Page 13 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
War and Strife reached her at the same time. She clubbed Strife across the muzzle, trying to keep him from her. War went low and seized one of her ankles in his mouth.
:Be gentle,:I demanded, and War kept his bite soft even as he dragged her toward us.
A huge black shape swept out of the house, too quickly for me to tell exactly what it was. It swiped at Strife, knocking a chunk of flaming essence out of his side. War tried to dodge aside without pulling too hard on our queen, but the black creature grabbed her.
I felt the slide of fiery teeth into her skin. Blood so sweet. So hot. It was all I could do not to slide fully into the sundog’s consciousness so I could feel her flesh in my mouth.
Panting, I fought the urge to merge and ordered,:Release her.:I couldn’t risk tearing her leg up worse when she was still inside the cursed blood circle.
War immediately let go, and the black creature swept her up and raced for the house.
I slammed my fist against my femur. “Fucking hell. What the fuck is that thing?”
“Silence,” Tzu retorted, his face intent. “Don’t you feel it? Sunfire burns in her now.”
I whipped my head back to search the house, trying to pinpoint her location. I could feel what I could not see. Our queen, down low in the building, huddled in darkness. Afraid. Desperate. Trapped.
A burning pain in her lower leg.
Actual sensation. As if I once again had flesh, a body that could be harmed.
“I feel her too.” For once, Kuros managed not to sound like a raging asshole. “How is that possible?”
“Sunfires,” Tzu replied. “What one knows or feels, they all experience. As long as our sunfires ride us, we’ll feel what she feels.”
Even though we’re dead.
He didn’t say the words aloud, but we all experienced a moment of raging dread and regret. We were fuckingdead. We could never be the Blood that she deserved.
Fuck, we weren’t even like her. We weren’t descended from ancient deities. We were all human, or had been once upon a time, except for Chak Ek’. We’d lived and died on this earth long ago, then served in Ra’s hell of endless light as skeletons. Our souls trapped in dry old bones, animated only by the god’s will.
Taste, touch, smell… All our senses had been lost to the grave ages ago. What we saw and heard came through the sunfires we carried. They didn’t have human emotions or thoughts, though. Ultimately, they were as enslaved as we had been.
Some of us had formed a sort of unholy alliance with our sunfires. Thoughts and memories flowed between us. War and Strife were as much me as I was. They carried my memories and the bits of my personality I might have retained after so many centuries. The man who’d been friends with Julius Caesar and loved Cleopatra was long gone. I held on to their names, but their faces were completely wiped from my memory. So too were the emotions I’d once had. I knew I had children with the queen of Egypt but couldn’t remember the color of her eyes, or the way she’d smiled, or even how she’d smelled. Those feelings had been blasted out of me by an endless burning sun.
Over the centuries, we’d seen other queens dragged to Heliopolis. We’d learned some of their ways and traditions, like their protectors, called Blood.
Until this very moment, I had the ridiculous notion that I could be her Blood. I could be a protector. Someone of honor again, not a Soldier of Light, an instrument of terror and torture sent by Ra to destroy yet another enemy. But how could any of us be her Blood when we were dead? I knew very little about how queens claimed their Blood, but the sunfires had studied the queens as intently as we had. They’d watched as Ra’s vizier burned out the Blood bonds to make the women “safe” for the god.
And there was no fucking way we could make such a bond. We had no blood to give. No body. No heart.
No soul, if I were completely honest. My soul had been burned out of me ages ago, hardened and tempered into yet another killing weapon in Ra’s arsenal.
None of us could ever be Blood.
6
Karmen
Iexpected the sundogs to go for my throat like a pack of wolves. Instead, they knocked me down, buckling my knees out from under me.
One grabbed my ankle in its mouth and started dragging me. The other one grabbed a mouthful of my shirt and lifted me up. So close, I stared into its burning eyes, vicious jaws right there over my heart. But it didn’t hurt me.
Why didn’t it hurt me?
Then it dawned on me. They were dragging me out of the nest. Across the circle. To the waiting soldiers and the other sunfires.
Flailing, I dug my fingers into the ground, trying to stop my momentum. Desperate, I clubbed the closest one in the head, trying to make it let go of me. It growled and gave me a warning shake, but it certainly didn’t let go. I didn’t have a weapon. I’d dropped the mirror somewhere, though I wasn’t sure if that would help or not.
