Nightwalker

Fourteen

We made our way slowly back across the river. Less than two hours had passed since sunset and the streets were still crowded, but no one took notice of us. Usually I’d be rising from my daylight nap about now, but my nightmares had woken me early that evening. Or perhaps some deeper sense of self-preservation allowed me to wake as soon as the sun slipped below the horizon.

“So, we’re off to London now?” Gabriel asked.

“And we get to meet your maker,” Michael said with a wide, playful grin. “I always wondered what she would be like.”

“She didn’t birth me.” The words came out sounding sharper than I’d intended. I didn’t want them to meet Sadira. She was evil and I was not like her.

“No, but without her, we would have never met you,” Michael said, drawing my wandering gaze back to his face. I looked down at his bandaged arm resting in a sling fashioned from a black silk scarf.

Without Sadira, Michael and Gabriel would not be here in Egypt, fighting hunters and the naturi. But I shook off the thought as quickly as it appeared. They had made their own choices. They knew what they were getting into and were free to leave at any time.

“We go to London and protect Sadira,” I repeated, as if saying the words over and over again would give me courage. “I wonder if we could lock her in a box for a few days. Just until the Coven destroys Rowe and the rest of the naturi.” Sadira would never go for it, but I was sorely tempted to try.

The smile died on my lips before it had a chance to grow. We had gone one block in from Corniche and were walking past the giant souq in search of a private taxi to take us back to the hotel toward the south when I looked up to find a naturi staring dumbfounded at us. His hand rested on the knob of a door leading into a flat-fronted, two-story building. By his stance, he had been in the process of either entering or leaving the building when we turned the corner and caught him by surprise.

Muttering something under his breath, he pushed open the door and disappeared inside, slamming it shut behind him.

“Stay here,” I ordered, grabbing the knife from the sheath on Gabriel’s waist. I would have preferred the gun, but it didn’t have a silencer and any shots would catch the attention of the crowds still lingering in the market. I couldn’t afford to divide my attention between fighting the naturi and trying to cloak the fight from the humans.

“Was that…?”

“Naturi.”

“But—”

“Walk down through the souq. Stay in the more crowded area.” I laid a restraining hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, pulling his gaze back to my face. “Protect Michael. He’s weak. Keep one eye on the door. There should be two in there. If one slips past me, I will need you to tell me which way it went.”

Frowning, Gabriel nodded. He didn’t like the idea, but he would follow my directions. I wanted to flash him a cocky smile to ease his concerns, but I couldn’t. For the second time tonight I was going to be outnumbered by naturi. Sure, I could torch the building, but without going inside, I couldn’t be sure that I’d gotten both the naturi Danaus sensed earlier in the evening.

With the knife tightly gripped in my right hand, I kicked open the door. The scent of blood, death, and excrement smacked me in the face, causing me to hesitate. Humans were inside. At least, they had been at one time. I rolled inside, followed by the sound of darts hitting the wall where I’d just been seconds ago. I paused behind a chair. The spindly thin naturi I followed in was shouting something to Rowe. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I was willing to bet it had something to do with the vampire crouched behind the hideous patterned chair.

Pushing to my feet, I was prepared to hit both naturi with fireballs. No fighting. No taking chances. But I froze when I finally saw the room. I was standing in what had been a living room, but it looked as if hosed down with blood. There once were four humans in that room; maybe more, maybe less. Their appendages had been hacked off and strewn about. By the smaller torsos, I could identify at least two children.

Rowe was in the far corner, up to his elbows in a man’s chest. The human’s head was still attached, his eyes staring blindly up at the ceiling. The black-haired naturi was drenched with blood, his red shirt sticking to his narrow frame. I lurched forward when the blond naturi I had followed in leapt onto the chair I was behind. With one foot braced on the back, he used his weight to topple the chair, attempting to bring it down on top of me. A short sword was raised in his right hand, ready to take off my head.

Stumbling backward, I fell away from the chair. My right shoulder slammed into the end of a table before I hit the ground, sending a shockwave of pain through my back. The naturi tried to fall on me, the sword aimed to bury itself deep into my chest. With the pain slowing me, I only managed to get my knees up between us. Dropping the dagger, I grabbed his wrists.

“Come now, vampire,” he said. “I only want your tongue.” The naturi struggled, trying to break my grip.

With a grunt, I shoved him off me. He flew across the room, hitting the door and slamming it shut. “How funny.” I pushed into a sitting position and raised my left hand. “I only want your life.” With a thought, the naturi was engulfed in flames. He lurched about the room, waving his sword about in a last desperate attempt to kill me. For a moment it looked as if wings were sprouting from his back, but the fire quickly consumed them. Had I finally met a member of the elusive wind clan?

I would get no answer from him. Flailing, the naturi slipped on the blood-soaked tile and fell, cracking his head. He stopped moving.

The sound of crinkling plastic caught my attention. I looked up in time to see Rowe darting across the room with a black, plastic garbage bag tucked under this arm. I tried to hit him with a fireball, but it struck the wall as he disappeared into the next room. I could only set him on fire if I could see him.

Muttering a cruse, I climbed over the overturned chair. I slid across the blood-covered floor, knocking limbs out of my way until I hit the opposite wall. So much for catlike grace. Pushing off the wall, I ran through the tiny kitchen and out the open back door. We wove our way through a maze of garbage-choked alleys and narrow streets that fluttered with laundry overhead. I couldn’t see Rowe, but I followed the scent of the blood that still coated him.

Coming out of one alley, I skidded to a sharp halt. The alley opened into the busy souq, several blocks down from where I’d left Gabriel and Michael. The crowded marketplace hit me with a barrage of scents, spices, cooking food, coffee, tea, and the redolent scent of men smoking sheesha. A brisk wind swept down the street from the south, carrying with it cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and the sweat of man, all mixed together to mask the scent of blood. A quick scan of the thoughts of the gathered people revealed that no one had noticed a blood-covered, one-eyed naturi carrying a garbage bag filled with human organs. Like a vampire, he had cloaked himself from their sight. And now he was gone.

Biting back a scream, I jogged back to the house. Without Danaus, it would take me hours to track down Rowe. Time I didn’t have. I shut and locked the back door before trudging back into the living room. The scent of burnt flesh mingled with the blood, leaving a rancid taste in the back of my throat.

It took every bit of willpower I possessed to walk over to the body Rowe had been digging in. Squatting down, I tried to ignore the fact that my skirt was growing heavy with the blood. A quick examination revealed that the man’s tongue and lungs were missing. Scanning the room, it was hard to miss that the chest cavities of all the humans were cut open.

I’d walked in on a harvest. I hadn’t seen one in centuries. Jabari and I stumbled across one a few years after Machu Picchu, in which nearly twenty humans had been slaughtered. But back then the naturi were greater in number and desperate to free their captured queen. Typically, they relied on earth magic for their spells. Yet, with time, they learned to use magic based on blood and the soul. It was just as powerful. Of course, their attitude was always, “Why kill a flower when you can kill a human instead?”

Standing, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. When I finally succeeded in clearing my mind of the horror around me, I reached out and touched Gabriel’s mind.

Gabriel?

Mira! Are you hurt? His thoughts rushed into my brain, hot and frantic. Through his eyes, I could see him, across the street, staring at the door of the building I was in. Michael was leaning against the wall beside him. Gabriel wasn’t telepathic, but after several years of training, I had taught him to focus his thoughts into precise sentences so I could read his mind and project into it my own response. It took us a while to perfect, a task I had not yet begun with Michael.

I’m not injured. Something in my soul had been hurt by what surrounded me, but I was not physically hurt.

Should I come in?

No! I paused until I regained my composure. No. Start walking toward the hotel. I have to burn the place. I’ll catch up to you in a couple blocks.

Be careful.

I waited until he pushed off the building he was leaning against and started down the street with Michael at his side. When I opened my eyes, my gaze fell on the blood-streaked face of a girl with long, black hair. She couldn’t have been more than six. I set her on fire first, wishing the flames would erase her wide brown eyes and tender face from my mind. But I knew better. I always remembered their faces.

Lingering in the house only long enough to see the bodies blackened and shrivel in the fire, I left through the back door, cloaked from human sight. I walked along the alleyways until I caught up with my angels. With a single touch on Gabriel’s shoulder, I made my presence known, but no one spoke. We managed to grab a private cab another block away, and took it the last few miles to the Sarah Hotel.

In front of the hotel, we found Danaus working with a short, thin man as they attempted to strap my coffin to the roof of a dilapidated taxi that looked as if it could have been around during the time of the pharaohs. At the sight of him, I sensed a rush of anger fill both of my guardians. Danaus might have saved my life from the naturi, but he was still the cause of the attack prior to sunset.

I laid a restraining hand on the shoulders of both Michael and Gabriel before I stepped between them. Their protectiveness was warming, but a fight on the street would not speed us from this city. “I don’t think this will make it to Luxor,” I said as I walked up to him.

“It doesn’t have to,” Danaus replied without looking up at me. He tested one of the ropes to make sure it was properly secured. “Your assistant contacted the pilots and they are bringing the jet to Aswan. It should be landing within the next half hour.”

“Excellent.” Charlotte was good at her work. I had thought it might be too difficult to get the pilots ready in time, but apparently she’d left them on standby. The vast majority of my trips were short, and she must have grown accustomed to my desire to leave quickly. “And the hotel owner?”

“Happy to be rid of us,” Danaus said in a low voice, finally lifting his eyes to meet my searching gaze. He returned my leather case, which felt significantly lighter. With an amused smile, I tossed it over to Gabriel. I was still in my skirt from the previous night, leaving me short on pockets.

“And my meeting?”

“Later.” His eyes darted over to the driver, who was staring at me with his mouth hanging open. He had noticed me when I started talking to Danaus, breaking the spell. The little man in the stained cotton shirt looked terrified, but I couldn’t blame him. My clothes were full of cuts and tears, and what could be seen of my flesh was covered in dried blood and black soot. Of course, Danaus looked the same as I did, with an assortment of cuts that were healing much faster than would be considered normal. His face and arms were smeared with blood and ash.

“The airport,” I said in badly accented Arabic, a jaunty smile directed at the driver. The little man bobbed his head and jumped behind the wheel. He was muttering under his breath as he went. I couldn’t understand it, but I doubted it was complimentary. I motioned for Gabriel to precede me into the backseat so I could sit on his lap. Michael took the front seat while Danaus was forced to sit in the back with me. It was a quick, twenty-minute ride across town to the airport, and we didn’t speak again until my coffin was safely loaded into my jet. I paused at the bottom step and gazed across the airstrip. The black night sky was dotted with the dark shadows of looming palm trees. I could still smell the Nile and the hint of foreign spices. I wished I wasn’t leaving like this. Despite the fact that I had escaped death and aided in the destruction of seven naturi, it felt like I was running with my tail between my legs. Rowe was still out there, hunting me and killing humans.

I was running, and time was nipping at our heels. I’m not sure how or why I knew, but I could feel it bearing down, threatening to crush us all.

After bitterly informing the pilots that we would need to land in London instead of heading home, I moved to the private room at the back of the jet. Danaus followed me back while my two guardians settled into the comfortable leather chairs near the door. During the night hours, they were generally off duty. Besides, I was in better shape than either of them at the moment, though I know I didn’t look it.

Flipping on the light in the tiny bathroom, I winced at my reflection. For once I didn’t look pale—my skin was covered with ash and blood. My blue-violet eyes looked nearly black and my hair was a matted mess. Turning on the faucet, I rubbed the cool water over my hands and up my arms. I wouldn’t be able to properly wash until tomorrow night, when I was in my hotel room. For now I just wanted the grime off my hands and face.

“What did you find out?” Danaus asked, not venturing far from the door that led to the rest of the jet. He didn’t look much better than me, with his soot-streaked body, assorted cuts and bruises, and sweaty, matted hair. He was tired as well. I doubted he was sleeping much since joining me on this little escapade either. At night he was surrounded by nightwalkers, who would rather drain him dry. During the day he was faced with my angels, who would rather see him dead than threaten me. And then there were the naturi, who could come out to play whenever they wanted. The shadows around his cobalt blue eyes had deepened and his movements were a little slower. There was now a thick growth of black whiskers on his chin and filling in the hollows of his cheeks.

“Not much,” I said, splashing some water on my face. “I am to locate a nightwalker and protect her while Jabari hunts Rowe.”

“Where are we going?”

“London.”

“Directly?”

“Yes. Tell Michael to contact Charlotte on my cell. She’ll have the hotel arrangements made before we land. We’ll be in the city for a couple days.” I rubbed my skin hard in a vain attempt to scrub off the blood. All my wounds had healed, but my body was covered in long lines of dried blood.

“What’s going on? You look worse than when you left the hotel.”

“Just give me a minute. Give the phone to Michael.”

“Mira—”

“Please, Danaus!” My voice jumped and trembled in the tiny room as my composure splintered.

Danaus stepped out of the room for a moment, and the soft murmur of his voice drifted back to me as he relayed my wishes to Michael. Charlotte wasn’t going to be happy with all these interruptions, but I was trying to keep her kind alive. Sure, I was trying to save my own skin as well, but my survival would benefit her. The hunter returned to the room, shutting the door behind him. He walked over so he was standing near the bathroom door.

“Did he attack you again?”

Looking up, I caught my reflection in the mirror. I hadn’t summoned my powers, but my eyes glowed. I closed my eyes and shoved my newest set of memories away as I gripped the edge of the sink.

“What happened?” His deep voice was soothing, a gentle hand massaging my frazzled nerves.

“Have you ever seen a harvest?”

“No.”

“I have, a couple of times. The naturi will attack a family or a small village. They kill all of its inhabitants and harvest certain organs and body parts for the magical powers they possess.” The words slipped from me, dry and quiet, but the explanation failed to numb the pain and horror.

“In Egypt?”

“Four people. Two children.”

“Mira…” Danaus’s voice drifted off under the weight of the images I painted.

“They were butchered. Innocent people. Just a means to an end.”

“And we’ll get them.”

A derisive snort escaped me before I could stop it. Turning my head, I was halted by the sadness in his eyes. “Then what? I know what you think of my kind, and you’re partially right. We are capable of that kind of brutality, but not all of us.”

Danaus reached for me and I jerked out of his reach. If he touched me, I would crumble and the tears burning behind my eyes would break free. I refused to cry on the shoulder of a man who planned on killing me at the first opportunity.

“It doesn’t matter. What of my meeting?” Releasing the sink, I grabbed a creamy white towel that lay folded on the counter. I wiped off my arms and face, feeling a little cleaner than before.

“When and where?”

“Tomorrow night. Your contact can pick the place, but this person must appear alone,” I said, tossing the rumpled hand towel back on the counter. I leaned against the sink, folding my arms loosely over my stomach.

“He won’t meet you alone.” He shoved both of his hands through his hair in a restless gesture, pushing it out of his face. The movement pulled his body into a single long line, flexing muscle and sinew in a tempting picture. I had been so focused on peeling his skin from his bones that I’d almost forgotten he was a man. An attractive one. Danaus was all muscle and tanned skin, telling tales of a long, hard life. I wondered about this ancient creature that walked around in the shell of a virile man.

“You can come too, but no one else,” I said after a moment. “And trust me, I’ll know. The naturi are the only ones I can’t sense.”

“Anything else?” Danaus folded his hands, resting them on the top of his head. With his black shirt tucked in, the fabric pulled against his chest, accentuating his flat stomach. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said he was trying to distract me on purpose.

“Just that it may be a good idea to make the place private. I don’t mind an audience, but I imagine your little group doesn’t want to be a part of a scene.”

Shaking his head, I saw a smile playing on his lips as he turned and left the room.

“Get some sleep, Danaus,” I called after him. “I promise Michael and Gabriel won’t bother you.”

“They think I tried to have you killed,” he replied, looking over his shoulder at me, his hand on the doorknob.

“They also know you saved my life.” I shook my head and frowned. “Even if you hadn’t, my angels only defend, never attack. They also won’t harm a creature when it’s defenseless.”

Danaus turned around to face me, his brow furrowed. “A vampire with a sense of honor?”

“There are a few of us,” I whispered. “There are some ideas that not even death can kill.”

The hunter nodded once to me and left the room.

Kicking open my metal box, I lay down with one booted foot still on the jet floor. I wasn’t tired and it was still hours away from dawn, but I didn’t want to join the others. It had been a long time since I last spent this much time surrounded by humans. Of course, there were my nightly trips to the clubs, theaters, and other amusements, but when I had my fill of them, I was always able to walk away. I could return to my quiet sanctuary and let the silence fill me. Now I was up to my ears in vampires, humans, naturi, and whatever the hell Danaus was.

To make matter worse, I still didn’t understand what was going on. The naturi were attempting to break the seal and open the door between our two worlds. I didn’t know how they were doing it. All I knew was that I had to reform the triad and keep Sadira safe. Not a particularly enjoyable task, but it wouldn’t last long. Jabari would find Rowe and kill him. There would be no need for the triad. Soon it would all be over. I would go home and try to forget about it.

I ran my hands over the red silk that lined the side of the box, enjoying its smoothness. A part of me wanted to call for Michael. I wanted to feel his warm arms around me, reminding me of home and my life before this nightmarish escapade began. I wanted to make him moan and to erase the memory of the pain I’d caused him earlier.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even raise my voice to utter his name. I had come so close to killing him. I hadn’t drained a human during the act of feeding since I was a fledgling. Yet my fear of the naturi and the taste of Michael’s blood fueled something in me. It had given me back a shred of power and control when it all seemed to be slipping from my grasp.

I could tell myself I would have stopped in time, but that did nothing to erase the knot of doubt in my stomach. No matter how much I cared for him, I would always be a threat to him.

With a sigh, I pulled my leg inside the coffin and stretched out. I needed to sleep. I would need my strength for London, and I wasn’t completely healed from my encounter with the naturi. And truthfully, I didn’t want to think anymore.