"Owls? Well, that's different." He pointed the powerful beam into the room. It was much larger than he expected. The sound of falling water caught his attention. He took two steps into the room. It was huge. It was at least nine feet to the ceiling, about thirty feet across, roughly sixty feet straight back and bare of all furnishings.

"Perfect." He smiled. "Plenty of room to do my ritual in here." The beam of his light glittered across a rippling surface at the far end of the long room. Water gushed musically in a restrained waterfall down a three-foot, base-relief carving in black marble outlined with hieroglyphs that seemed to be part of the back wall. The beautiful and elegant face of an exquisitely carved female G.o.ddess figure peeked through the falling water that flowed over and around perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He could even make out the areola surrounding the erect nipples.

"Those Egyptians sure knew how to carve a woman," he mumbled in appreciation as he shined the flashlight beam all around the black marble G.o.ddess. Wings delicately folded down at her sides. Her arms were bent at the elbows with her hands lifted and clutching a loop in each palm.

"I wonder which G.o.ddess you're supposed to be?" He tilted his head to one side. "I see the wings, but you don't look like any Isis I've ever seen." His gaze dropped and he could make out the plump, pouting lower lips of her s.e.x between her generous thighs. Water cascaded down the G.o.ddess's body and over raptor-clawed feet into a large, black marble basin sunk deep into the floor and big enough to swim in.

"Well now, an Egyptian bath tub." He chuckled. "h.e.l.l, I've seen swimming pools smaller than this," he muttered, dropping his pack to the stone floor with a m.u.f.fled thump. Looking into the water, the smooth bottom was visible.

"Doesn't look too deep, and doesn't seem to have any critters swimming around," he noted. "Should be okay to swim in, and the G.o.ds know," he said with a quick, guilty look around, "I could really use a bath right now."

He dipped a finger into the water. The cool water flowed against his finger. "There's a current..." He looked up at the water cascading down the base-relief G.o.ddess. "Well, there would have to be, seeing as water is running into this thing and not spilling out over the edge. It has to be flowing somewhere."

The ceremonial magician stripped in record time.I guess this'll take care of the purification part of my ritual, he thought as he climbed nude into the cool water.Now all I have to do is perform the spell itself. He stared hard at the violin as he soaked.

* Incantation *

The ceremonial magician tucked his long red robes into his rope belt and away from his bare feet as he lit the seven white pillar candles, one at a time. His shadow loomed large and splintered from the multiple light sources. From his velvet belt pouch he pulled out a huge chunk of drawing chalk. Carefully he drew a huge circle, then began inscribing the complicated conjuring diagram on the stone floor within the glowing ring of candles.

Light from the Coleman camp-stove flickered over the hieroglyphs and brilliantly painted carvings on the walls of the huge room he had found. The water from the fountain ran soothingly in the background.

In a strong and clear voice he called on the G.o.ds and spirits of his Arte to empower his design and witness his ritual as he drew. The archaic Latin and Arabic chant made strange echoes in the underground temple. He began to sense a vibration that resonated within his body.

He frowned as he chalked his diagram on the stone floor. In the erratic light of the candles and the cook-stove, the plain white lines seemed to be picking up the light and glowing. He could clearly make out every mark he had placed.

He continued to chant without hesitation, but his eyes grew wide as some of the inner traceries and symbols began to glow with color. Reds, blues, greens and gold began to race through his lines and glyphs as he completed them. The outer ring held a steady glow of bright white. Without stopping his incantation, he stood up and turned all the way around to look at the entire diagram. The design was definitely glowing. That had never happened in any of his previous rituals. He glanced hard at the chalk in his palm. It was stone white.

With the completion of his intricate ill.u.s.tration, he finished his chant. He stepped out of the conjuring circle carefully, without disturbing the chalked lines and archaic glyphs in their almost garish combination of colors. He looked back at the circle and realized that it was casting a light brighter than all the candles and his cook-stove combined.

"f.u.c.k." he whispered, then grabbed his bag and pulled out his magical Arte book, his Grimoire, along with his silver ritual chalice and a bottle of expensive champagne. He took his violin out of the battered case that lay next to his pack and tucked it under one arm, unsheathing his ceremonial sword. Carrying everything, he reentered the glowing diagram.

Dropping to his knees in the circle, he placed his book on the floor in the exact center of the diagram. Flipping through the pages, he opened the book to the ritual he wished to perform.

He uncorked the champagne and caught the foam and some of the sparkling wine in the chalice, then tipped the bottle and filled the silver cup. Some of it ran over his hand and he sucked on his palm.

"Mmm, good stuff." Guiltily, he placed the filled chalice by his Grimoire.

Carefully observing the liturgy forms of the ritual, he stood and raised his consecrated and purified sword. He took a deep, calming breath, then pointed the sacred blade at the white ring that encircled his diagram and slowly turned in a full circle. In a resonant voice, he called out the arcane spell to raise a cone of power.

A whisper of a breeze brushed his cheek and he froze, spooked as he felt the unseen world around him stir. He heard a humming, a soft sigh that was barely a whisper of sound. At his feet, the outer ring of his diagram turned a hard gold, then became dancing flames that raced around the entire outer edge, completing the circle where it began.

Whoa.Okay, this is weird,he thought to himself.So much for the formal invocation.I guess the spell is definitely working, but I don't remember it ever working this fast. I guess I better begin the actual spell.

Raising his violin, he began his invocation.

"...G.o.ds and Spirits of the Ether, I ask that you grant me the inspiration to write music, for my soul is lost in the pathways of humanity and I am bereft. I ask that you show me the way back to my own soul and the music that resides in my dream within a dream..."

Okay,he chided himself,no more listening to the Moody Blues before bedtime.

Carefully, he sat within the center of his glowing circle with his precious violin. Raising the instrument to his chin, he began to play the last song he had ever written. As he played, he poured his desire and need into his music. The song flowed from his violin, hauntingly beautiful and completely alien to this land of sand and sun.

Unnoticed, A breeze whispered through the chamber, circling from the magician in his circle of power. The candle flames danced with its pa.s.sing and lightly swept the sand from the floor as it flowed outward and into the hallways of the temple. The music sailed clear and sweet, throughout the temple and the wind followed. The sound and its accompanying zephyr swept through stone and pa.s.sageway, floating through room after undiscovered room.

He stopped, and the breeze fell. Echoes of his violin drifted through the stones and seemed to take forever to fade. He scrubbed his arm across his eyes, drying the tears that had dripped unnoticed down his cheeks.

He looked up as a strange howl echoed in the temple's depths, and then a powerful wind blew from the doorway and slammed into him. Wide-eyed, he noticed that the candles were not reacting, not even flickering in the strange wind. Arcane power danced on his nerves, his hair stood on end. It didn't feel angry or malignant.

Interest slithered into his mind. Something was perusing his mind and body with s.e.xual interest, like a queen a.s.sessing a new love-slave.

The power suddenly gathered, coalesced and solidified until he could actually feel it moving against his skin. It snaked around his body, closing around his wrists in a vice-grip. His arms were suddenly jerked wide, to either side.

"f.u.c.k!" he swore as he fought against dropping his violin. He couldn't move. His arms felt as though they were manacled with steel straight out from his sides. He wiggled his fingers. They seemed to be working just fine. He tried to stand, but his wrists felt like they were pinned to stone posts. He looked around but whatever was holding him was invisible.

"s.h.i.t! I don't believe this." He felt the arcane power slide under his loose robe with disembodied hands to explore him. He clearly felt something fondling his d.i.c.k, stroking him intimately, and he was powerless to do anything. His nipples hardened and his temperature soared as his body responded to the carnal exploration.

"f.u.c.k me! I'm getting a hard-on."

His belt loosened and his robe opened to expose his naked body as he knelt on the hard stone floor. His breath heaved as he fought the power holding him. His engorged shaft jutted upward, obscenely swollen. The head of his c.o.c.k was purple with excitement, and a drop of liquid formed at the tip.

The power seized his wanton flesh and he threw his head back, feeling an o.r.g.a.s.m rising without his control. His body convulsed and he shouted as his seed burst from his swollen c.o.c.k to splatter the floor.

As suddenly as it came, the power left. The ceremonial magician fell forward in reaction, gasping. He turned and his shoulder hit the stone floor, his violin cradled in his arms.

"Well, that was certainly f.u.c.ked up," he said between pants, then rose to his knees. He looked, but there was no trace of the s.e.m.e.n he had spattered on the floor. Carefully he placed the violin to one side, retied his robe, then grabbed the chalice of champagne.

"I better finish the ritual." He took a swallow to wet his dry mouth. "Before anything else weird happens."

Formally he raised the chalice of champagne and poured it out on the stone floor in libation, thanking the attending spirits in the archaic language of the closing ritual.

His eyes widened as the champagne soaked into the stone as quickly as it was poured from the chalice. Without hesitation, he grabbed the mostly-full bottle and continued to pour the very expensive champagne on the temple floor. The bottle emptied and not a drop was left to mark the spot. He placed his fingers on the stone. Bone dry. A hard shiver raced up his spine.

He bowed formally, then picked up the silver bell that sat near his book. The sharp sweet tones from the bell marked the completion of his formal spell.

"Okay, all attendant spirits go home," he said irreverently. "And thanks for the thrill."

He picked up the sword, stood and turned in a circle to disperse the magical energy of his conjure circle. Carefully, he gave the closing benediction.

The gold light dropped from the outer ring and the colors bled away from the diagram, fading until only white chalk lines remained. The flames of the seven guttering candles that circled his chalk diagram suddenly began winking out one by one, by themselves, until only the cook-stove cast light.

Tired to the bone, he left the circle, lit a candle that would last all night, put out the cook-stove, then dropped, still formally robed, onto his air mattress. In seconds, he was asleep.

Within the depths of the temple, gentle laughter echoed softly and whispered through his dreams.

* Avocation *

He yawned and sat up in his bedding. The blue glow of his watch said it was late morning, but there was no way to really tell in the absolute darkness of the underground temple. He remembered dreaming, and he remembered that a beautiful woman had been in his dreams. But for the life of him, he couldn't remember more that that.

Yawning, he rolled off the air mattress and lit the camp light, then the small Coleman cook-stove. Breakfast could come after clean-up, but coffee came before everything.

The firelight bathed the room in soft gold as he got out of his sleep-wrinkled robe. After a quick wash, he dressed in fresh jeans that were nearly white with wear, and a loose, white, cotton shirt that he left open to the waist. He was not looking forward to the long trek back across the desert to the hotel, where the rest of the orchestra waited.

Carefully, he packed away his magical apparatus then scrubbed all traces of chalk from the stone floor. There was still no trace of the champagne he had spilled on the floor. Odder still, there wasn't a trace of spilled wax from any of the seven candles either.

"Do I really want to know?" he asked himself, then judiciously decided that he really didn't. With a mental shrug, he grabbed his supplies and started cooking breakfast.

"Mmm, smells good. Got enough for two?" said a musical female voice.

"What?" The magician turned around so fast, he landed on his b.u.t.t. He blinked and his mouth fell open in shock. A gorgeous girl was standing at the doorway of the chamber.

"Oh, that was a graceful landing." She chuckled, showing an adorable dimple in a delicate and exotic face. Her eyes were onyx black, outlined in dark kohl and her lips were red as blood. Her hair was black silk, with fringe hanging straight across her brow and the rest hanging straight and fine to her hips, trimmed evenly across. Her skin glowed pale as alabaster and without a trace of tan.

Where the h.e.l.l did she come from?She was the absolute last thing he expected to find in an abandoned temple, and she was smiling at him.I didn't see anything, not even a Bedouin tent, anywhere near here. He rubbed his eyes.Am I still asleep? He looked again, and she was still there.

She moved into the room with an elegance that seemed closer to dance than a stride. The blood red T-shirt was snug against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the generous sway suggested her lack of a bra. Her boot heels clicked on the hard stone floor. The snug black jeans she wore emphasized her rounded thighs, broad hips and narrow waist.

She raised a dark brow. "I asked if you had enough to serve two."

He closed his mouth with a snap. "Uh, yeah, sure." He grabbed the second bowl from his pile of camping stuff and shoveled instant oatmeal, thick with raisins and sweetened with cinnamon and sugar, into it. Convinced that she was going to fade into mist, proving that she was a figment of too much sun and too little sleep, he held out the bowl with both hands.

Heavy silver bracelets jingled as she bent over him to take the bowl and spoon. Only inches from his nose, her nipples stood firm against the scarlet fabric. He could feel his d.i.c.k swelling in interest.

"d.a.m.n, I'm starved." She grinned broadly as she sat cross-legged. She took a bite, then another. "This is good," she said between bites. "Mm, I haven't had something this good in a long time. Thanks."

"You're welcome. It's just something I threw together," he said, breathlessly. She seemed to be real. She was so f.u.c.king beautiful. "How about some coffee? I have powdered cream and packets of sugar."

"Coffee sounds great."

"I'm, uh, Sean," he said as he poured coffee into a tin cup, handing it to her. "So, uh, how'd you get here?"

"I'm Lilli. Nice to meet you, Sean." She mixed sugar and powdered creamer into her coffee and sipped. "Mmm, this is heavenly. I live here."

"You live." He choked. "Here?" The coffee he was stirring creamer into spilled on his knee. He hissed and swore softly, grabbing for the towel lying on his pack.

Her musical chuckles became outright laughter. "Silly me." She smiled and placed her coffee cup on the floor. "You were expecting someone else?" She rose to her feet in one smooth graceful move. "Ah, I get it! You were expecting someone more like this."

Her black hair floated up in a cloud of arcane power that brought cold chills down Sean's spine. The hair all over his body suddenly stood at attention. The scent of heat and s.e.x filled the chamber and slammed him low in the gut. A cascade of golden sparks flared in a corona around her then blazed in a blinding flash.

An Egyptian G.o.ddess in a sheer flowing gown and ornate gold collar stood in a flaming aura of power. Her long hair was ornately braided with bright gold coins and milky opalescent orbs of moonstones. Her closed eyes were heavily outlined in kohl with decorative curls, and her lids were dusted with gold and amethyst. Her lips were heavily painted and outlined in black. Her arms crossed formally over perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s that were tipped in scarlet and heaved gently with her breath. Her skin was as white as milk. Her sheer white gown began just below her bosom, revealing the perfection of her form. Her long, exquisite legs ended in feet clawed like a raptor, a bird of prey.

"You have called and I came," intoned a voice laced with eons of time and rippling with accents of languages long gone to dust.

She opened her eyes, and they were a solid onyx black with stars in their depths. She spread her hands and snowy wings unfolded from her shoulders to spread almost the full length of the room.

"Oh my G.o.d." Sean choked, then rose unsteadily to his feet, his breakfast forgotten. This had to be a dream, G.o.ddesses just didn't appear for no apparent reason, and certainly not in tight jeans. Whatever she was, his d.i.c.k certainly approved. He was so violently hard he was convinced that he was going to spill in his pants.

"G.o.ddess?" she suggested with a mischievous smile. The curve of long incisors showed over her full bottom lip.

"G.o.ddess?" he echoed, stunned.

"Well, yes." She chuckled. "Lillith. You know, one of the Queens of the Starry Heavens, and all that." She shrugged and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s jiggled delightfully. She knelt on her raptor-clawed feet, and her ankles appeared to be in an odd place. Her wings folded over her back, arching high over both their heads then falling in a long graceful arch to brush the stone floor with a soft rustle for such large feathers. Her braids swung as she sat carefully on the floor in her sheer gown.

She picked up her coffee, smiling as she sipped. "Have a seat, Sean."

Sean sat, or rather, collapsed then winced. His jeans were squeezing his d.i.c.k too tightly. He sat up on his knees to give himself room. Staring at her in shock he picked up his coffee, just to have something in his shaking hands.

I called a G.o.ddess.The thought raced in a circle in his mind.I called a G.o.ddess? He sipped his coffee and grimaced.d.a.m.n, forgot the sugar. He turned and reached for the sugar.

He looked back at her, as he stirred sugar into his cup, and discovered that she was back in black jeans and scarlet t-shirt, normal feet and no wings. He sighed in relief.Maybe I imagined it? She looked at him and her eyes were still pits of onyx with stars.Maybe I didn't imagine it.

"Wait a minute," he said as his brow creased in thought, "if you're Lillith, what are you doing in an Egyptian temple?" Sean shifted to one side, then the other, but he could not find a comfortable position with his d.i.c.k that hard. "Aren't you supposed to be a.s.syrian or Babylonian or something?"

She laughed outright. "The Egyptians over-ran them so many times it's not funny. Just cause I started out there doesn't mean I stayed there. Ever notice how close Isis looks like me? Wings? Starry-night symbols? The crown and the ankh?"

"So you're Isis, too?" He sipped his coffee and found himself watching the way her long midnight hair slid lovingly across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Among a dozen other names as well. You called and I came. Is that so difficult to believe?"

h.e.l.l, yeah, it's hard to believe.However, his d.i.c.k was having no problems at all believing that she was there, and he couldn't take the binding in his jeans any more. He was finally forced to turn to the side and adjust himself in his jeans. He expelled a sigh of relief.

She grinned and the points of her fangs flashed with her dimple. "Like what you see?"

Sean blushed. Obviously she'd seen that he'd had to make room for his hard-on.Well, yeah, fangs and weird eyes aside, "you're the most incredible.female, I've ever seen."Jeez, I'm sharing coffee with a G.o.ddess. "But I wasn't trying to call a G.o.ddess. The spell I did was just to get my music back."

She tilted her head to one side. "Your music?"

"Yeah. Uh."G.o.ds, this is painful to talk about. "I've always had music in my head, ever since I was a kid, but lately, it feels like I'm empty inside." It had been a private battle with himself for the past year. Especially when the people he played concert violin with knew the music he had been writing over a year ago.

"What happened to your music?" she looked down at her tin cup, then back up at Sean, and her eyes were back to normal human black pupils.

"I just don't know." He shook his head in confusion. Her smile seemed to be loosening something inside him. He was still marble-hard, but he could at least hold some semblance of a conversation around his rampant libido.

"For the past three years or so, I've been playing the violin in concerts and orchestras and I love playing, but I haven't been able to write any music at all for over a year now. Sometime last year, it just...dried up. I set up the um, spell because I can't write music anymore. Not one completed composition. h.e.l.l, not even part of a melody."

"So you used magic?" She sipped at her coffee.

"I've been practicing magic since I found my Dad's ritual books." About the same time he found his Dad's girlie magazines. He shrugged. Magic was something he normally didn't talk about. His friends knew, but even they had no idea how deep he really was into ceremonial magic.

He swept his hands through the short blonde spikes of his hair. "Magic seems to unlock things inside me when I get stuck, and I'm pretty d.a.m.n stuck, but good, right now." He looked at the stunning woman in front of him. "I've been doing small magicks all my life, but I've never actually conjured anything, or any one, before." He shook his head. "I was only trying to call a muse, not a full blown, all-powerful G.o.ddess."

"Hey, flattery will get you everywhere." Lilli smiled wryly and sipped at her coffee. "So you were trying to invoke a traditional muse for inspiration and ended up in my temple?" Lilli c.o.c.ked her head, then leaned like a lioness on her side, her long legs stretching and her muscular thighs flexing.

"I'm here in Egypt with the orchestra and then some old guy tells me about this abandoned temple. So, I thought: d.a.m.n, here's my chance to do my ritual and see if I can unlock my music." His eyes became glued to the way her jeans molded between her luscious thighs, just outlining the plump female shape hidden there. "I uh didn't realize that I was in anybody's temple." He swallowed. "I mean, I didn't think anyone would still be uh...around. Look, I'm sorry if I, uh, disturbed you."

"You haven't disturbed me, Sean." She grinned, then shrugged. "It gets boring out here after a while. No one has come to visit in a long time, and the people that do just want to take my house apart." She sighed and looked around, then sat back up.

Sean's eyes locked onto the way her b.r.e.a.s.t.s moved invitingly under her shirt. He struggled to bring his eyes back to her face. "Um, I was just wondering, how is it that, your being an ancient G.o.ddess and all, you're, well." He waved at her modern clothes.

"A modern girl?" She grinned at his confusion. "I live in a temple in the middle of nowhere, but I'm still a G.o.ddess. I like to keep in touch with the rest of the world, so every once in a while I go out and spend time as a..." she hesitated. "As a mortal."