Part 27 (1/2)

Elyta's glance flicked to Kate. ”How touching. But she has her uses too. You both do.” Kate saw her eyes go red as she stared at Gian. ”The stones.”

Elyta would soon realize Kate had them. They were right back where they had been in the Villa Rufolo. Kate felt power hanging in the air until it pressed down on her chest and made it difficult to breathe. Was it Elyta's power? The stones, in the bag over her shoulder, trembled.

Elyta felt the stones' reaction s.h.i.+mmer through the power in the air. She turned her head, her eyes now carmine red. ”So you have the stones,” she whispered. Her hand caught at the bag.

Gian glared at her. ”If you mean to take the stones away from this place, I wouldn't.”

Elyta tore open the leather pouch and cupped the little boxes in her hands. She opened one. The emerald. Kate could see it winking in reflected moonlight. It trembled in the velvet lining. ”Of course I mean to take them away. What good would they do me here?” Elyta snapped the box shut, grinning. ”Bring these two along.” She rounded on Gian. ”You make any trouble, and I'll give you a session with the stones. Illya, Federico, break camp. Sergei, keep your eyes on Urbano. You can handle him easily in his condition. And confiscate that horse.”

Kate wanted to shriek and just run back down the ravine. But she wouldn't leave Gian. The two took Gian's faithful dapple- gray. Elyta was muttering, half to herself. ”I'll use you hard, Urbano, and maybe your little scarred friend as well. I've a taste for a woman once in a while.” She opened up the mahogany box. ”We'll have a lovely time all round.”

Kate glanced to Gian. She could see the muscles in his jaw working. In fact, he clenched his fists. The muscles stood out in his neck. Just bide your time, she wanted to say. We'll escape her again, you'll see. But he didn't look patient. He looked...

furious.

Elyta chuckled in glee, standing in front of the tent as the vampires worked around her. The ruby glistened in its nest. ”Oh, dear me, but you will make me powerful, probably even beyond my dreams. And I can dream a lot of power.”

Indeed, power seemed to be ramping up in the air around them, even though the two vampires who were striking camp were not using theirs. The air began to vibrate. Elyta didn't seem to notice. She opened up the silver filigree box, cooing to the emerald that lay inside. She had a box in each hand now. ”You're going to France, my darlings.”

The wind rose up in a gust from the ravine, swirling sand around their feet. Kate couldn't take her eyes off Gian. He was staring at Elyta. And as she watched, his eyes turned red. Not the faint rose she had seen in the chapel, but carmine, deepening into burgundy. What was happening here? Had he got his power back? There was actually a humming sound in the air now. A gust of wind, harder this time, took the tent right out of the hands of the vampires who were folding it. Camels brayed in protest, tugging at the lead ropes that tethered them to stakes.

Elyta looked up, puzzled.

And the stones bounced out of their boxes to lie in the sand, perhaps six feet from where she stood. She gave a little cry and sprang forward.

As Kate watched, the stones simply... sank into the sand. One moment they were there, and the next moment there was just a little vortex like you would see in the top of an hourgla.s.s as it was turned and the sand leaked into the bottom half. Elyta threw herself on her hands and knees, digging at the vortex frantically. It widened.

The wind began to howl around them.

”Elyta!” Gian shouted. The sound reverberated in Kate's chest and echoed through the wind, as though the wind itself spoke through him. ”Leave them! They belong here.”

Elyta glanced up. The wind caught at her hair and whirled it around her face. Her eyes, too, went red. Carmine deepened into burgundy. Could Gian stand against her? He stood there, immobile. The wind shrieked. Was it another sandstorm?

”I'll get them back, Urbano, if I have to dig out this entire chasm!” Elyta would never give up, never let the stones go or Gian and Kate either.

Gian screamed in rage and frustration. The sound was torn from his belly and canned away in the wind and the sand. Veins stood out in his neck.

Elyta's dress bloomed flame. It licked up her body and raced toward her hair. She screamed, but already her head wore a corona of fire. The wind tore at the flame and she was engulfed. The sand funnel reached Elyta's knees. The other vampires stared, transfixed. Gian slumped, breathing hard, then grabbed Kate and pulled her back, shouting something. Kate couldn't hear it in the wind that raged now around them. Elyta's features blackened. The O of her shrieking mouth was the only thing visible through the flame. Kate covered her own mouth in horror.The sand was whirling around in the wind, but it seemed to be coming up from the vortex too. Kate could hardly see Elyta.

There was only a gleam of flame in the whirl of sand. She turned to the other vampires. They were dim shapes behind the gray of a sandstorm at night.

The flames that were Elyta sank slowly into the vortex. The only shrieking Kate could hear was the wind and the sand. Gian had hold of her hand and was pulling her away. The image of Elyta's burning face twined through her mind and wouldn't let her go.

They b.u.mped smack into something. Gian was shouting. She looked back, and there through the dim haze of sand was a vortex of black where the tent had once been, whirling up into the sky in a widening funnel. He pulled her to her knees and put his arms around her. His burnoose sheltered her from the hissing sting of the sand. The something was a warm wall against her cheek.

Gian bent over her. The wind wailed.

It went on forever.

Until it stopped. Suddenly. Without warning, the wind went silent. Gian straightened. Kate looked up. The sand just fell, hissing, from the night sky, leaving a dusty haze behind it.

And that was all.

They were leaning up against the horse's shoulder. It lay with its legs tucked under it. Gian had covered its head with his left arm and the baggy burnoose had s.h.i.+elded the creature's eyes and nose, just as his right arm had protected her. The plateau was wiped clean, as though the tent and the vampires and the camels had never been.

She knelt there, stunned. Her senses refused to register the last-what? Moments? Millennia? Gian was blinking with an expression she imagined mirrored hers.

”What... what happened here?” she croaked.

”I... I set Elyta on fire.”

His anger did fuel spontaneous combustion. She blinked. ”You got your power back.”

He blinked again. ”No... not exactly. I used the power already in the air.”

”At least she's dead.”

How could he look uncertain? ”Decapitation is the only way to kill us.”

Her eyes widened. If Elyta wasn't dead then she was burned and suffocating below the sand. Not something Kate wanted to think about. ”What... what happened to the stones?”

”I... think... they went home.” His voice was shattered with screaming into the wind.

”But... why are we still here?”

”Because we scrambled out of the way of the vortex?” He didn't sound sure.

”Or because we were the ones that brought them home, and Elyta wanted to take them away.” She couldn't believe she was saying that. But she wasn't sure what to believe anymore.

The world holds vampires and spontaneous combustion, and maybe, somewhere beneath your feet, a buried temple, and one entombed alive there, waiting with a tower of coruscating jewels to signal those who left him ten thousand years ago to go to someplace... else. She started to argue with herself.

Or maybe not. Maybe there was a sandstorm that created a vortex that sucked everything in sight under the sand and it was all just an accident of fate that left some alive, and some suffocated under tons of sand.

And what about Elyta being set on fire ?

You can't believe that someone can set things on fire just by being angry. Stupid!

The dialogue between her two halves threatened to tear her apart. She tried to remember that girl who didn't believe anything but what she could see, who thought people didn't do anything but what was in their own best interest. Gian had been willing to sacrifice himself to his duty. As a matter of fact, he had offered to sacrifice himself to Elyta to save Kate just moments ago. She'd once thought him selfish and arrogant, but that had never been true about him, though it might well be true about her.

She looked down and saw her reticule still bulging, incongruous, in the pocket of her flowing trousers with her tarot cards, so much a part of her for so long, bulging, square, inside. These were who she was, she reminded herself. A charlatan, self- contained The cards were only cues about what people wanted to hear, guideposts to the psyche's need to believe. One couldn't know the future.

Except that she did, and it had nothing to do with tarot cards. She didn't know what to believe right now, but the tarot cards seemed to lie when they promised her, as they always had, that anyone who believed what they couldn't see was a pigeon, ripe for the plucking.

Gian heaved himself to his feet and stretched out a hand to help her. The horse shook, spewing sand, and got his forelegs under himself. She and the horse stood together.

The sand had settled around them, leaving the small, cold moon a silver coin in the sky. The stars hadn't yet appeared out of the haze of dust. But they would. The world was wiped clean, as if Ely ta and the stones had never been.