Page 74 of The Last Warrior

“They are real. They are simply entrapped in a place which is part of this world yet not of this time.”

She shook her head. “I truly do not understand. If we go to this place, will we find your tribe?”

“We will not,” he affirmed.

“Then how can your friend, this medicine man, take my grandmother there?”

“I do not know, but he is a man of some spiritual power. If anyone could take her to our time, it would be he.”

Suzette clenched her jaw. “But Irena is real, flesh and blood.”

“This is so, as are my people. They are merely caught in a trap. That it is of their own making does not mean it is less of a trap.”

“But if she goes there,” said Suzette, a cloud of apprehension marring her brow, “then she, too, would be enslaved there?”

“I do not know.”

“She would not be able to return here?”

“Again, I do not know.”

Truly alarmed now, a chill took hold of her. “I have a terrible thought, and I almost hate to ask, but… Since Irena is real, is of this world, and your people, at present, are not—at least not in this time we exist in—would it kill her to go there?”

Again he shook his head. “You ask me questions I cannot answer.”

“Well, someone—and it should be you—should take the pains to answer them. We are discussing my grandmother!”

He nodded. “So we are. I am sorry, but I do not have the answers you seek.”

“I am looking for a particular person—someone I met when I was in America many years ago. I have never forgotten him.”

“And do you love this man?”

“I do.”

In the stroke of an instant, Suzette understood what had happened. This man tonight was he—the man whom Irena had fallen in love with. It all fit.

“Do not be upset with me,” Irena had said. Only now could Suzette grasp the significance of those words. It was Irena’s way of saying goodbye.

Goodbye? Did Irena know his man was not a man, that he was… But if not a man, then what was he? A ghost?

Shivers racked Suzette’s body. If a ghost took a person to an unearthly place, would this other person become a ghost as well?

No, no, it could not be. This man Irena loved…he had to be a real man. What Black Lion was intimating couldn’t be true.

But what if it were true? Were there not phenomena that we, as yet, did not understand?

This was it, then. Without another thought, Suzette knew what she had to do.

Lifting her gaze to meet the dark eyes of Black Lion’s, she asked, “When do we leave?”

He nodded at her, as though he had expected her to say nothing else. “I am ready to depart at once. But first I ask you to consider this: White Claw is a medicine man, and if he loves your grandmother, as I expect he does, he will not bring her to the Clan if it will harm her.”

Suzette hesitated. “Can you swear to this? That no harm will come to Irena?”

“No man could make such a promise about another⁠—”

“Then it’s not good enough for me. This is my grandmother we are speaking of.”