Page 142 of Dancing for the Minotaur

Taurex’s throat tightened. “How did you know?”

She sniffed.

“I dreamed it. The Goddess lady told me in a dream.”

“She did?” Taurex asked.

“Uh-huh.” Lisa pulled back enough to look up at him with wet eyes. “She told me the Bull-man was coming to save us.”

Something inside Taurex suddenly seemed to break. He lowered his head and pressed his cheek carefully against the top of hers, mindful of his horns.

“Well,” he said, though his voice had gone rough, “the ‘Goddess Lady’ was right—the Bull-man is here.”

Cody gave a watery laugh and Taurex held them both tighter. The Goddess had sent him to protect Terra’s younglings, but as he knelt there with both children clinging to him, Taurex realized that he no longer thought of them merely as hers. Somewhere along the way, without permission or ceremony, they had become his too. Not because Terra had given them to him and not because a Bond had made them his responsibility.

No, they were his simply because he loved them.

And whether Terra ever chose to be part of his life again or not, Taurex knew one thing with absolute certainty.

No one would ever hurt her children while he still drew breath.

37

TERRA

Terra had never truly understood the expression “scared out of your mind” until now, because as she drove toward downtown Tampa with both hands clenched around the steering wheel, she honestly felt as though most of her mind had stopped functioning.

Thoughts came in broken pieces that refused to connect properly, sliding through her head so quickly she couldn’t hold onto any of them long enough to think clearly. A few thoughts kept looping over and over again, running like a broken record through her head.

Cody. Lisa. Orlov has my babies. Don’t call the police. Come alone. If you tell anyone, they die.

The words from his texts circled endlessly through her brain while her heart slammed against her ribs hard enough to hurt, and all she could think was that she had to get to her children before Viktor Orlov lost patience and did something terrible to them.

Her mother had been beside herself when Terra left the house, crying so hard she could barely speak as she clutched her phone in one hand and Terra’s arm in the other. Lucy had begged her not to go alone, begged her to call the police despite Orlov’s warning, but Terra hadn’t been willing to take the chance.

The message had been very clear—Come alone. No police. No tricks. If you disobey me, one of your children dies.

Terra could still see those words glowing on the screen and the accompanying photograph of Cody and Lisa huddled together in the back of a strange car, both of them crying. How could she possibly gamble with their lives? How could any mother?

“Please, God,” Terra whispered as she drove. “Please keep them safe. Please don’t let him hurt my babies.”

She didn’t even know what she was promising anymore. Anything. Everything. If God wanted her to spend the rest of her life volunteering at church or give away half her money or never swear again, she would do it. If Orlov wanted her body, he could have it. If he wanted her to go away with him somewhere, she would go. If he wanted her to kneel at his feet and tell him he owned her, she would say the words even if they made her sick. There was nothing he could demand that mattered more than Cody and Lisa coming home alive.

Terra shot through a stop sign without realizing it until a horn blared from her left and a dark SUV slammed on its brakes. She jerked the wheel hard, barely missing the other vehicle, and the driver leaned on his horn while someone shouted something at her through an open window.

Terra hardly heard him. She pressed harder on the accelerator and kept going, her ancient Honda protesting with a high whine as she pushed it far beyond the speeds she normally dared to drive.

Seminole Heights wasn’t far from downtown. Normally Terra could make the trip in fifteen minutes depending on traffic, but today every red light seemed deliberately designed to torture her and every car in front of her appeared to be moving at a crawl.

She swerved around a delivery truck, shot through a yellow light just as it turned red, and nearly clipped a parked car when she took a corner too quickly onto one of the narrow one-way streets downtown.

Horns blared behind her and somewhere a pedestrian shouted, but Terra barely registered any of it. Her entire world had narrowed to the glowing map on her phone and the little blue line leading her toward the place Orlov had told her to meet him.

Then her phone buzzed, and Terra’s heart nearly stopped.

For one horrifying instant she couldn’t make herself touch it.

Please don’t let it be another picture, she thought wildly. Please don’t let him have hurt one of them. Oh God, please protect my babies!