The languid curl of smoke enveloped Vanessa's face as she exhaled from her cigarette. She delicately knocked away the ash and set the cigarette holder aside. She traced along the curves of the dissipating smoke. Sinuous, hypnotic movement like a dancer in an Indian temple. She had never seen an Indian temple - but the other within her had. Her hidden companion was ineffably old, too ancient, too powerful, much too much for Vanessa to comprehend. The companion may have traveled everywhere and been within . . . how many? An intimate stranger who knew Vanessa to her molecular basis; yet, she only caught dark, distorted glimpses of her companion. When it chose to show itself, it wore a familiar face, Ethan or Malcolm.

Malcolm. The other had chosen the guise of Malcolm to be the vehicle of her initiation. It was the invasion of her flesh and her very soul. He was the gateway to knowledge. She knew him and remained forever pregnant with the presence of this ancient other.

Even when she had been an innocent: well, supposedly, innocent girl, her flesh may have been innocent, but Vanessa felt she had always harbored a darkness, a seed of corruption within her. That child had been teased and delighted by the sight of Malcolm with Claire. her mother. How many nights had little Vanessa lay in her bed before drifting off to sleep, slipping her arms into her nightdress, her fingers tracing the geography her body, imaging Malcolm exploring her body like he explored the typography of Africa. He was the gateway into the realm of the sexual for her, but it was also a subterfuge to hide a twisted, strange path that she would follow. A path more dark and uncertain than the vast dark continent Sir Malcolm Murray tried to traverse.
Vanessa had dreamt of Malcolm the previous of night. She dreamt of him now more than she did Mina. How she had treasured her dreams of Mina, Vanessa also wished that Peter had appeared in her dreams - but he never did. Her lost, dear friend, Peter. All that gentleness and promise lost to a dream that wasn't even his. Peter never really wanted explore vastness as the heart of Africa. He had no care as to where the Nile originated. It was she, Vanessa, who had the unsatisfied explorer's heart. She was the little girl who wanted to swim the ocean. If the dark companion were not within her, she would be gnawed out by a great hunger to know, to go out and explore.

Vanessa had loved Mina and Peter because they were so unlike her. They were her opposites who completed her.

She had dreamt of Malcolm as she had never known him. In her dream, he was a Cambridge student. She knew that he'd obtained a degree at Magdalen College, but that was years before she was born. Vanessa saw, in her dream, the young Malcolm Murray, perhaps no more than nineteen years old. He was a restless and rangy boy, with a face almost pretty enough for a girl. Still, his face had an air of definite masculinity, perhaps it was the side whiskers. No matter, Malcolm was quite admired by the local girls. They loved his bold green eyes and his mass of dark hair laying in disarray over the top of his collar. The town girls all offered side-long glances, some a bit more . . . a few, quite a bit more.

She loved Malcolm, she hated him. He was a dark reflection of a father. He was nothing like her lost, sweet, unassuming father. Vanessa sometimes forgot what he looked like.

She could feel the other stirring within her. Laughing in her head. Whispering that she should have no fear, the other would remain hidden — for now.

The voice slithered over her brain like snakes, saying she has come. She is here in London. It is she, the Lady of the Place at the Beginning of Time, the One Who Was Before the Gods Were, the Mother of All the Gods.

Sekhmet, the Eye of Ra.