by Faith Gibson
She checked the train schedule from Cairo to Alexandria. Even though she already had her first clue, she was tempted to get on the ferry to see if she was still being followed. She definitely wouldn’t take a chance on going back to the zoo. At least, not as Beatrice. When she decided against the ferry, she called and canceled her reservation.
Even though she’d had a couple of pastries, Sophia was still hungry. She blamed it on her shifter metabolism. She ordered a hummus and pita plate from room service and in less than twenty minutes, there was a knock on the door. Since she wasn’t Beatrice, she called out, “Please leave it.” Sophia reached out with her senses. When the footsteps retreated, she opened the door and picked up the tray.
While she was eating, a ping sounded from her computer. The only one who had this particular email address was Tiffany, her friend at the library. There was only one reason she would be emailing – to let her know Nikolas had received her note. Her fingers hit the wrong keys several times before she typed in the correct password. Calm your ass down. It’s not like he even knows where you are. Sure enough, Tiffany relayed what transpired: “I told him you had taken a leave of absence, as you instructed. The man was not happy.” Sophia couldn’t help but smile. She closed out of the email without responding. Knowing her mate had come calling again lightened her heart a fraction.
After putting on the Clara prosthetic, Sophia gathered everything she thought she might need and dropped it in her bag. Not taking a chance with the disk, she slid it into the pocket of the black slacks she was wearing. She French-braided her long hair before wrapping a scarf around her head. Being lighter skinned than Egyptian women, she dressed conservatively not wanting to draw unwanted attention to herself. She locked her room and snuck downstairs to hail a taxi. While she would love to take the ferry to Giza, she wanted to decipher the clues that were on the disk more. Maybe when she had her parents back safely, she could enjoy the scenery.
The express train ride took a little over three hours. The scenery had been less than spectacular, so Sophia used the time to devise a plan when she met her aunt. As she made her way to the platform, she shrugged her bag higher on her shoulder. She had brought a different disguise as well as a change of clothing, just in case. Being prepared for anything couldn’t hurt.
It was early afternoon, and she was hungry again, so she decided to find something light to eat. Spotting a small restaurant, she ordered Samak Mashwi with a side of Kushari. It’s a good thing I don’t have a weak stomach. The fish had a wonderful, spicy flavor she enjoyed, even if it was served whole. Ignoring the eyeball staring back at her, Sophia dug the flesh out of the center and ate it with the rice and lentil side dish.
Xenia’s home was located in a neighborhood containing the railway station. Even though the house was close, Sophia had no desire to walk the few blocks by herself. She hailed a taxi, and a few minutes later, sat in front of her aunt’s small home. Sophia paid the cab driver and got out onto the sidewalk. As she was walking toward the house, she heard a crash coming from inside. “Get out! You can’t see me like this!” a woman shouted.
Something else shattered, and a man yelled, “Fuck, Xenia. Stop this. What is wrong with you?”
Sophia hurried into the house and found a good-looking man dodging flying objects. Whoever was flinging those objects was nowhere to be seen. When a crystal vase was thrown around the corner, the man yelled, “Xenia, seriously, cut the shit!”
Sophia took a big chance and walked into the kitchen where her aunt was hiding. Even if the man hadn’t spoken her aunt’s name, she’d have known it was her. Xenia was the spitting image of Caroline, or would be if her grandmother hadn’t stopped aging and if her grandmother had fangs.
“Oh, shit!” Sophia ducked as another glass item flew through the air, this one headed her way. “Xenia, calm down,” she scolded her aunt.
“Calm down? Calm down she says. She, who I don’t even know who the fuck she is, is telling me to calm down! Do you fucking see this shit?” she asked, holding her clawed hands out to her sides.
Before she could say any more, Sophia returned to the man and blocked his view. “I think it would be best if you go. I’ve got this.” Using her shifter strength, she ushered him toward the door.
“But she said she doesn’t know you. I’m not letting some stranger in here without…” He was cut off as another object grazed the side of his head.
“Out, now!” she said as she shoved him out the door. Sophia flipped the locks and turned to face her aunt. This was what she had been training for. The man banged on the door, yelling to be let back in, but she ignored him.
“I have fangs. And I have claws. Fucking claws!” Xenia looked around, probably for something else to throw. Blood was running down her chin.
“Xenia, I can explain,” she replied with her hands up in the defensive.
The woman whirled around and shrieked, “Really? You can explain to me why after almost fifty years I all of a sudden sprout fucking fangs?”
Instead of answering, Sophia allowed her own fangs and claws to come forth. “I know what you’re going through, so like I said, calm down.”
Xenia calmed down. “What the fuck are you? What am I?” she whispered.
Sophia took a chance and slowly closed the distance between them. Holding her hands in front of her, she retracted her claws and allowed her fangs to retreat into her gums. “I will tell you everything, but first, I want you to close your eyes and imagine your fangs receding into your gums.” Xenia did as she said, and after a few seconds, her mouth was back to normal. “Now, do the same thing with your hands.” Sophia waited until her aunt’s hands were clawless. “Good. Very good.”
Sophia moved toward the sofa and asked, “Would you like to sit down? This is a long story.”
“Yeah, but first I need a drink. Would you like one?” Xenia walked to a cabinet on the far side of the room and poured a tall glass of what looked like whiskey. Xenia downed the glassful of liquor and poured herself another.
“No, thank you. Xenia, you aren’t going to believe what I tell you at first. But please, just hear me out. In the end, it will make sense. Sort of.”
Xenia brought the glass with her and sat across from Sophia. When she was settled, Sophia removed the scarf from her head before she continued. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way about who and what you are. I am your niece.” When Xenia started to interrupt her, Sophia held up her hand. “Yes, I know, you were adopted and don’t have any siblings. Actually, you have sixteen, well fifteen now. One is recently deceased.” Sophia stood and went to the kitchen, wetting a paper towel. She handed it to her aunt and sat back down. “You have a little blood on your chin.” Xenia wiped the blood as Sophia continued, “You were put up for adoption by your biological parents to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“From those of our kind who are prejudiced against the less than pure of our kind. Have you ever read a book about a shapeshifter, you know, like a werewolf?”
Xenia’s eyes were huge. “You mean we’re…”
Sophia cut her off. “No, not exactly. But we do come from a line of shapeshifters. The earliest Gargouille date back millennia. They were created to protect humans. The name has been modernized over the years to Gargoyle. Your father is a full-blood who is from the original line of shifters. Your mother is human; therefore, you are what is considered a half-blood. My father, one of your brothers, is also a half-blood. I guess that would make me a quarter-blood, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it. Anyway, what you have seen, the claws and fangs, is a small part of being a shifter. Females of our kind have enhanced strength, vision, and hearing. Once we meet our mate, we go through our initial transition into our shifter side.
“Phasing is what we call it when our extra parts show up,” Sophia said, using air quotes. “Now, the males, they are special. The Gargoyles have an awesome set of wings as well as special skin that is impenetrable. And yes, before you ask, they ca
n fly. The half-blood males get wings upon their transition, but not the thick skin. It develops over time. I know this is a lot to throw at you at once, but honestly, the worst part is over.” Sophia spent the next hour filling Xenia in on all things Goyle and answering her many questions. It was a lot to take in, especially the feeling of betrayal by parents who kept some of their children and not the others.
“So, what you’re saying is even though I’ve been seeing Keene for the last few months, anyone I’ve come in contact with could be my mate?”
“Yes, but you will know whether it’s him or not by the feelings you get when he’s near. I’m surprised it took you so long to transition, though. Most of us phase for the first time pretty quickly after meeting our mate.”
“I’ve had fangs for months now. I just didn’t know what to do about them. I’ve taken a sabbatical from work to come to terms with the new me.”
“That makes more sense. Have you not been around Keene since you transitioned?”
“No, and as you can see, he got tired of waiting on me. I’ve been putting him off, telling him I was sick. When I’m around him, my body does its own thing.”
Sophia couldn’t help but think about her own body’s reaction to Nik.
“Where did you go just then?” Xenia asked with the first smile she’d formed since Sophia walked into the house.
“I was thinking about my mate and how he makes me feel. When he’s near, I absolutely have to touch him. It’s as if part of my soul leaves me and takes up residence with him. Until I’m in his presence again, part of me feels gone. You might look at others and think they’re attractive, but no one else will do it for you, ever again.”
Xenia sighed. “Then Keene is definitely my mate. But how do I explain all of this to him? We haven’t known each other that long, and I really thought he was the one.”
“If he is the reason for your transition, he is the one. You should tell him the truth. He will feel the mate pull to you as well, and he won’t really have a choice but to be around you. I have yet to see a mate who ran for the hills at seeing the shifter side. While most of the shifters have mates who are also shifters, it isn’t unheard of for the mates to be fully human, like your mother and my mother.”
“My mother… what’s she like? I lost both my adoptive parents about a year ago to a home invasion.” Xenia paused as she took a sip of her drink. “That’s when I moved up here to Alexandria.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. Your biological mother, Caroline, is great. You look a lot like her, except older.”
“Older? How is that possible?”
“When a human woman mates with a shifter then has a child, her body stops aging. Caroline had her first baby when she was in her late twenties.”
Xenia frowned. “How old is she exactly?”
Sophia didn’t hesitate to tell her, “Two hundred forty-five.”
“You’re shitting me!” Xenia exclaimed. The slang term sounded funny said with her accent.
“I shit you not,” Sophia said, trying to lighten the moment.
Xenia downed the rest of her drink. “I’m too old to have a kid.”
“You’re the shifter, not the human. You will look the way you do now for the rest of your life. What you need to be concerned with is phasing and getting your shifter side under control before you go out into public. We’re not ready for the world to know we exist.”
“Yeah, I can understand that. By the way, why exactly are you here?” Xenia stood and poured herself another drink.
“It’s a long story, but if I want you to trust me, I’m going to trust you.” Sophia told her aunt everything she knew about her parents’ abduction, which wasn’t much. When Xenia asked what she could do to help, Sophia pulled the disk from her pocket. “You can help me decipher these glyphs.”
Chapter Five
“What do you mean the disk is gone?” Kallisto would have choked the huge man on the other end of the line had he been standing in front of her.
“Just what I said, Boss. We watched the bench until lunchtime. When we never saw the woman, we checked to be sure. It’s not there.”
Kallisto didn’t bother saying goodbye. She disconnected and yelled, “Sergei, get in here!” When her faithful companion strode into the living room of their hotel suite, she threw her phone at him. “Get on your computer and hack into the video surveillance at the zoo. Find out who took the fucking disk,” she seethed.
Sergei’s men had kept an eye on the ferries, but none had reported seeing the young woman. Either she was waiting until later afternoon to retrieve her clue, or she had not followed their instructions and had found alternate transportation. The fact that the disk was missing meant she either showed up when they weren’t looking, or someone else had found it. Neither scenario was acceptable. If Miss Brooks already had the disk, Kallisto needed eyes on the woman so she could eventually retrieve it back. If someone else had the disk... Kallisto didn’t want to think about that scenario.
Her father would not find this acceptable. He didn’t appreciate failure of any kind, and in his eyes, this minor setback would be considered failure. Her father wouldn’t raise a hand to her, but he wouldn’t hesitate to raise one to Sergei. He would give her that disappointed look only a parent could give their child. Kallisto had no wish to see that look on her father’s face. She saw it often enough directed at her brother.
Kallisto stood behind Sergei and placed her hands on his shoulders as he frantically searched the video feed from the zoo. He was her best friend, her confidante. Were he someone else, she would allow herself to fall in love with him. Make love to him. Since he was not, she kept their relationship purely platonic. Her father kept a constant eye on her. Never would she be allowed to engage in a relationship with someone beneath their station. She found that ironic considering who her mother had been.
“I’ve gone back to before the gates opened this morning. Nobody sat on the bench, and none of the workers stopped anywhere near it.” Sergei continued typing, searching.
“Go all the way back to the point when I put the disk under the bench.” She squeezed his shoulder then began pacing. There had to be something there showing who took the disk. Kallisto had no idea how her father had obtained such a priceless artifact or why he would allow her to use it as a clue. Whoever discovered the disk would hold in their possession an item so rare it could land them in prison, or worse yet, in the media’s eye. The Cleopatra Disk was created in 29 B.C., a year after the pharaoh’s death. It disappeared one hundred years later and had been missing ever since. It wasn’t the only rare artifact her father held in his private collection.
The rarity of the coin was kept a secret from all the men on her crew, including Sergei. She loved her friend, but she trusted no one. Only because she was already wealthy beyond measure did her father entrust her with the object. If it were to be discovered where the disk had been all those centuries…
“Here!” Sergei pointed to the monitor. “It was an old lady.”
Kallisto couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The same old lady who had snapped a picture of the leopard as Kallisto walked past was clearly the one to take the disk. “Fuck! How could I have been so careless?” She had not seen the woman until after she hid the artifact under the bench. Even then she had waited to make certain no one was in the vicinity. “This is bad. We have to find this woman and get the disk back.”
Sergei stood from his chair and pulled Kallisto into a tight embrace. She allowed him to offer her strength. She had screwed up, and it would take a miracle to find an old woman in such a large city. “I’m on it, Sweetheart. I will not let you down.”
“Holy mother of Horus! Do you know what this is?” Xenia turned the coin over and over, studying it closely.
“No, but I’m assuming you do?” Sophia asked.
“Yes, I do. This is the Cleopatra Disk. My father was an archaeologist. This object eluded him his whole life, and someone just handed it over to you as if it wasn�
��t one of the most sought-after artifacts of all time.” Xenia handed the disk back to Sophia.
“If it’s the original. I’m not up on all things ancient, but this item looks to be in pristine condition. Wouldn’t something that dates back thousands of years be a little more, I don’t know, fragile?”
Xenia walked over to a bookcase and pulled down what appeared to be a photo album. “If it was buried under rubble for thousands of years, out in the elements, yes. If it has been kept in a private collection, in the dark so to speak, then no. Take a look at this.” Xenia placed the album on the coffee table and pointed at a picture. “This is a Tutankhamun Disk. It was buried along with the King. The detail is perfect, same as the Cleopatra Disk. This one here belonged to Ramesses the Great. It was found in a dig back in 1922. That is what your artifact would look like had it not been locked up tight.”
“So why give me an ancient artifact that belonged to Cleopatra? Are the kidnappers telling me my parents are buried along with the ancient Queen?” Sophia started pacing. Her parents couldn’t be dead. Why would the kidnappers bring her all this way if they’d already murdered her mom and dad?
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Until you have proof, you need to assume they are still alive. As for Cleopatra’s burial site, no one knows where it is.”
Sophia sighed. “Great. I’m no closer than I was. Why give me a useless clue? That doesn’t make sense.”
“You said someone was watching you. Maybe they wanted to see if you would follow their directions. Or maybe they wanted you to have the disk, and they would contact the authorities. That would tie you up for months. Do you know anyone who would want to do this to your family?”
