“What was she doing here? Where have they taken her? I want the names of these friends and the address of where she has gone.”
Kamin absorbed the demands for a moment and then drew a breath, still as calm and even-voiced as before.
“You must be Jackson,” he said. “Docia told us all about you. I thought she called you and told you she was safe with friends?”
“Seriously? Does this look safe to you, pal?” Leo barked, indicating the devastated dining room.
“Indeed. An unfortunate event of timing, I promise you. And she is safe. She is with my longtime friend Vincent Marzak. And believe me, as long as Vincent is with her, she is very, very safe.”
CHAPTER NINE
Docia opened her eyes slowly, the grit under her lids scraping at her eyeballs like sand in private places after playing in a powerful surf. She opened them and focused on whatever she could. It turned out to be a floor tile, something Spanish looking, if the bright primary reds and blues were anything to go by … and chipped all to hell. The whole floor had definitely seen better days.
“Are you kidding me? I’m still not dead?” she said aloud, her voice rasping just like her eyes. Honestly, she didn’t know what else to say. What else to think. The last thing she remembered was heading for the ground at breakneck speed, a surprisingly fallible armored creature hurtling to his death right along with her.
She tried to look up but realized she already was … well, in accordance with her body, anyway. It was just that her body wasn’t upright. Not in any normal sense of the word. She was suspended over the floor by her torso, her wrists lashed wide apart like a wingspan of her own, her legs bound tightly together. Looking ahead once again, she noticed there were little drops of blood dripping slowly with a pat-pat-pat sound, right about level with her nose. Now that she was aware of it, if she crossed her eyes a little, she could see the droplets originating off the tip of her nose.
So she was apparently hanging parallel above those worn-out tiles. All she needed was a hang glider to help it make some kind of sense. Bound as she was, she really wasn’t getting a good feeling about it, and the bloody nose wasn’t adding anything to the contrary. On the dubious plus side, she’d lost her pretty new wig along the way, so only half of her side vision was obscured by her hair.
“Hello?” She cleared the crackly crud from her throat and tried again. “Hello? I’m kinda hanging here! I mean, I appreciate not being left on what looks like a really cold and somewhat dirty floor, but … I sorta can’t breathe through my nose. And you have some kind of rope or something over one of my … um … girls … and she’s not very comfortable.… Hello?”
“Docia, hush.”
Well, she didn’t have to see the owner of that voice to recognize him … though he did sound a little off to her for some reason. She tried to twist to see Ram, but he was somewhere past the bottoms of her feet, and when she looked beyond her toes she saw absolutely nothing of him.
“Ram, did you do this to me? I’m really starting to not like you, mister. Ever since you showed up, things have just been going to hell in a handbasket for me!”
“Hmm,” was the dry reply.
“Hmm? What hmm?” she demanded. “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘hmm’? It’s true!”
“I don’t recall being anywhere near New York when you got yourself shoved off a bridge,” he said.
She opened her mouth to snap at him but shut it again almost instantly. He kind of had a point there.
“And I wasn’t there when you entered the Ether.” Silence seemed the best course of action.
“And I had nothing to do with that nice gentleman trying to gut you with a knife.”
“Vincent …” She sighed. “You must be Vincent.” Because Ram had never spoken with such sarcasm and irritability before, so it was the only conclusion she could come to. This was Ram’s other half … but somehow it was undiluted by the Blending. She hadn’t realized that was possible. She had assumed that the Ram/Vincent persona, once Blended, was just that. Blended. So how was it that she could clearly hear another man, another personality, using this familiar voice?
“Damn, skippy, I’m Vincent. And because of you our boy Ramses here has us in a hell of a lot of hot water.”
“Look, I never asked him to show up and be all … all everywhere in my life all of a sudden!”
“You’re his queen. That apparently means something to him. So, like it or not, he and I are here to stay. Provided we make it out of this mess alive.”
Definitely not Ram. She preferred Ram. He was far more comforting. But on the other hand, since she had nothing but time to kill, it seemed, she was overrun with curiosity about more than one thing. But for the time being, she’d start with just one.
“Vincent,” she said after actually taking the time to think about how to word something for the first time in her life, “why did you agree to share your body with a Bodywalker?”
There were several strong ticks of silence.
“Same reason you did. I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t done yet.”
“Oh.”
“And I wanted to kill my fucktard ex-brother-in-law very precisely and very, very slowly. I couldn’t exactly do that flying around in heaven. Or carousing with demons. Whichever way it was going to go.”
“Oh. Is that why you almost died? Your fucktard ex-brother-in-law?”
More of those intense moments of silence passed. She couldn’t tell if he was trying to think about what to say to her or keep himself from getting really pissed off.
“Let’s just say he was of a mind that his son, my sister’s son, was his son, and when my sister finally found the courage to divorce him and won full custody of their son … well, it became a case of if he couldn’t have his son, he’d see to it no one else could. Same went for my sister, I guess. As far as he was concerned, she belonged to him. Forever. And nothing was ever going to be allowed to change that.” He sighed. “But that was a long time ago.”
“And … did you? Kill your fucktard ex-brother-in-law, I mean.”
She could feel him smile all the way across the room.
“Yeah.” But the satisfaction in his voice faded instantly. “But it didn’t bring back my sister or my nephew, so …” She imagined him shrugging. She also appreciated his forthrightness. Candor, it seemed, was something he shared with Ram. Among the obvious other things.
“So you got your revenge. And now you just … do what Ram wants to do?”
“I’m not his bitch, if that’s what you mean.” He chuckled. “Seems to me like that’s your calling.”
“Hey!”
“Well, if you haven’t noticed, the boy’s got it bad for you.”
“He does not!” she cried, her face flaming with heat, a cross between embarrassment and sudden feminine sexual awareness. In the end, her ego got the best of her. “A-are you saying that you don’t feel the same way? That he can like a woman, but you can … not?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “You’re trying to separate us, but we’re inseparable, for the most part. One of us feels stronger about volatile things than the other does from time to time, but normally, there’s no separation of one from the other.”
“So … why are you … ?”
“I honestly have no idea why I’m here alone,” he confessed. “And to be even more honest with you, after all this time being Blended with Ram, it’s a little effing scary.”
“I can just imagine,” she said softly, trying for a moment to poke around inside her own head, wanting to see if her other half was somewhere to be found within. But if she was there, she wasn’t speaking up. Then again, she rarely had so far. “So I’m guessing you’re tied up over there somewhere, too?”
“Well, I’m not polishing my toes,” was the biting reply.
“No need to be snippy,” she snipped back at him.
“Seriously. Ram has a thing for mani/pedis. He’s kind of a little bit too metrosexual for me sometimes.”
; She racked her brain for a way to respond to that. All she could come up with was, “Oh. So you don’t like them? Mani/pedis, I mean.”
Silence.
She giggled.
“Well, who am I to argue with pretty girls fondling my feet and hands?” he pointed out in a tone that was positively predatory male.
“Oh. No. I can see your point.”
Silence.
“But you like them.” She giggled, imagining him in a pedicure chair getting his toes painted.
“You know, I can see right up your dress from here.”
“Hey!"
Smug silence.
She would have given him the silent treatment, but she’d never been very good at it.
“So … best guess … what the hell is going on here?” she asked him.
“Best guess? The Gargoyles failed to get us away in time and the Templar Bodywalkers now have us captive. But …”
“But?”
“But I know why the Templars want to keep you alive. I don’t know why the Templars would waste the chance to ice me and Ram immediately.”
She didn’t ask why the Templars would want her. It was pretty obvious to them both. They were going to hold her hostage … maybe use her as a bartering tool. Maybe they’d kill her just to torment Menes as soon as he was resurrected.…
“Can I ask you something?”
“Can’t see how I could stop you,” he observed.
“Does Ram … is he happy to hand me over to Menes?”
“That’s a tough question,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Ram is devoted to Menes. His pride in himself is deeply rooted in his service to his pharaoh. He is second in command, should anything befall Menes and Hatshepsut. He is a natural at ruling over great masses, and contrary to his bad press, he is very open-minded and very much committed to doing the right thing. You could say he learned a few lessons since he was an original himself.”
She wanted to accuse him of not answering her question, but she realized it was the only answer he could give her. Vincent didn’t know any more than Ram did about how he would feel when the time came to bring her to his reborn pharaoh.
“You have no idea how much Ram envies what Menes and Hatshepsut have. How much he longs for it.” He paused. “But you’ve certainly thrown a wrench in the works, hot stuff. You’ve got my boy pulled six ways from Sunday.”
“Don’t mock me,” she said angrily. For some reason, it had become important to her that Ram feel at least a little hesitation about carrying out his duties.
“Hardly that. More like I am mocking him. Or … us. I’d like to say I don’t know what he sees in you, but you’re kind of spunky. In a waifish sort of way.”
“Thank you.” She sniffed. “I think.”
“And you do have a nice ass.”
“Damn right I do,” she shot back. “It’s by far my best physical feature,” she said proudly.
“Well, the girls are pretty impressive, too,” he said, that smirk back in his tone.
“Nobody asked you!”
“I figured since you were so curious, you might like to know. And frankly, teasing you is helping me not think about why Ram is dead silent over here.”
“You sound nervous,” she noted as gently as she could, not wanting him to think she was mocking him in any way.
“I’m a navy SEAL. We don’t get nervous.”
They both knew it was bullshit, so he relented rather quickly.
“It’s … hard to explain. It’s kind of like having a limb traumatically amputated,” he confessed. “I think there’s a level of shock involved. I feel cold and nauseated. And, I have to admit, starkly alone. He’s been with me every single step of the way for so long now … his voice in my head, his morals in my ear … his sense of duty and honor in my soul. We both … we’re the same in a lot of ways, for all he’s this ancient spirit that’s lived so many lives and I’m pretty nascent in the grand scheme of things. I … I like him. And I hope he’s okay.”
“Do you think these Templars did something? You know, like maybe … I dunno … a Ramses-ectomy? Maybe they forcibly removed him from you?”
“As far as I know, they can’t do that … and if they did, the host … I … would die. It’s kind of one of the rules. Did you know you have a mole on your foot?”
“Yes! Can you focus, please? Tell me about these Templars. What was with the fireballs? Can they just do that?”
“Templar Bodywalkers call on mystical forces … they call it the blessings of the gods. The red energy they use is called Ra’s Curse. Obnoxious and cheeky, if you ask me, since the one thing all the Bodywalkers believe is that Ra has cursed them and it’s not something they address lightly.”
“In our mortal lives we were known as the children of the sun. The children of Ra.” The voice was new, feminine, heeled steps walking slowly against the crisp surface of the tiles. She came close enough for Docia to see the darling blue suede Christian Louboutin shoes she wore. The pretty blue gleamed prettily in contrast with the red soles when she walked, no doubt. She looked strong, her calves well shaped, and her ivory skirt drew snug around her knees, and probably her hips, too, if Docia would just lift her head and strain a little. But she had a bitch of a headache and was too worn out to make the effort. “But now,” she continued, “Ra no longer smiles upon us. We cannot walk in the light of the sun. Or has no one told you this yet?”
Docia felt anxiety choking up the length of her, crawling down into her belly.
“Nightwalkers,” she whispered.
“Yes. We’ve been cursed to live among these lower breeds known as Nightwalkers. The Gargoyles that serve us. The Djynn. The Night Angels. I think there are six in all. Perhaps even others we don’t know of. Filthy mongrels, all of them. And yet we wallow amongst them, as though they were our equals.”
Her contempt dripped from her lips, but Docia was terribly distracted, trying to figure out what a Night Angel might be. Was it like an actual angel? From heaven? She’d obviously met and seen Gargoyles in action, but what about the Djynn? And how was it that no human knew about these things when apparently they were all living among them? Seemed she could barely swing a cat without hitting a mystical creature these days. She could understand the whole Bodywalker thing; after all, they were literally hiding inside of normal humans. But how did the rest of them manage to go undetected?
“Make certain you stay out of Ra’s light. He takes offense if we try to take part in his blessing. Let’s just say it isn’t a pretty sight.”
“Who are you?” Docia asked.
“I’m going to take a wild guess here and say her name is Odjit,” Vincent spat abruptly. “And according to what Ram has told me, she’s a fucking lunatic.”
“I am a priestess,” she corrected him. “And I think I prefer she use my new name. Selena. Let me assure you, Docia, the gods smile upon me and my followers, for we are faithful to them and their rituals in a way the Politic are not. One day Ra will forgive us all, if we have faith in him and follow his wishes. The way of the Politic is not the way to ending this curse.”
Vincent snorted. “She means if we all bow down to her and become her mindless lackeys, everything will be sunshine and roses. But what she really wants, what she’s always wanted, is to be pharaoh, queen of the Bodywalkers.”
“It is my right. There are many who believe it. But, let’s talk of other things,” the Templar leader said, starting a slow walk around Docia, leaving Docia with little to do but listen and admire her taste in shoes. “Let’s talk about you, Docia.”
“Well, I would, except you have me hanging here like some kind of flipping marionette.”
“Mmm. We call it the Suspension. And it does exactly that. It suspends your connection to your Body-walkers, basically imprisoning them and nullifying their powers.”
“I don’t have any powers,” Docia countered. “I barely have any hair.”
“You don’t yet … but given time you very much will be a powerful entity.
I think you and I both know you could potentially be one of the most powerful women in the living world.”
She leaned forward a little to whisper against Docia’s ear in a husky, breathy voice, giving her a whiff of a luscious perfume. “I know she’s in there. I know in her heart she wants to be here with us.”
“Whatever she’s saying, Docia, think of her like a pretty-smelling poisonous gas that encourages you to breathe deep, all the while killing you,” Vincent said with cutting sweetness.
“Vincent …” Straightening, she gave a little tsk, sounding disappointed in him. “You’re so terribly brain-washed. I would think that without Ramses you might be able to give me a chance and draw your own conclusions. Just as I would like Docia to use her free will and come to her own. How has it been, Docia, with all these people trying to force all of their ways upon you? Here we don’t do such rude things. Here we want you to come to things in your own way … in your own time. And as the Bodywalker inside of you Blends with you, perhaps together you will find a new way of being, rather than falling into step with the dictates of others.”
As she began to walk back, Docia noticed a glimmer of gold around her ankle, a delicate little chain with a tiny ankh dangling against the rise of her foot.
“Well, as appealing as that sounds, I hope you don’t expect me to do all of this hanging here like a duck in a Chinese market stall.”
“Not at all. But for the moment, alas, we must leave you as is. Once the Suspension spell has sunk in deep enough, we will let you down. It will suspend your Blending just long enough for you to have a look around … to get to know a few of us and to judge fairly without your Bodywalker’s interference.”
“And what good will that do? I assume this Suspension will wear off eventually. My Bodywalker will come back with all her opinions intact.”
“Perhaps. But we have changed the minds of others. Others that would surprise your valiant Vincent over there.”
“If I’m your goal, why bother suspending Ram? You don’t expect—”
“Of course not. But the only other choice is for us to kill your bodyguard to keep him from interfering. I am very certain that would start us off on the wrong foot.”