The Mummy (Ramses the Damned 1)

"Make a name for me, Lord Alex. Call me what you will, if you do not believe the name I gave you."

Troubled, his dark brown eyes. If he bent to kiss her, she would pull him down here on the stones. Make love to him till he was spent again.

"Regina," he whispered. "My Queen."

So Julie Stratford had left him, had she? The modern woman who went everywhere on her own and did as she pleased. But then it had been a great King who had seduced her. And now Alex had his Queen.

She saw Antony again, dead on the couch. Your Majesty, we should take him away now.

Ramses had turned to her and whispered, "Come with me!"

Lord Summerfield stoked the heat in her, his mouth on her mouth, oblivious to the tourists who passed them. Lord Summerfield, who would die as Antony had died.

Would Julie Stratford be allowed to die?

"Take me back to the bedchamber," she whispered. "I starve for you, Lord Alex. I shall strip the clothes off you here if we don't go."

"Your slave forever," he answered.

In the motor car, she clung to him.

"What is it, Your Highness, tell me?"

She looked out at the hordes of mortals passing her; the countless thousands of this ancient city, in their timeless peasant robes.

Why had he brought her to life? What had been his purpose? She saw his tearstained face again. She saw the picture in which he stood, smiling at the miracle of Camera, with his arm around Julie Stratford, whose eyes were dark.

"Hold me, Lord Alex. Keep me warm."

Through the streets of old Cairo, Ramses walked alone.

How could he persuade Julie to get on that train? How could he let her go back to London, but then was it not best for her, and mustn't he think of that for once? Had he not caused evil enough?

And what about his debt to the Earl of Rutherford; this much he owed the man who had sheltered Cleopatra; the man he liked and wanted so to be near, the man whose advice would always have been good for him, the man for whom he felt a deep and uncertain affection that just might be love.

Put Julie on the train. How could he? His thoughts gave out in confusion. Over and over he saw her face. Destroy the elixir. Never brew the elixir again.

He thought of the headlines in the paper. Woman on the floor of the dress shop. I like to kill. It soothes my pain.

In the old-fashioned Victorian bed in his suite, Elliott slept. He dreamed a dream of Lawrence. They were talking together in the Babylon and Malenka was dancing, and Lawrence said: It's almost time for you to come.

But I have to go home to Edith. I have to take care of Alex, he had said. And I want to drink myself to death in the country. I've already planned it.

I know, said Lawrence, that's what I mean. That won't take very long.

Miles Winthrop didn't know what to make of any of it finally. They had issued a warrant for Henry's arrest, but frankly at this moment everything pointed to the possibility that the bastard was dead. Clothes, money, identification, all left behind at the scene of Malenka's murder. And no telling when the shopkeeper had been killed.

He had a premonition that this whole grisly case might never be solved.

The only thing to be thankful for was that Lord Rutherford was not at the moment his sworn enemy. A stigma like that would never be overcome.

Well, at least the day so far had been peaceful. No more hideous corpses with their necks broken, staring off as they lay on the slab, saying in a silent whisper, Will you not find the one who did this to me?

He dreaded the opera tonight, the continuous questions he would get from the entire British community. And he knew that he could not take refuge in Lord Rutherford's shadow. On the contrary, he dreaded another run-in. He would keep to himself.

Seven o'clock.

Julie stood before the mirror in her sitting room. She had put on the low-cut gown that violently disturbed Ramses, but then she had no other appropriate clothing for this inane occasion. As she watched Elliott through the mirror, he fastened her pearls at the back of her neck.