Demon's Fire (21 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how we’re going to find him. Sahel’s tribe are nomads. They could be anywhere in the Vharzovhin.”

He expected Beth to tell him he had nothing to be sorry for. She was silent instead, her thumb worrying the fullness of her lower lip. Finally, she looked up at him and sighed. “I think I can track Pahndir, but I need to explain a few things first…”

Charles sat silent after she finished, presumably stunned. Beth struggled not to bite her thumbnail. She’d been less nervous in that parlor with the whip.

“Let me be certain I understand this,” he said slowly. “You think the spirit of Hhamoun’s ancient queen is possessing you.”

“It doesn’t feel like feel like she’s possessing me per se—more like I can tap in to her memories.”

“Because of your experience in this mysterious secret chamber, which no one’s found but you.”

He sounded as if he wanted to disbelieve her, but not as if he did. Beth wished this hint of acceptance made her happy.

“I know it sounds crazy,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to believe it myself. I simply don’t know how else to explain the changes I’m going through. My mind isn’t working the way it did before, and my body…” She shook her head and fought a blush, not wanting to discuss those details.

“I know you’ve gained a little weight—which suits you, don’t get me wrong. But that’s no reason to jump to conclusions.”

“Charles, I used that whip to pluck a champagne glass out of someone’s hand. Do you honestly think I could have done that if I were my normal self?”

To her surprise, he cracked a grin. “I’m beginning to think I’ve underestimated what ‘normal’ is for you. That, however, doesn’t mean I believe you can track Pahndir’s scent across the desert like a hunting dog.”

“He did it, Charles. He found me halfway across the city from his house.”

The memory of their experience at the sari emporium caused her to wriggle on the seat in dismay. She was suddenly, painfully aware of Charles’s body heat, of the hardness of his knees against hers and the shadow of his broad shoulders in the lamplight. She remembered how his lips had felt when he’d taken her, how silken they’d been as he’d licked and suckled at her breasts. Her sex heated and grew soft, its inner muscles twitching teasingly. She’d been convinced her and Pahndir’s lengthy lovemaking in the pool would sate her for a good, long while. If she could want Charles now, in spite of her worries, that assumption was erroneous.

She looked away, embarrassed to have Charles know. “We have to try, unless you can think of something else?”

“No.” He turned and put his hands on the steering wheel. He reached for the starter and activated it.

As the engine buzzed to life, she had a sudden vision of them trying to rattle across the deepest desert in the Model P. Much as Charles loved this car, it barely got them back and forth from the dig.

“I know,” he said, putting his pride and joy into gear. “We’re going to have to appropriate Herrington’s jeep.”

Pahndir’s luck, such as it was, ran out the following night.

Sahel’s “camp” was a small tent village that seemed too impermanent to call a town. A crumbling stone wall and bucket suggested the presence of a functioning well. Scrubby vegetation surrounded the nomadic dwellings. Pahndir imagined they looked much as they had millennia ago: the same thin floor cushions and guy ropes, the same camel regalia decorating the densely woven goat’s hair walls. Sahel’s harem had their own tent, near the penned-up goats. Pahndir didn’t see the men at all, though Sahel’s lieutenants, Aran and Delilah, immediately ducked beneath the dull black door flap.

Perhaps visitation rights came with their status.

He had no way to judge if the men would help him. Were they treated harshly or cosseted? Was being taken against one’s will reserved for aliens like him? Sahel had mentioned her harem was submissive when she was taunting him about Thallah. Perhaps he’d do better to come up with whatever plan he could without hoping for aid from them. Certainly, some plan was going to be necessary. The chieftain wasn’t showing signs of intending to let him go.

Soon after they’d reached the camp, Sahel and the other women gave him water and a little bread, then led him to a rough latrine. He didn’t protest the lack of privacy. At the moment, there seemed no point. Used to being considerably cleaner than his current state, he wanted a Yamish-style shower and a bar of soap almost enough to cry.

Both appeared to be out of the question. He was staked facedown and naked, spread-eagled on a blanket not far from Sahel’s small cook fire. Whatever the hardness of their nature, sadism wasn’t a genuine calling for this tribe—a hobby, maybe, but no calling. One of the women beat his back and buttocks in desultory fashion while Sahel, the master of this little world, prepared coffee for perhaps a dozen of her fellow tribe members. The steam from the pot smelled good, strong and dark, just as he liked it.

Pahndir, of course, was not invited to partake from the tiny cups. He was shifted onto his now stinging back, restaked, and held by those same leather-wrapped steel cables. The stakes were the weak point in the arrangement. He was certain he could pull them up and escape if his captors left him unsupervised long enough. If that miracle happened, he’d only have to figure out where to run.

East,
he thought, having observed that much from their two-day trek. He could walk the distance if he had to, but perhaps he’d get the chance to steal a camel. That would lessen the likelihood that he’d blunder into quicksand and disappear for good. He wondered if he’d been missed, or if Muto had somehow prevented that. Would Beth worry if she didn’t hear from him? Would she care enough to raise an alarm? Was it even possible to find him where he was? He didn’t think he ought to count on help from Cor and Xishi. One rescue in a lifetime was more than most people got.

A slim, oiled hand settled on his penis, hardly interrupting the dark currents of his thoughts. Apparently uninterested in dealing with him yet herself, Sahel had ordered one of the women to sit next to him on the blanket. He braced himself for more mockery, his body seeming too exhausted to perform for its audience.

And then the female fingers tightened and pulled.

Unexpected sparklers went off in his sexual nerves, the sensations so delicious, so intense, no amount of willpower could have staved off his hardening.

Conversation stopped as his penis lengthened…and lengthened…and grew so thick the woman who was stroking him could no longer close her fist. With every pull, he was swiftly reaching full royal size. Pahndir’s scrotum began to throb, the deep, dull ache his body’s way of complaining that it wanted emptying. His balls were heavy at this point in his cycle, stuffed with stored-up seed. With his involuntary reaction to being caressed, they also grew tender.

He knew his reprieve was over. He was in rut, full-blown, no turning back, and no chance for any but the most fleeting release. He’d be lucky to think straight, much less escape. He didn’t have a single doubt that Sahel would be aware of this.

“Well,” she said, her slightly hoarse voice bringing an end to the lull. “Maybe this demon
will
be some use to us. Widad, since you brought him up, I give you permission to take the first ride.”

Widad took the first ride, and some other nameless woman took the second. They didn’t remove their clothes beyond the necessary or bare their faces. Their human energy affected him but, thankfully, not as much as it might have. He wondered if his body had become keyed to prefer Beth and Charles. But it didn’t seem wise to think about them now. Pahndir steeled himself against enjoying his captors’ gyrations, grinding his teeth to fend off a dry climax. His arousal could only rise now and not recede. The less he gave in to it at this stage, the better his chance of maintaining a scrap of dignity during the next four or five days.

Naturally, Sahel wasn’t interested in his dignity.

She had a little whip, the tail no longer than her hand, which she began to ply against the soles of his feet. She had a finesse her women lacked, and a perceptible interest in the process. The snaps of pain cut through his self-control, twisting into his unwilling pleasure until, slowly but surely, that pleasure swelled.

He was truly helpless, as he’d never been in any game he’d played with Thallah. Sahel wouldn’t hesitate to do him lasting damage, or to kill him if the situation called for it. Under ordinary circumstances, the idea wouldn’t have excited him, but with his heat pushing him so hard, the fear and shame powered through his bloodstream like the strongest aphrodisiac. Though he throttled back a groan, no one, and certainly not Sahel, could have missed the heightening of his responses.

“Get off him,” Sahel ordered his current partner. “I’m going to bring him to his peak.”

She brought him by the simple expedient of lashing the whip against his balls while she worked her sex up and down his cock. The pain was exquisite, in every sense of the word. She brought him over and over, each orgasm a brief explosion of pleasure that turned instantly to frustration.

By the time she tired, he was bloody—and humiliated beyond bearing. He hated his male organ then, with a passion his kind shouldn’t have been capable of feeling. If someone had freed his hands and given him a knife, he would have harmed himself. Sahel was simply being who she was: a woman who’d learned cruelty paid, a punisher for hire. His body’s needs were what had betrayed him, yet again, and when he’d finally thought he might taste freedom.

He shouldn’t have allowed himself to hope. He’d have been better off if he’d never met Beth or Charles. He’d have been better off if he were still a prisoner of the pillow house.

He rolled his head against the coarse blanket, knowing his rampaging hormones were partially responsible for his despair. This was heat madness, and he’d survived it many times. He would come out the other side, if he could just hold onto himself.

Sahel rose from him, her body leaving his still hard, still aching with desire. He bit his lip against begging her to return.

“Wash him,” she said to the others, her voice slurred with enjoyment from their little interlude. “Bandage his balls if they need it. Demons heal more quickly than humans. I expect he’ll be ready to entertain us again tomorrow.”

Pahndir squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to contemplate facing this again. He hadn’t moved for the women when they’d taken him. He’d cried out in pleasure and in pain, but he hadn’t thrust. Every instinct in his body had screamed for him to do it, but he’d refrained.

He held onto that: his only lifeline. If the angry pulsing of his cock were anything to go by, that lifeline wasn’t going to take long to fray.

Provokingly, Herrington had taken the electric jeep. Charles and Beth had to wait until the next morning to steal it for themselves. Rousing before daylight, they crept together to the garage. After all that had happened, it seemed strange to be alone in it again.

“There’s one good side to this,” Beth said as she refilled the storage compartment’s water tank.

Charles wedged a box of medical supplies behind a blanket and gave her a look. Beth didn’t want to think about what the bandages were for. Ironically, it didn’t bother her at all to lay her nice, long whip on top of everything. Grimacing, and determined to claim her silver lining, she forged on.

“If Herrington is involved in this kidnapping, we know they haven’t taken Pahndir any farther than can be driven in a night.”

“Which leaves us how many miles of desert to search?” He shut the boot quietly, then walked to where she frowned at him. His hand came up to stroke her cheek as he strove for a lighter tone. “I say, Miss Philips, you do look fetching in my clothes.”

She’d borrowed his shirt and trousers again, in part because they were sturdy, and in part because she didn’t want to ruin one of her new outfits. Charles’s eyes were calm as they gazed into hers—not optimistic but steady. Beth thought about how she’d wanted to slip into his room last night, if only so she wouldn’t be worrying alone. She wondered if he wished she’d come, and if he’d have wanted to offer her more than a hand to hold.

“Charles,” she said, ignoring the fillip of inappropriate sexual heat. “We have to get Pahndir back.”

“I know.” He pulled her against him for a long moment, long enough for his warmth to seep into her. His hands tightened on her back and then released her. “Let’s get going before the staff wakes up.”

They got going but not very far at first. They had to drive to all three of Bhamjran’s desert-facing gates before Beth picked up a whiff of Pahndir’s spicy lemon scent.

With the sun rising behind them, the shadows of the city’s palm trees stretched across the sand.

“You’re sure it’s him you’re smelling?” Charles asked.

“I’m sure,” Beth said and hoped he wouldn’t ask how she knew. Pahndir’s scent had tightened her nipples like they were being pulled, and her sex was liquid and warm. She hadn’t expected this reaction when she’d volunteered to act as bloodhound, but, well, as long as it worked.

“That way,” she said, pointing past the distant outline of Hhamoun.

They followed the scent as closely as possible, but there were places even Herrington’s Tesla-powered demon vehicle couldn’t go. Some dunes were simply too towering, and many wadis twisted like snakes without a hint of a road to promise a way through. Then they had to follow established, navigable tracks until they picked up the trail again. That could be a laborious process, involving driving back and forth and stopping dozens of times while Beth got out to sniff. She was ready to weep with frustration by the time the flaming ball of the sun reached its noon zenith.

“You’re doing fine,” Charles said, patting her knee. He wore a brimmed straw fedora, but it hadn’t stopped his face from turning pink on top of its tan. The glare beat up at them from the sand as well as down from the sky. “Drink some water. Eat one of the sandwiches I packed. You’ll find the trail again when you relax.”

“You’re so patient with me,” she said, which made her want to cry even more.

Charles spread his hands and smiled crookedly. “All I have to do is drive. Anyway, if camels could get where they’ve taken Pahndir, so can this baby.”

He patted the metal dash with masculine fondness. Beth wanted to kiss him, wanted to hold his lovely sunburned face and slide her tongue against his. Her body was tense with desire, the flesh between her legs heavy and swollen. Having him forge through those folds was what would relax her, having him push his smooth, hard cock high inside her sheath.

“What?” he asked when she wet her lips.

There was something wrong with her, there absolutely was. No woman should be obsessing about sex—and with another man—at a time like this.

“Nothing,” she said, shaking herself. “You should drink some water, too.”

Patience notwithstanding, Charles almost didn’t believe it when they found the camp. There it was, though: tiny peaked black bumps sticking up on the shimmering horizon. Knowing better than to drive closer, in case there were sentinels, Charles turned the engine off and stared. He couldn’t doubt the settlement was Sahel’s. It was too great a stretch that Beth would find
any
people in this desolate sea of sand.

It seemed she hadn’t been deluded. Something supernatural really had happened to her in the ruins of Tou’s palace.

“Wait.” He caught Beth’s arm as she started to exit the car. “We need a plan.”

“Charles,” she groaned, and something about the sound struck him as odd.

Her face was flushed, which wasn’t strange considering they’d been sweltering all day, but the color seemed more than sunburn. Her lips were swollen, despite being protected by the balm she’d applied. Their satiny curves were parted, and she was breathing faster than normal. Her pupils looked larger than normal, too, turning her honey eyes to molasses.

She looks aroused,
he thought.
She looks like she did before we made love, almost desperate to be fucked.

Blood surged uninvited to his groin, tightening his linen trousers against his cock. He knew the reaction was wrong; he shouldn’t have been thinking of anything but Pahndir’s safety. All the same, he hardened like Beth was the last woman in the world and he hadn’t enjoyed relief in years. It was probably his imagination, but he thought he could smell
her
. His nostrils flared at the elusive scent. It smelled like she’d described Pahndir’s: lemons and cinnamon.

And sex,
he thought, the veins in his groin dilating in unison.
Don’t forget that.

Without thinking, his fingers fanned the skin at her wrist.

“Charles,” she whispered.

He leaned in and kissed her with a low pained moan, a sound she sent back to him. Their tongues welcomed each other—wet, greedy, warm—and then she pushed back from him, panting.

“In case we don’t make it,” he rasped, because that explanation didn’t sound as bad.

She touched his cheek, laying her palm and fingers gently against the skin. Her eyes were welling with emotion, the tears nearly spilling onto her lashes. He knew she was as glad as he was that they were acting like friends again.

Charles looked away, unable to hold her gaze. He’d be crying himself in a minute, and he was damned if he felt comfortable doing that. He cleared his throat. “I think I have a plan for how we could walk straight into that camp.”

Beth drew her thumb along his jaw. “Does it involve me bringing my new whip?”

The hint of humor in her voice had his lips twitching. What other woman could have asked him that? As to that, what other woman could have stolen his heart so completely while making it feel like a privilege? She had the power to break him and seemed likely to do so eventually. Despite that knowledge, he’d never loved her as he did at that moment. Considering he’d been loving her damned hard for nearly a decade, that said something.

“It might involve bringing your new whip,” he said, tapping her nose with a light finger. “In fact, it might involve you using it.”

Beth prepared herself as well as she could. She and Charles slapped the worst of the dust off, and she’d combed and braided her windblown hair. Her new whip was tucked into the back of Charles’s trousers. He’d stashed something in the boot of the jeep while she wasn’t looking: a pair of brass “knuckle-dusters,” as he called them. He slid his fingers into the holes, briefly examining the fit before dropping them into his right pocket. The motion looked like something he’d done before.

“You’d hit a woman with those?” Beth asked.

Charles was tucking his pocketknife into his boot. “I’d hit a puppy if it meant my life. Or yours.” He straightened and shook his trouser leg back down. Beth couldn’t help noticing he still looked natty. “Never underestimate your opponent and never hesitate. Either will get you killed faster than anything.”

“You’ve been in fights before.”

“They were a daily occurrence at one period in my life.” He squeezed the ball of Beth’s shoulder. “I’ll have your back, Beth. Hell, I’d have your front if I thought a woman like Sahel would take any man seriously. Just look like you’re willing to fight, and chances are you won’t have to.”

“Chances are.”

His mouth slanted in amusement. “You said yourself you’re stronger than you used to be. Plus, you have Tou’s memories to help you. Just pretend you’re the queen, and you’ll have those women quailing the same as Pahndir’s staff.”

Beth doubted that, but she appreciated the attempt to bolster her confidence. She wished she knew how to call Tou to her like the spiritualists who worked the Street of Fortunes. Though she closed her eyes and thought of the queen, she experienced no tingle, no sense of otherworldly presence.

On the other hand, she did receive an awareness that Hhamoun’s queen had been a world-class liar.

Better than nothing,
she thought and rolled her tense shoulders. She was no slouch at lying herself.

She and Charles could have spared themselves the tramp across the sand from the motorcar to Sahel’s camp. No guards had been posted on the perimeter. A goat looked up at their arrival, silvery green leaves trailing from its mouth, but that was the extent of the alarm they raised.

Charles pointed at the largest of the worn black tents. “I hear noise coming from in there.”

The sound was a rising and falling murmur, reminiscent of an audience in a theater. The closer they walked to its source, the more Beth’s body reacted. There was quite an assortment of scents in that primitive desert camp, but Pahndir’s was thick in the air, seeming to drown out the rest. Her heart pounded harder, the surging of her blood to her most sensitive places making it difficult to breathe normally.

She caught Charles’s hand a few feet from the entrance.

“He’s in there,” she whispered. “He’s alive. I can feel him really strongly now.”

The hold she took on Charles’s fingers wasn’t just to get his attention. It was tight, possessive, and probably a bit sexual. She let go, but not before his gaze flicked to the tips of her breasts. Though the glance lasted only a moment, it told her more than she needed to know just then.

Charles sensed what Pahndir’s nearness had done to her.

“All right,” he said, his voice carefully steady. “If he’s alive, we have even more reason to give this ruse everything we’ve got.”

He spread his palm against the small of her back. His touch was hot and sweaty but comforting. She’d already pulled out the whip and held it coiled in her right hand. She drew a breath and set her jaw.

I am a goddess,
she told herself, echoing the message of Tou’s black chamber.
I eat desert chieftains for breakfast.

Charles lifted the tent’s door for her, and she ducked through.

The interior was dark and stuffy, the only light coming from tiny rips in the goat-hair walls. Her eyes searched the dimness for Pahndir first. The choice wasn’t strategic, but she couldn’t help herself. When she found him, her heart gave a tremendous lurch, as if pushing a large enough volume of blood with a single beat could save them all.

Pahndir was very naked. He’d told her his people removed their body hair, but seeing him completely bared momentarily startled her. He’d been bound upright to a substantial wooden frame, his legs and arms spread wide. Slim strips of leather held his ankles and wrists secure. The position elongated the muscles of his upper body and bunched the ones in his legs, making him seem both more powerful and leaner. He reminded her of a pagan sacrifice: insurance that the rains would fall or the river rise. Thin red lines crossed his naked skin. Apparently, he’d been beaten to the edge of bleeding and left there. His eyes were shut, his face the hard, icy mask his kind were famous for. Only his hands revealed the strain he was under. They were fisted so tightly within his bonds that the veins at his wrists stood out.

The cause of his strain knelt before him, between his widely planted feet. She was sucking his erect penis, her head bobbing up and down the upper part of his shaft. She pulled all the way off him with each movement, baring the bulging, spit-shiny head.

The first time the fullness of his sex emerged, it was all Beth could do not to let her mouth hang wide. He was bigger than any drawing in a picture book, bigger than he’d been the night they watched Charles feed the Yamish courtesans with his energy. The woman couldn’t take more than a third of him between her lips. One of her hands pumped his base with a seemingly steely grip, beneath which his balls swelled impressively. They, too, were scored by whip marks.

Beth knew she couldn’t comprehend how much that must have hurt.

The mere thought caused every nerve, every muscle, every tender crease between her legs to contract, a reaction that thoroughly unnerved her. It wasn’t pity—or not entirely. Fluid ran from her in a shocking rush. The evidence of Pahndir’s suffering was arousing her. She wanted to soothe his pain more than she wanted her next breath, but she didn’t precisely want that pain to stop.

The realization had barely finished rolling through her when Pahndir opened his eyes and looked straight at her. His pupils were large already, but the instant he recognized her, two shining wells of solid black overtook his eyes.

Her heart contracted in another galvanic beat.

“Well, isn’t this a scene?” Beth drawled before he could speak and inadvertently ruin their plan. “I see why your women couldn’t bear to stand guard and miss out on this.”

She turned to the female who best matched Charles’s description of the chieftain. Sahel had been watching her underling’s performance with her arms crossed and her shoulder braced on one of the tent’s supporting poles—the image of superior boredom. When Beth addressed her, a spark of temper lit the woman’s cool, dark eyes.