Conquer the Dark

by L. A. Banks

  Gavreel tackled Isda with help from Paschar.

  “I ain’t neva gwan be all right!” Isda raved as his brothers thrust him against the wall. “They ground up thousands of mummies, rich mortals did that, and they snorted them in secret societies! Defiled corpses and graves! Built developments over the goddamned Valley of the Kings! They’re selling camel rides through the pharaoh’s backyard. Heaven help me, I will lay siege to this land! I swear it on me immortal existence—I neva wanted to come back and see it. My heart cannot take it, mon—now after all we built, all we did and taught, now they got my boy!”

  Isda finally grabbed Gavreel around the shoulders and sobbed. “Dat is who they took out there in the desert and defiled his sarcophagus with innocent human blood in a pentagram! Imhotep—they made up lies about one of the greatest geniuses in all history—my son! Do you hear me, Azrael, Angel of Death, my legion brother, you make dis shit right!”

  “Listen to me, man,” Azrael said, peeling Gavreel away from Isda and holding Isda firmly by the shoulders. “We’re gonna find the body.”

  Isda nodded, his chest heaving. “You promise me.”

  “I promise you,” Azrael said, then hugged him hard. “But you cannot lay siege to these humans.”

  “They’re invaders! They aren’t the original Nubian people. These are—”

  “Humans,” Azrael said in a no-nonsense tone. “You know how this works … battles, wars, invasions, the ebb and flow—”

  “Aided by evil,” Isda shouted, pushing Azrael off him.

  “Yes,” Azrael said, nodding.

  “They brought down one of the most magnificent empires.”

  “Yes,” Azrael said quietly. “And choices made within that empire also helped.”

  “Imhotep was a part of the Golden Age. My boy had nothing to do with dat travesty.”

  “No, he did not,” Azrael said in a calm tone, going to Isda slowly as one would approach a wounded lion. “And we will recover his sarcophagus and clean off the filth they covered him with.”

  Isda’s eyes glittered in the semidarkness. “They made up movies about him as evil. They have children afraid of his name. They—”

  “I know, brother,” Azrael murmured. “We may not be able to correct all of that in one mission, but we can find him and return him to rest.”

  Isda nodded. “That’s all I ask. I don’t have much beyond that left anymore.” Two huge tears rolled down Isda’s cheeks as he allowed his back to slump against the stone wall. “I watched them all die. “Watched all of their inventions and brilliance get taken to other countries. Watched others be given credit for what my children discovered and developed here. They said the Greeks and Romans did it all, but it was my sons and daughters, and my grandchildren and great-grands.” Isda closed his eyes and drew in a shuddering breath and then sniffed hard. “Then they put them in chains and after dat, mon … I couldn’t come back here to see anymore. I would have murdered.”

  “You don’t have to come back here anymore, brother,” Azrael said, drawing Isda into a warrior’s hug. “Do you want me to open up the column of light?”

  Isda shook his head. “I don’t want to go home until I can find his sarcophagus.”

  “Then, you tell us when it gets too intense. Some battles you can sit out. After a tour of duty for twenty-six thousand, nobody can fault you.”

  “Thanks, man … I’m all right,” Isda said as Azrael let him go. “It just fucked me up, is all. I felt all the energy on the walls, all the disrespect for what this place really was.”

  “Yeah, man. I hear you,” Azrael said. “I feel it, too.”

  “Can I try?” Celeste said, coming close to the open king’s chamber center stone.

  Isda nodded and she waited, glancing around. “I need to get inside the space.”

  Isda wiped his face and went to the edge of the open stone enclosure. Walking around the edges of what looked like the long, rectangular trough, he nodded. “This wasn’t Imhotep’s, it was Cheops’s.”

  “But if something evil happened in the shadow of this sacred ground …”

  “Maybe let her try,” Bath Kol said, imploring Isda without pushing him too hard.

  Finally Isda nodded and held out his hand to Celeste to help her into the encasement that would have held a pharaoh’s golden sarcophagus.

  Each person in the room placed his or her hands on the edge of the granite enclosure while Celeste slowly lay down inside it. Not sure what compelled her, she folded her arms across her chest in the ancient mummy pose, her body moving of its own accord as she closed her eyes. Soon her lashes began to flutter and images began to take shape behind her lids. She could feel the surface of her skin begin to tingle, and suddenly she was weeping.

  “Who is Dendera?” She sat up quickly with a gasp and wiped at her tears with dusty hands.

  Isda looked at Celeste and then around at the group. “Dendera is a temple in the south,” he said calmly, glancing around at the others as he began to pace. “A full day’s journey by car and too dangerous to be going through da desert at night. If you drive, you need an armed escort against bandits who would take foreigners hostage for ransoms—along the way, you’ll see … there’s some burned-out tour buses … look like Mad Max and the Thunderdome was dere.”

  “Then, by all means, lets take the freakin’ train,” Bath Kol said, rubbing his neck. “Damn, why is everything here so complicated?”

  “We’ll follow your lead, Isda,” Azrael said, helping Celeste out of the stone enclosure.

  “Aw’ight, den,” Isda said, closing his eyes.

  “But the Valley of the Kings turned up nothing?” Gavreel glanced around the group and his gaze settled on Paschar for a moment.

  “No,” Isda said quietly. “When our advance team got here, that’s the first place we looked. There are thousands of tombs in that limestone, mountainous region. We figured it would be a perfect place to hide a coffin. But with all the excavations still going on and the fact that the government actually built houses on top of the grave sites for miles—and people are digging in their basements striking gold and regularly selling antiquities on the black market, since that’s worth more than the couple grand the government will give them for their homes … we pulsed the area. It was cold. Last place we even thought to look was the museum. Insane.”

  “It was the last place any of us would have looked,” Azrael countered, clearly trying to make Isda feel better.

  “Den it should have been the first place I looked, mon.”

  “It’s all good, man,” Gavreel said quietly. “Stop lacerating yourself. We’re gonna work it out. So let’s focus forward instead of backward. How do we get down to Dendera safely traveling with mortals?”

  “Aw’ight,” Isda said, drawing in his palm with his forefinger to show the direction they’d have to take from Cairo. “Gotta take the train way past Sakkara, Memphis, Beni Suef, Minia, past the rock tombs of Beni Hassan, even beyond Abydos, though not as far as Nag Hammadi. The route follows the Nile and we can get off at Qena, then catch a ferry over to Dendera.” He raked his locks with his fingers and sighed. “You was feeling female energy, little sis, because dat temple in Dendera was dedicated to the goddess Hathor.” He glanced around at his brother angels. “Our locator is on point.”

  Chapter 7

  It was the shortest hotel stay in her life, and she deeply grieved leaving the sumptuous environs, especially when she saw the Cairo train station. It was not Amtrak’s Northeast-corridor rails by any stretch of the imagination. As Celeste glanced around the dingy, passenger-swarmed station, it looked like something out of a low-budget, 1940s version of The Orient Express.

  Every old cable TV movie she’d ever watched bloomed in her mind as she stood with the others impatiently waiting for the train. Haggling baggage handlers, old ladies swathed in traditional garb from head to toe with crates of livestock and children, arguing vendors selling cards and sweets for the ride and overcharging for water, made the platform a
lively but also treacherous place. Several times her heart leapt into her mouth as small children with wares to sell darted between passengers, dangerously near the platform’s edge. But somehow the little street urchins were as fleet afoot as mountain goats, navigating their way through hulking adults and luggage.

  Standing at the far end of the platform, Celeste watched the enormous locomotive huff its way into the station. Desert sand clung to its battered gray-and-navy exterior. The group just looked at it, seeming impassive. Bath Kol stopped a darting child and purchased a pack of unfiltered Camels and a deck of playing cards with a sigh. However, clearly no one wanted to fuss about the change from the luxury hotel to the sleeper train, on account of potentially hurting Isda’s feelings. It wasn’t his fault that this was the fastest, safest way to travel.

  A porter took their tickets on the platform and then led the way to a bank of five rooms along the inside of the larger sleeper car. The first thing that assailed her was the smell. Egypt didn’t have a no-smoking policy anywhere, and old butts plus whatever smoke clung to the upholstery nearly made her gag. It didn’t matter that she used to be a smoker herself; secondhand smoke stank to the high heavens, and when you added a layer of pine cleaner or industrial-scented air fresheners to the mix, it made her stomach lurch worse than the rickety train.

  She was forced to get over it; they were gonna be on the train overnight, regardless. Each couple lined up as the porter eyed them and then opened their individual cabins. Windows were on the left, then a narrow hallway that permitted only one person to politely pass at a time was in the middle, and metal-outfitted rooms were on the right.

  For a moment, Celeste just stared at the single-row seating that looked like a prison cot, or bus bench seat if she was being generous with the comparison.

  “You never ride the train, miss?”

  “No. It’s my first time in a sleeper.”

  Celeste had replied and even shook her head, but the man still glanced up at Azrael as though waiting for an answer from him. She’d noticed that ever since they’d arrived in Egypt, no one ever asked her a question and accepted her response. Oddly, it seemed as though a man had to respond to validate the reply. This reaction wasn’t just aimed toward her, she noticed. The locals seemed to treat all the women in their group that way. Hotel staff, restaurant waiters, exhibit guards, now the porter. Then, come to think of it, she hadn’t seen a single local woman in a job since they’d arrived. Working women had been nonexistent in the airport once they got off the flight, they were nowhere to be found in the hotel, were completely absent in the train station except as passengers, and weren’t at the monument sites, except those handing out toilet tissue in the ladies’ bathroom. Bizarre.

  The porter totally ignored Celeste and seemed to be quite willing to wait for Azrael to respond for her.

  “No, she’s never ridden a sleeper train before,” Azrael finally said with a slight frown of annoyance. “How does this work?”

  “Ah,” the porter said, extracting a bunk ladder from behind the door.

  Then in a series of magician-like flips, pulls, and flourishes, he secured a top bunk that was already made up with dubious-looking blankets and linens. Clicking it into place by lowering the bed out of the wall as if it were a foldaway ironing board, he added the ladder, then opened up the bottom bunk—she still wasn’t sure how even after she’d witnessed it, then showed them where a sink that didn’t work was hidden in the wall.

  “Bathrooms are at either end of the car, the bar is three cars down, and I will be by in one hour with your dinner.” The porter then showed them how to flip over their individual plastic dinner trays. “Meat or chicken or vegetarian?”

  “Vegetarian,” Azrael said, still marveling at the Transformers-like gadgetry of the sleeper car.

  Celeste cleared her throat and motioned toward the waiting porter with her eyes.

  “Oh, yes,” Azrael said, going into his pocket for a tip, handing the man what Celeste estimated to be way too much by normal standards.

  “Thank you, sir!” the happy porter exclaimed. “I will take good care of your entire family.”

  “You’re welcome,” Azrael said, but then stepped out into the hall as the others got settled in.

  Azrael didn’t have to say it, she could feel it. Everyone was worried about Isda. Sad glances passed among the group as each couple stood in front of their room in the narrow aisle and Isda stood in front of his alone with only an extralarge footlocker on roller wheels.

  “Where’s your wife with all of her dresses and shoes?” the gregarious porter said, obviously in a good mood now that he was well tipped by each previous angel brother he’d assisted.

  “She died,” Isda said in a flat tone.

  “But you have two tickets,” the man said, confused and seeming mortified by the gaffe. “And so much luggage.”

  “I’ll take the top bunk; my luggage can go on the bottom bunk.” Isda leaned against the windows in the hallway as the porter hesitantly readied his room, staring at the floor.

  “I am very sorry. I thought you were just teasing me and that maybe she had gone to the restroom,” the stricken porter said, his voice a low murmur now. “But you are a young man. You should marry again and take many wives. This way you will not be sad for long. Have many sons. Many children are good. Then this life will be good.”

  “Been there, seen it, done it, and finished with it. I’m older than you think and really don’t have it in me anymore,” Isda said quietly, then entered his room, hoisted his footlocker onto the bottom bunk, and closed the door on the porter.

  Bath Kol gave Azrael a nod. “This is the crash-and-burn part I was trying to tell him about in the airport, brother.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll be back,” Azrael said, looking over his shoulder into the room at Celeste.

  “I’m fine,” she murmured. “Go to him.”

  Bath Kol met Azrael in the hall. “Let me take first shift with him. They have a bar just three cars down. Aziza is cool and won’t be able to stand the smoke in there—she’s turning green from the smell in here alone. She’s tired, wants to meditate and sleep anyway. All of this nonsense has frayed her nerves—you know the queen doesn’t do violence or stress. So, I can go into the smoking car with our brother. Me and Is, hey, we go way back. I literally know where all the bodies are buried, and I never got to my Remnant in time, either. You kinda rub salt in his wound just by having Celeste—it ain’t your fault, but it is what it is. Me, I’m philosophical. I’ve got queen, but, you know. Just fall back and give the man some space. I got this.”

  “You’re sure?” Azrael landed a supportive hand on Bath Kol’s shoulder.

  “Positive,” Bath Kol said with a nod, then headed toward Isda’s room as the train began moving.

  “So they’ve found their way home,” Asmodeus said, rubbing his jaw as bloodied scorpions swarmed his feet. He drew heavily on a hookah and allowed the smoky mixture of water-cooled tobacco and hashish to flow over his palate, savoring it as he inhaled and then released it through his nose.

  He looked around at his newly reanimated warriors with disgust. The once-beheaded Malpas still had a visible scar around his throat and could not speak. His exquisite African features were now marred by a gruesome keloid scar that showed exactly where he’d been decapitated. He’d lost an arm that never came back. Where he’d been hit in the chest was a gaping sinkhole exposing burned, twisted viscera.

  Onoskelis was also now mute from her beheading and wore a thick ornamental choker to hide the wicked scar. The once beautiful Lahash was now merely a withered, blackened skeleton from his full holy-water immersion. Bune’s dragon heads were flesh-barren skeletons when he shape-shifted now, and his skin was slowly rotting off his bones from the shrapnel he’d taken in the ship explosion on the Delaware.

  Pharzup’s face, which had taken a shotgun blast delivered by Celeste, was missing an eye and the left cheek and half a jawbone, and the injury made him constantly drool on hi
mself.

  But perhaps the most pitiable was the once-strong and Roman-god-like Appollyon, who, because of a blade to the sensitive-for-angel area between his wings, was grounded. His black wings were useless appendages that hung limply in an uneven dangle. The man had been hobbled by the Angel of Death. To see such beauty mangled in battle was pure sacrilege.

  Asmodeus felt his fangs lengthening as dark fury consumed him. Only he and Rahab and Forcas had been left mostly whole. Forcas had regenerated from his multiple gunshot wounds; Rahab had escaped in time. Yet even Asmodeus still bore Azrael’s mark on his once flawless face.

  Quiet fury practically strangled Asmodeus as he studied the condition of his dark inner circle of the most valiant fallen. His warriors, like Lucifer, were to have been the most beautiful of all the angels—the best, the brightest, the strongest. Now they looked more like demons than dark angels. It was unacceptable. Abhorrent. Even his once flawlessly handsome face was burned and marred by his untimely contact with the Delaware River, which had been turned into holy water. Once he had the tablets, he would correct this abomination, too.

  He stood and pushed away from the long banquet table and paced to the window to stare out at the Egyptian night sky. The feeding on the human that the demons had dragged in had not helped any of them, nor had the blood. He listened to the crimson fluid slowly drip off the table onto the hardwood floor. The sounds of his own battalion gorging had sickened him, and he couldn’t watch them devour the disemboweled body with the injuries they’d sustained. Looking at them just made him think of his own disfigurement. Mirrors had been banished in the villa, but that didn’t solve the problem in the way that finding the crystal tablet would.

  Time was not on his side. They didn’t have months to spend in this luxury Red Sea villa on the West Bank recovering. There wasn’t time to waste consulting sorcerers, nor would it be advisable to risk petitioning the Dark Lord for his assistance at this late juncture in the campaign—which would mean admitting temporary defeat, which would also mean risking extermination or entering into a bargain that Asmodeus was unprepared for. He’d learned long ago that leverage was king in the dark realms.