He lunged back at Millie and wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling Millie’s ear down close.
“Throw me against the wall by that hole again,” Gabriel whispered. “As hard as you can.”
Millie did as instructed and Gabriel felt the loose stone shift again. One more blow and it might come free.
“Throw a kick,” Gabriel whispered. “Use the same leg as before and really play up that you’re hurt.”
“Got it,” Millie said.
He swung wide with a stiff kick, missing Gabriel by a mile and knocking the loose stone out of the wall. Gabriel threw a kick of his own, striking Millie in his supposedly injured leg. Millie howled and went down on one knee. The loose stone was about the size and shape of a cobblestone, and it was heavy when Gabriel hefted it.
Millie was right: the women wouldn’t believe that Gabriel could best a man of Millie’s size and strength bare-handed. And if the women thought they were sham ming, they might well take it out on Rue and Velda.
“Sorry, Millie,” he whispered, positioning himself so his body was blocking the queen’s view. “I owe you an aspirin.” And he brought the stone down, the muscles in his arms wrenching tight as he checked his swing just before connecting. The stone still hit, with a crack that carried all the way back up to where the women were waiting to hear it. Millie dropped as if he’d been shot.
Gabriel let the stone fall to the ground and raised his arms, breathing heavily. Were they cheering up there? It sounded like it. Then he saw something raining down on his upturned face. Flower petals. He turned back to where Millie lay, crumpled and unmoving. He was struck with the sudden fear that maybe he really had hurt his friend. He dropped to a crouch beside him. There wasn’t any blood that he could see, but—
Millie’s eyes cracked open narrowly. “Just like the pros,” he whispered, and grinned. He closed his eyes again.
Gabriel felt a flood of relief as he stood again. But it was short-lived. An instant later, he felt a sharp jab in his chest, like a nasty hornet sting. His fingers flew to the source of the pain and found a colorful feathered dart protruding from his left pectoral muscle. He pulled the dart out and flung it away but before it hit the ground, the world around him went liquid and untrustworthy. Black and red shapes swirled around him and he unceremoniously followed the dart to the floor.
Chapter 20
Consciousness came to Gabriel in stages, like a shadowy striptease. First there was an awareness of a sound, a nearly subliminal hum just above the very bottom range of his hearing. Then a hazy sense of firelight flickering through his closed eyelids. A lush, sultry aroma not unlike crushed frangipani; and underneath the cloak of sweetness, an odor distressingly sharp and electrical, like ozone. Gabriel stirred, tried to stretch but couldn’t. When he opened his eyes, he discovered he was bound naked and spread-eagled on a pile of furs. Each limb was tied to a thick stake driven deep into the dirt floor, allowing perhaps a three-inch range of movement in his arms and only slightly more in his legs. Off to his right and level with his chest, there was a fifth stake, but instead of anchoring a part of his body, this stake was tied to a rope stretching straight up and across the dim, distant ceiling.
Gabriel strained and stretched his neck, evaluating his surroundings. As he appeared to be in a high-ceilinged room, it had to be another chamber inside the large central building—nothing else in the village was nearly that tall. By craning his neck, he could just make out, behind him, a triangular doorway draped with tanned skins. Past his feet, a pit of glowing coals burned sullenly in the center of the room, raising the already high temperature, and past that was an odd wooden structure. An enormous tree trunk had been split in half and the halves—each the size of a good-sized canoe—hollowed out to form two long chutes that were propped up in a steep V-shape on a wooden scaffold. The rope tied to the fifth stake approached the chutes across the ceiling and then branched when it got to them, one end running down the middle of each. Above this, a large circular hole in the ceiling let in a shaft of reddish light. What ever lay beneath the shaft of light, where the angled chutes intersected, was hidden behind an elaborately woven screen decorated with more of the white blossoms that had rained down on Gabriel in the pit and decorated the queen’s bath. Whoever owned the floral concession around here was making out like a bandit, Gabriel thought.
Movement at the top of the chutes drew Gabriel’s eye and he squinted, trying to make out what was going on. The rope was twitching, almost as if it were attached to something inside the chutes that was squirming or struggling to get out.
He turned back at the sound of footsteps behind him. Queen Uta stood beside his head, towering over him with her strong legs planted wide and her fists clenched. She had on a minimal outfit of fur, one strip across her breasts and a minimally broader one around her waist. Her platinum hair had been brushed loose, flowing nearly to her hips.
“I see that you are awake, Gabriel Hunt,” she said. “And that you are prepared to perform your sacred duty.”
Gabriel was mortified to find that she was right. Even tied down as he was and with no shortage of other things on his mind, Gabriel was responding to the sight of her sleek, oiled and barely dressed body much as Millie had when they’d first encountered her. He wished he had on at least the few strips of barkcloth their captors had allowed them then, to conceal his reaction, but the stripped-off kilt lay in a pile by his feet.
“I’d be better able to perform my sacred duty,” he said, “if I weren’t tied up like this. Why not at least release one of my hands? Wouldn’t you like me to touch you?”
She smiled and crouched down beside him, caressing his bare chest.
“Yes, Gabriel Hunt, I would like you to touch me,” she said. “But I cannot free your hands, not even one, because I cannot be sure that would be how you would use it.”
“Are you afraid I will hurt you?” Gabriel said.
“Hurt me?” She shook her head. “This is not my worry. I cannot allow you to kill yourself, not before you give me a child.” She slid a slim stone knife out from a strap of leather she wore around one leg. She set it on the floor beside the fifth stake.
“Kill myself?” Gabriel frowned at the knife. “Why would I do that?”
“It is a shame that you cannot ask your predecessor, Dr. Silver, this question.” She leaned in close. “But I am afraid his answer died with him.”
Gabriel felt a cold elevator plunge in his gut. From the far side of the room, he heard an anguished, muffled cry and then a rhythmic pounding, as of a fist beating against a wooden door. He looked toward the scaffolding with its V-shaped construction on top and saw that the right-hand chute was rocking. And even muffled, he recognized the voice.
Velda.
“What have you done with her?” Gabriel said. The left-hand chute showed signs of movement as well. “Are they both here? The women who came with me?”
The queen stood, her eyes narrowing.
“Why do you care?” she asked. “Were they your lovers?”
“They’re members of my team,” Gabriel said. “I’m responsible for them. Like you are for your people.”
“You are responsible for them no more,” she said. “They are in their place and have their duty. You have responsibility for only one woman now.” She ran her hands up over her glistening golden flanks and taut belly.
The muffled shouts grew louder on the far side of the room.