Darkness Unbound

by Zoe Forward

  “Amun-Ra’s arm.” She stepped back, half her attention on Ibioni, and the other part on Zannis who was holding his own. But Djoser looked too gleeful, as if playing. That fucker was scary.

  Ibioni stiffened and collapsed to the ground. She wheezed out, “Zannis does not belong in this time. He will never be yours.”

  “He never belonged to either of us,” Astrid replied.

  “He will come for your son,” she whispered. Ibioni’s eyes dilated in death.

  “Who will come for my son?” She shook Ibioni, but her dead body disappeared.

  “Go,” Zannis ordered as he pulled his sword from where it’d lodged in a pew. “Get Ashor and the charmer magus out of here.” Please, Rouhi. Go. Ashor is too important to lose.

  Near the knocked-to-shit pulpit Ashor clutched a fast-bleeding laceration on his neck where he leaned against a pew. The daemon he fought was gone. She thought to Zannis, No! I’m not leaving without you.

  Zannis spun and dodged Djoser’s talon, but not fast enough. It left a deep gouge on his shoulder. You must take my sword. Djoser cannot get it. Throw me Ashor’s blade. Once you disappear, then I shall be sent back.

  Retreat. A smart move.

  Astrid swiped up Ashor’s sword where it lay discarded at his feet. She threw Ashor’s black blade at Zannis who launched his golden blade in her direction.

  Zannis yelled, “Go. I can hold him off a bit longer.”

  Ashor gurgled for air. Zannis was right. Ashor wasn’t long for this world. Instinct demanded she stay and fight.

  Go! Zannis ordered in her mind.

  “Christian, help me get Ashor.” She reached for that mysterious energy that started in her center and spread outward. She envisioned the Mexico estate, focusing intently on Kira. The portal opened. But too slow. Come on. Come on. Open faster. The shadows of a familiar kitchen appeared in the doorway.

  Christian appeared next to her. She and Christian hefted Ashor and dragged. With one foot into the portal, she watched Djoser shove a blade through Zannis’s chest. Zannis’s startled gaze spun to hers.

  His thought blasted into her mind, I love you. Since the moment I saw you. I will find you again.

  She sensed the moment their connection ended. “No!” she screamed as the portal snapped shut.

  She crumpled onto the floor, tears streaming, and chest heaving. Maybe he’d gone back to his otherworld. No, she detected his absence like someone had fired a rocket through her chest. He was gone. She wanted to go where he’d gone. Into death.

  Christian gripped her arm and shook her. “Don’t you dare let go. We need you. Don’t forget Draggon hurt you. He is not worth dying over.”

  She asked her head to move, to glare at Christian, but all she managed was a pitiful delayed-action roll that didn’t convey the appropriate fuck-off.

  A flash of light surrounded them. Maybe this was her death. Thank, God. She drifted on a haze. Christian disappeared. The guy with glowing blue hair leaned toward her face. This boded poorly.

  Mr. Blue-hair rested a hand on her chest. “You are not to leave this life.”

  As if abruptly yanked into a hard collision with an unyielding concrete slab, she was very much in the now. And, oh shit, did her chest hurt. “Let me go with him, wherever he went. Please.”

  “Your time is now. Your son’s time is now. Zannis’s time is past.” Amun-Ra’s hand passed low over her abdomen, hovered for a moment.

  Her startled gaze met him. Pregnant?

  Amun-Ra skewered Ashor, who was already rejuvenated after a magikal Kira healing. “Prime, bring me the human who is here.”

  Ashor pushed away from Kira to a stand. “Who? Rick? The domestic?”

  “No. The one with battle training who is already bonded to her.”

  Ashor nodded and stumbled once before striding from the room with Kira trailing.

  Who was already bonded to her? Her lungs pushed to move air against a crushing pressure. Regardless of the other budding life within, she wanted death.

  Amun-Ra returned a hand to her mid-chest, over the magus triangle. The pressure dulled enough that each breath didn’t hurt. “I cannot make the process of soul reincarnation instant, but I can hasten it. His soul must pass through the other life first. You will hold on.”

  Astrid didn’t understand what he spoke of.

  Ashor pushed Kane ahead of him into the room.

  Kane? The drive to protect him surged energy throughout her body.

  Kane stormed toward Amun-Ra, sizing him up for an ass-kicking. “What the hell are you doing to her?”

  Amun-Ra frowned. Astrid gripped the god’s forearm as he stood, halting the deity. “Don’t hurt him.” She wheezed against a wave of nausea. “He doesn’t understand what you are.”

  Amun-Ra raised his eyebrows and grinned. “You care what I do to this human?” He rose and faced Kane who backed off as if realizing the danger this being represented. Amun-Ra pushed Kane against the wall. “You will skip the induction for now. Ma’at shall be upset, but she can do her rules summation at a later time. I need your soul reunited.”

  Kane pulled at the hand pinning him without success. “What are you talking about? Please tell me I’m not one of them. I’m not spending my life daemon hunting. Hell, no.”

  Astrid rolled and pushed up to a sit to watch. Kane’s big body shook. His eyes rolled back in his head as if in the midst of a grand-mal seizure. Then he stilled. Kane locked gazes with Amun-Ra.

  The god said softly, “Ground her to this world and use every bit of what you have and what I gift you to protect her and her son.”

  “Astrid is pregnant? Right now?” Kane asked.

  Amun-Ra inclined his head once.

  Kane glanced around as if disoriented for a moment before squaring a calculated squint on Amun-Ra. “You implying she and I are supposed to be…you know? Together?”

  The god cocked an eyebrow. “I need you to keep her here and protect her.”

  “That’s all I’ve done since I first met her.”

  “Good,” Amun-Ra stated.

  “Beyond that I’m not sure it’ll work out,” Kane said hoarsely.

  “Circumstances have…changed,” Amun-Ra drawled with a half-smile. “I think you will find all past barriers surmountable.”

  Kane worked his lower jaw. “No. I won’t do this whacked shit unless you induct my brother too.”

  Amun-Ra leaned in. Kane coughed.

  The god rasped closed to his face, “You would disobey? Let her die? I can destroy you.”

  Kane wheezed and pulled again at Amun-Ra’s hand. When the god stepped away, Kane took a few big inhales with his hands on his knees. Then he squared off in front of the god. He pointed at Astrid. “She doesn’t look so good over there. My guess is this hasty enlistment has to do with you needing me. I do nothing and you will kill me? That probably means she goes into the afterlife.” Kane held his arms wide from his body. “So go ahead. Kill me.”

  Amun-Ra glared.

  Kane dropped his arms. “You seem to need me much more than I need this shit.” He raised his eyebrows in silent challenge.

  “She will die when you do. You would cause her death?” Kane and the god held a tense stare down. Amun-Ra rumbled low in a menacing tone, “Your brother is not slated to be a magus. He was a mess in his first life and is no better this time.”

  Kane didn’t lower his hard gaze. “I refuse to do this without him.”

  “Because you worry he will die as a human attempting something foolish.”

  “Markus is what he is, but he’s also wily, lucky, and trained.” Kane held his stare.

  “I will grant him one magus lifetime to prove himself, but ask me not for another favor.”

  From the far corner of the room Ashor said, “Please do not give Markus any sort of explosive superpower. I guarantee he will be worse than Nate for the next thirty years.”

  “’Tis done.” The god gripped Kane’s shoulder briefly before disappearing. Kane groaned and yanked u
p his shirtsleeve, but Astrid couldn’t see what he examined.

  “You have any memory of the past?” Ashor asked.

  Kane shook his head.

  “Then you better play with those things outside until you figure them out,” Ashor suggested.

  What things? Astrid thought.

  Kane massaged his arm and groaned. “God, they burn. Ouch! One of them bit me. What the hell are these?”

  “Dragons.” Ashor stood.

  “Seriously? Real dragons?” Kane ran a hand over the dragon tattoo.

  Ashor nodded.

  Dragons? Kane got dragons like Zannis. She wondered if someday she too would be granted a pair.

  Kane’s gaze swung to her, dragons forgotten. A few strides of his long legs and he knelt next to her. His warm fingers touched her cheek. “You with me, Bella?”

  She nodded. “They recruited you too?” Astrid collapsed onto her back, too exhausted to remain upright. “I’m not sure I want to keep going in all this.”

  “You can’t quit now. Look at me, Astrid.” He pulled her chin gently.

  She drank in his gorgeous angular face with its five o’clock shadow and those fathomless blue eyes. Had he always been this broad? This muscular? Her heart thundered renewed vigor in her chest. She stared into his clear blue eyes.

  “If I’m being forced into fighting daemons or whatever, I’m not doing this alone,” he said.

  “I’m not sure I want to fight at all anymore. I’m just so…tired. Of everything.”

  “I guess I’m going it alone, then. You finally decide to kick me off your team?” His lips twitched upwards.

  She snorted. “You suck alone. That Mexican gutted you.”

  Gone was Kane’s smile. In its place offended took up residence. “You distracted me. I got the bastard in the end.”

  She rolled her head outward, away from him. Her heart was torn between bleeding for Zannis and relief to have Kane by her, alive and safe. And so handsome. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s best if I finally die.”

  He pulled her chin toward him again. “I won’t do this without you. If you go, then I go. Then Markus probably goes too. Give it a day before you make a decision.”

  Astrid stared at him.

  Kane said softly, “You promised me a piña colada and a string bikini for that time I got you out of Sumatra. I’m not letting you die until I get that.”

  “I got you out of Sumatra. Get your facts straight. But you and me…” A strange gut need for Kane confused her. She’d always relied on him and been relieved by his presence, but now that familiarity entwined itself with a hefty dose of desire. And a bone deep need to be with him in every way.

  Kane murmured, “We’ll figure it out. I’m not sure that blue-haired guy…god…whatever it was wanted more of me than to protect you, which I do anyway.” He shrugged. “You’re so ridiculously helpless.”

  She pushed up to sit. “Bullshit, Langford.”

  “That’s my girl,” he whispered. I need you.

  Startled, she blinked up at the man she’d known better than any other human for five years. Had she really heard him inside her head? Surely not. That was reserved for Zannis. Who’s dead, she reminded herself. Amun-Ra just did an emergency something to Kane.

  Her heart slammed against her rib cage.

  His troubled gaze hovered above her. She reached for the mental bond she’d shared with Zannis. It lit up her mind with Kane’s anxiety, desperation, and the early phases of a freakout. Her head throbbed in an effort to wrap her brain around this new reality.

  “I’m going to sleep for about a day,” Astrid announced. She struggled to a wobbly stand.

  Kane caught her arm when she swayed. He swept her into his arms. “Don’t say anything. Let me do this.”

  “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  Before she faded into sleep, his thought blasted into her mind. Please stay on this side of death. Choose to stay with me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Astrid rolled to perch on the edge of the bed. Darkness surrounded her. She rotated her watch and hit the glow button. Four hours of sleep since Kane got inducted. Yet, she still felt as if someone had pulverized her innards, and then left her for roadkill.

  “The sleep thing not working out?” rumbled a masculine voice from the darkness.

  Astrid jumped to a stand with the knife from under her pillow gripped tight in her fist. She clicked on the nightstand light and spun toward the voice.

  Kane chuckled humorlessly.

  Astrid relaxed.

  He took a huge swig from a longneck and dropped his large frame onto the sofa against the wall near the foot of the bed without meeting her gaze. His dark button-down bunched up at his massive shoulders. In an uncharacteristic move, he drummed the fingers of his free hand against the armrest. He scanned the room with brows drawn low, sight unfocused.

  She swallowed a hitch in her breath when emotions boiled inside her. She couldn’t hide from the chaos pushing into her mind. The emotions didn’t allow her the familiar easy escape into feel-nothing land. Somehow her link to Kane had opened the vault to feeling. And, crap, it hurt.

  Every emotion and hormone swirling inside drew her to Kane. A part of her had been drawn to him for years. Now there was a new part of herself that she didn’t recognize. A part she had abandoned long ago. A woman who could love again. She didn’t want to. She couldn’t allow it. The pain from losing Zannis remained a fresh fissure of agony in her mind. But Kane. If anything happened to him, and if his death was her fault, then there’d be no deity that would stop her need to follow him.

  Her heart raced. Her palms sweated. “What’s wrong?” she asked him, laying the knife on the bedside table, struggling to hide her panic.

  “Everything about this is whacked.” He took another swig of beer. “On multiple levels.”

  “As if I raised my hand and yelled pick me,” she mumbled. She stared at the broad, strong hand gripping the longneck. And imagined his fingers on her skin. With a convulsive swallow she road-blocked that fantasy. She tried to redirect her mind, but failed. She desperately wanted to straddle Kane’s lap and attack those sexy lips. Stop it! she screamed at herself.

  She longed for the warmth of his body near hers. To bury her face in his neck and lose herself in his scent. But the barriers she’d erected between them, her ingrained need for his respect, and her terror of the emotions roiling through her held her motionless.

  Think business, she told herself. “What are you doing in here?”

  He shrugged, blue eyes revealing nothing.

  Yeah, stupid question. He was always nearby every single time when she woke up in shitty shape. In the hospital, in the field, and that time homeward bound from Sumatra a few years ago.

  She spotted the cloth-wrapped Sword of Neith propped against the bathroom doorframe. She lunged at the sword and unwrapped the gilded sheathed blade. She held it out to him. “I’m pretty sure they want you to have this.”

  “Which they?” He glared at the weapon as if it was a coiled venomous snake.

  “Every they. Magi. Gods. The blade shouldn’t hurt you. But it will seriously damage anyone else that touches it.”

  “Then, why not you?” He didn’t accept the sword. Instead, he took a sip of beer.

  She dropped it near Kane’s boot-clad foot, its bulk too heavy to remain in offering position. “I’m only its babysitter. It tolerates me.”

  “It’s your sword, then,” he said, still eyeing the weapon.

  Astrid shook her head. She backed up to the bed, and perched on its edge. Waiting. Would the sword accept him?

  Kane stared at the blade. His gaze widened. He reached for it as if the weapon lured him. He pulled it onto his lap and traced the designs on the sheath. “She’s talking to me,” he said, his voice filled with wonder.

  Oh God, Astrid thought. Maybe Kane was linked to Zannis? Maybe that was what Amun-Ra had meant about waiting for Zannis’s soul to return. Could Kane now be Zannis? NO! This was Kane
. This wasn’t the man who tried to murder her hours after she’d fallen in love with him. Her heart kicked in her chest, pounding so hard it hurt.

  Her gaze snapped to Kane when she heard the familiar chant of reverence. Chills bathed her spine. He unsheathed the blade. Its patterns swirled in blue along the length of the hilt.

  She asked, “Did it tell you to say that?”

  He nodded. And stroked a finger down the long blade.

  God, to have him touch her body with such intensity. She swallowed hard. “That thing doesn’t like just anybody. Only you can command her.”

  Kane asked, “How would you know?” His eyes lifted to hers.

  “Her previous owner told me.”

  “Him? The magus that pushed a sword through you?” He ghosted white and dropped the sword on the floor. “Was this the blade?”

  Astrid shook her head. “It wasn’t this sword. It was a look-alike. Take the sword. It is truly yours. I’m going to take a shower.” When she returned minutes later, damp and her head wrapped in a towel, Kane and the sword were gone. Her stomach plummeted. With a disappointed sigh, she returned to the bathroom to brush her hair.

  As she brushed, she realized she needed proof. A pregnancy test. Now. She wasn’t about to take the word of a guy with glowing blue hair. She jogged to find the doctor.

  ****

  Kane jolted awake. He squinted into his dark bedroom to make sense of the noise at the window. He must’ve finally conked out after hours of staring at the shadowed ceiling while his brain seesawed between the need to confirm Astrid slept peacefully in the room across the hall and the impulse to bang his head against a concrete block until he cleared the thought of her with that now-dead magus.

  The window slid open. With his field knife gripped tight in his right fist, Kane waited.

  A hand appeared on the windowsill followed by a foot. Instinct demanded he strike first. The moment before he released his knife on his intruder the dragons gripped his arm in a Rottweiler-stinging chomp. The knife spun out of control and missed.

  “Shit,” Kane cursed.

  “That sounded more like a shit I missed rather than a shit I almost killed my brother.” Markus plucked the knife out of the windowsill and tossed it on the floor. With a grunt, he managed to fall over the sill and into the room. He scrambled upright.