The Royal Palace Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas
The present day

Adrian King allowed the sweet scent to wash over him, to bathe his senses in its exotic and sensual perfume. A perfume he remembered well. A perfume he had created for a woman who had first appeared in his dreams more than thirty centuries ago.

How could the female standing in front of him here, now, so many thousands of years later, smell of this one-of-a-kind fragrance?

He tilted his head to one side and, with eyes closed and nostrils flaring, breathed in again, filling his lungs with the scent of the ancient oil as it emanated from the woman’s skin, from the tiny pulse points on the underside of her wrists, where he could clearly see rivulets of blue through the transparency of her flesh (how like the Blue Nile her veins appeared!) and just there at the base of her pale throat where he could mark the beats of her heart, hear its rhythmic cadence as surely as if resided within his own breast, smell the life blood, metallic, iron-rich, coppery, as it coursed through her body, and there where silky wisps of fine gossamer hair caressed her nape.

He opened himself up and allowed the odor to be infused into his bloodstream down to the smallest capillary, to permeate every cell of bone and muscle, and finally to flow unimpeded into his heart and mind. He was determined to know what the woman was thinking, what she was feeling. An easy enough thing to do with these humans.

Aren’t you human? Adrian paused and contemplated his own question for a moment, twisting his mouth into a semblance of a smile — or perhaps it was more of a predatory grin.

He was human on some level, he supposed, but as Merneptah Seti he had been raised as a warrior, as a prince, as the rightful heir to the throne of the Black Land. As pharaoh he had been venerated by his people, believed by them to be both mortal and divine, worshiped as half-man, half-god. It was he who imposed order and prevented chaos. It was he who preserved and, if necessary, restored harmony to the universe. Power was addictive, and he had been all-powerful. Heady stuff for a mere mortal.

If, indeed, he had ever been mortal.

Since his awakening Adrian had also discovered that his sense of smell, his eyesight, even his hearing had become so acute, a whole world had opened to him that had previously been known only to the wolf, the eagle, and the most cunning hunters of the forest and the desert. A world where even the slightest movement — no more than a mere whisper of a creature’s breath or a solitary flutter of a terrified heart — could deliver prey into the lightning-quick death grip of a hunter’s jaws.

Adrian took in another deep inhalation, simultaneously dreading and anticipating the flood of emotions that would rush into him, fill him, propel him inextricably closer to that point of no return. But there was only the odor of the ancient oil.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

He was stunned. This was unheard of. It was without precedence.

It confounded him. Perplexed him. Intrigued him. He took a step nearer, nudging the woman standing in front of him with his mind. Still, nothing. Then he pushed harder, but it was as though he had run headlong into a solid brick wall.

By all the demons of the underworld, by the devourer of unrighteous hearts and the discontented dead, this woman, this creature, seemed to be able to prevent him from reading her thoughts!

He had never encountered a human being with this ability before. Usually he had to stand guard against the outpouring of emotions, protect himself from the deluge that was unleashed like a dam bursting its concrete and steel barriers.

How could this insignificant female, hair and clothing dishabille, sunglasses hiding her eyes, how could she stop him from smelling, from seeing, from knowing?

For a moment Adrian was tempted to command her to remove the offending glasses and explain herself.

Who are you? That’s what he really wanted to know. And why are you wearing the perfume that I created for the Beautiful One who visited me in my dreams?

Adrian opened his eyes and consciously relaxed his shoulders. He widened his stance by six or seven inches to put himself and his "guest" at ease. Using every modicum of the self-control (for surely self-control was the true measure of a great warrior or a great king, or even of a god) he inquired, "Are you lost?"

"No," the woman replied. A moment later she appeared to change her mind. She raised her arms and then let them fall to her sides again. "Well, yes, I suppose I am. I was so intent on looking at your exhibits and studying the hieroglyphic inscriptions that I didn’t pay any attention to where I going."

"And you ended up here?"

She nodded. "I ended up here."

Adrian suddenly found himself amused. The unflattering and rather severe business suit the young woman wore was at such odds with the wild flush on her cheeks, with the damp tendrils of hair that had escaped the French twist secured with pins at the nape of her neck, with the telltale odor of sex that clung to her from head to toe.

"Perhaps if you . . ." Adrian gestured, indicating the sunglasses she was wearing.

"Oh, of course." She reached up and removed the pair of dark glasses and stuffed them into her handbag. She put her shoulders back and lifted her head.

That was better. Much better.

For the first time he could see her eyes: they were intelligent, but wary, guarded, distrustful. They were eyes that concealed far more than they revealed.

If the poets were right, if the eyes were the windows to the soul, then this woman was going to present a worthy challenge, Adrian thought as he took a step closer to his quarry.