Cursed in Love (Nora Moss Book 1)

by Zoe Ashwood

  “That one’s for you,” the gunman says, half to himself. “So your brother doesn’t accuse me of cheating you out of your prize.”

  Isak skewers the man with a glare. “If you think he’ll let you off the hook after this little stunt, you’re insane.”

  I take another step to the left, then another. So close. Just two more minutes, and we’ll be home free, able to rush up the corridor and out of this stifling cursed hellhole.

  “Eh,” the mercenary says, “I’ll take my chances.” He stoops again. “And this one’s for me. So shiny and black.”

  Isak lunges forward. “No, don’t—”

  His yell dies off as the other man plucks the last obsidian scarab from its resting place and waves it in the air. “Don’t be such a fucking wimp. Who’s going to know we took it?”

  “The one rule,” Isak grinds out through gritted teeth, “was to not touch the other contestants’ tokens!”

  “Yeah, and nothing happened,” the man retorts. “Relax. You’re so fucking uptight I can’t—”

  A deep rumble rolls through the chamber, cutting off his words.

  “What the…?” the guy says, retreating a step.

  The ground trembles beneath our feet, and I look up at Levi in alarm. This feels like an earthquake. In a suspended moment of panic, I realize we’re hundreds of feet belowground. Above us is only solid rock, and no one knows where we are, exactly. If we get buried inside this place, not even Aya and her magnificent team will be able to pull us out, dead or alive. And my family will lose another member, will have to mourn another—

  “Let’s go!” Raphaël grabs my hand, pulling me forward.

  I clench my fingers instinctively around Levi’s, and then we’re running straight for the entrance of the tunnel. The spell collapses around us, and the soldier shouts in alarm as we materialize in front of him. Raphaël knocks him aside, sending his gun clattering to the floor.

  But at a deep scrape of stone, I stop and glance back. Terror washes through me at the sight of the giant statue, which is moving. Set shakes his animal head, his long, black ears flapping, then stands from his throne, leaning on his long staff for support.

  I gasp in wordless horror as he lets out an inhuman growl. Where is the sound coming from? He was a statue of stone just moments earlier, and now he’s…alive.

  The god of storms, disorder, and violence is alive, and he’s more than four times taller than any of us.

  “Fuuuuck,” Levi yells. “We need to get out of here!”

  But I can’t seem to move my feet. Not when Set bends down and plucks the mercenary from the floor with one swoop of his massive black hand. The man screams, then falls silent as a horrible crunch echoes around the chamber. The god’s stone fist closes around his limp body, and the obsidian scarab beetle tumbles down, shattering in a thousand black shards.

  Raphaël pushes me behind him. “Take her,” he shouts at Levi. “Take her and go! I’ll try to hold it back as long as I can.”

  Levi’s grip on my hand becomes painful, but it’s not enough to distract me from the horrifying image of Set biting the soldier in half with a meaty, wet sound.

  Then we’re running up the corridor, away from the firelit chamber, pawing blindly through darkness. I stumble and nearly fall, which is enough to bring me back to my senses.

  “Stop!” I scream, digging my feet in. “We can’t leave him!”

  Levi takes my shoulders and shakes me, hard. “Nora, he’s a vampire. He can’t die.”

  Is that true, though? He said his brother was killed…

  Footsteps sound behind us, and we turn to find Isak Einarsson closing in on us. “Go!” he shouts. “Your man is coming, too.”

  We blunder onward, but after several steps, I grab Levi’s shirt and yank him back. “Wait, we need light! The spikes are close!”

  We waste precious seconds grabbing our headlamps. Another roar echoes from the chamber, an angry, vicious scream of a beast who’s been locked up and has finally thrown off its shackles. I whimper and start up the tunnel again, searching desperately for the piece of paper on the ground that’ll tell us where the spikes are.

  Levi notices it before me, and we drop to all fours, crawling beneath the metal strip in the wall so we don’t trigger the mechanism. On the other side, I straighten. Then I stumble, my head spinning, and barely catch myself on the wall of the tunnel.

  “Hey!” Levi takes my arm and hauls me up. “You’re using up too much magic. You need to stop before it kills you. Come on!”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I know he’s safe,” I snap as Levi tries to tug me forward. “He said he’s coming, and I can’t leave him here!”

  The ground shudders again, dust falling from the ceiling, but neither Levi nor Isak escapes. With grim faces, they stand beside me, waiting for whatever is coming.

  Then a yellow glow illuminates the tunnel, and I turn to find Levi holding a pulsating golden orb of magic in his palm.

  “I’m so sorry, Nora,” he says and presses the ball of light to his own chest.

  “No!” I lunge toward him, grabbing for his arm, but I’m too late.

  He shudders, and the magical threads of my protection spell snap like strings on a harp, their ethereal twangs resonating through me.

  Gasping in shock, I clutch Levi’s shoulders and scream, “What did you do?”

  My voice comes out shrill and loud, tinged with panic.

  “You can’t protect us all,” he shouts back. “I can’t let you die for me.”

  From around the corner, a shadow whooshes into view, and it takes my eyes a second to process the image I’m seeing. My entire world is unraveling, and I’m on the verge of losing it. But it’s Raphaël, his eyes black, his fangs bared, running at supernatural speed.

  “Duck!” I yell, trying to warn him.

  Instead of halting, he throws himself to the ground and rolls under the sensors and the imbedded spikes. Then I realize why he was in such a hurry to get away—the god we woke up is coming up the corridor, his massive black body scraping the walls and ceiling. He’s crawling after us, ruining millennia-old art.

  “Go!”

  Raphaël grabs my hand and Levi’s and hauls us forward. At that moment, Set reaches the sensor of the metal spikes. He slithers forward a couple of feet, and the metal spikes shoot out of the wall, right into his legs.

  I stop, morbidly curious, to see most of the spikes bent and twisted because they couldn’t punch through the obsidian. But two of them skewered the god’s leg, and he lets out another monstrous scream that shakes the walls and cracks the painted plaster.

  “Fuck!”

  My legs finally unstick themselves, and I rush forward, following the men as my survival instincts kick in. The beams of our flashlights dance erratically over the floor and walls in a dizzying rhythm. In one of the niches, a statue of a priestess shudders, plaster falling from it, and it reaches out, stone hands grasping toward Isak. He roars and smashes the hand away, sending it crumbling to dust.

  Maybe we can escape. Maybe the god is trapped, and we’ll make it out of here.

  A massive thump sounds behind me, but I don’t look back. There’s only the way forward, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to escape before the creature behind us pulls himself forward. If we can get out and seal that exit, surely we can…

  A massive earthquake shakes the tunnel, throwing me to the ground. I blink, dazed, and the silence that follows is complete—not a sound coming from behind us, just my ragged heartbeat rushing in my ears. My magic pings at me, my protection spell and Raphael’s activating.

  Then all at once, the ceiling drops down behind us. One moment, the dusty tunnel that has stood the test of time is perfectly preserved, and the next, it collapses completely.

  Thirty

  Nora

  I come back to consciousness slowly, my vision dark. Pain throbs in my temples, and something is wrong with my chest because I can’t breathe.

  Coughing, I curl u
p on my side and tuck my knees to my chest.

  Fuck, my arm hurts.

  At least I can feel my arms.

  And my legs. I wiggle my toes, and relief washes through me at the realization that my spine’s not broken, even though small aches and bruises are starting to make themselves known all through my body.

  I still can’t see—and I realize it’s because I’m in darkness.

  The tunnel. The temple.

  The god!

  “Levi?” I call, my voice weak and strangled. “Raphaël? Can anyone hear me?”

  No answer.

  In the pitch-black, stuffy tunnel, I close my eyes and try to connect with my magic. Maybe if I feel for the guys’ energy, I’ll be able to find them without light. But there’s barely a drop of power left in my inner well.

  Panic sets in, and I feel for my own protection spell first—it’s there, barely, and sucking up my remaining magic fast. Without thinking, I cut the flow and release the spell. It might have been the only thing that kept me alive, but I’ll die if it drains any more of my power.

  Then a slow realization trickles into my brain. There should have been a second thread of magic. Levi blasted through his own spell, but Raphaël’s was still intact, and now I don’t feel it at all.

  “Raphaël!” I scream.

  No one replies. My chest feels like it’s caving in. I didn’t sever that spell. If it’s gone, then Raphaël is…

  I scramble to my knees, ignoring the pain, and feel around for my headlamp. I won’t think like that. I can’t. Heaving in shuddering gasps, I cough, then spit out dust and grit. My fingers find nothing but sand and rubble, and the silence surrounding me presses down like a thick, smothering blanket. My backpack is still strapped to my back, so I take it off, fumbling through the pockets for my phone.

  I have no hope of getting a signal down here, but if the battery is still full and the screen hasn’t shattered… Yes. The screen flickers to life with an eerie blue light, illuminating the space. I cast around for my lamp and find it lying next to the wall, whole and only slightly scratched. I turn it on and almost sob.

  Now I survey the damage around me. A massive pile of rubble fills the corridor on one side. Judging by the slant of the floor, this is where we came from. I sigh—at least the monstrous god can’t reach me now. Then I flash the beam of light toward the other side, and my stomach drops.

  Another pile of rubble blocks my way forward. Large rocks are mixed with smaller debris, and fine, dry sand pours through the cracks like water, accumulating in a pile at my feet. Since the guys were mere steps ahead when the earthquake hit, that could mean…

  “Levi!” I scream, a touch of hysteria in my voice. “Raphaël!”

  I repeat their names over and over again, even calling Isak, but I receive no answer. I’m trapped in the dark with only my headlamp and my backpack, and my magic is pretty much useless.

  Something moves on my right, and I turn, the beam of light moving with me. For a wild moment, hope flares inside me that it might be one of the guys who I’ve somehow overlooked, but instead, I find a statue of a man standing in a niche. Its chest is bare, its black hair covered with dust, but it’s trying to pull itself out of the wall. The stone grinds with an awful sound, and the statue lifts a clawed hand in my direction, slashing through the air. It snarls when I back away.

  Pure adrenaline shoots through my veins. I reach for that last scoop of magic and fling it at the statue—but it doesn’t work. There isn’t a shred of humanity in this thing, and my magic is lost on it. Frantically, I cast around for a weapon to use. A crowbar would be great, but in this godsforsaken tunnel, all I have is rocks. I pick up a large one and throw it at the statue.

  My aim is terrible, and the stone only hits its shoulder, but it takes out a chunk of the statue, so I take another rock and heave. Again and again, I pelt the enraged, snarling thing that’s still trying to pull its legs away from the wall. One rock takes out its left hand, another smashes a part of its abdomen, and I finally toss a massive chunk of the wall at its head, screaming with effort.

  The statue’s head drops to the floor at my feet, and I jump away from it with a shriek. It rolls to a stop, the grimace still on its face. The rest of the statue droops from the wall niche, then goes motionless. With a hiccupping breath, I palm another rock and bring it down on the statue’s head, smashing it until it crumbles completely.

  My first impulse is to collapse to the floor and sob. This isn’t how I expected this to happen—we should have grabbed the token and gotten out without a hitch. It had been bad enough that we nearly got blown up by that explosion and stabbed with the metal spikes.

  Not in a million years did I expect to meet an actual fucking god in his underground temple. Had it really been Set down there? Had he collapsed the tunnels, burying himself, rather than let his prey escape?

  If we had been chased by a god, that’s a story my twin siblings would enjoy hearing. The thought of them sends a jolt of adrenaline through my weary, beaten-up body. If I crack here and give up, I’ll never see Lily and Elliot again. Or Dad. Or Levi or Raphaël or…

  I heave myself to my feet and face the pile of rocks and dirt blocking my way forward. No other statues threaten me. There’s no telling how fast my air supply will run out in this tunnel. If there are vents anywhere, we didn’t see them on our descent. And I’ll be damned before I waste precious oxygen crying on the floor.

  My only issue is my complete lack of water. In this hot, dusty tunnel, my mouth has already grown dry and sticky. Levi carried all the water containers. Not smart. But there’s nothing I can do about that now.

  Determined, I get in front of the rubble and start pulling rocks down and away, one by one. Afraid that the battery on my headlamp will go out, I switch it off for now and rely on touch alone, shifting the seemingly endless pile.

  I reject all thoughts of the men being crushed, of this heap being too big for me to dig through, and just keep moving, keeping panic at bay.

  I’d rather die hoping and working than despairing.

  I just hope this isn’t the end.

  Thirty-One

  Levi

  When I wake up, I’m half covered in rubble. My legs don’t feel crushed, just buried, and I thank the gods that none of the rocks fell on my head.

  Oh wait.

  I met a god, and from now on, I’ll be more careful with thanking or cursing them. Fucking hell, the mercenary that brought the Icelander to the chamber at gunpoint got eaten by Set. And now the god seems to have brought down his entire temple in an act of wrath so destructive, we might remain buried here forever.

  Heaving the rocks off me, I feel down my legs for injuries. My fingers come off wet and sticky, and pain radiates from my shins, so it’s likely I’m injured. Groping around me for my headlamp, I touch something soft and recoil instinctively.

  Then I reach back and poke it again. It’s warm and alive—someone is lying next to me, unmoving. Reaching over, I run my palms over the prone body until I find a wrist and feel for the heartbeat. It’s there, stable and strong. This tells me I’ve found Isak Einarsson. The arm attached to the wrist is too thick and hairy to be Nora’s, and I don’t think Raphaël even has a pulse. If nothing else, his skin isn’t this warm—in fact, it seems as if this guy is running a fever.

  That’s beside the point, though. I don’t have time to worry about a stranger who might have the flu.

  If I can’t find Nora, everything is lost.

  Pushing the horrible thought away, I rise to my hands and knees and search some more. Finally, my fingers brush over the elastic strap of my headlamp. With trembling fingers, I switch it on and survey the damage around me.

  The Icelander lies next to me, facedown, his broad back lifting with steady breaths. I nudge him with the tip of my boot, and he groans quietly. He’ll live. But Nora and Raphaël are nowhere to be seen. The massive pile of rocks and debris blocks the way back. My heart stops. They could be buried underneath.

&nbs
p; The corridor leading to the outside world is mostly empty, though, so we could get out and call for help. It would take me twenty minutes to reach the hidden doorway, maybe fifteen if I ran all the way uphill. Only I’m not sure anyone would come to our aid. Certainly not Aya and her father, who warned us against the dangers of entering this valley. Or the human police, who would take ages to get here.

  If Nora and Raphaël are still alive under the stone, they’re in danger of suffocating.

  Dropping to my knees, I dig my fingers into the rubble and pull it down. Fine sand particles rise with each move I make, swirling through the beam of the headlamp. I cough, spitting out a mouthful of dust. That reminds me of the water containers in my backpack. I shrug it off and open it—and find that both containers are crushed and empty. I must have landed on them when I was thrown off my feet, and all the water seeped out while I lay insensible.

  Shining my light at where I woke up, I find a telltale splash of wet sand.

  “Fuck.”

  Not waiting for the Icelander to wake up, I open the backpack still strapped to his back and take out one of his water bottles. And he has plenty of those. His bag is larger than mine, and weirdly, it’s filled with nothing but bottled water. I crack the top of one and take a great, thirsty swig.

  My body rejects the water before my brain is aware of what’s going on, and I spit out the salty liquid. My gag reflex activates, and I choke out the remainder of the water that managed to slip down my throat.

  “What the fuck?” I curse, throwing the bottle down. “What is this shit?”

  Isak Einarsson groans again, and his arm moves, scrabbling in the dirt. I crouch beside him and help him roll to the side, where he coughs and breathes heavily for a couple of minutes, his eyes still squeezed shut. Then all of a sudden, he shoots up to a seated position, nearly knocking his head into mine.

  “Whoa!” I rear back just in time to avoid him. “Calm the fuck down.”

  He scrubs his palm down his face, then croaks, “Water.”