His arms actually tore from their sockets as he collapsed to the ground with a crushed skull. A howl ripped from my throat as I ripped the sword from my stomach. Crimson spilled down my fur, but the wound was already closing as I took off the head off the nearest skeletal soldier.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I cried before I could stop myself and instantly wished I hadn’t said a goddamn word. Cold burst through the tunnel from farther ahead, covering the rock with a thick layer of sleet and ice. My lips started chattering as Khufu dispatched the last of the soldiers and picked up one of the muskets, checked to see if it was loaded, and discarded it in disgust.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying much attention to him because I was too busy staring at the form walking toward us through the swirling blackness. Shadows parted from around a man of average height with a ruddy complexion as he stepped forth from the abyss, ice coating the ground beneath each of his footsteps. He was bare-chested with a tiger’s skin wrapped around his waist and long black hair pulled into a tight ponytail that swayed behind the backs of his knees with each step. In one powerful hand, he held a trident made from writhing snakes, each point a striking serpent with green fluid dripping from its fangs.
“No, it can’t be,” Khufu said, but before he could elaborate, the man waved his free hand at the pharaoh. Cold filled the air, emanating from every surface, every pore, every atom. It wasn’t the cold of winter, no, this was the cold of absence, the vacuum of space, absolute zero in action rather than concept.
“Silence,” the man said, and it was silent. “You do not speak in my presence.”
His gaze fell upon me, and in that instant, I was crushed beneath the knowledge of everything I’d ever done, of every sin I would ever commit and every good deed I would ever accomplish. I fell to my knees under the absolute hatred of his glare as he stepped up to me, leaving me unable to do more than stare at his toes.
He squatted down next to me, until his pale gray eyes were level with mine, and in them, I could see the swirling vast eternity of emptiness. This wasn’t like when I’d stepped into the chaos of the void or felt the ravages of space and time. No, within his gaze was the sense of seemingly perfect order. The feel of it was so alien, so wrong, it made the breath shudder from my lungs and icy spiders crawl through my veins. It made me afraid in a way I couldn’t quite comprehend. It was inevitability, and there was no way to fight that.
“Do you recognize me, Dunewalker?” he asked, and his voice was perfectly neutral. For some reason, that was way worse than if he’d had any kind of emotion at all. It was the empty, inhuman voice of a machine.
“No,” I whispered, surprised I could make sounds because my mouth was so dry my tongue actually stuck to my throat. It was true. I had no idea who he was, but something about his appearance tugged at the back of my mind, making me think I should know him. That part was vastly outnumbered by my less rational lizard brain screaming at me to, “flee goddamn it! Flee!”
There was no other sound in the vast expanse of the cavern. My ears began to ring in the silence of it as the cacophony brought on by my own labored breathing mixed with my heart reverberating like a bongo drum in my chest and filled my ears.
“You ought to,” he replied, reaching out and gripping my chin in his hands, and somehow, I was back in my human form. I’d reverted back and hadn’t even realized it, but how? Because of his touch? That was impossible.
He slowly tilted my chin, craning my head upward to inspect me carefully like I was a prize winning poodle.
“Why is that?” I asked, the words barely escaping my now pursed lips as he squeezed my cheeks. I’d like to say his touch felt warm or cold as he poked and prodded me, twisting my head to and fro, but alas, it had no sensation of temperature whatsoever. Hell, his fingers didn’t even feel rough of smooth. It was just… neutral.
“The time has not yet come for me to respond to that question.” He stood, shaking his head. “This is only the beginning of the end. You will come to learn I am an inevitability.” He sighed, and as he did so, the entire cavern seemed to exhale along with him. It was like watching the first breeze heralding the coming storm.
“Inevitability? To do what?” I asked because the way he said it worried me a great deal. It was like my death was a foregone conclusion..
“It is inevitable that you will die by my hands. It has already happened, many years from now, in a place far from here but not so different.” He took one small step backward toward the shadows and they began to wrap around him, covering his flesh in inky darkness. “Dunewalker.”
“You kill me? But why?” I asked, trying to ignore the truth in his words. I didn’t know if they were true or not, but he certainly believed them, and while normally I’d laugh it off as just another threat, for some reason I couldn’t. Hell, I couldn’t even mouth off and tell him to take a number because, well, I didn’t want him in line.
“You do not understand yet, Dunewalker. It’s a fault of the prophecy.” He shook his head. “Being the Dunewalker is not some special thing. He is not destined to do greatness. His coming is not foretold in the way you think it is. He is not Excalibur to be plucked from the stone when the time is right.” The shadows covered everything except for his lips and eyes, which stared at me from the dark with a strangely blank expression. “The Dunewalker is what he is because of what he does. He is his deeds. He is what he is because he does what he must when it matters. It is a name given to fit his actions, not the other way around.” The last of the man faded into darkness and the cave began to lighten. “He is sacrifice, and that is what makes him special. Nothing more.”
Chapter 8
I wasn’t special. That turn of phrase kept rattling around in my brain as we made our way through the tunnel where we had just confronted he who had no name. Yeah, evidently that had been him. A guy capable of silencing silence had told me I would die at his hands, and the sad thing was, I believed him. It shrouded my every move, my every thought in intense hopelessness.
Evidently, my lot in life was to hound him like a bee bothering a tiger until he decided to squash me. And because I did that, a story would be written about me. It was tragic not just because I knew parts of the story, but because it seemed so pointless. In the end I wouldn’t win. So why would I go through it? I shook my head. That was a question to which I had no good answer.
“Let me explain it to you in a way that will make sense to you,” Khufu said, rubbing his throat as we walked. His skin was still a little green following our meeting with the man with no name. Yeah, that guy everyone had been worried about, apparently that had been him. “Let’s take Superman. He is a hero, not because he is invincible, but because he’s naturally a good guy. That’s what the Dunewalker is.”
“No,” I shook my head. “Superman is a hero because he’s invincible. It’s really easy to go fight things when you can’t die. There’s no sacrifice in that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Thes. His invulnerability, his power, is what makes it so difficult for him to be a hero.” Khufu shook his head. “He could turn evil and no one could stop him.”
“Batman could stop him—”
“Superman would throw Batman into the sun and not even break a sweat!” Khufu snapped, shaking his head. “And you’re missing my point entirely.”
“No, I’m not. You’re saying Superman is a hero despite the fact he is invincible. He is a hero because he does the right thing when he doesn’t have to do the right thing.” I shook my head, thinking about it. Admittedly, it sort of made sense. Being a hero was doing the right thing even though it was hard. Heroes didn’t choose the easy way. Being good meant hard choices. And Superman would never have to make them if he didn’t want to. He was that strong, that powerful. But he did it anyway. It was his choice.
“Exactly.” Khufu nodded. “It’s why he’s so hard to connect with for many people. Most can’t fathom the innate difficulty of being good when you don’t have to be.” He smirked at me and slugge
d me on the shoulder hard enough to make me wince. “That’s what makes you special too, Thes. Because you will make the hard choice, the sacrifice. Most people won’t. They like to think they will, but in the end, well, let’s just say humanity could learn a lot from their canine companions.”
“What if I don’t want to make that sacrifice?” I asked, but even as the words left my lips I knew I would give almost anything to save my friends. Hell, I’d journeyed back to ancient Egypt without a hope of success or getting back home to save my friend Connor’s soul. Who does that?
“Then you aren’t the Dunewalker.” Khufu shrugged. “The Dunewalker is forged through choice, not born by fate.”
“Awesome,” I said, sighing. “I love circular logic.”
“It’s the best kind. There are no corners to hide in.” The pharaoh showed me his teeth. “Besides, if you’re destined to fight he who has no name, then we need to hurry up.” He made a “move it" gesture.
I turned away from him and stared at the wall. I wasn’t sure I was okay with what he said. I guess I was okay with being a hero, with sacrificing, but if I did that, well, I wanted it to mean something. I didn’t just want to be a tiny speedbump on he who cannot be named’s pathway to destruction. It felt like so little, so why was everyone making it out like it was so much? Was I missing something? It sure didn’t feel like it, but I really hoped I was.
“We’re here.” Khufu gestured at the pathway ahead, and in the distance, I saw a golden door decorated with hieroglyphics and murals depicting scenes from mummification.
A black jackal’s head stood in the center of the door, jaws rippled back mid-snarl, and even from here, I recognized it as the face of Anubis. Ever since he had caught me making out with his wife, Bast, his face was burned into my mind.
“Hurry up?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “Because we haven’t been hurrying?”
Khufu waved off my response. “He who has no name has appeared. That means he is circling his host, whispering sweet nothings in his ear. Eventually the host will cave in and allow he who has no name inside. When that happens, the destroyer will rise. What do you think happens when he does that?”
“He attempts to destroy everything?” I asked as I thought about what Sekhmet had said the last time the destroyer rose. He killed gods and warriors alike. Hell, he had apparently destroyed legions of people like my friend Lillim, and they were born and bred to counter threats like this. I was supposed to fight something like that? Even if I knew how to go about it, I wasn’t sure it was possible. In fact, if anything, it seemed hopeless.
“Bingo.” Khufu smiled even though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “And you’re our only hope.”
“Until he kills me at some predetermined time and place,” I replied before I could stop myself, and my voice sounded depressed even to me.
“Perhaps. Just because he believes it to be true, doesn’t make it so.” Khufu shrugged. “Maybe if he strikes you down, you’ll become even stronger than he can possibly imagine.”
“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 powd
er 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.
Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Page 5