Darkness at Dawn (15 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Jennings
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Mike stood over her, then bent down.
“I’ve got a couple of things that will make this easier.” He spoke directly into her ear, voice quiet, though there was no way even someone sitting next to her could overhear. It was like being inside a cement mixer.
He tucked a heavy, scratchy smelly blanket around her. She was instantly enveloped in heavenly warmth. Where he’d managed to scare up a blanket was anyone’s guess, but he’d done it.
His cheek had brushed hers. He’d already developed enough five o’clock shadow to scratch her skin. It felt somehow good, solid and reassuring. Warm and utterly, completely male.
He took her hand in his, placed two pills on her gloved palm and handed her a canteen.
“What’s this?” One was a transparent capsule with tiny orange pellets in it and the other the pill she’d taken on the plane.
“Diamox. A carbonic anhydrase inhibitor. For altitude sickness.” He smiled at her and winked. “It really helps, but you shouldn’t operate heavy machinery while under the influence.”
No, there was a pilot for that.
“Take them.” The smile had gone. His deep brown gaze was serious. “It’s not going to be an easy flight, Chinooks are notoriously uncomfortable. You might as well get as much rest as you can.”
Made sense. Lucy swallowed both and tried to find a comfortable position, finding it when Mike placed his arm around her shoulders and settled her against him. As a pillow, his chest was too hard, but it had the advantage of being warm. Actually, she was pretty warm all over what with the smelly, scratchy blanket and the man.
The dim light in the cabin turned from green to red, and without warning, the helicopter lifted off in a great swoop. Lucy would have fallen out of her seat if it weren’t for the harness and Mike’s arm anchoring her to him.
He bent down close again, his lips at her ear. “You okay?”
A shiver ran down her spine at the feel of his breath at her ear.
The helicopter swooped again, huge rotors making an ungodly roar. The soldiers stationed on both sides of the cabin swayed with the movements, heads down, in Stoic Soldier Mode.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
Under her ear Mike’s heart beat slow and steady. It was as if his calm transmitted itself to her through their skin. It was almost impossible to feel afraid even though the helicopter was lifting and turning, threading its way through valleys between the solid granite mountains she knew were there, though they were invisible in the night fog.
A human heart was a reassuring thing.
He squeezed her shoulders briefly, bending down again, warm cheek touching hers. “Good. Now rest.”
Her eyes closed as the helicopter rose, taking her to a place she’d thought never to see again in this lifetime.
THE ROYAL CHAMBERS THE PALACE CHILONGO, NHALA“They’re going to test the disease on an African tribe,” said Mohar Thakin, Captain of the Royal Guards. He held her hands. “They’re hoping to wipe out the entire tribe.”
Paso shuddered. She’d never been to Africa, had never even seen an African, but they had souls. Though she knew that Arabs were behind the horrible things going on in the laboratory, it was Changa who was empowering them. Changa who ultimately would have blood on his hands.
He wouldn’t care, as long as it brought him power. Paso’s hands trembled in Mohar’s. She looked up at him, at that forbidden, beloved face. “Can we stop them?”
Mohar had new lines in his face, nostrils pinched white with stress.
“No,” he said soberly, deep voice steady. “We cannot. The Royal Guards are behind me and would do my bidding, but they cannot command Changa’s Sharmas. The Sharmas are mercenaries and would change sides on a dime. They have no love for Changa. But he’s paying them and they must obey. To do anything we’d need the Americans on our side. Let us hope your friend Lucy can get a message to the American military.”
“Shh!” Paso put her hand over his mouth, then removed it, stroking his strong jawline as she did. “Do not say this, do not even think it! If Changa even suspected Lucy is coming to get information out . . .”
She shuddered.
Changa knew no limits.
For only the second time in the thousand-year history of the Palace, it had a working dungeon, far down, where screams could not drift to the habitable floors. The last time men had been tortured as a state policy had been five hundred years ago, under the iron rule of Tsompa the Cruel.
Changa enjoyed cruelty, grew sexually aroused at pain.
He’d been courting her for two years now and had tried over and over again to get her into his bed. She’d avoided it so far by fighting back, by leaving a room when he entered, by making certain she was always with company in his presence.
But when Jomo died, Changa would come for her. She was part of his plan, she knew that. He had some bigger plan, but the first step was conquering Nhala. And what better way to do it than to marry the only person left of royal lineage, her?
And when he came for her, brave, beautiful Mohar would fight him to the death. If Changa didn’t kill Mohar outright, he’d lock him in the dungeon that frightened guards told her was slick with blood, and torture him every day until his heart gave out.
“He won’t know,” Mohar murmured, bending down to kiss her neck. “He’s not as smart as he thinks he is, the general. We will contact the Americans and have them rid the world of that abomination of a laboratory that only brings death.” He rubbed his face against her shoulder, and she shuddered again, only not in fear.
Love. Unexpected, unhoped for love. Princess Paso had thought herself beyond love, that her blood had placed her above normal passions. She’d dedicated herself to her brother the king and to her people.
But love had come, in the unexpected form of a brave soldier, who had risked his life to tell her what General Changa was doing in the frozen wastes north of the Palace.
If Paso had been privy to the general’s plot, if she was part of it, Mohar would have forfeited his life, condemning himself to a death by slow torture, by telling her.
But she’d been horrified, and they’d worked together to help the CIA agent who’d come posing as a simple tourist. He’d gone to the laboratory of death, been given information by the guard who’d warned Mohar, and had never come back.
Through the horror and anxiety of having her beloved country turned into a charnel house, Paso had fallen in love with the tall, quiet, brave soldier who had risked so much.
And the God of Love had heard, because he loved her back.
They might not survive this trial. Jomo wouldn’t survive at all. Changa had somehow poisoned him, and his life was slipping away. All their lives might yet be forfeit.
To stop Changa was going to require much bravery and much help from the spirits. They might fail. Changa might win. They might lose their lives, and a great evil could be loosed upon a world that had already known much evil.
But she’d found love, the most unexpected and greatest gift of all.
She pulled away from Mohar’s kiss, reluctant to leave the painless fire of desire. But time was their enemy.
She looked up into his dark eyes. She feared for him so much. One misstep and he would die badly. At times, she felt Mohar walked with one foot in this world and one foot in the next.
Until she shook herself and realized that this was the superstitious nonsense of her nurse that rose in her head in times of stress.
Her parents had believed in education and had brought in the world’s finest tutors to teach her the ways of the West—even though she’d driven her math tutor crazy with her lack of interest.
Mohar was not going into the spirit world. He was going to stay in this world, where she could love him. But between now and then many things had to happen, including reconnecting with Lucy Merritt.
Paso drew back from Mohar and looked down at herself. Instead of her usual jeans and Benetton sweater, she had put on the saffron yellow silk robe with the Snow Dragon embroidered in scarlet silk thread on the back that the princesses of the realm had worn for great occasions since the Yun Dynasty.
She hadn’t worn it since her father’s death ten years ago. Changa had been in England on a training course. He wouldn’t necessarily know the meaning of the ceremonial robe, but her retinue, loyal to her and not to Changa, would. The Sharmas wouldn’t know, either.
But Lucy would. Lucy would understand that something important was at hand, though she would know that already. Lucy had always been so smart, but also very quiet, so no one realized just how smart she was.
Mohar had pulled out his cell phone and had been talking quietly into it. He finished talking and flipped it closed. His hands, warm and strong, fell gently on her shoulders. “I have just received word from my men that the helicopter with Ms. Merritt and her fiancé will be landing soon.”
“Changa will be there,” Paso whispered.
“Yes.” Mohar dipped his head soberly. “He will.”
Paso willed herself to stillness. Every encounter with Changa now was dark and dangerous. He behaved as if in a fever and he smelled of madness.
“But I will be there, too.” Mohar’s hands tightened on her shoulders.
She looked up into his eyes. As head of the Royal Guard he had every right to be there at the greeting of an honored guest, but Paso knew that he would be there as her paladin.
“If he ever finds out about us,” she murmured, unable to finish the sentence. It was too horrible to contemplate.
“He won’t.” Oh, he spoke with such confidence. Paso wanted to lean into him and simply absorb some of his strength and confidence. Watching Jomo die day by day, trying to stay out of Changa’s way—they were trying her nerves until she thought she would snap.
But she couldn’t. A princess held fast. Her people counted on her to defend their country, particularly now that Jomo was deathly ill. Changa was much less beloved of the people than he imagined. But then he wouldn’t care. He had a powerful weapon, slowly coalescing in a laboratory sixty feet underground, that would give him the power of gods.
Paso knew that he would do away with her, Mohar, even all the Royal Guards, as a man swatted away flies in summer, if he even suspected she knew anything of his plans.
“He mustn’t suspect anything about Lucy.”
Mohar nodded again. “You must not betray in any way that you care for her or that she has any role here in Nhala, other than restoring a manuscript. Your life, her life, all our lives depend on it.”
Paso nodded. Her heart sang at the thought of seeing her friend once more, but they would meet under Changa’s cold, watchful eyes. Anything other than the cool, formal, dutiful welcome by a member of the royal house to a foreign professional she’d briefly known as a young girl would be insanity, and lethal.
Paso was going to have to get information to Lucy, and she couldn’t do that if Changa suspected anything other than a remote relationship.
So she would have to control her joy at seeing Lucy again after fifteen years.
A rumbling sound came from the rooftops. They both looked out the window at the light snowfall.
“The helicopter,” Mohar said. He stepped away from her, a soldier’s expression covering the lover’s face. His eyes went blank. A foot separated them, but it could have been a chasm. He gave a formal bow. “Princess, we must go.”
Paso’s back straightened, her face turned blank. She was the princess now, and not the woman.
She swept out the door, not looking back at the captain of her Royal Guard.
E
IGHT
IGHT
MIKE leaned to his left to look out one of the three dusty, filthy portholes on the starboard side of the Chinook. Luckily, they’d left the snowstorm behind in Thimphu and the sky was that of a crystal clear mountain night. An almost full moon shed silvery light over the helipad, though Chinooks had excellent radar.
The Palace was brightly lit, an unearthly marvel against the black mountainside.
Mike thought he’d seen a lot of the world, but he’d never seen anything like the Palace. He’d done his homework on the long flight over, sure. He’d studied the photographs and knew the stats. One of the highest buildings in the world in terms of altitude, six times the surface area of the Pentagon, a thousand years old, yada yada.
But the reality was unexpected, and overwhelming.
The Palace was lit by spotlights and torches along the pathway from the helipad to the body of the Palace itself, which was so huge it filled his field of vision. There was nothing but Palace, as far as the eye could see.
It sat high above the plain below and was accessible through great white swooping staircases and an internal elevator built in the sixties. As large as a small city, it was built of stone made to last the ages, and it had. The rooftops and windows and door frames were made of elaborately carved and painted wood dating to after the Great Fire of the attempted coup, but rigorously modeled after the thousand-year-old originals.
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