The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) (11 page)

I should have died
.

This was the thought that stayed with her, like a tiny purring creature curled in the space between her collar and jaw. Warm, snug, friendly.

I should have died
.

This was the first thing that came to mind when she woke and the last thing she thought before sleep carried her way. With every breath of air through the open balcony doors, even the wind spoke the words to her.

I should have died
.

Her sleep was dreamless, and not. She told herself they were dreams, because it was easier to call them this than to say they were memories. It made no sense that she would remember such things—the way she had been lifted, the way they bound her into honey-soaked wrappings, and then a casket of stone.

I should have died
.

And did not.

This idea was one she did not return to that often; it was too frightening, the idea that she had escaped death, cheated Anubis and Ammit both, that her heart still beat in her chest. She closed her eyes every night and listened, assuring herself it was so, even if it was not entirely true.

The weight of the honey pulling her down was true. The shadows in the room were thrown by fire and not gas-light; six shadows upon the ceiling, the ceiling of stone and then plaster and then stone. She moved through rooms effortlessly, even while weighted by honey. Sweet and cloying and for weeks after, she could not look at her breakfast offerings without being nauseated. It would pass, they all said. But in the firelight—

“She must be kept so,” said a woman.

Cleo tried to turn her head, but was bound and could not. The wrappings against her neck were soft and cool stone pressed into her cheek, trailing stickiness when she moved the least bit. She tried to lift her arms, but also could not do this. They were not bound across her chest—that might have told her she was dead and awaiting Anubis—but rather straight at her sides. Her legs were bound as well, and feet too; when she caught a glimpse of them, she saw the wrappings, the bandages, glowing with honey that had caught all the colors of the firelight. She was being turned to amber, to gold, to—

“Has it already had its way with her, then?”

This voice was familiar and Cleo exhaled at the sound of it. Doctor Fairbrass. She knew him, for they both worked with Mistral. He was immaculate in his attention to detail, precise to the point of madness, but she would have protested anything less. He knew his way around the living and the dead equally well, at ease with both.

Cleo tried to speak to them, but parting her lips only sent honey spilling into her mouth. She wanted to deny it entry, but was a slave to its sweetness. She opened her mouth and drank and drank until the flood slowed, until her lips were sticky in the wake of the golden river. She was nourished in a way she never had been before.

“I fear so,” said the woman. “It is the blood that binds it.”

I should have died
.

And her arms?

From the elbow down, she was dissolved, as if her arms were nothing more than gossamer. She could not lift them or ever hold anything. She would not cradle a child, nor the ancient skull of one found in debris.

That small bee, she thought;
smooth and cool carnelian between my fingers
. No more. These fingers as she felt them—oh she knew they could not exist, not as she remembered—were as cobwebs wrapped around muslin.

“She is as you are,” Doctor Fairbrass said.

“As I am, yes. As we are.”

The six shadows moved against the ceiling, swaying from side to side and back once more. Cleo watched through slitted eyes, the shadows giving the impression of being underwater, yet breathing. Her breath was slow, but not labored, and she was aware of each inhale and each exhalation, certain another would not come, though it did.

“You could have done nothing else, Doctor.”

A low hum rolled from the gathered shadows, settling into Cleo’s bones. She closed her eyes to the room, to the cave, wherever she found herself or did not find herself. Wherever she was, she was

Alive.

Still that.

Still. That.

Eleanor dropped the cloth back into the basin and stared at Cleo’s image in the mirror. The wash water was filthy and grew even more so as Eleanor began to brush her hair out. Iridescent locust wings came free, to shimmer on the surface of the ever-darkening water.

“All right,” Eleanor said again, each word measured. It was difficult to keep her temper, given all that Cleo had told her. Mallory and Auberon being held prisoner by Pettigrew who was demanding she return with the rings? It made Eleanor scoff, and yet, she wouldn’t put it past Pettigrew to do something entirely foolish, given his history with artifacts. But, given that she trusted both Mallory and Auberon not to be such idiots, she was not going to charge into his house without more information. And the information Akila had given her was potentially something indeed.

She set the hair brush aside and gathered her hair into three sections, plaiting as she stayed focused on Cleo. “You are telling me this honey made you immortal.”

Cleo shifted from foot to foot, her brown cheeks flooding with a rush of pink. “I don’t know
what
I’m telling you, Eleanor. Here—stop. You still have …wings.” Cleo strode forward, and gently pushed Eleanor’s hands from the mess of her hair. She unplaited what little had been done and picked up the brush. “I am only telling you something strange happened, something I cannot fully explain.”

The brush tugged through Eleanor’s hair and she closed her eyes. More locust wings whispered to the floor. While she had given up on calling things impossible, Cleo’s belief pushed that boundary. “Doctor Fairbrass came to tend you?”

“Agent Auberon was there, too. He and I—”

When she said nothing else, Eleanor looked at Cleo in the mirror. She continued to brush Eleanor’s hair, her brown gaze slowly meeting Eleanor’s.

“We had an extremely poor sense of timing,” Cleo said. “He came to Alexandria to oversee the recovery work I and my team were assigned to. I was upset at first—the way I imagine you must have been the first time you looked upon Mallory’s ugly mug.”

A smile flickered over Eleanor’s mouth; she would not deny that upset, no.

“I thought Auberon meant to take the work from me, but he only wanted to help. We spent many evenings together, talking of things other than Egypt. Our parents, our grandparents—he kept his grandfather’s slave name, Oberon…and thought…” Cleo took an uneven breath and pulled the brush through Eleanor’s hair again. “Our names gave us something interesting to talk about, but it was more than that. When the ground gave way beneath me… I remember him being there, and he said it was honey.”

“And the woman speaking with Doctor Fairbrass?”

“I don’t know—it may well have been a dream, Eleanor. But something… I was never the same after, and perhaps no one ever would, given the loss of two healthy arms.” She lifted her mechanical arms, light running down the metal. “Doctor Fairbrass said I would have died. Said he had no choice, but refused to explain more.”

Eleanor leaned back into the chair, exhaling as Cleo began to braid her hair. “All right. Let us presume the honey worked its magic upon you and that Pettigrew has gotten it into his head that the same will be true for him. Does he believe the rings will …what? You didn’t have rings…pardon my saying so, but you didn’t have
fingers
for most that time…”

Cleo laughed, taking no offense as her mechanical fingers now divided Eleanor’s hair into three even pieces, and made quick work of a braid. This, she wound into a coil, tucking the end under before securing it with pins.

“I don’t know what Pettigrew thinks of the rings—or why he would actually give you one, if he thought he needed them all for his plan.” Cleo smoothed a few stray wisps of hair from Eleanor’s brow. “You told me Anubis was here. That he said the rings would carry you. Perhaps Pettigrew also believes he needs
you
—much as the Irvings did?”

“I am half-sick of being used for the purposes of others,” Eleanor said, her voice edged in a growl. “Still, I have to allow he may well believe that. Akila said I would take the rings and go as I must. Of course, if Virgil has them already, we have only the one retrieved from the honey.” Eleanor slid from the vanity bench, moving toward the bureau. Here, beneath her folded clothing, she withdrew a case of lock picks. “Let’s search his room, shall we?”

Eleanor breached the lock to Virgil’s room with more ease than she had expected. Though much of the hotel had been renovated after the British destruction, an equal number of things remained untouched, door locks among them. Virgil’s room stood in shadow until Eleanor lit a single lamp. All appeared as he would have left it, tidy and in order. She did not find the ring box in the bureau, nor beneath his bed pillows. Only when she perched on the edge of the bed to ponder where it might be was she successful, hearing the faint creak of wood beneath her. She lifted the mattress to find the wood display box, its rings intact.

Cleo offered her the third ring, cleaned now. Eleanor accepted it with a grimace, both expecting and wanting it to whisk her away the moment it touched her hand. It did not.

Virgil and Auberon had had the corrosion cleaned from the other two and Eleanor’s heart lodged in her throat at the sight of them. They were beautiful and strange and bore the same markings as did the ring they had found in the honey. Dark and light metal, colliding in patterns that had no reason.

“Do you… Do you suppose you put them on?” Cleo asked in a near whisper.

Eleanor pulled the rings free of the case, setting it to the side. She contemplated the trio in her hand. “Akila said they were wedding bands,” she said. One ring was plainly larger than the other two, which were of a size. She touched the one Cleo had just given her. “This small ring was in the honey?”

“Yes.”

“And this larger one is from the auction I believe. Leaving the second small ring as the one left in the Mistral archive.”

One by one, her mouth growing more dry with each ring, Eleanor slipped them on. Part of her didn’t want to—she had promised Mallory, after all. But a larger part of her craved the power she had felt when wearing Anubis’s own rings. The small rings fit neatly paired upon her ring finger, the larger still too big for even her middle finger. But she left it there and waited.

“The world is not dissolving,” Eleanor said, annoyed and relieved both. If there were rings yet to find? Oh, she prayed not. “I am not going to bleed for these rings. I am not going to be a pawn any more—do you hear me, Anubis? If you’re listening…this has nothing to do with me, and you’ll not take Cleo, either. Not by hook or by crook.”

She waited for something, for anything, but there was no thunder, no lightning, and the room did not crack apart. It was altogether disappointing, and left her without a clue as to where to go next.

“Doctor Fairbrass, I suppose?” Cleo asked as Eleanor picked up the ring box and came off the bed.

“I suppose—because if you believe you are immortal by way of a body mellified in honey…” She opened the hotel door and linked her arm through Cleo’s, keeping her close. “We should look into that, but you’re not going without me. Or Virgil. Or, dare I say, even Auberon.”

But go they did, for when they crossed the threshold, the room around them winked out. As neat as a candle being snuffled, the hotel ceased to exist. Eleanor fell and tried to hold to Cleo, but she was also falling, and they tumbled apart, down to the ground of soft dirt. Even so, Eleanor cried out as did Cleo.

There was only the shimmering night sky above them, clearer than Eleanor had ever seen. This was a sky unsmudged by smoke, a sky that did not know the rise of buildings against its sprawl. The city here was smaller, but the streets had still already taken on the grid pattern they would maintain for centuries to follow. Farther out, rising from the waters of the harbor, was a thing that no longer existed in Eleanor’s time. A place that had been lost to the ages.

Cleopatra’s palace.

Dear Cleo,

I appreciated your letter very much and am pleased to hear how well the gloves fit. Do not forget that I spent a good many years as a surveyor within Mistral; it was my job to determine locations, points, and sometimes sizes of relative objects. Apparently this ability extends itself to ladies’ gloves, despite not having seen your arms. I hope they will serve you well for years to come; should you wear through them, we shall obtain another pair.

It was devastating to hear of the difficulties you went through with the damage to a finger. I was relived to hear that Fairbrass fixed it so easily—you finished your letter to me within the week. Hopefully the knowledge that you may be so easily repaired now will set your heart some at ease?

The weeks here are dreadfully busy. My partner remains a challenge, and I believe you and he are previously acquainted? Mister V. Mallory is unlike any gentleman I have crossed paths with before; he is one of Mistral’s best, and I look forward to working in the field with him.

When you next write, tell me of the work you were engaged in? I can well imagine how it is to remain inside when one is accustomed to tromping about the world. Would that you were out here with Mallory and me! I am certain the day will come when you are once again out of doors. The day will come when you once again dance, be it in an alley or a café—a day when I ask you to dance and you say yes.

Until then, I remain,

M. Auberon

“Virgil.”

From a great distance, Virgil heard his name, but could not open his eyes or turn his head toward the person calling to him. The voice was familiar, but so far away. The darkness that held him smelled like honey. And blood, the wolf inside whispered.

“Virgil.”

The voice was closer this time and Virgil forced himself up from the blackness. He forced his eyes to open after the drowse brought on by the drugged tea. No part of him ached; everything remained comfortably numb, a thing he supposed was good, given the bindings he found himself restricted by. Wide leather cuffs encircled both wrists and ankles, which were in turn attached to a wood and metal rack. Everything, including him, was splattered with honey. The rack rollers were pulled tightly enough that Virgil could not move, but there was no ache to tell him how long he had been racked.

The rack was encased within a glass cell and this cell was but one of many. Other cages fanned out in a circle, the cell beside his own occupied by Auberon, also racked and splattered with honey. A closer look at Auberon’s cell showed Virgil it was more than a splattering; the honey had begun to fill the cell from the bottom up. Above each cell, a glass compartment squatted, each of these containing beehives. Virgil watched as bees went about their business, creating and filling comb even as the comb leaked honey downward into the cells. Beyond he and Auberon, one other cell was occupied, the man inside appearing asleep, but Virgil had to wonder. Was it sleep or was it death?

“Back with us?” Auberon asked him.

Virgil took a long breath and shook his head. “I …do not know.” His tongue felt thick and coated with honey, as if he had been force fed. “We remain at Pettigrew’s?”

“I presume so, though I have seen nothing of the man since waking,” Auberon said, his face grim. “Laudanum? I think.”

Virgil agreed and for the first time, nausea threatened to become vomit. Given his present confinement, he decided this was a poor decision indeed, so grit his teeth and gave that particular impulse up to the wolf, who was already close to the surface, bristling. Neither would giving into
that
be wise, so he tried to breathe. Tried to remember a world before opium, and not after, because after, everything was smudged. He did not want smudged; he wanted clarity, and certainty, and—

“Eleanor? Cleo?”

“Unknown,” Auberon said, “though not down here with us. These…subjects appear to be male only—and Doctor Fairbrass among them.”

“Doctor Fairbrass. Hell.” Virgil grunted at both their circumstances and the continued degradation of his language. He picked the doctor out in a far cell, blond head bent to his chest as he hung unconscious in his own chains. He tried to shift upon the rack that held him, but he was wrapped tight, unable to move more than an inch in any direction. “Pettigrew has had some experience at this.”

“The question is, what the hell is
this
?” Auberon pulled on his own restrains and they did not move any more than Virgil’s had. “Given the riddle of the honey and of the rings… I am no closer to a solution, however his interest in Cl— Miss Barclay makes better sense to me now.”

“Do tell.”

“It is absolutely not my story to tell, however, during our recovery of her after her injury… Sustained here, Virgil, and not far away, I must note. During our recovery of Miss Barclay, we found her within a pool of honey. Fairbrass believed it was vital to her very survival. Given that, and that Pettigrew
knew
of Miss Barclay’s ties to honey—he asked her up there, he surely had a good idea what he would find within that sarcophagus—he may suspect she is proof of something he hopes to prove or accomplish with this honey. Miss Folley even spoke about honey’s medicinal properties.”

“Are you suggesting the honey did more than keep Cleo from hemorrhaging?” Virgil eyed Auberon. Auberon looked back, dark gaze as steady as forever.

“I may be,” Auberon said. “Prior to her injury, Miss Barclay and I were…”

Auberon went silent and Virgil waited. He could have easily filled in the gap—the two had certainly been developing something more than a friendship; they had, perhaps, been falling in love. But Virgil held his silence, wanting Auberon to admit the thing aloud. It was astonishing, the range of emotion that passed over Auberon’s face. How complicated a thing, the admission of an emotion some might take for a weakness, when it was anything but. Given how he cared for Eleanor, Virgil had come to know love as one of the best things that could happen to a man. How had Auberon and Cleo parted ways? Virgil had always presumed Cleo’s injury had something to do with it. And now, the strange honey mummy.

“She and I were falling in love, I suppose one would call it,” Auberon said and then jerked violently at the restraints that held him. “That dilutes it. We were falling in love. Plain and not simple, but there it is. She and I found that we had many things in common. She worried I would take the case from her, but I wanted only to help her see it through. Artifacts unearthed after the British bombing…I was staggered that so much had survived, and to have apparently discovered a catacomb of ancient— Never mind that. Miss Barclay and I spent our evenings together often, and after her injury, I feared I would not see her again. I did not, until the Exposition two months past. After her injury, we wrote one another extensively and I had hoped to visit her in Alexandria as she recovered.”

“Alexandria? I was told she spent her recovery in Cairo,” Virgil said. He supposed it did not matter overly much, however it intrigued him, that this city had such a hold on her.

“She was meant to, I believe,” Auberon said, “but her letters always came from Alexandria. She spoke of the ocean, but also of being hard-pressed to remember things that had happened to her. She spoke to me of strange memories—of being wrapped like a mummy and weighted by something. When we found her within the catacomb, she lay in a pool of honey—it was this Doctor Fairbrass believes saved her—but perhaps he meant in more than one way.” Auberon shook his head. “I never had reason to wonder, until now.”

“But is Pettigrew ill?” Virgil asked. “What might he mean to cure with this honey? His health appears perfectly well.”

“Maybe it’s not for himself, but someone else,” Auberon suggested.

“From all I have seen,” Virgil said, “he is experimenting still. Pressing the edges of things, having no idea what actually influences what. You saw how he welcomed input from Cleo and Eleanor—Cleo because he possibly knew of her history. That is troubling, though not impossible, given his Mistral ties, no? And Eleanor because…” Virgil shook his head, feeling the wolf inside him stretch, clawing for release.

“Given that the ladies found another ring within the honey sarcophagus…”

“I do not want to contemplate that, not one bit.”

“I cannot blame you—it is far easier to deny such an idea, much as I’ve done with my affection for Miss Barclay these years.” Auberon tested his restraints again, and again they did not move. “We must, however, presume that the rings are involved, and that Eleanor, at least in Pettigrew’s mind, has a connection to them. And well—Anubis.”

“Fucking Anubis.” Virgil spat the name, claws slicing out of his fingers as the wolf stretched and refused to go down again.

“Virgil, now is probably not the best—”

There was no good time for it, Virgil knew, but could not pull the wolf back once he allowed the rein to slip that much.

The wolf didn’t so much emerge as it consumed. Every shred of the man Virgil was vanished inside the wolf, brown fur brindled with gold erupting down arms, belly, legs. The ache held at bay by the remains of the laudanum came to the fore, but the pain at having limbs pulled taut for hours on end did not matter. The wolf would no longer be denied, even if it also found itself bound to the rack. The seams of Virgil’s already rumpled suit split, jacket and shirt hanging in tatters by the time the transformation was done, trousers held on by their button alone.

The beast remained confined within the restraints of the rack, however the slim crescent of human logic that Virgil managed to maintain given his recent training with Eleanor told him the leather cuffs were looser. He pulled with his entire weight and while the rack creaked as though it meant to give way, it did not. A savage snarl broke free from him and he lashed out with all he had, but could not budge himself from the rack. He was met with a laugh for his efforts, though not from Auberon, who would never.

Pettigrew emerged into the circle of glass cages, grinning. “So, it is true and amazing. Look at you. There are always legends, aren’t there? The Greeks probably called you
vrykolakas
, and the Romans
versipellis
. Turn-skin.” Pettigrew’s voice was laden with praise and appreciation. “Seeing such a thing in person.” He extended his hands, and then clapped. “Astonishing does not begin to cover it for we mere…humans, wouldn’t you agree, Mister Auberon?”

Auberon tugged at his own restraints but said nothing. This only drew another grin from Pettigrew, who crossed the circular center of the cell room. Virgil strained at the rack again, not caring that the leather bit into him.

“Now, now, don’t make me drug you again. I know how much you must have enjoyed—”

Virgil pulled at the restraints again, and again, until Auberon had to pull him back by screaming his name. Virgil felt the warm run of blood down his legs, and the way his heart heaved in his chest as he tried to breathe properly, but he couldn’t stop until every last bit of energy within him was exhausted. Virgil was blind with rage, even his wolf body crying for the release that came with opium. He was certain he had never been so sickened; so desperate for the drug.

“That’s right,” Pettigrew said as Virgil settled in a daze onto his haunches. “Now, we three are going to conduct some experiments. I expect they shall go rather quickly, based on all I already know. However, given what I don’t yet know… Well. We have much to do. I am eager to begin and hope you shall be…cooperative.”

“You believe this honey can cure what ails you, Pettigrew?” Auberon asked. “I’ve no injury you might experiment with.”

“In a way, you are correct, Mister Auberon. Something does indeed ail me. But I am curious as to more than that. You see, this honey…” He gestured to the hives above them. “It does all manner of strange things—you saw how your own Miss Barclay reacted to its taste. She knows—she has known the honey’s eternity within her. But just as it has seeped into her to make her deathless and undying, I believe it can also be made to
undo
—”

“…deathless?” Auberon whispered the word. “That’s—”

Virgil watched the two men, unable to do more. Hot saliva trailed a wet path down his maw, his tongue lolling from his mouth. Most of the words stayed with him and made sense, but others slipped right over his wolf brain. “Deathless” had a way of sticking, though, and judging by the look upon Auberon’s face, there was more he had not shared as to his relationship with Cleo.

“By all means,” Pettigrew said calmly. “Attach another word to that sentence. Impossible? Foolish? Miraculous? If a thing can be made to create something, it can be made to destroy it as well. Day is unmade into night, and night is unmade by the coming of every day. Even fair Egypt was made and unmade and made yet again. The world gives life and just as easily takes it. This is the true power—not of the gods, but of any man who dares leash it.” At this, he gave a ragged laugh and moved toward Virgil’s cage, crouching before the wolf. “I mean to leash it. Like a dog.”