Tuesday morning, Delia arrived at the Everette Museum twenty minutes early.
Robin had not arrived yet.
The morning security guard opened the door with a slightly surprised expression, seeing the new curator looking as excited as an elementary school kid about to go on a picnic.
Delia went straight to the research room in the back wing, put down her bag, took out her notebook, and stood in front of Dudu Yai’s sarcophagus with her hands on her hips.
“Okay!” she said to the sarcophagus.
“Let’s continue.” The sarcophagus did not answer.
Of course not!
But there was something about the air in this room that was different from yesterday.
Heavier.
Denser.
Like air that had been still in one place for too long and did not appreciate being disturbed.
Delia took a breath, noted that observation in her notebook as an air circulation issue that needed checking, and continued her work.
Today’s goal was to open the sarcophagus.
Robin arrived half an hour later and found Delia already halfway done documenting the locking system along the edges of the sarcophagus.
“Been here long?” asked Robin.
“Twenty minutes,” Delia answered without looking up.
Robin pulled up a chair and sat in the corner of the room with a cup of tea, watching Delia work with the expression of someone who had been waiting a long time for this moment.
The sarcophagus’s locking system was not an ordinary physical mechanism.
There were no visible hinges, no keyhole for a key to enter.
Instead, on all four sides of the lid, there were small recesses shaped like symbols, four different symbols that Delia recognized from the outer carvings as part of the sequence of text she had not fully translated yet.
A kind of password, she thought.
To be pressed in a specific order.
“Mr.
Robin, is there any documentation on how to open this sarcophagus from the team that found it?” Delia asked.
“None,” Robin answered.
“Like I said, there’s no documentation at all except the coordinates.” Delia nodded slowly.
Great.
So figure it out herself, huh?
She returned to her photos from yesterday.
Looking for sequence patterns in the text.
In ritualistic locking traditions from various cultures she had studied, there was usually a sequential clue hidden within the text surrounding the mechanism itself.
Like instructions hidden within the decoration.
Forty minutes later, Delia pressed the third of the four recessed symbols.
Click!
The sound came from inside, not from the surface.
Like something moving away within the stone structure of the sarcophagus.
Robin rose from his chair.
Delia pressed the fourth symbol.
Click!
Click!
Kreeeeak…!
The sarcophagus lid moved.
Slightly.
Only shifted a few millimeters, but enough to prove the mechanism was working and the lock had been released.
“Incredible!” Robin murmured softly.
Delia put on latex gloves, positioned herself at the head of the sarcophagus, and carefully began sliding the lid to the side.
Heavy!
Very heavy!
Robin immediately helped her from the other side.
Slowly, the lid shifted.
And the air that emerged from inside made them both step back half a step simultaneously.
It was not a foul smell.
Not the chemical preservative smell that usually accompanied Egyptian mummies.
This was something else.
Sharper.
Colder.
Like the smell of rain on soil that had not been wet for a very long time.
Like the smell of a room that had once held something very powerful.
Delia put on a thin mask and approached again.
Inside the sarcophagus, wrapped in layers of linen that had darkened to deep brown, lay a mummy in far better condition than it should have been.
Its face was exposed because the wrappings only covered from the chin down, and it still had clear structure.
High cheekbones.
Sharp chin.
Eyebrows that, even after hundreds of years, still formed firm lines.
Its hair was black, tightly braided on both sides, and adorned with strings of dark beads that Delia could not identify the material of up close.
On its chest were neatly arranged a series of small scrolls, a kind of miniature manuscript bound with dark red thread.
And around its neck hung a pendant with a stone that…
Delia tilted her head, squinting.
The color was very similar to the ruby on Alexander’s chest.
“Interesting coincidence,” she noted silently.
“Mr.
Robin,” she called.
“May I open these scrolls for documentation?” Robin approached, looked, then nodded.
“Be careful.” The first scroll alone was enough to make Delia spend a full hour in silence.
The text was in the same ancient Romanian, but this time longer, more narrative, more like a biography than a spell or title.
With a dictionary in one tab and a translator in another, Delia translated it word by word, fragment by fragment, until the picture began to form.
Dudu Yai…
A witch.
Not an ordinary witch.
The text repeatedly used a word whose closest translation was hunter or predator.
Her specialty was not ordinary humans.
Her targets were older, stronger creatures.
Vampires!
According to the first scroll, Dudu Yai hunted vampires not to kill them.
But to drain them.
To take the supernatural energy stored in the immortal creature’s blood to strengthen her own magic.
The older the vampire she hunted, the greater the power she gained.
And according to the last line of the first scroll, which Delia managed to translate before her eyes started stinging from staring at the screen too long, Dudu Yai had never failed a hunt in her entire life.
Delia sat in her chair.
“Okay,” she thought.
“So this isn’t just some ordinary concubine or empress mummy.” This was far more interesting!
Delia did not notice it immediately because she was too focused on her laptop screen and the third scroll she was halfway through translating.
But inside the now-open sarcophagus, something changed.
No movement.
No sound.
No sign that human senses could detect.
Just the air moving very slowly, like something breathing.
Or more precisely, like something sniffing.
And the scent that caught its attention, from within layers of fabric hundreds of years old, from within flesh that had long ceased to function, was not the room’s smell.
Was not Delia’s own scent.
This was another scent.
Cold.
Very old.
Very familiar to a creature that hunted one specific type of prey.
The scent of blood that had entered a contract with a vampire.
The scent of the vampire itself, faint but unmistakable, clinging to the skin, the hair, every cell of the girl sitting two meters from that sarcophagus.
Inside its brown linen, something that should have long been devoid of consciousness finally…
felt.
Robin called for Delia to stop at fifteen minutes to four.
“Take your notes home, translate what’s unfinished, and we’ll continue tomorrow,” the old man said.
Delia closed her laptop, carefully gathered the scrolls she had photographed back into place, then stood and stretched her back.
Almost eight hours hunched over a research table, her back would be demanding payment.
At the very least, an Alexander-style massage, mwahahaha.
As she tidied her desk, her back was still to the sarcophagus.
She did not see it.
Technically, there was nothing to see.
But if there had been an infrared camera in that room, perhaps something might have been detectable.
Something very thin, almost nonexistent, in the empty space between the open sarcophagus and Delia’s back.
Like surveillance.
Like something beginning to…
mark.
* Arriving at the apartment…
Alexander smelled it before the apartment door was fully open.
Not a foul smell.
Not a smell of danger that he recognized.
But there was something in the layer of scent clinging to Delia today, beneath the museum dust smell, the coffee she’d drunk at noon, the ink and notebook paper smell, that made Alexander’s hair stand on end.
Old.
Very old.
And hungry…
“Are you okay?” Alexander asked as soon as Delia entered.
Delia put down her bag.
“Yes, why?” “Your scent is different.” Delia turned to him.
“Different how?” Alexander did not answer immediately.
His nose sniffed once more, slowly, subtly, but Delia was already used to this creature’s strange habits.
“You touched something today.” “Many things.
I work in a museum, don’t forget!” Delia answered dryly, sitting on the sofa and opening her laptop.
“Something specific,” Alexander stared at her.
“Something old.
Older than you should have touched.” Delia looked up.
There was something in Alexander’s tone that was different from usual.
Not the worry he normally hid behind sarcasm.
This was more direct.
More serious.
“I managed to open the sarcophagus today,” Delia said.
Silence…
“Dudu Yai’s sarcophagus,” Delia continued.
“And I managed to take out the mummy.
It’s in really good condition, Alex, you should see it!
The facial structure is still clear, the hair is still there, there are even manuscript scrolls on its chest that…” “DELIA.” That tone cut through her sentence.
Delia closed her mouth.
Alexander stood in the middle of the room, his eyes staring at Delia with an intensity that could not be ignored.
“You opened the sarcophagus.
And the mummy is out.” “Yes,” Delia answered firmly.
“And you spent the whole day near it.” “That’s my job…” “Delia.” Alexander sat on the chair in front of her.
The distance between them suddenly felt like the distance of equals, staring straight at each other.
“What did you find from those scrolls?
About who Dudu Yai is?” Delia knew when Alexander was being truly serious.
This was one of those times.
She closed her laptop.
“A black witch,” she answered quietly.
“A vampire hunter.
Her specialty was draining supernatural energy from vampire blood to strengthen his own magic.” Delia paused.
“It says Dudu Yai never failed.” The expression on Alexander’s face did not change, but something in his eyes moved.
The silence lasted about four seconds.
Then Delia, because that was simply how her brain processed tension, stood up, took her phone, opened her music app, and pressed play.
The beat of DDU-DU DDU-DU filled the room.
“DUDUDU AH YEAH AH YEAH!” Delia shouted, spinning with one hand in the air.
“BLACKPINK IN YOUR AREA!
I managed to open the sarcophagus, Alex!
I took out the mummy!
The first curator to succeed in one work day!
DU DU DU DU…” “Delia…” Alexander whispered, rubbing his face in frustration.
“AH YEAH!
AH YEAH!” “DELIA!” That tone stopped her more effectively than anything else.
Delia lowered her hand.
Turned off the music.
Stared at Alexander, who was still sitting in his chair with an expression that was now beyond debate.
This was not manufactured worry.
Was not over-the-top vampire drama.
This was serious!
“Dudu Yai hunted vampires,” Alexander said quietly.
“And you, Delia!
You who made a blood contract with me, spent the whole day within two meters of her mummy, after you yourself opened the sarcophagus and took her out.” Delia swallowed.
“The vampire scent clinging to your body,” Alexander continued, “is the clearest invitation you could possibly give to a creature like her.” Silence…
“So,” Delia said carefully, “you mean…” Alexander stared straight, seriously, into Delia’s trembling brown eyes.
“You’ve been marked, Delia.”