Anubis

by Erik Schubach

  I looked over toward the command tent, maybe fifty yards away, and Xerxes and Truit stood there, looking in the direction the men were running. Beside them were two figures, one that looked to be a huge humanoid figure made of shadow and darkness, it appeared to have tendrils of that same roiling darkness shooting from it, seemingly tethering to all of the Lazarus soldiers.

  The other figure was a beautiful woman who looked to be only twenty-five or so, with her arms wide, reveling in the sandstorm encircling the camp as she sang that haunting tune. I recognized her as that weather witch from Vancouver who was all over the news... Leucosia.

  There was a wall of slack eyed people that I could feel were dead, surrounding them, and all were armed. Truit's meat puppets. The jackal in me was enraged. Death was our dominion.

  I quested and found what I was looking for, there was a congregation of the life forces that felt wrong, twisted and tainted. There were only a few in the tent we thought they were held in, and I could feel nine or ten moving toward the sounds of battle. Damn it. The others might not be able to feel them coming. They were essentially fighting blind out there, not being able to see, hear, smell, or taste the air.

  I told Olivia as she sliced the tent material with her sharp claws to make a rear entry. “You get the stones, the others are in danger. I'll meet you back with them, I have to stop this woman from singing up this storm.”

  Wait, singing up the storm. She was no weather witch. Many cultures had tales of similar women who could affect the weather and the minds of men with their seductive songs. This woman was a siren!

  Before Olivia could stop me, I stepped back into the storm and started running around the camp's perimeter. I almost lost it when a dog with a half human deformed face dove through the swirling sand around me. It was roaring almost like a lion, and it had one of those damn suicide control collars on it.

  I knew this to be Benjamin, Butcher of... of something. His name was as fractured as his body, twisted into something not recognizable. My claws raked him as I dodged to the side as his leap had him sailing past me, twisting in the air to try to snap its long, almost saber-like teeth at me.

  It roared in pain as I left long furrowed wounds down the length of him. He stood up on two legs and spun, lashing out with a leg, and I was shocked to find myself catching it then dropping to one knee and snapping his leg across my other knee.

  Then I was spinning, looping an arm under the broken leg as he screamed, and I caught one of his flailing, claw-like hands as I stood, pinning him across my shoulders, his malformed backbone stretched tight. The man-beast must have weighed four or five hundred pounds, but to my surprise, I lifted him with little effort at all. Then I was dropping to a knee again as I pulled down with all my might. He howled in pain, then with the downward kinetic force added to the power of my yanking in the same direction, I could feel and hear over the wind, his spine breaking in several spots.

  I tossed him to the ground, saying, “Sorry, Benjamin.” I was a little freaked out that he was flopping around on the ground, howling in agony, his front limbs thrashing as he dragged his hind legs as he clawed closer to me. How was he still alive?

  I growled, knowing the fragments of this man's soul to be irredeemable, and I would whisper him to the underworld if his name hadn't been shattered like his back. I placed a foot on his back between his shoulder blades and reached down, I turned his head until I met resistance. A disturbingly human, blue eye looked up at me, in a pleading manner and I saw him mouth, “Please?” The wind stealing his voice away.

  I almost lost my lunch. The man, even though he was of the wicked, wanted me to finish him off. I thought about what Stephanie had said about none of them knowing what their fate was to be before they volunteered. I almost felt for this man, who had been turned into this monster, but I knew he had already been a monster, the Genesis Chamber had just made his outside look like what he was on the inside.

  With a sharp twist and snap, he went limp in my hands. It was a mercy, though I knew it would be short-lived. I felt what was left of his soul, being brought to the underworld though me as a conduit, for Anubis to do with it what he would.

  But there was a sharp pain in my head as I saw that shadow which was tethered to him, seemingly swallowing the man's ebbing life energy and sending it back in the direction of that huge shadowy creature by Xerxes. Did it... did it just steal this soul from Anubis?

  I couldn't think about that now. I heard explosions and gunfire through the roaring wind and swirling sand. I had to stop this storm. Like now.

  Misjudging the edge of the storm, I stepped back into the calm eye of the storm back in the camp. I hadn't circled far enough and found myself right beside the command tent. The dead people all had some sort of stinking pouch around their necks, and they seemed to animate the moment I appeared and started raising weapons toward me.

  Xerxes and the others turned toward me. I saw a smile at the corners of the man's mouth. I had no doubt he knew who I was, even though he had never seen me in this form. I took two running steps toward them, leaping over their line of defense, and his smile faded as I blurred, feeling as though I was traveling faster than I should while they slowed down. My body was billowing and smoke-like in the darkness as I was pulled toward them all, sailing over their puppets.

  I was a little unnerved about how I seemed to know instinctively I could do these things, and just did them. Like fighting hand to hand, I'd never had any need to learn before, yet my jackal was so graceful, vicious, and deadly in combat.

  I spun slowly in the air, pulling out my was-scepter as I turned. And I landed right in front of the siren, already swinging with all my might.

  I know what I was expecting, after seeing what the staff did to the man's arm the other night, but it wasn't what happened.

  Leucosia's hand was moving up to block at inhuman speed, even in the weird augmented time bubble I seemed to wrap myself in, she just about got her arm up in time as I struck her throat and almost dropped the staff as the shock reverberated up it and into my hands. It was like I had just struck a solid stone statue.

  As I blinked in surprise, time sped back up, and the woman coughed and wheezed as she grasped her throat. The whirling storm seemed to simply drop like a curtain, then I was sailing through the air when the woman glared at me and backhanded me as I searched for her name.

  It was as if she had hit me with a runaway freight train, the force of me hitting the line of zombies, had my body tore through them like a buzzsaw as I saw stars. I tumbled across the ground and rolled to a stop. I knew I had at least a couple of broken ribs as I gasped. My head hurt as much as my chest, as I saw her name. It burned in my mind, unpronounceable and full of power. She was from before the times of the Egyptian Gods, and I knew instinctively that Anubis had no dominion over her.

  I gasped out, “A god?” Then my eyes widened as something stepped into my vision. I looked up, trying to catch my breath. That shadow creature was there, and I knew he was from the same time as the siren, something that walked the earth long before mankind had crawled out of the oceans and began breathing air. And it terrified even my jackal.

  It reached down, sending spears of shadowed tendrils out from its palm, stabbing at me, and I could feel it trying to latch onto the light inside me, my soul... no, my life force. Was this thing, who was older than the gods, some sort of parasite? Living off the lives of others? His tendrils of shadow couldn't seem to grab hold of me, as they just seemed to slip over me like oil floating on water.

  I heard Commander Xerxes calling out, “Don't kill her. I need her, she could be the key to what we...” Before he finished, I clenched a fist around the staff that I had somehow miraculously held on to as I tumbled across the ground. I twisted on the ground as I swung it toward the shadow being.

  It passed right through it with a sizzling sound, and it recoiled from me as the siren called out in a hoarse raspy tone, still grasping her throat, “No, kill her! If s
he had hit me with her fist instead of with the relic, I would have been out of commission or worse. She hits like Marina. She's too dangerous.” She started coughing and hacking and wheezing with her hand at her throat. I blinked at the inference. I could have done more damage with my fist? Was she somehow resistant to the mystical properties of the was-scepter?

  I thrust the staff forward, burning the shadow again and it retreated a step as I swayed to my feet. Xerxes took a step toward me and smirked, “You are a beautiful creature, Professor Bane. You may be the link we need to complete our quest.”

  He lifted a tranquilizer gun as the zombies started to surround me. I spat and was a little concerned seeing blood in the sputum, and I ground out between clenched teeth, “I'm not going to be dissected by some sick fuck like you, Xerxes.”

  He fired over and over, as fast as he could pull the trigger. I had dropped the staff, and they all looked surprised when it just faded away. I slashed and dodged, knocking all but the last dart away. Catching the last one between two fingers. I tossed it back, and the old man was faster than I gave him credit for as he knocked it away with the empty gun.

  I smiled and said, “My turn.” And I drew my pistol, which seemed to surprise them all as I fired once, sending him spinning back when the bullet impacted his shoulder. Damn it. I needed to visit the firing range. I had been aiming between his eyes.

  He hissed out in pain and ground out into a radio he pulled off his belt, “Release Jack Tourvell. We're bugging out to the cave system, the excavation is almost complete.”

  Truit took a step toward me and snapped, “Let me handle her. You're all useless to me.” I fired twice at her, but she kept approaching like the bullets didn't matter, even though they tore through her. What the hell?

  I glanced behind me to see the other Maidens finishing off some hideous lizard looking hybrids. We had won the field. All that was left were these assholes and a handful of zombie puppets. My kin started toward me as Truit got close and she lifted her hand.

  My jackal reacted faster than I could have, when she blew a cloud of white, sweet smelling powder my way. JackAya stopped our breathing as we leapt back before the powder reached us. Dear lord, I didn't want to end up like these dead meat sacks around me. I assumed this was that powder Steph had said allowed her to control people.

  We all turned to an explosion, and I saw the tent that housed the Genesis Chamber was a pile of burning debris now, and Stephanie was there in full cobra mode, with a smoking rocket launcher on her shoulder. Damn that woman was badass.

  As my team charged toward us, Abigail seemed to change her mind and started to follow Xerxes and the others toward the helipad on the other side of the camp, the blades on a heavy lift cargo helicopter were already starting to spin up.

  I don't know how she got there so fast, but a fully human Lieutenant Stephanie Grier dove over some crates and slammed into Xerxes, sending them both tumbling to the sand. They rolled to their feet like well-trained combatants. The older man took a stance that looked to be some stylized form of self defense I wasn't familiar with, and I realized there was more to the Commander than met the eye.

  Sure I had shot him through the shoulder, but it wasn't bleeding as much as it should, and it didn't seem to slow him down much as they exchanged a series of blows before breaking apart to circle each other by the hybrid tent.

  We mowed through the zombies as they tried to take us down with guns and darts. They didn't look too familiar with guns. Were they still in there? Locked in those deceased bodies? Retaining the skills they had in life? They were obviously not soldiers. Kissa spun through them in a sort of mesmerizing dance, yanking those pouches off their necks and they fell to the sand like the dead they were. Neith followed in her wake like they had fought as a team for years, lighting the corpses on fire with a touch of her golden flame.

  Their bodies fell to ash and drifted off in the desert breeze.

  We turned to Steph and the Commander as they circled each other, both now holding two knives each, one inverted along their forearms. They went at each other again and again, sparks flying from the impact of the blades on each other. Then Xerxes hesitated a moment as he asked in surprise, “Lieutenant Grier?”

  She grinned menacingly at him as she twirled one of the knives. He looked almost excited. “So the Genesis procedure worked? It just took time to stabilize? I must get blood samples.”

  Our friend dove at him, manifesting in mid-leap, her tail lashing out to strike his chest and she landed on top of him as he was knocked down, pinning his arms and legs with hers as she flared her hood and bared her fangs which dripped with venom.

  She hissed in a scream, “You're never touching me or anyone elsse ever again, assshole!” Her mouth opened impossibly wide, I realized her jaw had detached. Oh dear lord, was she going to eat him?

  Just as she lunged, the roar of some mammoth beast shook the ground around us and a huge, scaly and clawed arm, at least two yards long-lashed out of the tent they were beside and grasped Stephanie around the waist and tore her away from Xerxes.

  The Commander scrambled to his feet while we all rushed to help Stephanie as some creature from the most twisted of nightmares tore its way out of the tent, towering over us, even in our manifested forms. Xerxes chuckled as the beast roared again, then he said as the abomination slammed our Lieutenant to the ground with bone-jarring force, “I think you remember Jack don't you Grier? The father of one of your little friends I believe. He's the first from Phase Three, almost truly immortal. Give his daughter my regards.”

  We watched the man retreat, but our attention was on the monster. Our first priority was saving Steph from it. To my surprise, she turned almost bonelessly around in its grasp, and fired point blank with the two automatic rifles she carried, emptying the magazines into its face.

  It roared in pain and threw her away like some sort of annoyance as it clawed at its own face. It pulled back its claw, and I had to blink, there was no damage anymore, it had healed almost instantly. It reared up, and I got my first good look at the creature, and I knew I'd be haunted by the sight for the rest of my days.

  Steph rolled to her feet beside me and said to me with a smirk, blood seeping from a wound by her mouth, “Hey short stuff, miss me?”

  I shook my head at the resilient woman. I'd have to remember to never, ever, ever, get on the G.I. Jane's bad side. “Immensely. Welcome to the party, pal.”

  She hiccuped out a laugh. “Die Hard, really? You really are an adorable geek, lady.”

  I would have bantered more, and pointed out that she had gotten the reference and had made one herself the other day, but the man-beast towering over us all, preparing to charge. It was the immediate concern.

  I stared at it, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It seemed to be an amalgam of every predator in the modern world, and some I wasn't familiar with. In addition to the reptilian arm, the other was an over-muscled, oversized, gorilla arm with some sort of pincer from a giant crab on the end of it.

  It had bear aspects to its head, and mandibles like some giant-sized fire ant. One eye was human, the other was as large as a saucer and as dark as midnight reflecting the stars above us. It had canine and feline rear legs tipped with claws and the tail of a scorpion that was twitching around erratically. Its back was protected by what looked to be massive armadillo plates. The whole thing seemed to be stitched together with the same black shadows of the shadowy being who left with the others.

  Around its neck was a huge collar that was marked with a high voltage warning and what looked to be some sort of blocks of plastic explosives. And everything about it was wrong, and all my instincts screamed out to my jackal to kill it. Nature had never intended something like this to exist.

  So much of it was wicked, but the terrified man I could feel inside... he had not yet tipped the scales as to be irredeemable. He was fighting what had been done to him at the same time he reluctantly did their bidding. Though I sen
sed it wasn't his own life he was afraid for.

  Just as it went to charge, Steph took a step forward, reverting to human and holding a halting hand out. “Jack, no. We'll stop Commander Xerxes.”

  It hesitated, rearing back again at the name. It spoke in a slurred voice. “I'm sorry, I can't take the chance. He promised he'd leave Cameron alone if I cooperated. She's the only good thing I did in this life.” Then he hissed out in a roar that had me actually shaking, “Run!” And it charged, shaking the sand around us.

  I knew that this was a foe, however reluctant, who could probably kill some of us before we could subdue it. I looked at the others, they looked hesitant too, except Stephanie, whose snake lips were smiling as she drew a knife. A knife, I kid you not. She had every intention of charging right back at the mammoth abomination.

  That was suicide, and I wasn't going to let her die. I charged too, screaming out a challenge and the other vassals of the gods of Egypt added their voices to mine as they ran at my side. I heard myself calling out, “Don't kill him if possible, subdue him if you can!”

  Just then another sandstorm, complete with raging lightning arcing in the sand this time, slammed into us from the direction of the helicopter. Apparently, the siren had gotten her voice back.

  The next moment we were all tumbling across the ground when a sweeping pincered arm swept through our formation like we were nothing, scattering us like dolls. It felt like that siren had just hit me again. I couldn't see this ending well. I drew my staff and tried to peer through the flying sand that felt like it was trying to peel the obsidian skin off my inhuman body.

  My eyes widened when a huge shadow loomed through the storm above me, two huge arms coming down to smash me to a puppy-pulp. I tried to get the staff up in front of me in a weak attempt to defend, just as a woman, a human, slid in front of me, panting, and I just blinked dumbly at her as she actually caught the beast's arms, her's shaking from the effort, strain on her face.