Authors: Sheri Fredricks
As if the mythic gods drove in a steel pike, his heart lurched inside his chest.
Aleksander gently shook her and called her name louder. “Ella…”
Twenty-Seven
H
eart in his throat, for what seemed like hours, Aleksander forced himself to take slow steady breaths. Not for the first time, he called upon his Centaur training. He attempted to slam the door on his rising panic and shifted Ella’s unconscious body to a more comfortable position in his arms.
Gamato
! He’d never felt more trapped. Neither a crack nor glimmer of escape in any direction inside the cool, damp earth.
The miniscule dirt casket lay shrouded in darkness, except for a chip of light here and there. Beneath his fingers, he skimmed the velvety skin of Ella’s arm, concentrating on the texture, relying on the tactile sensory to keep him grounded.
“We’ll get out of here, Sweet-thing,” he said, more for his peace of mind than hers. “Don’t you worry.”
Every step into this latest battle, he’d expected to make his equine transition. Knew what would happen if he did. Other than risking his life in a fight for the death, and taking as many fucking rebels with him as he could, he would never have jeopardized Ella’s life.
It was never in the equation.
I’m so sorry, beautiful.
Everything rested quiet in their hole made for two. So quiet, he could hear the pounding of his heart.
Alek had no way of knowing how deep Ella dissolved them beneath the corridor floor.
Kolasi
, he hadn’t known that Trolls could even atomize others with them. This was the first he’d heard of it.
Crap, just when you thought you knew a species…
The earth surrounding them vibrated, as if a heavy object had fallen some distance to the ground. Brown powder sprinkled onto his face, and he shook his head to scatter the dirt.
Ella’s body lay on his…warm and soft, and despite the five-level-alarm trumpeting through his body, he felt strong when with her. Thinking back, he always had. She was infuriating and frustrating. With the innate ability to exasperate him, like no other mythic in the forested woods of Boronda.
Ironically, he trusted Ella more than he trusted anyone else he’d ever known. With his life at least. Trusting her with his heart was a little trickier.
Another shudder moved through the surrounding soil, and more dirt trickled down.
Is it getting harder to breathe in here?
He ran his hands over the gritty walls, wondering if he could sense a distance to the surface. Holed up inside their compact space, his ability to throw precognition further than the earthen barriers, proved fruitless. Like a human, he was helpless.
Flat on his back, enervated.
Powerless, resourceless…defenseless in the ground.
Shit.
Options on how to unearth themselves flipped through his brain, one thought after the other, like an old-time black and white movie from long ago. He might attempt to dig them out, but only as a last resort. Visions of the ceiling and walls caving in, choking them, and burying them alive, played out in vivid detail.
He’d like to believe that he was overreacting. He’d like to believe that someone,
anyone
, had seen them dissolve below ground. However, either his own intuition was kicking in big time, or Ella’s earlier terror was contagious.
An elevated sense of urgency completely trumped his personal sense of conduct. Under normal circumstances, he would never consider lying in the dirt, his lower body nude below the waist. Especially when he needed a barrier between his wits and the female draped in his arms. Until he’d seen Ella’s eyes. Looked deeply into them and saw the panic. Real, immediate danger.
“Ella.” Alek said in a soft voice. “We’re getting out of here.”
Metaphorically, if not in reality. The ground vibrated less often now. Whatever had caused the disturbance must be moving farther away, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing—or bad.
As a Centaur warrior, he’d encountered violence during times when he transformed. He and all the soldiers were highly skilled and trained for any eventuality. Up to and including shape shifting. The war was over though, the skill seldom used. Now the kingdom valued brains above brawn.
Aleksander needed some of that supercharged brainpower right about now.
Mentally, he flicked through the options checklist again and spoke to Ella as if she were conscious and listening. “We could dig ourselves out—and possibly be buried alive due to the ground collapsing.”
Nope, not a good choice
. He kissed her forehead and felt a sheen of perspiration touch his lips.
“Maybe shout and hope someone hears us.” Who was he kidding? Unless the passerby’s ear dragged the ground, nobody would hear a thing. “If I help you to spin, could you dissolve us to the surface?”
Without her mentally picturing their landing spot, they didn’t have a chance in hell.
Alek nearly laughed aloud at his ridiculous thoughts, the confinement turning him barmy. Besides, his shoulders were wider than the dirt coffin was tall. There’d be no spinning today…or any other day, if he didn’t figure this out.
He arched his neck back and squeezed his eyes shut, his arms cradling Ella carefully against him. Above his head, the dirt wall scraped his scalp. Beneath his extended toes, the opposite wall pressed in. On either side of them, above and below, the dirt remained constant, cold, and oppressive.
A shiver raced through Ella’s moist, clammy body, her breathing rapid and light. The onset of shock settled in, making itself at home inside her.
With only his body to provide the necessary warmth she needed, and no fresh air for extra oxygen, Aleksander clenched his teeth to keep from roaring his frustrations.
Poor Ella
. This was all his fault. He squeezed his closed eyes tighter.
Oh, what he wouldn’t do to feel the wind’s cold bite on his face as he galloped through the woods once more. Ella would ride on his back, and to hell what other Centaurs might say. He’d tuck his front legs up tight and jump logs, weave through the trees, and swim the hot springs pond with her holding onto his tail.
Then, after he transformed into his human body, they’d make love on the bank, cushioned by the soft moss that grew there. He would hold her sweet Troll body close, spill into her, and love her until they were both grey-haired and wrinkled.
He would then, have everything in life he’d been missing; a female of worth who he loved, a hearth to come home to, and children. Lots of freckle-faced, red-haired children who would have the best of both Centaur and Troll worlds.
Alek held onto his thought and let the dream wash their predicament away. Night-blooming jasmine, Ella’s very own unique scent, filled the small chamber and caused his heart to expand.
This was his woman.
She’s mine.
Though, she might now regret knowing him. “I’m sorry, Sweet-thing. Looks like I took you down with me.”
Time slipped by and he must have passed out or dozed off, because he didn’t hear the drumming at first. Faintly…through the thick layers of soil, Alek held his breath to listen again. Not the thump of his heart, that much was certain. It was more of a woodpecker’s
tap-tap-tap
that originated from somewhere above.
His pulse sped up.
Had the enemy found them?
The coring method to locate mythics who hid below surface was a tried and true technique which sometimes involved dropping explosives through the hollow core pole.
Alek knew firsthand about the kill ratio of this
modus operandi
and the fact it hit nearly one hundred percent effective. To eliminate the enemy threat during the Great War, he’d employed this method himself.
Shit!
Panic threatened to seize once more. He forced himself to breath slowly, to decrease the palpitations of his racing pulse. Helpless to protect Ella,
Elysium
seemed only a heartbeat away. Would the searching probe miss them entirely—or hit dead on?
Alek could only pray to the gods for a positive outcome, if not for him… then for Ella.
The rhythmic tapping grew louder. He felt the sound wave percussion like a ticking time bomb against his skin. Loose dirt rained down, threatening to cause a cave in at any moment.
Which would be worse? To be buried alive, or blown to bits in a dirt coffin?
Mindful of Ella’s injury, he hugged her tight and buried a kiss to her fevered temple. Behind his shut eyelids, a prickling sensation grew. His throat closed up and he choked out his next words. “Whatever the future, know that you’re mine, Ella—in this world and the next.”
From above, a fist-sized dirt clod broke loose.
Alek turned his head instinctively, and the crumbling rock struck his cheek. Whipping his gaze back to the low lid of their grave, he drew his breath in open-mouthed, rapid gasps. A puncture in the dirt ceiling, like a black hole drilled to hell, gaped as an ominous black orifice.
When he heard an object slide closer to the bored opening, his heart leapt into his throat. Reflexively, he tightened his arms around Ella, wanting so badly to protect her, to save her life from what was most certainly utter doom.
“Sorry, sweetheart. I won’t see you again, because I’ll be roasting in hell…where I deserve to be.”
Sorrow engulfed his heart, constricting his chest with dagger sharp pain. The thought of not having a future with Ella, beyond the next few seconds, brought tears to his eyes.
Pushed slowly, a four-inch diameter pole slid into view with terrifying grace.
Twenty-Eight
A
leksander stared at the solid wood probe with a mixture of shock and curiosity. The panic that threatened to monopolize his overwrought emotions slowly receded to a manageable level. With a conscious effort, he inhaled deeply to slow his rushed breathing and began to rationalize like a seasoned Centaur soldier again.
The dowel stopped its downward spiral about twelve inches from his face. He sucked in his breath when a small area on the pole’s surface began to move. Blinking his eyes to refocus, Alek watched, transfixed, when a circular shape appeared. Streaks of wood grain striations melted away, fog swirled in its place.
As if it were a living entity, it pulsed with salmon-colored flashes. The grey mist cleared, evaporated, like someone had opened the drapes and allowed the sun to clear the mass away and took the pulsating light with it.
The wall of the pole thinned, and as though he gazed through a miniature window of sorts, Alek dropped his jaw at the sight left to him.
Shrunken to Lilliputian size stood Patience, the Remedy Maker’s Wood Nymph wife. She waved her tiny hand at him, trying to smile while puffing her cheeks out in an odd fashion.
Baffled, Alek attempted to smile back, his tense facial muscles held rigidly in check.
If Patience were here, then Rhycious would be two steps away. The married couple seldom left each other’s side.
Patience flipped her long, wild mane of brown hair behind her shoulders and held up an index finger that he squinted to see.
Ah hell. This is not the time for Charades.
Next, she touched the points of her fingers of one hand repeatedly to the open palm of the other. With her cheeks swelled to chipmunk proportions, she gave him a wink then peered above her expectantly.
Aleksander watched what happened next in a stunned wonder.
Patience shimmered into a thousand particles of shocking pink light, reminiscent of a Fourth of July fireworks display. Instead of bursting outward and falling away as a thunderflash would, the points of light drew together to form a fiery pink light. It streaked like a comet…up the pole, out of sight. Fog whirled while the shimmer closed the window.
Once again, wood grain appeared and the pole’s exterior materialized as a hard opaque surface.
Alek released his breath with a great gust of air, and then inhaled a lungful of dust. The motes expelled when he choked out a cough, which only raised more dust in the earthen cubicle. He turned his head to cough into his shoulder and tried not to let his body spasm with each gasping shutter.
Ella’s head bounced on his chest from the muscle contractions, jostling her body in his careful hold. Some of her hair had twirled itself around his neck chain, pulling when he moved. Not much he could do about it right now.
Gods, it felt like he’d swallowed sandpaper.
Ella’s warm breath blew in his ear. A ragged, labored sound. The air was thick with unsettled dust, making it hard to breathe. Unconscious and gasping, her body labored to draw in air—and Alek never felt more helpless.
Grit filled his eyes and he blinked to clear it away. Sand seeped past his lashes and lids, and there was no way in
kolasi
for him to bring his hands up to wipe the dirt. Alek shook his head from side to side, hoping in vain the movement would knock the grime away. Eyes watering, he gave in and simply squeezed them shut, letting his tears wash them clean.
Alek wished he could rip his shirt off and toss it over Ella’s face to help shield her, but all he had were his hands. He kissed her forehead and tried not to inhale the dust caught in her hair. It would only set off another round and he might cough up a lung.
Driven nearly insane with a tickling need to hack and choke, he forced his thoughts away from his discomfort and concentrated on more pleasant things. Like how Ella’s heated body felt so good lying on top of him. How she’d twined her legs with his and made him never want to let her go.
Eyes closed, he held to the warm thoughts and prayed the mythic gods would deliver them to the surface quickly. To ignore the tickle in his throat, he willed self-control back into his body as he waited for the Centaur rescue team to do…whatever it is they planned to do.
When all remained pitch black behind his eyelids, bright spots of light flashed, then grew at a steady rate. Half afraid to open his eyes in case it turned out to be wishful thinking, Alek waited until an atmospheric pop fired off, sounding like a cannon shot in the underground compartment.
He opened his eyes and turned to the left, and smiled at Patience’s puffy-cheeked grin. Between them, the transparent window dissolved.
The moment it was wide enough, she slid her arm through the opening. She reached out her hand, no larger than a spring mosquito, and laid it on his arm.
“Holy doodles, Alek. Rhy came unglued at the hocks when we couldn’t find you.” Patience’s voice was faint.
Perhaps just a whisper, but in the deathly quiet he heard every sweet word.
“As fast as I can shimmer, you two are out of here. You okay with that?”
“Shimmer? Honey, you’re the size of a cricket. How in the hell can you shimmer three of us out at once?” Not to mention, he really hated the idea of being transported Wood Nymph-style. For the past two hundred years, he’d managed to avoid shimmering as a mode of transportation—whether consensual or forced.
During the war, Wood Nymph warriors flashed Centaur bodies into trees. Unfortunate victims were left hanging with half their body in and half protruding out, to die a slow and painful death. Some would suffocate—if they were lucky. Euthanasia, the mythologically humane thing to do, was carried out when victims suffered...or were condemned to twist into grotesque shapes when their bodies morphed to transform. Caught as they were, in a block of solid wood, unable to complete transition—
Because of the war, Aleksander didn’t seem to have the courage to let Patience shimmer him over a log, even though he trusted her as a Wood Nymph emphatically.
Hell, Rhycious trusted his wife to pop him in and out of the taproot tree of her heart all the live-long-day.
“Shit.” It drove him crazy that his arms were trapped and he couldn’t scratch his goatee to think, let alone scratch his nose.
A shiver ran through Ella’s body and her breathing turned into a rough wheeze.
“Alek, I know you dig shimmering about as much as you like kicking back in this awesomesauce hole.” Patience used her Wood Nymph abilities to widen the opening of the pole’s surface. She leaned her upper body out of the window and looked around. Her eyes fell on Ella, and she watched her struggle to breathe. “I’d never hurt you, and you know that.”
“I trust you. It’s just that—” He licked his lips and tasted the dirt. “The thought of dissolving into a piece of wood…” Even thinking about it caused his throat to close up.
“Staying here is death for certain. All you’d need is a bow to finish the wrap. Let me get the two of you out of here and you can grab a cold brewski up top. What do you say, tough guy?”
He wasn’t an idiot, choosing life over death was a given. Moreover, if he could give Ella a chance to live a fulfilled life, then there was no choice to make.
Aleksander firmed his resolve and pushed his fear aside. He didn’t have to like shimmering; he just had to do it.
Taking a deep breath, he met Patience’s turquoise eyes straight on. “Get us out of here.”
Patience smiled widely. “First, I’ll shimmer you both in here with me. Hold onto your friend and whatever you do, don’t let go of her. You copasetic on that?”
His stomach dropped below his navel, but he firmed his jaw and nodded. “Affirmative.”
“Once you’re in here, you won’t be able to breathe, so take—”
“What?” Since he was conscious, he had the power to draw a lungful of air beforehand. But Ella would not. “There’s no air in there?”
Patience chewed her bottom lip before answering. “This is a dead piece of wood, Alek. It’s dark…and colder than a Minotaur’s ass, too. But it’ll only take a couple seconds and then you’ll be standing next to Rhy.” She pointed her finger up. “He’s waiting for us, and you know what he’s like when he’s workin’ the worried and waiting game.”
Fuck.
Since the stroke of midnight and acting upon the false information fed to the Centaur military, to his badly-timed transition that caused Ella’s life-threatening injury, to a forcible shimmer out of their self-imposed grave.
Shit
. This night sucked all around.
And I sure as hell don’t want to be here when I turn back into my true form.
“Alright,” Alek nodded. “Get us out of here. We wouldn’t want to get on Rhy’s last nerve.”
Her miniature hand patted his arm. “A one-way express shimmer, coming up!”
Perspiration prickled the back of his neck, although the ground temperature didn’t warrant his body’s response. He noted his increased respiration, as well has his doubled heart rate.
I’m Kempor Aleksander, Head Centaur Guard. There is nothing that I’m afraid—
“Holy toes of Bacchus.” Invisible energy, like the power of a gale force storm, suddenly cocooned him in a blanket. His gaze shot to Patience, who blazed brighter than a bolt of lightning. Her inner spark intensified the radiant brilliance so vibrantly, it illuminated the dirt chamber and chased shadows to far corners.
Where her miniature hand touched his arm, the white radiance transferred to him. The energy tickled, as if a thousand feathers brushed his skin. Though there wasn’t a breath of wind, the howling sound charged all around them.
It lifted Ella’s red hair, suspended it, and magnified her unique scent of jasmine.
Aleksander inhaled deeply, wanting to draw her essence into his lungs and feed his starving soul. He thirsted for Ella, and only she could quench that thirst.
With the heightened noise, he couldn’t hear her breathe. His eyes searched her relaxed face but couldn’t tell if her lungs drew air or not.
Please,
he begged the mythic gods.
Let Ella survive this hell, and I promise I’ll rededicate myself.
He felt a tugging that encompassed his whole body, and reflexively tightened his hold on Ella. One moment, he was looking at the inside of dirt box and the next, he found himself lying on a cold wooden floor.
Gasping for air—
…that wasn’t there.