Disclaimers: I don't own the characters from Relic Hunter and make no money from my fiction writing - please do no reproduce without my permission.

NB – this, as is obvious from the title, is the sequel to my first Relic Hunter fanfic, 'Lovers of Legend'. It should make sense without reading the first one, but it might help to do so. There's a revised/improved edition of the first one going up on the 'Going Hunting' website - see my profile for URL. This is also the story I am writing for this years Nanowrimo - the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a single month. I am posting a slightly edited version!

Dedication: for Ivoryrose, Aryea and Tanya Reed. Thanks :)

Lovers of Legend II: The Curse of Cleopatra's Needle

by Katy

CHAPTER ONE: FROM BAD TO WORSE.

Nigel Bailey took a large gulp of piping hot coffee and decided he couldn't believe his bad luck. He'd done everything possible to avoid this occurrence since he'd been back in London. But it had happened, all the same.

Preston had found him.

To make matters worse, he had been scuppered in one of the few places he'd though he'd be safe. Nigel had found for himself a particularly cosy corner towards the back of the manuscripts room of the British Library. It was concealed behind an enormous oak book-cabinet, so old and ornate that it had surely come from the library of George III himself.

There was another good reason, besides avoiding Preston, that Nigel had chosen this particularly corner. He had, that morning, committed the first cardinal sin of any research student by entering the sacred vestibule of the library with his mobile phone on! It was on 'silent vibrate' rather than 'ring-tone' – still bad, but just about forgivable. But there was no way he was going to cut himself off from the world at just the time when the east coast of the U.S.A was waking up. He was waiting for a phone-call from Sydney, and the answer to a message he'd left for her late last night, after he'd made a stunning research breakthrough. He was sure he'd found the clue they needed to begin what could be their more exciting hunt ever – the hunt for the legendary and long-believed lost real Cleopatra's Needle!

But that was not why he was so desperate to hear from Sydney. This was the call that would make him feel better; the call that would reassure him that everything was alright between them. He needed that, particularly after he'd left Trinity in such a hurry and with such cold, bitter words.

But the call had not yet come and Nigel, increasingly despondent, had not moved for hours. Indeed, he had been drowning his sorrows in the hundred-year-old papers of Boris Dostoyevsky, the Russian Egyptologist – or 'Grave Robber', as the less forgiving revisionists would have it. And then Preston, with his big, beaky nose – a feature that Nigel had despised from an early age – had sniffed him out. Nigel had nearly ripped a Papyrus from the 5th century B.C. clean in two when his elder brother mooched around the corner.

Of course, it did no good staying there after that. Preston, with his usual air of patronizing joviality – had started demanding 'what was he doing there', 'why hadn't he told him he was in town' and, of course, 'where was Sydney?' The elder brother articulated it all in such a loud, stagy whisper that the whole room of scholars, family historians and flu-ridden students had began rustling their papers, coughing and generally peeping and grumbling in the direction of the large wooden bookcase.

Nigel had had no choice but to leave, blushing deep scarlet beneath an embarrassed smile. He soon found himself ordering two cappuccinos and a pair of burnt and slightly oily tasting chocolate chip cookies from the Library coffee bar.

Things were going from bad to worse. The too-hot coffee had already scorched his tongue - and the tight bastard hadn't even offered to pay the exorbitant bill! Most horrifically of all, the idiot was now talking: spewing forth a superficially amiable yet disquietingly probing stream of inquiries.

'What on earth are you doing here Podge? I mean, this is ridiculous. I thought you were supposed to work in the glamourous old US of A, but you can't seem to stay away! I read in the newspapers that you and the lovely Professor Fox foiled some pan-European art-and-antiques dealing racket six months ago, and you never even told me you were over! You do have a home here, Nigel. You could at least drop in…where are you staying now? And where is she? Don't tell me you're actually alone this time? She hasn't fired you, has she? Come on, Nige…do tell!'

Nigel glowered wearily at his brother, and then stared desperately down at his neat black mobile-phone. Switching on the ring-tone to its loudest setting, he had laid it deliberately on the table in front of him.

'Now would be a really good time to call, Syd,' he thought. But this time Professor Fox did not come to his rescue. The phone remained incriminatingly inanimate and silent.

Nigel took a deep breath: 'If you must know Preston, yes, I'm in London alone, and I didn't call because I thought…well, I thought you'd be busy.'

Preston's blue eyes widened with mock concern. 'I'm never too busy to know how you're getting on. Last time you were in London, you got kidnapped, beaten up – heaven knows what! And I had to read about it in the newspaper after the event. Really, Nigel – I would have thought you'd have a little more time for you older brother.'

Nigel just gawped at him for a second. Preston was attired in a dapper three-piece suit, in a becomingly tweedy shade of light brown. As so often, he made Nigel feel kind of small and scruffy, second rate even, dressed as he was in some smart-ish grey slacks and a thick, blue woolly jumper. And now the bastard had the gall to suggest that he, Nigel, was neglecting his brotherly duties.

Nigel could feel his nerves buzzing, his stomach tightening – but he took another deep breath, and did his best to smother the burgeoning flames. He didn't have time to reopen old wounds right now – besides, he'd long decided that talking to Preston would never be the way to heal them.

'I replied to you emails,' he muttered.

'Yes – and with such lengthy eloquence!'

Preston laughed and Nigel, more through gratitude, laughed too. Maybe this wasn't going to be the worst sort of grilling. They could finish their coffee, shake hands, and get out of there…

'So where is Sydney? On a hunt without you? I got the impression she didn't let you out of her sight.'

'No such luck', thought Nigel – and he realized he wasn't going to escape without at least spilling a few of those troublesome beans.

'Sydney's back at Trinity University, I think. She could have gone on a hunt, I know she went on one the week-before-last. I'm expecting a call.'

'She hasn't…she didn't…?'

'No Preston! She didn't fire me! I just, well…I got sick and tired of never having time to finish my research! I'd been her TA for nearly four years and I still hadn't finished my doctorate. I've been entitled to three months study leave to finish my thesis ever since I got there…and so I took it. Is that a sufficient answer?'

Preston narrowed his eyes suspiciously – and Nigel immediately knew he was rumbled. 'No, it's not sufficient,' he chortled. 'You just said you'd been entitled to study-leave for four years. Why take it now?'

'Um...well…'

'Haha! Um? Now we're getting somewhere! You two have had a ding-dong, haven't you? A little lover's tiff!'

Nigel felt the blood rush to his cheeks and cursing his body for betraying him even further. Preston's smug little smile made him feel nauseous. How did he know? How did he know???

'We're not lovers,' muttered Nigel. 'I thought that was blatantly obvious.'

Preston shrugged. 'Maybe. But you've been in love with her for ages, haven't you? What happened? Did you finally get into her knickers and think you'd found eternal bliss only to discover you were just another notch on her bedpost?'

That was enough! Nigel wasn't staying here a moment longer. He jumped to his feet, scarcely caring when the chair flew back with a clang, attracting the attention of practically everyone else in the coffee bar.

'I'm not sitting here and listening to you abusing my…my employer and a woman I respect very much as a friend.'

Nigel winced at his own words. How trite and pathetic they sounded – and how typical of bloody Preston, usually as emotionally blind as a Combine Harvester, to be so damned perceptive about the one relationship in his life whose recent floundering had cut him to the quick.

'Sorry,' protested Preston. 'But, look Podge, maybe this is for the best. You do need to get that bloody PhD under your belt before you turn 30. It was starting to be a bit embarrassing when people asked after you: 'What's Nigel doing? Still a Masters student?' You know, everyone expected so much of you and I reckon Mum and Dad would be very proud you've finally got your act together after all that faffing around chasing relics…hold on, Nigel. Where are you going?'

Nigel didn't quite know where he was going. All he knew was that he had to get the hell out of there. It had out started as a cold day, but now he felt oppressively hot. His shirt was sticking to his back under the overly-thick jumper, and his hair was starting to cling uncomfortably to the back of his neck.

He threw off the jumper as he burst out of the heavy swinging doors of the front of the library, then angrily ruffled his hair and tugged at his shirt collar. The hum of voices from the library forecourt behind him was instantly overshadowed by the incessant roar of traffic from the Euston Road.

'How does Preston see through me so quickly?' he wondered angrily as he stomped past a modern arty sculpture of a big metal man with a mathematical compass and towards the tall, brick entrance-gate. The metal letters above it proudly shouted the grandiose location: 'The British Library, The British Library, The British Library!'

The British Library. This place had memories for Nigel, some bad, some good. His Dad had always done his research in the old, circular bookroom in the British Museum, which was beautiful and full of the ghosts of the great and good. Mr. Bailey had liked to sit, for various convoluted reasons, on the very desk where Karl Marx sat: desk 372.

Yet the old bookroom had been small with woefully inadequate for the demands of modern users, and his father, unlike the more conservative readers, had been excited about the new building when the plans were finalised in the late 1980's, and had watched its progress with pleasure. He also had shared with Nigel his hope that one-day somebody would also restore the crumbling gothic towers of St. Pancras station hotel, which loomed over the ever-busy building-site next door. This tottering Victorian pile also excited and fascinated his ever-curious younger son.

Now, of course, the restoration of St. Pancras station was nearly complete, and the new library had been open for nearly a decade. But his father had never entered the plush, well appointed reading-room he had so long dreamed of, or seen King George's library relocated into its controversial, glistening, and six-storey high glass prison. He had been killed before any of it had opened to the public.

Nigel swallowed the lump in this throat before it stimulated any tears. He still felt screwed up that the only family member left to seek him out in the new library was Preston. It was so bloody unfair!

Nevertheless, as Nigel swerved out of the gate and onto the Euston Road, his deep breaths drawing in the stifling fumes of the traffic, he couldn't keep his mind even on these injustices for long. The street reminded him of the one person it really hurt to think about right then: Sydney.

He pictured her, not so long ago, her furious strides slicing through the pouring rain on this very pavement. She'd been so angry with that con-man Bellimo she'd brandished her umbrella as if it had been a lethal weapon.

Everything had been so simple between them, before he'd gone and make an idiot of himself, declaring his undying love in the style of Admiral Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton. What a pratt!

Of course Sydney had humoured him…hell, she'd slept with him! But once they got back to the States and onto the next hunt, the truth had all become quite clear to Nigel.

He was just another assistant she'd had sex with – and then she'd moved on to the very next, overdeveloped Adonis who'd dropped her a line.

At this reminiscence, Nigel gave himself a metaphorical slap. 'That's not quite how it happened,' he re-assured himself. 'You're doing Sydney a slight injustice…'

Slowing his pace a little, Nigel found himself wandering off the main thoroughfare, and up the side-turning before Euston Station.

'Things can be salvaged between us,' he thought. 'I just need to… return things to how they were before. We can at least try and forget it ever happened! And she's going to be so pleased about that breakthrough I've made with Dostoyevsky's notes, she'll be over here for the hunt in no time. After that phone-call, everything will be alright….'

'Aaaargh!' Nigel couldn't repress his cry of anguish. He slapped every pocket in his trousers with dying hope.

He had left the phone in the British library – with sodding Preston!!!

'Bugger, bugger, bugger!'

Nigel did an about-turn, and was accelerating back up the side-road when the midnight-blue Mercedes drew up beside him.

Alarm-bells rang instantly. Big, dark, menacing looking cars always meant trouble – and the side-street suddenly seemed preternaturally quiet for somewhere so near the heart of a large, gregarious city.

Alarm turned to panic as Nigel started to run and the Mercedes screeched up onto the pavement in front of him. He turned again, launching himself into a sprint. That was when the second car rounded that far bend, and thundered towards him.

He knew it would block his way. Nigel stopped dead, his mind racing. Why the hell was this happening, now of all times? He wasn't on a hunt, he was on the other side of the Atlantic from Sydney – and he couldn't think of anything to do but yell!

So Nigel yelled for help – then fell quiet when a large man in sunshades and with his hair tied back into a mousy ponytail climbed out of the front seat of the first car and pointed a gun at him. Nigel recognized the man instantly. His vague hope that this was just Derek Lloyd pulling one of his tricks died an instantaneous death.

'I'd be a good boy and keep quiet, Nigey-boy,' stated the man with the gun. 'I wouldn't want to make a mess on that pretty pink shirt?'

'It's not pink, it's light red,' snarled Nigel. 'I thought you were rotting in jail, Bately!'

The gunman tipped forward his shades and peered down at Nigel with a malicious grin. 'Aw, you remember me. How sweet? Now shut up and get in, unless you want the rest of your clothes to match that red shirt!'

Nigel didn't have much choice. Several men got out of the Mercedes behind, seized him by the back of his shirt and trousers and bundled him into the rear-seat of the car in front. One of them got in behind him and, on scrambling up into a sitting position, Nigel found himself ensconced between two much-larger men.

'Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse,' he thought miserably to himself, 'I get abducted in a London for the second time. My home city! This is just embarrassing!'

When he saw was accompanying him, however, he realized that things had not just got even worse. They'd got indescribably worse.

On one side sat Bellimo. He'd thought that bastard was locked up in Dartmoor Jail with Bately! It seemed not. He was right there and Nigel remembered only to well that promise that he'd made to him under Waterloo Bridge: it was Nigel Bailey he blamed for foiling his international murder and antique smuggling business, and he'd hold Nigel hostage until Sydney paid back every penny of what he'd lost and more. Nigel shuddered to his core: was that nightmare about to come true?

Bellimo was saying nothing, just staring straight ahead. Nigel, terrified, darted a glance the other way.

There, with an equally livid frown on his face, sat Fabrice Deviega.

'Oh God,' gasped Nigel silently. 'Talk about worst-case scenario!'

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