Calm down. Deep breaths.
She reassured herself that he was not dead.
Spieler had told her via cell phone that no one had visited her from the dig site while she was in the hospital. No one had known she was in that hospital until right before she’d been transported to the States. There had to be a way to find out about the warrior guy. She needed him on levels she barely understood, and feared contemplating.
Magik. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
Her brain shifted slowly from
how-stupid-of-me
to register Stephen’s parental stare. She forced a smile. “Thanks for the info. You’re right. That orc-daemon thing was scary. I’ll try to forget about it. Let me do some thinking about a new project. Why don’t we talk tomorrow afternoon?”
“Really, Shay. Don’t chase after this. Believe me, you won’t like what you find.”
****
Shay exited her advisor’s office, intent on contacting the only person she knew that might have info on magik. Not someone she liked or trusted, but desperate times led to...yeah, what a cliché she’d become.
Turning the corner, she inwardly groaned.
With his arm draped across the shoulders of his current bed warmer, her ex-boyfriend, Troy, smiled like the Cheshire cat. His artificially whitened smile, acquired after screwing a mall kiosk fifteen-minute-whitener-miracle girl, conveyed superiority and condescension. With his chiseled, all-American looks, most women would classify him as movie star hot. Too bad shallow was his middle name.
“Love my car. Shay.”
Prick.
She pasted on a falsely indifferent smile. “No prob. I don’t miss the payments.” They’d gone in together on the SUV after living together for four months, back when things seemed like they were headed toward matrimony. When they split, she sold him her half for a fraction of the car’s worth. At that point, all she wanted was him out of her life.
Troy gave her a disdainful once-over. “I heard you had an accident.” His eyes darted to her chest. “If they were doing plastic surgery, they could’ve made some improvements. And what’s up with the bandage on your face?”
That didn’t warrant a response. How could she have ever thought him charming? He’d been obsessed with transforming her C’s into double D’s since day one. He hadn’t even been decent in bed during the scant eight months of their relationship. Then, when her magi research took off, his jealousy spiked. He picked at her looks and her self-confidence. Then he slept with her closest female friends, breaking those bonds, and effectively ostracizing her from any sort of social life. He’d proven to her why no one should be in the same field with their significant other. And why good looks didn’t meant shit.
Exhaustion that was far more than physical powered through her. Being near him drained her emotional chi to empty. “I forwarded the car payments to you. You need to get that settled with the bank. Hope your flame of the week likes paying your bills.” She fisted her hands to stymie her need to flip him off as she rounded the corner.
Shay slipped into the bathroom just down the hall. She locked onto her reflection in the mirror. Pale green eyes reddened from unshed tears gazed back.
He isn’t worth more tears
, she thought as she wiped her eyes. Why couldn’t she get beyond this? Seeing him with a new ultra-beautiful girl made her feel as ugly and pathetic as he’d always told her she was. Old insecurities surfaced. She hated the power he still held over her self-confidence.
She yanked a brown paper towel out of the dispenser to dab her eyes.
You’re better than this. He’s a shit
. Although this had been her mantra since they split, it didn’t help.
Peeling away the bandage over the left side of her face, she stared at the scar, wishing sheer will alone could make it disappear. Three puckered lines trekked from her ear to eye—permanently marked by that daemon’s nails. Touching it somehow reinforced its realness as a defect she must come to terms with since it was forever. She couldn’t keep it eternally covered.
She ran a finger down her brand new perfect nose that looked nothing like the old one. Her freckles were still there, though, in reassuring overabundance. But the person staring back was a stranger, which spooked her. The facial reconstruction had healed without scars, which was remarkable given that all the doctors said it should’ve taken months. Her auburn hair had grown well past its normal shoulder length. Straight, thick, and dark.
Would she ever get used to her new appearance?
She fingered the small pendant on its delicate gold chain around her neck. Somehow, the necklace had stayed with her throughout her coma time. The stylized triangle symbol was beautiful and mysterious. And a genuine, pure gold, ancient artifact. Even though she was flat broke, she’d never sell it. It embodied all she had left of the only family that loved her.
Three years of postgraduate research on the symbol had yielded little on the Egyptian myth about Scimitar Magi. She spent six months in Egypt two years ago, and all she had at the end was the one tablet containing the magi symbol. It referred to a Keeper of Spells and his ring. It told a story of separating the Keeper of Spells from his totem, the ring, which made him vulnerable to death.
Maybe it was time to give up her dream of finding the ring. What a ridiculous goal. Sort of like chasing Cinderella’s glass slipper. Magi and daemons were an ancient Egyptian bedtime story. Nothing more. She must have hallucinated the orc-thing.
A new project would keep her busy out of this building. And avoid chance meetings with Troy. The reality was she was a single, penniless twenty-eight-year-old with no transport.
Time to walk to her soulless apartment just off campus.
A slight caress ran along her chest. She pulled down the top of her shirt. The weird tattoo expanded over her entire chest in the shape of a butterfly. Was it trying to comfort her or strangle her? She panicked and hyperventilated. Instantly, the tattoo shrank. It condensed to about an inch wide and sat just above her left forearm, still in the shape of a butterfly. Then it morphed into a bird similar to an ibis or an Egyptian benu-bird. That was the symbol for rebirth. Okay, that was freaky. It seemed to advise she start over. The benu blinked its single profile eye, observing her.
Was it good or evil? What if it changed into something that would hurt her? Forget about Mr. Warrior-man and the orc-thing. She needed help to get rid of this living tattoo before it killed her.
Chapter Seven
“How’s my favorite little pre-mag doing?”
Evil incarnate moved into Cy’s prison room. He was proud of himself for not breaking. Djoser, or Terek as he called himself these days, still had nothing but suspicions. Although weak in this child-body, Cy was mentally tough. He had been tortured many times over the centuries by different Hashishin and other dark-magik groups. The problem was he couldn’t escape in this frail form. He couldn’t heal fast. And Terek’s magik worked on him.
Now that he remembered his past lives, he knew the spells. All of them. Yet he couldn’t chance casting anything big or obvious, not that he was sure he had the juice to cast a big one. He thought nonstop about the what-ifs. He would wait and try a spell when escape became possible. Unfortunately, he suspected Terek’s patience would run out long before he’d be strong enough to escape, or old enough to attract the
akhrian’s
attention. He sent a silent prayer to the gods asking for help.
“The mute act is getting old.” Terek grabbed Cy’s arm and hauled him to his feet.
The chill of the daemon’s touch traveled up Cy’s arm. His whole body trembled. Gods, he despised being this weak.
Pain rocked his body and his mind. Within a minute, he passed out.
Cy awoke with his mouth on the floor. Disgusting. But the floor was not the concrete of his prison room. Without moving or altering his breathing pattern, he cracked his lids. His cheek kissed a dark hardwood in what looked to be a ceremonial chamber. Eight guys in their early twenties surrounded Terek. They were probably
Refiks
or students. One rolled on the floor, clawing at his left thigh as if he wished to detach it from his body.
Was Terek teaching?
Interesting.
No, not interesting. Why was he here? Maybe he was their next guinea pig.
Shit.
He slammed his lids closed, hoping they bought his fake unconsciousness.
Terek sighed long and hard. “Now that you’ve successfully cursed Reilly, which was a bloody miracle, it is important to know how to counter it, not that I advocate retracting. Nonetheless, this is a fundamental should someone else cast one of these vile spells upon you. If this has been a generational or bloodline curse, there is but one way to counter. Do any of you have a suggestion on how to counter a bloodline curse? Some spark of thought in those diminutive minds as to how this may be accomplished?”
Silence was broken only by a sudden wail from the guy on the floor.
Terek rolled his eyes. “Of course, none of you have any thoughts. If a paltry curse was cast, then you can boomerang it back to its caster.” He leaned down to the kid on the floor and whispered for a few seconds.
The student slashed his wrist and uttered a curse. Within seconds, a different guy rolled on the floor, grasping at his thigh.
Terek laughed and clapped his hands. “Excellent.”
“Now, how do I get rid of it?” the newest victim wailed.
Terek looked bored. “This is obviously a paltry curse. It will pass. If not, you’ll suffer forever. If this was a bloodline curse, then the target cannot revoke it with any external magik. He must know the original deity and item used to cast it. Traditional casters would bury the totem.”
A blond
Refik
interrupted, “To make sure no one could counter the curse after I cast it, couldn’t I burn the item used? Then, no one could find it to reverse the spell.” The kid looked proud.
Terek rolled his eyes. “No. Destruction of the object by the caster would lift the curse. To revoke a curse, you must either call upon the original deity and use an intercessory prayer or destroy the totem.”
Cy cracked his eyes and observed a sly smile on Terek’s lips as he subconsciously stroked the beaded
wesekh
around his neck.
He inwardly cursed when he found himself captured in Terek’s aqua stare. Terek stalked to him, yanked him up, and dragged him into the hallway. “Time to try something different for you. Meet your new guardian, Zimeri. You’re going to live with him for a while.”
A gracile, middle-aged Arab scowled while he performed a thorough scan of Cy. He sucked his lower lip through his teeth and squinted. His one weird white eye creeped him out.
Terek switched languages and asked, “How did your expedition to South America fare?”
Cy identified the language as an Arabic dialect. Languages had never been a problem for him. This one he knew, and easily translated.
Zimeri replied, “Quite successful. Even managed to sabotage the plane’s computer. Hope it slowed them down for a while.”
“Excellent.” Terek pivoted and returned to his class.
With a thick accent Zimeri hissed to Cy in English, “I don’t like kids, especially pasty white ones. You give me trouble and you will know pain unlike anything that Asian can dish out. Hold up your ankle.”
Zimeri clicked a hefty bracelet around Cy’s ankle, awkward and heavy around his emaciated appendage. He hadn’t missed Zimeri’s wrists. Numerous horizontal scars lined the inside, indicative of a more advanced dark-magik rituals.
Zimeri turned Cy to face him. “You take one step off the Sanctum property and that bracelet will emit an electrical charge that will kill you within seconds. You understand?” Zimeri laughed softly.
Cy shot him a blank stare. He understood. He may no longer be confined to one room, but he was still imprisoned. Still destined for torture. He silently vowed he would see that daemon-possessed bastard back in his hell before he gave them anything.
Chapter Eight
Dakar chucked the TV remote against the wall. A plastic shatter signaled its demise. He’d do anything for quiet.
Christian had taken it upon himself to be the ambassador of this century. He demo-ed an MP3 player and forced him to listen through countless ghastly heavy-bass songs that in his opinion qualified as little more than noise. The crash course hadn’t ended there. Christian set the fifty-inch flat panel TV to play three channels at once. Then, left.
After five minutes of flickering pictures and eardrum-battering noise, he wanted no more. And concluded everyone in this time was insane. After fiddling with the remote for a few minutes, he gave up on his quest for silence. He’d successfully cranked the volume to maximum intensity, and added a fourth channel.
He slammed out of the room, pissed. How he despised being dependent on the others in an unfamiliar world, which according to Christian had gone
high tech
.
They had flown into the private runway on the Scimitars’ property located just outside New Orleans less than twenty-four hours ago. Hidden behind tall wrought iron gates were acres of relatively undisturbed swampland and old plantation fields. At the center of the land sat a substantial renovated Colonial style plantation house. A few outlying buildings housed most of the guys.
He peeked out a hall window at the runway in the backyard. Convenient. This new group of Scimitars flitted around the world in super-speed airplanes whenever Ashor detected a new daemon enter the realm. Different than the old days. Back then, traveling equated to weeks, nay months, on disease-ridden, rat-infested vessels. Airplane travel may be a vast improvement, but his experience thus far had proven it to be perilous.
He hit the corner to the stairs that led down to the lower floor, and pulled up short to avoid colliding into Nate—the perfect target to alleviate his frustration. Looked like he wasn’t the first to get to the guy, though.
Nate’s shaggy brown hair skewed in sweaty disarray. His left cheek puffed out and had the early hint of bruising. He clutched a towel-wrapped, bloody left forearm with his right hand.
Nate rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell no. I know that look. What is this? Take-out-shit-on-Nate day? Javen beat you to it. He’s in a pisser of a mood since he had his monthly exam with Dr. Kira. I think she made him shrink talk about some of his psycho-shit. You see her around?”