Chapter 13 – Darius
DARIUS
I’m shocked by my actions. Completely shocked. As we walk toward the town, my thoughts spin. And I stare ahead of me, without looking at the others.
In the past, I’ve had many lovers. I’ve craved and ached for the touch of a woman more times that I could count. But there were few opportunities in war for anything more than a quick bedding.
But when Lamia’s teeth had pierced my flesh, it was like something inside of me awakened. I wanted to touch her. To taste her. To plunge inside of her until I felt her ripple with pleasure.
I’d lost all sense. Her bite had hardened my cock and changed everything inside of me. If she hadn’t pulled back, I don’t want to imagine what I would have done.
But that won’t happen again. I won’t let it!
I was ready for pain. I wasn’t ready for pleasure. But next time I’ll be prepared.
I just needed to find a way to separate whatever spell her bite holds over its victim from actual feelings. The last thing I needed was to start to convince myself that I felt something for the monster that took my life.
So, I’ll be smart. Smarter than I was.
As we walk along the shore, we come upon a beach, an inlet, where the waves are calmer. Mothers and fathers play with their children in the small waves. Castle are built out of sand, and the sound of children’s laughter seems to come from all around us.
I stop and stare.
Children. I can remember so many of the faces of the children in the town my brothers and I protected. I also remember the last time we awoke. It was to fight a monster that was taking and killing the children in brutal ways.
A child I had seen on the street smiling one day was found brutally killed the next.
Never had we struggled so hard to catch a monster. Never had so many innocent lives been lost before we were finally able to kill the demon that had been unleashed from the Underworld. But it didn’t matter; I’d never felt like more of failure in all my life.
A ball rolls toward me and I kneel, catching it. A little boy with blond curls stops a few feet from me. He looks nervous.
I smile. “Is this yours?”
He nods and holds out his hands.
I throw it gently to him.
“Thanks,” he says, then flashes me a smile, one with missing teeth.
I stare as he runs back to his mother, and my heart feels lighter.
“Do any of you have children?” Lamia asks, her question soft.
“No,” Ryker answers for us. “We have to have a mate first, and mates are rare and precious.”
“As are children,” I say softly, slowly rising to my feet.
Some of the beach-goers have noticed us. And it’s clear we’re making them nervous.
“We should keep going.”
The others follow as I lead them away from the beach and walk for a time, seeing no one else. It’s quiet out here on the sandy shore. Almost strangely quiet.
We step onto a little dirt road, heading toward the town, when a disturbance makes us all stop. Up ahead, a minotaur steps out of what seems like thin air. His hands are covered in blood, and he cleans them with a rag in a lazy movement before he spots us.
Not knowing what else to do, we head toward him.
His head, like that of a bull, turns toward us. “I thought I felt something off.”
Tensions sings amongst our group. Minotaurs and gargoyles have a complicated past, filled with killings on both sides. And yet, to see one of their kind in a place marked in the book seems like too much of a coincidence.
“Greetings,” I say, striving to be polite.
He huffs. “You’re far from the sanctuary, gargoyles.”
“Sanctuary?” What does that mean?
He shakes his big head. “The place where all your kind hide now. Isn’t that right?”
I don’t want him to realize how little we understand about this world, so I change the subject, even though I file away that information for later. “We’re on a quest.”
His gaze slides to Lamia. “What kind of quest?”
“This was our first stop on our way to the Cave of Blood.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I know nothing of such a place. I am just a servant to the gods. Creating their brilliant creations, one piece at a time.”
My stomach turns. “What does that mean?”
But somehow, I think I already know.
He stomps one of his hooves. “It means that I weave together creations until they become perfect enough for the gods. If one eye isn’t good enough, they will get another. If they need the hands of an artist, I will attach them. My job is to create beings worthy of the gods.”
Everything inside of me feels tense. Evil truly lurks in so many places in this world.
And then I think of the children. Has he taken any pieces from them?
“That sounds like a form of torture,” Vincent mutters.
Oh, it is. Worse than any of them could imagine.
The creature snorts again. “You should see my most beautiful creation. The sphinx herself. And yet, the gods felt she could be better…more powerful. She is my lifetime’s work.”
I glance in the direction he came from and see that hidden deep beneath the hill of sand is a door the color of gold. It shimmers with a glamour I know keeps it hidden from human eyes.
“Our map said there was some kind of bell or light here?” Ryker continues.
I barely hear him, my gaze focused on the door. On the laboratory of blood and death I know is on the other side.
The creature stamps its hooves. “There’s the light-tower. But be warned, gargoyles, the creatures that guard the bell tower won’t welcome your kind.”
Ryker opens his mouth to ask another question, when we hear a screaming from beyond the door. My gaze jerks back to it, and I push violently at the memories of my life before. But the vivid images fill my mind. Every muscle in my body aches with tension, with a need to act.
“What’s that?” Vincent ask. “It sounds like a woman in pain.”
If the minotaur could smile, I would say that it is. “The sphinx. She is brave, and yet, every time we remove a piece of her, or attach a new one, she screams in pain. She begs for death.”
Ryker pulls his sword from his back. “Release her.”
I’m shocked by Ryker. Not that he’s reacting to the screaming woman in the same way I am, but that there’s an instinct crawling inside of both of us to stop her pain, even though it’s the sphinx, a monster known for its cruelty.
The minotaur squares off with us. “You should know how foolish a battle with me would be.”
I withdraw my sword. Even if the battle is foolish, and even though we’re fighting for a monster, I can’t walk away. I could never walk away. Not from this.
Beside me, Lamia shifts, her snake-half uncurling beneath her dress. I’m transfixed by the red and purple scales and the power in her shape. With her at our side, I think the scales of this fight have tipped in our favor.
“Open the door, bull-face,” she orders.
He snorts. “Never.”
Vincent draws his sword. “Come on, man, don’t make us kill you.”
The minotaur smiles. “Many have tried. None have succeeded. So go, and let me see if I can make the sphinx scream again.”
Lamia launches herself at him with a cry of anger.
I’ve fought minotaurs before, so I fully expect her to smack into it like a brick wall, but somehow she knocks him to the ground.
Then, just as a roar bubbles up from his mouth, she tears his throat open with her fangs.
The gurgling sound that follows chills my blood, and then we’re left in silence.
That was not the battle I expected. Not at all.
Lamia doesn’t drink his blood, to my surprise. Instead, she uses her arm to try to wipe her face clean of the blood. But it only manages to smear it.
I know we’re all staring at her in shock. This is what makes me so nervous about her. One minute she’s a beautiful woman, almost sweet and innocent, and the next she’s this…this thing. Does it matter that she was fighting to help someone?
Somehow, the way she fights feels different from how we do. Less fair. More like an attack than a fight. The notion makes me uneasy as I slowly put my sword away.
Her gaze meets mine, and then she looks away.
Sliding across the minotaur’s dead body, she goes to the door and pulls and pulls. Then she smashes her fists into the metal. But the door doesn’t even shudder in response.
We cautiously move closer to her and try to open the door, but it still doesn’t budge.
“Sphinx?” Lamia calls.
On the other side we hear a soft voice. “Lamia?”
“I’m here,” Lamia says. “Can you open the door?”
There’s silence for too long before we almost give up on a response, but then it comes soft. “Not. Not yet. The pain. The surgery. I—“
Lamia squeezes her eyes shut and there’s anguish in her expression. “The minotaur is gone. Leave, when you can.”
Silence is her only response.
She turns and slithers away from the door and the dead body. We glance back at the door, then follow Lamia. On the beach, she leans down and washes herself until all the blood is gone from her face and neck, then shifts so that her lower half is that of a human once more.
“What about the…sphinx?” I ask.
Lamia exhales noisily. “That door was made by a god. We can’t get into it. We’ve killed her torturer and guard. The rest is up to her.”
I don’t like the idea of leaving that screaming woman there, but what more can we do?
At least the torture will stop. She isn’t a helpless child. She can get up and leave, if she can find the strength.
“Then, we go to the lighthouse next?” Vincent asks.
She nods. “And then we should figure out why the heck the map wanted us to stop here. And what it wanted from us.”