Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2)

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Halima put her arm around Ella. Her hand brushed the tattoo on the inside of Ella’s arm reminding Ella that it was there. “I will go,” she said, her voice full of emotion. “But I will be with you, too.”

  The plan was simple. If she had learned anything from Rowan while they were fighting for their lives in Heidelberg it was to keep the plan as uncomplicated as possible. The fewer pieces to manage were fewer pieces to fail or go wrong. Ella had watched Horus long enough to know his one great weakness was his vanity. She knew she would have to emotionally disarm him—even if just for a moment—in order to get the best of him and that wouldn’t be done by showing him fear as all his other victims had done. No, Horus saw himself as an attractive man, a man irresistible to women—even though he usually forced himself on them. Ella ground up the pills that Halima had given her and made a thin paste with them. She didn’t need to kill him. She just needed to make sure that he fell solidly to sleep and stayed that way for several hours. That evening, when Halima brought her dinner to her, Ella liberally coated the roast chicken and the chickpeas with the thick paste.

  “He won’t eat it,” Halima said, frowning as Ella prepared the dish.

  “Yes, he will,” Ella said. “Because I am going to seduce him into it.”

  “Seduce him?”

  “I’ve seen it before, Halima,” Ella said. “Men like Horus become malleable when you flatter them. No one flatters Horus because they fear him.”

  “With good reason.”

  “Yes, of course, but it means he is vulnerable to a woman’s praise. He’s a man, Halima. Trust me, if he has balls, he will fall for this. There is nothing more alluring for a man than a woman who wants him. I’m thinking even more than rape. And since he’s done the one many times and likely the other never, he is primed.”

  “I pray you are right.”

  When Ella sprinkled a healthy dose of the crushed pills into a goblet of wine, Halima shook her head. “Horus is Muslim,” she said. “He will not drink the wine.”

  “Horus is nothing, Halima,” Ella said. “He’ll drink it.” Then Ella turned to Halima and took her hands in her own. “It’s time,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I will never forget you. I want you to know that.”

  “Nor me you, dearest one.”

  They embraced. “I love you, Halima,” Ella said, biting back her tears. She pulled back. “Go, now,” she said.

  With one tearful look over her shoulder, Halima ran from the room and slipped out the door. Ella watched her go, her heart heavy in her breast knowing she would never see her again, but she was relieved, too, because Horus and Zimmerman could not reach Halima now.

  Ella knew exactly how long she would have to wait. Typically, after Halima delivered the evening meal, she would leave and then return to take the tray and ready Ella for bed. Ella gauged that would be in another hour. Ella would wait and then go out into the hall as if looking for Halima. She hated to cut any time off her friend’s head start but leaving the room was the single thing that would trigger Horus to come to her. She couldn’t wait for him to pick the time. That much she knew. She would force his hand and it would be on her time line.

  Suddenly, there was a light knock on her door. Frowning, Ella went to the door and stood in front of it, listening. She thought she could hear breathing. Was it Horus? He wasn’t really the door knocking type. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door. Harald Zimmerman stood waiting, a smile on his thin lips.

  “Gute Nacht, mein Liebling,” the doctor said, gently pushing past Ella and entering the room.

  Surprised and unsure, Ella followed him to the table where her uneaten dinner sat next to her wine goblet.

  “I see you have not eaten your dinner tonight,” he said easily, leaning back in the chair and lighting a cigarette. “I also see that you have your wits about you. I must have a word with Halima about that.”

  She had forgotten to act muddled! And now he was watching her with a careful scrutiny. Was it too late to pretend to be drugged? She glanced around the room as if attempting to gather her thoughts.

  “Perhaps it is just as well,” the Herr Doctor said, dragging heavily on his cigarette.

  Ella seated herself at the table, cursing herself for being thrown by the change of events. Did he know that Halima was gone? Where is Horus? Why is he here?

  “We have a little trouble, you and I,” he said, eyeing her critically. “I have, I think, a very good answer for how to resolve it but only tonight will reveal if that is true.”

  Ella forced herself not to speak. Although he clearly thought she was no longer drugged, she needed to allow some room for doubt depending on what she might need to do.

  “Your new master is coming for you,” he said. “He is very eager to meet you and to enjoy the, shall we say, fleshly pleasures of his new possession? As soon as possible. Can you guess what impedes him in his desire?”

  Ella kept her face impassive.

  “Now, I am not a surgeon,” he said, grinding out his cigarette in her dinner plate, putting an end to any thoughts Ella had about offering him a bite, “but I do know a few ways in which we might induce labor.” He waved to Ella’s stomach. “You are ready for an end to this, too, ja?”

  Holy crap. He’s going to try to rape me, she thought. The good doctor is a disgusting perv after all.

  “I’m going to try my way, liebling,” he said, standing and unbuttoning his vest. “I’m going to ride you hard and if, together, we are successful, there will be no need for Horus to try his methods. I assure you, my way will be much more pleasant. You understand me, I think?”

  Ella nodded.

  “Very good. Very good. Now, take your clothes off, my dear. That’s a good girl.”

  Ella’s hands shook as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse.

  Think, Ella. Think!

  She carefully peeled down her long, thickly embroidered tunic to her waist. She knew he was watching her and she was very aware of how vulnerable she must look. Her breasts, large even when she wasn’t pregnant, were heavy and full. The chill of the evening air made her nipples stand up. As she began to push the tunic down over her large stomach and hips, she looked desperately around the room for some idea of how to foil the doctor’s plans. Heavy breathing from his direction made her glance at him and she saw that he was indeed watching her and massaging the front of his trousers in an attempt to ready himself for her. She felt a wave of nausea as she saw him standing there, his tongue flicking out of his mouth like a lizard fixated on its prey.

  She was the prey.

  Turning away, her eyes went to the poisoned plate of dinner with the cigarette stubbed out in it, and the goblet of wine next to it.

  “Are you ready, my dear?” The doctor croaked, his voice agitated and thick as he rubbed himself.

  Her gaze continued on to the bed, the curtains, and the ornately carved side table with the little pot of scented unguent that Halima had applied to Ella’s healing tattoo. It was a pretty china dish with hand-painted roses on the lid.

  Full of deadly poison.

  “Nearly,” she said as she walked naked to the bed. She could hear him moving toward her as she reached the pot. She flicked off the lid, and plunged a finger inside just as she felt his hand wrap around her arm and jerk her away from the bed. She stumbled against him as he lifted her off her feet. Surprised at his strength, she allowed him to settle her on his lap facing him, her legs on either side and her large belly between them.

  “I am ready now, my sweet,” he said, bringing his face menacingly close to hers.

  Pushing back, Ella grabbed both her breasts as if to offer them up to him. “How about a little appetizer, herr doctor?” she asked in her best coquettish affect. She was sure he would hear the tremor in her voice and see through her pathetic attempt to play the seductress.

  But he didn’t.

  Without a word, he bent his head and began to hungrily suckle her swollen breasts. His lips were large and flacci
d and the pain of having her breasts sucked so roughly made her gasp.

  Squeezing her eyes shut against the sensation of what he is doing to her, she tried to imagine it was an elbow or a kneecap his mouth was latched onto—not her overly-sensitive breasts. She looked over his shoulder at the sunset out the window and tried to separate herself from what he was doing, his tongue noisily lapping and sucking her aureoles.

  And she prayed. She prayed to God and anyone else who would listen that she had gotten enough of the salve onto her breasts in the split second before the doctor had fallen upon her. She felt her lunch inch its way up her throat and prayed, too, that she wouldn’t vomit on him before the poison had a chance to work. And just when she was sure she had failed and was on the verge of gouging his eyes out with her bare fingers, without warning he dropped his hands from her hips and his head lolled heavily against her chest.

  She pushed against him in order to jump from his lap and he landed with a thud on his side, taking the heavy chair with him. She stood next to him, her knees quivering and threatening to give out altogether, and stared him. He groaned loudly from where he lay on the carpet. Carefully, with trembling fingers, she knelt by his twitching body and slipped his knife from his waist sheath, then rocked back on her heels, breathless at what she had done.

  Had he ingested enough to disable him long enough for her to escape? She twisted around to look at the little china tub of poison and then back at her attacker, convulsing quietly on the floor.

  As she sat there, trembling and trying to steady herself, she knew that she had to gamble on the side of certainty. She had to give him enough to kill him because she couldn’t take the chance that she would give him too little. She stood and walked to the bed where she pulled on her robe and reached for the salve. Forgive me, she thought as she walked back to where he lay on the carpet.

  It’s you or Tater.

  She scooped two fingers into the unguent, knelt by the doctor and spread the goo over his nose. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be fighting hard for breath. As she watched him die, she wiped her fingers on his shirt and then struggled to her feet. When she placed her hand on her abdomen, she felt the baby kick hard.

  Time to go.

  Because of the doctor’s visit, Ella knew that there was a good chance that Horus might not be loitering outside her door as he normally did. She prayed she was right. She pulled on her silk tunic and slippers and hid the doctor’s knife up her sleeve, her glance falling briefly on the tattoo on her arm as she did. The faint lines, spelling out the words for her phonetically by Halima, danced up her arm in a marching army of pictures and letters from her wrist to her elbow. Halima had made her promise never to read the words out loud unless it was a matter of life or death.

  Ever.

  Ella’s original plan had called for Halima to leave a horse for her by the eastern gate—but the plan had also called for Horus to be dead or disabled by this time, too. When Ella slipped into the hallway outside her room, she was relieved to see that the hallway was vacant. Candle sconces lit the hallway and cast eerie, moving shadows along her path. As heavy as she was, she moved silently and swiftly to the spiral stone stairs in the western tower that would lead her to the gardens and then beyond to the outer gate where the horse awaited her.

  She didn’t know where Horus went when he wasn’t standing guard outside her room. She knew he never went far. When she reached the stairs, she stood for a moment, trying to hear over the pounding of her heart and her labored breathing. She heard a few voices of servants laughing and talking but they were coming from outside in the courtyard—opposite the garden. If she had any luck at all, they would all give her and the doctor enough privacy not to discover her gone until morning.

  She raced down the steps and burst out into the garden without stopping to look to see if there might be someone there believing it unlikely that anyone would be strolling in the darkened garden at this time of night. Ella knew the narrow path through the garden well. It wound laboriously through the topiary and the hedges to the other side and to freedom. She started to run, one hand cradling her stomach to reduce the jostling caused by the pounding of her feet against the hard dirt pathway.

  There was a crescent moon tonight. Enough light to see but still dark enough to cloak her. She hadn’t planned it this way and was grateful. The air was fragrant with the scent of orange blossoms from the many trees in the garden and the air was warm on her bare skin, unusual for this time of night. She hurried along the path, twisting and turning as it did through the flowers and hedges. The doctor had taken pains to create a European Eden in the desert. Until this moment, she had loved the little garden. When she reached the far gate, she slipped easily through the wide bars of the grate covering it, knowing it was more for ornamentation than security. As soon as she did, she saw the pony, saddled and waiting for her.

  He stood quietly in the moonlight, his reins tied to the hinge of the gate. He shook his head at her approach and she heard the faint sound of the little bells that festooned his bridle. Her first thought when she saw him—even before she registered the relief that he represented to her—was of the love and care of Halima, who had stolen and led that little pony with so much hope in her heart that it might help Ella—when what she really believed was that it was all hopeless folly. As Ella reached the pony, she saw the saddlebag full of food and water. As always, Halima knew how to take care of her better than she did herself.

  She tugged the reins free from the gate and looped them over the animal’s neck and positioned her toe in the stirrup hoping she had enough strength to haul both her and Tater up and into the saddle. Before she could, her eye caught a movement over the pony’s back. Like a bad movie with an inescapable ending, Ella watched the darkness move and shift to encompass the man standing in the shadows watching her. She knew it was him. Somehow in the back of her mind she had known all along it would be.

  Horus emerged into the light cast by the moon. His broad face was glistening in the warm night. His teeth bared in a hungry grin.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  For a moment, they just stared at each other. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, his words impossible to understand.

  But his intention monstrously clear.

  Ella didn’t move. She stood with the pony between them and watched the eunuch approach. He was well over six foot four. His chest was broad—naked and greased as usual—and she could see the hard ridges across it of scars of old knife wounds that had enraged but hadn’t killed. The tattoo inside her sleeve seemed to tingle. She relaxed her hand and let the small knife inch down closer to her hand.

  Horus pushed the rump of the pony aside and the animal shied and galloped into the desert.

  A sudden terrible thought seized Ella.

  Had Horus met Halima with the pony? Is that how he knew she would be here? Had he killed Halima? A trickle of sweat tickled between her breasts but she didn’t take her eyes off the man in front of her or betray her thoughts. One thing was certain, she thought, it was too late for flattery.

  “What did you do with Halima?” Ella said, her hand nervously rubbing her stomach. At the mention of Halima, the hulk grinned.

  “Halima,” he said, moving to within an arm’s length of Ella. He drew a finger across his throat.

  Anger overwhelmed her. If this bastard killed her beloved friend as he was trying to kill her baby and forever keep her from being with Rowan…

  She fought for control. She couldn’t react out of anger or even fear. She needed to think. This beast couldn’t be stopped like a normal man. Her small pocketknife would be useless against him, just two or three more shallow wounds across that impermeable chest. Worse, her desperate attempts to save herself with the small knife probably wouldn’t even register with a mark that lasted longer than a week.

  What could she do that maddened cuckolds and enraged fathers had failed to do?

  She took a breath and a step toward him. The action stopped him and his
mouth stretched into a smile. He spoke to her again and this time she nodded, not understanding him but not caring.

  Horus pointed to her swollen abdomen and spoke again. Ella had the ludicrous notion that the monster was explaining why he was about to do what he intended to do.

  Fighting every instinct that told her to wrap her arms around her midsection—or run—Ella flung her arms out wide in an invitation to embrace. She didn’t expect him to take her up on it. Horus didn’t strike her as the hugging type, but her message would at least be received: she was not going to resist him. She held the position of her arms outstretched even as she watched him unsheathe his short sword and heft its weight in his hands. It was not impossible to believe that he might want to have sex with a woman with no arms and that thought made her arms waver a bit but she did not drop them to her sides.

  It was this or nothing.

  She had already killed a man for no other reason than that he stood between her and the door. Ella was sure now that the doctor had already been incapacitated and there had been no need for the second application of poison which killed him. She forced herself to stop thinking and to ignore her instincts.

  Be a machine, she said to herself as she smiled at Horus. No matter what he does, don’t react. Be a machine.

  Horus touched his sword to Ella’s abdomen. She fought down the sudden panic, reminding herself that whatever he intended to do to her, he couldn’t leave a mark or the Shah would kill him. He was toying with her. He wouldn’t cut her.

  At least not where it would show.

  She lowered her arms and beckoned him closer, hoping her smile looked inviting to him and not insane.

  He moved the point of his sword away from her but did not sheath it. Instead, he tugged at the front of his baggy haram pants to reveal his erect member. As Ella’s eyes went to his throbbing, engorged staff—marbled and veined—she felt suddenly cold. Be a machine.

  She stood her ground as he lunged at her. She felt his punishing hands on her arms and allowed him to throw her to the ground. The irregular kernels of gravel cut into her knees through her tunic. One meaty hand clamped down on the back of her neck and forced her to stay on her knees. He knelt behind her, using his sword hand against the back of her head to keep her immobilized while with the other he began to tear her tunic from her body.