Something I’d have known if I’d bothered to cal him.
Lifting a hand, I shield my eyes against the glare of the midday sun, enjoying the warmth that penetrates my skin, remembering the warmth that mortals feel from the inside out.
If I find a way to make things right for Frey, I wil.
But first. Frey was right about something else, too. I don’t know what I want from this shaman. If he’s powerful enough to solve the riddle of life and death, maybe he can solve my riddle, too. How I was chosen and why. What it would mean if I relinquished the title.
How I can get Chael out of the picture.
Because before I could make any decision, I’d have to know the mortal world would be safe. No matter how much I want to become human again, I wouldn’t put my desire ahead of the wel — being of bil ions.
Another hour of desert boredom and we cross the Arizona border at Yuma. Right outside Casa Grande we leave Highway 8 and pick up I-17. Then it’s on to and past Phoenix and final y, the monotonous scenery becomes interesting again. We’re headed north, approaching the Verde Val ey area, and for the first time, we’re seeing more than brown dirt and scrub. Red rocks light a fiery landscape punctuated with the green of real trees. Alder, ash, cypress and a half dozen others I don’t recognize. Bushes in hues that range from the lightest feathery green to bril iant emerald to cloud gray.
Ocotil o and yucca raise thorny fingers to the sky. I’m mesmerized by the wonder of it al, my absorption broken only when a movement catches the corner of my eye.
Frey looks at his watch. “We’re not going to make it before dark. Do you want to stop for the night in Flagstaff?”
I hadn’t noticed how much time had passed. The sun is low on the horizon. The dark doesn’t bother me so I volunteer to take over behind the wheel.
Frey looks at me as if I’d just suggested he become a vegetarian. “Do you know how to drive a stick?”
“How hard can it be? I’ve been watching you.”
I can see by his horrified expression he’s imagining scenarios where I strip his new baby’s gears.
“I’m kidding. Of course I can drive a stick.”
He isn’t convinced so I add, “Look. I drive a ninety-thousand-dol ar car. What’d you pay for this?”
Stil no relaxing of the worry lines around his mouth. “How long until we reach the reservation?”
“Four hours.”
“So let me take over for a while. You take a nap.”
Frey pul s off the road so I think I’ve convinced him.
Instead, he adjusts his seat back and stretches his legs. “We should both take a nap,” he says. “Thirty minutes or so and we’l hit the road again.”
I give hime evil eye. Jesus. What a baby. I adjust my seat, too, and stare into a cloudless, cerulean sky. Then it hits me,
“Frey, are you stal ing?”
His eyes are closed. He huffs out a breath. “That’s a ridiculous assumption.”
“Is it? You sounded like your ex wil not be happy to see you. Could it be that you’re a little skittish about seeing her, too?”
I’m teasing, but there’s nothing amusing in the way he snaps back at me. “The roads we’re going to travel once we get to the val ey are not wel marked or lit. And there’s no moon tonight. It won’t be easy navigating in the dark.”
“You’re joking, right? You have the vision of a cat. And I’m a vampire. My eyes are better than night-vision goggles.”
He turns at that. “Jesus, Anna. Do you always have to argue? Thirty minutes. Is that too much to ask? Just close your eyes and shut up, wil you?”
Wow. He really doesn’t want me to drive his Jeep. “Okay, okay. It’s what you get for carb loading at that Carl’s Jr. but I’m not sleepy. I’l just lay here and watch you sleep off that ten-thousand-calorie meal. It won’t bother you, wil it, if I stare at you while you nap?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s already asleep.
I humph an irritated breath. Stare around. Close my eyes.
Just for a minute.
CHAPTER 16
THE DREAMS COME IN DARK FLASHES. THE CHAOS of the last three days. Kil ing. The gunman in the store. The vampire in the desert. Always the blood is what stands out most vividly. Starkly, like a retouched photo where the background is shades of gray, but not the blood. It’s crimson, fragrant, sweet — sexual in its al ure. My body responds to the images and the first stirrings of arousal send heat rushing to warm my skin. I lose myself in the sensation, let the excitement build, yearn for release.
A hand on my shoulder. A voice.
I’m pul ed from exquisite pleasure. Pul ed unwil ingly back into reality at the moment before climax. I react with frustration and anger, batting the hand away. “What the—?”
We’re on the road. Frey glances over. “Jesus, Anna.
You’re moaning. Were you having a nightmare?”
Shit. I scrub a hand over my face, partly to recover from the effects of the dream, partly to hide the embarrassment.
I struggle upright in the seat. I’m stil groggy and disoriented. “How long have I been out?”
“Maybe three hours.” He shoots me a look. “You weren’t sleepy, huh?”
Three hours. It couldn’t be.
He’s stil talking. “But you’ve been moaning and thrashing around on that seat for the last fifteen minutes. I was afraid you’d hang yourself in the seat belt. What were you dreaming about?”
If I told him the truth, that I was just about to have an orgasm and he interrupted not a nightmare, but a real y, real y good dream, I’m not sure who would be more mortified. Frey for mistaking moans of passion for groans of terror or me for admitting it. I decide to save Frey the humiliation.
“I can’t remember what I was dreaming. You know how it is.”
Frey doesn’t take his eyes off the road. “Must have been awful.”
There’s an undertone of sarcasm that makes me swivel in the seat to search his face. Is he screwing with me? Is the only misinterpretation going on here mine? But it’s dark in the Jeep and in profile, only a hint of a smile plays at the corner of his mouth. He’s not giving anything away and I’m certainly not going to pursue the subject.
I turn my attention back to the road. The Jeep is bumping along and I realize we’ve left the paved highway. I remember Frey mentioning unpaved and unlit roads. He wasn’t kidding.
There’s no moon, either. But when I look up, the sky seems closer than I’ve ever seen it, the stars so bright, I have to fight the impulse to reach up a hand and pluck one down. As I watch, one of them separates from the rest and tracks slowly across the sky, blinking at me as it goes.
My breath catches. “What is that? An airplane?”
Frey fol ows my pointing finger. “No, too high. It’s a satel ite. You don’t see many of those in the city, do you?”
I watch until it disappears out of sight. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Frey shoots me a sideways glance. “You have, you know.
The night we went after Belinda Burke and stopped the demon raising. You don’t remember?”
The memory floods back. Frey and I racing across the desert. Panther and vampire. The sky as bril iant and close as it is now. I nod. I remember.
Frey pul s the Jeep to a stop. “Put your seat back. Let’s watch the show.”
We both recline the seats once more, mesmerized by a sky that moves and shimmers as if it were alive. Within minutes, we see two shooting stars, one right after the other, meteors trailing bits of rock and dust that disintegrate into fiery bal s when they hit the earth’s atmosphere. The Milky Way, a soft blur of hazy white light, divides the sky.
Constel ations form patterns that I can actual y distinguish. I feel like a kid, lost in awe and trembling with delight. It’s so beautiful.