Page 53 of Dead Beat

Her mind had gone muddled. “Tell me why they’re turning into bees,” she said, searching for something rational to say that would get her back on safe ground.

“It’s an assassination. The target swims laps at a club in Westport every night.”

That was enough to knock her out of her Darlington-induced stupor. “They’re going to kill him with honeybees?”

“No,” Darlington said, resuming their walk down the hall. “Honeybees die when they sting. I believe these will be bumblebees. He won’t have his EpiPen at an indoor pool.”

“So we’re facilitating a murder,” she said, matching his pace down the hallway.

“We are. This was all in the report that you didn’t read. Would it help if I told you this will save a lot of lives?”

Maybe. Maybe it didn’t matter if he was a bad guy or a good guy, or somewhere in between. Or if he died by a gunshot wound during a fake mugging or by a spy injecting him with a nerve agent or by a swarm of undergrad bees. This was the bloody business of the world.

But what about you? She wanted to ask these fresh-faced youths already disrobing in the temple room. Alex had never wept over the men she had killed, not until Theo, a man who had begged for death. She wasn’t haunted by Len’s last moments. If she had to put Alban Reed in the ground, she wouldn’t lose sleep over him either. But these children weren’t like her any more than Darlington was. They were like Mercy, people who had grown up steeped in norms, who had proper consciences to keep them up at night.

Would the bee that landed the killing sting remember? Would it somehow be cleaner, less violent than the crimes Alex had committed? Or would some luckless boy or girl wake in the night, remembering the smell of chlorine, her victim dying half naked and alone, gasping for air as he tried to pull himself across the slippery tiles?

“It’s not the target I’m concerned about,” Alex said. “Not exactly. These kids handle corpses, root around in people’s intestines, plan political assassinations, and then what … become investment bankers? Run nonprofits? Teach community theater after a gig performing Shakespeare in the Park? All these dirty deeds don’t just become happy memories of their bright college years.”

“You know the answer, Alex.”

“I’m not sure I asked a question.”

“Didn’t you?”

She had. The same question Turner had asked. The same question she’d been asking since the day she arrived on campus. Why? Why take these risks, why endure these wounds? There were other ways to gain access to power. Yale was brimming with them. But she didn’t really need to ask.

Magic was the drug. Magic was the answer. The dream of it, the hope. Life eternal. Knowledge unbound. It drove men to build portals and to hurl themselves through doors that should remain forever closed. What wouldn’t they all do for the promise of more?

Honeycomb

Provenance: Valley of the Kings, Tomb KV46; New Kingdom

Donor: Wolf’s Head, 1908

The relevant tomb was discovered in 1905 by James Quibell during an expedition funded by Theodore Davis. Present at the opening, archaeologist Arthur Weigall wrote in a letter to his wife: “In one corner were some jars of wine, the lids tied on with string, and among them was one huge alabaster jug full of honey … as liquid and sticky as the honey one eats at breakfast and yet three thousand five hundred years old.” Weigall literally swooned and the news caused a sensation.

Later chemical tests supposedly revealed that the substance was castor oil, and that is how the jug’s contents were described when it was officially entered into the Cairo Museum catalogue. But that disappointing correction never lodged in a public imagination that had already seized upon the “honey of the pharaohs.” In this rare case, the public was wise to hold to their fancies. Both honey and honeycomb were found in the tomb, both still edible, and the lot of jars was purchased by Wolf’s Head at an astronomical sum. This honey has a unique chemical signature and is used in a challenging transformation known as the Tears of Ra, which is itself based on the Opening of the Mouth, a ritual requiring honeycomb and performed on the dead to awaken the senses so that they may successfully enter the afterlife.

—from the Lethe Armory Catalogue as revised and edited by Pamela Dawes, Oculus

19

The temple room was built to resemble the Nile Valley, the stone floor bisected by a symbolic river, fed by a waterfall that tumbled down from a balcony on the back wall, the sound like a heavy, rolling murmur of conversation. The corners of the chamber had been decorated with palms limned in gold and the high vaulted ceiling was painted the bruised blue of a night sky. The constellations were those that would have been visible from Luxor at the winter solstice during the Middle Kingdom period.

It was humble compared to the sanctum at Book and Snake or the sprawling labyrinth beneath Manuscript, but the magic practiced here was some of the most ancient and powerful. He and Alex could have easily monitored the ritual from outside the tomb, and it probably would have been a better guarantee for keeping the demon in check. But they needed access to the sarcophagus tucked into the niche behind the waterfall and the activity of the transformation would provide perfect cover.

Salome Nils stood at the opposite end of the room, straddling the channel representing the Nile. A massive glass cloche rested on the table behind her and he could see a towering beehive dripping with honey inside it.

She clapped her hands together and raised her arms. “Let’s begin.”

“I think you mean beegin,” said a blonde beside Jonah Martins.

Salome cast her a stern glance. “Let the supplicants present themselves.”

Six members of the delegation stepped forward, three on each side of the channel, and disrobed. They lay down in a row, the soles of their feet facing the water.

“Let them be anointed with oils,” Salome intoned.