Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) (22 page)

“Okay.” He stood, despite being barely substantial and not really having legs in the traditional sense. He held out his left palm. The cloud moved down toward him in a way that reminded me of a puppy sniffing something to determine if it was safe or not. After what seemed like forever, the cloud touched him. It shuddered before sliding into him, tinging the whiteness of his pure soul slightly silver before fading away completely.

“Connor, what are you doing?” I asked, struggling to get to my feet, but as I tried, I just wound up falling onto my side. Pain lanced through me, making me gasp.

“Paying my debts, Thes,” he replied, bending down and picking up the broken shards of glass that had held his soul confined for so long. Ibebi must have shattered it when he had punched a hole in me. Connor pressed the broken vial into my hands, still smiling. “Oh and Thes, do me a favor?”

“Yeah?” I wheezed as he began to fade away completely.

“Tell, Lillim this isn’t her fault.” He opened his mouth like he was about to say more, but decided against it and shook his head.

“What isn’t her fault?” I asked, but by the time the words left my mouth, he was already gone.

Something warm pulsed within my hand, and I opened my palm to see the vial restored to its former glory. Connor’s soul sat inside looking no worse for wear, but even though I couldn’t see any discernable difference, I was sure something had changed. Connor had done something to the destroyer, the only question was what. A horrible realization filled me to the core of my being as I got slowly to my feet. What if Connor became the destroyer?

No, that was impossible. Connor had banished the destroyer. His soul looked purer than ever. Surely he couldn’t be the host to something like he who cannot be named. Then again, the destroyer wasn’t necessarily evil. He was neutral. He was balance. I wasn’t sure why he who cannot be named picked someone like Ibebi for a host nor why he had allowed the man to slaughter the gods on high, but something told me there had been a reason for the destruction.

I tried to think back, to remember if there were any changes in the history of Egypt that happened, but couldn’t come up with anything in particular. That wasn’t to say there weren’t changes, only that I was way too dumb to know what they were, and besides, it wasn’t like we had a lot of information from when the pyramid of Giza was still new. Half the stuff I thought I knew about Egypt had been shown to be less true than a huckster’s snake oil sales pitch.

Still, now that I thought about it, there had been a point where the Egyptians had stopped looking to Apep and Ra as supreme beings. Instead, Set and Horus had risen to take those roles. Was that because of these events? Was the destroyer’s rise during this time the catalyst for that change? Was that even possible? And strangely, I was pretty sure that was exactly what had happened. After all, how else could I explain what Ibebi had done to Apep? Hell, I had seen Ra’s power get forcibly transferred to Horus as the falcon god sat upon the solar throne. Even knowing that, this seemed like too high a cost.

A howl escaped my lips, low and keening as I clutched the soul of my very best friend to my chest. That was when the tears started to fall down my cheeks, and I couldn’t stop them.

Chapter 24

I’d like to say that when Sekhmet came over to me I wasn’t crying, but that would be a lie. She didn’t even say anything. Instead, she sat down next to me and pulled my hand into her own. It seemed like such a small thing, but it made me feel better anyway.

As I wiped away the tears running down my face with the back of my free hand and turned to look at her, my heart wrenched violently in my chest. She had a bruise running down the side of her face and her lip was split, but it wasn’t her injuries that gave me pause. No, there was something else, some desperate thread of sadness I couldn’t quite place. She stared off into the distance and clutched at my hand like she was afraid it would slip away.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, and she shook her head and bit her lip.

“This is it.” She stood, pulling me to my feet along with her. “You know that, right?”

“It?” My confusion must have been pretty evident on my face because she let out an exasperated sigh. “What do you mean?”

“You saved the day, Thes. You did it.” She waved her hand at the surroundings. They’d already turned back to normal, and while the only other Egyptian deity within sight was Set, I could see his body starting to pulse with just the faintest glimmer of light. If he was going to recover after being decapitated and hosting the supreme god of darkness, I was pretty sure everyone else was going to pull through as well. Well, that was good.

“You seem to think that’s a bad thing,” I replied, turning my face heavenward and letting the moonlight bathe my face.

“It’s not. Not really anyway.” She pulled me closer to her body and rested her head against my bare shoulder. It was a bit of a stretch for her since I was almost a foot and a half taller than her, but she managed anyway, probably because I wasn’t an eight-foot-tall hulking werewolf at the moment. I hadn’t remembered turning back. When I’d sat down with Connor’s vial clasped in my hand, I’d been a wolfman.

“Well, cheer up then,” I said, kissing her forehead. As my lips touched her skin, she smiled at me, but it was a strange fragile thing, like a wine glass teetering on the edge of a table. One false move, and it would shatter on the floor below.

“You don’t understand,” she replied, nuzzling me a little closer. It sort of reminded me of what a cat might do, and I wondered briefly if she was marking her territory. “But that’s okay, I guess.”

“What don’t I understand?” I moved to kiss her, and she moved so my lips met hers. Her mouth ate at mine like she’d never get to kiss me again, hungrily devouring me as she reached up and pulled me against her.

When she finally broke the kiss, her chest heaved and my heart hammered. She met my eyes and smiled that same sad smile once more. “Thes, I love you more than you know.”

“Okay,” I whispered because honestly, I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that because the way she said it was sort of tragic. It made my heart twist into a knot. What was wrong?

She released her hold on me and twisted her hands together, not quite looking at me. “You don’t have to say it back if you don’t want to.” She swallowed. Hard. “I’ll understand.”

“What are you talking about? Say what back?” I asked, shaking my head. “What’s going on with you?”

“You still don’t realize what is about to happen, do you?” she replied, reaching out and running one slender finger down my chest. “But maybe we can forget about that for a little longer.”

“What has to happen?” I said, watching tears slip from her perfect eyes and drip down her cheeks.

“You have to go back home, Thes. You have to leave me now,” she said in between sobs.

Her words hit me like a sledgehammer, throwing me off balance and knocking the wind from my lungs. She was right after all. It was time to go back, to return Connor’s soul to his body. There was nothing left for me to do in ancient Egypt, but did that matter? Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I could stay anyway.

“You have to go back,” she said as though she could read my thoughts. “If I thought there was another way…”

“You could come back with me,” I said, reaching out to pull her into my arms, but she slipped away like an eel and edged backward. “We could make it work,” I pleaded.

“I can’t do that, Thes. No more than you could stay here. We both have jobs to fulfill.” She looked up at me, about to say more when I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her close to me.

“No. There has to be a way,” I cried as my world started to unravel, all the joy and happiness inside of me draining away. “I won’t leave you.”

“Will you hold me until the moon goes down? Until the world ends? Even into what comes after that?” she asked, snuggling against me, and her warmth filled me with a strange sort of desperation. I couldn’t let her go, not for anything, not even if it was the right thing to do. This couldn’t be the right thing to do.

“Even if snakes and scorpions try to tear me from your side,” I replied, swallowing as she looked up at me.

“That’s what I thought you would say,” she answered before reaching around my waist and pulling me close to her body. She looked up into my eyes while biting her lip and stepped up onto her tippy toes. Sekhmet touched my face gently with her free hand, drawing me down into her, while her other hand traced along my back. She kissed me.

Unlike before, this wasn’t hungry or desperate. It was all things to all people. It was a bird’s first flight from the nest, a sunrise over mountain tops. In short, it was perfection incarnate.

As she broke our kiss and looked up at me, the only thing I could see in her eyes was love. So pure it made my soul hurt.

Then she shoved me backward through a portal that left me sprawled in my own backyard in the middle of the night.

Glossary

I’ve decided to include a glossary of Egyptian terms and deities that are found within this book. This list, more or less, falls into line with the actual Egyptian mythology and some of them have been twisted slightly in my story. Hope this helps.

Ammit –
The Deification of divine justice. He was the creature who consumed the hearts of the unworthy in the underworld.

Anubis
– One of the gods associated with the underworld in Ancient Egypt. He had the head of a jackal and was responsible, primarily, for coordinating where souls in the underworld went.

Apep –
Apep is the Egyptian deification of darkness and chaos. He is doomed to fight Ra every day. Night was said to fall because he swallowed Ra who cut himself free in the morning. He is also sometimes called Apophis.

Aziza –
A name meaning precious in Egyptian.

Bes –
 A dwarf god who protected egyptian from evil.

Bast
– A cat-headed goddess. She is primarily a war goddess and is said to be married to Anubis.

Book of Thoth –
A book written by Thoth thought to contain the wisdom of the gods.

Duat
– The supernatural realm in which the Egyptian gods dwell.

Geb –
 The Egyptian god of the earth. Father to Isis, Set, Nephthys, Osiris, and sometimes Horus.

Giza –
A temple built in around 2,500 BC. It was constructed by the Pharaoh Khufu and is one of the largest pyramids. It is considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Hathor
– A goddess of healing and medicine who was merged with Sekhmet over time.

Horus –
The falcon-headed god of the sun and pharaohs. He is the son of Isis and Osiris.

Imhotep –
One of the most powerful priests of Ra. He designed the pyramid of Djoser within Saqqara.

Isis –
The goddess of Magic. She is the sister of Set, the wife of Osiris, and the mother of Horus.]

Khopesh –
 A curved Egyptian saber.

Khufu –
A Pharaoh who ruled Egypt in around 2,500 BC. He commissioned the building of Giza, and is considered to be one of the greatest, and most terrible, pharaohs of all time.

Menhit
– One of the original warrior goddesses before Sekhmet and Bast came into popularity. Her name literally means “She who massacres.”

Mummy –
The Egyptian dead went through a process to preserve their corpses called mummification. These became known as mummies.

Neferkaptah –
An Egyptian prince who stole the book of Thoth. He was punished for this and entombed with the book so he could guard it forever.

Nephthys –
 A goddess of protection over death. Wife of Set. 

Nesert –
Egyptian for “the flame.”

Nile River
– A river in Egypt. It is considered the longest river in the world and is almost two miles wide in places.

Osiris –
The ruler of the underworld. The god of the dead and the afterlife. He is the father of Horus.

Pharaoh
– Basically, the Egyptian word for king or ruler.

Ptah –
Ptah is a green-skinned older god who was originally responsible for creation. He is the husband of first Bast and then Sekhmet. He is thought to be the father of Imhotep.

Ra –
The sun god who ruled in Ancient Egypt. He was the leader of the gods until Isis tricked him into giving his power to Horus.

Saqqara –
A vast burial ground in ancient Egypt. This was the primary site of burial for Egyptian royalty before Giza was built.

Scarab –
A type of beetle in Egypt. Believed to be magical by the Egyptians.

Sekhmet
– A lion-headed war goddess. She is said to be an example of the rage of Ra and was often unleashed to destroy his enemies. She is said to be merged with Hathor, who is the goddess of healing and medicine.

Set –
One of the Egyptian gods of chaos. He is neither evil nor good, but somewhere in the middle.

Setne –
A boy who stole the book of Thoth and was driven into madness by the ghost of Neferkaptah.

Sobek –
God of crocodiles, strength, and the Nile River. He had the head of a crocodile. He was feared and worshiped, mostly because people feared crocodiles.

Sphinx –
The Sphinx was a creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human.

Thoth –
The god of time and wisdom. Considered to be one of the most powerful Egyptian deities. He was said to interfere with Ra and Apep’s battles to ensure neither would win.

Wepwawet –
A wolf god who came to be associated with Anubis. He was a god of hunting.

Thank you for reading 
Unwrapped.
 If you wouldn't mind, please leave a review. If you are wondering how Thes got to Egypt, you can find out in 
Hardboiled
. As a special bonus, I have included the first chapter on the next page.