by Nina Bruhns
Remembering the look on Ray’s face when he said he’d be back for her—God, it sent chills down her spine. She’d just as soon not make it easy for him.
So with a scarf wrapped around her head, big sunglasses covering her face, plenty of water in her backpack and a camera hanging from her neck, she threw in her lot with a group of tourists headed for the Valley of the Kings. After disembarking from the ferry, the tour bus would make a stop at Qurna, the village where the only person she could think of who could possibly help her lived—a boy called Mehmet.
Mehmet was a little con artist whom Gillian had employed as a guide while doing her research. An adolescent of indefinite age and infinite shadiness, he’d nevertheless been a reliable helper and all-around boy Friday to her sister, who had for some obscure reason trusted the creature. Right now Joss had little choice but to trust him, too. At least to the extent of renting a donkey from him. A donkey was by far the most reliable transportation on the west bank. At least for where Joss was headed.
As luck would have it, she found Mehmet hanging around the village, and after an initial hesitation and driving a very hard bargain, he was able to scrounge up a suitable animal for her. Somewhere along the line he must have decided he liked her. Just her luck.
“You are sure you don’t want me to come with you, miss?” he asked. “It is long way. Difficult trail. I show you. It’s better.”
She shook her head. “No thanks, Mehmet. I’m just finishing up a few last details on my drawings of the Temple of Sekhmet. I’m quite familiar with the road there. But thanks anyway.”
The temple was just below the gebel where the tomb was located, and she wasn’t about to tell him where she was really going. And she definitely didn’t want him tagging along so he could learn the truth. He knew all about her archaeological work, so her stated destination made perfect sense.
“I come for free,” he told her earnestly, holding up his hands. “No pay. As favor to your sister, Miss Gillian,” he said, a shadow of some emotion flitting through his eyes. “She very good boss lady. I am sad she went away.”
“Me, too,” Joss said, and politely declined his offer once again. “I’ll have the donkey back by this afternoon. See you then, Mehmet.”
With that, she mounted up and trotted off. She glanced back once at him as the road took a final turn going out of the village. He was still watching her. She gave him a smile and a wave. But he seemed lost in thought and didn’t wave back.
It was a hard ride, and she pressed the donkey for all it was worth. Once away from civilization, she stowed her camera and pulled an old long-sleeved, full-length gelebeya from her backpack, which she put on over her clothes, along with a big native head scarf to hide her blond hair and fair complexion. When the few cars that appeared on the road passed her, she averted her face so no one would recognize her or suspect she was a foreigner.
Paranoid? Maybe.
She really wished she could have brought the shotgun, too, but it wouldn’t fit in her backpack without sticking out like a sore thumb. Tough to explain to the tour guides and the scores of security guards posted around all the ancient monuments these days, thanks to the constant threat of terrorism.
When she reached the ruins of the Temple of Sekhmet, she dismounted to have a rest and cut the dust with a drink. Cracking open a bottle of water, she first respectfully poured a few drops onto the ground in libation, then drank thirstily.
Looking around the site of so many happy hours spent over the summer having picnic lunches with Gemma and Gillian, her heart ached. She missed them so much!
The three sisters had been apart far too much over the past several years, and it had been tough on all of them.
Gemma was a cultural anthropologist, a specialist in traditional Nubian stories and lore, and she had a new teaching position at Duke University in North Carolina. Gillian was an historian doing doctoral studies in Oxford, England. Joss herself worked for the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and had been living in Canada for five years. So many miles away from each other. It seemed the only time the three of them ever saw one another anymore was during the summers when they were all doing their fieldwork in Egypt.
Egypt. The country where the three sisters had practically grown up traveling with their Egyptologist father, Trevor Haliday. Their dad had become obsessed with the place, pursuing his dark demons after their mother disappeared not far from that very spot two decades ago, never to be seen again. So the four of them, father and daughters, had returned here season after season, searching for her year after year. One day Dad had simply walked into the endless sands of the country he’d loved, to be forever with the woman he’d loved too much to get over the loss of her.
It was a dual tragedy that had torn the sisters’ lives apart. But it had also brought them closer, knowing that all they had left in the world was their love for each other.
People often asked how they could bear to come back to the unforgiving country that had robbed them of both parents. But the answer was simple.
All three of them loved Egypt with a passion that flowed in their blood like the waters of the Nile. Despite the glaring cultural differences, the very real dangers and the personal heartaches it reminded them of, more than anywhere else in the world, Egypt felt like home.
Josslyn sighed and rested her back against the sandstone blocks of the temple wall, letting her gaze meander over the stark, rugged desert landscape that she, despite everything, loved more than anywhere else in the world. To the east, in the distance shimmered the graceful muddy curve of the Nile River, banked by a narrow parallel band of lush green fields. The vivid green ended abruptly in the harsh browns and blacks of the west-bank landscape. The rough dirt track that she had ridden up from Qurna cut its shallow twin ruts, hugging the edge of the fields. From there, the land began a gradual upward slope for about three-quarters of a mile, where it was blocked to the west by the rugged, towering sandstone cliffs of the gebel. The gebel marked the western border of the Nile valley, the distinct limits of civilization—ancient and modern—the universally recognized line beyond which anyone who valued their life dared not venture.
It was there, hidden deep in the forbidding shadows of the gebel, that the realm of the dead, the tombs of the ancients, lay. Including the tomb Josslyn fervently hoped would contain something, anything, to help solve the riddle of her sisters’ disappearance.
Why had they been taken?
Of all the tens of thousands of visitors to this vast country, why them?
Had the Haliday family not sacrificed enough to this land of savage beauty and stark enigma for one lifetime?
Enough was enough. This was one battle Joss intended to win.
Rousing herself, she shook off her weltschmerz and remounted, urging the donkey as far up the ever-steepening gebel trail as it could go. She recognized at once the place where she remembered seeing the mysterious man carrying off Gillian’s unconscious body. Tying the donkey securely to a small boulder, she proceeded on foot.
Just before she reached the base of the crenulated, vertical cliffs, she spotted the well-hidden tomb entrance. Nearly invisible to the untrained eye, it was a mere fingernail of black shadow sandwiched between the pink-and-beige-striped pillars of rock, looking much like the eye of a needle.
She paused to listen for a long moment before taking the last few steps up to it—for the sound of voices, the scrape of a footstep or the slide of a weapon being drawn.
But all she heard was the whistling of the wind through the sandstone formations and the far-off call of a hawk.
Nevertheless, her heartbeat kicked up.
She sensed something…a swirl of the unknown, the thick brush of some mysterious force. Her mother, a child of the sixties, had believed the earth held spirits you could hear and feel, if you only tried hard enough.
She smiled at the memory. Joss didn’t believe in spirits any more than she believed in vampires. But hell, after last night…well, she was just freaked out enou
gh that the hairs stood up on her arms at the prospect of what the ancient hills might be secreting in their hidden depths.
Suddenly, she heard a noise above her. Gravel falling.
Ohgod! Was someone there?
She froze. And nearly jumped out of her skin when a long, black shadow appeared on the ground beside her.
A scream leapt to her throat as the shadow’s owner stepped out from behind a huge rock.
A scream that burst out as choked laughter.
“Omigod!”
It was only a cat.
Joss let out a rush of relief, half curse and half laugh. “Good grief!” she scolded it when her heartbeat had slowed to less than supersonic speed. “You scared the bejezus out of me!”
It was a pretty animal, clean and obviously well cared for, with an unusual copper-red coat and luminous green eyes. It looked kind of like the one she’d seen walking down the hall last night at the hotel. A lot like it, in fact. Except this cat had a round, flat, purple amulet suspended on a ribbon around its neck.
“What are you doing way up here?” Josslyn asked it, feeling a bit silly talking to a cat but feeling the need to hear a human voice, even if it was her own. “Where’s your home?”
It didn’t answer, of course, but it sat down in the tomb opening and stared at Joss, tail curling delicately behind it. As though it wanted to block her path.
Ri-iight.
Taking out her flashlight and the bootknife she always carried when doing fieldwork, she climbed the last few feet to the needle’s eye.
“Sorry, kitty. I need to get past you.”
Gently shooing the beast aside, she slid through the tall, narrow opening. After a moment’s pause to let her eyes adjust to the near darkness, she flicked on the flashlight and aimed the beam around her.
Sure enough, she found herself in the typical rectangular antechamber of a tomb, a room about the size of an average home’s entry foyer, carved directly into the sandstone cliff. The only decoration was a crosshatch of fake lines carefully carved into the walls, designed to make it look like fitted blocks rather than bare rock. There were no paintings and no hieroglyphic inscriptions. And no Lord Rhys Kilpatrick grave marker, either.
Damn. Could this be the wrong tomb, after all?
Murmuring a curse under her breath, she examined the walls more closely—and found something that made her gasp in astonishment.
A narrow slot had been cleverly carved between two of the faux blocks; deep in the tiny crevice was a hidden trip-latch. Unbelievable! Anyone who had not grown up trekking through tombs and temples with an Egyptologist father would never have recognized the concealed mechanism. Only during the Ptolemaic period did such devices exist, extremely rarely, and to her knowledge only in the temples. But she knew at once what it was.
Good Lord. A secret door!
The cupboard-sized passage would lead to the inside of the tomb proper—a much larger chamber, possibly more than one. It would have originally been carved and painted with intricate murals, and, like King Tut’s tomb, filled to the rafters with incredible treasures—gold, jewels, statues, amphorae and a thousand other things designed to be used by the deceased in the afterlife. Normally those treasures would be long gone, plundered in ancient times. But…
In a flash, the possibilities raced through Joss’s mind.
Had Gillian found this secret opening? Had she crawled through it? If so, what had she found inside? Ancient gold? A present-day antiquity smuggler’s cache? Or perhaps even a gun-filled terrorist hideout?
A chill worked its way through Joss’s whole body. Any one of those reasons could be why Gillian was taken.
Grasping her knife in her fingers, she started to insert the blade in the crack, probing for the trip latch.
“I wouldn’t do that,” a soft, feminine voice said behind her.
With a startled exclamation, she whirled, whipping her flashlight around. A woman was standing just inside the tomb entrance. Several inches shorter than Joss, she wore a beautiful flowing gown of dragonfly green that flattered her pale complexion and her riot of rich red hair. Hair the exact same color as the cat outside, Joss noted.
The woman looked a little like Gemma. Except for her eyes. The soul that shone through them seemed as old and wise as the ages, where Gemma’s were young and guileless.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Joss asked, and she noticed with a flash of unease that the woman also wore a flat purple amulet around her neck.
The woman smiled. “My name is Nephtys. And I’ve come to help you.”
Chapter 5
Khepesh Palace had been built completely under the ground, where the taint of the Sun God never touched it. Even with the never-changing dark, most of the followers of Set-Sutekh, the Supreme Lord of Darkness, spent their waking hours during the true nighttime and took their rest during the worst heat of the day above. Some of the immortals, such as Seth’s best friend, Lord Rhys, still enjoyed the daylight and kept homes aboveground in addition to their suites in the underground palace, coming and going as the whim struck, living comfortably in both worlds.
But as Khepesh’s immortal leader and high priest, Seth-Aziz rarely left the palace these days, and his duties were nearly all performed in the deepest hours of the night.
But Seth liked the nighttime; he relished the peace and tranquility of the dark. It had nothing to do with the myth that a vampire is burned by the sun—Haru-Re’s enthusiastic service to the Sun God, Re-Horakhti, soundly disproved that old wives’ tale. Seth simply preferred the darkness to the light. It was easier to think, easier to see what was important, easier to lose oneself in one’s solitude, in a cocoon devoid of the harsh light of illumination.
Occasionally during his long existence Seth had questioned his choice to serve the Dark Lord. Not because of the usual reason he’d been confronted with by others over the years—the grave misconception that Darkness equaled Evil, and that those who served its god must therefore also be evil. That was not true. He knew it to the core of his being. Good and bad did not reside in the absence or presence of light. Good and bad resided in the behavior of human beings, in the thoughts and actions of mortals and immortals, regardless of the god they served.
No, rather, Seth had questioned his choice to serve at all.
At the time of his youth, following in his father’s footsteps to become a priest in the powerful per netjer, or temple, of Set-Sutekh the ruling deity of much of Upper Egypt under the early pharaohs, it had felt more like his destiny than choice. Especially when Seth had subsequently been anointed as High Priest of the per netjer. Admittedly, as a young man he’d been blinded by the awesome magic of immortality when it had been offered to him and his followers…even given the high personal price he must pay. Becoming a vampire had seemed a small sacrifice to gain such immense preternatural powers.
The early days had been rough. Learning to control the unnatural cravings, and master the power, so neither controlled nor mastered him, had not been easy. Other high priests had not fared so well in matters of conscience, the natural greed and cruelty of many of the immortal vampires coming out in ways that ended up toppling pharaohs from the throne, and plunging the entire country into many centuries of chaos and hardship.
But Set-Sutekh was the God of Chaos, so his per netjer, with Seth as its leader, thrived and gained more and more power and influence from one end of the Nile to the other. It wasn’t until Seth truly opened his eyes and saw what the constant war and strife was doing to the mortals, the common people of Egypt, that he started to question what was happening. And his role in it.
He’d retreated to his underground palace and contemplated putting an end to it all. How could you go on living with such misery all around, and know yourself to be one of the primary causes? In his deepest depression, he’d written a long poem about a conversation between a man weary of life, and his soul, or ba, entreating it to just let him die. Ultimately, his ba had won his personal de bate, and Seth had not taken his l
ife. He had, however, resolved to withdraw forever from the affairs of mortals, and to stop the deadly strife between his per netjer and all the others.
It had worked, too. In every case except one.
Petru.
Haru-Re still insisted on seizing control of all the mortal realm for his god, Re-Horakhti. Ray would not rest until Seth and Khepesh were conquered, relegated to the anonymous sands of time, as he had all the other thousands of temples of the ancient gods of Egypt.
The final battle was coming. And it was coming soon.
Lately, worry and unease had kept Seth awake for most days, as well as nights. Today he awoke even earlier than usual, and with a pounding headache.
The hunger was also growing worse every passing day, bringing with it a multitude of physical miseries along with the psychological ones.
“My lord Seth-Aziz!”
Seth gave a silent groan. Or perhaps it was just the pounding on his chamber door that echoed painfully through his skull. Did the bad news never cease?
He slid from his bed, grasping the edge of the mattress with his fingers to steady the dizziness. “Come!” he called, reaching for his robe when the lightheadedness passed. The grogginess was getting harder to shake off.
The entry door to his suite glided open. “Sorry to disturb you, my lord. But you are needed at the Great Western Gate.”
Immediately, alarm shot through Seth. The Great Western Gate was the main entrance to Khepesh, placed at the end of a deep, meandering underground tunnel that led down from a hidden magical portal in the cliffs of the Western Desert. “What’s happened? Is it Haru-Re?”
Had the last salvo in their endless war for supremacy finally begun, now that the enemy possessed the final weapon needed for victory? Had Nephtys given in to the bastard…?
“No, my lord,” the messenger answered, shifting on his feet. “There’s a, um, bit of a disturbance. The guards are…not sure what to do about it.”
