Night's Pleasure (Children of The Night 4)

She glanced at the sketch pad in his hand. “May I?”

“What? Oh, of course.”

Accepting the tablet, she thumbed through the pages, admiring the sketches he had done of the Pyramids of Menkaure, Khafre, and Khufe, otherwise known as the Great Pyramid of Giza. There were several drawings of the solar barge of King Khufu, which had been sealed into a pit at the foot of the Great Pyramid sometime in 2500 BC, and drawings of the Great Sphinx, as well.

She returned to his sketches of the solar barge. She hadn’t seen the ship in years, but the boat in his drawings looked exactly as she remembered. “These are wonderful,” she said enthusiastically.

“Thank you. I intend to paint it when I get back home.” He shook his head. “It’s amazing to think that something so old and so exquisite has survived so long.”

“Yes,” Mara murmured. “Amazing.” No one living knew why the ship had been buried. Even Mara didn’t know. Some historians postulated that it might have been used as a funeral barge to carry the embalmed body of King Khufu from Memphis to Giza. Others speculated that it had been buried with the king in case he had need of it in the afterlife. Whatever the reason, it had been a remarkable find.

She turned her attention to the other sketches in the book—a child playing with a puppy, an old woman selling spices, the El-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, an old man nodding in the shade of a tree, the statue outside the Temple of Karnak in Luxor.

His work was exquisite. A few strokes of his pen and he had captured the elegance of the Colossi of Ramses II that stood in front of the Sun Temple, the lumbering gait of a camel crossing the desert sand, the whimsical sight of a hot-air balloon hovering over the Nile, the sparkle in the eyes of a little girl as she chased a ball, the hopelessness on the face of a street beggar.

She handed him the sketchbook. When her fingertips brushed his, she was startled by the little current of electricity that arced between them. Odd, she had never felt anything like that before. She took a deep breath. He was neither Vampire nor Werewolf nor shape-shifter, so what had caused that peculiar preternatural spark?

She knew, by the sudden widening of his eyes, that he had felt it, too.

“Do you also paint portraits?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, his gaze probing hers. “I do.”

“Would you consider doing mine?”

“I’d be honored.”

She smiled, charmed by his eagerness and his obvious adoration. He was a handsome man, tall and slender, his skin bronzed by the sun. But it was his eyes that beguiled her. Clear gray eyes, open and honest, with nothing to hide. A good man, she thought with some amusement. A truly good man in an increasingly wicked world. That, in itself, intrigued her.

“So,” she said, lifting a hand to the heart-shaped ruby pendant nestled in the hollow of her throat, “when can we begin?”

“Whenever you wish,” he said. “Now, if you wish.”

With the setting of the sun, she had intended to find a place to rest, to bury herself in the Valley of the Nile for a year or two, perhaps ten, but the idea no longer held any appeal. Suddenly, the world didn’t seem like such a dreary place; the lethargy that had plagued her had disappeared. She wanted to see the world anew through his eyes, to discover what had caused that odd sensation when they touched.

“Come,” she said, linking her arm with his, “let us begin.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

For Savanah, the next few days passed like something out of a fairy tale. She was the princess, and Rane was the wizard, the big bad wolf, and the handsome prince, all rolled into one.

They spent their nights cuddling on the sofa, swimming in the pool, or stretched out under the stars, sharing bits and pieces of their pasts. They went to bed just before dawn. Some nights they made love, some nights, overcome by severe bouts of grief, Savanah cried herself to sleep in Rane’s arms, only to wake late in the afternoon, alone. Several times, she had been tempted to peek into Mara’s lair, but so far she had restrained her curiosity.

While Rane rested, she passed the time reading, working crossword puzzles, or playing computer games. It was a strange life. Sometimes it seemed as if they were the only two people on Earth; sometimes she felt like she was in limbo, caught between two worlds; sometimes it all seemed like some sort of fever dream from which she would eventually awake, and she would find her father waiting for her at home, a cup of coffee in his hand, a smile of welcome on his face as he asked about her day.

She thought of him often. At those times, the need to avenge his death burned hot and bright within her, along with a knife-edged sense of guilt for spending her days and nights with Rane when she should be out hunting for her father’s killer.

After ten days and nights in the cabin, Savanah thought she might go stir-crazy if she had to spend one more day cooped up.

She confronted Rane when he appeared the following evening. “I have to get out of here. I need to go out to dinner or a movie, something. I need to see other people. I’m beginning to feel like we’re the last two living souls on the planet.”

Watching her pace the floor, Rane couldn’t help muttering, “Only one of us is living.”

She whirled around to face him. “You had to say that, didn’t you? As if I could forget.”

He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. “I thought you had come to terms with that.”

“I have.”

“You just don’t like to be reminded?”

“Well, if you must know, it doesn’t thrill me.”

“You’d rather I was mortal?”

“Well, of course.”

“I guess I can’t blame you,” he replied, “since I’d rather you were Nosferatu.”

Savanah stared at him, somewhat taken aback by what he had said. It had never occurred to her that he wished she was anything but what she was. Thinking about it now, it seemed perfectly logical. She recalled telling Rane that her parents had been happy together even though they were nothing alike. But the differences between herself and Rane were more than differing points of view on religion or politics or where to spend their vacation. She was a mortal female, subject to sickness and death; he was a Vampire, ageless and virtually immortal. She lived by day, he lived by night. She existed on food and water; he survived on the blood of others. Could they ever really find any common ground, other than the fierce physical attraction they shared? Could that be enough?

“Would you like to go into town?” he asked.