The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

"You have been very kind to me, Teddy," the woman said. "May I expect more kindness from you in return for some of these riches?"

He tried to answer. He could only make a dry, rasping sound that reminded him of the one time he'd almost choked on a piece of steak.

Her breath was at his ear now, her slender arms curving around him from behind. Her moist lips grazed his neck. Living, breathing, alive. The statue staring down at him through the lantern's flickering light bore her exact likeness, as did every statue stashed inside of this crypt. The same perfectly proportioned face; the same raven-colored hair and rich olive-toned skin. Only the color of the eyes was different. On the statues the eyes were dark, not blue, but they were of the same generous size and seemed full of life and calculation even beneath layers of dust.

"A modern man would look upon this crypt and accuse me of simply looting my own kingdom in its final hours. Of having no faith in my own lover. No faith that the Battle of Actium would halt Octavian's advance."

Octavian. Actium. A woman who did not sleep and could not die. The woman before him and behind him. Alive, alive, alive...

"This isn't...," the doctor tried. "Impossible. This is...impossible."

"No one knew more than I that an empire's greatest protection was in its wealth, not its army. It was riches that bought us peace with Rome for years. Riches and grain. So it would make sense to these historians, wouldn't it? That in my kingdom's final hours, in my final hours as queen, I did little more than grab for treasure.

"But they are wrong, you see. Very wrong. Once it was clear Octavian could not be stopped, once I'd chosen to give my life to the serpent's bite, I couldn't bear the thought of my likeness being destroyed by their soldiers. Let them write my history as the harlot queen, but before Isis, I would not surrender my countenance to the dismemberment of Roman hordes."

It wasn't just the statues, he realized. It was the coins, it was the treasures. She appeared on all of these coins. And they'd all been hidden here in this vault for more than two thousand years.

"Ask me again, dear Teddy," she whispered. "Ask me my name."

"What is your name?" he whispered.

She turned him gently, cupped his chin in delicate hands that possessed a supernatural degree of strength. But her kiss was gentle, lingering, and she delivered it while gazing into his eyes.

"Cleopatra," she answered. "Cleopatra is my name. And I wish for you to show me all the joys of this new world, so that I may share those joys with you. Would you like this, Teddy?"

"Yes," he whispered. "Yes, Cleopatra."

*

It was a remarkable tale she told. A tale of immortals and awakenings and terrible, tragic accidents.

She spoke of her death as a great lake of blackness from which she had been suddenly pulled.

Before its discovery, her corpse had been preserved by the mud of the Nile delta. For decades afterwards, it lay in the Cairo Museum inside a glass case, branded with the drab label UNKNOWN WOMAN, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD. Thereafter, countless historians and tourists had pressed their faces to the glass without realizing they were gazing upon the same likeness that had entranced Caesar and Marc Antony.

And then, two months prior, she had been recognized in death, recognized by a man from her ancient past who walked again.

Ramses! And so they were true, those wild tales in the papers about the recently discovered tomb whose mummified occupant had left scrolls claiming he was, in fact, Ramses II, one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs. The Roman furniture inside, the impossible tale of an immortal counselor who had served and advised many of Egypt's great rulers for thousands of years. All of it, so resoundingly dismissed by academics and historians, was absolutely true, and the woman before him was living, resurrected proof of it.

Ramses II. He walked even now, she claimed. In London, perhaps. Or maybe some other place, Cleopatra did not know. What she knew was this: He had been awakened by the sun after his tomb had been discovered and the body shipped back to London. Then, upon recognizing her in the Cairo Museum, he had awakened her with the same elixir that had given him immortal life, an elixir he had stolen from a mad Hittite priestess during his reign as Egypt's pharaoh.

Their reunion was a reversal of their first meeting two thousand years before, when the old priests in Alexandria had told her tales of a wise immortal counselor who had been raised from eternal sleep by her own great-grandfather. She had laughed at them, these priests, and demanded to be taken to the crypt of this so-called immortal. Upon seeing the withered mummy within, she had ordered the shutters in his tomb opened so that the place would flood with sunlight. Her disdain for old myths had turned to awe as this bath of celestial light brought skin and hair and handsome features back to the lifeless form on the slab.

The tales had been true! And the man she awakened, Ramses the Great himself, had served as her chief advisor and lover for years afterwards.

And then came his betrayal.

He had approved of her affair with Caesar, advised her to pursue it, even. But in Marc Antony he had glimpsed the seeds of his queen's undoing. And so, when she came to him on the eve of the Battle of Actium, demanding the elixir, not for herself, but for her lover, so that he could create an immortal army to stop Octavian's advance, Ramses had refused. And she, in despair, had eventually given herself over to the serpent's bite.

And now?

The Ramses of this new century had fallen in with a group of London aristocrats, friends and relatives of the man, Lawrence Stratford, who had discovered his tomb and died shortly thereafter. Together, this group had traveled to Egypt. For what precise reason, she did not know. She knew only that when Ramses came across her body in the museum he had been overtaken by grief and had performed an act he'd never once performed before.

He had poured his precious elixir across the remains of her corpse. Then, apparently, he had fled, abandoning her to the madness and confusion that had beset her in those first few days. A madness she spoke of in the most general of terms.

Teddy did not press.

But it was clear, terribly clear, that Ramses had fled in horror from what he'd done, that she had been left in the care of one of the members of his traveling party, a British earl, Elliott Savarell. This man had a son, Alex, but when she came to the part of the story in which he played a role, she became distant and distracted again. She said this name twice...Alex...Alex Savarell. As if its very mention overwhelmed her. As if the sound of it placed weight upon her tongue.