Sevin: Lords of Satyr (27 page)

“I can’t. I ask permission to withdraw.”

One of the priests cursed. Voices in the crowd bit at her as well. Angry accusations were hurled, claiming that she was willfully refusing the godking. She tried not to be angry at them. They were desperate, and their desperation had made them believe the myth the priests had woven.

“You’re doing well,” a voice encouraged.

“Better than some have before you,” said another.

“But I can’t go any farther. I swear it on the gods’ names.”

The priests huddled, whispering.

“It won’t do any good to kill the girl. She’s taken all she can,” she heard Baldassare argue.

“He’s biased. He wants her for himself afterward,” said another voice. “I heard him admit it.”

“I say let her sit there and adjust,” yet another voice suggested. “By law, she must try him on until sunset.”

Sunset! That was many hours away. Natalia hung her head, shutting them and the crowd out. Ever since they were young, the priests had schooled them all on this rite of passage that would occur on festival day. She had heard students reciting the chants of obligation in the halls even as children. Now they ran through her head and she whispered them in nonsensical snatches, just as women in childbirth chanted their own mantras to soothe their pain.
It is my sacred duty ... it is my lot to sacrifice. . . to save our land ... with all my heart I must try to awaken him ... to love ...

The wind picked up, whipping her hair wild and free as she herself longed to be. If they would not give her leave to go, she would die here if she must. She had to persevere for Sophie and the others, so that they would not be subjected to this.

Tears brimmed her eyes and fell to
his
chest. They trickled over him, running over on to his biceps.

A sudden hush fell over the crowd. Natalia lifted her head, dully wondering what had happened. Something shifted under her. Suddenly she heard a strange sound, as though heavy millstones were grinding. The marble beneath her shuddered.

Then, impossibly, she saw the muscles of his chest flex before her eyes. Saw his elbows bend. Saw his arms curve. Felt his hands come around her waist, hard and cold. Where marbled muscles flexed, the stone encasing them cracked and exploded in small bursts, then fell away to crash on the stage.

Her eyes flew to his face. His eyes remained closed, his expression unaware. Except for his arms and torso, he still showed no sign of life.
Life?

“No. No. This cannot be happening,” she whispered. Natalia pulled at those hands, squirming to get away, flexing her thighs in an attempt to relieve herself of him. His hands only clasped her waist more tightly. Fingers pressed, dimpling her flesh and bruising it.

She reached out to the priests, but they backed away, eyes round and fearful. “Cowards,” she railed. “Help me. Please,” she called. Frantically, she searched the crowd for a friendly face.

“He lives,” the onlookers whispered reverently, bowing down.

Only part of him. The rest of him was still stone, still slumbering. Something told her she had better escape before his eyes opened.

The stone hands squeezed, and she felt herself being pushed downward, her body being forced to take more of him.

She beat at him with her fists. Members of the community gasped, shocked at her audacity and the spectacle. The penalty for touching him without authorization was severe. No one knew what the penalty for striking him was. But not even the priests dared come closer to chastise her.

“Oh gods. No. I can’t,” Natalia whimpered, panting and slapping his marble chest. “If you can hear me, stop. You’re killing me. Stop!”

With a hard jerk, the hands suddenly reversed direction and lifted her away, disengaging their bodies. Distantly, she heard herself scream at the sensation of suctioning and abrupt loss. Then spots filled her vision and all consciousness fled.

When she swam back into awareness, she was no longer impaled. Instead, her pliable body lay draped over a chest and belly made of unforgiving stone. Her legs had separated and slid down to dangle on either side of statue and altar. Her cheek was on his breast, the top of her head tucked in the crook of his neck.

Masculine hands held hers—
his
hands—moving them over smooth marble with infinite slowness. Everywhere her palms touched him, the stone slowly heated, cracked, disintegrated.

This could not be happening!

Suddenly, his chest swelled under her. She heard the sound of a great, sudden gust of breath being drawn in by lungs long unused.

She pushed up on her elbows, her gaze seeking his face, and then watched as his lashes fluttered for some minutes, struggling to break free of the stone. His hands lifted and took hers to cover his face. Marble cracked and he let her go, ripping away the blinders of stone himself. Eyelids flickered. And opened.

Silver irises gazed at her from eyes framed with stone-dusted lashes. They were blank at first. But in an instant, they filled with wary confusion. Hard muscles bunched and tensed. With a mighty roar, the creature under her lunged upward, to crouch atop the altar.

Natalia howled as she fell to the stairs. She landed hard on one shoulder. Then she slid and bumped her way down the rest of the steps to lie in a crumpled heap on the stage.

Above her, he crouched on the altar, surveying the priests and the crowd below with fierce suspicion.

Lucien Satyr lay atop a block of marble, fighting the blinding pain that threatened to split his skull. Blood pulsed sluggish agony through his veins. He was half naked, his cock hard and throbbing with the need to come. He was inside a woman. Fucking her. Who she was, he didn’t know. But fucking her felt good. Better than good. He lifted his hands, pulled her closer.

Others were moving around them, surefooted and purposeful.

They had an audience.

Through the pain that burst in his brain, his thoughts gathered and congealed to a burning pinpoint of hatred. Somewhere among the onlookers, his enemy lurked. His final enemy. The last one of those who had tortured him and the others imprisoned in the catacombs.

The urge to kill swamped him. He tried to rise, but something was inhibiting him. He wore some sort of coat that was as heavy as a lead weight. Had that bastard restrained him?
No! Not again.

If he could just fight free of it, he might have a chance of getting to his enemy. Of tearing him limb from limb. This was the one he’d long sought—the one who’d favored young, fresh meat. Male or female, it hadn’t mattered. He’d taken what he wanted, and now Luc would make him pay.

The woman in his arms struck him. What the hells? Was she that devil’s minion? He disengaged from her and she lay over him. Even that felt good. Warm.

He lifted her hands and laid them on his flesh, wanting to feel her touch. Craving it. He, who hated to be touched, even by his own kin.

Breath filled his lungs.

He tried to open his eyes. Found he could not. Panic filled him. He was blind. He reached up to his face and felt the mask that encased it.

Ripping it away, he then blinked at the woman who rode him. She was beautiful. And terrified. He sensed the man he sought was escaping. He had to get to him.

He pushed her away and rose to a crouch, careless of the strange woman’s fate in that moment. His eyes scanned the crowd around him. Where was the evil one?

He swayed on his feet. Gods, what was wrong with him? He was weak as a baby. And covered in ... plaster?

Natalia hunched on the marble tile at the bottom of the steps, trying to gather within herself the wherewithal to stand. Atop the altar above her, the statue rose to his full height, a monster that was half marble and half flesh. Blood—her blood—dripped from his phallus, bright scarlet on gleaming white stone.

There was pandemonium among the holy men and women around her. No one knew whether to applaud or run. Some bowed low and were trampled by the fearful trying to get away.

Meanwhile Natalia mustered her strength. Pushing to her knees, she cried out at the sharp pain between her legs and sank again.

His head swiveled in her direction.

Oh gods! She’d drawn his attention. His brows drew together and his eyes narrowed. The emotions she’d sensed the previous night when she’d first touched him now blasted out at her from him, stronger than ever. Wariness. Terror. Rage! She cringed away, whimpering under their force.

He stared at her, accusing, as though he believed her the cause of his disorientation.

She shook her head in protest. “I didn’t ... I’m not ...”

He snarled, a low animal sound. In another burst of crushed stone, he leaped, catlike, from the altar and came toward her. His gait was awkward, hindered by the marble that still clad parts of him. Wherever his body flexed, great plates of it shattered and crashed to the temple stage.

Natalia inched away on her back, then got to her knees again, crawling, trying to reach help.

Masculine fingers threaded her hair. She whipped around at the same moment he tugged. The tiara, which the priestesses had perched on her head, came away in his grasp. He stared at it in bewilderment.

A hysterical giggle threatened to escape her, but she smothered it. Taking advantage of his distraction, she scrabbled across the tile, desperate to flee. But he reached for her again, showering her with tiny shards in the process. She ducked away, shielding her face. Taking her arms, he hoisted her high over one broad shoulder.

Turning with her, he moved decisively toward the temple. In a dozen steps, they were inside it. Behind them, gargantuan ancient doors that hadn’t moved in a century slammed shut. And he hadn’t even touched them.

“No one can move those doors,” Natalia whispered into the black.

Luc ignored her, his thoughts a riotous jumble as he moved up the nave past rows of seats. The smell of fresh irises was sickly sweet in the air here. It made him want to throw up. Every minute that passed was a fight to stay on his feet.

His mind screamed with memories banging against his skull as if to break free and make him confront them. Torturous memories of the miscreant he’d scented outside. Of the cruelty he’d perpetrated on Luc and all the others who’d been held captive in the catacombs all those years.

No, he stuffed the memories deeper. He couldn’t afford to think of them now. He was too weak. He had to get his bearings. To rest and collect strength before he faced his adversary.

The woman he carried delivered a particularly vicious kick to his belly and he grunted. Ignoring her protests, he moved on, half blind from stone dust and the surrounding murk. A moment ago, he’d been lying on a sacrificial altar outside this place. With her.

Five minutes before that, he’d been in Rome with his brothers. He remembered he’d eavesdropped on Sevin and Alexa. Then he’d gone to the main arena of the
Salone di Passione
. Bastian and Dane had been there, worrying over something.

He felt a sense of urgency, as if he had some mission that was as yet uncompleted. But what?

Why couldn’t he think? His gods-damned head was set to crack wide open with the pounding inside it. And the woman’s infernal struggling wasn’t helping matters. He would let her go eventually, but first he needed answers.

There were furs hanging on the wall behind the main altar ahead. He continued up the nave and went for them, tearing them from the wall and tossing them on the floor. Then he set his burden to lie on them.

Natalia landed on something soft and bristled. “The sacred furs,” she murmured in surprise. “You can’t—”

When her captor moved away, silence fell. She cocked her head, hope rising in her as she listened to the stillness. Had he gone? No, she heard a sound. But it was a distance off. This was her chance. She reached out and gingerly pulled herself up against a wall.

From somewhere nearby, he let out a soft curse. It sounded like he was trying to light a lamp.

Ignoring the cramping in her abdomen and the cruel bite of pain in her shoulder and between her thighs, she pushed herself to her knees. Then she stood and limped toward escape. She wouldn’t be able to budge the main doors, so she tried another route.

She’d been in this temple hundreds of times, had hidden in its nooks and crannies as a child playing hide-and-seek. Finding her way largely by feel now, she made for the choir chamber, the closest exit.

Her hands found him before her mind recognized what she was touching. His flesh was as hard as the rock wall. But unlike the smooth wall, remaining patches of stone marred him, making him feel damaged and strange. She was in no condition to run, but she tried anyway. He caught her. Light sprang up between them. He’d gotten the lamp working.

Wordlessly, he hooked an elbow around her waist and picked her up under one arm, holding the lamp in his other. He trudged back to the altar and then let her go.

She tumbled to the furs again and he stood over her, glowering. “What is this place?”

When she didn’t reply, he nudged her with his foot. Bits of white splintered and puffed in the air all around him. He reached up and ripped away a piece of it as big as his hand. “And what is this damned plaster?”

She scooted backward, her gaze wary.

“Speak,” he demanded.

“It’s marble. And this place is a temple,” she murmured. As if her voice had been a physical stroke, he arched his spine and shrugged those broad shoulders, sending another chunk of marble crashing to the floor.

Luc brushed a layer of lingering dust from his shoulder, eyeing her suspiciously. Her Siren’s voice eased his tension, relaxed him, making him want to lie down beside her on those furs. Making him want to hold her close. He, who abhorred being touched. Whatever magic she employed, he fought it off. Now was not the time.

“Where? In what city, what world?”

A pause. “Enclave a Roma, parallel two fourteen, ElseWorld.”

“ElseWorld,” he grunted. Her tone had told him she thought him addled. Perhaps he was. “Sleep,” he commanded.

In response, a strange lethargy stole over her. “What did you—?” she mumbled. And then she slept.