King of the Gods Read online

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a bad idea since I have no idea how to perform said ritual,” I replied. “Besides I don’t want to help you anyway. You’re the bad guy.”

  “Feh, details. Besides, it’s not like the ritual is beyond the ken of mortal men or anything.” Khufu shrugged. “All you have to do is seize the Staff of Ra from its dais. It’s really not that hard, but only someone with the book of Thoth will be able to perceive its location within this city.”

  “You mean the staff is here?” I asked, looking around and not seeing it.

  “Yes, that’s why I came here. I wanted you to come here and grab the staff for me. I knew that Aziza would take you to find the book, so I hedged my bet by making you come to me.” Khufu grinned that toothy grin at me. “If you get the staff for me, I’ll help you get back home. No harm, no foul.”

  “I just don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said, fixing Khufu with my best glare. “I don’t trust you.”

  “Why not?” he asked, puzzlement filling his features. “Is it because of the jailer? Has she been spreading lies about me?” He turned and moved toward a broken building, and I realized Aziza was lying beneath the rubble. Her eyes were rolled up in her head, and her tongue fell out of her mouth so that a trail of slobber slid over her cheek and pooled on the sand. “I don’t think she’ll mind. Promise.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a lie since she’s been trying to capture you this entire time,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “That’s true.” Khufu sighed, his shoulders slumping as he stared at Aziza. “She is under the misguided notion that we are enemies. That, however, isn’t true, Luke.”

  He turned to face me, and he looked totally sane. Great. I hated when insane people looked sane. Even worse, my werewolf senses were telling me that he didn’t smell like he was lying. So that meant he thought he was telling the truth. That was unfortunate. He would be a lot easier to ignore if he was lying to me.

  “But you can trust me, Luke. I only have your best interests at heart.”

  “You punched a hole in me and got me stuck in Ancient Egypt. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in you.” I touched the spot on my chest where he’d hit me way back in the tomb.

  Khufu waved me off. “You’re a werewolf. Isn’t that how you say ‘hello’ in werewolf?” A smirk crossed his lips as he reached out toward me but stopped just short of actually touching me. “The truth is, I’m on your side. You just don’t know it yet.” He walked past me toward Sekhmet and leaned down so that his knee was braced against her back. “Most of the gods have been weakened to the point that they’re mere shells of their former glory. And those are the ones we can find.”

  He licked his finger and stuck it in Sekhmet’s ear. “Do you really think I could do this if she were at even a sliver of her true power? No, she would rain down fire from the sky and cover this land in blood.” He looked at me, eyes filled with cold certainty.

  “So, why is she so weak?” I asked, wondering if he was right. Anubis and Bast had seemed strong, but Anubis was a god. So, why did he need Aziza’s help to dispatch some mummies? Shouldn’t he have been able to blink them out of existence? Especially since he was the lord of the dead and the mummies were, you know, dead?

  “I can tell from the thoughts crisscrossing your face that you’re starting to understand.” Khufu stood, tearing his spear free in a spray of golden ichor that left Sekhmet curling her bleeding body into a ball. “The gods are under siege. It’s why I want the staff of Ra not to take over, but to revive Ra. I’ve managed to pinpoint his location, but unfortunately, he’s still asleep.”

  “Wait a second,” I said, holding my hands up and making a time-out gesture even though I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t understand what I was doing. “Let’s assume that I buy that you’re not some kind of evil, vicious psychopath and what you say is actually, you know, true.” I took a deep breath. “What is besieging the gods?”

  Khufu’s face turned grim as he spun and pointed at the mural covering the wall. “Apep is rising. He hasn’t risen yet. I can tell that it will take a while, perhaps a thousand years or more, but someone is trying to call him forth. As he wakes, his essence is pulling apart the very fabric of reality. The more he awakens, the more this negative inertia increases. In short, he is draining away the powers from all the other gods. He is like a great big sponge sucking in all their strength.”

  “You mean to tell me that Apep is what you’re worried about?” I raised an eyebrow at him and then shook my head because that seemed crazy. “The giant snake god?”

  “Yes,” he replied, gritting his teeth. “He must be stopped.”

  “Well, but we’re from the future. Or, well, I am at least. So that means it all works out, right? Nothing to worry about?” I’d barely said the words when he laughed.

  “It all works out a few thousand years in the future, sure.” He looked at me like he had me hook, line, and sinker. “Why do you think that is, Luke?” When I didn’t respond, he moved to his tippy toes so he could look into my eyes. It was no easy task because he was almost a foot shorter than me. “It’s because someone in the past fixed it.”

  I swallowed as his words dawned on me. My time was what? Four thousand years in the future? Maybe, just maybe, we were the ones who stopped Apep here.

  And maybe, just maybe, that meant Khufu was actually telling the truth.

  If that was true, I had to help him.

  25

  “I cannot believe you’re going to help him,” Aziza spat. She was walking a few feet behind us, arms crossed over her chest. Thankfully, her clothing had somehow cleaned itself so she wasn’t covered in scorpion slime. I, unfortunately, was not so lucky. I reeked of scorpion juice, among other things.

  “This is why we should have just left her unconscious on the sand,” Khufu said before glancing over his shoulder at her. “I always liked you better when you weren’t talking, drooly.”

  Aziza wiped her mouth, her cheeks turning bright crimson. “Well, I never liked you.”

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you over all that slobber.” Khufu turned back and smiled at me, shooting me one of those looks that said, “women, eh?”

  “Look, Aziza, you heard his story too. It isn’t like I’m going off half-cocked. You agreed that what he said sounded legit,” I said, shrugging.

  “Yeah, that’s how you tell really good lies. You wrap it around a grain of truth.” She sighed and shook her head.

  Khufu shrugged, and his huge shoulders made the movement seem exaggerated. “Okay, don’t help me, and when the world ends in a swirling black hole of darkness, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say anything then, because the world will have ended.” Aziza stuck her tongue out at him in a display of monumental maturity.

  “So, where is this staff supposed to be?” I asked, turning so that I could look at both of them. I was beginning to get more than a little frustrated because we’d been walking through the tombs like dumbasses for the last hour, and I still wasn’t quite sure where we were going.

  Why? Because Khufu was playing things close to the chest. A little too close if you asked me, especially since he wasn’t exactly trustworthy. I mean, I had no proof that he was actually lying, but well, he had been locked in a tomb full of undesirable Egyptians. That had to count for something, right? Why, after all, would a hero get locked down there?

  And okay, while that was really annoying, I could have gotten past it. But their constant bickering was starting to make me edgy. This was not how people worked together.

  “We’re heading toward the staff,” Khufu replied, giving me the same smug look he had when I’d first asked him where to go.

  “Look, this place isn’t that big. We should be there already,” I said, gesturing at the city.

  “That’s because he doesn’t know where it is,” Aziza said, fixing Khufu with her best glare. “He’s just wandering around hoping you’ll spot i
t.”

  “I know where it is.” Khufu spread his arms out, gesturing at the city that lay before us. “It’s in Saqqara.”

  “Well, if that’s not wildly specific, I don’t know what is,” Aziza growled. She pointed at a tomb with an asp carved into the top of it. “Should we just pick tombs at random? Maybe we can play eenie meenie miney moe?”

  Khufu sighed and rubbed his chin with one hand. “It’s not that simple. See, Saqqara is made up of layers, and as you walk through it, the layout physically changes. We have to walk in a very precise path or else we won’t find Imhotep’s tomb.”

  Aziza’s face went pale, and her eyes got as big as trashcan lids. “You can’t be serious?”

  “Unfortunately, I’m as serious as a heart attack.” Khufu put one hand over his heart and nodded once.

  “What’s so bad about Imhotep? Didn’t you say you guys were friends, Aziza?” I asked, glancing between them.

  Aziza bit her lip but didn’t say anything.

  “What she’s not willing to tell you is that they used to date, and it didn’t end well.” Khufu smirked and rubbed his bald head thoughtfully. “And no, it wasn’t because she’s what I like to call an ‘acquired taste.’” He covered his mouth with one hand and leaned toward me conspiratorially. “If it’s just between you and me, I heard she’s really bad at blowjobs.”

  “You mean to tell me that the Staff of Ra is guarded by your angry ex-boyfriend? You didn’t think you should mention that?” I asked, ignoring his other comment because I knew from experience she wasn’t that bad, and besides, she’d gotten a lot better after some training.

  “It isn’t that simple,” Aziza replied, looking away from me, her scent changing so I knew she was about to lie to me.

  I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of, “don’t bother lying because I’ll know you’re doing it,” but an arrow chose that moment to pierce the side of my knee. So instead of making a witty retort, I opted for crying out in pain. I fell, hitting the ground hard, and rolling onto my back. I grabbed at the wound, blood gushing through my fingers as Khufu looked up toward the direction of the shot.

  “Damn,” he said a moment before three flaming arrows smacked into the ground at his feet. They would have hit him, but he was a little too quick. He scrambled backward, throwing his arms up as the arrows exploded. A wave of fire ripped outward across the sand, melting it to glass.

  The blast threw him like a broken doll, and he slammed into a hawk-headed statue with a crunch. He fell forward, slumping to the ground on his knees, blood dripping from his mouth as a dozen more flaming arrows filled the sky.

  I could already feel myself healing from the wound, which was bad because it was going to heal around the stupid arrow. That would be really bad. I reached down and grabbed the haft of the arrow in my knee so I could snap it off, but as I touched it, fire ripped up my arms, burning my flesh.

  The pain of it shot through me like a lightning bolt. For a second, I couldn’t even breathe. My vision went dark and hazy around the edges. It cleared as Aziza grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me bodily out of the path of the arrows. She threw us behind the statue of a squat sphinx.

  The sound of arrows smacking into stone filled my ears as I struggled to staunch the bleeding in my leg. It was no good. There was so much blood. Why was there so much blood?

  No. That didn’t matter. I needed to take care of this stupid arrow.

  Aziza threw a worried glance at me, panic flashing across her face as I turned my gaze toward the arrow and took a deep breath. This is going to hurt.

  Before I could dwell on it, I grabbed the arrow, and as more flame exploded out of it, I yanked.

  Pain like I’d never felt before ripped through me, and for a second, I thought I’d torn off my leg. Before I could so much as suck in a breath, purple light exploded from my wound, and it went sort of numb and cold as though all the heat inside me was draining away through my knee.

  “You can open your eyes now,” I said, glancing at Aziza who had her eyes clenched tight.

  She slowly opened them as my jaw unclenched. The pain was gone as was the wound. I moved, and it felt fine. Guess it would take more than an arrow to the knee to end my adventure.

  “Come out, my darlings,” the voice of fire said as it raged across the land, melting the sand to slag. “I have a bone to pick with you.”

  There was a loud thud as something landed on the other side of the statue. Visions of buzzards feasting on my corpse filled the space between my eyes and my brain. It was so vivid that it took me a moment to realize our attacker was trying to use some kind of mind magic on me.

  Taking a deep breath, I called on my power and willed it away.

  As the vision vanished, the statue in front of us shrieked, the stone groaning and cracking as it lifted from the sand until it was fully suspended in the air.

  Sekhmet stood there, holding the twenty-foot tall sphinx above her head like it weighed less than nothing. Her eyes were thin slits that spewed fire. Crimson flames danced across her flesh as she took one angry step toward us, brandishing the statue like a weapon.

  “Where is he?” she asked, voice booming like thunder. “And I swear to Ra if you say you don’t know, I will throw this statue at you. It won’t be pretty.” She hefted it like she might do it anyway. “I saw him with you a moment ago.”

  I glanced from the seething goddess to Aziza, but she stood there unmoving. Not like frightened unmoving, but like time had actually stopped. That’s when I realized that even the dust particles in the air had ceased moving. I searched back through my memory, but I was reasonably sure Sekhmet, as powerful as she was, didn’t have control over time. I swallowed, not sure of what to do when I realized that Sekhmet was also frozen in place. Even the sweat upon her brow was suspended in place.

  “Hello again,” said a familiar voice behind me. “I know you probably don’t need my help, but I hope you don’t mind me calling a little timeout on this play.”

  I whirled to see the guy who had given me the book of Thoth, the guy who I was pretty sure might actually be Thoth himself. He wasn’t wearing his armor anymore. Instead, he was wrapped in a black toga-like thing that fell around his ankles. He pushed a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses up his nose and stared at me, which seemed weird since I was pretty sure eyeglasses hadn’t been invented yet.

  “I don’t mind, Thoth.” As I said the words, a smile crinkled his face, and he nodded almost imperceptibly. “Please share your wisdom.”

  “Okay,” he replied, touching my forehead with one huge palm.

  There was a flash of light across my brow, and blinding white light filled my vision for a split second. Then I was standing next to Thoth a few feet away, only I could see myself at the feet of Sekhmet. It was weird, like being trapped in a live-action replay of the moment before. That was when I noticed Khufu sneaking up behind the goddess.

  “Outcome one,” Thoth said to me, waving one hand. “It has a fifty-nine percent probability of occurring.”

  Khufu leaped forward, his huge spear raised over his head to strike at Sekhmet, but as he descended, the goddess whirled, swinging the million-ton statue around like a baseball bat. It slammed into Khufu, reducing him to a splotchy cloud as the statue passed through the air at what seemed like the speed of sound.

  A sonic boom echoed across the land as she turned and with an almost casual flick of her wrists, dropped the statue to the ground. It struck with a splat that threw up a cloud of crimson sand. She smirked and turned to leave.

  “But what about the staff?” I said. “Will we be able to find it without him?”

  The scene paused, and Thoth looked at me. “If Khufu dies, you won’t recover the staff. That I can promise you.” The old god shook his head. “Unfortunately, you need the staff to awaken Ra. If you don’t, things will fall out of balance.”

  “So, Khufu is telling the truth?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at the ancient god of wisdom. “About the staff
and Apep?”

  “Mostly,” Thoth replied. “You must find a way to save him from Sekhmet.”

  “You said there was another way,” I asked, and even as I spoke, the scene in front of me rewound until it was back to the point where Thoth had pulled me out of time. I’ll admit, it was a little weird to watch myself.

  “There is this possibility, too. It has about a thirty-seven percent chance of success,” Thoth said as the scene restarted. “It’s worse.”

  Khufu didn’t leap this time. Instead, he reared back and flung his spear with all of his super-mummy strength. The weapon stabbed into Sekhmet’s arm as she turned toward him. She lost her grip on the statue. The sphinx fell, landing hard on top of her with a hideous sounding crunch.

  “Silly goddess, you think you can defeat me?” Khufu asked as he sauntered, actually sauntered, up to me and held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before she recovers.”

  “Well, that seems less bad,” I mumbled as Aziza and vision me got to their feet and followed him off into the distance. “Won’t Sekhmet just heal the damage?”

  “Yes,” he replied, and the scene shifted so that I was watching Khufu, Aziza, and I stand before a man so old looking that he had to have been a million years old.

  “Look, Imhotep, we need the staff to awaken Ra,” Khufu was saying, though frustration was lacing his words. “I don’t know how else to explain what you already know to be true.”

  “Firstly, I’m not helping you, and secondly, mwa ha ha ha!” he said before pulling on a golden lever that resembled a cobra’s head to his left. The floor vanished, and I watched as the vision-me fell, along with Khufu and Aziza. A horrible sound that reminded me of the time I’d been at the butcher while he tenderized meat filled my ears as I rushed over, anxious to see what happened.