Evelyn Vaughn - Her Kind Of Trouble

I tried to bob quickly back to my feet, behind my attacker and away from the immediate threat and his weapons, but I’d stepped on my damn skirt, which yanked me off balance long enough for the bastard to bodycheck me.

That was unexpected—which was why it worked. He rushed at me, filling my vision with his shoulder, his elbow. I meant to dance backward myself, like riding a wave. Let him do the work. Let him expend the effort.

But wham! Too soon, my back met a sword-covered wall. The back of my head slammed against a hard scabbard. And Sinbad’s swinging elbow knocked the breath right out of me.

I sank, fingers curling desperately around the grip of my own sword. Don’t drop it, don’t drop it.

As if lifting it were even possible, at that moment.

My damp knees hit the gritty floor, and I folded forward, catching myself with one hand, one fist.

Don’t drop it!

Breathe!

My body obeyed the first command, but not the second. I fought the physical panic that comes from having breath knocked away and arched my neck, straining my face upward.

The stranger’s hulking body loomed above me.

“You will leave Egypt, witch,” he dictated in his impeccable British. “And you will take your friend with you.”

My chest tightened, and my view of him began to waver. Goddess help me….

Maybe it was Isis, or Melusine, or just that universal, maternal force of goddessness that answered my prayer. Or maybe it was just timing.

Hot, exotic air filled my lungs with a rush. And with it came power.

Even as he said, “You will not interfere in matters that do not concern you.”

My fingers clenched around my sword. “Well, it sure as hell concerns me now.” And I swung. A quick, angry arc across his ankles. Not enough to cut anything off—I doubted I had that strength, or this new sword had such sharpness.

But definitely enough to bite. And unexpected.

That’s why it worked.

With a startled cry, the man jumped back. I surged up onto one knee, capturing my gauzy skirt with my free hand, and swung again while he was still off balance. It forced him back a few inches, which was all I wanted.

Before he could stop me, I ducked under his weapons, right past him and toward the front of the shop, no longer trapped.

He lunged, and I practically floated backward on the surge of energy before him. One step. Two steps. I reached my hand back for the door.

“Do you really plan to take this into the street?” I asked. “With all these nice bystanders and policemen?”

The policemen around here carried automatic weaponry, after all.

He scowled, and the air around him seemed to crackle with a most annoying version of alpha-male condescension. “You have no business here.”

But I lived outside the whole male pecking order, thank heavens. I stood my ground and channeled a personal power that was uniquely feminine. “You just made sure I do.”

When I heard the door behind me open, I deliberately ignored it. This stranger and I were in a staring contest, with nothing childish about it.

Then I heard Rhys’s distinctly Welsh voice. “Uffach cols!” he swore. “What’s this? Aren’t you that fellow—”

“From the airport,” I said, not looking back. “Yeah. Now he thinks he’s Sinbad.”

The door opened again, and Rhys shouted, “Shorta! Shorta!”

I hoped that meant police.

My opponent and I continued to glare. Then in a single smooth movement, he spun and vanished through the curtained doorway into the back.

I slowly lowered my sword, my breath resuming for real. Now I felt even less guilty about using a weapon.

“What the hell was that all about?”

“I only knew I was coming to Egypt last night…I guess that’s night before last, now,” I said, accepting the bottle of icy cold water Rhys had bought for me. “How the hell is it this guy was waiting for me? At the airport!”

“I didn’t tell many people.” Rhys hadn’t lost the crease of concern between his blue eyes. Not while I talked to the police, and not while I bargained the merchant down to a third of his asking price for the sword that had protected me.

Normally I’m a wimpy barterer, but after the merchant’s earlier vanishing act, I was in a combative mood.

Now I wore the sword’s wooden scabbard slung innocently over my shoulder, a recent tourist’s purchase. I hadn’t decided on a name for the blade, yet. I would worry about concealing it later.

“It’s not your fault,” I assured Rhys.

“I told the hotel, to get you a bed. I told my friend Niko, when I asked to borrow the car. A group of people working on the project own it together, so it is possible one of the others know.”

“I never said to keep it a secret.”

“I told Tala, the woman I wish you to meet—”

“Rhys.” I stopped and fixed him with my best scowl, swordfight-proven. “Let’s not empower fear. The man didn’t even use my name. He may not have even known who I really am.”

“Then how is it that, so soon after the airport, he found you here?”

I looked around us, at a rope of guitars hanging outside one souk and a rainbow of glittering material draped before another, at the press and flow of people all around us. “Well…we wouldn’t have noticed anyone following us around here, that’s for sure.”

“But how is it the man could have followed us in this crowd, and in Cairo traffic? And Maggi, why would he?”

Yeah, that one had me stumped, as well.

“Rings for rings,” called the veiled woman working at the jewelry counter nearby, which made me look down at my left hand.

My breath caught in my throat, stopping as surely as it had when Sinbad shoved his elbow into me. “Unless…”

I could barely form the words. But the sudden rush of possibility was too horrible to keep to myself. “Unless I’m wearing some kind of tracking device.”

“But who could possibly—” Rhys apparently saw how I was staring at the wedding ring.

The one Lex had given me.

Lex, one of the lead members of the Comitatus.

That’s the problem with old wounds. They reopen.

“The guy attacked me with a sword,” I whispered.

Rhys grabbed my hand, PDA or not. “Now wait a moment, Maggi. You were in a shop chockablock with swords. Just because this stranger used one does not mean he’s a member of that secret order.”

Yes, Rhys knew. I hadn’t taken any vows of silence.

“They used ceremonial daggers, didn’t they?”

“There is a difference between the two. Even if there were not, even if the man were—” he lowered his voice “—Comitatus, that could mean Phillip Stuart sent him, not necessarily Lex.”

“But Lex is the only one who could have told Phil, and how else did that man follow us from the airport?” I freed my hand from his and waded through the crowd to the jewelry counter, where I could see the female clerk’s smile in her eyes, over her veil. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes. Rings for rings.”

“I don’t want to buy—well, not a ring,” I decided, since if I wanted help, I couldn’t expect her to give it for free. I glanced impatiently at the cluster of cheap pewter pendants and quickly chose the horned disk that symbolizes Isis. “But I was hoping you could check this ring and tell me if there’s anything strange about it. Anything like a…a tracking device?”

The clerk stared at me blankly, as if disappointed. Apparently her English wasn’t good enough to include tracking device.

Great. “Is this a normal ring?” I tried, tugging the wedding band from my finger and sliding it across the counter toward her.

Then I froze, because of what she’d just slid hopefully across the counter toward me.