey?”

“Draycott Abbey. We can work there. A friend of mine owns it.”

Maddie walked to the balcony and stared outside. “Is it a looming gray building with towers and carvings and those weird old glass windows made up of little pieces?”

“Mullions. That’s what they’re called. And yes, it is.”

“Does it have a moat with four swans?”

“I guess that sounds about right. But how—”

“Because I’m there right now, Izzy.” Maddie turned away as the door opened. Lyon’s face appeared, etched with exhaustion. His eyes were unreadable. “That’s the place where they took me after I got sick,” she continued.

“Who took you? Did they force you to go? Maddie, I need answers.”

Lyon walked across the room, listening to every word she said, and the force of his concentration was almost like a physical touch.

“Force me? Well, it wasn’t my choice to come here. So you could say I was forced. I got sick – then everything happened too fast.”

“Who took you there, Maddie? Damn it, make some sense. Are you safe?”

“No, I’m not safe,” she said slowly. “I don’t think I’ll ever be safe again. I have these …marks, and they keep changing.”

“Marks? Sorry, Maddie, but none of this makes sense.”

Lyon made a rough sound and pulled the cell phone from her hand. Frowning, he turned it off and tossed it back into the drawer. “You were not forced. Be very clear about that. I did only what was necessary to guard your life.”

Maddie glared back at him. “But I can’t go back. And that means I’m bound. It wasn’t my choice, none of it.”

“We are both bound. But despite that, our right of choice remains. Mark what I say.” Anger darkened his eyes. “And you will not speak of this to anyone. It is not safe.”

Maddie blew out an angry breath. “He’s my boss—sort of. I have to explain to him where I am. And since you brought it up, let me remind you that I didn’t ask you to save me and I didn’t ask you to bring me here. I take care of myself. I always have and that’s never going to change.”

“So now you throw this back in my face? That is your fear talking.”

“And what exactly am I supposed to be afraid of?”

“This,” Lyon whispered, pinning her to the cold glass doors of the balcony. His hands curved over her shoulders and tightened. “This,” he repeated with his lips against hers. “My body—how you feel now. How it makes you feel when our skin burns together,” he said harshly. “The way you affect me, with just a look. Even without your marks, the pull between us was strong. Now it is almost too great to control.”

“Speak for yourself,” Maddie muttered, even though every one of his words had been true. Her marks were rising now, spinning around his hands, bright and eager as they came to rest on his face. Maddie frowned as she saw his muscles tighten below the sleeves of his black turtleneck. “Wait.” She caught his arm when he would have pulled away.

A jagged line snaked along the inside of his arm. It looked freshly made. “Did that happen when you brought me here?” Her throat felt raw. “Did…I do that with my nails?”

“No, you did not.” Lyon caught back an oath as her fingers traced the wound gently.

Maddie hated the thought that she had caused him pain, possibly while she had struggled. She leaned closer and brushed the red line with her mouth, shocked at the wave of tenderness that engulfed her. “You need to be careful.”

Lyon didn’t answer, motionless and silent Maddie. She rose slowly, drawn by emotions she could not name, sliding her arms around his neck to draw him closer. Her marks flared out, spiraling slowly around their bodies as her mouth settled on his and her senses burst to life, restless and eager.

The kiss pulled her out of her normal world, out of her normal body. The light at her hands glowed right through skin and bone. And though it made absolutely no sense, touching Lyon made her feel safe, beautiful. Loved for the first time in her life.

The old Maddie, the cynical and arrogant girl who had grown up too fast and seen betrayal too often, seemed to slide away like a shed skin. A new Maddie looked at the man who held her so gently. The man to whom she owed her life.

“You wanted the truth? Fine. Here it is. I don’t understand any of this. All I know right now is that when you touch me, I feel like I’m breathing for the very first time. My body feels alive and everything around me looks different. Somehow you’ve made me different.”

Maddie saw him flinch as silver spirals left long trails along his arms. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

Lyon took a slow, rough breath. “I…feel your marks, Maddie. They are not comfortable. But they are not meant to comfort, of course.”

“What are they meant to do?” She forced out the question, almost afraid to hear his answer. “Tell me the truth.”

“You did not want the truth before.”

“Now I do.”

“Very well. Your marks serve you and they serve your will.”

But that was only part of the truth, Maddie sensed. She tried to think, but the awareness of Lyon’s muscled body left her mouth dry and her blood pounding. “What else?”

“They are searching for a place to rest. A place where they can stay to grow stronger.”

Maddie tilted her head up, studying his face. “And that involves you.” She read the confirmation in his eyes. “Somehow that wound on your arm is connected too?”

Lyon nodded slowly.

“Tell me the rest,” Maddie ordered. “I need to understand this.”

Heat filled Lyon’s eyes. “Be very, very sure of what you ask.”

Maddie didn’t flinch. “I am sure. Now tell me all of it.”

“Very well. Wherever you touch me, your power binds me. And that physical binding burns.”

Maddie lifted his arm gently and studied the wound. “So my—-marks did this?” She felt a little sick at the thought that she could harm him without knowing it.

“No,” Lyon said sharply.

“Then what?”

His fingers locked on her hair for a moment. Then he pushed away, striding through the silver light of dawn and opening the door to the balcony.

Maddie’s marks followed him. They flared out in circles around him, restless and bright.

“Why do they follow you?”

“It is too soon.” Lyon’s voice was harsh with need and yet Maddie heard its tenderness. He moved outside and gripped the metal rail of the ornate balcony, staring east where dawn burned against the horizon.

Maddie moved beside him and rested her hand on the angry line of his shoulder. “Explain the rest. Please, Lyon.”

His eyes locked on the distant ridge. “You cannot understand.”

Over their heads dark wings arrowed through the air, and then plummeted toward the moat’s edge. Aeryx settled on a rock, his eyes like flame against the last gray remnant of night. “I will explain. You are his to bind, but he will not. And every second you are near, the Guardian burns with greatest pain, needing your touch and full joining. Because you are his home. That is by both Law and prophecy.”

Maddie had a sharp image of Lyon’s body, strong and muscled, driving deep against hers in desire. Was that what Aeryx meant?

“So…what you’re saying is these marks—this bond between us—it’s just about sex?” The words felt awkward.

Lyon glared at the dark figure settled on the rock below them. “No. The bond is far more than that. Once chosen, there are dangers. Added to that, the bond cannot be revoked.”

“Not good for divorce lawyers, I guess.” But Maddie found herself wondering what it would be like to have Lyon beside her every night, their bodies hot and intimate, their lives entwined. On some deep level she already knew that she could trust him. His actions had proved that to her more than once. And yet…it was so hard for her to trust. Everyone in her life had lied or left or betrayed her.

“I still don’t understand what happened to your arm.”

“You give him power with the touch of your marks.” Once again it was Aeryx who spoke. “And yet that same power will overwhelm him if it is not tempered. So he draws the power away. Pain is how he keeps himself sane.”

“Aeryx, no,” Lyon said harshly.

“I must, Guardian of Acre and the Lands of the North. She must understand the power of her marks and her body. He burns because of you, Rose. His pain and only that will balance his need, which is enflamed by your bright energy. But your transformation has been speeded up, just as time itself has been speeded up. Soon…you will have to chose.”

“Chose what?” Maddie felt sick at the thought that Lyon must feel such pain. How much more had he hidden from her?

Aeryx’s amber eyes locked on her face. “They will come for you and the Guardian. It is a mere question of time. They must sense your awakening and it will stir their darkest hungers. It would be safest if you and the Guardian are blood-bound before that happens. But as he told you, this bond cannot be changed or revoked. It is forever.”

Lyon growled at Aeryx in a language Maddie did not understand, and the great figure blew out in a sound of anger.

“And if I…chose not to do this?” Maddie asked softly.

“Then he will gain power from you again and again until it overcomes his control, his honor and finally his sanity. A Guardian searches the centuries for his Rose. Once he finds her, he must bond. This is for your need as much as his.”

Maddie’s hands felt damp. “Go on.”

“As your energies grow, you too will lose your balance. Those energies will push you to madness just as they do your Guardian.”

Madness. Okay, that was definitely bad.

“And…I take it we’re not talking about holding hands or saying a few quick wedding vows? Because I can do that.”

“It will take far more than words.” Lyon turned stiffly and Maddie felt the force of his angry gaze. “You face danger and madness—perhaps even death. And now you make a joke of it. But understand this. I have searched for you and it was my life’s duty and honor over the centuries. Now that you are here, you can no longer be a child. It is time for you to grow up, Maddie. You have to choose who you are and who you can become, and you must do all of this now, before the Walkers find you.”

She swallowed uneasily at his words. “You mean those…people back in London?”

Lyon nodded. “Except they are no longer people. Their souls are long gone, consumed to ash and angry dreams. Their bodies are all that remain. They would do the same to you,” he said grimly.

“Why? Who are they?”

“Their battle is as long as time. They hate all life. Where they come from we do not know. They came on air and thought and dark wings and their only joy is to consume and destroy whatever lives. Their hunger is infinite.” A muscle tightened at Lyon’s jaw. “Because of the light you carry, you are a rare prize and they will track you without end. If you are not afraid of that, then you should be.”

“I’m getting afraid really fast,” Maddie whispered, glad to feel his strong arm, glad for the warmth of his body near hers.

“Do not mock or underestimate them. But do not underestimate yourself either.” His eyes filled with longing. “You are still too young, though I have waited and wanted you for the ages.” His hands moved gently over her hair. “You have been betrayed. You have lost your dreams so young. But I promise you this. We will make new dreams—if you can trust me.” His thumb traced the curve of her cheek.

Maddie swallowed hard.

She had never trusted anyone—not since she was fourteen. She wasn’t sure how to start. But she couldn’t look away from this man’s honesty and when he held out his hand, she took it without hesitation. In the link of their fingers she felt safe. Maddie did not understand why or how, but this truth she knew.

Somehow they were already connected.

And in the deep awareness between them, she felt the moment his attention turned and he looked out across the abbey grounds.

“Lyon, what is it?”

With their fingers still linked, he pulled her back inside. He opened the dresser drawer and held out her phone. “Call your friend. You have a duty to discharge, and I will not stand in your way.” His eyes were grave. “But while you wait for him, we must work. There is much to teach you and very little time. We will talk about…the rest of what Aeryx said after that.”

“You promise that?”

Lyon looked down at their linked hands, watching Maddie’s silver circles restlessly. “I do. But see how your marks grow more powerful already. We must not delay. We will start upstairs in the Long Gallery. There is a painting you must see.”

“Art? What’s important about a few blobs of ink on a canvas?”

Lyon smiled faintly. “I am desolated to contradict you, but this painting is one that you will find most interesting.”

“Not likely.” Maddie frowned, still wondering about these things she had to learn from him. “Want to make a small wager?”

Lyon’s eyebrow rose. “Intriguing. What is it that you will give me when I win?”

“If you win.” Maddie tilted her head, studying him intently. “Let’s make it something easy. If I win, you explain everything about those marks on your arms. And if you win—though that’s not going to happen—I promise to pay attention and learn whatever you need to teach me. No complaining. But remember—I have to finish my work for Izzy. I made a promise.”

Lyon nodded. “I would expect nothing less. And I may occasionally provide you a little help in that area. I have resources that you do not.”

Maddie had no doubt about that.

“Deal.” She nodded and held out her hand. “But I still don’t have a clue how I’m going to explain you or Aeryx or any of this to Izzy Teague.”

On her way out, Maddie grabbed her cell phone and returned a call to Izzy, who was worried and also angry. When Maddie assured him that she was safe, he seemed to back off a little and assured her he would be at the abbey in about an hour.

“What is this mission that you have been given?” Lyon studied her curiously. “It seems important, yet you give me no details.”

“Because I have no details.” Maddie studied the beautiful winding staircase lined with paintings that even her untrained eye could tell were priceless. She had seen pictures of private houses like this one. They had dazzled her like a guilty pleasure. But Maddie had never expected to set foot inside one herself, so she was soaking up the experience.

“What have you been told? This man called Teague must have given you some details.”

“They were looking for something at the British Museum. You know that much because you were there. I noticed they were in the early British Galleries. At least that’s where their tracking devices went. But I don’t know what they were searching for or whether they found it. We’ll have to wait until Izzy gets here.”

“So this man Izzy—he arrested you?”

Maddie nodded slowly. She wasn’t proud of that part of her past, but she wouldn’t lie about it either. “I was fourteen. I got in with a weird group. Two of them were older and happened to be hackers.”

Lyon frowned at her. “I do not know this word.”

“People who break into secure computer systems. We weren’t doing it for money. We simply wanted to see if we could. Lame, I know.”

“Ah.” Lyon nodded slowly. “You were young and reckless. Lame, as you call it?”

Maddie shrugged.

“Two of the others knew what they were doing. They’d done that kind of thing before, I found out later. They were getting paid too. But bad luck for me. My computer was the first one that triggered an alarm during the hacking. Izzy Teague tracked it and they fingered me for the ringleader. One of the others was the son of a local politician. Another came from a wealthy family.” Maddie shrugged. “That’s life.”

“It was gravely unfair,” Lyon said harshly. “And you had no one to speak on your behalf?”

Maddie looked away. She thought about the mother who was usually lost in a drug-induced fog and the father who had bailed on his family when Maddie was just ten. “Nope. No one to put in a good word. I went to jail, juvenile facility, for nine months. I guess it could have been worse, since we happened to break into the secure Pentagon data system in Virginia.” She didn’t smile the way she once would have done. She had no sense of glory or pride about what they had done. Too many people had been hurt that day—herself included. “Izzy was the one who caught me. Turns out he had been watching my computer for six months. To be fair, I think he was shocked when he found out I was only fourteen.”

“You did this thing—this hacking thing—when you were fourteen? You broke into highly protected government equipment when you were so young?” Lyon looked at Maddie in disbelief. “Where did you get the skill—and equipment? I believed that you were without money for things like that.

“I was. But I’m a fast learner. And my friends—the people who I thought were my friends—had all the computers and equipment they needed. When they gave me some books to study, I caught on fast.” Maddie ran a hand through her hair. “I wish I hadn’t, frankly. Because it was all a rush. I was good at something and for the first time in my life I had friends—or so I thought. Then I was caught. And there was no one to be there for me. The wheels were in motion. I was taken into custody. After that…it only got worse.”

“I would like to hear the rest. I would like to understand all of your life, Maddie.”

She hadn’t spoken of those years to anyone. There wasn’t anyone to help her, so why bother? But now, as she looked into Lyon’s calm eyes, she blurted out the shock, the guilt, the painful transition to incarceration and a total break with any kind of a normal life. Distrust and betrayal had become her whole life after that, along with humiliation and intimidation.

Lyon’s eyes were chips of darkness, yet he listened with the same silent, keen focus that he did everything. When she was done, he didn’t speak. But his hands were locked in tight fists. “You will not suffer so again. I swear this to you. Your life may not be an easy one, but this kind of captivity and humiliation will not be part of your new life,” he said grimly.

His promise made Maddie feel better, though it shouldn’t have. After all, this new world she had fallen into held every sign of being worse than her old world. At least she had understood the rules back in DC on that grimy street she called home. But now…

Soulless creatures from the past. Madness. Death.

She looked down at her hands, with their restless silver light. What about these? What about the legacy that came with them? How was she going to figure everything out before those…creatures showed up on their doorstep.

No point in worrying about it now. You’ll go crazy if you do.

When they reached the top of the stairs. Lyon led her down a long corridor to the back of the house. He studied the wall and then pressed a small button. The room was swept into shimmering light from fixtures scattered over the beautifully painted ceiling.

Wealth could buy you this kind of beauty, Maddie thought. Wealth added to great taste, she corrected herself. She had seen paintings like this in magazines and on her visits to the Smithsonian. But nothing came close to how it felt right now, standing in this room with its living, breathing history. Maddie instantly knew that the figures in the paintings were ancestors of the current owner. She wondered if the man who had argued with Lyon had a portrait here. Something told her that he did—that he would be the most proud and arrogant of all the lot.

She glanced around slowly, taking in the beautiful paintings and the weight of the cold eyes that looked back from the walls. “What is it I’m supposed to see? Nice jewelry? A lot of very rich aristos and women with seriously weird hairdos?”

Lyon cleared his throat and Maddie was pretty sure he was hiding a laugh. “Look closer. Open your eyes and really see, Maddie. It is time you took control of your life. No longer will others take that choice away from you.”

So there was something important here to see. Maddie looked down the row of elegant paintings, studying each one in turn, trying to figure out what Lyon was trying to teach her. She always hated school, because her teachers were jerks and the other students were bullies.

Maddie frowned and ran a hand through the chaos of her hair, fighting irritation. But the truth was, if she’d had a hunk of a teacher like Lyon, she might have paid a lot more attention in European history classes. And if that teacher had had Lyon’s calm eyes and rugged body—

Well, morality laws might have been broken. If she had her way at least.

The simple truth was, Lyon made a great teacher. He didn’t push, he didn’t argue, he didn’t raise his voice. All he did was wait and let you come to the conclusions you needed to find. There hadn’t been anyone else like that in Maddie’s life.

She looked around her, wanting to succeed, because Lyon had asked it of her.

“How do I start? I mean, I don’t know anything about art. I’m not so great with English history either.”

“Open your eyes. And then open more than your eyes,” Lyon said quietly. “Let this room speak to you and listen to all that it says. Listen to your heart and feel these walls. Don’t just see them.”

Now this was weird talk, even for a man most people would consider a serious psycho. But because it was Lyon and because everything else he’d said had turned out to be true, Maddie did as he advised. She took a deep breath then let it out slowly, opening her eyes and then her mind to the room, letting the beautiful images play through her mind. She studied the colors, let the beauty of the bright silks and painted lace drift through her unconscious mind as she tilted her head back. As she began to relax, she stopped seeing any particular painting and began to see the overall room.

There was a pattern in the colors. One end was all pink and red. The middle of the room was greens. The pieces near the door seemed to be mostly blue. Was that important?

But Maddie didn’t ask for help. She was an expert in reading patterns, after all. Code work and computer hacking were largely about seeing patterns that other people didn’t understand. It was just a gift she had.

Maddie turned, looking from painting to painting, watching the blues merge into the greens and then finally to the shades of red at the far end of the room.

Was it something about the numbers? There were seven pink paintings. Three greens. Nine blues. Nineteen all together.

What else?

Maddie chewed on her nails. The room seemed to breathe in and then breathe out around her, almost alive. As if waiting for her to say something.

For her to understand its secrets.

She forced herself to relax, opening even more to the sense of the room itself, not to the paintings, but the feelings that room gave to her.

There was something off. She focused harder. One of the paintings near the center, the first of the pink paintings. Although very small, it carried the weight of a much bigger painting and seemed to pull at her.

Maddie walked toward it slowly.

It felt…heavy. Dense.

A woman smiled down at a child. Both were dressed in exquisite silk with lace at cuffs and collar. In the far distance Maddie saw the towers of a castle, and she thought Draycott Abbey must have looked like that centuries before.

The woman’s face was kind, she thought. The child radiated joy, lifting arms to his mother.

The beauty of the place was suddenly so dense, so physical, that Maddie could almost touch the warm silence of the summer afternoon and feel the sun against her shoulders.

So why was she frozen, rooted to the floor? What was it about this one piece of art that broke the pattern of the room, since none of the other paintings were having the slightest effect on Maddie?

“This one,” she said softly. She couldn’t take her eyes from the image. “This one feels more important than the rest. Heavier. And in some crazy way it’s familiar.” Maddie cleared her throat. “Or something.”

Lyon moved closer. “Familiar in what way, Maddie?”

“I don’t have a clue, damn it. Why do you keep asking me these things? I’m just—just telling you the crazy thoughts in my head. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

She shoved her hands in her pockets feeling angry and confused, suddenly overwhelmed by the beautiful house with all its priceless art and exquisite taste. Maddie knew then that she didn’t belong here. Probably she would never belong anywhere.

She tried to turn. She wanted to get away—but Lyon caught her hand and gripped it hard.

“Don’t run, Maddie. Whatever is stirring to life inside you—it must be important.” He tilted his head until his lips brushed her hair. “Tell me what you saw. What is it about this painting?”

Maddie stood stiff, beneath his gentle touch. “I felt something. This one is different. It feels wrong. That’s the only way I can describe it, okay? It breaks the pattern.”

“You see a pattern in the room?” She heard the slow release of his breath. “You feel that? You are very good, Maddie.”

She didn’t ask him to explain. She didn’t ask him to reveal more. This was her lesson and her test, and she was determined to get it right. “I can feel something. This one is small, but it seems bigger than the others. More powerful. Dense.”

She looked at Lyon, but he betrayed nothing. A very good teacher, she thought. Irritating, but effective.

“If it was a question of them being fakes, I would say the others were fake and this one was real. But in a house like this, every painting would be real. So it’s something else…”

Maddie moved closer. The exquisite scene perfectly captured the pink-gold light of a late summer afternoon. It wasn’t just about the artist’s skill. There was plenty of that, but every painting in the room showed a master’s hand. Maddie decided it had to do with feeling.

The feeling in this painting was so strong that she could almost reach out and touch it.

Unconsciously, she lifted her hand.

She had no idea what she planned to do next, but something about the painting or its energy pushed her away, almost as if it had a force and will of its own.

“I don’t understand. I keep trying to figure it out, but I can’t.”

“For once, Maddie, do not think. The world is yours to control. But before you can control the outside, you must control yourself. That means using all of your mind, not just the small part that analyzes through addition, subtraction and comparison. You have to feel the world before you can control it.” Lyon’s eyes darkened. He knelt before her. “I want to show you something.”

Maddie caught a little breath as his hands gripped her leg and tugged her boot free. His strong fingers curved over the sole of her foot and then pulled off her sock. She felt a little hot wave of desire as his fingers curved over the sensitive sole of her foot and then along her calf.

“You have to stop thinking. Feel instead. Feel how your foot meets this wooden floor. These planks are at least five hundred years old. They came from an estate to the north, where they were hand carved and hand polished. There is a message in this wood and in the labor of these skillful people who made this floor. But you can’t think it or analyze it. You have to use your senses to understand it.”

Maddie took a deep breath. This was getting seriously strange. But he had been right in so many other things…

“So what do I do next?”

“Take off your other shoe for start.” Lyon tugged off her other boot, dispensed with her sock and massaged her insole before setting that foot on the cool wooden floor. “Close your eyes—and feel the veins of the wood. Feel the age of the trees that they came from. Feel the tired, strong hands that polished this floor. Feel it all. Force yourself deep until you can see every vein and burr.”

Maddie bit her lip and did as he ordered. As she drove her attention down, where the skin of her toes pressed against the cool floor, she had a flash of workmen with old wooden saws and string, marking the floor. She could hear the sounds of their tools ringing out.

“So you have seen it. Now make that image part of you. Hold it close. You can only control that which is part of you.”

Maddie didn’t move. Around her the house seemed to creak slightly and she had the sudden sense that it was listening. Waiting.

A dust mote danced through a bar of sunlight to her right. At the far end of the Long Gallery, the curtains seemed to flare out, though Maddie felt no breeze.

She looked down. The gleaming circles had closed tightly around her wrists, like braided silver coils that moved with sinuous energy.

The house seemed to be waiting for a response. Her own marks seemed to be waiting right along with everything else.

But waiting for what? There was still so much that she didn’t understand. Yet for Lyon’s sake, she had to get this right.

She tilted her head, letting the images unfold through her mind like a movie in grainy film. She saw the slow change of the sunlight coming through brand new windows, touching walls that had been freshly painted.

As the weight of that image from the past grew stronger, she felt her body relax, drawn into that world so deeply that her legs slumped. She would have fallen if she hadn’t braced a hand on Lyon’s back. Her fingers opened, sliding through his dark hair. And desire struck her again.

Lyon flinched. She felt his muscles lock as if he had read her thoughts.

When Maddie would have pulled away, he caught her hand and held it against his shoulder.

“That’s a start. Even more than a start. Now try the painting. Let its colors race through your blood. See what it has to tell you, Maddie.”

She raised her head and let the pink-gold sky of the painting wash over her, with the warmth of the summer sun and the love of a mother’s glance. Emotion swept over her in sudden waves. And then Maddie’s throat seemed to tighten.

Lyon stood silently behind her as if he was aware of the storm of her feelings.

“I can’t feel it. That kind of peace and love—it’s only in paintings. I’ve never had it, and my friends have never had it. Maybe there are some families that are good together. But even for them—it doesn’t last. Adults pretend that if you’re good everything can be nice and safe and happy. But it’s just a big con. People change. People lie. People leave.” She stared angrily at the exquisite piece of art while emotions broke over her, torn out of some deep forgotten memory. “This just makes you wish for things you can never have. “

She turned around with a little broken sound, and she felt Lyon’s arms slide around her. Gently he pulled her against his chest.

“Tell me the rest of it. Tell me how this painting touches you, Maddie.”

“It makes me feel angry. It makes me feel—” Her voice caught. “Betrayed. I never had that belonging, and I never will. I wanted it. I still want it, even now, after all these years.” She closed her eyes fighting against the old surging hurt and betrayal, thinking about all the things she would never have. How had Lyon guessed?

And was it remotely possible that somehow this beautiful, ancient house had sensed the forgotten pain of her past as well?

Maddie straightened her shoulders. “You wanted me to get upset and feel all these things, didn’t you? You wanted me to remember—even if it hurt.”

“To hurt you was never part of my plan. But the human soul yearns for light. Dark memories can only be buried at great cost and energy. We all have nightmares, Maddie. The only way to lay them to rest is to stop trying to bury them. You have come a long way toward that.”

“What do I do now?” She looked up and swallowed hard. “Tell me, Lyon. I want to be done with this past. It hurts me too much.”

“That is for you to decide. I can watch. I can help you. But you must choose.”

Maddie took a deep breath and forced her eyes back to the wall, back to the pink and golden light and the scene of ineffable love between a mother and child, all the while feeling hollow inside. Who had ever cared about her that way?

“I don’t want to be angry for the rest of my life, Lyon. It’s just…easier to be angry. Hope is what hurts because hope always gets betrayed.”

Maddie’s hands curled to fists. The empty, helpless feeling had returned. It whispered that she would never be free of her past, that it wasn’t something you rolled up and dropped outside with the garbage.

The loss and emptiness would always be part of her. Nothing could change that.

“What I ask from you is not forgetting but remembering, Maddie. Do this for me—and for the person you can become.”

Maddie caught a jerky breath. “There’s something else, something I don’t want to face.”

Her thin shoulders tightened. “I’ve always wondered if it wasn’t my fault somehow. Maybe I needed to be punished, and that’s why I lost everything good in my life.” And in the dark nights, when she was most alone and frightened, Maddie wondered if she hadn’t wanted to punish herself.

Lyon’s fingers opened under her chin and he raised her face up to his. “Do you really believe that, my heart?”

She forced herself to meet the honesty in his gaze, hotly aware of the endearment he had just used. How could she possibly focus when he said something like that? And how could she not want him to say it again?

Slowly the anger and despair drained out of her. “I don’t think everything that happened was my fault. Some was bad luck. I did do something colossally stupid—and I got caught. As far as my mother—her biggest mistake was in having me. She never should have gotten pregnant. I think… that’s why the painting bothers me.”

Maddie had never known what a family was or belonging meant. But now she opened her mind to the possibility of that uncomplicated joy and the sweetness of a summer afternoon when you were loved and safe and your world was complete.

She closed her eyes. She understood the painting now.

“Very good,” Lyon said. “You learn well. Perhaps too well.”

Maddie felt his shoulder muscles lock when her fingers opened on his back. She had never felt more intimate with another person.

Desire burned between them, but neither moved. Their thoughts reached out twining and binding together just as Maddie’s marks moved in restless circles.

Heat spiraled up through her body and she felt an exquisite rush of desire. She didn’t have very much physical experience with men, but she knew that when Lyon touched her, the experience would turn her inside out. He would be bound by honor and expect the same of her. He would give more than he took. There would be no room for lies or holding back between them. Could she accept that?

The silver marks drifted along his chest. Maddie saw a muscle tighten at his jaw as they skimmed lower.

Restless and hungry, just as Maddie had begun to feel.

Because the marks were her. And she needed to understand all the rest. Why was she here? What was she supposed to do with her life?

The silver rings flared up on her wrists and danced through the air. When they touched the canvas, the baby’s eyes seemed to glow the woman’s gown seemed to shimmer and the painting almost seemed alive. It called to her…

It wanted an answer.

Maddie took a deep breath, reached out, and moved her hand toward the priceless layer of pigment. And though it made no sense, her trembling fingers moved deeper—right into the canvas.

The painted surface seemed to shift. It drew away from her skin and parted like a whisper of cool silk.

Maddie stared at her fingers, unable to believe what she was seeing. Her hands seemed blurred and her fingers seemed to belong to a stranger.

She was pretty sure they didn’t teach this in any of her physics books.

“Do you want to help me here with some explanations? Because this is seriously starting to scare me, Lyon.”

Lyon put his hand on her shoulder. At his touch, Maddie felt grounded and balanced, not spinning off into a thousand directions. It was strange how he could do that. With one look, one word or one simple touch he put her world to rights. That probably meant something. Actually, it probably meant a whole lot. But Maddie couldn’t risk thinking about that too closely.

She took a slow breath, seeing the dim outline of her fingers behind the painting. “Lyon, this—is scary. I can’t be doing this.”

“Most certainly it is impossible for other people. For you—anything is possible. This is only the start.”

The force of what he was saying made Maddie tremble. There were some major laws being broken here, basic laws of matter and energy and protons. Even though her world was a wreck, it was the world Maddie knew. There had to be rules—if everything was broken, where did it leave her?

Her hands trembled, veiled inside the picture.

“Lyon—I’m afraid.”

She felt his arm slide around her waist. “Be calm.” And then his breath caught. He muttered something under his breath.

“What’s wrong?”

“A car. From the sound, I would say it is moving very fast. Since no one is expected and the viscount is gone, it can be only two things. One is the man you called on the phone. Izzy Teague. The other…” Lyon’s eyes narrowed. Maddie tried hard to focus, but the painting kept drawing her in. Against her will, her hands slid deeper, up to her elbows. Where her skin plunged behind the canvas, her nerves felt cold. For a moment, just the space of a heartbeat, Maddie felt her fingers touch over something.

“Lyon, there’s something inside there.”

“You are certain?”

Maddie closed her eyes, nodding, reaching deeper, even though it left her disoriented, separate from all that she was, caught between two worlds that should never be crossed and connected.

“We do not have much time, Maddie. Feel it, tell me what is there.”

The cold was creeping up her arms. It was like her visions of fog—only far, far worse. This was not a simple vision, but a state of matter that was tearing at her very being. “It’s too different. I don’t have words for it, Lyon. It’s beyond—almost like it’s turned inside out.” She closed her eyes, struck by waves of fear.

In the distance a motor growled, moving fast up the gravel driveway.

“Maddie. They are very close. Come back. Pull your hands free.”

“I—I can’t. My marks—they belong inside the painting. That is the place they come from, Lyon. I can feel it now. And they want to go back. To be home. It’s like you said.” Her voice caught. “They won’t…come back.”

Lyon moved behind her. “You must fight this thing.”

“Fight it h-how?” Maddie was fighting with all of her will. But nothing was happening. Didn’t he see that?

And, her hands and arms were like ice. The place—or dimension—whatever you called it, was draining her energy. Something told Maddie that was a very, very bad thing.

But whenever she tried to pull free, the force of her movement seemed to reverse, drawing her in tighter.

Could that be the key?

Lyon moved behind her. Maddie felt his hands slide around her wrist. The strong line of his chest was a reassuring anchor, the one point of balance in the nightmare of the room. “How can I help?”

“Just—touch me. Because I’m going to try something. Nothing else seems to work. I’m stuck.”

“Do what you must.” His voice was hard.

Okay. Time to get weird.

Maddie took a deep breath, relaxing her shoulders and opening to the sensations in her hands and arms. She tried to pull backwards. Just as before, the motion seemed to kick her forward, in reverse.

So instead of pulling back, she leaned closer to the painting. She used the same amount of energy as before, except now she forced it in a shoving motion toward the canvas.

Nothing happened.

She forced down a wave of panic. Okay. So it wasn’t a simple reverse response. There was something else. Something she was missing.

You have to control yourself before you can control others.

Wasn’t that what Lyon had told her? Maddie didn’t feel in control of anything right now, but she forced herself to try. Instead of moving jerkily, she sent her focus down to the wooden floor, to the old beams that she had seen so deeply a few minutes before. She spread her toes and wriggled them, driving her skin against the cool wood, making deep contact.

Control.

Slowly she drew her focus upward, drawing power and balance from the floor, carrying that up through her body, all the time controlling her focus, grounding herself and balancing herself with every breath. A weight seemed to lift slowly from her shoulders as the energy rose. Something was definitely happening.

Down the hill Maddie heard the whine of a motor and the sound of tires crunching on gravel, but she refused to be distracted. Closing her eyes, she willed the power higher, through her knees, along her legs, up to her stomach. Her arms were almost frozen now, completely numb. She was pretty sure she didn’t have much time left.

Control.

She willed the balance of focus up to her neck. She held it, nurtured it, reveled in it. And when it was as deep and complete as Maddie could manage, she sent that controlled focus back down into her arms, watching in disbelief as a faint arc of silver light sparked across the sheer surface to the painting like a voltage arc from a battery.

Her hands slid backwards an inch.

Control.

She blew out a breath and focused again, drawing more power from the floor, up along her body to her shoulders, and then out along her arms.

Electric sparks hissed over the painting’s surface, and a dry, acrid smell of something burning filled the room.

Maddie really, really hoped that it wasn’t her skin.

She pulled her arms another inch free.

“That’s it, my heart. You’re doing it perfectly.”

Maddie felt the force of Lyon’s own focus, locked with hers. It helped, no mistake about it. But instinct told her not to rely on him or anything else.

This was her task, hers alone. She stared at the painting, letting her vision relax. She could see the outline of her hands now, ghostly and substantial. And yes, there was definitely a shadowed outline of something else inside the painting.

But she couldn’t take a chance on exploring further. The acrid smell was getting heavier.

She took a very slow breath and drew her focus into her hands, using the power and the balance from the floor—and finally taking more energy from Lyon’s hard body, locked against hers.

Her hands slipped free.

Maddie fell backward, into Lyon’s hard grip.

Shaking, she gasped his name, dizzy with relief. His hands locked on her waist and she heard him whisper rough words in a language she couldn’t understand, a language that sounded much older than Anglo-Saxon or Norman English. Then as her legs still trembled, Maddie tilted up her face and brought him down to meet her mouth, quick and hard and hungry, desperate to feel that they were both alive and the world still had order and rules and balance.

But there was no balance or order in the heat that slammed through her when Lyon’s tongue brushed hers and he whispered her name in harsh desire. There was no sanity when his hand opened, skimming lower, sliding under her shirt to find her breast.

She made a broken sound, pressing closer, needing more, wanting the mindless oblivion that Lyon would bring her.

Wanting to love and be loved. Every instinct told Maddie that this man would never fail her, would never betray her.

“Maddie, no. We should not.”

“Yes, we should. Touch me, Lyon. I never knew how it could feel. I’ve never wanted like this.”

She felt him shudder and remembered what Aeryx had told her. When Maddie looked down, her rosemarks twisted in a mad dance, shooting along her arms and then out to circle Lyon’s body.

They must be burning him. No matter how much she wanted their touch, Maddie could not bear to give him pain.

There was only one answer.

“Bind us, Lyon. I want you. I want to be linked with you.”

“No, Maddie.” His throat was raw, thick with his desire. “It can’t be reversed and you can’t go back.”

“I can’t go back anyway. My life will never be the way it was. And that’s probably a very good thing. I trust you, Lyon. Bind us. I heard what Aeryx said. I may not understand all of it, but I understand enough. You told me I have the right to choose, and I’m choosing now.”

Hunger filled his eyes. He cupped her breast and drew a harsh breath.

Maddie never knew what he would have said next, because an icy voice cut through the silence of the gallery.

“Let her go. Move away from her. Do it now.”

Maddie’s heart fell. She knew that voice. She knew its anger and harsh command.

Izzy Teague had arrived, and talk about a really lousy sense of timing. “Izzy, you don’t understand. He’s just—”

“Step away from her.” Maddie looked up. Izzy was holding a weapon of some kind leveled on Lyon’s chest.

And the cold, distant look in his eyes warned that he was just about to use it.

“Izzy, put that away.” Maddie moved protectively in front of Lyon, her heart pounding. “You’re being ridiculous. He’s a friend.”

“A friend? It didn’t look that way to me. It looked as if you two were arguing—and he was going to take something you didn’t want to give him.” Izzy’s eyes were very hard, very cold. “Would one of you mind telling me who he is?”

In a smooth movement Lyon moved around Maddie and slid his hand around her waist, steadying her. Reassuring her. “I am Lyon of Greyhaven. I am a friend to Maddie—and if she wills it, a friend to you. You have no need of firearms here, I assure you”

Izzy’s hard expression did not waver. “I’ll be the judge of whether I need firearms, pal. So where exactly did you meet Maddie, since she’s only been in London a matter of hours? Something tells me this story is going to be a show stopper.”

“She was accosted in the cemetery. I gave her shelter.”

Izzy’s head tilted as he considered this information. “Do you have some kind of ID? I plan to run a deep search on you, Mister Lyon.”

“Just Lyon. And I do have identification, but it is not on my person. Nor will I leave to find it while you are holding that weapon. Put it away.” Lyon’s voice had turned icy, just as distant and hard as Izzy’s.

“Like hell I will. Maddie, I meant what I said. Come over here next to me.”

“I didn’t trust him either. But…what he says is true. And he did save my life, Izzy. Several times in fact.”

“Come over here. Do it now.”

Maddie glared at him. Her anger grew when Lyon gently pushed her behind him and stood rigidly, hands at his sides as if ready to charge Izzy despite his loaded weapon.

She shook her head in disgust. “Would you two mind? I’m not big on testosterone moments.” Although, the truth was, Maddie had a secret, guilty tingle of pleasure at the thought of two tough, handsome men fighting over her to protect her.

When was the last time that had happened?

The far side of never.

But she continued to glare at the two of them. “I’ve got a serious headache and right now my hands feel like they’re melting. Both of you need to cool off. Now.”

Her words had not the slightest effect.

Lyon took a slow, measured step forward. Then another. Izzy’s eyes narrowed and the gun rose higher. If Maddie didn’t do something fast, someone was probably going to get shot.

“If you two idiots want to shoot each other and tear each other into pieces, be my guest. But I’m not hanging around. I’ve got better things to do with my time. I’m going to find myself a cup of tea. I assume there must be a kitchen somewhere downstairs.”

“Maddie, wait.” Izzy turned, scowling at her.

Lyon’s face was just as hard.

“My heart, we need to resolve this now.”

“My heart? Try that again. You said you two just met, Maddie. What’s going on here?” Izzy looked angry and baffled.

She shook her head, suddenly tired and with no tolerance for this macho display. The headache was getting worse. Her hands, numb before, had begun to tingle and burn as sensation returned. “Like I said, I’m leaving. Do whatever you want. I’ll be downstairs in the kitchen, assuming that I can find it. There’s a cup of Earl Grey somewhere calling my name.”

“Damn it, Maddie, you can’t—”

She shrugged and strode right past Izzy, giving a little wave. “Roll with it, Teague. Whenever you want to work, let me know. I seem to recall there’s a code you wanted me to break. That might be a more productive way to spend your time.”

She was very satisfied to hear nothing but stunned, angry silence as she stalked out of the room.

Lyon’s eyes snapped with anger. He crossed his arms, glaring at the man Maddie called her boss. “You are wrong. I am here to guard her, not hurt her.”

“Yeah, is that right? Well you’re going to have to prove it to me, pal.”

“If anyone failed in his duty, it was you. She is young and inexperienced, a stranger to this country. You should have protected her.”

Izzy’s eyes flashed with impatience—and more than a little guilt. “That’s between Maddie and me. I’m not about to explain my actions to you. Because this whole thing seems a little too convenient. One moment she’s wandering around in London and then you just happen to find her and rescue her? That’s crap.”

“But it is also true. I followed her to the museum where you were making your illegal entry. The police came and she might have been picked up if I had not gotten her away. I also saved her in the cemetery. By my reckoning, that makes twice that I have saved her life.” Lyon did not mention the other two times. Once when the Fallen ones had sensed her presence and again when Maddie had begun her Change, caught helpless, unable to breathe.

Izzy frowned and then slowly lowered the weapon. “I was wondering how she got away. We didn’t expect the police or that fire across the street. But I’m still going to need some papers and identification. Maddie is a valuable government asset.”

Lyon’s eyes hardened. “She is a most rare and wonderful spirit, not an asset,” he said coldly.

“Well.” Izzy gave him a new, assessing look. “Sounds like this just got personal between you two.”

“Oh, it has been personal for a very long while. Understand me—I would protect her with my life.”

Izzy considered this for a few moments and then blew out a frustrated breath. “There’s no need to worry. Maddie’s in my protection. I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

“I am glad that you have her interests at heart. But if you are truly fixed on protecting her, understand this. A much older danger waits out in the darkness. And it is not human.”

“Not human…” Izzy said slowly. “I’m afraid you lost me there.”

“I am not surprised. It is a difficult concept for many. But I think Maddie’s suggestion was best. We will discuss this over tea.” Lyon shot Izzy a hard glance. “And if you ever harm her or threaten her again, you will soon regret it. Mark my promise well.”

And for a second time Izzy was left staring in frustrated silence.

Lyon strode away after Maddie.

“I found the tea. I’m not sure I know how to use that old fashioned stove, but I think I managed to boil the water okay. I’m not much of a cook. Lyon, why don’t you find some cups? Any idea where there’s some food around here, Izzy?”

Lyon though she seemed calm, controlled, as if her anger had been put aside. And she seemed to enjoy ordering them around the kitchen.

“There’s a pantry over to the left.” Izzy pointed to a recess beyond a cabinet full of priceless glassware. “Usually the butler, Marston, handles that kind of thing, but he’s up north with Viscount Draycott and his family. I’ll have a look.”

“Something chocolate would be nice, too. Chocolate with a whole lot of calories and heavy cream. You British are big on heavy cream, aren’t you, Lyon? Just don’t slip in any of that nasty stuff.”

Lyon raised an eyebrow. “I do not understand you.”

“Oh yes you do. I’m talking about the kidneys. The brains. That stuff the Scots eat too, Haggis.” Maddie grimaced.

Lyon simply shrugged. “Food is food. In difficult times there may not be a great deal of choice. I think that people of this century do not understand how lucky they are.”

“Of this century?” Izzy turned slowly, studying Lyon with fresh suspicion. “You’re not trying to imply that—”

“Don’t get him started.” Maddie waved her hands. “Go find us some chocolate. We have work to do, remember?” She strode past the two men and attacked a drawer, searching for a teapot and tea bags.

There were no bags. Somehow she expected that. But she found a big box of loose tea that looked expensive.

“Let’s get to work, shall we?”

Izzy set a box of truffles on the table.

“First your pal Lyon here is going to explain what he meant about not human. After that, I want to know what he meant by not of this century.”

Maddie shook her head. “You’re not going to like it. You’re probably not going to understand it either. I know I didn’t.” She shot a glance at Lyon, whose face was expressionless. “You’d better tell him everything he needs to hear. At least, coming from you, he might believe it.” She cradled her cup of steaming tea and savored the rich, smoky smell. “After that, I’d really like to get to work.”

“That depends on your friend Lyon here—and how good his explanation is,” Izzy said grimly.

Maddie forced herself not to interrupt Lyon’s calm, methodical explanation. She wondered if Izzy was buying his story.

She really hoped so. If these creatures—or things—that Lyon mentioned came calling at Draycott Abbey, Maddie was going to need Izzy’s help. He would be a lot more effective if he believed the threat was real.

When Lyon finished, she rested her elbows on the table and studied the man who had arrested her five years before. “He’s telling the truth, Izzy. I don’t care if you believe it or not. There’s too much weird stuff going on for it to be a lie. And since we don’t have much time, let’s simply agree to disagree, shall we? I see you’ve got your laptop and briefcase in the corner and I hope that means you’ve got an update on my assignment. What happened at the museum?”

Izzy looked at Lyon, “This doesn’t leave the room, understood?”

Lyon nodded.

“Okay,” Izzy rubbed his neck.

We found what we went in for. I’m hoping you can help me understand what it means, Maddie.”

“So it’s some kind of artifact?”

“Not exactly.” Izzy hesitated, and then opened his briefcase, pulling out a heavy canvas bag, which he rested carefully on the table between Lyon and Maddie. “No discussion outside this room. Not now. Not ever,” he said roughly. He looked at Maddie, who nodded slowly. When he looked at Lyon, his eyes held a glint of challenge.

But Lyon simply nodded.

“Here it is. Tell me what you make of it. If there’s a pattern or a message in it, I sure as heck don’t see it.”

Maddie’s breath caught as he opened the brown canvas sack and pulled out a circle that burned and shone in the kitchen light. It appeared to be finely hammered gold worked in thin concentric lines. But it was too clean, too pristine, for an artifact, Maddie thought. “It’s a replica, I take it? Not the original.”

Izzy nodded, his mouth hard. “The original is far too precious for me to get transport clearance from the museum.”

There was something else he wasn’t telling her, Maddie sensed. She leaned down, running her finger carefully along the surface of the metal replica. “I’m assuming you don’t want an archeological or historical assessment here. I couldn’t do either one. There’s a message or information you want me to find, is that it?”

Izzy nodded, but said nothing.

Maddie took a better look at the fine circles, assessing the rows and the numbers and the spacing of the designs. She let the designs flow through her consciousness and waited for a pattern to emerge.

It was the way she always worked. It didn’t matter if she was working with computer code or a mathematical formula or any other kind of data.

She saw patterns in things, patterns that other people did not. It was just a gift she had, something in the way her brain had been wired. The real work came later, when she had to figure out what the pattern was supposed to mean.

The way Maddie had had to figure out what the paintings meant up in the Long Gallery.

There was something going on with this piece all right. The circles were all slightly off, not perfectly symmetrical. Since the design was so carefully crafted, Maddie didn’t think that asymmetry was a mistake.

She pushed out her chair and stood up, walking slowly around the table, studying the exquisite golden replica from every angle. She didn’t bother to ask Izzy questions about date or location or method of manufacture. All that was irrelevant. All that was what people thought it should mean.

Maddie dealt with the raw fact of what it did mean.

“What does it—”

Lyon made a low warning sound and cut off Izzy’s question. He probably could feel Maddie’s force of concentration. They were definitely linked somehow. Even the slightest emotion would race between them instantly, Maddie realized.

She kept walking around the table slowly.

And then she saw it.

Right there.

Right in the center.

Or where the center should have been but wasn’t.

“What’s that symbol?” Maddie looked at Izzy. “The one that looks like two small X’s on top of each other.”

“It’s an Anglo-Saxon sign. These are called runes.” Izzy started to say more, but Maddie held up a hand and shook her head. She didn’t want details. She needed to work cold and observe the data objectively.

That symbol—or rune—appeared in six spots on the artifact. They were equally arranged around the piece, but off center.

She was betting there was a meaning in that placement. Also in the frequency of the runes. She studied the placement of the symbols as if it was a code, looking for repetition or meaning and a pattern to the frequency of occurrences.

The double X symbol occurred in the sixth position in every sequence of symbols.

It could be some kind of an ending marker. Maddie focused on the other symbols.

“I need a pencil and paper.” She kept walking around the design and barely noticed when Izzy held out a notepad. She felt Lyon’s hands curve around hers as he slid a pencil against her palm. She smiled at him, feeling his encouragement. When his fingers curved, sliding over hers.

No words were needed.

Maddie shook away all distractions and sat down. Writing quickly, she noted every symbol except the double X in the order of their occurrence. Then she made a quick calculation of how many times they occurred.

Two symbols were used most.

One of them looked like a B. The other one looked like a vertical line with a little triangle on the top, like a flag.

Each of these occurred six times, always together.

It wasn’t a simple substitution cipher.

Possibilities came to Maddie in a rush.

It wasn’t a Caesar cipher or shift cipher, in which each letter of a message was replaced with another letter that shifted by a fixed number of spots in the relevant alphabet. She had read that Julius Caesar used this cipher to protect the security of his private letters. Maddie had been fascinated by that fact and had scoured everything on the subject she could find.

But maybe…this was a polyalphabetic cipher. The technique had first been described by an Italian called Giovan Bellaso in the sixteenth century, using shifts of letters or symbols as indicated by a keyword. She had found the technique fascinating; for a few months she had even played with her own variations.

Was that the pattern here? Maddie looked at the row of marks she had written down. She didn’t know what the letters meant, but she didn’t have to know.

Izzy could hand that part. All she had to do was to pick up the pattern.

In a piece of this age, the creator would not have access to advanced forms of technology or computers to generate complicated number sequences. Maddie was pretty sure that no cipher discs had existed before the fifteenth century either. All of that limited the possibilities greatly. But she wasn’t going to rule out anything yet. Instead she let the symbols drift and slide through her mind. If there was a pattern here, she would find it.

An hour later, Maddie had half-a-dozen sheets of crumpled paper were scattered over the table in front of Maddie. She sensed that something was still missing, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Tell me about this symbol—the one with two X’s on top of each other. It might be some kind of marker, or it may simply indicate a shift.” She tapped on her paper. “If you noticed, these other symbols always come together.” She drew a line around what looked like an N with two lines through the center and another symbol that looked like a capital R.

“There has to be significance to that repetition.” She rolled her shoulders, feeling a headache begin.

“Izzy, do you have my computer?” Maddie ignored the squeezing pressure at her forehead. “I want to run some numbers. While you’re at it, any chance of getting me some super strength Advil?”

But nothing worked.

Maddie played some hunches and crunched some numbers. She tried turning the symbol upside down to see if a pattern would be revealed on simple rotation. Again, no luck. Just as before, she had the sense that something was missing. What was she overlooking?

Maddie sat up straighter. She jammed a hand through her spiky hair.

Obvious.

“This artifact—is it incomplete? Was there ever a smaller piece that fit in the center?”

Izzy frowned at her. “I don’t have a clue. I’ll check ASAP.”

“While you’re at it, ask your source at the museum if there are any marks on the back of the original. This replica only has marks on one side. I need an exact photograph of corresponding markings on the back of the original piece.”

Izzy drummed his fingers quietly on the table. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not? If you still don’t trust me, Izzy—”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you. I can’t do it because our source is dead.”

“Dead?” Maddie repeated the word slowly. “How?”

“He was found in his apartment four days ago. There was a suicide note, but our people turned up details that indicated a struggle had taken place.”

“Cause of death?”

“Compression of the carotid artery. And…other things.”

“What other things?”

“You don’t need to know,” Izzy said grimly.

Maddie took a deep breath, pretty sure he wouldn’t give her any other details. “Are there any more photographs of this object—better yet, can you look at the object yourself?”

“I’m afraid not. The original vanished a week ago, probably stolen from the museum by my contact. He also removed every museum record and description of the piece. It was a new discovery, one that had never been fully cataloged. But even the accession notes from the field team have vanished.”

Maddie blew out a slow breath, thinking hard. “Can you find any similar pieces? The museum must have others like this. I need an idea of any markings that might have been used on the back. Something from the same place and time will give me an idea of symbol sequences.”

“I’m on it.”

Maddie rubbed a knot in her shoulders. She wasn’t surprised to feel Lyon move behind her, not saying a word. He could feel how tired she was, how frustrated. Maddie could feel his own impatience and frustration. She remembered that this mission was not his mission. He had a deeper duty—and another enemy waiting somewhere in the darkness.

But there was no point in thinking about those things she had seen in the cemetery. No point at all.

“She has done enough for now.” Lyon looked at Izzy. “While you gather the information she needs, I am taking her upstairs to rest.”

Maddie looked up, frowning at him.

“Do not even try to argue with me. You are exhausted. You need a break from this work.” The hard determination in Lyon’s eyes told her that he would not be dissuaded.

Maddie closed her eyes as the tension in her forehead turned into a sledgehammer force headache. If she didn’t rest, she wouldn’t be able to think.

Lyon had no doubt sensed that also.

But Maddie felt angry and impatient, her thoughts chaotic. She looked down at her hand, fisted on the table, and was shocked to see it was trembling.

This was far more than exhaustion.

She frowned at Izzy. “I have to rest. I’ve got the mother of all headaches. Give me an hour. I’ll start again with whatever new information you find.”

“I thought you were supposed to be a genius at this stuff, Maddie. What’s wrong?”

“This isn’t magic, Teague. I need data to work with or I can’t find a pattern. So get me those pictures and a description of the original object. Get me photos of any related pieces. Do it fast. Then I’ll give you all the magic you want.” She rubbed her eyes, tired and frustrated and struck with growing uneasiness.

Something was wrong. For a person who specialized in reading patterns, she was suddenly unable to read her own.

Runic symbols and hammered gold patterns chased and spun in mocking circles before her eyes as Maddie climbed the stairs to the gatehouse. Her skills had always worked before, so why had they deserted her now?

Lyon hated what Izzy was doing to her. He hated feeling her weariness and frustration, but there was no way to escape it. Maddie had made a promise and he had to let her complete the work she had agreed to perform for this stern American. But there were many things that Izzy Teague did not know.

And there were things that Maddie did not know either.

One was the unmistakable fact that her change had speeded up. If they didn’t find a way to balance their energy soon…

Lyon closed his eyes, forcing away fear and darkness. That was the way to madness. There were hard choices to make. He had hoped there would be more time, but it was not to be given them.

“Hey. Why the dark look?” Maddie slid her fingers over his arm and smiled up at him. “Something wrong? Something you haven’t told me?”

As ever, she was quick to pick up his mood. But she needed to rest, so Lyon did not share his worries yet. Instead he forced a smile. “It is fascinating to see this skill of yours for patterns. Have you always had it?” He prayed she would not realize he had changed the subject.

“You’re changing the subject, Lyon.”

So much for his hopes.

“But I’ll go along with it. I’m too tired to dig for deeper meanings. Frankly, all I want to do is fall into bed and sleep for about a thousand years.” She blew out a little breath. “Not literally, of course. Don’t get any ideas. I still don’t know all that you’re capable of, but I don’t want to find out by waking up a few centuries in the future or the past.”

“I have not that skill.” At least it was not managed as easily as she described. “You need not worry.”

“Oh, I am worried. Very worried. This job of Izzy’s is getting nasty and complicated. I didn’t tell him this, but you and I both know I’m not up to par. I don’t ever get sick, I have the constitution of a horse, and yet…right now I feel flattened.” She frowned at the heavy wooden door to the gatehouse as Lyon pushed it open for her. “I don’t suppose this has anything to do with what you warned me about?”

He wouldn’t lie to her. But he wouldn’t complicate her worry by giving her unnerving details. “It is happening as I expected. Rest now. Finish your work for Izzy Teague. We will find a way to deal with what must come.” Lyon expected her to argue and demand answers. It was a sign of her exhaustion that she did neither.

She simply sank down on the deep white coverlet and sighed in relief as Lyon pulled the curtains closed. “Don’t let me sleep too long. Half an hour. Okay, make that an hour.” She studied him with sleepy her eyes. “Promise me?”

“I promise.”

Lyon had no intention of keeping that promise, of course. He would let her sleep as long as she could, right up to the moment that Izzy returned with new information for her to analyze.

“Good. This is important to him. It’s probably important to a whole lot of people. I’m not going to wimp out just because I don’t feel good.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her head. “I never did get that Advil.”

“You will not need it,” Lyon said softly. She was half asleep when he knelt beside her and ran one hand over her neck, massaging the sensitive muscles behind her ears and along her forehead. He felt the hammer of her pulse and the drum of her blood as if it was his own, so closely linked they were now. He could sense every knot of stress and the weight of her pain. All were as clear and sharp as if they were his own. Using that awareness, Lyon he touched her slowly, freeing the muscles along her head and neck, letting her slide down into exhausted relaxation because he knew she was too stubborn and honorable to give up easily.

It was only part of the reason that she fascinated him.

“Feels good. Afraid I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep…” Her voice broke on a little sigh. “Don’t forget. Have to wake me up. I have to work—”

“Of course I will.” He did not find it easy to lie to her. And he did not excuse himself with the knowledge that it was for her own good. The truth was always more powerful. A lie stole a little part of you whenever it was spoken. Lyon did not only know this—he could see it happen and all the ways that a spirit was dampened and diminished beneath the force of a lie.

He could see many things that Maddie did not know about yet.

But he was not the hero she took him to be. He was not without much sin and blame. And he did not excuse or forget that blame.

One day she would see the darkness in him. He could not delay the moment much longer. And the thought of losing her respect left him shaken.

Lyon’s body hurt, but he did not complain. His need burned cruelly, like acid that ate down through every level of skin.

But his control held. He swore grimly that it would continue to hold. He would not claim her by violence, nor by misunderstanding.

Not…unless there was no other choice.

Yet as he walked down the stairs, his good intentions seemed to mock him from the darkness outside the abbey.

Something rose out of the darkness and slammed down on Maddie's chest.

She clawed her way up through shadows, through smoke and anger and fear. She felt cold, but the cold seemed to come from somewhere outside her, where an etched gold disc spun through empty space while her head ached hard and she fought to breathe. There was something about the disc. It was close—something she should have seen.

The gold face turned slowly. Rune symbols slithered past her, mocking and quick, challenging her to follow. But she didn’t understand. No patterns took shape. No meaning or order of any sort emerged.

Maddie closed her eyes on a moan of pain, daggers sharp at her forehead, the migraine waves getting worse.

Silver circles gleamed through the darkness, spiraling out and then closing tight. The spirals felt somehow familiar, but also frightening. She closed her eyes, struck by a sudden, sickening sensation of falling. And she knew if she let go and fell in that place she would be lost—lost completely and forever. Her body and her soul would be torn apart, swallowed. Blasted to dust and erased as if she had never existed.

She searched desperately for something to grab onto, but there was only cold air and angry voices. Only the smell of fear and burning flesh.

Stop.

She heard her own raw, shuddering voice of protest. This was a dream. She kept telling herself that, how it had to be a dream. But there was blood all around her. Real blood lay cold and dark against her hands. On the sheets. On her bare arms, bare legs.

On her conscience.

Some of the blood was hers. Most of it was Lyon's. And she had caused his horrible death. His face was scratched, his body severed by angry claws. His agonizing cry of pain echoed in the air.

Maddie screamed…and couldn't seem to stop.

Lyon turned from the back of the gatehouse and ran up the stairs, his heart hammering.

The scream had come from Maddie's bedroom.

She was at the door, swaying, her face white when Lyon found her. He lunged and caught her when she would have fallen. But she twisted in his arms, fighting him blindly.

"Nay, do not fight so, Maddie. You are safe, heartling." Lyon felt a wave of relief that she was alone and unharmed—at least as far as he could see. "Do you understand that all is well?"

"No. I saw it—the blood." A hoarse sound tore from her mouth. "All over my hands. And on you. Dear heaven, it was everywhere, Lyon. They had marked you, cut you terribly. It was because of me—because I was too weak to stop them—”

"Shhh." Lyon gripped her shoulders tightly, fighting through her terror and her guilt to make her hear. "There is no blood here. Look at me. I am sound and unharmed, just as you are."

Maddie blinked. "You're sure?" She ran trembling fingers across Lyon's face and neck. "You wouldn't hide if something was wrong, would you?"

"I would not. 'Twas but a dream, my heart." But also it was a forewarning, Lyon sensed. He would alert Aeryx to a coming threat, not that his old friend would need reminding. The Fallen ones were his oldest enemies. They would find no welcome while Aeryx watched the abbey.

"But...I saw blood. I felt it..."

Lyon scowled at Maddie. "Only you seem to be hurt." He turned over her palm and muttered angrily. "By Heaven, what have you done to yourself?"

Maddie touched the dark line on her palm where blood was drying. "I must have scratched myself while I was asleep. I don't remember any of it. It was too awful—I was too worried about you."

Lyon cupped her palm, unable to answer. She worried about him? This was the source of her panic?

Yet again she left him speechless. For centuries no others had wasted a thought to his safety or his hopes. Only she had done this.

Lyon’s heart raced. He sensed all her power and fierce light, captured in that line of blood and on the warmth of her skin where their bodies met. He had sworn to guard her, to teach her—but now, with no warning, need for her struck, stripping him bare.

The urge to bind her body and spirit to his left him blinded. His control shredded beneath primitive need. Lyon fought the hunger in angry silence—and felt his strength waver.

"What is it?" Her fingers brushed his face. "Something is wrong, Lyon."

"Memories. It will...pass." His voice was harsh. Lyon knew that what he felt for her would never pass.

"But Lyon—wait. I almost forgot. I saw the clue. It came to me while I was asleep—”

"What clue?" He tore his focus away from the heat of his taut muscles where their bodies touched. "I do not understand."

"The runes—I know now. I saw the pattern." Maddie's voice was strained with excitement. "It was no word code at all. It was numbers, Lyon. The marks represent numbers." She smiled in triumph. “Numbers.”

"How can you be sure of this?"

"Because I saw the pattern," she said impatiently. "It's what I do, remember? There were only 10 symbols on the disk. The flag-shaped rune was most frequent. I think it is a 1. The other repeated symbol could indicate a zero. But Izzy can crack the rest of the details. It's all math and frequency algorithms now. That's where he works his particular magic. He doesn't need me for that."

She frowned, wriggling free of Lyon's grip. "I should go tell him now. It's important for him to—”

"Tell me what?" Footsteps echoed as Izzy moved through the doorway. "What was all that noise up here?"

"I had a bad dream. But the pattern came to me in the dream, Izzy. Those rune marks represent numbers, probably a decimal set, given the repetitions."

"We didn't think of that. The Anglo-Saxons usually used Roman numerals. But for a code...". He broke off, frowning. Thinking hard. "So where does that take us next? What do the numbers mean?"

Maddie stared through the window. "Did you find any photos with the back of that disc yet?"

"No luck."

"When you do, my hunch is you'll find more of those same marks. And those will be numbers too."

"A number code?" Izzy looked unconvinced. "Not necessarily. It could be a geographical code. But there were no maps that old, at least no maps like the ones we know today. So these can't be simple map coordinates."

Maddie shoved a hand through the chaos of her hair. "They might represent cities or even houses by size or importance. Or maybe they mark a location, given by its distance from a key spot. It might be a reference to an important contemporary book." She frowned at him. "Did the Anglo-Saxons have books?"

"Lots of them. Their illuminated versions of the Bible are considered to be—”

Maddie interrupted him impatiently. "You can deal with the details, Izzy. I'm no historian. I can't tell you how to interpret the location or meaning of the numbers based on their historical importance. I can only give you the pattern, and this pattern is based on numbers. If you don’t believe me, give me my computer and I'll—"

"I believe you. Right now you look exhausted. Lyon was right about that. I'll pass this information on to someone I trust and let her work the details. At least now we know what we're looking for."

"I could check on possible locations using population reconstructions. If you want me to try—”

"No way." Izzy pointed to the bedroom door. "Go. Rest. Now. That's an order. Not that you ever listen to me." He shot a look of grudging respect at Lyon. "You'd better stay here and keep an eye on her. For some reason she appears to listen to you and no one else. I'd like to find out why that is, but right now I have work to do."

He shook his head, muttering as he closed the door behind him.

Lyon frowned. "Was he right? Do you listen only to me?"

"Maybe. But don't let it go to your head. I'm not into any passivity and submission stuff. My inner goddess gets pounded hard if she tries to tell me to do that." Maddie wrinkled her nose and made a snort of disgust.

"I am not certain that I understand what you mean by inner goddess.” Lyon smiled faintly. “And I cannot imagine anyone giving you orders easily."

"Oh they try. It just doesn't work out very well."

"Because you are determined. And independent."

"I've been called other things," Maddie muttered. "Most of them weren't very nice."

"Names do not matter. Your nature is strong and that will always make you enemies. But it is beyond time you had your rest. Once your friend hears back about those symbols, we will all be very busy. Unless—”

Lyon glanced behind him, out the window beyond the trees. Shadows gathered along the sloping lawn, darkening the edges of the moat. The air felt thick and heavy. It would be a moonless night, he sensed.

Moonless and more.

"Unless what?" Maddie looked back through the window. "Talk to me, Lyon. If there is something wrong…"

He chose his words carefully. "I feel something stir. I can tell you no more than that. But Aeryx will let nothing and no one pass him on this restless night."

"You think someone may try to break in?" She took a deep breath. "Just like in my dream. Those things—” She looked away, her hands locked at her waist. And then she gave a shaky laugh. "Maybe what I had wasn't a dream. Maybe it was a warning. If so, I'll be ready. They won't take you from me."

At the door she turned slowly. Her eyes were dark with determination when she looked at Lyon. "I will go to rest. But on one condition."

Lyon hid a smile. She was the least submissive person he knew. And he liked that trait of hers most expressly. "What would that be, heartling?" he murmured.

"One thing and one thing only. That I don't go to bed...alone tonight."

Lyon didn't move.

He might have grown up out of the floor itself. "Don't ask it, Maddy."

She smiled with iron will. "But I do not ask. I command. You told me this was in my power. So I'm claiming that power—and claiming you. No, actually that’s wrong. I'm claiming us."

For the space of a moment hope flamed in his eyes. Then it was carefully banked. "It's been a long day Maddie. I think it would be wiser if –"

"I've never been wise, Lyon. And I'm not starting now." She rose, her hands sliding around his chest. Maddie felt the stir of instinct far older than reason as her body began to come alive. When she looked down, her silver circles flared out in shining wings. Then they settled gracefully, one on each of Lyon's shoulders.

As if they'd always been there and were meant to be there.

When he would have stepped away, Maddie followed. Her fingers tightened on his back. "You're not getting away tonight, Crusader. I'm not letting either of us get away. This is my choice." Her mouth curved. "I can finally read your patterns. Didn't you hear Izzy? I'm very good at that."

His eyes darkened. "You have no idea about me or my past. I have years of blood on my hands, Maddie. Death and sacrifice have cost me more loss than you can imagine."

“No.” She cut him off with one palm pressed gently to his mouth. "I don't care. Don't talk to me about the past, Lyon. Talk to me about the future. When you touch me, I can almost see it.”

Lyon felt desire stab through his body. Her words burned into his skin. "Maddie, I must be sure that you understand –"

"I understand all that I should. Everything that I used to know is gone. There is only you, and only this. You said this thing between us must be faced. We both must make a choice – or we both must go mad. Those were your words."

"So they were."

Her head tilted back. "Then—bind me. Join us in whatever way you will."

"It will take great strength – great courage—and a passage through death itself. Are you ready for that, my heart?"

Lyon had to be certain, beyond all question, that this was by her choice and with her understanding. "You must come to me naked, in body and spirit both. Do you understand that? I must do the same."

Judging by the color that stained her cheeks, she understood well.

"So this is a really big deal?"

When he nodded, Maddie slid her fingers through his and locked their hands tightly in answer. “I understand.” She gave him a crooked smile. "Now when are you going to take me to bed?”

Into bed.

Such simple words. But in this case they came nowhere close to capturing the reality and the force of primal union. When they bonded, their molecules would change spin and drop out of existence for a moment in time. When they came back to movement, their motion would be reversed. Both would be stamped in that moment of change, entwined for all of time. It was simple physics in all its grandeur, yet there was nothing simple about it. The laws at work were ancient, and some of Lyon’s order whispered that the power had begun in the Holy Lands centuries before.

Lyon had never questioned when or how. For him, it was enough that the power existed.

"Do it now, Lyon." Maddie ran a trembling hand across her forehead. "Something is telling me that we don't have much more time."

Lyon took a harsh breath and pulled her closer, every muscle taut, rich with power, heavy with need. "So it is given. By both your wish and mine." Her fingers tightened—and in that moment his trembled too.

And it began again, the power rising anew, as it had five times before over the long centuries. Trust melded to desire and then both melded to joy.

Lyon’s callused hand gripped hers. He slid away her heavy shirt and then her boots. Maddie’s eager hands joined the work of his.

In seconds she wore only cool air and a faint, awkward smile. Lyon's heart trembled at the slender glory of her body. Light glinted over her skin, gathering force until he was almost blinded.

Until he was lost, well and forever lost in the certainty of his love for her.

His fingers move to his own garments, so awkward in this modern age. Maddie was faster, stripping away the fastenings that were so strange to him. When she pushed the garments free and dropped them on the floor, her eyes savored the look of him in turn, and her longing was the greatest compliment Lyon had known.

He held their linked hands tighter, slid one arm around her waist, and brought their aching skin together, feeling her fit against him.

He laid her on the old Persian rug, drew her down against him and whispered the oldest vow.

"Before the dawn three times I thee bind;

Before the dawn three times am I bound in turn.

Hand-to-hand, skin to burning skin, so it begins.

By stone and swan and sword, so may it be."

Maddie almost fell into the depths of his eyes.

Her arm and chest ached but all she felt was the burning force of Lyon's eyes. There was no shrinking and no uncertainty.

So many scars she saw. So much strength.

“I will be bound by you,” she answered. “And I bind you to me in turn."

She watched emotions play over that face –the hard, uncompromising face she had come to love so well. Her heart raced in the knowledge that the joining had begun.

Not that Maddie had a clue about what was physically involved, beyond the normal kinds of intimacy, taken and being taken in turn. But instinct whispered that there would be nothing normal about this night.

"Lyon, not to be unromantic, but there is a lovely bed next door. Why the floor?"

He pulled her down until she rested against his chest and powerful thighs. "Because this is a spot of power. This tower is the oldest part of the abbey, a place I remember well. It will share its power with us tonight.”

Maddie started to question, but she let the uncertainty go. If Lyon told her, then it was so. In truth, she could feel that power now, running deep within the old stones, a hum against her skin.

Lyon unfolded a linen cloth taken from his clothes. He took out four stones, which he placed around them, one in each direction. Pale green light floated up and Maddie remembered how he had cast the same stones to save her life back in London.

"What are they, Lyon?"

"They are born of the power of a Rose, my sweet. Guard them well, for they are treasures earned with pain. If you welcome them with full heart, they will guard you and all that you love."

More riddles. More doorways to a new world that Maddie struggled to understand. But because this was Lyon, she believed, storing this new fact away in her memory.

And then although she expected speed and raw strength, he brought her the drugging brush of his mouth over her body and after that the slow, exquisite search of his callused hands. Wherever he touched, she burned until her rosemarks danced, skimming along his body, circling them both.

Her body was pliant, aching, sweet and liquid beneath him as she rose over him and shifted to find his heat. Slowly she slid astride him, forcing him closer.

Lyon whispered her name roughly. Then he brought their bodies together, with hard thighs sliding deep to claim her. Maddie felt the engorged shaft part her until it could press no farther. She felt a sharp, exquisite burning.

And then she rocked against him, thigh to thigh. There was only the power and heat of him, scarred hands buried in her hair, his mouth at her cheek, whispering raw, hungry words in a language she could not understand.

He guided her body down to meet him, watching her face in awe. Maddie felt her heart tremble while love danced fiercely and joy took flight.

On a raw breath she gasped his name. Her nails raked his back as she opened to all he gave.

Loving him.

Binding him and herself by that love.

With his name on her lips Maddie arched against him. The climax built, surging up as she felt Lyon tighten deep inside her. Then desire broke in a blinding wave, and light broke free around her. She locked their hands and gripped him—and fell forever.

Knowing he would catch her.

Slowly her tremors calmed.

With a sigh she fell back against his chest, anchored in his arms. A tear slipped down her cheek.

Lyon caught it on one finger, raised it slowly and blew against it in a soft breath. Maddie blinked to see a glowing stone appear on his palm, this one lilac and not green. "And so your tears are treasures, my heart. And so we are bound, first in three."

The stone burned almost as bright as his desire when Maddie pulled him above her. "Show me the rest," she whispered.

Her marks danced through the darkness, lighting the path as Lyon rose against her, drew her legs around his waist and claimed her.

Until she shuddered and took his pain and his hunger and all his love while he drove into a blinding release.

A bird cried somewhere out in the darkness. The air filled with the hint of roses.

And the old stones seemed to whisper in echo beneath them.

Lyon's face gleamed silver in the light of Maddie's drifting marks. His breath was rough as he gathered her against his chest. “You can feel the stones hum beneath us?"

"All of that and more. How old is this house anyway?"

“You wish a history lesson, my heart? Now? While your thighs grip my waist?"

Maddie laughed, dizzy with happiness. When had she ever felt so much peace as this?

When had she ever been happy?

Never.

"You've made me interested, that's all. Stop teasing me. I’m starting to have an interest in history. Besides, I can feel this is no ordinary house.”

"Its guardian ghost would swell with endless pride to hear you say so."

Maddie frowned. “Maybe he is listening. Being a ghost and all.”

“No. I sent him away. We are to be given our privacy this night.”

Maddie trembled, as Lyon ran one hand along the warm curve of her hip. The sudden force of her physical joy was almost more than she could bear. Everything was the same – the gatehouse, the old Persian rug, the drifting scent of roses.

And yet everything was forever different.

In Lyon's arms she felt strong, yet infinitely pliant. Wise with age, yet filled with innocence. Somehow Lyon had done this.

She sighed when his scarred fingers opened on her shoulder and he leaned to kiss the curve of each sensitive breast, whispering against her still aroused skin. Beside them the light of her purple stone glowed, and Maddie realized that it beat in time with her own racing heart.

Strange, strange world.

She pushed up onto one elbow. Her eyebrow rose. “Fine. No history lessons. But as I recall, you said there were three bindings to come between us tonight, Crusader."

Her smile gleamed, soon reflected in Lyon's keen eyes. "So I did." He ran his hands through her spiky hair. "Such an odd style of dress you have, my Rose. And yet I believe it begins to grow on me." He pulled her up, settled her against his thighs.

Then his humor faded. "Two more bindings must come before the dawn. That will seal the oldest vows. You are ready?"

Maddie raised their linked fingers and kissed the scars along his palm and wrist. “More than ready."

Lyon nodded. From his nearby clothes he pulled out a folded silver cloth. When he opened it into the air, it gleamed like hammered metal though it weighed no more than a feather. At its center a swan seemed to move, drifting against fast water.

It was a work of great skill – and greater magic, Maddie sensed.

Lyon tossed the silk up and watched it slowly drift down across their bodies. Wherever it touched, their skin seemed to hum and draw on its power. Maddie fingered the feather-light weave, amazed to see the design tremble with life. “Lyon, what is this thing?”

"I found it in the sands beyond Acre. It is finest imperial silk from the great country of Chin, I was told. But I think it is far older than anyone knows. It defects harm from whoever wears it, Maddie, and it is my gift to you. From this night on, keep it close.”

Maddie did not understand. She wasn't even sure if she believed. But because her Crusader believed, she nodded.

Their bodies rolled over the carpet, thigh against hard thigh. As they slid together, the swan seemed to dance, crossing silver waters.

Lyon’s eyes narrowed with sudden hunger. He kissed his way down her chest and settled his mouth against the dark curls at her thighs, showing her new pleasure until Maddie gasped beneath the stroke of his tongue and lips, stunned and half lost in a haze of desire.

Still trembling, she locked her hands on his shoulders and pulled him up. Quickly she straddled him, urgent and hot.

Before the dawn, three times I thee bind.

Before the dawn, three times am I bound in turn.

Once by stone and now by swan. Sword is yet to come.

Hand to hand, skin to burning skin, so it begins.

Lyon whispered the words as he entered her slowly, with maddening skill. Beneath them the silver cloth rustled, almost alive, agleam with old powers. Then for a second time they were bound, their bodies fierce and fearless and driven.

Blindly they fell.

It simply wasn’t possible.

How could you be bone tired and fiercely awake at the same time? Maddie shook her head, staring at the hard lines of Lyon’s chest.

Her body was stretched out against his, beautifully stated. She traced his chest and drifted, caught in images that might have been memories. O maybe they were dreams, part of a new future taking shape.

"There is a third joining yet to come, you said?”

Lyon’s lips brushed her hair. Maddie heard him chuckle. "So greedy you have become. But yes, there is yet a third." He would have pulled her against him, but Maddie wriggled free, catching the silk around her.

Lyon lunged and caught her leg so she tumbled down against him. While their laughter echoed, they rolled over and over across the old rug.

“Impossible creature. Once my strength returns, there will be a third joining.”

"I'd say your strength has returned. Or is that something else I feel, there against my hip? Your sword?”

His eyes raked her body as Maddie reached low, circling him with her hands. Desire raced back to life and she marveled at the beauty of his chiseled body. Would it always be this way between them?

Across the dark hills a bird called shrilly. Lightning branched through the sky, and a drop of rain struck the balcony doors.

Lyon pushed up onto one arm, glancing through the trees. His body tensed.

"What is it, Lyon?"

"Only lightning. So it seems,” he said thoughtfully.

Maddie frowned as he pushed to his feet. Naked and magnificent he walked to the balcony. Drawing back the French doors, he searched the stormy night, motionless and intent.

Uneasy, Maddie gathered up the silver fabric and followed. Then she watched in turn beside him.

On the far side of the valley lightning flickered. Just lightning, she thought. No deadly fog here. They were safe.

She rested her head against his back, kissing the old scars, angry at the pain he must have endured. But now he would never be alone, she swore.

Something moved through the dark sky. Aeryx looped down to perch on the balcony railing. "A storm builds. There is lightning…and perhaps something more. Crusader, do you join me? Your eyes are strong."

Lyon's fingers tightened on Maddie's waist. For a moment she tasted the bitterness of his regret. "I will join you, my friend. Give me a moment. "

The dark head bowed. Wings furled, Aeryx rested on the railing, waiting impatiently.

Lyon found his clothes and dressed quickly. He sheathed his sword and then pulled Maddie close. "You are changed, my heart. We both are changed, but there is far more to come. I will be back once we have made our inspection of the grounds. Wait for me here.”

"Hurry." She managed a shaky smile. “I’ve discovered how very impatient I can be.” Maddie released his hand and took a step back. She gripped the gossamer silk as Lyon crossed the balcony and was caught up on Aeryx's powerful wings.

The room seemed empty and far too cold when he had gone.

More lightning cut the sky above the distant valley. Maddie sat on the old rug, his silk draped around her shoulders and one purple stone gleaming in her hand.

Minutes crawled past.

Thunder growled and rolled. And still he did not come.

Wings crossed the balcony.

As they passed, a cold wind gusted through the open window.

"Rose," a deep voice whispered. "Your Guardian calls to you from the far woods."

"I heard nothing." Maddie jumped her feet, scrambling for her clothes. "Is something wrong, Aeryx?"

“He is…weak, Rose. He bleeds most badly. His skin is torn, but he ordered me away, too proud for your help. So I come for you. Will you fly and join me? Or…are you afraid?”

“Of course I’ll go. Wait there. I’m coming.” Maddie jerked on her clothes and searched for the gleaming stones.

“Leave them, Rose. There is no time,” Aeryx murmured.

“I’m almost done.” Maddie stuffed the stones into her pockets and then knotted the silver web of silk tightly around her. “I’m ready. Take me to him now.”

“You are certain?” the voice probed.

“I’m certain. Hurry.” Maddie was furious with impatience. “Do it now.”

“As you will.”

A sound like wind through heavy grass filled the room. Maddie shivered and climbed onto the cold railing. When she reached out, stepping onto the dark wings, the powerful body swayed.

“Hurry, Aeryx.”

“We fly, Rose.”

Wind slashed at Maddie’s face as they shot upward in a dizzying sweep. She closed her eyes, caught by a wave of sudden nausea. The ground fell away beneath her, and Maddie leaned closer to the dark head. “Aeryx, what happened to him? Did the things—did those creatures—find him? I have to know.”

“Then I shall tell you, Rose. All that you wish to hear—and far more that you do not.” The voice changed, hardening in an angry laugh.

The air around Maddie’s head seemed to burn, charged with sudden electricity that made her flinch and draw back.

Too late she understood.

This was not Aeryx beneath her. This was no friend.

She was betrayed.

Fog swirled up beneath Maddie, piling over the ground, rising in cold waves.

Too late.

She slid trembling fingers into her pocket, feeling something foul burn at her skin. “Who—are you?” she whispered.

“You have called us, Rose. You gave us free invitation. Fool,” the voice rumbled, eager and hungry. “Through your wish we have crossed the portal.” The voice grew, awful in its power. “You invited us to come. Now we will feed well. On you and on those you love.”

Maddie understood now that a fierce intelligence had been at work. But this disguise they made–how was it possible?

There was no time to think about it. A leathery arm stretched toward her and narrow claws emerged. Maddie battled terror and nausea. This was no flight as Aeryx had given. Now they rocketed straight up, then fell with dizzying force.

The only thing that kept her sane was the possibility that they had lied about Lyon. She had to believe that he was unharmed.

She sent out a fierce call of warning to Lyon, to Aeryx, and to the abbey ghost. Then she eased her fingers around the stones hidden in her pockets.

The leathery arm reached back and gripped her leg. With a gasp Maddie wrenched free. The creature swooped higher. Its claws slashed toward her in a vicious strike and then another.

The last drew blood.

Maddie looked up and saw the air around her full of writhing shapes. Wings pounded and hammered as they followed hungrily.

More claws slashed toward her. A smaller figure raced above her head, dropping to snap at her arm. Maddie threw a stone and drove the creature back.

“She is no Rose,” the deep voice beneath her mocked. “Her fear burns clear.” Laughter rumbled and more claws struck. Maddie was tossed sideways, falling free for long seconds, dangling from the edge of a leathery wing.

She forced her eyes away from the other forms around her and dug another stone from her pocket. With all her force she hurled it at the dense, circling center of wings. A vicious cry tore through the air. Two of the creatures plummeted downward.

Dizzy with pain, Maddie found another stone. Another leathery form attacked her legs, and she flung out the stone. Chattering in fury, the creature burned in a flare of silver light, slashing Maddie’s arm from shoulder to wrist as it fell. The air was thick with acrid smoke and more forms gathered, hissing in delight as blood oozed down her bruised arm.

Suddenly Maddie tipped sharply. Her captor sailed high, then closed its giant wings around her, forcing out light and breath, crushing her slowly.

She searched for another stone, only to feel it slip from her trembling fingers. Four gone. Only one was left.

Her own.

Lyon?

Here. Very close. Fight them!

Maddie felt his strength burn through her as Aeryx shot over the high trees, with Lyon on his wing.

But the creature beneath her reached out to grip her neck, forcing the air from her lungs. Blindly Maddie gripped her last, precious stone and drove it with all her might into the suffocating wings, up through leathery arms and into the looming face. A raw cry of fury filled her ears as the body tipped and rolled sideways, losing control.

Maddie plunged free and was surrounded by a dark fury of wings.

"There! Faster, Aeryx." Lyon clung to Aeryx with one hand, hacking at anything in their way. As his great sword flashed, another scream signaled his blow and another pursuer fell.

The fallen wore their true form now, with no hint of human face or limbs. Their speed could not be matched.

A claw raked Lyon’s chest and passed lower. Aeryx rumbled in pain. In a swift jab Lyon’s sword slashed out and severed the leathery body, which fell to join dozens more that steamed on the ground below.

They were almost close enough for Maddie to see them now. In a few more seconds….

Then Lyon’s heart squeezed to see her plunge wildly from the sky, while dozens of the horde followed, hungry and hissing in their eagerness.

Lyon called out her name and leaped from Aeryx’s back, using his sword to cut his way through the bodies that followed her as she fell.

She acted by the force of raw fury, kicking her booted feet and flinging her silver rosemarks out in dancing circles.

The circling bodies drew back in confusion and fear.

With each brush of her light another of their throng lost control and pitched blindly down to earth.

But there were too many to count now. Maddie's breath was labored and her strength was nearly gone.

So many of the hungry things....

Then she heard Lyon’s shout and looked up to see him falling down toward her, hacking a way with his sword. As two creatures hooked him with their claws, Maddie felt the shape of the fabric at her waist. She tore it free and cast it up toward Lyon,

The horde fell back. Maddie gave a mad laugh and called his name.

A wiry arm hooked her shoulder, nearly wrenching it from its socket, and she was dragged back into her captor’s wings. And all her weapons were gone now. Only her courage remained.

And her rosemarks.

Maddie waited as the steaming mouth opened. Foul air and the stench of blood brushed her face. When the teeth gaped widest, she threw out her spinning marks and ran them down, into the yawning throat.

The gagging creature screamed in pain and cast her out.

But the ground was hurtling up toward her.

It was Aeryx who raced below her, the true form and true friend, gathering her onto his wings and then swooping up to cut through the horde around Lyon. The Crusader grabbed for the passing wing and met Maddie’s outstretched hand instead.

His fingers slipped on the blood from her wound and Maddie scrambled forward to catch him. Her eyes were glazed with pain and exhaustion but she did not flinch as he gripped her hand. Inch by inch he dragged his body onto the soaring wings.

Aeryx raced high, toward the sun as it flashed across the horizon.

Maddie’s whirling silver marks raced after them.

Aeryx sank down in weary grandeur on the slope above the moat.

In the morning sunlight the abbey ghost stood triumphant above a pile of steaming bodies, calling out a welcome. Around them the abbey’s roof and lands looked like a battleground, with the dead creatures in the scores. Smoke curled from their bodies. Yet as Maddie watched, the skeletal limbs shimmered and vanished, carried back to the place where they came from.

Was this what the Crusader had seen in his long, weary battles? Had Acre and Culloden looked like this?

She shuddered and felt Lyon’s tired arm slide around her. Together they stumbled over the ground, past the dead, hearing Aeryx keen in pain as he hovered above one of his own dead.

Up the hill Maddie saw Izzy walk toward them, his face a tight mask of disbelief. She did not try to explain. There was no need. The truth lay everywhere around them.

She looked up with loving eyes at Lyon. “They told me you were dead,” she whispered. “They said you needed me. The form was so like Aeryx that I never guessed—“

“It is done. We fought them back. You were magnificent, my Rose.” Lyon stared at her arm, where blood still oozed. “We must clean this well. Their poison is fierce. It may kill even now.”

But Maddie settled against him with a sigh of exhaustion and relief. As she did the silver swan fell, silk rippling as it covered their bodies.

Maddie had to ask the question. “They will come back?”

“I have little doubt of it,” Lyon said grimly. “But you learn fast. We will start your training tomorrow. The sword will be first, I think. But not tonight….” His fingers brushed her hair and he caught her up in a fierce kiss. “Tonight is for us. Only us.”

Izzy ran toward them, his eyes hard. “You are both bleeding. Let me have a look. Damn it, Lyon, why didn’t you warn me?” He grabbed Maddie’s bloody arm and scowled.

Talk about bad timing, Maddie thought.

And then she began to laugh.

And so the journey begins…..

Thank you for joining Maddie and Lyon on their racing path to danger and adventure. You probably noticed that I love this story! There are many secrets yet to come and dark betrayal yet waiting. Even Izzy will soon be tested when the fallen ones return.

But I am getting ahead of my story....

Ever since Adrian and his ghost cat Gideon swept into my life almost 15 years ago, nothing has been the same. Draycott Abbey seems to grow more beautiful with each passing year. I am thrilled that so many of you have asked for more of these unforgettable tales blending history and modern suspense. This one has haunted me for almost a decade.

More of Maddie’s journey will be coming this fall.

Longtime readers will know that this story is not part of my regular Draycott series, but I hope you will enjoy those too!

The complete Draycott Abbey collection as written (so far!) is:

CHRISTMAS AT DRAYCOTT ABBEY

“Enchantment,” a novella now reprinted in DRAYCOTT LEGACY

“What Dreams May come,” a novella now only available in DRAYCOTT ETERNAL

“Moonrise,” a novella only available in DRAYCOTT EVERLASTING

HOUR OF THE ROSE

BRIDGE OF DREAMS

BRIDE OF THE MIST

KEY TO FOREVER

SEASON OF WISHES

CHRISTMAS KNIGHT

THE PERFECT GIFT

And I especially hope you will look for my most recent ghostly abbey romance – CHRISTMAS AT DRAYCOTT ABBEY.

Each of these stories can be read alone, but they all work together, blending into an ongoing saga that stretches back for centuries. I hope you will enjoy all of them, savoring old characters and discovering new ones in turn.

If you want to learn more about the Draycott legacy, check out my website ---- www.christinaskye.com --for contests, details about upcoming books and research notes. Pinterest boards for Draycott Abbey are coming soon too!

Meanwhile, happy reading.

Maddie and Lyon will be waiting for you … at the abbey.

Fallen

Copyright © 2012 by Christina Skye

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.