Darkness Unbound Read Online Free PDF Page B

find your matched soul or senariai . Then we’re saved. ’Course you as a girl, I don’t know what we call your soul mate.”
    Astrid grabbed one of the shots and sucked it down. “How do you know it wasn’t kem-seki that made him go nuts?”
    Khyan sucked his lip through his teeth before replying, “Draggon seemed too right in the head. He only did targeted killings. Not random. None of us were strong enough to take him down between his age and his pets. He beat a couple of us to shit in our attempt to stop him when he left to hunt, but he never turned on us. The older we are, the better we are at all of this—the magik, seichim, our mojo, spells…all of it. He was also first generation magus, which means still half-god. Harder to die like that, but not immortal. The gods stepped in and took him away. I thought he was dead, in Osiris’ Kingdom or whatever.” Khyan paused. His gaze slid to Christian and then back to Astrid. “I think C would agree that Draggon just eye-fucked you about the whole time you had that doorway open. Soooo…you and he get it on at some point in the past?” Khyan leaned on his elbows over the tabletop toward her and grinned.
    Astrid glared, daring him to push it. She and Zannis was a closed subject.
    Khyan turned to Christian. “He just painted a fat red bull’s-eye on your forehead, man. I’d be ball-shriveling scared.”
    “Great. Some ancient Egyptian super bastard’s got a hard-on to kill me. Fucktastic thank you, Astrid, for trying to show you a good time.” Christian drank two shots and cursed.
    “I warned you weird stuff happens when I get drunk.” She gripped the edge of the table when the room did a whirlybird. “I’m roasted…I mean toasted.”
    Khyan chuckled.
    Astrid stared into Christian’s glower. “He can’t reach me here. He’s not coming back. No need to get your nuts in a wad. You’re safe. I’m just going to lay my head down.” The world turned black.

Chapter Three
    She lives , Zannis thought. And she lies .
    He backpedaled until his calves hit the chair. And collapsed to a sit. He stared at the now solid wall where she’d stood seconds earlier. He might be trapped in a time a thousand years before hers, but time passed the same for both of them. Twelve years. Over four thousand days he’d waited for a glimpse of her blue eyes.
    She shows up now?
    An hour ago he’d signed away his soul because he’d assumed Astrid to be dead. His will to exist in this prison ended the moment he changed her status from possibly-alive to gone-forever.
    She’s alive! His chest clamped tight. He slammed his eyes closed and focused on deep breaths to unlock his lungs—in, out, in, out. Nothing about that encounter signaled good-bye. Triumph sang in his veins.
    His body ached as foreign sensation flooded its previously vacant domain. Heavy arousal now burned his southern hemisphere. Tonight this wasn’t good. The nightmare coming his way shortly would misinterpret this as desire for her.
    Why couldn’t Astrid have appeared a month ago, even yesterday? The gods’ timing was pernicious. Or perhaps, calculated. He wondered if they sought to remind him of why he shouldn’t do what he’d signed up for.
    His mind spun. Astrid. Alive. And so beautiful. But not in the kohled, dark-haired, and dark-eyed manner of the Egyptian women he’d worshipped in his younger days. She had a tall, golden beauty. Astrid didn’t require augmentation—straight patrician facial features, striking blond hair, and lean, long limbs wrapped in those skin-tight pants. He envisioned her naked except for those spike-heeled calf-high black boots.
    His brain shorted out for a few seconds. Then he remembered her intense cerulean eyes that reflected the chaos of the Mediterranean Sea. She didn’t cower from direct eye contact. That woman didn’t take bullcrap from anyone. Gods, he loved that.
    What was she doing with magi? She’d been flirting with the charmer magus who could lure any woman to