“Female warriors. Like our Amazons.”
He shrugged. Bored with the conversation. “I suppose.”
At the door of his chamber, he opened it, then stood aside for her to enter. With her back to him, she removed her broach and stepped out of her gown, then folded it and placed it on the windowsill.
Her movements amused him. “Afraid I’ll shred the gown?” he drawled, bracketing her body between his arms and leaning down to kiss the back of her shoulder.
“Do what you must. But I’m fond of this gown,” she said, giving it a pat.
“Shall I help you with your necklace?”
“I can manage.”
Eirik drew away and strode toward the bed. He adjusted the lid on the ore pot, twisting it to lessen the amount of light emitted through the grapevine pattern on the lid. With only a faint glow to glaze the oil rubbed into his muscles, he undressed slowly, knowing her gaze clung to his toned frame.
The display was only the beginning of the seduction he planned. He glanced at the large mirror, then back at her. “Do we have company?”
“Always. Think I’d trust you?”
“You don’t mind that they will see everything I do?”
“It is only one. My eunuch. And he knows about my proclivities.”
He rested both hands on his hips. “And if I am inhibited by the thought of another witnessing our passion?”
Her head tilted to the side and her eyes narrowed. “Why are you so insistent, Viking?”
Eirik cursed silently. He didn’t need her growing suspicious. He dropped his voice to a low purr. “The last time you gave me leave to pleasure you, I held back. Partly because we don’t know each other that well. Partly because I didn’t want to reveal too much about my own preferences to Hakon.”
Her breath caught. Her head canted, eyelids dropping midway. “Are your preferences so extreme or strange?”
He remained silent, closing his expression, leaving it up to her imagination exactly what he meant.
Aliyah walked toward him, her nude body swaying. She touched his chest, fingers tracing the indentions beneath his chest, trailing over ribs, the layered muscles protecting his belly, until she reached his cock.
It twitched as she ran a finger down his length. However, he remained as still as a statue, his jaw grinding shut.
“If I send Michael away . . .”
At her statement, he angled his head and let her see the satisfaction building inside him.
She turned to the mirror. “Leave us. Now, Viking, I am yours.”
Eirik gave the silk rope a last turn around a slender ankle, then stood back, eyeing his work. Aliyah looked lovelier than ever, at least in his estimation. He’d slowly wrapped her wrists, teasing her breasts with the frayed ends of the ropes now and then until she panted with frustration. He trailed them along her slit until the rope shortened, then talked to her, telling her all the ways he’d ever pleasured a woman when she was bound and in his bed.
Her pussy clasped tightly. Her labia had grown red and thick with the blood heating her sex.
With a slow move, he eased onto the edge of the mattress and held up a wad of soft cloth. Her mouth opened obediently and he filled it, then tied a gag around her head to keep it there.
When her gaze locked with his, he trailed a finger through her nether lips and thrust one inside, and then chuckled at the moisture seeping from her channel. “Give me a moment and I’ll return.”
Her eyebrows lowered, anger flashing.
He tweaked a nipple. “You’re in no position to complain, now, are you?” With a grin, he padded to the door and stepped into the corridor.
Loud laughter and shouts sounded from the salon. He headed to the panel in the wall he now knew hid a closet situated behind the mirror.
He plunged a fist into the thin wall and pulled the panel away, knowing the noisy party would mask the crash and any shouts. Just as he’d suspected, her watcher stood there, his bald head jerking toward Eirik, his hand going for a button beside the mirror.
Eirik grasped his wrist and wrenched him from the room, then dragged him by the arm back into the chamber, where he tossed him on the floor beside the bed.
He tsked and cocked an eyebrow at Aliyah. “And you wanted to be able to trust me?”
The eunuch glanced wildly around the room, spotted the neat pile of Aliyah’s clothing, and crawled quickly toward it.
Eirik stepped past him and lifted the amulet from where it nested in the center of her folded silk. Holding it high, he smiled at Michael. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
He dropped it on the floor and stomped on it with his bare feet, shattering it. Satisfaction fueled his movements.
Aliyah groaned.
Michael whimpered. “Do you think you can escape, Viking? Where do you think you can go? You’ll be recognized on sight.”
Eirik picked up Aliyah’s gown and shrugged as she screamed behind her gag. “I would have spared it if you had been true to your word.” He ripped it in half, then spun the fabric in his hands, making a rope.
Michael tried to dart past him, but Eirik stuck a foot in the center of his back, pushed him flat against the floor, and then quickly tied his hands.
With the other length, he made another rope and tied the man’s ankles, looping it through the rope at his wrists to stretch and lift his legs from the floor. “You won’t be going anywhere. And I’ll be long gone when they find you.”
He turned to Aliyah. “I do regret causing you discomfort. Warriors from my world seek to provide women comfort and pleasure. But you understand I must do what I can to escape. It’s my duty.”
Then he slid the clothes from under the mattress, the boots and helmet from under the washstand, and quickly dressed. When he was ready, he cupped a fist to his chest in quick salute, then climbed over the windowsill and onto the ground below. The darkness swallowed him.
Outside, the sounds of the raucous gathering made him smile. Hakon and the others would keep the guards’ attention for some time.
He headed toward the rails, taking pains not to walk too quickly to attract attention. When the station house came within view, he ducked into the shadows of the building.
Passengers were entering the cars. He walked up behind a group of attendants and ignored their surprised stares, hoping that his behavior, his size, wouldn’t make them suspicious. He hurried to a seat and slumped into it, making his silhouette against the window smaller. He didn’t dare remove the helmet and reveal more of his skin. Despite time spent training beneath their hot sun, he was still pale in comparison to most Helios.
The tram doors closed. The lights within the cars blinked out. He released a sigh and gazed out the window as the car pulled away from the platform. No one rushed forward; the walkways were empty of scurrying guards.
When they crossed the moat, he dared breathe a sigh and began to think that maybe he’d done it. But he still had big hurdles ahead.
Not knowing what lay at the end of the track, he decided to stay close to the group of workers, to follow in their steps. It couldn’t be unusual for a guard to take the train, but he knew they usually showered and changed beforehand.
If anyone commented, he’d prepared a little speech. He’d been in a hurry to meet a girl. Wanted to impress her with his uniform. He wished he had a weapon, a knife, a cudgel—anything he might use if he were stopped.
The train slowed, passing through the edge of the Helio capital, the rails rising above the streets, above short one-storied buildings with streets outlined by small blue tracks of lights. Only a few overhead lamps broke the darkness, save for signage above establishments and lights suspended above every intersecting road.
The place was a maze of narrow roads. How in Hel’s name would he ever find what he sought?
The tram rumbled to a stop. The doors whooshed open. Not willing to be trapped inside the conveyance for a minute longer, he followed on the heels of a group of women who glanced behind them and tittered
to one another.
A reaction he was glad to use. He’d let them think he followed out of interest. When they paused outside an establishment with music and soft conversation floating out the door, he stepped into an alley beside it.
He didn’t have to wait long for what he needed. A three-wheeled conveyance braked to a stop in front of the bar. A passenger stepped out from the back door. Eirik rushed from the opposite side, opened the door, and slid into the seat.
The man in the front of the car glanced over his shoulder. “Look, freak, didn’t you see my lights? I’m a private car. Get the fuck out.”
Eirik leaned forward, snaked an arm around the seat in front of him, and clamped his palm against the man’s skinny throat and squeezed. “I haven’t time to be polite. I want you to take me to the Consortium offices.”
“Where?” the man croaked.
“A Consortium-controlled facility.”
Hands scratched at the backs of his.
He relaxed his hold while the man dragged in a lungful of air.
“Not from around here, are you?” the man wheezed, glaring at his image in the rearview mirror.
“You will do as I say. Now drive!”
“And I can drive around and around just to keep that shovel you call a hand off my throat, but it’s not gonna change a thing. I can’t drive to Consortium headquarters. They’re in the estuary. On an island. You’ll have to take a boat or a hovercar.”
Eirik struck his seat with his fist. “How do I find one of those?”
The man’s eyebrows furrowed as he strained to see into the mirror in the center of his front window. “You got money to pay?”
Eirik cursed, then shook his head.
The man shook his thick golden hair. “Didn’t think so. You one of those poor bastards they just trucked off Iceland?”
Eirik gave a nod, wariness stiffening his back.
But the man gave him a wide grin. Then he reached a hand behind his back, slipping it into the space between himself and the seat, and pulled something out. Something that flicked back and forth. A tail. “I got no love for PG. They fucked my ancestors. Everyone tells me I should just cut this sucker off and try to live out from under the scope, but I am what I am.” He shrugged. “And some women dig it.”
Eirik stared at the tail, then at the man’s split-lipped grin. “What are you?”
“Part lion and man.” With those words, he bared his teeth.
Eirik jerked back at the row of long teeth, the corner ones longer than a lynx’s fangs. “You are part cat?”
“Never heard of the feral experiments?”
The term sifted through his mind. Eirik nodded. “It was explained to me, but not fully.”
“Well, I have a story to tell you. One that’ll make your skin crawl. And I got a friend who might help you. Name’s Adem.”
Thirteen
The cannery warehouse serving as Adem Pantheras’s latest headquarters was a wooden building sitting on the sandy bank of the Blue Nile. The darkened storefront and covered porch faced away from the river and was supported on tall wooden pylons to prevent the building from being flooded in the rainy times.
Fatin eyed the boardwalk leading past the entry, then glanced across the rutted road to the buildings on the opposite side of the street. All ramshackle bait and boat rental shops. Small, peakedroof stores with narrow alleyways separating them. Plenty of places for Adem’s men to survey the store.
She drew back into the alley she and Baraq had used on their approach from the street running parallel to this one where they’d left Birget and the rest of her crew of Vikings cooling their heels.
“Why can’t we just walk through the front door?” Baraq asked, sounding exasperated. “I thought Adem was a friend of yours.”
Maybe he should have gotten a good night’s sleep rather than banging his girlfriend through the early-morning hours. “Adem is.” Guilt flashed. “Or was. But we had a difference of opinion.”
Baraq leveled a glare on her as he hunkered down beside her. “About?”
“My taking the assignment to snag the Icelanders. He thought it was . . . unethical.” Baraq’s soft snort had her lips curling into a snarl.
“I think I like him already.”
She jutted out her chin. “Adem is willing to sacrifice my sister for the greater good. I’m not.”
“Will we have to hold a knife to his throat to conduct this conversation?”
“Maybe.” No maybe about it, but she’d had just as little sleep and enjoyed prodding Baraq with a little ambiguity. “For sure, we have to sneak through his guards.”
“You’re sure there are people watching?”
Light flared as a vehicle turned a corner and barreled toward the storefront. “Shhh.” She crouched lower and peered around the corner.
A small three-wheeled car pulled to a sharp stop in front of the cannery. From one breath to the next, figures dressed in black spilled from doorways and alleys to surround it.
“Guess that answers that question,” Baraq muttered.
A man with a wild, full head of tawny hair stepped out into the light beaming from the entrance. “Got a visitor. Someone Adem will want to see.”
More booted feet approached on the walkway next to Fatin, and she pulled back, shoving Baraq behind her and sliding down behind a trash bin as the guard passed.
When next she peered around the corner, the car sat empty. The driver and his passenger had moved inside, likely under escort. The rest of the guards had faded into the alleys again.
She tilted back her head, studied the wall they leaned against, and noted a narrow metal ladder that led to the roof. She elbowed Baraq, and then crept quietly to the ladder. Her first step up creaked.
Baraq hissed for quiet.
Aiming a scowl over her shoulder, she faced the ladder again, took a deep breath, and began climbing, doing her best not to swing too far on the bars to keep it from squeaking. At the top, she peeked over the edge of the roof, but found it clear and slipped over.
Turning, she lent a hand to Baraq; then together they climbed the pitched roof, straddling the peak, then sliding down the other side to the gutter. An arm’s span divided their rooftop from the flat roof of the cannery.
Baraq glanced down and blanched.
She smirked. “Afraid of heights?”
His deadly glare didn’t frighten her. He glanced down again, grimaced, but squared his shoulders. “After you, bounty hunter.”
Grinning, Fatin crouched and sprang lithely to the other rooftop. When she turned back, she caught Baraq’s tense expression and stifled a laugh. When he landed beside her, she patted his shoulder. “You fly through the heavens and you’re afraid of a little leap through the air,” she said with mock sympathy.
Baraq gave her an acidic smile. “I’m a man, not a bird.”
Fatin felt like punching him in the gut, but grunted instead. “Look for a way into the building. There has to be a hatch or doorway somewhere.”
They found a trapdoor and pulled it back to reveal a narrow shaft with a ladder leading down one side.
Taking a deep breath because she didn’t like dark, tight spaces, Fatin began the climb down into the cannery. At the bottom of the ladder she found a door. Light gleamed beneath it. She depressed the latch and inched the door open.
A loud bang sounded behind her, then a solid thump. She glanced back to find Baraq seated on the ground. “Shhh! Never would have guessed you’re this clumsy.”
“I’m not a—”
“I know, not a bird.”
“Was going to say not a goat, since you seem to have been offended when I likened you to a bird.”
“Just shut up. We aren’t there yet.”
When she turned back to the doorway, a shadow darkened the crevice. So much for the element of surprise.
Blood thumped against her temples, but she pushed open the door, lifted her chin, and stared up into the face of Adem Pantheras.
Accompanied by men dre
ssed in dark clothing, their faces darkened with soot, Eirik followed the driver through the shop front, past tall shelves filled with tins of fish by the pictures on the labels. He wrinkled his nose at the thought of eating fish that didn’t come fresh from Hymir’s Sea.
At the back, they passed through a set of automatic doors that whooshed open, then shut behind them. The temperature inside was cold, and smelled strongly of sea creatures’ flesh. Long metal tables stood beside conveyor belts. Very like miniature versions of those used in his mines to transport the ore from the caverns to the workers who packed it into transport containers. Here, the tables held buckets clipped to the rear, likely where the unused parts of the fish were tossed.
The smell was overwhelming, but he resisted letting his nose so much as twitch because he knew he was watched. He could sense others lurking in the shadowed corners of the cavernous room.
At the rear of the large room was a corridor feeding to the right and to the left. The armed escorts in the lead headed toward the left, passing closed doorways until they reached the one at the end.
The driver stepped forward and pushed through it, then stood aside to hold it open for the rest of the group to enter.
The room was dark, except for a single greenish light in the center that hung from a wire suspended from the tall raftered ceiling. A door opened to the side and slammed. Footsteps scuffled in.
“We have a surplus of visitors,” came a deep voice that held an odd, growling texture. “Strange since this location is supposed to be a secret.” The footsteps drew nearer and a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped into the light.
Only like the driver, he wasn’t entirely a man. His face was something horrific, yet beautiful, a blend between human and cat.
His eyes were large, nearly round, and a pale reflective green. The skin of his face was cloaked in fine hairs, golden with irregularly shaped spots of brown. His nose was flat and broad at the end, his palate split down the center over a thin human mouth. Shaped throughout his body like a man, he was thickly built and muscular. The hair that swept away from his crown was long and pitch-black. Both hands fisted on his hips as he eyed Eirik, fixing on the helmet. “Remove it.”
Enslaved by a Viking Page 16