Cat's Claw

by Amber Benson

  I had been crouched down in my hiding place, behind the big bronze pot, for almost twenty minutes, and nothing was happening, aside from a really nasty-ass leg cramp in my right calf. I decided that if I wanted to get anywhere anytime soon, I was gonna have to make the first move.

  I had expected to meet back up with Bast once we’d gotten to where we’d been going, but from the moment I’d opened my eyes and discovered all the exciting amenities my new environs held—not—I’d known in my gut that I was alone here in Jackal Brother land.

  It was probably all my own fault anyway. I’d just had to be a smart-ass about the whole “spirit guide” thing, so I shouldn’t have been so surprised to find myself on the wrong end of a passive-aggressive payback from the überspirit guide Bast, ex- Egyptian Goddess and Queen of the Cats. I whispered a silent apology to my missing feline companion in hopes that she’d somehow magically appear beside me and tell me what to do next, but after a few tense moments of expectation, I realized she was not gonna be coming to my aid.

  I pulled out my rubidium clock.

  “How much time now?” I asked, waiting for the ticker tape of flashing numbers to stop.

  “Only fifteen hours?” I said, incredulously as I read the string of numbers on the clock front. “That’s not fair!”

  Well, at least I still have Senenmut’s Death Record, I mused thoughtfully as I pulled out the paper I’d stolen from the Hall of Death.

  I looked down at the almost-translucent sheet of stationary—my guess was that it was made out of rice paper, but I wasn’t an expert—and saw the same words I remembered from my last view still embossed across the page.

  It read simply: Under the remand of the Jackal Brothers until further notice.

  I thought about what that meant and decided that having to hang out in this torture chamber for more than a few hours probably wasn’t a very nice fate. I’d spent some time in the company of the Jackal Brothers—and were they a laugh a minute or what?

  Uhm, let’s go for the “or what.”

  Seriously, they were two of the most stone-faced—and not just because of their stonelike Jackal heads—unresponsive, and lacking in any kind of a sense of humor fellows that I’d come across in a long, long time. Usually, even if someone was a total stick in the mud, they would have at least some sense of humor, but the Jackal Brothers were entirely devoid of wit or charm. Frankly, they wouldn’t have known a joke if it had bitten them on the butt and caused a boil on one of their cheeks. Of course, by the type of surroundings I now found myself in, it appeared my little observation about them was more than valid.

  I stood up, leaving the relative security of my boiling oil pot, and stretched my legs, shaking out my right calf in hopes of getting rid of the cramp—but no luck there. I expected to get a few gasps and/or moans of interest from the peanut gallery, but of the five prisoners I counted, only one of them actually had his eyes open. The others all seemed to be in a state of heightened doze.

  The one conscious fellow in the room was staring at his feet with a look of intense concentration on his face. From the way his body was splayed out on the floor, both arms stretched far above his head and cuffed to the wall, I surmised that the only freedom he had was the freedom to move his toes around.

  “Excuse me,” I said tentatively as I watched him slowly move one big toe, then the other.

  Feeling my stare, he casually looked over in my direction. He had a shock of white hair that pooled around him on the floor and the palest yellow eyes I’d seen outside the Big Cat House at the zoo. A long, scraggly beard went past his waist, reconnecting with the hair from his head somewhere around his hips. He blinked, his eyes more alive than anything else in that Hellhole, but he didn’t say a word in response to my question.

  Finally, having sized me up—and found me wanting—he returned to his toes.

  Okay, maybe he’s deaf, I thought to myself.

  I was pretty sure it couldn’t get any worse than trying to get information from a deaf prisoner while stuck in a medieval torture chamber with no means of escape.

  I decided that the best course of action would be to start yelling at the deaf guy and see if I could wake anyone else up in the process.

  “Excuse me!” I said much more loudly this time, my voice echoing like buckshot around the chamber.

  The only response my yelling garnered was a full-on, nasty glare from my new prison buddy. I gave him an apologetic smile, but he only shook his head, his butter yellow eyes flashing like fire, and returned to examining his toes.

  Great, I had just been reprimanded by a deaf-mute.

  Feeling totally rejected, I leaned against the large bronze pot and rested my chin in my hands. Since no one was gonna offer up any useful information, I decided to ignore my torture-chamber mates for the time being and gingerly pick my way across the low-lying chains and exposed body parts so I could try my hand at unlocking the massive oak door.

  Just as I had resolved to put my plan into action, I felt the bronze pot I was leaning on suddenly give way, letting out a long screech as it slowly began to tip forward. I grasped the edge of the pot, trying to set it upright again, but it was too heavy. The only thing I got for my trouble was a load of partly coagulated grease down the front of my sweater. Once again, my fashion forward sense had been thwarted by the Afterlife and another beautiful designer creation would now, without a doubt, be resigned to the rag pile.

  Sometimes I hated my life.

  There was an eardrum-shattering ring as the pot fell forward, spilling its contents out onto the cold stone floor. The sound of metal on stone was so intensely painful that I tried to cover my ears with my hands, totally forgetting that they were coated in torture grease. So, not only did I not protect my hearing, but I also got rank-smelling grease in my hair.

  Yummy!

  “Ew!” I shrieked as I tried to wipe the remains of the grease onto my sweater, but the stuff was pretty caustic and wouldn’t come off. I was going to need way more than just a shower when I got home; I was gonna need some hard-core decontaminating.

  I suppose the sound of the oil pot slamming into the floor was loud enough to get the attention of the Jackal Brothers, but I like to think that they were already coming down to the torture chamber to check on their prisoners anyway, regardless of what I had just done.

  Needless to say, I was still standing in the middle of the room, rubbing my hands across my chest like an amateur You-Tube porn star, when the lock clicked and the big wooden door flew open. Immediately, the other prisoners in the room started moaning and screaming in agony—including Mr. Golden Eyes, that traitor. I had no idea what had set them off, other than the door opening, but the intensity of their howls was enough to send shivers up my back.

  “Who goes there?” sounded a deep voice from across the room. I looked up to find one of the Jackal Brothers standing in the doorway, his cold, dark eyes fixed on me.

  “Oh, hello there,” I said. “You remember me, don’t you? Calliope Reaper-Jones? You took me to meet with the Board of Death a few months ago . . . ? Uhm, I think you know my father.”

  I finished my babbling, only to be greeted by silence—and the intermittent moans and screams from the peanut gallery.

  “Oh, be quiet,” I snipped at the prisoners. “You know you’re only doing it for the attention.”

  There were a couple of boos—and a hiss or two—but it seemed to shut them up for the moment.

  “I don’t know why you’ve got all these people held prisoner in here with all this medieval torture crap, but it’s pretty creepy,” I said to the Jackal Brother, who stood stock-still in the doorway, his very muscular body clad in only a modest cotton loincloth.

  “I mean, sure, you’re all badass in your loincloth, but what do you think you’re gonna accomplish by being so aggressive and violent with these men—and when I say men, I’m really only being polite. They’re barely even human anymore, the way you’ve emotionally castrated them like this.”

  D
id I ever mention that when I’m extremely nervous, I like to talk? Actually, it’s less that I like to talk and more that I just can’t make myself shut up.

  The Jackal Brother continued to stare at me, then, finally, he spoke:

  “Castration is a good idea.”

  This only garnered another round of boos and hisses from my torture-chamber mates. Some inventive fellow even figured out how to lob an old, gnawed-on bone in my direction with his foot.

  “Wait a minute. You totally took that out of context. That is not what I was talking about,” I said, my voice inching up an octave as I spoke. “Look, all of this is beside the point. I’m here for one thing and one thing only!”

  Now the catcalls started. Of course, these poor guys hadn’t gotten laid in, like, a zillion years, so anything I said was gonna get turned into sexual innuendo.

  “That’s so not what I meant, either, you guys, so get your mind out of the gutter,” I said loudly, over the whistles.

  “And what is that one thing?” the Jackal Brother asked me—and I thought I detected a note of curiosity in his voice.

  “I’m here to collect a guy for a friend,” I said, trying to sound as official as I could. “His name is Senenmut.”

  Silence. Seriously, you could’ve literally heard a pin drop. I looked around the room, but all the prisoners had become very interested in the ceiling or the floor or the backs of their eyelids.

  The Jackal Brother began to laugh and the sound was so horrible that it filled me—and seemingly the rest of the chamber, too—with dread.

  “What does that mean?” I demanded, trying to combat the hideous laughter.

  “It means,” said the Jackal Brother, “that it is upon a fool’s errand you have come.”

  “It is not,” I said haughtily, thinking of Runt and how much I would miss not getting to see her anymore if I failed before I’d even started.

  “But you ask for our most treasured possession,” he replied.

  “So?” I replied. “I want him.”

  The Jackal Brother took a moment to consider what I had just said—then he smiled.

  The only other time I’d spent in the company of the Jackal Brothers, there had been absolutely no smiling—and let me just add that that had been a blessing, because the smile that crossed this Jackal Brother’s face was so foul, so horrid, that it made me want to start praying.

  I tried to make myself avert my eyes from the two rows of sharp—I mean, filed down to a point sharp—teeth, but I couldn’t. All I could do was stare at the bits of ragged meat stuck in between its incisors and what I assumed must be its molars.

  “If he is so important to you, then you would be willing to wager your own soul for his, would you not?” the Jackal Brother said, finally shutting his mouth and making me sigh in relief.

  Uh-oh, this is so not where I wanted this scenario to be going, I thought to myself.

  “Sure, a little wager? Why not?” I replied, ignoring my brain’s pleas for me to shut up.

  My response brought on another bout of smiling from Jackal Head. He seemed inordinately pleased with my answer, which only made me more worried about what I’d gotten myself into.

  “So, if I win, I get Senenmut and I get to keep my soul?” I said, my hands starting to shake as I took in the magnitude of what I was agreeing to.

  The Jackal Brother nodded.

  “And if you lose, we will possess Death’s Daughter’s soul for all of eternity,” he cackled.

  “Sure, fine. Whatever,” I said, just wanting to get the whole thing over with. “Now, I want to see Senenmut and make sure that he’s still all in one piece. Otherwise, it’s no deal.”

  Without hesitation the Jackal Brother inclined his head toward the utterly silent—possibly deaf—guy with the yellow eyes.

  “That’s him?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

  The Jackal Brother nodded.

  “Crap. Are you sure?” I asked, even though I knew with my luck being what it was, that this was exactly how it was gonna go down.

  I turned and looked at my “new friend,” but he was back to his toe-training exercises.

  This is the schmuck I am wagering my soul for? I thought miserably.

  “Are you satisfied?” the Jackal Brother said as he moved toward me. I wanted to take a step back and away from him, but the burning oil pot was hemming me in.

  So, instead, I just nodded my agreement.

  “I guess I’ll have to be.”

  “Now,” the Jackal Brother said as he closed the gap between us and invaded my space, “I will explain the terms of the wager.”

  “Go for it,” I said gamely, trying not to stare into his massive jaws again.

  “We will measure the weight of your heart against the feather of Ma’at, Death’s Daughter, and if it is judged to be too heavy with sin and greed, we will own you, body and soul,” he finished.

  Suddenly, he raised his hand and the room around us went dark. I felt my stomach clench as the floor dropped out from beneath my feet, the walls disappearing right along with it.

  I got the impression that we were in some kind of anti-space—and if I failed this test, then I would be lost here, in this world of nothingness, for all time—and just the idea of what “all time” entailed made me shiver involuntarily.

  I looked over at the Jackal Brother and he smiled at me again.

  “Bring the scale!” he called into the nothingness.

  I blinked and suddenly we were no longer alone—the Jackal Brother’s twin was now standing next to him, holding a set of large golden scales in the palm of one hand and a tiny golden ankh in the other. Beside him sat an incredibly strange-looking creature with the head of a crocodile and the body of a lion, its silvery blue eyes telegraphing intense hunger. Wrapped around its throat was a heavy silver chain, the end attached to the waist of the newly arrived Jackal Brother.

  I instantly felt sorry for the poor half-breed thing. I mean, what kind of a life could this disparately crafted creature really have? Then the nasty croco-monster abruptly snapped its massive jaws in my direction and that ended the pity party right there.

  “Why don’t you watch where you’re pointing that thing?” I said, glaring at the giant croco-monster, but only getting another round of maw chomping for my trouble.

  “Fine. Whatever,” I said as I shrugged and shifted my gaze to a more pleasant subject: the set of shining scales the Jackal Brother was holding in his hand.

  The scales were truly a thing of beauty, with intricate hieroglyphs lovingly etched into its golden body. At the apex stood a sculpture of a tiny, nude woman, one golden ostrich feather woven into her long, metallic hair. The rest of it was covered in more glyphs—none of which I could read, but a few of which I did remember seeing in the Hall of Death.

  “Are you ready to be judged?” the Jackal Brother holding the scales said, interrupting my thoughts.

  I nodded.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, “and it will only hurt for a moment.”

  I did as he said, shutting my eyes and swallowing hard as I waited.

  “Hey!” I said as I felt a sharp pain blossom in my chest that slowly—very slowly—began to turn into a dull ache between my ribs. I looked down, my eyes nearly popping out of my head.

  My heart was gone!

  “What did you just do to me?!” I cried, starting to freak out as I stared down at the great, gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be.

  I looked over and found the first Jackal Brother holding my still-beating heart in his hand.

  “Whoa,” I said, watching my heart drip its lifeblood onto the ground. “Can I have that back now, please?”

  The two Jackal Brothers ignored me as they set my heart on one side of the scales and gingerly placed a single silken ostrich feather on the other. For a moment the two sides were totally balanced, but then the side with my heart on it began to dip lower than the feather. I held my breath, fear curdling my blood.

  I notic
ed the look of excitement that passed between the two brothers—of course, they were being totally obvious about the whole thing—and my stomach began to burn.

  Had I really just screwed myself out of the rest of my immortal existence?

  Please, God, I found myself praying, please just let me scrape by this one time. I promise to be a good sister and friend and daughter for the rest of my immortality, if you’ll just not let the Jackal Brothers get me.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw that the scales had stopped dipping, and instead, the two sides were slowly moving back into a state of balance. We all waited with bated breath, me willing the scales to go one way and the Jackal Brothers willing them to go the other.

  Suddenly, I felt a cool breeze envelop my body, toying with the grisly hole that had been left between my ribs.

  “Where did that come from—” I started to say, but clamped my mouth shut when I realized the breeze had blown past me and was now eddying around the single ostrich feather.

  “No!” the Jackal Brothers screamed in unison, but it was too late. The breeze swirled around, lifting the feather high up in the air, then suddenly dying away as it dropped the feather right into the open jaws of the croco-monster.

  I heard a sharp intake of breath—I was pretty sure it came from me—and a feeling of intense relief overwhelmed me.

  “That’s not fair!” one of the Jackal Brothers wailed—and it took everything I had inside me not to jump for joy and scream, Yes, it is fair, you little shits!!

  “So, what does it mean again when the scales are all balanced like that?” I asked innocently.

  “It means that you win,” the two brothers said as, together, we watched my heart disappear from its place on the scales. Instantly, I felt it beating in my chest again, making me nearly cry out with joy.

  It was a miracle! My heart had been judged and it had been found . . . not lacking!

  Of course, the Jackal Brothers weren’t the only ones depressed by the outcome. The croco-monster didn’t seem at all satisfied by its ostrich feather meal. It just kept snapping its huge jaws at me in frustration. I wasn’t 100 percent certain, but I kind of thought if my heart had been deemed unworthy, the croco-monster might’ve gotten to eat it up as some kind of creepy parting gift.