“Before I forget,” Ana said. “You have an amulet that my friend wants. You stole it.”
He shrugged. “Your friend can’t have it. I don’t even have it anymore.”
She could tell he was lying, but also that he wouldn’t tolerate more questions. She glanced out the window to see the gray light of a cloudy dawn stretching over the mountains. “How’s the weather?”
“Good enough for your vehicle. Got a place to go?”
“Yeah. But having a place to go isn’t the problem. Getting there is.”
Comprehension flashed across his face. “Shit. Of course you can’t drive. No cars in Otherworld.”
“Bingo. I always wanted to learn to drive, but I’m never on earth long enough. I don’t suppose you could…?”
He sighed. “Yeah, sure. To get you out of my hair.”
“Thanks, really. Let me change my clothes”—she plucked at the fabric now stiff with dried blood—“then could we get out of here?”
“In a hurry to start your life on earth?”
The opposite. “I’ve got to see a Druid priestess about a trip to Otherworld.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Cam’s body lay chained to the windswept tor while his mind hurtled nearly three thousand years into the past. To a time centuries before he’d ever met Ana.
Or so he’d thought.
As fist-sized hail pelted his battered body and left bruises that would heal so that others could form, the memory of a night he’d long forgotten rose in his mind, spurred on by the sight of Ana on the floor, her chest drenched in blood from his arrow.
Pain and delirium fueled the hallucination. Or memory. Which, he couldn’t tell.
In his mind, he was no longer chained to a rock in the worst of the elements of Otherworld. He was standing in a clearing, observing the drunken debauchery of his fellow gods. It was an enormous party, and it appealed to his senses on every level. Joy and lust and other things that he’d never believed he’d felt as a god all surged through him, fueled by the wine that flowed freely.
All facilitated by the High Priestess Druantia, who he’d thought a worthless upstart following the last battle. After this night, he’d have to change his opinion of her. She was still just a servant, but one who attempted to make amends for her failures.
And oh, how she did. Wine, food, dancing. And she directed him to a nymph, a Dryad of the oak trees, who sat off to the side. Lovelier than any woman he’d ever seen, with shining gold hair and green eyes.
Ana. Every hair on her
head, every expression on her face. It was Ana. His dream self didn’t know to find it strange that a mortal who had yet to be born was here in this forest with him. Drunk on the wine and the revelry, he gazed upon her, his eyes tracing her athletic form draped in fine blue wool and reclining against the roots of the oak.
“Are you enjoying the evening?” he asked once he reached her.
She glanced up at him, stood slowly, and smiled. “Perhaps I will now.”
“You haven’t been enjoying the festivities?”
She shrugged. “Our presence was required by our mistress, Druantia.”
Of course. Oaks were sacred to the Druids, whom the Dryads served.
She turned toward the deeper part of the forest and waved her hand. “Come with me. I tire of the noise.”
He followed her as she led him back through the trees, away from the madness and revelry reaching a fever pitch in the clearing behind. Her hips swayed gracefully as she walked and her hair tumbled down her back. His eyes traced over her form, unable to look away.
She stopped at the base of a graceful old oak and turned to him. Her eyes were brighter now, and a smile curved her mouth.
“You prefer it here, away from the noise,” he said.