Surrender (THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES) (22 page)

Crack! Lightning!
Hot pain erupted through her skull, slamming her forward into Jackson’s arms.

“Kailin!” Jackson’s voice faded as the night flooded her, swamping her with inky weight.

“Back,” she whispered but it was no good. Jackson held her in his arms as she slipped into a pain free layer between life and death.

Chapter Ten

Floating in a thick pool of black, Kailin surrendered to the comfort of oblivion. In oblivion there is no time, just quiet comfort and sameness. If boredom surfaces, the mind is ready to wake. Kailin heard the rush of her breath in and out for several, unending cycles. There, evidence that she was indeed alive. Her head beat in time with her heart. Throbbing. More evidence of life. Oblivion was much more comfortable.

“Bloody fucking bastard!” Jackson’s words shot through her sore head nearly making her groan, but that would have pained her more. Wet. Hot wet trickled down her neck. Blood? The thought nearly sent her diving back into the black. “That rock nearly split her head. She could be dying right now! Let her go!”

A deep calm voice wavered before Kailin where she sat slumped against the warmth of Jackson. She knew it was him because he smelled good, but also because her pebble was nowhere. She rested against him, in his snug embrace, his arms wrapped around her body.

“The Orb of Life is sacred,” the detached voice said. It was familiar. Kailin tried to force her eyelids open but they were too heavy. She contented herself with listening. “It is not meant to be unearthed. We convinced her father of this, but now see that was foolishness. Dr. Anthony Whitaker was only the first to try and take the orb. But others follow.”

“Your plan then is to kill off everyone coming to find it?” Jackson asked. “That’s one hell of a long murder list.”

“It is our sacred duty to protect which must be lost, that which should never have been forged in the first place. It has been buried several times and yet its power keeps surfacing. So we will keep burying it.”

Moghadam! The large man from Samantha’s party. Kailin chiseled a crack in her lids. Like breaking the pressure of a long ago sealed sarcophagus, her lids slid open easily. The light of several torches pierced her sight and she blinked.

“There, she stirs,” Moghadam said. “Though it would have been far kinder for her to die instantly. I hear she is terrified of closed spaces.”

Nausea gripped Kailin’s stomach, either from the crack in her head or Moghadam’s cryptic words. Jackson squeezed Kailin gently, cradling her against his chest. He seemed to pull the back of her head into him. Maybe to staunch the bleeding. His efforts hurt and she gasped on a stab of pain. It was then she realized his hands were tied around her front, binding them together.

Jackson rattled off some words in Arabic that sounded like a threat. Moghadam didn’t respond. Kailin tried to see past the sharp points of firelight to the faces beyond. There were at least ten men dressed in traditional Bedouin clothing.
Kufiyas
encased their heads and long
thobes
flowed around their bodies. Horses flanked them. Kailin’s gaze wove amongst them but she didn’t recognize anyone until she reached Qeb. He stood beside Moghadam, eyes darting between the large leader and she and Jackson. Moghadam seemed too accepting of the camel owner as he rattled off commands in his native tongue. Plus Qeb’s face looked incredibly guilty.

“Qeb betrayed us,” she mumbled.

“Seems it. I should have been more on guard.” Jackson’s voice was a rough growl near her ear, restrained fury infused with guilt. “How hurt are you?”

She wasn’t sure. “The trickling on my neck seems to be stopping, but my head pounds.”

Jackson cursed low. “Bloody hell, Kailin.”

“Quite literally,” she whispered. “And I can’t do anything to help our situation with you strapped to me. Do you think they know that?”

“Not certain,” he answered, his lips so close they brushed the spine of her ear. “Qeb’s told them that you have some sort of powers which is why they knocked you unconscious first when they attacked.” Again with the growl. “We were bloody easy targets.”

“I am just as responsible,” Kailin countered his self-flagellation. It was true. She was so used to feeling invincible with her magic she didn’t pay attention to threats. Yet threats stalked her now. Even some that her magic did nothing against, like the asp if she’d been bitten and the bite of a rock cracking her head when she’d been wrapped up in the touch of Jackson’s lips.

They sat in silence, Jackson pressed against her back, keeping the chill from penetrating while Moghadam investigated the hole.

“One shovel,” Moghadam said and looked sideways at Jackson. His gaze slid to Kailin and he cocked his head. “One shovel and less than an hour if Qeb is to be believed. That is…unnaturally efficient.”

“Let me go and I won’t hurt you,” Kailin called and she felt Jackson stiffen. “Keep me tied here and you won’t make it off this desert alive.”

Moghadam laughed. Qeb made some comment that sounded like a warning. His eyes opened with wary waiting, he glanced around as if he expected to see a wall of sand swallow them in the dark.

“If you could hurt me, you’d have done so.”

“I threw you backwards last night. You and all your men.” Kailin’s gaze bit into the man’s dark, flinty eyes.

Qeb rattled something off and retreated to stand amongst the horses. Moghadam continued to consider her, his features sharpening as he weighed the evidence of her threat. “Again, if you could do something
now
, you would have.”

“I will,” she bluffed. “Cut me loose and I will give you a chance to survive.”

“What of your man?”

“He is not my man,” Kailin said indignantly.

“That’s not what it looked like when my rock hit your lovely head, lips parted and tipped up to receive his breath.”

Several of the villainous band chuckled and Kailin ignored the blush rushing across her face. Their torches would be soaring if she weren’t tied to Jackson. Then they would know what her wrath meant. She stared directly at Moghadam with hatred in her gaze. Her words came softly, crisp and succinct. “Do not make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.”

The threat, so pointed and honest, shut down the smirks in the semicircle around them. Moghadam didn’t seem too affected. “I apologize, lovely lady, but I’m afraid I will test your temper tonight. Perhaps your hatred will lesson your terror. Hold onto that.” He nodded to a bulky man nearby. “Lower them in.”

“Untie us first,” Jackson demanded.

“And have you easily climb and claw your way back out. No. You two can hold onto each other in the dark as we seal you in with your treasure. Death in each other’s arms is rather romantic.”

Lower? Down? Into the black hole?
Kailin stomped down the terror that churned a swath of cold dread up her throat, but couldn’t control the rapid exchange of breath, the hiss of barely subdued panic.

“Slow inhale,” Jackson said against her ear. “Slow exhale.” His arms tightened around her.

Slow in, slow out
. Kailin concentrated on the words, but her breath still came in pants, drying her mouth. Stars flickered before her eyes.
Drakkina!
she screamed in her mind.
Drakkina, help us!
The blasted spirit was never around when needed.

“In,” Moghadam ordered, and two men moved forward to grab them. Kailin used her leg strength to dig into the sand, but she was weak and so was the sand. It surrendered her easily as they dragged them.

Jackson held her close. “Lean into me when we fall.”

Fall! In! Claw back out!
Kailin’s world shattered into shards of panic. She screamed and kicked backwards in the sand, but the men managed to lift them to the gaping hole in the hill. It was at least a ten foot drop down, but the fall didn’t knife white searing terror through her. It was the dark, engulfing walls. The smell of dirt all around her. The thin, dusty, inadequate air. Rocks and earth above and around her, closing in on her body. A tomb! Flashes of memory cut through all control.

“I’ve got you,” Jackson’s firm voice penetrated. “Kailin, I’ll catch you. Relax or it will be worse.”

For a brief moment she stopped screaming and breathed, processing his words. But then her boot caught the edge of the hole. Sand and pebbles rattled down on the stone floor below. Without the torch, the hole was a gaping mouth ready to swallow them, smothering them in all consuming night and hopeless insanity. Hyperventilating, Kailin kicked with her boots against the edge until she felt nothing but air. Jackson held her before him on the edge.

“Tuck into me, Kailin!” he rasped. And then…

The hole consumed them with a flash of free-falling breeze. Jarring pain crushed the air from her lungs as her legs hit first before she slammed backwards onto Jackson’s chest. He grunted and she stared up at the torchlight illuminating the hole above like a fiery sun. Sand rained down, stinging her eyes. She spit and sucked in breath, her vocal chords constricting on their own accord as the exhale narrowed into a scream. She was going to die! But worse than that, she was being buried alive.

****

Jackson spit out a mouthful of Kailin’s hair he had sucked in with his first breath once he regained the ability. She lay against his chest, staring up at the hole, screaming. This was no tantrum wail of a child or a woman feigning fright to lure the comfort of a man. Kailin’s scream was shattering, heart-splitting terror, raw and uncensored. It was worse than the howl of the dying. It was the twisting, squeezing pain of torture.

All Jackson could do was hold her in her trapped position, his arms tied around her, hands bound before them both. He dug his heels against the stone and scooted them backwards so they wouldn’t be hurt by the dirt and stones falling as Moghadam’s men covered the hole with a slab.

“Throw down a torch!” Jackson yelled up. “It will eat up our oxygen quicker.”

Moghadam’s face appeared over the edge. “A mercy I think,” he yelled over Kailin’s screams. The bastard actually looked unnerved by her intense reaction. Hopefully it would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. Seconds later a torch dropped down, illuminating the small, half-caved in tomb around them. The slab slid into place, blocking out the stars above.

“Kailin. Love. Close your eyes.” She paused for breath that turned to rattling sobs. “Imagine the bright blue sky above.” Jackson used the same soothing tones he’d used with frightened horses at home, the same voice he’d managed during the worst of Cassy’s illness. Even as dread crept through him, his voice rolled with a calming caress at Kailin’s ear.

“Sparrows flit from an oak at the edge of a forest, but you’re out in the open, on a huge prairie with waving grass as high as your knee.” Kailin’s sobs gentled to a light sniffing. Her breaths hitched but they held longer in and out. “The blades tickle under your skirts against your knees as you run free in the breeze that bends the grass. Above, white clouds float silently pushed by wind. A hawk circles, searching for a hare or mouse. It is open. You are free.”

Jackson felt Kailin draw in a full breath, expanding her lungs. “You smell fresh grasses and the slight tang of an earlier rain.” Jackson’s gaze slipped along their tomb as he talked. Porcelain cats laid cracked on the far wall along with canopic jars possibly holding the mummy’s internal organs. Turquoise, red ochre, gold shone through the dust on the walls, painted depictions of royal hunts, births, and the afterlife.

“You hear the squeak of the prairie dog as it dives into its burrow as the hawk shoots down. The bird soars back up looking for easier prey.”

He twisted to look over his shoulder. The original entrance was behind them, caved in and set with years of mud and pressure from the flooding Nile. He glanced around. Surely there were more tunnels leading away from this small room.

“Horses, wild and free, run across the flat land, under the magnificent blue sky,” he murmured near her ear and tracked her slower breathing. It was jagged with quick intakes, quivers from the sobs and strain of screaming. But it was slower. “That’s it, Kailin. You are under the wide open sky, safe and free.”

The mummy lay without its limestone sarcophagus, its stained wrappings still intact but without ornamentation. Perhaps he was a pharaoh, probably not though, considering the small room unless the tomb truly did expand into the hill.

“Peaceful breezes pull at your hair and you lay back into the grass to stare up at the passing clouds.”

It looked as if the tomb had already been raided with the mummy out in the open, yet a glance around showed priceless pieces of golden treasure scattered. As his gaze searched and his lips moved in slow, reassuring tones, Jackson’s stomach clenched. The orb must be here. Where was it?

“The breeze blows softly over your arms and you inhale long.” Kailin followed his words with a deep draw on the air around them. How many more of those inhales did they have between them? Orb or not, he had to get them out of here.

“Kailin, keep your eyes shut. I have to move us, find something sharp to cut these ropes. Once we’re separated, you can easily get us out.” The back of her hair brushed his chin as she nodded. “Good. Keep watching the white puffy clouds.” She sucked in another slow, long breath. He’d have to keep her calm when he drew away from her, or her magic would explode the whole tomb around them.

Spears leaned into the back corner. “Let’s stand, but keep your focus on the wide sky.” She pulled her knees up and shifted her weight so they could roll forward into a crouch and then a stand. “Good, I’ll guide you, just shuffle your feet through the tall grasses around us.”

“You’re good at this,” Kailin whispered.

Jackson stopped, a grin touching his dust-dry lips. “Getting in life-threatening positions or talking calmly?”

The smallest of chuckles twitched through her body. “Both, but I was referring to the beautiful description of the prairie.”

“It was my home for decades.”