Painter of the Dead (Shades of Immortality Book 1)

by Catherine Butzen

  It seemed to release something in him. His hands went to her jaw, thumbs stroking over the skin there as he pulled her closer and deepened the kiss. His need was raw, palpable, a little desperate as he held her. Theo’s lips parted without thinking, responding to the need there, letting him past one more barrier. His tongue touched hers, sending another spark of heat skittering through her, and she curled her hands into the fabric of his shirt.

  He murmured her name again as they separated. His color was high—redness in his cheeks, lips kiss-bruised, and eyes bright. Their gazes stayed locked, his skin warm against hers.

  There it was again. The shifting of the world, the sense of movement, still figures somehow alive in spite of being paint and pigment. It wasn’t intoxicating—it was enervating, like the moment before the big drop on the rollercoaster. Her still-life world was jolting into motion. It would be so easy for it to go wrong, but for once, there was something there to go wrong.

  “That wasn’t smart,” Theo said after a long moment.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Seth admitted, his voice rough.

  She moistened her lips again and stepped back a pace or two, trying to pull everything into focus. The motion began to still as sanity reasserted itself. “Four meetings, two kisses,” she said. “And you’ve got me doing it too.”

  “I’m a bad influence,” he admitted with a touch of humor. “Forgive me?”

  “Maybe. If you’re willing to trade.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Trade what?”

  “Call it compensation,” she said. “You wrecked my exhibition, and now you’ve handed me this idea of someone who’s been alive for four thousand years. The ultimate primary source.” She tugged on her braid, thinking. “I know professors who would pay millions to pick your brain for half an hour.”

  “It’s not that simple, Theo.” He frowned. “Four thousand years is too much to recall. If I didn’t write things down sometimes, I’d never remember where I’d been. My memories of Egypt are stored in the clay, but everything beyond that fades.”

  “Then tell me about that,” she urged. “Tell me about Egypt. Tell me about anything. Sounds. Images. Colors.”

  “I can’t, Theo. Not—not yet.” Some of the remaining warmth faded from his eyes. “It’s difficult to explain.”

  She put a hand on his arm. “I swear I’m not going to tell anyone, Seth. But one thing. Please. One thing that I can take to prove that you lived four thousand years ago.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and Seth’s gaze was leaden and unreadable. Finally, he dropped his head, unable to meet her gaze anymore.

  “My tomb,” he said. “I’ve looked at the excavation records. You’ve got most of it. But there’s another chamber—on the northwest side, sunk into the slope. It’s hidden behind the mural of Apep. Inside, there are ten more shabtis, grave vessels with models of food and drink, two jars of beer, five loaves of bread, a jar of honey, a chisel one of the workmen dropped, and a badly misspelled copy of the Book of the Osiris-Name. It’s what those professors would call the Coffin Texts.” The corner of his mouth twisted. “My scribe was good, but his spelling was not. I didn’t realize that until 1938, did you know? I read an analysis of my own tomb inscriptions. They said I must not have been very well liked, to have such an amateur writing on my walls.”

  He looked at her again. “Is that enough?”

  “It is.” The words left her in a whisper, but they carried weight. It was. It was something the museum’s people in Egypt could confirm. And it was also something that people would question if she revealed it and it turned out to be true—or untrue. Lots of angles here, directions she wasn’t used to thinking about. Still…“I think it is.”

  Chapter Ten

  You have wandered for too long. Think of your corpse and come home.

  – From the “Tale of Sinuhe,”

  circa 1960 BCE

  It was impossible to tell what time it was. There were no windows or clocks in the bedroom, lending the place the air of a comfortable tomb. Theo sighed as she rolled over, stretching out the aches in her muscles. Her rumpled shirt had left crease marks in her skin, and she’d kicked the blankets off the bed.

  Memories came creeping back, slow and awkward, and her face reddened in the gloom. She’d been kissing a man. Kissing Seth Adler, the source of her current trouble and the inspiration for her weirdest work yet.

  Her bag lay where she’d dropped it by the edge of the bed. Reluctantly, she reached out and flopped over to it, fumbling through the contents for her cell phone. The glowing display told her it was almost six o’clock in the morning.

  Staying over had probably been a mistake. But the exertion of their struggle, and the sheer overwhelming nature of the revelation Seth had shared with her, had worn her out. Seth had offered a guest bedroom—with a locking door—and she’d accepted.

  Her sleep had been deep but plagued with strange dreams. She had the oddest sensation that someone had been calling her name, asking for…something she couldn’t remember.

  Focus, she told herself sternly. It would be time to get up soon, and she had things to do.

  For a start, she had to call Zimmer.

  Groaning, Theo let her head drop into her hands. Zimmer would be waiting for her report. If he thought something had happened to her he might tell the police, and who knew what would happen next.

  It was plain that she would have to lie, and the thought made her stomach twist. Twenty-four hours earlier she’d been solidly on Zimmer’s side, ready to help him expose a psychotic, drug-fueled art thief. Now she didn’t know where she stood. If she tried to explain it to the Security chief, she doubted he’d listen. Mummies? Blood turning into clay? History straight from the horse’s mouth? Not the best way to guarantee her job security, especially not when she didn’t even have her full clearance back yet. She would have to come up with a damn good lie.

  The thought made her horribly uncomfortable. Sitting there in the gloom of the bedroom, she felt like a gullible tool.

  At least I didn’t sleep with him, she told herself, as resurgent disbelief fought against the memories of clay droplets and disintegrating bodies. That, at least, was a sentiment that could apply to either side. Whether he was an accomplished liar or a…thing…she shouldn’t have gone as far as she had. Let alone talking late into the night and then sleeping over. There was common sense at stake here, although that felt like the one thing that had been in short supply lately.

  Sighing, Theo swung her legs over the edge of the bed and straightened up, trying to move quietly. Early or not, she wasn’t going to be able to doze much longer in Seth Adler’s home. She listened at the door, wondering if he was awake, but heard nothing besides the low humming of the central air system. Safe. Tugging her shirttail down, she opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

  Seth was where she had left him, laid out on an enormous tan couch and fast asleep. His arms were neatly by his sides, his legs pulled together, a blanket tucked around his still-dressed form.

  Moving as silently as she could, Theo stepped closer and peered at him. His eyes were shut tightly and his breathing was shallow.

  He lay so still it took her a moment to spot the evidence that he was alive. There was a pallid tinge to his skin and the veins and tendons stood out sharply, as if moisture had been sucked out of the flesh. Shuddering, she turned away. Watching him certainly wasn’t going to do anything for her peace of mind.

  Unsure of what else to do, Theo returned to the broad gallery. It looked very different now. With the great ceiling lights dimmed, only a few bluish strips lent faint illumination to the assembled collection.

  One of the banners was crooked. Her portfolio case had been shoved haphazardly onto a recessed shelf, hiding both it and the lethal painting. The painting’s skid across the floor had peeled several layers of pigment off the canvas, scoring it deeply and destroying part of both figures. Yet Seth still hated having to see it. She tweaked the banner back into place,
hiding it completely.

  It was almost funny in its strange way. The person who collected these things had experienced chaos like she could never imagine, but he was afraid of a simple picture. Four thousand years of danger and death were nothing compared to four hours with oils.

  Feet padding noiselessly on the sleek wood, she moved to the nearest case and peered in. There was the old faded piece of greenish cloth with the undyed X showing on the top. In the darkness, the green was washed out, leaving the remnant gray-black with a nearly white symbol on top. With a start, Theo realized what it must have been originally—dark seaweed-green dye used instead of black, since faded over the years. Hundreds of years, if her reading of the symbol and color scheme was correct. Which meant it wasn’t an X.

  “Hospitaller,” she murmured, sketching the shape of the cross with her fingertip against the glass. “Of course.” No surprise that the leper mummy had gravitated toward the great doctors of the Crusades. They’d ultimately become pirates too, which had probably appealed to the military part of him. Had this been his, then? Or did he just collect flotsam and jetsam?

  The case was set close to the wall, next to a recessed fireplace that clearly hadn’t burned anything in years. A few more items were displayed on the mantel: a medieval German helmet, a moth-eaten glove, a curved knife on a wooden stand. The knife’s hardened leather hilt was stamped with a set of initials, but the whole thing had a thick coating of dust.

  There was a creak behind her and she stiffened. The quality of the silence had changed. Someone was awake.

  Breathing out, she ran a finger over the hilt of the knife and wiped away some of the dust. She’d seen weapons like it before.

  “What is it?” she said anyway, brushing away a little more. The colors began to come through: the dark gray of worn steel, the initials R.A. It was an old weapon, but it had been well-used. “Who was R.A.?”

  “Rachid al-Adhur,” came the voice of Seth from behind her. “He had quite the interesting life before he founded the Trust. That’s a Khyber knife.”

  “From your time in India?”

  “The most recent sojourn, yes.” Seth leaned against the doorframe, watching her. In the low, cold light of the trophy room, the remaining warmth in his colors faded away. He might have been a tinted marble statue.

  “And the knife?” she asked. She wiped away another spot of dust, exposing an old crack in the leather of the hilt.

  “The knife was a gift while he was playing the part of a Hassanzai of Tor Ghar. Rachid found it necessary to adopt a new persona for a while.”

  “I’ll bet he did.” The knife looked worn. It had been used, a lot, and then cleaned one final time and put away in a trophy room to gather dust.

  He found it necessary; he founded the Trust. Despite surrounding himself with pieces of history, Seth seemed to have closed himself off easily from his former lives.

  Or perhaps not easily. She didn’t know much about the Hassanzai, but late nineteenth-century India hadn’t been a good place for people with divided loyalties. War and rebellion raged across the continent. Now, though, it was all gone. Dust gathering on an old Khyber knife, its aged leather set as hard as wood, the people it might have killed names in textbooks.

  Everything passed, and the heat of politics and religion and colonial warfare became lines in a history book to some. Even something that could force Rachid al-Adhur to adopt a fake identity—an imposture within an imposture, carried out by a man who couldn’t die—would eventually vanish.

  If this was really true, then everything was impermanent to him. Everything she took for granted, like the country she lived in and the rules and morals her world ran on, would pass. And he’d live to see it, and learn the new rules in turn. Sic transit gloria mundi.

  She couldn’t imagine what that was like. But the motion, the blurriness that it must lend to the world itself, made her thoughts spark.

  “I’ll bet he did,” she repeated, and turned away from the mantel to lean against the case. She rested her arms on the top of the glass as she leaned down, examining the strange garment. The tails of the shirt she wore fluttered in the soft breeze of the air system, and she knew Seth’s gaze was on her. “You know, we had an exhibit on the courts of the maharajahs not so long ago. ‘Opulent’ doesn’t begin to describe it. How did Rachid like that?”

  “He didn’t care.” Seth moved around to the other side of the case, mirroring her posture with his own and meeting her eyes as he leaned over the Hospitaller tunic. “He didn’t have the kind of life that put him in the palaces of the rajahs and ranis—not when there were so few left after the Mutiny.”

  “You mean the Indian Rebellion?”

  He shrugged. “Six of one. People died.”

  “As they typically do in mutinies and rebellions.” Theo stepped away from the tunic and moved left, toward the next case. This one contained everything golden: more gold coins, an aged gold torque in the old Celtic style, and a gold-plated cigarette case with a date and inscription that were worn down to almost illegibility. She thought she caught the number 1901 on it, but it was hard to tell through what looked like acid damage. “That was when the empire really started coming apart. You must’ve seen that coming. You’re an old hand at this, after all.”

  Seth circled around her, padding almost noiselessly on the smooth boards, before stopping opposite her again. He rested his fingertips against the glass this time, poised above the sleek curve of the torque.

  “Nobody can see the future,” he said softly, his eyes once again locked on hers. “And it’s hard to see an empire dying if you’re one man on the edge of it. No matter how many times it’s happened before.”

  Theo swallowed, but kept her voice calm and level. “Is that what you’ve learned from four thousand years? That you don’t know anything?”

  “Not quite,” he said. “But it’s a good start.”

  He reached across the case and, softly, slid his hand down her forearm and over her wrist. Her fingers curled around his without quite meaning to, and he ran the edge of a thumbnail over the pad of her palm. “The problem with people, Theo, is that we’re never as wise or as strong as we think we are. That was the first thing I had to learn. I don’t know if I’ve learned anything since.”

  “Sure you have,” she said. “I notice we’re not speaking Kemetic.”

  He gave a wry smile at her teasing tone. “Learning a new language isn’t that hard when you have no alternative. And given that I’ve been speaking English for about three hundred years, I’d flatter myself that I have some knowledge of it.”

  “Really?” She drew back her hand and circled around to the next case. There was another piece of folded cloth there, less ragged than the Hospitaller tunic and dyed what must have once been a beautiful shade of red. She leaned over the case, propping herself against it and letting her back settle into a deeper curve. Her breasts, modest but peaked in the cool air of the room, rested against the chilly glass.

  Seth’s dark gaze followed her every move, but this time he didn’t move with her. He stayed there, tracking her with his eyes—hungrily, she thought, with a hint of caution. He knew a game was being played, but he didn’t know where he stood.

  “Really,” he said. “It was a difficult change. But learning English isn’t much, next to building a house or manning a ballista. I’ve always managed well.” He reached across the space for her hand again, but Theo slipped around the case and turned to the rack of spears and polearms instead.

  She ran one forefinger over the dull edge of a halberd’s blade, hyperaware of Seth’s piercing stare at her back. “Well, you’d have to,” she said softly. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  He was still by the last case, his hands resting on it. The dim light touched the edges of his fingers and palm, leaving the rest as dark claws against the glass. “Am I not,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “You aren’t.” She traced patterns in the dust with the tip of one finger, moving slowly, almost
idly. Her words were light and calm. She had him, she knew, in the palm of her hand. “You should be dead. But here you are, Seth Adler, the financial superstar, in your nice suit, surrounded by relics of those centuries in between. You shouldn’t be here, but you are. Somehow. And you can’t tell me that’s been easy.”

  “Maybe not.” Seth stretched out his hand and brushed his fingertip over the dusty halberd. He was closer to her now, his skin inches from hers, his eyes glints in his shadowed face.

  Her mouth was suddenly dry, but she forced herself to focus. “And if it isn’t easy,” she said, “then when I ask about it—please, Seth, tell me the truth.”

  She wiped away the pattern with a sweep of her thumb. “You don’t have to lie to me. I can’t use your words against you. I need…I need to know, sometimes.”

  Seth’s gaze darted over her, his mouth twisted into a tight line. Then his hand dropped from the blade and came to rest on her shoulder, gently stroking the ball of his thumb over the taut line of her collarbone. The warmth and closeness of him, against the coldness of the room, drew her like a nail to a magnet.

  The kiss was deeper, harsher than before. She drank it in and fought for more, her hands curling into the fabric of his shirt, her body pressed against his. There was a hitch in his breath as her legs parted slightly, and he pulled her closer, stroking one hand over the curve of her hip and thigh.

  “Di djed nebet,” he murmured into her ear, his voice somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

  Djed. She knew that word. She pressed her lips against the corner of his mouth, feathering kisses there, as his grip on her tightened. He whispered the words over and over again, like a prayer, and she wrapped herself into him and held him as he prayed.

  “Hey,” she said quietly. “Look at me, Anhurmose.”

  He shifted, but never got the chance. A shrill buzzer cut through the cold room, and a bright-blue light winked on at the end of the hall, making him jump and pull away.