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Hassani was just standing there, surrounded by flames, I had no idea why. And then I realized why. The snakeskin was burning up, but as it did so, it was throwing out more than just sparks.
Two chariots raced, neck to neck, the black flanks of their horses gleaming, the sun on the golden armbands of the drivers blinding, the sand spraying from under the wheels like waves in the air. A crowd roared as one chariot pulled ahead, crossing a line in the sand a split second before the other. But the winner did not look pleased.
Instead, he jumped off his vehicle before the horses had even stopped, hit the ground and rolled, but not to his feet. He knelt, despite the fact that the burning sand must have been all but cooking his flesh. “Please,” he begged.
It was not enough. The whole point of these games was to remind the people who ruled—and why. Seeing a human best a god at anything might lead to the idea that the gods could be bested at other things, could even be driven out.
No, not close to enough.
The god glanced up at the sun, his father’s symbol, boiling hot and brilliant overhead. And then just as hot down here, as a column of blinding white light surged earthward. The charioteer’s screams echoed around the racetrack, turning to shrieks and then to gurgles as his skin sloughed off, as the meat cooked on his bones, as he fell over, toppling to the ground as his pharaoh lifted a hand.
And the handlers released the lord’s favorite dogs, free now to enjoy their freshly cooked meal.
The vision shattered and I stared around blindly for a moment, before realizing that my left sleeve was on fire. I shook it out and grabbed Hassani. “Come on! Come on, we’ve got to go!”
But we weren’t fast enough.
The pool sparkled dimly in the lantern light, throwing golden ripples on the dark water. Inside, a dozen hand selected girls bathed under the watchful eyes of the harem eunuchs. The women came from all over Egypt and beyond: nubile temptresses from Ta-Seti and Punt, their skin as dark as midnight and lustrous with lotions and perfumes; golden skinned beauties from Canaan and Lebanon, with rippling tresses that almost reached to their feet; and rare, moon-skinned lovelies from further afield, acquired through trade with slavers from faraway lands.
The girls had noticed his entrance, flanked by sumptuously dressed servants, and felt the weight of his gaze. Some slid farther down in the water, their hands moving to conceal their bodies. Others did the opposite, putting their charms on display, hoping to be the lord’s next wife.
But it was one of the former that caught his eye. “That one.”
The royal scepter singled out a girl with hair like flame and skin like milk, little more than a child with her breasts just beginning to form. Two eunuchs pulled her from the pool and brought her, dripping and naked and trembling, before the god. She knelt and one of them lifted her chin to show him her face; she was breathing hard, her skin flushed, and her eyes—
“Closer.”
She was pulled to her feet and brought forward, and yes, he had thought so. Her eyes were as unusual as her other coloring, like the water in the shallower reaches of the Nile. Beautiful—and rare.
He smiled in approval. After a nudge from her handlers, the girl smiled hesitantly back. Until she saw the fangs.
She screamed, a small, brief cry that was quickly silenced, for the god could drain a vessel in seconds. She sagged in the hands of her holder, withered and lifeless, and hidden from the others’ eyes by the eunuch’s bulk. She was carried away, and the son of Ra surveyed the pool again.
“That one.”
The vision shattered—just in time. I ducked, and dragged Hassani down with me. A piece of the burning tail slung by overhead, shedding an arc of sparks in its wake. They rained down on me harmlessly, but Hassani was not so fortunate.
“Fuck!” I yelled, as the consul went up like a roman candle.
I always carried temporary shields in my arsenal, but I hadn’t activated them. I’d thought that this would be a quick in and out; my mistake, and possibly Hassani’s death if I didn’t do something. And a shield wouldn’t help here.
There was no time for finesse. A grab in a pocket, a tear of his clothes, a slap to his chest, and a small golden charm sank into his skin. I just hoped it wasn’t already too late.
With the typical vampire flammability, Hassani already had orange-red wounds opening up all over his body, with the skin blackening and tearing and splitting around them. He had seconds at best. But that was before the charm started spitting out little tattooed rain clouds that shot in all directions.
They were supposed to be used for camouflage: to raise a rainstorm to disguise the sounds of a getaway, or to wash away evidence, or to persuade nosy humans to run inside. They were meant to be deposited on the side of a building or shot straight into the air. They were not intended for use on a body.
But necessity is the mother of stupidity, and sometimes, stupidity works.
Well, sort of.
The room should have been awash in water, with a literal rainstorm blowing up inside the walls. But charms like this had to draw their resources from the natural world. They didn’t contain water; they just pulled whatever was available in the vicinity together. And there wasn’t much in the bone-dry temple to work with.
But they were finding something. Because, every time a spark on Hassani’s skin turned into a conflagration, they were there, enthusiastically showering the hell out of it. We didn’t get a rainstorm, but we got enough to keep him from dusting away to nothing, although it came at a price. We were both drenched in seconds from the enthusiastic sprays, and when I finally did activate the shield, the small bubble it projected around us quickly started to fill with water.
I sloshed for the door, while images from the beast’s life hammered at my cranium, trying to force their way in. I managed to hold them off, grateful for once that Dorina wasn’t here, because the mental gifts were on her side of the brain. I was all but mind blind without her, dull as a block of wood, which was usually a problem living and working with people who could talk as easily mentally as physically.
But not today.
