Darkness Bound

24

Hawk, clothed all in white, beautiful and somber, stared straight into the camera. Behind him it was dark, but she could make out the vague outline of furniture, some kind of gauzy curtain, the branches of a tree. For a moment he did nothing, just stood unmoving with his hands hanging loose at his sides.

Then—unbelievably, horribly—he began to change.

First it appeared to be a trick of the light. There was a shimmer, a glow appeared around him as if emanating from within. The glow grew brighter, the shimmer more distinct, until all at once the flesh-and-bone man that was Hawk dissolved into a floating plume of glittering gray mist, ethereal and insubstantial, floating halfway between the floor and the ceiling like a disembodied spirit.

His clothes fell with a soft rustle of fabric to the floor.

Jack made a strangled sound. She went hot then cold, and found it increasingly difficult to breathe.

Breathing became next to impossible when the floating gray plume of mist gathered in on itself, and coalesced into the largest, most beautiful black panther Jack had ever seen.

It padded toward the camera. It paused, sat back on muscled haunches, staring into the camera with those eyes of vivid yellow-green, and let out a low, rumbling growl that stood all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck on end.

Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .

She’d been set up and used by . . . by one of them.

Bile rose in her throat. She clapped both hands over her mouth. Memories again swirled in a Technicolor tangle in her mind, vivid images of the two of them in every possible s****l position. Memories of his words, both harsh and tender, as he pushed himself inside her and brought her to orgasm, over and over again.

Jack didn’t have time to linger on those terrible memories, however, because again the image on the screen was changing shape. The panther changed back to mist, the mist changed back to man—naked, glorious—and the man came close to the camera, so close she saw the stubble shadowing his jaw.

Those cat eyes still burning lucent green, Hawk said into the camera, “I have a proposition for you, Jacqueline Dolan.”

He continued to speak in a low, cold monotone, as the bottom fell out of Jack’s world.

Aside from the sand that insinuates itself into every crack and crevice, the main problem with living in a desert is the heat.

Suffocating, relentless, palpable as a hand pressing on the crown of your head, the heat of the northern Sahara is particularly trying. Especially for a group of predators who originated from the lush, tropical heart of the African rainforest, a place where it rains at least once a day.

“If someone doesn’t figure out how to get me some ice,” muttered Caesar Cardinalis, sprawled in a high-backed rattan chair with one long leg flung over the wooden arm and a tepid glass of water in hand, “someone is going to die.” He stared around the arid, dusty room, eyeing each of his guards in turn. All of them had their hands clasped behind their backs, their gazes trained on some invisible point in the distance, a solid row of weapon-heavy soldiers as unnecessary to their lord and master’s continued health as snowshoes in the tropics.

Caesar added with languid ill humor, “And when I say someone, I mean everyone.”

The guards—knowing all too well this wasn’t an idle threat—shifted their weight from foot to foot, and sent each another quick, anxious glances.

One of them stepped forward. Larger than the rest, he was a cool, efficient killer with a withering stare and the impressive musculature of an elite athlete. Like the others, born and bred in darkness in the catacombs below Rome, he had eyes the color of polished obsidian, but unlike the others, he didn’t tremble when he addressed their leader.

He was, however, smart enough to keep his gaze lowered deferentially to Caesar’s bare, tanned feet. Before speaking, he bowed.

“I took the liberty of ordering a diesel-powered generator, Sire, the day we arrived. It’s being delivered soon to the market at Jamaa el Fna. With your permission, I’ll take Nico with me to pick it up when it arrives.”

Marcell waited patiently for Caesar to assess this and pass judgment. This kind of independent thinking was not something Caesar normally appreciated, but knowing their luxury-loving leader as Marcell did, he’d taken the risk with full confidence of reward.

A reward that was ensured when Caesar replied, “Thank Horus one of you has a brain.”

Careful to keep the self-satisfied smirk from his face, Marcell bowed a little lower, then returned to his place at the wall.

The kasbah in Morocco that Caesar and his followers had settled in after their abrupt departure from Spain was vast and crumbling and echoing empty, one of the hundreds of abandoned sandcastle palaces left to bake in the sun by a clan of long-ago Berber warriors. Situated in an unexpected oasis along the former route of the caravans over the Atlas mountains to Marrakech, the stronghold built of earth was isolated from any human settlements, and steadily collapsing. In spite of its decay, it was spectacular.

An austere, sprawling maze of red clay and stone, it still held the echoes of its former glory and conspicuous wealth. Elaborate stucco pillars, brilliant mosaics, soaring Moorish doorways, and intricately carved woodwork had survived the harsh desert climate, as had a*****e of handwoven wool rugs, stashed in rolls of dust-covered canvas in the dungeon below. Along with a few pieces of mismatched furniture bought from a local bazaar, the rugs were now scattered about Caesar’s rooms on the uppermost floor of the palace.