Something told me the information was important, but try as I might, I couldn’t remember more than a vague impression. To say it was annoying was an understatement of galactic proportions because I knew, just knew, it was important. But if it was so important, why couldn’t I remember what it was?
I shook my head, pushing the thought out of my head as I turned and trudged down the scarlet passageway after my comrades. My sandals squealed on the slick surface like nails on a chalkboard and the Set-animal turned and regarded me like a loathsome insect. At least that’s what I think its look meant because it and Khufu were already pretty far ahead. The ancient pharaoh didn’t even look back. Instead he kept walking behind the tiny tail-wagging, Set-animal, his eyes cast vaguely toward the ceiling as his huge ape-like arms swung casually through the air like we were on our way to a picnic.
Unfortunately, while I wasn’t quite sure what they were walking toward because as far as I could tell, there were no branches off this corridor, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a picnic or anywhere else with, you know, food. Besides, near as I could tell, the passage looked like it ended just a couple hundred feet away.
Then again, I hadn’t even known this place was here since it had been hidden behind some kind of mystical wall, so there was that. I supposed that was positive because I somehow doubted the Apepians would be smart enough to follow us through the secret entrance they probably didn’t know about, and even if they did, something told me Fluffy was more than meets the eye.
Call it a werewolf thing, but I’ve always been pretty good about sensing the capabilities of other animals. Every time I looked at the Set-animal, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. It reminded me of those movies where the huge shadow passes by the main character and you know, just know, when he turns around there’s going to be a machete wielding murderer ready to cut him to ribbons. That’s what being around Fluffy was like.
“You coming, Thes? Or is it nap time?” Khufu called from the end of the passage as Fluffy scurried past him and disappeared through what sort of resembled a doggie door in the stone. It vanished the moment his little tail slipped past. So there was a magical entrance. I knew it.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I called, smirking at my own genius at having figured out there would be a secret door within the secret passage. A moment later, I was standing next to Khufu, but instead of his normal dopey grin, he had a grimace on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not actually sure how to get past this door,” he replied. “If I had the magical interdimensional scissors I was looking for in the Nile, maybe I could open up the way to the Duat, but without it, you’d need a wizard or something to get through.” He peered at me. “Do you know a wizard?”
I put my hand on the crimson stone in front of us and felt the pulse of heat within. It sort of reminded me of placing my hand on the stove after it’d been used all day. Not hot enough to burn my hand but warm enough for me to realize it was seriously hot on the other side. And he wanted to go inside. After the magic dog. Who hated me. Awesome.
“Magical interdimensional scissors?” I asked, quirking an eye at him. “Is that a real thing?”
“Yeah,” Khufu replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “But you had to go and throw a fit and get us chased by Apepians before I could find it.”
“Is that so?” I said, kneeling down next to where I’d seen Fluffy disappear through the stone. I pressed on the spot, and for whatever reason, it felt squishier than the rest of the hard as granite wall. “I think it’s through here.”
“Great, well that helps a lot. Now we just need to figure out a way to fit through a magical doggy door the size of a…” he paused and made a vaguely Fluffy-sized shape with his hands, and as he did so, an idea popped into my head.
“Stand back, cause it’s about to get hairy,” I said, calling upon my inner wolf. I found him deep inside me, head buried in his paws as he lay in the tall grass of my brain, snoozing. He looked up at me and yawned, his huge tongue lolling in his mouth before he got slowly to his feet and stretched.
“You called,” he asked, and the sound of his voice in my mind made me smile. Normally, werewolves couldn’t communicate with our wolves, at least not with speech. Our communication was usually more primitive, more feelings and such, but ever since I’d come to Egypt and absorbed the Book of Thoth, my wolf and I had begun to communicate in words. Now it was almost like he was another person living inside me, and he knew so much more than I did. Still, this sort of made me worried I was turning schizophrenic.
“Wepwawet, I want you to help me get through this door,” I whispered because I wasn’t quite used to talking to him without actually, you know, talking. Khufu glanced at me and smirked. He thought it was hilarious when I talked to myself, even though I’d told him I was talking to my wolf.
Wepwawet shrugged in that way he did, and his power washed over me, filling me up and bursting out of my flesh. In seconds, I stood there transformed into the hulking half-man, half-wolf form brought on by calling upon my wolf.
I reached out, and as my brown-furred paw touched the ruby wall, it rippled like I was touching the surface of a pond. I smirked and pressed my entire hand through the substance. It felt weird, sort of like reaching into a vat of warm lotion. I turned, glanced at Khufu, and gestured for him to move forward as I held the mystical gateway open.
He nodded, humor filling his eyes as he strode passed me and disappeared through the stone. I followed him a moment later. We stood on the edge of a blue cliff. Above us, cotton candy pink clouds rippled in a lemonade-yellow sky. Off to my left, a trail downward was carved in the stone. The Set-animal stood at the head of the trail, waiting. When it saw me, it sort of nodded its head in approval before loping downward. I guess we were supposed to follow it? I wasn’t quite sure anymore. For all I knew, its job was done.
As I started walking toward the creature, Khufu snorted and put a hand on my shoulder. It was sort of funny because while I was a foot taller than him normally, in werewolf form I was almost three feet taller than him, so he had to stand on his tippy toes to do it. “I knew I brought you along for a reason,” he said and began whistling a tune that sort of reminded me of Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran, which was silly because there was no way he could have known about a song I’d heard once when a particularly psychotic babysitter had played it while giggling at me. I should have eaten her, but I didn’t.
“Did you know I needed to transform to enter the passage?” I asked as we approached the pathway and stepped onto it. The ground here felt different beneath my feet. Unlike the roughhewn stone of the cliff, the path seemed smooth and worn, reminding me of the stamped concrete surrounding my parents’ pool back home. That’s when I realized I no longer had my sandals… If I had a nickel for every pair I destroyed by transforming, I’d have had enough money to buy at least three new pairs. You know, as long as they were cheap.
“I’m just going to leave you to wonder about the answer to that question,” Khufu replied, still smirking. “If I answer, there’s only one of two outcomes. Either you’ll think be disappointed in me or you’ll be annoyed at me for not telling you straight away even though I’m never one hundred percent honest with you.”
I mulled over his words as we followed the Set-animal down the three-foot wide path. He had a point. Those would be the only two outcomes. I shook the thought away as we followed the path down into the depths of the Duat. The air grew warmer, making me think we were descending into the pit of Hell itself. But that was impossible because we were in the Duat, right? Surely we weren’t actually marching into Hell…
“So, how honest with me are you?” I asked as my razor-sharp toenails clicked on the stone path.
“Usually around thirty percent honest, but sometimes I get as high as forty-two percent.” Khufu shrugged. “Because that’s the answer to everything.” Let’s just say his answer didn’t exactly fill me with happiness.
“Good to know,” I replied as m
y wolf scratched at the back of my mind, wondering if he could go back to sleep. Hey, what can I say, my wolf was lazy. I nodded, and my body shifted back to its human form. Immediately, the room grew ten degrees cooler because I wasn’t wearing a homegrown fur coat. I scratched at my arm and shook my head.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of my wolf because like I said before, werewolves didn’t actually communicate with their wolves. At least not like how I did now. Wepwawet swore werewolves used to all communicate with their wolves like how we did now, but how was I to know if he was telling me the truth? For all I knew, I was insane, and he was a figment of my imagination. Then again, I’d like to think if I had an imaginary friend, she’d be really hot and topless, not because I’m shallow or anything, but because, well…
Khufu cleared his throat, and I looked up to see him standing next to the entrance of a cave. It had huge effervescent stalactites distended from the roof like teeth so it looked like the maw of a mud creature, an image that wasn’t helped by the brown-black substance undulating along the surface of the stone.
A wet, warm breeze blew from the cave as I eyed Khufu suspiciously. “You’re not seriously suggesting we go in there? It looks like the mouth of a great beast.”
He smiled at me and gestured toward the entrance with one huge, bejeweled hand. “It is the maw of a great beast. In its stomach is the passageway to Imhotep’s hideaway.” He paused and shook his head. “But if you want to leave your girlfriend to rot all by herself, I’m cool with that too.”
Chapter 3
“Um… where’s the rest of it?” I asked, walking around the SUV-sized mound and looking around for its body, but near as I could tell, only its ginormous head was on the surface.
“Buried deep within the rock. The serpopard has a long neck and survives by waiting for foolish creatures to take shelter within its mouth. Then it swallows them whole, and they tumble downward into its body. I’ve been told it can take days to reach the bottom.” Khufu smiled at me, giving me a look that clearly said, “Go on in. I double-dog dare you.”
“I think you’re screwing with me,” I replied, reaching out and touching the stone beside the mouth of the cave. Instead of feeling like rock, however, it felt like damp scaly flesh. Heat radiated off of it, and I swear, it nuzzled my fingers a little. Inside my head, my wolf sat up and gave me a no nonsense stare. Great, so it didn’t like this either.
“Don’t go in there,” Wepwawet said as the Set-animal sauntered up to me and rubbed my ankle with its face, scenting me. My inner wolf glared at the creature but said nothing.
“Thes, I hate to say it, but I’ve just reached one hundred percent honesty with you. It’s a little weird for me, I’ll admit, but there it is,” Khufu said, stepping up to the maw and pointing inside. “If you look closely, you can actually see its serpentine tongue.”
He probably would have said more, but the tongue exploded from the thing’s gullet, striking Khufu in the chest with enough force to knock him from his feet. He hit the ground with a bone shuddering thud and lay there dazed as the blue-veined tongue began to slowly retract, reeling him in like a fish on a line. The pink globous end of the tongue sticking to his chest reminded me of bubblegum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.
I leapt forward, grabbing Khufu by the arm and trying to haul him backward, but a fat lot of good it did. My feet didn’t so much skid on the smooth stone as go out from under me. I fell hard on the ground, stars flashing behind my eyes as the creature dragged us forward like we were weightless.
I called upon my wolf, bracing my feet against the giant creature’s lower jaw and pulling with all the strength I could muster. That’s when the teeth started to descend. Not quickly, but quick enough I knew I could avoid being taken, all I had to do was let go. If I did, Khufu was a goner… and he had said the way to Imhotep was inside, right? I looked around before taking a deep breath and throwing myself inside the huge creature’s mouth.
Darkness filled my vision as the jaws slammed shut behind me like a steel trap. The smell of rotting meat hit my nostrils and turned my stomach. I pulled myself to my feet, amazed I could stand upright inside its mouth. The ground was spongy beneath my feet as I looked around, trying desperately to orient my vision to the murk.
Warm, musty air clung to me, making me feel sticky and gross as I knelt down beside Khufu. His eyes had rolled back in his head so all I could see were the whites. The tongue had released him, but the spot on his chest where it had been attached was bloody and raw. I reached out with one hand and shook him gently. He didn’t respond. Worry crept up my spine as I looked around time but saw no signs of a throat or a stomach. Were we trapped here in its mouth waiting to be digested? Hadn’t Khufu had said we should fall through its neck for days? So where was all the falling?
I shouldn’t have asked. The ‘ground’ beneath my feet opened up, and we pitched downward into the murky darkness. Even with my werewolf-enhanced vision, I could barely make anything out as we tumbled downward in a fall that reminded me of my last trip to Tartarus. I wasn’t sure how far I’d fallen that time, but it felt like forever. This seemed worse.
The ground slammed into me with monster truck force, throwing me back up into the air, whereupon I fell again and hit the ground like an already cracked egg. I lay there, trying to figure out how to breathe as my wolf howled in anguish inside me. Thankfully, I had been in werewolf form, otherwise I was sure I’d have died.
Thanking my stars for my supernatural durability, I got to my hands and knees and spit out a mouthful of blood as my ribs writhed beneath my flesh, pulling themselves back into place. It was always a weird feeling when my bones knitted themselves back together at superhuman speeds, but I’d never really been able to pinpoint the where and when of it all. It was sort of like watching a flower bloom. You couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment anything occurred, but nonetheless when it was over a flower was there in front of you.
I pulled myself to my feet and looked around, thankful the ‘room’ was lit by what looked like effervescent neon yellow algae. Other than that, it was sort of uninspiring. It sort of trailed off down into the darkness a few feet ahead. The ground beneath my feet was spongy as I made my way over to Khufu’s unconscious body. His arm lay twisted beneath him, no doubt broken by the fall.
Admittedly, even after spending several weeks with him, I wasn’t exactly sure what the limits of his healing would be. For all I knew, that arm would take ages to fix. Sucker. I bent down to grab him, and as my hand touched his body, he twitched. I pulled my hand back and stared at him, but he didn’t move.
“Khufu, are you okay?” I asked, doing a very good job of keeping the fear out of my voice if I do say so myself.
No response. I stared at him for a moment, and when he didn’t move, I knelt down next to him. As soon as my hand touched his skin, he jerked again, way more violently than before.
I scrambled backward and inhaled deeply through my nose because I wanted to test something, not because I was scared, promise. A whiff of rotting meat filled my nostrils, but he had always reeked that way before. No… No, there was something off about him now. His scent was… acrid, like how I imagined battery acid would smell like, you know, if I ever decided to tear one open and take a whiff.
Khufu’s body arched upward, bending in a way I was pretty sure wasn’t natural. His eyes shot open, but they were still white and unseeing as his mouth opened into a soundless scream. Eight spindly green appendages that reminded me of grasshopper legs burst from his sides. The legs hoisted him into the air and began plodding down into the darkness.
“Well that was certainly different,” I mumbled in a vain attempt to keep the fear inside from overtaking me. I watched, wide-eyed as Khufu’s body was carried off down the sloping yellow hill, presumably toward the creature’s stomach. But what had that thing been, and worse, how had it gotten inside him?
Terror seized me as I frantically checked myself over for any suspicious bug legs sprouting from my body, but finding
none, I let out a small sigh of relief.
“It was probably from the thing’s tongue. I bet it injected some kind of egg into him that hatched into a crude transportation bug,” Wepwawet spoke into my mind, and the sound of his voice was strangely comforting.
“Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about that,” I replied, not bothering to whisper because who was going to hear me? I steeled myself as best I could and made my way after the mummy-toting creature. I wasn’t sure where it was taking Khufu, but something told me even a mummy wouldn’t survive a bath in the serpopard’s digestive enzymes.
I caught up to the bug in moments as it plodded along in a sort of uncaring way, its nimble three clawed feet picking along the slimy ground like it was made to do this, which it probably was. Up ahead, the path we were on looked like it was about to drop off. The creature stopped short of the edge and slowly lowered itself to the ground. The legs retracted slowly and mechanically, sliding in upon themselves. In a moment, the only trace they had been there at all were the eight bloody holes in my friend’s body.
“Wait for it…” my wolf murmured, and I would have turned to look at him if he wasn’t in my mind.
“For wha—”
A creature resembling a humongous green spider pulled itself out of Khufu’s mouth as the sound of snapping bone filled the air and made my insides ache in commiseration. Once free of the ancient pharaoh, it unfurled itself and stood there next to him for a moment. Its actual body wasn’t big, only about the size of a football, but then again, I wasn’t sure I’d want it inside me no matter what size it was.
I was about to say something when it turned and regarded me with a thousand magenta eyes. It opened its mouth and let out a high-pitched warble, shattering my eardrums and making me fall to my knees, clasping my head.
It lunged at me, coming at me like a spider out of the stomach of a mummified pharaoh. I dodged just as it landed on the spot I’d occupied and rolled sideways as its claws tore gouts in the fleshy surface. The floor beneath my back rumbled as I came to my feet, fur covered in sticky saliva. The spider whirled around as I pounced, using the muscles in my legs to propel myself high into the air.
All Wrapped Up: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 2) Page 2