THE Egyptian Museum was crowded and dense, tourists pouring off buses to tramp through the five thousand years of history packed inside. Patricia tingled with excitement despite Nico’s bad mood, and she couldn’t wait to feel the vibrations of some of the most exquisite objects in the world.
Rebecca confidently bypassed the long line to the Tutankhamun gallery, saying she’d show them even better artifacts stashed away in the basement. Patricia was eager to see the fragments, which a phone call yesterday had assured them were here.
As they made their way into the administrative offices, people began to stop and greet Rebecca. She waved at men and hugged women, her shyness gone.
One of the men offered to take them downstairs so they could see the ostracons. Patricia had brought her digital camera, complete with fresh batteries.
The basement was even more densely packed than upstairs, with storage rooms and huge spaces crowded with shelves and boxes. Patricia wondered how anyone found anything down here, but their guide seemed to know his way around. A larger museum would be opening soon in Giza to take the load off this one, their guide said, then added, “Inshallah.”
Their guide, whose name was Ali, stopped at a door and opened it with a key. Inside were shelves covered with grills, all locked. He led them unerringly to a grill whose lock looked newly cleaned and oiled, and opened it.
“Two fragments found near Alexandria,” he said.
He pulled out one piece of limestone, about two feet square. Andreas reached for it, but Rebecca beat him to it. She gazed down at the stone in reverence.
The second fragment was larger, about two by four feet. Nico lifted that one, and Rebecca touched it, her eyes shining. Ali moved boxes from a rickety table, and Rebecca positioned both pieces on it.
“This one first, I think,” she said, tracing the hieroglyphs on the smaller piece. “And the other one fit in between. Yes, that’s just lovely.”
She gazed happily at them, unable to stop touching them. Patricia pulled out her camera and turned it on, waiting for the light to tell her all was ready.
A shout from Nico startled her. She looked up to see Ali heft a sledgehammer and bring it straight down on the fragments.
Rebecca screamed and dodged out of the way. The smaller piece shattered, and then Nico and Andreas were on him. Ali, a small, slim Egyptian man in his twenties, fought them off, suddenly having the strength of ten.
Nico wrestled with him, while Rebecca tried to grab the pieces of fragments. Ali threw Andreas and Nico off like they weighed nothing and brought the sledgehammer up again. Andreas dragged Rebecca out of the way as the sledgehammer came down.
Patricia watched in sickened horror as Ali pounded the fragments to dust. Nico tried to catch his arms and stop him, but Ali threw him backward across the room.
Nico pushed himself up, his rage bringing out the divine light inside him. Andreas had already morphed to his leopard form, kicking out of his clothes and snarling like crazy.
Ali brought the sledgehammer down one more time, then he wilted. The sledgehammer slid from his grip, and he crumpled to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head.
Andreas leapt on him, but Patricia rushed to them. “Wait. I don’t think—”
Andreas flashed sharp teeth at her, but he backed off and sat on his haunches. Rebecca was crying, hugging pieces of limestone rubble to her chest.
Nico retrieved the sledgehammer and stood above Ali. Ali opened his eyes and blinked up at them, then went pale with fright and started babbling in Arabic.
Andreas growled again, lips curling back from his teeth. Rebecca wiped her eyes and dragged in a deep breath. “Leave him alone, Andreas. He doesn’t know what happened.”
Rebecca spoke to him in fluent Arabic for a few moments, then Ali switched back to English. “I do not know why I did that. I could never do such a thing. A demon must have got me.”
He climbed shakily to his feet, his face almost green with fear. He looked at Nico and Andreas, who surrounded him menacingly, and held up his hands. “I truly do not know. I would never destroy an artifact. Never.” Tears leaked from his eyes.
“I believe him,” Patricia said. She quietly clicked off her camera, not needing it now. “But I don’t think it was a demon that possessed you, Ali. I think it was a goddess.”
PATRICIA left the museum in fury, but Andreas and Nico seemed strangely subdued. “Dyons don’t have the brains to track down the fragments,” she said as they walked back to the hotel. “They can only follow us. But getting into the museum in broad daylight to attack would have been too hard for them. So she takes over the mind of an innocent to destroy the fragments once she knows where they are. We do all the work tracking them down; she walks in and takes over.” She raked a hand through her hair, wanting to scream in frustration. “What a bitch.”
Rebecca nodded, her eyes glinting with the same anger. “Remember what I told you about my dissertation advisor? Same thing. I did the grunt work; she walked in and used every bit of it. But this is worse. Destroying an artifact is unforgivable. Unforgivable.” She stabbed the air for emphasis.
“It doesn’t matter,” Nico said.
“Of course it matters.” Patricia rounded on him in the crowded street. “It must have been the key to getting you free. Why else would she destroy it?”
“He means it wasn’t meant to be,” Andreas said. “We weren’t meant to be free. It’s not going to happen.”
“You can’t give up now,” Rebecca said, her face set in determination. “What we find on ostracons are mostly copies of other inscriptions, for practice learning hieroglyphs or to allow people far from a monument to read what was on it. All we have to do is find the original inscription. I remember some of what was on the first fragment. If we can find inscriptions with the same kind of theme, we can look until we find a match. We can—”
She broke off as Andreas seized her hand. “Peace, Becky. We’re finished. The inscription is destroyed. It was a nice try. Why don’t we just enjoy what time we have left?”
Rebecca jerked away. “Forget it. I didn’t win all those research awards for stopping the minute it got hard. It’s just another challenge.”
“Exactly,” Patricia said. “I’m good at tracking down elusive antiques, and Rebecca is good at tracking down elusive information. Between the two of us, you can’t lose.”
Nico and Andreas exchanged a look. Patricia recognized the look for what it was, and her rage mounted. They’d given up, tired from struggling to free themselves. They didn’t want to hope.
She folded her arms, not letting Nico go anywhere. “I refuse to run back home with my tail between my legs. I will keep searching and helping Rebecca. Besides, I’m in Egypt for the first time in my life, and I want to see a pyramid.”
Nico gazed down at her from his height, his eyes dark as sin. She knew she’d never find a man like him again.
“All right,” he said quietly.
Patricia had drawn a breath to fling more arguments at him, and she stopped in surprise. Nico gave her a nod and turned her to walk next to him again. “Keep looking,” he said as they went. “I won’t stop you.”
He wouldn’t explain what he meant and was quiet all the way back to the hotel.
THE pyramids of Giza, across the river from Cairo, were every tourist’s destination. Nico, Patricia, and Rebecca found people from every corner of Europe, North America, and Asia waiting in lines to ride camels or be ushered across the rocks by tour guides to the base of the ancient pyramids.
Andreas had refused to come, much to Rebecca’s annoyance. She pretended she didn’t care as she walked with Patricia, but Nico sensed her hurt.
Nico knew exactly why Andreas had remained behind. The feeling of being watched hadn’t left either of them, and Andreas had faded into the shadows to see if he could flush out their mysterious follower. It hadn’t been Hera or a Dyon; they were far more direct and gave off different vibrations.
Patricia’s face lit up as they came to the base of the Great Pyramid, a structure built before Nico was born. Even the famous Tutankhamun had considered the pyramids of Giza to be ancient.
He looked up the great blocks of stone, while Patricia and Rebecca took pictures of each other with it in the background. Climbing the pyramids was now forbidden, but that didn’t keep them from scrambling around the base, looking in wonder at the giant blocks of stone. Rebecca knew much about it and kept up a babbling commentary to Patricia.
Nico scanned the crowd with caution, on the lookout for Dyons. Now that the fragments were destroyed, perhaps the Dyons would back off, but then, with Rebecca’s and Patricia’s determination to keep looking, Hera might well decide the best way to stop them was with their deaths.
He looked back at Patricia and Rebecca in time to see them disappear around a rock. Cursing under his breath, he leapt lightly to the top of the slab he had been leaning against, to see them descending to the temple behind the pyramid.
Nico could move fast when he wanted to and skimmed over the stones on their trail. He saw them stop and greet an Egyptian in a Western business suit, odd attire for this dusty venture.
Nico moved toward them, wondering if this was the antiquities dealer they’d spoken to before at the hotel. Patricia was certainly chattering with him without fear, Rebecca nodding at points. Nico slowed a little but continued his descent.
He saw a sudden flash of light, blinding power that seared his eyes, and when he blinked them clear, the Egyptian man, Rebecca, and Patricia were gone.
ANDREAS reached him within half an hour of Nico’s call. “What the fuck?” he panted, drawn and gray with the effort of getting there.
“The man following us was a god,” Nico said, his throat tight. “I don’t know what god, but that explains why we couldn’t track him down. If they don’t want to be seen, they’re not seen. Patricia wouldn’t have seen his aura, either, unless he let her; it doesn’t matter how psychic she is.”
“Damn it.” Andreas looked around the crowds of tourists and camels, Egyptians in caftans and Western clothes, colors amid the dusty white. None of them seemed to have noticed the flash of white or the three vanishing. “What the hell did he take them for?”
Andreas growled agreement. Gods were capricious. He might want to share a good wine with Patricia and Rebecca because he liked them, or he might want to father a new race with them. It depended on who he was and what agenda he had. And if he was friend of Hera’s . . .
“You didn’t recognize him?” Andreas demanded.
“No. He was hiding his true form and hiding it well.”
“So what do we do? Tear apart Egypt, or toddle quietly back to our rooms and wait for him to return them, if he ever does?”
“They might be far from Egypt by now,” Nico said.
“I know that.” Andreas flashed a scowl around the crowds. “You know, it would be great if I could say this is the best thing, the easiest way to get ourselves away from them, but you know I can’t.”
“No.” Nico knew he didn’t have to say anything else.
Andreas had his hands on his hips, still scanning the crowd. “Now that we know we’re looking for a god, we might be able to spot him.”
Nico wasn’t so sure. Gods were experts at keeping themselves hidden. They’d become especially adept in the last millennia or two as belief in the old gods was all but destroyed.
Nico had already searched the spot from which the three had vanished and found nothing, not even a disturbance in the dust. He and Andreas looked again, then walked around the pyramid and gazed into the shadows of the entrance.
Patricia suddenly stepped out into the bright sunlight and smiled at him.
“Patricia, damn it,” he said, starting toward her. “Where did you go? I thought—”
She didn’t seem to hear him. She laughed and beckoned to him. “Well, come on.”
Nico turned to call to Andreas, and when he looked back at the entrance, Patricia was gone again.
With Andreas right behind him, Nico dove past the line of tourists and into the dark hole of the pyramid.
PATRICIA had no idea where she was, but the vibrations of the ancient tomb were spectacular. The place was lit with generator lights, showing all four walls and ceiling painted with beautiful, bright scenes of Egyptian life. The tomb must be thousands upon thousands of years old, the vibrations so strong she had to raise an extra shield to protect herself.
Rebecca, who didn’t have to worry about psychic residue, simply gazed at the walls with the hunger of an avid archaeologist.
“I’ve never seen these before,” she said in wonder. “I can’t believe how well preserved it is. No one’s tried to chisel off the panels, the paint hasn’t faded, the colors are as fresh as the day they went on. Of course, the Egyptians knew how to make things last. It’s amazing how smart and practical they were and how romantic at the same time.”
The woman was nearly salivating.
“They are coming, yes?” their Egyptian friend, Mr. Ajeed, said.
Patricia couldn’t quite remember how she’d gotten here, into this deep tomb that Ajeed promised held wonderful artifacts. The best in Egypt, he’d said, but a well-kept secret. They would have to traverse many secret passages to find it.
Patricia had no memory of walking down here, though her legs were tired enough. She’d gone back outside, to see Nico staring at her in amazement, though she didn’t quite remember that journey, either. She’d told Nico to follow, but he was taking his time.
Ajeed smiled, showing white, even teeth. “That is because, my dear young woman, it has not yet been discovered.”
“Huh?” Rebecca stared at him. “If it hasn’t been discovered, how did you know the way down here? Giza’s been gone over pretty thoroughly. I’d be surprised if someone doesn’t know about it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Rebecca demanded. “We didn’t walk that far; we should be just behind the Great Pyramid, in one of the temples.”
Ajeed smiled. “You must trust me. You need answers, and I have found them for you.”
Patricia frowned at him. When they’d met him in the lobby of the hotel, Ajeed had seemed an ordinary antiques dealer, the same kind she’d met in her business travels before. He dealt in antique furniture, mostly from the Ottoman period, and sold to dealers throughout Europe, the U.S., and the Arab world.
Patricia had tried to read his aura, on the lookout for Dyons in disguise—not that they seemed bright enough to use disguises—but she’d found the aura of an ordinary person. Nothing supernatural about him.
Without changing expression, Patricia let her shields down again, touching Ajeed with her psychic senses.
She nearly screamed. The power that emanated from him was brighter and fiercer than any she’d ever seen. Even Andreas’s and Nico’s auras weren’t as strong, and Andreas and Nico had knocked her to her knees.
Ajeed lifted his hand, and abruptly the white-hot light vanished. Patricia gasped, finding herself flat on the floor, her head pounding.
“I am so sorry, Miss Lake,” he said, reaching down to help her. “I should have anticipated you would try that again.”
“What are you?” She refused his offered hand and climbed painfully to her feet herself. “No, wait, maybe I don’t want to know.”
Rebecca was looking on in shock. “What do you mean, what is he? What did he do to you?”
“He isn’t human.” Patricia’s headache began to recede, but the muscles in the back of her neck still pulsed.
“No,” Ajeed agreed. “Your friends, they are demigods, half god, half mortal. I am like them, only nothing about me is mortal.”
Before meeting Nico and Andreas, Patricia would have assumed the man was crazy, but now she was not so sure. “A god, then. Which god?”
“There are so many,” he smiled. “Gods, gods everywhere. It’s likely you wouldn’t have heard of me.”
“Try me,” Rebecca said, hands on hips. “I’ve studied most of the ancient Egyptian religious texts.”
“Very well, then you can call me Bes if you want. But I prefer Mr. Ajeed. I like having a human name.”
Rebecca looked him up and down. “Bes was a dwarf god. You’re pretty tall.”
“Ah, but human forms can be so deceiving.” Ajeed cocked his head toward the entrance, looking for all the world like a harmless, friendly Egyptian man. “I believe your friends have arrived.”
He turned as Nico strode from the stone stairs into the tomb. Andreas came behind him in his leopard form. Patricia wondered why they had taken so long, but maybe they’d had to look for a private spot where Andreas could change into his leopard shape.
But then, Mr. Ajeed—Bes—had claimed that they were no longer in Giza. Frowning, she marched out past Nico, taking the stairs up. Nico turned and followed, and she heard Rebecca clattering behind them.
Patricia emerged in a shallow room that looked out over a place of bright emptiness, a land she’d never seen before.
17
WHERE are we?”
Patricia felt Nico behind her, his tall, strong body protectively at her back. The shallow, square-cut cave opened out to a steep, rocky cliff. Below them empty desert rolled away under a blue sky to the gray green smudge of cultivation around the Nile. Dry air burned through her lungs.
Rebecca stopped beside them. “I’d swear this is Amarna, a cliff tomb on the north side. But that’s like two hundred miles south of Cairo.”
“Mr. Ajeed claims to be a god,” Patricia said, staring at the stark beauty of the landscape. “Why couldn’t we follow him into the Great Pyramid in Giza and emerge a couple hundred miles south?”
“I never would have believed it before I met you people,” Rebecca muttered. She shook her head, turned around, and marched back down into the tomb.
Nico slid his arm around Patricia’s waist. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m happy I haven’t lost you.”
“I wouldn’t have left you behind.”
He didn’t answer. His arms tightened around her waist, and she turned around and kissed him.
Their mouths took each other’s in slow warmth, with only a taste of the incredible hunger of the sex they’d been having. Right now she was just a woman loving a man.
Nico smoothed her hair back from her face and touched his forehead to hers. “Patricia.”
His dark eyes held so much sadness. She kissed him again, trying to wipe away the loneliness that made her heart ache. He’d spent so many years alone, and she wanted to assure him that he never would again.
“We should go see what this is all about,” she whispered.
Nico nodded, still holding her. She would have loved to stay there forever, the two of them against the barren and beautiful landscape, the sun warming them as they held each other.
Nico took her hand and led her back down the passage.
At the bottom, Mr. Ajeed stood smiling at Rebecca, while the leopard Andreas sat protectively in front of her.
“So, now we know where we are?” Ajeed asked, still affable.
“I was right; it’s Amarna,” Rebecca said stiffly. “I’ll gloss over how we got here, because I have the feeling I don’t really want to know. But why?”
“I will show you.”
Ajeed started to go around her, but Andreas rose, hackles up, teeth drawn in a snarl.
“Let him, Andreas,” Patricia said. “I want to see why we’ve been tricked here.”
Andreas subsided, still pressing tight to Rebecca, his blue eyes ice-cold.
Ajeed led them through a small doorway built of precisely chiseled thick blocks and down another passage. It, too, was lit by a string of generator lights, which made Patricia wonder about the power source. If this was an undiscovered tomb, who had put in a generator?
Ajeed led them down a ramp and down again. The air was cooler here than outdoors, the sun a long way outside these giant blocks of stone. It was also not stale, which meant there was another source of air, some shafts far above, perhaps.
When they reached what must be the very base of the tomb,. Ajeed stopped. They stood in a burial chamber, a stone sarcophagus prominent in the middle of the room.
The walls and ceiling were covered with more paintings, the colors vivid white, green, red, black, orange. The human figures were the expected half-turned surreal forms. The animals were more lifelike: birds in flight, wild cats hunting among reeds, the curved prow of a boat on a lake, looking remarkably like the feluccas that sailed the Nile now.
Rebecca stared around in great delight. “An untouched Amarna tomb? No way.”
Ajeed flashed his smile. “It is. It was put into my care, I a lesser god, so honored by this task. I have protected it all this time, kept away robbers old and new. The lord, he rests in peace, enjoying his afterlife.”
Patricia glanced at the sarcophagus, suddenly imagining the mummified body that must lie inside it. She stepped back into the curve of Nico’s arm. This place was indeed peaceful, the psychic vibrations soothing and almost still. No one had been into this room since the grave tenders had sealed it up more than three thousand years ago.
Rebecca frowned at Ajeed. “The entire city of Amarna was built by Akhenaten to worship one god, the Aten,” she said. “Other gods weren’t welcome, in a big way, so why should you have been asked to guard this tomb?”
Ajeed looked modest. “The lord who lies here, he secretly disagreed with the pharaoh. But one couldn’t say that, oh, no. He remembered Amun and Osiris and the old gods, and asked me personally to look after him.”
“Hmm.” Rebecca looked around again, the gleam of the true historian entering her eye. The past was alive to her, Patricia realized, more alive than shopping in London boutiques or going to clubs with a gorgeous man. Her eye saw more than Patricia’s could, even with her psychic vision.
Nico turned to look at the wall behind them and went still. “Andreas.”
Andreas padded to him. He stretched his leopard limbs, then he elongated into his human form and stood up, naked and casual.
Rebecca joined them, her gaze lingering on Andreas before she looked at the wall. Patricia looked, too, and realized what she was seeing.
“The inscription,” she gasped.
“All of it.” Rebecca nearly jumped up and down in excitement. “There’s the bit I translated,” she said, pointing to a patch near the ceiling. “There’s so much of it. No wonder it didn’t make much sense; whoever copied it out on the ostracons only used part of it. This is terrific.” She spun in a little circle, prettier than Patricia had ever see her. “I’ve just made my career. I’m the first one to ever see this; I’ll be the first one to translate it. I’ll have journal articles out the butt, interviews, job offers. Woo!”
She danced around until Andreas caught her, his grin wide. “Take it easy, sweetheart. Don’t pass out from happiness.”
Rebecca flung her arms around his neck. “I don’t care.” She kissed him on the mouth, then smiled at Ajeed. “Thank you, Mr. Ajeed, or Bes, or whatever you want to be called. You’ve made me the happiest girl on the planet.”
PATRICIA had not said much about the discovery, but Nico didn’t have time to ask her why until later. The upper rooms of the tomb provided dry accommodations out of the heat and wind, and Ajeed had furnished them with cots and camp chairs, and plenty of food and water. He’d also somehow transported all their bags from the hotel.
Nico stood in the entrance, looking out from the cliff face to the empty valley below. No one stirred there, not tourists nor archaeologists.
“He was prepared for us, wasn’t he?” Patricia stood next to him, fanning herself in the heat, a bottle of water in her hand. “There’s enough stuff here for us to stay for weeks. But if anyone saw him setting up, or sees us now, this won’t be an undiscovered tomb for long.”
“I think he did something,” Nico mused. “Suspended time or drew a curtain across this area or something. There’s nothing out there.”
She joined him to look over the ruins of the kingdom of Akhenaten and his famous queen, Nefertiti. There was nothing left except a few faint ruins covered over by dust. A green smudge in the distance showed a line of cultivation and then the sparkling waters of the Nile.
“I was advised that this area was dangerous to visit,” Patricia commented.
“He’s protecting us.”
“I have to wonder why. Bes wants Rebecca to translate that wall. Is he for or against Hera?”
“Come here.”
Patricia went to him as Nico stripped off his T-shirt. He unfolded his black wings, enjoying stretching them out. “You asked me once if these worked, if I could truly fly. Want to see?”
Patricia’s eyes began to glow, the blue green light of the sea. “I’d love to.”
Nico pulled Patricia to stand in front of him and wrapped his arms around her waist. She gasped. “You mean with me?”
Instead of answering, Nico jumped off the cliff. Patricia shrieked once, and then Nico’s huge, feathery wings caught them in outstretched black glory.
He glided on the hot wind from the valley floor, then pumped his wings to take them higher. He loved the feel of the wind in his feathers, the strength of his wings holding them easily aloft.
After Patricia’s initial fright, she went very quiet. When he looked at her, Nico saw that she was grinning.
“Like it?” he asked.
“Like it?” She laughed. “Nico, I love you!”
The words smote his heart. She’d said them before, when he’d first made love to her, and he still couldn’t be certain if they came from her heart or from the joy of the moment.
He soared over the valley and to the barren stretch to the east, not wanting to chance being seen by farmers near the river, not sure how far Bes’s power stretched. He wheeled over the cliffs, again catching the updraft to glide across the valley and its ruins.
The sun was sliding westward, streaking the sky with red as it hit the dust in the air. Twilight descended, quickly followed by dusk. The stars were silver pinpricks in the sky as Nico landed at the cliff-top entrance to the cave again.
He turned Patricia in his arms and kissed her. She tasted like the wild joy of flying and the honey sweetness of herself. He wrapped his arms around her and lowered her to the clean-cut floor, letting his wings cushion her.
“Let me pleasure you,” he whispered.
“Now? Right here?”
He swept his tongue through her mouth, feeling her respond like he’d taught her.
“Right here.”
Patricia’s pulse sped under his touch. “What if the others come looking for us?”
“What if they do?”
Her eyes burned bright. “That would be bad.”
“You like it bad, Patricia.”
“Do I?”
“You’ve had it sweet, now let me show you rough.”
She smiled, a glint in her eye. “You’ve tied me up before. And I remember a gag once.”
“That was nice playing.” He bit her cheek. “I mean bad, Patricia. Do you trust me?”
Her pheromones were pouring from her, her excitement increasing. “Yes.”
“Are you sure about that?”
For answer, she licked him across the lips. His cock tingled and lifted. She certainly wanted to play.
He could tell the difference in their kiss. Things had changed between them, no longer she being uncertain and he teaching her. She’d learned to give in to her naughty self, the one that loved two men in her bed, liked playing with the silk scarves around her wrists.
Now she wanted more, the most he could give her. Their relationship would peak; after this, she’d start losing interest in him, and her affection would drift away, maybe even manifesting itself as disgust. She wouldn’t be able to believe she’d let him do what he did—if their lovemaking even lingered in her mind.
“Strip,” he said.
She started, then smiled again, glancing over her shoulder to see if anyone was on their way up the passage.
Nico growled. “I mean now.” He ripped open her blouse from neck to waist. Her hands came up to stop him, but he let his god strength and magic manifest to have her clothes in shreds and her naked in seconds.
“That isn’t fair—”
“I don’t care about fair,” Nico said. He snatched her up in his arms, got himself to the edge of the cliff, and flew off into the night with her.
PATRICIA had seen movies like this. The savage man dragged the woman off with him, and the others went wild with worry, but the woman discovered that beneath the beast lay a heart of gold. She’d already found Nico’s gentle heart, but she hadn’t experienced his savage strength.
In silence he carried her through the desert night, her naked body against his for warmth. Something seemed to jar the entire world, then he landed in a strange place that was nothing like where they just were.
She seemed to be on a balcony overlooking a lush, green world, perhaps an oasis in the desert. It was night, everything in hues of silver, black, and gray. The room behind her had a marble floor and cushions everywhere, no other furniture except two low tables heaped with food and drink.
She started to open her psychic senses to discover where she was, but Nico clamped his hand on her arm. “No. Let it be.”
“Why? Where am I?”
“In a world of my making. Enjoy it for what it is.”
She looked perplexed. “But where are we really?”
For answer he seized her wrists and pushed her down into the cushions. He kissed her, his mouth masterful, and she stopped squirming.
Nico was heavy on top of her, no longer playful and laughing. He was strong, pinning her wrists to the floor. Before she could ask what he intended to do here, he’d shoved her legs open and thrust himself inside.
What he did to her—what she let him do to her—in that room amazed her. She never thought she’d like what he wanted, to surrender entirely to him and let him do as he pleased.
He pumped into her until they both were ready to climax, then he withdrew, flipped her onto her hands and knees, and entered her from behind. They both came not long after that. Then he made her stay in that position while he worked lube into her ass and then slid inside there.
Andreas had done this, but with him it had been tingling, experimental, daring fun. Nico meant business. He filled her and pinned her, his strength letting her know that he could do whatever he wanted, and she couldn’t stop him.
But he never hurt her. As hard as he drove, as firmly as he held her down, it was nothing but pure pleasure.
Afterward, he carried her to a bathroom like the one in their Cairo hotel and laid her in a huge fountain with warm water running from its spigots. He washed her and himself, then he made love to her against the tile.
He tied her to one of the spigots and made her promise him all kinds of sexual favors to secure her release. Then he made her do them. They used the fruit and wine that loaded the two candlelit tables, he feeding her or eating from her as he liked.
When she was exhausted from this play, he carried her to the balcony and let her rest, watching the wind in the trees and the moonlight on the lake there.
Nico laid himself on top of her to warm her. “I never want you to forget me.”
She gave him a sleepy smile. “How could I ever?”
“You could. But I don’t want you to, even if you hate me. I know I never will forget you.”
“Because of the curse?”
“Because of you.”
The emptiness in his eyes hurt her. She knew she could never reassure him, and she also knew she didn’t really understand the curse of the goddess. Both he and Andreas had decided that whatever Rebecca or Patricia did couldn’t help them.
“If you’re my slave,” she asked, “why can’t I order you around? You’ve been pretty masterful all night.”
An interested light entered his eyes. “What would you do?”
“Oh . . .” She let her imagination go and began to smile with where it went.
He took her hand and wrapped her finger around his gold chain. “What would you do?” he repeated. “Command me.”
Excitement shot through Patricia. What would she dare? But they were in a place of magic, a place that didn’t really exist, and maybe anything she did here wouldn’t be quite real. It was a fantasy, and Nico was letting her live it.
“All right,” she whispered, then pushed him away. “Get your butt back in that fountain. Now.”
Nico suppressed a smile as he rocked to his feet and sauntered back inside, his beautiful ass moving as he walked. Laughing at her, was he?
Patricia stalked after him, and when she entered the chamber, she found a whip in her hand. She snapped it.
It flew around and hit her own bare skin, stinging like crazy. Nico started for her, concerned, but Patricia waved him off, her face flaming.
She practiced with the whip until she mastered it better, and Nico watched, unable to hide his grin.
“You asked for it, buster,” she said.
She cracked the whip again, loving that she had her own beautiful, naked, willing slave at her beck and call.
“You’re not in the fountain,” she said. “Stand in it, against the wall.”
Nico stepped into the fountain tub, putting his back against the blue-and-green-tiled wall. Water trickled from vents in the top, coating his body with a sheen of it.
She wanted to stop and salivate, but she kept up her persona. “Hands above your head.”
Nico lazily raised his arms, crossing his wrists. She wondered what she could use to bind him, or bind him to, when manacles suddenly appeared around them.
“You do a convenient fantasy,” she said. “I want your wings, too.”
They peeled out from behind his back, splashing water droplets all over her. He fluttered them, then settled them along his body.
There he was, a winged god, sleek and wet, his arms stretched above him and crossed at the wrists. Every muscle gleamed with water, his body tight and dark.
“You are so beautiful,” she said.
He only smiled at her, his eyes sin-dark.
He was giving her an incredible gift. She’d known Nico long enough to know he hated giving up control, that his bond to the curse chafed him. He turned it around by assuming mastery over the one who enslaved him, pleasuring her so well that she surrendered to him.
And here he was, surrendering to her.
His cock was already hard and tight, taunting her to do her worst. She sashayed forward, aware that his hungry gaze roved every inch of her body.
Patricia had never considered herself a knockout—pleasant in a subdued way was as far as she’d go—but Nico looked at her like she was the sexiest, most delectable woman in the world. She felt her power as he looked at her. He wanted her, and she could play with that.
First she came close enough to almost touch him, body to body; then, when his gaze blazed with need, she stepped back a few inches. Something dangerous flickered in his eyes, and she laughed.
Next, she slid the leather of the whip behind him and wrapped it around his hips, further pinning him. His cock poked through a crisscross of the leather.
She tied it off and stepped back, surveying her creation. Delectable.
Patricia sensed Nico’s god powers rumbling through his body, and him keeping them in check. If she dared lower her psychic shields, his aura would no doubt throw her across the room.
He was calming himself for her, letting her enjoy her illusion that she controlled him.
Patricia eased herself to her knees in front of him. Leaning carefully so that she didn’t touch him, she blew on his stiff, smooth tip.
He moved slightly, a groan escaping his mouth. Patricia licked where she’d blown, rewarded by a louder groan and a shift of body.
“You’re killing me,” he said hoarsely.
“You’re a demigod,” Patricia said brightly. “You’ll get over it.”
He said something under his breath she didn’t understand, but she recognized swearing when she heard it. She felt a little glow of satisfaction.
Patricia got up and fetched the lube they’d used, then returned to smear it all over his cock. She rubbed it in, letting her fingers dance, sliding under his balls and playing with them.
He moved and groaned, straining against his bonds. She caught up a slim candlestick from one of the tables, sans candle, and slid it between his legs. He parted them, and she rubbed it over his thighs and balls and buttocks.
He was sweating, the water still trickling over him, his wings fluttering and flattening against the wall. He rocked his hips, helping her please him with the candlestick.
“I’m going to come,” he moaned. “Let me be in your mouth.”
“Not until I say.” She unwound the whip from him and cracked it in the air, pleased with her newfound skill.
“Please,” he begged.
“No.”
He glared at her, a divine being who didn’t want his wishes denied.
“When I’m ready,” Patricia said.
Nico growled, his wings slapping the wall. She knelt again and opened her mouth wide, taking his whole cock inside.
His groan rang through the room. She slid her lubed fingers between his buttocks and warmed his anal star before sliding one gently inside.
Her mouth never let up its play while she carefully caressed his ass. Beautiful Nico stood still and let her, even though he could at any time smash away the chains and take her to the floor.
She sucked him a little longer, then withdrew and looked up.
His hair was wet and plastered to his face, his eyes heavy, cheekbones flushed. His wings moved restlessly.
“Now,” she whispered. “Now you can come.”
She closed her mouth over him again, just as he cried his release and shot his seed over her lips.
She smiled up at him around his cock, her heart full. I love you, Nico, she wanted to say.
As though he heard the silent words, he roared. He ripped his hands apart, the manacles breaking and falling before they dissipated into mist.
He scooped Patricia from the floor and ran with her to the cushions of the bedroom. Still hard, he pushed into her, making love to her until her laughter turned to screams.
Then, when he’d come a second time, he held her against him, his heart thudding beneath his hot skin. The beautiful and strange room dissolved, and they were lying in the dusty tomb at Amarna, snug on their cot.
“Was it a dream?” she whispered as she slid into sleep.
“No,” he said.
18
REBECCA closeted herself with the inscription for the next five days straight. She slept down there, barely remembering to eat or drink.
It made Andreas crazy. He hovered over her, growling at her to take water or she’d dehydrate. Rebecca would drink, but absently, staring up at the hieroglyphs and jotting notes like crazy.
“She’ll kill herself,” Andreas said to Nico and Patricia where they liked to sit on the cliff side. Rebecca had told him pointedly to leave the tomb and stop interrupting her. Andreas hadn’t wanted to leave her alone, but her frazzled look told him he should give her some time to calm down. “She’ll kill herself for nothing,” he continued.
“She’s a trained archaeologist,” Patricia said. “She’s probably like this with all her finds. It excites her—like me with antiques.”
Andreas only growled back, “This is crazy.”
Of course Patricia would take Rebecca’s side, and Nico was so twisted around Patricia, he wouldn’t try to help. Andreas knew why he was crabby. He was worried about Rebecca, worried that the inscription meant nothing, worried he was about to lose her.
Also, Rebecca worked on the inscription until she fell asleep in exhaustion, and Andreas hadn’t had the chance to be with her. He snuggled down with her at night, but she was too far gone for sexual games, and he was too bound to her to return to Patricia for relief. He had to release himself before he boiled over.
Sometimes, when Nico and Patricia weren’t having sex, he’d go with them down to the ruins, and Patricia would tell them about the special kingdom that had been built there. Akhenaten had designed and built Amarna to give reverence to Aten, the god of the sun disc. He’d moved the capital here from Thebes, to the consternation of the powerful priests of Amun. Archaeologists still weren’t sure what to make of Akhenaten, and many conflicting theories abounded. He’d been married to the beautiful Nefertiti and possibly sired the famous Tutankhamun.
The ruins weren’t as romantic as the pyramids at Giza or the Temple of Karnak, far to the south, but Patricia seemed fascinated by the mosaics on the floor of Nefertiti’s palace.
During this time, they saw no one. No tourists, no farmers, no police. No one. Bes was protecting them well.
Andreas wasn’t quite as interested in the ruins as Patricia was, not caring much about how people worshiped long-ago gods. Most of the gods he’d known had been powerful, arrogant, obnoxious shits. Bes betrayed his lesser status by being nice. Gods of Andreas’s pantheon were only generous when they wanted something.
At night, after Rebecca fell asleep, Andreas would become too restless to stay put. He’d change to his leopard form and enjoy himself racing across the rocks, basking in the cool of the night. The stars were unobstructed by pollution here and stretched thick and white across the horizon. He longed to show Rebecca this beauty, but the damn woman wouldn’t come out of her tomb.
One night he returned from his nocturnal exploration and pulled on his pants, in case Bes, who turned out to be extremely modest, saw him. He wandered barefoot back down inside the tomb, annoyed that the lights were still on. Rebecca was still at work.
Andreas entered the lower room and stopped. Rebecca had fallen asleep over the inscription, her face childlike in slumber.
Andreas smiled, then went to her and smoothed back her hair. She made a soft sigh at his touch, then as her awareness returned, she jumped and woke.
Andreas knelt next to her, still stroking her hair. He kissed her cheek, trying to keep his impatience and raging lust in check. She smelled nice, warm and damp from sleep, her mussed hair exactly like it would be when she left his bed.
“Did you finish?”
Rebecca looked momentarily confused, then her face cleared. “I think so,” she said heavily. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. “All that work, and it doesn’t help you at all.”
Andreas gently pried the papers from her fingers. “Come to bed.”
“I want to check a few more things.”
“No, you don’t.”
Andreas swept her into his arms and carried her up to the antechamber where she and Patricia had their cots. Patricia was with Nico, he knew. Nico had taken her somewhere to be alone with her as he had done of late.
Rebecca, on the other hand, had kept on working. He carried her to her cot and laid her on it, wiping the tears from her eyes.
He knew in his heart that their mission was a failure. Whatever Bes was trying to do—infuriate Hera, or prove he was more powerful than other gods gave him credit for—he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. He had known from the start that it was a long shot, and he’d kept going because he hadn’t wanted to give up the chance to be with Rebecca.
He stripped off her clothes without her either resisting or helping him, then he opened his jeans to show her how hard he was for her. Rebecca looked, her pheromones starting to stir.
She reached up and grasped his swollen cock, her light touch making him want to fuck her then and there. He resisted, letting her touch to her enjoyment.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be with Patricia?” she asked.
He’d wondered how much she’d known about the threesome. “That was just playtime, sweetheart. Now it’s all you.”
Her strokes on him grew bolder, and then she sat up and kissed the tip of his cock. “That’s it, baby. Do whatever you want with it.”
A hungry look entered her eyes. She studied his length, touching lightly as though learning him. She swiped him with her tongue a few times, and he held still and let her.
When she’d played a little longer, he eased her down to the bed.
“I want to suck on you some more,” she whispered.
He knew she did, and he craved it, too. He pulled his jeans and underwear off and got on his knees on the bed. He straddled her, then leaned forward so he could put his mouth on her pussy.
Lovely little blond curls met his tongue, and he flicked them until her legs opened for him. He breathed her scent, all female musk wanting him.
“Suck on me, Becky,” he said.
He felt her move his cock with her fingers, and then her sweet, hot mouth closed over it. She suckled softly, and he groaned.
He lowered to her quim again and licked it. He started to lap it, loving the taste of her.
She kept working on his cock, and he fit his mouth to her clit, sucking her at the same time she sucked him. Her hips shifted, excitement taking over.
He needed so much to fuck her. Her mouth was fantastic, but he wanted to dip into this pretty little pussy and feel it squeeze him hard.
He held back. Like Nico, he didn’t want to rush things and have them over too soon. He wanted to savor her, every minute of her, and then have an amazing climax with her before it was all over.
Andreas couldn’t imagine not having this pixie of a woman in his life anymore, but he knew it would happen. Sooner rather than later.
The despair made him growl. “Come on, baby, suck me.”
Rebecca doubled her efforts, her mouth and tongue doing wonderful things to him. In return, he kissed and licked and suckled her until her hips lifted from the bed, and she began to come.
Her sweet cream filled his mouth, hot and wet, and she writhed all over the place, her teeth closing around his cock. She sucked hard, too far gone in ecstasy to be gentle.
Andreas didn’t mind. He moved his hips, fucking her mouth, while he petted her pussy to bring her back down again. Soon he was coming, too, shouting his release as she pulled it into her throat.
Everything went black for a moment, his coming was so hard; then he found himself collapsed on the bed, with her smiling and snuggling up to him.
“Can we fuck?” she asked sleepily. “I mean, for real?”
He touched her face, her come still all over his lips. “An amazing climax isn’t good enough for you?”
“It was wonderful—better than wonderful, but . . .” She gave him a wistful smile. “I want you inside me. Then I’ll believe that you’re really mine.”
Andreas fingered the gold chain around his neck. “I am really yours.”
“I don’t mean that.” Tears filled her eyes. “I mean that you might like to be with me, not just responding to the whim of some goddess.”
Andreas tried to keep his heart cold, but pretty Rebecca was tearing a hole in it. “I do want to be with you, sweetheart. That’s why I want to save it.” He hesitated. “The inscription has nothing on it that will free us, does it?”
She looked mournful and shook her head.
“That’s all right, darling,” he said. He pulled her against him, resting his cheek on her hair. “I didn’t really think it would. So I’m going to savor you as long as I can, all right? And keep on savoring you, until the end is the best both of us will ever have.”
NICO cradled Patricia against him as they listened to the disappointing news. Bes had made them all coffee, looking proud that he’d mastered the art. It was thick, syrupy Egyptian coffee, but Patricia and Rebecca drank it without comment.
“It’s a story,” Rebecca said. “A homily, if you will. I don’t think anyone’s seen this wall except Bes until we got here, but I’m betting this story was known in other places, and the Greeks copied it onto what became our ostracon because it’s a moral tale. Egypt’s power had waned; even the tales of their gods were starting to be forgotten. Some of the names got changed or superimposed on Egyptian ones or hybridized to make entirely new god names, which is why it was hard to figure out.”
“Never mind the history lesson,” Andreas began. Nico shared his impatience, but Patricia stopped him.
“Leave her alone. She worked her ass off on this.”
Rebecca scrubbed her hand over her tired face, distracted instead of angry. “What I’m trying to explain is that the priests started to use Egyptian stories, but this story came from even more ancient times than Amarna—before there was much civilization in Greece at all, back when legend says the gods walked the earth without restriction. What this wall shows is the story of Nico and Andreas. Or Nikolaus and Andrei, as they were then.”
Patricia sat forward, while Nico tried to hide the bite of disappointment. Rebecca’s face was drawn, and he knew they’d reached a dead end.
“What does it say?” Patricia prompted.
Rebecca looked over what she had written. “It’s long and flowery, but to summarize, the sons of the gods, Nikolaus and Andrei, were wild and untamed. Nikolaus had wings of softest sable; Andrei took the form of a beautiful leopard, and together they pursued and seduced as they liked.
“One day they abducted a priestess of Hera. She fell in love with them and did whatever they wanted, then they abandoned her for their next conquest. The priestess, spurned and angry, prayed to Hera for vengeance. Hera devised a potion for her, which the priestess sprinkled on Andreas and Nico as they slept.
“When they awoke, they again pursued the next maiden they saw, but suddenly, instead of wishing only to fulfill their lust, they became her slaves and found chains around their necks. When the maiden was finished enjoying them, she banished them from her, and they had to leave with broken hearts. When they spied another maiden, they sought to regain their lustful ways, but the same thing happened. As it will to eternity.”
Rebecca sighed and pushed aside her scribbling. “The point of the story is that pursuing lust for its own sake will only return to punish the lustful, while true love will be rewarded with happiness. It uses the tale of Nico and Andreas, our Nico and Andreas, to drive the point home. That’s all.”
They were all silent for a moment. Far outside in the night, a bird cried, but except for that, all was quiet.
“That’s it?” Andreas asked.
“Afraid so,” Rebecca answered.
Andreas got abruptly to his feet and stalked to the entrance, looking sightlessly through the dark opening. Nico slid his hand into Patricia’s.
“It’s a story to teach the evils of lust,” Rebecca said glumly. “Nothing about how to free yourself from the curse. I’m sorry.”
Patricia was frowning, not in disappointment but in confusion. “If the inscription means nothing, why were the Dyons so adamant about us not finding it? They didn’t need to pursue us so hard if it doesn’t help us.”
Nico shrugged. “Hera is tricky. She could have sent them to keep us on the path, to drive us this way when the answer—if one exists—lay somewhere else. Or as Andreas suggested to me, it’s just another way to twist the knife.”
“Torturing us, you mean,” Andreas said without turning.
“Something like that.”
Rebecca stood up. “Well, I’d like to talk to her. Ask her right now what she hoped to obtain by keeping you trapped for centuries. Sure, I’d have been pissed, too, if you’d made love to me and dumped me, but I mean, keeping you trapped for eons is insane. I think you learned your lesson.”
Nico tried to keep his voice neutral. “Maybe the spell is the only thing that’s keeping us nice. Perhaps if the spell is broken, Andreas and I go back to what we were, learning nothing.”
Andreas snorted. “Our slavery is based on the idea that we never fell in love—didn’t understand what it was like. She thinks we never did anything but satisfy our lust, so she had to teach us what the pain of love was. But that isn’t true. I fell in love, and lost, and hurt, long before all this started.”
“Me, too,” Nico said. “And because of Hera, I lost everything I could have had.”
Rebecca and Patricia exchanged a look, both stubborn, both so sure they could solve any problem if they picked at it long enough. He squeezed Patricia’s hand, a dull ache in his heart as he realized that he was going to lose everything that could have been.
“It’s over, Patricia,” he said. “You and Rebecca should go soon. We’re going to lose you anyway—might as well get it over with.”
“If we did that, what would you do?” Patricia asked.
Andreas turned around again, his face hard. “What we always do. Exist.”
Existence, not life. Nico felt the familiar burn in his heart, the pain that never quite went away.
Bes scanned the wall, his friendly face distressed. “There must be something in this you can use.”
“I don’t know what,” Rebecca snapped.
Bes turned hopefully to Patricia. “Maybe it says something to you, as you call it, psychically?”
Patricia studied the wall as she had many times since their arrival. “I’ve tried that, but it’s just an ordinary wall. I mean, ordinary for an intact tomb painting from three thousand years ago.”
“I was so certain.”
Andreas smoothly stepped to Bes, grabbed his lapels, and lifted him from his feet. “What is your interest in all this, Bes? Did Hera send you to watch us? Are you going to report how upset we are so she can gloat?”
Bes squeaked as he hung from Andreas’s grip. “No, no. I promise.”
“Why, then? Why should you care whether two Greek demigods got free of a curse?”
“Because it is unjust.” Bes looked indignant, his dark eyes flashing. “When I heard you were trying to break the curse, and I found out what kind of curse it was, I was so angry. She is a great goddess, such as our own Isis, but she is too arrogant. How dare she punish you like this?”
“And if you can get us free, you can rub her face in it?”
Bes wet his lips. “Something like that. She cannot have it her own way all the time.”
“Thwarting Hera is dangerous,” Nico observed.
“Yes, but it needs to be done,” Bes said. “Perhaps I am the only one brave enough to do it.”
Andreas shook him. “What you mean is you think you have the weight of your pantheon behind you, that Isis and Osiris will protect you.”
Bes shrugged the best he could. “If that is the only way. Isis would not openly defy a head goddess of another pantheon, but she would not let Hera hurt me.”
“And it would give you so much more clout with the other gods,” Andreas suggested. “They might even have to take you seriously.”
Patricia advanced on Andreas. “Oh, leave the poor man alone. He tried to help us. If it had worked, you’d be praising him to the skies and buying him beer.”
Andreas returned the man to his feet and stepped back, scowling but knowing Patricia was right.
Nico came to Patricia and slid his arms around her from behind. She leaned back into him, but she was angry; he could feel it thrumming through her.
“You tried,” he whispered. “I’ll always remember that you tried. Thank you.”
Patricia gave him a glare. “I’m not giving up yet. If we do this together, Nico, we’ll—”
She broke off, staring at something behind Nico. At the same time, Andreas snarled and shifted into his leopard form, shaking off the clothes that ripped from him.
Nico turned. The room had filled with Dyons.
Bes drew himself up. “How dare she? This is my domain.”
The Dyons stood in a row, about a dozen of them, shoulder to shoulder, a wall of muscle. Bes crackled with light and threw it at them with his hands.
The Dyons flinched, but the light deflected from them. They were being protected. But that meant . . .
Nico felt it first. He dragged Patricia to the floor, shielding her with his body as the air rent and everything inside the tomb exploded.
The wall paintings cracked and burst into a million pieces. The stone sarcophagus, which Rebecca had been using as a desk, splintered, the dry mummy inside crumbling instantly to dust. Pieces of limestone and alabaster, and chips of paint showered down on them in a needlelike rain.
Patricia coughed as the tomb filled with dust and crumbling, ancient paint. The tomb itself didn’t fall, the stone blocks strong and enduring, but everything else was gone.
As the air cleared, he heard Rebecca wailing. “No, not the wall painting!”
Nico sat up. Bes was coughing, his black hair coated with yellow dust.
Rebecca huddled in a ball by the remains of the sarcophagus. Andreas, still a leopard, paced at her feet, stopping to shake the dust from his fur.
Patricia gasped. “The Dyons.”
They were melting, collapsing in on themselves. Their bodies spun down into dust, returning to the clay from which they’d been shaped.
A tall woman rose from the middle of them, a large, stout matron wrapped in Grecian robes. She had very black hair, large dark eyes, and a cold hauteur that froze the molecules in the air.
Bes ran at her, enraged. “This tomb is under my protection. You don’t belong here.”
“Oh, please,” the matron responded. She waved her hand, and Bes tumbled back across the room. Andreas snarled, fur rising.
“So you almost found the secret,” the woman said to Nico. “But you didn’t know what to do with it.”
Nico raised his brows. “It is here, then.”
“Yes, but gone now. Some stupid priest in this backward land liked the story, and he wrote in the solution. If you had been smarter, you would have understood immediately.”
Andreas’s growls grew loud and long. Nico hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid like leap on her, because Hera could kill him. They were demigods, not gods. Their tainted half blood meant that the gods could kill them if they saw fit.
“But I am compassionate,” Hera went on. She adjusted the cloth over her ample bosom, her eyes narrowing. “I have come to end your suffering.”
“How?” Patricia demanded. “You’ll break the curse?”
“No, my dear. I will end their long, miserable lives. That will free you as well, to get back to your little store.”
“No.” Patricia broke from Nico’s hold. “You can’t; I won’t let you.”
Nico seized her. “Patricia, don’t.” Hera in this form looked like a harmless woman out to do her shopping, but she was the most powerful goddess in the pantheon, bad-tempered and unpredictable.
Hera looked at her in pity. “You poor thing. Bow to me and thank me for relieving you of this pathetic fixation.”
Patricia’s knees bent, though she obviously tried to hold back. She stiffly sank to the floor, and her body folded over until her face touched the dust.
Nico gave in to anger. His wings split the shirt from his back, and he sailed across the floor and bowled into the goddess.
Hera threw Nico across the room. He landed hard on his back and felt the snap of bones, both wing and body.
He heard Andreas growling his leopard growl and rolled over in time to see Hera slam him to the ground in another burst of power. Rebecca screamed. Andreas’s paws scrabbled on the stone floor, then suddenly he went limp and still, his eyes clouding over.
Rebecca crawled to him, crying. She flung herself on him, stroking his dust-choked fur.
Hera fixed her attention on Nico again, and through his pain, he sensed her power draw to a point. She was going to release it at him, and then Nico would die.
“Patricia,” he croaked. “I love you.”
Hera let fly. Her power was too mighty to look at, a huge golden light that was a deadly missile. Through his blurred vision, Nico saw Bes step quickly in front of him and take the entire brunt of the blast.
19
BES’S body absorbed Hera’s power, expanding hideously, then he exploded with light. The whiteness of it filled the tomb, burning fire on Nico’s retinas. He wanted to reach Patricia, to protect her, but he couldn’t move.
When the light died, Bes stood upright in front of Hera. He no longer looked like an Egyptian but a short man with a lionlike face with horns in his dark hair.
“This is my jurisdiction,” he said. “I told you.”
Hera regarded Bes in fury, her matronly form elongating to something powerful and huge. “And those two lascivious demigods are my creatures. Guard your mummified man and give those two to me.”
“No,” Bes said. “I read the story on the wall, too, a long time ago, and I know what it means.”
Hera’s face went white. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“It’s all about love being stronger than lust.”
She drew herself up, thrumming with power. “What of it, little god?”
“What are you going to do with that one?” Bes asked, pointing at Andreas’s still body.
Nico’s grief hit him hard. The one constant in his life had been Andreas, his snarling, snarky, smart-ass companion in hell. Andreas lay lifeless on the tomb floor, his eyes staring sightlessly.
Rebecca had draped herself over him, moaning incoherently. Patricia sat against a wall, her knees drawn to her chest, crying, dust smeared on her cheeks.
“He’s nothing to me,” Hera said. “A bastard fathered by my promiscuous husband.”
“If you don’t want him,” Bes asked her, “will you give him to me?”
Hera’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“As a treat. To compensate me for destroying my tomb.”
Hera regarded him wearily. “Do as you like with him. I resign all claim. Will you mummify him?”
“No.” Bes grinned at her, his low stature and the horns making him look cocky. “Do you give up all claim on him?”
“If you insist. Not much more vengeance I can take on a dead leopard.”
“Excellent.” Bes beamed.
Nico could only watch, broken and in pain, as Bes went to Andreas and put a kind hand on Rebecca’s shoulder.
“My dear, I think you should go sit with your friend.”
Rebecca clung to Andreas’s body. “Leave him alone.”
Patricia staggered to her feet. She went to Rebecca and pulled her up, letting the smaller girl cry on her shoulder. She led Rebecca away and they both sank down next to Nico. Nico watched Patricia, unable to reach for her.
Bes straightened Andreas’s limbs, which were already stiff. He shook his head in pity.
“He didn’t deserve to die.”
“He is a male creature who gave female creatures much misery.”
“And yet, this little one weeps for him.” Bes pointed to Rebecca, being soothed by Patricia.
Hera shrugged. “She was caught in my curse.”
“But she is free of it now, yes?”
“She should be.”
“And yet, she still grieves.”
Hera did not look impressed. “She will recover soon.”
“I must think how to ease her pain.” Bes rubbed his hands together. “I’ve always wanted to try this.”
“Try what?”
“Reanimation.”
Hera snorted. “You need much power to do that. Get it wrong, and he’s a zombie leopard—not pretty.”
Bes gave her a Well, maybe look and continued to position Andreas’s body.
Patricia looked up in horror. “Can’t you just leave him alone?” She glared at Hera. “There’s a difference between taking vengeance and torturing someone because you enjoy it.”
“Patricia,” Nico whispered.
She didn’t hear him, or at least she pretended not to. She cradled Rebecca against her and bravely faced the most powerful goddess in the Greek pantheon.
Hera got a gleam in her eye Nico didn’t like. “I see.” She turned back to Bes. “Well, get on with it.”
The room dimmed. Nico wondered if the generator power was tied to Bes, and now that he needed to use more of his magic, the lights were going. Or maybe it was Nico’s vision. He was in so much pain he couldn’t tell if he was dying or not.
Things had definitely gotten darker. White light concentrated around Bes, and the small god closed his eyes, lips moving silently.
Hera watched, a smirk on her face. The light coalesced around Bes, touching Andreas softly and making his open eyes shine.
Bes’s power burst out from him in an incredible wave, ripples sending the rubble bouncing around the floor. Patricia drew protectively closer to both Nico and Rebecca, and Rebecca lifted her head to watch with dull eyes.
Andreas’s body leapt as though electricity had licked through it. The leopard jerked, limbs stiff, and then slowly came upright, as though dragged by puppet strings.
Rebecca started to crawl forward. “No, please, leave him alone.”
Patricia dragged her back again, urging her to keep still.
Hera laughed. “There is a difference between reanimation and resurrection. You obviously have them confused, Bes.”
The leopard was on its feet, not alive, but standing on its own. Nico felt sick to his stomach.
“You are correct.” Bes smiled. “I can’t do a resurrection, but my friends can.”
He pointed to something high up on one wall. A painting still clung there, having miraculously escaped the explosion. There were two figures: a woman with long, thin horns on her head in a transparent dress, and a man facing her. Isis and Osiris, Nico realized, the goddess and the husband she’d brought back from the dead.
“Isis and Osiris,” Bes shouted. “Lend me your strength.”
The painting began to crack. Before it crumbled into nothing, a shaft of light lit up Bes, which he transferred to the leopard.
Nico held his breath. Sudden animation sprang into Andreas’s eyes, and the big cat yawned. The new life rippled down his body from ears to tail—Nico could follow the wave all the way down. At last Andreas did a full cat stretch and shook himself.
Still bathed in light, Andreas rose on his hind legs and took on his human form, stretching tall. Rebecca’s eyes lit with joy.
The thin gold chain around Andreas’s neck broke with an audible snap, and the pieces clinked to the floor. Andreas put his hand to his throat in wonder, then he laughed.
“Ha!” Rebecca shouted to Hera. “You said you resigned all claim to him, which means he’s no longer under your curse.”
Hera’s eyes blazed, and she raised her hand, power gathering in her palm.
“No,” Bes said quickly. “You gave him to me. He is my creature now, protected by the power of Isis.”
Hera stared at him, then folded her hand, and the light faded. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. He is nothing. An unimportant demigod.”
Andreas laughed again. He closed his hands around his throat, his blue eyes dancing with mirth.
“In that case,” Andreas said to Hera, his voice strong and powerful, “I have something to tell you.”
He grew taller, his demigod divinity filling the chamber. He changed again into a leopard—his true leopard form, huge and powerful and painfully bright.
“Fuck you.” Andreas ended on a very leopard snarl, then he leapt straight upward and vanished.
Rebecca was on her feet. “What did you do to him?”
“She didn’t do anything,” Nico said. His heart lightened, joy that Andreas was beyond her reach mitigating some of the pain inside him. “He’s free.”
“But where did he go?”
“Who knows?” Nico wanted to laugh. “It doesn’t matter.”
Hera’s outrage faded, replaced by a knowing smile. “How does it feel, Nikolaus? Your friend, bound to you for millennia, deserting you when you most need him?” She switched her gaze to Rebecca. “How does it feel for you, dear? You see, he never loved you, never even liked you. He used you with absolutely no thought of caring for you. Does that make you angry? Would you like me to punish him?”
She watched Rebecca hopefully, but Rebecca only looked back at her.
“No. I’m happy he’s free of you. Let him run wild if that’s what he wants.”
“How disappointing.” Her look hardened, and Nico understood that Rebecca had changed in Hera’s eyes from Andreas’s victim to Hera’s enemy.
“How does it feel?” Hera asked her again. “To know that the only man who found you beautiful was a liar? He didn’t think you beautiful at all. He only wanted you to translate the inscription for him, and he’d have done anything to make you do it.”
Rebecca watched her expressionlessly. Nico wanted to smile his encouragement.
What Hera couldn’t see in Rebecca was her courage and strength, her fortitude. She was not a woman who would crumple and fall because another woman told her she couldn’t catch a man.
“You know,” Rebecca said mildly, “my dissertation advisor was much better with insults than you. And still I got my PhD with honors.”
Hera’s brows rose. “You are quite amusing, my dear. Andreas has just deserted you. It doesn’t matter whether you care about the truths I tell you. He’s left you.”
“If he would only come to me because he was compelled, then I don’t want him,” Rebecca said.
“How brave you are.”
She sounded like she was losing interest. Hera glanced over at Nico, who couldn’t move for pain. “The question now is not Andreas, it is what I will do with you.”
“You’ll do nothing.” Patricia said. She’d gone to stand with Rebecca. “Nico is still under the power of your curse. Isn’t that good enough?”
“Not really. Someone has to pay for Andreas escaping me, and Bes is beyond my reach.”
“He’s already hurt. He can’t even move.”
Hera smiled sadly. “I see that. Poor little demigod. I will have to repair him.”
She raised her hand and sent a ball of light to Nico. He gasped as the shock of it hit him.
Mending his bones hurt worse than the breaking of them. He clenched his teeth, holding in his agony. His bones cracked and snapped as they melded together, his wings spreading. Nausea kicked his gut.
Patricia made a noise of anguish. He heard her footsteps, then felt her slim arms around him, her tears falling on his cheek. He tried to lift his hand to touch her, to soothe her, but the pain was too great.
He heard Hera walk to them, felt the goddess stop and look down. “I could hurt you far worse than that, you know.”
Nico did know. The punishments the gods devised could be cruel beyond imagining, such as Prometheus, chained forever to a rock while an eagle plucked out his liver every day. He wondered what endless horror Hera would bind him to.
Right now, he enjoyed Patricia’s lips in his hair, her cool hands on his skin. I love you, he wanted to whisper.
Bes came to them, the half-sized god’s body thick and strong. “I read the inscription. You know what you have to do.”
“Tell me,” Patricia demanded. “What does the damn inscription have to do with all this?”
“It’s a test,” Bes said, ignoring Hera’s splutters. “Nikolaus and Andrei are tortured for centuries, but if they pass Hera’s test, they will get free.” He shrugged. “Andreas is already free, of course. Death did that.”
“The test?” Hera shrieked in an awful voice. “You dare challenge me?”
Bes looked hesitant, his gaze straying to where the painting of Isis had been. “Yes,” he said.
Hera smiled, looking suddenly happy. “Good.”
Her smile widened as she gazed down at Patricia and Nico, and a dry, hot wind blasted through the tomb. Patricia screamed suddenly, and then she and Rebecca vanished.
Nico started up, no longer caring about the pain. “Where did you send her? What did you do?”
“The test has begun,” Hera said. Her fussy draperies fluttered in the wind. “Your bond to her is broken. How much do you care about her—really?”
“Enough to want to save her from you.”
“Truly? Well, then, you’d better get on with it.”
She smiled, leaning closer and closer to him. Then she vanished, along with Bes and the rubble-strewn tomb. Nico found himself facedown in the hotel room in Cairo, cool tile pressing his face.
A man stood next to him, neat shoes and crisp pant legs dust-free. “Nico, what the hell?”
He lifted his head to find Demitri, his demigod friend who owned the hotel, staring down at him in great surprise.
DEMITRI had dark hair that he wore pulled into a sleek, businesslike ponytail, which went with his well-tailored suit. He’d always been meticulous in his dress, no matter what the century.
He was a son of Apollo and a longtime friend of Nico and Andreas, but when the slave chains were being handed out, he’d luckily been elsewhere.
Demitri had become a good friend over the centuries, a help when they needed it. Nico felt a brother’s closeness with him, though they weren’t brothers by blood. When Patricia and Rebecca had decided they needed to come to Cairo, he’d known there would be no safer place to stash them than at Demitri’s.
Now Demitri listened with shock in his brown eyes as Nico related the story.
“Holy shit,” Demitri said. “What test was she talking about?”
“I have no idea.” Nico rose to look for a shirt. Their luggage had mysteriously reappeared, as though it had never left the suite. “I have no clue what danger Patricia is in, or where she is. She could be anywhere in this world or maybe not here anymore. Hera could have magicked her to Hades. Who knows?”
“I can check on that,” Demitri said. “Hera doesn’t rule there, as much as she thinks she does.” He sat in thoughtful silence a moment. “Andreas just took off?”
“Yes, and I don’t blame him. He was dead, right in front of me, my best friend, and she just laughed. I thank all the gods he’s all right.”
“Me, too. But I wonder what he’s up to. You never know with him.”
That was true enough. “And Rebecca,” Nico said. “I don’t know if Hera sent her off with Patricia or killed her, or what. Both of them stood up to her. I’ve never seen anything so brave, but I wish they’d cowered in a corner and begged her to help them against us. Then they’d be all right.”
“I can see that.” Demitri sat up, his pristine suit a sharp contrast to Nico’s T-shirt and jeans. “I’ll help you look, Nico. We’ll find her.”
Nico wished he could be so confident. He stood looking out of the window over the Nile and the city beyond, so many houses and buildings and people, millions of them. Patricia was out there somewhere—maybe.
He loved her with every part of himself. Whether it was the curse or not, he didn’t care; he loved Patricia, and that was all there was to it. He loved the way she groaned when he pleasured her, how she’d laugh and bite the tips of his feathers.
He loved her riot of blond curls, the pucker she’d get in her forehead when puzzled about something, the aquamarine sparkle of her eyes. Even if she never returned his love, if it was only magic, he didn’t care. His love for her would never die.
“That bad?” Demitri stopped beside him, looking out over his adopted city.
Nico nodded grimly. “That bad.”
Demitri clasped Nico’s shoulder. He didn’t have to say anything; his friendship and support radiated from him.
The door of the suite banged open. Nico and Demitri whirled, poised to fight, then Nico stopped, heart beating in relief as Andreas slammed his way in.
He’d dressed in a ragged caftan he must have picked up along the way. His hair was sandy, his face creased with dirt.
“Where the hell is she?” he demanded of the two of them. “Where’s Becky?”
IT was dark where Patricia was, and she had the horrible feeling of aloneness. Not alone as she might be in her apartment above her store at night; there she was aware of the churning, teeming city around her, people above her and down in the street. Now she felt utterly alone, as though she’d been buried alive.
She hadn’t been. She could move and sit up and even stand, and there was air here, cool and fresh, as though the place was ventilated.
Patricia explored what she could, walking around with arms outstretched, and found that her prison was six paces by six. The ceiling was beyond her reach, even when she jumped.
When she stretched out her psychic senses, the walls began to glow and pulsate with the auras of people long past, hundreds and hundreds of them. She was someplace very old, but not a tomb, which would be quiet with the passing of ages.
This place had seen much activity, and the people here had been excited, bored, hopeful, worried, and happy. She could feel no powerful godlike aura, so she thought perhaps it hadn’t been a temple.
“Not that this is helpful,” Patricia muttered to herself. “I’ll still starve to death. Or perhaps die of thirst.”
Very cheerful.
She rose again and paced the confined space. One, two, three, four, five, six . . . seven, eight?
Patricia stopped, confused. It had been six paces before, she’d sworn that.
“Now I’m losing my mind,” she said out loud. “This just gets better.”
No doubt about it, her prison was now eight paces by eight. Moving walls? Patricia pushed at the stone blocks, but they were solid. She banged on them once with her closed fists, then slid to the floor again.
She sat quietly, frustrated, but not in panic or despair. One thought came to her over and over again: Nico will find me.
She knew this deep down inside. This was the test Hera and Bes had argued about: whether Nico and Patricia would love each other enough to find each other again. She knew the answer was yes.
She did hope that the test of her and Nico’s love wouldn’t be like some of the weird myths she’d read in which the beloved object was turned into a rock or tree or something, in order to make a point. She had mixed feelings about spending eternity as a symbol of true love.
“I’d rather have the reality,” she said, grinding her teeth. “Hurry up, Nico.”
“WE need Bes,” Nico concluded.
The other two had dragged him out to a coffeehouse in a back alley, feeding him potent Egyptian coffee. The streets were teeming as usual, men filling coffeehouses or strolling, enjoying the cool darkness. Two men shared a water pipe in one corner, and at any other time, Nico would have found the pungent scent of spiced tobacco and the slow bubbling of the pipe soothing.
He’d wanted to fly away and search every corner of the world for Patricia, but Demitri convinced him they had to do this logically.
“Bes knew the story on the wall,” Nico continued. “What this test was. What I’m supposed to do.”
Demitri turned to Andreas. The leopard-man had lost his habitual bitter look, his throat free of the gold chain he’d worn for millennia. But he was still angry and desperately worried about Rebecca.
“Andreas,” Demitri began. “If you spent all your time with Rebecca, you saw the inscription the most. You were with her when she finished her rough translation. Do you remember anything about it, especially at the end?”
Andreas ran thick fingers through his hair. “I wasn’t paying attention to the damn wall, if you know what I mean.”
Demitri nodded. “You, a woman—I know what you were paying attention to. But do you have anything, remember anything?”
“Nothing helpful,” he growled. “It was the sad story of Nico and me getting caught by Hera’s spell, and how we were eternally punished for our lust. After that it was stuff about how lust dwindled and love was stronger, how love could shine through where lust failed.”
“All right, that’s good.” Demitri tried to sound reassuring. “What does that mean to you?”
“That love is stronger and more important than lust,” Nico said. “Love has great power, where lust fades. I already knew that.”
Demitri agreed. “What I think it means is that if you truly love Patricia, not just want her, you’ll prevail.”
“That’s helpful,” Nico said in an ironic voice. “Wasn’t there anything on the wall that said, Start looking here?”
“No,” Andreas said glumly. “It didn’t say anything about whether Patricia and Rebecca would be together, either.” He sighed. “I have to find Rebecca. She doesn’t know how to handle goddesses. She’s too blunt. She’ll get herself killed.”
Demitri looked at them both and raised his brows. “I think you’ve both gone way beyond the lust part. Now it’s just legwork.”
Nico shook his head. “This is Hera we’re talking about. Nothing will be that easy.”
“I know. But I have some ideas and friends who might know things.”
“It’s good of you to help,” Nico said.
Demitri looked offended. “How long have we been friends?”
“Four thousand years. Give or take.”
“Exactly.” He clapped Nico on the shoulder. “I won’t leave you in the lurch when things get tough. I say we draw up a battle plan.”
20
NICO insisted that they try to summon Bes. In ancient Egypt, the god Bes had defended homes against evil spirits and other dangers like snakes and wild animals. He was a protector of hearth and home, a handy god to have around.
Modern-day Egypt had thoroughly embraced Islam, but statues of the old gods, copies of those found on archaeological digs, were plentiful. Demitri had one.
The statue was squat and square, Bes’s legs stubby. His face was almost lionlike, his horns two tiny bumps on his head.
“He looks better in person,” Andreas growled. “Barely.”
Demitri studied the statue as it reposed on the table in the middle of the suite’s living room. “If anyone hears I’ve been conjuring pagan gods in my best guest suite, I’ll be run out of business.”
“We’ll keep it down,” Andreas assured him.
He was as restless as Nico, pacing and growling all morning. His movements were jerky as they surrounded the statue with greenery and candles. Gods liked offerings, but Nico wasn’t sure what Bes would enjoy. Wine? Fruit?
“Coffee,” Andreas said. “Remember, he was so proud of his coffee machine.”
Nico decided it had as good a shot as anything, so Demitri sent for a tray of hot, fresh coffee with four cups. The waiter who brought it tried to look into the room to see what they were doing, but Demitri grabbed the tray and slammed the door.
“He probably thinks we’re having an orgy,” Demitri said as he set down the tray.
“An orgy with coffee?” Andreas asked.
“He has a vivid imagination.”
“I wonder what he’d think if we asked for some DVDs?”
Nico looked up irritably from where he was arranging the altar. “Can anyone who’s not still a slave please shut up?”
“Sorry,” Demitri said at once.
“Just relieving the tension,” Andreas added.
Nico finished and sat back on his heels, still wondering how to do this. He’d never actually conjured a god before, mostly wanting them to leave him the hell alone.
He started to chant in an ancient tongue that was not Greek or Egyptian but the language that had existed before those civilizations rose. It was a language of the gods, when they walked the earth, before leaving humankind to have contact with them only through worship, through rituals like these.
“God of hearth and home, I summon thee,” Nico said. “Proud god who faced down the queen of my pantheon, hear my plea.”
Nothing happened. Andreas moved restlessly. “Where is he? It’s not working.”
“Shh,” Demitri admonished. “Let Nico finish.”
Nico tried to block out their words and focus on the statue. Bes looked back at him blankly, the stone remaining immobile.
“Maybe he’s not positioned right.” Andreas grabbed the little god and turned him to face the window. As he lifted his hand away, he knocked against the small cup of coffee, which overturned an spattered all over Bes.
“Damn it,” Nico muttered.
Swearing, Andreas reached for a towel, but Demitri stopped him. “Wait.”
As the coffee dripped from the statue, the stone flushed with warmth. Life trickled into it, inch by inch, until at last a tiny figure stood amid the garlands. The three men leaned forward to look at him.
“No, no, no,” the small Bes said, waving his arms. “I can’t give hints. It’s against the rules.”
“I don’t give a damn about your hints or your rules,” Nico said. “Where’s Patricia?”
“I can’t tell you. If I do, I’ll void the test.”
“Screw the test. I’ll be a slave for eternity if Hera releases her. I don’t care. I just want her to be all right.”
“That isn’t the answer,” Bes said.
“I told you, I don’t care . . .”
“Staying a slave isn’t the solution to the test,” Bes said. “You have to find it on your own.”
Nico clenched his hands. “What is the test? What did the wall painting say?”
Bes looked pained. “I can’t tell you.”
Andreas leaned forward and poked the little god. “Listen, you. I’ve had enough of games with gods and goddesses. Give back our ladies and stay the hell out of our lives.”
Bes’s expression turned mournful. “I can’t. I wish I could help you. I have no desire to see Patricia hurt.”
Nico’s heart felt like lead. “Are you saying that if I don’t pass the test, Patricia will be hurt?”
“Yes, unfortunately. I can make things better for her if you do the right things, but if not . . .” He trailed off with a gesture of helplessness.
“What about Rebecca?” Andreas interrupted. “She’s not part of Nico’s test, is she? Where is Rebecca?”
Bes jumped back a foot, nearly tripping over the garlands. “She’s safe. She’s safe, I swear it. In Greece.”
“Greece?” Andreas stood up. “What the hell is she doing in Greece?”
“She’s in the land of Odysseus and Penelope,” Bes said, perplexed. “In Ithaca.”
Andreas let out a long growl, his claws emerging. “Not Greece, you little stone idiot. New York. She works at Cornell—in New York.”
“Oh,” Bes said. “I just heard Ithaca. I hope I sent her to the right one.”
“You’d damn well better have sent her to the right one.” Andreas reached down and grabbed Bes in his big fist.
The little god shuddered and froze into hard stone. Andreas started and dropped the statue, which shattered on the tile floor into three large pieces.
“Damn it,” Andreas said. “Nico, I’m sorry.”
Nico shrugged, his heart aching. “It doesn’t matter. He wasn’t going to give us much more than that.”
Demitri retrieved his broken statue and tried to fit the pieces together. “What did he mean, he could make things better for Patricia if you did the right things?”
“Who knows? I don’t know what the right thing is.” Nico stared at the tangled garlands and spilled coffee, the statue Demitri was trying to repair. “I have to find her.”
“What’s the phone number for Cornell?” Andreas broke in.
Nico looked up. “I don’t know. Patricia’s cell phone is in her room. She might have it from when she first called Rebecca.”
Andreas was out of the room before Nico had finished speaking.
Nico rose to pace. His back itched, his wings wanting to break free of their confinement. He wanted to soar over the city, blast open every building with his half-god magic, and find Patricia.
He couldn’t; he knew that. He sensed that if he resorted to brute force, he’d never see her again, or he’d kill her in the process.
Where could they hide her that a normal search wouldn’t find her? A living woman couldn’t be taken to Hades and survive, the legend of Persephone notwithstanding. He’d met Persephone, and he had no doubt she had the god of the underworld wrapped around her little finger.
It had to be somewhere magical, mysterious, but someplace she could exist and he could find. That let out any of the god realms; she must still be on the tangible earth.
I’ll find you, Patricia, he thought, hoping that somehow she could hear him. I love you. I’ll find you and break this test and prove my love is real.
He pictured her standing in front of him, her riot of blond curls snaking over her shoulders, her smile, her laughter. He lifted his hand as though to touch her hair, his heart breaking when his fingers brushed only empty air.
THE room had definitely gotten bigger. Patricia could walk twelve paces each way now, and on her next circuit, her foot bumped something hard.
Wincing, she leaned down to see what it was and found a square shape that felt smooth and cool, like tile. She also felt droplets of water, and reaching forward, she encountered the unmistakable silken feel of water.
Her heart lurched, her parched throat pinching. She hesitated, fearful of drinking water that hadn’t been purified, but her dry mouth urged her to at least taste it.
She scooped some in her hands and let droplets dribble across her tongue. They tasted as clear and pure as the best bottled water.
Well water? If she was out in the middle of nowhere, well water might be all right to drink. It was cold and good, and she couldn’t resist scooping more into her mouth.
“Now, if I could just have a sandwich to go with it,” she said hopefully.
She waited, but no smell of roast beef and mustard assailed her, and she sighed. “Oh, well, it was worth a try.”
Patricia started to walk back to her corner, then had the sudden fearful thought that the basin might vanish if she turned her back on it. She whirled around and banged her foot on it again.
She scooped more water into her mouth, then found a dry place to sit next to it. She hung her fingers into the water, its touch comforting.
“Come on, Nico. You’re supposed to find me. I know you are.”
She wished for the hundredth time that her psychic ability included projecting her thoughts to others. Even if she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could feel nothing more than the auras of this room, nothing outside of it.
“Nico, if you can hear me . . .”
She sighed. She knew Nico couldn’t, and she could not hear him, as much as she projected.
“They could have left me a cell phone,” she muttered. “But, oh, no.”
Not that it would have worked in this thick-walled building out in the middle of nowhere. Cell phones were only as good as their ability to pick up a signal.
Patricia sighed, hoping that whoever found her phone put it to good use.
“I’M in Egypt; where do you think I am?” Andreas yelled into Patricia’s phone. At the other end, Rebecca’s shrill, tinny voice came back to him.
Andreas’s heart beat thick and hard. Rebecca’s number at Cornell had indeed been stored on Patricia’s phone’s recent call list, and one touch had it ringing far off in New York. Rebecca’s breathless “Hello” reached him after the second ring.
She was safe. She was all right. Hera hadn’t killed her.
“How should I know where you are?” Rebecca said back to him. Her voice sounded shaky, like she’d been crying. “You magicked yourself out of the tomb, leaving the rest of us stranded.”
“No, I didn’t, sweetheart. I’d never leave you stranded.”
Rebecca huffed. “I saw you.”
“I had to get out before she could think of some way to trap me again. I knew that was the only way I could help Nico. When I came back for you, everyone was gone. I thought Hera had done something with you. Nico and Demitri didn’t know where you were.”
“I blacked out and woke up here, in my office, with my clothes all dirty from the tomb. The department chair walked in thirty seconds later.”
Andreas imagined it, Rebecca filthy from the rain of rubble and wall painting, tears tracking through the dust on her face.
“And do you know what?” Rebecca’s laugh sounded strained. “He didn’t even notice anything was wrong. He just asked me how my research trip to Cairo had been.” She kept laughing, hysteria edging her voice.
“It’s all right, Becky,” Andreas said. “You’ll be safe enough there. Go back to the B and B and tell the cats we’ll be coming soon.”
“What about Nico and Patricia? Are they all right?”
Andreas hesitated, not sure what to tell her.
“What is it?” she squeaked as his hesitation went on too long. “What happened to Patricia and Nico?”
Andreas told her. He clenched the phone, not liking to hear her cries of dismay. He hated being half the world away from her.
“Damn it,” Rebecca said. “I’m coming out there.”
“No, you bloody well are not. You’re safe there. The Dyons will stop tracking you now.”
“Screw that. I have my passport, and my visa’s still good for another three weeks. I can get a British Airways out of JFK and change in London. What else am I going to spend my postdoc stipend on?”
“Becky, no.”
“Stop calling me Becky like it means something. You aren’t under the curse anymore.”
“I know that,” he shouted. “Don’t you get it?”
“I’m coming out there,” she said firmly and hung up.
Andreas slapped the phone closed and stalked out to the living room.
Demitri watched him with an amused look on his face. “Trouble with the little woman?”
Andreas had the sudden urge to go to the man and jerk his tie crooked. Demitri always had to look perfect. “I thought once the curse was gone, I wouldn’t care what she thought of me. But I do. Damn it.”
“I think Nico is having the same problem. What he’s feeling is more than just the curse.”
They both looked at Nico, who had spread maps all over the table, marking places to look. Andreas’s heart burned for him. Andreas at least had the satisfaction of knowing Rebecca was all right, even if the headstrong woman wasn’t about to stay quietly safe at home. Nico was hurting.
Andreas sat down next to him, looking over the places Nico had marked: the pyramids at Giza and the ones farther south at Dashur, the valley of Amarna, the remote areas of the Valley of Kings.
“Why these?” he asked.
Nico looked up, a fanatic light in his dark eyes. “They’re places god magic would have built up over the centuries. If Hera wanted to confine Patricia magically, these would be good. I can’t imagine Patricia staying long in a place that wasn’t magical. She’s resourceful and would figure a way out.”
He spoke proudly, and at the same time, his face was stark with grief and worry.
“There are magical places like this all over the world,” Demitri said, his voice gentle. “Stone circles in England, the Mayan temples, caves in India.”
“I know.” Nico looked up with a frown. “But we have to start somewhere.”
“Good point,” Demitri said, trying to sound cheerful.
Andreas shook his head at Demitri, and rested his hand lightly on Nico’s shoulder. “We’ll find her,” he said. “Demitri and I will do everything we can. Promise.”
LATER that night, Andreas found Nico out on the balcony, looking over the Nile. The river was a black streak in the city of light and noise, the boats on it strings of brightness.
Nico had agreed to rest and start searching for Patricia at first light. Demitri was putting together tickets and passes for them to get around the country.
Andreas leaned next to Nico on the balcony. “You all right?”
“No.” Nico wouldn’t look at him. “She’s out there, in danger, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, you do. You look for her. You keep looking for her.”
Nico sighed. “I’m in love with her, Andreas. I feel it, even beyond the curse.”
“I know.”
“I should have made her stay in New York. I let her argue her way to coming out here because I wanted to be with her. I wanted to have her as long as I could.”
“I know. What do you think I did with Rebecca?”
“I thought my feelings were physical, part of the curse,” Nico continued. “But they go so far beyond.”
Andreas didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. He saw the tears glisten on Nico’s face and moved closer to him.
Sometimes words weren’t enough. Andreas snaked his arm around Nico’s shoulders and turned Nico’s face to him so he could kiss his mouth. This wasn’t about sex but about comfort.
Nico kissed him back, shakily, his lips cold. The world had changed in so many ways, Andreas thought. But once upon a time, in their ancient world, a man could kiss his best friend without condemnation.
He heard Demitri stop in the doorway. “Don’t do that out here,” he said, exasperated. “I have a hotel to run.”
“Piss off,” Andreas rumbled.
Nico stepped away from Andreas, his stance a little stronger. “I’m all right now.”
“No, he isn’t.” Nico was bowed with grief and fear, and Andreas knew it.
“Come on inside,” Demitri said. “If Nico needs comfort, we can both give it to him.”
Nico nodded. He passed Andreas, and Demitri moved aside so that Nico could enter.
Nico took Demitri’s hand and pulled the other man inside with him. He kissed Demitri’s mouth, then started with him for the bedroom, Andreas following.
NICO woke a few hours later, snug in a nest of his two snoring friends. He was grateful to them for their comfort, lying with bare bodies touching for warmth and reassurance, like littermates.
Both Demitri and Andreas advised caution and waiting, but Nico knew he could do neither. They also advised against using his demigod magic to search, but Nico knew he had to use everything in his power to find her.
Nico rose and left the bed, pulling on his pants. Still sleeping, Andreas and Demitri moved closer together, Andreas draping one arm over Demitri’s bare torso.
Nico walked through the dark suite and out onto the balcony. The night businesses had closed, and it would be several hours before shops opened to take advantage of the cool of the morning.
Nico unfurled his wings, letting the breeze from the river ruffle his black feathers. He stepped up on the balcony rail.
I will find you, Patricia, if I have to search for the rest of eternity.
Eternity sounded like a long time for her to wait, but he hardened his resolve. Hold on, my love.
He leapt out into empty air, his wings catching the cool draft rising from the river. He stretched out his powers to see, and the world changed.
Solid shapes receded into irrelevant details. What he saw was humanity, the teeming brightness of it, families gathered for warmth and love against the night.
He soared over the city of Cairo, seeing the spread of domes and minarets of the Islamic city, faith clinging to them like warmth.
Across the river, the cities of Heliopolis and Giza spread before him, densely packed with humanity. The river itself gleamed with boats.
He found no sign of Patricia. He hadn’t expected to, thinking Hera would have put her somewhere far more dire. He turned to swoop out over open desert, the chill of the night catching in his feathers.
Soon that chill would change to unbearable heat, and Patricia would be out in it—somewhere.
He circled south, following the life-giving Nile, and out across the desert cliffs.
PATRICIA jumped awake, her limbs cramped from the hard floor and her folded position.
Her hand had fallen to her side, and she quickly reached for the basin again, sighing in relief to find the water still there. She didn’t feel any ill effects from it, and her thirsty body didn’t stop her from leaning over the tile and scooping handful after handful of water into her mouth.
She felt a little better after she drank and bathed her face in the cool liquid. Her frustration mounted after that. She had to get out of here.
Another exploration of the room showed that it had expanded in size even more. One wall jutted out a little now, and around the corner, still in the dark, she bumped into a table.
Sinking to her knees, she cautiously touched it, thoughts of snakes and scorpions prominent in her mind. Her hand found something ball-shaped, with the unmistakable feel of orange skin.
Laughing, Patricia lifted the orange to her nose and inhaled the citrus goodness of it.
Then she peeled it and devoured it. While savoring its tangy sweetness, she felt the table again, finding a whole pile of oranges and a plate of what smelled like figs. She ate a little of those, too, saving the rest.
Now that her hunger and thirst were somewhat assuaged, she began to want light. She had to figure out where she was and figure out how to get out of there and find Nico.
She hoped Nico was all right. Hera had killed Andreas by barely lifting a finger, and she might think it fun to murder Nico and keep Patricia imprisoned and wondering for the rest of her life.
Best not to think about things like that.
She also wished she knew where Andreas had gone. Had he deserted Nico and Rebecca as Hera claimed? Or was he biding his time? She’d seen Rebecca disappear the split second before Patricia had been teleported out herself, and she wondered if Rebecca, too, was confined somewhere.
She had faith in Nico and Andreas, even if Hera didn’t. Nico would come.
Patricia wasn’t certain how she knew—she’d met Nico only a couple of weeks ago—but she did. She and Nico shared a bond, even if it first started as a curse.
He would come for her.
HALFWAY down the Nile, a man with a rifle aimed into the dawn sky and brought down the largest black-winged bird he’d ever seen.
21
ANDREAS wasn’t surprised to wake up and find Nico gone. Demitri was already up, showered, and immaculately dressed by the time Andreas wandered out to look for coffee.
“Are you going to just let him go?” Andreas asked. He stretched, letting the morning sunlight warm his body through the windows.
“Do you have any suggestions as to where to start looking for him?”
“Not really.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Andreas gulped the coffee Demitri handed him and scowled at the smoggy morning. “I’m not going to sit here while Nico gets obliterated by Hera.”
“I don’t suggest we do.” Demitri set his cup down with economical movements. Demitri’s hair was pulled into his neat, short ponytail, his expensive Italian suit precisely tailored for his frame. Andreas felt scruffy in jeans with bare torso, his hair a mess, and he didn’t care.
“What do you suggest then?” he grumbled.
“Nico’s running on adrenaline and emotion. If you and I use our brains, we can figure this out and help him.”
“You’re optimistic.”
“He’s hurting.” Demitri arranged the empty coffee cups carefully on a tray. “And I saw you both with Patricia even if I didn’t meet her. She wasn’t looking at you or any other man; she only had eyes for Nico. He needs someone like that.”
“Nico’s a demigod. Patricia’s a mortal. How is that going to work?”
“We’ll make it work. And even if they can have only a fleeting time together, don’t you think it’s worth it?”
Andreas thought about Rebecca, how she could move from shy smile to steely determination back to shy smile in seconds. She was two women: the brainy scholar who’d made her name as one of the top archaeologists of the day and the hesitant young woman who’d never realized she was sexy.
“Yes,” Andreas said slowly. “I think it would be worth it.” He studied Demitri a moment, taking in the man’s dark eyes and tanned skin, remembering when Demitri had been a wild hellion running all over the world beside Andreas and Nico. “When did you become the matchmaker?”
Demitri shrugged. “When I realized Nico had a chance to be free and happy.”
“I’m free, if you noticed. Are you happy for me?”
“Well, of course.” Demitri straightened his tie a fraction. “But do you know what to do with the happiness you’ve been handed?”
Andreas thought about Rebecca again, how his longing for her hadn’t abated, even though his slave chain was gone. This was real.
“I’ll figure it out,” he promised.
NICO lay facedown with his wings over him, trying to be as still as he possibly could.
The shot had taken off a chunk of wing feathers, enough to knock him out of the sky. He’d spiraled down to this clump of rocks and crawled behind them, hurt and out of breath. Out in the desert, he heard men shouting to one another, searching for him.
He wished he had the power to make himself invisible, but he was only a half god, with limited magic. He couldn’t retract his wings with part of one damaged, even though it would be almost as awkward to explain to whoever hunted him why he was lying in the middle of nowhere without a shirt. His full-back tattoo would cause comment as well.
All he could do was huddle in stillness in the middle of the rocks and hope they didn’t see him.
To quiet himself, he thought about Patricia. He imagined himself carefully licking her leg all the way up to her quim, then kneeling back and slowly spreading her legs.
She’d laugh down at him, her blue green eyes shining in anticipation, her hair a riot of curls on the pillow. She’d touch her clit like he’d taught her to and spread the lips of her quim. She’d be glistening with moisture and wanting his mouth. And his cock.
That organ inflated as soon as his thoughts spun. His heart throbbed with worry for Patricia, and his cock throbbed with need for her.
The men spoke in Arabic, coming closer. Nico lay utterly still, the warmth that flooded him thinking of sex with Patricia relaxing his limbs.
“I’m telling you, it was the biggest bird I ever saw. A black swan, maybe.”
“Sure, little brother. Like the huge fish you caught last month that none of us ever saw.”
“I told you, some cats ate it.”
“You tell good tales, Ahmed. Very entertaining.”
The first man, Ahmed, trailed off into disgruntled murmuring. They were three feet from his hiding place, their pace not slowing. With any luck they’d tramp on by, unable to see Nico in the early light.
The two men walked past, the second one admonishing the first to hurry up so they could go home and have their coffee. Their footsteps had almost faded, when suddenly the younger man cried out.
“There. You see?”
Nico hid a groan as they dashed back to where he lay, wings spread over his body. He raised his head to see a rifle barrel pointed right in his eyes, and behind the rifle, an astonished Egyptian face.
“Hello,” he said in careful Arabic. “Do you think you’d have enough coffee for me, too?”
PATRICIA wondered if she imagined the light. She waved her hand in front of her face and saw nothing, so she decided it was her imagination.
When she saw Nico again, what would she tell him? That she loved him, first. If the test was finding her, and he did and got free, would he still want her? Andreas had been quick enough to disappear, leaving Rebecca heartbroken. She was a resilient young woman, but Patricia had seen her pain.
Would Nico be a carefree demigod again, happy to be rid of Patricia?
She thought of his upright body, broad shoulders, fine torso, the black spread of his wings. She thought of him naked, with his cock standing straight out from a thatch of black hair, his own feathers caressing himself.
He was a beautiful man—no, demigod—and she was in love with him.
The light was definitely there. It was a faint flicker on the edge of her vision, back where she’d found the tiled basin of water. She rose from the dirt and moved toward it, going slowly in case it was Hera waiting for her with a sword of doom or something.
But her psychic senses still told her she was completely alone. However these things were appearing, no person brought them in.
The light had the dim quality of phosphorescence. She knew that some fungi could glow like that, but she had no idea if such a fungus could be found in Egypt—if she was still in Egypt.
She rounded the corner. The tiled basin glowed as though from within, lighting it up in luminescent blues and greens and reds.
“Great,” she said. “And I drank it.”
She peered into the basin, which, she now saw, was beautifully decorated with mosaic tile. The light was fixed at the bottom, an electric light, not glowing plant life. The water bubbled up from inside the basin, as though from a spring.
The strangeness of all this, which might have frightened Patricia weeks ago, now bounced off her. She had no idea how the room had expanded or how normal-looking things had appeared out of nowhere, but it seemed to go with the situation.
She drank more water, wondering if the light would stay. It was nice to be able to see a little bit. Patricia walked back around the corner to the food table, figuring she might as well have another orange.
The table had grown. She could see its faint outlines in the light, a low, oriental table like what had been in their hotel rooms. It was now covered with brass plates heaped with fruit, not just warm-climate fruit, like oranges and figs, but strawberries, grapes, apples, and dates.
Patricia sat down and made a nice fruit meal, not surprised that everything tasted so good. These were the juiciest oranges, the sweetest grapes, the crispest apples she’d ever had.
This is very weird, she thought. Or maybe it’s Hera’s way of driving me insane. Are these really apples I’m eating, or am I dreaming all this?
The juice running down her chin was real enough. What she wanted most in the world, though, was Nico there to lick it clean.
STRANGELY enough, it didn’t take Nico much effort to get his hunters to accept that he was a divine being. The two brothers, Ahmed and Faisal, lived in a small house in a village of the Dakhla oasis out in the western desert. They were farmers and lived there with their older brother, Mahmud, his wife and children, and their aging mother.
Nico was welcomed into the house and given food and drink, although it was obvious they didn’t have much to give. The brothers were convinced that Nico was an angel sent to bring them luck and divine guidance, and Ahmed took much ribbing for shooting at him.
Fortunately, except for the wing feathers, he’d missed. Human bullets couldn’t kill Nico, but he’d still bleed and hurt. Once Nico’s wings had healed enough, he drew them in, to the family’s delight, and he accepted their offer of a caftan to cover himself.
Nico spread a little magic over the house and the rest of the village to help keep the people here healthy and bring them a good crop yield. He decided to tell them about his quest, which the brothers listened to with interest.
“The divine Nico searches for his beloved lady,” Ahmed said. “I’ve never heard that story.”
“That’s because it’s still being told,” Nico said, cradling the tiny cup of Egyptian coffee they’d given him. “I don’t know what the ending is. Can you think of somewhere around here a goddess might hide a lady?”
They seemed happy to help and speculate, and the oldest brother’s three sons chimed in. The wife, mother, and daughters had taken themselves into another room on Nico’s arrival, but the wife called to her husband, and she and her mother-in-law loudly told him their opinion on the matter.
It took a long time and a lot of argument and then another meal for the family to reach a conclusion.
“There is a place,” Ahmed said. “It is out in the desert where there are no roads. The foreign archaeologists search here, there, and everywhere for sites to dig, but they always miss that.”
“Why don’t you tell them about it?” Nico asked.
Ahmed looked innocent. “It’s fun to watch them look. And it might be nothing, just some square stones in the desert.”
“I’m willing to see them,” Nico said.
Their mother and Mahmud’s wife related that they approved, and preparations were made for a journey into the desert.
Nico waited outside while they prepared, enjoying the cool breeze under the palm trees. The brothers farmed here where life-giving water bubbled from the surface of the desert. They liked it here, Ahmed said, far from the bustling crowds of Cairo and the tourist spots of Luxor and Thebes.
“A man can be his own person here,” Ahmed told Nico. “He can walk with a long stride, and he knows all his neighbors, good and bad. When I go to Cairo . . .” He shook his head. “So many people, so much noise, and I can’t breathe the air.”
Tourists did travel out here to look at the tombs and Roman temple, but for the most part, Ahmed’s village was quiet.
Mahmud had an ancient jeep, which they supplied with gas and water, and the two younger brothers and Nico piled in for their trek into the desert. It took several tries to get the jeep going, and then they were off.
Ahmed and his family were of Bedouin descent, and Ahmed drove the jeep with the same fond restlessness with which his ancestors must have ridden their horses. The sun blazed full and high, but the autumn morning was crisp, the air fresh.
The jeep shot down roads Nico could barely tell were there, Ahmed steering with reckless abandon. Gravel and sand shot up from the tires, and the vehicle tipped with each turn.
From what Nico could tell, Ahmed was driving them straight into the desert, toward the Great Sand Sea. Nico held on to the roll bar as the jeep rocketed onward, Ahmed promising Nico would thank him when they reached their destination.
Nico held out hope that the journey would prove fruitful, because before he’d left the brothers’ house, he’d seen something that startled him. In a shadowy corner, on a forgotten table, he’d seen a stone statue that looked exactly like Demitri’s statue of the stumpy-legged, lion-faced old god, Bes.
ANDREAS and Demitri spent much of the day trying to figure out where Nico had gone, and couldn’t.
“He marked places everywhere,” Andreas said. “Eastern Egypt, the western deserts, the south by Aswan. Why couldn’t he tell us what he was thinking?”
“Because he knew he had to go alone,” Demitri said.
Andreas heaved a sigh. “I’m no longer a slave, and I feel just as helpless as before. I’m supposed to be there with him, my friend, a man closer to me than a brother, and here I sit in your cushy hotel.”
“I feel the same,” Demitri said glumly. “We could have sex to pass the time. Maybe something will come to us.”
Sex with Demitri and Nico had helped Andreas get through many years of the curse. Andreas could sate his immediate need with his friends until the curse caught him again, and he had appreciated that.
But now that he was free, he knew he wanted Rebecca, not his two friends. She called to him, and he wanted to go to her. At the same time, he didn’t want to abandon Nico in his hour of need.
“This sucks,” Andreas said.
“I know.” Demitri came to him and put his hands on his waist. “It’s a poor substitute.”
Andreas looked at his friend’s handsome face and coffee-colored eyes, feeling the leopard in him respond. Andreas was half an animal, with animal instincts that kicked in at the worst times.
Demitri was half an animal, too, and their animal selves called out to each other. Mesmerized by Demitri’s eyes, Andreas tilted his head and slanted a kiss across Demitri’s mouth.
“Oh, goodness,” Rebecca’s light voice cut across the living room. “I came at the right time.”
Andreas abandoned Demitri to charge to Rebecca and catch her in a crushing hug. “What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay in New York.”
“I’m happy to see you, too, Andreas.”
Rebecca kissed him on the mouth, then pushed and squirmed to get out of his arms. She looked Demitri up and down with great interest. “You look nice,” she said. “What do you turn into?”
“A tiger,” Demitri said.
THINGS were improving in Patricia’s prison. The food table now boasted candles that threw a light on her surroundings. By the candlelight, she saw that an oval, tiled bath had appeared on the far wall, enticing steam rising from it.
She didn’t hesitate long before she stripped off her clothes and immersed herself in hot, scented water.
“This is all good,” she said to the air. “But what I’d really like is a door, or a cell phone that works, or even better, to be back at Nico’s friend’s hotel.”
She held her breath, wondering if the magic room would provide any of it, but nothing happened. The things that appeared hadn’t appeared in response to her direct wishes but as though someone else were thinking what next she’d need.
“Some DVDs? To pass the time?” She glanced around at the bright mosaic tile and the gleaming brass of the dishes. “Or is that too modern for you? How about someone to tell me stories, then? Like Scheherazade.”
Nothing.
She sighed, leaning back to at least enjoy the bath.
Here she was, so far from home, waiting to be rescued like a princess in a fairy tale. And all she could think about was the memory of meeting Nico for the first time, liking how he looked with his wings covering his half-naked body.
Then meeting Andreas with his wild cat’s eyes, and Nico becoming all protective of her. Then the incredible way Nico had taught her to feel. It hadn’t been just sex, but learning to appreciate her own body and the beauty of it.
Patricia slid her hands down her wet body and cupped her breasts, feeling them warm and heavy in the water. She pinched her nipples between thumb and forefinger, liking the tingle as she rolled the nubs back and forth.
She wished for Nico to lean down and suck on her, but she had to be content with her imagination.
It wasn’t enough. Patricia rose in the tub, water cascading from her body. The tub was large enough to let her kneel in it, her legs apart, the water lapping her thighs.
She parted the lips of her quim as Nico had taught her, fingers on either side of it. She dipped her finger to touch her clit, closing her eyes at the feeling that spread through her.
Her skin tingled and warmed, her quim going soft. She was wet, not just with bathwater but also with her own juices, and the slickness lapped her fingers as she rubbed herself.
Her head went back, the feel of her long curls brushing her skin, soft and erotic. She imagined Nico trailing his fingers down her spine, his touch gentle, while she played with herself.
Patricia rocked a little against her hand, spreading herself wider. She pretended Nico’s tongue wet her, the tip of it tickling her clit.
She moved her finger faster with the fantasy, a groan dragging from her throat.
Patricia slid fingers inside herself, wishing she had something bigger and thicker. Visions of Nico’s cock played through her mind, the feeling of it long and hot and hard in her hand. She envisioned the dark hair at its base, the heavy balls warm against her palm.
She liked what came with his cock: his tall, muscular body, his sinful smile, his black-dark eyes.
Come for me, Patricia, he’d say in his sexy voice. Show me what you feel.
Patricia rose, her body hot and shaking. She straddled the side of the tub, the tile cool on her backside, and thrust her hand between her legs, pulling up tight.
“Nico,” she said out loud. “Watch me play with myself for you. Watch me want you.”
She worked her clit, thrusting against the cold tile, until her world spun around, and she shouted her release to the echoing ceiling.
She slid bonelessly back into the tub, a smile on her face. “Did you like that, Nico?” She sighed, then she laughed. “What? You want more?”
She pictured Andreas joining Nico, as he had before he’d become bound to Rebecca. His mottled hair tangled down his neck, his ice blue eyes focused on her. His cock, too, would be stiff and hard, ready to find her.
She remembered his cock filling her ass, the lubrication sliding him right in. It had been so good, so . . . satisfying, in a way she’d never been satisfied before. Not the same as Nico inside her, loving her, but in a bone-jarring, dirty fantasy kind of way.
She’d loved it.
Patricia draped herself over the edge of the tub again, smiling at the memories. Nico’s huge cock in her mouth, filling her while Andreas fucked her.
And then Nico inside her, letting her ride him on the bed while he clasped her breasts. His feathers warm and cushioning, tickling her back while he made love to her.
They’d done some naughty things, and she’d loved every second of them. She’d never believed that she, Patricia Lake, could have let herself do them.
Patricia was still hot and needy. She slid two fingers inside herself, pushing like Nico did, trying to stem the ache. She cried out, then her body took over. She fucked herself with her fingers while she shouted Nico’s name, she writhed against the blunt hardness and imagined Andreas in her ass at the same time.
“I love you, Nico,” she cried out as she came, waves of pleasure undulating her body.
“I love you,” she repeated softly as she sank back into the warm water, her eyes closing. “Love you so much.”
Out in the hot desert in back of the rocking jeep, Nico jerked awake, hearing her.
22
SO, why do you like to kiss men?” Rebecca asked Andreas. She sat with him at the table in their hotel suite, eating a much-needed meal.
Andreas looked puzzled. “I don’t.”
“You did with Nico in the hotel in London.” She slid a piece of spiced chicken from a kebab and savored the taste. “And when I walked in, you were kissing Demitri.”
“Oh. They don’t count.”
“Thanks, old friend,” Demitri said. He was still poring over the maps, a worried look on his handsome face. Demitri was just as tall and muscular as Nico and Andreas, but he dressed in finely tailored suits instead of sloppy jeans and shirts.
Rebecca thought she preferred sloppy jeans, at least on Andreas. He had a raw sensuality that she liked; Rebecca, who’d never done anything raw in her life.
“We’re like old comrades,” Andreas said. “Closer than brothers. And we’re not human; the same rules don’t apply to us.”
“Convenient.”
“I think so.”
Rebecca’s gaze strayed to his throat, where the chain he’d worn was gone. She wondered what that meant to what was between them—if there ever had been anything between them.
She made herself walk away from him to the maps spread across the table. Demitri gave her a little smile, unembarrassed, as comfortable with himself as Andreas was.
They’d told her about summoning Bes and what he’d said, and Nico taking off before dawn. She looked at the places Nico had marked, rough circles on the neat layout of the map.
“Here,” she said, running her finger along the line of oases in the deserts west of Cairo. “Somewhere along this road.”
“How do you know that?” Andreas looked over her shoulder. “We’ve got the whole country to search—the whole world, actually.”
“Because I read the wall in the tomb,” Rebecca said.
“Which said what?”
“The ending wound off into gibberish—at least, I couldn’t read much of it. But it talked about secluding the lady in the hidden palace and the lover searching adamantly until he found her.”
“What has that got to do with the western oases?” Demitri asked in a more polite tone than Andreas had used.
“It was talking about gardens in the desert,” she told them. “Ancient, beautiful palaces that have died and wait to live again. Places where forgotten kings will rise from the sands and things like that. That might mean ruins in or near one of the oases. I’ve been out there—lots of fascinating stuff.”
“I’ve been out there, too,” Demitri said, pained. “Lots of sand.”
“Why only in the west?” Andreas asked. “There are oases in the eastern part of the country, too. All over the deserts out here, in fact.”
“The forgotten kings.” Andreas and Demitri looked blank, and she shook her head in exasperation. “The mummies that were found near Bahariyya about ten years ago. About a hundred of them, and they think there are hundreds more. Don’t you read the archaeological news?”
“Sorry,” Andreas said. “Been busy.”
“I heard about it,” Demitri put in. “But ten years ago.”
Rebecca couldn’t imagine anyone not knowing everything about an exciting find, but she let it go. “Anyway, that’s what the inscription could have been referring to. The forgotten kings rising from the sands might be the mummies. There are plenty of ruins out there. It hasn’t all been explored, because most people want to do the Valley of Kings.”
“You know that,” Demitri said. “Does Nico?”
“Doesn’t matter. If we can find Patricia, then we’ll find Nico.”
“But it’s Nico who has to find her to break the spell,” Andreas reminded her. He traced his fingers down her spine, which had her instantly flushing.
“It may be that only Nico will be able to find her. But nowhere on the wall did it say his friends couldn’t help him along the way. In fact, there was a picture of friends around the winged god, including a leopard.” She looked straight at Demitri. “And a tiger.”
“Are you sure?” Demitri asked in surprise.
“Why not? The ancient Egyptians could know about tigers. The caravan routes went a long way east. Pharaohs had all kinds of exotic animals in their menageries. It was a very cosmopolitan society.”
“I meant, how could the person who made the inscription in the first place have known that we’d all be there to help him?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Rebecca tried to step away from Andreas and his intriguing warmth, but she couldn’t. “I only know what I read and translated.”
“It’s good enough for me,” Demitri said, folding the maps. “Better than sitting around here worrying. I’ll go with you. I can arrange for transportation.” He looked down at his exquisite suit and winced. “I’ll have to find something to wear.”
“That’s settled, then.” Rebecca yawned and rubbed a hand through her tangled hair, but her adrenaline was kicking in. “Let me clean up and change. I wish Bes hadn’t sent me all the way back to New York. I’ll never get over my jet lag at this rate.”
She walked out of the room, feeling Andreas’s gaze on her every step of the way. She hoped as she showered that he’d enter the room and try to join her, but he never did.
PATRICIA got up before she faded too far into the bath. The air was warm enough so she didn’t shiver, but she appreciated the pile of fluffy towels she found on a stand next to the tub.
She couldn’t bring herself to dress in her filthy clothes again, so she kept the towel wrapped around her. She went around the corner again, to find her prison had expanded yet more.
Now a bed stood in the corner, an exotic bed with a canopy of pointed arches and plenty of silk hangings and cushions. Exhausted, Patricia had no compunction about climbing onto the bed and letting the softness take her weary limbs.
She didn’t mean to sleep, but she woke abruptly several hours later to see that she wasn’t alone. A man stood about three feet from the foot of her bed, arms folded over a bare torso.
Patricia kept the covers pulled firmly to her chin and looked back at him. He was tall and muscular and wore nothing but a cloth draped around his waist.
“Who are you?” Patricia asked him. She repeated the phrase in Arabic.
The man regarded her stonily, obviously not understanding her.
“I’ve seen this movie,” she told him. “Don’t even think about ravishing me.”
She wasn’t afraid, because it was all so absurd. The bed with its lush hangings, the fruit, the bath, and the half-naked man were all like something from a 1920s film. She admitted that it was better than huddling alone and afraid in the dark, but this was bizarre.
Music began, the wild, fast Egyptian music played at parties and weddings. The man started to dance in smooth, sensual waves, flowing and undulating with grace.
“I see,” Patricia said. “You’re the entertainment.”
The man went on dancing, ignoring her. He was quite good, his body gleaming with oil in the subdued candlelight. His hips swayed enticingly, his movements strong and sensual.
Patricia watched him for a while before she realized he was not going to stop.
“You know, I’d much rather you told me where the door was,” she said. “If you’re getting paid to do this, I’ll give you a bonus for pointing the way out.”
The man continued to dance like he hadn’t heard her. Patricia knew her Arabic wasn’t good enough to make herself understood, so she lapsed into silence.
His body was like liquid sensuality, but Patricia felt only pain in her heart. It reminded her of how Nico had danced for her in his apartment, how he’d smiled as he’d slid his hands to her waist and swayed with her.
She understood now why he’d resisted staying with her. If his pain had been anything like what she experienced now, she knew why he’d tried to avoid it. Nico had lived through thousands of years of that pain.
“Damn you, Hera,” she said. “You have so much power, and you waste it punishing a man who only wants to love.” Patricia knelt upright in the bed, still clutching the blankets. “Do you hear me? I think you’re nothing but a mean bitch. You punish others for your own hurting. So many people are starving or helpless in this world, and you obsess on petty vengeance.”
She fell silent, half expecting the amenities to vanish and the walls to fall on her. But the music went on, and the oiled man kept dancing.
Patricia sank down to the pillows again. She wanted to get out of the bed, but the dancing man kept staring at her, and her dirty clothes were on the other side of the room.
Almost as soon as she had the thought, a silk robe appeared at the foot of the bed, along with what looked like a belly dancing costume.
Ignoring the sequined bra and gauzy skirt, she pulled on the robe and belted it before dropping the towel. The dancer ignored her, still undulating to the music like he was on automatic.
A mindless drone, she thought. Like the Dyons.
Patricia climbed out of bed and moved back into the alcove where the bath was, the area now containing benches strewn with cushions.
But as much as Patricia paced, she found no door or window, not even a ventilation shaft that communicated with the outside world.
She clenched her fists and let out a scream. It rang to the ceiling but was drowned out by the wild music.
The dancer whirled on, oblivious of her frustration. She watched him sway his hips and swirl around, arms and hands working, then she sat down on the cushioned bench and cried.
“IT was here,” Ahmed said. “I think.”
They stood on a dune at the end of the jeep road, staring out across the empty desert.
It was beautiful. Waves of sand flowed under the blue sky, a contrast of color and light. Behind them was the rocky desert, the oasis swallowed in the mist on the horizon.
“Sandstorm is coming,” Ahmed said, sniffing the air. His brother Faisal nodded. “We can’t start now.”
Nico conceded. He could survive even the worst sandstorm, or he could easily fly away from it, but his human companions could not.
They took shelter in a rocky outcropping below the dunes, and Nico helped the brothers unroll the cloth top over the jeep. It wouldn’t be much shelter, but would help keep out the brunt of the storm.
When it hit, the visibility disappeared within seconds. Nico huddled in the jeep with the brothers, who started swapping stories about other sandstorms they’d weathered. Nico sat silently and thought about Patricia.
He swore he’d heard her call out to him, in a voice ringing across the sands, but when he’d sat up, he’d realized that Ahmed and Faisal had heard nothing. He wanted her so much, so longed to hear her tell him that she loved him, that her voice had cut through his dreams.
He remembered the naughty look in her eyes as she’d fantasized out loud in the car on the way to Cornell. She’d described how she’d open his jeans and fondle him, then suck his cock into her mouth.
He remembered all the times she’d really done it. Patricia seemed especially fond of his cock, loving to simply hold it and gaze at it. She liked licking it and nibbling on it, and seeing how much of it she could take into her mouth.
Patricia had a skilled, wicked mouth. She’d always smiled at him afterward, pleased with herself.
He’d give anything to have her with him now, locked alone with him in this sandstorm. She’d look at him with her sexy eyes and whisper to him how much she wanted to pleasure him. Him, the slave that was supposed to be devoted to her pleasure.
She’d never tried to take advantage of his bondage to her, never tried to humiliate him. Everything she’d done or asked him to do had been loving, sweet, beautiful.
The sandstorm lasted several hours, and by the time it lessened, the sun was sinking. Ahmed and Faisal got out of the jeep, brushed away the worst of the sand, and started setting up a camp.
Nico helped them, then left to begin to explore the dunes.
REBECCA worried about getting to the oases quickly, until Demitri told her he had a private plane. They’d fly out to Dakhla and be there in a few hours.
Andreas hadn’t spoken much to her at all. She’d cleaned up and dressed without seeing him, fuming that he hadn’t tried to get into the shower with her.
In the plane, she had a seat to herself, with Demitri across from her and Andreas behind her. She pretended to ignore Andreas and talked to Demitri instead.
“So, you’re a demigod, too?” she asked him.
He nodded. “My father was Apollo, my mother a magic woman from the Indus Valley. She could take the form of a tiger, and she taught me to as well.”
“And you’ve been friends with Nico and Andreas since . . . ?”
“Since forever, as people like to say now. We met as young men. When Hera trapped the two of them with her curse, I wasn’t there. I decided to stick around and help them as I could.”
Rebecca saw guilt in his eyes that he’d been elsewhere when Hera had taken her vengeance. He’d stayed not only because he wanted to help his friends but to atone for escaping.
Andreas didn’t contribute to the conversation, and when Rebecca looked behind her, he seemed to be asleep. She set her jaw and looked out of the window in silence.
They landed first at Bahariyya but found no evidence that Nico had come this way. Demitri insisted they continue to Farafra and then Dakhla. It was getting late by then, so they opted to stay in a small hotel and continue their search the next day.
Rebecca found it strange to walk on cool, green grass under palm trees when, not far away, the stark desert spread across thousands of miles. This was a beautiful place, an island in the desert, but it frightened her that Patricia might be lost somewhere in the endless sands.
Demitri discovered quickly that Nico had been there. The villagers here knew everyone, and everyone had heard the story of Ahmed shooting a godlike man out of the sky. They scoffed at the story but agreed that Ahmed’s family had found a man in the desert and driven off west with him.
Demitri went to hire a car and guide, while Rebecca pored over a local map in her hotel bedroom, trying to decide which way they should go.
She heard Andreas enter and stand right behind her. He smelled of sweat and the diesel of the car that had brought them here, and his own male musk.
“Why did you come back?” he asked abruptly.
She kept her gaze on the map, pretending his nearness didn’t unnerve her. “To help Patricia. It was ridiculous for me to stay home when I knew what the inscription on the wall said and maybe how to help her.”
“No other reason?”
Rebecca turned around, suppressing a shiver as she looked up at his tall, powerful body.
“Do you want me to tell you I came back for you? After you fled the scene in the tomb?”
His blue eyes darkened. “I had to. I knew Hera would never let me go. She’d trick Bes into giving me back to her if I stayed. I went back to Olympus to talk to the other gods.”
Rebecca had never thought in her life she’d be with a man who so casually mentioned that he talked to the gods of the Greek pantheon. “And what did you talk about?”
“I got a promise made that if Nico and I were free, we’d be free for always. And that Hera couldn’t take her revenge on you. You are not to be hurt.”
“That was nice of you.”
Andreas growled, his leopardlike temper returning. “It wasn’t nice. It was necessary.”
“I meant it was kind of you to make sure I’d be all right.”
“Damn it.” Andreas grabbed her by the elbows and pulled her tight to him. “I’m not kind. I don’t do things to be kind. I wanted you to be all right so when I saw you again, I could have you back. I want you to be all right because—I want you to be.”
Why did he always take her breath away? No man had ever wanted her like Andreas wanted her. It was a heady feeling, and frightening, too, because she didn’t want it ever to stop.
“You’re not under the curse anymore,” she said, trying to hold her voice steady.
“No kidding.” Andreas put his thumbs under her jaw and turned her face up to his. “I don’t care about the damn curse. I just want to find out what it will be like with you without it.”
Her heart hammered. “You mean like an experiment?”
“I don’t care what you call it. I want you to be safe, but I want to be with you. It’s driving me crazy. Why didn’t you stay in New York?”
“I already told you why.”
“How are you supposed to stay safe if you don’t do what I tell you?”
She started to laugh. This tall, strong male had come to her in her little room at the B and B and made her take off her bra and give it to him. Then he’d pleasured her in a shower in London to wash away her fear of the Dyons. Her heart began to thump as she thought that maybe they’d finally consummate their relationship in this exotic oasis in Egypt.
She reached up to kiss him, intending a brief, tempting kiss, but he pulled her into it and took her mouth in hunger.
He always bowled her over with his extreme masculinity. Walking in to see him sticking his tongue into Demitri’s mouth had only stoked the fires. Andreas was everything that was masculine and dominant and wild and exciting.
“Make love to me,” she whispered. She’d gotten to the point where she wasn’t above a little shameless begging.
He drew back with a hot smile, reverting to the Andreas she knew.
“How do you want me to do it? On your back, me on my back, me behind you? I can think of many exotic ways.”
Rebecca’s pulse sped. “However you want it.”
He slid his arms around her and gently bit her ear. “Don’t tempt me like that. I have a demigod’s power, unrestrained now. The things I could make you do . . .”
“I mean that I can’t decide.”
“Hmm.” Andreas stepped back, his ice blue gaze sweeping her body. “Why don’t you let me call the shots, then?”
Her cleft was warm, aching, while her imagination spun. “That would be good.”
“Strip.”
The abrupt command made her blink, but in another second, Rebecca started tearing off her clothes.
Andreas pointed at the bed. “Lie down.”
Rebecca breathlessly climbed onto the bed and bounced onto her back. When she looked up, Andreas was naked, his lovely body glistening with sweat. His hard face and cool eyes made a contrast to his thick cock lifting for her in wanting.
“Spread for me, baby,” he said softly.
Rebecca spread her legs, bending her knees and sliding her feet to her hips. “Like this?”
“You’re beautiful.” Andreas climbed on the bed and positioned himself between her thighs, his body heavy and warm. “You’re so beautiful.”
His lips found hers. He playfully nipped them, but she sensed most of his playfulness had fled. He was all business now, all man, and he wanted her.
“Have me,” she whispered. She lifted her hips, her pussy full and hot for him.
She felt his fingers swirl over her and dip into her moisture. “You’re a sweetheart to be so wet for me.”
“I’ve been wanting you for a long time. Ever since you came in my room and told me to take off my bra.”
“You wanted me before that.” His eyes sparkled. “You wanted me when I was licking your breasts.”
“I thought that was a dream.”
“Nope. It was real.” He drew his hot tongue around her nipple. “You tasted good.”
“You were a leopard.”
“And you were a sweet thing. I wanted to bury myself between your legs and lick your pussy clean.” He shrugged. “But I didn’t want to scare you.”
His words made the pool of heat inside her boil over. “Fuck me,” she begged. “Please, Andreas. I’m dying for you.”
“You look pretty healthy.” He smiled, slow and sensual. “But all right.”
He took her lips in a hard kiss at the same time he lifted slightly and pushed inside her. He was a tight fit, and he spread her and stretched her until she gasped.
“I can’t take all of you.”
“Yes, you can, sweetheart.” His eyes were half closed, his voice ragged. “You’re so beautiful, Becky.”
She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his back. He pushed inside, farther, farther. He would tear her apart.
Andreas groaned. His eyes closed; his mottled white and black hair fell across his flushed face. “Damn,” he breathed.
He started to ride her. They moved together, body to body, her hands on his back, his mouth opening hers in heated, bruising kisses.
“I love you,” she whispered. “Oh, gods, Andreas, I love you.”
“Love you, too, Becky,” he said hoarsely. “You sweet, sweet woman.”
She lay back, beginning to come under him, but he rocked into her for a long time. By the time he finished, she was laughing, sore, bruised, and happy.
Even if after they found Patricia, Andreas decided to disappear to his demigod world, or wherever he went, Rebecca would have this. She’d always remember.
They emerged from the bedroom hours later, dressed again, as Demitri returned to tell them he’d arranged for a car and driver to take them out into the sands.
23
AHMED drove the jeep to the end of the track at first light, and they proceeded on foot over the dunes. Ahmed had a stick that he kept running over the sand, swearing that it would point their way to the ruins.
Nico wasn’t sure he believed that, but he let Ahmed lead the way. The brothers had grown up in this country and knew it, and Nico hadn’t been this way in thousands of years, since Roman times. Amazingly, it didn’t look much different.
After about half an hour of searching, Ahmed’s stick thumped on something hard under the sand. He broke into a grin.
“It’s here.”
Nico and Faisal joined him on their knees to start scraping away sand. Nico’s pulse quickened with sickening fear. Patricia couldn’t be buried in a ruin here. She’d never survive.
The land was covered with sand as far as the eye could see, no outcroppings or man-made edifices poking through. If Patricia was under here, she’d have no way to breathe.
They dug quickly, the sand sliding and spilling back as fast as they moved it. Faisal had brought a shovel, which helped, but the final uncovering they had to do by hand. What they found was a square, flat stone that had obviously been hewn by an ancient chisel.
“You see?” Ahmed said. “I know where all the ruins are.”
Nico lay down and put his ear to the hot stone. He could hear nothing, feel nothing. It was too damn thick.
“How big is this place?” he asked.
Ahmed shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never uncovered all of it.”
“I need to get inside this. I need to find her.” He broke off in fear and frustration. “She might not even be here.”
Yesterday, he’d heard her voice loud and clear, echoing across the emptiness. I love you, Nico. Love you so much.
He’d thought he’d imagined it, but now he wondered again. Patricia was psychic. What was to say she couldn’t project strong psychic energy that his own magic picked up?
Ahmed suddenly screamed. Nico jerked his head up in time to see Ahmed leap from the top of the building, his face white with fear.
Nico and Faisal stepped hurriedly back into the sands, Faisal holding his shovel high. From the corners of the building, dozens of snakes had emerged: desert vipers, thin and deadly. Their yellow, slitted eyes beamed hatred.
“Stay back,” Nico told the two men.
His first beat of fear turned to one of grim satisfaction. Hera had just signaled loud and clear that Patricia was here, unless this was another decoy.
He didn’t think so. The snakes began to coil on the hot rock, then one by one rose into the forms of Dyons.
“Demons,” Ahmed cried. He unshouldered his rifle, bringing it up in his hands. Faisal stepped behind him, eyes wide, shovel ready.
Nico wasn’t quite sure of their odds against an army of Dyons, even with Ahmed’s rifle. Dyons couldn’t kill Nico, but they could tear him apart enough that he would be a bloody, useless wreck for some time, and of course they could kill his human companions.
Wind whipped up behind him and the two men, sand rising in a deadly cloud. But this was no ordinary sandstorm. It was something malevolent, a whirlpool of sand with the three men and the Dyons in the vortex.
“Go back to your jeep,” Nico shouted at Ahmed and Faisal. “You’ll die here. Go back.”
Both men looked like they wanted to run but held their ground. “I’ll not leave a friend to die,” Ahmed said.
It would more likely be Ahmed who died, but Nico had no time to argue. The Dyons attacked at the same time the sands whirled to swallow them up.
Nico fought, reverting to his true form as the Dyons reached for him. His true form was mostly light, the shape of the winged man solidifying it. Nico was at his most powerful in this form, able to fuse the magic of his divine half into something deadly.
But keeping that form took its toll. He tired more quickly, which would leave him vulnerable, and the slave chain made everything more difficult.
Nico heard Ahmed and Faisal both cry out, and he did his best to defend them. The Dyons swarmed him, and sand stung and scoured him. The sand would rip his flesh from his bones, and the Dyons would finish the process. Only a god could kill Nico, but when the Dyons finished, he knew he’d wish himself dead.
Ahmed’s cries turned to shouts. Dimly Nico heard the whirr of an engine, and he wondered who could have driven out here amid the sand cyclone.
Then new shapes entered the fray, a lithe, white snow leopard followed by a huge tiger rippling with muscle. Nico laughed, getting sand in his mouth, but he fought through Dyons to stand side by side with his friends.
“Join with me,” he yelled over the storm.
Andreas and Demitri couldn’t answer in their animal forms, but he felt their surge of magic. He joined his to it, and the Dyons closest to them crumbled into dust before the onslaught.
The other Dyons, mindless beings, converged for another attack. The three demigods struck again, breaking the first line.
But they’d keep coming, again and again, until Nico, Andreas, and Demitri were worn down. He couldn’t see Ahmed and Faisal anymore and hoped they’d had the sense to run for safety.
The three demigods continued the battle without speaking, their magics fused into one. Nico loved the feeling, having his two best friends part of him, a bond unlike anything else. Sometimes the three of them got close to this during sexual play, their power flowing into one another through hands, tongues, and cocks, but mortal bodies were limited. This joining was joy.
He marveled that his mortal body and Patricia’s could come together with the same joy. That’s what love did, he decided; it expanded what was physical into something magical and powerful.
He needed that with Patricia even more than he needed his godlike powers, his immortality, and his wings.
Nico heard a grinding sound and gleeful shouting, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ahmed’s jeep break through the sands of the cyclone. The jeep landed on a line of Dyons, breaking them down into their snake forms, which hurriedly crawled away.
Andreas and Demitri leapt forward, their big-cat forms taking down the last two Dyons. The whirling sand suddenly stopped, the last particles raining down on the gathered group and the jeep. The blue sky arched serenely overhead as though nothing had ever happened.
The jeep was full of sand, and sand piled on the heads of the grinning Ahmed, Faisal, and Rebecca.
“Whew!” Rebecca called, brushing sand from her face. “I didn’t think that would work.”
THE next problem was how to get into the ruin beneath their feet. The storm had dumped most of the sand they’d labored to sweep from the top of it back on.
With Andreas and Demitri to help, they cleared it again, only to be faced with a slab of blank stone.
“We could drill,” Ahmed suggested. “Or get explosives.”
“No!” Rebecca cried before Nico could. “This is an artifact. It needs to be properly excavated.”
“Patricia might be in there,” Nico snapped. “No explosives—or an excavation that could take two years,” he added, looking pointedly at Rebecca.
“Of course I want to get Patricia out safely,” Rebecca returned. “But if we could disturb this as little as possible?”
Faisal ruined that idea by banging on the top of the stone with the point of his shovel. Little chips of stone flew out, to Rebecca’s distress, but it didn’t make much of a dent.
“It will take too long without the proper tools,” Faisal concluded.
“We’ll have to dig down the sides,” Ahmed said. “Find a door below the sand?”
“I could send for a backhoe,” Demitri offered. He and Andreas had resumed their human forms and their clothes, which Rebecca had brought in the jeep. Rebecca winced at the word backhoe but kept silent.
“Could heavy equipment get here on these roads?” Andreas asked.
“I have to admit I don’t know.”
Ahmed looked off to the west and sighed. “It looks like another sandstorm coming. A real one.”
Nico stood staring at the slab of stone, bright in the sunshine, his heart like lead.
Was this his test? What would he do in order to retrieve Patricia? Endanger his friends and strangers who tried to help him? Endanger Patricia herself trying to get to her?
“You need to go,” he said abruptly.
Andreas started to snarl, his eyes flashing dangerously, and Demitri broke in. “Why?”
“Because this has to be me, alone.”
“No,” Rebecca said. “I saw the wall. You should be helped by a tiger and a leopard—”
“And I was. You helped me defeat the Dyons and Hera’s defenses, but I can’t endanger you any more for this. Please go.”
“What happens if you can’t?” Andreas asked. His eyes betrayed his worry.
“Then Hera destroys me.”
“Like hell,” Andreas said.
Nico faced him, his friend for an eternity, the man who’d struggled by his side all these years, never leaving him.
“I stay here until I find a way to save her,” Nico said. “I won’t walk away. If that means I stay here forever, chained to this place, then so be it.”
“She’ll never set you free,” Andreas said. “That’s the real point, isn’t it? Hera will make you search forever, enslaving you forever.”
“I don’t care about that anymore.” Nico put his hand on Andreas’s shoulder, squeezing. “I want to make sure Patricia is all right. Hera can do what she damn well pleases: keep me a slave, kill me. I don’t care anymore. I just want Patricia safe.”
Andreas started to speak, then he saw what was in Nico’s eyes and subsided.
He put his hand on Nico’s shoulder and pulled him close for a brief, hard hug.
“Take Rebecca out of here,” Nico said. “Go on.”
Andreas nodded. He turned away, but not quickly enough for Nico to miss the tears in his eyes. Andreas reached for Rebecca and led her down into the sand.
“Yell if you need us,” Demitri said. He gave Nico the same kind of heartfelt hug.
“I won’t.”
Demitri only nodded and followed the others, but Nico knew they’d wait for a long time before they gave up and went home.
Ahmed and Faisal were much easier to convince. If the story said the winged man had to save the great lady by himself, then he did. You didn’t mess with a story.
They left him water and wished him luck, then spun the jeep around and ambled down the dune.
Once they were gone, Nico knelt on the top of the stone slab. He spread his wings out, fanning the hot air, sweat trickling down his face and half-naked body. He crossed his wrists in front of him, as though offering himself to be bound.
“All right, Hera,” he said in a conversational tone. “I’m here. I’ve found her. Do whatever the hell you want with me. Just let her go home and be all right.”
For a moment, nothing happened. He felt only the soft breeze touching his hair, the threat of storm gone, heard only the slither of sand as it settled on the dunes.
He waited, knowing Hera could make him kneel there for years, but as he suspected, she was too impatient for that.
A shaft of light manifested from the sand, and Hera stood in its protective glow, her robes and dark hair not even stirring.
“Do you mean that, shallow demigod?” she asked. “You’d sacrifice yourself to me to save her?”
“Yes.”
Nico refused to meet her eyes, refused to grovel and plead like she wanted him to. His only concern was saving Patricia, and to hell with anything else.
“Your life for hers?” Hera prodded.
“If necessary.”
The goddess put her hands on her plump hips. “Well, I can’t do that. Your father has made it clear that I am not to kill his offspring, even though he has followed the rules and not interfered with my vengeance.”
Dionysus had always been an indifferent father as far as Nico was concerned, paying little attention to him after he’d fathered him. Nico wondered if things would have turned out differently if Dionysus had cared, or if Nico had tried harder to make him care. Lessons learned.
“Then do whatever you want,” Nico said. “But let Patricia go safely home.”
Hera watched him, her head tilted to one side, dark eyes curious. “You truly think you would do anything to save her, don’t you?”
“I do,” Nico said quietly. “I love her.”
“You love nothing. This is a game. I am making you feel what you feel. Me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Hera straightened up, her face softening into a smile. “He thinks he’s learned something after all.” She leaned to Nico, the glow still surrounding her. “What if I let her go, and she doesn’t remember you? What if she’s indifferent to you and doesn’t love you? Would you still want me to save her?”
Nico knew in that moment that he’d lost Patricia forever. Hera had never intended to let Nico have her. She had spun out this test because it amused her, and because she’d wanted to remind Bes that she was far more powerful than he was.
“Yes,” Nico said, his throat tight. “It doesn’t matter what Patricia thinks of me.”
“Hmm.” Hera studied him a few moments longer, her eyes alight with glee. “Very well. She goes free.”
She pointed her finger at the corner of the slab, and it broke open to reveal a dark hole beneath. As Nico dove toward it, Hera vanished.
THE walls around Patricia started to shake. The music ceased like someone had flipped a switch, and the dancer vanished.
She gasped and clutched the bench she rested on, staring at the ceiling in terror. Was the whole thing about to explode, like the tomb? Was it going to come down and crush her?
The silent dancer had been boring and unhelpful, but at least he’d been company. Now she was going to die alone.
The bench vanished, and Patricia plopped onto the floor. She huddled into a ball, covering her head with her hands.
The beautiful tiles disappeared as did the bathtub and the table laden with food and drink. The candles dissolved, leaving her in darkness.
Her heart hammered. Why was it all being taken away? Had she not been appreciative enough? Was she supposed to have set up a shrine to Hera and groveled before it?
“You heartless bitch!” she shouted. Not a way to placate the goddess, but it made Patricia feel better.
She heard the walls close in on her, stone grinding against stone. The building rocked and moved for an excruciatingly long time, and then just as abruptly, it stopped.
Patricia rose. She put out her hands, her whole body shaking, and started to walk across her prison. She nearly cried when she touched a wall right away, realizing that she was again trapped in the six-by-six cell.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. Maybe she’d been asleep and dreamed the food and water, the bath and the bed. Maybe none of it had been real, and her mind had conjured everything up to keep her from going insane.
Except she still wore the silk robe, her own clothes having disappeared.
“Damn it.” Patricia rested her head in her arms and let herself go. She choked on sobs, crying like she’d never cried in her life. She was lost here, and she’d lost everything.
A sudden light pierced the darkness, and she winced at the pain of it.
“Patricia?”
She didn’t recognize the voice, but she didn’t care. She dashed the tears from her eyes, trying to see.
“Here!” she shouted, her words strangled from weeping. “I’m down here!”
“Thank all the gods.”
The man exuded relief, although Patricia still couldn’t place him. Andreas’s friend Demitri, maybe?
A block of stone not far above her slid out of the way, and blue sky appeared, sunshine pouring down through the hole.
“Is this real?” she asked shakily. “Not more weirdness?”
“This is real.” The man reached down for her. He had dark hair and eyes and a sinfully handsome face, but she’d never seen him before.
She wasn’t certain he could pull her out, but he caught her wrists and lifted her, then grabbed her under the shoulders and hauled her the rest of the way out. She landed facedown on top of a stone slab, sand all around her. Dunes marched to the horizon beyond the slab, knife-edged and perfect.
For a moment, all she could do was lie still and breathe the dry, ovenlike air, enjoying seeing sky above her and true sunlight. The breeze, though hot, spoke of freedom.
She sat up, pushing her curls from her face. “Where the hell am I?”
“The Great Sand Sea,” her rescuer said. “West of the Dakhla oasis.”
“Oh.” She thought about the fact that she was literally in the middle of nowhere rescued by someone she’d never seen before. Everything she knew was so far away, but that hadn’t sunk in quite yet. “You speak English,” she said.
The man smiled a little. “I speak many languages.”
He certainly was a looker. His skin was tanned from bright sunshine, and his eyes were coffee-dark. He was wearing blue jeans and no shirt, letting her get a good look at his hard chest dusted with black hair. The sleek, oiled dancer in her cell had nothing on this man.
When he turned to fetch water, she saw that a tattoo of wings covered his back, the ends disappearing under his waistband. Nice.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked. “Not that I’m not grateful for you pulling me out, but how did you find me?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and she was startled to see his eyes moisten. “Your friends came looking for you. They’re not far. They have a jeep.” He pointed down a dune that looked like all the other dunes.
“That’s good news.” Patricia pushed her hair from her face. “Are you all right?”
“Sand in my eyes, is all.”
“Is everyone else all right—Rebecca, Andreas?”
“They’re fine. They’re waiting for you. Do you feel up to walking?”
Patricia started to climb to her feet, then winced as her bare soles touched the stone. “I lost my shoes.”
“That’s all right.”
Before she could stop him, the man swept her up into his strong arms. He was powerfully built, muscles rippling on his arms and shoulders. If she had to be rescued, she didn’t mind a gorgeous man like him doing the rescuing.
He stepped off the slab of stone, sinking a little into the sand, but easily carrying her down the side of the dune. She saw in the distance that the sand petered out, and rock took over. She could make out the outline of two vehicles against the rocks, and people around them.
She looked up at her rescuer again. His face was unshaven, and sand dusted his hair. His eyes haunted her: beautiful, dark eyes that held a world of pain.
“Have I met you before?” she asked. “You look familiar, but . . .” She shook her head. “No, I don’t think I have.”
“My name is Nikolaus. Everyone calls me Nico.”
“Thank you, Nico. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.”
He flinched, jaw tightening, but he remained firmly upright. She daringly laid her head on his shoulder, loosely clasping his arm with one hand.
Nico didn’t set her down all the way to the jeeps. As soon as her feet touched the ground, Rebecca flung herself at Patricia and hugged her tight, crying.
“I thought you were dead,” Rebecca sobbed. “Are you all right?”
“I seem to be.” Patricia took stock. The things in the ruin might have been illusion, but she felt hydrated, fed, clean, and rested. “It was the weirdest experience.”
Patricia let Rebecca help her to sit in one of the jeeps. Patricia wasn’t in a hurry to be inside anywhere for a while, but the canvas top of the jeep kept the sun from burning her.
“You must have been terrified,” Rebecca was babbling. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but Bes magicked me back to New York, and I had to fly all the way to Cairo again.”
“It’s all right,” Patricia said, taking a long swig of water. It didn’t taste nearly as clear and pure as the water in the tiled basin had, but Patricia found she preferred the ordinary plastic bottle. “I knew you’d find me.”
“Nico did,” Rebecca said, smiling happily.
“Yes.” Patricia turned to the man, who was being greeted by Andreas and Demitri as though they knew him well. “And I’m grateful.”
Rebecca looked puzzled. “Grateful? What do you mean, grateful?”
“Shouldn’t I be?” She gazed at Nico, who avoided her eyes. “It couldn’t have been easy to pull me out,” she said to him. “I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ll find some way to repay you.”
“Patricia,” Rebecca began.
“She doesn’t remember me,” Nico said.
The others stopped and stared at him, looking stricken, and Patricia couldn’t imagine why. If she’d met him in passing somewhere, they couldn’t really expect her to remember that this instant, not after the trauma of her imprisonment.
“That was the price,” Nico said to them. “I’m free, and she doesn’t remember.” He touched his bare, brown throat.
Rebecca looked from Patricia to Nico, her mouth open. Andreas and Demitri seemed shocked but somehow not surprised.
The two Egyptian men by the other jeep exchanged glances, and the younger said something in Arabic.
“He says it’s a tragedy,” Rebecca related. “They were hoping the story had a happy ending, but now they know it’s a tragedy. They think it’s romantic.”
Patricia was relieved enough to laugh. “I think me getting out of there is enough of a happy ending for me.”
“She needs to get out of the sun,” Demitri said. “I’ll have a doctor make sure she’s all right, and once she rests, everything will clear up.”
Rebecca looked worried again and urged Patricia to drink more water. The others piled in the jeeps.
Patricia found herself squished between Rebecca and Nico, who remained silent.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember you,” she said to him as the jeep bounced over the rocks to a more level track. “Where did I meet you, again?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nico said in a bleak voice and looked away.
24
WHILE Patricia slept in the little hotel, Nico’s friends tried to comfort him.
“It sucks,” Andreas said. “And it isn’t fair. You’re free now. You should have what you want.”
“I made the bargain,” Nico replied. His chest ached as though someone had stepped on him. “Her life and her freedom in exchange for my heartbreak. But to me, it’s more important that Patricia is alive and well than that she still wants me.” He stopped, the words choking him. “I’ll make sure she gets back to New York, then I’ll leave her alone.”
“But you passed the test,” Andreas protested.
“No,” Nico said. “That was the test. Would I sacrifice my own happiness for her life? It was an easy answer. Yes.”
Andreas started to argue, but Demitri rested his hand on Andreas’s shoulder. “Leave him be. Think about it. What if it had been Rebecca?”
Andreas’s mouth turned down. “I know. I’d have done the same. I still think it sucks.”
Nico left them and went for a walk, not able to take much more of his friends’ sympathy. They were good to feel for him, but what he needed most was to be alone.
Nico’s new friends Ahmed and Faisal had returned home, blessed with luck. They’d have a grand time telling the story of how they fought snake monsters side by side in the desert with three demigod warriors. They would likely tell the story over and over as the years went on, until they were famous for it. As to who would believe it, it was hard to say.
The hotel was situated near cultivated fields, the smell of green assailing him as Nico strolled along. Palm trees soared overhead, dates hanging in huge, golden brown bunches.
This was a beautiful place, a haven in the harsh desert, but Nico couldn’t enjoy it. He could only see the blank politeness in Patricia’s aquamarine eyes when she asked, “Have I met you before?”
Hera knew how to twist the knife. Nico’s gut hurt, and the hurt only increased when he realized that what he’d felt for Patricia under the slave chain had been real. He’d loved her, and now that he was free of the curse, he loved her still.
He’d heard her tell Rebecca of the strange room that had given her more and more comforts, taking them all back as soon as Nico found her. He wondered if Bes had worked some magic to give her that. Hera likely wouldn’t have. Patricia had been smiling, her eyes tired but unafraid. Her ordeal had not broken her.
Nico knew that no matter how much it hurt, he wouldn’t take back his sacrifice. Patricia was safe, and that mattered. He would go away, and she could get back to her real life.
An Egyptian man in a business suit walked toward him, and Nico stopped to wait for him.
“Hello, my friend,” Bes, in the guise of Mr. Ajeed, said. “All is well?”
Nico folded his arms over his borrowed caftan and fell into step with him as they walked along. “Patricia is well. Thank you for helping. Was it you who gave her the fruit and water and so forth in the cell?”
Bes beamed. “Yes, that was me. Every time you thought about how much you loved her—thought it from your heart and your gut—she received another benefit. Your love for her kept her fed and warm and rested while she waited.”
Nico’s eyes narrowed. “What was with the naked dancing man?”
“I thought she’d like it,” Bes said innocently.
“I just wish she’d stop talking about it,” he growled.
Bes gave him a sympathetic look. “I heard of your sacrifice. It was nobly done.”
“I’ll feel noble later. Right now I feel like someone hit me with a truck.” He tilted his head back to stop the tears from leaking from his eyes. “I love her.”
“Yes.” Bes walked in silence a moment. “You passed the test; you are free. You will find your reward.”
“I don’t give a damn about rewards. I’ll make sure Patricia gets home, then I’ll go to Olympus. I need some peace about now.”
“You could always guard the tomb in Amarna with me. That is peaceful.”
“The tomb was destroyed.”
“Yes, but the lord must still be guarded. Archaeologists will come soon and take him to a museum, and then I can go.”
Nico gave him a look of new respect. “I wish all the gods were as loyal and steadfast as you.”
“The Egyptian people were good to me, before the gods were forgotten. I guarded homes against snakes and other animals and made sure even the humblest of the people were safe. They paid me back in reverence.”
“You helped Andreas and me, too. Why? We’re not even of your people.”
Bes shrugged. “I had several thousand years to study the wall painting. I knew you’d come eventually. It was very exciting, actually—the most excitement I’d had in millennia.”
Nico smiled, his lips stiff. “I won’t forget you, Bes. Anytime you want to come to Olympus, I’ll make sure they let you in.”
“A fine offer,” Bes said. “I might pay you a visit. You do deserve a reward for your kindness, and you will have it.”
Nico wished he’d drop the admiration. “I don’t need anything. Just a little peace and quiet.”
“Oh, yes, you do. You will get your reward. I’ll make sure of it. Wait and see.”
Bes smiled mysteriously, then he stopped, shook hands with Nico, and strode off the other way.
Back in Andreas’s room, Nico found Demitri on his cell phone talking to people at his hotel and Rebecca sitting on Andreas’s lap, kissing him.
Rebecca slid to her feet when she saw Nico, blushing. Andreas lounged back, a satisfied look in his blue eyes. A stray cat from the village sat on the windowsill behind him, purring.
“As soon as I’m back at Cornell, I’m putting in for a grant to dig out here,” Rebecca told Nico. “I don’t know what those ruins are, but the stone is older than Greco-Roman. Want to join us?”
“If you can find it again,” Nico said absently.
“What? Why not? I can hire your friends to drive me out there. They seemed nice.”
“It might not be a real place—maybe something Hera put together. Besides, what about your tomb in Amarna?”
“My ruined tomb,” she said in a sad voice. “When we start excavating that, they’ll be able to tell it was destroyed just last week.”
“They’ll think it was an earthquake,” Andreas suggested, stretching his arms along the back of the sofa. “Or vandals. Which is true; it kind of was both.”
“I’ll find the ruins,” Rebecca said stubbornly. “I need to make my name.”
Andreas looked at her with a fond expression. “If you want it that much, I’ll help you, Becky.”
Rebecca looked surprised. “You’d stay with me?”
Andreas pulled her down to the sofa “You and I are going to be together for a long, long time. I have so much more to teach you, Becky.”
Rebecca flushed with happiness. “I think I’m in love with you.”
“I know I’m in love with you,” Andreas returned. “How about that, Nico? Me, in love, and not because of the damn curse. For keeps.”
“Congratulations,” Nico said, happy for his friends even through the hole in his heart.
Demitri was still talking loudly to someone on the phone, not paying attention to the others. Nico left them, drawn to the door of Patricia’s room.
He knew she was asleep. Rebecca had given her a sleeping pill to calm her down and had shooed everyone away from her, but Nico couldn’t resist looking in on her.
The latch of her door clicked under Nico’s touch, and he pushed it open. The shades were drawn to shut out the glaring sun, the room dim and quiet. A portable fan quietly hummed in the corner.
Patricia lay in the middle of the small bed, a sheet over her, her head pillowed on her arm.
Nico closed the door and softly approached the bed. Patricia lay with her eyes closed, her curls spilling over her shoulders.
He lifted a curl from her cheek, smoothing it back with a gentle touch. Knowing that the sleeping pill would have her slumbering soundly, he leaned over her and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
She stirred a little, her lips curving to a faint smile. Nico’s heart leapt, then slowed again when her mouth smoothed back into sleep.
Time to go. Nico moved noiselessly to the door and turned the knob.
“Nico?”
Patricia’s sleepy voice arrested him. He faced the door, unwilling to see the look of blank inquiry in her eyes.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just making sure you were all right. Go back to sleep.”
He started to open the door.
“Nico.”
The throb of love and longing was unmistakable. Nico let the door close and made himself look back at her.
Patricia was sitting up in bed, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Nico, I couldn’t remember who you were.”
She bit back a sob, and Nico’s heart shattered. He was across the room, scooping her against him in an instant, burying his face in the curve of her neck.
“Why couldn’t I remember?” she whispered. “I love you, Nico. It was all I could think of while I waited for you to rescue me. Why couldn’t I remember you?”
Nico couldn’t speak. He held her so hard, his hands shaking, tears spilling from his eyes.
She pulled away from him slightly but only to kiss him. Nico kissed her back desperately, hungry for her. She laughed, he was so frantic, her laughter spilling into his mouth.
“I love you,” she repeated.
“I love you, too, Patricia.” He held her against him, his lips in her hair, on her face, hands fervently undoing the buttons on her nightshirt. “I love you so much.”
“Then why didn’t I know you?”
Nico didn’t want to talk, but she looked so perplexed, he explained what had happened. “It was the final test,” he finished. “A test of my love. The hardest thing I’ve done in my long life: let you go.”
“I felt so alone.” She ran her hands across his shoulders.
“I think Bes gave you back your memory,” Nico said. “He told me I’d find a reward, and this is what he meant. I don’t know how he thwarted Hera.”
“Maybe he didn’t.” Patricia pulled him down to her. “I was lying here, feeling so empty, and I didn’t know why. It was like I’d lost someone I loved, someone I’d forgotten, but I didn’t want to forget. I tried lifting my psychic shields to search, and I found a barrier there, one I hadn’t erected. I pushed and pushed, and I started dreaming of you—a man with wings taking me to a strange place where we had incredible sex.” She smiled. “And then when I woke up and saw you, I knew.”
Nico’s heart beat faster. “Remember the story Rebecca translated on the tomb wall? She said that pursuing lust for its own sake would return to punish the lustful, while true love is rewarded with happiness. I think this is what Bes knew, that our love would drive though anything Hera could throw at us. That love would win in the end.” He held her close. “And I do love you.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “I’m crazy with it, Nico.”
“I’ll never leave you alone. Never again.”
“Just be with me now.”
Nico burrowed into the nightshirt, kissing her breasts, suckling each nipple into his mouth, unable to get enough of her. He ripped the shirt the rest of the way open and stripped it from her, his hands parting her legs even as she laughed.
His need pounded so hard it hurt. He felt her fingers at his waistband, trying to tug open his pants. He unzipped them and kicked them off, nearly tearing his shirt and underwear off in his hurry.
He kissed her as his cock found her opening, wet and slick for him. It took nothing at all to slide into her, his whole body rejoicing as he found his way home.
She lifted her hips, her face relaxing into the joy of him inside her. Her quim squeezed him tight as her hands closed on his ass.
“It’s good,” he groaned against her lips. “It’s good to fuck you, love.”
“One thing’s missing,” she murmured, her hips rocking to drive him even deeper into her. “Your wings.”
Nico grinned. He let them slide out from his shoulder blades, feeling satisfaction as he stretched them to the ceiling and gently flapped them down.
He enclosed them in a black, feathery cocoon, the sensitive tips brushing against her warm skin. Patricia smiled and bit into his feathers, causing him to wince and laugh at the same time.
“Vixen,” he growled. “Like it rough, do you?”
“I think I do.”
“Well, then, sweetheart, get ready.”
She looked innocent. “For what?”
“For me. I’m going to fuck you so hard you will beg for mercy.”
“Will I? I don’t think so.”
“Don’t tempt me, Patricia. I’ll make you pay for being so cute.”
“Oh, really? How?”
He showed her. She screamed and laughed as he made love to her, then spanked her ass until it turned cherry red. Then he fucked her all over again. She writhed and laughed and loved every minute of it.
“I love you, Nico,” she said as she sank back into sleep. “Don’t go yet.”
“Never.”
“But you’re free of the curse now.” Her eyes slid closed, even as she held him close. “You can go anywhere you want, be anyone you want.”
“I’m right where I want to be,” he said. “And who I want to be. Nico, with Patricia, the woman I love.”
She touched his face. “Do you mean that?”
“I plan to spend a long, long time showing you.”
“You’re immortal, more or less,” she said. Her eyes were sad. “And I’m not.”
“I know. But Hera owes me something for this torture she’s put me through. If she wants me to be true to one woman and love her and her alone, she can help me. She can let you come to Olympus with me, and become an immortal.”
Patricia’s eyes rounded. “An immortal . . .”
“It’s nothing I’ll force you into. You make the choice. Likewise, I can ask to be made mortal myself, so I can stay with you. It doesn’t matter to me either way—as long as it’s you and me together.”
“That’s a lot to think about.”
“Take your time,” Nico smiled. “I don’t mind waiting.”
She mused. “Of course, if I was immortal, I could become a fantastic antiques dealer. I could put things away for years and then make a killing on the market.”
“You see? Advantages.”
“Make love to me again.” Patricia slid her arms around his body, tickling him under his wings. “So I can decide if I really want to take the step.”
Nico’s body warmed, his still-hard cock more than ready. “This will help you make up your mind?”
“Yes.” Patricia smiled, her blue green eyes warm and full of love. “But I’ll have to be completely certain, so you’ll have to do it again, and again, and again.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Nico said. He held her wrists against the pillow, loving how her eyes darkened as he slid into her again. “As many times as you want me. We’ll have all the time in the world . . .”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allyson James writes bestselling and award-winning historical, contemporary, and paranormal romances, award-winning mysteries, and historical fiction under several pseudonyms. She lives in the warm Southwest with her husband and cats and spends most of her time in the world of her stories. More about Allyson’s books can be found on her website,
www.allysonjames.com, or contact Allyson via e-mail at allysonjames@
cox.net.
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