Free Sorcerer's Vendetta (The Secret of Zanalon) by Sarah Ray Page A

he had heard of Him at all it would have been His true name, Yeshua, or something closer to that.  He recognized only that she was calling out a name, in terror.
    Then, he turned back to her, and the question on his lips died as the focus of her terror registered.  Realization grew clear on his face, his lips tightening slowly. His blue eyes glinted, narrowed, shifted quickly, pain suddenly masked by anger.
    Rachel dropped her gaze, studied a pattern on the bedspread, traced a line.    Out of the corner of her eye she saw him staring at her silently for a moment, then he moved slowly to the joining door between the rooms and opened it. Without a word, staring straight ahead, Zanalon slid his hand up the wall and pushed the switch up for the light to her room, flinching when the artificial light hit him. He moved back to the small table between the two beds at the opposite wall and carefully balanced the bright sword next to the lamp. Then he paused for a moment, silently.  She thought for a moment he would speak, but he turned again, away from her and moved back to the dresser against the wall separating their rooms, not looking at her.  He laid his palms flat on the dresser and stared at the mirror-image of the laminated top, his cloaked back to her.
    She tried to meet his reflected gaze. He ignored her.
    "I don't know what got into me," she said, as she slid off the bed and headed into her brightly-lit room, closing the door quietly behind herself. There was nothing else to say.
     
    After her bath, Rachel sat on the bed in a towel and pondered, among other things, the problem of her clothes. The room was dim; the light from the bathroom was all she dared, as she was nerving herself to approach Zanalon's room. She stared at the adjoining door, got up with her bundle and advanced on it, bit her lip and turned away, started to dress, stopped. And repeated the whole sequence.
    Oh pooh, he said he'd take care of my clothes. Let him, she decided. She marched to the door before she could change her mind again and knocked, intending to hand the bundle through the door. No answer.
    "Zanalon?" she called. No answer.
    Touching the door handle, she wondered if he had decided to go on to his confrontation alone. She tried the door; it opened easily.
    The room was dark. "Zanalon?" she called again, entering the room.
    He's gone, she thought. Something tightened in her stomach suddenly.
    Rachel paused, recognizing the ache. Wait a minute, reality check here. What am I doing, anyway, running around England with the Abe Lincoln of electricity? Ready for a change, huh? God knows he's certainly not like my last (and first) great love. So maybe I did spend three years with an atheistic scientist who convinced me that sex didn't really have any more importance to it than a handshake, unless you're interested in perpetuating mankind. At least I was safe. Not one moment with Carl was spent ping-ponging between shrinking away from him in fear for my life one minute and praying the next that ... he'd ...
    Kiss me ...
    There in her inner tirade, her thoughts went silent. Rachel simply felt.
    He made me feel alive.
    With a shake of her head, she began feeling her way into the room with stub-dreading toes.
    I'll miss him.
    She dropped her bundle of clothes when she reached the bed, so that she would have at least one hand free as she crawled across to reach the lamp on the stand beside it.
    Rachel's hand met firm flesh. She pulled it back with a startled gasp, off-balance so that she nearly flopped forward. All she could do was sit back on her knees on the bed, clutching her towel. She heard a rustle of movement at the same instant that a dim, glowing line started by the lamp she had been reaching for, no more than candlelight. It was the sword, apparently attuned to Zanalon's state of consciousness. Her hand had fallen on his bare back; he was stripped down to only his breeches.
    She gawked and giggled inanely, struck by a projection of what