I stared down into the pit and barely resisted the urge to vomit. The sight of my body impaled on a host of spikes filled my vision. My heart leaped into my throat, and I fell to my knees as my own lifeless eyes stared back at me. I swallowed. In this version of the future, I died …
“But why?” I murmured as Imhotep’s form melted away to reveal Sekhmet standing there with a satisfied grin on her face. She cast one glance at us and then fire filled the pit, reducing everything inside to ash.
“As you can see, option B fails as well.” Thoth shrugged as the scene froze in place. “That’s why you need to go with a third choice, which, unfortunately, has only a three percent chance of success.”
I swallowed, unable to tear my eyes from the sight of my own broken body. “And what is option three?”
“Not option one or two,” Thoth said, waving his hand at me, and as he did, everything vanished in a haze of bright light. “Do something else. Be better. Get Sekhmet to help you.”
I was back in my body on the ground, looking up at Sekhmet. She stood over me, brandishing the huge sphinx statue like a baseball bat. Before anyone could do anything, I leaped to my feet.
“Stop!” I shouted, diving past her to intercept Khufu. I hit him square in the stomach with my shoulder before he could even think about attacking. We slammed into the sand, and I was on my feet a second later, not waiting to see how he reacted as I whirled to face Sekhmet.
She took a step forward, her face drawn into a mask of fury and hatred. “Move, wolf,” she said, and the words were hard, yet strangely brittle. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will. You won’t like it.”
“No,” I replied, holding my palms out in front of myself. “We need him to stop Apep from rising. I know you want revenge, but just listen to me.” I swallowed and took a leap of faith. “We need you too, Sekhmet. Thoth told me to find a different path, and the only way I can see to do that is with your help.”
She was about to say something but instead cocked her head to the side. After what felt like an eternity, she finally spoke. “Why do you say that, Luke?”
“You are one of the greatest warriors in Ra’s court. Only you are strong enough to wield his staff and beat back the demon, Apep. Without you to help us fight, it won’t matter if we succeed in getting ahold of the staff.” I smiled at her. “Unless you’re too scared?” I shrugged. “I understand if you are.”
“I fear nothing.” A loud crash filled my ears as the goddess tossed the statue casually to the side. She came forward and met my eyes. “I will spare Khufu this one time, and I will accompany you to the staff’s location, wolf.” She licked her lips. “But I will require something from you in return.”
“Sure,” I said, nodding to her. “If you help us get the staff, I’ll give you anything you want.”
“Good. I shall remember you promised me anything,” she replied, nodding as she stepped past me. Behind me, Khufu was just getting to his feet, and the goddess seized him by the throat and hoisted him into the air. “If you try something I even mildly dislike, I will tear you into your composite atoms and place each one on a different sun to burn for eternity.” She smiled at him. “Do you understand, pharaoh?”
26
It wasn’t long before our motley crew arrived at Imhotep’s tomb. The pyramid would have seemed huge if I hadn’t seen Giza. Even partially constructed, Giza was big enough to have fit this place in its bathroom. Why had Khufu built such a ginormous pyramid? Was it to outdo Imhotep? I thought about asking but decided against it.
The north face of the pyramid looked like it had been carved from one giant block. Hieroglyphics every color of the rainbow littered its surface, and while I wasn’t sure what they said, Aziza’s eyes widened in horror as she scanned them.
While that concerned me, I was more worried about the two forty-foot tall statues of Anubis that stood guard on either side of the door. Their hands were clasped around the hilt of some weapon that disappeared behind their respective backs. What if they came to life and tried to kill us? Sure, we had Sekhmet with us, and even if she didn’t help us when bad things started to go down, I was fairly sure I could stop them with magic. Even still, I didn’t want to get squashed like a bug. Then again, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, right?
I sighed and shook my head, dismissing the thought. Somehow, we had to get inside and convince Imhotep to hand over the staff, and while that didn’t sound hard, I was pretty sure it was going to be just this side of impossible. At least we seemed to have Sekhmet on our side now. That should make it easier, especially since we had to succeed.
“So how do we get in?” I gestured at the tomb.
“I’m not sure we should. Those hieroglyphics strongly imply that it would be a really bad idea to venture inside,” Aziza said reluctantly.
“No, that’s just what the sign on your panties says,” Khufu replied, stepping past her and pressing one of his huge hands against the wall. She stared at him, mouth opening and closing as her eyes flickered between surprise and rage. “You need to read them straight down, like this.” Khufu trailed his fingers vertically down the hieroglyphics. As he did so, they lit up, glowing like opals cast into the sunlight.
When he reached the last one, the stone shuddered, and the screeching of crows filled the air. Color exploded outward from the pyramid, throwing Khufu off his feet and sending him skidding backward in the sand like a giant pharaoh-shaped comet.
Beside us, the huge statues quaked, and their massive stone heads turned toward us. They opened their mouths, revealing rows of huge teeth that glittered like shards of broken glass. Their hands whipped out, pulling huge curved sabers free from their stone backs and brandishing them at us.
“Stand down, brother,” Sekhmet said, holding one hand out in front of her. Fire licked across her skin, turning the sand beneath her feet into molten glass. “I do not want to have to destroy your statues.”
“Anubis has no place here.” A voice that struck me like the emptiness of the void rippled out across the sand. At that moment, I felt nothing. It was like every ounce of my being had been reduced to a swirling mist of atoms.
Sekhmet’s fire died out, squashed under a blanket of darkness that fell over the land, dousing the earth in chaos. Her eyes went wide as she swallowed, taking a step backward and stumbling. She fell on her butt, mouth agape. “No … no, it can’t be …”
“What is it?” I cried, shaking myself into action as one giant stone foot tried to flatten me. I hit the ground in a roll and called upon my wolf. In an instant I was transformed and ready to go.
I scrambled to my feet as the statue lumbered toward me. Behind it, I could see its twin focused on Aziza. I don’t know how, but it was sprinting behind her as she ran, its long legs tearing up the distance between them so that it was like watching an ant try to outrun a world-class sprinter.
Aziza turned, one hand splayed out in front of her. Purple energy wafted off of her in tendrils, reminding me of a particularly colorful sea anemone. A blast of lavender energy exploded from her hand and struck the statue full in the face. Its head cracked, splintering down the center. It wobbled, taking a couple steps backward. Its arms flew out to help it regain its balance, but despite its face having been reduced to rubble, the automation seemed otherwise unconcerned.
She bit her lip, fear flashing across her features as the huge stone Anubis steadied itself and took a step toward her, weapon raised high above its head so that its surface glinted in the fading sunlight.
My own statue struck so fast that I barely dodged. Its huge fist plowed into the ground beside me, burying itself up to the elbow in the sandy earth. I darted between the things legs as it struggled to free itself.
The Anubis statue ripped its hand free with a sound that reminded me of a landslide. It spun, one huge foot barely missing me as I threw myself to the side. Its swirling black eyes widened very slightly as it stared at me. I scrambled to my feet as it reached out with one huge hand and grabbed me.
Its stony grip tightened around me, not hard enough to break anything, but not loose enough for me to escape either. It hoisted me up until I was staring directly into one of its huge eyes. It reminded me of the center of a tornado … you know, if that tornado was made of tar and trying to suck you into a black hole.
“You,” it said, and the profound emptiness of its voice struck me like a blow. My body went slack, collapsing under the pressure of that one word. The statue cocked its head at me, thinking. “I know you. Why?”
I tried to respond, tried to remember how to talk, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t. My lips were fused together, my voice lost to me. Admittedly, I was partially surprised I could still breathe because every part of me felt hollow like a clamshell sucked free of meat.
The image of a huge cobra loomed up over me in in my mind’s eye. Its huge head fanned out black as pitch and as wide as a skyscraper. Enormous eyes of spinning black lava fixed on me, freezing me in place beneath their baleful gaze.
“Explain to me why I did not kill you before?” the creature asked, huge serpentine lips opening and closing to reveal rows of bloody teeth the size of tanker trucks.
The snake reared back, and I suddenly realized I was not where I was before. Stretching out before me was an infinity of perfect white. It was so disconcerting that I could scarcely breathe. I was in the void. In nothingness. The only things here were the snake and me. Its huge black tail wrapped around me, holding me in place so that I couldn’t move. Its skin was like oil, glistening and wet.
The sound of my blood rushing in my ears was all that I heard as it regarded me carefully, nostrils flaring outward. My very essence began to float toward the snake, flowing out toward it like particles of black shadow.
“I’ve figured it out. You’re from the future,” the snake said, a sly grin settling over it as it bobbed its head. “I’m so smart that sometimes I amaze myself.”
“Why is that?” I said, only I wasn’t sure it was me moving my lips. It was something else, something deep within me. It was a voice I did not own. No. This voice was from the sacred heart buried within me.
“Because the mark upon your flesh, faint as it is, carries a message from the future, of a time beyond time. Of a time after time.” The snake released me. I fell down through nothingness. It lunged toward me, mouth opening like, well, a striking serpent, but always staying far enough away that it never caught me. I was pretty sure it was on purpose.
“It says that I am a hero. That chaos gets its due. It tells a story I hardly believe is possible.” The snake caught me, its serpentine tongue wrapping around me. It arrested my fall so suddenly that my head snapped backward and little stars shot across my vision for a second. “It tells me that I will bring order to chaos.” It narrowed its eyes at me until they were slits of boiling fire. “I am chaos, and I will bring order. Tell me how, tell me why.”
I was rendered completely insubstantial. A mist that broke into a cloud of nothingness and scattered across the world. In that moment, I saw the universe make and unmake itself. Saw life spawn on a million earths, saw it die away just as quickly. I saw eons elapse in the space of a second and saw a second stretch out into infinity, moving so slow that each moment was a lifetime of time.
Time.
Time bent sideways, breaking, spilling its contents out across the endless space of nothingness.
Time snapped back into place like a rubber band. In that moment, I knew everything and anything. I saw how my story could end, saw it splinter outward among possibilities so numerous that no number could truly do it justice. In that moment, I understood infinity, and that felt too small, too limited, too wanting.
The huge snake loomed in front of me, its tongue warm and slimy on my flesh. I stared into its eyes, meeting its magma-hot gaze.
“Apep,” I commanded, and the world around me shuddered. Cracks the color of warm honey appeared in the endless white void. “Release me.”
And he did.
27
I was standing in the sand outside of the pyramid in human form. A pile of rubble that was vaguely reminiscent of the Anubis statue was strewn out in front of me. I squinted, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun overhead as I surveyed the scene. Khufu was still on the ground, only he was starting to stir, just the barest movement that let me know it’d be a few minutes until consciousness fully grasped him in its fist.
Sekhmet was on her knees in the sand, eyes blank and uncomprehending. It reminded me of that thousand-mile stare I’d seen in movies about war, shock and trauma frozen just below the surface. Her hands lay slack at her sides, her fire long since extinguished.
Like the statue that had attacked me, Aziza’s was strewn across the ground in pieces, only the chunks were bigger and more recognizable than mine had been. It sort of resembled a huge dismembered corpse sans blood and gore.
Aziza stood just behind it, mouth open in shock. Her amethyst eyes were bright, but I was pretty sure she didn’t actually see me. As I moved toward her, her eyes didn’t follow my movement, didn’t track me as they should.
The sand beneath my bare feet didn’t move, didn’t flex beneath my weight. Instead, it was more like I didn’t touch it, didn’t disturb even the smallest particle.
That’s when I felt him inside me. My wolf. Wepwawet.
He loped forward in my mind, huge and substantial. Only he was different. His fur carried a golden sheen, like the sun was hitting it just right so it appeared metallic. Instead of ruby, his eyes were ringed in gold. His tongue lolled lazily out of his mouth as those eyes fixed upon mine. Then he talked for the first time since I’d met him.
“Hello,” he said in a voice that was like the ragged edge of a freshly licked wound.
“Um …” I said for lack of anything better to say. My wolf hadn’t spoken since I’d absorbed the sacred heart. Sure, he had communicated, but it had always been with emotion. It had never been something as direct as this … I mean, okay, I didn’t know a lot about the process, but since the wolf hadn’t communicated with me like this, I’d just figured it couldn’t with, you know, speech.
Wepwawet cocked his head at me, ears cocked, listening and waiting. “Did you not hear me?”
“Yes, I heard you,” I replied, and for the first time, I realized he was no longer an it. My wolf was huge, imposing, and very, very male. “Wepwawet.”
As the name left my lips, the space between us shattered. At that moment, I knew things I hadn’t known before.
The wolves contained within the sacred hearts had names. They had always had names. The humans who took them just didn’t know them. My wolf wasn’t the Wepwawet, the Egyptian wolf god, but had been so named. Why that was, I didn’t know for sure. Still, one thing was abundantly clear, my wolf was more than I’d expected. They were more, and because the people who had used the sacred hearts didn’t know that, both the wolf and the user were less.
“Luke, I have waited a long time to speak with you. I’d wondered if you were worthy, if knowing me would drive you to the brink as it has for others. I am gladdened that you seem to have passed.” Wepwawet gave me an approving look.
“Thank you,” I said, remembering what Aziza had said before, about how the sacred heart had made guardians go insane with power. Was it because they could commune more deeply with their wolves? Was that why the humans who took the hearts couldn’t speak to them?
“Your thoughts are full of questions, Luke. I shall do my best to help you along.” Wepwawet moved toward me, his huge head brushing against my leg and sending a ripple of heat along my flesh. “Once, long ago, it was not as it is now. We knew your kind. Together, we stood atop the world. Together, we conquered the darkness and fed upon its flesh. Together, we howled at the moon, and it howled back.” My wolf spoke, and the truth of his words was like a kick in the gut because I could see the warriors of old, could feel their power burst at the seams.
Beyond that though?
I could feel them tear the darkne
ss asunder, feel them champion the good, the right, and the noble.
“What happened?” I asked, blinking away the images.
“I do not know.” My wolf licked me, tongue warm and wet on my skin. “What I do know is that this is how it should be, Luke. How it must be. You must bring us back together, must bridge the world between your wolf and your guardian heritage. Time is short, and the darkness is coming.”
“Luke!” Aziza’s voice shattered my attention, and my wolf retreated into my mind, leaving me standing there in confusion for a second. “Thank Ra! You’re okay!” She wrapped her arms around me, pulling me into a hug. She buried her face into my chest, holding me there as tears slid down her cheeks. “I thought you were dead.”
“You thought I was dead?” I asked even more confused. “Why is that?”
“The statue grabbed you, and you went lifeless. Then the statues exploded, and you fell to the ground. You landed on your head. The sound of it was … I thought that there was no way even you could survive …” She pulled away, looking up at me with tear-rimmed eyes. “I should have known better.”
“Get a room,” Khufu said before I could reply. He walked up, put one hand on my shoulder, and squeezed. “Now, let’s get going before you get too big a head.” He pointed at the pyramid.
The door to the ancient tomb had been reduced to rubble. Smoldering bits of rock littered the sand in front of it. Gloom filled the entrance, and while it should have seemed foreboding, it just … didn’t.
I tore my gaze from the doorway as Sekhmet strode up to us. The look on her face made me curious, but as I opened my mouth to ask her what the thought etched into her features was, she waved me off.
“Later,” she mouthed and stepped past me into the darkness, one hand held out before her. Flame blazed within her palm, throwing back the shadows and fighting off the darkness.
I followed her, leaving Aziza and Khufu to fall in line behind me. I wasn’t sure how I became the middle person in our lineup, but I didn’t like being sandwiched between an Egyptian war god and two mummies, but at the same time, I still hadn’t learned that primordial fire thing either.
King of the Gods Page 15