The museum set up the Egyptian room as if it were inside a wealthy pharaoh's tomb. They decorated the hallway with depictions dedicated to life in Egypt as it evolved over the ages, portraying the lives of ordinary people doing everyday things.

This mummification room was in a league of its own, speaking of the kind of wealth only a 'god' among men could amass in one short lifetime. It made his subjects' simple lives seem paltry, their poverty directly contrasting the opulence of his life and death.

The casual cruelty of his choices showed in everything he touched in life and all the people who had to die to be buried with him—his wife, army, servants, animals, and even the horses drawing the cart, bringing his body to its final resting place. Why? For the comfort of his afterlife.

Gillian grimaced at the waste.

***

The golden sarcophagus dominated the central room, both spectacular and eerie. The much smaller coffin of the wife appeared diminutive beside it.

The immense weight of the gold, silver, precious stone, and rare wood was tremendous, and to think people lived like this and believed in all of it, wasn't hard to imagine. Weren't they still doing it? They amassed massive fortunes to show their power, but at least now, they failed to take it to their graves, but it wasn't in the opulent surroundings of the central grave area their escort stopped. Nor the rooms dedicated to the soldiers, weapons, carriages, or household items.

They passed through it all to the very back, and with a flourish, the curator indicated the inauspicious room cut from raw stone with a single phrase written across the doorway in ancient Egyptian.

"The embalming chamber," he declared like a tour guide. "The items and artifacts are old and brittle, touch nothing that does not need to be touched. Anything not taken into evidence, handled, or tested must remain where it stands. The museum opens the exhibit in three days."

It struck Gillian as callous after the gruesome find, considering that the boy was supposed to inherit this place.

She tuned out the rest of his instructions, listening to Elissa's unhurried footsteps echo down the corridor instead.

"Good day, ladies," he strutted off, keeping his gaze averted from the open door.

***

Gillian and Colt glanced at each other.

"Rather cold, are they not?" her boss murmured, meaning the Hail family for pushing ahead with the opening, her voice echoing against the stone walls.

They turned and stared at all the corridors and rooms leading to this place, tracing their path to it in their own minds.

"All these cameras and security measures, but no one saw a damn thing?" she almost marveled with a touch of anger.

His brilliance surpassed his arrogance.

They hesitated to go in, but Sally shrugged and stepped inside, forcing them to follow.

"Wait up," Elissa commanded.

Colt compressed her lips into a thin line before purposefully not waiting.

Gillian said nothing as her eyes met her sister's when Elissa entered behind them. The message in her eyes was clearly understood—tone it down; this isn't our world.

***

The smell was overpowering and distinct—death, blood, herbs, and vampire—a pungent elixir in the small space.

Sally's white lab coat seemed like a beacon of light in the cool, gray stone-walled room. No gold or silver decorated the inside, and it contained nothing but the tools of the embalmer—the stone altar, small wooden tables for his instruments, and unadorned clay jars stacked against a wall.

The white linens wrapped correctly around the body provided the only other splotch of color, ready to be laid beneath the heated sands of the Egyptian sun to remove all the water and juices, turning it into a perfectly preserved specimen of mummification.

Clutched in the folded grip of his dead hands across his chest was neither scepter, ankh, nor flail but his phone and a knife, and it seemed rather gruesomely appropriate.

"Whoever did this studied mummification extensively." Sally walked over to the body with Colt.

Only as they approached it could they see some bandages around his face were cut away, and what lay beneath was enough to give her nightmares.

As Sally said earlier, his eyes and mouth were sewn shut, and judging from the extensive bruising to his facial tissue, he was alive for most of it.

"Sally, this is Gillian's sister, Elissa Drake. She will work with us for a while, and she is a security expert who collaborates with the Fed's," Colt finally introduced as Sally glanced at Elissa with a frown.

There were questions in her eyes she was too polite to ask, and her sister chose that moment to pull out her winning charm. She won over Sally effortlessly with a winning smile and a few gracious words, and Colt's brow furrowed.

"I didn't know you had a sister," Sally chided, feeling more comfortable, and Colt snorted almost rudely.

"You were not the only one," Colt grouched. With her usual tact, Sally continued with her observations, but her expression indicated she wasn't finished with this conversation yet.

Gillian didn't have to look at her sister to know Elissa was smirking again, and she started to get Colt's irritation with her sibling.

"He also has intimate knowledge of Egyptology." She pulled on her gloves.

"He removed the eyes, tongue, privates, and nails while his victim still lived, sowing the eyes shut, cutting open his abdomen, and removing all the intestines through the hole. The victim was still conscious, and in ripe old tradition, the killer took this long spoon thing, stuck it into the brain through the nose, and scrambled it up to get it out."

Sally picked up a scalpel and cut loose a piece of linen to unwind it.

"With his victim dead, he removed the internal organs and put them in their specific jars, wrapping the body in all the correct layers of cloth. He bound the little jewels, or as we call them, trophies from this young man's victims into the linen. All of this would have taken hours—it's a painstaking and precise job that old Egyptian priests trained for since childhood.

"What was with the eyes and the sowing?" Colt asked.

"Egyptians believed it would prevent the soul from reincarnating. The Egyptologist Ron Berns visited earlier, and he was almost inappropriately impressed with the 'craftsmanship' of this murderer," Sally almost scoffed, staring at the body of this young man who was both victim and monster.

"At least this time he spared us having to stare at the guts and insides," Colt sighed, and Sally glanced at her innocently.

"They are over there in that big jar; go have a look," she invited with a wicked grin, and Colt glared at her.

Elissa rolled her eyes at the two women, their bit of banter lightening the atmosphere of dark depression for only a moment, but it settled back almost like a living presence.

The room gave Gillian the creeps like no crime scene ever did before. Not even the Halloween ball or that long-ago basement; there was just something sinister about it.

When she glanced at Elissa, she realized her sister felt it too. This vampire was genuinely evil, and there was no trace of compassion, conscience, or remorse in him.