Unwrapped: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 3) Read online

  Unwrapped

  Werewolves vs. Mummies Book # 3

  J.A. Cipriano

  Copyright © 2015 J.A. Cipriano

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  Chapter 1

  As my eyes shifted from the goddess standing before me to the corpse of the girl I loved lying at my feet, time seemed to stop. Golden ichor leaked from her body as my eyes traveled along the butter yellow sand to rest on the top half of her severed head a few feet away.

  My vision went ten kinds of blurry as I stared at her lifeless lips, still frozen in horror and pain, even though only three seconds before they’d been pressed against my own. I could still feel the warmth of her kiss, the strength of her embrace. How could that have been only a few moments ago?

  Sekhmet had just broken our kiss, and as she had looked up into my eyes, a goddess as pale as death itself had driven a knife through the back of Sekhmet’s head before wrenching it violently sideways, decapitating my girlfriend in one gruesome blow and splattering me with her blood.

  Rain spattered across the sand, drenching me in the space of a breath as I turned my gaze back toward the goddess. She stood before me, a golden dagger clutched in one hand, and the sight of her made panic rise up inside me. Her skin had the tight, pale texture of a corpse left in the morgue for a month. My eyes traced up her body, taking in every detail and committing it to memory. Blue veins throbbed beneath her porcelain flesh, and even from here, I smelled cinnamon in the air. Was it coming from her?

  Her eyes reminded me of the milky marbles of an unseeing cadaver, only hers were fixed upon me. Her brows were crinkled in desperation. Her white as snow hair was piled upon her head in tight buns.

  She took a step toward me, barely disturbing the sand beneath her bare, alabaster feet. Her shimmering blue dress whipped around her in the winds of the storm, but she paid it no mind. As she pointed her dagger at me, a drop of my girlfriend’s blood hit the sand. Rage boiled inside me, chasing away the last vestiges of fear clinging to me and tingeing my vision with scarlet.

  It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. The werewolf inside me came rushing forward, desperate to take over in a flurry of hatred. My vision went black around the edges as I held up one hand, palm out. If she moved even one more inch, I was going to change completely. If that happened, I would attack her. That wouldn’t end well for either of us.

  I was barely keeping the beast trapped within me as it was. Already, the bones beneath my flesh writhed and twisted. Fur thick, coarse and black as the heart of a girlfriend killing goddess sprouted along my arms, my neck, my chest. Pain filled me as a distant sort of throb, but I ignored it as my body changed even though I didn’t mean for it to do so.

  She hadn’t stopped moving, but before she’d managed even one more step I transformed. I stood before her, a hulking mass of muscles and rage. My inner wolf had been brought to the surface, and he was pissed. No, that wasn’t quite right. He was ready to bring down the wrath of an angry, old-testament God upon her.

  The goddess cocked her head to the side, examining me like I was some strange kind of bug. Maybe she’d never seen something like me before. Maybe it was something else entirely. Either way, she should have been scared, but her scent, so full of cinnamon it stung my nostrils, hadn’t changed. She was too worried about something else. Well, that would change. She would know fear soon enough. That would curb her desperation.

  I crossed the space between us in the space of a breath. My right hand seized the goddess by the neck and squeezed. The muscles in my arm bulged with the effort. My claws bit into her skin, spilling rivulets of golden god blood down her throat. Wherever her molten blood touched me, it scalded my flesh, but I ignored the damage. It would heal. With any luck, she wouldn’t.

  The scent of sizzling meat filled my nostrils, and the distant realization that my hand was cooking as I held her in my grip was strangely irrelevant. As smoke curled from between my fingers, I hefted her into the air. A look of annoyance crossed her features as she tried to jab me in the side with her dagger. I caught her wrist with my free hand, jerking it in a twist that filled my ears with the delightful sound of shattering bone. The goddess shrieked and dropped the knife as fear flashed through her eyes. Finally. It was delicious.

  “What have you done?” I said, my voice was so quiet and flat it should have scared me. It didn’t.

  “You will release my son, wolf.” She spat and a gob of saliva spattered across my cheek. As it dribbled down my cheek, my face began to bubble and smoke. I ignored it. Pain did not matter. “You do not understand what his imprisonment portends for the future.”

  “You killed Sekhmet,” I snarled, ignoring her worries about her son because, quite frankly, I didn’t care. Not even a little. “You will die for that.”

  The goddess clucked like I was an insolent guardsman who knew nothing. “Foolish wolf, Sekhmet is a goddess. She can’t die from a mere flesh wound.” She struck me. The movement was too quick for me to even react. One moment she was talking to me, the next I was flying backward, her knee having broken every bone in my ribcage. It hurt, indescribably so.

  I hit the sand a few meters away and bounced a couple times as my wolf tried to heal me. The taste of blood filled my mouth as I forced myself onto my hands and knees. Jagged bits of rib bone pulled themselves out of my lungs and other internal organs, slipping back together in a screaming cacophony of agony.

  The goddess knelt down beside Sekhmet’s lifeless body and with a flick of her wrist, drove one pale as death hand through my girlfriend’s chest. She rummaged around inside like she was looking for something inside of a particularly full grocery bag before pulling her gore spattered arm free and holding it out to me, palm up. A golden heart beat in the center of her palm.

  “See, her heart still beats. As long as it does, well, she can get back up.” The goddess shrugged and reached her free hand into a satchel the color of old, dried blood slung around her hip. I hadn’t even noticed it before, and as she flipped the lid open, a golden jar gleamed within. She removed the jar and placed it on the sand between us. It was covered with hieroglyphics I couldn’t decipher and seemed to glow in the light of the sun with ethereal energy.

  “Stop,” I wheezed, trying to crawl toward her, but my arms buckled. I collapsed to the sand and though I tried to will myself forward, but my body was spent. I’d just defeated Apep, the veritable king of darkness a little while ago, had pulled out all the stops to do it. My body had nothing left, which was unfortunate because if it did, I’d tear this woman to pieces and dance on her remains. You know, if I could dance.

  “No,” she replied. Her voice was a cross between annoyance and boredom. Then, staring directly into my eyes, she pulled the lid off the jar. Screams of agony filled the air as golden smoke poured from the vessel. Still making eye contact, she dropped Sekhmet’s heart into the shrieking jar and slammed the lid down. A flash of sapphire light exploded from the urn as the goddess’s bloodless, dead lips curled into a devious smile, revealing her bone white teeth.

  “Canopic jars are wondrous things.” Her grin widened, sending chills running down my spine as she scooped up the jar and shoved it back into her satchel like it was a Tupperware filled with last night’s leftovers. “They can hold even a god at bay. You know, assuming you’ve torn out said god’s heart and placed it inside.” She nudged Sekhmet’s body with one toe. “It’s almost a pity to waste
it like this, but then again, you were actually dumb enough to imprison my son, Horus, during the one moment in all of eternity when he must be free.” She shook her head. “If this was tomorrow, I wouldn’t have even cared… much.”

  “I’ll kill you,” I growled, finally strong enough to pull myself to my feet. I took one wobbling step toward her, my jaw clamped together in concentration as the rain beat at my fur, matting it against my body.

  “Or you can release my son, and I trade you this.” She jiggled her satchel at me like it wasn’t filled with the heart of my girlfriend. “Sounds good, eh?”

  With those words she was just gone. There was no wisp of smoke, no flash of lightning. One moment she was grinning at me like a lunatic. The next she had vanished off the goddamned planet, leaving me standing broken and beaten over the body of my girlfriend.

  I trudged toward Sekhmet even though I didn’t know what I hoped to accomplish. I knelt down, clutching her corpse to my body as golden ichor spilled from her wounds. There wasn’t much coming out of her now. Most of her blood had already soaked into the sand around her body. Still, as I held her close to me, the last remaining traces of warmth faded from her body.

  Khufu found me like that, still clutching her cold corpse against me. I wasn’t sure how long it had been, but it must have been a while because it’d stopped raining. He put one large mitt of a hand on my shoulder and shook me gently. I turned my eyes toward him. Everything felt bleak, numb, and empty.

  “What happened, Thes?” Khufu asked, concern filling his normally jovial voice to near bursting.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, chewing on my lips. I was back in human form. I’d reverted and hadn’t even noticed. That’d been happening a lot more lately. Part of me wondered if it was because I was starting to be comfortable with both my inner werewolf and my humanity. The other part of me worried that was true. If it was, it meant I was becoming way too used to being in wolfman form. The last guy who had gotten that familiar with his wolfish nature wound up going insane and living in the woods, chasing down wild deer to eat.

  “You don’t know how this happened?” he asked, raising one large, bushy eyebrow at me. “That seems unlikely.”

  “A goddess who looked like death came and cut off her head. Then she stole Sekhmet’s heart and put it in a bag before vanishing.” My voice came out in a hoarse whisper.

  “Do you know which goddess?” he asked, kneeling down next to me and slowly unwrapping me from around the corpse of Sekhmet. I let him. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I did, though I couldn’t tell you why.

  “Whichever one is the mother of Horus. She was pretty pissed her son was captured.” As I said the words, his eyes went as wide as dinner plates.

  “You can’t be serious,” he said, swallowing hard enough to make the lump in his throat bob like a fishing lure.

  “As serious as a heart attack,” I replied, though I hadn’t been intending to make a joke. I shut my eyes and counted in my head in an effort to keep from screaming. The goddess had been right. Sekhmet would recover from this as unreal as it seemed. I just needed to get all her pieces back in the same place. To do that, I had to release Horus. No big deal. My allies had captured the falcon god. They’d damn well release him too.

  “So, Isis has shown herself,” Khufu whispered, and as he said the name, the sky above us crackled and the wind howled. “Did she say anything else?”

  “Not really, mostly that we’re dumbasses for imprisoning her idiot son today of all days.” I got slowly to my feet, still drenched in gore and stared at the mummy king. “Now, what’s say you call your best buds and get Horus released.”

  “Okay,” Khufu said, brushing himself off even though his metallic armor looked pristine. “Let’s go see if we can talk some sense into them.”

  “It’s either that, or I rip them in half and free him anyway,” I growled, and the wolf within me looked up from its place among the tall grasses of my mind and eyed me curiously.

  “Yeah, I figured you were going to say that.” Khufu sighed before bending down and pressing his thumb against Sekhmet’s body. Emerald light flashed from beneath it as gilded fire leapt across her form. Even her head burst into flames, and it was several meters away.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed, leaping toward him as he lifted his hand and presented it to me, palm up. A glittering, golden pendant in the shape of a snarling lion sat upon his calloused flesh.

  “We can’t very well leave her body lying around in the desert, can we?” He pressed the pendant into my grip. “There are lots of things that would love to find a perfectly good body, especially one fit to hold a god, and let me tell you right now, you wouldn’t like any of them, even if they weren’t inhabiting the body of your girlfriend.”

  My fingers closed around the pendant in my hand, and from within it, I felt the faintest spark of life. I swallowed. I would save her or die trying.

  Chapter 2

  “So, what’s your plan, exactly?” Khufu asked as we trudged through the sand. I wasn’t quite sure where we were going and was relying on Khufu to lead me to the others. Yes, I recognize that as far as bad plans went, following the lying pharaoh was a pretty horrible one. The last time, it’d gotten me swallowed by a giant monster and assaulted by mindreading spiders. It wasn’t an experience I cared to relive, so you’d think I’d have learned from it. I hadn’t.

  “Find Horus and free him?” I asked, choosing my words carefully. “Am I missing something?”

  “I’m not going to say your plan is bad per se, but it sure leaves some things to be desired.” Khufu pointed off into the distance at what looked like a black speck of rock so many miles away it could have been considered a league of miles. “You plan to storm into the prison of the gods and demand deities almost as old as time itself release Horus?”

  “They’d damn well better,” I snapped, pressing my right thumb into the center of my chest. “I’m the Dunewalker after all. You know, the tragic hero destined to face down countless horrors throughout time and space. That makes me awesome, and besides, I saved the freaking world. The least they can do is release Horus. I’m not sure why you think they won’t.”

  “Oh, I think they will.” Khufu nodded once, still not taking his eyes off the speck. “I’m worried we won’t actually find Set and Nephthys to ask them.”

  I stopped in my tracks and stared at the pharaoh. He continued walking for a moment, either not noticing I wasn’t following him anymore or not caring. Knowing him, it was probably not caring.

  “Why are we going to a place where they aren’t?” I asked, barely resisting the urge to transform into a hulking werewolf and rip the mummy in half. It might be tough to actually tear him in half, especially since I hadn’t had a good meal and a night’s sleep in a while, but I was sure I could manage. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, after all.

  “I’m taking you to Horus’s prison, but that doesn’t mean Set and Nephthys will still be there. More than likely, we’ll have to deal with petty bureaucrats. I’m not sure what your dealings with the government are like in your time and country, but here it’s like being pecked to death by ducks, and let me tell you, ducks don’t have the sharpest of beaks.” He turned as he spoke, but when he saw me, his eyes widened in horror. At first, I thought he was scared of me standing there, trying to decide if I was going to eat him or not, but then I realized he was staring at my torso. He held up one finger and pointed at my chest. “What the hell is that?”

  I looked down at my body, and my breath caught in my throat. Embossed into the flesh of my chest was a scorpion with its tail and claws upraised so the design sort of looked like an Egyptian ankh. The barest tip of the tail was blood red, veiny, and pulsing while the rest of it was a sort of flat sky blue color.

  “I have no idea but get it off!” I yelped like a little girl and batted at it with my hands, but it felt like my skin, only warmer. Needless to say, my pathetic attempts to simultaneously squish it and brush it away did noth
ing other than make my chest hurt. This wasn’t good at all. I didn’t know what it was, but the thought of having some kind of weird magical tattoo attached to me didn’t make me exceedingly happy. In fact, it downright terrified me. For all I knew, at this very moment, it was dissolving my insides.

  Khufu stared at me as I beat at my flesh, his face still plastered with shock. He shook himself like a great dog and reached forward, touching my skin with one large finger. His ran it to and fro for a couple seconds as I watched him, panting with fright.

  “I think you’re cursed,” Khufu said, voice low and scared. “I have no idea what the symbols mean but they speak of Isis.” He looked at his finger, probably making sure I wasn’t infectious before shifting his eyes back toward me and pointed at the demonic scorpion tattoo. “The ankh is her symbol of life and the scorpion is one of her power creatures.” He shrugged in a way that suggested if it walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, it was probably a horrible curse bestowed upon my once pristine flesh by the Egyptian Goddess of Sucktitude.

  “Why is it bleeding?” I asked, totally keeping the tremor out of my voice as a miniscule amount of red filled in more of the tail. The image became even more three dimensional which should have been impossible given it was made from my skin, but there it was.

  “I’m guessing it’s some kind of timer. I’m not sure what happens when it fills with blood, but I’m assuming nothing good.” Khufu swallowed and glanced back toward the speck in the distance. “We’d better hurry.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, swallowing my fear. He started jogging, and I did my best to keep up with him. It should have been easy since I was quite a bit taller than the mummy, and therefore had much longer strides, but he had supernatural speed and endurance on his side, whereas I did not. Stupid puny human form.

  Ten minutes later, my lungs were about to explode from exertion while the pharaoh kept going like a supernatural train, never slowing, never leaving his path. If this kept up, I was going to have to ask for a break or transform into a werewolf. I was loathe to do either. For one, I wanted to get there as soon as possible so breaks were out and while calling on Wepwawet, my wolf, would empower me, it’d also reduce my overall energy reserves.