“Just because you both have this yin-yang dragon tat on your arms doesn’t make you Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” she argued. “It’s not even on the same arm.”
“Nonetheless, Sean and I bear identical marks, just as we share the same form.” He spread his hands. “For this part of every night, that is me.”
“Shifting doesn’t work like that. I know. I pull the thoughts from someone and use it to create the dreamveil,” she said. “I know you’re not Sean Meriden pretending to be an executive chef. You’re a completely different person. A separate person.”
Dansant nodded.
Rowan had seen a lot of weird things in her life, but nothing like this. “So how could you and Sean end up sharing the same body?”
“I have only theories, not facts,” he admitted, “but over the years Sean and I have come to some logical conclusions. It begins in Nice, with a man named Nathan Frame, who was married to the daughter of a chef.”
Dansant told her the story of the accident, and the few fragments of memory Sean had retained of Nathan’s past before he had come to France.
“When Gisele was taken, she was put in a van filled with test tubes and biological samples. These were things taken from other people these men tortured. When the accident happened, Nathan ran into the fire to try to save Gisele. Then the van exploded and he was very badly burned. That must have been when one of the specimens entered his body, through his wounds, for pieces of the test tubes were found embedded in them. After two weeks in the hospital, he died of his injuries.”
Her throat tightened. “No, he didn’t.”
Dansant nodded. “In the moments after his death, I came to consciousness in his body. At the same time, his body spontaneously healed and changed shape into mine. I was not hurt or burned, and I knew I could not stay in the hospital and be discovered as I was, so I escaped and hid myself. Then, sometime after midnight, I lost consciousness. My body shifted again, this time into Sean’s form, with his mind and personality.”
“So Sean is Nathan.”
Dansant shook his head. “Neither of us is Nathan Frame, although we both have some of his knowledge and characteristics. I acquired his cooking skills and love for fine cuisine. Sean inherited his mechanical talents and his fighting abilities. We both have some skill with weapons.”
“Was Sean burned when you changed into him?”
“Fortunately, no. The first shift had healed him as well.” He sighed. “I am not Sean, and I am not aware of him. Upon my second awakening, when the sun set the next night, I woke to find myself standing on the docks looking at a boat. I was thirty miles from where I had gone to my rest and I could not remember how I had come to be there. My clothes were torn at the seams, as if a larger man had tried to wear them. Fortunately that portion of the docks was deserted at the time, and no one saw us change.”
“So sunset triggers the change from Sean to you, and you don’t change back until after midnight,” she said, to be sure she had it straight. “You have no memory of what he does while he controls the body, and it’s the same for him. When you’re awake, he’s asleep.”
He nodded. “We seem to have divided the best of Nathan Frame between the two of us, although physically neither of us bears any resemblance to him. Sean has a few fragments of his memory, but I have none at all. What we do have of Nathan’s original form are these.” He touched the tat on his arm. “According to his medical file, Nathan also had a taijitu on each arm. One scarlet, one blue. Those, too, were divided between us.”
She considered how a man’s life and experiences could be split in half, and how much grief the division must have caused Meriden and Dansant. “How do you know all this about each other? If your minds are separated, and you’re never aware of each other, how can you communicate at all?”
He smiled a little. “At first we tried to leave messages with other people, but over time we have learned that they sometimes changed the message or even forgot them. Then we wrote notes and left them in our pockets, but mon frère does not always have the patience to write. When we came to America, Sean hired a twenty-four-hour answering service for his garage. It was my idea to call it and leave messages for him, and set up an account for myself so he could do the same. We have to be guarded in what we say, of course, but it has proven to be most effective.”
Rowan chuckled. “You should really try e-mail.” Her smile faded as she studied his face. “You really don’t remember who you were before all this happened to you and Sean?”
“I wish I did, but no. My memory begins the night I woke in the hospital.” He grimaced. “There are some clues about the sort of man I was. I speak many languages, some that are very old and no longer used, but French is the most familiar. I know how to handle weapons, especially blades, very well. As you have seen, I paint portraits and landscapes. They are people and places I have never seen, but still I know them.” He touched his chest. “Here, inside, I feel them.”
“Do you remember dying?”
“Non. I only remember waking. I had thought perhaps my first body must have been destroyed by the men who took Nathan’s wife, but then that woman came to me, the night you and I went to the opera. She called me Michael and kissed me.” He gave her a troubled look. “I was looking for you, so I did not pay much attention to her.” He nodded toward the portrait. “That is the same woman.”
“Michael is a pretty common name, but at least we know what he looks like,” Rowan pointed out. “When it’s Sean’s turn to have the body, he can start hunting him down for you.”
“Non, ma mûre. If the man I was lives, I have no wish to meet him.”
“Why not?”
“He cannot know he was born again in another body. He has his life and his woman.” He ran his hand over her curls. “I have mine.”
“For eight hours a day.” Now she shook her head. “How can you live like this? You didn’t even get half days.”
He gave her a wry look. “Regrettably I was never consulted. But it is not so bad as you think. You sleep every night, and you do not resent the hours away from the world. When Meriden takes my body, it is much the same for me.”
“Jesus, that’s another thing.” She twined her fingers in his. “Neither of you really ever sleeps, do you?”
“Sean does.” He shrugged. “I do not seem to require it.”
She tucked a long strand of his hair behind his ear. “Aren’t you afraid when he takes over that you might not come back the next night?”
He considered that for a moment. “I have always felt that it is Sean’s body, not mine. I am grateful for my life, but I live it through his flesh.” He sighed. “After the accident, neither of us could accept it at first. Sean was too damaged in spirit, and I could not bear the thought that I had only existed as bits of skin and blood and bone. We still struggle with it, and we often resent each other. For example, he will not like that I was the one to tell you about us.”
“I’m not afraid of Sean.” She kept hold of his hand. “I’m in love with him.”
His mouth tightened. “I know.”
“I’m also in love with you.” As he stared at her, she leaned in and brushed her lips against his. “Whatever problems you have with each other, you’re both going to have to deal with that.”
He looked stunned and pleased, and threaded his fingers through her curls. “You would choose both of us?”
“You might be two different guys, but you have the same heart. Literally and metaphorically speaking.” She pulled him over on top of her. “I don’t care if you change into one man or two or nine. I want you. I want Sean. I want us.”
Dansant braced himself on his forearms. “Do you.” He settled himself between her legs, rocking his hips a little so that his erection stroked her gently. “I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you.”
“Same here.” She reached down in between them, unzipping his fly and pushing her hand inside.
“Rowan.” He caught his breath. “Sean is your lover. He may not accept this. I love you, but I do not want him hurt. He is my brother.”
It touched her that he was so concerned about his other half. “We’ll be okay. Just let me do the talking.”
“In that, I have no choice.” He tried to lift himself away from her, and when she held on he frowned. “I will change in a few moments. I cannot be with you when he emerges. It is too dangerous for you.”
“I’m tougher than you think, Jean-Marc.” She palmed him, enclosing him in her fingers and guiding him to where she was already wet and pulsing with the ache of emptiness. “This is the best way to tell him, you know. And when you wake up tomorrow night, we’ll pick up where we left off. I promise.” She lifted a little to seat him between her folds, and then tightened her muscles to draw him in. “And if Sean doesn’t cooperate, I’ll just handcuff him to the bed and ravish him until he changes.”
Dansant swore softly and shook as he sank into her another inch. “Do you understand what happens? I will change while I’m inside you.”
She smiled. “I don’t think it’ll hurt. And this way, I get to have both of you inside me.”
He stroked into her, groaning as she clasped him with her body. As the sky outside turned dark gray, he began fucking her, driving himself in and out as she held on to his shoulders and cradled him with her legs. When his eyes began to darken from heavenly blue to midnight black he bent his head and kissed her, pressing in as deep as he could, and she came around him, her body arching as he pushed her over the edge of pleasure and into the darkness with him.
His body shifted in a wave that had no beginning or end but just swept out in all directions, like water swelling and spilling from a winter thaw. It was beautiful to see and feel.