Qift, Egypt 1940








Maximilian stood at the top of the deep pit, looking down at the small group of laborers slowly digging their way into the Egyptian soil. The hole was roughly 50 feet in all three dimension, an army of hired works busied themselves excavating with shovels and hand picks, the others carrying baskets full of dirt and sand out; to be dumped onto an ever growing hill of debris. “How much faster they work at night..." Max says softly. Four weeks of digging had uncovered part of a huge temple complex; and a treasure trove of stone and clay artifacts, all in dedication to the god Shesmu. But the real prize had so far eluded Max. The burial site of the god himself.


The olive-skinned laborers had dug through the rubble of three collapsed floors; the original stepped pyramid design of the temple having fallen in on itself once the site was abandoned. Pick axes and shovels had given way to dynamite; Max's normal patience turning into barely contained panic as he felt time slipping away.
“For what you're paying them, you should make them work around the clock. Paying them with my money, I may remind you...” Max turns away from the ever growing hole, towards the middle eastern man leaning against the stump of a once tall obelisk. Max's mentor, his patron, and his Sire; Aziz. The dark skinned Mekhet was as lanky as Max, but much taller, over 6 feet. His onyx black hair was wrapped tight in a braided ponytail, and he was wearing the traditional lose white shirt and beige, flowing pants of the Bedouins. He picked at his goatee absent-mindedly, arms crossed across his chest.


“Money spent fulfilling your wishes I'd remind you. And I'd hate to miss something important because I was asleep...” Max answered, moving closer to the taller man so that their conversation wouldn't be overheard. “You asked me to find more trinkets for your collection, and if I'm right, this tomb will be rich in artifacts. I don't want to risk a discovery during the day. I want to be here to see it.”

“I asked you to find me objects to impress the Estate and that damned uppity Daeva; not little stones and clay lumps with scribbles on them...” Aziz answers, more than a little annoyed. He picks up one of the offering tablets from a small table Max was using to organize the dig. Roughly the size of his palm, he turns it over; barely glancing at the pictographs etched into it's surface.


“They're not scribbles, they're hieroglyphics. And if you a scientist instead of an art collector, you're realize they give us information far more valuable then that golden necklace of the Harpy's you covet so much...” Max picks one of the small artifacts up, translating for Aziz as he reads the hieroglyphs. “It is with this offering I beg the favor of Shesmu, to bring fertility to the fields.” He picks up another, reading it also. “Great and Terrible Shesmu, I beg you watch over my father, guide him and nourish him on his journey to the Afterlife.”

“So you're after an ancient farmer and caterer to the dead?” Aziz asks mockingly, growing tired of his Child's theatrics. “What does he have to do with finding me something beautiful enough to shut Anya's self-absorbed mouth for a few years?”


“Shesmu wasn't just some minor god. He was the god of precious oils for beauty and embalming , and escorted the just dead to final rest. He was also a butcherer; ripping the heads off sinners and squeezing their heads in wine presses to drink the blood that ran out. A blood thirsty god, often depicted as a half man/ half beast, wrapped in the specter of death, who drank the blood of the living? He doesn't sound at all like a Gangrel, does he?” Max watches Aziz' face, waiting to see if the light of comprehension would click on.


“Wait. You think he was... one of us?” Aziz finally answers, suddenly finding the dig much more interesting. Max shrugs, putting the little tablets back down. “Hard to say, but I'm willing to bet on it. Our kind has nothing if not a healthy ego and desire for control and power. And what could be better for the ego than being worshiped as a living god? In fact, I'm willing to bet...”


Max's words are cut short as another explosion rocks the site, followed by excited shouts from the crew. Max and Aziz both run over to the edge of the hole, looking into it and trying to see past the slowly settling cloud of dust “Hiram!” Max calls out “What the hell is going on down there!” “Mister Heinz!” The foreman of the workers calls out in heavily accented English. “Come down, we've broken through the seal!” Almost before the words echo up to his ears, Max is scrambling down a roughly crafted ladder. His dead lungs ignore the thick dust hanging in the air, the workers rushing past him to get to the fresh, clean night air up above. Max walks over to the foreman, who has his mouth covered by a thick sash wrapped around his face. Aziz joins them shortly, pushing the workmen out of the way as he jumps down to the ground when he's only halfway down the latter.


At their feet lies an immense stone slab, roughly ten foot square. Carved into the surface, the image of a lion-headed man, seated on a throne with servants bowing at his feet. Down the center, a wide fissure had been opened by the dynamite, with a spiderweb of cracks spreading outwards. Enough TNT to blow a bank vault door three stories into the air had just barely pierced the five foot thick granite. “Go get torches.” Max orders Hiram, turning to Aziz. “Let's get this cleared quickly. If I'm right, what we're after is under this slab..” Max stretches, directing the stolen power of his blood to his thin limbs. Aziz does the same, the two Kindred man-handling one of the larger chunks up and out of the deep well the slab had covered. The two Kindred flinch slightly as Hiram comes back carrying two lit torches, Max directing him to drop them down into the pit.


The light they cast is faint, but more than enough for the two Mekhet's Auspex-enhanced vision to pick out the details of stairs, and bones. Piles and piles of bones, stacked on one another like cord wood. It takes a few moments longer for Hiram's eyes to adjust, but when he does he recoils in horror; crossing himself as he falls back towards the ladder that leads out of the pit.


Max and Aziz don't even notice his leaving, the two men looking at each other like hungry wolves. Butchery, on such a grand scale, was a common marker for their kind. Max jumps down first, making sure to land a good distance away from the torches. Aziz follows, both Kindred reluctantly picking up one of the burning bundles of wood and cloth, thankful when they find ornate holders carved into the stone walls of the slopped pit they've uncovered. Bones, brittle with age, snap and splinter under their feet, sounding like so many dry twigs as they turn to look around.


They quickly realize they're standing on a slopped ramp, a few curious kicks scatter the bones enough to uncover finely cared steps underneath. “What do you think Maxi, a hidden passage?” Aziz asks, looking up to where the steps would join the floor of the temple, were it not for the thick slab of stone overhead. “No, I think this once served as a passage down, that slab was of granite; much finer than the sandstone the rest of the temple was made of. I'm willing to bet it was added later. To cover this...” Max swings his arms wide, encompassing both the bones and steps. He turns, walking further down the slope, stopping at the wall that forms the back of the small space they'd fallen into. He has to squint in the flickering torch light, unsure his eyes weren't deceiving him. He reaches out, letting his fingers run over the smooth, cool surface.


“Sire...” He calls out softly, as if he were only speaking as an after thought to his caressing of the wall. “Please bring one of those torches over here.” His voice is barely a whisper. Aziz eyes the flames, quite happy to leave them where they are, ensconced into the wall. “Aziz, LIGHT!” Max shouts in frustration, feeling the claws of the Beast beginning to slip out from their hiding place deep within his consciousness. He pushes it back down, his attention returning to the wall. As Aziz gingerly carries one of the torches over, fully illuminating the hieroglyphs carved into the smooth wall. Max smiles, he hadn't been dreaming; there were carvings in the wall. By the faint light of the flickering torch, he translate them; not even aware he's speaking as he reads them aloud.


“Ra, forgive us, your children; for returning Shesmu to his heavenly home. We could no longer provide his earthly form with the sustainable it deserved. May those here journey with him, and provide his with all he requires...” His voice trails off, Max looking down at the piles of bones with new understanding. “These weren't victims. They were sacrifices. They killed him...” “Wait, what do you mean they killed him?” Aziz growls out. “I thought you said there was supposed to be a nice, treasure filled tomb for me; Maxi! Not a pile of bones!” Aziz yells, his fingers tightening around the heft of the torch.


“Wait, just... Wait. Something doesn't make sense here.”, Max says softly. He steps back, running his fingers through his hair. “If they're saying they killed him, he must have ruled here at one time. And if he was here, he'd need someplace to sleep; away from the light, somewhere.... under... ground...” His eyes go wide with understanding, running his fingers back over the roughly cut hieroglyphs. They were quickly and rudely cut; the stone around them oddly formed. It wasn't clean, and it looked... bunched in places. Uneven, unlike the rest of the finely finished stones around them. Max picks at a carving of a bird, his fingernails easily picking away the surface “This isn't stone! It's plaster!” He reaches down, the vitae-infused muscles still coursing with ill-gotten strength as he picks up a large piece of granite, knocked loose by the explosion earlier. He rears back, slamming the stone into the plaster wall; the ancient material shattering and crumbling in on itself.


Instinctively, the two Kindred cover their faces as the wall falls in, debris spilling down and covering the the piles of bones around them. Once the air clears, a gapping hole looms where the plaster wall once stood, the dust-filled air swirling ominously into it as fresh air entered for the first time in over two millennium. They look at each other, Aziz motioning Max to head in first. He steps in, the flickering torch light shining on a scene unlike any Max had ever seen.


He was standing in the entryway to Shesmu's haven. The years had destroyed what was once an opulent resting place. What were once silk tapestries had decayed into piles of dust on the floors. Piles of ash marked where small torches had once burned to illuminate the room. The treasures, the gold and jewels one would expect a powerful Kindred to outfit themselves with were missing as well; probably taken by his servants after his death. Max steps to the side, allowing Aziz to join him in the room. The stark, empty chamber serving to focus both men's attention to the only remaining piece of furniture. At the center of the room; the low, squat form of an ancient Egyptian bed. Resting on it, the dessicated remains of a long-dead corpse.


Both vampires are drawn to it; Aziz for the glinting jewelry still adorning its gnarled fingers and wrists, Max because of the long wooden shaft jutting from the body's chest. “I think we've found Shesmu...” Max says softly. Aziz reaches out of it, almost mesmerized by the four foot shaft of wood until Max reaches out and smacks his hand away. “What do you think it is?” Aziz asks softy. “A bit of overkill if they're going to stake him” “Without examining it? I would guess the shaft of a spear.” Max says. He stares into the empty eye sockets of the body; the dry desert air having dried the corpse into a natural mummy. Or was it a corpse? Was it possible? A vampire, staked for thousand of years; waiting to be reawakened?


Max is jarred out of his pondering by a sound like dry twigs snapping, staring aghast as Aziz snaps the fingers off the hands of the dried-out corpse. “That the hell are you doing?” He asks, watching as the older Mekhet begins to remove the beautiful rings from the shriveled fingers of the body. “Getting what I paid for.”, Aziz answers, twisting the skull off next; the paper-thin flesh cracking and falling away like dried leaves. He reaches down, taking the golden necklace off the neck of the corpse, lifting it closer to his eyes to examine its jewel covered surface better. Aziz smiles to himself, running his fingers over a large opal that made up the body of a falcon, rubies for eyes; its outstretched wings solid gold. “These we do nicely. I can't wait to see Anya's face when I show up wearing these at the next Court.” Aziz smiles to himself, placing the various jewelry in pants pocket as Max can only watch in horror; having watched his Sire just defile an ancient mummy for what little material wealth remained on it.


Aziz walks over, patting Max on the back. “Good job, my boy. This more than makes up for all the time and money you've wasted. I bet Anya will be tongue-tied for a decade over these... “ He laughs, his tone anything but friendly, as he guides the still reeling Max towards the entrance to the tomb. Aziz looks back, grabbing a touch from the wall and throwing onto the bed; the ancient wood and corpse igniting immediately. They both flinch as the first bright red-orange flames leap to life, light flickering off the stone walls of the tomb.


The two Mekhet make their way back to the large opening that had been blasted into the stone slab over there heads, a rope having just been lowered by the workers. Aziz grasps it, turning to smile at Max. “Come on, we've got to find a train to Cairo. I don't know about you, but the sooner were on our way back to New York, the happier I'll be. Being back in Egypt brings back memories I'd rather have forgotten.” The taller Kindred begins climbing the rope, leaving Max alone among the bones and flicker light of the raging fire inside the other room.


He doesn't dare turn back to watch the flames, standing motionless for a moment as he thinks about all the information lost that night. No treasure trove, no collection of rare artifacts; just a few trinkets to make his Sire happy and buy Aziz more animosity from the Harpy. Worst of all, the question of if that really was Shesmu would remain unanswered forever. Though he wouldn't admit it, deep inside him, Max was happy he didn't have to find out...