Greg Grom knew he had to test it. He had to know. His test was a big success.
Now he was coming back to get the powder-all of it. In the black of night the old corpse was a hideous specter. It stared up at Grom with gaping eye sockets, and laughed at him with yellow teeth. Grom couldn't stop thinking about how the man died.
The old Miytec holy man was trapped underground.
The oil in his lamp was nearly exhausted. "I taste of the powder. I descend into death. I perform the ritual of resurrection upon myself."
Grom knew what that meant. Too much powder worked like Haitian zombie powder. The metabolism slowed and the body seemed to die. Pulse and respiration slowed until they were virtually undetectable. The subject appeared dead. Days later, the subject's metabolism sped up again. The subject, to all appearances, died and came back from the dead.
The holy man took the powder in hopes of extending his life in the unlikely chance that the tomb would be opened up again.
In the irrational, superstitious part of his brain Grom was convinced that now, finally, after seven centuries, the Miytec holy man would resurrect.
It took hours for Grom to get up the nerve to move the holy man. He had to move him-the old Miytec had inconveniently laid himself on top of the stone slab that led into the storage chamber. Using a wide broom, Grom gingerly shifted the body off the stone, only to have it crumble into pieces. After that he felt less anxiety. The old Miytec wasn't a body any longer, just a pile of bones. Grom swept him into a corner, then pried up the big flat stone. Underneath was blackness.
Grom poked his flashlight inside and looked around, and had to clamp a hand over his own mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
There were dozens of stone jars. Dozens of them. Grom worked hard that night, carrying jar after jar out of the storeroom to his rental car. He checked every single jar, and every single jar was brimming with powder. An hour before dawn saw him replacing the stone entrance and shoving the crumbling bones back into place. He drove back to the hotel and used the luggage cart to move the stone jars to his room.
Heidi Fenstermaker was there waiting for him. She helped him pile the jars in the closet, then gave him a nice long back rub. In fact, she did whatever Greg wanted.
Heidi, after all, had been the subject of the very first test.
THE MORNING BEFORE, Greg had waited under a vinecovered arch that had grown shaggy from neglect. It was the only entrance to the hotel's dismal patio restaurant where the crew of archaeology interns took their meals. Heidi Fenstermaker couldn't avoid him.
"Morning, Heidi," Grom greeted her cheerfully. "Join me for breakfast?"
Heidi's eyes flitted around the empty tables as she tried to come up with an excuse to have breakfast with anyone else. However, Grom's bold and overtly friendly invitation gave a polite girl like Heidi no way out.
Grom led her to a tiny round table for two. A surly waiter appeared long enough to deposit two cups of coffee.
"You're heading back to the States in a couple of weeks?" Grom asked conversationally.
"Yes, finally." Heidi sighed.
"I wish you wouldn't go."
"Why not?"
"I like having you around."
She was taken aback. "Greg, you haven't said ten words to me since I got here."
He lifted the cup of coffee out of her hands. "Ugh. A bug just flew in it," Grom said. "I'll get you a fresh cup." He stood and tossed the coffee over the patio rail into the weeds, then got her a clean cup at the waiter's station. He sprinkled in the precious, tiny bits of powder and added fresh coffee.
"Dash of cream, no sugar, no bugs just the way you like it," he announced as he placed the coffee before the lovely Heidi Fenstermaker.
"Thanks."
Grom tried not to stare as she lifted the white porcelain to her full, beautiful lips. The moment of truth. What did dried, ground-up, poisonous octopus powder taste like, anyway? It couldn't be good. He half expected Heidi to spew java all over him.
Instead, she rewarded him with a faint smile. "It's okay?" he asked.
"As good as it gets around here." He nodded. Now the next big test. Would it work?
It couldn't work. How could it work? The Miytec story had to be just a myth.
Well, he would know soon enough.
"I was saying, anyway, I was hoping we might get to know each other," Grom suggested.
"So why'd it take you three months to talk to me?"
Grom tried to look self-effacing. "I'm shy around women." He drank his own coffee, hoping to encourage her by example.
"You're not acting shy now." She sipped.
"You know, for once this is pretty good coffee," Grom said.
Heidi Fenstermaker nodded. "It's not bad at all, really."
"You'd like a little sugar." He said it simply. Not a question. Not a command. He just said it.
Heidi started to say something, then stopped. "I would like some sugar," she said.
Grom poured it in for her.
"It was nice of me to pour your sugar," Grom suggested.
"It's very sweet of you to sweeten my coffee," Heidi said with a wide smile. She sipped it.
"Great joe they have here," Grom observed.
"It is wonderful!"
"I'm attracted to you Heidi. And you are extremely attracted to me."
"I am, Greg. I guess I never really admitted it to myself until this very minute."
"You are in love with me, passionately. You want me. You'd do anything for me, Heidi."
"Yes, Greg, anything. " She leaned over the table, her eyes drinking him in lustily and giving him a fine view down the front of her light cotton shirt. She looked around and surreptitiously opened a couple more of the shirt buttons. Grom's view got even better.
Heidi pulled the rubber band out of her hair, transforming her tight ponytail into a bountiful spill of cornsilk. "Let's skip breakfast and go back to my room," she suggested.
Grom leaned back, brimming with satisfaction. His future was assured. His success would know no bounds. And what better way to celebrate it all than with a morning romp with Heidi Fenstermaker? He said, "Finish your coffee for me first, will you, honey bunch?"