The unimaginable luxury made her remember the clip of Creed looking into the camera and saying, “I’ve been involved in a number of cults. You have more fun as a follower. But you make more money as a leader.”
Given the way those poor souls had died back in the arena, the former was obviously not true, and she hated that her brain coughed up something so pop-culture’y because it seemed disrespectful to those who had lost their lives. But as she looked at the pastel silk walls, and the draped silk bunting over the circular bed, and the satin sheets bearing the profile that had been etched on those double doors at the arena, she decided the “more money as a leader” thing was clearly right in this case.
No linoleum here. The carpet was thick and fine-napped and—
“The murals,” she said as she swung her light around.
An enormous scene of a garden, with a fountain in the center and birds in midflight and beds filled with flowers, graced the smooth plaster, obviously painted by somebody who knew what they were doing. And as if it was not an artist’s rendering but rather a picture window, or perhaps an open arch to the great outdoors, drapes had been mounted around the artwork, the swoops of sunshine-yellow damask held back so the “view” wasn’t blocked.
A representation of Utopia, a beautiful, impossible-for-a-vampire, daylight-not-reality that nonetheless captivated.
It was rather like the bill of false goods the Dhavos had sold his congregation.
“You want Chalen’s beloved,” Duran said. “Here it is.”
She pivoted around, lowering her light so she didn’t nail him in the eye. Duran was over by the bed, standing next to a shadow box that had been installed into the wall.
As Ahmare approached, she focused on what he was illuminating. Something was set back behind the glass . . . something that glowed.
“A pearl?” she breathed. Then she remembered the conqueror’s decrepit body on his throne. “Of course. Chalen’s crown had an empty mounting in front—and that is what went in it.”
“The Dhavos wasn’t just a spiritual leader, he was a good businessman, a wholesaler of drugs, and Chalen was the middleman for the heroin and cocaine, getting the product to the street after my father brought the stuff in from out of the country. I used to hear them, when I was up in the ducts, talking about the deals on the phone. The shipments. The deliveries. You needed up-front cash to play with the big overseas contacts and the Dhavos had that liquidity courtesy of his congregation turning their worldly goods over to him. He and Chalen had a profitable partnership until there was some kind of double cross. In retaliation, my father infiltrated Chalen’s stronghold and took the one thing that male loved most. The pearl. How my father did it, I have no idea.”
Duran made a fist and punched the glass, shattering the fragile barrier. Reaching in, he took the pearl and passed it over like the priceless oyster creation didn’t mean anything.
And to him, she supposed, it didn’t.
To her, as the cool contours of the baroque settled into the crease of her palm, she felt like she was holding her brother’s life in her hand.
Not going to lose this, she thought as she tucked it into her tight sports bra.
“I think,” Duran said as he inspected one of the other “windows” with his flashlight, “that my father assumed that he would kill two birds with one stone when he dropped me at Chalen’s door—”
All at once, a line of light, like something you’d see at the bottom of a door, flared in the far corner. As if there were another room outside . . . and someone had just thrown a switch.
“You stay here,” Duran ordered as they both wheeled in that direction and he clicked off his flashlight.
As the bedroom plunged into darkness, Ahmare didn’t argue with him, although not because she had any intention of following his rules. Instead, she got her gun out again and prepared to run after him.
“Turn off your light,” he whispered without looking back. “So they don’t see you when I open the door. And step to the side so you stay in the shadows.”
Good advice, she thought as she clicked her beam off. Best to stay hidden for as long as she could before they rushed into the other room.
To get out of the most likely path of illumination, she shuffled back a number of feet, going up against a wall. Then she held her breath as Duran got ready to open things and jump on whoever was—
Just as Duran pulled the door wide and lunged out of the bedroom, a soft sound from behind her got her attention.
She didn’t have time to react. The hood that came down over her head smelled like old wool, and before she could scream, a brutally heavy hand clamped over mouth, her gun was taken, and a thick arm locked around her waist.
With brutal efficiency, she was carried off.
25
AS DURAN SWUNG THE door open, he kept his body out of the way in case—
The instant he caught the scent in the air, he came alive, instincts roaring to life, possibilities filling him out from the inside. It was the same kind of rush he’d gotten from Ahmare’s gift of vein, power and purpose returning.
His father was still alive.