Cursed Read online

  “You’re better off without the demon, Two,” Six said steadily. “It was driving you mad.”

  “Better off without him, you say?”

  As he spoke, he idly swung Charlotte back and forth in a slow arc, as though she was some kind of pendulum. She was getting dizzier and dizzier as the black, bottomless pit flashed beneath her.

  The Pit and the Pendulum, she thought sickly. Oh my God, he’s going to drop me. Drop me or lose his own hold and we’ll both fall and he won’t care because he’s crazy—freaking crazy…

  “Better off without my one and only friend,” she heard Two say again. “Well maybe you’d be better off without this little one.”

  As he spoke, his fingers began to loosen around her ankle. Charlie was on an upward swing and just as she reached the arc, Six shoved Stav’s big body off the platform, right into her path.

  “Grab him!” he shouted as Stav’s dangling body jerked to a halt.

  Feeling like a trapeze artist, and not a very good one at that, Charlie made a wild snatch for Stavros’s legs. She latched onto him just as Two’s bony hand let go of her ankle.

  With a muffled shriek she gripped Stav even harder and held on tight. Then she felt him jerk and there was the sound of coughing which seemed to shake her whole body.

  “Stavros?” She wanted to look up at him but she was too busy hanging onto his legs upside down for dear life.

  “Hold tight!” she heard Six shout and then he was hauling Stavros up onto the platform with her clinging to him tightly.

  As soon as they were back on solid ground, she turned eagerly and looked into her lover’s face.

  “Stav? Stavros?” She slapped him lightly on the cheeks and he coughed again and opened his eyes.

  “What in the…Seven Hells?” he muttered groggily. “Where am I? An’ why do my arms feel half pulled…out of their sockets?”

  Charlie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “Stav? Oh my God, Stav—you’re back! Your back!”

  “Didn’t know I was away.” He blinked his eyes, frowning at her. “Can you untie my wrists? They hurt and I can’t hold you while I am tied down.”

  “We will take care of that right now,” Six said. Grasping Two by the wrist, he drew the defeated Dark Kindred leader up until he was eye level, dangling from Six’s big hand. “Where are the keys to the manacles?” he growled at the other male.

  “Here they are.” Reaching down with his free hand, Two pulled something out of his pocket. But instead of keys, he came out with a small, snub-nosed weapon which he leveled at Six. “Well, well—not the keys after all,” he said, grinning broadly. “But very handy, just the same. How would you like to be hit with a shocker?”

  Six didn’t appear disturbed. “Drop the weapon, Two,” he said, frowning. “Drop it now or I drop you.”

  “Go on and drop me then—see if I care. Or maybe I’ll save you the trouble.”

  With a suddenly twist of his wrist, he slid out of Six’s grasp and dropped, disappearing silently into the black void.

  Charlie opened her mouth to scream or gasp—she didn’t know which—but the sound never left her lips. Instead there was a loud flapping sound which echoed in the vast, shadowy cavern. Then Two appeared again but this time he seemed to have grown a huge pair of black, leathery wings. They flapped in the darkness, holding him aloft as he grinned and let out a high, screaming, crazy laugh that set her teeth on edge.

  No, they’re not wings, she thought, staring at him. They’re that black leather trench coat he always wears. But how in the hell did he make it fly?

  “How do you like my latest enhancement, Six?” Two called, grinning that awful grin full of gray, spit-slick metal teeth. “Subtle, no? You’d never guess it just to see me that I can fly.”

  Six had gotten a weapon from somewhere—possible off one of the guards earlier—and he was holding on Two as he hovered in mid air.

  “Fly away, Two,” he growled. “Or I swear by the Goddess I’ll make you pay.”

  “Oh, there will be payment, my dear Six. Payment in abundance,” he snapped, still hovering there in mid-air. “But I will be the one dishing it out.”

  “I have had enough of this.” Six aimed a blast of blue energy at the other male who barely ducked out of the way in time.

  “Ha!” The near miss seemed to delight Two. “Keep trying Six but it will do you no good—you can’t kill me, none of you can!”

  “What makes you so sure?” Six growled. “Did you get an invulnerability enhancement?”

  “Hardly.” Two laughed again. “Do you remember, my dear Six, about how all of you were blathering on and on about that stupid prophesy about the Heart of Love and ‘Cursed to find an early grave’ and all that? Well, I have a prophesy of my own—one given to me by an old female on Belis Six who claimed to be a witch.”

  “A what?” Six frowned. “Now I know you have gone mad.”

  “Not at all, not at all—the witch had a very good reputation for accuracy—I checked her out thoroughly before I killed her,” Two said conversationally. “She said this to me—

  ‘ No Kindred shall kill you

  Though you spill rivers of their blood

  The one who is your doom

  Comes from desert and from flood.

  A free-born male

  Too proud to bend his knee

  Enslaved of his own will

  Against his will set free.’

  He cocked his head to one side. “Now what do you think that means? I think it means that no such male exists—therefore none can kill me, especially not you, Six, no matter how much you may want to.”

  “I think it means you’re a fool,” Six growled. “One who’s about to die no matter what that prophesy said.” He leveled his weapon at the hovering Two who gave a crazy laugh and suddenly shot upwards. Soon he was out of sight somewhere among the ruined clusters of the Collective.

  “What in the Seven Hells is going on?” Stavros muttered weakly. “Is this another dream? Why could he fly?”

  “Enhancements,” Six said shortly. “Wings aren’t a common one but they aren’t that rare. Trust Two to be ready for anything.”

  “Speaking of being ready, what are we going to do if he comes back?” Charlie asked nervously. “And how are you going to get Stav out of those damn handcuffs?”

  “Like this.” Six flexed his left hand which appeared to be made of flexible silver metal. “Two isn’t the only one with enhancements.”

  “Oh…good,” Stav muttered. Then his eyes rolled up and his head fell back against the metal platform.

  Charlie checked him hurriedly. “He’s still breathing but his pulse is weak and thready,” she told Six, who was currently shredding the metal manacles with his silver hand.

  “That surge of energy that came from the power net when it burned was no laughing matter,” Six said grimly, finishing with the first cuff. “He may not be out of the forest yet as they say on your world.”

  “Out of the woods, you mean,” Charlie said distractedly. “What set the net on fire anyway? And why did the plan work at all? I thought the emotions Stav’s Mark absorbed weren’t strong enough to set it off.”

  “Something happened when Two touched him,” Six said, getting the second cuff off with quick, efficient motions. “If I had to guess I would say it was the pure evil of Ur, the demon, trying to invade Stavros while he was still charged with the positive energy of the Heart of Love.”

  “Like a chemical reaction.” Charlie stood back as Six threw the other male over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She looked at the smoldering lump of blackness in the center of the charred net and shivered. It smelled horrible—like sulfur and burned flesh. “So the prophesy was right after all,” she concluded.

  “It was given by the Goddess,” Six said shortly. “Or rather, she foretold that I would remember it. I have not known of her very long but so far she seems extremely accurate in all she says.”

  “The Goddess, huh?” Ch