Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3) (19 page)

“Three weeks ago, my men also reported a massive sandstorm in the Western Sahara, again originating in the same vicinity as the earthquake. It also appears to be defying all the laws of thermodynamics, spreading in all directions from a single fixed point. The eastern edge of it shall reach Cairo in less than a week.”

“I’m sorry,” Hex cut in, “but was there a question in that weather report?”

The Swede sighed and flicked an index finger. Theodora sprang into action and punched her in the stomach. Hard. It choked all the air right out of her, and she doubled over and gasped.

Rowan stood up so fast and so violently that his chair fell over. He started in Theodora’s direction, his intent obvious from his murderous expression, but Hex held up her hand to stay him. No matter how much she might wish to see Rowan tear Theodora apart, she knew now was not the time. She could practically feel Vasily breathing down her neck.

Besides, even she could admit she was being insufferable.

The Swede waited until Rowan stiffly resumed his seat before he continued. “Three weeks ago, reports of strange weather began to emerge southwest of the city in Giza. Fog, then torrential rains, followed by a hailstorm that lasted two days. Then there’s the recent weather in Western Cairo: a record-breaking heat wave that seems to have affected none of the rest of the city. Yesterday, the temperature reached fifty-five degrees Celsius at the air docks. None of these things has ever happened in recorded history.”

Damn. She’d thought it had been feeling a bit more sweltering than usual out there.

“What does any of this have to do with me?” Rowan demanded. “Are you suggesting that I am the cause of these things?”

The Swede looked at him with poorly concealed irritation. “I know you came out of that tomb the same time these events began. I want to know why this is and
how
you came to be there. And I want to know how
he
ended up four thousand years in the past.”

“Who is ‘he’?” Rowan asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

The Swede smiled wryly. “The ‘painted man’. Netherfield said he showed you the papyrus last night.”

Hex would have laughed at the Swede’s intimations, had her skin not begun to crawl. The whole thing was just downright eerie whether it was true or not.

“Apophis?” Rowan scoffed.

“So he is called. But I knew the first time Netherfield showed me the scroll who he really was. No one else has a tattoo like that. Especially not a four-thousand-year-old minor god. Your presence in the tomb has only confirmed my theory.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rowan said.

The Swede almost looked rueful. “I know. And normally I would be wholly delighted by your predicament. But your amnesia is rather inconvenient. I have spent years on this project, and I want answers.”

“So do I. You spoke of my cousin. What of the rest of my family?” Rowan demanded.

The Swede looked amused at Rowan’s redirection. “Men like us don’t have family.” He turned and practically sneered in Hex’s direction. “And we certainly don’t have loved ones.”

Well,
that
seemed a bit cold. And most likely a falsehood. The Swede insisted that he and Rowan were alike, but aside from their shared eye color, Hex could see nothing similar about them at all. Where the Swede’s eyes were soulless vacuums beneath that thin amber veneer, Rowan’s were full of feeling—full of the best parts of humanity.

No matter who he was or
what
he was, Rowan wasn’t the type of person to have no one in the world. Somewhere,
someone
cared for this man. She knew this down to the marrow of her bones, the same way she knew the Swede was a liar.

She just hoped Rowan didn’t believe him.

“What do you want from me, then?” Rowan countered.

The Swede smiled enigmatically. “Why, your cooperation, of course. I seek only to understand these strange events, as I am sure you do as well. You have lost your memory, but that doesn’t mean you cannot be of assistance to us at the Tomb of Apophis. Beyond that…well, it would serve us both to continue our professional relationship. I have the answers you seek, and you possess unique…
skills
that would be very useful in my line of business.”

Rowan looked as incredulous as Hex felt. “You’re offering me a job?”

“Don’t listen to him, Rowan,” she cried, earning her another jab to the stomach. The pain was worth it, though, for while she didn’t doubt Rowan’s fundamental nobility, she feared he might be susceptible to the Swede’s false promises. She knew
she
would be if she were in his shoes, and though she made no claims to the same level of integrity at which Rowan seemed to naturally operate, better men than he had be felled by temptation.

The Swede may have had all the answers, but he would never give them to Rowan. She just hoped Rowan was shrewd enough to deduce this for himself.

Rowan made no comment one way or the other, which was as worrying as it was reassuring.

The Swede sighed and stood up. “No need to give me an answer now.” He turned to Netherfield. “Escort our guests to the docks. We shall leave for the Western Sahara immediately. Perhaps there we shall all have our answers.”

Before Hex had time to protest, Theodora grabbed her by the arm and jerked her toward the door. She glanced over her shoulder to find Rowan falling in line next to Vasily and Netherfield, his worried eyes fixed on her. The Swede brought up the rear, joined by his small army of palace guards, so she didn’t dare speak to Rowan.

The noose was tightening around both of their necks, and escape looked more unlikely than ever. When they reached the docks and the Swede discovered the
Amun Ra
was long gone, there would be hell to pay.

She could only hope Rowan had a plan, because she sure as hell didn’t.

As they reached the front entrance of the palace, however, she noticed the odd look passing between the guards in front of her as they paused at the threshold. It wasn’t until she stepped outside that she discovered the reason.

It was snowing.

In Cairo. In June.

She could see her breath vaporizing in front of her in the frigid cold. Already the surrounding street was dusted with a fine layer of white, delicate lace, as if the ground too had frozen in the space of a night.

She wrapped her arms around her body and searched out Rowan once more. He was watching the falling snow with an inscrutable expression, but she knew he was probably thinking about the Swede’s words.

Was Rowan indeed the cause of this perplexing weather? After all the crazy things she’d seen, she wouldn’t be shocked if the man was right. Even though she didn’t want to believe it, she had to admit that it was hard to doubt his theory in the face of such compelling circumstantial proof. The world had gone insane the moment Rowan had stepped out of that tomb.

In the distance, a low peal of thunder rolled, long and deep like the echoes of a train in a tunnel, and she shivered in foreboding.

The Swede stopped next to Rowan and held his hand out palm-up to catch the snow. She didn’t at all care for the sneer on the man’s face.

“Ah, snow in summertime,” he said musingly. “I’ve not seen such a sight since Sevastopol. Do you not even remember that, Rowan?”

A strange, distant look fell over Rowan’s face, and something very much like anguish took up residence in his eyes. “It wasn’t snow,” he said solemnly. “It was ash.”

The Swede’s expression twisted with malice. “Very good. For a moment, I was afraid your best memories were lost forever.”

The gooseflesh on her arms returned at the bizarre exchange, and it hadn’t anything to do with the cold. Whatever Rowan was remembering had him looking like he was on the verge of casting up his accounts. Or attacking the man. But after one glance at Theodora’s firm grip on Hex’s neck, the fight went out of him.

A weight she’d not even realized she was carrying inside was suddenly lifted. She’d needlessly question his motives. The temptations offered by Netherfield and the Swede had not swayed him at all, and he’d only played along because of the danger to her.

She felt a little guilty for doubting him even for a second, but how could she not? All of her past experiences had taught her caution, and she would have been a fool to so wholeheartedly trust a man she’d known barely a month. She could probably count on one hand the days they’d actually spent together. All of her common sense had told her that it was much too soon to trust him.

All of her instincts said otherwise.

The thunder rolled again, this time closer, and the ground began to vibrate beneath them. She heard the distant, cacophonous boom of stone falling against stone and the crack of splitting wood resounding like a clap of lightning through the air.

A roar arose alongside these other sounds, steadily growing in intensity, as if moving in her direction. It took her several moments to identify what she was hearing, but it finally came to her. It was the sound of people screaming. Hundreds of people. And the booms and the cracks were the sounds of the city collapsing in on itself.

Then she realized the thunder had yet to stop. It had blurred into that bone-chilling, collective wail for a moment before overwhelming even that, growing closer, the ground beneath her shivering like a wet dog. Theodora’s hand slipped off her throat, and Hex fell to her knees and clutched at the stone pavement to steady herself, a momentary feeling of seasickness washing over her.

When she felt as if she were not seconds away from losing the meager contents of her stomach, she lifted her head and tried to figure out what the hell was happening. The buildings on the opposite side of the wide boulevard swayed like reeds in the wind, and behind her, the walls of the palace began to groan, rubble raining down on their heads.

“Earthquake!” someone yelled, right before a tremor rocked the earth so hard the pavement beneath her began to fracture.

She glanced to her right just in time to see Theodora being thrown away from her as the ground erupted between them. Her momentary elation at getting rid of one obstacle was quickly replaced by another, however, when she happened to look upward. She cursed and dove out of the way just as a large chunk of stone plummeted down from the palace ramparts. It landed with a loud bang right where she’d been kneeling only seconds before.

For a moment, she lay on the crumbling pavement, stunned, as all around her chaos reigned. That had been too narrow of an escape, but she hadn’t the luxury of dwelling on it. Here was the opening she’d been waiting for.

Dust and snow clouded her vision as she raised her head and searched for Rowan. A tangle of palace guards, servants, the Swede’s men, and other inhabitants of the district stumbled all around her, covered in dust and blood. She could see no one familiar but Netherfield, unconscious beneath the doorway of the palace, and Theodora.

The vampire was struggling to stand as the earth continued to tremble, a huge gash on her temple leaking blood down her face. She looked uncharacteristically disoriented, so she must have received quite the blow. It wouldn’t deter her long, however, so Hex knew she had only a few seconds at most to make her move. She hefted a large chunk of stone lying next to her and stood with a groan.

The rumbling beneath her only grew worse, and she pitched about from side to side as she scrambled in Theodora’s direction, dodging falling debris and blocking out the chaos surrounding her as much as she could.

She managed to sneak up close enough behind Theodora that her legs brushed the other woman’s skirts. She drew in a breath and heaved the rock high over her head. She didn’t give herself time to think too much about what she was going to do, for she knew Theodora wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same. But she had to shut her eyes as she brought the stone down upon Theodora’s skull as hard as she could, unable to bear what she would see.

She fought back her rising gorge as the sickening crunch of bone cracking and tissue squelching reached her ears. Something hot and wet splattered against her face and arms, and the smell of raw iron and something else that was sickly sweet and
wrong
hit her nose. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, breathed through her mouth, and struck out again and again until her arms felt as if she’d been hitting them against a brick wall for hours.

She wanted to live, damn it.

When she opened her eyes, she was on her knees, blood and gore up to her elbows. Theodora was face down in front of her, the back of her head a mangled mess of blood and bone and what she very much feared was brain matter.

It was an image she was never going to be able to erase from her mind, and for the first time, she didn’t think it would be such a bad thing to have her memories wiped clean like Rowan’s had been. She certainly didn’t want to carry
this
memory around with her forever.

She crawled away from the lifeless body and retched. Theodora seemed dead enough…had she been human. But Hex didn’t plan on finding out whether she’d truly managed to kill the vampire. She rose unsteadily to her feet and swallowed down her bile, contemplating her next move as the ground beneath her started quaking once more.