3 Blood Lines by Tanya Huff

Author:Tanya Huff [Huff, Tanya]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

“. . . all right, the death of a child under her care might drive the rest of the day out of her mind—I’ll give her that, I’ve seen it happen before—but it’s the way she didn’t remember things, Henry. It just didn’t ring true.”

Henry looked up from the pair of clippings, his face expressionless. “So what do you think happened?”

“She was in the playground, not ten feet from where the child fell. I think she saw it. I think she saw it and it wiped the memory from her mind, just like it did at the museum.”

“By it you mean . . . ?”

“The mummy, Henry.” Vicki finished stamping down another length of the living room and whirled around to start back. “I mean the goddamned mummy!”

“Don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions?” He asked the question as neutrally as he could, but even so, it brought her shoulders up and her brows down.

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean, children die. For all sorts of reasons. It’s sad and it’s horrible, but it happens. I was the only one of my mother’s children to make it out of early childhood.”

“That was the fifteenth century!”

“And in this century children have stopped dying?”

She sighed and her shoulders dropped. “No. Of course not. But Henry . . .” A half dozen quick strides took her across the room to his chair where she dropped to her knees and laid her hands over his. “. . . these two were taken by the mummy. I know that. I don’t know how I know it, but I know. Look, cops are trained to observe. We, they, do it all the time, everywhere. They may not consciously recognize everything they see or hear as important, but the subconscious is constantly filtering information until all the bits and pieces add up to a whole.” She tightened her grip and lifted her eyes to meet his. “I know the mummy took out these two kids.”

He held her gaze until her eyes began to water. She felt naked, vulnerable—worth the price if he believed her.

“Perhaps,” Henry said thoughtfully at last, finally allowing her to look away, “there are those few who take observing one step further, who can see to the truth. . . .”

“Oh, Christ, Henry.” She retrieved the newpaper clippings and stood. “Don’t give me any of that New Age metaphysical bullshit. It’s training and practice, nothing more.”

“If you wish.” Over the centuries he’d seen a number of things that “training and practice” couldn’t have accounted for, but as he doubted Vicki would react well to a discussion of those experiences, he let it drop. “So if you’re right about the mummy and the children,” he spread his hands, “what difference does it make? We’re no closer to finding it.”

“Wrong.” She jabbed the word into the air with a finger. “We know it’s staying around the museum and Queen’s Park. That gives us an area in which to concentrate a search. We know it’s continuing to kill, not just to protect itself from discovery but for other reasons.

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