Under Wraps: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 1) (18 page)

“Thes, why are you so worried about her? She’s tried to kill us, twice.” Aziza’s words were brittle sounding. She was giving me a look I didn’t quite understand. It was sort of crestfallen and sort of angry.

I opened my mouth to respond, and tell her, what? That everything inside me was telling me to rescue Sekhmet, who was a war goddess and didn’t need saving? Still… something… something in the irrational part of my brain was screaming at me to save her.

Khufu shot me a glance that told me to keep my damn mouth shut. “You say that, but what I really hear is, ‘You’re right Khufu, this is our only chance to get past a giant dragon who eats fire gods for brunch and flosses with their bones.’” Khufu shouldered by me and moved into the room, his sandaled feet crunching on the ice. “You’re welcome.”

“He’s right,” Aziza said, voice angry and annoyed. Before I could respond, I felt her hand on my shoulder. “Sekhmet will be fine because she’s a goddess. Besides, you’re just a werewolf. What could you honestly do to help her?” She stared at me hard as my stomach twisted in knots. She was right, of course. Sekhmet was a goddess and I was just a werewolf… but still, leaving her to the dragon felt… wrong?

“I might be able to do something…” I trailed off as her features tightened.

“Besides, we have to get the Staff of Ra and awaken him, or you won’t get Connor’s soul, doesn’t he mean anything to you?” Her words were like glass, cutting deep and leaving me wounded and raw.

“Yeah, I remember. Is that more or less important than the mummies we were supposed to recapture?” I cried, barely resisting the urge to shove her backward. “You know, the ones who wasted days of my time that could have been spent getting the soul back.”

Aziza shot me an odd look. “Um… there are no more mummies. What do you think Anubis and I were doing? Playing kissy face like you and Bast? No, we took care of
all
the mummies.” Aziza glared at me hard enough to make me look away embarrassed.

“Except me,” Khufu said, now so far into the darkness that I could barely see him. “You must like me.”

Instead of replying, Aziza stepped past the threshold and into the icy cave. Not wanting to be the last one alone in a creepy Egyptian maze, I followed. But I felt bad about it in the pit of my soul. That counts for something, right?

The moment I was inside, I realized I could see fine. The walls were layered with glowing green ice, as though it was filled with incandescent algae that had somehow frozen in place while making light.

Still, as I scanned around for clues to Sekhmet’s whereabouts, I realized it was hopeless. Not that it would have been easy to find her, the place was littered with caverns and giant ice boulders. For all I knew, she was trapped in one of those rabbit holes, desperately fighting for her life while I was leaving her to die alone and in the cold. Some hero I was.

“This is not how heroes act.” My words came out in a frozen wisp of cold.

“I’m not a hero,” Khufu called over his shoulder. He was standing in front of a giant iron gate. The metal was covered in layers of frost that made it look like someone had doused it with a firehose before fast freezing the still dripping metal. “I’m more of a loveable villain. Now get over here before I leave you trapped in a world of unyielding, unending winter.”

“You’re not lovable. Not even a little,” I said, smiling despite myself. I stopping next to him and my eyes widened as I stared at the gate. . “Wait… is that a keyhole?” Down on the left of the gate was what looked like an enormous keyhole, one that you’d need a key the size of an elephant trunk to open.

“Yes and I have just the thing,” Khufu replied and reached into the air next to him. It was weird to see, honestly, because half his arm just disappeared. He fished around for a while, biting his lip. After what felt like forever, he yanked his arm out of the space.

Clutched in his fist was a jade key the size of an elephant trunk. It was covered in carvings that depicted elephants, of all things. They were pulling carts, dancing on balls, flying through the air on ginormous wings. It was nuts.

“How in the hell?” I asked.

Khufu looked at me and wiggled his stupid eyebrows. “Good thing I didn’t leave this in my other loin cloth. That would have been embarrassing,” he said and held the key out in front of himself, brandishing it like a sword.

“Let it go,” Aziza said, coming up beside me and putting a hand on my arm. I turned to look at her as Khufu raised his key high above his head.

“Key of visions, grant me sight beyond sight!” Lightning exploded from the sky, which was crazy because we were inside, and I could actually see the ceiling. It was about twenty feet overhead and filled with glinting icicles. Still, somehow, an arc of blue electricity shot from the cloudless ice and hit the key in his hand. A huge reptilian eye opened in the center of the handle, and the key elongated. The handle widened, unfurling like a pair of leathery wings.

“Are you being serious right now?” I said, but my voice was drowned out by the howling wind that whipped around us, stirring the snow up into little dervishes that pelted me with ice.

“Thes, you’ll soon realize one thing. I’m always serious.” Khufu strode forward. His jade key gleamed like it was made of green starlight and slammed the tip into the keyhole. The ice shattered into a zillion scintillating shards that hit the ground with a sound that reminded me of the time our chandelier came loose during an earthquake and crashed to the wood floor some twenty feet below it.

He pushed, his huge muscles straining, and as the key slid into the lock, the whole room seemed to let out a sigh. Khufu twisted, and the lock clicked open, the sound echoing across the frozen wasteland. Ice splintered out along the edges of the gate before the metal melted into a pile of glittering sludge.

“How do you like that?” Khufu called, and his voice was so loud in the sudden silence of the room that it was more than a little unnerving. Beyond the gate, the hallway lit up to reveal polished pink stone that reminded me of a room made entirely of taffy and cotton candy.

Aziza began clapping, a sort of slow, lame thing that was more patronizing than not. “Awesome,” she murmured, and when I shot her a questioning glance, she shrugged at me.

“After you, my lady,” Khufu said, sweeping into a weird bow. “And no, I’m not going to retrieve the key. If I do the entire place will come down on us and kill us all. Besides, if somehow Sekhmet doesn’t, you know, get eaten by a giant god-eating dragon, I’d like for her to be able to follow us.” He shrugged.

“Why Khufu, I didn’t think you cared,” Aziza said as she stepped past him into the cotton candy pink room.

“Oh, I don’t,” he replied as Aziza vanished into nothingness. “But sometimes, I like people to think I do.” He waved to me as he jerked the key roughly from the keyhole and dove through the threshold just before the gate reformed. I watched him vanish from behind the icy metal as the room began to shake. Then a giant icicle crashed into the ground inches away. Damn.

I ran as fast as my little legs would carry me toward the nearest cave. Thankfully, my legs weren’t actually little because I was six and a half feet tall, but the principle still applied. I dodged a falling chunk of ice the size of a Buick, spinning my body to the left in a way that would have made my high school football coach proud. It crashed into the icy floor, cracking it beneath my feet.

My toes caught the edge of the crack and pain shot through my foot as I stumbled, windmilling my arms for balance. An icicle pierced the space immediately behind me, and the shockwave of the impact threw me forward. I slid along the ice, my body careening sideways into the mouth of a cave.

I hit hard on the frosty rim, my ribs cracking into the wall. My breath whooshed out of me, and for a second, I couldn’t remember how to draw another one. Little black dots swirled in my vision as the cave wobbled and shook.

I tried to get to my feet and crawl away but found that I couldn’t. My hands were stuck to the ice. A breath of biting, glacial wind pelted me with razor sharp sleet. Blood flowed down my body, crackling against the icy floor in sold chunks, somehow freezing before it hit the ground. How cold did that make it?

Too cold.

My teeth chattered, and I gritted them together. With a howl of rage, I tore my hands free, leaving more than a little skin stuck to the ground. The pain in my hands threatened to swallow me as I got to my feet and managed one wobbling step before the room roiled, throwing me farther into the cave.

I hit hard on my back, and my head smacked into the ground. The sound of it echoed off the cave walls, sounding horrible enough to make my stomach churn. My vision went hazy around the edges as I stared up at the ceiling.

A huge dagger of ice clung to the ceiling, wobbling dangerously. “Damn,” I wheezed, and as I tried to move, tried to get free of the ice and cold, it broke free.

I didn’t actually feel the impact because it was so cold that I think it numbed my thigh completely. Either way, it left me pinned, unable to move because an icy spear held me in place. The edges of the wound were already blue and frosted over with cold. I tried to grab the ice with my hands, but I couldn’t feel my fingers.

It didn’t used to be this cold in here. Why was it so much colder? I tried to swallow, tried to grip the ice, but I might as well have tried gripping a hippo with a pair of baseball gloves.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice that froze my heart into a solid block of ice said from behind me. The world spun into a vortex of blue and white as I tried to turn toward the voice. That was about as far as I made it before I felt the icy touch of fingers on the back of my neck. It felt like a corpse dragging me down into hell, except it was much, much colder than that.

Chapter 24

Sekhmet was suspended a few feet in front of me in a solid cylinder of ice that sort of reminded me of a scene from a movie. Her mouth was open, trapped in a soundless scream, her arms raised in front of her to ward off a blow. A horrible, purple bruise covered nearly half of her body.

I’m not sure why, but the sight of her like that filled me with both rage and relief. Relief because, even though she was trapped in solid ice, I was pretty sure she was still alive. If I could just think of a way to free her, I
knew
she’d recover.

The rage though, that was harder to quantify. Something about seeing her beaten filled me with such anger that I could barely see through it. Whatever had done this would pay for hurting her. Well, that was a surprising thought… Why was I so angry about it? I’d just met her a little while ago, and she’d tried to kill me… twice.

I shoved the unhelpful thoughts away and tried to move. Pain like a million burning suns flashed through my leg, ripping the breath from my lungs and making me cry out. After what felt like a year, the agony receded enough for me to open my eyes and stare down at my leg. The spot where the icicle had pierced me was covered in a blue bandage that was frosted over with hard rime.

“I’d say ‘so you’ve awakened’ but that seems just like something someone should say to you when you wake up to sound ominous.” A voice that sounded like snowcapped mountains spoke in my ear. “I don’t want to sound ominous.”

I spun to see a… well, I’m not sure because it looked like a pale man with a black goatee and long flowing hair so blonde it was nearly white. Only… only he was clad in a tight-fitting blue gown. He lifted one white-gloved hand and taped his square chin once before smiling at me. His teeth reminded me of a cave filled with icy death, all glinting and dangerous.

“You won’t be able to move that leg for a while, I’m afraid. The bandage I placed upon it will suck all the ice from your blood, but alas, it is neither a quick nor painless process.” His sapphire eyes glinted. “I do not envy you.”

“Who are you?” I choked out my words in a fog of white mist.

He took a step toward me, then another and another until he was right next to me. His footsteps were so dainty it made me think of ballerina princesses.

“I am Frost, the first ice dragon.” He shrugged. “I have made my domain here, deep within the bowels of Egypt because I was like ‘who would look for the ice dragon thought to have been destroyed by Wyrm in the bowels of Ancient Egypt.” He poked me hard in the chest with one spindly finger. “Evidently, you would.”

“You don’t really look like a dragon,” I said before I could stop myself.

“I should think not,” Frost said, shrugging his delicate shoulders. “As I said, frost dragon hiding underneath Ancient Egypt.”

“So… uh… why are you hiding?” I managed to say through chattering teeth and rubbed my arms. Usually the cold didn’t bother me, but this was a whole different level of cold, and here I was wearing what amounted to a linen toga. I needed like four ski jackets. I mean, Frost had, for lack of a better term, put Sekhmet on ice. If I annoyed him by asking the tough questions like why was he wearing a ball gown and stiletto heels, what would he do to me?

“Did you know that if you pin down a lobster in the ocean it will start screaming?” He moved his hands to mimic holding one down. “These screams will draw other lobsters to its location, but not to help. They’ll systematically tear the screaming lobster apart.” He frowned at me, the edges of his lips tugging downward. “Dragons are like that, except most of us don’t need to hear you scream. My brothers and sisters only need to know that I’m here. Once they know, they will come to tear me apart.” He shut his eyes as a shiver wracked his body.

“So you’re hiding from your family here?” I asked, and the thought was strangely sad. “So they won’t kill you?”

“Indeed.” Frost quirked his head. “So why are you here?”

“I was led down here because we were trying to find the Staff of Ra… only our guide was an evil pharaoh, and he trapped me in your domain, along with her.” I jerked my thumb at Sekhmet. “I guess I’m sort of here to rescue her.”

Frost’s face remained impassive for so long, that for a moment, I wondered if he had heard me. Then, without saying a single word, he spun on his heel and sashayed across the icy floor, his blue stilettos clicking. When he reached the far wall, he pressed his hand against the ice. It swirled, reminding me of a vortex that got steadily bigger.