by E. A. Copen
As if in answer, two decaying bodies stormed through the dust cloud, hissing and snarling in the back of their throats. Undead hands ripped and tore at the gray cloth covering their bodies, revealing shrunken black skin underneath.
Mummies. I’d accidentally raised Beth’s mummies.
Oops.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When I said it would be cool to raise the shade of a three-thousand-year-old mummy, I definitely meant a shade and not the mummy itself. For starters, raising the dead wasn’t easy, especially once they’d been dead a while. Shades and spirits only hung out for easy access a week or so after death. After that, a necromancer had to straddle the chasm and step just a little too far into the land of the dead to call them back. The result was normally disastrous for everybody.
But reanimation of dead tissue was a little different. Reanimation didn’t require me to jam a soul back into the body, just a bunch of raw power. The thing was, reanimated corpses were basically mindless slaves. To use them was desecration and went wholly against my vow to respect the dead, so I’d never done it until that night in the museum.
The mummies marched straight for me.
Beth shrieked and backed away.
“Go!” I shouted at her. “Get out of here!”
Emma appeared in the doorway, returning from escorting the group of civilians out. Her eyes widened at the sight of the mummies, and she went for her weapon.
“No, don’t!” Beth shouted and tried to run for Emma, but the shot went off.
Emma’s bullet sailed through the more well-preserved of the two mummies, punching a hole in its gut that didn’t even slow it down, before it struck me. It hit my side, thankfully where I had two layers of spider silk, and bounced right off. The impact though was enough to send me sprawling backward. Getting struck by a bullet, even in a bulletproof suit, hurts.
Imseti stepped over me while I was still blinking back tears. “Tear him apart,” he ordered the mummies.
He must’ve thought they’d listen to him because he was a god, or that he’d somehow gotten enough power by devouring one brother and a bunch of fae that he could command anyone. But god or no, Imseti couldn’t command the mummies I’d animated. They stopped just a few feet from me and stood perfectly still.
“What’s wrong with you? Obey me. I am a god!” Imseti pointed at me. “Destroy the Horseman.”
Osric snickered. “You know, I don’t think they like your tone.”
I pushed myself up, holding a hand against my aching ribs. “Last chance, Imseti. Give me the box, and I’ll hand you over to the police and let the justice system do its work.”
“You can’t command me,” Imseti said. “This isn’t your place, and these aren’t your people.” He turned back to the two mummies. “You men worshiped me in life and swore to serve in death. Stand aside.” He paused, and when the mummies didn’t move, he barked the command at them again.
Again, the mummies didn’t move.
With a frustrated roar, Imseti pushed one of the mummies out of his way and headed for the exit, the same exit Emma and Beth were blocking. A surge of magic power crackled through the room like lightning, and Imseti’s shadow grew, stretching to encompass both women. A trick I’d seen before outside the morgue when the three brothers ripped apart five policemen.
I pointed toward Imseti. “Stop him! Don’t let him take the box!”
Then all hell broke loose.
Osric moved past me in a blur of black to engage Imseti, slicing at him with his daggers. The god dodged, sliding back with a snarl, and right into the mummies who had marched after him to obey my command. The largest of the two mummies grabbed Imseti by the arm and pulled back. Osric sliced his blade through the flesh at the shoulder, sending a fresh spray of blood to coat the mummies and the floor. Imseti and Osric both stared at the blood, stunned. Even I paused, wondering why the hell a god was bleeding like any other human.
Then I remembered the night before. As far as we knew, he hadn’t fed, and Seb had said they had to keep feeding or risk fading. I’d taken the word fading literally, but maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe it just made him more mortal.
My Vision confirmed that Imseti still had a glowing, golden soul, but it wasn’t as bright a glow as I’d have expected from a god, and it was speckled with flakes of silver. Imseti was becoming mortal.
The mummies, however, didn’t care about souls or gods. They were only there to follow orders, and that meant stopping Imseti. They continued to pull back on Imseti’s sliced arm while Osric tried to stab Imseti and Imseti tried to pull away.
With a loud snap and the sound of tearing flesh, the mummies ripped Imseti’s arm clean off and cast it aside. Imseti screamed in horror as the mummies descended on him, ripping and tearing at his clothes, his skin, anything they could grab onto. Osric hesitated, deciding whether to intervene, and then quickly turned away as Imseti’s screams became more desperate.
“Stop!” I commanded, racing over to the mummies. “Stop it!” I pulled the mummies away from Imseti’s body, but I was too late.
They’d torn off most of the skin on his face and neck. The suit he’d worn was now a shredded, bloody mess with parts of Imseti all over it. He had been gored clean to the spine at the waist, enough that parts of his pelvic bone were clearly visible. The hand that held the box still gripped it tight, and Imseti, still being mostly a god, wasn’t dead.
His torn lower jaw quivered, and one remaining eye blinked up at me. “Help…me.”
There was no fixing him, not with as far gone as he was. Yet if I turned my back and left him there, he’d never die, not until I decided it was time to collect his soul. Even if the body rotted away, he’d still be there, aware and in pain.
I thought back to the massacred police officers outside the morgue, to Lexi’s broken body, remembered the pain in Emma’s voice as she described what was happening to me that first day. For all the pain and suffering he’d caused, he almost deserved what had been done to him, but he didn’t deserve to suffer for an eternity.
I looked for his soul and found it floating inside the twisted mess the mummies had made, a dying sun swirling with a mix of silver and gold. It was hard to look at it, such a beautiful thing, resting among exposed guts and broken bone. My stomach lurched, but I forced myself to swallow. This was my job now. This was the balance I was supposed to work to maintain. No unneeded suffering, no passage of judgment. I’d leave that to someone else. I was just there to restore things to the way they were, and for that Imseti had to die.
Cringing, I thrust my hand into him and closed my fingers around the soul. Imseti made a small gasping sound as I removed his soul, and I could swear I saw relief in that one eye before the rest of him turned to dust.
The small box fell to the floor where Imseti’s hand had been. Osric bent, picked it up and dusted it off before handing it to me. “Shall we return the box to the queen?”
I looked back at the blood-spattered mummies awaiting my next command. “Um, what do I do with these guys?”
“You mean you can’t just…” Osric waved an arm. “You know. Put them back?”
I shook my head. Eventually, the spell would wear off, and they’d just collapse wherever they were, but I didn’t know when that would be, and they’d follow me around until then. They were my undead servants now, after all. “I’m kind of stuck with them until the spell burns out. No telling how long that’ll be since there’s a god’s soul fueling the spell.”
Osric shrugged. “If you’re stuck, you’re stuck. I’m more concerned about them.” He pointed to Emma, Seb, and Beth.
Beth was doubled over, heaving her guts up. Seb was patting her gently on the back, his face ashen. And Emma… Emma was on her radio, already giving orders to someone on the other end.
“Stay here,” I said and walked over to them.
“What the hell was that?” Emma asked, as I stopped a few feet away. She lifted an animated hand. “You know what? Never mind. I don’t want
to know what it was. I want to know why you’ve got a pair of mummies following you around, and how I’m supposed to explain that to the first responders on their way here.”
I looked back at the mummies, standing stiffly just a few feet behind me. They almost looked like they were grinning. Freaky. “Get everyone outside,” I said to Emma. “And keep the EMTs and the general public out for as long as you can, however you can. There’s still one more thing I need to do.”
She frowned, eyes flicking to the mummies and back. “It better be putting those guys back, because I don’t’ think there’s a form for that anywhere in the precinct.” She helped Beth up, and the three of them left the exhibit rooms.
“Ready?” Osric asked.
I nodded.
One of Osric’s shadow daggers appeared in his hand. He slid the blade over the meat of his thumb before making a few quick motions with his hands. A transparent bubble sprang up in front of him, distorting the room beyond, and he stepped into it. The bubble stretched around him, and he didn’t come out the other side, instead moving into another pocket dimension, one I was supposed to follow him into.
I sighed, eyeing the box in my hand and the mummies behind me. If anyone had told me my week was going to end by bringing a soul box and two mummies into Faerie to save my ex-girlfriend and get engaged to a queen, I’d have called them crazy. But that’s where I was nonetheless.
“Might as well get this over with,” I said, and stepped through the transparent portal.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I expected the realm of the Shadow Queen to be dark and cold, but stepping through the portal, I had to shield my eyes from the light. Scorching wind hit me, bringing with it a spray of fine sand that stung. The sweet smell of frankincense hung on the dry air, and the sound of rhythmic drumming greeted my ears. In the sky, an unmoving eclipse hid most of the sun, casting an eerie shadow over half the desert in front of me, and bathing the rest in bright light.
Ruined sandstone walls stood just a few yards away, lining stairs that might have belonged to giants. On either side of every step, a great fire blazed inside a bronze urn. The drumming I was hearing was coming from the flat surface at the top of the stairs, where many shadowed forms danced, passing mallets between them and still keeping the rhythm as the dancers moved from drum to drum.
And there, between them sat Nyx in a throne of onyx stone, an obsidian knife held to Odette’s throat.
My heart leaped into my throat at the sight of Odette, pounding in tune with the ominous drumming. I took a furious step forward, preparing to shout over the noise for Nyx to let her go if she wanted her box, but paused. Something about Odette was different. She had always been beautiful with her dark features, heart-shaped face, and soft curves, but even as the queen’s captive, she had a new glow about her. Her cheeks seemed rounder, the curves of her body more noticeable. Or maybe it was a trick of the light, or that I hadn’t seen her for two weeks. Yeah, that could be it. Still, something deep down screamed at me. Something was different, something that chilled me to the bone.
Nyx lifted a finger on her free hand, and the drumming stopped, the shadows stilling with her command. Even Osric, who had been advancing up the stairs, stopped and dropped to one knee, head bowed.
I glanced behind me in time to see the portal ripple and vanish. The mummies hadn’t followed me through. Of course they didn’t. Death has no place in Faerie.
Even as I thought that, I became aware of a new lightness in my limbs as if a heavy burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I tried to activate my Sight and found I couldn’t. Just like the mummies, I couldn’t bring death into Faerie. I was completely cut off from most of my magic. By the sly smirk on Nyx’s face, she knew it too.
I raised her box for all to see. “I have your stupid box. If you want it back, I suggest letting the Summer Princess go.”
“Or you’ll what exactly?” she asked, shifting her knife.
Good point. I didn’t have much leverage since I’d left most of my magic at the door. Maybe I could blast to box to bits, but then she’d just slit Odette’s throat and order her guards to kill me. Nyx held all the cards.
Or did she?
I raised my chin, projecting my voice to make sure everyone heard me. “Or I’ll open it.”
The sandstone ruins went eerily still. Even the flame seemed to freeze long enough for the shadows to draw a breath. So, she and her court feared what would happen if the box was opened. She’d said part of her soul was trapped inside. Why wouldn’t she want to reclaim that?
With a frustrated growl, Nyx removed the knife from Odette’s throat but didn’t let her go. She rose and gave Odette a hard push that sent her tumbling down the stairs. In a panic, I ran to her.
“Had I known before what I know now, I would have ordered her killed immediately,” Nyx said just as I reached Odette.
Odette pushed herself up on shaky arms, the feather-light green dress falling around her like a waterfall. “I’m fine,” she said and pushed me away.
I didn’t listen, instead taking her arms and pulling her to her feet and looking her over. My breath caught in my chest and a new, icy chill pumped through my veins at what I saw. There was a reason she’d looked different, and it had nothing to do with the moonlight. Her normally flat stomach had a new, very noticeable bump.
You probably don’t even know, do you? Osric had said. Of course, time flows differently in Faerie. My two weeks could’ve been months here.
Even though I knew the answer, I had to ask. “Odette…”
She jerked her arms away and put her hands over the bump in a protective gesture. “Now you see why I was recalled to Faerie so suddenly. No fae can survive being born outside of Faerie. There is too much iron in your world.”
“But is it…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. My throat was too dry and my heart was suddenly pounding a million miles an hour in my ears.
“It’s an abomination.” Nyx stood at the top of the stairs, glaring down at us. “The seed of death itself brought into our world. Delivering that child will doom us all. The Summer Queen attempted to hide it, but now that I know the truth, all of Faerie will know.” She started down the stairs.
Odette put a hand on the side of my face, pulling my attention back to her. “The child is yours. There’s been no one else. She means to kill our child. No matter how you feel about me, you cannot let her!”
I was still trying to process the unexpected news. Had she gotten pregnant on purpose? Was it part of her manipulation ploy toward whatever end game she had in mind? The Baron had warned me that people would try to get me in their corners, that they would test my loyalty to the balance. What if that’s all this was?
But even if that were true, I couldn’t fault a child for the sins of its mother. My child. Fucking hell, I couldn’t be a dad. No way was I ready for that. I could barely take care of myself. The idea of being responsible for someone else was downright terrifying.
“But the child is another matter. Let us first resolve the issue of my box. Sir Knight,” Nyx said, pausing by the kneeling Osric.
He lowered his head even further. “My Queen?”
“Retrieve my box from my betrothed.”
Osric rose and started down the stairs. I helped Odette to her feet and backed away, pulling her along with me. There was nothing but open desert behind me, and the queen and her knight in front of me. Nowhere to go and only limited options left. It seemed no matter what I did, this wasn’t going to end in my favor.
Panicked, Odette’s hand brushed against my hip, and I was suddenly aware of the weight there. Sybille’s ironwort tea bag. She’d told me to use it when I went to the place with no death. That could only mean Faerie, but what was I supposed to do with it? She’d failed to specify. Ironwort might have the same negative effect on fae as its namesake, but there was no way I could deliver it directly to Osric, the queen, or anyone else for that matter.
Except through the box. Nyx’s soul was in the bo
x. What would happen if I exposed a faerie queen’s soul directly to ironwort? Nothing good for Nyx, if I was right.
I fumbled with the box, dropping my staff into the sand as Osric closed on us. A series of hieroglyphs held the box closed. The last time I’d looked at the box, they’d looked like a bunch of poorly drawn Pictionary symbols, but now I understood them perfectly with a glance. Hapi’s soul, I thought. It must be because I absorbed it. Maybe I gained some understanding from it.
“There are two sisters,” I muttered, reading the inscription. “One gives birth to the other, and the other, in turn, gives birth to the first. Speak the name of the sisters and I will open.”
Odette’s fingers tightened on my arm. “Lazarus, I don’t think now is the time for nonsense!”
“It’s a riddle.” I silently cursed. I’d never been good at those things, that’s why I’d copied Beth’s homework all the time in school. Word games weren’t my forte.
Odette squeezed her eyes shut.
Osric reached us and grabbed the box, but I held on tight. “Let it go, Lazarus. I don’t want to have to kill you.”
I pulled back on the box and raised my eyes to the shadow of the moon eclipsing the sun. It suddenly struck me as ironic that the land of shadow would also be a land stuck in a perpetual eclipse. The moon casting her shadow forever on the sun meant they’d never see dusk or dawn here. No sunrises, no sunsets, no passage of time in days. Not only was this part of Faerie a place with no death, but it was also a place of no time. How boring that must be. I squinted and turned away from the eclipse, remembering that it was bad to look straight at one for any length of time. To live in a land with no night or day. Only the pale shadow of each.
That’s it. That’s the answer to the riddle!
I jerked the box back hard from Osric and shouted my answer as loud as I could. “Night and day! The sisters are night and day!”