Elei's Chronicles (Books 1-3) (66 page)

One kiss
.

***

“So this is not what it seems?” Sacmis whispered, her back to Hera. It was a beautiful back, graceful and strong, narrowing to a small waist and slim hips. The fine scales of Regina rippled down her spine.

“It depends on what this is supposed to be.” Hera felt anger flare again. Damn Kalaes, always poking his nose where it did not belong, always... always what? She shook her head, trying to dislodge the dark mood, not sure why she was so upset with him.

Sacmis was staring at her over a fine-boned, pale shoulder. She was so pretty. “What do you want it to be, Hera?”

Dangerous territory
. “I think... I want too much, and it’s too soon and not the right place and time.”

“There’s no time like now. Tomorrow is fraught with danger.” Sacmis licked her lips, and Hera could not look away. “What do you want?”

Again that question. If only she had a clear answer. “I want to hold you.” Of this she was sure.

“Come here.” Sacmis pulled Hera down with her and brought their bodies together once more.

“Sacmis, wait...”

Sacmis sighed. “Just sleep next to me, Hera. I am not asking anything else. I missed you so much all these years.”

Hera nodded, a knot in her throat. She settled, inhaling Sacmis’ scent at the juncture of shoulder and neck, pressing closer.
Gods, I’ve missed you, too
, she wanted to say, but couldn’t.

***

That night Elei dreamed he floated in luminous blue. He was underwater, in the deep ocean, his limbs growing heavy. He sank slowly among shoals of silvery fish and white jellyfish that pulsed like translucent hearts. Wonder filled him as dolphins flashed past, their sing-song calls filling his ears. He reached out to touch them but sank deeper, in darker waters.

Eyes blinked in the black-blue depths, and different voices sounded, strident and yet musical. He moved his arms and legs, trying to slow his fall. He didn’t know how to swim, and now the descent frightened him. He couldn’t draw air. As he flailed, sinking like a stone, lithe forms shot up and surrounded him, gripped his arms and legs. Their strength was overwhelming, and their fishtails beat the water. Silver hair floated around their silhouettes like clouds, and when they raised their faces toward him, they were beautiful girls, solemn and sad.

Mermaids
.

Panic gripped him and he fought harder, but couldn’t break free, couldn’t breathe. His lungs burned.

One of the creatures came to hover before him. The mermaid opened her arms wide. He could see her slender arms and her naked breasts, round and perfect, pale as if carved of cliff rock. Then she looked up and it was Alendra, the honey gold of her eyes glowing in the dark. She put her arms around him, and the other mermaids swam away, leaving them alone.

Alendra leaned closer, lifted her face and pressed her body to his, all curves and smooth valleys, and he forgot about breathing as his body tightened painfully, aroused and eager.

“Alendra...” he whispered, his lips hovering near hers, his arms pulling her supple body closer. She let him, and lifted her fingers to his mouth, caressing his lips, making him gasp.

“Elei?” A male voice smashed the dream into a thousand glittering pieces. Elei jerked. He was twisted in the blanket and covered in sweat.

“Hey.” Kalaes stood by his bed, a frown on his face. “Wake up. It’s just a bad dream.”

“Yeah, I’m...” Elei’s voice cracked and he swallowed. He sat up. “I’m okay.” Heat licked at his face. Kalaes had thought he was having a nightmare. Well, he wasn’t going to explain. “Go back to sleep.”

“It’s evening,” Kalaes said and sank back on his bed. He rubbed both hands over his face. “Probably time to go. I should go and see if Her Highness Hera is awake.”

“Just knock on the door this time.” Elei fell back on the knotted blanket, yawning. “Or maybe you’d rather not?”

Kalaes snickered. “I wish,” he said, “but Hera will kill me for sure if I do it again.” He dragged his boots from the floor and pulled them on, got up and ran a hand through his wild hair. “I swear, I’ve never seen a chick in a worse mood than her, and that says a lot. On the boat, I honestly thought she was going to kill me.”

Maybe she was
, Elei thought uneasily as Kalaes walked out the door. He couldn’t recall telling him that Regina was pushing Hera to her limits as it matured, trying to make her hurt mortals.

Making a mental note to talk to him about it, Elei got to his feet. He thought about his dream and heat coiled heavy in his belly.

Stop
. He shook himself, checked the wound under the bandage, satisfied that it wasn’t bleeding anymore, and pulled on his pants and boots. Now was not the time or place to lust after Alendra — or ever.
Get over it
.

He found her sitting in the main room, her hair a tumble of silver on her shoulders. Unable to meet her gaze after his dream — the feeling of her naked, soft curves under his hands flickering in his memory — he grabbed a bottle of water and leaned against the wall.

By the time Kalaes came out of the girls’ bedroom, followed by Hera and Sacmis, Elei was pretty sure he had his thoughts and body under some semblance of control.

“All set and ready to go,” Kalaes said cheerfully, as if talking about a stroll through the country. “Grab your bags and, um,” he waved a hand at Alendra, “put up your hair, or whatever it is you girls do before you head out.”

Alendra rolled her eyes. She lifted her hair, produced a hairband from her pocket and snapped it on. Her ponytail swung behind her as she rose, a shifting sheet of light.

“Elei? Are you with us, fe?”

Elei blinked. He nodded, and automatically turned toward their room to grab his backpack.

“He’s daydreaming,” Sacmis said, laughter in her voice. “Person-dreaming.”

Hera snorted. Elei stopped in his tracks, then forced himself to keep going. He could swear he felt Alendra’s gaze on the back of his neck. As he pulled the door open and escaped into the bedroom, he heard Kalaes say, “Well, we all know now who you’re person-dreaming and kiss-sharing with, Sacmis.”

Elei grabbed his backpack and shouldered it, taking a deep breath as he did. So this was it. Now they’d see if the map was true, if they’d interpreted the symbols correctly, and if all the trouble, all the lives lost and all the running would pay off.

It had better
, he thought, thinking of Pelia —
Hecate
— and what she’d set in motion to bring them where they stood now.

There was no turning back.

Chapter Twelve

V
erne led them
behind the building — an abandoned tax-collecting post of the Gultur — and along quiet streets. A few flickering lamp posts marked their passage, lighting a rusty infopole, reflecting in a closed shop window, forming a pool of light in which a beggar woman huddled like a black vulture.

Elei tugged his hood over his face, then checked his Rasmus. Was it possible that the Gultur had tracked them down and were waiting for them to show up at the underworld entrance?

He patted his gun, aware that, if the fleet arrived, a few bullets wouldn’t be enough to save them.

As if hearing his thoughts, or maybe uneasy himself, Verne walked faster, practically jogging down the street.

With a soft curse, Hera went after him and grabbed his arm. “Slow down!” The wind lifted her dark hair, sifting through the shiny strands. “You’ll get us all killed.”

Verne stopped, hands trembling at his sides. “Let me go.”

“He heard you.” Kalaes took three steps and pried Hera’s fingers off before they broke the man’s arm. He placed his tattooed hand on Verne’s shoulder and made himself into a barrier between them. “We all heard you; in fact, probably everyone in the neighborhood did. Calm down.”

“He’s making people suspicious.” Her voice carried on the still, cold air like a bell tolling.

“What’s up with you?” Kalaes ground out. “You know damn better than to advertise our presence like this.”

“He,” Hera jabbed a finger at Verne, “was the one running as if the dogs of the fifth hell were chasing—”

“Hera,” Sacmis said, just that one word, and Hera fell silent, then turned away, her shoulders stiff.

Verne looked from one to the other. Sweat stood in sparkling drops on his brow, despite the chill. “I can only point you in the right direction,” he said, his voice shaking as much as his hands, a sort of all-encompassing tremor.

“That’s fine.” Kalaes frowned. “Just don’t run. Hera’s right.”

As they started off again, Alendra’s gaze flicked toward a nearby building, and Elei turned to look. A man lounged against the dirty wall, chewing on an unlit cigarette, hands in his pockets. The posture was Kalaes’ favorite, and maybe it was seeing another person standing that way that made Elei’s hair stand on end.

Or maybe not
. The man observed them from under his blond fringe, his gaze keen, and a shiver ran up Elei’s spine. He nodded at Alendra and they hurried to join the others. As they trudged past shuttered storehouses and dark buildings, Alendra mentioned the man.

“Maybe we’re the most interesting thing he’s seen in decades.” Kalaes grinned, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it.

Verne left them at the end of the street, practically the end of the little town, where the last houses curled like dogs in the dirt. He vanished behind a fence; there one second, the next gone.

The mountains rose like towers against the dark sky, lights peppering their slopes where villages nestled. The vertical mass of the range loomed over them. Salt marshes stretched south as far as the horizon where the narrow buildings of a town stabbed the clouds. Grasses tall as Elei clustered in groves and thickets, speckling the landscape.

The quiet was broken only by the rustling of grasses and the flutter of nightbirds nesting in the marshes. Hera, Sacmis and Kalaes led the way, Elei and Alendra following.

The clouds covered the moon as they walked, plunging the world into blackness. Alendra stumbled and Elei barely caught her before she fell. In the dark, she was as good as blind.

He kept his hand on her arm. “Walk with me,” he whispered, and she nodded.

Hera held Kalaes’ arm, probably for the same reason he held Alendra’s, while Sacmis walked a few steps ahead, scouting.

Something rustled behind them and Elei’s spine stiffened. He twisted to look but nothing was visible between them and the town. He continued walking, guiding Alendra’s steps, and he thought of the man who’d been observing them. An uneasy feeling settled on the back of his neck. Was someone following them? He looked again and small movements in the shrubs made him catch his breath. Yet he didn’t see anyone. They skirted a grove of cordgrass with stems of his height, the spiky tops shaking, sharp like blades.

The others were at least twenty feet ahead, and the distance was widening. With a curse, he pulled Alendra along faster.

Soon he found out that guiding a virtually blind person through a marsh wasn’t an easy job. Although the tide was low, and the ground pretty much dry, Alendra kept slipping in patches of slimy mud and tripping on clumps of stiff marsh grass.

Without warning, she wrapped a slender arm around his waist and held on, her whole body quivering.

Elei stopped so suddenly they almost fell over. “Alendra?” She’d always kept some distance before. He could feel the line of her smaller body against him, a seam of fire where the curve of her hip fit against his thigh, the softness of her breast against his ribs.

“What is it?” she asked, her scent rising again around him, tearing down his defenses.

“Nothing, just...” He turned his head, longing to bury his face in her hair, and saw something move behind them — low, in the grasses.

Shit
. He pushed Alendra away, her yelp followed by a loud crunch as she fell in a thicket of giant glassworts, their green, fleshy leaves swallowing her. Acid grass scent rose.

Elei drew his Rasmus and took aim. Something moved in the undergrowth, careful and slow. Could a person move so silently?

Another thought stuck him. What if it wasn’t a person? What if it was a wild dog? On Ost they were a constant threat; they’d killed Albi, and others he’d known. The thought froze him.

He could hear Alendra behind him, extricating herself from the grass with puffs of annoyance, and then the low snick as she cocked her gun. He rather hoped the bullet wasn’t meant for him.

Another rustle in the grass. Rex pounded in the back of Elei’s eye and lights sprang up, though fainter than usual. That didn’t mean there was no danger, only that the medicine he took had weakened Rex.

The heads of the stems swayed. Setting his jaw, he squinted and aimed.

A small dark shadow burst out, and Elei jerked, stepping back. It was a cat. A black cat.

“Cat?” he whispered, not daring to believe it. How could Cat have followed him all the way from Dakru City?

The little cat trotted over to him, tail erect, ears perked, meowing, and he stared like a fool, gun still pointing.

“Is that a cat?” Alendra hissed. “Your cat? What the hells?”

Elei shook his head. Something burned in the back of his eyes as the cat wound itself between his legs, purring like a broken aircar engine. “Hey...” It couldn’t be his cat. It had to be some random stray from the town.

The cat looked up at him with bright blue eyes that glowed faintly. Rex. With a sigh, Elei holstered his gun and scooped up the little cat, placing him — it was definitely a he — on his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Much to his relief, Alendra said nothing and made no sarcastic comment about Cat or parasites. She just clicked the gun safety back on, holstered her weapon, and took his hand. Her fingers were warm and tight around his own.

“Lead on, all-seeing one,” she said, and he grinned, even though he knew she couldn’t see it.

***

The marshes seemed endless. Alendra stumbled time and again, her breathing harsh. Her back was drenched in sweat. Elei wondered for a moment if Hera had lost the way. That map was sketchy; maybe she had misread something.

He could see Kalaes, his head of wild hair bent toward Hera’s, Sacmis on his other side.

“What can you see?” Alendra whispered, so close to his ear her breath tickled.

“They’re slowing down.”

“Maybe we’re close.” He could hear the hope in her voice.

“Maybe.” He was scratched from the bushes and hard grasses, covered in mud and weary.

Sacmis gestured for them to approach. She’d thrown back her hood and her blond hair gleamed like a silver helmet in the moonlight. Elei pulled Alendra along, Cat gripping his shoulder so hard the tiny claws scratched his skin.

Hera and Kalaes were scrambling up a small hillock that rose above the marshes. Sacmis grabbed Alendra’s other arm and they went up together, slipping in mud and loose rocks.

“Hoping to get an overview of the place?” Alendra panted. “Are we lost?”

“No.” Sacmis pulled her around a larger rock. “We’ve arrived.”

The entrance? Elei scrambled up after them. The top of the hillock was flat and even, a circular platform, and Kalaes and Hera crouched at its center.

Elei walked around them. His steps echoed. He tapped his heel and the ground underneath rang like a giant bell.

“What are you doing?” Hera asked, annoyance bleeding into her voice.

“It’s metal,” he said. “This whole hilltop is metal.” In the middle of the marshes, miles away from the nearest city. Somehow, until then, it had all seemed like a strange tale —the map, the tunnels, the vents. He realized he’d expected to find nothing and return to Dakru empty-handed.

“I can’t see a damn thing,” Kalaes muttered, huddling next to Hera.

“You’re just a mortal. What did you expect?” Hera said.

Kalaes huffed. “Well, excuse me for existing. What do you see?”

“It’s a hatch,” Hera said. 

The wheel was big like the round table in Pelia’s dining room. Its surface was covered in lichen and moss.

“Can you open it, Hera?” Sacmis asked.

“Let me try.” Kalaes gripped the wheel.

“I think it will take more than one person,” Hera said. “Elei, come here. Sacmis, you too. Between Regina and Rex, we should pack enough strength to turn the wheel.”

Elei approached the hatch and knelt next to Hera, with Sacmis on his other side. Around them were small, round holes, cut into the metal at irregular intervals, big enough for Cat to fit through.
Ventilation?

Alendra sank to her knees next to Kalaes and put her hands on the wheel. It was so rusty Elei wondered if it’d fall apart the moment he grabbed it.

But it didn’t. He curled his fingers around its circumference. The metal was icy. “What’s it made of?”

“Must be ancient,” Hera breathed in awe, running her hands over it. “Who knows? Some secret alloy?”

“Let’s do this,” Kalaes said. Elei could see his crooked smile, his teeth flashing in the dark.

Elei tightened his grip and pulled. He didn’t feel strong; either Rex didn’t sense danger or was so weakened it couldn’t help him.
Careful what you wish for...

Hera panted, straining. Muscles bulged on Kalaes’ arms. Elei gritted his teeth, his hands burning.

“Pull,” Sacmis grated. “Harder.”

The wheel lurched. It was a tiny shift, but Elei felt it in his bones. “It’s moving!”

He pulled, hearing the others curse. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Cat jumped off and stared at them from the sidelines.

Then, as if some brake gave, the wheel lurched and turned. Elei’s hands slipped and he fell sideways. Rolling over, he looked up at the gray clouds streaking against the black sky and tried to catch his breath.

“Back on your feet,” Kalaes grunted. “Let’s open this hatch before the fleet decides to do a fly-over.”

That got Elei moving. He took his place and helped to heave the great wheel around until, with a keening screech, it finally ground to a halt.

Kalaes met Elei’s gaze over it. “Ready to see what’s below?” 

Placing his hands on the cold metal, Elei dug his heels in the soft layer of soil covering the metal of the hatch, lowered his head, and pushed together with the others. The hatch creaked, grass roots resisting where they’d grown inside the rim, the hatch door scraping on red lichen and pebbles as it finally shifted.

“It’s opening,” Alendra said.

Elei’s heart beat in his temples, and sweat ran in rivulets down his back and legs. “Good,” was all he managed before he felt the hatch give.