The Dark God's Bride (Book 3) Page 18

  “No,” he said and then, shook his head. “And I don’t care.”

  It came true. All of her worries and fears came true. A part of her was relieved because now she didn’t have to wonder. At least now she was no longer in the dark with all of the questions that were slowly tearing her apart.

  “Free me!” he demanded crudely, yanking on the chains that were attached to his limbs. “Break the seal!”

  “Not until you get better.”

  “Insolent girl! If you make me repeat myself one more time, I will snap your slender neck!”

  “How are you going to break my neck if you can’t even break free? I’ll take my chances waiting for you to remember.”

  “Remember what?!” he growled impatiently.

  “I can’t tell you that now, can I?”

  “Who are you?”

  “That’s what you need to figure out.”

  A muscle in his jaw ticked irritably. His expression turned to a vicious sneer. “You will rue the day you challenged me, woman.”

  “I haven’t yet.”

  “You will.”

  “We’ll see,” she mumbled to herself. Her hands flew to her throbbing temples. “But first, I think I need some air and maybe a really strong drink.” She left the cellar and did exactly just that. She opened all of the doors and windows to let the air in and then poured herself a glass of one of Chevalier’s brandy bottles she found in the cabinets. The year on the label was 1885. It was a waste of aged brandy since she didn’t know how to drink, much less enjoy it. She chugged the entire glass in one gulp and winced at the burn in her throat.

  Chevalier was right. There were only two options for her. She chose to stay by his side and that was exactly what she was going to do. If this was ever going to work, she needed to be willing to work at it. If she was going to fight this battle with him – for him – she couldn’t be fighting herself too. No more ‘I can’t believe this happened’ and no more ‘I’m going to faint’ bits. Somehow, some way, she would have him back to the man he once was.

  Amara straightened her back and heaved a determined sigh. She rolled up her sleeves and went to the bathroom to fetch a basin of water, face towel, and a pair of scissors. She returned to the cellar with those items.

  “Release me, you insolent girl!”

  “Oh hush up. You’re just wasting your breath. I cried and begged you to release me before, and little good it did me. Think of it as karma.” She picked up the pair of scissors and approached him. He had a questioning look on his face as to what she intended to do with the weapon and then sneered at her. She rolled her eyes and then began to cut off the long sleeves off his shirt.

  “What torture is this?” He demanded.

  “My kind of torture,” she replied. She ripped off the severed sleeves and tossed them aside along with the scissors. Next, she unfastened the buttons of his shirt. She dipped the face towel in the water, gave it a good squeeze, and then used it to clean his face starting with his forehead. He was glaring at her and she knew he was thinking of the worst way to kill her after he broke free. She gave him a wry smile and then rinsed the towel before she started on his neck. “I’m not intimidated.”

  “You should be,” he said, his eyes glinting dangerously.

  “That’s the thing about fear. After you stare at it in the face long enough, you start to question why you fear it in the first place. The worst thing you can do to me is kill me and I’ve already been to the Realm of The Dead. It wasn’t really all that bad.”

  “But there are things I can do to you that are worse than a death sentence.”

  “I guess so, but you are not in any position to carry out those things now so it’s pointless of me to fear you.” She opened his shirt and worked her way down his lean chest to the tightly corded muscles that were his abs.

  “Just wait until I am in that position.”

  “Again with the threats.” She wrapped her arms around his bare torso and ran the wet towel across his broad shoulders and down his spine. “When you are in that position, you won’t want to hurt me.”

  “And why not?” he asked with a hint of curiosity.

  “When you remember, you’ll know why.” After she finished with his back, she rinsed the towel in the basin again. She rubbed the wet towel down the length of his arms and then cleaned his hands and individual fingers. He was observing her now in silent fascination. When she looked up at him, his briefly dropped his gaze on purpose and tugged a wicked grin across his face.

  “Go on,” he encouraged.

  She was forced to admit that she was a bit daunted by his challenge. They may have been lovers, but she was nowhere near brave enough to help him clean the lower parts of his body. She found herself blushing fiercely so she lowered her head to hide the tell-tale flush on her face. The candlelight was dim so he couldn’t possibly have seen it.

  “Well?” he taunted her.

  She lifted her chin, grey eyes framed by dark lashes popped up at him. The sneer on his face quickly diminished and in its place was a ghostly pale expression. For that one brief moment, she could have sworn he was the man she loved. He grunted and then recoiled. His eyes had gone bloodshot. He violently yanked on the chain and screamed out like a wounded animal. He was trapped, she painfully realized, not bound in chains or contained within the walls of the cellar, but inside the dark prison of his mind.

  “You!” he snarled at her accusingly. “Make it stop!”

  “I’m not doing it, I swear!”

  “Lying wench! There is a piercing pain ripping through my brain! Make it stop!”

  “Believe me,” she gasped out. She pressed the side of her face against the wall of his chest. “If I could take your pain unto myself, I would! I would!”

  She knew he didn’t believe her and she didn’t need him to. The important thing was that she meant it. She hated to see him like this. She hated to see him in pain. If only she could put him to sleep.

  There was a thought. The tranquilizers!

  She pushed away from him and sprinted neck or nothing upstairs. She searched the kitchen drawers for the things Chevalier gave her before he left. She found a small case of tranquilizers next to the cellphone and the stack of hundred dollar bills, grabbed a syringe, and then raced back down to the cellar. He was cursing at her as she approached him with the syringe. She calmed her nerves with a deep breath and then injected the tranquiller at the base of his neck. He was glaring at her with a passion to kill. His glare began to dull as the drug streamed through his veins. At last, he closed his eyes and slept.

  Amara dropped the syringe and shoved her hands at her mouth. She had never seen such intense hatred in his eyes before, as though he wanted to choke the life out of her where she stood. Those same eyes that once held her with warmth were now filled with cold loathing. She felt the muscles in her throat tense, becoming thick and heavy. Her head spun with nausea.

  I love you, Amara.

  “And I love you,” she responded to the fragment of memory.

  I would never allow myself to fail you again…

  “I won’t allow myself to fail you either.” She pressed a light kiss on his lips. “I will fight this battle alongside you. We’ll get through this… somehow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Good morning!”

  Amara greeted Noctis first thing in the morning. He was awake and he was probably awake for some time now. Tranquilizers could not keep immortals immobile for very long. Once they develop tolerance toward it, tranquilizers become no more effective than tap water. She needed to be careful on how and when to use the next doses.

  “I hope you are feeling better today.” She smiled at him. “Of course, you are. All you really needed was a good night’s sleep.” She needed one too. She didn’t sleep a wink last night. This morning when she looked at herself in the mirror, her eyes were noticeably swollen.

  His hostile glare followed her across the cellar. She put the clean water basin down next to him perhaps
a bit too close. When she bent down to soak the cloth, he kicked the basin and plashed water at her face. It was one of the many little ways he rebelled against her.

  “I was going to shower anyway,” she said, completely indifferent to his treatment of her. She lived through worst. She squeezed water out of the cloth in her hand and began to help him cleanse his face. He turned his head to the side to resist her attempt. “I’m going to head to town for a bit to do some grocery shopping and pick up some supplies. It’s actually quite a long drive there and back so I probably won’t be home before sunset. I’m telling you just in case you wonder where I am.”

  “Be gone, witch!” he spat at her.

  That gutted her deep. “You still think it was me that—”

  “Who else could it have been? You bombarded my head with those images in some kind of brainwashing attempt! What plans have you laid for me now that you have me chained to this despicable place? You might as well reveal your big agenda now. What is it that you wish to accomplish from all of this?”

  There lays the irony, Amara said to herself. She became the one with the ulterior motives. She became the one with the hidden agenda. If he established such a solid image of her inside his head, she could talk until she turned blue and it wouldn’t change a thing. She could bare her heart to him with every last ounce of conviction in her little body and he wouldn’t believe a single word. There was no point in trying.

  “What fun would it be if I give my agenda away?”

  “Now you are showing your true face.”

  “People have many faces, Noctis. The face you see may not be all to a person.”

  “Are you trying to teach me a lesson about human nature, woman?”

  “We can all learn a thing or two about human nature. You can call me Amara, by the way.”

  “I would rather not. I’m afraid that I will see you as a person instead of the evil bitch that you are.”

  “Ha,” she laughed dryly. “That’s novel. Really.”

  “Release me!”

  “In good time, I promise.”

  “Now!” he demanded as he gripped on the chains.

  She shook her head in refusal. “Not now.”

  “When?”

  “When you remember why you are here in the first place!”

  “My mind is blank!” he thundered. “Blank!”

  “Which is a damn good thing, I dare say.”

  “Do you think it is amusing to see a man struggling to remember his own name?”

  “It’s Summit and at one time, you called yourself Noctis.”

  “Among other things,” he added.

  “I would gladly answer any questions you have. Learn to ask.”

  “Starting with who are you?”

  The question felt like bucket of ice water poured over her body. She was hesitant to tell him because the pride that dwelled inside of her wanted him to remember her himself. If she told him that she was his lover, he would simply dismiss her as one of many. All that was special about her lied in his feelings for her, and if he couldn’t remember that…

  She wished her eyes could tell him what millions of words couldn’t express. She wished he could gaze directly into her soul and see for himself that she was not as evil and calculating as he painted her.

  Her prayer was answered when she found him staring back at her in the same trance he had been in when he first saw her through the door crack. She seized the moment and kissed him. She lured him like she always did and he responded, or at least his muscle memory did, with the same hunger and lust shared in their previous kisses. And they had shared so many of those kisses that it had become second nature. The chemistry between them was as thick as glue and it bonded them together so seamlessly that one couldn’t be removed from the other without causing damage to either of them.

  Their kiss was the perfect blending of love and lust and everything in between. It ended with one of them being stunned and the other, breathless.

  “Who are you?” He repeated the question, though this time it was less vindictive and more inquisitive.

  “I’m a feeling,” she whispered to him the closest thing to truth. “If you remember that feeling, you’ll remember me.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s getting late. I should go to town now if I want to get back before dark.”

  “Get back here and explain!”

  “That is all the explanation I can give you. Now, do you want me to get you anything from town?” She asked him before she headed up the stairs.

  He was trying to stretch an inch out of the metal chains to get closer to her. “Get back here!”

  “I’ll be back later this evening.”

  Amara showered and then changed. She took Chevalier’s jeep and drove down a dirt path that conformed to the shape of the terrain. She had trouble navigating to town the first time with only Chevalier’s terse instructions, but she had an easier trip the second time around.

  The small town of Waydale was nestled between the mountains with a population of under four hundred. The buildings were spare and the shops were simple. They only sold the essentials and that was pretty much it. The charming town was at least a hundred years behind the times. She would bet everyone knew each other because stares followed her wherever she went.

  She made a few quick stops to buy enough clothes, canned food, and other miscellaneous items to last months. That earned even more stares.

  “You’ve bought a lot of things there,” a rugged man in a beige cowboy hat said to her when she loaded the things she bought on the back of the jeep. “Here, let me lend you hand.” He voluntarily helped her load the supplies.

  Where she came from, the big city, people usually minded their own business. To have a complete stranger offer a helping hand brought out some cynical feelings. But this was a small town, Amara reminded herself. She shouldn’t doubt these gentle folk.

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you new in town?”

  “Why, yes. I’m on vacation.”

  “It looks like you’re staying for a while,” the man hinted at the case of canned food in his hands. “For business or for pleasure?”

  “Um… pleasure, I guess.” Though she hadn’t seen any bit of it since she arrived. She hadn’t had any decent sleep for the last couple of nights.

  “Don’t tell me a little lady like you is staying up the mountain all by yourself.”

  She couldn’t tell a complete stranger about the unstable deity locked up in her cellar. “I’m a big girl,” she replied with a smile. “I can take care of myself.”

  “I live up there, too. Maybe we’ll run into each other sometime.”

  “Maybe. Well, thank you Mister…”

  “Jake. Please call me Jake.”

  “Thank you, Jake. I’m Amara.”

  “The pleasure was mine, Amara.” He helped pull down the rear door after he pushed the last of the cases in. “Look like it’s going to rain so you should be careful. I hope to see you again very soon.”

  She smiled at him as she rounded the car to the driver’s seat. She secured the seatbelt, adjusted the mirrors, and then began the drive back to the cabin. It did rain like Jake said, but it was more of a light shower, which Amara was grateful for. If it was really pouring, the dirt road would turn to mud and that would have been a hellish walk back to the cabin.

  Luckily, she got back before dark. She parked the jeep in front of the cabin and brought in the fresh groceries. She left the rest of the jeep unloaded for a sunnier day. She wouldn’t want to get sick in this kind of weather. If she had, there would be no one to take care of them both. She started up the propane stove and prepared dinner for that evening: chicken pasta, salad, and cool tea. Living without a running refrigerator was a pain in the neck because once the fresh produce expired after a couple of days, canned food would be the only thing on the menu.

  After dinner, she paid the man in the cellar a visit be
cause she felt guilty that he might be suffering from neglect. She was partly right. The ceiling was leaking water on him and he was less than ecstatic about it.

  “Oh my…” She ran back upstairs to look for an umbrella. She found an old dusty umbrella sitting in the corner of the closet. She ran back down the cellar with the umbrella and a large bath towel. She opened the umbrella to cover him despite the old superstition. “I’m so sorry. I would have come sooner if I knew this would happen.” She pressed the towel on his face and neck to dry him. “How long has it been leaking?”

  “Too long,” he muttered. “This is a crime of the most heinous nature.”

  She suppressed a giggle. “I know it’s beyond forgiveness, but you must try. I just got back from town.”

  “Another lie,” he said. “You came back a little over an hour ago.”

  “…Alright, you got me. I had to make dinner. Unlike you, I need sustenance to survive and I haven’t eaten anything since morning. I was awfully hungry.”

  “What do I have to do for you to rid me of these chains? There is very little I wouldn’t do so you might as well present your case.”

  “I told you. There is nothing I want from you.”

  “Then, why are you keeping me here?”

  “Because you are a dangerous man.”

  Being his egotistical self, he said, “At last, you are making sense!”

  “Your chains were earned, I can tell you that much. What am I going to do about the leaking ceiling? This place is old so it must be a structural problem. I don’t know anything about home improvement and I can’t hire people to fix it. They’ll see you and then put me away for life.”

  The rain was unrelenting as the hours rolled by. Amara shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other and then back again. She switched the umbrella from one tired hand to the other and then back again. The feeling of sleepiness finally caught up to her after too many sleepless nights. She was drifting in and out of sleep.

  “Don’t waste your time to win me over with your little act. I will still break your pretty little neck when I rid myself of these chains.”