Dark Sins and Desert Sands (11 page)

“When you imagined it, did you forgive me?” she wondered. The answer seemed terribly important.

“Yeah.”
The one single word sounded like it had been torn from his throat. “But not before I had you naked and on your knees.”

“Having sex with me was what you needed to forgive me?” she asked.

Ray looked queasy. “Layla, don’t even say that. Can you stop being a shrink for just a minute and stop analyzing?”

Layla braved his anger anyway. “You started it. Besides, I just want to know why you fantasized about me naked.”

He winced. “Because I just wanted to have power
over you for a change. Because it felt good to think about sex. Because it was a distraction from prison. Because if I was thinking about pleasure, then I wasn’t thinking about pain. It helped me forget the fear. It made me feel just a little bit free.”

“Then I’m glad you did,” Layla said, pressing a kiss to his palm.

“Are you?” Ray asked. She could see that he was wondering if it had been part of her game. Maybe he was wondering if what they’d just done together was still some new kind of manipulation. If she was just trying to earn his trust, so that she could send him back to a dark dungeon. He squeezed his eyes shut a few times, as if he were literally in pain, and then she saw that he was.

“Ray?”

He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. You’re bleeding.”

A few droplets of blood had leaked from his ear onto the pillow and his jaw clenched. “When I use my power to control people, it always hurts after. More so with you.”

She felt guilty for encouraging him to use his powers during sex. Her heart hammered in her chest at the thought that something that had felt so right between them could have hurt him. “Can I get something for you?”

“I just need to rest a little,” Ray whispered. “Just stay with me.”

The war god struggled to keep his expression appropriately somber as the police allowed him into the
parking garage to look over the crime scene. Layla was gone. Vanished. Her car abandoned. That should’ve been enough to fix Seth’s mouth into a scowl, but the dangling body of one of his men was a sight that unexpectedly delighted him. The limp body hung loosely from the stairway railing; the police thought it was a clear case of suicide, but Seth knew better. This was Layla’s handiwork, and he wanted to pause and admire her skill.

Seth had always believed that blood was the best irrigation for the soil, but there was something to be said for the clean and sterile kill of a sphinx, too. Every man had secret sins and a guilty heart. Some men had shame too great to live with, and that made them vulnerable to a riddler like Layla. Obviously, the men who worked for Seth—men who agreed to kill for profit—were easy prey.

Even if Seth could feel pity for a mortal, he wouldn’t have felt it for this man. It was difficult for him to even
pretend
to be grief-stricken.

Isabel had no such difficulties. She was already sniffling into a tissue. He didn’t have to guess how the strumpet had managed to charm her way past the police tape. There wasn’t a mortal man alive who could walk by her without a second look, and a police detective was already at her elbow, comforting her. “You shouldn’t have to see this, Miss Flores. Why don’t you let me take you back inside and we can go over your statement again about the last time you saw Dr. Bahset.”

“¡Qué horror!”
Isabel cried, eyeing the dead man and shaking her head.

The worst part was that Seth sensed that the Aztec’s
emotions were genuine. How could the goddess possibly be upset about the death of one of Seth’s men? Had she known his hapless employee? Worse, had she
touched
him? Had they been lovers? The possibility was surprisingly unsettling. It was a good thing the man was dead, because Seth may well have killed him just for the brief flicker of…what was it?
Jealousy?

No. Isabel was a filthy whore. Why should he want what so many other men had obviously already enjoyed? Worse, she was a goddess. No minion that he could control and keep under his thumb. If she displeased him, he couldn’t simply punish her. Isabel would be his equal. Well, not
exactly
his equal. He was older than her, and stronger by far. The fact remained that she wouldn’t submit to his commands and Layla’s rebellion was already more trouble than Seth wanted to contend with.

“It isn’t suicide,” Seth told the police. “Rayhan Stavrakis did this. He’s an escaped enemy combatant and he has a score to settle with Dr. Bahset and now he’s kidnapped her.”

“But first he took the time to hang this guy?” the detective asked. “Kind of a lot of trouble to go to when a bullet would work just as easily.”

Seth hated to be questioned by petty mortals. “It’s his modus operandi.”

“So you think Stavrakis hanged her boyfriend, too? What was his name? Dr. Jaffe?”

Seth winced at the word
boyfriend
. It was such a juvenile word, and it implied intimacies that Layla shouldn’t have engaged in with anyone, much less the pathetic psychiatrist. Then again, Layla was proving
to be as unpredictable and elusive as the minotaur. Oh, how Seth looked forward to capturing them both.

“I think you’d be smart to put all your resources into finding him. He has information vital to our national security so we need him alive.”

In truth, the minotaur had never given up useful information in the dungeon. He may have even been innocent of the crimes he was accused of. Not that it had mattered at all to Seth. The important thing about Rayhan Stavrakis was that he’d been a perfect specimen. It hadn’t been difficult to turn him into just the kind of pet Seth had always wanted for his very own. Seth doubted the Las Vegas police force would be able to catch him, but a manhunt would increase the pressure.

Back out on the street, Isabel was waiting for him. “Is Layla in danger from the minotaur?”

It irritated Seth that he wanted to reassure her. “No mortal man can hurt Layla.”

“Rayhan isn’t
just
a mortal man, he’s also a monster. What if he really
has
taken her? What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to find them both and add them to my collection of creatures. I’ll use them to make war, to grow more powerful, to put the world back the way it was supposed to be. Maybe you should help me. Perhaps if men understood the power of the old gods again, you’d have a worshipper or two.”

“Do you really think I don’t have worshippers?” Isabel asked, her pretty eyes hot with offense.

“Besides slobbering fools who want to take you to bed?” He glanced angrily at a man on the street who ogled her.

“Sex can be worship,” Isabel countered, fearless of his wrath. “Lovemaking is. When a man worships a woman’s body, he’s worshipping me, too.”

Ah, he could see it now. Whereas he fed off war and mayhem, she fed off sex, and with all the rutting in this sinful city, he could see why she’d make it her new home.

“I think,” Isabel said, her eyes half-lidded and voice sultry, “that
you
would even worship me a little bit, if I came to your bed.”

It wasn’t possible that he should want her. She was the embodiment of everything he despised in a woman. Where he was the sterile sand, she was lush and fertile. Where he inspired hatred, she inspired lust. Maybe even love. He controlled storms and crocodiles and venomous scorpions that burrowed under sand and rock, whereas she commanded flowers and hummingbirds and butterflies that fluttered delicately through the air. Yet, the thought of conquering her stirred something in his blood that he hadn’t felt for centuries. “If you came to my bed, perhaps you’d do the worshipping,
Xochiquetzal
.”

She smiled at the use of her true name. “It’s a pity you’ll never find out.”

“I could have you if I wanted you,” Seth assured her.

“No,” she replied. “No man puts his hands on me unless he’s earned the right.”

Earned the right?
He didn’t need her permission to enjoy whatever pleasures her body offered. He could
take
them. “I’m more powerful than you,” Seth warned. “I can bend you to my will.”

She should’ve stepped back from the thunder in
his eyes, but instead, Isabel whispered, “Are you sure about that?”

In an effort to soothe his ego and satisfy his pride, Seth had come to Vegas to fetch his wayward minion. Now Layla had made a fool of him again, and the young Aztec goddess had been on hand to witness it. It had emboldened her to taunt him like this, and it made him furious. She was too young a goddess to truly understand the world, but he would teach her. She’d either submit to him now or he’d take her right here on the street like the whore that she was. He’d tear the clothes from her body with the scouring winds of a sandstorm. He’d scorch her lips with his desert heat and make her wilt in supplication!

With a sharp breath, he summoned his powers and the sky began to cloud over. An unseasonal gust of wind rattled windows of the nearby building. It also pressed Isabel against the wall while fat droplets of rain spattered at her feet. At the sudden storm, the city’s residents and tourists fled indoors, but Seth wasn’t thinking about any of them. At the moment, his attention was wholly and solely on Isabel. Her skirt fluttered around her hands as she fought to stay covered and Seth gloried in the way rain drove like needles into her. “Don’t test me—”

He got no further than that before her hair blossomed into a wreath of orchids and Isabel laughed. “Rain makes the earth fertile. I’m not afraid of your storms.”

Her laughter was too much to endure. He considered calling an army of scorpions from the desert to carry her somewhere he could have her at his mercy, but she was exhausting his reserves, and he didn’t want
the mortals to see this display. It was foolish to spend so much power over this little spat. And what’s more, she seemed to be enjoying it. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had a worthy rival, Seth, hasn’t it been?”

“Nonsense,” he told her, letting the storm clouds drift away. “The mayhem and bloodshed of this world still sustains war gods like me. I have plenty of competition. There are the Greeks, like Ares and Athena. I vie with Ogun in Africa…” He trailed off because it seemed as if he’d named them as equals, and they weren’t.

“Those aren’t your true rivals,” Isabel said. “All of you want the same thing. War, battle, violence. You’re all jackals of the same pack fighting over the bones. I’m something completely different.”

Yes, she was different. In all the most interesting ways. He’d always thrived in his epic battles with Osiris and Horus. He missed those days, and longed to taste them again. Was it possible to recapture with her?

“I propose a wager,” she said. “Layla has vanished and we both want to find her. If I find her first, I want you to release her as your minion and give her to me.”

Seth snorted. “Layla is a betraying bitch. She’ll be no more obedient to you than she was to me.”

“I don’t want her obedience,” Isabel said, slicking the raindrops from her skin.

“Then why do you want her?”

“Do you really care?” Isabel asked. “Or are you just afraid to lose?”

She pricked at his pride. “What do I get if I win?”

“Me.” Isabel leaned forward to press a very provocative kiss on his mouth.

He let it happen. It was a way of sealing their bargain, but it was more than that too, and soon he’d make her regret having trifled with him.

I get inside your house at night

I lurk beneath your bed

Close your eyes: you still see me

Light a torch: I’m dead.

A
few hours later, in the darkness, there was a soreness between Layla’s legs—a physical reminder of what she’d done with Ray. She clamped her thighs together as if to savor it before she went back to feeling nothing at all. With Ray, she’d experienced all the things people always talked about, but she hadn’t understood. How was she supposed to go back to the numbness of life before?

A vague sense of regret formed at the realization that she’d just had unprotected sex. Nate Jaffe had always been diligent about using protection and Layla
had made it a practice to be responsible. So why had all reason fled the moment Ray touched her?

Ray slept soundly, his face half on her pillow, his big frame taking up the bulk of the bed. She couldn’t sleep, but didn’t want to wake him either, so she found the remote control, flipped on the television, and pressed the mute button. She should’ve known better. Photos of Nate Jaffe flashed on the screen, stabbing her in the heart. Then her own image flickered across the screen. Underneath her photo, red letters spelled out the word KIDNAPPED.

Seeing Ray’s picture on the news was even harder to take. The red letters under his photo said AMERICAN TERRORIST. Layla turned up the sound just loud enough to hear the newsmen compare him to John Walker Lindh and proclaim that Ray was armed and dangerous.

That wasn’t a lie. Ray had made love to her, yes. He’d shown her a side to him that was gentle and vulnerable. She’d also seen the other side of him, too. She’d seen the coldness in his eyes when he’d shown her his gun, and though he protested his innocence, Layla wasn’t sure she believed him. She might not remember everything about herself, but she remembered enough to know that she wasn’t a malicious person. She wouldn’t have interrogated someone she thought was wrongfully accused.

Ray had to have done
something
to make the government arrest him. Breaking out of prison to terrorize people didn’t sound like the actions of an innocent man. People didn’t just get thrown into places like Gitmo by mistake, did they? So what was she doing here, in his bed? Layla took a deep breath, wondering what version
of the Stockholm syndrome had led her to not only go willingly with her captor, but to sleep with him, too. Logic and reason were coming back to her, and she was horrified.

She’d walked out on her patients today. Walked out on Isabel. And now what? Was she literally sleeping with the enemy? She couldn’t go back to her office or her old life until she remembered exactly who Seth was and why she was so afraid of him. She couldn’t stay with Ray either. Some sense, deep and foreboding, told her that if she stayed with Ray, he’d end up dangling from a rope or strangled. That’s what happened to people who got close to her….

Where could she go?

Her fingers itched for the sixpence that she’d kept since the day she woke up with it in her hand. It comforted her. Steadied her. Helped her to think. Helped her feel safe. Safe… The memory teased itself out of her mind slowly. She’d left herself a clue, as if the information were too secret to write down, as if she knew she were losing her memory. Six pence. She’d always thought it was just a coin, but it was more than that. It was an address!

6 Pence Road.

A safe house in the mountains that she’d set up for herself long ago.

Layla carefully slipped out from under Ray’s arm and crept across the floor, gathering her clothes and dressing silently. Her skirt was salvageable, but her bloody blouse was beyond saving so she pulled one of Ray’s black T-shirts over her head. It looked sloppy on her, and smelled like him. It was also too big. She was swimming in it, but nothing could be done about
that. The keys were in the pocket of Ray’s jeans. She pulled them out very carefully, so as not to wake him, then slipped out the door.

Ray had actually slept without nightmares for a change. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. No dreams of finding his brother’s dead body. No dreams of dungeons or village massacres. Just pure, blessed sleep. He would’ve liked to turn over and catch a few more winks, but he knew Layla would be anxious to be up and out of here before daybreak. He reached for her, liking the way her scent was on the pillow, but not liking it so much when his outstretched hand found an empty bed beside him.

“Layla?” He sat up, trying to shake his sex-sated stupor. It was a small hotel room; she couldn’t have gone far. He glanced at the bathroom, half expecting to see her fixing her hair in front of the mirror, but it was empty. He launched himself out of bed. “Layla!” Her name echoed off the walls as he pulled on his jeans. Stumbling toward the door, he threw it open and blinked into dawn’s light. His car was gone. His keys were gone, too.
“Motherf—”

His own curse was cut off by the pain in his arm as he repeatedly bashed it against the motel door in fury. She’d played him.
Again
. Last night had been about luring him into a false sense of security so that she could get away without telling him what he needed to know. Where the hell would she go now? She wouldn’t go to the police—he knew that much, but it was of small comfort. Knowing her, she’d probably decided to chance a trek out of town in that rust bucket, which
meant she could be stalled somewhere in the middle of the desert without water, terrified and alone.

Why should he care? She’d taken off again. And this time was almost worse than the first time, when she’d left him behind to rot in Syria. At least then he only had an illusion that there was something between them. He hadn’t slept with her.

But with his powers, she couldn’t
really
run from him, could she?

Layla’s cabin was in the mountains, at the edge of the desert. It was a well-hidden and well-chosen safe house. The car she’d stolen from Ray shuddered to a stop then stalled out completely in that driveway.
Great
. There was no sign of anyone else living here, and the place looked near-abandoned. She found the key under the gutter spout, where she expected it, but worried that there would be an alarm inside. There wasn’t one. There wasn’t electricity either but there was a generator, a well for water, and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. Everything she’d need to live off the grid for a while.

Off the grid?
Who said things like that?

It was one of the many unfamiliar thoughts that had been rushing through her mind. The first thing she did was find a flashlight, and that led her to some lanterns. The second thing she did was check the bedroom, where she found a few changes of clothing. Casual clothing. Mostly jeans and cotton tops. These outfits didn’t look like anything she would wear, but they would have to do.

She got the generator working and once the power was on and the water was pumping, she decided to
take a shower. It was with a bittersweet feeling that she washed Ray’s scent off of her. Once she was clean, she changed into her new clothes, surprised that they were a little big.

Had she lost weight? It seemed as if she hadn’t really been very hungry for the past two years of her life, but now she was ravenous. It must have taken her a half hour to figure out how to get the woodstove burning and put on a kettle of hot water. There wasn’t any tea in the pantry. Just coffee, soup, and a lot of beans. She hoped it would be enough to still her growling stomach. She’d heard that a watched pot never boils, so she went back into the bedroom and rummaged around, curious and awed by each new discovery.

In the large walk-in closet, she found an enormous safe. It was big enough to lock a man inside of it. She didn’t remember the combination, but her fingers did, and a moment later, she was staring at the unnerving contents. A metal briefcase full of cash lay open before her, but her eyes were immediately drawn to the weapons and ammunition. She found not one, not two, but
three
different guns. Steeling her courage, she picked one up and realized that she knew how to clean it, how to load it, how to turn off the safety. She knew how to shoot it, too.

Under some clips of ammunition, she found a few cell phones. All prepaid. All she had to do was charge them up and activate them with one of the many credit cards she found in a manila envelope that also contained several passports. Layla opened one of the passports and it had her picture, but a different name.
Berenice Neferet
. It didn’t sound familiar. Layla opened another passport, and then another, all with her photo.

Isadora Asar
.
Alexandra Khaldun
.
Nila Odji
.

The names were alarming enough, but it was the dates that disturbed her. One passport had expired fifteen years before. Layla could have been no more than a teenager in that photo, and yet, she looked exactly as she did now. Who the hell was she?
What
was she?

Layla pulled out a sealed envelope. She hadn’t liked what she found in that safe, and she was sure she wasn’t going to like what she found in this envelope. Breaking the seal, she pulled out a series of photos. Pictures of strangled men, bodies dangling from the end of ropes, corpses with bags over their faces. Suffocations. Asphyxia. People who had somehow stopped breathing…maybe because of her.

Nate Jaffe had died this way too, but she was sure she hadn’t killed him. When it came to the men in the pictures, she wasn’t so sure. All she’d done to that Scorpion Group flunky in the stairwell was whisper a riddle to him, and he’d crumpled on the ground as if he’d been struck by lightning. What had she said?
I’m too heavy to carry, too light to put down, a stain on your soul, a thorn in your crown
. The answer to that was guilt.
Guilt
. And there was certainly enough of that to go around.

Layla went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee and think. What if Ray’s car wouldn’t start again when she tried it? Layla took a sip of the coffee, letting her mind work over the problem, and was rewarded with a rich roasted flavor rolling over her tongue. Wow. A flavor at once deep, dark and buoyant. How had she never noticed how good coffee was before?

It wasn’t just the coffee either. It’s like the whole world was coming alive for her all at once—all the
horrible things and the beautiful things all mixed together. Ray was like that for her. Someone whose nature seemed so awful and wonderful that she hadn’t known how to be with him for even one more moment. Now, she couldn’t stop thinking about him and wondering if she’d made a mistake.

Ever since Seth had walked into her office, she’d been running scared, reacting and letting emotions crowd out her more reasoned, deliberate nature. For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, Layla started to analyze her situation like the therapist she was. And the first thing she had to do was make a very important call.

Holding one of the prepaid cell phones she’d found in the safe, she unfolded the mangled flyer she’d tucked into her pocket the day before. It was the one advertising Carson Tremblay’s art show, and it had a phone number. A few moments later, she had him on the phone.

“Holy crap, Dr. Bahset! Are you okay? You’re all over the news.”

“I’m fine, but I want you to know that I’m so sorry for walking away from you yesterday—”

“They’re saying you were kidnapped!”

“I wasn’t,” Layla said. “I’m having personal problems right now and I can’t treat you anymore. I need you to get a pen and paper and write down the name that I’m going to give you of another psychologist—”

“I don’t want another therapist.”

“Trust me, I wish this wasn’t happening. I know how hard it was for you to trust me, and I don’t want
to do anything to betray that, but I have to make sure that you’re cared for if something happens to me.”

“What’s going to happen to you?” Carson asked. “Where are you? Do you want me to call the police?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want you to get involved. I don’t want to put you in any danger. This phone call isn’t about me. It’s about you. Are you experiencing any anxiety?”

“Yeah, I guess. But just the normal kind,” he said.

“If you start to feel an attack coming on when you look at the artwork, do you think you can practice the techniques we talked about?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Dr. Bahset, my dad is a reporter. Maybe he can help you.”

It broke her heart to know that she’d put him in a position to worry about her. “You can help me by getting well, Carson. Before I called, what were you focusing on?”

He cleared his throat, as if he were embarrassed. She could almost see him shuffling his feet and digging one hand down into his pocket with a shy shrug. “I was thinking about the girl I met in your office.”

Layla was confused. “Isabel?”

“No. Artemisia. Missy. Isn’t she a patient of yours?”

Layla bit her lower lip. She didn’t have a patient by that name, but she remembered the young prostitute that Ray had hired to follow her. Wasn’t her name Missy?

“Anyway,” Carson continued, “Missy and I talked for a while in your waiting room and I showed her some of my stuff. She said that nothing beautiful is unblemished and that maybe I’ve gotta learn to see the flaws in the art, too.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that sounds kinda like what my dad does. Always uncovering the ugly secrets of everything. I’d rather focus on the good, ya know?” There was some static on the line and then Carson said, “My show is starting soon, so I gotta go, but you should really call the police and tell them you’re okay.”