Seti's Heart

by Kelly, Kiernan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Seti’s Heart

  TOP SHELF

  An imprint of Torquere Press Publishers

  PO Box 2545

  Round Rock, TX 78680

  © 2007 Kiernan Kelly

  Cover illustration by Alessia Brio

  Published with permission

  ISBN: 978-1-60370-262-1, 1-60370-262-8

  www.torquerepress.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press. Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680.

  First Torquere Press Printing: January 2008

  Printed in the USA

  Prologue

  5,000 years ago

  Nile Valley, Egypt

  Camp of the Children of Setekh

  Blowing in fiercely across the dunes, the storm whipped the sand into a maelstrom of biting particles that could flay flesh from bone. Within moments, it could fill a man’s lungs with sand, drowning him with the blood of the desert. In the animal skin tents of King Seti’s tribe, his people cowered and quailed before the power of the sandstorm.

  Seti alone stood against the onslaught, feet braced apart, chin held high. In the face of the storm’s fury he was immoveable, as solid and unyielding as stone. Bare-chested, his only garment was a short linen loincloth. He stood with his head thrown back, his warrior braids whipping about his head: long, black, beaded scourges that flailed his face and sun-bronzed shoulders. Arms spread wide, he welcomed the wind, embracing its stinging wrath as one would embrace a son.

  In a way, the tempest was Seti’s child – he had nothing to fear from it. He had created it; it was he who had called the demon from its lair and unleashed it upon the land. The storm was Seti’s shield, keeping him and his hidden from the eyes of his enemy. It was also his fist, his spear, and he wielded it without mercy, striking down all who dared defy him.

  This time Seti’s enemies had gone too far. Bidden by their god, they had stolen Seti’s heart from him, had ripped it away and fed it, still beating and warm, to the jackals.

  For that crime they would pay with their lives.

  Ashai had been more than a lover, more than another pretty face in Seti’s harem. He had been Seti’s favorite, the only one capable of easing the tension from Seti’s body and the worry from his mind with a single caress. Ashai’s unusual, light-colored eyes, the color of an oasis, had twinkled with good humor even on the darkest of days. His smile and his arms had always been warm and inviting.

  Seti had loved him above all others. For Ashai, Seti would have moved mountains, drained oceans. It was for Ashai that Seti had led his people across the dunes, seeking greener lands. Ashai had wished to settle, to build, to see their people grow fat and happy along the rich, fertile banks of the Nile; he grew weary of their nomadic life. In addition to wanting to grant Ashai his wish, Seti had found that the land along the great river to be rich in resources that would assure his camp’s growth.

  Each year it flooded, the waters nursing the earth. When the waters receded, the land was left ripe for planting. The wealth reaped from the river’s bounty would assure Seti of a vast kingdom. He had led their people to this place, near where the wind rippled the waters of the great river.

  But Seti’s people were not the only ones to covet the fertile land. There were others, but they were of no more importance to Seti than the gnats that worried his beasts of burden. He had marched through their camps, leaving behind little but footprints in the sand. The dead were discarded; the living assimilated into Seti’s camp. His numbers swelled.

  Within Seti’s own tribe there were those who were jealous of his riches, of his power. Seti’s priests, grown envious and greedy, tired of Seti’s rule. Wishing to make a weaker man king, one who they could manipulate, they sought out Seti’s enemies and made a pact with them.

  Together, they called upon Setekh, the god who had bestowed upon Seti’s family their power; they lied and convinced Setekh that Seti had dishonored him by giving Ashai honors due only to the gods.

  One night, when darkness had settled over Seti’s camp like a thick, suffocating shawl, as Seti sat with his advisors readying for war, his enemies had stolen in and taken Ashai from him. Almost before Seti knew he was gone, Ashai’s head was returned to Seti minus his beautiful green eyes, the name of the god Setekh carved into his forehead.

  Seti’s priests told him that the warning had been clear: Seti should seek to please no one but the gods; the land of the Nile was not to be his. Give over to his enemies, or be destroyed.

  A King of his people, Seti was a warrior to be reckoned with, but more, he was a sorcerer. In his veins flowed an ancient magic, gifted to his bloodline in the time before time, before the gods had wiped the dust of the earth from their feet. A gift bestowed upon Seti’s family by the very god for whom he was named, as was his father, and his father’s father before him back through the mists of time.

  That Setekh, the god to whom Seti owed his powers and who he and his ancestors had worshiped and burned offerings to was the same god who had demanded Ashai’s blood as payment for Seti’s disobedience, sent a rage unlike any Seti had ever known roaring through his blood.

  The wind carried Seti’s oath across the sand.

  “SETEKH! YOU MISERABLE JACKAL! WHORE OF HORUS! MAY YOUR GENITALS SHRIVEL AND BE EATEN BY THE SWINE WHO WORSHIP YOU!” he bellowed, his voice barely audible above the fury of the storm. “I curse the day my ancestors first uttered your foul name! I denounce you! From this day forward I will seek out those who bow down before you and trample them beneath my sandals until at last there are none left! Until your existence is less than a memory, forgotten by the world! I swear this, upon my very soul!”

  Screams rose from over the hill as the storm found Seti’s enemies, the windborne sand flaying them, burying them alive. After a very long while the terrible din ceased, the howl of the wind the only sound remaining.

  The wind grew fiercer, particles of sand whipping Seti’s flesh like a cat o’ nine, biting deep. Then suddenly, all stilled. Sand, airborne a heartbeat ago, fell in a cloudy curtain to the ground, the wind dying to less than a whisper. Before Seti, the warm air seemed to shimmer, becoming alive, taking solid form as a giant rose up before him.

  Eyes as dark as the deepest pits of the underworld glared at Seti from within a face so gruesome that it could make the strongest man cower in fear. Reptilian, long jaws were filled with dagger-like teeth, eyes that glowed with an otherworldly power gleamed. Below his neck, a strong and perfect body towered against the buff desert dunes.

  Setekh.

  An arm slowly rose, pointing a long, graceful finger at Seti. “Arrogant dog! You dare threaten me and mine?” Setekh thundered, his voice reverberating deeply in Seti’s bones, chilling him to his very core. “Death is too easy a penance for you. It is you who will be forgotten! Hungry, thirsty, lonely, you will live a half-life, doomed to suffer five thousand years of agony! Never will your ka rest in the afterlife! Such is the curse your insolence has brought down upon your head!”

  From within the tents of Seti his people rose up, commanded by a god they had worshiped all of their lives. They surrounded Seti, bore him up and carried him into the tents, where soon the only sounds that pierced the silence of the night were his screams.

  Chapter One

  Present Day

  New York City, NY

  National Mu
seum of Natural History

  Culture Halls, Division of Anthropology

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ashton. I’m afraid your qualifications didn’t pass muster. Ms. Rush has secured the position as my assistant.”

  Logan’s humble - if biased - opinion was that Dr. Noah Peterson didn’t look sorry at all. In fact, the man looked as though he was barely suppressing a gloating grin. There had been a persistent rumor going around that Dr. Peterson had not wanted to take Logan on as an assistant for one simple reason, and it had nothing to do with Logan’s qualifications. That reason, at least according to the water cooler gossips, was Peterson’s disapproval of Logan’s alternate lifestyle choices.

  In other words, Peterson was homophobic with a capital “H”, and Logan was as out as a fella could get short of having the word “gay” tattooed across his forehead.

  Susan Rush, on the other hand, was blonde, curvaceous, and possessed qualifications that included an ass that was nearly legendary among the straight male staff of the museum.

  Logan sighed. To be fair, Susan also had a degree, had been in the top ten percent in her graduating class, and had a ream of recommendations from her professors.

  Peterson had been Logan’s last hope at a prestigious department’s assistant’s position, albeit a tissue thin one. The only other spot left open in the Museum’s Fellowship Program was as Lincoln Perry’s assistant, a career move that would have Logan buried up to his nose hairs in the deepest, darkest dungeons of the Museum, from where neither Logan nor his career would ever again see the light of day.

  But then again, even slaving away in the bowels of the Museum beat starvation and eviction, which were Logan’s only other options.

  Logan bit his tongue, swallowing the half-dozen clever and bitingly caustic accusations that popped into his head but which would only have served to assure his future flipping burgers in the Museum’s cafeteria. Turning his back on the pompous, arrogant Curator of Anthropology, he walked away, his dignity in shreds but his employment – such as it was – still intact.

  Stopping off in Administration, Logan expressed his interest in becoming Dr. Perry’s assistant. Lord, he should have been an actor – not only had he managed to sound excited about becoming Second-In-Charge Of Dusty Crates and Moldy Junk, he’d also successfully ignored the Administration Clerk’s look of incredulity. He could almost hear the question that must have teetered on the tip of her tongue - a live body volunteering to work for Perry? Logan had no doubts that the woman would run straight from work to the store to purchase the heaviest coat available, since all indications pointed to Hell freezing over.

  When the door of Administration clicked closed behind him, it sounded like the thunderclap of doom to Logan. His fate sealed, there was only one thing left to do – drown his sorrows in pitchers of draft beer while listening to the sympathetic commiserations and ill-conceived advice of his friends.

  “Jase? Hey, it’s me,” Logan said, his voice a little breathless as he left the Museum and hurried down the sidewalk heading toward a bar favored by lesser humans beings such as anthropology graduate students. “Let’s put it this way – it went about as well as expected. I’m heading over to The Bones now.”

  The Bones was actually a small bar named Hogan’s, rechristened by the museum scholars who frequented it. Located two blocks from the museum, the bar was housed behind a nondescript, red-bricked façade. Dimly lit and famous for its five-dollar pitchers of beer, it was a favorite among students and museum assistants who had deep thirsts but shallow bank accounts.

  Logan settled himself into a booth near the back of the bar and ordered a pitcher. If he had his way, it would be the first of many.

  “You shouldn’t frown like that, Logan,” Wendy said, setting a frosty pitcher of Budweiser and a mug on the table. “When your eyebrows knit together it makes you look like you have a unibrow. Plus, it’ll give you wrinkles.”

  Wendy was well past sixty and had been a waitress at The Bones since it had first opened its door in 1968. She was practically an historical landmark, knew everybody and their business as well as she knew her own. Her hair, a steely gray that she refused to dye, was wrapped around the crown of her head in a thick, silver braid. Her eyes could be either kind or frighteningly hard, depending on the circumstances, but at the moment they were softened with compassion.

  She’d taken a liking to Logan and his small group of friends, which meant a few free pitchers now and then and a great deal of smothering mothering the rest of the time.

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind, Wendy.”

  “What’s wrong? C’mon, Logan. Spill,” Wendy said, sliding her substantial rear into the booth next to Logan.

  “Didn’t get the fellowship slot in Anthropology,” Logan confessed. He should have known that Wendy wouldn’t give up until she had all the sorry details. In that way, she was worse than his mother. Then again, Logan’s mother didn’t usually serve her son pitchers of beer and tell him that he needed to get laid more often.

  “Why the hell not? You’ve got a freakin’ 4.0, made the Dean’s List all four years running, and have a ton of internship hours under your belt. Who could beat that?” Wendy was nothing if not loyal, taking any setback Logan or his friends experienced as a personal affront.

  “Somebody who has two things I don’t have. Tits,” Logan smirked, pouring himself a beer. He downed half of it, mopping up the foam that dripped down his chin with his sleeve.

  “These are napkins,” Wendy said sarcastically, pulling a handful out of the dispenser and handing them to Logan. “Useful new invention. Try some. Besides, tits are overrated. They’re fine when you’re twenty, but when gravity hits it’s like having a couple of millstones hanging around your neck.”

  Logan chuckled despite himself. “Thanks.”

  “Seriously, that sounds like discrimination to me. Isn’t there anything you can do? Somebody you can complain to? File a grievance or something?”

  “Sure. I could file a formal complaint with the Museum Board. Demand an investigation, call for a hearing. Of course, that would be the one sure-fire way to lose any chance I might ever have at a full professorship. I’d be lucky if I could get a job selling postcards in the gift shop after that,” Logan answered, polishing off his mug. He poured another, intent on becoming as drunk as possible in as little time as necessary. “Besides, she really does have better qualifications for the position.”

  “That sucks,” Wendy said, shaking her head. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Take a fellowship with Dr. Perry. He’s the Curator of-”

  “Lincoln Perry?”

  “You know him? I didn’t think he ever came up from the Museum’s basement long enough to make friends. For that matter, I didn’t think he was capable of making friends. Antisocial-”

  Wendy’s hand shot out, smacking Logan upside the back of his head.

  “Ow!”

  “You keep a civil tongue in your head when you’re talking about Lincoln Perry, Logan,” she growled, waggling a finger at him. “He’s a fucking dinosaur and he’s got a really big bite. He’s got more friends in high places than the Museum Director. If you’re going to work for Perry, you’d better mind your Ps and Qs.”

  “How do you know Dr. Perry?” Logan asked, rubbing the back of his head. This was taking mothering a bit too far, but he was too curious to say anything to Wendy and risk insulting her.

  “I’ve been here a long time, Logan. I know lots of people. But Lincoln Perry has been here even longer than I have. He’s been working in that museum since Hector was a pup, knows everybody and everything in it.”

  “He’s Curator of Relics, Wendy, which means he’s a glorified stock boy who keeps track of junk accumulated by the Museum, but unworthy of display. Donations that meant a lot to benefactors, but little to the scientific world.”

  “Just you wait and see if I’m not right,” Wendy huffed, sliding out from the booth just as Logan’s friends showed up. “This can be a grea
t opportunity for you, if you keep your nose clean and your lips glued to the old boy’s ass.”

  “Okay, Wendy. Whatever you say,” Logan sighed. He knew better, but there was no sense in arguing the fact anymore. All he wanted right then was to plunge face first into a barrel of suds.

  Jason, Leo, and Chris stood by, patiently waiting for Wendy to extract herself from the booth. All three were self-described SSOLs - Serious Students Of Life, although Logan’s definition was Seriously Shit Out of Luck. Whichever meaning of the acronym you subscribed to, it meant the same thing - that they were young academics with brand new sheepskins and empty bank accounts. Although Jason had landed an internship at Sloan-Kettering, he was living off his rapidly dwindling trust fund, and the other two didn’t have a single job prospect between them. Still, they were supportive and had helped keep Logan’s head above the black waters of despair on more than one occasion. Logan considered himself lucky to have their friendship and loved them all like brothers.

  Each gave Wendy a brief, dutiful peck on the cheek, assuring them of at least one free pitcher that night, then slid into the booth.