Behind us came Aurora’s sharp command: “Sokar! Kill!” And then to Dragut: “Get to your ship, idiot, and cut off whatever boat they have to escape!”
I could hear the baying of the mastiff and the skitter of its nails on the marble flooring as it chased after us. I slammed the throne room door, threw its light latch, and watched the wood stretch like canvas as the big dog slammed against the other side, howling and slavering. I’d little time to reload, but I could buy a few seconds. “Save our boy! Past that tapestry is a stair to the dungeon! A companion waits there!” I had just time to pour powder, but not yet ram patch and ball. Then there was a gunshot, the edge of the door exploded into splinters, and the frenzied dog burst through, howling for blood.
My longrifle club met the dog midleap. The animal grunted as I knocked it to one side of the room, and I prayed I’d cracked a rib.
Aurora burst through the doorway after her pet, hair flying, mouth wide as a banshee’s, a pistol smoking and Dragut’s sword held high. “I’ll kill you all!”
But Astiza, instead of fleeing, had thrust Horus in one corner. Now she grabbed the edge of one of the carpets and yanked. Lady Somerset fell, cursing like a sailor, and Astiza pounced, wrestling for the sword. The women rolled, bit, and scratched. They were a blur of struggling limbs and tangled hair, fighting at a pitch of wild fury. The dog came at me again as I fished for a bullet and this time it leaped to catch my rifle in its teeth, chewing and growling. I was knocked backward, landing on the pillows, and the beast was astride me, one hundred pounds of quivering malevolence, breath hot, flecks of foam flying, its growls primeval. I tried to use the weapon to twist his head away from mine, but its neck was as strong as my arms.
“Mama!” It was poor Harry, crying amid the chaos. I could hear a frenzied snarling and realized that Yussef’s leopard was banging against its own cage, frantic at the sight of the black mastiff that had invaded its domain.
Aurora used the hilt of her sword to clout my woman, stunning her, and then tried to pry her wrists free of Astiza’s desperate hands so she could run her through. With the ferocious protective instincts of motherhood Astiza twisted back and with a cry from both women the sword suddenly flew free, ringing as it fell on marble tiles.
Then the real havoc happened, a blur of animal reflexes.
With a yowl the spotted leopard suddenly shot free of its cage and the dog launched itself off me to meet it. The mastiff was as big as the cat and probably expected it to bolt, but instead the leopard twisted and the two collided at the apex of their leaps, spinning in the air. If the dog was powerful, the leopard was swift. They writhed, dueling with their jaws. Then the mastiff yelped, suddenly terrified as the leopard caught at its throat. The two animals tumbled over each other on the Persian carpets, the leopard hissing and tearing. The dog frantically pawed the air, its legs no match for the cat’s lethal claws.
“Sokar!” Aurora screamed and heaved Astiza to one side, my lover’s head striking a marble pillar. Harry’s mother slumped, dazed. “Your bastard let the leopard out!” Aurora crawled for her sword and then turned toward little Harry, her eyes completely mad as the boy shrank in the corner. I finally fed a bullet in the muzzle and began ramming the shot, but squeezing the lead down the tight barrel takes an eternity. Aurora rose like a crazed Valkyrie, wild with frustration as she aimed to stab my son, and now I was scrambling to stop her, trying to think of a distraction.
“Save your dog!”
At my cry Aurora twisted, confused, her purpose momentarily incoherent, and then suddenly stepped toward the fighting animals, presumably to kill the cat. It was the only sacrificial thing I ever saw her do.
So the leopard sprang, ten feet through the air in a perfect gyration of predation, and flew past her sword arm to land against her body, claws gripping flesh and jaws splayed wide to close over her face.
Aurora didn’t even have time to scream. There was a sickening crack of bone as the leopard bit, and her head disappeared under the animal’s.
Behind them the ugly dog was in ruins, its throat and flanks pumping blood.
Aurora thrashed frantically on the floor, Yussef’s pet leopard on top of her and pinning her down. The beauty that had transfixed me in America was being clawed to ribbons, each swipe leaving parallel red streaks and ribbons of flayed flesh. Her feet slid frantically on the rugs and marble, heels making streaks of blood. Then the cat was at her throat. Her face had already caved, her eyes gone. I finally reloaded, but there was no need to waste a precious shot as leopard and victim twisted. Her head flopped loose, her neck bitten half through. Finally she went limp, the big cat batting at her and growling, and then there was a bustle at the door as eunuchs and janissaries crowded to see. They halted abruptly at the sight of the freed leopard, frozen by the bloody tableau.
I shot the biggest one, a great goon of a mulatto guard, and then the angry animal leaped again, there was a shout as the guards surged backward in terror, and the cat disappeared through the door. We heard a fusillade of shots, punctuated by snarls.
I picked up the dazed Astiza to shove her toward the rear tapestry and escape, but she staggered away from me and nonsensically grabbed an antique shield from the wall. It was a carved and filigreed thing of polished bronze and probably quite valuable, but the last kind of anchor we needed at a time like this. Had the blow to her head left her daft? But then I saw my own souvenir—Yussef’s head-dress from the back of the leopard cage! I grabbed, picked up little Harry, pulled Astiza again, and finally we staggered past the tapestry and through the hidden dungeon door. I slammed home its locking bar before tumbling down these narrower stairs with my longrifle and blunderbuss, shaken by the wild fierceness of what I’d seen. Astiza’s chest was heaving with exertion and shock.
“Papa, I let lion out,” Harry confessed.
“Good boy! You saved your Mama. And me.”
“Will it eat us?”
“It’s dead. And so is Aurora,” I told Astiza, who’d finally set the shield down. She was shaking with exhaustion and excitement.
Above, we could hear guards pounding on the door I’d barred, and then shots as they fired through it. It would hold until they fetched axes or gunpowder.
Astiza closed her eyes and took little Horus to hug even tighter. By thunder, the boy had pluck! He was a clever little tyke, too, given to my rather improvised luck. I’d just have to keep an eye out that he didn’t copy the side of me I’m trying to reform.
“I could hear her face breaking inside its jaws,” Astiza said. She shivered. “She was the wickedest woman I’ve ever met. The old demons possessed her, Ethan. The ones I thought had been banished to the deepest part of the earth. The Egyptian Rite summoned the succubus back and they took over her soul and her mind.”
“Bad animals, Papa.”
“There’s wildness in fierce animals no human can come close to,” I said. “But unlike people, they kill without sin.”
She hugged me, the three of us a tight cluster. “Ethan, I wasn’t sure you’d come back. To have Horus return and not you…”
“And leave my family?” I grinned. “I’m a papa now!”
“I didn’t know what you were aiming at with that shot.”
“I didn’t know what I’d do if I missed the tether.”
“If Horus had been hurt, I didn’t want to live.”
“He hasn’t had an easy time of it since he met me, has he? Which is why I’d like a little more payback before we leave. There’s a mirror, Astiza, big as a courtyard, and they’re planning to turn it against the American navy. Have you heard about it in the harem?”
“All of Tripoli has heard of it. Yussef is beside himself with pride. We’ve watched its erection from the harem windows.”
“We have to destroy it before we go or it will burn the schooner coming to rescue us. Its reach is longer than
