Shadow on the Wall: Superhero | Magical Realism Novels (The SandStorm Chronicles | Magical Realism Books Book 1) (13 page)

Where am I? What…

He looked down to check his watch and found it gone, as was, to his surprise, his shirt. His tuxedo pants were ripped at the knees, but other than a few aches he did not feel too badly injured. It was too dark to check and see what surface damage had been done. Recai reached up and touched his face, wincing at the contact. His memory was fuzzy from the previous night. Looking back in his memory, he saw only swirling cyclones of sand.

Across the room a sliver of light shone from under what must have been the door. Recai heard voices coming from the other side but couldn't make out what they were saying.

Slowly, he used the dim glow to take in his surroundings. The room was dark and small. There had been shelves along the wall at one point but someone, or something, had ripped them from their posts. Packages of paper towels and disinfectant were sprawled about the floor.

He pulled himself up to his knees, hissing through his teeth at the pain of concrete grating against raw flesh. Tiny pieces of ancient dirt and grime worked themselves into his wounds, intermingling with his bloodstream. With cautious movements, he felt his way along the floor in the dim light to the door. As he approached, the voices became clear in spite of their hushed tones: a man and a woman.

Why am I here?

He dizzily relaxed back down on the ground, allowing his head to rest on the floor's welcome coolness.

The darkness was seductive, the lure of sleep difficult to resist. The voices beyond the door spoke just beneath the level of his understanding. He deciphered the familiar tones of Turkish and Arabic intermixed so completely they had to be of someone from the city. The second voice was lower and softer, speaking in an unfamiliar cadence. Soothing, like a chant. Recai had heard this accent before but could not place it. His ears strained for a clearer sound.

As he lay in the dark cellar, his memories swirled like the storm he had been caught in: the voices from outside, flashes of a woman beaten and afraid. As he moved farther from sleep a final image broke through—a man, snarling in the storm, with a snake tattoo winding up his arm and peeking out from behind his neck.

Recai bolted upright and burst to his feet, the previous night's events overwhelming him as they flooded back. The man with the tattoo…the snake's eyes…. Rebekah's death rose to the forefront of his mind as the man's face shone in his memory.

Outside this little room was someone who was keeping him in here. Whoever had pulled him off the tattooed man had dragged him down here. His rage-filled memory told him that much. Last night, with Darya, he had momentarily allowed himself to forget his pain. But all he accomplished was adding more confusion to his chaotic heart. His need for revenge raged anew.

"Open this door!" Recai roared. Mustering what strength he had he threw himself against the metal keeping him inside the concrete cage. His shoulder burned from the impact but he didn't stop his assault.

"Let me
out!
Who put me in here? Open this door or—"

"If you were calm I'd feel a lot better about opening the door," a smooth voice said in a familiar cadence.

"I'd be calm if I wasn't locked in this hell hole. Open!"

"Ah, and there's the downward spiral. I cannot let you out until you are calm, and you cannot be calm until you are out. It seems we are at a bit of an impasse, eh, Recai?"

Recai was still. For a moment he just stood there in his cell and stared in wonderment at the door. How had this person outside known his name? His confusion was so complete his anger dissipated. The attendees of the mayor's party and Darya knew his identity, but no others, and they were all still under lock and key from the storm.

A quiet shuffling from outside pulled him back to his current predicament. A click echoed through the small room, ricocheting off of every surface as his captor unlocked and opened the door.

Light flooded in, momentarily blinding Recai, forcing him to squint and move away from the open door that offered him freedom. As his eyes adjusted, his anger returned. The silhouetted form before him was outlined with florescent light.

"You locked me in here, you kidnapped me," he seethed, crouching down in preparation to attack.

"No, Son, I protected you."

The familiar voice washed over him.
Son
. No one had called him that in a very long time. The name soothed him somewhat, and piqued his curiosity.

"How do you know me?"

His voice shook as he held back his instinct to burst out into the light beyond his warden.

"You knew me once. You knew my daughter…"

The husky voice drifted off, leaving Recai feeling alone and cold. As Recai took a step forward the man retreated into the main room, allowing the light to illuminate his wizened face and tired eyes.

  "You knew Rebekah…"

Recai's gut wrenched as if he had been hit. His eyes watered—the image of her calling him to heaven, then leaving him earthbound and alone returned. His emotions fought for voice, but there were none which could convey his shock as the accent of the man before him suddenly made perfect sense.

"Hasad?"

Recai reached out and stepped toward the old man as if seeing a ghost.

"How…?"

The pain in his gut twisted its way through Recai, wringing every drop of misery out of him, spilling it on the floor, leaving him to wade in its sea.

"Son, are you all right?"

Hasad's gruff exterior fell away as he took in the broken young man before him.

Recai's eyes filled with water again as he fell on his knees before the old man. His life had been saved so many years before, only to be the cause of Rebekah's death. There was nothing about him that was worth saving. He failed time and again, never able to do or be enough. But he ached for the understanding of the only soul who knew the pain he suffered. He wept for the first time in a long time since Rebekah's death. Hasad placed forgiving hand on his shoulder.

"Hasad, I'm so sorry. I should have… I should have protected her. I shouldn't have lived when she didn't." Recai's voice cracked as the tears streamed down his face, cleaning a path through his bloody features. "I could have—"

"There's nothing anyone could have done."

Hasad did not embrace Recai, nor did he move away. He simply stood, accepting the other's tears with a strength he didn't possess, but which Recai needed.

"I don't know why I lived. I never wanted to. I failed her in this life, I would have been happy to follow her into the next."

"Recai," Hasad began, pulling Recai's attention up out of his misery. "I pulled you from that fire. There's a reason you lived. There's a reason you're here. Stand up."

Hasad waited patiently as Recai stood and once again took in the old man before him. Hasad hadn't changed much since Recai last saw him in Çayustu. The lines in his face were deeper and his skin looser, but wild intelligence still shone from his eyes.

Those eyes bore into Recai as he asked, "Now, where have you been?"

Darya sat in front of her vanity with a soft smile on her face. The celebration for her uncle had ended unexpectedly, and while she was frustrated with Recai's rejection, she didn't take it to heart.

Her long hair hung down her back over her silk nightgown as she poured a small amount of oil into her hands. She rubbed them together filling the room with the earthy scent of sandalwood, transforming the heat from oppressive to languid.

It had been three days since the kum firtinasi, and the sand was still settling into the cracks of the streets. Another week would pass before the reddish tint would be gone and life would return to normal. Until then she would stay in her apartment, thankful for the luxury of technology that allowed her to continue her work running the empire that funded her uncle's government.

She never knew where his funds came from and never asked; she simply invested and managed them, increasing his wealth exponentially. All the while she siphoned off just enough to run her own projects without anyone ever suspecting.

This morning her mind would not focus on business or on the constant insult of having to hide her face and name from those she worked with, enraging both her vanity and pride. Instead, her mind drifted to Recai. His lips had been soft and his hand sure when he placed it on her back to dance. When they spoke he had not avoided her eyes or acted as if she committed a sin by speaking her mind. He had laughed, and looked at her the way she dreamed someone would.

Whatever the reason he left, she didn't care. His momentary lapse in piety gave Darya a glimpse into the passionate man within.

Darya began to oil her hair. She moved section by section, applying moisture to her damaged strands, bringing back the beauty the desert heat had stolen. Pulling her hands along the length of her locks she weaved her fingers into her hair, spreading the oil evenly from scalp to ends. The process was time consuming but soothing, allowing her mind to drift.

While she worked, she closed her eyes and dreamt of a life with a man she hardly knew, a man with rare and insightful green eyes.

Darya prided herself on being capable. She ran her own life and made her own decisions, but something about a mate and equal appealed to her. She would give anything to have love. Real love—not the kind traded for favors or blackmail. The kind that freed you. She believed Recai was different from other men, that he would be able to appreciate all that she could offer.

In the hall she heard her attendants fuss about something. There was always a fuss about something. Her uncle insisted she have guards even in her own home, keeping her in purdah regardless of his claims to value her above all his other confidants. She held the reins of his power, yet had none of her own.

She longed for change, for freedom. Her gilded cage closed in around her every day. The constraints so tight she feared she may run out of space completely. She grew tired of being allowed out in the street only if she covered herself. She resented being permitted to work only if she hid behind false names and computers. Someday the whole city would know who spoke directly into the mayor's ear, and then she could take what she was due.

Bursting through the doors to her bedroom, her housekeeper struggled to keep someone out.

"You can't simply walk in there! This is her
bedroom
!"

"It's fine," Darya stated calmly upon seeing her half-brother's silhouette. She turned on her ottoman to face the disruption.

"
Beyan!"
the housekeeper protested.

"I said it's fine."

"Your uncle would not be happy," Darya's housekeeper said with a tsk before eyeing the man now standing just inside the double doors leading to Darya's suite.

"Sister…" he began as the housekeeper slid past him and shut the doors behind her.

"Why are you here?" Darya demanded, annoyed by his presence in her home. Their relationship was not supposed to be public; that's what made it work so well. As soon as anyone associated them with each other, or found out they were related, so many of Darya's plans would be compromised.

"Don't start with me! Do you see these fucking bruises on my face?"

"So? You're always doing something insane. It's about time someone raised a hand to you," Darya responded blithely to her half-brother's harsh tone. She turned back to her vanity, watching him in the reflection as she poured more oil into her hand to resume her task.

"It was your dirty errand that did this, Sister," he sneered, his eyes narrowing in the mirror until the left one disappeared under the swelling of his brow. He resembled his mother so much it was hard to believe he was her father's child; but Darya remembered the wedding and his birth in painfully vivid detail, despite having been only four years old when he was born.