“It takes a lot to injure me. I could be hit by a car and not be injured. A bus—probably if it was going fast enough. A train—absolutely. I’ve been stabbed and poisoned and shot with an arrow. I’ve drowned and fallen from great heights…” He got a faraway look as if he was remembering all those times. Rose tried to hide her horror. What he was describing terrified her.
“Poisoned?” she asked.
“I’ve been bitten by a crawler,” he said. “For a while, my brothers and I stayed with a vampire who had built an army. He had soldiers and crawlers. He had turned Hudson and Marcus, and later Valen.”
“Turned them from humans into vampires,” she clarified.
The door to the kitchen swung open, interrupting her. Horus closed his mouth and stared at his brothers. “Yes?” he asked.
“You’re talking too much,” Ra grumbled. His words had an instant effect on Horus. He shut his mouth with a snap and picked up the wooden spoon he’d been stirring the vegetables with.
“You don’t need to be like that,” Rose said. “He didn’t tell any of your secrets.”
“His stories are my stories,” Ra countered. “And I’m not ready for you to know my history yet.”
“That’s not really fair,” she said. “You know a lot about me.”
“Maybe you overshare,” Ra replied, and her face heated. He made it sound as if she just unloaded on them, the implication being she took advantage.
“If you don’t like me, then why are you here?” she asked. “You don’t have to stay.”
Ra’s gaze shifted to his brothers, and she got it.
“You’ll stay as long as they do, won’t you? Even if you don’t like me. You’ll put up with me for their sake.”
“I heard you talking to Horus,” Seti said. “And I like you. If you also like Horus, while your judgment is questionable, it doesn’t bother me.”
So Horus and Seti liked her, and Ra would have to suffer her presence. That sounded awful.
“Look,” Ra said, “I wouldn’t leave anyway. In the space of one week, you’ve been attacked by a vampire and a crawler.”
“You’ll stay to protect me.” Like a babysitter. Like he owed her something.
Water boiled over, spilling onto the hot surface of the stove. The sizzle filled the tiny kitchen. At some point, Horus must have put the spaghetti in the boiling water. He stirred it, seemingly unbothered by his brother’s brutal honesty.
Ra nodded.
“And because your brothers are here,” she added.
“It’s hard to be apart,” Seti said. He popped a mushroom into his mouth before Horus poured the sauce over the top.
She didn’t have any family left, but she understood. And it made her feel dirty.
“It’s ready,” Horus said. He flipped all the burners off and she took that as a sign she should get some plates.
Silently, she handed them the chipped plates her mother had given her and then got glasses. “I hope this is okay,” she said, edging past Seti to get some ice. “I don’t have anything else.”
“It’s fine,” Seti assured her. He took each glass of ice and filled it with water. Horus and Ra held two plates each and followed her out of the kitchen. She usually ate dinner at the small island in the kitchen. But there was no way all of them would fit. Her coffee table was big enough to fit their plates, so she grabbed pillows off the couch and tossed them on the floor as makeshift seating.
The guys settled themselves as if eating on the floor was something they always did and dug into their meal. Rose’s belly grumbled again, but the discussion in the kitchen had put her off eating. Twirling her spaghetti, she thought about what Ra’d said.
He didn’t like her, but he felt compelled to protect her.
He didn’t want to stay, but he wouldn’t leave until his brothers did.
She took a bite of her meal. It was simple, but it was a homey, familiar flavor, and it went a long way to settle her.
“So what do you do?” she asked after a few minutes of quiet. “When you’re not rescuing girls?”
Horus swallowed his bite. “We have a small farm in Quebec. I farm. Do some woodworking.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Chairs. Cabinets. Custom pieces.” He’d cleaned his plate quickly. “Anyone want more?”
Rose wasn’t halfway through her meal, so she shook her head. “No, thanks.”
Seti and Ra shook their heads as well. She knew better than to ask Ra, who wanted to tell his own story. But Seti was safe. With Horus gone, she turned to him. “Are you close to Montreal?”
“Closer to Quebec City,” he answered.
“So you speak French?”
“Oui. Among other languages.”
Interested, she put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward. “Like what?’
“English, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese.”
“Coptic,” Ra muttered.
It was so tempting to ask him what language that was, and where it was spoken, but he’d put up very high, very thick, walls.
“What about you?” Seti asked, after he eyeballed his brother.
“English and Spanish,” she said. “But it’s mostly high school level. I understand more than I speak.”
The door to the kitchen swung open and Horus emerged. He sat at his spot. “Coptic was spoken in Egypt around fifteen hundred years ago,” he said and smiled at her. Ra glared, but Horus squared his shoulders. “I heard you answer, and I realized Rose might not be familiar with Coptic.”
Pushing his hair out of his face, Ra let out a sigh and turned to face Rose. His dark eyes held hers, and he leaned in closer. Studying her face, he whispered something to her in a language she’d never heard. It was musical and slipped off his tongue like a stream spilling over stones.
Seti had just taken a sip of water and spit it out. It sprayed Ra, and he jerked away from Rose to wipe his face.
“What did you say?” Rose asked when he was done. Her body was hot, and her face flushed from the intensity of his gaze and the deep tone of his voice.
Ra twirled the spaghetti with his fork before he answered her. “The she-camel delivered a daughter.”
Oh. He was fucking with her. It was clear from the way he held her stare, eyebrow lifted in challenge that he expected her to storm off. But where would she go? Into the bathroom? This was a one-bedroom apartment.
Cocking her head to one side, she studied him. She’d always been good with languages, so she repeated the first word he’d said. That was all she could remember. He lifted his eyebrows, surprised. “Did I say it right?”
“You did,” Seti replied when Ra didn’t.
“A girl camel is called a she-camel?” she asked.
“Actually, it’s called a cow,” Horus answered.
“Huh.” She held Ra’s gaze. “I guess you don’t really speak Coptic either.”
25
Ra
Ra didn’t want to smile, he really didn’t, but Rose had called him out. He thought he’d been so clever.
“Smart girl,” he said to his brothers who replied with pride and not a small amount of enjoyment at his comeuppance.
“Stop being such a jerk,” Seti said. “We’re here for however long, why don’t you try to get to know her?”
He locked down the thoughts he had about that. He wanted to get to know her. Rose was funny and strong and went toe-to-toe with him.
Why did he have to push everyone away from him? What was he afraid of?
He knew the answer to that as soon as the question flashed through his brain. Death. He was afraid of someone else he loved dying.
For three thousand years, he’d lived in fear of his brothers’ deaths. They could die. Injure them enough, and they weren’t coming back from it. Unlike Horus and Seti, Ra did remember their parents. And he remembered how they died, sacrificed by their tribe. He remembered his mother’s cry as his father fought to get to them. He remembered rushing his brothers through the night and hiding in the
reeds along the Nile.
He remembered the smell of burning flesh and the heat of the sun on his back when he led his brothers across the hot sands toward safety.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Rose. “I was rude.”
“You were,” she answered. “So thank you for the apology. Could you maybe stop doing things you have to apologize for?”
And there it was again. The challenge.
Ra smiled, and she smiled back. Rose was beautiful. Wild hair that had a life of its own. Brown eyes that held all her emotions. All he had to do was look in her eyes to read her. Right now, she was wary but hopeful. She bit her lip to keep from smiling too big, and guilt stabbed him in the gut.
He shouldn’t have made her so self-conscious. Whatever his reasons, he hadn’t saved her to be a jerk.
“I’ll try,” he said.
“I don’t want you to be nice to me because your brothers are,” she went on. “If you don’t like me, that’s fine. I can handle it.”
“He likes you,” Horus said.
She looked at him, studying his face for an uncomfortably long time. And it hit him. She was reading him the same way he read her. “I’m not…” It was much easier saying things no one else could hear but his brothers.
Shutting her eyes tightly, she burst out, “I like you.” She opened one eye to see his reaction. She’d shocked him.
“You like me.”
“I do,” she said. “You’re blunt and sometimes mean, but in between those times, you seem like someone I could be friends with.”
Friends.
He warned his brothers against friends. Could he be friends with Rose?
“You want more,” Seti said. “Stop being such a coward.”
He was no coward, but he also didn’t run into battle with his eyes closed. Ra glanced away from her. He couldn’t look at her while he admitted, “I would like that.”
“Yeah?” Her voice lifted at the end as if she was excited. Excited by being friends with him.
He faced her again and smiled. A real one. The kind of smile he gave to his brothers. “Yes.”
There was a small gap between the curtains, and outside the snow had begun to fall. It reminded him of the pile of ash he’d left behind on the train, and it wiped the smile right off his face.
26
Rose
The guys were still awake. She could tell. Everything was quiet—well—as quiet as Jamaica Plain could get. There was the background noise of cars and emergency vehicles in the distance. Voices shouting. But inside her apartment, it was quiet. Too quiet.
Rose tossed and turned. She stared at the ceiling then turned onto her side. She fluffed her pillow and jammed it under her head. But the guys were utterly still.
She wished she had some other sort of superhero ability. Night vision would have been helpful right about now.
Sighing, she squinted into the darkness at the couch. Seti was there, one arm thrown over his face. Not helpful. She’d fought Horus for this nest of blankets on the floor and had thrown a bit of a shit fit over the idea of taking the bed while they slept on the floor.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” she asked, her voice obscenely loud in the darkness.
“We don’t sleep very often,” Seti answered. “A few times a month.”
She sat up in her nest and crossed her arms. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I tried,” Ra grumbled from the bed. “I told you we didn’t need the bed.”
Oh, shit. He had said that. She just thought he’d meant, we’ll take the floor. “Oh.” But… “Horus or Seti could have said something.”
“It would be weird for us to stay awake all night while you slept,” Seti replied.
“It’s weird anyway,” she replied.
“You’re not comfortable,” Horus said. “Come sleep in your own bed.”
Her bed was so comfy, and she was soooo tired. But Seti was right. It was weird to go to sleep while she had guests who would stay awake. The world suddenly spun as she was lifted and plopped onto the mattress. Horus’s white teeth gleamed in the dark as he settled her over his arm next to him. “Three monkeys in the bed,” she said, repeating a story she’d heard a long time ago.
“Roll over, I’m crowded,” Ra whispered the end of the story and then chuckled. He didn’t get up. Turning on his side to face her, he reached across Horus’s chest to push her hair out of her face and then tucked his hands under his cheek. “Go to sleep.”
There was no command in his voice, yet her body responded. She snuggled a little closer into Horus’s warmth. His chest was hard, and so was his arm, but for some reason, she relaxed entirely and in a matter of seconds, fell asleep.
Rose woke up the next morning to the scent of warm flour and blueberries. In a flash, the entire night returned to her, and she sat up, wide eyed. The living room was empty except for a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin sitting on a plate on the coffee table. “Hello?” she called.
The door to the kitchen swung open, and Seti poked his head out. “We’re still here.”
She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath, but now she let it out. You stayed! she wanted to yell, but she dug deep for her chill and said, “You got breakfast. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Seti replied. “Your bag is on the chair.”
“My—” Her bag sat in the well-worn loveseat next to the front door, and she scrambled out of bed. Digging through it, she squealed as she found her computer, phone, and wallet all where she’d left them. “How did you find them?” She’d dropped them, she assumed, when the vampire had grabbed her in the middle of the street.
“It was at the sandpit,” Seti said, walking into the living room. The door behind him opened and Horus and Ra came out. “By public works.”
“I thought I lost it all,” she whispered. She opened her laptop and it glowed to life. Shoulders sagging, she shook her head. “I had no idea how I was going to replace all this.” She looked at each of them. “Thank you.”
“It was easy,” Ra said. “We asked Sylvain where he found you. After that, we just followed your scent.”
Her scent. “And it was just sitting there.”
“Yes,” Horus answered and frowned.
“Did something happen?” she asked, wondering if they’d run into trouble.
Horus didn’t answer right away. He reached for her coffee and handed it to her, staring at her until she took a sip. It was from her favorite coffee shop—the one where she’d done her work before the vampire found her. Had they followed her scent all the way from the sandpit to the coffee shop? Was it something there that made Horus frown so deeply?
“You tried to fight him,” the big man finally said.
All of it was a blur. How would they know that? Unsure of what to say, she stared at her cup and took another sip of her coffee. When she lifted her eyes, she found all the brothers staring at her. “What?”
Seti answered. “You’re a tough woman, Rose.”
Lifting one shoulder, she shrugged. Without her mom, she was on her own. No one came to rescue her.
That wasn’t accurate anymore. Maybe it never had been accurate. When it had really mattered, and life and death was on the line, these guys had shown up—guardian angel vampires.
No. Not vampires. They said, over and over, they were different. They ate. Walked in daylight.
Rose picked up the plate with the muffin and put it next to her. She pinched off a piece and popped it into her mouth. Chewing, she thought about what Seti said. “I’m not so tough,” she replied.
He opened his mouth to argue, but she went on, “I’m not. I mean—I take care of myself the best I can, but I don’t feel successful at it. I keep thinking that there are all these things—pieces of a puzzle—that I should be putting together to make sense of my life, but rather than do that, I’ve buried my head in the sand. Wouldn’t someone who was tough, someone who wasn’t afraid of things, face their challenges head on?”
Ra’s golden skin seemed to pale. He glanced away from her, but not before she saw his gaze had lightened from dark brown to golden. “I understand.”
For a long time, he and his brothers stared at each other. It went on so long, she knew her initial sense that hey could communicate without words had to be right. “What are you arguing about?” she asked.
Seti looked as if he was about to answer, but Ra interrupted him. “How much to tell you. How much to trust you with. How much to admit.”
She had no response to such honesty. Everything inside her wanted to assure him that he could trust her with anything. But in her life, the only person she’d ever really trusted was her mother. Dr. Stone knew all about her, but she had never really confided in him. The one time she’d tried, he’d shown her he didn’t believe what she knew to be the truth.
In the short time she’d known these men, they’d already shown her so much. Maybe they’d revealed it without knowing what they were doing. “Keep your secrets,” she assured them. “You’ve already trusted me with so much. You’ve brought me to meet your friends. Made me realize I’m not crazy. That alone—” They could never know what that meant to her. “At my lowest, you appeared. Like a gift. You could disappear today, and you’d have done more for me than anyone on this earth.”
“A gift?” Horus asked.
“Fate?” she rephrased. “Is that a better term?” She liked the word gift, though. It made her think of a higher power, or better yet, her mother, watching over her.
The men went silent again as if considering her words. Rather than stare at them, she stood and went about tidying up her apartment. She folded the extra blankets but placed them on the nearby chair so they could be used again tonight. Hopefully they’d spend the night again. “I’m so used to being by myself. It should be harder to get used to you. But it feels like you’ve always been here.” She spoke without looking at them.
“It does,” Seti replied. “It’s easy.”
Ra chuckled. “For you maybe.” A hand touched her lower back and she spun. No sound of movement—no creaking springs or rustle of clothing—had warned her of his approach. “It’s not easy for me to accept change. I’ve fought against it, because…”
Rose Page 15
