The Was-staff glowed like it was radioactive. Set’s body jerked violently before disintegrating into a pile of scarlet powder. And from that powder, a shadow rose. It stretched upward, becoming more substantial as it got to its feet and turned its faceless gaze upon me. The look of its hollow, vacant eyes made panic rise from the deep, primordial part of my brain. Something was here. Something dark and horrible. And somehow, that thing was better than the destroyer.
It hissed as one black as soot eyelid opened to reveal the depths of the endless void. The shadow reached out and wrapped its hand around the glowing Was-staff. The weapon shuddered and winked out entirely as the shadow pulsed and throbbed before exploding in a cloud of darkness.
Apep stepped forth from that darkness wearing jeans and a skin-tight black t-shirt. A bemused smile crossed his lips. “Hello, Thes. It’s been a while.”
Chapter 20
The destroyer turned toward Apep. His eyes were wide with something very similar to panic. It seemed to move through him, stealing his ability to do more than stare at the snake god in terror and quake in his non-existent boots. Horus took the opportunity to drive his godly fist into the man’s skull. The sound of cracking bone filled my ears as the destroyer tumbled across the clouds toward us.
Apep raised his left hand, and the darkness congealed into an oily mass that swept up around the destroyer, wrapping him up like a python squeezing its prey. The man’s eyes began to bug out of his skull as he struggled fruitlessly to get free of the ties binding him.
“See, here’s the thing about neutrality. It’s a broken concept because there’s always middling little things going on. Those tiny, nearly superfluous things never go according to plan, and as that happens, entropy rises and chaos is the result. It’s also why order is so easy to break. Chaos is much more difficult to stamp out. Trying to perfectly balance both is impossible. Chaos does not care what you do or what you stand for. It exists solely to break down everything. Even that which it has itself created.” Apep stepped up to the destroyer and pressed one milk white finger up under the man’s chin and tilted his head until their eyes met. “I can smell your fear. Even with all this power at your disposal, you still fear me, don’t you, Ibebi?”
The man blanched at the mention of his name, Ibebi. In that instant, he became somehow less than he was. The power within him visibly diminished as he shrunk away, shriveling under the coils of darkness wrapped around him.
“Thes, help!” Anubis called, and his voice shocked me out of my reverie. I turned to see him still dangling over the abyss. He was losing his grip as he tried vainly to scramble up over the edge, but try as he might, his fingers just slipped off the clouds.
“I’m coming!” I raced toward him, sprinting across the clouds and leaping toward his hands as they slipped off the clouds. I grabbed Anubis’s wrist just as he tumbled free, and the sudden jerk of all his weight nearly popped my arm from its socket.
I hung half over the edge as Anubis dangled below me. He had lost his jackal head and stared up at me with ruby red eyes. I wasn’t sure if this was the first time I’d seen him without his godly jackal mask, but unlike the others, I couldn’t recall when I’d seen his actual face. He looked young, younger than me in fact. He had one of those boyish faces so it would have been hard to tell how old he actually was even if he wasn’t a couple millennia old. Still, I got the feeling that even if he was physically older than me, he wasn’t much in the way of maturity. He was just a young kid.
Horus grabbed me around the waist and yanked me backward away from the edge, dragging Anubis along with me. As the death god’s feet cleared the edge, he let out a heavy breath of relief and rolled onto his back.
“Thank—” Anubis stopped speaking in mid-sentence as his eyes widened. His gaze was fixed upon Apep who had the destroyer dead to rights. “Why is he here?” Anubis spun toward me, raising one shapely black eyebrow, but even though he was putting on a brave face I could tell he was terrified.
“Thes summoned him to help.” Horus’s voice was a mixture between satisfaction and mockery. “It wound up being a good idea. Who would have thought?”
“Why did you do it?” Anubis asked, ignoring the falcon god.
“Because we were losing, and we needed help. Apep was the obvious choice when you realize who he is.” I pointed at the destroyer. “He’s some guy, right? Some normal guy. And normal people fear Apep. More so than you guys do. Even with all the power he has access too, Ibebi can’t beat back his primordial fear of the demon snake. He just can’t do it because he’s not a hero. It’s easy to stand up and fight a hero. Heroes have rules after all. Villains are much harder to beat, especially when you fear them.”
“Even still, summoning Apep back after he was banished is unwise.” Anubis shook his head. “This is a genie you will not be able to put back in his bottle.”
“Just because I’m a villain, doesn’t mean I want the world to end,” Apep called, glancing over at us like we were petulant children. “I like it here, all my stuff is here.”
With those words, Apep reached out and put one hand over the destroyer’s mouth. He pinched his fingers together and pulled, and as he did so, a screaming apparition came free of the man. It was the color of obsidian, and the keening it made was unlike anything I’d ever heard.
“You’ve turned to the dark side, friend, and I’m the master of the darkness,” Apep said, dropping Ibebi’s lifeless body to the ground. It hit with a sort of empty thunk as Apep held out the vaguely humanoid shade in his hands, showing it to me. “I’d like you to look at this, Thes. I’m going to learn you.”
“To learn me?” I swallowed, taking a step back as my heart beat so hard in my chest I thought it’d burst free. “Why? What’s in it for you?”
“As thanks for releasing me back into the world.” He shook the writhing thing in his hand. “This is that poor schlep’s soul. Take note of how dark and twisted it is. This is why the destroyer turned him so easily, why he could make him do this.” Apep waved his hand around, indicating the fallen gods all around us. “Contrast it to the soul you came here to recover. Your friend’s soul is practically white as the driven snow in comparison.”
I took a deep breath before pulling the small, crystalline vial that held Connor’s soul from around my neck. I looked at it. Apep was right. A near perfect whiteness glimmered within the stoppered bottle. And now, staring at it, I suddenly felt incredibly stupid and selfish for still being here. Sure, I’d helped stop Apep prior to releasing him, but in the end, he was free again because only his darkness could defeat the destroyer. It was sort of sad, but there was power in fear, and that fear had won out even when the combined might of the entire heavenly host failed. It was a lesson I wouldn’t forget.
Still, that wasn’t quite why I felt dumb at this immediate moment. What would have happened if I’d just taken the deal when Apep offered to transport me home so very long ago? Would he have stepped forth and crushed the destroyer on his own just as he done now? Was the only thing I managed to cause was strife and chaos? And worse, had I kept Connor from waking up this entire time because I’d been too stupid to return home? No, it couldn’t be that simple. I had done good, hadn’t I?
“Was everything you did to stop him?” I pointed at the soul still writhing in Apep’s grip. “Was that why you did everything you did?”
“I actually told you that before, Thes.” Apep tapped his temple with his free hand. “I said I needed to stop the destroyer. You did not listen. Do you think I wanted to do what I did? I nearly shattered the realms to make darkness rain across this land. I had to make the peasants realize why they should fear me.”
I nodded, understanding it all. We’d all been fools this entire time. Apep had done everything to make himself appear greater than he was so when the destroyer finally came to conquer all of Egypt, not only would the demon snake be able to stand up to him, but he’d be able to win.
“All I’ve done has been for naught,” I murmured, shakin
g my head and barely resisting the urge to crawl into a hole and die.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Apep replied, glancing at me. “You’ve unleashed forces here that even the heavenly host cannot begin to know the consequences of. That was meant to happen.” He smirked at me. “After all, I smelled myself upon you when you first arrived. There must be a reason why you know me in the future, eh?”
As he said the words, I looked up at him and cocked my head at him, but all he did was smile back at me with one of those “I’ve got a secret” smiles. Still, maybe he had a point. Maybe all I’d done was just to affect the future so that when the destroyer rose one last time, he wouldn’t crush us all. And, as I had that thought, I clung to it like a kid with a kite on a windy day. That one thought was my salvation. If I lost it, I knew I’d sink down into a pool of depression from which I might not ever escape.
“Thanks,” I said, looking up at the snake god
“Don’t mention it,” he replied, nodding at me.
“So what do we do now?” Horus asked, breaking my moment of contemplation as he strode forward and knelt beside the cooling body that had once hosted he who cannot be named.
“We banish this punk to a deep, dark hole and sit back and be thankful we didn’t all die at he who cannot be named’s hands.” Apep showed his impressively white teeth. “Then, well, let’s just say things get interesting.” The snake god tossed the soul through the air in my general direction, and it wasn’t until Anubis caught the soul in one hand that I realized Apep was giving it to the death god. “I think you know what to do with that, don’t you Anubis?”
“Yeah.” Anubis nodded, his lips set in a grim line as he studied the struggling soul in his hands. “I’ve got a special place for him.”
“Make sure he doesn’t escape for at least a full day. If he does before then, he can reenter his body and this whole shebang starts over.” Apep glanced down at the body as Horus reached down to touch it and a little zip of electricity shocked the falcon god.
“You mean to say he who cannot be named is still in there?” Horus asked, pulling his hand back like he’d touched a sleeping snake.
“Yeah, as long as there’s a chance that soul will come back into its body, he won’t leave. That’ll take about a day. Then the decay will have set in and that soul won’t be able to return even if it wanted to do so. If he wasn’t in there, I’d just light it on fire and be done with this whole business.” Apep turned to walk away, and I rushed toward him, grabbing his arm before he made it more than a couple steps.
“Wait, that’s it? You’re just going to go?” I asked, but before Apep could answer, Isis appeared in front of us. Her sapphire armor glinted in the light of the sunlight. Her left hand was clasped around a sword the color of clear ocean water with an ankh for a hilt, but her other hand stood empty.
“You’ve done as I asked, Thes,” she said, pulling a golden jar from the satchel at her side. “Here’s your treat.” She flung the canopic jar at me.
My heart leapt into my throat as relief flooded me. I caught the jar like I’d caught the winning touchdown in the Superbowl and pulled it into my chest. With a heave, I wrenched the lid open. Black smoke exploded from it. I staggered backward as darkness filled my vision.
Horrific laughter filled my ears as I fell to my knees, clawing at my flesh, trying to pull off the oily residue that stung every single pore on my body like a hive full of fire ants.
“Mother, what are you doing?” Horus cried, voice hoarse. Footsteps filled my hearing and a low keening erupted across the heavens.
I wiped the burning slime from my eyes in time to see Anubis stagger backward, Isis’s sword jammed through his chest, piercing the spot where his heart would have been. The death god fell to his knees as Isis reached down and jerked Ibebi’s struggling soul from his grip. She shot a look at us, only she wasn’t looking at me. Apep lay on the ground next to me, struggling with the same black gunk that clung to me.
“No!” Horus called, and as the falcon god moved toward his mother, she flung her empty hand at him. A wave of blue energy struck him like a comet, and he simply vanished.
“Yes,” she replied, and with that, she drove the struggling soul back into the body of the peasant, Ibebi. The clouds beneath me evaporated then, and I fell through the air along with the still struggling form of Apep and the corpses of the entire Egyptian pantheon save Isis.
Above, I could see her peering down at me, and as she waved goodbye to me, I realized my one tragic mistake. Geb had said all of his children were infected by he who cannot be named. Isis was one of his children. And I’d never bothered to free her from the influence of the destroyer. Damn.
Chapter 21
As we plummeted through the air, Apep exploded into a cloud of darkness that rippled outward, filling the sky. Serpentine jaws snapped shut around me, arresting my fall before I could become a Thescake. It was a little weird because I found myself sitting on his tongue looking at his still human form, now clad in a pristine white suit with a white tie and a white handkerchief in his pocket.
“So, how are things?” the god asked, glancing up at me and patting the spot of black tongue next to him. “Good?”
“We have to get back up there. Isis is under the influence of he who cannot be named. She’s going to help him kill us all!” I cried as I looked around for somewhere to go, but I was trapped inside the mouth of a humongous snake. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“We are heading back up there. I think I can still take on the destroyer now that you’ve finally allowed me to fuse with Set. Together, we shall bring the full might of the void down upon his lily white skull.” He waved his hand. “I meant his figurative lily white skull. All I need you to do is keep Isis from being all ‘I’m a crazy bitch’ and we should be fine. Think you can manage that?”
“Yeah,” I said after a moment. I had been about to say, “I’ll do my best,” but if that wasn’t good enough I wanted to do better. I wanted to stop the destroyer and rescue everyone. Besides, I needed to get Sekhmet back, and Isis had betrayed me. She was going to pay for that.
“Excellent.” Apep stood, and as he did so, the snake’s jaws opened to reveal the heavens. The clouds had turned to a strange gray color and silver lightning shot through the sky. Isis stood off to the side, gazing off into space as the destroyer, now back in his body, paced around the throne of the gods, studying it like a little kid trying to decide precisely which cat deserved to have a firecracker strapped to it. I didn’t particularly care for that kind of kid.
“Hello,” Apep called, stepping out onto the clouds, and as he did so, scarlet lightning crackled above us. “Miss me?”
The destroyer spun on his heel, staring wide eyed, but even as a shudder ran down his spine, his hands tightened into fists. He was scared, but this time he was going to fight. And why shouldn’t he? He’d let himself be taken quietly into the night once before. No, this was his chance to stamp out the night. Of course he’d fight. He was a cornered animal confronted with a snake.
Isis rushed toward us, but as she did so, Apep batted her aside like she was a ragdoll. Her body rolled across the cloud strewn surface as Apep shrugged out of his coat and let it fall to the ground. He reached up and loosened his tie before glancing at me. “I’ve got this. Get the queen.”
I nodded and sprinted after Isis’s tumbling body, hoping to take her down before she recovered. If she was anything like the other gods had been, well, it’d be tough, but I was sure I could manage. Even if I didn’t have godly help on my side, I had something better. I just wasn’t quite sure what it was that was better yet, but something, surely. I was the Dunewalker after all.
My foot lashed out, catching the goddess in the ribs as she climbed to her feet. The sound of cracking bone filled my ears, and as I pivoted to drive my elbow into her back and slam her into the ground, she actually twisted in midair like an eel and seized me around the throat. Her fingers closed like a vice, cutting off my air supply, and as we toppl
ed back to the ground, she slammed me onto my back.
Stars shot past my eyes as she reared back to smash her fist into my face. And silly me. I let her. The blow shattered the front teeth of my open mouth and drove into the back of my throat so hard I nearly gagged as I twisted and bit down, using the full force of my jaws and my remaining teeth on her delicate wrist.
I’m not quite sure how hard a werewolf can actually bite down, but I once had a friend who owned a German shepherd. Not wanting to keep her dog locked in the car, my friend left her dog tied to her bumper while she went inside the bank. I wasn’t quite sure how long she was inside, but when she returned, the dog had chewed through not only the tire, but the metal rim of her front passenger side too. My jaws were quite a bit stronger than a German shepherd’s were.
The sound of snapping bone filled my ears as my teeth severed Isis’s hand, spilling her golden god blood into my mouth. Power surged through me as it touched my tongue. The goddess wailed in agony, pulling back her bleeding stump of an arm. I bounded to my feet and tackled her to the ground. I pounded away at her face, and as it turned to putty beneath my onslaught, I saw Apep fly off through the distance.
His body slammed down onto the clouds a few yards from me, and the lightning in the sky above faded to the distant rumble of a well spent storm. The destroyer turned his gaze upon me and bared his teeth before raising one hand and gesturing for me to “bring it.”
“Come on, Thes.” He cracked his neck. “All out of tricks?”
“What happened to leaving me alive to tell the tale?” I asked, slowly getting to my feet. In all honesty, I was just trying to buy myself some time to recover. I had no plans on living through this battle. I was going to take him down even if it killed me. As the thought settled over me, I realized that he who cannot be named knew this as well. He had called it an inevitability. Turned out he was right.
Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Page 15