Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) (35 page)

Ever.

Ella’s original
plan had called for Halima to leave a horse for her by the eastern
gate—but the plan had also called for Horus to be dead or disabled by
this time, too. When Ella slipped into the hallway outside her room, she was
relieved to see that the hallway was vacant. Candle sconces lit the hallway and
cast eerie, moving shadows along her path. As heavy as she was, she moved
silently and swiftly to the spiral stone stairs in the western tower that would
lead her to the gardens and then beyond to the outer gate where the horse
awaited her.

She didn’t know
where Horus went when he wasn’t standing guard outside her room. She knew he never
went far. When she reached the stairs, she stood for a moment, trying to hear
over the pounding of her heart and her labored breathing. She heard a few
voices of servants laughing and talking but they were coming from outside in
the courtyard—opposite the garden. If she had any luck at all, they would
all give her and the doctor enough privacy not to discover her gone until
morning.

She raced down
the steps and burst out into the garden without stopping to look to see if
there might be someone there believing it unlikely that anyone would be
strolling in the darkened garden at this time of night. Ella knew the narrow
path through the garden well. It wound laboriously through the topiary and the hedges
to the other side and to freedom. She started to run, one hand cradling her
stomach to reduce the jostling caused by the pounding of her feet against the
hard dirt pathway.

There was a
crescent moon tonight. Enough light to see but still dark enough to cloak her. She
hadn’t planned it this way and was grateful. The air was fragrant with the
scent of orange blossoms from the many trees in the garden and the air was warm
on her bare skin, unusual for this time of night. She hurried along the path,
twisting and turning as it did through the flowers and hedges. The doctor had
taken pains to create a European Eden in the desert. Until this moment, she had
loved the little garden. When she reached the far gate, she slipped easily through
the wide bars of the grate covering it, knowing it was more for ornamentation
than security. As soon as she did, she saw the pony, saddled and waiting for
her.

He stood quietly
in the moonlight, his reins tied to the hinge of the gate. He shook his head at
her approach and she heard the faint sound of the little bells that festooned
his bridle. Her first thought when she saw him—even before she registered
the relief that he represented to her—was of the love and care of Halima,
who had stolen and led that little pony with so much hope in her heart that it might
help Ella—when what she really believed was that it was all hopeless
folly. As Ella reached the pony, she saw the saddlebag full of food and water.
As always, Halima knew how to take care of her better than she did herself.

She tugged the
reins free from the gate and looped them over the animal’s neck and positioned
her toe in the stirrup hoping she had enough strength to haul both her and
Tater up and into the saddle. Before she could, her eye caught a movement over
the pony’s back. Like a bad movie with an inescapable ending, Ella watched the
darkness move and shift to encompass the man standing in the shadows watching
her. She knew it was him. Somehow in the back of her mind she had known all
along it would be.
 

 
Horus emerged into the light cast by the
moon. His broad face was glistening in the warm night. His teeth bared in a hungry
grin.

Chapter
Twenty-three

For a moment,
they just stared at each other. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, his
words impossible to understand.

But his intention monstrously clear.

Ella didn’t move.
She stood with the pony between them and watched the eunuch approach. He was well
over six foot four. His chest was broad—naked and greased as usual—and
she could see the hard ridges across it of scars of old knife wounds that had
enraged but hadn’t killed. The tattoo inside her sleeve seemed to tingle. She
relaxed her hand and let the small knife inch down closer to her hand.

Horus pushed the
rump of the pony aside and the animal shied and galloped into the desert.

A sudden terrible
thought seized Ella.

Had Horus met Halima with the pony? Is that how he knew she
would be here? Had he killed Halima?
A
trickle of sweat tickled between her breasts but she didn’t take her eyes off
the man in front of her or betray her thoughts.
One thing was certain
, she thought,
it was too late for flattery.

“What did you do
with Halima?” Ella said, her hand nervously rubbing her stomach. At the mention
of
Halima
, the hulk grinned.

“Halima,” he
said, moving to within an arm’s length of Ella. He drew a finger across his
throat.

Anger overwhelmed
her.
If this bastard killed her beloved
friend as he was trying to kill her baby and forever keep her from being with
Rowan…

She fought for
control. She couldn’t react out of anger or even fear. She needed to think.
This beast couldn’t be stopped like a normal man. Her small pocketknife would
be useless against him, just two or three more shallow wounds across that
impermeable chest. Worse, her desperate attempts to save herself with the small
knife probably wouldn’t even register with a mark that lasted longer than a week.

What could she do that maddened cuckolds and enraged fathers
had failed to do?

She took a breath
and a step toward him. The action stopped him and his mouth stretched into a
smile. He spoke to her again and this time she nodded, not understanding him but
not caring.

Horus pointed to
her swollen abdomen and spoke again. Ella had the ludicrous notion that the
monster was
explaining
why he was
about to do what he intended to do.

Fighting every
instinct that told her to wrap her arms around her midsection—or
run—Ella flung her arms out wide in an invitation to embrace. She didn’t
expect him to take her up on it. Horus didn’t strike her as the hugging type,
but her message would at least be received: she was not going to resist him.
She held the position of her arms outstretched even as she watched him unsheathe
his short sword and heft its weight in his hands. It was not impossible to
believe that he might want to have sex with a woman with no arms and that
thought made her arms waver a bit but she did not drop them to her sides.

 
It was this or
nothing.

She had already
killed a man for no other reason than that he stood between her and the door.
Ella was sure now that the doctor had already been incapacitated and there had
been no need for the second application of poison which killed him. She forced
herself to stop thinking and to ignore her instincts.

Be a machine,
she said to herself as she smiled at Horus.
No
matter what he does, don’t react. Be a machine.

Horus touched his
sword to Ella’s abdomen. She fought down the sudden panic, reminding herself that
whatever he intended to do to her, he couldn’t leave a mark or the Shah would
kill him.
 
He was toying with her.
He wouldn’t cut her.

At least not where it would show.

She lowered her
arms and beckoned him closer, hoping her smile looked inviting to him and not
insane.

He moved the
point of his sword away from her but did not sheath it. Instead, he tugged at
the front of his baggy haram pants to reveal his erect member. As Ella’s eyes
went to his throbbing, engorged staff—marbled and veined—she felt
suddenly cold.
Be a machine.

She stood her
ground as he lunged at her. She felt his punishing hands on her arms and allowed
him to throw her to the ground. The irregular kernels of gravel cut into her
knees through her tunic. One meaty hand clamped down on the back of her neck
and forced her to stay on her knees. He knelt behind her, using his sword hand
against the back of her head to keep her immobilized while with the other he
began to tear her tunic from her body.

That was the
moment she felt a small needle of hope.

Ella had only
taken one basic health class in college and that had been a long time ago but
the textbook’s colored photo of the human body—with the exact placement
of the femoral artery—had remained vivid in her mind. As Horus tore at
her gown, his arrogance and lust blinding him to any resistance on her
part—and she was careful to give none—Ella flexed her wrist to
allow the small, sharp knife fall into her hand. The point of the blade pierced
her palm but she didn’t care, nor did she register how slippery her blood made
her grip on the handle now in her grasp. She called up a picture in her mind of
where the artery must be across the top of his thigh, and then, forcing herself
to ignore how close he was to actually penetrating her, she poised the tip of
the blade on his left thigh and plunged it straight in with all her strength.

Horus gave a
grunt of surprise and she felt him loosen his hold on her for just a moment but
it was enough. She scrambled out from under him, leaving half her torn tunic in
his grasping hands. Even in the half moonlight, she could see the ground was
already becoming wet with his blood. The stunned look on his face as he looked
down at the small fountain of gore gushing from his thigh gave her another
second to do what he would never have expected any of his victims to do: she
wrenched his sword from his hand.

She rested the
heavy hilt of the weapon on her pregnant belly to get a better grip. Their eyes
met and she took a step toward him as he sank into a weak, seated position in
the puddle of his own blood. “Hey, dipshit,” she said, pointing the sword at
him. “I want you to remember me for the two seconds you have left before you
bleed out.” He looked at her, his face a mask of confusion and pain. “Better
yet,” she said fiercely. “Remember
Halima
.”

 
          
At
the mention of Halima’ name, he groaned and slowly lowered his shoulders to the
ground.

           
Ella
waited until his breathing had stopped and his eyes no longer blinked. Then she
tossed down his sword and turned in the direction the pony had gone.

This time, she
knew which direction to go. With Horus and Zimmerman both dead, she wasn’t sure
who there was yet to come after her—except for the Shah. And not knowing
his resources, she wasn’t about to go back to the palace and just hope he wouldn’t
try to take her.

The night turned
quickly cold but Ella was grateful for the relief from the sun.

If I can only have two prayers, do I pray that Halima lives
or that I find the pony?
She touched the long series of incantations tattooed on her arm and decided to
pray for both. She walked slowly, not wanting to jar the baby any more than was
necessary, and felt herself listing from side to side as she moved, like a
tubby penguin trudging over the sands. With every dune she came to, she focused
on seeing the pony at the crest and with every disappointment, she allowed
herself to run down the other side before she came upon another dune and then
she did it all over again.

She tried to
imagine how far the little horse would run in its panic. Ella had experience
with horses. She had ridden competitively as a teenager. Once she’d been
unseated in a big pasture near the house her father and stepmother had rented
in Cumming, Georgia. Her horse, an older model with a barn fixation, had bolted
for the barn at full speed after being badly startled by an inquisitive
butterfly who came too close for the animal’s comfort. Well, it was hard to say
exactly
what
had frightened the
horse. But the point was when he shied and dumped her in the pasture, he didn’t
stop running until he was back at the barn. Unfortunately, the experience was
unhelpful at the moment. This pony had bolted in the
opposite
direction of his stable so there was no easy guess when or
where he might stop.

The longer Ella
walked, the calmer and more purposeful she became. She had no control over
whether or not Horus had hurt Halima. She had no control over whether or not
she found the pony. She had no control over whether or not the Shah would send
men out looking for her in the desert. The only thing she could do to save
herself and her baby, she was doing. So she put one foot in front of the other
and focused on Rowan’s face and the feel of his arms tight around her. She
pictured his laughing brown eyes and the way he ran his fingers through his
hair when he was thinking. She called to mind the way he looked when he wanted
her. And she let that image draw her deeper and deeper into the desert over one
dune and down another.

Just before dawn
she found the pony. He stood at the top of a high dune as if waiting for her.
He stood quietly until she reached him. When she grabbed his bridle, she
realized that she had been only seconds from collapsing in an exhausted heap on
the sand. With trembling legs, she positioned her foot in his stirrup and
managed to haul herself up into the saddle. She reached into the saddlebag to
pull out a small goatskin of water but her fingers felt something small and
hard and when she withdrew the object, she was again overwhelmed with the
feeling of Halima and her loving care. It was a compass.

Ella drank deeply
from the water bag before checking the compass and turning the pony’s head
north. The morning got quickly hot and Ella regretted that she had spent the
long cool night on foot.
Now
was when
she should be resting somewhere. If she could just make it through the long sizzling
day—without being recaptured or expiring in the heat—she would use
the night to travel faster. She stopped at midday and created a water bowl out
of part of the pony’s saddlebag. She knew it wouldn’t do her any good to kill
another horse—not when her life depended on him living. She let him drink
as much as he would, which left her with less than half a cup of water for
herself for the rest of the journey.

It would have to
do.

She rested for a
quarter of an hour and then fear that the Shah’s men were right behind
her—and a new, insistent ache in her abdomen that hadn’t been there
before—made her press on. She walked the rest of the afternoon. Ella
longed to soak the hem of her tunic in what water she had left and press it to
her face and neck but she knew she didn’t dare. She had stopped sweating hours
ago and that scared her. Just before sunset, she wet her lips with the water,
forcing herself to take only a few sips. She was so exhausted, and her stomach
so badly cramping, she had no idea of how she was going to utilize the cooler evening
to go faster. Plus, the pony, for all that she’d given him nearly her last bit
of water, was fading. With every step he took, she was terrified he would
buckle beneath her at any moment.

Once the heat of
the day was finally behind her, she only had to deal with her intense
weariness, her growing easiness about the baby’s nearly constant movements…

…and the
relentless thirst.

When the time
came to take advantage of the lack of blistering heat, Ella realized she no
longer had the strength to go on. Nor did the pony. The very idea of trotting the
poor animal after the day he had endured was ludicrous. He was nearly done and
so was she. Just before the darkest part of the night, somewhere around
midnight, she stopped him and slipped out of the saddle to the sandy ground. He
wandered away, his nose down as if looking for grass or anything to nibble. She
had eaten all the goat jerky and the dried raisins she’d found in the saddlebag
hours earlier.

And now it was
time to rest and to know she had done her best. She had done everything she
could possibly do, including murder, to save herself and her baby. She pulled
the tattered remnant of her tunic up around her shoulders and shivered in the
desert night and watched the pony move further and further from her.

She held her
stomach with both hands and murmured to her unborn child, telling him stories
about his father, about America, about all the things he would never live to
see or do. And she told him how much she loved him and would always love him.
She touched the tattoo on her arm and thought of Halima and when she did she
smiled and her eyes lifted from the sand, the endless sand, and saw the final
apparition as it moved toward her across the desert.

Two men on
horseback. Either the Shah’s men or a dream. And which ever it was, the sight
of it brought her an immense sense of peace because she knew it meant, one way
or the other, the trial was over. She watched with interest and a muted sense
of wellbeing as the horsemen approached. And it wasn’t until she saw one figure
dismount and run to her pony that the thought crept into her consciousness that
it might
not
be a dream. Tater was
kicking her so hard in the ribs, she had to get on her knees to be free of him.
And that was when she saw the figure was a man and he was running toward her.