The light blinded her, startled her, and she sat backwards in the dust, twisting her face to one side to avoid the light.
When had she turned it off, she wondered, jogging her mind for a memory that remained elusive?
Shaking her head with the thought that she must have been far more upset than she’d realized to forget getting up to turn the thing off, she blindly sought the switch and turned it off again.
It took many moments for her eyes to adjust to the dimness once more. She sat where she’d fallen, blinking, rubbing her eyes, testing her memory for flickering bits of information that teased at her but determinedly eluded her efforts to grasp them.
“The men came back this morning. They’re working on a support we can use to wench you up.”
Wench her up? Dismayed, feeling like a cow, Gaby pushed herself up right and got to her feet stiffly, brushing at the dust she’d collected on her pants when she sprawled out. “What about the rope?” she called up to Dr. Oldman when she reached the opening of the shaft.
“Enrique found a piece of rope we missed last night,” he responded.
There was just enough sarcasm in the statement to suggest the ‘found’ rope hadn’t been found where it was supposed to be. Not that she was going to quibble over it. At least someone had produced it and she could get out.
The experience hadn’t been nearly as terrifying as she’d thought it would be, but she had no desire to spend another night in the temple.
“I’m going to test the thing as soon as they have it rigged up … to make sure it will hold you when we pull you up,” Dr. Sheffield offered.
Gaby’s lips twisted wryly. Right, she thought, in a pig’s eye. She could hear the excitement threading his voice. He was just anxious to get down and explore the chamber. She was surprised he hadn’t slithered down the shaft behind her the night before.
No doubt he’d wanted to be sure there weren’t any dangerous traps in the chamber itself before risking his neck.
She didn’t care. She just hoped they hurried. She had to pee and she didn’t want to be squatting in the corner when Dr. Sheffield arrived. She could just imagine his outrage if he discovered she’d pissed in his great find.
To her relief, she heard sounds indicating Dr. Sheffield’s imminent arrival only a few minutes later. Moving back out of the way as his booted feet slid into view, she stood to one side as he extracted himself and got to his feet. He didn’t glance at her as he untied the rope that had been looped around each of his thighs to form a sling support. He merely dropped the rope, staring blank faced at the chamber.
The rope was snatched upward again before Gaby could grab it.
“Hey!”
“Just a minute,” Mark called. “I’m coming down, too!”
Gaby ground her teeth. Was the whole fucking team coming down, she wondered angrily, to ‘rescue’ her?
They were. The moment Mark disentangled himself, he gave the rope a jerk and again it disappeared.
“Fuck!” Gaby muttered under her breath before she thought better of it.
She needn’t have worried. Neither Mark nor the professor gave any indication at all that they’d heard her. Dr. Sheffield had flicked on the floodlight and both men moved like zombies toward the frieze that covered the walls of the chamber.
Gaby stared at them irritably for several moments before her gaze was drawn to the figure seated in the alcove. Without quite realizing it, she moved toward him, tilting her head back to stare into his glittering green gaze.
Warmth flooded her as she stared up at him. With surprise and more than a little embarrassment, she realized it was desire stirring to life inside of her. Images flickered through her mind that built upon the burgeoning warmth. A shiver went through her as the images became so profound she could almost feel his skin brushing along hers, felt her belly clench as if she could feel his cock surging inside of her.
“Anka,” she said on a breath of sound, unaware of the yearning in her voice.
“What?”
Jolted out of her absorption, Gaby glanced at Dr. Sheffield blankly, wondering when he’d come to stand next to her. “What?”
“I thought you said something,” he said absently. “Anka?”
Adjusting his glasses, he leaned forward slightly at the waist, as if trying to bring the image into focus. “Is that what he’s holding?” he asked doubtfully. “My god! I believe you’re right! This is … I don’t know what to make of this, to be honest.”
Gaby glanced up at Anka’s eyes again, but the odd, almost electric current that had enveloped her before had vanished. “His name is Anka,” she said, rubbing at the ache between her eyes that hadn’t been there moments ago.
The comment drew Dr. Sheffield’s attention to her again. He studied her thoughtfully. “You should go to your tent and try to get some rest. I know this has been an ordeal for you.”
His concern would’ve been more touching if he’d seemed the least interested in helping her out of the chamber instead of coming down to explore and ignoring her as if she wasn’t even there, Gaby thought irritably. She didn’t argue with him, though, or address the implication that the experience had somehow ‘disturbed’ her mind.
Turning away, she moved to the altar to gather up her belongings. She noticed when she climbed down again that Mark had followed her. He barely acknowledged her, however. He was focused on the altar.
“What’s this?”
Gaby noticed he’d touched the oily residue of the lubricant she’d sprayed on the stone. He was rubbing it between his fingertips. “Oil. I sprayed the stones down last night to make sure scorpions couldn’t crawl into my sleeping bag with me.”
His eyes were bulging as he looked directly at her for the first time. “Oil?”
She caught the disapproval in his tone. “It didn’t hurt the rocks,” she said dryly, turning and stalking to the shaft and securing her bundle in the rope.
“You sprayed oil on the … in this …. You didn’t consider the possibility of damaging something irreplaceable?” Dr. Sheffield demanded, obviously outraged as he moved to examine the edges of the altar.
Gaby turned to glare at the man as the workers began hauling her sleeping bag up in response to her tug on the rope. “I consider my health and well being of some importance,” she snapped.
Instead of responding, he looked around as if searching the room. “I haven’t seen any scorpions in here.”
“It’s dark in here,” Gaby responded testily. “Just because you haven’t seen any doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”
“But the tomb was sealed,” Mark objected.
“It isn’t a tomb,” Gaby shot back. “This is a temple to the fertility god, Anka, and this is the sacred breeding ground.”
That statement caught the attention of everyone present. She glanced around at them, feeling more than a little defensive at their expressions.
“How did you arrive at that?” Sheila demanded.
Gaby gave her a look. “The frieze along the walls?”
Sheila’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not stupid. Anyone can see the depictions suggest fertility rites. But how did you arrive at the conclusion that this was the chamber where the rituals were held? If this chamber is any indication, the temple must be massive and filled with dozens of chambers. And how did you get the idea he was called Anka? That’s Egyptian, isn’t it?”
Frowning as it sank into her that she had no idea how she knew, Gaby searched for something to say.
She’d dreamed it, she realized abruptly, feeling hot color begin to creep into her cheeks. Before she could embarrass herself further, Mark drew everyone’s attention.
“Hey! I don’t think this is an altar at all! The slab of rock on top is just resting on the supports. I think this is a tomb!”
She’d been sleeping on some dead person’s tomb, Gaby thought, horrified?
Having sex on somebody’s tomb, her mind corrected.
God! Was that worse than dancing on somebody’s
grave?
Chapter Four
Amusement settled over Anka as he watched Gaby’s flight from the chamber. It was typical of the conundrum that was Gabrielle that, as intelligent as she was, she refused to accept anything that fell outside the order that she demanded of her universe. He frowned after a moment, though. As amusing as he found her disordered thoughts, he did not find his own turmoil nearly as pleasing.
She was struggling very hard to dismiss everything that had passed between them.
Let it go, he told himself.
But he could not. It piqued him mightily that she was determined to thrust it all neatly into the back of her mind and dismiss it as something that had not happened at all.
He did not have to search long or hard for the reason for his own turmoil.
She had more than surprised him when he had come to her. She had stunned him.
In all the time he had interacted with her kind, no one, not one had asked him for the gift she had demanded of him.
They had begged for riches. They had asked for power. They had pleaded for fruitfulness. They had wanted all manner of ‘things’ and petitioned him for those gifts they thought would bring them happiness and fulfillment.
And yet when he asked her to tell him her heart’s desire, offered to give her whatever that was, she had not asked for what he had expected. She had said ‘you’.
The memory threw him into turmoil all over again.
He did not know what to make of such a request.
He did not even know how to respond, or if he should respond.
He was more than merely intrigued by her now, though.
She had awakened his hunter’s instincts. She had stirred to life an appetite for the things he’d long denied himself—the corporal pleasures of the flesh.
* * * *
Gaby managed to make it out of the chamber before the workers could gather the equipment Dr. Sheffield was bellowing for. When she left, Dr. Sheffield was trying to coax some of the workers down the shaft to help remove the slab.
Ignoring the argument that was growing more heated by the moment, Gaby shifted the bundle under her arm and struggled out of the pit with it, no mean feat considering she had to climb three ladders to reach the level where the tents had been set up.
She wanted to bathe, but she wasn’t certain all of the workers were occupied in the pit … or would stay down below. From the voices, it sounded to her like some of them would be walking off the job. Deciding after a moment to dismiss her uneasiness over it in favor of her current needs, she grabbed bathing supplies when she dropped off her bedding and headed to the ‘facilities’.
Privacy wasn’t exactly insured. The john and the camp shower had been set up in a tent and canvas walls did nothing but block the view. With everyone at the dig site, though, Gaby had far more privacy than she could usually count on. Having relieved herself, she went into the bathing area, took off her clothes, and, after taking a deep breath, plunged beneath the drizzling shower head. The temperature of the river water wasn’t particularly cold unless one happened to be particularly hot when one plunged into it. All that could be said for it was that it was a way to get clean with some privacy and some assurance that the water was actually clean and free of harmful bacteria and/or larger living organisms.
She felt better when she’d bathed and changed.
She didn’t know why she’d been creeped out by the discovery that she’d slept on a tomb. She wasn’t superstitious. Dead was dead and they couldn’t be offended by anything anyone did above their burial spot—not even something as disrespectful as fucking.
She examined bones all the time. Most of them had been dead centuries, at the very least, but she’d examined skeletal remains for the police a few times when a body was found that had been buried long enough there was little left for them to go on to solve the case.
She wasn’t repulsed by bones. Decaying tissue had an ick factor, depending on how old it was, but bones … no.
She didn’t need to sleep, or to rest, but she didn’t particularly want to rejoin the party in the crypt at the moment and she didn’t feel like standing in the hot sun. Finding a place to settle beneath the shade of one of the open tents, she stared absently at the jungle, trying to sort through her thoughts.
She knew she had to have dreamed the bizarre things that had been dropping into place in her memory since she woke, and yet it didn’t have the ‘feel’ of a dream. In the dream, she’d thought she was awake, shielded from what she was seeing by an odd sort of lassitude, but alert enough that she’d been looking for an explanation for the strange lights.
A breathless sort of thrill rushed through her when she finally allowed herself to recall the sensations she’d experienced when Anka had made love—ok, fucked her. The sense of happiness and satisfaction she’d felt upon first waking, she knew, were because of that … wet dream, which was her first ever and brought on by what? Some sort of weird fascination with the statue?
Was that why she couldn’t remember Anka actually doing anything? She remembered looking up at him. She remembered, in shivery detail, everything she’d felt—except she couldn’t remember him physically touching her beyond that first brush of his hands that had made her clothing vanish.
And what was up with that, anyway? Why would she even dream in terms of magic?
He had been wearing some kind of leather looking breechclout. She certainly didn’t remember him taking it off. So how could he have had sex with her?
What was she thinking!
The whole thing had been a dream! Why was she quibbling over the details?
And why was it that remembering it was enough to make her feel all hot and bothered all over again? God! She was so pathetic!
Granted, she could barely remember the last time she’d gotten laid, mostly because she’d tried like hell to forget it, but it wasn’t as if she went around hassling after men, fantasizing, looking desperately for somebody to scratch her itch. She rarely felt an itch. Mostly, she didn’t even think about having sex because she never saw anyone that interested her enough to put it in her mind.
Last night sure as hell shouldn’t have put her ‘in the mood’!
She stewed over that awhile and finally remembered she had been pretty fascinated with the fertility god’s dong. She didn’t remember feeling aroused, though. She’d just been … sort of awed and unnerved at the size of it.
Why had she felt compelled to spout all that nonsense about the temple, anyway, she thought irritably? Now she was going to either have to explain that she’d had that weird dream, or just leave it hanging. Either way, she would sound like a hysterical female.
She had not been hysterical! She’d been upset, unnerved, but she damned well thought she’d handled herself well under the circumstances.
The worst thing she could do, she finally decided, was to slink off with her tail between her legs. She’d be better off to brazen it out and, somehow, just pass off the comments.
Having made the decision, she got up resolutely and headed to the dig site. The workers, from what she could tell, seemed to have decided to stay, although it also appeared that they’d flatly refused to go inside the temple … or tomb, whatever it was. Several of them glanced at her as she made her way to the shaft, but they averted their gazes almost as quickly.
Strange.
She could understand the archeology team behaving like that toward her—they were convinced she was quivering on the edge of a breakdown only because she’d spent the night in the temple alone. But why the natives? She didn’t see why they would be uneasy about her state of mind.
It was almost as if they knew something.
Shrugging it off with an effort, she made her way to the shaft. Two workmen were stationed at the four legged timber brace they’d built above the hole to rescue her and help the others down. Like the others, they looked distinctly uneasy and they barely glanced at her. Instead, they merely nodded when she indicated she wanted to go down, and avert
ed their gazes.
Superstition, she told herself, although she couldn’t imagine what sort of misguided mythological ideas they might have about this place. No one had known it existed before Dr. Sheffield and Dr. Oldman had stumbled upon it. How could there be curses or anything of that nature connected to it that they might be concerned about?
She arrived in the chamber in the midst of a discussion regarding the body they’d decided they would find in the altar cum crypt.
She wasn’t convinced it was a crypt. Why would there be steps leading up to a crypt?
On the other hand, she supposed it also defied logic that an altar would be so high.
Unless the people that had once inhabited the city were giants?
That thought directed her attention to Anka. It dawned on her after she’d stared at the statue of the god for several moments that the altar had probably been scaled to their giant of a god.
Was there any way in hell, she wondered, that she’d experienced some sort of psychic event?
She wasn’t inclined to believe in the supernatural any more than she believed in any other myths or magic, but she felt as if it hadn’t been a dream at all. Maybe it had been her subconscious mind interpreting the depictions on the wall around her?
Whatever it was, she felt as if she knew what the chamber had been used for and how. She felt strongly that the dancers she’d seen in that half waking state had been performing a ritual dance to summon the god and that the altar was an altar, a place where the woman who was suffering infertility lay, summoning the god to help her.
That was why the altar had been built as it was, so that the god, Anka, could come to her and answer her prayers.
Maybe the slab on top was nothing more than the consecrated stone settled there?
“It’s definitely hollow,” Mark said at just that moment, frowning at the screen on the sonogram he was using to examine the altar.
That shot down her theory, of course. Maybe.
“Assuming there is someone buried here, possibly preserved, we can’t take a chance on opening it until we have a container suitable for moving it. We just don’t have what we need on site right now. If it is mummified, it won’t last long in this kind of weather.”
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