Wardens of Eternity

by Courtney Allison Moulton

  “We have to go,” I said, swallowing my panic. I fumbled with my harness and ropes until Baket nudged my arm. She did not ask me why or what had happened inside the tomb. She did not question why I was alone.

  “Climb on,” she said, and gestured to her back with a nod of her head.

  I did as she instructed, bleary-brained and desperate for escape. With my legs astride her back, I clasped my hands together around her chest. She took a couple steps toward the cliff edge and leapt. I squeezed my legs as hard as I could, held on with my hands, and I felt my body rise off her back. Before I could cry out, we hit the ground with the grace of a bird and relief flooded through me.

  That relief was immediately stolen from me as the large trucks and tanks rolled to a stop twenty yards from us. Soldiers hopped out, their boots thudding softly in the sand, their rifles jangling and clicking. The same ten-foot-tall bipedal mechanical suits I saw at the Cairo airport plodded toward us, expelling diesel smoke, hydraulics hissing. Within the protective mesh cages, their pilots pulled levers to raise the large guns built into the machines’ arms.

  I slid from my sphinx’s back and stood tall, no matter how tired and brutalized I felt. Magic sparked at my fingers. I would do what I had to do for survival.

  My heel dug into the earth and I launched, the toes of my boots skimming the ground. The Nazi soldier below me fired twice and my taw spell cast both bullets from their course. I smashed my fist into his helmet and the tempered obsidian chips of my gloved knuckles shredded steel with a scream. He collapsed to the ground, and I tore his helmet from his head, breaking the buckle. I landed in a crouch as another soldier raised his gun and I swung the helmet, catching bullets and mangling what was left of the steel. I let the helmet fling from my grip, and I ripped my asaya from its holster and spun. The staff extended with a crack and I whirled it faster. When a third soldier’s attention turned to my weapon, I kicked his knee with all my strength. Bone yielded, and he sank to his feet, the cry of agony from him shrill. My asaya spun and struck the outstretched hand of the next soldier, and he dropped his gun as his fingers splintered. My asaya struck again, this time across his back, slashing his coat in two.

  The delicate, metallic jostling sound of a pistol behind my head made me freeze.

  “Juggernauts, halt!”

  My weapon thudded in the sand. Breathless, I swallowed hard and raised my hands.

  Baket hissed and stepped forward. “Don’t!” I shouted to her. I couldn’t bear to watch their bullets tear apart her body. The soldiers, to my astonishment, did not react as violently to the sight of her as I would’ve expected them to. Perhaps this wasn’t their first confrontation with the supernatural.

  A woman barked orders in German and the soldiers lowered their guns but did not relax.

  I whirled and recognized the Nazi woman and high-ranking officer emerging through the crowd. He had pinkish-white skin and his cold blue eyes stared at me with such contempt I imagined he could watch me bleed out in the sand without so much as frowning.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?” I called to the crowd. “Or are there none left man enough to challenge a woman?”

  The officer scoffed, a guttural, phlegmy sound in his throat, and muttered something in German that I imagined from his tone was a very, very nasty word.

  “Ziva Mereniset,” the woman said, removing her sunglasses to gaze at me with wide, hungry eyes. “I didn’t have the opportunity to introduce myself before. I am Doctor Ursula Vogt.”

  “How did you learn my name?” I demanded.

  “With a great deal of trouble,” Vogt replied. “I like your sphinx.”

  Baket and I exchanged glances and she took a step forward. I gave her a subtle warning shake of my head. “You don’t seem all that alarmed by her presence.”

  “No,” she replied, her voice cool, but a shadow of madness grew in her eyes. “I have seen things, Ziva. Done things.”

  Her words sowed dread in the pit of my stomach. “We will be on our way now,” I announced.

  The juggernauts took a collective step forward, hydraulics wheezing. Their officer barked an order in German and they froze.

  “I believe you have something we seek,” she declared. “Please relinquish the queen’s heart.”

  Adrenaline sparked a flame in my blood. “You’re too late. Its power is gone.”

  Tendrils of shadows snaked across the ground between the soldiers’ boots, creeping toward me. My throat tightened, snatching any whimper of terror I might have made.

  “You,” came a woman’s voice I knew, one sizzling with malice. “You mortal fool.”

  Kauket’s form materialized in the inky darkness and the pressure of a terrible power closed in on my skull. When I saw her face, all the blood in my body crashed and I nearly crumpled to the earth.

  “What have you done?” Her voice trembled and her own fear seeped through the cracks in her rage. Gold blood stained her dress.

  “Where is Anubis?” I demanded. This couldn’t be. He was stronger than her. She couldn’t beat him.

  Tremors of unease and muffled voices rose from among the men as they shuffled in their places, their weapons rattling. They’d become nothing more than an audience to me; my attention was wholly on the goddess eager to crush me in her hands.

  “You’ve got greater concerns now than his wellbeing,” Set warned as he appeared behind me. I jumped and Baket positioned herself between me and the god of chaos, a growl rumbling from deep within her chest.

  “You knew.” The words were a rush of air from my mouth.

  “I gave you the chance to come with me,” he said, but his tone wasn’t exactly condescending. “You should have taken it.”

  I gaped at him. “You were trying to kill me!”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill you, I was getting to know you.”

  There wasn’t enough time in the world to explain how bizarre that was.

  “We were searching for a savior and unearthed a monster, and you knew we would,” I accused him, my voice sharp and unforgiving. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  He crossed his arms, tossing me a pointed yet sympathetic look. “Would you have believed me? If I’d wanted to kidnap you, child, I would have.”

  I looked around me, at the faces of the Nazi soldiers who didn’t know which creature to aim their guns at. The decorated officer barked orders in German and they reassembled quickly. The juggernauts raised their machine guns.

  I started to walk toward Set. The soldiers shuffled once more with uncertainty. My heart hammered in my chest, but I would not allow my fear to surface. Baket followed, and the men gave her a wide berth. The juggernauts took lumbering steps back with a collective hiss and whine.

  I walked past the bewildered Vogt and the officer to Set, who beamed at me with what I swore was pride. A weight seemed to lift from his brow and his eyes brightened as though he’d removed a mask. He seemed younger in that moment—almost human.

  “Ziva,” he said, his voice earnest and low. “I wanted the heart’s power so I could rule my kind. Now, the heart is gone. I need your help. Nefertari’s heart was not the only queen’s heart. The blood and the power are in yours too. You and I can stop her together.”

  An explosion behind me deafened my ears. Set looked up and bared his teeth. I whirled in horror as rock debris rained from the sky all around us. Men scattered in a panic. Their grunts of pain and surprise vanished in the smothering cloud of dust. Set’s sena spell stopped a boulder from careening into the two of us.

  The top of the mountain had blasted apart. The cliff dais was now in fragments at our feet. A profound hush settled on us.

  A man’s scream rose and then was drowned by a deafening metallic clang. I ducked as a truck hurtled over our heads and crashed onto its side before skidding into another. More men screamed, firing their weapons in all directions as their bodies were tossed into the air, crushed and twisted by the sekhem spell cast from someone unseen. A juggernaut’s machine gun tore apart
the tanks as its pilot fired in a wild, sweeping arc. Vogt and the officer darted through the pandemonium, their hands shielding their faces, shrieking orders in German.

  Set grabbed my arm and yanked me around him as a tank exploded and sprayed shards of metal. His broad body shielded me; I clung to him, and a chunk of steel the length of my arm tore through his shoulder. Our eyes met in bewilderment and shock. The look of utter fear on his face was more terrifying than anything happening around me. Then the fear washed from his visage and the look the god of chaos gave me promised he would lay waste. His golden battle mask materialized, consuming his face and any trace of humanity left in him.

  Shadows and netherlight flashed. Vanished. Flashed again twenty feet to our right. Vanished. An unseen force yanked a soldier off his feet and through the air. His body was eaten by the burning tank’s flames.

  A horrible darkness spread across the sky, drawn like a curtain by a great fist. An invisible blade slew the sun. The screams, the screams. Breaking bones and blood and dust. The world was on fire.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, clapped my hands over my ears.

  A surge of electricity pierced my skull, and my eyelids flew open.

  The silhouette of a woman against the flames moved toward me. Hair billowed around her like a cape. A shining mask of gold concealed her face, her eyes behind it flashing green.

  “You will watch,” came Nefertari’s breathy whisper in my head. “You will see.”

  She raised her hands and opened her mouth in a scream, massive, explosive, world-ending. Her power and rage were one murderous beast, swallowing all other sound. Machine gun flashes lit the darkness, the snap and pop of gunfire lost in the queen’s roar.

  Set rose above me, his power building like a storm, and detonated with his scream. The earth lurched and swayed and rolled, the sand blasting from him, tearing into the air around us. Trucks and tanks, juggernauts and human bodies were cast aside like wads of paper. The queen may have been an unholy monster, but the desert belonged to Set.

  “Lady! Lady!”

  I didn’t know how long Baket had shrieked into my ear before she nudged me hard with the top of her head, snatching my attention.

  Nefertari was horrible. Her power . . . she was more than I had imagined. More than Set had imagined. She was doom and destruction. She was not the savior the Medjai had made me believe in. This world was hers for the taking and take it she would. Piece by piece. Bone by bone.

  I looked up to meet Baket’s wide, terrified eyes. “We have to run.”

  The sphinx nodded briskly. “Yes, we do.”

  I sprinted toward where the camels had blessedly remained tied, though they grunted and danced with fright. Out of mercy, I took valuable seconds of time to cut the tethers of all the animals so they could get themselves to safety. Clark Camel stared at me and groaned eagerly.

  I slapped his rump and yelled at him, “Go! You stupid thing, go!”

  He spooked, spinning hard and bolting. A panicked German shout made me jump and spin to face a line of soldiers with raised guns. This close, I could see their faces. They were so young. Boys my age. A few surely younger. And so afraid.

  One of them shouted at me in German and backed up his threat with three gunshots into the sky before pointing the barrel at me again. Boys or not, they would kill me.

  A rising, crawling fog rose between us, shimmering and crackling with magic. The soldiers looked about themselves with fright before they dropped with a collective exhale and thud in the sand. I held my own breath and stared, horrified, at their lifeless bodies littering the ground before me.

  “Ziva.”

  My name in his voice was a hoarse, broken effort. Anubis appeared in front of me, looking beaten, worn, exhausted. He could feel me, my heart, the grief and terror and hopelessness. He looked past me and at the carnage he himself had wrought.

  “I am so sorry,” he said softly, and I wasn’t sure to whom he was apologizing. “To use my power only causes pain to others, to myself. For me to take mortal life . . . it is an abomination.”

  “They intended to kill me,” I told him. “You saved me. Set saved me.”

  “If he’d told me the truth about Nefertari and I’d trusted him, then we wouldn’t be here right now,” Anubis admitted tiredly.

  “Perhaps he didn’t think he could trust you either,” I offered. “And whatever creature arose from that tomb . . . it is not of this world.”

  “You have to keep moving,” he urged. “The only thing that matters now is survival.”

  My senses became clearer again. “We will meet again soon,” I told my friend.

  Anubis nodded, and Baket nudged my hip. I climbed onto her back and couldn’t help myself but to search the distance for my camel, who was long gone. The need to scream and sob returned. I took a deep breath and urged Baket into a gallop for our lives.

  I did not steer the sphinx into the direction we’d come from, but slightly northeast, based on the sun’s position above my head, and toward the Nile where we’d find civilization. I turned to look behind us and cast a powerful taw spell. The magical wind beat into the sand, kicking it up, lashing it through the air, and erased our tracks. I urged her to lope faster, deeper into the desert.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Lady, we are close to Asyut.”

  Baket’s voice stirred me from a strange, restless sleep maybe more accurately described as a state of unconsciousness. If I’d had any nightmares, I didn’t remember them. I slumped against her back, unable to feel my hands or feet anymore, and I realized she had slowed to a walk at some point.

  I lifted my head, squinting against the harsh sunlight, and searched my surroundings. We were still in the desert and traveled alongside a mountain range. Cut into the rock were numerous levels of rectangular openings half filled with sand and debris. Old Kingdom tombs, I was sure. I wondered who’d been buried there eons ago.

  Baket and I continued our trek, and I felt wearier than before. A city of haze emerged on the horizon smudged with deep, lush greens. The promise of water and shade spurred me with excitement.

  “This is where I leave you, lady,” the sphinx said, her sweet voice softened with regret.

  “I understand,” I told her. “We can’t attract attention from the locals.”

  She nodded and frowned. “Stay safe.”

  Her form dissolved into the wind. The realization that I was alone hit me with a bitter punch to my gut. I wanted to scream now more than ever, into the emptiness of the desert, but if I allowed myself to then I’d lie down and die. Death would be the last thing I’d succumb to if I had any say in my fate.

  Asyut was less colorful than the tourist-centric Aswan. Flat-topped buildings rose straight out of the Nile, their mud brick walls stained at different heights, indicative of past flooding. The river’s opposite shore was lush palm groves and crop fields. I trudged into town, overlooked by passing motorcars and donkey carts. The occasional airship above cast its shadow over the street as it followed the Nile.

  I felt like a broken, spinning compass that couldn’t find its way. I had two choices: travel south into Sudan where I had no clue what to expect or any of the language, or head north and get passage out of Egypt through Cairo. But that was risky even if I stayed on the run and ahead of the Medjai. Escaping to Europe and somehow finding my way home to America wasn’t an option. They’d expect me to do exactly that. If I knew French, I could’ve gone west, to Morocco. I’d have to make my decision once I got to Cairo.

  Fear and uncertainty had me by the throat, but I didn’t have time to let them in yet. Not yet.

  There were no airships docked today, but I wasn’t discouraged. Since an airship would’ve been faster, Cyrene might watch for me to travel that way rather than by river.

  I headed back to the docks and purchased my ticket on the first boat out. My stomach rolled and squeezed itself around my insides. I hadn’t been this hungry since I met the Medjai, but if I wandered into a restaurant
looking as ragged and filthy as I did, I’d get chased away. I found a lamp vendor nearby, and in the glossy reflection of brass baubles, I surveyed the damage.

  Another disadvantage of having thick, curly hair was being unable to brush it out. I did what I could with my fingers to reshape the curls from out of the dirty, bushy mop my hair had become. With a little bit of saliva on my thumb, I could smear away most of the blood and dirt. After a couple minutes I looked like a person no one would run from screaming.

  I had enough money to buy a meal, so from a street cart in the souk I ordered a dish of ful medames, mashed fava beans with garlic and lemon juice and a few triangle slices of pita bread. I selected a table on a café patio and ate.

  “Good afternoon,” came a voice I was sure I’d heard before.

  I looked up and choked on my food. “You!” I exclaimed, bewildered to see Ursula Vogt alive in front of me.

  “Yes, me,” she replied in English. “So astonished, Ziva. I’d love a chat with you, if you have a moment.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “If there is one thing Germans exceed at, it’s finding what we want,” she replied slyly. If she weren’t wearing those huge sunglasses I was sure there’d be a wicked gleam in her eye. The wide brim of her fabric slouch hat concealed much of her face and her shoulder-length blond hair. She smelled faintly of diesel fuel and cigarettes. She wore a khaki trench coat belted at her waist and black leather gloves.

  “Well, you surely exceed at dodging questions,” I grumbled, glancing around us. A tall white man in a Nazi uniform paced outside the entrance, making me more uneasy. How could any of them have possibly survived?

  “We have ways of detecting paranthropic energies,” Vogt explained vaguely, then paused. At my baffled expression, she continued. “Intelligent, nonhuman life and beings long considered myth.”

  I glowered at her. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I am human.”

  “Not according to our qualifications,” she replied coolly and removed her sunglasses and placed them on the table in front of her, revealing a piercing blue gaze. “I believe yours is a strong species, and I choose to be open and honest with you because I hope you will cooperate with us. The men in control of my country support my research, and within the National Socialist organization is a group devoted to a higher cause. You may call us the Thule Society. Our purpose is rooted in lineage and history.”