Blood of the Nile
Authors: Annalynne Russo
Evernight
Publishing
Copyright© 2013
Annalynne
Russo
ISBN:
978-1-77130-578-5
Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor:
JS
Cook
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or
distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
No part of this book may be used or
reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names,
characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BLOOD OF THE NILE
Tales from the Vampire Scribe, 4
Annalynne
Russo
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
The Homecoming
Maliyah sat glued
to the cushion of her first-class seat. She pierced the fine leather with her
newly manicured fingernails. Her head pounded as if she’d been beaten with a
sledgehammer and her stomach lurched at the slightest hint of turbulence. Ever
since 9/11, she’d been terrified of flying. That was the one of the reasons
Maliyah Aziz had kept her civilian job working for the U.S. government in Italy
for more than a decade. Even while her mother and close friends in Miami begged
her to move back home, she just couldn’t quite muster up the nerve to fly again.
It had always been
Maliyah’s dream to live and work in Europe. Ever since she spent a semester in
Rome as a high school exchange student, it was the only thing she could think
about. She graduated at age sixteen. Then she completed her computer science
degree at MIT in four years, and took the position at Naval Air Station
Sigonella
as a technical analyst without a second thought.
But shortly after she accepted the job off the coast of Sicily, the twin towers
of the World Trade Center crumbled into a monstrous heap of twisted iron and rubble.
Mailyah
vowed never to travel via airplane again.
That promise
hadn’t been too hard to keep. A self-described workaholic,
Sigonella’s
captivating seascapes and warm-hearted hospitality left her with little idle
time on her hands. There was only one unfortunate drawback. Maliyah missed her
family and friends terribly, especially her mother Celeste. But the stubborn
woman refused to pack up and move to the tiny Sicilian town even though she
lived alone in South Florida.
Celeste
D’Agostino
al Aziz could be the most pig-headed person on
earth when she wanted to be. Unequivocally beautiful and fiercely independent,
Mrs.
D’Agostino
al Aziz had the power to turn heads
and make strangers listen to whatever she had to say. She’d had her choice of
suitors. In fact, those close to her were stunned by her decision to elope with
a virtual stranger, a foreigner at that. No one could believe the gusty girl
from the Bronx would marry an affluent Egyptian businessman who was accustomed
to subservient females falling at his feet.
While Celeste
enjoyed her role as wife and mother, she refused to let her job as a freelance
journalist take a backseat, a fact that remained a thorn in her husband’s side.
Her work took her to the farthest regions of the world. She covered everything
from the Olympic Games in Barcelona to Operation Desert Storm in Afghanistan.
Such an itinerant lifestyle made Maliyah’s fear of flying seem
all the more ridiculous. Still, she couldn’t quite calm the ominous tension in
her shoulders or the knot in the pit of her belly during the entire two hour
and thirty-nine minute flight to Cairo.
It if wasn’t for
her father’s sudden heart attack and subsequent death, Maliyah would never have
gotten on an airplane to begin with. Nonetheless, she popped a Xanax exactly as
her doctor instructed and boarded the flight without putting up too much of a
fuss.
It’d been more
than twenty years since she last stepped foot on Egyptian soil.
Too long.
Still, she could remember quite clearly the
picturesque beauty of its desert landscape.
Rolling hills of
honey-hued sand.
Elaborate figurines intricately carved into rock and
marble. Yet it was the overwhelming sense of love and acceptance she’d experienced
from communing with her father’s people that remained etched permanently into
her subconscious. They held the most significance to her.
Maliyah’s first
and only visit to the city nestled along the Nile River took place two decades
past, a year before her parents’ bitter divorce. She had turned nine years old
a few months prior. She could scarcely recall a more happy and carefree time in
her life. Maybe that’s because the next summer, her content existence shattered
into a million irretrievable pieces.
Maliyah adored her
mother. But their relationship was nothing like the unbreakable bond she shared
with her father, Anwar al Aziz. They were like two peas in a pod – kindred
spirits who could practically read each other’s thoughts. As an only child,
Maliyah was the apple of her father’s eye. His whole world wrapped up in an
adorable brown-haired, green-eyed, freckle-faced angel.
Divorce can be
tough on any child, but Maliyah took it especially hard. Anwar al Aziz, the man
she worshipped and adored was gone – ejected from her life like a soccer star who
had received more than his fair share of penalties on the playing field. Unfortunately,
Maliyah had been too young to comprehend the rules of the game. Although her
mother retained primary physical custody, Anwar visited several times a year
during business trips to the United States. While the love Maliyah felt for her
father remained unconditional, the once-unflappable father-daughter bond they
shared became somewhat strained.
Over the years,
Maliyah turned sympathetic to her mother’s plight, and more and more detached
from her father. She loved them both, but came to understand Celeste’s reason
for filing for divorce. The male-dominated Egyptian culture could be rather unfair
to women. In addition to differences in upbringing, their careers took a toll
on the marriage, too. With her mother’s work and Anwar’s import/export business
headquartered in Egypt, they took turns caring for their only daughter. When
one of them left on business, the other would stay home and serve as Maliyah’s primary
caretaker. They never spent much time together as a couple. No wonder their
romance eventually fizzled out.
“Ma’am.
Please lift up your tray table. The captain has turned on the seat
belt sign.” The straight-laced flight attendant with the perfectly coiffed
hairdo and tailored navy-blue suit smiled down at her, jostling her from her
errant thoughts.
Maliyah nodded,
then
collected the array of fashion magazines she’d brought
along to keep her occupied on the trip and tucked them neatly into her carry-on
bag. As the aircraft began to descend, Maliyah’s heart beat wildly in her
chest. Her palms grew moist with perspiration. Sweat drizzled down the sides of
her face.
Freakin
’ Xanax isn’t even taking
off the edge.
She closed her
eyes, took a deep breath
and exhaled
as the wheels of the plane hit the concrete runway. While her back and
shoulders gave her tightly coiled muscles a slight reprieve, Maliyah’s stomach
nearly tossed up the pasta salad she’d eaten for lunch. Thank goodness she sat
in first class. Otherwise she might not have made it out of the plane in time to
get to the lavatory.
“Pardon me,”
Maliyah said as she rushed past the throng of impatient travelers trying to
exit the airplane. Quickly, she ran to the restroom and frowned at her pale,
lifeless reflection in the mirror. Her hair looked like a rat’s nest. Dark
circles masked the area around her eyes. She splashed cold water on her cheeks
and sighed as her stomach slowly calmed.
How in the hell am I supposed to meet Salma and Husani looking like
this?
What would her
Egyptian cousins think of her when she arrived looking like death warmed over?
Would they even recognize her? Maliyah smoothed the wrinkles out of her yellow cotton
frock and headed toward the baggage claim.
As she passed the
luggage carousel, she spotted a couple that peered eagerly over the towering
heads of several foreign dignitaries. The woman swiveled her head sideways. Her
silky, blue-black tresses slightly obscured her classical features from view. She
had a sharp, patrician nose, high cheek bones and the intelligent, yellow-green
gaze of an alley cat. Maliyah would recognize that face anywhere. A year
younger, her cousin Salma’s radiant beauty remained unsurpassed.
Dogging closely on
Salma’s heels was her older brother Husani. His intense brown eyes bored into
her. He was a tall, broad-shouldered brute sporting an overgrown five o’clock
shadow. His abrasive demeanor matched his gruff exterior. He stood behind his
sister, arms folded tersely across the wide expanse of his chest.
An impenetrable force.
But Maliyah knew better than to be
fooled by his appearance. Husani may have grown into the tall, handsome man
that stood a few yards away. Nonetheless, he was still the boy she ran to when
life led her astray. He’d been her confidant ever since she could remember.
