by Zoe Forward
Why couldn’t Astrid have appeared a month ago, even yesterday? The gods’ timing was pernicious. Or perhaps, calculated. He wondered if they sought to remind him of why he shouldn’t do what he’d signed up for.
His mind spun. Astrid. Alive. And so beautiful. But not in the kohled, dark-haired, and dark-eyed manner of the Egyptian women he’d worshipped in his younger days. She had a tall, golden beauty. Astrid didn’t require augmentation—straight patrician facial features, striking blond hair, and lean, long limbs wrapped in those skin-tight pants. He envisioned her naked except for those spike-heeled calf-high black boots.
His brain shorted out for a few seconds. Then he remembered her intense cerulean eyes that reflected the chaos of the Mediterranean Sea. She didn’t cower from direct eye contact. That woman didn’t take bullcrap from anyone. Gods, he loved that.
What was she doing with magi? She’d been flirting with the charmer magus who could lure any woman to his bed with a small suggestion. Just the thought of that gigolo touching her sent him into a tailspin of homicidal images.
He said a quick centering prayer and focused on breathing.
Her face swam in his mind. Those pale cheeks had flushed as he approached. When he’d touched her mind, he’d captured a blast of desire and replay of their time together long ago. For just those few seconds, they’d been bound by the invisible strings of longing for that heaven before everything went wrong. She thought he wanted her dead? Anger surged at the injustice. Even though his actions looked bad from her perspective, he’d expected her to confront him and fight. Not hide. Her anger he could handle, but not her silence. He deserved more than a twelve-year cold shoulder.
He glanced around the lightly furnished Egyptian townhouse. The half-empty goblet of water and the remnants of the bread and fruit he’d nibbled, but not finished, remained on the table. Food magikally appeared and disappeared for him, but the gods never granted him anything beyond bland fare. He’d give anything for one spice, or something to drink other than water. Each day was the same. He awoke, he read the same ten books, he exercised, ate, and slept. No variance. Day in and day out—twelve years of mind-numbing stasis. She could have offered him salvation, at least a welcome deviation from monotony. When first locked indefinitely into these five rooms as punishment for his unsolicited human kills, a definite magus rule breakage, he’d been conceited enough to think he could handle it. He deserved punishment for what he’d done, and expected internment in the Lower Realm with endless soul-ripping torture. The gods’ sentence had been uncharacteristically lenient. Yet, he had counted on Astrid to reappear. Her magik could release him from this prison, even if only for a short time. As long as that time was spent naked, he’d gladly lie in the dark fires of the Lower Realm during all the times they weren’t together.
She never came. And he trod the edge of insanity from his solitude.
The dragon tattoo on his arm chomped with the bite of a fractious hound. Okay, he wasn’t entirely alone, but he couldn’t summon forth his pets. He’d tried, but early in his incarceration he’d discovered their freedom was forbidden. They prowled his skin, as anxious for freedom as he.
He flipped a few pages of the text on the origin of the English language that he’d been reading before Astrid intruded. The words blurred, not that he needed to actually comprehend the letters to know what it said. He’d long ago memorized every page. Of the twelve books he’d been granted this one was the oddest choice. The other eleven were Egyptian religious texts. The English book had been penned in the twentieth century, a time he’d only visited once when he had his night with Astrid. Languages came easy to him, but the book enabled him to understand the nuances of Astrid’s English. He’d thought the book a signal from the gods that she’d come back into his life. Why hadn’t he been patient? He’d given her up as gone to Osiris’s Kingdom too soon.
He and Astrid had bonded. He thought that meant they needed each other to survive. How wrong he’d been. Her emotional grid when he’d connected with her mind just now had been different. What used to be lit up with vivid passion now projected a disconnected void of one who had shut off feeling. He detected a woman who had detached from life. Existing, but not thriving. That’s exactly what he’d done to survive.
His mind flew back to that moment when he’d first seen her hunched in the shadows crying. The instant her eyes locked onto his, he’d known she was his other half. His soul needed her to thrive. He should have known she wasn’t gone. How many magi had he watched lose their senariai only to succumb to death soon after their bonded woman died? Had she perished, his soul would’ve finally been released into his next life. Maybe the gods locked her into her world, prevented her death, because they didn’t want him released from this prison.
He massaged his forehead and cursed. How could he have believed her dead? Too many nights he’d dreamed of Astrid in dangerous situations, felt her pain and heard her screams. Too often he’d awoken drenched in sweat, furious, and trapped here, where he could do nothing for her. Now he feared those visions hadn’t been fantasy. He existed to protect innocents from the cruel evils of the world, from the deadly and the deranged, from the tainted and obscene. For Astrid he would destroy even the slightest menace without care for consequence. Case in point: look what he’d released on those Hashishins and where it landed him.
Everything within him stilled with a sudden aaha. The gods had heard his years of prayers. They’d given her back to him. A second chance. He hit the floor on bended knee and sent up a quick thank-you to Shai for interest in his destiny. He entreated Thoth to help him find wisdom and strength to navigate what was on its way to visit him tonight.
The rustling of gown fabric warned him to shut his mind to thought. His torturer had arrived.
He rose slowly, and crossed his arms as he turned. It wasn’t his torturer, but her slave.
Aneksi stood regal and still. As usual, she kept her head covered such that all he could make out was her lips. He despised everything his half sister represented as the emissary of the bitch he’d married eons ago. Aneksi reminded him of this whole dirty business he’d agreed to. An hour ago he’d agreed to play whore in exchange for one hour of freedom a month. Freedom to do whatever he wanted in the Human Realm during those precious sixty minutes.
None of this was Aneksi’s fault, though. Like him, she’d been deceived and incarcerated. Her prison was to serve as his ex-wife’s slave for eternity.
“She has come,” Aneksi said softly. She removed her head cover, exposing the north-to-south scar from eye to chin on the left side of her face. Her delicate hand waved toward his bedroom. A fresh bruise highlighted her right eye. Protective instinct flared.
He ground his front teeth back and forth and narrowed his gaze. “Which one did that?”
“Did what?”
“Your face.” He pointed.
She lifted her fingers to the bruise. Pain drifted through her eyes for an instant before they glazed over into her usual bland expression, and dropped her hand from her face. “No need to concern yourself.”
“Someday.”
Her gaze dropped. “We are both lost to someday solutions.”
“Something changed today. Change is good.”
Her gaze popped up. Hope flared. She shook her head, all optimism fading away. She pointed toward the bedroom.
“Is Min no longer satisfying Ibioni?” He envisioned the dark-skinned fertility god, Min, with his ridiculous red sash and hefty gold crown. “Or is this another conception quest?”
Aneksi stared at the floor. At this point he probably couldn’t engage her again. That spark seconds ago was the first he’d ever witnessed to indicate Aneksi took an interest in his fate.
He glanced toward the bedroom and back at Aneksi. His stomach soured. He forced a hefty swallow. Staring at Aneksi didn’t help. Now if he could just make himself move to face Ibioni.
The image of Astrid in those skintight dark pants, and boots drifted through his mind. She was s
o clean. So honorable. And he never deserved her. This was his life now. He signed up for this.
Astrid’s voice flashed through his mind. Soothing. Divine.
He pushed all memory of Astrid into a dark corner where it had to remain hidden. Determined, he forced his feet to move toward the bedroom.
Ibioni liked to get inside his brain as was her natural gift. She was a first generation god-lineage, half-human, like him. Not quite deity status, not quite human. She was the only mix allowed to live freely within the gods’ realm. Such liberty was allowed by her full-blooded god lover who couldn’t stand to go a night without her. Revulsion whipped a wicked path through his mind.
As he passed Aneksi she whispered, “I am sorry.”
He wished that he didn’t equate her with everything fetid in his life. Even so, they were bound by their mutual imprisonment. “There will be that someday. I promise.”
Her pale blue eyes met his, hopeful.
Ibioni stood in the center of the bedroom, statuesque in her silky cream-color robes that perfectly highlighted her olive skin and draped curves that would have most men on their knees. The gold bracelets around both wrists jangled as she turned. Her dark hair was left loose, falling in gentle waves to her waist. She was exquisite.
For a moment the vision drew him back to the first moment he’d glimpsed her. As an Egyptian infantry squad leader, his life had been focused on distancing himself from a childhood of starvation and destitution. And of shedding the stigma of being the offspring of a whore’s son and the nameless father who’d impregnated and then abandoned his mother and her twin sons, thus condemning her to a life of prostitution. Success and rank had been hard won, but he excelled at discipline and training. With his blond hair, a definite rarity, women came easily. At twenty he’d been an idiot when it came to the opposite sex. He’d enthusiastically agreed to marry Ibioni in exchange for riches, and a chance to bed that radiant creature, thinking himself in love.
Back then he’d thought himself one hundred percent human. Min had known of Zannis’s lineage. That he was the son of Amun-Ra, the king of all the gods, a little fact he hadn’t become privy to until well after the nuptials. Min wanted Zannis’s son, and planned to get that child by any means possible, including prostituting his lover.
“Zannis.” A feline smile curved Ibioni’s lips—the perfect alchemy of seductive, mysterious, and fascinating. “What? No open armed hug or foot kissing at my genius, which will enable you freedom from your cage?”
He ground his back molars. “Do not insult me with feigned compassion.”
She didn’t take the bait, but moved around the room as if showing off her grace. Her movements had purpose—a weapon scan. Old habits never died, at least when it came to sex with her. He never went naked in her presence without a weapon within reach. She liked it rough and only got off when she inflicted the most pain possible.
Ibioni slid her hand under the mattress, removing the rough blade he’d forged from a broken vase. She cocked an eyebrow and put it far from the bed. Damn. His mind slid to a time when the bedroom didn’t equate to a war zone. To a time with a beautiful tall blond.
With a jerk Ibioni halted. “Who is the woman in your mind?”
“Just an actress from a long ago play,” he lied smoothly. “Jealous?”
“To be jealous, I would have to be threatened. That is impossible.” She smiled. “Tell me. Who is she?” Although a request, an underlying threat simmered.
“This is what you want to do? Talk?” On her approach, waves of nausea rolled through him. He feared at her touch he’d humiliate himself by emptying his stomach on her sandaled feet. Reality crashed in. Even should she try mental coercion, which she’d done countless times when they were married, he probably could not experience arousal. Signing on as a magus must’ve guaranteed all aspects of that job applied, including having only one woman that his body craved. He had not been with any woman since Astrid, nor did he desire any other.
She chuckled. “Astrid?”
Oh shit.
Ibioni clucked. “That female is dead.” Ibioni’s sweet smell assaulted his nostrils as she glided close. She traced a manicured nail along his collarbone. “Why do you perpetuate your fascination with that pitiful human? A dead human. She could never do what I can for you.”
The need to destroy Ibioni burned him from the inside out.
A flicker of heat shot down his spine. The bitch attempted to activate his desire? Nothing stirred in his groin. Thank the gods.
She whispered, “She could not have remained with you forever. You’d have watched her grow old and wrinkled.”
Deception flashed in her eyes. She knew Astrid lived. If Astrid was his senariai, then she would survive as long as he without aging. His disgust for Ibioni flared into a fierce need to annihilate her once and for all. Fear took up residence in a dark corner of his mind that she or Min might target Astrid in retaliation, if he failed to kill Ibioni.
He sent up a quick plea to Amun-Ra to protect Astrid. Although unlikely, he hoped his father might listen to his petition.
Courtesy of his photographic memory, he mentally scanned the contract he’d signed less than an hour ago, coming to the part he hadn’t even given real consideration to. Breaking the agreement. He announced, “This is not happening.” He stepped away from her.
“I can help.” She reached for him again.
He pushed her hands away. “I have decided. My answer is no.”
“You will violate our agreement before we give this a chance?”
“Yes.” He watched her curiously, careful to maintain an apathetic mask.
“You do understand what happens, if you do not uphold your part? You’ll lose this cushy prison.” She waved at his surroundings.
“Yet, I avoid the part where I get to be your whore forever.”
“Until I am with child, of course. In exchange you get a period of freedom in the Human Realm.”
So, this was about conception. Again. Loathing flared. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.
She stepped into him; her breasts bumped his crossed arms. Her hands roamed his body as if that would activate sensation. “Maybe in a few days you’ll change your mind.”
He trapped her hands in his, stopping their southern trek. “Stop.” He pushed her away from him and stepped backwards again.
Panic flashed through her eyes. “You will go to the underworld. To the executioner who will slice your body and shred your flesh. Forever. There’s no Mesquet reincarnation chamber awaiting you.”
“I apologize, but I...I cannot do this.” He shook his head. “It never worked when we were together for years. I know the only reason Min had you marry me was to get you with child. It did not work then, and it probably will not work now. Is there not another that can father your child? Why cannot Min give you this desired child?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Was this all some sort of game to humiliate me? You know he wants you to be the father.”
Zannis sighed. “My decision is not about you. I thought I wanted time in the Human Realm. Now, I cannot do this.” Beyond his distaste for his ex-wife, he pitied her. Softly he asked, “Do you love him, Ibioni? Enough that all this…all the duties he requests of you make what he gives you worthwhile?”
Her hand shot to her throat. Emotion drifted through her eyes.
“Are you a slave like the rest of us?” he asked.
She glanced around as if Min watched her. She whispered, “You never pleased me, Zannis. Not like he can.” Her eyes shifted away from direct contact, indicating otherwise.
“You lie.”
She hissed, “Only a god can grant us a divorce, which you will never get. You will remain mine forever. Eventually, I will get what I need. I hope you enjoy real hell.” She disappeared.
His townhouse prison vanished.
Chapter Four
“Wake up, Astrid!”
Astrid’s brain throbbed inside her skull. She fought alcohol-induced lethargy to
bat at the hand gripping her arm. “Quit.” Her lids drooped closed. Ah, relief.
“Come on. Wake the fuck up.”
She managed a clumsy sit and blinked from the car’s backseat into the dark driver’s seat at Christian. “Whaaat?” she slurred. “My head hurts.” She massaged her temple with one hand. The motion sent the world around her into a slow spin.
“Shit. Stay awake. Stay in the car. Do not get out of the car. Did you hear me? Do not get out of the car. Nod if you understand.” Christian’s head snapped to stare out the windshield into the black night, and then popped back to her. Worry pinched his features.
“I’ll just doze here.” She leaned her head against the window.
“Just stay in the car. No matter what you see out there. You can’t handle this thing, at least not your condition.”
“What’s going on?” She squinted at him, but he was already exiting. The car door’s slam ricocheted like a gunshot through her head. She massaged her forehead. Instinct demanded she disregard the temptation to doze. Stay alert.
Shadows moved in front of the car through the darkness beyond the light cast by a solo streetlight. Even that dim light hurt her retinas, but she forced herself to squint through the pain. Khyan flew from the darkness. He landed butt first onto the sedan’s hood with a long curved sword in hand. He jumped up like a superhero as if not even bruised, leaving a body-sized dent in his wake. He charged back into the dark.
The car jolted forward, smacking Astrid’s cheek against the back of the front seat and tossing her onto the floor. She pulled herself off the floor mat to glance out the rear view. With a screech she braced for the SUV’s next strike. She crashed back onto the floor. Screw Christian’s dictate. She had to get out of this car. Now.
Another hit came from the passenger side. Her head whacked against the driver’s side door. She blinked slowly until the world stopped its spin. Then, she tugged at the door handle, but it wouldn’t open. Outside, the door was tight against the concrete edge of an overpass. Two more successive hits, and the car broke through the concrete guardrail. It teetered at the edge. Interstate traffic whizzed below. She shuffled to the passenger side of the car too late.
