Cronin's Key (30 page)

“Alec,” Cronin whispered in a rush. “Please explain!”

Alec started to feel along the walls. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for or even hoping to find, but he knew it was here. “In the King’s Chamber,” Alec said. “The hieroglyphs. Whoever drew them thousands of years ago was showing us what to do.”

Alec had put the pieces together. The only god vampire holding an ankh, a key, was Ra, known by historians as the god of the sun. Ra was painted over and over again holding the ankh, the key, and wearing the sun-disk…

And it all fell into place. Every piece made perfect sense.

He might’ve been the key Keket needed to bring back Osiris, but Alec was also the key for something else.

Mikka, the vampire who saved Alec in the alley in the very beginning, said to him
it’s both
. He said
it’s not one, but both
. He wasn’t talking about the Illyrians and the Egyptians like they’d assumed he was. And Eleanor couldn’t see what Alec’s real purpose was, only that he needed to be human. They’d assumed he needed his human heart to stop Keket…

It’s not one, but both…

But it wasn’t his heart he needed to stay human for. It was his blood.

Alec’s blood was the key needed to bring back Ra. Even his father had told him it was his blood that was special.

It wasn’t Anubis who would kill Osiris again. It was Ra who would kill them all.

Alec knew what he had to do.

“I’m not here to bring back Anubis,” Alec said.

Eiji looked concerned. “Alec, you’re not making sense.”

Alec never stopped scanning the walls with his hands. “I thought I might have to bring back Anubis,” Alec said, still trying to make sense of the hieroglyphs. He turned again, looking over each wall. “But that’s not right.”

“Alec, the room is empty,” Cronin hissed. “What are you looking for?”

“Something no one wanted found, something buried…” Alec looked at the sandy stone floor. “Something buried twice.” Alec went to the floor and started sweeping at the sand with his hands. He looked up at the vampires who were staring down at him. “Ra. We need to find Ra, the god of the sun.”

“Stop,” Cronin said, and he stood completely still and smelled the air. Then he turned to the side wall and followed his nose to it. “It is faint, but it is there.”

The large stone brick Cronin stopped at, some three by two feet in size, was painted with a sphinx, like the others around the small room. But this one sphinx wasn’t shielding its face from the sun. It had its head bowed; it was holding an ankh in offering. “Here, this one’s holding the key. We need to get it out,” Alec said. He dropped to his knees and started frantically, fruitlessly scraping at the stone wall.

“Alec?” Cronin pleaded.

“It has to be Ra,” Alec said, running his fingers along the cracks between the huge stones. “They never marked where Ra was buried because they never wanted him found. He has the sun-disk. Don’t you see? It’s been right in front of us all along. I’m not the key for Keket to bring back Osiris. I’m the key to bring back Ra.”

Cronin shook his head a little. “Alec, I do not understand.”

“Just trust me,” he said. “We need to get this mummy out.” Which, without some C4, Alec was thinking was an impossibility.

“Stand aside,” Cronin told him.

Cronin simply dug his fingers into the grout-like edges of the stone, carving it away like sand until he could get his hands between the stones. Then with a strength Alec didn’t know was possible, Cronin, Eiji, and Jodis strained to bring the stone forward.

The muscles in Cronin’s arms bunched and bulged, his shoulders were taut and his neck was corded. And with what Alec was certain was every ounce of strength the vampires had, they pulled the stone out.

Alec looked into the dark hole they’d created and could see there was definitely a hidden vault of some sort.

“We will stand guard,” Jodis said, and she, Eiji, and Bes faced the door, stakes at the ready.

The hole the stone left was no more than three feet by two, just big enough for Alec to slide through. The chamber he found himself in was tiny: four feet by seven feet, and Alec had to stoop. Cronin was suddenly by his side.

But the sarcophagus in the middle of the tiny room was unmistakable. There were hieroglyphs carved into the stone top, the largest of them an ankh.

Alec stood at one side and shoved against the top. It was a limestone slab some few inches thick, and he couldn’t move it an inch. Cronin simply put both hands against it and slid it off.

“We really need to discuss your workout routine,” Alec said, looking into the stone coffin. He heard Eiji laugh from the other side of the stone wall.

The body wasn’t wrapped like Alec had expected. He was expecting a bandage wrapped mummy like he’d seen in a hundred
Scooby
-
Doo
cartoons as a kid, but it wasn’t like that at all.

The body was covered with a linen cloth sheet, in what Alec assumed was a burial for a disgraced pharaoh or a burial done in haste for a pharaoh someone never wanted found. The cloth felt like dried paper and Alec pulled it back to reveal exactly what he was hoping to find.

The body itself was dried and warped, all blackened sinew. His face looked contorted, frozen in a perpetual silent scream. His teeth were yellowed and blackened, and his vampire fangs looked too big for his mouth.

But he was holding a plate-sized disk across his chest, and that was what Alec wanted.

Ra, the god of the sun, buried within the walls of the pyramid.

Just then, there were voices on the other side of the wall where the others were, and Cronin froze. “Don’t be alarmed,” Bes said quickly. “It is my coven brothers.” Bes leaned through the hole. “They say there are many coming this way.”

Eiji spoke next. “Alec, whatever it is you’re doing, you need to hurry.”

“We need to take this mummy to Keket,” Alec said quickly.

Cronin looked at him, stunned. “Alec, surely not.”

“Now. We need to do it now,” Alec said. “Bes, I need you to stay here with your friends. Tell whatever vampires come looking for me that I’ve gone back to the Gallery. Tell them their Queen has fresh blood for them.”

Cronin growled. “Alec.”

Alec carefully slid his hands underneath the mummy and lifted it, surprised by the light weight of it. “Eiji, Jodis, come in here, quickly.” He looked at Cronin. “Please trust me. We need to go to the King’s Gallery. Not her chamber. We need as many of those vampires in the one room as possible.”

Jodis slid through first, then Eiji, both of them stopping still when they saw Alec holding the mummy. There was no room to move with the four of them squashed in the small vault-sized chamber. Cronin stood at one end, closest to Alec, of course, then Jodis and Eiji, each of them touching the person next to them.

“Be ready,” Alec warned. “Because this is it.”

And they were gone.

* * * *

The Gallery was about one hundred and fifty feet long, only six feet wide, but the ceiling was twenty-eight feet high. And it was a blur of movement.

Queen Keket stood inside the door to her chamber, yelling orders in Arabic to her returned army, and when Alec, Cronin, Eiji, and Jodis appeared at the end of the Gallery near her door, she flew back, keeping about twelve feet between them. Her army stood behind her, still,
still
not willing to defy her.

Her eyes trained on Alec and went wide when she saw what he held. Or rather who. She saw the disk. She knew exactly who it was.

Alec smiled at her. “I thought it was Anubis who I needed to bring back to take you down,” he said. “He was, after all, the one who killed Osiris the first time. I presumed he could do it again.”

“Anubis was a fool!” she cried, flinging her arms wildly. “He wasn’t strong enough to do my work. Osiris will worship me. I am to life as he is to death. I shall rule over you all with him at my feet.”

“You think the god of the dead will answer to you?” Cronin asked. “You are sorely mistaken.”

Keket laughed wildly. “You have no idea of my power.” She put her hand to the mummy of Osiris and the gallery went quiet. Her power was obviously transmitted by touch, because the returned vampires were waiting for Osiris to come to life.

But the mummy never moved. He was incomplete without his heart. When she realized her plan had failed, Keket flew into a rage.

Alec was certain this woman vampire was insane. She ranted some more, throwing up her arms, sending her swelling sea of vampires into a frenzy. They edged in, like a hive of wasps, seeming to stand on top of each other trying to get closer to Alec’s blood, though they wouldn’t attack without command, despite how starved for blood they were. They were truly a frightening sight. There was so many of them, so warped and deranged and misshapen…

But it was Keket who frightened Alec the most.

She was literally backed into a corner, with absolutely nothing to lose.

Without her Illyrian guards, the guards Cronin had killed earlier, she stood at the forefront of her army with a mummified Osiris she couldn’t resurrect.

It was a complete stalemate.

She needed Alec’s heart, yet couldn’t give word to her drones to charge, because he would certainly be killed in the frenzy. One sniff of his blood and it would be an unholy carnage.

Everyone would lose.

Maybe that was her fallback plan.

Alec couldn’t let it get to that. He knew what he had to do.

He knew it was his blood that was the key. It was on all the walls, in every hieroglyph. The Ancients had painted instructions on the very walls in which they stood. He needed to take out Keket and her whole returned army in one fell swoop.

He put the mummy of Ra on the ground at his feet. They were with their backs against a wall, completely surrounded. It was the only way.

Jodis had warned Keket that keeping her returned vampires underfed and isolated—her being their only provider of food—to control them would be her undoing. And so it would be. Alec knew how to get as many returned vampires into the King’s Chamber at once. In fact, he knew what would bring them there in droves.

He unsheathed his knife from his thigh holster. “Cronin,” he called out over the snarling sound of the wall of vampires. “Take Jodis and Eiji.”

Cronin looked at the mummy on the ground, then at the knife in his hand. He seemed to understand immediately. “Alec, no!” Cronin roared; the violence in his voice stopped every vampire in the room.

“Get Jodis and Eiji out,” Alec said, not taking his eyes off Keket. He needed Cronin, Jodis, and Eiji out of the room, and as many of the good vampires that were left. “Fall back,” Alec yelled, knowing any good vampires on their side of the fight knew that code word meant get the fucking hell out there. “Fall back! Now!”

“Alec, no,” Cronin said again, quieter this time. Begging.

“You can’t be in here,” Alec said.

“I won’t leave you.”

“I’m not giving you a choice,” Alec yelled back at him. “Fall back. Now.” Alec held up the knife over the sun-disk and raised his left hand to the blade.

“Alec,” Cronin started to say, but Alec drew the blade across the palm of his hand, slicing it wide open.

The reaction in the room was immediate. Flooded by returned vampires, they seemed to swarm from everywhere, lured by the rusty scent of blood. The whole room seemed to moan and scream as they fought and clawed for their prize.

Cronin, Eiji, and Jodis stood around Alec, guarding him, protecting him from the rancid tide of returned vampires who sought his blood. Alec held his hand over the body of Ra and let his blood flow freely from his hand onto the sun-disk, filling it red, just like the hieroglyphs on the walls depicted.

Then Alec moved his cut hand to the mouth of Ra, letting drops of blood run over the mummy’s teeth and into its mouth.

Queen Keket raged as she realized what was happening. “What have you done?” she screamed. She stood at the forefront of her army, keeping just enough distance between her and Jodis so she could not freeze her.

The body of Ra began to fuse and creak, the fetid scent of decayed flesh, camphor, and myrrh overpowering.

“Oh holy shit, holy shit,” Alec said, watching in rapt horror as the mummified, dehydrated body of Ra came to life. It was one thing to imagine it, it was another thing entirely to watch it happen in front of you. Slowly, impossibly, somehow without shattering, the dried and brittle Ra stood. He was surprisingly short, his blackened, crippled body all sinew and twisted, with matted hair, and his eyeless sockets scanned the room.

He lifted the disk to his mouth and drank the blood, then he made a keening roar, a sound reserved only for the depths of hell. Everyone stood motionless and watched as Ra slowly turned the bloodstained red disk around and lifted it above his head.

Light sparked and cracked from the disk, like streaks of lightning, and Alec knew what was about to happen. He looked at Cronin and found him staring, wide-eyed back at him.

“Five seconds, huh?” Alec yelled over the dull roar of the writhing sea of vampires. “Five seconds for ultraviolet light to kill a vampire?”

Cronin gave a nod.

Alec smiled at him. “Come back and get me in six.”

Then blinding sunlight ripped through the darkness.

* * * *

One second:

Sunlight, pure and warm, engulfed the room like fire, and harrowing screams filled the air. A parched and screeching roar came from Ra.

Cronin gave a final wide-eyed glance at Alec as he grabbed Eiji and Jodis. There was a struggle between them, and Eiji ripped his arm free just as Cronin and Jodis disappeared.

Two seconds:

Eiji spun away, his long black hair like flowing ribbons around his head as he picked up a wooden stake from the ground in one swift, fluid movement.

Alec noticed then that Keket was in full flight toward him, almost upon him, her arms raised, her teeth bared.

Three seconds:

Eiji struck Keket in the chest with a stake, a look of horror on her face, her rabid scream cut silent, and her body seemed to explode into dust.

Four seconds: