“Yeah, about that,” I muttered, barely dodging under his clumsy slash. “Turns out I’m allergic to sarlaccs.” I threw myself forward, smashing into his chest with my shoulder and driving both of us to the floor. The knife slipped from his grip and skittered across the stones.
His other fist came lashing out, catching me in the side of the head like a wrecking ball. My teeth snapped together as shards of bone broke through my skin. I toppled sideways to the ground and laid there like an idiot as my skull tried to mend itself back together. Anubis leapt to his feet and kicked me in the stomach. A cry exploded from my throat, spraying blood from my lips as my ribs shattered, and my body left the ground.
Thankfully, the giant stone statue of Anubis broke my fall. I collapsed to the ground, my spine cracked in at least three places. The death god picked up his knife as lightning filled the ceiling with flashes of ominous silver light. Instead of finishing me off, Anubis turned and moved back toward Osiris.
Anubis raised his knife upward, and a flash of lightning struck the blade, illuminating it like a miniature star. A terrifying shriek, like a chorus of thousands of screaming voices, ripped outward from the cloud as a whirlwind burst from its center mass and hurtled toward Osiris’s bleeding, prone body.
A low, melodic chant erupted from Anubis’s lips as he drove the knife down into Osiris’s chest once more and sliced him open from crotch to throat. Osiris’s face contorted in agony as the wind swept within his wound, turning his flesh a motley gray color and reminding me of what had happened to Khufu. If Anubis was trying to turn Osiris to stone, I couldn’t let him succeed.
I forced my partially healed limbs into action and ripped Khufu’s khopesh from my belt. Pain lit along my nerves as Anubis turned his head toward me, eyes strangely vacant and far off. I let the weapon fly with all the strength I could muster. I’d never thrown anything so hard in my life, but even I was surprised at how fast it flew through the air, especially since I was still lying on my side. One moment the khopesh was in my hand, and the next, it was embedded in Anubis’s chest. Golden ichor burst from the wound as the god reached up to touch the spot with the fingers of his free hand.
“How?” he mumbled eyes awash with confusion as he slumped forward onto his knees, his life dripping through his fingers.
I ignored his question and raced toward Osiris. I gripped the knife embedded in my chest, and my hands went numb from the cold. My teeth began to chatter. My breath came out in a spray of white mist as I pulled on it with all my strength. It came free with a sound like a thousand snarling wolves, and I fell backward onto the stone.
Lightning burst from the cloud above us, striking the altar and turning part of it into molten puddle as I clambered toward the bound death god, my limbs still cold and unfeeling. A blast struck my arm. The jolt of energy set my cells ablaze and made my nerves scream. Power rampaged through me, burning me from the inside out and boiling the blood within my veins. Still, I struggled toward Osiris and slashed at the chains binding him with the last of my strength. The chains fell away beneath my knife like they were made of wet paper, clattering to the ground like the bones of a dying skeleton.
Osiris caught my eyes, but before he could say anything, a bolt of lightning struck me full in the face, throwing me backward through the air as everything faded into darkness and agony.
Chapter 15
“The death coil is coming apart at the seams!” Osiris cried, his voice breaking through the darkness and fog surrounding me. “We need to harness the chaos energy before it completely overwhelms the morbidity array and explodes killing us all!”
I blinked, trying to bring the scene into focus as I fought through the haze clinging to my vision like cobwebs. The last thing I remembered was being hit in the face by lightning, but from the look of things, everything had gone crazy while I’d been unconscious.
The scene slowly swam into view. Anubis was across the room, his hands glowing with violent crimson energy as he tried to stuff handfuls of oozing yellow fluid from an immense bubbling jar next to him onto a tear in reality. Garish yellow light spilled from the ragged edges of the gash where he slathered the substance. As soon as it touched the rip it pulsated and bubbled. Through the tear, I could see faint glimpses of a curious emerald eye the size of a skyscraper lumbering closer.
“I’m giving it all I’ve got, Osiris!” Anubis called, voice strained as his skin began to smoke and bubble. “We’re running out of glue!” He tossed another handful into the tear, and I watched in amazement as the rip shuddered, pulling taught for a split second before springing back into place as a burst of super-heated air exploded through it. I was glad to see them working together. I must have succeeded in beating he who cannot be named’s influence out of Anubis. Yay for small victories!
“Well, give it more!” Osiris yelled back, and I swung my head toward him to see him wrestling with a giant black lever, trying to push it back into place as black mist swirled around him. Skeletal hands reached from the fog, clawing at the struggling god and leaving bloody trails in their wake.
“What can I do to help?” I asked, and my voice sounded quiet in the din of the chaos. I got slowly to my feet and took a step toward Osiris, my feet crunching on the stone as I did so. I looked down to find the ground alive with black-bodied beetles. The bugs turned toward me, their scarlet multifaceted eyes watching me carefully.
“Get the doom crystal and use it to empower the array!” Osiris replied, his voice tight with strain as he lifted one hand and pointed to a rather boring looking wooden bookshelf a little to my left. A sapphire the size of my head sat on the middle shelf, glittering like a tiny star.
“Okay!” I sprinted toward the gemstone, crunching over beetles as a sulfurous odor filled my nostrils. I glanced back over my shoulder toward the trail of crushed bugs to see yellow smoke rising from their broken bodies. So they smelled like sulfur.
I ignored it and grabbed the sapphire. It was way heavier than I expected and covered in an oily residue. The gemstone slipped from my fingers as I pulled it from the shelf and hit the stone floor with a crash. The sapphire shattered into a bazillion pieces of flitting blue light before whirling upward like a hurricane. The smell of sulfur vanished as jets of sapphire energy exploded within the room, striking the portal Anubis was struggling to hold closed with his bare hands.
One clawed fingertip the size of a school bus poked through, jabbing the god through the sternum and poking out his back like an enormous fishhook. Anubis screamed, losing his hold on the portal and slumped forward as the claw began to retract, dragging him toward the portal. Just as the god was about to tumble into whatever hellscape awaited beyond, a blue blast of energy struck the finger. A howl unlike anything I ever heard shook the room hard enough to throw me from my feet.
“He sees me!” Anubis cried, his body stiffening and actually graying out as his essence began to flake away like blowing dust just before the finger evaporated into a stream of black smoke. The eye appeared again, narrowed in rage.
“Release me, puny god!” bellowed a voice from beyond the portal. Anubis fell to his knees, his limbs dissolving under the horrific gaze of the creature beyond the tear.
“Never!” Osiris yelled back, throwing all his weight onto the lever as a blast of sapphire energy struck the eye. “Eat doom energy!”
The eye blinked a couple times, like it was trying to dislodge a piece of dust and not shake off a lightning bolt to the face.
“I see both of you godlings now. Your ends have been foretold. I will feast upon your souls soon enough!” The voice from beyond rocked the room, grating against my senses and shattering my thoughts as the eye shut and pulled away from the portal. “Everything between then and now is just a wasted breath, a last dying gasp.” Laughter rumbled from the beyond. “Enjoy it while you can.”
Ignoring his own gored body, Anubis took the opportunity to fling the last of his bubbling goop at the hole before smearing it across the air itself with his bloody hands. T
he glue formed a translucent yellow seal streaked with bits of Anubis’s disintegrated flesh. The seal convulsed, blowing out toward us like a soap bubble as the thrum of hideous laughter dulled and distorted, dissipating into the air.
The hurricane of sapphire shuddered and with one dying gasp of life, threw the entirety of itself at the barely patched portal. The whole room lurched, spinning off its hinges like the earth itself had left its axis. My feet flew out from under me, and I slammed into the shelf hard enough to break the wooden boards before the whole thing toppled on top of me. Agony lanced through me as Osiris flung his entire body at the lever despite the dozens of skeletal limbs clawing at him. It snapped into placed with a crack of thunder.
An explosion of green fire blazed through the air, consuming the black mist as the patch across the portal solidified into a crystalline lattice of emerald light. I climbed slowly to my feet, taking a tentative step toward Osiris. A loud pop shattered my eardrums and left me standing there dazed and confused.
“Well, that was fun. Let’s never do that again,” Osiris said, getting to his feet and turning toward me, blood dripping down his face.
“Agreed,” Anubis said, coming toward me. His body was back to normal if a little paler, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. Evidently, sealing the breech had caused whatever was siphoning him away to stop. And people said werewolves healed fast. “I’m surprised you thought to shatter the doom crystal. How did you know it would release the volatile energy within?” He reached out to help me to my feet.
“I, er, um,” I mumbled, looking away sheepishly as he pulled me into a standing position like I didn’t weigh a couple hundred pounds.
“You dropped it on accident didn’t you?” Osiris asked, coming over to me, his chest heaving as he sucked in gasps of air. His ribs had a sort of flattened, broken look, but they popped back into place as he moved so that by the time he reached me, they were as good as new.
“Yeah,” I said sheepishly. Then I shrugged because I didn’t know what else to do.
“There are no accidents, Thes. If you dropped it, you were meant to do so.” Anubis smiled at me. “And thanks for saving me. Sorry I broke your back while you were doing it.”
“It’d have been easier if you didn’t have such a hard head,” I replied, punching him lightly on the shoulder like we were two guys talking after a football game despite him trying to kill me only a few moments ago. “What the hell was that thing?” I pointed toward where the slash in reality had been, although now it looked like as normal a space as any.
“The World Eater,” Anubis said and his voice held an edge of fear to it. “At least that’s what we call him. To speak his true name is too horrible a concept to imagine. He is beyond powerful. Even a single utterance could bring about untold devastation. They say that when this world finally winks out of existence, when we are consumed by the apocalypse, it will be like a flea bite compared to the ravages he would unleash in its place.”
“That sounds bad.” I swallowed. “But you’re gods, surely—”
“Even gods have gods,” Osiris said, shaking his head. “And those gods have gods again. It’s why when you look at all of us, there is always one before, always a penultimate being from before. It’s turtles all the way down.”
“So you’re saying the World Eater is a god unto gods who themselves are gods unto more gods?” I asked, a horrible sinking feeling filling me. I’d fought gods before. Hell, I’d done it a few minutes ago, and they were impossibly strong. Now Osiris was telling me there were beings like gods to them, and worse yet, it just kept going and going forever. “I suddenly feel very small.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Osiris replied, shrugging. “No one even remembers the World Eater’s true name.”
“Besides, if he comes forth, you likely won’t even know. You’ll just be gone.” Anubis smiled. “I know that probably doesn’t make you feel better, but trust me, it should.”
He was right. It didn’t make me feel better, but I could sort of see his point. If this thing was so terrible it could cause untold devastation, it probably would be better to die while going about your day, oblivious to what was going on. What was that saying, ignorance was bliss?
“Is the destroyer on par with you guys or is he something more?” I asked, trying to ignore the possibility of a being so supremely powerful it could wipe out the universe with a blink.
“Both and neither.” Osiris put his hands out in front of them like he was balancing two objects. “He’s more a proportionality. He is as strong as he needs to be to destroy what he has come to destroy.”
“That sounds rigged,” I replied, furrowing my brow. “You’re telling me his power changes so he will accomplish his goals?”
“Mostly, yes. The destroyer doesn’t always win, and he doesn’t always lose. It is like handing a man three spears and giving him three targets. Just because he could hit all three doesn’t mean he can or will.” Osiris smirked. “Now enough theology, Thes. Time’s a wasting, and I have some siblings to awaken.”
“And how the hell are we going to do that?” I asked, remembering how Set and Nephthys had routed us with little effort.
“Well, this time, I’m on your side.” Anubis grinned at me, and it was strangely menacing given his jackal head and sharp teeth. “I’m no slouch.”
“Okay,” I nodded, deciding to go with their plan because I really didn’t have a better one. “Let’s go beat up some gods.”
“I love this guy,” Osiris said, throwing his arm around my shoulder. “Never complains, always wants to just punch things in the face. There’s a certain purity to it.”
“Or stupidity,” Anubis replied with a shrug, and sadly, I sort of agreed with him.
Chapter 16
“So who is your god, Osiris?” I asked as we crept through some stone tunnels with hieroglyphics depicting gods in a titanic battle with Apep. Supposedly, we were beneath the prison of the gods, but if I’d learned one thing, it was that you couldn’t trust gods even as far as you could throw them.
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” He shot me a rather serious look. “Seriously because if you spoke his name, he might hear it and come back.” A shiver ran down his body and Anubis stiffened mid-step.
“I’m guessing he’s not all rainbows and sunshine,” I said, watching the fear fade from the two deities. It’d only been there a few moments, but if something could scare them that badly, I wanted no part of it. And to think that god likely had a god of its own. It was almost too much.
“If the rainbows are made of broken glass and the sunshine is magma, then sort of,” Anubis said, shaking his head as we trudged forward through the barely lit corridor. “I was going to try to make a comparison you would understand, but I just can’t.”
“I could, but I won’t,” Osiris added, somewhat cheerfully. “The less said about him, the better.”
“Next you’re going to tell me I’m descended from aliens or that you guys are just alien settlers who used pyramids for landing pads.” I smirked, shaking my head.
“You said it, not me,” Osiris replied, but when I looked over at him, he was snickering. I couldn’t tell if it was because I was being foolish or if I was correct.
I sucked in a slow breath and held it for a few moments before exhaling. Sometimes dealing with deities was downright exasperating because I never quite knew if they were telling the truth. It was like when I’d see an alert on social media for one of my friend’s birthdays, and before I’d go to wish him one, I’d always wonder if they’d set their birthday wrong on purpose just to see who would really remember. Then they’d see my message and be like, “Fool! I’m born on January 17th not March 8th. We are no longer friends!” It hadn’t happened yet, but that didn’t stop me from being overly paranoid about the possibility.
“Anyway, so what exactly is the plan?” I asked, suppressing a shudder as the torches began to change color, shifting from orange yellow to blue-green with eac
h step we took. “I’m hoping it's more complex than hit them in the face.”
“I actually like the ‘find my parents and bludgeon them until they listen to reason’ plan a lot,” Anubis said, smacking his open palm with his fist. The sound echoed in the corridor.
“You like the idea of beating your parents senseless?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow at him. “And I thought werewolf families were messed up.”
“Let’s just say I have issues I need to work out.” Anubis grinned, showing me his razor-sharp teeth. “On their faces. With my fists.”
We walked in silence for a while after that. The tunnel kept twisting and turning, sloping up and down, so by the time we reached a shiny golden door, I was thoroughly lost. If it wasn’t for there being no other offshoots from the path we’d walked, I was relatively sure I would have had trouble finding my way back.
Like nearly every door I’d seen down here, this door was hewn from a solid slab of gold. Unlike the others, this one had depictions of each of the Egyptian gods and goddesses etched into its surface along with a series of hieroglyphics beneath each figure. Since I couldn’t read the symbols, I presumed it represented their names. The door was also a little weird because there was no handle or hinges on its surface, so I wasn’t quite sure how it’d opened. Even still, I was relatively sure there had to be a simple way.
“Ready?” Osiris asked, throwing a glance at Anubis and smiling even though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “There’s still time to turn back.”
“Nah, I’m good,” Anubis replied, taking a step past us and placing his right hand against the drawing of himself. Black light flowed out from beneath his palm, rippling outward along the surface like the concentric circles made by a stone being flung into a lake.
The door shuddered, warping in its frame as the ground beneath out feet came alive with writhing, crawling insects. They hadn’t been there a second ago, but now they were crawling over my feet, pulling themselves free from the stone like they’d just been woken from a long nap.
Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Page 11
