Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) (15 page)

“You like the idea of beating your parents senseless?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow at him. “And I thought werewolf families were messed up.”

“Let’s just say I have issues I need to work out.” Anubis grinned, showing me his razor-sharp teeth. “On their faces. With my fists.”

We walked in silence for a while after that. The tunnel kept twisting and turning, sloping up and down, so by the time we reached a shiny golden door, I was thoroughly lost. If it wasn’t for there being no other offshoots from the path we’d walked, I was relatively sure I would have had trouble finding my way back.

Like nearly every door I’d seen down here, this door was hewn from a solid slab of gold. Unlike the others, this one had depictions of each of the Egyptian gods and goddesses etched into its surface along with a series of hieroglyphics beneath each figure. Since I couldn’t read the symbols, I presumed it represented their names. The door was also a little weird because there was no handle or hinges on its surface, so I wasn’t quite sure how it’d opened. Even still, I was relatively sure there had to be a simple way.

“Ready?” Osiris asked, throwing a glance at Anubis and smiling even though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “There’s still time to turn back.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Anubis replied, taking a step past us and placing his right hand against the drawing of himself. Black light flowed out from beneath his palm, rippling outward along the surface like the concentric circles made by a stone being flung into a lake.

The door shuddered, warping in its frame as the ground beneath out feet came alive with writhing, crawling insects. They hadn’t been there a second ago, but now they were crawling over my feet, pulling themselves free from the stone like they’d just been woken from a long nap.

I fought the urge to scream like a little girl and leap into the air, but there were no tables for me to leap upon. Instead, I tried to pretend I was extremely manly and glanced at Osiris, who seemed to take the bugs in stride. He approached the door and tentatively placed his left hand against his own symbol. A shudder went through the room, blowing across the back of my neck like a soft wind stirring the grass in a graveyard at night.

White light spilled from Osiris’s fingertips, flowing outward like a gentle ocean wave and crashing into Anubis’s black light. The energy called by each of them mixed and warped as the door inched backward, scraping along the stone with a sound that made my teeth hurt.

With a jolt, the door lurched backward several feet, revealing a passageway barely big enough for me to move through. Darkness spilled out from behind the doorway and where it touched the scurrying bugs they froze, stopping in near mid-motion.

“What the hell is through there?” I asked, fear lacing my words as frost crept out from the passageway, coating the floor and walls with a sheet of ice.

“That is where the great ice dragon Frost sleeps,” Osiris said, and I instantly pictured the effeminate man in a ball gown. “You’ll need to ask him to let you into the prison.”

“Um, I thought we were under the prison now? Wait…” I held up my hands, making a time out gesture. “What do you mean me? Are you not coming?”

“No, we need to hold the door. If we let it go, it will slam shut, and we won’t be able to open it again for a hundred years,” Anubis said, voice strained with exertion.

“And I’ll be trapped inside?” I asked already knowing the answer and hating them because of it.

“Yes. You need to make it through the tunnel and into Frost’s lair before we lack the strength to hold the door open. If it closes before you reach him, you’ll be trapped in the in-between.” Anubis turned back toward the door as he spoke, his muscles corded with effort as sweat dripped down his well-sculpted body. “Hurry.”

“But what am I supposed to do in there? You haven’t given me even the faintest clue,” I snapped, a combination of worry and annoyance filling my voice. It was one thing to go see Frost. It was quite another to go see him without any idea why I was going to see him.

“I am absolutely positive you’ll figure it out. Now hurry up,” Osiris replied, strain evident on his face. “Good luck and Thes?”

“What?” I grumbled, annoyed with his lack of details as I darted through the opening.

“Don’t give him any balloons,” he added like it was the most important information in the world.

“Why not?” I called, glancing at him over my shoulder as my sandals fast froze to the ground beneath my feet.

“You can’t trust an ice queen not to let it go,” he replied, shooting me a wry grin as I let out an exasperated sigh. I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, but it hadn’t worked. In fact, if anything, it’d made me warier because he had tried. It was weird. Him trying to reassure me made me realize he was worried, and if Osiris was worried, I sure as hell was too.

A chill crept along my skin as I stared down the tunnel ahead. Every surface was covered in thick ice, and the floor and ceiling were brimming with crystalline stalactites and jutting stalagmites. It was just like the cave of doom I’d seen when I’d met Frost so very long ago. The ground beneath my feet rumbled, and I turned to see the door slide back toward the entrance a fraction of an inch.

“Damn,” I muttered and took off down the corridor in a dead sprint. My sandals tore from the ice, but the chill was getting to me. Every breath froze me from the inside and every exhalation produced a cloud of freezing mist.

Without think, I spit a mouthful of saliva into the air. It froze before it even hit the floor and shattered. The ground rumbled again, but this time it came from in front of me and was more like the distant beating of a massive heart. Frost hadn’t exactly been unhappy with me the last time I’d seen him, but the guy had certainly been weird. The thought of seeing him again didn’t exactly fill me with excitement. Still, what was I supposed to do? Get trapped in the in-between? Screw that.

I had only gone a few yards when the cavern began to close off, shrinking so I had to duck my head and edge carefully forward. Then it got worse, and I had to start crawling on my hands and knees. The glow of the ice faded, leaving me unable to see more than a few feet in front of me as icy cold seeped through the knees and elbows of my tunic. My teeth chattered so hard, I heard their echo. Still, I pressed forward, even as the walls pressed so close to my sides, their icy touch on my skin.

“Who goes there?” called an ancient, reptilian voice that carried ice and sleet with it. Wind rushed by me, frosting my eyebrows.

“Thes!” I yelled, surprised I could even make a sound over my teeth chattering. To say my tunic wasn’t providing adequate cover from the cold was an understatement.

“Thes, how are you?” I felt a hand on my shoulder, so cold it was like someone had touched my skin with liquid nitrogen.

“Okay,” I replied between shivers, glancing behind me to see the Frost peering at me. His ice blue eyes were filled with a mixture of confusion and delight. He gestured with one hand and the space around us opened up, the ice actually receding to allow us room to stand.

“Why are you here?” He asked as he stood up and glanced back at the way I’d come. The movement made his ankle-length, white-blond hair whirl around his black-cocktail-dress-clad body like a cape. “Someone has opened one of the doors to my domain, and I came to see who could possibly be so stupid as to disturb me. Imagine my surprise when I found you of all people.” He rubbed his black goatee with his fingers. “Care to tell me why you’re so very interested in my company, Mr. Mercer?”

“Sure, but I’d rather we did that back in your lair so I don’t get trapped out here in no man’s land.” I smiled at him as best I could, while I got clumsily to my knees. It was a miracle I’d managed it without falling because I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. I sincerely hoped he’d take me somewhere a tad bit warmer to continue our conversation. Who would have thought a frost dragon would like it below freezing? Then again, I guess the cold didn’t bother him anyway.

“Why, Thes, if I didn’t know you had another in your heart, I would think you were anxious for me to take you home.” He cocked a wry smile at me and arched his perfect, white as snow eyebrows a couple times. Before I could respond, he strode forward, entwined his white-gloved fingers in mine, and stepped into the shadows cast by the icy cave. Frosty stairs opened before him like magic, descending into the depths of the ice. More steps didn’t appear in front of him until the moment his foot fell upon them, but that didn’t seem to worry him terribly. Even though he could totally slip off of them, especially since he was wearing a pair of black stilettos so tall, it’d have given even my sister pause.

“Yeah, well, priorities,” I replied, hoping he didn’t lead me off into oblivion, but as soon as the thought flashed through my brain, we appeared at a rather simple looking door carved from the ice. He reached out with his free hand and pushed it open. It was still cold inside, but I could tell it was several degrees warmer than the in-between.

“Indeed.” He released my hand and held the door for me, gesturing for me to enter. “But if you gave me a balloon, I wouldn’t let it go.”

I let those words rattle around in my brain as I stepped past him. Was he coming on to me? The thought made me shudder, and not just because he was male and I was male. No, it was more because he was an immensely powerful dragon who could swallow me whole.

The room itself was pretty much exactly like I remembered it when I’d been here with Sekhmet. That is to say, it was mostly a square covered in a light dusting of blue frost and little else. Bits of furniture were scattered here and there, but they didn’t look very comfortable since they looked like they had been carved from blocks of ice.

The door behind me shut with an ominous click that echoed through the otherwise silent room. I whirled around to see Frost standing there, leaning against the icy door. White mist flowed around him like a cloak as he stared at me with his piercing ice blue eyes.

“Well, Thes, I’ve kept my bargain. You are in my humble home.” He gestured around the room. “Why are you here?”

“Honestly, I sort of have no idea, but I’ll try to explain,” I replied, feeling heat rise on my cheeks as the dragon shook his head in sad acceptance.

“So it isn’t a whole lot different from last time. Very well.” His words made me blush. The last time I had run into him had been pretty similar.

Frost strode past me and sat down on his sofa, evidently ready to accept my lack of knowledge as par for the course. It was a little disconcerting that he thought so little of me, but not nearly as much as when he stretched out so I could see way more of his milk white legs than I cared to see. “Enlighten me to the best of your ability.”

“There’s a being who cannot be named circling his host. When he finally convinces the host to accept him, they will merge and become something called the destroyer. The destroyer will proceed to kill everyone and everything to the best of his abilities.” I took a deep breath as Frost watched me completely impassively. “I am trying to get back into the prison of the gods so I can release Nephthys and Set from the influence of he who cannot be named so they, in turn, will release Horus. Then, hopefully, Horus can rally the gods to fight the destroyer.”

“Seems reasonable,” Frost said when I finished speaking even though what I’d said hardly sounded reasonable to me. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’m not sure. Anubis and Osiris said we were going to go fight Nephthys and Set, but then led me here. I’m assuming you’re supposed to help me somehow.” I gave him a pleading smile.

“Oh, I can help you,” Frost replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “But then you’ll owe me two favors. Is that really what you want?”

“Is there another way?” I asked because I had to ask even though I knew there probably wasn’t.

Frost tapped his chin with one white-gloved finger a couple times as he looked into the distance thinking. “No.”

“Then yes, I’ll owe you two favors,” I said without hesitation because I really had no other choice. I had to rescue Horus. If I didn’t, sure the destroyer would rise and blah, blah, blah, but at the core of it, I didn’t care about that nearly as much as I cared about getting Sekhmet back safe and sound.

I’d tried to keep her imprisonment out of my mind, tried to focus on the mission, but as I stood here in the hollowed out ice cavern with Frost, I remembered how I’d felt when I’d seen her trapped within the ice, battered and bruised. I’d wanted to save her then, and I’d barely known her. Now, well, let’s just say that if all I had to do was owe an ancient, unstoppable dragon an extra favor, I could live with that.

“Very well, I shall lend you some of my power to rescue Horus,” Frost said, studying my face for what felt like an eternity before standing and walking toward me. He pulled his left hand free of his glove and held it out to me. His fingernails gleamed like black ice in the ambient light of the room.

I took his hand and rime exploded across my flesh, turning my blood into ice water and making my heart beat slower and slower in my chest. Frost leaned down and placed his lips against my forehead. The touch of them was like being stabbed in the brain with an icicle while sucking down a mondo-sized slushy. Freezing air whipped up around me, enveloping me in a titanic hurricane of sleet and snow.

“Good bye, Thes. I wish you well,” he said, releasing my hand and allowing the winds to whisk me away. They carried me up through the ice like I was no more substantial than a dream, and as my atoms disassembled themselves, the world spread out before me. It was vast, empty, and cold enough to make Frost seem warm by comparison.

Chapter 17

I hit the ground in a whirlwind of sleet and snow, Frost’s power thrumming through me like electricity. Hoarfrost spread out along the stone where I stood, surveying the room. I was back inside the prison of the gods. Horus’s cage was just a few feet away, still blazing like a funeral pyre though the heat no longer bothered me. I exhaled slowly, and my breath came out in a cloud of white mist. I reached out toward the fire writhing around Horus’s prison and felt the heart of the flames. It pulsed with the burning need to consume and devour, but the fire’s appetite was nothing compared to the senseless hunger of the remorseless winter.