I flip the switch, and a skinny door in the middle of the wall clicks open.
“…I’ll still take you up on that offer to assuage Cooper’s anger for me. Because I could really use another well-cooked dinner after this bullshit is over.”
Erica walks up behind us. “Can you weirdos stop being so tragically heroic? It’s annoying.”
We both stare at her, eyebrows raised.
She lifts her hands in surrender, then drops all the humor in her tone. “We may have taken too long.” Her fingers curl into fists, and small green sparks dance across her knuckles. “The summoning can’t be more than two or three minutes out, if it’s not already underway. We need to go in guns blazing.”
Ella offers me a pensive smile as she tugs her gun from its holster again. “If Cooper refuses to cook for you, Cal, even after I talk to him, I could always whip you up a little something. I make a mean omelet.”
She grabs the edge of the heavy door and lugs it wide open.
The room beyond is even darker than the main basement, lit by nothing but candles in scattered jars and an authentic oil lamp running low on fuel in the middle of a wooden table. Ella immediately moves to enter in a fight stance, gun at the ready, but my hand shoots out and grabs her shoulder before her foot can cross the threshold.
“I don’t have the best track record with secret doors.” I nod at Erica. “Might want to check for wards first.”
Ella suddenly recalls the exploding clock disaster, judging by her pained expression, and steps away, ushering Erica forward. The witch examines the door closely, then smacks the doorframe with an open palm, whispering something in a language that doesn’t sound like it was made for human tongues. My magic sense, still active, catches subtle green waves rippling through the stone. They hit two wards, which flare bright white as they deactivate.
“Should be good,” Erica says and steps through the doorway to prove her point.
Ella and I follow her into the room. It appears to be some kind of study. Magic manuals are stacked on rickety shelves, gathering dust. The worktable sporting the oil lamp is strewn with disorganized papers, some printed, others handwritten, and others still ripped out of old, yellowed books. Another table along the back wall displays a collection of jars, tins, and bags—each contains some type of ingredient Erica likely sells at her occult shop for the practitioner clientele.
Among all the crap in the room, however, it’s what’s above the back table that catches my attention: a large corkboard. Numerous printed pages, scribbled notes, hand-drawn pictures, photos, and even stories cut from the local newspapers decorate the board.
As I maneuver around the central worktable toward the wall, the flickering lamplight brings the board’s content into stark relief: headlines about the exploding boathouse in Holden Park, pictures of the college kids who were lured into the underworld heist (and paid the price), blurry security cam images of Charun stalking through the streets (which should have been wiped in the cleanup efforts), and…of course.
A graphite drawing of Vanth’s key, in the middle of it all.
My hand moves on its own, brushing against the thick drawing paper.
Ella walks over to me. “Cal, you okay?”
“No…” I stare at the damp streak on the paper left by my wet fingers.
“We don’t have time to stall, you two,” Erica hisses, already heading toward another door on the left wall; this one is in plain sight. “What’s up?”
A deep shudder runs through my core. “If Marcus is involved in this case, then he must also have been involved in the Etruscan case. Even if Halliburton was the contact point for the kids who stole Vanth’s key, Marcus would have known what their primary objective looked like.”
“Why is that important right now?” Ella murmurs in my ear. “We really can’t stall anymore.”
“I’m sorry. I know. I just realized…” Dread settles in my gut. “I had the key, in my hand, that night at Holden Park. And Marcus ran right by me when he arrived to fight Charun. He…Would he have…?”
Erica answers my unspoken question. “He would have killed you. If he’s willing to steal souls, sacrifice fellow practitioners, and risk his own life to summon Ammit—then yes, Cal, he would have killed you that night, if he had seen that key in your hand.”
“Ah. I see. Guess I was lucky, huh?” I stare at the drawing in the middle of that board of tragedy.
Then I reach out and rip it free, crumpling up all that remains of that godforsaken key.
Without another word, I lumber toward the second door, check with Erica—who shakes her head; no wards—raise my gun, turn the knob ever so gently, and kick the damn thing open as hard as I can without shattering every bone in my leg.
On the other side of the second door is a blindingly bright room. Hundreds of candles are arranged on the floor in intricate patterns, like tessellations, casting a powerful orange glare. Along the far wall are the remaining soul clocks, stacked the same way they were in Slate’s secret basement room. Now, however, they glow deep blue, even brighter than the candles, all the hour hands striking twelve, the minute hands spinning around and around.
And in the center of this colorful chaos, his shoes on the outer rim of a massive summoning circle drawn in blood, stands Allen Marcus. Head bowed. Eyes closed. Hands pressed together like he’s praying.
The moment I step into the room, Erica and Ella on my heels, Marcus’ head snaps up, eyes wide, pupils lit by the fires of hell themselves. He shouts a rapid incantation in a guttural language, which I realize might be rushed Egyptian. His shoulders tighten harder with each syllable, lips straining like the words are heavy weights on his tongue. Sweat pours down his face from the magical exertion of trying to pull an ancient beast from its slumber. The man looks ready to unravel at the seams—and it strikes me, standing there in awe and terror, as the blur of Erica blows past me into the room, and Ella fires the first shot at Marcus, center mass…
Of course, summoning Ammit was never meant to be done by a single person.
Whoever or whatever this enemy is, they are so fearsome, so powerful, so dangerous, that Allen Marcus is willing to stop the beat of his own heart to bring this summoning to fruition.
And he does too.
Erica almost makes it. Fifty-odd candles fly into the air as she shears through the army of flickering lights on her warpath toward Marcus. Fists raised, crackling with green energy. Fury carved into her face.
Ella’s bullets soar past her, heading straight for Marcus’ chest, but the wizard is too prepared to be put down by a handgun. The bullets ding off an invisible magic shield and ricochet into the cinderblock walls.
Marcus flinches, trying to maintain concentration, his words growing faster and louder and more demanding. Until the instant when Erica, more a haze of a human being than a physical form, because she’s moving so, so fast, reaches the edge of the summoning circle.
In that moment, the last syllable of the summoning incantation rolls off Marcus’ tongue.
A crack like thunder breaks the air. Erica is flung backward by a powerful shockwave that knocks Ella and I off our feet. The witch careens into one of the clock stacks, toppling it, soul clocks shattering into splinters when they hit the floor.
But Erica doesn’t go down. She rolls feet over head and springs back into a fighting position. Her entire form is encapsulated by her green aura. She huffs out an angry breath—and all the candles in the room are snuffed out at once, plunging the lab into an inky blue brilliance.
“Too late, Milburn!” calls Marcus over the growing roar from the circle. His voice isn’t menacing. Only tired. “When you arrive in your afterlife, my dear, you might want to think long and hard about the consequences of aiding and abetting great nuisances like DSI.”
“Nuisances?” Erica mutters darkly. “Is that all you think they are?”
“Honestly, woman,” he nearly spits, watching Erica as she shakes off the sting from the weeping cuts on her face and neck. “I
would never have guessed you were this damn stupid if I hadn’t seen you making a fool of yourself outside, fighting right alongside those pathetic excuses for—”
“Hey!” I heave my aching body onto my feet again in a swift move I hope looks painless and easy. (It’s not.) “I don’t appreciate it when douchebags pretend I’m not in the room while they denigrate me. You want to insult me, bitch, then look me in the eye and spew your shit.” I slowly raise my gun, aiming at the space between his eyes. “Or shut the fuck up, pretend your balls haven’t shrunk into prunes, and fight me.”
Marcus’ face scrunches up like he ate something bitter, and he throws his gaze across the room to pick me out from the shadows near the door. “You want to die first, Crow? I’ll happily oblige.”
Ella staggers up next to me and whispers, “A little overboard there, Cal.”
“A little distraction too.” I smirk.
Between blinks, Erica vanishes from the overturned clock stack and reappears less than a foot behind Marcus, body wound up for a vicious kick. Marcus, who’d taken his eyes off Erica for the first time since she entered the room, reacts a half-second too slow. He dives to the left as Erica’s foot breaks his magic shield like it’s tissue paper. She nicks his right arm, just barely, with the heel of her boot…
…and what would’ve been a bruise if the kick had been mine morphs into the equivalent of a grenade exploding next to Marcus’ tender flesh.
His coat sleeve is shredded. His flesh peels off his muscles, his muscles off his bones. Veins burst. Blood spurts. The wizard wheels away, unbalanced, a shriek on his lips as he trips over a candle and falls on his ass with a fleshy thump and the snap of a prominent bone.
Erica staggers to a halt near the edge of the circle, then spins around and storms toward the fallen wizard. Marcus clutches his bloody arm, a red stain pooling beneath him alarmingly fast, and tries to scramble away from his impending doom. But there’s nowhere for him to go. Ella and I have the exit blocked. All he can do is lean against the wall and sneer through his graying beard.
“As I said, Milburn”—he nods at the circle—“you missed your chance to stop me. Kill me if you want, but all the orders were written into the circle or the incantation. Ammit will rise from the Eververse and destroy our enemies, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
Erica looms over Marcus now, her face painted with hellish blue highlights. “Why is it, Marcus, that you keep speaking like we’re embroiled in some kind of war?” Her fists clench at her side, the green magic energy sizzling so loud it overtakes the growl from the magic circle. “Who is this enemy, and what have they done to us to deserve such vicious retaliation, to the point where you, of all people, would throw away your career, your reputation, your life? Huh, Marcus?” Her voice rises scarily close to a scream. “What the fuck is going on, you bastard? How could you do this? Trap these people”—she points to the clocks—“in such a heinous way? Conspire with the Wolves? Drag the normals into this? What is wrong with you?”
Marcus is trembling now. Not from fear. The pool of blood is growing too wide. Erica nearly ripped his arm off. He’s bleeding to death.
Even so, his voice is steady when he replies:
“Milburn, my dear, we are at war. Or, at least, we will be soon. What we’ve feared for so many years will finally come to pass. Fire and brimstone will rain down upon us, practitioner blood will paint the streets, and all that’s left of your so-called normals will be the shadows of their souls scorched black into their bedroom walls.
“We aren’t s-safe…” His voice finally wavers. His eyelids droop. His head bobs. “None of us are safe. They’re coming for us. Coming to eradicate us all. An army of…of…”
Allen Marcus passes out from blood loss. Twenty-seven seconds later, he dies.
And forty-four seconds after that, the gaping maw of the Egyptian Underworld rips the concrete floor in half, and Ammit, Devourer of Souls, rises from the Eververse.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I’m not sure I’ll ever witness a scene more repulsive, more horrendous, or more heartbreaking than an Ancient Egyptian monster swallowing whole the screaming souls of the dead.
Ammit climbs from the depths of Duat like a predator on the hunt. Lion claws peek over the lip of the hole in the basement floor and sink into the concrete, as if the stone is soft as butter. Next comes the head of a crocodile, long and green, with rows of sharp teeth. Black eyes perched above her massive jaws dart left and right, up and down, absorbing every detail of the dank, depressing place to which a mortal dared to summon her. The scaly head is followed by the rest of her body, a nightmarish chimeric combination of lion and hippo, as she heaves herself out of the portal and into the basement room.
Without pause, the monster stalks across the room, scattering candles, until she reaches the tallest clock stack near the center of the back wall. Her crocodile snout nudges one of the clocks, and a wave of energy washes over the entire wall. Every clock begins to shudder and emit a shrill whine, which grows louder and louder as the blue glow grows brighter.
(It’s only in hindsight I realize this sound is the trapped shades screaming in terror.)
Ammit lets out a hum, and it carries a clear tone—she is pleased. Her lumbering body backs away from the clocks, and the crocodile jaws fall open. Wide. Wider. Wider still. To the point where it seems like her lower jaw should tear free from her snout with a mighty snap. But it doesn’t. Instead, her mouth extends to an impossible angle, almost one-eighty, as if it’s made of rubber, presenting her slick, fleshy, squirming tongue aching for a meal.
And then Ammit makes another sound. One that seems more like a word. A human word. It rolls off that disgusting tongue the way I would say hello, goodbye, clear as day, sharp and crisp, the beginning and end of a conversation dominated by one party. By an authority. By a higher power. By a god.
This word rebounds off the walls, the ceiling, the floor, worms its way through the tiny gaps along the wooden seams of every clock. For a brief moment, all the clocks go still. The wailing stops. There is no sound at all except the harsh, panicked breathing of the three mortal onlookers, and the expectant sigh of an ancient beast.
The clocks explode.
The souls emerge.
Before the splinters even hit me, Ammit inhales, creating a vortex in her throat. The translucent shades tumbling through the air are suddenly drawn in toward the creature. They scream. All of them scream. So loud it nearly deafens me.
Hundreds of faces, young and old, black and white, from all walks of life, fly past me into Ammit’s distended mouth, and there’s nothing I can do to help. I reach out on impulse, to a young woman—she can’t be over twenty-one—but my hand slips right through hers, and she vanishes into the abyss of Ammit’s maw, shredded into ribbons of soft blue light on impact with the monster’s flesh.
It’s over in thirty-two seconds.
All the sinful souls are devoured.
And the lab falls dark and silent.
As I’m watching the Eververse portal in the floor evaporate like dry ice, leaving nothing behind but the circle of blood, I casually lean to my left—and vomit. I don’t know when I fell to my knees (I didn’t even feel the impact with the floor), but I’m glad I’m not standing. Because I heave and heave and heave, everything I’ve eaten in the past few hours splattering against the concrete and overturned candles. When I finally run out of stomach contents, I gag on air, doubled over, hands clutching my abdomen, tears stinging my eyes.
You’re having a panic attack, whispers a voice in the back of my head. Calm down, Cal. You’re still in danger. You have to get up and fight, or that thing will…
A disturbance in the air in front of me.
I slowly raise my gaze from the floor—and find myself staring into Ammit’s black crocodile eyes. The edge of her scaly nose is an inch from my own.
How did she get so close without—?
A spike of pain rips through my head, and my body contorts lik
e I’m being electrocuted. Unintelligible sounds pass through one ear and out the other, yanking my brain to and fro. Something warm and wet and thick—blood—leaks from the corners of my eyes. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t hear my own thoughts.
And then—words. English words.
“Young man,” says Ammit the Devourer, without moving her crocodile mouth, “tell me: is this the realm of Earth?”
My jaw unlocks like someone released a spring, and an answer slips out. Involuntarily. “Yeah,” says my voice in a flat tone, “this is Earth.”
“Oh?” Her nose creeps closer to my face, and she audibly sniffs. “How strange. I thought mayhap I’d gotten lost along the path from Duat. You smell”—another sniff—“more like the denizen of another underworld than a man trudging through the dust of mortality. Why is that?”
My hand moves by itself, even as I struggle to keep it by my side, and tugs down the collar of my coat. Revealing the scar on my neck left by Vanth’s sword. “I’ve been to another underworld. In life,” I add automatically.
“Really?” replies Ammit. “How bold you mortals have become since I last walked the Earth. Traipsing into realms made for the dead and the eternal.” An amused snort puffs out of her nostrils, right into my face. (Her breath smells like decay.) “But then, I suppose it matters not. If I am in the right realm, then the mission of my summoner remains the collar on my neck.” She turns her crocodile head away from me and looks to Marcus’ slumped, bloody form. “Pity, though, he did not live to see the fruits of his efforts. May his afterlife be filled with equal delights.”
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