The pain of that slapped him to awareness, and he stood up in his human form. It was pitch dark in here and hard to breathe. Leon morphed into a lynx, his eyes more attuned to the dark.
He couldn’t see much in the pinpoint of light through the hole, but he saw colors and shapes, and his snake form had felt the smoothness of plaster.
It was cold down here, and smelled of death. The air supply couldn’t be that great, either, despite the hole through the rubble to the surface. Leon rose into his human form again, and felt the rubble until he found the opening he’d made. He dove for it, turning into his snake form as he entered it.
Going uphill was a lot more work than coming down. Leon shoved himself up through the rubble, struggling to breathe. The snake was too damn big, and the chips of stone had collapsed a little as he came down. He shoved them aside with his broad nose, but the opening grew narrower as he ascended.
His head bumped a rock that didn’t move. The sudden halt rippled down his long body, and Leon lay there, trying not to panic. The snake urged, give up and sleep, but Leon forced himself to stay alert.
He wished he could turn into a bug or worm, which could have found a way up through the cracks. But this python was the narrowest being he could manage. If he turned into anything else, including his human form, he’d be crushed to death by the fill.
Damn it, why had he been so anxious to dive down here? Showing off to Val, he thought. And Demitri. I’m the big, bad shifter who can slither into holes no one else can. Idiot.
He couldn’t call out or signal his predicament. He could only lie here, unable to go up or down, until someone outside decided he’d been gone too long. And what could they do? No one else could get in here. They’d have to go back to the dig, get tools to pry him out, and by then, it might be too late.
The snake was cold, stymied, and shutting down. Fuck, the corner that was Leon’s human brain thought. What a stupid way to die.
He fought to stay awake, fought to push farther into the rubble, but his struggles grew weaker. He knew his friends were within a few yards of him, which made the idiocy of it even harder to take.
His snake eyes closed, the thin film covering his orbs. It seemed to be lighter, but maybe that was heaven’s gate. Would he enter the afterlife as a snake or a man? What was a snake’s heaven like? All the mice you could eat and a steamy tropical jungle to hang out in? And would the mice you ate have their own afterlife, where they dined on boulder-sized hunks of cheese?
His mind was going. The light grew brighter and the rock in front of him suddenly dissolved into dust.
Leon popped his eyes open. The light wrapped itself around his snake body and slowly but surely pulled him out.
Leon traveled forward an inch at a time as though someone dragged him by a string. Rock scraped his skin, layers peeling from him as he went. He suddenly popped out of the hole at the top of the rubble and fell onto the cold step just inside the opening. The white light faded, and the yellow beam of a flashlight took its place.
“Leon,” Demitri called, his voice rough with fear. “Can you make it the rest of the way?”
Leon grunted in pain as he flowed into this human form, his limbs aching, his skin smarting. What happened to the snake happened to him, and he’d been scraped and scratched all over. He put his fingers on the opening to the outside, slowly became a snake again, and flowed all the way out.
Demitri jumped aside as Leon slithered out of the hole and onto the ground. Leon had just enough strength to let the snake become human, then he lay on the ground, bloody, grimy, and panting.
Demitri crouched on one side of him, and Val knelt on the other.
“Are you all right?” Demitri’s fingers skimmed Leon’s back and arms, looking for injury. Val looked down at him, her midnight blue eyes wide with worry. Despite his pain and lingering fear, Leon’s heart warmed.
“I think so,” he croaked. He groaned as he sat up. “Y’all remind me never to do that again.”
“I’m sorry,” Remy said. “Damn, Leon, I’m so sorry.”
“I was all right,” Leon protested, though he knew he’d never reassure Remy. “Just a little stuck.”
“A lot stuck,” Val said. “Demitri saved your life.”
Leon painfully pulled on his clothes then sat against the outcropping where he’d spent those agonizing moments in the dark. “How did you save me?” he asked Demitri. “All I saw was light.”
“It’s the magic of Apollo,” Val said before Demitri could answer. “The power of the sun.”
Leon drank deeply out of his canteen. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was sired by Apollo,” Demitri said, looking off into the bright desert. “I have god-power, though not as much as my father does. The sun isn’t just light, it’s energy. I can manipulate it if I have to, though Apollo doesn’t like it when I do.”
“Why not?” Leon wiped his mouth. “Seems like it’s damn useful.”
“The Greek gods have always been jealous,” Val said. She sat down at Leon’s side and put her cool hand on his. He clasped it, knowing he’d come close to never seeing her again. “Gods guard their power well. Look what happened when Apollo’s son Phaeton stole his chariot and drove it every which way. It scorched the earth. They have to be careful.”
Remy snorted. “That’s a myth made up by people who didn’t understand weather cycles and climate change.”
Val gave him an alarmed look. “Never say that. We’re close to the gods here, and they get angry if you deny that they caused everything.”
Demitri smiled a tight smile. “They’ll say they created the weather cycles and climate change.”
“Hanging out with you two is an education,” Leon said. “Anyway, Remy, don’t you want to know what’s down there?”
“Did you see anything?”
“Felt it. Smooth walls, like they were plastered. Very smooth. The room I landed in wasn’t big, maybe ten by ten, and one wall was covered with rubble. Other than that, the room was empty.”
Remy’s eyes lit up. “You must have landed in an antechamber.”
“It’s a long way down through the chips, though, and it’s packed solid. It will take a backhoe to move it.”
“We do it by hand and sift through every bit of fill.”
“Are you serious? That will take forever.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll write up a proposal on it, see if I can bring a team out. I won’t be able to hide this for long, and I shouldn’t. Even if I don’t get to investigate it, someone else should.”
Val laughed at him. “You sound so altruistic, but you know you want your name on this tomb. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you get it all to yourself.”
Demitri gave her a suspicious look. “How do you plan to go about that?”
“You and I are magical people, Demitri. We can reward humans we like, you know that.”
“Not arbitrarily, and not without good reason.”
“It’s not arbitrary. He’s kin of Leon, who is helping me. I can bestow rewards if I like. It’s better than eviscerating people, isn’t it?”
Remy looked startled, but Val smiled at him. “I’ll reward you now,” she said. “I’ll tell you the name of your thief, but you have to promise me you won’t send for the police.”
“Why not? Stealing antiquities is a serious crime.”
Val stood up, her slender thighs at Leon’s eye level. “Promise me, Remy. Or I won’t tell.”
Remy looked at Leon for confirmation, and Leon shrugged. “She probably has a good reason.”
“The only person I wouldn’t turn in right away is Felicia,” Remy said.
Val’s smile widened. “Well, that’s convenient.”
Remy started to speak, then broke off. “You aren’t seriously telling me Felicia has been stealing things, are you? She would never do that.”
“Maybe she has a good reason,” Val said. “I know Felicia has been doing it, Remy. But she loves you and doesn’t want to hurt you. You need to p
romise me you’ll be kind to her, or the vengeance demon in me might need to have one last fling.”
Remy flushed. “I don’t believe you. How could you possibly know?”
Leon got to his feet, sensing his brother’s anger. “He has a point, Val. How do you know?”
“Simple. She changed the checklist that you keep on that clipboard. I looked over the sheets the first time you showed us the storage room. She’s gotten clever—the reason you haven’t noticed anything else missing is because she removed those pages from the inventory. You have no record of it, so you don’t miss it. It will be a long time before someone figures out it’s gone.”
“But they will notice, eventually. And then I’m screwed.”
“Maybe Felicia hopes to replace them,” Val said in a reassuring voice. “You said that the stolen things weren’t valuable information-wise, and you’d already photographed and recorded them. What’s one more ushabti in a museum case full of them?”
Remy’s scowl was fierce. “I don’t believe you. You have no proof.”
Leon moved to stand next to Val. “Chere, before we came out here, you said we could set a trap with Felicia as the bait.”
“Because I knew she was listening.”
Remy nodded reluctantly. “She was.”
“I wanted to put her off guard. If we go back now, we’ll likely catch her in the act.”
“No,” Remy said.
“I know you don’t want it to be her,” Val said. “You’re in love with her. But she is going to need your understanding and love now more than ever. Use this as an opportunity to bring you closer together.”
“What are you talking about? If she’s been stealing from the dig . . .”
He trailed off, looking more unhappy than Leon had ever seen him look. Remy had always been the good Dupree, always agonizing over whether the right thing was the moral thing. Leon saw him agonizing now.
He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. And Val could be wrong.”
Val shook her head. “I’m not. She loves you, Remy, but she has some troubles of her own. She wasn’t born an archaeology postdoc.”
Remy’s mouth closed in a tight line. He picked up his backpack and started walking back down their trail toward the Jeep. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder. “Let’s get this over with.”
Val sighed and shook her head, but she turned to follow him. Demitri started after her, but Leon caught his arm and turned him back. Demitri looked him up and down with his dark eyes, the heat in them intense.
“Thanks, man,” Leon said. “I thought I was dead.”
Demitri didn’t touch him, but his expression held relief. “I didn’t want to lose you, too.”
Leon reached out and squeezed the big man’s shoulder. He turned to catch up with Val, and Demitri fell into step with him, putting his reassuring bulk at Leon’s side.
18
FELICIA faced Remy with her head held high, but her heart beat swiftly with anger and dismay. Val had betrayed her. Felicia didn’t know how Val had found out, but Val had told Remy out there in the desert that Felicia had been stealing from him.
When the four had returned, Remy hadn’t spoken at all to Felicia. The other three had walked back to their own hired Jeep and roared off toward their hotel, leaving Remy and Felicia alone.
Felicia had started to ask Remy about the tomb, which could turn out to be an exciting find. Remy had regarded her stonily then quietly announced that Val thought Felicia was the thief.
“Please tell me she’s wrong,” he said.
“Do you believe her?”
Remy folded his arms. “I don’t know. I don’t want to. But she was convincing and told me I should confront you myself.”
His green eyes fixed on her. Felicia couldn’t read what was in them, and she realized that in spite of the five years she’d worked with Remy, she didn’t truly know him. She’d had no idea he could turn into a lion, for one thing. She’d never met his family, never heard anything more than innocuous things about his life back in Louisiana. They’d talked about archaeology and good finds, research and theories, dreams and ambitions. Nothing about their true pasts, either of them.
Felicia drew a shaking breath. “She’s not wrong.”
Remy dissolved into rage. “Felicia, for God’s sake, why? You of all people know how precious every artifact is, how—”
“Don’t you dare lecture me!” Felicia stepped back and bumped against the table. She remembered Val sitting on it that afternoon, leafing through the pages of artifacts.
“Then tell me why,” Remy demanded.
“Because I needed the money. Why do you think?”
“If you need money, why didn’t you ask me for it? I could have floated you a loan.”
“Sure, Remy, because you’re rolling in money. I know you made it through school on scholarships and hard work. I know you came from a rough background. I also know how much a postdoc makes. You’re lucky you can eat. You are the last person I’d ask for money.”
“Stealing antiquities is better? Do you know what could happen to you? The best is you get tossed out of the country and not allowed back in. You’ll lose your job and your reputation. No one will hire you ever again. And that’s the best-case scenario. It’s your career, Felicia. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I needed the money,” she ground out.
“For what? If you’re in debt, there are programs. You can declare bankruptcy, you can do something. It’s not that desperate.”
“It isn’t debt, Remy. It’s medical bills. It’s expenses way beyond my means, and I don’t exactly get paid a lot myself.”
“We get some insurance. And there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“It isn’t for me.” Felicia pressed her hands to her face, steeling herself to explain. “My mother is in a nursing home. She has Alzheimer’s. She’s only in her early sixties, and she’s healthy otherwise. But nursing homes cost money, medicine costs money, food and clothes cost money, and I don’t know where to get it.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, blurring Remy and the storage room and the shelves and shelves of potsherds.
“Jesus, Felicia, why didn’t you tell me?”
“What could you have done? What can you do?”
Remy went silent, his eyes anguished. “I don’t know. You’re right, I’m useless as shit. But ripping off the dig isn’t the answer. How can you help your mom if you’re in prison?”
“Well, I was hoping I wouldn’t get caught,” she yelled.
“You would have eventually, damn it. Thank God I found out, not Habib. He’d have turned you over to the Egyptian police in a heartbeat.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.” Remy raked his hand through his hair, making it rumpled and adorable. “What did you do with the artifacts? Who did you sell them to?”
“No one, yet.” Felicia wiped away tears with the back of her hand. “I lined up a buyer, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to give him anything. He hasn’t paid me anything either.”
“Thank God for that. Where are they?”
“Under my bed.”
Remy turned away, every line of his body strained. The man she loved had just found out she’d betrayed him. More tears rained down her face. Before this, she hadn’t worried about losing Remy, because she’d been convinced he wasn’t interested in her. But after last night, after kissing him out in the desert, after today when he’d talked to her like he assumed she’d work at his side the rest of her life, she understood what she’d thrown away. And it ripped her heart to pieces.
Remy heaved a long sigh. “Bring them back here and we’ll put them away. No one needs to know about this, and we won’t ever mention it again. All right?”
Felicia nodded, knowing she could do nothing else. The buyer had promised several thousand American dollars for the stuff, but she knew now
she never could have gone through with it. Throwing away her career—and Remy’s, too—for a few thousand dollars would have haunted her forever. Besides that, she had an emotional bond to every piece found on a dig, no matter how insignificant. It was a tie to the past that could never be replicated.
“I’ll get them,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Remy.”
Remy wouldn’t look at her. “You bring them back, and I promise, no one has to know.”
Felicia nodded again and walked blindly toward the door. Remy wouldn’t punish her, wouldn’t ruin her for this. He was a good enough friend for that. But she also knew, as she pushed her way out into the hot desert evening, that he would never forgive her.
“VALERIE is gone,” Val said stubbornly in their suite in the small hotel outside the Valley of the Queens. “She’s not coming back. She never existed in the first place.”
Demitri looked into her beautiful dark blue eyes, the eyes that held the soul of Valenarian. A devious part of him was glad—he loved Valenarian, and she was back to stay.
But his rejoicing would be short-lived. Aphrodite would return in eleven more days to see if they’d succeeded in integrating both women at last.
“Val, chere.” Leon caught her hand. “You know we’re all going to die if you don’t let the nice one come back, right?”
“I know that. There’s nothing I can do about it. Valerie is gone.”
Leon looked at Demitri. “How do we bring her back? More sex?”
Val ran her fingers through Leon’s hair. “I like that idea.”
“Deprive her of sex,” Demitri said, his voice hard. “Valenarian likes it too much. Valerie was celibate.”
“That would just drive me insane. I might turn into a wild killing machine if I don’t have sex. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” She smiled a dark smile.
“Be serious about this,” Demitri snapped. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Aw, it’s sweet that you care.”
Demitri glared at her. “You know how I feel about you. You’ve tortured me with it since the day I met you.”
Val’s smile vanished. “I’m the one who was tortured. What do you think it was like believing you’d never care for me, that you couldn’t because of what I was?”
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