Soul Reborn (Key to the Cursed Book 1) (7 page)

She inhaled sharply.
Her heart clashed against her chest. “Yes.”

“And what if I
wanted to take a little nibble?”

The words sent an
instant rush of heat through her body, tingling in all the right places. She
closed her eyes, and gripped the table. The wood creaked under the stress.

“Open your eyes,” he
commanded.

She complied and
found him staring into her soul. Her connection to him was so strong. Everything
about him pulled her in. The more she struggled to stop it, the stronger it
became.

Her body trembled, feeling
the cold press of his lips against hers. Coldness spread over her face, cool
and delicious. Like, an ice cold drink on a sweltering day, quenching an
unknown thirst. His strong cold hands grasped tightly around her biceps and
pulled her in tighter to his mouth. Her reluctance got lost somewhere in the
taste of him. Desperation overcame her as he aggressively sought out her tongue
with his own. A moan escaped her lips with the onslaught of pleasure. He
answered her with a growl which resonated in his chest, spurring her to slip
her hands under his tunic and up his tight muscular back.

The deep growl of
arousal propelled to a deafening roar. He reared back and retreated several
feet into the darkness.

She gasped. To
stabilize herself, she gripped the table and leaned over to catch her breath.
Her warm fingertips pressed against her burning lips.

“Whoa,” she
muttered under her breath. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Stay? Go? Run?
She just kissed an Egyptian god—the God of the Underworld, no less. Her body
throbbed from a simple kiss.

Who was she kidding?
There was nothing simple about it.

One thing Lilly did
know, she burned him, and badly, considering the distance he backed away. She
glanced over her shoulder to the location he disappeared. “I’m sorry.” She
followed it with a deep breath, and looked down at the parchment she laid out. Lilly
tried to distract herself from the warm burn of heat returning to her face.

“Lil,” Kit yelled.

She took another
deep breath before turning to her sister. “Lil, hey.” Kit narrowed her eyes on
her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, what’s up?” She
leaned against the table casually. Her eyes darted to the dark corner. She knew
he was watching, but didn’t enter the room. She hoped he was okay.

“Mother called.” Kit
grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the room and up the steps. “We have a
lead. We need to move.”

Lilly grabbed her
weapons belt and put it on. “You’re not going and that’s final,” she said to
Kendra. “It’s too dangerous for you to travel at night.”

“You may need me.”

“No, we don’t.”

Kendra turned to
her other sister. “Kit, help me here.”

“Lil is right. We
can’t risk losing you.”

“We all go,” Asar’s
voice boomed from a dark corner of the room.

“No,” Lilly said. “We
can’t risk traveling with Kendra in the open. She is not immune to the revens.”

“You will do as I
say. No further discussion.”

The room blackened.
With the loss of equilibrium Lilly fell forward on her hands and knees onto a
dirt floor. In the distance, Kit retched and Kendra whimpered. A cold, hard
hand ripped Lilly from the floor. She blinked a few times, confused. “Where are
we?”

“The key is here, I
can feel it.”

Lilly looked in the
direction of Asar’s low voice and saw his shape, nothing else. “Damn you,” she
hissed.

Conversely, her
heat vision silhouetted her sisters’ shapes in reddish yellow halos. She grabbed
Kendra’s hand. “You stay in the middle or immediately behind Kit or me. Do you
understand?”

Her sister gave a
petrified nod. Kendra had an overwhelming fear of the dark, so Lilly understood
why her entire body shook. She placed one of her small knives into her young
sister’s palm.

“So much for
gathering intel,” Kit growled, standing at the bottom of the stone steps deep
inside an abandoned church.

Lilly recognized it
as one of the places she and her sister had once exterminated an entire nest of
revens. She turned to Asar. “Where’s the key?”

He simply stared at
her with his vacant black eyes.

Grumbling, she
ascended the steps with her katana leading the way. The first chamber lay empty
of revens but had furniture, as if someone was living there. She glanced at Kit,
who shrugged.

Kendra squealed.
Lilly whipped her katana with precision toward the lunging reven. The next
thrust pierced straight through the reven’s chest into the heart and out the
back. With a quick quiver she withdrew the blade and tore up the heart muscle.

Lilly glared at
Asar as the body dropped to the floor. He looked as if he couldn’t have cared
less. Barely acknowledging her eye contact he pushed past her.

She made it to the
other end of the room when a wave of dizziness swept over her, and a thousand voices
whispered in her head. Depending on which way she turned, the pitch would rise
and fall. Lilly jumped when Kit grabbed her arm.

“You okay?”

Lilly nodded and
followed the whispers back across the room to a set of stairs heading in the
opposite direction. The small voices were telling a story she couldn’t quite
comprehend, but the need to understand overwhelmed her. Despite Kit’s protests,
she rushed forward to the source and distanced herself from the rest of the
group.

Lilly pulled up at
the entrance of a small circular room. A woman with red hair and white gown stood
with her back turned towards the door, humming a small tune which bounced
softly off the stone walls. Two revens stood rigid against either wall, unaware
of Lilly’s presence.

The whispers emanated
from a small jar on the center of alter. Lilly stepped forward, shortening the
distance between her and the woman. Despite her apparent beauty, the fetid
smell of decay revealed the woman’s true identity. Lilly never thought she
would get this close to the goddess. She pulled her blade high over her shoulder.
In one smooth motion, she sliced horizontally.

A cold arm yanked
her back, just as the tip missed the woman’s thin neck by a fraction. Asar’s
black figure moved in between her and the goddess. He picked up the jar and
opened its lid, making enough noise to make the goddess turn.

Lilly held her
breath uncertain what to do. Did he not want her dead? He’d blown whatever chances
they had of killing her.

She crouched
slightly. Kit entered the doorway with Kendra.

The goddess froze
and stared at the room full of unexpected guests. Her startled expression soon
disappeared in favor of sinister sneer. The revens on the wall lurched forward,
not toward Asar, but toward Kit and Kendra. Lilly executed four clean swipes
and the bodies dropped to the ground.

The goddess screeched.
“Nehebkau!”

Asar’s black eyes
fixated on the pale redhead with red rimmed eyes and grey skin, reminiscent of
a reven’s. “Where is the key?” he bellowed and threw down the jar.

“You will never
find it, my love.”

He grabbed the
goddess by the throat and slammed her up against the wall. “Where is it?”

The screams of
revens echoed up the staircase in deafening roar. “We have company,” Kit yelled.

Lilly picked up the
jar and handed it to Kendra. “Stay behind me. Down the steps, Kit. We’re
getting out of here.”

She led the trio down
the center of the church. At this moment she didn’t give a shit if the two gods
followed. Her first concern—getting Kendra to safety. Lilly jumped down out of
the church window followed by her two sisters. She kicked out the window of a
car and hotwired it. “Get her out of here, Kit.”

“Not until you get
in the car.”

“Go. I’ve got to go
back.”

She ran off before
her sister could protest any further, and cautiously navigated her way through
the corridors, only encountering a few revens. Finally, after rounding the
stairs, Lilly entered the small circular room she had left Asar and Kamen. The
chamber lay empty with only the lingering smell of death.

The burning in his
side could only mean one thing.

The blade Kepi
thrust into his ribs had been poisoned with snake venom. It could render any
god powerless in minutes. He could not dematerialize in his weakened state.

Asar strained
against the bindings holding him tight against the stone altar. Normally, he
could have easily overpowered a goddess like Kepi, but without his soul, she
had gotten the upper hand. Even Kamen lay immobilized by nails driven through
his arms, shoulders, thighs and feet.

Asar focused on the
red eyed goddess who leaned over him. She caressed the side of his face. “Whatever
happened to us? I thought you loved me.”

“You betrayed me,”
Asar growled.

“You refused me
entry into the afterlife. You did not even have the decency to condemn me to
walk
this
god forsaken world. No, you imprisoned me to live my days in
darkness, confined to my tomb. Surely, you could have found it in your dead
heart to forgive me.” The sharp points of her claws ripped through the skin on
his face. “You are keeping strange company these days. A Nehebkau?”

“She is nothing more
than a slave.”

“A very beautiful
slave, I might add. Too bad she ran at the first sign of trouble.”

He had foolishly
thought Lilly would be different than the other woman poisoning his life. Despite
the bellow of betrayal sounding in his head, he pressed his lips tightly
together. He would not show his weakness to Kepi.

The goddess had
taken more than his son and the key to the Underworld. She had stolen his
heart, literally. Cut it out with her bare hands. She robbed him of his very soul,
the one sacred thing he was created to judge. What better revenge could the
goddess have than leave the God of the Underworld without his soul?

Unlike humans, he
existed without his life source, but he could not judge others without it. It
weighed on him like a scarlet letter. With his soul and key, the goddess
resurrected her reven army. He could not let Lilly execute Kepi. His heart lay
inside her chest. If Lilly severed the heart, his soul, a fate worse than death
would fall upon this world and the afterlife.

He did not want to
admit to himself Lilly’s touch alone removed the curse of emptiness. As painful
as it was, he felt alive in her presence. He could have completely absorbed the
life energy she emitted so strongly, but he would not damn her to a fate
similar to his own.

“You have nothing
to say? No last words?” the goddess asked, raking her hand up the length of his
linen covered thigh to rest on his scrotum. The thin material provided little
protection.

He cringed at the
unwanted touch of the goddess. A touch that, long ago, brought him sadistic pleasure,
now just filled him with disgust and loathing. “Get your hands off me,
odjit
.”

She clamped her
hand around him. He roared and arched up off the alter.

“We will finish
this now. It is time to finally take what is left of your putrid body and feed
it to my revens. Only then will you understand what it is like to be denied
paradise. Your brother and son will soon see the same fate.”

Kepi raised the
blade to eviscerate his abdomen. Asar chanted a small prayer to the Mother
Goddess. A tumble of silver flashed in the corner of his eye seconds before the
goddess’ head split open and was thrown back into the pack of revens.

A spray of blonde
hair and black boots followed. With her feet straddling him on the alter, Lilly
cut his bindings on his wrists and legs. In a quick movement, she leapt to Kamen’s
side and pulled the stakes from his body.

The goddess
staggered to her feet, and removed the blade imbedded into the side of her skull.
Letting out a blood curdling screech, she faced Lilly, who had placed herself
immediately in front of Asar.

Lilly twisted the
katana in her hand with precision. “You want a fight, bitch? Bring it on.”

The goddess shrank
back into the flood of revens in a hasty retreat. The undead pushed forward. Lilly
swung her sword through the first row of rotting flesh. Body parts showered to
the floor.

“Where are you
going?” Lilly shouted. “I’m not done with you.”

Asar rolled off the
altar onto his unsteady feet. The venom burned. Dead or not, it hurt like hell.
Despite his own severe injuries, Kamen pushed back the horde of revens, but it
wouldn’t last long.

“Lilly.”

Her green eyes
flashed over her shoulder as she continued her killing rampage. Backing slowly toward
him, she pressed her athletic frame against him.

Asar reached out and
wrapped his arm around her waist. “Stay close to me,” he whispered in her ear. “Walk
forward slowly.”

He leaned on her
for support. The heat of her body immediately burned his skin, but he willingly
endured the pain.

They had bigger
concerns.

With Kamen
protecting them from the rear, the revens parted as Lilly stepped forward with
her weapon at the ready. Each step seemed excruciatingly slow and methodical. Over
a thousand undead swarmed around them. Sweat rolled down the sides of her face
and her chest heaved against him. They exited out the main vestibule of the
church, down the aisle and out the large wooden doors in the front. Kamen
secured the metal lock and released his control. The doors of the church bowed
against weight of over a thousand zombies.

Lilly gripped the
railing on the steps. “We need to find transportation. Those doors won’t hold
for long.”

Asar could not
support his own body weight and leaned heavily against her. He groaned when she
moved down the steps and yanked open a van door.

“Daylight is
coming,” Kamen stated, starring at the horizon. “We need to get him inside
somewhere.”

She shifted her
shoulder. He fell with a loud thump into the back of the van. With his eyes
half hooded, he knew his death neared.

No measure of life
would save him now.