Shadow Fall (32 page)

There was a secondary reason for caution as well.

“We need to be careful in this area,” Kira whispered. “There are irreplaceable artifacts on the other side of those doors.” They might be insured for millions, but they were, in truth, priceless.

Sonoranvan gave a curt nod, then signaled to Commander Jenkins, communicating the placement of their teams for the incursion. Jenkins acknowledged and gestured to his team. The black-clad men and women shifted into position. Kira caught Bale’s attention, pointing up. The banaranjans would take to the air.

Jenkins held up a hand, counted down to one. Two of the squad pushed open the double doors, and the banaranjans entered in a blur of wind and speed.

The already minimal night lighting went out. Team members quickly switched to night-vision, sweeping the large room for any potential threats. Several tense moments passed before the all clear was called.

Kira breathed a sigh of relief even as tension coiled in her stomach. She drew her Lightblade, and called her extrasense. Blue-green light flickered along the silvery metal of the dagger. She swallowed a curse, then concentrated, willing the power back to cobalt blue.

A glowing trail of Chaos magic led from the replica of the Book of the Dead papyrus to the entrance of the pseudo-tomb.

“Either one of you know what’s on the other side of that door?” Jenkins asked. “Other than a trap, I mean.”

“What’s supposed to be on the other side of the door is a long corridor with funeral texts and spells emblazoned on the walls. It leads to a chamber where they have the Weighing of the Heart Ceremony exhibit set up. There’s a burial chamber off to the west side, but you exit from the main room,” Kira explained. “What we’ll actually find is anyone’s guess.”

“That’s all right. Jenkins here loves surprises,” Sonoranvan said, settling her assault rifle.

“Not the kind that get you killed, though,” Jenkins said.

Both the commanders looked far too eager for Kira’s tastes. They were about to face something that could very well kill them in creative and excruciating ways. Maybe they and their teams all had a bit of berserker in them.

As a unit they moved through the opening to the exhibition tomb. It was as Kira had described. A long narrow corridor, barely wide enough to fit three people abreast, stretched some twenty yards before widening into what she assumed was the antechamber beneath the crux of the pyramid. A golden light spilled out into the end of the passageway, faintly illuminating the last few feet.

“We need to get down this passageway as quickly as possible,” Kira said, drawing the khopesh. There was barely enough room to maneuver the two-foot-long weapon, adding to her anxiety. If the intent was supposed to creep out visitors as they embarked on an otherworldly journey, Hammond’s setup certainly did the trick.

“Do you hear that?” someone asked behind them.

A scrabbling noise filled the corridor. “It could be anything,” Kira said, keeping her voice even. Egypt had a wide variety of fantastical creatures in its ancient mythology. “Maybe a bunch of scorpions, or … beetles.”

She looked up and saw a seething, shifting dark mass take up the majority of the left wall and the ceiling. Beetles were better than scorpions, but knowing the gods of Shadow, these critters probably packed a hell of a supernatural wallop.

“That’s a helluva lot of beetles,” Jenkins said. “And we’re fresh out of bug spray.”

Kira tapped her earpiece. “Control, I need a prayer or spell from the book that references beetles.”

“Searching.”

The beetles swarmed overhead. As several of the squad began firing up at them, shattering the hard carapaces with bullets, fluid bubbled through the shattered exoskeletons. Someone swore, then repeatedly stomped their feet. “Their guts are eating the floor away like acid!”

The team’s boots and protective gear were sturdy and charged with enough magic to temporarily avoid the corrosive effects of small amounts of the substance, but Kira assumed that unprotected flesh was immediately endangered—and prolonged exposure or a larger quantity of the stuff would be deadly. And no telling what a bite from the beasties could do … “Control, you need to search faster.”

“Move deeper in!” Sonoranvan called. “But hold your fire. Try to avoid cracking the shells and releasing the acid … I fucking hate bugs!”

“Got it!” Kira’s earpiece crackled. “Spell thirty-six. It’s pretty short and it doesn’t really say all that much—”

Someone screamed as a mass of the black bugs swarmed over him. “Give it to me anyway!”

“Here goes: Begone from me, O crooked-lips! I am Khnum, Lord of Peshnu, who dispatches the words of the gods to Re.”

Kira repeated the spell at the top of her lungs. A collective shiver ran through the plague-worthy mass of insects. They fell like a deadly black rain. The swamped guard swayed, and then pitched forward noiselessly. His teammate knelt beside him. “His exposed skin is covered in welts, ma’am,” she said to Sonoranvan. “And his breathing’s really shallow.”

“You.” Sonoranvan pointed to another guard. “Help Patterson get Matthews to safety. The medical team should already be on standby at the inception point.”

“But—”

“Did I stutter, Burkholtz?”

“No, ma’am. Right away, ma’am.” The two guards lifted the unconscious man to his feet. Balancing his weight between them, they quickly made their way back to the entrance.

“At least we know the spells work,” Khefar said.

“Yeah, but we need to get them cued up faster.” Kira tapped her earpiece for emphasis.

“We’ll do our best, ma’am,” a voice on the other end said meekly.

“All right, let’s keep moving,” Jenkins called. “I don’t want to stay in this slaughter tube longer than necessary.”

Tension pressed down on Kira’s shoulders as they quickly made their way down the long corridor. She hoped the Gilead agent would be okay; she knew nothing about beetle toxin, but could guess that ones sent by Shadow had to possess some nasty poison.
One more thing to thank the Lady of Shadows for.

“What’s that scrabbling noise?” someone asked.

An eerie, skittering noise filled the corridor. Kira holstered her gun, her skin crawling with wariness. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“What now?”

“Seeker demons!” Khefar yelled.

Plural? Kira peered down the stone walkway. Sure enough, five seeker demons scrambled down the corridor toward them, one running along the ceiling.

One seeker demon was bad enough. Five were impossible odds. “Bale, if your guys are looking for a fight, now’s a good time to join in!”

“Finally, some excitement.” Bale shed his human form. “Tell your humans to stay back unless these creatures get by us.”

The banaranjans pushed to the forefront, each making a beeline for a seeker demon. Unfortunately that meant the humans had to face one too.

Shots rang out in rapid-fire succession as the squad lay down a barrage of bullets while the team tracked the fifth demon, dust and debris falling down around them. Regular bullets wouldn’t kill a seeker demon, but a few well-placed headshots could at least slow them down slightly.

Problem was, seeker demons didn’t like to sit still long enough for a shooter to take aim. On top of that, in the tight confines of the narrow corridor with only night-vision goggles to see by, the possibilities of being struck by friendly fire increased a thousandfold. The banaranjans surged ahead, moving quickly despite not being able to take flight. Yet even their fighting ferocity could barely stand against the single-minded malevolence of seeker demons.

“Commanders, get your people back!” Kira shouted. She didn’t want them to die needlessly, but if the seeker managed to get by her and Khefar, they were dead anyway.

“Back up, back up!” one of the commanders yelled. “We’re gonna get slaughtered if we stay here!”

Kira and Khefar took the front line, bracing themselves for the seeker demon’s attack. “You take right, I’ll take left,” Khefar said. Kira nodded, charging the khopesh with her extrasense. Power flared bluish-green along the blade. She didn’t have time to worry about it as the seeker demon closed the distance between them with a leap, claws extended, jaws wide.

Kira spun right, swinging the khopesh so that the hooked end caught the deadly beast about its neck. The Dagger of Kheferatum blazed with power, severing one of the creature’s arms. The limb disintegrated with a caustic cloud of dust, glowing green in the night-vision glasses.

Grimly holding on to the khopesh, Kira gripped the demon’s free arm with her left hand. Straining to hold the creature, she put a boot in its back. “Now, Khefar!”

The Nubian swung his dagger up again, jamming the blade deep into the seeker’s skull. A piercing howl rent the close confines as the seeker shuddered violently, then disintegrated.

The banaranjans had already made short work of their targets. “Are any of your guys hurt?” Kira asked.

Bale grinned. He’d obviously fed well on the adrenaline Kira and the others had pumped out. “These pitiful Shadowlings are no match for banaranjans in their prime. Only a weak banring fresh from the crèche would fall to a seeker demon.”

“You all right, Nubian?” He’d faced the worst of the seeker’s wrath.

Khefar sucked in a breath. “The vest took the hit. Thanks for making me wear it.”

Commander Jenkins thumped Khefar on the shoulder. “Y’all are making this look too easy.”

“You think that was easy?”

“It was easy only because we’ve had experience—that’s the third one we’ve faced in as many months,” Kira said. “I gotta wonder, though: if we’re getting seekers now, what’s waiting for us at the end of this?”

“Only one way to find out.”

They made their way down the corridor to the chamber containing the Weighing of the Heart exhibit.

Except for the two dozen people and Halflings who had entered, the room was empty.

No seated Osiris. No gleaming giant scales. No Ammit the Devourer. The only light was a faint glow emanating from the entryway to the burial chamber on the west wall.

What the—?

“Check the burial chamber,” Kira called.

One of the banaranjans poked his head in. “There’s a big granite box that’s glowing, and something that looks like a doorway but isn’t.”

Glowing? “Everybody, stay back. I’ll check it out.” Kira stepped into the burial chamber, pulling off her night-vision goggles. The sarcophagus, made to look like real granite, emitted a subtle golden glow. Beyond it, set into the wall, was a re-creation of the false door that—in real Egyptian tombs—was typically used by the deceased to pass from the land of the dead to the land of the living. Kira’s eyes widened as she translated the hieroglyphs carved into the side panels of the door’s design. The inscriptions were praises, but not honoring the deceased as one would expect. Instead, each seemed to be a prayer or exultation to Set. She read the words aloud. “The lord of the desert, the hand of Chaos, the subduer of Apep. He who is, he who will come again. The great lord Set.”

Loud slithering sounds filled the antechamber.
Gods, no.
Apep. There was a reason why astronomers had taken its Greek name, Apophis, and named a comet after it. Apep was destruction personified.

“Do we even want to know what that noise is?” Sanchez asked Kira over the communicator.

“Chances are, Commander, it’s a giant snake.” Kira replied, the glibness doing nothing to ease her sudden worry.

“I fucking hate snakes,” Sanchez said under her breath.

Kira saw Khefar reach for his earpiece. “There’s a spell to use against Apep. Find it and send it to us now. Kira, get out of there.”

Kira scooted back around the sarcophagus, intending to rejoin Khefar and the SRT to figure out their next step. But when she attempted to exit the door she’d entered through, she bounced off a hard plane of air. She was alone, trapped in the burial chamber.

Her pulse kicked up, sending blood racing hard through her veins. Kira pounded against the invisible barrier, shouting at Khefar, at Bale, at the commanders.

“We can’t hear you, Kira!” Khefar growled. “And it is obvious something is keeping you in there.”

How could she hear them but they couldn’t hear her? She reached to activate her earpiece, intending to call them, but it was missing. Dammit!

Rage poured from her into the khopesh. She hammered at the invisible shield with the blade but not even her power dented it. What sort of magic was this thing made of?

The slithering sound increased. She could hear hissing now, the combined sounds unnerving as they echoed off the walls. Out of the shadows of the chamber’s dimly lit southwest corner she saw glittering light fracturing off scales.

Gods. Kira tapped into her fear and rage, channeling the energy through her extrasense. She didn’t know if it would be enough to withstand the snake’s strike, but hopefully it would give her enough time to wrack her brain for spells to use against Apep.

You can defeat it,
a voice echoed inside her head, familiar yet foreign.
You have but to call on me, and I will give you the strength of my arm to stand against Apep.

Bile filled Kira’s gut, acid and ice coiling together as her vision wavered. Set speaking to her, the Lord of Chaos inside her head—inside her head!—almost unhinged her knees.

“No!” Kira put the sarcophagus between her and the snake. Not that it would do much good. She darted a look at the entryway, hoping that Khefar would find a way inside, and soon.

Join me. Embrace me, and my power will be yours. None will stand against you, Apep will hold no threat to you.

“No, no, no! I will never join you. Never! Stay out of my head!”

Then, face Apep and die.

Khefar readied the Dagger of Kheferatum. “I’m going in. Draw back to a safe distance. I don’t want any of you to get hit with the Dagger.”

“I think we can survive an accidental cut, sir, as long as you miss vital organs,” Jenkins said.

“I can knick you with this and that would be the end of it,” Khefar retorted. “You disintegrate. It’s not dying, so it won’t be painful. You’ll simply cease to exist.”