“I still think this is stupid,” I replied, hefting my magic morningstar as I reached deep inside me, hoping there was more in my gut than apprehension and fear.
“You know, I get that a lot,” Khufu said, vanishing within the pyramid of Giza and leaving me alone to face whatever would come. It didn’t scare me at all, honest.
Chapter 18
Lightning crackled. Thunder boomed. The night turned dark and stormy. The stars above winked out one by one. The penguins ran for cover, huddling next to a huge stone the builders hadn’t placed upon the walls of the pyramid yet. Wind howled around me, kicking the sand into a cloud of dust so thick I could scarcely see a few meters past the edges of the pyramid.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself as best I could even though worry and doubt swept over me. How was I going to do this? It was one thing to be given godly armor and weaponry. It was another entirely to stand here and take on whatever would come. Sure, I might be strong, and while I had the whole werewolf thing going for me, I wasn’t exactly Bruce Lee. Besides, super powered or not, I was still just a guy and Apep was a god. How the hell was I supposed to win?
A bolt of scarlet lightning tore through the sky, slamming down into the sand next to me and turning it into molten glass. I stepped back and called upon Wepwawet as more and more lightning filled the horizon, turning it into a raging crescendo of arcing electricity. The sound of horses thundering toward us filled the air, coming from just beyond the edge of my sight, and I tightened my right hand on the morningstar.
It reminded me of the time my Alpha had sat me down on his knee and said it was okay to be frightened because the things werewolves were designed to face were scary. It was true too. Imagine how scary it would be to fight a lion. Well, for me, even with all my natural abilities, it was still like fighting a lion. The lion just had super powers too.
Something grabbed my left hand and squeezed. I screamed, whirling toward it, weapon raised to pound it into oblivion. My heart leapt into my throat, and I forgot how to breathe as I stared at what couldn’t be real. Sekhmet stood before me, hair like spun sapphire and skin like polished obsidian. She smiled, and her eyes flashed in the darkness.
“How?” I whispered. At least I think I did because it was the only thought running through my brain, but honestly, I wasn’t quite sure if my mouth had even worked.
“Miss me?” she asked, pulling my hand toward her mouth and caressing it with her lips. A shock went through me, making my knees tremble and threaten to collapse out from under me as she stared at me.
“Yes,” I squawked, worried she’d get annoyed if I didn’t say anything. “But…”
“You saved me, Thes, and while I’m not at full strength, I didn’t want you to stand alone.” Her flaming bow appeared in her other hand, and it was then I realized she was wearing golden armor with the head of a lion emblazoned in flame across her chest. “This time, we’re doing it together.” Her cheeks went red then. “If you’ll have me, that is?”
Her voice had changed from confident to fearful with those last words, though I didn’t understand why. Of course I wanted her with me. Why wouldn’t I?
“I want you with me, Sekhmet,” I replied, squeezing her hand as we turned toward the oncoming hoof beats in the distance and stood before them together. “More than you’ll even know.”
Her hand rose a couple degrees in temperature before she pulled away, and I realized my own hand was suddenly cold. I glanced at her as she reached back and drew a flaming arrow from her quiver. “Good,” she smiled at me. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”
It was the last thing she said as Apepians burst through the sandstorm, coming at us mounted on the backs of hippos and crocodiles so massive I wasn’t sure how this was going to work. Flaming arrows filled the sky, flying through the air so quickly it was like the heavens themselves were raining fire down upon our enemies. Most of them struck true, and as they hit snake-headed warriors, the creatures burst into clouds of blazing dust.
The sky above tore itself asunder as thunder so loud it sounded like it was hailing Armageddon itself cracked through the air. The burning smell of ozone filled my nostrils as I craned my head toward the sound, and what I saw couldn’t be real.
A serpent’s head so large it had no end loomed above, mouth open wide. Striding down its extended purple tongue was a man in armor shifting between every color imaginable. A sucking black hole swelled in the center of his chest, and as I watched, things hit the hole and vanished within. I was too far away to make out his distinct features, but even still, I knew who it was. Apep. Their king had taken the field. Hopefully, Khufu’s plan led to a checkmate before he took all our knights.
Set pointed his staff at the slowly descending form and red fire exploded from its tip. Apep raised his hand, gesturing casually. The flames dissolved into wisps of smoke. Apep raised one hand to his lips and blew outward like he was blowing a kiss at the god of chaos. Set fell backward, clutching his side as darkness began to spread across his armor like thick oozing oil.
“Damn,” Sekhmet muttered behind me, glancing up at the fight. “Thes, you have to get up there, I’ll hold these guys back.”
“What happened to doing things together?” I asked, already making my way toward the pyramid.
“I’ll join you in a second,” she said as I gripped the first of the huge stones and shut my eyes, concentrating.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” I replied, opening my eyes and flinging myself upward with all the strength my werewolf muscles could muster. My claws dug into the honey-colored stone as I loped up the side of the pyramid. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but once I’d started, there was no turning back. Besides, what choice did I have? Go find a ladder? Where?
I reached the top seconds later, but already the darkness had covered most of Set’s chest. Still he kept the staff held high, channeling power down its length and into the pyramid below. The ground around us rumbled as Apep stepped onto the platform next to me and grinned, his milky-white features crisp and clean.
“Hello, Thes,” he said, waving at me amiably. “How are things?”
“Fine, I guess,” I replied because I wasn’t sure what else to say. “How are you?”
“Been better,” he said, tapping a spot just below his left ear where a tiny red mark dotted his otherwise pristine flesh. “A little mosquito keeps trying to bite me. It’s annoying.”
“I can see how that would be annoying,” I said. “But let’s be real here, you’re the bad guy and everyone here is trying to stop you from ending the world.”
“Wrong again,” Apep said, grinning at me like I was the world’s biggest idiot. He held out his splayed hand before me and tucked down his first finger. “One, you have no idea what my motivations are. Two, I don’t know if these rabble have mentioned it,” he gestured at Set as the god struggled to his knees, “but perhaps you have heard about the one who cannot be named? Perhaps you wonder why he cannot be named? It is not that we dare not speak it, but that he actually cannot be classified with so trivial a thing as a name.” He rapped the black hole at his chest. “Perhaps you might wonder what it would take to beat something like that, something even the nothingness of the abyss fears.”
Apep walked forward and put his bare foot on Set’s chest and pushed him back against the stone. “Go on, tell the wolf about the one of whom I speak. You know, the one whom we cannot name because he simply has no name. ”
“That’s not how this works,” Set coughed, a horrible phlegmy sound as his face broke out into sweat. “But I shall do it if it buys me time. If you’re willing to spend your precious power on a conversation, who am I to argue?”
“Go on,” Apep said, pinning Set against the pyramid’s roof with his foot like the God of Chaos was an errant toddler. “I’ll wait. What is the saying? ‘Time is on my side?’ You may think you’re waiting me out, but you’re not.” His words made me wonder, not for the first time, if he was insane.
; Set shook his head, face strained. “A being is born every few generations with one simple task. He is to destroy everything so it can be rebuilt. I have faced him before in the guise of one of my friends, and I shall face him again.” Set shut his eyes and let out a labored breath. “Apep has faced him too.”
“You mean…” I said, and Apep smiled his serpent grin at me.
“Yup. I’m a good guy.” Apep’s words made my world sway. How could Apep, the demonic horror incarnate, be the good guy? No… even if he was doing this to stop a something from ravaging the world, he had stepped over the line. Then again, back in my time, I knew a girl who had harnessed Apep’s powers for good…
“A good guy wouldn’t be doing this!” I cried, gesturing at the surroundings as the floor beneath us cracked like an eggshell, splitting down the center and cutting me off from him. “You’re going to destroy the planet.”
“I’ll remember you said that, Thes,” Apep replied, triumph in his voice. “I want you to remember it too.” With those words, he lunged forward, crossing the space between us so quickly, he was nothing but a blur. He seized me by the ear like a naughty puppy and forced me face first to the ground. “Now bark, little wolf. Bark and show me you have some bite.” He ground my cheek into the rough stone, tearing the fur and flesh from my skull.
Pain shot through me, blotting out everything as my wolf struggled to heal me. I reached out, trying to grab onto his wrist, but he tweaked my ear so hard, stars shot past my eyes. “Woof, woof, Thes,” he said and flung me from the top of the pyramid.
I hit the ground with enough force to break everything inside of me. I lay there, unable to do more than bleed. Agony coursed through me, throbbing through my limbs with every cursed beat of my heart as Apep landed on the ground so lightly, he didn’t even disturb the sand beneath his feet.
“Did that hurt, little wolf?” he asked, raising a petulant eyebrow at me. “Know that every time I hurt you, it doesn’t hurt me.” He tapped the black hole swirling on his chest. “I actually sort of enjoy it in a weird way, who knew.”
Apep bent, seizing me by the collar of my armor and hauling my broken body to my feet. I hung there unable to do anything at all as he smiled into my face. “Go on, bite me.” He craned his head upward, exposing his throat to me and waited. “No? Okay then,” he said, stepping around and flinging me through the air. “I must be able to trust you a lot, Thes. I can throw you pretty far.”
My body smacked into the side of Giza’s pyramid with a wet thud, and I slid to the ground in a heap of broken bones and blood. I could barely see through the haze of agony as the snake god sauntered toward me with his hands clasped behind his body like a Tibetan monk. Just as he was about to reach me, something golden slammed into him, driving him backward across the sand.
Sekhmet stood between us, head like a lion with a mane of fire even though I was pretty sure manes were for males only. “You won’t hurt him anymore, Apep!” she cried, raising her knocked bow and letting loose a volley of flaming arrows at the snake.
Apep recovered and threw up an arm like he was going to block, but he needn’t have bothered. The arrows hit the ground all around him igniting the ground into a swirl of golden flames. They surged around him hot enough to turn the sand into molten glass. Sekhmet leapt forward, a knife that looked like the one Khufu had used on Horus earlier, gleaming in her left hand.
“No!” I cried as Apep plucked her out of midair with no more effort than it would have taken for me to snatch a football. Her momentum jerked her body forward and her eyes bugged out of her skull. Apep smiled, white teeth gleaming, and shook her so violently the gleaming dagger slipped form her hand and fell emptily to the superheated ground.
“See, here’s the problem,” Apep said, waving his other hand and banishing the fire around him like it’d never existed at all. “You are of no consequence, girl. You’re but a young thing. Too young to realize how little she matters in the grand scheme of things.” With that, he drove her face into the swirling hole on his breastplate. In an instant, Sekhmet’s entire body was sucked into the swirling void, and he turned toward me brushing his hands. My heart broke as Sekhmet vanished, and my throat closed up so I couldn’t even breathe.
I leapt to my feet hardly able to see. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d healed enough to do it, but it didn’t matter. I wanted to kill him. To rip his head off. To make him pay for whatever he had done. How could he do this when she just came back to me? I howled, and the ground beneath us shook. The moon above grew ten shades brighter as I crossed the distance, slamming into the elder god and knocking him to the sand.
I hit him, my closed fist smashing into his pristine face and spilling golden god-blood across the sand. Apep began to laugh as my second blow knocked a tooth free from his mouth. “Go on, Thes. Hurt me. Hurt me bad.” My third blow silenced him for a moment, shattering his stupid smile into a macabre canvas. “I want you to do it.”
I roared, my hands clasping around his neck as I slammed him backward against the sand, but the more I hurt him, the more he wanted me to do it. It made me even angrier, so angry, I didn’t even see it when the sky above turned into a sweltering mass of black shadow, nor when the pyramid began to crack and dissolve like it was made of baking soda and the sky was raining vinegar.
Rain began to pelt me as I reared back, my bloody, dripping claw glinting in the flash of lightning soon swallowed by the void above. Apep grinned at me like I was the world’s biggest mark.
“You can still save her,” he whispered before breaking into a hacking cough. “If you want to try, Thes. Sekhmet can still be saved.”
I hesitated. I knew I shouldn’t have, knew I should end this here and now. For whatever reason, I had the snake in my grasp, and I knew, just knew, I probably wouldn’t get another shot at him, not like this anyway. I even knew Sekhmet would tell me to forget her and stop him.
So what did I do? I opened my stupid, traitorous mouth and asked a single question. “How?”
Apep’s grin reached his eyes as he lifted one bloody finger and tapped the swirl of darkness on his breastplate. “Go and get her.”
And like an idiot, I did.
Chapter 19
I wasn’t quite sure what I expected the inside of an enormous space snake to be like, nor what I’d expected from the great void of chaos, but what I saw wasn’t it. Ice spread out for as far as I could see in every direction. There were no hills, no piles where snow had fallen unevenly. It was just a blank canvas of frost. I craned my head upward toward the sky and was surprised to see my reflection staring back at me from about ten feet away. It was disconcerting to say the least.
I looked around, shivering as I tried to find Sekhmet. Thankfully, it didn’t take long. She lay curled into a tiny ball only a few meters away, body half-buried in the ever falling snow. I tromped toward her through the ice, my feet sinking up to their ankles. With each step, the cold weighed on me, threatening to drag me down so by the time I reached the goddess, I could barely move from exhaustion.
“Sekhmet,” I whispered, collapsing onto the drift next to her. “Are you okay?” I had been about to say something dumb like “I’ve come to rescue you,” but I’d figured she’d frown on that, and I hadn’t traveled into the belly of the abyss to be castrated by the lioness. See, I learn things.
Her eyes flickered open, lashes caked with ice and her face went hard and angry at the sight of me. “How did he get you?” she asked, voice careful and even as she looked me up and down.
“Um…” I bit my lip and let out an exhalation of mist. “I came here on purpose. To rescue you.”
“Why?” she asked, eyes narrowing in anger, but not as much as I’d expected.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I lied because I did know. I’d come here because the thought of losing her to the void hurt enough to make my stomach ache. Only I couldn’t tell her that…
“Mmm,” she murmured, lips pursing into a sort of half-frown as she stared at me. “I’m not going to
press the issue because even though you’re an idiot, I’m glad you’re here, Thes.” She reached out and touched me, running her hand along my face, and it was then I realized I was back in human form. No wonder I was so cold. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said, smirking as she shook her head at me. “Now how about we cut our way out of this snake’s belly?”
She stared at me for a long time as a thought I couldn’t read filled her face. She nodded after what felt like forever. “Okay, Thes.”
I wasn’t quite sure how I got to my feet because the cold made it into one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I was about to say something to that effect when Sekhmet took my hand in hers, intertwining our fingers together. A surge of warmth traveled through me, filling me with confidence and energy. I wasn’t quite sure what the goddess had done because when I looked over at her, she was blushing so hard the snow on her eyelashes melted. Though it could have just been a coincidence. I’m sure it was a coincidence.
“Okay,” Sekhmet said, looking away from me even as she sidled closer to me so our bodies were practically pressed together. “If the rumors are true, there should be a way to journey down into the center of the sucking void. It is in that place we can split open the snake and break free.”
“Is this where you tell me the only problem is you don’t know where that is?” I asked, ignoring the bit about her talking about rumors. I mean we were in the belly of the beast as it were, some hard facts would be nice.
“No, I know where to go,” she replied, pointing off into the distance. “I can feel the pulse of the void.” She shook her head and pulled me forward, her footsteps melting the ice away enough for me to follow behind her impeded only by the slush beneath my feet instead of thigh-deep snow. “There’s just one minor detail.”
“Oh?” I asked, and as I did, Sekhmet swallowed. The sound echoed across the barren landscape. “What’s that?”
All Wrapped Up: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 2) Page 11