After a quick layover in Heathrow, I boarded the plane to Cairo. I settled into my seat and closed my eyes, exhausted. I had just nodded off when I was nudged by a woman dressed in all black with a veil covering everything except her eyes. She made desperate hand signals at me, as I stared at her uncomprehending. It soon became clear, she wanted my seat. Angrily I shook my head. I wasn’t going to give up my aisle seat for the middle. This only made her hand gestures more frantic. I saw she wasn’t going to budge and people were getting backed up behind her. Irritated I moved over to the middle seat, and she sank down. My anger died a bit when I figured out her demand had something to do with the abashed British gentleman sitting on the other side of me. She didn’t want to sit next to a man. He shrugged his shoulders at me; I shrugged back at him, and he returned to the book he had been reading. The plane roared to life and I closed my eyes again, trying to ignore the woman’s elbow pushing mine over the armrest. She got my seat, why should she get my armrest? As we reached flying altitude I finally surrendered my armrest, too tired to keep up the fight. A surreal haze descended, hours ticked by, and I finally fell fully asleep curled in a tiny ball.
I was jolted awake by the plane landing on the runway. I attempted to stretch my stiff muscles, but it was hard crammed in the middle seat. The plane made its long taxi as the murmur of passengers unbuckling their seatbelts and rustle of luggage being retrieved from under seats grew. I tried to peer out the window, visions of golden sarcophaguses and majestic pyramids dancing through my head. Even with the reason I was here, I couldn’t help but to feel excited to visit the land of the pharaohs.
I finally caught a glimpse of horizon through the window. On it was just another gray-brown dusty metropolitan. Disappointed I turned away, so much for glossy expectations. I fingered the necklace Aaron had sent with me, while mentally going through his instructions on how to find his grandmother again. The plane came to a halt at last, and I felt the heavy weight of responsibility crash down with it. Here I was, a rookie agent, out to do a veteran’s job, without any backup, and Kels’s life depended on it. How did I get myself into this? I shouldered the backpack I had so hastily packed, hoped it was enough, and filed off the plane.
After some careful navigating through the airport, with Aaron’s directions ringing in my head; fifteen dollars had bought me a pastel colored sticker, with blue Arabic writing on one side and ENTRY VISA on the other. I examined the silver holograph sticker in the middle; polka dots struggled with a sharp eagle to win the place in my vision. I tucked my passport back in the wallet under my shirt and made my way outside.
“Taxi miss?”
The hot heavy air rushed to great me after the air-conditioned terminal.
“Taxi?”
I took a moment to steady my nerves, as a group of men pushed eagerly toward me.
“Miss need taxi?”
“Best price, taxi!”
“Here, taxi!”
I was caught by the zealous taxi drivers circling the doors of the airport. I did my best to pretend I confidently knew where I was going; shaking my head at the persistent calls, glaring angrily at the more aggressive. Aaron had warned me the taxis that waited at the front of the airport always charged a lot more, partly because they had to pay the security guards at the entrance gate of the road leading into the airport, but partly because they could catch the unaware tourists. I finally broke free and walked out into the hot Egyptian air. Disorientated, I kept my chin up, picked my way down the side of the road, and marched past a surprised security officer in the entrance gate. Spotting the line of black and white taxis waiting on the other side was like seeing a pot of gold under a rainbow. Relief washed through me, it was a tiny step in the long journey ahead, but at least I had done something right.
The relief soon changed to fear for my life, as the taxi I had chosen raced through the crisscross of highways and city streets across Cairo in a manic impression of driving. Tall, squat, brown white, old, new buildings whisked by my window. The driver was a jolly man who spoke broken English. He was delighted that I was from California and that I had chosen his taxi. I somehow managed to understand, in between the swerving honking traffic, the loud fast paced Arabic music, and the driver’s enthusiastic butchering of English, that he had five children. His eldest daughter, apparently, was getting married soon. I gripped the side of the door and responded with a weak congratulation to his proud announcement.
“YOU MARRY?” he yelled over the music.
Startled away from my failed attempts to watch the scenery flashing by, I looked at him. “Me?”
“Yes, yes, you marry?” He smiled widely, pointing at the photo of his daughter.
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head vehemently.
“You marry?” The driver thumped his chest and glanced at me questioning.
I wrinkled my eyebrows, bewildered. “I marry you?” I asked.
He nodded enthusiastically, thumping his chest again. “You old, need husband!”
Confounded, I bit back my laughter. “But you have a wife?” I pointed to the family photos lining his window shade flaps.
“I have!” He held up two fingers.
“You have two wives?”
“Yes!” He smiled, satisfied I understood correctly.
“That isn’t enough?”
He didn’t understand.
“TWO.” I held up two fingers. “A LOT.”
His eyes twinkled. “But can have,” he said and held up four fingers.
This time I did laugh, even as the Cairo scenery flashed by me at a breakneck speed.
“So you marry!” He didn’t veer from his conversation the way he veered the taxi through the traffic.
I considered flattening my hair and expose my horns, to show him how unwise his proposal was, but I kept myself in check. I doubted there were many Homo daemonis around here. I contented myself with shaking my head and widening my eyes, pretending to be unable to understand anything more he was saying. He continued to talk loudly, but I kept our conversation at a standstill. He was thoroughly vexed by the time he pulled to a stop in front of an old apartment building, but he still smiled and shoved his card in my hands.
“You need taxi, or-” He winked and whispered, “husband.”
Exasperated, I smiled and waved him off. The taxi peeled away, and I was left in the dust. I looked around. So this was Cairo. The atmosphere was so heavy the air felt visible. I wasn’t sure if it was the pollution, the desert sand, the humidity or a combination of the three, but it was like I could actually see the air around me.
I shouldered my backpack and avoided the stares of the Egyptian male normals puffing on hookahs in the café across the street. There were not any women seated at the crowded round tables, except an older blond woman. Her ruddy complexion, worn sandals, and faded travel pack, distinguished her as the kind of tourist that could sit at an all male Egyptian café in the darker streets of Cairo, and casually read like she was sitting in a coffee shop near any sunny park in the U.S.
I turned and stared up at the apartment building the taxi driver had dropped me off at. After some gazing, searching for signs, numbers, anything, and some swearing, I took a deep breath and walked through the narrow side gate into the alleyway, hoping to find someone to help me. The alley opened to a tiny courtyard, and I caught a glimpse of my first Egyptian sapien female. She looked startled to see me and posed for flight.
“Please,” I called. I spread my hands in a gesture of helplessness.
The woman paused, hesitant.
“Please, I need to find a woman named Eshe, she lives here,” I said.
She looked confused.
“E-shee.” I pronounced the name, emphasizing the shee.
She shook her head. My shoulders drooped.
“Eshe.” I held out the piece of paper with the name and apartment number written on it.
She reached out and snatched the paper and looked down. Her expression cleared, “Ee-shay!”
I nodded vigorously, not sure what the difference in sound was, but relieved she seemed to know who I was talking about. She touched her fingers to her forehead, and motioned me to follow her. We tramped up three levels of the narrow cement staircase and came to a halt at a door at the end of a long open-air hallway.
“Eshe?” I asked, pointing at the door.
“Eshe.” She smiled an affirmative.
I tapped on the door. There was no answer. I tried again, this time rapping more firmly. A stream of gibberish, which sounded Arabic, filtered to me from inside, and the door swung open. The old woman that answered was dressed in a tunic and wrapped in a brightly patterned shawl that complimented her deeply wrinkled, but glowing, dark skin. “Assalaam alaikum,” she said. She appeared to be sapien, but her tall height and long neck didn’t miss my eye. She didn’t seem surprised to see me, so I wondered if she was used to non-angel visitors.
“Mumken asaduq?” she asked.
I had a moment of panic, did she not speak English? I knew there would be a language barrier with the Egyptian normals, but nowhere in Aaron’s instructions had he mentioned the possibility of a language barrier with the angels. This mission was hopeless enough. “Eshe?” I tried to pronounce the name in the way the woman earlier had.
The wrinkled face light up. “Ah, do not speak Arabic, no?”
“No.” My sigh of relief elicited a low laugh.
“How can I be help?”
How was I supposed to answer that? I decided to just jump all in. “Aaron sent me,” I said and pulled out the necklace he had given me and handed it to her.
The light on the old face shuttered. The friendly open expression changed to a haunted apprehensive one. She peered behind me to see if I was alone and motioned me inside. Relieved she at least was going to talk to me, I entered the cool apartment. It was simple and clean and tiny, with a touch of exotic décor and some ornate furniture and a lingering scent of minty earth. Eshe gestured me to into a small room with red orange walls, a low wooden table and silk pillows on the floor. I watched her lower herself onto floor with ease, her wings not in the way at all, and wondered if the traditional Arabic seating arrangement originally came from the angels’ desire to sit comfortably.
She removed her shawl revealing a pair of beautiful black velvety wings. I tried not to stare, but I had never seen such beautiful angel wings. The wrinkles that covered her face were barely visible on the membrane.
She noticed my gaze and straightened proudly. “It is the work of my life. I make cream for wings. But it is good for normals skin also. For this, tourists find me. So I speak some English. But you, you know Aaron, but you sapien, no?”
“Erm, no, not sapien.” I said, uncomfortable. Homo angelus and Homo daemonis were pretty well known to each other in most of western society, but I never considered the idea that Eshe may have not ever seen a daemon, or worse, never even heard of one.
Eshe’s large liquid black eyes gazed at me, as I wrestled with whether I should tell her who I was or not.
“I have the thing for this, uncomfortable moment. Be back,” she said. Gracefully she stood up and left the room.
As I nervously rubbed one of my horn stubs, I could hear the sounds of tinkering coming from the closet sized kitchen, and took a moment to mull over how calm she seemed, considering how strange I must appear to her.
She returned with a tray laden with small glasses and a curvy silver teapot. She placed the tray down on the table. I watched curious, as she poured a dark, amber liquid into the ornate glasses.
“This is called ‘shai’,” she murmured, placing a steaming glass in front of me. She crumpled a few small green leaves in her palm that released a fresh minty smell that must have infiltrated the walls of her apartment. The leaves went into her glass followed by a spoonful of sugar and a dash of milk. She then passed to me the small earthen bowl filled with mint leaves, a box labeled ‘cane sugar’, and the tiny milk pitcher. I followed her example. Every motion was done with careful precision, a suspension in time, the call to pay attention to the actions being performed in front of me. When we finished, and I brought the warm glass up to my lips, I was assaulted by the sweet mint, earthy scent. Rich milky liquid coursed down my throat, settling inside my stomach and something inside me uncoiled.
The room was silent, its occupants sinking into the moment.
“It is more than a drink,” Eshe said, observing me relax.
We sat in silence for a few moments longer. I realized how badly I had needed to just be still for a moment.
“Now you tell your story.”
I placed the glass of tea down. There was only one way to find out if she knew of my species and was okay with it. I brought my hands to my head, pushing down my hair to show her my horn stubs.
“Ah, not sapien.” She nodded, unimpressed.
I nodded, pleased. I liked this woman’s attitude. She was so much calmer than most people. It was easy to trust her. I launched into my account.
An hour later the teapot was empty, and the entire story was told. Eshe’s hands were pressed together, as if in prayer, and she held them to her forehead, thinking. She brought them down and lips pursed, shook her head sadly.
“Aaron never say I have a,” she paused, unsure.
“Great-grandson?” I supplied.
“Great grand-son. Yes, great-grandson. My daughter would be proud.”
“He’s an amazing kid,” I said. I pulled out the drawing Kels had made me. The orange construction paper was wrinkled and some of the crayon had rubbed off onto my wallet. Carefully I passed it to her. Gently she traced it with her fingertips. I hesitated, wondering if I should give it to her. I didn’t want to part with it; it was the only reminder of the child that badly needed my help.
“It is yours,” she said, reading my thoughts, and passed it back.
Gratefully I folded it back into my wallet. “You are Aaron’s mother’s mother?” I asked.
“Yes, Aaron’s mother’s mother,” Eshe repeated. “My daughter had much pride. My family, we proud to be angels, proud of wings.” She stroked her left wing, its smooth surface glimmering faintly violet in the low light of the sitting room. “But our family pride was more in my daughter. My family be proud angels, but it is not good to hate others, the not angels. Her husband.”
Eshe stopped speaking and glowered at the coffee table. The silence stretched. I sat awkwardly, watching the emotions rage across her face.
She looked at me. “Her husband a bad man. The father of Aaron, was a bad man. Passed it on to his sons, my grandsons, Rahab,” she paused again, her voice catching.
“I can’t imagine what this is like for you,” I said. “Finding out about all of this. But that is why I am here, to do something about it.” I leaned forward. “But I need help, Eshe. I can’t do this alone.”
She looked at me; her eyes were so much like Aaron’s. “I help find the child,” she said.
For the first time since that damn Prius had snuck out of sight, I felt a glimmer of hope.
I clutched onto that hope that night lying awake on the small futon Eshe had dragged out to the living room. I kept hoping the next day, as I sat in Eshe’s tiny apartment while she disappeared on mysterious errands. I worried when we didn’t go anywhere. I had expected to run off to the temple the moment I found Eshe, but Eshe had other ideas. She told me to stay put while she pulled on a black veil that covered her face, a niqab she called it. She claimed it was safer that we were not seen together as a foreigner would be suspicious to the people she was going to meet. She came back with strange bundles; preparations for our trip, but would not tell me where or when we were going. I began to get uneasy that evening. By the end of my second day in Cairo, nothing had happened, and before I went to sleep I vowed to talk to her about it in the morning.
The next day found me out in Giza, with dry eyes and black snot from the city’s pollution, still without the slightest clue what our plan was. After confronting Eshe about when we would begin our rescue mission, she had gently but firmly told me to go explore the city. “I get things we need, like food, weapons. The weapons are hard to get, because I am woman. We should not go into my grandson’s temple without a plan. He is a dangerous man.” Her eyes turned sad. “The rites of Moloch are not until the first of June. Aaron said so, we have some more days.”
“What if Aaron was wrong?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we go now?”
“If Aaron is wrong, why are you here?” She patted my hand and began puttering around the apartment as if nothing was wrong, as if her only great-grandchild hadn’t been kidnapped by one of her grandsons, who was probably going to kill the child. I didn’t understand how she could be so calm. I worried that she was lying, that I was being tricked, but when I opened my mouth to say something else, she simply looked at me with eyes that seemed to swallow the soul, and I grew ashamed. Since I had no idea where Kels was, all I could do was follow her command and sulkily go out to play tourist in the obliging Cairo. At the least maybe it would give Aaron a little more time to catch up with us. Although, if he could catch up, why would he send me ahead in the first place?
I ended up, as any tourist would, at the Great Pyramids of Giza. The heat of the sun baked the exposed back of my neck. I flipped up the collar of my shirt and stared up at the pyramid looming through the haze of the desert afternoon. Khufu’s pyramid, one of the ancient wonders of the world, was before me in all its majestic glory, and I couldn’t bring myself to give a damn. My mind was a thousand miles away, literally. For all I knew Aaron was still stuck in California, Kels’s body was in a ditch somewhere, and SITO had probably officially fired me. It was four days until the first of June, the night of the Rites of Moloch, and I was stuck in tourist hell.
A grumble from a nearby camel interrupted my thoughts. The camels that carried tourists for five minutes by the pyramids were in pretty bad shape. Hair matted, ribs showing, sores seeping, they had plenty to grumble about. I grumbled back and, for a lack of anything else to do, went to explore the pyramids more. I trudged over the dusty paths, past the laughing, camel-riding, picture-snapping tourists and over to the other side of the pyramids where the Great Sphinx reclined, guarding the pharaoh’s tombs in all its nose-less glory. The limestone mythical beast was not as majestic as I had always imagined. It seemed smaller in the midst of the cheap souvenir peddlers and red-faced foreigners and blustering tour guides. It didn’t help that instead of regally gazing out into the distance, like it appeared to in all of the pictures, it faced the Giza suburbs complete with a KFC and Pizza Hut. One could grab a bucket of extra crispy and eat it with a view of the last standing ancient wonder.
I walked around the length of the beast, fighting the urge to rub my horn stubs while threading through the dense tour groups. If I had not been so on edge, I probably would have been amused to realize the great beast even had a tail, wrapped around its body just like a little pussy cat, but I was too busy fretting, fretting about Kels, fretting about what SITO was going to do to me, fretting about Aaron, fretting about if I could trust Eshe. I stood apart from the crowds, staring at the ancient monuments and seeing nothing.
“Connelly!”
A familiar voice plunged into my thoughts. I whirled around. Eyes piercing, hands on hips, looking extremely angry, was the five-foot-two figure of Levins, staring at me from a sand dune in front of Pyramids of Giza. My tongue turned inside out, and I thought about bolting for cover. My feet felt betrayed me; they remained glued in one spot. Slowly she paced toward me.
“What. Were. You.” She came to a stop in front of me and thrust her face up to mine. “THINKING?”
I gulped and stepped back. “So I guess Galina gave you the message then?”
“She’s smarter than you are.”
I agreed silently. “How did you find me?” I asked.
“You’ve been tailed by someone from the SITO office here in Cairo, until I could track you down and beat you severely.”
I recalled the man who had stared at me so intently from behind the hookah smoke at the café near Eshe’s apartment yesterday. Damn if I was a shitty detective for not picking up on that.
Levins circled me like a bird of prey circles a trapped bunny rabbit. “So tell me Connelly, before I put your ass on a plane and send you home, why did you suddenly up and get on a plane to Egypt in the middle of the night, the day after Subject 342 was abducted?” She stopped circling and pounced. “And who is the woman you are staying with?”
I toed the sand under my shoes. “I don’t know what to say,” I muttered. “All I can ask is that you trust me.”
“Connelly, how can I trust you, when you don’t trust me?” Levins crossed her arms over her chest. The desert sun danced over her bronze skin and through her hair, making the highlights look like they were made from real gold. It would have been a beautiful sight if it hadn’t been so damn scary.
“All you’ve done since you’ve been put on this case is hide things from me. We’re supposed to be a team. A team works together, but you can’t seem to figure that out. This isn’t some CPU case that you can play rogue detective, and everyone will turn a blind eye. You’ve put yourself and Subject 342 in danger by your selfishness.”
I hung my head. The words stung, but I deserved them. They were the same words I had been telling myself for the past twenty-four hours.
“Secret faxes, anonymous tips, mystery meetings,” Levins paused and raised an eyebrow. “Need I go on?”
I shook my head, still not meeting her eyes. I had thought I was being careful with all of that, but apparently I hadn’t given Levins’s deductive skills enough credit. How did she figure it all out?
“Now, will you tell me what the hell is going on?” she asked.
A million different scenarios played out in my head; Levins arresting me, Starks firing me, my being sent to Ireland in disgrace with no job and no prospects, Aaron being arrested again and interned for kidnapping, Galina would never talk to me again. I bit my lip. The heavy air weighed down on me like the guilt weighing down on my mind. The smell of camel and tourist sweat mixed with the salt of the desert sand. Levins and I stood facing one another in the stillness of the late afternoon. Her eyes were intently focused on me, as I tried to decide the best answer to give her, my mind a whirlwind of unhappy thoughts.
In the distance a child laughed.
Clarity rushed through my head. This wasn’t about me, this was about Kels and the danger he was in. So what if I was sent home? Levins would have to do something with the information I would give her. Even if I couldn’t be a part of the rescue, Kels would have a helluva better chance if I spilled the beans.
Levins caught my expression. “Thank God,” she murmured.
“I’m sorry I was an idiot,” I said.
“You were a big dumb stupid idiot,” she said, but tempered that with a relieved smile.
I returned a tiny smile back and began to tell her Aaron’s story. She listened carefully as I outlined how Aaron met Kels’s mother, his history with Rahab and the Anakites, how my dad was helping me, and who Eshe was. I told her my reasons, as pitiful as they seemed now, for hiding things from SITO. The sun was a glowing orange at the bottom of the sky by the time I reached the part about what Aaron believed to be Kels’s role in the rites of Moloch. Her expression darkened, but she didn’t comment. As the sun dipped under the horizon, painting layers of orange and pink over the hazy desert air, I explained how I came to be in Egypt, and that Eshe and I planned to go after Kels.
“I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about Aaron’s location. I genuinely do not know where he is, but I still believe he is innocent.” I finished. With the last of the secrets out I felt an amazing lightness in the center of my stomach and was able to look Levins full on in her dark eyes.
She pursed her lips and looked away, staring into the distance. “That poor kid,” she whispered. We turned at the same time to see a normals child run by laughing, pursued by a red-faced father in a touristy Hawaiian shirt.
Her eyes met mine. “Well, no more wasting time. Let’s go get him.”
I stared after her, unmoving as she stalked away.
She turned back. “You coming Connelly? Or are you just going to stand there like the dumbass you’re proving to be?”
With a jolt I hurried to catch up. I couldn’t believe it. Levins was letting me stay on the case.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook though,” she said, looking at me sideways.
“Of course not,” I responded meekly. We walked off of the sandy pathways and onto the cement road that was laughably close to the giant pyramids. The urban sprawl of Giza rushed to greet us, with peddlers hollering, taxis honking, motorbikes spitting diesel fumes and local pedestrians jostling with the tourists to get home. We picked our way through it, looking for an empty taxi.
A loud wailing sound erupted into the fray, filling the air with a sound of aching loneliness.
“That’s the call to prayer,” I said, feeling proud of my local knowledge. Over the past day and a half I had gotten used to the eerie sound that caused the city to pause and take a breath five times a day. Eshe had explained that it was the Muslim call to prayer.
“The Maghrib,” Levins responded absently.
“The what?”
“It’s the after sunset call to prayer.”
“Oh.” Apparently Levins already knew about the call. She even knew the names of the different times of prayer. Once again I was reminded about what a rookie I was. The wail continued, thrumming through the bustle of the streets and into our beating hearts. Unsure how it worked, or if I was even allowed to, I sent a silent prayer in answer to the call, wishing with all my heart that Kels would be okay.
“Hey, Levins?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“You think you could get us a few supplies, in particular some protection?”
“Protection?”
I kept my attention in front of me and spoke through the side of my mouth. “A gun maybe?”
She grinned.
Three hours later Levins, Eshe and I were crammed into the back of a train car, each agent with a gun hidden in the folds of our clothes. Eshe’s relief at the sudden appearance of professional backup calmed my anxiety about her intentions. She had agreed to leave without a peep of protest, and we were off to the train station to take us to El Alamein, the port town that would take us closest to the temple.
At the station we discovered it was impossible to get sleeper tickets on such short notice, so we made do best we could in the passenger car, cramming inside the musky space filled with the scent of spices and sweat. The seats were hard padded plastic. I gingerly lowered myself on them, not looking forward to the number the seat would do on my tail. The other passengers in the boxcar, all Arabic normals, stared without abashment at us, well, mostly at me. Eshe and Levins were both covered by dark burkas. They were only out of place because of their white tourist friend.
“You see hijab as way to keep down woman. I see it as way to protect ourselves from outside,” Eshe had explained. Levins saw her point and wore one. I refused, complaining I would look ridiculous in it with my pale skin and blue eyes. Eshe argued that there were many pale-skinned Muslims. So I pulled out one argument they couldn’t refute, my horns would stick right through the cloth of the head cover.
I kept to my jeans and a broad-rimmed khaki hat I had picked up on the streets of Cairo, and so the other passengers stared at me, a lot. Thinking about what Kels would have done, I almost dared to waggle my tongue at one of them that was particularly curious, but with the tall graceful form of Eshe breathing steadily on one side of me and the short wiry frame of Levins flexing on the other, I kept my tongue in my mouth. Instead I wondered how Kels was doing and willed him to know I was thinking about him. I pulled out the drawing he had made me and stared down at the two stick figures holding hands. I’m coming, I haven’t forgotten you.
The train rattled and creaked north through the night following the length of the Nile. I noticed the normals men kept a respectful distance from Eshe and Levins, and I reconsidered Eshe’s reasoning to wear one. Maybe I was stupid for refusing. Eventually, as the train clattered and clanked its way along the banks of the Nile, the attention directed at us wore off.
The lights on the train went dim for the night. “Try to get some sleep,” Eshe said. “We have a long day ahead of us.”
It was a lot easier said than done. Long after Levins was snoring softly beside me, I was still trying to get comfortable. On the other side, the sleeping form of Eshe was so still, she seemed to not be breathing. Annoyed at both of them, I got up carefully and walked unsteadily to the end of the car where the bathroom was located. After staring for some time at the train tracks rushing by under the hole in the floor where the toilet should have been, I decided I could hold it and instead headed to the dining car. It was dimly lit with a few haggard male sapiens puffing on hookahs. They stared at me, red-rimmed eyes squinting in disbelief at the crazy tourist woman riding with the locals.
Chafing from the tight regulation of the past few days, I walked to the end of the bar and indicated I wanted one of the beers in the glass fridge. I couldn’t be doing anything stupid by asking for a beer, even if no one else in the place was drinking. The bartender passed one over. Glancing at the hookah smokers who were still leering, I slung the bottle up to my mouth and proceeded to chug the entire thing. Slamming the empty bottle on the bar I looked back at them with a grin. Some muttered and turned away, but others saluted with gap-toothed smiles. Feeling better I paid the bartender and walked away, using all of my energy to keep my body straight against the sway of the train, until I couldn’t feel their eyes on me anymore. The beer worked its magic, and although I had to use the hole-in-the-floor toilet, I was able to drift into some form of sleep at last.
“Get your ass up Connelly!”
My eyes heavy, I forced my blurry vision to focus. A dark figure stood over me, nudging me with its foot. It took me a moment to realize it was Levins, still in the burka, and that I was on a train in the middle of Egypt. It took another moment to realize the train had stopped and people were getting off of it.
“Hell,” I mumbled. “I feel like I just went to sleep.”
Levins kicked me harder and I growled, but I got up, blinking in the light of the morning. She sniffed. “You smell like beer,” she said.
“So? I needed help going to sleep.”
“So, Muslims don’t drink alcohol you moron.”
“Good thing I’m not Muslim,” I snapped.
She glared at me before turning her back.
Stretching my cramped legs and tugging on my wrinkled shirt, I followed her and Eshe off of the train, grumbling to myself.
As we tagged behind Eshe through the crowded streets of El Alamein, I was once more uncomfortably aware of how easily she could be misleading us. Levins had pulled close to me, and from the expression of her eyes peering out through the rectangular slit of her niqab, I could tell she was feeling the same way. Vendors pushed and shoved their way toward me, the obvious tourist, thrusting in my face plastic regalia and Egyptian souvenirs made in China. A first I responded with a polite no and then just a shake of the head, but I soon realized any eye contact would only make them more persistent. I kept my head down and forced my way through the increasingly urgent demands that I buy something.
“I pay many camels for you white woman!” Someone whistled at me. I whirled around, ready with an angry retort, but a firm grip on my elbow stopped me.
“Do not be upset,” Eshe murmured. How she had made it to my side so quickly was beyond me. “They do that to tease the tourists, it is a joke, not real. Now come, we are almost there.”
I glared in the direction the whistle had come from, and the man waved merrily at me. I let it go and followed Eshe, enviously watching Levins weave through the crowd without trouble, wishing I hadn’t been so stubborn about wearing the burka. Looking around I wondered how many half and full angels wandered through the crowd. They would be easily camouflaged by long, dress-like kaftans. Bound wings would not be noticeable. It was a brilliant social choice of clothing for the Homo angelus. I mused again how much of the Middle-Eastern culture was angel influenced.
“Hey you! Hey you, American! You American right? We are a democracy too now! No need you! American!” Another yell followed me through the crowd. This one I ignored, it sounded much more belligerent, and it didn’t really bother me. Eshe glanced back, but when she saw I was right behind her, she continued on.
We made our way off the main street, twisting and turning through the side streets to finally stop in front of a modern looking building with a Rent-A-Car logo over the doorway. The harsh cold of air conditioning washed over us as we stepped inside. I was relieved to get out of the sun and the crowd. Eshe left us in the lobby. We waited until Eshe came back and we were guided to a small German car. After a brief argument, Levins took the front passenger seat, and I sulkily settled in back, as Eshe peeled out of the parking lot.
For having such a peaceful personality, Eshe drove like a madwoman. Levins and I hung on as she swerved her way through El Alamein. I was glad to be shoved in the back because it meant my head was farther away from the windshield. As we narrowly missed scraping five parked cars and a market stall, I actually wished that my taxi man fiancée was driving. We squealed out of the city and onto a road that stretched ahead for miles into the desert.
We drove in silence for awhile, every muscle in my jaw and hands clenched from the ride out of the city. My hand had snuck up to my hair and was furiously thumbing the horn stubs underneath.
“There are three ways to the Temple of Moloch from the road.” Eshe broke the tension. We were still going at a breakneck speed, but at least the road was clear. “One, we take jeep, but very noisy and angels do not trust them unless they know they come first,” she said.
“No jeep then. We need that element of surprise.” Levins shook her head.
“Could we take the jeep part of the way and walk to rest?” I asked.
“No, leave in sand too long, lose jeep. It is only desert from here to there.”
“Okay so what’s another way?” Levins asked.
“Camel,” Eshe responded.
Levins and I stared at her.
“You’re kidding,” Levins said.
“No,” Eshe replied softly. “Not far, two days most.”
“Two days!”
Normally I would have enjoyed seeing Levins so flustered, but as it was I was having a hard time accepting the idea of riding a camel aimlessly through the desert. Maybe it won’t be so bad. I had watched quite a few movies about adventures through the desert. I swallowed, my throat dry from the air, maybe.
“What is the final way?” Levins asked flatly.
“Use wings. Fly.”
“Damn,” Levins exhaled.
“Damn,” I echoed. We slumped in our seats.
Silence fell again. I stared out the window at the flat sea of dust and sand that stretched out into the horizon. Ride a camel through that?
My apprehension grew as we drove on and the scenery did not change. Hours later Eshe slowed and pulled off the road at a small roadside village. A few open stalls lined the road. They all leaned to the right and were selling bright bags of curious looking snacks and objects I believed to be fruit withering in the hot sun. A couple of sun-browned children sucking on candy stared back at us as we walked down the center street of town. At the end of the line of shops there was a dusty open-air stable with multiple signs written in Arabic. The only sign in English said, RENT CAMEL. Levins and I stood by trying not to look as clueless as we were, while Eshe went inside. She appeared again speaking rapidly with a woman, while a man looked on with folded arms. After much gesturing of hands and shaking of heads and expletives, Eshe waved us over. She stood proudly in front of three camels. These camels were much better looking than the ones at the pyramids, but still Levins and I eyed them doubtfully.
The man approached me, grinning. “Good price yes?” He pointed at Eshe. “She rob me, not say to my wife you all were riding. You give more money? How about car?”
“Do not listen. I bargain hard to get good price because you are tourist.” Eshe didn’t look at the man as she spoke.
“Can’t you tell him that?” I asked, self-conscious.
“A woman of faith does not speak to a strange man,” Eshe said demurely. She was really sticking to her cover.
I spread my hands helplessly and shook my head at the man. He narrowed his eyes and stalked off with a sharp rebuke at his wife. The wife hurried over and helped us onto camels. All three animals kneeled down. As we watched Eshe gracefully climb onto the first, a knot in my stomach formed.
“Connelly,” Levins whispered at my elbow.
“Yeah?”
“Remind me when this is all over to kick your ass,” she hissed and stalked away.
“Dressed like that, you look like you have no ass,” I hissed back and clambered up the camel that had so obligingly kneeled down beside me. It rose up faster than I expected, and I choked on my own tongue. Levins’s laughter echoed in the distance. Huffily I ignored her and attempted to regain my balance. Being atop a camel was a lot farther from the ground than it looked. Riding one was like nothing I expected either. Their rolling gait was very different from the clipped movements of a horse and the top of their hump was actually kind of comfortable.
I waved uncertainly to the children, who were still staring, as we rode out of the tiny cluster of buildings that was called a town and back to the car. Eshe dismounted and gathered our things from the car. Torn between asking her if she needed help and not wanting to attempt to get down, I mutely watched as she packed our saddlebags. I was satisfied to see Levins did not move either. My camel was surprisingly solid as Eshe poked and prodded around the saddle. I named him Bob, a good solid name for what hopefully would be a good solid ride.
“That way.” Eshe was back on her camel and pointing at the horizon ahead that was being consumed by the sky. I swallowed a lump of fear as we stared out into the eternal gold and red dunes that stretched out before us. She and Levins started forward. Quickly a sea of sand rushed in to greet us. Here we go. With a deep breath I nudged my camel. Bob grumbled and began walking, hooves sinking into the desert.
At first the ride was exciting, but it got old fast. After an hour of endless desert sand, dry heat, the smell of sweaty camel hair, and the beginnings of a sore ass, I sunk deep into my thoughts. What if Aaron was wrong and Kels had been taken somewhere else? What if Rahab didn’t wait until the day of the Rites? What if we died out here in this wasteland? How would I tell the Smyths I had lost their child?
Round and round my thoughts went as the sun smoldered through the sky, and the two camels carrying burka clad women rose and fell hypnotically in front of me.