Under Wraps: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Werewolves vs. Mummies Book 1) (2 page)

“Have you changed your mind?” she asked. “Or are you going to wander around aimlessly in the desert for who knows how long before you realize you should have come with me? Then, when you’re a minute from death, I will find you. You will look upon me and ask for help, and do you know what I’ll say?”

I gritted my teeth together, forcing my rage down inside me. “What will you say?”

“I will say no,” she replied and the finality of it chilled me in my bones.

I ignored the sudden urge to throttle her and instead stared past her at the sand dunes. “Fine.”

“Fine what?” she asked, reaching out and grabbing my chin. She turned my head so that she was staring into my eyes. “Fine what, Thes?”

“Fine, I’ll help you if you help me find Khufu.” I replied, the words slipping over my tongue like sandpaper and glass.

“Good.” She poked me in the chest with one slender finger. Flames spread across my face as I realized I was naked. I was standing in front of Aziza completely naked. “Let’s get going. Every minute we delay allows the mummies to entrench themselves further in this world.”

I pushed her hand away and dropped my hands to cover myself. She raised an eyebrow at me, a sly smirk melting across her face. “Why are you embarrassed, Thes? I thought werewolves were used to being naked?”

I swallowed, turning away from her. “Most werewolves are used to being naked. I’m not super comfortable with it. Honestly, I don’t transform all that much,” I replied, looking away from her, trying to make my heart stop pounding so hard…

I mean, okay yeah I’m a werewolf, but that didn’t mean I wanted to walking around with all my bits showing.

“I can see thoughts dancing through across your face, flitting through your eyes like little fish.” Aziza smiled at me before turning away from me and walking toward the pyramid. “Come on, let’s get you some clothes, and don’t worry, I’ll walk in front of you.”

“Why didn’t you get me some clothes when you got yourself that dress?” I asked, trying to think of unsexy thoughts before I reacted in a really embarrassing way. When we’d last been in the tomb, she’d been, for lack of a better term, under wraps, shrouded in millennia old linen wrappings. Now her sheer blue cotton dress clung to her in a way I had to try very hard not to admire, even though it fell to her ankles and had long sleeves. In fact, now that I was looking closely at
it
, I realized most of her body was covered. So here I was, stark naked, and she was completely covered. That didn’t seem very fair.

“These
are
my wrappings. Now that I am awakened, they can transform into any clothing I’d like. When I was a young girl, I always wanted a dress just like this, but we couldn’t afford it.” She bit her lip, staring off into the distance and saying no more.

“Well, I think you look very nice,” I said, glad she wasn’t looking at me because I was pretty sure I turned an even darker shade of red.

“Oh?” she asked, glancing at me over her shoulder, and I thought my brain would explode.

“Keep your eyes forward missy.”

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” she asked, looking me up and down, and I felt fire burst across my cheeks and ripple down my neck. “I’m really not trying to do that…”

“Yeah, a little, but it’s not your fault,” I lied. The truth was, I didn’t really want her looking at me naked. Part of it was that generic, I don’t like to be naked in front of random people even if they are really hot Egyptian princesses, for well, obvious reasons.

The other part? Well, I’m not exactly the type of guy girls like to date. I was known as the hookup guy back in school, and not because I was some sort of playboy. Maybe it was because I was six and a half feet tall, played football non-stop, and had really rich parents, but for whatever reason, I was the guy girls liked to ‘hook up’ with, but not date. No. Never date… Since my sophomore year, I had been the guy girls would line up around school to go to Homecoming with, but go to a classic movie on Saturday afternoon or a picnic at the park? Not so much.

I sighed and glanced at her again. Nope, I was not going down that road. Sooner or later, I was going to find Connor’s soul and bring it back home. I didn’t want to make that any harder than it had to be. Besides, what kind of guy would I be if I fell in love the first ten seconds into meeting someone?

“I think these tracks lead north,” she said, dropping to her knees in the sand in front of me and running her hand over what looked like half a footprint. Her hand began to glow with strange lavender light, and her eyes went a little unfocused as she stared into the distance. All at once, footsteps lit up across the dunes. “Come on, the trail won’t last long,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me along. “Maybe we can get this one before she regains too much power.”

“What about my clothes?” I grumbled, stumbling along behind her in the super-heated sand. She glanced at me, eyes sweeping over my body as she bit her lip, dark thoughts flashing through her eyes.

“You’ll be fine. Besides, you’d just destroy them the second we find the mummy, anyway.” With that, she turned back toward the trail of iridescent footprints.

“But I’m naked. There’s no way I’m going to fight a mummy naked. It’s just not going to happen.”

“Look. Can you just man up or something? I need you to help me with the escaped mummies. We don’t have a lot of time.” She glared at me over her shoulder, amethyst eyes narrowed into slits. “We can get you some clothes later. Besides, we both know you’ll need to transform in order to fight them. That will destroy your clothing.”

“I don’t care.” I replied as my stomach tightened. She was right, after all. Most clothing, unless it was magically treated, would be destroyed if I shifted. When I didn’t say more, she huffed again and shook her head.

“Boys,” she murmured. “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t get ‘em to fight mummies…”

Chapter 3

“How do you even fight a mummy?” I asked as we stood in front of a massive cave. Its mouth yawned open like the maw of a great beast as it extended downward into the butter-yellow earth. It was a little weird because I didn’t even know Egypt had caves. I’d been pretty sure it was all sand with a river running through it. Maybe a palm tree? “Like, let’s say we find the mummy, and we want to recapture him. What’s the plan, exactly?”

Aziza glanced at me, eyes narrowed into slits so all I saw were compressed slivers of purple. “So you finally ask a useful question?” she huffed. “It’s about time you got on board with this.”

She was mad at me. I’ll admit I probably could have bitched a little less, but I’d really wanted some clothing. I still couldn’t believe that she expected me to go monster hunting naked. Who does that? Savages? I mean, okay even if my clothing was destroyed when I shifted, that didn’t mean I wanted to tromp through the desert in my birthday suit. It wasn’t like I was going to be in wolf form the
whole
time.

Thankfully, she’d managed to scrounge up some clothing for me from one of the slave camps on the way. It was scratchy and didn’t fit very well, but it was better than tromping across the dunes in my birthday suit.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, trying to sound as happy as possible. “I’m not exactly a ghost buster, so unless you have one of those traps and a proton pack, I’m not sure what to do…”

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Aziza said, reaching up and tapping the amethyst scarab around her neck. “All mummies have a necklace like this. It’s what keeps us animated. Destroy it and our wrappings will cinch down on us and render us immobile.”

“That seems a little… easy?” I offered. “Are you sure there’s not something you aren’t telling me?”

“It is a little more complicated, but basically, no. That’s it. Break the pendant, and they’ll fall back asleep.” She smiled at me for the first time in a while, and the sight of it made my heart forget how to beat in my chest. “It’s, as your people would say, ‘not rocket science.’”

“Okay smarty pants, what do we do with sleeping mummies? Let them lie?” I asked, smirking at my own joke. You know because I was a werewolf.

“I’ll summon a sarcophagus from the Duat and imprison them. Trust me, once you get the pendant, I’ll take it from there. Now let’s go.” She pointed into the cave, and a tiny shiver shook her. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been watching her very closely.

“So I fight the raging mummy, and when I’m done, you bag ‘em and tag ‘em?” I asked, stepping in front of her and staring down into the cave. It smelled like damp sewer, but beneath that there was a faint odor of flowers. Jasmine, maybe?

I stepped down into the cave, and the air breathed over me in a warm wave. Every step was like treading deeper into the maw of some great beast. Hell, if I hadn’t actually been to Tartarus before, I’d say it probably felt like that. The cool, golden stone glistened all around me. Bits of water collected along the roof and dripped down to form multi-hued stalactites that seemed to grow as I descended. I shivered, trying to dismiss the notion that fangs were distending all around me.

“Yep, definitely the mouth of some giant monster,” I murmured to myself.

Aziza nodded next to me, her face a dim outline in the darkness of the cave. Even with my extra-ordinary vision it was hard to see. Then again, I hadn’t changed. If I did, I’d probably be able to see just fine. Still, I didn’t like changing. I knew some other wolves that spent the majority of their time in fighting form, you know half-man, half-wolf, and more still, who liked full on four-pawed wolf form.

Me? I preferred to be human. There was just something about changing I’d never liked. Maybe it was the bloodlust, or the lack of control, but every time I changed, I felt more like an animal and less like a person. I could definitely see why some people enjoyed it. You became strong, fast, and pretty much invincible, but it had a cost. Change too much and you might start taking on characteristics that wouldn’t exactly do well in day to day society.

I’d known a guy once who had gone pretty much feral and wound up raiding a convenience store and eating everyone inside. Guys like him were the reason to play it cool. Besides, no one wanted a hunter after them. Especially me. Still, here in the bowels of some Egyptian cave, I was half-tempted to change just to make myself feel better. A little supernatural chutzpah could be just the thing to make the tremors stop ricocheting down my spine.

I pushed down the thought. I should transform, I knew that, but I needed to fight the urge. I couldn’t let myself change if I didn’t absolutely need to do it. If I gave in every single time I was a little scared, I’d be calling upon my wolf a lot over this little adventure. While that wasn’t bad, per se, it was a slippery slope to always being in wolf form. That was not a road I wanted to travel down if I could help it.

I rubbed my clammy hands together, glancing around the cave, and wishing I could see just a little better. Already the entrance had faded to a small pinprick of light behind us. If we didn’t find the mummy soon, I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be able to see anything. The prospect of encountering a shambling mummy in total darkness wasn’t exactly appealing.

“So…” I whispered, trying not to be loud enough to be heard by anyone other than Aziza. “I don’t suppose you have a flashlight or something?”

She shook her head. “That’d give our location away,” she replied.

“How do you even know what a flashlight is?” I asked as I stepped in something sticky and my stomach lurched. “Or what rocket science is?”

I looked down, trying to wipe my toes off on the sand, but whatever goop I’d stepped on stuck to me with gooey tenacity. Awesome.

“I’m not sure.” She shrugged, fingers touching her pendant. “I know lots of things I probably shouldn’t.”

Something just beyond her moved. I wasn’t sure how I could tell, but the shadows twitched. My heart began to pound in my chest, and my hands clenched themselves into fists. I stared at the spot, trying to tell myself I was just seeing things, that my mind was playing tricks on me.

“What?” she asked, looking at me, wide-eyed. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “I thought I saw something.”

“You thought you saw something?” she asked, and the words sort of caught on her teeth and spun out into the space between us.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. The shadow hadn’t moved, and though everything inside of me told me to run the hell out of the cave, I started walking toward it anyway. It wasn’t like it was far away. The whole cave was only a few meters wide. As I approached, a strange smell hit my nose. It was still flowers, but they were almost sickly sweet, like rotting fruit.

Something struck me in the back of the head. I toppled forward, my already obscured vision going even darker around the edges. I hit the ground hard on my hands and knees as fingers tore into the flesh of my right bicep. I tried to move, tried to fight off my attacker, but the next thing I knew, I was flying sideways through the air.

I smashed into the cave wall. My breath whooshed out of me as I slid brokenly to the floor. I lay there, unable to do more than wheeze. Aziza’s face lit up in the distance, her scarab pendant glowing bright enough to fill the cave with lavender light.

In front of me stood a woman with long ebony hair and skin the color of charcoal. She was wearing a skintight dress of solid gold that fell to her ankles. Her back was to me, but even from here, I could see blood dripping down her fingers so they looked like gory claws. She wasn’t watching me anymore, her head craned toward Aziza.

I sucked in a breath that tasted like pennies and gritted my teeth together. I was going to get up and help… any second now.

“Jailer,” the woman said in a rich and sultry voice that melted over me like warm chocolate. “Why have you come for me?” She took a step forward, her dress glittering like a golden disco ball as she moved, all sashaying hips and firelight. “Surely there is someone else you can go bother?”

Aziza’s face clammed up, going stony and unreadable as she wrapped her hand around her pendant. “Nas,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You should come quietly.”