Rakitaki: A Jonas Quartermain Adventure

by Lee Alexander

  He spoke, though the words were lost to Jonas’ jumbled mind. He felt like he was both watching them from a third-person perspective as well as from inside Atakheramen’s eyes.

  The Pharaoh reached behind his back and into the folds of his robe. He withdrew the bracelet that Jonas held. When she saw it, her eyes lit up. The ruby reflected the firelight, throwing little flashes of red across their faces. She spoke to him, love evident in her face and actions. He slipped the bracelet over her delicate hand and onto her wrist. She looked at it adoringly, then asked him a question. He ushered her outside, though he stayed well back from the doorway. Beyond, daylight could be seen.

  She stepped into the brilliant sunshine, and everything seemed to turn a brilliant red for a long moment. Then the dazzling light faded away as she twirled in place. As lively as she had appeared a moment before, she looked positively thrumming with energy. Atakheramen spoke again, and she ran over to give him a hug.

  Jonas fumbled with the bracelet, desperate to take it off, then tossed it to the desk. He shuffled his chair back in a panic. He paced the room with his hands in his hair, stressing about what he’d done. Sure, he’d stolen from the museum, but far worse, in his mind, was the fact he had stolen from him. The vampire pharaoh. An action not likely to go unnoticed.

  Curiosity ate at him. He had to know. Was the man evil, a craven beast intent on power and suffering? Or was he a good man afflicted with an evil power? Did he do those things for the betterment of his people like he claimed?

  Those questions and more flew through his head at breakneck speed. He paced across the tent dozens of times, constantly glancing at the bracelet that lay inert on his desk. Finally, he psyched himself up with multiple quick breaths, then grabbed the bracelet and slipped it on.

  Blood poured out of his greedy mouth and onto the stone floor. The slaves were used to cleaning his spills. He was so focused on his meal that he missed a presence enter the room. A gasp came from the doorway and he lifted his head just in time to see his wife’s eyes bug out in horror and disgust. She turned and fled the room.

  Jonas took the band off again. He could still feel the phantom sensation of blood coursing down his throat, and he reflexively swallowed. The dry click informed him the blood had not come out of the memory, despite the lingering sensation. The gold and ruby bracelet sat inert in his hand, yet it felt like a deadly snake. He shook his head, breathed out, breathed in, and put it back on.

  She stood behind the pillar in the throne room. He could see her eye looking at him. Her long hair flowed around her, nearly to the floor. He had been so careful for so long. Two decades. They had ruled in peace for an unimaginably long time. The village of a hundred houses had grown to a city that housed tens of thousands. Her health matched his own, as young and vibrant at forty as she had been at twenty. He had cleaned the blood from his face and neck before chasing after her.

  He had incredible speed, another facet of his power he had concealed from her. Every year he gained greater strength; a deeper understanding of the gift he had been given on the Crimson Night. She moved so slowly to his enhanced perception. The corpse in their room hadn’t even begun to cool. He chastised himself. Twenty years of care, ruined by a single stupid impulse. He hadn’t fed in days and the hunger had overtaken him. The slave had been nothing to him, but to her, she had been a human.

  He spoke and held a hand out. She hesitated mid-step. He asked her something, and she stepped out hesitantly. He reached his right hand out, left hand open and at his side. He was as non-threatening as he could be.

  She took first one faltering step, then a second with more confidence. She reached out and clasped his hand. She asked him a question. He knelt, looking up into her eyes. A single teardrop of blood escaped his eye. She looked startled, then wiped it away with her sleeve. She glanced around furtively to ensure they were alone. It was the middle of the day and the slaves were sleeping in their own quarters.

  Jonas felt her hand brush Atakheramen’s face. The love that was expressed by the simple action blew him away. He could feel the love and trust the man had for his wife. His heart broke at the tragedy he knew would befall her. She asked him a question and Jonas felt his mouth open. Words he didn’t understand came out in a different voice. She looked shocked, then fled the palace.

  Jonas took the bracelet off. He wiped the tears from his face. The heartbreak was still with him. He felt the ache in his heart and stomach. The ruby was cold under his thumb. It didn’t react when he touched it. He sniffled, wiped his eyes again, then placed the bracelet on once more. He had a feeling he knew what would happen next.

  He stared out of the palace. Sand had started overtaking the village. When she fled, most of his subjects had followed. The village had started to collapse in their absence. Trade could no longer happen with three-quarters of the populace gone. Stands stood empty. Houses collapsed in storms Nobody tended the fledgling crops, and the farms on the normally inhospitable red dirt had disappeared under the assault of the sands. Trade ceased. His wells worked as they had for decades, but with no new slaves to feed to them, they too were drying up. Only a few dozen of the most dedicated citizens remained.

  He sighed, his head in his hand. The sun shone outside and he wondered for the hundredth time that day if he should walk into the long-forbidden daylight and end it all. He blinked and a vision stood before him. Backlit by the bright day, cloaked against the sun, her shape was obscured. Yet few dared enter his throne room, and none of her diminutive stature.

  He reached out a hand and spoke her name. Jonas strained to hear it. He needed to know. Something deep inside told him it was important. The moment replayed again, then a dozen times more. Each time the name was garbled. He grew frustrated and shouted into the silence. Finally, the word coalesced. He was shocked when he heard it.

  “Madsenen!” The torture, the torment in his voice. The weakness and vulnerability. It tore Jonas’ heart anew. Yet he knew that name. The football player that had died at his hands. The coincidence was too great to ignore. He filed the name away for later.

  She walked forward in a floor-length cloak. It made no sense to him. The heat of the day would have roasted her alive. Then she flung the cloak aside with her arm to draw her hood back and the bangle shone in the dim light. It had done as he had designed it to, giving her endless youth. It had been ten years since they last stood face to face, yet she still appeared to be twenty. He reached out a hand, hoping against hope she would return the gesture.

  She stood in the center of the hall, looking at him. Then she gave an order. Dozens of men filed in after her, surrounding him. He looked around at the gathered force, then begged her to change her mind. She lunged forward with a wicked dagger. In a flash it was over. She lay on the floor and he cried in rage and sorrow. He watched the blade dance as her heart beat. Her arm hung limply to her side; her leg bent the wrong way. She bled in his hands. He sobbed over her. She croaked something out. He leaned over. She shouted the order, her last words. Then she fell still.

  The men closed the circle and began to attack. A dozen spears put holes in him, swords hacked chunks out of his body. He roared in defiance. He broke one spear and pulled the man in, feeding deeply. The body was empty in seconds. His second roar shattered the air, causing all but the most stalwart of the soldiers to flinch and cover their ears. One man lunged in with his sword, driving it deep into his breast. Atakheramen’s heart had shriveled decades before. It no longer beat and had no blood to drive. The attack was useless.

  He tore the man’s head from his body, savoring the salty-metallic rain of the arterial blood. He attacked soldier after soldier, laying them low. Finally, the hall was filled with corpses and one animalistic shadow of a man. He straightened himself and wiped the blood from his face. He knelt next to his fallen wife and asked her a question. She lay in his arms, eyes open to the sky. He reached up and gently closed them, uttering a prayer to Anubis. Tears of blood fell to her face as he wept.

  A spe
ar with a chain attached soared into the palace and pierced his chest. A second flew in a moment later. Then a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. Each hit their mark. He collapsed to the floor, no longer able to move with his major joints compromised. The chains tightened and he was dragged across the rough stone floor. He screamed as each tug drew him closer to his death.

  Sunlight touched his skin for the first time in three decades and he burst into flames. His roars turned to piteous screams. He screamed as he burned. The men circled to hack and stab at the flaming body. Pieces fell away. The youngest of the soldiers turned and puked into the blood-soaked sand. He threw curses and tried to use the dark magic that filled his body, but the flames took everything from him. The bravest of the men stepped up and looked into the monster’s eyes. He swung his sword into the meat of the pharaoh’s neck, cutting his cries short. The body burned for another hour, only extinguishing when the sun set. They dragged the body across the desert to the unfinished pyramid.

  Jonas gripped the bracelet and placed it on the desk. His left hand throbbed with the real rope burn, while the rest of his body ached with phantom pains. The death of the pharaoh had been horrible. Yet he knew that the lunatic vampire had caused thousands of deaths in his decades.

  He retched, feeling bile in the back of his throat. His skin crawled. But he knew what he had to do. He had to know how it ended. He swished old, cold coffee in his mouth, stomach hitching at the taste. He spat it out the tent flap, then sat in his chair again. He picked up the bracelet and looked at it in disgust. He sighed deeply, regretting the action before he had even done it.

  He placed it around his wrist.

  He screamed at the restrictive bandages; his arms were bound tightly to his sides. He felt hollow inside, far worse than ever before. He slammed his head against the lid of the sarcophagus; a meaty thump against stone. He threw himself against the coffin time and time again. He lost track of time in his rage. The lid started to shift after an eternity. Then it began to crack. Finally, it crumbled. He couldn’t see through the layers and layers of linen. He screamed, turning it into a howl. He sat up and wiggled until he fell out of the sarcophagus.

  He inched his way along the floor until he met steps, feeling the rough stone catch and tear at the linen. One eye was exposed, then the hook of his nose. He began to chew on the linen as he crawled, tearing himself free. He broached the surface, thanking any god willing to listen that there had been no door in place. Sunlight struck his face and he felt himself catch fire again. The linens burned away and he screamed freely. His atrophied muscles were drawn tight by the fire and he found himself trapped. An eternity of agony passed; ended only when the sun set and the flames died.

  He lay panting in agony as his battered and broken corpse fought to move. A jackal yipped nearby. He lay still, halting his breath. It closed the distance, smelling the charred meat. When it started to feast on his leg, he snatched it at the scruff with a gnarled hand and drained it dry in a second. It never even made a sound as it died. He immediately felt better. He stood and eyed the surroundings. The scenery was the same and simultaneously different. The pyramid base had been partially buried. He had no idea how long he had been trapped.

  He trekked across the sand to where his palace lay, finding it barely peeked above the sand. It had been at least a decade since his death. He vowed vengeance upon those that had felled him. He wandered east until sunrise; taking shelter in a nearby cave of sandstone.

  Jonas took the bracelet off and stared at the ground. Hope had abandoned him. The monster had been killed, hacked to bits, mummified and buried, and still he returned to his mockery of life after a few years.

  51

  He screamed like a madman. The bag was tight over his head, the ropes bit into his flesh at the wrists. He squirmed on the wood, ignoring the rocking of the ship. He could hear birds crying out far above. The only saving grace to being tied in the belly of the ship was he could not catch fire during the day. He had been free for nearly a decade this time. They had tracked him to Greece, pinned him down with spears like the first time, and tied him up. He just hoped they wouldn’t decapitate him this time.

  “I will gut all of you,” he growled in Greek through the heavy sack.

  “I would like to see you try. You take one step out of that cage and we flood it with sunlight. We know your weakness, monster.”

  Atakheramen snorted a short laugh. “You think mere sunlight can stop me?”

  He heard the two guards shift in their seats. The bag hadn’t been removed in two weeks. Sailing took a long time, across an expanse like the Mediterranean. The hunger burned in his belly, begging to be loosed, to be fed. He opened his mouth to bite the bag, but it moved away from his head every time he tried.

  Sleep was troublesome for him, but he attempted to rest until his opportunity presented itself. He did not resist when they lifted him from the cage, or when they left the ship under cover of night. He could hear the people bartering and the smells of the market. Back in Ankh-Tawy, the center of Egypt’s power.

  The wagon ride out of the city was no better than the ship had been. He did not struggle, knowing that he could trick the men if he presented no outward threat. The ride took a day and a half. When the wagon stopped for the last time, he could smell the pyramid. It reeked of containment magic.

  “Home,” he whispered into the hood. The men unloaded him, carrying him with great care down the stairs into his prison. They dropped him in the center of the antechamber. He had spent centuries in the next room. One long stint as his head reattached itself to his body over a hundred years. Awake for all of it.

  “If you let me go, I can make you all rich beyond your wildest dreams. Powerful enough to challenge the lesser gods. Rulers over man.”

  “Shut it,” said one man as he clubbed Atakheramen’s head with a staff.

  “In the name of Madsenen, we bind you. For the glory of Horus, we bind you. For the life of our peoples, we bind you,” the man intoned while the creature groaned on the ground. “Cursed to roam the Earth forever, we bind you to your grave.”

  Then they set to work. He screamed as they cut his arms and legs off. Despite having lived through that same treatment twice before, the pain was still excruciating. They stabbed him in the chest with seven swords, then used an axe to sever his head. He tried to scream, but no breath came to him. His head was lifted, still inside its bag, and placed in the sarcophagus.

  When the lid slammed shut his rage exploded. He was impotent; powerless. He closed his eyes and began to think, to plan. Someone would come along.

  Three centuries passed in the dark of his prison. Three hundred years of isolation, awareness, and insanity. When he heard the weasel of a man speak to his comrades, the language of Egypt had changed. The words sounded thick to his starved ears. When the lid crashed to the floor, his eyes opened. For the first time in lifetimes, he saw light. The bag had rotted away in the intervening years. The men looked into the tomb, making statements of wonder.

  “He looks like he died an hour ago. The guild are fools, there is no way he can return. And look at all this wealth! We will live like kings!”

  The leader, a small man with a pinched face, handed off his torch. He reached in and lifted the head, shocked by the weight. He turned it this way and that to inspect the head of the monster they had heard tales of for their entire lives.

  “He doesn’t look that scary.”

  Atakheramen’s eyes opened and the man shrieked, but it was too late. His teeth sank into the wrist across his mouth and began to suck. Blood gushed out of the ragged wound at the bottom of his head, holding a strange shape. He drank until the man collapsed to the ground. The others shouted and scrambled away from the dark vision.

  He stood for the first time in longer than he could remember. The body made of magic would only hold for as long as the blood could power it, but he had a solution for that. He darted from one to the next, draining the grave robbers of their blood. Then he used a portion of
the power to open the rest of the coffin encased in the sarcophagus.

  His body lay there, still in bags that had rotted away. His arms and legs were in the wrong positions, and the swords in the body had been replaced with daggers. He stretched his magical blood-fueled body over the remains and focused.

  When he rose the next night, his body was whole. He felt weak from using all the power the men had given him. Yet he could walk without using magic. He could feel again. He could breathe again. A smirk crossed his face.

  “I wonder what the guild is up to. My wife was a clever one, to create such a long-lived organization.”

  He checked the corpses of the men for anything that could help him. The daggers in his body had been destroyed by time and his flesh. They were useless. He found a small iron blade on one of the men and tucked it into the sash he wore. Their clothes were ill fitting on his larger frame, but he would make do until he was back in civilization.

  When he left the pyramid, he turned sunward and walked until morning. The clothes were of high enough quality to protect him, though his face still burned badly when sunrise arrived. He took shelter in a small shack that had been abandoned some years before. When he finally arrived at the city, it had changed once more. It had grown, and the name had changed. He heard men crying out about the great city Mennefer.

  He set to work. There was much to be done to return himself to his status as Pharaoh.

  "Dammit,” Jonas sighed. “Even decapitation didn’t work. There has to be something. How else did he end up a mummy?” He looked at the bracelet and put it on again.

  “Vlad,” said the kingly man. They conversed in Turkish. He had all the time in the world. He could spare a few years to learn a new language, and had done so dozens of times. He had traveled all around the Mediterranean in the millennia since his rebirth. After all, Anatolia was not far from his native Egypt.