Just like that, it all began to melt away, disappearing as if it had never been, but for echoes of distress and a wicked chill to remind him it had indeed happened.
“You see?” she said to him. “I could have destroyed you if I wanted to. No one would be the wiser. I could pretend to be your queen, as you have told everyone that I was, and wait for Menes to be in front of me and send him back into the Ether.”
Ram was breathing hard, adrenaline from fear and other emotions pumping through him. He was furious that he had been so easily disabled and so helpless against the power she had wielded over him. But he was not furious with her, because what she said rang wickedly true. He might have brought her to Menes … and she might have been an assassin. But he had thought she was Hatshepsut, had just assumed she was his queen since Cleo had sent him there specifically to find her. The understanding that he might have brought a viper into Menes’s presence chilled him far deeper than her spell.
“Docia … I mean—”
“No. We like Docia best at present. She and I will discuss which name is preferred later, but for now we like Docia. I find it to be a very pretty name.”
She smiled and there was a kind of warm innocence to it, a blend of the Templar’s sincerity and Docia’s spirit. It was beautiful and disarming, slowing his heart rate.
“Docia, you are right. You could have done all of these things. Between that understanding and the fact that I still see the strong presence of a woman I do trust inside of you, I would be foolish not to believe you. You took many chances. You took a risk, coming to me like this.”
He reached out and picked up one of the dark, choppy locks of her hair. He toyed with it between his fingers a moment.
“Did you lure me with magic in order to soften me up?” he asked suddenly, looking into her eyes. “I cannot explain this heat and undeniable craving for you any other way.”
The look in her eyes was utter, shattering hurt. There was no indignation, no fury. Just flat-out pain and shock. Tears sprang to her precious mink eyes and suddenly he felt like the worst kind of villain. The expression was pure and innocent.
“The only explanation?” she choked out, a slow burning anger rushing up in defense of her pain. “Really, that’s the only thing you can think of? You, who have watched Menes and Hatshepsut cling to one another so faithfully and fiercely throughout the aeons? This is all you can think of?”
She moved to get up, reaching for the dress she had discarded the day before. She struggled to turn it right side out, a pained little sob squeaking out of her as she hid her face from him.
“Docia …” He touched her shoulder and she shrugged him off hard.
“Don’t touch me!”
But touch her he did. He grabbed her by both arms and threw her back down on the mattress, stripping the dress out of her arms and chucking it away. Neither noticed the poofing sound as it landed in the fireplace and the delicate silk went up in smoke.
Ram pinned her down, his huge body over her, his golden eyes seeking hers although she resisted meeting them as she struggled with him.
“Let me go before I bring the wrath of Ra down on your miserable hide!” she spat out.
“Docia, I had to ask! Listen to me! Wouldn’t you? Faced with all of this, seeing the power you can wield, wouldn’t you question it?”
“No! I would have more faith in it! I would remember that the Bodywalkers were Suspended for most of the exchanges of last night! Why was it Vincent and Docia alone? Did you forget about Odjit’s spell?”
“You are a Templar. Her niece, for the sake of Ra! How could I know if she cast the spell on me but faked it on you, hmm?”
“Have I not proven to you I can be trusted? And if not me, surely you trust Docia’s soul! There is very little purity of heart in this world. Did you not recognize it when she cried out your name with joy?”
“Yes,” he said with sudden fierceness, reaching to entrap her head between his hands, forcing her to look at him at last. “Yes, Docia, yes! But you must forgive me because I have never felt anything like this in all my many lives! To live so long but never feel such a thing … why now? I question it. Why now?”
She sniffled back a trapped little sound of hurt, and it pained his heart. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t grasp this. Couldn’t understand why he felt so much with her and none other. She had to forgive him, but he simply didn’t understand and barely knew what to do with it, other than the very base instinct that told him to hold tight and never let go. But she was Templar and he Politic, and they had been enemies for so long.…
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked suddenly. “Because … because we have been on opposite sides so long, our souls never met. Never connected. All of this time you could have been in my hands, in my heart, resonating with my soul, but we were as good as worlds apart.”
He felt pain as he said it. Genuine pain. To think this feeling, this wonder, could have been his … could have soothed him and given him the succor he had needed as he died and lived and died and lived … but he had scorned it as an enemy and therefore had wasted the opportunity to know it. To have what Menes and Hatshepsut had. Yes, it was tragic in its way, when death came into the picture, but if this was what they felt when they were together on this earth, then Ram suddenly understood. He understood what drove them to forever be together. To seek each other out again and again. To agree never to let the other go on without them. It circumvented war, it took precedence over everything and everyone else. They risked everything to remain true and continuous to each other.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed down at her. “So sorry.” He was desperate for her to believe him. “I’ve been who I am for so long and thought I knew everything. I thought I knew … but I forgot that there are new lessons to be learned in every lifetime we choose to become a part of. It was ignorant and stupid of me. Please, Docia, forgive me for that.”
She swallowed, her lips pressed tightly together as she stared hard into his golden eyes. After a moment, though, she softened, her bottom lip drawing back between her teeth as she contemplated whether she had the heart to forgive him for his insensitive remarks.
“You’re a jackass, you know that?” she grumbled, the immediate follow-up of more lip nibbling telling him she wasn’t ready to kick him to the curb for that fact.
“Yeah. I guess I can be. But, I don’t have to tell you why I am like this. Why I am so defensive and suspicious. You are … it’s quite surprising to find a Templar with such optimism.”
“You know many Templars intimately, do you? Intimately enough to know how they feel or their take on the world?”
She had a point there. He wouldn’t confess to her that his closest conversation with a Templar, other than her, had been while he coerced the poor bastard for intel.
“It’s a war, Docia. It’s not pretty. It’s not friendly. It’s not in the least amusing or pleasurable. I don’t have to tell you that.”
“I know,” she said softly. “But we can end it.” The light of true hope and belief entered her eyes. “With time and trust and reasonable understanding …” She had become greatly animated, but now she exhaled, her whole being deflating. “But it isn’t up to you, is it? It’s ultimately up to Menes and Hatshepsut. We know they are returning imminently. I only hope we can be the diplomats the Templars will need to build a bridge between these two sides.”
“There is a lot of hate,” he said, almost as if in warning. “I may trust you, but that doesn’t mean I will trust others just as easily.”
The words made her smile, wide and pretty, the delight of it reaching into her mink eyes.
“So you do trust me?” she said, hope so high in her voice and in the way she held her breath that he found it heartbreakingly ingenuous. He softened, his defenses melting away as he let her optimism infect him, allowed himself to be a believer, at least while in the circle of her arms. He was not really as naïve as she was to think it would be a task won just by determination. I
t would be a hard road. A long one. But he realized that in the massive chess game between the Bodywalker factions, she was indeed the queen on their side. Her power was undeniable. It was an asset they had never had before. It made him think that maybe … maybe this time around things would be different.
“I trust you!”
There was a huge whump as SingSing plopped down hard on the mattress next to them, completely oblivious, it seemed, to the fact that they were still naked.
“You’re so cute for a Bodywalker. It’s the lopsided hair. A bold fashion statement if I ever saw one! And you didn’t hurt my babies. And you guys managed to have sex without waking me up! All good things, I must say.” She stuck her face between theirs, eyeballing Docia for a moment. “Hey! You weren’t there yesterday! Where’d you come from? Say, she’s kinda pretty.”
That stopped Ram’s building infuriation right in its tracks.
“You can see her?” he asked. “I mean, see her see her?”
“Duh. Can’t you? Black hair. Brown eyes. Nice tatas.”
Docia gasped, but it was more a strangled laugh than a sound of outrage.
“I mean the Bodywalker inside her,” he said dryly.
She rolled her eyes. “Like I said. Brown eyes. Black hair. Nice—”
“SingSing!” he cut her off.
“They look different otherwise. Docia’s more adorable, while the other one inside is more … ladylike.” She said it as if it were a curse, then shuddered to punctuate it. “It’ll be harder to see the difference once they’re Blended and all that. Say, did you get sex goobers all over my bedding?”
“SingSing!”
* * *
“This is a bad idea,” Ram grumbled as he watched SingSing zip up a thick purple parka with a lime-green tuft of fur running around the edge of the hood.
“If you want to get past those Templars, you’re going to need me. And since this house isn’t going to be safe with those kooks running around in my woods looking for you, I have to leave anyway. Me and the babies will come with, and once we’re all safe, I’ll just go about my business. You think I want to be weighed down by a couple of Bodywalker clowns? Huh? Huh?” She gave them a dirty look, but by then they weren’t buying her anti-everyone attitude. The Djynn cared more than she was letting on. Otherwise she could have easily booted them back out into the daylight instead of putting them up. But she was right. The woods were going to be crawling with Templars. They were going to need her help getting out of there.
“Of course not,” Ram agreed placatingly. “We appreciate your help.”
Inside of Docia, stranger things were happening than outside of her. She was harboring a fugitive! A Templar runaway. A defector.
Well, how cool was that? Tameri. She was soft and gentle at heart. Honest. But, oh my, she was powerful. Docia couldn’t believe it when those words and that power had been birthed from her lips! But thank God, oh, thank God Tameri was a good guy. She realized now what a danger it had been, what a chance she might have taken, entering into the agreement to share her body. For all she knew, she might have agreed to live a hundred or so years trapped submissively within her own body, a dominant Templar forcing her into subjugation, helpless to do anything but watch.
Hush. You did not make a bad choice, Tameri soothed her. Nor did I. You have a strong and beautiful spirit. Your innocence and your optimism will help us carry this war to an end.
Docia was putting on a pair of mittens that SingSing had loaned her— along with the rest of her outfit— but she paused a moment to gaze at her hands. There was a flowing sort of numbness in her extremities. First normal, then numb, then tingling brightly. Like limbs falling asleep and awakening again, but without the pain. In her head it was like being hyperaware, her senses of sight and smell feeling sharp and oh so very awake. She could hear things, like the tiny rasp of air against the walls of his larynx as Ram breathed in. The occasional rustle of SingSing’s hair that made her suspect her “babies” were in there and peeking out. And within her own body she could hear almost everything.
It will eventually become background noise again, Tameri assured her. Just as it was before. You just have become used to dismissing these sounds, if you heard them at all. But your senses are stronger now, as are you.
It had been strange at first, sitting back and listening to Tameri and Ram speak. But every time she had chimed in, felt compelled to say something, it had come through. The switch in dominance was still a bit awkward, and Tameri assured her that they would one day soon begin to feel like a single consciousness, the way Ram and Vincent did when not victims of the Suspension spell. It would become as natural as breathing.
Docia tried to feel sad that Vincent was no longer there, tried to tell herself that it had not been Ram making love to her the morning before. But again, she could feel this wasn’t the case. There truly was no separating the two of them. Without that spell, there was very little distinction. She felt the same way for the Ram/Vincent blend as she had for Vincent alone.
She couldn’t even force herself to feel awkward about it. But what came through, perhaps because of Tameri, was this terrible sense of anxiety. She fretted and worried that he might change his mind, that he might turn on her. That she hadn’t done enough to convince him of her sincerity.
It would have to be enough, Docia agreed. There was nothing more she could do or say to convince him that she had not already tried. But she suspected, she hoped … he was coming around. That he was seeing the wisdom of her approach.
But she couldn’t worry about that part of things just yet. She had a whole other worry beyond getting past the Templars possibly hunting them in the woods.
“We need to get to Jackson,” she insisted. “I will go wherever you like, but please … I want to see my brother before we go anywhere else.”
Ram turned and looked down at her, his head tilting ever so slightly to the left as he studied her for a moment.
“I said I would bring you to him, and I will. But it will have to be quick and discreet, Docia. With Tameri inside of you and the Templars on the hunt for her, they might resort to—”
He broke off and a very dark look clouded his features. So dark that she felt a terrible fear and dread wash through her. Tameri’s thoughts solidified what she was already suspecting.
“You mean they will go after Jackson to get to me?” she said anxiously, reaching to clutch at him. “To get at Tameri?”
“Odjit knows that whatever is important to you becomes important to Tameri. More so as time moves on and the Blending moves forward.”
“We have to warn him!” she gasped. “He’s just a human and she’s so powerful! So ruthless! Oh, my God!”
“And she is only the tip of it,” he agreed grimly. “There are others … those who work with and for her.”
“Don’t worry,” SingSing called to them in a singsong tone. “Let’s go! Chop chop!” She threw open the door and let in the frigid dark of night and the sight of rogue snowflakes dropping here and there, accompanied every so often by a swirl of them blown from the roof of a laden tree.
She led the way, trudging through the six or seven inches of snow that had fallen while they were sleeping, quickly making a path and seeming to know exactly where she was going. Docia saw Ram looking behind them and at the ground with concern. Their tracks were visible. It would be nothing for the Templars to follow them.
“Does Tameri know any obfuscation spells, by any chance?” he asked after a few minutes, as if he’d been debating whether to voluntarily ask for that kind of help. Strangely, she was kind of proud of him for it. There was no contempt or even judgment in the request. No sign of prejudice other than his initial hesitation.
“No. We don’t have much access to those simpler magics. Ask for something grandiose or complex and we are very well versed, but something so simple?” She shrugged. But it made Docia wonder. “If the Politic don’t use magic, how have they held their own against the Templars for so long?”
/> The smile that turned wickedly over his lips and into his eyes made her heart flutter and her whole body go warm. There was something so deviously sexual and potently male in the expression. It was the face a man made when he had no doubt of his own prowess.
“Just because we don’t use magic does not mean we do not have power,” he said mysteriously. Instantly she began to internally hound Tameri for the answer he was withholding, but she was keeping silent.
“Great. My Bodywalker can choose sides and gang up on me,” she muttered.
“Not for long,” Ram assured her with a chuckle. “Relax. Let her have her moments of independence while they last. She is only ever truly herself when confined to the Ether or first resolving into the Blending.”
Docia had not thought of that. And because he said it, those parts of her that had been fretting over never being her independent self again quieted down and relaxed. Sure, she was going to lose her original self to some degree for the rest of her time here on Earth, but at least she would regain it when she left it, and at least she would be allowed to move on peacefully to what was next instead of being forced to recycle over and over. She had already died once. She was happy to draw the line at twice.
SingSing led them about a half mile toward a second building. A large garage of sorts. And once she opened the door, she revealed a shiny new SUV in a startling but beautiful green color. Docia was beginning to get the idea that the Djynn were fond of bold colors. Which, when she thought about it, very much suited the ballsy little genie.
Then the Djynn turned around and smiled at them, putting her hand on each of their arms.
“This is for the best,” she said. “Woof!”
And with a purplish poof, there were two dogs standing where her guests had been.
Two poodles.
“Oh, don’t look at me with those glary eyes, Body-walker,” she said, smirking at Ram. “How else do you expect me to get you past any Templars in the road? Just hang your head out the window and drool. Really sell it. We’ll be fine if you do.”