The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

A modest amount of money had been enough to save his hide the first time, covering his travel to the Sudan and his living expenses in the months after his arrival. Now he wasn't sure what the exact cost to his professional reputation would be. Or if he could afford it. There was no going back to his family. Once he tallied up the expenses from this journey, there was precious little for him left to even live on. Two hired motorcars, one for the tents and supplies, one for the two of them, and a driver for each. Enough food and water for days. Or not, if his beautiful companion's appetite didn't flag at some point. And dynamite. Several menacing sticks of dynamite.

But she had promised him, promised them all, that whatever they found at the end of this desert journey would be enough to pay off all of their debts, now and forever.

In the ensuing quiet, the tent flaps shuddered in the desert wind. He could make out the distant laughter of the drivers. He'd told them to keep a respectful distance from the tent. So far they had obeyed.

"Teddy," she whispered.

Her fingers grazed his cheek.

He was so surprised by this sudden touch he jumped.

"Soon I shall tell you my name," she whispered.

*

He felt like a foolish boy for plugging his ears with both fingers. But he'd never been this close to an explosion before. He had no idea what to expect.

His beautiful companion showed no fear as she watched the men disappear in between the ridges up ahead, strings of dynamite in their hands.

Before them lay an island of eroding sandstone spires. They forme

d a loose cage around a high mound of golden sand. Teddy knew precious little about Egypt's archaeological digs aside from the webbing of tents they threw across the landscape. There were no signs of any such excavations here.

They were a two days' drive from Cairo. In the middle of nowhere, it seemed. And yet she had directed them here with utter confidence simply by watching the stars. And now, as the men scurried across the sand, lit fuses abandoned in their wake, her body coiled with an almost sexual tension.

He drove his fingers deeper into his ears.

The men, still running, clapped their hands over their own.

The blast sent a shimmering shock wave through the sand at their feet. A plume of smoke rose high into the air. She actually clapped, his female companion. Clapped her hands together and smiled as if dynamite contained a magic as powerful as the kind he sensed coming from her.

Once the smoke cleared, he could see one side of the mound blown away. A stone doorway had been punched through by the explosion, its shattered remains left behind like rotting teeth.

The ground here had not been disturbed for ages, and she'd known the exact location of this buried temple.

The Egyptian men fell back.

Were they right to be afraid?

There'd been all that talk in the papers recently. A magnate of some powerful British shipping company had discovered a mummy's tomb, filled with inscriptions proclaiming it the final resting place of RAMSES THE DAMNED. Also within, Roman furniture and a statue purported to be of Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.

The whole affair was utter lunacy, the journalists had cried. Ramses II had ruled a thousand years before Cleopatra's reign. And his body lay in the Cairo Museum. Everyone knew that!

But when the man who discovered the tomb suddenly fell dead within its once-buried walls, talk of ancient curses overtook academic quarrels. The mummy's body had been shipped off to London, the last he read, at the request of the late archeologist's daughter. Stratford, that was their name, he remembered now. Where had she put it? he'd wondered. In her drawing room? How ghoulish! Clearly she had not feared any mummy's curse.

Perhaps it wasn't a curse the men all around him feared now, but the woman who had brought them to this place.

His lantern barely pierced the darkness within. She walked far enough ahead to remain just inside the halo. But she was eager to strike out into the black, he could tell. This tomb, even in deep shadow, was utterly familiar to her.

When the light from his lantern fell across the glittering treasures up ahead, he gasped. She halted and waited for him to catch up, waited until the glow filled the space with the strength of a dozen candles.

Nerves alight, he spun in place, looking for a sarcophagus or some other sign of a desiccated mummy slumbering within this dark place. But all he saw were piles of coins. An ancient vault of untold treasures. And his beautiful companion walked among them leisurely, sweeping the dust and sand from atop the glittering piles with one gentle passing hand. There were statues of varying sizes as well, lined against stone walls without elegance. They had been brought here in haste, it seemed, and for their protection.

"How did you know this was all here?" he asked.

"Because I ordered my soldiers to bring it here," she answered.

His laughter was sharp, disbelieving. Then he saw the face of the statue closest to him. His breath left him along with any sense of an orderly, rational world.