Eternal lover, p.14
Eternal Lover, page 14
“Get dressed. Arm yourself. Just in case.”
Damn. She’d been cockblocked by a curse.
He grabbed twin blades from his discarded clothing and crept out of the room, toward the access.
She exhaled heavily and began to dress, mentally cataloging where all the weapons in the camp were located and how she’d need to move to access them, depending on the threat.
Kalila wondered just what was next, because it had been jackals, then a wall of flesh-eating scarabs, and now what? Besides her raging case of blue bean.
At this point she wouldn’t be surprised if He Who Endures himself walked into their camp.
Chapter Six
Seth didn’t want to leave her like that, sweet and wanting, and oh so close to orgasm.
But it was possible that the Left Hand had been behind the jackals, and he wouldn’t put it past them to hurt Kalila simply to keep him from his goal.
Yet he wondered about the giant scarabs. They’d protected him, and Kalila. They seemed to even . . . like her. When coupled with her dreams, Seth’s logic could lead him to only one conclusion, but that was even more insane than his existence.
Could Kalila be Khepri?
No. He wouldn’t say it wasn’t possible, but it wasn’t likely. Considering Kalila didn’t demand anything from him he couldn’t give her, and she wasn’t inclined to punish him for it either.
Dusk was already falling again. How could that be? It hadn’t seemed like they’d spent that much time down in the first room. He had the strangest thought that they’d been kept down there until they made the choices someone wanted them to make.
But that was insane. It wasn’t as if, after all these years, Isis or Osiris were going to puff up from the ether and meddle in his life.
Seth crept forward, silent and alert, taking in everything around him. He looked for the small details of someone’s passing—items having been moved, shifts in the sand—and he found nothing.
Not until he got to his tent, and there saw the hieroglyph that loosely translated to “demon” had been painted on his tent in something red that definitely was not paint.
“Someone really doesn’t want us here,” Kalila said, and handed him his clothes.
He dressed quickly, all the while scanning the horizon, searching for any possible threat. Seth had to get Kalila out of there, but he was faced with two insurmountable problems. She wouldn’t go, and even if he could convince her, there was no way to go until the rest of the crew was on-site. He couldn’t expect her to start out on foot in the open desert. Not that she would. He knew with a certainty she wouldn’t leave this site, and she definitely wouldn’t leave him.
“Someone really doesn’t want me here,” he began.
“Let me guess. You think I should leave.”
He turned to look at her, really look at her. She stood at the ready, with her makeshift flamethrower, the riot gun, and determination in her eyes.
“Of course I think you should leave. I don’t want you to get hurt.” He allowed himself the luxury of reaching out to touch her face. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re competent, or strong. I care about what happens to you, Kalila.”
“And I care about what happens to you. I know you’re about to say something like how you couldn’t live with yourself if something happened to me, but what about what I can live with? Do you think I’d be able to forgive myself if I left you here, alone?” She held up her hand to stop him from speaking. “Not to mention one of the most significant finds of the century? Not a chance.” She looked out at the sandy horizon. “Plus, I’m not tromping through the desert on my own. That would be even more dangerous. At least here, we can protect each other.”
Seth considered arguing with her because he didn’t need her protection. Or want it. He’d come here to die.
But he couldn’t very well tell her that, could he?
Except, looking into her eyes, he realized he trusted her. He trusted her more than he’d ever trusted another living soul. He wanted to tell her the truth. He ached for it. Keeping it from her had become a physical pain. But the question remained whether he should. Seth realized he was hot and cold when it came to telling her or not, but he needed to know he wasn’t only telling her for himself. Lessening his own burden while adding to hers.
Seth also knew if he told her who he was, there was no chance this side of the afterlife she’d leave. Not that there was much to begin with.
“So, in the stories,” she began carefully, as if her words were shards of glass on her lips. “They speak of a religious sect called the Left Hand of the Moon. It seems surreal to ask this, but do you think this could be their work?”
The question was like a punch in the face.
When he didn’t speak she continued. “I know what that would imply if we agreed it could be this sect, but I have no answers that don’t have some kind of supernatural root cause. Looking at this as a woman of science, I can allow that the jackals might have been a coincidence. Even though the scarab behavior was unlikely, it’s still possible the jackals emitted some pheromone or something that drew them as prey over us, but the passage of time, Seth. I know we didn’t spend more than a few hours down in the dig. There’s no way it should be dusk, and it’s not a sandstorm. So what is it?”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. What if it is the Left Hand of the Moon? If it is, they seem to only have a problem with me. Not you.”
“If you say one more word about me leaving you here, I’m going to actually . . . I don’t know what I’m going to do, but you won’t like it.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Fine. I won’t bring it up again, but how are we going to fight off the Left Hand until the rest of the crew gets here, and when they do, how are we going to protect the site and whatever we find?”
“I think you’re forgetting the most important thing here, Seth.”
“What’s that?” He was quite sure he hadn’t forgotten it at all.
“If we allow that these strange occurrences can be attributed to the Left Hand of the Moon, we have to allow that the heart is here, and its owner will be coming for it.”
He cocked his head. “Why would you assume he’d want it?” Seth cleared his throat. “Granting such a thing, such an existence, were possible?”
“That’s a lot of power to have over someone. If someone else uses it before he can get it, he has to live forever. Even if I wasn’t ready for the dirt nap, I wouldn’t want someone telling me I could never have it.” She bit her lip, obviously considering something.
“Okay, so now that we know it’s here, we have to find it. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep us from it,” Seth said as a cold twinge of guilt skittered down his back. He’d spent so long trying to root the myth of him out of her head, and now he was preying on her fantasies to get her to help him find the heart he’d told her didn’t exist.
He was a bastard. Maybe he’d deserved his punishment after all. It occurred to him that he’d always put his own wants and needs above everyone else in his life. Even those he’d claimed to love.
Everything he’d ever done had been with some kind of end goal in mind. He’d been a conqueror, he said, to unite the people, but it had been for his own insatiable lust for power. When he’d taken Khepri he’d not forced himself on her. He’d seduced her. Their pleasure had been mutual. Only he’d demanded to marry her because she was the best. The most beautiful. He couldn’t have given her his heart if he’d wanted to, because he did not yet know what it meant. In his friendships, they’d never been for the sake of getting to experience the other person. They’d all been motivated by some selfish desire.
The revelation had found the weakness in his armor and had split it apart like a cracked egg. He was bare and vulnerable not to anyone else, but to the truth. And it cut with a thousand blades.
Seth supposed it was fitting that he’d finally learned the lesson he’d been meant to learn all those long years ago.
“We’re taking a chance going back down in the dig. I mean, we were before, but now that there’s someone who will do anything to stop us, we need to take some more precautions. Should we search in shifts? One person is the lookout, while the other looks for the heart?”
“We’re safer together.” There was no way he was going to let her stand watch. “We can rig alarms around the camp with fishing wire and we stay strapped.”
“Won’t they see us?”
“No. I can find my way in the dark. You’re going to stay down in the first room, lanterns high. If it looks like you’re only interested in the hieroglyphs, you should be safe, at least until I get back.”
He didn’t want to leave her, not even for those few moments it would take to string the line around the perimeter, but he had no choice. They couldn’t get down in the dig without some kind of protection topside.
Seth wanted to finish what they’d started earlier, but there wasn’t enough time.
How odd, for a man who’d had millennia to get his fill of the world and what it had to offer that now he’d run out of time. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him.
It occurred to him that he could choose.
He didn’t have to be done.
Part of him had wanted to die simply to spite his curse. But there was that other part of him that still had things he wanted to experience. After all his long years, it hit him just now that he still had living to do. Why should he deny himself anything he wanted when it was so obvious that she wanted him, too? Being happy would be the best rebellion.
He allowed himself to imagine a future with Kalila. What did his happiness look like?
It shocked Seth that it didn’t look much different from where he was right now. The only thing he’d change would be the Left Hand of the Moon putting Kalila in danger. Otherwise, being out on some discovery mission with her, strolling through the pages of antiquity, and bringing the ancient world to the modern, there was nothing better.
“What?” she asked him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He offered her a crooked grin. “Just thinking.”
Only then, the scene changed. She wouldn’t stay young. She’d grow old; she’d die. While he . . . he would simply have to endure.
Unless he found the heart.
Then he could still have his happiness, and he could leave this world when she did. Because with Kalila gone, the world would finally have nothing left to offer him.
“Well, you’d better think faster. It’s almost dark.”
“Remember what I told you.”
“Crank the lanterns. Work on the hieroglyphics. Situational awareness. Got it.”
“I’ll be back in less than ten minutes.”
He dashed to his tent and pulled some lengths of fishing line from his bag. He’d packed enough to rig the whole camp, but Seth was most worried about keeping the dig site safe. It didn’t matter if they vandalized his tent, or took his belongings. What mattered most was seeing their enemy coming, and being ready to launch a counterattack. He tried to work out a more feasible plan as he rigged the line around the camp. If only he could be sure that the scarabs would still protect her. He considered for a moment offering a prayer to Isis.
He had never prayed to her before. Never honored her temples or her days. He’d never bowed to any power but his own.
Yet, he’d do it for Kalila.
In times past, he’d only have had faith in what he could see and touch, in the actions he could take. This was a leap for him, and he wondered if any of the old gods were left, or if he’d outlived them, too.
“Hear me, Oh Great Isis, Queen of Heaven.” He spread his arms wide as he beseeched the sky and fell to his knees. “I, Menes Sethos Cepos Akhenaten Dakarai, am on my knees in supplication.” He bowed his head. “I am He Who Endures and I beg your blessing. I have done all that mortal hands are capable of doing and I ask your protection, not for me, but for her.”
The night was silent and still, no breeze rustling the encroaching darkness around him. Yet, still, something shifted in the great expanse of sky overhead, and the moon’s silver light fell in a diamond-dusted waterfall on his face.
He wanted to believe that she heard him, he wanted to believe she’d grant him this one boon.
The moment was over and the clouds crashed together, blocking out the silver light, which was just as well. He didn’t need his enemies seeing him traipsing about the camp, yet if they had been watching, they would have seen him surrendering to their goddess, entreating her aid. They’d think him mad.
Maybe he was.
Maybe the long years of solitude had finally taken their toll on him and he was nuttier than squirrel shit, as Rafael had loved to say.
Except Seth couldn’t help looking up at the sky again, and it seemed to him there was now no moon at all. No clouds. It was as if it had all been a figment of his imagination.
He scanned the horizon one last time and, not sensing any movement or that there was anyone in the camp but him and Kalila, he went to the access point and descended to where Kalila was working with the first mural of hieroglyphics.
“Find anything interesting here?”
She looked up from her work. “I did, actually.” Kalila stepped down from the ladder. “So, as you can see in this entryway,” she motioned to the four walls and the ceiling, “it looks as if the tale of He Who Endures is basically copy/pasted around the whole area. Look here at the third mural. Instead of Khepri’s scarab, we have what might be a representation of the god Set. See the saluki-shaped creature wearing the headdress?”
He leaned in to examine it, and it pulsed the same strange purple that Khepri’s scarab glyph had earlier.
“I’d swear that wasn’t there yesterday.”
“I know. Me too.” She nodded. “It’s strange the things our eyes want to see, and how easily we miss what’s right in front of us.”
He felt like that had deeper meaning, but they didn’t have time for him to analyze it.
“If that’s the thing that’s not like the other, it must be a code,” he said.
“So we need to look for other examples,” she instructed. “What progress have you made on the piece you were working on?”
“Not much. It looks like a portrait of some kind.”
“Which is highly unusual, don’t you think?”
He nodded. “From the markings, I think he might be a priest.”
“I’m racking my brain, but I can’t think of a time when anything like a portrait has been on the wall in any of these tombs or the lost cities. Carvings, yes. Stories with body figures, but never anything like a portrait. That has to mean something.”
“I think it means that this place was not lost for as long as we originally thought. The painting style, even the pigments, I think are more modern.” He shrugged. “Eh, Italian Proto-Renaissance modern, not airplane modern. For example, this blue? If it’s what I think it is, I’d have to have it tested to be certain, but it’s some kind of ground gemstone. Lapis, maybe? I can’t remember off the top of my head, but it was first used in Giotto di Bondone’s The Lamentation of Christ. So I would date this portrait between 1304 and 1400.”
“The Left Hand of the Moon,” she whispered, with something like awe tinging her voice. Kalila grabbed her electric lantern and shone it next to the portrait. “Do you think this is a self-portrait? Or a warning?”
“It could be both,” he agreed easily.
“Bastard,” she whispered. “Defacing this place with his modern nonsense.”
“I have to wonder what caused the sinkhole.” Suddenly, he wondered if this was a trap. But to what end? They couldn’t kill him and they didn’t want him to die.
She nodded. “How long have they been using it, and are they using it still? We need to go deeper.” Then she leaned in closer to the wall. “Hey, look. There’s another of Set’s glyphs.”
“Set was a trickster god, which means his glyphs are no use to us.”
“We just haven’t figured out how to use them yet, but we will.” She crept forward down the long hall with her lantern held aloft, and it stretched shadows down those vividly painted halls.
There were too many choices, too many opportunities for deadly traps.
“Don’t go any farther!”
“What, why?”
“Just like we rigged our camp, this place must surely be rigged, too, if they were using it as some sort of headquarters. Or if the heart is here.”
While he didn’t expect fear from her, rather a healthy sense of caution, he was surprised at her grin. “Do you think there might be some big-ass boulder that might chase us down these hallways like Indiana Jones?”
“It’s probably snakes, if we’re honest.” Because what would be worse than giant, flesh-eating scarabs? Of course snakes.
She positively cackled. “Unlike Indy, I like snakes.”
And suddenly, there was an answering cackle, yet it was not made by a human voice. It was the high-pitched keening of a jackal.
Chapter Seven
“It’s fine.” Kalila shook her head. “It’s all fiiiinnne.
That absolutely was not a jackal I heard.”
“No. Totally not,” he agreed much too easily.
She looked around, half expecting to see the wave of scarabs again, but no such savior presented itself.
Kalila laughed nervously. “The curse did say they were undead.”
“It did,” he answered, but there was no teasing in his voice. No lighthearted banter.
For someone who’d spent much of their time together trying to convince her that all of this—the story of He Who Endures, the Left Hand of the Moon, and curses—was all tripe, he’d sure changed his mind in a hurry.
It didn’t add up.
Most people didn’t let go of their long-held belief systems so easily. Not even in the face of blatant and overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Things began to snap into place in her mind. Each and every experience she’d had since she’d been in Jordan had somehow magnetized the pieces of the puzzle and they rearranged themselves until they fit.
