Queen Takes Checkmate (Their Vampire Queen Book 5)

by Joely Sue Burkhart

  I ran my hands down his back and slipped my palms up beneath his shirt so I could feel the heat of his skin. “I don’t know yet. I need to wake Huitzilopochtli first. I need to know why he’s imprisoned, why he’s mortal, and if there’s anything left of his power that I can use.”

  “And then?”

  I stayed soft and easy in his arms, my hands stroking up and down the long muscles of his back. “We go to Cairo. Vivian will open the portal to Heliopolis. And I go inside.”

  A tremor rocked his body against me like a massive earthquake had just dropped California into the Pacific Ocean. “Alone?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” I breathed slowly, still stroking him. “Like Mehen said, I’ll need a reason for Ra not to blast me into smithereens as soon as I show up. He needs a reason not to fear me, or suspect me of being capable of bringing him down. If I try to walk into his palace with the open goal of killing him, he’ll just attack me before I can get close enough to use the serpent.”

  “Mehen’s right.” Rik’s voice rumbled like rocks grinding into dust. “You’ll have to be very close to use it, unless that snake can fly.”

  “Then I get close. I’m the bait. I can’t change that. Ra wants a queen, and he’ll want one of Isis’ lineage even more. Maybe he hopes I can heal him, like Keisha wanted me to heal Tanza.”

  “Or more likely, he wants to foul Isis’ line by siring a queen on one of her daughters,” Vivian said grimly.

  I shuddered, and Rik almost popped my ribs squeezing me harder against him. “I won’t fuck him. I’ll die first. But I may have to allow him to think that I’m open to the idea. I may have to allow him to believe many things that I hope you all know aren’t true.”

  Daire pressed his face against my flank, wriggling beneath my sweater to find my skin. Mehen smashed me against Rik. Vivian braved the other men and hugged me from the other side. My other Blood stood close, Guillaume on one knee, a hand braced on the floor, his head hanging down as if he’d been stripped of his honor.

  “I’ve never assassinated a god before,” Xin said, his voice cold and hard. “Send me through the portal. Allow me to get him first. Even if he’s immortal, I can at least provide a distraction.”

  “What if your power of invisibility doesn’t work against him?” My voice was faint, because I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t ask them to loosen their hold on me. “What if they kill you immediately, and I’m incapacitated by the pain of losing you? He’s God of All Things Light and Day. For all we know, all our powers will be useless against him, or surely others would have succeeded in killing him already.”

  “The Morrigan’s Shadow can stand against him,” Nevarre said, his baritone ringing. “The Phantom Queen sent me to you for a reason. You need my darkness to fight his light.”

  “Vivian, is there more than one portal to access Heliopolis?”

  “Of course, some more guarded than others. I know them all.”

  “How are they opened?”

  “The blood of Ra opens portals. His foul blood burns in my veins.”

  I lifted my head from Rik’s neck and focused on her. Solemnly, I asked, “Would you be willing to allow a few of my men to feed on you, only so they may carry that same power and open extra portals?”

  She stared at me, her lovely face glowing with inner fire. Her eyes so fierce they pierced my soul. “For you, my queen, I will do anything. Anything at all.”

  26

  Shara

  The dusty basement room was crowded with all my Blood, Gwen, Carys, and Gina. Though I didn’t ask any of them to leave.

  My rat friend sat on my shoulder, her tiny paw locked in my hair. Through her, I felt hundreds of other rats nearby. If the worst happened, and Huitzilopochtli tried to kill me or escape to kill his daughter and granddaughter, they would clog the tunnels with their little bodies and prevent him from reaching the surface. Hopefully by then, one of my Blood could kill him.

  Guillaume had brought out his heavy Templar sword for this job. He stood at the mummy’s head, ready to chop him in half at the first sign of trouble. Xin, Ezra, Nevarre, Llewellyn, and Daire all stood at the door to prevent his escape.

  Clutching the Isador grimoire in my arms against my chest, I turned to my twins. “Is there anything else you can tell me about him? Signs of his power? Anything?”

  “His calendar day is One Flint.” Itztli’s face was grim and hard, though his black dog’s mournful eyes looked back at me. “The first day of the calendar to symbolize his founding of Tenochtitlan.”

  “He was the god of human sacrifice, war, and the sun,” Tlacel added. “War captives were most often sacrificed to him, but every year, a handsome young man would be chosen to take the god’s place. He would live in luxury as Huitzilopochtli until he was sacrificed during Toxcatl. Warriors who died in battle were transformed into hummingbirds and flew to his side. Also, women who died in childbirth. They were considered great warriors for battling to bear a child and received honors at his side.”

  Itztli lightly gripped the hilt of his obsidian blade on his hip. “He was always pictured with Xiuhcoatl, a weapon that was made to look like a fire-breathing dragon. It might have been a spear thrower, though I also saw a picture once with Xiuhcoatl stuck in his sister’s chest.”

  “The one who tried to kill his mother?” I asked.

  He nodded. “He chopped her up and threw her head up into the sky, which became the moon. Xiuhcoatl was sometimes thought to be a representation of the fire god, too. He supposedly threw it during battles like lightning bolts.”

  Handing the book to Gina for safekeeping, I stepped closer to the mummy. I held my hands out over him, palms down, though I didn’t touch him. Closing my eyes, I listened, not with my ears, but with my magic.

  I sank slowly into the mummy. I felt the rasp of brittle wrappings around the body. Dried and shrunken flesh. Cords of muscles that had tightened to thin strips of leather. Bones. So ancient my mind couldn’t comprehend exactly how old he must be. As old as Isis, surely. Would I someday find the Great One’s body like this? Lost and forgotten, dried up in some dingy basement?

  Or my mother’s?

  I felt a cold wisp brush my nape, sending chills trickling down my spine. I had a feeling that my mother would never have left her body behind. She wouldn’t risk me trying to find her so I could resurrect her.

  :My time is over, daughter. It is your time to rise.:

  Deep inside the mummy, I felt the cavity where his organs should be. In true Egyptian fashion, they’d been removed. That told me it had to have been done by Ra, or at least ordered by him. It didn’t make sense that Keisha Skye would have attempted to mummify an Aztec god.

  The emptiness didn’t feel right, though. There was an echo. A greater hole that felt wrong. It took me a moment to realize why, but I had to check the book to be sure.

  Opening my eyes, I lowered my hands. “Gina, can you find the page where the mummification ritual is covered? It should be fairly close to the beginning.”

  She flipped carefully through the pages. “Yes, here it is. What do you need?”

  “Is the heart removed?”

  “No,” she replied. “It must be kept with the body. The heart was the seat of thinking and emotion for ancient Egyptians. That’s why it had to be weighed against Ma’at’s feather of truth before they could continue their journey to paradise.”

  “Bingo,” I whispered, smiling. “That’s why he’s trapped as a mortal. Ra had his heart removed. It’s not here.”

  “Can you resurrect him if there’s no heart?” Rik asked.

  “I’m not sure, but I think so. I can bring his soul back to the body, but he won’t be Huitzilopochtli the god until he regains his heart.”

  In the bond, I felt an immense wave of relief from Mayte, who was holding on tightly to our bond, watching everything I did. I could almost feel her pressed against my back, even though she was at least a thousand miles away.

  I closed my eyes again, but this tim
e, I wanted to ground myself. I concentrated on the earth beneath my feet, still separated from me by concrete, but closer than when I’d been in the top floor of the tower. I felt the hum of my blood circle singing around me, brilliant energy streaming up from the ground to the hundredth floor, blocking all attempts—human or supernatural—to break my protections. Powered by my period blood, this circle could not be broken.

  Not until my death.

  I reached deeper inside myself and found my heart tree hundreds of miles away in Eureka Springs. My heart ached for my nest. My manor house. My trees. My hot spring bubbling up from the ground. I’d suffered and died to grow the heart tree, its thorns piercing my body, puncturing my heart. My blood flowed in the tree, powering the sacred grove that our goddesses had helped me grow. The Morrigan, Nevarre’s goddess, had even sent Her crows to live in my grove.

  With that thought, I saw my crow queen in her nest, her shiny black feathers fluffed up against the cold. Soon, she seemed to say in mind, and I felt the promise of warm eggs beneath her breast. In a few months, she’d lay her first eggs.

  All of them would. Birds had flocked to my nest. Mostly crows, but I sensed blue jays, cardinals, owls, even a bald eagle in the trees.

  The queen sent another image to me, the skies dark with countless flocks of birds flying to her from across the country. Birds chirping and singing, telling her of things they’d seen. Some brought her tokens and gifts. Shiny coins, bits of ribbon, strands of hair. I touched a delicate silver locket, and I could suddenly see the owner.

  A woman. No, a queen. I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Alone, she wept, silently, staring out into a vast darkness. I had no idea who she was, or where she lived, only that she’d once owned the locket now in my crow’s nest.

  The crow cocked her head, showing me piles and piles of trinkets. Goddess. So many. If they all had images of owners, bits of secrets attached to them…

  :Eyes.: She chirped in my head. :Ears.:

  Yes, of course. The birds were my eyes and ears in the world.

  I was going to have a huge hoard of shiny treasures to sort through as soon as I went home.

  I started to pull back to the mummy, but hesitated, lingering with my crow queen. How had she been able to communicate directly in my head? I hadn’t tasted her blood.

  An image filled my head of a large thorn puncturing her in the side, just below her right wing. :Blood. For you.:

  She’d bled on my heart tree that flowed with my blood and power. Now she could talk to me directly. Implications flickered through my mind. Reaching up to my rat, I scratched her lightly under the chin. :Would you be willing to offer your blood on the heart tree?:

  She squeaked and touched her nose gently to my cheek. I took that for yes. If only I could figure out a way to travel between the tower and my grove quickly without having to get on a plane. I pushed that thought away and focused on the mummy lying before me. My heart tree pulsed inside me, tying me to the earth and the sacred grove. I was as rooted to my power as possible.

  I punctured my index finger on one of my sharp nails and traced a pattern on the mummy’s chest. I didn’t know what it meant, only that it needed to be done. The magic dictated that symbol. That word. It meant…

  “One Flint,” Itztli whispered. “His calendar day.”

  “Huitzilopochtli, Hummingbird on the Left, Lord of Sun and War, patron god of Tenochtitlan, I call you from beyond the grave. By the blood of the Great One flowing in my veins, I command your soul to return to this body.”

  My hair lifted around my head briefly. Something fluttered past my head and landed on the mummy. A hummingbird, bright blue with an emerald-green chest. It paused a moment, wings outspread, and then they blurred, releasing the trademark buzz of a hummingbird in flight. With a loud pop, it disappeared into the mummy’s chest.

  I traced my still-bleeding finger over the bandages covering his mouth. “Huitzilopochtli, your queen calls you to rise. I call you to glitter and shine as in days of yore. Rise.”

  In the distance, I heard a tinging sound, as if someone played a harp or chimes far away, almost out of hearing. His chest rose on one deep breath, and then he released that breath on a furious, heart-rending bellow.

  Rik shoved me behind him, while the twins took up position on either side of him. Through the bond, I felt Guillaume raise the sword over his head, poised to slice off the mummy’s head.

  “Wait!” I commanded them, pushing Rik’s arm over my shoulders so I could see, though I didn’t make him move out of my way. I was already asking much of my alpha. While I could, I’d allow him to protect me as carefully as he wished, because all too soon, there would be nothing he could do to save me.

  The mummy thrashed on the table, rending cloth and scattering centuries of dust. His body swelled beneath the wrappings, shredding them more to reveal blue skin. Strips of cloth fell away, stained with the same blue, so it must be some kind of paint or dye. He reached up and dragged the cloth from his face. Too quickly, because I could see the white bone of his skull before his flesh knitted together over the top, filling in over the cavity where his nose and mouth were.

  His eyes gleamed golden like the sun. Beneath the blue paint, his skin was nearly black. His hair hung in twisted plaits from a high ponytail on the crown of his head. He jerked upright and promptly lunged toward me.

  Rik pushed me back with a warning growl, and the mummy fell to the ground. He crouched, eyes gleaming like molten gold, and threw his head back to roar again. Not like a beast or a jaguar. To me, it sounded like rage. Pain. Unimaginable grief.

  He spoke, but I couldn’t understand the words.

  Tlacel translated for me. “Where is she? Where is my love?”

  Huitzilopochtli threw his head back and roared again, this time a name that I recognized. “Citla!”

  :Oh, Shara,: Mayte cried in our bond. :He’s still looking for my mother.:

  27

  Tlacel

  In the five hundred years and more of my life, I’d never thought that my affinity for the ancient language of Mexica would be of use to anyone. Yet here I sat between my queen and the god of Tenochtitlan, acting as interpreter.

  Something even my mighty older twin could not do.

  I’d grown up used to being second place. It wasn’t Itztli’s fault that he’d been born first. In fact, I was incredibly lucky that Grandmama had decided to ignore the old ways and allowed me to live. It wasn’t uncommon in those days to kill the weaker twin, and I had never been as powerful as Itztli. Given our heritage and how we were conceived, it was a miracle that either of us had been able to hold on to our sanity long enough to find a queen.

  Shara had moved us all back upstairs to a private room. She’d offered food and drink to the ancient god, but he’d refused everything, other than a blanket that he’d casually wrapped around his hips.

  “What happened to you?” She asked the man who’d once been the most important god of Tenochtitlan.

  Huitzilopochtli didn’t look at me as I repeated the words for him. He couldn’t look away from our queen. Not that I blamed him in the slightest. “After the fall of Tenochtitlan, I slumbered off and on for centuries. I hoped that Mexica would rise once more, but as the years passed, I realized we were doomed. We would never again build our temples. Our ways were lost, corrupted, and destroyed, our temples torn apart to build the Spaniards’ churches. Mexica was no more.

  “But then another god began to whisper to me. He promised to bring us back to our full glory. He promised golden temples would bear my name once more. Sacrifices would be offered to strengthen me again. Our cities would rise on the earth and we would destroy any who stood in our way. All I had to do was eliminate the last few witches that lived in my ancient country.”

  Pausing, he tipped his head to the side, looking at Shara. “Queens. Like you.”

  “So Ra woke you and asked you to kill the last few queens in Mexico?”

  I repeated Shara’s words and Huitzilopochtli grun
ted acknowledgement. “There were so few left. I thought it would be easy. But then I found Citla Zaniyah and she conquered me with her gentle spirit. I felt great pain inside her. A great darkness. She’d endured much, but she still carried a sweetness in her that called to my hummingbird. I watched her from afar, and then I sang to her as a bird. She heard me. She answered me. I knew, then, that she was mine.”

  He stared off into the distance, a pained smile on his face. “I took her from her family for a time. It was only days on this earth, but in Aztlan, it was a lifetime. She told me about the evil she’d endured in House Tocatl. I sensed the other sun god’s touch in that foul deed. He would revel in such a thing. He wanted all the queens dead, yes, but he wanted them to suffer, too. He would have laughed with glee at the thought of a young, powerful, beautiful queen being ruined by men who were supposed to protect and nurture her power.”

  He focused on Shara, his face hardening. “I couldn’t bear that I had participated in the spread of his evil. I had not tortured young queens, but I had caused others to die. I knew that if he could find my love, he would destroy her. So I took her back to her home and set out to correct my misdeeds.”

  Shara leaned back against Rik in her normal seat, though our alpha vibrated with urgency. If Huitzilopochtli so much as moved an eyelash in a way that Rik didn’t approve, he’d have her up in his arms. The last Templar knight casually stood behind Huitzilopochtli’s chair. He didn’t have to have the sword unsheathed to make his threat known. A whisper from our alpha, and the former god would be dead.

  “I was the sun. I was invincible. I took Xiuhcoatl in my left hand and went to defeat the Egyptian Lord of Sun with all the love burning in my heart. Only to be batted down like an annoying insect. He is so strong. I’ve never seen his like. Even at the height of my glory in Tenochtitlan, I don’t think I could have defeated him.”

  “I told you,” Vivian muttered beneath her breath.

  Shara ignored her. “What did he do to you?”