He wondered if she’d known what she was getting into, making love to him. Not only that, but she’d done it in full knowledge of what he was. That left a mark.
The memories rose to the surface and Seth took a deep breath, trying to keep focused. In certain ways she was afraid too—worried, determined to be liked and concerned with things he honestly hadn’t contemplated in centuries. But Neith knew, there was iron in her somewhere, bright and sharp beneath the smooth, pallid skin, showing in those moss-green eyes that looked right into his soul… Oh gods help him, he couldn’t think.
It had been a long time since he’d been able to talk so freely with another human being. And a brother or scribe was nothing compared to a woman lying at his side, her voice rough with exhaustion even as she teased information out of him.
And Theo saw things.
He knew in his bones that there was nothing in the world that would last like he did. Everything changed, everything died, and no country or creed or dynasty would endure with real meaning. He had fought and died for causes that went unremembered, served at the right hands of men whose names were disgraced after they passed on, collected the favors of great kings whose monuments had not one stone left atop another. His tomb—and the tombs of far greater and more consequential men—was a dusty old site for bored tourists. The relics of Kemet sat in museums, studied as the flotsam and jetsam of a dead kingdom.
But Theo saw a picture, a creation of the whole. He remembered her stroking the glass as she talked to the shabtis and told them how important they were. Jumbled scraps of tomb goods became, in her eyes, links to a great civilization that had changed the course of the world.
Seth didn’t know if she was brilliant, naïve, or insane. But it felt good, he thought, to hope that his lives had meant something.
Egotistic? Oh definitely. But, godsdammit, couldn’t he pretend his life hadn’t been a failure? Theo gave him hope. Hope for a future, maybe.
Now memories twisted, fed by that hope. He imagined living one small part of his life completely honestly, worshiping his gods openly and not having to hide behind his stupid, stupid façade of the eccentric loner. Waking up in his penthouse with a rumpled blonde head on the pillows next to his. He turned the image over in his mind: I need to go to Turkey, Theo. The national institute bought some figurines that might be from my cache. How would you like to see Istanbul today? The glint in her eyes as she seized on it, the churches and palaces that she wouldn’t be able to resist, knowledge he could share with her.
Meri tje, he’d said. I love you.
Seth moaned and tried to push the thought out of his mind. The images of long, sleek limbs, barely concealed by folds of smooth, thin cloth, taunted him. She had had to wear white at that first party, hadn’t she?
He had to find a solution. Four thousand years on this planet, so many of them recorded on these scraps of paper, couldn’t have been lived for nothing. He had to find a way, before his enemy got impatient and decided to damage his mummy again.
Sundown. It came so early in this frigid hellhole; barely past four o’clock, and yet he could feel it in the cold, slithery sensation rippling down his back. His bones ached as the warmth began to bleed out of the world. The borrowed heart in his chest began to slow.
It happened every night. Some were worse than others, and deep winter was the hardest time of all, but he had been facing it for four thousand years. One more night, he could manage that. Survive one more night, steal his mummy back, and then he could sleep soundly again. Perhaps with company.
A jab of pain broke through his thoughts. His left arm, the one closest to the west wall, was beginning to cramp up. Unusual, but not unheard of during long nights. He massaged the tensing muscles and tried to focus on his work.
Then came another jab. Then another. Chilly fingers clawing up his arm to his shoulder, latching on to him with iron-hook claws, digging into the skin and peeling it back. He gripped his shoulder hard, trying to press away the sensation.
Oh Neith, help him. Not again. Not now.
A hand fastened on his heart and he doubled over, stars erupting in front of his eyes. He tried to call out for Neith, but his breath was gone. His heart beat wildly, ready to burst like a ripe grape. Not a single drop of blood spilled, and he was on the ground. He could feel his own skin—not this false substitute, but the dead, dry flesh wrapped in ancient linen—screaming as it was torn.
Breath brushed his ear, the ghost of a ghost of a whisper.
“Hello, dead man.”
Not again. Not like this. Seth braced himself against the table and forced himself upright, clawing through the pain that threatened to split him in half. It was coming, and it wanted to kill him, but he couldn’t let that happen. Not now—not after four thousand years, and not when he finally had a single fucking thing to look forward to. He snarled something between his teeth (Sabaean, always a good language to curse in) while the voice laughed in his ear.
The shadows were gathering again. He’d seen them in the museum—the pacing jackal and, worse, the lumbering thing with the crocodile head, its nose to the ground as it traced the scent of an old sinner. His enemy had his mummy and was calling on the gods to tear him down.
But Theo had seen the jackal too. Was it visible to those who were purely human and had never worshiped the gods? He clutched the edge of the desk, his fingers white-knuckled, as he stared straight ahead. Sweat beaded on his skin.
Not now.
There was a reason he preferred the bank vault. The cool, dry air was good for paper…wood…metal…
He pulled down the bow stave from its rack and strung it, muscles tearing as he pushed through the creeping cold and pain. The arrows felt good in his hands. Bronze-headed and fletched with ibis feathers, they were perfect copies of the ones carried by Amenemhat’s General Anhurmose, known as the Left Hand of Horus, leader of expeditions for the Great House and triumphant victor over the tribes of the far desert.
He probably looked ridiculous, slinging a leather quiver over his rumpled parka and stringing a bow in the basement of an old city bank. He didn’t give a damn. Seth Adler didn’t have a prayer in this situation, but Anhurmose might.
The shadows were coalescing. There were jackal figures there, and the crocodile-headed monster, but they weren’t right.
The first one came crawling out of the darkness, half-formed feet squishing on the bald carpet. Jaundice-yellow eyes faded in and out in sockets that had been crudely scooped out of wet clay. Ceramic bones bulged through the torn skin, which had only raw score marks to show the shape of fur that should have been there. Its knees reversed as it gathered itself up into a crouch. Its teeth were hard, bone-white, and human.
Three more emerged, one from each other wall. Two more jackals and a crocodile-headed, lion-maned figure of Ammit, baring their human teeth and dripping fouled clay as they closed in around him. His fake heart pounded in his chest, so loud that he thought they would hear it and pounce, but he kept his face expressionless and nocked an arrow.
“Puppets and shadows,” he called out in old Kemetic. “Is that all?”
“Don’t play games with me, corpse,” the voice whispered. Cold seized him again as invisible claws curled into the muscle of his shoulder, wrenching and tearing. He barely held back a scream and clutched instinctively at the shoulder again, but there were no marks there.
The jackals raised their heads as one and howled. The sound was eerie but wrong, echoing more deeply and hoarsely than it should have. It was the mournful sound of nightmares in the forests and mountains. Despite the pain, Seth found himself smiling.
“Who’s playing games?” he said. “I’m not the one who made a jackal sound like a wolf.”
There was a growl from the dimness. “Details are unimportant.”
“Details are everything,” Seth said. The nearest jackal bared its evil teeth.
It had been lifetimes beyond lifetimes since he’d done drills on the flat red earth of the campsites with his me
n. But he had returned to life in a new body weeks before, and with it came renewal of the encapsulated memories and skills of his long-lost self. Even as the fake jackal crouched to leap, he loosed the first shaft.
The arrow buried itself in the creature’s chest. It howled again, less wolf and more banshee, and bucked as its clay began to fall apart. Seth had another arrow nocked in a fraction of a moment, half turning in place, ears open for movement. The remaining monstrosities were growling in a variety of pitches and beasts’ voices, but none of them lunged.
“One more, then!” he shouted. His voice echoed through the stone-lined vaults, and for a moment, exultation overwhelmed fear. They were wrong, cheap imitations made by someone as fallible—as mortal—as he was. He could kill them. He’d never been a magician or a priest, just the Great House’s favorite warmaker, but, by the gods, he could kill something and make it stay dead.
His tormentor was less than pleased. It groaned and hissed and clawed at him, but Seth set his teeth and refused to let the shooting pains drive him to the ground again. After so many years of continuous sacrilege, Neith should have turned her face from him, but his aim was still true and he could still make war on his enemies. That gave him hope, and with hope came backbone.
Djed.
“You is make dead,” the voice snarled at him. In its anger, its Kemetic had stumbled.
“Thank you,” Seth told it tightly. Purely on devilish impulse, he threw in the rhetorical flourishes that the educated men had liked so much. “Now I know you are no servant of the Two Lands,” he continued, turning on his heel to survey the circle of monsters. One or two had begun to creep forward, but as his gaze fell on them, they snarled and retreated. “My people knew the power their tongue carried in the service of the red land and the black, and they would never have allowed such degenerate speech.”
That got a barely suppressed growl from the voice. Its touch raked at him again and this time Seth staggered, falling to one knee. Seeing him waver, the Ammit started forward. He pinned it to a bookcase with an arrow through the throat, but he was slower on the draw the next time, and the rest of the creatures’ eyes were fixed hungrily on him. Icy pain curled into his muscles, raking at his fingers and arms, and he gave a gasp as his left wrist broke.
“You did this to me!” the voice hissed as the bow fell from Seth’s suddenly numbed grip. “You stole my shabtis. Broke my head. I could have been a king, but you stopped me. Do you know how many Great Houses I destroyed? I could have been the greatest of them all! But you wouldn’t let me! I am always the servant! I hate you! I hate you!”
Seth fumbled for the bow, but his damaged arm wouldn’t cooperate. With discordant howls, the clay creatures pounced. Teeth fastened on to the back of his neck. Claws sank into his chest. He tried to draw his wrist knife, but the pain—oh Neith, help him—
He gasped out an obscenity as he died again.
* * *
Theo woke with a start. Her mouth tasted like metal, and a dull ache pulsed at the base of her skull, in time with her racing heartbeat. Why had she been dreaming about churches?
She’d fallen asleep facedown on the leather couch. Blinking aching eyes, she slowly peeled her face off the cushions, grimacing as she did so. The room was dim and unfamiliar, and the pinkish light leaking into it from outside lent it an eerie aspect. A glance at the clock showed that it was after midnight; she’d slept through the whole day, and then some.
“Arise,” a man’s voice said.
Theo fell off the couch.
There was a man in the living room. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed for the lamp on the end table, but the lamp was a near-solid chunk of brushed steel and she wrenched her arm. The man looked at her steadily, his face expressionless.
His skin was the color of Seth’s, but with a warmer undertone. He was bald and wore a white stocking cap pushed far back on his forehead. The rest of his clothes consisted of pale-gray sweatpants, sandals, and white athletic socks. His torso was completely bare. A leash dangled from his left hand, ending at the collar of a steel-colored greyhound that was watching Theo with an expression of near-manic alertness.
“What the hell?” Theo yelped. “Who are you? Get out of here!”
“I am clay,” said the man calmly. He knelt, and the dog did likewise, lowering its head. “I am created to serve Anhurmose through you. What is your command, oh my mistress?”
Theo gaped at him. “What?” she said. Her heart was racing, and her arm throbbed painfully as she cradled it. Memories came trickling back: arts and crafts of the damned, failure, falling asleep on the couch. “Wait, I—I made it, but it didn’t work.”
“I was created to serve Anhurmose in death. He lived.” The glassy eyes regarded her calmly. “Then he did not. I rose when he died.”
“He died again?” Theo said softly. “How?”
“His enemy is clever. He warped shabti clay and made servants of it to kill him.”
“Is it going to happen again?”
“I do not know. It is not my purpose to see the future.”
Theo took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. “Prove it,” she said. “Prove you’re clay.”
The man held up one arm and produced a knife from the pocket of his pants. Theo watched, curiously aware of a sense of ritual, as he nicked his arm. Flour paste dripped from the wound.
The breath left her in a great whoosh, and Theo sat down hard on the couch again. The man-golem-thing watched her, his expression utterly level. The dog made a woofing noise but otherwise barely moved. When it blinked, the lids scraped dryly against the hard surface of its eyes.
“How is this my life?” Theo said to nobody. “All I wanted was to get back to work.” The shabti failed to respond.
“I can’t believe I’m buying this,” she told it. Who else was there to talk to? “A mysterious person turns up in front of me with a dog, bleeds paste on my parents’ carpet, and I believe that he’s the magically created, living version of the shitty art project I made. It’s entirely possible that this is a crazy fantasy, and I’m actually safe in a nice padded room somewhere. What do you think?”
There was a stony silence from the pair. Theo raised her head slightly to look the man in the eye, and he stared back, unblinking. She might’ve called him a robot, but Aki’s friend Sandy would be ashamed to produce such lifeless work.
“Do you think?” she added.
The shabti stared. “I am me,” he said. He didn’t seem inclined to add anything.
“You sure are,” Theo muttered. “Great. What’s your name?”
“I have no name. I am clay.”
“Clay is a lousy name.” She tilted her head, examining the unmoving man. “How about Albrecht? Like Albrecht Dürer? You seem like the kind of guy who’d watch the end of the world happening and take notes.”
Continued silence. Well, at least he wasn’t damning her for a poxy whore or anything. Theo stood again and, taking her courage in hand, moved closer to him. “Your name is Albrecht,” she said decisively. “Al for short. What can you do?”
This time, the answer came immediately. “I hunt. I track. I know all that Anhurmose son of Merenptah knows.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “So you can find him?”
“I can.”
The possibilities were staggering, but Theo forced herself to stay calm. “Does he need to be found?” she said as calmly as she could. Al stared at her again, and she rephrased the question. “You said he died. Is he in pain?”
“He is.”
She swallowed. “Does he need help?”
“If he is not to die forever.”
No room for equivocation there. The shabti didn’t seem to be lying; it probably didn’t know how. Seth was in trouble, and the enemy had his mummy. She had to do something.
“One minute,” she said breathlessly. The golems stood silent as Theo grabbed her phone and dialed Aki’s number.
Voice mail. Of course, voice mail. When had things ever
gone right for her in a crunch?
“Aki,” she said hastily, clutching the phone so tightly that the plastic creaked under her hands. “Look, it’s almost five o’clock right now. If I haven’t called you back by noon tomorrow, something bad has happened to me and I think it’s Mark Zimmer’s fault. Do you understand? Mark Zimmer. He’s hurting Seth, and I’m trying to find him. He already tried to kill me last night. I can’t call the cops; they’ll think I’m crazier than I already am, but they’ll believe you. Got it? Cops. It’s”—a hysterical laugh bubbled to the top—“it’s life and death.”
There wasn’t anything else she could say. She hung up and turned to the statue she had brought to life, staring it right in its dead eyes. “All right,” she said, taking a deep breath, “what do you bring on a rescue mission?”
“Weapons,” said the voice. “Medicines. More dogs.”
“Too bad I’m not a pet person,” Theo muttered. But medicines? She could do that. After years of studio work, she’d learned to keep a damn good first aid kit on hand, and her parents had followed her example. She found the kit under the kitchen sink and threw open its lid to check the contents. Still well-stocked—good.
Weapons? Theo had never been a very combative person. She was the queen of passive aggression; her weapons were pointed asides and sharp emails. The supplies she had were art supplies.
Or, if she looked at it another way, she had enough dangerous chemicals to blow up an office building.
Despite exhaustion and fear, a small, grim smile edged its way across Theo’s face. Separately, X clearcoat and Y paint thinner were inoffensive, but together they might strip the skin from your hands. Poisons, acid-like industrial solvents, accelerants—all in neat tubes and sold with no questions asked. Even the two-pack-a-day students put out their cigarettes before going into the studio, and it wasn’t because you weren’t allowed to smoke indoors.
Painter of the Dead (Shades of Immortality Book 1) Page 25
