Page 6 of Queen Takes Checkmate
“I’m ready, thanks to you two.”
I set her down in front of the door. She stretched out her right hand and touched the silver lock. “Does silver affect us in any way?”
“The legends are always somewhat based in fact.” Guillaume reached over his shoulder and pulled a foot-long heavy blade out of a spine sheath beneath his shirt. “Even the rock troll would have a difficult time breaking free of silver chains this thick. Allow me to break the chains and lock for you, my queen.”
With a nod, she stepped back against me. I slipped my arm around her waist and she closed her hand over mine on her stomach. Her hand was so small in mine, and her head barely reached my sternum. But it suddenly dawned on me….
She was protecting me. Offering me her strength, her touch, her love a shield, as the knight stepped closer to us. The knight who’d killed me over and over in my head while Tanza tortured me.
I clenched my jaw so hard I almost broke a tooth. My queen. Protecting me. It was all I could do not to sweep her back up in my arms. Or better yet, carry her to the nearest bed and bury my face between her thighs.
Guillaume slipped the tip of the heavy blade into a link and carefully pried the chain open. The lock fell with a clatter to the floor and he stepped back, lifting his gaze to mine. The consummate gentleman and honored Templar knight held my gaze a moment, and then inclined his head. To me. Not to her.
Our bonds were all strong enough that I’m sure Guillaume had no difficulty picking up the shuddering memories implanted in my head. Memories that had not happened, would never happen, but hurt just the same. The man had been tortured too, physically in prison, and then mentally and emotionally by his first queen. He knew firsthand the toll it took on a man. Especially a man used to being the strong protector.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. And I respected him all the more for that small gesture of respect and honor.
Resisting the urge to push my queen behind me to fully protect her, I planted my palm on the heavy door and shoved it open. The hinges groaned with disuse. Guillaume slipped inside, followed by Xin and Itztli, both still shifted, their mighty noses working overtime. Through our bonds, their senses flooded me with rich colors and textures of smell. Thick, ancient dust. Coppery rust. A hint of decay. No, not a rotten scent. Extremely old, wasted away, desiccated…
“A mummy,” Shara whispered. “But who is it? If they’re dead, why all the protections?”
She stepped forward and I glided with her, keeping contact with her body though I didn’t hinder her steps or try to keep her back. We entered a small cell with no windows. The air was thick and heavy. One of the Blood flipped a switch, and the hallway flooded with sudden light, spilling into the cell and illuminating a table in the center of the room.
Nevarre hovered at the door, protecting our back, along with Mehen and Llewellyn.
The table looked like an exam table from a doctor’s office. On top, a body laid tightly wrapped in yellowed rags, very much like a television mummy. More silver chains bound the body tightly to the table, and a heavy crucifix lay on top of its chest with a wreath of garlic.
“Silver, salt, garlic, holy objects,” Guillaume whispered. “It’s like they threw everything they could think of into the ward.”
She held her hand out over the body and drew her hand down its length without actually touching it. Her eyes fluttered shut and her head tipped, as if she listened to something only she could hear. “The prison isn’t the silver chains or even death. His prison is complete and utter darkness.” Her eyes opened, glinting like Guillaume’s blade. Hard, cold steel. “He’s one of Ra’s followers.”
Guillaume didn’t move, exactly, but the blade in his hand seemed bigger, longer, ready to cut the mummy apart in one mighty blow. “Egyptian?”
“No. He doesn’t…” She blew out a disgusted sigh. “He doesn’t feel like Isis. When I think of Her, I see sands and smell the desert wind. I see Her pyramid and the moon hanging above. Or I feel Her hair blowing in my face and smell jasmine.”
“What do you sense from him?” I asked.
Her mouth tightened into a flat, hard line. “Sunlight and blood.”
Itztli rumbled a growl. His ruff spiked around his neck and started down his spine. :Huitzilopochtli.:
The Aztec sun god of Tenochtitlan.
“Fuck,” all eight of us said in unison.
Shara
I backed away from the mummified body, my mind racing. He did feel ancient and… deep. That was the only word I could think of. His force of personality and will was as old as the bedrock, like Tepeyollotl and gods who were worshipped centuries ago.
“Why the fuck would Keisha Skye have the Aztec sun god imprisoned in her basement?”
“Vega might know,” Rik said. “As Skye’s alpha, she’s the most likely to know what was going on down here. Though she didn’t seem to know about Tanza, so who knows.”
For a moment, I felt another twinge of sympathy for the dead queen. I couldn’t imagine having a secret as massive as a daughter, whom I’d told everyone decades ago had died, hidden in the basement…
While my alpha knew nothing about it.
I couldn’t imagine keeping a secret like that from Rik. Even if I wanted to, and I didn’t, I didn’t think it would be possible. Our bonds were too deep. We’d shared too much blood to keep that kind of secret. That bond had allowed me to save him when he’d sacrificed himself to protect me.
