The Book of the Dead

by Carriger, Gail

  “We found the tomb partly looted, of course. Most of them are. Oddly, the looters stopped half way through and not a single person has touched the tomb since. Until we came along.” The archaeologist crossed the room, grabbed up the torch, and led the way through a carved opening into a short passageway.

  Mr. Tarabotti followed.

  The passage turned to the left, and before them stood a huge basalt statue of a mummy, threatening and protective.

  The archaeologist ignored this, turning again and leading the way down a steep set of stairs, talking all the while.

  “Once we saw the mummy we realized why. The natives are terribly superstitious about these kinds of things. Well, you would be too, if you grew up in a land entirely devoid of supernatural. I mean, our government has been trying for elimination ever since the Inquisition, but the hives and packs will keep springing up. Not here, though.”

  Mr. Tarabotti placed a hand against the tunnel wall to steady himself as he climbed down the dark stairs. “They’re too strong and too well connected.”

  “Yet the Templars back home keep trying.”

  “They’re believers.” Mr. Tarabotti grimaced as his hand came away from the wall filthy with dark brown dust and a fine yellow powder.

  “And you?”

  Alessandro shrugged. He believed in very little beyond his job and the wealth it generated.

  “Well, regardless, this excavation has been fascinating. The sarcophagus has unique hieroglyphics on it. And the mummy – excellent preservation, stunning condition, from flesh to fibre. There.”

  They emerged into a room slightly smaller than the first, and far less tidy. It was cluttered, with antiquities spread across the floor and nestled into niches in the painted walls. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and, while some artefacts had been knocked over and broken, most were intact. The preservation was amazing. Wooden furniture stood in the corners, draped in crumbling textiles with large stone statues of animal-headed gods resting on top. Pots in every shape and size lined the walls, nestled amongst crowds of tiny human statues, piles of copper weapons, and a myriad of other mundanities. In the middle of the jumble, next to the massive hole it had obviously been hauled out of, stood a large sarcophagus of red granite, its lid off and tilted against its side.

  The archaeologist tugged Mr. Tarabotti over to it. Inside, a mummy lay partially unwrapped, the looters having started with its head, lusting after the precious amulets of gold and lapis tucked inside the linen bandages.

  They’d stopped.

  There was no doubt as to why.

  “Remarkable,” said Mr. Tarabotti in English.

  The creature inside was human, almost, but the bones of its face were not. Teeth, jaw, shape of forehead all leaned more towards canine than man. There was even a light patterning of hair in the shrunken wrinkles of the dried brown skin.

  “A werewolf.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Mummified in half homo sapien, half homo lupis form.” Alessandro pulled a small analogue aetheromechanical transducer from his jacket pocket and prodded delicately at the mummy, testing for remnant vital aetheromagnetism. Nothing. “They say alpha werewolves can maintain just such a state as this, half in, half out of human form. They use it in metamorphosis rituals. Can you imagine?” His fine upper lip curled. “Disgusting.”

  He investigated further. “Well, I commend you, Mr. Caviglia. If this is a hoax, it is a very good one.”

  The archaeologist puffed up in outrage. “I assure you, sir – !”

  Mr. Tarabotti held up the transducer autocratically to stop any denunciation and continued examining the body. “Don’t you think that head shape is a little odd?”

  “Aside from it being attached to a human body?”

  “We call it Anubis form,” said a new voice in old-fashioned Italian flattened out by a British accent.

  Out of the staircase entrance came the gleaming muzzle of a nasty double-barrelled pistol followed by a blond military-looking gentleman.

  “Hello, Curse-breaker,” he said to Mr. Tarabotti in English, gun steady.

  “You were at dinner earlier this evening.” Alessandro switched to the Queen’s tongue, out of courtesy for their visitor, at the same time releasing his gun out of its wrist holster. The movement was so subtle as to be imperceptible. The gun slid down toward his hand, almost peeking out of the bottom of one burgundy sleeve.

  The man nodded. “I followed you from the hotel. As you inconvenienced me by not allowing my agents to steal the map from you.”

  Mr. Caviglia raised both hands and straightened away from the sarcophagus. His eyes were fixed on the intruder’s weapon.

  Mr. Tarabotti sniffed. “I knew someone was following me. How did I miss you?”

  “You never looked up.” The man had a soldier’s bearing and a young face, but his eyes were dulled by past lives.

  “I’m too old to remember humans have taken to the skies.” Alessandro shook his head at himself.

  “You’re a werewolf,” accused the archaeologist, with more power of deduction than Alessandro would have given him credit for.

  The man snorted. “Not here, I’m bloody well not.” He glared at Mr. Tarabotti as though this fact were somehow his fault. “I hope you know what a bother it has been, travelling through Egypt after you these weeks. I had to learn to shave again, and every little cut takes donkey’s years to heal. I don’t know how you mortals do it. I really don’t. I hope you appreciate the risk I’m taking.”

  Alessandro licked his lips. This was going to be fun. “Oh, I appreciate it.”

  The un-werewolf narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you move.” He glanced briefly at the archaeologist. “Is it true what you found? What he said? Is that there a mummy of a werewolf in Anubis form?”

  “See for yourself,” suggested Mr. Tarabotti, hoping the un-werewolf would come within striking distance.

  The un-werewolf didn’t take the bait, too old for that. “We used to rule this land. Did you know that?”

  Mr. Caviglia gave a little snort of disbelief.

  “You archaeologists haven’t figured that one out yet, have you? They worshipped us as gods. Turned sour on us in the end. Most things do. The god-breaker plague swept the Two Lands and, within a generation, every werewolf had died. We’ve not been back since because this,” he gestured to himself, “is what results.”

  “Mortality.”

  “And why would you risk everything to follow me here?”

  The un-werewolf looked at Mr. Tarabotti. “Curse-breaker, this mummy is our ancestor. You daylighters,” and he included the archaeologist in his contemptuous statement, “have no right. Especially not some crusading religious fanatics. That mummy is the property of the British Government, we have the concession, not the Italians. Ours to study and understand.”

  Mr. Tarabotti smiled his tight little smile. “Who said we wanted to study it?”

  The archaeologist and the un-werewolf both looked to him in shock.

  “But the Templars promised.”

  Mr. Tarabotti shrugged. “The Templars lied. And we can’t very well have the English using it as some kind of pro-supernatural propaganda tool.”

  No record and no witnesses.

  He slid the derringer smoothly the rest of the way out of his sleeve and into his hand, turned slightly in the same movement, and shot Mr. Caviglia in the chest at point blank range. The archaeologist fell with a tiny cry of surprise and lay still against the corner of the sarcophagus, slumped and limp.

  “We can’t allow you to go babbling about this to the antiquarian community either, I’m afraid.” He looked thoughtfully down at the scholar’s dead body. “Pity.”

  The un-werewolf started, but his gun remained trained on Mr. Tarabotti.

  Alessandro tucked the now-useless pistol into his pocket casually, feeling about for his second one, and narrowed his eyes at the man.

  “What it must be like, seeing that,” he tilted his head at the fal
len archaeologist, “and knowing you could so easily end up the same way.”

  “Do you really think, after hundreds of years, we immortals fear death?”

  “Do the crazy ones, who have lived too long, travel to Egypt to die voluntarily?”

  The un-werewolf shrugged. “Some.”

  “So, we find ourselves at an impasse.”

  “Mmm, please take your hand out of your jacket, Curse-breaker.”

  Mr. Tarabotti did so, tucking his second tiny gun up the end of his other sleeve in a manoeuvre he’d once learned from a street performer.

  The un-werewolf gestured with his pistol for Mr. Tarabotti to move away from the mummy and towards the door. Cautiously, Alessandro did so. But, near to the entrance, as he passed close to his opponent, he pretended to stumble over a fallen urn, lurching violently to one side.

  The un-werewolf growled at him and stepped threateningly forward.

  Alessandro dove, shifting his weight and lashing up and out with his foot, striking the man’s wrist where it held the gun.

  The double barrel discharged a bullet, missing Mr. Tarabotti by a foot, the slug ploughing hard into a support column, spitting limestone shards at both men. The un-werewolf swore and rotated the chamber to load his second shot.

  Alessandro rolled, as much as he could, over the small statues and artefacts littering the floor, coming into a crouch covered in thousands of years of dust but with his second gun clutched in his hand.

  He fired, hitting the un-werewolf in the shoulder. The shot wasn’t deadly, but it did cause the man to drop his own gun in surprise.

  Mr. Tarabotti lunged for the fallen weapon at the same time as the un-werewolf, and the two of them scrabbled through the ancient offerings. Alessandro struck out viciously at his opponent, connecting where the shoulder wound seeped old blood, groping for the fallen gun with his other hand.

  The un-werewolf backhanded Mr. Tarabotti, handicapped with only one working arm, and that odd British distaste for kicking in a fight.

  Mr. Tarabotti had no such compunctions. Crawling as they both were after the fallen weapon, Alessandro kicked out with one foot and managed to shove the man over. Grabbing the gun, he came up triumphant, pointing the weapon at the un-werewolf, who now crouched amongst the wreckage looking as savage as he might have in his lupine state.

  Mr. Tarabotti shot the last bullet. But the man was fast, even without supernatural speed, and managed to dodge. Frustrated, Alessandro threw the gun petulantly aside and pulled the flask of turpentine from his jacket.

  He scattered it liberally about, making sure to coat the mummy in particular.

  The un-werewolf lunged for him, seizing him by the waist and hurling him back to the floor. Mr. Tarabotti pushed against the man’s chin, trying to wrench his neck. His opponent howled, an animalistic sound coming from such a human face.

  “That was you howling earlier this evening?” Mr. Tarabotti panted out the question, clawing at the creature’s eyes.

  “Staying in practice, even if I can’t change,” came the hissed reply, as the un-werewolf struggled to hold Alessandro in a one-armed grip.

  “That’s rather perverse, you know that?” Mr. Tarabotti uppercut sharply with the palm of one hand, achieving just enough leverage to break the un-werewolf’s nose.

  Alessandro squirmed away. Coming panting to his feet, he brushed off his burgundy coat with fierce disgusted movements. “Is such dusty combat strictly necessary?”

  The un-werewolf only bled at him.

  Feeling deeply put upon, Mr. Tarabotti reached once more inside his jacket, pulling out the tin of phosphorus matches. He backed away until he was at the doorway. There, he struck a match and threw it at the turpentine-covered mummy.

  Seeing this action, the un-werewolf decided on self-preservation and charged past him up the steps.

  The flammable liquid caught easily, the fire quickly spreading to burn away happily at the wooden furniture and textiles scattered about. From the amount of smoke and flames flaring up from within the sarcophagus, Alessandro had no doubt the mummy was ablaze as well. He whirled and ran up the stairs and out of the tomb, coughing delicately.

  Outside, things were not as they should be. The un-werewolf was getting away, dangling precariously off the edge of the gondola of a hot-air balloon, floating upwards. A tubby sort of personage was manning the balloon’s thermotransmitter and cranking up the hydrodine engine to get a steering propeller moving – a familiar tubby sort of personage, wearing a long scarf wrapped about his throat.

  “Why, Sir Percival. I see you do own more than one item of neck wear.”

  “What ho, Mr. Tarabotti? Sad business, this. I did so hope it wasn’t you.”

  “Working for the Crown, are we, Phlinkerlington? How menial.”

  “For the Glory of the Empire, Mr. Tarabotti. Can’t expect a Templar’s toady to understand. Now can I?” As he spoke, the baronet succeeded in getting the propeller in motion, and then waddled over to assist the un-werewolf in flopping, fishlike, into the safety of the gondola.

  The balloon began to rise upwards, its propeller whirling mighty gusts of steam. Soon it would be at sufficient height to set a steady course back to Luxor.

  Alessandro flicked the air with the back of his hand, gesturing the men away as if they were mere irritations that had been bothering his evening’s stroll.

  No record and no witnesses.

  He searched around his feet for a sharp fragment of limestone. The blaze from the lower part of the tomb had extended into the open room at the top. It lit the ridge-side on which he stood with flickering orange. It seemed the dust, itself, was flammable, and fresh air only encouraged the conflagration. He could hear the faint “poof” sound of limestone spalling in the heat.

  He found a rock of adequate size. There was enough room on the hillside for him to run up his speed. Not exactly the perfect cricket pitch, but, then, one couldn’t be too picky about such things. Mr. Tarabotti may have been born Italian, but he had bowled for New College, and been widely regarded as one of the fastest on record. The stone hit the balloon perfectly, tearing through the oiled canvas right above the engine feed, with immediate and catastrophic results.

  The hot gas leaked out, deflating the balloon from one side and causing the whole contraption to list dramatically. The un-werewolf let out a howl of mixed anger and distress and Sir Percival swore, but there was nothing either man could do to salvage the situation. Moments later the balloon burst into flames, falling to the ground with a thudding crash.

  Mr. Tarabotti paused to light a cheroot with one of his remaining phosphorus matches and then walked towards the wreckage.

  Both men were lying face down in the sand. Mr. Tarabotti turned the un-werewolf over with his foot, puffing softly. Definitely dead. Then he heard a small moan.

  “Still alive, Phinkerlington?” He pulled out his garrotte and tossed the end of the cheroot away.

  No record and no witnesses.

  The fallen baronet turned his head weakly and looked at Mr. Tarabotti.

  “Looking less and less likely, Sandy my man,” he croaked. “Nice bowl, by-the-by, perfectly aimed and you even got a bit of spin on it.”

  “I do what I can.” Alessandro crouched over the fallen man and reached forward with the garrotte.

  The baronet coughed, blood leaked out the side of his mouth. “No need, Sandy old chap, no need. Do me a bit of a turn, would you? For old Eustace’s sake, if not mine.”

  Mr. Tarabotti sat back on his heels, surprised.

  “See Leticia safely home to England, would you? Doesn’t know a thing about this business, I assure you. She’s only a slip of a thing, good chit, really, can’t have her wandering about Egypt on her lonesome. You understand?”

  Mr. Tarabotti considered. He’d have had to investigate the girl anyway. This gave him a good excuse to find out what she knew. He’d be terribly, terribly understanding and sympathetic. Tragic accident in the desert. What were they thinking, floating at
night? He’d been out for a stroll and saw the balloon fall from afar. Dashed to the rescue but wasn’t in time to save anyone. Old friend of the family, of course he’d be happy to escort her home.

  Percival Phinkerlington’s watery eyes bored into him. Alessandro pursed his lips and nodded curtly. The baronet sighed, closing his eyes. The sigh turned into a wet rattling gurgle, and then silence.

  Alessandro Tarabotti lit another small cheroot off the burning balloon basket. What would he put in his report to the Templars? Such an incommodious bit of business. A dead un-werewolf was one thing, but a dead British aristocrat? He sighed, puffing out smoke. They’d not be pleased. Not pleased at all. And the mummy. Did his superiors need to know the truth of the mummy? For the truth was, that was no wolf’s head at all. Alessandro Tarabotti had killed enough werewolves to know the difference, emaciated or fully fleshed. No, it had been far more dog-like, small, pointed. A jackal, perhaps?

  He smoked his cigar. On the walls of that burning tomb, the jackal-headed god, Anubis, had been depicted assisting a jackal-headed man into the afterlife.

  Werejackals? Surely not.

  Alessandro snorted. But some twinge of fancy reminded him of the un-werewolf’s words. They worshipped us as gods. And Ancient Egyptian gods had other animal heads. Lots of other animal heads. No wonder the Templars wanted to keep such information out of British hands.

  Mr. Tarabotti turned to commence his long walk back to Luxor. Baronet Phinkerlington might be dead, but Alessandro had to escort Miss Phinkerlington back to England and deal with a mess of paperwork as a result. He wondered which one of them had got the better deal out of the arrangement. Probably Phinkerlington.

  The Cats of

  Beni Hasan

  Jenni Hill

  “The plundering of the cemetery was a sight to see, but one had to stand well windward. The village children came and provided themselves with the most attractive mummies they could find. These they took down the river bank to sell for the smallest coin to passing travellers. The path became strewn with mummy cloth and bits of cats’ skulls and bones and fur in horrid positions, and the wind blew the fragments about and carried the stink afar.”