Page 96 of Gemini Hunted
A truly grisly row of human skulls.
All yellow-toothed and hollow-eyed and gnarly with age, the cranium collection grins at me from a cobwebby ledge set high in the tunnel wall. Directly beneath on either side, a lattice of ancient femurs and tibias and ribs—all the major bones in the human body, I guess—frames a narrow arch.
A funky-smelling breeze drifts from the dark passage to tickle my face like a ghostly finger.
By sheer force of will, I manage not to shiver.
Step up, showgirl, you’re the queen here,I tell myself sternly.No shivering.
Lucius stops scribbling notes in his gradebook long enough to give me a serious look with his lovely sherry eyes. “As a matter of fact,Iknew. These catacombs loom rather large in the history of this academic institution. This place is where thewitching races secretly interred their dead in Roman times, while we were persecuted by the Empire, much like the early Christians. Frankly speaking, I would have preferred to avoid the place entirely. But it seems that is not to be our fate.”
Zephyr prowls up like the feral predator he is and runs a professional eye over the row of gaping sockets and grinning teeth. With a hiss, he peers into the low passage with his keen Fae eyesight. He’s the smallest of my guys, but even he has to stoop.
The crossed swords jutting over his armored shoulders keep him outside that scary hole, which I totally don’t mind.
“I’ve never understood this morbid mortal custom,” my Dark Fae murmurs, “of encasing your dead in rock to molder. In the natural order, a rotting corpse returns nourishment to the soil and the wild creatures who inhabit it.”
“Oh darling, that visual. So picturesque. Rather like the way you buried your cousin’s head in our rose garden.” Vasili smirks, but the comment lacks the barbed wire sting of his usual malice. Either my Goblin King is still struggling with that alarming head injury he claims doesn’t bother him, despite the numbing potion and Seelie herbs we’ve doctored him up with…
Or there’s been a fucking miracle in this harem, and my dominant alpha truly has softened toward Zephyr.
At least temporarily.
I mean, a girl can hope. Can’t I?
“Tight fit in there,” I mutter, bending to aim my own beam over Zephyr’s dragonscale-armored shoulder, and already missing my catsuit. “We’ll have to squeeze in single file and all hunched over. That’s assuming we’re all going.”
My voice echoes and re-echoes weirdly inside, like the walls are murmuring. I can’t see shit beyond a crumbly stone stair that slopes down around a sharp curve. My dragon stirs and grumbles unhappily in my skin. She doesn’t like beingunderground and encased in a sleeve of rock too tight for her to shift.
That makes two of us.
Neo slips an arm around my waist and cuddles the white kitten to his chest. He’s just fed her, with Mordred’s interested assistance, so she’s all sleepy and limp and purring against my bookworm’s brawny shoulder. “We can always turn back, babe. Try another way.”
I suck in a lungful of the dank-smelling air. “No, we can’t. This tunnel led straight here. The only other way to go is back. And since we gotta find the Vault before the AIB findsus—”
“Back is not an option.” Draco Mars emerges from the darkness behind us with a suddenness that makes me gasp.
Zephyr spins and unsheathes both his swords with a snarl that bares his tiny fangs.
Draco wraps a casual hand around the butt of the big-ass rifle propped over his hulking shoulder and gives my menacing Dark Fae King his own unfriendly look.
“Something you gonna do with those swords, Unseelie?” Mal’s guy growls in his guttural accent, sounding like Schwarzenegger in hisTerminatordays.
Now I’m just waiting to hear him say,Hasta la vista, baby.
Lucius and Vasili—both my currently available alphas—step protectively in front of me. That protective shit used to bother me, but I’m working like fuck to let my alphas do what their instincts demand. Protecting me is a genetic need for them, so I gotta learn to accept it.
At least sometimes.
I’m more surprised to see a reaction from Mordred (who’s no alpha and is barely even an ally, but OMG, that kiss! Even in our current crisis, I can barely stop thinking about it.) He muscles up behind my alphas in backup, his broad shoulders filling the narrow tunnel, silver trident magically appearingin his hand. Still toting the Horn of Ceres in that sealskin bag slanting across his bare bronze back.
“I’m commonly addressed as Your Radiance,” Zephyr says coolly to Draco. But at least he sheathes his swords over his shoulders. That move defuses the worst of the tension.
Though definitely not all of it.
“I don’t give afokkhow you’re addressed, Unseelie.” Draco eyes him warily. “You’re not Mallory’s king. And you’re definitely not mine.”
This is the first I’ve seen of Mal’s Icelandic mafia warlock since he loped off with the others to deal with those hyenas. Draco Mars is alarming enough in normal circumstances. Seeing him now, with dried blood spattering his spiked biker jacket and the side of his rugged face, cold eyes glittering like arctic ice under his pale buzzcut, and a rifle slung over his shoulder?
