Howard’s brow rose. “This discovery is mine. It belongs to me. I deserve it after what Alistair did to me. Cut me out of the fieldwork. Kept secrets from me. Let that boy take my place. I was going to share it with you, but I can see that’s not going to happen now.”
In a swift jerking movement, he grabbed at my backpack, but I struggled to keep it.
“Just give it to me!” Howard bellowed.
“No!” I screamed at his face, my fingers holding a death grip on the strap.
We wrestled over the leather bag, two pairs of feet inching closer to the edge of the landing. We were running out of room and Howard showed no sign of giving in.
“Please, Howard! Stop it!”
“Just give me the God damn journal, Andelyn!”
“My name is Andie!” I spat in his face and brought my knee up between his legs in a hard thrust.
He fell to the floor and I took the opportunity to jump over his body and make a run for the exit. But I wasn’t fast enough, and Howard was fueled with rage. His arm reached out and grabbed my ankle, sending me clumsily slamming into the stone floor alongside him, my jaw smashing against it.
I kicked and screamed as Howard clawed at my legs, dragging me closer to him. My jacket rode up and the coarse sand scratched the skin of my back. His surprisingly strong arms hauled me to my feet, and we spun around so my back was to the dark opening that dropped off just inches away.
“Fine then,” he replied with an eerie calm.
I watched as his mouth twisted at the sides with dark intent, and he pulled a knife from his side. A metallic tinge touched my tongue as my mouth filled with blood from the fall. I spat it on the floor. The knife gleamed in the light of my head lamp that shone up from our feet and I looked at him with wide, desperately pleading eyes.
“I’ll just come back for it in the morning when we tragically discover your body at the bottom of the pit. Poor Andie Godfrey. Just couldn’t handle the stress of revisiting her father’s death.”
I shook my head in disbelief and fear. “No, Howard, you don’t have to do this. We can work–”
But the sharp thrust of a blade in my gut sent me reeling and stole the words right from my mouth. I felt the quick spread of warm blood soaking through my clothes and stared at Howard, betrayal emanating from my eyes. It was all I could do, stare at him and plead the question why with my pained look as my shaking hands gripped the knife handle that stuck out from my stomach.
He leaned into my face, brushing his cheek against mine as he whispered in my ear, “Goodbye, Andelyn. I’m so sorry it had to end this way. I’ll be sure to give you some credit when I announce the discovery to the world. Now, go, and give Alistair my regards.”
And just like that, he gave my dying body a quick shove and I fell over the edge where I landed at the bottom like a sack of potatoes. The sensation of bones breaking was almost as sickening as the sound which echoed off the empty walls. I could do nothing but lie there on the floor, broken limbs sprawled across the giant wheel carving as blood leaked from my body. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.
Howard’s retreating footsteps got quieter and quieter as he left me for dead at the bottom of the pit. Part of me was relieved that he was gone. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of watching the last of my life putter from my body. I closed my eyes, dreaming of being reunited with Dad and Silas, the two people I loved most in this world. We’d be together in the next. Somehow, I found the strength to move one arm, the one miraculously not broken, and struggled to pull Silas’s necklace up to my face where I could place a kiss on the stone. I held it in my hand and cried the last of my tears.
“I-I’m coming, guys,” I choked out as more blood gurgled from my face.
Suddenly, I felt something burning my forearm. I glanced down and saw my ankh tattoo alight with the flame of a small fire that traced the black lines on my skin. Just as it had with Silas in my dream. I screamed involuntarily at the pain, unable to move. Unable to stop the agony as I had no choice but to lay there and watch the symbol catch fire and sear my skin.
A strange white-blue light flooded the pit, blinding my eyes. Was someone here? Was Howard coming back to finish the job? I struggled through the cloudy daze that threatened to take me under, strained to listen for footsteps. But no one came. The light spread and grew, and I could see then, its origin. It wasn’t coming from above.
It was coming from beneath me.
My head lolled and I pressed my cheek against the stone floor as I watched the crimson color of my blood fill the cracks and grooves of the carvings. The white-blue light seemed to blaze from the center where the sun sat in the middle of the wheel. I let out another moan of agony as the stone beneath my figure began to move, shifting in a circular motion.
It jerked my broken bones as the center opened up, creating a larger hole, and more light filled the space. Pressure built in the air around me. It felt as though the very fibers of my physical form were being stripped apart, thread by thread, as the light continued to grow and envelop me in a white-blue blanket. All I remembered was the agonizing sound of my own screams getting pulled into the void as every molecule that made me whole filtered in along with them. One by one.
And then I was gone.
Chapter Eight
Some part of me fluttered into consciousness. I tested my body, focusing on my fingers, my arms, then legs, expecting unforgiving pain, only…I couldn’t move. Just my eyes, deep under the closed lids, strained to move back and forth. My limbs, hot and heavy, felt like solid Jell-O and it sent a cold ache splintering across my body every time I dared try and move. If this was how it felt to come back to life, I’d much prefer death.
I managed to peel my eyelids open, loosening bits of sand from underneath that scraped across the surface of my eyeballs. Ignoring the fresh pain, I blinked a few times to wash the dust free and let my sight adjust to the light in the room around me. A room made of stone. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, but not the same room I’d been in before. This wasn’t the pit; I was in a cave.
Panic filled my veins as I recalled my last memory of me and Howard near the pit and I instinctively tried to bolt up, to run away. But I couldn’t. I tried again to move my limbs then realized that I was held in place, strapped to a hard bed. I blinked in confusion. As more of the strange room slowly came into focus, I realized I wasn’t alone.
Two people occupied the space with me; one abnormally tall and the other barely the height of a hobbit. I squinted, straining to make them out better. But the oversized beige hoods they wore covered most of their faces. Odd words and phrases touched my ears and I recognized some of it. Far less than half.
“Excuse me,” I croaked. My throat felt like my face; hot, dry, and tight.
The tall person turned and took a couple steps toward me. I could see their face then, and I tried to hide the squeak that pressed from my chest. They looked human…ish. I stared at them in horrified fascination. They had the feminine facial features of a Greek goddess paired with the long and square body structure of an athletic male under a long grey cloak. Their skin almost seemed slightly translucent, milky, void of any color, which only intensified as it blended with the same color of their long, silky hair.
They lowered their hood, revealing more of the icy colored locks and smiled as foreign words flowed from their mouths. They seemed kind enough. They dabbed my forehead with a wet cloth, and I saw from the corner of my eye how they pulled it away with splotches of red soaking into it. The person, male, female, I wasn’t sure, continued to speak to me, a soft but authoritative tone. Still, I couldn’t make out everything. It was like listening to someone speak when every second word was bleeped out.
I shook my head from the pillow as I stared up at them. My limbs still unable to move. “I’m sorry, I don’t quite know the dialect. Parts are familiar to me,” I explained in the best Arabic I could. “Can you tell me where I am?”
Just then, I heard a bustling sound on the floor just a f
ew feet away from my head. I strained my neck to catch a glance and saw another person–a small child–rummaging through my backpack. Dad’s pictures sprawled on the floor. My notes. Dad’s journal.
Instinctively, I tried to bolt upright to grab my stuff and run the hell out of there, but I couldn’t. The strange force holding me in place was like a magnetic field preventing me from leaving the surface of the bed.
“Hey!” I shouted at the tiny hooded being.
Startled, it spun around, and I saw then that, unlike the other being, it wasn’t human-like at all. Aside from the bipedal form, nothing about this thing said it was even from Earth. Dry scales of emerald green covered its body, and above a snouted face two giant black eyes blinked at me. I let out a fierce scream, which only caused the little creature to let out an equally terrifying sound before it scuttered out the door.
Was this the afterlife? Or something else?
I struggled to catch my breath as a new dose of panic flooded my veins. Not only was I in some strange place with tiny lizard people, I was also unable to move. Try as I might, it just wasn’t happening. It only caused me excruciating pain. The taller being, who I was also convinced couldn’t possibly be human, stood and left the room with a sigh.
I waited for someone, anyone, to return but no one did. I was left there on the bed, held down against my will as I healed from the damage Howard had caused. I thought about his betrayal and the strange beings as other thoughts spun around in my head like…where I was and if I were in trouble. Or how long had I been there? A few hours passed by. Exhaustion matched with my growing dehydration, and I eventually passed out. Completely gone to the world.
My dream was…light. A fact that made me feel out of place. My dreams were often dark and heavy with the weight of my self pity. The sun shone down from the sky like a blinding flashlight, but it warmed the grass beneath my bare feet, so I lay down to bask in it. I let the rays soak into my skin and closed my eyes to inhale the sweet smell of floral wisps in the air. But as I lay there, I heard a voice and pried my eyes open to find a familiar face above my head.
“Dad!” I said with excitement.
But he didn’t hear me. In fact, he couldn’t even see me. I watched as his lips moved with the motion of words. His face looking out across my body to someone else. Someone I couldn’t see. He looked concerned. Then, he turned and glanced down at me lovingly, a smile that filled his expression with wrinkles.
“Hey, Peach,” he said, the voice seemingly coming from the sky. “You’re going to be okay.”
He leaned in and touched my forehead. The moment his skin touched mine, I fell, careening into a pit of nothingness that swallowed up my screams and tears.
I awoke sometime later and could tell that a fair bit of time had passed. Just from the way my body ached in a new way, a far less painful way, but stiff and sore as if I’d been lying still for days.
Which, I bet, I had.
I brought my hand up to my face with a sigh of relief. I could move and without excruciating pain. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the lumpy bed, noting how it was made of a thick kind of linen, tea stained and stuffed with what felt like a mixture of hay and sand. The floor, like the walls, totally made of stone. Like the inside of a well constructed cave.
I realized my clothes were gone and in their place were off-white linens, loose and scratchy against my tender skin. I strained to listen for the sound of someone nearby and heard nothing, so I poked around the room in search of my stuff. I scooped up the contents of my bag and tightened the drawstring under the flap before hugging it to my chest.
The sandy wall pressed against my back as I scanned the modest room and realized, aside from a few stacked metal crates, it contained only the bed I’d lain on and a small side table made of old wood. A clay tumbler full of water sat there, right next to a freshly cut flower. White and round with half a dozen narrow petals. I picked it up and held it to my nose, remembering the same scent in the dream I’d just had.
With a smile I whispered, “Water lily.” One of my favorites. And my Dad’s.
A noise from behind alerted me to a new presence. The tall angel creature appeared from around the corner, as if a hallway just ended in this room rather than it having a door. I hugged my backpack tight and swallowed hard. The person took a breath and sat on the bed before patting the spot next to them. Wordlessly, I obeyed and took a seat a couple of feet away. Hesitant.
The person began to speak but, again, I could only make out every other word and I shook my head.
“I’m so sorry,” the sound crawled out over a dry larynx. “What did you say?” I didn’t know most of the words coming from its mouth, but I did manage to decipher that we were in Egypt and then one other word…death.
It repeated the words, slower this time.
My eyes widened in disbelief. “Death?” I choked. “Are you saying I died?”
The person seemed to understand me more than I them as they nodded and shook their head in response and said the phrase once more.
“Am I–” I glanced down at my soiled linens, eyes glistening. “Am I dead now?”
My guest rolled their eyes inside their ultra pale face and abruptly left the room.
“Wait!” I called after them. But no one returned. I sat back down on the bed and let out a huff. Where the hell was I? Did I dare leave?
A figure came around the corner and I all but jumped out of my skin. It wasn’t the same person, though it was equally as tall but with the obvious body of a dark man. Only the body, though, because his head was that of a canine. A…jackal? I stared in shock at the elongated snout covered in pure black fur to match the beady eyes that stared at me. I was held prisoner by my own frozen disbelief. The dog man, shirtless and sporting the same cream linen pants as me, spoke to my guest who suddenly appeared at his side. He pointed at me and spoke with a stern tone. He was even harder to understand.
My caretaker came toward me and outstretched its long arms to grab hold of mine. I wriggled in its surprisingly firm grasp. Unable to break free, I bent my knees and jumped before clumsily kicking it in the gut. They went reeling backward and I rolled across the bed before attempting to run past the dog man. But his arm flew out and I ran into it like an iron bar. The wind knocked from my lungs and I stumbled back to the bed where the Viking-like angel pinned me down as I gasped for air.
The dog man opened the palm of his other hand and took a strange object, the size of a large coin, to hold between his finger and thumb. I stared at it from the bed and took a sharp inhale as I watched three needle-like arms creep out from around the edges of the tiny circle. The man said something to the person pressing me down and they tightened their grip on my arms as he came closer, holding the object out as if…as if he were putting it on my face.
“Holy shit!” I said and panic ran through my veins like a race car. “No! Please, don’t!”
I jerked and kicked but it was no use. I couldn’t move. All I could do was watch in horror as the dog man placed the object on the side of my face, right above my ear. A labored scream erupted from my gut as the prickly arms of the object punctured my skin, in my ear and behind my jaw. What was that thing? What were they doing to me? Who–what were these creatures?
The dog man spoke again, calmly, as he stood by my side. But this time I…understood him.
“The pinching you will get used to,” he told me.
I stared at him with a whole new sense of fear and wonder. Now that I knew the words that came from his mouth, I became fascinated with how they made his lips move. The lips of a jackal. Like suddenly witnessing your pet talk. Only, this was a man.
Of sorts.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he continued. “But it did not seem we were going to get through to you. The device–” he tapped a finger to the side of his own head, covered in a smooth and silky black fur, “can be removed at any time. That is your choice. But I advise you to keep it on.”
I swallowed hard. “A
nd what if I don’t?”
He shrugged. “Then you will make your time down here more difficult than it has to be.”
“Down where?” I asked.
He exchanged a knowing glance with my other guest. “We’ll get to that in time. First, rest. You’ve taken on fatal wounds. They are healing but time is wise spent resting right now.”
“Will you at least tell me who you all are?” I demand.
Dog man’s mouth curved into a smile under his snout. “Of course.” He held out a very human-like hand toward the Viking angel. “This is Eirik. A healer. And I am Anubis.”
A part of me wanted to let loose a wild laugh, but I squashed it down and covered my mouth with my hand as I scrambled to collect my thoughts. “Anubis, you say?” I struggled to speak the words.
He nodded and one of the tall jackal ears flopped over. “That I am.”
I clutched the bag to my chest and pushed myself across the bed where I pressed my back against the wall. Anubis. The man with a jackal head.
And the Gate Keeper to the Underworld.
Chapter Nine
I’m not dead. I’m not dead. I’m not dead.
I sat, unmoving, on the bed where Eirik and Anubis had left me well over an hour ago. I was just hallucinating. Going through withdrawals. I was actually in a clinic somewhere. The dog headed man was just a dog I saw on the street as they carted me off. Right?
No.
I could still taste the bloody tinge of Howard’s betrayal, fresh in my memory. He lured me to Egypt, hoping to use me. Hoping that I’d solve the mystery of the wheel and share the glory with him. In hindsight, he probably would have stolen all the glory for himself. Either way, I may have met my maker regardless of the outcome. So, if Howard truly did stab me in the gut and leave me for dead–and the gatekeeper to the underworld stuck a strange device in my ear–then perhaps I was dead after all.
I pried my limbs from around my body and stretched out my arms as I recalled the way one had shattered when I’d collided with the bottom of the pit. My arm now moved; my fingers rolled. I was completely healed. But I’d only been out for a few days, at most. There’s just no way. Not unless I really were dead.
Ancient Hearts: A Time Travel Fantasy Romance (Kingdom of Sand & Stars Book 1) Page 8