Surrender (THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES) (23 page)

“You miss it.”

He nodded and continued to move them toward the corner with the spears.

“Will you go home after this?” she asked.

Jackson opened his mouth and then closed it again. Would he? What would he do after his mission was complete? It depended on whether he was successful or not. Could he ever return home if Cassy didn’t survive? “I don’t know yet.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“You are, right now. Keep focusing on it.”

“I am,” she said. “Intensely. Yet…I would like to touch the grass for real and breathe that beautiful azure blue air.”

He inhaled and caught the slight floral scent that still hid in Kailin’s hair. “Your smell reminds me of it.” Two more steps and he stopped.

She laughed. “You mean the smell of terror and dirt.”

Of sweet woman, my woman
, rolled through his head. He frowned slightly at the possessive thought. “Of silent grandeur covered by a field of wildflowers.”

She didn’t answer. Jackson scanned the walls. Where was that damn orb?

“There are spears in the corner. I’m betting they are sharp enough to saw through these.” He lifted their tied hands in front of Kailin’s chest. She nodded and they moved as one to the corner. He could tell the moment she opened her eyes. Her whole body stiffened and her breathing became shallow.

“Only a few moments longer,
Atsila
,” he said.

Kailin kicked one of the spears over so that it hit the floor.

They knelt together. “We need to turn the blade up,” she said breathlessly.

“Don’t fall on it,” Jackson warned. “You’ve bled enough today.”

Kailin pulled her hands apart as far as she could, leaving an inch of rope between. “Relax,” Jackson said. “I’ll lower you over it.” Her body sagged slightly and he tipped them forward. His muscles contracted, keeping them in the awkward, nearly-spilling-forward hover over the ancient but deadly blade. He inhaled, pulling on the thinning oxygen to charge his muscles. Kailin hung suspended over the spear head as he sawed the binding across the blade. Back and forth, back and forth, he rubbed against her as he rubbed the rope. Without the cushions of the usual skirts, he was sure she could feel him growing against her.

“Good God,” Kailin huffed beneath her breath, confirming the thought.

He chuckled though his breath rasped out over the exertion. “I’m not apologizing either.”

Back and forth they rocked while the individual lines of twine snapped one by one under the sharp assault. The final one broke and Kailin’s hands flew apart. Jackson lifted them back from the blade but held onto her.

“Wait, Kailin. Don’t blow us out just yet.”

“I am getting out now,” she snapped, struggling in his grasp. Her eyes shifted upward like she was already imagining the ceiling blowing heavenward.

“You could destroy this whole tomb if you blow up the hill again. We won’t be able to find the orb. Not to mention the fact that Moghadam and his men aren’t far away yet. They’ll see us escape and come after us tonight. And I want to have a chance to check your head before you start battling.”

After a lengthy pause, Kailin said, “We need more air.”

“Agreed,” he said and realized that his respiration had increased as his body tried to find more oxygen in the stale air. “Just a few small holes up to the surface. Can you do that?”

“I think.”

“You think? Just don’t pull the whole thing down on us.”

“If you keep making me mad, I might pull the whole thing down on
you
.”

“Your ghost would be quite put out if you kill me before the end of the world.”

“Let go of me before we both succumb to low oxygen and die in this bloody hole,” she said.

Jackson exhaled long and loosened his grip around her arms. He groaned as his overextended arms pulled back. He shook them out as he let them drop from her sides. Loneliness instantly replaced Kailin in his arms.

Kailin poked one slender finger up toward the dirt, away from the slab. “Hole, out,” she demanded and the dirt sucked in on itself, upward, creating a long tube-like hole up through the ceiling. It was only about five inches wide, but it led upward foot after foot. “Out!” she insisted and with one little sound of raining dirt far above, she broke free. “Good God how far are we buried down?”

“Doesn’t matter because you, Kailin Whitaker, can get yourself out of anything.” He smiled at her and she met his gaze. A little self-satisfied grin replaced the open fear that kept resurfacing like a dead fish in her eyes.

She gave a little nod. “I’ll make a few more holes for air circulation and we can look the site over before surfacing,” she said with stilted calm, but he saw the tremor that passed over her shoulders.

“Great,” he said though the only treasure he really cared about was the one fabled to bring life to the lifeless, bring health to the sickly, and body to the disembodied. He held the torch high to illuminate the small room as Kailin drilled two more holes.

“There’s a door,” he said.

Kailin pivoted and strode to the chiseled line in the wall. Cracks broke beautiful glyphs. She ran a fingertip across the dust, along the script. Her nail was filed into a soft curve and remarkably clean. A shudder of lust gripped Jackson’s gut as he imagined that very fingertip tracing the lines of his body.

Her forehead pinched as she read. “‘Ptahmes, army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe to Ramses II and his son, Amunherkhepeshef. Gone to Tuat, the underworld, to be tested by Anubis and Thoth. If his heart proves worthy, he will pass to meet the great Osiris and take the train of Ra to the Fields of Hotep, Fields of Offerings.’” She rubbed a flat palm along the dust-encrusted pictures. “Typical Egyptian mythology.”

“Here we go…‘The great orb lies with pharaoh, gifted to him by the ancient man from far across the world, protected by the gods. His army stands ready. Enter only if you are prepared to die.’”

Kailin ran her finger along the edge until it stopped in a small indent at the center of a dragonfly. “It’s the same,” Kailin whispered.

“Wait.” Jackson came closer. “Warning taken. I’ll go first.” He handed her the torch. The light flashed across the mutinous pinch of her lips. “You be ready to hurl anything bad away from us,” he added.

Jackson turned his attention to the door and released the mechanism halfway through the indent.

“Back,” Kailin whispered beside him and a great rattle pierced the silence behind the stone door for several long seconds.

Jackson’s hand stilled and he glanced up at the ceiling. After the noise settled he exhaled. “You probably just broke my treasure.” Jackson pressed against the door that swung silently inward on an ancient hinge mechanism. The vacuum of three millennia sucked dust on a great whoosh through the tomb from the holes Kailin had dug up to the surface. He picked up a rock and tossed it into the second room. It clattered on the rock-lined floor. “Stay low.” The torchlight pressed into the dense black, showing a fallen line of statues.

As his boot broke the line across the threshold, a whistle shot in the stillness.

“Stop,” Kailin clipped.

“Duck!” he yelled and crouched to the floor. A breeze flew over him half a second before a heavy wooden spear hit him as it fell to the ground. “Kailin!” he yelled and spun as he realized she was still standing there behind him. Eyes round in her moon-pale face. His gaze slipped down her body, expecting the tip of the spear to be imbedded there, but she stood unharmed. He grabbed her shoulders. “You stopped it?”

She nodded numbly. Relief exploded inside him like a herd of wild mustang set free. He moved on complete instinct and the absolute need to feel her alive and whole against him. “Bloody hell,
Atsila
!” He grabbed the torch back, setting it in a holder beside the ancient door. Jackson caught her face in his palms, brushing back the hair that had escaped her braid. “You could be impaled right now.” His eyes searched her face, pale yet flushed with energy.

“I’m not. You told me to be ready.” She looked deep into his eyes. “So I was.”

“Holy bloody hell.” He shook his head. Jackson’s pulse pounded through him. His muscles contracted, quivering with unused energy. What if she hadn’t been ready? She could be torn through, slumped on the ground right now before him. Her life blood flowing too fast to catch.

She pointed her chin toward the room behind him. “Your treasure awaits.”

Treasure? A room full of treasure stood behind him, full of mystery and ancient beauty. Yet he couldn’t drag his gaze from the treasure before him. The woman who stood warm and alive.

Jackson breathed deeply and made himself release her. “You stay right here.”

“I can obviously take care of myself,” she dictated and stepped around him into the vast cavern. Golden statues of animals lay tipped over near the back wall, cats, hawks, a black jackal. But the most amazing site, which filled the room, was an army of toppled over statues of men.

“Don’t touch anything,” he said. “Everything could be linked to a trap.” Several spears lay on the ground, devoid of dust. “Perhaps you sprung most when you knocked everything over,” he murmured.

Kailin walked amongst the rows of statues and wrapped bodies, most tumbled over. She bent and squatted down to examine them in the splashes of light. The mummies had swords strapped to them.

“They are warriors.” She glanced at him and closed her eyes. Slowly the statues and wrapped bodies rose. A chill ran down Jackson’s back as the five rows of large warrior-statues stood, face front, as if they were magically assembling for a siege. They waited only for the signal to defend their master, who’d unfortunately already been molested in the front room. The mummies stood as if ready to attack or defend.

“Why would he lock his army behind him?” Kailin asked as she continued to inspect the bewitched lines, peering into their details. Jackson moved stealthily around each. “They face out, but put the one they are supposed to protect in front of them? Doesn’t make sense.”

Jackson’s gaze slid to the back of the second chamber. “It makes sense if the guy in the front wasn’t the one they were guarding. There’s another door.”

Kailin strode forward but Jackson held up a hand, careful though not to touch her and mute her protective magic. “If an army guards this door, there will be more traps near it.”

She nodded. “Press,” she whispered in the stillness and Jackson watched several cloth rugs along the walls push back as if many hands pressed against the walls and floor around the threshold.
Whoosh!

“Stop!” Kailin commanded as three spears shot out of hidden crevices set into the rock walls in front of the door. The spears shot across the distance and fell and clattered against the mosaic stone floor. She took a step forward.

“Did you trigger the floor stones as well?” Jackson asked. Kailin stopped.

“Hard,” she whispered and stomped her heel against the stone where she stood. Three spears shot downward from above, their points stabbed into the floor, shafts quivering. Kailin stood, wide eyed, for a long moment, breathing through open lips. Slowly she turned her head to him. “Anything else?”

“You triggered the door itself?”

She nodded. “That was the first three spears.”

Jackson pinched his lips together. He’d rather have Kailin above ground right now, although her magic was immensely helpful. “We should be clear then, but still be ready. There could be trigger points on the inside.”

She inhaled long and moved to the glyphs on the door. Her fingers brushed and teased the dirt away. “Look at this,” she called in awe as he peered over her shoulder. Curls from her braid coiled around her shoulders like golden little asps. He forced his eyes to the ancient writing.

“‘I protect this with more than my life. A gift from an ancient magic, an ancient man. I gift it to the one who carries its mark. Beware its power and never let it fall in the hands of thirteen demons.’”

“Really? Thirteen? Lends a bit of credence to the ghost’s story,” Jackson commented with a casual tone that belied the goose bumps crawling up his arms. “I’d say your father was bloody right about the orb being here.”

“A gift to the one who carries its mark,” Kailin murmured. “Anthony must have found references to the orb then. No one has been here or the spears would have been already tripped.”

“Without reference no one would know the power of the artifact. Your father would be safely sleeping back in his hotel room.” Jackson picked up one of the spears that had broken when it stabbed down through the rock floor. He yanked the tip out and used it to run a track around the door made of hard limestone blocks. No indent or crevice indicated a mechanism to open it.

He felt Kailin’s gaze and looked back over his shoulder. “How did you know about the orb, if you did not work with Anthony?” she asked.

He didn’t even pause but looked back at the stone before him. “It is referenced in several tombs. Moghadam apparently knows of it too. Your father isn’t the only one interested in the orb.”

“Are you?”

Jackson turned slowly, meeting her steady gaze. “I promise you that we will free your father. The orb is yours to do so.”

“And then?”

Lying was not something he wanted to start with Kailin. “Let’s have this interrogation when we aren’t buried beneath twenty feet of rock and sand.” He saw the hitch in her inhale. Sick, he felt sick reminding her of her fear, but she wasn’t letting the half answers he supplied satisfy. He needed to think how to tell the truth and still not tell her that he very much intended to take the orb. Once they found it. “So do you think you could help move this door and spring the assumed traps on the other side?” He rested his clenched fist on the stone.

Kailin swallowed hard, her face pale as she eyed the still-intact arched ceiling. She nodded but her lips parted on a series of little pants. He walked over to her and placed his hands on her upper arms. She tensed and pulled back.

“You take away my magic when you touch me,” she whispered. “Right now, the knowledge that I can blast my way out of here with a single command is the only thing keeping me from running out of here screaming.”