For the longest time it seemed, nothing happened.
An explosion rocked the garden, an unseen grenade tossed through from the outer tunnel and then two smoke grenades followed. Men poured into the glade, the defenders opened fire even as they fanned out through the concealing smoke and faded into the grass and shadows.
It was sobering and humbling for Raissa to realize the old thief had been right. She couldn’t have stood alone against this onslaught.
A coughing roar and a scream told them the fate of one of them. Even the best armor still left vulnerable targets for teeth and claws. Lions liked to cripple their quarry first with a swipe at the hamstrings before going for the throat.
Automatic weapons opened up, a quick pop, pop, pop as Hassan’s men found targets.
With a nod, Raissa and Ky moved out, keeping to the shadows, Nebi moving low at their heels.
They both were alert to enemy snipers on the ridge above them or the rock face around the entrance.
With a glance at Ky Raissa unchained Sekhmet’s gift and used the hunger, the scent and sense of body heat aid her.
It was a little startling for him to watch as she shifted to become predator, his hackles rose instinctively. Most of the changes were subtle, her canine teeth lengthened, her face seemed to thin. And her eyes went from blue to a deep blood red.
She looked at him, almost warily.
With her golden hair, and the light loose dress she wore, she blended nearly invisibly into the grass. Except for those eyes.
Reaching out with a small smile, Ky touched her cheek lightly. Her eyes closed and her breath shuddered in her chest. She brushed her face against his hand, gratefully.
“Be careful,” he said.
She looked at him wryly.
“I think that’s my line,” she said.
Then she was gone, moving fast and low through the tall grasses as she scented prey.
She popped up, briefly, spun, her sword flashed in the sunlight to cut through armor and flesh. The man went down, spurting blood as Ky took the wing man with a quick snap of his hands as the man focused on Raissa. She was the stalking horse, the judas goat, lure to the unwary.
Both of them faded back into the shadows, moving quickly, quietly, listening, watching.
They followed the sound of the gunfire but also watching the grass around them and the shadows.
A movement caught Ky’s eye as they stalked around the edge of the glade. With a gesture he signaled Raissa to circle. She nodded.
Two more went down, a third to Nebi as the lion rushed nearly silently past them to take them.
Five out of fifty and some to Hassan’s men…
Something warned her, alerted her, Raissa’s senses screamed.
There was no scent. She searched for warmth.
She couldn’t see Ky.
It had been a trap, somehow she knew it, those last three had been a trap. She and Ky were separated…
Where was he…?
She saw the sniper stand, his ghillie suit concealing him among the tall grasses and she leaped for him even as he opened fire. She followed the line of his sights and found Ky in them. Bullets flew, struck. She almost could feel Ky’s body jolt with the impact even as she took the shooter down. His partner spun toward her, startled, and Nebi came out of the tall grass, snarling with fury…and he found he had a far closer problem.
Her swords took the shooter’s head and then she spun, sheathing her swords to run to Ky.
Something, instinct… whatever… It hadn’t mattered. Ky had seen the man in the ghillie suit rise out of the grass too late. He felt the impact of the bullets…as Raissa had that night in the Museum, in the Hall of Statues, three quick hard blows to his chest, the big sure target of his torso when there was no vest. They drove him backward, he felt his knees buckle.
Zimmer had sent out hunter teams for them. For him and Raissa. Not that it mattered now.
An inarticulate cry sent the birds in the trees into flight.
Raissa…
Suddenly she was there, bent over him, her blue eyes wild, frantic…
“Ky,” she whispered, horrified. “Nebi, guard!”
There was blood on him. Raissa was appalled. An astonishing amount of blood.
Curling her arms around him, she held him carefully, poured healing magic into him as she scrambled to get him under cover, but there was so much blood and healing wasn’t working fast enough.
Looking up at her, Ky cupped her cheek, startled at how weak he was suddenly, felt the cold creep into him. The knowledge that he was dying and the pain hit him at the same time and he clenched his teeth against them.
He didn’t want to die, not yet, not now. He fought it.
Already his vision was darkening, though…
Raissa poured more healing into him, cupped his face in her hand. His life was slipping away from her.
There was a hole in his chest, another below his ribs… She was losing him.
“Ky,” she said, desperately, “remember when you asked if biting you would change you? There is a way to save you but it will change you…if you die. If you truly die. There are ways to keep the change from happening if that’s what you want.”
The sounds of battle continued around them. She could almost hear Hassan’s people fighting and falling, the battle drawing close to the entrance to the tomb. It had been a suicide mission from the start and they’d known that, but still… It pained her to sacrifice a life, any life.
And Tareq?
She was frantic, desperate, torn between her duty and the man she loved.
“I can do that, I can do that for you when the time comes,” she stammered, “but if you do this, you’ll be stronger, faster, you’ll be like me…and you’ll live, virtually forever.”
She wanted to beg him to accept what she offered but she couldn’t. It had to be his choice. His decision.
It had to be of his free will.
“You won’t age,” she said. “Ky…”
Don’t leave me alone, not again… But she couldn’t say it… She couldn’t, shouldn’t try to influence his decision.
It was there in her eyes anyway, the grief, the fear of loss, the loss of him. Ky saw it anyway.
A single bright tear spilled down her cheek. It fell warmly on his mouth, tasted of salt, he saw her brilliant eyes, and the tears.
He loved her and he didn’t want to die, not yet. He had too much yet to do.
To live when he felt himself surely dying?
He nodded.
Reaching into his pocket, quickly, Raissa fished out his pocketknife, pulled out the blade.
She shifted, became Sekhmet’s priestess again. Her eyes were like fire, flickering from blue to red, burning hot.
In shock, he watched her brace herself and then she cut her own slender throat, right above the vein. Blood spurted.
“Drink,” she said, “or we both die…”
She hadn’t told him that part.
Stunned, weakness slipping through him, for a second Ky could only stare.
It was hardly the worst thing he’d drunk.
Drink, she’d said, or we both die.
Somehow he found the strength, his hand locked around her neck as he clamped his mouth over the wound in her throat. The rich coppery taste of her blood, her life, filled him. It was rich, salty. To his surprise there was an effervescence to it, as if it bubbled with her energy.
She tasted incredible.
The pleasure of it struck him like a blow.
Ky groaned as her life force gushed into him. Involuntarily he swallowed and the taste, the life, the energy and the power of her, poured into him, coursed through him, burst into his veins. She was delicious, intoxicating…
Suddenly he was starving, he needed more, much more.
Instinctively, his arms banded around her so she couldn’t escape, one arm around her waist, the other locked in her hair. His mouth pressed hard against her throat, drinking her in great greedy gulps, he drowned himself in her. The pain faded as he felt her body jolt against his with each deep swallow, each pull on the wound in her throat. She moaned, softly.
Pleasure hammered through her as he drank, he could taste it.
Her ecstasy poured into him, deliriously. The pain was gone, his wounds healed, the weakness was gone, energy and strength burst through him…rushed…filled him. It felt as if his blood sparkled in his veins.
It was more pleasure than Raissa had ever known. Now she understood why those others hadn’t fought her. She was blind to everything except his firm mouth drawing on her, sucking, suckling. She moaned with the pleasure of each hard draw, with the feel of his mouth feeding on her filling with her, shuddered gloriously as his pleasure exploded through her. A delicious languor stole over her, her body twitching with each swallow with a pleasure so intense it was nearly sexual.
With a sigh, she surrendered to it.
Feeling her go limp in his arms, still he drank, until he was sated.
Stunned, Ky drew his mouth away from her, looked down at her in shock and horror as he realized what he had done and how thoroughly.
Her eyelids fluttered weakly…and then color came back to her face in a rush, flooding through her.
She gasped.
“Raissa,” he said.
Her blue eyes a little hazed, Raissa looked up at him, blinked…her tongue ran lightly over her lips, blinking again a little dazedly as she looked up at him.
“Let’s do that again,” she said, in a slightly hoarse whisper, “some other time. That was astonishing. Just keep in mind I’m not quite as big as you.”
He laughed, with relief. “You’re on.”
She smiled and then she made a face.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to break my promise though,” she said, looking at him apologetically. “I can’t just take it back.”
“Given the circumstances,” he said, eyeing her narrowly, “I’ll allow it this time. So long as he doesn’t enjoy it too much. And it is the enemy.”
His mouth twitched, teasingly.
With a grin and soft laugh, she said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
She was weaker but that still left her with an edge over Zimmer’s men.
Ky kept his head turned away as she disappeared into the grasses and Nebi growled, following.
After a moment, so did Ky.
There was a brief rustle in the grass ahead of him.
Only a glimpse and then Raissa was pulling a man back into the shadows before reappearing moments later.
He looked at her.
It felt a little strange to want to be sure she’d fed enough.
A little abashed, she looked at him.
“I took enough,” she said. “I did.”
Then she gave him an impish look. “But I’ll probably be hungry later.”
“Good,” he said, and smiled.
All around them he could hear the sound of gunfire. It astonished him to realize they’d likely been out of action for only a few frantic minutes.
So much could change in that time.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
From the tunnel to the outer world came another explosion as a new set of weapons opened up in their private little war. More men burst out, moving fast and low, keeping one of their number secure in the center, picking their targets as they went.
It rapidly became obvious they’d been watching as target after target fell.
Ky looked at Raissa.
The last team had finally entered the game.
Firing steadily around them at anyone and everyone, they charged down the avenue between the statues in a race to reach the entrance to the Tombs before they could be stopped.
Both Ky and Raissa did the same, trying to cut them off even as they saw Zimmer stand and shout, calling to his people, gathering them around him. As one, they, too, raced for the sanctuary of the entrance to the Tomb, firing wildly ahead of them to clear the way.
Hassan’s people were caught in the crossfire, and Tareq, Ryan and Komi were now in the center of the action.
“Tareq, Hassan,” Ky shouted, “fall back, fall back…”
All he could do was pray that Ryan and Komi would be smart enough to do the same.
Even as he shouted, he dove, catching Raissa beside him and dragging her with him, to avoid the spray of bullets Zimmer’s mercenaries sent their way.
It was chaos, madness.
Now at last Raissa truly understood what the old thief had meant.
It was a madness born of this time, of the insistence on being the one, the only.
In her time they had understood that all Gods were the same, they were simply other faces of the One, as many as there were people. The gods of her childhood had different names than the ones of Egypt, but the same spirit existed in them all. When Egypt had taken a new land, they had absorbed those Gods, taken them in not denied them.
She couldn’t have stood against this alone, though, sheer numbers would have undone her, they would have cut her to pieces.
There were two separate groups now, both vying for the entrance to the Tomb, as intent on shooting each other as they were on shooting at the defenders, both trying to be the first to gain the entrance.
Raissa saw Zimmer, surrounded by his mercenaries, keeping his head down but with a gun strap over his shoulder, race for the entrance to the Tomb.
One of the newcomers fell, but his fellows closed around the one in their center, sacrificing themselves, determined that at least one of their number would reach the Tomb itself.
Ky shouted, “Hassan!”
A grim voice answered from among the men falling back with them, his grief thick in his voice, “I’m afraid Inspector Hassan didn’t make it. My name is Abasi…I am next in line for command.”
“We can’t let them reach the Tomb ahead of us,” Ky said.
Tall, thin, his expression bleak, Abasi nodded. “I know.”
It was clear that he was prepared to die.”
Looking at the numbers they faced, Ky’s heart sank.
He remembered the nightmarish journey down into the lower depths of the tomb. The thought of being trapped in here with anything that could make those sounds made his skin crawl.
There was no choice.
He looked at Raissa, remembering what she’d said.
The Guardian is both the Key and the Lock.
Raissa looked back at him, her own heart sinking, but she’d fought the Djinn so many thousands of years before, had stood Guardian here for so long, and she knew her duty as no other.