Dark Sins and Desert Sands (13 page)

She didn’t remember exactly what happened next. She only remembered the after-spasms that rocked her as Ray enveloped her in his arms.

My touch starves the guilty

My army feeds the poor

The preachers use me weekly

But the sinners need me more.

S
alvation or damnation.
Looking at Layla, he still couldn’t say which she was. He only knew that she’d wrecked him. Utterly wrecked him. He’d been desperate for her, but she’d been more desperate for him. He’d never felt needed in bed before. Wanted, yes. Lusted after, sure. But needed? No.

She’d let herself be safe in his arms, and now he felt a very real responsibility to never, ever let her down. Watching her as she slept, he thought he’d kill anyone who ever tried to hurt her.

When her eyelashes finally fluttered open, she said,
“You don’t have to keep watch. I’m not going to run away.”

He felt himself flush. “Maybe I just like looking at you.”

She lowered her lashes. “I’m not a statue.”

“No,” he said. “You’re a puzzle. This whole thing is a puzzle. A little new for me.”

“You’ve never slept with a woman before me?”

“Sure, I have,” he said, and he wasn’t lying. Serving four tours of duty made it difficult to maintain relationships, but there’d always been willing women that he cared about. Maybe even thought that he loved. It just hadn’t been like this.

“For some reason, I thought you were a Muslim,” Layla murmured.

“I am… I was. I dunno,” he fumbled to explain, caught off guard. “My family practiced progressive Islam. My mother only wore a
hijab
to the mosque. My father and I were less devout. He liked to say that he’s more Greek than Syrian.”

Thinking about his family made him wonder how they’d reacted to his disappearance. It may have been his mother’s instinct to wear down her knees in prayer, but he was equally sure that his father would have seen Ray’s disappearance as one more reason not to believe in God. And Ray wasn’t sure he could blame him.

“Mostly, I grew up just like everybody else,” Ray said.

“Ah. All very Americanized.”

Was that judgment he heard in her voice? He’d spent two years being told how un-American he was. He didn’t feel like debating whether or not he was a bad
Muslim. “Yeah. Well, I drink but I don’t get drunk. I don’t eat bacon if that’s what you’re wondering.”

He knew that wasn’t what she was wondering. Strict Muslims weren’t supposed to have sex outside of marriage. Then again neither were Christians or Jews but nobody seemed to bat an eyelash when they lived their lives according to their own rules. His family had always fasted during Ramadan and venerated all the prophets including Mohammed, Moses and Jesus. But Ray had also been raised to believe in the autonomy of the individual in interpreting the
Qur’an.
Ray had never seen anything wrong with enjoying a woman’s company in bed or out of it.

Layla shifted so that her head was on his shoulder. He liked the way her hair fanned out on his arm. It was dark and shiny as ebony. She pressed her lips to an old, faded military tattoo on his arm. A bald eagle. “Your family must have been proud of you when you joined the army.”

“They were actually pretty pissed,” Ray confessed, and not just about the tattoo, which his mother denounced as a defacement of his body. They were also angry that he enlisted. He was supposed to be an engineer like his father, or a lawyer like his brother. He was supposed to go to college and get the fancy education his parents had saved up for all their lives. Instead, the day after his eighteenth birthday—ten days after his brother blew his brains out—the Twin Towers in New York City came tumbling down. The whole world seemed to be falling apart, and enlisting seemed like the only way to fix it. He didn’t know how to explain all that to Layla, so he said, “The military needed translators and I spoke Arabic. It made sense at the time.
Each tour of duty, I spent about eighteen months fighting in the Sandbox, then a year stateside training other soldiers.”

Her fingers idly traced his arm. “With skills like yours, you could’ve made a lot more money as a civilian contractor…”

“Probably, but I’m not a damned mercenary.” He hadn’t meant it as a rebuke but the wounded look in her eye told him that she’d taken it personally. He just kept talking, hoping to push past it. “In any case, eventually the army bonuses were lucrative enough that I could help my parents out. They’ve had a tough time raising my nephews. Kids are expensive.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she murmured, and disentangled herself from his arms. He was already blowing it, and he wished he knew what he’d said wrong, but before he could ask, she said, “There’s something I need to show you. I don’t know if it will give you the answers you’re looking for, but maybe you can make more sense of it than I can.”

He sat up and his gaze was still lazy and lustful as he watched her smooth her denim skirt back over her hips. It gratified him to see that she stood on shaky legs. She padded over to the closet and showed him the safe, opening it to reveal a stash that would be the envy of any government operative. Money. Guns. Official documents under different aliases. His eyes widened and he pulled his pants back on, coming to her side in three strides.

“What do you think it means?” Layla asked.

“I dunno,” he said, flipping through her passports. “You don’t recognize any of this stuff?”

“I was hoping you might.”

Ray explained, “I helped gather intel but I don’t know shit about serious spook stuff.” That’s when he noticed she was holding a folder. Clutching it, really. “You gonna show me what’s in that?”

She drew her lips together and shook her head, but didn’t stop him when he pulled the folder from her fingers. Ray wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see inside, but the photos of the dead men shook him. Strangled men, hanged men, asphyxiated men. “What the hell is this?”

“I don’t know,” she breathed. “Suicides. I think some of them are men who killed themselves at black ops sites. I think I questioned them.”

Ray slammed the folder shut, trying to block out the way the word
suicide
still echoed in his ears. It was an ugly word. One that sent his mother into shrieking hysterics. One that left him with a hollowness inside that wouldn’t ever go away. Sweat broke out across his brow and the air seemed stifled. How hadn’t he noticed how small this room was before?

It didn’t seem possible that it could fit the two of them and the bed, too. “I need some air.”

She followed him out onto the deck in the back, and he had a hard time looking at her. He kept his gaze steady over the desert below. “I’m sorry. I have trouble with—”

“Enclosed spaces,” she finished for him.

Ray marveled at the grandness of the view, the golden arc of beauty as the sun set over the mountains. They really were alone out here. There wasn’t another cabin for miles. “I guess I’m claustrophobic.”

“It’s post-traumatic stress disorder,” Layla said. “I
know what you’ve been through, Ray. I saw it in your mind.”

“Is there a cure?”

She hesitated. “Sometimes. Therapy sometimes helps. After what you’ve been through, I think you’re going to need a lot of it. When all this is over, you’re going to need to trust somebody.”

“Right now, I only trust this,” Ray said, pulling her into his lap, and she smiled at the way he echoed her earlier words. They sat together watching butterflies dancing amongst the desert flowers, when her stomach growled.

“Are you hungry?” Ray asked.

She nodded and looked a little bit astonished. “I actually think I am. I want to shower, and get dressed, and eat something…delicious.”

“I didn’t see anything but beans and soup in your pantry,” Ray said. “But I’ll give it a shot if you want to go ahead and get cleaned up while I cook.”

“You want to cook? For me?”

“Don’t expect five-star service, but I can heat up some soup.” He took another deep breath of the great outdoors. It steadied him. “Just go and shower and it’ll give me a few minutes to get myself together.”

In the shower, Layla
remembered.
She remembered all of it.

Like a crumbling antechamber of an ancient pyramid, something inside her gave way and the buried treasure came spilling forth in all its beauty and horror. One minute the warm water of the shower was running down her back. The next moment, Layla was the cracked earth of the desert, soaking up the rain. She
was made of sand and stone. Her veins were the burrows of scarab beetles and the blood that flowed inside her was that which had been spilled in the war above, the red syrup of mortal life that soaked into the ground. Her heartbeat had been the thunder of chariots, the march of men, with spears and swords. Her only tears, the milk of the cactus and her only companions had been the swift-striking vipers that slithered over her skin.

Seth had changed all that. She remembered that now. He was no stalker ex-husband, no shadowy government contractor, no mortal man at all. He was the Scorpion King, god of Egypt, ruler of the desert, and her creator. With his hands running red with the blood of his vanquished foe, Seth had pushed them into the sand and molded her to life. Layla’s first breath had been the arid one he’d breathed into her. Layla had lived thousands of lives in thousands of years, and never aged. She was
war-born,
created to serve a war god.

There was nothing that could have prepared her for this truth. No notes that she could have left herself that would have ever convinced her that she wasn’t human. As the memories continued to flow over her, Layla pressed herself against the shower wall and slid to the floor. She crouched there, in the steamy shower. A wretched noise heaved itself out of her, something keening and filled with loss.

“Layla?” She heard Ray’s voice from the other room. She didn’t answer. She just went to her knees, unsteady and sick, wondering—if she were really made of sand—why the water didn’t just wash her down the drain. Seth had fashioned her into something lasting, something to serve him through the ages, that’s why.
And she’d been a fool to ever think there was a way to escape him.

The door in the bathroom creaked open and Ray hesitated. “Layla, are you okay?”

She made another sound, like a wounded animal in pain.

“Shit,” Ray said, crossing the threshold. “Are you hurt? What’s happening to you?”

“I’m remembering,” Layla choked out. The shampoo had long since washed from her hair, but something still stung her eyes. Another sound came out of her. It was a sob.

Ray’s voice softened. “Layla, come on out of there. Let me help you.”

“You can’t help me,” Layla said, near-hysterical laughter bubbling up in her throat. “You said you saw inside me. You said you saw a lioness. That’s not what I am. I’m not a woman and I’m not a lioness. I’m both. I’m an abomination. I’m a
sphinx
.” It was a relief to hear the truth spoken aloud after all this time. Her secret name. Her secret self.

“You’re not making any sense,” Ray told her, pulling open the shower door. She saw that his hands were shaking. The confines of the bathroom were like kryptonite for him and he must have felt as if the walls were already closing in. Somehow, in spite of this, he made himself crouch down and reach for her. “Come on out of the shower. Let me help you.”

Layla pulled away, feeling the sting of the needles as the water beat down on her back. “I told you, you can’t help me. I’m not even a mortal woman, don’t you understand? Please just go, Ray. Get away from me
before you end up dead. Like Nate Jaffe or the men in those pictures.”

Ray shifted on his heels, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. “I’m not leaving you like this.”

But he’d have to. Layla would just stay here in this shower until the end of time. She might just live that long. She’d go on and on, long after Ray and his soulful eyes had turned to dust, and the only one who would know her was the loathsome god of the desert.

Seth. Her mate. Her maker. Her
master
.

“I’m not coming out,” Layla whispered.

Ray muttered a dark curse, unintelligible. “Then I’m coming in.”

It was a hollow threat. There was no way he’d be able to make himself climb into the shower with her. She could see the way his body tightened in rebellion, the way his knuckles went white on the shower door. “Just go away, Ray, before you have another panic attack. Go away before Seth finds you and kills you. Or before I do.”

Ray snorted. “You’re not going to kill me.”

Then, with a slow heave, he pushed himself into the shower with her, his body low to the ground as he squeezed inside. She knew what it cost him. She heard the pace of his breathing double. She felt how cold his skin was as he brushed past her. She felt the erratic beat of his heart as he enfolded her against his chest and smothered his anxiety under the steam and water. Water ran over both of them now, soaking his clothes. His shirt sucked tightly against the muscles of his chest and his jeans went to soggy dark indigo. He smoothed her hair back, holding her face away from the spray.

He’d done this for her sake—
for her
—and now his
voice was a shaky whisper. “Whatever it is, Layla, you can tell me….”

“No, I can’t,” she said, burrowing her face against him. The burning in her eyes was nearly unbearable now. That’s when she realized that the water on her face wasn’t just from the shower. All those pent-up tears breached the barrier, spilling from her lashes and scalding her cheeks. She was crying. Sobbing, really, and couldn’t stop.

“It’s gonna be all right,” Ray said bracing against the shower wall with his boots so that his wet, denim-clad knees made a cradle for her.

It wasn’t going to be all right. She was the twisted minion of an evil god. What comfort could a mortal man like Ray really offer her? And yet his arms were the only safe place that she’d ever known. “Oh, Ray…you have no idea who I am or what I’ve done…”

“I know what you’ve done. I was there, remember?”

“I’m nothing, nothing but what he made me!”

“Don’t say that,” Ray murmured against her lips. “Don’t ever say that again. It’s not true.”