The Man From Forever

She hadn’t left. Instead, she’d come to where the army leader had lost his life. More of the enemy than he could count had walked to the cross to aim their cameras at it, but she was simply standing beneath it, alone, looking sad and cautious, her eyes taking in her surroundings.

She sensed he was here. Everything about the way she moved and looked told him that. He could walk away from her, leave her with nothing except her suspicions. Or he could approach her and see if she again ran in terror.

Instead, he simply watched and absorbed and learned as she crouched at the cross’s base and ran her fingers over the dried grasses growing there. She looked, he thought, almost as he must when he touched his son’s blanket. Knowing that twisted his heart in a way he didn’t want. She was the enemy. It was his right to hate her. But how does a man hate a woman who has crawled into his dreams?

Confused, he moved a little closer so he could study her features without being watched in return. As he did, she sprang to her feet and looked warily in all directions, her long, straight, shiny hair floating on a breeze. She was like others of her kind, stupid in the ways of the wilderness. If she had spent her life hunting, she would know to watch for birds or rabbits frightened from their hiding places. The birds and small creatures always told when something dangerous was about.

Still, he didn’t ridicule her for her lack of knowledge; her body’s language told him that she sensed something few did. Yes, many came here, but instead of letting the land tell them what had happened that cold morning, they read the talking leaves they’d brought with them or the plaques that had been placed in the ground back where they left their cars. As a consequence, they knew nothing.

She understood that yesterday waited in the wind, and for that he admired her. He wondered what she heard, whether everything was being revealed to her or whether she knew only the army’s side. For her to truly understand this haunted place, she needed to hear the beating of Maklaks’ hearts, feel their fear and anger. There was only one way she could know all that; only one person who could tell her—him. In his mind he imagined himself looking into her soft, dark eyes while his words brought his people back to life.

What was he thinking? She was evil! Muscles taut, he touched his hand to the knife strapped to his waist.

He’d been here that long-ago day, a silent and somber shadow among other shadows that had come to watch this meeting between his chief and the army leaders. Keintepoos had had no faith in the words the army men spoke because those men were ruled by their leaders who lived far away and made decisions about things they didn’t understand, who hated and feared the Maklaks, who they had never shared meat with. His voice hard with anger and frustration, Keintepoos had agreed with the shaman Cho-ocks and the killer Ha-kar-Jim that if the army lost their leader, the others would flee in disarray. That was why Keintepoos had killed the army man, but instead of going back to where they’d come from, the army’s strength had grown until there was no escaping them.

Why did today’s enemy grieve over the army man’s death? General Canby was one of those who’d helped bring destruction to the People.

The woman was still looking for him, her attention split between the cross and whatever she was trying to find in the horizon. With her every movement, his awareness of her grew, until it was as if she stood beside him, her hand extended to him in invitation and challenge. He felt his body weakening, knew that if she placed her fingers on his flesh, he would forget everything except his need for her.

Sucking in sage-sweet air, he gripped his lower thigh with all the strength in his fingers until hunger for her was replaced by pain. Still, he knew that once the pain was gone, she would again crawl inside him. For a moment of awful and total weakness, he wanted nothing else in life.

Then, because he was a warrior in a world where it was a lonely thing to be a warrior, he pulled hatred from deep inside him and fed upon it.

“Blaiwas! Eagle! Hear my cry. I seek your wisdom. Should the woman live?”

Although he scanned the sky, he saw nothing. Again he sent out a plea, secure in the knowledge that the wind pushed his words behind him where she couldn’t hear. “Blaiwas. Eagle. You are my spirit and the truth lives within you. This woman beats upon my body with fists I do not understand. I must know. The owl call I heard last night. Is it the cry of a mortal bird or Owl himself sending his warning? Am I to die? Is she?”

The sky remained clean and clear, hazed only slightly by the morning, but as he continued to study it, he saw a small, dark and familiar shape. Closer and closer the shape came until he had no doubt that his spirit, Eagle, had answered. Directly overhead now, Eagle rode the wind in large, graceful circles until it was so close that he easily made out the knife-like tips of its talons. It flew with its head lowered, not because it sought food but because it had locked its eyes on him.

Eagle. Blaiwas.

Aware that the woman had taken note of Eagle, he sent out a silent message of thanks that his spirit had answered his call, then repeated his question. As if absorbing the whispered words, Eagle aimed its magnificent body upward in a powerful thrust. The coal-black bird with its pristine white head and tail nearly disappeared before jackknifing and heading down again. This time it aimed itself at the woman, coming so close that she ducked. A cry that seemed to come from the depths of the earth burst from Eagle and held, echoing.

“I see, heed your message. She is danger. I will not forget. Now go! Leave this sorrowful place. Return to Yainax, your mountain.”

Eyes still intent on the eagle who she feared might attack again at any moment, Tory couldn’t be sure whether or not she’d heard a male voice. Given the state of her nerves, anything was possible. An eagle, the largest she’d ever seen—heading right toward her! Coming so close, she swore she’d felt its body heat! Impossible, just like the voice. Then, taking her eyes off the disappearing eagle, she caught a movement near a boulder some fifty yards away. Except it was more than a movement, it was reality.

The warrior had returned. Standing in stark relief against the muted background, he seemed otherworldly and yet… Unconsciously using her researcher’s senses, she took in his hard and healthy body, his sure stride, the proud lift to his head. He seemed unaware of anything except her, and as he came closer, her awareness of the rest of her world faded into nothing.

He might be a hoax—had to be a hoax. Still, her heart and nerve endings hinted at something very, very real. As yesterday, only a single strip of material stood between him and nudity. His slender weapon rode low and secure along his right hip, and his hand hovered scant inches from it, warning her that a sudden movement from her might propel it into his competent fingers. His long ebony hair absorbed the sun and played with the wind and made her ache to bury her fingers in it.

She tried to judge the speed of his walk to gauge how much longer she had before he was close enough to touch her, but she couldn’t tear her thoughts from his body’s beautiful flow. He seemed to be not arms and legs and shoulders and hips, but a single and perfect meshing of everything a man needed to be. His muscles came from the earth, from wrestling life itself from that earth. Watching him walking sure and flat-footed over hostile ground, she believed him totally in touch with his world. In winter he must have to dress to protect himself against the elements, but this wasn’t a man for expensive wools and high-tech synthetics. When the elements drove him to shelter, he would clad himself in what the land around him provided. Remain part and parcel of the land, of eternity.

Through flared nostrils, she breathed of the virgin air and felt herself a virgin—waiting for the man who would take her.

“What do you want?” she asked when only a few feet separated them. Why me? Her entire being hummed with awareness.

He stared, not blinking, eyes like night and the distant past and maybe the future, as well.

“What do you want?” she repeated in a voice that shook and carried no strength. He had it all; maybe he had everything she would ever need.

“You do not belong here. Go.”

His words were thickly accented, hard and rusty as if he hadn’t spoken in years. She tried to concentrate on that, but what he’d said demanded her complete attention. “Don’t belong?”

“I am la’qi. I say you must leave.”

“La’qi?” She stumbled over the foreign word.

“Chief. Chief of this place. I say you do not belong here.”

A hoax. Someone’s idea of a huge joke. Except no laughter waited in his eyes, and she didn’t see how even the finest actor could master his speech pattern, or look as if he’d been forged from the wilderness. It was as if his English came from a half-forgotten source, as if it had been years since he’d had anyone to talk to. “I don’t understand.”

Instead of saying anything, he placed his hand on her shoulder, the grip not quite painful but nothing she could escape. She swayed and then grew strong from his grasp. He, a stranger, had no right touching her. He would know that if he obeyed the laws she’d obeyed all her life, but his incredible eyes spoke of a world beyond her comprehension.

“What do you want?” she asked, although the weight and warmth and warning of his touch made talking all but impossible.

“For you to leave.”

“You—you can’t mean that.” His fingers were heat and barely contained strength. It was as if he were pulling her into him with the contact, and if she didn’t soon put an end to it, there wouldn’t be anything left of her. “I—I have a perfect right.”

“You are evil.”

Evil? This wasn’t funny. She’d tell him that just as soon as he released her thoughts, her everything. “Why are you following me?”

“You came to my land. Walked where you had no right.”

“No right? Look—” She tried to slide out from under him, but he increased the pressure just enough to warn of pain should she resist. She still felt as if he’d wrapped invisible chains around her, but she was now beginning to put herself back together. No longer did she feel as if she might shatter. “Look, this is public property. I don’t know what your game is, what you’ve been paid to pull this stunt, but it isn’t working.”

“I do not play games. I will know the truth. I must know. What is your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes. What do they call you?”

On the verge of telling him, she reached deep down inside for the tenacity that had taken her to the top of her profession. Risking a wrenched shoulder, she rocked back and ducked at the same time, effectively freeing herself. Still, she was left with the unsettling awareness that she now stood alone only because he knew he could recapture her whenever he wanted.

“You are the enemy.” His voice rumbled over the words and made her hair stand on end. “Your presence is not wanted on Maklaks land.”

“Maklaks?”

“Your people call us Modoc but we are Maklaks.” He punctuated his words by tapping his broad, hard, dark chest.

Telling herself that this was an Oscar-winning performance, she quickly judged the distance between her and her car. Even if she’d been an Olympic sprinter, there was no way she could reach safety before his long legs ran her down. Her hands, dangling helplessly by her sides, felt like totally useless appendages. In truth, she wanted to clamp them around her throat to protect it from the deadly looking knife strapped to his hip.

“I ask you one more time. What is your name?”

“Victoria Kent,” she said in a rush, her voice squeaking a little at the end. “Everyone calls me Tory. What—what does it matter? Look—”

“Victoria? Queen Victoria?”

He was talking about the queen of England. But the woman had been dead, what, nearly a hundred years? “N-no,” she stammered. “It’s a family name. My great-great-grandfather’s daughter—”

“Kent? What is that?”

“My father’s family’s name. Look, I don’t know what you’re pulling, but it isn’t funny. I’ve had—I’ve had just about enough of this.” She made what she hoped was a decisive move toward the path leading to the parking lot, but before she’d taken more than two steps, he blocked her progress.

She looked up at him, struggled against the sense of size and strength that flowed around him and lost the battle. There wasn’t an ounce of flab on him, no pale patches of flesh untouched by the sun. His arms and legs told of a man capable of any physical task demanded of him. She gauged his height at around six feet, an imposing piece of knowledge given that he was barefoot and still loomed over her. She glanced down at his feet; at least she tried to, but her gaze snagged on his perfectly molded thighs and calves. Tarzan couldn’t hold a candle to him. He seemed utterly impenetrable, a tree of a man capable of withstanding the fiercest storm.

He took a step toward her and leaned down. When his nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed, she realized he was using all his senses to gain a better understanding of her. She shrank from his scrutiny but didn’t try to escape again, not because she didn’t want to, but because as long as he wanted it, he could keep her here. She wasn’t up to the battle, especially not one with a man who made her feel newborn and weak and hungry simply by looking at her.

What did he see? Arms and legs, slender body, hair usually kept out of the way with a ponytail or braid, no makeup.

Rocking back on his heels, he again settled his hand on her shoulder. As before, lightning arched through her, and for a moment it took everything in her not to collapse. She opened her mouth, stood there with it hanging open, questions without words crowding what remained of her brain. She felt his fingers exploring, half panicked when his search brought his hand dangerously close to the swell of her breast. When he pulled back, she let out a sigh of relief; still, the loss left her feeling empty. He placed his thumb against the base of her throat. When she swallowed, it was as if a part of him had slid into her.

“What…” Run! Yell for help!

“You are part of him.”

“Wh-what?” she stammered. He’d been silent for so long, communicating on another and utterly primitive level, that she’d forgotten he was capable of speaking.

“General Canby. You are part of him.”

That, more than anything that had happened so far, chilled her. She fought the urge to slap his hand, fought to keep a grip on what little of her separate self remained. “What—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You carry his blood in your veins.”

“Who told you that?”

“It is in your eyes and the beating of your heart.”

Shaking, she ordered herself to wrench out of his grip, but her body refused to obey. Or maybe the truth was, she needed to feel his fingers on her more than she needed freedom and sanity. “It can’t—you can’t possibly know—”

“That is why you stood so long at the white man’s cross. And why your eyes said things better left hidden.”

“What things?”

“You are looking for a piece of yourself, Tory Kent. But you are wrong!” His grip increased. Then, before even more fear assaulted her, he relaxed his hold but still didn’t free her. She felt wedded to him somehow, as if forces greater than both of them had determined that they would stand like this and say the things they were. “This man.” He jerked his head in the direction of the cross. “He knew nothing of the hearts of the Maklaks. He had no heart, not one that understood those whose land this was.”

“I—I don’t know who you’ve been talking to or what they told you, but I don’t appreciate how you’re using a confidence.”

“Con-fidence?”

The way the word rolled off his tongue turned it beautiful, rich and tantalizing. But that might be a dangerous deception she didn’t dare let herself get lost in.

He had to stop touching her. That was the trouble—a stranger was taking liberties with her, breaking through that invisible and yet necessary space that surrounds a person and is broached only when intimacy is wanted. Amazed by her perceptiveness in the face of this—this, whatever it was—she took a deliberate step backward. As before, he let her go. Relief flooded through her and yet she felt lost, as if she’d lost her rudder in life somehow. An avalanche of words boiled inside her, but she couldn’t sort them out enough to string any of them together. Her thoughts snagged on the eagle she’d spotted a few minutes ago, veered off into a memory of the one that had bedeviled her at the stronghold yesterday, splintered and resettled themselves on his knife.

His knife. Why hadn’t she paid closer attention to it before? She studied the dusty black, opaque weapon now; concentrating on it was easier than gazing into his ageless and yet ancient eyes or learning how he had knowledge of her that he couldn’t possibly. Although some of the knife was hidden by the cord holding it in place against his warm flesh, she saw enough. No machine had made it; she was sure of that. Thin chunks had been sliced from it to create something long and deadly. It lacked visual symmetry and yet she had no doubt that it was perfectly balanced. She guessed it was possible that this man or whoever he was in cahoots with could have found a slab of obsidian and gone through the laborious task of turning rock into a knife, but there was no reason for them to go to that much trouble.

Unless, this ancient-looking weapon was what the man used to keep himself alive.

Cold sweat coated her body and forced her to concentrate on what he’d just told her about herself. “Look,” she began with less force than she wanted, “I don’t know why you’re doing what you are, but it’s time for the joke to end. It’s good—believe me, you’re very, very good.” Too good. “But—but I don’t like it.”

“You came here looking for a part of yourself in the wind and rocks.”

What? How could he know…?

“He is dead. You cannot find him.” The warrior took a single, telling step toward her. “Leave me alone, Tory Kent. Your presence ended my forever sleep and I hate you for it. You had no right!”

He was saying that her coming here had brought him into the present? It was insane—insane and yet unshakable.

“This—this isn’t fair,” she blurted. “Please, at least tell me your name.”

His features contorted, briefly revealing raw anguish. He glanced upward, and she wondered if he was looking for the eagle. Then, the gesture reluctant, he again settled his attention on her. “You are not Maklaks. You will not understand.”

But I want to. I need to. “I’ll try to pronounce it.” She stumbled through the words, only dimly aware that she was no longer trying to tell him that he couldn’t possibly be who he said he was.

“Not that.” He sounded angry. “My name has meaning the enemy cannot understand.”

The enemy. So that’s what she was to him. “Try me,” she whispered. “At least give me something to call you.”

“Loka. I am Loka.”

She took his name into her through her pores. It settled uneasily, a word from another time and culture, part of a proud and defiant people. “Loka.” She still couldn’t bring her voice above a whisper. “Is that all?”

“It is enough.”

Yes, it was. Although the syllables felt harsh on her tongue, she found something solid and right about it. The whites of her great-great-grandfather’s time had called the Modocs such things as Curly Headed Doctor, Hooker Jim, Captain Jack. She’d thought those tags both sad and obscene, was glad this man had escaped the demeaning labels.

“Loka.” His name crawled even farther inside her. “Did your father call you that after you had your vision quest? Is that how those things were done?”

Although she’d asked as gently as she knew how, his body instantly became tense and hard and remote. “You know nothing of the Maklaks. How can you stand on our land as if you have a right?”

“I’m—I’m trying to learn.”

“You cannot! Go. Now!”

But she couldn’t. Something as old and permanent as the rocks themselves held her here. “Why do you hate me?”

“Why? You are part of the man who put an end to the Maklaks.”

“No, he didn’t!” She felt on the edge of losing self-control and couldn’t think how to change that. “Your people killed him. Murdered a man of peace. That’s why he was here, don’t you understand that? He came to this awful place because his job was to try to put an end to the war. He didn’t want any more killing. Do you think he wanted to jeopardize the lives of the young men under him? To be responsible for sons and sweethearts and fathers—he was doing everything he possibly could to keep things from getting any worse. And what happened? Some hothead—”

“Enough!”

The single word stripped her of the anger she didn’t know she had until he’d unleashed it. Although she wanted to tell him that she hadn’t said enough yet and might never fully expel her anger at a good and dedicated man’s untimely death, Loka had leaned closer, and his eyes—his unbelievable eyes—were a tunnel to his soul.

“Were you here?” she asked, her voice so calm that it had to belong to someone else. “Did you kill him?”

Chapter 5

Silence spread between them like a slow-moving river. Tory stared up at this man from the past, thinking not of his role in history, but of the way the sun caressed his ebony hair. His eyes were morning and darkness, danger and challenge, and yet she wanted to experience everything about him. Yesterday she’d wished she was behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle because, maybe, that would kill the energy eating away at her.

Today he was what she needed.

No! The denial reverberated throughout her, coating everything except the truth about her emotions.

“Loka. Did you kill him?”

He hadn’t taken his eyes off her, making her think there was no way he couldn’t know what was going on inside her. She felt surrounded by him, but although she should want to run from his impact, the thought barely flitted through her before fading into nothing. “No,” he said.

“No?” she repeated dumbly.

“My chief ended him.”

My chief. “Were you there?”

“Yes.”

Yes. The word had a life and strength of its own. It bore its way into her, but she gave no thought to trying to fight it. “Where?” she asked as if that mattered. “Where were you?”

Instead of pointing at the spot where she understood the peace tent had been, he indicated a rocky bluff maybe a quarter of a mile away. “The army said we were to stay in our camps, but we didn’t.”

What did you see, Loka? On that spring morning in 1873, what did you hear? Instead of giving voice to the questions pounding at her, she waited him out. It seemed as if he were drawing into himself, looking for the memory so he could spread it out in front of them. Looking up at him with the vast sky behind him and the wind and birds the only sounds in this universe they shared, she felt herself losing whatever grip she still had on the world she’d always known.

“The warmth felt good on my back. Cho-ocks and Keintepoos said that soon we would be able to move into the mountains because the snow was almost gone. I’d come with my brother and father and two cousins. We hid behind the rocks—the army men were too stupid to know where to look for us.”

With every word, his voice sounded less raw and unused. There was music to it, a deep drumbeat that pulsed around and into her. She held on to the sound, the words, knew nothing except him and what he was telling her.

“Keintepoos came armed to the peace talk. He and Ha-kar-Jim had already decided what they were to do.”

“Keintepoos? Ha-kar-Jim?”

“My chief and the brave your ancestor knew as Hooker Jim.”

The Modoc chief. The man who’d killed her great-great-grandfather. She remembered a little about Hooker Jim, enough to know that the young Modoc had been almost single-handedly responsible for turning a tense situation into war. “Your chief listened to Hook—to Ha-kar-Jim? Loka, he was a killer. He murdered innocent settlers.”