“Go inside and get her.” He looked at me stony faced. “It is the only way.”
“Why are you giving me that look?” I asked as the wolf retreated back into its cave. Now that the fighting was done, it wasn’t interested.
“No reason,” he replied. “But be careful. The spirit of Neferkaptah lives within. He guards the book of Thoth. Even if you opt to leave it there, he will still come after you for entering his tomb. You do not want that.”
An icy chill hopped down my back like a frozen cricket as I stared at the statue. I sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I need the book and Aziza so I guess I’m going down there.” I tried to smile, but I didn’t think it worked. “Would you be a sport and hit the button for me?”
Setne sighed and looked at the ground for a long time before nodding once. He moved over to the spot and stared at me with sorrow-filled eyes. “Good luck,” he said and pressed the button.
It was the scariest thing that ever happened to me. My body was rendered completely insubstantial, and as I tried to cry out, I was sucked downward through the sand.
Chapter 8
I hit the spongy earth with a plop. There had been a point where I worried that I would remain in a gaseous state for a prolonged period of time, and I was extremely glad my time spent as vapor had been limited.
I patted myself down to make sure nothing was missing. Nothing was, but I did know one thing for certain. I would not like being a ghost. That was for sure. There was something about not being able to scratch an itch on your nose that bugged me… a lot.
I got to my feet and looked around, wiping my greasy hands on my tunic. I wasn’t sure what I expected, exactly, but what I saw was a little off. For one thing, all of the walls were shifting from neon purple to blue to green and back again in an endless swirl of changing color. Shapes that reminded me of electric jelly fish writhed within the walls, floating about on currents that couldn’t exist within stone. The ground beneath my feet was made of the same substance, and looking down gave me the weirdest sense of vertigo I’d ever had.
The ground beneath my sandaled feet was surprisingly similar to a trampoline. I bounced with every step. I couldn’t help it. As I glanced around, looking for somewhere to go, a smirk crossed my face. Instead of having a billion doors or tunnels, there was only one exit. A big rectangle was cut into the floor a few meters in front of me. Lightning zipped through the floor around it as I approached, each footstep sending green sparks flickering outward.
Stairs led downward into a tunnel I couldn’t see the end of. I took a deep breath and began making my way down into the depths of the jellyfish-filled hole. It wasn’t long before I reached the bottom because the stair’s trampoline-like consistency made it easy to take them two and three at a time. I wasn’t sure how far down I’d gone when I reached the bottom, but since the entrance I’d taken was just a faint spot against the background of color far above, I was guessing it was at least a couple dozen flights.
A lone door stood in front of me, glittering like polished ivory. Its handle resembled a giant batwing carved from solid jade. It glimmered as I reached out to take it. I pulled the huge door open, and when nothing zapped me into dust, I let loose a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“I am the loud noise in the dark, making you shriek in surprise,” a voice like a tattered sheet whipping in the wind whispered in my ear. I spun toward it, heart pounding and pulse racing. There was nothing behind me but iridescent jellyfish swimming through the stairs.
“I am the tree scratching on stones, making you hide beneath your sheets.” The words tickled along my flesh, standing my hair on edge. I turned back around, but again there was nothing there.
“Hello? Is someone there?” I asked in my toughest voice, the one I used when my football team was down by six and had the ball on the three yard line. It wasn’t a perfect fit, I’ll be honest, but it was better than shrieking like a little girl.
“I am the one there when no one’s around,” the wind whistled in my ear, the like rustling leaves on a windswept evening.
My thoughts filled the spaces around me with all sorts of horrible monsters, but this time, I didn’t look around. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened my eyes, the door in front of me was very slightly ajar and cool green mist drifted in through the crack, rising up toward me like an amorphous cloud.
“I am the poison gas that fills your lungs,” the voice said, reptilian and squealing as the door swung open. Pungent gas that smelled like rotten eggs rushed out toward me. My feet hit the bottom step as I backed up. I stumbled, my hands flailing for purchase on the slick, gelatinous stone. I hit the ground with a bounce that sent me lurching forward into the cloud.
It stung me like I’d just walked into a steam line, which yes, I’ve actually done before. It was a werewolf thing. Don’t ask.
The beast inside me howled in pain, threatening to burst outward as my skin blazed with green-black fire. I clamped my eyes shut, willing myself to move forward through the caustic mist, one burning hand stretched out. I stumbled, flopping forward on my hands and knees as the urge to lie down and die filled every ounce of my being.
The wolf inside me wasn’t having it. It pushed me onward, crawling along my flesh and shoving down the pain. My body shuddered forward, one painful movement at a time.
“I am the breath that’s stolen from your lungs, leaving you to drown and thrash.”
“Shut up!” I cried, the beast snarling through my words. I summoned everything in me, reaching so deep inside that I could actually taste the wind whipping through the forest after a hard rain. I got myself to my feet, and the spongy floor recoiled beneath me, throwing me stumbling through the doorway. I fell, hitting the ground beyond the caustic doorway with a bounce and rolled a little bit like a broken mannequin.
I lay there on the floor staring at the multi-hued ceiling as jellyfish flitted back and forth, oblivious to my pain. My skin felt ragged and raw, but as I looked around, I realized I didn’t hurt anymore. Behind me, the cloud of gas stood there, unmoving. Was it just a barrier?
I shook away the thought so I wouldn’t jinx it and got to my feet. A raised dais with a huge white-marble chair upon it filled the center of the tiny room. Sitting upon that throne was a man. He was clad in golden armor that covered his shoulders and waist but left his well-muscled midsection bare. A huge golden crown sat upon his head that made me think of a golden top hat.
“Was it you telling me all those things?” I asked, glaring at the figure who regarded me like someone would regard an interesting bug.
His regal face contorted into a thin smile. “No,” he said, pointing behind me at the cloud. “That would be Neferkaptah.”
“Oh?” I asked as the wolf inside me perked its ears up. Something about this guy did not sit well with my inner wolf. The wolf stirred, looking around and sniffing the air.
“Indeed,” he replied, crossing one leg over his knee and leaning back in his chair.
“He’s really not as scary as I thought he’d be,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the cloud. “He’s more like the rock in my shoe.”
“Even a rock in one’s shoe can cause paralysis.” At the sound of his ancient voice, the wolf inside me took a tentative step backward, retreating down inside me, tail between its legs. “So why have you come here, Thes Mercer?” He waved his hand, blue eyes staring off into the distance like he was watching something play out in front of him. “Never mind, I already know. I just didn’t realize I already knew.”
“Okay, cool,” I said, but it wasn’t really cool because with every movement, every word, he made me more and more uneasy. Even my wolf was afraid, and it was never afraid. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. If my wolf was afraid, it’d be more difficult for him to help me if something happened.
“Calm yourself, Thes. I will not harm you.” He stood, stepping off of his dais and holding his hand out to me. “I promise.”
I was going to ask
him to prove it, but what was the point? If he wanted to kill me, I was pretty sure he could do it, and even if he couldn’t, what good would questioning him do? Besides, in my admittedly limited adventuring experience, most things just told you to trust them or shove off anyway.
“What, not going to ask me why you should trust me?” He raised an amused eyebrow at me. “No, of course not. The great Thes Mercer would never do that.”
“How do you know my name?” I asked just before he ran one slender finger along my cheek. His icy touch made my knees shake.
“I know everything.” His lips curled into a smile as he reached behind himself and pulled what looked like a golden dictionary from behind his back, only I was pretty sure it wasn’t actually a dictionary. “I just don’t always know that I know everything until I do.”
“Is that it? The book of Thoth?” I swallowed, my eyes going wide. It couldn’t be this easy... right?
“Yes. I’m not really much of a writer. Never got my ten thousand hours in.” He shrugged at me. “But I’m going to give you this because I already know how this story ends.” He shoved the book into my hands, and the moment I touched it, power washed over me like dew over a spring morning.
A picture of a sand dune was etched into the cover. The details were so fine I could make out each and every grain of sand. The book was lighter than I expected, weighing less than a comic book, but as I tried to thumb through it, I found I couldn’t open the cover.
“Why won’t it open?” I asked, but as I looked up from the book in my hand, the guy was gone. Aziza stood in his place, a curious look on her face, her sword clasped loosely in her left hand.
“Zeez!” I cried, and as I reached out to wrap her in an impromptu hug, she drove her khopesh through my belly and sliced outward, spilling my entrails across the gelatinous stone. I collapsed forward on my knees, my hands holding my insides as they spilled out of me in a rush of crimson goo and thicker bits.
I had half a thought to try and stuff them back in, but when I tried, Aziza kneed me hard in the face. My nose broke in a spray of blood as I toppled backward onto the ground like a limp fish. The book of Thoth slipped from my grip and hit the ground with a thunk. Without even looking at me, Aziza reached down and picked up the book. Its cover was slick with my blood as she tucked it against her chest.
“Why?” I wheezed, trying desperately to make sense of what had just happened. Had she just betrayed me? Was I going to die? What about Connor?
“So you got it, I’m surprised,” Aziza sneered, but it wasn’t quite her voice. Maybe it was the blood loss, or the fact that my inside bits were on the outside, but I could have sworn she sounded different.
She began to walk off then, not even bothering to glance back in my direction. She stepped through the green mist like it was nothing and disappeared from view. Evidently, it did not bother her.
I tried to call upon my wolf, but I couldn’t find him. I could tell he was there, buried deep down inside me, but as my hands fell limply to my sides, I got the feeling that, for whatever reason, he was too scared to do more than watch me die. I tried to suck in a breath and concentrate, but as everything got hazy, and black spots filled my vision, it was all I could do to keep from falling unconscious. I failed.
Chapter 9
“Get up!” The voice of the wind whipped around inside my head like a hurricane, and before I’d even fully opened my eyes, my body lurched to its feet and tottered forward like a half-broken zombie. The surroundings swam around me, hazy and green, as I took another step on the blood-slick floor. The stink of my blood was heavy in the air, filling my nose with the scent of a thousand rusty nails.
Somehow, my insides were tucked back inside me, held in place by a green film. I tried to reach down and feel the wound, but I couldn’t move my hands. It didn’t really feel healed… more like patched up if that made sense. It was like someone had just grabbed up all my bits and stuffed them back into my stomach and duct-taped the wound shut.
As far as I could tell, my entire body was covered in green smoke. It drifted about me in a haze, shoving me toward the doorway. Fortunately, the caustic mist was curiously absent. Well, small victories. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious, but because I wasn’t dead, I was sure it couldn’t have been long. Without my wolf healing me, I should have bled out.
Whatever. As long as I wasn’t dead, I could call upon my wolf, heal this gaping stomach wound, and find Aziza. I wasn’t sure if I was going to kill her or try to figure out why she’d gutted me like a fish. Though I was leaning toward the murderous vengeance option, I knew she couldn’t have done that without a good reason. Right? If she had wanted to kill me, she could have done so right at the start of this little adventure. That meant something had to be wrong.
“What’s going on,” I tried to say, but no words came out of my mouth. In fact, my lips didn’t even move. It was a little like screaming inside my head. It made me wonder if that was what coma patients experienced.
My feet hit the stairs a moment later. I fell forward, smashing my face on them because I couldn’t move my arms to stop myself. My head bounced painfully off the gelatinous floor as I sort of half-crawled forward on my hands and knees. Thankfully, I didn’t bust open my face because the mist seemed to protect me from actual damage, which was nice of it, I guess.
I tried to shut my eyes to concentrate, realized I couldn’t even do that, and frustration filled me. “Stop!” I screamed inside my head, and just for a second, my body came to a standstill before lurching up the stairs.
“We must protect the book,” the wind whispered in my ears with a voice like the flitting wings of a thousand swarming bats.
“Then let me control my damn body!” I snapped, and surprisingly, my lips worked. The words had barely left me when my left toes caught the top of the step. I stumbled, falling forward again. This time when I reached out, my hands flew outward, stopping me from braining myself on the stairs.
“Very well. Move forward, I will lend you my power to heal yourself. I will guide you, but we must hurry!”
“Got it,” I murmured to myself.
I pushed to my feet, surprised that I could move my body. Not wasting another second, I started sprinting up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. I know it sounds weird, but I didn’t feel any pain. I knew that my gut should have hurt, that the pain should have been stifling, but it just wasn’t. Instead, a strange numbing cold filled my body. Even when my muscles began to burn, the pain of it faded away until my body felt like one giant leaden ball.
I could still operate, still function just fine. My sense of touch hadn’t gone away, but I felt no pain, nothing at all. Even my wolf couldn’t do this. I’d gotten ripped open dozens of times while in wolf form, and it always hurt, always burned. This was so different, I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it.
We reached the top step a moment later. I looked around, trying to figure out where to go. Like last time, there were no obvious exit to the room, but Aziza wasn’t there. So where had she gone?
I was about to ask, when the world around me spun. I careened upward toward the ceiling with green mist trailing after me like an emerald comet tail. I threw my hands out in front of me to shield my face just as I slammed into the ceiling. It was like hitting really warm jelly. I plunged upward, holding my breath. When my lungs were about to explode, I sucked in a breath that tasted of spearmint and cotton candy.
Iridescent jellyfish swam past me in the murk, and I had the distinct feeling that they were wondering what the hell I was doing there. I shrugged, not knowing what I was doing there either. Whatever was going on was far beyond my control. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that.
I was spit out on the surface a moment later. I lay there like a flummoxed seal, my face pressed against the cool stone. The wind began to whip around me, kicking up little motes of dust, and I got the distinct impression that if I didn’t start moving, I was going to go back into lumbering zombie
mode.
I got to my feet and glanced around. Off to my left, Setne was standing there, staring past me with wide eyes. Blood spattered the ground next to him, but for some reason, it didn’t seem like any of it was his. I turned my head, craning my neck so I could follow his gaze, and my breath ripped out of me.
Aziza was waist deep in the water, blood leaking from a wound on her shoulder as she wrestled with a massive crocodile. It snapped and thrashed at her, but she had one arm around its neck and was forcibly yanking back on its head like she was trying to tear it off its body. The water around her was littered with the bobbing corpses of crocodiles and glittering golden sarcophagi.
I staggered toward her, trying to count how many mummies she’d defeated in the time it had taken to get up here. Ten, twenty? Where had they all come from?
“Aziza,” I said, and my voice came out like the palest whisper. I wasn’t sure how she heard me, but she must have. Her head snapped up, eyes narrowing as she took me in. Her face went rigid as she took two steps forward and flung the massive croc at me.
I threw my arms up to block, but just before the giant reptile slammed into me, a wall of emerald mist reduced the beast to a cloud of crimson foam. It splattered across me and the ground, leaving a Thes-shaped outline on the stone behind me.
“Miss me?” I asked, taking a step forward. My hands clenched into fists, and I made an effort to relax them. Really, I wasn’t sure what to do because, as she stared at me with flat predator eyes, I knew something was wrong with her. I just didn’t know what.
“I’m surprised you’re not dead, wolf,” she snarled. The words were so acidic they could have melted through the stone floor.
“I don’t actually like being called wolf,” I replied, cracking a smile. “How would you like it if I called you mummy?”
“It wouldn’t matter to me.” She shrugged her shoulders the barest fraction of an inch. She moved, one tentative step closer to me, the muscles in her legs tensing like she was about to spring. The gilded cover of the Book of Thoth poked up from a satchel slung over her shoulder. I wasn’t sure where she’d gotten it exactly, but there were a lot of things going on right now I didn’t quite understand.
Under Wraps: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 1) Page 5
