Dark Journey

“When you haven’t even decided whether or not to make me leave?”

Isis sighed and shook her head. “You are in need of fresh clothing, a good meal and rest. We shall discuss these matters in greater detail at another time.” She let her hand drift down his arm. “Let me show you to your quarters here at the Center. When you have been cleared, you will be given a tour of the city and time enough to see what we have to offer. Then you shall be granted a chance to apply for citizenship...if that is what you desire.”

He dropped the mask completely and straightened, glad to shed the false weight of fear and submission. “And what is the price?” he asked.

“As you must know,” she said, “every citizen is expected to do his or her part, human or Opiri.”

“Humans have to give blood,” he said.

“Willingly,” she said. “But you must have known that.” She tapped on the door, and the guards opened it.

“I will take Daniel myself,” she said.

The guards’ faces tightened with worry, but they made no protest. Isis, Daniel thought, had them in the palm of her hand.

He followed her along the corridor to a door at the rear of the building. A second, smaller building stood on the other side of a narrow garden. Summer flowers nodded gently in the breeze left by Isis’s passing as if they, too, offered obeisance.

“These are the visitor’s quarters,” she said. “They are used only until the prospective citizen has been properly introduced to the city and is assigned a permanent residence. I hope you will find your room comfortable.”

The room she indicated was near the back of the building. She opened the locked door with a key hidden somewhere among her robes and invited him inside.

It was more or less what Daniel had expected: a bed, a small table, two chairs, a small chest with a lamp. An inner door led to a bathroom. There were no windows.

A thread of real panic worked its way through Daniel’s gut. He hated small, windowless rooms. He hated being a prisoner. But he’d known it might come to this, and so he stepped inside.

“I will see that food and drink are brought immediately,” Isis said. “Clothes will come after I report the sizes you require.” She looked him up and down with a faint smile. “I think I have already made an accurate estimate.”

An intensely physical tension rose between them as Daniel realized that she had been as fully aware of his body as he had been of hers.

Her smile faltered, and he had the sense that she was startled by the change in the air, as if she had suddenly lost the use of a tool she had wielded with ease all her life.

What would she do, Daniel thought, if he let her see just how little under her influence he really was?

She must have seen something in his eyes that alarmed her, for she looked away and backed toward the door. “I will speak to you again soon,” she said. “Rest well, Daniel.”

In a moment she was gone, and the door lock engaged. Daniel sat down on the bed and stripped off his boots, dirty shirt and pants, trying to distract his thoughts from Isis and the sense of walls closing in around him. He stepped into the shower and imagined that the water was washing away the memories, but they were never far from his thoughts. Part of him still lived in that tiny, dirty cell Lord Palemon had kept him in when Daniel wasn’t being used or punished for defiance. Even his good years with Ares and his time in Avalon and Delos hadn’t erased that cell from his mind.

When he walked out of the bathroom, Isis was standing by the door. A tray of food and a pitcher of water lay on the table, but Daniel barely noticed them. Isis wet her lips and stared at him, and his body reacted exactly as it had before. This time there was no concealing it.

“I am flattered,” Isis said huskily.

“It’s no less than you expect from any man who comes near you,” he said.

Her brows drew down. “You are discourteous, Daniel.”

“And you aren’t used to discourtesy, are you? You don’t have to order anyone to get what you want.”

Her dark eyes sparked with anger, bringing out the deep purple lurking within them, and Daniel laughed inwardly. She wasn’t so different from the Opiri he’d known in Erebus, or even some of those he’d met outside in the colonies. She summoned respect, even if she didn’t acknowledge it.

“You’re a Bloodmistress,” Daniel said bluntly. “You were born to influence others.”

He was surprised to see distress in her expression. “What do you know of it?”

“Do you deny it?” he demanded.

She wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered. “You are wrong.”

“A pity you never had a chance to own another intelligent being,” Daniel said. “Then you could have had absolute power.”

“I do not want it!” She gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles turning white against her golden skin. “You do not know me. You see only what you wish to see.”

“Then you do deny it, in spite of all the bows and smiles and deference everyone shows you, as if you were the goddess your name implies.”

“I made no attempt to influence you,” she insisted, her golden skin turning pale.

“Maybe not consciously,” he said, relenting a little, “but instinctively. Because you are what you are.”

“That is truly what you think of me?”

“We’re strangers,” he said. “What should I think?”

To his astonishment, she worked at the fastenings of her robes, and they fell like water to her feet. Beneath them she was naked. And breathtaking. Her body was sweetly curved, full-breasted and hipped, her legs shapely and strong, her waist supple.

“You cannot abide losing control, Daniel,” she said. “That is your rebellion against your old life. Now I give you a choice. You may prove to yourself that I cannot influence you...because I want you, and I will do nothing to make you want me.”

Chapter 3 (#ulink_aac63888-2bc4-5f2d-a47c-e3c4f961ac6a)

Lust shone in Daniel’s pale blue eyes, but he made no move toward Isis.

He was disciplined, she thought. Disciplined and proud, yet willing to set aside his pride to play the serf if he thought it was to his benefit.

But he had also accused her of trying to dominate others with her influence. Surely that could not be true; she had sworn to give up such power long ago.

At the moment, Daniel had all the power. Dangerous was the word that kept coming to mind, even though he was still a prisoner. His body fascinated her; every part of him was whipcord muscle and lean grace, like one of the wildcats that roamed the wilderness. His skin had been bronzed by exposure to the sun, and his eyes were bright and keen in his tanned, handsome face.

She had never met a human who had such an effect on her, not in all her long years of life, though she had known thousands upon thousands of men; men who had worshipped her as a goddess, laying gifts at her feet, willing to serve her in any way she desired.

This man would never serve her. There was a hardness in him, scars she could feel but not see, experiences she could only imagine in spite of her time spent with former serfs. She had always been able to sense what lay in human hearts, had regarded them with sympathy and pity. But Daniel...

He would reject her pity, her sympathy, and any offer to guide him as she did the thousands she had sworn to protect. And still she reacted to his proximity as if she were a starving Opir in the presence of fresh, pumping blood.

How could it be that she should desire a man who was not only a stranger to the city, but an utter enigma to her? How could her body betray her so cruelly? What had she meant to prove by stripping herself and standing before him, a living offering to one who could so easily disdain her?

“Enough of these games,” Daniel said in a husky voice, his gaze never leaving hers. The back of her neck prickled as he drew closer. His steps were nearly as silent as an Opir’s, his stride loose and easy.

But he was no more relaxed than she was. The physical evidence of his desire had not abated, and his nearness stiffened her nipples and brought her to aching readiness.

“What do you want, Isis?” he murmured. “What are you hoping to gain from this? Are you hungry for blood that doesn’t come from a storage unit? Or do you think you’ll learn something about me you can’t get any other way?”