Cries from the Lost Island

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  “You killed her? You? She hadn’t done anything to anyone!”

  His frozen eyes reflected the flickering lamplight like mirrors.

  Slowly, he lowered his hands and reached over to pull open the mummy’s sheath where it had been ripped. He stared unmoving, his immobility so complete I wondered if he’d been trained to do that. To go still and silent, to blend with the desert, maybe while enemy soldiers passed by only yards away. “Did you look?”

  I shook my head. It was a spastic motion. Except for when he spoke, he didn’t seem to be breathing.

  “You should look. You will understand, I think.” Lifting the ancient fabric more, he gestured for me to peer beneath.

  The light was wrong. I had to shift positions to see. Walking down the table with the dagger clutched tightly in my fist, my breathing sounded like a freight train chuffing up a steep mountain pass. When I had the angle right, I risked taking my eyes off him to stare at the mummy’s body. A gash slit the left side just below the ribs, as though the man had been stabbed.

  “You think that . . . that’s where he thrust the gladius into his body?” I asked in a shaking voice.

  He dropped the fabric and leisurely smoothed it back into place. “I think it was a final act of love. She knew Octavian would parade his corpse through the streets of Rome, so she staged a burial in Alexandria, then had her servants sneak his body out and bring him here where he would be safe.” The words never disturbed the absolute stillness of his body. His hands remained on the mummy as though part of the weave. “It must be Antonius.”

  “Why am I alive?”

  “I told you. I need your help. That’s why I returned the dagger to you. As a sign of good faith.”

  The chamber wavered around me. Several of the lamps spluttered out, plunging the corners into shadow. As the marble statues went dim, they seemed to grow smaller and smaller, receding into another darker world.

  “Help how?”

  Sattin blinked once. “You know where her grave is, don’t you?”

  “Cleopatra’s grave?”

  “Of course.”

  “No.”

  That dreadful lack of motion returned. His manicured hands resting on the mummy were dead white against the ancient purple linen. It was like being stared at by an alien lizard.

  He removed one hand from the mummy and extended it to me. “Then give me the queen’s dagger. You won’t be needing it.”

  “So, if I don’t know where her grave is, you’re going to kill me?”

  He just kept his hand out, waiting.

  For several moments, I clutched it to my heart, while I tried to count the number of voices in the corridor outside. Two? Three? More than enough to take care of me.

  When I reached beneath the shield and tucked the dagger into Antonius’ mummified fingers, Sattin didn’t even blink. He just withdrew his hand. Now, if they wanted the bagsu, they would have to take it from the hands of the man who had loved her more than life itself.

  Picking up the ancient gladius, I backed across the room. Which was totally insane. I should just go with them. But I figured I was dead either way, so I might as well die on my feet fighting like a man. Somehow, I knew that would matter to Antonius.

  “An old sword will do you no good,” Sattin said.

  Gripping the gladius in both hands, I spread my feet, preparing myself. “Why do you want to find her grave?”

  Amusement glittered far back in his eyes. “I have heard that you’re trying to release her, to free her from this world so she can go to the afterlife. Is that correct?”

  “Says who?”

  Sattin casually dragged the fingers of his left hand along the table as he walked around it and took a step toward me. “Why would you throw away your life to save someone who has been dead for over two thousand years? It’s beyond foolish.”

  Faint cries penetrated the chamber. Sattin stopped and cocked his head, as though trying to identify where they’d come from.

  “Give me the gladius, Halloran. You don’t even know how to use it.” He took another step toward me.

  The cries rose and fell as though riding the storm winds like falcons, soaring closer.

  The voices in the corridor stopped.

  Sattin heaved an annoyed breath. “All right. I’ll do this the hard way.” Over his shoulder, he called. “Come in.”

  The heavy door swung open and LaSalle entered, flanked by two soldiers.

  Seeing her was like being bludgeoned.

  I shouted, “Did you kill Cleo? The police said she fought with a woman.”

  She took a step toward me. “Hal, it wasn’t supposed to go down like that. She fought, and then she ran.”

  “You . . . You killed her? You killed my Cleo?”

  “Not me, personally. We were struggling and when she got the upper hand and my guard Malik . . . Well, it was accident. The simple truth is that we couldn’t scare her into giving us the medallion, and she was stronger than she looked.”

  This had to be an inhuman nightmare. I leaned my shoulder against the statue of Isis and locked my shaking knees. “Why are you doing this? Just tell me why.”

  Sattin quietly took another step forward. As did the soldier. They were boxing me in between Isis and Set. “That dagger is worth a fortune, Halloran. And more than a fortune if we can offer it along with the documented mummy of Cleopatra VII. We’re talking maybe five hundred million dollars.”

  Gunshot . . .

  Sattin glanced toward the sound but didn’t seem upset.

  I swear, the statue of Set to my right moved. Like molten gold in the fluttering lamplight, the god’s hand twitched.

  “You’re involved in an antiquities looting ring? This was all about money? You killed Cleo for money?”

  “Everything is about money,” Sattin said. “And looting Egypt is very, very lucrative.”

  “LaSalle, I can’t believe that you would sell off a nation’s heritage.”

  “Well, Hal,” she said with a small smile. “A museum administrator’s salary is pretty paltry. Now, don’t make us hurt you. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you that happened to Cleo.”

  To make the point, the big soldier fingered his gun. “Let’s be done with this. He killed Malik. Let me shoot him.”

  LaSalle shook her head. “He knows the location. I’m telling you. I don’t know how, but he has the same gift that Samael had. The dead speak to him.”

  “Did you kill Samael?” My voice was shaking.

  “The old man died of a heart attack,” the soldier said. “He wouldn’t talk, and when I aimed my rifle at his head, he grabbed his chest and fell over.” To make the point, the soldier lifted his rifle and aimed it at my head.

  Carefully, so as not to force me into doing something stupid—which I was about to do—Sattin ambled forward as though he hadn’t a care in the world. When he stood less than a pace in front of me, he said, “Go ahead. Strike me down with the sword. You don’t have the guts. You’re a soft American child.”

  I positioned myself to thrust with the gladius and extended the weapon, prepared to do battle. The big soldier edged another step closer, his finger on the trigger of the rifle. “Don’t push me! I—”

  Swift as lightning, Sattin leaped forward and knocked the gladius from my hands, sending it cartwheeling across the floor. Which I was pretty sure would not have impressed Antonius.

  An unearthly far-off roar shook the chamber. As people looked around anxiously, I grabbed for the statue of Set to stay on my feet. It felt strangely warm, lifelike. Mutters broke out when my enemies started asking one another questions.

  “It’s the demon,” I said.

  Sattin laughed, but it was an uneasy sound. “This isn’t Halloween, boy. Just a bad storm.”

  “Then why are you so afraid?”

  “It is
you, I think, who are afraid, and you should be.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s Ammut. She’s coming.”

  Sattin stepped forward and knocked my forehead with his fist. “I’ve heard you’re a crazy kid. I think your demons are up here, Halloran Stevens.”

  That struck home a little too hard. My head pounded. “We’re all on the same side now. We have to get out before she gets here.”

  “No one is on your side.”

  The roar became a harmonic shriek, like a thousand voices crying out at once as they rushed toward us.

  “I’m telling you—”

  “Enough,” Sattin said. “No more stalling. No more ghost stories. Shut up, and take me to her grave.”

  He gripped my arm and hurled me toward the corridor.

  “Corbelle, don’t forget the bagsu. It’s under the shield, in the mummy’s hands.”

  Her head turned to look. “In his hands?”

  “Yes. The boy put it there.”

  Licking her lips, she sucked in a breath, as though worried about that task. “All right.”

  “Get the door,” Sattin ordered the big soldier.

  The man trotted forward and swung open the heavy door as LaSalle walked toward the mummy.

  “Can’t you feel her presence?” I cried as Sattin shoved me into the wind-swept corridor. Rivulets of rain trickled down the floor.

  “Move, child. I have no patience for weakness.”

  My stomach cramped. I walked, staying close to the wall in case my feet slipped in the water. When a gust of wind swept around the corner and blasted us, I flattened against the wall, but Sattin staggered.

  Which gave me the chance I’d been waiting for: I ran.

  With every ounce of strength in my body, I fled up that corridor like a hunted animal, gasping in terror, waiting for the impact of the bullet.

  When I hit the tunnel, I leaped up the stairs two at a time, my teeth chattering so hard I was sure my jaw was going to . . .

  The scream from the chamber below was inhuman, wavering up and down the scale as though being torn from the throat by a rusty hook. My spine stiffened as adrenaline surged through me.

  Sattin and the soldier hit the bottom stair just as I charged out into the storm lashing the temple. Rain fell so hard I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I had no idea where I was. Run straight across. Keep moving!

  Bulling forward was like drowning. I was sinking away from my own mind, floundering in the wind. My thoughts unraveled into disconnected strings around me.

  Stray words, five paces away.

  And then different sounds pierced the horror. Like clothes flapping. Something was struggling out there. Close by.

  Grunts and whimpers. I couldn’t tell where they came from.

  Move. Keep staggering forward.

  The flapping stopped. I heard a zipper unzipping. Fingernails clawed against nylon.

  Pressure mounted behind my eyes as wind sucked the air from my lungs.

  Hurricane. Had to be.

  I felt fingers rake my leg and graze down the side of my pants.

  Without warning, something grabbed my ankle. That quickly, it had me. Talons closed around my leg, and the terrifying weight crawled higher, and clung to my thigh. It hung from me, pulling itself up until it could grab my shirt and hiss in my ear. “Get down! Be still!”

  I threw myself to the temple floor.

  We lay side-by-side in water that almost covered our prone bodies.

  Sobbing without making a sound, I could only think the words, Roberto, they told me you were dead.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Roberto grabbed my arm, as though signaling me to be quiet.

  I couldn’t have spoken if I’d wanted to. Symphonic calls flowed and ebbed on the wind, powerful, hushed, as though the long-dead gods of ancient Egypt had risen and were riding on the flashes of lightning just visible through the downpour. The thunder of their ghostly chariots rolled through my chest.

  A gun boomed!

  Someone shouted. Sattin?

  My whole body became a mass of quaking muscles.

  Then. Movement . . . to my left.

  It glowed turquoise through the wall of water, coming out of the tunnel as though emerging from the primordial waters of chaos that had existed before the world was born. Once again, Set lived. Red-haired. Vastly taller than the being I’d seen in Colorado, pointed teeth shone in the crocodile head. One of the most ancient of Egypt’s gods, the brother of Isis, Set took great monstrous strides across the temple.

  Roberto’s hand clamped around my wrist so hard I feared he might break my arm.

  “Hal? What—”

  “Keep your head down!” I yelled.

  The temple shuddered as the constant roll of thunder grew deafening.

  Sattin let out a hoarse scream and backed up against the hieroglyphic panel as Set reached for his throat.

  The big soldier fired his pistol at Set, and cried, “Get out of there! Colonel, run!”

  Set ripped Sattin’s head from his body and tossed it on the ground, then swung around to face the soldier. The man appeared to be in shock. His gun fell from his hand, and one long cry escaped from him before Set tore out his throat.

  Then he vanished. Just vanished.

  An eerie hush descended.

  “We have to get out of here!” Roberto said.

  “Not yet. Wait!”

  It was as though the tornado had twisted away, or the eye of the hurricane was passing over the top of us. Sattin and the body of the big soldier lay crumpled like paper dolls at the base of the hieroglyphic panel. Their disembodied heads still rocked where they lay beneath the figure of Cleopatra dressed as Isis. Overhead, black clouds rumbled and flashed as they moved on, sailing south out into the desert. The air reeked of ozone.

  For five minutes, both of us lay there quaking in the pool of shallow water.

  “Hal?” Roberto finally said, struggling to sit up. “I’m hurt. Can you help me?”

  Around his right thigh, a widening pool of blood spread out through the six inches of water that covered the floor of the temple. And the bullet graze on his head was still pouring blood down his face.

  “Oh, my God.”

  Lunging for his arm, I helped him sit up, then I frantically scrambled around through the water to get to his right side where I could see his leg wound better. The bullet had gone clean through the outside of his thigh, high up near the hip. “Thank God, it didn’t hit the femoral artery, but you need a hospital, Roberto. How on earth did you walk over here?”

  Roberto shifted a pistol to his left hand, and I realized it had belonged to Corporal Bektash. “Had to. You were in trouble. Get me out of this swimming pool, okay?”

  Pulling him to his feet as gently as I could, I wrapped his arm over my shoulder and headed for the stairs.

  Each step was a waterfall. I had to be careful, take it slow, which was agonizing for Roberto. At the top, I saw the dead soldier who’d stood guard up here.

  “That’s the gunshot I heard when I was in the chamber?”

  Wincing against the pain, Roberto nodded. “Yeah.” He squinted at the dead man and seemed stunned. Guilt tortured his expression.

  “Thanks, buddy.”

  Through gritted teeth, he said, “Let me sit down now, Hal, okay? I can’t walk anymore.”

  I eased him to the wet ground and knelt beside him. The first veils of morning sunlight poured through the clouds, falling across Pelusium in bars and streaks of fallow gold. The entire site was a glittering shallow lake.

  Reaching down, I ripped open his blood-soaked jeans where the bullet had torn them. Thank God, it had not struck the bone. “I’m going to make a bandage, then carry you to the emergency phone and call an ambulance. Hold on.”

  Removing my shirt, I
tore it into strips and wrapped the wound. The entire time, my eyes kept returning to the temple, waiting for Corbelle to step out of the tunnel.

  “Who are you looking for, Hal?”

  “Corbelle. She was in the temple.” I had to bite back a sob before I could say, “One of her guards, Malik, killed Cleo.”

  “She told you that?”

  I nodded. As I tied off the ends of the bandage, Roberto lost his balance and fell sideways onto one elbow.

  “Not . . . doing so well.” He swayed, clearly on the verge of passing out.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Just hold on. I’m going to get help.”

  I grabbed my best friend, lifted him over my shoulder, and staggered to my feet.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Once they’d loaded Roberto into the ambulance, I tried to get into the rear with him, but the emergency tech said, “No, no room,” and pulled the door closed in my face.

  Watching the ambulance drive away with the tires flinging mud, I felt even more alone than I usually did. My blood beat a dull rhythm in my ears. For a few seconds, I just stood there.

  The police would be here soon. I could hear their ooo-ah sirens blaring in the distance. I’d also called Moriarity, but it would take him at least another hour to get here. He’d taken Sophia to the Alexandria Hilton for the night.

  Turning, my feet hewed a dark swath across the mud as I walked back to the temple and trotted down the steps. Most of the water had soaked in, but about an inch remained on the floor. Splashing through it, I cast only a glance at the dead bodies beneath the hieroglyphs.

  When I reached the tunnel, I hesitated, frightened to enter, but only for a second. If the old gods hadn’t killed me when I was lying on the floor of the temple, I figured they weren’t going to kill me now.

  At the corridor, I sucked in a deep breath and reached for my flashlight. Switching it on was an event. Shreds of mist crawled along the wet floor, probably born of the cold rain colliding with the hot corridor, but they seemed alive, creeping toward the ajar door at the end where lamplight still flickered.