Vlahos approached as she groaned and turned her face away.
He bent over her head. “Suck her clit now. Make her come. I need it a
ll, buddy.”
Billy lurched up and knelt between her thighs, prying them apart and bending low. His tongue fluttered against her clit, and she bit her lip.
God, it was too much, too much. And then her back arched off the ground, and she was keening.
Vlahos placed his hand in the center of her chest, and then shoved…his hand sinking into her. She screamed, coming apart and horrified at the same time, her legs twisting.
And suddenly, she was awake. Vlahos poised over her, his hand not inside her but pressed against her chest.
Low, ugly laughter surrounded her, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Nice,” Means said. “Very nice. After we bring her through, I’ll have to taste me some of that,” he said, kissing the air.
Then Vlahos grabbed her shoulder roughly and flung her toward Billy.
She came to her knees and settled beside him.
He leaned into her for a moment, and then straightened away.
Just long enough to reassure her, tell her she wasn’t alone.
Winded, trembling, she lowered her head, afraid like she’d never been in her entire life. She knew the truth now about her life, about her world. And she was surrounded by a web of lies.
If she lived through the night, if she was ever free again, she didn’t know where that left her.
Gabriel inhaled deeply, a heaviness settling inside his chest. God, would this night ever end? Gillian was shaken by what she’d learned, terrified by how truly vulnerable and helpless she was. He might be a demon, but he understood how a human heart worked. She’d needed to believe she was strong and could overcome anything.
As a demon fighting to keep the balance between the land of the living and the shadowlands on the other side, he shouldn’t be feeling so conflicted. Sacrifices had to be made, but he’d hate to lose her, hate like hell to lose his friend as well. However, he wasn’t certain he could help either one of them without compromising the mission.
He had to get that artifact from Means.
Squaring his shoulders, he headed toward the lizard that’d just completed painting a picture on the floor. It was a circle with triangular points surrounding it. At the center was a crude rendering of a creature’s face with a broad snout and a tongue shaped like a dagger. Because his unit back in San Antonio had been studying up on Aztec glyphs to try to the decipher the message on the side of Spanish sword hilt they’d recovered, he knew he was looking at a representation of the Aztec Ring of Flames, with the sun god Tonatiuh, at its center.
Means set aside his brush, one of the tools he’d stolen from the dig site, and lifted the sleeve of his coverall. Wrapped around his wrist was a silver cuff, inlaid with semiprecious stones and crystals, and with a large blood-red crystal cabochon at the center of radiating rings of etched flames.
“Might want to stand back,” Means said, a grin beginning to slide across his face. Then he bent and dipped a finger into the remaining blood inside the bucket and held it above the cabochon.
One drop slid onto the stone. The drop disappeared, melting into the crystal.
Around them, the humming grew louder, the air began to move, building until it whipped around the barracks floor like a cyclone.
Then a pinprick of bright light burst in front of Means, expanding instantly, tearing at the fabric of this dimension, opening a gash of bright intense light and heat. The Wizard laughed gleefully, and reached into the tear, pulling back the edges with his hands until it opened wide, revealing another place, another world inside.
Darkness lay in wait, moonlight filtering through the gash to touch the floor of the barracks.
“Quickly,” the Wizard shouted. “Anyone who wants to come with me, step through!”
Murmurings sounded all around them. The prisoners shifted on their feet, exchanging glances, a few, namely the ones The Wizard had befriended, stepped eagerly forward and climbed through the rift.
Gabriel stood, his hands clenched at his sides, unable to warn them what awaited them. It sure as shit wasn’t freedom. But he needed the cuff and had to get close enough to Means without being jumped by his minions.
He stepped closer to Means and touched a jagged edge of the portal, then grasped the burning rim and opened it wider, smiling across at demon. More prisoners stepped forward, ones not quite so eager, but with jaws sliding tight as they stepped through the gaping hole to the other side.
A dozen entered, many more hung back, their expressions stating their unease and disbelief.