Page 14 of Shai

He was still dressed in nothing but a pair of jeans, the muscles in his arms bulging as he kicked the door open wider to reveal the writhing body of the black mamba in his grip. Fuck! There’d been a tiny part of me hoping that it had been nothing more than one of his games, a form of mental torture where he left me alone in the room for a few hours to work myself up into a frenzy, only to reveal that it had all been some sort of sick joke.

Backing away, I almost knocked over an ornate vase in my haste to put

space between myself and the deadly creature. I’d given thoughts to a plan of action in the last few hours, wrapping the snake in the bed sheets and tying it up, maybe, but that prospect had seemed far easier when I wasn’t confronted by the beast.

Shai’s grin didn’t abate in the slightest. “Are you ready, Elijah?” Something else he had in common with McIntyre, that annoying

inclination to overuse my name. What was it, some sort of technique taught to people who wanted to be king of their own little world?

My heart was pounding so hard that there was a coppery taste in my throat, as if its frantic activity was forcing blood into parts of my body where it wasn’t supposed to be. I thought I’d tasted fear before. I’d been bundled into a sack and thrown into a river for God’s sake, but that paled in comparison to this. What exactly did he expect me to say in response to his question? Of course, I wasn’t fucking ready. You’d have to be a lunatic to be ready to be locked in a room with a deadly snake.

I forced my dry lips into a shape where they might be capable of forming words, unable to tear my gaze away from the snake in his hands. “What happened… to the man… the one earlier, the one who…?”

“Dead.” Shai’s softly spoken word lacked emotion, yet still seemed to ricochet around the room. “Three hours and twenty minutes.”

I didn’t know what was more disturbing, the fact that he was still smiling while discussing the man he’d killed, or the fact that he’d timed it like it was nothing more than a science experiment. “How long…” I dropped my gaze to the snake, the words attempting to crawl back down my throat. I tried again. “How long are you going to leave me with it?”

The pause before Shai answered seemed to stretch on forever. Either time had slowed, or Shai was deliberately taking his time in answering. The delay gave me enough time to send up a silent prayer, to hope for an answer in minutes, or at most an hour. Maybe then I’d have a chance. It was a large room. There were plenty of places where a snake might want to hide. All I had to do was keep an eye on it, and avoid it until the time was up.

“Eight hours.”

My heart sank into my stomach. “Why so long?”

His lips curled back into an easy smile. “Because anything shorter and it would be too easy.”

He held the door open with his foot, the muscles in his arms moving in a way I took to mean he was about to drop the snake. “Wait!” Surprisingly, he did as I’d asked, his dark gaze finding mine across the room. “Have you got any advice, anything that might help me?” It was a long shot to ask the very man who was making this happen, but it wasn’t like I had anything to lose.

Shai tilted his head to one side, a lock of dark hair falling over his brow in a way that made him look far too young to be in charge of half of the organized crime in the city. “Stay away from it.”

And then in one smooth movement, he dropped it, the snake’s head

whipping around almost before it hit the floor. The door was already closed, though, the key turning in the lock, and Shai nothing but a memory. The snake was clearly pissed, which left me with a huge problem, given that I was the only organic thing in the room that it could vent its frustration on. I took a slow step backwards, careful not to make a sound. At the moment the snake’s attention was focused on the door it couldn’t get through, and I would much rather it stayed that way. Not going to stay there for eight hours though, is it?

I took another step, my hand catching a pile of books. One teetered

dangerously before I managed to grab it and prevent it from toppling to the floor. Blood thudding in my ears, I scanned the room, desperately searching for a hiding place. Short of pulling the bed covers over my head and hiding in a blanket fort like a child, there wasn’t one. Minutes ticked by as I stood there immobile, my limbs locked into position. The snake was still by the door. There was plenty of space between us. If the snake came my way, I just needed to move, needed to keep that gap between us. Eight hours.

And that’s when the unthinkable happened. The lights went out,

plunging the room into complete darkness. The room having no window suddenly made perfect sense. Reaching out blindly in panic, my fingers found something, whatever it was crashing to the floor. Stupid, clumsy idiot. I reeled away, walking straight into something I assumed had to be the bed. I tried to slow down my thoughts, tried to think logically and take stock. I was in the room with a snake, a deadly snake that would kill me even if it only bit me once. I couldn’t see a thing, so I didn’t know where it was.

I held still, tilting my head to one side to listen for the sound of

movement, my mind starting to play tricks on me, sounds seeming to come from more than one place in the room all at the same time, which wasn’t possible.

I sought to recall any snippet of information I’d ever gleaned about

snakes from the occasional article or wildlife documentary. Snakes could see in the dark, their eyes detecting heat like some sort of inbuilt infra-red camera. Therefore, I might not be able to see it, but chances were that it could see me. For all I knew, it was watching me. What else did I know? They didn’t have great hearing. Or was that just a myth?

My best bet was to find a corner and stay still, to move as little as

possible so that I wasn’t a threat and brought the minimum amount of attention to myself. Only, I wasn’t in a corner, which meant moving to get there. That was easier said than done when my legs were shaking so badly that they threatened to buckle if I tried to take so much as a step.

Closing my eyes, I tried to recall the layout of the room, not wanting to choose a corner filled with furniture. If I remembered correctly, there’d been nothing on the opposite side of the bed. I reached out, feeling blindly until I located a surface that could only consist of soft sheets. I started a slow crawl across the bed, cringing every time the bedsprings creaked.

After what seemed like forever, I reached the other side, changing position so that I was sat with my legs stuck straight out in front of me, reluctant to place my feet on the floor. What if it was there? What if I stepped on it? A soft sound of relief escaped my lips as I gingerly placed one foot down and found nothing but carpet beneath it. Lowering the other garnered the same result.

Hands stretched out in front of me like a sleepwalker, I made my slow, halting way to where I thought the corner was, expecting at any moment to feel the agonizing pain of a snake’s fangs sink into my ankle. Sweat dripped down my face. Great. I was probably a huge, flashing beacon to the snake.