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The Fourth King
It was a stormy summer, rain-swept and split by lightning. The days resounded to the incessant patter of rain: the view through the windows was blurred, smeared, refracted into broken pieces. Yet it was oddly peaceful, with little else to do but wait out the weather with the cosy, cheerful company of her friends.
That wasn't something Chatoya Irkil could often say of her life and she didn't expect it to last.
So she wasn't too surprised when the call came, late one blustery night, disrupting their poker game.
"It's for you," Lisa said shortly, holding out the handset. "That jerk."
Blue, then. Her soulmate had been out of the country for a fortnight, and she'd felt his absence more than she would ever admit.
He would, she suspected, have felt the same thrill in the wild storms that she did. He might even have understood why she snuck out in the middle of the night to stand under the occluded sky and let it try to buffet and drown her and sweep her off her feet.
After all, when she crawled back in, soaked through and sated, the space where he was not seemed less significant.
Still. He was an assassin and the leader of one of the Nightworld's three mercenary organisations, feared, loathed and ludicrously powerful. By a series of increasingly bizarre events, most of which Blue had engineered, she'd wound up running Pursang, one of the other two. He was both her enemy and her lover, and seemed to see little difference between the two. Which meant there was no chance this was a social call.
"Oh joy," she muttered and took the phone.
Cougar's poker face transformed into a scowl above his cards, proving once and for all that bluffing really wasn't the vampire's forte; something Thom obviously twigged to as he quietly folded, eyeing the pile of chips in the middle with regret.
Oblivious to the tension in the air, Jepar flicked his stake onto the table and said, "Raise you." Then looked up with a grin and added, "Jerk is far too soft. Blue's more of a bastard."
"See you," Cougar snapped, and chips clattered.
"Preaching to the converted here," Chatoya reminded them, and lifted the handset to her ear. "Hello, Blue."
"My witch," he greeted her on a line full of static. "How are things?"
Civility. That didn't bode well. "Did you actually ask me how I am? What do you want, Blue?"
He sounded a touch annoyed. "Nothing I can have at this particular moment. Which, yes, is the ulterior motive behind my call. I need your delicate touch."
"My delicate touch with what?" she said, and realised how it sounded when Cougar slammed down his full house with unnecessary violence. It didn't help that Blue was his brother, and they got along like a house on fire: heat, pain, and the ever-present possibility of someone being choked to death.
"Powerful spells. I need some very old curses stripped from a tomb and I doubt there's anyone else who could withstand the backlash if it goes wrong."
"Where are you?"
"Egypt."
"Egypt?" she squeaked, and Jepar glanced up as he laid down a straight flush. "Is this to do with Didier Algera?"
"If I'm correct. I've chartered a private flight for you at the airfield in an hour. Bring back-up. Two trustworthy people, preferably with high-level ability in close combat. Any more will be unwieldy. They'll need their memories erased afterwards."
His voice was deadly serious. Her stomach sank. "I take it this will be sealed in our personal archives."
"Yes." That meant it related to a high-level Fury, or an exceedingly dangerous creature. She had read enough of the records put together by former leaders of Pursang to know that such missions were rare, and rarely survived. "You may wish to tell your second-in-command of this expedition. No one else."
"Blue, what is this?" The others were watching her.
"I'll explain when you get here. I suggest you hurry."
With no further ceremony, he hung up. She was left with no answers, only the certainty of danger.
Nothing new, then.
"Toya?" Jepar said. "What was that all about?"
Two trustworthy people. She met those green eyes, full of concern, and said, "How would you feel about a holiday to Egypt? Beautiful Nile vistas, archaeological wonders and all the sun you could want."
The shapeshifter blinked. "Well, my tan could use some work... What's the catch?"
"You have to face down almost certain death."
A faint grin lit him. "Aside from Blue?"
"Believe it or not, he is not going to be the biggest threat out there."
"If that's what you think," Cougar cut in acidly, "you're going to need more than Mr Tantastic here."
"Hey!" Jepar said.
She gazed back at Cougar, facing down his anger, letting it wash over her as she had the storms in all their fury. "I know. That's why you're invited too."
His eyes widened, gold and soft and startled. He recovered quickly. "When do we leave?"
oOo
When she first stepped off the plane, the heat didn't seem so bad. By the time they had crossed the tarmac to the waiting airport, she was profoundly glad of her sunglasses and the hat Jepar had insisted she wear. The searing sunlight had soaked into her skin until she felt as if she should glow.
She let out a sigh as they passed into the building and were struck by cool air-conditioned air.
"You didn't say it was going to be this hot," Cougar said accusingly from behind her.
"It's August. It's Egypt," she said, wiping her forehead. "I didn't think I needed to."
"It's hell," he moaned. "Only without the possibility of it freezing over."
She turned in time to see Jepar step through the glass doors with apparent reluctance. "It's beautiful out there," he said with a wistful glance at the air shimmering above the broiled tarmac.
Cougar gazed at him in disbelief. Spikes of his black hair were already wilting onto his eyebrows. "Are you insane?"
The shapeshifter actually shivered. "Let's get our bags and get out of here."
"Mad," Cougar muttered.
Weighed down with luggage, visas stamped, the three of them trudged around the parties of tourists to the reception. They went past the armed guards, rigid and stern in white, with a certain amount of trepidation. Somehow, the signs decrying Luxor as 'City of a Thousand Smiles' didn't ring quite as true when a machine gun covered the exclamation mark.
"I knew I forgot something," sighed Jepar as they passed more tourists.
"Any chance it's your freakish ability to wake up with the sun?" Cougar asked sweetly.
His mouth turned down. "Worse. I forgot my sandals."
Chatoya muffled a giggle at the vampire's expression. "You can buy more," she told Jepar.
"Not if you want to associate with me," Cougar said firmly. "Not unless-"
His voice cut off as though a door had slammed shut. In his mouth, she saw the start of a scowl, echoed in the hard glitter of his eyes and she knew just who was stood there.
Chatoya only turned her head fractionally and Blue filled her eyeline, his hair outrageous and azure against the soft orange of the tiled walls, his expression almost an exact echo of Cougar's. She felt the similarity between them keenly whenever they were together; it was easy to forget how alike they were, focused as she so often was on the immense differences between them. Now the fact was driven into her like a stake.
"I could have sworn I said bring backup," her soulmate said in a voice that was flat and dangerous.
"And here they are," she said equably, secretly delighted. He hadn't known – hadn't even guessed. "The best I could find."
"Where did you look, in villages with an overabundance of idiots? Exactly what qualities do you think they possess that will be of any use?"
A light touch of her hand was enough to stop Cougar from saying something that he was likely to regret. She smiled into her soulmate's cold eyes, and said, "I trust them."
Implicit in her words was the insult: as I dare not trust you.
He heard it: his eyes flicked to them, flanking her, unafraid, these two men who had been either side of her shadow before he was her enemy, long before he was more than that.
"And soon everyone will know it," he said, the words a statement of fact. "You've brought your friends into the heart of the Furies, my witch, and now they're nothing but a weapon to drive into your heart. Trust them if you wish, but they can betray you by their very being. And they will. Sooner or later, they will."
"We can take of ourselves," Jepar said in a voice that was eerily calm.
"And we'll take care of any of your minions who are stupid enough to try and use us against Toya," Cougar added, flashing a smile as nasty as his tone. "They really, really won't live to regret it."
It didn't faze Blue. He only said, in a voice soft with menace, "We'll see."
oOo
The roads were potholed, and the car a collection of scrap parts held together by rust and optimism. She gritted her teeth at every spine-jolting bump and braced herself against the door.
"Amazing," she said. "I didn't think you could find another car as horrible as your Fiat, but here it is."
Blue shrugged. "It's roadworthy, and it's inconspicuous."
"Could be worse," Jepar said cheerfully from the back seat.
"Yeah, you could be driving," Cougar said darkly. His mood hadn't improved at all: he'd spent the journey glaring into the back of Blue's head as if that might make it explode. "So, little brother, want to explain why you need our help?"
She muffled a sigh. The question was delivered in a patronizing tone that probably wouldn't have had any effect if anyone else had asked it. As it was, his expression was concealed by sunglasses, but she saw Blue's hands tighten on the steering wheel.
"You're likely to be about as much help as a concrete lifebelt," Blue said icily. "But if my witch wants to leave her life in your hands, so be it. She's the one who must open the tomb, and you will need to ensure whatever guards it cannot touch her."
"While you do what?" Cougar enquired.
"Take the artifact inside it, and do my utmost not to be controlled by it."
The silence that followed his remark was charged. Chatoya turned to look at him, his profile clean and sharp, cold in this hot dusty place. "What artifact?" she said.
"If I'm correct – and I may not be, but it's unlikely – the tomb contains a copper crown. It is the key to subduing the creature which has caused a zodiac of deaths. It rises every five hundred years, and each time we too rise and stop it. We have been unlucky this time. Each death takes it closer to full strength, and every time since it first rose, we have stopped it before the full twelve. Algera was the last."
"Then what?" Jepar said, tense.
"It comes to collect the crown and the glory it once held."
"Was it a king, then?" Chatoya said softly.
"Yes," answered Blue. "Once, in Palestine."
"What happened to him?" she said.
"Power," he said. "It's a long story."
"Is it a long ride?" Chatoya glanced at him. "I'd like to hear it."
She didn't think he would tell them, but then he began to speak in clipped, bored tones. "Very well. He was, I am assured, a good king to begin with, as if such things matter, but he was ambitious. He learned that there were beings beyond this world, the demons and the devils, the dark shadowy things that only a fool would try to barter with. But a fool he was, so he spoke with them, and when they asked some small thing – a memory, or a tooth, or a hair – he gave it to them, and what he received seemed worth the price."
She watched him, and thought: some small thing, like a kiss, or a dream, or a future.
"But their gift faded, and so he went back. He bartered again, for a greater gift. Piece by piece, he sold his soul and his sanity for power. His empire grew, and his humanity shrank. At last, nothing remained but the hunger for power, an obsession so deep it consumed him."
Perhaps she could understand this king, a little. It wasn't power that clutched at her, but she knew the stirrings of fascination, knew what it was to return time and again to something gripping and unearthly.
"So when they asked for his most precious possession, he took his beautiful wife, Mariamne, and cast her out of this world, into the smoke and darkness and the void. In return, they gave him a crown made of copper which would compel all who saw him to obey as long as he wore it, no matter the order, how terrible or how trite. But it was a demon's gift, and so when he put the crown upon his head, it turned to fire, and burned him through and through. Lesser men – better men – might have thrown it away then, and shrunk into grief. But he endured the pain while his subjects trembled before him, and as the demons had promised, as long as he wore it, none could deny him."
"Bloody hell," Jepar murmured.
Blue's smile was faint and icy. "An accurate description. His borders expanded, and he swallowed place after place into his empire. Then, one day, his men captured a prophet – a local witch. She was well-renowned, so he had her brought to his court and commanded her to tell him the future. She got to her feet, and looked him in the face as no one had since he took his crown of flames, and said, 'Your end comes: your end cries in a cradle even now. A child shall topple you with a sword of stars.' It got a touch garbled in mortal translations, of course, as such things do. But they did get their facts straight about the massacre. Every child under two was slaughtered in the empire, for a mad king's love of power."
"Hang on..." Jepar sounded stunned.
She stared at Blue. "I've heard that story. It's in the Bible."
"And as I said, it's an imperfect version that has been absorbed into mortal mythology. But that detail is right."
"Herod?" Jepar choked. "We're hunting down Herod?"
"His crown, actually." Blue turned into a long golden driveway that twisted up to a house on a rocky hill. "I think it's best we keep him and it separate, don't you?"
"You said the Furies have encountered him before," Cougar said curtly. "How do we stop him?"
"We won't. But the Old Soul who was born to stand against him will."
"You're relying on Fate?" Cougar said, incredulous.
Blue drew the car to a juddering stop in front of the door. "No. I'm relying on the fact that we have raised her from birth to be what she is for just this moment." He turned off the engine and got out, slamming the door.
Chatoya followed: she looked at him over the roof of the car, his face unreadable. "And what is that, exactly?"
"The same thing as the rest of us," he said. "A weapon."
oOo
Inside, the house was basic but spacious. Jepar and Cougar began unloading what little luggage they had, dragging it up the rickety stairs. An ancient air-conditioning unit whirred in the living room, which was beautifully tiled in black and red. Through an open door, she glimpsed a flourishing garden, green and white and pink.
A woman rose to greet them from a battered chair. "You must be Chatoya," she said, offering a hand. Her grip was strong, almost bruising. "Aurenna Ravija."
The woman who'd brought Blue to the Furies and a legend in her own right. Her amber eyes were piercing, staring down her beak of a nose with a hawk's intensity. The sun had bleached her spiky blond hair and given her a deep tan.
"Reading up?" Chatoya asked, noting the pile of scrolls beside her chair.
"While we can," Aurenna said. She looked to be in her late thirties, her voice calm and low. She glanced at Blue. "Diablo, shall I fill them in?"
"No need." It was strange to hear Blue referred to by his title. Her friends treated him with no such reverence, and the two of them were past formalities, long past. "They have only to meet Sunita."
"She went out to Karnak with Kurt. They'll be back soon." An almighty crash came from upstairs. Aurenna glanced up, a flicker of alarm in her face. "What on earth...?"
Jepar's voice drifted down to them. "Um...we've had a bit of a spider incident."
Chatoya saw Aurenna mouth the words with an incredulous look.
Blue heaved a jaded sigh. "This bodes well."
"I heard that!" Cougar shouted down. "And it took us by surprise, all right?"
"Quite," Blue said, a liberal helping of sarcasm in the word. "Whereas the demon king will be entirely predictable."
"I'd better make sure they haven't damaged anything," Aurenna murmured. The floorboards above them creaked ominously. "The air-conditioning is fragile, and believe me, you don't want it to break."
She made a hasty exit as something clattered. For the first time, Chatoya was left alone with Blue.
He lifted the sunglasses, and the intensity of his gaze was briefly dizzying, as if the Egyptian heat hit her for the first time. And if they had been a normal couple, perhaps she might have kissed him, or melted into his arms, or said I missed you.
Instead, she took off the sunhat and combed her fingers through her hair, and left distance between them. "Do you trust her?"
"Not entirely," he answered. "But enough."
"And me?" she said softly, not sure why she asked it. "Do you trust me?"
He smiled. It was knowing, and sensuous, and a little scornful. "As much as you trust me."
Not at all, she wondered. Or far too much?
oOo
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