Those muttering voices in Jess’s subconscious, trying to process what was in this chamber with a rational mind, were bothering her.
She shoved them away. She didn’t need to be rational anymore. That had no place here.
Her gaze moved to a small pillar table next to the bed—for she couldn’t think of this as a coffin now—and alighted on a crystal vase, with one snow-white orchid in it.
Some of the legends she’d uncovered had said that Lord Mason was so enraged in his grief he’d sold his soul to darkness and become a desert demon in truth, whirling across the sands of the Sahara and unleashing vengeance against her family. After which, he dedicated his damned eternal life to watching over her, hiding her grave and body from those who would harm her.
Another fanciful tale said that the week after she was killed, a fierce dust storm had buried her father’s camp, no trace of it ever to be found. Sheikh Asim’s brothers in other tribes renewed the blood oath to seek revenge, the ones Prince Haytham advised to stand down. She wondered if they ever heeded him.
Everything she saw here was beautiful, moving, a miracle. But she had to admit it was also discomfiting. She’d come prepared to see dry bones, maybe the unexpected—and highly unlikely—possibility of a dried flower husk, clutched in skeletal hands. A dusty tomb for the dead, a fitting place for her to fade into its tranquility, become part of the silence.
But unlike Jess’s failing body, there was something vibrant and strong here, a love so eternal it may have taken a dark turn in its determination to endure. This was not just guilt and grief beyond comprehension, but dormant power that would wake and consume the whole world, if it would bring her back to him. What would a man become, if he didn’t have the strength to let go, and possessed the power to hold on throughout all eternity?
That sense of uneasiness returned, a sly voice. You know what he is.
Shut. Up.
Sinking to her knees in the petals, she laid her temple against the sarcophagus. Along the walls Lord Mason had left his wife more gifts. Books, fantastic jewels, scarves. Horses carved of onyx. Clothing . . . a beautiful beaded wedding dress Farida would not have had when she made her own vows under the stars. All in all, there appeared to be several hundred gifts. One for every year she’d been dead.
Jess forced herself not to start counting. The way to open the tomb was an engineering trick, not magic. Perhaps Lord Mason had descendants. Perhaps he’d returned to England, eventually married, and his heirs came once a year . . .
Fate could not be so cruel as to bring her back full circle. Not after months of searching and hoping.
If vampires existed, so could other supernatural beings, right? Why not a desert djinn? But she’d been a researcher too long to ignore the possibility, in the laughing, mocking face of everything she now knew about the world.
The words of the memoir she’d treasured, memorized, as well as the documents she’d struggled to find, started to fire past her denial. Pinning her against the workings of her still too agile mind, they made her see the things she’d overlooked. Things that she, of all people, should have noticed. But she had read what she wanted and needed desperately to believe.
Sheikh Asim’s correspondence to his brother: This infidel is an unnatural being. Even the prince will shun him for what he is .. .Farida’s own words: As his lips closed on my throat, I knew his hunger . . . We are nighttime creatures now, for the comfort of my love, and avoidance of those who pursue us . . . I prepared my dinner . . . A loving, submissive woman, speaking of preparing her dinner, not his . . . He is always gone during the day . . .
“No. No. No! ” It was not possible. Lord Mason had become a djinn, like the stories suggested, a ghost visiting her grave throughout the centuries, a wizard able to preserve her body. Maybe even a fallen angel, defying God’s will to be with her. Farida had loved him. It had bled from every pen stroke in that journal. This whole chamber said he’d loved her insensibly. A vampire did not love, and most certainly not human women. No woman could fall in love with a vampire to the depths that Farida had fallen in love with Lord Mason. It didn’t happen. Vampires were savage, brutal creatures, obsessed only with power and control.
He is not as other men in his solitude. He ordered me not to bind my life to his, and yet I defied his will and insisted. At last he made me his, in a way deeper than any woman I know has experienced. He is inside me in all ways, in my mind and soul, the two of us linked together through all eternity.
Romantic, sweeping words she’d taken as romance, when she should have been reading other things.
No. No. No. What she was seeing before her was not the power of a vampire. They had no ability to preserve life this way, because this woman was dead.
“That’s as tight a fit as a young girl’s bum, that is.”
Jessica stiffened and raised her head. Mel wriggled free and dropped into the chamber, giving her his ugly grin. “Well, darling, we didn’t believe it was all about some dusty rock almost as big as my dick, and we were right, weren’t we?” Shoving aside her jumbled thoughts, she rose on trembling legs, bracing herself on the side of the sarcophagus. When Mel’s gaze went to it, his eyes widened. “Hell’s bells, look at that, Harry.”
She wanted to shift in front of it, cover Farida from his sight. Then she realized he’d ignored the phenomenon in the center of the room for the treasures on the floor behind her. But as he started forward, Harry caught his arm, his self-preservation instinct greater. “What’s going on here?” he asked sharply.
Her last act on this Earth was going to be bringing grave robbers to Farida’s resting place. As if the horrific possibility whirling through her mind wasn’t enough to handle.
“Your death,” she rasped out. “This woman is guarded by the spirit of the man who loved her. You touch one thing, and you won’t leave this chamber alive.”
“More of your fanciful rubbish. You’re mad, old girl. We’re about to be bloody rich beyond anything ever,” Mel said. “That’s all that’s happening. And even dead, that girl’s a lot prettier than your sick heap of bones. I say we wake her up and take her along.” One man might have sacrificed his heart and soul to ensure this place would remain pure in memory forever. She had to believe that, hope for it, no matter what other terrible alternative existed.
Jessica drew the knife from beneath her clothes, the one she’d almost gotten Harry with in their early travels. Perhaps because her movements were feeble, they didn’t think to stop her, but they didn’t know a Hell-based rage was burning deep in her breast, bolstered by her fear of betrayal and the threat of utter hopelessness. Please, let me die before I learn the truth.
“You don’t belong here,” she said, her voice rough and strange to her own ears. “You can’t touch these things. These are his gifts to her. That he’s still bringing her.” How could they not see it? The fresh flower petals, the orchid, three hundred years of offerings?
Or was she dreaming again, meshing the reality of their presence with the illusion of what she wanted this chamber to look like? No, she’d imagined dried bones, had even been comforted by that idea. Everything here was real, particularly their threat.
“Miss Anna,” Harry said quietly, “none of us will keep you from staying here. Mel doesn’t want anything to do with that woman.
But you have no use for these treasures. What does it matter if we take a few?”
“Because they’re hers. Because something has to matter enough that we don’t take from it.” From their startled looks, she suspected they could see that fire welling in her eyes, hear the raw, despairing fury in her hoarse voice. She was getting dizzy, a gray haze at the edges of her vision, but she defied it, brandishing the knife. “Something has to be sacred.”
“Well, you go on and worship all you like, you crazy old witch,” Mel growled. “I’m plundering to my heart’s content.”
“No, you are not.” She swung the knife as he moved forward. Surprised, Mel leaped back as the tip snagged and ripped his sleeve. “You will not touch anything here as long as I have breath to fight you.”
“Fair enough,” he retorted, and drew a knife of his own, the blade catching the torchlight.
“Mel,” Harry snapped. “No call for that, now. We’ll just knock her out. She couldn’t fight off a baby.”
“Why can’t you leave her be? Why can’t any of you . . .” As she choked on the pain of it, her head swam, the floor tilting. She wished Lord Mason had thought to bespell this chamber like they did in the movies, so that in the presence of grave robbers, cracks would run across the ceiling and the walls would crumble in, burying them all, preserving it forever. But then the chamber would disappear, as if it had never been, a figment of her imagination. No, it was here. She could see it, could see all of it. “You won’t take from her, damn it.”
“Jesus, Harry. She’ll die here anyway. Might as well hasten the old bat along.”
“I’m not old,” she snarled. “I am twenty-nine years old.”
That caught the men off guard, bought her a minute. Why not? She was tired of having it all bottled up inside of her. She’d endured months, years even, of trusting no one, talking little, even to Raithe, because most times speaking wasn’t the primary use he had for her mouth. Even knowing they would think her crazy, she would confess it here and now, because it was all right. She could tell Farida, so she would hear it, before they killed her at the foot of her sarcophagus.
“I am Jessica Tyson, not Anna Wyatt. I was the servant of a vampire for five years. A vampire who killed my fiancé. That vampire did this to me”—she gestured at the wasted flesh of her face—“but I survived. To do this. To come to this woman’s grave, to someone who understood . . . that life is the most horrible thing in the world, and the most marvelous.” Tears were running freely down her face now, though Jess was surprised her dried-up heart, pounding so erratically, had any left to give. “I beg you, if you have any scrap of decency, do not defile this place.” But she knew when it came to these men and decency, threats worked better. “If you refuse and kill me”—she pinned them both under her gaze—“I swear, no matter what deal I must make from the grave, I’ll curse you for the rest of your days. You will know Hell on Earth, until you bang on the devil’s door and beg him to let you in. She was Farida, daughter of Sheikh Asim, the lion, and wife and beloved of Lord Mason, the desert tiger. She chose to abandon everything for his love, and she died for him. You will not dishonor that.”