The Hunt: Complete Edition

by Anne Marsh

  Tying the impromptu mask around her nose and mouth, she held out the second strip to him. “Here.”

  When he didn’t take the material, she nudged him firmly in his ribs. Embarrassingly, her fingers left a dark streak on his smooth skin. So much for personal hygiene.

  “Do it for me,” he demanded in a low rumble.

  “What? No hands of your own?” she grumbled.

  “Just do it. I can drop all these cobwebs if you prefer.” He gestured with his shoulders and she watched, fascinated, as the muscles of his back worked. Right. Yeah. His hands were full of sticky, gossamer strands. Some of the finer threads broke off and clung. Was that a skittering sound she heard? Looking up, she realized the ceiling was alive with insects.

  The breath whooshed out of her, making the webs in his hand dance angrily. “Oh, Heqet.”

  “Squeamish?” he asked.

  Absolutely. “No,” she lied. Leaning forward, she tied the strip of silk around his nose and mouth. “Keep going.”

  With every foot she crawled, the moon’s pull lessened. Somewhere, far above them, the moon was sailing proudly through the clouds, shedding her silver light over the Valley. Down here, though, she could barely feel its influence. No moonlight—she felt a wrenching sense of loss. She hated working underground, and the bastard who’d sent her here knew that. He’d sent her anyway.

  “How much farther?” she asked, wondering forlornly how much more of this she could stand.

  “You look sad,” he observed. “Why?”

  “Because we’re a good mile underground, all right?”

  He brushed a cobweb off her face. “Is it the depth that bothers you?”

  She stared at him. Was he displaying a sensitive side? Now? He surprised her: Mr. Gruff-and-Tough alpha male could be thoughtful. Sweet in an awkward manner. Who knew that he had it in him? Or that it would attract her?

  “Being underground does bother some people.” His hand stroked her hair. “Don’t like the sensation of all that dirt and stone pressing down on them.”

  Great. She aimed a look at the ceiling—a mere six inches above their heads—and shuddered. If she hadn’t been claustrophobic before, she would be now as she contemplated the massive weight of the temple located right over their heads.

  “Do I look like I’m scared?”

  He considered her. “No. You look like you’re in pain.” And it almost seemed as if her pain bothered him. No, what he wanted was to pry. Get to know her inner secrets.

  “I’ll keep you safe,” he promised and she shot him an incredulous look. Keep her safe? She could keep herself safe.

  She knew better than to trust someone like him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It took twenty minutes to slither through the narrow tunnel—nineteen minutes too long, as far as Miu was concerned. That tunnel had been sheer hell. Now she stood in a corridor that was distinctly not marked on her bootleg map, slapping spider webs—and spider bits—off of her damn partner while he returned the favor.

  His hand landed on her ass with a sharp slap and she jumped. “Last one,” he said innocently. “Spiders bite. Best to have them off.”

  Right. She shot him a look and he merely smiled that cat-in-the-cream smile she was starting to detest. That smile meant he thought he’d just won the latest round in their ongoing who’s-top-dog contest. Sooner or later, she’d have to disillusion him.

  At least he looked satisfyingly surprised when she landed a good swat of her own on his ass. “Spiders,” she returned sweetly when he growled. Goody. He didn’t believe her either.

  A twisted maze of tunnels, corridors, and walkways snaked away from their spidery exit point. On the level just beneath them would be the burial chambers, room after room of the mummified dead laid out in their ceremonial best. Impossibly elegant tombs, decorated with fabulous gems. And around every corner, traps for the unwary. Apparently the Guardians relied on more than brute strength to do their policing. From her current vantage point, she could see several graphic examples of what happened to thieves here.

  A skeleton still pinned to the wall by numerous blades.

  A headless, handless skeleton.

  A skeleton trapped in an impossibly small space.

  “Did we lose them?” She could only hope.

  He shook his head. “They’re coming down your passageway and coming fast.” He held up the flarestick so she could examine the map. Unfortunately, as she’d already noticed, their current location was not marked on the papyrus. That made pinpointing their exact whereabouts difficult.

  “We’re here,” he said, jabbing at the waxed parchment with his thumb. The tomb she was looking for was just below them. She had to hand it to him. He did know his shortcuts. He’d bought them valuable minutes.

  “Thank me later,” he said, looking amused.

  “You didn’t lose them completely,” she pointed out.

  “Got you here first,” he countered. “Gives us the ad-

  vantage. We can pick our ground. Stand or run, but we decide.”

  He had a point. And she liked the fact that he apparently knew his battle tactics and wasn’t going to wade into a fight just because he could. In the distance—but still closer than she liked—she heard the soft whisper of rock on rock, as if their followers had grown careless or bored or overhasty and allowed one foot to drag too long, too low over the floor.

  “Guardians?” she suggested, her mind sorting through possible defenses. Or, since she knew there was no standing against those hard-faced warriors she’d seen in the antechamber to the temple, possible hiding places and acts of misdirection. She wasn’t going to be any male’s mate and she certainly wasn’t going to become a shish kebab either. Defense. Distraction. Disappearance. Those were her options.

  “Not Guardians.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Too loud. Too clumsy. They don’t smell right, either.”

  As if he could smell them from here. Still, she inhaled deeply—and almost choked on the lungful of dead Valley men that she drew in. You could have reconstructed several bodies from the dusty particles floating almost invisibly through the stale air. An alcove must have caved in and dumped its load onto the unforgiving floor. Apparently, the Guardians were so busy ripping would-be thieves to shreds, they’d ignored basic structural upkeep.

  Just peachy.

  “I don’t smell anything.”

  “I do,” he said, and she shot him another sideways look. What was he? If he hadn’t had that impossibly smooth face—completely free of the dark marks that branded the Guardians—she’d have been suspicious. He moved comfortably through the corridors, even in the semi-twilight. Did his eyes glow golden? She hadn’t paid attention.

  No, she’d been too busy eyeing his magnificent ass.

  Her full-moon hormones were the devil.

  Before them, the corridor branched, splitting into

  two equally dark passageways that dropped away to the left and the right. “Which one?”

  She consulted the map. Making a mistake now could be fatal. “Left,” she said.

  He took the indicated tunnel. As they passed through the opening, she eyed the wooden braces with trepidation. All this stone and the temple’s builders couldn’t be bothered with more permanent supports?

  “The catacombs outgrew themselves,” Jafar explained.

  “Too many dead people?” she asked lightly, to mask her unease.

  “Something like that,” he agreed. “The first levels were planned. After that, the Valley dwellers just kept bringing the dead and they had to go somewhere.”

  “So we’ve got the same three on our trail,” she said. He nodded tightly. “Are we going to kill them?”

  “They’re thieves,” Jafar said flatly. “How else would you deal with them?”

  “News flash,” she muttered. “Pot calls kettle black. What do you call yourself?”

  “I’m not here to thieve, Miu,” he said in that delicious rumble.

  “
Right. Pull the other one; it has bells.”

  “Not yet,” he muttered. There was no time for further chitchat.

  Their new-found company burst from the main corridor as if they were being pursued by an army of death spirits or worse. None of them bothered to conceal their approach, although the dark faerie did pause. Wisely. The daemon simply barreled forward without hesitating. There was a sickening squelch as Jafar gutted the male. Withdrawing his blade from the body, he shoved the corpse to the ground.

  Jafar certainly had the two survivors’ attention now.

  He had hers as well.

  That move with the knife had been as cold-blooded as they came. Just a smooth, lethal jab that let the other fellow’s momentum skewer him on the unforgiving metal.

  “Fellow thieves?” he asked her.

  Without answering, Miu rolled the body over with her foot and examined the daemon’s face. It was possible. No one knew who else worked for the Master. Oh, there were the inevitable pairings and you certainly couldn’t avoid spotting others coming and going from the Master’s lair. But no one knew for certain. The daemon, however, was completely unfamiliar. She hadn’t seen his face before.

  “Call them treasure hunters,” she snapped. “Sounds more professional that way. Because that’s what we really are. Can’t truly steal from the dead, can we? After all, they’re dead. They don’t need anything they’ve brought to the tomb with them. Those are unclaimed, ownerless artifacts, merck, and we’re simply giving them a new owner. No harm, no foul. Dead aren’t going to miss what we take, and we need it.”

  Her merck didn’t look as if he agreed with her assessment.

  “Ah. But do you? Need it, that is?” Casually, he bent over and wiped his blade on the dead man’s body. The blood left macabre black streaks on the moss green skin of the deceased.

  The dark faerie perked up noticeably. That kind had a thing for blood, liked to use it in ritual mazhyk. If she’d had a choice, she wouldn’t have spilled it in his presence.

  “Master wants it, then Master gets it.” Did she sound as bitter as she felt?

  “What do you want?” Jafar’s dark eyes examined her face thoughtfully. “Seems to me that’s the more important bit of this discussion.”

  “No.” The dark faerie spoke up at last. “No matter at all what she wants. None of us. We’ve come for a little bit of a necklace and that’s what we’ll be taking away with us.”

  “Nothing else?” Jafar sounded skeptical and she couldn’t blame him. They were surrounded by a vast quantity of gold and jewels—and no one was going to make off with any of it?

  The dark faerie shook his head. The banshee merely crouched on the ceiling, hissing with irritation.

  “He must really want this necklace.”

  Jafar’s gaze snapped to hers, his eyes suddenly intent. “Why?”

  She didn’t know and, judging by the look on the faerie’s face, no revelation was going to be forthcoming from that quarter either.

  Jafar shook his head. “No idea why he wants it— and yet you’re going to haul a priceless mazhykal artifact back to him? No wonder he’s the guy in charge. Sheep,” he muttered in disgust.

  The dark faerie barked a short, pithy curse that more than reflected how Miu felt about their current situation.

  “It’s not that simple, merck,” she explained. “Look, you want a reason why we’re all here? It’s called leverage. The Master simply helps himself to whatever—or whoever—we care about. Then we have to toe the line. Ask them, if you don’t believe me. I don’t know what he has on them, but he has something.”

  “Is that true?” He angled toward the dark faerie, being careful to keep the banshee in his peripheral vision. He wasn’t a fool.

  The dark faerie shrugged. “True enough,” he agreed in a gravelly voice. “Fetch back this necklace or pay the price.”

  “Which is?”

  “Personal.” The faerie’s voice was hard. “A private matter between myself and the Master.”

  “And yours?” Jafar turned toward Miu.

  “Same as his,” she said bitterly. “Personal. And none of your business. All you need to know is these two are after the same necklace as us, they’re equally desperate, and we all share the same rule: winner takes all.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the banshee move. Hell. She needed Jafar’s attention and she needed it now.

  ***

  One moment Jafar was listening with intense satisfaction as Miu’s fellow thief revealed the object of their search, and the next minute he was trying not to gape as Miu grabbed his ass.

  A hell of way to get his attention, admittedly. The tangled scents and emotions swirling around him in the passageway were a distraction and worse was the rank despair shrouding the newcomers. They wanted the necklace badly, badly enough to confront Miu— and himself. Which all pointed to Miu’s boss having a powerful hold over them. Jafar had to ask himself what that hold could be.

  Miu’s fingers flexed, squeezing the cheek cupped in her palm, and Jafar’s thoughts scattered to the winds. Desire rose fierce and strong in him. His senses gathered, focusing on the exquisite feel of her bare fingers as they moved slowly, teasingly over the naked skin of his ass. He bit back a groan. Her warm palm cupped and squeezed.

  Her free hand—the hand not palming his skin as if he belonged to her—shoved a plug of wax into his hands. She must have pulled it out of that pack of hers. He looked up—and spotted the female banshee inhaling.

  Deeply.

  “Oh, crap.” Miu’s hands fell away from him. “Quick. Into your ears. She’s going to scream.”

  And scream she did. The blasted female threw back her head and loosed a powerful swell of sound into the narrow space, shaking the walls and making the floor buck and ripple beneath their feet.

  With a loud crack, the supporting beam on which the banshee was perched split apart.

  The world exploded around them in a seething whirlwind of dust and rock. From somewhere high above, the piercing scream of the banshee was abruptly cut off. The cave-in was first a slow-motion spill of rock and dirt, and then, with a tremendous roar, the wall nearest them collapsed.

  Hell.

  Tucking his female into his arms, he pulled her against his chest and dove for a storeroom. They made it inside in the nick of time.

  Outside, wall stones and dirt rained down, sealing them in.

  ***

  Their prison cell was twelve feet by twelve feet.

  One hundred forty-four square feet of dust-filled space and a half dozen stone shelves lined with stone pots of various sizes.

  “Damn banshee,” Jafar said. That was an understatement. Miu had seen the banshee go flying from her perch with the first wave of rocks. Judging by the sheer volume of dirt and stone blocking their exit, she’d bet the banshee was even unhappier with the outcome than they were.

  Jafar’s eyes went to her forehead and he swore. “You’re bleeding.” Cursing, he ripped a strip from his loincloth and pressed it firmly to the cut.

  Pain blossomed in her forehead. Great. Just what she needed. “Ouch.” She swatted at his hands. “Quit that.”

  “Stops the bleeding,” he said, ignoring her protest.

  Carefully, he ran his hands over her body, checking for other injuries. It seemed to Miu he was taking his sweet time about the examination.

  Discreetly, she tried to dislodge his hand from her breast. Was the caress intentional? The liquid spot between her thighs didn’t particularly give a damn. Well, she reminded herself, there was still the question of just who had sent the merck. Get him naked and she could check for Lierr’s mark—and indulge her own curiosity about the man trapped in the chamber with her.

  His hand squeezed slowly, stroking the V of flesh revealed by the damn virgin’s robe. Definitely intentional.

  “Are you in pain anywhere?” His deep voice made her shiver—or was it the hypnotic stroking of his hand? Just small strokes of the upper slope of her breast. Only s
lightly wicked.

  Should she let this seduction continue? Her body answered the question for her.

  She raised her arms around his neck and pressed herself tightly against him.

  “Tell me you want this,” Jafar growled against her mouth.

  Miu knew she should be grateful for his question, but she couldn’t think straight. All she could do was sigh, “Yes.”

  Dimly, she realized this was out of character for her, and when she was more in control of her senses, she’d be mortified. Now, however, she simply let the pleasure wash over her. Each caress made the pain in her forehead subside further.

  The clasp of the virgin’s robe parting sounded unbearably loud in the room, grating on her over sensitized nerves. The silk fell to the floor in a smooth rush of fabric. His eyes heated and caught on her breasts.

  “Clothes,” she hissed, and he obliged her by slipping rapidly out of his. He might have used mazhyk; she no longer cared. Her sex tightened, all wet heat, as he exposed that smooth, golden skin to her. A wicked scar curled around his right side like a lover’s caress gone terribly awry. Not a thief mark, but perhaps something worse.

  She ran a questing finger over the skin. “Knife?”

  He nodded curtly, his hands reaching for her, drawing her between his legs so she was cradled in the hot embrace of his arms and thighs.

  Teasingly, she explored the flat male nipples, let her tongue lick delicately at the darker skin. A rumble of masculine approval made her smile. Her merck liked that. She did, too. His taste delighted her, an exotic mix of male and spice and something otherworldly.

  “Do you want me?” Running an exploratory finger around his nipples, she let her fingers slide down along his ribs, over the taut, muscled expanse of skin. He was so large that he made her feel small. Protected. She’d never felt that way before; it was strangely seductive.

  His answer was to lift her legs around his waist in a smooth, hot glide of skin. His thick erection rubbed mercilessly against the slick lips of her sex, his fingers curving around the cheeks of her ass as he lifted her effortlessly upward. She barely stopped herself from arching into his possessive touch, from sliding herself against his fingers.