Читать книгу Masked Possession - Alana Delacroix - Страница 14

Chapter 8

When Eric opened his eyes, he saw Caro hovering over him, dark hair now loose around her shoulders and eyes wide with shock and confusion. She reached her hand out to touch his face softly and shivered when he kissed her palm, her gaze never leaving his. The door banged open and Stephan ran in, Tom right behind him with his gun drawn.

“What happened?” Stephan demanded sharply. “I heard you call.”

“I don’t know.” Caro sounded dazed. “He collapsed and said it was convergence and I tried CPR, then there was a room but it was a cave, not a room, with dancing people and it was black and now I’m here but I was there and I don’t know what happened.”

She was rambling. “Stephan, give Caro a drink. Brandy.” Eric sat up and experienced a dizzying wave of nausea. “Better make that two.”

“I’m ordering the medics.” Stephan already had his phone out.

“No!” Eric’s voice sounded harsher than he intended and he softened it. “No. I’m fine. We’ll talk about it later.” He shot his lieutenant a look that stilled Stephan’s hand. Tom was on alert, checking the room while keeping his laser attention focused on Caro.

Eric would deal with Tom’s suspicions later. Despite his horror at what had happened, his concern was for Caro. What she had done should have been impossible. Completely impossible. Somehow she had managed to get into his mind, to see the dark cavern where he kept the memories of his past masques. Only Hierarchs and the best healers had the power and ability to do that. He replayed what had happened while she was there, but began to get hard almost immediately. Now was not the time to think about the way her soft, strong legs had wrapped around him. He put it firmly out of his mind and leaned over to face her. “Caro. Caro, look at me.”

She raised huge starry eyes and when she met his gaze, flushed a red so deep that Eric would have laughed had he not been shaken. She remembered everything. She shouldn’t remember. Then again, she shouldn’t have been able to do what she had done in the first place, so why was he surprised?

“Did that happen?” Her voice quavered. “Where was I?”

There was no way to sugarcoat it and he couldn’t lie to her. “In my mind.”

“You’re kidding.” She stared at his forehead, then passed a hand over her eyes. “Seems a little small for the two of us.”

A huge wave of relief passed over him. Caro was resilient. He took her hand and felt her stiffen at his touch. He hoped to God it wasn’t with distaste. “I’m not. I think you stopped the convergence. You grounded me, stopped the feedback loop.”

Stephan handed Caro a small snifter and she took it without speaking. His lieutenant handed Eric his own glass. “Is that true?” he demanded.

Eric wrapped his arms around Caro, who was now shaking uncontrollably. “Change what I said and get the medics. I think she’s going into shock.”

Caro pulled out of his embrace, and he fought the intense desire to bring her back into his arms. “No, no medics. Some more of that brandy though.” Her voice grew stronger. In a moment, she rose to her feet and walked, unsteadily, over to one of the chairs. Pushing her hair away from her face, she pointed at Eric.

“Tell me exactly what that was about,” she ordered, clearly not caring that she was addressing the Hierarch. “None of your masquerada lies.”

Tom took a threatening step toward her but Eric waved him off as he rose to his feet. He was slick with sweat and stripped off his shirt without thinking twice. Caro’s eyes flickered slightly and he smiled inwardly, loving the effect he had on her, before grabbing a blanket and draping it over his shoulders.

“What did you see?” he countered. He was having trouble processing it himself. His mind was in turmoil.

She responded instantly. “A cave. High ceiling. Long and dark, with figures whirling around like dervishes. Different ages and ethnicities. Men and women and children. They wore costumes from different time periods. The ones in more modern clothes were at the back, toward you. Why were they moving? They looked frenzied, wild, but their faces were frozen.”

Eric and Stephan shared a glance. “They’re usually still, almost as if they’re posed,” Eric said. “It must have been the convergence.”

“There were so many,” she said softly. “How long have you been a masquerada?”

“Over four hundred years.” A sharp pain pierced Eric’s head. It was hard to think of the past while close to a convergence point.

“Then what happened?” asked Stephan. Tom listened closely, a heavy frown on his bronzed face.

“Ah, Eric was hidden at the end of them, lying down under a sheet.” Caro looked helplessly at Eric and he felt himself twitch again.

A summary would suffice. “She put her hand on my face and we found ourselves back here.” Stephan shot him a suspicious look but said nothing. Eric ignored him. “Caro, what you did— I don’t understand how you did it. Only a healer should have been able to do that, and they’re adept masquerada who have been well-trained. Even then, they’re rarely successful.”

Caro drank down the snifter and poured herself another generous tot. She drank down the third brandy and coughed. “What do you mean by stopping the feedback loop?”

“Convergence is caused when you lose control of the masques. They keep coming up through your psyche, fighting your core self until they overwhelm it.” Caro’s gorgeous eyes were wide, but she motioned for him to continue. He forced himself to speak, although thinking about what he’d narrowly avoided gave him a feverish, sick feeling. “You stepped in between, broke the cycle. Gave the core enough time to master them all.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said roughly.

“Then how can this have happened?” Tom’s hand was firmly on the handle of his holstered gun. “Is there something you should tell us? Are you a masquerada, Ms. Yeats? Can you at least keep your mouth shut?”

Caro started as though he had slapped her, then her brown eyes narrowed. “I’m discreet.” She put down the empty glass with a steady hand. “This is no one’s business but yours.”

“Good. Much depends on that. Discretion means not telling your boss, by the way.”

Eric clapped his hands together. “Enough, Tom. Caro said she would keep what happened to herself. It doesn’t matter how it happened. It’s done.” He felt the heavyweight horror of the experience, and an overpowering fear that it would happen again. He couldn’t let it. “Caro, is your plan ready to go now?”

“What?”

“Your plan. The one you presented earlier. I need it right now.”

She shook her head as though clearing it. “Of course. Give me a moment.” She shut her eyes for a few seconds as she took a deep breath. Then her voice became completely professional. Eric admired her self-discipline, strong enough for a masquerada. “We still need thirty-six hours for the main show, but can start reducing the others immediately.”

“Stephan?”

“Not a problem.”

“Caro, begin.”

She turned to Stephan. “I’ll need your help.”

“Whatever I can do,” he said immediately.

Caro checked her laptop and began to list off items in a firm voice.

Stephan nodded as he took notes. “Anything else?”

“The Hierarch can’t leave this house as any of the affected masques.”

“That’s fine,” Eric said. The mere thought of masquing at all made him feel ill. He needed to come to grips with it himself.

Caro gave Stephan a few more rapid instructions about possible flight times. “I need to get in touch with our field crews.” She shut down her laptop and slid it into her bag. “Stephan, I’ll call you by noon.”

She gave Eric a quick, confused glance as she nodded farewell but that was it. He didn’t push her. She would need time to think about what had happened, as did he. She was already on her phone as Tom and Stephan walked her out.

* * * *

When Stephan returned alone, Eric was lying on the sofa, staring at the wall. The lieutenant didn’t beat around the bush. “Tom doesn’t trust her. He’s doing a background check. She must have some masquerada blood.”

“Maybe.” It would make a lot of sense if there was some in her background. There were definitely statics walking around with an ancestor’s indiscretion hidden in their cells. Although most would never be affected, the masquerada line occasionally ran true.

“What the hell happened there? Is it true?”

“It happened,” Eric said. He didn’t want to think about the convergence and how he had come close to losing himself. Instead, he wanted to think about how good Caro felt against him, and the soft feel of her hot tongue on his skin.

“Those masques are dead to you now,” Stephan said roughly. “You nearly converged. Christ, you did converge. You’re lucky as hell you’re not sitting there with six legs.”

Stephan was right. He couldn’t deny it. “Okay.”

“You can’t change into any of them again. I want the medics to check you over. No masquing at all until they give the go-ahead. None.”

Eric nodded. “Fine.” No problem there—he was in no particular hurry to live through that again. It had been sheer luck that Caro had been there to ground him.

“This needs to be kept quiet.” Stephan started to pace the room. “If Caro talks, we’ll be in real trouble. Iverson won’t hesitate to use this as a weapon against you.”

“I know.”

To Iverson and his followers, strength lay in the shifting ability. It wasn’t only them, either. Almost every masquerada believed the same thing. Those who could shift into multiple masques were automatically given a respect not accorded to those who could not, even though the ability was one masquerada were born with and was usually hereditary. Since the type of masques one could take on couldn’t be changed through hard work or practice, Eric found this class structure deplorable and unjust. He’d spent years trying to combat it. It was slow work.

If it got out that he couldn’t shift…there would be problems.

He sighed. At least that wouldn’t happen. He could still take on masques. All he had to do was take a few days off. The medics could be trusted to keep silent and so could Caro. He knew it. Then he caught sight of Stephan’s frown. “What now?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got the worst poker face imaginable. Give me the rest of it.”

Stephan looked resigned. “You won’t like it,” he warned.

“Jesus, spit it out.”

“I’ll say it one more time. Frieda has experience with convergence. She’s a registered healer and they take a vow of patient secrecy.”

Eric nodded. Stephan probably had a point. “As long as she doesn’t take this as a willingness to enter a personal relationship.” Not again.

“I’ll make it clear it’s professional and consultative only.”

Eric rubbed his head, too tired to argue. “You win. Call her in.”

“She must be a masquerada,” Stephan said.

“You know she is.”

“Caro, not Frieda. How else could she do that? Get into your mind like that?”

“I have no idea.” Could she be? He hadn’t felt a thing from her, none of that subtle energy that helped masquerada identify each other.

“Tom will find out. I’m curious myself.”

“Me too,” Eric murmured.

Though perhaps not for the same reasons.