“You ready, big guy?” Khufu asked, slapping me on the back. The force of it surged through me, but I ignored it. “Or you want to do one more set before we go?” He gestured at a bench press in the corner of the final destination platform. The place was weird like that. Whatever type of training equipment you required magically came out of the floor. It made cleanup awesome because it disappeared just as easily.
“I’m good, thanks,” I said and stepped into the portal.
The next thing I knew, I was standing on the slowly cooling sand outside the temple. I was dressed in a standard white Egyptian toga thing with a khopesh strapped to my thigh. Khufu appeared next to me a few seconds later and walked past me toward the temple.
“You ready?” he asked for the second time, glancing at me over his shoulder as he approached the entrance. It looked like it had been hewn from a single block of yellow stone. Its surface was littered with hieroglyphics depicting images of Osiris as he presided over the dead. Gilded torchlight flickered out from the entrance, spilling shadows across the walkway.
I took it all in slowly, savoring the feel of the slight breeze on my flesh for the first time in a long time before following after Khufu, my sandaled feet crunching on the soft sand before I stepped onto a stone path.
The stars above were bright, filling the sky with light as I met up with Khufu. He stood just outside the entrance, staring at a sleeping young man with a scraggily beard and clothes that seemed much too nice for your average doorman. Coins littered the inside of the jar next to him and there was a sign next to it in a language I couldn’t quite read.
Before I could ask Khufu what it said, the mummy rummaged around in his pocket and pulled out a handful of glittering coins. He proceeded to toss them in the bucket, and for a moment, nothing else happened as they clinked against the inside.
Blue fire exploded from the bucket, swirling up and consuming the coins in a blast of heat. The air crackled around us, little arcs of lightning zipping across the container’s surface. The youth awoke with a start, falling backward off his wooden stool with a shriek as he tried to crawl backward away from the hellfire-filled bucket.
“What the hell did you do?” I cried as an ethereal face rose from the flames and stared at us. It had a bald head with a long scraggly beard and eyes that felt like they were trying to pull me into hell itself. The creature looked down at the bucket and curled its lips into a snarl, revealing a mouthful of white daggers.
“You dare to offer the great god Osiris fake coins?” the bearded demon face asked, at which point I turned all my hatred onto Khufu. Had he seriously just tried to cheat a god out of an entrance fee?
“Back in my day, gods didn’t charge admission.” Khufu crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the apparition as it narrowed its eyes into slits.
“Very well.” Its gaze shifted to me as it nodded solemnly, evidently lumping me in with the cheapskate mummy. “If your desire is to find death, I can oblige you.” It waved one translucent hand before I could say anything at all.
I had no idea what the thing was, but I had no desire to find death anytime soon. I was about to tell it just that when the stones beneath our feet rumbled. Panic welled up inside me, standing the hair on the back of my neck straight up as I tried to scramble away. Unfortunately, before I could, the floor became completely insubstantial, transforming into yellow mist that held my weight about as well as a bridge made from smoke could be expected to do. I plummeted downward and smacked into a vat of red goop that reminded me of the red finger paint I had used as a kid to paint my face when I played war games with my friends. You know, because I was Native American, and it made me feel cool even though it pissed off my grandfather.
Just as my head plunged beneath the surface of the paint, my feet touched something solid. I pushed off the ground with all my strength, breaking my head free of the goop. As I sucked in gulps of air and treaded goop the best I could despite its innate thickness, I looked around for Khufu.
He was only a few feet away, flailing like an angry cat toward a ridge of purple rock jutting out from the far wall. I pushed myself toward it, moving through the paint with surprising speed, but I’d made it no farther than a couple meters when something wrapped around my waist and pulled me easily from the muck despite my two hundred and fifty pound frame.
The creature spun me around, leaving me to stare into its enormous, yellow eye. Green ichor dripped from around it, falling down into the red murk below. The thing was like one giant eyeball with tentacles writhing all around it. One of which had me firmly around the waist. Other tentacles flew out, grabbing me around the ankles and wrists and pulling me into a splayed position as it, well, eyed me. A shiver ran through me as I realized there was an eyeball on the end of each tentacle.
“Put me down,” I growled, getting ready to call upon my wolf, but as I had the thought, I found my entire body starting to freeze up. My wolf seemed so far away, the distance between us separating into a chasm as I was spun upside down and twirled around by the eye beast. A pang of horror went through me. If I couldn’t call on Wepwawet, what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to escape without his help? I grunted, trying to reach toward my khopesh, but it held me so tightly I couldn’t even move my arm an inch. So much for all my newfound muscle.
“No,” the voice boomed from above me, and I craned my head toward it to see the face of the apparition from before. Only, he was a bare-chested dwarf, and his bulbous, disgusting belly hung over the waist of his dirty, lion-print loin cloth. Tufts of black hair stuck up all over his body at seemingly random places, quivering like the tentacles of a sea anemone. He sat on the back of another of the giant eye beasts, whistling a tune that reminded me of one from a Disney movie as it carried him slowly toward me.
“Why not?” I asked, looking around for Khufu and, unfortunately, saw him dangling upside down from the tentacles of another eye beast as it drifted lazily through the air toward us.
“Because I don’t want to let you go?” the dwarf asked, quirking one dark eyebrow at me as he grinned, revealing a grill that would make a rap star proud. His teeth were covered in gold and gemstones, and it made me wonder how he managed to do simple things like talk and eat without slicing his lips to ribbons.
“Any particular reason?” I asked, still trying to call upon my wolf, but it was like trying to yell across the Grand Canyon with a death metal band playing on both sides. In short, not super effective.
“I have a lot of work to do and precious little time to do it, wolf.” The dwarf smiled. “I need someone to help me. You seem to be strong which is good because it will take you and your friend a while to mine the gold required to appease Osiris.”
“Do you mean to tell me I’m stuck in some strange interdimensional mine so we can dig for gold to pay an entrance fee to a temple?” I asked, barely resisting the urge to hate Khufu to death. Didn’t he realize we needed to hurry? We had to save Sekhmet. We didn’t have time to mine for gold. There had to be another way, and if there wasn’t, maybe this guy would take Khufu as payment and call it a day.
“Indeed.” The dwarf stepped off his eye beast and walked toward me, completely ignoring the miniscule fact of there being nothing beneath his feet whatsoever. He patted me on the cheek as he knelt down close enough for me to see nothing but his multifaceted eyes. “That is exactly what I’m telling you.”
“And where is Osiris?” Khufu called from a few feet behind me. “You can’t expect me to pay a fee and not see the god.”
“I can, and I will,” the dwarf replied, jabbing himself in the chest. “That’s my job, to keep people like you accountable. After all, where would we be without rules?”
“Enjoying anarchy?” Khufu offered, and I was quite sure it was the wrong answer because the dwarf’s skin turned from a sort of greenish yellow color to bright red in the space of a minute. Veins pulsed out along his flesh as he moved away from me and slugged the pharaoh hard enough to make me wince in sympathy. Khuf
u’s face contorted in pain as his lips burst open from the force of all the air in his lungs being expelled violently.
“How about you enjoy that?” the dwarf asked. “Or do I need to put boot to ass, Mr. Smart Mouth?”
“No, I’m good,” Khufu wheezed, and I totally got the impression he’d have grabbed his stomach in pain if he wasn’t being suspended by a giant eyeball.
“Excellent.” The dwarf cracked his knuckles. “My name is Bes, but you can call me Master, Boss, or supreme deity of all things.”
“Isn’t Bes supposed to be a funny god?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Do I seem funny to you?” he asked, spinning around so quickly his huge ears flapped in the breeze. His face was scary enough to frighten demons. “Well, punk, do I?”
“Um…” I murmured, trying not to swallow my own tongue in fear as every part of me told me to run and hide.
“He thinks we’re bad guys,” Khufu said, and the dwarf whirled on the ancient pharaoh. “It’s not his fault. He’s small.” Khufu grinned even though the dwarf turned two shades darker and actual steam began pouring from his ears. “It gives him a complex.”
“Why you no good, papyrus-picken…” Bes jabbed Khufu in the chest with one gnarled finger and the pharaoh cried out as the sound of snapping bones filled the air. “Has no one ever taught you respect?”
“Okay, okay, so what’s the game plan here?” I asked, trying to break free of the tentacles holding me, but it was about as effective as trying to dead-lift a skyscraper.
“You have to make up for what you’ve done,” Bes snarled, his huge nostrils flaring as he moved toward me. “Then I’ll consider letting you see Osiris.”
“Oh, so you do know where he is?” I asked, allowing hope to fill my voice.
The dwarf stopped mid-stride and chewed on his lip. “Not exactly per se…”
My hope shattered into a thousand tiny shards. “So you want us to pay to enter the temple and Osiris isn’t even here to be offended?”
Bes puffed up his chest, swelling like a balloon. “I’m here temporarily. You know, to keep things on the straight and narrow. Whatever you need from Osiris, you can get from me.” He glared at me. “After you thieves pay for your transgressions.”
“Oh, so you can help us get Set and Nephthys to release Horus from his prison?” I asked, allowing the faintest fragment of hope to open its dodgy little eye.
Bes paled visibly. “Um, no, I can’t exactly…”
“He’s not on speaking terms with Set,” Khufu said, still smirking. “He’s useless to us.”
“I am not!” Bes called back, strangely irritated. “If I wanted, I could go release Horus right now. Where is he?”
“The prison of the gods,” Khufu exclaimed, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice as Bes took a step back, mouth agape.
“But why would they imprison him there, now of all times?” Bes asked, suddenly very worried. His fear made a cold sweat run down my spine. What could make Bes, the Egyptian deity of all things good and the fighter all of things bad, afraid?
“What is so special about today?” I snapped, hysteria rising in my voice as I tugged at the tentacles.
“Today is the day he is supposed to rise,” Bes replied, swallowing hard. “All the gods have been waiting for our call to arms, but so far, Horus has not issued it.”
“Call to arms to fight what?” I asked as a bad feeling filled me up to the core of my being.
“To fight he who has no name.” Bes swallowed, shaking his head and walking away. “I must find Set and Nephthys. Maybe I can convince them…” Bes shuddered, barely looking at us. “No, this is no good at all.”
“You know, we can help you. If you just release us,” Khufu said, jutting his chin at me, but Bes seemed too distracted to really care what the pharaoh said. “He is the Dunewalker after all.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Bes said, waving a hand at us dismissively.
The eye monsters released us, and we both fell back into the paint, which let me tell you, sucked. I got back to the surface as quickly as I could, but Bes was already gone. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he’d taken his eye monsters with him, so I was going to chalk it up as a win.
Chapter 7
“I’ve told you a thousand times, Thes. I knew that would happen. That’s why I used fake money for the entrance fee,” Khufu said for perhaps the thousandth time, but I still didn’t believe him.
“And as I’ve said, I don’t believe you knew that would happen.” I crossed my arms over my chest as we walked through the scarlet cavern. It reminded me of a tunnel that had been carved by a humongous burrowing worm, but I hoped I was wrong. If I wasn’t, I really didn’t want to meet with said worm.
“I had an inkling it would. Either it’d work and Osiris would suck us into the depths of the temple so we could explain ourselves or we’d get in for free.” He raised his eyebrows at me as he spread his hands. “It’s a win, win.”
“Your win, win almost got us killed by a psychotic dwarf,” I said, glaring at him. “And we didn’t find Osiris or get in for free.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you complain too much?” he asked, elbowing me in the side and making me stumble. “You’re pretty whiney for a werewolf. You should work on that.”
I was about to reply when a horde of skeletons wearing medieval knight armor came charging at us from the tunnel ahead on the backs of skeletal horses because, hey, that was totally reasonable. I threw myself to the left just as the nearest horseman charged through the space between us, flaming lance crackling through the air and filling the cavern with the smell of burning pitch.
He spun, his horse’s hooves kicking up a spray of crimson gravel as I scrambled to my feet. The others were already closing in on me as I tore my khopesh free and flung it at the one with the flaming lance. It struck him where his heart would have been and punched through his rusted armor like it was made from tinfoil, but that did little to deter him as he came charging back toward me.
I transformed in mid-leap and landed upon the knight with the full force of my enhanced werewolf bulk. The horse’s skeletal back buckled, breaking into pieces as we crashed into the ground, the knight’s boney body shattering within his armor like a glass window pane. Fragments of bone flew in every direction as I spun around in time to take an axe to the chest.
The blade sliced into my flesh, spilling warm blood down my torso. It didn’t hurt so much as it enraged me. My vision tinged red with anger as I grabbed the arm holding the weapon and jerked with all my might. It came free at the shoulder with a screech of snapping sinew. I spun on my heel, tearing the axe free and using my momentum to slice the axe through the horse’s back legs as it passed by me. The creature squealed as it toppled forward onto its face, nearly disintegrating under the impact.
I barely had time to celebrate as the bones around me began to jiggle and shake with unnatural force. I watched in horror as they began to slowly piece themselves back together. In a moment, the two knights and their horses would be completely reformed. That was no good.
One glance around the cavern, revealed Khufu up ahead, fighting several more of the knights. His khopesh flashed through the air as I sprinted toward him, bringing my axe down on a foot soldier with a pike. My blow literally split him from forehead to crotch, and he collapsed into a heap of wobbling bones.
“This is no good, Thes. We need to get out of here before they reform,” Khufu called as he decapitated a knight who seemed to be able to continue fighting even without his head, which I guess wasn’t that surprising.
“Agreed!” I cried, shouldering another pike-man aside and moving toward the pharaoh as he reached up and grabbed another knight by the front of his chest plate and pulled. The skeleton came toppling off the horse’s back and shattered upon impact with the stone floor. With one graceful leap, Khufu was on the skeletal horse. He grabbed the reins and spun the beast in a wide arc, his khopesh flashing throu
gh the air.
“Bone storm!” he hollered as the horse obliterated another pack of warriors, grinding them to dust beneath its armored hooves.
Khufu grinned and held one hand out to me as we stood in the center of the wobbling bones. Without giving him the chance to offer another cheesy one liner, I grabbed his wrist and pulled myself up behind him. The pharaoh kicked the creature into action, sending us speeding up the tunnel and away from the obliterated skeletal knights.
We’d barely made it a hundred yards when another contingent of skeletons came into view. Only these ones were armed with cannons and muskets. Tatters of gray and blue uniforms hung off their boney frames as they all took aim at us.
“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” called another skeleton from just behind their line. He held a saber in one hand and pointed it at us. “Ready, aim, fire!”
An explosion of lead and death came flying at us, obliterating our horse and sending us toppling through the air. Bullets tore apart my flesh as I slammed into the ground, and I was incredibly thankful Khufu had been in front of me since he’d taken the brunt of the blast. Besides, if anyone deserved to get shot at, it was him.
“Reload!” called the skeleton with the sword as I rolled, coming up on my feet and leaving only a few inches of skin on the rocky floor as I did so. See, who says I hadn’t learned anything.
I loped forward, crossing the distance between us in a flash. I raked outward with my claws. The two skeletons in front of me fell sideways into their line as I stepped past them and kicked the cannon with all of my might. It flipped up through the air before landing backward on top of the soldiers who had been trying to reload it as agony rippled through the ball of my foot.
My musket-ball-induced wounds closed as I hopped forward on my good leg and ripped the musket from the nearest soldier before proceeding to use it as an improvised club to beat my way to victory. The sword-wielding skeleton charged me, his blade flashing through the air, but I used a move only a werewolf could. I let him stab me right through the stomach as I charged. I stopped when the hilt of his sword touched my belly and brought my forearms down on his skull with all the strength I could muster.
Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Page 4