Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3)

by J. A. Cipriano

  Sekhmet studied my face before unslinging her bow. “Well, that’s a depressing sentiment. What happened to the guy who pushed back the void itself to save me? The guy who was swallowed by Apep and fought his way free? Where did he go?” Orange flames leapt across her bow and as she spoke, an arrow of burning fire appeared knocked within.

  “He fell off the world and died,” I replied, hopelessness filling my voice as she loosed the bolt.

  It didn’t seem like much, no more than a splinter of light in the unceasing, endless gray. I wasn’t sure why the grayness of it seemed so much worse than the oppressive white of the void or the unrelenting dark, but it did. It had something to do with the emptiness of it. The void might be empty, but the void was still something itself. This wasn’t even that. This was less than nothing.

  Her arrow struck the destroyer, piercing his wrist as he readied his fist to deliver another blow. It jerked him off his feet and pinned him to the solar throne. Fire leapt across its wicker frame, blazing like a torch as his scream of rage filled the air.

  The ground beneath our feet shattered and from the cracks, orange flames burst forth, searing the air and turning the heavens into a blast furnace. The sky above us crackled with energy as Sekhmet fired again and again, burying arrow after arrow in the destroyer, and with each bolt, spots of color no bigger than a bottle cap surfaced here and there.

  Unfortunately, her arrows didn’t seem like they were doing much more than angering the destroyer even though I wasn’t sure why. Earlier, he’d seemed to feel injury, but now he was more like an unceasing, unstoppable machine. And the thing about fighting machines was this. You might be able to damage them, but at the end of the day, they didn’t feel pain, and they didn’t get tired.

  The destroyer brought his free hand down upon the flaming arrows embedded in his torso, snapping them off and blotting out their fire as he tore his pinned wrist free of the throne, leaving a bloody trail in its wake. He didn’t even grimace.

  Apep took the opportunity to blast the destroyer full in the face with a bolt of scarlet lightning. The destroyer toppled backward like a fresh cut tree. But even as he fell, something changed. The heavens seemed to hold their breath and everything stopped. Sekhmet’s arrows, so numerous they blocked out the sky, fell from the air and clattered lifelessly to the ground, their flames extinguished.

  “I can feel everything, every last molecule,” the destroyer said, rising to his feet and staring at his open hand in amazement. “I can feel every speck of dust in the air.” A strange look of realization flitted through his dark eyes as he made a fist. The cracks in the ground resealed themselves, smothering the fire within. “And I can make it dance to my whims. It’s amazing.”

  A smile crossed his lips as his dark eyes locked on Apep. “I, Ibebi, am a god even among gods. I have nothing to fear, even from fear itself.”

  He waved one hand at Apep. The snake god flew backward, unraveling into streams of crimson smoke. As Apep hit the clouds and broke apart, Set’s body tumbled out of him like a broken marionette. The storm god was whole once again but, unfortunately, didn’t look conscious. Even with flesh sloughing off of him like melted candle wax, Apep got to his feet and took an unsteady step toward the destroyer.

  “Everyone has something to fear. Those who fear nothing are fools,” Apep murmured. His voice was like a whisper on the wind as he threw his hand out toward the destroyer. As one final blast of lightning leapt from his fingertips and struck the destroyer in the chest, the great god of darkness Apep evaporated into nothing.

  The smell of burning sulfur filled the air as the destroyer looked down at the charred spot on his chest and casually brushed it away. “I wondered what would happen if I knocked Set free. I had a thought that perhaps he was still locked away inside the snake god, that perhaps they were just fused together somehow. Turns out I was right.” He shook his head. “Hard to believe I ever feared either of them.”

  Sekhmet charged the destroyer who turned to face her like she was an errant toddler. I reached out to stop her, but my hands grasped only air. The destroyer met her head on, driving his knee into her stomach. Her face twisted in agony as blood exploded from her open mouth. His next blow flung her back past me. I wasn’t sure where she landed because as the crack of snapping bone filled my ears, everything inside me broke.

  I launched myself forward, my vision red with rage. The destroyer sidestepped my punch like I was moving in slow motion and drove his open palm through my solarplexis. His hand burst out my back in a spray of gore. He wrenched it free with a pleased smile on his lips. I slumped to my knees, blood pouring from my broken body as white smoke swirled around me.

  “It seems you have been defeated, Dunewalker.” The destroyer grabbed me by my ears and spun my head. Sekhmet lay on her back so far away she was barely a glimmer on the horizon. Still, even from this distance, I could tell she wasn’t moving. “Your love has been defeated.” He twisted my head toward Set’s unmoving body. “Your last resort is nothing but a fading memory.”

  As everything in my field of vision went black and unfocused, his smiling yellow teeth filled my eyes. “Tell me, Dunewalker, why did you come back? To die at my hands?” He flung me to the ground, but I didn’t feel the impact. “Because that can be arranged.”

  A strange sort of calm settled over me as I watched the smile on Ibebi’s smug face transform into one of pure glee. Here he was, just some normal guy, and when given great power, had crushed us all.

  “I am unstoppable, Thes Mercer.” He loomed over me, one fist raised to end my life. “Me, a son of a lowly reed gatherer, but I have defeated Ra himself.”

  As the destroyer brought his fist down, the white mist floating around me congealed around his arm. It tightened around his every last muscle, binding him and dragging to him knees. A horrific scream tore from Ibebi’s throat as silver light exploded from within him, rushing from his mouth, ears, and nose. It spewed upward into the air like molten metal, but unlike molten metal did not fall back to earth. It hung there above us like a single pulsating cloud.

  Ibebi’s body convulsed as he fell backward, clawing and scratching at the white mist clinging to him. Suddenly, there were clouds again. The silver above us began to fade and moonlight shined through.

  The black mass of darkness that had been Ibebi’s soul, burst forward from his mouth like the pulsating molten cloud had done. It almost seemed like it was giving chase, only, as it tried to mix with the silver cloud, a familiar looking hand wrapped around it and jerked it backward.

  Ibebi shrieked, and the rage in that tortured cry nearly stopped my barely beating heart.

  “No, you don’t get to escape,” Connor said as he turned, still little more than a cloud of white mist in the barest shape of a man. “Not after what you’ve done.” And with those words, Ibebi burst into silver flames. They ate up his screaming, flailing soul until there was nothing left.

  “How?” I croaked and was surprised the word reached past my lips.

  Connor smiled at me before kneeling down next to me and running one ghastly hand over my gaping chest wound. Energy filled me as white light filled in my flesh, forcing it to knit itself back together. “I couldn’t let some guy kill my very best friend. Not after everything he’s done for me. He went back in time to save me. Who does that?”

  The cloud above us pulsed, and Connor cocked his head toward it like he was listening to something only he could hear. He nodded once.

  “Okay.” He stood, despite being barely substantial and not really having legs in the traditional sense. He held out his left palm. The cloud moved down toward him in a way that reminded me of a puppy sniffing something to determine if it was safe or not. After what seemed like forever, the cloud touched him. It shuddered before sliding into him, tinging the whiteness of his pure soul slightly silver before fading away completely.

  “Connor, what are you doing?” I asked, struggling to get to my feet, but as I tried, I just wound up falling onto my side. Pai
n lanced through me, making me gasp.

  “Paying my debts, Thes,” he replied, bending down and picking up the broken shards of glass that had held his soul confined for so long. Ibebi must have shattered it when he had punched a hole in me. Connor pressed the broken vial into my hands, still smiling. “Oh and Thes, do me a favor?”

  “Yeah?” I wheezed as he began to fade away completely.

  “Tell, Lillim this isn’t her fault.” He opened his mouth like he was about to say more, but decided against it and shook his head.

  “What isn’t her fault?” I asked, but by the time the words left my mouth, he was already gone.

  Something warm pulsed within my hand, and I opened my palm to see the vial restored to its former glory. Connor’s soul sat inside looking no worse for wear, but even though I couldn’t see any discernable difference, I was sure something had changed. Connor had done something to the destroyer, the only question was what. A horrible realization filled me to the core of my being as I got slowly to my feet. What if Connor became the destroyer?

  No, that was impossible. Connor had banished the destroyer. His soul looked purer than ever. Surely he couldn’t be the host to something like he who cannot be named. Then again, the destroyer wasn’t necessarily evil. He was neutral. He was balance. I wasn’t sure why he who cannot be named picked someone like Ibebi for a host nor why he had allowed the man to slaughter the gods on high, but something told me there had been a reason for the destruction.

  I tried to think back, to remember if there were any changes in the history of Egypt that happened, but couldn’t come up with anything in particular. That wasn’t to say there weren’t changes, only that I was way too dumb to know what they were, and besides, it wasn’t like we had a lot of information from when the pyramid of Giza was still new. Half the stuff I thought I knew about Egypt had been shown to be less true than a huckster’s snake oil sales pitch.

  Still, now that I thought about it, there had been a point where the Egyptians had stopped looking to Apep and Ra as supreme beings. Instead, Set and Horus had risen to take those roles. Was that because of these events? Was the destroyer’s rise during this time the catalyst for that change? Was that even possible? And strangely, I was pretty sure that was exactly what had happened. After all, how else could I explain what Ibebi had done to Apep? Hell, I had seen Ra’s power get forcibly transferred to Horus as the falcon god sat upon the solar throne. Even knowing that, this seemed like too high a cost.

  A howl escaped my lips, low and keening as I clutched the soul of my very best friend to my chest. That was when the tears started to fall down my cheeks, and I couldn’t stop them.

  Chapter 24

  I’d like to say that when Sekhmet came over to me I wasn’t crying, but that would be a lie. She didn’t even say anything. Instead, she sat down next to me and pulled my hand into her own. It seemed like such a small thing, but it made me feel better anyway.

  As I wiped away the tears running down my face with the back of my free hand and turned to look at her, my heart wrenched violently in my chest. She had a bruise running down the side of her face and her lip was split, but it wasn’t her injuries that gave me pause. No, there was something else, some desperate thread of sadness I couldn’t quite place. She stared off into the distance and clutched at my hand like she was afraid it would slip away.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, and she shook her head and bit her lip.

  “This is it.” She stood, pulling me to my feet along with her. “You know that, right?”

  “It?” My confusion must have been pretty evident on my face because she let out an exasperated sigh. “What do you mean?”

  “You saved the day, Thes. You did it.” She waved her hand at the surroundings. They’d already turned back to normal, and while the only other Egyptian deity within sight was Set, I could see his body starting to pulse with just the faintest glimmer of light. If he was going to recover after being decapitated and hosting the supreme god of darkness, I was pretty sure everyone else was going to pull through as well. Well, that was good.

  “You seem to think that’s a bad thing,” I replied, turning my face heavenward and letting the moonlight bathe my face.

  “It’s not. Not really anyway.” She pulled me closer to her body and rested her head against my bare shoulder. It was a bit of a stretch for her since I was almost a foot and a half taller than her, but she managed anyway, probably because I wasn’t an eight-foot-tall hulking werewolf at the moment. I hadn’t remembered turning back. When I’d sat down with Connor’s vial clasped in my hand, I’d been a wolfman.

  “Well, cheer up then,” I said, kissing her forehead. As my lips touched her skin, she smiled at me, but it was a strange fragile thing, like a wine glass teetering on the edge of a table. One false move, and it would shatter on the floor below.

  “You don’t understand,” she replied, nuzzling me a little closer. It sort of reminded me of what a cat might do, and I wondered briefly if she was marking her territory. “But that’s okay, I guess.”

  “What don’t I understand?” I moved to kiss her, and she moved so my lips met hers. Her mouth ate at mine like she’d never get to kiss me again, hungrily devouring me as she reached up and pulled me against her.

  When she finally broke the kiss, her chest heaved and my heart hammered. She met my eyes and smiled that same sad smile once more. “Thes, I love you more than you know.”

  “Okay,” I whispered because honestly, I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that because the way she said it was sort of tragic. It made my heart twist into a knot. What was wrong?

  She released her hold on me and twisted her hands together, not quite looking at me. “You don’t have to say it back if you don’t want to.” She swallowed. Hard. “I’ll understand.”

  “What are you talking about? Say what back?” I asked, shaking my head. “What’s going on with you?”

  “You still don’t realize what is about to happen, do you?” she replied, reaching out and running one slender finger down my chest. “But maybe we can forget about that for a little longer.”

  “What has to happen?” I said, watching tears slip from her perfect eyes and drip down her cheeks.

  “You have to go back home, Thes. You have to leave me now,” she said in between sobs.

  Her words hit me like a sledgehammer, throwing me off balance and knocking the wind from my lungs. She was right after all. It was time to go back, to return Connor’s soul to his body. There was nothing left for me to do in ancient Egypt, but did that matter? Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I could stay anyway.

  “You have to go back,” she said as though she could read my thoughts. “If I thought there was another way…”

  “You could come back with me,” I said, reaching out to pull her into my arms, but she slipped away like an eel and edged backward. “We could make it work,” I pleaded.

  “I can’t do that, Thes. No more than you could stay here. We both have jobs to fulfill.” She looked up at me, about to say more when I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her close to me.

  “No. There has to be a way,” I cried as my world started to unravel, all the joy and happiness inside of me draining away. “I won’t leave you.”

  “Will you hold me until the moon goes down? Until the world ends? Even into what comes after that?” she asked, snuggling against me, and her warmth filled me with a strange sort of desperation. I couldn’t let her go, not for anything, not even if it was the right thing to do. This couldn’t be the right thing to do.

  “Even if snakes and scorpions try to tear me from your side,” I replied, swallowing as she looked up at me.

  “That’s what I thought you would say,” she answered before reaching around my waist and pulling me close to her body. She looked up into my eyes while biting her lip and stepped up onto her tippy toes. Sekhmet touched my face gently with her free hand, drawing me down into her, while her other hand traced along my back. She kissed me.

 
Unlike before, this wasn’t hungry or desperate. It was all things to all people. It was a bird’s first flight from the nest, a sunrise over mountain tops. In short, it was perfection incarnate.

  As she broke our kiss and looked up at me, the only thing I could see in her eyes was love. So pure it made my soul hurt.

  Then she shoved me backward through a portal that left me sprawled in my own backyard in the middle of the night.

  Glossary

  I’ve decided to include a glossary of Egyptian terms and deities that are found within this book. This list, more or less, falls into line with the actual Egyptian mythology and some of them have been twisted slightly in my story. Hope this helps.

  Ammit – The Deification of divine justice. He was the creature who consumed the hearts of the unworthy in the underworld.

  Anubis – One of the gods associated with the underworld in Ancient Egypt. He had the head of a jackal and was responsible, primarily, for coordinating where souls in the underworld went.

  Apep – Apep is the Egyptian deification of darkness and chaos. He is doomed to fight Ra every day. Night was said to fall because he swallowed Ra who cut himself free in the morning. He is also sometimes called Apophis.

  Aziza – A name meaning precious in Egyptian.

  Bes – A dwarf god who protected egyptian from evil.

  Bast – A cat-headed goddess. She is primarily a war goddess and is said to be married to Anubis.

  Book of Thoth – A book written by Thoth thought to contain the wisdom of the gods.

  Duat – The supernatural realm in which the Egyptian gods dwell.

  Geb – The Egyptian god of the earth. Father to Isis, Set, Nephthys, Osiris, and sometimes Horus.

  Giza – A temple built in around 2,500 BC. It was constructed by the Pharaoh Khufu and is one of the largest pyramids. It is considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

  Hathor – A goddess of healing and medicine who was merged with Sekhmet over time.