Heart of the Gods (26 page)

Those cold eyes flicked over Ky.

“It seems he’s envied you for some time, Professor. That was all I needed to buy his soul.”

That cold smile settled on Ky for only a moment before returning to Raissa. “He also tells me you have Sekhmet’s gift, little slave, although he doesn’t believe it, but that you haven’t fed. Look where your scruples have left you, great Guardian of the Temple.”

John.

She’d warded the others but she hadn’t warded John because John hadn’t been there to ward. He hadn’t been protected.

Now she knew who had betrayed them and how they’d been betrayed.

Another clearly did not.

“The Guardian!” Inspector Hassan cried out in shock, “No…!”

The knowledge nearly shattered him. He’d betrayed the Guardian of the Temple.

Even as he drew his gun he saw it, the resemblance to the figure of Nubiti that had been passed down to him from his father and his father’s father and sat in a place of honor in his home. It explained so much, her appearance in the village, her speed, her quickness, her skill fighting in the marketplace.

He should have seen it. He’d been a fool.

Zimmer laughed. “Yes, here is your precious Guardian, Inspector…but now she is mine.”

Stunned, furious, Hassan looked at him.

The name Kamenwati hadn’t registered at first, it was a name from the distant past, but then it did.

The Grand Vizier?

In his arrogance Hassan had allied with the wrong side and with him his men.

A gesture from Zimmer even as Hassan’s gun cleared his holster.

Magic whispered.

Something huge came out of the darkness.

A great force struck Hassan a shattering blow that lifted him from his feet, propelled his bodily backwards to vanish into the darkness.

At the same moment, gunshots shattered the shocked silence and Hassan’s men fell, the mercenaries around them cutting them down mercilessly.

Terrible as it was, it was the distraction Raissa needed.

She knew she had to go carefully here, her magic subtle, for Kamenwati had far more power, was far more powerful than she was, she could feel the hum of it in the hand that held her.

Quickly, she called what little power she had. She cast her incantations in the shadow of Kamenwati’s, first one then the other, while he was distracted.

A sudden burst of wind rushed through the campsite in the wake of Kamenwati’s spell, not entirely unexpected at this time of night as the heat of day was supplanted by the cold of night. Some of the lanterns blew out, casting parts of the camp in shadow, especially the section where the prisoners were, giving them the cover of darkness.

“Mine again,” Zimmer said, turning his eyes on her again. “Mine, slave. There is no one now to defend you. You’ve lost and you’re mine once again.”

In that he was wrong…If what she planned was going to work, Ky had to have a chance to work unobserved. She needed Zimmer distracted, angry and unthinking. She didn’t know Zimmer well, she only knew what had been said of him, and what she’d observed.

But she knew Kamenwati. She knew his pride, and the pride of the powerful marid Djinn that was allied with his spirit.

They were weaker here, working through Zimmer, but she dared not underestimate them.

She was no longer Kamenwati’s slave, had not been for three thousand years and more.

Possess her body he might, but never her soul. That had always been hers.

Until now she’d been submissive, deliberately she raised her eyes to his in such a way as no slave would have dared.

Provoking him. Dangerously.

She kept her voice calm, even, sure. And faintly derisive.

“We haven’t yet reached the Tomb, my Lord Kamenwati. Much can happen between here and there. They have a saying in this time. Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched.”

Fury erupted through him, she saw it flare in his eyes at her insolence, at the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice.

And not just him, but insecure, sensitive and insensitive Zimmer within him.

It was like a spark to tinder.

Enraged, insulted, he dropped her, backhanded her…

The force of the blow sent her flying across the campsite as his spell had sent Inspector Hassan flying into the darkness. If she’d been human it would have broken her neck. The impact of his hand split her lip and made her head spin. It seemed she was human enough.

Without her hands to catch her she sprawled on the ground.

In that much he was right, she was too weak to fight him. Physically or magically, she’d used too much power. She had been and still was a mercenary, a fighter. That had always been her gift. Once they’d called her berserker, for the madness that took her in battle.

Give her a weapon and she would fight like nothing these men had ever seen.

It was not, though, her only weapon. She would have to use wit and guile instead. And her weapons were her own, bound to her.

She whispered the incantation like a prayer to the Gods. It was one.

Ky was barely aware of something, a brush of air at his back. Something touched his fingers but he was too intent on watching Zimmer and Raissa, and what Zimmer was doing to her.

She rolled frantically and almost managed to scramble to her feet as Zimmer stalked across the campsite toward her, his eyes enraged, sparks glowing in the depths of them like hellfire.

His anger seemed to shimmer in the air between them.

She lifted her chin defiantly.

Zimmer caught her by the front of her t-shirt…lifted her into the air.

“Know you will serve me as you did not in the past,” Zimmer said, furiously, yanking her toward him so she was only inches from his face, “on your knees. You will never know a day when your hands will not be bound behind your back, each and every day until the day we reach the Tomb. And when we reach it I will stake you out in front of the doors to the Tomb as an offering to the Djinn when I free them…”

It was not an idle threat.

Each word made her mouth go dry as horror shivered through her at the thought, at the picture he painted with those words.

The Djinn had no reason to love her. Their vengeance would be terrible.

She took a breath, her eyes on Kamenwati’s eyes in Zimmer’s face.

Ky went still, his jaw nearly shattering it was clenched so hard at the thought of Zimmer touching her, using her.

Why was she taunting him?

Behind Ky a soft voice said, “Don’t look now, boss, but Raissa’s swords just appeared behind you.”

Ryan.

In disbelief, Ky dropped his hands lower and encountered the nearly razor-sharp edge of one and a sharp sting as he cut a finger on it.

Quickly, he glanced at the guards, even John, but they were intent on the scene in front of them.

As Raissa had so obviously intended, goading Zimmer as she had.

Now Ky understood.

A look to the others was all it took. With small movements, they moved closer to cover him and the swords. They braced themselves for the inevitable repercussions if they came and watched the guards carefully. Tareq steadied the hilt of Raissa’s left hand sword with the hands they’d bound in front of him so that the sharp edge was up. Ky sawed the edge of his bonds across the sharp edge.

Zimmer thrust Raissa away from him so she stumbled backward, falling onto her back to stare up at him as he stalked toward her once more.

“I will ask only one thing of them,” he said, “that they leave you alive when they are done so I can sacrifice you to Set. After her rescue and resurrection of Osiris, he has no love for Isis. Even weakened as you are, Isis’s priestess’s dying a long, slow death at his hands will bring both him and me a great deal of power.”

Even knowing the plans she’d set in motion, the thought made her heart sink.

If they failed, she knew what her fate would be. And resigned herself to it.

His smile went colder.

“But first,” he said, “it would appear that you need to be reminded of your place…slave.”

The word, and the way he said it, sent another chill through her. It didn’t bode well.

Gesturing to the guards, he summoned two of them.

“Take her and hold her, bind her hands in front of her…”

Raissa watched him warily.

From her years as his slave she had an inkling of what he intended.

Her throat tightened further.

It would hardly be the first time. She had and could endure as she had then.

Another gesture, a conjuration and the whip was in his hands. She knew the thin braided leather strips well from old. Her breath caught and her mouth grew taut as she braced herself for what would follow.

“Fight this,” Zimmer said, “and one of them will die.”

There was no need, as terrible as it would be, what was coming would meet her needs. All attention would be on her and Kamenwati. It was worth the pain.

Shaking out the braided length of the leather, he untangled it so the little iron beads at the ends of each strand flicked across the sand. He wanted her to see it, to anticipate what was coming.

Raissa tightened her jaw. She’d hoped the last time would truly be the last. This would hurt a great deal, cost her a lot of blood she couldn’t spare, but it would end, she knew. Somehow she would get through it.

“What is the penalty?” he asked her, for the benefit of the other prisoners, “for an escaped slave?”

Technically, Raissa hadn’t escaped, Isis had taken her into her service. It had been her saving grace. That scarcely mattered to Kamenwati.

Her voice was quiet when she answered. “Twenty lashes.”

Ky stiffened, beside him Tareq went still, horrified.

Surely Zimmer wasn’t serious… Twenty lashes…with a cat o’ nine tail?

Forcing himself to concentrate, Ky worked the heavy rope over Raissa’s sword. He couldn’t help her if he wasn’t free. At least they’d used rope, plentiful at a dig, and not metal or plastic handcuffs. The first would have been much more difficult, the second would have cost him some blood.

Two of the men hauled Raissa to the center of the circle of tents and forced her to kneel.

One of them grabbed the back of the thin t-shirt and ripped it open to expose her back.

Coiling up her hair in one hand, he tossed it over her shoulder so it would be out of the way.

Even in the wavering torchlight, the old scars on her back were clearly visible. Long white marks across her back and shoulders.

Ky winced to see them. It wasn’t the first time she’d faced the lash. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have. Yet it was a common punishment in that time.

With a smile and a sigh, Zimmer walked to her, stroked a hand over her, his thick fleshy fingers lingering on the scars there, tracing them.

Her hair swung to hide her face and for that Raissa was grateful. Just his touch made Raissa flinch.

Zimmer sighed, his breath trembling with anticipation.

“I remember well.” he said, fondly and with some satisfaction. “You needed to be educated often.”

The whip snaked across her back, curled around her ribs, the pain bright, searing…nearly blinding…all the breath went out of her at the intensity of it. Fighting for breath against the agony, her back automatically arched away from the source of the torment.

“You do remember?”

He was waiting for her answer.

“Yes.” Her voice was thin, a little more that a gasp as she sucked air in once again.

With a sudden sharp flick of his wrist he sent the whip snaking across her back once again.

“Master,” he snapped.

It was as if fire licked across her skin, sharp, savage, the pain so intense it took the breath from her again. She couldn’t have cried out if she wanted but she locked her jaw against it. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. And she wouldn’t call him Master. She wouldn’t give him that. Besides, she couldn’t breathe. Her body quivered at the violation, the assault on it.

Agony was apparent in every line, every muscle sharply defined as they locked in response to the pain that came with each crack of the whip.

In the face of that Ky forced himself to concentrate.

Raissa.

Twenty lashes.

Blood trickled down her hands from her wrists. Streaks of it ran down her back, her ribs.

Her face was in profile, her beautiful blue eyes closed as she flinched away from the pain.

All Ky could do was watch the scene in front of him, his jaw tight as he worked the rope across the edge of her blade, a part of him responding to each crack and flick of the whip as it stroked across Raissa’s skin. He saw her knees give a little.

The next bite of the whip sent a rush of weakness through her. Raissa’s knees tried to buckle. It was only with effort that she kept them beneath her. She was getting weaker, quickly, as the blood flowed. Worse, though, she was getting hungry. Her stomach quivered, cramped. It had been too long since she’d fed and the blood loss only made it worse.

“I will break you,” Zimmer promised softly, “before we reach the Tomb. Bow to me now, give up and the pain will stop.”

Magic licked out around her, drew off her pain, drew it in and fed on it. She shuddered at the violation.

“No.”

He sent the whip snapping across her back. It flicked across two previous stripes, a new layer of pain on top of what had come before. It was so sharp, so intense, her lungs locked.

Zimmer leaned close, his voice low and suggestive. “Are you hungry…?”

Just the suggestion set it raging. Her need had claws and they raked her. She fought to pull it back, to regain control. Her stomach cramped as another wave of weakness washed through her. She felt her teeth shift, extend. They pressed against her lower lip sharply. She bit down, the pain a distraction. Her teeth retracted.

The whip burned across her shoulders and her knees finally gave out as pain exploded through her. She fell, braced herself on her hands as the shackles dug in. Darkness closed around the edges of her vision.

She fought it as she’d fought the rest.

Ky felt the rope that bound his wrists give to the sharpness of Raissa’s blade even as she sagged, her body trembling violently.