Poof.
The facts were irrefutable, and the conclusion Logan began to draw—however outlandish—seemed the only valid explanation for the series of events.
Fact: The mummy had been locked behind a closed door, safely sealed within its golden tomb. Logan had seen it with his own eyes, had locked the door himself.
Fact: In the next moment it had vanished like an assistant in a magic act. Unlike said assistant, however, the mummy hadn’t fallen through a trapdoor or scuttled off behind a curtain. Logan had thoroughly checked the floor and walls for any sign of a hidden entrance and had found none. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Just solid, immoveable concrete block walls and a poured cement floor.
Fact: A man had appeared in the very same closed, locked room, as naked as the mummy had been and bearing a startling resemblance to the effigy sculpted on the lid of the sarcophagus.
Conclusion A: Seti was a member of a subversive, futuristic nudist society and had been beamed inside the room at the same time the mummy had been beamed out, by way of some top-secret, highly questionable, utterly improbable transporting device.
Conclusion B: The man who called himself Seti was the mummy, just as he purported himself to be.
Occam’s razor, Logan thought. “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,” which translated as “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” In other words, all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the correct one.
Seti, the naked man who had a face and body that could make the angels weep at its beauty and who was sitting not twenty feet away from Logan, was…
“A five-thousand-year-old dead guy,” Logan whispered in awe.
Logan felt himself begin to shake as he stepped outside of the Vault and stared hard at Seti, not certain at all how to handle the subject of his newly formed hypothesis. On one hand, if it were true then Seti possessed a wealth of firsthand knowledge that would be invaluable to the scientific community. Simply put, he was a history geek’s wet dream. On the other hand, he was a walking corpse who had last seen the light of day before the birth of the pyramids.
He didn’t look like a corpse. In fact, he looked like one of the men who graced the covers of the skin magazines that were stacked in Logan’s bottom dresser drawer at home. The kind that had inspired one-handed orgasms over the years—tall, handsome, with a hard, sculpted body.
Seti was still seated, slumped in the Queen Anne chair where Logan had left him, looking drained and worn out. No wonder. Rejuvenating from a state that was only one step up from dust must have been exhausting.
“Now do you believe?” Seti’s voice sounded as weary as he looked.
“Maybe,” Logan hedged. Saying it out loud was a step Logan wasn’t yet prepared to take. “You need to understand how impossible this all seems.”
“Impossible?” Seti sniffed. “Nothing is impossible where the gods are concerned.”
“God did this to you?”
“No, your Jehovah had nothing to do with this. At the time I was cursed he had not yet made his presence known in the pantheon of the Immortals. It was Setekh,” Seti said venomously. “Demon bastard of a mongrel’s whore.” There was obviously no love lost between Seti and the god whose name he bore.
“Setekh cursed you? That’s why the canopic jar bore the head of a crocodile! I was right. It was meant to represent Setekh!” Logan couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice as his deduction was validated. He’d thought the jar symbolized Set, although he hadn’t known why. “But you were mummified. What happened to the other canopic jars?”
“Must we have this conversation now?” Seti growled. “I am hungry, thirsty, and grow impatient with your questions.”
“Look, Boris Karloff, I think I’m entitled to a few answers,” Logan said sarcastically. “I was living in a nice, safe, rational world up until a few minutes ago. If you’re going to expect me to believe that you are who you say you are, then I think I deserve a few details.”
“I will tell you all you wish to know after we leave this place.”
“Leave? Where do you think you’re going to go? You can’t run around New York in nothing but your skin. People don’t do that anymore. We’re civilized now.”
“Civilized? How is covering yourselves with cloth from neck to ankle when it is not needed for protection from the elements a mark of progress? It seems idiotic to me, as if your people wish to keep secret the fact that they have genitals.”
Logan blinked. “Point taken, but you still can’t do it. You’d be arrested before you got ten feet from the building.”
Seti rolled his eyes. “As you wish. Secure clothing for me if you must, but hurry. I wish to shake the dust of this place from my feet as soon as possible.”
“Do I look like your personal valet?”
“My apologies,” Seti replied sarcastically. “We will sit here until your Dr. Perry returns. Then you can explain to him how his precious sarcophagus was destroyed and that the naked man is, in fact, the mummy he has so jealously guarded these past fifty years.”
Logan opened his mouth to retort but closed it again with an audible clack. His head swiveled as he looked back and forth between Seti sitting regally before him in all his naked glory and the ruins of the Vault.
Shit. Seti is right. Perry will never believe me. One look at the mess in the basement and Perry will have me spitted and roasting in courtroom hell. Breaking and entering. Vandalism. Grand theft. The possible charges loomed up before Logan’s eyes in big flaming red letters. He could already hear the prison cell door slamming shut and his life as a free citizen saying goodbye for the next thirty or forty years.
“Wait here,” Logan ordered, pointing a finger at Seti. “Don’t move, and don’t touch anything. I’ll be right back.” Before Seti could say a word to the contrary, Logan raced off.
He took the stairs two at a time, not wanting to waste a moment waiting for an elevator that was notoriously slow and cranky. Flying up the four flights, he reached the lobby level of the museum out of breath but in record time.
Threading his way against the flow of the steady stream of visitors, Logan entered the museum gift shop. He grabbed a black T-shirt that read, appropriately enough, The Dead Come Alive at the National Museum of Natural History, and a pair of matching sweatpants with the logo of the museum embroidered at the hip. A pair of flip-flops completed his purchase, which he charged to the last of his charge cards that miraculously still had credit available. Logan grabbed the clothing from the cashier without waiting for either a receipt or a bag. He tucked it under his arm, and then returned to the basement. He prayed Seti had listened and was still there waiting for him.
He was. Although he looked less than happy about having been made to wait. His dark chocolate eyes narrowed as Logan approached, and the air took on a decidedly frosty chill.
Tough titties, Logan thought. This superiority thing Seti had going was starting to get on Logan’s nerves. He thrust the shirt, pants, and sandals at Seti with a barked order to get dressed. “Hurry up,” he said. “I’ve got to get you out of here before Perry comes back.”
Seti stared at the clothes in his hands as if he’d never seen such things before. With a start, Logan realized he probably hadn’t. All facts pointed to Seti having spent the last five thousand years in a box, Logan reminded himself. “I could hear everything that went on around me,” Seti had said. Hear, but not see.
Sighing, Logan reached for the T-shirt. “Let me help you,” he offered, fitting the shirt over Seti’s head. “Your arms go in the smaller holes.”
Within a few moments, Seti was dressed, looking like any one of a thousand tourists who visited the museum each week. Except that Seti’s phenomenal body made the cheap T-shirt and sweatpants look as good as if they were tailored Armani. He wore them with grace and ease, as if he’d been born to them.
Dammit. Logan realized that he could dress Seti in a potato sack and he would still look like a million bucks. He was going to draw
attention, like it or not.
“All right. Stay close to me, don’t wander off, don’t make eye contact, and for the love of God, don’t speak with anyone!” Logan growled.
Logan had no idea where he could possibly take Seti and not be found within the first five minutes. All he knew was that they couldn’t stay in the museum.
He led Seti out of the dungeon and up the stairs to the main floor. After an indecisive moment, Logan made a beeline for the exit. The museum was crowded, as was usual for late afternoon, and walking against the crowd slowed them down considerably. They’d only gone about fifty yards when Logan turned around to make sure Seti was keeping close behind him.
He wasn’t.
Backtracking, it took Logan a full five minutes to find Seti standing in the Hall of Mammals, staring nostalgically at a stuffed camel.
A trio of women had spotted him almost at the same time, zeroing in on Seti like a group of heat-seeking missiles, whispering to each other as they approached. Logan held no doubts as to the topic of their conversation. The subject was Seti, and the question was how long it would take them to get him out of his new T-shirt and sweatpants.
Logan sprinted back. He grabbed Seti’s arm, and tugged hard, to the annoyance of the three women, who had evidently just declared Seti their own personal museum souvenir. The women practically snarled at Logan as he dragged a reluctant Seti away from the exhibit and back toward the exit.
“I told you to stay behind me!” he hissed as Seti shook off his arm.
“You are not the master here.”
“Oh, and I suppose you are?”
“I am Seti. It is my birthright to rule.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m Logan, and it’s my right to kick your sorry ass if you do that again!”
“How can my posterior be apologetic for anything?” Seti scoffed. “Besides, with those short, stumpy legs of yours, I doubt that you could kick high enough to reach it.”
“My legs are not stumpy!” Logan retorted before he saw the flash of humor in Seti’s eyes. Great. The dead guy was being witty. “Oh, very funny. Look, just stay with me, okay? The sooner we get out of here, the better off we’ll both be.”
A security guard stood sentry at the exit turnstiles. Just as they approached him, his radio crackled to life.
Heavy static slurred the voice, and the guard played with the knobs on his radio unit, trying for better reception. The voice could have been asking the guard what he wanted for dinner, but Logan was too nervous to realize that. In his mind, Perry had found the empty sarcophagus and was issuing an all-points bulletin for Logan.
“Oh shit!” Logan whispered. “They couldn’t have found the Vault so soon! Dammit, I didn’t expect Perry to be back for hours yet! Come on. We’ve got to get out of here!” He stepped up the pace, walking as quickly as he could without actually breaking into a run.
Luckily for Logan, the security guard didn’t look twice at either him or Seti. He was too busy playing with the buttons on his radio to notice the two men who zipped past him and out of the building, disappearing into the crowds on the street.
Chapter Five
ON THE street, Seti stopped every five feet despite Logan’s protests, gawking at one thing or another. He couldn’t help himself. It had been so long since he’d last seen anything but the inside of the lid of his sarcophagus that the sights, sounds, and smells of the city overwhelmed him. And never, even when he’d been alive, traveling the land with his people, had he seen such a conglomeration of oddities.
Over the years, Perry had spent countless hours speaking to him as he lay immobile in his sarcophagus, instructing him on what changes time had wrought on the world. Seti had come to understand that cities were what his people once referred to as camps. What he hadn’t understood was how immense, how unbelievably vast those cities might be, nor how crowded with human life.
Where on Ra’s green earth did all of these people come from? He hadn’t known that the world could hold so many, let alone all in one place.
People of all different sizes, shapes, and colors, male and female, old and young, strolled or hurried along. The streets teemed with them. Seti couldn’t differentiate between classes either. Some people had facial markings, some wore jewelry, but others around them didn’t behave as if those marked were of a higher or lower rank than they. As improbable as it sounded, it seemed that all classes of people here mixed freely with one another, with none showing deference to the other. How odd.
Most people were dressed in garments similar to those Logan had procured for him, but a few wore considerably less. Some so much so that Seti would have wondered why they had bothered with clothing at all, if Logan had not already told him of the ridiculous edicts about public nudity.
And the buildings! So tall that their roofs disappeared into the clouds, they looked as if they’d been hewn from solid rock. He ran his fingers over the smooth, cold surface of the cornerstone of one such wonder, marveling at the workmanship of the perfectly square stone. Amazing.
But what captured Seti’s imagination like nothing else were the automobiles. Oh, he’d heard Perry talking about them and had understood that they were some kind of miraculous conveyance, but to actually see them moving up and down the streets without a single horse or camel in sight was unsettling. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought them the work of some god.
A young woman with hair so bright a red that it looked aflame sold what she called deeveedees from a battered suitcase on the curb. Before Logan could stop him, Seti grabbed one of the thin boxes that she had on display and cracked it open. Disappointingly, the deeveedees were no more than small flat discs fashioned from some unfamiliar substance that served no obvious purpose Seti could fathom. Perhaps they were weapons of some sort, he reasoned. Logan jerked it out of his hand before Seti could test his theory.
Mouthwatering aromas drew him next to a small metal cart where a man peddled twisted pieces of bread sprinkled generously with salt. In Seti’s day, salt had been a precious commodity, readily available only near the sea or from a few scattered and rare salt licks, so he was duly impressed by the merchant’s wealth. The smell of the baked bread made his stomach grumble, reminding him that he was famished.
“I need food,” he told Logan, fully expecting to be obeyed immediately. Unfortunately, Logan was proving to be frustratingly disobedient. He hadn’t obeyed a direct order from Seti yet.
“In a while. We have to keep moving!” Logan replied, tugging at his arm.
“Now.”
“Later!”
Obstinate servant! Seti wondered how the kings of this modern world kept their servants in line, since he saw no evidence of lashings on any of the people around him. Obviously, whatever their method, Seti was doing it wrong. Logan fought him at every turn.
Logan’s hand was tugging incessantly on his arm again. Seti allowed himself to be pulled along the sidewalk, but only until the next wonder caught his eye. He planted his feet, and it would have taken a man much larger and stronger than Logan to budge him.
Window glass amazed him. It was nothing like Seti had imagined it to be. A most interesting invention, he thought, tapping his fingers against the storefront pane. Nearly invisible, hard, it let abundant light into the shop. Still, Seti considered, it also allowed prying eyes to see into a man’s personal affairs, just as Seti was doing now. He watched a young man slip curious-looking sandals on the feet of several patrons who sat within the shop. How did these people tolerate strangers nosing about in their business? Seti would never stand for anyone gawking at him.
Everywhere he looked, sights, sounds, and smells that were both alien and fascinating to Seti assaulted him, intriguing and beguiling him. Most were benign, some were enchanting—like the pretzel, as Logan had called the small, twisted loaves of bread—but some were completely repugnant.
Such a repulsive smell wafted to his nose at that moment, drifting up from a circular hole in the road. Seti winced, recoiling from the stench.
“Must be a sewer break,” Logan muttered, wrinkling his nose and tugging yet again on Seti’s arm.
Thank the gods, that smell must not be common here, Seti thought. Logan finds it as horrendous as I do. For once, Seti was happy to allow Logan to lead him away.
Logan turned into a darkened doorway, dragging Seti in behind him. He didn’t want to enter—Seti had spent far long enough boxed up in a small, dark place. He wanted to see the sky, feel the fresh air caress his cheek.
But he was also hungry and thirsty, so much so that he was beginning to feel weaker by the minute, and Logan had promised him both food and drink if he came inside. Reluctantly, Seti did as Logan bade him.
He hated having to rely on Logan for his sustenance. It should be the other way around. Seti was a king, therefore the provider. It had always been that way, and it went against his grain to be dependent on anyone.
Still, he had no choice, at least not for now. He followed Logan into the building, through a dimly lit room to a table near the back. Sliding in, Seti sat opposite Logan.
“Well, who do we have here? Where did you find this hunk of fine-looking man flesh, Logan?”
“He’s… a friend from out of town, Wendy. On vacation,” Logan replied, eyeing Seti. A warning not to divulge his true origins, Seti surmised. Very well. By this point, if it would get him some food and water, Seti would have gladly claimed to be a lump of dung fresh from a camel’s ass.
“What’s your name, lover?” Wendy, as Logan had called the old woman, asked him.
“Seti.”
“Seti what?”
“Seti… from out of town.”
Wendy chuckled. “Cute and a sense of humor. Can’t beat that combination, Logan. I think he’s a keeper. All right, boys, what’ll you have?”
Logan ordered the food—burgers, fries, and a pitcher. Seti had heard of burgers and fries and had high hopes that the pitcher would contain liquid of some sort.
Having suffered a constant, gnawing ache in his belly for thousands of years, his throat as parched as the desert sands, he nonetheless had survived—in a manner of speaking. And yet within the scant few hours since the curse had been broken, he felt as though his strength were draining away, leaving him as weak as an infant. He could barely sit upright. That, he remembered, was the curse of having flesh.
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