It was the first and last time he and Jason had been intimate, but it had paved the way for a friendship that had endured since, expanding to include Leo and Chris. The four of them were inseparable. Had been inseparable, he reminded himself with another sharp pang.
As much as he loved Leo and Chris, Jason had been Logan’s best friend. It was Jason who Logan confided in, who he’d confessed his crushes to, and who’d held his hand when his heart had been broken. It had been Jason who Logan had turned to in times of need, and who Logan had thought to go to when he realized that he needed a place to hide with Seti.
Now Jason was dead because of him.
Again a crush of guilt threatened to buckle Logan’s knees. His eyes welled with tears of sorrow and rage, his throat constricting with them as his memories of Jason danced through his mind. Logan gritted his teeth against the pain, yanking open the front door of the Wilder building and marching inside.
His first obstacle came in the form of a beefy security guard with a flat top crew cut and a belly that was more keg than six-pack. The material of his blue uniform shirt stretched tightly across his gut as he sat behind a sleek, modern reception desk. Behind him was a bank of elevators, their golden doors framed in dark, burnished wood.
“Help you?” he asked Logan, flicking his eyes up from the newspaper he’d been reading. His tone suggested that Logan must be lost, since no one who looked like Logan did could possibly have any legitimate business inside the Wilder building.
“I’m here to see Ethan Wilder,” Logan replied. The name tasted like poison on his tongue, and he resisted the urge to turn his head and spit.
“You got an appointment?” the guard asked dutifully, but doubtfully.
“He’ll see me. Tell him that it’s Logan Ashton. Tell him that I’ve got something for him. From Seti,” Logan replied, adding under his breath, “and from Jason.”
“Look, kid, if you’re trying to sell him something, Mr. Wilder will have your balls for breakfast. Why don’t you try across the street at the Trump Tower?”
“If Wilder finds out that I was here and that you sent me away without calling him, it’ll be your balls being served with his cream of wheat and orange juice, not mine,” Logan growled.
The guard grunted and shrugged. “It’s your funeral, kid,” he said, picking up the phone and pressing a couple of digits with a thick forefinger. He spoke quietly into the receiver. Logan caught his name and Seti’s before the guard fell silent and his eyes widened, a flush creeping up his neck.
“He’ll see you, Mr. Ashton,” he said, setting the phone down in the receiver. “Come with me, please.”
Whatever Wilder had said to the guard had made an impression, and the use of a salutation with his surname was not lost on Logan. The guard was almost reverential, leading Logan past the desk to the bank of elevators. He pressed the button, ushering Logan inside, removing the set of keys that jangled at his sizable waist. Selecting one, he inserted it into a keyhole below the floor buttons on the elevator panel.
“This will take you straight up to Mr. Wilder’s penthouse,” he said, backing out of the elevator. “Look, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time,” he apologized as the doors slid shut and the elevator began to glide silently upwards. Logan had no idea what threat Wilder had made to the guard if he let Logan leave, but the man sounded as if he might pee his pants.
Logan kept his hand inside his pocket, his fingers curled around the cool, comforting metal of the gun. For the briefest moment a new worry surfaced as he rode the elevator up toward the penthouse. Logan had never shot a gun in his life.
“Don’t be stupid,” he chided himself. “You’re a college graduate. You’ve got your degree. It’s a simple piece of machinery. You can do this. Point and shoot.” He had no more time to doubt his abilities as the elevator stopped with a slight jerk and a gentle chime announced that he’d arrived at his floor.
The doors slid open, revealing a plush outer office. Logan whipped the gun out of his pocket, swinging it in a wide arc and trying not to think about how badly his hand was shaking.
Then he remembered Jason and how he’d looked like a discarded marionette laying on the floor of the apartment, drenched in blood. Logan’s hand steadied even as his expression darkened.
The outer office was empty. Logan stepped out of the elevator onto carpeting so plush that he felt like he’d sunk in it up to his ankles. Burnished mahogany molding accented rich, cream-colored walls. Heavy, Victorian-styled furniture was scattered in neat, tasteful groupings, dominated by a receptionist’s desk that had probably cost more than Logan made in a month. Three flat-screen monitors sat on the desk, dark.
A pair of enormous double doors stood sentry at the far end of the room. There then, Logan thought, is where his quarry lie - the lair of the beast. Shh, he thought, stifling a hysterical giggle that threatened to bubble up past his lips. I’m Elmer Fudd, and I’m huntin’ millionaires.
Above the doors, a tiny blinking red light drew Logan’s attention to the closed circuit camera poised above the jamb. He grunted, resisting the urge to hurl profanities at Wilder through the magic of television, since he was certain that he was being watched. His face crumpled into a scowl as he strode toward the doors.
They opened before he could reach for the handle. Silently swinging inward, they revealed an immense space much larger than the outer office. From the threshold, Logan could see clear through to the other side of the room and out into the city through the ceiling to floor windows. To his left, Logan saw a deadly array of weaponry hung for display. Axes, swords, scimitars, daggers, and spears, all antiquities, were affixed to wall plaques and gleamed under spotlights.
“Mr. Ashton. Do come in,” a cultured voice called to him in a clipped, British accent. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Logan’s head snapped to the right. There, seated behind a desk that dwarfed the one in the outer office, sat a cadaverous old man. Sharp features on a skull tightly wrapped with skin bore the mark of his advanced age, his hair was snowy white and neatly styled. A dark blue suit that had the look of money hung on his thin bones. An arthritic, liver-spotted hand waved Logan deeper into the office.
He was not what Logan had expected. In his mind, Logan had demonized Wilder, envisioning him as a fanged, scaly monster with the blood of the innocent dripping down his chin. Outwardly, Wilder looked like a harmless old man, someone’s grandfather. Then Logan looked into Wilder’s eyes and saw the truth of him.
There was nothing grandfatherly about Wilder. His eyes sparked with intelligence and fiery fanaticism. Logan could see the snake coiled just behind Wilder’s eyes, ready to strike and sink venomous fangs into Logan’s flesh.
Logan’s hand rose, pointing the gun at Wilder. “You bastard! You sent those assholes after me and now Jason is dead because of you! You killed Perry, too. Why? Before I do the world a favor and put a bullet between your eyes, tell me why!”
“Why? I should have thought you’d have figured that out by now, Logan. I’d heard that you were a clever young man. Tsk, tsk. Sadly, it seems reports of your intelligence were sadly overrated.”
“Tell me why!” Logan roared, his finger itching to pull the trigger and blow Wilder’s pompous ass into the next world.
“Why, Seti of course. Surely you’ve realized by now that he’s special. Unique. And he is mine. I discovered him. It was my money that brought him here, that greased the palms of customs officials to get him in, and paid to keep his existence a secret from the world. He belongs to me.”
“Seti is human! He doesn’t belong to anyone!”
“Seti is most assuredly not human. In his veins flows the secret to immortality! That secret would have been mine by now if it weren’t for you, you insignificant worm! You nearly destroyed my life’s purpose!” Wilder screamed. His eyes darted to a spot just behind Logan.
Suddenly the press of cold metal touched Logan’s temple. His eyes shifted to the right, meeting those of a man who’d snuck up silently b
ehind Logan while his attention had been focused on Wilder. A bodyguard, perhaps, or another hired killer. Either way, Logan realized he was a dead man if he so much as flinched.
Ice loosed Logan’s bowels as the grim realization that he’d failed sunk in. A large hand snatched his gun away from him, pocketing it. Logan forced himself to look back at Wilder, wanting beyond anything else to smash the supercilious smile from Wilder’s face.
“Truly, Mr. Ashton, you didn’t think me so much a fool that I’d allow you to waltz into my office and kill me, did you? You must be more of an idiot than Perry had taken you for being,” Wilder said, shaking his head. “I knew the moment you arrived that my detectives had failed to procure Seti and that you were here for some sort of misguided, poorly planned revenge. Where is he?”
“Fuck you!” Logan snarled. If they were going to kill him, then so be it. He wouldn’t give Wilder any information. He would take that small victory with him to the grave.
“I am through playing games! WHERE IS SETI?” Wilder roared, standing up behind his desk. The barrel of the gun pressed painfully into the side of Logan’s head. “I’ll find him anyway, Logan. My finances will allow me to comb this city, even if I need to do it door by door. I will find him. You might as well simply tell me, and I promise that your death will be swift and painless. Withhold the information, insist on one more minute of this false bravado, and I’ll see to it that you suffer for as long as humanly possible before you die.” The icy black look in Wilder’s eyes told Logan that he meant every word he said.
It didn’t matter. Logan’s lips whitened, clamping shut into a tight, thin line, even as his heart hammered in his chest.
“Shoot off something non-vital,” Wilder instructed his henchman with no more emotion than if he was ordering lunch. “Perhaps a finger or a toe. Let’s see if pain will loosen his tongue.”
Suddenly, the air conditioning went haywire, or so it seemed to Logan. The room’s temperature dropped swiftly, the sweat that covered Logan’s skin chilling him. His breath ghosted in small puffs of fog in the rapidly cooling air. Wilder had noticed the change, too. His wild eyebrows knitted together in a frown as he glanced at the vents in the ceiling.
Near the window wisps of smoke curled, thickening, taking on a shape. For the briefest moment, Logan dared hope that it was Seti, exhibiting yet another unbelievable, incredible power. But the shape that took form was much too large to be him. Its head brushed the fifteen-foot ceiling of the room as it solidified.
A giant with a crocodilian head, long jaws lined with wickedly sharp teeth, its eyes burning red, surveyed the office, locking on Logan.
A huge, clawed hand lifted, and the man who’d held Logan at gunpoint was suddenly flung across the room. His gun discharged into the air, the bullet whizzing by Logan’s head so closely that he could feel the breeze part his hair. With a crash, the man hit the wall hard, crumpling to the floor.
“SETI IS MINE!” the creature, man, beast, whatever it was, thundered. It disappeared before the echo of its voice rumbled away.
Taking Logan with it.
Chapter Seventeen
The police, a squad of uniformed and suited men with many whirring and clattering machines – Seti had no idea as to their use, nor did he care – descended on Jason’s apartment like ants, crawling over everything, barking orders. Standing in the bedroom, cloaked in a spell that kept him unseen by the prying eyes that searched Jason’s apartment for evidence, Seti’s patience began to fray.
He’d gone too long without Logan in his sight. How could he protect Logan if he could not see the man? Right now, at this very moment one of the hard-eyed police-warriors might be questioning Logan, frightening him, touching him.
The thought of anyone but Seti touching Logan for whatever reason sent a bolt of white-hot jealousy whistling down Seti’s spine, stiffening it. No one touched Logan. No one. Logan was his.
Seti gritted his teeth and did what he was best at. He endured.
The moments ticked by with maddening slowness. Not even the ages Seti had spent locked in his sarcophagus had passed with such excruciating deliberateness. Surely a sorcerer was at work here. It was the only explanation Seti could come up with to explain why time had stopped.
Finally, a face he recognized slipped into the room with him.
“Seti?” Chris whispered, peering into the darkened corners of the bedroom. “Are you in here?”
“I am here,” Seti answered, remaining unseen. He watched Chris jump at the sound of his voice with no visible body attached to it. It would have been quite comical, if Seti’s nerves hadn’t been strung tight with worry over Logan. “Are the warriors gone? Where is Logan?”
“The who?” Chris asked. “Oh, the police! No, they’re still here. Listen, Seti, I managed to duck in here, but they’ll miss me in a minute. Logan is gone.”
“WHAT?” Seti roared, becoming visible in the blink of an eye. He towered over Chris, every muscle in his body tensing. “What do you mean, gone?”
“He…he took off just before the police got here. I didn’t get a chance to tell you before now. I don’t know where he went, Seti. But he took a gun with him,” Chris said hurriedly. He cast a glance at the bedroom door. “You need to get out of here, now. The cops will be back here any second – they probably heard you. Hell, the entire east coast probably heard you!”
Seti tipped his head back and howled, shimmering again into near invisibility. All that could be discerned of him was a subtle shadow, obvious only if one was looking for it.
A heartbeat later two police officers burst into the bedroom, guns drawn. Spotting Chris, a plainclothes detective demanded, “Who were you talking to?”
“A mummy,” Chris answered, a little too sarcastically. His reply didn’t sit well with the detective. He grabbed Chris’ arm and roughly manhandled him out of the room, while the other officers searched under the bed and in the closet for whatever had made that inhuman bellow. Not finding anything, they left, closing the door behind them.
A new emotion, one Seti had never felt before, took hold of his heart in an icy vice, squeezing the breath from Seti’s chest.
Fear.
Logan was gone, out in the world, unprotected. Seti had failed at his vow – again. The knowledge put his entire body on edge, each nerve screaming in protest. His sleek, dark brows knitted together as his face turned to granite, his resolve firming anew. He had lost Ashai. He would not lose Logan.
Stalking to the window, he drove his bare fist through the tempered glass, shattering it, and stepped through onto the narrow ledge outside. Ignoring the blood that dripped from his split knuckles, he raised his arms to the sky, lips moving soundlessly.
The wind responded to his call at once, a gentle zephyr that caressed Seti’s skin like the soft lips of a lover.
Seti concentrated, drawing upon the magick that flowed in his blood. His body filled with a power he hadn’t felt since the ill-fated night five millennia ago when he’d unleashed the fierce power of the desert winds upon his enemies. He would turn this city inside out, tear it apart brick by brick if necessary, to find Logan. He would not fail again.
The hair on his arms and legs stood on end as the air around him crackled, and his eyes glowed eerily with the potency of the power he summoned as he spoke two words into the whispering wind.
“Find him.”
At once, the wind whipped into a gale. From the open ocean waters across the harbor that surrounded the city, the wind drove huge waves crashing against the shore, rocking even the mightiest of freighters moored at the docks as it screamed in across the water in response to Seti’s order. With the speed of a nuclear windstorm it pushed through the city, sweeping across every inch of it.
It whistled underneath doors, howling through apartments and offices, shooting through ventilation and elevator shafts. Nothing could stand firm against the onslaught. The wind lifted park benches and garbage cans into the air as it blew through the streets, turning them into projecti
les, hurling them blocks away. Hot dog and pretzel vendors’ umbrellas were pulled free from their carts and sent soaring into the sky. People were knocked to the ground, sent skidding across the pavement by its force. Trees were stripped of their leaves; many uprooted altogether when they failed to bow to the tempest.
And the wind searched.
It slipped into the tiniest crevices, slammed against solid walls until it found – or made – cracks with which to enter. Every room within each building, every rooftop and basement was touched by the powerful gusts. Every vehicle, every office, every restaurant was scrutinized by the gale.
At Jason’s apartment, police radios crackled to life, spurring the officers to temporarily abandon their investigation, racing to the street in response to the unexpected hurricane-force winds.
Seti's Heart Page 14
