It had to be asked. It would not diminish anybody.
"Help me," I whispered.
Then I lifted the chalice, and I drank.
The last time I'd drunk from a goddess grail, it had been sweet, refreshing. Not this time. Even after its wash, a sharp, briny taste came off the cup. I clenched my teeth against nausea, suddenly dizzy. As if I were again in the harbor, being tossed around by the sea's powerful tides, my world lurched and twisted.
I'd expected a greeting. Instead, I felt a connection that was unsettlingly familiar, and then—memories that were not my own.
Were they?
Hying over the desert, the fertile green of the
Nile
to the left, the brown barrenness of the desert to the right. We could barely notice the scenery through Our fear and grief as We sought Our murdered lover. Our husband. Osiris…
Lex?
No
. I shook my head.
No, no, no
…
With love comes pain
, warned a hundred female voices, a thousand female voices, more. They echoed around me and through my head in more languages than I could recognize. Goddess of Ten Thousand Names, for sure!
Embrace it and be a woman, or fear it and live in ignorance as a girl
.…
This was no message of welcome. It was nothing less than a challenge.
Along with the voices whirled images, brief glimpses of grieving mothers and lovers and widows. The price of loving. Payment for heaven. Old as time.
We were one
.
Some of the women I saw seemed to glow—goddesses? And yet they, too, grieved. In particular, a flash of bright blues and reds and golds caught my attention, a horned-disk crown, dark skin and darker eyes burning with loss and horror. Then I couldn't see Her because We
were
Her, weeping, pressing Our cheek against the cold, dead cheek of Our husband, Our god…
His own dark cheek lightened; his black hair turned a ginger-brown, then darkened again.
No. No…
But before I went under again, lost in sorrow and anguish, I managed to clutch at what she'd said. If this was already happening, had already happened, then denying it did nothing but keep me ignorant—and helpless.
Choose hope.
I couldn't force myself to say
yes
, to even think it. Not to such a horrible possibility. But I stopped protesting, and sensed harsh satisfaction.
"Show me," I whispered into the tumult of images, into the empty hotel room. "
Show me
."
Some of
Isis
's voices soothed and comforted me—Goddess of Compassion. Some of Her voices couldn't hear me, lost in Their own grief—the Great Mourner. Some laughed at me, though gently, like the mother of a precocious child—
You wish
another
gift
?
Another… ? Did she mean a gift beyond the knowledge of Lex's true danger, or a gift beyond the warning instinct that Melusine had given me? Either way, this was why I'd just risked my life for this grail.
Isis
had a skill that I needed—the magic to find her ambushed lover.
"Yes," I whispered. "I was born to this. I will do good with this. I deserve it.
And so does he
."
Again, the sense of flying, of the
Nile
rushing beneath my wings, of pyramids in the distance, coming closer, closer—
My eyes opened to a ringing voice, one powerful utterance made up of many. It was the voice of every woman, ever, who had looked pain and loss right in the eye—and gone to battle.
"Then welcome. Champion. Name it for one who strikes."
And again I sat in the hotel room, a bitter taste in my mouth, a tug at my heart, strength in my veins…
And Catrina's voice, cursing loudly in French for Rhys to let her by, just outside the doorway.
"—scratch your eyes out if you do not let me—" she was threatening, struggling in his firm grip, as I threw open the door.
Her green eyes narrowed. "You… "
"Once a thief, always a thief?" I challenged, turning back into the room to grab a clean towel and the white, fluffy robe I'd taken from the Four Seasons. It wasn't the one I'd worn. It was the one Lex had. It had smelled of him, this morning, and I'd needed it.
If the hotel charged him, I'd just pay him back.
Name it for one who strikes
. Was there really a baby, then? I sensed I was missing something.
As I shouldered into the hallway again, Cat saw the grail in my hand. "
You washed it
?"
"Yes." I turned to Rhys. "Can you borrow the car again? We need to head back toward
Cairo
, as soon as I can clean myself up."
"Certainly." I couldn't blame him for looking confused. "You know where he is, then?"
It was a strange sensation, the gift
Isis
had given me. I had to concentrate to even recognize it, a tiny tug below my heart, as if there were an invisible cord connecting me to Lex.
That's the direction I pointed, vaguely southward. "Thataway."
"And what about—oof!" That last, because Catrina had elbowed him in the solar plexus.
"Hit her back," I suggested, striding down the hallway to the shared bathroom.
Wouldn't you know the damned thing would be in use?
I knocked on the door, then leaned against the wall to wait while Catrina caught up. Behind her, Rhys shook his head, then went off in search of whoever currently had the car.
"This is why I took the cup before you could," she insisted—in French, of course. "I saw that you had found something, and I knew that if I did not hide it, you would steal it, do something like...
voilà
!"
It was an angry
voilà
, complete with hand gestures. She really hated that I'd interfered with nature's treatment of the cup, didn't she?
"You stole it so that I couldn't?" I challenged. "Interesting ethics."
"You speak of ethics to me?"
"Good point. That would be useless." To my relief, the door behind me opened and a golden-haired gentleman with fogged glasses emerged in a cloud of steam.
"
Guten Tag
," he said, as he passed.
The Hotel Athens was pretty much full of Westerners.
I went into the bathroom. Cat followed before I could keep her out—since I was hindered by still carrying the grail, still with some bottled water in it—and shut and locked the door behind us.
"You are the thief," she insisted. "I knew as soon as you arrived that you would destroy Cleopatra's Palace as you destroyed Fontevrault."
"
I didn't destroy
—"But would saying it for the umpteenth time make any difference? In disgust, I turned on the shower.
"You brought the people who destroyed it," she said, so maybe she'd listened—just a bit—after all. "And now you do the same here. We had no trouble until you arrived. Then the pylon falls. Then a boating accident. How is this not your fault?"
"Because I didn't do any of it?" But…what if it
had
been aimed at me? What if it was the work of the Comitatus, led here by me…or Lex?
Without his knowledge, of course.
Guilt made me feel belligerent. Catrina and I glared at each other, like gunslinger deciding who will draw first.
Then I held out the chalice. "Want some?"
Her lip curled. "Do you know where this has been?"
"Yes, and it tastes awful. But it might help explain a few things."
"Do you think I took the same room with you for your companionship? I do not trust you! Why should I trust this?
And how can I put the chalice back now
?"
As if she'd really meant to do that. But…
Who the hell knew? Maybe she had.
With a shrug, I took another swallow of the water—and winced. Goddess, that tasted nasty! But I felt the little tug, between me and Lex strengthen.
Lower.
I hated to pour the rest out.
With a soft curse, Catrina took the chalice—which I still held—and gulped the rest. As if I'd dared her.
Maybe I had.
Her face immediately screwed into a grimace, at the taste. Her eyes widened, watering and accusatory. Then she spun for the toilet.
I stepped into the shower to give her some privacy.
Of course I took the Isis Grail with me.
Name it for one who strikes
? Surely, if
Isis
meant my baby, if there was a baby, she would have known the gender.
When I stepped back out of the shower, now as clean as befitted a champion of the goddess, Catrina sat with her back against the door, a haunted look in her eyes.
I divided my time between drying off, keeping an eye on the chalice, and watching her with growing concern.
And trying not to worry about the tug from Lex, deep in my gut. Or
one who strikes
.
Damn it, I didn't want to feel concern about this woman! I wanted to wrap myself in this thick, soft robe and bury my face in the fuzzy lapel and breathe in Lex, Lex, Lex…
But denial would save neither him nor me. Champions can't be choosy. And there was something freeing in the fact that Isis herself had, at times, been quite the bitch.
"Are you okay?" I asked grudgingly.
"What was that?" she demanded, standing unsteadily.
So the cup hadn't just made her sick, after all. She'd gotten some of
Isis
's juju.
"Behold the power of the goddess." I smiled dryly.
She didn't. Instead, she just followed me silently back to our room. At least she was no longer eyeing the cup as if she meant to grab it, clobber me over the head with it and run.
But she
was
still eyeing the cup.
It made me nervous as I pulled on clothes, and not because I'm particularly modest. I dressed deliberately for battle—the cargo pants and camisole that I hadn't worn since arriving in this country. Good walking boots.
Sword.
Suddenly I understood the goddess's suggestion. One who
strikes
, indeed! Snakes were an old goddess symbol. And at least one supposed incarnation of
Isis
had turned into one particular snake in her darkest hour.
"Hello, Asp," I said softly to my Egyptian blade. Then I slid it into its scabbard and strapped it on. Like a warrior.
I transferred what I needed from my fanny pack to my cargo pockets. I rolled the chalice in a towel and tucked it in the fanny pack, with a little six-oz bottle of water. Have goddess, will travel.
My concession to Egyptian conservatism was to then top the whole outfit with a white cotton galabiya, which I'd only bought as a souvenir for a friend back home, and took along a blue-and-gold head scarf, just in case.
The whole time, Cat watched, eyes narrow and cool, like her namesake.
We both jumped when Rhys knocked.
"I've got the car and topped it off with petrol," he panted, holding up the keys. "It took some doing to find Niko, but I've got it."
"Good." I headed out—but when I turned to close the door, Catrina was right behind me.
"Hold it," I protested. "You're not coming."
"You are taking the chalice?" she asked, as if she hadn't seen me strap it around my waist.
"Yes:"
"Then you are taking me."
Just what I needed—someone along that I couldn't trust. But from the faint but continual tug below my heart, I sensed I didn't have the time to argue. And I was generally against the idea of clobbering people over the head and leaving them unconscious, even as it applied to Catrina Dauvergne.
"Don't get in my way," I warned, heading down the hallway toward the stairs with a stride that was purely American.
She wisely waited until we were in the car—me driving, despite Rhys's protests—and had headed out past the ornate Greco-Roman gate onto the
"And who," I asked, glancing in the rearview mirror, "are those men who are following us?"
Rhys twisted in the passenger seat to look. So did Catrina, in back.
"Maroon coupe," I said, to direct them to the proper car. "I don't recognize the make—it has a lightning bolt across a circle?"
"Opel," deciphered Catrina.
"
Uffach cols
," said Rhys.
"No," insisted Catrina. "It's an Opel Vectra."
But Rhys had already turned forward in his seat.
"Not to worry anybody," he said gently, "but I believe that may be the same car that tried to run me down the other week."