“The sooner the better, Hassan. Nothing personal, but this is a job I want over with ASAP.”
“I’m surprised, my friend. If I were you, I’d want as much time with the little black-haired woman as possible.”
“She’s not my type,” said Mac.
“Ahh…so the way is clear for me.”
Mac felt his pulse quicken. “She’s not yours, either,” he said, a little too quickly. “She’s not anyone’s type.”
Hassan paused, perhaps picking up on Mac’s strong reaction. “If you say so…”
“I do.” Mac hung up, put on his khaki shorts and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Going to the wrought iron balcony, he leaned over the edge and looked down on the sordid, ancient city below. A city full of broken dreams and heartaches washed ashore on a mindless sea. A city full of ancient miseries and tragic secrets. A million unhappy endings, threadbare fairy tales worn to the level of mere survival. Existence, one sunrise to the next. One smoke-filled breath to the next.
He took a long drag off the unfiltered Turkish blend he’d picked up in Islamabad last month. He’d been to Porto Sayeed dozens of times but never before had he understood it or felt its pain. Not until now.
* * * * *
Minarra cried herself dry in the shower. Sitting against the wall of the small stall, knees drawn to her chest, the water splashing her knees and head and arms. A mindless sting, endless and unforgiving.
It wasn’t fair. Where the fuck was that marriage proposal six years ago? When it would have meant something? When she could have acted on it.
All right, so she would have freaked out back then. And there would have been her father to consider. He was protective as a hawk. No man was ever good enough for her in his eyes, least of all an archeologist. Ironically, the more a man was like himself, the less Roger Hunt trusted him. And Mac was like him in spades. That’s why they’d connected so easily.
Okay, so marriage six years ago would have seemed strange…awkward. She was just having fun with Mac. That summer was paradise, all the feelings and thrills and romance she’d missed in her life up to then. If only she’d known she’d never have it again.
In any event, Mac was doing nothing now but throwing a monkey wrench into the machinery of her life, her career. Wasn’t it messy enough they’d ended up back in bed together? How bizarre was it that they could still have such incredible sex, even better than before, with so much tension between them.
Damn it, why did he have to come back into her life at all? Why did Malcolm have to pick him to lead this expedition? Why had her father made the man promise to watch over her? Better still, why did Daddy have to die at all? Why did he have to leave her with the burden—the curse of Shera-Sa? Well this would be the end of it. This would be the last expedition. Either this map would produce concrete proof of the city’s existence or she would abandon her attempts to find it forever.
No more sixteen-hour days combing through ancient records, no more fighting tooth and nail for grants and academic respect for something no one in their right mind believed in. No more bizarre dreams brought on by overwork, or whatever the hell else was causing her to be swallowed up like this. And above all, no more Mac Macallister. Not in her present, not in her future. His ghost would be laid to rest, along with all the others.
Then she could reclaim her life. For the first time she could explore herself. Find her identity. Maybe even change her name. No more Minarra…no more Komen-tah.
This last thought produced a ringing noise in her head. An angry sound, something wanting to be heard, refusing to be denied. Something ancient and evil that would no longer live only in dreams or human imagination. She covered her ears. Looking up, she saw the water turn red. A cascade of blood about to hit her head. She screamed.
* * * * *
From reflex, Mac grabbed the gun. He was at the bathroom door seconds after hearing the screams. Minarra had locked it from the inside. “Min, open up!” He pounded the door.
Either she couldn’t hear him or she didn’t want to respond. Tucking the gun into the back of his shorts, he squared his shoulder against the barrier keeping him from the woman he loved. The wood gave way with a sickening crunch. Mac felt nothing from the impact—he’d have time for the pain later.
He found Minarra in the shower. She was against the back wall, flailing her arms. He leaped in, instantly soaking himself from the shower spray. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“B-b-bloo—” Her lips were blue. She was shivering, trying to say something.
Was she trying to say blood?
He gathered her against his chest. Whatever the fuck this was, he’d deal with it. He’d kill it. He’d do something. “Sweetheart, it’s all right,” he soothed. “I’m here. You’re safe.”
“Mac,” she sobbed, her strength draining. “It was horrible. So much…blood everywhere.”
Mac felt a chill down his spine. She’d been hallucinating…like her mother. “Min, it’s all gone. Whatever it was, it’s all gone. I swear to god.”
Demons of the mind…the only thing a man can’t fight with his hands, Mac thought grimly.
Min looked up into his face. “You don’t understand…” She kissed him then. Maybe as an afterthought, or was it intended to help explain?
Mac’s desire rose instantly to the surface. “Sweetheart, if you keep on like this I’m going to take you back to bed,” he gave her fair warning. “Is that what you want?”
She nodded, slowly, but fiercely. “I need it. Fuck me, Mac…make it go away.”
There was no making it to the bed now. Mac tore at his drenched clothing, pulling off each item until he was naked. Lifting her by the hips he impaled her. Her sex was hotter, slicker than he’d ever remembered. Hissing in dark delight, eyes closed, she wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles.
“Yes, baby,” she encouraged, circling her arms around his neck. “Take me…fucking have me…”
Mac was not gentle this time, nor slow. He was a piston, cock pounding at her, slamming her ass cheeks against the tile. She cried out, egging him on. “Yes…” The word stretched into grunting syllables, laid one upon the other. Her pelvis was like a magnet, drawing him in, thrust after thrust. It was as hot as any sex they’d had in the desert—hotter even—and faster with all the fury and anguish bottled up over the years. Her nails dug into his shoulders. He was squashing her breasts, not wanting a single millimeter between them. She was like an itch, deep under his skin. Her breathing said it all, a cadenced “fuck me” noise that made it all just perfect. He didn’t slow down for a second. Locking his teeth, he tightened his ass muscles, made one last magnificent drive and came. She cried out a whimper of joy and anguish.
Minarra came for him, like a wildcat, wound up and unleashed, claws bared, fangs sunk deep—the quintessential fur-covered predator, lusciously tamed in her lover’s arms.
Their come mixed, mingling as it dripped with the water. They held onto one another through the storm, riding the crest of the waterfall, down into the rapids below. Washing themselves away, to a glorious, unspeakable sunset.
Eventually, Mac was able to turn off the water. “You’re going home,” he told Minarra, who was shivering in the corner.
She looked at him, about as formidable as a drowned cat. “No,” she said fiercely, her eyes conveying the Hunt willpower. “You’re taking me to Shera-Sa.”
“You’re going home,” he repeated, though he knew he could never do that. In spite of his worst fears for her safety, he would take her, because she would accept nothing else. Truthfully, he’d be disappointed if she ever did. That was what made her so difficult, so incredible…so Minarra.
“I need a towel,” she said.
He handed it to her. God, he wished he knew what made her tick, what the hell she needed and what it was that terrified her so.
Mac knew the history—Sofia’s untimely end. I couldn’t handle the mother, you can’t handle the daughter, such was Roger’s supreme impervious logic. He
wasn’t worthy—not for anything more than this. Roger had made that clear.
Mac went over the final checklist in his mind. Men, guns, food, water, archeological equipment, camp supplies, and more guns. That should about do it. And maybe some wooden crosses, too. To mark any graves they would have to dig.
Chapter Six
Minarra knew she would like Hassan the minute she saw that the big man was intent on needling Mac for the entire journey. He was one of those good-natured men, jolly and fun-loving, though she was quite glad she was not someone he considered an enemy. With all that muscle power and his quick eyes, she was quite sure he would make a deadly opponent.
She was less certain about the other men, though she’d leave them to Hassan and Mac to keep in line. Hassan had already made it clear that should any of his deputies so much as look askance at her or say a disrespectful word, he would happily dispatch them “a few years earlier to their Great Maker, Allah.”
As for Mac, he would do the same, she was sure. As a matter of fact, the expedition leader had become so protective since leaving the hotel she was starting to feel claustrophobic. Not to mention paranoid.
It didn’t help that their convoy looked more like a military invasion than a scientific expedition. All three of the jeeps were fitted with mounted machine guns along with a rocket launcher and a box of AK-47’s in the Land Rover.
“It’s all precautionary,” the tight-lipped Mac said, helping her into the Rover.
Hassan had offered for her to ride in one of the jeeps with him, but Mac had refused—a bit brusquely, in her opinion.
“It is quite all right,” the big-hearted Hassan assured her. “He wants your protection, in case of trouble, you will make sure he doesn’t get hurt, won’t you?”
She grinned in response to his wink. “Absolutely,” she assured him.
As soon as the convoy was underway, Mac wanted to hear more about the vision-dreams. She would never forgive herself for having reacted so foolishly in the shower, because now her secret was out and the man would treat her like a hysterical, helpless female.
“I already told you everything I know,” she said curtly. “It’s no big deal. Just stress.”
“Stress might give you headaches or even dizzy spells,” he lectured. “But it does not generally cause a person to see blood pouring from a shower nozzle.”
Minarra tied back her hair against the light wind whipping through the open cab of the jeep. Admittedly, the experience in the shower had been the most frightening of her life. It really had looked and felt like blood…
~~~~~
She hid her face, cowering, terrified of having the vile substance on her body. At first it burned like fire, like the sting of Mac’s spanking hand multiplied by a hundred, like the bee sting she’d gotten as a little girl, multiplied by a thousand.
She thought her flesh was going to melt off. But just as quickly as the agony had come, it left. She was standing, covered in sand, in the middle of a vast dune. The sand was black, like the dusted granules of an ancient volcano. Strange lightning erupted across the sky, little zigzags off bigger ones, purple, electric-blue and red.
There was no sun but she sky was lit a hazy, vague orange. With her peripheral vision, she could see rushing shapes, too quick to grasp in her mind’s eye. Strange objects littered the desert, huge pieces of artificial material, neither metal nor plastic. They were of all shapes, tubes and cones, intricate semispheres cracked open. Like some kind of supertech junkyard.
The lightning was starting to hit the ground, and as it did, she could make out flashing scenes, like shimmering movie images. Civilizations passed before her eyes, working backward from the present. All the way back through the Middle Ages, to Greece and Rome and Egypt…
At a certain point the lightning was matched by thunder. Her heart raced. She knew what was coming next. Shera-Sa. The proto-city was about to rise again.
The earth beneath her began to rumble. The vibrations shook her teeth. In the pit of her stomach she felt a wrenching. Something was wrong here. She felt a tugging at her ankle. Looking down, she saw a skeletal hand grabbing her ankle. Minarra screamed as another hand grabbed her other ankle. More and more skeletons were emerging, headfirst from the sand.
A trumpet blared, an unholy, bleak wail. The skeletons were forming ranks, taking on flesh and armor. An army was rising. At the same time, she saw the walls, white as ivory, strong as diamond. The ramparts of Shera-Sa. First and greatest city of them all.
Mother of civilization…coming to reclaim her children.
She could see a troop of horses in the distance. At the lead was Komen-tah, leading his cavalry. In his hand, above his head, he held a flaming weapon, more than a sword and as bright as any star. The others held weapons too, and Minarra realized that they were on their way to conquer the nations. Shera-Sa would rule the world of this day as it had the ancient world.
Her mind willed it to stop. Visions overwhelmed her of a terrible, bloody war to come, the worst the world had ever seen, millions of refugees, whole continents laid to waste, and in the end, all humans paying homage to the mad prince.
And his consort.
Minar-ra…her namesake…
~~~~~
But it hadn’t happened yet. They were waiting for something. They needed something, and it had to do with the modern Minarra. Indeed, Minarra realized now that the ancient priestess and her lover had been trying to break into her mind all this time. They wanted to lure her to Alcazara. They might even have planted the map.
What exactly did they want, though? And why plant the dreams? Were they trying to make her feel trapped in the past? How would it serve their ends to drive a single archeologist mad with unbearable visions?
She had been about to confront the old Minar-ra when Mac awoke her, coming to her rescue. Mostly she was grateful to him, though a part of her wished she could have seen. Would it be like looking in a mirror—as in her last vision? Or was there some other horror in store for her?
The answers lay out there, in the desert. But also in her own past. Could it be there was more than mere coincidence involved in her naming? Had her father known something he’d not shared? Had he seen more than he’d revealed, even on his deathbed?
For now, she had no choice but to rely on Mac. The one man who cared most for her in the world, and who had the oddest ways of showing it. Running off and leaving her for six years, then storming back in, wanting to be her savior…and now her husband.
“Why won’t you trust me?” he asked, placing a hand on her thigh. “I can’t help if you don’t share.”
She shivered at his touch on her bare skin. She should never have worn shorts out here. “Please, Mac,” she stiffened. “I’d prefer you don’t…”
“Don’t what? Show my feelings? I’m sorry for being human, Min.” Mac put his hand back on the wheel. He sounded angry…hurt even.
“I appreciate the concern,” she replied in as neutral a tone as possible. “But if you don’t mind. I’d like to get a little rest.”
Mac drove on in silence. She let the road lull her into a state of semiconsciousness. If only he knew how grateful she was to have him beside her. He could never know this, but she did not know if she could bear to be without him right now.
They stopped for a break about two hours outside of the city. The road ahead was a shimmering mess, the superheated air creating a mirage effect. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but broken stone and small tough, weeds. On the horizon was the back end of the dunes. By morning they would be in the Belly of Gehenna, the aptly named desert valley that comprised the center of this ancient land.
They would encounter few if any vehicles and little in the way of permanent civilization. It was here they would find Shera-Sa, if it existed. They would navigate by the stars, and by the measurements of Shera-Sa’s mathematicians. Minarra wanted and hoped for much more. She would follow the footsteps of explorers down through the centuries, hoping the fabled city lay somewh
ere buried, preserved by the sand, waiting to be rediscovered, to be reawakened to a new dawn.
What mysteries would Shera-Sa hold in her temples and palaces? What wonders to spark the modern mind? It boggled the mind to think that all doubt about the city’s existence would finally be destroyed. And yet, given the frightening nature of Minarra’s dreams, she also had reason to hope it would all prove to be a hoax after all.
“We’ll camp behind that ridge,” Mac pointed, about a half hour before sunset.
The western sky was a glowing, baked orange, layered with ancient reds. This was no sky of the New World, no sky that could ever hang over a modern city or town. It was a sky fit for fortune-tellers and flying carpets. And maybe a winged, sandaled god or two.
Minarra said nothing, preferring to keep a judicious silence. Mac waved the convoy off the road, gathering the vehicles into a loose, yet defensive circle. Hassan hopped from his Rover, his AK-47 in tow and began shouting orders. He was quite a sight, in his desert boots, gathered Bedouin style pants and vest. He looked at home here, as much as any human could.
Gathering her things, Minarra set them down on the ground. It was her intent to help set up the tents, but Mac refused to allow it.
“Sit there,” he said harshly, directing her to a folding chair. “I don’t want you exerting yourself.”
“For heaven’s sake,” she complained. “I’m not pregnant.”
She could only imagine what the man would do if she was.
“You just worry about the map,” he said. “Let us do the grunt work.”
Hassan laughed. “You sound like a married couple!”
Minarra felt a tiny stab. Was it that obvious that there was a history…a thing between them? Surely it wasn’t something akin to a marriage relationship, though. Was it?
“I wouldn’t wish that on any woman,” said Mac wryly, hiding his emotions as deftly as ever. “I do the gender a favor by staying a bachelor.”
“You don’t fool me,” Hassan slapped his shoulder. “You’re a man in love. You have been since the day I met you and one day you will tell me who she is.”
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