Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)

With a shout of laughter, the clicking on the ropes could be heard, and then the cart and bullsen were moving. I stood there frozen, watching them disappear into the distance, wondering why they had let me escape.

It wasn’t until I turned and looked around, taking in my surroundings, that the true horror and realisation hit me. They hadn’t cared about me escaping because this was where they had been planning on leaving me all along. The dirt beneath me was dried and cracked, a stale, arid taste to the air. There was barely any vegetation, and absolutely no civilisation in sight.

We were in a place so dead and desolate, that it could only be one area.

The abandoned rings. The dead zone.

I stared at the plume of red dust that was slowly settling back down to the ground, and then walked over to the cart tracks, nudging at the indentations with my boot. There were no other tracks around—there was nothing else around. Just dirt, and sun. A sun that was about to set … and I had no food, no water, and no map. Not that there were any landmarks to reference on the map.

“Cyrus!” I shouted again, turning my face up to the sky even though I knew that Topia wasn’t actually in the sky.

He didn’t answer, of course, so I ended up screaming out an incomprehensible sound of frustration instead, before marching off down the tracks left behind by the cart. I had no idea where I was going, but at least I was following some kind of direction.

I picked up the pace a little as the sun began to sink lower and lower. My legs were aching and there was dust in my eyes, but I couldn’t just stop and sit down under a tree. There weren’t any trees, and there were probably wild packs of animals that came out at night to snack on the bones of abandoned dweller-sol-betas. That was probably why nobody ever came back from the dead zone—other than Dru and Karyn, apparently.

I was almost running by the time something finally came into view. I pulled a hand up over my eyes, squinting against the horizon. It was only a blurry outline, backed by the sun, but it seemed to be moving. I halted, watching as what seemed like another cart approached me from the horizon. The cloud of dust rose behind it, gently obscuring the sun in a hazy red glow, and for a moment, I was reminded of my Chaos. Of the damage I had done to Evie’s face. It seemed as though my soul-link to the Abcurses had been keeping me from blacking out and leaking Chaos up until this point, but now I was on my own. Well … on my own with whatever version of me took over whenever I blacked out and leaked Chaos everywhere. So … not really on my own at all. I also still had the semanight stone, if that counted for anything.

I waited while the cart approached, unable to see the person steering it properly through the haze of dust. When it finally skidded to a halt, veering off to the side of me, I realised that it had been following on the exact same track as Dru and Karyn had left. Maybe they had changed their minds, and were back to kill me.

“The hell are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” The blunt question drew my eyes up to the front of the cart, where a guy was standing from the driver’s seat, looping the reins for the bullsen over a handle in front of him.

He was easily several life-cycles older than me, but there was something experienced about him that denied his still-handsome appearance. A roughness that came from hard work and cynicism, instead of age. I knew that he was a dweller immediately.

“A couple of sols knocked me out, threw me into the back of a cart and dropped me here,” I announced plainly.

I even gestured in the general vicinity of my head, to indicate where the ‘knocking out’ had occurred. He arched a dark brow and jumped down from his seat, causing me to glance toward the cart to see if anyone else would come out.

“So,” he brought my attention back to him as he approached, “what’d they knock you out for? Did you steal something? Polish the wrong shoe? Accidently sneeze in front of someone important?”

I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corners of my mouth, and I examined the guy a little more closely: he had sooty hair, dark eyes, and darkly tanned skin, as though he spent a lot of time in the sun. Probably driving carts. Through the dead zone …

“Wait a click.” I shook my head, frowning, and gestured back to the cart, checking again to see if anyone was poking their heads out to see what was going on. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s my job,” he replied, like it was obvious. “I take the deceased out to the ruins, and … er … put them to rest.” He was rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, watching the look on my face.

The look that was probably full of disgust and horror. Which would explain why he was suddenly acting uncomfortable.

“What kind of deceased?” I eventually asked. “And who the hell pays you to do this?”

“My father pays me.” He almost looked like he was blushing now, and he started to glance back toward the cart. “It’s the family business, you see. One of the gods asked my great-grandfather to take the bodies to the cave behind the temple, where the guardians live—”

“Guardians?” I interrupted. “I thought nothing lived out here?”

“Well if the guardians catch it out here … it probably won’t live for long.” He cut his eyes back to me, trying to convey the seriousness of that statement, but I was still stuck on all the horror and disgust over the fact that he carted dead things around.

“You still haven’t answered me,” I prompted. “What bodies?”

“The bodies of the dwellers.” He watched the alarm chase away my disgust, and then he was shaking his head, seeming torn between amusement and annoyance. “They’re already dead. I don’t kill them or anything. I just take them from one place to another.”

“Who the hell is killing dwellers then?” I demanded, my voice becoming shrill.

“Nobody! Or … well, I guess sometimes … listen, I really need to get this load to the temple before nightfall, otherwise the guardians get pissed. And you really don’t want to know what happens when the guardians get pissed. You can come with me, and I’ll hide you in the cart. Or you can stay out here and wait for them to find you. If you decide to come with me, I’ll explain everything to you on the way back home, and then we can discuss what the hell to do with you.”

He walked over to the cart, pulled back the canvas wrap, and motioned me inside. I stayed right the hell where I was.

He groaned. “Look … what’s your name?”

“Willa.” I wasn’t even looking at him. I was still staring at the cart. “What’s yours?”

“Zac. And I kind of want to keep it that way. If I’m late tonight—or if they catch you out here—we’ll become Patricia and Kenneth. I know this probably doesn’t make any sense to you, but they do things with the bodies. Change them. Give them new names, and then send them to Topia to serve the gods.”