Stephanie Draven - Dark Sins and Desert Sands

Shit! It was no lion, it was her . It was Layla Bahset. The same cat-green eyes. This was the way his cool, clinical interrogator envisioned herself in her own mind. Or maybe she was just trying to scare him off. “Don’t threaten me.”

“He’ll hurt me if he finds you here,” she said. “More importantly, he’ll hurt you . He’s watching … “

“Who?” Ray asked. “The guards? The sick bastards who got off on watching me bleed? I’ve already taken care of them. They aren’t ever going to hurt me again, and neither are you.”

“I’m different now,” the lioness said. “I help people now. I heal them.”

“I don’t care what you do,” Ray growled, though that wasn’t strictly true. “I want to know why I was pulled out of my unit in Afghanistan. I want to know why I was arrested. I want a name. I want to know who it was that accused me of treason.”

“My memories are locked away from me in the antechamber,” she said. “And even if I could give you a name, what good would it do?”

What good would it do? The question made crimson fury pass like a taunting veil before his eyes. If he had a name, he could confront his accuser. He could prove his innocence. He wouldn’t have to live as a fugitive anymore. He could be a free man.

“I can’t free you unless you free me,” she said, with a look of anguish. “Save me.”

Had she read his mind now? Ray was getting confused. “How can I save you?”

“Make me feel something,” she said.

He could have blinked only once, but when he did, he no longer saw a lioness on the ground, but a woman on her hands and knees, staring up at him with a needy gaze. Naked. Completely naked. He couldn’t look away, unable to tear his eyes from the way her hair flowed like a dark river over her bare shoulders and the elegantly arched curve of her back.

Layla seemed to luxuriate in his openmouthed fascination. She let him look at her glistening body in vivid color. The taut nipples, dark as berries. The thatch of dark hair between her thighs. She let him stare. She was enticing him, daring him to come closer and touch her. “Make me want something. Make my pulse quicken with excitement. Make me sigh with longing. Make my body weak with pleasure. Make me, make me, make me.”

Oh, the things he wanted to make her do …

But it had to be another trap. Just as she’d tried to bury him in sand this afternoon, now she was trying to make him lose himself in lust. He had no intention of becoming a desiccated carcass in the ruin of her mindscape. And yet, the heat of her wanton invitation was so strong that Ray felt himself harden in response.

If she understood the monster he was now, if she knew the mixed-up milieu of desire and hatred for her that swirled inside him, she’d run. Instead, she beckoned and Ray was atop her before he knew it, his body crushing down on hers. She didn’t recoil, not even when she must see him for the horned monster that he was. She stretched her hands up as he lowered his head. Together, they rent the sand, with … his horns or her claws, he couldn’t tell.

He was angry with himself, and angry with her. With his blood running hot, he’d nearly forgot what he’d come here for. He’d come here for answers, for justice. Nothing less would satisfy.

And then she asked, “Will you save me?”

What lives without a body, and speaks without a tongue? Everyone can hear it, but it’s seen by none .

Her plea was an echo and it tore something inside him, making him thrash. Another sound followed, shrill as a siren, and he thrashed again. Something shredded as a cacophony of beeps exploded in his brain. Someone was shaking him, pulling him out of Layla Bahset’s mind and back into his own body.

It was the teenaged hooker that woke him up. A good thing, too. The alarm clock was ringing and probably had been for some time. What he’d seen inside Layla’s dream had nearly unraveled his sanity and now a headache roared behind his eyes with renewed vengeance.

“What’s the matter with you?” Missy asked, eyeing the shreds of fabric in his hands. He looked down to see that he’d torn the bedsheets, ripped them with such violence that lint floated in the air around them like fairy dust. What’s more, he was burning up, and the motel room was fetid with his sweat. Then there was the blood, freely flowing from both his nostrils.

Missy took a few steps back. “Dude, are you sick? Are you trippin’?”

What was wrong with him? Ray used the ruined sheet to soak up the blood. He felt as chapped and dehydrated as if he’d been trekking a real desert. “Get me something to drink,” he barked, and tried to get his shaking under control while she padded across his room and returned with a cloudy glass of his bourbon. He drank it down in three swallows and it burned all the way.

Squinting his eyes back into focus, Ray saw that his bag was open, his papers all over the floor. There it all was; all the clues and clippings, the file folders and photographs. “You went through my things?”

“I’m not a thief,” the hooker said. “But I am a snoop … or didn’t you see that when you were snooping in my head?”

A group of hooting partiers crowed about their winnings in the parking lot outside and Ray winced at the noise. The motel room door did little to block the sound and it bothered him. Everything bothered him. The colors, the smells, the sounds.

“So who is she?” Missy asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it. In fact, I’ll pay you double to just shut up.”

“Double! No shit, big spenda!” the hooker gasped in feigned astonishment as she waved Layla Bahset’s picture around. “Seriously, who is she?”

Layla Bahset was his tormentor, the cool-eyed bitch who had tried to win his trust—tried to convince him that there was something between them. But it had only been a trick to get him to confess to crimes he didn’t commit. She’d abandoned him in that hellhole. She was a fiend. But now he’d seen inside her mind and … What had he seen?

He should know. He’d destroyed enough minds since he’d been cursed with these powers. He’d left his jailers and torturers trapped and ruined, afraid and devastated. But he wasn’t sure that even he could have taken all her memories and buried them in sand. And he hadn’t done it. Someone else had. Someone else, someone more powerful, had gotten to her first. The realization rocked his world. There might be others, just like him …

“You should really keep all your notes on a laptop or something,” Missy was saying. “Otherwise you just seem like a paranoid nut job.”

He wasn’t paranoid. They’d taken his dog tags from him and put a black bag over his head. They’d bound him with a plastic zip cord that cut into his wrists. His protestations of innocence had made no difference at all. These were just the times.

Ray’s nose seemed to have stopped bleeding, so he threw the bloody rags onto the floor. Then, with a shaking hand, he reached for the glass and the bourbon and filled it. “You can go now.”

Missy didn’t move. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

“Will you just get the hell out?”

Missy snorted. “Are you going to make me?”

He couldn’t make her do anything in this state. He could barely hold his drink. “Fine, stay or go, I don’t care, but if you stay, put some clothes on.”

“I am wearing clothes,” Missy objected, straightening her miniskirt so that it covered more of her legs. “Besides, you were all hot and bothered in your sleep. So what’s the matter now? Don’t you want me?”