The storm god’s nostrils flared as he leaned toward me and sniffed the steam slowly rising from my gut wound. His crimson eyes narrowed as he drove one of his khopeshes through my left shoulder and into the metal below, pinning me to the ground.
“So you’ve enlisted help, Thes, but that is no matter. Frost cannot save you from me.” Set gestured at his wife with his empty hand as red sparks arced across the blackened blade of his remaining khopesh. “The power you have borrowed may hurt the fire within my wife and even the fire within this prison, but it will not stop me. Even winter cannot silence a storm.” His lips curled into a cruel smile as he poked my chest with his khopesh. “I bring the lightning.”
With those words, another crimson bolt exploded from above me and slammed into the spot he’d touched. My teeth snapped together as I spasmed and jerked. Electricity coursed through me, filling the air with the smell of burning flesh and hair.
“What’s the matter, Thes? Wolf got your tongue?” he asked before driving his khopesh through my stomach, reopening my slowly closing wound. The blade glanced off my spine and the lower half of my body went numb and unresponsive. “I know you’ll heal from this, wolf.” He knelt down next to me and traced one finger along the ragged edge of the wound. “I’ll try to make this as fun as possible for the both of us.” He clapped his hands together. “It’s been ever so long since I’ve had such a durable playmate.”
A shudder ran through me, somehow blocking the pain erupting from every nerve I could still feel. My hands tightened into fists as I tried to slug the storm god in his stupid face. Unfortunately, he caught my fist in his hand and looked at me like I was a particularly loathsome insect.
“You don’t seem to know the rules, Thes,” he said, twisting my hand hard enough for the bones in my wrist to snap like twigs. “I can touch you, but you can’t touch me.” He leaned in close, so his breath was moist on my cheek. “Unless of course you pay extra. Do you want to pay extra, Thes?”
That was when an ape-sized fist crashed into the side of his skull. The blow sent him tumbling across the icy ground. He lay there for a moment as Nephthys stared down at me, eyes filled with relief. Her head had reverted to normal, but her arms had changed into those of a black-furred gorilla. Only unlike normal gorilla arms, they were translucent. Even now, I could see her normal arms within them. The sight made me wonder if she was running out of steam. That must have been why she hadn’t fully transformed during our fight earlier.
“Thes, we have to hurry. I’ll hold off my husband as best I can while you take care of the cage,” she ordered as she grabbed both of Set’s khopeshes and jerked them free of my body in a spray of blood and thicker bits. “And thanks for knocking some sense into me, but next time, try not to damage my armor so much. Just go for the face, it heals quicker.”
She stepped in front of me, crossing the twin blades in front of her as flames leapt across the edges. Her form blocked Set from view as he got slowly to his feet. The next thing I heard sounded like a storm smashing into a wildfire raging through a dry forest.
I stared down at my own body, willing it to heal faster as I stuffed my own intestines back inside my ruined abdomen. Another titanic crash echoed across the space, and even though my legs still didn’t work, I realized I couldn’t wait for them to recover. I began crawling forward with my hands, dragging my legs behind me. As I moved toward Horus’s prison inch by bloody inch, I left a gooey red smear on the ground behind me like I was a half-dead slug.
“You should not interfere, wife,” Set’s voice echoed before lightning exploded through the air, leaping across the all metal floor beneath me. Electricity jumped through my body, locking my muscles together. I hit the ground, teeth mashed together under the strain. A few feet away, Nephthys spasmed as a torrent of electricity rampaged through her.
Before the goddess could recover, Set stepped forward and with one flick of his wrist, sliced through her neck with his bare hands. Her head fell from her shoulders in a geyser of golden blood as he stepped past her falling body and narrowed his eyes at me.
“Now where were we, Thes?” he asked as my muscles finally relaxed, and I slumped to the ground unable to move. “Oh yes, that’s right. I was going to torture you to death. Well, time’s a wasting.”
He took a step forward, and I shut my eyes, reaching out toward my wolf. In the plane of my mind, Wepwawet lay on his side in the midst of a huge field of snow. His chest heaved as one half-lidded amber eye stared at me. Gray smoke rose off his body in coils as his tongue lolled out of his mouth.
“What can we do?” I asked my wolf. “How can we stop Set?”
Wepwawet swallowed hard enough for his entire body to shake with the effort. “We must call upon Frost harder.” My wolf nodded toward me, and I realized I was clutching the string of a blue balloon in my hand. I stared at it in disbelief because I hadn’t even known I was holding it. “We must release everything he has given us at once.”
“How do I do that?” I asked, watching a winter storm rage within the blue rubber of the balloon.
“Let it go,” my wolf said, and as I tried to comply, my fingers froze around the string. Frost covered my flesh, trailing off in icicles that hung nearly to the ground. My nails were corpse blue, and as I tried to move my hand, I couldn’t feel anything beyond my wrist.
“How?” I asked, my eyes widening as I stared at my hand in disbelief. “I can’t even feel my fingers.”
“I don’t know, Thes.” My wolf shook his head and shuddered in the snow. “But you better figure it out quickly.”
Before I could reply, a surge of pain ripped through my body, making my heart slam erratically in my chest. Storm clouds filled the horizon of my inner world and blasts of scarlet lightning struck the snowy landscape. The ground beneath my feet rumbled, and I fell to my knees in the ankle-deep snow as freezing rain began to fall from the sky, chilling me to the core.
The balloon began to steam in my hand as water ran down it, thawing my flesh. A sudden burst of inspiration filled me as I forced myself to my feet and half-ran, half-stumbled toward the incoming storm clouds. I raised my frozen fist above my head, flailing like a madman.
“Come on Set, show me what you have!” I cried at the top of my lungs. “Your mother’s a whore and your wife smells like sodden monkey!”
No sooner had the words left my lips when a bolt of lightning shattered the sky and crashed into my outstretched fist. The ice encasing my hand exploded, and as I slumped backward in the snow. My body twitched and jerked uncontrollably. The balloon slipped from my grip.
It floated toward the stormy sky without a care in the world until it hit the storm clouds and disappeared into them. Thunder rumbled. Lightning crashed. The entire sky exploded. Ice rippled outward across the horizon like someone had doused the whole of the world in liquid nitrogen.
My eyes flew open as Set was flung backward across the prison of the gods in an avalanche of blue energy that swept out around me like a tidal wave, turning the ground around me into a thick sheet of ice. The storm god hit the wall and hung there, frozen in place as Frost’s power leapt from my fallen body and smashed into Horus’s prison.
The fire winked out in an instant, extinguishing like it’d never been there at all as rime covered the bars and hail fell from the sky. The cage shattered in a crystalline explosion of sleet and snow. The form within the prison stirred, crawling slowly to its feet as the entire world succumbed to the endless hunger of winter.
Chapter 18
The world around me was a winter wonderland. Foot deep snow covered the ground and glittering icicles hung from the ceiling. It would have been beautiful if it wasn’t so damn cold.
Set had been turned to a popsicle, and Nephthys’s headless corpse lay frozen into an icy statue. Flecks of silver metal were sprinkled around me, although I wasn’t quite sure what it was from. As I crawled slowly to my feet, my body felt strangely whole despite the injuries I’d sustained at the storm god’s hand. I took a step
toward the cage, toward the figure half-buried in the snow next to it and was surprised to find myself unencumbered by the ice. It melted around me, giving me a wide berth as I approached. Well, that was lucky. As I knew from experience, it takes forever to tromp through the snow.
I trudged forward, dragging my body through the melting snow and shivering as icy water clung to my clothes and fur. My breath came out in white wisps as I sucked in frigid gasps of air. After what felt like forever, I finally reached the fallen form of Horus who lay splayed across the snow. In places, the god was little more than a charred skeleton. The rest of his skin had a shriveled texture to it, reminding me of a raisin. Between the char and withering, I probably wouldn’t have even known it was him if he hadn’t had the head of a falcon.
One of his sunken eyes opened, staring at me from beneath a hood of melted feathers.
“Thes,” he croaked, voice hoarse and grating. “You came to rescue me.”
“Yeah,” I said, scooping him up in my arms. He was strangely light, and I wondered if every ounce of moisture had been sucked from his body. “You owe me now.”
“Indeed,” he rasped, head falling forward so his beak rested on his chest. “What do you desire?”
“For you to rally the gods and get your mother to release Sekhmet.” As I said the words, a shiver ran through the god.
“Then get me to the sun throne. It is the only way to restore my power. Do this and I will help you, I promise.” He tried to swallow, but the sound he made was more like rubbing two pieces of beef jerky together.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” I asked, suddenly unsure how to actually get him out of the prison. It wasn’t like there was an obvious exit. We were standing in a metal box, albeit a snow-filled metal box.
“You’ll have to trust me,” he replied, and as he spoke, his falcon face faded away, leaving me looking at his human face. Still, as he reverted, his body seemed to bolster a touch, as though the extra power he’d been using to maintain falcon form had flooded back into his body and given him a better grasp on life. “But I won’t betray you, Thes. We both get what we want after all.” His hand fluttered in the direction of the ice cube formerly known as Set. “Set is defeated, and I will assume the throne.” He grinned at me. “It’s everything I could ever want.”
“Indeed,” I said, resisting the urge to fling him into the snow in disgust. He was right after all. In the end, Horus had to win. The thought made my stomach twist in disgust, and not just because his mother had kidnapped my girlfriend following a horrible decapitation. No, it was because I didn’t think the falcon god was up to the challenge, and if he wasn’t, we were screwed. This was like purposely better on the worst horse in a race, only losing this race might destroy the planet. “Just hold the throne against the destroyer, and I’ll admit I was wrong about you.”
“What do you mean?” Horus gasped, and the fear in his voice made me shudder. “The destroyer is back?”
“He is circling his host as we speak. Once we get you to the throne, you must rally the gods,” I said, but as the words left my mouth, Horus pushed me violently away. The god slipped from my hands and hit the snow, sinking down into it.
“No, he cannot be back.” Horus tried to get to his feet, but before he could move more than a few inches, I stepped on his spine, pinning him to the frozen metal floor. “You don’t understand, Thes!”
“I understand fully,” I said as the falcon god struggled beneath my heel, but my werewolf bulk was more than enough to keep the dehydrated god in place. At least, I was pretty sure it was. “We made a deal. Honor it.” Horus began mewling, burying his face in the snow. I let out an exasperated sigh. “Seriously, man?”
“The destroyer is unlike anyone. If he comes, it will be to kill us all. You may have beaten Apep, but he cannot be stopped.” Horus shook, shivers racking his entire body.
“Maybe the destroyer is a girl,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring at the struggling god. “Presuming the destroyer is male is awfully sexist of you. Now stop making snow angels and zap us to the throne so I can put your scrawny ass on it and get my girlfriend back.”
“You don’t understand, Thes,” Horus opined once more. “If the destroyer comes back, it won’t matter if Isis releases Sekhmet. We’ll all be dead.”
I leaned down close to Horus so my snout was only inches from his ears. “Horus, you’re doing this. End of story.”
“I don’t think—”
“It doesn’t matter what you think!” I snapped, jerking him to his feet by the scruff of his neck and spinning him around so I could glare into his eyes. The fear there made me wonder why everyone had put so much faith into him. I’d seen that look before, and every time it was followed by someone throwing down his weapon and running for the hills in a hysterical panic. Still, I was desperate. I reached into my memory for the toughest voice I ever remembered. That of my Alpha, Halcyon. “You’re doing this,” I growled, copying his I chew boulders and spit out gravel tone.
“Thes,” he whispered, body going as still as death as I began dragging him toward where I sort of recalled entering the prison. Granted all the walls looked the same, so it was sort of a long shot, but it was about time kismet started helping me out.
“I’m not sure what part of ‘it doesn’t matter what you think’ you do not understand,” I said as we reached the wall. I ran my nails over the silver metal. There had to be a door here somewhere.
“The part where you expect me to do battle with an unstoppable god killer,” Horus grumbled, although I’m not sure if his words were actually directed at me. They seemed more forlorn and directed at the ether than anything. It was like he was starting to accept the inevitability of his situation. This was good. I wasn’t going to let him do anything other than sit his scrawny ass on the damn throne and make Isis return Sekhmet to me. Besides, it wasn’t like his shriveled raisin form had much in the way of power to stop me with.
The wall beneath my hand slid away to reveal Osiris. Anubis stood a few feet behind him. Both wore glittering armor, but while Osiris’s seemed to be made of polished silver, Anubis’s was the same color as his mother’s had been. The color of old, dried blood.
“Howdy partner,” Osiris said, nodding at me and tipping an imaginary cowboy hat at me as his eyes shifted to Horus. “Seems you’ve found our runaway pigeon.”
“It would seem so, but he keeps trying to fly the coop.” I pushed Horus toward the two death gods. “And I realized I don’t actually know how to get to the throne, much less out of this prison.”
“We figured as much,” Osiris said, reaching out and taking Horus from me, and for some reason, I let him do it. I can’t say why, but I sort of trusted Osiris to do the right thing, probably because we’d both died fighting a horde of imaginary zombies together. “That’s why we came. Now, let’s get out of here.” With that, Osiris bopped Horus on the head, knocking the falcon god unconscious before slinging him over his shoulder like a continental soldier.
“But what about Set and Nephthys?” I asked, glancing back at the frozen godsicles.
“I’ll take care of the parental units,” Anubis said, moving past me into the room. “That’s why I came along. Maybe I’ll get more allowance out of it.” He sauntered toward the carnage with a bounce in his step. “I need mo’ allowance. Yodelayeoo.”
I shook my head, barely able to keep from grinning at his antics even though this was a serious situation. “Do you think we can do this? Bird brain seems to think we’re all going to die.”
“Here’s the secret, Thes. Everyone’s got to die sometime.” Osiris threw his arm around my shoulder. “Maybe this is our time, maybe not. But we won’t know if we don’t get out there and do our thing. Even if our thing is to die a gruesome, grizzly death at the hands of an unstoppable force.”
“Wow, that sounds awesome. I’ve always wanted to die a horrible grizzly death with an extra helping of gruesome. You know, just to make it interesting,” I replied,
hoping against hope, I wasn’t about to meet my maker.
Osiris just met my eyes and shrugged. “Who knows, maybe you’ll become an immovable object. Stranger things have happened.” Osiris began leading us down the passageway. “Now let’s go. Time waits for no one. Except Thoth, but he doesn’t count.” He elbowed me in the side. “You know because he’s the god of time.”
“Yeah, I got it,” I replied, sighing. “Well, no matter what, we have to try.”
“That’s the spirit, except, well, your words remind me of some very wise words I was once told a long, long time ago.” He looked over, meeting my eyes. “Do or do not. There is no try.”
“Are you quoting Yoda to me?” I shook my head in disgust. “I think we’ve reached the absolute limit to Star Wars references for this little journey. I’m officially putting the moratorium on them.”
“Alright,” Osiris said, eyes gleaming. “Ready to go to the throne and sit bird brain on it?”
“Yeah, more than ready,” I replied.
Osiris nodded at me. “Beam me up, Scotty!” With those words, we vanished in a flash of white light.
A moment later, I found myself standing upon the heavens. They spread out in front of me in an ever expanding expanse of clouds. The sky above was a palette awash with pastel colors, changing in a soft gradient of pinks and yellows. The only other thing here was a simple wicker chair. It looked old and forgotten. Cobwebs clung to its surface, and the reeds binding it together were cracked and brittle.
“Is that it?” I murmured, sure it had to be because it was the only thing here, but at the same time, it seemed so much less impressive than the scenery. “It looks a little…”
Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Page 13
