Empire of Ash: A Passionate Paranormal Romance with Young Adult Appeal (God of Secrets Book 1) Read online

  I ease across the fallen rock, the smell of chalky limestone filling my nose, then stop and reach inside the cavity. Plucking up the bragging flashlight, I direct it into the darkness.

  Thick dust floats about the space as I peer in and trace the arched ceiling, noting the same construction as the stairway, a balancing act of huge limestone blocks. Like its sibling, the stones appear to still be aligned.

  I step into the dusty darkness, my boots shuffling on the dry earth. They don’t exactly echo, but their sound makes it feel as though it’s a fairly large room.

  What did I stumble upon?

  No cobwebs, so it has to have been completely sealed off all these years. I take two, three, four more slow steps studying the dirt floor and limestone block walls to the left and right through the haze. There’s no bones, no ancient dishes or other artifacts. It’s just an empty space.

  My shoulders slump. Why would an empty cavity be hidden behind the stairway wall? It makes no sense.

  I shine my light into the floating dust ahead, and my eyes spot something other than the block wall. I squint and my mouth falls open.

  I suck in a breath making myself cough as my pulse speeds. Tingling erupts in my chest as I stride forward.

  Is this… is it what I think it is?

  Chapter Three

  My lips quiver and I feel moisture well up in my eyes. I’m not this lucky. I’m not.

  I swallow hard.

  Scrolls! Floor to ceiling, as wide as the wall stretches, the ancient wooden shelves brim with them, and I stare, dumbfounded. So much history, committed to ancient texts, lays rolled up, and I can’t wrap my head around it.

  The Terracotta Army in China, the Behistun Inscription in Persia, Olduvai Gorge. These and a handful of other discoveries including the Dead Sea scrolls have created tsunamis in the archeological world. I cut my professional teeth studying every aspect of each of these discoveries in college. They’re what fanned the flames of my passion for all things ancient, ever hotter. But it’s been decades since anything close to the significance of any of those finds has surfaced.

  My legs feel weak, but I force myself to stay standing as I run the beam of my flashlight back and forth over the trove again and again struggling to grasp the magnitude of the find.

  I swipe at a stray tear. Nothing in my life has come easy. Has karma at last seen fit to bless me?

  That thought releases a river of tears, and I draw a hand to my mouth as my chest constricts with emotion. I’ve dreamed of becoming a curator, but this… Am I really this lucky?

  I can’t hold back a soggy chuckle. Luck. Right. Sure. I’m never lucky, but how can I argue with… all this?

  I shake my head as I continue staring through watery eyes. I want to believe, I really do, but…

  At length, I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, resisting the urge to cough, then snort. Great, now my nose’ll keep running. I snicker as I scrounge in my pocket for another Kleenex. So emotional.

  Blowing my nose, I laugh, “Guess I better see if anything’s written on them before counting my chickens.”

  I pull the broken phone out of my pocket hoping the camera still works. Proper protocol stipulates photo documentation before disturbing anything; for while we archeologists might fool you into believing we’re harmless as flies, in fact we’re as destructive as voicing an unpopular opinion in a social forum.

  Archeologists have gotten better at recording a lot more during excavations, but at the end of a dig there’s no arguing that a site has been irreparably changed. Anything not recorded is gone. And that is the very last thing I’ll tolerate with this find… my find.

  Squeezing the Maglite under my arm, I hold up the phone.

  Please work, I beg my imaginary god. Miraculously the flash goes off.

  Yes!

  I capture several wide angles of the fragile wooden shelves brimming with bounty, then divide the probably twenty-foot span into seven close-to-equal parts for close-ups.

  As I step closer a pleasant, aromatic smell fills my nose and I sniff. Woody, earthy… with a hint of dryness.

  “Is that… papyrus?” I wonder aloud.

  It doesn’t have the signature leather, caramel, and dust mixed with sunlight scent that I associate with old parchments. I’ve certainly smelled enough to know. But papyrus? Egyptians used it.

  “Egyptian scrolls in Greece?” I rub my ring, my excitement growing yet more.

  Thoroughly enraptured by the old, seductive scent, I inhale another whiff and can’t suppress a sneeze. I grin as I blow my nose again. Another mystery to solve and I feel giddy.

  As I capture close-ups of each of the six shelves, I do the math, calculating no less than one thousand two-hundred and sixty scrolls. And my legs buckle. The Dead Sea scrolls number close to nine hundred.

  When I finish, I quickly scroll through the picture roll and snicker when I realize I made a punny. Scroll…

  After satisfying myself that I haven’t missed anything, I stow my phone back in my cargo pants and step back, again scanning the trove in disbelief.

  My fingers itch with the need to read just one before I report my find to Jude. Just one. A tiny one perhaps.

  I know I shouldn’t. I’ll probably get in trouble, but it is my find. My sense of right wars with the rebellious streak I’ve been punished for a time or two, okay more than that. The folks at the group home thought they beat it out of me. No, they just taught me to use it stealthily.

  The room’s been securely sealed, judging by the amazing condition the papyrus is in, so it ought to still be flexible enough to open without damaging it. I grin as I realize I’m rationalizing.

  Surely they can’t fire me, not for this. Jude’ll get that stern frowny face, but that’ll be the worst of it.

  My pulse speeds. I play by the rules when on the dig site, but aren’t I owed this? I’ll tell Jude I exercised “professional judgment.”

  The argument makes me snicker again as I set the flashlight down, dig in my pants pocket for the pair of rubber gloves, then pull out a sheet of plastic that I keep folded in the inside pocket of my jacket; I discovered ages ago that kneeling on the plastic helps the knees of my pants last longer, and when you’re on a tight budget, every little bit helps. I pull on the gloves, then spread the plastic out.

  Stepping back, I bite my lip as I gaze across the shelves. Nerves make my stomach feel like a jackhammer is at work. Damn the consequences. I’m about to select a papyrus and read its secrets, and my life will never be the same.

  I blow out a breath and whisper, “Okay, moment of truth.”

  Randomly picking the shelf just below eye level, I step forward and select a scroll in the middle of the top row, then gently grasp the thickness between my thumb and forefinger and ease it out, bringing my other hand up under to support it as it drops into my palm.

  My heart’s pounding and my fingers start to tingle.

  I’m holding a record of history not seen in millennia.

  I freeze, standing there, staring at the thing as my brain sprints, trying to process the craziness of the moment.

  Earth to Pell, Earth to Pell, my inner voice finally brings me back, and I blow out a breath.

  No doubt my tongue’s sticking out—it’s what happens when I concentrate hard—and I take slow baby steps toward the plastic, my hands shaking the whole way. My feet reach the edge of the sheet and I kneel, then ever so gently lay it down in the middle, as if handling dynamite, not that I ever have.

  Pell, you’re such a dork, I tell myself, laughing.

  My face starts to ache because I haven’t stopped smiling.

  “Oh, I need stones,” I say to the walls and chuckle. “Well, there’s certainly no lack of those.”

  I stand, then stride the few paces back to the collapsed wall and glance about the thinning haze of the cistern. I’d been paranoid the roof would collapse on me not twenty minutes before. Whether I’m truly safe or not, danger is the last thing on my mind now. Nothing her
e has changed, but I sure have.

  I can’t help but see it as a picture. The most significant things in life happen in the seemingly ordinary moments. Only looking back do we realize it. I shake my head.

  I bend and select four limestone fragments, then retrace my steps and kneel once more.

  Setting the stones down in a pile, I tug on the wrist of each rubber glove, like a surgeon readying to operate, and reach for the scroll. A fraction of an inch at a time, I ease it open taking care not to stress the fragile material to its breaking point. I forget to breathe.

  A fluttery feeling rises in my stomach the instant I spot familiar Egyptian characters as I continue easing it open. It shouldn’t be a surprise what with the papyrus, but still…

  I rub the silver ring on my finger through the glove. Somehow, in this moment, I feel strangely connected with parents I’ve never met who, according to that note they left with me in the basket on the group home step, were forced to give me up.

  I’ve seen enough crap in life, I understand how circumstances can force your hand. It had to have been a dire situation that forced them to do so. I’m just glad I didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere. I sigh. It would have been nice to share this with them.

  I swallow, hard, then refocus.

  It isn’t a particularly long document, and I have it open and its corners carefully secure in no time. I sniff, then snort as my nose starts running, no sprinting, as I lean over and snap several pictures.

  “Okay, okay, so demanding.” I pull back to my haunches, blow my nose, then lean forward again, finally focusing on the text.

  I taught myself Egyptian hieroglyphs in my formative years as I worked to decode the message on my ring, so I don’t anticipate this will be too difficult. I’ll soon find out.

  A zigzaggy line, the letter n comes first, then the symbol of folded cloth, or the letter s.

  Yes, a folded cloth for s. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make this stuff up. Hieroglyphs don’t have to make sense. I’ve never understood why some symbols represent what they do, but it doesn’t matter, I just memorized them.

  A quail chick comes next for w, then a mouth, that’s r. So the first word, NSWR. Egyptians didn’t use vowels, hence our inability to know how their words are pronounced, so as I put the letters together, the first word is “answer.”

  Emotions well up again making my stomach flutter. I still can’t believe I’m reading ancient history.

  I sniff as my nose starts running again, but I can’t stop, I won’t. My emotions gone amuck caused this out of control nose. Ugh. So annoying.

  The second word starts with a lion, l, then a hand for d, then two flowering reeds for y, so the second word’s “lady.”

  I sniff again, moving on.

  The third word spells “sphinx.”

  That gets my attention, and I lean back.

  “Answer Lady Sphinx?” Okay… I draw out the last word. I’m not sure what I expect, but it’s not that.

  I hunch forward again and continue the time-consuming task of translating. “Often talked of, never seen, ever coming, never been.”

  Is it a prophecy?

  I sniff-snort. Blasted nose.

  The next part reads, “Daily looked for, never here, still approaching, coming near.”

  It’s sounding like a prophecy, but of what?

  My back starts protesting its harsh treatment, but I ignore it. “Thousands for my visit wait…”

  Whose visit would gobs of people wait for?

  “… but alas for their fate…”

  That sounds ominous.

  Waiting. My visit. Alas. I’ve got no clue.

  I sniff as I rub my chin, continuing. “Though they expect me to appear, they will never find me here.”

  These people are waiting in the wrong place…

  What is this?

  My knees start throbbing along with my back, but I’m nearly done, and I persist.

  “What am I?”

  Great question, Sherlock.

  I sit back, my back and nose thanking me and drop my hands in my lap. “What am I?” I frown as my mind whirls, trying to make heads or tails of it all. “The title said ‘answer lady sphinx’.” Yes, I’m still talking to myself.

  I furrow my brow. Sphinxes are mythical creatures. Tales told of one in ancient Thebes terrorizing its citizens by demanding the answer to a riddle taught her by the Muses—what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening? It ate every person who answered incorrectly. Eventually Oedipus gave the right answer: man, who crawls on all fours in infancy, walks on two feet when grown, and leans on a staff in old age. At that, the sphinx killed herself.

  “Answer lady sphinx. Answer lady sphinx.” I wave my arms about, as if that’ll conjure an answer.

  The great sphinx of the Giza plateau is the most famous, but there’s been a host of sphinxes around Egypt since time immemorial. Egyptians believed the creatures protected important places.

  My brain keeps mulling, trying to assemble all the pieces into one coherent picture. It doesn’t come quickly, but at length, inspiration strikes.

  It’s a riddle.

  “Often talked of, never seen, ever coming, never been. Daily looked for, never here, still approaching, coming near. Thousands for my visit wait, but alas, for their fate, though they expect me to appear, they will never find me here. What am I?”

  “Yes,” I shout. Lightness fills my chest as clarity dawns. I become more and more sure of it, especially with “Answer lady sphinx” as the title.

  One sentence remains for me to decipher, the answer to the riddle if I have to guess. I return my attention to the scroll and quickly discern the ancient Egyptian, very long-winded way of saying, “tomorrow.”

  I grin from ear to ear, scanning the trove of scrolls. Do all of these contain riddles? I snort; they’re a regular joke book, if so. Imagine. But whether riddles or something else, this is an unbelievable discovery.

  I throw my head back and laugh because it’s mine. Luck has finally smiled on me.

  Movement out of the corner of my eye interrupts my celebration, and I pivot my head to see a column of dark, swirling smoke coalescing. My heart accelerates.

  Smoke.

  But there’s no flame, and I don’t smell any smoky odor.

  I scan the rest of the room.

  The swirls grow thicker and thicker and…

  I shriek as a man with an olive complexion, perfectly styled, short onyx hair, and five-o’clock scruff lining his jaw, steps out. That, along with his fine, gray-leather duster, tell me he’s trouble.

  Chapter Four

  My heart pounds, and I grab the Maglite as I bolt up.

  Gold eye, silver eye.

  The guy isn’t huge, taller than me for sure, but aren’t most guys? He looks to be in good shape, and there’s no way I’ll best him if he tries something. The light from my headlamp doesn’t reach him so with hands trembling, I shine the flashlight at his face.

  He squeezes his eyes shut and turns his head away. “Do you mind?” His rich baritone voice comes out pissy as he turns palms up in protest making the silver and gold rings decorating the first three fingers on both hands glint in my beam.

  “Who… who are you? Whe… where did you come from? How’d you do that?” I make a circle in the air with my free hand miming the swirl of his smoke trick.

  He clenches his jaw and shakes his head, hands still up.

  I can picture him rolling his eyes under those dark lids, but I don’t care. No way is Mister Duster going to hurt me if I can help it. I brace, moving my feet shoulder distance apart and grip the flashlight more tightly.

  “Would you please stop blinding me with that thing? I’m not going to hurt you.” He’s got an accent. It’s not strong, maybe that’s why I can’t place it.

  “I’m just supposed to believe you?” My pitch rises.

  His muscled abdomen moves with the force of expelled air under the well-fitted, leather vest.<
br />
  Huff all you want, I don’t care.

  If I wasn’t so scared, I might enjoy checking him out further, but I need to find a way out of here while protecting my find. But how? There’s no way I’ll make it up ninety-nine steps before him.

  “You have questions. We can’t very well talk if you don’t lower your light,” he says.

  He hasn’t moved any closer, thank heavens, but my gut isn’t buying his cajoling. Guys dressed like this always mean trouble. Always.

  “You don’t seem to be having a problem talking.” I keep my light trained on him and resist biting my lip.

  Eyes still closed, his scowl morphs into a grin as he lowers his arms and straightens, then shifts his feet apart giving him a confident, wholly masculine look. He probably smells good, too.

  Stop it, Pell, my inner voice pleads.

  A corner of his mouth hitches up, as if he can sense the effect he’s having on me.

  O. Kay, a little too much confidence… a little arrogance even, Mister Cocky Pants. I’ve run into people like him, Irik case in point, and I’m not having it. “You tell me how you got here, and I might consider lowering my light.”

  “Then it seems we are at an impasse. I’m in no rush. I can wait.” I tense as, eyes still closed, he draws his free hand to his jaw and begins tapping a pointer finger against his lips to press his point.

  What is it with guys? He’s as irritating as Irik.

  “Fine, but if you so much as sneeze, I’ll shine it in your face again.”

  “Fine.” His tone turns charming.

  Charming my ass, but I lower the light to his chest.

  I inhale sharply and my heart picks up pace as soon as he opens his eyes. I’m not sure what I expect, but it definitely isn’t this, not in a million years. A pair of alluring oval-shaped eyes, one gold, the other silver, stare back at me.

  He arches one thick, onyx eyebrow and gives me an intense, hawkish glare as I continue staring longer than is polite. I don’t care.

  I can’t look away. All my life, eyes exactly like his have calmed me and given me confidence, but in this moment my thoughts scramble.