Forgotten Read online

  “Let me just…let me get these guys settled.” Kate turned to herding the cats to another part of the house. Most of them seemed glad to go—the minute she opened a door in the back of the apartment they scampered into the room. “There,” she said, shutting the door and coming back. “Mimi doesn’t want them in the bedrooms but we’ll have to make an exception.”

  “I am sorry I spoke about your mother’s death,” Rone said in a low voice. “I should not have said such things.”

  “It’s all right.” She took a deep, trembling breath. “Look, come into the kitchen and let me look at that gunshot wound.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Can you? Stand to be near enough to me to treat me, that is?”

  “I…I think so.” She swallowed convulsively. “If…as long as you don’t reach for me or try to touch me. I…I don’t know why that bothers me but it does. It really does.”

  “I can tell.” Rone wrinkled his nose, scenting the sharp smell of her fear again. Have to move slowly and take it easy, he cautioned himself. He didn’t want to scare her into flight again—the results had been disastrous last time.

  Taking a deep breath, he followed her into the kitchen. They would just have to take this slowly. Very…very slowly.

  * * * * *

  “Sit here.” Kate pulled out one of the mismatched kitchen chairs, picking what she thought was the sturdiest one. It was heavy and made of solid wood—Mimi’s grandfather had made it for her. Kate was glad they had it now. The Kindred—no, Rone, he’d said his name was Rone—was so big she didn’t think a weaker one could have taken his weight.

  Wincing, he stripped off his jacket and the black wife-beater t-shirt to bare his shoulder before sitting down. Kate watched him, wide-eyed, as he settled into the chair, looking more like a mountain of muscle than a man. Around his neck he wore a long, fine-link, rose-gold chain. There were two rings strung on it—one was a delicate gold band and the other had a pale green stone with gold flecks at its heart. It was perfectly round and seemed to glow against his olive skin like a small moon.

  “What are those?” She gestured at the rings. “I mean that stone—I work in a jewelry store but I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  He looked up at her, his piercing blue eyes troubled.

  “You really don’t know?” Before she could answer he sighed. “Of course you don’t. These are your wedding band and the engagement ring I gave you when I first asked you to be my bride. The stone is a Rigellian Emerald. Very rare and expensive but it reminded me of your eyes. You loved it. You said…” He looked down at his big hands, lying open in his lap. “You said, ‘Any girl can have a diamond. But who else has a stone that exactly matches their eyes?’”

  “Look, I’m sorry…” Kate shifted uneasily. “Really sorry that I can’t remember any of that. But I just can’t, okay? I’m not doing it on purpose to hurt you—I really just don’t remember.”

  “It’s all right. Forgive me—I should not have spoken of it.” He sighed. “Do you have any antiseptic wash? This wound must be cleaned before my body can heal it.” He nodded down at the bullet hole, still oozing blood, which had gone through his outer triceps area.

  “I have some hydrogen peroxide here.” Kate held up the brown bottle. “It might sting a little but it should do the trick.”

  “All right.” He held perfectly still and let her pour the liquid on the bullet wound. It was small and neat at the front of his arm where the bullet had entered, but much larger where it had exited. Still, it didn’t seem to have hit any bones or tendons or blood vessels. Kate thought that all in all the big Kindred had been really lucky she was panicking when she pulled the trigger. She was usually a much better shot than this.

  Speaking of panic, she still felt the overwhelming fear wanting to rise in her throat when she got close to him. But she gave herself a stern talking-to, reminding herself that Rone wasn’t here to hurt her, and managed to damp it down. It helped that he held as still as a statue while she treated him and didn’t try to touch her in any way—Kate was grateful for that.

  “All right,” she said at last, when the peroxide stopped foaming. “I think that’s it. I’ll just clean this up…” She took a pad of paper towels and blotted gently at the ragged wound. It seemed to have stopped bleeding, she saw with satisfaction. “Looking good,” she told him. “Let me just get a few of these gauze bandages…”

  “No need.” He looked down at his arm and Kate did the same. What she saw, made her gasp. Before her eyes, the wounded flesh was growing together—healing at an amazing rate. The bullet hole in his arm got smaller and smaller until there was nothing left on either side but a small, white scar on his smooth, olive skin.

  “Wow!” Kate murmured in wonder. Without thinking, she reached out to touch the place where the bullet wound had so recently been.

  But the minute her fingertips touched his bare skin, she felt the panic set in. Her pulse started to race and her throat closed up until she couldn’t breathe.

  With a ragged gasp, she jumped away, curling her fingers into a fist as though she’d been shocked or burned.

  “What is it?” Rone looked at her with obvious concern. Kate could see the wish in his eyes to go to her but to his credit, he must have realized that would only make things worse so he stayed where he was.

  “I…I touched you.” Kate put a hand to her heart, trying to still the drumming. “I…I don’t know why I feel like that when I touch you. Like…like I’m having a freaking panic attack.”

  “I don’t know either.” He shook his head somberly. “Maybe someone on the Mother Ship will, though.”

  “The Mother Ship?” She frowned. “As in, the Kindred Mother Ship that orbits the moon? Why would I go there?”

  “To find out why your amnesia is lasting so much longer than it should,” Rone said patiently. “The Dream Blooms—”

  “Back up.” Kate made a motion with one hand. “You said something about that back in your car but I didn’t understand it. What are Dream Blooms and what do they have to do with what happened to me?”

  Rone took a deep breath. “It’s a very long story but the gist of it is you fell into a trap meant for another. You breathed in the fragrance of the Dream Blooms, which were planted in the wedding bouquet of a friend of yours, and you immediately seemed to forget me. At least, when I reached for you, you drew away. Then you were taken—abducted in a split second by a molecular transfer beam. It takes only living tissue and leaves everything else behind. All that remained was the clothing you’d been wearing and these…” He lifted the two rings which lay against his chest and gripped them tight in one big fist. “I’ve been searching for you ever since, certain you were dead or being tortured somewhere…”

  “I’m so sorry.” Kate shrugged helplessly. “But six months is about how long I’ve been here in Florida. My friend Mimi found me naked in a park in Sarasota—about an hour south of here. She let me move in with her and then I got a job and things just began to seem…well, normal I guess.”

  “Normal.” He gave a hollow laugh and scrubbed one big hand over his face. His palm made a whispering sound over his whiskers. “Gods, how can this be normal? You not knowing me…not remembering anything about our life together…”

  “I can’t help that. I told you,” Kate said sharply. “And I wish you’d stop talking about all these memories we made and things we did—it makes me uncomfortable. It’s weird to hear about when I feel like I just met you for the first time when you jumped me in that hallway at the mall two hours ago.”

  “I did not ‘jump you’,” the big Kindred said with dignity. “I wanted to find a quiet place to speak to you alone. I thought you might be being watched—thought the ones who had stolen you away were using you to bait a trap of some kind. I tried to speak to you through our mind link but you didn’t hear me—maybe because of the building materials the mall is made from. So I had no choice but to try and speak to you privately.”

  “Wait a minute…