“Tell me about the relic Chelle was searching for.” It was all connected. Had to be. And the sooner everything was out in the open, the better their chances.
Ronan raked his fingers through his hair and let out a gust of breath. “It’s a vampire relic,” he said after a moment. “The origin of our race is rumored to have begun with it.”
“The suspense is killing me, dude.” Naya nudged Luz’s seat again, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Spit it out already!”
“What Chelle was looking for—has been searching for over centuries—is Set’s chest. And the last intact memory I have before waking up in Naya’s house was getting a phone call from her, telling me that she’d found it. Here.”
“Set as in the Egyptian god?”
“The one and only,” Ronan replied.
“How does an Egyptian deity tie into vampire lore?” Luz asked. “You’re a little too blue-eyed and white to be from that part of the world. KnowwhatImean?”
Ronan ignored Luz’s snarky observation, but he did give his head a rueful shake as his gaze met Naya’s. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who noticed that Luz acted like a sixteen-year-old most of the time. “Set constructed the chest as a coffin for Osiris. He tricked him into laying in it and sealed him inside. Isis found the chest and rescued Osiris. Set consequently hunted Osiris down and ripped his body into pieces, scattering them throughout Egypt.”
“Yikes. Can you say overkill?”
Naya laughed at Luz’s rib and Ronan gave a lopsided grin. “After that, the myths fork into separate legends. As vampires are told, Isis tasked the god Thoth with placing a resurrection spell on the chest that Set had constructed to be Osiris’s tomb. And after Isis collected the pieces of Osiris’s body, she placed them inside the chest. When he emerged, he was whole but there were noticeable changes.”
Naya leaned forward, rapt. “Such as?”
“Fangs,” Ronan said with a grin that showcased his own sharp dual points. “An insatiable thirst for blood and an aversion to sunlight. For starters.”
“Cool!” Luz exclaimed with all of the enthusiasm of a kid at a magic show. “If that’s true, then you’re, like, descended from a god. Pretty impressive, bloodsucker. Also, can I just point out that without the help of magic you probably wouldn’t be here right now?”
Naya laughed her agreement. “She’s got a point. Why was Chelle looking for it? And how did she track it here?”
“I have no idea how she tracked it here. Our phone conversation was brief. She said she needed me to come and that someone was following her. After that, the line went dead. Chelle’s a bit of a tomb raider, but only where it pertains to vampire relics. She takes private contracts, but the chest has been her own personal obsession. For centuries, Mikhail was the only vampire and our kind teetered on the brink of extinction. Without a mate, he wasn’t strong enough to turn a dhampir.”
“And she thought if she found the chest she could make vampires without Mikhail’s help?”
Ronan cocked a brow. “It was a hopeful notion when we had no hope.”
“But you don’t believe it?” Naya asked.
“As much as I do any myth. Who can say? There isn’t any evidence of it in the Collective, and neither I nor Mikhail is old enough to have witnessed it.”
“The Collective?” Luz asked.
“Vampire memory,” Ronan explained. The memories of every vampire living or dead are shared among all of us.”
“Creepy,” Luz said with an exaggerated shudder.
“It can be a challenge, but it can also be very useful.”
“You bet! Especially if you thought your girl was steppin’ out on you.”
Leave it to Luz to give the vampire race’s collective memory a Jerry Springer twist. “If the legends are accurate, the chest would hold an immense magical charge,” Naya explained. “Especially if it carries the power of resurrection.”
“A god’s magic? Big mojo.”
Naya met Luz’s gaze in the mirror. She had a point. “Magic can only be used for its intended purpose. If someone who didn’t know anything about it was trying to make that magic work for them it would certainly corrupt it.”
“And whoever has Set’s chest might have Chelle.” The hope in Ronan’s voice was like a dagger to Naya’s chest.
“That would be my guess.” Unless, of course, Chelle had been one of the first to be corrupted. In which case, odds were good that Ronan’s sister was already dead.