Every Last Kiss Read online

  “It took you a few days to outsmart Octavian? That stupid boy?” Antony asked dubiously. “How did you…” his sad voice trailed off.

  “Snake.” She stared at him firmly.

  I heard Iras’ small gasp at my side and I reached down to grasp her hand. She squeezed it tightly. She inherently knew that if Cleopatra died by snake, so would we.

  “But Cleopatra…” Antony pleaded.

  “There is no ‘but’, Antony. It is done. We cannot change it. But take comfort in the fact that the sniveling weasel Octavian did not triumph over us. He did not kill us. We chose our own ends.”

  He nodded sullenly, but knowing Antony as I did, I knew he was simply biding his time until he could think of a way to change her mind. I looked up at Cleopatra to find her gazing at me pointedly. I raised my eyebrows questioningly. She looked at the door and back to me.

  I released Iras’ hand and she nodded gratefully as I placed a pillow behind her back.

  “Is that better?” I murmured. She nodded again.

  “Thank you, Charmian.” As I began to straighten, she placed her slender dark hand on my arm. “And thank you for coming to find me.”

  Her voice was smooth and musical, her eyes liquid. I swallowed hard and nodded. It was the least I could do. It was partly my fault she had been taken in the first place.

  “I’ll get you some wine, my friend.”

  I turned and quickly fled the room, leaning on the ivory banquette that housed the wine. A jug of shedeh was clearly sitting right in front of me and I focused on it as I called to Cleopatra.

  “My queen, did you move the wine? I do not see it.”

  A moment later, she appeared alone in the doorway, her face tired.

  Her gaze darted to the shedeh and then to me as she crossed the room quickly to me.

  “Where is your bloodstone?” she hissed. “I do not see it!”

  “You do not see it because I’m no longer wearing it,” I replied wearily. “Pothinus took it.”

  She stared at me in shock.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “There is only one thing to do,” a raspy voice interjected from the corner. We whirled around.

  Ahmose lurked nearby, his black robes twisted around his bare feet.

  “Charmian, what have you done? You were to retrieve Iras from Pothinus, not come back without your bloodstone and reveal every secret that you know to Antony and Iras,” he chastised.

  “Don’t lecture me,” I snapped. “I’m doing the best that I can- without your help, I might add. And apparently, there is more to the Order of the Moirae than you have ever explained to me.”

  “Now is not the time,” he murmured, closing the distance between us.

  He quickly pulled his cloak around the three of us and I gasped as he grasped our hands. He began murmuring quickly, reciting the same incoherent words over and over in a monotone.

  “What is taking so long? Iras and I require wine to swallow this tale.”

  Antony appeared curiously in the doorway. As soon as he saw us huddled together, he began taking long strides across the room to reach us, his face shocked and suspicious.

  But it was too late. Warmth was spreading into my body, the electrical impulses throwing my head back. Before my eyes fluttered closed, I caught a glimpse of Antony’s astonished face and then I saw only blackness as Cleopatra, Ahmose and I were rocketed through the channels of time.

  When I was able to open my eyes again, we were alone in Cleopatra’s chambers, standing in the same exact spot. Only now, daylight was shining into her chambers. There was no sign of Iras or Antony anywhere.

  “When is this?” I glanced at Ahmose as I made my way into the bedchamber to verify that we were truly alone. And we were. They both followed me and we walked to the open air of her balcony.

  “This is the day that Antony kills Tehran,” Ahmose answered, as Cleopatra ran her fingers absently back and forth on the stone railing. “Iras has not yet been taken- she is still safe and sound in her rooms, because you have not yet asked her to find Annen. We need to carefully consider our next steps… we do not want to get ourselves into a deeper mess.

  I sighed heavily as I sunk into a chair. This was beginning to seem impossible.

  “Ahmose, I don’t see how a deeper mess is even possible. The fat eunuch has my bloodstone and who knows what he will attempt to do with it? But that aside, it is just simple physics. Everything that we do… every single action, has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s Newton’s law of motion, but it seems to apply to time, as well. I think that everything we do, no matter how careful we are, is going to have an effect.”

  Cleopatra nodded dejectedly.

  “Charmian’s right. It’s like a ripple in a pond. It starts out small, but creates an ever-widening circle. It seems our smallest actions have big consequences.”

  She walked back into the room, dropping down onto her bed in a heap, covering her face with one arm.

  “Ahmose, what was the eunuch talking about? His words were strikingly similar to Annen’s. Is there more to the Order than you have explained?”

  I watched him hopefully for a good answer. I didn’t receive one.

  “I don’t know what you speak of,” he muttered vaguely. “You know what you need to know.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Is there more that you aren’t telling me?”

  My hands were on my hips and my feet were planted as I demanded answers from the priest. I knew I looked intimidating, but after the night I had had, I deserved answers. I could see from his wrinkled old face that he knew more than he was telling.

  “Obviously whatever Pothinus knows of us, he learned through Annen. And I do not know how much of what Annen knows is truth. I have wondered at his motives for quite a while. I do know that he learned about us when he was at the Temple of the Phoenix in Heliopolis. Not long after, he was imprisoned by the Moirae.”

  “What did he learn that caused his imprisonment?” I whispered.

  “That I do not know,” Ahmose admitted.

  “Then there is only one way to find out,” Cleopatra interjected. “We must find this priest. It appears that nothing will be resolved until we determine his true motives.”

  Ahmose nodded reluctantly.

  “Yes. We must find Annen. It shouldn’t be too difficult- I am guessing that he is at the Serapis. But we must be incredibly careful to not disturb time again.”

  Cleopatra quickly flipped over onto her stomach so that we were lying head to head on her thick embroidered bedding. She grabbed my hand, holding it as she listened to Ahmose speak.

  “To begin with, you cannot dismiss Tehran when you see him in the hallway. I am not certain, but that might have been the trigger to the series of events that led to his death and Iras’ kidnapping. And then, I think we should find Annen today- before Tehran sees us tonight at the banquet.”

  “Okay,” I agreed slowly. “But once we find Annen, then what?”

  “Hopefully, he can explain how much Pothinus knows and why he brought him here in the first place. And then, obviously we still need to get your bloodstone back from the eunuch.”

  I nodded.

  “Alright. We’ll begin with Annen. I’ll go there today and speak with him. Will you be joining me?” I turned to Ahmose.

  “No. I am already participating too much. I cannot accompany you.”

  “I’ll go with you. We’ll use the underground corridors to avoid being seen,” Cleopatra offered.

  I hadn’t been in the underground corridors for quite a while. But the damp, poorly lit passageways wound underneath the entire city of Alexandria. Of course, they didn’t come straight up to the Palace, because that would risk a security breach to the queen. We would have to travel down to the beach once again- without arousing suspicion.

  “Well, we have all afternoon until we are expected back here for dinner, my queen.”

  “Then there is no time like the present, is there?” she asked
. I shook my head.

  “No, I suppose not. I can’t help but feel apprehensive, though. I can’t explain why.”

  That was an understatement. My instincts were all screaming at me that we shouldn’t go.

  “Don’t think about it,” Ahmose advised. “Just get in there, find out what you can and return safely to the palace.”

  Easy for him to say. It seemed that he always had the easy part- he got to sit back and watch me unfold Fate’s tapestry. I didn’t point that out for him, though. There was no use. The only way we would ever fix this mess and get things back to normal, was to begin by seeking out Annen, the most frightening man I’d ever met.

  Cleopatra was right. There was no time like the present, because we didn’t have much of a future left.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa were actually built as a series of tombs in the bedrock beneath the city. However, they evolved into being a complex labyrinth of passageways that led to many locations throughout Alexandria, often secretly entering into one of the many temples. Oddly enough, by the time the catacombs were discovered by modern archeologists in the 1900’s, the passageways had all collapsed. Only the tombs remained.

  Right now, however, they were perfectly intact…and very, very dark. Cleopatra and I stared down the empty, darkened hallway that led to the Serapis temple, both of us thoroughly creeped out by the scurrying noises emitting from the corridor. I felt fairly certain that there were even nastier creatures than rats and mice down here, but I wasn’t going to think of them…the kind of creatures with stingers on the ends of their curled tails or the huge, unhinged mouths with fangs. I shuddered.

  Cleopatra lifted down a torch from the wall and lit it.

  “Are you ready?” she asked, turning to me with a grimace.

  She wasn’t any more excited than I was to be doing this. But it couldn’t be helped. We couldn’t be seen, so this was the only way. I nodded reluctantly and grasped her arm as we started walking.

  We had worn sandals for this venture and I was now so very glad that we did. As we walked, I could hear the continual scurrying of animals that lived in the dark… and I was extremely glad that my bare feet weren’t going to bump into them.

  Every twenty feet or so, we stopped so that Cleopatra could light a torch on the orange-ish clay wall, lighting the way for our return trip through the catacombs. So, behind us glowed softly, but the way in front of us still loomed in darkness. The blackness was all encompassing, chill inciting. And it smelled like a tomb.

  Every so often, we would come to a side passage and I would pause in the dark doorway, wondering if we should turn. But every time, Cleopatra would shake her head. She seemed to know exactly where she was going.

  “How do you know these passage ways so well, my queen?” I asked curiously. “I don’t recall coming down here with you.”

  “Well, my love, you aren’t nobility, are you?” she answered a touch smugly. “I learned these routes from my father during the Cyprus uprisings. We memorized escape routes.” She glanced at my face and added, “And don’t worry about not being nobility- you aren’t missing much. At least your siblings haven’t tried to kill you.”

  I had to smile. It was true. Each of her sisters, Arsinoë and Berenice had tried to have her assassinated. I could remember even back in our nursery days, Cleopatra had been afraid to drink or eat things that had been sitting around her sisters- for fear that they would try to poison her. It wasn’t the most emotionally healthy way to grow up.

  In fact, her sister Berenice had tried to overthrow their own father for the throne, but failed. He had her beheaded soon after. So much for close family ties, although Cleopatra’s relationship with their father was much better… mainly because she respected his authority and made it clear from the get-go that she only wanted to learn how to make Egypt grow. It was apparent from the time she was small that Egypt was her top priority.

  She had disliked her little brothers because she felt that they were useless. They were spoiled and lazy- and she had little use for that. She had spent her days growing up learning languages, Egyptian custom and educating herself. Her brothers had spent theirs whining, playing and backbiting.

  Regardless, Cleopatra had always denied to me that she had her little brother Ptolemy XIV killed. The physicians weren’t able to determine a cause of death, although they suspected poison. Cleopatra swore to me at the time that it hadn’t been her- and I believed her. She had never lied to me. There was no point- she didn’t answer to me. And besides, Arsinoë was much more ruthless than Cleopatra. It could just as easily have been her.

  “Why are you so distracted, Charmian?” Cleopatra asked curiously as we walked. “You seem to be miles away from here.”

  “You are very perceptive, my queen,” I smiled. “I was just remembering your childhood. It’s a wonder that we made it this far with all of the deception and murderous trickery. We probably should have been dead long ago.”

  “Bite your tongue, Charmian!” she exclaimed softly. “Things happened the way that they were supposed to happen. Isn’t that the song you keep singing? My sisters were vipers, only out for their own profit. My brothers were pathetic. None of them had Egypt’s good at heart.” She made a pfft noise as she wrinkled her nose in disdain.

  I nodded. “I know, Cleopatra. But I’m still surprised that we have made it this far.”

  “Well, let us not muck everything up now, my sweet.” At her words, she stopped outside of an inscribed door, the short train of her deep purple sheath dress dragging on the floor. The Serapeum. Temple to the goddess Serapis. I turned to Cleopatra in apprehension.

  “Cleopatra, Ahmose has very powerful magic. The fact that he is sending us here to Annen, makes me nervous. I can’t imagine how powerful this priest must be if he possesses knowledge that Ahmose does not. Let us tread lightly in here.”

  She nodded solemnly in agreement before she pushed the door inward and we walked through. Almost immediately, a priest appeared in the doorway, his face startled. As soon as he saw Cleopatra, however, he dropped to his knees, face down on the sandstone floor.

  “My queen,” he murmured into the stone. “We didn’t expect you today. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.”

  “Please rise,” she commanded. “We’re here on a whim.”

  The priest rose from his knees, holding onto the wall to steady himself. He was older, his face lined with wrinkles. In the typical custom of the priests, his head was closely shaven. Writing and designs were carefully drawn upon his bare arms and chest with kohl, the moist blackness starting to smear only along the edges.

  “My queen, how can we assist you?”

  The priest was certainly eager to please her, his black eyes anxiously waiting for her orders. He had started to back down the hallway leading into the bowels of the temple. Already, the heady scent of the incense was beginning to envelop us.

  “I am searching for someone. The priest, Annen. Have you seen him?”

  The priest froze, apprehension clearly written all over him. “Your majesty?”

  “Annen,” Cleopatra repeated firmly. “Is he here?”

  I could see on the priest’s face that he was. I waited patiently to see if the priest would confirm it. After just a moment, he did.

  “Yes, my queen,” he murmured with a small bow of his head. “He is. Follow me and I will take you to him immediately.”

  Cleopatra threw me a sidelong glance and I followed her up the long inclined hallway. We passed the enormous oblong room that served as a library for Alexandria… it was crammed full of thousands of rolled up papyrus scrolls, shelf after shelf of them. Yet another archeological find that would never be discovered. I shook my head at the loss. It seemed so senseless that these important things would be destroyed by ignorant soldiers…it was simply the way it would work out. But it was still a pity.

  We passed every main underground room and the priest led us into a darkened section. I felt myself tense
up. Since I knew that Pothinus was lurking somewhere around Alexandria, my protective instincts were on overdrive. The cold darkness under this temple caused my hackles to rise. I didn’t like the feeling.

  Entering a small, poorly lit room at the end of a deserted hall, I could just barely make out the silhouette of a hooded man seated behind a desk, surrounded by scrolls. I could tell that he looked up as we approached, but I couldn’t see his face.

  “Annen?” The priest approached him tentatively, almost reverently. “Queen Cleopatra is here to see you.”

  “Of course. Thank you, my friend.” Annen stood before he lowered himself carefully onto the ground in front of Cleopatra. I could practically hear his old bones creak.

  “Your highness,” he uttered.

  “Annen, it is good to see you. Please rise,” Cleopatra instructed. “We’ve been searching for you. We have heard that you may possess knowledge that we are in need of.”

  Well, so much for small talk. But Annen didn’t seem bothered. He nodded understandingly, almost as though he expected it… and us, for that matter.

  “Of course you have,” he agreed. “I am glad that you have come.”

  He rose from the floor and lit an oil lamp on the desk. I didn’t bother to ask him why he had been sitting in the dark. As a High Priest, he did many strange things, I was sure. My mind flitted back to that pesky cannibalism rumor and I shuddered. I reminded myself that it was just a rumor. I couldn’t prove it.

  Looking at Annen now, though, I wouldn’t doubt it. He was so creepy that it was chilling and that was putting it mildly. It wasn’t just his