Tut's Trumpet Read online

  How could I believe these fairytales of power and war and destruction? It was just a trumpet. An old, historic trumpet with an incredible lineage, but still just an ancient musical instrument.

  Sure, I’d felt all kinds of feelings when I’d played the trumpet. I always felt something when I played my flute. Music was a part of my soul and wasn’t a magical power that had gotten me through the antique-shop window. That had been pure adrenaline.

  My common sense prevailed over the woo-woo magic stuff.

  After locking the door, I marched into Grandfather’s office, my feet knowing where to take me. I jerked open the closet door. My fingers itched to touch the trumpet. With trembling legs, I walked faster toward the back of the closet. With shaking arms, I moved the folders, papers, and cup of pens.

  Faster, faster, faster.

  My hand twitched around the metal rod. I yanked it down.

  The mechanical sounds whirred. Whirred like my pulse.

  The secret panel opened.

  I marched down the stairs. My feet clomped on the wooden steps in time with my beating heart. Anticipation skittered down my spine, through my bloodstream, out to every inch of my skin.

  My gaze focused on the case. I undid the buckles. Paused.

  Grandfather’s admonishment not to play and Falcon’s warning rang in my ears. Clanged similar to a middle-school orchestra. A harsh noise trying to capture my attention. I pushed the demands aside. The trumpet’s calling was more powerful.

  I picked up the trumpet.

  And played.

  The music sounded harsh, but it was a smooth symphony inside of me. My sorrow disappeared, covered by the feeling of exultation like at the end of a triumphant overture. Power thrummed as if a perfect quartet filled my emptiness.

  I thrust more air from my diaphragm, blew harder, in longer breaths.

  The power strengthened and morphed to an angry surge. Anger at my parents’ death, anger at my grandfather’s disappearance, anger at Falcon who didn’t understand my need to play.

  The anger flowed through my veins, palpitating at the pulse points. The fight streamed to every patch of skin. The fury wound around my brain, telling me to continue playing.

  “Stop!” The order came from the top of the secret stairs.

  My buzzing lips hiccupped. I ignored the command and kept blowing. Who was anyone to order me?

  Over the bugle of the trumpet I saw Falcon’s hurried steps and intense expression. I noted his narrowed eyes and his frowning lips. I sensed his desperation.

  Fury stormed through my mind and I blew harder. He’d broken in again. He was ordering me around. He had no right.

  He pounded down the steps. “It’s already taking control of your soul.”

  His words jolted. I pulled the trumpet an inch from my mouth. “What’s taking control of my soul?”

  I hated that I responded. I put my lips to the mouthpiece again. Blew a quirky, teasing pattern to show I didn’t care what he wanted.

  “That’s what the trumpet does to those who tempt fate and play.” He wrapped his hands around the throat of the trumpet and tugged.

  I yanked back. “Ridiculous.” I tried to get my lips on the bronze instrument.

  He tugged harder. “Once a person has played the trumpet of war, the blackness ekes into their soul and takes control. It’s hard to resist. Even more so if you’re wallowing in grief or pity.”

  The air in my lungs spluttered. How does he know about my grief? The trumpet slipped from my grip. “I didn’t feel any blackness. And I could’ve stopped playing at any time.”

  Probably.

  “You told me you hadn’t found the trumpet.” His stern tone reprimanded. “I knew you were lying. Figured you’d come into the house and go immediately to the trumpet and play. I was right.”

  I didn’t care that I’d lied to Falcon. He was no one to me.

  “Yeah, so?” I cocked my hip and chin to a defiant angle, letting my inner anger—real or otherwise—speak with attitude. “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because I know about these things, understand what you’re going through.” His voice softened with sympathy. The tightness in his expression eased.

  “How could you?”

  “I played the trumpet of war, too.” He seemed to struggle with the confession, as if admitting he played showed a weakness.

  I wasn’t weak for playing. I was strong. Undefeatable.

  He set the trumpet in the case and slammed the lid shut. The noise of finality echoed dark in my soul.

  “I played the trumpet centuries ago. During a battle.” He snapped the buckles tight. “The first time…” His gaze glazed. “I was ordered to play by Horus, god of war.”

  I choked. Falcon speaking like the mythical god was real had my belly twisting into shapes that didn’t exist. He was crazy and he blocked the only exit from the secret basement. I freaked, my nerves short-circuiting. My lungs gasped for air.

  “The battle raged. Fires burning. Warriors pillaging. The screams of terror. I didn’t recognize the village at first.” His fingers unsnapped the buckle on the case and snapped it closed again. “Playing the trumpet kept me in a zone of anger and triumph and exultation.”

  I sucked in a breath. All the things I felt when I played. Although he didn’t mention the lack of grief. He’d said he’d played the trumpet. So my feelings weren’t unusual. Did the trumpet cause you to feel emotions? How was that possible?

  “As I tromped through the wasted village of thatched roofs and bulldozed bricks, I stepped on a head decapitated from her body.” His fingers unsnapped the buckle again. Was he tempted to play? “The little girl’s brown hair was matted to her head with the blood.”

  Horror screeched through me, slashing my heart into strips. The way he described the battle made the scene come alive. My doubts about Falcon and about the trumpet thinned.

  “A bright-purple hair ornament caught my attention. The ornament was covered in blood, but I recognized the welded gold pieces.” The clink of the buckles snapping closed echoed through the dank basement and punched my stomach. “I recognized my stamp. I’d made the hair ornament for my sister.”

  The screeching scratched at my skin, causing my body to shake. He’d stepped on his dead sister. A sister he’d loved, by his raw tone and horrified expression. Falcon’s lips snarled. Every line on his face was more pronounced with the agony of his earlier life. His eyes were bright with unshed tears.

  I believed him. No one could fake that kind of emotion.

  “We’d attacked my village.” He rushed the wall and kicked the basement wall with his black boots. “Burned my house.” He kicked again. “Killed my family.”

  He kicked a third time and then sank onto the cold floor. He curled his legs into a fetal position. His shoulders hunched in upon themselves. He appeared to be suffering from post-traumatic stress from centuries ago.

  My heart wept for him. Tentatively, I stepped toward him. Sympathy for his distress, for losing a loved one, for feeling guilty about their death touched me. I could relate. I touched his shoulder. The familiar zing jolted. I didn’t know what to say to make him feel better. He’d relived one of his worst memories to explain to me. “I’m sorry.”

  “The worst part,” his voice grumbled from some dark part inside of him. “I continued to play. Yes, because the trumpet called to me. Mostly, to get rid of the agonizing grief and guilt I experienced every other second of the day.”

  His words hit like a knife to my midsection. Like I was the wall he’d kicked. My body sagged and I slid down the wall next to him. “I understand.”

  And I did. He’d explained my feelings to me perfectly. He’d played the trumpet and understood the urge. And if I believed him about the trumpet, should I believe him about everything else?

  “It was a long time ago.” He lifted his head and scrutinized me sitting beside him. His intense gaze infiltrated mine, trying to read my conscience. “Centuries ago, actually.”

  Lookin
g away, I stared at the case sitting only a few feet from us. Tempting. “Do you still have the urge to play?”

  “Since emerging from being a shabti? All the time.” A muscle in his cheek twitched and then his expression cleared.

  “What’s a shabti?”

  He pushed against the wall and got to his feet ignoring my question.

  “What’s a shabti?”

  He glanced at me, back at the trumpet, back at me again. “Shabtis are ancient stone men who protect the Pharaoh’s tomb and serve him in the afterlife.”

  I jumped to my feet. “Excuse me? Did you say you were made of stone?”

  Granted, his muscles appeared rock hard.

  “Not anymore. I told you about serving the god of war.” At my nod, he continued. “I was selected to be the Chosen One for the Society of Aten in the time of what modern scholars call the eighteenth dynasty. After what I did to my family, I agreed. The year of my sixteenth birthday, during the summer solstice, a special chant was read and I touched the Mighty Amulet of Aten. I don’t remember anything afterwards.”

  His story grew more spectacular by the second. “That was a gazillion centuries ago.”

  “That night, I morphed into a stone shabti.”

  “A stone man?” Shock turned me to stone. I couldn’t move. I’d accepted he’d lived another life and the trumpet had some type of hold over both of us, but to believe he’d been made of stone and brought back to life?

  “Yes.” He studied my face and must’ve seen my shock. “Back then, the Society couldn’t predicate when a full moon eclipse would occur, which is what they needed for the powers of the amulet to emerge.”

  “We had a full moon eclipse this past summer.” I remembered hearing about it before my accident.

  “Exactly.” He jerked his head down. “The Society is thriving. This summer, they finally got all the elements right and King Tutankhamun’s soul transferred to—”

  Had Falcon received King Tut’s soul? Is that why he had these powers and could resist the draw of the trumpet? I stumbled backward. Was I attracted to King Tut?

  “—Olivia.”

  Her name dropped—a pebble in a puddle, rippling through me.

  “Olivia?” A girl was chosen to host King Tut’s soul? I wasn’t sexist. Very modern-thinking of King Tut.

  “It wasn’t her choice, and it’s a long story. She fought the Society and freed the surviving stone shabtis. The seven of us became human again.”

  I shook my head back and forth, not denying what he said. Not believing, either. “There are seven of you?”

  “Plus Olivia and Xander. They broke the curse and we all received the powers of the amulet.”

  Envy stung. “Did everyone blow the trumpet of war?” Why did my thoughts always return to the trumpet?

  “No, only me.” His brow furrowed. “The way for you to stop this addiction to playing the war trumpet is to play the silver peace trumpet.”

  My stomach twisted again. The knots tied into a tangle of anxiety and worry. “I don’t have the silver trumpet. Although the kidnappers think I do.”

  “The shabti warriors are working on finding the peace trumpet.” Falcon held out his hand. “Come on. I’m taking you to the Soul Warriors’ warehouse. You’ll be safer there.”

  From the kidnappers or myself? Doubts shadowed me like a lost soul. I didn’t have a lot of choices. Staying here didn’t feel safe.

  I studied his outstretched hand and warmth toasted my cheeks. “Do you feel the…zing when we touch?”

  “Yes.” His brow furrowed again and I recognized his considering or thinking expression. “It seems to be getting less painful.”

  Pain? For me it was an electrifying contact. My heated cheeks chilled as if taking a cold shower. Guess the attraction was only one sided. “Oh.”

  Picking up the trumpet’s case, I put my other hand in his. I’d trust him to a point. On my own I was clueless. I did believe the war trumpet was affecting me. I didn’t know how to proceed or even if I could resist the call of the trumpet. I needed to learn more about his past and his powers, about the trumpets’ powers, and about this Soul Warrior group and their plans for both trumpets.

  Together, we climbed the stairs.

  I went to get my jacket from the hall closet. A small, colorful box the size of a Chinese take-out box sat on the small table in the foyer.

  What was this? A bribe to convince me to give Falcon the trumpet, or to come with him, which I was willingly doing? “Did you bring a present?”

  “What?”

  I set the trumpet case down. Besides the notes of sympathy and the funeral flowers, I hadn’t received a gift in a while. When I opened the lid, a funky smell wafted from the box. I crinkled my nose.

  A shriveled, beige, plastic-looking lump with curved ridges and a dark center canal squished at the bottom of the box. A brownish-red liquid leaked from the bottom. Blood.

  All the air evacuated my lungs. “What is it? What did you give me?”

  “I didn’t give you anything.” He grabbed the box out of my trembling fingers.

  I swallowed the nausea rising in my throat. My body blazed. Sweat gathered on my upper lip.

  He peered into the box. His nose scrunched and his eyes widened. He jerked back. “It’s a severed ear.”

  My mind blanked. “Whose?” I asked the question, not really wanting to know.

  “There’s a note.” He pinched a small piece of paper between his fingers.

  He scanned the note, his expression becoming more intense with each word he read.

  He regarded me with sympathy. “Your grandfather’s ear.”

  Chapter Ten

  Aria

  Grandfather’s ear.

  The nausea welled. Fear trickled down in the form of sweat. My head whooshed and my body listed. I was afraid to ask, yet needed to know. “Where’s the rest of him?”

  Squeezing my eyelids tight, I tried to force the sickness away. To blank the image of Grandfather’s ear in the box. The blood. The horror.

  “The note says, Professor York isn’t able to hear the music any longer. The punishment for him will continue to get worse until you deliver both trumpets to us.” Falcon’s gaze connected with mine over the bloody note. “It goes on to say how to contact them.”

  Tremors quivered through my body. I deadened inside. Fear and anguish wove through, killing any hope I’d had of saving Grandfather. Guilt gutted me. “They’re going to kill him.”

  I leaned into Falcon, needing comfort. He set down the box and wrapped his arms around me and I nestled into his strong body.

  But the tears wouldn’t come.

  Instead, sadness switched to surliness. Fear to fury. The tremors revolved to rage. “What’s the biblical saying? An eye for an eye?”

  “The trumpet’s talking through you.” His tone softened. He rubbed his palm in soothing circles across my back.

  His touch soothed the tremors, but not the anger brewing. The kidnappers had no right.

  “Take a deep breath. Focus.” His palm continued to move in even swirls.

  “All I can focus on is killing the kidnappers.” I didn’t want to calm down. Falcon had no right to tell me how to feel.

  “Focus.” His soft voice sounded melodious.

  His palm continued to caress my back. I relaxed into him. Let the motion pacify. The accompanying zing went a long way to quiet my anger, the gentle massage touching the right spots. I concentrated on his hand moving on my back. On his arm around my shoulder. On his chest against mine. On his scent of eucalyptus and palm.

  Maybe Falcon was the cure to reverse the effects of the trumpet.

  The zinging cavalcaded down my spine like someone running a felt hammer down a xylophone. Each strike growing stronger, more meaningful. My skin good-shivered from his touch, from his closeness, from his caring.

  I stiffened, remembering what he said about touching me. “What is my touch doing to you?”

  “A lot.” His husky timbre weak
ened my knees.

  Was he feeling the same bombardment of emotions? Desire and caring and attraction and concern? “I mean because of the essence of the trumpet. How does it feel when you touch me?”

  He sucked in a ragged breath and his chest quivered. “I can deal with it, if I can hold you close.”

  The urge to get closer, to touch bare skin, to kiss his lips and let this new desire for Falcon take over the desire to play the trumpet consumed me. I shifted, raised my head, and spotted the box on the table.

  My body drained of its blood. Dizziness swam in my head. Rational thought returned. “We should call the police.”

  Falcon tilted back, keeping an arm around my shoulder. “And tell them what? Ancient trumpets, which are purportedly at the Egyptian Museum, are what the kidnappers asked for, except we can’t give them the trumpets because they have magical properties?”

  My shoulders slumped and his arm dropped to his side. “We’d get a ticket to the looney bin.”

  “Exactly. We’ll talk to Olivia and Xander.” Falcon took my hand in a caring hold. “Let’s go to the warehouse.”

  “Sounds almost as bad.”

  “Better than a jail cell.”

  “I like musical bars, not metal ones.” I picked up the trumpet case, not sure which I desired more: playing the trumpet of war or Falcon. “Just promise me if it comes between keeping the war trumpet or saving my grandfather, we’ll save my grandfather.”

  “Of course.” He answered quickly.

  Too quickly.

  Like acid, doubts ate away at my confidence in Falcon. Why would he make the promise when only yesterday he didn’t care about me or my grandfather? All he cared about was the trumpet.

  And here I was, bringing the one thing he coveted to him. To his warehouse.

  Walking with him, my mind zigged and zagged with various options. I couldn’t stay in Grandfather’s house where the kidnappers could get to me. I couldn’t go to the police. I knew no one else in the city. And even if I did, who would believe me?

  I had to take my chances with Falcon. Believe he’d keep his promise. Or believe I was smart enough to get away from him if he didn’t.