Night Huntress 06 - Eternal Kiss of Darkness (36 page)

“You have cause to rejoice,” Radje said, sweeping into the room where Kira was. “Mencheres has agreed to trade himself for you. He really must be weary of life. Or he intends to set a trap for me with the other Guardians tomorrow night, but all they would see is me, risking myself to bring a condemned criminal in.”

“You sure thought of everything,” Kira replied in a flat voice, hoping he’d leave so she wouldn’t have to hear more of his self-aggrandizing.

Radje lasered his gaze into her, his dark eyes turning green. His long black hair was braided in a style that somehow still managed to look masculine, and those braids swung when he came closer to her.

“You are too pitifully young to understand how long I have waited, yet now at last it is time for me to claim my power.”

“Don’t you mean steal Mencheres’s power?” she corrected.

He spread out his arms out in an annoyed manner. “That power was meant to be mine. Even the gods agree. Why else would Mencheres suddenly long for death? Why else would his visions and ability to trace people fail? Had not
all
these things come to pass, I couldn’t act against him in this way. You see? Fate has intervened for my success!”

You narcissistic bastard,
Kira thought, but she didn’t push Radje’s already-unstable temper by saying it aloud.

She knew why all those things had happened to Mencheres, and they had nothing to do with fate lending a helping hand in Radje’s lust for power. It was centuries’ worth of suppressed guilt, regret, and grief catching up with Mencheres, all coalescing into a wall of darkness that he couldn’t see past and didn’t think he had the strength to tear down. If Radje had a conscience, he’d be familiar with how strong inner demons could be. But, of course, the crooked Law Guardian was too empty inside to know anything about that.

“And you’ll let me go after you get what you want from Mencheres?” she asked, only managing to contain the majority of her derision from the question.

Nothing altered in Radje’s expression. “Of course. No one would believe any tales you would tell, and even if some did, there would be no proof.”

Except for your new power,
Kira mentally added. Only an idiot would believe Radje wouldn’t kill her to protect that secret from being told. Hell, she bet the mercenaries who guarded this place had their days numbered, too. She could guess that the only reason Radje was pretending he’d let her go was so Kira didn’t scream any warning to Mencheres when he demanded to speak to her before giving Radje his power. Mencheres wouldn’t give Radje anything until he knew she was alive. The Law Guardian would know that.

“So Menkaure took you as his lover,” Radje said musingly, his gaze sliding over her in a way that made her long for a shower even more than blood. “I can smell him on you.”

“Give me some soap and water, and I can fix that,” she replied shortly. She didn’t like the calculating gleam starting to appear in Radje’s eyes, or the obviously explicit reference to Mencheres’s scent on her. The sooner Radje left her alone, the better.

He came closer instead, stopping only inches from Kira. “When I first put a watch on your sister’s residence, I wondered if it was futile. I sensed Menkaure had an affinity for you, so I did not expect him to let you return out of fear of a trap. If he didn’t care where you went, then perhaps capturing you would benefit me nothing. Yet my guards heard you tell your sister that you had to sneak away from Menkaure to see her. That is why I knew you would be of use to me alive.”

Kira suppressed a shudder as that disturbing gleam grew brighter in Radje’s eyes.

“Tell me,” he almost murmured, “how much did Menkaure claim to care for you?”

The last thing she’d do was tell Radje that Mencheres loved her. He’d only do even more terrible things to her to spite Mencheres, but she couldn’t pretend that she meant nothing to Mencheres, either. That would be too obvious a lie. Even though Radje believed Mencheres had a death wish, he’d still agreed to trade himself for her.

“We didn’t have a lot of time together, but the time we spent was promising,” Kira said in as much of a noncommittal tone as she could manage. Anger and hunger competed in her. She wanted to smash the smirk off Radje’s face… and she’d give every cent she had for a bag of blood right now.

“Do you know what the Greeks used to call Menkaure?” Radje asked with feigned casualness. “Eros, after the god of lust. As Pharaohs, we were both considered gods by our people. I have been a Law Guardian for almost three thousand years, but before then, when I spent my time seeking my own pleasure, as Menkaure did… my nights were spent in such a sea of flesh that I would never be able to number all the women I had.”

That anger burned hotter inside Kira, but she sought to keep it down and her emotional shields up. It wasn’t enough for Radje to frame Mencheres and ruin his life. Now he had to try and destroy his relationship with her, too, even though he fully intended to kill Mencheres as soon as he saw him.

“Good for you. With all those memories, sounds like you should direct a porno titled
Gods Gone Wild,
” she replied, her voice almost sounding normal.

“Menkaure lived that way for well over two thousand years until he married,” Radje said sharply, as if Kira had been too thick to figure out that Radje wasn’t the only one swimming in a sea of flesh.

Kira blew out a sigh for effect. “Makes sense. All the things he could do in bed about fried my circuits—and with that power of his, I mean that literally.”

Radje gave her a contemptuous look. “It wasn’t just women. Menkaure has had other men, too.”

She shrugged as much as the metal clamps would allow. “So he experimented in his wild young vampire days. Lots of people have. Why, there was this one time in college with me and my girlfriend after a few tequila shots—”

“Are you too stupid to comprehend anything I have said?” he interrupted.

Kira gave him a hard stare, her anger escaping at last. “I understand a lot. Like how you’re so obsessed with hating Mencheres that you’d stoop to even this. Go on, tell me more, but I don’t care. Whatever hell Mencheres raised back then, I think he more than made up for it with over nine hundred years of celibacy, so you’re not turning me against him with your dirty little anecdotes. Right now, all you’re doing is boring me.”

She saw his fist coming, but as she was bolted to the wall, all she could do was brace for it. Pain blasted through the side of her face, followed by a snap of her neck that she could feel
and
hear. For a few agonizing seconds, she couldn’t see. And then the pain faded and her vision cleared so that Kira could notice every detail of Radje’s wiping her blood from his hand onto her shirt.

“We will see how bored you are after I take Menkaure’s power and kill him,” Radje said crisply. “If you think he will find a way to defeat me, he will not. Menkaure knows he’s already dead. If he didn’t, he would have fought against me harder.”

He swept out of the room with the curt word to one of the guards to make sure to eat in front of her while giving her nothing. Kira’s mouth tightened into a grim line even as she fought to tamp down that searing hunger inside her. She had a task to accomplish, and she’d need a clear head in order to do it.

And a little time without any guards watching her.

M
encheres lay on the bottom of the tub. The water had long since cooled, but he didn’t add more to heat the temperature. He hadn’t wanted to move lest it disrupt his concentration. For the past several hours, he’d stared at that looming wall of darkness in his mind, trying to tear it down brick by brick. Kira’s location lay past it, if he could only find a way to breach its indomitable defenses.

But all that occurred was the darkness edging closer until it seemed to have already swallowed him. He replayed Kira’s words in his mind as if they were talismans that could guide him.
You ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?. When did you lose the ability to see past the darkness?. Survivor’s guilt. You might not see a future for yourself because you don’t believe you deserve one.

None of that should matter now. He might not believe he deserved a future, but he knew Kira did. That should be enough to make him relinquish every bit of guilt that might have been blocking him before. Kira loved him, and she believed in him in a way that no one else had before, ever. That alone should be enough to enable him to rip down that wall of darkness within him.

Yet despite his channeling every fiber of his being toward destroying that wall to learn Kira’s location before it was too late to rescue her and leave to meet Radje, the darkness didn’t waver. Its denseness seemed to grow instead, and when the timer went off on the watch Mencheres had set, he knew with great sorrow that Kira was wrong. This wasn’t a barrier he’d caused within himself, no matter how strongly her faith burned for him. It wasn’t survivor’s guilt, self-fulfilling prophecy, or his misinterpreting what he saw.

It was Duat, the dark underworld devoid of sky or land, and no one defeated death once its ferryman set his sights on them.

Mencheres rose from the tub, not even bothering to towel off before he pulled on his clothes. A calm purpose settled over him. Eternal darkness might await him, but before he entered Duat, he would bend that darkness to his purposes first. There was yet a way to save Kira.

Vlad’s expression was somber as he waited for him outside the bathroom. He asked no questions, but he would know Mencheres had been unable to breach that wall inside him. Otherwise, he’d be urging them to leave, so they could retrieve Kira.

“Perhaps we can—” Vlad began.

“I know another way,” Mencheres cut him off. His lips twisted into a sardonic smile. “Though you might not want to stay to see it.”

B
urning assailed her from the inside out even before Kira opened her eyes. Her mouth felt dry, her limbs ached, and somehow she had a stomach full of fire. For a few confused moments, she couldn’t remember where she was, or why she was manacled to a wall. Then it came flooding back.
The three vampires ambushing her in Tina’s building. Radje bringing her here. Mencheres
,
scheduled to meet Radje tonight to trade his life for hers.

She didn’t move or do anything else to rattle those metal clamps and alert the guards that she was awake. They hadn’t left her alone once last night, to her dismay. Of course, Radje had been here, so perhaps the guards had put on a more diligent front for him. She heard them in the other rooms. They had humans with them, and those heartbeats sent Kira’s hunger into overdrive. Though this building seemed to be closed to the public, the ruins were a tourist attraction, giving the guards an easy supply of food.

But no guards were in the room now. Radje might not be here either. He might be on his way to Atlanta to meet Mencheres. What time was it? How long had the dawn kept her asleep?

Kira glanced around, trying to see if any glimmers of sunlight streamed in the room past hers. She couldn’t crane her neck enough to see any, or they weren’t there, but it didn’t
feel
dark yet. She still had time. The rapid thumping of those heartbeats called to her with a hypnotic lure, that burning in her stomach reminding her that she didn’t have much time, either. If she couldn’t control her hunger, it could drive her into a senseless blackout of bloodlust again.

Mencheres is counting on you,
Kira reminded herself. She could do this. She wouldn’t let him down.

As quietly as she could manage, she pulled at the iron manacle around her wrist. It creaked in an alarmingly loud way, making her eyes dart nervously to the open archway, but no one came. Kira gritted her teeth and tried again. The irons still groaned in a manner that sounded like alarm bells to her, but from the sounds in the other room, the guards were occupied with the humans. Who knew how long that would last? She had to hurry.

Kira felt the iron begin to wiggle back from the wall. Elation flooded her, but at the same time, she heard one of the guards mumble, “Did you hear that?”

She shut her eyes and sagged in her restraints just in time. The guard entered, waves from his aura increasing as he drew nearer. A large hand cupped her face, lingering far too long for her comfort. That same hand gave her breast a rough squeeze next, but Kira forced herself not to react.

“Still out,” he muttered. Relief filled her as she heard him rejoin the others in the next room. She opened her eyes a slit, cautious just in case he’d pretended to walk out, but no one was in the room.

She might be able to pull the irons from the wall, but they were too noisy for her to get them out without alerting the guards. Kira gave her manacled hands and feet a ruthlessly analytical look. Broken bones would make a lot less noise than rattling irons. All she had to do was keep herself from screaming. She remembered the agony she’d felt when Flare had crushed her hand.

Easier said than done, but she had no choice.

Kira clenched her jaw shut, bracing herself. Then she slowly, mercilessly pulled her hand down, forcing not the iron from the wall but her hand through a circle far too narrow for it to fit.

Flames of throbbing pain shot through her hand as her bones crunched together, sounding like someone grinding coffee beans for their morning brew. A shudder went through her, and she fought not to make any sound. When her hand cleared the iron clamp, it was twisted into an irregular shape for a few seconds; it hurt even worse as it healed. Then, even though the burning in her hand subsided, the one in her stomach seemed to increase.