Painter of the Dead (Shades of Immortality Book 1)

by Catherine Butzen

  “On his life,” she said, “I promise.”

  Meren laughed—snickered, more like, a high-pitched sound. His left hand convulsed for a moment. “Good. Speak the words.”

  Theo sat down on her haunches next to the mummy. Meren knelt on her other side and calmly closed his eyes. Theo laid her left hand on his chest; in her right, she raised the mummiform figure. Meren smiled as she began to speak:

  The body of the son of Merenptah. Khnum is my father; Neith is my mother. I am pure. I am known to us here as I am known to those who have brought me into this world. O Anubis and Osiris, pass me by, for I am not dead; I live here within, and walk upon the black earth and the red earth. For behold, I arise here, in the vessel of the son of Merenptah, and stand alive.

  My mouth has been opened here. My spirit has been enshrined here. My ka has no need of its wings now, for it has a home well prepared for it by the sacred workers who serve the afterlife. Thus it is for the son of Merenptah, the faithful servant of the Crocodile District, of Waset, and of He Who Has United the Two Lands.

  Meren was praying too, she thought, watching his still form. What gods would listen to him? What if he couldn’t transfer and he blamed her—

  No. There it was. A glow was gathering, a hot, dry, white glow, centered on his chest. His heart.

  Her hands burned. She yelped and flung the shabti away, half hoping it would fall apart, but even as it landed on the snow, it was changing. Its crude clay shape flexed and shifted, its surface growing smooth and gleaming, running like melted wax as it began to grow.

  Meren’s knees buckled, his eyes rolled up, and he fell face-first onto the ground. The shabti’s knees flexed too as it pawed at the dirt, its body radiating heat that melted the snow around it. The old body lay sprawled on the dirt, barely three yards from Theo, red hair tangled with sweat, its limbs angled strangely.

  The worst part was that the shabti wasn’t real. Its shape was unnatural, shiny and liquid, like a cheap CGI effect dropped into the middle of the world. The sheer existence of it twisted in Theo’s throat—it was wrong. A bad note, a mismatching color, a patch of sandpaper in the middle of an acre of velvet. It was out of sync with the world, and it made her sick to look at it.

  The mummy—Seth? Anhurmose?—was trying to move again. Theo looked down at him/it (hmt, shelter/owl/bread, “fare for conveyance,” pennies for the ferryman?) and remembered a preparation room where the dry brown form lay quietly and never hurt anyone. Seth had been repulsed by the sight of his own corpse, and Theo couldn’t blame him, but she’d never hated the mummy the way he did. Swallowing the remnants of blood on her tongue, she took his fragile hand.

  She didn’t know if she loved him. Not so soon. But there was a connection in there somewhere, and need, and a fierce protectiveness that kept her back straight and her breathing steady while the clay grotesque oozed its way into life.

  And that mix of need and motion had given her the courage to do what she’d done.

  The prayer was what Meren had needed. But a human brain can’t carry four thousand years of memories. Somewhere along the line, he’d forgotten those crucial words. With his stilted Kemetic, who could’ve said whether he would understand the shabti inscription? And he wouldn’t have thought to check it, either, since it wasn’t the thing he’d had so much trouble finding.

  But that inscription, the one she’d copied over and over again, was the other half of the puzzle. She’d done what he’d wanted and given Meren a new body. He hadn’t specified anything about the leftovers.

  Something groaned. She didn’t look, not daring to hope. Another groan, louder this time, and a rustle of fabric.

  And with a hacking cough, Mark Zimmer came to life.

  “Fuck!” he burst out, his voice strangled and breathless. “Fuck! Shit! Dammit!”

  Shabti-Meren rose up, his features forming out of the liquid clay, and still the old body wasn’t dead. Zimmer tried to clamber to his feet, failed, stumbled, and collapsed, clutching the nearest gravestone with clumsy fingers. Theo’s heart squeezed in her chest as she fought the urge to shout.

  Meren had tried to take over her body, back in the museum. He’d failed. But the voices begging for revenge had stayed with her, whispering in English and Kemetic and so many other languages spoken in the past centuries when Meren had stolen them, and the loudest voice had been the one with a remaining link to the world. The voice that had gotten stronger whenever Meren was near. The voice of Mark Zimmer, a child of the 1980s.

  The real Zimmer was alive.

  But so was the new Meren, and he didn’t seem fazed by the trick.

  Meren’s new form had softer, kinder features than his brother, more open and less battered, and he sported the clean-shaven head of a priest and long, dark eyelashes. He had a similar nose, though—a little smaller, a little more hawkish, a lot less broken. With sandals, a white kilt, and a leopard-skin cloak, he looked like one of Theo’s paintings come to life.

  “It’s true,” he said softly, touching a hand to his chest and feeling the rise and fall of it. For a moment, he was in a world of his own. “I remember. I remember things. Almost. It’s there. It’s true. It’s true.”

  The crumpled heap of Mark Zimmer raised his head. “Fuck you,” he croaked. “I never…” He coughed. “I never got to say…say it before.”

  Meren frowned. “What are you doing, boy?”

  “Not a boy.” Zimmer lurched to his feet, shaking. “I was. I was eight. All I wanted was an Atari!”

  “He’s alive!” Theo burst out. Seth would have loved it. Her chest ached with mixed emotions, too many to count or name or even color: fear, pain, anger, strangled affection and loyalty, and the merest shred of triumph. This was work she could be proud of.

  The priest turned on his heel, his eyes flicking to the stumbling body. “You snake,” he said. “I never thought of that.”

  Seth had called her a backbone and a crocodile, but it was pretty clear that when Meren called her a snake, it wasn’t a compliment.

  “Don’t look at her!” Mark shouted, staggering and almost falling. “Look at me! I’m the one!”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “No. No, it is.” Mark scowled and clenched his fists. His motions were broad and sweeping, like a drunk oversteering himself and walking into a wall. A child in a grown-up’s body. “You made this my business. I never got to play my Atari! I never got to say ‘fuck’! Ever! You got to!”

  Meren drew a hand across his face, and Mark recoiled, clutching his mouth. Blood leaked between his fingers.

  “Look what you did,” Meren said to the staring Theo. “Children shouldn’t be allowed into this kind of thing, Theo.”

  Anger flared up, sudden and unpredictable. “Don’t,” she snarled. “Don’t you dare use my name. I don’t know you.”

  “You do.” Meren’s tone was even, steady, a hard contrast to Theo’s shaking voice. “We worked alongside each other for almost a year, and you trusted me when you needed help against…him.” He pointed one long finger at the dead man. “Don’t pretend otherwise, Theo. You’re old enough to know that actions have consequences. Though I suppose final indulgences are allowed.”

  She had brought him back, brought Zimmer back, but it was clear that Mark couldn’t help her. And now that Meren had the idea of how to make shabtis, he wouldn’t want anyone else hanging around with that same knowledge.

  He would kill her. There would be a eulogy saying she was taken too soon and a flat marker at Rosehill Cemetery that the gardeners would be able to mow over. Her murderer would never be caught…unless they found poor Mark at the same time and decided he was to blame. Two birds, one stone, some assembly required.

  To hell with that.

  Somewhere along the line, between making love to a man from a different time and ducking through a security door to escape from liquid-clay golems, she’d grabbed djed with both hands. There were too many memories—too many paintings—too much motion to let Meren k
ill her now. Seth was a mess, trapped in the hell of his own corpse, but there was still breath in that withered husk of a body, and King Tut would turn Presbyterian before Theo let Meren hurt him any more.

  As she leaned forward, she pulled the mummy closer to her, putting his back to Meren. One hand, hidden behind the dry husk of a body, dipped through the snow and gathered a half-handful of clayey dirt.

  Even while she let tears flow, she used the dirty pad of her thumb to sketch two quick symbols on the mummy’s hollow chest. The ankh and the tyet, the signs of life. Seth let out a raspy breath, but the sacred marks didn’t seem to be hurting him, and it was the only thing Theo could do for the moment. Half-hunched over the mummy, it looked like she was hugging him or praying. Meren didn’t seem fazed by it; she doubted he feared prayers or gods either.

  He flicked one hand at her, and something slammed into Theo’s chest. Her breath whooshed out of her in one moment; she tumbled backward, gasping for air and clutching her aching ribs. Seth fell with her, his poor skin cracking with the impact, and she tried to steady him.

  Mark tried to tackle Meren, but Meren stepped neatly to the side and the child-man crashed face-first into a standing gravestone.

  Theo lay curled up on the ground, shielding Seth with her body as best she could. Her head swam and her chest throbbed in pain, each breath a struggle.

  The priest didn’t seem inclined to give her the time to recover. Stepping over to her, he kicked Theo in the side. While she wheezed, he picked up his brother’s withered form and cradled it in his arms.

  “I remember,” he murmured to the dying man. “I do. I remember…I made them for you. I did. And they worked, and it ruined my life. I touched godhood.” He held the body of his brother almost affectionately. “To have that power in your hand, to know that you’ve defeated death, it’s…it’s intoxicating, Anhurmose.”

  There was a faint rattling groan from the mummy, like wind crumpling paper.

  “Put him down,” Theo said softly. “Please.”

  Meren shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want him to finally meet me, eye to eye.” He peered at the withered face. “As much as he can, anyway.”

  “But if you remember you made them for him, then he was telling the truth.” Theo forced herself to sit up. Her vision still swam, and her breathing was shallow. “Please. You’re his brother.”

  “And he ruined my life.” Meren’s words were dispassionate now. He might have been talking about the weather. “Because of him, I learned what I could do. I learned I had the power to be the greatest king Kemet had ever seen. But the gods—well, they’re gods. Vicious doesn’t begin to describe it.” He snapped off another of the mummy’s fingers. “I took body after body, trying to get to the throne. Shabtis were just clay; why be a new homemade man when you could take on the body of a king? But circumstances always conspired against me. Hundreds of years, I tried. And I started to forget.” Another finger, broken like a twig and dropped in the snow. “He stole my life, Theo. Can you blame me for wanting those shabtis?”

  “The Collector,” she said slowly. “You were the Collector. Robbing Egyptian antiques collections—gathering shabtis and pieces from his tomb. And destroying things you couldn’t use.”

  Meren smiled mirthlessly. She almost couldn’t take it anymore. He was gloating; he was on top of the world; he was winning. She had to do something.

  Bringing back Mark hadn’t worked. The one thing that had changed was that Meren, once hidden inside a mortal body with a beating heart, was at home in a shabti now. Seth was still going to die; the question was whether his brother would burn him alive (undead?) before the sun rose.

  She was out of other options. It was time to do something very, very stupid.

  The mummy was out of reach. There was no way she could snatch it from Meren’s hands, and he would never bring it close enough to give her a shot. She tried anyway, clambering to her feet and making a clumsy rush for the mummy. Meren didn’t bother with his spells; he simply tripped her and watched her crash into the dirty snow.

  Head down, she curled up in a ball and let more tears flow. Her hands, safely hidden from Meren, pawed up another handful of dirt. When she wiped the tears away, the warm liquid seeped into the dirt and made mud. It was the work of a moment to do what she had to do before redoubling her sobs.

  Meren laughed and took a step closer. “Really?” he said. “That’s what you’re going to do now? So much for the snake—”

  The snake struck. Her hands went around his ankles.

  Meren’s words were truncated by a scream as the twin tyets, painted in grave dirt on the palms of an artist and a woman, touched his skin. His back arched and his muscles spasmed as his flesh cracked and crisped under her hands.

  “Bitch!”

  He lashed out, his foot narrowly missing Theo’s face, but Theo was already moving. She yanked as hard as she could, fingernails digging into the burned skin, and pulled Meren off his feet. With a roar of rage he went flailing backward, landing hard in the snow.

  His second kick wasn’t quite so wild—one sandaled foot slammed into Theo’s temple, making her head ring and sending her twisting sideways on the ground. The mummy had fallen from Meren’s grip and was lying inches away—still twitching—

  Meren rose, staggering, with open flames blazing in both hands. He hurled palmfuls of fire at Theo, who ducked her head just in time. The flames sputtered against her cheap parka, crisping the plastic and filling the air with a sickly chemical smell. Plastic melted and warped but didn’t burn.

  Unlike Seth. Meren palmed another ball of flame, but Theo flung herself forward and tackled him to the ground again. He was stronger than she, a lot stronger, and she struggled to keep him pinned. She could hear Mark yelling something in the background, but she couldn’t focus on him.

  Meren’s hands burned. One stray blow and Theo’s head snapped back, her world reeling. Her left eye began to swell shut.

  It wasn’t enough. Her touch could burn him too, but his shabti body couldn’t bleed and it healed too quickly. Sparks showered down, landing dangerously close to the mummy, and Theo’s breath hitched in her throat. Meren seized the opening, and this time he grabbed and held on.

  White-hot pain lanced through her and Theo couldn’t restrain a scream. She reeled back, clawing at Meren’s grip, as his unnatural fire turned her sleeves to ashes and seared into her skin. He bent over her, grinning, his teeth bared and flecked with clay. She slammed her forehead into his nose and grinned back through her pain at the crunch of cartilage.

  Mark came stumbling through the snowy graveyard, Frankenstein’s monster in a body three sizes too big for him. He launched himself at Meren, shoving Theo aside and grabbing the priest around the waist. Meren shouted, his words a tangled garble of languages and curses as Mark tried to pummel him.

  The boy wasn’t much good at it, but he didn’t have to be for long. Even as Meren knocked him away with a burst of green light, Theo was ready. She flailed across the grave and seized Meren by his wrist.

  This time, the scream wasn’t remotely human. Blood rose, burned off, and vanished as the flesh scorched. The tyet—Isis’s knot, a symbol more powerful than the ankh, a woman’s sigil and a sign of reproach for a man who should have died a long, long time ago—blazed brightly as it burrowed into his skin.

  Theo knew about the power of symbols. A language made of pictures…

  “No!” Meren screamed. He tried to lash out at her, but as he jerked, his dying hand broke and crumbled away.

  He had no heart of his own, and Theo’s soared. He was a clay man who thought he was real. Even the touch of the tyet amulet hadn’t hurt Seth this way. But this was the written symbol, based in a magic mixed with art and a religion where a man’s written name was his identity. And she was facing someone whose real body was long gone and whose heart was that of a dead cat.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Maybe she meant it.

  She put her hand on his chest, on the place w
here his animal heart tried and failed to be the real thing, and Meren burst into flame.

  It was a fire never seen before in the city on the lake. Too hot, too fierce, too white—the glare of the desert sun at noon, a tiny supernova in the middle of the graveyard. Heat washed over Theo, prickling her skin, scorching her, overwhelming her. She yelped and tumbled backward, her palm burning as the clay scorched her.

  Meren’s final words were a drawn-out howl. It cut off abruptly. Ash and clay dust settled over everything.

  “Holy shit,” Mark whispered.

  Silence fell.

  The noise of the city rumbled in the background, but around them, nothing moved or made a sound. The orange lights of the graveyard bled all other color from the scene, and the dust and ash melded into the charred earth as if they had always been there. Her hands and face were burned stiff.

  Someone had to have noticed that blaze. She winced with pain as she checked her watch, wondering how fast the fire department would respond to a call at this time of night.

  Mark sagged to his knees and rubbed his face until the skin turned red. “Holy shit,” he repeated weakly. “I want to go home.”

  “Me too.” Theo leaned against a gravestone, closing her eyes. One breath, then another, deep and cold, reminding herself that she was still functional, she was alive, Meren was gone, and she and Mark and Seth would be okay.

  Seth.

  The mummy-man still lay where he’d been dropped. His bandages were torn to shreds, and his arms and legs were broken. His few remaining fingers twitched weakly in an aborted gesture she couldn’t understand.

  Theo crouched beside him. Her eyes burned, but there were no more tears. Golems and evil priests and ancient spells, her mind could manage. But seeing Seth like that pushed it over the edge of reaction.