Broken Heart 09 Only Lycans Need Apply(47)

He gifted me with that wicked, wicked grin, and suddenly I had a whole new reason to get out of the pyramid and, you know, not die.

Not dying would be good.

At least, not dying forever.

I moved through the door, and down the hall. I could see stairs through the next archway, and as we made our way up the stone steps, I explained my second vision to Drake.

“You experienced the first time Gabriel took blood from Patsy?” he asked.

“Seems like,” I said. “But there wasn’t any talk of objects. I mean, unless we take into consideration the beauty shop aspect . . . combs . . . scissors . . . hair.”

“I do not think what you are supposed to learn has much to do with objects,” mused Drake.

“Then what?”

We reached the top of the staircase, and found yet another narrow hallway lit with torches. “Well, here we go again,” I said.

For whatever reason, Drake felt compelled to take my hand, and as I stepped into the hall, cold air blasted us from the other end.

An otherworldly voice rang out: Know the beginning . . .

I blinked against the fierce wind, and when it stopped, we were no longer in the pyramid. Or so it seemed. We were walking in a faded landscape. It was not like the previous visions I’d experienced, the main difference being that Drake walked beside me, still clasping my hand. It was like we had been tossed into the ghost of the land that had once been ancient Egypt.

I was enthralled.

Ahead of us walked a tall man with a shaved head wearing some sort of white dress that looped over one shoulder. I knew from the wall reliefs and the architecture that we were in a temple, one devoted to the god Anubis.

“It seems we are visiting a memory,” said Drake. He nodded toward the man. “That’s Amahté.”

“How do you know?”

“Who else would it be? Amahté was the high priest of Anubis. Khenti, his son, once told us that the god gave him the ability to speak to the dead and he also gave him the ability to raise the dead.”

“His son was a vampire, too?”

“All Ancients turned at least one of their biological children.”

“Well, that’s weird.” I pondered that idea for a moment. “Ruadan is an Ancient, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He was the first to make his own children into vampires. His twin sons, Patrick and Lorcan, were both Turned.”

Patsy had mentioned Lorcan in her conversation with Gabriel. Something about suffering from the Taint, and vampires who could turn into werewolves. Shape-shifting didn’t seem to be a common element of being a vampire.

“What exactly are Patsy and Gabriel?”

“Werewolves who must drink blood to survive. It is a very small pack. Only Gabriel, Ren, and Anise existed, until Patsy was Turned and had children with her mate.”

“I’m starting to feel like I need a flowchart,” I said.

He nodded to the ghostly image of the priest. “Every vampire family has certain abilities. Amahté’s Family gift is the ability to see ghosts and communicate with them.”

I remembered the strange moment during our rescue/re-kidnapping when Patsy had gone off to a corner to have a conversation with the air. Gabriel had said then that she could speak to spirits. “So, Patsy was a vampire before Gabriel . . . er, made her into a vampire-werewolf?”

“Yes. She was part of the Amahté Family. But now she is also loup de sang. And as queen of the vampires and, for a time, the werewolves, she absorbed seven powers of the Ancients.”

I stared at him. “You know that I have no idea what’s going on, right?”

“I’m not a flowchart kind of guy. I’ll tell Lorcan to make you one when we return to Broken Heart. He keeps track of all the vampire history.”

We reached the end of the temple’s hall. The man ahead of us had barely cleared the doorway, which led outside, when we heard noises of a scuffle.

We stepped out of the temple and saw three men, all of whom were naked, struggling with Amahté. He was putting up an impressive fight, and for a moment I thought he might actually win.

Then the attacker behind him took out a dagger. He drew it across Amahté’s neck. The blade slit his skin easily.

Blood spurted everywhere.

The man dropped his victim, then fled with his companions.

Amahté lay on his back, his hands pressed against his gurgling throat.

“You see why they wore no clothes,” said Drake. “They can go to the Nile and wash off the blood. Then get dressed, and no one would know they committed murder.”

“Bastards,” I muttered. “Why would they kill him?”

“Jealousy about being a favorite of both a god and the ruling pharaoh,” said Drake. “At least that’s what Khenti had told us.”