A Vampire's Claim (62 page)

Farida had chosen an incomparable man. Jessica would choose where she wanted to die.

Killing Raithe had seemed impossible, of course, enough that Jess never even entertained it, not after those first six months as his slave in a world surreal compared to her twentieth-century white-bred life. Since he could read her mind as easily as she read Farida’s pages, he’d delighted in punishing her every time she’d thought of murder . . . or of running. Eventually, she’d learned to make her mind blank, a dumb, self-lobotomized creature who would do anything, endure anything, her life merely a muddy haze of images and obstacles to avoid. But that hadn’t been sufficient. Raithe wanted her full attention and enthusiasm. She’d learned vampires were not only brutal and ruthless, but they knew humans so well they could use kindness, cunning and desire to bait them into awareness, no matter how often their cruelty taught a woman to retreat into the apathetic pit of her mind.

At that point she’d believed he could do no worse to her, but evil was bottomless—it used every horrific torment as a shovel to dig a little deeper, giving her one less place to hide.

Oh, Jesus, was she destined to follow him to Hell? Some said vampire servants followed their Masters into the afterlife. Another good reason not to die any sooner than she had to. She’d already proven the will was far stronger than X-rays and blood tests.

Though Death wouldn’t wait forever, she’d faced down the Grim Reaper and made him blink, made him back the hell off until she accomplished this.

“So we wait here until dark, then?” Harry, one of her trio of opportunists, stood at her side.

While she needed the three men for passage and protection, for their knowledge of the language and the Sahara, she would have preferred to do this alone. However, there were things she couldn’t do by herself anymore. Harry had put her before him on his camel a couple of times when she fainted into one of her hours-long stupors. She’d warned him of it, instructed him to keep moving no matter what. Time was too short for her. She’d given him the compass heading and some landmarks, but not all of them. They thought they were seeking only a grave marker, not the tomb that was her true goal.

When they found the obelisk, she’d have them leave her there. She wasn’t sure she could make the final leg of the journey on her own, but she certainly wasn’t going to dishonor Farida by exposing her secret resting place to others. She owed that not only to Farida, but to the brokenhearted spirit of the man who’d loved her enough to place her there.

“So are we in the right place?” Harry repeated patiently. They’d gotten used to her silences, her slow response time.

“I think so.” She considered the lay of the dunes, checked her compass and then shuffled through her sheaf of notes, checked the GPS. They’d made camp a couple hours before and her camel’s resting body was warm and solid at her back, a rhythmic vibration as the creature chewed her cud.

Harry sat down and leaned against his pack, considering her. “You know, you remind me of crazy Daisy Bates. She lived in the Outback desert for years among the blacks. Was as at home there as a baked lizard.”

She glanced up at him. Harry was an expatriate Australian, one who’d lived in and around the Sahara for the past twenty years, a swagman gone walkabout far from the Outback, saying he’d come here because he’d heard tell it was even hotter than Oz. He’d stayed merely to test it out, and claimed with dry humor it was the most air-conditioned place on earth. ’Course, she knew he’d left Australia because he was wanted for the killing of a man in Queensland, a cuckolded husband who came after him with a knife.

When one was a fugitive, thieves and cutthroats with some type of honor code were the best partners, when one had to have them, and she’d done well in that, for the most part. He could have been the sort to take her out in the desert and leave her during one of her unconscious spells to die, going back to try for the jewels she’d promised.

However, though she knew Harry had a code of honor, she didn’t count on it carrying him too far. She’d made it clear the bank would be expecting a specific password before they’d release the jewels to the three of them. She was too weak to do anything but die under the least amount of torture, so any temptation Harry or Mel might have to beat it out of her before they got her to her destination was obviously futile.

Mel was far more unscrupulous, but Harry kept him in line. She worried little about being a woman traveling alone with them, and not just because Harry’s tastes didn’t run to forcing women. She was skin stretched over bone. Her hair was brittle, lackluster. If she brushed it, it came out. She was as likely to vomit up a meal as digest it, and her hacking cough kept the clothes she wore flecked with blood and sputum so that sometimes she was too tired to wipe it away. The odor coming from her body was noxious, that of a sick and dying animal. It was a wonder buzzards weren’t following them.

This journey had not been so long that Mel or Harry was that desperate. Even so, Dawud, her third man and Islamic native guide, often gently reminded her to keep her head and face covered, since she was unmarried and the three of them were unmarried men.

It was also better for when they met caravans, before they left the known routes.

At one time, his kindly meant reproof would have rankled. Now she didn’t mind wearing the head covering. It saved questions. It also provided a protection, an unspoken barrier. She’d come from a modern world, full of the ideals of equal rights and independence for women. But in this culture a woman who demonstrated modesty, who respectfully kept herself covered, sent out a signal that she was deserving of respect. Didn’t always work, of course, because the world was also full of those who did as they pleased, took what they wanted. But she’d take advantage of any protections the world offered to survive to her final goal.

She liked young Dawud very much, besides. He hoped to use the funds to bring irrigation and education to his village, and she wanted him to have that. For him, specifically, she made it clear to the other two that the bank would
not
be giving Dawud the jewels directly upon successful completion of their task, but handling the liquidation and management of funds for the village in trust.

Mel and Harry could plan to rob and kill each other as they saw fit after they got their share, but she wasn’t risking an innocent.

In fact, she could have done with just Dawud, except it would take two strong men to shift the obelisk. Dawud also might not be willing to touch it, because of carved ancient warnings and protections that would not concern Harry and Mel. Another way Farida’s lover had protected her body, though he’d been unable to save her life.

The sun was setting now, the stars starting to appear, one by one. She watched them like beads on a rosary, a mantra of hope said over each one. She was so tired. Of course, she didn’t remember what
not
being tired was, or not being sick. But it was almost over, and this would be an accomplishment she’d done just for her.

Would Jack, her murdered fiancé, have understood that about her? If so, he’d have understood it before she even understood it herself, because until all this had happened, she’d had a laughable understanding of what sacrifice and true determination meant.

They’d had so little time to get to know each other, but he’d been willing to die for her. When not a split second instinct, that was too precious a gift to ever explain, a deep, soul-level treasure that foretold what would have grown between them. But why Heaven dangled a precious gem before its children and then took it away was anyone’s guess—perhaps Heaven had been in that periodic transition flipflop with Hell. Like the Sahara, from green to fire. Or maybe it was the same as that ridiculous story about the one tree in Eden that couldn’t be touched. Did
anyone
think an all-knowing deity had been that naive about the tragically curious nature of its offspring? More likely, He’d just found a way to kick their asses out of His garden, tired of their incessant questions.

Of course, that same fatal curiosity had drawn her to Farida’s story. She’d likely sacrificed her sanity to it.

Jess picked up the binding, rubbed her hands over it. While she knew the men thought her obsession with the book was odd, she needed the comfort of those words now, to stave off the unease the deepening night always brought. Harry was moving about, working with Mel to make their dinner. When the full canopy of stars shone above, she’d be able to locate the obelisk. Persephone would show her the way.

Opening the carefully preserved but well-read pages, she began to read her favorite passages. While she knew them by heart, enough to mumble them as she’d rocked along on top of her camel during their journey, she liked to see the words, pass her fingers over the ink. Connect with Farida, as if that touch between paper and flesh could draw Jessica fully into her world and out of this one.

Three centuries ago, when Prince Haytham came to the aid of Farida’s father against another warring faction, riding at his side was a man who’d fought and adventured with him, a man he referred to as Lord Mason. It suggested he’d been of British aristocracy, likely a second or third son who’d become a traveling soldier seeking his fortune, a common enough tale. Though according to Farida’s words, there’d been nothing common about him at all.

If Jess could paint a picture of Heaven, that would be hers. A world where she could be Farida, their merged soul belonging to the love of Lord Mason, for all eternity.

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Copyright © 2009 by Joey W. Hill.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

eISBN : 978-1-101-01195-9

1. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.I4343V365 2009

813’.6—dc22

2008039329

http://us.penguingroup.com