Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) (7 page)

“Are you quoting Star Wars at me right now?” I asked, somewhat incredulous. “That is not helpful.”

“It’s a classic that I may or may not have seen,” he said before making a buzzing noise and pretending to slice me in half with an invisible sword. “Besides, you’re a time traveling werewolf. Will you ever really be gone? You could die and appear three seconds later.”

“I’m not some time traveler visiting his wife,” I said, getting angry at the pharaoh even though this wasn’t his fault, not really. Was destiny really expecting me to fight a guy called the destroyer? How was I supposed to do that? It seemed impossible, not just for me, but even for Superman and Luke Skywalker, unless… “What if we just kill the host before the destroyer inhabits him?”

“It seems like a good plan, but it’s impossible. The host is an ordinary person in the midst of the supernatural. He is the one who wants more than anything to stand astride his peers as an equal. He’s the token normal guy, given incredible power. Even if we could find him, he’s not exactly unique. No, if the destroyer is here, killing his host will only delay the inevitable.” Khufu shrugged. “It’s been tried before.”

“How long does it delay the destroyer for?” I asked, trying to decide whether or not I would kill a totally normal person to stop a monster from rising. I wasn’t sure.

Instead of responding, Khufu shrugged and placed his hand on the statue of Anubis’s snout and pressed downward, pushing the teeth together. The door began to shake, creaking like a badly oiled spring as the ground beneath our feet rumbled. I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t even realized we had walked up to the door.

Purple light burst from the statue. Its eyes, the size of fist-sized amethysts, threw fractured light across the room. Khufu backed up to where I stood and watched, eyes shielded with one hand. Crackling webs of light splintered out along the surface of the stone, glowing brighter by the second, and after only a moment, I was forced to cover my eyes and look away to keep from going blind. Even still, spots danced across my vision.

A sharp crack echoed out across the cavern, splintering my hearing into a sharp, jagged ringing. Without thinking, I spun toward the statue to see the door gone. Anubis stood in its place, his body covered from head to toe in gilded armor. He held an impossibly decorated spear the color of obsidian in his right hand. His eyes narrowed, and the weight of his gaze would have made me cringe away if I hadn’t felt the destroyer’s gaze a moment before. Compared to that, this was nothing.

“What do you want?” he asked, glaring at me. “Bast isn’t available at the moment.”

My cheeks burned as I looked up at him, my mouth hanging open as I tried to get my sluggish brain to form a coherent thought better than
my, what big teeth you have
.

“We’re not here to see your feline companion,” Khufu said, stepping past me and blocking me from view as much as he could with his massive, linebacker-sized body. “We’re here to help you find Osiris, oh great god of the dead.”

“How do you mean to find Osiris, when even I have not been able to do so?” Anubis asked, taking an ominous step forward as literal flames danced in his eyes.

I fought the urge to say, “see, told you so,” to Khufu because I’d asked him the exact same thing earlier. I doubted Anubis would take it well if the pharaoh told him the reason he hadn’t found Osiris was because he’d been too busy and hadn’t tried hard enough. No one tended to like it when they were told they just didn’t want something bad enough. After all, for every breakout success there were fifty more people who worked just as hard if not harder and never succeeded. Life was sort of sucky that way.

“You make an excellent point,” Khufu said, sauntering forward, one hand inching toward his khopesh as he flailed in front of himself with his other hand. I’d caught the movement toward his weapon, but judging from the look on the god’s face, he hadn’t noticed. I wasn’t sure what Khufu had planned, but I was reasonably sure both Anubis and I wouldn’t like it. “But you’re missing something important.”

“What’s that?” Anubis asked, before Khufu rammed his khopesh through Anubis’s jugular in one quick motion and wrenched the blade sideways. The Egyptian god’s head fell to the sand as his body collapsed to its knees. Only there was no blood. None at all. I’d seen gods get disemboweled before, hell, I’d seen them get beheaded and there was always blood. Always.

Instead, black smoke spewed from the wound, filling the corridor in the space of a second with choking, noxious gas. The cloud solidified in the air above us, forming into a monstrous face that stared down at us with glowing purple eyes.

“How dare you!” the cloud screamed, and the sound was like a thousand flies having their wings torn off simultaneously.

“Indeed,” Khufu said, but before he could do anything else, the face slammed into his chest like a comet, flinging him backward as it burrowed inside him. He hit the ground hard on his back, spine bowed painfully. The body of Anubis crumbled into gray powder as I raced toward the fallen mummy. I’d barely gotten to him, even though it was only a couple meters away, when the last of the smoke wormed inside of him, leaving Khufu laying there with his eyes vacant.

Purple ringed the edges of his eye sockets as he turned his gaze upon me and blinked several times. His flesh had taken a yellow, sickly quality to it, and as he tried to get to his feet, he collapsed forward onto his face. I grabbed him beneath the arms and hauled him upright, but even still he put nearly all of his weight on me. His muscles trembled as he craned his head toward me and shook his head languidly.

“Before you ask,” he wheezed. “No, I’m not okay. It feels like my blood has been replaced with molten gold.”

“How do we fix it?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.

“You don’t fix it.” He coughed, shaking his head. “That thing kills whoever kills it. Some kind of death curse” Khufu tried to swallow and wound up coughing violently. Yellow phlegm sprayed from his lips and splattered across one of my arms. My stomach nearly revolted. “That’s why I did the honors on that imposter,” he continued, wiping slime from his mouth with one forearm. “I’m already dead so the joke is on him.”

“Are you insane?” I yelled, shaking him even though that caused him to cry out in pain.

“Maybe a little,” he capitulated, gripping my wrist. “Either way, we need to find the real Anubis and fast.”

“No, I have to figure out a way to save you.”

“No, Thes, you don’t. As I said, I’m already dead. This will pass. Besides, finding Anubis can’t wait.”

I let out a slow breath as I studied him closely, trying to decide if he was lying. If he was, I was going to find a way to resurrect him so I could kill him for lying to me. “Where do you think he is?” I asked after the silence between us had stretched into an eternity.

Khufu pointed toward the open door, and I could have sworn the tip of his finger was made of stone. “Hopefully, through that door because I doubt I’m going to be doing much more than lying down for a while.” He took a wobbly step away from me and lost his balance. Thankfully, I caught him before he collapsed completely, but it was a near thing, especially since he was so heavy.

“Let’s just take this slow,” I whispered, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. I was terrified by what that thing had done to Khufu. Sure he’d betrayed me, made fun of me, and been mostly a jerk, but he’d always been sort of open about it, and besides, I sort of liked him. There, I admitted it.

“Okay.” Khufu nodded, hobbling along like his joints were as stiff as boards. “That’s a good idea.”

It took a while, but we eventually made our way inside, and I almost wished we hadn’t. The place was trashed. It reminded me of those crime scene photos you see of houses that had been ransacked. Every single statue and all of the furniture had all been toppled over and smashed. The once plush green carpet was marred and stained with a variety of foul smelling goop. Even the torches lining the walls were broken, and the ones that were lit, seemed to have seen far better days.

“Um…” I swallowed. “What the hell happened here?”

“Seems like someone was looking for something they didn’t find.” Khufu tried to smile at me but wound up looking like he was going to hurl. “Or did find. I have no idea.”

“You’re not being very helpful,” I replied as I sat him down on a relatively clean patch of carpet and turned a relatively stain-free couch right side up. “Now get on there and lie down. I’ll look around more.”

“What if something tries to eat me?” Khufu asked, an uncharacteristic look of fear flashing across his face as he climbed onto the couch and flopping into its soft pink cushions like a half-dead fish.

“I don’t think you really have to worry about things like that, but if something does eat you, try to give it indigestion.” I smirked and turned away from him so he wouldn’t see how worried I was. If there was truly something dark and horrible here, well, it’d probably kill Khufu before his curse could do its job.

I made my way toward the only other door in the room. It was made of dark wood and bound in gold. It was also slightly ajar. I pushed it open and peered into the surprisingly well-lit hallway beyond.

The ground was covered with glowing blue stones and as I padded forward inside, warm, moist air clung to my skin like a wet breath. I moved forward anyway, my hand reaching down to pat the khopesh on my leg. Which was when I realized I no longer had it.

I cursed. I must have lost it during my battle with the skeletons. Speaking of which, that was a little weird, right? I mean, okay we were in ancient Egypt and in the land of the dead, I think, but still, those soldiers looked like they could have come from the civil war. They shouldn’t exist yet, and that said nothing about the knights. Something weird was definitely going on.

And what was with Khufu suddenly making pop culture references? He’d never done that before, and now he was quoting Star Wars at me? Had I entered loonyville? Was I going to wake up and find myself in a mental hospital? I sure hoped not. If I was delusional, I hoped my delusions had way more naked women in them. Just saying. Besides, if I’d dreamed up my girlfriend getting decapitated by Isis, I had real psychological problems.

A smirk crossed my lips as I approached the end of the hallway. Three doors stood around me in a semi-circle, each sparkling like polished glass. The one to the left of me was dark indigo, and the colors of the entire space changed in a rainbow-colored gradient so the door to my right was completely filled with oranges and reds.

I sighed, not sure what one to pick, and decided to just go with orange because it was the new black and would therefore be where I’d hold a captured death god. Besides, nothing bad was ever orange, right? You know, except fire.

The sight of a thousand white kittens all sitting in the middle of a red rug, lapping cream from golden saucers greeted me when I pushed the orange door open. Bast sat just beyond them, her chin in her hands as she stared at them. She looked up at me and smiled.

“Oh, hello, Thes. How are things?” She stood and stretched, her mouth opening in a wide yawn to reveal her tongue amidst rows of teeth, thousands of teeth. Only I barely noticed because I was instantly very aware of how confined her ample curves were by her tight black cat suit. “Did you miss me?”

Chapter 9

“Um, hi, Bast,” I sputtered, my voice catching in my throat as she sauntered toward me, every movement slow and sensual. She met my gaze, and there was very real heat within her sparkling eyes.

“You didn’t answer my question.” She pressed one black fingernail against my chest and trailed it down my body.

“Oh?” I squeaked, looking around for somewhere to hide, but the sparsely furnished room didn’t exactly offer anywhere to go. Rats.

“I asked if you missed me.” She licked her lips, slowly tracing the outline of her mouth with her tongue. “I heard you found another cat to replace me.” She pouted, pressing her body against mine as she sidled around me. “Haven’t you learned there’s no kitty quite like me?”

Her hands snaked around me from behind, wrapping around my stomach. She raised them slowly, her nails scratching at my flesh through my clothing and making a small sound escape my lips. “Um…” I managed to say before she released me and took a step back.

I turned as she reached out and pulled the door closed behind her. Dread swept through me as it clicked shut, and I realized, to my horror, she stood between me and the only exit. I must have had a worried look on my face because she raised one eyebrow and made a tsking sound.

“What’s wrong? Don’t want to be all alone with me?” she asked, a hint of sadness tingeing her voice as she stepped close to me and wrapped herself around me. She was so warm, I could barely think past it. Somehow, I managed to reach out and grip her shoulders. She leaned down, pressing her lips to my neck. I pushed her away.

“We’re not alone,” I whispered and motioned toward the kittens who were all watching us with unblinking eyes. It was really creepy.

“They don’t count, Thes,” she said, leaning close so her words were hot on my neck before she nuzzled my shoulder with the top of her head. “I’m starting to think you’re making excuses.” Her fingernails trailed down the nape of my neck as she spoke. “Is there something else you’re interested in?”

“Where’s Anubis?” I asked, trying to pull the conversation back toward where I wanted it to go. Bast was throwing me off, and not in a good way. She’d always been, well, aggressive, but not quite like this. No, she was like Bast gone wild, and I was reasonably sure I didn’t want to participate in whatever that was.

She scowled at me before taking two quick steps back so her back was pressed against the orange door. “He’s gone. Vanished. Disappeared.” She dropped her hands to her sides, and a breath shuddered out of her. “I woke up, and he’d left without a trace. That was so long ago, I can barely remember it.” She looked up at me, eyes filled with unspent tears. “I’ve been taking care of the underworld all on my own. Cats aren’t meant for that kind of responsibility. We’re meant to roam free, not attend meetings on rigid schedules.”