The Anubis Plague полностью

The woman roused and blinked awake. Her eyes were striking, even in the dim red lighting. Bernie held her head in his lap with one hand and reached for his radio with the other.

“Don’t,” the woman said. Four sets of footsteps closed in around him. Her face transformed from one of terror to one of joy. She smiled wide and held up Drew’s keycard. “You’ve already done enough.”

“You!” Bernie cried, standing. He backpedaled into a huge individual, bouncing off him as if he were a small child.

Earlier in the day, just as he and Drew had arrived, a woman had careened into them. The younger night guard had taken an elbow to his ribs, growling at the museum visitor in protest. Bernie had quickly stepped in and dissolved the situation to the point of getting the headstrong Drew to apologize for running into her. But now, Bernie could see that it had been all a ruse to steal the guard’s keycard. Whoever these people were, they had then used the card to access the museum unperturbed.

Before Bernie could call for help, someone grabbed him from behind and dragged him around to the other side of the Lion of Knidos. He gazed up at his beloved glass ceiling as something cold and sharp pressed up against his throat. Then, the unidentified assailant yanked the unseen object sideways and dropped Bernie to the floor as he gasped for air.

But none came.

Baahir was surrounded on all sides. The only reason his exact location had yet to be discovered was thanks to the poor lighting inside the hotel’s parking lot. It also helped that he was wearing mostly black clothing. The beam of a high-powered flashlight swung his way. He stooped beneath it and scurried under a truck. Voices called out all around him. The men searching for him were confused. Rahal was the loudest of them all. He angrily chastised the others for losing Baahir.

The Egyptologist stayed put and waited. He’d do so all night if it meant his survival. Footsteps approached his position. Baahir ducked his head down and allowed his dark hair to hide his face. But just as quickly as the light came, it went. As the seconds passed, his hunters grew restless.

Baahir lifted his head and spied a lone individual standing perfectly still some thirty feet away. He had yet to join in the search. Baahir figured that it could only be one man, considering who he was dealing with.

Khaliq Ayad.

Never in his life had Baahir thought he would be in this position. He had never done anything to warrant this kind of attention. Sure, like his mother, he had ruffled a few feathers within the historical community over the years, but besides that, Baahir had been a stand-up guy to everyone he met. His involvement in the golf course dig had been a classic wrong-place-wrong-time scenario. If he had been out of town, or sick, it would have been a coworker running for his or her life and not him.

Lucky me, he thought, spotting Rahal stomping by.

The betrayer was the one leading the charge here. He was screaming at everyone to find Baahir, even going as far as threatening the other men with their lives if they failed. If it were anyone else, Baahir would have laughed the claim off as an empty threat. But this was different. Rahal and his boss weren’t people to be trifled with. Abbas and Ghazzi’s deaths were a perfect example of that. If Agent Rahal was as cold-blooded as recent history would suggest, then a man like Khaliq would surely be just as bad, if not worse, than Satan himself.

Baahir pushed aside the images of his future torture when a set of boots stopped three feet in front of his nose. Luckily for him, the wind was howling through the parking lot. His heavy breaths were masked, but for how long? The man standing before him spoke.

“Anything yet?” It was Rahal.

He received a chorus of disappointing ‘nos.’ Only then did Khaliq move. He marched his way over to Rahal and Baahir’s position. Baahir held his breath and waited to see what would happen.

The thought terrified him. The stories surrounding the Scales of Anubis weren’t heartfelt ones. Everyone involved with them was supposedly violent, obsessive, and manic beyond reasoning.

During Baahir’s extensive research into the group, he discovered an account by one of their followers after capture describing what the leadership supposed. At this point, there was no reason to think that Khaliq didn’t believe the same. The family alleged themselves to be blood relatives — descendants — of Anubis. The organization functioned as if they were the death god’s real-life scales of justice, weighing the hearts of mankind against Ma’at, truth. From what Baahir knew, the Scales of Anubis found everyone who opposed them and their mission to have “heavy hearts” and therefore be unworthy of entering Duat, the underworld.

And Baahir was the next to be judged.