Ethan froze, his hand going slack on Shelly’s.
Even as the sconces began to go out, one by one, as if snuffed by an invisible finger, Ethan recognized the voice. That soft lilt of a gentle accent, speaking in Egyptian, which Ethan spoke fluently. It was Isis.
CHAPTER EIGHT
There was a stirring at the table, a shocked inhalation of breath from the earl and Shelly. Arielle merely sat like a stone, her huge blue eyes fixed on the distance, not on the woman next to her, for they all knew Madame Aurora was only the mouthpiece. Her plump hand squeezed Arielle’s, as if reassuring her, but Arielle was not afraid.
She was spellbound. “Mother…I knew you were watching over me. But I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Ethan forced himself to concentrate, for it had been years since his travels in Egypt and the Holy Lands. The words were familiar, and finally he realized Isis–or at least an astonishing semblance of Isis’s voice--was reciting a quote from the Book of the Dead, the Egyptian scroll that held the sacred beliefs of the ancients about the afterlife.
Isis’s voice sing-songed, “‘The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, shall not tarry, he shall not remain motionless in this land for ever. Right well shall he see with his two eyes, right well shall he hear with his two ears, the things which are true, the things which are true.’”
What riddles were this? Was Isis’s spirit warning them or was this all a gigantic hoax by a talented medium? In the flickering of the last lit sconce, Ethan warily looked around for a logical explanation of the unexplainable. They all cast enormous, dancing shadows on the wall. The sconces flickered in the still room as if a high wind buffeted them. Were they too insensate to feel the breeze or was something spiritual, visible only in its effect on the sconces, among them?
If this was a hoax, it was a very clever one, for there was nothing that could hide any type of device. Bare walls. Bare windows. A bare table. Then again, near Arielle’s feet, Ethan’s searching gaze glimpsed gleaming green eyes. He bent to look under the table and thought he saw a streak of an orange kitten in the shadows, but he wasn’t sure. He heard a very slight rustle from the hem of Arielle’s taffeta gown that draped the floor, and then nothing.
Ethan considered calling a halt to the proceedings, but Arielle was so rapt, her head cocked on one side as she listened to what sounded like Isis’s voice, that Ethan hadn’t heart to protest For the moment anyway, the girl seemed fine. What harm could a kitten do, anyway?
Ethan looked around the table again and noted that Seth, alone among them, had stiffened. He, too, searched his surroundings, not focused on the eerie voice at all. For some reason, Ethan’s wariness increased. It was as if Seth sensed something the rest of them could not feel. As if he trod both earthly and spiritual worlds at will.
Shelly whispered next to him, “What is it…she…saying?”
Before Ethan could respond, the sing song tenor of the words, still reciting the ancient verse, began to change. They quickened with urgency, becoming staccato. “‘That which is held in abomination to me is the block of slaughter of the god. Let not this my heart-case be carried away from me by the Fighting Gods…”
Across the table, Ethan stared at Seth. Tension shouted from Seth’s very posture, head erect on his shoulders, his eyes darting between Madame Aurora’s face and Arielle’s rapt expression. Ethan also suspected that Seth understood the strange language, and not for the first time, he wondered about the man’s ancestry. His assistance of Arielle that day had been a bit too timely and convenient. Ethan suspected that if he’d not been invited, he would have found a way to inveigle himself into the seance.
“‘Hail, thou Lion-god!” Removing all doubt about his comprehension, Seth nodded very slightly as if acknowledging Isis’s greeting. The last burning sconces flared and then began to go out one by one.
Ethan’s breathing quickened, and his trepidation became fear. With a wild flickering, the last sconce went out just as the disembodied voice, filtered through Madame Aurora, said with soft admiration, “‘Hail, thou who dost wind bandages round Osiris, and who hast seen Seth.’”
In the darkness, Ethan felt Shelly tug fiercely at his sleeve. “Interpret! Tell me what’s going on!”
But Ethan was frozen in panicked comprehension. Seth…in the ancient Egyptian myths, Seth was the jealous brother of Osiris who so resented his brother that he killed him. Isis was Osiris’s wife and she had to battle Seth to bring her husband back to life so he could rule the underworld.
But this wasn’t ancient Egypt, it was the Queen’s England. Such ancient tales were just that, folklore. But a chill shivered down Ethan’s spine at the irrefutable similarity between legend and fact. The fact was, Isis’s voice had just warned her daughter Arielle of warring gods. Then she hailed a man named Seth as a lion god.
A match flared to life and then the earl, his hands shaking, had lit the central candlelabra. “Enough of this nonsense,” he grumbled. “All right Madame, how did you do it? How could you so perfectly imitate my dead wife’s voice and speak in that savage tongue of hers….”
A strange purring sound interrupted him.
He trailed off as he stared at his daughter. “Arielle…”
“Oh my God!” Next to him, Shelly leaped to her feet, starting around the table, but Arielle spat at her and backed away. Shelly froze, watching the transformation.
Ethan stared between Arielle and Seth. They’d all been so worried about Isis’s effect on the girl that none of them had considered a more dangerous influence. Seth sat rigid, his total attention on Arielle. His eyes had begun to glow golden in the dimness, with diamond shaped pupils, and they were so brilliantly hypnotic…
Just as he leaped up to manhandle Seth from the chamber, Ethan belatedly realized that Arielle wasn’t looking into those hypnotic eyes. She wasn’t looking at any of them. Fixated on a faraway place, Arielle had never so befit her name, ‘lioness of God.’ Her eyes were slitted, glowing, slanting to cat’s eyes as they watched. Her fingers, clutching the table, had begun to grow fur, and tiny baby claws, looking dewy and unused, began to sprout from her fingertips.
For a moment, they were all frozen in fear, unsure what to do, even Shelly. And then the disembodied voice came a last time, wailing, a lament so sad it brought tears to Ethan’s eyes.
“‘Hail, thou who returnest after smiting and destroying him before the mighty ones! My heart weepeth over itself.’” And with a soft sobbing, Madame Aurora began rocking again, cradling her ample bosom as if she held all the sins and sorrows of the world.
Whiskers poked from the sides of Arielle’s nose, and then the metamorphosis became more rapid as the sobs increased. Finally Isis’s voice spoke her only words of English. “Daughter, beware. Know always that I love you and go to make a place for you.”
Madame Aurora groaned and slumped sideways. Shelly rounded the table toward Arielle, but Arielle swiped at her with growing claws. A tail sprouted underneath her dress, switching its way to egress through the buttons on the back of Arielle’s gown. Arielle looked down, licking at the whitish hair growing on her hand, purring. She made a sudden movement that twitched her skirts away from her feet.
They all saw it at the same time. A tiny marmalade kitten sitting at her feet, staring intently up at her with glowing green eyes.
Unblinking. And somehow, small and scrawny as it was, the kitten emitted a strange sense of power. From the look of horror on the earl’s face, Ethan realized he wasn’t the only one who felt the danger in the tiny creature. As if it wanted to own Arielle, to bend her to its will.
This was the source of Arielle’s hypnosis, not Isis’s spirit or Seth’s strength.
Her blue eyes taking on a tinge of green, Arielle stared back at the kitten, thick white fur, spotted in places, beginning to cover her face and arms as the transformation became more rapid.
The earl tried to take his daughter in his arms, but with an angry yowl exactly like a great cat’s, she scratched him. Holding
a hand to his wounded cheek, he backed a step, looking at Shelly pleadingly.
Her own eyes glowing in a strange way, Shelly moved toward the kitten, but Seth was faster. Shoving Shelly aside, Seth kicked the cat with his foot, breaking its concentration on Arielle. The kitten turned on Seth, spatting, but he kicked it again. Toward the window.
Shelly ran and opened the window.
Seth whispered something even Ethan couldn’t catch. The words sounded Egyptian, yet different. With the next kick, the kitten latched onto Seth’s ankle with all four paws and its teeth, biting viciously.
Arielle stood frozen, blinking as the cat’s hold on her wavered. The hairs began to recede, the whiskers shortened, and the sharp claws became tiny and dewy again.
“My cane!” Struggling with the cat, Seth glared at Shelly.
Shelly grabbed the cane still hanging on the back of Seth’s chair and offered it to him. Seth swung the lion headed tip toward the cat still clinging to his leg. Releasing him, the cat streaked to the open window. On the sill, it arched its back and hissed.
The earl had relit the sconces and candles, so the brightly lit room cast the kitten’s shadow on the tree outside.
Ethan inhaled sharply. Here was all the proof needed of the tiny creature’s true strength. A lion arched its back at them, a full mane flowing back as the kitten flung back its head and roared.
The sound that came out of the tiny throat was a lion’s roar.
Without mercy or compassion, Seth used his cane like a golf club and whacked the cat out of the window into the tree. The cat ducked the worst of the blow and landed on all fours on a tree branch. For a moment it hung there, staring in at all of them with a purely human hatred and promise of retribution that made Ethan instinctively move to pull Shelly away from the window.
Then, with a final lion’s roar, it bolted down the tree into the darkness.
Arielle, who had collapsed into her father’s arms, fully human again now the psychic link was broken with the kitten, began to cry. “What happened? I heard my mother sobbing and then…nothing.” She looked around at them with lushly lashed, dewy blue eyes, latching onto Seth’s grim face. “Did I do something?”
Seth shook his head. “Nothing you could help.”
The earl patted his daughter’s shoulder with a shaking hand, looking over her head at Seth with a mouthed, “Thank you.” To Arielle, he said, “Well my dear, have you had your fill of toying with the spirit world yet?”
Arielle hid her face in his shoulder, mumbling, “Mother was here, wasn’t she? But what did she say?”
“Deuce if I know. Except…she wanted you to be careful.”
Arielle peeped up at him again. “Of what?”
“Of…demons. Gods of the underworld.” For once, there was no mocking tone from the earl as he spoke such ‘nonsense.’ Just gravity. And worry for his daughter. Again, he looked at Seth. “My deepest thanks, sir. While we all stood stunned, you acted and sent that…that thing out the window before it totally bewitched Arielle.”
Seth nodded, but Ethan noted he rubbed his lion headed cane repeatedly as if he found either comfort or strength in the feel of it. Seth smiled at Arielle. “How do you feel?”
Madame Aurora snored gently, her head resting on the table, as if being medium had drained more than psychic energy from her. Arielle glanced at her, then back at Seth.
She cocked her head to the side in that thoughtful way of hers, then said solemnly, “Two steps down a very long road. A lonely road that only I must travel. Perhaps the same road my mother traveled?” She ended on a question.
The earl looked away from her searching gaze, but with a newfound strength Ethan had noted in her in the past week or so, Arielle blocked her father and crossed her arms over her bosom, brooking no denial. “Enough prevarication, Father. If tonight has proved nothing else, it is that there are things in this world and the one beyond that are trying to influence the course of my life. How can I expect to make the right choices if I do not understand my own heritage and the details of my mother’s death? Stop treating me like a child if you truly wish me to become a woman.”
Over the earl’s consternation, Shelly smiled broadly. “Bravo, my dear. And truer words were never spoken.” She quirked an inquiring eyebrow at the earl.
With a mixture of pride and sorrow, he recovered himself to brush that rebellious lock of hair away from Arielle’s flushed cheek. “You win. But may we have this comfortable coze on the morrow, after we’ve both had time to recuperate from this draining event?”
A loud snore from Madame Aurora seemed to punctuate his point. They all laughed.
Shelly came forward. “Come my dear. Your father is right. We’ve had enough truth for one evening. We could both do with a warm cuppa by a warm fire. I trust you will see the woman home.” Her tone, as she looked at Seth and Ethan, added, ‘never to return.’ But she was all motherly concern as she escorted a tired Arielle down the stairs, leaving the three men alone.
Immediately the earl rounded on Ethan. “What in blue blazes did that woman yammer on about? You speak that heathen tongue, used to converse often with Isis, in fact, so I know you must have understood.”
“Nothing made much sense,” Ethan said grimly. “I believe the voice was quoting from the Book of the Dead, a sacred scroll that details ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife. It was intended as something of a map on how to get to the underworld and live forever. Isis’s voice, or what sounded like Isis’s voice, said something about truth, and a lion god, and a battle. But whether she was warning of something or trying to tutor Arielle in preparation for her own journey, I do not know.” Ethan chose not to mention the connection he’d made to Seth. He evenly met Seth’s probing gaze, and it was finally the younger man who looked away.
The earl stared out the window at the spot where the cat had clung. If they’d doubted their own sanity, and believed themselves now to have been subject to mass hysteria, there was proof enough of the demon’s existence in the fresh claw marks on the tree. “I never thought I’d have to suffer that horrid sight again, of a woman part cat and part female. But it must be true. These dreams, the scratches on her arms, that ghastly kitten. Heaven help us all, but despite all my efforts, the sickness of the mother has passed to the daughter.”
The verification of Isis’s ailment did not surprise Ethan, for he had glimpsed her in that form himself. Seth also showed no surprise, merely rubbing his cane more thoughtfully.
The earl turned on them, his teeth clenched with determination. “But it ends here. No demon will seduce my daughter into becoming a ruthless creature of the night. I do not want Arielle to be alone day or night.” He turned so Seth. “You have already proved you are vigilant and concerned for her welfare. Sir, will you help guard my daughter?”
Seth bowed his shining dark head. “I am honored at your trust. I will do my utmost to endeavor to deserve it.”
Ethan bit back a protest. Endeavor, my eye, he thought. Seth had his own plans for Arielle, and while he hoped they were kinder than those displayed by the cat that killed the girl in the woods, Seth’s own capacity for ruthlessness had been proved in the vicious way he kicked the cat and clubbed it out the window. However, he’d certainly not seemed to have harmed the creature, but this evidence of unnatural strength in a sickly looking kitten only increased Ethan’s foreboding that solving this series of murders would prove dangerous indeed. He wanted to warn the earl about Seth, but Ethan had no smidgeon of proof to counter Seth’s undeniable gallantry in protecting Arielle.
Yet.
As they all went downstairs, Seth escorting a weakened Madame Aurora by the arm, Ethan recalled the myth of Egyptian creation, and the titanic battle between good and evil brothers over who would rule the underworld. If that fiction were playing out in real life as some surreal puzzle they had to solve, Ethan wondered what sort of pitiful protection he, the earl and Shelly could offer Arielle against such powerful beings.
Especially as it a
ppeared she’d already begun the transformation that turned her into their kind.
An hour later, Arielle was in bed and Shelly stood at the front salon window, looking outside. Ethan and the earl were entertaining Seth and the medium in the dining salon with a light, late supper. The earl had invited Shelly but she’d demurred, unable to contemplate food over the sick feeling in her stomach.
She’d been worried from the first time she saw her writhing in bed that Arielle’s strange link with the other world was among the strongest she’d ever seen--thus among the hardest to break. After tonight, she felt almost a sense of desperation. The change had begun in earnest, and worst of all, Arielle apparently felt no warning and had no memory of her transformation, so she could not defend herself against it.
As for the earl’s charge to Seth to help guard his daughter, well, Shelly intended to discuss that with him at length. She couldn’t fully deduce why at this point, but quite simply, Shelly didn’t trust Seth despite his outward gallantry.
The thought had scarcely left her head when a block of light pierced the drive outside as the front door was opened. She heard the murmur of goodnights, recognizing both Seth’s and Madame Aurora’s voice, and then both of them came down into view on the drive. A barouche clattered around, the door closed and Seth offered a hand to help the medium into the carriage.
The woman stopped, looking up at him, murmuring something even Shelly’s acute hearing could not detect. But then, with a stealthy look around, the woman held out her hand. Shelly stiffened, easing back into the drapes in case they spied her at the window. Seth, too, turned to look over his shoulder, his caution another warning, and then he pulled a small leather money case from his pocket to remove several notes. Shelly cursed under her breath, wishing she could see the denomination, but Madame Aurora certainly seemed well satisfied as she pocketed the bills.
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