Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  I realized that I was looking at two of the small, ninja type guys who had attacked Hassani’s place last night, in order to steal the artifacts. Two who hadn’t made it back out, by the look of things. So, what were they doing hanging out down here?

  “Somebody make the bodies from last night go,” a low voice said from behind me.

  I turned my head to see Lantern Boy clinging to some rubble, and eying the sparks flying out of the guttering torch warily. He still looked freaked out, but there was also a stubborn tilt to his jaw. As if seeing a beat-up woman head out when he wouldn’t had wounded some pride.

  “They carry them to morgue for study,” he continued. “But then—” He suddenly splayed his fingers, like fireworks going off. Or, I guessed, like zombies sitting up. Because that was absolutely what those things were.

  Looked like Louis-Cesare had been right, after all.

  “They attack our people,” Lantern Boy added. “That why master set fire to monster.”

  I nodded. A necromancer, especially one as powerful as Jonathan, could probably animate any corpse in the area. Hassani’s people must have mentally communicated with him about what was happening at the morgue, so he’d decided to make sure that the big boy didn’t get in on the act.

  Which, points for proactivity, but he could have said something!

  Of course, that didn’t explain why he’d wanted to show me the creepy thing in the first place, but that could wait.

  “Only it not work.”

  I’d started digging in my jacket, to see if I had anything that might help with the current problem, so it took a second for what Lantern Boy had said to register. I stopped and looked back at him. “What?”

  He nodded solemnly. “He return. He always return.”

  I knew—I knew—I was going to regret asking this. “Who returns?”

  The boy’s eyes flickered ominously, or maybe that was just the light. Most of the fuel had been knocked out of our torch during the impact with the other column, leaving it with only a few knotted reeds and some small sticks in the metal holder, most of which had been consumed. But dark red embers still glowed at the base, and deep in his eyes.

  “Gods not like us,” he told me. “They not die, you see? They . . .” he stopped, as if searching for the right word. Which I guessed he didn’t find, because he looked frustrated. “Like torch, about to go out.”

  He waved a hand at the fading item over our heads.

  “They burn lower?”

  He nodded. “Yes, they go low. But not out. They just need—”

  “Someone to add more fuel,” I said numbly, wondering why what remained of my skin suddenly felt like it was about to detach and crawl off.

  A massive crash shook the rubble underneath me, and another pillar disintegrated into pieces. It was on the far side of the room, in an area of mostly shadow, but that didn’t matter. From this vantage point, I could see perfectly well. And what I could see . . .

  “He glow bright now,” Lantern Boy whispered.

  Yeah, I thought, staring at the creature emerging from the curling clouds of dust.

  Yeah.

  It was a snake, if snakes were as big as buildings. A cobra by the look of it, with the typical wide spread hood and flickering tongue, and black as sin. But not like the zombie, which had been darkened by fire. This thing looked fresh out of the box new, without a mark on it. The black was a shiny, lustrous gleam of a color, like the paint on a luxury car, or the patina of black pearls. It was broken up into a thousand small scales—if the size of a medieval shield is considered small—that shaded to gray and then to white on its belly, getting smaller and tighter as they went, down to maybe the size of my fist.

  I shouldn’t have been able to see it so well from this distance, but I guess my hawk charm was still functional. Because I was getting a perfect view of round, wicked black eyes reflecting the lamplight like golden suns. And of fangs longer than my body. And of a tongue flicking out in between them, as if testing the air, looking for . . .

  Something.

  My stomach gave a lurch, but I didn’t have time to decode the message it was sending before the burning zombie lunged. How it had hoisted itself up Mount Rubble I didn’t know, and didn’t care. I put two bullets in what was left of its brain and kicked it back into the other two, who were also clumsily headed up. More of the creatures turned their heads my way, as if on a string, drawn to the echoing sound of the bullets.

  But not the main event. It just stayed where it was, swaying back and forth and occasionally striking down at . . . nothing, as far as I could tell. But it wasn’t nothing.

  Please God, I thought fervently. Please, just one time. Just this one, fucking time, don’t let it be—

  Goddamnit!

  The creature turned suddenly and I spotted Louis-Cesare, clinging to the side of its neck, just under the great hood, with a sword in his hand. He clearly intended to use it to chop off the head. Which would have been fine, which would have been great, except that that wasn’t going to work, and where the hell had I put—

  “Where he come from?” Lantern Boy shrieked, spotting him, too, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, not that it mattered at this point.

  “He does that,” I muttered, searching frantically through my jacket.

  “Does what?”

  “It’s called the Veil. He goes . . . dim,” I explained—badly, but who had time for—

  A muffled scream from Lantern Boy had me looking up, just in time to see my lover hit the far wall of the great chamber, hard enough to leave a Louis-Cesare shaped divot in a cavorting goddess. I didn’t know who she was, but she had a tambourine in her hand and was wearing a ton of golden spangles, each of which appeared to be made out of actual gold and was as long as a spear. Which became a problem when Louis-Cesare fell to the ground and they stabbed down on top of him.

  He was a master; they wouldn’t kill him. But they could pin him for a second, and a second was all that thing needed. And if there was anyone else still able to help, I didn’t see them.

  In a split second, I spotted hairy chested Rashid, his bald head gleaming in the torchlight, his body writhing on a spear half buried in solid rock. Nearby was bearded Bahram, on his feet but wrestling with half a dozen energetic looking zombies. Zakarriyyah was also still standing, in front of a pile of the wounded, defending them alone with a single sabre. Even That Bitch had gotten in on the act, with twin daggers in her hands and a snarl on her pretty face, as she stared down two partially burnt corpses.

  But no one else had been crazy enough to take on the main event, no one but my husband. Who was about to pay for it. The huge, hooded head reared back, the fangs descended, the body lunged—

  And was hit by a double barrage of bullets as I sped across the floor, a bright red crotch rocket between my thighs, a defiant scream on my lips, and two .44 Magnums in my hands.

  The bullets didn’t hurt it; I hadn’t expected them to hurt it. The damned thing had survived a funeral pyre and come out shiny and spit polished. But they got its attention.

  Oh, boy, did they get its attention.

  And goddamn, the creature was fast. It didn’t so much stop its lunge as change direction, almost quicker than my eyes could track. One second it was spearing down at Louis-Cesare, and the next—

  It was right in my face.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dory, Cairo

  It was impossible, just impossible. And this was coming from someone who had once stared down a fully grown dragon. I’d thought that was intense, but after this, I was going to have to revise my personal scale.

  Holy shit just got a brand-new definition.

  Of course, that depended on me surviving this at all, which . . . yeah.

  Fortunately, the senate didn’t buy cheap shit, and while I wasn’t the best on a bike of anybody I’d ever seen, I was motivated. I threw a couple of magical smoke bombs, skidded around in the resulting confusion, saw that giant head strike down all of an inch
away from my right leg. And knifed the bastard in the eye.

  It reared back, an unholy ululation of surprise and pain coming out of its mouth, so human-sounding that it had every hair left on my body saluting the insanity. And then it was coming for me as I rocketed ahead, with a sound like all the sandpaper in the world being scraped across all of the stone. The dragging shhhhSSSSHHHSSSHHHHHSSSSSHHHHHH noise made my ears want to join my skin wherever it had fucked off to.

  And damn it, I tried. I was flying, straight back the way I’d come because that was the only exit I knew, and I was getting the fuck out of here! And so was someone else.

  A second earlier, Lantern Boy had been on top of the rubble heap, hiding like he maybe had some sense. Now he was sitting behind me, holding onto my waist, and screaming in my ear. “Take a left!”

  “What?”

  “After you leave the chamber, go left!”

  I went left.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled, staring at him over my shoulder as we plunged into darkness, and thus getting a perfect view of the wall behind us blowing out.

  “Helping you!”

  We started down a long set of narrow stairs with almost no light at all, which wasn’t the best place for a conversation. “W-w-w-w-w-why?”

  “I fail you. I fail him. I not fail again!”

  Well, that’s optimistic, I thought, as the stairs disintegrated beneath us. That probably had something to do with the fact that an ancient demigod was smashing through them like they were tissue paper instead of solid stone. Or maybe it was just trying to fit its bulk down a passage completely unsuited for it.

  Either way, it wasn’t fun.

  That wasn’t the worse part, though.

  A foul, lung shriveling stench flooded the air as my tires struggled to find purchase on the disintegrating floor, while chunks of stone tumbled down the stairs from behind me. It was so bad that I almost couldn’t breathe again, not because there wasn’t air, but because my body didn’t want it. I had to force myself to take in any oxygen at all, which was probably just as well.

  Imminent asphyxiation gave me something else to concentrate on other than immanent death.

  But that wasn’t the worst part, either.

  “Left!” Lantern Boy screamed, and I hung a left, despite not being able to see a damned thing. But I could feel, and there was suddenly solid stone under my wheels again. I tore ahead, straight into a group of—

  What was this shit?

  I still couldn’t see too well, although the dead blackness of a moment ago was gone, but not for any good reason. We’d just plunged into the middle of what appeared to be a glowing crowd of mummies. They weren’t glowing much, but down here, any illumination seemed bright. And they were mummies, as in the ancient Egyptian, covered in bandages, barely shuffling along variety.

  They weren’t attacking us, unless you counted getting in the way, so I guessed they weren’t part of Jonathan’s forces. It looked like whatever spell he was using had had some spillover, and whoever had been buried in the temple’s crypts had gotten caught in it. As to why the hell they were glowing a faint greenish white, I had no idea.

  But it was pretty damned startling, and the ancient demigod apparently thought so, too. Or maybe he just got confused. Whatever the reason, one of the creatures was snatched up from beside us, and—

  “Fuck!”

  “The god, he has poison,” Lantern Boy informed me.

  No shit. The mummy was no sooner pierced by those fangs than it began writhing and flailing, almost like it was alive and in pain again. Only no, I realized staring over my shoulder. The reason was the same one that caused a piece of paper caught in a fire to dance for a second, before curling up and dusting away.

  Or in this case, to fall to pieces and then into nothing within seconds, like it had been hit with the world’s fastest acting acid.

  Okay, I decided sickly.

  That was the worst thing.

  And then I floored it.

  “Left! Left!” Lantern Boy yelled, as we skidded through another doorway, but there was no left anymore. The giant snake head had just taken it out, along with everything on that side. We slid through the collapsing doorway, sparks scraping off the floor, then straightened up and went barreling ahead—

  And found out where all the mummies had come from.

  For the record, riding through a long, dark tunnel of a room, with a bunch of sarcophagi on either side, the lids of which are either off or rattling, is a fairly pants wetting experience. Especially when paired with mummies disintegrating left and right as spirts of acid hit them. And a goddamned Lantern Boy yelling “LEFT!” loud enough to rupture an eardrum.

  I veered left, which was heart attack inducing itself as I couldn’t see squat, and we were going about sixty miles an hour, and there was no actual corridor there. Or a room or even another crypt. Any of which would have been preferable to—

  “Stairs!” And worse, they were going up.

  We crashed into them, almost flipped, and did stand on end for a second before I could sort us out. Mummy light is not good light, but by this time, I was mostly going on feel anyway. That and sheer terror.

  “Sorry!” Lantern Boy yelled from behind me as we started up.

  He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded hyper, as if whatever passed for an adrenaline system in vamps had hit overload, enough to short out his good sense, fully extend his fangs, and probably tent the front of his robes if I could see them, which thankfully I could not. But it was indisputable that I had a hopped-up teenager determined to prove himself to his possibly dead boss, and for some reason, I was taking orders from him.

  I wasn’t sure which of us was crazier.

  But I didn’t know the layout down here, so I just kept going. When a spurt of pure acid hit the wall beside me, melting ancient stones into goo, I kept going. When the ceiling started to collapse, sending huge rocks tumbling down at us, some bigger than we were, I swerved and kept going. When Lantern Boy shoved a hand in my jacket, and sent every charm I had left tumbling down what remained of the stairs, including one that transformed into a cute little Citroen that I’d never even had a chance to drive, I Kept. Fucking. Going.

  I heard the car crumple between the too-narrow walls behind us when it expanded to its full size, and wedge itself there like a barricade. One that lasted about a second when hit by twenty tons of godly fury. I heard the brain altering sound of an entire car getting crushed like a soda can behind us as we burst out into a suspiciously well-lit tunnel. And then—

  “Left!”

  “You asshole!” I yelled, because sure enough, the damned kid had brought us right back where we’d started.

  Well, almost. We were on the other side of the great hall now, where a Louis-Cesare shaped hole was to be seen on our right, in the midst of a field of golden spikes. There were crumbled pillars and piles of rock everywhere, shambling zombies in the shadows, and vampires, beaten and bloody, but back on their feet, why I didn’t know.

  And then I did, along with why Lantern Boy had suddenly gotten so perky.

  The boss was back.

  When I’d first seen Hassani at our consul’s court, I’d thought him fairly menacing, and not just because of his looks. He’d had an air about him, not of danger exactly, but of something. He had been completely believable as a thousand-year-old assassin and the head of a group of equally badass characters.

  Which was why I’d been surprised when Louis-Cesare and I arrived in Egypt and met a mostly gracious, scholarly type with ink stained fingers and rosy cheeks above his carefully tended beard. He’d reminded me of a cross between a younger version of Santa Claus and a medieval monk. It had been . . . disappointing.

  I wasn’t disappointed now.

  Now he looked more like Gandalf, only not the kindly, firework-wielding version. But Gandalf the White, come back from the brink of death to kick butt and take names, and he was all done taking names. But not of thundering one from the top of the stairs, his
arms raised like Moses, if Moses had wielded a sword in either hand.

  “Sokkwi you were, and Sokkwi you are, and ever shall be, no matter how many times you return. But you will not return again, Little Fool. Today will see your end.”

  He didn’t even raise his voice, not that he needed to with those acoustics. And yet I was shivering. And skidding around, throwing an absolute wave of sparks into the air from a fender sliding across rock, which the tide of vamps rushing at me didn’t even flinch away from.

  I guess fear was relative, and nothing looked intimidating next to what was chasing me.

  So, I didn’t understand why, instead of running to back up the boss, they grabbed me and started dragging me back. “That thing will kill him,” I said, fighting. “Don’t you get it? It will kill him!”

  “No, it won’t,” Louis-Cesare said, pulling me back, pulling me away. Leaving the tiny looking man in the burnt and filthy robes, standing all alone at the top of the massive staircase.

  But not for long.

  The wall I’d just driven through exploded, sending huge stones tumbling over the floor, each as big as a small house. Fortunately, we’d retreated out of the way, into the shadow of a lion headed goddess whose name I couldn’t remember. Right now, I could barely remember my own.

  Because the giant shadow of the great beast had just fallen over the stairs, blocking out the light, leaving Hassani all alone in the darkness.

  “We have to help him,” I whispered.

  But Zakarriyyah was shaking his head. “He has all the help he needs,” he said softly.

  I had no idea what he meant. There was nobody else here. And, worse, the trip through the crypts hadn’t put a mark on the creature. That armor-like hide was a little dustier, but if it had picked up so much as a scratch, I didn’t see it.

  How did you fight something like that? How did you even start? If massive boulders hadn’t hurt it, I doubted any weapon we had was going to do any better. Not that I had any left in the first place—

  And then the snake started talking, and I forgot to care. I forgot everything except the words echoing and echoing—inside my mind.