Damned by the Ancients

by Catherine Cavendish

In the kitchen, the cat’s food and water bowls looked untouched. Yvonne unlocked the kitchen door and went outside. She found an empty food bowl. “Maybe it’s her, maybe not. There’s no way of telling. Sekhmet! Sekhmet!”

  Ryan replenished the food and water while Yvonne searched the garden. Part of it remained cordoned off, but she could see the cat wasn’t there.

  She shook her head as Ryan looked questioningly at her.

  Heidi didn’t take the news well. All the way back to the hotel she wept copious tears. Yvonne sat in the back with her and cuddled her. “Don’t give up hope. She’s a very resilient cat. Look how she found you in the first place.”

  “She’s all alone out there,” Heidi wailed.

  “She knows how to look after herself. She’s done so all her life, hasn’t she? Besides, she’s a special cat. With friends in high places.” Yvonne blinked back the tears that pricked her eyelids. How had it come to this? Such hopes for their time in this beautiful city. This should have been a time of discovery. All the galleries and museums they had planned to visit. The palaces and quirky places that hid among Vienna’s rambling back streets. They sped past the magnificent Grecian-style buildings on the Ringstrasse. A wonderful opportunity for their daughter to study at the International School and mix with kids from all over the world. It would have set her up for life. Set them all up for life. And now this. If only they hadn’t chosen that house. If only…

  But somehow, Yvonne knew. The decision to live at Villa Dürnstein had been made for them by powers they could not comprehend. Heidi had somehow been destined for this role, and nothing Yvonne and Ryan could have done would have prevented it.

  Heidi’s sobs subsided. As they pulled into the hotel parking lot, she sat up straight, dried her eyes, and waited until Ryan had parked the car. Without a word, she opened her door and got out.

  Yvonne watched her, puzzled. Something about her had changed. She joined her daughter and Ryan. He had the same uncertain expression she knew she must be wearing.

  He whispered to her. “Is she all right?”

  Yvonne shrugged. “I’m not sure. Let’s get her upstairs.”

  In the suite, Heidi went straight into the bedroom, climbed on the bed, and lay down. Yvonne sat next to her. “Heidi?”

  The little girl opened her eyes. “Not Heidi,” she said in a voice that chilled Yvonne’s blood. She called out to her husband. “Ryan! Come here. Quickly!”

  He was there in an instant.

  “Heidi?” he said.

  “Not Heidi,” the girl repeated and closed her eyes.

  Hysteria mounted in Yvonne’s body. “Heidi.” No response.

  “That’s it,” Ryan said. “I’m calling a doctor.”

  Once again his daughter’s eyes opened, but Yvonne knew in an instant that the voice that spoke didn’t belong to her daughter. An older woman was using her now, but with some difficulty. The words were stilted as if uttered at great expense of energy. This didn’t seem like Paula. The voice didn’t sound the same.

  “No doctor. Not necessary. Won’t help her.”

  “Who are you?” Yvonne asked. “Paula?”

  No reply. Heidi’s eyes closed and this time, she seemed to fall asleep immediately.

  Yvonne and Ryan held each other. Their shared silence spoke of shared fears. Yet another challenge, another threat seemed to be mounting; once again their innocent daughter was at the heart of it and there wasn’t one thing she could think of that they could do to prevent her being dragged deeper and deeper into Quintillus’s evil.

  The shadows lengthened in the room and still Ryan and Yvonne sat with their sleeping daughter. At some point Yvonne must have laid her head down on the bed because she woke suddenly with a sore neck from the awkward position. The room had grown dark. Only moonlight and a distant streetlamp provided any illumination. Everywhere was quiet. Yvonne reached for Heidi but her hand found only the duvet.

  Instant panic assailed her. “Ryan?” She groped for the wall switch, found it and snapped it on.

  She stared in horror at the empty bed. In the chair nearby, Ryan stirred.

  “Where’s Heidi?” she asked, already halfway to the bathroom. Everywhere was dark and she switched lights on. The bathroom, too, was dark and the sudden bright light made her blink, but also revealed an empty room.

  “Ryan, where is she?”

  Her husband stumbled into the living area. “I’m calling the police.”

  “What the hell good will they do? We know she hasn’t been abducted. Not in the usual way anyhow. Quintillus is behind this.” Yvonne raised her voice. “You bastard. Bring her back. Bring back my baby.” She fell to her knees, sobbing. Ryan stood, helpless, tears coursing down his cheeks.

  “He’s taken her back to the house,” Yvonne said, at last. “I know it. I can feel it. That’s why…whoever it was…took control of her. To make her sneak out when we fell asleep. Oh God, why did I fall asleep?”

  “Don’t blame yourself. I fell asleep, too. We’re both exhausted.”

  “And now our little girl’s gone. We’ve got to go there. Bring her back.”

  * * * *

  At three in the morning, plenty of traffic still coursed up and down the Ringstrasse. Every single traffic light stood at red as they approached. Yvonne drummed her fingers on her lap. “Come on, come on!”

  After what seemed an age, they pulled up outside the house. The place was dark.

  Yvonne fumbled with the key and dropped it. Ryan retrieved it and unlocked the door. “If she’s here I haven’t a clue how she got in.” He switched on the hall light and the two of them ran into the kitchen. Yvonne threw the switch and gasped at the sight.

  The basement door stood wide open.

  Ryan and Yvonne grabbed flashlights off the shelf and tiptoed to the entrance. They listened.

  Nothing.

  Ryan led the way, switching on his flashlight. Yvonne did likewise and shadows danced off the walls as their beams illuminated their way down the stairs. They reached the room with the hieroglyphics and the portrait when a muffled sound stopped them.

  “Heidi?” Yvonne called, hardly daring to believe. She shone her flashlight around the room, illuminating dark corners, jumping at the sight of broken chairs, her senses heightened to snapping point.

  Another muffled sound. A cry like a wounded bird. Or a young child. Now Yvonne dared to hope.

  “Can you see her, Ryan?”

  From the other side of the room he called out, “I can’t…wait…over there.” He dashed over to a cupboard, laid his flashlight down and started tugging at the door. Yvonne joined him. The door wasn’t locked but it was stuck tight. Its door creaked and groaned and the sounds from within grew more frantic with every tug.

  Tears streamed down Yvonne’s cheeks. She found strength she never knew she possessed as she pulled and scrabbled at the door, heedless of broken nails and blood streaming down her fingers. “Heidi, we’re coming, baby.”

  “Goddammit!” Ryan gave one almighty tug and the door fell apart, its broken wood shattering.

  Inside, crouched on the floor, white-faced and shaking, Heidi struggled to her feet. Yvonne swept her up in her arms, smothering her with kisses. Ryan enclosed them both in his arms.

  Yvonne recovered herself enough to speak. “How did you get here, darling?”

  Heidi lifted her face from her mother’s neck. “Someone…I don’t know who…brought me here. A strange woman came into me. It wasn’t Paula. This one was much older and she spoke Sekhmet’s language.”

  In the distance, Yvonne could make out a new sound. “Can you hear that?”

  Ryan nodded, tightening his grasp on his family. It grew louder. A rushing wind that hurtled toward them, almost knocking them off their feet. A thumping and thundering like a herd of wildebeest filled the room. Wind whipped their hair and a roar preceded a
white mist that swirled in the wind.

  A figure took shape. Tall, animallike. Rectangular ears protruding from the top of its head. The god Set raised his staff. The wind died instantly. The mist billowed and curled. Stepping out from it, a man.

  Quintillus.

  “You will give her to me.”

  “Never,” Ryan said.

  “You will give her to me or I shall take her anyway. Do not incur the wrath of the god Set or it will be the end of you.”

  “You will not have her.”

  Set raised his staff again. Ryan pushed Yvonne and Heidi away as the weapon crashed down on his back. He staggered and sank to his knees.

  “Ryan! No!” Yvonne shielded Heidi with her own body as the staff came down again. It caught Ryan’s head and he groaned. Yvonne screamed.

  In her arms, Heidi struggled. “I have to go to him, Mum. I have to. He’ll kill you.”

  “Then he’ll have to kill me, because I’m not letting you go.”

  Quintillus’s voice chilled her. “You should listen to your daughter, for she will not be your child for much longer. Then she will belong to me for all time.”

  “She will never be yours while there is breath in my body,” Yvonne said, the words spitting out from behind gritted teeth.

  Set raised his staff again.

  “No!” Yvonne clutched Heidi as tightly as she could, shielding her from the blow she felt sure would follow.

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Ryan cried out as the staff cracked across his head. He collapsed, unconscious. Set roared. Yvonne kept a tight hold on Heidi as she reached out to him.

  “Ryan. Ryan!”

  His eyelids flickered once and then stopped. With relief she saw a pulse throbbing in his neck.

  She turned her tear-streaked face to Quintillus as she continued to shield her daughter. Righteous anger drowned her fear. “What the hell do you want from us? What could we possibly give you?”

  Quintillus’s gray, withered face looked as if at any moment it might disintegrate altogether but when he spoke, his voice was strong, firm, cold.

  “Your daughter has youth and vitality. She has innocence and will provide the perfect vessel for my beloved queen’s return. That’s why she was chosen. The others that came before her proved unfit to host the spirit of my beloved Cleopatra.”

  “I told you. You will not have her. You’ll have to kill me first.”

  “Regrettable, but if I have to, then so be it.”

  Ryan stirred. If only he would come round. Maybe between them they could… What?

  God help me. Help us all.

  Heidi wriggled in Yvonne’s arms. “Mum, let me go. I have to go.”

  Yvonne hugged her tighter. “No. I won’t let you.”

  Set’s roar echoed off the walls, deafening Yvonne. Ryan’s eyes shot open. He struggled to sit upright, holding his head. Momentarily distracted by his movements, Yvonne relaxed her hold over Heidi. It may have only been a fraction but it was enough for the girl to wriggle free. Quintillus grabbed her.

  “No!” Yvonne’s protesting cry became a wail as Set raised his staff once more. He felled her with a blow that sent her sprawling across the floor. Everything stopped.

  * * * *

  From a muffled distance, someone called her name and tugged her arm. Slowly, she returned from a cloudy, enveloping mist. Searing pain scythed through her head. She touched her forehead and pulled her hand away, fresh blood staining the already bloodied fingers.

  “Yvonne. Thank God. I thought I’d lost you.” Ryan held her to him as realization dawned on her.

  “Heidi.”

  “I’m so sorry, love. He’s taken her.”

  Yvonne struggled free. “Where? We’ve got to find her. Bring her back.” She winced as another wave of pain shot through her.

  “I haven’t a clue. I don’t know why, but for some reason I’m sure she has to be somewhere in this house. Down here probably. I came to, but something whacked me over the head again and the next thing I knew, I’m waking up with you laid out beside me. Thank God you’re alive. I really thought they’d killed you.”

  Ryan struggled to his feet, swayed a little, then steadied himself by hanging onto the small cupboard. He held out his hand and Yvonne took it. As she stood, a wave of nausea almost overcame her. She swallowed hard and often, tasting the sickly sweetness of bile as it rose into her mouth.

  Ryan handed her a discarded flashlight. “They’re still working,” he said as he shone the beam around the walls.

  “There has to be another door. If not in here then in the kitchen maybe,” Yvonne said as she swept the room with her beam.

  “I don’t see how there can be. We’ve opened all the doors.”

  “We must have missed something. I’m certain of it. There’s another part of this basement. The area we’ve seen isn’t big enough. There has to be more.”

  “The library. Or our bedroom. Remember the hollow wall?”

  “But there’s no door there.”

  “Then we’ll have to make one.”

  He was right. It didn’t matter about the damage. Their daughter’s life was at stake.

  Yvonne followed Ryan back up to the kitchen where he rummaged in the tall cupboard that held all manner of tools. He pulled out a sledgehammer.

  “This ought to do it.” He handed a smaller hammer to Yvonne. “Come on.”

  He struck the first blow, splintering the elegant wood paneling. Yvonne worked next to him. Every blow she struck, she imagined Quintillus’s head caving in. It gave her additional strength and a feeling of finally being able to do something.

  The panels started to come away. Ryan tugged them, one after the other, throwing them on the floor. An archway that looked as if it should have contained a door opened up in front of them. As soon as they had made a space they could squeeze into, they stopped hammering.

  The musty smell hit them immediately. Ryan shone his flashlight. “Stairs. I knew it. Come on.”

  Yvonne followed right behind him, steadying herself with the handrail. At the bottom, a closed door. It opened with a reluctant creak. The room revealed nothing but a couple more doors, also closed. Ryan tried one, while Yvonne tried the other.

  “Locked,” she said.

  “So’s mine.” Without hesitation, he kicked the door in. Another disappointment.

  “We’ll try your door,” he said.

  Inside, Yvonne spotted something lying on the floor. She went over to it and picked it up.

  “This is Heidi’s,” she said, fingering the hair clip shaped like a blue butterfly. “How did it get here?”

  “Quintillus.”

  “So where is she?” Yvonne’s desperation was reaching fever pitch. “Heidi.”

  An answering cry, so faint she could almost believe she had imagined it. But then it happened again.

  “Oh God, Ryan, that’s her. But where?”

  “It’s coming from inside this room. Heidi!”

  A featherlight touch, no more than a fluttering, grazed Yvonne’s cheek. She swept her flashlight around, but only the wrecked debris reflected back at her.

  “I swear she just touched me,” she whispered. “But she’s not here.”

  A faint glow pulsed at the back of the room. It grew to a steady pulsing light, shining brighter with each flash. Two figures formed in its greenish glow, one distinctively Quintillus. The other, unmistakably Heidi.

  Yvonne dashed forward to grab her. A force pushed her back so hard she fell, bruising her knee. “What have you done to her?”

  Quintillus laid his hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Heidi looked calm, serene even. “She is fulfilling her destiny, to be the host of the greatest queen who ever lived. Cleopatra. We were destined to be together forever. I am a descendant of her husband, the great and gloriou
s Julius Caesar, and she will stay with me. I have no need of you now, and she has no need to sleep beside that traitor Mark Antony who stole her from her rightful path. In death as in life. Caesar’s soul inhabits my body and she will be with me for all eternity.”

  Ryan wrapped his arms around her and Yvonne felt his body tense. He spoke, his voice firm and commanding. All trace of fear removed and replaced by boiling rage. “If you are indeed Caesar reborn, you are a liar. It is on record that Mark Antony was an ally of Julius Caesar. He risked his life for him on many occasions. He and Cleopatra only came together after Caesar was assassinated. Mark Antony was no traitor to him.”

  Quintillus stared at the man who dared to challenge him. “Cleopatra would have remained faithful to me unto and after death if Antony had not seduced her and stolen her from me. Now, all these years later… All these times I have been so close, I have touched her and she has turned to ashes… Now in this child shall her spirit finally be reborn as it was meant to be. Innocent, pure, and mine.”

  “You sully the name of Caesar.”

  “Ryan!” Yvonne tore herself out of his arms. Had he gone mad?

  The light pulsed once more and her daughter and her captor were gone.

  “Heidi!” Yvonne’s cry went unanswered. Ryan put his head in his hands.

  “Dear God, Ryan what have you done?”

  He raised his tear-stained face. “I’m so sorry, Yvonne. Nothing else had worked. I thought if I challenged him… Maybe he’d drop his guard. Maybe I would have a chance to grab her and…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Yvonne’s mind was a teeming mass of conflicting emotions. She wanted to strangle Ryan for angering Quintillus as he had, but she understood it, even admired his courage. But it had got them nowhere. She put her arms around him and they stayed there, wrapped in each other’s despair.

  Finally, Ryan spoke. “We’re not doing any good down here. Let’s go back up. We have to work out what to do next.” He led Yvonne unwillingly upstairs into the kitchen, where he thumped his fist on the table. “Goddammit. What the hell have we done to deserve this?”

  Yvonne shook her head. “The police are no good to us. We can hardly go to them and persuade them to investigate the kidnap of a child by a man who’s been dead for over a century.” She knew she was merely voicing her thoughts aloud and that Ryan probably thought exactly the same way, but she needed to perform a checklist of possible courses of action. Being pragmatic helped her focus. It was better than cracking up.