Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) (11 page)

Gilded chains were wrapped around his limbs, fastening him to the throne. Sparks every color of the rainbow danced across his bronze flesh and zipped through his hair. I fought the urge to wipe my hands on my tunic because I could still feel where I’d been bitten, been eaten. It wasn’t exactly awesome.

“So, how are things?” Osiris asked, looking up at me and meeting my eyes. Guilt rimmed the edges of his face as he stared at me. “Want to go hug your girlfriend?”

“Yes, actually,” I said. “And tell her all the things I never got to say.” Like how being around her made me want to be brave, made me want to take on the whole of the universe to spare her even an ounce of pain. In short, being with her made me a better person.

“Well, help me out of here, and we’ll go get Horus and talk to my wayward wife. Deal? Then you can spend all the time with her you’d like.” He tried to move his arms, but his muscles did little more than strain against the bindings. Pain flashed across his features.

“Yeah,” I muttered, stepping over a withered, months’ dead corpse I barely noticed as I crossed the gray stone floor in slow, purposeful strides. I was sort of glad he didn’t want to talk about what had happened in the diner. I don’t think I could have. It might sound silly, but I might have walked away from the whole of Ancient Egypt if he’d made me do it.

I gripped one of the chains binding him and heat exploded across the length of my flesh. It was like someone had tossed me into a red hot frying pan. My fingers released the bindings reflexively, and I stood back, holding up my smoking hands. They were covered with angry red blisters.

“How do I let you out?” I asked, wondering why I’d thought I could pull off chains designed to hold down the god Osiris with my bare hands. It wasn’t because I thought I was better, it was more that I was… distracted.

“There’s a key on the wall. It unlocks the lock on the back of my throne.” He nodded toward the left wall, and sure enough, there was a large bronze key hanging from a bronze hook. It struck me as a little odd since almost everything I’d seen in ancient Egypt had been made from gold.

I padded over to the wall, grabbed the key without bothering to check for traps and jerked it off the hook. I know I should have checked, but I just felt sort of out of it. Damn zombies.

A moment later, I’d located the lock and sure enough the key slid into it perfectly. With one flick of the wrist, the chains fell to the ground and vanished beneath the floor. Osiris sat there for a couple seconds, rubbing his wrists before standing and stretching. He yawned once and spun around to face me.

“Thanks for letting me out. I’m not sure how I’d have gotten out otherwise. Those chains restrict my godly aura so people can’t find me. You’d be surprised how hard it is to live through the machine uprising with people asking you for things in the real world. Breaks your concentration real good like.”

“How would you have gotten out if I wasn’t here?” I asked, staring hard at him.

“James would have let me out, but he seems to have died.” He gestured at the corpse at my feet. “That’s his one job.”

“Oh. Um, sorry?” I offered, unsure of what to do. I’d barely even noticed the corpse on the ground. What did that say about me?

“Don’t worry. He’s been dead lots of times before. The body I give him only lasts about a week before he’s sucked back into the underworld. Clearly he expired a while ago which is probably why he died so early on in the game.” He made a gun with his fingers and pretended to shoot James, and like magic, the floor beneath the corpse opened up and swallowed him.

“Ah.” I shrugged because I didn’t know what to say to that. “So what’s the plan, exactly?” I tried to smile at him but was pretty sure I wound up grimacing. “No offense or anything, but Horus is locked in the prison of the gods. I’ve fought one of the guards before and he seems a bit more, um…”

“Impressive than I do?” Osiris asked, not looking the least bit offended. “He should because he is. Still, they won’t be a problem.” He walked up to me and put one hand on my shoulder. “Trust me. I’m a people person.”

His words swirled around me like raspberry-scented vapor, and I found myself getting dizzier and dizzier as I breathed. I tried to hold my breath and back away from him, but he held me too tightly for me to move more than a couple inches. Silly me, I should have known better than to trust a god. I’d grown careless. Stupid, stupid.

I opened my eyes even though I hadn’t realized I’d closed them. The prison of the gods was a few feet away. Osiris stood next to me, now clad in golden armor with a crook and sling attached to straps on his hips. He had a staff in one hand, and his beard was trimmed and braided with golden beads even though his hair still had that crazy professor look.

Without a word, the god of the dead strode toward Narmer and Menes and waved his hand in greeting. “How goes it, old friends?” His voice swept outward, rolling over the two men like a visible thing. They stiffened at once and turned toward him, their conversation forgotten.

They both regarded him in the same way I regarded my crazy uncle Lou. He was always a bit too wild and a bit too uncouth to actually be respectable, but damn was he fun, even if you didn’t want him to meet your date.

“Hello,” Narmer said, his gaze shifting from Osiris to Menes and back again.

“I need to come inside for…” Osiris tapped his chin in thought as he looked up toward the sky, thinking. “For reasons.”

“Oh, well, of course then,” Narmer replied, moving to stand aside before stopping abruptly and moving back into position. “Wait no, that’s not how this works at all.” He pointed at Osiris with his golden spear. “You know that.”

“I also know there are a couple fine young honey bunnies off that way.” He pointed off to the left. “They were looking for someone to oil them up before their big swimsuit contest.” He leaned in close to Narmer, shielding his mouth with his hands. “I bet a couple lucky guys could have some real fun.”

“I need a snack,” Menes said abruptly and began walking in the opposite direction from where Osiris had pointed. “Narmer, make sure no one gets through my side in the next few minutes.”

“Gotcha,” Narmer said, an annoyed look crossing his face.

“I’m guessing he’s still mad at me about that thing a while back,” Osiris said as he watched the guard go. To say their exchange didn’t exactly fill me with confidence was an understatement of gigantic proportions. How the hell was Osiris going to get them to let us in if the guards disliked him
that
much?

“You might say that,” Narmer replied, shaking his head.

“He should hurry up and get over it.” Osiris grinned broadly. “It was just a joke.”

“Putting superglue on a toilet seat is not funny for anyone,” Narmer said, shaking his head in disgust. “You’re lucky he didn’t gut you like a fish.”

“That’s not true. It was funny for me and the fifteen women I had with me.” Osiris smirked. “Speaking of which…”

Narmer glanced at Osiris and sighed. “I’m going to regret asking, but can you explain what a bikini is?” His words made me break out into a grin. Maybe Osiris was smarter than he looked. Besides, if Narmer had never seen a girl in a bikini, he was definitely in for a treat.

“It’s a very thin, very tiny strip of cloth used by women to somewhat cover the interesting bits when swimming,” Osiris said as he actually drew the outline of a bikini-clad lady in the air and the outline took shape in silhouette before blowing away with his next words. “It’s a sight to be seen, truly.”

“And these women need to be rubbed with oil while in such revealing garments?” Narmer asked, cheeks turning slightly red as he spoke, his gaze far off and distant. Let’s just say it didn’t exactly take a psychic to see the images running through his mind right then.

“Yes, for the contest. It’s very important for them to look shiny.” Osiris shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Hey, I don’t make the rules.”

“I can’t leave my post.” Narmer glanced off in the direction one last time. “But you guys should go…”

“I could watch the gate, if you’d like?” I offered, stepping forward and doing my best to act innocent. “I’m reasonably tough.” I pointed to my mouth. “And I still have all my teeth.”

“He makes a good point,” Osiris agreed. “Teeth are important, and he does have all of them.” The god clapped the guard on the shoulder. “What do you say, you go rub some bikini-clad honey bunnies, and we’ll watch the gate. Besides, what are the chances someone shows up? How many people have been here in the last couple weeks?” Osiris poked Narmer in the ribs. “I’m going to go with not many.”

“I’m going to regret this,” Narmer replied, chewing on his lip as he extricated himself from Osiris. “But, I can’t. What if someone gets past you? Besides, you were just trying to get in a moment ago. I’d be a fool to leave you in charge. You might sneak in while you were supposed to be keeping people out.”

“No one will get past me,” I said, doing my best to look fierce while ignoring his concern that I would sneak in. That was exactly what I was going to do. “I once played goalie against a team of Brazilian soccer players with one hand tied behind my back and no one scored a single goal.”

“Do you know what he’s talking about?” Narmer asked, glancing at me like I was a crazy person.

“It’s a game of sport where people kick balls at a single man who must block them all from going past him.” Osiris smiled and clapped Narmer hard on the back. “And I’m Osiris, you can trust me.” His smile broadened.

“I just don’t think—” Narmer’s words were cut off when Osiris smashed him on the back of the head with his flail. The guard stumbled forward, collapsing to his knees in the sand whereupon Osiris soccer kicked him in the face. Narmer flopped backward on the sand, staring dazedly off into the sky, and I could almost see the little tweety birds flapping around his skull like something out of a cartoon.

“See, not a problem,” Osiris said, leaning down and jerking a keyring from the guard’s belt. He spun on his heel and walked toward the gate, whistling. “I’m not sure why people ever doubt me.”

“I’m not sure either,” I replied, still half-amazed at what I’d seen. Osiris had taken down Narmer with two blows. Granted, the first was a sucker punch, but still. I hadn’t known that was possible. Maybe Menes was the stronger of the two? Yeah, I’m going to go with that.

“I know, right?” Osiris pulled one of the keys off the ring and tossed it to me. “We’ll need to turn the keys in the locks at the same time to reveal the way inside.”

“Okay,” I said, snatching the bronze key out of the air and moving toward the lock. It slid easily inside. I turned to watch the god.

“One, two, three,” Osiris said, twisting the key on three before we could properly discuss what we were going to do. I turned my key only a fraction of a second after he did. The whole wall in front of us vibrated and wobbled, spilling dust and debris down on top of me. I sputtered, trying to wipe the dirt from my face as obsidian stairs burst from the sand between us and spiraled upward until they reached the apex of the wall.

“Black stairs, Thes. Black stairs,” Osiris mumbled dejectedly as he pulled the key from the lock and hurled it into the distance. “I can’t believe you summoned the black stairs. Do you know what this means?”

“Um, no?” I offered, hoping it wasn’t something horrible as I flung my own key into the distance. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it, but Osiris had done so, and I was following his lead. Besides, that’d make it difficult for Narmer to follow us. He’d have to wait for Menes to get back and then admit he’d gotten beaten up. Something told me, he might be inclined to assume we hadn’t gone inside.

“It means you didn’t turn the key at the same time as me,” Osiris replied, moving toward the spiral staircase. He shot me a look of disappointment. “If you keep up this subpar teamwork, I’m going to have to find a new partner. Capiche?”

“I see where you’re coming from,” I said, leaving the “from crazyville” part of my sentence unsaid.

“Excellent,” Osiris said as he scaled the stairway at near-inhuman speed. “I’m glad we had this talk. Maybe if we don’t die, we can try to get platinum. I’ve never done that before.”

“Platinum?” I asked, following the guard up the stairs. “Is that like better than gold?”

“Man, we’re in Egypt, virtually anything is better than gold. We have almost as much gold as we do sand.” He glanced toward me. “We have quite a lot of sand if you couldn’t tell.”

“I could tell,” I replied as he stepped off the final stair and onto the wall itself.

“Good, you seemed a little dull. I wasn’t sure if you caught my joke.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “You know, that gold was virtually worthless.”

“Nope, I caught it,” I muttered, getting annoyed with Osiris’s antics because it was starting to seem like he enjoyed pestering me. It didn’t help that he was reminding me of Khufu who was in the process of turning to stone. I still had no way to save the mummy and being around Osiris was actually making me feel guilty for not doing more. Even though Bast had told me to leave, and I had no idea what to do anyway.

I stepped off the final step, shaking my head. No sooner had I done so when the stairs dissolved into smoke. A second later, they were gone completely, leaving me standing atop the high wall next to the ancient god, looking down at the sand below and hoping I wouldn’t fall to my doom. When I’d started this adventure, I’d been deathly afraid of heights, but after going a few rounds scaling the pyramid of Giza, well, I was
slightly
less afraid of them.

“Well good, I won’t explain my jokes in the future,” Osiris said, looking down into the pool below. It was only a few feet down, but it was filled with what smelled like acid. And that’s where I was totally going to describe the smell of acid as acidic but decided not to do so.

“Is that acid?” I asked, watching the death god peer into the bubbling liquid.

“Yes. Quite strong acid too. Able to burn through a person in moments. You know, if they don’t drink non-rbST milk.” He shot me a look that made me think he’d heard my conversation with Bast earlier, but that was impossible, right? “I kid, I kid. But seriously, we’ll need to go through the acid, but don’t worry, some of it is fake acid and won’t kill us.”