Dark Sins and Desert Sands

by Stephanie Draven

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. You think I’m just some stupid bimbo because I turn tricks.”

  Ray ran a hand through his hair. “I think you’ve made some bad choices with your life, that’s all. What would your family think about how you make money?”

  “I don’t have family,” Missy said, flipping the tab on her soda so viciously that it foamed over the lip. “And you don’t know shit. My life isn’t your business so maybe you should shut up about it before I walk out and leave you stuck in your shrink’s head.”

  She was right. He needed to focus on getting his own life back, and right now that meant hunting down the woman he’d gone to bed with the night before. Ray lay back on the bed, focusing his concentration on his memory of betraying green eyes.

  Ray wasn’t surprised that Layla’s mindscape was still sand as far as the horizon, but now there were some signs of life, too. Greenery dotted the landscape. Spiked aloe plants had clawed their way toward the sunshine and as Ray trudged through the dunes, he saw prickly brush and flowering cacti ringed by thorns. Layla was like that, he thought. Lush and vibrant beauty that would cut you if you dared to get too close.

  Her inner pyramid was fully exposed now, and it wasn’t the only thing. Broken chariots lay strewn about, the wind having swept some of the sand away to reveal them. He found arrows, too, and broken spears. Not just ancient weapons, but modern ones, too. A hollowed-out tank lay upside down like a rotting carcass in the sun.

  He didn’t see the lioness, but knew she was lurking. The entrance of the pyramid beckoned like the maw of a wounded animal gasping its last breath. Ray stormed into the pyramid and raced up its twisting passages. There was an antechamber. His nostrils flared as the monster rose within him. He felt his bulk expand and bulge, his skin turn to hide. His skull reshaped itself, the horns pushing through his scalp. He was an animal now, vicious and more dangerous than before, and the fortress that held Layla’s memories no longer looked so impregnable.

  With a furious snort, he charged forward, ramming into the weak spot. It was a clash of stone and horn and hoof. The pain of it, a hammer to the brain. Still, he charged again. Gravel and stone fell into his eyes, and by the time he shook it out, the lioness had appeared in the dark passageway, illuminated by the light from a brazier that flashed with sudden fire. The lioness’s fur was as tawny and golden as Layla’s skin, and her eyes just as green.

  “Let me inside,” Ray said.

  “I told you that I can’t,” the lioness said. “I told you the way…”

  Ray remembered what she’d said. Make me want something. Make my pulse quicken with excitement. Make me sigh with longing. Make my body weak with pleasure. Make me, make me, make me… Well, he’d done all that, and Layla had walked out on him anyway. Now he’d do things his way. He’d make Layla remember just as he’d made her cry out underneath him.

  “There’s a gentler way in,” the lioness warned, a line of fur rigid upon her back.

  “I’m done being gentle with you, Layla. I’m going to unlock your memories even if it kills me. Or you.” When he rose to charge again, the lioness leaped upon his back. Her powerful legs straddled him as her teeth found the bulging flesh of his back. They went down together, sending a wild spray of sand into the air with their bulk. She tore at his flesh. He bucked, trampling her beneath him. There was a wild raking of claw and horn. She was trying to get her strong jaws around his throat, trying to suffocate him like the huntress that she was.

  It’d been a long time since Ray had felt like her prey and his outrage rose like hot red lava in his veins. If he couldn’t break into her memories, he’d use his powers to drag her into his.

  Layla gasped as some nightmare enveloped her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. It was as if Ray had her by the throat and was forcing her to look into the stench-filled blackness that had a weight of its own. She wasn’t a lioness now. She wasn’t even sure she was herself.

  That’s when she knew. She was inside Ray, inside his memories, inside his prison cell. Layla reached her hands to the sides, trying to feel for an exit and felt metal walls instead. It was just a box and there was no light. Only pain and shivering and sweat. Someone was screaming. She heard the beating, the sickening sound of breaking flesh and bone.

  Ray was here, too. She heard him panting. A slat in the cell opened, and something was pushed through it. Something soft and pulpy spattered to the floor. “Your dinner,” someone said. “Have some meat.” Layla felt Ray’s hunger—the starvation that was hollowing out his stomach and driving him mad. He scrambled for the meat blindly, grasping it with filthy fingers and tearing into it with his teeth. Then she heard him gag, and spit, as he said, “It’s raw…”

  “It’s the only thing you’re getting until you confess,” was the unseen guard’s reply.

  She heard Ray take another bite, choking it down. She smelled the blood of it in her nostrils. Then Ray gagged. “What is it? Dead rat?”

  “It’s your nephew,” the guard said. “We cut off his little arm to feed to you and if you don’t tell us what we want to know, we’re going to cut out his heart and make you eat it, too.”

  At hearing that, the sound Ray made wasn’t human.

  He dropped the flesh in his hands and cried out, a shattering sound that shook the walls.

  “Food fit for a monster,” his guard said, only his eyes showing through the slat. “Why shouldn’t your family have to pay for what you’ve done?”

  “I’ve done nothing!” Ray shouted, his grimy hands pounding on the walls.

  Then it all came up. He regurgitated the bites of flesh he’d eaten and sprayed the floor with bile. It didn’t matter if the guard had been lying or telling the truth. It only mattered that Ray’s mind couldn’t sort out the fact from the fantasy. The sour scent of vomit was everywhere, and that’s when it happened.

  That’s when Ray first became the minotaur. He couldn’t reach through the bars, but he seized hold of the guard’s mind with the force of his anger alone.

  “I’ll kill you!” Ray shouted.

  Layla saw the fear in the guard’s eyes. The guard scrambled for his keys, unable to fight Ray. Unable to stop himself from opening the door, and when he did, Ray beat him bloody. Layla didn’t stay to see if Ray had killed the man. She felt the roiling of her own stomach that she’d been any part of this, and she ran.

  Ray’s memories were a labyrinth. They twisted and doubled back upon one another. There were a thousand other versions of Ray here, in a thousand more memories. She saw him being beaten. She saw him sitting in an orange jumpsuit in a metal room under bright lights, and she was there, too. She had a folder in her hands, and glasses perched on the end of her nose, and she was saying, “Just give me something, Ray. A name, an address, something that will help me make a deal for you. You know that you’re special to me. Help me save you.”

  “Ray?” she whispered, feeling the taurine shadow of his inner minotaur fall across her. But her voice was drowned out by another sound. Someone else’s call was echoing through the cavernous insides of Ray’s mind.

  “Wake up, Ray.” It was a girl’s voice, frantic, terrified. “Wake up, Ray. Wake up!”

  Ray opened his eyes to see Missy fighting off some pasty-faced white guy with a knife who slapped her across the face and sent her sprawling to the floor. Ray pulled the gun out from beneath his pillow as he tried to shake off the dizziness and disorientation. He didn’t pull the trigger.

  He didn’t have to. His attacker hadn’t expected to be looking down the barrel of a Makarov semiautomatic. The pale and lanky intruder put his hands up in surprise. “Easy, dawg. I was just checking to see how strung out you were. I don’t need my slut getting herself in trouble with no junkie.”

  Great. So the guy was Missy’s pimp. He was here to rob Ray or kill him or both of them. “Drop the knife, Vanilla Ice.”

  The pimp took a few steps backward, but didn’t drop the knife. Ray didn’t wa
nt to have to fire his gun. Didn’t want to make any sounds that would draw attention, didn’t want to deal with a dead body, but he could almost see the calculation in the pimp’s eyes as Missy sobbed on the floor.

  Okay, then. Ray was up out of the bed in one swift motion, knocking the knife out of the pimp’s hand and slamming him against the wall. He delivered a brutal punch to the guy’s kidney, then another to the other side. Missy’s pimp howled in pain, but Ray didn’t stop punching. His fist hammered into the guy’s face. He was tasting the pungent fuel of rage. It felt good to actually hit something with his bare hands.

  “Stop it!” Missy yelled as her pimp curled into a fetal position, moaning and groaning. Ray kept hitting him until a solid blow to the face made the guy’s eyes roll up in his head. He was out cold. Even so, Ray pulled back for another punch. “Ray!” Missy was screaming, clutching him, crying, hanging from his arm with all her weight. “Stop it, or you’ll kill him.”

  “Why should you care?” Ray asked. “He’s a sick fuck who gets off on exploiting little girls. Look what he did to your face. The guy is scum. He’s not even human.”

  “You’re wrong,” Missy said, her lower lip trembling. “He’s a person, okay? You’re not his judge, jury and executioner.”

  Ray’s nostrils flared once more, but he dropped his arm. Missy had just saved his life. The last thing Ray wanted to do was kill this bastard in front of her and traumatize her. Ray stood up, retrieved the knife and the gun, and shoved them into his duffel bag where he found a roll of duct tape. He tossed it to Missy. “Tape him to the chair. I’m going to clean up, then we’re out of here.”

  Ray’s hands were shaking and it wasn’t just because he’d nearly beat a man to death. He could taste the blood in the back of his throat from his mental war with Layla. Luckily, the adrenaline seemed to be keeping him conscious. The pain was bad. Worse, the bathroom walls suddenly seemed too close. Crowded. It hadn’t seemed so small when he was with Layla, but now the idea of showering was more than he could handle. Stepping into that shower would be like climbing back into a prison cell. Goddamn, this anxiety was getting worse every day.

  He wiped himself down with soap and a washcloth, rinsing his hair in the sink. He was toweling himself off when Missy finished duct-taping her pimp to the chair. “We can’t just leave him here, Ray. He needs a doctor.”

  What that asshole needed was another beating, but Ray held his tongue.

  “I can just call an ambulance,” she said, flipping her pink cell phone open to show Ray. “They wouldn’t even trace it back to you.”

  “Hello Kitty?” Ray asked as he glanced at the cartoon-character-themed phone. “Seriously?”

  The hard-edged teenager blushed. “Maybe I could get someone else to call an ambulance. There’s this boy I met at Dr. Bahset’s office. Cool name. Carson something. He’s an artist and he said if I ever needed anything, he’d be happy to help.”

  Young love. Just what Ray needed. “Missy, it’s better that we just get out of here first. We’ll take a bus to my friend Jack’s house in Virginia. We’ll be safe there until I figure out how to find Layla again.”

  “Dude, you’ve got a friend?” Missy asked sarcastically. “Get outta town!”

  The pimp made a horrible gurgling noise, obviously in pain.

  “Come on, Missy. Let’s go.”

  They were halfway out the door when the phone on the motel end table rang. Might be the cops. Might be motel management. The one person he didn’t expect it to be was Layla Bahset.

  Chapter 12

  No puzzle stands before me. No riddle bars my way.

  When questions cloud the

  meaning, I chase the doubt away.

  Layla held her breath, cradling the phone on her shoulder, waiting for Ray to answer.

  “Nice disappearing act you did this morning,” he finally said, his words guarded.

  Layla exhaled then took a deep, steadying breath. “Ray, I want you to come find me.”

  “You can be sure that I will, sweetheart. I can find you anywhere. I just proved that to you by dragging you into my memories, didn’t I?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m going to tell you where you can find me. There’s a manhunt on for you. For both of us. You have to get out of Vegas, but until you do, I have somewhere you can stay and be safe. With me.”

  He laughed and it was a bitter laugh. “So what’s the catch? What’s the game this time?”

  “There isn’t one,” Layla said. “I saw a lot of things in your memories, Ray, but the one thing I didn’t see was treason. I want to help you clear your name if I can.”

  She let the silence settle, not wanting to push, but finally asked, “Ray?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  It wasn’t the most hopeful sign. “I know. You’re thinking about last night and wondering what it all meant, thinking—”

  “I’m thinking about how I’m going to get to you, since my face is all over the news and you stole my car.”

  “She could be luring you into a trap, you know,” Missy said, unwrapping an ice pop she got from the bus stop vending machine.

  Maybe the kid was right. It wouldn’t be the first time that Layla had tried to trick him, but Ray had to take the chance; it might be the only one he got. “Listen, I emptied your pimp’s pockets. Take the cash and keep yourself out of trouble until you get to Virginia.”

  “If you give me your money then you’re helping to transport an underage hooker across state lines,” she said, slowly sucking on her frozen treat in a provocative way that made him worry about her future. “It’s a violation of the Mann Act, you know.”

  “There’s something freakish about you, Missy.”

  “Right back atcha, Rage-a-tron.” She snatched the money from his hand. “Anyway, it was nice knowing you.”

  So she was still pissed. “Don’t be like that, Missy.”

  She turned to face him. “You never asked me if I wanted to leave Vegas, Ray. You never asked me if I wanted a new life.”

  His skull-crushing headache seemed to get worse, so he popped a few more aspirin in the hopes that it would stave off the pain. “Look, Missy, I’m not abandoning you. Jack’s going to take care of you, and not in a sexual way. He’s a good friend, and he owes me.”

  “Yeah, well, you beat the crap out of my pimp, so I don’t have much choice now.”

  “You’ve always got a choice,” Ray said. “Just try it out, okay? See what it feels like to follow the rules and do stuff you can be proud of.”

  She snorted at his hypocrisy and he supposed he couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t exactly the poster child for following the rules. But he would be. When he got his life back, he’d never skirt that line again. Everything he ever did would be one hundred percent legit.

  “So, Ray, if it all turns out to be a bust, how will I get in touch with you?”

  He’d planned to get a new cell phone at the convenience store—one of those disposable, prepaid ones. But by the time he’d have a number to give her, they’d already be out of touch. “Tell ya what, Jailbait. Gimme your phone. I’ll carry it with me, and if you need me, you call it.”

  She gasped. “Not my Hello Kitty!”

  “When I find Layla and this is all over, I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “Careful what you promise. I want a touch screen one that costs a bajillion dollars.”

  If Ray managed to get himself out of this mess, he’d be happy to buy Missy one of those phones. Hell, he’d buy some for his nephews, too. “You know how to follow the bus schedule and get to Virginia, right?”

  Missy didn’t answer him, distracted by the moth that landed on her outstretched hand. “Hey, cool…”

  “It’s a bug, Missy. I need you to pay attention to what I’m telling you here.”

  “It’s not a bug,” was her indignant reply as the thing spread its colorful orange wings like it was preening. “It’s an American Painted Lady. See the white spot in the forewing suba
pical field? That’s how you can tell it apart from a regular Painted Lady.”

  Ray stared at her. “What are you, an entomologist now?”

  “Artemisia’s a plant that attracts butterflies,” Missy explained. “That’s where I got my name.”

  “So?”

  “So, before my mom became a raging drunk, she used to read me all these butterfly books at night. But you go on thinking I’m just some dumb hooker.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it,” Missy said as the butterfly fluttered away.

  “No, really. Missy, I’m sorry.” He was. What she’d been through, what she’d done to make a living, wasn’t the sum total of who she was. Prostitution didn’t define her. No more than what Ray had been through in the past two years defined him. Right now people saw her as a hooker and they saw him as a fugitive. It was time for both of them to do better. He kissed the top of Missy’s head as people started getting on the bus. “Take care of yourself, Jailbait.”

  He’d come for answers—not for Layla—but the moment she opened the cabin door, he was once again rendered a stammering fool. On the drive up into the mountains in his newly stolen vehicle, Ray had promised he’d steel himself against her and harden his heart. But now that he saw her again in the flesh, he was stricken.

  Layla was wearing a thin cotton shirt that clung to her curves and a denim skirt that left her legs bare. She stood in the doorway, her hair loose around her shoulders, and she didn’t even have shoes on. Her perfection had crumbled and the woman beneath the facade was even sexier. He’d thought—maybe hoped—that one night would’ve been enough to break his fascination with her. Especially after she ran off and left him behind. Again.

  Yet, he still wanted her. In fact, he wanted her so much his mouth went dry. Nothing should matter to him as much as clearing his name, but desire for Layla somehow moved up the hierarchy of his basic needs. He was like a man dying of thirst, and for him, she was an oasis.