Tempest Minds: A Time Travel Fantasy Romance (Kingdom of Sand & Stars Book 2)

by Candace Osmond

  My heart thudded against its cage.

  Silas sprung to his feet while Anubis coated my scorpion stings with the raunchy ointment and I immediately felt the relief of the poison being pulled from the wounds.

  “I’m going to kill my brother and bury his amulet at the bottom of the deepest ocean.” He clenched a fist as the words seethed from his mouth.

  I patted his arm and smiled through the pain. “One crisis at a time. Let’s go find a magical grain of sand and prevent the God of Chaos and Destruction from destroying the world first.”

  ***

  The second half of our journey went by much faster than the first. The push of urgency was fresh and alive, moving us along as we followed Anubis’ expert tracking ability. He rode his mule as if he knew exactly where to go and, the more I thought about it, he probably did. These gods possessed powers unlike anything I could have ever dreamed of. Like the stuff of movies or fantasy novels.

  Shadow sat content in my arms as I held the reins of my donkey with one hand. I tried to ignore the stark silence that hummed around Silas just a couple feet to my right. He was pissed, I got that. But I worried for him. This eternal rivalry between him and his brother was unhealthy, to say the least. One of them was bound to end up dead and I constantly battled with the possibility that it might be the man I loved.

  Anubis hauled back on the leather reins and his donkey came to a halt. His jackal head sniffed at the air and he closed his eyes for a moment before turning to look back at us.

  “It’s here,” he said with stone cold certainty.

  I glanced around but there was nothing only sand as far as the eye could see. A warm breeze tickled my face and the hot afternoon sun kissed my skin where the salve didn’t cover. I tugged at the edges of the cooling fabric of Eirik’s old cloak and shielded my face, not wanting it to burn any more than it already had.

  “Are you sure?” Silas asked him.

  Anubis nodded and hopped down from his mount. He circled a spot in the sand. “How deep did your mother say she buried the temple?”

  Silas joined him on the ground. “Deep.”

  “Can you do it?” his cousin replied.

  He bent his knees and squat over the ground as his fingers stuck in the sand, pushing and sinking up to his wrists. His eyes closed, and a calmness washed over his face for a moment before they flew open again.

  “Yes,” Silas assured us. “I can feel it. Deep beneath the surface.” He examined the area widely. “Stand back. Way back.”

  Anubis and I led the donkeys back a ways, while keeping Silas in our sights. Shadow played and dug in the sand near my feet, totally oblivious to what we were doing. But then I realized, I didn’t really know what was about to happen myself. Silas remained perched in the sand; his fingers stuck deep beneath the surface. The air began to tighten and vibrate with a strange energy. All emanating outward from my boyfriend. I watched intently, but the sound of a falcon crying in the distance stole my attention and I whipped my head around in search of the bird I’ve now come to fear.

  “What’s the matter?” Anubis asked.

  “Did you hear that?”

  He lowered his head and peered around. “Hear what?”

  I strained to listen again, my eyes scanning the blank skies. But there was nothing. I shook my head. “Nothing. Must have been my mind. Maybe the heat is getting to me.”

  “Well, won’t be much longer now,” he replied. “Amun will unearth the entrance in no time.”

  “Is that what he’s doing?”

  But Anubis didn’t get the chance to reply. Just like the dense air around us, the sand beneath our feet began to hum, the mild vibrations tickling up through my legs. Shadow stopped rooting around in the dirt and his ears flattened against his head as he scurried over to me. The pulsations increased, getting deeper and louder with every passing second.

  Suddenly, a small hole formed just a few yards from where Silas was hunched, and sand began to trickle inside it. Soon, a wide mouth opened in the ground and more sand poured down inside it, like a slow releasing drain. The hole grew bigger and bigger, with a terrifying amount of sand billowing into it and I realized the rim was opening toward him.

  “Silas!” I cried and bolted after him without a second thought.

  “Andie! Stop!” Anubis called.

  But it was too late. The ground beneath me gave way like play doh and my body hit the cascading sand like a sack of potatoes. It sucked me inside, unrelenting and impossible to escape. I scrambled and clawed in a futile attempt to climb back up, but it was no use.

  The hole must have been fifty feet wide now and I hurled toward a dark pit. More sand pushed from above and I glanced up in a panic to find two more bodies sliding toward the same direction I was headed.

  I was nearing the bottom, a black void too far down for sunlight to reach, and I covered my head protectively with my arms as I shot inside a narrow rectangular opening and tumbled to the bottom of a stone cased entryway. I landed on my back, knocking the wind right out of my lungs, and gasped for air as I struggled to my feet. Sand continued to trickle down and around the entry, most of it missing the open doorway that sat at an odd upward angle.

  Soon, Anubis and Silas tumbled inside, Shadow not far behind. He scrambled to his little feet as he coughed up bits of sand and shook away what coated his skin. Anubis brushed at his clothes and narrowed his eyes at me in the near darkness.

  “It’s a wonder you’ve made it this far in life, you know that?”

  My cheeks flushed. “Sorry about that. I thought Silas was going to get sucked down in the hole.”

  “And yet,” Anubis gestured widely at his cousin, “here he is. Alive.”

  I rolled my eyes. The guy could be so uptight sometimes.

  Silas was on his feet and by my side. He shook the sand from his hair and dusted it from his clothes. “It’s fine. We’re all fine. Now, let’s get what we came for before my brother finds us here.”

  He grabbed a thick piece of wood sticking out of the wall and tore part of his shirt to wrap around the end. Then pointed the tip down toward Shadow.

  “Care to light the way?” Silas asked the creature.

  Shadow cooed and chirped then sucked in a deep breath of air before bowing out a small stream of fire. The end of the torch caught and the cave-like temple around us suddenly became alight with a dim golden glow. The firelight refracted off the jagged stone walls and we crept deeper and deeper inside. Aside from endless hieroglyphs, the place was nearly empty. No statues, no sarcophaguses, no furniture. Nothing. As if it had been cleaned out before Isis sunk it the bottom of the desert.

  I trailed along, not really sure exactly what we were looking for. My gaze raked over the beautiful and neglected images carved into the walls.

  “Did Isis say where it was? Or what it looks like?” I asked, my voice nothing but a deep echo through the chambers.

  “Yeah,” Silas replied just a couple of feet in front of me. “She said to look for a Malek Box.”

  “What’s that?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the hieroglyphs. There was something familiar about the symbols and some of the words.

  Anubis glanced over his shoulder. “A small metallic box that can fit in your hand.”

  We turned a corner and I stopped to narrow my gaze at another image. “Hey, wait.” I waved Silas back. “Bring that torch here.”

  He held it up to the wall and the three of us gasped in unison.

  Anubis tilted his head as he examined. “Is that…”

  “A Tanin warrior.” The words came out in a whisper across Silas’ lips as he stared at the giant reptilian humanoid, clad in armor.

  “I thought Tanins didn’t really take root here,” I said, remembering what Eirik had told me.

  “They didn’t,” Anubis replied. “That we know of. But look at this.” He pointed to another wall, one covered in what looked like a map swathed in strange, yet familiar, symbols.

  Shadow crawled up in my arms and reached
out toward the wall. His little palm pressed against it and he let out a saddened coo. A reptilian monarch wore a gaudy head piece while leading a ship across the sea where it seemed another temple like this one awaited. The shapes of the bodies of land resembled that of the continents I knew on this world. But, as I traced the story of pictures with my eyes, I realized that the creatures exited their ship on the other side of the world, but with the faces of men.

  Human men.

  “My god,” I choked out. “Is this saying…they were…shapeshifters?”

  “So, they did come here, after all,” Silas spoke with uncertain awe.

  I looked at Shadow in my arms. “But where did they all go?”

  Anubis clapped Silas’ upper arm. “That may be a question for your mother. But right now, we have more pressing matters.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” he agreed and began pacing the large room we were in. The single torch was beginning to dim as he walked the perimeter, glancing inside the only doorway other than the one we entered through. “This is it. There’s nothing more except two portal doors in this large closet.”

  I let Shadow hop down to the floor as I craned my neck and searched around for a sign of…anything. “Well, it has to be here, then. Keep looking.”

  Shadow’s padded feet tapped against the cold stone and he moved within the space as if he’d been here before, with purpose. He climbed up on a stone ledge and puffed a flame that immediately caught fire to a trough of some sort of oil, causing a ribbon of fire to circle around the room.

  I smiled at the creature. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  He chirped happily.

  I examined the chamber with new eyes, in the generous firelight, and noticed a small square amongst the many carvings on the wall. The line around it thicker and deeper than the rest. Like a tile without grout. I walked over and touched my hand to it and noted how it felt loose to the touch. Like I could just pull it out.

  “Guys,” I said. “Could this be what we’re looking for?”

  They came over and stood on either side of me while I gently pushed on the square, realizing then that it wasn’t made of stone like the wall, but of a weird, soft black metal. It popped out enough that I could secure my fingers around it.

  I looked at Silas. “Do I just pull it out? What if–” I chewed at my lip, wondering if I was being ridiculous. “Would it be…booby trapped?”

  He chuckled lightly and shook his head at his confused cousin. “No, I doubt it,” he told me. “My mother would have warned us, I’m sure.”

  With a deep breath, I pinched the box with all my fingers and pulled it from its perfect hole in the wall. It slid without resistance and I held the surprisingly light box in my hand.

  “Should we open it to make sure?” I asked.

  Anubis stared at it, a distant look in his eyes. I held the key to his father’s resurrection in my palm. I wondered then, what he truly thought of it all. What side he fell on when it came to his family’s dysfunctional matters.

  “Are you alright?” I asked him.

  He shivered away the daze and took a step back. “Yes. It’s just…” His arms crossed tightly. “It’s difficult to have a parent whom you both love and fear.”

  Silas and I stood in silence, letting him have a moment with his own resolve.

  “But that’s neither here nor there,” Anubis added with a hint of positivity in his tone. He straightened his back proudly. “This is a Malek Box, it’s surely the one we came for. Opening it could release my father in his elemental form. If that grain of sand comes in contact with another, that’s all he’d need. We can’t risk it.” His nostrils at the tip of his black nose flared with a deep breath. “Let’s get it to secure location.”

  “No need, cousin,” a voice sounded from behind.

  I spun around, my heart already flown into a panic, and my throat squeezed with the rush of fear that suddenly coursed through my body. Horus stood there, smug and waiting. Silas stepped in front of me protectively and I peered around his shoulder as the god stepped closer.

  A wild, sneering grin spread across his face. “I’ll take it off your hands.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  It’s crazy how fast things can change right in front of your eyes. And when it’s for the worst, it’s even faster. The world around me closed in, my ears filled with the quickened pulse of my life force and I swayed on my feet. Pushing back against the heavy blanket of nausea that threatened to push me down.

  Silas widened his stance and braced himself between his brother and me. His wide shoulders heaved under the thin cover of his linen shirt. From this close, I could feel the air that touched his body humming, the way it did when he was about to use his powers.

  Horus swung a leg in front of the other as he confidently paced the area between us and the exit. He clucked his tongue and waggled a finger at his brother. “Now, now. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Wouldn’t want to accidently let dear old uncle out now, would we?”

  Silas guffawed. “Isn’t that what you want?”

  He shrugged carelessly. “Yes, but I’m not sure I’d like to do it down here.” He motioned at the cavernous space around us. “Who knows how sound this ancient structure is? And, I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy being crushed to death by a cave-in.” His wide hands smoothed over the ornate chest piece he wore over a cream tunic. “I’ve grown fond of this body over the last few thousand years.”

  “What are you really doing?” Anubis seethed.

  Horus feigned surprise. “I thought that was rather obvious. I needed to find Set but hadn’t the first idea where to look. I knew my mother would never tell me; I’ve tried everything to get inside her head. She’s stubborn.” His dark eyes narrowed on me. “It’s frustrating.” I swallowed nervously as he continued. “But I knew she’d tell you. Especially if the location had been compromised.”

  Silas’ fists clenched at his sides. “You wanted me to hear you discussing your plan, didn’t you? It was all a trick.”

  His brother stared unapologetically. “Are you surprised?”

  In unison, the three of us replied in defeat, “No.”

  “You can’t resurrect my father,” Anubis said and stepped forward. “He’s nothing but chaos and destruction, and he’s had thousands of years being angry at the world. He’ll destroy everything.”

  “That’s the plan,” Horus replied as he examined the hieroglyphs on the walls around us with a sense of boredom. He cringed at the cacophony of protests we threw at him. “Easy, easy. I’ll put him back. I just need to…borrow him for a bit.”

  I’d had enough, my impatience stomped down my fear. “But that’s the thing, Horus. You won’t be able to put him back.” I peered over Silas’ protective shoulder. “You’re not strong enough.”

  He flashed me a glare that could cut through glass. “Do not tell me what I can and cannot do. I will release Set on the world, and they will beg for me to save them from themselves. And when they watch me destroy the God of Chaos and Destruction, they’ll worship at my feet and hand over their hearts without question.”

  “But that’s not love!” I cried, frustrated at his stubbornness. I took a step forward, but Silas’ arm held me back. “That’s fear.”

  For a split second, I could see a hint of sadness flash in his eyes, but his expression hardened. “I see no difference.” Horus fixed on the cube in Silas’ hand. “Now, hand over the Malek Box.”

  “Never,” Silas replied and stuffed it in the satchel that hung across his chest.

  “Then you leave me no choice, brother,” Horus replied and readied himself for an attack.

  “Very well, then.” Silas stomped his foot and his golden staff shot up from the floor where he caught it in his hand without breaking his stare down with Horus.

  The temple immediately filled with noise as the two dove into a brawl. Thick waves of energy blasted back and forth, knocking one another into a wall or scraping across the stone
floor. I wanted to help, to jump in and break up the fight, but what could I do, really? A mere human girl with zero fighting skills had no chance of even coming between two clashing gods.

  Anubis stood on one side of the room, hunched and waiting for the chance to jump in, while I hovered in a corner on the other side with Shadow at my feet. If only I’d put the cube in my backpack, I could make a run for it while Horus was distracted. But that wasn’t the case, and I stood helplessly in wait.

  In the blink of an eye, Horus grabbed hold of Silas’ arms and let out a guttural roar as he spun him around, putting himself between me and Silas. My heart pounded in my chest and I didn’t have the chance to even scream as Horus moved with a blinding speed and I was in his grasp. My back to his chest, a knife to my throat.

  “Andie!” Silas cried, but came to a screeching halt when the blade tightened against my skin and I let out a wince.

  I could feel it break the surface and a warm trickle made its way down my neck, causing the gold flecks in Silas’ panicked eyes to gleam intensely. Shadow growled from below and I heard the distinct thwomp of something kicking him out of the way. His little body crumbled to the floor a few feet away and I whined in place, unable to move. Tears streamed down over my cheeks, but a dose of panic shot through me when I noticed Silas and Anubis moved toward us.

  “No!” I pleaded with a gurgle. “Don’t. Just stay back.”

  The hand that wasn’t holding the knife to my throat stuck out, palm up. “The cube,” Horus demanded neatly. “Now.”

  He hesitated, but only waited a moment before he reached for his bag.

  “No, Silas, don’t!” My eyes widened, begging him not to do it. “Just leave. Get out of here.” Cautiously, I gently patted the pocket that we both knew held my soul stone.