Her father had made Natasha hold a piece of the body that night and warm blood had dripped down her arms. The smell made her retch and gag, but her father’s eyes held her motionless, for he would not countenance weakness in his daughter. The next time, he had made her cut until she eventually began to see human flesh as mere meat.
Natasha opened a large chest, its workings well oiled. She reverently unwrapped the ritual masks and laid them next to the altar. She ran her fingers over the Horus mask, caressing the feathers of the falcon who soared above the earth, god of the sky who rose above mere mortal life. She would call on him, but tonight she would be Isis incarnate.
A knock came at the door and Isac was admitted. Behind him two other men dragged a bound and gagged youth who struggled against his bonds.
“Apologies for our late-coming,” Isac said. “This one was hard to subdue, but the gods will be pleased with such a strong sacrifice.”
Natasha walked over to the young man. He had lithe muscles from manual labor and skin the color of burnt caramel. His eyes were wild with fear and anger above the tight gag, but she could see that he was intrigued to see her there. No doubt he was thinking that he would be safe with a woman present. He wore a rough shirt, faded through washing and many days under the sun. She unbuttoned it as the other men held him tight, his muscles straining against their bondage.
“I like a bit of spirit,” she said as she stroked his taut stomach with her fingertips. “Are you ready to perform for the gods?”
The young man was clearly aroused and yet puzzled by what was going on. Natasha slid her hand down further to caress his hardness and he groaned through the tight gag, turning his head away.
“Wait a little,” she whispered to him. She turned to Isac. “Prepare the ritual.”
The men pushed the young man onto the altar and fastened the four straps to his limbs. He struggled, but the bonds held tight.
Isac and the others put on the masks of Horus, Anubis, the jackal, and Thoth, the baboon-headed god. Natasha pulled off her outer robe to reveal a white sheath dress that wrapped tightly around her body. She picked up the tall head-dress of Isis and placed it on her head. At that moment, she felt transformed into Isis, protector of the dead, worshipped as the mother goddess as well as the ruler of magic and nature. Her father had understood the power of the goddess and his own wives had failed to bring him honor by taking the role, so he had schooled Natasha to perform the rites. Isac had accompanied her for many of the years they had done this and tonight they would take the rites to the final sacrifice together.
Natasha stood at the head of the altar and the other three stood at the sides, so four of them surrounded the bound youth, still struggling and groaning through his gag.
“The chalice,” Natasha commanded.
Isac, as Horus, stepped forward and gave her a large copper bowl filled with what looked like muddy water. She drank a long draft and relaxed as the hallucinogen began to work on her. First her lips went numb, then she felt her heart race. The candlelight merged with the stone walls and spirits began to leak from the tombs with the faces of her ancestors, their lips begging her to begin the bloody rite.
As she succumbed to the pull of the drug, Natasha found a strange symmetry in her quest. For s
ome claimed that the manna eaten by the Israelites in the desert of the Exodus journey was a bread containing ergot, a fungus with the same psychoactive base chemicals as LSD, similar to that which they now imbibed.
The bowl was filled again and each of the men drank. Before Isac took his own draught, he lowered the gag and poured the liquid into the throat of the tied man, holding his nose so he was forced to drink, before raising the gag again.
Now came the part Natasha loved most, when the curtain between the real world and the spirit realm was torn down and she could see into the void between them. Her body became a vessel for the goddess and these men the witnesses to the eternal struggle between life and death. At this point she thought nothing of the Ark quest, for her physical self was just a shell, an outer form.
She watched the figures of the men as they twisted into therianthropic forms, their animal heads becoming visages of the divine, the pantheon she worshipped and of which she was now part. Her body was touched all over with fire, as her skin became super-sensitive. Her mind started to whirl, as shadows in the tomb morphed into djinns that reached out to her, misshapen mouths open, calling out, their tongues lapping at her skin. Flashbacks of her father came to her in this state, how her pain had become his pleasure and her sacrifice made him proud enough to call her daughter, the favorite one.
“Tonight you will be Osiris, tonight you will see the gods in the afterlife,” Natasha said, beginning the chants of the ancient rite. Her voice mingled with Isac’s in the chorus and she felt the rise of power within. She moved to the side of the altar and touched the bound man intimately, calling on the Gods to see her act in uniting heaven with earth. Isac helped her to mount him and she began to ride the man, feeling him hard inside her as the drugs spiraled her up into the heavens with pleasure.
“I call on Seth, god of chaos and storms,” she prayed, as she undulated her hips, teasing out the sexual tension, feeling the eyes of the men on her. “Hear my plea and send me what I need to complete the quest. This is for you.”
Natasha felt the ritual knife in her hand as she neared her own peak, plunging down onto him as the young man groaned his release and she squeezed him deep inside her. Leaning forward, she thrust the knife up under his ribs, then pulled it from him as blood welled up, staining her dress. She stabbed it down into his chest again and again as she called to heaven. The young man’s eyes were wide with fear and agony and she felt him shrink within her as she called out to the gods to see her sacrifice and reward her with victory.
She watched the life leave his eyes and felt his spirit rise from his corpse to join the others that swirled around her in the room. The gods were here and she reveled in their touch as she slid from the altar and began the bloody business of hacking up the corpse, the other men joining her to finish the sacrifice.
***
Much later, Natasha felt the cold of the ground permeate her clothes as she lay on the floor of the tomb. The stink of blood and sex mingled with death and decay hung in the air. The after-effects of the drug meant she had to choke back vomit that threatened to erupt from her. She despised the new life within her, for it made her physically weak and brought her low. She would get rid of it, as soon as the Ark was delivered to Jerusalem.
Natasha struggled up onto her hands and knees, then hauled herself up one of the pillars. The slashed limbs of the dead boy were limp on the altar, his head had rolled to one side with eyes open, his blood congealed in pools across the floor. She was covered with gore, as were the men who lay curled on the floor, sated from the violent frenzy. She never knew which of them she had sex with after the ritual, for it just became a haze of blood lust and the high of drugs mixed with sexual ecstasy. This too honored the gods, and they would reward her sacrifice.
Isac began to stir as Natasha pulled her bag from behind one of the mummified bodies and withdrew her cloak. She wrapped it around herself to hide her bloody clothes and then felt in the pocket. She pulled out her smartphone and saw a number of messages from al-Hirbaa. She opened the first and smiled, for the Gods had already rewarded her faithfulness. They needed to head for Jordan.
DAY 5
Nuweiba to Aqaba, Jordan. 4.07am
Morgan gazed out at the inky blackness of the Red Sea, her thoughts lulled by the slap of waves on the hull. It was as if time had been suspended and she could be still in the dark, all the rushing around put on hold for this period of calm before the next storm. Khal was sleeping in one of the cabins, tired after the long drive, but Morgan needed some time to think, so here she was, looking out to sea.
The black of night camouflaged the turquoise waters beneath which she had scuba dived so many times. Just to the north was Eilat, the Israeli resort town where during the day girls in bikinis lay on the beach and muscled boys showed off their volleyball skills. She smiled softly at the memories of how she and Elian had spent holidays there with their IDF friends. Young bodies idle in the sun, covered in sand, his arm thrown across her in sleep.
When Elian had died, shot to pieces on the Golan Heights, she had retreated from that kind of fun, as it seemed irreverent somehow. His body was cold in the tomb so how could she be laughing in the sun? She had thrown herself into her work, research on understanding fundamentalism. Only by eradicating it on all sides could there be peace between Jews and Arabs. Her passion had driven a wedge between her and her old friends, who thought she was trying to help create a solution that was a fantasy.
Now Morgan was back looking for the Ark, an artifact that could bring instant conflict to her home, or perhaps bring some kind of salvation. She shivered in the night breeze, for the Scriptures showed the Ark to be a weapon, a thing of terror and power that could strike down enemies with bolts of thunder. She knew of those within the Israeli Defense Force who would dearly love to get their hands on such a thing, divinely fashioned for the people chosen by God himself. Regardless of how she felt about the religious and political implications, it would be better if ARKANE held the Ark and not one of the parties in the Middle East. For even those who were as doves might prove to be hawks once they had their hands on something potentially explosive.
The boat neared the shore and night faded as the lights of the port of Aqaba grew brighter. Morgan turned from Eilat towards Jordan’s only port, bustling with people scurrying over cargo ships at this early hour. Man-made industry was surrounded by the russet mountains of the Jordanian interior, perched on the edge of a primal land that looked like it could easily shrug off this insignificant intruder. Giant cargo ships loomed over the little ferry as it navigated the docks, just as Khal emerged from the cabin, holding two mugs of coffee.
“It’s not great, but it might keep us going for a bit,” he said.
Morgan smiled and took it from him, their fingers brushing and she saw the way he looked at her. For a moment she thought that an arm around her, a strong shoulder to lean into, would help more than the caffeine. He looked even more like a rugged movie star after a rough night’s travel, the dark stubble on his chin sculpting his jawline. The thought of how it would feel on her skin flitted across her mind and she turned away quickly. Khal sat next to her watching the progress of the ferry into port.
They finished their coffee as the boat docked and then they slipped off towards the customs house. It seemed appropriate, Morgan thought, that they were two travelers in search of the ancient Ark entering through a trade route that had been inhabited since 4000BC. Aqaba, the biblical Edom, had become the kingdom of the Nabateans and then, in the first century AD, it was one of the main Roman ports in the area, later passed down through the hands of the Islamic dynasties. In modern history, Aqaba had been the site of a battle in World War I won by the British. Now it was a fast growing port and resort town with watersports vying with the giant boats for domination of the coral-filled waters.
Morgan and Khal headed for a line of taxis and car hire booths where men sat in the early morning drinking coffee and smoking Polo cigarettes. Khal negotiated a rate for the next few days of hire and they were led to a car park dominated by incongruous Japanese cars. Morgan laughed as they got in, throwing the little baggage they had in the back.
“International antiquities hunting in a Toyota Yaris,” she said. “Don’t say I never show you a good time!”
Petra, Jordan, 7.18am
Even though it was still early, the sun beat down as Morgan and Khal pulled into the car park at Petra, the ancient capital of the Nabateans, established in the sixth century BC. The main tourist buses arrived much later so the place was still quiet. Local men were opening up their shops and drinking coffee in patches of sun, preparing for the daily onslaught of tourists. Dusty camels with saddles in muted colors sat on the ground, chewing, their legs folded under them. Horses and donkeys stamped in the corners of the square, ready to be ridden by tourists who didn’t want to walk the kilometers around the city.
Morgan opened the door of the hire car, bracing herself for the heat.
“We need a break. Let’s explore before the rest of the tourists get here. Are your negotiation muscles up for some more flexing this morning?”
Khal smiled, saying nothing, but headed off towards the ticket office with a purposeful stride. Morgan watched him walk. He was confident, for he knew archaeology, and his academic skills could shine here. Morgan felt calm with Khal, for he didn’t have that latent physical energy that Jake seemed to exude, always moving and restless. Khal was self-contained, his deeper thoughts protected by a wall of academic professionalism.