Free Flight of the Crow by Melanie Thompson Page A

Sahir twins. Owning one would surely lead to possession of the other. The fact it was Fenix, the delicious golden phoenix, made him quiver with anticipation. Everything was going exactly as planned this time. He was in control. He had all he needed to perform the ritual that would give him back his lost youth. Immortality was no gift when granted to a man already old. He’d spent a thousand years as a seventy-year-old man. His knees ached unbearably, he had numerous digestive issues he hated to think about, and his eyesight was poor.
    The entrance to the moon chamber was hidden. It took him several minutes of searching to find it. Only feet away from where he crouched, water rushed through the underground river. Moisture from the water made everything slick with slimy green algae. The metal door set low in the wall was locked. Priest pulled a skeleton key out of a pocket in his robe and inserted it into the ancient lock. At first it refused to budge. He passed his hand over the lock and the key turned halfway and stuck. He closed his eyes and willed it to unlock. When it finally clanged open and the bar dropped inside the mechanism to open the lock, he sighed with relief. He’d never doubted his ability to get into the locked room, but bending down was painful and his patience was limited.
    He shouldered the rusty door open. It groaned and creaked on corroded hinges as it scraped across centuries of collected dirt. “Take her in there,” he ordered the dummy he’d conscripted to aid him. The huge man’s brain was small and weak and easily overpowered with magic.
    The room behind the door was small and for the most part filled with an iron cage. The hulking prison was a hundred years old built long before the French Revolution, but was used then for special prisoners. Marie Antoinette was rumored to have been held here, but Priest knew this room had been used for more nefarious purposes than just holding prisoners. The cage was built to restrain a select group of people, namely witches. The bars were made with iron blended when hot with star metal brought from Egypt. The special metal was melted from a meteor which had landed in the Sahara Desert long before the pharaohs ruled. It resisted all spells and curses to break it. Once Fenix was in there, she would have to remain his guest until he opened the door.
    Chuckling to himself, he grabbed the witch’s red-gold hair and jerked her head up. Her golden eyes flew open. “You!” She snarled.
    â€œYes, it is I, your nemesis, Draak Priest.” He ran a possessive hand down her back. She wore a diaphanous gown that clung to her curves. For a moment, he contemplated enjoying her body right here in this damp hell. But he thought better of it. When he lay with Fenix, and he would lie with her, it would be as a young man with the erection of a young man. Oh yes, he would be as strong as a stallion, able to fuck her for hours until she screamed for mercy. “Soon,” he said. “Soon you will know me in a different way, my dear. Soon I will be young and as powerful as any stud you’ve taken between those white thighs.”
    â€œI’d rather die.”
    â€œAh death, for us it could be considered a gift. But for you, it will be a gift longed for but never attained.”
    He opened the cage door. “Put her in there,” he told the dummy.
    While the big man was dumping his fair burden inside the cage, he bustled around to the altar built into the wall. Guttered candles sat in their nests of melted wax. He scraped them all away and knelt on the kneeling stone. Only two days from now, he would perform the ritual that would give him back his life. He turned around and sat on the stone. The cage was right behind him. When he looked up, he saw the hole in the ceiling that led all the way to Saint Sulpice, fifty feet directly over their heads.
    The hole was under the stained-glass dome of the church’s chancel. When the full