“Which is why I said find. Honestly, Thes, learn to keep up.” The mummy smiled at me, and I wondered if his statement had a double meaning. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find him.”
“The other gods haven’t found him…” I let my words hang in the air and not because my lungs were burning from the pace.
“I think that might be because they’ve been too busy to look for him effectively, what with the mummy uprising and Apep on the loose. Gods are busy creatures, and what’s more, they don’t really care about each other all that much.” He shrugged. “You should avoid their family dinners, should you ever find yourself invited.”
“So your big plan is for us to just go and find Osiris because the gods haven’t tried hard enough?” I asked, barely resisting the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake the stupid out of him.
“Unless you have any other bright ideas,” Khufu offered, raising one bushy eyebrow at me. When I shook my head, he continued. “We’re going to start by going to the temple of Osiris and asking them to help us. Since we won’t be concerned about making the pesky mortals bow down and worship our awesomeness, I’m sure they’ll talk to us.”
“And if they don’t?” I asked, remembering how the priests at the temple of Ra hadn’t exactly been forthcoming. Then again, they’d been infinitely more helpful than the priests in Set’s temple, you know, because they’d all been killed.
“Then I give you my permission to eat them.” Khufu grinned. “Unless you don’t think you can beat up some eighty year old priests.” I was about to spout off about how Menes had just gotten lucky, but thought better of it. Something told me that the guy wouldn’t appreciate it, especially since he had made a point of remarking on it beforehand. No, I had no choice but to accept the obvious. That guy had opened up a can of whoop ass on me and there’d been nothing I could do about it.
“You just wait,” I said, chewing on my words. “One of these days I’m going to come upon a monk wandering the desert, and he’s going to teach me all sorts of martial arts. Then I’ll come back here and stomp a mud hole in that guy’s ass.” I jerked my thumb in the direction I hoped the prison of the gods stood.
“You know, Thes,” Khufu said, stopping to look at me with a deathly serious expression on his face. “I could train you.”
I stared at him for a long while, trying to decide if he was joking, but it really didn’t seem like he was. “To fight?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, shrugging his massive shoulders. “I am a pharaoh. We’re all taught how to fight. In fact, we have the best tutors in the whole land.” Then he dropped into a fighting stance and began shadowboxing at me, circling around me as he bobbed and weaved. “I can teach you how to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. I trained that other guy, and he turned out okay, so I’m sure I can train you.”
“Other guy?” I asked as Khufu continued to throw punches at a nonexistent bad guy.
“Yeah,” Khufu grinned. “This one time a gorgon broke into Hades tomb of the damned, and I helped stop it. As thanks, I got to spend a few days topside.”
“Is that so?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at the mummy. I had a feeling he was lying, but he didn’t seem like he was. Then again, this was Khufu, all of his stories had to be taken with a heaping bucket of salt.
Khufu stopped shadowboxing and stared off into space like he was remembering a particularly fond memory. “Yeah, I met a young kid while I was out and about. I taught him a few things to keep him from getting beat up.”
“Uh, huh,” I said, walking past him. “Let me know when you have a true story to tell.”
“If you don’t believe me, you could ask him. He might still be alive.” Khufu shrugged.
“Oh? What’s his name?” I asked, half chastising myself for going along with the pharaoh’s obvious delusion. It would be just like him to send me to ask someone who had never heard of him. Then the person would look at me like I was a crazy person while Khufu laughed his butt off.
“Cassius Clay, Jr.” Khufu stared at me so seriously it was unnerving.
“And now I know you’re lying,” I replied, laughing at his audacity. “You honestly expect me to believe that?”
“Go ask him when you get back.” Khufu dared. “Either way, I can still train you.”
“Yeah, I’m good.” I smirked. “I’ll wait for my badass shaolin monk.”
“Suit yourself. But if you come crawling back to me asking for training, I’ll tell you exactly what I told that George Foreman guy.” Khufu grinned at me. “I don’t want a damn grill.”
“And this is exactly why I dislike you beyond words,” I replied, shaking my head as we began walking across the sand toward the temple of Osiris so we could find a god no other gods had been able to locate. It sounded crazy, but so had the idea of Khufu training Muhammad Ali and I’d almost believed that. Almost.
“Whatever, Thes. You love me.” Khufu socked me on the shoulder. The pain of it radiated down the entire side of my body, but I ignored it. “Admit it.”
“No,” I said, turning to fix him with my best glare but stopped short when he held out his palm toward me, displaying two small seashells the color of lilacs. I barely remembered them. We’d found them while searching for some sort of magical object to stop Apep, but I had no idea what they were supposed to do. He must have kept them. Then again, he’d kept a lot of the stuff we’d found, so that wasn’t really a huge surprise.
“If you don’t admit it, I won’t let you have one of these.” He waggled the seashells at me. “And I know you want one so we don’t have to walk the several miles to Osiris’s temple.”
“I don’t even know what those do, so I’m not telling you a damn thing.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.
“These seashells, when eaten, teleport the eater to the temple of Osiris. I’ll admit, it’s sort of a single use item but being that we want to go there, seems to be just the thing to get us there. As long as you admit you love me,” he replied, a smug expression on his face. “Clock’s ticking.”
“Hatred. Overwhelming.” I said, exhaling explosively.
“Time’s almost up.” He popped one seashell in his mouth and stuck his tongue out at me. The seashell rested on the very tip. “You know what happens when I swallow this?” he asked, but it was hard to make out since his tongue was out of his mouth. “I get transported to the temple of Osiris, leaving you to wander the desert alone.” He began slowly retracting his tongue into his mouth. “Enjoy your walk.”
“Fine,” I growled, narrowing my eyes at him and holding my left hand out toward him palm up. “I like you.”
“You say like, but I know it’s more.” Khufu dropped the other seashell in my palm. “Now eat your seashell like a good boy.” He swallowed his own and vanished, leaving behind only the faintest smell of salty sea air in his wake.
I stood there, hoping I wasn’t getting tricked before shrugging. Even if it was a trick, what else was I going to do? Wander around lost in the desert? I sighed, and going against the little voice in my head telling me not to trust the insidious pharaoh, stuck the seashell in my mouth. The taste of grapefruit filled the entirety of my being as I swallowed the shell. Heat spread through my body as my vision blurred and distorted. What felt like warm sea water covered my limbs, dragging me down beneath its gentle embrace as everything around me faded into the ether.
Chapter 5
The surrounding scenery congealed into a purplish mass that sort of resembled grape jelly. I stood on a lone platform, the color of lavender sequins. The star filled sky raced by like I was in the cockpit of a spaceship going near light speed, but it didn’t feel like I was moving. I swallowed, trying to figure out what the hell was going on as I spun in a slow circle. There was nothing on this platform, and while it was about a hundred square feet or so in size, it was a little disconcerting because there was only the vast emptiness of space in every direction. If I fell off, I was reasonably sure I’d fall forever.
> Khufu sat cross legged in the center of the platform, and as I turned back toward him, he stood. He wasn’t dressed in his traditional Egyptian armor anymore and was instead dressed remarkably similar to a shaolin monk. He wore baggy orange pants and a loose fitting orange top with the Japanese symbol for wisdom embroidered on the left side of his chest in black. His waist was cinched with a dark blue sash.
“Glad you could make it, Thes.” Khufu gestured at our surroundings. “We’ll be here for quite a while, so make yourself at home.”
“Where the hell are we?” I tried to stifle my rage as the mummy approached me, strangely serious. “Where have you taken me?”
“This is the final destination,” Khufu replied. “Here, we are outside of space and time. It was created as a place for people to train and battle with no distractions. There is no real world to worry about, no magical items to use.” He smirked. “No one to hear you scream.”
“And why are we here when we’re supposed to be finding Osiris so he can release Horus, thereby rescuing Sekhmet?” I asked, incredulously. “And why are you dressed like that? shaolin monks haven’t even been invented yet.”
“I thought it would be fitting since you wanted to be trained by a shaolin monk.” He poked me in the chest with one stubby finger, and I realized I wore a similar outfit only mine had no symbol. Where had my tunic gone?
“We don’t have time for this,” I replied, my hands curling into fists.
“You’re weak, Thes. So far you’ve been lucky you haven’t been killed outright.” He shrugged. “You have no skill, no chance of beating someone who knows what they are doing. Here’s a newsflash, Thes, the things you will face from here on out are stronger, faster, and better than you. If you don’t up your game, you will die.”
Khufu gestured, and as he did so, a glimmering rent in space appeared at his fingertips. Through it I could see the outcroppings of a temple, huge statues of Osiris sitting outside. People bustled about it in preparation for something I didn’t understand.
“If you want to leave. Go. I won’t stop you. I’ll even join you, and we can both go get killed together.” Khufu pointed at me. “But if you really want to save everyone, you’ll let me train you to use your natural abilities to your advantage.”
“So you’re going to train me in Kung Fu?” I asked incredulously.
“Among other things. And don’t give me that whole Kung Fu won’t be invented thing. Need I remind you, I’ve spent millennia as an undead mummy. I’ve learned a few things, grasshopper.” Khufu sucked in a deep breath and exhaled through his teeth. “And before you give me another excuse, let me remind you of what I said earlier. We’re outside of time and space right now. We’ll go back to Egypt and only a few moments will have passed. It will be even better because we will appear at Osiris’s temple.”
“So you weren’t lying about transporting us there?” I asked, gritting my teeth as I mulled over his words. As much as I wanted to be back out there doing something, he had a point. I mean, I’d just gotten thrown three miles by someone who had only hit the air in front of me. To say I was out of my league was an understatement of gigantic proportions.
Still, anytime we spent here, even if it didn’t count in the real world, was time spent not saving Sekhmet. The thought gnawed at me, making me ache at the idea of purposefully delaying my journey to find her. However, I wouldn’t be able to save her from people like Menes if I didn’t get better and fast. Otherwise, I’d just wind up getting my face caved in and Sekhmet would be trapped forever. No! I couldn’t allow that. I had to get strong enough to save her. I owed her that much.
“Nope, we’re just taking a little detour for now.” Khufu snapped his fingers, and the portal vanished, leaving us standing there in the abject darkness of the final destination. “Now, are you ready to brawl?”
I nodded in spite of myself. Werewolves typically didn’t train, but well, I was starting to think that was foolish. Maybe I’d have been able to do more if I was trained. My friend Lillim had taken down gods by herself, and she had told me it was because of her training. That was her people’s whole thing. Even though they were often physically outmatched, they usually won because they trained so hard. Werewolves didn’t do that because, well, we were werewolves. That tactic hadn’t really helped much in my last fight where I’d gotten punched in the face so hard the wind broke my face. It was time to learn a thing or two.
“Yeah, let’s do this.” I raised my fists and dropped into a fighting stance in front of Khufu, trainer of Muhammad Ali and master of shaolin Kung Fu.
“Okay,” Khufu replied, studying me as he walked around me in a slow circle. “Firstly, you’ve watched too many movies. Your stance is all wrong.” He kicked my feet out a little bit and adjusted my center of balance with his hands. “This will give you more balance and increase your natural striking speed by shortening the time you need to shift your momentum. When you swing, rotate on the balls of your feet.” He demonstrated.
I complied, feeling like an idiot, but found to my astonishment he was right. My fist whistled through the air. I did it a few more times before stopping.
“Why did you stop?” Khufu asked, narrowing his eyes at me.
“Why is it so hard to breathe?” I asked, my chest already heaving. “Normally, I have pretty good cardio.”
“The gravity here is a bit stronger than back on Earth for one.” He blew a breath of stale air into my face. “And the air is significantly thinner.”
“So I’m in the training ground from hell,” I grumbled, suddenly concerned I’d die from lack of oxygen. “Um, what’s next? You have any other surprises?”
“What’s next is you do that about a thousand more times, then switch to your other hand and do the same thing. I’ll wait, I have infinite time.” Khufu stared at me, and I didn’t get the feeling he was joking.
“Why so many times?” I asked, throwing another punch and nearly losing my balance in the process. I was already starting to get tired, which was no good at all. I’d thrown what, three punches? How was I going to punch nearly two thousand more times?
“Because you want to ingrain it into your muscle memory. You need to fight without thinking. Your body needs to want to do those kinds of punches, to react naturally by doing the correct thing. To accomplish this, you must drill.” Khufu gave me a ‘duh’ look.
“So it’s like, you know, riding a bike?” I asked, dropping back into my stance and readying myself for another attack.
“If the bike was on fire, and you were on fire, and everything was on fire,” Khufu said with a strange gleam in his eyes before the floor exploded into flame, rippling out around me in a circle so hot it sucked the moisture from my body. It steadily moved closer, inching forward as I stood there like a dumbass.
“What the hell is going on?” I screamed, not sure how to escape the flames. Could I leap through them? Maybe, but it’d hurt a lot. Still, I was a werewolf. We’d been known to leap through fire despite not liking the smell of burnt fur. Khufu had to know that.
“Keep punching, Thes. Every punch you throw will make the fire recede a few millimeters. If you stop, it will gain on you. When you get to a couple thousand punches, it will go out. Good luck.” And with that, the pharaoh sat down with his back to me and pulled out a paperback book.
I didn’t see what it was about because the flames surged upward, cutting off my view of everything but the raging inferno surrounding me. It roiled, edging closer inch by inch as I stood there gaping, the air almost too hot to breathe. Sweat poured down my body and was instantly evaporated as I turned in a slow circle. As far as I could tell, there was no way out, short of throwing myself through the ring of fire, and just because I could survive, didn’t mean I wanted to set myself ablaze.
Still, maybe Khufu wasn’t lying this time. I resolved to try it his way, what would it hurt? I dropped back into my fighting stance, and as I did so, the floor beneath my feet turned a translucent green color. I shifted my hips, throwing
my momentum into the blow, and as I did so, the ground turned blue and the fire edged backward a hair.
I threw another punch, but as I did so, I over extended slightly and my toe inched forward. The ground beneath my feet turned an angry red color, and the fire leapt forward, increasing in speed as I dropped back and tried punching at it again. As I did so, the floor changed back to blue.
Oh my god, I was playing a Dance Dance Revolution training simulator, you know, except with fire. It almost made me want to laugh and cry simultaneously, but that’d mean I had time to stop punching, which I didn’t. I kept going until my arms felt like they were going off, until everything distilled into a weird sort of emptiness in my brain. There was no thought. There was only me and the flames surrounding me. And punching. Lots and lots of punching
Chapter 6
I wasn’t sure how long I played mystical flaming DDR, but it was a while, and that wasn’t the end of it, not by a long shot. Khufu trained me for time indeterminable, and while I couldn’t tell how long it actually lasted since there was no time in this place, it felt like years. Let me just say this right now, exploding hop scotch was way less fun than it sounded.
By the end of it, I had learned not only several forms of martial arts, weaponry, and everything in between, but I’d somehow managed to bulk up too. I’d also eaten something like 800 pounds of fish because for some reason, Khufu thought it was a must for gaining muscle. He told me this after thumbing through a human physiology text book in search for hidden muscles to have me work out.
Either way, I was feeling pretty good as Khufu reopened the portal, and I stared into the desert sand at the foot of the temple of Osiris. It was night time, so we’d definitely been in the final destination long enough for several hours to have passed in the real world, and while I’d inquired as to the exact ratio of time to outside time, Khufu hadn’t told me.
Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Page 3