do what you want to them.”
The trio blocking his path broke apart, allowing him to sail inside the narrow hallway without pause, then everyone filed behind him, their footfalls offering only the slightest whisper. Battery-powered lamps illuminated the hieroglyph-covered walls. Sabin allowed his gaze to rest on those glyphs for only a second, but that was long enough to burn the images into his mind. They showed one prisoner after another being ushered to a cruel execution, hearts removed while they still beat inside their chests.
Human scents coated the stale, dusty air: cologne, sweat, an assortment of foods. How long had the Hunters been here? What were they doing here? Had they already found the artifact?
The questions skated through his mind, and his demon latched on to them. As Doubt, it couldn’t help itself. Clearly they know something you do not. It might be enough to topple you. Your friends could very well take their last breaths this night.
Doubt could not lie, not without causing Sabin to pass out cold. It could only use derision and supposition to topple its victims. He’d never understood why a fiend from hell couldn’t utilize deceit—best he could come up with was that the demon carried a curse of its own—but he’d long since accepted it. Not that he’d allow himself to topple this night. Keep it up and I’ll spend the next week sequestered in my bedroom, reading so I can’t think too much.
But I need to feed, was the whined reply. The worry it caused was its greatest nourishment.
Soon.
Hurry.
Sabin held up his hand, stopped, and the warriors behind him stopped as well. There was a chamber up ahead, its doorway already open. The sound of voices and footsteps echoed, perhaps even the buzz of a drill.
The Hunters were indeed distracted and begging for an ambush. I’m just the man to give it to them.
Are you, really? the demon began, Sabin’s threat unheeded. Last time I checked—
Forget about me. I’ve supplied you with food as promised.
There was a gleeful exclamation inside his head, and then Doubt was opening its mind to the Hunters inside the pyramid, whispering all manner of destructive thoughts. All for nothing…what if you’re wrong…not strong enough…could soon die…
Conversation tapered away. Someone might even have whimpered.
Sabin held up a finger, then another. When he raised the third, he and the warriors jumped into motion, a war cry echoing.
CHAPTER TWO
GWENDOLYN THE TIMID SHRANK against the far wall of her glass cell the moment the horde of too-tall, too-muscled, too-bloody warriors charged into the chamber she’d both loved and hated for over a year. Loved, for being inside of it would have meant she was out of her cell, freedom a possibility. Hated, for all the torturous deeds that had taken place there. Deeds she’d witnessed and feared.
The very men who had performed those deeds gave startled cries, dropping their Petri dishes, needles, vials and various tools. Glass shattered. Savage roars boomed, the intruders leaping forward with practiced menace, their arms slashing, their legs kicking. Down, down their targets fell. There was no question about who would win this fight.
Gwen trembled, unsure what would happen to her and the others when things settled. The warriors were clearly inhuman, like her, like all the women locked in the cells surrounding hers. They were too hard, too strong, too everything to be mortal. Exactly what they were, however, she didn’t know. Why were they here? What did they want?
She’d known so many disappointments this last year that she didn’t dare hope they’d come on a rescue mission. Would she and the others be left here to rot? Or would these men try and use them as the detestable humans had done?
“Kill them!” one of the captured shouted to the new warriors, the sound of her hard, angry voice causing Gwen to draw her arms around her middle. “Make them suffer as we have suffered.”
The glass that kept the women removed from the outside world was thick, impenetrable by fist or even bullet, yet every heartbreak inside the chamber and cells was a blast inside Gwen’s ears.
She knew how to block the noise, something her sisters had taught her to do as a young child, but she desperately wanted to hear her captors’ defeat. Their grunts of pain were like midnight lullabies to her. Soothing and sweet.
But strong as the warriors obviously were, they never once delivered a deathblow. Oddly, they merely wounded their prey, knocking them unconscious before focusing on the next opponent. And after what seemed too-short seconds but had probably been minutes, only one human was left standing. The worst of the lot.
One of the warriors stepped forward, approaching him. Though all the newcomers had possessed lethal skill, this one had fought the dirtiest, going for the groin, the throat. He raised his arm as if to render the final blow, but then Gwen’s wide-eyed gaze caught his and he paused. Slowly he lowered his arm.
Her breath caught. Brown hair soaked with blood was plastered to his head. His eyes were the color of brandy, deep and dark, and they, too, were threaded with crimson. Impossible. Surely she imagined the wild glow. His face, so roughly hewn it could only have been carved from granite, promised destruction in its every line and hollow, though there was something almost…boyish about him. A startling contradiction.
His shirt had been slashed to ribbons, rope after rope of sun-kissed muscle visible every time he moved. Oh, the sun. How she missed it, craved it. A violet butterfly tattoo wrapped around his right rib cage and dipped into the waist of his pants. The points of its wings were razored, making it appear at once feminine and masculine. Why a butterfly? she wondered. Seemed odd that such a strong, vicious warrior would have chosen it. Whatever the reason, the mark somehow comforted her.
“Help us,” she said, praying the immortal could hear through soundproof glass as she could. But if he heard her, he gave no indication. “Free us.” Still no reaction.
What if they leave you here? Or worse, what if they’re here for the same reason as the humans?
The thoughts filled her head suddenly, and she frowned, perhaps even paled. The fears weren’t out of place; she’d wondered the exact same things only a short while ago. But these were somehow different…foreign. They were not her own, not spoken in her own inner voice. How…what…?
Sharp white teeth sank into the man’s bottom lip as he clawed at his temples, clearly infuriated.
What if—
“Stop!” he snarled.
The thought forming inside her head halted abruptly. She blinked in confusion. The warrior shook his head, scowl intensifying.
Distracted as the immortal clearly was, her human tormentor decided to act, closing the remaining distance between them.
Gwen straightened, calling, “Look out!”
Attention remaining fixed on Gwen, the granite-faced warrior reached out an arm and grabbed the human by the neck, choking and stopping him at the same time. The man—Chris was his name—flailed. He was young, perhaps twenty-five,
