Free Ultimate Warriors by Joy Nash, Jaide Fox, Michelle Pillow

physical exhaustion wasn’t
enough to overcome her distress, her anger, or her uneasiness once she was
alone in the apartment.
          She had
finally decided that she would lie down anyway and close her eyes. Even if she
couldn’t sleep, surely doing that much would rest her at least a little so that
she could face the next day.
          Despite
her angry dismissal, however, Shayne’s words assaulted her. Every time she
closed her eyes her mind went round and round with the argument. It was going
on three AM when her mind finally began to wind down. Bits and pieces of
nightmares began to batter at her almost the moment she drifted away, however,
and she found herself starting into wakefulness each time she sank toward
slumber.
          She
thought when first she sensed the presence at the foot of her bed that she was
still sleeping. The nightmares had become so real to her that she’d begun to
have difficulty sorting dream from reality at times.
          The
moment Onyx grabbed her and hauled her from her bed, however, she knew
absolutely that this was no dream. Before she could scream, or even put up much
of a fight, he’d captured her so tightly against his hulking frame that she
could barely even squirm. She struggled anyway, trying to wiggle free of his
grip.
          "The
time has come," he said in his deep, rumbling voice.
          Nariko
definitely didn’t like the sound of that. "What time?"
          "Tonight
you will help me open the doorway so that I can achieve my full powers,"
he said in the same growling voice.
          "Like
hell I will!" Nariko snapped angrily.
          "You
will. And you will enjoy it as much as I," he promised.
          He
lifted her free of the floor then, launching the two of them upward with such
force Nariko cringed, expecting momentarily to collide with the ceiling.
Instead, she discovered when she opened her eyes that the Earth was far below
them. Her heart slammed into her chest wall like a caged bird trying to beat
its way out of a trap.
          This
could not be real. It had to be one of the nightmares!
          She was
afraid to struggle now, however, and realized she wasn’t so convinced that it
was a dream that she was willing to risk breaking free and falling to her
death. Instead, she drew in a deep breath to scream for Xalen to come to her.
          Onyx
silenced her before she’d managed to emit more than a squeaking syllable. She
wasn’t certain how he’d silenced her when he held her firmly gripped in both
arms, but she felt as if her mouth were covered tightly. She couldn’t open her
mouth. She couldn’t breathe.
          The fear
of suffocation very quickly ousted every other thought from her mind, even her
fear of falling to her death. She fought frantically to free herself, to drag
air into her lungs, but absolute blackness began to swim around her within
moments. The stars dimmed and one by one winked out.
          Cold was
the first sensation that filtered through her mind when she swam upward toward
consciousness once more. Light flickered through the thin skin of her eye lids
and she stirred. Realizing she couldn’t move, Nariko opened her eyes at last
and found that she was staring up into the darkness of a cavernous ceiling.
          The
light she’d seen, she discovered, was the flickering fire of torches set into
sconces on the dark stone walls that surrounded her.
          It
looked rough hewn, crude--she was in a cavern, she realized finally.
          She
couldn’t move because she was pinned by the manacles around her wrists and
ankles.
          With
cold terror washing over her, she lifted her head.
          Almost
as if they’d been waiting for her to do so, as if it was a signal to them to
commence, shadowy figures clothed in dark, hooded cloaks stepped from the
darkness and surrounded the stone altar where she lay.
          Low, so
low it was more like muttering than chants at