“Tenzin!”
She ignored the Fire King’s enraged voice as she held Daniel’s wrists in her hands, pointed her feet upward, and closed her eyes.
“What the hell are you doing, Tenzin!” Daniel was panicking.
“There’s not enough room for us to fly side by side.” She closed her eyes and asked the wind to guide her. “And I can’t turn around in this space. Don’t look down; just trust me.”
She had to hold on to his wrists and back them out, wiggling through the narrow parts of the passageway and pulling Daniel behind her. She could feel him subtly shaping the rock to clear the passage in the tightest spots.
“Do you smell that?”
Tenzin hadn’t been paying attention to anything but the shape of the air around her, the expanse and shape of the void, and the nascent bond she could feel from Ben’s blood in her system. “What?”
“It smells like bread.”
“The sacred bakery?” She reached out with her amnis, searching for heat and the scent of bread. “I think I can get us there.”
“Just don’t land us in the middle of an oven or something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She twisted through the last of the passageway until she felt her feet hitting stone. Above that stone, there were footfalls that spoke of humans walking back and forth above her. “Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“I think I feel a door of some kind, but it’s stone.”
“Is there air around it?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s not a perfect seal.”
“Then you can get it open.” He squeezed her hands. “You don’t know stone, but you know air, right?”
“Right.” Tenzin felt the fine tendrils of air that whispered along the seams of the rock and focused on them, pushing more and more air into those crevices until she heard the rock move.
“Yes. You’re doing it, Tenzin.”
“With my feet.”
“With nothing, you brilliant woman.” The smile was in his voice. “Keep going.”
“Can you widen it?”
“If I widen it, it will fall and probably give us a very nasty bump on the head, darling. I think your way is far more promising.”
“Okay.” It was slow, but it was working. She felt the stone creak as it gave way, and small pebbles and particles rained down on them, falling into her nose and eyes.
Daniel coughed and sneezed when the dust reached him. “Almost there.”
Almost there.
Almost to Benjamin.
And if Saba had harmed him, Tenzin would be going to war.
36
Ben stalked around the room, which smelled of earth and decay, his eyes locked on Saba, who sat on a stone bench, waiting with an enigmatic smile.
She’d placed candles around the room, so he could see her clearly, and his teenage memory hadn’t done her justice.
Objectively, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her features were dramatic, and her jawline and cheekbones looked as if they’d been sculpted from marble. Her skin was the color of dark mahogany, and her eyes were so dark they appeared to be solid black. Her eyelashes were thicker than average people’s and curled around her eyes, framing them like kohl.
She wasn’t tall, but she was well proportioned and powerful with straight shoulders and a regal bearing.
Which made sense for the mother of the immortal race.
“Saba.” He finally spoke her name.
“Benjamin Amir Rios Vecchio,” she said, her voice resonant in the earthen chamber. “You are everything I wanted you to be.” Her eyes fell to the scroll. “Does it call to you?”
Ben had almost forgotten about the wildly dangerous object he was carrying around like a football. “No. It’s a scroll. I don’t think it has any of these rumored magical powers people are so excited about.” He was trying to keep focused, but he couldn’t keep from blurting out, “You ordered me injured so badly that I would have to turn.”
Saba sat back, her shoulders resting against the wall. “Yes.”
Ben nearly sputtered he was so angry. “Just… Yes. Yep! Sure did. You wanted to end my fucking life, so you did. Is that who you are? A murderer? I thought that you were… I don’t know. Greater somehow. Above all the stupid shit that modern people worry about. I thought you were wise. What the fuck did I ever do to you, Saba?”
She cocked her head and frowned a little. “Are you angry?”
Ben finally paused in his pacing. “Um, am I angry that you ordered a fucking sword put through my body so that I would have no choice but to become a vampire? Yes, I’m a little angry about that.”
She nodded. “But just a little.”
Ben rubbed a hand over his face. “Oh my God, you’re worse than she is about the literal stuff.”
“I was repaying a favor, Benjamin Amir Rios Vecchio.” She folded her hands on her lap.
“To who?”
“To you.”
Ben blinked. “What are you talking about?”
She smiled, and it was so beautiful Ben felt like crying. “You saved the life of my last living child, Benjamin. Lucien had given up; he’d surrendered to the sun, but you risked fire in order to pull him to shelter. You gave him your own blood. After such a gift, how could I leave you to a life of slow disintegration as a human?”
Ben couldn’t take his eyes away from Saba. He leaned his back against the wall and let out a long-held breath. “You were repaying… It was a favor? To me.”
“Of course.” She nodded to the object cradled in his arm. “You were nothing to me at the beginning. An honorable human and a good servant. But later… Something made me look closer, Benjamin Amir Rios.”
She’d left off the Vecchio on purpose, Ben knew it.
“What?” Ben shrugged. “I’m nothing. I was a nobody, exactly what you said, a pretty decent human and a good servant. Why would you—”
“The blood of Mithra,” she murmured, “is a complicated thing.”
Ben fell silent.
“I have known for many years where the scroll of Mithra rested. I gave the scroll to Mararah with my own hands when I guided him to the throne.” She drummed her fingers on her leg. “He did not have the blood of Mithra, of course.”
“Because he was human,” Ben said. “Only wind vampires carry his blood, right? So it has to be a wind vampire who—”
“Do you think…” Saba smiled. “You think any wind vampire could carry Mithra’s scroll?”
Ben lifted it. “I’m carrying it.”
Saba smiled, her eyes dancing. “I can see that.”
“And Saba…” Ben’s mind pushed past the confusion and focused on the job they’d come to do. “Tenzin and I did not come empty-handed. We know that even though the scroll isn’t Ethiopian, it’s still in your territory and so we’re prepared to offer you—”
“Have you read it yet?” Saba was staring at him with unwavering eyes. “The scroll. Have you read it?”
“Uh, no. One, I don’t read Ge’ez, and two, we’ve kind of been running for our lives from your homicidal boyfriend.”
Saba’s eyes danced. “I’m going to tell Arosh that you called him that. He will be so amused.”
Oh dammit, what had he gotten himself into? “Please don’t. What do you want?”
She leaned forward and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “Isn’t it obvious, young Benjamin? I want to know if it works. I want to know if Mithra truly did what he claimed. I never believed him in life. But then after I met you, I began to wonder. Was it possible? Could Mithra have actually—?”
“I don’t understand!” Ben was losing patience with the riddles and the double-talk. “If you’ve known all along where the bone scroll was, you could have had any wind vampire you were allied with—Ziri, Inaya, a thousand others—any of them could have—”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Saba frowned. “Do you still not realize who you are? Why the serendipity of Giovanni Vecchio’s finding you was so very extraor
dinary? Why you hold the scroll of Mithra with such ease? All of this was meant to be. Who am I to interfere with fate?”
Ben shook his head. “I am utterly ordinary. Just like this scroll. The only thing that makes me special is Zhang’s blood, Saba, and I’m not even sure—”
“Has anyone ever told you, Benjamin, that your eyes are quite special?”
Ben blinked. “They changed color. That happens when you turn sometimes, and Tenzin said—”
“You have Persian eyes.” Saba smiled. “Benjamin Amir Rios. Son of Horiya Haddad, daughter of Qamra Saliba, daughter of Dina Azimi, daughter of Ardeshir Azimi, son of Javid, son of Hasan Khani, son of Farideh, daughter of Zana—”
“Stop!” Ben held up a hand. “Stop it. I… I don’t know any of those people. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Those are your ancestors, Benjamin. I could go back further if you like.”
“No, they’re not… They can’t be—” Ben’s mind was swimming. “I don’t know any of those people. You don’t know what you’re talking about. My mother’s name wasn’t Hori… whatever you said.”
“Horiya Haddad,” Saba said. “It was the name she was born with. An honorable name from a prominent family in Lebanon whose roots go all the way back to a Sasanian governor who ruled Sidon a very long time ago, even for a vampire.”
Holy fuck. If Saba was right, his mother hadn’t been lying about everything. Ben was frozen in shock, but what Saba was revealing…
“What are you saying?” he asked. “Be very clear.” A memory surfaced from weeks ago, sitting in Giovanni’s library thousands of miles away in Pasadena.
“But if the bone scroll can be used by someone with the blood of Mithra, that could mean a lot of people… In theory, his human descendants could have had lots of children. They could be thousands and thousands in the modern world, right?”
“You are one of many.” Saba folded her hands together. “And yet you are unique. In so many ways, Benjamin Amir Rios, son of New York, you are singular.”
“You’re saying that I carry the blood of Mithra,” Ben said. “Not only as a wind vampire but as a human.”
Saba smiled. “An exciting prospect, isn’t it? You would think that in all my years of life, I would have tracked down another descendant of Mithra’s and made sure they turned to the air, but I often lose track of things.” She frowned. “Time especially. I forgot about the bone scroll for centuries until Arosh brought it up some time ago.” Her smile turned sly. “So convenient that you’d fallen in with a wind vampire, and one whose own sire owed an obligation to the Fire King.”
A hundred tiny puzzle pieces fell into place around him. The revival of a rivalry thousands of years at rest. A sword lost to the sea. An impossible decision and a wrenching separation.
“You’ve been playing with us.” Ben heard his own voice, and it was tinged with bitterness. “All along, you’ve been playing with Tenzin and me as if we were nothing more than pawns.”
“Have I been playing with you?” Saba cocked her head. “I suppose from your perspective, that could be correct. But you and your partner are far from pawns in this game.”
“My life” —his anger rose— “was not a fucking game!”
“If we are using your metaphor, you and Tenzin are the king and queen of this chessboard. Don’t you see?” She spread her empty hands. “I’ve just admitted to you that the scroll is useless to me. And indeed, Arosh doesn’t know this yet, but he could never wield it.” She smiled smugly. “As if I would allow him to gain such an upper hand; I dearly love my prince, but I have not forgotten who he is.”
“You don’t feel a single regret,” Ben said. “Do you?”
“For what?”
“For taking my human life from me. For forcing Tenzin to give me to her father. For playing your game with our lives.”
Saba’s chin rose. “No. Regrets are useless, and I don’t waste my time on them.”
“You think you’re smarter than everyone, don’t you?”
“Smarter? That is a different matter entirely. But wiser?” She smiled. “Who in our world could be wiser than me? What child can claim to be wiser than his mother?”
Ben held out the scroll, which suddenly seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. “So what keeps me from destroying it right now, Mother?” Anger began to burn in his chest. “What is stopping me from crushing it in my hands?”
37
Tenzin emerged from the floor of the bakery, a dusty mess of a woman with red stone dust all over her clothes, her hair a tangle, pulling an earth vampire through a hole in the floor no bigger than a large loaf of round bread the humans were pulling from the oven.
She looked around the bakery, alive in the predawn hours. The priests who had been baking were frozen and staring at her and Daniel. “Uh… Bêta Merkorios?”
Their eyes went wider.
“Have you picked up any Amharic?” Tenzin murmured.
“Nothing more than yes, no, and thank you.” Daniel looked down at his bare feet. “We look a bit of a mess, don’t we?”
“I imagine so.” She nudged the stone back into the hole with a loud thunk. Then she walked toward the open doorway, feeling Daniel following her.
“Bêta Merkorios?” one of the humans asked.
Tenzin spun around. “Yes. Awo. Bêta Merkorios.” She nodded hard.
The old man dressed in white walked them silently out the door and down the hill, pointing toward the massive metal cover that sheltered Bêta Amanuel in the distance.
“Thank you.” She took his hand and had to resist the urge to kiss it. “Thank you.”
Daniel shook the man’s hand as well and thanked him in Amharic. Tenzin walked down the hill, itching to take to the sky but knowing the humans were watching.
“The cavern Saba pulled Ben into,” Daniel said. “I’m sure it’s part of the complex under Merkorios. There was a scent that was familiar and there was more water. It smelled damp.”
“We have to get to Ben and make sure he’s safe,” Tenzin said. “And we also need to make sure he secures the bone scroll. We have leverage, and he better not reveal it until the right time.” She picked up speed, floating just over the ground to avoid the clumsy earth. “Daniel, are they still—”
“We’re far enough away,” he said. “I really don’t think they can see. The moon isn’t very— Oh my God!”
She’d already grabbed him by the back of his collar and yanked him into the air, speeding over flowing hills and round houses to land in front of the church they’d explored the previous night.
Someone had put a brand-new lock on the old door, but Tenzin didn’t have time for subtlety. She yanked the padlock off the door, twisting the metal in her fingers, the fire of Ben’s blood burning through her veins.
Her mate wasn’t panicking. Now that her head wasn’t swimming from being underground, she could feel him. He was angry. Worried.
Not frightened.
Should he be?
It was a question she had no way of answering until she found him and looked into his eyes. Ben’s bravado could drive her absolutely out of her mind. Male egos were infuriating. She felt him though. His blood hummed with contented energy in her veins, happy that Tenzin had finally recognized it.
The humans who cared for the church had replaced the carpet, but Daniel tore it up again, which Tenzin was grateful for. She had no patience for—
“Small daughter of Zhang!”
“Fuck!” Tenzin bared her fangs and turned to snarl at the voice of the fire vampire who was determined to make her kill him.
“Go deal with him.” Daniel was already moving the stone back from the floor. “I’ll try to find Ben.”
She grabbed his arm just before he walked down the stairs. “Daniel, if he returns safely to me, I will owe you a favor.”
It was no small thing among their kind, and Daniel knew it. “He’s my friend, Tenzin.”
“He’s my mate.” She leaned closer when Danie
l’s mouth fell open. “Do you understand me?”
The vampire nodded silently and slipped into the stone passageway.
As soon as he was gone, Tenzin walked out of the church, dirt and stone dust covering every inch of her, her hair sticking up at odd angles from being tugged and pressed in the ventilation shaft.
Arosh stood across a wide gulf carved into the rock that surrounded the church of Merkorios. Between them, a two-story drop threatened to make life very painful for anyone who happened to fall into it at night.
“Tenzin.”
She tucked a chunk of hair behind her ear. “Arosh.”
He still looked immaculate. His hair was braided and shining. His skin had a healthy glow gained from the rich oils he used on his body, and his leather leggings and billowing white shirt reminded Tenzin of a pirate in a movie. She couldn’t stop a smile from touching the corner of her lips.
“Do I amuse you?”
“You amuse many women,” Tenzin said. “But not me.” She gave him a small salute. “I consider you a valuable competitor, however.” She shook her finger at him. “Your women had very high standards, and I think you should consider that a compliment.”
He narrowed his eyes. Arosh hadn’t known for sure quite how Tenzin had “enjoyed” staying in his harem, but he might have been starting to get an idea.
“The boy—”
“Is a man now, Arosh.” Tenzin scanned the surrounding area, but she found only one other vampire mind hovering nearby. It wasn’t Ziri—nowhere near powerful enough. Inaya maybe? “You do know Ben is a grown man, don’t you?”
“Do you?”
She smirked. “Oh yes.”
“Ah.” He shrugged. “I wish you happiness, but despite my new peace with your father, I must take the bone scroll from you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “That will not be happening. Ben is the one who found it. He is its caretaker now.”
“But it is a treasure from Saba’s territory.” Arosh paced back and forth along the edge of the rock. “He has no right to it.”
“He does if he bargains for it,” Tenzin said. “You know your queen is amenable to a fair trade. Especially if that trade nets her a token from her most beloved daughter.”
The Bone Scroll: An Elemental Legacy Novel Page 27