Page 120
and plunged her hand down under his leather belt to the root of his sex.
He moaned against her. She felt him gathering up her skirts. Then suddenly his hand stopped. His whole body stiffened. Awkwardly she turned her head; he was staring down at her naked leg, her foot.
He was staring at the great strip of bloody bone exposed in her leg, at the fan of bones in her foot.
"Jesus Christ!" he whispered. He drew back from her against the wall. "Jesus Christ!"
A low growl of rage and hurt broke from her. "Take your eyes off me!" she screamed in Latin. "Turn your eyes away from me! You will not look at me in disgust."
She sobbed as she grabbed his head with both hands and banged it against the stone wall. "You will die for this!" she spit at him. And then the twist, the simple little twist. And he was dead, too.
That was all that was required, and now there was blessed silence and his body lying there, like the body of the other, with the money showing under his sagging coat.
Her wounds could not kill her. The blast of heat from the one called Henry had not killed her; the blast which made the horrible, unbearable noise. But all it took to kill them was this.
She looked out of the opening of the shaft, down over the dark ocher sands towards the soft lights of the Mena House. Again, she heard the music, so sweet, drifting on the cool air.
Always cool at night, the desert. And almost dark, wasn't it? Tiny stars above in the azure sky. She felt a strange moment of peace. Nice to walk alone, away from them in the desert.
But Lord Rutherford. The medicine. Almost dark.
She bent down now, took the American's money. She thought of the beautiful yellow motor car. Ah, that would take her back to where she'd come from very swiftly. And now it was hers all alone.
Suddenly she was laughing, thrilled by the prospect. She rushed down the side of the pyramid, dropping easily from one stone block to the one below it; so much strength now, and then she ran towards the car.
Simple. Press the electric starter button. Then push the "gas pedal." At once it began to roar. Then forward on the stick, as she had seen him do it, as she depressed the other pedal, and miracle of miracles, she was racing forward, giving a mad turn to the wheel.
She drove in a great circle before the Mena House. A few terrified Arabs scurried out of her path. She hit the throbbing "horn," as he had called it. It frightened their camels.
Then she made for the road, pulling the stick back again to make it go faster, then shoving it forwards, just as she had seen him do.
When she came to the metal pathway, she stopped. She clutched the wheel, trembling. But no sound came from the great empty reaches of the desert to right and left. And ahead lay the lights of Cairo, such a sweet spectacle under the paling, star-filled sky.
" 'Celeste Aida!' " she sang as she started up and raced forward once more.
*
"You asked for our help," Julie said. "You asked for our forgiveness. Now I want you to listen to me."
"Yes, I want to," Ramses said in a heartfelt voice, but he was puzzled. "Julie, it is she ... beyond question."
"The body, yes," Julie responded. "It was hers, without doubt. But the being who lives now? No. It is not the same woman you once loved. That woman, wherever she is, has no consciousness now of what is happening to this body."
"Julie, she knew me! She recognized me!"
"Ramses, the brain in that body knew you. But think about what you are saying. Think about the implications. The implications are everything, Ramses. Our intellects--our souls, if you will--they don't reside in the flesh, slumbering for centuries as our bodies rot. Either they go on to higher realms or they cease to exist altogether. The Cleopatra you loved ceased to exist in that body the day it died."
He stared at her, trying to grasp this.
"Sire, I think there is wisdom here," Samir said. But he too was confused. "The Earl says that she knows who she is."
"She knows who she is supposed to be," Julie said. "The cells! They are there, revitalized, and possibly some memory is encoded within them. But this thing is a monstrous twin of your lost love. How can it be more than that?"
"This could be true," Samir murmured. "If you do what the Earl suggests--if you give her more of the drug, you may only be revitalizing a ... a demon."
"This is beyond my understanding!" Ramses confessed. "It is Cleopatra!"
Julie shook her head. "Ramses, my father has been dead no more than two months. There was no autopsy performed on his remains. The only embalming done upon him was the age-old miracle of the Egyptian heat and desert dryness. He lies, intact, in a crypt here in Egypt. But do you think I'd take this elixir, if I had it in my hands, and raise him from the dead?"
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120 (Reading here)
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165