Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) (39 page)

           
“What’s
going on?” Ella called from the tent.

           
“Nothing,”
Rowan said. “Go back to sleep.”

           
“
Effendi
!” Ra said urgently. “It is
Madaam
Newton.”

           
Rowan
snapped his head back to Ra at the mention of Marvel. “What?” he asked, looking
down the path and pulling on his shirt.

           
“
Effendi
Digby is in her tent,” Ra said.
“I cannot lay a hand on a white man. He is forcing himself on her!”

           
“Son
of a bitch!” Rowan said. He jammed his pistol in his waistband and took one
step out of the tent and then grabbed Ra by the shirtfront. “Guard my tent,” he
barked. “Don’t leave Mrs. Pierce alone for a minute.”

           
Rowan
ran down the path to Marvel’s tent, cursing the fact that Spenser was down at
the dig site.
Did Digby really think he
could get away with this? In the middle of the camp?
Suddenly, a form
stepped out onto the path in front of him.

           
“In
a hurry, Pierce?”

           
Rowan
stopped abruptly before running head on into Digby. He looked down the path to
Marvel’s tent, which was dark and quiet. He heard no cries.
What the hell? Had Digby already raped her
and was now taking a midnight stroll?
Before Rowan could respond, Digby
took two steps toward him and plunged a large knife into his chest.

Rowan saw the
knife too late and tried to twist away. He felt the blade go in like a hard
punch to the chest. It knocked the breath out of him. His hands fell to his
side and he stared at Digby with his mouth open.

           
“And
now,” Digby said, his breath coming in excited pants, “I believe I’ll just have
a long overdue taste of your wife. Over your dead body, it seems.”

           
Rowan
sank to his knees, then felt the hard ground rush up to slam him in the face.
He was paralyzed but could still hear. Amazingly, he heard the sounds of the
night, the sounds of the horses nickering, the sounds of a man running up the gravel
and dirt pathway toward them.
Was it
Spenser?

           
“Very
nice little improvisation, Ra,” Digby said, “suggesting to Pierce that I was
enjoying the physical charms of Miss Newton. Very nice indeed. Come on, give me
a hand. Let’s get him out of sight.”

Rowan felt hard,
rough hands grab him under the arms and by the legs and lift him up.

“Bung him down
there, into the ravine,” he heard Digby say as the men panted with the exertion
of carrying him. “Heave him off. Hurry!”

The dark sky swam
in dizzying circles above him as they swung him out and then he fell, rolling
over and over against the sharp rocks of the sides of the steep ravine. When he
finally came to rest, his face in the gravel and the dirt, he could feel the
darkness begin to encroach completely, blotting out the sounds and sights of
his world. His first conscious thought was surprise that it didn’t hurt very much
to be stabbed.

His last was an
overwhelming sadness that he would not be there for Ella and the little one.

Part III

Chapter
Twenty-Six

           
Ella
knew it wasn’t going to be possible to go back to sleep until Rowan returned.
She sat up on the camp bed, resting a hand on her belly to calm a suddenly
awake and active Tater Tot.

           
“Settle
down, baby boy,” she said, feeling a rush of warmth flood through her.
Happy
, she thought.
That’s what this feeling is. I’m happy.
She pulled the goose-feather
stuffed duvet onto her lap and stretched out a growing kink in her back and
heard footsteps on the gravel outside her tent. The sound of the footsteps stopped
abruptly. Ella’s skin prickled uncomfortably.
Was that Rowan? Why didn’t he come in?

           
Suddenly,
the tent flap jerked back and Ra entered. Ella’s first thought was that
something must have happened to Rowan for Ra to burst in on her this way. Her
second thought centered on the large Bowie knife he held clutched in his hand.
She covered her belly with both hands. The way the boy looked, the way he stood
staring at her eliminated any thought she might have had about conversing with
him or demanding why he was in her tent.

           
She
screamed.

           
As
if triggered by the noise, Ra charged her, his knife held in a high arc, and
brought it down with force. Ella twisted away, feeling the edge of the blade
slice through the bunched duvet in her hands as she fell to the floor of the
tent. She could feel him regrouping for another attack and knew she would never
get to her feet in time to escape. Instinctively, she turned away and tucked
her head to protect her belly, presenting her exposed back to him. She waited for
the blow she knew was coming. Instead, she heard a grunt and felt Ra push
against her and fall onto the bed. When she wrenched around she saw him struggle
to get up from the bed and slash his knife arm out at Abdullah who stood in the
tent, his face flushed with anger and determination.

           
Ra
snarled at Abdullah and launched himself at him. Ella watched the boy and the
man grapple in the tent, knocking over the lantern and the camp table. Ra
howled and pulled away from the fray long enough for Ella to see his arm now
hung at an unnatural angle. She could also see that the front of Abdullah’s
grey robe had sprouted a wide red splotch that was growing quickly. Within
seconds, Abdullah dropped to his knees, his eyes dazed and slowly closing. Ella
was already out of the tent and running down the path, saving her breath for
her slowed, lumbering jog. As she reached the center of camp, she turned to
look back at her tent and saw Ra poised in the doorway watching her before he
turned and ran in the opposite direction.

           
Rowan! Where is Rowan?
Ella fought for
breath and felt the cold night air go straight through her thin cotton
nightgown. It was then, as she stood in the deserted center of camp, that she
realized the pounding of blood and fear in her ears had kept her from hearing
what was going on around her. The sounds of screams and gunshots came roaring
into her hearing as if the volume had been suddenly, rudely turned up. In front
of her she saw two men on horseback running down one of the camp servants,
viciously battering the man from behind with a club until the man fell.
Suddenly, everywhere around her were men fighting and running. One of the
servants ran past her and she thought his robes were on fire, perhaps from
running through the main campfire.

           
Terrified,
Ella ran to the first tent, Marvel’s, only to find it empty. She peered out of
it and watched as two men hacked at each other with swords, one on horseback
and one on the ground. The man on the ground was Spenser. She could see he was
bleeding from a head wound. She watched him as he pulled a pistol from his
waistband and dispatched the man on the horse who did not fall but galloped
away, hugging his horse’s neck.

           
What was happening? Who was attacking them?
Not knowing what else to do but driven by a desperate need to find Rowan, Ella
bolted from the tent and ran back down the path to her tent. Her bare feet were
bloody, bruised and screaming in pain.

           
“Rowan!”
she called. Her cries were drowned out by the sounds of the battle raging all
around her. She ducked off the path as a man on a pony came barreling down the
pathway, his saber swinging around his head, the lower part of his face covered
by his
hijab
. She felt the gravel
give way beneath her feet as the ground sloped down from the path into the
bordering ravine. Grabbing a small sapling to anchor her clumsy descent, she
eased her way to the bottom of the ravine and safety. The gunshots sounded
muffled and the battle cries of the Arab invaders more and more distant.

           
Was Ra waiting for her down here? Is he with
those men? Where is Rowan?
The pain from her feet was shooting all the way
up her legs now as she stumbled a few steps into the bottom of the dark ravine,
praying she would be safe here. She screamed and fell over a large obstacle she
hadn’t seen in the dark and landed hard on her hip. She felt the rocks and the
gravel on the ravine floor dig into her. Before she could scramble away from
the form she knew that it was a body, probably from the fight above. It wasn’t
until she was back on her feet, her breath ragged from her terror, that she
could see what she had tripped over.

It was Rowan.

           
Emitting
a horrified whimper, Ella staggered to where he lay in a crumpled heap on the
ground and sank down next to him. There was blood on his shirt but none on the
ground. She could see the knife embedded in his chest up to the hilt.

           
“Rowan,”
she croaked, pulling his head and shoulders onto her lap. She held him, listening
to the sounds of battle above, and not able to believe this was happening. She
touched his face with trembling fingers. His face was cool from the night air.
“Rowan,” she whispered again.

She watched his
impassive face in desperate fear and thought
this cannot be happening
. Had she really gone through everything
she had endured just to lose him? She flashed back to their love making of just
a few hours earlier, to his sexy laugh and the way his eyes and warm strong
hands worshiped her body.
He was so full
of life!
This had to be a dream. A terrible, nightmarish dream.

           
She
cradled Rowan’s body to her breast and felt Tater kick against the added
pressure of his father’s bulk. The three of them were together now, nearly as
close as they had ever been, she thought. Her fingers touched Rowan’s neck
where she could feel the faintest of throbs that told her he still lived. She
didn’t want to look at the knife that protruded from the middle of his chest.

           
The
wound was a mortal one. That much she knew. The knife kept the avalanche of
crimson—his very life—from gushing out of him. Maybe if he’d been
stabbed in the emergency room of a topnotch trauma center in some major
metropolitan city he might live—
maybe
.
But there was no way he
wasn’t
dying
tonight in 1922 in the middle of the Sahara desert, with his adoring,
heartbroken wife wrapped around him for all she was worth. Ella reached for his
pulse again, terrified she wouldn’t find it this time, but needing desperately
to believe she would. That’s when the tears came.

           
You can’t die, my darling
, she wept.
You can’t leave us so soon.

           
As
she reached for his neck, the sleeve of her robe fell back and the bright
Egyptian moon shone on her arm. Before she could touch him, she saw the tattoos.
For a moment she just stared at them. The words of Yeena, the Cairo seer, and Halima
came back to her:

           
“You
must find the Book of the Dead for your husband.”

           
“It’s
the only thing that can save the three of you.”

           
Ella
wrenched back her sleeve and stared at her arm. Without hesitating, she did the
one thing Halima told her she must never do. She read aloud the first set of hieroglyphics
exactly as Halima had shown her. When she spoke the words, she heard her voice,
full of tears, panic and terror.

“
Ana bikhayr bookra, shokran
,” she read
haltingly. “
Hal beemkanek mosa’adati
.”

           
As
soon as the words were out of her mouth she felt her skin crawl as if a
thousand ants had descended upon her but she could see nothing. A cold blast of
air whistled down the ravine to settle around her shoulders.

           
Ella
watched Rowan’s face but he showed no change. If anything, he was more still
than before. She tried to remember what Halima had told her about the first
incantation. Something about doing the opposite of what her instincts told her
to do. She licked her lips and began to feel panic creep up her spine.
That could be anything!

           
She
watched Rowan’s chest to see if she could see it move at all and that’s when
she found herself looking at the knife. She knew the only thing that was
preventing him from instantly bleeding out was that knife. Only a surgeon could
remove it at this point.

That was when she
knew.

           
She
had to remove it.

           
With
trembling fingers, she wrapped her hand around the handle of the knife and, sending
a prayer up to God Almighty, she yanked it out of his chest. She heard him
groan when she did. The next thing she knew she was doing when she had the
knife in her hand, although she had no idea why, was drawing a long shallow slit
across the palm of her hand. She pressed the cut against the wound in Rowan’s
chest. She didn’t know what drove her to do it but as soon as she touched him,
she felt something she hadn’t felt in him before: warmth.

           
The
baby kicked hard and Ella dropped the knife and pulled her sleeve back again.
“Not yet, baby,” she said. “Not done yet.” She held her arm up to see the
markings brightly illuminated in the moonlight and with one quick look at Rowan
who was as silent as death, she read the second incantation.

           
“Ta’ala
ma’ee, ta’ala ma’ee. Ada’tu tareeqi.”

           
Suddenly,
she felt a gush of water between her legs and looked at her lap to see a
widening wet spot spread across her hips.

           
Shit!
Her water broke! Could this be right?
She looked at Rowan but he lay unmoving. She heard Halima’ voice in her head:
Have faith. You must have faith.

           
Ella
put her hand on her belly and felt an immediate grinding pain as if bone were
slamming up against bone without enough room to move. She gasped in pain and
flexed her back sharply to avoid or rearrange the source of the agony. It
followed her relentlessly. She felt it pound into her very organs and she
closed her eyes and forced her shoulders to relax and to receive it without
resistance.

           
Let it come
, she thought
. Give it all to me.

           
The
pain ebbed to a whisper and then died. She took a long breath and, with a final
look at Rowan, his lips now blue, the blood on his chest no longer pumping out,
she read the last incantation from her arm. Again, she heard Halima reciting in
her head:
The sling. The lamb. The
coffin. Choose wisely, Ella! There will be no more prompts. You must trust
yourself.

           
She
read out the final incantation in a strong, loud voice. “
Ana ahbak. Entabeh linafsika. Ohebuka.”

           
It
was as if she had been transformed into a magic slate that erased itself and
all that was written on it in one cleansing swipe. The cold night, the rocky
ravine, Rowan’s body, even her pregnancy, all vanished in the time it took for
her to take a breath. She was still seated but no longer next to Rowan. She
climbed to her feet to see that she was now on a cliff top. It was still night
but the air was warm and carried the scent of orange blossoms on it. When she
looked down at herself, she could see her stomach was flat once more. She was
gripped with a sense of loss as her hand went to her abdomen to confirm what
her eyes told her: she was no longer pregnant. Looking around in bewilderment,
she searched for Rowan but couldn’t see him anywhere. At the same time that Ella
knew all of this had to be some kind of hallucination, somehow she also knew
that her actions were real.

           
With
real consequences.

           
She
tried to assess her situation. She was standing alone at the edge of a cliff in
the Valley of the Kings. Where the camp should be, she could see only darkness.
Where the piles of rubble and signs of excavation of Carter’s dig site, she
could make out nothing. There was only rock and sand for miles around and below
her.