Dark Sins and Desert Sands

by Stephanie Draven

  With a sharp breath, he summoned his powers and the sky began to cloud over. An unseasonal gust of wind rattled windows of the nearby building. It also pressed Isabel against the wall while fat droplets of rain spattered at her feet. At the sudden storm, the city’s residents and tourists fled indoors, but Seth wasn’t thinking about any of them. At the moment, his attention was wholly and solely on Isabel. Her skirt fluttered around her hands as she fought to stay covered and Seth gloried in the way rain drove like needles into her. “Don’t test me—”

  He got no further than that before her hair blossomed into a wreath of orchids and Isabel laughed. “Rain makes the earth fertile. I’m not afraid of your storms.”

  Her laughter was too much to endure. He considered calling an army of scorpions from the desert to carry her somewhere he could have her at his mercy, but she was exhausting his reserves, and he didn’t want the mortals to see this display. It was foolish to spend so much power over this little spat. And what’s more, she seemed to be enjoying it. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had a worthy rival, Seth, hasn’t it been?”

  “Nonsense,” he told her, letting the storm clouds drift away. “The mayhem and bloodshed of this world still sustains war gods like me. I have plenty of competition. There are the Greeks, like Ares and Athena. I vie with Ogun in Africa…” He trailed off because it seemed as if he’d named them as equals, and they weren’t.

  “Those aren’t your true rivals,” Isabel said. “All of you want the same thing. War, battle, violence. You’re all jackals of the same pack fighting over the bones. I’m something completely different.”

  Yes, she was different. In all the most interesting ways. He’d always thrived in his epic battles with Osiris and Horus. He missed those days, and longed to taste them again. Was it possible to recapture with her?

  “I propose a wager,” she said. “Layla has vanished and we both want to find her. If I find her first, I want you to release her as your minion and give her to me.”

  Seth snorted. “Layla is a betraying bitch. She’ll be no more obedient to you than she was to me.”

  “I don’t want her obedience,” Isabel said, slicking the raindrops from her skin.

  “Then why do you want her?”

  “Do you really care?” Isabel asked. “Or are you just afraid to lose?”

  She pricked at his pride. “What do I get if I win?”

  “Me.” Isabel leaned forward to press a very provocative kiss on his mouth.

  He let it happen. It was a way of sealing their bargain, but it was more than that too, and soon he’d make her regret having trifled with him.

  Chapter 10

  I get inside your house at night

  I lurk beneath your bed

  Close your eyes: you still see me

  Light a torch: I’m dead.

  A few hours later, in the darkness, there was a soreness between Layla’s legs—a physical reminder of what she’d done with Ray. She clamped her thighs together as if to savor it before she went back to feeling nothing at all. With Ray, she’d experienced all the things people always talked about, but she hadn’t understood. How was she supposed to go back to the numbness of life before?

  A vague sense of regret formed at the realization that she’d just had unprotected sex. Nate Jaffe had always been diligent about using protection and Layla had made it a practice to be responsible. So why had all reason fled the moment Ray touched her?

  Ray slept soundly, his face half on her pillow, his big frame taking up the bulk of the bed. She couldn’t sleep, but didn’t want to wake him either, so she found the remote control, flipped on the television, and pressed the mute button. She should’ve known better. Photos of Nate Jaffe flashed on the screen, stabbing her in the heart. Then her own image flickered across the screen. Underneath her photo, red letters spelled out the word KIDNAPPED.

  Seeing Ray’s picture on the news was even harder to take. The red letters under his photo said AMERICAN TERRORIST. Layla turned up the sound just loud enough to hear the newsmen compare him to John Walker Lindh and proclaim that Ray was armed and dangerous.

  That wasn’t a lie. Ray had made love to her, yes. He’d shown her a side to him that was gentle and vulnerable. She’d also seen the other side of him, too. She’d seen the coldness in his eyes when he’d shown her his gun, and though he protested his innocence, Layla wasn’t sure she believed him. She might not remember everything about herself, but she remembered enough to know that she wasn’t a malicious person. She wouldn’t have interrogated someone she thought was wrongfully accused.

  Ray had to have done something to make the government arrest him. Breaking out of prison to terrorize people didn’t sound like the actions of an innocent man. People didn’t just get thrown into places like Gitmo by mistake, did they? So what was she doing here, in his bed? Layla took a deep breath, wondering what version of the Stockholm syndrome had led her to not only go willingly with her captor, but to sleep with him, too. Logic and reason were coming back to her, and she was horrified.

  She’d walked out on her patients today. Walked out on Isabel. And now what? Was she literally sleeping with the enemy? She couldn’t go back to her office or her old life until she remembered exactly who Seth was and why she was so afraid of him. She couldn’t stay with Ray either. Some sense, deep and foreboding, told her that if she stayed with Ray, he’d end up dangling from a rope or strangled. That’s what happened to people who got close to her….

  Where could she go?

  Her fingers itched for the sixpence that she’d kept since the day she woke up with it in her hand. It comforted her. Steadied her. Helped her to think. Helped her feel safe. Safe… The memory teased itself out of her mind slowly. She’d left herself a clue, as if the information were too secret to write down, as if she knew she were losing her memory. Six pence. She’d always thought it was just a coin, but it was more than that. It was an address!

  6 Pence Road.

  A safe house in the mountains that she’d set up for herself long ago.

  Layla carefully slipped out from under Ray’s arm and crept across the floor, gathering her clothes and dressing silently. Her skirt was salvageable, but her bloody blouse was beyond saving so she pulled one of Ray’s black T-shirts over her head. It looked sloppy on her, and smelled like him. It was also too big. She was swimming in it, but nothing could be done about that. The keys were in the pocket of Ray’s jeans. She pulled them out very carefully, so as not to wake him, then slipped out the door.

  Ray had actually slept without nightmares for a change. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. No dreams of finding his brother’s dead body. No dreams of dungeons or village massacres. Just pure, blessed sleep. He would’ve liked to turn over and catch a few more winks, but he knew Layla would be anxious to be up and out of here before daybreak. He reached for her, liking the way her scent was on the pillow, but not liking it so much when his outstretched hand found an empty bed beside him.

  “Layla?” He sat up, trying to shake his sex-sated stupor. It was a small hotel room; she couldn’t have gone far. He glanced at the bathroom, half expecting to see her fixing her hair in front of the mirror, but it was empty. He launched himself out of bed. “Layla!” Her name echoed off the walls as he pulled on his jeans. Stumbling toward the door, he threw it open and blinked into dawn’s light. His car was gone. His keys were gone, too. “Motherf—”

  His own curse was cut off by the pain in his arm as he repeatedly bashed it against the motel door in fury. She’d played him. Again. Last night had been about luring him into a false sense of security so that she could get away without telling him what he needed to know. Where the hell would she go now? She wouldn’t go to the police—he knew that much, but it was of small comfort. Knowing her, she’d probably decided to chance a trek out of town in that rust bucket, which meant she could be stalled somewhere in the middle of the desert without water, terrified and alone.

  Why should he care? She’
d taken off again. And this time was almost worse than the first time, when she’d left him behind to rot in Syria. At least then he only had an illusion that there was something between them. He hadn’t slept with her.

  But with his powers, she couldn’t really run from him, could she?

  Layla’s cabin was in the mountains, at the edge of the desert. It was a well-hidden and well-chosen safe house. The car she’d stolen from Ray shuddered to a stop then stalled out completely in that driveway. Great. There was no sign of anyone else living here, and the place looked near-abandoned. She found the key under the gutter spout, where she expected it, but worried that there would be an alarm inside. There wasn’t one. There wasn’t electricity either but there was a generator, a well for water, and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. Everything she’d need to live off the grid for a while.

  Off the grid? Who said things like that?

  It was one of the many unfamiliar thoughts that had been rushing through her mind. The first thing she did was find a flashlight, and that led her to some lanterns. The second thing she did was check the bedroom, where she found a few changes of clothing. Casual clothing. Mostly jeans and cotton tops. These outfits didn’t look like anything she would wear, but they would have to do.

  She got the generator working and once the power was on and the water was pumping, she decided to take a shower. It was with a bittersweet feeling that she washed Ray’s scent off of her. Once she was clean, she changed into her new clothes, surprised that they were a little big.

  Had she lost weight? It seemed as if she hadn’t really been very hungry for the past two years of her life, but now she was ravenous. It must have taken her a half hour to figure out how to get the woodstove burning and put on a kettle of hot water. There wasn’t any tea in the pantry. Just coffee, soup, and a lot of beans. She hoped it would be enough to still her growling stomach. She’d heard that a watched pot never boils, so she went back into the bedroom and rummaged around, curious and awed by each new discovery.

  In the large walk-in closet, she found an enormous safe. It was big enough to lock a man inside of it. She didn’t remember the combination, but her fingers did, and a moment later, she was staring at the unnerving contents. A metal briefcase full of cash lay open before her, but her eyes were immediately drawn to the weapons and ammunition. She found not one, not two, but three different guns. Steeling her courage, she picked one up and realized that she knew how to clean it, how to load it, how to turn off the safety. She knew how to shoot it, too.

  Under some clips of ammunition, she found a few cell phones. All prepaid. All she had to do was charge them up and activate them with one of the many credit cards she found in a manila envelope that also contained several passports. Layla opened one of the passports and it had her picture, but a different name. Berenice Neferet. It didn’t sound familiar. Layla opened another passport, and then another, all with her photo.

  Isadora Asar. Alexandra Khaldun. Nila Odji.

  The names were alarming enough, but it was the dates that disturbed her. One passport had expired fifteen years before. Layla could have been no more than a teenager in that photo, and yet, she looked exactly as she did now. Who the hell was she? What was she?

  Layla pulled out a sealed envelope. She hadn’t liked what she found in that safe, and she was sure she wasn’t going to like what she found in this envelope. Breaking the seal, she pulled out a series of photos. Pictures of strangled men, bodies dangling from the end of ropes, corpses with bags over their faces. Suffocations. Asphyxia. People who had somehow stopped breathing…maybe because of her.

  Nate Jaffe had died this way too, but she was sure she hadn’t killed him. When it came to the men in the pictures, she wasn’t so sure. All she’d done to that Scorpion Group flunky in the stairwell was whisper a riddle to him, and he’d crumpled on the ground as if he’d been struck by lightning. What had she said? I’m too heavy to carry, too light to put down, a stain on your soul, a thorn in your crown. The answer to that was guilt. Guilt. And there was certainly enough of that to go around.

  Layla went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee and think. What if Ray’s car wouldn’t start again when she tried it? Layla took a sip of the coffee, letting her mind work over the problem, and was rewarded with a rich roasted flavor rolling over her tongue. Wow. A flavor at once deep, dark and buoyant. How had she never noticed how good coffee was before?

  It wasn’t just the coffee either. It’s like the whole world was coming alive for her all at once—all the horrible things and the beautiful things all mixed together. Ray was like that for her. Someone whose nature seemed so awful and wonderful that she hadn’t known how to be with him for even one more moment. Now, she couldn’t stop thinking about him and wondering if she’d made a mistake.

  Ever since Seth had walked into her office, she’d been running scared, reacting and letting emotions crowd out her more reasoned, deliberate nature. For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, Layla started to analyze her situation like the therapist she was. And the first thing she had to do was make a very important call.

  Holding one of the prepaid cell phones she’d found in the safe, she unfolded the mangled flyer she’d tucked into her pocket the day before. It was the one advertising Carson Tremblay’s art show, and it had a phone number. A few moments later, she had him on the phone.

  “Holy crap, Dr. Bahset! Are you okay? You’re all over the news.”

  “I’m fine, but I want you to know that I’m so sorry for walking away from you yesterday—”

  “They’re saying you were kidnapped!”

  “I wasn’t,” Layla said. “I’m having personal problems right now and I can’t treat you anymore. I need you to get a pen and paper and write down the name that I’m going to give you of another psychologist—”

  “I don’t want another therapist.”

  “Trust me, I wish this wasn’t happening. I know how hard it was for you to trust me, and I don’t want to do anything to betray that, but I have to make sure that you’re cared for if something happens to me.”

  “What’s going to happen to you?” Carson asked. “Where are you? Do you want me to call the police?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want you to get involved. I don’t want to put you in any danger. This phone call isn’t about me. It’s about you. Are you experiencing any anxiety?”

  “Yeah, I guess. But just the normal kind,” he said.

  “If you start to feel an attack coming on when you look at the artwork, do you think you can practice the techniques we talked about?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Dr. Bahset, my dad is a reporter. Maybe he can help you.”

  It broke her heart to know that she’d put him in a position to worry about her. “You can help me by getting well, Carson. Before I called, what were you focusing on?”

  He cleared his throat, as if he were embarrassed. She could almost see him shuffling his feet and digging one hand down into his pocket with a shy shrug. “I was thinking about the girl I met in your office.”

  Layla was confused. “Isabel?”

  “No. Artemisia. Missy. Isn’t she a patient of yours?”

  Layla bit her lower lip. She didn’t have a patient by that name, but she remembered the young prostitute that Ray had hired to follow her. Wasn’t her name Missy?

  “Anyway,” Carson continued, “Missy and I talked for a while in your waiting room and I showed her some of my stuff. She said that nothing beautiful is unblemished and that maybe I’ve gotta learn to see the flaws in the art, too.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that sounds kinda like what my dad does. Always uncovering the ugly secrets of everything. I’d rather focus on the good, ya know?” There was some static on the line and then Carson said, “My show is starting soon, so I gotta go, but you should really call the police and tell them you’re okay.”

  Chapter 11

  Without me, you have e
verything.

  I dwell inside your deepest core.

  Without me, you are nothing.

  Wanting only makes me more.

  “I thought you didn’t need me anymore,” Missy said, posing in the doorway of Ray’s motel room like some twisted version of Lolita. He motioned her inside and that’s when he noticed the bruises on her face. Someone had busted her lip open and bruised her jaw. Someone had roughed her up.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Ray demanded to know.

  She shrugged. “My pimp. He’s not happy about my extracurricular activities. He only let me come here because I told him you were a big spender.”

  Ray rolled his shoulders, ready for a fight. “Is he outside?”

  “What are you going to do if he is?”

  “I’m going to beat him to death.”

  Ray was as serious as a heart attack and it must have showed because Missy paled. “I don’t want you to kill anybody, Ray.”

  Missy was one of the few people left in the world who didn’t think of Ray as a monster. Her good opinion actually meant something to him, so he decided to let it go. For now anyway. “I need to find Layla.”

  “Again?” Missy eyed the rumpled bed with a knowing glance.

  Ray didn’t want to look at the bed. Some part of him couldn’t believe that last night was real. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that he’d been inside Layla in every way, but he couldn’t stop remembering it either. It made him feel angry and betrayed. He’d been a sucker to think that anything that happened there actually meant something. “I’m going to try to get into her head, and I need you to make sure that I find my way back.”

  “Got it,” Missy said, swaggering over to the mini fridge for a cold soda. “I’ll wake you up in one hour, like before. You got something I can read while I wait?” She caught his sidelong glance. “What? You think I don’t know how to read?”