by Zoe Ashwood
Milo shows me how to tip my weight back and allow the rope to take it. “Just relax and walk backward like you would on horizontal ground. And slowly let the rope out. This is a rappel device. It won’t let the rope slip from you, don’t worry. Just do what I’m doing, and you’ll be fine.”
The things humans invent to make their life without supernatural powers easier…
I obey his instructions, though, and we slowly descend the rock face, walking backward. Glancing over my shoulder, I can no longer tell the exact spot where the door to the underground opened. At the bottom, we disengage from our ropes, but I stop Milo before he gets out of his harness.
“We might have to leave in a hurry,” I tell him. “Just keep it on.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, boss.”
I don’t care how good his CV is, I’m ditching this man after this part of the competition. He’d been too chatty, disrespectful to me and the locals in Cairo, and bragged about helping out a team of grave robbers in Egypt on a previous mission. I only agreed to take him with me because Kiran insisted this land was too dangerous for a sea dragon to tackle on his own.
“What if you pass out and get all dried up?” he’d asked me with a brotherly clap to my shoulder. “You need someone for backup.”
The irony that he’d gone paragliding without backup and broke both his legs totally escaped him. Even with his supernatural healing, he would have missed the inaugural ceremony and blown our chance at seizing the stolen royal crown. Which is how I ended up here, in the middle of the fucking desert, with a pumped-up clown on my team.
“Find the right spot,” I bark at him now. “We’re going in after them.”
He rubs the side of his reddened neck. “You sure? We could wait for them to come out and just take the token off them. Might be easier than dealing with whatever’s hiding inside.”
And that’s why I hate the man.
“The tokens might be personalized,” I retort. “We can only grab our own, I told you that already.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Look. Here’s that symbol that chick mentioned.”
A surge of anger flares inside me. It’s an irrational reaction—especially since I don’t know anything about the woman who had disappeared into the tomb. Yet I’d cut off my right hand before I let Milo near her, which is completely ridiculous. I drag in a breath of dry desert air that scorches my nostrils and burns in my throat. This isn’t the time or the place to teach this guy manners. I grab another water bottle from my backpack, take a swig, then splash the symbol on the wall, just like the short-haired witch had done.
The ground shudders, and the door swings open on a groan.
Taking a flashlight from my backpack, I click it on and step inside.
I need to find the token and get the hell out of here before the American witches realize we’ve copied them to get in here. And decide to blast our asses with spells and leave us in this tomb. I’ve never been hexed before, and I don’t want to find out if I’m as impervious to stronger spells as I was to that zap of electricity.
Milo follows me slowly, shining his flashlight over the walls. “Holy shit, this is straight out of Tomb Raider.” He walks over to a hieroglyph of an Egyptian god and scratches his nail over a gold-inlaid sun disk. “And this is the real shit!”
The paintings and reliefs on the walls are remarkably well-preserved. To have some moron destroy them goes against everything I stand for.
I swat the man’s hand away from the wall and force through gritted teeth, “Leave it. That’s an order. We’re not here to rob the tomb.”
“Okay,” he says after a moment, “but it would be a shame not to take a little souvenir.”
I direct the beam of my flashlight straight into his face. “You will leave this place intact. We get the token and we get out, that’s the deal. You’ll get paid more than enough for your help on this mission.”
He squints and sidesteps to get away from the light. “Yeah, yeah. Lead the way, then, boss.”
My hackles raised, I curse under my breath and turn my back on him, even though I don’t really trust him enough to do that. But Milo is a mercenary, and he’d only received half of his payment upfront. My sister won’t wire the rest until I report back, and he’s not the kind of guy who would leave a six-figure sum on the table so he could stab me in the back.
The grinding noise sounds again, and I glance over my shoulder to see the doorway shrinking as the rock slides back into place. A brief flare of panic rushes through me, and I push down the instinct that tells me to bolt for the opening while I still have the chance. Underground desert caverns are not sea dragons’ natural habitat. And I have no idea if the trick with the water will work for opening the door again.
I set my jaw and continue down the corridor and into the darkness.
I just hope we can avoid meeting the other team of witches. As much as I want to see the woman again, take her in my arms again, I didn’t like the look of that third guy who joined them at some point. The way he moves reminds me of a large predator, a jungle cat, and until I know what I’m dealing with, I don’t want a confrontation. Milo and I are outnumbered, and I don’t trust the soldier to remain calm.
“Come on,” I mutter to him. “Keep close.”
A faint snick from behind me catches my attention. I turn and find Milo stowing something in his pocket.
“What the fuck did I tell you?” I growl.
My nerves are shot to hell, and I feel the telltale shimmer of heat race down my limbs, threatening a shift. I push my dragon back inside—if I shifted here in this narrow tunnel, I’d be fucked—and advance on the mercenary.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “it’s just a keepsake. No one will know.”
“I don’t fucking care about people knowing. You’re desecrating a tomb. Have some respect.” I shove at him hard so his back collides with the tunnel wall. “Don’t make me ask you again.”
He pushes me off, slamming his palms in my chest. “Oh, I respect this. I respect how much money it’ll bring me. You think I want to be here? Your brother bought all my debt. Made me do this. And I’ve had to listen to your fucking whining for days. So if I want to take something that’ll help me, I’ll take it. Now back the fuck off.”
I stare at him, jaw clenched and fists ready. I’m going to murder Kiran when I return home. What the fuck was he thinking?
I drag a calming breath through my nose and get a whiff of something old and decaying. Fuck this place. Fuck this game. I can leave now and return to Iceland empty-handed. Tinna won’t blame me. No one who’s ever tried to get the crown has succeeded, so I’ll be just the last in a long line of failures.
The image of her in the throne room flashes through my mind. Our queen, seated on the ancient stone throne, her head bearing a simple gold diadem that’s been wrought to replace the rightful crown.
And damn it, I can’t quit now. No matter this fucker right here or my brother’s crazy plan for binding him to my service.
“Fine,” I say. “Do whatever the fuck you want. But once we get out, you’re off the mission. I never want to see your face again.”
When it looks like he might object, I lift a hand to silence him.
“You can deal with my brother,” I tell him. “He’s the one who hired you.”
I’ve had enough of this shit. Enough of Kiran taking on projects he can’t handle. Just because he’s older than me, he’s got the position as Tinna’s second-in-command. But I’m done mopping up his failures. Starting with this one.
Without waiting for Milo to follow, I forge ahead, hoping that this tomb won’t become our final resting place as well.
Twenty-Seven
Nora
“Why do tombs have to be so scary?” I murmur as we inch down the first corridor.
Levi snorts, but he moves closer to me, one hand extended in front of him. He sweeps for more curses lying in wait. “Because they’re haunted, obviously.”
I nudge him, but he has
a point. I know ghosts don’t exist, not in the way popular media would have us believe, but ancient curses and gods are very, very real.
“Stop scaring her,” growls Raphaël. “This isn’t even a tomb. It’s a temple.”
Levi and I stop, and I turn to Raphaël, illuminating him with my headlamp. “Are you sure? No mummies in here?”
He shrugs. “Not sure about the mummies yet. At least about the human ones. We’ll see animal offerings, probably, if this place hasn’t been looted by humans before.”
I face the wall covered with intricate hieroglyphs. The colors are vivid as though they’d been painted just yesterday. “Is that likely? How would they know to find the entrance?”
Raphaël shrugs. “They have their ways. And if there’s treasure to be had…”
He’s right, of course. Humans have been looting Egyptian artifacts for centuries—and that hasn’t stopped in the twenty-first century. But this place looks untouched. I reach out and touch a blue-and-white lotus flower.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper. “And so well-preserved.”
Our lamps illuminate the corridor with just enough light to see that it’s descending slowly—and that it’s very long, its end disappearing in the darkness. The walls are completely straight, as is the ceiling, and I wonder what magic the ancient priests and priestesses must have employed to carve such a path through solid rock. Shallow reliefs cover the walls, painted in russet, gold, blue, and white, and statues of humans in ceremonial clothing stand in recessed niches every couple of steps.
“This is the god, Set,” Raphaël says, pointing to a tall depiction of a deity with an animal head.
“I thought that was Anubis,” Levi replies. He steps closer and indicates the head. “Isn’t that a jackal?”
“No, the snout is turned down, see? Set’s animal is made up.” Raphaël blows out a long breath. “Either way, I’m not really happy about this. Anubis might have been the god of death, but Set was the god of storms, disorder, and violence.”
“Yikes.” I follow the hieroglyphs down the corridor. “Here he’s fighting…wait, that’s Horus, right? With the falcon head?”
“That’s right.”
Raphaël starts forward as though he wants to trail the story, but Levi grabs a strap on his backpack and yanks him back.
“Wait up. I’ll go first to make sure the path is clear.”
Raphaël frowns but allows Levi to take the lead. We descend slowly, with Raphaël stopping every couple of steps to read some inscription on the wall. He keeps muttering to himself, as though translating in his head.
“You can really read these?” I ask quietly as he traces a squiggly horizontal line with his finger and taps what looks like a duck with his other hand.
He tosses a grin over his shoulder. “The Rosetta Stone was discovered the same year I was born. It was a significant discovery, so everyone talked about it at the time. And I liked riddles. When I was old enough to enter formal education, I studied Egyptology with some of the best archaeologists of the time.” He pauses and adds in a more somber voice, “Though in reality, they were little better than grave robbers and looters.”
Levi lifts his eyebrows at me, and I get what he’s thinking. There’s so much we could learn from Raphaël. So much he has lived through. When this is all over and done, I want to just sit with him and listen to him tell me stories about the past.
“Come on.” Levi walks farther down the corridor. “I think I see a door up ahead.”
Raphaël and I hurry after him. He’s right—a narrow black doorway yawns on the left, simultaneously inviting and terrifying.
“Do you think this is it?” I whisper. Then I shine my light down the rest of the tunnel. “But we’re not nearly at the end, are we?”
With careful steps, Raphaël closes in on the opening and looks back at Levi, who nods at him to continue. I tiptoe behind him because I sense that silence is important—there’s a small chance that someone else is in here and might hear us blundering around. Also, the temple is terrifying, and a primitive mammal part of my brain that identifies itself as prey is telling me to be quiet so as not to attract predators.
What comes into view as our flashlight beams illuminate the space is a narrow chamber with no other exits. It’s full of shelves on which lie…mummies?
I shrink back, thoroughly creeped out. “Crap! You said this wasn’t a tomb.”
“I did,” Raphaël agrees, then steps inside the room. “But I suspected we’d run into animal sacrifices at least. These aren’t human mummies.”
Levi inches closer and peers at the shelves. “They’re not? They definitely look big enough.”
“Those ones are probably crocodiles,” Raphaël says. “Yes, the glyphs indicate as much. Which is strange, this far from the Nile. But maybe this temple was special.” He walks deeper into the room, scanning the cloth-wrapped bundles. “There are cats, jackals, rats, falcons, and ibises here.”
Pointing at each one in turn, he finally reaches the end of the room and faces us. “This definitely isn’t our end destination, though. Nothing here suggests that the tokens are hidden here.”
Levi holds out his hands and sends a pulse of magic into the room. When he spools it back in, he shakes his head. “I had to double-check. But he’s right. There’s nothing magical in here anymore.”
We continue our way down the tunnel, and my unease grows. How far underground are we? A hundred feet? A mile? In the darkness, my sense of distance and direction slowly gets chipped away, and I’m just glad the corridor is straight so far.
As soon as I think that, a fork in the path materializes in front of us.
“Ah.” I walk to the mouth of the tunnel on the right and shine my light inside. “What now? Do we have to search both options?”
Levi stands close to me. “Whatever we do, we’re not splitting up.”
A flash of horror sparks inside me. “Of course not! Don’t be crazy.”
Raphaël has his nose stuck to the wall and is reading the inscriptions. “Nothing here says where to go. It’s just the legend of Set. His entire story, from when he cut up Osiris in pieces to when he had sex with Horus.”
Levi turns to him. “So Set was gay?”
Raphaël shrugs, still immersed in the story. “Not really. He had several female consorts as well. There are variations of the story where Set forces himself on Horus, but the original myth says he asked first and Horus said yes because he wanted him and his power.” He smoothes his palm reverently over another depiction of Set carrying a long staff. “This must be a very old temple.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Good to see you’re enjoying yourself.”
He grins back at me, finally focusing on us. “Well, I don’t like being underground, but darkness is better than full desert sunlight for sure. And this is my area of expertise.” He gives a little shrug that’s somehow quintessentially French. “I never thought I’d find an intact temple in the twenty-first century, so this is way better than what I expected when you came to visit me in Paris.”
But no matter how skilled he is, if the walls don’t hold the directions to the main chamber of the temple, or wherever the Scottish witches placed our markers, we need another method to decide where to go.
I close my eyes and dip into the well of my magic, taking out a scoop of the shimmery liquid. I shape the spell to reveal the presence of living creatures—but also their traces. I let the stream of power split in two and imagine it flowing down both corridors simultaneously. I can’t see the path ahead, nor the details, but the right tunnel comes to a dead end faster, and there’s no trace of living energy down there. The tunnel on the left, however, glimmers with pearly light as my magic illuminates the mystical footprints of other witches’ energies.
With a sigh, I pop my eyes open and find Raphaël and Levi staring at me, their headlamps blinding. I throw a hand up to shield my eyes. “Ugh, guys.”
“Sorry,” Raphaël says. “What did you just do?”
<
br /> I point at the left corridor. “That’s the way the other witches took. The other tunnel seems to be empty of any trace of living creatures, so, um, I’m not too keen on heading down there.”
Levi snorts but heads in the direction I indicated. “Good job, Moss. I was afraid we were going to have to choose by smell.”
Raphaël squints at me in confusion, but I just shake my head, grab his hand, and tug him along. If he hasn’t heard of The Lord of the Rings in his two hundred years of existence, I can’t help him right now.
Down we go, the tunnel making sharper turns now, zigzagging straight into the rock. This temple is a feat of engineering that modern humans would have trouble achieving, but to think that this rock was carved four thousand years ago is mind-blowing. What possessed these people to dig so deeply?
Another chamber opens up to the right of the corridor, filled with alabaster jars with carved animal heads sitting on top. I suspect the contents of those jars to be incredibly nasty, but we don’t waste time searching through them. That’s not what we’re here for, and the deeper we go, the more I feel a desperate urgency to return to the land of the living.
“There’s no air down here,” I complain. “No ventilation. This can’t be good.”
Levi looks at me sharply. “If you get light-headed, you need to let us know.”
Raphaël grips my hand more tightly. “If anything happens to either one of you, I’ll get you out. Don’t worry.”
I manage a weak smile, but it might not be the lack of air that’s making my breaths come faster. The thought of hundreds of feet of raw rock above our heads is horrifying.
If these walls held for thousands of years already, they’ll hold for the next hour for sure.
I count my breaths and force myself to relax. If I panic, I’ll make stupid mistakes, and we can’t afford those. My head clearer, I lift my chin. We’re a good team. We can handle whatever they throw our way.
The light bounces off the walls, and suddenly, Raphaël’s grip on my fingers turns crushing. He reaches forward, grabs the back of Levi’s pack, and hauls him backward, throwing him to the floor. With a wild look in his eyes, he wraps himself around me and presses my head to his chest, pinning me to the floor.
