Enslaved (The Inbetween Novels) (27 page)

Shayla wanted to laugh, but she was afraid it’d finish off her fight with vomiting. “You’re not the fluffy type.” She spat out a mouthful of dirt and bitter spit.

“Fix yourself, female. You will not meet my father looking like a lizard that’s been dragged through the mud.”

“I looked pretty good until you brought me here. Where are we? Don’t tell me this dust bin is home sweet home, Harry.”

He flipped his hand in a dismissive gesture. A wet rag appeared clutched between his fingers. The binds on her wrists loosened and fell to the floor. Shayla slowly brought her arms in front of her. The movement made the nausea swell with a torrent of pain from her shoulder.

At last she managed to grab the wet cloth from Harry. It was nice and cool. She pressed it against her forehead, not caring about the muddy water dripping down her face and into her cleavage. The cool rag was helping her nausea. If only something as simple could get her out of the trouble she’d stumbled into.

This is what you get for picking guys up at a bar, Shayla,
she berated herself.
What kind of guy did you expect to find there, Prince-freakin’-Charming with a bucket full of the answers to your romantic problems? Stick to battery operated boyfriends.

Where did that leave Deryck, though? Shayla scrubbed the cloth down her face, taking care when she neared the throbbing in the right side of her jaw. She took her time wiping off the grime she could reach—which wasn’t nearly enough. The skin on her arms and chest were sun burnt. How long had she laid unconscious? The thought of what could have happened made her stomach flip dangerously. Now that she’d seen the true side of Harry, she knew he was more than capable of abusing an unconscious woman.

Unable to look at the man in question, she looked down the hall. They were close to another doorway. This one was massive; easily three times the size of a normal set of double doors. One of the large, ornate doors propped up against the wall of the hallway. Whatever held it in place had long ago given up its function. The other door had fallen into the room they were approaching. It blocked a section of the walkway, but not enough to hinder their entrance, though she had a feeling no obstacle would keep Harry from dragging her in there.

If I go in there, I’m as good as dead.
The knowledge made her shiver as much as the cold water dripping down the back of her neck.

“That’s good enough.” Harry muttered something under his breath she couldn’t understand. The rag vanished from her hands, gently sucked away by some unseen force. It caught her tangled hair in its breeze. “Start walking. Try not to hurt yourself until I am ready for you to do so.”

He dragged her away from the wall by her good arm and pushed her in front of him. Their footsteps echoed down the hallway and into the room at the end. The sound doubled back at them. It sounded as though an army marched the ancient path, not a doomed woman and her surly captor.

They passed through the crumbling archway where the two-foot thick doors had abandoned their sentry duty to lounge around. The room beyond was massive, larger than she could have anticipated.

Above them was a huge domed ceiling with possibly the most intricate carvings and deepest paint pigmentation of anything she’d seen yet. There were two distinct motifs carved into the bricks. On the right side was a huge, golden sun. A man stood with his arms wrapped lovingly around the descending sun, like one would cradle a restless child before laying them down to sleep. The other side held the moon, so plain in comparison to the sun. Another man stood behind it, pushing it toward the apex of the domed ceiling. Silent figures on the walls watched the frozen depiction of the sunset and moonrise. Most of the males on the wall had the same face, some of the women as well. Except one, her statue stood at the far end of the room, watching their approach. The empty space beside her felt wrong. Something had been there, but was long gone by the time Shayla and Harry made their journey into what was clearly a temple of some sort.

Why would Harry’s father be there?

Shayla paused and tried to decipher the story unfolding across the walls. The carvings reminded her of Egyptian hieroglyphics. She’d studied them a lot as a child, but these glyphs were completely different, a whole different language. Any knowledge she had as a curious ten-year-old was useless.

“You’re not here to take in the sights,” Harry whispered in her ear. The brush of his breath on her neck made her shiver.

“Why am I here?” She ducked away from him.

Harry pointed over her shoulder. “Your answer is over there.”

Shayla looked back toward the lonely golden statue. Her jeweled eyes were downcast, fixed on an ornate table set in the middle of the room. As Shayla watched, flames flared to life and hovered above it. Their reflection in the polished gold made the vast room a little bit brighter, but not nearly enough to chase away the chill of a long-forgotten place.

Harry nudged her toward to the table. Shayla gaped at the craftsmanship of it. Golden dragons, much like those depicted in the pictograms on the walls, comprised the legs of the table. Their tails wrapped along the front and curled around each other, making it impossible to tell when one dragon ended and another other began.

A human skull sat in the middle of the table, bordered on the backside by an arch of floating flames.
Guess he’s never heard of candles.
She stepped up to the table and marveled at the intricate designs adorning the skull. It told a story, one far different and darker than the tales along the walls. Bodies crawled over the pitted, pale surface of the skull, reaching for a golden doorway. The story stretched over the forehead, jawbone, and cranium. Its teeth were missing. Not even the dead could smile in the dark temple.

Her abductor pulled a sheet of paper from thin air and laid it in front of her. He muttered something else under his breath. A large knife appeared in his hand. The silver blade caught the flames and reflected them into her eyes. Shayla turned her head.

A wet hiss behind her brought Shayla’s head around again. Harry held the knife in his right hand. The polished edge was red with blood. His left hand dripped onto the floor, the blood beaded in the dirt. He leaned over the table. Blood splattered onto the skull, covering the entire forehead in gore. Slowly, it absorbed into the dry bone like a greedy sponge. The golden doorway painted on the top of the skull shimmered faintly.

“Read from the paper and do everything it says. Skip nothing. Do it properly and you’ll die swiftly. Screw around and I may be tempted to get a taste of what Eros had.”

Shayla frowned. “Who is Eros?”

Harry laughed. “You didn’t think a normal man would want you for a wife, did you? Little girl, you were wed to a god and he used you for that sweet piece between your thighs.”

The world swam around her. Shayla caught herself on the edge of the table. The gold under her hand was strangely warm. She had to be misunderstanding what he said. There was no way this man, a virtual stranger, could know about her life. She’d worked hard to put the abuse she’d suffered behind her. Very few people in her life currently knew about it and they were sworn to remain quiet, unless they saw her diving into the same sort of relationship.

“Cyrus? He wasn’t a god. He was a monster.”

“Same thing in my book. Now shut up and read. I’ll introduce you to a real god.”

Harry slapped the ebony handle of the knife against her right palm. Reflexively, her fingers wrapped around it. He watched her, hovering at her shoulder. If she tried to use his knife against him, he’d win. Harry outweighed her by at least seventy-five pounds—seventy-five pounds of pure, lean muscle, she judged from the way his suit coat moved over his arms and shoulders.

With no other option left, Shayla picked up the paper and read. The more she read, the more panic threatened to overwhelm her. It wasn’t just a set of instructions. There was a spell of some sort for her to read aloud. And the worst part, the spell required blood to kick off the fun and games.

“How am I supposed to work magic when I have none?” She turned the handle of the knife over in her palm nervously.

“Shacking up with a god has perks. Get started, already.”

She set the paper down on the table and brought the sharp edge of the knife to rest against her left wrist. Her hands shook so bad, she didn’t know if she could make a clean cut without doing serious damage.
What does it matter? He’s going to kill me anyway.
Taking a deep breath, Shayla jerked the blade across her arm. Blood glided over her dirty skin. The sting slowly registered through all of the other pains wracking her body.

Her trembling arm swung over the skull. Shayla tipped it over and poured the blood onto it. The glowing doorway on its forehead brightened. She set the knife down and picked up the paper again.

“Bel Marduk, I summon you . . . .”

“Where the hell am I?”

Deryck scanned the land around him and kicked sand out of his shoes. To the north stood a bulking shape—ruins of some sort. The desert had mostly reclaimed it, though it looked as though humans were working to slowly excavate the ruins and uncover whatever ancient secrets it may hold. There were no markers or signs telling him where he’d landed. An internal map was not his gods-given power. He’d give a lot for that gift at the moment, though.

South of where he stood was a building, somewhat modern but worse for wear after time in the ruthless desert climate. He could only see the top third of it over a series of low, rolling hills separating them. Deryck turned back toward the north and frowned. He felt a twinge of recognition, but it vanished.

A nice, cool breeze cut through the baking heat, making him thankful he’d never had to suffer a summer in the land of his father. The breeze brushed his arm again, sending goose bumps over his flesh. Deryck frowned. None of the bushes moved with the wind, or the scant handful of trees atop the nearby hills.

He turned toward the source of the breeze. To his right was a mound, maybe six inches taller than he was. The base of the mound had been dug into, forming a narrow shaft into the earth. Another breeze kicked up out of the hole; not air, not really. It was the sensation of powerful magic being worked.

“No, it can’t be.”

Deryck hunched over and peered down the hole. A concrete tube reinforced the tunnel into the sand. It was approximately four feet high and just as wide. He couldn’t see the end of it, but whatever, whoever was working magic was somewhere under the sand.

Stooping lower so he wouldn’t hit his head, Deryck descended into the makeshift mineshaft. The sunlight took him maybe a quarter of the way down. After, he was forced to blindly feel his way along, hoping like hell there wasn’t anything waiting to eat him in the darkness. He was immortal, but still felt pain. If a snake bit him, for instance, it’d make life miserable until the venom worked its way out of his body. He didn’t have Wolfrik’s healing gift.

After what felt like eternity, but was probably only fifteen or twenty yards at a steady downward incline, a faint light appeared at the far end of the tunnel. Deryck hurried as best as he could. His back ached and he had a sneaking suspicion he’d have issues with confined spaces for a while after.

The tunnel ended abruptly; dumping him into a large, empty room. Shafts of sunlight broke through the ceiling where the sands above were thinner than where he’d entered. It was warmer in the room than the tunnel, far warmer than he expected. The sense of magic was closer, but not in this room.