Not rule, but destroy. It didn’t even surprise me. In the washed-out lantern light, in the depths of this cave, where the air smelled cold and the shadows seemed alive, anything was possible, anything at all. All the stories came to life.
Kumarbis gripped the coin around his neck. “When he made this, the first of the coins, I saw what he would become. Where his ambitions lay. I followed him still, I wore the coin because I had nowhere else to go. I had been alone for so very long, you see. You cannot understand how long I was alone.”
No, I couldn’t. My sympathies swung wildly, from one to the other, to both. They’d both been wronged, they’d both made mistakes. I couldn’t feel anything anymore.
“But you left,” I said. “You left, but you didn’t stop him, back when he wasn’t so powerful—”
“I wore his coin,” Kumarbis said simply. “I could not harm him. Leaving was difficult enough. Breaking the bond, marring the coin, nearly destroyed me. I don’t know of anyone who’s done it since.”
Anastasia had done it. She’d been called Li Hua when she lived in China at the time of Kublai Khan, and Roman had bought her as a slave from the conquering army. He’d turned her, she’d served him—and then she’d escaped. She was the one who’d explained the coins to me. And Kumarbis had never had a clue about her, or anything else that had happened after he left Roman, I was betting.
“How? How’s he going to do it? Destroy everything?” I said. Only one of many obvious questions. But the one I really had to know, if I wanted to stop the man. That artifact, the one Roman was looking for—the Hand of Hercules—did Kumarbis know about that?
“Does it matter? If we stop him, it won’t matter—”
“Yes, dammit, it matters!”
His body seemed to creak with the deep breath he took. “We will stop him, and the point will be moot.”
He didn’t know. Chuckling, I scratched my itchy, unwashed hair. The vampire didn’t move. Didn’t stand up to announce that he was finished, that he’d carried out his part of the deal and we were done now. This was still story time+frcesh, and he was still waiting for my questions. Maybe I had some journalistic interview chops after a;t know how lo
Chapter 17
THE RITUAL chamber had been transformed. Zora must have been busy in the day or so since I’d last been in here. While I’d been asleep, she’d been preparing.
She moved clockwise around the rough-hewn walls of the room, us and wrapped my arms around my heady from ed, theing a candle to light torches set in sconces drilled into the stone. Five torches, for the five points of the star painted on the floor. The flames produced more light, orange and churning, than I’d yet seen in this underground world. I looked up—and up, and up. What I hadn’t noticed before in the darkness: the mine extended upward, a vertical shaft that must have followed the vein of ore. A tower of open space, outcrops of rough granite wavering in the light. Boards lay across the space at irregular intervals, and a couple of ancient, desiccated wooden ladders were propped against the stretches of stone, as far up as the light allowed me to see. Miners had worked here, once upon a time, climbing ever upward in search of wealth. The surface of the wood glittered with that ever-present patina of precipitated minerals.
I gazed in awe, as if I stared up from the nave of a cathedral. The lofty space of a holy site, carved out of what people called living rock. The air seemed to pulse with the rhythm of my breathing. Black smoke trailed upward, to infinity. There must have been some unseen cracks or fissures to the surface, providing ventilation. The chamber smelled of pitch and incense, sandalwood and sage. Oily, hot, pungent. I blinked, my eyes stinging from the smoke, squinting to try to adjust to the changing light. I put out my hands, afraid I was going to get dizzy. I was still hungry, dehydrated. Nothing I could do about it but hang on.
Arriving at the top point of the star, Kumarbis wore a serene smile on his face, hands folded regally before him. He might have been a statue, or a figure from an ancient frieze. He might very well have been the model for one of those stone kings, with his broad face and determined gaze. He had on the same pale, loose shirt and pants he’d been wearing. Only Zora was dressed as some kind of otherworldly priestess. Thank goodness she wasn’t making us all wear white robes.
Kumarbis nodded at me and said, “Regina Luporum, will you join us and take your place in our circle?”
Zora pointed at a spot, one of the branches of the star. I didn’t recognize any of the markings there, nothing that particularly meant “Regina Luporum” or anything else. It could have been scribbling, random symbols copied from a Wikipedia article. If I asked Zora what the symbols meant, would she know? Or would she tell me I couldn’t possibly understand? I wanted to remember this, the symbols and patterns, everything, so I could ask Cormac and Amelia about it later.
I’d wanted to know what all this was about. Fine. This was it.
“We won’t hurt you,” Sakhmet whispered as she moved past me to her own place on the circle. Her smile was meant to be reassuring, and in spite of myself, I was reassured. I liked her. If only we could have coffee together in my favorite diner and have a normal conversation. This setting was damaging my judgment.
When Zora finished lighting torches, she joined us in the circle. Five points to the star, a place for each of us to stand. Kumarbis, then me, then Zora, then Enkidu and Sakhmet. I could see their faces,
