The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (15 page)

Even his mother was in front of him, and his father of course was right behind their girl guide.

“Listen, Jonathan,” Alex said, his breath pluming, “can you handle this beast of burden?”

“Might I ask why your father has your lovely mother,” Jonathan said, eyes hooded, face ice-flecked, “and you have the delicious Lin, whilst I have been paired with a yak? Just wondering . . .”

“Thanks, Uncle Jon,” Alex said, and moved over snowy, rocky ground, past his mother and father, catching up with Lin.

“Hi,” he said.

She glanced at him, but said nothing.

“You know, I read up on Tibet once, and it said monks stay warm by generating body heat. So, later, when it gets even colder, if you need someone to, well, rub up against you for warmth? I’m your man.”

Her withering look cut him worse than the whipping snow.

She moved on ahead of him, using her stick as support, and the boy thought,
Smooth, Alex,
real
smooth . . .

From the radio strapped to the yak came the voice of their pilot:
“This is Delta Tango Alpha to Ricochet. Come in, Ricochet.”

O’Connell, in sunglasses (even late in the day the glare of the sun off the snow could be blinding), fell back and yanked the mouthpiece from the two-way radio, walking along with the beast that bore it, Jonathan at the rear.

“Come in, Delta Tango Alpha.”

“You know those two fellas you said I should look out for? Well, I believe they just pulled into town with all their best boyos.”

“Those fellas,” of course, were General Yang and the Emperor.

O’Connell signed off, then moved back up in front of Evy, calling, “Okay, people! We’ve gotta pick up the pace—
move!”

In the process of trying to do as O’Connell asked, Lin slipped, and Alex was right there to catch her, and help her regain her footing. He was unaware, as was Lin, that Alex’s mother had noted the charged energy between them . . .

By sunset, the little party had reached its destination for the night—the ruins of a monastery on a windswept hillside swathed in alpen-glow, looking idyllic against a Maxfield Parrish sky of rouge and purple.

As they tramped toward this shelter, Evy—who had fallen in alongside her husband—said to him, “By my estimate, we have a half day’s lead.”

O’Connell nodded. “Still, we can’t be sure. We’ll sleep in shifts and keep an eye out for Yang and the Emperor and their troops.”

Walking backward, O’Connell called out to the rest of the party: “Packs on backs and feet to the ground at dawn!”

There were no arguments.

In what had been the main chamber of the ancient monastery, Evy stoked a charcoal campfire, surreptitiously watching her son and the Chinese girl as they unpacked supplies from the yak. To Evy, in the flickering half-light of the campfire, the couple seemed in full-on flirting mode, and the unpacking was taking forever.

Finally Alex crossed to his mother, a box piled with blankets in his arms.

Alex said, “According to Lin, if we leave at first light, we should reach the Gateway by noon.”

Evy nodded. “Did she happen to say how she knows so much about this Gateway?”

“Not really.” Alex glanced back at Lin, and when his face returned to his mother, his features were touched with a goofy lovesickness that did not encourage Evy as to his objectivity. “She’s kind of . . . mysterious. Enigmatic.”

“Well,” Evy said, with a smile as icy as the weather, “she’s certainly managed to enchant
you.”

Alex frowned at his mother in confusion. “What do you mean?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Alex, what I mean is, you’ve spent the entire journey thus far trying to impress this girl. You are
obviously
attracted to her. Nothing wrong with that.”

Alex smirked, shook his head. “I think this mountain air is clouding your mind, Mother.”

Evy tilted her head and her eyes sent her son a signal of concern. “Whatever secret she’s hiding, son, I want you to take care. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Alex did not react defensively. He said, “I appreciate that, but . . .” And then he assumed an unearned air of self-confidence in the ways of women. “. . . I mean, it’s not like I haven’t had my fair share of
experience
with the opposite sex.”

His mother did her best not to betray her amusement. “I guess a mother doesn’t really know when her little boy has grown up. How many . . . ‘experiences’ . . . are we talking about? One, five, ten . . . ?”

He lifted his chin and blustered along: “You shouldn’t ask questions when you don’t want to hear the answer, Mother.”

“I see. I see. Well, I appreciate you protecting my gentle sensibilities.” She studied his face, trying to look past his bluffing. “Experience is one thing, Alex, but tell me this—have you ever been in love?”

And now the line had been crossed: Alex was clearly uncomfortable continuing this particular conversation with his mother. Still, he could not help but contemplate the subject she’d raised, and his eyes drifted to Lin, still dealing with the supplies.

“I haven’t been in love yet,” Alex admitted, surprisingly frank. “At least, not like you and Dad . . . Look, I gotta go. Lin and I have first watch.”

“Stay alert.”

“Will do.” He started to go, but stopped and turned back to his mother. “Listen—I’m sorry about being such a brat . . . you know, blaming you and Dad for raising the Emperor from the dead and all.”

Evy was quite sure this particular apology had never been made to a mother by a son before.

“That’s quite all right, Alex,” she said. “This specific mummy has managed one feat I didn’t think possible, no matter how many elements he’s the master of.”

“What’s that, Mom?”

She gave him her warmest smile. “He’s brought the three of us together again.”

Alex’s smile in return was immediate and natural and the very same smile he’d been giving his mother since he was a very small child. She had seen it a thousand times, and treasured every one.

He strode off, and Rick came over to her wearing a wary expression.

Craning to look back at his son, he asked Evy, “What was that about?”

“We were just catching up,” she said lightly.

Rick nodded. “How’s he doing?”

“Fairly well, I think. You might go over there and talk to him yourself, and find out . . .”

He glanced over, but Lin and Alex were stacking supplies, laughing together in what was obviously a private moment.

The boy’s father said, “I think he’s a little preoccupied.”

Evy’s mouth twitched in a tiny smile. “He claims he’s not interested in her. Or anyway, not in love with her.”

“I should hope not.” Then her husband’s brow furrowed and he said, “Of course, you made the same claim about me, when we first met. You said you despised me.”

She shrugged. “Fine line between love and hate and, anyway, those were entirely different circumstances.”

He walked her behind a half wall, finding a little privacy, looking at her in the old way; he stroked her cheek, gently, very gently. “As I recall, we were stuck in the middle of nowhere with a rampaging mummy on the loose. Seems like similar circumstances to me. Déjà vu all over again?”

She smiled, and touched his face. “Who knows what will happen after we get to that Gateway tomorrow?”

“You’re right,” he said, and edged closer.

She swallowed and continued, “Mummies being such an unpredictable lot . . .”

“Hmm-hmm. But so are the O’Connells.”

Their lips were centimeters apart.

“Still,” she said softly, “one never knows . . .”

“Knows what?”

“When one . . . when
we
. . . might be spending our last night together.”

“Well, then . . . we better make it memorable.”

And their lips met, the kiss as deep as it had been in the desert when they first triumphed over Imhotep, as passionate as in the hot-air ship over Ahm Shere after their second adventure. They, and their love, were suddenly young again—reanimated without any magical elixir.

Snow battered the half-crumbled edifice, washed in blue-gold moonlight. Seated near the campfire within the mostly roofless structure, Jonathan Carnahan spoke with a companion.

“We all of us have a burden to carry in life,” he said philosophically, “but nobody’s denying that yours is a considerable one. May I call you Geraldine? . . . That was the name of a schoolgirl I once loved, and somehow I think it suits you. I mean, I can’t go around just calling you
‘yak,’
now can I?”

The beast was resting nearby, providing almost as much warmth as the fire.

Jonathan continued: “After all, you’re so much more than just a ‘yak’—in fact, we’re all very proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

A sort of grunting emanated from within the big hairy body.

“Yes, my girl,” he went on, rhapsodizing, “if only I could find a woman with your fine qualities—loyal, hardworking, not prone to prattle on.” He glanced at Geraldine. “I would prefer less hair, but no one can deny you have lovely eyes.”

A nightmarish howl seemed to rend the night itself beyond the crumbling monastery walls—
what the hell kind of creature was
that? he wondered.

The wail echoed in the darkness, like a cry from beyond the grave, and Jonathan, shaken, slipped an arm around Geraldine’s neck and clung to her.

“Is it all right,” he asked her, “if I hold you for a while? I’m sure you’ll find it comforting . . .”

Geraldine had no apparent objection.

In the adjoining chamber, blankets around their shoulders, Alex and Lin had just gotten to their feet. They’d been enjoying the glow of the fire that burned in the center of the foundation, giving nicely dim illumination to every partial-walled room.

And then Alex had heard the ungodly howl that had so startled Jonathan, and stood, and so did Lin, although she claimed not to have noticed the ghastly cry.

Then another roar echoed beyond the half-fallen edifice.

Alex’s eyes were wide as he turned toward the sound. “There it is again! You must have heard it
that
time . . .”

She shrugged. “It’s nothing. Probably just a snow leopard. They are more afraid of us than we are of them.”

Alex thought,
I’m not so sure,
but then changed the subject, standing facing her. “You know something funny? My mother is under the impression that there’s something going on between us.”

Her expression turned incredulous. “Not something
romantic?
How foolish of her.”

Alex was a little hurt by this, but he didn’t show it, as he said, “I told her there was no chance of that.”

“Right. Good.”

“I mean, look at us—we’re complete opposites. You guard tombs, I raid them—what kind of basis for a relationship is that? I like guns, you’re into knives. These are pretty insurmountable odds, after all.”

“Absolutely.”

My God, she was lovely in the glow of that fire, her face going in and out of darkness as the flames flickered . . .

Alex half grinned and said, “Good. Fine. Now that we have that cleared up, we can stay focused. Keep our eyes on the prize.”

“The prize?”

“Taking down the Emperor.”

“Ah. Yes. I could not agree more.”

Silence draped the small room. Shadows from the fire wavered over them. Then he looked right at her.

“I mean, hell,” he said. “You’re not even my type.”

“That’s obvious,” she said. “Why would you want a woman who can knock you on your backside?”

“The current expression is
kick your ass,
and just for the record, you didn’t.”

He’d barely finished that when she threw a wicked right cross at him, which Alex caught, like a firefly he’d grabbed out of the air.

Then he drew her close to him. His face approached hers; her face approached his. The sexual charge between them was something neither could resist, although Lin tried.

She said, “This is a bad idea.”

“Terrible. The worst.”

So he kissed her. And she kissed him back, and there had not been a kiss this passionate, this epic, in a very long time . . .

. . . not since Alex’s father and mother kissed, a few minutes before.

The snow stopped falling but the wind kept blowing it around, so the next morning’s ascent was similarly rugged, Lin and O’Connell leading the party single file up the narrow, snow-covered path, which snaked around the near-vertical face of a gorge.

Finally, Lin gestured and said, quietly, “There . . .”

O’Connell saw it, too, and called back excitedly, “We’ve
found
it!”

They had indeed found the Gateway of Shambhala, or as the awestruck Evy spoke aloud, “The Gateway of Shangri-la.”

A monumental colonnade of stone forged the gap between two mountains, accessible by an ice-encrusted rope suspension bridge.

Within minutes, they were headed across, where on the other side, on the steps and among the columns of the Gateway, O’Connell began to lead his little group in preparation for the ambush of an ancient Chinese Emperor with a contemporary paramilitary force.

Jonathan was excused from these preparations to attend to the yak, feeding her handfuls of shredded wheat biscuits. “Don’t you worry about me, Geraldine—better men have tried to kill your companion than some sorry old red-clay, Chinese mummy. You just stay safe and, if anything should perchance happen to me, you go find yourself a nice young yak to settle down with.”

Geraldine grunted and licked him with a tongue as disgusting as the gesture was affectionate.

In the rocks near the Gateway, O’Connell dropped his weapons trunk and proudly cracked it open, revealing an impressive portable arsenal of revolvers, assorted automatics, a pump twelve-gauge, a Thompson submachine gun and more. He turned to see Alex approach, a trunk of his own over a shoulder.

“Okay, son,” O’Connell said. “The toy box is open—help yourself and tool up . . . just be sure to save a few goodies for your old man.”

Alex half smiled. “Hey, thanks, Dad—but I excavate relics, not use ’em to shoot with. Besides, I have my own box of toys.”

O’Connell’s son cracked open his trunk to display an array of gleaming revolvers and automatics with a shotgun and submachine gun thrown in for good measure, all looking as shiny new as cars on a showroom floor.