Steph sighed. “Either take her here and now, or keep it in your pantss Doc. I haven't been laid in two yearss, after thiss was done to me.”
I returned to human and huffed in exasperation, then dug out the clothing I brought for her. She looked at them then at me. She lashed her tail behind her as she cocked an eye. I muttered, “For god's sake woman. Cover yourself. Just cut a hole in the jeans for the swishy thing if you have to.”
She smirked. “You don't like me hanging around naked?”
I looked at her expectantly.
She handed the pants back as she put the shirt on. It stretched tight over her womanly assets. Then her tail lifted and probed the space she had been hiding when we came in, I realized she had made some sort of nest in the ceiling space.
Her tail pulled down one of the kaftans that the fake raiders were wearing, and she used that tail like a third hand as she covered herself with the loose fitting, voluminous garment. Her tail slipped up inside of it, I'm sure to wrap around her own waist to hide it.
She smirked again at me and reached out to grab my hat, and she placed it on her head and tipped it down low to keep her face in shadows. “There, are you happy now? Human cosstume verssion 1.0.”
I whimpered. “That's my hat.”
My girl giggled at me and said, “I'll get you another one, Indy.”
Ok, she was funny. And sexy. And... I stole a peck on her lips and felt my heart flutter. She cocked an eyebrow in response. “There's the assertiveness I...”
Steph covered her ear flaps. “For the love of god!”
I realized just how easy it was to banter with this woman whom I would have considered a monster just weeks earlier. I guess perspective always makes you look past the surface. I saw a woman who was enraged and hurting after a heinous thing had been done to her, yet she had somehow retained her humanity for the most part. I respected that... and I liked her.
I asked as I looked between the two women, “Saddle up?”
Steph seemed to glide out the door, making me think she was still using her tail under her garments more than her feet, and I snorted when she said, “Yippie kay yay, mother fucker.”
Die Hard? Ok, I more than liked this woman now. Olivia was muttering in her delightful British accent, “For the love of Allah, there's two of them now. I'm surrounded by geeks.”
A minute later we were speeding toward the capital. I looked back in the rearview mirror to see the lieutenant putting on some sunglasses with thick white rims. Doc turned back to see what I was looking at and she blurted, “Hey you tosser, those are my sunglasses, how did you get those?”
I threw her own words back at her. “I'll get you another pair, Bird-brain.”
She asked, “Bird-brain?
I echoed her indignant tone. “Pup out?”
“Touche.”
I called back over the rush of wind in the open vehicle, “How did you get to Egypt, Stephanie? You said you were in New York when those women exposed the Crucible. I can't exactly see you flying coach.”
She shrugged, and the only thing that ruined her disguised appearance was the slender forked tongue which snicked out from time to time to taste the air. “I sswam for two dayss. Then ssnuck onboard a container sship heading acrosss the Atlantic. Once I got to France, then it wass jusst another sswim to Africa. Hello Egypt.”
I blinked at the impossibility of it. Ok, she was even more badass than I had witnessed so far. I told her so. “Damn, you're amazing.”
She hesitated as Olivia chimed in too, “Bloody amazing.”
Then the woman seemed to deflate into the back seat and chuckled, “You almosst make me feel like a persson again.”
We both snapped at her in unison, a growl in our tones, “You are a person!” Maybe it was that I felt more a thing than a person now, but I needed to defend the humanity inside her. Because if she didn't have any, then how could I? How could we?
We drove in silence for a bit.
Then the snakeish soldier leaned forward between us and asked, “Sso, who iss thiss persson you are bringing me to ssee?” She seemed to be looking at the horizon like she could see the huge city ahead as we started to get into the greenery which defined the life-sustaining Nile Valley.
The Doc supplied, “Her name is Kissa, she is the vassal of Apophis. Since my falcon recognizes something of the Snake Maiden in you, perhaps she can help in some way.”
I cocked an eyebrow and asked rhetorically, “Isn't Apophis the god of chaos?”
She shrugged and stated, “I didn't say she 'would' help, just that I think she 'could' help.”
Then I contemplated that. Anubis was the god of funerary rites and the underworld, Apophis was the god of chaos and non-existence... wasn't Horus... “What about you, Olivia? Isn't Horus the god of healing?”
She glanced over at me as we started through the outskirts of Cairo, heading toward the hospital. Her eyes were apologetic as she said to me as she looked back at the lieutenant, “She isn't injured. It is beyond my capability.”
I smirked at her. “Wait, wait, wait. So you can heal? So why were you torturing me back in the desert?”
She rolled her eyes, “In any case, those bullets needed to be removed, and you heal just as fast as I could do it, so it was pointless. Face it, love, you're superhuman.”
I swallowed and just stared at the road ahead as traffic got more dense, my cheeks burning. Doctor Olivia Nazari had just called me love. I was knocked out of my reverie by a hissing laugh, “Now look what you've done, bird girl, you broke her.”
Grr.
We arrived at the private hospital and parked in the back. I turned back to Stephanie to tell her we'd be right back, even disguised, she wouldn't blend in well... but, she was nowhere to be seen. When had she gotten out? I asked jackal-butt to amp up my hearing. I laughed at myself in my head as my jackal form asked, “You do realize you're just insulting yourself?” Yeah yeah.
I whispered, “Steph.”
Olivia looked at me, a crooked smile on our face when we heard in the chaos of sound in the city, “Go ssee to your man, ladiess. I'll ssee you back at the vehicle. I wouldn't be able to blend in ssuch closse quarterss.”
My finely feathered Doc said appreciatively, “It seems she's two steps ahead of us.”
I nodded, and we slipped into the hospital to go in search of Gamal's room. We checked at the front desk and made our way to the private room the Professor had him set up in.
I winced at the man on life support, his chest covered in bandages. He was in rough shape. I looked at the clipboard hanging on the foot of the bed and glanced over his charts. A lot of it I didn't understand, but I did the prognosis. He wasn't expected to recover, or even survive another night. My heart sank. He was hurt because of me because someone wanted what I had become. I swallowed my guilt. You didn't do this, Aya, Xerxes and Lazarus did.
I looked up as Olivia crossed back over to the door and nudged her head toward it. I furrowed my brow as I went to stand by it, and peek through the blinds on the window in the door. She said, “Warn me if anyone is coming.”
I watched her as she crossed back over to Gamal, and looked at the beeping EKG monitor, and the various IV lines and the breathing machine. I took a half step toward her as she manifested, she seemed to study him as her eyes flared with gold light. It reminded me a bit of the Goa'ulds from Stargate, and I bit back a smile.
Then her eyes narrowed, and she reached a feathered arm to her empty back, and somehow pulled a large glowing silver ankh that had me stumble back against the door trying to escape it and the light it threw off seemed to be slashing through my brain. It was like when I saw the ankh around Xerxes' neck only a hundred fold more intense.
She looked over to me as I regained my footing, holding my head, I swear it felt ready to explode. I look at ankhs all day in my profession, and dozens of them since I became this Jackal Maiden, so why were these different? The only thing I could fathom was
that they were in contact with a living being instead of carved in stone or painted on pottery.
Though there was genuine concern in her eyes for me, Olivia turned back to the dying man on the bed. She looked through the loop of the ankh at him, and it flared brighter, sending ice picks into my skull, then she held her free hand over his heart. A misty haze of light seemed to move from the ankh to envelop Gamal.
His EKG started screaming as his heart rate went erratic. I was about to tell her to stop when it stabilized again. Then she dropped the ankh as she gasped from what looked to be a herculean mental effort on her part. Like my was-scepter, the ankh just seemed to melt away into nothing as she returned to human form.
I rushed to her when she staggered, and she stood taller and smiled encouragingly at me. “I'm fine, it just takes a lot out of me. I've only done it a couple times, but never with someone this far gone.”
We turned to the door as doctors and nurses came rushing in with a cart full of equipment. A crash cart, I realized, when I saw the defibrillator paddles. One doctor was asking us to leave the room as another hesitated and looked at the EKG, his brow furrowed, and he pulled his stethoscope out to listen to Gamal's heart.
When she dragged me out then down the hall toward the back, I asked, “What did you do?”
She winked at me. “I'm pretty sure your man is going to have a miraculous recovery. I didn't heal him fully, or that would have brought up unanswerable questions, but I did heal the worst of it to ensure he will survive.”
I just stared at her, my mouth agape, and she shrugged. “It's my gift like yours is...” She trailed off and looked away.
I nodded and finished for her with a knot in my stomach, “Basically the exact opposite. Where you heal, I kill.” My blood ran cold at the thought of all the men I have killed, now that I know it is me.
She shook my hand as she grasped it. “Hey, get out of your head. You have only taken the wicked who are under Anubis' dominion. I killed last night too. In defense of others. It is what those of our bloodline do, and have done for all of recorded history.”
Logically I knew it. They were evil men who I had stopped from perpetrating that evil and hurting even more people. It didn't mean I had to like it.
We slid to a stop at the Jeep outside, the lieutenant was sitting in the back seat. We inclined our heads at her as we saddled up. I told her, “One last stop, at Cairo University two blocks up. We need to get the last lodestone, so Xerxes doesn't get it.”
Stephanie reached into her garments and pulled out the idol. “You mean thiss?”
I grabbed it from her hands and stared at it then her. She had gotten to the university, and back in the short time we had been in the hospital. And she somehow found the lodestone?
I handed it to Olivia, who cocked a brow and shared, “But I had this purposefully mislabeled and misfiled to a low priority excavation. How did you...”
She flicked her tongue out rapidly a few times and said as she shrugged. “I just looked for the drawer that had Aya'ss sscent coming from it. Doessn't take a rocket sscientisst.”
Then the Doc's eyes widened, “Did anyone...”
Steph chuckled. “Nobody ssaw me. I wass in the ceiling sspace mosst of the time.” Then her voice lowered to a hiss of disdain. “There were two Lazaruss goonss watching the Universsity. They are waiting for you two to sshow up there.”
Crap on a tuba! It was our next stop, and we would have walked right into an ambush. I noticed Olivia, like me, didn't ask if anything untoward had befallen the two men. Neither of us wanted to know.
The Doc pointed to the north then wrapped the Anubis idol in a rag she found in the glovebox. “Next stop, Kissa's.”
Chapter 10 – Snake Maiden
About halfway to Tanta, my feathered guide had us turn off onto a poorly maintained dirt road. I was in the middle of describing the disparity between the various glyphs found in the Valley of the Kings, which is indicative of many of the developing written languages around the globe as each is influenced by the region and even sometimes by the rulers themselves.
I went on, “And just the differences in location of two separate digs in the same general vicinity, illustrate how even slang can become part of the vernacular of a culture.”
Stephanie had been leaning forward between us listening in rapt fascination as I babbled on for almost ten minutes on the subject. She hissed out, “Fasscinating.”
Then I realized I had gone down a rabbit-hole again and furrowed my brow at the ladies and asked, “What was the original question?”
Olivia gave me an amused and mischievous grin when she supplied, “I had asked if you wanted some water from the canteen.”
“Oh.” I lowered my head to my shoulders, trying to look smaller. How the heck did I get to comparative syntax from canteen?
The tips of my ears burned more when Steph told the Doc, “You've caught yoursself one of thosse beautiful mindss girlss.”
I mumbled, “Shut up.” Then asked to get the attention off of me, “How much farther?”
Falcon-girl placed a warm hand in mine and supplied with a sly smirk. “Oh, we passed it a few minutes back, but your impromptu lecture sucked me in, and I wanted to see where you were going with it. It was that irrigation pump house back there on the right.”
I wanted to die right there. Then I grumped out as I thought back to the drive, supplying, “That was the only building on this road for twenty miles, and it was on the left.” I slowed us and turned around.
She chuckled. “It's on the right coming from this direction since I knew we had to turn around.” She was being all sorts of playful, and the sassy behavior looked good on her.
Stephanie was hissing in laughter at my girl, “You, I like.”
Whatever.
“Come to think of it, I am a little parched.” I reached for the canteen, and they exploded into fits of giggles. What did I say?
Heh. A giggling snake is kind of funny.
The lieutenant seemed to stiffen up a bit as we pulled up to the structure. Olivia instructed me to, “Pull up in the back, there's an open shelter to park... and the vehicles can't be seen from above.” Why would we need to hide our vehicle from... I blurted to our scaled friend, “Does Lazarus have those kind of resources?”
She nodded. Then I just had to ask. “Why did you volunteer? Seeing what happened to the other volunteers...”
She hissed in anger, “I wassn't in Lazaruss when they recruited me from the Sspecial Forcess. None of uss were. We were jusst told the Genessiss Chamber would make uss better ssoldierss. We never ssaw any of the resultss until we were one of the failuress and they put one of those damn ssuicide control collarss on uss to asssure our obedience.”
That was horrifying. Thinking you were doing something good and noble, just to be turned into some sort of monster, then enslaved. I reached back and took one of her malformed hands in mine. I said the only thing I could, “I'm sorry that this happened to you.”
She hadn't been looking at me until then, as she stewed over my inference that she knew what she was getting into. She nodded once then tried to lighten the mood, “You're not getting your hat back.”
Olivia hammed it up by placing a hand on her arm and saying, “Thank you for that.”
I huffed. It was an awesome hat.
Again, the lieutenant looked at us, blinking.
Then Olivia exhaled and said, “Let's get inside. Umm... Kissa can be a little... unpredictable?”
I hesitated at the back door of the structure and asked, “You did text her to let her know we were coming, didn't you?”
She shook her head, squinted one eye cutely and said, “Not exactly. She doesn't have a mobile. She tries to stay as untraceable as she can since she is the keeper of the lodestones for our various gods.”
I blinked. “Soo basically, we're showing up unannounced to where the woman who is protecting the most powerful relics in Egypt is currently hiding o
ut?”
She nodded, and I asked, “And she'll be ok with this?”
“As I said, she's a tad unpredictable.” She shrugged.
Stephanie asked, eyes narrowed, as she placed the hat and sunglasses in the jeep, “Then why iss sshe the one in posssesssion of thesse lodesstone thingiess?”
The doc gave her a sheepish grin as she half shrugged. “She's the most dangerous of us all... well, that's debatable now that our dear Aya has joined the ranks. The first Anubis vassal in centuries.”
I sighed. “Unpredictable, dangerous, what could go wrong?”
Steph hissed a chuckle and told me, “I'll sstand behind you, sshort sstuff.”
“Chicken.”
“No, jusst intelligent.”
Olivia rolled her eyes at us and held up a finger to stop our banter. We stepped up to the door, and she reached for the door handle which looked almost old enough to qualify as an artifact itself. This structure looked to have been built back in the nineteen fifties or sixties. Was it even operational? I didn't hear the tell-tale sounds of mechanical pumps inside. Why did the woman I was so infatuated with seem to know where all these abandoned structures were?
She opened the unlocked door, and I could see the door jamb was splintered, forced open years ago. She called out in Arabic, “Knock, knock? Kissa, it's me, Olivia. I'm here with...”
I sensed a shadow dropping soundlessly behind us. Steph spun and her tail lashed out. The shadow leapt over the sweeping scaly appendage. Two small hooked khopesh sickles sliced through the air but in a move that had me gasping, our scaly friend had grabbed the wrists of our attacker and spun as she twisted into a perfectly executed hip throw. The attacker sailed halfway across what looked like an old storage room, dropping the sickles, which dissolved into nothing, and landing in a sliding three point stance.
My eyes widened at the almost seven-foot-tall woman with a cobra's head, hood flared wide and six-inch fangs bared in threatening malice. She charged, hissing loudly and Stephanie charged right back, baring her smaller fangs with vicious intent. Venom dripped from the needle-sharp and glinting fangs of each opponent.
Anubis Page 9
