University Page 6

  “Rafe,” she sobbed out.

  His smile was gentle as he reached down her body and eased the vibrator out of her body, snapping it off.

  “Josey,” he whispered.

  Joey closed her eyes against the nightmare that wouldn’t end. He didn’t see her for who she really was. She wasn’t Josey. She wasn’t.

  Well, he thinks you are and he might be the only damned chance you’ve got out of here so play along!

  Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes as she opened them to gaze up at him. The hope and desperation in Rafe’s eyes were pitiful to her. But there was also a hint of skepticism there and it was a sharp reminder that she was completely helpless. He could help her or he could kill her. The hand that rested by her side had a .38 clutched in it.

  He followed her gaze to the handgun and immediately he tucked it into the waist of his trousers, his concerned gaze returning to her. And that concern gave her courage.

  “Rafe,” she whispered, unable to stop the tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t understand what… is happening to me.”

  His fingers were gentle as they brushed the hair from her forehead, and he was wearing that crazy, lovesick expression he’d worn just that morning.

  This is a dangerous game…

  “Josey, the picture from the downstairs table was missing.” His voice was shaking. “You took it, didn’t you?”

  “I knocked you out and tied you up and you want to know about a picture?” Joey tried to smile through her misery.

  Rafe’s smile was soft. “Did you take the picture?”

  Joey nodded, sending up a prayer that she didn’t say or do something to get herself killed.

  “Why did you take it?” he whispered. The intensity in his eyes was incredible as he watched her and waited for her answer.

  God, now what do I say?

  “It was… us.” She forced the last word out.

  “Do you remember that day, Josey?”

  Rafe’s throat worked as he continued to stare down at her.

  Think. Think!

  Without the photograph it was hard to fabricate anything. But she remembered they were wearing light-colored clothes. Maybe it had been taken in the summer and it had been a very hot day. Maybe the humidity had made her hair curlier than she had liked.

  In her mind’s eye, Rafe smiled at her and said, “It looks beautiful.”

  Joey gaped at Rafe in the small dark room who-knew-where. “It was summer. It was hot that day. You were laughing at me because I was fussing about my hair.”

  “Josey.” Rafe cradled her head in his arms and held her tightly to him, his heart beating fast and loud. His grip on her was tight and he began to shake, his sobs raw -- awful sounds in the quiet dim of the room. After long painful moments, he lifted his head to brush feather-soft kisses over her face. “Josey, you came back to me. I always knew you would.”

  Dear God, what had she done? Was he so desperate that he would have believed anything she said? There was no way she could have known anything about that day in 1937…

  Rafe’s weight lifted from her after a long moment and he began working at the ties at her wrists. He had her arms free in no time, helping her to sit up and rubbing her sensitive red flesh where the ties had carved into her skin.

  Joey watched him, trembling as he loosened the ties at her ankles reverently. Rafe wasn’t oblivious to the fact that she totally naked -- his hazel eyes darkened as they swept over her body.

  “So what happens now? They want to kill me, don’t they?” Joey asked in a small voice. Don’t even think about mentioning Will.

  “No one wants to kill you, Josey. I’d offer them myself to keep anything from happening to you.” The worry in his eyes confirmed her suspicions that they were in great danger. “We must go to Brazhnik and convince him of who you really are.”

  “Who is Brazhnik?” Joey asked.

  “Our leader,” Rafe explained. “You will remember him too in time.”

  Her life depended on convincing the leader of the cult of whatever the hell it was that she was Rafe’s wife from another life?

  Oh, yeah. She was dead meat.

  “Rafe, do you know how crazy that sounds?” She threw Will’s words at him and winced as an image of her lover popped into her mind. Please let him be okay! “How will we ever convince him that we were married in another life? And why would he care?”

  He’d reached into a small cabinet as she spoke, the one piece of furniture in the room besides the platform she’d been tied to, and pulled out a black bundle. Her words stopped him cold.

  “Married in another life,” he repeated slowly, handing the silky bundle to her. “Josey, you don’t understand, do you?”

  Joey shook out the black robe he’d handed her and quickly wrapped herself in it. The thin, slick fabric had gooseflesh rising all over her body.

  “Understand what?”

  “It was in another life for you,” Rafe explained slowly, taking her cold hands in his when she’d finished pulling on the robe. His hazel eyes searched hers as his grip on her hands tightened. “But I was married to you in this life. I never died, Josey.”

  She heard Will’s voice in her head. Close to one hundred years old…

  Joey shook her head in denial, the sound of blood rushing in her ears. “That’s not possible.”

  Rafe held her hands firm in his grasp when she tried to pull them away. “Look at me,” he demanded as she tried to avoid his gaze. “I am one hundred and two years old. Look at me!”

  I don’t want to! Joey didn’t want any part of this. She just wanted to find Will and get the hell out. Will cared for her, desired her. If they hadn’t killed him or changed him into Stepford Will, well, he was the one she wanted.

  God, please help me get out of here.

  Finally she met Rafe’s gaze, his eyes clouded with worry.

  “Josey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about this. It must be so overwhelming.” His kind words almost opened the floodgates of her emotions because it was true. She did feel overwhelmed. “This is a lot for you to be expected to absorb.”

  “How?” she wanted to know.

  “How is it that I look as I do for a man my age?” Rafe sighed but his gaze never broke from hers. “The ritual does that. I can try to sell you the same story we sell all of our new members about how the students we choose are better off and how our lives are better. The same story I told you yesterday morning in my house. But in reality it is an ancient rite, an evil one. We are taking a part of these students away from them. In return those of us who willingly participate in the ceremony achieve immortality. We don’t age, we’re not touched by illness ever as long as we go to the ceremony once each moon cycle.”

  They didn’t age or get sick? What was this? Cocoon?

  “Are you worshipping the devil?” Joey hated the fear in her voice.

  Rafe’s laugh was a dry huff. “No. We don’t believe in a devil though we do believe in the existence of one great divine being.”

  “One that condones raping people?” Joey shot back bitterly. “Robbing them of their emotions?”

  Rafe took one of her hands and pressed it to his heart. “Just believe me when I say this. I loved you so much in your previous life that I went insane when you died. I was weak, Josey. I know you told me that we would be reunited in heaven… but I was afraid to trust that. I found a way to live on and I prayed you’d come back to me and you did.

  “I had to wait sixty years for you to come back to me, Josey. And every day has been hell for me since I hired you last fall to work in my lab knowing who you really were and knowing you didn’t remember me or that life we spent together. It has been anguish to see you every day in my lab and be unable to hold you, to love you.”

  His heartbeat was so strong beneath her palm. Joey swallowed hard.

  “You found me. Now why can’t we just leave this place?” she wanted to know. “You can get us out of here. I know you can.”

  Rafe’
s eyes slid closed. In regret?

  “I can’t break with them now, Josey.” His voice was barely audible. “I’m sorry. I just told you why. Nature would catch up with me. You’d be running away with a very old man.”

  Before Joey could say anything else, the door opened and a tall man in a red robe, his face concealed by the hood pulled over his head, stood in the doorway.

  “Brazhnik wants to see you.” The man’s deep voice boomed through the room.

  Joey’s heart lurched in her throat as Rafe nodded and helped her off the platform so she could follow him from the room.

  Chapter Eight

  Joey didn’t miss the way Rafe’s hand trembled around hers as they followed the man in the red robe through a long winding corridor leading to the stage. The murmur of voices was a muted din behind the closed stage curtains, the people in black robes, she knew, waiting for the ceremony to begin. Figures in red robes moved swiftly about behind the curtains while at the center of the stage, the platform waited. A nude male figure with a black hood over his head was strapped to it in a prone position. His body was all sleek muscular lines, his skin fair but tanned. It looked like Will.

  Will! You perverted bastards!

  The man who’d led them to the gathering walked away while another person in a red robe walked toward them. He was taller than the others, his shoulders and chest broad, straining the silky fabric he was draped in. The man pulled back his hood as he reached them and Joey stared in surprise at the face of a handsome young man. Not at all what she’d expected. His hair was dirty blond, short and disheveled about his head. The features of his face were pleasing but strong, the line of his jaw firm, his chin prominent. His eyes captured Joey’s attention. Strange eyes, green she thought, but so pale from a distance they nearly seemed colorless.

  “What’s this?” the man asked in a pleasing male voice with just a hint of an accent that she couldn’t place.

  “Brazhnik.” Rafe’s voice was a lot steadier than his hand. “It’s Josey.”

  With that Rafe released her hand and nudged Joey forward for the inspection of the man he’d just identified as the cult’s leader. Joey trembled where she stood while the man’s strange eyes studied her face. The intensity of his gaze made her fear grow in leaps and bounds. Could he see into her heart and mind? Could he tell she was a liar? That she wasn’t really Josey?

  Brazhnik walked in a slow circle around Joey. “The resemblance is remarkable, Bowen. No one has ever disputed that.”

  Brazhnik stopped and lifted a lock of her hair from her shoulder, examining it. He even lifted her hair to his nose and inhaled deeply. It was all Joey could do not to flee. But she knew she’d never get past them. And she’d never be able to get Will out.

  “No, there is no escape for you now.” Brazhnik spoke close to her ear, his voice a silken purr that made her shudder in dread. “I know what game you’re playing. I understand why.”

  Joey’s heart pounded out a terrible rhythm as Brazhnik took a step back, turning his attention to Rafe. Like a vision from a nightmare she watched as he motioned for one of his companions, who immediately approached with a red robe in hand.

  “You disappoint me, Rafe.”

  Rafe’s hand trembled as he accepted the robe.

  Oh, shit! This is bad.

  “Josey or not, she was to be prepared for the ceremony,” Brazhnik reminded him.

  “If you want another one for your ceremony, take me in her place.” Rafe’s voice broke as he pleaded. “Please. She is the reason I am here. You know that. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for this moment when she would come back to me. Have pity on me, on us. We’ll serve you. I promise. Haven’t I always served you?”

  Brazhnik regarded him speculatively but his eyes were so cold. There was no emotion there. For the first time Joey realized that she might not live through the night.

  The man on the pedestal, it had to be Will, wasn’t moving. I’m so sorry, Will, Joey silently apologized to him. This is all my fault…

  Taking a step toward Rafe, Brazhnik placed a hand on his shoulder. The simple gesture seemed to calm Rafe a bit but not completely.

  “You have always served me. I have not forgotten. And I will take pity on you.”

  “What form will your pity take?” Rafe’s voice was reduced to a whisper.

  Brazhnik smiled then. A beautiful, terrible smile that sent a fresh spike of terror into Joey’s heart.

  But he didn’t answer. Rafe scrambled to remove his clothing and pull on the red robe as Brazhnik approached with a sizable book in his hands. It appeared very old and after a moment Joey recognized it as the book from the ritual she’d witnessed. Patiently the cult leader waited for Rafe to finish dressing and then handed the book to him.

  “Tonight you will call the rite,” Brazhnik ordered. “If you are truly my servant and you do as I bid you, you may keep the girl.”

  What’s the catch? Rafe’s hazel eyes were filled with terror at the instructions he’d been given. What could be so bad about calling the rite -- whatever that meant? What was going on?

  “I am faithful.” Rafe didn’t sound very convincing. “I’ll do as you ask. And then Josey will join us?”

  Please leave me out of this! But those soulless eyes were back on her in an instant. She couldn’t bear to meet that gaze again. Joey cast her eyes down at the floor.

  “She will join us for the rite. But she is wearing a follower’s robe. She’ll need one of the elders’ robes for the rite.”

  Joey watched the edge of Brazhnik’s robe disappear as he walked away, but didn’t have the courage to look up.

  “It is time,” Brazhnik called back to them.

  Rough hands grabbed her from behind and Joey gasped in fear. They were pulling the black robe she wore from her body. But she didn’t have time to cover herself or even to fight them because they immediately covered her again in a red robe, pulling the hood over her head to hide her face and hair. Like that made a difference. She was a head shorter than everyone else on the stage. Of course she’d stand out.

  All of them in red robes, the elders according to Brazhnik, formed a circle around the pedestal where the man she believed to be Will was bound. Why had they covered his head with the hood?

  Rafe stood next to her with the book clutched tightly in his hands, his knuckles white. She could hear the harsh rasp of his breath as the curtains began to move.

  “I love you, Josey,” he leaned close to whisper to her. “No matter what happens, always remember that.”

  Joey’s heart was gripped by pity for him, by fear for them both as the curtains pulled back to reveal the black-robed figures, the followers, waiting beyond the stage. Rafe stepped slowly around the pedestal with the book in his hand and began the chant.

  Her counterparts in the circle joined hands and she panicked because she didn’t know where Brazhnik was. She only knew that her fear grew when her hands were captured by the larger men of the cult on either side of her. Rafe raised the book as everyone chanted faster. Bright green sparks began to form in the air above his head, hundreds of sparks gathering until they formed the green orb of light that she remembered from the first ritual she’d viewed.

  The man on the pedestal struggled in his bonds for the first time, moaning under the hood in a muted voice that she could barely hear among the chanting voices. Their voices blended in the foreign tongue with an ominous chorus that heightened her fear. He lifted his head and Joey sent a silent prayer heavenward for it to be over for Will quickly if it was him. They were going to take his life away from him either way. Tears gathered in her eyes. They’d been so close to being together. It’s not fair!

  Joey was going to lose him after all…

  Through her tears, Joey watched the orb of green light hovering over Rafe and the man they were sacrificing like the hand of death ready to fall. Rafe stopped chanting, hesitated, and Joey held her breath, sensing something wasn’t right.

  In a flash the green orb dropped down
on Rafe’s head and he screamed, the book flying from his hands. He tore the hood from his head in a frenzy, ripping at his hair, gouging his own face with his nails as the light twined around him viciously. Rafe hit the floor, crying out in pain, as the hands clutching hers held her in place and a figure nearer the front stepped forward, calling out in the strange language. The maniacal group began a new incantation, repeating it over and over.

  Some unseen force pulled Rafe from the floor so that he hovered, writhing in front of Brazhnik, and Joey screamed as she watched the flesh of Rafe’s bloody face began to wither like rotting fruit in a time-lapse video. His hair whitened, grew thin, his body contorted and shrunk as his skin grayed and turned yellow beneath the green streaks of light. Brazhnik’s voice was strong as he continued to chant, the other noise in the room dying away as she watched Rafe deteriorate, to wither into a wizened and emaciated version of his former self.

  “Bring her!”

  Fear rooted her to the spot as she watched Brazhnik pointing to her from where he stood. The two men on either side of her seized her arms, one gripping her painfully, and dragged her to stand between Brazhnik and Rafe’s expiring form.

  Rafe looked like a living mummy. The unnatural light seemed to be the only thing sustaining him. His skin was leathery, pulled grotesquely back from his face, his hair long white wisps floating about his head in a ghostly manner. His hazel eyes in their sunken sockets widened as Brazhnik pulled back her hood, grabbing her hair painfully in his hands from behind.

  “You will watch her die again before I send you to your death.” Brazhnik’s voice was a cruel whisper in her ear.

  The flash of a long curved blade caught her eye as it moved before her face and she waited to die, sure that her heart would explode from the fear before Brazhnik could manage to cut her throat. Joey’s eyes locked with Rafe’s, waiting, sharing his horror.

  Before she knew what was happening, the man on her left released her and sent his elbow flying back to connect with Brazhnik’s face. Joey automatically ducked, twisting out of the grip of the man on the other side while her rescuer dealt Brazhnik a series of brutal blows. She turned to see Brazhnik struggling to pull himself from the ground as the other red-robed figures approached.