She regrouped faster than he’d expected. “Be warned. I don’t take commands either, Malacai.”
He snatched the blade from her hand before she could realize his intent. He dipped the tip of the blade into her plunging neckline. She gasped, but she stood still. He saw the heat of desire leap in her eyes. She would enjoy the pain he so badly wished to inflict on her. Sickened, he plunged the knife point down into the wooden table, inches from Jordy’s thigh. He gripped her chin and pulled her face up to his. “Listen well. I came here to take you, to claim you. And I plan to enjoy this lush bounty you so willingly wish to give me. I will make you scream, Margaron.” He dropped his hand and strode to the door. “But I will not do it with an audience.” He turned to her. “When I take you, you will see only me.”
It was the biggest gamble he’d ever taken. He walked out the door. He was ten paces down the hall when she called out.
“Yes, Malacai.”
She’d hissed the words, but it was enough. He turned back. “Do it.”
She leveled a finger at him. “Just know this. I will make you scream as well.”
He was glad she turned her back to him then, because his revulsion for this game almost consumed him. His muscles cramped from the effort it took not to shake. He prayed silently as she unbuckled Jordy’s arms and legs. She wasn’t completely compliant, as she quickly rebound Jordy’s wrists behind her and she kept the gag in her mouth. She dragged her roughly from the table and shoved her toward the door, doing nothing to cover her or adjust her torn clothing.
Come on, just walk out of here. Cai repeated the phrase over and over, but Jordy turned and looked up at the cages, waiting while they were lowered. It was all he could do not to drag her out of there to freedom and Dilys’ waiting car, but he held his own.
The first cage was opened and Margaron roughly dragged the beaten woman from the cage. Her face was so disfigured, that Cai could no longer discern if she was the woman in the photo or not. That question was answered when the other cage was opened and Margaron kicked her toe at the human lump that was curled up inside. The lump moaned, but did not try to get up. Cai gagged when he saw the dried, bloody clothing stuck to her back. The tattooed flesh.
“I have not come this long way to be kept waiting,” he said. “Untie her so she can carry that … thing out.” His throat burned with the effort to stay in character.
The beaten woman crept to the other cage and tried to help the woman to her feet. She moaned and swayed to her knees, but it was clear she wouldn’t make it on her own.
Cai strode back into the room. He was this close to victory, and he wasn’t willing to relinquish his hold on the trunk in order to help carry the woman. He hadn’t come this far to make a foolish gamble. He studiously avoided looking at Jordy and walked over to Margaron. “A little overexuberant, wouldn’t you say?”
Margaron looked up at him, the mad gleam dancing once again in her eyes. “With your creativity, I thought you’d find it clever.”
“Clever, yes. Now it’s merely inconvenient. Let’s get on with this, shall we?” He nodded to Jordy. “Release her hands. Between the two of them, they should be able to get her out of here.”
Margaron clearly wasn’t happy with being ordered about. “I could rid us of their existence far more quickly.” Cai stilled for a split second. “We have far more interesting ways to spend our energies, don’t you think?”
He swallowed another shaky sigh as she untied Jordy and shoved her toward the cage. Jordy and the other woman quickly hoisted the moaning woman between them and stumbled slowly to the door.
Jordy was still gagged but Cai felt her eyes on him. He purposely didn’t look at her. If she had any ideas about trying to do anything other than getting the three of them the hell out of there, he was not going to encourage it.
At the door, Jordy made noises behind her gag and stopped. She motioned to the other woman, nodding, trying to make her understand while they struggled to hold the dead weight of the now unconscious woman between them.
Through a mouth so swollen it was hard to understand her words, the beaten woman said, “Where do we go?”
With a smug smile, Margaron looked at Cai and responded for him. “Down the hall, up the stairs, and out the main hall to the doorway. There will be an older woman waiting out there with a car. I care not what you do from there.”
Cai said nothing and tried not to think about how she knew of Dilys’ existence. With all her spying, she could have some vast system of surveillance cameras all over the place. He’d put nothing past her at this point.
“And I wouldn’t advise that you rush to find help. Anyone returning to this place will find nothing but a pile of rocks.” Margaron stepped closer to Cai and ran a possessive hand down his chest and cupped his groin. With a pointed look at Jordy, she said, “Besides, there is no longer anyone here requiring rescue.”
FORTY
Cai watched Jordy go, praying she and Dilys would leave and get those women to safety.
His job was not done yet, however.
Cai had no idea how he was going to end the threat she posed. He could just walk out, but that wouldn’t stop her from starting this nightmare all over again. He’d have to restrain her somehow, then go get the authorities. If he could enter this place once, he could do it again.
Strapping her to that same slab and leaving her here indefinitely would give him great pleasure.
“Come with me,” Margaron instructed. “It’s finally our time.”
He gripped her wrist and removed her hand, pulling it up between them. He was needlessly harsh with his grip, but he knew she would respond to pain with pleasure. “I don’t wish to waste any more time.”
“We can find our comfort upstairs.”
He yanked her arm up behind her back, pressing her full breast tight against his chest. “I didn’t think comfort was high on your list of needs.”
Her eyes lit with approval. “You understand me better than I had anticipated.”
“I will never understand you,” he said. It was the easiest line he’d scripted so far. “But then, complexity intrigues me. You understood I enjoyed a challenge. You just misjudged the sort.” He nodded to the table Jordy had so recently departed. “Perhaps we can unveil some of those complexities right here.” He pressed her back, biting his nails cruelly into her skin as he leaned into her body with his. “Or have I misjudged you as well?”
“No, you have not.” If he’d thought her eyes demonic before, they were downright satanic now. “Put down the trunk. We will have time to revel in the powers of the Dark Pearl later.” Her skin was flushed, her lips wet. “After you have bred me.”
Her eyes were exclusively on him and Cai debated the wisdom of putting aside the very item she’d gone to so much trouble to get. She also wanted him. Or, more precisely, what she thought he could give her. Question was, which did she want more?
If he could just get her on the table …
“I want to see it, on your skin.” He motioned to the thick slab of wood. “Lie back for me.”
She arched her brow and raised a finger. “I said, put it down.” She flicked her finger down and a sudden surge all but yanked the trunk from his hand.
Had his fingers not been locked around it from all the time spent gripping it so hard, he would have dropped it. As it was, he caught it to his stomach and held it with both hands. How had she done that?
Don’t question it, just act.
He wasn’t sure if he was hearing his words or Alfred’s. Both voices echoed in his head.
He drilled her with a look. “I said, spread yourself for me.”
She closed her eyes and murmured several words under her breath. The trunk slid from his hands to the floor.
She opened her eyes and laughed. “You not only don’t understand me, you underestimate me. I thought you were a believer.”
He went for the trunk just as she flicked her finger upward. The trunk leapt to her outstretched hand. He went for
it, but she held him back with a mere raised hand. As if a barrier had been erected between them, he could not move closer to her.
She narrowed her eyes. “Now, you spread yourself for me.”
Things were happening too fast for Cai. Her sleight of hand trickery had cost him dearly, but he wasn’t in this to lose. “It’s empty,” he said.
She laughed even more gaily. “To most people. But then, we both know you’re not most people.” She gripped the amulet and began to murmur the words. The amulet glowed, but she dropped it with a scream. The acrid smell of burning flesh filled the air. “What have you done to it? What spell have you put on it?”
“I am a mortal, remember? I cannot cast spells.” But it was clear there was something more than stage magic going on here. Don’t ask for explanations where there are none.
“Alfred. I knew he would reach me from beyond the grave.” She flung the trunk at him and stalked across the room. She took a large blue glass bottle from a table and slid the stopper out. She poured something foul smelling on a piece of cotton batting and pressed it to her palm.
“The bastard thought he could change fate by reaching his claws out to my grandmother.” Her laugh this time was cruel and cutting. “He stupidly thought she was capable of this. The old man, so lost in his mortal world of acclaim, smug in his safe little bubble he created to house the seed of his son. I could have told him my grandmother had weakened long ago.” She peeled the cotton off and rinsed her palm with another solution, sucking in a breath, savoring the sting, before looking at him again. A slow smile curved her lips. “I surpassed Isolde long ago. She was no longer any use to me. Clinging, demanding, irritating. Alfred did us all a favor by bringing her sorry existence to an end.”
“Alfred wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“That is where you’re wrong. For the right reason, Alfred is capable of quite a few things I daresay would shock you. Have you not read any of his past works?” She chuckled. “You have sorely deprived yourself of quite an education.” She walked back to him. “Pity you will not be able to avail yourself of them later. Right about now, that whole place should be a smoldering pile of stone rubble.”
Any other time, Cai would have laughed incredulously at such a bald statement. Now he gripped her hair at the nape and yanked her head back. “What have you done?”
His actions only increased her delight. “Hedged my bets.”
“Liar.” She might be well-versed in any number of parlor tricks, but she wasn’t capable of long-distance arson. Unless … “When did you take Jordy? From where?”
“Your door.” She wrinkled her nose. “Fresh from your bed, from the smell of her.”
Cai wanted nothing more than to yank her head back even harder, snap something. Disgusted, with her and with what she was capable of making him feel, he dropped his hand and walked several feet away.
“So, who is going to take whom?”
“You burn my grandfather’s possessions and expect me to bed you? To plant my seed inside”—he gave her a derisive once-over—“this?”
Her hair seemed to lift away from her scalp, her face contorted in rage. “How dare you revile me.”
“Quite easily.”
“You’ll pay for that.” She raised her hand, but he raised his first.
“I’d be careful where you point that thing. I won’t be of much use to you if you aren’t careful. Though I confess I’m not all that enthusiastic about the chore any longer.”
“Chore?” She fairly screeched the word. “No man can resist the pleasures I alone can offer.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Yes, we will.”
He gestured to the table, prodding her. Goading her, as had been his intent all along.
“Not here. We will go upstairs.”
He closed the distance between them and walked her backward until the table met her back. “We go nowhere. I will take you here, against the wall, if that is how it is to be. But I want this done and over. Now.”
Her breath came rapidly. “So be it.” She ran her fingertips over the neckline of her dress and it dropped to the floor in a whispery heap. She was perfection. She turned his stomach. She placed a hand on his chest. “But answer me this. Can you open the trunk? Have you done it?”
He nodded.
“Prove it. Then I will show you the bliss that will be our future.” She ran her hand down the length of his torso. She smiled up at him and curled her fingers around him. He felt nothing but revulsion. So, it came as a rather horrifying shock when her fingers vibrated lightly and he stirred beneath her touch.
Fear stirred within him, too. Just what in the hell had he let himself in for? That she had done … whatever the hell she’d just done, terrified him like no threat of torture could have.
“Open the trunk.”
He was out of his league. He no longer knew what in the hell she truly was, but he knew that he didn’t have what it took to beat her at her own game.
Open the trunk. Use the one weapon you have. Aim it at her heart.
Maybe he’d known from the beginning it would all come down to this.
It would all be decided on his ability to trust, to have faith. In Alfred. In Jordy. In what he could not understand.
In himself.
He moved back from her and shifted the trunk to face him. He wrapped his hand around the amulet. Now he purposely blocked Margaron from his mind. He thought of Jordy, of the many ways she challenged him. He thought of Alfred, and the many ways he challenged him still.
He didn’t have to understand. He only had to believe.
He said the words, quietly, under his breath. The amulet glowed, the light seeped once again from between his clenched fingers. The amulet released.
He closed his eyes for a moment as he rested his hand on the lid. It will be there. As it would have been for my father, as it has been for Alfred, and all the L’Baan men before him.
The trunk grew heavier. He opened his eyes, and lifted the lid.
Nestled in the deep folds of blue velvet rested a black pearl. Immense in size, stunning in it’s perfection and lustrous sheen. Cai was awed. Not by it’s beauty, which was doubtlessly unsurpassed.
It existed. The Dark Pearl existed.
He didn’t question it. He acted.
He lifted the Pearl and let the weight of it roll into his palm. It fit perfectly. As he somehow knew it would, should.
Margaron’s sharp inhalation drew him back to his purpose. He looked at her. Her naked beauty would humble most men. He was not most men.
He lifted his hand and aimed the Pearl at her heart.
FORTY-ONE
Jordy rested her hand on the chamber door. Her head thrummed with pain where Margaron had struck her when she’d tried to run. She hadn’t even seen what hit her. Her wrists and ankles stung and her body ached. Just thinking about that blade over her belly made her want to throw up. She had no idea what help she could be. But she could not leave Cai behind.
Dilys was gone. She’d taken the other two women to the closest medical facility. She’d begged Dilys to call the authorities. She’d agreed, but said, “By the time they arrive, what will be done, will have been done.”
She had no idea what help they’d be anyway. As soon as she’d stepped through the entrance toward where Dilys stood, she was once again in the ruins.
She hadn’t wasted time wondering about that, but demanded that Dilys get her back inside to help Cai. She’d been surprised that Dilys hadn’t argued with her. She’d given Jordy her jacket to cover up in, and said nothing else, as if she’d known all along.
She’d stood behind her and instructed Jordy to simply walk through the entrance, then she’d begun chanting words softly, under her breath. The air had shimmered, and Jordy had stepped back into the gaslit hall.
Now she stood at the chamber door. She could hear no voices through it, so she carefully, slowly opened it.
Her hand flew to her mouth. He’d done it!
> Cai held the Dark Pearl.
And a very naked Margaron beckoned to them both.
It was hard to draw her gaze away from the young woman. She seemed to radiate such exquisite perfection, that it was difficult not to simply stand there and reflect upon it. But the Dark Pearl surpassed even her beauty and drew Jordy into the room as if in a thrall.
“Let me hold it,” Margaron commanded. “We will both hold it as you enter me. To ensure the passing of the right seed.” She stepped forward.
Frowning, Cai continued to aim the Pearl at her.
“Come to me, Malacai. The time we have waited for is here. Now.” She strode forward, hand outstretched.
Still frowning, Cai looked from the Dark Pearl to Margaron, seemingly transfixed. He shook his arm, his expression fierce, and yet nothing happened.
When Margaron was less than a step away, Jordy spoke.
“It’s not your time, Margaron,” Jordy said loudly. “Your time will never come.”
Cai jerked his gaze to her. “Get out of here, Jordy. This isn’t about you.”
Margaron hadn’t flinched in surprise, nor had she taken her eyes off the prize.
“This is about me.” Jordy ran to him, stumbling on shaky legs. “This is about us.”
Margaron made a grab for the Pearl, but Jordy leaped between them, knocking Cai’s arm aside. He held on to the Pearl, but Margaron managed to grab Jordy’s arms and throw her to the floor. She hit it far harder than seemed possible. Her head rang and pain sang up her arms as she broke the fall with her hands. Scraped and bruised, she didn’t stay down, but rolled to her feet.
“You can do this, Cai,” she said.
He didn’t answer, and he didn’t move. His expression was pure concentration and he held the Pearl as if his life depended on it. It very well might, she thought, gauging the dark look in Margaron’s eyes.
“You won’t win, Margaron. Not Cai, not the Pearl.”
Margaron didn’t take her eyes off the Pearl, but swung her arm wide and pointed at Jordy, who knew enough to duck.
Jordy came up behind Cai, using him as a shield, knowing Margaron wouldn’t risk hurting him.
Legend of the Sorcerer Page 26