King of the Gods Read online

  “Yes. They will kill you and eat you, but not in that order. I can help you stop them, but only if you get the object out of the box now!” She flashed her teeth at me. “Hurry!”

  “Fine!” I said as I shoved down my fear and allowed my training to take over. I’d never won a fight by being scared and freaking out. No, I won by being calm.

  I scrambled toward Aziza, reaching toward the box even though she was some kind of ghost. I had no idea what was inside, but if it would keep me from being eaten by whatever was howling, I was all for it. I kept my fear conquered just like my father had taught me to do and grabbed hold of the stone with both hands.

  As soon as I touched the ankh, the purple glow spread across my flesh, covering over my fingers and palms like gloves made from purple light. Aziza’s hands settled on top of mine which was a little weird because her touch was icy and made my skin prickle.

  Her hands began to fly across the stone’s surface, directing me to press here and there as more howls ripped across the horizon and lightning began to crackle angrily through the sky. Zeus was definitely pissed.

  The sound of claws moving across the stone behind me filled my ears as the amethyst stone began to glow violently before unfurling like a blooming flower. At first glance, the thing inside was about the size of a tennis ball and sort of resembled a heart made of pulsing black tissue. Red tendrils wriggled around it like a sea anemone. I couldn’t tell you why, but the moment I locked eyes on the object, everything inside me screamed that I had to have it, had to make it mine.

  I reached in and grabbed it before I could even fully process what the object was or why I’d just gone fifty shades of Gollum over it.

  Tendrils wrapped around my flesh, latching onto me like octopus tentacles and filling me with nearly indescribable warmth, and as I opened my eyes in shock, something smashed into my temple.

  I went flying sideways and smashed into an outcropping of stone with bone-shuddering force before bouncing several feet like a rag doll. As I skidded to a stop, the pulsing heart remained melded to my flesh. My vision went blurry around the edges as a thing hewn from my nightmares came into view, one hand outstretched toward me. It was nearly ten feet tall, covered in mottled black and green fur, had enormous claws the color of rusty fishhooks, and eyes the color of melted gold.

  “Give me what you have stolen, boy,” it snarled in a voice that tore painfully at my eardrums. It took a step toward me on massive black-furred legs bigger than redwoods. “If you do, I’ll kill you quickly. If not, well, I’m quite hungry.” It grinned at me, revealing a mouth that reminded me of a great white shark only much less friendly.

  2

  “Monster,” I growled, still struggling to rise and defend myself (as hopeless of an endeavor as that would be), when the sky above me tore asunder, spilling red light across the horizon like blood from a terrible wound. A freaking comet struck the ground between the monster and me, throwing up a gout of dust, debris, and light. I barely had time to comprehend what was going on when Aziza breathed a sigh of relief into my ear.

  “Thank God, the cavalry is here,” she murmured so close to me I nearly jumped. I didn’t, but it was mostly because I was watching the dust cloud in front of me start to settle. There was someone inside that cloud. “You need to hide the sacred heart before he sees what you have. If he does, it won’t end well for either of us.” I felt Aziza’s hand on my shoulder. “Concentrate on hiding it, and it will listen.”

  “What about the monster?” I said, shutting my eyes and willing the thing in my hand to hide even though it seemed pointless. Almost at once, the tentacles clutching my arm disappeared into my flesh, and the tennis ball vanished in a flash of lavender, leaving behind what resembled an ouroboros tattoo on the palm of my hand.

  “Good. And don’t worry about the monster. The guardian will take care of it. That’s his whole job,” Aziza replied as a guy dressed in what looked like regal Egyptian armor stepped from the dust. “Sometimes they’re even good at it.”

  The guy stood there looking at the monster with a dopey grin on his face. Without a word, he pointed a giant warhammer at the creature. A length of silver rope stretched from the hammer’s end to coil loosely around his wrist. It made me wonder how he wielded such a weapon. It seemed completely impractical. I’ll admit, it was mostly professional curiosity because at that moment the monster was only a few feet away, and if this guy had come from the clouds to fight it, I wasn’t going to stop him, even if his weapon did seem ridiculous.

  “Wendigo,” the guardian said disdainfully as the monster sniffed the air. It seemed unconcerned by the guy’s sudden appearance. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “You have no place here.”

  Instead of replying, the creature attacked. It moved so fast I barely saw it. The guy must have seen it though because he stepped to the side while lashing out with his hammer. The rope coiled around his wrist snapped like a whip, sending the hammer in an arc that punched straight through the monster’s chest. As its corpse fell to the ground, it began to slowly dissolve, its particles melting away in a cloud of crimson steam as the weapon returned to his hand. He nodded once at the cloud rising from the monster’s corpse before turning to look at me.

  I wasn’t sure what the look on my face was, but the moment he met my eyes, the anger in his eyes was replaced by a strange calm. Then he smiled at me. It was strange looking to say the least because the expression seemed somewhat forced. It reminded me of the one on the lady at the returns counter at a department store who was always happy to help you. He held his left hand out to me like he was offering to help me up.

  “I need the sacred heart,” he said in one of those scratchy voices I associated with smoking. “It looks like a pulsing black heart. If you don’t give it to me, more monsters will come to take it.”

  “Wait, hold up,” I replied as I ignored his outstretched hand and got to my feet.

  The guardian shrugged and dropped his hand to his side. It was just as well. He hadn’t even inquired how I was, so the last thing I was going to do was let him touch me, especially since Aziza’s weird heart thing had magically buried itself in my palm. I swallowed hard and let that thought replay itself. Aziza’s weird heart thing had melted into my flesh.

  Oh my god, what if it burst out of my chest like an alien? Still, if this guy and the monster had appeared to get it from me within seconds of me finding it, I wasn’t sure I should let either of them have it. For all I knew, they were both bad guys. While Aziza had said the guy was a Guardian and was supposed to kill monsters, she’d also told me to keep the sacred heart from him. And, oh my god, I had an ancient Egyptian artifact inside me. How could that possibly be good?

  “What do you mean more monsters?” I gestured to the spot where the wendigo had been, but all that remained of it was a fast evaporating puddle. “Monsters aren’t supposed to be real.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we want you to think.” He made no movement toward me although I could see his muscles tensing like a jungle cat about to spring. He was definitely trying to decide whether he wanted to ask me again or just take the sacred heart from me. I was even inclined to give it to him because hello, crazy monsters.

  The only thing keeping me from doing it was Aziza. Why had she told me to hide it when she could have easily told me to hand it over? Then again, what the hell did I know about Aziza? She was a ghost I’d found in a box beneath the temple of Isis on Delos. And where the hell was she anyway?

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped, fixing him with my best glare. It had little effect.

  “I’m the guardian of this tomb.” He jerked a thumb at his own chest. “My job is to keep the supernatural whatsits from getting the artifacts we bury in tombs.” He pointed at me. “Please just give me the sacred heart before more monsters show up. Then I can go back to sleep, and you can go back to playing archeologist.”

  I swallowed his jab because his words had bigger implications. If this guy w
as telling me the truth, not only were monsters real, but he was responsible for this tomb. It seemed impossible to believe, but at the same time he had appeared out of the clouds in a comet and killed a monster right in front of me. That surely lent some credibility to his words. Maybe not as much as I’d have liked but definitely more than a little.

  “What if I don’t want to give it to you?” I replied because taunting an ancient Egyptian temple guardian with a warhammer was always the best choice of action.

  “Seriously?” He shook his head, and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “What do you think happens?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and raised an eyebrow. “You try to take it, and I stop you?”

  “Why are you being this way?” He glared at me like I was some kind of strange fish. He waved his hand dismissively. “The sacred heart is a powerful artifact my people created during the last Destroyer war. I’ve been keeping it safe for a long time. The moment you activated it, I awakened. Let’s just say you beat me up and keep it while simultaneously avoiding all the monsters drawn toward the heart’s power. Let’s just say that happens, you know, for funsies.” He let out a slow breath.

  “I’m like an ant compared to the monsters the destroyer could send to get it from you and rest assured, the bad guys will bury you beneath bodies before they let it fall into the enemy hands closing around you even as we speak.” He held his hand out to me again. “Please just give it to me. Then I can make it dormant and hopefully avoid a world-ending catastrophe.”

  “Maybe I think you’re lying,” I said, and while I didn’t sound very convinced, something about this felt off in a way I couldn’t explain.

  “Then you’re a fool,” he replied, his outstretched hand shaking with annoyance. “Please just give me the sacred heart—”

  I wasn’t sure if he was going to say more because another wendigo appeared next to him like the Predator dropping out of camouflage. The creature batted him aside with one clawed hand. The guardian’s hammer slipped from his hand and fell emptily to the dirt as he bounced across the temple like I’d done only a moment before.

  The guardian was on his feet in an instant, blood running down his face in a crimson mask. He darted forward, focused on dropping the wendigo in front of him when three more of the things appeared all around him. They drove him to the ground as several more of the creatures appeared from every which way. How could there be so many? And why had no one from the dig come up here to help? There were armed guards less than a mile away, and we weren’t exactly hidden from view up here.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve feasted on a guardian.” The wendigo closest to me smiled, revealing a mouthful of shark-like teeth. His smile made one thing startlingly clear. Even if help was on its way, it wasn’t going to get here before the thing ate me.

  No, I had to take care of this myself.

  I darted forward and scooped up the guardian’s fallen hammer. The moment my hand touched the weapon, purple light exploded along its length, and a surge of confidence exploded through me. I spun faster than I’d ever done before and drove the weapon into the monster’s face with lithe movement. Blood and skull fragments sprayed across my face as I whirled, whipping the hammer around and letting it fly while holding onto the end of the rope with my other hand.

  The weapon struck the monster atop the guardian in the back right about where I judged its heart should be and punched straight through it. I jerked hard on the silver rope, and even though I was a six-foot-nothing guy, the several-hundred-pound monster hurtled backward off the guardian like I’d snagged it with an industrial-strength crane.

  The monster hit the ground with a wet thwack, but I didn’t stop to see if it was dead. No, I was already moving forward, weaving past claws and fangs in a dance I’d done a million times, albeit not against monsters before. I couldn’t tell you why, but their movement seemed slower than I remembered them being earlier.

  I spun, pulling hard on the rope as I did, and the weapon tore free of the wendigo I’d speared with the hammer and flew back to my hand like the weapon had a mind of its own. I barely had time to contemplate it as I blocked a claw that would have removed my head from my shoulders. I spun the weapon and drove the blunt end of the weapon up into the creature’s jaw. It stuck with a satisfying crunch. Without hesitation, I pivoted on my left foot and smashed my knee into the creature beside it. The sickening crack of ribs giving way filled my ears.

  The wendigo’s howl of rage and pain echoed as I landed and took another step forward, swinging the hammer at the nearest monster like I was trying to knock a baseball out of the park. I even followed through. When in doubt, follow through. It’s what my little league coach always said. I’d always found the suggestion dubious back home, I mean what good could come from swinging past a ball, but it seemed to work now.

  The broken monster hit the ground as I whirled around, looking for more enemies. There were none to be found. Instead, the temple was littered with slowly evaporating corpses. Had I killed them all? It seemed impossible. I wasn’t even out of breath.

  The guardian was a few feet away, his body drenched in blood. I could tell he wasn’t dead because his chest was still moving with every breath. Still, that wound didn’t look good. He needed help, fast. Not wanting to drop the warhammer, I sprinted over to him as the purple glow surrounding my body faded away.

  By the time I reached him, I almost wished I hadn’t. His stomach had been torn open with three horizontal slashes, revealing things inside I was pretty sure weren’t supposed to be visible. His eyes were shut tight in pain, but before I could stop him, he drove his own fingers into the rent flesh. Gray light burst from the wound, spilling over him like water. I watched in amazement as the bleeding stopped and his flesh knit itself together.

  “Well, that’s a neat trick,” I mumbled in awe.

  His eyes opened. He met my gaze, and a smile crossed his lips. He opened his mouth to say something and promptly passed out. I sighed. Some supernatural badass he was. He’d come to rescue me, and I’d wound up saving him from the wendigos. I dropped down next to him, slinging his body up over my shoulder so I could drag him down the hill. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make it a half mile like this, but I was loath to leave him here alone. What if more wendigos showed up and ate him while I was gone? No, I needed to take him with me.

  I looked around, trying to figure out how I was going to explain what happened, but there was no trace of any of the creatures. How had they all vanished? Then again, maybe that’s what happened when wendigos died. It wasn’t like I even knew what a wendigo was anyway.

  3

  I made it about six steps before realizing the guardian, clad in full armor, was way too heavy for me to possibly drag him half a mile. Besides, I wasn’t too keen on having any more of his blood soak into my tank top. It wasn’t that I was squeamish. It was more that for all I knew, he had some kind of magic ancient Egyptian disease. I did not want a magic ancient Egyptian disease.

  “Aziza? Are you there?” I whispered while mentally chastising myself for talking to a ghost I was still partially sure I’d imagined. In fact, I was reasonably sure I was going to find one of my comrades kneeling over me, trying to wake me up after I’d passed out due to heat stroke. Yup, I definitely needed to get into the shade and rest. Fast. If I didn’t, I might actually start to believe in magic, monsters, and ghosts.

  “Yes?” Aziza replied in a sing-song voice that reminded me of Belle from Beauty and the Beast before she materialized in front of me. Even though I’d been expecting her to do just that, I let out a grunt of surprise. This confirmed it. She was real. Well, take that, sanity.

  “Can you help me?” I asked, voice straining as I stood there trying to hold up a billion pounds of musclebound supernatural guardian.

  “I suppose I could lend you a hand,” she said, cradling her chin between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand as she looked me up and down. “A figurative hand, at least. I can’
t actually touch him or you.” Then she stuck her hand through my face to illustrate her point. Her touch caused a chill to creep over my skin. As she withdrew her hand, I shuddered involuntarily. “Non-corporeal.”

  “Don’t ever do that again,” I replied, gritting my teeth together in an effort to stop them from chattering.

  “Or what?” she asked, grinning at me. Very slowly, she licked her finger before sticking it in my ear. I tried to swat at her, but my hand passed straight through her which had the added bonus of knocking me off balance. I wound up falling straight through her stupid non-corporeal body and crashing to the ground in a tangled heap. Then the billion-pound guardian landed on top of me. It was just this side of awesome.

  “Now that we’ve settled what I can and cannot do, how about you stop messing around? We have a lot of work to do if you expect to use magic to carry Tweedledum down this mountain.” Aziza knelt down in front of me, and I could tell she was just about to burst out laughing. I glared at her, but sadly, she didn’t spontaneously combust. Why the Hell had I asked her for help, again?

  “All right,” I muttered while secretly plotting to get Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman, Winston Zeddemore, and Egon Spengler to help me out with the pest problem I seemed to have. “What do I need to do?”

  Part of me still couldn’t believe I was lying on the ground beneath a guy who had come to earth in a flaming comet while talking to a ghost about magic, but I did my best to silence that part of me. It wouldn’t help any because let’s be real here. Either magic was real, or I was abso-freaking-lutely insane. I really didn’t want to be insane. I would look terrible in a straightjacket.

  “You’ve absorbed the sacred heart.” Aziza paused to let that sink in. “I won’t bother to explain how impossible that actually is, but suffice to say, you now have my magic. You’re welcome.”

  “Magic?” I replied as I pushed the guardian off of me. Oddly, it was a lot easier than I’d expected it to be. And were my hands glowing?