by Anne Rice
* * *
Ramses had not expected this kind of fight out of the man. These wild punches, this desperate clawing.
Who was he? From where did his rage come? He was mad and stinking of alcohol. He made Ramses afraid of his own strength. If he wasn’t careful, he would break bones or shatter the man’s skull by mistake. And he didn’t want that at all. But if the man didn’t stop fighting!
His goal was to pin the rogue against the wall, thereby making his own strength known. Then the rageful drunk would have no choice but to answer his questions.
But it was not to be.
The man slipped free of his grip suddenly, his steps turning into a drunken dance as he ran away.
Someone was waiting for the man at the end of the hall.
She was tall and slender, and her skin was as black as a Nubian’s. Her gold turban matched the color of her flowing dress, which was complemented by a shawl of yellow and gold brocade; its intermingling of color made it look like a form of armor. Her neckline was exposed, and despite the jagged gold plates that composed her necklace, this expanse of visible skin made her seem terribly vulnerable to the madman’s careening approach. But she held her ground with utter confidence.
Would she move out of his way?
She did not.
Instead, just at the moment when the drunken fool seemed ready to plow her off her feet, she reached out and seized the back of his neck. He froze under her powerful grip.
For the first time, Ramses saw the woman’s eyes. They were as blue as sapphires, as blue as his own.
The madman snarled, “Unhand me, you black—”
She slammed the side of his head into the wall.
The plaster dented.
He collapsed in a lifeless heap.
From behind her appeared two men, also black skinned, and blue eyed, both impeccably dressed.
“Remove him,” she said. “Bind him if need be.”
Silently, the men lifted the unconscious body. Together, they carried it away as if it were a rolled-up rug, offering Ramses polite nods as they passed. They headed in the opposite direction of the front hallway. Away from the party, away from the clamor of guests outside.
And then he was alone with her, this mysterious woman who had appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, who closed the distance between them with a warm and patient smile, as if the ugly business in this hallway were merely an inconvenience.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Find your fiancée. They are preparing the champagne toast. You must not drink. Either of you. You understand me? You must not drink. I will take care of this one.”
He’d forgotten about her, the golden-haired woman with Cleopatra’s eyes, whose sudden disappearance had lured him into this little mess.
She was unconscious, slumped on the washroom floor.
“Go, Ramses the Great,” said the black woman with the fiery blue eyes.
“Who are you and what have you done?” he asked.
“Only those who have come to do you harm will be harmed. Provided you and Miss Stratford do not drink the champagne. Do as I say. Find your fiancée. Now.”
As if she had no doubt he would follow her command, she sank to her knees and turned her attention to the sleeping beauty on the bathroom floor. She drew her great shawl from around her back and wrapped the comatose woman’s body on it. Then, without the slightest struggle, she picked up the golden-haired woman with both arms. An immortal, this powerful, black-skinned woman. There was no doubt in his mind. But…
The champagne. Do not drink the champagne…
He ran.
25
Julie ran.
She spotted Ramses on the stone terrace. Was he looking for her?
Yes!
When he saw her racing across the vast expanse of green on the other side of the hedge, he rushed down the steps, weaving between waiters passing out flutes of bubbling champagne to all the guests.
When he reached her, she fell against him, not just to seek comfort, but because it would allow her to whisper everything she’d seen. The wall of hedge concealed them from the party, but they were close enough that frightened talk might be overheard.
“She’s here,” Julie rasped. “Cleopatra. I took her to the temple to keep her away from Alex. She is sick. Something ails her. She thinks more of the elixir will cure it. She tried to explain, but there was some sort of trap. Ramses, the floor itself, it opened and swallowed her, and I could hear movement in the tunnel below. Someone took her, Ramses.”
“We must end this gathering at once,” Ramses said. “And we must do so without creating a panic.”
“What is happening, Ramses?”
Memory struck. A memory only moments old. That strange, brittle woman, Jeneva Worth, and her husband, Callum, asking for a tour, not just of the grounds, but of the very temple from which Cleopatra had just been abducted.
“Julie, come with me. I will explain everything as I—”
“There you are!” Alex Savarell shouted. He’d just appeared around the side of the hedge, and now he was bounding towards them with drunken glee.
“Do not drink,” Ramses whispered fiercely. “Do not drink the champagne. Only pretend to drink. Don’t let a drop of it touch your lips. Nod to indicate that you understand.”
She nodded. And so there was more to this, she realized, more to this strange plot into which Cleopatra had stumbled, and Ramses was aware of it, and the only choice was to follow his instructions.
From behind, Alex steered them towards the lawn.
“We’ve been looking all over for you two,” he said, sounding as if he had already imbibed a great deal. “I’ve been preparing this toast for weeks now. Force me to wait another moment and I’ll suffer an attack of nerves all the wine in Yorkshire won’t cure.”
Seconds later, Alex had positioned them at the base of the terrace steps.
The crowd turned to face them. And there in front, Jeneva Worth and her husband, Callum. Impossible to believe they weren’t connected to what she had just witnessed inside the temple. How else to explain their strange, overly detailed request for a tour of that very place? Now their expressions were unreadable, thanks to the sunglasses they wore. But they were certainly staring in her direction. Were they noting the little smudges of dirt from the temple on her dress?
As he spoke, Alex’s gentle voice carried across the quiet lawn, occasionally drowned out by the breeze moving through the trees overhead.
It seemed a perfectly respectful toast, full of gracious, humble sentiments designed to tell the group before them that he and his entire family had truly moved on, that all those present should accept Mr. Reginald Ramsey and Julie as destined for each other. But Julie heard only every few words of it, and so it came as a surprise when Alex said, “And so I ask you now to lift your glasses in celebration of Mr. Reginald Ramsey and his bride-to-be, Miss Julie Stratford.”
All of the guests complied.
She only pretended to take a sip, just as Ramses had instructed. But what could this mean?
She looked from glass to glass to glass to glass, searching for a mysterious cloud or flecks of some strange particle. But she saw only sparkling fluid in each.
There was a smattering of applause, some polite laughter, a few murmurs about what a lovely champagne it was.
Jeneva Worth dabbed the side of her mouth with a napkin. Then she went suddenly and conspicuously still. The sight of something on the terrace behind Julie had paralyzed the woman with fright.
She reached up and removed her glasses. Julie saw the woman’s eyes were as blue as her own. Then she gripped her husband’s wrist, whispered something to him that caused him to also stare past Julie.
He too removed his sunglasses. His eyes were also startlingly blue.
Finally, Julie looked over her shoulder at whatever had captured their attention.
She was one of the most beautiful women Julie had ever seen, and she was emerging slowly through the terrace d
oors. Her gold turban glinted in the sunlight, and she lifted her chin gradually as she crossed the empty stone terrace, until her features were visible to everyone on the western lawn who had noticed her arrival. Her skin was dark as ebony, her eyes as blue as an immortal’s, and the gaze she leveled on the crowd before her seemed as steady and immutable as the Sphinx.
Many had noticed her arrival, but were trying not to openly stare. This was not the case with Jeneva and Callum Worth. Or with the giant bearded man she’d seen them mingling with earlier. Or with several other guests, who had noticed the arrival of this beautiful black woman with an evident horror that caused their jaws to gape and their hands to tremble. Each of these terrified guests wore sunglasses they now removed. Each revealed the crystalline-blue eyes of an immortal.
Ramses seemed less surprised by this woman’s entrance than Julie was, but he stared up at her now, as well. He recognized the importance of her quiet arrival.
Most of the guests had gone back to chitchat.
But Julie felt as if every muscle in her body had coiled.
Do not drink, Ramses had told her. Only pretend to drink.
And now…
There was a soft thud against the grass a few paces away. Jeneva had dropped her champagne flute. She stared down at it as if it were a serpent preparing to strike.
“The queen,” Callum Worth whispered.
And then Jeneva hit the grass knees first. The blue drained from her eyes, replaced by what at first appeared to be a fiery shade of red, then her eyes became empty, black sockets.
When Callum Worth reached for his wife’s shoulder, he saw that his own hand was withering before his very eyes, as if every ounce of blood and every drop of water had been sucked from his flesh in one swift and silent instant.
Jeneva’s hands appeared exactly the same. But this didn’t stop her from reaching out for Ramses and Julie even as her jaw fell away from her face and turned to a drift of ash that danced gracefully on the cool breeze.
And then the screams began, piercing, terrible screams.
For it was happening to all of them. All of the terrified immortals who had removed their sunglasses at the sight of the magnificent woman now standing proudly on the empty terrace, staring down at all of them like a monarch preparing to address her subjects. Only her address was silent, Julie realized, and it unfolded with terrible and destructive speed.
All over the lawn, the immortals had begun to wither and decompose, creating little pockets of chaos among the guests. Here a withering arm reached out for nothing; there a desiccated torso collapsed onto a pair of suddenly hollow legs, both becoming clouds of swirling ash.
Chairs and tables were overturned as everyone raced to make an escape.
When a hand seized the back of her dress, Julie screamed.
It was the stately black woman, the architect of this, Julie was sure.
“Come with me,” she said. “Both of you.”
She held Ramses in a similar grip and pulled them both backwards up the steps as chaos reigned.
“Who are you?” Ramses demanded. He was masking dread with fury.
“I am your queen,” the woman answered.
“I answer to no queen.”
“Perhaps not,” the woman answered. “But you still have one.”
26
Inside the house, servants fled down the front hallway.
The woman led them through empty rooms, then out a side door and across a terrace much smaller than the western one. Then they were hurrying through a shady, manicured garden towards a wide gate that stood open across the entrance to the staff road.
Beyond, two gleaming motorcars sat parked. Standing next to each one, a tall black man in a beige suit and tie. Both cars were Unic Landaulettes, each with a pair of backseats that faced each other.
“We can’t just leave!” Julie finally cried.
“Why not?” the woman answered. “Everyone else is.”
“But Samir and Alex and—”
“No mortals have been harmed by what I’ve done.”
“We cannot abandon our mortal friends to this panic,” said Ramses.
“I sent a message!” the woman replied. She whirled on them. Her eyes blazed with anger. “I destroyed those who came to abduct your fiancée. In this way, I have sent a message to the one who sent these lackeys. And the message is this. I am awake, I walk, and I know of his evil designs. These actions of mine call for your gratitude, Ramses the Great, not your disapproval.”
Whoever she was, this self-proclaimed queen, she seemed coolly satisfied by their reactions to her shocking words. And she spoke his former title with just enough disregard to indicate she would not be cowed by it.
“We have much to say to one another,” she said, more quietly. “And we will do so once there is safe distance between us and this place.”
She started for the car parked in front.
Her tall servant continued to hold open the back door to the one parked just behind it.
“That’s not enough,” Ramses said firmly.
“Enough for what?” she asked.
“Enough for us to feel like anything other than your captives. Captives to whatever poison you used on those guests.”
“If I wished to poison you, I would have done so already.”
An excellent point, Julie thought. And she now feared his pride might get in the way of whatever revelations this mysterious woman held in store.
They were staring at each other, Ramses and this woman, this queen. Each assessing the other’s strength and resolve, it seemed. Two monarchs establishing ground. Would it fall to Julie to prevent an all-out war between them?
“You do not understand the forces that wish to do you harm,” the woman said. “You were not even aware of them before now. Make no mistake. I am not one of them.” She held his gaze. “I am Bektaten,” she said, “queen of Shaktanu, a land that perished before your Egypt was born.”
With that, her other servant opened the back door to the first car and she stepped inside. As she did so, Julie glimpsed a beautiful, golden-haired woman spread across one of the car’s facing backseats, wrapped in some sort of blanket or shawl.
She couldn’t just be sleeping. She must be unconscious.
Bektaten. Shaktanu. Julie could see that Ramses was mystified. He stood there staring forward, clearly in the grip of a storm of questions.
“Come, Ramses,” Julie said, pulling him towards the other car. “Come. We have no choice.”
Part 3
27
Cornwall
She had yet to wake, this golden-haired woman who walked with the same poise as Cleopatra, so Julie had volunteered to prepare her for bed.
How suspicious and apprehensive Ramses had been as he watched the man called Aktamu carry this strange woman in his arms across the swaying rope bridge! What if the poor mortal woman woke suddenly? What if she saw the perilous drop to the crashing surf and let out a scream that startled her caretaker so badly he dropped her by mistake?
When in all his long existence had he ever stood by silent, and helpless, watching the actions of another male immortal, whom he could not control?
Nothing of the kind took place, and now they were all safely inside this immense castle with its soaring walls and smooth floors of polished stone and its roaring fire and its lustrous draperies.
The furnishings in the great hall were new and suitably grand; there were great expanses of Oriental rugs, their colors muted so as not to compete with the purple and gold that defined the drapes and upholstery throughout. Each chair gathered around the massive card table resembled a kind of throne with a carved wood frame and thick, tufted cushions. The iron chandeliers overhead had been wired with electric replicas of candles, their glow steady and insistent. It was Norman, this castle. The arches in the windows and doorways were rounded and subtle. Ramses preferred it to the jagged severity of the Gothic, a style with which so much of this country remained utterly enthralled.
&n
bsp; The man called Enamon lit some of the torches in the hallways. And so it seemed the castle had some corners electrical wires did not yet reach.
They were alone now, he and this queen, her turban like a crown. And in her bearing and in the fluid and patient way with which she moved about the great hall, her demeanor, that of a person who might have come into the world long before his own time, he sensed her age, sensed her deep reserve of control.
She studied him silently, and without any suspicion or disdain that he could see.
“You are my great folly, Ramses the Damned,” she said finally. “Do you realize this?”
“How so?”
“That I did not see you. That I did not see the touch of an immortal in Egypt’s long history.”
“It was not every ruler who called me into service. And there was only one with whom I shared my story.”
“Which one is this?” she asked, approaching him.
An astonishing feeling, the presence of one who could act as an authority over him—who outmatched him in experience, wisdom, and life. Indeed, she was the elixir’s creator; she must be. For he could feel the quiet strength of her many years.
How would she react, this queen, when he told her what he’d done to Cleopatra? Would she consider it an unconscionable crime? Were they members of a special race of beings, he and this woman? Did she consider herself the arbiter of their laws?
“In time, Queen Bektaten of Shaktanu,” he said. “I may tell you all you want to know, in time.” And she can destroy you with that potion of hers, the potion that infected those blue-eyed immortals you saw destroyed all around you.
He took a deep breath, and tried to wipe the slightest expression of dread from his face.
She furrowed her brow a little. Mild disappointment in her expression, but not anger.
Just then, Julie returned. She took up a post next to him as if she meant to physically guard him. It was a loving gesture, this protectiveness, and under different circumstances he would have taken her in his arms to show his gratitude.