“It’s like this every time. You never get tired of the chase, do you?” he asked.

That made Jackson grin like an idiot. Now here was something he agreed with Menes on fully. The chase. The seduction. The oh-so-sweet victory.

“This is only the second time I have come ahead of Hatshepsut with the intention of choosing a host for her. She was … very reluctant to return to the mortal world that time as well. It had hurt her deeply, leaving our child behind. She has not wanted another since then, and I doubt that will have changed now,” he said with a dark sort of frown. Jackson had never really put much thought into it before, but he wanted children. When the time was appropriate of course, but if this queen of theirs did not want children, what could they possibly do to change her mind, knowing the grief and loss she had suffered? And that brought him to another question. Did Bodywalkers give birth to mortals or other Bodywalkers?

Our children spring from our host’s mortal bodies. They are everything mortal and we leave them behind when we go, never to know them again unless, one day, we discover the actual death and find our way into the afterlife. We tend to outlive them before we pass, which is equally difficult. It takes ancient rituals and a complex mummification process, most of which are lost to us, to create more Bodywalkers. Odjit perhaps would be capable, since she was truly a priestess in her time and was well-versed in the Book of the Dead. And perhaps her niece, Tameri.

Tameri. Their unique defector with her extraordinary power. That defection had definitely fallen into the “good” column as far as things were concerned. He’d had no idea just how powerful she was. Nor had he realized how fearful Odjit had been of losing her. So afraid that she had come for her Tameri herself, with all of her power brought to bear and every intention of destroying her if she did not come back to her willingly. And it was truly the power of fate at its finest that, in spite of all the massive Nightwalker power involved in that battle, Odjit had been felled by simple human hands.

Hands, he thought with a sudden choke of rage-filled emotion, that were presently unaccounted for. Jackson was loathe to count Leo out without seeing an actual corpse, but it was hard to imagine that even Leo’s strong and powerful body could recover from the bloodbath that had been left at his home. Next to protecting the women, this was Jackson’s top priority. He was going to find Leo, dead or alive, and he was going to seek justice for whatever had been done to him.

“I need Ahnvil,” he said abruptly. “I’m going to send him back to New York as soon as possible. And get me Diahmond. I don’t know who has her in their care, but I want her well in place before her mistress is resurrected. She can help keep a closer eye on the women as well. No offense to Asikri or to you Max, but there are just some places you’re not going to be able to follow them just by nature of your sex. When I say I want them watched, I mean every single minute. I’m not giving any opportunity for someone to get to them.”

“I don’t understand how you think you’re going to keep all of this a secret from that girl,” Asikri said. “And neither one of them looks like they’ll have enough sense to obey whatever rules you set down for them. That spitfire alone will be hard to keep under wraps.”

Jackson didn’t bother to hide his amusement. “Did she really get you in the—?”

“She’s lucky I didn’t have bad intentions,” Asikri groused. “Doing something like that could go a long way to pissing off an attacker and making what happens next a lot worse.”

“Some would say it’s better than just quietly letting someone do whatever they want to you. I know for a fact that every one of us would go down fighting. Why should it be any different for them just because they are women?” Jackson loosed a wry laugh. “I once arrested this guy who had gotten rough with his date and wasn’t taking no for an answer. By the time we got there we were forced to pull her off of him and ended up having to rush him to the hospital with stab wounds to certain tender places.”

Every man standing there winced.

“Never underestimate the power of a frightened woman,” Ram said.

“I don’t underestimate any of them,” Jackson said, thinking about Marissa and how brave she had been in spite of being terrified. She didn’t have to race him to safety the way she had. She could have just left him to rot. She might have had every right to it, too. That impulse to be of need, to help anyone in need of it was going to go a long way to convincing her to become a Bodywalker.

“I better get messages out to the Gargoyles. It’s growing near dawn and we still have a lot to do,” Ram said. “Max, take the women to the guest house and see they are comfortable. We’ll touch base at dusk.”

Jackson’s first impulse was to tell Max to leave Marissa behind. It was strange, but he found himself craving her constant company now. It was as though, now that all secrets were out in the open and the walls of their respective jobs were no longer a hindrance, he was making up for lost time. And there was a lot of that time to account for. Jackson knew that Menes wasn’t overly impressed by his performance so far with Marissa. To the ancient Egyptian it was simple. See something, want something, go after that something with all barrels blazing. Jackson realized that was in some ways a very good quality in a ruler. He was not very tolerant of the many human protocols that interfered with doing the best or the right thing. In this way they agreed that the right thing deserved to be done, but they were almost polar opposites when it came to how to execute it properly. Menes would have gone after Marissa without wasting time … or rather, without wasting life. How funny, Jackson thought, that this nearly immortal being was so much more appreciative of the shortness and preciousness of life than perhaps Jackson himself was. Perhaps because Jackson had always thought there would be time later to do certain things. Now, having tangoed so closely with death, he felt quite an understanding for Menes’s straightforwardness.

“Dusk then,” Jackson said, realizing after a long moment that they were waiting for his release. That was going to take a little getting used to. Not that he didn’t know how to take command. Training Sargent and his predecessor had taught him a lot about that, much in the same way the academy did. All things being equal, however, he had never shouldered a massive responsibility like the one he currently held as Politic ruler. Not many men would have. There were not very many monarchies anymore, and those that did exist rarely took place in a crucible of war and power of this magnitude.

“What about Kamenwati,” Ram asked him once the others had moved out of earshot. “Docia said you were entertaining some idea that he might want to defect to our side? Do you know how insane that sounds?”

“When has any of this ever sounded sane? It’s no more far-fetched then Tameri herself defecting. The niece of Odjit? I would never have believed it. I’m amazed that you did when she finally told you who she was.”

“It was difficult,” Ram said slowly. “But by then …”

“You’d already lost your heart to her?”

Ram smiled at that, very clearly enjoying a memory about the incident. “Something like that. It could easily have been a trap and I could just as easily be dead right now, a knife in my chest while I slept. But, as you know, your sister is very special and well worth the risk involved.” Ram smiled wider then. “Well what do you know. I just realized that after all these lifetimes, I am finally going to be related to you.”

“I see,” Jackson said, equally delighted. “You’re going to marry my sister then?”

“I had better. She won’t stand for anything less. And … well … I don’t want her to get pregnant out of wedlock and have her thinking I’m trying to be dutiful by doing the right thing by her only because of that. Your sister has odd notions about certain things.”

“I don’t think it’s odd to demand respect,” he said.

“Me neither. I mean it’s odd for her to suddenly think being pregnant would make my love for her somehow less believable. Less true. She doesn’t doubt me now, but her implication is that doubt would come into the picture at that point.”

“I don’t know. Just marry her quick and everyone will be happy. Especially because I left my shotgun in my house.” Jackson frowned then. “But I guess none of that will be seen by me again.”

“Nonsense. I’ll have Max send some of the others out to pack up and move everything for you. Don’t worry. No one has suspected you as yet of any wrongdoing. But it should be done today.”

“I’d appreciate that. Especially the photo albums. Docia’s whole life is documented in those things. She’ll want them for her own kids one day.” That brought his smile back. “You know, for a minute there I was getting worried. She kept dating these thoughtless bastards who treated her with about as much fascination as they did their furniture. Not disrespectfully, but with no appreciation for the treasure that she is. She was starting to believe she didn’t deserve any better. Now she’s got the best, and I couldn’t be happier.”

“Neither could I,” Ram agreed. And although he said it quietly, there was no doubting the ferocity with which he meant it. He loved Jackson’s sister. Like Hatshepsut and himself, Tameri and Ramses were souls meant to be cleaved together, for all they were in separate forms. And knowing of Ramses through the eyes of Menes, he had no question that Ram would be just as lost without Docia as he was whenever he lost Hatshepsut. And yet he knew he was extremely privileged to be one of the oh-so-rare individuals who knew, with evidence removing all doubt, that he would see his love one day again … and again … and again. It was sometimes the only thing that made this perpetual life of theirs worth living.

“I know I don’t have to tell you this, but treat her well, my friend. Neither of us is worth a damn to anyone without our women by our sides.”

With that he took leave of Menes’s life-long friend and went off to plan how he was going to go about searching for his.

Chapter Fourteen

Marissa had to give these Bodywalkers credit, she thought with an exacerbated sigh. They sure knew how to pick them out. And by them she meant humans, mortals, of dependability and all-around good fiber. Max was everything that Asikri was not, and by showering her sister with his undivided attention, he had made great strides in making up for what the ruder man had done to get her there. Apparently Asikri hadn’t bothered to do much in the way of explanation and hadn’t really been able to understand why the old “your sister is in trouble and sent me to come get you” ploy was not the angle to take with a New York girl, native or not.

Now the two were sitting by the pool, catching the last rays of the unseasonably warm day. She could hear the low rumble of Max’s voice, punctuated by her sister’s uncontrollable laughter.

Marissa was making herself busy by inspecting the grounds of the house. Well, house was really putting it mildly. Even mansion wasn’t exactly right. But it and its stone gardens of yucca plants and cacti were magnificent. Both, she realized, were dotted with very large statues of Gargoyles, all in varying degrees of crouches, spread wings, or even the impression of movement. Their faces ranged from ugly to absolutely grotesque, with varying wingspans, each one as distinctively different as one human was from another. It was funny but she’d imagined them all looking more uniform. If you knew one you knew them all kind of thing. There were other statues, too. Angels, Grecian goddesses, fauns, imps, and about a dozen other mythical creatures. The most unnerving was perhaps the behemoth-proportioned griffin Gargoyle in the front garden, the massive sentry looking very forbidding. She didn’t think it was an actual Gargoyle, it being so big, but what the hell did she know? She was still very new to this whole creatures-of-the-night thing.

That’s when it finally occurred to her to question the existence of other genuses and species. Hadn’t he said they were one of the Nightwalkers? What exactly were the others, besides the Gargoyles? And since the Gargoyles had been created by the Templars, it was a good bet they weren’t considered a Nightwalker species. But if they turned to stone in daylight and came to life at night, in her mind that made them uniquely qualified to be called Nightwalkers.

Just the thought of there being more creatures out there made her heart race. She sat down at the feet—or rather talons—of a Gargoyle, poking curiously at its leg to test its stoniness as she tried to calm herself with a little logical thinking.

Monsters were real. They had always been real. Whether human or otherwise. She shouldn’t spend every moment fearing what might or might not happen to her or her sister. Today was no different than any other day they had walked out into the world. Expect the best, prepare for the worst, live life, and don’t become paralyzed by fear. Which was easy to say, except now she was filled with the understanding that there very well might be a target painted on her back.