“Oh my God, you didn’t hurt Doug, did you?!”
“I gave that wimpy Egyptologist a little knock on the head is all. He’ll live.” Julian steps behind her abruptly and quickly ties her wrists together against the small of her back with a thin cord that digs painfully into her skin. “I guess it’s my charming brother’s way of making me work for my money. You know better than anyone else what a sadistic bastard he was. Is that too tight?”
“Yes!”
“Too bad, I’m not as good at this sort of thing as Richard was.”
She does her best to sound unconcerned, “What are you going to do, Julian?”
“I’m going to have a little fun, Lucia. It’s the least I deserve after flying halfway across the world to fulfill my dead brother’s last perverse wish.” He picks up the lantern again.
The light crests over a row of smiling figures walking deeper into the tomb in the direction of the burial chamber.
He shoves her ahead of him. “Move.”
“Mark will come looking for me any minute now—you know that.”
“I don’t think so, honey. You see, Lori slipped a little something into his wine. That’s right. But you’re not half as surprised as I was when she approached me at the hotel and offered to help me. I guess Mark told her how he felt about you and she got desperate. She’s stupid enough to hope their friendship will blossom into love once she gets a divorce. I guess she hasn’t looked in the mirror lately. That’s why she encouraged you to believe Richard really was appearing to you, so you’d remain the inconsolable widow and dump Mark.”
“But Mark will realize she’s the one who drugged him.”
“She’ll blame Doug, of course. Don’t you get it yet, Lucia? Let me explain it to you. When Doug made a pass at you, you hit him over the head with your flashlight and just then all the lights went out and you ran deeper into the tomb by mistake.”
They enter a spacious chamber held up by four pillars and crowded with life-size gods and goddesses forming a beautiful procession along the walls.
In the middle of the room, Julian sets the lamp down again and then snaps open the thick belt around his waist and very carefully sets the object attached to it on the floor beside the light.
She looks away from the strange black box when Richard suddenly seems to step right out of the wall to her right. His body is a solid shadow in black clothes as he crosses his arms over his chest, leans casually back against Hathor’s bright red dress and stares over at her, his expression intensely sober contrasted with the goddess’ smiling profile. He looks so real she can’t take her eyes off him.
“What is that thing, Julian?” She unwillingly shifts her gaze back to the box that resembles a huge die, covered with luminous white circles.
“A holographic projector,” he answers proudly, “courtesy of some geeks at M.I.T. Richard invested a shitload of money in their project so they let him have a prototype. Isn’t it something?”
She glances longingly back at her husband, who is now looking around the room, a soft smile on his lips.
A fresh sorrow slices through her. “Then he really is only a hologram.”
“You got it.”
“And it was you in the temple last night.” She wonders how on earth she could have mistaken Julian’s bony frame for Richard’s solid body.
“What are you talking about? Oh never mind, just be quiet!” He yanks off the ski mask, grabs her arm and leads her over to one of the pillars. Standing behind her, he unties her wrists and then pulls her sweater off over her head. She isn’t wearing a bra and he makes a small sound of approval as he pushes her against the column, crushing her soft breasts against Ramses III’s unyielding chest.
Cheek-to-cheek with the smiling pharaoh, Lucia meets Richard’s eyes. She feels irrationally reassured by the mere illusion of his presence because he would never have let anyone hurt her.
“Hold your arms out straight,” Julian instructs and promptly ties them together again on the other side of the pillar by stretching the rope taut across it. Then he steps around behind her again.
“I’ve always wondered what was so special about you, Lucia, that my brother couldn’t get enough of you.” He moves in tightly against her. “He had women throwing themselves at him right and left,” the bulge in his pants finds a welcoming niche in the small of her back as he slips his hands between her body and the pillar to unzip her jeans, “yet for some reason, he was completely faithful to you.” He yanks them down around her knees along with her panties. “Nice ass,” he remarks, pausing on his way back up to kiss it. “Mm, very nice.” He gives one of her cheeks a hard smack and then licks it, soothing the burn with his tongue.
Richard looks their way.
There is nothing she can do to stop Julian so she lets her eyes feast on the illusion of her husband’s presence. His dark hair is cut short on the sides but is fuller and slightly unkempt on top and his goatee looks more sinister than ever.
Julian gives her other cheek the same treatment, a vicious smack then a lingering lick. “Richard was my brother, you know, Lucia, so maybe you’ll like my cock as much as you liked his. What do you think? Should I fuck you while he watches?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“I thought you might enjoy that.”
She feels him step back away from her.
“But there’s something else you want me to do to you first, isn’t there, Lucia?”
He sounds so much like his brother that her body is growing excitingly confused, listening to him while looking at Richard. Her pussy is getting wet—she can’t help it. “Yes,” she hears herself say again softly.
“You want me to beat you, don’t you, honey?”
She knows he is deliberately imitating his brother’s tone and suddenly she is nothing but grateful to him for doing such a good job of it. “Yes,” she answers fervently, “please!”
“It would be my pleasure. And I see your new boyfriend had some fun with you too. Those look like beltmarks to me.”
She can’t answer as Richard seems to look straight into her eyes.
A whip’s cruel tongue licks her bottom now.
The sharp crack echoes through the sacred chamber and she welcomes the pain that surges through her body and darkens her mind, so that for a precious moment she forgets her sorrow.
Julian’s next lash is more assured and twice as agonizing.
His third searing stroke extinguishes her awareness for a hot second, yet her fear that Richard will disappear if she takes her eyes off him is worse than the pain. When she is able to focus again he is still there, thank God, his arms still crossed contentedly over his chest as he watches his brother whip her.
The whip lands on her upper back. “Oh God!” she sobs as it seems to slice through her skin to her heart. “Oh, Richard!” She can’t run from how she feels anymore—she has no desire to live without him.
He uncrosses his arms and holds her eyes as he turns and steps into the wall with the gods.
“Get away from her now!” Mark’s command reverberates through the room with shocking power.
“I’m only giving her what she wants,” Julian protests mildly.
Mark quickly pulls her jeans and panties back up then snaps open a pocketknife and cuts the ropes stretched between her wrists.
As though withdrawing her homage to Osiris, she lowers her arms and wraps them around herself, clinging to her warm, living body.
Mark zips her jeans closed. “Are you okay?” he asks gently.
She nods.
He picks up her sweater.
Trembling and not a little disappointed to have been rescued from an illusion that was turning her on so much, she slips it back on.
Mark walks over to where Julian is standing with an infuriating little smile on his face, grabs a fistful of his shirt, slams him back against a wall and punches him in the face.
Blood streams from her brother-in-law’s nose as he slides to the floor, his eyes fluttering up into
his skull. She derives a keen satisfaction from the fact that he no longer resembles Richard at all.
Mark returns to her side.
“Is Doug all right?” she asks.
“He’s out cold but I don’t think he’s hurt.” He picks up the flashlight he apparently brought with him.
“But Julian said Lori put something in your wine.”
“She did and she’s fast asleep. I switched cups on her when she wasn’t looking.”
“What about…that?” Part of her desperately wants to keep the holographic projector yet she knows she can’t, not if she wants to hold on to Mark.
He rests his right foot on it. “Take this, you bastard.” The sound of crunching metal is almost sickeningly organic, like the shell of an evil black scarab being crushed. “She’s mine now.”
Chapter Fourteen
Doug is still lying where Julian left him.
Mark crouches down beside him and gently places two fingertips against the side of his neck. “His pulse is steady.” He shines the flashlight directly in Doug’s face and gives him a gentle slap.
Doug’s eyes snap open. “What?” he croaks and shoves Mark away from him. “Turn that thing off!” He gets up without letting Lucia help him. “What the hell happened?”
Mark gives him a skeletal rundown of events since Julian hit him over the head, then says, “Lucia and I are leaving Luxor, Doug. Tonight.”
* * * * *
The moon is three-quarters full and as regal as a queen in a luminous blue veil, fervently courted by the stars around her.
It feels like a miracle to Lucia that a cab is waiting for them in front of Tutankhamon’s tomb.
She rolls her window down to continue admiring the seemingly eternal heavens.
Mark doesn’t say a word, not to her or to the driver, who apparently knows where to go.
A dim copper light flows out from the lobby of the Habu hotel through the open doorway and Mark literally has to pull her inside she is so enraptured by the eternity of love and desire promised in all the diamond wedding rings of the stars visible overhead.
Up in their humble room she tries not to remember how good Richard looked with a goddess’ red dress pooled behind him like the blood no longer flowing through his body. Because he was nothing but a three-dimensional trick of light, nothing but an impotent hologram.
Mark hangs his camera around his neck. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Down in the lobby he disappears into the night with their bags while she stops at the front desk to pay the bill.
“Madam,” the clerk calls after her, “this signature does not match the name on the card.”
“Excuse me?” She glances at the yellow receipt in her hand.
The confident flourish of the “R” and the “T” leap out at her like cobras.
She’s signed Richard’s name instead of her own.
The now-suspicious clerk takes his time making another imprint of her small piece of plastic, worth as much as the contents of an ancient tomb in its day.
Mark appears in the doorway. “What’s the holdup?”
“Nothing, I’ll be right out.” She impatiently snatches the pen from the man’s dark hand and carefully signs her own name this time.
Their cab takes boldly off into the moonlit darkness again.
“Is there a boat waiting for us, Mark?”
“No, I thought we’d just swim across.”
She forgives him the sarcastic retort. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew something was going to happen?”
“Because I wasn’t sure anything would happen. It just never hurts to be prepared.”
“So we’re leaving Thebes tonight?” She tries to sound indifferent.
“Yes, on the train to Cairo. When we get back to the Etap pack your stuff as fast as you can.”
His gesture was wonderfully romantic but when he destroyed the holographic projector he’d also crushed all her hopes of ever seeing Richard again. Until that moment she hadn’t truly faced his loss, and doing so feels like waking up from an intensely sexual dream just when she was beginning to climax. His appearances had been like mysterious caresses, each one a little more intimate and lingering, arousing her soul and exciting her with the possibility that their love was powerful enough to defeat time and space. Yet now nothing will ever come of them.
“I’m sorry, Lucia, I don’t mean to snap at you. None of this is your fault. Part of it’s actually my fault for betraying your confidence.”
“Mark, don’t even think of blaming yourself for anything.”
They fall silent.
Less than ten minutes later they are following the narrow path of a flashlight’s beam to the river’s edge and the fact that there is a boat waiting for them in the darkness seems much more like magical synchronicity than forethought.
As they glide across the water, Mark politely converses in broken Arabic with the vessel’s owner over the motor’s quiet hum. The man is nearly invisible in his black robe. All Lucia can see of him where he crouches at the helm is an occasional glint of moonlight in his eyes and the lifeless ghost of cigarette smoke rising like steam from his shapeless black form, like a lump of coal just disgorged from deep in the earth. When they reach the East Bank, he remains on the boat as she and Mark hurry up a steep flight of stairs to the Avenue.
The current of bodies walking up and down the sidewalks comes as a shock after the utter stillness of the Valley. It is easy to understand how for the ancient Egyptians the Nile served as a palpable line between life and death that enabled their thoughts and feelings to cross naturally back and forth between them.
Mark hails a carriage and they take it the short distance to the Etap.
With Mark helping her throw things into her suitcases, she is ready to go sooner than she would have believed possible.
A group of native men is already waiting out in the hall to help them carry everything downstairs.
Once again she settles the bill with her gold card then, outside, steps up into a carriage piled high with their luggage, where Mark drapes a warm arm over her shoulders and holds her close just as the moon disappears behind the western mountains.
Richard had often arranged incredibly elaborate sensual games for their enjoyment and he had played with her one last time, fulfilling her supernatural fantasies in order to free her of them. Yet the truth is that the holographic paintings he left her of himself, combined with ancient Egypt’s enduring magic, have made it even harder for her to lay him to rest in her heart. She must accept the fact that for as long as she lives Richard Taylor will never truly die. And maybe that was what he intended all along…
* * * * *
Their carriage makes it to the train station just in time to catch the Wagon-Lit express to Cairo.
The German train is state-of-the-art. When it begins moving Lucia feels the slight tug mainly in her heart as she prepares to leave Richard physically behind for the second time.
They are told all the sleeping compartments are occupied.
Mark begins doling out the baksheesh like a young god with flowers blooming out of his hands and the door to a private car closes behind them a few minutes later.
Two native men literally fling her black suitcases into the room like rocks spewing from a volcano. Navigating around them, she falls onto the dark-green shore of the seat, as silently wrapped up in her thoughts as a mummy.
Mark kicks a bag out of his way and drops down beside her.
“I’m broke,” he announces. He leans his head back against the tall seat and closes his eyes. “Tonight wiped me out. It’s amazing how much a quick getaway costs.”
“I’ll cash some traveler’s checks,” she says listlessly.
“Thanks. I’ll be paying you back.”
“Excuse me, but I’ll pay you back. If you hadn’t come when you did…”
“That was too easy.” He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees as he looks up at the dark window. “And I don’t th
ink I like the fact that no matter what happens you still love that dead bastard and think he can do no wrong.” He meets her eyes. “I think Richard would have had you buried alive with him if he could have, but since that isn’t socially acceptable anymore he had to be creative. It’s my theory that he was trying to get you to kill yourself so you could be with him again, forever.”
She leaps to her feet.
He follows her up and steadies her against him when the train gives a slight jolt. “This isn’t over, Lucia.” His tone is even harder than his grip. “It won’t be over until you face the truth, that your husband was a sick bastard and yet you insist on burying the rest of your life in the past with him.” He releases her abruptly and carefully stows his laptop and camera bag in an overhead compartment.
“You’re right,” she says tightly.
“Forget it.” He runs the fingers of both hands through his hair. “I didn’t mean to push you.”
“No, Mark,” she says urgently, “I need you to push me. I can’t keep deluding myself. I’m sick of it!”
Chapter Fifteen
The following morning, Lucia sweeps open the curtains of a hotel room.
The three pyramids of Giza cut sharply into the sky, pointing away from her old life into the future. She can’t imagine it but it doesn’t matter because the perfect clarity of the atmosphere is the enchanted bubble of the present moment.
* * * * *
They have breakfast on the porch of the Mina House Hotel, which boasts a marvelous view of the only remaining ancient wonders of the world.
After enjoying their usual artery-clogging fare, shunning the healthy alternative of fresh fruit, they sit back to savor a second cup of American coffee.
“What are you thinking about?” Mark asks her.
“Not about Richard, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Try me.”
Smiling, she looks over at the pyramids again. They are such a magnetic presence that her head keeps turning irresistibly in their direction.
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