Sevin: Lords of Satyr by Elizabeth Amber Read Free Book Online Page B

coming,” he said, trying to sound calmer than he felt. “You try.”
    “I was trying,” said Luc. “Same result as yours. Nothing. Has this ever happened to you before?”
    “No, but then I’ve never tried to bring them forth while in the depths of hell,” Sevin snapped.
    Luc sighed. “Nor I. I was seventeen when I was freed from these catacombs. Didn’t yet have the power to conjure them.”
    Sevin ran a hand through his hair, his mind working to formulate a plan. Any plan. Roman catacombs were known to stretch for miles, with twists and turns that had never been mapped. Men had died in them, their skeletons simply swept into the enclosures with the bones of other long-dead men. Well, by the gods, he wasn’t going to let his brother, who’d already suffered so direly in these very tombs, die here in them tonight!
    Luc’s voice came, stark in the silence. “Damn, I’m sorry, Sevin. I didn’t mean to bring you here with me.”
    “There’s no one I’d rather be lost with, brother. Don’t worry. We’ll get out of here. Even if I have to claw our way out with my bloody fingers.”
    They’d be dead by morning if he didn’t. Judging by the changes he felt beginning in his body, they had only twenty minutes or so until the moon came. If the Satyr didn’t mate with females from dusk to dawn on a Calling night, they did not survive. Simple fact.
    “Let’s go.” Sevin found Luc again and pulled him by one arm back out into the corridor.
    “I see something,” Luc murmured almost immediately. “A light. There.”
    Since he couldn’t see anything, Sevin had no idea in which way his brother was pointing. He plumbed the depths of the blackness around them in all directions. Then, to his right, he saw a winking glow in the distance.
    “A shade from the ElseWorld hells?” Luc speculated with black humor.
    Smugglers, more like, Sevin speculated silently. But whoever it was held their salvation in his grasp—a gas lamp. Determined not to spook their savior, he clapped a silencing hand over his brother’s mouth and shoved him back into the room. Luc shrugged off this touch, but Sevin hardly noticed, for the gesture had become a familiar one since Luc had returned from these very bowels less than one year ago.
    The pale vision rushed onward, moving toward them. The lantern swayed back and forth in its hand. Its golden light flickered wildly, alternately revealing the stone walls of the corridor and their visitor’s long, flowing gown. A woman? What was a lone woman doing down here? And what was she running from?
    His nostrils flared slightly. The Satyr had keen senses, and before he saw her face, Sevin recognized her by scent. It was none other than Alexa Patrizzi! Her pale hair was down and tousled as if she had just risen from sleep.
    Alongside him, Luc snarled, recognizing her a split second later.
    At the sound, she froze uncertainly. The arm holding the lantern jerked, banging against the cavern wall.
    “No!” Sevin leaped for it, but before he could get his hands on it, it clattered to the stone floor, its precious light extinguished.
    “Who’s there?” Alexa demanded in frightened tones. Soft footsteps, a muffled thud. “Ow!”
    “Be still. You’ll hurt yourself. Wait till I can get the light on again,” he told her.
    “Lord Satyr?”
    “Sevin,” he confirmed as he knelt and searched by feel for the lamp. “How far are we from an exit? Can you lead us out of here?” He purposely failed to mention his brother’s presence. No need to spook her even more.
    “I don’t know. I—” She paused uncertainly.
    “You’re lost?”
    Silence.
    “Did you just nod?” His hand touched warm glass and metal.
    “Yes.”
    Damn. “What are you doing down here alone this time of night?” he demanded as he concentrated on relighting the lantern he’d found at last.
    A telling silence. “I’m subject to nocturnal wanderings,” she said at length. “Somnambulism.”
    “You sleepwalk?” She was