A Little Rhine Must Fall (9 page)

:Make a little more noise, why don’t you. We think there are one or two guards who are
not
heading this way to see what all the commotion is about:

I struggled to my feet, brushing my hair out of my eyes and came face to face with Cecily. She grabbed my elbow. “Hurry. If we go this way we’ll miss all the guards. Unless you want to keep using the Voice.”

I didn’t, so we ran. I had no idea I had that much energy left. A moment earlier I had been ready to lie on the ground until archeologists found me hundreds of years from now. Now I was racing through the dark pyramid complex, tripping over rocks, and trying to keep up with a vampire who wasn’t even panting. She probably wasn’t
breathing
either, but you get the point. I was panting enough for both of us.

We reached the wall and I stopped, gasping for breath. “The gate is closed!”

“No problem,” Cecily made a cup with her hands and motioned for me to step up.

I was wary. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to toss you up,” she said.

Bastet was nowhere in sight, having taken her own path back. I looked around for a ladder, or a door, or maybe a magic carpet that would lift me gently up and over. Nothing.

“Come on, we haven’t got all night.” She held her hands out again.

It was just as bad as I imagined. Whatever parts of me had survived un-bruised from my pyramid jaunt now joined the rest of me.

Cecily dropped lightly beside me and caught me rubbing my hip and muttering. “Did you fail to stick the landing?” she asked.

“Stick the landing? Yeah, I stuck the landing. I stuck it right on my butt.” I was a little caustic.

“At least it’s padded,” she smirked and I had to start laughing.

:If you two are done being idiots, can we go?:
Bastet had arrived.

There were almost as many people on the streets at night as there had been in the daytime. The air was full of strange exotic smells, and I wished we had more time to sightsee or maybe just try some of the food I could see people eating as we passed different restaurants. It was so loud, too! Taxi cabs crowded the roads and they were all honking their horns. I kept bumping into people trying to take in as much as I could. Bastet hustled us by everything in a rush and we soon made the turn back into the alley.

My eyes took a moment to readjust to the darkness after the lights of the street. Bastet was at my feet, back arched, hair raised, tail straight in the air and a low rumble coming from her throat. Cecily was also in fight mode, crouched and ready to spring. I saw the danger last. The end of the alley was not empty.

Chapter Eight:

Reentry

I was not in the mood for this. I was tired. I wanted to go home. It felt like I had been awake for days, but I knew that when I got home it would probably still be mid-afternoon.

“Double, double, toil and trouble,” I muttered, then louder, “What do you want?”

Three figures were waiting for us at the end of the alley. I recognized them by their hooded robes which were pulled up to hide their faces. They stood in a line, hands held in front and hidden by the voluminous sleeves. They were too cliched to be muggers. It had to be the WAND.

“You shall not pass,” one intoned.

“And who is going to stop us, little witch?” Cecily’s voice was low and sweet and sent chills down my spine. I’d seen her in action several times before and I would not want to be on the wrong end of her spiked heels.

“We have no quarrel with you, bloodsucker,” another one answered, “but the human cannot pass.”

Bastet growled loudly.
:We paid for the human to use this Zipline:

“You paid for
two
trips for the human. Those have been used.”

Crap. It was the pregnant thing again. I was barely six weeks pregnant. It didn’t seem fair that I should count for two people. (Unless it came to food. Then I was definitely eating for two!)

“They are just trying to extort more payment,” Cecily murmured to Bastet.

:What is the price for the
two
humans to return to their home?:
Bastet hissed.

“We want nothing from you, goddess,” the third witch chanted in a monotone.

“Well that’s just silly,” I said. “I want to go home and I want to go home
now
.”

Cecily laid a hand on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t try the Voice,” she whispered. “They’ve obviously prepared themselves for that.”

“There’s got to be something you want,” I said, frustrated. “I am
not
catching a flight home.”

“Promise us the baby and we will let you pass,” they said together. It actually came out sounding intimidating. They had practiced.

Cecily had grabbed me around the waist and pulled me back before I could gouge out their eyeballs with my fingernails. I kicked and fought, but she was a rock.

“I’m going to
kill
them,” I panted. “Let me go!”

“We want the life of the child. Give your word that the baby is ours and you may use the Zipline.” So help me, they sounded smug. If they thought for one second that I would
ever
give them my child …

A sound behind me made Cecily turn. She had shifted me in her grip and all I could see was an eerie light illuminating the WAND’s faces. Their robes had fallen back and terror was in their wide eyes.

I twisted to try to see what was making the light. A woman stood in the alley behind me. She was ten feet tall if she was an inch. A linen sheath covered her from ankles to just under her breasts, and two wide shoulder straps barely kept her modest. Not that anyone would be looking at her breasts; they would be too busy staring at her lioness head, whiskers, furry ears, and all.

She opened her mouth, filled with sharp pointy teeth, and
roared
. Cecily dropped me and I cowered on the ground, hands over my ears. The witches had all fallen back and to their knees.

“Allow the human to pass or taste our wrath!” The words were hard to distinguish from the growling that I could
feel
as well as
hear
.

The WAND members had not been prepared for an angry Egyptian goddess to show up and they turned and ran, right into the stone wall. After falling in a heap, they straightened themselves out, found the Zipline entrance, and disappeared from sight.

I stood up slowly, hands held out to show … I don’t know, that I wasn’t a threat to a giant lioness-headed goddess? As if that wasn’t clear to everyone! But when I reached my feet, she was gone, and Bastet sat in her place.

“Bastet?” I asked cautiously.

:Yes?:

“What…?”

She yawned.
:Shifting really takes it out of us. Can this wait ‘till later?:

I ignored her request. “You’re
Bastet
, right?
The
Bastet. Goddess of music and childbirth?” I had done a little online research after meeting her the first time.

:Yes. Could you hurry it up? We are tired and want to go home:

“That’s
my
home you’re talking about,” I pointed out. “And I say that you can answer a few questions.”

:Fine. You want to know, if we are Bastet, and why we just took the form of Sekhmet. The answer is simple. We have always just been us, cat shaped or lioness-headed. The Egyptians created so many gods in their imaginations that we had to do double duty on quite a few of them to keep up. We’ve had to be Shu, Tefnut, Nefertem, Aker, Wadjet, Mut, as well as Sekhmet. Any further questions?:
She sounded annoyed. Someday I would learn to not annoy powerful gods.

“We?” I asked. The “royal we” thing could really be confusing sometimes.

:Yes. Both ‘we,’ as in the one of us, and ‘we,’ as in all gods and goddesses. You didn’t think we were the only Egyptian god running around, did you?:

Actually, that was exactly what I had thought. Silly me.

Cecily kneeled before her. “Oh great Ubasti, I thank thee for ridding us of those troublesome witches. Might we please go home now?” He voice started out respectful and awed and ended a trifle sarcastically.

:
We
are not the one slowing us down:
And she disappeared into the Zipline.

She didn’t wait for us on the other side. When we appeared, it was early afternoon and the sun drained Cecily of her vampire speed and strength. She looked about as tired as I felt. Talk about jet lag! Zipline lag was much worse.

There was silence in the car as I drove back towards my home. I had left anxious about facing aliens. Now I was returning and anxious about facing my motherin-law. Part of me would rather face aliens any day of the week than spend fifteen minutes with Carolyn. Another part of me pointed out that, since I had yet to
meet
any aliens, I wasn’t basing that feeling on anything concrete.

“So what now?” I finally broke the silence.

Cecily shrugged, her dark sunglasses hiding her eyes. “The Synod will figure out the new coordinates and date and we will attempt to parley with the aliens again.” She looked troubled. “I don’t like this at all, Piper. If they meant peace, why did they fail to meet with us? If they mean to bring war, why ask to talk with us at all? It just doesn’t make sense.”

I yawned, it was time for my nap. “The whole thing is just too crazy for words. If I went to the government and tried to warn them about ‘the alien menace’ I would be locked up in a little padded cell faster than you could say ‘Leonard Nimoy.’”

A smile twitched on her lips. “Let us hope that the Endring do agree to peace and that all of this,” she waved her hand at the suburbia we were driving through, “stays as it is.”

I pulled into my driveway in time to see a large hairy creature jump over my fence and run through my neighbor’s backyard. Seconds later, my gate was opened from the inside and a man wearing a safari hat and vest and carrying a camera came running out. He paused to snap a photo and then also ran through my neighbor’s yard.

I sat there in stunned silence, hand frozen halfway to the ignition to turn the car off. Cecily cleared her throat. So help me, if she laughed I would stake her!

“Well,” she finally said, managing to sound serious. “You’re going to need to talk to Floyd. I think he left your gate open.”

He had. And that was the least of the things I was going to chew him out for. For the cherry on top, a little black nose poked around the corner of the gate, recognized freedom and dashed off down the road in the opposite direction.

I was a trifle slow getting out of the car since I had forgotten to take off my seatbelt before trying to run after my dog.

“Harvey!” I yelled, having little faith that he would obey. Calling him as dumb as a stump would be crediting him with too much intelligence. Of course, he ignored me and happily stopped to mark a mailbox.

I trotted after him, baking in the heat pouring off the asphalt. “Harvey, come!” I yelled again.

He wagged his tail and squatted on the grass. Oh, no, no, no! I was
not
going to go get a plastic baggy and carry around his poop. I had more than enough poop to deal with every day with diapers.

“Stop, Harvey!” I commanded with the Voice, thankful that it always worked on him. He stopped. “Harvey, come!” I commanded, and of course he obeyed.

Cecily was heading up her driveway, laughing. “Enjoy your immortality!” she sang.

I scooped up the runaway and rubbed him behind the ears. “It’s a good thing you’re so cute,” I told my little Toto look-alike. “Do
you
want to scoop up doggy poop?” I yelled after Cecily, but she was already inside and my only answer was the door slamming behind her.

I trudged up my own driveway, retrieving my purse from the car and slamming the door. I was not looking forward to the next several minutes. Carolyn and I would be icily polite to each other and my jaw would be sore later from holding a tight, fake smile. If this was the price of free babysitting it was rather expensive.

I opened the front door to a frigid blast of air-conditioning. “I’m home!” I yelled.

Megan and Cassidy were sitting on Carolyn’s lap and reading a book on the couch. I had time to lock the front door behind me and put up my purse and keys before she finished whatever page she was on and told the girls, “Now girls, your mother is home, why don’t you go and say hello to her? You don’t want her to feel like you’re not happy she’s home!”

I gritted my teeth, remembered my dentist and tried to smile without using too many facial muscles. Megan and Cassidy came running over to give me a hug and I kissed each of their heads.

“You know how it is,” Carolyn trilled from the couch. “They just
love
it when someone takes the time to read to them. I think that special attention is
so
important at this age.”

Like I didn’t spend time with my kids, or read to them. I read to them all the time. “Thank you for watching them, Carolyn,” I said sweetly.

“Anytime, darling,” she smiled, just as sweetly. “You know I
always
put my grandchildren first!”

Implying that
I
didn’t put my children first. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but somehow I was the bad guy for letting her spend time with her grandchildren. It was a lose/lose situation for me.

I sniffed the air and then scooped up Cassidy as she tried to run by me back to her Granny. “Whoops! Somebody needs a diaper change!”

Carolyn stood up and followed me to the changing table. “You know, Piper. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this.” Oh, joy. I couldn’t wait to hear this.

“Yes?”

“Don’t you think Cassidy is a little too old to be wearing diapers?”

Yes. I did. And I had tried to potty train her with disastrous results. Then I had decided that, for my sanity and the carpet cleaning bill, I would wait until she was ready.

“Well, I—”

She interrupted me. “Mark was potty trained when he was eighteen months old. Of course, I really took the time to teach him. It requires a very dedicated mothering style, but I really think that it’s time for Cassidy to get out of diapers. I hate to point this out, but one of the results of your,” she made a face, “
reproductive
choices, is that you do not have time for quality interaction with the children you already have.”