“What’s that for?” I asked.
“So he knows he has visitors,” Timothy said.
“He, who?” I really wanted to be anywhere else but in this weird half zoo, half dungeon.
Except in the clutches of Galina and Sekhmet, so I kept my shoes rooted to the spot.
If this was the way to get Grim back, I’d jump in with whatever lurked inside.
A door opened farther inside the cage. Light spilled in from the other side, backlighting the figure as he entered. It was a man. He sauntered forward with a slow, prowling gait. His feet were bare. The jeans he wore rode low on his hips, framing the deep V of muscles there. The denim was torn up as if a wolverine had raked its claws across them. Scars crisscrossed over his exposed muscled chest, some old and faded, while others were new and bright red. Had an animal done that to him? Muscular, but without the bulk, I could tell by looking at him that his body was honed for speed and violence.
The moment I set eyes on him, I recognized the power of a god, but something was off about him. Energy sizzled, raw, and untamed. My senses screamed at me to get the peanut butter fudge out of here.
But his face. His face looked as though it had been carved by angels. It was almost painful to look at him. It drew me in, like a lasso thrown around my gut that was being jerked in his direction. Under those perfect features loomed a wickedness in his eyes that promised pleasure and decimation in equal measure.
I remembered meeting Grim and the instant death wish that struck me with a physical blow. This felt similar, yet different. Grim’s silky darkness was the polar opposite to the burning sun across from me.
“You rang?” he drawled. Resentment and boredom were etched on his heavenly face, reminding me of a teenager. A teenager with high cheekbones, a sharp gaze, and cut, lean muscle. Tousled hair fell into his keen eyes.
“Xander,” Timothy said, uncertainty lacing his tone. “We need your help.”
His harsh laugh first came out as a bark, then it rose into an unhinged cackle. The sound reminded me of a hyena.
As if knowing the unsettling effect he had, Xander turned his gaze onto me. A cold spark in his ocean blue eyes sent tiny claws raking down my spine.
I’d seen and felt Grim exude and wield tremendous power, but standing in the same vicinity as this guy felt as though I were next to a nuclear reactor.
“Who’s this?” He continued to saunter forward in a wide, lazy arc. Though the bars separated us, he was stalking me.
“Grim has perished and returned to the cradle,” Fallon said, forgoing introductions and cutting to the chase. “We need to resurrect him.”
The hyena laughter echoed through the room again, pitchy and unsteady. Madness flared in his eyes with white-hot sparks.
I took an unconscious step back.
“You want to dig him up?” Xander asked, cocking his head. He’d stopped on the other side of the cage. He gripped the bars and stuck his face between them as if trying to press his face through. His words came quick, lurching over each other in an unsteady rhythm. “You want to dig, dig him up, pull the dirt off his grave. Rip the wrappings off his mummy.” Another insane laugh echoed through the room.
“It’s a bad day,” Timothy said to Fallon. “We won’t get anything from him when he’s like this.”
“What happened to him?” I took a step forward.
Xander stilled on the other side of the bars, watching me with unerring focus. Under all that crazy was a painfully handsome god, and deeper under that was persistent, permanent pain. I recognized that pain. After living in a glass house as a child for so long, I’d gone a little crazy myself.
“He is a god, like us,” Timothy said. I could tell he was trying to move the conversation away from my questions.
“Not like us,” Fallon said. “He’s broken.”
Xander reared back with a snarl, backing up in the darkness of his cell.
Timothy shot Fallon a stern look. “He’s the only one who can help us find the cradle.”
“What is this cradle?” I asked. I was fairly certain it wasn’t like a baby’s cradle we were looking for. That would just be plain weird.
Xander spoke, nearing the bars again. “The cradle. The cradle of life.” He looked down and away, shaking his head and muttering words. His fingers flexed as if he were trying to get a grip on himself. With a calming breath, he relaxed them and straightened.
Some new awareness had entered his eyes. I faced an entirely different man now. He used the moment to appraise me from my head to my toes. Though I wore Grim’s button-down shirt and a pair of jeans and my ass-kicking boots, he made me feel as though I were stripped down to my cherry red panties. Then a positively wicked smile curved on his face. “You smell like leather and sugar, firecracker.”
I didn’t know what pissed me off more. That he referred to my scent the way Grim had, or the nickname.
