“V’Aidan,” she whispered. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
“Erin,” John said from his doorway. “In my office. Now.”
By the tone of his voice she figured she was in serious trouble. No doubt he was going to fire her for missing so much work.
What did she care anyway? At this point, she was only going through the motions of life. Nothing was important to her now. She’d lost the only thing that gave her life meaning. The only one who had ever believed in her.
Soul-sick, she got up and walked the short distance to John’s office.
“Close the door. Sit down.”
She did as he commanded.
He sat there for several minutes, sipping his coffee, reading his E-mail.
She wondered if he had forgotten her. Then he turned, pulled his glasses down the bridge of his nose, and stared at her. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Loving an immortal.”
Erin had a sudden urge to clean out her ear. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, come on, don’t play innocent with me. Why do you think Chrissy was working here?” He pointed to the dolphin tattoo on his left forearm. “I’m an oracle for the Greek gods. Which is why I’m so damned tired and cranky all the time. They have the most annoying habit of bursting in when you least expect it.” He sighed disgustedly. “The least they could do is pay me, but oh no, I was lucky enough to be born into this. And benefits…” He snorted. “No sleep, no pay, no peace. Got to love it.”
She disregarded his tirade. “So, you’re like the Oracle of Delphi? I thought they were all women.”
“Those particular oracles are, but not all of us are female. Obviously. We are merely human channels to the various gods.”
Totally baffled, she stared at him, wondering if maybe this was a dream, too, or if the Big Guy had lost his mind. Something wasn’t right, at any rate.
“Okay, so you’re an oracle. Want to tell me why you hired Chrissy if you knew she was a dream-sucking monster?”
He shrugged. “She is a god and I have no choice except to serve her. She wanted a chance to scope out human targets. I merely provided her a safe cover.”
“You sold me out?”
“No,” he said, his stern look turning gentle. “They weren’t supposed to drain you the way V’Aidan did. Trust me. What he did was wrong. And you can rest assured he is being adequately punished for it.”
Her heart stopped at the forbidding note in his voice. “Punished how?”
“What do you care?” he asked, pushing the glasses back up on his nose. “You’re rid of him. Right? No more Skoti in your dreams. You have your life back to yourself.”
“I want to know.” No, she needed to know what had happened to him.
John took a drink of coffee. “Why they sent him to Tartarus, of course.”
Erin didn’t understand the term, and at the moment she wished she’d paid more attention in school. “Is that like jail?”
“Oh, no, hon. It’s hell. They killed him the minute they took him back to his realm.”
Erin couldn’t breathe as tears welled up in her eyes. The weight in her chest was excruciating. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. “They killed him?”
“Didn’t you know?” he asked simply. “Didn’t he tell you what they were going to do to him? V’Aidan was never one who played by the rules. He’d already been banned centuries ago from taking human form and banished from this realm.”
“Why?”
“Because he would pretend to be human. Skoti are not supposed to have any creativity of their own. They’re not supposed to want love. Not supposed to want anything except a single night of dream surfing, hopping from one person to the next. He’d behaved for centuries, until he found you. Even after they stripped all his skin from his immortal body, he couldn’t stay away from you.”
John sighed. “Hypnos had already banned his transformation powers, so he decided there was nothing more to be done with him. Since V’Aidan wouldn’t obey him, they sent him to Tartarus for the rest of eternity.”
“But he didn’t hurt me. Not really.”
“Didn’t he? You look awful from here. Like you’ve been crying for months. And I swear you’ve lost at least ten pounds since all this started.”
“That’s not his fault.”
“No?”
“No. I don’t want him to suffer because of me.”
His gaze searching hers, John pulled an envelope out of his desk drawer and handed it to her.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
Frowning, Erin did as he said and saw the three pictures of her and V’Aidan at the carnival. Her hand shook as grief and agony swirled in her heart. “Where did you get these?”
“M’Ordant sent them to you. He thought you might like them as a souvenir.”
She stared at V’Aidan’s handsome face. At the love in his eyes.
“I have to see him,” she insisted.
John shook his head and sighed again. “Well, I’m afraid it’s too late now.”
“It can’t be. Please. I need to see him again. Please, tell me there’s some way I can reach him.
John narrowed an intense gaze on her. “That depends on whether or not you really love him.”
Erin still couldn’t believe what she was doing. She’d allowed John to teleport her into the Underworld, where he’d told her M’Ordant would be waiting to guide her to V’Aidan.
Not that she really believed in the Underworld, but at this point…
M’Ordant materialized in front of her. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes.”
Nodding, he led her through a deep, dark cavern that reminded her much of the one V’Aidan had used to torment her. They walked for what seemed like miles before they came to a small cave.
A light was shining inside and she could hear a man’s voice speaking. “You’re thinking of her again, aren’t you?”
She looked inside and saw the once-proud dragon lying weakly on the floor with his back to her. Someone had chained his neck to a large boulder. His shoulders were slumped, his wings lying broken and useless on the earthen floor. His reddish skin had an ashen, dehydrated look and every inch of his body was covered with bleeding welts.
Erin swallowed at the sight. Could that monster really be the man she loved?
“What’s her name?” the man asked. “Elise? Erika?”
“Erin,” the dragon rasped, his voice both familiar and yet foreign to her. “Her name is Erin.”
“Ah, yes, Erin.” The man shook his head. “Tell me what kind of worthless fool gives up immortality for a woman? Especially a woman who threw him so quickly to his death?”
“She was worth it.”
“Was she? M’Ordant told me she was dreaming of a man last night. Some golden-haired type. Got to figure that if she’s dreaming of someone so soon, she’s probably already got him picked out and is ready to sleep with him. Bet she’s giving him the high hard one even as we speak.”
The dragon let out an anguished cry that tore through her.
The man didn’t seem to care. He dumped food and water into two containers and moved them away from the dragon. “You’d better hurry. I don’t think you’ve made it yet before your food evaporated.” Then he vanished.
Erin watched as the dragon struggled to reach the food and water. His wounds bled anew as he limped, straining against the boulder that would only barely budge. He held one to his heart, and when she saw what it clutched, her own heart splintered apart in pain.
It was that stupid wreath of wildflowers she’d made.
V’Aidan collapsed just before the water, his claw reaching out desperately for it.
Tears streaming down her face, Erin ran to where he lay. She grabbed the water, noting half of it was already gone, and as she touched the container, she knew why. It was red-hot. It burned her hands, but she didn’t care.
V’Aidan needed the water.
Kneeling down, she helped him sit up enough so he could drink.
V’Aidan gasped at the liquid as it soothed his parched throat. His eyes were so swollen from his beatings that he couldn’t see who helped him. All he knew was that at last he had a moment of peace from his burning thirst.
“Thank you,” he breathed, laying his head back down.
“You’re welcome.”
He froze at the voice that had stayed with him all these weeks. The voice that both soothed and tortured him.
It was then he felt her gentle touch against his scaly flesh.
Erin cried over what they’d done to him. She ran her hand along his rocky flesh, unable to believe they had reduced him to such a state.
He tried to push himself away from her. “Go. I don’t want you to see me in this hideous form.”
She laid her cheek against his and held him close. She now understood what he’d meant that night at the carnival. “I don’t care what you look like, V’Aidan. I love you as you are.”
Those words tore through him. “You’re not real,” he said, his voice ragged. “My precious Erin can’t love a monster. No one can. She is goodness and light, and I… I am nothing.”
He looked up and roared at the ceiling, “Damn you, Hades! How dare you mock me like this, you bastard! Isn’t it enough for you that I ache every minute of every hour for her? Just leave me to suffer in peace.”
Erin refused to let go of him. “It’s not an illusion, V’Aidan. I want us to go home. Together.”
Tears welled in his swollen eyes, stinging them unmercifully. It was a cruel lie. He’d never had a home. Never had love.
He pulled against the chain that choked him, wishing for one moment that he could be with Erin again in her dreams. It had been the only time in eternity he had ever known happiness. “I am damned here, Erin. I have no powers. Nothing to offer you at all. You must go. If you stay here too long, they won’t let you leave.”