As I spun in a slow circle, I realized how quiet nature was. Wepwawet perked up his ears inside my head, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air.
“There’s nothing here, Thes,” he said, his voice a staccato growl in my ear as we padded through the lush vegetation in search of our sapphire goose.
“Awesome,” I muttered, allowing my body to revert back into its human form. I wasn’t sure what sort of enemies lay in wait for us here, but I wasn’t willing to waste the energy to stay in wolf form for no reason. Especially since the lack of wildlife made me think it might be a long time before I found anything to eat.
I sniffed, but the scent of goose was nowhere to be found. The wind whipped by me, cold on my skin as I moved. The sun beamed down, but as I craned my head toward it, I realized I was shivering. It wasn’t even cold per se. In fact, the temperature reminded me of a cool morning back home in Orange County, California, but I must have acclimated to the super-heated temperatures of Egypt because my teeth were practically chattering.
“Thes, how are you?” the voice rumbled from beneath my feet, shaking the earth and throwing me sideways as the reverberations rocked my body. I landed hard on my back, and as I lay there in the tall grass staring up at the sky, my heart fell into my toes. It’d sort of seemed like the earth had spoken, but that was impossible, right? If it wasn’t, I was going to be in a lot of trouble. Fighting gods and he who cannot be named was one thing, but the entire earth? That was even more impossible. After all, what was I going to do, punch it to death?
“Fine?” I ventured, clinging to the ground in case it started moving again. If it did, I was hoping I was on a nice planet. If it wasn’t, I was going to use some of my twenty-first century knowledge to find a way to pump chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere so the sun would bake this world into a dead heap of rock.
“You don’t seem fine,” the earth replied, shaking violently beneath me, and my little handfuls of grass did nothing to keep me from flopping around uselessly.
“It’s a little hard to talk, I’ll admit.” I forced myself to smile, but I wasn’t sure where to aim my thousand watter. “Every time you speak, the earth shakes.”
“That is because I am Earth.” The voice sounded the same, but this time the earth didn’t rock and roll. The mud in front of me rose up, forming into a man with a beard like an ancient sorcerer in the space of a single breath. He looked sort of plain, dressed in standard Egyptian robes the color of drying grass. “It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to a human. You’ll have to forgive me.” He strode toward me and held out one mud-colored hand.
“No problem,” I murmured, taking his hand and allowing him to help me to my feet. It was a little weird because I expected him to hoist me up effortlessly, but he grunted with the effort. When I was finally standing, he wiped his forehead with the back of one hand and flung the contents onto the grass. Where the droplets struck, flowers every color of the rainbow sprang to life.
“You’re heavy.” His brown eyes glinted as his lips twisted into a grin beneath his scraggly white beard. “Sometimes, I forget how heavy things are.”
“Seems like you forget a lot,” I replied before I could stop myself.
“Indeed. I have seen many things. Enough to fill a universe with scrolls.” He shrugged. “My wife says I should do a better job of remembering, but I’m not sure of the point. Firstly, no one wants to listen to a doddering old man ramble about things in his day, and secondly, given enough time, everything will be forgotten. Even I will be swallowed by the sun.”
“Hopefully, not soon,” I said, and he shrugged.
“What is time to a giant ball of rock spinning in space? It might as well be tomorrow for all it will matter. Even a trillion, trillion years is nothing on a scale to infinity.” He took my hands in his, and his flesh was strangely cool, reminding me of how the dirt felt when I helped my mom plant in the garden back home. God, that seemed like a million years ago. “But never fear. For you, time isn’t a straight line. Even if you were to go to the end, you could loop around and come back.”
“So I keep being told. It doesn’t really sound that awesome to be honest,” I said, pulling my hands away.
The man’s eyes shifted to my hands before moving back to my face. “So, Thes. Tell me why you have come to see me here?”
“I came looking for a goose who stole a sword.” I knew it sounded ridiculous, but it was the truth after all. Besides, what was I going to do, lie?
The man gritted his teeth. “I do hate that goose. Always causing problems.” He let out a breath through his teeth, and the ground shook just a little.
“How so?” I inquired because it seemed like he wanted me to ask him about it.
“People always assume the goose is my power creature because my name is Geb.” He drew the symbol for his name in the air. “But if you were to spell my name in ancient Egyptian using shorthand, you could phonetically spell it using the word goose.” He drew another, easier to draw symbol. “It’s a little disconcerting since I’m a god and all. People could at least spell my name right. What’s next, using letters in place of words?”
It was then that a conversation I’d once had on my phone flashed through my head.
“U R A QT”
“LOL”
I let out a small breath, my cheeks heating up as I looked at Geb, the Egyptian earth deity and forced myself to smile. “I promise to spell out all words fully from now on.”
“Excellent. Sometimes, we forget words have feelings too, but not as much as punctuation. Nothing hurts more than a dropped comma or a failed ellipsis.” The god steepled his fingers. “Anyway, you won’t find that goose here.”
“Why is that?” I asked, wishing I had some more assertive punctuation at my disposal. Sometimes it felt like all I had was the question mark.
“Because he doesn’t really exist.” The god shrugged. “He’s just a construct.”
“A construct? For what?” I sighed because all I could do was keep questioning the god like an annoying toddler. Pretty soon I was going to be doing nothing but asking why. Then again, after about five whys I’d probably have gotten to the root cause of everything. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that was a problem solving joke, and when I get back home, I’m going to tell my dad that despite his insistence, no one thinks it’s funny.
“You don’t know what a construct is, do you?” Geb grumbled as he sat down on the grass and picked at it with his fingers, pulling apart the blades and letting them drift in the wind. “This body I’m using to talk to you so your itty bitty human brain doesn’t explode into a fountain of goo is a construct. The goose is similar. He’s just a construct for creation and before you look at me dumbly and ask ‘creation?’ like you’ve never heard of the word, I shall explain further. There is a story about a goose who laid the world egg. From it hatched the earth and the sun and everything.” He shrugged as if to say, “I know it’s ridiculous but bear with me,” before continuing. “It’s not real, at least not in the literal sense, but since people believe it, the story has sort of become real—”
“And because people associate the goose with you, it brought me here?” I asked, not realizing I’d cut him off until after I’d done it. I felt my cheeks burn as he stared at me unconcerned.
Geb looked like he was going to say something but instead nodded and held out his right hand toward me, palm up. Within it, a tiny gray rock in the shape of a sparrow’s egg popped into being. A thin green vine wound upward around it like a serpent, its roots biting into the rock, causing it to crack.
A beak poked through the stone, and the sound of it was booming in the silence of the place. It pushed aside the debris like a chick hatching from an egg, and as it did so, I realized it was the sapphire goose. Once free, the miniscule creature spun in a slow circle in the center of the god’s palm, its eyes wild as it flapped its blue wings.
“Blue, would you please be so kind as to return the khopesh you stole to this young man?” Geb gestur
ed at me with his goose which sadly wasn’t even the weirdest thing to happen to me today.
The bird eyed me warily as though I was the untrustworthy thief before hopping off of Geb’s hand and waddling toward me. With each step it grew, so by the time it reached me, the fowl was the size it had been when it’d stolen Khufu’s khopesh.
“Uh, good goose?” I offered, not sure if I should reach out and try to pet it or something, but visions of being chased around by a honking goose didn’t seem exactly fun so I kept my hands to myself.
It honked at me, a loud burst of sound that shattered my eardrums before driving its beak into the grass at my feet. It tugged at something within the soft dirt, and even though I couldn’t explain it, the creature slowly pulled the khopesh from the ground at my feet like it was a particularly stubborn worm.
As I reached toward the weapon, the goose turned and leapt into the air, flying away into the distance in a drunken arc. I tried my best to ignore the creature as it bobbed and weaved through the empty skies even though I wanted to know where it was going and instead picked up the khopesh. It was dirty, but seemed otherwise unscathed by its adventure which was good. This weapon was the anchor that held Khufu’s spirit to our world. If it broke, he’d be turned back into a lifeless corpse. While there’d been times I’d have liked that to happen, now wasn’t one of them.
“Thanks,” I said, turning toward the god.
He smiled at me, revealing a mouthful of pristine white teeth that glinted in the sunlight. “So are you going to ask why I wanted to speak with you, Thes?”
“Um, it hadn’t occurred… what can I do for you, Geb?” I blushed a little. “Do you have a title I should use? Just saying your name seems a little too personal.”
He waved off my comment. “Geb is fine.” He cracked his knuckles. “Now let’s get down to brass tacks. The reason you are here and nowhere else is because I need your help.”
“You need my help?” I asked, raising my eyebrows in astonishment. “What could I possibly do to help you?”
“I am going to tell you.” He shot me a look that made me flush with embarrassment. “My children have been influenced by he who has no name. He has used his considerable power to poison their minds and make them do his bidding. You must release them from their trance and convince them to work as one to thwart him. It is the only way.”
“Oh, is that all?” I asked incredulously. “And who are your children?”
“Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.” Geb rubbed the tip of his beard between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand as he spoke, not quite looking at me. “I admit it won’t be easy, but a good hard blow to the head should do it.”
“Is that why Bast seemed to wake up after I broke the floor with her face?” I asked as everything started to fall into place. During our battle, Bast had been acting weird, but after I’d thrown her, she’d seemed clueless as to what was really going on around her.
“Yes. Bast was under his influence as well. I would not be surprised to find Anubis has fallen prey to he who has no name’s brainwashing as well.” Geb smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Just try to aim for the head. That will be the easiest way to knock some sense into them. You might have to do it a couple times.”
“Okay, okay, assuming it’s even possible for me to punch them hard enough to disrupt he who cannot be named’s mind control, I still need to find Osiris.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t even know where he is. No one does.”
“Someone does,” Geb assured me.
“Oh? And where is this mystery person?” I said a bit snottier than I should have since I was talking to a god, but hey, he deserved it. He’d seriously told me to find five of the most powerful Egyptian deities and smack them upside the head. It was one of the worst plans I’d ever heard, to say nothing of the fact I still had to save Sekhmet from Isis and return Connor’s soul. I didn’t have time to go tracking down random gods. Still, the idea of beating the mind control out of Isis was strangely appealing after what she had done to Sekhmet. Perhaps there was some merit to this plan after all.
“Right here.” He tapped his chest with his thumb. “And I’ll do you a solid and take you to him.”
“Oh?” I asked, but as the word left my mouth the ground beneath my feet opened up and swallowed me whole.
Chapter 11
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in Ancient Egypt. I stood in a 1950’s style diner which was pretty disconcerting since I’d been talking to Geb when I’d closed them. Cheap hot pink Formica tables scratched and scarred by years of use spread out in front of me. They were welcoming in that centuries of disuse sort of way. The booths were covered with cheap red vinyl and were split in places so the stuffing spilled out of them like the innards of some once living thing. Sunlight filtered through the security bars over the big plate glass window outside, but I couldn’t make much beyond the dirty glass but lumbering shapes.
The place smelled horrible, like rancid meat and rot. I took a step forward, my feet sticking to the dusty, dirty black-and-white checkered laminate tile as I moved. Despite the scrapes and groans coming through the walls outside, the place seemed empty.
“Hello?” I asked cautiously, and my voice sounded foreign and perverse within this space, although I wasn’t sure why. I was starting to get the impression no one ever spoke within this musty old diner, although I wasn’t quite sure why. A bad feeling settled over me, raising the hair on the back of my neck and making me shiver as a horrible thought filled my brain. What if everyone here was already dead? What if I was the omega man?
No, that was impossible. Still, wherever this was, I didn’t want to be here at all. It reeked of death and decay. It made me feel like maybe, just maybe, everything had ended. Yes, this was what the world would be like after the ending. Plague, famine, nuclear winter, EMP, zombie apocalypse, the cause was irrelevant. Either way, everything would spin into decay until the sun decided to swallow everything. Maybe Geb was right after all? Maybe nothing mattered?
A gunshot split the silence, and I spun toward it. The sound wasn’t loud. It had been muffled for sure, and I probably wouldn’t have heard it if I didn’t have super sensitive hearing, but I’d heard it nonetheless.
Before I could grab one of the rusting butter knives from a disused place setting to use as a weapon, a thought occurred to me. I was a werewolf. I didn’t need a weapon. I was a weapon. One of the finest weapons nature had ever had the good graces to create. And even though I didn’t know where the hell Geb had sent me, I calmed my fear, pushing it down into the core of my being and burying it beneath discipline and resolve. I was an Alpha. What was a gun?
I made my way toward the sound, taking care to creep quietly. I wasn’t sure what had shot the gun or what had been shot, but I knew one thing. Surprising people with firearms generally ended badly for someone. Even moving stealthily, I reached a door with faded, peeling green paint quickly and, having nowhere else to go, pushed on it with the palm of my hand, careful to keep as much of my body as possible hidden behind the wall. I wasn’t sure how bullet proof the thin the walls were since they looked like they were composed of little more than mold and drywall, but using them for cover made me feel better anyway. Hey, just because I could live through a gunshot wound, didn’t mean I looked forward to them.
The door creaked open on rusty hinges. My heart pounded in my chest as I held my breath and listened. No sounds. Good. I craned my head to look through the sliver of an opening. It was mostly dark inside, but thin beams of sunlight punched through holes in the ceiling, making it seem like a cage with bars of light.
Standing in the center of the tiny supply closet was a man about six feet tall. He was hunched over a chair, his tattered blue letterman jacket with most of the gold letters ripped off barely visible in the gloom. His black hair was unkempt, and his skin had a paleness to it despite being naturally dark. It made me think he hadn’t been outside in a while.
There was a thing in the chair.
I knew no other way to describe it. It sort of looked human, but its flesh was distended and rotting. It only had one eye and that one eye was clouded over and staring blankly off into the distance like the muscles that had once moved it had rotted away.
The creature looked like it’d been shot through the mouth because the space behind its head was splattered with black blood that smelled of death and decay. Its jaws opened and closed awkwardly, trying to snap shut but unable to move well because one jawbone was completely shattered.
“Go on, say ‘brains’ again, I dare you,” the man with the jacket said, standing up and pointing his pistol at the creature. It was a compact thing, all sleek black metal. Still, it looked like it could do some serious damage if pointed in someone’s general direction and fired. “I double dog dare you.”
The thing surged forward, dragging the metal folding chair across the tile with a screech that set my nerves on edge. The duct tape around its limbs strained as the creature pulled hard enough to cut into its own flesh. Black blood spilled from the bindings, releasing the scent of rancid meat into the air.
I tried to keep myself from gagging and failed. Vomit exploded from my mouth and splattered across the tile, giving away my position. The man whirled, gun pointed at me. His eyes were dark and wild, and his face was smeared with grime. It sort of looked like he’d covered himself with that decrepit black blood that spilled from the bound monster.
“Now everything makes sense,” he said, gesturing at me with his gun like I was the answer to life, the universe, and everything. “You’re making James upset.” He pointed toward the thing in the chair with his empty hand. It snapped at him again, teeth clacking shut awkwardly on the broken hinges of its jaw. “He can smell your life, your essence. It’s why he is acting the way he is. Why he’s trying to eat me now.” He patted his chest with his open palm. “You need to cover yourself in their scent so they won’t recognize you.”
Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Page 7