“Yes, glorious one,” Kamen rasped, staggering to the door. As he passed through the portal and left Apep behind, he understood that he had released the most foul of imp gods upon the earth. Apep, mortal enemy of the good and golden Amun. As opposite that god as ever there was.

And he had brought it down upon them all.

Once he was out of the sight of the thing he straightened up, the only sign of his pain the whitening of his lips and the stark truth in his eyes. He didn’t risk going anywhere else but the room where Chatha was toying with the human.

The human. Yes … yes! The mortal was the key. It was the only way he could begin to right this thing.

He prayed to the gods that this time he was on the right path. And he knew now that leaving this existence was no longer an option for him. He had lost the privilege of peace.

He opened the door to Chatha’s torture chamber.

“Chatha, heal it. I wish to play with it elsewhere,” he commanded, looking down to see Chatha methodically tearing strips of skin off of his victim. Yes, he told himself fiercely, look upon the destruction you have caused and feel your guilt as you should! “Do we know its name?”

“Leo,” Chatha breathed, looking put out that his game was coming to an end.

“Now now, Chatha. I have something better for you to do.” Yes go … go and entertain evil so much like yourself … the evil that was born out of my black, selfish heart. “I have awakened the god Apep, maker of mischief and a great blackness … much like yourself. Go to her in the altar room. Make haste. I am certain she will not like to wait.”

“Mischief …” Chatha smiled, beaming with that beautiful innocence, sickening him as he realized that permitting Chatha to live in the house of this Down syndrome innocent was but one of many sins he had allowed in the name of his mistress and his misguided cause. It was but one of the things he would make right.

Chatha hurriedly healed Leo, not even enough to bring him to consciousness. He closed all the wounds, knitting them just enough, but leaving him striped with angry ridges all down his chest, ribs and stomach. Chatha then scampered to the door. “Come, come!” he beckoned Kamen.

“No, my friend,” he said forcing a smile, “it’s time for me to play.”

Chatha barely waited for the denial to be finished before discarding Kamen’s company. As soon as he was gone just long enough to have entered the altar room, Kamen bent to grab Leo by his arm and, kneeling, dragged that arm across his neck. The position lay all of Leo’s weight against his dislocated shoulder and he ground his teeth together. He could have had Chatha heal him, but the pain was a good mask for his thoughts. He knew one or two telepathic Templars and they had both said the same thing to him. A target that was in agony was difficult to read because the pain took up so much space in their thoughts.

Besides, it was far less than what he deserved.

He hefted the man who was of equal weight and build, pulling him to his feet. Leo groaned and his eyes opened in a sticky pull of lashes. Cleansing the mortal of the bath of his own blood was not a luxury he had given the man. Leo’s dark brown eyes swung to Kamen’s face.

“I’m getting us out of here, my friend, before something far worse than Chatha comes down on us.”

Leo eyes were very swollen, his lips caked with blood. He cleared his throat, as if to speak.

He spit phlegm and blood in Kamen’s face.

“I’m not your f**king friend,” he rasped.

“No,” Kamen agreed. “But I’m all that stands between us and almost certain death.”

“So the f**k what? I’m happy to die,” Leo ground out.

“No. I don’t think you are. If you were, this torment would have ended your life long before this. It is your own resilience that kept this going as long as it has. I do not think you would give up now.”

“Fine. But just so you know motherfucker … I’m going to kill you as soon as I get the chance.”

“I would be disappointed if you didn’t,” Kamen said, moving them to the door.

Chapter Fifteen

Jackson was out of his mind. Or that’s what he thought. Crazy and probably hallucinating that he was holding Marissa in his hands, the soft coppery strands of her hair streaming between his fingers like magnificent red waterfalls, gleaming with a touch of gold. Her warmth was emanating into him—he’d never known such enticing warmth before. Pervasive. Steady. Patient. Waiting for him to recognize it. Waiting for him to take charge of his damn life and go about the business of living. Everything was in flux, everything was changing. His home. His job. Himself. Hell, even his sister had changed. Nothing was the same as it had been three weeks ago.

Nothing but Marissa. And even there Menes’s proposal was to change her. To use her as a means to an end. A goal that meant far more to him than resolving this war, and he took that priority very seriously.

“I’m sorry I ever suggested …” he blurted out, trying to find some way of reassuring her that she wasn’t anything insignificant in her own life or just exactly how she was.

“No. Don’t be sorry. I … I’m actually flattered I think. It sounds a lot like … oh, Jackson in a way it’s incredibly romantic. Don’t you think? Two people born dynasties apart … and then this thing, this magical thing happens and they get to meet and create, literally, a love for the ages. Imagine. It’s as if you were Romeo asking me to become Juliet. Although perhaps that’s a bad choice as a metaphor because they—” She broke off suddenly, her breath catching in her throat.

“They die.” He finished it for her, not afraid of the stark truth of it. “Imagine,” he said back to her, “if death were only the beginning for those lovers. Imagine if they knew that the other would always, always be there for them when next they were reborn.” He touched a thumb to her lower lip, tracing the lushness of it. “What strength of purpose that can give them. What pain will come when one of them has to leave the other once more.” He sighed softly, his breath stirring her hair. “The last time we were reborn, I came three months ahead of her. I chaffed at the bit, fretted and stomped about. Nothing would satisfy … nothing could satisfy until my love was born again. But … it was only a single week after she finally came to me when Odjit found her and assassinated her before my very eyes. And I could not bear it, this world, without her. First I sent that faithless bitch back to the Ether, but then … I went back for my love, so she would have my soul next to hers in the Ether … and so I wouldn’t have to bear a lifetime without her.”

“Suicide.” She breathed the word over him. “You committed suicide.”

He nodded. “Had my host been a different sort of man it might not have been possible, but we were both swept away by our emotions. I will feel everything Menes feels just as sharply as he feels it. And he feels everything I feel, just as sharply as I feel it. He knew, better than I did myself, what I feel for you.”

“Feel?” She whispered the word over him, like it was a dirty little secret. “How can you trust what you feel? He could … he might be manipulating—”

“No!” The word was sharp, his hands tightening around her head. “Listen to me,” he said as he brought her forehead into contact with his own. “For once … stop thinking with this loud head full of thoughts and just feel.” He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, dragging the smell of her into himself. A sweet shampoo made with vanilla, a musky floral perfume touched lightly to her skin as if she’d walked through a light cloud of fragrance. “Before anyone else … before Menes. Before all of this … before Chico …” He breathed her in again. “It was a Sunday. I remember because I was in a hurry to get to the flag football game at the park … we’d been beating the pants off of the Middletown PD the last two games.”

She laughed. “That means it must have been a Sunday?” she asked.

“Yeah. Flag football gets you in the mood for Monday Night Football. Jesus, don’t you have a brother? An uncle? Some guy somewhere in the family tree?”

She shook her head in between his hands. It made the silk of her hair slip back and forth between his fingers and he swallowed hard. Something about the sensation felt illicit. It felt like knowing her on an intimate level. Only someone close against her would know how her hair felt. And he knew she didn’t let just anyone touch her hair.

“My father died when Lina was two. I was eight. I don’t remember much about him. No brothers. I only have an aunt and she’s been associated with … umm … about two dozen uncles … that I remember. Before she died my mother didn’t let us spend too much time around them.”

“Smart lady. When did she die?”

“I was nineteen.”

“You …” He laughed then, turning up his chin and pressing his lips to her forehead as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “It was a Sunday,” he whispered against her as his mind raced. She had raised her sister. Just like he had raised Docia. Only he had had Leo to help him. Leo had always been there, watching Docia when he had a test to study for or when he went to the Academy. Who had been there for her? How had she gone through medical school by herself with a kid sister to take care of? “And I came into the station with Chico. I had him off leash. Bad habit, really. I trusted him so much that I’d forget he was still an animal. I never forgot he was dangerous, don’t get me wrong. I trained with him too much to let that happen. But he was still a dog, you know? And he smelled something. I was rushing through to get to the park, picking something up off my desk … I can’t even remember what it was … and Chico got wind of something and did something he has never done before. He left my heel. Chico always stayed at my heel. Always.

“But something caught his nose and he left me. I saw it out of the corner of my eye … so I looked up and saw you. Do you remember now? He was at your feet and he growled. It’s why you shied from Sargent the other day. You remember Chico growling. And it wasn’t playing. You froze because you knew that was not a playful sound.”

He heard her swallow and he pulled back so he could look into her eyes. “Yes,” he said softly, “you remember. You were wearing something so loose. A skirt that swept your toes, full of fabric, light and whimsical, like a hippie girl straight out of Woodstock.” It was a joke. Everyone in Saugerties knew that Woodstock wasn’t held in Woodstock. It had been held in a little town called Saugerties, New York. “You looked so damn pretty. And I remember thinking, what’s so wrong with us that you won’t dress that way at work? A brief flash of thought before calling Chico to heel.”

“But he didn’t,” she said, her voice as whisper soft as his was, as if they were in church telling secrets.

“No. He snarled and growled again. I dropped everything in my hands and flew … I mean flew across that room terrified he was going to bite you. And I remember thinking you stupid damn dog if you bite her she’s never going to go out with me!”

She gasped, a small laughing sound. “You did not!”

“Did too,” he said with a smile. “That was the minute I realized I was crushing on you big time. Of course I couldn’t examine the feeling because—”

“Because your dog lunged for my throat?” she said dryly.

“Don’t be a drama queen. You know full well it was the perp behind you he was gunning for. Deitz did a shit search on him and he cuffed him in front, the stupid lazy bastard. The guy had a knife and he was seconds away from sticking you. But he froze exactly the way you did when he saw Chico lunge. I called him out but he barreled right past you and went for the guy’s arm. Took me a minute to realize why. Had my gun up the guy’s nose two seconds later.”

“I have to admit, as scared as I was … there was something kind of hot about you taking that guy down. It was my first time watching you actually face off with someone. I know it wasn’t by the book,” she whispered, “and I know Chico misbehaved. I confess he always scared me a little after that because it happened so close, but that was the day I first thought “My god, that man is like a full dose of testosterone and adrenaline. It was stunning because I never thought I’d be that kind of girl.”

“The kind that finds me hot?” he teased.

“Oh, you …” She reached out and pinched him on his chest.

“Ow. Hey,” he complained.

“Oh don’t give me that. I doubt a—”

She was cut off with a wild gasp as he suddenly pushed off and rolled her beneath him, her hair spilling wildly across his bed and pillows. Oh yes, he thought, I like that. Marissa in my bed.