* * *
Ram whirled around, once again thrusting Docia behind him, knowing exactly what the threat was and that there would be no misunderstandings this time.
“I beg to differ,” Odjit/Selena said, lowering herself to touch down on the marbled floor, others of her brethren behind her. An extraordinary number of them. Ram wondered how no alarm had been raised, yet again. The driveway was lined with Gargoyles for a reason. They were bound by ancient law and duty to be the protectors of the Bodywalkers. They stood as sentinels to all the safe houses. Where were they?
“You have something of mine,” Odjit/Selena said, pointing to Docia. “That woman is a Templar, and she belongs with me.”
Ram had arrived with Docia only a few minutes before Jackson’s arrival. He had not yet had time to talk to Kasimir and the rest of the Bodywalkers in the house about Docia and Tameri. Ram felt several sets of surprised eyes turning toward him, the most intense being Kasimir’s. He was head of this household; it was a sign of heavy disrespect and could even be perceived as treachery to bring a Templar onto his premises who was not obviously a prisoner.
“She doesn’t want to go with you,” Ram defended her sharply, ignoring the others and standing his ground in front of her.
“I’m afraid it’s hardly her choice,” Selena scoffed. “These grooves were carved long ago, and we must go where we belong.” She laughed. “I hardly think any of these others will lift a finger to stop me from taking her,” she said, indicating the tense forms of Kasimir, Felicity, and Asikri.
“Take her,” Felicity sneered. “I knew she was no good from the minute she stepped foot in this house. Look at us, Kasimir. Look at what she has brought down on this house … your home … which we will now have to abandon because of her. And she masqueraded as our queen, pretending to be Hatshepsut!”
“That error was mine!” Ram bit out in an angry voice that echoed in the foyer. “She had no idea who she was. It was my assumption based on what Cleo had told me to expect and what location to expect it in. The assumption was my flaw. My mistake. She was entirely innocent. The moment she realized who she was, she confessed it to me. And she also told me she has no desire to return to the Templars. She is defecting.”
“Defecting?” Selena laughed, the sound bordering on maniacal, exposing the tension and anxiety in her. “There’s no such thing! There is black and there is white. There is Templar and there is Politic. One does not call itself the other and expect to be believed. Harbor her if you like, but I promise you she will turn on you. She wishes to unseat me as head priestess,” Selena told them. “What better way to do so than to make time with my enemies, wait for you to destroy me, and then take my place later on? Give me the viper now and save yourself a bitch of a snakebite later on.”
“Give the spy to her,” Felicity demanded, stepping forward as if she meant to do exactly that, her hands crooking into claws. “She’s right. No Templar could ever have pure intentions. The idea is laughable. You of all people, Ramses, should know that!”
“The Templars are poison,” Asikri said, though it was more a carefully thought-out observation than a jump on the bandwagon. Asikri was Ram’s best friend, or the closest thing he had to it next to Menes. If any-one in the room was going to take his side, it would be Asikri. But if anyone had cause to despise Templars, it was Asikri. Ram knew it would be asking too much of him to take up a wild cause on behalf of a Templar without so much as preparation or explanation. Hell, Ram still had doubts quavering along the edges of his mind.
He was also doing all he could to hold on tight to Docia by her arm. She was squirming, fighting to free herself from him, her entire body leaning toward the front door and the sight of her brother lying limp and unconscious in the midst of his windshield.
Ram shot Asikri a look and jerked his head slightly toward the redheaded human woman, then quickly looked for the additional human male. The last thing he needed was innocent human casualties because they got caught up in a war they had nothing to do with. They did not deserve it, and deaths would draw unwanted attention to the Bodywalkers.
But Leo was gone, disappeared into the dark of the night beyond the door.
Docia was in tears, rage and hatred all her own rising to blend inside her with the fear and contempt Tameri had for Selena and her carbon, Odjit. Before that moment there had been tentative Blendings of their beings, most of it a switching back and forth of their distinctive personalities and a sort of internal dialogue of learning about each other. But here, suddenly, was common ground. There was no chance for affectation or pretense; it was as pure as anything could ever be. There was no question that Tameri found Selena to be utterly vile. And there was a moment of panic, too, as she looked with trepidation at the faces of the Templars immediately surrounding Odjit. Tameri recognized Kamenwati. She knew it was him because as always he was right beside her, just as Ram would be right beside Menes.
Then Selena bypassed appealing to Ram’s prejudices and looked directly at her.
“Come, Tameri, enough of this foolishness.” She snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor beside her, opposite the side where Kamenwati stood. “Take your place beside me where you belong. Otherwise the deaths of all who are here will be on your head.”
“Do not threaten us,” Ram snapped out in a roar of outrage. “You are not all-powerful yet, Templar bitch! Our strength has matched yours every time!”
“Formerly,” she said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her mocking eyes. There was a touch of trepidation there. But only a touch. “I have a new spell, you see. The gods have seen fit to grace me with it.” As she spoke of the gods, she raised her arms, palms toward the sky, beatification flashing hollowly across her features. Maybe once Odjit had believed she was doing the work of the gods, but now she only went through the motions and used her relationship with them to draw power for herself. She was far more interested in being pharaoh over all the Bodywalkers than she was in paying homage to the gods. Docia could feel Tameri’s contempt for that and her trepidation at the announcement of a new spell. “Or,” Selena said, eyes as colorless as cold glass, and seething with dark avarice, “have you not questioned yourself as to where your loyal dogs are?”
Stohn was blind with wrath, impotence, and frustration. He sat crouched on top of the pillar closest to the house, his position chosen purposefully so he, who was stronger and older than all the rest, would be on hand instantly if Kasimir needed him. But just before his sense had rung inside him, a klaxon of warning that all Gargoyles had built inherently in their souls, a sensation like ice and devastation had blasted over him. Real ice was of little consequence to his kind. Things like ice and snow shattered and scattered the instant they shifted into movement; the extraordinary strength of their bodies and the fierce protectiveness of their stone hides in their true Gargoyle forms shed it just as they shedded all other types of external attacks.
But this was something entirely different. This had come directly from the touchstone beneath him. For all Gargoyles of all tribes were beholden to their touchstones. Every day by dawn they had to be in contact with it or else suffer utter vulnerability either being exposed to the sun and turned to stone, or hiding somewhere dark in a humanoid form that grew sicker and sicker, weaker and weaker, with every passing hour until darkness came again. Most never made it to dusk. And even at dusk they still needed to find their touchstone, else they could not heal and regenerate from their ordeal. The touchstone was everything. It was like their beating hearts, their very souls. It protected them in the day and breathed life into them in the night. The longer they went away from their true touchstone, the colder their souls grew.
And this wickedness that had come had crept over his touchstone and then into him, adhering him to it as though he were an initiate, newly born to the world and unable to leave the umbilicus that fed and nurtured him. He could not move. He could not draw breath. He could not leap into the air and into flight, his powerful wings pushing him higher and h
igher and away from whatever wickedness this was. He, who was the most powerful of his tribe. Helpless. Forced to stare forward and down into the courtyard as an attack took place, a body went flying into the windshield of a car, and Templars invaded the house in force.
He was also able to see a puny human male, one that had no spark of a second Bodywalker soul within him, making him useless and weak in the face of such enemies. He slipped back into the shadows of the house, though Stohn could see him perfectly with vision that was meant for the nighttime. He was making his way across the front of the house, edging around to the open wall that had been blown away on its side and was now covered in heavy-duty carpentry plastic to help contain the heat and keep out the weather. That plastic had no doubt been destroyed as the Templars invaded the house from that side, most probably taking his domini by surprise. The very thought infuriated him, burning the stone along his back. He could see Bashalt and Amber, his second and their shaman, respectively, equally bound and equally furious. This was an unexpected vulnerability, a weakness unlike anything they had known before. Certainly there was a whole tribe enslaved by the Templar Bodywalker sect, as well as others who had either been captured or swayed for whatever purposes. For whoever controlled a Gargoyle’s touchstone controlled the Gargoyle soul connected to it. But this was a whole new kind of hell, the kind only a Templar like Odjit would wreak upon them.
For the moment, that meant he and his brethren could not come to the assistance of their domini, and the very idea made him sick to his captured soul.
Straining toward the door as she was, looking to get to her brother, Docia could see out into the courtyard parking area, and she could see the archway leading into the gardens on the left that was topped with a massive Gargoyle, crouched at the ready, hands spread apart so that each was gripping the edge of the arch on either side. He looked as though he could spring down at any second, coming to life and to the assistance of those within as they had done before. But as she looked at him, she got an overwhelming sense of frustration and fury, and even a bit of fear. He was trapped. Fighting to be free, yet unable to do so.
Odjit’s new spell, Tameri thought, distressed. She could feel his pain from across the courtyard and could sense the power of what was binding him.
Can you help him? Docia asked fervently. What she meant was could she help them. Docia’s heart was focused on Jackson’s lifeless body, but she was as much Tameri as she was herself, so her priorities were split evenly.
I’m sorry, Tameri said to Docia as gently as she could. Your brother is dead. But it was impossible for her to feel disassociated from that understanding any longer. She was too deeply enmeshed with her new soul sister. But her power showed his broken neck as clear as day, showed there was no breath in him and no beating of his heart. She showed all of this to Docia in quick, brutal flashes and dreaded doing it, but she did it to pull Docia away from what could not be helped any longer; to bring her attention squarely where it needed to be.
To tap into the fury that was on the cusp of being born.
Emotion was the greatest source of all power. The stronger the emotion, the more stunning the power it could achieve. There was only a moment of numbness, a moment of feeling a wash of grief overcoming them.
And then it came.
Rage. Unadulterated and potent beyond all understanding. Docia birthed the emotion like a squalling babe, and Tameri kept levelheaded enough to wield its power. The coldness in Docia’s heart was the key, and it came loose as she stepped around Ram, took a deep breath, and threw out both hands as though she were throwing weighted spears at the lot of them. She didn’t need verbal words, only to scream them in her mind. Ice leapt from her cold fingers and frozen soul, similar to what she had done to Ram in exhibition, but a thousand times more potent and violent.
Templars went flying back, as though they were the seeds of a dandelion plucked by a ferocious wind. And as they flew, their bodies turned into ice, like realistic sculptures carved painstakingly by an artist’s hands; and as they hit solid surfaces, they shattered like glass.
But the Templar she wanted most to pay recovered, barely, in midair. Stopping the icing process on her body with a counteractive spell and turning the side still made flesh toward the wall she hit. The soft flesh of her humanity took the impact hard and she cried out with pain. Odjit fell to the floor in a heap, this time unable to protect the arm, chest, and hand that had become ice from striking a surface. She screamed as two of her fingers, pinky and ring on the left-hand side, shattered away, leaving two blood-red circles in her frozen hand where those fingers ought to have been, the sight of it like seeing an oxtail cut through its diameter.
The Templar woman screamed in pain and rage, a rage to match Docia’s. She spit out furious Egyptian words, spittle flying from her lips and making her auburn-haired loveliness something ugly and seething with venom. She was in every sense a virago, and she would destroy the origin of her wrath and agony.
Ram knew this without question. And without question he threw himself between Odjit and Docia. Selena and Tameri. Ram and Vincent never thought twice, even though both were certain Odjit was going to kill her target, whoever and whatever it might be. But that target was Docia, and that was unacceptable. Unacceptable to their shared conscience, their paired souls, and unquestionably unacceptable to their beating heart, both physical and essential.
Strange, he thought, how all doubt fled in that moment. All those worries and questions, all the prevaricating prejudices of his mind that tried to tell him he was being taken for a fool.…
So be it. He was a fool. Because when it came down to the meat of it, he believed her. Believed in her. Needed her. Wanted her. Knew her. Tameri did not have the soul of evil that Odjit did. No more than Docia did. And although he was only beginning to know Tameri, he knew that he was in love with Docia, who homed her. For some intangible reason, he knew without a doubt that he was connected to Tameri just as perfectly as Menes was to Hatshepsut. In an ideal situation, he wouldn’t want that kind of encumbrance, knowing that while it had great strength to lend, it could also be his undoing. And stepping between her and Odjit’s wrath was proof of that. He knew by the snarling fury on the head priestess’s face that she was going to try to kill Docia. Odjit wielded the hand of Ra, ferocious red rage and power screaming out of her and into him when he blocked her intended target. He couldn’t spare her from the propulsive force of his body slamming back into hers, but he figured that was better than the alternative.
Only he wasn’t hit dead center of his body as expected; he was blasted in the shoulder, wrenching him hard about and lighting him on fire with pain. His sight was blinded with the red power of the Curse of Ra, but just before, that infinitesimal second before, he saw something move out of the shadows from behind Odjit, grab her by her hair, bend her head forward, and slice her hard and fast across the throat.
Odjit smacked face-first into the marble floor as Leo released her, blood pumping and pooling from her violently severed carotids. He didn’t take time to preen over a job well done. He threw the knife in his hand at the throat of the big male who had stood beside the woman before all hell had broken loose. To his surprise, his target reached up and snatched the weapon out of the air long before it came close to harming him.
“Oh shit!” he ejected as the infuriated right hand of the Templar priestess lunged for the useless sack of flesh that had injured and perhaps slain the woman who, in his mind, was his queen. He came within inches of having its neck in his hands when something fell onto his back and the sound of heavy beating wings surrounded him.
Stohn was free at last! He had almost fallen to the ground, he’d strained so hard, the release coming so suddenly and unexpectedly. He had raced forward, wings of stone, skin of stone, body and eyes all of stone, all the weight of what he was crushing down on Kamenwati.
“What? Lose concentration, did we?” he rasped into the priest’s ear, his stony voice like the sound of granite grinding together.
Ram had taken a pretty good hit; his shoulder and half his chest had been burned by the Curse. He was in pain, but all he could focus on was looking for Docia. He needed to see her face. To feel her touch. To know he had done well by her. It was all that mattered to him in that moment.
He needn’t have fretted. She was against his back in another second, crying hysterically in grief, her immediate rage spent now that all potential targets of it had been dealt with in one form or another. She wrung him about the neck from behind, causing him excruciating pain, but he said nothing. He didn’t care. Physical discomfort meant nothing in the face of his relief that she was all right. He enveloped her head in his hand, the short fuzziness of her hair the sweetest sensation on earth to him, next to the sting of her salty tears against his burned skin. He turned, gathering her close and tight, checking all corners of the room to make certain there was no further threat to either of them. He saw Kamenwati wrest free of Stohn with the help of the remaining Templar acolytes. He fell onto Odjit’s body and in a searing scream of red light they both disappeared. But the blood on the floor told a breathless tale: it said that for the first time in so many regenerations, Odjit would be dead and trapped in the Ether while Menes was just about to be born to continue his rule of the Bodywalkers. Without Odjit’s power to fuel them, he believed there would be no one strong enough to fight Menes. With Tameri on their side, the Templars would have little chance of fighting a diplomatic assimilation of the two halves of their people.
Marissa was in shock. She had been since the first thrust of attack, since Jackson had been ripped from her side and thrown fifty feet away. She had stared wide-eyed as a power struggle had ensued, power being the key word. She saw things that her logical, analytical mind could not accept. Watched death play out before her. Saw monstrous bewinged creatures of stone fly and leap around her to subdue the attacking force, or what was left of it after Jackson’s sister had turned them to ice and scattered them everywhere. She was breathing hard, unable to focus on anything, almost too frightened to move. But when she finally forced herself, all she could do was run. She ran out of the house, making several strides before the ice on the ground got the better of her. This time there was no Jackson to catch her, no Jackson to protect her or mock her or argue with her.