Chloe Saint James stood slowly, brushing coarse dust from her brown woolen gown as she surveyed the newly formed fissure rending the dry southern California earth. The surrounding terrain was as nondescript as it was enthralling, colored in shades of umber and dusty green and gray. Small clumps of mesquite and rounded granite boulders dotted the horizon, relieving the otherwise flat landscape. Austere as it was, it was perfect for her state of mind and heart--a heart that had just discovered a new purpose within the chasm at her feet.

Remnants of ancient power sang along her nerve endings. It called to her from the very soil itself, twining into a soul that had been bereft for too many years.

She raised her head and threw her arms wide joyously, letting the energy flow over her, reveling in it as it replenished her from the inside out. It danced on her fingertips, swam through her blood, flowed like a river of the finest wine on her tongue.

Oh yes, the earth cried out to her, but it was more than that. A power almost as primitive and complex as that of the land was buried in this Siren's song and she recognized it for what it was ... a rune. More specifically, the Rune of Domain. Its unique signature was distinct, something she could feel down to the marrow of her bones.

How yet another artifact from the Realm had found its way across an ocean and continent was of no concern to her. Finding the rune was.

As Elder to the Earth Sect of the Realm of the Fae, her destiny, her fate, might very well lie beneath the parched earth. She might finally be able to return home to the emerald grass and loamy soil of her adopted homeland. To the extended family she hadn't seen in over forty years.

A brief thrill zinged through her as she considered returning to the Realm with pride and a measure of redemption, rather than because she was so lonely she thought her soul had begun to splinter.

Wrong! She wasn't lonely. Her solitary existence was because she chose it to be so, not for any other reason. Certainly not for the reason most in the Realm suspected.

Regardless of her motivation, it was imperative the stone be returned to the Realm. With the Rune of Fate so recently recovered, she had sensed a strengthening in the bond of the High Council. What would happen if this rune, her rune, were discovered?

Arms still raised, she petitioned the earth itself. If answers were to be found, she would discover them beneath her feet.

Logan Whitefeather topped the small rise, eyes on the ground around him. It was snake season, and getting hit by a diamondback this far away from proper medical care was a sure recipe for disaster--something he knew from first-hand experience, which was why he carried a snake-bite kit now. Not that it would do a bit of good this far from town. He'd been lucky the first time, damned lucky.

But even with the snakes, how he loved the desert, how he missed it when he was crammed into his tiny cubicle at Los Angeles Air Force Base. Hell, he even missed the reservation when he'd been down the mountain for more than a few months. He spent far too much time reading dusty tomes and compiling statistics. Yeah, it brought in a decent amount of money, but most of that went back to his parents, and by extension, his tribe.

One of these days, he would find the artifact he sought, the stone he was fated to find, if his teenage vision quest was correct. The relic that had first elicited his interest in archaeology and kept him in a lower-paying job once he'd completed his degree so he could freely rove across the desert. He could only hope finding the stone would bring his people the direction they so sorely needed.

He shifted his backpack more comfortably on his shoulders, prying the shovel blade away from his back and lifted his head, his attention snagged by fragments of words riding the scant breeze, lyrical and potent. Then he saw her, and stopped dead in his tracks.

A pagan goddess stood, not twenty yards away, brown robes swirling in a strong gust that cycloned around her, but nowhere else. Long, chestnut hair tumbled down her back in a riot of curls stopping just shy of her ass. Slender, well-defined arms were flung out, as if welcoming the world. Her chant raised the hair on his arms. "Mother Goddess, I humbly beseech you; return the Rune of Domain to its rightful guardian. Show me, with your guiltless wisdom, where it lies."

Logan's heart stuttered to a stop in his chest as he quickly considered what she was asking Mother Earth. Rune of Domain? There damn sure couldn't be two mystical stones hanging out in the Los Angeles hardpack, so he was almost positive she was referring to the Moonstone. His relic. The question of the day was what he was going to do about it, if anything.

She solved it for him by swinging around and piercing him with a sharp, assessing glare, her face half hidden by a swath of hair. He wondered what had given him away, because he could've sworn he hadn't made a sound.

"Begone mortal. You have no place here."

No place here? Logan was stunned, sudden anger boiling his blood. This was his tribal land. Whoever she was, she was the usurper. "No place here? I have every right to be here. Who in the hell do you think you are?"

"I know who I am. Who you are is irrelevant." She actually waved her hand, as if shooing him out of a room.

He strode forward in furious, ground-eating strides until he was within an arm's reach of her. "That's where you're wrong, medicine woman." He surveyed her body in one slow sweep, from the tips of her toes to the riotous mass of curls still covering half of her face. The side he could see was radiant, beautiful and so unbearably arrogant he had the insane, overwhelming urge to wipe the expression from her face with a punishing kiss. So he stepped forward to do just that.

What he got when he grasped her arm was the very last thing he expected. Power screamed up his fingers, crawling through his body like a living thing. He yanked his hand away with a muttered curse and stared at her.

"What are you?"

She still looked at him haughtily, face half-hidden, but something flickered behind her eyes.

"It is of no concern to you," she paused as if weighing her words, "human." When she answered him, he detected a hint of fatigue. Even with, or perhaps because of that fatigue, her voice took on a throaty Lauren Bacall rasp that shivered over his skin like pure sex.

Before he could blast her for performing rituals on the reservation, before he could even begin to consider the electricity still dancing over his nerves, she began chanting in a language Logan had never heard before and placed a cool hand on his forehead.

Logan's muscles immediately froze, locked in place. Even his vocal cords were immobilized. Only his brain seemed to work, and it was whirling like a dervish. What in the hell had she done?

"Have no fear. The binding spell will only last a few moments." Now the weariness in her voice was more evident. Not that he gave a damn.

She removed her hand and shifted, revealing her whole face for the first time.

As stunningly beautiful as one side had been, the other was covered in a mass of scars snaking across her cheek and chin, winding around one eye and disappearing into her hairline. Logan would have gasped if he'd been able. Her face was a perfect dichotomy.

A bitter smile tipped her lips. "Shocking, isn't it? I can see it in your eyes." She lifted a hand in salutation. "As always, it is of no matter. Be well, human." Then she was striding away from him in quick, loping strides, robe billowing around her, molding to a delectable body that would have made his cock stand at attention--if it'd been capable of vertical motion.

Long moments passed as he stood, petrified, capable of only one thing--thinking. What in God's name was she? He turned her words over in his head, hearing again the phrase that seemed the most important--Rune of Domain.

Chloe chastised herself silently as she made her way to the abandoned miner's shack she'd taken as her own one short year ago. Foolish. She'd been foolish to allow the human to approach as closely as he had. She'd been even more foolish to touch him. It hadn't been necessary to lay the binding spell, but after the jolt of energy she felt when he grabbed her arm, it had seemed more essential than breathing. She was sure of one thing ... the man she had left standing helpless in the desert might be human, but he had a power within which almost matched her own. It was something prophesied among the Fae, but she had never expected to see it, much less feel it.

...A human of considerable power will come to the aid of the Sidhe in their hour of need. The human will have no idea of his strength, nor how to use it, but the final outcome will lie in his or her hands...

She shook her head in amazement and a little bit of dismay. If this man was the one spoken of, then something dangerous to the Fae loomed on the very near horizon. But what it might be wasn't included in the prophecy.

If she totally disregarded the man's power and potential--a difficult feat on any day--she had to admit he was a fine specimen; hence her compulsion to touch him. It had been so very long since she'd laid hands on a man, or been handled in return. The ghost of his touch still zinged across her body, lighting nerve endings long ignored.

What would it be like to have a man as virile as he run his fingers over more intimate places? Would fucking him be as miraculous as she remembered? It had been too many years since she had indulged in anything except self-satisfaction, and even that had become a hollow pleasure.

She shook her head as she strode across the high desert. It wasn't like her to wallow in self-pity, nor to ponder things which would never be.

Had she become too apathetic, living in solitude these past forty years? Had she begun to forget her own heritage? If her reaction to the human were any indication, it appeared she had.

Stepping through the glamour she'd laid to disguise her "home", she unlatched the door and stepped into the magic-generated coolness with a sigh. Books, her oasis in this desert of solitude, lined the walls. From the latest bestsellers to ancient tomes she'd carried with her year after year, they were what kept her sane as she searched her inner being for the one thing that could save her soul, allow her to return to the Realm with pride and a token of redemption. And after all these years, perhaps she had finally found it in the form of the rune.

What she needed to do now was sit, contemplate the best course of action and forget about the mystery man in the desert and the feelings of longing he'd generated with a simple touch.

Should she contact the Moira Rhiannon? Or should she seek out and find the rune on her own, returning to her homeland victorious?

She settled into the rocking chair she'd liberated so many years ago and set it in motion with a push of her foot. It was the first possession she'd taken upon her self-imposed exile from the Realm, and had been with her in the countless seasons since.

A low, dull ache settled behind her eyes as the last remnants of the rune's power faded. Decisions that had once come so easily now warred bitterly with one another. Contacting Rhiannon was no doubt the wisest course of action, but damnable pride stopped her from opening the connection. The newest and youngest Moira to-date had shown herself to be wise beyond her years, a surprise, actually, but something more than pride warned her that all was not as it seemed in the Realm. There was dissention, yes, but she knew, deep in her bones, the breach went much further, much deeper, than what she had gleaned in her few-and-far-between conversations with the Moira.

She'd seen it with her own eyes just weeks ago, heard it from the child Ian as he plead for her protection. It still troubled her that he'd located her so easily, but he was Fae, and her protective spells were to turn away humans and other supernaturals, not her own kin.

Goddess, what she wouldn't give to change those moments so many seasons ago, when her fate had been sealed by a moment of calculated cruelty, a moment which had separated her from the Realm forever, and in more than the physical sense.

It still pained her to remember what O'Donnell had done to her, and his actions against Collette, well, she couldn't, wouldn't think about those right now. Even after forty years it felt like a knife sliding into her heart, a hyena gnawing at her soul.

She shook her head. Rehashing the past, and even the present-day state of the Realm, did nothing but deject her. She needed to focus on the Rune of Domain, and how to use her magic and intellect to discover where it lay cradled in Mother Earth's arms.