Submerge (The Bound Ones Book 2)

by Tricia Barr

  “So, you have learned that you can get sick,” Skylar said. “What happens if you get injured?”

  “Well, just like anyone else, if I get cut, I heal,” Ayanna said. “I’ve broken bones before, and I’ve gotten some pretty serious wounds, but as long as I rest, the wounds heal pretty quickly. My healing is much more accelerated than the average person, though. It’s fairly instant.”

  “How very interesting,” Skylar mused. Then he and Ayanna commenced a long conversation about biology and the possible healing properties of the stone, a conversation to which Phoenyx just could not pay attention. Her mind was shuffling, looking for a clue as to the location of the other two stone fragments. If she couldn’t remember tonight, they would have no destination tomorrow. If she couldn’t remember at all, Lily would die.

  She excused herself from her friends’ circle and wandered the tomb, allowing herself to study and admire her many treasures, hoping that one of them would spark a memory. It didn’t take long for her to get lost in these items, the statues and weapons and papyri taking her back to the time of pharaohs. Why was it that she could remember all those lives so clearly yet all the time since was patchy and blurry?

  She felt a hand gently land on her lower back.

  “Can you believe this is our life?” Sebastian said, his voice soft and whimsical. “Or lives rather. Just yesterday, my mind was limited to only this life. My broken childhood, my wayward adolescence, the hopes and dreams of what you and I might have been before. And now, my existence, my self, has expanded immeasurably, and knowing the amazing eternity that you and I have shared is so much more than I ever could have dreamed up. I feel unbelievably lucky to share this fate with you. I am a broken, lost, scandalous person without you. You make me better.”

  All of Phoenyx’s anxiety melted away, and warmth spread through her from where Sebastian’s hand touched her back. Then she heard him moan as his body shuddered, and she realized the warmth she felt she was accidentally letting flow into him; even after all these lifetimes, she didn’t quite know her own strength.

  Overcome with love and lust, Sebastian pulled her into his arms and kissed her with the passion of a thousand romances, and she lost herself in him.

  Phoenyx pulled her clothes back on and lazily fell back onto Sebastian’s chest, getting herself cozy. He balled up his shirt and propped up under his head, then pulled over the bottle of nedjem and took a swig. He offered it to her.

  Her head was already weightless and giddy—probably more from the fantastic sex than the alcohol—but she took it and swallowed a mouthful anyway.

  “Do you remember the last time we had this together?” he asked, holding up the bottle and swishing the liquid around inside.

  “I might,” she said playfully, tracing her fingers across his naked chest. “Remind me.”

  “It was the night you found the first stone fragment,” he said.

  And just like that, the memory came flooding back to her.

  She galloped back into the city, having successfully stashed the stone in their treasury. She felt inebriated with triumph and joy and hope, and she had to find him and tell him the good news.

  Night had fallen, and as he was a kitchen slave in this life, she knew he would be leaving the kitchens soon after having prepared the meal for the royal family. She crept through the palace toward the kitchen passages.

  Then he emerged and saw her, the look on her face inciting excitement in his.

  “What is it?” he asked, taking her hands in his.

  “I found it!” she whispered, gleeful. “I found the stone!”

  “Oh, thank Atum!” he exclaimed. “Where?”

  “Ramses,” she said. “He was wearing it. All this time, they had been wearing it on a necklace, handed down through the generations. I snatched it from him while he was sleeping, after we had…” She stopped herself. Even though she was a slave in the pharoah’s harem, and exploiting her sexual gifts had always been their greatest advantage, she didn’t like having to use them, nor did she like having to mention it around him.

  “It’s alright,” he said, reassuring her. “Don’t feel guilty about having to share yourself for our cause. You do what you have to, and I know that you will always be mine.” He picked her up and kissed her, spinning her around as he did so. “Besides, that doesn’t even matter now, because you found the stone! We must celebrate!”

  He pulled a bottle of nedjem out of his sack and held it up between them suggestively.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked, accepting it from him and eagerly taking a drink.

  “I stole it from the kitchen stores,” he replied. “I thought we might have a little fun tonight.”

  The warmth of the alcohol and the thrill from her accomplishment fueled her desire for him, and she pulled him close, hungrily devouring his mouth. She felt him harden instantly.

  “Let’s go to the harem rooms,” she whispered, breathless and starving for him. “The girls bring their servant playmates there all the time. The guards won’t care if I bring you.”

  He nodded and lustfully chased her to her chambers. Most of the concubines were asleep in their lavish beds. She roughly pushed him onto one of the empty ones and climbed on top of him. She hoped that he had had enough of the nedjem to slow him down, because she suspected tonight would be a marathon kind of night. She wanted to have him again and again and again.

  In the throes of passion, getting drunk on the sweet sound of his moaning, she didn’t hear the footsteps coming up the hall into the room behind them.

  “You filthy, treacherous little snake!”

  She felt a hand snatch the hair on the back of her head and pull her backward before she could turn around. King Ramses yanked her head around to face him, his face contorted and made ugly with rage.

  “First you steal from me, then I find you giving yourself to this slave!” Ramses spat in her face. “You were my favorite. Didn’t you know that! I would have given you anything. How dare you share your body, MY body, with a disgusting peasant.”

  He brutally threw her small body at her lover, their heads knocking together painfully.

  “It wasn’t enough for you to sneak food from my kitchen,” Ramses said to her lover. “You had to taste my favorite concubine. I’ll teach you to take what’s mine.” He pulled a dagger out of his belt and stabbed him between his ribs.

  “No!” she yelled, pushing Ramses away to no avail.

  “And you,” he sneered. “No one will ever have you again!” He grabbed her by the back of her neck and sliced the dagger across her throat.

  She felt the hot blood spilling out of her veins and down her bare breasts.

  Ramses turned around to address the gasps of the concubines he had awoken with his outburst.

  “Let this be a lesson to the lot of you,” he warned. “She was my favorite, and I killed her. I will do much worse to any of you if you prove unfaithful. Now clean this mess up.”

  She fell limply into her lover’s arms, their blood mixing together as they lay dying.

  He kissed her forehead and struggled to find her hand with his, then braided his fingers through hers as he so often did.

  “Until next time…” he croaked.

  Then she died.

  “Not the most pleasant memory,” Phoenyx said, sitting herself up and looking down at Sebastian.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “We got to die in each other’s arms. It was rare for that to happen, considering how many lives we’ve lived. In retrospect, I prefer the deaths we’ve gotten to share together. Better than having to suffer the pain and blackness without you.”

  She smiled indulgently. “You have a twisted view of death.”

  He pulled her back on top of him and kissed her. “What’s twisted is that we’ve died so many times that I’ve had to develop a view of death.”

  She laughed. “True.”

  He held up the stone fragment between their faces. “Now
we have one fragment. If we find the rest, we won’t have to face death again, not together or apart.”

  She cuddled back up into his arms. “We will find them. I won’t ever lose you again.”

  Burning! Her whole body was engulfed in flames, a huge funeral pyre she could not escape. Help! Let me go! Struggling, unable to get free. She was burning to death! Flashes of Lily’s face. Lily! Heart pounding, gasping for air as it singed her throat. No!

  Phoenyx jolted awake, covered in sweat and relieved to be free of that awful nightmare. The relief only lasted until she realized what was going on in her waking world.

  She was bound from head to toe; her hands were tied behind her back, there was a rope wrapped tightly around her chest and arms, another around her thighs, and a final rope binding her ankles. And to make matters worse, there was a rank smelling cloth snuggly covered her mouth. Panic sizzled through her body.

  She looked franticly around. She was in the antechamber on the floor against the wall. Sebastian was at her feet, bound and gagged as well, and still passed out from the looks of it. Against the opposite wall were Skylar and Ayanna, just as helpless and unconscious. Who had done this? And how had they tied us all up without any of us noticing? That nedjem must have packed more punch than they realized.

  She heard voices coming from the tomb behind her. She let her head fall back onto the ground and closed her eyes.

  Two men were coming, carrying something heavy between them. She slightly lifted one eyelid to peak. They were olive-skinned, dirtily-clad men, and they were carrying a sarcophagus toward the tomb’s entrance. As they spoke in their somewhat musical tongue, she realized something fantastic—she could understand what they were saying! It wasn’t Arabic, it was the native language of an ancient tribe from nearby, except a few of the syllables were slightly altered. She realized from what she had learned in Ayanna’s class that this language must be what is now referred to as Berber.

  “These treasures will make us rich!” said the heavier man. “We will be able to live like pharaohs!”

  “And we can get a nice price for the girls, too,” said the other one.

  “Why sell them? As a rich man, I could use a pretty pale wife.” He laughed.

  “Yes, yes! The one with the red hair is mine.” They both laughed, and Phoenyx’s lips curled in disgust under the cloth.

  The men carried the sarcophagus out of the tomb, and she was alone with her cocooned friends once more.

  How was she going to get out of this? She struggled against her restraints, but they were very tightly secured. These ropes were thick, so even if she could find a cutting tool, she would never be able to cut through them fast enough to not get caught.

  She heard rustling on the other side of the antechamber. Skylar was waking up. He came to his senses and his eyes found her as the footsteps from outside grew louder. Phoenyx shook her head at him warningly and she dropped her head as the men walked by. She peaked just enough to make sure that Skylar had played possum also.

  The men left into another room to fetch more priceless artifacts, and just the thought of their grubby, unworthy hands on her treasures filled her with rage.

  “Phoenyx.” She heard Skylar’s voice. Only…his mouth was still covered by that cloth.

  “Phoenyx?” she heard again. And then she realized that she wasn’t hearing with her ears; Skylar’s voice was inside her head! Her eyes widened with the realization. Skylar took that to mean she could hear him.

  “Calm down and focus”, he said to her thoughts. “You are forgetting that you are no ordinary prisoner. Use your power to get free. I’ll use mine.”

  A deep frown set into her face as she realized he was right. How could she forget about her power? More angry at herself now than at her situation, she let her anger loose and her bounds seared to nothing around her body, freeing her almost instantly. The flames were a reassuring caress as they passed over her face to burn the cloth.

  She looked across to Skylar to see his restraints gracefully unfurling like ribbons in the wind. Once he was free, he unleashed his powers on Ayanna’s bounds, and Phoenyx gently loosed her flames on Sebastian’s ties, careful not to burn him. Her flames obeyed completely, not even marring a thread of his clothing. The heat against his skin, though, was enough to rouse him. She put her finger to his lips before he could speak, and with her other hand she pointed towards the distant voices in the tomb. He nodded silently.

  What was their next move going to be? She couldn’t let them continue to steal these artifacts. And who knew how much they had already taken before she woke up. She had the overwhelming urge to burn them alive. That they had the audacity to view her as an object was too revolting to dismiss. Her hand passed over her empty pocket as she thought, and she suddenly remembered what should be there that wasn’t. The stone. They had taken it. That meant their filthy hands had been wandering enough to find it. She could feel pulses of heat emanating from her as her fury boiled over.

  The men’s voices preceded them into the antechamber, and rather than scurry out the entrance, she charged toward them, feeling murderous.

  They halted in surprise, dropping the four-thousand-year-old old vase they were carrying and it shattered on the tomb floor. Had her anger not been at its peak, that would have tripled it, but it did add just enough to cause her element to spark to life in her hands, her human form no longer able to contain the fire within.

  Terrified, the heavy man pulled out a gun from his belt and aimed it at her. Before he could pull the trigger, it was flung out of his hands, and his body was violently yanked against the wall. His breath was knocked out of him and he struggled to breathe as he was hugged by an invisible force against the wall a foot off the ground.

  Phoenyx watched with mild surprise for a split second before she realized this was Skylar’s doing. She looked over her shoulder and gave him a nod of thanks before she turned her attention to the thinner man, who was trembling after seeing what was happening to his friend, and watching what must have looked like a succubus with flaming claws coming his way.

  She grabbed his shirt and pushed him up against the wall, enjoying the sound of his flesh burning at her flaming touch.

  “Where is the stone?” she demanded in his tongue.

  He cried in pain and scratched at her hands, only to burn his own.

  She tempered herself enough to reign the flames back in, and she asked again, pushing her will into him.

  His fear was almost enough to make him resist her influence, but after a few shudders, he stutteringly responded. “Wh-what s-s-stone?”

  “The one that was in my pocket,” she said with a deathly calm.

  His eyes darted franticly from side to side as he thought, then he said, “It’s gone. Our friend already took it with the first load.”

  So they had removed quite a bit of things while she slept. She had to get it all back.

  “You’re going to take us to it,” she said, “and then you’re going to help us bring it all back.”

  He nodded twitchily.

  “You’re no use to me shaking like a scared puppy,” she said. “Calm down.” As it had been in the past, the use of her power was intoxicating, and fire wanted to burn more, but she managed to temper herself enough to let calm flow into him. Almost instantly, his shakes subsided and he turned into putty in her hands.

  “I will take you to the stone,” he said obediently. She let go of him and then turned to his chubby friend, whose face was contorted in strife to free himself from his invisible ties.

  “I have no use for you,” she said to him. She locked her hand around his throat, and for a moment, the urge to incinerate him was forceful and difficult to resist. It was like an addiction. But she resisted giving in to this irrational urge. She pushed her will into him as she said, “Get lost.”

  With that, he fell to the floor and dumbly ambled out of the tomb.

  “Like I’ve said before,” Skylar said warily, “you’re one scary bitch.”

/>   ****

  The Berber thief led them out of the tomb. The sky was a pale sapphire, getting lighter and lighter toward the east. They climbed down from the tomb entrance and at the bottom was a mule reined to a humble cart that was filled with treasures. The thief explained that he had a car not too far away, and the cart was just for the rugged terrain in between.

  “How far away is your friend with the stone?” Phoenyx asked.

  “He’s in the village, about forty minutes away,” the thief replied. “But he’s not alone. We gathered some friends to help with the lifting. They are all armed.”

  “How is it that you are all armed?” Ayanna asked.

  “He’s a crooked guard,” Skylar said in English, reading the man’s mind. “He and his buddies have been waiting for a find like this for a long time.”

  “So I guess we can expect a big welcome when we get there,” Phoenyx mused.

  “Sounds like my kinda party,” Sebastian said.

  “By the way, Skylar, thanks for having my back up there,” Phoenyx said. “You really responded quickly.”

  “I’m just glad I’m on your side,” he teased.

  They left the mule with the cart there, intending on returning the stolen items when they got back, and followed the thief over the craggy hills to his beat-up old jeep. They got inside and the thief turned on the ignition and started driving.

  Phoenyx’s adrenaline was pumping, but she had a handle on her anger. She was mostly determined to get that stone back. For the sake of not scaring the hell out of her friends any further, she wasn’t going to erupt like that again; though Sebastian and Ayanna were no strangers to her volcanic outbursts.

  She was grateful to have Skylar as a part of their team. His telekinesis had saved them more than once just since she’d known him. So had his mind reading abilities, however annoying or awkward they made things sometimes. Then she remembered his new trick this morning.