Lost In Time: A Fallen Novel (9 page)

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Be careful,” was his only response before he Flashed away. Celeste looked around the empty graveyard. The sun was reaching the peak of the day, bathing her in sunshine and light. Victor was right. Keeping a distance between herself and Marcus was the only way she would be able to walk away from this and fulfill her destiny and save her brothers and father. Her heart twisted, but she turned into the light of the sun and took several breaths letting the warmth of the sun spread through her.

This time she took the bed in the back of the jet. She was exhausted and although Victor had healed her, she needed to get some rest. If she was going up against Calliope again she was going to need as much strength as possible. He was far stronger than she had originally thought.

She left Marcus on the phone with a laptop in front of him. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow. Her last thought was of Marcus’s past and of the mysterious Jessica. It annoyed her she cared so much. Especially after the stern talking to she had given herself in the graveyard.

“Wake up.” Marcus shook her roughly, and she rolled over glaring at him. He glared right back. “We’re going to land soon, and we have some things we need to discuss.”

Celeste pulled herself into a sitting position wiping the sleep from her eyes. “Really, I can’t imagine what we have to discuss.” She blinked innocently up at him.

“You’re very good at that,” Marcus snapped in anger. Celeste took a deep breath, the smell of Marcus almost making her eyes cross in pleasure. He smelled incredible, like sun warmed skin and the unique smell that was all Marcus and all man. She honestly couldn’t think of anything that smelled better.

Celeste mentally shook herself. Lifting an eyebrow waiting for him to continue. Not sure her tongue would work if she tried to speak anyway.

“You have an amazing ability to turn conversations back on a person with sarcasm.”

She folded her arms, feeling as if he was just warming up. Her father had done it more times than she could count.

That’s when she felt the slide of passion from deep in the pit of her stomach. It flowed into her lower back and started to pulse. She pushed it away and concentrated on Marcus. The time change from the Infernos to this plane was going to be a problem. Time passed quicker here. She had been here three, maybe four days, and the Sex Demon in her was getting restless. She ignored its whine of attention pulsing in her lower back and attempted to concentrate on the lecture Marcus was working on giving.

“If we are going to work together we need to be honest with each other,” Marcus started.

She laughed. “As a Reaper and a Demon. I’m sure you can understand I have some issues with trust of any kind outside of my brothers and father.”

“But does that include the brother that has gone rouge and killed innocent mortals and Reapers? The same one that is trying, as we speak, to take over the Infernos and unleash them on the mortal world?”

“I will say this one last time, Fallen. I am not working with Calliope. In case you may have missed it, I have a lot to lose if he wins. My home, my family, my very way of life. He also just kicked my ass. That’s not really making me eager to join his team.” What did he think was going to happen to anyone who stood against the Reaper? The half breeds and mortals would be the first to go. She wasn’t an idiot. She had read history from both the Others and from the mortal plane. She had everything to loss here. If he couldn’t put that together, she had strongly misinterpreted his intelligence.

“What exactly are your abilities?” Her mouth dropped open when he asked this question. It was like asking Superman who his alter ego was.

She leaned forward placing her hands on the bed. “You tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine.” She let some of her Sex Demon pheromone leak out, infusing the room. She hoped it would get him to leave her the hell alone for a moment.

Marcus immediately rose to his feet and left. Well, at least she knew how to clear a room. Unfortunately, he was the one man she wanted to stay, and he really didn’t like her.

****

When they landed, the sun was just rising, and she scrambled from the plane so she could catch it. Marcus gave her the strangest look as she pushed past him in her excitement to exit the plane.

As the door opened, she leapt from the plane before the stairs were brought into place. Landing on the balls of her feet, she oriented herself and turned toward the sunrise, smiling when she realized she was in time. She closed her eyes and breathed in the sight and smell of the new day.

“What are you doing? I thought we were under attack,” Marcus snarled next to her.

She waved him away. “It’s beautiful, and not even your sorry ass attitude can change it.”

“What?” he demanded.

Celeste turned to him in utter shock. She reached out and slapped him upside the head like she would do to one of her brothers.

“The sunrise.” She pointed. “Now shut up.”

Marcus snapped his mouth shut and turned to the sunrise. She ignored him. She had promised herself she wasn’t going to let him get to her. She swore she was going to remain completely aloof when it came to him. He was her partner, and when it was done she would go back to the Infernos, and he would go back to whatever it was he did on the mortal plane. When he owed a pound of flesh, she would be there to care for him as she had been for the last two hundred years.

“Can we go now?” Marcus asked once the sun was fully visible.

Celeste turned to him. “Have you become so jaded in this world you cannot enjoy something as simple as a sunrise?”

Her question seemed to surprise him, and he looked back toward the sun, then to her. “I have no idea what you are talking about. I just watched it with you, did I not?”

She couldn’t help it. All her promises flew out the proverbial window she reached out and cupped his cheek. “But did you enjoy it? Did you feel the majesty of it?” she whispered as if speaking the words too loudly would break the spell that a new sunrise always spun for her.

He jerked away from her touch as if it burned him. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Celeste nodded. “I understand.”

He narrowed his eyes and walked to a waiting car. She followed, and before climbing into the dark interior, took one last look at the sun and breathed in the clean air. It was enough that she understood.

****

Marcus couldn’t understand the woman. One minute she was spitting mad and hitting him. The next she looked so calm, and still she could have been a statue. Her enjoyment of the sunrise baffled him. When had he last taken the time to enjoy the sunrise?

Jessica’s face popped into his memory, and he pushed it aside. She was his past. She had moved on, and he had as well. Things were better this way.

“Cameron has been here for two days, but as a Tracker he has to almost be within reach of a Guardian before he knows there is one there,” Marcus offered.

“I thought Trackers could track anything?” Celeste asked, not looking at him, but out of the window at everything they passed. She seemed to be memorizing it all as they passed.

“They can, but to get the best results they need to have to have come into contact with something of the entity they are tracking. It must be either by way of a personal effect, or actual contact. They can sense Guardians, but like I said, they have to be very close in order to pick them out,” Marcus offered.

“But you are able to sense and know where the Guardians are, correct?” Celeste asked taking her braid she wrapped it around her hand, playing with the silver tipped ends.

“Yes, and the other way around. We have that unique ability so we stay away from each other.” And for the last several centuries it had worked, but now Marcus was turning it against them. If he ever believed he would one day be redeemed, it flew out the window. By tracking down Guardians, revealing who they were and not just revealing who they were, but revealing who they were to Reapers. Hell was too good a place for him.

She looked thoughtful, and Marcus watched her, unable to take his eyes off the movements of her hands. As the silky strands were wrapped around her wrist, his palms itched to reach out and touch it, to feel it run through his fingers. Was it as silky as it looked? His entire body reacted, stringing him as tight as a bow, frustrating him in more ways than he could point out at the moment.

Celeste dropped her hair and snapped her fingers in his face. “Hello, Fallen?”

Marcus shook himself. “Excuse me?”

“What are you doing?” Celeste asked, confusion written all over her face.

She was staring at his groin, and he shifted, uncomfortable, and looked down. Not his groin, his hands in his lap. He had snapped the pen he was holding in one hand and crushed the cell phone in the other.

“Damn it.” He threw the objects across the vehicle.

Celeste rolled her eyes, her brow creasing as if she was thinking really hard. “So you can sense them? The Guardians? So we send you out to scout them, and then we move in?”

Marcus wished it were that easy. “They don’t really trust the Fallen, Celeste. And like in Australia I can’t just move on them.”

She rolled her eyes, and he realized it was a form of communication with her. He had seen her do it so many times in the last several days he was beginning to at least understand her eye rolling and sarcasm. It was little help, though, because everything else about her was a complete and utter mystery. That particular eye roll meant she had just told him she wasn’t an idiot.

“Duh. You sniff them out, and then we’ll send the Tracker in. If he can get a lead on them, then we just need to watch and see who the Touched is.” She shrugged as if it were really going to be that easy. “I can tell when a mortal is Touched. Or, we could do like we did in Australia and wait for Calliope to find and disembowel the Touched and lose another Guardian. Oh, and of course, the possible chance to stop Calliope from entering the Infernos, but really I’ll let you decide.” She said picking up her braid she toyed with it again. But her shoulders were tense, and he understood now she was just as uptight about the situation as he was. She just showed it differently.

“Sarcasm much?” Marcus quipped to put her at ease.

She actually smiled at his flippancy, but otherwise kept her mouth shut. She must think she had gotten her point across, but all she had done was irritate the hell out of him.

“The Trackers have a home here. We will be staying there,” he snapped.

“Where is it?”

“What?”

“The home? It is close to the city, close to Bourbon Street?” Marcus smiled, his irritation immediately forgotten at her obvious excitement. She couldn’t keep it out of her voice. “Celeste, have you never been to New Orleans?” He actually felt the wall fly up between them and had to control the urge to lean away from her.

“No.” Her voice was calm, but he saw emotions pass through her violet eyes.

“It’s a wonderful place. I think you will enjoy it. I am sure, as we search the city you will be able to see a great deal of it.”

She pursued her lips together and turned back to the window. “That would be nice.” But he heard the quiver of excitement, the thrill of the possible. It made him wonder what else she had missed out on while being raised in the Infernos with only men to teach her anything.

She was such a contradiction; one minute a spitting mad Demon. The next an excited woman on her first visit to New Orleans. He was definitely going to have to consult Kyra on this issue. Either that, or kill Celeste in a fit of rage because she seemed to touch his every last nerve, and he did the same to her. In fact, this was the longest they had gone without arguing since they met three, no, four days ago. They passed the International Date Line twice, and now he wasn’t sure even what day it was.

“How old are you, Celeste?” Marcus scolded himself. He didn’t want to know that information. He wanted to maintain a distance from this woman.

“Why?”

Well, he had stuck his foot in his mouth. He might as well continue. “Just that keeping you a secret must have been a great ordeal. I can’t imagine it has gone on that long.”

She rolled her eyes again, this time saying it was his turn to be the idiot. “Why, because Dante and the Reapers are such a wealth of information? Strike up a lot of conversations with Reapers on your visits?”

“Celeste, I have been in and out of the Infernos for several centuries. I think I would have remembered seeing you.”

“Five hundred years,” she offered.

Marcus just sat there. That was impossible. He would have noticed her. How could he have missed her? She was a wet dream waiting to happen, and he was damn sure he would remember her. Then he shook his head, where the hell had that thought come from? Not that it wasn’t true but damn, he would have liked to think he had remembered meeting her.

“That’s not possible.”

She leaned forward, her breath whispering against his face. He drew in her smell, and something clicked in the back of his brain. It was gone just as fast. She smelled like clean sheets just pulled from the line. He had never thought that smell was erotic, but with her braid slipping from her lap and landing against his thigh, he went hot all over. Between her smell and that damn hair, all he wanted was to push her back against the seat and kiss her, which shocked the hell out of him. He thought he had grown past those types of physical emotions. Then her words brushed against him like a caress. Whispered so quietly, Marcus had to lean in a little farther in order to hear them.

“That would be, because it was a secret.” She barely breathed the last word, and then leaned back, placing her index finger against her full lips and winked at him.

Marcus fell back in his seat and just glared at her, fighting with himself. One side wanted to push her back into the cushions and press himself against her sweet body. The other side of him, the celibate side, wanted to get as far away from her as possible. However, at the moment, he was trapped in the car with her. She was doing something to him that he couldn’t explain, and it was turning him on and pissing him off at the same time.

Finally, she broke the silence. “The black robs, Fallen. They hide a lot.”

“Marcus,” he said.

“Excuse me?”