Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3)

by Margaret Foxe

  She turned her head away from Rowan and Vasily and froze in shock at what she saw. A mob was running up the boulevard in her direction, slowly thinning out as people sought refuge down side streets and in the ruins of half-crumbled buildings.

  In their wake came the thing that chased them: a giant rift in the earth. It ripped its way down the center of the street, heading straight in her direction. One side of the fissure pushed the ground up, while the other side shifted downward, a chasm opening between them, sucking down anything that was in its path: steam cars, dray carts, even a few poor souls who’d not managed to get out of the way fast enough.

  Just as the earth began cracking beneath her feet, she dove for the nearest alley and curled herself under a half-caved doorway. She wrapped her arms around a stone pillar and clung with all the enhanced strength her Welding hands afforded her.

  It took what seemed like an eternity for the tremor to subside.

  Finally, when the earth was once again still, she stood on shaky legs and dusted off her clothes and hair. She shook her head, as if that would shake off her terror, and ventured out to the main street once more. The street seemed even wider than it had been before, with a giant, zigzagging canyon running straight down its center. She didn’t dare get close enough to see how deep it actually was.

  The earthquake hadn’t seemed to even register with Rowan and Vasily, however, their battle continuing unabated nearly on top of the rift. She let out a gasp of dismay at Rowan’s proximity to the edge. She scanned the skies for the Amun Ra through the veil of snow and could see its hull swiftly closing the distance between them. Just another few minutes, and Simon would be close enough for the emergency ladder to reach them.

  She glanced back at Rowan, and her hopes, momentarily buoyed by the approaching dirigible, sank. She wasn’t sure they had a few minutes, for Rowan had still not defeated Vasily.

  The vampire was driving the fight back in her direction, and Rowan had no choice but to follow him. Vasily was playing coy, lashing out and dancing away in the space of a single second, never allowing Rowan close enough to reach his head. Worse, he’d managed to lure Rowan even closer to the edge of the rift. Occasionally, one or the other of them would slip on the eroding sand, and every time it was Rowan, Hex’s heart went into her throat.

  Suddenly, Vasily reversed his momentum, taking Rowan off guard and flipping their positions until Rowan’s back faced the chasm. She could easily discern Vasily’s intention to try and force Rowan over the edge, and she cried out a warning as he abruptly feinted forward.

  She cursed her timing, for Rowan’s attention shifted to her for a split second, and in that split second, Vasily made his move, trapping Rowan beneath him.

  She wasn’t sure who she was upset with more: herself for distracting him, or Rowan for letting himself be distracted. Rowan’s torso hung suspended over the edge of the rift, straining against the weight of Vasily pressing down on him. Vasily’s hands went straight for Rowan’s neck, knocking him flat onto his back and straddling his body.

  Rowan may have been stronger than Vasily, but Vasily was, alas, smarter than he looked. If Vasily didn’t force him over the edge, then gravity would, and even Rowan seemed subject to that fundamental law of nature. In Rowan’s present position, it was only a matter of time before he tipped over the edge.

  The deep, resonant blare of the Amun Ra’s fog horn sounded, and she looked up to see its glorious underbelly hovering in the sky just above her, the emergency ladder descending in her direction.

  Rowan had told her to get the hell out of there, and there was a time in her life when she might have done just that—she had nearly done that, in fact, just a month ago when faced with an eerily similar situation.

  She’d almost left Rowan behind in the desert to rot alongside Janus, despite the promise she’d made to the sheikh. Even after he’d taken that bullet for her, that insidious voice inside her head had still been there—an insidious voice that sounded an awful lot like Hubert Bartholomew.

  She couldn’t shake the guilt of letting herself even consider listening to that voice. Abandoning Rowan in Cairo had only added to her burden, much as she’d tried to deny it to herself—much as she’d tried to assure herself she was doing the right thing.

  What sort of person had she become? What sort of coward?

  Well, there was no way in hell she was leaving Rowan behind this time, not after all he’d done for her.

  She picked up a long piece of splintered wood and charged forward. She used all of the strength she had to ram the wood against Vasily’s head.

  Caught off guard, Vasily fell straight over the edge of the rift, allowing Rowan just enough time to pull himself back to safety. She planted her feet firmly in the rubble and began to scramble backward before she too pitched over the side from the force of her momentum.

  Her victory lasted only a moment before Vasily’s hand shot up out of nowhere and grabbed her foot. She yelped as he dragged her over the edge in one smooth move. She heard Rowan call out behind her, but even he couldn’t reach her in time to stop her descent.

  She slid down a steep slope, kicking out again and again to dislodge the hand clamped firmly around her ankle. Just before the slope plunged into the unknown, she managed to lodge her fingers into the shallow grooves of a large slab of sandstone, their sturdy, mechanical strength the only reason she was able to hold both herself and Vasily up. It was the only time in her life she’d ever been thankful for her so-called enhancements.

  But her hold wouldn’t last long, not with the vampire weighing her down.

  Vasily attempted to pull himself up her body, but she was having none of it. She kicked at his hands and head with her free foot until she felt as if she’d broken her own ankle alongside his fingers.

  One last desperate kick to his knuckles broke his hold, and the weight dragging her down released her so abruptly she nearly lost her grip on the rock. The sound of his screams echoed off the narrow canyon walls as he plummeted into the void.

  It seemed to take an inordinately long time for him to hit the bottom.

  Then, stillness.

  She let out a shaky breath, blinking the sting of snowflakes out of her eyes, and tried to regroup. She could hardly believe she was still alive. She didn’t look down, for she had no desire to know how far she had to fall.

  The memory of her childhood tumble from a London rooftop flitted through her mind, but she ruthlessly suppressed it. She had no time to dwell on past mistakes when there were plenty of them in the present to sort out. Besides, it couldn’t be but a few meters to the top. She’d done this sort of scrambling in her sleep as a girl.

  Though the stakes had never been quite so high.

  She managed to pull herself up a few handholds on the rock face, her legs still swinging wildly in the empty air, unable to find purchase. Just as she was starting to believe she actually had a chance of making it, however, the giant standstone slab she was using as her lifeline started to shift away from its eroded moorings, tilting downward as gravity began to kick in.

  She cursed loudly and tried to tighten her hold, but it was futile. Her metal fingers, poking through the tips of her mangled leather gloves, screeched against the stone until they were clutching nothing but air.

  For a split second she felt weightless, disconnected from anything solid, and she knew without a doubt she was going to die. Then she was falling…

  Until she wasn’t.

  A strong hand caught her around the wrist, nearly jerking her arm out of its socket in the process, and she howled, half in pain, half in sheer disbelief. She began to rise in the air, over the lip of the rift, then higher still.

  She opened eyes she hadn’t even realized she’d closed to find Rowan glaring down at her through a thin curtain of snow. One of his arms was wrapped around the Amun Ra’s emergency ladder, the rest of his body angled down to hold onto her.

  “Can you climb?” he demanded, though he had to shout to be heard over the loud
din of the dirigible’s propellers.

  Hex shouted back her assent, and the next thing she knew he was lifting her effortlessly by one arm until her free hand could grip the rung just above his head. This put her at his eye level, which was unfortunate, since he looked as if he wanted to strangle her. She faltered, taken aback by the barely leashed fury in his expression, her heart nearly galloping out of her chest. She tried to speak, but for once in her life, she was without words.

  She looked down at the city, half-obscured by the falling snow. A good part of the inner city lay in ruins, the rift ripping its way eastward. The palace was nearly leveled completely, and it looked like the entire north face of the once seemingly invulnerable Khan-el-Khalili had collapsed in on itself. Smoke rose from various buildings that had caught fire during the earthquake, and even from the Amun Ra’s altitude, she could see a flood of humanity milling aimlessly in the streets like confused ants.

  Without the earthquake, she doubted she would have ever escaped the Swede, but she couldn’t feel grateful for this, not when half of Cairo was gone. Her stomach bottomed out at the thought of all the lives that must have been lost.

  Rowan jostled her back to herself. “Climb,” he bit out, tersely. As if he were in charge of her.

  Which he was not.

  She scowled at him and began to climb, ignoring the ache in her arm—the aches in practically every part of her body. When she reached the railing of the dirigible, she dragged herself over the side and collapsed onto the deck, breathing hard and staring up into the passing clouds, numb with relief.

  Rowan climbed aboard a few seconds later and sat down hard with his back to the railing, staring off blankly into the distance, as if he too couldn’t believe they had made it.

  A few minutes passed, and she realized that the snow had long since stopped and the clouds were parting to reveal a vividly blue sky. The temperature was suddenly sweltering, but her body hadn’t received the message. She was trembling all over, as if she were going into shock.

  Which was ridiculous, because she was Hex Bartholomew, and Hex Bartholomew didn’t go into shock like some swooning maiden. She’d not done so when Janus kidnapped her. She’d not done so when she was thirteen and woke up with no hands. She’d not even done so when her mother left her, and she’d certainly not done so when her husband did. Though even she could admit that it had been…

  An eventful few days, which was probably the understatement of the century. Hex was used to a bit of trouble, but this had taken trouble to a whole new level. She couldn’t even count on both hands the number of times she’d nearly lost her life. She should be dead—would have been dead a hundred times over if not for Rowan.

  She hadn’t thought she’d make it when she’d lost her grip on that shifting sandstone rock, when she’d been weightless and groundless with no chance of stopping her descent into the abyss…

  She closed her eyes against the intensity of the sun and let her battered body soak in the heat. She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but she could tell from the purr of the ship’s engines beneath her back that they had reached cruising altitude.

  When she finally brought herself to open her eyes again, a shadow was hovering over her, shielding her from the glare. It was Simon. His expression was grim as usual, but just around the edges of his eyes lurked the telltale signs of relief.

  “That was some damn fine piloting, Captain,” she teased, propping herself up on her elbows.

  Simon looked even more disapproving. Apparently, he wasn’t in the mood to jest, though she wished he’d just play along. She felt that if she didn’t make light of the moment she might fall apart completely.

  “Some damn fine luck is what it was,” he groused. He nodded at Rowan, who had also resumed glaring at Hex from his place by the railing. “That one bloody jumped over the side of the ship to get to you in time,” he said. “Nearly took the whole ladder down with him.”

  “It held,” Rowan practically growled back.

  She focused on Simon, determined to ignore Rowan as much as possible. She wasn’t ready to deal with him quite yet. “You could have wrecked her, bringing her so low to the ground,” she chided.

  Simon’s expression turned disbelieving. “Curiously, my primary concern happened to be making sure you didn’t fall to your death, not nicking your precious boat,” he said dryly. He held out a hand and helped her to her feet.

  “The Amun Ra is an L-class solar conversion prototype, not a boat,” she said starchily as she straightened her waistcoat—or what was left of it, anyway.

  Simon just lifted one eloquent eyebrow in reply, and she huffed at his continued lack of humor.

  “Thank you for saving my life and not destroying my ship,” she said grudgingly. “Though I never ordered you to come back here.”

  Simon’s other eyebrow shot up to join the first. “Last I checked, I don’t follow anyone’s orders.”

  “We had an agreement…”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Helen is safe with Fincastle…”

  “Fincastle!” she yelped, though without much heat. Things could have been a whole lot worse, and though Thaddeus was not her first choice for a nanny, she knew he would never let a hair on Helen’s head be harmed.

  Simon’s brow lifted even higher and his lips curled downward. “She is safe and halfway to the Canaries by now. If you think, however, that any part of our ‘agreement’ included me leaving you behind to die, you are very much mistaken.”

  She nodded shortly, and clapped him on the shoulder. She was too tired to argue further with him.

  “Thank you,” she said solemnly. “I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

  “I didn’t either,” Simon murmured darkly, though some of the tension finally went out of his body.

  “It’s the one time in my life I was glad to have these damn hands,” she said, holding them out for his inspection. “They saved me down there. I couldn’t have held on for as long as I did without them.”

  Simon closed his eyes as if pained. “Somehow, that does not make me feel any better,” he said bitterly.

  She sighed. There was simply no pleasing him. “Have you set course for the Canaries?”

  Simon nodded. “We’ll catch up to them in two days.”

  And then she would be faced with a thousand new problems, but there was no way in hell she was returning to Cairo after this. “Lovely. I think I’ll go and pass out now,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”

  Simon looked like he might protest, but he finally gave a reluctant toss of his head and stalked back toward the helm.

  As she turned in the direction of her cabin, she caught sight of a scowling Rowan approaching her with a determined stride. She sighed inwardly. If he thought it was his turn to berate her now that Simon had finished with her, he had another thing coming. She definitely didn’t need Rowan reminding her of how much of an idiot she’d been for interfering in his fight with Vasily. She had that covered all on her own.

  She turned her back to him and walked as fast as her aching bones could manage, hoping he would take the hint. She was dead tired, the cut on her shoulder throbbed to high hell, and she was covered in Theodora’s reeking blood—not to mention the fact that she had sand in all sorts of unnatural places. If he picked a fight with her right now, she wasn’t sure what she would do.

  But she knew without a doubt that it would be something impulsive, for her blood was still humming, her body still on edge, despite her exhaustion. Just talking to Simon, deflecting as much of his concern as she could, had wrung her out completely.

  He caught up with her at her cabin door, just managing to stop it from crashing into his face with a well-placed boot. He followed her inside with a stormy expression and slammed the door behind him. She rolled her eyes at his dramatics and headed toward her chest of drawers for fresh clothing, determined to ignore him as long as she could.

  “Wait,” he said with a growl. He clasped her firmly around the forearm, halting her half
way across the room, and spun her around to face him. Her blood began to boil even hotter with his rough handling, her fatigue momentarily forgotten.

  Well. If he were that determined to fight with her, then she’d be damned if she backed down, no matter how exhausted she was. She was not about to apologize for intervening with Vasily no matter how stupid it had been in retrospect. She’d done what she had to do, and it had worked…sort of.

  She glanced pointedly from his hand on her arm up to his face to tell him just that, but the angry retort she had ready on her tongue was lost. He looked positively undone with rage. She had pushed him too far, and it felt…

  Too good. Before yesterday, indifference had been her ideal when it came to him. Indifference would have saved her from the inevitability of being hurt by him. But the moment he’d walked back into her life at the palace, all of her vows to herself had been called into question. He kept insisting on saving her life, damn him, which was as appealing as it was infuriating.

  Watching him now, his muscles rippling beneath the bloodied, torn lawn shirt stretched taut over his upper body, his hair wild with sweat and dust, and his face scowling with the intensity of an angry wolf, something molten hot burned low in her belly.

  “What do you want, Rowan?” she demanded, satisfied at how very calm she sounded, despite the tumult of emotions she was feeling inside from the mere touch of his hand. She was used to having the advantage over most people, but not Rowan. Never Rowan. He was a head taller than her and made entirely of steel—quite possibly literally. He could so easily crush her if he wanted to.

  Or hold her, touch her, possess her...

  Damn it to hell. It seemed she didn’t want to argue with him at all. At least her body didn’t.

  She swallowed, licked her lips, and tried to talk herself out of doing something she’d regret. But it was no use. The surge of desperate relief at actually being alive after all that they had endured had left her reckless, giddy, and stripped to the bone. Nothing was left to fight against her body’s demands.