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There was silence for a moment, and when his voice finally came, it was rough. “When I was with Jonathan, I thought that he had done his worst, that there was nothing else he could take from me. I was sure of it—and I was right. Until I met you.” He turned around, and one look at his face and I understood why he hadn’t wanted to talk about this here. “Now, I am afraid all the time, and it is affecting m
y judgment. I left, thinking I was protecting you, and then I realized: what if he came back?”
And, finally, I got it. Louis-Cesare hadn’t told me everything that had happened with Jonathan, but I’d gotten the gist. But despite that, his worst nightmare wasn’t falling back into that monster’s hands. It was having me do so, and him be unable to stop it.
“He isn’t coming back,” I said softly, walking over. “He has what he wants. He left me lying in the street—”
“He didn’t. The fey did. Their interest may be in Dorina, for whatever reason, but his—”
“You think he might try to get at you through me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what he might do. I just—” he looked at me, and there was no deception on his face this time. None at all. If I’d wanted honesty, I was getting it. “I only know that I left for the right reasons, and that I returned for the wrong ones. Because I was afraid, and I am weak.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re weak, all right,” Rashid said sarcastically.
The healer smacked him.
“No,” I said, putting my arms around Louis-Cesare’s neck and pulling him down to me. “You didn’t come back for that.”
“Then why did I come back?” The blue eyes were haunted.
“For the same reason you left. For love.”
And then, right there, in front of them all, I kissed him.
Chapter Thirteen
Dory, Cairo
“This is all very touching,” Zakarriyyah said dryly. “But can we please get back to the point?”
“Which was?” I asked, still hanging onto my lover.
“To discover who sent our attackers. If it wasn’t the two of you—”
“What attackers?”
He looked irritated, probably because he’d already explained this to Louis-Cesare while I was out. But I hadn’t heard it. And I still didn’t.
Because someone cursed and someone screamed, and every vamp in the semi-circle surrounding us suddenly looked like they’d seen a ghost. Several fell to their knees and several more fled, dropping their weapons and running for the exit. And the rest were staring in what looked like horror at something behind me.
I turned, but all I saw was an elongated shadow flickering in the firelight and rippling down the stairs. It didn’t look like a man; it didn’t look like anything, at least not from this angle. And before I could look up and see what had cast it, the healer’s pretty face was in my way.
“Do it,” Louis-Cesare said roughly. “Now!”
“What?” I asked, turning back toward him.
And never completed the motion. A soft, cool hand slid onto my shoulder, and I realized what was going on—half a second too late. “Don’t you da—” I began.
Then I was out.
I woke up furious—and disoriented, because I was staring up at a huge dwarf. He had to be three stories tall and was carrying a basket filled with giant emeralds. He looked like he’d tripped, and some of the stones were tumbling out and cascading to earth like the world’s costliest waterfall. I was lying right underneath, and the view up the glimmering cascade was seriously trippy with only half my brain working.
Bes, the demon fighter, I thought vaguely. God of war and parties, which didn’t seem to go together to me, but the ancient Egyptians had liked him. One of our guides had said that dancing girls often had a tattoo of him on their upper thigh . . .
Then the rest of my brain came online, and I abruptly sat up.
Son of a bitch!
