by Zoe Ashwood
And I hate not knowing what to expect.
Even one guy is a mystery, but two at the same time is too much.
So instead of dealing with this right now, when my brain is still mush after that crazy double orgasm, I straighten my shoulders, push the escaped strands of hair behind my ears, and face the two men waiting on my decision.
“What did you find out?” I ask Raphaël, delighted that my voice is only slightly squeaky. “Did you meet with Aya?”
Raphaël takes a set of car keys from his pocket. “We can leave immediately. But I have to tell you that I almost bumped into your Icelandic friend out there. Apparently, he heard the explosion and came running.” After a moment, he adds, “Up close, he’s very tall. If it ever came down to a physical fight, he’d be a worthy opponent.”
I lift a hand, stopping him. “No fighting with other contestants unless we’re attacked. Our strategy is to evade and sneak in and out as fast as possible. I want to get to the valley before those Russians, if only because I don’t want them to blow up the temple or whatever.”
Levi hefts his duffle bag, then picks up mine before I can protest. “Let’s go, then.”
The two men troop out, leaving me alone in the small office that still smells of sex. I crack the window open and hope no one comes in for a while.
Then I descend the steps and buy a whole scoop of those almond sugar cookies. I’ll need all the support for figuring out what to do next. And since we’re soon going to be in the middle of the Egyptian desert, my support will be cookies.
Eighteen
Levi
The truck that Aya Mansour procured for us is nothing short of a monster. The Land Rover isn’t new, but it’s been freshly cleaned, and it gleams white under the setting sun. Raphaël does a perfunctory check of our gear, and Nora pokes through the food provisions, mumbling to herself something about cookies.
She tasted of sugar and almonds earlier, and I hadn’t been able to resist her. Our office adventure was unplanned, and I can’t wrap my head around how hard I came while another man kissed my woman.
Fuck.
Whatever Nora and I have, it’s getting more complicated by the second. I knew she had some unresolved feelings about Raphaël, but as long as she also wanted me, I wasn’t going to complain. Then I went and screwed her while he watched us, instead of pulling away. If I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have kissed her. Not then, anyway, but judging by how they both reacted, I don’t think they would have been able to keep their hands off each other for long. It would rankle, but the look Raphaël and I shared over Nora’s head as he burst into the room had me flaming up, and I couldn’t stop, not when her inner walls clamped down on me, squeezing me so sweetly.
And now I’m half hard again, just thinking about that.
What a mess.
To give myself something to do, I throw our bags in the trunk, then hop in on the driver’s side and push back the seat to make room for my legs. Then I wait for Nora and Raphaël to figure out between themselves who wants to ride shotgun.
Raphaël opens the passenger-side door and raises one dark eyebrow. “Want to let me drive?”
I shake my head. “Not until we hit the sands. I’ve never driven in the desert before, so it’s better if you do it.” I’m making assumptions, but I’m betting the vampire has the skills necessary to take us deep into the back country. “You can be navigator for now, or rest. I want to try this baby out.”
His lips press together, but he doesn’t object. Neither does he comment on what happened. In the rearview mirror, I meet Nora’s wide-eyed gaze, but she ducks down to rummage through her backpack instead of chatting with us.
Fine with me.
We all need some time to think.
I take us out of the city, following the navigation system that works great for now. It’s after we reach the last oasis on our route, Kharga, that we’ll get off the roads and into the desert proper. The highway south is clogged with evening traffic, but the farther we get from Cairo’s center, the fewer cars there are on the road. The sun sets slowly, flashing blinding orange light at us through various buildings as we head farther away from the Nile.
Then, after a big road junction, something on our left side catches my attention.
“Holy shit,” I say, “are those…?”
The world-famous Egyptian pyramids rise out of the desert, imposing even from the distance. I’d slept through the plane landing when we arrived in Cairo, but I bet the view from the air is spectacular.
Nora lets out a gasp behind me. “Wow. I wish we had time to visit them.”
In the front seat, Raphaël grins at us. “Maybe you’ll have time to stop there after we return. But I have to warn you—it’s a very touristy spot. So many people visit each year.”
“I don’t care,” Nora mutters. “This is awesome.”
I have to agree. There’s a reason why they were classified as one of the seven wonders of the world. They’re huge, and for the first time since our arrival, I’m forcefully reminded that we’re in Egypt, not just any hot, dry country. There’s history here that inspired hundreds of stories, and I kind of feel like Indiana Jones, going off on a treasure hunt.
“I’m putting this on our list,” Nora informs me. Then she touches Raphaël’s shoulder. “You’re welcome to join us, you know. On our post-mission trip.”
He snorts out a laugh. “We’ll see.”
Nora settles back, and somehow, the strange energy that floated between us since our office encounter dissipates, leaving me more relaxed. Raphaël fiddles with the radio until he hits a station that plays crooning, bluesy tunes, then relaxes in his seat, whistling along. I can’t help but stare at him. He looks so damn human right now, I’d never suspect he had fangs.
Soon, a glance at the quiet backseat tells me Nora has succumbed to the rumbling rhythm of the car: she’s fast asleep, her head leaning against the window. Raphaël casts a look back as well, and his lips turn up in a wry smile.
“She’s so peaceful when she sleeps,” he murmurs. Lifting his gaze to me, he adds, “She’s always so full of energy it’s hard to imagine she ever slows down.”
I crack a smile despite myself. “That’s a good way to describe her.”
We both face the road ahead, remaining silent for several long minutes.
Then Raphaël turns to me. “How is she?” he asks. “Nora. How is she really?”
Clenching my jaw, I consider the question. “Why do you want to know?”
His hand, which rests on his knee, clenches into a fist. “She’s different than she was. More serious. Less…” He blows out a breath. “Less innocent. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
I don’t want to talk about Nora like this. But he’s right. And this mission, this entire operation, is being driven by the change that occurred in Nora’s life.
“Her mom died,” I end up saying. “I won’t tell you anything more. But it happened soon after you two broke up, so it cut her up even more. Since then, she’s been, uh, driven.”
Raphaël’s noise of distress tells me a lot about how involved he is in this. He half turns in his seat, taking in Nora’s sleeping form.
“I had no idea.” He reaches out as though to touch her, then pulls back. “What happened to her mother?”
“She got sick,” I tell him, my voice tight.
His piercing gaze focuses on me. “And none of the witches could do anything about it?”
Clenching my jaw, I stare ahead. Within five minutes of our conversation, he’s hit on the one topic I can’t talk about. Not without Nora’s say-so, and definitely not with full honesty. I haven’t even been honest with Nora about it. There’s a reason why I haven’t spoken to my father in more than a year, and I’m not ready to share it with a vampire I barely know.
I don’t answer him, and after a while, Raphaël gives up and relaxes back into his seat. He switches the radio to a classical music station, and we drive on as the world darkens around us. The sun slips b
ehind the horizon, and soon after, the mournful call from the mosques by the road floats through the closed windows. Several tall minarets poke up from the dusty, light-brown desert. It’s incredible how the old culture is mixed with the new here. It reminds me of how Raphaël’s friend Aya told us that the old gods were never put to rest in the valley we’re going to. A shiver runs down my spine at the memory of her serious face.
Then I shake it off because superstition and panic never served anyone who wanted to achieve anything. I trust Nora with my life, and she trusts me, so we’ll figure shit out as we go. It definitely won’t hurt to have Raphaël on our team, either. He’s already proven himself useful several times over, even though I still have no idea what—if any—special powers he has as a vampire.
As I glance over to him now, at his healthy brown skin, his thick black hair, he doesn’t seem extraordinary in any super-human way. But I’m not about to get lured into a false sense of complacency by his hotness.
He looks up, and I jerk my gaze away, weirdly embarrassed to have been caught staring.
Then he blows out a sigh. “Come on, out with it.”
“What?”
I press the AC button, turning it up. It’s suddenly hot in the car even though the light around us is fading.
“You’re bursting with questions. Just ask whatever you want to know.”
He seems resigned but not annoyed. And hell, I need some answers if I’m supposed to trust this guy. If I’m supposed to trust him with Nora.
“Did you, uh, eat in Cairo?” I blurt out, because it’s the first and most obvious thing that comes to mind.
“No.”
I blink. “No?”
“There wasn’t enough time,” he says.
“So…” I try to find the right words without sounding offensive. “Will you be okay while we’re out there?”
Raphaël clears his throat. “I fed in Paris, the day before you arrived at the gallery. I drank enough to last me for several days, depending on how much I exert myself and how much time I spend in full sunlight.”
So that’s where he went that evening when I tracked him down, thinking Nora might have found sanctuary with him after our fight. I don’t know what to think about this, but it’s good to know. With Raphaël facing forward, same as me, it’s somehow easier to have this conversation.
“Speaking of Paris,” I say. “When you pinned Nora in your office.”
“Ah,” he says, “that.”
“Yeah, that.” I clench my fingers on the steering wheel. “Your eyes turned black, and your fangs popped out. Talk me through that.”
He throws me a sideways glance. “You’re direct.” He rakes his fingers through his hair. “Well, what you saw is a vampire caught in bloodlust. I smelled Nora and her amazing scent, and I snapped. That hasn’t happened in more than a century, by the way.”
He ducks his head, and it’s weird to consider that the vampire might be embarrassed by his actions. Whatever we’d been told about the monstrous creations that supposedly butchered whole villages back in the day, Raphaël is nothing like that. It’s apparent from what little time we’ve spent together that he’s almost…normal.
“Why is Nora’s scent special?”
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Some people smell better than others. And she is exquisite.”
“Would you have killed her if your cousin hadn’t stopped you?” I press.
“Camille is my great-niece,” he corrects me absentmindedly, his gaze focused somewhere in the distance. “Many times removed, of course. And I hope I wouldn’t have hurt Nora. I like to think I’m not completely corrupted yet. I haven’t killed anyone while feeding since I was a very new vampire.”
His words land with a heavy weight. So he has killed people. Probably many of them. He’d said he was a soldier, too, fighting in the Great War, and I wonder whether it’s different for him to have killed in action and while feeding.
“Does it hurt?”
Nora’s soft voice sounds from behind me, and I jerk. The car swerves slightly on the nearly empty desert highway. I glance in the rearview mirror, but her face is shadowed, unreadable.
Raphaël doesn’t react, and I wonder whether he’d realized she was awake even as he answered my questions.
“If done right, the vampire’s bite doesn’t hurt, no,” he says. “In fact, the donor usually—”
“No,” Nora interrupts him. She leans forward, and her breath brushes against my neck. “Did it hurt when you transformed?”
“Yes,” he says simply. “It isn’t something I’d willingly bestow on anyone.”
I chew this over, then remember what he’d said about his brother. “But you—”
Raphaël sighs. “Yes, I changed my brother. He’d begged me, and I believe I made a mistake. He was never very happy as a vampire, certainly no happier than he’d been as a human, and he had trouble coming to terms with this, ah, lifestyle.” He drops his gaze to his lap. “Neither of us ever changed anyone else.”
Nora is silent for a long moment, then asks, “You never loved anyone so much you wanted them to live forever, like you?”
At this, Raphaël turns sharply in his seat to look at her. “You think this is pleasant? I would never do that to someone I loved. I regret even changing my brother. I would never inflict this on someone else.”
He faces the road again, his face still as a mask.
Whoa.
Now that we’re talking about this, I allow myself to consider the possibility of becoming immortal. Would I do it given the chance? To live forever would mean being able to see the world, to do all the things I never have time for.
“But then everyone around you dies,” Nora persists. “How can you ever get truly close to someone?”
“You can’t,” he replies, his voice hollow. “You don’t.”
The desert grows dark around us, the starry night pressing down on the vast, unfamiliar land like a blanket dotted with bright jewels. There’s nothing either one of us can say to that, so we sink into silence, bothered by our own thoughts.
Nineteen
Nora
We drive through the night, and I doze on and off against the hard window of the Land Rover. Levi and Raphaël don’t talk much, apart from Raphaël giving Levi murmured directions. After the conversation we shared, I’m not exactly sure how to act toward Raphaël, especially considering that hot-as-hell kiss he gave me in the office above the bakery.
But luckily, as dawn breaks across the sky in the east, we close in on the last town on our journey. The world is painted orange and pink by the light of the rising sun. The palm tree groves and the dense, wiry shrubs that appear along the road announce our arrival to the Kharga Oasis. A boy on a gray donkey rides down a narrow alley, his legs bumping against saddle bags filled with oranges.
It’s too early in the morning for many people to be around, which is fine with me. The fewer locals see us, the better our chance of slipping through any ambushes without notice. I’m not convinced the Russian witches have given up, and neither am I naïve enough to think that they were the only ones who will hinder our progress on this trip.
I just want to get in and out of that valley without too much trouble. We’ve tried to figure out what’s waiting for us out there, but there are too many possibilities for us to prepare for anything specific. We might have to raid a tomb. Fight an ambush of attackers. Crawl through a snake pit. Who knows?
“We need gas,” Levi says. “We have about half a tank left, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
Raphaël glances at the fuel gauge. “Yes, but we don’t want the car to be too heavy either. We might not hit the huge dunes here like we would in the west, but wind-blown sand will still get deep enough for the car to get stuck if we’re not careful.”
Levi shrugs. “Your call.”
Raphaël exhales through his nose, his lips pinched. There’s tension between them, same as before, but they keep glancing at each other subtly, which is interestin
g. That Levi hadn’t pulled away from me in that office surprised me. I didn’t think he’d want to share. The thought is enough to warm my insides, and I squeeze my knees together to calm down. This isn’t the time or place for getting all hot and bothered about the two men sitting in the front of the car.
We stop at a gas station, and Raphaël gets out to do business with the owner who looks like he only rolled out of bed a couple of minutes ago. We hide out behind the tinted windows of the car, and I rummage through my backpack for some sunscreen to put on while we wait. I toss Levi the bottle, and he snorts, then puts it on his nose and forehead.
“This is it,” I say quietly. “In another fifty miles, we’ll be at the valley.”
Levi peers out the window toward the distant hills that surround the oasis. “I hope we shook off those Russians. If they attacked us like that in the middle of the crowded bazaar, I don’t want to know what they’d do when there’s no one around to see us.”
A shiver passes over me. “Listen, I wanted to talk to you about what Aya said.”
He grimaces. “Which part? The evil witches or the restless gods?”
“Both?” I chew on my lip for a moment. “I think we should stop after we’re out of sight of the town and do a proper protection spell for all three of us. Something more than just our usual charms. There’s a reason why no one ever wants to go exploring in Egypt.”
Levi’s eyes are serious as he considers my idea. “That would mean delaying the trip by at least half a day. There’s no way you can do a full circle and a spell like that without needing to recharge afterward.”
“I know.” I open my palm and trace a fingertip over the now-healed, dark-pink brands. “But I would never forgive myself if something happened to you. Either one of you.”
Finally, Levi nods. “Okay. We’ll find somewhere safe. Maybe even camp out for the day.” He points to the back of the truck where a folded tent bag rests in the trunk. “By the way, did you notice there was just one tent?”
I hadn’t, but the thought of sharing with both men has my cheeks flaming. Desperate to hide my reaction, I blurt, “Maybe it’s one of those tents with separate bedrooms?”
