Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) (21 page)

Her hands worked over me like I was a piece of pottery on a wheel, reforming me from nothing, encasing my spirit in a body of flesh. The splotch that had once been me faded away. The process wasn’t painful per se, but it was certainly unlike anything I had ever experienced.

When it was over, I stood there, fully formed and naked in the desert. The cool air of night licked across my skin, making me shiver. It was like how I’d come to Egypt in the first place, but where that had been insufferable and burning. This was cold and strangely appealing, like a glass of ice water on a blazing hot summer’s day.

“How do you feel?” Isis asked, rubbing her chin between her thumb and forefinger as the wind buffeting me transformed into a simple white tunic that fit my frame perfectly. “I think I got you all proportioned correctly, but you didn’t exactly leave me a lot to work with. It’s a good thing I put this on you earlier, or I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.” She held up a crimson scorpion by its tail. The creature was huge and very, very dead.

I swallowed and glanced at my chest. The scorpion that had been tattooed upon my chest was gone. “What the hell was that thing?”

“A death curse, but you died before it went off, so I used the little bit of essence it’d sucked up to rebuild you.” She flung the scorpion into the distance. “This is where you say thank you.”

“Thanks,” I said because what else could I say? She had revived me from being a smudge on the goddamned ground via the death curse she’d put on me. I was alive due to her whims in more ways than one. “I’m guessing falling from heaven broke you free of the destroyer’s influence?”

“It did, and I should be thanking you for freeing me, not the other way around,” she replied and as she said the words, her face brightened. “Wait, I know what to do to thank you!” She reached into the air between us. It was a little strange because her arm, complete with hand, actually vanished into the atmosphere between us. She bit her lip and crinkled her nose, rummaging around inside some kind of weird pocket dimension. After only a moment, she pulled her hand back out and with it came a small golden jar about the size of a human heart.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked, feeling tears tug at the corners of my eyes as relief flooded into me. “Is that Sekhmet’s heart?”

“You know, I’ve always told people I had the heart of a lioness.” She pressed the box into my hands as she spoke. “But this is the first time I could add ‘in a jar on my shelf.’”

I wasn’t listening to her as I wrenched off the lid. A golden heart beat inside. It was Sekhmet’s heart. I had it in my grasp, finally! Before I could stop myself, I pulled it free of the jar. It pumped in my hand, filling me with a joy I couldn’t quite explain.

The emerald pendant Khufu had used to store her body pulsed, and I jerked it off my head, somewhat surprised it had survived my fall and subsequent resurrection. The moment I touched the heart to the pendant, golden flame erupted from them hot enough to make me inadvertently drop them.

They struck the sand with a hiss and quickly reduced it to molten glass. A figure I never thought I’d see again stretched upward from the slag. My heart swelled with relief as tears filled my eyes. I crossed the distance between us and swept her into my arms, half-worried she wasn’t really there at all. Her warmth filled me, radiating into my embrace as I buried my face in her hair.

“Thes, I knew you’d save me,” she said, and her voice was the sweetest music I’d ever heard. “I never lost faith in you. Not even for a moment.” She reached out to me and touched my cheek.

I kissed her. She kissed me back, pressing her mouth into mine as her hands wrapped around my back and drew me against her lithe body.

“Ahem,” Isis said from a few feet away, and even though I was content to ignore her entirely, Sekhmet pulled back and turned to look at the other goddess. Isis pointed upward with one slender finger. Confusion creased Sekhmet’s perfect brows.

“What?” she asked, gazing toward the heavens above. Her body shuddered against mine and not in a good way. “Is that who I think it is? Tell me it cannot be.”

“It is. He has returned. Even now, Apep battles him at the foot of the solar throne. He is losing. But without Horus to help him, surely you can feel the tug of chaos as it recedes into the gentle night.” Isis had her head craned upward. “Horus is trying to come back to help him, but my son doesn’t know the way. He will not make it in time to turn the tides.”

“So where does that leave us?” Sekhmet said and courage filled her voice like a clarion call, bolstering me and making me feel like I could take on an entire army by myself.

“I fear only Thes can stop him now.” Isis looked at us. “I just wish I could tell you why I think that.”

“Me?” I asked as Sekhmet pulled away from me completely. Her sudden lack of closeness left me cold in the night, and I shivered.

“You, Thes,” Sekhmet said, taking my hand in hers. “If Isis says you can stop the destroyer, I believe her. It is foretold after all.”

“How is it foretold?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at her. “I thought all that destiny talk was mumbo jumbo.”

“Because Thes, you come from the future. If the destroyer wins here and now, there is no future. Ipso facto, you have to win.” Sekhmet smiled at me. “Or have you forgotten you weren’t born in ancient Egypt?”

“I haven’t forgotten, but it’s still insane,” I replied, tightening my grip on her hand. “How am I supposed to win against something like him? He decapitated Set with a single blow.”

“Let’s find out,” Sekhmet said with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Isis, find Horus and meet us at the throne.”

I was pretty sure Isis replied, but I never heard her because Sekhmet took that opportunity to wrap one arm around my waist and leap the air with all the strength her godly legs could muster. Wind as hot as the sun whipped around us, but instead of scorching me to my bones, they lifted us up into the heavens as gently as a couple of hot air balloons.

Chapter 23

What was left of the heavens wasn’t exactly heavenly. The clouds had taken on a metallic silver color, and the sky above was the exact same shade, making the world seem to stretch out into eternity. There was a very small sphere of swirling rainbow surrounding Apep, but with each blow the destroyer landed on the snake god, the color surrounding him faded.

Sekhmet took one look at the surroundings and her breath caught in her throat. “How can this be?”

I exhaled through my teeth. “Everyone’s been defeated. Horus and Ra are who knows where and Apep stands alone. Now only darkness remains, but even darkness can be defeated by a light switch.”

Sekhmet studied my face before unslinging her bow. “Well, that’s a depressing sentiment. What happened to the guy who pushed back the void itself to save me? The guy who was swallowed by Apep and fought his way free? Where did he go?” Orange flames leapt across her bow and as she spoke, an arrow of burning fire appeared knocked within.

“He fell off the world and died,” I replied, hopelessness filling my voice as she loosed the bolt.

It didn’t seem like much, no more than a splinter of light in the unceasing, endless gray. I wasn’t sure why the grayness of it seemed so much worse than the oppressive white of the void or the unrelenting dark, but it did. It had something to do with the emptiness of it. The void might be empty, but the void was still something itself. This wasn’t even that. This was less than nothing.

Her arrow struck the destroyer, piercing his wrist as he readied his fist to deliver another blow. It jerked him off his feet and pinned him to the solar throne. Fire leapt across its wicker frame, blazing like a torch as his scream of rage filled the air.

The ground beneath our feet shattered and from the cracks, orange flames burst forth, searing the air and turning the heavens into a blast furnace. The sky above us crackled with energy as Sekhmet fired again and again, burying arrow after arrow in the destroyer, and with each bolt, spots of color no bigger than a bottle cap surfaced here and there.

Unfortunately, her arrows didn’t seem like they were doing much more than angering the destroyer even though I wasn’t sure why. Earlier, he’d seemed to feel injury, but now he was more like an unceasing, unstoppable machine. And the thing about fighting machines was this. You might be able to damage them, but at the end of the day, they didn’t feel pain, and they didn’t get tired.

The destroyer brought his free hand down upon the flaming arrows embedded in his torso, snapping them off and blotting out their fire as he tore his pinned wrist free of the throne, leaving a bloody trail in its wake. He didn’t even grimace.

Apep took the opportunity to blast the destroyer full in the face with a bolt of scarlet lightning. The destroyer toppled backward like a fresh cut tree. But even as he fell, something changed. The heavens seemed to hold their breath and everything stopped. Sekhmet’s arrows, so numerous they blocked out the sky, fell from the air and clattered lifelessly to the ground, their flames extinguished.

“I can feel everything, every last molecule,” the destroyer said, rising to his feet and staring at his open hand in amazement. “I can feel every speck of dust in the air.” A strange look of realization flitted through his dark eyes as he made a fist. The cracks in the ground resealed themselves, smothering the fire within. “And I can make it dance to my whims. It’s amazing.”

A smile crossed his lips as his dark eyes locked on Apep. “I, Ibebi, am a god even among gods. I have nothing to fear, even from fear itself.”

He waved one hand at Apep. The snake god flew backward, unraveling into streams of crimson smoke. As Apep hit the clouds and broke apart, Set’s body tumbled out of him like a broken marionette. The storm god was whole once again but, unfortunately, didn’t look conscious. Even with flesh sloughing off of him like melted candle wax, Apep got to his feet and took an unsteady step toward the destroyer.

“Everyone has something to fear. Those who fear nothing are fools,” Apep murmured. His voice was like a whisper on the wind as he threw his hand out toward the destroyer. As one final blast of lightning leapt from his fingertips and struck the destroyer in the chest, the great god of darkness Apep evaporated into nothing.

The smell of burning sulfur filled the air as the destroyer looked down at the charred spot on his chest and casually brushed it away. “I wondered what would happen if I knocked Set free. I had a thought that perhaps he was still locked away inside the snake god, that perhaps they were just fused together somehow. Turns out I was right.” He shook his head. “Hard to believe I ever feared either of them.”

Sekhmet charged the destroyer who turned to face her like she was an errant toddler. I reached out to stop her, but my hands grasped only air. The destroyer met her head on, driving his knee into her stomach. Her face twisted in agony as blood exploded from her open mouth. His next blow flung her back past me. I wasn’t sure where she landed because as the crack of snapping bone filled my ears, everything inside me broke.

I launched myself forward, my vision red with rage. The destroyer sidestepped my punch like I was moving in slow motion and drove his open palm through my solarplexis. His hand burst out my back in a spray of gore. He wrenched it free with a pleased smile on his lips. I slumped to my knees, blood pouring from my broken body as white smoke swirled around me.

“It seems you have been defeated, Dunewalker.” The destroyer grabbed me by my ears and spun my head. Sekhmet lay on her back so far away she was barely a glimmer on the horizon. Still, even from this distance, I could tell she wasn’t moving. “Your love has been defeated.” He twisted my head toward Set’s unmoving body. “Your last resort is nothing but a fading memory.”

As everything in my field of vision went black and unfocused, his smiling yellow teeth filled my eyes. “Tell me, Dunewalker, why did you come back? To die at my hands?” He flung me to the ground, but I didn’t feel the impact. “Because that can be arranged.”

A strange sort of calm settled over me as I watched the smile on Ibebi’s smug face transform into one of pure glee. Here he was, just some normal guy, and when given great power, had crushed us all.

“I am unstoppable, Thes Mercer.” He loomed over me, one fist raised to end my life. “Me, a son of a lowly reed gatherer, but I have defeated Ra himself.”

As the destroyer brought his fist down, the white mist floating around me congealed around his arm. It tightened around his every last muscle, binding him and dragging to him knees. A horrific scream tore from Ibebi’s throat as silver light exploded from within him, rushing from his mouth, ears, and nose. It spewed upward into the air like molten metal, but unlike molten metal did not fall back to earth. It hung there above us like a single pulsating cloud.

Ibebi’s body convulsed as he fell backward, clawing and scratching at the white mist clinging to him. Suddenly, there were clouds again. The silver above us began to fade and moonlight shined through.

The black mass of darkness that had been Ibebi’s soul, burst forward from his mouth like the pulsating molten cloud had done. It almost seemed like it was giving chase, only, as it tried to mix with the silver cloud, a familiar looking hand wrapped around it and jerked it backward.

Ibebi shrieked, and the rage in that tortured cry nearly stopped my barely beating heart.

“No, you don’t get to escape,” Connor said as he turned, still little more than a cloud of white mist in the barest shape of a man. “Not after what you’ve done.” And with those words, Ibebi burst into silver flames. They ate up his screaming, flailing soul until there was nothing left.

“How?” I croaked and was surprised the word reached past my lips.

Connor smiled at me before kneeling down next to me and running one ghastly hand over my gaping chest wound. Energy filled me as white light filled in my flesh, forcing it to knit itself back together. “I couldn’t let some guy kill my very best friend. Not after everything he’s done for me. He went back in time to save me. Who does that?”

The cloud above us pulsed, and Connor cocked his head toward it like he was listening to something only he could hear. He nodded once.