She followed him, and was surprised to find him making his way to the storage room. What was he going to do in here? Then she realised that this was the furthest room from Jones. If Henry were going to be up to something, like resurrecting a priest for example, then he wouldn't want any witnesses.
Like her, for instance.
Aylisha made sure she kept out of sight, crouching behind the packing crates, as he crossed the room towards the sarcophagi.
Henry placed a small lamp from his pocket on a crate near the stone sarcophagus, and opened the book. She listened hardly breathing as began muttering to himself. "Yes, this is it…the stories are true…this will make me all powerful…an immortal. I shall be a god on Earth!" She was horrified when she heard him begin to speak the words her own mother had spoken all those years ago.
She understood now why he had taken the books. Translation had never been his gift; he had seen the spells of the book and interpreted them as a way of making himself immortal.
"Stop! Stop! Do not read from the book!"
She leapt from her hiding place just in time to see the lid of the stone sarcophagus thrust aside, revealing the reanimated cadaver of Beni!
Henry was rooted to the floor with shock; the book slipped from his nerveless fingers. This drew Beni's attention to him, and he began to move towards him. Snatching up the jewelled sword from a nearby crate, he thrust it through Henry. The force of it lifted him off the floor before Beni pulled it out, allowing Henry to crumple in a bleeding heap. As Henry's life oozed from his body onto the floor, Beni began to regenerate.
He had not noticed Aylisha yet, so she retreated behind a nearby crate, and gaped open-mouthed as flesh and tissue flowed over the corpse, covering freshly regenerated muscles and organs. The part of her mind which was desperately clinging to reality told her that Henry must have read the spell of regeneration Imhotep had intended to use for Anck-su-namun; however, this time Henry had taken her mother's place as 'sacrifice du jour'.
Functioning almost purely on instinct now, she stretched out her arm and pulled the fallen book towards her. She had just got hold of it when Beni caught sight of her.
"Well, hello there. Where were you hiding then?" he asked nastily in his nasal Hungarian accent. He then seemed to begin talking to himself. "Hmm, my powers may yet be weak, I should give myself time to test them first".
He began to walk towards her. Beni looking like he did, this would not normally be terrifying. However, anyone one carrying a bloody sword tends to get scary pretty damn quickly. "I'm sorry, my dear, but you know the first rule of a perfect murder; no witnesses".
Her was nearly upon her when he was distracted by a noise from the entrance. It was Jones, the night watchman. He had heard her shouts to Henry, and had instantly run to see what was happening. Unfortunately, with eighty-year-old legs, words like 'instantly' and 'run' became relative terms. Thus he only had just arrived, wheezing a little.
Beni smiled.
"Don't go away now," he said, as he turned towards the unlucky figure of Jones.
Aylisha was almost in cardiac arrest by this point, and trying desperately to think rationally. If Beni were regenerated, he would have the same powers as Imhotep. It must be because he too was eaten alive by the scarabs. Aylisha knew she wouldn't have time to get the Book of Amun-Ra from Henry's office before Beni killed her. She had no place to run to. What could she do?
The idea came to her, as though something in the darkness at the back of her mind had whispered it to her. She almost brushed it aside as to risky. However, she was stuck between certain death and slightly less certain death, and she knew which option she was taking.
