John Jos. Miller Wakes the Lion
The night was dark, the ground was cold, and John Fortune had no idea where he was.
Lying on his back, he looked up at a black, star-spangled sky. He seemed to be in the bottom of a shallow gully, hemmed in by rough-hewn rocks and boulders, without a taco stand, road, car, or streetlight in sight. When he held his hands in front of his face, he could barely see his fingers. His chest felt funny, his throat raw. His body hurt all over, as if he’d just run back-to-back-to-back marathons. Even more distressingly, he was totally naked.
He lurched to his feet, wincing in sudden pain as small, sharp stones on the floor of the arroyo dug into the bottoms of his feet. “What happened to my clothes?” he asked aloud.
There came no answer.
He lurched in a circle, dizzy and coughing. He remembered…he remembered the skittering thing crawling under his skin, like a rat burrowing into his body. The fear that had enveloped him. There had been a man, clad in shining white, who’d tried to kill him with a sword…wallah! Fire had danced all around him, and smoke blinded his eyes. Maybe the fire had taken his clothes—but no, that idea was ridiculous. He had no burn marks on skin or flesh.
Finally he remembered—he had run, bursting out of the house into the night. The feeling of freedom had been exhilarating, intoxicating. He had run for hours. How many hours?
How many miles? He did not know. In the end he had collapsed, exhausted. Here.
Wherever here was.
Fortune shivered. He couldn’t just sit here all night. He had to get back to Los Angeles. He was starving. He’d never been so hungry. He needed food, bad. And clothes. He couldn’t sit around butt naked in the middle of nowhere and wait for help. Help of any kind was unlikely to find him. He’d have to seek it out.
And if that thing was still in him, he really needed medical attention.
He remembered that the thing had been scuttling toward his head. Hesitantly, he put his hands on his jaw, gingerly felt his cheeks, up around his ears and across his forehead—where he felt a lump. The thing that had climbed into his body was still in his head.
John Fortune freaked and ran. Or tried to.
He clawed his way up the side of the arroyo, sliding back down several times in a rain of gravel and sand. Once he dislodged a rock near the edge of the dirt bank that would have crushed him if it had landed on him, but somehow, miraculously, it missed when they both tumbled back to the gully’s floor.
Somehow, he dragged himself up out of the arroyo. He glanced around wildly, desperately looking for something, anything that might hold a hope of aid. He was in wild, undeveloped foothills that dropped down to a plain dotted by clumps of stunted evergreens. The ground was sparsely covered by small shrubby bushes, tufts of grass and cactus, which he discovered when he brushed too near one and scratched his left leg from calf to ankle. The sudden pain acted like a pitcher of cold water thrown in his face. He tried to breathe easier. Aided by the light cast by the rising moon, he spotted a dark ribbon of what could be a road, or at least a path or trail of some kind, free of the stones that were tearing up his bare feet.
He started toward it, cautiously but quickly, eager to find some human contact, someone who could tell him what had happened to him and assure him that he’d be all right. …
He was thirsty, and his hunger was so great that his stomach cramped like it did before his monthly blood came. The moon rising above the foothills was gigantic in the night sky. The jackals who laired in the wadis greeted it, howling. Fortune’s head throbbed in rhythm with their cries. The hunger was bad, but he was used to it. He had often gone without food, when that meant that his children could be fed. Not that his sacrifices had helped much in the long run. He had lost them all, one by one. Jamal burning with fever, clutched hopelessly to his breast, nothing to feed him but the salt tears dripping from his cheeks.
The road was more of a dirt track than a highway, but it was smooth and soft on his bruised feet. The jackals didn’t follow him on it, but the flies did. They weren’t as bad as the flies in the marketplace, but they bothered him as they buzzed around his head, whispering, leading him perhaps back to the temple where there was shade and water and blessed rest, and …
What was he thinking?!
These were not his thoughts, these memories of a life he’d never led. Jackals? Children? A temple? John Fortune’s hands rose to his forehead, then dropped down, afraid to touch that thing that had burrowed beneath his skin and climbed to his brain. These weird memories had to be coming from it, athough…they were human memories, and that thing had been…a thing. An amulet-size bug that had been nesting in his mother’s chest of drawers since before he’d been born. A scarab, a beetle, not…not a person!
Fortune wandered down the path, not knowing what to think, not even wanting to think. Sometime later he stumbled upon a hardtop road. This is more like it.
His hopes rose higher when he saw a building settled in one corner of a lonely crossroads, unlit and seemingly deserted. Still, there was at least a chance that it might contain something useful. Some food to soothe his cramping stomach. Some water to cool his burning forehead. Maybe a phone to call his mother. Some clothes. Some goddamn shoes. His feet were killing him.
It was a gas station, existing somewhere in a state between abandoned and decrepit. Its roof sagged badly. The dusty pumps in front of it had not been used for years. The chair by the front door, looking as if it had been used too much over the years, was half off its rocker. It was almost inviting enough to drop onto, but Fortune wasn’t sure if it would hold his weight, and the bamboo lattice seat would probably have been fairly uncomfortable on his bare ass.
The glass-windowed storefront was only slightly less dusty than the disused gasoline pumps. Encouragingly, however, of the three words—GAS FOOD DRINK—etched into its surface, only the word gas had been crudely crossed out by a couple of swatches of duct tape.
The front door was aluminum bars set between sagging screens to keep the flies out. It was locked, though it didn’t look very sturdy. Fortune considered it for a moment, then grabbed the handle and yanked at it with all his strength. A low rumble sounded deep in his throat, surprising him, and his legs, back, and arms knotted from sustained effort, as the door slowly peeled away from its warped wooden frame with complaining metallic screeches. It finally came mostly clear, hanging limply by its hinges. Fortune was breathing heavily when he stepped through the doorway, but he finally felt as if he’d accomplished something, even if the B & E made him feel mildly guilty. Still, he could pay back the storekeeper, once he’d recovered his black Amex card.
Inside it was almost as dusty as out. Fortune could see rows of canned food stacked haphazardly on rickety wooden shelves, along with some loaves of bread, jars of pickles and peanut butter, and packages of cookies and crackers, and—good God—an old-fashioned cooler set against one wall, plugged in and humming away, a soft breeze wafting off it. He couldn’t deny his sudden urge to lean his burning forehead against its metallic coolness.
He slid the cooler open, reached in, and dragged out a bottle of ice cold Coke. On the cooler’s side was a built-in bottle top remover. He popped the lid, put the bottle to his lips, and drained it in a single, long gulp, shuddering as the sugar and caffeine hit his stomach.
He finished the bottle with a satisfied sigh, and noticed for the first time a wooden coatrack with a beat-up pair of bib overalls hanging from it. They looked a little rank and far too large, but Fortune was in no position to be choosy. He pulled them down from the hook and danced his way into them, hopping on the sagging plank floor as he put them on. Fortune felt better. He had clothed himself. More sustenance was within reach. Now, if he could only find some shoes. …
He looked up and saw his face framed by a cracked mirror set in the old wooden coat tree. The thing in the middle of his forehead was like a massive pimple, red and hard and shiny. It looking ugly and freakish.
The fear struck him again like a blow to the face. He panicked, scrabbled at the amulet with grimy fingers. He tried to pry it out of his forehead, but his fingernails were too short to get a grip on i t—though in his blinding fright he scratched himself so badly that blood began to flow.
A knife, he thought. A piece of glass. A strip of metal. Anything to get that thing out of his head.
Fortune’s heart nearly stopped when a car pulled into the store’s rutted dirt parking lot, its headlights gleaming like monstrous eyes through the dirty storefront window. A strange, powerful hand clamped down on his brain, and he began to change.
The metamorphosis should have been painful, but if it was, John was too frightened to notice. His body grew massively. He felt his new overalls rip apart at the seams, as if they’d been made out of paper towels, and he was naked again. But he didn’t really need clothes. He was furry all over, with a thick pelt that shone as he had once shone himself, back when he’d been an ace. He could see a ghostly reflection of his body in the dirty glass window.
A lion. Of all the crazy, impossible things in the world, he had turned into a lion.
No. Not quite. More precisely, he was a lioness…but a lioness a lot bigger than any he’d ever seen at the zoo. And he glowed. He glowed like a beacon in the dark.
That was the only solace he could cling to, all he could think about if he wanted to keep his sanity. Because he no longer had any control over the body that was no longer his. He stared at the car outside, trying to speak, trying to call out—but something would not let him. Something else had taken command of his flesh, something that was growling, twitching its tail angrily, its muscles ready to leap and pounce. Something…or someone. It was furious, he realized, but it was also, underneath it all, very afraid.
Car doors opened and slammed. John heard his name called out. “John! You in there?”
He recognized the voice. It was Bugsy. The massive figure at his side had to be Lohengrin, though he could see little but their outlines because of the headlights glaring in his eyes. The lioness tensed. She leaped, landing atop a rickety wooden shelf, scattering cans of chicken-noodle soup and beanie weanie everywhere. He felt her take a deep breath. Her lungs expanded enormously and a heat kindled in her stomach, burning like a furnace popped on by a pilot light.
“Mein Gott!” Lohengrin shouted. “The lion again!”
The lion let its breath out in a whoosh that engendered a smoky billow of air, but no flame.
Her words brought back shattered memories—his first transformation, in his mother’s house…Lohengrin…the sudden armor and sword…fire, smoke, the scream of an alarm. The house burning down around them. Crashing through a window to escape.
John would have sunk to his knees if he’d had control over his transformed body.
My God, Fortune thought, I’ve got a woman in my head. He had to be certain.
There was a long silence, then,
Isra shook her shaggy head.
Still nothing.
Isra lifted a paw. Lohengrin’s sword had flickered into his hand. He and Bugsy looked at each other. “What do you think?” the German ace asked in accented English. “This time, she is not attacking. That is good, ja?”
“Ja,” Bugsy replied, “I think that it might be all right. John, is that you? Are you…are you all right?” Isra nodded her leonine head.
“John,” Lohengrin said. “I am sorry too.”
“Anyway,” Bugsy said quickly. “I’m sorry it took us so long to find you. Trying to rent a car in the middle of the night is a real bitch, and you were really moving there for awhile. My wasps could hardly keep up…uh…but the question is, where should we take you? Do you need to go to the hospital?”
Isra shook her head angrily, a low grumble sounding deep in her broad chest.
“We could call your mother,” Lohengrin offered.
“No,” Bugsy said, “no, not his mother. Simoon’s mother. Isis. She was the one who wanted him to have the amulet. Let’s take him to her. Maybe she can…fix him or something.”
“Is she a doctor?” Lohengrin asked.
“No, I think she’s a god.”
Lohengrin’s sword disappeared. “I think she wants to go to Isis,” he said. He slid into the driver’s seat. Bugsy took shotgun. “Great,” he announced. “Road trip.”
The sun had been up for some time when they hit the Strip.
They could see the black glass pyramid of the Luxor towering in the clear morning sky a mile down the street to their right. John Fortune could read the utter amazement in Isra’s mind as they moved past hotels and casinos, though her leonine features showed nothing but regal inscrutability. Despite the early hour the street was thick with traffic, and the sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians. Las Vegas is truly the city that never sleeps.
It was difficult to say who was more astounded—Isra, or the crowd on the sidewalks—as the rental convertible slowly cruised down the Strip. Fragments of excited conversation from the onlookers came to them:
“Holy crap, look at the size of that lion!”
“Is it real?”
“Of course it’s real! Whaddya think this is, Disneyland or something?”
“It’s too big to be real! And it’s glowing!”
“Is it dangerous?”
“It’s probably a publicity stunt.”
“That blond guy driving must be Siegfried.”
“Nah. He has tigers.”
“And look! There’s Ralph! Looking good, Ralph!”
“I had no idea he was so young.”
“Wave to the camera, Ralph!”
Bugsy waved enthusiastically, while the big German remained dignified as he drove sedately to the Luxor, muttering, “I am not Siegfried. I am Lohengrin.”
Fortune could feel Isra’s growing excitement as they pulled into the Luxor’s parking lot, passing a giant sphinx, a serene reflecting pool, and rows of obelisks. They stopped in front of the main entrance to the hotel, but none of the valets dared approach. Sekhmet was snorting fire in her excitement, much to the excited approval of the crowd that had gathered to gawk.
The show was only starting. The lioness leaped out of the back of the convertible and padded lightly, eagerly, back and forth, very much as if it was feeding time at the zoo.
It soon did. Half a dozen of the Living Gods filed out of the main entrance to the hotel casino, accompanied by a retinue of fan-bearers, jugglers, acrobats, and other retainers. Led by the beautiful Isis, attended by fan-bearers holding ostrich feathers over her head, by a fat-bellied dwarf whose name Fortune didn’t know, by jokers with the heads of a dog and a hawk. Bringing up the rear, accompanied by their own servants, were two old familiar figures—Thoth, the ibis-headed spokesman of the Living Gods, and ancient Osiris, he who had perished and then come back to life, supposedly. As usual, a cryptic smile wreathed his tight-lipped mouth.
Isis—beautiful, voluptuous, and wearing a gown that was more diaphanous than modest—was receiving most of the attention from the gathered onlookers. Especially when she bowed low gracefully and said, “Hail, Lady Sekhmet! Your coming was foretold by far-seeing Osiris! Long have we awaited your arrival! Enter our abode!”
The onlookers burst into applause as the lioness returned Isis’s bow, as elegantly as four legs would allow her, and followed the colorful procession into the Luxor’s lobby. Bugsy and Lohengrin, exchanging glances, took up the rear. They were a traffic-stopper as they paced slowly, ceremoniously through the cavernous atrium and halted before the elevators. Not only was Isra reluctant to enter them, it seemed that she was too big to get into one even if she’d wanted to.
Isra snarled and some of the onlooking tourists glanced about nervously.
Perhaps the word “cages” did it, or maybe just the mere thought of confinement again. Whatever made Isra relinquish control, there was an unexpected, instantaneous transfiguration, and Fortune found himself standing naked in front of the elevator banks.
Fortunately, the fan-bearers acted with instantaneous aplomb and covered him—almost entirely—before the cameras in the hands of onlooking tourists could go off. All the important figures piled into the elevator, leaving their retinue to entertain the assembled crowd and deliver a spiel about the Pageant of the Living Gods, six days a week, with matinees on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
It was a tight fit inside the elevator, but with John Fortune back as John Fortune and not a monstrous lioness, they made it. Osiris punched the button and they scooted upward to the private penthouse of the Living Gods in the heart of the Luxor pyramid.
“We must have something around here that would fit you,” Isis said, as they entered the living area of a spacious suite. She rattled off some sentences in Arabic to the dog-faced god, who looked to be about Fortune’s size. “Go with Anubis. He can lend some clothes that should fit. When you return, we’ll have refreshments.”
“And answers for my questions?” Fortune asked.
Isis smiled. “Of course.”
Feeling like an idiot, Fortune borrowed the ostrich-feather fans from their bearers and followed Anubis, who seemed friendly enough (if John could accurately read his grinning canine features) but had little English. Fortune was glad to score jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers.
By the time he returned, drinks and snacks had been laid out. Bugsy and Lohengrin were conspicuous by their absence. Only three senior members of the group—Thoth, Osiris, and Isis—were awaiting him.
“Don’t worry about your friends.” Thoth hadn’t changed since the last time John had seen him. His features were birdlike, with a long, sharp beak that gave his words an odd clacking cadence. “We have set them up in their own suite where they can refresh themselves and relax. Much of what we have to say here should stay among family.”
“I’m flattered that you think of me in those terms.” Fortune balanced a plate of pastries dripping with honey in one hand and a tiny cup of coffee loaded to the top with sugar in the other. “I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
Osiris, who had little English, spoke a rapid stream of Arabic. Like Thoth, he was also little changed since Fortune’s last trip to Vegas. He was brown-skinned and thin, lean to the point of emaciation, with a bald head, dark chin beard, and dark, vibrant eyes. He looked like an antediluvian rock star who ate too little and spent way too much time in the sun. Thoth translated his words into precise English, unaccented but for his strange lisp. “We need Sekhmet now more than we ever have. She was meant to be the greatest among our people, our champion and shield against those who would destroy us—but, as you well know, things do not always work out as they should.”
Isis took up the story. “Isra was born in Alexandria, of a family who had for generations worked the docks. The gods certainly work in mysterious ways. Yes, they gave her great powers. But her body, ill-nourished, worn out by childbirth and a life of hard work, could not contain the tremendous energies needed to fuel them. She was forced to…to change, in yet another way. To shrivel onto herself, to go into a deep sleep—until one would come whose body could be her vessel.”
“You.” Thoth nodded his head like a bird pecking for bugs. “You, who should have been an ace, you whose heritage was stripped from you. We beg you, please, to let Sekhmet live through you.”
Fortune swallowed a honeyed date, choking. “As a parasite in my body?”
Thoth shrugged. “Surely, more of a symbiote. She does nothing to harm you.”
“But I don’t want her inside me, controlling me. Why can’t she share your body? Or yours, or his?”
Isis looked sad. “If we could, we would serve her. But we lack your strength.”
Osiris nodded vigorously as Thoth translated his words again. “Surely,” Osiris said, “you have seen the news out of Egypt.”
“Some,” Fortune said. “I’ve been busy.”
“Of course,” Osiris continued. “The whole world has been busy while hundreds of our people have been killed. And without Sekhmet to protect them, it will only get worse. Hundreds of thousands of innocents—men, women, and children—all will die. The Living Gods themselves will pass from this world, starting a new dark age that will cast its shadow across the globe. Sekhmet must return to Egypt.”
“Why can’t she return in your head?” Fortune snapped. “I have my own life—a job. Friends. I’m supposed to go back to college in the fall.”
Isis looked significantly at Thoth and Osiris. “We understand. You are tired. Much strangeness has been thrust upon you. We should talk later, when you have had a chance to rest.”
“Yeah,” Fortune said. “That’s a good idea. I’m really tired. I should call my mom. Let her know that I’m all right. Something will work out, I’m sure of it.”
“Yes.” Thoth didn’t look at him.
“I’ll call Anubis,” Isis said. “He’ll take you to the room we’ve arranged for you.”
“Thanks.” Somehow John couldn’t meet her eyes.
Osiris stopped him as he stood to leave, taking his hand with a devil-may-care glint in his old, glittery eyes, and barked a few sentences in Arabic.
“What did he say?” Fortune asked Thoth.
“He said,” Thoth replied, “that he is not worried. That he knows that you will do the right thing in the end. In visions he has seen you leading a great and powerful army, bloodied but unbeaten, your heart’s desire at your side.”
Anubis was waiting, like a grinning puppy. He had the eyes of a puppy, eager and trusting. Fortune couldn’t look at him either. They left the Living Gods’ quarters and Anubis led him down a corridor to his room, bowed down low to him, and left.
Fortune settled into the comfy chair. He had to call his mother, but later. There was still too much on his mind. He turned on the TV, turned down the sound, and dialed room service to order more food. The channel was CNN. He watched the news flicker by silently as he put in his order for steak sandwiches, fries, and a couple of milkshakes. He couldn’t decide between chocolate and strawberry, so he ordered both as he watched President Kennedy and his hot actress wife receive foreign dignitaries at the White House. When a story about Egypt came on, John turned up the sound.
It was terrible. A bunch of fanatics calling themselves Ikhlas al-Din were killing jokers in Cairo—women and children as well as men. Fortune stared at the horrific images on the screen. He couldn’t believe that no one was protecting these people. That the authorities were allowing this to happen. Something had to be done.
Someone…someone had to do something.
He turned off the television, unable to watch any more. The words Lohengrin had spoken before they’d burned down his mother’s house came back to him. “You must find your destiny,” the German had said. “If God has need of you, and this is the path your honor demands, you must go.” John got up out of the chair and paced around the room. He didn’t know if God needed him, but there was sure as hell a bunch of poor devils in Egypt who did.
The doorbell rang and Fortune called out, “Yeah?”
The door opened. It was his food. A smiling bellboy wheeled it in with a flourish.
“Thanks,” Fortune muttered. He signed for it, and when the bellboy noticed the size of the tip he smiled even further.
“Thank you, sir.”
Fortune didn’t even notice that he left. He took the cover off the dish on the cart. The steak sandwiches and fries looked great and smelled even better, but suddenly his appetite had disappeared. He wanted to do something, but all he could do was pace.
He thought of Kate. How he had spoken about wanting to make a difference. He did. He did want to help people. What he went through to try to regain his ace …
And now. Here was another opportunity.
Most people never got one in their entire lives. So far, he’d had two.
He could take it, or he could go back to being Captain Cruller for the rest of his life.
He flopped down into the comfy chair. He had to think. Kate …
His heart’s desire?
When he closed his eyes, exhaustion took him. Fortune fell asleep.
He woke in the shower.
He didn’t remember getting into bed, sleeping, getting out of bed, undressing, and going into the bathroom. That bothered him.
But then a lot of things had been bothering him lately, and he still felt enough residual weariness to suspect that he hadn’t slept well at all. Given the events of the last couple of days, that was hardly surprising.
He felt for Isra’s presence in his mind, and found her, silent, curled up like a kitten in a dark corner. He still wasn’t sure what to think of her, of what her presence in his life offered him, for good and bad. He pondered as he washed his hair, soap-slick fingers slipping over the amulet that weighed like a stone against his forehead. He was getting into deep waters. Maybe deep enough to close over his head and drown him. John had no illusions about himself. He liked to think that he was reasonably bright, but he knew he was terribly inexperienced in the ways of the world. He had been sheltered and protected all his life, and he suspected that, by nature, he was a little more trusting—all right, naive—than most. He pondered this as he dried himself off, and went back into the bedroom to dress in his borrowed clothing.
But if he could believe in Isra, if he could trust her, she offered him the type of life that he had once tasted, and lost. Not that he regretted the loss of his ace. Not much, anyway. He could have done good with it, but clearly it was out of control. Whether his ace had been inherently unstable or something in Fortune himself had been tacking—training, focus, willpower—he knew that his father had sacrificed his life to save him, and perhaps save the entire world as well.
But that stage of his life was over. Isra was offering him entry onto a new stage. If he could believe her. If he could trust her.
The phone rang. He had a sudden premonition.
“John?”
“Hello, Mom.” He didn’t ask her how she’d managed to track him down. Peregrine had her ways. And her detectives. “Sorry, I meant to call you last night—I mean, last morning, but I guess I fell asleep.”
“Thank God you’re all right.” Peregrine sounded relieved. That was good. “You are all right?”
“Sure, Mom.”
“That’s good.” Solicitous. “Now I won’t feel so bad about killing you.” Not so solicitous.
“Uh—”
“Do you know how worried I’ve been?”
“Yeah, uh—”
“Do you know that you and your idiotic friends burned my house down?”
“Yeah, uh, I’m really sorry—”
“My Emmys melted!”
“Mom,” Fortune said quickly, “I’m, really, really sorry about that. But it couldn’t be helped. It was the lion. She breathes fire, and Lohengrin frightened her—”
“The lion.” Ice cold. This was not good. “I see. I hear, also, that that amulet, that thing, is in your head. I should have thrown it away years ago!”
“Mom.” He took a deep breath. Suddenly it all seemed very clear to him. “Really, this is a great opportunity.”
“You have a thing in your head.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
“How can you be sure that it’s not controlling your brain?”
“What, Isra?”
“If that is its name.”
“Isra’s not an ‘it.’ She’s a woman. An Egyptian woman. And I’d know.”
“How?”
“I’d know,” Fortune repeated firmly. “It’s not as if we don’t have discussions with each other. Arguments, even. It’s not like she’s turned me into some kind of robot or something.”
“John—” Peregrine said, anguish in her voice.
“Listen, Mom, I’m not a kid anymore. I’m grown up. You can’t treat me like a kid, surround me with bodyguards, watch over me twenty-four hours a day.” Again, Lohengrin’s words came unbidden into his mind. “I’ve got to find my own destiny.”
“It’s not your destiny, John. It’s what that creature in your head wants.”
“That’s not true.”
“How do you know? How can you know that?”
“Because,” Fortune said quietly. “I wanted it, too, before I put the amulet on. I’ve always wanted it. I don’t want to work on TV shows, fetching donuts, doing errands. I want to be someone who can do important things. Who can make a difference in the world. Like my father. Like you. You were my age when you fought the Astronomer.”
“That was different.”
“How?” Fortune asked.
“I was in control. I knew what I was doing. You—you’re younger than I was. And maybe that’s my fault. Maybe I did protect you too much. Sheltered you. But you’re my son. I couldn’t stand by and let something awful happen to you. And this…this Isra. We just don’t know what it’s doing to you. Can’t you see that? We have to at least get it checked out. I can be there by seven in the morning. I’ve messengered a credit card and some ID. Just stay put until I get there. We’ll charter a plane and have you at the Jokertown Clinic before we know it. Dr. Finn will be able to help. I know he will.”
Suddenly all of Fortune’s certainty was gone. He couldn’t forget the fear he’d felt when the amulet had burrowed into his body. The feeling of someone else locking him up in his own head, controlling him. It was creepy, and it was frightening.
And Isra would be with him, always. For the rest of my life.
“I don’t know,” he said hollowly.
“I do,” Peregrine said. “Sit tight. I’ll be with you before you know it. You’re my son, and I love you.”
“All right,” John Fortune he said. “I’ll wait.”
It was an interminable wait.
The messenger showed up not too long after Fortune hung up the phone with a package containing fresh clothing, a black Amex card, and a wad of cash. It would be hours before Peregrine could make it up from Hollywood.
Suddenly John couldn’t stand to be confined to the room any longer. He had to get out and do something. Anything.
He wandered down to the casino. There were no clocks there, no night and day. Just color, action, lights, and noise, mindless and buzzing. He got a cup of quarters, fed some into a slot machine and pulled the handle. He watched the wheels buzz around. He got an ankh, a sphinx, a bar, a mummy. He fed in more quarters.
Fortune dug out more quarters from his plastic cup, fed them into the slot, and pulled the handle. “I’ve been wondering where you were.”
“Thanks. That’s real decent of you.” Two mummys. He won a buck. He fished the quarters out of the mouth of the return slot and fed them into the machine again.
know this is hard for you. But think of my people.>
“I didn’t ask for this, you know.” The person at the next machine looked at him, and Fortune realized that he was speaking out loud. He didn’t care.
Fortune shrugged angrily. “Sure. Why not?”
The person at the next machine got up and left.
Fortune paused in his mechanical feeding of the machine. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”
“No,” he whispered.
But Isra knew his mind, and knew that he was really saying yes.
She opened her memories to him, and they slammed into him like an express train. The agony of birth. The ecstasy of holding her baby for the first time. Their lives, difficult and hard, their trials and sorrows, all compressed into a millisecond of time that bit into his brain like a knife. A child dying in her arms, carried to its grave wrapped up in an insufficient cloth shroud. Put in a coffinless grave, the hard clods of dirt raining down upon the tiny corpse.
Fortune was too stunned, too overwhelmed to cry.
Fortune knew he couldn’t, either. And it wasn’t Isra. It was him thinking it.
He put his last quarters into the machine, and for the first time relinquished control willingly. Their hand pulled the handle together, the wheels spun, and five ankhs in a row came up. Sirens started to wail.
Isra was bemused by the flashing lights and the loud sounds the coins made clattering down the shoot and spilling out and onto the carpet, but she knew the flash of silver when she saw it, and she realized what it meant. She grabbed a handful of large plastic cups that were stacked on a nearby counter and filled them with coins.
Behind them, a voice said, smooth as silk, “You’re very lucky.”
It was a woman. She was lithe and sinewy without tautness. Her simple black dress clung to every line of her body like a second skin, her long black hair swept down her back, past her waist, like a living wave. Her face was elfin, but not mischievous. It was queenly, full of a beauty that Isra could have only dreamt of. Her eyes were startling. They were silver, with odd flecks in them, gleaming like stars.
“Yes,” Isra told her. “I am.”
The woman smiled. Her smile was dazzling and promising at the same time. Her strange eyes fastened on Fortune’s and looked deep, as if she were more interested in him, in what he thought, in what he desired, than anything else in the world. She stood so close that their bodies nearly brushed. Isra set down her plastic cups full of coins. The woman smelled like a tropical night. Like languid flowers, musk, and heat.
“What do you plan on doing with your winnings?” the woman asked.
“I plan on putting them to good use.”
“I’m glad to hear it. There are many worthy charities.” She paused. “Just one question. You’re not John Fortune, are you?”
“What makes you say that?” Isra didn’t like this woman. Under her own scent was another, a man’s smell. The woman had been with one, and recently. But there was something else.…
The woman said, “You’re not a man.”
“You read minds?” Isra asked, defensively.
“No. I read men. And you’re not one.” Another smile—warm, seductive. “I am interested in aces. And I find fire-breathing lions fascinating. Lionesses, that is.” Her sensual lips pursed. “I can see that my curiosity is not going to be satisfied.”
“Why should it be?”
“No reason,” she admitted. She turned to go and paused for a final word over a finely turned shoulder. “Take care of yourself.”
Isra watched her go, her snarl unheard amid the buzz of the casino’s background noise.
Isra took a cab to the airport, and paid the driver with coins taken from one of her cups. The Pan American counter was fairly quiet, until she dumped her winnings out all over it.
“Is this enough for a ticket to Cairo?” she asked. “One way.”
The ticket agent, used to the eccentricities of Vegas life, counted out the coins as quickly as he could, but ended up shaking his head. “Sorry. You’re short a couple of hundred.”
She growled her frustration, which alarmed the agent somewhat.
The agent watched, somewhat mystified, as his customer began to talk to himself. “All right,” the young man finally decided. “Wallah. It is in the hands of the Gods.” Then he reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a passport and black Amex card, the kind without a credit limit. “Charge it to this, please. First class.”
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