Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [110]
Yet what was one more mistake among a lifetime of them? He had no hope of success in the arena anyway. Why shouldn’t he lake this opportunity to enjoy himself?
He reached the mouth of the passageway and somehow managed to stop by clutching the frame with his hands. His body swayed toward her, yet his fingers dug in and held him in place.
“Come to me,” she whispered.
Her scent rolled over him again. He snorted against it, finding it cloyingly sweet, exotic, and yet somehow rotten.
“What are you?” he struggled to say. His lips felt wooden and thick.
“I am a haggai,” she replied. “How strong you are. How suspicious. Do not fear me. I am given to you. Come.”
He took one step forward, his hands sliding down the wall and dragging free.
At that angle, with the firelight shining behind him to cast faint illumination into the mouth of the passageway, he saw her. Just a vague outline—the long mass of curling hair springing up and blowing as though in a breeze, the liquid gleam of her eyes watching him from the darkness, the pale curve of her ripe breasts. She seemed to be sitting on the floor, and yet the height was wrong for such a position.
Blinking against the haze in his brain, Caelan took another step forward, staggered, and bumped into the wall. Feeling dizzy and strange, he twisted to put his back against the wall.
As he did so, the faint firelight gleamed off something shiny and smooth coiled around her. She was sitting on it, but . . .
She leaned forward, reaching out her arms. “Caelan, come. I am here to give you ecstasy such as you have never known.”
When she moved, he realized she wasn’t sitting on the coils. Instead, they were a part of her. The lower half of her body wasn’t human at all, but rather eellike and a sickly mottled gray color. Her hair wasn’t hair either. There was no breeze blowing here to stir the tendrils on her head. Instead, a thick mass of tentacles grew from her scalp, stretching and reaching, constantly moving with life of their own.
Horrified, he stood frozen, his mouth agape.
“Caelan, I want you,” she sang.
Even more to his horror, he felt himself moving forward, obeying the spell of her summons. Revulsion burned his throat, and with all his will he tried to fight, but it was asthough his feel belonged to another. They would not obey him.
He walked right up to her, raging inside, lighting the spell she’d cast over him. She was a monster, something demonic and evil. He couldn’t couple with that.
Her fingers stroked his arm. With shock he realized he was suddenly close to her. She ducked her head and brushed his chest with the tentacles. They felt soft and warm, squirming against his flesh.
Desperately, he shut his eyes and reached for severance. With a snap, he was freezing cold as though he’d entered an ice cave.
She cried out something, but her voice was too far away to hear. She reached for him, but he stepped back slowly, oh so very slowly, feeling as though he were moving under water. Yet her grasp missed him and he was free, still stepping backward while she called and called his name.
When he came to his senses he was running for his life along the sandy jogging track, arms and legs pumping, his breath a desperate rattle in his throat. Something unnameable was chasing him. He could sense it, although dusk had fallen and he couldn’t see much in the starlight.
Then he realized those were hoofbeats behind him. He heard the horse snorting and the oaths of the rider. Exhaustion plunged through Caelan. His legs were burning, and his heart was hammering out of control.
He stopped abruptly and dropped to his knees, dragging in deep, gulping breaths of air. Shudders ran through him, and he had no idea how he’d gotten out here.
The horse reined up beside him, and its rider jumped down.
“Traulander?” It was Orlo’s voice, half exasperated and half afraid.
Caelan dragged in more air, lifting his hands to wipe the sweat drenching his face. “Yes, master.”
“Great Gault