Darkness Captured (18 page)

He’d been monosyllabic ever since.

With just a jut of his chin, he’d banished her companions from the room, then held out his hand—a gesture she was starting to despise because she couldn’t resist the silent command.

Then he’d lifted his arm, turning her under it, his dark glance sliding over her skin, pausing on every bauble. His thumb had flicked the rings in her nipples, a finger traced the chain to her belly-button ring, which he toggled.

When he’d traced downward, her breath had caught, her eyelids dropping to half-mast, but much to her disappointment he’d skipped the clit ring. “Did he cause you pain?”

“Funny,” she whispered, breathless beneath his relentless stare, “it was exquisite.”

His lips had firmed; his golden eyes narrowed. His hand had tightened around hers and drew her against his body. His erection had jutted against her bare belly, and her pulse leaped. “Did he take you?”

“Was he supposed to?” she asked innocently.

When he damn near squinted at her through fierce slits, she decided he wasn’t in the mood to be teased. Something she couldn’t resist. “He aroused me only to … prick me,” she said, in her best breathy “Marilyn”—which had the effect she desired.

He sank to his knees in front of her and lifted one of her legs over his shoulder. She dug her fingers into his hair … for balance … while he fingered her clit ring.

Her body responded instantly, and liquid arousal seeped to wet her folds. He skimmed it with a single fingertip and used it to lubricate the aroused knot, rubbing in circles and tapping the ring until she vibrated against him, an orgasm slamming through her too quickly to be truly satisfying.

When she slumped over him, he disentangled her fingers from his hair and slid her leg off his shoulder. When he rose, his cheeks were reddened, his lips moist with her juices. “These weren’t meant for your enjoyment.”

Gabriella didn’t resent her new adornments or the implication they were intended to mark her as a slave. Marduk’s reaction had been too delicious. The warm, sexy feeling his unintended lovemaking had left kept her on the edge.

Dagon had been right. Even hidden beneath layers of gauzy clothing, her breasts and clit tingled, remaining engorged because every scrap of fabric, every breath of air that touched her, kept her mildly aroused. She did, however, mind her multilayered harem outfit.

Xalia had dressed Gabriella, fitting a slim short skirt in a ripe berry hue around her hips and tying it together with a jeweled braid. Then a see-through tunic was pulled over Gabriella’s head. The tunic was split at both sides, and fastened by a jeweled girdle around her waist. Bangles, all gold and studded with emeralds, sapphires, and rubies, encircled her wrists. A chain with golden bells, very like the ones Xalia wore was fastened around one ankle. A headdress comprised of a gauzy scarf covered her hair and cloaked her face. On her feet, she wore soft silk slippers.

The clothing barely hid her assets; the rings at her nipples merely denting the fabric and emphasizing their existence. The heavier jewelry made her feel as though she was indeed wearing a prisoner’s chains.

Beside her, Marduk had forgone his usual dark medieval-style garb. Tonight, he wore only a linen kilt that left his powerful torso and hewn thighs bare. A gold armband surrounded his left forearm, and a crown bearing the same crest as his ring sat atop his dark hair. She’d been attracted to his well-made body from the start. Now, he took her breath away.

And the bastard knew it. While her gaze ate up every inch of him, the corners of his lips curled in a self-satisfied smirk.

Walking beside him through the darkened streets, she stayed close to him, touching him, as he’d instructed, to keep the nightmares at bay. She thought she might have clung like a leech, anyway, because of the slithering sounds that surrounded them. The streets were far from empty. Far from quiet.

Rasping whispers in the dark, low moans, an occasional shriek—she felt as though she was walking through a Halloween fun house, only the creatures hidden in the darkness weren’t costumed monsters, they were the real thing.

Only because of Marduk’s presence at her side did she remain unmolested.

They didn’t have to travel far. Their route had taken them from Marduk’s turreted tower set inside the curtain wall through narrow cobbled streets toward the center of the small city inside the fortress. As they drew closer, above the tiled roofs, Gabriella caught glimpses of the inner wall surrounding the palace.

Another full moon shone from the sky, silvering the cobblestone beneath her feet and lending a soft, fairy-tale-like patina to the pale sandstone walls they approached. A barred gate rose slowly on creaking gears to let them enter, but they were stopped by a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a very beefy man, who stepped into their path.

Marduk’s hand slid over hers on his arm, but he remained quiet.

The bull-man nodded to Marduk, then turned to Gabriella.

Her eyes rounded as his face drew nearer. It was enormous, his nostrils flaring; humid heat gusted in her face with his snort. “The Mistress of the Dead demands tribute.”

“Tribute?” she said faintly.

“Give him your bracelets,” Marduk said softly.

Frowning, she slid them over her wrists and deposited them in the beast’s open palm.

The bull-man bowed and swept out his arm. “Enter, lady. May you find joy in Kur-gal this night.”

She watched the bull-man’s lips move, bemused, but Marduk gave her a gentle shake. “You were staring,” he whispered, bending toward her ear as they walked away.

“I couldn’t help it. I was talking to a cow.”

Marduk chuckled beside her, and Gabriella felt lighthearted again. So, they’d entered the Queen of the Dead’s palace—she should have expected a surprise or two.

The gate opened into a flagstone-paved courtyard filled with a lush profusion of fragrant flowers and guests. A fountain burbled in the center where several people sat, some with feet dangling in the water, watching a nude woman turning her face into the spill from a marble penis.

There were scantily dressed dancers in gauzy costumes even more revealing than her own moving among the milling guests, like characters straight from an
Arabian Nights
tale. More creatures like the bull-man at the gate were interspersed among the guests—hybrids produced through humans’ crossbreeding with goats, horses, and birds—male and female parts exposed as they roamed. And while clothing seemed an option, so far, this party wasn’t the orgy of lust she’d half expected.

“You seem disappointed,” he said softly.

She blinked. “No … just surprised. I’d expected something less like a frat party.”

“That term doesn’t translate well, but I’ll assume you were thinking that only sex and violence would occur here. We have only reached the first level of the entertainments. We have farther to go.”

He guided her toward the back of the courtyard and through another set of gates, guarded by a pair of bored-looking twins—male and seemingly all human. Their gazes sharpened on her, then turned to Marduk, to whom they bowed. “What tribute do you offer, Bel?” they said in unison.

Gabriella quirked an eyebrow, knowing what was coming.

“Your headdress and tiara should suffice,” Marduk said, so casually, she knew this was a game for him and he was waiting for her to balk.

Without complaint, she gave the items to the twins and was waved through gate with another, “May you find joy in Kur-gal.”

“What’s Kur-gal?”

“The name of an ancient Sumerian city, and what Irkalla fashioned this palace to be. She insists on ceremony. The first time Inanna entered these gates long ago, Irkalla forced her through the same ritual as you are going through now. It’s now used to acclimate all new guests to her rule.”

The gate they passed through opened into a hall filled with tables laden with large round trays of food—roasted lambs’ heads sitting in mounds of saffron rice, fruit of every description, round flat breads that the guests tore with their fingers and fed to their companions as laughter and goblets of wine were raised in the air.

“A party and a feast,” she said faintly, her heart rate beginning to escalate. “Other than the costumes, this doesn’t look so different from the hall where I arrived.”

“Here there are no penitents serving their guts to demons as punishment. They won’t be bathing in blood anytime soon.”

“But there are human dead and demons here.”

“These undead have been elevated from the cursed halls through favors they’ve given to their masters.”

“What sorts of favors earn them this reward?”

Marduk took her hand and lifted it to his mouth, drawing her gaze from the tables to his dark, penetrating gaze.

“Does sex earn them rewards?” she blurted. “Is it because they are more attractive?”

“Or more skilled. They also trade in information. Like when a particularly succulent living woman fled my captivity.”

“So you don’t have to set watchers. All the undead would scramble to be the first to sound an alert?”

Marduk’s smile didn’t alleviate her unease. “I wouldn’t mislead you. You should know you have no recourse but to behave.”

She looked around them. There were empty spaces at the benches pulled up to long trench tables. “We aren’t staying here either? Will you feed me sometime tonight? My stomach’s growling.” Then her gaze fell on one of the baked lambs’ heads and she shuddered. “But I can wait …”

“We will stop in the next chamber to eat. The crowd is smaller. Not quite so loud. And you will meet our rulers.”

Gabriella’s breath caught when he dropped her hand and turned. She waited for a second, frozen, but the nightmare didn’t consume her. Assuming the palace was enchanted, just as his chamber was, she rushed to stay close behind him as he strode to the side of the room and a set of golden doors.

Even before they reached the guards—a rank of identical creatures, all sporting jackals’ heads and dressed in short golden kirtles—she was pulling her tunic off over her head. She dropped it into the hand of the jackal-man closest to the doors.

Which left her only with the silken slippers, slave’s bracelets and anklets, and the short skirt.

Her breasts with their new adornments prickled as the jackals’ gazes swept her nearly nude form.

“Come,” Marduk said, grabbing her arm and sweeping past the long rank, ignoring the customary welcome they intoned.

Inside the rulers’ private hall, Gabriella’s eyes widened. Gold shimmered wherever her gaze rested—on the cutlery, the plates, even the mosaic studded with precious stones beneath her feet. But it was the two figures seated atop a dais stretching along the back of the hall that glittered brightest of all.

Dressed in a silk tunic embroidered in gold thread and wearing a golden crown shaped like a Quaker oatmeal box and more jewelry on his wrists and fingers than she’d started this adventure with, the King of the Dead was a short, corpulent figure. Hunched over his plate, he was seemingly unaware that his queen’s rapacious gaze clung to Marduk’s frame as he strolled into the room.

Marduk had dropped his hand from her arm, gesturing silently that she must enter after him.

She didn’t resent being relegated to the rear. Staying three steps behind him, her head lowered, she watched everything from the corners of her downcast eyes.

All the occupants of the room, save the king and queen, were staring at her.

Gabriella trembled as dozens of demons assessed her body with greedy eyes, lifting noses to catch her scent as she passed. Did they smell life? Or a meal?

Marduk walked directly to the front of the dais and bent at the waist. “My queen,” he said softly, giving her a small, tight smile. Then he nodded to the king. “Sire.”

When he looked over his shoulder, his gaze compelled her to do the same. She swept into a curtsy, made awkward by the fact her short skirt pulled upward and she didn’t really want to flash her ass to the entire assemblage, but her attempt seemed to please the woman, whose wedge-like crown sparkled with diamonds and rubies. “Marduk, I’m so glad you recaptured your little pet.”

Gabriella ground her teeth at the woman’s tone, sarcasm served in whiskey-laced syrup.

Still, she couldn’t help but stare at Irkalla—she was the mirror image of her sister, Inanna; same long swath of raven hair, dusky skin, large, almond-shaped eyes. Her lips were just as lushly formed, but the corners tipped just the slightest bit downward. Was the power she’d amassed in this realm a bitter reward?

“She didn’t wander far,” Marduk murmured.

Irkalla’s gaze studied Gabriella’s body, pausing on her ripened breasts. “We’re pleased she seems to have come through her ordeal unscathed.”

Gabriella felt heat warm her cheeks and breasts. She wanted badly to join the conversation, irritated that they spoke as though she hadn’t a thought of her own.

Instead, she surreptitiously studied the other woman’s attributes, knowing Marduk had enjoyed them all. And she conceded the comparison—her own sturdy body against Irkalla’s lushly endowed frame—didn’t serve her well. Irkalla needn’t worry when she gazed into the mirror and asked, “Who’s the fairest of us all …?”

Her only competition would be her equally beautiful sister.

Dressed as Irkalla was, her station proclaimed in a gold-embroidered silk sheath and a broad, gold collar encrusted with large pearls and bloodred jewels that lay flat against her chest, Inanna didn’t stand a chance of outshining her sister.

As Marduk and Irkalla traded pleasantries, Gabriella shifted restlessly. She had so many questions begging for answers. She’d yet to see anything faintly reminiscent of the hell she’d been schooled to expect. This Land of the Dead seemed disappointingly tame. Not that she wasn’t grateful that fire wasn’t licking her skin. But still. As decadent as the sex had been with Marduk, she’d had darker, more deliciously frightening times spent in human “hells” and dungeons.

Suddenly, the downward curves of Irkalla’s lips slowly lifted, and her gaze fell on something right behind Gabriella.

She couldn’t resist peeking around her shoulder to see what amused the queen. Her gaze slammed into Inanna’s narrowed eyes. The vampire was led by a massively built, handsome man who held the end of a long silver chain attached to a studded black collar. Inanna’s chin tilted upward, a proud captive, her completely nude body gleaming with a light application of oil.