Chapter Four: By the Might of Horus, You Will Kneel Before Us

Dressed in a dark business suit and with thin wired glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, the man standing in front of her looked like any of the upper class men that Bianca had seen over the years. He would have been completely indistinguishable from the others if it were not for his ruddy, tanned skin and the flashy gold jewelry that gleamed from what seemed to be every inch of flesh that wasn't covered. She found her eyes being drawn to the especially large pendant that lay in the center of his chest.

The man took a step closer to her and she felt a stab of pain in the pit of her stomach. A slick smile spread over his lips as she flinched and fought to open her mouth to scream. However, as hard she tried, she couldn't manage to force her vocals to obey her command and found herself gasping instead.

His slender fingers reached up to the necklace tracing over the intricate design before resting on the sapphire gem in the very center. "The Great Eye of Isis. It's quite the trinket is it not?" His voice was heavenly accented, similar to the dialect of the brutes from before, but somehow more refined. "You can stop trying to speak; I wont let you."

She set her mouth into a grim line and looked at him with all the contempt and rage she could muster.

He began to walk slowly and deliberately around her. She was reminded of a serpent coiling around its prey just before it strikes. "I honestly expected better from you, Miss Chevalier." Her face must have betrayed the shock of hearing her own name. "Do you really think that I would not know who you are? You're either too arrogant for your own good or very, very naive." The man paused behind her, leaning in close enough that the hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention.

Bianca shuddered at the closeness and shook her head slowly. She had no idea who the man was or even what he could be talking about.

He continued, "When my men reported that the tablet wasn't in your possession I thought that they must have been mistaken. There was no way that you would be so foolish as to let it go. Apparently, I was wrong." He had walked a full rotation around Bianca and now stood directly in front, looking down his thin, pointed nose at the girl struggling to keep her knees from buckling.

The man cocked his head to the side slightly, as if he was seeing her for the first time. "You honestly have no idea what is happening, do you? You poor thing." His voice dripped with bitter sarcasm.

Bianca could feel the energy leaving her, being sapped out of her by some power that she couldn't begin to comprehend. Spots and dots of darkness began to cloud her vision and she had to fight to keep them at bay.

Her mind became muddled. 'Where's Rick? Or Evy? They know what to do.' The small thought bobbed up in the back of her memory as her brain fought to come up with something that would stop what ever was going on.

"Do not try to fight off the sleep, Miss Chevalier. You are only making it worse for yourself." The idea of simply closing her eyes came to her; it would be better for all of them, wouldn't it?

She watched as the man lightly ran a hand over the black stone tablet that lay on the desk beside them. He held it up gingerly, as if her was afraid that it would burn him at any second. "How long did that imbecile have this in his shop? Years? And he never even told you its true worth. Maybe he didn't trust you as much as you thought."

Her eyes shot open. The man's words struck her like a punch to the gut. 'Louis? What the hell does this snake know about Louis? How dare he say anything about him?' It was as if a fire had been lit under her. The new found energy gave her the strength to push herself off of the desk. The man's face morphed to a merely bemused one as he watched her struggle. "Did that hit a nerve?"

With out even thinking about what she was doing, her hand reached down to her skirt pocket and pulled out the unfamiliar weapon that she had concealed there what seemed like years ago. His expression didn't falter as she raised the pistol up and pulled the trigger.

She could see the bullet's path as if time had stopped to a stand still. It shot out from the barrel and traveled directly towards the man, and hit him square in the chest, just underneath where his amulet lay. It didn't stop there. She watched as the small bit of metal fazed through him like there was nothing in its way. She could hear the sound of the bullet crashing into the wall behind him, leaving a small, round hole in its wake.

"Did you think that was going to work?"

Bianca dropped the weapon the floor in surprise. 'Why didn't it hurt him? Why didn't it do anything?' She stumbled back a few feet before collapsing onto the carpet. The last burst of energy had been burned out of her and now it felt as though she hadn't had a chance to rest in a thousand years. The man ignored the woman that now lay crumpled at his feet and instead focused fully on the stone that he held in his hands after so many years of waiting.

As Bianca fought to keep herself awake she could hear the sound of muffled voices. She strained to understand what they were saying, but it was as if she was under water. The man seemed to hear the voices as well. He cocked his head towards its source, then carefully tucked the tablet under his arm and strode around her. He paused when he reached the door. "You really are a disappointment, you know. Be sure to tell old Louis that Apophis says 'Hello' when you see him in the afterlife. I'm sure that wont be that long from now."

He was gone as suddenly as he had appeared.

Bianca came to as if she had been dreaming. Time seemed to speed up and her senses seemed to explode. She could feel her chest tightening and her heart pounding like a drum as the room spun around her. When it finally stopped, she was looking up at the crowd of people standing above her. She tried to ask what had happened, but all she could manage to do was loll her head to the side and let out a faint wheezing cough. Her throat felt as if it had been filled with a handful of desert sand.

"Miss Chevalier? Are you alright? You two, stop crowding around her so much. Give her some air." Evy ordered. The two men stepped away to the corner of Bianca's vision.

Bianca took in a fresh gasp of air and managed to speak. "There was someone here. A man."

"We didn't see anyone on the way here. We heard the bang, though. Was that you?" Rick asked.

"I...I shot him." She twisted her head to the side and looked over at where the man had been standing as if his body could have miraculously appeared since the last time she looked. It hadn't.

"That was good, Miss Chevalier. Rick, if he's injured he can't have gone that far, right? Why don't you go and-"

Bianca shook her head. "No, he's not. It went through him. Like he was a ghost or something. He knew about Louis. He said that I didn't know anything." Her speech trailed off into another coughing fit.

Jonathan lifted an eyebrow at the woman laying on the carpet. "You sure this isn't just another one of your fits? Maybe you hit your head harder than we thought last night?"

Bianca jerked up to the protest of Evy and her aching body. "You think that I'm making this up?" she hissed. The man shrugged. She watched as Evelyn's expression changed to one of almost pity. As her rage began to boil, she remembered something that would prove her to be right. "The stone! He took that damn tablet with him. Look, it's not there anymore, is it?"

Evy visibly paled at her words. She shot from where she had been kneeling above Bianca and was standing at her desk within seconds. Bianca could hear the sound of papers being shoved aside and the entire desk top being torn apart in her search for the item that wasn't there. She closed her eyes for a moment when she heard Evy curse beneath her breath.

"It's not here."

Bianca resisted the urge to say 'I told you I wasn't crazy'. She accepted Rick's hand when he offered it and pulled herself up off of the floor. He left her almost immediately to stand closer to his wife. She noticed Jonathan take a swig from his flask and nearly asked him if she could have a taste as well. Anything that might calm her racing nerves would be welcome.

She didn't have time to ask.. "Who was this man that you saw? Did he say anything? Was he Egyptian or was he a foreigner? There was only one man this time, right?" Evelyn barraged her with questions, shooting them at her so fast that she hardly had a chance to process them before the next one was asked.

Jonathan came to her rescue. "One at a time, Evy. I'm sure that our brain damaged friend here would be happy to answer any of your questions if you ask them slowly enough."

Bianca chose to ignore the jab that was hidden in his words. "Yes, it was only one man this time. He seemed different than the others somehow, like maybe he was in charge of them." she thought for a moment before continuing. "He had some kind of amulet that he talked about. He called it the eye of Isis or something.

Evy was flipping through one of her tomes before Bianca even finished her sentence. "He said his name was Apophis."

The other woman glanced up from the page that she was skimming for a moment. "Apophis is the Greek name of Apep, the snake that battled with Ra every evening when the sun set. It would be rare to find someone that would purposefully name their own child after the god of darkness."

Rick snorted. "Says the same woman that wants to name her own children Horus and Osiris.

"That is completely different!"

Bianca couldn't help but forget about their situation for just a moment to smile at the couple's banter. A soft poke to the back of her leg pulled her attention away from their entertainment. She turned around to find Jonathan holding out her cane for her. "Found this on the floor by the door. We can't have our cripple go without her cane, can we?"

She bristled as the heat flowed to her cheeks. Thousands of retaliations flooded her mind, but none of them conveyed her feelings towards the man. Snatching the wooden stick from him she spun back. 'What the hell is he doing? Is he just poking at me trying to get some kind of reaction from me? God, I think I can smell the gin all the way over here.'

"Here it is!"

She looked back up just in time to see Evy shove the book right under her nose, her finger pointing to a group of hieroglyphics that might as well have been written in an alien language to Bianca. "The amulet of Isis! It says right here that it was housed in the grand temple in Memphis until Napoleon's campaign in Egypt disrupted most of the shrines. It hasn't been seen for centuries! She glanced around at the other three people in the room as if they were supposed to make the same connection that she had. She was sorely disappointed.

"That's nice, Evy, but what does that have anything to do with finding the men that took your new favorite toy?" Rick asked, the fatigue from the day finally showing in his voice.

"Well, dear, if you had read those books that I got for your birthday this year, you would know that this particular amulet was known for its mind altering powers. If this text is accurate, then it grants the wearer the power to create a kind of dream world for their enemies. They are able to shift and control the dream on their command."

"And you think that's what the man did to me? That's why I couldn't hurt him with the gun and why I couldn't talk? Bianca asked to woman. 'Could something like that really be real? Louis worked around ancient old trinkets for 50 years and he never mentioned coming across anything like that. Although, Louis never spent any time robbing tombs in Napoleon's army."

Evelyn stared strait into Bianca's eyes. "Yes, I do." She paused as if weighing whether now was the best time to bring something up. "In fact, the presence of such a powerful lost artifact makes sense considering what I managed to find out about the tablet that you left here yesterday."

"Oh, this should be wonderful." Jonathan mumbled under his breath, earning him an elbow to the side from his brother in law.

"I told you before that I had read about something very similar to your tablet in one of my books a while ago. It fit perfectly with an artifact is connected to the myth of Setna, one of Ramses the Great's sons. According to the myth, the son was a great and powerful wizard. He learned all the spells that his priests could offer him, but he still wasn't satisfied with his power."

Evy slid into the armchair behind the desk and Bianca did the same. She leaned foreword, eager to learn just what was going on.

"The son heard of a very powerful book of spells, written by the scribe god Thoth himself, and wanted it for himself. He and his brother traveled to the books resting place in a tomb where he met with the spirits of a previous prince and his family. The spirits warned him that they had found the book for its power and were punished by the gods. The prince ignored their warnings and took the book and learned its spells."

"I'm sure this is going to end well." Rick scoffed from his place behind his wife.

"Yes, the prince was haunted by a vision where he left his wife for a priestess and sacrificed his children to the sacred cats of Bastet. When he realized his mistake, he returned to the spirits on his hands and knees and begged for their forgiveness. They agreed on the condition that the prince must make sure that no one else can ever learn the power of the book. Their tomb was sealed and covered by the sand dunes. No one has seen it since then."

"And, let me guess, our little tablet has the location of the tomb that is never supposed to be opened ever again."

Evelyn looked up at her husband and snapped the book closed. "Not quite. The prince didn't completely go back on his word. What's on the tablet seems to only be the first step of many that would eventually lead someone to the resting place of the book."

"A treasure hunt." Bianca said, not really wanting to believe a word of what she had been told. "Are you really trying to tell me that hunk of rock that's been sitting on my shelf for years is actually the key to some ancient hunt for some godly power? That a man with a rusted old, piece of junk necklace with the power to control minds sent a gang of cronies to demolish my home and work because they think it will lead them to a magic spell book? How can you even think that for even a second?" Her voice was growing shriller and more frenzied with every passing sentence. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself, but it did little to help her frazzled nerves.

"You're taking this quite well."

Evy looked pointedly at her brother. "That's enough. This is a lot to take in at one time, I know. But we all need to focus on what's important here. The fact is that somewhere, a man who was willing to harm a defenseless woman for just the first clue now has the chance to be the most powerful man on this earth."

Rick was suddenly up in arms. "No. No, I know where this is going. You want to run off on some adventure, put yourself in danger yet again, and come out of this with the magic book. No."

"But, Rick, what else are we supposed to do? This man could rule the world with that kind of power. He'll gain control of the skies, the earth. It even contains the language of the gods!"

"I'll tell you what we can do. We can call the police, tell them that some nut job broke into the museum and let them do their job. Then, we can actually try to lead normal lives without any more mummies or gold books or bringing princesses back from the dead."

Bianca glanced back at Jonathan for any hint about what was happening. The man leaned down closer to her and whispered. "Don't worry about this one, mum. Evy's going to win hands down."

'I don't even know whose side I'm on.' she thought as the couple continued their heated argument. 'It's not like I was even supposed to be involved in the first place. It was all just a big coincidence. The police really would be the best idea, wouldn't they? Then I could just go back to my shop and forget the whole thing. The shop that practically doesn't even exist anymore. Right.' The image of the topped over shelves and broken shards of pottery that littered the floor came to mind. She shuddered slightly at the thought.

Bianca gazed around the room at the different artifacts that were housed in the many display cases and on the shelves. She wondered briefly if any of them had such an interesting story too. 'But that man knew me. Or, at least, he knew Louis. He made it sound like I should have already known about the book and what was on the tablet. What if I was meant to find the book?' She shook her head lightly at the thought. 'Don't be stupid, Bi. It's just a rock that happened to be in your store. But still...'

"We should go after it."

All three pairs of eyes were suddenly on her. She hadn't even meant to say it out loud; it had just burst out unprovoked. Evelyn smiled at her warmly before turning to her husband with a look of satisfaction. Rick sighed and seemed to resign to the idea. Bianca cleared her throat to mask her sudden outburst. "I mean, Evelyn probably has some idea about where the first clue is and the four of us can probably get there faster than the police could."

No one commented on the fact that she had included her self in the group. "You do have some idea where the first clue is, don't you?" Bianca prayed that she hadn't just made a complete fool of herself yet again.

Thankfully, Evelyn nodded. "Yes, I managed to translate most of the tablet before you got here. I wrote down the exact translation and put it somewhere around here. Hold on just a moment."

The woman began flipping over papers and shaking out books in her wild chase. Just when Bianca thought she would give up, Evy waved a scrap of paper up triumphantly. "Ah! Here it is!"

Rick gestured for her to hurry up, but she didn't seem to pay him any mind. "It's only half finished, but it should be enough to discover the location of the next clue. In fact, I think I already have it figured out. Here's what it said, 'Hidden in the crescent of the moon, guarded by the eye of Ra, the holder of the ka will be the holder of this truth.' Then it goes on more about the gods that watch over the book and about it igniting their wrath upon those that search for the book for a bit, but that's not really important."

"It's not?" Bianca said.

Evelyn ignored her. "What is important is that I think I know where the clue was hidden. It's obviously a tomb of some kind from the third part, the ka refers to someone's spirit, and the crescent of the moon and the Ra part must be a clue to the tomb's location." She pulled out a piece of paper that looked like a letter or telegraph from her desk drawer and placed it on the surface. "It just so happens that I just received word from a fellow colleague of mine that a tomb was excavated just this past week. A tomb that was found in a crescent shaped valley near Mut that was decorated only with carvings of the sun."

It clicked in Bianca's head at that moment. "The eye of Ra is the sun."

"That's right." She passed the paper to Rick so he could stop looming over her shoulder to read it. "And if I'm correct and this tomb is the one that the stone speaks of, then every item and recreations of the art from the tomb has been moved from the valley to the city Minya. Which is much closer than the middle of the desert that they were originally found."

Jonathan snatched the letter from his brother in law's hands and skimmed it quickly before throwing it carelessly into Bianca's lap. "So, if this Apo what ever his name is doesn't know that the tomb has already been excavated, then we have a chance to get the next clue before him."

"Precisely." Evy said, looking incredibly proud of her own detective work.

Rick looked to his wife in one last chance to change her mind. He was met with a stony glare. He sighed and rolled his eyes towards he ceiling. "I guess I'll go get the car."

Spoiler Alert: the next clue is an invisible map on the back of the declaration of independence.

Plot actually happened in this one and now I feel like it was way too rushed. Hrmph.

Also, the title of this chapter has absolutely nothing to do with anything. It's actually an obscure reference to the song that I had on repeat while I wrote this chapter. The more you know!

I would really like feedback as always. Thanks!