The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

"I know what it takes to rule. And I know that no king and no queen ever rules with one man at their back. Yet most of their time is spent fighting off challenges from those in their own houses who claim the true source of power and success. I knew this before my resurrection. I know it now. You were a traitor, is what you were, Saqnos. You speak as one who served only for the promise of personal reward."

A silence fell over the room. He turned his back to her. He was gathering strength. Gathering focus. Her outbursts had not pushed him further into anger as she had hoped. They had quieted him instead. Paralyzed him in some way. She didn't seek his paralysis. She sought his outrage. She sought a chaos she might seize as a chance to escape.

"Perhaps, then," he said quietly, turning to face her again, "you should lecture me more on your history as queen. Surely it will benefit me to know which aspects of your known story are truth, and which are fantasy created by an empire that despised you and cheered your fall."

He closed the distance between them. His children had backed up several feet, but they still held the chains in their hands.

"Your victories were many, were they not? You were banished from Alexandria by your father and yet you managed to make it back into the city as Caesar held it in his grip."

No, she thought. Not this. Not this interrogation. Not this descent into a past that was blackness. Hadn't she managed to avoid this? To skip past it?

"Tell me what is true of this tale, Queen Cleopatra VII. Last queen of Egypt. The tale in which you smuggled yourself into Caesar's quarters inside a basket full of serpents. Is this true? Or fantasy?"

"No," she whispered. "Lies. It's all lies. That is not how I outwitted my father's army."

A greater silence now, deeper, and, within it, a kind of tense energy gathering itself, a new energy that seemed to unite everyone in the room.

What had she done? Had she made some error? Revealed her true, tortured nature?

Slowly, Saqnos took one end of the chain from the hand of the woman who'd spoken against him. He began to wrap its length around his wrist, tightening it, pulling her forward in her chair until she was rising awkwardly to her feet.

"It was not your father's army," he whispered. "It was your brother's army. He was the one who banished you from Alexandria before Caesar's landing." He yanked her away from the chair. They stood within inches of each other. There was no avoiding his blazing stare. "And it was not a basket of serpents. It was a rolled-up rug. And you do not know these things because you cannot remember them. And you can't remember them because yours was not an awakening, it was a resurrection, as you just carelessly revealed.

"Because you, Queen Cleopatra VII, are not a queen at all. You are a foul thing raised from death, losing your memories to one who contains your true reborn spirit. You are nochtin. That is the name I made for the vile creature you are. I have raised many like you only to watch their visions of those who contain their true reincarnated souls drive them to madness, leaving me with only one choice. To wall them away in darkness for all time. And this is what I will do for you, pretender to a throne who calls me a traitor to mine. Cast you into darkness before eternal madness will claim you."

The scream that tore from her was a piercing, primal thing that sounded more animal than human. She slashed at him across his face with her fingernails, using such force he almost released her. But he kept his balance and withdrew by only a half step. The chains at her neck were pulled taut once more. But they couldn't restrain her cry.

"I am Cleopatra!" she roared.

There was a crack like the sound of a whip. A windowpane behind him was suddenly spiderwebbed with cracks. Had her own screams broken the glass?

A mercy, the fear that swept the room. It distracted her from her despair, from the terrifying implications of her captor's words. A rock. That was it. Someone had thrown a rock at the window small enough that it didn't crash through the glass, but with enough concentrated force to crack it from frame to frame. Only an immortal would have the strength to do this.

The three men who'd stood against the wall drew oily black handguns from their jackets and hurried to the terrace door.

The other two captors, the male and the female, remained at her side.

In one powerful hand, Saqnos gripped the front of the hard cold collar around her neck. But he'd turned his head to one side to watch the hasty exit of his men.

There was a moment of silence, which was quickly filled by a strange, rhythmic clicking. A blink of an eye later, the three gun-wielding men were backing silently through the doorway, guns raised, heads bowed.

They were followed by the hounds, who stepped through the open door one after the other, perfectly silent, perfectly poised, their gazes directed at the men who pointed their pistols uselessly in their direction. For a moment, it was impossible to believe they were the same animals to which she'd almost been fed. For they were utterly silent now and moved in perfect unison. They were mastiffs, their heads the size of a man's. The round blue eyes seeming more thoughtful now that their mouths were not contorted into snarls. In the twinkling light from the chandelier, she could see their shining coats ranged in color from black to dark brown.

Dumbfounded, the men stumbled backwards. One of them stabbed the air with his gun as if he thought this might stop their advance. It did nothing of the kind. She could count them now. Ten, twelve. Fifteen in all. And on most of their dark faces, faint traces of bright orange powder.

Some powerful enchantment had caused a miraculous change in them. It seemed as if they were now governed by a single consciousness.

"Burnham," Saqnos said in a growl.

Torn between holding on to one of the chains attached to her neck and responding to his master's request, the man called Burnham cleared his throat and let out a piercing whistle.

The dogs ignored it.

Burnham went pale. He tried again. The dogs once more ignored him. It seemed as if the lot of them, all fifteen, were gazing directly at the three men holding guns, and now, Cleopatra realized, these men were essentially cornered. They'd been backed all the way to the wall.

"Burnham!" Saqnos bellowed.

"They are not responding, Master. It's as if they've been spellbound."