I was glad to see Tut's drool-slavered snout snapping fruitlessly above as the animal peered down into the pit our departure created. Lucky I'd left Quicksilver home. He was a mighty dog, but the Karnak hyena was creepily supernatural, and that was even without knowing whether it was a shapeshifter or not.

Lorre stopped to light a torch on the wall with a pack of matches impressed with the name Karnak in bold type. Matches?

Grab 'em, Irma advised. Might come in handy in this low-tech dungeon.

Irma usually didn't come out to advise me unless the situation was erotically dangerous or physically perilous, I'd come to realize. Call her a foul weather friend.

A stroll by torchlight with a Peter Lorre CinSim through the innards of a reconstructed ancient Egyptian temple was definitely not hot, so I slipped a hand into his baggy jacket pocket and snagged the matchbook for a souvenir.

The yellow stone road was a smooth ramp that led upward. The passage was narrow and harrowing to anyone with a smidge of claustrophobia. I'd never had an opportunity to test my score on that, but was beginning to pay attention to my breathing rate.

"You see, miss," Ugarte was droning like a bored tour guide, "this is a true pathway of the dead. No civilization since the Egyptians has quite given the afterlife its due. That is why the modern world is so fascinated by all things Egyptian.

"And now you will see what few humans have, the last and most glorious embodiments of the gods honored in the temple of Karnak."

Chapter Twenty-five

When Lorre/Ugarte stepped through an opening, sweeping the torch aside with a dramatic flare and whoosh of its flame, I was stunned by the huge space revealed.

A right royal mess I've gotten myself into, I thought as I was led into the inner sanctum of a royal tomb.

This was no stone burial chamber, richly appointed but relatively small. This was the Mall of America-Cecil B. DeMille and Donald Trump style-redone in Egyptian Baroque.

I gasped to take in the vast glittering, gilded chamber, the rows of animal-headed figures, more than life-sized statues, alabaster urns, inlaid chests-all guarded by coils of gigantic venomous snakes. The lavish low furniture on carved wooden animal hooves and paws poised as if about to come alive and hunt me down. Almost every inch of space on the towering walls was incised with painted figures and colorful hieroglyphs.

A many-stepped dais at the space's far end was surmounted by leopard-upholstered ebony thrones virtually tattooed with solid gold and lapis lazuli inlay. A pair of huge albino cobras occupied the positions of honor, and anyone could guess who they reminded me of, swaying with their hoods flared. White. Deadly. Christophe. Cocaine. Snow.

Vegas verged on being magical at duplicating world landmarks, but mere reproductions of these treasures would be too priceless even for Vegas. A modern billionaire with close to Pharaonic wealth must have either bought or recreated the priceless past. The real thing, though, wouldn't have survived in such glorious and perfect condition, so I was back to Daddy Gargantuabucks. Of course, being escorted into a nameless billionaire's secret treasure vault didn't augur well for making a return trip out.

Whoever was behind the Karnak had heard enough about me to set the court hyenas on me. When that failed, I'd obliged them by coming to this mountain of basalt and, if I didn't devise an escape plan, probably would soon slip into a sarcophagus as an unsuspected tribute to the royal mummy, like a pre-dynastic servant killed to accompany the ruler-god to the afterlife. But why? What had I done to tick off the Karnak mob? I'd surely find out soon enough.

The floor was wall-to-wall Mediterranean-blue tiles, lapis lazuli with gold flecks.

I felt like I was walking on water. I couldn't help but move farther into this incredible vision. I knew I'd never see its like again, if I lived to see anything again.

Oddly, the lavish setting cheered me up. People who needed such pomp needed witnesses… impressed, awed, cowering witnesses. Disciples.

I sensed the Ugarte CinSim shuffling silently by my side. Our footsteps were muted by the sound of flute and drum, not an American Revolutionary marching band, but a quintet of musicians against one wall, looking as if they'd just stepped off its painted surface.

Their dress was tomb-painting typical: wigs and diaphanous, pleated linen kilts for the bronze-skinned men; high-waisted, long pleated linen gowns with mere bands covering only the nipples of the breasts for the women.

The music was oddly atonal, both jumbled and flat. I recognized harps decorated with semiprecious stones. There were also lyres, drums, rattles, and tambourines.

I could believe that this was an area reserved for elite guests, and then I reconsidered. This area was not for any hotel guests at all, no matter how many millions they gambled.

This fiercely luxuriant death-themed palace was for unwanted guests, like me.

Still I couldn't keep myself from gaping at the riches beyond belief as I moved forward to the processional music, not fretting about retreating or an escape route. Perhaps the swaying white cobras had mesmerized me.

Maybe I thought such civilized surroundings wouldn't be the scene of bloody murder, mine.

Maybe I figured the CinSim was obviously allowed to come and go.

Maybe I just was going to worry about it after I found out what was going on.

Maybe I would take two Darvon and wake up in the morning in my cozy Enchanted Cottage bedroom.

Wait! Maybe I wasn't worrying because my subconscious had noticed that I was surrounded by burnished reflective surfaces, if not outright mirrors, and that my silver familiar had split and morphed into pair of cobra-shaped twining bracelets on my upper arms.

I'd bet my developing silver medium ways against this flood of high-karat gold any day. I'd come within twenty feet of the thrones and paused when the music silenced. So I stopped.

The cobras slunk over the chair backs to guard an inlaid screen that made a wall behind them. Figures stepped out from each side of the screen, bizarre doubles of the ancient Egyptians painted on the walls.

Their beauty amazed me. Both had the profiles of the famed bust of Nefertiti, the queen as sleek as an Egyptian hound in her proud carriage and long, lyrical neck. Both wore the high and wide, flat-topped headdress her statue did. Both had skins the color of terra cotta and eyes edged in thick sweeps of kohl.

They were startlingly small and delicate, almost fairylike. Neither, minus crown, could be over five feet tall. Elegant, slim, rich miniatures of their civilization's oldest genes boiled down to perfection. As I took them in from headdress to sandaled toe, I confirmed that they were man and woman. And blushed.

Yup. I guess it still shows that I'm from Kansas. Here I am in a monstrous, magnificent necropolis, probably a candidate for embalming myself, and my face feels as hot as a country yokel's at a State Fair hoochie-koochie show.

The man's diaphanous kilt, the linen sides crossing on a curve at the front, still showed his genitals through the double-layer gauze. And the woman… well, not only did the central bands that went over her shoulders barely cover her tattooed nipples, but the empire-waist skirt parted at the bottom of her breast bone, breaking totally away to reveal the rest of her nude torso and legs in front.

Both of their pubic areas were shaved and liberally decorated with tattooed hieroglyphs. Similar funky tats appeared elsewhere on their bodies as well.

Hmm, Irma said. Wouldn't mind having one of these, way more artistic than modern ones.

I ignored her and turned, shocked, to see how Ugarte was taking all this.