by A. J. Aalto
Declan grabbed my uninjured arm and gave it an insistent tug.
The tomb guardian roared as the werefox pounced on his chest and then launched away. Duamutef swung a massive fist and hit Folkenflik in the head; the werefox shrugged it off, then latched onto Duamutef’s extended forearm the way he had with me and Sayomi. The guardian didn’t even flinch. This battle was going to take forever, and Declan and I didn’t stand around to watch. Sparing one final glance over my shoulder at the dusty doomscape that was Huxtahotep’s tomb, I pelted after Declan and out into the cool, Egyptian night.
Chapter 28
“Cash, throw cash at the driver, go!” I yelled, shoving Declan ahead of me.
“He’s busy!” As we ran, it became apparent that the driver was indeed busy, head thrown back against the headrest, eyes closed, mouth open; Pia’s head was in his lap.
“He can drive with his dick out, can’t he?” I scrambled onward, my heels skidding in a soft, unpacked spot of sand.
The driver didn’t flinch as we ran up to the taxi, and Pia’s head remained stationary. Declan threw cash in the driver’s open window and it fluttered around and settled.
We both stopped dead. Dividing our attention between the taxi and the tomb to make sure nothing was coming out of either, we took in the stillness of the bodies.
“Dr. B?” Declan whispered.
I passed him my go-bag slowly, not making any sudden movements, keeping one eye on the flat, dark desert. I sniffed the air for underscents and caught the distinct whiff of urine, followed by a very slight smell of spilled blood. Very slight, because there wasn’t much left. The driver’s flung-back face was pale. Drained. I didn’t need to search for the fang marks. If I hadn’t already been panicking about the mellified man and the werefox and the tomb god and the fact that Sayomi and Folkenflik usually traveled together, my nemesis was likely out here somewhere, I’d have been afraid. My eyes cut across the desert, searching for the danger.
“Those poor people,” Declan said softly. “This is bad, Dr. B. I’m part revenant. The Egyptian government does not like monsters like me. I will absolutely get blamed for this.”
Any other time, I’d have had a good cry and then called for police; I’m a firm believer in the law and the enforcement thereof. In this case, I did not have much faith that we’d get out of here if the cops showed up, and this was not the time to mourn my friend. The mellified man in my go-bag assured that there’d be trouble if we were caught here, next to the bodies, next to the tomb.
“He’s still here,” I said.
“Hrm?”
“There’s a vampire here,” I told the dhampir.
“Revenant, Dr. B,” he corrected.
“No,” I said, summoning the Blue Sense. “No, this fuckhead’s not a revenant. There’s a goddamn vampire here. And you’d better get your ass ready. Because he’s not done feeding.”
There would be no making rowan wood stakes here in the desert. There would be no purchasing holy water. There would be no cross to repel him. There would be no silver dagger. It was full dark, and he had so many advantages here that I figured this was it: I was about to die.
I wasn’t going to go down without a fucking fight, though. My Cougar mini was in my hand and I trained it on the sand dunes. Bullets wouldn’t kill a revenant, but the flesh wound would hurt and might slow him down. Declan eased to a crouch and started going through both bags, rummaging. Keyed up, tension singing through the hot wires that were now my nerves, I didn’t know why the revenant was giving us time to prepare. Maybe he found it amusing to toy with us, to watch us freeze and twitch like rabbits. Maybe he wanted to watch me cry. Behind us in the tomb, I could still hear Folkenflik yipping and barking, and the pounding thud of Duamutef. I didn’t know if the god could exit the tomb, but I hoped I wouldn’t find out right this second, because I had two dead bodies on my hands and I was being hunted in the dark.
“I got nothing, Dr. B.,” Declan whispered frantically, which was sort of hilarious; preternatural hearing would pick up a whisper. Old habits. It also wasn’t strictly true. He’d removed a pair of clean tighty-whities; he tore off a strip of cotton to wrap around the open wound on my right forearm. “I didn’t pack for revenant attacks. I figured they’d stay frozen at Skulesdottir.”
“Not all of them were frozen.” Not all of them showed up, I thought, pulling my sleeve down over the bandage and backing toward the taxi. I put out my left hand to take the driver’s side door handle and gave it a jiggle. It popped open. The driver’s hand flopped out; his fingernails were already cyanotic.
“I hate to admit this, and maybe I’m just in shock and snockered on candied man,” I continued, not taking my sweeping gaze off the desert around us while checking the driver’s wrist for a pulse, “but I’m kind of missing Sayomi, that sexy latex-coated bitch.”
“Me too, Dr. B.,” he said, swallowing hard. “She only shot at us and tried to set you on fire.”
I put my gun in its holster and grasped the driver’s arm to gently pull him from his seat. He was a lot heavier than he looked, but his dead weight had been overbalanced against the door, so he tumbled out, sending up a puff of sand. Released from his lap, Pia’s curly-haired head banged into the stick shift and turned sideways, her cheek smooshed against the plastic. I grimaced. Her tongue peeked out between her lips, and her eyes bulged, shot through with bright red petechial hemorrhage.
She hadn’t been drained. While a revenant had sucked the driver dry, someone had wrapped a thin wire around Pia’s neck and garroted her; her throat was marked with a deep line where the wire had dug in. A revenant and his DaySitter, both murderers.
“I don’t want to alarm you,” I said, realizing I’d dropped my voice to an absurdly pointless whisper, too, “but we’re probably gonna die any second.”
“Why would that alarm me?” he said with a soft heh heh.
“We need to consider how to spend our last moments on Earth.”
“I’m not going to make love to you, Dr. B.”
I straightened, making an insulted gurgle-pfft. “That’s not where I was going.”
“Yes you were,” he accused.
“My friend is dead and our lives are coming to an end, and you think I’m thinking about penis?”
Declan gave me a come-on-this-is-you look.
I said defensively, “There’s nothing wrong with liking dicks.”
“Is that the title of your autobiography?” Declan scooted around to the other side of the taxi, keeping an eye out for movement all around us, and opened the passenger door; he made quick but gentle work of removing Pia from the seat and laying her in the sand a little distance from the car. Then he stood to rest one hand on his tight little pot belly. “You saw Mark Batten naked, for Hecate’s Sake. I am never taking my clothes off for you.”
It seemed a funny moment for body image issues, but I understood where he was coming from; I always doubted myself when I wondered who Batten had seen naked before me. I knew I was no hot piece of ass, and I knew Batten could get sexier women than me. To this day, I had no idea why Kill-Notch had ever bothered with me. Though I had no intention of actually bedding Declan Edgar, I joked, “I’ll keep my eyes closed?”
“Nice try,” he said, coming back around to peer at me. “Dr. B, are you feeling okay? Your pupils are huge.”
I was wired and shaking, chilled by fear, sick about Pia, but there was definitely heat running through my veins, too, and a fresh, electric jolt of energy. I felt dynamic, vigorous. “I think the mellified man is starting to work.”
“What does it feel like?” he asked, but when I shook my head, he shifted to, “Do we run? Do we steal the car and drive away?”
“Run off to the airport and pretend we were never here? How can we leave them here like this?” I looked down at the bodies. The mellified man was Pia’s fault, and I supposed we might never find out whose dried up corpse she used to fake the mummy to make the confection, or who she was planning on selling it to. The m
urders were the revenant’s fault. But leaving without reporting any of it? That’d be squarely on my shoulders and it felt like the wrong thing to do. “We can’t leave without explaining what happened to the authorities.”
“Right.” Declan nodded, but he didn’t look happy. “So we stay?”
“How can we stay? If we don’t get killed by a werefox or a vampire or an Egyptian god, we’ll get detained by Cairo police or arrested; nobody got time for that shit! I need to bring a three-headed demon this oh-so-important seed pod, and this oh-so-disgusting candied man, and an oh-so-purposeless yeti toenail, so I can put your cranky mom on the throne and save the world from Trollpocalypse 2016. Priorities, Irish.”
“Okay. Do we fetch Folkenflik?”
I spluttered, “Why would we fetch him?”
“You have the whistle to sway his loyalty to you. He’s still alive, fighting off an Egyptian protection god. He’s kind of incredible, Dr. B. More powerful, or faster, maybe, than any lycanthrope I’ve ever met. I figure he can probably go toe-to-toe against a revenant for you?”
“I’m not having furface fight my battles for me,” I said, mildly insulted. “I don’t need a man to help me get vamp-murdered. I can do that all on my own.”
Declan blinked rapidly and then puckered his entire face in thought. “Was that some sort of attempt at sexual equality?”
“I am woman, hear me roar?” I grabbed my forearm wound and hoped I wouldn’t be roaring and furry come the next full moon.
“If by ‘roar’ you mean ‘stubbornly choke on your own blood,’ yeah, I’ll give ya that. Well done, you.”
“I’m not very good at being a feminist, but I’m trying.”
“Now’s probably not the time, Dr. B.”
I wasn’t so sure. I was feeling fantastic, and that new vigor was quickly overpowering the fear and tiredness of our jetlag and stress. Probably this was the best time for me to be all Girl Power. I felt like I could bench press the taxi. We’d left plenty of evidence of our being here, and there was no point in a cover-up. “Hand me my notebook,” I said.
Declan rummaged and gave me my Moleskine and pencil. I scribbled down a brief explanation of what happened here for Cairo police, debated about adding my contact information or leaving it anonymously. I went ahead and was completely honest; I figured by the time anyone tried to extradite me to face Egyptian authorities, I could probably retreat to Skulesdottir if I needed to dig my heels in. I knew very few things about the way the world worked, but I did know this: the revenant high court would never consider handing over one of its DaySitters to a human court of law. Revenants dealt with their own; not necessarily well, but they were super-stubborn about their independence like that.
I tucked the note under the driver’s hand, saying a soft apology to the man whose name I didn’t even know. I searched his pockets until I found his wallet and flipped it open. Rasul. I wrote that in my Moleskine with the date, time, his description and address, and then took quick pictures with my phone of his fang wounds, in case I needed to show Batten or Harry. Then I slid into the driver’s seat to take a picture of the dash, in case I needed any of the information in the car.
I saw her in the rear view mirror; every horror movie I’d ever seen reared up in my memory to prove me a moron, because who doesn’t check the back seat? I ducked, and she snatched at me with the piano wire, getting my hair, which slipped harmlessly away with the rest of my head. I dumped myself out of the car onto my shoulder then log-rolled to put distance between us. I hopped to my feet, noticed that my actions had thrown my gun in the sand by the car door, saw she’d seen it. I wondered if I could dive for it.
“That wasn’t so good,” I told the stranger who got out of the back seat. “I’ve seen better murder attempts. I give it two stars.”
She looked familiar; a lean, young black woman with pencil-thin legs clad in pink ballet leggings complete with tutu, strappy sandals, and strong-looking gloved hands. She whipped the wire to the ground and took a cute purple .22 from the waistband of her tutu and pointed it at my chest.
“That’s not going to do you any good, either,” I said mock-sadly. “I ate magic mummy jerky. Probably gave me bullet-proof boobs.”
Her sneer wavered for a second and the Blue Sense flared: her hatred was not aimed at me. I rocked into motion, shifting my shoulder back, turning aside so I was out of line with the shot if it came. She tried to retrain on me. I kicked her inside the left knee to shift her balance. Grabbing the gun’s muzzle, I redirected it, twisting her wrist back until, at the last second, the gun was pointed right back at her own face before she was forced to let go. Power throbbed in my arms, even the injured one. I threw the gun to the ground and kicked it back in Declan’s direction. She rushed me and I gave her forehead a chiding slap. It stopped her just long enough for me to dive for my gun and put her in my sights. It was only then that I recognized her.
“Where is he, Umayma?” I asked her, returning to my feet and keeping my gun trained on her. “I don’t feel him, but he’s here. He wouldn’t pass this up.”
She flapped her hand at the taxi and pointed at herself, then at her throat. Mute? She indicated the taxi again.
I shook my head. “You didn’t do this by yourself. I know you’re Jeremiah Prost’s DaySitter. I have to admit, you’re older than I thought you’d be. What are you, twenty? Twenty-three, maybe?” Maybe she just looked older. Maybe being Prost’s ‘Sitter had aged her prematurely. Just thinking about him made me feel old.
She seemed like she was going to deny who she was; the Blue Sense reported that she wasn’t nearly as ballsy as she was pretending. This girl was terrified, though she hid it beautifully. I thought this might not have been her first murder, but maybe she wasn’t used to facing people without her immortal nutcase at her side. Where the fuck was he?
Declan was at my side, now holding Umayma’s gun. “We need to step back into the tomb,” he advised. “Kinship of the Departed may keep a revenant from venturing inside.”
Or drive him crazy if we got him close enough to an angry spirit. I didn’t take my eyes off Umayma. “And risk running into Folkenflik? Or the tomb guardian?”
“We need to—“
Declan’s words were cut off by a flurry of activity as something black and glossy darted from behind the stela slabs, flashing past us without pause. It dove and took down Umayma, and both of them squeaked with the impact. Declan ducked, but I felt my body rock into forward motion the second I saw Sayomi’s arm raise and the glint of cold steel in the desert starlight.
Hood would not have been impressed with my clumsy attempt at a spin-kick, but my legs were still adjusting to the new force of the mellified man in my system. My Ked heel did land squarely on Sayomi’s raised elbow, and I heard the distinct wet snap of bone breaking. The knife went flying. Umayma squirmed under the other DaySitter.
I had grabbed Sayomi by her latex collar when the vampire finally showed. When he did, it was an eye-confusing blur, a swirl of dark hair long enough to rival my own untrimmed ghost locks. I’m no dummy; I let go of Sayomi and ran for the tomb’s entrance with Declan hot on my heels. Let Prost deal with her.
Deal with her he did. Prost dragged Sayomi off of his DaySitter with ease and sent her sailing into the dark night; I dove into the imagined shelter of the tomb’s mouth, looking back over my shoulder as Umayma scrambled to her feet. Declan disappeared into the tomb, Folkenflik be damned, but I stalled where I was.
Prost was not chasing me. He squared his shoulders at me and waited for me to come back out.
That was not going to happen. If he didn’t want to come closer, I was safe from him, at least. The shuffle behind me was just Declan coming back.
“What’s he doing, Dr. B?”
“I only know what he’s not doing,” I said. “Maybe you were right about Kinship of the Departed.” Together, we watched him step over Rasul’s body and sit on the hood of the car, crossing his legs in a full lotus and making himself comfortable. I not
iced he was wearing boot-cut jeans over old Nike Marathon shoes from the seventies, and it struck me as a ridiculous in the moment. I was going to be killed by a vampire in bad shoes? Not acceptable. I didn’t dare look too closely at his face, not above the chin, but his mouth curled smugly. His DaySitter moved to sit nearby in the sand to await his instructions, but for now, he seemed pleased to see us effectively trapped in the tomb’s entrance.
“Where’s Folkenflik?” I asked, not bothering to whisper.
“I don’t hear him. When I went a bit deeper, I heard a thud and another weird sound, like a primate-canine mix.”
“Wah-hunh or roop roop?” I asked.
“It was really more of a ree-unf, Dr. B.”
“Do I want to know why do you sound so disappointed about that?”
Declan dropped our go-bags and shuffled through them, presumably in a futile check that someone might have slipped a rowan wood stake in there in the last five minutes and he just didn’t see it happen. “Remember when Folkenflik bit you?”
“No, I forgot the moment I may have become infected with the were-virus,” I said dryly.
“He knocked over more than one canopic jar. The tomb guardian is one thing. He may have stirred up another. We may be hearing more than one protection god in there. This ree-unf was a totally different sound.”
“As long as it stays the fuck away from me, I guess that’s Folkenflik’s problem, not mine,” I said.
I looked for Sayomi, wondered if she was okay. Do I care? A little. Now that Prost was here, I only had one goal: get Declan and our loot out of here without us dying. I didn’t want anyone else to die, either. Rasul’s blood was coursing through Prost’s veins, flushing him with hot life, causing his lungs to rattle to life and his heart to pound; he was more dangerous right now than he would have been unfed. He was content to watch me struggle; a cat with a mouse, he cocked his head and smiled at me without saying a word. He didn’t really need to. We both knew I was screwed.