“Then your brother will die.” She leveled a steady gaze at him.
He’d always protected Roman. Always. Right now, Roman was fighting for his life. Reign clenched his hands to keep from hitting something.
“I want a willing, attentive lover.”
“You want a pet,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I want you. With love in your heart and passion in your body.”
“And what will I get?” When she didn’t respond, he had his answer. He turned away; ready to return to his gilded cage.
“I will free you from the Vanquished. No longer will your demons haunt you.”
To be free of his tormentors. What would he give to have that relentless torture cease? Their voices silenced forever? Anything. And she knew this. “You had this ability all along and withheld it. To punish me, bend me to your will.”
No emotions showed on her face, but her coiled hair quivered in response to her agitation.
Whispers gathered in his head. The Vanquished, his constant companions, had awakened. Quickly, their wails rose from incoherent babble to mournful screeches which tore at his sanity.
“Negotiations are over. Do we have an agreement?” Nephythys folded her arms under her breasts, plumping them.
The choice should be simple: freedom from The Vanquished and a chance to save his twin. And all he had to give up was his soul. Not like he had used it in last two thousand years. Still, he had to know. “Let me touch you.” He stretched a hand toward her.
Immediately, a soft glow shielded her body, protecting her from any physical contact.
“You know you cannot. All are forbidden to touch me.”
Nothing had changed. To relegate himself once more to her version of love left a chasm in his gut. But, he had no options. He couldn’t let Roman die because of him.
A null raced into the room and stumbled into a low bow. “Great Goddess, The god, SET, approaches.” Breathless, the servant trembled.
Reign almost smiled. SET had granted him a reprieve from a lifetime of servitude. Reign leaned into her. He brushed her protective barrier. She retreated. He followed, backing her into a wall, crowding her. She couldn’t haggle with SET about to make an entrance. “One day. That is all I will give you.”
“No, this is not a negotiation.” The tips of her hair flamed.
“I have changed my mind. One hour is all you will have.”
Her attention snapped from him to the open archway, and returned. “No. You will give me what I demand.”
“Then we will wait for your husband’s arrival.” He leaned his naked body against a wall.
Anger flashed in her eyes, but she looked to the archway again.
His lungs tightened, searching for the air that suddenly vanished from the room. Reign wobbled. His muscles jellied and he slammed into the table for support.
“All right! I agree.” A copy of Nephythys separated from her body and cupped Reign’s face.
He didn’t have the strength to push her away when her lips covered his. In a rush, some of her power transferred to him.
“Until you return to me, I give you part of my vis’Ra, my energy. It will grant you immortality, the ability to fade and flash, and care for your needs.” An icy wind circled the chamber. “They will not last long,” she stammered, glancing at the doorway. “Goodbye, my love.”
Her vis’Ra coursed through Reign’s veins, a poisonous brew that propelled him from one realm to the next. He materialized on a black road with a yellow line dissecting it. Small dwellings lined either side of the road. Was this freedom? He glanced down at the strange clothing covering his body. The rustle of leaves drew his attention to a sickly tree. He studied the leaves flapping and strained to feel the wind on his face, but no breeze caressed him. Was he real? A metal monstrosity crept down the road and rumbled to a stop a few feet away. He braced for attack. The door swung opened and Roman appeared. Stunned, Reign couldn’t move as his brother strode by without pause.
“Roman?” he called and received no answer. How could he not see him, know he was here? Had time and distance truly destroyed their bond?
The door to the house behind him opened and a woman ran into Roman’s arms. Fury pulsed through Reign. He expected to find his brother engaged in battle, not entwined in an intimate embrace. He bargained his life for this? Once more, his brother placed what lay between a woman’s thighs over family. Too many times drink and women came between his twin and his duty. As mercenaries, their honor lay in their ability to wield the sword in their hand, not the lance fools hung their pride on.
Roman swung the woman up and carried her to the waiting conveyance. Unlike the other women his brother had wasted time on, this one he held close and tenderly kissed. Had he found the one who had caused him to lose his soul?
No woman was worth that. Nephythys proved that.
“Roman, I am here.”
Still, his brother ignored him. Reign grabbed Roman’s shoulder. His hand passed through. He wasn’t real. What had Nephythys done to him? Behind him something crashed. He spun and saw a beast, the hybrid nightmare he had glimpsed in the Scrying bowl. The beast Anubis created and the Goddess ordered him to defeat.
The gods and their petty games. Reign could kill it now, save his brother and return to his cage secreted in Nephythys’s palace. He gagged at the thought of being subjected to her idea of love, but that was the bargain he’d made. Whether now or later, the price had to be paid. He would do this for his brother and the woman. At least one of them would have peace and their line would continue.
Roman entered the metal carriage. It roared much like the beast, then settled into a throaty rumbled. The rear wheels smoked the black road. The beast leaped from the wooden structure and landed inches from Reign. It paused and studied him.
It saw him when his brother hadn’t.
Reign’s hand itched and a weight rested in his palm. A sword. Jagged. Dark as night, sharper than sin, and larger than the one he used to wield in battle, was clasped in his hand. He lifted it.
Heavy, good for cleaving.
Roman and the woman sped away, cloudy fumes trailing behind. The beast followed. Its claws dug into the black road, leaving chunks behind.
Reign charged after both. Fast and agile, the beast pulled away. Nephythys’s vis’Ra surged in Reign’s veins. His atoms shifted, separated. Panicked, he couldn’t stop his body from dissolving. Suspended in the air as a heavy mist, Reign quelled his terror. If the gods could do this, then he could too. With a thought, he chased after his prey, closing the distance within a matter of seconds. A little closer and he would have him.
A force yanked Reign to a stop, reeled him back, and slammed him to the ground. Pain ripped through his head. The Vanquished, his personal army of demons, shrieked inside his skull. He’d thought Nephythys would have alleviated the curse so he could return quickly to her servitude. He wasn’t surprised fortune didn’t favor him. It never had.
For countries, for kings, and for emperors, he killed. To honor the Nicolis name, he killed. And to protect the one person he loved—his brother—he killed. Too many to count fell beneath his blade, but each victory came with a price.
Roman must return. Without his brother’s easy temperament to balance the darkness in Reign’s soul, the Vanquished ruled, and he would become a madman, no better than the beast he chased. Soon he would lose rational thought and descend into madness. He hadn’t traveled all this way to become the thing he would destroy. No. His fingers cracked the hard surface of the black ground, searching for earth to hold onto and center him. Sometimes touching the ground from which all things sought sustenance helped suppress the riot in his brain. But there was no dirt beneath the surface of this strange ground. An ashy, gray substance covered his fingers instead of fertile earth.
A distant whimper reached Reign and gave him the strength to turn his head a fraction. A woman stumbled from the house. She wobbled on unsteady legs. A wild, curly mass of hair obscured her view. She re
sted on one of the wooden columns. One wrong step and she’d trip on the scattered debris and tumble down the stairs. He had to get to her before she fell.
Fighting the invisible demons weighing him down, Reign forced himself to his knees. Then he crawled. With each step, the cries of the Vanquished lessened, replaced by calming silence. If he were pious, he would offer a prayer that she stay put until he reached her.
She pushed away from the column. Her knees buckled. Seconds before her skull would’ve smashed onto the ground, Reign materialized. He dove beneath her and absorbed the brunt of the fall.
Damn the gods.
The feel of her solid form blasted through his petrified center. He hadn’t realized how much he missed this. Human contact. The simple act of touching and being touched. Warmth and the softness of a woman. So long denied, now he feasted.
He buried his face in her mass of curly hair and inhaled jasmine and honey. A moan ripe with longing ripped from his throat and he fitted her lush curves more intimately to him. She shivered and her breath curled in the air. Gently, he rolled and let her slide from his arms to her back. The pale glow of artificial light bathed her face and he forgot to breathe. Something so lovely couldn’t be real. Wasn’t real. Touching her shouldn’t be allowed.
Desire to taste her luscious lips—this one time—dug its claws into him, and drew him near. He brushed her wild tresses from her face and stroked a finger down her cheek, leaving a bloody streak. A quick search and he discovered a gash on the side of her head. He hadn’t saved her. And while he pawed her like an untried youth, she lay dying.
The sound of shuffling feet whipped him around, ready to defend her.
“I called for an ambulance.” An elderly female pushed open the short wooden gate. A halo of silver hair gave her an angelic appearance.
“Can you help her?” Reign asked when she kneeled opposite him. The elder stared, her gaze bore into him, and he couldn’t turn away from the intensity of her watery eyes. Beneath her glare, something inside him wanted to retreat, slink away, and hide like a chastised child. Then her withered face stretched into a smile.
“Alexis will be fine,” she said.
“Alexis.” He repeated the name and returned to study the woman he’d saved.
“She’s stronger than even she realizes,” the elder said.
Her voice soothed him in a way he couldn’t explain until the quiet drone of a distant wail caught his attention. Another slightly different wail joined it. They approached. Together, they set his inner demons on edge. Red, blue, and yellow lights dissected the night and two metal monstrosities screeched to a halt a few feet away. He stood, ready to defend.
“It’s all right. They’re here to help.” She looked up at him. “They’ll take care of her.”
He wanted to care for her, but that wasn’t his mission. “I will leave.” It pained him to say those words. Leaving was the last thing he desired, yet he had to. He lingered a moment longer before stepping into the shadow of the house and fading away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stretched out on a gurney in the emergency department of the county hospital wasn’t how she planned to spend the evening. So much for following where your conscience led. She should’ve left Stella Walker alone and maybe her grandmother’s house and her head would still be intact.
“Keep still, Detective,” her doctor ordered while probing her scalp.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. She had a concussion and an inch long laceration on the left side of her skull. So far, that’s all they’d found wrong, but the MRI results hadn’t returned yet.
“What bed is Detective Lever in?”
Alexis cringed. The one person in the world she didn’t want to see was a few feet away on the opposite side of the privacy curtain. Her partner, Lead Detective McCabe. She didn’t know his first name. Didn’t think he had one since no one dared call him anything but his surname. He didn’t like her gender, didn’t like her style, and hated her youth. She was twenty-four, not two.
Maybe McCabe would take the drawn curtain as a sign she wanted privacy and leave. The curtain snapped open. Even though she expected it, she flinched.
“Please, keep still. I’m almost done.”
She didn’t believe the patience in the doctor’s voice. In the parted opening stood her partner, Lead Detective McCabe, all two hundred and eighty five pounds of him, and that was a low estimate. His impersonal gaze swept over her before meeting her eyes.
“You okay?” he asked though his gaze didn’t meet hers. Instead, he studied the equipment with what looked like trepidation, though she could be wrong.
“I’m fine. Once the doctor finishes I’m free to go.”
“You need to spend the night under observation, Detective,” the doctor interjected still piecing her back together.
“Thanks. I prefer my own bed,” she said, then glanced at her boss. “How’d you know I was here?”
“The desk sergeant got a call from New City PD and your neighbor, Mrs. Margie Kelly.” He stepped fully into the room. “She gave the sergeant more info than New City did.”
She wasn’t surprised her eighty-year-old neighbor had phoned 911. Honorary member of the neighborhood watch, nothing got by her rheumy, insomniac eyes. But a Nicolis calling for the cavalry? Hard to believe.
“Your neighbor’s out there, by the way. She was so concerned she hopped in her Buick and drove the speed limit to get here despite her cataracts. Her words, not mine.” He spoke to her, but stared at the doctor.
“She’s a fixture in the neighborhood, but her heart’s in the right place.”
Awkward silence enveloped the small space. McCabe stuffed his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants and started jiggling his loose change. It had to be the hospital and not the crusty blood matting her hair that had him on edge. The man was the lead detective in The Village Strangler case. He waded in body parts and guts.
“All right.” The doctor peeled off his gloves and dumped them in a nearby red bin along with a stack of bloody gauze and disposable instruments. “I’ll be back with your MRI results.”
“So what the hell happened?” McCabe snapped the moment the curtains swung back in place.
Yeah right, like she was going to tell him about the animal that demolished her grandmother’s house.
“My guns—” She had dropped both during the fight.
“I have one. The New City PD found it in the living room, unfired. They have the other for testing. Answer the question.” McCabe pinned her with a hard stare.
Don’t shift. Make eye contact. Be sincere, but not ingratiating. “I don’t know what happened.”
His eyes narrowed and his thin lips compressed into a slash. “You’re in deep shit, detective. Can’t blame you for zipping it shut. If it were me, I’d do the same. But just to let you know, Internal Affairs will be all over this. You see, that busybody neighbor of yours told us all about your houseguest, the petite brunette you brought home.” He imitated Mrs. Kelly’s voice. “Though Nicolis failed to mention he was squiring away our only witness and you failed to mention you were taking her home. If anything happens to Stella Walker, your career is over.”
“Because I helped a witness?”
“Because you keep fucking up. Should I list all the ways?”
Alexis gritted her teeth and lowered her eyes. Great. Her one act of kindness would leave her unemployed.
“Are you listening to me, Lever?” McCabe leaned closer, crowding her with his bulk.
It was his favorite interrogation technique. She forced herself not to lean away. “Yeah, every word.”
“Another thing, you’ve been reassigned to Vice.”
She swallowed her bitter response but couldn't mask her grimace.
The curtain opened and the doctor slipped back to her bedside. “Your MRI is normal.”
“So I’m done?” She started pulling leads off.
“I really think you should stay the night, detective, but I can’t force you.
Let me get the nurse to discharge you.” He left again.
“My gun?” She stretched out her palm to McCabe.
He placed it on the bed. “I’m gonna give you some advice, Lever. Straighten your shit up. You don’t get unemployment when you're fired.” The curtain swung closed behind him.
His words had a definite ring of truth. The sane part of her wanted to listen. To dig a hole and pull the dirt in behind her. Be the good girl, the team player, follow the rules and maybe they would like her, give her a dram of respect.
And that thing. It had tossed Alexis aside. It didn’t want her. It hunted Stella. Did she and Roman get away? Coupled with Daniel Nicolis, The Village Strangler still on the loose, the woman was in deep trouble. She should’ve told McCabe about it.
Yeah, and end up heavily medicated in a strait jacket. She doubted her strait-laced supervisor believed in anything paranormal. She didn’t either. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, fairies, gnomes that reserved airline seats for savvy travelers, none of that shit was real.
Except for the monster that grabbed her by the throat and looked her in the eye. The monster that chose not to kill her, passed her over for better prey.
And all of it was no longer her problem. Right? She gave a mental nod. She needed a shower and a sleeping pill. Maybe after a few hours of unconsciousness, her world would right itself. On an ordinary night, she would’ve listened to the angel on her right shoulder and taken the cautious road leading back to her grandmother’s house. Thank God Nana wasn’t alive to see her home wrecked.
Another thing on her list to take care of.
Alexis wrestled the safety rail down and swung her legs over the edge. Next came the leads and the IV. She couldn’t return to the desecration of the one place she always felt safe without doing something.
By the time the nurse arrived with the discharge papers, she was dressed and the gun was in the pocket of her sweatpants. She hadn’t made it far when the shrill voice of Mrs. Kelly reached her over the din of the emergency department.
“My dear, where are you off to when you should be resting?” She hustled over to Alexis with a surprising amount of energy for a woman her age.
Everlasting (Descendants of Ra: Book 2) Page 2
