Forgotten in Darkness

By Zoe Forward

After an unjustified two-century stint in purgatory, Scimitar Magus Dakar returns to the human realm, renewing his eons-old curse. Either he or the woman he loves must murder the other within days of meeting in each new lifetime. To break the vicious cycle, he must kill her before she strikes her deathblow, something he's never done in the past. Archaeology grad student Shay McGinnis suffers a near-death attack in pursuit of a piece of Scimitar Magi lore. But did the magnificent warrior who pinned her to the wall injure her or the daemon he fought? In her search for answers, she draws the attention of both an ancient evil sorcerer and the warrior Dakar. The attraction between her and Dakar is instant, and for Shay confusing. She wants to be with him, but intuition equates him with death. Not random death. Hers. Will this be the lifetime they break the curse before they are murdered by an age-old enemy or worse kill each other yet again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Jan 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781628301199

Zoe Forward

Award winning author, Zoe Forward is a hopeless romantic who can’t decide between paranormal and contemporary romance. So, she writes both. Her novels have won numerous awards including the Readers’ Choice Heart of Excellence, Golden Quill, Carolyn Readers Choice Award, and the Booksellers’ Best Award. When she’s not typing at her laptop, she’s tying on a karate belt for her son or cleaning up the newest pet mess from the menagerie that occupies her house. She’s a small animal veterinarian caring for a wide range of furry creatures, although there has been the occasional hermit crab. She’s madly in love with her globe trotting conservation ecologist husband who plans to save all the big cats on the planet, and she’s happiest when he returns to their home.

Book preview

Inc.

Forgotten

In

Darkness

by

Zoe Forward

A Scimitar Magi Novel

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Forgotten in Darkness

COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Zoe Forward

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Rae Monet, Inc. Design

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Black Rose Edition, 2014

Print ISBN 978-1-62830-118-2

Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-119-9

Scimitar Magi Series, Book Two

Published in the United States of America

Praise for DAWN OF A DARK KNIGHT

Book One in the Scimitar Magi series

"DAWN OF A DARK KNIGHT by Zoe Forward is an electrifying Paranormal Romance. This is a story of torment, lust, love and bad guys out to rule the world...Excellent read—highly recommended."

~Reviewing Vixens

~*~

The tension between Ashor and Kira is electric. There are many...moments that suck readers right into the story and leave them eager for more...This story is sexy, fun and full of magic.

~Coffee Time Romance & More

~*~

"DAWN OF A DARK KNIGHT was all kinds of Urban Fantasy fun...I honestly want more."

~Waves of Fiction

~*~

"DAWN OF A DARK KNIGHT is one of the very few paranormal romances that I have read that I am now hooked on...has just the right amount of love, lust, humor, and ass kicking to make this a paranormal romance that I would be more than willing to read again. In fact, I would even go far enough to say this could be made into a pretty kick ass movie too."

~Books She Reads

~*~

...a story rich with romance and unique paranormal elements...is well-paced, their intimacy is hot, and I cannot wait to read more about them and the fellow Scimitar Magi.

~Between the Bind

Dedication

To my sister,

who introduced me to the genre

and is always there for me

no matter what comes my way.

Acknowledgments

As with any book, many people helped to get it right. My mother and sister have tirelessly supported my writing endeavors.

My editor, Eilidh MacKenzie, represents what every author hopes for when writing a book: someone who will not only appreciate what you have put on the page, but also can envision what story those words could tell, if they were tweaked.

Special thanks to Luis Marin for his translation expertise.

Many thanks to LJD, who was always willing to discuss a fight scene or weapons. Always there to push me to keep it real and make the boys real guy guys. And humoring my late-night gotta-shares. He’s my very own adventure hero.

And, Misty. You know I’d never get a book out without you there.

Chapter One

The back of Shay’s head whacked the wall. Sparkles flared across her vision. Her numb brain kicked into high gear when her unknown assailant’s hand crushed her chest. Can’t breathe.

Her heart pumped hard and fast. She twisted against the hand’s pressure and the massive muscle cage surrounding her without effect. Several shoves later, he allowed her enough freedom for shallow breath. A few good air drags satisfied her lungs. Oxygen saturated her brain and jolted her body into emergency evac mode.

Her feet slid along the rough plaster wall a foot or so off the floor, unable to get purchase. She attempted a knee-to-groin, a move learned in a long ago self-defense class, but one of his quads trapped her thighs. He leaned into her, pinning both her arms beneath one of his. She had no doubt he could snap her in half with a slight flexing of his biceps. At that thought, adrenaline surged.

Let go! she screamed silently, unable to drag in enough air to vocalize more than a pitiful wheeze.

Do not black out. If the impending darkness took over, she would be unable to defend herself. Vulnerable and at his mercy.

Her mystery attacker shifted, allowing her lungs a bit of a break. Although a relief, he didn’t release. He stared beyond the church’s entryway into the dark sanctuary as if she were no more significant than one of the irksome mosquitoes rampant in Cartagena.

She stopped the struggle, realizing its futility. With a squint, she angled for a visual. The ambient light of dusk did a poor job illuminating the church, and him. His profile was all about shadowy angles. A lightning burst from the approaching storm highlighted a stylized tattoo, which trekked through facial stubble from his cheek to his neck. His hair was long, dark, and more than a little out of control.

He still didn’t meet her gaze. Nor did he make any effort to explain why she remained immobilized between him and the wall. His profiled lips thinned.

Situation status: Deep shit.

Impatience had put her into the mess. When she’d found the church’s front doors locked, walking away hadn’t been an option. She’d picked the lock, a skill mastered as a pimply teen during her stepbrother’s phase of imprisoning her pets into any small space available.

Local rumor had lured her here with the promise of a seventeenth-century Dutch captain’s journal. She hoped it belonged to Pieter Florisz who had been marooned in the area when his ship sank a couple hundred years ago. Last year in a musty Belgian library, she had found a 1639 shipping log entry that reported he carried a great Egyptian treasure on his vessel. A sketch of the item depicted the symbol for the Scimitar Magi, the topic of her Ph.D. thesis. Right now was the closest she’d been to confirmation of their existence. Pitiful, really. She needed this item. She hoped it to be the ring as discussed on the only cuneiform tablet that mentioned magi. That single documentation of the antediluvian immortals helped convince her graduate school advisor they’d make a legit thesis project.

"Por qué estás aquí?" Why are you here? The deep baritone of her captor’s voice vibrated through her chest. His cadence and syntax reflected an educated man, clearly at odds with the bad boy tat. Yet, the accent suggested Spanish was not his native language.

Familiarity slid through her mind. Weird. They’d never met. His gladiator physique and that tat were unforgettable.

Get. Off. Me, she wheezed out in English against his chest. She switched to Spanish. "Suéltame." Let go.

He switched to English and ordered, You are not safe here. You need to leave.

No mistaking that accent. What was an Egyptian doing in South America? Maybe this was just a coincidence, but given that she sought an Egyptian relic…unlikely.

The constriction on her ribs reached critical. Get off. After a good air-suck, she finished, Then I’m gone.

Without warning, he broke all contact and stepped away.

Her back scraped down the rough plaster wall. When her feet hit the floor, her knees buckled. Before she landed butt-first onto the wooden plank floor, he caught her and supported until she regained balance. Then he backed off.

She squinted into the shadows where he’d taken up residence—big and scary-looking. The earful she planned to unleash about his abysmal greeting skills lodged itself mid-throat when another lightning burst lit him up. And she processed his full frontal.

Oh, my. His appearance correlated with the Egyptian accent; at least, the cheekbones made sense. The power and danger radiating from him mesmerized her.

All thought vacated her mind like the last sand grain whooshing to the bottom of an hourglass. Words spilled from her mouth, but she couldn’t have told a soul what she’d said.

His lips twitched upwards.

With that long dark hair that fell well beyond his shoulders, angular face highlighted with tats, and hard body, he was power, sex, and unpredictability all wrapped up in…a genuine puffy shirt complete with lace-up front and billowing sleeves. And authentic breeches with knee-high black leather boots. She chewed at her lower lip to hold back a smile. This style blast from the long lost past somehow worked for him, but really? Maybe he was cuckoo or one of those oddballs that liked to pretend he was a pirate.

They are blond.

What? Her brain did a quick rewind, coming up with zilch. Blond?

The streaks. His deep voice washed over her. Chills skirted down her spine. He smiled again, this time showing off a set of straight pearly whites.

Streaks? Oh, yeah. Her mushy mind had stalled on his hair. Fine, light-colored streaks wove through the dark strands as if highlighted in, but she suspected they were natural. She couldn’t imagine him sitting for a half hour with a head full of foil.

She slow-trekked a southward scan to his shirt, which V’d open to mid-chest. Her breath caught when he shifted, revealing the top of a familiar symbol between his pecs. Not possible. The magi icon. The same emblem as that on the item she sought—three scimitar swords whose blades formed an inverted triangle.

She touched the pendant beneath her shirt, a genuine Egyptian relic with the same motif—the symbol that had propelled her into archaeology. Either he was as obsessed as she with the symbol, or he was the real deal—a Scimitar Magus. He did fit with her imagination’s vision of the mythical immortals chosen by the Egyptian gods, not that she’d found more than a few sentences about them in all the tablets and papyri she’d studied over the years.

Shay forced two slow blinks. You’re hallucinating. After the second open-and-shut, the tat was gone. She had magi on the brain, and her imagination just punched in some overtime. He was no more than a super-hot, gym-pumped tattoo junky. And she didn’t trust hot men. Too many times burnt. What’s the deal with the pirate shirt and breeches?

He plucked at the front of his shirt and frowned as if insecure. He tied the laces to close its gape. And crossed his arms in front of his massive chest in a failed attempt to hide it. ’Tis no longer a popular style?

She cocked an eyebrow in a silent Really? Are you part of a reenactment group? Who uses ’tis these days?

Reenactment? What would that be?

People who… She trailed off when an unexpected, foul odor that reminded her of a smelly sewage treatment plant assaulted her nose. She peered into the dark sanctuary, wondering if a pipe had burst.

His head swiveled to glare into the church before his eyes shot back to her, no longer friendly. Now dark and deadly. I cannot awaken you right now. I promise, I will find you later. Leave. Now. He pointed at the front door. With a pivot, he strode through a narrow arch into the dark heart of the church.

Wake her up? Maybe he didn’t understand English very well or translated incorrectly.

He must know about her quest. Someone from the nearby archaeological dig site she’d been visiting for the past week must have clued him in. She wanted a little look-see at the book and perhaps a few pictures. He must be here to steal it. Not while she still breathed.

****

Cold water lapped around Shay. Rain pelted her face. She rummaged her short-term memory to explain how she got here, and where exactly here was. No helpful recollection surfaced.

She sank below the water’s surface, stretching downward with a pointed toe. After several seconds, she buoyed upwards. Her feet had touched no bottom. She waved her arms around, searching for any sort of solid anchor. Nothing but water.

Her head throbbed like the morning after a late-night vodka binge. And she couldn’t see. Was it night? No, she was…

Blind! Her scream scattered into the whipping wind and rain.

A hand swipe to pull from her eyes whatever obstructed vision didn’t resolve the issue. Pain rocked her head with each breath she dragged in through her mouth, a necessity since, like her eyes, her nose also refused to work.

She spat out salty water as a wave rolled over her.

Which way to swim? She thrashed around again, contacting only the insecurity of angry water. Chaotic waves smashed into her.

Thunder crashed close. She screamed again, not willing to surrender. But she was smart. Longevity under these conditions was poor.

I’m not ready to die! At twenty-eight she had plans, like learning how to salsa. And what about Tasure? No one wanted her eccentric cat long-term. Her two-week leave had taken a battle to convince her roommate to care for him, and she’d already received over twenty nasty emails about the feline’s misbehavior.

Her arms frenetically flailed to keep afloat. Sooner than expected, her arms and legs tired of the unrelenting battle. The harder she struggled to keep her head above water, the drowsier she became. Her arms refused commands. Minutes felt like hours. The thought of slipping beneath the surface, of breathing in water…she wasn’t ready to go there. Yet. But the more fatigued she got, the more drifting below the surface seemed right.

Abruptly, something yanked her out of the water. She landed hard on rough flooring. Her sluggish mind sought explanation. Solid support. That was all that mattered. Wind whipped a blistering buzz around her and rain pelted. The loud clicking racket of her teeth echoed in her head.

A dry, scratchy blanket landed around her shoulders. She burrowed tightly into the cloth. Given the rocking sensation, she assumed this was a boat. A small one.

She attempted to speak, to ask her rescuer where she was and who helped her, but failed. Only garbled sounds emerged. Why couldn’t she speak? No voice, no vision, non-functional nose. What was going on?

Her heart skipped to bird-tempo beats. Her breaths came in short gasps.

A lyrical male voice spoke, somehow crystal clear despite the wind. "Be calm, shani. I will take you to a place where your people can help."

Shani? He knew her name? No, that meant red in Egyptian, ancient Egyptian. As in her red hair. But no one spoke that language anymore. How had she known what he’d said? She knew her translation was as irrefutable as if he’d spoken her first language, English.

He must know her. Was another archaeologist playing an elaborate practical joke on her?

A hand massaged slow circles on her back through the blanket. At his touch, she forgot about the cold, but the skull-splitting head pain continued. She reached to touch her face, determined to know why her vision was lost and what was going on with her nose, but he captured her hands.

Do not touch. His other hand cradled the back of her head while he hummed an unfamiliar, yet comforting melody.

He stopped humming. This will be difficult for you. There is much blood in your head. I regret the pain you feel and can help this, but I am not allowed to heal you entirely, nor give back lost memory. To me this seems a blessing. He will help you remember. For now, I will gift you protection until he finds you. Doubt not that he will find you.

Great. She was on a boat in the middle of a hurricane with a guy spewing nonsense. What had happened to her?

Oh God. She might be permanently blind and mute.

His gentle massaging motions against the back of her head soothed the escalating panic. Her migraine-worthy head pounder receded.

His touch disappeared. I must row now. Stay still.

Through drowsiness, she wondered what kind of idiot took a rowboat into a storm like this. As her mind drifted, the image of a gladiator with streaked black hair flashed in her mind.

Did he do this to her?

The male voice said softly, "Sleep, shani. When you wake, vow to me this: Do not kill him. Not this time."

Chapter Two

Restless, Dakar paced.

He glared at the floor of his small, humid room where there should be a groove. He’d walked the perimeter a zillion times, but the damned concrete wasn’t kind enough to give him any credit. Every crack in the painted cement wall was etched into his brain. He had composed a symphony to accompany the light’s flicker pattern.

Confinement made him want to tear the skin from his skull. How long had he been in this putrid closet? Two weeks? Four? He’d lost count.

These humans should worship him as a hero for sending a daemon back where it belonged, not throw him in prison. Yet he wasn’t surprised when they attacked and locked him up in solitary. Getting caught coated in blood in a foreign land guaranteed all the wrong conclusions by captors.

When they hauled him from the Cartagena church into this shithole, blood loss, sleep deprivation, and starvation had him too weak to put up much of a fight. They scoffed when he swore the blood on his clothes was his. The fact his wounds appeared as little more than superficial cuts by the time they examined him hadn’t helped his case. Had he divulged that most of the blood belonged to a daemon, he would have bought himself a one-way visit to the loco ward.

Perhaps they had discovered the woman’s body nearby, and presumed he murdered her. Inadvertently, perhaps he had.

No. She’s not dead.

His chest clamped tight. Memory of her in past lifetimes flooded his brain, inciting a hotbed of contradictory desires. He needed to kiss his way from the delicate arch of her instep to the last freckle on the bridge of her nose. He wished to wrap her tight in his arms where the heat of her body could reassure him she lived.

And he must kill her.

But the thought of hurting her shredded his soul. If that daemon had harmed her…Stop. Such thoughts needed to move into a dark corner. This time, this life he must strike first, before she conjured some new way to take him out of the world.

Recall of her beaded nipples and that low-cut shirt of soft transparent cloth had him groaning as blood beelined for his groin. He clenched his teeth. Do not think about her.

Telling himself that only worsened the situation. Incarcerated in this small room, his mind was his worst enemy. His torturer.

A vision of her furious green gaze when he let her fall and almost hit the floor had his lips twitching upwards. The hard-on worsened. With a curse, he halted his trek. Do not dwell on such thoughts. Learn to hate her. Otherwise, he would never be able to do what he must. Surely, this desire for her reflected nothing more than a combination of the gods’ meddling and their shared curse.

He threw himself into push-ups at a brutal pace in an effort to shut down his mind.

It failed.

How long had it been since he last saw her? Two hundred twenty-three years, his annoying mind chimed in like it had a calendar where he’d been ticking off the days.

That time had been spent imprisoned in the hellpit that was the Middle Realm. This purgatory zone rested on either side of the road blessed human souls walked on their post-death journey to be judged by the god of the afterlife, Osiris.

He jumped up and wiped at his mouth, a habit needed hourly to remove sandy accumulates in that godsforsaken desert hell he’d just escaped. With pleasure, he twisted the handle of the dripping faucet. Cool liquid bathed his hands. Pure luxury. He splashed his face and drank. The water tasted earthy and had a foul mineral odor, not that he cared.

He glanced up at the flickering light bulb and marveled at the changes in this world. No candles. Automatic glass-covered lights. In the brief moments he’d seen of the outside world before imprisonment, the differences left him unsure he could maneuver alone. Even so, he would escape. Confinement was far worse than fear of the unknown.

He appreciated the bulb’s dim sputter. It cast more light than anything in that land of ever-present darkness where he’d been trapped. Only a sporadic red moon had lit his way through the endless sandy mountains populated by nightmare-worthy reptiles in addition to daemons and the occasional lost human soul. But he had mastered the art of moving in darkness.

His traitorous mind moved back to the woman in the church. Was it her? His body had apparently decided so. When reincarnated, she remembered nothing of him or previous lives until he nudged her mind into recall, which meant right now she had no memory of him. He had purposefully not mental-nudged out of fear the daemon might attack during the several minutes required to assimilate previous life memory.

What a misconceived plan. Now he didn’t know if she lived or had drowned.

If that was her, she lives, his brain screamed. He slapped his hand against the wall when panic squeezed his chest to the point he could barely move air. She is alive, he said aloud. Were she dead, he wouldn’t be debating this. Their curse mandated they each die by the other’s hand, not by inadvertent daemon attack. And once one was dead, the other swiftly followed.

He would find that woman.

First step: escape. That required strength. The lacerations on his back from the daemon’s strike a few weeks ago weren’t healing. The evil shit had spit on him before he sent it back to the Middle Realm, ensuring the gashes would fester, like the one on his side that had been burning for over a hundred years. It would become a new chronic pain and an infuriating power drain.

Dakar’s captors feared his strength, which, although paltry in his mind, was still stronger than a handful of men. To restrain him, his captors had discovered three to four guards were needed. They resorted to hitting him with a device that shot lightning bolts. That hurt and ultimately drained him. Overhearing their conversation after their most recent success at subduing him, he discovered they suspected he was more than just a man.

He laughed softly to himself. If they only knew.

****

Hours later, muffled voices halted in front of Dakar’s cell. Shadows registered in the door’s small window. He called forth seichim, the mystical energy endowed to each magus that enhanced perception, and boosted strength and concentration. With its power flooding his body, he could hear the conversation between two men and a woman.

A man’s low mesmerizing voice said, "El hombre peligroso de quien usted habla, esta ahi adentro?" Is the dangerous one you spoke of in there?

No one replied.

The questioner prompted impatiently, "Está ahí?" Is he in there?

"Sí, said a gritty voice Dakar recognized as that belonging to the guard who most frequently handled" him.

The questioner drawled in English, Must’ve come on a little strong. I’m a bit off today.

The woman laughed. Or he’s gay and, like every person on the planet, other than me, he wants to jump your bones.

Could be. Who could resist this? I mean, come on, my stylist did an amazing highlight job this time, but that guy has no chance. Not with that B.O.

A key sounded in the lock of his cell, but it didn’t complete the one-eighty turn needed to unlock. The guard asked, "Seguro que quiere ir en paz? Él está loco." He made a gesture by his forehead that Dakar could see through his window.

What’d he say, Christian? the woman asked.

Wants to know if you’re sure about going in alone. This guy is crazy.

Yeah, I’ll be fine.

Christian put his face to the small window, but Dakar saw little more than a shadow through the dirty glass. I don’t have a good feeling. Let me go in there with you.

I can handle this, she said confidently.

It’s my job to make sure you don’t get hurt. I can’t let you do this alone. I mean, who knows what’s going on in this guy’s head after a few weeks in that locker.

You need to trust me. Her tone broadcasted calm, but Dakar detected anxiety.

If the bastard so much as crowds your bubble, you yell. Ashor is gonna kick my ass into the next life for this. I still say it’s wrong that he doesn’t know you’re doing this without him. With unease lacing his tone, he added, You won’t tell him about this going-in-alone thing, will you?

He doesn’t need to know. This is my job now, isn’t it?

The door scraped along the floor as the guard pulled it open. The guard had a death grip on his gun, which he held in the hand opposite that opening the door. "Párese contra la pared. Se mueve y le disparo."

Stand against the wall. Move and I shoot. The tall blond Dakar assumed was Christian quietly interpreted the guard’s command for the woman.

Dakar moved into the shadows and chuckled at the guard whose hand shook. As if the gun would stop him, if he chose to charge.

The guard’s gaze slid to the woman. Her nose scrunched as she stepped into the cell. Yeah, he bet it smelled rank in here. She jumped when the door slammed shut.

Dakar asked, "Quién es usted?" Who are you? He detected the subtle buzz of preternatural energy from her. Distrust took a seat front and center.

Do you speak English? French was my language in school and, honestly, I can’t remember it very well. Spanish is truly beyond me. She shrugged. Despite high-heeled black boots, the top of her head barely reached his chest. A thick dark braid ended at the top of her skintight black pants. The current fashion for women must be to dress like men. The style left little to the imagination, not that he was complaining.