Sevin: Lords of Satyr (6 page)

Goblet still clasped in one white-knuckled hand, Luc grunted a grudging assent and rose. But the instant he stood, he stumbled and let out a guttural cry. His free hand reached out blindly and found Sevin’s sleeve, gripping his arm hard, as if needing a lifeline.

Sevin steadied him. “I’ve got you. You’re all right.”

But Luc only laughed, a hollow, aching sound that sent a knife of empathy stabbing deep into Sevin’s marrow. “No, brother. I’m not all right,” Luc muttered cryptically. Something in his tone went odd then, and he bit out three final words. “Not. At. All.”

“What the hells?” Sevin heard someone say. Dane. But then his brothers and everything around him began to waver, like a scene on a distant horizon viewed through the sweltering summer heat. The carousel music sounded garish and tinny to his ears and its spinning made him dizzy. He fought to breathe.

And then, suddenly, Sevin was bathed in darkness. Not the kind in which you could make out shapes once you got accustomed to it. No, this darkness was the black pit of his brother’s nightmares.

S
evin hunkered down in a crouch, his survival instinct kicking in.

There was movement near him.

“Luc?” he ventured.

“Here.”

“Anyone else?”

Silence.

Luc still gripped his arm, he realized. Sevin twisted, reversing their hold so that he now gripped Luc’s forearm. With his other hand he reached out into nothingness. Total and complete blackness. He stood and stepped out blindly, tugging Luc behind him.

After a few steps, his fingers made contact with something cool and solid. A rock wall, uneven in places and roughhewn. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the steady trickle of water.

“Where are we?” he wondered aloud.

“Catacombs.” The word was a thready monotone from his brother’s lips. “The tunnels below the Patrizzi house.”

“What? How the fuck did we get down here?” If these were in fact the very subterranean tombs in which Luc had been imprisoned for twelve years, he had to get them out of here. Luc’s grip on sanity was tenuous enough without subjecting him to this abomination.

“Don’t know,” said Luc.

Still holding on to his brother, Sevin moved forward, feeling along the wall with his opposite hand. “Well, figure it out so we can get back to the salon. Gods, I thought this place had been destroyed when Dane found you.”

“This is a different section than the one that caved in,” said Luc. “But I well recall the general stench down here.”

Other than the smell of cool earth, Sevin detected no such stench. He took the fact that the air was not stale as a positive sign. Perhaps they were close to some sort of exit. But he didn’t correct his brother. Luc had had a dozen cruel years to memorize every nuance of this place. If he said he recognized its scent, then he recognized it.

Sevin continued moving down the corridor in what he hoped was the direction of the water sound, pulling an unresisting Luc behind him. “Has this happened to you before?” he asked Luc. “This instantaneous traveling?”

“Some,” Luc admitted dully. “Only when these headaches are at their worst.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it?” Sevin felt rather than saw Luc’s shrug.

“I’m freak enough without adding to my repertoire, don’t you think? Besides, I’ve taken inanimate objects for the ride before, but never another person,” said Luc. “And never so far in one go.”

When Dane had come to Luc’s rescue some months ago, Luc had somehow moved an overhead beam support, causing the cave-in that had killed Alexa’s mother and brother—his jailers. He hadn’t done it with his hands, but with his mind, Dane had said. This had been the first inkling his brothers had of his otherworldly talents. Luc had been tight-lipped when it came to anything regarding those, so they’d learned little more of them in the months since.

“How do you usually get back to where you came from? In the same way? As quickly?” Sevin demanded, his mind racing. They had already drunk the elixir. When the moon came, they would both feel it, even down here where they could not see it. And then they would both require the surcease of a woman’s flesh.

This didn’t worry him particularly, for he knew he could conjure Shimmerskins. He had done so often enough before in the salon. But he didn’t know how adversely a night in this place would affect his brother. Luc teetered on the edge of madness as it was. A night spent here might topple him into the abyss. They had to get out.

“It’s not something I can direct,” Luc said, sounding frustrated. “It has only happened a few times before. Each time, it has taken longer to return to my starting point.”

The wall Sevin had been feeling his way along abruptly ended. Reaching out, he searched for something to hang on to. Finding another wall at right angles, he forged onward. “We can’t wait for some serendipitous magic to transport us. We’ll have to get out on our own.”

But after they’d wandered on for what felt like hours, but was surely far less, he had to admit defeat, for now anyway. The time for thoughts of escape was at an end until morning. For tonight, he needed to find a place off the main corridor, somewhere they could pass the night. A room or cul-de-sac that would afford a modicum of safety from interlopers, should there be any.

After only a dozen or so feet, the wall ended again, this time turning through a doorway. They were in a room now. The splashing sound of water was far louder here. His hand bumped something. A chair, no, it was bigger, ornate and polished. More like a throne. He pushed Luc down to sit on it. As he did so, he realized Luc still held his wine goblet, something he hadn’t noticed before.

“Stay here. Don’t move,” Sevin told him. On his own, he began roaming the perimeter of the room, feeling his way. There were leather trunks stacked along the walls and statues standing taller than he. There were other pieces of furniture and statuary, many of them made of fine cloth or smooth stone.

A few more steps, and Sevin inadvertently kicked something that clanked noisily. Bending, he lifted and felt of it. An urn studded with stones, perhaps jewels. One that hummed with magic. Everything here did.

Luc’s strained voice reached him. “Where are we?”

“A storage place of some sort, filled with what feels to my touch like ancient treasures. Every one of them made by ElseWorld hands and tainted with the magic of that world.”

At the back wall of the room, Sevin discovered the source of the trickling sound. An enormous fountain of some kind stood there, bubbling fresh water that sprang from some unknown source into a series of small pools incorporated into it.

Who had brought all of this here and what it all meant must remain a mystery for the moment. Artifacts were his eldest brother’s specialty, not his. When he and Luc found their way out of here, he’d send Bastian back to investigate.
If
they found their way out.

At this point, these treasures were less important than the room itself. It was surprisingly clean and well kept, its stone floor covered with rugs. The profusion of ElseWorld magic in these objects had apparently kept the chamber free of rodents, insects, dust, or mold. To find a haven of this quality in which to pass the night was a timely gift from the gods.

For all too soon, his and Luc’s minds and bodies must become engaged in hedonistic pursuits to the exclusion of all else. Under the moon’s thrall, they would forget themselves. They would become vulnerable.

“Luc?”

“Mmm.”

“Unless you can get us back to the salon soon, we’re going to have to spend the Calling night here.”

Luc let out a harsh breath. “It’s not something I can control. Believe me, if it were, do you think I’d have brought us here?” He sounded at the end of his rope.

Fuck.
“Stay calm. I can bespell the perimeter, and we’ll be relatively safe here. We’ll make do with Shimmerskins, just like any other Calling night, so—. Wait, that’s it. Damn, why didn’t I think of it earlier? Their skin is luminescent. They can serve as living lamps to lead us out of here!”

Concentrating, Sevin gazed into the endless darkness and focused his mind in an attempt to conjure several of the insentient females. At his silent command, the air should have begun to vibrate. Mist should have spun and glimmered, then stilled, shapeshifting. Iridescent forms should have risen from the vapor and solidified into the females who had serviced the Satyr since ancient times.

But none of that happened.

And when it didn’t, he was disoriented. The ability to bring forth Shimmerskins had been with him since he was eighteen and in the throes of his first Calling. To a Satyr male, losing this ability was akin to losing the ability to speak or to hear. “They’re not coming,” he said, trying to sound calmer than he felt. “You try.”

“I
was
trying,” said Luc. “Same result as yours. Nothing. Has this ever happened to you before?”

“No, but then I’ve never tried to bring them forth while in the depths of hell,” Sevin snapped.

Luc sighed. “Nor I. I was seventeen when I was freed from these catacombs. Didn’t yet have the power to conjure them.”

Sevin ran a hand through his hair, his mind working to formulate a plan. Any plan. Roman catacombs were known to stretch for miles, with twists and turns that had never been mapped. Men had died in them, their skeletons simply swept into the enclosures with the bones of other long-dead men. Well, by the gods, he wasn’t going to let his brother, who’d already suffered so direly in these very tombs, die here in them tonight!

Luc’s voice came, stark in the silence. “Damn, I’m sorry, Sevin. I didn’t mean to bring you here with me.”

“There’s no one I’d rather be lost with, brother. Don’t worry. We’ll get out of here. Even if I have to claw our way out with my bloody fingers.”

They’d be dead by morning if he didn’t. Judging by the changes he felt beginning in his body, they had only twenty minutes or so until the moon came. If the Satyr didn’t mate with females from dusk to dawn on a Calling night, they did not survive. Simple fact.

“Let’s go.” Sevin found Luc again and pulled him by one arm back out into the corridor.

“I see something,” Luc murmured almost immediately. “A light. There.”

Since he couldn’t see anything, Sevin had no idea in which way his brother was pointing. He plumbed the depths of the blackness around them in all directions. Then, to his right, he saw a winking glow in the distance.

“A shade from the ElseWorld hells?” Luc speculated with black humor.

Smugglers, more like,
Sevin speculated silently. But whoever it was held their salvation in his grasp—a gas lamp. Determined not to spook their savior, he clapped a silencing hand over his brother’s mouth and shoved him back into the room. Luc shrugged off this touch, but Sevin hardly noticed, for the gesture had become a familiar one since Luc had returned from these very bowels less than one year ago.

The pale vision rushed onward, moving toward them. The lantern swayed back and forth in its hand. Its golden light flickered wildly, alternately revealing the stone walls of the corridor and their visitor’s long, flowing gown. A woman? What was a lone woman doing down here? And what was she running from?

His nostrils flared slightly. The Satyr had keen senses, and before he saw her face, Sevin recognized her by scent. It was none other than Alexa Patrizzi! Her pale hair was down and tousled as if she had just risen from sleep.

Alongside him, Luc snarled, recognizing her a split second later.

At the sound, she froze uncertainly. The arm holding the lantern jerked, banging against the cavern wall.

“No!” Sevin leaped for it, but before he could get his hands on it, it clattered to the stone floor, its precious light extinguished.

“Who’s there?” Alexa demanded in frightened tones. Soft footsteps, a muffled thud. “Ow!”

“Be still. You’ll hurt yourself. Wait till I can get the light on again,” he told her.

“Lord Satyr?”

“Sevin,” he confirmed as he knelt and searched by feel for the lamp. “How far are we from an exit? Can you lead us out of here?” He purposely failed to mention his brother’s presence. No need to spook her even more.

“I don’t know. I—” She paused uncertainly.

“You’re lost?”

Silence.

“Did you just nod?” His hand touched warm glass and metal.

“Yes.”

Damn.
“What are you doing down here alone this time of night?” he demanded as he concentrated on relighting the lantern he’d found at last.

A telling silence. “I’m subject to nocturnal wanderings,” she said at length. “Somnambulism.”

“You sleepwalk?” She was lying. When they’d first seen her, she’d been fleeing something, or someone.

“You’re the one trespassing,” Alexa countered in that prissy way he now recognized as a shield she put up when she was uncertain or afraid.

“We came to be here accidentally. Not on foot but in an instant, through a burst of unexpected magic,” Sevin told her.

“We?”

“My brother is here.”

“Which one?” she asked cautiously.

“Luc. The youngest.”

“Oh.”

Silence thickened the blackness around them as Sevin worked at the lamp, twisting the mechanism to get it to catch. Coaxing it to light again was paramount at the moment, but as he worked at it his mind sorted through their possible options. Trying to figure out how to turn this crock-of-crap situation they were in into something resembling survival, he zeroed in on what was paramount and disregarded the rest.

Fact one: It was now too close to Moonful to search their way out of this place in time for what was coming, even with a lantern. He and Luc were stuck here for the duration.

Fact two: Their Satyr blood would soon rage out of control, their bodies undergoing physical changes that would call them to mate with a female. To ignore this call was to perish.

Fact three: For some reason, the gods had seen fit to send this particular female—his family’s enemy—into his orbit tonight. Not once, but twice. And unless a miracle occurred that transported Luc and him from this pit in the next quarter hour, it was going to become necessary for them to mate her tonight. Until dawn.