12.21.12: The Vessel (The Altunai Annals)

by Killian McRae

  He was going to die, so that she might live.

  Chapter 29

  Seated at the back of the hookah lounge, Victoria turned the amulet in one hand, and held the pipe connected to the bubbling pot in the other. The whispers had been getting steadily louder through the day, though the message remained the same. This particular hookah lounge had been known to offer an old world blend that was strictly off menu. Her hope that the intoxicated smoke might push some of the chatter from her brain proved false. Just as with alcohol, her body remained unaffected. Still, the taste wasn’t bad.

  Alex had kept silent the last two hours. As sleepless as he was, the wear on his body was taking its toll. His chin rested on his balled up fist while his elbow pitched on the table. As his eyelids grew heavy—a few times he had nodded off only to snap up with a start—his willingness to hold down any conversation had diminished.

  “Ankh Tawy,” Shep said out of the blue.

  “Huh?”

  “Ankh Tawy,” Shep repeated, pointing at the amulet. “When you were rambling off whatever you were hearing from that thing, you mentioned Ankh Tawy.”

  “And this is important why?”

  Shep leaned forward with a smile. “Ankh Tawy was one of the names given to Memphis. It means, ‘the place which binds two lands.’ In the Egyptology community, we always explained that as the meeting of Upper and Lower Egypt. I guess that’s not what it refers to after all.”

  Victoria had to admit to herself that she was really starting to like Sheppard Smyth. Most humans’ heads would have exploded long ago from the influx of earth-shattering revelations the likes of which the last week had given him. Not Shep. He took every little insight and development with an open mind and a tempered spirit. She had always respected him professionally, even if from afar. Still, she had spent many years hating him when he, in her opinion, had stolen Christine away. Old habits died hard.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Shep said.

  Her eyes narrowed as a glint of smile danced over his face. “I don’t answer the Jesus question.”

  “The Jesus question?” he echoed.

  “Yeah, you know … Was he real? Did you meet him? Was he really divine? I don’t talk about it.”

  “Well, between you and Dmitri that makes two of you. No, I don’t care about ‘the Jesus question’. What I want to ask is, what was Christine’s role in all this?”

  Taking a deep breath, Victoria debated internally, but concluded that there was no point in holding back. He knew almost everything else anyhow.

  “A few years ago, I read a small mention in Archaeology of the discovery you made in Ethiopia. Of course I knew your theory was spot-on, and I knew the evidence you found was genuine. It was about me, after all. I also knew that if you got the community at large to accept it, Dmitri would see you as a threat to exposing our existence. He’s lashed out before, you see. Tutankhamen’s tomb contained a piece that referred to the Altunai. Nothing definitive, but something that may have been helpful to anyone who knew what to look for. You recall what became of Howard Carter and the rest of his party, right?”

  Every key member of Carter’s legendary party—who’d been present when Tut’s tomb had been opened—was dead within a few years in highly suspicious ways. Except for Anathea Hermapolous, but that part of the story had obviously proved to be a clever fabrication. The superstitious delighted in blaming it on the curse placed on burial sites by the ancient priests.

  As he nodded, she continued, “I couldn’t risk exposing myself either. Christine and Alex’s family have been members of The Order for centuries, and I have known their ancestors even before The Order was formally founded.”

  “Why is this news to me?” Alex asked through a yawn.

  “Christine didn’t know, or I’m sure she would have told you. Your parents hadn’t brought you in on the family’s secret membership in a clandestine society before they died either. If you go back far enough in anyone’s family tree, you’re bound to discover some secrets in its branches. So you’re descended from a famous bloodline; it isn’t that unique.”

  “No, not at all.” Shep’s sarcastic tone made her smile. “Personally, I like to think my ancestors ruled the world, you know? Instead, when I looked into it a while ago, all I found out is that one of my uncles was a bank robber.”

  Victoria choked the smoke from the pipe. If he only knew ... “Yes, well, I asked Christine to become a member of your research team. She was supposed to dissuade you from pursuing proof. Three months into the assignment, however, she called me to tell me that she’d fallen in love. She wanted to leave The Order and start a life with you. I warned her that she was putting herself at risk, but I left it up to her. I tried everything to get her back, if for no other reason than her own protection. In the end, we compromised.”

  Stirred into interest, Alex leaned forward. Shep, too, scooted closer.

  “What kind of compromise?” the professor asked.

  “To try to protect her, to give both her and you a fighting chance if Dmitri ever made you targets, I bonded her.”

  Alex coughed. “My sister was a proxy?”

  Victoria nodded. “By definition, though all her work for me happened before the bond. I was trying to protect her the only way I could.” Her gaze softened and fell upon Shep. “Shep, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I doubted her when she told me she loved you. I looked into her thoughts, hoping to find some rationalization for her actions, some covert reason she was making an excuse to leave my service.”

  His breath grew shallow. “And?”

  Slowly, Victoria’s head swayed back and forth. “I found nothing, because with you, she was beyond thought. She wholly, completely, and utterly loved you.”

  “And you swear you were only trying to protect her?” Shep asked. “You said she died in my place, what did you mean by that?”

  She put down the pipe and flexed her fingers back, cracking each knuckle in turn. “The tomb you were excavating, it wasn’t just any tomb.”

  Shep knew that much. For one, it wasn’t near other tombs. In fact, when he’d first excavated the site, he’d supposed it was a temple. Furthermore, the site definitely had been originally completed after Octavian’s conquest. A titular on what would have been the outmost wall of the structure bore the seal of Augustus, a name the first emperor of Rome adopted only after he’d taken over Egypt.

  “I know it was made for someone who died around the same time as Cleopatra. I suspected it might have belonged to Caesarian, Cleopatra’s oldest child and son of Julius Caesar. It definitely belonged to a member of the royal family, but not anyone who died with any great manner of wealth or prestige. I was hoping to find evidence, but … Well, as you know, I abandoned the site before I could find any proof.”

  Shep’s eyes went wide when he remembered that the person seated across from him had been intimately acquainted with Ptolemaic Alexandria. “Do you know whose tomb it was?” he asked.

  Every outer demonstration of confidence fled Victoria’s face. Her cheeks stained red through her olive skin as she turned her gaze to the distance. “I do.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s the reason Dmitri came to kill you, Shep. You got too close to finding proof.”

  At first, his face clouded with confusion. Then, as though a gust of wind cleared it, she saw his eyes go wide and his jaw drop. “That was Cleopatra’s tomb.”

  “Bingo.” Victoria took up the pipe and inhaled the fragrant smoke, delighted with the way it burned her throat even if it didn’t relax her mind. “Octavian allowed us to build a small memorial to hold her and Marc Antony. The tomb was later sacked and most of it destroyed when Christianity took root in the city and the zealots went on a rampage against what they saw as heathen gods, and they knew that the last queen of Egypt thought of herself as Isis inca
rnate. You see, although I took ownership of my status as a goddess, I never ‘corrected’ what the Egyptians adopted as part of their religion, no matter what Dmitri thinks. I don’t know what became of their bodies. After Cleo died, I was too busy protecting the living Ptolemys to worry about the dead ones. I was able to convince Dmitri that you knew nothing that would give away anything.”

  Alex, of course, brought up the last possible question she’d want to answer at the moment. “Are there still any Ptolemy?”

  Instinctively, her eyes fell on Shep. “A few.”

  Luckily, Shep didn’t notice. Instead, his mind raced in a different direction. “Were you thinking of killing me in Mexico?”

  “When I almost kissed you?” she asked. He nodded. “No, Shep. I was just trying to sate your curiosity. One of The Order, Katherine, tried to contact you to canoodle you into ‘giving a guest lecture’ in England, but she said she only got your answering machine. You must have just left for the airport on your way to Mexico. I’ve been planning to keep you close leading up to the gate opening since Christine died. When Hector told me you were coming, I decided to plant the command in your brain to make your way back to the place you knew as Anathea’s house. But I also thought you’d be a lot more likely to chase me across the world if it might get you laid.”

  His tea became a splash zone on the table top. Shep spluttered, trying to clear his lungs. “I’m not ...” Cough. “I didn’t … wasn’t going to …” Hack, hack.

  She guffawed as she whacked his back. “Don’t kid yourself, you wanted to lay me flat the second you saw me in the terminal.”

  Alex’s snore rose up from the table, giving them an excuse to steer away from the subject and making both of them smile. He’d managed to drift off again. Victoria tried to shift his hands to support his head, giving him a pillow of arms.

  “Poor baby. I don’t know how he’s stayed awake this long. The Altunai blood he has now means he won’t need too much sleep, but even still …”

  “So you don’t sleep either?” Shep asked. When her expression showed surprise, Shep continued, “It came up with Dmitri. I asked if he ever slept, and he said only for recreation.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “If you count nodding off after sex as recreation, then yes, I think that’s the only time he sleeps. As for me, I need an hour or two each day.”

  Shep pulled the last drops of tea from his tulip-shaped glass. “Yeah, I usually get by on three or four myself. Now I guess I know one of the reasons Christine and I worked so well; she only slept a few hours a day, too. We used to joke it was like we were made for each other.”

  The curious way Victoria looked at him put him off kilter.

  “What?”

  “Do you realize in all the time we’ve spent together, that’s the first time you said her name with a smile?” Her eyes cast up to the window, and to a column of dust-swirled light that beamed in its angle against the ceiling. “Almost time now. We should go.”

  Shep rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the ache. “This gate thing, what’s going to happen? Without Dmitri, will the gate open?”

  “No, and that’s the reason for my little display in London,” she answered. “I’m hoping he’s pissed off at me for rejecting him and so mad with rage that he’ll stay away out of spite. If it does open, I’ll reverse its polarity and seal it closed again. Or at least, I will if my theory proves true.”

  “And you’ll use Cleopatra’s blood as the Vessel?”

  She looked at him askew.

  “Yes, in so many words.”

  The cryptic answer was left hanging as Victoria turned to Alex and gave him a shove. His head fell off the table as his overly jade eyes snapped open. “Wakey, wakey, Mr. Cezanne. The world’s about to end, don’t you know?”

  “Already?” He yawned and stretched. “Okay, let me just pay the—”

  She stopped his words with two of her fingers over his mouth. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Her life had been a patchwork of high-stakes drama and non-sequitur calm. She had never supposed the latter would see out the tail end of this day. As she drew a few Egyptian bills from her pocket, she reflected that the afternoon had passed in perhaps the best possible manner. It was hopelessly and utterly human.

  Chapter 30

  As night fell, Dmitri’s footsteps carried him to where his temple had once stood. More than one pharaoh had remade the site to beget his own legacy long after the Altunai had left. Preserving it through the centuries had been no simple task, but a necessary one. Luckily, no matter in to whose hands Egypt fell, money always spoke the native tongue.

  As he sighted the ruins outside Memphis, Dmitri heard the amulet’s call. He halted, his mind opening up, searching the surroundings for other’s thoughts. He found only the distinct voices of Shep and Alexander Cezzane. As always, Tlalli kept herself hidden from him, but he concentrated on the chatter of the two men, and using his ability as proximity to Tlalli allowed, he ported. Dmitri reformed behind the remnants of an ancient pillar. In his mind’s eye, he could see it as it looked in the past … gleaming white and brilliant in the sunlight, holding the overhang of the roof that rose above it. In the present, he looked some twenty feet away and saw Shep, Alex, and Victoria seated on the ground, looking like they were waiting for the bus.

  “How long are we waiting here?” Alex asked, kicking around bits of sand with his feet.

  “Until we’re certain they are not coming,” Tlalli answered. He could hear more than a bit of annoyance in her voice, and wondered how long they had been sitting before the gate already.

  “Is this the only time the gate is able to open?” Shep asked. “I mean, yeah, this is the night they were planning to return, but if it doesn’t open, then what? Do they just give up?”

  So she had decided to be a martyr, and hadn’t told her lovers of her plan. He couldn’t allow it, not when he knew it was within his power to stop. Stepping out from his hiding place, Dmitri made his presence known. “Tlalli, don’t do this.”

  All three of them scrambled to their feet, Shep and Alex taking a step back, and Tlalli boldly stepping forward.

  “It’s my decision to make!” she insisted. “If I can stop this, I must.”

  He dithered, putting his hands up in the international sign of “no harm intended”. Dmitri turned to the men with wide eyes and pounding hearts, who all but cowered in his presence. It was then that the truth hit him. If he were in their positions, and the woman he loved had suddenly came face-to-face with her biggest threat, he wouldn’t hesitate to put his own body between Tlalli and the source of danger. And he most certainly would not be standing in league with the man threatening to claim her heart.

  Feeling as though he were suddenly buoyant, Dmitri broke into a laugh. “You lied!” he sung out. He took a few more steps in her direction, but she threw her hands up, demanding distance. Unable to contain himself, he rolled up on his toes and clapped. “You don’t love them, and you’ve never slept with them. You were just trying to piss me off, hoping I’d more than happily stay away and let you die, weren’t you?”

  “Silence, you alien fool!” she shouted. In one hand, she clutched the amulet, petting the stone which had already started to glow. Tears pricked the corner of her eyes, confirming what he already suspected. “Leave! Go!”

  Dmitri turned his attention to Shep and Alex, who he noticed for the first time held a statuette of Cleopatra in his hands. “Perhaps you gentlemen can assist me. It seems my wife is under the misguided notion that her death will somehow save humanity.”

  All terror fled Alex, replaced with concern. “Vick, what is he talking about?”

  “Nothing!” she insisted. “Remember, he’s one of them. He’s trying to trick you.”

  Dmitri ignored her. “The High Council is not a fan of loose ends. We designed the
system with a failsafe. If the gate does not open before the sun rises on the appointed day, the Vessel dies.”

  Shep and Alex both rounded on her. “What?”

  “It’s my sacrifice to make!” Victoria insisted. “If we open the gate, the Altunai will kill everyone. Better one should die than billions.”

  “Wait,” Shep said. He turned his gaze to Dmitri, and the Guardian felt an ounce of victory at having won over the professor. “Why are they going to kill us?”

  “Don’t you understand?” Victoria shouted out. “How does Dmitri feed? How do I feed? What do you think the Altunai have planned for this so-called colony of humanity?”

  Dmitri watched as understanding turned the faces of the two men green. Alex even doubled over, as though the news had walloped him in the stomach.

  Shep collapsed against the nearest pillar. “You mean … we’re cattle?”

  “Yes!” Tlalli confirmed. “They use the Vessel, i.e. me, as a record. They’ll look at all of my memories to see what conditions humanity has gone through that might taint it. Any deemed not fit for consumption will be annihilated. Everyone else will be consumed over time. But if the gate doesn’t open, only I will die.”

  “If the gate doesn’t open tonight, they’ll simply build a new gate,” Dmitri corrected. “Unless there’s been any developments while I’ve been away, they can have it ready in a month of Altunai time. At most, you’d buy humanity a few hundred years. Please, love. Isis favors me. If I talk with her, maybe I can convince her that this crop has failed.”

  Tlalli glared at him like he’d just won the village idiot’s equivalent of the Miss Universe pageant. “Isis thinks you love her. The moment she looks in my memories and sees our history, any sway you have over her is gone. A woman scorned and such, Guardian.”