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Hassani nodded. “The monuments used to be faced with pure white limestone in ancient times, so highly polished that it was said to be blinding under the sun. But taking their facing stones was easier than quarrying new material, so.” He shrugged. “You can see the stones of temples like this one in the walls around Old Cairo.”
“This was a temple?” I glanced around. I supposed I should have figured that out. The paintings were faded almost to indecipherability, but there were a lot of them, covering even the ceiling, which was so high that the light barely touched it. And while the stone pillars guarding the doorways were bare of pigment, their surfaces were beautifully carved, with the tops looking like lotus flowers opening under the sun.
That sort of thing was expensive in the ancient world, where everything was done by hand. Palaces and temples were virtually the only spots that received such treatment. Well, and tombs.
For some reason, I felt a shiver go across my skin.
Hassani did not appear to notice, maybe because he was busy tracing another carving on the wall. “Oh, yes. Heliopolis was full of temples, to the point that the Greeks named it after the god they associated with the deity worshipped here. In ancient Egypt it was known as the House of Ra. You see? This is his cartouche.”
“Ra? He was the sun god, wasn’t he?”
Hassani wasn’t called Teacher for nothing. I’d thought it was more of a religious title, but he seemed genuinely pleased that his strange visitor knew something, at least. I was grateful for the guide to Aswan, who had basically never shut up. “Yes, indeed. Heliopolis was the center of his cult, going back as far as history does. It predated the dynastic period, you see.”
“Dynastic?”
“The era of the pharaohs.”
“And what was before that?”
He shot me a look. “Why, the time of the gods, of course.”
We went on.
There were more stairs, and more descent into darkness. The underground temple was vast enough for me to wonder why a good chunk of Old Cairo hadn’t collapsed into a massive sinkhole. I assumed that something had been done, magical or otherwise, to shore it up, although there were no signs of anything. No magic glistened anywhere, and the only scent I could detect was dust.
Well, and an odd, skin ruffling odor that tickled my nose occasionally, from different directions, as if born on a breeze that didn’t exist down here. It was acid-sharp and bitter, and disturbing because it was impossible to identify. It didn’t help that the rooms we’d transitioned into were smaller and interconnected, and as dark as pitch before our completely inadequate light source lit them up. I was starting to wonder what had possessed me to accompany Hassani down here in the first place.
He had promised to take me to the morgue where they were keeping the attackers’ corpses from last night. Louis-Cesare had already seen them, and probably gotten a clue as to where to start his search. It was something he hadn’t bothered to share with me, forcing me to retrace his steps in the hope that I’d notice whatever he had—which had sounded like a perfectly reasonable plan upstairs.
Here . . . was a different story.
This place was seriously creeping me out, and my overly suspicious brain was taking full advantage. It was busy pointing out that this was a damned long trip to the morgue, wasn’t it? One with no witnesses to anything that might happen along the way except for Lantern Boy, who was Hassani’s creature. The consul hadn’t hurt Louis-Cesare because that would have been tantamount to declaring war on our senate, but a filthy dhampir who had just attacked him? And who he probably blamed for the assault last night?
Shit.
My mood wasn’t improved when we entered yet another area of the temple. I still couldn’t see squat—even less than before, in fact, since the lamplight was no longer able to reach the ceiling. But whatever we were walking through suddenly felt bigger and airier, with our footsteps echoing loudly in absolute silence.
Well, almost absolute. The vamps weren’t bothering to breathe since they didn’t need it, but my own breaths sounded loud and ragged in my ears. Calm the hell down! I told myself sternly.
My adrenal glands told me to get fucked and pumped out some more energy I didn’t need and couldn’t use right now. It buzzed around in my veins, threatening to make me clumsy, although the crappy lighting and uneven floor were already doing that. The tiny puddle of lantern light seemed vanishingly small, leaving me feeling like I was walking through a big, black, echoing void, with the only thing keeping me from falling on my face the small area of rough-cut stone I could see directly in front of me.
And, eventually, that wasn’t enough.
I tripped on the crack between two huge stones and went down to one knee, and then almost jumped out of my skin when a hand cupped my elbow.
“My apologies,” Hassani said, his voice repeating eerily from all directions. The handsome, bearded face bent down into the puddle of light. “Our people see so well in the dark that I sometimes forget that others do not. But you should experience this.”
“Experience what?” I asked hoarsely, and heard my own voice echo.
I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to experience shit down here.
But it wasn’t up to me. Suddenly, a series of light flashes all but blinded me, to the point that I threw an arm over my eyes. And when I lowered it, blinking in a dazzling flood of illumination, I saw . . . something incredible.
I had wondered why Hassani’s court was smack in the middle of Old Cairo. Vampire enclaves tended to hug the outskirts of cities or be off in the hinterland somewhere. Wards were good, and the ones upstairs were next level. But they couldn’t hide everything as last night had proven. It was easier to make sure that any oddities were well beyond the range of prying eyes.
But now I understood.
