Touch of the Fire God [Scions of the Ankh 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (9 page)

The pain the woman felt was insurmountable. The poison claimed her body as its playground and showed no mercy. For a being that had never felt pain, it was both new and terrifying.

But she lay in the arms of Ralabos. Her Ralabos. The one made for her and only her. They had been together longer than any time recorded, and now she was leaving him. She grieved for him, for he was in much pain. Her pain, she felt, was nothing compared to his; she could feel his heart breaking for her.

Then her mind could bear no more as the pain washed over and through her. Her vision began to darken, and she heard him calling her name ...

* * * *

Rene woke with a start. The sun peeked gleefully through her windows, and her heart was beating as if she had run a marathon.

She had been in so much pain. No, not her right? The woman in her dream had died so painfully. Rene felt a pounding between her shoulder blades as if she had been pierced. She scrambled out of bed and raced for the bathroom, grabbed the hand mirror that was stylishly hooked on the wall, and positioned herself against the bathroom mirror. Yes, her birthmark, a jagged scar-looking thing, was bright red, as if ...

As if what? She had been the woman shot with the arrow? Rene closed her eyes and willed her mind to clear of the inane thoughts. She was not some goddess from ancient Egypt. It was a dream, brought about by reading that strange book before bed.

As she replaced the mirror, she recalled a voice that had called to her from her dream ... Called her what? The name was on the tip of her tongue, but her mind wouldn’t grasp it. No, the voice had been calling the woman, not her.

She didn’t even begin to want to explore the fact that, yet again, Ralabos had been there and he had loved her. No—he had loved the woman in the dream immensely. And the woman had loved him unequivocally.

The finer points of the dream began to fade, leaving in their wake only the feeling of a love lost. A lover lost. Why did this story seem familiar? She began her morning routine while her mind tried to divert its thoughts to more realistic things.

For example, she was getting nowhere with finding Franklin Summit’s body, and quite frankly, she smelled a rat. Someone was yanking her chain, and she didn’t like it one bit. Today, she would demand to see someone in charge. This was ridiculous, there had to be a body somewhere.

It wasn’t until after she was dressed that she realized that, once she opened that bedroom door, she would have to face Ralabos. Her cheeks flamed as her mind rewound to last night and how her traitorous body had demanded more of him, like the drug that he was.

But why couldn’t she have a little guilt-free fun?

Her colleagues did it all the time; she heard the way they talked and had often wished she could indulge in some of the physical activity that seemed to drive them from one bed to another.

She knew the answer: because she didn’t want that—she wanted one bed, one man. She would rather be loved and cherished by one man than a slew of men whose promises were as empty as their hearts.

She decided to stay away from Ralabos Smith, as he was a puzzle that not only boggled her mind, he messed up her well-established common sense.

* * * *

“You promised you wouldn’t hide from me,” his voice drawled as soon as she stepped out of her room. Did he have a Lo Jack on her?

“Are you reading my mind or something?” she joked half-heartedly. Shutting the door carefully behind her, she tried to calculate the distance from her room to the front door of the mansion. It would take a minute, maybe two, to get there?

She had to get away from him. She wasn’t used to her mind going to mush and her body being as finely tuned as a new piano when he was around. If he merely quirked one of his perfect eyebrows at her, she wanted to touch his lips.

Damn it! Would he notice if she made a mad dash out the front door?

“Am I?” he countered, then smiled as if he really was reading her thoughts.

“Well if you are, it’s rude.” She walked with more confidence than she felt toward the dining area, though a sudden loss of appetite was making the trip seem useless now.

It was not lost on her that he stayed where he was and watched her as she walked. Rene was determined to get the upper hand.

She stopped and spun around. “I was not hiding from you. I was just sleeping in late. Have you eaten already?”

Ralabos slowly sauntered toward her, his movement and rhythm deliberate, sexy.

“I’ve eaten, but I would not mind watching you.” He let the innuendo blatantly hang between them.

Rene willed her face to remain one color.

“Also, I was wondering if you’d like to join me on a hike today, as they say.” He smiled, using the new language he had learned on what Jonathan referred to as the
TV
.

“Sorry, I can’t. I have to go to Cairo and find out what’s happened to Franklin’s body. If I’m lucky, they’ve located it by now.”

Ralabos stiffened. “You cannot go to the city.” His tone was suddenly stern.

“I am not your child, Ralabos. I can certainly handle myself.” Rene’s spine stiffened as well. He had no right to order her about. Just where did he get off thinking he could?

“It is dangerous in the city.”

“It is dangerous in the bathtub if you slip,” she retorted, stomping her way to the dining hall. Ralabos had no trouble keeping up with her strides with his long, muscular legs.

“Then let me accompany you,” he demanded.

“No! I don’t like your attitude, Ralabos. You cannot just go around issuing orders!” She stopped mid-stride and turned, almost colliding with him. “Last night, was—er, well, last night. But you don’t get to order me about.” She turned smartly, dismissing him; at least she was trying to.

“If you don’t take me with you, you will not go!” His voice was rising, and Rene could swear the hall was getting hotter. “You will listen to me in this. I do this only for your well-being.” His eyes glittered like hard gray stones as he pointedly bore his gaze into hers.

“You can’t stop me!”

“This is my house as well. I will order every servant, especially the driver, not to give you access to anything,” he countered, his face in a full scowl.

“Well I’ll call a cab with my cell phone!” Rene shot back.

“Cell phone?” He seemed momentarily puzzled before he remembered the small communication devices. He could certainly fix that. He telepathically located the small device attached to her hip and sent it enough of a heat pulse to disable it. “You would not dare,” he challenged her, barely holding a smirk in place.

He watched the defiant woman whip the phone off her delicate, well-formed hip and flip it open. She frowned when the device seemed to not function.

“Well?” he prompted, chiding her.

“I’m not getting any reception.” She snapped it closed and cursed silently to herself. “I’ll find a way, Ralabos,” she snapped at him.

“Well just so we are clear, you may not use the telephones in the house. If you don’t take me with you, you don’t go at all.”

With that, he strode for the dining room double doors and opened one, gallantly holding it and gesturing her inside. His ears almost burned at the curses he plucked from her mind. No matter, he would have to teach the little hellfire that she couldn’t outwit him.

* * * *

“Where is she?” Ralabos demanded of Thoth and Hathor, bursting into the study as the two pored over books. It was after breakfast, and Rene was nowhere in sight; his temper however, was clearly visible.

“I do not know,” Jonathan murmured, running a spell over in his mind. “I’ve been preoccupied with reinforcing the protection barrier by centering it just on the property and a few miles around it. That means that we must keep Rene on the property or she’ll be detected.”

“She isn’t in the house,” Ralabos declared. “The little minx is angry with me, and that anger is blocking me from mentally connecting with her.”

“She was quite angry with you, Ralabos,” Hathor commented, laying a hand on Thoth’s shoulder. “She called you a few choice names, some I dare not repeat.” Hathor smirked to herself, remembering the human’s tirade.

“You spoke with her?” Ralabos squinted at Hathor; women talking together, no good ever came from it.

“Yes, she asked to borrow my cell phone.” Hathor had picked up the much-loved human female habit of shopping, and the phone was among her many purchases.

Ralabos took a deep breath before he asked her another question. “Did she call this
cab
thing to take her away?”

He was really frowning now. The realization that his little hellfire might have outwitted him was dawning rather unpleasantly.

”I don’t know. She went to another room to use the phone. Oh no, if she’s in the city...”

“Seth can detect her,” Thoth finished for her. Before he spoke another word, Ralabos had already transformed into a hawk and burst through the glass in the window, sending a million pieces flying.

“Look, I have been here several times looking for the body of Franklin Summit, no one can tell me anything, and the last time I was here, the person I was supposed to speak to canceled on me after having me wait here for several hours.

“Now I will not leave here until I know something!” Rene bellowed loudly.

She was irritated as all hell. First the crap with Ralabos, now these people were trying to give her the runaround again.

It ends now,
she thought.

The small, mousy woman began clasping her hands tightly in front of her, clearly distressed by Rene’s attitude. “Miss Selkis, we are doing—”

“Who is ‘we’? There’s no one here but you and I. There’s always been just you and I, and while I’m sure you’re pleasant enough company, I came halfway around the world to claim the body of Franklin Summit and bury him respectfully, not sit and chitchat.”

“May I be of some assistance?”

Rene turned to see a rather tall, dark, and dare she say, good-looking man, dressed in all black and staring intently at her with the blackest eyes she had ever seen.

He approached her slowly, and the weight of his aura began to weigh on Rene. Power. That was the one word that came to mind. Not nearly as intense as the feeling of unleashed power from Ralabos, but it was undeniably there. He seemed deadly, and his concentrated stare made her skin crawl.

“Who might you be?” Rene kept her voice steady, though the closer he got to her, the more the feeling of something dark seemed to envelop her. Not only that, she could swear she’d seen him before, but she couldn’t remember where.

“I am Torian A. Nubis. I own this facility. How may I be of assistance?” he asked again with an accent similar to that of Ralabos.

Rene breathed a sigh of relief; at last she was making headway. Rene gave him the quick and ugly version of her complications from trying to obtain the body of Franklin.

“Please accompany me to my office. Business such as this calls for privacy. Thank you, Gale. Please hold any interruptions.”

The mousy woman breathed a sigh of relief as he took control of the situation, though the look of adoration in Gale’s eyes as she looked at Mr. Nubis did not escape Rene’s notice.

As they walked farther into the cavity of the building, Rene couldn’t stop the niggling feeling that he seemed so very familiar to her. He was certainly gorgeous enough to be a model, but she sensed that that held no interest for him. No, Mr. Nubis was anything but a boy toy. He was far too sophisticated and intense for that sort of life.

What was it about the men she'd been meeting lately that were abnormally gorgeous? They seemed a species unto themselves.

His office, of course, was dark as well. Everything was in male shades of gray to black, and oddly, the office smelled new, like it was hardly occupied.

“I understand you are having trouble obtaining a body, Miss ...?” he asked as rounded the large desk and settled comfortably into his black, shiny, leather chair, indicating that she should be seated as well.

“Yes, that of Franklin Summit. He’s been dead several days now, and I was flown out here specifically to obtain his body. Is there a chance he’s already been buried or that the body has been mis-tagged?”

“I assure you the body of Franklin Summit is not in the ground.” Nubis smirked, then caught himself. “There has just been a communication oversight.”

“On whose part, Mr. Nubis?” Rene clipped, not liking the man’s attitude. “I have acted on the information given to me.” Was he implying that she was the one who was backwards?

“Are you staying in a nearby hotel, Miss ...?” he asked again, this time clearly indicating she should interject an answer.

“Doctor Rene Selkis,” she offered, “and no, I’m staying with a friend of Franklin’s.” Rene wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but she thought for a second that a smile was about to cross that serious face of his before it was quickly squelched.

“Your name means
rebirth
,” he stated, looking at her as if searching for something in her face. He withheld his thoughts about her last name, however. “Are you staying with Jonathan Thoth?”