by Anne Marsh
Now all I have to do is take the necklace.
I step gingerly into the burial chamber, scanning the room for hidden threats. For traps. Nothing. The room remains blissfully quiet. But stepping onto the carnelian-colored granite floor blocks feels vaguely wrong, as if I’m disturbing something.
Or someone.
Nerves. I’ve let the merck turn me into a bundle of nerves with all his talk of danger and protection. So I’m not going to think about him. I’ve—finally—reached my destination. It doesn’t matter that I—almost—wish he were here to see the burial chamber. The merck can take care of himself. He’s bigger, tougher, and savvier than any male I’ve ever met; he’ll be fine. Raising the flarestick, I peer around the chamber.
Fitting, that an alleged princess is buried here. The room is every little girl’s fantasy—if, of course, little girls daydream about possible funeral sites. In addition to the startlingly pink granite floor, the walls are an impossibly smooth, pure white. Moreover, the walls are perfectly blank. No carvings. No friezes. No gold work. Other than a handful of statues sprinkled in niches around the room, the only object is the coffin. Still, despite the beauty of the room, it feels half finished. Half empty. As if whatever was buried here was so terrible that no one wanted to return, even when the other chambers on this level filled up.
I scan the room one more time, even setting off a small seeking spell that ricochets merrily off the limestone walls. The spell leaves a small scorch mark that spoils the perfect blankness but turns up no obvious mazhykal traps. Safe? Maybe. I’ll still play it careful.
Get the necklace, I tell myself. Forget the merck. Guilt is a luxury I can’t afford. It doesn’t matter if the man took on that angry death spirit singlehandedly. And then carted me to safety when the banshee wailed down the roof.
There was no reason for him to do these things—was there? He’s just as self-serving as every other male I’ve met. Because if I believed there was any chance that my hard-as-nails merck harbored sweeter sentiments for me, I’d rappel back up the escape shaft—toward him—and that’s a really, really bad idea.
I have to have the necklace. I want my sister back.
Decided, I stride across the chamber and throw open the lid of the coffin.
JAFAR
She double-crossed me.
She stunned me with a cheap witch spell.
And I didn’t see it coming.
In a fit of rage, I shift, battering myself against the grille she used to block her escape route. Unfortunately, I am too large to fit through the opening to the air shaft. That impossibility makes me grit my teeth; I’ll bet the little witch knew the precise dimensions of the crawlspace she used as a personal, private staircase.
When I catch her, I’ll wring her neck.
Wring her neck… When I catch her, she’ll have stolen the necklace she came for and I will have to execute her. As one of the Guardians, I am honor bound to do so if I catch her stealing. While the actual method is up to me, the yea or nay is not. Thieves die. I’ve never questioned that black-and-white pronouncement, have always understood that the temple’s dangerous proximity to the other realms requires quick and summary justice. I slam my hand against the stone wall of my prison, ignoring the fine rain of dust and gravel that showers down on me.
I am a killer. An enforcer. So why am I questioning the need to do my job now?
I know I’m growling when other Guardians appear, shifting away the heavy rock fall with powerful forearms and even more powerful spells. How long has Miu been gone now? Half an hour? More? When the Guardians finally near the alcove, I overhear a pithy curse as they discover the remnants of the daemon’s corpse, crushed by a pair of falling girdle stones.
“Bloody hell,” one Guardian mutters. “Hell of a way to go.”
“No point in trying to resuscitate him for interrogation,” another agrees. “Spirit’s passed.”
When the rocks fall away from the doorway, I have my story ready. Leaning back against the wall, I deliberately avert my eyes from the ventilation shaft where my companion disappeared. If my nose failed to scent the exit concealed behind the elaborate grillwork, these males will also be fooled.
Folding my arms across my chest, I stare levelly at the males entering the alcove. The confined space works in my favor. If I have to, I can hold them off with my longsword. Buy some time.
Buy some time? Is that what I’ve really decided to do? Yes, because perhaps if I can buy Miu time, she’ll decide that she really can trust me. Strangely, I want her to do so. I want her to explain why she’s come for the necklace, why she won’t give it up.
For the first time, I want to know reasons.
“You okay, Jafar?” My pride members stand there, examining me cautiously. Three men, all well over six feet tall and dressed in black hunting leathers rather than the ritual white of the Hunt. Each bears a longsword strapped to his back, as well as an arsenal of shortknives tucked into waistbands, boots, and arm sheaths. Three pairs of gold eyes examine me. Three noses scent the air, delicately.
“Seems fine,” Hebon announces flatly. His hand doesn’t leave his sword, however. Only a fool stands between Hebon and his target. Decades ago the male channeled all his pent-up rage into his blades. He doesn’t draw until he is ready to kill. And he never, ever misses his target. His mood is as dark as his visage.
“Where is she?” Sanur teases. “You did have a female in here, didn’t you?” He scents the air again. “I can smell her, my brother, and she smells good. Good enough to eat.” A feral grin curves his lips as he stalks into the small room.
Brooding, I fight back the unexpected impulse to rip Sanur apart. I’ve seen my brother use that same charming smile on countless females. I recognize the sensual prowl as the male strides unerringly toward the narrow passageway that allowed my female to escape from me.
Sanur doesn’t get to taste her.
Not today.
Not—if I am honest with myself—ever.
“Jafar doesn’t take females.” Hebon bites off his words, as if speaking is a colossal waste of time, when he could be hunting down the intruder instead. His cold eyes examine the escape point. “He wouldn’t take up with a thief and an intruder.” The unspoken words again hang in the air between us.
Can I really bring myself to turn Miu over to their untender mercies? I’ve hunted thieves with these males for centuries. I know their methods, and they are brutal.
“Where is whom?” I ask innocently. Leaning back against the wall, I replay my options.
“The female trapped in here with you.” Sanur scowls playfully and nudges the still-silent Badru in the ribs. The other male grunts, but holds his ground. “Damn it, Jafar, you know we can smell her, my brother. You had her here with you. Where did she go?”
“Are you hunting her?” Because I have to be the one to find her.
I am going to be the one to find her.
“Depends,” Sanur answers, stepping through the wreckage. Picking up a small funeral pot, he examines the seal. “Not broken. Thank the gods. The alcove down the hall is filled with traumatized death spirits. You’d think they’d never left their bodies before.”
That has to have been unpleasant. “Sealed them back in? Or sent them on their way?” Either way, I don’t really give a damn, but conversation will give my femi a few more seconds of freedom. She hasn’t admitted it—and I suspect she’d traverse the spider-filled air shaft a dozen times first—but the stories of shapeshifting Guardians scare her. And yet she seemed willing to trust me. To shove a plug of bespelled wax into my ears to prevent my eardrums from bursting with the banshee’s wail.
Of course, in the end, she also abandoned me inside the alcove and went on her merry way.
“Is she a thief,” Hebon bites out, “or is she your mate?”
“Did you bell her, my brother?” Sanur asks eagerly. Even Badru turns that eerie black gaze of his from his calm consideration of Miu’s escape hatch and looks at me. Badru never says m
uch—hell, my brother never speaks at all if he can avoid it—but the Cat misses nothing. He knows precisely how my female disappeared; he is just working himself up to the words.
There is exactly one option left to me and I take it.
I growl a warning. She is mine. “Back off. She’s not a thief.”
“But is she your mate?” Sanur demands.
“No.” I have to admit the truth. She isn’t.
“Then what is she?” Hebon counters. His fingers caress the black hilt of his sheathed blade. The blade has killed more tomb robbers than any other in the temple; rumor claims the shifter struck a bargain with one of the more bloodthirsty gods. True or not, he isn’t getting my female.
“Mine,” I state firmly. I shove away from the wall, my hands finding my own blades. One of my pride brothers groans.
“Only if she’s a mate,” Hebon insists.
“And not if she’s nicking our stuff,” Sanur puts in. I don’t underestimate the male, despite the lazy sensuality of his face. When Sanur decides to take his responsibilities seriously, he takes them very, very seriously. “She shouldn’t be down here. The other females remained on the upper levels.” In the silence, three sets of eyes examine my face. “As expected. Yours did not.”
“She’s too close to the Doorways,” Sanur adds and that is also true. As a Guardian, I work the lowest levels of the temple, the first line of defense against the other realms bordering on theirs. Down in the catacombs, it is perfectly clear who the bad guys are. Come out of the tunnels and you are cut down. No exceptions. If you aren’t a Guardian, we assumed you are an Ifrit that has crossed over.
And no one hesitates to kill an Ifrit anymore.
“She won’t go through the Doorways.” I don’t know how I know, but I do. For some reason, my femi has a strong anchor in this realm. She won’t leave willingly. “She’s not comfortable underground. She’ll want to return to the surface.”
“Not a mate.” Hebon turns to the others. “We hunt her then.”
My Cat doesn’t care for that idea either. The beast roars to life within me suggesting that the men filling the room are a threat to our female. Take them out. I fight the urge, but something must show in my eyes.
Sanur throws up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. “He’s going to mate her,” he says to the others. “He’ll have the bells out before nightfall. The Cat just doesn’t know it yet.”
That isn’t possible, is it? Dark heads swivel toward me, their eyes crawling over my face.
“If she steals,” Hebon says in the icy voice that makes even other Guardians hesitate, “she’s ours. Not his.”
My brothers are skeptical and I can’t blame them. I’ve never taken the slightest interest in the bride Hunts.
“Why follow her, if she is not a thief?” Badru finally breaks his silence, his voice hoarse with disuse. A good question and not one I can answer. How can I explain that this small female fascinates me, that I want to see what she does next? And if, I admit to myself, she will indeed hang herself if I give her the rope.
“He’s hunting,” Sanur argues, narrowing his eyes.
It is Hebon who asks the question they all think. “But a thief—or a mate?”
MIU
I push aside the lid of the coffin, careful not to let the heavy wooden panel fall onto the floor. Carved with spells for navigating the afterlife, the lid’s bright carnelian paint has faded considerably in the darkness. More to the point, someone had deliberately smashed the shabti statues for this woman. Someone did not want the dead woman to enjoy a pleasant afterlife.
That’s a bad sign.
Forcing myself to take deep, even breaths despite the fetid stench wafting up from the coffin, I examine my quarry. In the decades since her burial, the princess has lost most of her good looks. The ivory curve of ribs gleams through the decaying remnants of a once-elegant dress. Time and a closer acquaintance with the dark, hot confines of the coffin have reduced the expensive fabric to tattered streamers of dull gray. But nothing can dim the glow of the jewel that hangs about her neck.
The necklace fascinates me.
I knew it would, from the moment I first felt the moonstone’s pull when I entered the temple. Set in the middle of a stunningly simple necklace of silver, the jewel is a deep, unfamiliar blue that pulsates with color as if the necklace’s creator blended together sky, stars, and ocean to create this impossible mystery. The moonstone also reeks of mazhyk. Is there more to this necklace than the Master is letting on?
Possibly.
Mazhyk or no mazhyk, I have to take the necklace.
Tentatively, I reach out my hand. Even though I’m expecting something of the sort, I have to stifle a shriek when my fingers close around the stones—and long, pale talons wrap themselves around my wrist. The nails bite into my skin, carving shallow crescents into my flesh. Blood wells beneath the pinprick wounds.
Heqet save me. A treasure daemon.
“Hey.” The treasure daemon tugs insistently on my wrist. “Got you by the wrist here. Not letting go, bound till death does us part. You are familiar with that part?”
I am, but no point in letting the daemon know that. “Really?” I eye the creature thoughtfully. “Nothing at all will make you release my wrist?”
“’Fraid not,” the daemon says regretfully. His nails sink deeper. “Unless perhaps you’re willing to leave the hand behind?” The note of hope in the daemon’s voice makes me shudder. Looking closer, I see that the coffin already holds a collection of hands. Unless the princess has a rather unusual and never-before-mentioned physical abnormality, the treasure daemon has already collected.
Multiple times.
How long has it been since the treasure daemon moved in and set up housekeeping inside the dead woman’s coffin? Fortunately, I’ve come prepared. I always do my homework because I never know when I’m going to be tested.
“Perhaps we can negotiate,” I suggest. The daemon looks bored, as if he’s heard all possible suggestions before.
“Doubt it,” he says. Just to punctuate his point, he takes a good, long lick, the glass-sharp papillae of its tongue scraping over my skin. The skin breaks, blood beading on the surface. “Oh, I doubt it. Too, too sweet.”
Before the daemon can fasten onto my wrist—and either suck me slowly dry or force me to carve off my own wrist—I reach into my bag and whip out a handful of herbs. The sweet-scented grass is the color of early limes, but far more potent than any citrus fruit. Usually, sweetgrass is difficult to obtain and costs more than your average treasure hunter earns in the best of years. I’d had the foresight, however, to insist that Lore learn both botany and herbalism. As a result, our kitchen gardens grow far more than squashes and lettuces. They provide a living, growing arsenal from which I cull the best, such as the sweetgrass I’m now dumping into my palm.
A careful puff of breath sends the pollen floating across the dim air toward the daemon, who looks first shocked and then blissful as he inhales. “Ah,” he says in surprise, and then “Oh, you didn’t.” I’ve seen smokeweed addicts take shallower drafts than the daemon’s second.
“Got more of that stuff?” he asks, rubbing his crotch with lazy strokes. My sister didn’t mention that the grass is addictive or—I eye the daemon warily—that it apparently acts as an aphrodisiac. Great. I have one blissed-out daemon on my hands.
I counter, “Going to let me pass?”
A crafty look appears in the daemon’s eyes. “Hand it over,” is all he says. And then, “I don’t suppose you could help a guy out here?”
Disgusted, I shake my head. No way am I feeling up a daemon, not even to fetch the necklace. Undeterred, the daemon grabs the pouch from my hands and totters out of the coffin. He curls up in a boneless heap in one corner of the chamber, slowly shifting forms as the weed takes effect. “Enjoy,” he slurs before closing his eyes.
Right. One obstacle removed. The daemon is vulnerable enough that I could slide my blade through his neck, but
I hate killing anything if it isn’t necessary.
Shaking the droplets of blood off my wrist, I reach farther inside the coffin. The hard wooden lip cuts into my hips, forcing me to stretch off balance. The necklace is too formfitting to allow me to pull it over the dead woman’s head; I’ll have to undo it. There. Brushing aside the remainder of the rags, I twist the necklace around until I spot the clasp. Keeping half an eye on the daemon, now uttering small, wheezing snores, I tug on the small lock.
The clasp doesn’t budge, but instead sets up a high-pitched wail that must draw the attention of every Guardian for miles around.
JAFAR
The unearthly wail shatters the stillness, shooting up the escape shaft toward us. I don’t blink, but I know that scream. We all do. The privately wealthy can afford to bury their dead with elaborate grave goods. To keep away grave robbers, some purchase protective spells to guard the coffins. Judging by the strength of that scream, someone just attempted to remove a very valuable object indeed.
Three dark heads swivel unerringly toward the escape shaft.
Turning, I face the males. Since I’ve run with them in Cat form and fought by their sides in man form, I know them. I know how they fight—and what they are most likely to do. Sanur has drawn his blades already, but the other two hesitate, Hebon because he hasn’t decided yet if he wants to strike a death blow, and Badru because, well, he’s never been completely normal. He watches, long after others have acted. Never mind that he usually comes to the correct conclusion.
The Guardians will want to believe me. These are my brothers. Surely, I can’t be forced to choose between them and the female.
Can I?
“Who is she?” Sanur’s sympathetic face swims before me. “We can take her to the Amun Ra, Jafar. We can let him decide.” His brother leaves the rest of his sentence unspoken: We don’t have to kill her now. He is willing to bend the rules that much.
Hebon doesn’t say anything, but his arms tense. I knew he is ready to pull the blades and, if he has to, he’ll throw them at me. Duty first. Everyone knows that Hebon never wavers. Ever. Once he’s committed himself to a course, he stays it.