Will shook his head slowly, whispering in his mind, in her mind, “Oh, Sarafina, don’t be such a fool.”
Sarafina glared at her sister in triumph, but then she went still at the look Katerina returned. It was cold, steely and deadly.
Before she could begin to understand what that look might mean, there was a horrifying scream that rent the night from somewhere beyond the camp. Everyone went stiff and still for one brief moment, as if the sound had turned them all to stone.
“No. For the love of Devel, not again,” someone whispered. Will thought it was Gervaise, the reigning chieftain of the tribe. He didn’t know what Gervaise meant and wondered if he was about to find out.
But before he could learn anything further, he was shocked out of the fantasy by the sensation of his lungs slowly filling with ice water.
A hand clasped him by his hair and jerked his head out of the tub of frigid water. Will dragged in a desperate, hungry breath, before that hand shoved his head into the tub again, holding him under.
His hands were bound together behind his back, his legs bound at the ankles. His body screamed with pain, pain he had managed to escape only moments before. But all that dulled beside the stabbing need in his lungs as they spasmed in search of air. Small red explosions danced behind his tightly closed eyes. He was going to pass out, and then he would drown.
The hand jerked him out of the water again, and even as Will sucked in greedy, noisy breaths, slammed him down into a small, ladder-back chair.
Water ran from his hair and face, soaking his ragged, filthy shirt.
A bearded man wearing a spotless white headdress lifted Will’s chin and stared down at him, then spoke to one of the guards, using one of the tribal dialects in which Will was fluent, though he had managed to keep that fact from them…thus far.
“He has returned to his body. You may resume the torture now.”
“Why should we waste our time? He will only leave again when the pain becomes too much for him. How does he do it? Where does he go?”
The first man shrugged, crossing the floor of the cave to where a fire had been burning earlier. It was now a bed of glowing coals. They’d placed long iron rods in the embers, and it was one of these the man pulled out, using a piece of fabric as a makeshift pot holder. The hotter end was neon-orange and reminded Will of the beer sign hanging in his favorite bar back home.
“Now, Colonel Stone,” the man said, speaking heavily accented English. “You will tell me what I wish to know.”
“I’ve told you already,” he said softly, though it hurt like hell to talk, because of his split, swollen lips and the dryness of his throat. “There are no American spies in your training camps.”
There were, actually. There were thirteen, to be exact, and Will knew who they were, what names they were using and what camps they had infiltrated. They would have received word of his capture by now. They would remember their training, and they would know exactly what to do, where to go, when to meet there for extraction. It would take them another forty-eight hours to get out of harm’s way, he thought. Judging the passage of time was tricky, given the circumstances.
He had to hold out until the men were safely out of the country.
“If there are no spies, then how do the Americans always seem to know our plans?”
Will didn’t shrug. The movement would have hurt too much. “Technology?”
The man laid the cherry-red end of the iron flat across Will’s chest. The pain was beyond bearing, and he tipped his head back and grated his teeth against it, while the smell of his own burning flesh choked him.
Even when the rod was lifted away, the pain remained. Burning, scorching pain deep inside him. He closed his eyes, tried to find that place inside his mind where he’d been hiding before. That place where the pain couldn’t reach him. He saw the woman, standing far in the distant reaches of his subconscious. Sarafina, the dark, exotic fantasy woman who lived out her tales in his mind so vividly that she swept him away from the torture, the pain.
He’d stumbled upon her quite by accident, when they had beaten him nearly unconscious. He’d been hovering on the edge of oblivion when he’d seen her in his mind’s eye. Just her eyes, glowing black eyes. He found himself focusing on those eyes, getting caught in them, sinking slowly into their black-water depths, into darkness. He’d felt himself sinking deeper, and as he did, the pain vanished. Once it fell away behind him, he emerged on the other side, in some other place and time, as a silent, invisible observer of the woman’s life.
Ever since that first time, he’d found he could use the pain to find that place again. The trick was to just give himself over to the agony, not to fight it, but to embrace it. And then he would close his eyes and search for hers. All he had to do was find her eyes, stare into them, and he would sink again into her world, where the pain couldn’t reach him.
She was pure fantasy, as was her story. He knew that. But she was also his salvation. And the salvation of those thirteen Americans who would be tortured to death unless he kept their names secret.
So he closed his eyes as they placed the hot brands on his skin. He relaxed his jaw and tried not to fight the pain. He let the pain drive him closer to her, closer, until she turned and faced him. Her eyes opened wide as he fixed his upon them and rushed willingly into their cool black depths. Then he was completely immersed, having left his body far, far behind. He swam, every stroke taking him farther. And he wondered if one of these times his captors would do him the favor of simply killing him, so that he could remain in that other place. But would it remain, opening, welcoming him inside? His own custom-imagined heaven? Or would it vanish as his brain cells slowly died?
At this point, he wasn’t certain he cared.
2
F or only a moment, Sarafina felt an alien presence in her mind. As if someone else, someone unseen, were watching her. Watching over her.
Many times she had felt this unknown presence. Many times. She sensed him-and yes, she knew he was male, though how she knew, she could not have said. He felt male. He was protective of her. He filled her with warmth and a sensation of security. As if there were one all-powerful spirit in the entire world, and its only job was to take care of her. Love her. Watch over her.
She thought of him as her guardian. Her guide. And each time he came, she thought she came a bit closer to being able to see him, speak to him, touch him. She’d heard him this time-very briefly, but clearly.
She tried to focus on her beloved spirit, but he seemed to withdraw. Fina sighed in stark disappointment before shaking away the feeling, and hurrying to join the others, who were already racing into the woods, toward the sound of the horrible screams. Like her, most of them knew already what they would find.
She was the fastest runner, despite her ill health of late. More than that, she knew exactly where to go. How she knew, she could not have said. Some dark instinct led her, and she didn’t question it. She was a gifted diviner and a Shuvani. Knowing things she oughtn’t know was a part of that. So she quickly caught up to the tribe, then broke off from them, veering through the woods at an angle that led her unerringly to the spot.
She came upon the two of them moments before
