“I lost them a long time ago.”
The female’s eyes traced his body, clearly noting the scars. “You’ve added some skin art,” she muttered.
“Not by choice.”
There was a long silence. “What the fuck happened to you, Duran.”
8
NEXI HADN’T CHANGED.
It was a relief and a complication, Duran thought. She clearly remained a killer, a straight talker, the kind of female you didn’t bullshit. But she also still did things her way or no way.
“I just need my stuff,” he said. “And then we’ll be out of here.”
“I’m not giving you shit until you tell me where you’ve been.”
This was not jealousy talking. At least . . . he didn’t think it was. Their relationship had never seemed to him to be the sort that grew that kind of tangled green vine. Maybe he was wrong, though. Her anger seemed misplaced unless she cared more than he’d thought.
“Answer my fucking question,” she demanded.
“Working out.” He shrugged. “Night school. I started a lucrative business selling recycled plumbing equipment—”
“He’s been in Chalen’s dungeon,” the female—Ahmare—said. “He was released only so he can take me to the conqueror’s beloved.”
Duran glared at the interruption. “Shut up—”
“Dungeon?” Nexi said in a low voice.
“For twenty years,” Ahmare added.
“Christ.”
“More like hell,” Duran muttered as he looked way.
Nexi wasn’t one for emotion except for anger. She rarely showed anything else, being more interested in exploiting the feelings of others for her own purposes. Then again, after what the two of them had been through, she had learned the hard way that giving people insight into your heart and soul was like loading a gun and handing it over to an enemy.
No reason to believe the intel wouldn’t be used against you.
It was, he realized now, why he’d agreed to help her all those years ago. He’d figured someone like Nexi wouldn’t get attached to him and that meant he was off the hook for being responsible for anybody but himself. He could go his own way after they were out of where they’d been, the split clean so he could take his revenge on his father.
There had only ever been one thing for him, and that was not settling down with a female.
Still, a part of him didn’t want to see that Nexi didn’t care—or, worse, was happy—about what had been done to him. He was also ashamed, even though she wasn’t aware of any details of his captivity. Back when he’d known the Shadow, when they had worked on their escape, he’d been solid about who he was and what his purpose had to be. Now? This mission that was taking him back to where they’d been held, so long the only goal he’d ever had, abruptly felt like there were two strangers in on the action.
The female he’d just met.
And himself.
“I didn’t throw any of it out,” Nexi said. “Your shit, that is. It’s all where you left it.”
“Thank you.”
“I was just lazy. It wasn’t to honor your memory or anything.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
Nexi muttered something that didn’t carry. And then she addressed Ahmare. “You need to hide that SUV. My garage is through there.” She pointed to two tire tracks barely noticeable in the kudzu. “I’ll open it for you. You’re going to leave me the keys in case I want to use it—or decide to chop it up when both of you don’t come back.”
Nexi dematerialized, up-and-gone’ing it, and Duran looked at his female— The female, he corrected in his head. He looked at the female. At Ahmare.
“We’re going to need to camp out overday. There’s no way we can get where we need to go before dawn because I can’t dematerialize.” He tapped his collar. “This is steel.”
“Goddamn it.” The female glanced at the sky like she was measuring the distance the sun was going to have to spin overhead in millimeters. “That’s twelve hours.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“The hell there isn’t. You can tell me where to go and I can do this myself.”
“You won’t make it out of there alive.”
She stepped right up to him. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“You don’t have the access codes or the layout to the compound. The Dhavos will know the second you set foot on his property and he’ll have you headfirst in a grave before you can get one shot off.”
“Dhavos?” She frowned. “Wait . . . this is a cult?”
“Set up sixty years ago.” Duran shut that door himself. “Back when humans were tuning in and dropping out, the Dhavos took inspiration and created a Utopia underground. Like most megalomaniacs, he cared less about enlightenment and more about being worshipped by a captive audience, but he managed to convince about two hundred wayward codependents to join him on a bullshit spiritual journey that culminated in servitude—and not of the holy variety. He’s a rapist and a murderer and he pays for everything by selling heroin and cocaine to humans who live below the poverty line.”