The God Collector

by Catherine Butzen

  “Golems! Perhaps the legend has roots in Egypt—”

  Maybe it was just their own unnatural forms resisting them, or maybe the agonized shabtis didn’t honestly expect to see a curator theorizing about their connection to Jewish folklore, because the lumbering monsters paused just long enough. Theo ripped the ID card off Van Allen’s jacket and swiped it through the slot, letting out a wordless yelp of triumph as the light turned green. The door slammed shut behind them; a clay hand reaching for Theo’s braid crumbled into dust as it was severed.

  “The implications…” Dr. Van Allen murmured vaguely, staring at nothing while the door reverberated with blows and Theo pulled hard on his arm, “…the implications of, yes, a true automaton…it could offer an alternate explanation for the Antikythera device, for a start…”

  Theo tried to urge him forward again, but Dr. Van Allen was dead weight. He descended into random mumblings about gears and folklore and Heron of Alexandria.

  With nothing human to vent their rage on, the shabtis let out eerie howls and began to attack anything they could reach. Clay cracked and masonry crumbled, but now she could hear glass shattering and the screech of metal as well. There went the windows. Theo pulled harder, hoping that the curator would miraculously develop mobility. He didn’t.

  A hand landed on her shoulder, and Theo let out a yelp. “Let me go, you son of a—” she began, rounding on her attacker with fists flying.

  Instead of dodging, Seth caught her first awkward punch and shifted, throwing her off-balance. Theo stumbled and almost fell, but his grip was like iron and its strength kept her upright.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she gasped out. His arm was rock steady, but there was a faint tremor in the fingers that wrapped around her wrist.

  “Followed you,” he said tightly. “I was afraid you might do something reckless. Come on, we have to go!”

  She would have bristled, but the thunder of the fists on the door made losing her temper a distant second priority. “Wait! We can’t leave the doc!”

  Seth slung an arm around Dr. Van Allen and lifted him clean off the ground. Theo stumbled at the sudden loss of balance, biting her lip hard as she tried to resettle herself. Van Allen sagged and fell quietly unconscious, and Seth scooped him up in a fireman’s carry.

  They ran, and the door burst open behind them. The shabtis screamed as they broke through, a noise like knives on glass, and Theo’s heart shuddered in her chest.

  The end of the corridor was coming up fast. The urge to escape had been too strong, and now the shabtis were between them and the staircase. There were only two ways out now: the iron-gated elevator and the security door that led outside. No contest.

  Theo grabbed the card and swiped them through the security door, trying to ignore the alarms still ringing in the background. She gasped as the cold of the outside air hit them like a slap in the face.

  They were on a fire escape. The steel bars formed a small balcony before turning sharply downwards, vanishing into the orange-tinted shadows and creating harsh, black lines against the cold, white exterior of the building. Snow fell through the gaps in the metal, but ice clung to it, making the footing treacherous. Seth clutched the railing with one hand and balanced the unconscious Van Allen with the other, eyes wild.

  “What are we going to do?” Theo panted. Even through the thick security door, she could hear the golems crashing around, making the building shake. They seemed to be bent on just destroying everything they touched. “Tell me you know how to kill those things!”

  Seth shook his head. “The magic’s been twisted. I could sense it a mile off—some kind of spell. I think someone was trying to take over a shabti body.” The door vibrated again, knocking icicles free and sending them clattering down the long stairway. “We need to get down, now. Hang on to me, and I’ll hang on to the rail.”

  “Are you crazy? We have to stop them!” Theo’s breath caught in her throat. Yuri was on the night shift most of the time. With the alarms blaring, he’d come running, and… Oh God. Not an option. Think think think. Magic, Egyptian magic. Shabtis. Seth. Shabtis as magic. Shabtis as Seth…

  It was the sight of him, his dark eyes locked on her, that gave her the idea. “Stay here.”

  He grabbed her arm, but she shook him off.

  “Theo, don’t!”

  “No! Stay here.” And before he could say anything, she slammed back into the museum.

  Wet clay. Wet clay was malleable, and in a creature like that, malleable was dangerous. Two of the three golems had begun to melt into each other, and their howls echoed and re-echoed down the hall as they struggled to separate themselves. The third was smashing every glass case it could get its muddied hands on, leaving streaks of clay on the walls and the carpet. When Theo stopped in the hall, though, their heads turned to follow her.

  You spent so much time there, talking to them as if they were real. It had to make an impression.

  “My poor little guys,” she said.

  The golems recoiled. The biggest of them—THS2023, she guessed, judging by the remnants of dark pigment on its head—twisted to look at her. Several expressions dragged across its face in quick succession, each feature disconnected from the others in a way that made it impossible for any of the expressions to ever be complete. An angry mouth twisted, but the eyes seemed almost afraid.

  “Maybe you didn’t like it in the prep lab, but at least you were safe,” she said, trying not to let her fear show. Her heart pounded and her skin was slick with clammy sweat, but she kept her gaze on the warped face. “Now you’re out here, getting clay all over the carpet and getting jerked around by magicians. Four thousand is way too old for this kind of thing.”

  It was like talking to a skittish animal. The words didn’t really seem to matter; it was all about the tone and the familiar voice, letting them know that there was someone there they knew. She sent up a mental prayer to any god listening and hoped it would be enough.

  “I wish this hadn’t happened,” she continued gently. “I loved you guys so much, seeing you all ready for that exhibit. It’s not fair, you getting pushed out here before you even get a real chance to shine.”

  The biggest one clutched its head, its hands sinking into the soft clay. The smaller ones were folding in on themselves as their forms bubbled and shifted. One reached out several pseudopods, temporarily taking on a familiar shape. It was trying to return to its old form.

  “It’s okay,” Theo said, taking a few cautious steps forward. The smallest of the golems tried to reach for her, but fell back, its body spasming. “I’m so, so sorry, guys. I wish I could do something for you right now. But, I promise, everything’s going to be okay. All right? Whatever happens, there’s still gonna be an exhibit, and hundreds and hundreds of people will come by every day to look at you and see how amazing and beautiful you are. No one can take that away from you.”

  The golems shivered. They were losing coherence, their bodies melting into shapeless blobs. She kept talking, murmuring reassurances, telling them what wonderful things they were, and finally—with a sigh, as if they were just giving up—they collapsed. Liquid clay flooded the corridor and began almost immediately to dry into hard patches.

  She stumbled back, propping herself against the wall as the golems dissolved. Her eyes stung; she mopped her face with one hand, only to feel roughness under her fingers. She, like everything else in the corridor, had been sprayed with quick-hardening ceramic. Clumps were tangled in her hair.

  “It’s all right,” she called out. The alarms were still echoing in the depths of the museum, but to her ears, they seemed to have faded into the background.

  The shabtis. Oh God. She leaned against the wall, trying to steady her breathing. The security door creaked open again and Seth appeared in the corner of her eye, a blur of blue copper topped by the dull orange of the doctor’s jacket, but she couldn’t s
eem to turn her head to focus on either of them.

  Her little survivors. Four thousand years old, those figurines, existing not because of magic or science or preservation labs, but simply because they were works of art that people had chosen to protect. She’d talked to them, teased them, praised them and maybe loved them just a little bit. Loved them enough to awaken their link with Seth, and perhaps draw him to her. But she’d never seen them move, and she’d never watched them die. Her vision blurred as tears began to well up.

  There was a soft thump as Seth set down the doctor. Van Allen’s head lolled, but his eyes were half-open and some of his color was coming back.

  Theo took a deep breath and quickly mopped away the tears with the back of her hand.

  “Theo.”

  Seth took a couple of steps towards her, strangely awkward now that the danger was past. Theo glanced down as she blotted the last of the tears. She could feel the warmth of him, see his striking colors, even without looking directly at him, but she wasn’t sure what to do now.

  He put one hand on her shoulder and gently raised her chin with the other. “Theo,” he said softly. She could still feel the faintest of tremors in the hands that held her, like little cracks in his own clay shell. “Theo, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” The words came out in a whisper.

  “Never do that again,” he said. “Please. I don’t think my heart can take it.”

  “Theirs sure couldn’t.” She closed her eyes and, just for a moment, leaned into his touch. She could feel his heart—or something’s heart, anyway—under her hands, beating too slowly to be human. Slow, but steady, and she took comfort in its rhythm. He pressed a kiss to her lips, and, God, she wanted to just stay there and let herself enjoy it.

  But she couldn’t. The guards would have responded to the alarms by now if they were able, but even if Zimmer had somehow incapacitated them, the police would be getting the alarm signal too. Later, she silently promised herself as she kissed him softly. More of this later. Now, though, she pulled away.

  “What happened?” Seth asked, taking the hint.

  “I came to see Dr. Van Allen about the second theft.” Theo raked a hand through her dirty hair. “Zimmer was here. He grabbed me,” she added with a humorless twist of her lips. “His Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique needs work. But he did something to the shabtis and created…that.” She busied herself with peeling scraps of hardening clay off her hands, hoping not to meet his eyes.

  “He touched you? Where?”

  When she showed him, he hooked his fingers into the neckline of her shirt and began to gently tug it down. She tried to push his hand away, but his finger touched something and she winced as another wave of pain flooded through her chest and shoulder. He had torn the neckline a little, exposing the soft, white cup of her bra and the humble curve of her left breast. What had been plain skin was now marred by a huge fresh burn, bright red with raised, bloodied edges, like a knife had been run over the flesh. It was the size of a man’s hand and formed a familiar shape—an ankh with its arms folded inwards.

  “Tyet,” Seth murmured. Blood was draining from his face. “He touched your heart, Theo. He wanted to take your body.”

  “What?”

  Her voice rose in a yelp, and the long hall echoed it back, turning it into a chorus of indignant disbelief. “What do you mean?” she whispered, trying and failing to keep a lid on her surprise. “Tell me that’s not what it sounds like!”

  “It was…theorized,” Seth hazarded. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “As an extension of the technique I used. If a soul could be earthed in a shabti, couldn’t you find a way to move one soul into another living body? Throw the owner’s soul out into the darkness and take his form? But I never…”

  “Theorized.” Theo swallowed. “By who?”

  “Meren.” His expression was grim. “My brother.”

  It took a moment to process. Theo’s first thought: But Mark looks so freaking Irish. Then her normal thinking caught up and the words left her mouth without being cleared by her brain, “But your brother’s dead.”

  “So am I.”

  “No you’re not, you’re…” She looked for the word and didn’t find it. “You said you weren’t, Seth. You’re in the house when the lights go out.”

  “I haven’t died all the way. But I’m supposed to be dead, if things worked the way they should.” His gaze flicked over the tyet burn on her chest. There was a small pink mark next to it, where Seth’s teeth had nipped at her breast only hours before. “This is magic, deep magic. The kind my brother specialized in. Maybe the amulet protected you, but if you hadn’t had it, you might not be alive right now.” His face was unnaturally pale.

  “I’ll manage.” She ran a hand through her hair again and tried not to look him in the eye. The expression there was making her stomach twist. “What now?”

  “I have to leave,” he said. That got her to look up. “I have some books, some copies of texts he gave me back home. I might be able to find out if he could have done this. Or if not him, who else.”

  “Seth,” Theo said softly. “Are you rabbiting again?”

  “Yes.” His voice was flat.

  For a moment, Theo wanted to punch him. Or hug him. She wasn’t sure which impulse came first. Seth looked like the dead man he was, his expression haunted, his clenched fists white-knuckled. She wanted to scream at him that this wasn’t the solution. That she wanted to go with him, or make him stay. With an effort, she made herself speak calmly.

  “That won’t solve it,” she said, pulling her shirt up to cover the tyet mark. “Please, Seth, think. We need to figure this out.”

  His jaw clenched, veins bulging in his skin. It wasn’t dawn yet and the effects of the night were still on him, creating hollows and drawn lines in his face as he fought to keep his own anger and fear under control. “Theo,” he said, and her name was a harsh whisper. “When I thought this was just crime, that was one thing. Crime is human. People want gold and antiques for themselves, tombs get robbed—it happens. But this is magic. Gods are involved, Theo. I saw a jackal shadow in the hall—” She couldn’t keep her expression neutral, and he flinched a little. “You saw it too?”

  “I… Maybe,” she said. “I might’ve been hallucinating.”

  “Hallucinations only cover so much.” The words were bitter. “I know better than anyone that magic is dangerous. Gods, more so. Gods you can’t control, especially when they’re angry. Someone’s going to die, and nobody else in this whole freezing city has bodies to spare!”

  He used the word freezing like a curse. Theo didn’t let his anger touch her. She moved forward and, gently, took his head in her hands. The muscles under the skin stood out like twisted bands of steel, and the skin itself was papery and dry. Stubble scratched at her palms.

  She looked him in the eyes and saw desperation.

  “Seth,” she said softly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  It was the only thing she could think of to say. But that look in his eyes was so wrong that she wanted, desperately, to wipe it away. A month ago she would’ve given an arm to be able to paint that look of desperate fear, to share it with the world. Now she never wanted to see it again.

  Seth closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. “I don’t know,” he murmured, his breath hot against her palm. “I don’t know. I did or I didn’t. But I’ve been dodging this for a long time, Theo. I have to go. I can’t meet Ammit this way. I can’t.”

  “Then go.” The words felt heavy, but they came out in a bare whisper. “But be careful. And take this.” She pulled out the tyet amulet she had carried.

  When it brushed against his arm, though, Seth jolted back. There was a hiss of burning, and a bright-red mark spread across his arm. Theo gave a startled cry and dropped the amulet, but her own fingers were fine.

  “Seth, I’m so
rry—” she began.

  He shook his head.

  “No heart,” he said. “Not a human one, anyway. I’m a little déclassé for the Throne Mother now.”

  “That’s her loss.” She kissed him. “If you’ve really got books on this, think about finding them, okay? We’re not dead yet.”

  “From your lips, to the gods’ ears,” he said quietly.

  Then he was gone.

  Eyes stinging, she turned back to the half-conscious curator. He was slumped against the wall, eyes closed, seemingly unbreathing. For a moment, she wondered if he was in shock. But she moved, and the flat, pale eyes focused on her, pinning her to the spot.

  “Miss Speer…” the words came out in monotone, “…I’m fairly certain that this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “No, Doctor,” she said. There didn’t seem to be any other answer. “Are you all right?”

  “I seem to have cracked a tibia. Would you mind having a look?” Still barely an inflection, just the dry, stale voice. “I’m having difficulty checking for myself.”

  No time to stand on ceremony: Theo pulled up the curator’s pant leg. His shin was swollen and purple, the flesh taut and hot. It was flecked with sweat, and when Theo touched it, Van Allen flinched a little and let out a hiss.

  “You broke something,” she said, “and the swelling’s bad. But I think you’re gonna be okay.”

  “I hope so. We’re going to have a lot of cleanup to do.” For a moment, the eyes unfocused again. “This could have some fascinating repercussions. The account of Israelite slavery in Egypt is often considered apocryphal, since there’s been no discernible cultural link between Old Kingdom and, hah, Old Testament. But the mythology…”

  “Dr. Van Allen, are you okay?” Theo said, more than a little worried. “You got a pretty bad whack on the head there too. You should probably just relax and wait for the police.”

  “Police?” Van Allen frowned. “Oh. Right. The police will be coming.” The bright-blue gaze skewered Theo, and she shifted, unwilling to meet it. “You’d better get moving, I think. You don’t want to be caught here.”