Enslaved (The Inbetween Novels) (28 page)

Deryck’s eyes swept the floor, looking for something to tell him what was going on. Footprints led from the tunnel he’d taken in to a shaft of light halfway across the room. The dirt on the uneven bricks had been disturbed there, pushed aside by a large shape. On the outskirts of the light was a small mud puddle, though it was impossible for water to get to the arid room—the land above showed no signs of rain. He followed footprints roughly the size of his own through the dirt. A second set of prints joined them at the far end of the room, made by a much smaller foot in a pair of heeled shoes.

Crouching, he measured the feminine footprint with his fingers. “What have I gotten you into, Shayla?”

Standing, Deryck continued tracking the footprints through a hole torn into the brick wall at the opposite end from where he’d entered. The hallway beyond was lit by torches, spaced every ten yards or so. They gave enough light to see by, but he couldn’t see how tall the walls were. The darkness above him seemed to stretch on forever.

Deryck stopped between a pair of torches and examined the images carved into the mud brick walls. The faces of the gods stared back at him. They were dressed in the robes of their respective identities; however, each and every face was the same man with black eyes and curly hair that looked like a thousand springs atop his head. The face was eerily close to Herryk’s.

“You must be Marduk.”

Another cool breeze of magic gusted down the hallway. It was getting stronger. Deryck broke into a jog. The flickering torchlight made it seem as though the various faces of Marduk lurched out of the wall to grab him. A low thrum hummed in his head—the pounding of blood through his body as panic tried to grab hold and yank him to despair.

A voice drifted his way. His heart gave a wild thump. His feet faltered for a moment.
Thank the gods, she is still alive.
Shayla’s voice fell in rhythmic sways as she chanted a summoning spell. One that’d unleash a god who would level all other pantheons and subjugate their believers the moment he was in the human realm.

Deryck hit the doorway of the main temple and stopped dead in his tracks. He pushed against the invisible barrier keeping him from Shayla. She was still too far away.

“Shayla, you have to stop,” he shouted to no avail. Deryck’s voice bounced off the magic barring his entry and echoed behind him down the hall.

“You can’t stop her, idiot.” Herryk stepped out of the shadows, shaking his head.

“I’ll find a way. She wasn’t meant to free you.”

“It doesn’t matter. Did you really think love was required to gain your freedom? Take what you want. Don’t be a pussy and ask for permission, from a human of all creatures.”

“Humans are the reason we exist, Herryk. Without them, there would be no gods to sire our kind.” Deryck leaned to the side to keep Shayla in view. She was still chanting, walking in a slow circle around the altar.

“That way of thinking is why you failed.” A grin spread over Herryk’s lips. “I wasn’t expecting an audience, but since you’re here, you can watch my father and I have a little fun with the human before she sacrifices herself.”

“You won’t touch her.”

The floor under their feet vibrated. Dust and bits of brick broke loose and rained down on Deryck’s head. He rammed his shoulder against the barrier. It didn’t budge. There was no give to it whatsoever. Herryk had never been this strong before.

Helplessly, Deryck watched Shayla make another pass around the table. The floor beneath her glowed golden red, like the first rays of sunshine over a mountaintop. In a few moments, it would be too late to stop her from summoning Marduk.

Once Shayla had begun the summoning ritual, she couldn’t stop. A cool wind swept through her body, dragging the words out of her throat. She tried to stop, tried to run from whatever purpose Harry needed her for. It was useless. She was stuck orbiting the golden table. The skull gave its best toothless grin each time she passed in front of it. The winds in the room blew her hair in front of her eyes, but did not hinder her from reading the spell.

She couldn’t hear anything or sense anyone, not even Harry. The power created a bubble around her, drowning out everything except her voice and the soft pit-pat of her blood hitting the mud bricks below. Her voice changed, became something more guttural, impossible to understand. She wasn’t speaking English anymore.

The light around the table grew, but the flames Harry summoned didn’t. Bright light poured out of the doorway on the skull’s forehead. The blood on the floor—her blood—glowed golden red, a trail of bloody footprints locked in a circle they’d never break free of. Blood dripped onto the toe of Shayla’s shoe and began to shimmer. She flicked it off with her next step and it joined the circle around the altar.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Shayla jerked her head up from reading. At first, she thought the sound was her heart hammering in her chest. She laid a hand over her heart. It was beating hard, but not at the same rhythm. Her eyes landed on Harry—tall and lean with his back to her in the doorway they’d entered. His hands were fisted by his side. For an instant, she thought he’d whirl back to her, demanding she continue the ritual.

He didn’t. Harry’s attention was locked on something outside of the doorway. A shape moved in front of him, barely visible above the dark tangle of his curls. The torchlight reflected off whatever it was. She frowned. Maybe there was someone else necessary for the ritual. Or perhaps she’d been chanting a bunch of nonsense, and the father she was supposed to be summoning walked in the front door of the temple.

Well, that’s really fucking anticlimactic.

The figure stepped out from behind Harry. He was speaking, but she couldn’t hear a word he said. His fist raised and banged against something, glass maybe. It kept him out of the room. The thudding she’d heard before came again. A breeze of power followed after the thud. Something not man-made kept the man from the room. He stepped closer, face pressed against the invisible barrier. Golden eyes caught the firelight as they locked with hers.

Shayla gasped. “Deryck?”

Harry wheeled around. Green light flared in his eyes. “Why did you stop?”

Shayla took a step away from the menace etched across his face. Her hip hit hard against the altar. “Why is Deryck here?”

“How do you think I found you?”

She felt lightheaded. Shayla looked around Harry to Deryck. He had a strange look on his face. She couldn’t tell whom it was directed at, but he wasn’t happy to be there. Neither was she. How involved was Deryck in everything that’d happened since she left her house? Her life, once she’d reclaimed it, had been nice, boring, ordinary. As exciting as it got was one of Faye’s girl’s nights in on days she decided porn was better than a romantic comedy. Shayla had a desk job specifically to keep her level of weirdness to a minimum. There was no room in her life for magic, gorgeous men, and psychopaths with father issues.

Shayla crumpled the paper with the ritual on it and dropped it onto the ground. “I’m done with this, all of it. Whatever you two have planned, find someone else who’s supposedly slept with a god.”

“You stupid little human,” Harry snarled. “You will do your job.” He closed in on her.

Shayla shrank back against the table. Pain raced through right wrist. She screamed at the tight grip pulling her sideways over the altar. An arm—tanned, muscled, with a heavy dusting of black hair over it—reached out of the forehead of the skull. On the wrist was a wide metal cuff bracelet. It had a large round piece in the middle bearing a vaguely floral shape made from precious stones. Blinding light hid the rest of the body it belonged to. Around the bright light, red mist swirled slowly.

The grip on her wrist tightened. Bones ground together, making her scream again. “Finish the summoning, female.” A male’s voice, low and gravelly, said from the light.

Deryck’s heart dropped to the ground. Shayla’s second scream echoed in his head, taunting him and his inability to rush in and save her. The side of his fists ached; the left opened a cut under his little finger. Blood smeared over the barrier. He rammed into it with his shoulder. There was still no give to the magic separating him from wringing his fellow incubi’s neck.

Herryk stood in front of him, a smug look plastered on his face. He looked over his shoulder, his smile widening. “If she’s not careful, the old man is liable to drag her in.”

Pressing himself flat against the barrier, Deryck forced himself to look past the man he wanted to kill. Shayla stood at the front of the golden table. She looked so small from this distance. Her body jerked backward, but didn’t go very far. She was slowly inching toward the swirling mass hovering over the table. Firelight glinted off of something near her wrist. He planted his forehead against the barrier and focused on the silver reflection. It was a bracelet. Under it was an arm—Marduk’s arm.

“Stop him. He’ll ruin your plans if she goes into the God’s Lands with him.” Deryck slapped his hand against the invisible wall.

Humans were not capable of comprehending the vastness of their universe. Their view of things had to be restricted, cut down to the essentials. One glimpse of the paradise the gods lived in and they died immediately. Too late into human evolution they’d discovered this. Countless prophets, who were brought to witness the glory of the gods they worshipped, perished. Their souls were lost to salvation. They wander the earth, multitudes of frightened souls with no recollection of who they were or memory of their death. He saw them occasionally when he walked the streets of Shayla’s hometown, the ancients who’d once lived in the land now covered in asphalt and choked with gas. The souls witnessed the death of their world through the centuries. It had to be agony in its purest form. If the soul couldn’t cope, it turned into a creature hell-bent on torturing the living. Their happiness is sacrificed to the malice buried deep within the spirit. Eventually a specialist, a demi-god born of a god of death, is forced to venture into the human realm and wrangle these wraiths.

He shuddered to think of Shayla suffering such a fate.

Herryk turned his back on Deryck. His voice cut across the dark room—another spell. The paper Shayla had thrown rose from the floor. It un-crumpled and floated in front of her at eye level. “Read, Shayla. You do not want to know what will happen if I allow him to drag you through that hole.”

Allowed? Yeah right.
Deryck kept his opinion of Herryk’s perceived power over his sire to himself. Marduk would do whatever he wanted with no regard to his son’s wishes. The gods didn’t care what happened to their seed once it was spent, unless they were subject of prophecy. It never ended well for demi-gods who’d been dragged into the games the gods played in order to one-up each other.

Shayla read again. Her words were slow, stumbling over each other. Deryck needed to get her out of there. First, he’d have to distract Herryk long enough for him to drop the spell keeping him out in the hall.

“Blood magic, Herryk? Is your sire aware of your failure to wield proper magic?”

“My father knows what he needs to. Why waste my power when this will suffice?”

Deryck shook his head. “You know nothing of your own people. We had a vast library to read from, to learn about them. I think I’ll stay right here and see what Marduk has to say about his offspring using mundane magic.”