Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Um, where am I?” I asked, wiping my mouth with my sleeve and realizing I wore a blue flannel. Where had my Egyptian tunic gone?

  “Detroit,” he replied, staring at me like I was the crazy one.

  “Okay,” I took a deep breath. Had Geb somehow sent me back to the future? I thought he was sending me to rescue Osiris. Was the ancient death god trapped in Detroit?

  “Brains…” The sound came out of James’s throat in a dry choking rasp.

  “Excuse me,” the man said, absently pointing his weapon at James and putting a bullet in the creature’s skull, splattering gore across the dirty wall behind it. James jerked once, one last dying groan escaping its throat as its head snapped backward before lolling forward. Without another word, the man moved toward the corpse of the creature and collected some clumpy goop off the wall.

  He moved toward me then, not quickly and not slowly. “Here. Put this on.” He pressed the congealed bits of slime into my hands before beginning to rub his gross palms on my cheeks. And what did I do? I just stood there in shock, too confused to figure out what the hell to do.

  “Um, what’s going on?” I asked as he finished covering me in foul smelling ichor and took a step back, admiring his handy work.

  “I’ve found the secret,” he replied, lips curling into a bemused smile. “The secret is they smell our life. But we can mask our scent. If we cover ourselves in their dead blood, we can move around freely. You know, unless it rains. You never want to be outside when it rains.” He shook his head, and a shiver ran through him.

  “What are they?” I asked, staring at the thing in the chair. He followed my gaze, confusion filling his features.

  “How could you not know?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “Ugh… newbie.”

  “Sorry. I was in Ancient Egypt a few minutes ago, and Geb sent me here to find Osiris.” I shrugged, wondering what he’d say even though I’d told him the truth. Probably something like, “okay, it’s fine if you don’t want to tell me the truth.”

  “Ah, that makes sense,” he said and smiled at me, revealing a mouthful of teeth that hadn’t been brushed in very long time. He pointed his gun at the creature in the chair, and to my amazement, it was starting to move again. Apparently, blowing its brains out did little more than temporarily stop it. “That’s a zombie.” He shot it again as if to punctuate his sentence, and it slumped in the chair once more.

  “A zombie? In Detroit?” I asked, hoping it sounded less crazy to him than it did to me. “Do you mean to tell me the world ended by zombies of all things? When? What year is it? Oh my god, is my sister okay?”

  The man sighed, shaking his head before I could have a full on breakdown. “None of that matters.” He put his arm around my shoulder and led me from the room, making a point of shutting the door. Somehow that thin barrier between us and James made me feel better. “What matters is you’re here with me.”

  “And who are you?” I asked, not sure why I let him lead me to a relatively clean booth. He sat me down on the vinyl before sliding in next to me, which was a little weird since I’d expected him to sit across from me. Most people did since I was a pretty big guy. Even on dates.

  “I can see you’re a little slow,” he said, staring up at the ceiling as though asking for someone to grant him patience and understanding. I followed his gaze but saw nothing more interesting than a dirty ceiling. “You were sent here to find someone. So you’ve found someone. Who do you think that someone is?”

  My eyes opened wide as I stared at the man. Glee slowly filled his features as recognition spilled across my brain. “You’re Osiris?”

  “None other than,” he replied, leaping to his feet and pacing back and forth in front of the booth with nervous excited energy. “It’s been a while since anyone came to find me.” He gestured toward the door where Zombie James was duct-taped to a chair. “Not since James at least, but he didn’t do very well. He hasn’t been very good for conversation in a long while.”

  “And why are you here in the midst of a zombie apocalypse in Detroit?” I asked, barely able to comprehend the words coming out of my mouth. Had zombies really taken over the world? It seemed impossible. Sure, they always did it in the movies, but this was the real world. We had vampires and deities walking the earth. Surely they could take down some mindless walking corpses. Surely.

  “To get the high score obviously,” he replied, smacking the table with his palms. “It’s taking a bit longer than I expected to clean up this mess. Expert mode and all that.”

  “Expert mode?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Is this some kind of game to you?”

  “Uh, yeah?” He looked at me like I was the stupid one. “Zombie Apocalypse: Detroit.”

  “Hold up,” I said, suddenly incredibly angry. “Are we in some kind of virtual reality video game right now?”

  “Yes…” Osiris said, giving me a strange look. “You really are fresh off the turnip farm, aren’t you?”

  “No, no, I can’t even…” I stood and glared down at the god. “So the world has been thrown into a tailspin because of your disappearance, and you’re in some made up land fighting fictional zombies. Perfect.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, staring at me very strangely. “I do this every year. It helps me keep a fresh grip on things.” He shrugged. “It’s not always zombies. Sometimes it’s aliens or machines.”

  “You keep fresh by vanishing into virtual reality and fighting against the apocalypse?” I asked, barely able to keep myself from smacking him.

  “Yes. It helps to remind me things aren’t pointless. The apocalypse does that for me. It makes me realize how precious every moment is because in the end, it all dies.” He shrugged again. “Everything dies, Thes Mercer. It all turns to dust. But the end isn’t important. It’s the in between, the time spent fighting and triumphing. It’s the moments we cherish. Our first kiss, our last kiss, and all the ones in between. The magic is in the doing.”

  “And spending time in a fictional hellhole helps that?” I could barely conceal the contempt and confusion filling my voice as I spoke. How could he seriously be here, on vacation, with everything going on back home? Oh my god, had I really just called Ancient Egypt home? What was wrong with me?

  “Yes. Think about it.” He reached out and touched my forehead. There was a small glow of golden light from his finger as he did so. A look of consternation flashed across his features before he pulled his hand back and stared at it. “Do you remember the time you were walking home from school and you saw that car accident? The one where the little girl on her bike got hit by the car? Even though she was fine, how did you feel about it?”

  I swallowed. I’d never told anyone about that memory, so how did he know about it? Had he pulled it from my brain? A surge of anger rushed through me as I narrowed my eyes.

  “You shouldn’t steal my memories,” I growled.

  “You should answer the god of death’s question, Thes.” Osiris stared at me flatly and crossed his arms over his bloodstained jacket.

  “I felt like I needed to race home and hug my sister, Charity, okay?” I glared at him because I’d done just that. I’d rushed home, grabbed her up in my arms and hugged her tightly even as she beat at me with her stick-like arms, trying to figure out why I was hugging her in front of all her friends.

  “Exactly.” Osiris gestured at the world around us. “This is like that for me, only times a billion.” He leaned in close, like what he was about to say was important. “I’m the god of death. It’s easy to see life as pointless, easy to see everything before the spot where each soul steps into eternity as nothing on a grand scale.” He smirked. “That’s how my father thinks, but I don’t feel that way. I feel like it’s all important.”

  “Okay,” I said, swallowing the urge to get into a metaphysical argument with Osiris. “Either way, we have to go. Egypt is in trouble, and I need you to help me rescue Horus.”

  “Why would I do that? I need just twenty four h
ours of survival to beat my high score.” He peered at me quizzically. “Did my wife put you up to this? She always seems okay with me going and doing this, but when I get back, she’s all sorts of pissed off at me for leaving. And Horus? He’ll be mad at me for months afterward, like me going on a weekend vacation was the worst thing ever.” He raised his arms in a sort of “what can you do” gesture.

  “Dude, you’ve been gone for months.” The words left my mouth before I could stop them.

  “Months?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “That’s impossible. The game resets after seventy two hours. I’m barely into my third day.”

  “Someone is screwing with you, man. I’ve been in Egypt for way longer than a weekend.” I shrugged because I didn’t know how to prove it to him. Unless… “Why don’t you look into my brain and see for yourself?”

  He watched me carefully, looking for some kind of trick, but evidently decided I was being honest because he sighed and reached out. His finger touched my forehead once more. This time, I felt him paging through my memories like someone flipping through a novel at breakneck speed. Flashes of color, thought, emotion, and smell whipped by me so quickly, I collapsed backward into the booth as bile swam up my throat and churned in my stomach. Well, I wasn’t doing that again.

  My chest heaved with exertion, cold sweat dripping down my body as Osiris stood over me, mouth slightly agape like a dying fish. His eyes were fixed on a point on the wall, but instead of actually seeing the wall, he seemed to be staring out past it into eternity. It was sort of creepy to be honest because I knew he was thinking over the events of my tiny little life, giving it special importance.

  It made me wonder how many times Osiris, the god of death, had taken special interest in the souls standing before him, and in that moment, I realized it must be quite often. I couldn’t even imagine purposely getting attached to people before whisking them off into eternity. It would be like having an endless series of last goodbyes, of final kisses, or words left unspoken forever. His job was the worst job ever.

  “You’re right,” he mouthed, the words stilted and broken. “This is bad.” He broke his gaze from the dirty wall and looked down at me, emotion clouding his eyes. “We need to get out of here right now.”

  “Awesome,” I replied. “How do we do that?”

  He opened his mouth to speak when James exploded through the thin door, arms outstretched as he surged across the room toward us. Osiris spun on his heel, putting rounds into the zombie, his gun barking like a cannon. James staggered backward under the onslaught of bullets before slumping to the ground, twitching like a poisoned insect.

  The ring of gunshots in my ears made the room feel obtuse and cotton filled. Osiris turned back toward me, keeping one watchful eye on the downed zombie. “That’s the thing,” he whispered just before zombies came crashing through the front window in a spray of glass and debris, snarling and snapping as they tore through the flimsy bars and spilled into the front of the diner. “You don’t escape.”

  Chapter 12

  I’m going to be honest here. I don’t want to talk about what happened next. Suffice to say, I now know what it feels like to have my flesh gnawed from my bones while I’m still alive. Werewolf healing is not exactly awesome when things are eating you. Eventually, I ran out of steam, my body lost its ability to heal itself, and they kept coming. I’d once read a story where ants came, swarming over a plantation and eating everything in their way and leaving nothing but desolation in their wake. A heroic farmer tried everything to stop them, but they kept coming, going so far as to throw their own bodies into a moat made of fire until they could cross on the backs of their fallen brethren.

  It was like that, only with zombies eating me. I wasn’t sure when I lost Osiris in the scuffle. We were separated early on, but I know he died because I eventually ripped the head off his zombified corpse.

  So, yeah, I’m not going to talk about it. Maybe when it’s a little farther removed, I’ll be able to do so. Maybe if zombies ever start to actually walk the earth, I’ll tell my tale as a warning to my pack mates. Because if that happens, we will lose. Zombies are an unending, unceasing plague from which nothing will survive.

  I used to sort of wonder why all zombie movies ended in such hopelessness. Survivors always eventually being overrun and consumed. No more. There would be no escape. Even for an alpha werewolf like me. All that meant was I got to try to kill more of them before I died. My success was measured only in how many I brought down before they tore out my spleen and feasted on it as my blood spilled down their gore covered jaws.

  A shudder ran through me as I shook the memories away as best I could. My body was still shaking from the memory. I found it hard to believe Osiris did that to himself on purpose, but then again he was a god who couldn’t really die. Maybe this was his way of experiencing what it was like to be a powerless mortal.

  I wasn’t quite sure, but as I thought about it, I realized he was right about one thing. The only thing I wanted to do right now was gather up everyone I loved, hell, I wanted to gather up everyone I was even mildly acquainted with and give them all a big hug. I wanted to listen to them drone on about their boring day. In short, I wanted to be with them because…. Because it could all go away, all be reduced to rotting, decayed flesh and after that? To dust.

  To do that, I had to get Sekhmet’s heart back and return home to reunite Connor with his soul. Then I was going to hug and kiss my sister no matter how many of her friends were watching. It was time to get moving.

  Osiris lay in front of me bound to a golden throne. He stared at me, gaze never wavering from my feet. His cheeks were flushed, and he seemed disheveled like he had in the zombie world but no worse for wear even though I’d torn off his arms and beaten him to death with them. Here he still had both arms and his head. That was something, right?

  Gilded chains were wrapped around his limbs, fastening him to the throne. Sparks every color of the rainbow danced across his bronze flesh and zipped through his hair. I fought the urge to wipe my hands on my tunic because I could still feel where I’d been bitten, been eaten. It wasn’t exactly awesome.

  “So, how are things?” Osiris asked, looking up at me and meeting my eyes. Guilt rimmed the edges of his face as he stared at me. “Want to go hug your girlfriend?”

  “Yes, actually,” I said. “And tell her all the things I never got to say.” Like how being around her made me want to be brave, made me want to take on the whole of the universe to spare her even an ounce of pain. In short, being with her made me a better person.

  “Well, help me out of here, and we’ll go get Horus and talk to my wayward wife. Deal? Then you can spend all the time with her you’d like.” He tried to move his arms, but his muscles did little more than strain against the bindings. Pain flashed across his features.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, stepping over a withered, months’ dead corpse I barely noticed as I crossed the gray stone floor in slow, purposeful strides. I was sort of glad he didn’t want to talk about what had happened in the diner. I don’t think I could have. It might sound silly, but I might have walked away from the whole of Ancient Egypt if he’d made me do it.

  I gripped one of the chains binding him and heat exploded across the length of my flesh. It was like someone had tossed me into a red hot frying pan. My fingers released the bindings reflexively, and I stood back, holding up my smoking hands. They were covered with angry red blisters.

  “How do I let you out?” I asked, wondering why I’d thought I could pull off chains designed to hold down the god Osiris with my bare hands. It wasn’t because I thought I was better, it was more that I was… distracted.

  “There’s a key on the wall. It unlocks the lock on the back of my throne.” He nodded toward the left wall, and sure enough, there was a large bronze key hanging from a bronze hook. It struck me as a little odd since almost everything I’d seen in ancient Egypt had been made from gold.

  I padded over to the wall, grabbed the key
without bothering to check for traps and jerked it off the hook. I know I should have checked, but I just felt sort of out of it. Damn zombies.

  A moment later, I’d located the lock and sure enough the key slid into it perfectly. With one flick of the wrist, the chains fell to the ground and vanished beneath the floor. Osiris sat there for a couple seconds, rubbing his wrists before standing and stretching. He yawned once and spun around to face me.

  “Thanks for letting me out. I’m not sure how I’d have gotten out otherwise. Those chains restrict my godly aura so people can’t find me. You’d be surprised how hard it is to live through the machine uprising with people asking you for things in the real world. Breaks your concentration real good like.”

  “How would you have gotten out if I wasn’t here?” I asked, staring hard at him.

  “James would have let me out, but he seems to have died.” He gestured at the corpse at my feet. “That’s his one job.”

  “Oh. Um, sorry?” I offered, unsure of what to do. I’d barely even noticed the corpse on the ground. What did that say about me?

  “Don’t worry. He’s been dead lots of times before. The body I give him only lasts about a week before he’s sucked back into the underworld. Clearly he expired a while ago which is probably why he died so early on in the game.” He made a gun with his fingers and pretended to shoot James, and like magic, the floor beneath the corpse opened up and swallowed him.

  “Ah.” I shrugged because I didn’t know what to say to that. “So what’s the plan, exactly?” I tried to smile at him but was pretty sure I wound up grimacing. “No offense or anything, but Horus is locked in the prison of the gods. I’ve fought one of the guards before and he seems a bit more, um…”

  “Impressive than I do?” Osiris asked, not looking the least bit offended. “He should because he is. Still, they won’t be a problem.” He walked up to me and put one hand on my shoulder. “Trust me. I’m a people person.”