Chapter Five
A jungle, Cambodia, 1925
Bobbie had managed quite well on the unsightly motorcycle and two days ago, she had had left it safely parked in Siem Reap, where she planned to have it returned to its owner in Bangkok as soon as she was sure she didn’t need it any longer.
She was now trekking through the jungle, assisted by a couple of local men whose job was mostly to spot snakes, when her aides both stopped dead.
“What’s the matter?” she asked in French, which everyone locally spoke to varying degrees.
“We go no further,” one of the men told her.
She sighed. Clearly there was some sort of superstition or other nonsense, but Bobbie didn’t have time for it.
“Suit yourselves. I have a job to do.” She paid them then, as they hastily retreated, she pulled out her map and compass and was double-checking her route when she heard footsteps approaching.
“You’re doing a rather poor job of sneaking up on me, and there’s no need for the sword, either,” she said in exasperation. It was going to be one of those irritating times when someone wanted to speak with her, and instead of doing the decent thing and arranging an appointment, they had sent a lackey who had been hired for his size and brute force rather than his positive attitude or potential leadership skills. It was the sound of the blade being slid out of its sheath that had given it away, otherwise the footsteps might have been that dogged Scotsman trying to sneak up on her.
She turned and absolutely did not roll her eyes when the brute brandished his sword at her and said, in broken English, “You, captive.” Slightly put out by the sheer bloody nuisance of this whole thing, she gritted her teeth and allowed the man to take her prisoner. She would escape later, and anyway, it would be useful to know who else was involved and what they wanted.
* * *
The lackey with the sword had taken Bobbie to a makeshift encampment of animal-skin tents. It screamed local tribe, but Bobbie suspected that this was more than a simple village. For starters, animal skins weren’t generally used for tents in the humid jungles of this part of the world. Suspicions aroused, Bobbie was led at sword point to a big tent, where she was pushed inside.
At first, everything looked pitch black, as her eyes tried to adjust to the new lighting. Then, she saw that she was not alone.
“Why is a western woman wandering through the jungle alone?” The voice, against all probability, was speaking English. But it wasn’t Sean’s voice that cut through the darkness: the heavy accent said the man was local. Bobbie squinted then opened her eyes widely to try and pick out more detail on the man in the tent with her. He had a huge beard but otherwise she couldn’t make out a lot.
“Why did you kidnap me?” she countered.
“I asked first,” he said, and she felt her pulse quickening at the force beneath his words. If he chose, he could snap her in half.
“I’m looking for a snake cult.”
“There are better ways of achieving spiritual one-ness,” he remarked.
“I’m an antiquarian. An explorer of the past. I want to find the snake cult that was in these parts a thousand years ago and, possibly, still exists today.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean, ‘and then what’? And then I’ve found it. I can write about it. Put this place on a map.”
“That is all?”
“Is there anything else?” She felt a little nettled at the implication that her life’s work—exploration, and subsequently sharing her findings with the world—wasn’t purposeful enough to be a legitimate reason to find a snake cult.
“You’re in the way, little girl,” he said, speaking to a part of her that she didn’t want to know existed. “I’m going to have to put you somewhere safe, until current events are over.”
“What events?” Bobbie asked, still infuriated at being referred to as a little girl. She hated this man. All she wanted to do right now was to fight him, to prove that she wasn’t helpless just because she was a woman. Subtly, she tensed her right leg. The garter where she held her revolver was reassuringly tight. She was about to reach for it when the brute with the sword burst in and started speaking in an unfamiliar language.
The tone of the conversation was hurried and tense, and eventually, the huge man growled, “On your knees, woman, and stay in that corner. Be silent, or so help me, I’ll give you to the man who’s about to arrive.”
Despite her irritation and the general feeling that she was being dismissed, Bobbie was far too interested in finding out more about what was going on, because she sensed that there was a deeper mystery here than trying to stop an Englishwoman from finding an ancient snake cult. She decided to obey, for now. Anyway, it would be easier to escape if the redheaded chieftain was talking to someone else.
Kneeling in a corner passively, Bobbie watched a fair-haired man with blotchy pink skin enter the tent. He was flanked by two men who looked similar, but were clearly lackeys.
“Gottag, hövding Chen,” the man said. Bobbie’s brain took a moment to register that he spoke in Swedish.
“Good day, Herr Gunnarsson. How is the arms trade?” Chen ran his fingers through his beard nonchalantly. Nothing about this entire setup made any sense, and Bobbie intended to figure it all out.
“Very good. I got your message. I’m here to make my latest acquisition.” The blond man’s voice was cold and suggested that he had hurt many people in the past. The other man was going out of his way to be respectful. Bobbie wondered how people like this ever met one another in the first place. It wasn’t like the souks or bars were filled with them in the corners of the world where they all seemed to be hiding out.
“Which item were you interested in?” Chen asked.
“The Naga-Seik.”
Bobbie had heard the name before, but struggled to place it.
“The snake summoner.” Chen’s jaw clenched, and Bobbie watched him carefully arrange his countenance, but Herr Gunnarsson didn’t seem to notice.
“Indeed. There’s rumours of a snake cult around here,” the creepy Norseman remarked.
Bobbie’s heart paused for a moment as she listened intently. This sounded like the sort of thing that always seemed to find her eventually. Nine times out of ten, the legends surrounding any given artefact were poppycock, but Bobbie was fascinated that cultures grew up around even the craziest stories.
“They’ve had a revival lately.” Chen summed up everything Bobbie knew about the snake cult. She sat in silence, hoping he might give away their location.
“Indeed. According to my research, once every thousand years, a seven-headed giant snake can be summoned with the right ritual. It can be controlled by a special artefact.” Herr Gunnarsson sounded so serious that Bobbie had to try very hard not to snort with derision when she was supposed to remain unseen. She wasn’t sure why Chen was protecting her from Gunnarsson, but she had no wish to try her luck.
“And you think the Naga-Seik is that artefact,” Chen said. Gunnarsson nodded.
Bobbie silently looked heavenwards. She would be highly interested to know what had gone wrong inside the Scandinavian’s brain that he had made a leap in logic from here are some rumours of a snake cult all the way to this artefact must work exactly as the stories say, and it will be mine. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d come across people with these sorts of ideas, but it never ceased to astound her.
“So… let’s talk price. I could probably get a lot for selling it to the snake cult. Or a lot more if I put it on the open market.” Chen was shrewd and seemed to know his business.
“Indeed. But then, if you don’t sell it to them, I’m certain they won’t pay you a night time visit and burn down your entire encampment, along with everyone in it. Name your price.” The menace in the man’s voice was obvious, and despite her usual bravery, Bobbie shuddered.
“One hundred pounds.” Chen spoke a little too quickly and Bobbie thought he was eager to get rid of the Norseman.
“Good. Let’s trade.” Some words were exchanged with henchmen, then the Swedish ones brought money and Chen’s lackey brought the artefact. It was a little statue of a seven-headed snake. Bobbie thought she must be mistaken, but the eyes seemed to glow. When the Norseman touched it, the look on his face was disturbingly maniacal. “Perfect.” He pulled a gun on Chen. Bobbie pressed her lips together as fear gripped her.
“Time to go, young lady,” a voice whispered into her ear, then a hand clamped over Bobbie’s mouth and she was very firmly pulled under the bottom of the animal-skin tent, where she was released.
“You!” she whispered furiously, more from shock than anything else. Sean simply didn’t know when to quit. From the tent, there was no sound. Bobbie wondered what was happening, whether Gunnarsson was going to take the snake artefact or not, but she didn’t have the opportunity to find out. Grudgingly, she conceded that Sean had just saved her from a sticky situation, although she was sure she would have thought of something.
“Just in time by the looks of it. C’mon, lass.” Keeping low to the ground, he led the way out of the encampment. When they were almost at its edge, a shot rang out, then another. Birds flew up into the sky and Sean began to run, holding Bobbie’s hand so she had to follow. They were about a quarter of a mile away, ensconced in jungle once again, when they finally stopped running.
“We can’t just leave,” she said, trying very hard not to think about Chen, or what might have happened to him.
“Yes, we can. My motorbike is waiting for us in Siem Reap—thank you for the touching note you left for the owner—and I’m looking forward to riding it out of here. Those gunshots… it’s too dangerous.”
She groaned. “That was your motorcycle? Of course it was. How on Earth did you get it around the world?”
“It went in the baggage car of the various trains I’d taken, and I rode it in the places where there were no railways. When you left me on that platform in Rangoon, then hopped back on the train at the last minute, it went without me, but I got the next train instead, and I sent a telegram ahead telling them to keep the bike until I could claim it. You’ve caused me no end of bother, lass.”
She bridled at the accusation. “It’s not one-sided! You’ve caused me rather a bloody nuisance, too.”
“Little madam, you have a serious bottom-blistering due. D’you really want to make it worse by acting like none of this was your fault?”
“It wasn’t. I never asked you to be here.”
“Right, we’ll have less of that, Roberta.” She bristled as he used her full name. He quickly had her pinned face down on the jungle’s soft ground, and he flipped her skirt back. The next sound she heard was his belt being unbuckled.
“You can’t be serious. You’re a complete and utter oaf.” She tried to kick free but he paid her no mind.
“Aye, I’m dead serious. The last one didnae seem tae do the trick so I’m taking my belt to ye harder, this time.” His brogue had become less refined, and Bobbie guessed it was because he was too annoyed to speak correctly.
The belt landed over her thin underwear and she gasped. This was much worse than before, and it had taken her by surprise. He must have put a lot more force into it, and perhaps the fact she was lying flat rather than bent over something also made a difference, because it burned furiously in a wide line. His belt was made of a heavy leather, which didn’t help.
When it landed again, she stopped being so patient with him, and began struggling to get free. She wriggled her hips and kicked her legs backwards in the hope of catching him unawares and getting him off her. The third lick was harder, and she growled as she flailed her arms, still fighting him like an angry lioness. Unmoved by her struggles, he merely pinned her wrists to the small of her back and continued punishing her.
Her bottom was seared with angry welts, and a furious burn underscored it, with the separate welts aching on top of the overall heat that emanated from her cheeks.
“You’re deplorable!” she shot at him.
“I’ll have less of the insults, lassie. I can keep belting you for as long as it takes.”
“This isn’t fair,” she retorted, her face growing hot. How did he have this effect on her, when she usually managed to face down all sorts of sticky situations with dignity and tact? Breathing carefully, she tried to temper herself, but inside she was in turmoil. There was no way out of this, and she had never been forced to submit to someone before the Scotsman had appeared in her life. It was almost too humiliating for words. The stinging swats of the belt kept coming, but the pain seemed to die down a little as she accepted that this was inescapable. He stopped, and she remained where she was, gasping for air and trying her damnedest not to cry.
“Are you going to be more amenable, now?” he prompted.
“All things considered, I feel that I have been a veritable paragon of good behaviour.” She spoke into the leaves, too exhausted to raise her head. He had thoroughly taken her in hand.
Another sensation broiled beneath the lingering burn: she hardly dared put a name to it. Normally, when it came to men, she was very forthright about what she did or didn’t want, but how could she possibly admit that she was aroused by the severe rump-roasting he’d just delivered? It hardly bore thinking about, even as her sex throbbed and ached for some relief. With a start, she remembered that the same thing had happened on the train, too. What was wrong with her? Ashamed, she sheepishly looked up at Sean and for some reason her gaze lingered on a bulge in his trousers. She gasped, then caught his gaze.
“Do you feel it, too?” she asked, struggling to form coherent words.
“Yes. It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon.”
“Spanked a lot of women, have you?” she retorted, her desire suddenly overshadowed by a fit of jealousy. It didn’t make any sense. She didn’t even like him… did she?
“A gentleman never kisses and tells.”
She snorted derisively. “And you’re a gentleman?”
“Aye.”
There was a long pause, as Bobbie digested the easy cheek of him calling himself a gentleman. He’d clearly grown up middle class, probably gone to a good school, but he could hardly be called landed gentry.
“I would have gotten along just fine without you,” she said at length, although the fire from her earlier words was dampened by the sting in her derriere.
“Where would you be, right now, if it weren’t for me?”
“In that tent, planning my escape.”
“Wrong. You’d be in Bangkok looking for a tuk-tuk driver or elephant wrangler willing to get you into Cambodia. Don’t forget the motorcycle.”
“How did you get here so quickly without it?” It was something she’d wondered about ever since he pulled her out of the tent. There was no way he could have got here so fast.
“Scotch mist.” He winked at her. It was disarming. In her time on the run from a mundane life, there had been numerous occasions when Bobbie had been leered at, towered over, and glared at, and she had also caused many raised eyebrows, but to her knowledge, this was the first time in her adult life that a man had winked at her. Somehow, beneath the staid Boy Scout trying to doggedly drag her back to Blighty, there was a charming and possibly playful man who was amused at the situation.
That was when Bobbie finally admitted to herself that she really had caused him a lot of trouble.
“I am sorry about the fact you’re involved,” she told him. “It was nothing to do with me; my parents won’t listen to reason, but all the same, it must be a tad inconvenient for you to have ended up in the Orient when you thought you just needed to fetch a girl back from Italy or some such.”
“I was rather hoping you’d head home after Istanbul,” he said wistfully.
“Constantinople. Fascinating, but the Turks won’t let it be anybody else’s business.” There were plenty of mysteries about Constantinople, but they wouldn’t be solved until the Turks allowed foreigners to investigate.
“Shame, it’s been gone for such a long time, you’d think they wouldn’t mind.”
“Apparently not.” She imagined how nice it would be to sit in a Turkish bath house after a day like this, with the hot water soothing away her troubles. Any bath would be wonderful about now. It would be nice for an hour or two, but what then? Dinner parties, dress shopping… where did it end? All the cripplingly boring in-between times when she was expected to wait quietly for the next event. If she went back to civilization, she would have to do all the things she was trying to get away from. “Anyway, this place is far more interesting,” she added.
“It must be, if you’ve come all this way, but what could possibly be out here, in the middle of a nondescript jungle in an out-of-the-way French colony?”
“Oh, there’s so much here. You would scarcely believe all the things I’ve read about. There’s been a deep-rooted culture here for over a thousand years; an incredible blending of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and then there’s the fragments of evidence that a snake cult might have existed, too. I would love to find some evidence for it all.”
“You like evidence, don’t you?” The tone of his voice implied that he thought this was a peculiarity. Bobbie supposed that even amongst scholars, it wasn’t always the case that they had a shred of evidence to support their longwinded writings. In fact, many of them would take the evidence and say whatever they wanted about it. Often, facts were sacrificed to make way for romantic conjecture. While she didn’t think over-hesitance was a virtue, she tended to be more pragmatic than most when she wrote about the sites she’d worked on, preferring to state what she found and cross-reference it with historical notes rather than inventing entire narratives based on one-off finds.
“I thrive on it. If there’s no solid evidence, something might as well have never existed. History can’t be trusted unless the artefacts are there to support it. And people shouldn’t conveniently ignore evidence, either.”
“And this snake cult?”
“Chen—the chieftain; I don’t know what his story is, but he’s probably dead now—said he’d found a site that pertained to it. You dragged me out of there before I learned where it was.”
“I’m not sorry.” He sounded almost proud of the way he’d rescued her. She supposed he would be, and she knew she ought to be grateful, but really she hadn’t exhausted every possible means of saving herself so it was a little jarring.
“Well, I am. He sold an artefact from the site to a Swedish arms dealer, Gunnarsson, who thinks the item in question can summon a giant seven-headed snake. I don’t know how one grows to be an adult with ideas like that, but there you have it.”
“Aye, it certainly seems a bit farfetched. Look, I can see that this is important to you, but the jungle is dangerous and you shouldn’t be out here on your own. You’ve already been kidnapped once. We are going to stay in this area for a few more days. Look for the evidence you wanted, and regardless of if you find anything or not, we will set off for Britain on Friday morning.”
Bobbie sighed. “You’re going to keep hounding me, aren’t you?”
“Yep. You’re stuck with me until I get you home. And that means you have to do as I say from now on.”
“Or else what?”
“I’ll take my belt to you again. Or perhaps I’ll find other ways to punish you, instead.”
His tone made Bobbie thrill. It was filled with so much promise of dark consequences, and even though she didn’t want to be belted again, some part of her was curious about what else he might think of.
“If you irritate me too much, I’ll tie you up, put you in a sack, and take you back to England regardless of whether you’ve had ample time to investigate snake cults or not.”
That got her attention, and she didn’t like being over a barrel, but some part of her wanted him to overpower her, simply to prove that he could do it. If only the consequences of submitting to him weren’t her return to Britain. She nodded slowly. “All right. But you should know I’ll just make off again the very next time I want to go and investigate a far-off land.”
“And I’ll come after you again.”
“Why does it matter so much to you? I’m just going about my life, minding my own business, and I don’t understand why that bothers so many people to the extent that they insist on conspiring behind my back to make me fit a mould I will never occupy.”
“That’s no concern of mine. Your parents are worried, and they asked me to protect you, and that’s the start and end of it. If you want to gallivant around the world, you should do it safely and respectfully, not being kidnapped and who knows what else, so your parents aren’t sitting at home at their wits’ end.”
“Did anyone ever tell you something? You’re a crashing bore,” Bobbie knew she was being contrary, but she couldn’t help it. He was annoying her.
“Did anyone ever tell you something? You act like a whining child when you’ve lost. You should be more sporting.”
“Usually, I am.” She flushed furiously as she admitted that. Something about him really did seem to bring out her churlish, competitive, and above all, worst side.
“Come, let’s head back to the nearest village and get some supper, then we can rest for the night and you can keep looking in the morning. Hopefully by then the arms dealer is long gone.”
Bobbie bowed her head in acquiescence, then Sean led her back to his motorbike. They rode over the rough terrain until they reached the village.
* * *
The nearest village had no shops, no hotel, and no bar. It was really a collection of hammocks strung up between several dozen trees, with a sort of outdoor cooking area and some laundry drying on more string. The villagers were very taken with having two westerners in their midst, and they kept bringing what flowers, cups of water, and random items they had, which Bobbie felt obliged to graciously accept.
Bobbie usually had no trouble alone amongst people such as these, but she noticed that they treated her decidedly differently now that Sean was here. The villagers were uncomfortable and trying too hard to impress them, and Bobbie didn’t know how to respond. All the villagers’ questions were directed at him, but of course he couldn’t answer them, because he hadn’t spent the last three months learning their language in preparation for this journey. Every time Bobbie replied to one of their questions, they would ask Sean another one, and it quickly became tiresome, especially that they wouldn’t answer her questions about the snake cult, so after more time had passed than she wanted to spend on this, she feigned sleep.
After long enough, she really did fall asleep, but in the night, she awoke cold and with a sore neck. To her surprise, by the bright light of the moon filtering through the sparse leaves of the trees, Sean was flopped in a separate hammock. Carefully, Bobbie got down to the ground, then across to where Sean slept. Teeth chattering with cold, she clambered into his hammock and snuggled up to him, letting his body heat fill her with warmth.
She was drifting back to sleep, so she wasn’t sure if she dreamed it or not, but before oblivion claimed her for another night, Bobbie thought Sean had put his arm around her then kissed the back of her hair.
When she awoke, something was pressing into her lower back. Actually, that was a generous description. It was really pressing into her bottom. She widened her eyes then narrowed them. Likely a snake had fallen out of the tree above and landed between her and Sean. She hated snakes. It was probably poisonous; most of them around these parts were deadly. Keeping her body as still as possible, she moved her hand down to her thigh and slipped her gun from its holster in her garter. Behind her, the snake seemed to be twitching slightly; probably looking for a warmer spot to hide in.
While it was true that snakes were more afraid of her than she was of them, Bobbie knew that animals did all sorts of stupid and deadly things when they were terrified. As a result, the creature’s probable fear wasn’t the least bit reassuring.
Trying to aim at the damn snake would be difficult; it was pressing straight into the cleft between her ass and of course Sean was hugging her, making this even harder. If she got this wrong, one or the other of them could end up quite badly injured. She took the safety off and tried to contort her arm until the tip of her gun pressed against the twitching snake. Touching its thick round body, even with her gun, made her blood run cold, because until that moment she’d been hoping it was her imagination playing tricks on her.
Suddenly, Sean’s arm tensed around her body and she froze.
“Would you mind pointing that somewhere else?” he growled.
“Stay very still; there’s a snake pressed right between us,” Bobbie whispered in reply.
“That’s not a snake, Roberta.” His voice sounded slightly strangled, although Bobbie wasn’t sure why.
“I can feel it twitching against my… my… lower back!” Her voice began to rise in fear and she forced it to remain steady. “The barrel of my gun is touching it. There’s definitely a snake!” If Sean moved, the snake might bite one of them.
“You are pressing your revolver against the head of my cock, and I’d like you to desist at once.”
Bobbie couldn’t decide if that was reassuring or more horrifying, so she settled for removing the gun, holstering it, then getting out of the hammock and glaring at Sean.
“What is your… your appendage doing impersonating a snake at this hour of the morning?” she demanded.
“Sorry. It does that sometimes.” He shrugged and didn’t seem terribly apologetic. Irritated by how scared she’d been when she thought there was a snake, Bobbie gave up and wandered off in search of something to drink. Just when she thought there might be something about him worth sticking around for, he went and proved comprehensively that men were just ridiculous as a species. She found some whisky in the bottom of her pack and took a deep draught.
A few minutes later, a tremor shook the ground beneath her. Bobbie looked around for the source of the rumbling sound that tore through the jungle, but nothing was immediately apparent.
Then, Sean’s voice quietly muttered from behind her, “Careful, there’s a snake coming.”
Bobbie rolled her eyes. “Really, Sean, don’t you think it’s gone far enough? This is in jolly poor taste, and—fuck!”
She dropped her line of argument completely when she saw a snake towering over them. It had to be at least twenty feet high and it had a long body trailing along the ground behind it, too.
That wasn’t the worst part, though. She counted them twice, to be sure; there were definitely seven heads. She took another deep draught from the whisky bottle, but it was quickly empty.
“There isn’t enough whisky in the world, sometimes, is there?” Sean muttered, running off to take action. Bobbie wanted to stay at his side and help, but her courage left her. If only it had been anything but a snake, she would have been fine. She growled in frustration as she ran in the opposite direction, out of the path of the snake. It didn’t seem to have a target in mind, but its aimless wandering was just as dangerous as if it was hunting. At any moment, it could slide over someone and crush them.
Bobbie was spending too much brainpower trying to get out of its way, and she pushed down the part of her that screamed that giant seven-headed snakes simply didn’t exist. A roaring sound was almost drowned out by the snake’s movement as it crashed through two trees, knocking them over.
“Get on! Quick!” Sean shouted, and Bobbie realized the roaring was coming from an engine; he’d retrieved his bike. Perhaps they could get away from the snake after all. Around them, the villagers scattered, trying to evade the huge monster, all of them too far away for Bobbie to pull anyone else onto the bike as she and Sean made an exit.
As they put more distance between them and the snake, Bobbie tried to think through everything. There was a giant snake. An actual, three-dimensional, ginormous snake. With seven heads. She had to hand it to the thousand-year-old Chinese diplomat; he’d not embellished in the slightest.
Sean stopped the bike somewhere after several minutes, and Bobbie saw the animal-skin tents in the distance.
“All right, Miss Evidence, what do we do now?” Sean challenged.
Bobbie fought to control her emotions. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“I mean, obviously we need to kill it somehow, but until five minutes ago I thought the giant snake was a metaphor that got turned into a religious symbol, nothing more!” She rummaged in her pack and pulled out the translation of the Chinese diplomat’s story. Reading as fast as she could, she told Sean what it said.
“There was a ritual to summon the snake. Another ritual can bind the snake to a person. That’s what the arms dealer wants to do. Then another ritual still can send the snake back to where it came from. Each ritual requires a different artefact. At the moment the snake is wandering aimlessly. My guess is that the snake cult has summoned the snake.”
“So we need to find the artefact and do the ritual to send the snake back?”
“Precisely. According to this account, we need a sort of metal spear, shaped like a lightning bolt, called Ri-Loh. It’s the only thing that can get rid of the snake, now it’s been summoned.” Bobbie balked at the idea of confronting the snake, but she knew someone had to, and it wasn’t like anyone else was falling over themselves to assist.
“Where can we find it?”
“My guess is, it’s wherever Chen found the idol he sold to the arms dealer. If we trail the arms dealer, we should find out where it came from.”
Sean shook his head. “We’ll look around the area and see if we can find it by ourselves, first. That would be the safest course.”
“Still planning to leave on Friday?” Bobbie asked, only half-serious.
“I think we have to see this through, now, although I hate to say it. I promised your parents I’d keep you safe. Fat lot of good I’ve done.” He looked wistful.
Bobbie touched his arm for reassurance. “It’s not your fault, old thing,” she said softly. “I mean, unless you summoned the bloody snake. In which case, it’s all your fault.”
* * *
“There! That’s when the guard changes. What was it?” Bobbie looked at her watch as she asked the question. “Four hours. They’re on four-hour shifts to guard the site.”
It had taken some careful searching, but they’d found the site where Chen must have discovered the idol. It was an impressive and intricately designed building, which was probably a temple, and two men guarded the door. Now, Bobbie and Sean were hidden behind some thick undergrowth and trying to find a good opportunity to get inside.
Gunnarsson must have seized control of the site. His fair-haired lackeys were now overseeing some local men who guarded the site. Nearby, the animal-skin tents were on fire, and Bobbie felt a chill of horror as she realized the negotiations between Gunnarsson and Chen must have gone badly wrong.
“Normally these sort of buildings have at least two entrances; often they have four,” Bobbie murmured. “It’s rather strange that this one only has a single way in or out.”
“Do you think we can slip in through a back door?” Sean asked.
“Unlikely. These people don’t seem to be taking any chances, though. If there is another entrance, I think they’re probably guarding that, too, unless it’s inaccessible.”
“Stay here, I’m going to look around.” He acted like he had any idea what he was looking for or what he might do if he found it, which Bobbie found infuriating. She was about to say something to that effect, but Sean was gone already.
Regardless of what he thought, she knew she wasn’t going to stay here just because he told her to. She shook her head and looked up thoughtfully. The building was easily climbable, and she thought there was a darker patch high up the curving structure that could be a hole in the roof. Carefully placing her hands and feet on the intricately carved stonework, Bobbie began to climb. The sun seemed to be disappearing rapidly, but the further she got, the more certain she was that this was another way inside.
By the time Bobbie reached the hole, the sky was almost black. Not wanting to draw attention to herself, she slipped through the space and carefully landed on a ledge inside.
Putting her feet in the narrow spaces between carved colonnettes and using the small stone columns like a ladder, Bobbie climbed down to the floor and looked around. Reedy light from the bright full moon filtered through the gaps between the colonnettes, but it was difficult to pick out the details. She tiptoed around a corner and clapped her hand over her mouth to avoid screaming when she almost walked into someone moving in the opposite direction.
“Young lady, you are in a world of trouble. You disobeyed a very clear instruction to stay put,” Sean growled.
Bobbie sighed. “I was fine,” she hissed back. “Let’s just get on with this and save the silliness for later.”
When he put one hand on her shoulder and squeezed hard, Bobbie wondered if he was trying to be reassuring or to remind her that he could easily overpower her. She was very aware of his presence as they explored the structure together, trying not to draw attention to themselves as they worked.
The building was truly beautiful on the inside, even in feeble light, and Bobbie thought it was a shame no one lived here, or used it regularly, anymore. She wondered for the umpteenth time what drove people to abandon such lovely monuments.
“Have you seen the carvings on the walls?” Sean asked. “They must have taken years to complete.”
“The styles in the rooms we’ve walked through so far show that they started it about two hundred years before it was completed. In the first room, the leaves were rudimentary, then as we moved through the years, elephants started appearing, and carved heads of men. The naked women, of course, are also rather detailed.” Bobbie’s voice was more detached as she explained about the history of the place.
“It must have been one hell of a party place, if it was full of elephants and dancing girls,” Sean said.
Bobbie giggled and nodded, realizing it was sort of nice to have someone around who wanted to know about these things. He must have been the first man she’d ever met who asked her for factual information, who believed that she might know enough about something to be able to share it. Most men she’d had to work with in the past had simply told her their thoughts on the histories of various locations, making no allowance for the possibility that she might know anything about it.
In fact, Sean had been quite easy to work with since they called a truce. Now that he wasn’t trying to drag her home to her parents, he was much more interesting. Bobbie smiled to herself, then widened her eyes in horror. Was she… getting feelings… for a man? She pressed her lips together and tried to reason with herself. This had never happened before, and all things considered, she’d really thought she was immune to men as a whole, beyond occasional sexual encounters. Not that she was especially interested in women, either, although she’d gone to a girls’ boarding school and knew what went on sometimes after lights out. She simply wasn’t interested in forming a romantic relationship. Or, rather, she hadn’t been. Until now.
Bobbie was so distracted thinking about her newfound feelings for Sean that she almost forgot where they were and what they were doing, until the handsome Scotsman squeezed her hand. She looked up and returned to Earth. Well, mostly. There was still a small part of her that was bouncing around against the walls of her mind at the fact that he was holding her hand.
This was a bad state to be in, and she worried that she was going to be too distracted to do her job. She tried to concentrate. They had walked into a big hallway, with a huge statue of a many-headed god dead centre. It was painted mostly gold, although this had flaked to show red, white and black underneath. Around the walls, there was the usual array of friezes. The pictures on the walls weren’t so much telling a story as showing an assortment of random scenes that appeared to be unconnected. Bobbie wondered if there was something behind them, but as she tapped and pressed the wall, nothing happened. Then, she almost kicked herself. The statue’s eyes glittered on the central head. She approached it, wondering how best to investigate.
“You’d best not be thinking of climbing that,” Sean warned her.
She ignored him and vaulted up onto the statue’s crossed legs, but hands around her waist pulled her back down again.
“The eyes,” she protested, climbing back up again.
“I said no. I’ll go and look.” He firmly lifted her back down, holding onto her waist this time, so she stood barely eighteen inches from him as his huge hands encircled her middle, reminding her of how strong he was.
“But you’re bigger than me, and heavier. If it’s going to break on me, it will certainly break on you,” she replied.
“Yes, and if it does, I’ll be the one who falls, not you. Stay put.” To her surprise, he kissed her on the forehead. Even more strangely, her legs turned to jelly and heat stole across her countenance.
“Well, when you put it like that…” She trailed off. She couldn’t help but obey him.
He nodded with a sense of finality and turned to climb the statue. Within moments, he held the glittering diamond eyes in his hands. “Now what?” he asked.
“I think he wants an offering,” Bobbie replied. “Look.” She pointed to his hands, which rested on his knees, palms up. Sean placed one of the diamonds into each of the statue’s hands and stepped back. There was a grating sound from the floor, and they looked around for the source. Behind the statue, a panel in the wall had slid away and revealed a gaping passageway.
“We have to follow it,” Bobbie explained.
Sean looked put out by the idea, but he entered behind her all the same. Once they were inside the dark tunnel, Bobbie lit a candle—she always carried at least one in her pocket—and looked around. A grating sound behind them made her heart sink.
“What happened?” Sean asked. The surprise in his voice reflected how Bobbie felt.
“The opening closed.”
“So we’re trapped?” he asked.
“Or at least, we can’t go that way,” she said. “We’ll have to press on and hope it’s not a death trap.”
Moving forward in the dim light of the single, guttering candle, Bobbie felt a breeze coming from further down the tunnel. That meant air flow, which almost certainly meant there was another way out of this. She was proved right when the tunnel abruptly turned into a huge cave. The ground was almost completely covered by a wide, rushing stream.
“This is the way out?” Sean shook his head in disbelief. Bobbie shrugged.
“Obviously we’re going to get wet, but it’s not the end of the world,” she replied. “I think we need to go against the current to find the vanquishing stick.”
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s a little opening up there, can you see it?”
Sean craned his neck and narrowed his eyes, then nodded. “The stone is just about wide enough to traverse,” he remarked.
Following Sean, Bobbie carefully edged across the rock at the side of the fast stream, clinging to any crags in the wall that her fingers fitted into. She tried to not think about what might happen if she slipped, because such things were silly and irrational, and anyway, she was a decent swimmer. When they reached the opening, Bobbie was surprised that it was carved with friezes once more.
“Wow, they really went all-out to hide this thing,” she remarked.
“Aye. Shame they didn’t hide the snake-summoning artefact so well,” Sean added dryly.
“That would have saved everyone a lot of nuisance,” Bobbie agreed.
They made their way down the narrow passageway, and at the end of it, on a pedestal, there stood the object they had been looking for. It was eighteen inches long and looked a little like a metal lightning bolt. Bobbie stared at it for a long moment then picked it up. Nothing untoward happened. She stuffed it down one of her stockings, so the fabric held the long stick against her thigh, and they made their way back out to the underground stream.
“I suppose it’s time to get wet,” Bobbie quipped. Sean chuckled grimly. This wasn’t going to be the most pleasant part of the trip. Bobbie only hoped there were no leeches. They leapt into the water and let the current carry them out of the cave. There were a couple of worrying drops, as the water made its way out of the cave, but overall the temperature wasn’t terrible and there didn’t seem to be a huge amount of rocks beneath the surface.
A pinprick of white grew larger, and then they were out in the daylight, still being carried down the river.
“I say,” Bobbie called out. “How do we get back out again?”
“I dinnae ken. I thought you were the one with the plan, lass!” Sean’s accent seemed to thicken when he was stressed. Bobbie sighed and tried to swim to the side of the water. Up ahead, the landscape came to an abrupt stop. The water carried them toward that point, and Bobbie was almost certain it was a treacherous waterfall. She redoubled her efforts to get out of the water, and finally managed to catch a rock.
“Here! Grab onto me!” she called to Sean, as her skirt tried to drag her downstream. He caught onto one of her ankles and her hands slipped from the extra weight dragging her toward the current. Determination won out, and she managed to pull herself out of the stream, onto the shore, at which point she gave a hand to Sean.
They lay on the banks of the water for a long minute, gasping with exertion.
“You still got it?” Sean asked.
Bobbie nodded. “Now we just need to find out how the bloody thing works,” she added, once she could speak again.
In the cloying, humid air, the coolness from being soaked through was nice. She rolled onto her side and gazed up at Sean.
“I am awfully sorry about the trouble you’ve gone to, you know.” She played with a strand of her hair as she drank in his features.
“I know. And I’m starting to see the attraction of all this antiquarianism stuff.” Sean took her chin in his hand and gazed at her. The moment was pregnant with electricity. Bobbie parted her lips and leaned toward him slightly. Sean grasped her hair with his other hand and wound it in his fingers, paying no mind to the fact it was wet. He pulled her face to his then he claimed her mouth, and she gasped as his tongue darted past her lips. A frisson of heat shot through Bobbie’s body and she pressed her breasts up against him as she raised one leg and wrapped it around him, resting her foot on the grass behind his thighs. As she ground her hips against his, she felt his hardness rapidly growing.
“Would you yield to me, lass?” he murmured in his soft Edinburgh accent.
“Yes,” Bobbie whispered. She wanted nothing more.
* * *
Sean pushed himself away from her and picked up one of her shoes in his hand. It was brown leather, with a thin, waxed lace tied into a careful bow then double-knotted. She wasn’t the sort of girl to allow her shoelaces to come undone over the course of the day. He gently worked at the knot, until he was left with a normal bow, at which point he pulled on one of the loose ends until the lace was unfastened.
He loosened the laces lower down, then eased the damp shoe off her foot, before casting her garter aside then peeling away her stocking—soft, slightly transparent, with a thick seam down the back—which revealed her foot.
“If I were you, I would have left the socks on. My feet are disgusting,” Bobbie grumbled, and when he looked at her face, Sean was surprised to see her blushing. How could such a confident, outgoing adventuress be ashamed of her body? He shook his head and bent down, before taking her big toe into his mouth. He sucked at it gently, then ran his teeth along the underside, eliciting a satisfying gasp from Bobbie. He swirled his tongue around the rounded pad, then relinquished it and gazed up at her.
“Your feet are beautiful,” he murmured, returning to the task of sucking on her toes, until each one had been worshipped. He placed her foot gently on the grass then picked up her other one, carefully unwrapping it from its shoe and sock before showing those toes some attention, too.
Bobbie was still blushing heavily as she said, “That proves it. Boys are just disgusting and weird. Sucking each of my toes like they were thruppeny lollipops… the very idea!”
Sean kissed his way across the top of her foot, all the way to her knee, then lifted her leg even higher and lovingly caressed the back of her knee. He knew that was a very sensitive spot for women, and he smiled in satisfaction as she moaned with pleasure. She reached forward, her hands traveling in the direction of his shirt buttons, but he shook his head and caught both her wrists with one of his big hands.
“Let’s get one thing settled, young lady; I may be worshipping your body right now, but I am in control, here, and you don’t get to do anything other than lie back and enjoy what I’m doing to you.”
Bobbie looked like she might be about to protest some more, but Sean chose that moment to release his hands and push her backwards. While she was distracted with not falling flat on her back, he slid her soaked panties down her thighs, revealing her glistening pussy between the silky curls. His cock turned into a steel bar in his underpants as he pulled the panties past her ankles, discarding the underwear on the grass before his face took up residence between her legs. She was an active girl, and quite headstrong, and he was almost certain that no man had ever dared take control of her like this. He knew she was confident enough that she would be clear if she didn’t want this. She would learn that a real man liked to take care of his woman, yearned to pleasure her, needed to put her needs before his own.
“Why is your face down there? Are you trying to look at what I ate for breakfast?” Bobbie’s voice was critical but it seemed like her heart wasn’t in it. Sean was, indeed, drinking in the sight of her exposed pussy.
“I have my reasons.” Deciding to share them with her, he stuck his tongue out and licked her from her small opening up to where her fur began. She squeaked, and he paused for a moment, but she did nothing to stop him. He did it again, and the squeak became a moan.
He licked her pussy until milky-white juices flowed out of her hole, which seemed to have opened a little, inviting him to fill it with his cock. By now, the sounds she made were continuous, deep moans from the heart.
He swirled a finger around her entrance and her hips bucked, as her body tried to entice him inside. It suddenly became clear that he’d wanted this all along and just not known it. From the moment he first spoke to her, he knew now that he’d wanted nothing more than to show her how happy he could make her, but her penchant for getting into dangerous situations kept driving them further apart.
Now that he finally had her under his hand, he had no intention of rushing her.
* * *
Bobbie had been intimate with men before, but none of her long list of ex-lovers had ever been so thorough, or so focussed on her pleasure, and while her itch for human contact had always been scratched in the past, she was usually left with a sense that sex wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She’d never really understood why Adeline spoke so wistfully of time spent with Edward, as though she couldn’t get enough of being under him.
Now, however, clarity had appeared. There was the part of her brain that always analysed everything, which pointed out she was lying on the floor of the jungle somewhere in the Orient (that she could easily point to on a map, although perhaps not right now) while the man who had been stalking her for over a year was doing extremely naughty things to her body, out in the open, where anyone could see them.
The rest of her told her brain to take a long walk off a short pier. The analytical side harrumphed for a moment, then it decided there were enough escape routes from this position, and settled down.
She realized why her thoughts had drifted, then. The Scotsman had paused in his attention to her pussy and was looking up at her intently. Had he just asked a question?
“Sorry, were there words?” she asked, her voice soft.
“Aye. I said you’ve got a beautiful pussy. I could eat it all day.”
Bobbie sighed and rolled her hips, but instead of resuming his conquest, Sean sat up.
“What’s the matter?” Had she upset him somehow? She was always sticking her foot in it with men.
“You’re wearing too many clothes, still. Let me help you with that, lassie.” He reached out and unbuttoned her form-fitting jacket, which was probably not made to get quite so wet, then slid it off her shoulders until it pooled around her wrists. Next, he untied the ribbon beneath her shirt collar, before methodically undoing each button.
Bobbie felt her breasts spring free as the tension in the white fabric of her shirt was released. She sighed and took a deep breath, savouring the warm breeze against her chest. Sean carefully revealed her stomach, then her shirt joined her jacket. He wrapped one arm around her back and lifted her toward him for a moment, so she could shake off her shirt and jacket.
Bobbie had been naked plenty of times before, but this time, she felt exposed. She wanted Sean to think well of her, for some undiscernible reason, and that meant she was worrying for the first time in her life about whether she was sexy enough. It had never even occurred to her before; she had always just been carried along on the current of events with no real emotional involvement in any of it.
“Your titties are amazing.” Sean’s voice cut straight through Bobbie’s inner monologue of self-doubt and she allowed herself a tiny smile. He liked her.
“They look even better without the undergarments,” she remarked dryly, then let him reach around with his other arm and release the long strip of hook-and-eye fastenings. It was so sensual to be taken care of like this, to be unwrapped like a gift just for him. She was almost disappointed when her last layer of clothing slid away from her body, leaving her completely bare and at his mercy.
“You’ve got me, now. What would you do with me?” she murmured. Sean trailed a finger down the curve of her neck, then down past her collarbone until he reached the soft flesh of her breasts. He traced a pattern over the skin, setting her nerves aglow, and she arched her back to try and get more of his touch. As if her latest attempt to take control was intentional, Sean pushed her backwards until she landed on the grass once more, where he seized both her mounds in his hands and caressed the nipples with his thumbs, as her flesh spilled out from between his fingers.
“First, I plan to devour these titties,” Sean replied, then leaned down and circled her left areola with the warm, wet tip of his tongue. She moaned as his actions teased her, filled her with longing, while he never went near the long point of her nipple. He repeated this action with the right areola, and she shuddered as her clit throbbed with desire.
“Oh, please,” she began, but she couldn’t finish the thought. Put your mouth around my nipples in turn. Suck on them. Nibble them. Make them yours.
“You’re not the gaffer, young lady,” he responded. She sighed with need and pent-up energy.
A moment later, he’d taken the white skin of her cleavage into his mouth and was gently sucking on it and swirling his tongue over it. When Bobbie hazarded a glance at his face, she saw a strange expression; arousal mixed with… triumph? He knew exactly what this was doing to her. Then, she realized what his plan was. Whenever she told him to do something, he purposely did something else instead. With that in mind, she resolved to stop trying to give him instructions.
He kept teasing her breasts for several more minutes before he finally decided she had behaved well enough to let her have his mouth on her nipples. It felt divine, as he grazed the hard points with his teeth and caressed them with his tongue. She couldn’t help but cry out with desire.
His hand moved south and found her clit. She gasped as electricity coursed through her. Then, he gazed into her eyes with a thoughtful expression on his face, and she smiled encouragingly, before his finger plunged deeply into her pussy and she was lost in a sea of sensation.
“Good girl,” he murmured, then his mouth resumed its attention to her breast and she cried out as the sensations all combined and seemed to make her whole body buzz with an unfamiliar energy. In a sudden rush, she exploded and bucked around him as her muscles clenched and seared with a delicious warmth. She cried out and squeezed her fists by her sides as she floated for a moment in a separate world composed of only her and Sean.
When she came down, she quivered until Sean relinquished her breasts and held her to him.
“Are you ready for my cock, now?”
His words made her giggle. “You could probably park a train in there about now,” she replied with mirth.
“I guess that might be enough room. Possibly.” He hastened out of his clothes at a breakneck speed, and when he removed his underpants, his hard flesh sprang out. Bobbie licked her lips as she drank in the sight. He positioned the tip of his cock at her entrance, and she moaned with need. The residual effects of her orgasm still left her sensitive, and his cock was huge in comparison with her pussy. She felt the skin at her entrance stretching almost to breaking point.
“Relax, lass. Let me in,” he uttered in her ear. She tried, but it was a tight squeeze all the same, and when his lower abs touched her fur, her pussy felt stretched in every direction as the tip of his cock pressed against her cervix. She moaned as he remained still inside her, waiting for her to adjust. It was the first time anyone had refrained from just forcing their way in; in fact, she had rather thought that was the only way to do it, until this moment proved otherwise.
When she was more at ease, he slid back out of her and she immediately felt bereft, but he didn’t leave her like that for long before he thrust back in and she gasped as his head brushed against somewhere magical, before it found its place deeper within her.
He began making love to her at a slow pace, and she was soon comfortable enough to meet his thrusts with ones of her own. She had never needed him more than at this moment. As he held her to him, something new grew inside her; stronger, more satisfying somehow than her first climax, and she knew that when it finally arrived, it was going to feel incredible.
Sean bit down on her neck, filling her with fresh radiance as her core tightened around his huge cock, and she cried out with desire.
“Oh, harder, please!” she uttered before she realized her mistake. He paused inside her, then tutted and shook his head.
“Well it looks like you haven’t learned the lesson, yet, lassie,” he growled. “I’m in control here, not you.” He pulled his cock backwards, and Bobbie had a horrible moment where she worried he was going to stop completely, but he left the tip inside her, tantalizing her as the rest of her sheath ached to feel him within her again. If only she’d kept her mouth closed.
“I’m sorry.” She wondered if there was anything she could do now to get him to go back to what he was doing before. Then she caught her thoughts and shook her head. Trying to get him to do what she wanted was what got her here in the first place. She needed to let go; to relinquish control to him. It was so hard though. Surely she knew what was best for herself, not him.
All the same, she made the effort, and didn’t ask him to go back in deeper again. Instead, she did something she wasn’t very good at: She waited. As though he sensed her internal struggle, and its eventual resolution with her inaction, he began to thrust into her once more and she melted around his hard cock. He pulled back out again, almost all the way, then plunged back into her. She shuddered as her body got wound tighter with desire.
Trying not to demand he go harder, in case he stopped again, she instead focussed on the sensations he elicited. It was freeing, not having to concentrate on what she wanted, and she enjoyed allowing herself to experience this perfect moment.
He pulled out one more time, then pushed back in deeply and ground his hips, pressing against the bundle of nerves inside her pussy that so few men seemed to be aware of, whilst brushing her clitty at the same time. It was her undoing, and very soon her body released the pressure, as wave after wave of pleasure tore through her, making her cry out his name as she writhed beneath him.
As she floated down to reality once more, he increased his pace, gripping her hips tightly as he thrust into her faster, harder, until she knew he was coming apart, then he stiffened, groaned, and she felt his hot liquid shoot straight inside her. She widened her eyes as she realized what that might mean. It wasn’t his problem, though, and she didn’t want an argument right now, so she said nothing.
Afterwards, they lay on the grass once more, and Bobbie stared at the clouds.
“When I was a child, I used to wish I could live on a cloud. I thought I could build a castle up there, that floated around from one continent to the next, going wherever the notion took it. I thought I would have all sorts of adventures, meet so many interesting people, and of course I was a princess so I had to do it all in a flowing pink gown,” Bobbie said.
Sean smiled indulgently at her. “You’ve done a few of those things,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but not the cloud castle. I think I was eight or nine when I read a book about the water cycle and realized that clouds are insubstantial and that one could never live on a cloud, let alone build a castle on it.” She remembered being so disappointed when she’d found out.
“When I was a wee laddie, I wanted to have a pet Loch Ness monster. Children always dream the impossible,” he replied, stroking her arm with his big hand. Bobbie snuggled up to him.
“The Loch Ness monster’s—” she began.
“Let me guess, you found it and it’s now in a zoo in Chihuahua?”
She giggled and shook her head, pretending to take him seriously. “How did you know?”
“Well, it was in all the papers. The Mexican Highland Daily News was all over it.”
They both giggled. “If I ever do find Nessie, I’ll give her only to you,” Bobbie said. And she meant it. “After all, if silly giant snakes can be going around places causing a nuisance of themselves, who’s to say there’s no monsters that live in the bottom of deep lochs?”
* * *
Sean was still slightly dazed from the fact he and Bobbie had managed to make love on the floor of the jungle. Now, he was mostly just picking up the thread of what they were doing as he followed in Bobbie’s wake and tried to stop her from getting killed. He’d never known a woman like her.
“So, why do you act like my father’s lapdog?” Bobbie asked.
Sean was taken aback by the description although he supposed from her point of view it was accurate enough. “You don’t mince words, do you?”
“I try not to mince anything. Bad for the constitution. Go on; was it a gambling debt? Did he save your father’s life in the Boer? I think I would have remembered if he’d taken you in as an orphan.”
“I wasn’t an orphan. My parents only died in the last few years.”
Bobbie paused, and Sean sensed her trying to be sensitive. Unfortunately, she was the sort of girl for whom that didn’t come naturally. “I’m sorry. Was it the war?”
“No, they were too old to be caught up in that. I wasn’t. I was on the front lines when it happened. Unlike in all the stories about gallantry and derring-do, that meant I didn’t know my parents had passed away until about three weeks after the event. The Spanish Influenza of 1917.”
“Goodness. That must have been difficult.”
“I never got to say goodbye.” Sean trailed off, then he was silent as his thoughts swirled around him. The scent of his mother’s baking, and the way he would pinch cupcakes off the wire rack as they cooled in the window as a boy… The reassuring baritone of his father’s voice as he sang and puttered about the garden… The taste of castor oil when he got sick, followed by the best vegetables from the kitchen garden… Their beaming faces, but sad eyes, as they waved him off to war when he enlisted. In all the conversations they’d had about it before he’d gone to fight the Hun, none of them had even considered the possibility that they wouldn’t survive to see the ceasefire, that he’d return to an empty house and an overgrown garden, and never get to hear his father’s voice again. “…I’m sorry. It was seven years ago and we all have to let go of our childhoods eventually, don’t we?”
“I keep trying. Somehow, a rather strong Scotsman keeps dragging me back, kicking and screaming,” Bobbie remarked pointedly.
Sean sighed. She was right, that was exactly what he was doing. Her parents wanted her to never leave the safety of their home, until they could pass her off to a man who would take care of her, as though she were some sort of invalid. “I guess you wouldn’t understand. You take your family for granted. What if you woke up one day, out here in the middle of a foreign country, and they were gone?”
Bobbie blinked and stared into the distance. “Look, I’m sorry you lost your parents, but I’m not going to spend my whole life cooped up in their country pile waiting to marry someone from the local village just so I get to see my mama before she carks it. I do love my parents, but don’t you understand? I have to live my own life. As an adult. Independently. I have to do something fulfilling. I can’t—no, rather, I won’t—live my life in their shadow. I’ve seen it happen to too many girls.”
Sean was thoughtful. “Most girls find fulfilment in flower shows or raising money to help orphans.”
“I’m not most girls. I was raised to lead, to aspire, to be outstanding. By my parents.”
And blast it all if the girl didn’t have a good point. Sean shook his head as the pieces fell into place. “They raised you to be thoroughly modern, to have a sense of adventure, to be precocious…”
“But the moment I turned eighteen they expected me to change into the demure, perfect housewife and wish for marriage. And flower shows.”
Sean cringed. How was any woman supposed to know whether she was coming or going with so many mixed messages? He felt bad for his part in it. And for the fact that he’d just made love to her, when he was sure she’d never want to marry him.
* * *
Catching up with the snake proved difficult. First, it had meandered through the jungle indiscriminately attacking animals, plants, or people that got in its way. Then, it seemed to disappear into a hole in the ground for a while. Bobbie’s irritation was growing, although she didn’t regret that she and Sean had spent time on sex instead of going straight for the serpent.
“I guess the drawback of it having seven heads is that, just when we figure out its pattern, it goes and changes its mind,” Sean grumbled as they searched for any trace of the snake.
“Bother! Why do Scandinavians always leave so much litter?” Bobbie stopped for a moment to disentangle her feet from a discarded newspaper. “Ugh, that’s perverse!” She winced at the double-page spread of Gunnarsson holding up various Cambodian artefacts and looking very pleased with himself.
“Aye, but it’s only the local rag,” Sean soothed. “He’d never get coverage in a real broadsheet without a more substantial story than, ‘Man finds old things in country full of old things.’”
“You’re right.” Bobbie turned her attention to the ground and tried to focus on the task at hand. “Here! A trail!” She pointed to the ground near her feet, where something had swept through the fallen leaves and twigs, leaving a path of dark humus. Sean was at her side in a moment, and they followed the trail. Bobbie laughed aloud as they came into view of the temple from where they’d found the artefact to get rid of the snake.
“We appear to have come full circle.” She shook her head. Her amusement was cut short, however, as they moved closer. The unmistakable sound of screaming came from the temple, then a man ran out of the entrance, looking terrified. It was Gunnarsson, and he held a book.
* * *
“I think that’s the book that tells one how to use the artefacts,” Bobbie whispered.
“So, do you want to ambush him or shall I? I think you could distract him long enough for me to overpower him,” Sean said.
“Or I could hold my gun to his head and demand he hand over the book,” Bobbie countered.
Sean raised an eyebrow then shook his head. “The less said about your gun, the better. No, find another way to distract hi—”
Sean’s words were cut off as the snake glided out of the temple. It appeared to have grown by half a dozen feet since they last saw it, and was moving slightly more slowly.
As Gunnarsson hastily disappeared between some trees, two men grabbed Bobbie and Sean from behind.
Bobbie squeaked then stopped herself. Sean fought the man holding him, and easily got free, but the man was wiry and didn’t know when to quit. Utterly unable to get the man to stay down, Sean watched in horror as the other man dragged Bobbie toward the snake temple.
“If I get eaten by the bloody snake, can you make sure my parents think it was quick and painless?” Bobbie yelled.
“Hey lass, nobody’s gettin’ eaten on my watch!” Sean growled, punching the man in front of him once more then ducking a return blow.
Sean’s stomach clenched as he finally knocked his opponent unconscious. He ran after Bobbie into the temple, but in the maze of passageways within, he couldn’t immediately discern where she had gone.
He wandered around the dark corridors, straining his ears for any sounds, then he heard the unmistakable tone of Bobbie’s voice when she was indignant about something. He hurried in that direction, then stopped abruptly, staring in horror at the scene.
On a stone slab, Bobbie was being tied down by the man who took her. Gunnarsson was reading in another language from the book he’d been holding earlier. Candles cast an eerie glow on the wall and more men were chanting in the background.
It would be an unnerving ancient ritual, except Bobbie was spitting sparks.
“Well, really, Herr Gunnarsson, this is disgraceful.”
“Shut up, woman,” the Scandinavian man growled irritably, clearly not happy at being interrupted whilst reading from his book.
Bobbie, however, ignored him. “First, your henchmen can’t even capture me comprehensively, and then, when they finally got me into this temple—which I’ll have you know wouldn’t have used candles in the original ceremonies—their rope work skills are nothing short of shoddy. Look, I’ve untied myself already!”
“I said—wait, what?” Gunnarsson turned to look at Bobbie, as did Sean. When Sean saw that Bobbie’s ropes were still fastened, he realized she was commanding Gunnarsson’s attention to give Sean a chance to get closer.
He ran in and picked up a tall candlestick, then hit Gunnarsson with it. The man fell but got up again quickly. Sean wrestled with him, but the Scandinavian was surprisingly strong. As Sean tried to overpower him, the snake appeared.
“Sean!” Bobbie shouted. “Be a dear and untie me before the snake eats me, please!”
“I’m doing my best, lass!” Sean growled, as Gunnarsson banged Sean’s head against the stone ground. The snake came closer, then loud screams chilled Sean’s blood. Although they were clearly the screams of one of Gunnarsson’s henchmen, it galvanized Sean’s will. In an instant, he threw Gunnarsson off him. The man rolled and hit the bottom of the stone altar on which Bobbie was tied. Sean ran to Bobbie and untied her.
“We need to get out of here,” Bobbie said.
“D’you think I’m simple, lass? I ken that!” Sean replied in exasperation. He took Bobbie’s hand and helped her off the stone, then they began to move to the exit, but the snake circled between them and the doorway, before towering over them.
“I hope it’s full from eating that other man,” Bobbie remarked, keeping her voice level. Sean nodded.
“Aye, me too.”
It leaned down and sniffed them. Sean squeezed Bobbie’s hand.
“If we die, there’s no one I’d rather be here with.” When she spoke, Sean’s chest inflated.
“Me too, lass,” he replied with a smile. The snake pulled back with a hiss and moved away.
* * *
“Perhaps it’s full after all,” Bobbie said, as it glided across the room. “Perhaps this is a good time to put it to rest, if we can get that book off Gunnarsson.”
Apparently, it was still hungry, though, because it caught up with Gunnarsson easily, wrapped its body around him while he screamed and tried to crawl free, then leaned down and feasted upon him with all seven heads. Bobbie shuddered and looked away. When Sean grasped her hand and pulled her out of the temple with him, she didn’t resist.
“Does the artefact work without the book?” Sean whispered. Bobbie forced herself to look over her shoulder as they left the temple. The snake was, indeed, devouring the pages.
“Blast!”
“What does that mean? Didn’t the ancient people make… you ken… a copy or something?” Sean’s suggestion was mildly irritating as Bobbie’s heart sank. They stepped out into the sunshine and she stared at the main entrance to the temple, half-expecting the snake to reappear.
“It was written on the dried skins of month-old lambs and consecrated to the sacred gods. I don’t think they would have reproduced it like some cheap Regency woodcut of a bawdy-house wench.” Bobbie’s tone was scathing. Sean sighed but said nothing. Bobbie supposed he would be well within his rights to take her to task over her tone of voice, but he didn’t. Instead, he very carefully went across to where the book had last been seen. Bobbie remained where she was; she’d clearly seen the snake eat the book.
Sean was tutting in annoyance when he returned. “What kind of bally idiotic culture decided to invent an object that summoned a crazy snake, that could only be gotten rid of with another object and the correct mumbo-jumbo, and after they did that, how stupid were they to only put one flaming copy of the book in their temple?”
Bobbie shook her head trying to think. It was difficult with the threat of the snake; she was worried it might appear again at any moment. Then, the answer hit her.
“The newspaper!”
Sean raised his eyebrow again, but Bobbie moved behind him.
“This way!” She followed the trail back into the jungle, until she reached the discarded newspaper that had wrapped itself around her feet earlier.
“Do you think this will work?” Sean sounded either impressed, surprised, or both. Bobbie shrugged noncommittally, then she reached down and picked up the newspaper that someone else had so readily cast aside.
It was easy to find the correct page. Amongst the black and white stills of Gunnarsson’s smarmy face, there were images of the inside of the book. Bobbie hoped against hope that one of the images might be the pages she needed.
“Do you have a magnifying glass?” She patted her pockets as she asked. “Mine is rather compact and I could do with a decent-sized one.”
“Aye. Here.” Sean withdrew a three-inch magnifier from his pocket and handed it to her. She smiled gratefully.
“We make a good team,” she remarked. He gave her a strange look and she wondered if he disagreed. Either way, she pressed the magnifying glass against the paper, and pored over the enlarged image.
“Yes! This is it!” She punched the air. “Get out the artefact!”
Sean withdrew the eighteen-inch-long object from his inside jacket pocket, then Bobbie began reading the ancient letters. As she did, the artefact began to glow, and she stared at it in amazement.
When she had finished the words, the artefact was pulsing with a faint blue light that seemed to radiate from within.
“Now what?” she wondered aloud.
“Now, we take it to the snake,” Sean replied, striding forward with confidence.
Bobbie was glad he seemed to know what to do with the item, because she’d run out of images of the book, and couldn’t guess.
She trailed after him, and when they reached the temple, Sean shouted into the depths. “Oi! Snakey!”
Bobbie pinched the bridge of her nose and cringed as Sean called to the snake in colloquial Scots. It was the least dignified adventure she’d ever been on.
“I suppose you’re going to lull it into a stupor with a set of bagpipes you’ve kept folded in your pocket, next?” she remarked.
Sean chuckled. “Nothing of the sort. I prefer to play the fife, anyway. Oh, steady on!” He leapt backwards as the snake appeared and loomed over them both. Bobbie gasped in horror at its size.
“It must still be growing!” She took several steps backwards, but really only several miles would reassure her. The snake was at least thirty feet tall, now. Bobbie counted seven heads, still, although they seemed to be working in unison, like a hive of bees.
“Aye, well, this should stunt it,” Sean growled, then aimed the lightning-bolt-shaped artefact at the snake, and Bobbie stared in terror as it glowed brighter, then a bolt of electricity blasted toward the snake, ensconcing it in the jumping light for several seconds. The snake roared, tossed its heads as one, then fell to the ground, narrowly missing squashing Sean flat.
“Beefy beastie, isn’t she?” Sean prodded the snake with a foot. “It’s dead. I think the locals will be eating snake stew until June!”
“They’re welcome to it,” Bobbie retorted, shuddering at the idea of eating snake. She had tried plenty of other oddities on various adventures, but the taste of snake was not one she ever intended to experience.
As they watched, however, the snake seemed to fold in on itself, then turn black, at which point its form crumbled like the ashy remains of a fire.
“I wonder why the snake didn’t eat us, when it had us right there,” Sean mused.
“According to the pages of the book that I managed to read just now, the snake only eats virgins.”
“So you’re saying that I saved you from certain death by making love to you, earlier?” Sean asked with a wink. Bobbie giggled and made a noncommittal sound. She didn’t think this was the right moment to point out that she hadn’t been a virgin for some time.
“What do we do with this?” Sean held up the artefact. “Does it belong in a museum?”
“No. It should go back where we found it. Museums are just hoardings of things. Out here, that artefact is alive and it has a purpose.” Bobbie felt strongly about this. Sean’s gaze raked over her, and for a moment she expected him to argue, but instead he just nodded, eyes twinkling.
“Whose turn is it to dive into that cold stream first?” he asked with a grin, then nudged her ribs with his elbow. She chuckled.
“I don’t know, but I’ll race you for it,” she replied, and before he said anything more, she was streaking across the grass toward the temple’s entrance.
No man had ever outrun her. For that reason, she wasn’t expecting to hear his footsteps right behind her. But then his hands were on her waist and he’d tackled her to the soft earth. She cursed him in Latin.
“My willy is not going to turn black and fall off,” he retorted, his voice vibrating as his lips brushed her ear. He rolled her over, then she laid on her back beneath him. “There’s an Ancient Greek myth,” he began, “about the goddess Nike. She said she would only marry the man who could outrun her.”
Bobbie looked up into his eyes. “But none could.”
“Until one.” He leaned down and kissed her.
“Well, there’s no need to be saddled with a chap for whom one has to wait around every corner. If he can’t keep up, he ought to be cut loose.”
“Is that how it is, aye?” Sean raised an eyebrow.
Bobbie nodded emphatically.
“Good job I can keep up, then, is it not?”
She grinned and pulled him closer. It was a wonderful moment, although she knew it couldn’t last. Now that he had helped her finish her work here, Bobbie was certain that he would insist on taking her back to her parents.
“Any port in a storm?” she murmured, trying to bury the feeling that she was about to lose him.
“You? You’re not a port, lass.”
“Then what am I?”
He grinned mischievously and kissed her again. “You’re mine,” he replied.