by Jean Murray
She retraced the hieroglyphics that covered the entire lid, looking for some small clue she had missed. At the head of the sarcophagus she laid her forehead against the wood. “Bakari, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I need you to tell me how to open this—please.”
She had asked that question every day she had entered this cell. With of course, no response. The tomb still remained silent to her touch. She fisted her hand. “Come on, talk to me. Tell me what I want to hear.” Her voice rose, along with her desperation.
“I have been asking him the same thing.”
Kendra jumped at the sound of a deep voice. Knocked off balance, she toppled butt-first over a stack of texts that lay on the floor. She landed on her back with a resounding thump.
“Kendra!” Asar stepped forward out of the shadows. “I am sorry. I did not mean to scare you.”
Lying on her back with her slippered feet in the air, she pressed her palm to her forehead. God, this happened way too much. Asar held out his hand. She clasped his thick palm. “I’m okay.” Her cheeks filled with warmth, embarrassed that she lived up to her fumbling reputation.
“I should have announced myself.”
Standing up, Kendra pulled her robe together and smoothed her wild hair. Gathering her pride, she looked up into the concerned face of her new brother-in-law. “I didn’t mean to speak so harshly to him.” She looked away to hide the tears that welled in her eyes. Trapped in his own grief, the Underworld god didn’t seem to notice.
“How long have you been here?”
“A few hours. When I saw you come in, I did not want to disturb you.”
Such sorrow in his voice and no wonder, God knows what his enemies did to Bakari during his confinement. Kendra weaved her fingers through Asar’s muscular digits. “I’m okay really. I was having trouble sleeping, so I came down.”
His mouth lifted up on one slide. “You have been working very hard. I appreciate everything you have done.”
She exhaled heavily. Apparently she hadn’t done enough because Bakari was still trapped. She pulled the large god forward and placed her hand on the center of the tomb.
“What was he like?” Kendra cringed, regretting she let the words slip past her lips. Asar frowned. “I meant, what is he like. Shoot, I’m sorry. I’m used to dealing with mummified remains. This is so completely different.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. What the heck was she saying? “I need to shut up now.”
His frown deepened further. “It is okay, little one. I would be a fool to think Bakari could come out of this unchanged. Who could?” The Underworld god placed both hands on the top of the sarcophagus and kissed the lid. “He was very kind and generous.” A wry smile crossed his handsome face. “Nothing like me.”
Kendra placed her hand on his arm. “That’s not true. I’ve seen the way you judge souls.” The breadth of his grief translated through her touch. Loss had a strange way of bringing people together. They had lost their father to the curse over five years ago and again on the Thebes battlefield, when he was finally put to rest.
Placing his warm palm over hers, he winked. “Thanks to your sister, I have a second chance not only for myself, but my son.” He pulled away from the tomb. “Bakari had a pure soul that is why I imparted my gifts to him.” Asar touched the gold lion and moon medallion that hung from his neck. The same necklace that led Asar to their doorstep so many months ago. “Most thought it would be too great a burden for a young god, but he shouldered it with the utmost strength and fairness.”
“The power to kill gods.”
Asar nodded. “It was his ability to be impartial that made him so effective. He utilized his skill judiciously. Never used it for his personal gain.”
Kendra looked at the tomb. “I’d like to think the son you knew is still in there.”
“Me too, little one.” Despite the catch of hope in his voice, resignation darkened his eyes.
Rapid footfalls echoed through the corridor. Kendra glanced up to find Lilly staring in from across the heavy iron bars. Her bright green eyes looked warily from Kendra to Asar. “Is everything okay?”
Asar’s eyes brightening upon her arrival. He left the cell to intercept her sister. Although it wasn’t easy in the beginning, the pair was inseparable, always in tune to the others’ feelings. His grief no doubt brought Lilly here. Kendra sighed. She would love to have a man look at her in the same way.
“Everything is fine. I am sorry that I disturbed your sleep.” He leaned his forehead gently against Lilly’s.
“Come to bed. You must be exhausted.” Lilly kissed Asar’s lips before pushing him toward the hallway. “I’ll meet you there.” Lilly swatted him on the butt before turning to the iron gates. A good-natured growl echoed in the chamber.
Lilly walked up to the reinforced bars. “How’s it going?”
Kendra shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
Lilly wrapped her arms tightly against her waist. She never passed through the doors of the cell, and only came here if Asar was present. Kendra was surprised she stayed this long.
“I want you to let me know, if you start feeling different in any way.”
“I will. Actually, I’m feeling a whole lot better now that my headache is gone.”
“Good.” Her sister started to fidget with her belt. “Ah, I need to go.”
“I understand.”
Her sister turned and dashed out the corridor. Kendra shook her head. Lilly was a powerful Nehebkau huntress with an abundance of courage and absolutely no fear. There was only one exception, Bakari’s tomb. Her sister could sense Bakari’s draw of living energy off her soul, similar to the way she fed Asar’s. It was the Underworld’s curse, forcing them to feed off the one thing they were commissioned to protect. Luckily, their mother had seen to it that the sisters had enough energy to feed their hunger. Asar told her that Bakari was feeding off her in the same way, but she never noticed.
Tracing one of the glyphs on the sarcophagus, her mind started churning. Their mother had made them to serve a specific purpose. Lilly’s healing energy grew Asar a new soul from which to judge.
If Kendra was destined to free Bakari from his prison, what made her different from Kit? Kit had the same demi-blood running through her veins. She started to pace the length of the sarcophagus. At the head of the tomb she directed her question to the sleeping god.
“So what makes me different? You like auburn hair?” Kendra rolled her eyes at herself. “I’m sure it’s not because I’m short.” A snort sounded outside the cell. She glanced up to see Ari and the two guardians staring at her with unusual interest. “I’m glad you guys find this entertaining. A little help would be appreciated.” She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot in the silence that hung between them. “I thought so.”
Ari cleared his throat. Kendra shifted her gaze to him. “You have something to say, Ari?”
“No, Madame.”
Narrowing her eyes at him, she pursed her lips. “Are you sure about that?” He clamped his lips tighter and shifted his eyes to the ground.
Kendra turned to the sarcophagus. “I guess we start from the beginning then.” Lifting up the text gingerly in her hands, she opened the delicate parchment to the page she had marked. The black demotic text contained spells to inflict injury, manifest plagues, and more importantly, raise the dead. Bakari for all intents and purposes was in a death-like state, locked in darkness.
She had the right spell, but no matter how she read the incantation the crypt remained sealed. “So what’s missing?”
She resumed pacing. “Okay, let’s go back to what the Nehebkau mother stated, we are the key. Lilly unlocked the goddess Kepi’s tomb. My mother wanted to thwart Menthu’s plan before his army grew too strong. Unfortunately, the reven’s curse had to be released upon the earth. Kepi returns to take her revenge, stealing Asar’s key to the Underworld, ripping out his soul, and kidnaping his son.”
She rested the text on the lid and pushed the sleeves of her ro
be up to her elbows. “But, Bakari is dangerous. He’s the only god with the power to kill other gods.” She fisted her hand and slapped it into her palm. “Kepi has to lock him away, but not kill him. So she uses the demotic spell to place him into hibernation, until she is ready to use him against the Pantheon.”
She shifted her gaze to Ari. His intense black eyes watched her silently. She waved her finger. “There are no coincidences in the world of gods, though. Is there, Ari?”
“No, Madame. If a god wills it, it is done.”
“So there wouldn’t be any coincidence that I am expert in Egyptian Mythology? My mother, the Mother of the Gods, made me for this very task.”
“Yes.”
“Then why the heck can’t I open this thing?” She groaned and slapped her open palm on the sarcophagus. A loud clap bounced off the walls and vibrated through the tomb. She cringed. “Sorry.”
Frustrated, she sat hard on a stack of books. She rested her elbows on her knees and perched her chin on her palms. “Kepi had to have read the incantation for four days, sealing his crypt with blood. Blood of a male ass to be specific.”
She had carefully laid out the ingredients for the awakening spell on the floor in front of her. Reversal spells were tricky. They required ingredients that were in opposition to those used to bind it in the first place. Asar had obtained the blood of a female mule. She didn’t ask where or how, because she didn’t want to know. Never a fan of it, she passed out every time it was medically required to be drawn. Looking into the cup containing the congealed dark red matter, she swallowed back the bile that crawled up the back of her throat.
She had everything she needed, or did she?
Kendra raised her two fingers on her right hand with her thumb across her palm. She recited the Catalepsy incantation from memory, “I invoke thee who art in the void air, terrible, invisible, almighty, god of gods dealing destruction and making desolate. He that destroyeth all and is unconquered. I perform thy ceremonies of divination, for I invoke thee by thy powerful name in which thou canst not refuse to hear entirely come to me and approach and strike down him with frost and fire.”
She held her breath and waited for the lid to release, but yet again the crypt lay silent. Irritated, she huffed. “Kepi had to of modified the spell, that is the only explanation.” She jerked up too quickly. Her slipper hooked on the edge of the stack of books. Not again. She threw her hands out and crashed into the gold chalice. The gelatinous mule blood spilled across the stone floor.
“Shoot.” Could this day get any worse? She sat back on her heels and stared at the red serum that dripped from her fingertips. The blood glistened against her palms.
“Oh, my God!”
“Are you okay, Madame?”
Startled, she looked up into Ari’s eyes. “Kepi didn’t use animal blood. She used her own.” Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? Kendra was the key. Special. The complete opposite of the evil goddess.
Kendra wiped her hands against the soft terry cloth. Taking a hard swallow, she reached her hand out to the warrior. “Give me your blade.”
Chapter Nine
In the beginning, it was the pain that kept Bakari hoping.
Now, the taste for blood consumed him.
Fresh on his tongue, Bakari leaned over a large male. Yes, the energy fed the dark chasm, but he searched for something much sweeter. He licked his lips. Sweeter than nectar. The enticing fragrance floated so close. Sniffing the air he followed the trail of his desire.
His bare skin burned with the exposure to the air. Despite the shallow casts of the wall torches, the light seared his eyes. None of that would stop him from sating the hunger raging in his chest. He stumbled erratically and knocked into the stone wall.
A small gasp shot his gaze wildly around the room. He wasn’t alone. Movement to his lower left stopped his progress. He squinted his eyes to focus on the blurred outline. A female—a very unlucky female.
Bakari sneered. In uneven and staggered strides, he seized his prize. Sweet nectar and a soft familiar energy soaked into his skin. The thumping of the human’s heart clashed like harsh brass cymbals in his ears. Feed.
He leaned, so he was at eyelevel with his prey. A pair of wide brown eyes stared at him. His mouth watered with the thought of consuming something so innocent.
“I did it.” The woman’s voice resonated a significant amount of astonishment and surprise, followed by a nervous giggle. “I really did it.”
Bakari shook his head. This woman was foolishly unafraid at the moment, when her life was about to be sucked from her soul. Her tiny fingers wrapped around his hand that was clenched on her shoulder. The scent of nectar overwhelmed him. He zeroed in on her palm with a large laceration into the delicate flesh. Fresh blood trickled from her wrist to her elbow. The source of his siren scent.
“Your hair and eyes?” Her small hand reached out and caressed a long strand of white hair. Her eyes narrowed. “You have a small resemblance to your father.”
Bakari scoured a palm over his face. His memories were muddled and wrapped in a fog. Nothing made sense. He surveyed the room under the strong glare of light.
His tomb. Blood on the floor. Books strewn in every corner of the cell. The guards he had taken out several seconds after his awakening. The large iron bars were unmistakable. He may have escaped his sarcophagus but Kepi still had him. Even more perplexing, the young human with ringlets of reddish brown hair.
He grabbed the slender curve of her shoulders. “Who are you?”
“Kendra,” she whispered.
Her words brought his focus to her plump pink lips. The drum of her heart kicked up to a gallop. The fine tremor in her body reverberated through his grip. His blood hunger burned through his chest. It had been an eternity since the goddess had last fed him. The fact that his hair was white told him it had been an inferably long time. His eyes would be colorless as well. His skin cracked and bleeding.
He must look like the beast—hungry and seething.
Bakari fixated on her slender throat and the soft movement when she swallowed. He leaned into her neck and inhaled along the line of her pulsing artery. “Kendra, you are going to tell me everything I want to know.”
Her breath hitched and her eyes darted to meet his. “Sure, anything.” The fine quiver to her voice made his predatory urges thunder through his body. His head swam with dizziness.
Despite the threat that he posed to her, she grabbed his arm to steady him. Angered by his weakness and so much more he pushed off her assistance and snatched the back of her neck.
His mouth and throat burned to taste the floral sweetness of her blood that had teased his tongue not ten minutes prior before he awoke in the cell. Mere inches separated him from extinguishing the unbearable pain of starvation.
Her breathing accelerated to the point of hyperventilation. Her whole body began to quiver in his clutches. “Oh, God. Please don’t hurt me.”
Bakari exhaled a hiss through clenched teeth. His victims, twenty in all, had echoed the same pleading words before they took their last breath of life. He had descended further into darkness that day, striped of all his worth and ethos. But that was Kepi’s point, was it not? She wanted to destroy him from the inside out. Make him into the killing machine she envisioned for her plot.
Kepi might have succeeded, considering the murderous actions he had taken upon wakening. Three guards dead. Even the ones outside the cell. Same as now, his instinct for survival overrode any morality he may have had left, and yet he hung uncommitted in taking Kendra’s life. Her words paralyzed him.
It now seemed too easy. The biggest tip off for his internal sensors was this human. She did not seem held against her will until now.
Warmth, like rays of sunshine, ebbed in and around her. The powerful but gentle energy he sensed certainly could not be coming from such a small creature. No human could ever generate that level of living power. The small amount of absorbed life kept him from ripping her slender neck open w
ith his teeth. “Impossible,” he said aghast at the revelation. “You?”
Taking a step back he scanned her. A thick white robe draped her body and obscured the thin lace gown that hugged her body. Crimson streaks of blood covered the front.
“What’s impossible?”
He grasped his pounding head. Nothing made any sense. Based on the books, blood, candles, and other spell conjuring ingredients, there was no other conclusion. Kendra had found a way to break him out of his entombment. She will set you free echoed a past memory.
“You did this?”
Kendra pulled her lower lip in between her teeth. Her chin quivered as she nodded.
He stared upon his imposed prison for over gods knows how many years. Bitter rage boiled in his veins. “How long?” Grabbing a hand full of cloth he pushed her up against the large stone wall. “Tell me how long I have been in there.”
A small tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and followed the curve of her creamy, freckle dotted cheek. “Five years.”
The answer hit him like a knife to the chest. His agony ripped through him with renewed fury. He staggered and dragged the petrified female with him. He crashed into the side of the sarcophagus, knocked it off its pillars and onto the floor.
His back slammed into the stone floor. Kendra tumbled face first into his bare chest. A bellow of anguish burst from his throat. The echo of his despair bounced off the hardened surfaces of the dungeon and carried out through the spaces of hell.
Chapter Ten
Kendra came face to face with Ari’s lifeless body, which had been hidden by the sarcophagus. The guardian’s eyes stared at her with a cloudy haze. The murderer had a tight hold of her. Bakari’s body vibrated with an unadulterated rage. The torches on the walls dimmed. The air in the room thinned to the point she couldn’t draw a breath.
She gasped and reached for the unseen strangle hold, but found no fingers to peel away, only an unrelenting pressure pulling at her body. She slumped against his chest, the darkness consuming her completely.
