The Pyramids of London

THIRTY

Rian gasped, and flung herself away, a chill finger brushing her arm. A more natural hand caught her ankle, and Lyle’s smile was quietly pleased as he vanished underneath a clutching grey-green tide, pulling Rian behind him.

She kicked, and caught at the shielding table, but the power of the thing was beyond human strength. The hands were icy, and it felt like they were dragging her into ancient, wet mud, the kind that sent a knife of chill straight to the bone.

Twisting, she tried to spot the remaining Mendacium. No sign, so she snapped off two shots at one of the Romans she could see, grazing his shoulder. But no, she had to conserve her bullets. Somehow choke the horror down, and work for a chance, and that was not a thing that was easy to do when bitter hands clutched at her thighs. How many bullets did she have left? And why, why had Lyle—?

Rian pushed that question away. Why did not matter at this moment. Only a woman, over there behind the barrier. A woman who had called death, and whom Rian must answer with death. The Mendacium had been kneeling, and that one man was in the way, and that at least was an easy shot, and Rian took it.

There. The proudly handsome face, in profile, barely visible through a gap in the barrier. How many bullets left? One? Or was it none? Again, that was not a thing to think about, not yet, because cold hands had Rian’s waist, and her grip on the table was making little difference, and this was as difficult a shot as Rian had ever tried, after years of training diligently because a Prytennian woman travelling took care to be prepared.

A red flower bloomed.

Rian’s hand shook so much at this success that she dropped her pistol. Taking great gasping breaths she hauled at the table. It seemed in her desperation that perhaps the grip of the hands had loosened, but the Sea of Lies had not fallen with the ones who had called it, and she scrabbled with no care for dignity at unhelpful wood, until she noticed that her efforts were observed by a black hare, running silently in place.

Rian could have wept at the sight of it, a conflation of her sole memento of her mother and someone who had begun to dominate her thoughts, but most of all a sudden and real hope for survival.

The Night Breezes swirled around her, a vortex of mouse and hare and hound dragging her upward. But the Sea of Lies did not release its grip, and Rian cried out in pain.

An arm across her back, solid and human, brought a sudden end to the wrenching tug-of-war. The grasping, spectral hands vanished, driven from existence by a stronger power, and Rian was lifted to the withers of the three-tailed mare. The Crown Princess was dressed very much for combat, and made a formidable armful, but that and royal protocol did not keep Rian from abandoning resolution and embracing her with the whole of her heart.

“Thank you,” she said, in a choked fragment of a voice.

Aerinndís, Sulevia Sceadu, let out her breath. For a moment, one single moment, she touched Rian’s shoulder. But then she straightened, and that movement brought Rian to her senses, and she allowed her arms drop, gathering what little remained of her self-composure.

The fight had been summarily concluded, the few surviving Romans helpless in a whirl of transparent hounds, though from the crashing noise out in the corridor it seemed the bull-bear had run, and was being hotly pursued.

Prince Gustav, a little clawed about the edges, strode over as the three-tailed mare dissipated.

“The Lyle?” he said, but he’d already seen, and raised his axe to the ceiling in grave salute. “This, no-one deserves.”

Rian, remembering a hand around her ankle, looked down and away, and spotted Makepeace striding into the room. He had been thoroughly clawed, his shirt tattered, and the flesh beneath furrowed.

“Lost the thing,” he said to Princess Aerinndís. “And the winds seem to have trouble keeping hold of it.”

“There was not, this time, an immediate vanishment,” the Crown Princess said, watching dispassionately as Makepeace’s exposed wounds began to stitch themselves together. “They still have it in sight.”

“You know of this animal?” Prince Gustav asked, brightly interested. “Not a thing of Rome or of Prytennia.”

Makepeace started to speak, then stopped, grimaced, and said: “And now an excess of cats.”

The noise that came close on the heels of this statement was rough, grating, and very loud. The roar of a lioness. The power and fury caught up in that sound would surely echo across the world. Prince Gustav, looking appreciative, headed toward it, Ishi at his heels.

“Comfrey, Dama Seaforth is out of her depth,” Princess Aerinndís said. “Return her to Forest House, and then find me.”

“Highness,” Makepeace said, then added: “Don’t dawdle Wednesday.”

He followed the two royals toward the roaring, giving no indication that he’d noticed the flush so hot it left Rian dizzy. True enough, perhaps, given she was surrounded by those with considerably more power, but Rian had thought her conduct creditable enough in the situation. She had needed rescue, true, but…

Or had Princess Aerinndís’ order been meant as a rebuke for an unwanted embrace? Rian examined that thought, then lifted her chin and walked after Makepeace with all the poise she could muster. Whatever else, this was certainly not the moment to wallow.

A single hand of the Huntresses crowded among the bodies and damning evidence of the first room, three of them in lion form and still roaring, the other two likely the Pakhet and Bastet members of the hand, small women whose current silence did nothing to distract from their fury.

The noise was considerable, threat palpable, and yet Aerinndís Gwyn Lynn spoke with no more or less than her usual grave formality, while Prince Gustav looked on with all the appreciation of someone who would gain from these events, at only the small cost of one aide. Makepeace walked through without pause, and brushed past the handful of police and pyramid staff that had ventured so far as the room entrance before wisely deciding to wait.

People moved aside without looking at Makepeace—or Rian—or even asking questions. They did seem to be marginally aware of him, enough to get out of his way, but reacted without any interest. Given Makepeace’s still-healing injuries, this was quite an achievement. The power to control minds: not only the minds of vampires, but any who did not have sufficient god-touched resistance to prevent it.

A crowd had gathered out in the deepening dusk. The Huntresses, particularly the Sekhmet vampires, could not storm through London’s heart without comment. Here, Rian did see occasional reactions to the advent of a man in a shredded shirt with nearly-closed rents in his skin, but even the people who looked frowned and blinked as if they had only caught a fleeting glimpse of the unreal, and then went back to gazing avidly at the pyramid’s entrance.

Makepeace was moving toward one of the squares of trees that could be found all over London, but once they were past the crowd Rian spoke up.

“I’m going to go check on Lynsey. You don’t have to escort me back—I’ll take a taxi.”

“Interesting thought,” Makepeace said, not breaking pace. “But this night has only started, and you are still bright and shiny bait, even if someone else was the one to be eaten. That tedious creature—Wrack or Wrack’s servant—was there, where you were intended to go. Her Highness will track it wherever it runs, unless it somehow vanishes again, and we will hunt as soon as Her Highness can diplomatically shovel this Roman mess into Hildy’s lap. Wrack must know the Sulevia Sceadu’s abilities, know the only way to escape will be to avoid her until dawn, or flee over the border. If the fulgite really is so important to it, it’s barely possible it may make one last attempt. The best place for you is Forest House.”

“Did you guess? What fulgite was?”

He didn’t answer immediately. It was not until they were walking toward the centre of the pocket-sized parkland that he said: “Most ba would have moved on long ago. None of the fulgite I’ve ever handled felt like more than rock to me, bar that piece your brats have been hauling about. Something so small could not possibly house a ba, and they usually would never waste their energy trying to communicate with this world even when intact—it would be enormously difficult, and greatly impact their ability to reach the Field of Rushes. When I touched that piece, I guessed that there was a living creature involved in the production, but hadn’t taken the next step. I wonder if whoever is buying back the stolen fulgite is specifically seeking that where the ba still has some connection to the shattered form.”

Rian waited until he had taken her into the Great Forest, then told him, as unemotionally as she could manage, all that had happened before he and Princess Aerinndís had arrived.

“Double-souled?” Makepeace mused. “Or is this Wrack one of the Hungry Dead, eating a living host from within? Surely I would have felt that?”

“The woman called Min said Dane had changed since meeting the Alban,” Rian pointed out.

“True. Not likely to be one of the Hungry Dead, then. They use up their host before hopping to another. Unless it’s multiple…” He shook his head. “Either way, the hunt’s up. We’ll see what we have when we bring the bull-bear down.”

Since she had rarely felt less happy in herself, Rian was struggling to see her own best course. But there was something logical and obvious, and the fact that she very much didn’t want to do it should make no difference. Especially when whatever had driven Lyle had apparently attempted to kill her out of pure spite.

“You weren’t strong enough to hold it before,” she said.

“That’s one of the reasons we’ve involved Hildy. It’s a rare creature that is resistant to both the Night Breezes and the triskelion.”

“I thought she was going to be dealing with a lap full of Huntresses.” Rian took a slow breath, then made herself say: “You’re injured and my blood and ka, by all accounts, will make you stronger.”

He shot her an annoyed glance. “Oh, very noble, Wednesday. Yes, I so want a meal of the terror and revulsion radiating off you right now. Marvellous thought.”

“Isn’t that what vampiric trance is for?”

“I can do all sorts of entertaining things with you, Wednesday, but I can’t keep you in trance and eat you. No vampire can keep their Bound in feeding trance.”

She hadn’t realised that. She really wished it wasn’t so.

“Then we can be mutually revolted. It’s still by far the best sense.”

“Spare me.”

Rian started to point out that the sphinxes were still an unknown factor, and the Huntresses apparently entirely disinterested in diplomacy, but stopped herself. At the moment, arguing Makepeace into doing something she would really rather he didn’t was beyond her. She had seen someone she’d liked die, and almost been murdered by him, and then forgotten her place in relation to Prytennia’s Crown Princess and been swiftly made to remember it. That was surely the meaning behind that ‘out of her depth’. Rian could hardly claim to be surprised: the usual result of any blazing pyre of attraction was a failure to spark even a flicker in response.

But she’d thought—just for a moment she’d absolutely believed that Aerinndís‘ response had been positive. And that had crashed through common sense, left Rian off-balance and reeling, as stung by the Crown Princess’ subsequent dismissal as if she’d been slapped in the face. Walking in a straight line felt like an achievement.

Ridiculous over-reaction. Looking seventeen had evidently erased the twenty-odd years of growing up she’d done since then.

When they reached Hurlstone, Rian hesitated, searching the blue shadows. “What do we do about the automaton?” she said. “It’s grown increasingly responsive, and now we know what’s haunting it.”

Makepeace clicked his tongue, but shook his head, continuing on to the gate. “We’ll hand it over to the Huntresses tomorrow,” he said. “You’re right that they’re not in a diplomatic mood. Don’t be irritatingly right too often, Wednesday. It will make you intolerable.”

It wasn’t until he came through the gate with her that she was sure that this meant he’d conceded a larger point. It took sheer force of will to stop her hand from creeping up to her throat, and intense concentration to regain enough control of herself to greet two tense girls alert for any development.

“However did you manage to get Griff back to bed?” she asked, guessing from their exchanged glances that she had failed to produce a reassuring appearance. Though Makepeace, even with his wounds erased, rather announced that.

“He’s starting to feel better,” Eluned said briefly. “It always makes him sleep a lot. What happened?”

Rian explained in the briefest of terms, still circumspect in case of interested listeners lurking on roofs. The whole world would know the largest of secrets, all too soon, but she still didn’t quite dare to let her guard down.

“I held it in my hand,” Eluned said, even so. “Someone’s eye.”

That was very likely, and not what Rian wanted to discuss at that moment.

“Would you two find Dem Makepeace a new shirt, please?” she said. “And wait in the kitchen?”

The only way Rian could face what came next was to get it done as quickly as possible, so she turned and walked briskly across Forest House’s large central hall to the receiving room, seating herself at one end of a faded chaise lounge. When Makepeace came through the door, she met his eyes and coolly held out her wrist.

“This will only reinforce the link,” he said, shutting the door.

“It was fading?”

“Marginally. But what will happen with you is that the weaker my command over you, the more likely your colony will rouse and finish bringing you across.”

Rian’s resolution was failing her over and over today. Although she managed to keep her wrist held out, she had to turn her face away as Makepeace reached the lounge and sat down. He at least was not interested in drawing anything out, taking hold of her hand immediately. The touch brought Evelyn’s tour through ‘antiseptic, watered-down domestication’ to the surface of Rian’s thoughts.

He will lick your wrist, which will numb the physical sensation somewhat, but not enough for your skin to not know it has been pierced.

The muscles of her arm and shoulder knotted at the prospect, but she did not flinch away at the brief, moist contact. And of course Evelyn had been describing the experience as a Shu, not an Amon-Re Bound, and so had no reason to mention the sharp intrusion of her vampire’s emotions with that touch. Reluctance, irritation, pity. Hunger.

The numbing did seem to distance her to the entry of teeth, but Rian was keenly aware of the following moment, of Makepeace’s mouth sealed to her wrist.

It’s not the drawing of blood, but the ka that is the challenge to face.

Rian’s breath hissed between her teeth.

First because it hurts—it always hurts…

A vice had clamped around her chest, and her lungs felt as if they were being squeezed.

It is a sweet pain.

It was sex.

There was no other word for it. An entirely physical response, jarring in the moment, startling a gasp out of her. Makepeace hesitated—she could feel his surprise as a clear note like a bell—then drank again, leaving her shuddering and twisting, crashing onto summits of physical pleasure without any of the climb.

He dropped her hand, shifted so fast that memories of that first night at Sheerside barely had a chance to rise before he was straddling her lap, teeth in her throat, and the result was back-spasming pleasure, and a fierce hunger, as much Makepeace’s as her own, the Amon-Re ability to sense emotion taking the very real gratification a vampire experiences when feeding, and adding the physical sensation it produces in the Bound, magnifying it back and forth between them. It was confusing, shattering, engulfing thought and leaving only the urge to continue. One of her arms was wrapped around his back, another gripped his hair, and she twisted so that she was biting him, drinking as he drank, hot blood burning her mouth.

They stopped. Rian felt the effort of will Makepeace mustered to achieve this, a sledgehammer decision that moved him back a necessary inch, and broke the loop that made her want to drink from him. She coughed, shuddered, and fought an urge to spit as Makepeace’s blood, smeared around her mouth, slowly crept across her lips, found soft tissue, and sank.

“Too much of that and nothing will stop you crossing over, Wednesday,” he said, sitting back as soon as she loosed her grip on his hair.

In aftermath, beyond simple emotion, they looked at each other, dishevelled, breathing deeply, exposed. She could feel his heart racing, almost as quickly as her own, an ancient monster energised.

Then Makepeace bit his own thumb and held it against her mouth, and she felt the flow of his ka, reinforcing the bond between them and bringing to the fore a combination of dismay and satiation that echoed Rian’s own response.

“Your sensitivity to light will spike again,” he said, climbing to his feet and walking without further delay from the room.

Of all the people she’d met since she’d returned to Prytennia, Makepeace was the last she’d expected to tumble with—which is what it most definitely felt like she’d done, even though all clothing had remained on. An embarrassing development, something she might cringe from when she was no longer so trammelled. She was not a person who needed a meeting of hearts to bed someone, but usually her dominant emotion wasn’t annoyance, or fear.

Rian had no certainty as to how long that had taken, but the light-headed exhaustion, the dragging confusion of thought, suggested that he had drunk very deeply of both blood and ka, and she was fortunate indeed that he’d found the wherewithal to stop.

It had at least briefly distracted her from earlier events. Possibly she now felt even worse, but that would pass. The one lesson she had no trouble remembering: in time she would recover, stop feeling so mortified, find her calm centre and move on.

She always had.