She listened to the growl of the V8 under the hood and took her eyes off the road for a quick second. Craning her neck she stared at herself in the mirror. Her features had turned grim.
Homecoming.
Of sorts.
Being nearly immortal has its perks, to be sure, but it’s difficult to accept watching people you get close to age and die. My response has been to form very few friendships, and very few relationships deeper than mere flings. The money certainly helps keep me from succumbing to loneliness, and sometimes I almost feel guilt for using my fees for travel to exotic places where I can meet and bed the most beautiful women. Money plays a part in that, too, I assure you. However, there is one friendship I wish would blossom into something else, but it’s like a stupid cliché and I am kept apart from her by capricious fate. Caterina—Cat—whose face is the mirror image of my dear Magdalen, now long gone in the sands of time, has proven herself to be my soulmate, but I am forbidden from making her aware. And I pine for her without result…wondering if perhaps Fate has given me a new Magdalen but has contrived to keep us apart. My dear almost-Moneypenny, if only we could share what remains of your life, I would be content in my own Fate. Well, only if it were a good Fate…
Chapter 36
Midtown Manhattan
New York City
Simon whirled when he sensed someone behind him.
“Hello, Simon.”
“Cat?”
“The very one, and on the first try.”
“What are you—well, of course I know what you’re doing here, but I didn’t think the old man would send you, of all people. The VSS running out of agents?”
“He didn’t want to send me. In fact I had to convince him.”
He stepped back to have a look at her in the glow of the nearby hallway art deco lighting sconce. The fading but expensive black leather jacket highlighted her narrow waist, and a pair of skin-tight dark jeans fit her so well he felt jealous of the denim. Her hair was gathered behind her in a bushy tail that couldn’t contain its fullness or coppery radiance. Her complexion wasn’t typically Mediterranean, perhaps placing her heritage in a more northerly clime. A superb blend of northern Italian or even French, along with Scandinavian, or perhaps Germanic?
All those exotic tastes. Delicious.
Her pale blue eyes flashed and as he leaned closer she hauled off and smacked him, open-palm, right on the cheek. The loud crack seemed to echo in the long corridor.
Simon snapped back, startled.
“You got me in more than a little trouble, Simon my love,” she said, now caressing his stinging cheek with her long, cool fingers tipped with violet nails, making it better.
“Cat,” he started, “I didn’t intend—well, I deserved that.”
“Of course you deserve it. If not for this, then for any of the other hundred things you’ve done deserving of a good slap. That I know of.”
The wide mouth curled into a sarcastic smile, and he almost couldn’t resist closing the distance and catching her unawares with his lips, but he didn’t. The slap hadn’t hurt much more than his pride, but how much more of that could he afford to lose?
“It’s in the nature of things, Cat, my dear. I started on the wrong foot as you know. I can’t break out of my pattern now, can I? It’s part of my rakish charm.”
She laughed. “You’ve got by on just the sum of that for a long while, haven’t you?”
He nodded. “And my abilities, I daresay.” He left it ambiguous.
“I’m sure I know your abilities more than most.”
“And a bit less, too,” he said.
This was more like it. Typical banter between them, navigating between the innocent and the raunchy. But she hadn’t slapped him before. It still stung despite her healing fingers.
“What are you doing here?” Although he could guess.
“It was obvious that your handler being thousands of miles away wasn’t working out very well, so I decided to get my hands a little dirtier than usual. These Golden Dawn fanatics may be everywhere, but it seems they’re based here, after all.”
“Did you get something from the photos I emailed?”
She nodded. “And that dagger you left, too. Let’s go inside. I don’t like discussing this in the hallway.”
He popped his door lock with the key card and they stepped into his loft. “This floor only has two tenants at the moment, and the other one is on a photo shoot in South Africa.”
“A photographer, is he?”
“No, she’s a model.”
“Of course,” she said, chuckling and shaking her head.
Simon bet she already knew who his neighbors were and where they happened to be. It was part of her job, after all, to provide background of all kinds and to handle.
Which meant she probably knew he’d already entertained Tanya a couple times in his place, and checked out her place down the hall. Checked it out very closely, indeed.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. The door closed behind them.
“It’s been too long since my last time in New York,” she replied wistfully.
As soon as they turned, three masked assailants charged them with raised machetes.
Chapter 37
Midtown Manhattan
New York City
No, they weren’t machetes. Maybe swords. Katanas.
Either way, the blades flashed in the moonlight filtering from the skylights and gave away their silent wielders. Simon had just enough time to step in front of Cat.
He dodged the first attacker’s slashing swing easily, but it was followed by a strong epee-style thrust that seared through his sleeve like a hot razor…Letting the sword-wielder follow through allowed him to grasp the fanatic’s arm and twist it outward far enough that another attacker’s swing, unchecked, sliced through the skin, sinew, and bone of the first attacker and severed it cleanly…
The armless attacker went down without a sound.
Drugged again?
Were these attackers magically enhanced berserkers?
Were they immune to pain? If so, they were immeasurably more dangerous.
In a near-balletic move, Simon twisted to avoid another slash by the second guy, realizing at the same time that Cat had taken the third attacker and somehow pinned him to the brick wall as if she’d thrown knives at him, except no blades were visible…The assassin’s right arm was stretched upward, tacked to the wall like a dead butterfly, his katana extended uselessly toward the ceiling.
The masked man’s muscles bunched and stretched under his black clothing as he attempted to free himself, but despite his strength Cat’s magic held him immobilized. His sword shivered with his efforts, but could not move from its position.
Clearly Cat had rested since her recent exertions. Her power was evident, having taken the attackers by surprise. She asked the trapped attacker questions in a low but very commanding voice, and when he refused to respond his own hand made a downward arc, the trembling sword positioned itself and deliberately skewered its owner until he twitched and died.
Cat the warrior!
By then Simon was busy—the second attacker had regained his balance after slicing off the other’s arm, and was now rounding on Simon again, this time with two blades in his hands. Both swords flashed in the silver light and Simon knew the attacker meant to slice off extremities rather than get in close for body thrusts.
Coward.
But then he felt a stab of fear—if his hand or wrist were severed by the flashing razor-sharp blades, he would lose his bracelet and then he’d likely bleed out like a normal human. With the bracelet, most wounds healed eventually though they scarred. Without the bracelet he’d face the loss of his immortality and meet his Final Death.
It would be a race to the finish—would he bleed out before he aged rapidly and turned to dust?
Either wasn’t something to look forward to.
Were they targeting his arms—the br
acelet—perhaps explaining their apparent focus on limbs and not his center mass?
How did they know? His secret had rested safely for many centuries.
The scars on his torso and the bracelet itself burned as Cat’s magickal attack intensified. He could smell his flesh scorching.
It was probably Cat’s assault causing him to burn, although the Opposition’s own adept might have magically cloaked or enhanced the attackers.
Astaroth’s Assassins, he thought as his mind blurred.
With no time to reach another weapon, Simon allowed his instinct to take over and went inside himself…
Simon’s hands flashed out and snatched the whirling twin blades from his attacker’s grasp—ignoring the immediate excruciating pain in his palms that flowed like liquid fire to his brain—then flipped them, caught them by their grips with his bloody hands and skewered the final attacker through the heart and through the neck, impaling him in the floorboards. With a wild growl he yanked out one of the swords and sliced off the attacker’s head.
Then he sank to his knees, the blood pooling below him and his nerve endings screaming in agony. He willed the bracelet to do its work. He half-heard Cat’s droning voice, somewhere nearby.
His eyes were clouded by pain and—not for the first time—he cursed his life…and the Deal.
Chapter 38
Tomb KV 34, The Valley of the Kings
Egypt
Walking in the footsteps of Victor Loret, Dr. Akil Kazem was struck by the irony of how he would not benefit from his discovery as his predecessor had.
Too bad, I’ve spent my life seeking fame and glory, and perhaps a little fortune, but now two of those will never find me.
Handsome, sun-bronzed and well-muscled at forty-four, he could easily pass for a decade younger, and if his strenuous night’s activities with his colleague, Dr. Jill Harris, were any indication, aging was the least of his preoccupations. Almost the least. They had consummated the end of their long search and the final discovery with seemingly endless bouts of adventurous sex followed by sessions of swigging the hotel’s best champagne and giggling incoherently.
Kazem smiled wickedly at the thought of Jill’s long legs stretched over his shoulders and both of them rocking in unison until the bed nearly broke, and he chuckled at the thought of her dribbling fairly expensive bubbly over his genitals and slurping it with her talented tongue. He’d done the same on her, and it was heavenly—who needed silly religious trappings when heaven was to be found between the thighs of a wild and responsive lover, anyway?
Who needed fame when you could make a huge discovery, fuck your hot colleague, and the very next day collect a secret bounty worth millions?
He predicted a long and enjoyable retirement at some Mediterranean resort, a sun-drenched place with oranges and lemons and olives growing up the hillsides and massages by the pool followed by more gymnastic (and rougher) sex with Dr. Jill—at least until he tired of her long, bony nose and the relatively flat chest, two flaws which great oral technique couldn’t quite cancel out.
Today was the day their discovery would become his passport to that life. School in England had certainly prepared him, though the climate was not to his liking. No, the Mediterranean was much more preferable and when he tired of the life of a rich playboy retired antiquities expert and archaeologist, he could always revisit the Valley of the Kings and extend his list of modest discoveries.
Modest, that was, until the papyrus scrolls Jill had brought him last year had led them to a previously exhausted tomb—that of the Pharaoh Thutmose III, often considered to have been the Egyptian ruler during the biblical exodus. Sure, Loret had discovered and opened the main tomb all the way back at the end of the nineteenth century, but if there was any lesson to learn in Egyptology it was that the ages often met in confluence on the Nile, which made dating most finds so difficult. Rulers and their rivals tended to destroy each others’ temples and statues, rob graves, and try to erase their rivals’ existence. Which led to very confusing digs, indeed. For instance, although this tomb had been thoroughly explored, emptied, and studied, there were still secrets to unearth, secrets which could be older or newer than the tomb itself.
Kazem had first become aware of the possible existence of a secret compartment in the tomb when the attractive and highly desirable Dr. Jill Harris had brought him the scrolls to translate. Intrigued by the tale the glyphs told, Kazem had formed a professional partnership with Harris, bringing to bear his own resources from his status at Cairo University.
Her striking blond hair had colored his dreams and soon it had seemed that she was also taken with him. They’d been colleagues first, then friends, and then she seemed to invite the next step. So he had taken it, daringly. They’d become lovers in the most symbolic setting on earth, monuments to death and eternal life all around them.
And their work together had progressed with the relationship.
But her reticence to disclose the provenance of her find despite his pleading indicated that perhaps they had not been acquired in a precisely legal manner. Perhaps discovered in a hoarded lesser collection of some aged mentor, or perhaps stolen, what did he care?
For the glyphs related a story that quickened his pulse and dampened his brow. Jill’s beauty surely had hooked him like a bright flash in the water, but the hook had really been set when a two-month intense study of the pictograms finally resulted in a solid translation. One which indicated a glorious find was to be had right on the well-traversed mounds of the Valley of the Kings, generally thought to have been played out as treasure troves.
Jill’s excitement when he shared the translation had stimulated his secret lusts, and they’d formed their partnership when she casually mentioned that she knew someone who might pay handsomely for the find—if Akil Kazem could consent to keeping it to himself. The figure quoted was so much higher than his salary, and any likely offers for future lecture tours, would have totaled that he’d started to think of it as a private search right then.
And the find itself had proved to be in a place thousands had gazed upon, but no one had ever spotted.
According to his translation, the secret compartment was located inside the famous pillar on which was the carved and painted image of the goddess Isis suckling the Pharaoh Thutmose the Third. Just late yesterday they’d found the tiny catch that opened it.
And now Jill was meeting him here, in the closed tomb, to help him remove the artifact they had promised the patron who was going to make them both rich.
Of course there had been a chance the compartment would be empty, found and plundered by grave robbers of a previous century. But the hiding place was truly ingenious, and the compartment had survived the centuries intact.
The statue had shocked and fascinated him at the same time, but Jill had not seemed very surprised.
He stepped over the dusty remnants of millennia and perused the faces of the pillar, one of the chamber’s two such supports. As he stared at the rows of glyphs, he heard a scrape from deeper in the tomb. His breath quickened, for he had been harboring the erotic fantasy of fucking Jill atop the nearby ceremonial sarcophagus. His hopes were now raised...
It was indeed Jill, resplendent in her khaki blouse and jeans, which he’d noticed right away she filled out quite well, thank you. But as she approached he saw there was someone with her, a tall and swarthy man in a lightweight summer suit.
What’s this? Kazem thought. She hadn’t mentioned anyone else, and this was not likely to be the patron—she’d stated he wanted his hands clean of their crime.
Kazem thought, This might be a problem.
And then the chamber’s poor lighting revealed there was indeed a problem. His fantasy fizzled as if it had never been.
Jill held a pistol quite comfortably. He’d seen enough spy movies to know the fat tube sticking out of the gun’s barrel was a silencer.
His heart pounding, he tapped the pocket of his trousers that held his pill vial. The one thing that kep
t him from being as healthy as he looked.
“Jill, what’s going on?” He hated the whiny tone in his own voice.
“Akil, help me with our little statue. This gentleman is here to help us carry it out, don’t worry about him.”
Of course! Kazem remembered now that yesterday in all the excitement, he had forgotten to show her exactly how the hidden compartment’s secret latch system worked. Once they had replaced the statuette and closed the heavy door, it might as well have been in a safe. Surely if she had known how to open the compartment, she would have already removed the treasure.
He said: “Certainly, Jill, but only once your friend leaves the tomb.”
“My dear Dr. Kazem,” she started, and he winced at how cold and unfriendly she sounded, “the days of you telling me what we’re about to do are over. This gentleman is with me, and he’s going to remove the statue. Then I’ll pay you, and we will go our separate ways.”
The man grunted as if he disagreed. She chuckled sideways at him. “Doesn’t that sound convincing?”
The man shook his head and shrugged.
“You’re right, Yusef.” She looked back at Kazem. “You’re going to open the compartment, or I will put a bullet through every one of your limbs until you do. And if you still don’t, Yusef here can make those wounds even more painful. Can’t you, Yusef? You’ll do it eventually, my love.”
Her tone was mockery personified, backed up by barbed steel he had no idea existed within her.
Yusef grunted and this time he smiled. It was not a pleasant smile.
Chapter 39
Midtown Manhattan
New York City
“Well, Mish Moneypenny, wasn’t that exhilarating?”
Finally he arose, looking at his hands. The wounds were closing. The pain was still sharp, but subsiding.
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