Please do me the honor of fulfilling our mission in Egypt. In return, I will fulfill the vow I made to you last night. Those who have hurt you will pay, I promise you that. And if possible, I will also retrieve those we have lost. I will be in touch.
Louis-Cesare
I just knelt there for a moment, rereading the letter. Then I read it a third time, before it really sank in. And I felt my face burn.
I guessed I knew what that look of peace had been about last night, huh? He’d suddenly been calm, but not because he was with me. Not because we’d comforted each other, and were about to chase down our enemies together. But because he’d decided what he was going to do. Which involved leaving the little woman behind while he ran after Jonathan.
Alone.
He was chasing the one man who’d ever beaten him, but he didn’t want backup? Bet if Dorina was still here he’d have wanted some damned backup. But plain old Dory? Nah. What the hell could I do for him?
I heard the letter crumple in my fist.
Hassani sat up, having freed himself as far as the waist. “You see,” he said, watching me. “You could go to the queen’s mausoleum, after all.”
I shot him a look of pure fury. “Is that what you’d do?”
“No. But I am not a dhampir.”
The look didn’t change.
The door burst open, and at least a dozen master vampires tore into the room, blades out and faces set on hate. Hassani held up a hand and they stopped, so suddenly that some of them ran into each other. One toppled Ken, who fell onto his face, still unmoving.
Hassani regarded them calmly. “Children, a teachable moment. As it is written, ‘Repel evil with what is better; then you will see that one who was once your enemy has become your dearest friend.’”
One of the vampire’s hissed, and another bared fangs.
“So, I’m evil?” I demanded.
Hassani brushed it aside. “Exaggerated for effect.”
“Do they know that?”
He freed himself the rest of the way and took his time standing up and shaking out his perfect clothes. A number of tiny golden bugs fell out and rattled against the floor. He sighed.
Then he looked at me, and the dark eyes were somehow different than before. “Come. There is something I want to show you.”
Chapter Nine
Dory, Cairo
We headed to a part of the complex I hadn’t seen before, with sets of rock cut stairs going down into limestone caverns well below city level. Going down also meant going back in time, apparently, as layers of the current city peeled back like an onion to show earlier habitations. And then to reveal another city altogether, as we came to several stories of medieval brickwork.
It featured the curved archways and pierced stone of Fustat, the original city built here by the first Arab conquerors, which predated Cairo by centuries. I remembered one of our guides telling me that Old Town overlapped its borders somewhat, or what was left of it. But we didn’t stop there.
Maybe seven levels down we branched off the main stairs and cut through some rock hewn, sepia-colored rooms. They had traces of age-old pigments on the walls, and cartouches containing hieroglyphs I couldn’t read. Hassani paused like a good host whose guest has seen something that interested her, and the lantern boy he’d brought along stopped, too.
The kid was a vamp but just barely, with big dark eyes and a nervous disposition. He had on a simple djellaba—the local robe that reminded me of a long nightshirt—with pale blue and white stripes. With the simple leather sandals he wore, and the old-fashioned lantern he carried, he looked like he’d stepped out of another time.
As did everything else. The abrupt halt set the light swaying and the carvings flickering like an old news reel. I expected to see Howard Carter show up, any time now.
“Heliopolis,” Hassani said, looking approving of my interest. “You are standing in the remains of the first city ever built on this spot. The City of the Sun, as the ancient Greeks called it.”
“I thought Fustat was the first on this site.”
“Oh, no. In fact, the temples and other buildings of Heliopolis were scavenged for materials to build Fustat and then medieval Cairo, just as the pyramids were.”
“The pyramids?”