Pushing to my feet, I was prepared to hit both naturi with fireballs. No fighting. No taking chances. But I froze when I finally saw the room. I was standing in what had been a living room, but it looked as if hosed down with blood. There once were four humans in that room; maybe more, maybe less. Their appendages had been hacked off and strewn about. By the smaller torsos, I could identify at least two children.

Rowe was in the far corner, up to his elbows in a man’s chest. The human’s head was still attached, his eyes staring blindly up at the ceiling. The black-haired naturi was drenched with blood, his red shirt sticking to his narrow frame. I lurched forward when the blond naturi I had followed in leapt onto the chair I was behind. With one foot braced on the back, he used his weight to topple the chair, attempting to bring it down on top of me. A short sword was raised in his right hand, ready to take off my head.

Stumbling backward, I fell away from the chair. My right shoulder slammed into the end of a table before I hit the ground, sending a shockwave of pain through my back. The naturi tried to fall on me, the sword aimed to bury itself deep into my chest. With the pain slowing me, I only managed to get my knees up between us. Dropping the dagger, I grabbed his wrists.

“Come now, vampire,” he said. “I only want your tongue.” The naturi struggled, trying to break my grip.

With a grunt, I shoved him off me. He flew across the room, hitting the door and slamming it shut. “How funny.” I pushed into a sitting position and raised my left hand. “I only want your life.” With a thought, the naturi was engulfed in flames. He lurched about the room, waving his sword about in a last desperate attempt to kill me. For a moment it looked as if wings were sprouting from his back, but the fire quickly consumed them. Had I finally met a member of the elusive wind clan?

I would get no answer from him. Flailing, the naturi slipped on the blood-soaked tile and fell, cracking his head. He stopped moving.

The sound of crinkling plastic caught my attention. I looked up in time to see Rowe darting across the room with a black, plastic garbage bag tucked under this arm. I tried to hit him with a fireball, but it struck the wall as he disappeared into the next room. I could only set him on fire if I could see him.

Muttering a cruse, I climbed over the overturned chair. I slid across the blood-covered floor, knocking limbs out of my way until I hit the opposite wall. So much for catlike grace. Pushing off the wall, I ran through the tiny kitchen and out the open back door. We wove our way through a maze of garbage-choked alleys and narrow streets that fluttered with laundry overhead. I couldn’t see Rowe, but I followed the scent of the blood that still coated him.

Coming out of one alley, I skidded to a sharp halt. The alley opened into the busy souq, several blocks down from where I’d left Gabriel and Michael. The crowded marketplace hit me with a barrage of scents, spices, cooking food, coffee, tea, and the redolent scent of men smoking sheesha. A brisk wind swept down the street from the south, carrying with it cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and the sweat of man, all mixed together to mask the scent of blood. A quick scan of the thoughts of the gathered people revealed that no one had noticed a blood-covered, one-eyed naturi carrying a garbage bag filled with human organs. Like a vampire, he had cloaked himself from their sight. And now he was gone.

Biting back a scream, I jogged back to the house. Without Danaus, it would take me hours to track down Rowe. Time I didn’t have. I shut and locked the back door before trudging back into the living room. The scent of burnt flesh mingled with the blood, leaving a rancid taste in the back of my throat.

It took every bit of willpower I possessed to walk over to the body Rowe had been digging in. Squatting down, I tried to ignore the fact that my skirt was growing heavy with the blood. A quick examination revealed that the man’s tongue and lungs were missing. Scanning the room, it was hard to miss that the chest cavities of all the humans were cut open.

I’d walked in on a harvest. I hadn’t seen one in centuries. Jabari and I stumbled across one a few years after Machu Picchu, in which nearly twenty humans had been slaughtered. But back then the naturi were greater in number and desperate to free their captured queen. Typically, they relied on earth magic for their spells. Yet, with time, they learned to use magic based on blood and the soul. It was just as powerful. Of course, their attitude was always, “Why kill a flower when you can kill a human instead?”

Standing, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. When I finally succeeded in clearing my mind of the horror around me, I reached out and touched Gabriel’s mind.

Gabriel?

Mira! Are you hurt? His thoughts rushed into my brain, hot and frantic. Through his eyes, I could see him, across the street, staring at the door of the building I was in. Michael was leaning against the wall beside him. Gabriel wasn’t telepathic, but after several years of training, I had taught him to focus his thoughts into precise sentences so I could read his mind and project into it my own response. It took us a while to perfect, a task I had not yet begun with Michael.

I’m not injured. Something in my soul had been hurt by what surrounded me, but I was not physically hurt.

Should I come in?

No! I paused until I regained my composure. No. Start walking toward the hotel. I have to burn the place. I’ll catch up to you in a couple blocks.

Be careful.

I waited until he pushed off the building he was leaning against and started down the street with Michael at his side. When I opened my eyes, my gaze fell on the blood-streaked face of a girl with long, black hair. She couldn’t have been more than six. I set her on fire first, wishing the flames would erase her wide brown eyes and tender face from my mind. But I knew better. I always remembered their faces.

Lingering in the house only long enough to see the bodies blackened and shrivel in the fire, I left through the back door, cloaked from human sight. I walked along the alleyways until I caught up with my angels. With a single touch on Gabriel’s shoulder, I made my presence known, but no one spoke. We managed to grab a private cab another block away, and took it the last few miles to the Sarah Hotel.

In front of the hotel, we found Danaus working with a short, thin man as they attempted to strap my coffin to the roof of a dilapidated taxi that looked as if it could have been around during the time of the pharaohs. At the sight of him, I sensed a rush of anger fill both of my guardians. Danaus might have saved my life from the naturi, but he was still the cause of the attack prior to sunset.

I laid a restraining hand on the shoulders of both Michael and Gabriel before I stepped between them. Their protectiveness was warming, but a fight on the street would not speed us from this city. “I don’t think this will make it to Luxor,” I said as I walked up to him.

“It doesn’t have to,” Danaus replied without looking up at me. He tested one of the ropes to make sure it was properly secured. “Your assistant contacted the pilots and they are bringing the jet to Aswan. It should be landing within the next half hour.”

“Excellent.” Charlotte was good at her work. I had thought it might be too difficult to get the pilots ready in time, but apparently she’d left them on standby. The vast majority of my trips were short, and she must have grown accustomed to my desire to leave quickly. “And the hotel owner?”

“Happy to be rid of us,” Danaus said in a low voice, finally lifting his eyes to meet my searching gaze. He returned my leather case, which felt significantly lighter. With an amused smile, I tossed it over to Gabriel. I was still in my skirt from the previous night, leaving me short on pockets.