Wardens of Eternity Read online

  “Nasira? Sayer?” My voice was nearly inaudible. I couldn’t call any louder. I couldn’t blink. Couldn’t breathe. I could only stare at what I’d done, the creature I’d resurrected.

  A ceramic jar bobbled and tipped over. Something inside thrashed and the vessel shattered. Another cat mummy escaped, stretched, spine cracking. The first creature approached cautiously, and the two sniffed noses. They seemed disoriented, unsure. They hissed, fangs bared. Paws lashed out, scratched.

  They turned and looked unseeingly at me. Another mummy tore itself from its wrappings. Another smashed through its tiny coffin. Another. And another.

  They hurled their bodies into the glass with thud after thud, proving they weren’t as frail as they appeared. The glass cracked and cracked further. Their claws raked, leaving streaks. Their voices filled my head, my mind, my bones.

  What had I done?

  CHAPTER

  13

  I threw up my hands and turned away as glass exploded in my face. The cat mummies collided with me, and their claws tore my skin, sending searing pain up and down my body. I lost my balance and fell onto my back beneath them, unable to hear my scream over the mummies’ yowling. Horror, panic, and disgust seized my thoughts, muting them, and all I could do was react.

  “Khet!” Blinding flames swarmed my vision, blooming like petals, unfolding and stretching around me. The cat mummies screamed and scattered into the shadows. I pushed myself to my feet, lingering in the fire of my spell for protection until they died.

  “Ziva!” Sayer ran to me and slid to a stop when he saw the broken glass case. Behind him a cautious Nasira had her asaya raised.

  “I’m sorry—I should’ve known better—I thought reading the words was harmless . . .” My stammering trailed off.

  “The cat coffins,” Sayer murmured as understanding grew in him. “What happened?”

  “They came to life,” I told him, still in disbelief.

  A low yowl came from the darkness and we turned to face it.

  “They seemed confused, enough so to become violent.” I shook my head. “Honestly, I don’t know. They were monsters.”

  “We can’t let them live,” Sayer said, removing his axes from their scabbard. “Not if they’re dangerous to innocent people. Send them back to where they belong: the netherworld. We’ll apologize to the gods later.”

  A cat mummy sprang at him, claws outstretched with a scream, and he swung an ax with clean precision. Its head spiraled through the air and the body smacked to the floor in a heap. He took off after one of the creatures scurrying through the hall and Nasira backed up against me.

  “And the lesson learned tonight?” she asked jokingly.

  “Magic is dangerous and when used carelessly can wake up horrifying cat mummies,” I answered, drawing my asaya.

  “Good girl.”

  One of the creatures darted from the room, and I chased after it into the hall overlooking the main floor. A mummy leapt into my path and landed, skidding before smacking into the base of a display. I raised my asaya. The mummy’s reedy limbs unfolded stiffly from its tight ball like a spider’s corpse in the midst of resurrection, its dark, empty eye sockets huge and fixed greedily on me. It pushed itself onto its hind legs and launched, but I swung my asaya and the obsidian slashed through its neck, taking its head.

  A second mummy emerged at a lope, yowling, but a devastating neit spell dragged it off its feet. The water rushed across the floor and spilled over the side of the second floor balcony. Before the creature could recover, Nasira knelt and killed it.

  “Who’s there?” an echoed voice shouted through the cavernous first floor. “The police are on their way!”

  Gasping for breath, I looked at Nasira and said, “We’ve got to go.”

  Another cat mummy barreled into her, knocking her into the balcony railing, which erupted in shattered wood. The force of a second mummy pitched both of them over the edge and Nasira screamed as she grappled for balance. I snatched her hand before she fell, but the creatures’ claws latched onto her clothing, tore her skin, biting and scratching.

  “Hang on!” I cried, summoning all my strength to keep Nasira from falling. I braced my boots against the base of the balustrade and leaned back. What was left of the railing creaked and threatened to crack. I freed one hand, risking losing my grip on Nasira, and shot a taw spell into the cat mummies, rattling them, but they quickly reassembled. Nasira slipped through my grip with a yelp and I grabbed her arm with both hands again.

  Nasira groaned and looked up at me, her face pale and stricken. “Let go and get out of here. You have to trust me.”

  I shook my head furiously. “I can’t!”

  “They’re ripping me apart!” Nasira begged, tears pooling in her eyes. “Please.”

  “Okay,” I said, swallowing hard. “I trust you.” I squeezed my eyes shut and opened my hands. I heard Nasira let out a gasp and then a thud. When I heard squealing and thrashing, I opened my eyes and watched her wrestle with the creatures. I looked wildly for her weapon and found it lying on the floor.

  “Nasira!” I called.

  Her head snapped up. I chucked her asaya and she snatched it from air. She shot for the beasts, spinning the staff so fast the air screamed.

  “The storage room!” she shouted to me. “Find my mother and Cyrene!”

  I nodded and did as she instructed, though I hated leaving her to clean up my mess. I was the one who’d resurrected the cats and it was my fault they had to be stopped, my fault the sacred animals had turned vicious during resurrection.

  Racing through the museum, I tried to be as quiet as possible. Back here I wasn’t likely to be spotted. The guards had all rushed to where the action was, and any moment the police would arrive. Guilt for putting my friends through this horror gnawed at me, but I had to remain focused on my task. We hadn’t yet found what we came for. I could not leave empty-handed.

  I found the hallway we’d split up in and moved quickly in the direction Cyrene and Haya had gone. One door led to a cramped washroom, so I opened the other. Bingo. The storage room was larger than the lab and receiving room combined.

  “Cyrene?” I called.

  “Ziva?” The priestess poked her head out from around a freestanding shelving unit packed full of boxes and metal trunks. “What was that noise out there? Everything all right?”

  “Uh, well, something came up,” I explained, purposefully vague. “Sayer and Nasira are on it, but we have to be quick. Our guards are no longer distracted.”

  Her mouth formed a tight line. “No luck yet. Care to assist?”

  “Yes, of course,” I told her, and started down the far aisle, peaking into open crates. I moved quickly, wishing I could speed this up somehow. If Nefertari’s ka was alive in me somewhere, then I should have had a connection to her body, especially her sacred organs. I brushed my fingers across wooden boxes and steel safes, closing my eyes and hoping something in my power would speak. Something about a pine box drew my attention and I decided to indulge the impulse and remove the lid. It was filled with shredded brown paper I was careful not to spill onto the floor as I searched for the artifact within. There couldn’t be any obvious evidence we’d been through here.

  “Come on, queen’s blood,” I whispered. “Sing to me.”

  My words seemed to transcend into an incantation and as soon as my fingers brushed something cold and solid, I felt the prickle of energy zip up my hand. I lifted my prize and held it to the light. The canopic jar was made of smooth, creamy alabaster, and traces of paint. The lid was carved into the shape of a baboon, whose name, I recalled, was Hapy. Inside, packed in natron salt, were sure to be lungs. I made out the rope of a cartouche and understood why Sweeney had found it difficult to read. The inscriptions were quite faded, but I recognized the heart-and-windpipe hieroglyph denoting ‘nefer’ and excitement filled me. When I looked further, I found the delicate, cursive slashes of hieratic script, and while so far, I’d only learned the very basics of
reading it, the strangeness in the syntax was immediately noticeable. This was what we came for.

  “Haya!” I called. “Cyrene! I’ve got it!”

  They rushed to my side and I presented the jar. “I’m positive this belonged to Nefertari,” I insisted. “There’s strange hieratic here just as Sweeney said.”

  Cyrene took the jar from me and examined it closely. “It’s not strange. He simply didn’t know how to read it. This is Medjai hieratic. We were the ones to develop this writing system. Let’s call it a night before things get any more exciting, shall we?”

  I carefully returned the box to its original state and hoped no one would notice the missing contents for a long time. We exited the room and emerged into the hallway, just as Nasira and Sayer slid to a stop in front of us.

  “We’re on our way out,” Sayer said, breathlessly. “Care to join us?”

  “After you,” I replied, grinning.

  “Do you have it?” Nasira asked, peering into Cyrene’s hands.

  The priestess nodded. “Right here. Let’s go home.”

  Our Medjai mole remained behind to avert suspicion from herself. The rest of us ran from the museum and back to the cars, which sat dark and silent as waiting soldiers. Dina remained behind at the museum for damage control. Nasira and I joined her mother in the first car, while Cyrene and Sayer slipped into the second. We sped off into the night.

  “That was excellent work back there, Ziva,” Haya praised. “Nasira has trained you well.”

  Nasira glanced over her shoulder at me from the front seat and grinned wide. “Only a minor hiccup.”

  “Minor?” I laughed. “Cat mummies are not minor!”

  “Wait—what?” Haya stuttered. “Cat mummies?”

  My cheeks burned. “I promise I’ll be more careful when I practice reading hieroglyphs.”

  “In a controlled environment,” Nasira added.

  “And I won’t speak them aloud just to be safe—”

  My words caught in my throat when the Daimler pitched through the air. It hit hard ground and bounced, sending us soaring again. Glass shattered and scattered through space like sparkling rain and the shards ripped through my skin. My stomach flipped, dove into my throat, and dropped low in my gut and back up again. No one screamed; I heard only grunts as bodies thudded against surfaces, and the groan and crash of metal against pavement. I felt nothing but abject confusion and amazement. When the motorcar came to a mangled rest, my senses returned to me and I understood we weren’t right side up. My limbs were tangled with someone else’s. My skin and clothing scraped against glass and debris.

  Shuddering from shock and pain, I looked through the busted-out windows. Headlights blinded me, and I heard panicked murmurs.

  “Mum?” Nasira asked fearfully, her voice shaking.

  “Ssh, baby girl,” Haya whispered, as she jangled the door handle and worked to keep herself from falling forward into the dashboard.

  Realization gripped me breathless; magic suspended the car in the air, propping it perpendicular to the ground. Taillights blazing into the black and starless sky, the grill gave a low whine as it grated against the cold pavement. Knotted metal whined and groaned, and the air cracked and buzzed with energy.

  Footsteps clicked on the pavement, belonging to heels trailed by a dress of black snake scales dazzling like jewels.

  Nasira shoved her shoulder hard into the car door to no avail. “It won’t budge. She’s keeping the doors closed.” She put her feet onto the dashboard, pushing herself higher in the driver’s seat, and she kicked the windshield over and over. Her taw spell added force to her blows. Spiderweb fractures spread. The glass creaked.

  Kauket’s shadows swallowed the moonlight and drowned us in suffocating darkness.

  I freed a tireless instinct for survival. We had to escape. Escape. Escape. I looked around wildly. The doors wouldn’t open. This was a trap. A prison.

  My stomach hurled into my spine as the car lurched forward, careening through the air until it smashed into something horribly solid, crushing the roof into us. After a moment, we fell, and the car toppled to the ground, scattering glass and dropping chunks of undercarriage. The sensation dragged me deeper into unreality. My vision grew blurry, and everything became tight around me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Revulsion took me like a riptide, powerful and without mercy, and my ears rang; an abominable sound like kettles shrieking and bones breaking.

  “Mum? Mum!”

  I’d never heard terror come from Nasira before. When I turned my head to find her, I saw she’d been pushed into the backseat and was now pinned against me. I couldn’t see Haya. The coppery odor of blood made me sick.

  Nasira’s screams released a clarity in me. I choked on the air stuck in my throat and I scrambled, the animal instinct deep within again screamed at me to break free. The rear window had been shattered and turned into a gaping hole. The roof hadn’t been crushed as badly in the back. We could certainly squeeze out this way.

  “Come on,” I said, my voice hardly audible. “Nasira, we can get out. Come on.”

  I dragged myself through the glassless skeleton of the sedan and onto cold, glossy pavement. Nasira had stopped calling for her mother and I assumed she followed me. I pushed myself to my feet, straining against the fear and dread and pain desperate to drag me to the ground. I lifted my head to meet the familiar carnelian eyes, cold as old blood, of the goddess of darkness.

  “Nasira!” I screamed. She wasn’t behind me. “Nasira!”

  From behind her expressionless, inhuman gold mask, Kauket observed me. Her painted brow and carved mouth remained calm, without empathy or humanity. With malice sharp as a stone’s edge to cut clean and deep, the monster whispered Nasira’s mother’s words: “Ssh, baby girl . . .”

  I mustered what confidence I could and threw a taw spell into Kauket’s face, but a wave of her hand deflected it.

  “Hunting you is quite easy when you make such a racket everywhere you go,” the goddess sneered. “All that magic wasn’t for nothing. Time to tell me what you’ve been up to, little mouse.”

  Tires squealed to a stop behind me and I dared not look away from her. Car doors opened and slammed shut. Sayer yelled my name, but he seemed distant, a cry carried from across the sea. I was in shock, I told myself. This would pass. It had to, or I was dead.

  “Nasira is still inside the car!” I called to Sayer.

  “And my mother?”

  I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had to fight and defend my friends and Nefertari’s treasure. We couldn’t resurrect her without it and there was no way I’d let Kauket take it.

  My asaya felt like an old friend in my hand, its weight empowering. I swung it around my head, and the staff extended with a crack, the obsidian blades shining in the night. Magic kicked up like a whirlwind around me, lifting and grabbing my hair. I summoned all and it pulsed into the pavement. I felt the ground crack and sink beneath me. My life force, every fragment of my heart and soul shaped by a bloodline thousands of years old, gave me the power to protect this world and those in it who couldn’t protect themselves. I’d inherited this ancient blood and it was my responsibility not to let anything kill me before I fulfilled my destiny.

  My teeth clenched together beneath the weight of my power. A coppery taste of blood stung my tongue. The gods had started all of this over a grudge. They’ve tried to kill us over a grudge. They murdered my parents over a grudge. But they had no idea that what they created had grown even bigger than the immortals themselves. This fight was about more than my life or the life of our queen. I understood why, in the end, we would win. We had more to lose than gods who would live forever.

  The pressure of my magic began to implode on me, squeezing every last inch of my skin and clenching the muscles in my arms and legs. I refused to let it be too much for me to handle; I needed all of it to fight. No matter how much I summoned, the goddess of darkness would have more.

  There was, how
ever, something about me that set me apart from the other Medjai. They didn’t think like I did. I was a survivor, I was a woman, I was blessed by Death, and I had queen’s blood. Queens do not die for nothing. For my entire life, I had been endlessly underestimated. Never again.

  “Khet,” I snarled through gritted teeth. Magical flames burst from my hand and tore up both ends of the asaya, consuming it, wreathing it. The concentration required to control the spell was burdensome, but Kauket’s disarmed reaction made up for my struggle.

  I raised my asaya, presenting it to the goddess of darkness—a promise the obsidian blades would slake their thirst on her immortal blood.

  Her wide, stricken eyes told me she understood, yes, I was mortal, but I was also Medjai, an ancient people of god-given power. I would not yield until death took me, and I’d give it one hell of a fight first.

  With a scream I shot forward, whirling the asaya until the air shrieked with power, the flames hot. I leapt into the air and brought down my staff in a fiery arc, one end slashing open her collarbone as she yanked herself aside. I landed, swept the asaya again, anticipating her attempt to dodge it, and obsidian met the flesh of her abdomen in one slice. Golden blood sizzled in the flames.

  A force lifted me up off my feet and my stomach plummeted. A surprised wail escaped me as my body soared, my limbs flailing, and my khet spell was extinguished. Something grabbed my ankle and stopped me dead in the air before yanking me toward the earth. I smacked the ground, sending a shock of pain through me, and I grunted as I was dragged toward the goddess of darkness. I glanced wildly over my shoulder at her and flipped onto my back. Kauket’s hand reached toward me and her sekhem spell hauled me like a doll across the ground. I kicked, but the magic wrapped around my ankle held my leg rigid and still. She raised me into the air and I slashed with my asaya, but she caught my arm and squeezed. Dangling, I cried in pain and was forced to drop my weapon. My free hand shot for the sheath inside my jacket and whipped out a smaller was dagger, which I sliced across Kauket’s cheek. The goddess’s head snapped to the side and she snarled, baring fangs. The wound bled gold and crackled with netherlight.