Surrender (THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES) (27 page)

Kailin lay flat and Jackson moved his hands around her until he found a place that was limestone and not soft female body. With most of the pressure on his knees instead of his feet, he didn’t know what type of leverage he could get, but he’d try.

“One, two, threeeeee…” He rounded his back up. “Arrrrr!” He breathed and pushed. The lid seemed to shake a small bit but didn’t slide. Muscle just couldn’t win against two tons of limestone. He collapsed back on Kailin and tried not to suck in all their remaining air.

“I tried to use magic too, thinking maybe you weren’t touching me,” she whispered, “but I guess you still were.” After a few seconds of silence: “We’re really trapped in here.”

“Only until Drakkina loses the demons and returns. Or Moghadam opens this up. He knows his queen is in here.”

“What if the men are all dead?”

“Then Drakkina.”

“What if Drakkina is dead?” Kailin’s voice had become so tiny he could hardly hear it even though her lips brushed his ear.

“She’s survived this long. She knows how to handle them.” Jackson kissed Kailin’s ear and then her cheek. “We’re lying together on the wide open prairie, blue skies, white puffy clouds, constant breeze. My mother had this huge patchwork quilt that we’d take out for picnics. We’re lying on it.” Jackson clutched Kailin’s limp hand. “Full from sweet potato pie and rabbit stew with young garden carrots.”

“I think you need to take me to this place, Jackson,” Kailin whispered.

“It’s a promise.”

“Made with a kiss?”

There was being a gentleman and then there was giving in because the lady certainly needed a kiss. “Of course.” Jackson brushed back over to her parted lips. Gentle at first, he melted against her mouth. Warm, so warm. Kailin’s lips were soft and generous, her body contoured and sloped like fertile hills. He tasted barely controlled passion, but the quiver running through her, against his length, was tainted by tamped down terror.

God, how was he going to get them out of here? Because he certainly wasn’t surrendering Kailin to death now. He’d never known when his own life would be finished, but now he had something to live for. A promise. A promise to see home again and to take his woman there where she would never be confined again.

She slanted against him, her breath a rasp that roped in his mind away from the prairie and difficult promises. Only one oath resonated through him.
Mine. My woman
. Heat slid down through his body. Smooth skin, the essence of flowers in her hair behind the ancient dust coating them. He rubbed his thumb across her hand. How he wished to touch her cheek, finger through her hair, explore the long lines of her back. His short nails dug against the limestone, but the 3,000-year-old chiseled sarcophagus certainly didn’t give.

“I can’t breathe,” Kailin whispered. “There’s no air.”

“There is,” he whispered against her mouth but didn’t continue the kiss. “Blue sky full of air around us. Just lean into me.” She shivered, certainly not from cold. Terror then. Jackson’s stomach twisted tight as the warm trickle of her tear pressed between their cheeks. “Nothing but open air and prairie grass.”

“Jackson.” His name came tortured from her lips. “I…there’s so much more.”

He waited, but she didn’t go on. “Small breaths. We’ll be out of here soon. Then there will be more,” he insinuated. “Much more.” A breathless hitch that sounded like the start and stop of a chuckle came from her, easing the pain in his chest.

Damn. They had to get out of here. Jackson braced his back against the lid again and shoved.
Useless.
He shifted his feet around the orb, but as long as he lay against Kailin, the orb’s power was muted. Damn. Where was that witch?

The air was thin around their smashed bodies, sparse. Jackson drew shallow inhales. He kissed Kailin’s lips lightly. “Blue skies,” he murmured. He held his breath and pushed upward, trying to separate his body from Kailin’s. No use. Even with his eyes shut he sensed the dizziness that comes with the lack of oxygen. Maybe if he died first, his body wouldn’t mute her magic and she could escape. His fingers moved along his pant line, but then he remembered Moghadam had taken his knife.

There were other ways to die. “Kailin, I need your scarf.”

“What?”

Her voice sounded as thin as the air. “Your scarf.” Jackson used his teeth to tug at the fabric around her neck. If he could ball it into his mouth, stopping the oxygen completely, he could be the first to die, the only one to die.

“Listen Kailin. When I…pass out, I think your magic will work again. You need to get yourself out then.”

“My magic,” she repeated.

“Breathe, Kailin. You need to think. When I stop moving,” he said, purposely not inhaling against the burn in his chest. “You need to blast your way out of here. I know you can. Do you understand?”

“Blast us out,” she whispered.

“Good. I’m going to stop talking now. Kailin, I…I’m sorry.” He kissed her. There was so much more he wanted to do, so much more he wanted to say, explain, in case she found out his true mission. She would think the worst. Maybe that’s what he deserved. “I never meant to hurt you,” he whispered and began to eat the dusty cloth.

Hiss!
The seal of the limestone lid broke, releasing the vacuum. Jackson’s heart slammed hard in his chest and he spit against the dense folds until the scarf was out of his mouth. The two-ton lid scraped along the edge of the narrow coffin.

“Breathe, Kailin. Breathe deep,” he ordered. Was she moving? He couldn’t tell. The lid moved slowly and a flicker of light slid across Kailin’s face. It was shut tight. Jackson moved his mouth across Kailin’s and blew into her lips. Was she unconscious? “Kailin!”

Deep voices babbled in Arabic outside the sarcophagus.

The lid scraped the rest of the way across the top and crashed down one side of the sarcophagus. Jackson pushed out on his knees, pulling Kailin’s limp body with him. “Kailin, we’re out. Breathe,” he ordered and laid her down on the chiseled stone of the floor. His chest clamped tight. He tried to inhale deeply himself but could only concentrate on trying to detect movement in Kailin. He ran his hands over her face, splaying back her hair.

“We saw her leave,” Moghadam insisted.

Jackson ignored him, watching Kailin for signs of life. He rested his hand on her chest and felt the thud of her heart. Her lips moved and Jackson’s chest opened up enough for him to fill his lungs.

A second chance. He’d been given a second chance. The cramp in his chest uncoiled. Kailin was alive.

“Our queen,” one man murmured.

“Give her some room,” Moghadam commanded. Jackson leaned back and up to stand, their bodies separating.

Boom!
Sand above blasted upward. A fountain of dirt and artifacts shot like an explosion into the inky night sky. Jackson watched Moghadam, his man, and the body of the third fly upward as they screamed. Kailin lifted her arms at the same time her eyes flicked open.

“Out,” she whispered and rose within the storm. She glanced down at Jackson as she disappeared into the dark. “Jackson.” She moved her hands but nothing tugged at him. Her telekinesis still had no effect on him. Even the orb had risen, a firefly glow lighting it from within, while he watched from below.

“Damn,” he murmured and glanced around for a rope or something climbable. But even the sarcophagi had risen, leaving the tomb an empty sandstone cave. The mosaic ceiling had shattered. Once Kailin’s panic ebbed, she’d be furious at herself for the destruction. Right now all Jackson cared about were those demons out there. Had they been called back by the massive magic she’d used or by the orb’s growing magic?

Jackson cupped his hands around his mouth. “Kailin throw the orb back down to me. It could call the demons back.” Without any use of human strength, the orb floated down to him. “Don’t use your magic!” Jackson caught the ball and the inner light faded.

With the orb under arm, Jackson jogged back through to the front two rooms that were unscathed compared to the destroyed inner sanctum. He grabbed the rope that had fallen into a heavy tangled coil on the ground covered with shards of pottery. Treasure, years of research, but not now. What the hell was going on above the desert floor?

“Jackson?” The faint sound wasn’t panicked just concerned.
Kailin
.

“Down here! Wait, I’m coming back,” he yelled and dragged the rope behind him on his dash to the open room. He looked up and froze.

Kailin stood on the edge of the chasm she’d erupted in her panic. Sand sifted down from her feet. “Be careful, the edge,” he warned at the same time he realized it wouldn’t matter as she could always levitate herself. He threw the bizarre thought to somewhere in the back of his psyche. The stars wreathed her head in the blackness of the once again clear sky. The constellations, his longtime friends, watching in awe just like him.

Kailin’s hair hung around her shoulders. In the firelight from a torch somewhere behind her she looked like a dark angel shot down to earth, tumbled in the sand and dirt of cruel humanity. The separation between them physically hurt.

“Moghadam!” Jackson yelled and set the orb against his ankle. The radical’s face appeared next to Kailin. “Catch!” He threw the end of the rope up to the man. Kailin grabbed at the same time Moghadam did and they both caught it. Moghadam barked an order to the other survivor and handed off the torch to Kailin.

Jackson wrapped his legs around the rope and grabbed the orb. The men pulled and Jackson rose. At the edge, he rolled the orb across the desert slope and the two men pulled him over the side of the unearthed tomb.

The four of them stood among the broken artifacts on the newly sculpted mounds of debris, rock, and sand. The one man who had been killed below by the demons was found and prayed over by Moghadam and his one surviving man.

“We will search for the others in the daylight,” Moghadam said, eyeing the cold blackness of the desert. “The cyclone scattered them. Perhaps some will be alive.”

Kailin stood distant, her arms wrapped tightly around her. Jackson shrugged out of his jacket and laid it across her shoulders. His fingers stretched along her arm.

“I don’t know if the orb will call them back,” Jackson said softly. “If you use your magic at all, the orb enhances it. So don’t use any magic.”

She seemed so fragile standing there. She hadn’t said anything since his name. Was she in shock? He’d seen psychological shock before, where men would shut down after witnessing the blood bath of a battle or the animal inhumanity of arm to arm combat. “Perhaps we should stay connected.” The small innuendo he lay under the words didn’t spur a reaction.

“I panicked.” Kailin’s words were mere whispers woven with the light breeze.

“Seems like a reasonable reaction considering you were half unconscious and stuck in a tomb.”

“I could have killed the rest of us. I was out of control.”

“Hmmm…I suppose so, but we are all fine. Moghadam and his man don’t even seem dented. You must have set them down softly.”

“I blew the room to bits.” Her profile turned to him, her eyes glittering slightly from the torchlight. “All the artifacts. The mummies.”

“We’ll find things in the daylight. Not now.” He had to get her somewhere safe. Jackson scanned the night but only stars seemed to watch. He fought the chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the plummeting temperature and everything to do with the thought of the demons coming back. He had no idea how to protect Kailin if that happened.

She shook her head. “I’m the dangerous one. One person shouldn’t have such power,” she whispered.

A shadow dove from the clouds, a silent and graceful form. Kailin’s owl landed with two wing flaps near her legs. Its uniformly mottled face twisted back and forth as if taking count of those who had survived. A low “whoo” came from it as it hopped closer.

“Tuto,” she said softly, a breath of relief passed her lips.

“Do you have a way for us to get off this desert tonight?” Jackson tossed at Moghadam. “Your queen could use a bath and a good night’s sleep where demons can’t just suck her away, don’t you think.”

Moghadam ran a hand over his face while nodding. He too glanced at the open space around them. “We did.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kailin mumbled. “Did I blow them up too?”

Moghadam stared at her, frozen for a second. “I…I don’t think so, my queen. The demons’ cyclone took much, but we will keep you safe.” His eyes flitted to his companion who nodded stiffly as if he too felt the ridiculousness of Moghadam’s boast after their army had been slaughtered and it was obvious that their “queen” held more power than any of them. Although right now she looked more like a scared child, heavy with guilt over stepping on a butterfly in the garden.

Jackson pulled her stiff shoulders under his arm, her body into his side, and she let him. “We had a camp below the tomb.”

“
Aiwa
, yes,” Moghadam nodded and swept his arm out to indicate Kailin to go first.

For a moment, Jackson wondered if he’d have to carry her, but then she started to move, trudging against the sand. Tuto leapt into the darkness of night again. He soared in smooth, silent circles around them. Moghadam’s man carried the wrapped orb. It was safe for now. If the man tried to run with the artifact, Kailin could surely call it back. He’d retrieve it before he gave way to sleep tonight, if he gave way. The orb was far too valuable, and it was finally within his grasp.

The sand sifted under his boots. Kailin’s long stride wobbled as the hill churned under her heels on the slope, and Jackson steadied her. Below two lumps lay against the black desert. Two camels. Qeb must have taken two. But two were enough to get her off the desert tonight. He’d tuck her away. Where? He wasn’t sure. Where did one hide from demons? A church? A tomb could mask her magic. Which tombs did he know, and how would he get her inside one again?

The chilled desert breeze sliced against Jackson’s neck, making him glance behind him. Something wasn’t right. “Wait.” He paused, his hand halting Kailin’s descent. The stars, the constellations, something seemed warped. “Damn,” he muttered and Moghadam turned to study the night sky. The darkness, dotted with familiar points of light, wavered like water. It was as if he stared at a reflection of the night sky in a pond.