She hesitated. But he had poured it into her mouth, she remembered. Yes, down her throat in the blackness.
With his left hand, he grabbed the back of her head, and with his right he lifted the vial to her lips.
"Drink it down."
She did. Gulp after gulp and it was gone into her. The light brightened in the room around her. A great lovely vibration shook her from the roots of her hair to her toes. The tingling in her eyes was almost unbearable. She closed her eyes, and then opened them and saw him staring at her in astonishment. He whispered the word" Blue."
But the wounds, were they healing! She held up her fingers. The itching tingling sensation was tantalizing. The flesh was covering the bone. And her side, yes, closing.
"Oh, ye gods, thank you. Thank the gods!" she sobbed." I am whole, Ramses, I am whole."
Once again his hands stroked her, sending the chills through her. She let him kiss her, let him pull off the torn clothes." Suckle me, hold me," she whispered. On the tingling flesh where the wound had been he kissed her, his mouth open, his tongue licking her. As he kissed the moist hair between her legs, she pulled him upwards." No, into me. Fill me!" she cried." I am whole."
His sex jutted against her. He lifted her and thrust her down on it; ah, yes, nothing remembered now, nothing but the flesh; she went limp in ecstasy, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.
Defeated, he dragged his left foot like a cripple, drawing ever closer to the hotel. Had he been a coward to leave? Should he have stayed, struggling to be of assistance in that war between Titans? With malice in his eyes, Ramsey had said, Go. And Ramsey had saved his life by intervening; by following him, by making a joke of his last feeble attempt to get the elixir of life. Ah, what did it matter now? He must somehow get Alex out of Egypt; get himself out of Egypt. Wake from this nightmare once and for all and completely. That was the only thing left for him to do.
He approached the front steps of Shepheard's, eyes down.
And he did not see the two men who stopped him until they were blocking his path.
"Lord Rutherford?"
"Let me alone."
"Sorry, my lord, I wish I could. We're from the governor's office. There are some questions we must ask you."
Ah, the last humiliation. He did not fight.
"Help me up the steps, then, young man," he said.
She stepped out of the copper bathtub, the long coarse white towel around her, her hair still damp and curling in the steam. It was a bath for a palace, this room of painted tiles, and hot water running through a tiny pipe. And the perfumes she had found; how sweet the scent, like crushed lilies.
She walked back into the bedroom and saw herself again in the mirrored cabinet door. Whole. Perfect. Her legs had their proper contour. Even the pain inside her, where the evil one called Henry had wounded her, that was no more.
Blue eyes! How the sight shocked her.
Had she been this beautiful when she was alive? Did he know? Men had always said she was beautiful. She did a little dance, loving her own nakedness, enjoying the softness of her own hair against the backs of her arms.
Ramses watched her sullenly from the corner. Well, that was nothing out of the ordinary, was it? Ramses, the secret watcher. Ramses, the judge.
She reached out for the wine bottle on the dressing table. Empty. She smashed it on the marble top. Bits and pieces of glass fell to the floor.
No response from him; only that hard unyielding gaze.
So what did it matter? Why not go on dancing? She knew that she was beautiful, that men would love her. The two men she'd killed this afternoon had been charmed by her, and now there was no dreadful secret evidence of death to hide.
Pivoting, letting her hair fly about her, she cried out:" Whole! Alive and whole."
From the other room came the sudden frantic cry of that parrot, that evil bird. Now was the time to kill it, a sacrifice to
her happiness, like buying a white dove in the marketplace and letting it go in thanks to the gods.
She went to the cage, opened the little door and thrust her hand inside, catching the fluttering, screeching thing