“Is it open?”
Leo grabbed a latex glove from the dispenser on the wall and snapped it onto his hand. He paused only a moment before he jiggled the handle. The door swung open easily. Feeling for a switch along the wall, he flipped it, turning on the single light fixture. The room was empty.
“He must have gotten rid of it,” Chris said. “Why would he get rid of the sarcophagus after keeping it hidden for fifty years?”
“Maybe he didn’t want any evidence lying around,” Jason finished. “If Perry has said anything to anyone about the break-in, Sheila would have known about it, or at least heard a rumor. But overnight, Perry had the sarcophagus removed and the door replaced. I’m convinced Perry had Seti’s sarcophagus in here illegally.”
“Now what do we do?”
“Now we check Perry’s office for evidence.”
“Might I remind you that we’re not Sam Spade and company? We’re a trio of grad students who don’t know their legal asses from their litigious elbows. What you’re talking about doing is breaking and entering!” Chris said, frowning.
“It’s only a B and E if the door is locked. If it’s open, then it’s only trespassing.” Leo grinned. “Come on. We’ve come this far. Nobody’s home—what can it hurt to take a peek and see what we can find?”
“You go on. I’ll keep watch,” Chris said, shaking his head. He trotted up the aisle toward the front of the dungeon.
“You are such a chickenshit,” Jason called after him, chuckling. “Okay, here goes.” He suddenly paused, his hand hovering over the doorknob to Perry’s office. “Something’s wrong. Really wrong,” he whispered. He felt the blood rush from his head to his feet, leaving him dizzy. While Jason had often gotten “flashes” of feelings before, he’d never felt anything like this. This was more than unsettling. There were vibes coming from Perry’s office in waves that were downright terrifying.
“Is it open?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know, but… I’m suddenly not sure I want to see what’s inside.”
“Then move. I’ll do it,” Leo said, elbowing Jason out of the way. “And you’ve got the nerve to call me a drama queen. Sheesh.” He turned the knob and pushed the door to Perry’s office in. He found the light switch and flipped it on, instantly flooding the room with light.
Lincoln Perry sat at his desk, head thrown back, his lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. A single gunshot wound marred the skin on his forehead. Surprisingly, there was very little blood—just a thin trickle down the side of his face and a few spots splattered on the collar of his shirt.
“Holy fucking shit!” Leo gasped, involuntarily taking a step backward. “Is he dead?”
“Oh God. Unless he’s into some really fucking weird body modifications, he is,” Jason whispered, putting a hand over his mouth, his stomach lurching as his lunch tried to make a reappearance.
“Guys?” Chris called from the front of the room. “I found something,” he said, walking back toward Perry’s office. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the looks on Jason and Leo’s faces. “Oh shit. What’s happened?”
“It’s Perry. He’s dead.”
“What? Are you sure?” Chris asked, eyes widening.
“About as sure as I can get without performing an autopsy,” Leo said, running his hands through his hair. “What are we going to do? We can’t just leave him here.”
“Maybe he’s had a heart attack or something,” Chris said, stepping past Leo into Perry’s office. “Are you sure he’s…?” His voice trailed off. “Oh, man. He’s been shot!”
“No shit,” Jason said. “Any other brilliant observations, Einstein?”
“Did you touch anything?” Chris asked, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he’d suddenly been struck by a terrible headache.
“I had a glove on. I didn’t leave any fingerprints,” Leo said.
“Okay. Then I say that we get the hell out of here. I’m not using my cell phone. We can stop at a pay phone and call the cops. Tell them where to find Perry and hang up before they can trace the call,” Chris said. “Come on. We need to leave. Now.”
“What’s that?” Jason asked, indicating a white envelope Chris held in his hand.
“I found it in Logan’s in-box. I don’t know what it is. I haven’t opened it,” Chris answered as they hurried back toward the stairs.
Forcing themselves to slow down to a walk when they reached the main lobby, the boys made their way out of the museum. Hitting the sidewalk running, they sped down the block. They turned off onto Seventy-Ninth Street, and ducked down into the subway.
Chris wrapped his hand in a piece of paper toweling snagged from the men’s room and made the call to the police. It was short, sweet, and to the point. “Dr. Lincoln Perry has been murdered. His body is in his office at the National Museum of Natural History.” He hung up before the 911 operator could say a word other than “911. What’s your emergency?”
None of them breathed a sigh of relief until they were safely seated on the next train leaving the station. It left them six long city blocks from their apartment, but they double-timed it all the way back, taking the stairs two at a time and arriving in the living room huffing, puffing, and gasping for air.
“What the hell happened?” Logan asked, jumping up.
“Perry’s dead,” Jason wheezed, bending over at the waist, trying to get his breath. “He was murdered, Logan.”
“Oh my God! Who would want to kill him? Yeah, he was nasty, snooty, and a pain in everyone’s ass, but he was harmless,” Logan gasped, swaying a little on his feet. “They’re going to think I killed him, aren’t they?”
Seti put his hands on Logan’s shoulders, steadying him.
“No. If it comes down to that, you’ve got four witnesses who know you’ve been here at the apartment all night,” Chris said. Looking up at Seti, he amended himself. “Well, three witnesses. I don’t think Seti can take the stand. I’m pretty sure you need to have been born in this millennium to testify.”
“Whoever killed him must have smuggled the sarcophagus out of the museum too. It was gone, Logan. And the door had been replaced,” Jason said. He trotted into the kitchen. When he returned, he held the half-empty bottle of vodka. He took a long swallow before passing it to Leo.
“Oh, and I found this in your in-box,” Chris said, handing the envelope to Logan.
Logan blinked, still in shock. He took the envelope from Chris’s hand, his own shaking badly. Sitting down on the couch, he opened it and took out a folded sheet of lined legal paper. “Oh my God,” he said, unfolding it and reading a few of the handwritten lines. “It’s from Perry.”
Chapter Eleven
JASON, CHRIS, and Leo stood close together in a semicircle around Logan, staring down at the letter he held in his hands as if it were a snake that might jump free and bite them. Seti stood slightly apart from them with his arms folded, the look on his face stern.
“It was dated yesterday,” Logan said, looking up at each of them in turn. “He must have written it just before he….”
“Well, what’s it say, Logan?” Jason prompted, lifting the bottle of vodka to his mouth. He still looked shaken and a little gray, as if his blood wasn’t quite making it up to his brain.
Hands shaking, Logan read Perry’s letter aloud in a halting voice.
“Logan,
“I’m certain that by the time you read this, I will be dead. How, I cannot say. Perhaps I will be shot, or perhaps poisoned or stabbed. I’ve no idea how hired guns go about the business of killing these days. What I do know is that Ethan Wilder will not allow me to live much longer.
“I know Seti is with you. I know all about the curse, and how true it is, Logan. Seti’s curse is the reason I’d kept the sarcophagus hidden for fifty years—we were waiting for Seti to return. Unfortunately, it seems our calculations of the end date of the curse were flawed.
“There were only five men on the face of the earth who knew Seti’s sarcophagus rested in the dungeon.
If I am dead, then Ethan will have had the others killed as well. There is no sense in sullying their names. I will take their identities with me to the grave.
“It was our plan to capture Seti once he revived and use his blood to discover the secret of his immortality. It was our firm belief that the curse would have altered his DNA, allowing him to return to life after five thousand years. We wanted that mutated DNA for ourselves. We wanted immortality.
“I understand now that I was played as a patsy from the very beginning. Ethan never intended for me—or the others—to live to see Seti returned from the dead. I wasted my life protecting a secret from which I would never profit. I gave up my family, my health, and finally my life for it.
“I was a fool, and I am sorry that I ever agreed to it in the first place. I’ve ruined careers and treated people badly—you included. All I can do now is try to make amends by warning you.
“Know this, Logan. Ethan Wilder will stop at nothing to get his hands on Seti. Newly awake, Seti will know little of this world. He may become unbalanced by the shock of all the changes that have occurred, or he may adapt easily. I have spent hours instructing him on history and our language but have no idea if he actually heard or understood anything I said. Also, there is no way of telling how well he will absorb the stress of his rejuvenation. You must protect him, Logan. Don’t let Ethan get him. Don’t let that bastard win.
“Let Seti live in the peace he could not find in death.”
“It’s signed ‘Sincerely, Lincoln Perry,’” Logan finished.
“Wow. Ethan Wilder! That’s big, Logan. Huge,” Leo said. He took a swig from the bottle of vodka before passing it to Chris. “He’s loaded, as in stinking, filthy rich, and he has more power than God. I’m not sure you want to get involved with him.”
“Are you kidding? This letter is Perry’s confession! It completely absolves Logan of any involvement,” Chris said, frowning at Leo. “This is outstanding news, Logan! We need to take the letter to the police. Perry’s named his killer! It’ll get you off the hook for everything!”
“Yeah, I guess I could say that it was delivered to me here,” Logan said, staring at the letter he held. “After all, it was, in a way.” He looked pale, and his hands were still shaking.
“Logan, are you well?” Seti asked. “Whoever this Ethan Wilder is, I will not allow him to hurt you.”
“I’m fine, Seti. It’s been a helluva day,” Logan said, waving a hand dismissively at Seti. “First I hook up with a guy who’s older than—and until recently was just as inanimate as—dirt up to twenty four hours ago but is suddenly alive and kicking, and then the man I worked for is murdered. Now, to top it all off, I’m probably a suspect in his murder and have a—if all accounts are accurate—rich septuagenarian supervillain out to get me. Just another day in the life of,” he sighed.
“Ethan Wilder is nobody you want to mess with, Seti,” Leo insisted. “He’s got the kind of power that can put a real hurt on you. Look at what he did to Perry!”
Seti snorted. “I fear no one.”
“Yeah? So said three-quarters of the dead heroes in history,” Chris said, rolling his eyes at Seti’s bravado.
“Look, this letter is Logan’s best chance at completely clearing himself,” Jason interjected. “Logan is right. For all we know, the police might have him earmarked as a suspect in the murder, since he was the last one to see Perry alive. Besides, you heard what Perry wrote in that letter. Wilder is going to come looking for Seti. He’s probably started already. They can’t stay holed up in this apartment forever. Eventually Wilder will find them, and then what?”
“I still think it’s a bad idea to go to the police. Wilder has really deep pockets, Jason. What if he has the police department in his wallet? What will happen to Logan then?” Leo argued. “We shouldn’t make any rash decisions. We should at least sleep on it.”
“Tomorrow, then. We’ll give the cops a chance to find Perry’s body, gather evidence, and then decide what to do,” Jason said.
Even Chris agreed. “Yeah. We need to wait at least until after they announce that they’ve discovered the body. We should watch the news. For all we know, there was evidence at the scene that might lead police to Perry’s killer without Logan ever having to get involved.”
Logan looked down at the letter he held again. “I don’t know whether to pity Perry or be pissed off at him. I thought he was a bastard when I worked for him, but it looks as though I seriously underestimated him. How evil does a man need to be to wait fifty fucking years for the opportunity to kill someone you don’t even know? And all for personal greed.”
“The quest for the Grail has always been seductive,” Chris said. “Evidently, Perry and his friends thought Seti’s blood holds the key to immortality. The secret to living forever is a powerful motivator, Logan. Historically, it’s often made men do abominable things.”
“Wait…,” Leo said, looking at Seti askance. “You’re immortal? How? Are you like a vampire, or are you more like Dorian Gray? Do you need to suck blood? Or is the secret in that pretentious bit of bling you’ve got around your neck?” he asked, pointing to the golden torc that graced Seti’s throat.
“Bling?” Seti asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Ignore him, Seti,” Jason said, flicking Leo’s ear with two fingers. “He’s a little loopy, not to mention slow on the uptake.”
“For a group of so-called scientists, their theorem was seriously flawed, anyway,” Chris said, shaking his head. “They assumed Seti to be immortal and yet planned to kill him to get the secret of his longevity. How do you kill an Immortal? That’s an oxymoron if ever there was one. Besides, there is nothing to substantiate the conclusion that Seti is immortal, anyway.”
“He did live for over five thousand years,” Leo insisted. “That’s pretty fucking immortal in my book.”
“He was cursed and mummified, then rejuvenated. There’s a definite distinction between forced hibernation and living forever. There are no facts in evidence that support the claim that Seti can’t die,” Chris argued haughtily. “And unless you want to try putting a bullet in him, there’s no way to prove it either.”
“Yeah? What about that little show he put on with the water from the fish tank? That wasn’t computer graphic imagery, you know. No CGI that I’ve ever heard of leaves wet spots on the wall and floor,” Leo said, nodding toward the fish tank.
“Whatever power he manifests doesn’t suggest in any way that he can’t die,” Chris countered. “Just because Copperfield can make an elephant seem to disappear doesn’t make him Peter Pan.”
“There’s a difference between illusion and magic,” Leo insisted. “What Seti did was magic.”
“Magic isn’t synonymous with immortality.” Chris sniffed.
Leo glared at Chris, frustrated. “You are a stubborn asshole.”
“Well, that’s as irrefutable and earth-shattering a scientific deduction as I’ve ever heard,” Jason laughed. “Congratulations, Leo. You’ve won the Nobel Prize. Besides, Perry’s letter never once said they planned to kill Seti. Only that they planned to use his blood to discover his secrets.”
Seti looked irritated as the debate raged between Logan’s friends. Finally he huffed as if exasperated, then bent down, scooping Logan up into his arms. “I am weary. We will rest now,” he said, turning his back on Jason, Leo, and Chris. Ignoring Logan’s protests, he carried him into the bedroom. He used his foot to slam the door shut behind them.
“WELL, SOMEBODY’S a little grumpy,” Leo said, staring at the closed bedroom door.
“Once again you’ve overlooked the obvious question, Leo,” Chris said, turning to look at Jason. “They’re sleeping together?”
“Guess so.” Jason grinned.
“Logan is such a lucky bastard,” Leo sighed. “Did you get a load of the six-pack Seti’s got stashed under that T-shirt?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Chris mumbled.
“Yeah, right. That T-shirt is tight enough for
you to see his spleen, but you didn’t notice,” Leo said. “I was watching you. Your eyes never made it higher than his neck, and often not higher than his belly button.” He sighed again. “And I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that he’s not wearing underwear. Things were looking up below his waistband. Big things. Huge things—”
Chris elbowed Leo. “We get it.”
“We’re not, but evidently Logan is,” Leo laughed. “Getting it, I mean.”
Jason and Chris both swatted Leo on the arm. “Shut up, Leo,” they said in unison.
“I don’t care if Logan is a prime murder suspect or if Ethan Wilder is gunning for him,” Leo said wistfully, “I’d still love to be in his loafers right about now.” He grabbed the vodka bottle from Chris and took another long swallow as he stared at the bedroom door.
For once, Jason and Chris could not find fault with Leo’s logic. They sighed in unison, nodding in agreement. Reluctantly, Jason flicked on the television set, changing the channel to CNN and turning up the sound.
The weatherman was standing in front of a large map, talking about the next day’s cold front as small animated storm clouds drifted across it. His deep voice with its studied newscaster monotone echoed in the apartment.
“Don’t you think that’s a little loud?” Chris asked, raising his voice to be heard over the volume of the television. “I’m not hard of hearing, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Jason cast another look at the closed bedroom door. “I have the distinct feeling that things are going to get loud in there. I, for one, don’t get my kicks by being an auditory voyeur—at least not when the moans and groans are Logan’s.”
Chris looked back and forth between Jason and the bedroom, then reached for the remote and turned the sound up another notch.
Chapter Twelve
ETHAN WAS seated at his huge, intricately carved mahogany desk, staring out the windows at the city’s lights, when his private line rang. He snatched the phone from the receiver before it could ring twice.
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