“I’ve changed my mind.” He dropped back into a fighting stance which was a little weird. Isis twitched beneath me, and as I glanced down toward her, the destroyer rushed at me.
His fist came at me like a bullet train, and as I tried to dodge, Apep grabbed him from behind. The blow struck me anyway, though not with nearly as much force as it would have if the snake god hadn’t jerked him backward off his feet. As I was flung backward across the clouds, every bone in my left shoulder shattered into tiny fragments, the two of them fell to the ground grappling with each other.
I lay there for only a second, trying to will myself to move despite having been hit by a metaphysical bus, but it was long enough for Isis to get to her feet and stumble toward me, rage in her battered, bloody eyes.
“You took my hand,” she slurred through bleeding lips. “Now I’ll take something from you.”
“If it’s my job, you can have it,” I replied, pushing back the agony of my busted shoulder and getting to my feet. That one blow had caused so much damage, I knew my arm would be out of commission for a while. “Sure, you get to go back in time and see the world, but the whole getting beat up by deities thing is really starting to suck.”
Instead of replying, she ran at me, golden blood trailing from her stump of a hand as she drew back to beat me upside the head with it. As she did so, I stepped into her attack, shouldering her in the chest and knocking her back a step. Her breath whooshed out of her as our combined momentum crushed her ribcage.
I stepped through the attack, drawing Khufu’s khopesh as I did so since it’d been relatively effective thus far on freeing deities from the influence of he who cannot be named. My blow came around in an arc as she threw her good arm up to block. The flat of my blade hit her upward moving elbow with an ear splitting crack and shattered into a million shards of broken, splintered metal. My hand kept going, the hilt of the weapon still traveling through the air. I felt the power in the khopesh evaporate as it smacked weakly into the goddess’s abdomen.
Isis ignored my attack and kicked me in the chest, shattering my own ribs as I hit the ground a few feet away. The hilt of the lifeless khopesh slipped from my hand, landing on the clouds next to me with an empty thud as a horrible feeling settled in my gut that was entirely divorced from the pain of my immediate injuries. That weapon had been the anchor keeping Khufu on this world, and while I knew the mummy had been turning to stone, there was always a chance I could have saved him. But with the weapon shattered, and all its mystical energy leaking into the ether, he would revert to a lifeless corpse. And it was all my fault. How could I be so stupid?
Tears filled my eyes as the goddess grabbed me by the throat and hauled me to attention like I weighed less than nothing.
“Now that I’ve taken something important from you, it’s time for you to learn to die,” she said, and her words slipped around my senses like a noose, cutting off everything and leaving me unable to do more than hang there as she began dragging me toward the edge of the clouds. “It’s too bad you’re not better dressed. Usually people want to look nice when they meet their maker. Oh well.” And with that, she released me, and I fell backward off the heavens for the second time that day.
The only difference was this time I grabbed onto Isis with my good arm and brought her along for the ride. She stumbled forward, slipping off the edge along with me, and we plummeted through the air.
“It’s too bad you can’t fly,” I cried as I held onto the struggling goddess with all my might. “You’ll just have to hit the earth along with me. I wonder, can your godly durability survive a fall like that?”
Instead of responding, she kneed me in the face, breaking my nose and snapping my head backward. My hand slipped off of her wrist, and as it did so, Isis started to transform. Sapphire light spilled from her body as she turned into a massive white bird. She struggled, flapping one broken wing in an attempt to right herself as I grabbed hold of one slender bird leg and hung on for dear life.
She juked and jived, spinning around in midair and making my stomach leap into my throat, but I kept a firm grip on her avian leg. We were so high above the earth, I couldn’t even see the ground, and that realization made me so scared, I gripped her even tighter. Even if I could hang on forever, I had no way to defend myself, and my strength ebbed with every moment.
Isis slashed at me with the claws on her one free leg, trying to tear me open, and I bit down on her ankle, sinking my terrible werewolf teeth into her thin birdy leg. Fluid that tasted strangely of chicken filled my mouth, and I swallowed as her shriek splintered my hearing and left an aching ring in its wake. With each gulp of her godly blood, my strength returned. Like magic, my left shoulder started working, the bones writhing back into place inside me and welding themselves back together.
I reached out with my left hand and buried my claws in her underside, ripping the goddess’s underbelly open. She squawked loud enough to shatter my eardrums and tried to fling me away once more. Only this time her efforts were weaker than her previous ones had been. As blood and thicker bits spilled from her insides, we started to plummet to earth, and I realized with horrible certainty, that by splitting her open, I had made it impossible for us to keep aloft.
As we fell in a lopsided death spiral that became more and more severe with each passing second, Isis reverted back into her human form. She folded herself like an accordion, drawing her legs to her chest and pulling me within reach of her arms. She smashed her fist into the top of my skull. My vision fragmented down the center and everything went blurry as my teeth broke, tearing free of her leg.
She hit me again, and even though I felt the important bits of my skull crack, I wrapped both of my arms around her waist and never let go.
Chapter 22
We hit the ground. I died. Seriously. My body was reduced to a pile of sloppy mush in the bottom of a crater in the desert. Isis didn’t fare much better, but because she was a goddess, she seemed to retain cohesion.
It was a little weird to watch her pull herself back together, especially because I was little more than a ghost floating next to what remained of my body. It was a little weird to be dead, especially because even up until the very last moment, I’d sort of expected to live through it.
Still as I watched Isis pull herself back together like she was that liquid metal terminator repairing himself after being doused with liquid nitrogen and shattered across the floor, a strange sense of calm settled over me. I was done. There was nothing else I could do. Part of me rankled at that, but most of me was suddenly very tired and very happy to be done with everything. I was a mortal after all and had been meddling not just in the affairs of a dragon, but in the affairs with gods. Being able to stop doing that was like a huge weight being lifted from my shoulders.
Yes, I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to rescue Sekhmet or return Connor’s soul to him, but as I tried to think about it, the place where my emotions were just shut off, replaced by a weird sense of finality. I was done after all, there was no use worrying about them anymore. Besides, I was pretty sure things would work themselves out, and even if they didn’t, what was I going to do about it? I was dead.
What was left of me couldn’t even really be called a corpse because, as I said before, it was mostly just a crimson splotch strewn across the sand. That was the problem with falling from heaven, I supposed. There had been a point when the air resistance had actually burned a great deal of my flesh from my bones, but with Isis’s body to block most of it and my werewolf healing, I’d survived that more or less.
That said, there had been a point where my werewolf metabolism caused my body to start devouring itself to keep going. My muscle mass and bones had melted away before my eyes as my body reappropriated every available nutrient to keep me alive. Even though death seemed inevitable, I’d hung on to the vain hope I could take Isis along with me. I had forced Isis beneath me, using her as a shield so she couldn’t transform and fly away. Since she was a goddess,
she had fared much better in our fall from heaven, but hey, I never said it was a good plan, did I?
We’d struck the sand hard enough to melt the sand into glass and shatter the bedrock beneath. What remained of my scrawny arms and legs had splintered under the force of the impact. My body slammed into Isis a millisecond later with enough force to push my teeth back through my skull. My bones pulverized, and the gooey bits inside me burst from my flesh like I was a bag filled with red paint. Isis fared no better, but then again, she was a goddess.
I wasn’t quite sure how long I floated there, watching her put herself back together in a way that all the king’s men and all the king’s horses would surely envy. Me? I was definitely going the route of Humpty Dumpty. There was a tug at my spirit, an unearthly pull trying to guide me away from this spot, but I couldn’t look away for the goddess even though it grew more insistent by the second. I wasn’t quite ready to leave. I couldn’t quite understand why, but something about this end felt… unfinished.
Wasn’t I supposed to be special? They had called me the Dunewalker, but what if I wasn’t? What if I was just some poor schlub who had gotten in way over his furry werewolf head? I mean, hadn’t Geb told me that if I didn’t do my job, someone would take my place? At least I think it was Geb. I’d encountered so many Egyptian deities, they were all starting to run together now.
The scenery was starting to fade away now. Bright light the likes of which I couldn’t explain filled my vision, and like a silly little moth, I felt myself drawn inexplicably toward it. I floated forward, and as I moved closer to the light, a strange sense of peace fell over me. I was done, and that was okay.
“No.”
The word stopped me. The light was so close I could feel on my ghostly skin like the first kiss of morning sun. I moved back toward it, ignoring the voice calling to me.
“No you don’t, Thes.”
“Why?” I said or think I said. It was weird because I didn’t actually have a mouth.
“You don’t get to leave yet.”
“But I stopped Isis.” The words left me before I could stop them. The light was so very close. I reached out and my blob of a hand touched its shimmering silver surface with the barest fingertip. Peace settled over me. I wasn’t sure what the speaker wanted, but quite honestly, I didn’t care. If this was what only the barest touch felt like, what would it feel like if I embraced the light? I wanted to find out. I was tired of fighting.
“That isn’t enough.” A hand gripped my shoulder, searing my soul like napalm and ripping away my peace. A scream tore from the entirety of my being as I was dragged away from the light. I fought and twisted, trying to get back to the light as it faded away from me. The music in my ears grew faint enough to be replaced by the empty hum of the Egyptian desert.
A female face appeared in my field of vision, so magnificent in its splendor, it almost made up for what I’d lost, almost took away the ache inside me. Her hair was like freshly brushed gold and her eyes like a perfect ocean, endless and inviting. She reached out to me with one milk white hand and touched my chin, and as she did so, my face became strangely substantial.
Her hands worked over me like I was a piece of pottery on a wheel, reforming me from nothing, encasing my spirit in a body of flesh. The splotch that had once been me faded away. The process wasn’t painful per se, but it was certainly unlike anything I had ever experienced.
When it was over, I stood there, fully formed and naked in the desert. The cool air of night licked across my skin, making me shiver. It was like how I’d come to Egypt in the first place, but where that had been insufferable and burning. This was cold and strangely appealing, like a glass of ice water on a blazing hot summer’s day.
“How do you feel?” Isis asked, rubbing her chin between her thumb and forefinger as the wind buffeting me transformed into a simple white tunic that fit my frame perfectly. “I think I got you all proportioned correctly, but you didn’t exactly leave me a lot to work with. It’s a good thing I put this on you earlier, or I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.” She held up a crimson scorpion by its tail. The creature was huge and very, very dead.
I swallowed and glanced at my chest. The scorpion that had been tattooed upon my chest was gone. “What the hell was that thing?”
“A death curse, but you died before it went off, so I used the little bit of essence it’d sucked up to rebuild you.” She flung the scorpion into the distance. “This is where you say thank you.”
“Thanks,” I said because what else could I say? She had revived me from being a smudge on the goddamned ground via the death curse she’d put on me. I was alive due to her whims in more ways than one. “I’m guessing falling from heaven broke you free of the destroyer’s influence?”
“It did, and I should be thanking you for freeing me, not the other way around,” she replied and as she said the words, her face brightened. “Wait, I know what to do to thank you!” She reached into the air between us. It was a little strange because her arm, complete with hand, actually vanished into the atmosphere between us. She bit her lip and crinkled her nose, rummaging around inside some kind of weird pocket dimension. After only a moment, she pulled her hand back out and with it came a small golden jar about the size of a human heart.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked, feeling tears tug at the corners of my eyes as relief flooded into me. “Is that Sekhmet’s heart?”
“You know, I’ve always told people I had the heart of a lioness.” She pressed the box into my hands as she spoke. “But this is the first time I could add ‘in a jar on my shelf.’”
I wasn’t listening to her as I wrenched off the lid. A golden heart beat inside. It was Sekhmet’s heart. I had it in my grasp, finally! Before I could stop myself, I pulled it free of the jar. It pumped in my hand, filling me with a joy I couldn’t quite explain.
The emerald pendant Khufu had used to store her body pulsed, and I jerked it off my head, somewhat surprised it had survived my fall and subsequent resurrection. The moment I touched the heart to the pendant, golden flame erupted from them hot enough to make me inadvertently drop them.
They struck the sand with a hiss and quickly reduced it to molten glass. A figure I never thought I’d see again stretched upward from the slag. My heart swelled with relief as tears filled my eyes. I crossed the distance between us and swept her into my arms, half-worried she wasn’t really there at all. Her warmth filled me, radiating into my embrace as I buried my face in her hair.
“Thes, I knew you’d save me,” she said, and her voice was the sweetest music I’d ever heard. “I never lost faith in you. Not even for a moment.” She reached out to me and touched my cheek.
I kissed her. She kissed me back, pressing her mouth into mine as her hands wrapped around my back and drew me against her lithe body.
“Ahem,” Isis said from a few feet away, and even though I was content to ignore her entirely, Sekhmet pulled back and turned to look at the other goddess. Isis pointed upward with one slender finger. Confusion creased Sekhmet’s perfect brows.
“What?” she asked, gazing toward the heavens above. Her body shuddered against mine and not in a good way. “Is that who I think it is? Tell me it cannot be.”
“It is. He has returned. Even now, Apep battles him at the foot of the solar throne. He is losing. But without Horus to help him, surely you can feel the tug of chaos as it recedes into the gentle night.” Isis had her head craned upward. “Horus is trying to come back to help him, but my son doesn’t know the way. He will not make it in time to turn the tides.”
“So where does that leave us?” Sekhmet said and courage filled her voice like a clarion call, bolstering me and making me feel like I could take on an entire army by myself.
“I fear only Thes can stop him now.” Isis looked at us. “I just wish I could tell you why I think that.”
“Me?” I asked as Sekhmet pulled away from me completely. Her sudden lack of closeness left me cold in the night, and I shi
vered.
“You, Thes,” Sekhmet said, taking my hand in hers. “If Isis says you can stop the destroyer, I believe her. It is foretold after all.”
“How is it foretold?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at her. “I thought all that destiny talk was mumbo jumbo.”
“Because Thes, you come from the future. If the destroyer wins here and now, there is no future. Ipso facto, you have to win.” Sekhmet smiled at me. “Or have you forgotten you weren’t born in ancient Egypt?”
“I haven’t forgotten, but it’s still insane,” I replied, tightening my grip on her hand. “How am I supposed to win against something like him? He decapitated Set with a single blow.”
“Let’s find out,” Sekhmet said with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Isis, find Horus and meet us at the throne.”
I was pretty sure Isis replied, but I never heard her because Sekhmet took that opportunity to wrap one arm around my waist and leap the air with all the strength her godly legs could muster. Wind as hot as the sun whipped around us, but instead of scorching me to my bones, they lifted us up into the heavens as gently as a couple of hot air balloons.
Chapter 23
What was left of the heavens wasn’t exactly heavenly. The clouds had taken on a metallic silver color, and the sky above was the exact same shade, making the world seem to stretch out into eternity. There was a very small sphere of swirling rainbow surrounding Apep, but with each blow the destroyer landed on the snake god, the color surrounding him faded.
Sekhmet took one look at the surroundings and her breath caught in her throat. “How can this be?”
I exhaled through my teeth. “Everyone’s been defeated. Horus and Ra are who knows where and Apep stands alone. Now only darkness remains, but even darkness can be defeated by a light switch.”
Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Page 16