Near the bayous outside New Orleans
“I’m almost there.”
Hatshepsut leaned on a tree to as she took a pause.
The last rays of the setting sun provided very little light for her to examine her wound, but even in the long shadows of the trees, she saw that it had grown.
Hatshepsut grumbled angrily to herself.
That little witch!
How could I have been so careless!
Hatshepsut’s anger began to quail as her thoughts drifted elsewhere.
Senemut .
.
.
Hatshepsut was still in disbelief.
She hadn’t seen Senemut in over a century.
Seeing him had aroused feelings that she had long forgotten.
Senemut .
.
.Why were you there?
Hatshepsut shook the thought from her head as she continued her trek through the swamp.
She no longer had the strength to run super-fast, but she could still run fast enough to be out of the alligators’ reach by the time they smelled her blood.
She ran until she came to a vast estate that was surrounded by a tall wall.
Hatshepsut knew what awaited her on the other side, armed guards with menacing dogs, motion sensors, and cameras.
She knew she was going to have to summon what was left of her will to be able to run fast enough to not be seen.
She winced as she formed another thick layer of ice over her wound in hopes that it would keep the dogs from smelling the fresh blood.
She took a deep breath and leaped over the wall.
As soon as her feet touched the ground, she ran towards the massive house that stood before her.
She passed all the obstacles before her like a breeze.
Soon she was at the house.
Without missing a stride, she leaped to the longest balcony with a set of French doors on each end and collapsed in front of one of the doors.
The ice that she had used as a bandage melted away by the same magic that seemed to be eating her alive.
She knocked weakly on the paned glass, hoping for an answer.
“Roman?” Hatshepsut breathed.
“Roman!
Oh, by the gods, please be here!
Roman, I am in need of help!”
With her last cry, Hatshepsut’s gloved hand slid down the door, leaving a bloody trail down the glass as she crumpled to the floor in pain.
What do I do now?
Hatshepsut knew she didn’t have enough strength to go anywhere else.
Plus, the more power she used, the harder it was for her body to resist the spell.
She lay on the cold balcony feeling her strength slowly seeping from her body.
She was so consumed by her pain that she didn’t hear the doors click open.
It wasn’t until she felt strong hands grabbing her up that she noticed that someone had heard her.
She didn’t resist as her savior gathered her up in his big arms.
She laid her head upon his broad chest and surrendered to the pain.
“Hat!” Hatshepsut heard a deep voice whisper into her ear.
“Hat!
Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she replied weakly.
“What have you done to yourself?”
“Long .
.
.
story,” Hatshepsut moaned, closing her eyes as she buried her face in Roman’s hard chest.
She began to feel relief as she breathed in his musky scent.
Hatshepsut could feel Roman walk through several rooms.
Then she heard a strange sliding sound and Roman’s footsteps echo in a dark stairway that led downward.
Soon she could hear a door squeak open and after a few steps Roman stopped and laid her on a hard flat surface that was only a little wider than she.
She opened her eyes to see that he had laid her on an altar that stood in the middle of five tall candelabras each with lit black candles.
As she examined this dark room closer, she saw that the candelabras stood along the edge of a circle at the points of a pentagram painted on the floor.
As she continued to look around, Hatshepsut noticed that the room was lit with hundreds of candles.
Long trails of melted wax hung over the edges of their holders and ran down the stone walls and counters making the room look more like a cavern than a room in a house.
Of all the times she had been in this man’s house, this is the first she had seen of this room.
Hatshepsut followed Roman around the room with her hazy gaze.
She noticed that his long reddish-brown locs were in disarray and the only thing he had on were a pair of black pajama pants.
The candle light made his ebony skin glow an odd hue.
“I woke you.”
Roman walked back towards her with his hands full of items.
“You didn’t wake me,” he said, laying the items beside her.
“Even if you had, do you really think I would care?
Now, why don’t you settle down and let me take care of you.”
Hatshepsut winced as Roman examined her injury.
He gently probed the wound with his fingers.
“Someone used some powerful dark magic,” Roman said rubbing some of Hatshepsut’s blood between his thumb and fingertips.
“Lucky for you, I recognize the spell.”
“Lucky me,” Hatshepsut said weakly.
Roman chuckled as he reached in a bowl and sprinkled a fine power on the wound while mumbling words that she didn’t understand.
Hatshepsut restrained herself from crying out from the pain.
“I’m sorry,” Roman said, touching her forehead.
“This will be very painful.”
“Be done with it!” Hatshepsut cried.
At that moment she couldn’t imagine pain greater than what she felt now.
As Roman began his ritual, she found that she was wrong.
Very wrong.
Roman held the claw of a bird over the wound and began his mumblings again except this time he spoke louder.
“Tainted blood,” Roman chanted, “darkness lure.
Purge the taint.
Blood be pure.”
Hatshepsut watched as Roman’s golden brown eyes convert to an empty black.
She began to feel a pulling sensation followed by extreme pain as Roman continued to chant his words over and over.
She cried out as a thick purple ooze seeped from her wound and rose to the ceiling in a large blob.
After he had extracted the entire spell from her vile gash, Roman threw back his long locs over his shoulder revealing a strange necklace.
It was a thick leather cord that was strung with alternating sharp claws and beads.
In the middle was the skull of a bird with a red stone lodged into the crown of the skull.
The stone began to glow as the bony amulet absorbed the blob and ceased its glowing.
Hatshepsut let out a whimpering sigh and blacked out as the last of the magic left her body.