Vampire Sheikh (4 page)

She smiled at the memory. Joss didn't believe in spirits any more than she believed in vampires. But hell, after last night…well, she was just freaked out enough
that the hairs stood up on her arms at the prospect of what the ancient hills might be secreting in their hidden depths.

Suddenly, she heard a noise above her. Gravel falling.

Ohgod!
Was someone there?

She froze. And nearly jumped out of her skin when a long, black shadow appeared on the ground beside her.

A scream leapt to her throat as the shadow's owner stepped out from behind a huge rock.

A scream that burst out as choked laughter.

“Omi
god!
”

It was only a cat.

Joss let out a rush of relief, half curse and half laugh. “Good grief!” she scolded it when her heartbeat had slowed to less than supersonic speed. “You scared the bejezus out of me!”

It was a pretty animal, clean and obviously well cared for, with an unusual copper-red coat and luminous green eyes. It looked kind of like the one she'd seen walking down the hall last night at the hotel. A
lot
like it, in fact. Except this cat had a round, flat, purple amulet suspended on a ribbon around its neck.

“What are you doing way up here?” Josslyn asked it, feeling a bit silly talking to a cat but feeling the need to hear a human voice, even if it was her own. “Where's your home?”

It didn't answer, of course, but it sat down in the tomb opening and stared at Joss, tail curling delicately behind it. As though it wanted to block her path.

Ri-iight.

Taking out her flashlight and the bootknife she always carried when doing fieldwork, she climbed the last few feet to the needle's eye.

“Sorry, kitty. I need to get past you.”

Gently shooing the beast aside, she slid through the tall, narrow opening. After a moment's pause to let her eyes adjust to the near darkness, she flicked on the flashlight and aimed the beam around her.

Sure enough, she found herself in the typical rectangular antechamber of a tomb, a room about the size of an average home's entry foyer, carved directly into the sandstone cliff. The only decoration was a crosshatch of fake lines carefully carved into the walls, designed to make it look like fitted blocks rather than bare rock. There were no paintings and no hieroglyphic inscriptions. And no Lord Rhys Kilpatrick grave marker, either.

Damn. Could this be the wrong tomb, after all?

Murmuring a curse under her breath, she examined the walls more closely—and found something that made her gasp in astonishment.

A narrow slot had been cleverly carved between two of the faux blocks; deep in the tiny crevice was a hidden trip-latch. Unbelievable! Anyone who had not grown up trekking through tombs and temples with an Egyptologist father would never have recognized the concealed mechanism. Only during the Ptolemaic period did such devices exist, extremely rarely, and to her knowledge only in the temples. But she knew at once what it was.

Good Lord. A secret door!

The cupboard-sized passage would lead to the inside
of the tomb proper—a much larger chamber, possibly more than one. It would have originally been carved and painted with intricate murals, and, like King Tut's tomb, filled to the rafters with incredible treasures—gold, jewels, statues, amphorae and a thousand other things designed to be used by the deceased in the afterlife. Normally those treasures would be long gone, plundered in ancient times. But…

In a flash, the possibilities raced through Joss's mind.

Had Gillian found this secret opening? Had she crawled through it? If so, what had she found inside? Ancient gold? A present-day antiquity smuggler's cache? Or perhaps even a gun-filled terrorist hideout?

A chill worked its way through Joss's whole body. Any one of those reasons could be why Gillian was taken.

Grasping her knife in her fingers, she started to insert the blade in the crack, probing for the trip latch.

“I wouldn't do that,” a soft, feminine voice said behind her.

With a startled exclamation, she whirled, whipping her flashlight around. A woman was standing just inside the tomb entrance. Several inches shorter than Joss, she wore a beautiful flowing gown of dragonfly green that flattered her pale complexion and her riot of rich red hair. Hair the exact same color as the cat outside, Joss noted.

The woman looked a little like Gemma. Except for her eyes. The soul that shone through them seemed as old and wise as the ages, where Gemma's were young and guileless.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Joss asked, and she noticed with a flash of unease that the woman also wore a flat purple amulet around her neck.

The woman smiled. “My name is Nephtys. And I've come to help you.”

K
hepesh Palace had been built completely under the ground, where the taint of the Sun God never touched it. Even with the never-changing dark, most of the followers of Set-Sutekh, the Supreme Lord of Darkness, spent their waking hours during the true nighttime and took their rest during the worst heat of the day above. Some of the immortals, such as Seth's best friend, Lord Rhys, still enjoyed the daylight and kept homes aboveground in addition to their suites in the underground palace, coming and going as the whim struck, living comfortably in both worlds.

But as Khepesh's immortal leader and high priest, Seth-Aziz rarely left the palace these days, and his duties were nearly all performed in the deepest hours of the night.

But Seth liked the nighttime; he relished the peace and tranquility of the dark. It had nothing to do with
the myth that a vampire is burned by the sun—Haru-Re's enthusiastic service to the Sun God, Re-Horakhti, soundly disproved that old wives' tale. Seth simply preferred the darkness to the light. It was easier to think, easier to see what was important, easier to lose oneself in one's solitude, in a cocoon devoid of the harsh light of illumination.

Occasionally during his long existence Seth had questioned his choice to serve the Dark Lord. Not because of the usual reason he'd been confronted with by others over the years—the grave misconception that Darkness equaled Evil, and that those who served its god must therefore also be evil. That was not true. He knew it to the core of his being. Good and bad did not reside in the absence or presence of light. Good and bad resided in the behavior of human beings, in the thoughts and actions of mortals and immortals, regardless of the god they served.

No, rather, Seth had questioned his choice to serve at all.

At the time of his youth, following in his father's footsteps to become a priest in the powerful
per netjer,
or temple, of Set-Sutekh the ruling deity of much of Upper Egypt under the early pharaohs, it had felt more like his destiny than choice. Especially when Seth had subsequently been anointed as High Priest of the
per netjer
. Admittedly, as a young man he'd been blinded by the awesome magic of immortality when it had been offered to him and his followers…even given the high personal price he must pay. Becoming a vampire had seemed a small sacrifice to gain such immense preternatural powers.

The early days had been rough. Learning to control the unnatural cravings, and master the power, so neither controlled nor mastered him, had not been easy. Other high priests had not fared so well in matters of conscience, the natural greed and cruelty of many of the immortal vampires coming out in ways that ended up toppling pharaohs from the throne, and plunging the entire country into many centuries of chaos and hardship.

But Set-Sutekh was the God of Chaos, so his
per netjer
, with Seth as its leader, thrived and gained more and more power and influence from one end of the Nile to the other. It wasn't until Seth truly opened his eyes and saw what the constant war and strife was doing to the mortals, the common people of Egypt, that he started to question what was happening. And his role in it.

He'd retreated to his underground palace and contemplated putting an end to it all. How could you go on living with such misery all around, and know yourself to be one of the primary causes? In his deepest depression, he'd written a long poem about a conversation between a man weary of life, and his soul, or
ba,
entreating it to just let him die. Ultimately, his
ba
had won his personal de bate, and Seth had not taken his life. He had, however, resolved to withdraw forever from the affairs of mortals, and to stop the deadly strife between his
per netjer
and all the others.

It had worked, too. In every case except one.

Petru.

Haru-Re still insisted on seizing control of all the mortal realm for his god, Re-Horakhti. Ray would not
rest until Seth and Khepesh were conquered, relegated to the anonymous sands of time, as he had all the other thousands of temples of the ancient gods of Egypt.

The final battle was coming. And it was coming soon.

Lately, worry and unease had kept Seth awake for most days, as well as nights. Today he awoke even earlier than usual, and with a pounding headache.

The hunger was also growing worse every passing day, bringing with it a multitude of physical miseries along with the psychological ones.

“My lord Seth-Aziz!”

Seth gave a silent groan. Or perhaps it was just the pounding on his chamber door that echoed painfully through his skull. Did the bad news never cease?

He slid from his bed, grasping the edge of the mattress with his fingers to steady the dizziness. “Come!” he called, reaching for his robe when the lightheadedness passed. The grogginess was getting harder to shake off.

The entry door to his suite glided open. “Sorry to disturb you, my lord. But you are needed at the Great Western Gate.”

Immediately, alarm shot through Seth. The Great Western Gate was the main entrance to Khepesh, placed at the end of a deep, meandering underground tunnel that led down from a hidden magical portal in the cliffs of the Western Desert. “What's happened? Is it Haru-Re?”

Had the last salvo in their endless war for supremacy finally begun, now that the enemy possessed the final
weapon needed for victory? Had Nephtys given in to the bastard…?

“No, my lord,” the messenger answered, shifting on his feet. “There's a, um, bit of a disturbance. The guards are…not sure what to do about it.”

Seth let out a sigh and went to his armoire to pick out clothes appropriate for a public appearance. “What kind of disturbance?”

“A woman. A mortal. Demanding entrance to the palace.”

Seth paused with a frown, thought, and remembered.
Ah.
The promised blood sacrifice. That was quick. “Sheikh Shahin must have sent her.”

The messenger appeared acutely uncomfortable. “I don't believe so. But she insists on speaking to you, my lord. Only you.”

Not totally unexpected under the circumstances. “Is there a problem?”

The man shuffled again. His face grew red. “She's, um, quite angry.”

Seth was beginning to have a bad feeling about this woman. “Why on earth would she be angry? Is she not bespelled?”

“I think not, my lord.”

Seth smoothed his formal black robes into place, tied a red sash around his waist, then gave the messenger a hard look. There was definitely something the man was not telling him. “Does this mortal woman have a name?”

The man avoided his gaze. “I, um…”

Suspicion suddenly curled through Seth like a serpent ready to strike.

Mithra's balls.
It couldn't be. There was no way she could have found Khepesh on her own.

And besides, no, she wouldn't
dare….

But one look at the messenger's apprehensive expression and Seth knew his suspicion was correct.

Fury flooded through him. And with it, all trace of the blood weakness fled from his bones. He could not believe the temerity of the woman to show her face here!

“By the gods!” he cursed as he flew from his rooms toward the Great Western Gate. “I will have her head on a platter! And the person who led her to our portal shall find
his
head on the end of my captain's sword!”

As Seth approached the monumental silver gate, he saw that a small crowd of immortals had gathered, sensing the high drama unfolding. The
shemsu
of Khepesh all knew about the Haliday sisters. And about Nephtys's vision of Seth's future consort and soul mate, a beautiful blonde whom Nephtys had joyfully identified as Gillian, the youngest sister. But Seth's embracing of the vision and admitting the young Haliday woman into the
per netjer
had led to a string of disasters…culminating in her fleeing Khepesh with Lord Rhys right after the annual Ritual of Transformation—the elaborate ceremony where Seth should have taken his annual blood sacrifice. This year Gillian had been his chosen sacrificial vessel.

Everyone knew of these events.

But what the gathering crowd didn't know was that to save Gillian, Rhys had waylaid Seth, and he had never received the sacrifice. Which was why he was now suffering the weakness that had his head reeling.

Rhys and Gillian had been summarily banished from the palace as traitors, and they had fled straight to Petru, the
per netjer
of the Sun God, ruled by Seth's enemy, Haru-Re.

When Sheikh Shahin had subsequently discovered that Gillian possessed two sisters, one of whom was also a blonde and who greatly resembled her, Nephtys had changed her story. “It must have been
Josslyn
Haliday I saw in my vision!” Nephtys had insisted.

But Seth wasn't buying it. He wanted nothing to do with either woman. Gillian Haliday had brought nothing but heartache and catastrophe to himself and to Khepesh. Because of his naïve belief in the vision, and in the possibility of love and companionship with that woman, he was in a personal hell of his own making, and his beloved
per netjer
was on the brink of annihilation by the enemy.

And he'd be
damned
if he let that woman's sister through his gates to wreak further disaster upon them all.

“Seth-Aziz!”

He could hear Josslyn Haliday's strident voice calling his name from the other side of the huge double portal even though it soared three stories high and was fashioned of pure, solid silver. He planted his feet and gathered his strength, needing all the authority he could muster. This was one battle he did not intend to lose.

“Open up! Let me in!” She pounded on the massive gate with her fists, which made a surprisingly loud echo for a mortal. “I know you're in there! Give me back my sisters! Let them go right this minute, or I'll have the U.S. Marines on your ass so fast your head will—”

“Enough!” Seth bellowed so loudly there was instant silence on both sides of the barrier. His subjects very seldom saw him angry and even less often heard him raise his voice. They knew it never boded well for anyone caught in the crossfire.

He ground his jaw and advanced on the gate, sweeping his hand at the portal guard. “Open it! Now!”

She wanted to come in? Fine. He'd let her in.

And she would never see the light of day again.

A long, deep clang resonated, and the portal wings began to move, splitting down the middle and slowly opening inward to reveal the glittering silver outer gate. Both sides were decorated in intricate hieroglyphics, the cartouches of Set-Sutekh gracing the center of each, along with the left Eye of Horus—symbol of the god who'd ripped it from his enemy. The gate was flanked by tall, lotus-shaped, fire-burning torches, flaming bright against the stygian void of the tunnel beyond.

A lone woman stood illuminated by the torchlight.

For a second Seth just stared. If he weren't so angry, and so fucking, ravenously hungry, he would have laughed.

This?

This
was supposed to be his future wise and beloved consort? She looked more like a street urchin from the slums of Cairo.

Her face was sweat-streaked and dirty, and she wore an ancient striped
gelebeya
that looked like she'd stolen from an old man's clothes line. It hung about her ankles in clouds of dust. On her feet were ugly army boots. Her hair, if it was even blond, was wrapped in a scarf of the
popular Palestinian variety usually worn by clueless tourists and aging hippies.

The gate reached its zenith and glided to a halt. She had no trouble picking him out of the crowd of observers, who looked back and forth between them as they stared each other down.

She was fearless. He'd give her that. Or rather, reckless. Did she really think she stood a chance here? A mere mortal pitted against a demigod?

For a long moment she regarded him, from top to bottom, her eyes betraying an emotion he couldn't quite decipher. Consternation? As though he wasn't what she'd expected? Well, that made two of them.

She took a step forward. “I've come for my sisters,” she declared in a loud, clear voice.

He narrowed his eyes at her disrespect.

“On your knees, woman, and kneel before the high priest of Set-Sutekh!” the portal guard commanded her, raising his scimitar.

She faltered for a split second, then her back went up and she took another step forward, ignoring the threat. “I kneel before no man,” she informed Seth archly. “Now give me my sisters!”

Seth's fists clenched at his sides, his blood simmering.
No one
disrespected him in this way!

“Come in and get them,” he growled, schooling his urge to strike the woman dead where she stood. It would take so little, the merest whisper of a thought in his mind. And then he'd be safely rid of her, once and for all. “
If
you dare enter.”

She started to walk, but he lifted a finger and stopped her in mid-stride. Surprise swept over her face at having
her movements controlled by another, as though she were merely a puppet on a string.

She had no idea.

“Take heed,” he warned, his voice gravelly with the effort to quell his boiling temper, “that if you willingly choose to enter my domain, you become mine to rule, mine to do with as I wish.”

She blinked. “What's that supposed to mean?” she demanded, and he saw the first glimmer of uncertainty flit through her expression.

“Exactly what you think it means,” he informed her.

He could smell her, the mortal scent of her like an insidious perfume of temptation sent to harass his senses. The salt of her sweat. A dusty hint of the fragrant desert above that clung to her clothes. The telltale tang of the dawning fear within her breast.

And under it all, the sweet, alluring scent of her mortal blood.