Free Curse of the Druids by Aiden James Page A

under the glow from Ishi’s and Marie’s flashlights.
    “What in the holy hell…?” Impossible to believe what my eyes were feeding my brain.
    None of it made sense. Not the smooth large sapphire embraced by a golden dragon detailed in the style of the Romans two millennia ago. Nor the small bluestone boulder that now blocked the aisle, and where the amulet and its long golden chain lay draped across the boulder’s surface. Surreal in every sense of the word.
    “Who in the hell did this?” Marie wondered aloud, shining her flashlight in both directions down the aisle.
    “There’s no one else here,” I said confidently, stepping closer to her and the gleaming amulet.
    Our prize was far more spectacular in its magnificence than I previously pictured. Beyond priceless. The fact it had appeared before us, seemingly on its own, spoke to the legends surrounding it. I saw with my own eyes that the rocks I had carefully covered the breach in the side of this elongated tomb were intact before Ishi and Marie pushed them aside. Untouched by Egyptian miscreants, what prankster could bring a blue boulder into the crypt when the damned thing was several times larger than the hole?
    “None of this was here yesterday. None of it,” whispered Ishi, whose wide eyes were glued to the amulet, like a child staring at a fire in a hearth for the first time. If only I could join him in that moment of uncomplicated wonder.
    “Someone up above must be smiling on you, darlin’,” I told Marie, pointing toward the ceiling. “Maybe a favor from dear old dad? You should pick it up.”
    She regarded me suspiciously, like I had suggested sticking her hands into the mouth of an alligator instead. I laughed
    “What’s so funny?” she asked, scowling.
    “You,” I said, finding her especially adorable. “You don’t want to try it on for size?”
    “Maybe I should try to bless it first. There’s an incantation written on the map.”
    “The one you tried to read on the plane?” I asked, taking the map from my coat pocket and bringing it closer to Ishi’s flashlight. “You couldn’t read it then, what makes you think you can read it now?”
    “Don’t say an incantation unless you can speak the words correctly and know what they mean,” warned Ishi. “Wrong magic is bad magic. It can kill us all!”
    “Or, turn you into a toad,” I deadpanned.
    A slight thud, followed by three others in quick succession suddenly resounded from outside the crypt.
    Car doors? Shit!
    “Damn it—cut the lights!” I whispered. “Looks like someone’s about to join the party. If neither of you are gonna pick this sucker up, then I’ll do the honors.”
    “No. No, I’ll do it,” said Marie, looking anxiously toward the hole. Footsteps approached and the daylight creeping into the mound was soon blocked, followed by voices speaking in the Masri dialect we heard yesterday. Excited voices— very excited voices. “Here we go.”
    She picked it up, and though I expected it to have some weight to it, Marie deftly slipped it over her head and around her neck. The moment she did, the sapphire began to glow brightly. A sign of protection? Perhaps… or maybe it was just the opposite, and we were about to be betrayed, obliterated, or both.
    That notion gained support when an explosion blew open the crypt’s breach. A pair of legs poked through the opening, but I didn’t wait to see the rest of the guy. Instead, I shoved my glowing girlfriend and little buddy toward the far left end of the mound, praying we’d find a place to hide… and that the gleaming Ambrosius Amulet wouldn’t cost us our lives.
     
     
     

 
     
    Chapter Eleven
     
     
    We didn’t get far before a small platoon of armed men dropped down into the hole. Fortunately we had the good sense to stay quiet and duck into an area where a middle shelf had collapsed onto a bottom shelf, creating a space big enough to accommodate us all. It meant sitting on a pair of human skeletons,