Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) (2 page)

“We can’t very well leave her body lying around in the desert, can we?” He pressed the pendant into my grip. “There are lots of things that would love to find a perfectly good body, especially one fit to hold a god, and let me tell you right now, you wouldn’t like any of them, even if they weren’t inhabiting the body of your girlfriend.”

My fingers closed around the pendant in my hand, and from within it, I felt the faintest spark of life. I swallowed. I would save her or die trying.

Chapter 2

“So, what’s your plan, exactly?” Khufu asked as we trudged through the sand. I wasn’t quite sure where we were going and was relying on Khufu to lead me to the others. Yes, I recognize that as far as bad plans went, following the lying pharaoh was a pretty horrible one. The last time, it’d gotten me swallowed by a giant monster and assaulted by mindreading spiders. It wasn’t an experience I cared to relive, so you’d think I’d have learned from it. I hadn’t.

“Find Horus and free him?” I asked, choosing my words carefully. “Am I missing something?”

“I’m not going to say your plan is bad per se, but it sure leaves some things to be desired.” Khufu pointed off into the distance at what looked like a black speck of rock so many miles away it could have been considered a league of miles. “You plan to storm into the prison of the gods and demand deities almost as old as time itself release Horus?”

“They’d damn well better,” I snapped, pressing my right thumb into the center of my chest. “I’m the Dunewalker after all. You know, the tragic hero destined to face down countless horrors throughout time and space. That makes me awesome, and besides, I saved the freaking world. The least they can do is release Horus. I’m not sure why you think they won’t.”

“Oh, I think they will.” Khufu nodded once, still not taking his eyes off the speck. “I’m worried we won’t actually find Set and Nephthys to ask them.”

I stopped in my tracks and stared at the pharaoh. He continued walking for a moment, either not noticing I wasn’t following him anymore or not caring. Knowing him, it was probably not caring.

“Why are we going to a place where they aren’t?” I asked, barely resisting the urge to transform into a hulking werewolf and rip the mummy in half. It might be tough to actually tear him in half, especially since I hadn’t had a good meal and a night’s sleep in a while, but I was sure I could manage. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, after all.

“I’m taking you to Horus’s prison, but that doesn’t mean Set and Nephthys will still be there. More than likely, we’ll have to deal with petty bureaucrats. I’m not sure what your dealings with the government are like in your time and country, but here it’s like being pecked to death by ducks, and let me tell you, ducks don’t have the sharpest of beaks.” He turned as he spoke, but when he saw me, his eyes widened in horror. At first, I thought he was scared of me standing there, trying to decide if I was going to eat him or not, but then I realized he was staring at my torso. He held up one finger and pointed at my chest. “What the hell is that?”

I looked down at my body, and my breath caught in my throat. Embossed into the flesh of my chest was a scorpion with its tail and claws upraised so the design sort of looked like an Egyptian ankh. The barest tip of the tail was blood red, veiny, and pulsing while the rest of it was a sort of flat sky blue color.

“I have no idea but get it off!” I yelped like a little girl and batted at it with my hands, but it felt like my skin, only warmer. Needless to say, my pathetic attempts to simultaneously squish it and brush it away did nothing other than make my chest hurt. This wasn’t good at all. I didn’t know what it was, but the thought of having some kind of weird magical tattoo attached to me didn’t make me exceedingly happy. In fact, it downright terrified me. For all I knew, at this very moment, it was dissolving my insides.

Khufu stared at me as I beat at my flesh, his face still plastered with shock. He shook himself like a great dog and reached forward, touching my skin with one large finger. His ran it to and fro for a couple seconds as I watched him, panting with fright.

“I think you’re cursed,” Khufu said, voice low and scared. “I have no idea what the symbols mean but they speak of Isis.” He looked at his finger, probably making sure I wasn’t infectious before shifting his eyes back toward me and pointed at the demonic scorpion tattoo. “The ankh is her symbol of life and the scorpion is one of her power creatures.” He shrugged in a way that suggested if it walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, it was probably a horrible curse bestowed upon my once pristine flesh by the Egyptian Goddess of Sucktitude.

“Why is it bleeding?” I asked, totally keeping the tremor out of my voice as a miniscule amount of red filled in more of the tail. The image became even more three dimensional which should have been impossible given it was made from my skin, but there it was.

“I’m guessing it’s some kind of timer. I’m not sure what happens when it fills with blood, but I’m assuming nothing good.” Khufu swallowed and glanced back toward the speck in the distance. “We’d better hurry.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, swallowing my fear. He started jogging, and I did my best to keep up with him. It should have been easy since I was quite a bit taller than the mummy, and therefore had much longer strides, but he had supernatural speed and endurance on his side, whereas I did not. Stupid puny human form.

Ten minutes later, my lungs were about to explode from exertion while the pharaoh kept going like a supernatural train, never slowing, never leaving his path. If this kept up, I was going to have to ask for a break or transform into a werewolf. I was loathe to do either. For one, I wanted to get there as soon as possible so breaks were out and while calling on Wepwawet, my wolf, would empower me, it’d also reduce my overall energy reserves.

That didn’t seem like an especially awesome idea given we might have to argue with Set and Nephthys, both of whom were Egyptian freaking deities. Let me tell you, fighting gods was tough. I’d done it before and most of the time, barely scrapped by. To say I was really hoping they’d just let the falcon god go was an understatement of mythic proportions. Still, if they said no, I had to try. You always have to try. There’s no other way to win. At least, that’s what my football coach always told me. Usually right before we lost, but still.

The scorpion on my chest didn’t hurt or itch, but I couldn’t help scratching at it anyway. The creature felt real, and I could have sworn its beady, lifeless eyes were watching me. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before Khufu pointed it out. You’d think I would have, but then again, I’m probably the least observant werewolf in Ancient Egypt. I was guessing Isis must have cursed me when she broke all my ribs. It seemed a bit extreme if you asked me, but then again, I had tried to tear out her throat with my claws.

I mean, so what if I’d attacked Isis, one of the most powerful deities in all of Egypt. I’d been consumed with soul crushing rage and sadness because she had
torn out my girlfriend’s heart.
Still. Isis. And she’d dropped me like a bad habit before tearing out Sekhmet’s heart with her bare hands and shoving it in a voodoo glow jar.

And here I was going to go argue with her brother and sister? That was my big plan? Argue with two larger than life deities? Maybe Khufu was right. Maybe we needed a better plan. A chill ran down my body as I thought about it.

While I had worked with both of them to stop Apep, that didn’t mean we had any sort of understanding. After all, they were gods. I was a mortal, Dunewalker or not. If they felt keeping Horus chained up in godly purgatory was a good idea, I wasn’t going to be able to make them stop by force, that was for sure. Still, it wasn’t like I had a choice. I had to ask them to let the deity go. Who knows, maybe they would. Then again, monkeys might also fly out of my butt.

Chapter 3

“You should let me in,” I growled, glaring at the jackal-headed guardian standing at the entrance to the prison of the gods. It was a squat building about seven feet tall and twenty feet wide behind a fairly standard gate. It wasn’t really much to look at except for the fact it was made from
solid freaking gold
.

The baboon-faced guard to the left snorted. His black nostrils widening as he did so. Then he scratched his chin with one slender fingernail. The jackal just narrowed his scarlet eyes at me and adjusted his grip on his golden spear.

“You really should let him in,” Khufu said from several feet away. He was hidden behind a large boulder, barely peeking his head over the top to watch our confrontation like a gigantic wuss. “He’s prone to fits of insanity.”

I narrowed my eyes and tried my best to look intimidating as the left guard grinned, revealing a mouthful of razor sharp teeth. It was sort of eerie because he had a monkey face, and in my experience, monkeys were supposed to be funny and pleasant. His mouthful of daggers was anything but.

“You do not scare me,” the baboon said, voice so high pitched it made my ears hurt.

“I should. Did you know one time I ate an entire bag of pop rocks while drinking extra carbonated soda. What have you ever done?” I asked, taking a step forward and poking ape-face in the chest with my index finger. His golden armor was warm enough to burn me if I kept pressing me on it. So I didn’t. Still, it made me wonder if he was wearing something between it and his skin. It didn’t look like he was because it was open in seemingly random places, but he had to be, right? No one in their right mind would wear armor made of burning metal against their flesh. Hell, most people didn’t wear normal armor directly against their skin.

“I walked the plains of the underworld, my flesh scraped raw and bleeding as I fought off a horde of undead. They came for forty days and forty nights in an ever widening, never ending stream of claws and teeth. My companions fell all around me, their screams shattering the night air. Still, I stood tall. Still, I stood firm. My body and mind in service to the truth, the good, the way.” The jackal guard stepped forward and looked down on me, which was easy since he was a couple feet taller than me. “And you tell me of the time you had a stomach ache?”

I suddenly felt like a complete idiot. My cheeks flushed as the jackal shoved me. Not hard mind you but enough to move me out of his companion’s face. “You have nothing to say for yourself?” the jackal admonished with a shake of his furry, black as coal head.

“Not to that, no. It sounds pretty freaking horrible.” I swallowed, trying to regain my composure. I mean, I’d fought Apep face to face, claw to fang, but somehow that seemed less harrowing than fighting an army of undead while they
ate
my friends.

“Let’s start this again,” the ape said, looking past me toward Khufu. “Why have you come to the prison of the gods?”

“We need them to release Horus to stop Isis from going on the warpath,” Khufu said, still cowering behind his boulder.

Evidently, I was being ignored by the guards which sort of sucked, but then again, with tall, dark, and scary as hell staring at Khufu instead of me, I felt pretty happy to stay out of the conversation.

“You are aware she has already spoken to her siblings and they told her no, correct?” the ape asked, gesturing toward the sky with the point of his spear.

“I had sort of assumed that had occurred, yes,” Khufu replied, very slowly moving from behind his boulder. “Otherwise, she probably wouldn’t have torn the still beating heart from Sekhmet’s chest and forced Thes to journey here.”

The ape glanced at me sideways. “Sekhmet is imprisoned?” he asked, the barest trace of emotion in his voice. He almost seemed empathetic. It was weird because previously he’d sounded as empathetic as a mafia boss after he’d just buried an axe in the skull of a man he loved like a brother. Was it because of Sekhmet? If so, why? What did this guy have to do with my girlfriend? Unless… No, he couldn’t be one of her exes, could he? I sure hoped not because I already didn’t like him. That would just seal the deal.

“By Isis, yes,” Khufu said, walking up to us. “So if you’ll just let us pass, we can release Horus and save her.”

“Not going to happen,” the jackal guard said, moving forward and placing his hand on his companion’s shoulder. “Sekhmet isn’t worth going against Set.” It was a little weird because the last part of his statement seemed to be directed more at his compatriot than at us. It kind of pissed me off. It was like when my Alpha back home addressed the entire pack with a comment aimed directly at me.

“Just tell them we beat you up,” I said, now that I was no longer nose to chest with the jackal guard.

They both started laughing, the sound of it loud enough to echo across the desolate plains of the desert. Tears streamed from their eyes as they struggled for breath between gasps of amusement.

“To think you,” the jackal gasped.

“Could beat us,” the other added, slapping his partner on the back and wiping tears from his eyes with one meaty forearm.

“Laughable,” the jackal confirmed, snorting like a donkey as he sought to catch his breath.

“Hey! What do I look like, chopped liver?” I narrowed my eyes as Wepwawet, the wolf inside my brain as he very pointedly shook his head at me. What the hell was he so scared of? We’d fought Apep and Horus. What the hell were these two?

“Liver is very tasty,” the baboon said and his tongue snaked out to lick his chops as he eyed me hungrily.

“Indeed. Especially with spices.” The jackal nodded. “I do so enjoy liver and spices. So many vital nutrients.”

“Are they talking about eating my liver?” I asked, glancing sideways at Khufu who seemed absolutely petrified. He didn’t even glance in my direction when I spoke, and while that should have scared me, all it did was confuse me.

I mean, who the hell were these guys? I was the freaking Dunewalker, right? Mythical werewolf hero. These were two slack jawed guards. I narrowed my eyes and took a step forward, my sandaled feet sinking in the soft butter-colored sand.

“I feel like we should fight,” I growled, my hands tightening into fists even as Wepwawet furiously shook his head no. “You know, for the sake of my pride. Still, it wouldn’t even be fair because there are only
two
of you.”