by R. C. Murphy
Turning, she found Herryk charging her way. “Will you send me home if I cooperate?”
He stopped so close she felt his rapid breath brush over her arms. Herryk’s dark eyes narrowed. “No. I will keep you around to fuck whenever I feel like.”
“So you’ll turn me into a slave.” She paused, pretending to consider his proposal. “You’d have better luck trying to fuck yourself in the ass.”
The blow to her cheek happened so fast, she didn’t have a chance to brace herself. Shayla dropped to the ground. Her face throbbed from the teeth out. Blood pooled inside of her cheek and she spat it on the bricks. The knife lay beside her hip. She scooped it up and held it against her thigh as she struggled to stand.
“Leave her alone, Herryk. There are millions of women for you in this realm, some who may even be willing to sleep with you,” Deryck yelled.
“They didn’t do this to me. If she read the summoning as I instructed, none of this would’ve happened and I’d be free to do whatever I wanted.” Herryk turned to her again. “You owe me.”
Don’t let him talk . . . . Shayla widened her feet, bracing herself for the attack. “You only have yourself to blame, Herryk.”
She gripped the knife tight and swung it from her hip in an arc over her head. The blade bit into Herryk’s cheek below his left eye. Shayla put her weight behind it and dragged the knife diagonally across his face. His cheek, lips, and chin split. Bone and teeth peeked through the wound. And then the blood came. It poured down like rain, soaking the remaining dry spots on his dress shirt.
Herryk’s hand flew to his cheek. He said something, but it came out slurred and incomprehensible. He isn’t falling. Oh God. I’m going to die now.
Not even several millennia serving as a sex slave to whoever happened to be horny when they fell asleep, or intentionally sought out an incubus to pleasure them, could have prepared Deryck for the torment he endured watching Shayla fight off Herryk on her own. He should have gotten her out of there when they had the chance. But no, he took her feelings into consideration instead of throwing her over his shoulder and getting the hell out of the temple. He’d tried to help, coaching her from his vantage point. Nothing he said could help her escape a man far larger, stronger, and possessing far more active magic than the latent magic she possessed after Eros’ interference in her life. Barring a scenario like one he’d seen in the movie she shared with him, Shayla would die. And they were fresh out of accidental gamma radiation exposure supplies.
Keeping an eye on Herryk—who stood stalk still, surprise and pain etched across his bleeding face—and Shayla, Deryck knelt and wrapped his hand around the chain holding him near the pin embedded in the floor. He needed to take advantage of the distraction—Herryk couldn’t use magic to hold the pin in the ancient brick while focusing energy on healing his wounds. Bracing himself, Deryck pulled on the chain. Metal links dug into his hand. His lower back and shoulders screamed in agony. The brick around the stake crumbled. The stake remained embedded in the floor. Deryck stopped pulling and jerked the chain back and forth, wiggling the pin to widen the hole as much as possible. More brick broke away.
“Stay away, or I’ll give you a matching cut on the other side, Herryk.” Shayla’s voice shook.
Deryck looked up. Herryk’s bleeding had slowed. His shoulders straightened and his tongue toyed with the jagged edge of skin at the side of his bottom lip. “Dare you.”
Time was up. Deryck squatted down, tightened his grip on the chain, and put all of his energy into pulling. It held firm, mocking him. Cursing, he wrapped the chain around his hand one more time and jerked so hard, he thought he’d dislocate his shoulder. The stake popped free, sending chunks of brick spraying over the floor.
“This shit ends now.” Deryck dropped the chain.
Herryk grabbed Shayla’s wrist and squeezed so hard, her skin lost all color where his fingers dug in. The knife clattered to the floor. He kicked it under the altar. Shayla kneed him in the stomach and wrenched in his grasp. Herryk held on tight. She shoved him. They tripped over each other and hit the golden altar hard enough to raise the front legs off the floor.
Deryck closed in on them. He grabbed Shayla by the waist and pulled her away from Herryk, glad the other man’s body blocked her from hitting the table directly.
Herryk spit a clot of blood at her. It dripped down her chest. “You’re going to die, woman.”
“You first.” She leaned back against Deryck and brought her legs up. Her feet slammed into Herryk’s stomach. He let out a grunt and dropped her arm. Deryck pushed her away and braced himself.
Herryk laughed. “He can’t save y—“The mocking tone in his voice warped into a scream of agony.
Blood spread over the table and spilled onto the floor. Deryck grabbed Shayla’s hand and made for the door. As he moved, he saw Marduk’s arm reaching from the portal, buried wrist-deep into Herryk’s back. Herryk slid across the table, pulled by his father toward the God’s Lands—an instant death sentence for the incubus.
“Don’t let him do this to me,” Herryk screamed over the crunch of breaking bones.
Deryck turned Shayla away, pressing her head against his chest and covering her exposed ear. “Listen to the sound of my heart, Shayla. Count the beats if you have to.”
She nodded. Tears trailed from her eyes and soaked into the front of his shirt. Shayla’s entire body shook. Herryk shrieked and she jumped in Deryck’s arms. He held her closer, but his eyes were on the man off to meet his doom.
Herryk’s body folded at an unnatural place—six inches above his hip joints—where Marduk held him. The back half of his body disappeared into the portal. In the human realm, they were fully corporeal. Their slave bands prevented them from becoming non-corporeal and utilizing natural or magically created gateways between the realms. They had the power to move through the realms, but only as decreed. Marduk planned to drag Herryk straight into the middle of the Babylonian section of the God’s Lands.
Herryk gave one last scream. The sound was muffled as the portal swallowed his head. His feet kicked against the table in a last attempt to free himself.
“His father will ensure he never bothers you again,” Deryck whispered into Shayla’s ear.
“Does he care that much about anyone other than himself?” Shayla turned her head toward the table.
Deryck turned their bodies to prevent her from seeing the horror. “Don’t look. It isn’t finished yet.
“No, Marduk doesn’t care. He is too ashamed to allow Herryk to live now and prove to the universe that his seed created a creature too weak to complete even the most basic unbinding ritual. Each incubus has a gift they’re allowed to retain—a gift from their fathers. Herryk’s was magic. The ritual should have succeeded.”
Admitting it made Deryck panic all over again. He looked up from Shayla’s dirty, frightened face. Herryk’s feet hung out of the shrinking portal. The left foot twitched once and fell still. The lights on the back of the table flickered out. With a whoosh, the portal closed, leaving Deryck and Shayla in the dark. Only a handful of torches around the temple burned. They were not nearly enough to see their way out of the room and into the hall.
Shayla pulled away from him. “Deryck, I can’t see. Do you have your phone?”
He thought it was an odd request; the phone wouldn’t work this far below the surface. Deryck handed it over anyway, reaching blindly until his hand collided with her arm. “Sorry.”
“Thank you.” A moment later, the screen on the phone lit up. Shayla pressed a sequence of buttons on the screen and the dim glow brightened, creating a small square flashlight. She held the face of the phone toward the ground and walked across the dark room without a word.
Deryck caught up with her. “Shayla, you have to allow me to explain what is going on.”
She didn’t stop until she stood in the doorway between the temple and the hall. Even in the dim torchlight, he could tell she was shaking in a way having nothing to do with the tempera
ture. “I don’t think I want to know the truth, Deryck. But you owe me one answer. Did you tell Harry, Herryk, whatever his name was, where to find me?”
“Gods, no. Shayla, I was sent to you by a force far more powerful than Herryk or his father. He got suspicious when I was spending more and more time away from the compound we live in together and followed me. Somehow, he discovered who your husband had been. I didn’t tell him anything, you have to believe me.”
Shayla hugged herself awkwardly, favoring her left shoulder. “Why were you sent to me?”
Deryck’s mouth was as dry as a desert. He licked his lips, willing his brain to cough up an explanation that wouldn’t upset her any more. In the end, he opted for the blunt truth. “You’re my only chance to live as a free man.”
“Excuse me?”
“You saw the same tattoos I have on Herryk’s arms. We’re not friends by any means, so why would we have the same mark? I’m an incubus, a demi-god created by a union between a fertility god and a human woman. The tattoos are part of a binding spell—one that forces me to sleep with women in their dreams. As an incubus, there is only one way for me to gain my freedom, and it requires the assistance of a woman who has given birth to another incubus.”
Shayla held up a hand. “I can’t listen to any more of this. If you do have power like you’ve claimed, take me home. I just want to curl up on my couch for a week and forget all about gods, incubuses, and the awful things that have happened in my life because I stupidly fell in love with the wrong men.”
Deryck’s heart thumped against his rib cage. No way could he have missed her choice of words—men, not just her marriage to Eros, she was referring to him as well. “I will need to hold your hand in order to take you with me.”
She nodded and held out her hand. “Okay.”
He took her hand between his, forcing himself to focus on his powers and not the fact that this would be the last time he was allowed to touch her. “Try to relax, it’ll make the trip easier on you.”
“There’s no way I can relax here. Just do it.” Shayla closed her eyes. Her hand tightened on his.
Deryck coaxed his powers to their full extent and transported them across the Earth. He honed in on Shayla’s home, aiming to land in the entryway where there were no windows for neighbors to witness their bizarre arrival. The world solidified around them again. He took a deep breath to steady the exhausted trembling in his entire body. He needed to sleep and recover, but first, he needed to make sure Shayla was okay.
She swayed on her feet for a moment, then pulled away and made good on her desire to curl up on her couch. Shayla grimaced, carefully maneuvering into her corner. His heart broke watching her attempt to brush the dirt and blood from her legs before giving up and curling them under her backside. Somehow, she took up less than a foot of couch space.
“You should see a doctor. I can take you.”
“And tell them what, exactly? That I was kidnapped by a power hungry demi-god who beat me until I performed a ritual that required a blood sacrifice—all so his misogynist ass could take over the world?” Her green eyes cut a glare his way. “I can set my shoulder myself and patch the cuts. If anything needs stitches, I can always fake a kitchen accident.”
He admired the strength in her voice. Inside the temple, he was certain she’d break. But she never gave up fighting, even when she’d been forced to accept his help. Deryck watched her, appalled with the horrors he’d forced on her in order to get one step closer to obtaining his freedom.
“I’ll leave you be. I don’t want to lose you as a friend, Shayla.” Deryck slipped a thin silver chain out of his pocket. A charm hung from the end, a silver replica of the portion of his tattoo unique to him. It was one of three charms in existence capable of summoning only him. He set the charm on the coffee table in front of her. “This is the only way to reach me from now on. If you want to see me, put the necklace under your pillow when you go to sleep.”
Shayla’s eyes fell on the charm. She didn’t move to pick it up or speak. He didn’t need her to say anything. Her silence spoke volumes.
Deryck walked to the front door and opened it, making sure to turn the lock on the back of the knob. “Goodbye, Shayla. I’m so sorry for the pain I’ve caused you.”
Denied another glimpse of her stunning eyes, Deryck left Shayla’s house for the last time.
Four weeks. It had been four weeks since Shayla last saw or spoke to Deryck. For the first week, she’d done exactly what she told him—sat on her couch, binged on movies, and hid her battered body from the world. Getting out of work hadn’t been easy. She told Mr. Tate and Kelly she’d been in a car accident. It bought her the time she needed to allow some of the damage to fade. Even then, when she went back to work, everyone had something to say about the bruises on her face. Most of the damage was gone by the end of week four. The cuts on her arm were the worst and should have gotten stitches. She kept them covered with a suit coat, despite the slowly climbing temperatures outside.
Shayla sat at her desk, clicking through an avalanche of emails that’d come in overnight from their foreign clients. Most of the messages were forwarded to others in the office. She pinned three of them to take care of after lunch and dumped the rest in Kelly’s inbox to deal with so she wouldn’t get a migraine. The entire time, her mouse hand dragged and clicked, her left twirled in tiny circles, wrapping a silver chain around her pointer finger in one direction, then the other. Deryck’s charm was always with her, with the exception of when she went to sleep. She wasn’t sure she could ever forgive him for his part in the abduction and would rather not accidentally call on him by taking the charm to bed.
The phone on Shayla’s desk rang. She picked it up, accidentally knocking the charm against the handset. Cringing, she hoped whoever was calling hadn’t heard the loud clunk on their end. “This is Tate’s Public Relations, Shayla speaking. How may I help you?”
“You aren’t answering your phone,” Faye said.
Shayla sighed and leaned back in her desk chair. “Obviously I am if we’re talking, Faye. I’ve got a lot of work to do right now. Can I—“
“Stop brushing me off, Shayla.”
“I’m not. I’ve been busy.” She couldn’t keep the defensive tone out of her voice. The last time she talked to Faye, she nearly broke down and told her everything. Her friend sensed something was off—more than the fake car accident.
“Yes, busy avoiding everyone who you don’t depend on for a job. You forced me to resort to drastic measures just to make sure you’re still alive.”
“You’re over exaggerating. I’m alive and in one piece. Call off the cadaver dogs.” Shayla switched the phone to her right ear and resumed twirling the charm around her finger.
“How do I know you’re not bleeding to death from a hundred self-inflicted paper cuts?”
Shayla shook her head. “I’m not suicidal, depressed, or anything requiring a stint in a padded room. Honestly, I just needed some time to myself.”
“And this has nothing to do with the lack of male company for the last month?”
“It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. I’m fine now.”
“Good, then you won’t mind if I come over for Girl’s Night tonight.” Faye’s tone said more than her words. She wouldn’t listen to Shayla if she told her not to come.
“I don’t know. The house is a mess and—“
Faye laughed. “Your house is never that messy, you’d have a conniption fit if it was. Whatever excuse you want to sell me is ridiculous. Besides, it wasn’t a question. I’ll meet you at your place after work. You’ve been alone for too long.” She paused, her voice going distant and muffled for a second. “Phil says he’ll give me up for the whole night if it means you have someone to talk to. I think he just wants to get rid of me before I force him to move the furniture in the living room again.”
Shayla felt a twinge in her chest. She remembered all too well the driving urge to make sure everything was perfect in
the house before the baby came. Cyrus didn’t help her, though. He’d bitch and complain every time he found something “out of its damn place” and force her to put it back, even if she couldn’t get help to move heavier pieces by herself. The more she remembered of her time with him she’d suppressed, the harder it became to understand why she put up with him. Herryk’s explanation made sense; Cyrus had been a god with vast sexual appeal. The moment he stepped into her life, she was slave to his desires.
“You there, Shayla, or are you trying to hide again?”
“I’m here. Bring dinner with you and I guess I can try to be social later.”
“Oh man. I found this new Italian place a couple blocks away. They have the best lasagna known to man. One bite and you’ll forget how miserable you are and the guy that made you that way.”
“He didn’t—” It was too late. Faye had already hung up.
Shayla dropped the handset back in place. She rubbed her forehead, hoping to chase off the headache building behind her eyes. Faye meant well, she really did. However, Shayla wasn’t sure what would help her deal with the kidnapping and what happened during and after. She couldn’t talk to anyone about it. They’d think she was insane.
The phone on her desk rang again. Shayla answered and swung back into the rhythm of work, hoping it’d keep her mind in one piece until she left and was forced to cope with Faye caring too much.
Time moved differently in the God’s Lands. The inhabitants were not bound to a twenty-four hour day. The light source in the sky brightened and dimmed according to its own schedule—which usually fit the whims of the gods who controlled the sun and moon. It was worse in the Inbetween. Time flowed slower in the Inbetween than anywhere else, giving an incubus ample time to please his mistress without being rushed due to her sleep schedule. All of the different time systems wreaked havoc on Deryck’s mind. It felt like yesterday he’d said goodbye to Shayla and at the same time, like it’d been a decade since he’d seen a smile on her face.