He intended to survive this.
They left the tents with the jeep, as warm as it was within, even with the chill of the desert at night, there was little need for them except to keep scorpions out and they were only minimally effective at that. They lent the illusion of privacy more than anything else.
Privacy was the least of their problems.
Raissa stood in the center of the avenue, looking at the statues of the lions, biting her lip pensively.
Behind her, they had a fire going, food cooking, the sleeping bags laid out and a watch set.
The aroma of food filled the air, the scent making her stomach growl for ordinary food.
Ky slipped an arm around her from behind and she turned her face a little into his shoulder, brushed her cheek against it.
“What is it?” he asked.
Lifting her face to look up at his over her shoulder, she reached up to thread her fingers into his hair, slipped them behind his ear to curl around his head.
Softly, she called, “Nebi…”
Before them, the statue of the great lion stirred, shifted, moved a little, with a sound like the grating of stone. Its head tossed, the eyes turned green as the alabaster crumbled…
“Holy shit,” Ryan said, scrambling back.
After all he’d seen, why this little bit of magic should shake him he didn’t know.
“It’s all right,” Raissa called. “He won’t hurt you.”
The lion shook itself thoroughly, divesting itself of years of dust, of the vines and flowers that had entwined him and then leaped gracefully down.
Ky didn’t move as the great tawny cat padded toward them, his capacity for being surprised had long ago been reached…and surpassed.
Smiling, Raissa ruffled the shaggy mane as the lion bumped his head against her, chuffed at her and then sniffed at Ky before rubbing his great head against Ky’s hip. Raissa’s fingers entwined in the lion’s mane, Ky was suddenly reminded of the figurine he’d found of her with the lions, her blue eyes as she looked at him luminous in the fading twilight.
“Hello, old friend. Ky, this is Nebi,” she said. “Forgive him but he used to guard Khai for me and he thinks you’re him.”
With a wry chuckle, Ky said, “I’ve been getting a lot of that lately.”
It was getting easier.
Raissa just looked at him and grinned.
Experimentally, he ruffled the great cat’s mane and received a sound not unlike a purr, a great rumbling in the lion’s chest.
Ky just shook his head in amazement.
Relieved, Raissa called down the others, as everyone’s eyes grew rounder.
“Emu, Kiwu and Alu,” she said, as Kiwu stretched and Alu rolled over on her back, all four legs splayed, asking for a belly rub.
Laughing, she crouched down to oblige.
“All right,” she said, “enough play. Go hunt and guard.”
Emu, Kiwu and Alu padded off but Nebi looked back at them doubtfully, his great golden eyes going from her to Ky.
Oddly, Ky found himself touched by the lion’s apparent devotion to his namesake and by extension, to himself.
“Go eat,” Raissa said.
With a reluctant sigh, the lion padded off into the darkness.
“They were Sekhmet’s gift,” Raissa said, fondly. “When first I went to the temples.”
Ky looked across the clearing then looked up at the spangled night far above. Time was passing and they had no idea when they might have company.
Settling in front of the fire with Raissa at his side, Ky said, holding up one of the automatic weapons he’d confiscated from Zimmer’s men, he said, “Do any of you know how to use this?”
To his surprise, Ryan said, “I do, boss.”
At the look on Ky’s face, Ryan said, “Don’t look so surprised, Boss. I came from heartland, the good old U.S. of A., the great Midwest, where our guns are only half as important as the Bible and where if you don’t know how to shoot one, you’re a sissy.”
“I do as well,” Komi said. “It was necessary I join the army in Togo for a time.”
Ky looked at Tareq, who nodded, then gave a glance to Raissa.
Both of them just looked back at him. They were his people, it was his decision.
“Ammunition is limited,” Ky said, “so make your shots count. If possible, we have to keep them from entering the Tomb.”
“We got it, Bossman,” Ryan said, almost impatiently.
Raissa took a breath, looked up at the stars visible through the crack above them.
She lifted her chin to the gap in the roof. “If you hear a deep rumbling, the sound of scraping stone and that begins to close, run, for the Djinn have been released. If there is a way up and out, find it and get out quickly, if you can.”
“And if we can’t?” Ryan asked, something in his voice saying he already knew he would hate the answer.
Komi just watched and waited.
Her blue eyes met his, apologetically. “Bullets, I suspect, will be of little use against Djinn. Then there is only Isis. If you can reach her.”
“Fuck,” he said, dryly. “Wouldn’t you just know it?”
Raissa couldn’t help but agree.
Chapter Thirty
The screams from within the Tomb were both promising and unpromising as Zimmer didn’t know what caused them, the Djinn, a trap, or something else? If one of those fools who entered had somehow unwisely released the Djinn after he’d cautioned them and instructed them in what they should and should not do, then it was a matter of a short wait to see what escaped. He, after all, had his marid self as protection. And, as additional surety, those around and between him as well. If worst came to worst, though, he had his sword and his magic.
As Kamenwati, they’d taken no chances on him summoning aid from his numerous sycophants, servants and slaves, so he’d been blindfolded, bound and gagged on his journey to the Tomb. He had no more idea where it was than these fools around him.
He doubted he would need them but it was always best to be prepared.
The fanatics who had hired Zimmer had been more than happy to send him more men when he told them how close he was to finding the Tomb.
What they would have thought if they knew who they were truly dealing with―High Priest to the Great God Set, certainly a ‘demon’ in their eyes and he a pagan―was humorous to contemplate.
One of the men staggered out.
“Snakes,” he shouted, in horror. “It’s filled with snakes.”
Furious, Zimmer shouted, “But is it the Tomb of the Djinn?”
The man shuddered as gunfire crackled from within.
“Fools,” he snapped.
They were likely to set off any traps in there, firing that wildly.
Christian fanatics, they all had a fear of snakes.
Disgusted, he swung out of the desert buggy and stalked to the entrance to the tomb, unleashing his marid-self, conjuring up fire with a simple gesture.
Stunned eyes followed him.
The floor of the tunnel was littered with the slithering things.
This was no accident.
Slowly and softly, he cursed his former slave and Priestess of Isis. These were her creatures.
When he got his hands on her once again the Djinn would be the least of her worries.
That she’d escaped from him once again infuriated him.
Worse, he couldn’t punish those who enabled it as he once would have. In the past he would have had them thrashed, then torn limb from limb. These times wouldn’t allow for it.
If the Djinn were free? He’d have had each and every man possessed by a marid Djinn bound to him by magic. Then he could do as he would.
But they were not.
There was no safe place for him to vent his frustration, his fury…until he got his hands on his old slave.
That one had Sekhmet’s gift…not just the drinking of blood but healing. He’d chain her up and then he would take her to the brink of death again and again… to the very brink, when death would seem a blessing, afterlife or no, until she cried out for it…and then he would let her heal again…even feed her so it could begin once more.
Her cries would make the very Gods weep but he would show no mercy.
His God was Set and Set was not a merciful God.
Striding down the long tunnel, he came to the first chamber.
It took only the sight of the sarcophagus there to know he’d been deceived and delayed.
His fury was vented on the coils of Isis’s asps scattered across the floor. Wisely, they vanished.
He roared his frustration, the sound echoing.
They’d lost most of a day.
Chapter Thirty One
The desert got very cold at night but the little cup of garden within the ancient cave captured the heat reasonably well. Most of their sleeping bags had been designed for the desert and the temperature shifts of it. Given the circumstances, they’d all taken their sleeping bags into the shadows, away from the coals of the fire, in case of surprises in the night. Yet they stayed remarkably warm.
Tareq had first watch, by dint of being the oldest of them, he said.
He stood near the entryway to the tunnel from the outside.
To his surprise, he soon had companionship, the great lioness settling at his feet to watch with him. Reaching down tentatively, he scratched behind her ears and she sighed, laying her great head on his foot almost possessively.
‘Well,’ he thought and smiled.
It seemed he’d been adopted.
Raissa didn’t have her own sleeping bag but Ky had appropriated John’s for her, since he didn’t need it…
She saw the question in his bowed head as he handled John’s sleeping bag.
“Don’t blame John too much,” Raissa said, softly. “It’s truly not truly his fault. It’s what we would have called a ‘glamour’, a spell designed to conceal, to make you more appealing, more attractive to another, to hide yourself and bend another to your will. Although not unattractive, Kamenwati always used one, to blind people to what he was. He was a master manipulator, finding the wedges to separate people, encouraging resentment and anger.”
“How did you escape it?” Ky asked, zipping the two sleeping bags together.
With a smile, she said, “I had been raised by Druids so I understood magic but I was always cautious around handsome men as they are known to break your heart.”
Ky looked up to see her teasing smile and the twinkle in her blue eyes.
“Can they?” he said, holding out a hand to her.
“Hmmm,” she answered, as she took the offered hand and let him draw her down to her knees beside him. “They can and do.”
“Could I break your heart?” he said.
Her smile broadened and she laughed. “Oh, now you’re just fishing for a compliment…”
Laughing, he said, tugging sharply on her hand to tumble her beneath him, to look down at her with her hair sprayed in a golden fan across the fabric, “So?”
Laughing back at him, Raissa replied, “Yes, you not only can break my heart but you have, several times, many times, and every time I look at your face.”
She reached up to touch it, to trace the line of his jaw with her fingers, the beard that framed it and his mouth so neatly, just a little coarse beneath her fingers.
Her eyes glimmered in the shadows, the thin light of the fire enough to see her features, barely, but all Ky needed to see was the flash of her smile.
“I know what that’s like,” he said, leaning down to kiss her as he stretched out close beside her, his fingers combing through her hair.
She stretched out on her side to look at him.
“Do you?”
The question was soft.
He nodded as he drew the white dress over her head to expose her lovely body with a sigh, feeling her soft warm skin against him. Already he was hardening at the thought of touching her.
Idly he ran a hand over her, stroked the long muscles of her back and then over the curve of her hip.
Raissa shifted against him, slowly and deliberately unbuttoning his shirt, one button at a time so the firm muscles of his chest were revealed to her a little at a time, her mouth following, pressing against his satiny skin until she could pull the tails of his shirt free. Tugging, her fingers slipped tantalizingly beneath the waistband of his slacks until she freed them.
Ky started to reach behind him to unbutton the cuffs of his shirt but she quickly gathered the material in one hand, twisted it to trap his hands behind his back.
Tilting his head, he looked at her in question and a shot of heat went through him as she looked at him with a slow, impish grin, her blue eyes sparkling, biting her bottom lip slightly.
She scrambled to her knees, keeping him prisoner.
He felt the fingers of her free hand at his waistband, unfastening his jeans. His breath caught as she slid her hand, her fingers, inside to curl around him.
Her blue eyes glowed, lambent in the darkness, her smile full of mischief as she freed him from the confines of pants.
Keeping his hands trapped in his shirt, she pulled the sleeping back over her and slid down until there was only the trail of her brilliant hair to show where she’d been.
Anticipation had him tightening further.
Warmth touched him, a soft ephemeral touch, just the flick of her tongue as she moved down his body and he groaned.
That agile tongue darted out to tease, to dance over his groin, and lower. It slipped and circled him until he was hard and rigid, groaning between his clenched teeth. Another slow swipe of her tongue at the head sent a jolt of need through him.
“Raissa,” he whispered, his voice harsh with need.
Her warm mouth closed over him again, took him in completely and his body jolted as she sucked on him. It was maddening and marvelous. He swelled within the hot moist cavern of her mouth.
Ky desperately wanted to clasp her head, to drive himself deeper into her. It was as if she’d read his mind. She released his shirt, slid her hands beneath his hips and gave him what he wanted.
It was all he could do not to explode in her and he wanted to…
Freeing his hands, he grabbed a handful of that brilliant hair and drew her up, away from dangerous territory. When she reached for him, he caught her hands and dragged them above her head, as he twisted, pinned them and her to the ground beneath them.