Chapter 2
Ash
I didn’t sign up for any of this immortality stuff. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into way back in the early 1900s but I was here still. The person I was back then wouldn’t recognize who I was now, though. I still got caught up short when I caughta glimpse of my reflection in a mirror. After half a decade knocking around in this stolen body I still couldn’t quite believe it was true. But hey, it was better than being truly dead, without the assurances of Those Who Return.
To modify a line from a really trashy 1980s fantasy movie, my name is Ashton Kennedy, I was born during the late-Victorian era as Elizabeth Rae Tomlinson, died in 1966 and returned in the body of this man.
I die and am reborn through the ages and I am Inkarna.
* * * *
This wasn’t the first time I’d visited the States and I reckoned I’d gotten a handle on driving on the wrong side of the road. But hell, Texas of all places? Guess it made sense. House Montu, a rival Inkarna House, was like an octopus, with tentacles everywhere. It seemed simple enough as my superior in House Alba explained it: go in to Luxor Stables, find the cartouche of Amunet the First, apparently a priceless artifact recently turned up in House Montu’s clutches, and get the hell out of there.
I hadn’t expected this.
The house was huge. The place hulked as a sort of gothic nightmare that bristled with a mad conglomeration of minarets and Victorian turrets six stories high in places. No wonder it proved so tricky to get past the initial security measures. It was like the Winchester Mystery House on steroids—if that were at all possible.
Now that I was in, I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. A large stretch of lawn surrounded the place, dotted with topiary. If I studied the rambling architecture hard enough, order was apparent in the chaos. They’d based this on some bizarre Pythagorean ideals, to be certain. The place fair crackled with subdued menace. I would have to be careful. The very bricks carried sentience, held memories.
A few lights shed buttery warmth but, for most, the manor bristled menace beneath the star-pierced sky, a monstrous blackness against the inky night. I didn’t want to even know what lurked within the no-doubt labyrinthine corridors. How the hell was I supposed to find a golden relic smaller than my palm?
With great care not to alert any Inkarna who’d have the power to equal mine—there had to be at least one or two here for sure—I pulled in tendrils of daimonic power. Slowly. Whispers borrowed from the wind, from the electrical cables running to the house. I’d had enough time in this Kha to grow accustomed to how the body functioned. Whereas my previous Kha had been delicate, a surgical instrument of exquisite sharpness, this one was steady, strong, if a little blunt at times. With each passing year I had regained some of my previous skill, but what I lacked in daimonic finesse still, the physical attributes more than made up for it.
Hidden as I was, in a dark corner by a paddock, with the sharp tang of horse manure in my nostrils, I reached out with my awareness, and kept just enough of myself within the physical Kha. I didn’t want to chance discovery by the numerous security guards patrolling the premises. It wasn’t easy for a man of over six feet to lurk in the shadows, but I made damn well sure I did a good job of it. The place belonged to Alexander Goodkin and, as far as my superiors knew, Alexander was possibly Inkarna. Now that I’d had an eyeful of Luxor Stables’ main building, I was tempted to run with the latter.
With a pang, I thought back to the old chapter house that belonged to my now-defunct House Adamastor in Simon’s Town. My brethren wouldn’t have the power to punch another Inkarna through for decades, the way things had gone, and the link with the material and spirit worlds broken. I was it. If I fucked up now, there might never be another chance for my people to reestablish a chapter house in the material world, and I would have to rely on the charity of House Alba. That is, while I was still useful to them.
This monstrosity before me was more than a chapter house, though. It was a veritable nexus of power—a temple. What the hell was I going up against? This could be House Alba’s set-up to get rid of an inconvenient scion of one of the Great Houses for a few generations—a last gesture to clean up a mess my escape from Sea of Nun five years ago started. I didn’t want to follow that train of thought.
A million pinpricks of blue-green fire flittered over the roofs of the manor. They flashed and spun—an earthbound constellation. There was a pattern there, one to which I could attune myself. A mortal or an initiate might blunder into this sophisticated system, unaware of the web of awareness spread to catch just such an intrusion.
I could sense some life within the building and pinpoint not one but four bright fires and at least half a dozen verging on the same frequency. Sweet Amun!
With an almost physical snap I fell back to my Kha. Cricket song sawed loudly in my ears and I drew a shuddering breath. Me, go up against four Inkarna and six initiates? Did House Alba want to send my disembodied souls howling back into the Tuat? They needed an army for this encounter, not a lone warrior.
Although my heart hammered in my throat and my mouth had gone unaccountably dry, I rose, hating the way my joints clicked. Some remnants of the daimonic power I’d gathered a few moments ago remained and I sucked in a little more to wrap myself in a bubble of silence. A determined watcher might distinguish a shadow but most—and I hoped this would be the case—would find their gazes slide away from my progress across the lawn.
Somewhere a sprinkler hissed. A horse whinnied, the sound chilling in the dark, grass-scented air. I couldn’t help but think of long-ago days, of growing up on a wine estate in the shadow of Paarl Mountain.
Of course it was clear why House Alba’s elders would ask me to do this—go alone. For years House Adamastor had perfected the art of secrets, of passing by unseen and foiling all manner of modern technology. We were once a House of mysteries and forgotten knowledge, small and insignificant tucked away at the tip of Africa until House Montu dislodged us from our precarious nook.
Now it was my turn to repay the favor, although my actions were more in line with an ant trying to make an elephant budge. Every small bit helped. It was best to remind myself of that. How could the other Houses stand by and let Montu grow so powerful? Or was it a case of divide and rule through the aeons?
Here I was, a mere flyspeck that slipped from shadow to shadow; as insubstantial as the wind in the face of this monolithic task.
The small hairs on my nape and on my forearms tingled as I approached the building. I felt like I was being watched in my paranoia, despite my precautions. Each of my senses screamed for me to get the hell out of here but I couldn’t. One tense moment passed when a pair of security guards rounded the corner and I flattened myself against a rough sandstone wall.
I’m not here, I’m not here, I’m not here…
They passed, their booted feet crunching on the chip-stone walkway, as they talked in low tones about some movie actress with big tits. Men. Typical.
I paused long enough to wipe the sweat from my brow, and drew a deep breath. There were benefits to being nigh on invisible, but I wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever. I needed to get inside the house and pray the place wasn’t completely riddled with security cameras and the like. Of course it would be, and I’d need to identify and circumvent each threat as I encountered it.
I rounded five wings of the building before I located an entrance that was suitable. It looked like a cellar door, half sunken into the ground with three steps leading down to a semi-subterranean level. It was a simple process to negate the electronic lock, which snicked open with minimal fuss or expenditure of energy. Even better, I’d deactivated the alarm, which engaged again as soon as I slipped inside, a minor blip on House Montu’s radar, if I played my hand right.
The air in the passage was musty and heavy with the scent of dry rot. It was almost pitch-dark and I stayed perfectly still long enough to reach out with my daimonic senses, gratified when I encountered no electronics
or wards. Good. I let slip the cloaking with the same relief of shedding a coat in a too-warm room.
My ears rang with the pressure of the weight of the quiet. I swallowed reflexively and pushed my daimonic senses forward and backward, alert to the slightest buzz of electronic surveillance equipment or approaching people. Nothing. House Montu obviously didn’t expect someone to foil their electronics. Or so I could only hope and pray to The Opener of the Way that this be the truth of the matter. Anpu Upuaut go before me, let no one stand against me…
I reached up to touch the Anubis pendant where it rested beneath my shirt. On cat feet I walked, pausing every so often to listen, to sense and feel my way ahead. What function these passages had I couldn’t decipher. I envisioned cells containing prisoners then hastily shoved those hellish thoughts away. Heavily barred doorways opened to my right every ten paces then the passage hit a T-junction, with a further stone-flagged passage running perpendicular to the one in which I now traveled. More doors. Locks, rusted from disuse. What have they stored, forgotten for centuries?
I could get lost in here, which was not something upon which I wished to dwell. To follow those thought trails invited certain failure. Ten very dangerous individuals lived and worked in this gargantuan building, and possibly two dozen highly inconvenient human guards. I needed to remain alert. Cold sweat trickled down the small of my back and I had to stop for a few heartbeats to regain my composure.
A little voice inside kept asking, why me?
What would Richard do? Leonora? Would my beloved friends, many years gone from the material plane find themselves paralyzed by this choking fear? I imagined Richard’s disappointed expression and the old sadness returned.
Richard, though decades separate us, I miss you.
Enough of this. I pushed farther and took three left-hand turns before I realized my foolishness. I was like Theseus in the maze beneath Knossos. Any moment now, the Minotaur might find me. How apt too, the symbol of the bull for which House Montu had so much fondness. I stopped for the umpteenth time. I needed to have a systematic approach.
Voices echoed. Mortals without the agitated fizz-crackle of daimonic presence. The way the passages were laid out I wasn’t sure from what direction they approached but, either way, I had to make myself scarce. Anyone who had ever played hide and seek would understand that adrenaline rush of knowing one was pursued by the seeker, of remaining hidden. Only this time the stakes were so much higher.
I didn’t fear death—at least not in the greater sense of dying and passing through the Black Gate—there were other, more exquisite punishments House Montu could mete out if I were discovered. Though I could negate these mortals easily, the action would, no doubt, betray my intrusion—a cost I could ill afford at this point. With that threat distracting me, I must have taken far too many wrong turns. While I couldn’t hear the speakers any longer, the darkness had become almost absolute and I felt my way along blindly.
The blackness pressed down, heavier than the weight of rock, mortar and the floors above me. My lungs threatened to collapse, my breath wheezing painfully in my chest. I’d never done well with not being able to see. This was absolute. A cloying, solid thing with presence that would crush the very life force out of me.
I didn’t see the short flight of stairs to my left until I fell. I tumbled, my breath knocked out of me with each impact. The first thing I did was draw breath while I lay dazed, unsure of how far I’d plunged. Of all the items I did not bring with me, a torch had been one of them. Nice one. Lizzie would have thought of that, not Ashton. My identities blurred until I took hold of Ashton, not Lizzie. As my eyes adjusted to the sudden presence of light, I could breathe again despite the haze of pain that incapacitated me.
I was sprawled on a landing. Another short flight of stairs down to my left was illuminated by a subdued green gleam—the reassuring one encountered when the electricity cut out. After I made sure all my limbs functioned and no extremities were broken or twisted, save for the bruises no doubt blossoming on my ribs and the tender spot at the back of my skull, I crept down those stairs.
Yet another labyrinth existed deep below the ground. If the twists and turns became any more bizarre I would need a ball of yarn to find my way back. Here the stucco walls had been painted with scenes one would rather expect in the tombs of ancient pharaohs than beneath an eccentric businessman’s ranch house.
The artworks were standard, depicting an afterlife in the Tuat, of huntsmen casting nets over flocks of waterfowl, of sheaves of wheat ready for harvest. Prominent in all of this was the symbol of the Apis Bull, of falcon-headed Montu smiting his enemies.
Delicately executed hieroglyphs were painstakingly executed then enclosed in ellipses with horizontal lines at one end to denote royal names, and if I grasped the meanings of these names above the sealed doorways, I had accidentally entered a sunken tomb complex. The names read like the who’s who of Montu nobility, legendary personages I’d heard whispered of in the Tuat after my first passing and return as Ashton Kennedy.
My superiors in House Alba had a lot to answer for. This was like being thrust into the belly of the serpent Apep. If I got out of here with Kha, Ba and Ka intact, I’d be one infernally lucky Inkarna.
Down here the air was cool—much colder than above—and I cursed not wearing something warm under my jacket. At least it was dry, and the faint breeze that stirred on my sweaty skin told me air-conditioning was at work. And thank the moon god Khonsu there was light, even if it was a sickly hue that made my skin look like putty.
I felt it then: a faint prickling miasma of pain drew me down a side-passage where there were no tomb paintings. Pencil sketches showed that an artisan attached to House Montu planned to add the pigments at a later stage. The door was unadorned and unsealed. Wave after wave of frustration bubbled, as though from the stone against which I pressed a palm.
This was not some rescue mission, yet whoever was beyond that door radiated a terrible frustration and—and this frightened me somewhat—a horrific hunger. I should turn away, continue on my mission but I couldn’t. That damnable curiosity that was the hallmark of House Adamastor’s Inkarna tugged at me. I must look.
I gathered a few tangles of daimonic essence, just enough, in case I had to strike, and pushed open the door. The barrier swung inward, grating dryly on invisible hinges. Within was a chamber, its unplastered walls revealing redbrick and mortar. The only source of light was yet one of those horrid green fittings that illuminated a lidless sarcophagus, which, at a quick glance, appeared to be carved from limestone.
Within lay a man with Native American features, his body bound painfully with chains in a mockery of a mummy’s bandages. Several padlocks held these bonds in place. He wasn’t a mortal. His lips were pulled back in a silent rictus snarl to reveal vicious elongated canines—which would not look out of place on a wolf.
Chapter 3
Xan
I woke up in degrees, a dream I couldn’t remember melting away to reveal reality. The air was dry and chalky, sticking my tongue to the roof of my mouth just behind my fangs. I couldn’t see anything. Hinges on a door groaned close by as someone joined me. A dude. I could tell from his scent. Human males used masculine soaps and deodorants with names like Lava and Irish Spring. Girls usually smelled like flowers, or at least something sweet. He walked real quiet-like, which was odd. Sneaky, even. I don’t know why he bothered, not like I could do a whole lot about whatever he wanted to do. His pulse was rapid and sounded like a little tom-tom. I groaned. If only I could move just a little. I licked my parched lips.
“You might as well stop sneaking around. I can hear your heartbeat.” My voice sounded like sandpaper on gravel. Baking in July. In the back of a dump truck trekking through Mexico. Somewhere I’d tasted dirt, probably when I face-planted into the neatly trimmed turf grass. I squirmed. “What do you people want from me?”
“Who’s to say I want anything?” He had one of those uppity British-sounding accents, only a l
ittle flatter, softer, as he moved to stand behind my head. “What are you anyways?”
I inhaled through my nose and chuckled a little. Specks of green dotted my sight when I peeked; my vision was returning. “I figured you’d know what I am, considering you and your buddies decided to vamp-nap me.”
“Vamp-nap? I have nothing to do with your situation.” He came closer.
I must’ve looked like hell, drained of blood as much as I was and doped up more than a ghetto hooker. I didn’t even fully fit in whatever the hell they had me lying in. My knees were bent like I was crammed in a Toyota. I was beyond normal tall, but just under doorway height. I could be grateful for that tiny favor of nature. Else I’d be smacking my head on every door frame I passed through as much as I usually drank. I lived in a tavern, it worked real well to kill the blood thirst for the most part, so I ran with the solution.
“You’re a vampire.”
“Really? Amazing powers of perception, genius.” I smirked despite the circumstances. It couldn’t be helped.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re not one of them I guess, so that makes you a special guest, Mr.—”
“I’m not giving my name to a vampire.”
I shrugged under the heavy weight of the chains. “Suit yourself. I guess you’re not going to tell me why you’re here either.”
“Amazing powers of perception.”
He was fucking with me. I snorted. “You plan on eyeballing me for the next week, or is it possible that you get me loose?” I opened my eyes wider and immediately squinted at the swirls of light stabbing my retinas.
“And why should I do that?” He lingered just outside my field of vision.
“Because I got a feeling you don’t want to be here anymore than I do.” I swallowed, biting back my rising need to sink my fangs into a fresh hot vein. I laughed to myself. Shit, I was losing my mind. If he didn’t buy my story, I’d be a snarly mess before long.
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