(DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING! Except my character Katherine, of course.)

-Ravyne

Death Becomes Her

Chapter 3:

The town's habitants were very welcoming and helpful when their group entered into the city late that night. They women offered Kat and Evelyn places to sleep in their own tent and then when morning came, they were given new clothes.

Kat of course simply assured them that her own clothes were just fine, so they washed them and dried them for her while the brothers went to search for transportation. She's not too happy about the fact that she'll have to be riding a camel again; the beasts have never liked her very much. However at this point in time, what choice does she have?

"You know, you would like nice in some of these robes," Evelyn states randomly as they are getting dressed in their new or newly cleaned attire.

Kat chuckles from behind the curtain she's dressing behind, "I've never been one to wear something I couldn't move in. No offense but I couldn't fight very well in something like that."

"Well, I know it's not my place to say-."

Kat pulls the curtain aside just far enough for her to raise her eyebrows at the woman, "And so you shouldn't."

Evelyn's sheepish look turns to one of motherly determination, "But I think that as friends we should be honest with one another."

"We're friends?"

"I…would like to think that we are."

Kate pauses half way through pulling her shirt over her head and thinks about it. She's never had many friends that were girls; growing up mostly on the streets and then in the Legion it's not really something that's an everyday occurrence. Thinking about it, though, it would be nice to have someone else to talk to besides her brother. He can be rather overprotective and over bearing at times.

Kat smiles and continues pulling on her shirt, "I'd like that. Thank you."

"Wonderful, then, as your friend, I think you would like lovely in one of these. Maybe a blue or a green," Evelyn remarks.

Kat can hear her new friend beginning to ruffle through the other clothes that the town's women had brought for them and she steps out from behind her curtain to stop her, "Evie, as my friend, I'd have to say no. I'm really fine."

"How will you grab the attention of a man dressed as one?" the woman gawks, motioning towards Kat's dark pants and loose sleeved, white v-neck shirt that she has tucked away at the waist. The shirt is bundled up at her elbows while she has the ends of her pants tucked away into a set of mid-calf high boots.

Kat looks down at herself in confusion, "What's wrong with the way I dress? And who said I was trying to get the attention of any man?!"

"Miss O'Connell-."

"You can call me Kat. Everyone does."

Evie nods, "Every woman should aspire to get a husband at some point in their life."

"I don't need one. At least right now. I'm happy with being on my own."

"But no one should have to face life alone. It's not the way anyone should live. I'm not saying that the way you dress is a problem, it's just-."

Kate raises an eyebrow and finishes her sentence, "Not convenient."

Evie shifts her eyes down to the green fabric in her hands uncomfortably and the room goes quiet for a long time.

"Evie, thank you for your concern, I really do appreciate it, but…if God wants me to have a man in my life, then He'll send me one. But…I don't think that's going to happen for me," Kat smiles after she gathers the courage to speak.

"Of course it will. You are very beautiful in your own right; the right man will notice," Evie smiles with new determination. "Now turn around, I want to try something."

Kat wants to argue, to tell her why she's wrong, but the words just won't come. So instead she takes a seat on the cushioned stool as Evie instructs and allows the woman to pull down her dark brown hair from the usual bun she keeps it in at the back of her head. The entire time that Evie brushes out her hair with the borrowed brushes, Kat closes her eyes and loses herself in her thoughts.

Evie's stubbornness almost rivals her brothers on any given day. She'd make a wonderful mother one day, Kat could already tell that. Her thoughts pull back the memory from the boat, when they had all sat around the table discussing their journey. Evie had gotten so worked up and upset when her brother had dismissed their so-called kiss so casually.

Kat opens her eyes and smiles, Evie would make an excellent match for her brother. The signs were already there. Maybe she could tame him.

"Evie?"

The woman pauses in her work on Kat's hair and looks up.

Kat chews on the words for a second before deciding on something else, "Thank you."

Evelyn smiles in response, "All done."

Kat smiles as Evie moves her hair around for her to see. Her long hair is now braided up with a piece of green material threaded through it. Evie was right, green does look good on her.

After meeting at the appointed spot, Rick and Jonathan appear, leading a herd of five, very large camels towards them. Kat tries not to laugh when she spies her brother ogling over Evie's new wears. She's never seen her brother so at a loss for words.

When Evie presents Kat to him, expecting a comment on Kat's new hairdo, Rick just shrugs and drops a set of reigns into his sister's hands. Kat looks up in dread at the darker brown camel with bored eyes, "Let me guess. This one bites and spits more than the others do."

"Just the way you like 'em," Rick teases, nudging her shoulder.

"O'Connell, that is no way to treat your sister!" Evelyn argues in her motherly tone.

"Don't worry about it, Evie," Kat calls to her. "I'll get him back later. He hates snakes."

Evie's eyes widen in alarm.

They all climb onto their respective camels and ride out across the desert. All too soon, the heat starts to beat at them all, forcing them to pull on protective layers over their heads. Twice they've had to rough it out of small sand storms, Kat has had to constantly dodge potential bites from her camel who whips its head back to snap at her heels, and Gad randomly sings loudly and obnoxiously from the back of their herd. It's a long journey, one that Kat begins to recognize the further along they go. Pretty soon, they would be back at the lost city of the dead, facing only God knows what.

As night settles in, they're all forced to try and sleep in their saddles. This is the main thing Kat has been dreading. She's never gotten any sleep like this, no matter how many trips on camels she's been forced to take, it just gets harder to do with each trial. During the night, Rick glances back at her and makes a movement with his fingers—a clear signal that she's seen him make before. Her eyes shift and scan the top of the cliffs off to their left.

Shapes.

Possibly ten men on horseback sit there silently, no doubt watching their every move. Kat narrows her eyes; this she remembers. Back during their last time in Hamunaptra, while trying to escape the city across the desert, she and Rick had spied similar chaps gazing from the tops of cliffs at them. She wonders if these guys are the same ones.

She questions if these are the same guys as the ones she saw sneaking through their camps. Kat hadn't told Rick about it but when their battalion had camped that first night in Hamunaptra, she had woken up briefly and seen a few men cloaked in black, sneaking their way around their troops. At the time, she had just thought it was a dream…until she found the footprints the following morning. The winds had erased them not to long later.

Looking back towards Rick, the tense moment is broken by what she sees. Evie's camel has moved up in their lines, carrying the sleeping woman to Rick's side. She mumbles in her sleep, rocking momentarily against Rick's arm. He gently moves to shift her softly back upright in her saddle before shushing the camels.

Kat chuckles under her breath, glancing thoughtlessly back up at the ridgeline. Her smile vanishes; the shadowy figures on the cliff tops are gone.

Again, a dark feeling settles into her gut.

"Good morning, my friend."

Rick and Kat pull their camels to a stop first, forcing the rest of their company to do the same behind them. They shoot uneasy smiles at Beni who is approaching them from the opposite direction on a camel of his own; the group he's leading stopping along with them. Rick had filled her in about the other Americans who were looking for Hamunaptra as well and paying Beni to show them the way there.

Kat felt bad for the Americans.

"Hey, Beni," Kat grins at him. The weasel of a man stiffens up and drops his smile at the sight of her, only able to nod a response. She grins wider; he's still scared of her.

"What the hell are we doin'?" one of the cowboy Americans complains as the whole group finally comes to a standstill.

Kat rolls her eyes, tunes out their annoying conversation, and lets her gaze search the ridge line behind them. There aren't any shadowy figures of men on horses to be found…but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Still watching them.

"Remember our bet, O'Connell: first one to the city."

This perks up Kat's interest and she leans over to hiss low towards her brother, "Bet?"

"Five hundred bucks to whoever enters the city first," Rick whispers back.

Kat mauls over the words for a long moment, "That's it? They do realize this is the 'City of the Dead'…right? I would've bet a thousand."

"Do you have that kind of money on you?" Rick throws her a look.

"Who says I'd lose?" she grins.

Rick glances down at the camel she rides, "Since when can you run a camel?"

Kat looks down, quickly pulling her leg away as her camel turns back to try to bite her ankle again, and her smile all but falls clean to the ground.

Her brother grins at her, "Not so confident anymore, huh?"

"Shut up."

"Hey, O'Connell."

They both turn to Beni's annoying voice again, sharing blank looks.

"Nice camel," the weasel man scoffs.

Kat narrows her eyes, glancing down at the camel Beni sits atop, "Have you not noticed that you're riding one as well?"

Beni sits up straighter in his saddle, "This camel is handpicked and bred from a long line of champion camels. Not some flea from a backwater town."

Kat digs in her pockets for that pretty pebble she had picked up out of the road from that backwater town and tosses it in Beni's direction. It smack his camel on the hind leg just a hair and the beast jumps in a sudden fright, tossing Beni around frantically for a second before he can get his mount back under control.

"Oh, yeah," Kat laughs, "A real thoroughbred."

The skies lighten and Kat can feel herself tense up on instinct; beside her Rick does the same.

"Get ready for it," her brother sighs.

"For what?" Evie inquires.

"We're about to be shown the way," Kat finishes for him.

As the sun rises up over the horizon, it's like a veil melts away, giving way to a blur of colors that slowly sharpen into their destination: Hamunaptra.

"Here we go again," Kat grumbles under her breath. She shifts her eyes left and right, silently wondering why no one has moved to race towards the city, and decides that the whole group must be too struck with awe to go anywhere. All except her brother of course whose expression is more one of worry than awe. "Well, might as well get me some extra cash."

With a slap of her stick against her camel's leg, the beast kicks up the sands as it breaks out into a run across the desert, leaving the rest of the stunned group in the dust.

"…three hundred…four hundred…and five hundred. Thank you so much boys; it was nice doing business with you," Kat throws them a triumphant, open wide grin as the cowboys dish over their winnings into Evie's awaiting hands. The woman smiles like a little girl who's just won the national spelling bee for the first time and Kat can't help but shake her head.

Even after her head start, Evie had surprised everyone by tearing to the front lines and riding through the front gates of the city first. Winning the bet has put a happy glow around the woman.

Now they are all busy setting up a drop line as a way to enter into the hole they've found in the ground by a towering pillar. At first, Kat wants to question their choice of entry ways but Evie is confident about the location and who in their right mind would argue with a librarian and Egyptian historian?

Rick orders Kat to finish tying off the rope as he grabs something off the ground nearby and heads off into Evie's direction. The woman is busy messing around with an 'ancient Egyptian mirror' as she calls it but she looks up as he comes over to her. Kat fiddles with the rope absentmindedly, letting her muscle memory finish the task at hand while she eavesdrops onto their conversation. Whatever he had said to her, it left Rick with a slight embarrassed blush across his face and a warm, flattered blush across Evie's.

Oh, what I wouldn't have gave to have been a fly on their shoulder during that conversation, Kat thinks, eyeing the canvas wrap that Evie is unfolding and gazing at longingly.

"Have you finished that yet?" Rick asks, sounding oddly frustrated.

Kat grins slowly at him as she give the rope a final tightening tug, "Feeling a little flustered there…lover-boy?"

Ricks face drops into straight up outrage but Kat giggles and drops her way down into the dark hole before he can spit out anything against her. She swings down the rope, lowering herself to the floor below and then signaling to the rest of the group to head on down. Past the spot of light the hole above allows to enter, she can't see into the darkness beyond. Rick drops down next, flipping out a match and lighting it. The flame flickers to life and he uses it to light a torch. The circle of light widens.

"Do you realize we're standing in a room that no one has entered in over three thousand years?" Evie asks as she, Kat, and Rick gawk silently at the room around them, still mostly hidden in darkness.

"Whew! What is that God awful stench?!" Jonathan complains as he drops to the floor behind them. Not far behind comes Gad, climbing uncomfortably down the rope. Jonathan eyes him thoughtfully, "Oh."

Evie makes her way over to one of the Egyptian mirrors, wipes away the centuries of cobwebs and then turns it up into the light filtering in from above, "And then there was light."

The light beams zigzag from one mirror to another around the room until it fills the space and reveals their location. Kat's eyes widen in astonishment; hadn't she read about a room like this? Somewhere?

"Oh my God. It's-."

"Sah-netjer," Kat breathes.

"Precisely!" Evelyn smiles proudly.

"How'd you know that?" Rick whispers to his sister.

"Read it somewhere…I think," she answers thoughtlessly as she takes another torch and uses Rick's to light it so she can go explore through the room. She passes through a beam of light traveling between two mirrors and the light in the room dim for a fraction of a second. And in that fraction of a second, Kat swears the colors of the dim room blurred into something else.

Their group decides to explore further and they start making their way through the maze of tunnels and hallways beneath the city. Rick takes position at the front of the group, gun drawn and ready, while Kat takes the back of the group with a knife at the ready in one hand and a torch in the other. Every part of her body is screaming at her to run, to escape. It's no mystery that this place is just straight up wrong in every sense of the word.

Suddenly the tunnel is filled with an odd sound, like that of thousands of tiny bats taking off all at once, but nothing appears out of anywhere.

"What the heck was that?" Kat hisses up to the front of the group, feeling every hair on her body standing on end.

"Sounds like…bugs…" Rick whispers back.

"He said bugs!" Evie whispers. Kat bites back a smile the second she hears the teasing note in the woman's voice. The second she says this, Gad begins to flinch in disgust.

"What do you mean bugs?! I hate bugs!"

"Just keep moving," Kat pats his shoulder comfortingly, hiding a grin. They finally all inch into another dark room and come to a stop as they gaze up at the feet of a statue planted firmly on a solid base.

"The legs of Anubis," Evie explains to everyone. Kat and Rick move in cautiously, eyes darting around the room warily, while everyone else goes to the base of the statue where carving and paintings tell an unknown story of times long ago. "The secret compartment should be somewhere inside here."

Out of literally nowhere, groans and moans of an eerie nature fill the room and Rick signals for everyone to get back against the statue base. They hurry to obey and Rick and Kat pass their blazing torches to Evie and Jonathan for safe keeping, tightening their grips on their weapons as they inch side by side to the corner of the stone base. Rick throws a look at his sister and she nods back at his silent signal in response.

They whip out into the open, baring their weapons, and are met with opposing battle cries. The Americans stare back at them, their own firearms cocked and loaded and aimed straight at them. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, their weapons lingering in midair for a tense moment.

"You scared the bejesus out of us, O'Connell," one of the cowboys breathes.

"Likewise," Rick responds, lowering his guns with a tense smile.

"Hey," the glasses wearing Mr. Burns speaks up randomly again, pointing his lantern beam at the tool kit in Evie's hands. "That's my tool kit."

Evie hugs it tighter to her chest.

"No, I don't think so," Rick shoots back and everyone's guns go back up at each other.

Kat shifts her gaze back and forth between the two groups of ego silently in boredom.

Mr. Burns glances uneasily at Rick's guns aimed at his head, "Okay…perhaps I was mistaken." That confession eases everyone a bit and the guns lower.

"Well, have a nice day, gentlemen, we have a lot of work to be getting along with," Evie bids them goodbye.

"Push off!" Dr. Chamberlain, the Egyptologist, snarls, puffing out his chest. "This is our dig site."

"We got here first!" Evie argues defiantly with a stubborn glare.

The guns whip back up. Kat rolls her eyes. If this got any more bloated, they'd be here all day and get nothing done. Kat looks around and finds a nice boulder to lean against until the apes could figure out who was going where. Honestly, she didn't care who ended up in what location; she'd personally prefer to leave before the evil of this place decided to pick any of them off.

When Evie finally step in and breaks up the mess, Kat watches her send a weird look at Rick and he reluctantly gives in. Their group leaves, traveling deeper underground to God knows where.