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 shimmer 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 shielded 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.

She looked at Gian. He was gazing around, disoriented, and then his eyes found hers. He blinked several times. She saw the purpose rise in them like a tide.

"Let's get you out of here," he said. His voice was startling in the new quiet.

Where? Where would she go? Her plan of living in a rural cottage seemed ludicrous. She stared around at the silent sand, not even the whisper of a sirocco to stir it. The certainty of who she was and what she wanted seemed lost forever.

The sky had gone red ahead of him. Gian's old enemy, the sun, would rise soon. There was no cover out here on the plateau.

They had trudged for most of the night in the vague direction of El Djelfa. The horse couldn't go on much longer. Neither could Kate. He had only pretended to drink this night, so as to save the water for her. But there was little left. She was nodding on the horse's back, so he steadied her with a hand on her lower back. The daylight would be merciless. He wondered if he could stand another twelve hours at the equator with sunlight sc.r.a.ping his skin even inside the burnoose, burning his eyes no matter how he squinted. He was almost human in his weakness. He'd borrowed power from the Old One, bent on retrieving his jewels, to set Elyta on fire, but it was a loan only, and it was gone now.

But while he had had it, he had controlled the power, directed it, and shut it off when it had done its work. The vortex would have taken Elyta anyway. He knew that now. But he had made her suffer. He should be sorry for that. Maybe someday he would be.

Using that power had taken its toll. It would weaken him for the fight against the sun. He required blood. And there was no blood. Kate needed all her strength. He had to get Kate to shelter. He must prevail, even if the horse faltered. He could carry Kate. They couldn't have survived a sandstorm, Elyta, and even the wrath of the Old One just to have her die on this endless sere plateau.Behind him, he felt the sun rise.

Chapter Twenty-one.

Kate cracked open her eyes. They felt swollen. All of her felt swollen. She was in some kind of dim room. The walls were whitewashed, the shutters drawn against the heat of the day. They cast bars of horizontal light across the dirt floor. She was lying on a pallet of some kind. Her mouth felt like she had inhaled sand. An old woman was holding up her head. The crone's wrinkles rearranged themselves into an almost toothless grin.

"Drink, English," she said in that language. It was heavily accented.

Cool water poured down her throat. Kate swallowed until she gasped and choked.

"Enough. More later."

"Gian?" Kate croaked.

"The one who carried you here?"

"Yes," she whispered. She remembered sliding off the horse. She remembered the horse staggering. It had been so hot, so bright. Gian had picked her up, and dragged the horse along behind him. He must have carried her to here, wherever here was.

"He lives."

Kate didn't like the sound of that. Only just living? "Is he well?"

"He was burned as though he walked naked in the sun."

Did his burnoose not protect him? She shoved up on one elbow. "'I must go to him."

The old woman pushed her back down, gently. It wasn't hard. Kate was weak as a kitten. "You rest. Later more water and food. Then go."

Kate had to find him. She remembered the bubbling of his skin with burns the night he had carried her from the lodgings in Rome. He had healed that. He could heal whatever he suffered in the desert now, couldn't he? Elyta had not weakened him that much. She couldn't have. Kate would not let it be so.

The room was swimming. Her vision blurred at the edges. She fought against the darkness that washed over her. But it was no use...

Gian tried to breathe. He'd heal. It was just taking longer because the stones and using the Old One's power had weakened him.

That was all. He could bear the pain. He always had. He was naked. The thought of cloth against his skin made him nauseous.

He lay on his back on a pallet of some kind. Even that was torture. An old woman came occasionally to give him water and thin gruel. She said Kate was well so he stopped trying to get up. He had not let her grease his flesh with animal fat though. That would only delay healing the burns. He'd heal faster if he had blood. But he was too weak to compel the old woman or even draw his fangs.

He had never been affected so by sunlight. It was as though he was newly made, not more than eighteen hundred years old. By the time night fell on the plateau, he had been nearly crazed with pain. The tiny village, cl.u.s.tered round the date palms and the pool of brackish water, had seemed a hallucination brought on by pain. It wasn't, thank the G.o.ds.

But the pain from burned flesh was not the worst. The worst stretched out ahead, in an infinite future devoid of meaning. The stones were returned. The vampire wars were over. They had receded into the past instead of being a series of ever-present nightmares that dogged his every move. Elyta was gone. The Old One had returned to waiting.

And Gian had no purpose. He could not go to the Elders at Mirso Monastery and ask to serve on other missions. There was a reason the stones had not wanted to fall into the Elders' hands, crazy as that seemed. The concerns of the Elders might be just as political as Elyta's ambitions, if to a different end. And there was the fact of his unusual powers. Had they really destroyed that other firebrand because he was uncontrolled, or because he had learned to control it, as Gian thought he had, and that made him a threat? He didn't know.

And then, when he finally healed, when he got Kate back to Algiers or Amalfi or Rome or Firenze, she was going to go to England to be unhappy in some rural backwater. He would be left, at best being allowed to exist on the fringes of her life, helping her where he could, watching her age. That was the only purpose his life could have. He twisted against the pallet and the coa.r.s.e canvas cover tore at his flesh.

He dozed sometimes and dreamt, fevered dreams of Kate being hara.s.sed by village ruffians, himself unable to protect her.

Sometimes he dreamed about the Ruffords, strange as that was. He didn't want to sleep. He didn't want to dream. But waking was a nightmare too. Sleeping or waking, all he felt was pain.

"How are you?" That was a stupid question. Kate carefully erased the horror from her face as Gian turned his head in her direction. She hated to think he had been healing as the old woman had promised her. Because in that case, his burns must have been even more appalling than they were now. His body was blotched with open sores weeping serous fluid. His vibrations were so low as to be almost imperceptible. She felt better after sleeping, water, and food. That seemed a betrayal.

He smiled, his blistered lips cracking. "Good," he whispered, his voice hoa.r.s.e.

She wanted to burst into tears. That would never do. She couldn't burden him with her need for rea.s.surance. She managed a tentative smile. "Liar." She knelt beside him. "Water?"

"Thank you."

She lifted his head and scooped water from the bucket next to him with a wooden ewer. He slurped the ewer dry. She laid him down carefully. Why was he not healed? It had been what-three days?

He must have read her thoughts. "It's going faster now."

"Not fast enough."

"Faster and the villagers would cast us out," he mumbled through swollen lips.

"You need blood."

His eyes registered-what? Longing? He turned his head away. "I won't die."

Kate turned and pulled the fluttering fabric that formed a door across the entrance to the hut. "But it will save you suffering. And you can't take it from a villager or they would do considerably worse than cast us out." She knelt again beside him.

"You're not strong enough."She smiled at him. "I'm much better. If you can't draw your power, I'll get a knife."

"I won't take blood from you." This was said through fitted teeth.

"So, you can carry me across the desert, but I can't help you in return?" She raised her brows. "Arrogant, Urbano. Very arrogant." If she could provide blood, maybe his need would overcome his resistance. Getting a knife from one of the villagers might rouse suspicion though. Very well. She looked around. How did one draw enough blood to feed a vampire? She glanced around the tiny hut. She needed something sharp. A crockery bowl sat near the door. She took a breath and rose. She hit the bowl against the doorpost. Shards cascaded to the packed earthen floor. G.o.d, grant me courage. Taking up a triangular splinter, she sat beside him, careful not to touch his ravaged flesh.

"Kate, don't do this."

"And how, pray tell, are you going to stop me?" She braced her wrist on her thigh and sliced across it as hard as she could. The shock of pain immobilized her for a moment. Then the blood welled. Gian moaned. Was it in protest or antic.i.p.ation? The blood began to spurt. She'd done it. "Drink," she whispered, holding her wrist to his mouth.