Nefertiti’s Curse: An Urban Fantasy

by Jamel Cato

  “I won’t forget that as long as you remember the revolution he started continued and succeeded even after his death,” Xavier said.

  “Stand down, Gentlemen,” Jacob said.

  Milner and several more males that Xavier could smell backed away from the entrance.

  Jacob beckoned for Xavier to come inside and follow him.

  When he noticed Xavier had not moved, he smiled and said, “A thinking monster is the most dangerous kind. You’d be surprised how many critters literally fall for that one. Please, come in Xavier.”

  There was a brief and faint shimmer around the doorway as the magical ward protecting the building deactivated.

  Jacob led Xavier through a maze of disturbingly narrow corridors that opened into a large empty room with unfinished cinder block walls.

  “You didn’t have to open the executive conference room just for me,” Xavier said.

  “There’s nothing in here to gather intelligence on or attach a tracking spell to,” Jacob explained.

  “A tracking spell? Do I look like a wizard?”

  “Except for all the tattoos, you look like any one of the harmless middle-class black guys I know from Princeton. And I look like Han Solo’s little brother. Since either of us could fill this room with dead bodies using just our bare hands, it’s safe to say looks can be deceiving.”

  “I’m going to slowly reach in my front pocket,” Xavier said.

  Jacob nodded.

  He produced a flash drive and handed it to the soldier.

  “What are we talking?” Jacob asked.

  “A level two ogre and three gargoyles in Manhattan,” Xavier said, listing the creatures whose whereabouts were detailed on the storage device.

  The DSO bounty on the ogre alone was worth millions.

  “No vamps?” Jacob asked with clear disappointment.

  “Of course not,” Xavier said. “Vampires are sentient beings.”

  “Vampires,” Jacob said, “are organisms that procreate through the spread of a deadly virus. Even the ones you think are so refined need fresh human blood. Ask them where they get it.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that the next time I see one.”

  Jacob dropped the flash drive into one of the pockets of his vest before reaching into a different pocket to retrieve a small hermetically sealed pouch that he handed to Xavier.

  “Which way is out?” Xavier asked.

  “Three rights, two lefts and another right. Then take the middle door.”

  Xavier turned to leave.

  “Homo neanderthalensis,” Jacob said.

  “What?”

  “Homo neanderthalensis. Every argument you can make for the coexistence of man and monster can be equally applied to the coexistence of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. And you see how that turned out. Nature only permits one dominant species. Nothing you do or believe will change that.”

  When he exited the building, Xavier found five men blocking the way to his car.

  Milner was front and center. “What kind of French name did you call me earlier, boy?”

  Xavier had no idea why Jacob kept a buffoon like Milner on his payroll.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Xavier said, raising his palms in the universal gesture of surrender.

  “Then you shoulda’ never brought your black ass out here, dog boy. I’m about to go Michael Vick all over you.”

  Milner’s four male groupies found that hilarious.

  “It’s funny you don’t like dogs,” Xavier said, “when Katie-Jo has that poodle tattoo right below her pantyline.”

  Milner exploded in rage and bull rushed Xavier.

  Katie Josephine Cleetus was Milner’s longtime girlfriend. Xavier knew about the tattoo because Maya had hacked into Milner’s phone and stolen a photo of it. She said hacking Milner had been easier than cutting in line at a school for the blind because his password for everything was na$car3.

  Xavier sidestepped the rush with superhuman speed and slapped Milner in the cheek so hard that several of the man’s teeth went flying in the opposite direction. Without slowing, he twirled a roundhouse kick against the legs of the two men closest to Milner. As they tumbled, Xavier extracted the camo knife from one man’s thigh holster and drove it into the dirt between the other pair of assailants. He yanked a length of the untied laces hanging from the top of each man’s boot and quickly wrapped it around the hilt of the knife, creating a tripping wire. Both men ungracefully jerked to the ground face first when they tried to charge into the fight.

  Xavier landed several feet away in a defensive crouch. Almost immediately he felt the business end of a gun barrel press into the back of his head.

  “That’s enough!” Jacob yelled from behind Xavier. “Stand down!”

  Xavier looked up and around to see that Jacob was accompanied by three different men, all of whom were armed and garbed in black body armor. There was one on the hood of a Milner’s truck, another stationed in a nearby tree and a final hunter on the roof of the building—all excellent high ground positions. They were aligned in a diamond formation and spread far enough apart that he could attack only one at a time. Their clothing was doused in a synthetic chemical that negated his advantageous sense of smell. Each had their weapon pointed at his center of mass.

  The professionals had arrived.

  Xavier nodded toward the bodies jumbled on the around Milner. “If that’s the other half of your team, humanity won’t be the dominant species for long.”

  “Trainees,” Jacob said. “I figured this would be a good way to teach them a few lessons without anybody getting killed.”

  “Milner is still a trainee?”

  “Kent is an imbecile,” Jacob said. “But he has a talent that’s indispensable in this business.”

  Xavier got up and made his way to his car, wondering what in the world that could be.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Washington, DC

  Michelle and Nick Petraeus, a colleague about her same age, were having lunch at a restaurant near the DSO building.

  “So there’s no relation?” she asked.

  “No, but everyone assumes there is so don’t blow my cover.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Speaking of secrets...”

  “Here we go.”

  “What?”

  “Something tells me we’re about to get to the real reason you asked me out to lunch.”

  “Cut to the chase much?”

  “Only with guys who want to talk about secrets.”

  “Okay then. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “It’s out there now.”

  “This is not going the way I planned it.”

  “You made a plan?”

  “I make a plan for everything.”

  “You do?”

  “You’ve seen my work.”

  “I have. You make the rest of us look like slackers. Thanks for that.”

  “I’m overcompensating.”

  “For what?”

  He took a wary look around the dining room before handing her a worn sheet of paper folded in quarters.

  She read it. “I would have bet anything you had better grades than that, but okay?”

  “I falsified my transcripts to get into law school. Those are my real grades.”

  She took her own wary look around the dining room. “Why are you showing me this, Nick?”

  “It was an act of good faith to put us on equal footing when we talked.”

  “When we talked about what?”

  “I know you’re black,” he said triumphantly.

  She considered her next words carefully. “Is that what you’re into? Black women?”

  “No, actually I’m into blondes with pouty lips, which is what you look like right now.”

  “So you think I’m passing?”

  “We both know you’re doing way more than passing. Right now, my eyes and ears are telling me that I’m sitting across the table from the hottest blonde I’ve
ever seen. Like fantasy hot.”

  “What makes you think you’re not?”

  “Your speech.”

  “What’s wrong with my speech?”

  “Nothing, which is the problem.”

  “Come again?”

  “I’m hearing the neutral diction of a white woman who grew up in the Middle Atlantic region of the United States.”

  “How am I supposed to sound?”

  He swiped at the screen of his smartphone a few times. “Not like this.”

  A sound clip of a woman speaking with a heavy Caribbean patois came from his phone’s speakers.

  She quickly reached out and hit the stop button.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked angrily.

  “It was my turn to take minutes at the Golem Task Force meeting last month. I recorded it so my minutes would be better than everyone else’s.”

  “You could go to jail for that.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Hiding your accent is not a crime.”

  “But a super pretending to be human to infiltrate the DSO is.”

  “I’m not infiltrating anything.”

  “But you are a super?”

  “I’m an analyst at the agency just like you are.”

  Their conversation was briefly interrupted by a server delivering food to their table.

  “So now what?” she asked when the server was out of earshot.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” he said as he broke the paper wrapper on his utensils, “nothing has changed. We’re both still snowflakes.”

  Snowflake was the derisive term that veteran DSO employees used to refer to the analysts Carlos hired to work on his diplomatic outreach efforts.

  “You’re not going to turn me in?”

  “I won’t if you won’t.”

  “And this is not a ploy to pressure me to sleep with you?”

  “I have a feeling a ploy like that would get me shipped to the DSO station in Estonia with a severe case of blue balls.”

  She laughed as she slipped his transcripts into her pocket.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Just before midnight, Xavier rang the doorbell of a stately townhouse in Georgetown.

  An elderly woman in a maid’s uniform showed him in. She had walnut-colored skin and stark white hair that was pulled into a neat bun.

  “Hello, Rapova.”

  Like always, she returned his greeting with only a silent smile.

  As Rapova painstakingly led him one slow step at a time toward the rear of the house, he wondered anew why his host kept her as his sole domestic servant. He doubted she could lift an iron.

  Eventually, they came to a pair of French patio doors that opened onto a backyard that seemed to stretch for half the block. Wall sconces bathed the area in warm light and a perimeter of twelve-foot hedges provided plenty of privacy.

  A man with alabaster skin and wavy black hair who appeared to be in his late thirties sat at a bistro set sipping what Xavier hoped was red wine. Stefan Hyrnko’s appearance and demeanor were so evocative of the stereotype of an aristocratic vampire that Xavier would not be surprised to learn that his host was the original source of it. He was certainly old enough.

  “I smell Carlos and hunters on you,” Stefan said. “And something else I cannot quite pinpoint. Should I be offended at being the last call on your social calendar or glad that you are still alive?”

  Xavier was impressed that Stefan could still detect his activity after the shower he had taken in his hotel. “This is the first place I’ve been today where someone didn’t threaten my life.”

  “The night is still young.”

  “It’s good to see you, Stefan.”

  “Likewise. You should visit more often.”

  After the requisite amount of small talk, Stefan asked, “What brings you to my humble abode?”

  Xavier passed over a photo. “Carlos suggested you could tell me something useful about this.”

  The vampire did not appear surprised or concerned by the referral from Carlos. Xavier did not know what kind of arrangement Stefan had made to enjoy such a genteel lifestyle outside the SGZ, but he was sure it involved the brokerage of information.

  “The photo is authentic,” Stefan said, passing it back.

  “Vampires can sunbathe now?”

  “The ones who have recently eaten a strange fruit they were given by an even stranger being can.”

  “A being?”

  “Do you have any idea how expensive it is to live near M Street these days?”

  Despite his intimation, Stefan was not interested in monetary compensation.

  Xavier placed a small vial on the table. Its clear top half provided a view of the minuscule green plant inside.

  “Poison or antidote?” Stefan asked, examining it.

  “Neither. It’s a truth vine.”

  “Do you jest?”

  “No.”

  The plant grew a small amount right before their eyes.

  Truth vines grew when the truth was spoken and wilted when it was not. The exceedingly rare plants could only be cultivated by someone who could communicate with the Earth.

  Stefan placed the vial into an inside pocket of his blazer. “The vampire in the photo is named Petrov Leclerc. He is based in Norway, where, to my distaste, he recently became Regent of the Nordic Nightwalkers. He was given the fruit by someone named Baynin. My information about this individual is currently limited, however, I can confirm that he is immune to wards and other things that would be fatal to both humans and supers.”

  Xavier committed these details to memory. “The fruit is what allowed Leclerc to withstand sunlight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is the effect permanent?”

  “It would seem so, although we have only a few months of history to judge by. My sources believe it is some form of genetic engineering.”

  “Whatever it is, it works on more than vampires.”

  “Yes, I have heard about the Jinn who no longer grant wishes.” He took a sip of wine. “Judging by your expression, I take it you have not.”

  Xavier suddenly backed his chair away from the table and stood.

  Stefan also rose, scanning the area for danger as his fingernails turned black and pointy.

  Petrov Leclerc stepped out from the shadow cast by the house.

  Xavier briefly thought he had been set up.

  Then Stefan told Leclerc, “You are not welcome here.”

  “I do not care about your rules old man,” Leclerc said, raising a battery-powered tanning wand that emitted ultraviolet light. He shoved the wand forward. Instead of burning Stefan, it cast a beam of harsh light on a tall creature with the head of a jackal and the muscular body of a man.

  Xavier growled and knocked the wand from the vampire’s hand with a powerful swing of his claw.

  Terror in his eyes, Leclerc stumbled backward and yelled out something in Norwegian.

  Nine more vampires leapt the fence and entered the yard. They closed in on Xavier and Stefan, who had positioned themselves back-to-back.

  One of the newcomers rushed at Xavier’s anubis and came away missing a hand from the curved blade of a khopesh.

  Xavier switched to an overhand grip and stabbed the sword into the left eye of the next attacker with a swiftness and force no vampire could match. He grunted when a third assailant cracked him in the ribs with a baseball bat, then ducked to avoid a slash from a fourth. A sudden backflip landed him behind the bat swinger. He grabbed the vampire’s head with both hands and twisted it ninety degrees as another jammed the tip of a taser into his left thigh. Xavier’s body convulsed for two seconds before his tattoos counteracted the effect.

  There were too many of them.

  A pair of vampires crashed into him and he was tased again. He felt a rope being pulled around one of his claws. He closed his eyes and focused.

  The grass split open in seven places. Thick brown branches with ten-fingered claws and thorns the si
ze of pencils shot up from the openings. Each branch seized a vampire in an unbreakable grip before snatching its prey below the surface. Some of the attackers were snapped in half like folding tables as they were subsumed.

  Xavier, back in human form, was on his hands and knees recovering from the mental strain when the elemental of the Potomac basin made a large dark face of soil appear in the grass beneath him.

  “Who’s your daddy now?” the face slurred to him before sinking away.

  Xavier smiled, not realizing Leclerc had escaped.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Amtrak train gently rocked as it sped back to Philadelphia.

  After checking his voicemail, which included an apologetic message from Stefan, Xavier opened a secure email from Maya that contained a dossier he was eager to read.

  Michelle Lathan was twenty-eight years old. She had been born and raised on Saint Lucia, a small island nation in the Caribbean isles. Her mother was a teacher and her late father had been a hotel manager and entrepreneur who had been born blind. After excelling in school, she came to the United States to attend the University of Maryland at College Park, where she graduated summa cum laude with a degree in economics. After three years in banking, she had joined the DSO as an analyst.

  She had a B+ blood type, $4,351 dollars in her checking account and a boyfriend who was a Yale-educated attorney named Dudley Sturgis.

  Then Xavier came to the addendum that Maya had placed last.

  Lathan’s tuition had been paid by The Mercy Society, a charitable foundation where Carlos held a board seat. Carlos had been a sponsor of her green card application and had taken fourteen trips to Saint Lucia during Lathan’s youth. A dozen photographs of Carlos and Lathan at various stages of her life had been attached to the addendum, including one of him and Lathan celebrating her twenty-seventh birthday at a restaurant. The last page of the report had the results of a paternity test that had been conducted with hair samples Isabella had somehow obtained from the pair. The phrase NO BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION was printed in bold red letters across the top.