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breathing faster. The world seemed to narrow into some dark tunnel, and if she gave any answer to his question, he didn’t hear it.
     
    Layla watched him collapse. He toppled like some felled animal at sacrifice. He fell hard, his head bouncing when it struck the floor, his mouth going lax. Instinctively, Layla rushed to his side, stooping to feel for a pulse. She found one, but he didn’t respond when she said his name.
    What was wrong with him? She remembered that he’d suffered a nosebleed the first time she saw him in her office. He was bleeding from the nose again now. Maybe he was suffering from high blood pressure or some far more serious ailment.
    She should call an ambulance. No. He’d kidnapped her. She should call the police. But if she did, it was all going to come out. All of it. They’d find out that she’d been hiding her amnesia for two years, and no one would believe her when she told them about the mental powers that Rayhan Stavrakis had exerted over her. They’d think that she’d gone crazy.
    Maybe she had.
    This was her chance to escape, but she couldn’t just leave him here bleeding on the floor. She pushed on his shoulder, trying to roll him over. He was brawny,heavy, hard to move. She managed to angle his mouth toward the ground so that he wouldn’t choke on his own tongue but she didn’t know what else to do. She had a doctorate in psychology; she wasn’t a medical doctor.
    But Nate Jaffe was.
    Layla fumbled for her cell phone in her purse and dialed. After five rings it went to voice mail. Why wouldn’t he pick up? Okay, he was obviously still smarting from their breakup. She’d just have to go get him. Nate’s apartment wasn’t far from here and her captor didn’t look like he was going to regain consciousness anytime soon, so Layla bolted for the door. If there really were other men out there following her, then she’d just have to risk it.

Chapter 5
    A barren woman with skin cracked and dry, still enchants men though none know why.
    T hough Seth was a desert god, he hated the Mojave. Not just because it was a New World desert, far and remote from his own Egyptian home. He also hated the Mojave because as a war god, he believed that a desert should devour . A desert should destroy .
    A desert shouldn’t give birth to a neon monstrosity like Las Vegas.
    The city was like no proper desert metropolis of old. It had no citadel; it sent no chariots into the sands to conquer. It didn’t join with the sand and sun and powerful ring of mountains. Instead the Vegas architecture was a blend of archaic myth with modern excess—an adult fantasy-scape at the very edge of reality, where magic blurred with the mundane. With its garish lightsand glitter, the city beckoned visitors and residents to worship the myriad relics of man’s gloried past. It became a fertile oasis for washed-up immortals. And why not? Where else but Vegas could deities walk comfortably amongst the mortals without fear of discovery? Here a primitive goddess of dancing could easily take on the guise of a showgirl. Where else but Vegas could a trickster god hide in plain sight, running a casino? Where else could a god of revelry gorge himself in an actual bacchanalia, but at Caesar’s Palace?
    This is what made Las Vegas the singular, perfect refuge for the old immortals.
    Except for Seth. He’d never make his home here. He still had his pride. He had his powers too—some of them anyway—and there were still wars for him to feed upon. He still enjoyed the look in the eyes of men as he parched their tongues and stole the breath from them, leaving them to gasp, choking on their dry mortality.
    Crouching by the road where it met the desert, the once mighty war god let sand slip through his hands. It felt like the hair of the woman who belonged to him. It felt like the silken sheets she used to lay upon in their cold, cold bed. He had only come here for Layla, and she had already betrayed him. Again.
     
    Layla knocked