Gillian hesitated on her hands and knees just inside the inner tomb opening, unwelcome thoughts of vampires stealing through her mind. The interior room was blacker than midnight.
She swallowed. If she crawled in all the way, would the sandstone block slide home again, trapping her inside the hidden tomb? Her heart hammered so hard she feared it would slam right out of her chest. Surely, there would be a lever on this side, too...
Stifling a shiver, she raised her flashlight to look around before deciding. But her hands were shaking so badly she dropped the light. The clatter of hard plastic on stone echoed through the chamber, hinting at its size. Not huge, but a good deal larger than the antechamber.
“Mehmet?” she yelled over her shoulder. Where had the kid gotten to with that camera?
He didn’t answer. Nor did she hear the comforting pad of torn sneakers on the stone floor behind her.
Turning back inside, she took a deep, cleansing breath of surprisingly fresh air. This was ridiculous. There were no such things as vampires. And she’d been in a thousand tombs before. This one was no different.
Well. Except for the weird sliding stone. That was unusual. But certainly nothing to be all paranoid about.
She let out the breath, picked up her flashlight, and shone it around.
An involuntary cry arose in her throat. “Sweet Mother of God!”
Shock and excitement surged up within her. Forgetting all about being trapped, she vaulted to her feet, wildly aiming the flashlight around the room.
It was amazing!
Beautiful, precisely chiseled inscriptions and breathtaking painted scenes covered the walls on all sides. Old Kingdom, if she didn’t miss her mark. And truly incredible!
She swept the flashlight beam to the main funerary scene on the focal wall. Which showed clearly it was not a Ptolemaic priest’s tomb, at all, but a far more ancient priest who had served—she stepped closer, stilling the beam on the central figure of the scene—the god Set-Sutekh. The tall, distinctive figure of the half man, half mythical jackal-like creature stood regally in a pose he’d held for five thousand years, accepting gifts and adulation from the slightly smaller figure of a human priest-servant.
She squinted at the inscription alongside the man, dredging up the hieroglyphics she’d learned as a child, traipsing after her father and a bossy sister who liked to tease her with secret messages written in obscure glyphs. The priest’s name was...Seth-Aziz.
Her eyes widened and she let out a nervous laugh. Oh, shit. The vampire? Seriously?
She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Get a grip, girl,” she scolded herself. Seth-Aziz was not an uncommon name back in those times. Presumably this one had been the builder of the tomb, and its original occupant. A priest. Not a vampire.
She concentrated on the funerary scene. Fanning off to either side of the deceased were other, even smaller figures of men and women, as well as gorgeous carvings of flowers, birds, and animals. It was all simply stunning.
“Oh, man,” she said softly, drowning in the beauty of the painting. There was something magical about it. Something almost...alive. Despite its age and the classic Egyptian stylization of the depictions, the figures seemed almost to...to breathe with vitality and life.
Again, goose bumps whispered over her skin and she murmured, “I hope you paid your artists well, Seth-Aziz, for they created something truly worthy of your god.”
She savored the rest of the scene, taking it in slowly, bit by bit, sounding out the names of the other family members and followers depicted worshipping the great god Set-Sutekh, along with the High Priest Seth-Aziz. Some stood, some knelt respectfully on their heels. Some danced or played instruments. All were carefully named. Even the birds and animals had names.
“Mehmet!” she yelled again, aiming her flashlight at the crawl hole. “You have got to see this! Hurry! Where’s that camera?”
As she turned back to the carved figures, a man toward the end of the line of Seth’s human supplicants caught her attention.
He had a mustache.
“What the...?”
Egyptians didn’t do mustaches. Ever.
He must have been a captive. A foreigner who had somehow worked his way into the high priest’s respect. Curious, she walked up and peered closely at the inscription running along his back. She didn’t recognize any of the words. Or the name.
“Lard... Lerd Roos... Rees...” she sounded out aloud. One of the big annoyances with hieroglyphics was that, like Arabic, they didn’t contain the vowels used for pronunciation, and unless you knew the word, you just had to guess. “Okay, definitely a foreign name. So, Lerd Roos or Rees, Khel... Khilpet... Khelpet Rech. Lard Roos Khelpetrech. Lord—”
She let out a gasp and dropped her flashlight again. This time the bulb popped, plunging the tomb into pitch darkness. But she barely noticed. Instead, she was frantically trying to tame her thoughts. The inscription had been clearly carved in the same style as the rest of the figures. Not graffiti.
Impossible!
That’s when a stranger’s voice suddenly came from behind her. “I see you’ve found me.”
A man’s voice.
Not Mehmet’s.
With a scream, she whirled, instinctively flattening herself against the tomb wall, vainly searching the darkness. “Who’s there?”
She grabbed for her knife. It wasn’t in its sheath. She must have dropped it in the excitement of opening the secret door.
The scrape of boots sounded like the stranger was moving through the crawl hole, then came a soft rustle of fabric as he straightened. Inside the tomb. With her.
Panic crawled up her spine. This wasn’t some mythical vampire. This was a real man. Possibly a tomb robber. Or worse. Why hadn’t she listened to Mehmet?
“Don’t be alarmed.” The voice was calm and smooth, with a cultured British accent. Which didn’t mean squat. Jack the Ripper’s accent probably sounded sexy as hell.
The boots stepped closer. She pressed herself harder into the wall. But there was no escape through solid stone.
She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut but didn’t dare. Though it hardly mattered. The darkness was so thick it wrapped around her like a black velvet blanket, heavy and cloying. She could barely breathe. She started to feel faint—and her knees were growing weak.
There was something wrong with her.
“Who are you?” she managed, fighting to stay upright.
The boots stopped right in front of her. Her stomach clenched wildly.
She was so dead.
“My name is Lord Rhys Kilpatrick.”
A strange, encompassing energy welled through her mind like a rising tide of buzzing insects.
“Yeah, right,” she muttered, shaking her head, desperately trying to clear it. But the motion only made it worse. “And I’m Amelia Edwards.”
She was sure she heard a soft, masculine chuckle. But then she lost the battle with her knees and slowly started to slide down the block wall.
Oh, God.
Her last thought was of her sisters. Please don’t let them take this too hard...
Then she collapsed. Right into the arms of the stranger.