by D. S. Ritter
After swearing she would bathe it the next day, Sam wrapped her arm in a plastic bag and took a long, hot shower. Her body remained tense for a while until the soothing smells of soap and shampoo and the heat of the water did their work. Mind wandering as she washed the nastiness out of her hair, she thought for a moment about what John had told her. What was coming was unstoppable, but it wasn’t there yet. And some things beyond the astronomical needed to happen before that. Nobody could change the course of the stars and planets, but the courses of people? That was easy enough to screw up.
As she toweled off, she picked up her cell phone.
Sam D:
Hey, I have a question.
After a few minutes, her phone buzzed with a reply.
[unknown number]
Changed your mind?
Sam made a face, but didn’t type what she was thinking; she needed this guy to be open to talking.
Sam D:
Maybe later.
What does the thrall need to perform the ritual?
There was a long pause now, and Sam worried that John was blowing her off. She almost jumped out of her skin when he replied.
[unknown number]
thralls need a bunch of crap
Blood, talismans other weird stuff
Most important is an amulet touched by kings
Sam’s mind raced. What if they stopped the thrall? If it never completed the summoning, maybe they wouldn’t have to fight what was coming.
Sam D:
What the hell is an amulet touched by kings?
[unknown number]
Exactly what it sounds like.
Not exactly easy to come by.
Anything touched by a king, let alone multiple, could present an issue. It wasn’t like they lived in a country with a history of monarchy, or even Chicago or New York, where there might be one sitting in a museum somewhere. Maybe the thrall wouldn’t be able to find one. Maybe the deadline would pass and nothing would happen.
Sam knew she was not this lucky.
A quick internet search revealed little. There was a natural history museum in Ann Arbor, the art museum, and the archaeological museum, which was tiny. She was scrolling through the list of exhibits, when she paused, hovering over a link to the ancient Egypt section. Clicking, her breath caught in her throat. Pictured at the top of the page was quite literally, The Amulet of Kings. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she muttered, staring at it.
She picked up her phone and started texting anyone she could get a hold of.
"...a lichen-covered octopus with a horrific number of extra tentacles and a multitude of eyes."
Chapter Twelve
“So, now we’re hunting jewel thieves?” Heather seemed more at ease with this plan, though she still had her crossbow in the trunk of her car.
“Sort of?” They were walking through the museum together, though they barely looked at any of the exhibits, save the mummified cat behind glass. “If we can catch the thrall, or at least stop them from getting the amulet, there’s no way they can summon whatever.”
“You think the thrall’s just going to walk in during the day and take it?”
Sam shook her head. “Maybe? But I doubt it. I’m guessing they’ll break in. Why risk being stopped? I just want to see where the amulet is being kept so we can figure out how to guard it.”
“Won’t alarms and stuff go off if they break in?”
“Hope so. I doubt these monsters really get stuff like electricity or door and window sensors. If the thrall gets arrested for breaking and entering, our problems are over.”
The amulet sat in a position of prominence, right in the middle of the ancient Egypt exhibit. Sam was surprised by how plain it looked. A round, polished hunk of gold carved in an eagle motif. The metal had deteriorated over the centuries, and no longer shined, but the plaque beneath the glass case proclaimed it had been owned by three ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Three were certainly enough for the amulet to fit the bill.
“This is the Amulet of Kings?” asked Heather, peering at the thing. She didn’t look too impressed.
“This is it,” said Sam shrugging. “Let’s keep an eye on it. Hopefully we’ll be able to fuck up this thing’s plans and then everything will go back to normal, right?”
The plan that had formed was a simple one; when they had time off, members of the monster hunting party would stake out the tiny museum in shifts. That way, there would be no question about catching whoever the thrall might be. It was a pretty good plan.
***
“This was not a good plan...” mumbled Sam. She sat at the bus stop a little ways down the street from the museum and it was getting harder and harder not to fall asleep. With fall drawing closer every day, the night air made her uncomfortably chilly, but that didn’t seem to matter; her body wanted to sleep. After a sleepless night and a full eight-hour shift, it was understandable, but really inconvenient. She had earbuds in and turned up the music in an attempt to stay alert. So far, there’d been no movement, and the sun would rise in about two hours. Nobody was sure if the thrall would make a move in daylight, so Franklin would relieve her to keep watch for a few hours. If she could make it that long.
Despite the music blaring, she felt her head droop and jerked back awake. This happened a few times, and each one she told herself she’d stand up or something, but, in a minute… just another minute.
She thought her alarm clock was going off, but as she opened her eyes again, she realized it was an alarm of a different kind.
The sun peeked over the horizon, painting the clouds pink and salmon, everything was covered in a sheen of icy dew, and down the street, someone in a black hoodie and jeans stumbled out of the museum and took off on foot. Sam sprang up, ignoring the stiffness in her legs and back and gave chase, running full out.
The burglar headed down the street toward the Diag, the park in the middle of downtown, but didn’t go in, instead, cutting through Nickle’s Arcade, a narrow corridor of shops too expensive for Sam's taste. He came out near Seven-Two, turned the corner down State Street, and then Sam lost sight of him in Liberty Square, a small concrete park which, at the moment, was full of booths displaying the work of local artists.
“Fuck,” she panted, grabbing her knees. This was bad. Very, very bad.
She wracked her brain for places the thrall might go to hide. Nothing was open yet, not even the bus station. There were the occasional alleys, but nowhere that would make a good spot. Except one place, and it wasn’t far.
Seven-Seven was a huge, three story underground garage. Sam had worked there a few times, back when she’d first started. It had been built for at least two attendants to man it, with booths on the first and second basement levels, but the company had only ever manned the upper-most booth, opting to fill the lower one with cleaning supplies and reams of extra tickets.
Despite it having opened only a few years prior, the further down you went, the danker it got. The whole thing was full of shadows and crevices, something the homeless took advantage of in the winter months and on the hottest summer days, when it remained cool on the lowest floor.
Sam found one of the stairwells and took the steps two at a time, almost wiping out at the bottom. It was so early that the entire first floor stood empty.
She ran down to the other end of the structure, and when she was sure there was nobody in the dark back alcove, ran down the ramp. She developed a massive stitch in her side, but pushed through the pain, something she’d never been able to bring herself to do at the gym or during her few, highly unsuccessful attempts at jogging.
On the second floor, she worried she’d guessed wrong, but then she spotted movement near one of the emergency exits. She raced over and leaped down the into the poorly lit stairwell.
The hooded figure had been about a quarter of the way down when she plowed into them. The two hurtled down the rest of the stairs, rolling in a painful tangle of arms and legs.
When they hit the concrete, Sam sc
rambled to get on top and ripped the hood away. She seemed to do that a lot these days.
The person underneath was not John, but Joe, the stoned trainee. Sam stared at him, and he gazed back up at her. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy. He held his mouth in a crooked grimace, like he was in the middle of having a stroke. And he smelled terrible.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” asked Sam, both not wanting to touch him and refusing to let him get away.
He opened his lopsided, rigid lips and hissed. “Master calls.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care who’s calling you, we need to get you to a hospital or something, man, you are messed up.”
That’s when he started screaming. It was a high-pitched, full body, throat mangling screech that put Sam’s teeth on edge and made her skin crawl. She could see the veins bulging in his neck and at his temples as his face grew increasingly red. He clutched the amulet in his hand, so tight his knuckles turned white and bloodless. She reached down and tried to pry it from his fingers, but his grip was like stone. She’d have to get him to loosen his grasp.
“I’m sorry I gotta do this, Joe...” She wrapped her hands around his throat and squeezed. He didn’t even seem to register what she was doing at first, but as she applied more pressure, the hand without the amulet rushed up and grabbed her wrist. He was strong, but the adrenaline rushing through her veins helped her hold on.
She’d never strangled anyone before and wasn’t sure she was doing it right. She continued to press her hands to his throat though, desperately hoping.
After what felt like an eternity, he seemed to relax and then go limp. His eyes were still open, and his head lolled to one side. Sam’s heart seemed to want to recede further into her rib cage; had she killed him? She put her ear to his chest, despite the hoodie smelling like garbage and sweat, and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard his heart.
Wasting no more time, she wrenched the amulet from his hand, put it in her pocket and headed for the surface.
About halfway up the stairs, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned and found Joe right there. He reached out and hit her with a haymaker she had no way of dodging, slamming her into the stair rail. For a terrifying second, Sam almost teetered over it, but threw her weight toward him and shoved, trying to knock him away. He took a step back and stumbled backwards, losing a few steps, but not toppling down. As quick as she could, Sam took off upward, trying to put more space between them. She saw daylight, the sky already turning a pale blue.
Joe snarled and screeched, no longer bothering with the words of human beings. He lunged forward, snatching at her ankles, but she leaped and scrambled up the last few stairs and into the open. After that, she took off like a shot and didn’t look back.
Chapter Thirteen
She rode the bus home in a cold sweat, the amulet heavy in her pocket. Glancing over her shoulder and starting at every stop, she was a bundle of nerves. Even though it was broad daylight by the time she reached her Ypsilanti apartment, she felt more paranoid, jumping at every sound, every sudden movement.
Joe didn’t know where she lived, though, had no idea. So, when she keyed into the building, and then into her second-story apartment and slid the deadbolt home, she figured that would be the last she’d hear about it, at least until she had to go into work that night.
Sam took the seldom-touched jewelry box down from the shelf in her tiny closet and opened it. Inside lay a knotted nest of cheap old necklaces tangled together with a few pieces of actual jewelry she never wore. Underneath were a handful of rings and a pair of earrings, though she’d let the holes in her earlobes grow back in long ago. She put the amulet inside, half buried, shut the box and returned it to its place. Then, she stripped down to her t-shirt and underwear and fell into bed, nightmares be damned. As the pillow and light comforter embraced her, smelling of fabric softener and shampoo, a weight lifted. Joe had lost the amulet and soon, everything would be over.
It sucks being wrong.
She didn’t wake up until the door was already half kicked in, the noise of splintering wood and fiberboard jolting her back to consciousness. She sprang out of bed, horrendously alert, just in time to see Joe finish the job, smashing the door to pieces. Crossing the apartment in what felt like three steps, Sam pulled her sole kitchen knife out of the sink. The blade about three inches long, an inch wide, and it still had bits of onion stuck to it. It was cheap and dull as hell, but the tip still worked pretty well.
Joe took a step forward and Sam swiped at him, less than interested in how much damage she might cause. She’d tried to be gentle before, but she suspected he wouldn’t give killing her a second thought if she got in the way too much. And besides, this was about more than her survival; what was one life when it came to the rest of the world? So, she swiped again, hoping to drive him back out of the apartment, but he was fearless or numb. He took another step forward, despite the blade aimed for his face and Sam screamed a little as she nicked the tip of his nose.
Seizing on her weakness, Joe grabbed her by the arm, the one still healing, and used it as a leaver to slam her into the wall. She fell, dazed by the hit, but rose again and hit him low, using the force of her weight to put him off balance and half-tackle him into the hall, where he slammed his back into the wall. She heard her neighbors upstairs stomping for her to keep it down, but they were shit out of luck; she had to finish this thing. She tried to plunge the knife into his side, but he caught her arm before it could connect and plunged it into the drywall behind him. Surprised, she dropped it, and heard it clatter between the struts. Then, it was like she didn’t exist. He walked away, heading straight for the apartment. Desperate, she grabbed at his foul-smelling hoodie.
Later, Sam would remember that it almost seemed to happen in slow motion. She saw his shoulder move as he turned and it felt like she froze as his arm came around. The world exploded when his fist smashed into the side of her head, and then everything went to black.
***
When she woke up, there was nothing left of her door and the little she could see inside her apartment from the hall was a mess. Her head pounded and a bruise had started to form. Shakily, she crawled out of the hall and found everything she owned trashed. Joe had destroyed the small dresser in the corner, flinging the drawers full of clothes against the walls. A pile of broken dishes lay in the kitchen where he’d pawed through the cabinets like a wild animal. Her comforter was ripped to shreds, the stuffing thrown everywhere, and he’d torn into her mattress and broken the low wooden bed frame trying to get underneath. Joe had completely smashed her little TV and her laptop, seemingly out of spite. The clothes and holiday decorations she’d kept in the closet were strewn everywhere, and worse, the jewelry box lay in pieces on the floor, its contents spread wildly over the carpet. The amulet was gone.
“Well,” she said, shaking her head. “We’re kind of fucked now, aren’t we?”
Chapter Fourteen
Disbelief, anger, hopelessness, all of these emotions were there when Sam told the group about what had happened. “I can’t fucking believe this,” said Drew, “you had it. You had the thing, and you let him take it?”
She understood his feelings, hell, she blamed herself too, but screw that. “I fucking cut the guy in the face, Drew. He was not in a normal state of mind.” Not to mention, nobody ever expects a one-punch K.O.
Heather, Drew, Franklin, Yolanda and Carter all looked uncomfortable. They’d met in the Diag,
so those who had work could get to their shifts quickly.
“So, what are we gonna do now?” asked Carter, rubbing the back of his neck. “Dude’s got what he needs. Do we just wait?”
“I don’t know,” said Sam, “unless we can find where he’s hiding out, we might have to.”
“I hate waiting.” Yolanda crossed her arms. She’d been quiet up to this point, but it was easy to see she was pissed off. “Jesus is gonna piss his pants. He’s ready to bolt, you know?”
“So ar
e we,” said Drew, looking at Heather. “You really fucked this up, Sam.”
“Fuck, dude,” said Franklin, standing up. At his full height, he towered over Drew by at least six inches, “The guy kicked her damn door in, and she did what she could. Cut her some slack.”
“I just feel like this whole thing has been totally botched.”
“Well, we’re going to have to deal with that,” said Yolanda, fixing Drew with the stink eye. Heather was quiet, staying out of the argument. “We got like, a week, right? Let’s try to find Joe before the game, and mess that dude up if we have to. Trying to get that amulet back is better than just blaming somebody, right?”
“Look around on break,” said Sam, hiking up her backpack and checking her phone. It was one of the few things she owned that had been left unscathed. “I gotta go clock in. We’ll do what we can while we’ve got time, but get ready, just in case we can’t find him. And remember, there might be more than one thrall, so keep an eye out for weird people.”
“Weirder than the people we work with?” Carter laughed at his own joke though nobody else did.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “Keep in touch, guys.”
She kept her cool with them, but Sam’s eyes burned as she walked away. She had screwed up, massively. The idea to destroy the amulet had only come after she’d lost it. Thinking about destroying an ancient artifact made her cringe, even now. It was the sort of thing everyone, from teachers, to her parents, to Indiana Jones had trained her not to do.