Ten for Dying

Prologue

At the deadest hour of a warm summer night, the door to the mausoleum behind the Church of the Holy Apostles opened with a creak resembling the short cry of a sleeper disturbed by a nightmare.

The door closed, barely stirring the humid air in which the sharp odor of incense overpowered the faint, fading perfume of flowers left to wither at the base of the sides of the sarcophagus. Again the brooding silence was broken, this time by the throaty croaking of frogs and the shuffle of feet across the moon-washed marble floor.

A pause. Then a babble in a strange tongue emanated from the deep shadows, gathered like death at the head of the sarcophagus.

“Beloved wife of Petrus Sabbatius, I summon you back from the hall of judgment! Return from the embrace of Anubis, god of the dead! As the sacred scarab brings forth the sun from night each morning, I command you with words of power to come back from the darkness!”

A hand, small as a child’s, leathery as an old man’s, laid a carved scarab inside one of the olive wreathes carved into the reddish Sardian sandstone lid of the tomb.

“Hear the song of frogs, sacred to Heqt, giver of life to the returned dead! When I name you, you will answer and obey me!”

The diminutive speaker paused, turned, and listened.

Was that a noise outside?

Was his magickal ceremony working?

Would the door swing open and his former employer glide into the chamber rather than materializing next to her tomb?

There was no sound but the croaking of the frogs.

What if she did not appear?

What if he was caught desecrating a holy place?

He laid trembling hands on the sarcophagus, bent forward to whisper in the ear of its occupant, and continued in desperate tones.

“I summon you! You must return!”

Another pause.

“I served you well and now I need your protection,” he pleaded.

There! A noise outside!

She had obeyed his summons. Or was he discovered?

The thought took him to a narrow window. In his haste he trod on one of dozens of frogs hopping everywhere. His foot slid and he clamped a hand on the windowsill to keep himself from falling.

Moonlight turned the gnarled hand to unpainted marble.

He pulled himself up, standing on tiptoe to see outside.

The cry of horror he could not stifle reverberated around the mausoleum.

What had he done? What dreadful gates had he inadvertently opened?

Two figures, one clutching an object as pale as the uncaring moon to its chest, loped away from the illuminated doorway at the back of the church.

Demons!