She returned to her perusal of the tables lining the street. A sour-faced man with gray hair accepted a bundle of woven leather belts from the traditionally garbed Muslim woman behind him. Her gaze moved on to the vendor at the next table selling red fez caps to tourists. Then it abruptly returned to the Muslim woman.
Those hands.
Not the delicate appendages of a woman, but lean and square-tipped. An artist’s hands.
Her eyes flew up, peering beneath the dark blue hijab, looking deep into the woman’s eyes—the only feature visible above the full-face niqab. Had she not viewed those eyes from beneath a burgundy hood mere days ago, she might not have recognized them. They were remarkably pretty.
“Uh-oh.” Brian stiffened beside her, his grip tightening. “That can’t be good.”
Although the warning note in his voice made her curious, Lena was afraid to look away from Tariq in case he disappeared, so she simply tugged on Brian’s hand and said, “I found him.”
But even as she spoke, Tariq’s gaze darted over her shoulder. His eyes widened at whatever he saw there, and then he turned and ran. Lena’s reflexes were much sharper than his, and she would have snagged the voluminous folds of his disguise, except that Brian reacted to a different stimulus, and he had a formidable grip on her hand. He went left, and she went right.
She missed the blue robes by an inch.
“This way,” she hissed, giving Brian’s hand a fierce yank.
He followed her gaze, spotted her fleeing target, and prodded her forward. “You lead. I’ll do my best to catch the bullets.”
“What?”
Tariq’s midnight blue robes fled down a narrow alley. Into the Khan.
“Some guy recognized you,” Brian said, as they shouldered their way through the crowd. “And I’m guessing he doesn’t like you, because he promptly whipped out a gun. A nice, shiny black nine-mil with a suppressor.”
A gun? Not a demon, then.
Running at full Gatherer speed wasn’t an option in the crowded market, and despite their best efforts Tariq remained a good twenty feet in front of them, drawing a rumble of frustration from Lena.
He sped through the medieval souks with admirable agility, shouldering past turbaned vendors, leaping over collections of brass pots, ducking under rugs. Racks of cheap souvenirs fell to the ground in his wake, forcing his pursuers to hurdle new obstacles.
Brian responded by conjuring a shield, which helped keep the debris out of their path. Lena veered left, hot on Tariq’s heels. The person behind them must be one of Nasser’s men. He would not have run otherwise.
“Throw a sleep spell at him,” Brian suggested.
“That would put everyone in the alley to sleep,” she reminded him. “It’s not a very focused spell.”
“I can live with it if you can.”
“Death will not be pleased if we cause a scene.”
“Fuck Death,” he said nicely. “Either you want to catch him, or you don’t.”
Lena needed no further prompting. As carefully as running down a narrow alley allowed, she directed a sleep spell at the flapping blue robes ahead. Her first attempt ricocheted off a shop sign and hit the people right in front of her. An elderly man crumpled to the packed dirt with a suddenness that gave Lena a sharp pang of regret. But the guilt wasn’t strong enough to stop her from aiming a second shot at the fleeing Tariq.
But again the man lucked out.
He turned a corner an instant before the spell would have hit him.
With everyone around them now snoring, Lena and Brian put on more speed and reached the corner in a split second. They entered the dead-end alley and stopped.
It was empty.
Except for tourists and shopkeepers. Not a single person garbed in blue robes. No one frowning or looking remotely disturbed. No swaying rugs, no oscillating strands of beads, no fallen racks. Tariq had simply disappeared.
Lena’s heart thudded with the slow beat of a funeral dirge.
He was gone. Vanished.
And with him had gone her last hope of saving Heather.
Wearing his blue galabeyya and a white turban, Malumos knelt beside the gunman’s sleeping body, studying his weapon with curiosity. A bullet would never stop Lena Sharpe or her companion. Only he or another demon could do that. Humans simply had no idea what walked among them on a daily basis.
His skin tingled and a hot rush of power rose up in his chest. He glanced up.
His brothers had arrived. They strode down the alley toward him—each occupying the body of some pathetic human. As they neared, the energy surging through his veins deepened to painful intensity. United, there was nothing the three of them couldn’t do, and that was an utterly rapturous feeling.
Inside the body of a suavely dressed African male, Maleficus frowned as he studied the sleeping thug. “This man sought to destroy her. Why?”
“Who knows?” Malumos stood and pocketed the gun. “And who cares? The only thing that matters is that we now know where the coins are. The fellow she was chasing through the souks has them.”
“How can you be sure?”
He fished a silver coin from the small leather purse hanging from his wrist, holding it up for his brothers to see. “As you know, the coins call to one another. As the human in the blue robes passed by, this one began to hum with excitement. I took the opportunity to read the man’s thoughts, and I know his next move.”
“Does that mean,” Mestitio asked breathlessly, the sunken eyes of the elderly female he possessed locked on the man at Malumos’s feet, “you have no higher purpose for this human? Does it mean that I can have him?”
Although his brother’s tendency to forget the task at hand annoyed him, Malumos knew the seething rage inside the other demon, if left to fester, would eventually boil over and cause far worse grief than a few lost hours. And better he expend that energy on this hapless soul than on the girl.
He nodded.
Mestitio licked his lips, bent to touch the sleeping man, and made the transfer. The body he’d previously occupied fell to the dirt, unconscious, and the gunman woke up with a soft gasp. A twisted grin spread across his mouth, and he pulled a serrated combat knife from a sheath under his shirt. “Fun, fun, fun.”
“Don’t be too long,” Malumos cautioned him.
“With recovery of the Judas coins imminent,” Maleficus said, “perhaps I should follow the lead Ms. Sharpe provided and venture to Karnak?”
An excellent call. The people in the alley began to rouse from their slumber, rolling over and grumbling. Malumos watched as his youngest brother succumbed to a primeval urge to take his meal to some hidden location before feasting and crawled into the shadow of an open doorway, blood already seeping from a dozen self-inflicted wounds. “This day shall go down in history, brother.”
“A truly momentous occasion,” said Maleficus, nodding. “If the book contains the spell we need.”
“I have great faith in your research. It will be there.” His brother glanced at the Timex on his wrist. “The train to Karnak leaves in an hour. The length of the journey is such that I will need to return to hell briefly to recuperate, but I shall endeavor to report back before midnight.”
Malumos nodded. A thrall could remain on the middle plane for up to eight hours, if the host was easy to subdue. Less, if great physical exertion was expended during the possession. “Mestitio and I will take our rest now. Once we are reunited and at full strength, the three of us will collect the coins.”
14
After questioning the people in the souk about a woman in indigo robes and getting precisely nowhere, Brian led Lena back to the spot where he’d been certain the man with the gun had fallen. But the gunman had already departed.
“What the hell?” Brian growled, as he spun around. The sun was descending toward the horizon, but even in the deepening shadows, his Gatherer vision was excellent. “First the kid. Now the guy who was chasing us. Is there a portal through the barrier here, or something?”
; Lena grimaced. “I hope not. A perpetually open portal would allow creatures from the between to freely pass through.”
Brian shot her a quizzical look. “The between?”
“The space between the planes where the barriers themselves exist. A world composed completely of shadow and spirit.”
“What are we talking? Ghosts?”
“No. Gradiors and bone-sappers,” she replied, without a hint of a smile.
“What are grad—” He halted himself midword and grabbed her arm. Really, he was going to have to kick MacGregor’s ass for the huge gaps in his education. “No, on second thought, I don’t think I want to know. Let’s go find Carlos.”
They returned to Al-Muski amid a chorus of angry shouts from vendors whose goods had fallen during the chase. Lena quietly offered a handful of Egyptian pounds to anyone who displayed a broken item, but otherwise they strode on without stopping.
“If we knew what Tariq was doing here,” he said to Lena as they peered right and left for signs of their young partner, “we might be able to figure out his next step.”
“I can only assume he was meeting with a buyer. But I’ve no idea why he’d agree to meet in such a busy place. It’s hardly conducive to a negotiation involving large sums of money. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Look around. Maybe something will strike a chord.” Brian dialed Carlos’s number. When the young man picked up, he said, “We almost had him, but no go. Meet us back at the corner.”
Lena was frowning when he hung up.
“See something?” he asked.
She nodded surreptitiously at a building across the street with a shoe store on the bottom level. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s one of Reyhan Nasser’s offices.”
“Who the hell is Reyhan Nasser?”
In the middle of her explanation he held up a hand. “Okay, I get it. I think you must be nuts to hang out with this Tariq character, but I get it. So, he was staking out the joint, waiting to see if Nasser showed up? Why would he do that? The guy with the gun is proof that his cousin hasn’t forgiven him.”
“I agree. I can think of only one reason why he’d be so fearless.” Lena’s gaze fell to her shoes. “The coins.”
His chest tightened. “You think he touched them?”
“The curse is double-edged,” she said, nodding. “It grants the holder extraordinary luck and wealth while breeding betrayal and paranoia. If he touched the coins, Tariq may be feeling invincible. Capable of ending Nasser’s death threats once and for all.”
“Didn’t you warn him about the side effects?”
“Of course. In fact, I told him only the negative aspects of the coins’ power.”
“But extraordinary luck sure explains how he disappeared so neatly in the souk.” Brian spotted Carlos and waved to him. The young man had just hailed a cab.
Speakers above his head suddenly screeched to life, followed by a low, lyrical keening warbling through the air. It didn’t stay lyrical for long—a second later, several other chants from different parts of the neighborhood layered over the first, quickly becoming an irritating white noise.
“What is that?”
“Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer.” She sighed. “A single muezzin’s call is beautiful and soothing. Unfortunately, there are many mosques in the area and each does its own.”
They slid into the taxi, squeezing into the backseat. Brian’s desire not to crowd Carlos meant his thigh pressed against Lena’s soft body. There were worse fates. He glanced at Carlos, noting the deep lines etched around his mouth.
“You okay?”
“Headache,” the young man said with a shrug.
Another bad one, judging by the kid’s pale, clammy skin. He’d suggest seeing a doctor, but Bale was the closest thing to a doctor the Gatherers had, and he was really more of a Band-Aid guy. Gatherers got wounded, not sick.
“There’s no point in continuing to look for Tariq tonight,” Lena said, her voice heavy. “He’ll need to come up with a new way to approach Nasser, since we blew his cover. When we get back to the hotel, I’ll put the word out with my network. If he makes contact with any of them, we can follow up from there.”
“You have a network?” One or two friends were to be expected, even for a loner like Lena. But a network sounded organized. “Who’s in it?”
“The people who make my life easier.”
“These are people you trust?”
She smiled. “I don’t trust anyone. But my colleagues are extremely good at what they do, and as long as I keep in mind that they’ll turn on me when it suits them, they’re very useful.”
Brian gave the hotel address to the cabdriver, then sat back. He’d gone through Lena’s iPhone with a fine-toothed comb when they first nabbed her. There hadn’t been any contact information in her address book except for travel agents and take-out restaurants. No notes or text messages to or from anyone, except from the Gatherer dispatcher. Yet she’d been able to contact several people, quickly and easily, right under his nose. “How do you get in touch with them?”
“The bulletin board we discussed before, an e-mail to a multirouted mailbox, or a message at a prearranged phone number.”
“Prearranged how?”
“Does it matter?”
Hell, yeah, it mattered. It meant she was part of a well-oiled machine he knew nothing about. It turned his image of her on its goddamned ear. He’d assumed all along she had some sort of connections. It just burned him to know they weren’t casual acquaintances, that they might be people she relied on to help her out of tough spots. Because he’d cast himself in that role.
Rescuer.
But it was looking as if he’d been completely wrong about Lena. Maybe he really had read his own interpretations into her actions instead of seeing the truth. Maybe she really was the gold-digging bitch everyone else believed her to be.
He closed his eyes.
No. Those shadows in her eyes had been real. The nervous pulse had been real. Ah, fuck. Who was he kidding? He had no idea what was real anymore. He was seriously compromised in the trusting-Lena department, because he wanted that deeper side of her to be real. He needed it to be real, or else the delicious buzz he got just holding her hand was a huge pile of horseshit.
“Good,” he said with a lazy smile, dredging up a pale reflection of his good-ol’-boy charm. “You can put feelers out with your buddies while I visit the hotel spa for a massage. With any luck, we’ll get a bead on your little friend without breaking a sweat.”
After Em’s cell phone warbled for the fourth time in two minutes, she turned it off. She wasn’t in the mood to be harassed by Murdoch. Not only was she a few hours short on sleep, thanks to another one of those creepy rage dreams, but her sneakrative shopping excursion wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped.
“You know what’s crazy?” she said to her best friend, Sheila, as she pulled a green pepper out of her Subway sandwich. “I’m feeling like a shit for skipping out, which is totally ridiculous, ’cause I haven’t had a break in ages.”
“Guilt,” Sheila said with a shrug. “You got a priest for a stepdad. What do you expect?”
“He’s not—” Em broke off. Talk about your awkward conversation. Actually, he’s not a priest; he’s a four-hundred-year-old dead guy who got his soul back. Wouldn’t that go over well? “... that bad. Just kind of old-fashioned.”
“Whatever. Shake it off, chica.”
“Yeah.” If only it were that simple. But when you were the Trinity Soul carrying the fate of the world on your shoulders, nothing was that simple. All she could think about was how disappointed Michael would be if he knew she was here instead of back home trying to fix the coin.
The girls mutually agreed on Hot Topic as their next destination, and gathered their purses and shopping bags. As they cleared the tables, Sheila glanced over Em’s shoulder.
“Uh-oh.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure out who she’d spotted striding toward them across
the food court. Resisting the urge to turn around, Em waited until the heavy footsteps halted.
“Emily Jane MacGregor.”
Her girlfriends broke into smiles at Murdoch’s Scottish accent. Even Sheila melted a little, flipping her long black hair back. To Em’s immense relief, none of them seemed to catch Murdoch’s use of her horrid middle name. She spun around to face her keeper. “Lewis. How many times do I have to tell you it’s Emily Lewis?”
His arms were folded over his humongo chest, his gaze squarely on her, despite Sheila’s unconscious attempt to draw his attention. His light brown hair hung past his shoulders and his beard hadn’t been trimmed in forever, but the rough-warrior look somehow worked for him. All her friends thought he was hot.
“I’m not here to debate your name.”
Emily had been about to tell him she was ready to go home, but his aggro attitude raised her hackles. The words spilled from her lips before she could give them proper thought. “Then maybe you should go home.”
Outwardly, nothing in Murdoch’s demeanor changed. But Em’s senses caught the inner escalation of his temper. It swirled like a minitornado in his gut, still under control, but fighting to be unleashed. “You would be wise,” he said softly, “not to test me.”
Realizing she’d drawn a line where she hadn’t planned to, Em heaved a sigh. “What do you want, Murdoch? As you can see, nothing bad has happened to me. I’m not injured or dead. I’m safe and sound with my friends.”
“Oh, I see, all right,” he said. “What I don’t see is a text message telling me where you are and what time you’ll be home. The sort of simple courtesy I’d expect from a responsible adult.”
That stung. “If I told you I wanted to go shopping, you’d’ve said no.”
“How you could be certain of that when you never asked?”
“I’ve asked before.” Her purse slid off her shoulder and she jerked it back up. “And the answer is always no. According to you and Lachlan, I’m supposed to come straight home from school. I have responsibilities.”
“You do,” he agreed, clearly missing the point.
Bound by Darkness Page 21