Encore (Descendants of Ra: Book 4)

by Tmonique Stephens

  She eyed the fork and him beneath her lashes. Then she tossed the silverware down and pushed the plate away. “Fattened for the slaughter?”

  “You are no sacrificial lamb.” He’d read the Bible…a little bit.

  “Got your will back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bet it feels good.” A tiny smile flirted with the corner of her mouth.

  “Feels awesome.”

  “Sorry.” She didn’t flinch from meeting his gaze.

  EJ liked that about her. The no pretense, no bullshit side of Ridley. She fucked up and owned it. “Accepted.”

  “Do you remember any of it?”

  “I remember all of it.”

  She blushed, and he wondered what awkward moment she’d remembered. Then the slight bit of color drained out of her face and he wondered again.

  “So.” She drew out the word until it had five syllables. “When does the torture continue?”

  Not a bad assumption. “Don’t worry about Emeline. That won’t happen again.”

  She studied her clenched hands and slowly relaxed them. “I deserved it. She got her pound of flesh, and I got a lucky blow in before she took my head off. Though, I imagine that may be a permanent fix to my dilemma.” Her lips quirked as she pondered her words. “Anyway, I’d say we’re even, though she may disagree.”

  “Whether she does or doesn’t, it will not happen again.”

  Forehead low, eyebrows scrunched together, she gave him a slow once over. “Still protecting me? Why? You’re free now? You should be the first in line to kill my ass.”

  Yeah, he should. “Why’d you do it? The Order, Khuket, Emeline, me? What was your end game?”

  Her lips pursed in a mulish line, and she hugged her legs to her chest. “Interrogation first? Hmm. My reasons are my own damn business.”

  Not anymore. “Tell me about the curse. Tell me about Josie.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ridley grabbed the fork and leapt to her feet, ready to kill. “You have no right to that information. She’s innocent. You can do whatever you want to me, but you will not touch her.”

  EJ hadn’t budged from his place on the floor. His long legs were stretched out, hands relaxed in his lap, face blank of emotions. He wouldn’t give her a reason to strike. Minutes ticked by as EJ did his best to be harmless while a symphony of emotions danced across her beautiful face. Her limbs trembled, probably from exhaustion, but she didn’t lower her weapon. It wasn’t surprising after everything she’d survived.

  “Tell me.” His tone was soft and easy.

  “What do you want to know?” Suspicion edged her voice.

  He shrugged. “Whatever you want to share.”

  “Why should I tell you anything?” she muttered.

  “Don’t know. Maybe because I asked.” He stared into amethyst eyes until she sank next to him, near enough to strike and still be able to flee.

  Time didn’t matter as he waited for her armor to crack and let him see the woman lurking beneath. And she made him wait. Slow minutes eked past until—

  “Her birthday is in July. The twenty-second,” she whispered as if it hurt. “Josie knows it. Her mother celebrates it every year. I gave my daughter to Marilyn a week after I gave birth. I couldn’t do to her what my mother did to me. She gets to have a mom who’s not going to drop dead and leave her an orphan.” Her voice choked on the last word. “She gets to be loved, be a little girl, while I do everything in my power to save her life,” she growled.

  His gaze never left her eyes as his hand rose. Tense, ready for him to inflict pain, she white-knuckled the fork until he cupped her face. A shudder ran through her and her eyelids fluttered. Pain? He wondered, yet she didn’t pull away. When she opened her eyes, tears shimmered in their depths then cleaned a path down her cheeks.

  “P-please don’t h-hurt her. I’ll do anything you want.”

  Now that pissed him off, her pleading for her daughter’s life as if he were a monster who would use a child to punish Ridley. “Contrary to what Khuket made me do to Ember, I don’t hurt children,” he snarled and climbed to his feet. Kidnapping the eight-year-old sister of Stella had nearly broken him. He remembered her terror. Her little body shaking with fear. It made him ill, yet he couldn’t stop.

  Uggh! He smashed his fist into the wall and welcomed the searing pain of tendons ripping and bones snapping.

  Ridley hugged her knees to her chest and buried her head. “It wasn’t my plan. I swear.” A deep breath lifted her shoulders. Her head rose and she met his eyes. “I thought I could control Khuket. Stupid, yeah. But desperation made me arrogant, so I tracked her.”

  “You tracked a god? How?”

  “Previous contact with them or one of their belongings and I can locate them. It’s one of my talents.”

  “Along with speed.”

  Ridley tilted her head back and rested against the wall. Forlorn and wistful, she rubbed a hand across her forehead. “I inherited it from my mother. The only things that were passed down from my ancestors. My mom died when I was six. I landed in foster care for a bit then the Crosses adopted me. Nice family, older couple. They loved me, even though I was a handful. To say I was boy crazy would be putting it mildly. Penelope Cross wasn’t about to let her daughter be a statistic. Her words, not mine.”

  She picked up the water bottle and played with the label. “I wasn’t a slut, so don’t get the wrong idea.” She met his gaze and her sly smile kicked his heart up a notch. “I was a tease. I’d get the boys worked up then I’d walk out, leave ’em with blue balls and a stiffy. Then I met Nick.” She sighed and a sultry grin stretched across her face as if she’d remember something particularly dirty.

  A shaft of jealousy speared EJ.

  “I’d just turned seventeen and he was perfect. He had a motorcycle and a juvy record.” A carefree laugh slipped out. “Mom hated him!”

  And so did EJ.

  “I loved him. At least the version of love my seventeen-year-old hormones conjured.” During her speech, she caught a piece of the label on the bottle and started to carefully peel it away from the plastic. “Then the book arrived.” The peeling stopped and she cocked her head to the side deeper in thought. “No, it materialized in my bedroom the night I planned on losing my virginity. A huge book with pages of names scrawled inside and a letter from my mother.”

  “What did it say?”

  “The curse is generational, passed from mother to daughter. The list of names, those women were my ancestors. And they died the second they turned twenty-five.”

  “Why?” Her statement was too much to believe.

  “The first one, the priestess Rashafet, she started it by falling in love with the consort of a goddess. Wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t fallen in love with her, too. Well, he did, and his goddess didn’t like to share.

  While fascinating, EJ wanted her to get to the meat of the story, but he didn’t have the heart to rush her.

  “The goddess killed the consort, left his body for the vultures. The priestess who betrayed her, wasn’t so lucky, neither was her infant daughter.”

  “Pissed off goddesses normally aren’t known for their forgiving nature,” EJ said. Alexis barely escaped Nephythys, Reign’s ex-goddess.

  “She cursed the priestess and her descendants to give birth to only daughters and to die the day they turn twenty-five. There is no reprieve.”

  He shook his head. “But you and the knife trick.” He ran a finger across his throat, mimicking what she’d done to herself yesterday. “Made me think you were indestructible.”

  “…As long as I’m fed, and as long it’s before my twenty-fifth birthday, I am.” Her voice was despondent. His chest ached from the sound.

  “No curse is foolproof. There is always a loophole. Just have to find it.”

  “A few did that, waited out the curse by not having a child for as long as possible. Their ages are recorded. One lasted to thirty-five, another fifty, there’s one whose recorded age
is one hundred and twenty before she gave birth to her first child.”

  EJ shifted on the cement floor. “That’s not possible. No woman can give birth at that age.”

  “What if you never age? Eternal beauty. Eternally fertile. Eternally horny. Men chasing you, beating at your restraints. The women around you get to have husbands, passion, love, while you have a cold, empty bed. Never to be touched. Never to be loved.” She sobbed and it took a few minutes to compose herself.

  Explained that way, the situation sucked, but there was something he had to ask. “You knew this… and you still went with Nick, didn’t try to fight it?”

  “I didn’t believe it. Would you believe this story about a stupid curse on the night you lost your virginity to the person you loved?” she snapped.

  Not in a million years. “Sorry.” Yet, he still couldn’t let go. “No condoms? Birth control?”

  “Really? You really think a condom and some birth control could thwart the curse of a deity?”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry I asked.” Sorry was quickly becoming his favorite word. “How long were you two together?”

  “One month. Then he joined the army and forgot about me. A year later, a roadside bomb in Iraq killed him. He knew about Josie, said she wasn’t his. A tease equaled a slut in his book, even if I was a virgin,” she sighed and closed in on herself. Speaking of the past seemed to drain her. “The end of my story and the end of me in a less than a week.”

  Less than a week told him nothing. He needed an exact date. “When’s your birthday?”

  She cleared her throat. “January first.”

  EJ scrubbed a hand down his face. “That is the most effed up thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Welcome to my life. You get to visit while I have to stay.” She shifted the empty water bottle from one hand to the other.

  EJ winced. At least she wasn’t outside working on her bucket list while her child was being raised by someone else. He choked up, wanted to hold her, wanted to fix this for her. She wanted a normal life for her daughter and for her not to witness her mother dying suddenly at the age of twenty-five. He cleared the knot of emotions wedged in his throat and said, “Tell me about you and Khuket.”

  ~~~~~~~

  Talk about ripping the stitches and bleeding out. She could refuse to answer, but damn it, she was already in the stew.

  “What do you want to know?” His cocked head and raised eyebrow gave her his answer. “I needed her help to break the curse. I thought I could bargain with her.”

  “With? …Avery and Ember.” He answered his own question.

  “Not Ember,” she said quickly. “I had no idea about the child until the last minute. I didn’t know what she wanted with her. I gave you the syringe—”

  “To keep her calm. Lessen her trauma. Yeah, I know.”

  The wedge of fear knotting her chest, eased. “I wouldn’t have let Khuket kill her.”

  “I know that now. I didn’t know that then.”

  The conviction in his voice actually made her believe he meant it. Gave her hope that everything would be okay?

  “I was in there, Ridley. You thought I was a blank slate. I wasn’t. I was completely aware of everything.”

  Ridley gulped down the knot in her throat as she felt the color drain from her face. All the unfiltered, uncensored things she’d said —her cheeks flamed. “Oh.” Was all she could manage to say. She folded under EJ’s intense scrutiny and glanced away.

  Voice gruff, “I knew you didn’t know. Didn’t make it any easier… It was hell trying to talk to you and not connecting.”

  If the shoe was on the other foot, she’d be beyond bitter, maybe even crazed. Bitterness wasn’t what she heard in his voice. If she had to guess, she’d say regret framed his tone. Hope sparked in her chest, and she reached into her pants pocket and touched the locket.

  Would EJ go against his family to aide her?

  “I need to leave.” The Harvester was her last hope. She had to get it from Daniel. Now that she’d touched the bastard, she could track him.

  EJ’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment, she imagined the silent conversation rolling within his brain, the yin and yang of it as he listed all the reasons why he couldn’t let her go. “Don’t bother answering. I already know.” She turned her back to him and slumped against the wall.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

  Her internal clock kept time with her sinking heart. She squeezed her eyes closed and thought of Josie, hoping to drown out the booming sound when EJ shifted. She opened her eyes as he passed by her and strode to the door. He didn’t shield the keypad as he punched in the code and the door retracted.

  EJ stepped aside.

  Ridley didn’t know what to look at: Him? Or the exit? She rose and couldn’t stop herself from taking a step toward freedom. This was a test or some stupid game. Had to be. “Don’t make me hate you.”

  EJ frowned. “No games. Too much is on the line.”

  “Are you serious? You’re letting me go?” Slowly, she walked toward him, not the door, not to the escape she desperately wanted. She stopped inches from him and a foot from the open door.

  With her speed, she could be gone before he could blink. “Why are you doing this?” She left out the ‘for me’ part. He had so much to lose with this action. She wasn’t worth it, not by her estimation. And she couldn’t say she would do the same if their positions were reversed.

  Lips grim, ice chips for eyes. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Ridley darted past him, not willing to chance he’d change his mind. She stepped into the hallway and seemed to breathe for the first time. She felt his presence behind her, standing close enough to ward off the chill of the corridor and drag her back into the room. Her coat was draped on a chair, along with one of her knives lying on top of a small desk.

  Ridley reached for the weapon while EJ reached for her coat and held it open. Home, that’s what her coat was. A little slice of apple pie a la mode and hot chocolate on a cold night, a roaring fire in January. Home.

  She twitched at the thought of having its reassuring weight on her shoulders and didn’t hesitate to shrug it on. The weight was off by precisely three and pounds of metal. The blade in her hand made up for half of the weight. Another blade was missing. The one Alamut nicked her with.

  A string of curses fired in her head. Just what Alamut needed, another weapon! She had to get it back. Suddenly, it occurred to her she had no place to go. All of her safe houses were now compromised. Her mission just got harder. No matter. She’d overcome. She always did.

  EJ’s hands settled on her shoulders, strangely comforting. “Come with me,” she said. Her words surprised herself. She didn’t regret them, yet she didn’t turn to see his expression, didn’t want to see the rejection.

  “Can’t. Want to… I need to take care of things here, and I know you won’t wait.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “You know me that well?”

  He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and stroked the dip beneath her lip. Her breath hitched, her heart stuttered, making her regret so many things.

  “Yeah, I do.” He released her and pointed down the corridor. “The exit is that way. The code is 854367. You’ll be by the tennis court. Head for the woods. There’s a highway ten miles away.”

  He headed upstairs while she stayed rooted to the spot, watching him disappear. Only when the door slammed closed behind him, and any possibility of him changing his mind, did she race the two hundred yards down the hallway to the exit and the freedom she absolutely needed yet no longer craved.

  ~~~~~~~

  EJ marched through the house eager for the overdue confrontation. His thoughts strayed to Ridley. By now, she should be in the woods, distancing herself from RockGate and him. Her unexpected plea for him to go with her more than surprised him. As did the spike of pain when he told her no. Time and again, she proved she didn’t need his protection. Ridley was one woma
n who could take care of herself, even if she shouldn’t have to. Someone should be there to watch her back, soften the landing when she fell.

  EJ walked into Roman’s office without knocking and didn’t stop until he faced the two men there. Didn’t take a genius to know he was the topic of conversation. And he didn’t give a rat’s ass. Roman sat behind his desk while Avery leaned against the bookcase.

  “Glad you two are together, saves me the trouble of repeating myself. If I’ve never said thank you then listen well. Thank you, Roman for the room and board, the food, and clothes—”

  Roman shot to his feet. “That’s unneces—”

  “—and thank you, big brother, for all the time and effort you wasted on my sorry ass.” EJ continued as if Roman hadn’t spoken. “Must’ve been a chore since you’ve had to continue doing all my thinking for me. Thank God, I somehow managed to learn how to shake the piss off my dick and wipe my own ass, or you’d still be doing that for me, too. Proves I’m not a complete write-off.”

  Avery had the decency to wince and lower his eyes. “EJ, I didn’t mean it like that. What I said—”

  “Was the truth. I’ve let you, more than anyone else in this house, do my thinking for me because I…owed you—my big brother, my fucking hero who saved me from a fire that killed our parents…a fire you caused. All these years I had you on a pedestal, following your every lead like a damn lap dog because I trusted you.” EJ growled, through the anger tightening his throat.

  His hand curled into a hard fist. “You were the first and last person I always turned to.”

  Avery’s Ink flared, and then quickly settled. “Let me explain.”

  “You’ve had years to explain. Now, I don’t need it.” He pivoted and strode to the door.

  “Wait,” Avery called.

  EJ couldn’t help stopping. And hated himself for the hesitation. “Just so you don’t waste any time wondering, I’m leaving RockGate.”

  “Where are you going?” Roman demanded.

  He pivoted so he could see both of their final expressions, glimpse the betrayal they were about to feel. “And I let Ridley go.”