Free The Babylon Rite by Tom Knox

warrior priest, buried with his tumi. Decapitated llamas, that was nice, and tons of grave goods – a headdress made from desert fox bones, this fantastic wooden club …’
    Dan was still working at the door. A faint crack of blackness could be seen – beyond. The tension was thick in the air, replacing the crimson powder of lethal cinnabar. Jessica guessed that all of them were feeling it, the rising tide of excitement.
    Jay spoke up. ‘Didn’t you find blood on that club?’
    The door was definitely opening. Larry replied, ‘Yeah, it was covered in this … like … black stuff. Horrible. We did immunoanalysis. It reacted to human blood antiserum only.’
    The door was opening further. Larry added, ‘It had been used so often, to kill people, ritually, that the blood had soaked through the wood. Like jam in a sponge. Yuk.’
    They were seconds from entering Tomb 1, Huaca D.
    Dan interrupted, his voice strained by exertion. ‘Looking back, ah, you know, with what we know from Jessica and Steve Venturi, I reckon – ah—’ He was pushing at the door now, and it was opening easily. ‘I reckon that, ah … the mace must have been used in the sacrifice ritual. When they were done drinking blood, they just lined victims up, hit them with the club, bludgeoned the brains away – so all we need to do is know why: who they did it for, who they, ah … worshipped. OK … ah … I think I think we’re in.
I think we’re in the tomb!
’
    Even the veteran professional calm of Dan Kossoy was affected by the excitement: he said nothing more. But the beam of his headtorch told the story.
    The door was open.
    Jessica breathed the ancient air exhaling from Tomb 1. It seemed to be respirating, releasing a long ancient sigh of relief, or submission. This was nonsense, of course. It was just some ventilation, air blowing through the entire huaca, now that the door was fully open, the desert wind whistling through, probably from their entrance to some further concealed exit – air sucking from one end to the other.
    The smell was tainted with an old putridity, something ancient, and distant, and incorrigibly dead.
    Jess looked around. Was she the only who had noticed this disgusting odour? No. Jay had a sleeve over his mouth. But Dan Kossoy seemed entirely unfazed.
    ‘It’s an unbroken Moche tomb all right. A big one. I know that singularly lovely perfume. Come on. Let’s go see.’
    One by one they crouched and waited to pass through the portal of Tomb 1, Huaca D. Jess felt, for a fraction of a moment, like a Second World War POW in a movie, waiting to use the secret tunnel to escape from the Nazis. The difference was, they were going
further into
the imprisoning evil.
    The first thing she noticed was the size of the tomb: it was huge, big enough to stand in, and it stretched deep into hidden darkness. Mud steps led down. So that was how it worked. The Moche must have dug down, to make this vast tomb, then built the adobe pyramid over the pit.
    Her feet crunched on something. What? She shone her headtorch down on the floor.
    A thousand glittering corpses sparkled back at her: the desiccated carapaces of beetles, iridescent, still showing their sinisterly gorgeous colours: purples and lurid greens and deep dark blues.
    ‘Skin beetles!
Omorgus suberosus.
Flesh-eating Coleoptera. The Moche worshipped them – they worshipped skin beetles and blowflies. We see them on ceramics. Familiars of the unknown god, perhaps? Hmm.’ Dan Kossoy was standing close to Jess as he said this. Very close. The beams of their headtorches crossed like battling swords as they both stared at the floor. She felt his hand reach for her hand and grasp it discreetly, giving a brief, secret, affectionate, reassuring squeeze. Then he pointed. ‘And here, these are fly puparia. Thousands of them. But … my goodness. Look. Here – totally staked out.’
    Jessica gazed. The dead beetles formed a kind of stencil or silhouette: and they surrounded a skeleton