Page 28 of Awakening Storm

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When Rhianna awokethe next morning, she’d seen enough of golden eyes throughout the night in her dreams to predict that staying on the island wouldn’t work. She knew it was just her brains working while she slept, but it felt like more. Could he have some special power over her? She shivered. Or was it her imagination working overtime? Even her curiosity couldn’t sustain her for an entire three-quarters of a month under his watchful stare. Really, she must have been delusional last night when she’d proposed the idea.

Aidan was sitting in the living room when she entered. “Do you want to eat something before we leave?” he asked.

“No. Just coffee,” she mumbled. She rolled her sleepy eyes. Evidently he was the chipper sort in the morning.

She plopped into a chair, and he delivered a piping hot cup to her. She took a sip. It was just right. “How did you know how I take my coffee?”

“I watched you last night. Plus, my keen sense of smell helps.”

She angled her head, lifting a brow. “Is that because of your tiger?”

“Yes. Good guess.”

She chewed on her fingernail for a moment. “It’s still hard to believe . . . shape-shifting, I mean.”

He nodded. “I imagine it seems impossible . . . Now how can you contact your team?”

His focus on getting her out of there stung, but she tried to ignore it. “I have satellite phone. The director and some other members of the crew are stationed on a ship not far away.”

“After you finish your coffee, we’ll go topside and call.”

With a nod of agreement, she closed her eyes and drank. The warmth touching her mouth reminded her of his kiss last night. When she opened her eyes again, the same eyes that had haunted her sleep were watching her. She finished the last of her coffee in one more gulp and stood. “I’m ready,” she announced.

A sadness pressed on her heart as she collected her satchel and met him at the entrance. They didn’t speak as he led the way. She noted as they went the beauty of his home and everything he’d accomplished. She admired him for that. Which made her departure weigh heavier on her.

The next thing she knew, they were aboveground near the great tree. She still didn’t know the whole story about the tree. “You know,” she said, “if you chat on the ham radio or the Internet, perhaps we can keep in touch.” Then one day he’d share everything with her, she thought.

“Uh, sure,” he said.

But his response was without conviction. And it certainly wasn’t filled with any of the passion she’d felt in his kiss. There she was again, back to that inescapable moment. She wondered now if she’d merely imagined the exchange or perhaps attributed more significance to the act than he’d intended. She decided it must be the latter.

Aidan stopped in a clearing up ahead. “You should have better reception here without the trees for interference.”

She dug in her bag, pulled out the sat phone, powered it up, and dialed. She paced while it rang. He stood off to one side, waiting. No one picked up, so she ended the call and tried again. “Nope. I’m not sure it’s going through.”

“Let me see.” He accepted the phone that she handed him and stared at its screen, reading the information there. “The signal strength seems okay. Sometimes the satellites go down, though, and an entire area is taken out.”

“I don’t know much about them,” she admitted. But given his remote location, she guessed that’s what he used on a regular basis.

He moved farther away from her and climbed a rocky bank, pointing the phone’s antenna toward the sky. “I’m going to text them. Sometimes that gets through when a call doesn’t.”

“Okay.” Rhianna hugged her arms around her middle. She watched as he manipulated the device, and she thought of all the gadgets and machines he had in his workshop.

Without warning, something lifted her feet off the ground and floated her forward. A scream ripped from her throat and the unnatural sensation made her feel as if she as enveloped in something, inside some kind of bubble. She turned her head to search out Aidan, but his attention was still on the phone.

“Help!” she yelled.

“It’s too late,” an icy voice sounded from within a haze.

Rhianna snapped her head around to find the sorceress, dressed in black, fitted garb with a flowing midnight-blue robe layered on top. An ornate warrior’s breastplate showed beneath as well as a decoration of some kind of spiked armor over her left shoulder. In her right hand, she extended a scepter that was emitting a florescent blue-green glow.Her power source,Rhia guessed.

They were both moving into a swirl of blackness. Rhianna tried to tug free, straining in the opposite direction.

It was as if rock and dirt and trees created a funnel and she was about to be sucked into the whirlpool.

Again, Rhianna screamed for help. She looked toward Aidan. Finally, she appealed to him with her mind instead of her voice.