Page 7 of Queen Takes Checkmate
For all of Keisha’s power and her many sibs living in this tower, she must have been very alone. In the end, she’d had no one but Tanza.
“Will you resurrect him?” Rik asked.
He didn’t ask if Icould—but if Iwould.
My power was great enough that I could resurrect a long-lost god. That was a stomach-turning realization. The immense responsibility weighed like a crushing boulder on my heart. If I made a mistake, it wouldn’t hurt only me, but my nine Blood. No, mytenBlood. Llewellyn might have been my mother’s alpha, but he’d taken my blood. He was mine now, whether I wanted him or not.
What if I resurrected this mummy, only to discover that was exactly Ra’s plan all along?
“My queen,” Tlacel said, drawing my attention to him. “I would recommend against resurrecting Huitzilopochtli unless your need is great. What I saw…”
A shudder rocked his shoulders at the memory of what we’d seen on the other side of the portal. I’d mostly been concentrating on Xochitl so I could grab her and pull her back to our world, but I remembered people waiting below us. They’d looked strange, and it made me remember the bits I’d picked up from his brother’s bond. Itztli had said there had been a Blood descended from the Flayed God who liked to strip people’s skin off whole and give it to his queen to wear.
Those “people” waiting to catch us as we fell out of the sky had looked more like empty skins rather than whole bodies. Rays of golden light had glowed where their eyes and mouths should have been.
“It was nothing for hundreds of sacrifices to be made to him during a single festival,” Tlacel continued. “He was the patron god of Tenochtitlan, war, and the sun. The steps of the Templo Mayor dripped red with blood on his holy days. And that was before Ra corrupted him.”
“This is too risky to rush into a decision,” I finally said. Absently, I touched the glistening red snake embedded in my skin. Its head lay over my right breast and the rest of its body curled around my neck. “When I saw Coatlicue on Snake Mountain, She asked me to kill Ra so She could be reunited with her son. Huitzilopochtli will be key to our showdown with Ra, but I don’t know how yet. If I bring him back too soon…” I shook my head. “I know where he is. I wish we knew why or how Keisha Skye kept him locked in her basement. Was he a gift from Ra? Or was she imprisoning him to spite Ra?”
Guillaume grunted sourly. “The only way to know for sure is to wake up the bastard and ask him.”
I turned to Llewellyn. He’d been imprisoned by Keisha too. His eyes had been gouged out, his head covered in a leather hood, and his body bound in chains so heavy that he could barely walk. “Do you know anything about other prisoners Keisha might have?”
He gazed back at me steadily with dark eyes that glittered occasionally, as if a spark flew past a dark window. I’d healed his eyes and restored his power, but I really knew very little about him, other than he’d been my mother’s alpha.
Oh, and the fact that he’d willingly allowed himself to be imprisoned and tortured by her enemy for twenty years so that he’d be in place when I needed him. That told me a great deal about his loyalty and honor.
“Unfortunately, no, my queen. I was kept away from this level and knew nothing about the child or this cell. Though I know a great deal about what went on above stairs.”
I nodded and turned to leave the cell. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him yet. He’d been in the tapestry that I used to check whether an Aima was meant to be my Blood or not. I didn’t doubt my decision to give him my blood, and I certainly never would have left him trapped and crippled by Skye’s people. But was he really supposed to bemyBlood? Or would he always be my mother’s? Did it matter? “We should sit down tomorrow and go over everything you can think of.”
“It will be my pleasure, my queen.”
I waited until all my Blood filed out and turned my attention to the door. “Do you think we need to set a guard? Or find a way to put these chains back in place?”
Something rustled up above us. Guillaume’s blade glinted. Rik tightened his grip on me, ready to shove me behind him or sweep me up into his arms. Xin and Itztli both crouched with vicious snarls.
Little eyes flashed in the vent near the ceiling. It was askew enough that a small rodent pushed through and scurried down the wall.
Mehen growled. “I fucking hate rats. I ate way too many while I was imprisoned. They taste like shit. Literally.”
An idea sparked as I watched the rat come closer. It ran along a faint ledge in the stonework and then sat, facing me, as if awaiting its orders.
“Are rats considered creatures of the dark?”
“Sure,” Mehen replied. “That’s why they could cross over to my prison lair. Bats, crows, snakes, spiders. Anything humans are normally frightened of, and for good reason.”
Maybe that was why the crow had wanted a strand of my hair to line her nest. I’d assumed she was friendly because of Nevarre’s raven, but maybe she’d responded to my father’s power instead. “Anyone speak rat?”
“Fuck, no. I ate them. I didn’t talk to them. Well, I talked, but they never replied back.” Mehen grimaced, shaking his head. “I got a little crazy toward the end. I would have talked to anything or anyone just to not hear the intolerable silence any longer.”
My grouchy dragon needed lots of affection and companionship after his long imprisonment. His pain wouldn’t be wiped away in a matter of days or weeks, no matter how much I loved him.
His eyes flared and he swallowed hard. He’d heard my thoughts, though I hadn’t meant to broadcast so loudly to him, or any of the Blood, not deliberately. Another side effect of our deep bonds, and one that I fully embraced, even if it accidentally exposed my deepest, most secret thoughts. Mehen didn’t say another word, but he stepped closer and put his palm on the small of my back.
I turned my attention back to the rat. “Do you understand me?”
It squeaked and nodded, whiskers working with excitement. She. I was sure of it. Even with the hallway light on, I could feel the flows of dark power around me. Those streamers carried a sense of what they flowed past, everything from a mummy locked in this cell to a rat eager to serve a queen who understood and would value her services.
