"Well, then, my dear," he spoke softly, and pulled a chair close to sit down at her side. "I really didn't expect you to awaken so soon."

She would have cowered from the hand he rested against her temple, had she been able to move. The rage surrounding this man slammed into her senses. She cried aloud, as though from a physical blow.

"No need to be afraid, my dear. I certainly won't be harming you." He laughed softly, at some joke she could not fathom. "Tell me your name."

Her tongue moved with a will of its own. "Ianira..." The drugs in her veins roared through her mind, implacable and terrifying.

"Ianira? Where are you from? What last name have you?"

They called her Cassondra, after her title as priestess of Artemis. She whispered it out, felt as well as saw the surprise that rippled through him. "Cassondra? Deuced odd surname. Where the devil did you come from?"

Confusion tore through her. "The station—" she began.

"No, not the bloody train station, woman! Where were you born?"

"Ephesus..."

"Ephesus?" Shock tore through his eyes again. "You mean from the region of Turkey where that ancient place used to be? But why, then, do you speak Greek, when Turkestani is the language of that part of the world? And how is it you speak the Greek of Pericles and Homer?"

Too many questions, blurring together too quickly... He leaned across, seizing her wrist in a brutal grip. "Answer me!"

She cried out in mortal terror, struggled to pull away from the swamping horror of what she sensed in his soul. "Artemis, help me..." The plea was instinctive, choked out through the blackness flooding across her mind. His face swam into focus, very close to hers.

"Artemis?" he whispered, shock blazing through his eyes once more. "What do you know of Artemis, the Many-Breasted Goddess of Ephesus?"

The pain of his nearness was unendurable. She lapsed into the language of her childhood, pled with him not to hurt her, so...

He left her side, allowing relief to flood into her senses, but was gone only for a moment. He returned with a leather case, which he opened, removing a heavy, metal tube with a needle protruding from one end. "If you are unable to speak with what I've given you already," he muttered, "no power of hell itself will keep you silent with this in your veins."

He injected something into her arm, tore the sleeve of her dress to expose the crook of her elbow and slid the needle in. New dizziness flared as the drug went in, hurting with a burning pain. The room swooped and swung in agonizing circles.

"Now then, Miss Cassondra," the voice of her jailor came through a blur, "you will please tell me who you are and where you come from and who the man was with you..."

Ianira plunged into a spinning well of horror from which there was no possible escape. She heard her voice answer questions as though in a dream, repeated answers even she could not make sense of, found herself slipping deep into prophetic trance as the images streamed into her mind, a boy hanging naked from a tree, dying slowly under this man's knife, and a pitiful young man with royal blood in his veins, whose need for love was the most tragic thing about him, a need which had propelled him into the clutches of the man crouched above her now. Time reeled and spun inside her mind and she saw the terrified face of a woman, held struggling against a wooden fence, and other women, hacked to pieces under a madman's knife...

She discovered she was screaming only when he slapped her hard enough to jolt her from the trance. She lay trembling, dizzy and ill, and focused slowly on his eyes. He sat staring down at her, eyes wide and shocked and blazing with an unholy sort of triumph. "By God," he whispered, "what else can you do?"

When she was unable to speak, he leaned close. "Concentrate! Tell me where Eddy is now!"

The tragic, lonely young man flashed into her mind, surrounded by splendour such as Ianira had never dreamed might exist. He was seated at a long table, covered with gleaming silver and crystal and china edged in gold. An elderly woman in black Ianira recognized from photographs presided over the head of the table, her severe gaze directed toward the frightened young man.

"You are not to go wandering about in the East End again, Eddy, is that understood? It is a disgrace, shameful, such conduct. I'm sending you to Sandringham soon, I won't stand for such behavior..."

"Yes, Grandmama," he whispered, confused and miserable and frightened to be the object of her displeasure.

Ianira did not realize she had spoken aloud, describing what she saw until her jailor's voice shocked her back into the little room with the expensive coverlets and the gas lights and the drugs in her veins. "Sandringham?" he gasped. "The queen is sending him to Scotland? Bloody hell..." Then the look in his eyes changed. "Might be just as well. Get the boy out of the road for a bit, until this miserable business is finished. God knows, I won't risk having him connected with it."

Ianira lay trembling, too exhausted and overwhelmed by horror to guess at her fate, trapped in this madman's hands. He actually smiled down at her, brushing the hair back from her brow. "Your friends," he whispered intimately. "Will they search for you?"

Terror exploded. She flinched back, gabbled out the fear of pursuit, the gunmen in the hotel, the threat to her life from faceless men she had never met... Fear drained away at the sound breaking from him. Laughter. He was staring down into her eyes and laughing with sheer, unadulterated delight. "Dear God," he wheezed, leaning back in his chair, "they daren't search for you! Such a bloody piece of luck! No doubt," he smiled, "someone influential was disquieted by what you can do, my dear lady. Never fear, I shall protect you from all harm. You are much too precious, too valuable a creature to allow anyone to find you and bring you to grief." He leaned close and stroked the back of her hand. "Mayhap," he chuckled, "I'll even take you to wife, as an added precaution."

She closed her eyes against horror at such a fate.

He leaned down and brushed his lips to hers, then murmured, "I've work to do, this evening, my lovely pet, very serious work, which must take me from your side. And you must rest, recover from the shocks to your system. Tomorrow, however..." He chuckled then stroked her brow, the chill of her wet cheek. "Tomorrow should prove most entertaining, indeed."

He left her, drugged and helpless, in the center of the bed and carefully locked the door behind him. Ianira lay weeping silently until the medication he had given her dragged her down into darkness.

They didn't intend to stay long.

In fact, they hadn't intended to take the train to Colorado Springs with the rest of the tour group, or ride all the way out to the derelict mining camp in the mountains far to the west of the train station, not at all. Not with Artemisia and Gelasia asleep in a big, awkward trunk, sedated and breathing bottled oxygen from the same type of canisters they'd sent with Ianira into London. Marcus, terrified for his children's safety, had packed away a spare oxygen bottle for each of the girls, just in case something went wrong. And it had. Badly wrong.

They'd been followed through the Wild West Gate.

Just as Noah had predicted.

"His name's Sarnoff," Noah Armstrong muttered, pointing him out with a slight nod of the head. "Chief of security for a real bad sort named Gideon Guthrie. And Guthrie's specialty is making people disappear when they're too much of a threat. Real sweet company, Jenna's Daddy keeps. We can't do a damned thing yet. If we bolt now, he's just going to follow us. Then he'll choose the time and place, when there aren't a truckful of witnesses nearby. But if we head for that mining camp with the rest of the shooting competition tour, he'll have to follow us, with all those up-time witnesses lurking everywhere. Then we can choose the time and place, jump him when he's not expecting it."