“Back with us?” Auberon asked him.
Virgil took a long breath and shook his head. “I …do not know.” His tongue felt thick and coated with honey, as if he had been force fed. “We remain at Pettigrew’s?”
“I presume so, though I have seen nothing of the man since waking,” Auberon said, his face grim. “Laudanum? I think.”
Virgil agreed and for the first time, nausea threatened to become vomit. Given his present confinement, he decided this was a poor decision indeed, so grit his teeth and gave that particular impulse up to the wolf, who was already close to the surface, bristling. Neither would giving into that be wise, so he tried to breathe. Tried to remember a world before opium, and not after, because after, everything was smudged. He did not want smudged; he wanted clarity, and certainty, and—
“Eleanor? Cleo?”
“Unknown,” Auberon said, “though not down here with us. These…subjects appear to be male only—and Doctor Fairbrass among them.”
“Doctor Fairbrass. Hell.” Virgil grunted at both their circumstances and the continued degradation of his language. He picked the doctor out in a far cell, blond head bent to his chest as he hung unconscious in his own chains. He tried to shift upon the rack that held him, but he was wrapped tight, unable to move more than an inch in any direction. “Pettigrew has had some experience at this.”
“The question is, what the hell is this?” Auberon pulled on his own restrains and they did not move any more than Virgil’s had. “Given the riddle of the honey and of the rings… I am no closer to a solution, however his interest in Cl— Miss Barclay makes better sense to me now.”
“Do tell.”
“It is absolutely not my story to tell, however, during our recovery of her after her injury… Sustained here, Virgil, and not far away, I must note. During our recovery of Miss Barclay, we found her within a pool of honey. Fairbrass believed it was vital to her very survival. Given that, and that Pettigrew knew of Miss Barclay’s ties to honey—he asked her up there, he surely had a good idea what he would find within that sarcophagus—he may suspect she is proof of something he hopes to prove or accomplish with this honey. Miss Folley even spoke about honey’s medicinal properties.”
“Are you suggesting the honey did more than keep Cleo from hemorrhaging?” Virgil eyed Auberon. Auberon looked back, dark gaze as steady as forever.
“I may be,” Auberon said. “Prior to her injury, Miss Barclay and I were…”
Auberon went silent and Virgil waited. He could have easily filled in the gap—the two had certainly been developing something more than a friendship; they had, perhaps, been falling in love. But Virgil held his silence, wanting Auberon to admit the thing aloud. It was astonishing, the range of emotion that passed over Auberon’s face. How complicated a thing, the admission of an emotion some might take for a weakness, when it was anything but. Given how he cared for Eleanor, Virgil had come to know love as one of the best things that could happen to a man. How had Auberon and Cleo parted ways? Virgil had always presumed Cleo’s injury had something to do with it. And now, the strange honey mummy.
“She and I were falling in love, I suppose one would call it,” Auberon said and then jerked violently at the restraints that held him. “That dilutes it. We were falling in love. Plain and not simple, but there it is. She and I found that we had many things in common. She worried I would take the case from her, but I wanted only to help her see it through. Artifacts unearthed after the British bombing…I was staggered that so much had survived, and to have apparently discovered a catacomb of ancient— Never mind that. Miss Barclay and I spent our evenings together often, and after her injury, I feared I would not see her again. I did not, until the Exposition two months past. After her injury, we wrote one another extensively and I had hoped to visit her in Alexandria as she recovered.”
“Alexandria? I was told she spent her recovery in Cairo,” Virgil said. He supposed it did not matter overly much, however it intrigued him, that this city had such a hold on her.
“She was meant to, I believe,” Auberon said, “but her letters always came from Alexandria. She spoke of the ocean, but also of being hard-pressed to remember things that had happened to her. She spoke to me of strange memories—of being wrapped like a mummy and weighted by something. When we found her within the catacomb, she lay in a pool of honey—it was this Doctor Fairbrass believes saved her—but perhaps he meant in more than one way.” Auberon shook his head. “I never had reason to wonder, until now.”
“But is Pettigrew ill?” Virgil asked. “What might he mean to cure with this honey? His health appears perfectly well.”
“Maybe it’s not for himself, but someone else,” Auberon suggested.
“From all I have seen,” Virgil said, “he is experimenting still. Pressing the edges of things, having no idea what actually influences what. You saw how he welcomed input from Cleo and Eleanor—Cleo because he possibly knew of her history. That is troubling, though not impossible, given his Mistral ties, no? And Eleanor because…” Virgil shook his head, feeling the wolf inside him stretch, clawing for release.
“Given that the ladies found another ring within the honey sarcophagus…”
“I do not want to contemplate that, not one bit.”
“I cannot blame you—it is far easier to deny such an idea, much as I’ve done with my affection for Miss Barclay these years.” Auberon tested his restraints again, and again they did not move. “We must, however, presume that the rings are involved, and that Eleanor, at least in Pettigrew’s mind, has a connection to them. And well—Anubis.”
“Fucking Anubis.” Virgil spat the name, claws slicing out of his fingers as the wolf stretched and refused to go down again.
“Virgil, now is probably not the best—”
There was no good time for it, Virgil knew, but could not pull the wolf back once he allowed the rein to slip that much.
The wolf didn’t so much emerge as it consumed. Every shred of the man Virgil was vanished inside the wolf, brown fur brindled with gold erupting down arms, belly, legs. The ache held at bay by the remains of the laudanum came to the fore, but the pain at having limbs pulled taut for hours on end did not matter. The wolf would no longer be denied, even if it also found itself bound to the rack. The seams of Virgil’s already rumpled suit split, jacket and shirt hanging in tatters by the time the transformation was done, trousers held on by their button alone.
The beast remained confined within the restraints of the rack, however the slim crescent of human logic that Virgil managed to maintain given his recent training with Eleanor told him the leather cuffs were looser. He pulled with his entire weight and while the rack creaked as though it meant to give way, it did not. A savage snarl broke free from him and he lashed out with all he had, but could not budge himself from the rack. He was met with a laugh for his efforts, though not from Auberon, who would never.
Pettigrew emerged into the circle of glass cages, grinning. “So, it is true and amazing. Look at you. There are always legends, aren’t there? The Greeks probably called you vrykolakas, and the Romans versipellis. Turn-skin.” Pettigrew’s voice was laden with praise and appreciation. “Seeing such a thing in person.” He extended his hands, and then clapped. “Astonishing does not begin to cover it for we mere…humans, wouldn’t you agree, Mister Auberon?”
Auberon tugged at his own restraints but said nothing. This only drew another grin from Pettigrew, who crossed the circular center of the cell room. Virgil strained at the rack again, not caring that the leather bit into him.
“Now, now, don’t make me drug you again. I know how much you must have enjoyed—”
Virgil pulled at the restraints again, and again, until Auberon had to pull him back by screaming his name. Virgil felt the warm run of blood down his legs, and the way his heart heaved in his chest as he tried to breathe properly, but he couldn’t stop until every last bit of energy within him was exhausted. Virgil was blind with rage, even his wolf body cr
ying for the release that came with opium. He was certain he had never been so sickened; so desperate for the drug.
“That’s right,” Pettigrew said as Virgil settled in a daze onto his haunches. “Now, we three are going to conduct some experiments. I expect they shall go rather quickly, based on all I already know. However, given what I don’t yet know… Well. We have much to do. I am eager to begin and hope you shall be…cooperative.”
“You believe this honey can cure what ails you, Pettigrew?” Auberon asked. “I’ve no injury you might experiment with.”
“In a way, you are correct, Mister Auberon. Something does indeed ail me. But I am curious as to more than that. You see, this honey…” He gestured to the hives above them. “It does all manner of strange things—you saw how your own Miss Barclay reacted to its taste. She knows—she has known the honey’s eternity within her. But just as it has seeped into her to make her deathless and undying, I believe it can also be made to undo—”
“…deathless?” Auberon whispered the word. “That’s—”
Virgil watched the two men, unable to do more. Hot saliva trailed a wet path down his maw, his tongue lolling from his mouth. Most of the words stayed with him and made sense, but others slipped right over his wolf brain. “Deathless” had a way of sticking, though, and judging by the look upon Auberon’s face, there was more he had not shared as to his relationship with Cleo.
“By all means,” Pettigrew said calmly. “Attach another word to that sentence. Impossible? Foolish? Miraculous? If a thing can be made to create something, it can be made to destroy it as well. Day is unmade into night, and night is unmade by the coming of every day. Even fair Egypt was made and unmade and made yet again. The world gives life and just as easily takes it. This is the true power—not of the gods, but of any man who dares leash it.” At this, he gave a ragged laugh and moved toward Virgil’s cage, crouching before the wolf. “I mean to leash it. Like a dog.”
* * *
December, 30 BC – Alexandria, Egypt
Eleanor picked herself up from the ground, but could not stop staring at the palace. The marble structure appeared both gold and blue in the combined flood of moonlight and lantern light. Even from here, she could see the carved lions, their massive paws resting upon perfectly smooth spheres of marble. She knew that one day the world would swallow this, leaving nothing behind. As the lighthouse had been swallowed, as the library had burned, some things could not be saved, even by the hand of an archaeologist.
“Is that…” Cleo’s voice trailed off.
“Yes.”
Eleanor looked at the rings she wore. She rubbed them, thinking fervent thoughts about how they needed to be in their own time Right Now, but the landscape did not shift or otherwise move by her command. But for the lapping of the water against the shoreline and the approach of four large guards, there was no movement at all.
“Oh, dear.” Cleo’s voice sounded strained by more than simple concern.
Eleanor offered a confident smile to the guards as the men approached, each with a long spear pointed toward her and Cleo. They might run in the opposite direction, but where might they go? Eleanor had only one destination in mind and it was the palace.
“You will show me your hands,” the lead guard demanded in Greek.
The language surprised Eleanor, though she supposed it should not have. Many in the Ptolemic era had refused to speak Egyptian, even while in-country. Greek was superior, or so they believed, but had never quite erased Egyptian customs as they had possibly hoped.
“You will take us to your queen,” Eleanor returned in Greek, refusing to be cowed by the man, even if he did have a spear. She did as he ordered, however, extending her hands, ensuring that he could see the rings she wore. She had no idea if he would recognize them, but if the rings had brought them here, of all places…
The guard grunted and his spear twitched in his hands. Then, every spear lowered, and the guards made a bow to both women.
“Follow.”
The guards marched in a loose formation and Eleanor and Cleo fell into step behind them, Eleanor holding to Cleo’s metal hand when she reached out. Being separated here would only complicate things and Eleanor had in desire for complications.
“Were you named for the queen?” Eleanor asked Cleo in whispered French.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “As were my mother and grandmother, but… Eleanor, we cannot be about to meet her.”
“I don’t know who we’re about to meet, but that is Cleopatra’s palace, is it not? Standing in the harbor, not yet the rubble of ages.” She frowned, her thumb worrying at the ring as she tried to piece the puzzle together. “Akila told me these were wedding bands. You don’t suppose—”
Cleo interrupted her with a gasped “No! It—but how? Eleanor. This is… Oh, I would say we are dreaming. We are dreaming and I— Oh, gods.”
When Cleo would have stopped walking, Eleanor pulled her along so as not to lose pace with the guards. “Tell me.”
“There was a woman, in my room.” Cleo’s steps did not falter again, her hand tightening slightly on Eleanor’s. “She must be kept so, she said; it is the blood that binds it. That woman could not have been…Cleopatra? Doctor Fairbrass and a woman—a group of women. They…they changed me, or ensured that I had been changed…so that I would—”
“It is the blood that binds it,” Eleanor echoed, thinking of Anubis’s rings, of the way blood pooled in her own hand as she slid them on and opened the portal to another age. “So that you would live.”
Despite her wish to stay with the guards, Eleanor stopped walking at the sight of the light that abruptly cut across the water. The gold light washed across the harbor and snatched her breath away when she realized what it had to be. She followed the arc of light, out and further out still, until she found the dark, shape against the horizon. It was four centuries gone in her own time, but here, Pharos of Alexandria stood yet, spilling light into the darkness to guide ships safely to shore. The lighthouse was not entirely helpful when it came to figuring out what year they had landed in. If the palace were indeed that of Cleopatra…if she lived yet, they were at some point before 30 BC, perhaps even within that year itself.
“Eleanor.”
Cleo tugged her arm and Eleanor stutter-stepped back into motion, her eyes still on the distant light. “I never thought…” But she thought now, about seeing things that no one in her time had known, about studying them, and bringing information back into her own time. How might it benefit scholars and other archaeologists? To know of these places that were otherwise gone.
Maybe, Eleanor thought, they weren’t gone at all—simply removed from common reach. If rings had guided her to Hatshepsut’s thriving kingdom, and now too Cleopatra’s…where else might other rings take her? Take anyone. If she had carried Virgil back and now Cleo…who else might she take…
“Is that what Pettigrew wants?” Eleanor whispered. She clung more tightly to Cleo as they approached the palace, their feet crunching over the gravel that lined the walks. “But the honey… Does he want to be immortal and travel as Anubis does? Does—” She shook her head, knowing she was rambling. “Why the goddamn pageantry?”
“Some men refuse to do things simply,” Cleo whispered.
The guards came to a halt at the palace, and Eleanor peered past them, to the woman who approached on one of the aisles of marble. She was barefooted and clad in a simple gown that was more Greek than Egyptian; its white pleats moved with every step she took, making her look like wavering grain as she passed in and out of the light cast from bowls of firelight that lined the route. She wore no wig or makeup, for it was late; her own hair had been brushed and drawn into a single dark tail down her back.
“They have come?”
The queen spoke Greek to her guards, but when they bowed and parted ranks, allowing the queen access to Eleanor and Cleo, the queen spoke the same Egyptian Eleanor recalled from Anubis.
“You have come, daughter of
Anubis, and she who has been…touched.”
Cleo flinched but Eleanor did not loosen her hold on her friend. “Your majesty,” she said in Greek, “I speak Greek, if that remains easier for you. As does this Cleo.” She inclined her head toward the Cleo at her side.
Cleopatra’s mouth moved in a smile and she bowed her head to Eleanor, as if addressing an equal and not a commoner from another time. “Greek then,” she said.
“You are not surprised to see us,” Cleo said, echoing Eleanor’s own thought on the queens’ demeanor.
Cleopatra reached for Eleanor then, moving down the steps between her guards; her warm fingers slid around Eleanor’s be-ringed hand and lifted it so the rings could be seen in the firelight. Cleopatra’s thumb skimmed over them, the metal heating under her touch. Eleanor shuddered, thinking the queen had stroked a hand over her jackal fur the wrong direction.
“I am not surprised,” the queen said. “These rings were my own—are my own, will yet be my own. Never worn, but never false.” Her brown creased with a frown and she released Eleanor’s hand. “I have much to show you—you, honey-touched, have questions. Have you remembered the oracles?”
At Eleanor’s side, beneath the stern and seeking gaze of the queen, Cleo shivered. What the queen thought of Cleo’s mechanical arms, Eleanor could only wonder.
“M-majesty?”
Cleopatra exhaled. “The oracles who harvest the honey, the honey that infuses us, makes us as the gods are: undying. Come with me.”
With a gesture she told the guards to fall back; they were unobtrusive as they followed, but their presence calmed Eleanor. This was a time and place unknown to her, but for fragments she had read in books or studied in museums. That she and Cleo were speaking with Queen Cleopatra , the last pharaoh of Egypt, was something she had trouble accepting. And yet, here they were. Cleopatra had touched her and they had not vanished. She had also expected them.
Cleo’s mechanical hand tightened within Eleanor’s as the queen guided them into a courtyard with a deep and far-reaching pool. The surface of the pool was covered in lotus blossoms; flowers of every color rose above a splattering of round, flat leaves. The fragrance in the air was one Eleanor knew immediately. It was the scent of the honey they had discovered within the sarcophagus. Beyond the pool, there were hives, their stone bases marked with bee and lotus hieroglyphs.
The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) Page 14