God of Destruction (31 page)

She gasped, slightly louder than a breath,
“Taran!”

She realized her mistake too late. Each man
in the room, excluding Mainyu, whipped around to face the entrance,
already fumbling for their weapons, but, thankfully, Alex was
first. Despite the break in her abdomen, she raised both hands, the
gun held amateurishly between them, and let the first shot ring out
through the room.

Alex thought it a little surreal when one man
fell, bleeding, to the floor, but the next was quick to follow.

When Kierlan arrived to pick up the slack,
she looked to the god who seemed completely unaware of the
commotion around him. She had no snappy one-liner to shoot at him,
or a mocking demand. All she had was a gun in her hand. As she
raised it, she kept both eyes open and focused on the side of his
face closest to her. Without missing a beat, she squeezed the
trigger, waiting for the unmistakable spout of blood to shoot back
at her.

He jerked precariously away from her when the
bullet met his temple.

Claire fell from his grasp and sprawled out
across the floor in an unconscious heap. Alex would have run to
help, if not for Mainyu’s slow movements when he fell back into his
previously kneeling position. Pulling himself to his feet, he
stood, looking away from her for a moment.

No sound or change in stature revealed that
he was angry.

Suddenly, the god spun, arm outstretched and
fire burning in his eyes. “Witch!” he screamed waving his palm from
her direction to the wall.

Alex couldn’t see what it was that it hit
her, but, as he turned, her body flew out of his path, connecting
forcefully against the human remains. She vaguely heard someone,
probably James, call her name when she fell to the floor, sending
the gun skittering across the room.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

629 B.C.

True to what she had prophesized, Bomani was
long gone by the time Ziba returned to her chambers that morning,
tired and bloodstained from hours spent tending to the God of
Destruction. She peeled her robes from her skin, soaked red, and
dropped them on the floor before she crawled back under the blanket
and tried to sleep. Unfortunately, all the waking hours in the
world could not have lulled her back into a deep sleep. Mainyu’s
words replayed in her head as she stared into the darkness behind
her eyelids. You are mine. You are mine. You are mine.

She didn’t sleep much for the next week.

Between periods of kneeling beside Mainyu,
tending to his wounds alongside Shireen while he absentmindedly
stroked her hair, she prayed at the sanctuary to Kurshid, stared up
at the ceiling from her bedroll in the night, and pleaded with fate
that Bomani not return to the temple. It was all she wanted in the
world to be allowed to keep him, but she knew it wasn’t to be. If
she didn’t comply with the demands of the God of Destruction,
Mainyu had made it perfectly clear that her relationship with
Bomani would be revealed to the city, and she, as well as her love,
would be killed.

But, she knew she couldn’t send him
away.

When the day came that she knew he would
return, she spent the morning nursing Mainyu, as usual. Shireen,
however, didn’t join them. While she led the temple in prayer for
the Persian Army when they returned from Egypt, Ziba stayed behind
with Mainyu, cleaning his wounds again and dressing them in fresh
bandages. She said nothing while he wound his fingers through her
long, strange hair. She didn’t dare protest, but the feeling of his
fingers touching any part of her made her skin crawl and her
muscles tense.

“
So beautiful,” he whispered, staring up
at her from his place on the bedroll.

Swallowing back her objections, she bowed
her head politely, shoving the bandages she had just unwrapped from
his body into the jar in her lap. “Thank you, My Lord.”

His hand moved from her hair to cup her
face. “Something ails you, My Love. Tell me what it is that upsets
you.” She was forced to look in his face and what she found there
made her want to gag: fierce possessiveness.

“
You are mistaken, Lord Mainyu. Nothing
ails me,” she lied pretending to wipe sleep from her eyes. “I am
only tired.”

The skeptical look to come over his face
suggested he did not believe her, but his eyes softened as they met
hers. “My Love, you need not worry yourself over mere mortal
matters. By the end of a fortnight, my strength will have returned
and I will bring you back to my world with me.”

Ziba’s heart hung in her throat, choking
her. She bowed her head again and prepared to back out of the
room.

“
Ziba, wait!” he ordered, sitting
up.

She halted, but didn’t raise her head.

“
Will you not look at me,
Priestess?”

She half-heartedly complied. “Yes, My
Lord.”

He smirked, looking her up and down. “I
expect you to come to me this night. I know of your former lover’s
presence in the temple and I want to know, the moment you tell him
of your indifference.”

She let her head fall, hiding the tears
pricking at her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice cracked.
“Yes, My Lord.”

She couldn’t help but keep her head hung as
she sauntered toward her room, feeling the heavy moisture in her
eyes roll lazily down her cheeks. Her chest shook with hidden sobs,
and she could not see where she was walking when she abruptly
smacked into someone else’s body. She could not look up, for fear
she would reveal her sadness to the patrons of the temple. She just
wanted to hide in her room.

“
My Lady?” the all too familiar voice
gasped as he recognized her fair hair.

Ziba’s sobs suddenly cut off with a sniffle
as she squinted up into her Bomani’s face. Her arms itched to throw
themselves around his neck so she could kiss him and know that
everything would be alright. It was so easy to believe that when
she was wrapped in his arms, safe from anything that came her
way.

Regrettably, he could hold her in his arms
forever and it still was not going to change Mainyu’s ultimatum. As
he went to embrace her, she held him at arm’s length.

“
Ziba, what is the—” he inquired, reaching
fruitlessly for her shoulders as she fought him off.

“
I cannot see you anymore, Bomani,” she
confessed, peering up at him through drenched eyelashes.

It took a moment for shock to register on
Bomani’s face. “Z…Ziba, you cannot mean that.”

Gulping back the sudden bad taste in her
mouth, she said, “I do.”

“
Why?” he demanded, grabbing her by the
shoulders and pulling her to him, despite her quiet pleas that he
release her. “If this is about the consequences, it does not
matter, Ziba! I will…I will…will take you away from here! We will
leave! The temple…the army…all of it!”

“
And where would we go, Bomani?” she
cried. “Where could we go where we would not be
recognized?”

He thought for a moment before he gave a
loud laugh, “I do not care! We could live anywhere, Ziba, and never
see anyone else ever again and I would not care! As long as I have
you, I would not care what else happened.”

“
Bomani!” she whimpered. “You would do
that?”

“
Of course, My Love, anything!” he
insisted, kissing her neck while he held her to him. “I cannot lose
you.”

Ziba easily succumbed to her wish to pull
his face to hers and kiss him. “Then we have to run now!” she
enthused, holding his head between her hands.

“
Ziba, is that what has you so frantic?
Have we been discovered?”

She briefly debated whether to admit that
she had been confronted by a God, but, in the end, she decided that
she did not want to worry him over it. “I fear we may have. I
cannot live with this worry anymore, we must leave tonight!”

“
My Love, relax,” he pleaded. “We need
time to put together means of escape. I promise you, we will leave
by daybreak tomorrow. I must return to the men now. I will come for
you at dawn to take you away. Be ready, then.”

Ziba reached up on the tips of her toes to
kiss him. “I will be ready.”

With a smile, he disappeared around the
corner, out of Ziba’s view.

She felt like the world had been taken off
her shoulders as she strode toward the sanctuary to Kurshid and
prayed. It may have been wrong of her to do so, seeing as she would
be abandoning her position soon enough, but she wanted to appear
normal. However, all day, out of the corner of her eye, she
searched the room for Bomani. Several times she found him looking
back and the two shared secret smiles. The only storm cloud over
Ziba was the reminder that she would have to visit Mainyu that
night.

As the sun set behind the temple, Shireen
swept through the temple with a sour look marring her visage. Ziba
stood in the center of the room, putting off the inevitable as long
as she could, when her sister stepped up to her. “Sister,” she
greeted with a curt nod. “Lord Mainyu requests that you join him in
his chambers. He sounded…quite urgent.”

Ziba grunted an inaudible groan but nodded
nevertheless. “Thank you. I suppose I should see what he needs,
then.”

Shireen hummed in the affirmative, but her
face suggested otherwise.

Ziba’s stomach dropped. “What is the matter,
Sister?”

“
There is something about that man, Ziba.
I do not trust him and I do not like that you are seeing him alone.
It completely lacks propriety and it is wrong of him to ask it of
you when the consequences are so dire,” she explained, crossing her
arms.

“
I would never risk such a fate, Shireen,
you need not fear,” Ziba lied, inconspicuously clenching her
fists.

“
I trust you, Ziba,” she amended. “I fear
for you, though. You are so young…so naïve. It makes me nervous
when men show such an instant attraction to you. You do not know
yet what they are capable of.”

“
I do know,” Ziba said. “I do. I do not
risk harm, I assure you.”

Shireen bit the inside of her mouth. “What
is it that he speaks of when you are alone?”

“
Nothing of consequence, Shireen.”

Shireen nodded suspiciously but stepped out
of Ziba’s way. “Then I will not keep you away any longer.”

Ziba walked to Mainyu’s bedchamber like any
other would walk to their death. She cast aside the curtain
separating his room from all the others and slipped inside with the
quiet grace of a cat. She found him sitting up for the first time
since they found him, his abrasions all but healed, and his
expression twisted with rage.

“
Lord Main—” she bowed.

“
Do you think me a stupid mortal, Ziba?”
he demanded, turning the full force of his scowl on her.

Ziba staggered back like she had been
struck. “O…of course not, My Lord.”

“
Then do you think me blind or
deaf?”

Dread festered inside her and sweat beaded
up on her forehead. “I…I think n…nothing of the sort, M…My
L…Lord.”

“
Your fear gives you away,” he
snapped.

“
Gives what away?”

“
Do not test me, young one!” he snarled,
pulling himself to his feet. “I am a God! I heard everything of
your plans to leave with that mortal!”

Ziba’s gasp was the loudest sound in the
room for a long moment. She fell into a deep bow on the floor. “My
Lord, please forgive me! I was foolish to think of such a plan and
I was foolish to disobey you—!”

“
You test me, yet again! I am not a
simpleton, Ziba. I know you are only sorry that I was able to catch
you.”

“
No, My Lord, I swear—” she
sobbed.

“
But you would be unable to betray me ever
again if he were gone!” he growled.

Ziba went silent when he did. “What do you
mean?”

Mainyu smiled slightly. His jaw dropped as
low as it could as he gave a long, inhuman growl.

He erupted into a cloud of buzzing, black
smoke.

Ziba fell backward as the explosion sent the
dark vapor blowing into her face, leaving a slight burn on her
cheeks. Then, the smoke flew out the door, into the hallway, and
out of sight. Ziba sat there in the silence for only a moment
before the sound of bloodcurdling screams brought her flying to her
feet.

The hallway was empty as she ran headlong
toward the sanctuary where she had last seen Bomani, smiling back
at her. As she entered the main room, she halted mid-step when
Shireen’s arm caught her around the waist, keeping her from seeing
past the circle of people standing around the room. She heard
sobbing from some and screaming from others, and though she could
not see what they surrounded, she had a good idea of it and fought
against the arms binding her.

“
Ziba, you cannot go in there,” Shireen
snapped, pulling her sister down the hall the other way.

Ziba slid easily through Shireen’s arms and
crawled toward the crowd before she pulled herself up. “Ziba,
don’t!”

Ziba ignored her sister’s warning and fell
through the wall of onlookers into the emptiness within where only
one body lay on the cold floor.

All the sound around her melted away as Ziba
tried to recognize her love in the corpse that lay before her.
Black veins protruded from his grayish skin and his mouth was
hanging open, full to the brim with dark fluid. His eyes, wide open
and unseeing, had become the same shade of inky blackness.

Arms wrapped around her body, pulling her
back to her feet and away from the gruesome scene before her.
Shireen’s voice whispered comforting words in her ear, but she
couldn’t understand them. Any hope of escape was now gone. Any hope
of a life was now gone. Any hope of love was now
gone
.