Ten for Dying

Начало книги

At the deadest hour of a warm summer night, the door to the mausoleum behind the Church of the Holy Apostles opened with a creak resembling the short cry of a sleeper disturbed by a nightmare.

The door closed, barely stirring the humid air in which the sharp odor of incense overpowered the faint, fading perfume of flowers left to wither at the base of the sides of the sarcophagus. Again the brooding silence was broken, this time by the throaty croaking of frogs and the shuffle of feet across the moon-washed marble floor.

A pause. Then a babble in a strange tongue emanated from the deep shadows, gathered like death at the head of the sarcophagus.

“Beloved wife of Petrus Sabbatius, I summon you back from the hall of judgment! Return from the embrace of Anubis, god of the dead! As the sacred scarab brings forth the sun from night each morning, I command you with words of power to come back from the darkness!”

Читать дальше →