aside to get at me. Now he’d produced a pistol, his face twisted with rage and loathing. I threw myself back against the shelves just as the gun went off, feeling the wind of the bullet as it sped past. It hit one of his noxious glass jars at the end of the room and the vessel shattered. Liquid splashed onto the floor by the balcony and something hideous and pale went skittering. A poisonous smell arose, a stench of combustible fumes, to mix with the smell of gunpowder.
“Damn you!” He fumbled to reload.
And then old Ben came to my aid. “Energy and persistence conquer all,” I remembered again. Energy!
Astiza was under the table, creeping toward Silano. I took off my coat and threw it at him for distraction, and then tore off my shirt.
The count looked at me as if I were a lunatic, but I needed bare, dry skin. There’s nothing better for creating friction. I took two steps and dove forward toward the jar that had broken, hitting the wood carpet like a swimmer and skidding on my torso, gritting my teeth against the burn. Electricity, you see, is generated by friction, and the salt in our blood turns us into temporary batteries. As I slid to the end of the room, I had a charge.
The broken jar had a metal base. As I slid I thrust out my arm and extended my finger like Michelangelo’s God reaching toward Adam.
And when I came near, the energy I’d stored leapt, with a jolt, toward the metal.
There was a spark, and the room exploded.
The fumes of Silano’s witch’s brew became a fireball, shooting over my cringing body and ballooning toward the count, Astiza, and down toward the carts, coaches, and boxes below where the preservative had dripped. The puff of the blast threw the table’s papers up in a whirlwind, singeing some, while below me the storage area caught fire. I struggled up, my hair singed and both sides burning—one from the scrape of the sword and the other from my slide on the carpet—and eyed my rifle. There was preservative on my remaining clothes, and I swatted out a puff of flame on my breeches. A dim, smoky haze filled the room. Silano, I saw, had fallen, but now he too was struggling upward, looking dazed but groping again for his t h e
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pistol. Then Astiza rose behind him and wrapped something around his neck.
It was the linen wrapping from Omar!
I crawled toward my gun.
Silano, writhing, lifted her off her feet but she hung grimly on his back. As they clumsily danced the hideous mummy bounced with them, a bizarre ménage à trois. I got to my gun and snapped a shot, but there was just a dry click.
“Ethan, hurry!”
The powder horn and shot bag were there, so I began to load, cursing a rifle’s laborious ramming for the first time.
Measure, pour, wadding, ball. My hand was trembling. Astiza and Silano spun by me. The count was turning red from her choking but he had her hair and was twisting to get at her. Starter ram, now the hammering with the longer one . . . damn! The pair had crashed against the balcony railing, breaking part of it free. Fire rose below.
The attached mummy continued its dance. The count twisted Astiza to his front, shielding himself as he eyed my rifle and struggled to lift his pistol clear. Smoke thickened against the ceiling. My one shot had to be perfect! He’d pulled the wrappings off his own throat and was tightening them on hers. He lifted his gun.
I threw out the ramrod, put a pinch of powder in the pan, my barrel coming up, Silano firing but his aim spoiled by Astiza, whom he twisted to hurl into the flames, just enough to expose his neck as they strained . . .
“He’s going to burn me!”
I fired.
The ball hit his throat.
His scream was a bloody gargle. His eyes went wide in shock and pain.
And then he smashed through the balcony railing and down into the flames below, taking my woman with him.
“Astiza!”
It was the plunge from the balloon all over again. She gave a cry and was gone.
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I ran to the end of the study and peered down, expecting to see her in flames. But no, the mummy had snagged on one of the broken balustrades, its rib cage and dried muscles still tight after millennia.
Astiza was hanging by its linen wrappings, her feet kicking above the hot fire.
Count Silano had disappeared into the holocaust, writhing on the makeshift pyre. The book was at his breast.
To hell with the cursed book!
I grasped the bandages, hauled, got her arm, and pulled her up. I wasn’t going to let her drop with Silano again! As I dragged her across the lip of the balcony Omar broke free and fell, turning into a torch as his linens caught the flames. He banged down to burn with his master. I looked. His broken limbs were moving, as in agony! Was he somehow still alive? Or was it a trick of the heat?
He’d not been a curse but a savior. Thoth had smiled on us after all.
And the book? As Silano’s clothes burned away, I could see the scroll curling on his dissolving chest. The flames were growing hotter as the count’s flesh bubbled, and I backed away.
Astiza and I clung. There were church bells, shouts, a clatter of heavy wagons. The Paris fire brigade would be here soon. By the time they arrived, the secrets men had coveted for thousands of years would have turned to ash.
“Can you walk?” I asked her. “We don’t have much time. We have to flee.”
“The book!”
“It’s gone with Silano.”
She was weeping. For what, I wasn’t sure.
Below, I heard the carriage doors being opened and water pumped.
We slowly limped to the door we’d entered by, bloody and singed, stepping over a mess of glass, fluid, bone, books, and ruined papers.
The hall was smoky. For a moment I hoped the fire would push any pursuers away until we could make our escape.
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But no, a platoon of sentries was pounding down the hall.
“That’s him! That’s the one!” It was an annoyingly familiar voice I hadn’t heard for a year and a half. “He owes me rent!” Madame Durrell! My former landlady in Paris, who I fled in unseemly circumstances, had been the red-haired mystery woman who’d haunted the periphery of my vision since I’d returned to Paris.
She’d never been a believer in my character and at our parting had accused me of attempted rape. I’d deny it, but really, all you had to do is look at her. The pyramids are younger than Madame Durrell, and in better shape, too.
“Am I never to be free of you?” I groaned.
“You will when you pay what you owe me!”
“Creditors have better memories than debtors,” Ben liked to say.
From experience, I knew he was right. “And you’ve been following me like one of Fouché’s secret policemen?”
“I spied you in the prison wagon, where you belonged, but I knew you’d be out somehow, and up to no good! Oui, I kept an eye on Temple Prison, let me assure you! When I saw you enter the palace with that corrupt jailer I ran for help. Count Silano himself said he would confront you! Yet by the time I get back here the whole place is in flames!” She turned to the soldiers. “This is typical of the American. He lives like a wilderness savage. Try getting him to pay you!” I sighed. “Madame Durrell, I’m afraid I’ve lost everything once again. I cannot pay you, no matter how many policemen you have.” She squinted. “What about that gun there? Isn’t that the one you stole from my apartment, the one you tried to shoot me with?”
“I did not steal it, it was mine, and I shot the lock, not at you. It’s not even the same . . .” But Astiza put her hand on my arm and I looked past my old landlady. Bonaparte was coming down the corridor with a cluster of generals and aides. His gray eyes were ice, his features stormy. The last time I’d seen him that angry was when he’d heard of Josephine’s infidelities and annihilated the Mamelukes at the Battle of the Pyramids.