Anubis Nights (20 page)

“No.”

“If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with already.”

“No!” I said.

“You want me to do it?” Kelly asked.

“No,” I said.

“Good because I think we should help Ankhesenamun.”

I sat down on the bed. “Fine. Whatever. We can help her.” I looked at Winslow. “You can see if you can translate the tablets, but if you try to leave here without us . . .”

He smiled, clearly amused. “I can’t leave here without you. Charon linked you to me. I could feel that pull the moment you arrived here. That’s why I came to Thebes. If I leave here, you’ll be pulled forward too. So you needn’t worry about me leaving you stranded.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

Kelly looked at the floor. “We wait for Tutankhamun to die.”

***

The next day, King Tutankhamun released his final breath and moved into the afterlife.

***

The mourning began.

The women in the palace tore their hair and clothes in grief, and they tossed sand on their heads. And I mean they tore their hair in a literal sense. Some of these women actually yanked out tufts.

For the next few days, Tut’s body remained in the palace. A steady stream of mourners went in to view it. Kelly and I were admitted because Ankhesenamun insisted. She joined us in the bedchamber.

She stared at her husband for a time then cast her eyes to the floor.

“I miss you, my love,” she said.

“We’re very sorry for your loss,” Kelly said. “Tutankhamun was a great king.”

“To speak the name of the dead gives them life in memory,” Ankhesenamun said.

“People will be speaking Tutankhamun’s name thousands of years from now,” I said. “He will never be forgotten.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything we can do for you?” Kelly asked.

“I have hired a man to weave fresh linens for my husband’s mummy. I want him to have new wrappings.”

Kelly nodded and for my benefit, she said, “As I understand it, mummies are normally wrapped in the bed linens their families tear into strips so the deceased can go into the afterlife with something familiar.”

Ankhesenamun nodded. “That will not be the case for my beloved Tutankhamun.” She turned to me. “I fear that the embalmers may damage or destroy my husband’s body, and he will need it in the afterlife. Would you be willing to oversee the mummification?”

“Uh,” I said, trying to think of a way to respond.

“I will command the Men of Anubis to allow you to witness the mummification. As you are a foreigner and won’t be using their knowledge, they will permit it. I have many duties to which I must attend, and I would be grateful if you would do me this courtesy.”

How could I say no to her? Answer: I couldn’t.

***

I don’t know how much of a stink the embalmers made, but the queen would not be denied, and a few days later, I found myself in a tent on a hill with three men who were there to mummify their king. They were known as the Men of Anubis. One of them was a priest, and he wore a big black jackal mask as if he were Anubis himself.

The process fascinated me. I’d never witnessed a mummification before. I did my best to stay out of the way. I knew the family of embalmers didn’t want me there, so I didn’t want to further upset them.

They positioned Tut’s body on a wooden embalmer’s board, and they had several boards running perpendicular beneath his corpse like railroad ties.

First, a man entered the tent and drew a red line about two and a half inches long on the left side of Tut’s stomach.

“Slitter,” the Anubis priest said.

A young man holding an obsidian knife stepped forward. He moved with gentle precision and sliced open Tut’s stomach with a quick incision that matched the red line the previous priest had drawn.

Four stone jars stood on a small table, and the lids were painted to look like Tut’s face, including his crown right down to the cobra jutting from the front. I’d seen a documentary about mummies on cable a few months before, but in the show, the canopic jars had lids shaped like a falcon, ape, human, and jackal. They were the four sons of Horus. Tut got his own likeness for his canopic jars, though. I didn’t ask why.

The priest removed Tut’s spleen, speaking prayers so softly as he worked that I could not make out the words. He pulled out all twenty-two feet of intestines, the kidneys, and the liver, which was a lot bigger than I expected. They put each organ in a separate jar. As Egyptians believed they thought with their hearts, the priest did not remove Tut’s heart but left it in place. Tut would need to be able to think in the afterlife. The priest filled the stomach cavity with packets of natron, which was like a blend of baking powder and table salt. It would help to dry out the body. Another priest put some incense into the stomach cavity too. Myrrh.

The next step was to remove the brain.

The priest took a long iron rod with a hook on it. He pushed it up through Tut’s nose, broke through the bone behind the eyes with a squick sound, and twirled the rod around like a whisk to break up and liquefy the brain. Again, they believed the heart was the location for thought, so the brain had no purpose.

They flipped Tut’s body over and let his brain drain out through the nostrils. I’ll spare you the details, but watching it made my stomach turn a couple of flips.

They rolled him over again. Now the priest wrapped the rod with clean linen and inserted it into the nostril. He pushed it in, moved it about, and pulled it out. Needless to say, the linen came out soaked in blood and brain matter. The priest swapped the dirty linen for clean and repeated the process until he could insert clean linen and have it come out white.

They poured a resin mix into Tut’s nose, which would solidify and help keep any bacteria from having a field day. Next they scooted Tut’s body up a bit so his head hung off the board and his chin aimed at the roof. The priest poured still more resin into Tut’s nose. After that, he shoved some frankincense into the skull, probably to help with the smell.

The final step for the first day was to bring in massive amounts of natron. They put some beneath the corpse then buried the body in natron. They must have used six hundred pounds of it.

“We shall leave him in the place of cleansing for thirty-five days,” said the priest.

I was impressed with myself because I didn’t toss my cookies during the entire procedure.

BRAND EASTON

Brand wanted to kick himself for trusting Priscilla, but he couldn’t because the weird plants growing out of the train’s floor held him securely in place. Priscilla danced around him, sprinkling dust and chanting some sort of spell. That didn’t bother him so much. She wore a gray dress with white ruffles at the sleeves and collar.

“Well, at least you’re not naked,” Brand said.

She ignored him and kept chanting.

He didn’t know whether or not Edward was present because he wasn’t touching the pocket watch, but he also couldn’t see Esther.

“Esther!” Brand said.

“She’s indisposed,” Priscilla said.

Priscilla sprinkled one more batch of dust on Brand.

She knelt beside him. “I’m really sorry to do this to you, but we need your body.”

“If I had a dollar for every time a woman told me that,” Brand said with a grin.

“For someone who’s trapped, you don’t seem particularly fearful.”

Brand glared at her. “You might think about that.”

“You simply don’t know how powerful I am.”

“But, Grandma, I was nice to you,” Brand said.

“I’ll be nice to you too. This will be over quickly.”

“Let me guess. You want to put Edward’s spirit in my body so you two can have wild monkey sex.”

“There’s much more to it than merely sex but yes. You’re going to go to sleep, and Edward will be guiding the buggy, as it were.”

“Good luck with that,” Brand said. “I’m not that easy to vanquish.”

“The spell will work its magic, and you’ll go to sleep. Then Edward will take over.”

“Lady, you’ve snapped so far from reality that I don’t even know what to say to you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said.

Brand tried again to pull free of the vines, but they were too strong. He figured his best bet was to allow Edward to try to possess him. Then he’d simply pretend to be Edward, and Priscilla would set him free. A solid right cross would solve his dilemma. Except now he noted another little problem. He was getting sleepy. Very sleepy.

“Well, shit,” Brand said right before everything went dark.

RAYNA NOBLE

Rayna moved along a row of books in the library. She wanted to know more about what she might encounter at the Alpha et Omega meeting. Would Winslow be there? Did she need to seem knowledgeable about the occult? She scanned the titles in the section she considered to be pseudoscience at best:
Occult Chemistry
by Annie Besant and C. L. Leadbeater,
The Occult World
by Alfred Percy Sinnett,
A Dweller on Two Planets
by Phylos the Thibetan as told to Frederick S. Oliver.

She started to pull the Oliver book off the shelf when a young man pushed it back into the row. “You don’t want that one. Silliness about Atlantis.”

Rayna turned to face the man. He stood nearly six feet tall but seemed taller because he was slender and wore a suit with thin vertical stripes. His dark hair was slicked back, and his mustache looked so thin, it might have been drawn on with a pen.

“Perhaps I want to read about Atlantis,” Rayna said.

The man gave her a small shake of his head. “Not in that book. Stick with
Timaeus
and
Critias
by Plato.”

“While I appreciate the advice of strange men, I rarely take it.”

“Am I a strange man?” he asked.

“You’re a stranger to me.”

“Then please allow me to introduce myself. I am Carlton J. Penick.”

“I’ve never heard of you.”

“I would be surprised if you had. May I inquire as to your name?”

“My name is Rayna.”

“No last name?”

“I gave it up for Lent.”

He smiled. “As Easter is long past and you don’t strike me as a Christian, I’ll take that as you telling me it’s none of my damn business.”

“I don’t strike you as a Christian?” Rayna asked.

“You wouldn’t be haunting the occult section if you were.”

“Know thy enemy?”

“I think not. As it happens, I am well versed in all things Atlantis, so if you have any questions, I would be delighted to answer them for you.”

“I’m not sure I believe in Atlantis,” Rayna said.

“I didn’t say I was a believer, simply that I have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about the subject.”

“I don’t really want to know about Atlantis,” she said and began scanning titles again, running her forefinger across the spines of the books.

Carlton placed a hand on hers, stopping her on a book titled
All about the Occult Arts
by Carlton J. Penick.

Rayna looked at Carlton. “Why, Mr. Penick, this can’t be a coincidence.”

He met her gaze with confidence and just the hint of a suggestive smile. “As I said, I have accumulated a great deal of knowledge.”

“So you stalk women in libraries in hopes of impressing them?”

“I detect a dismissive attitude.”

“Then you’re very perceptive. Have a nice day, Mr. Penick.”

“You, too, Ms. Noble.”

He turned and walked toward the exit.

“Wait. I didn’t tell you my last name,” Rayna said.

He held up a hand and waved back to her but did not turn around. She considered going after him but frowned and pulled his book off the shelf instead. She flipped it open to the introduction and began reading about how Carlton Penick was a Freemason who graduated to other groups as his knowledge grew, and he was seeking the source of magic in the world.

She closed the book and looked at the front cover. There wasn’t a dust jacket. The cloth had been stamped with the Eye of Horus. She carried the book over to a table, sat down, and began reading.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JONATHAN SHADE

Kelly, Winslow, and I walked along the east bank of the Nile. The river flowed north, and we walked with it. I kept an eye out for crocodiles but didn’t see any. A few boats drifted past. The sun beat down on us, so I took off my shirt and tucked it into the waist of my jeans next to my Glock. I’d left my shoulder holster in the room.

Kelly spoke first. “Ankhesenamun wants to send a letter to a Hittite king named Suppiluliumas to have him send a prince for her to marry.”

“Why would she do that?” Winslow asked. “The Hittites are enemies of the Egyptians.”

“She doesn’t want to marry a servant, and there isn’t a male heir,” Kelly said.

Winslow shook his head. “She should just marry someone from the royal court.”

“She has a lot of choices,” I said. “Aye is old enough to be her grandfather. Horemheb is an asshole. I haven’t met anyone else here who could be a king.”

“She should marry Horemheb,” Winslow said. “He’ll be out fighting battles, and she can do what she pleases.”

“It’s not that simple,” Kelly said. “I think that Aye or Horemheb, or maybe even both of them, are responsible for Tut’s death. Think about it. Tut took the throne at the age of eight, so odds are Aye basically ran the country. Now that Tut is old enough to rule, Aye regrets losing the power, so he wants to kill Tut before there’s a male heir.”

“That would be motive,” I said. “He and Horemheb seem close, so I suspect them both.”

“I don’t think they’ll kill her at this point. They need to marry her to be legitimate kings, but just to be safe, we need to keep an eye on things. If she sends a letter and the Hittite king sends a prince, we’ll want to see about protecting him too.”

“If Supper Guy--”

“Suppiluliumas,” Kelly said.

“Yeah, Supper Guy. If you think I’m going to try to pronounce that, you’re crazy as a shithouse rat.”

“You didn’t even try.”