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“Sorry!” Lantern Boy yelled from behind me as we started up.
He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded hyper, as if whatever passed for an adrenaline system in vamps had hit overload, enough to short out his good sense, fully extend his fangs, and probably tent the front of his robes if I could see them, which thankfully I could not. But it was indisputable that I had a hopped-up teenager determined to prove himself to his possibly dead boss, and for some reason, I was taking orders from him.
I wasn’t sure which of us was crazier.
But I didn’t know the layout down here, so I just kept going. When a spurt of pure acid hit the wall beside me, melting ancient stones into goo, I kept going. When the ceiling started to collapse, sending huge rocks tumbling down at us, some bigger than we were, I swerved and kept going. When Lantern Boy shoved a hand in my jacket, and sent every charm I had left tumbling down what remained of the stairs, including one that transformed into a cute little Citroen that I’d never even had a chance to drive, I Kept. Fucking. Going.
I heard the car crumple between the too-narrow walls behind us when it expanded to its full size, and wedge itself there like a barricade. One that lasted about a second when hit by twenty tons of godly fury. I heard the brain altering sound of an entire car getting crushed like a soda can behind us as we burst out into a suspiciously well-lit tunnel. And then—
“Left!”
“You asshole!” I yelled, because sure enough, the damned kid had brought us right back where we’d started.
Well, almost. We were on the other side of the great hall now, where a Louis-Cesare shaped hole was to be seen on our right, in the midst of a field of golden spikes. There were crumbled pillars and piles of rock everywhere, shambling zombies in the shadows, and vampires, beaten and bloody, but back on their feet, why I didn’t know.
And then I did, along with why Lantern Boy had suddenly gotten so perky.
The boss was back.
When I’d first seen Hassani at our consul’s court, I’d thought him fairly menacing, and not just because of his looks. He’d had an air about him, not of danger exactly, but of something. He had been completely believable as a thousand-year-old assassin and the head of a group of equally badass characters.
Which was why I’d been surprised when Louis-Cesare and I arrived in Egypt and met a mostly gracious, scholarly type with ink stained fingers and rosy cheeks above his carefully tended beard. He’d reminded me of a cross between a younger version of Santa Claus and a medieval monk. It had been . . . disappointing.
I wasn’t disappointed now.
Now he looked more like Gandalf, only not the kindly, firework-wielding version. But Gandalf the White, come back from the brink of death to kick butt and take names, and he was all done taking names. But not of thundering one from the top of the stairs, his
arms raised like Moses, if Moses had wielded a sword in either hand.
“Sokkwi you were, and Sokkwi you are, and ever shall be, no matter how many times you return. But you will not return again, Little Fool. Today will see your end.”
He didn’t even raise his voice, not that he needed to with those acoustics. And yet I was shivering. And skidding around, throwing an absolute wave of sparks into the air from a fender sliding across rock, which the tide of vamps rushing at me didn’t even flinch away from.
I guess fear was relative, and nothing looked intimidating next to what was chasing me.
So, I didn’t understand why, instead of running to back up the boss, they grabbed me and started dragging me back. “That thing will kill him,” I said, fighting. “Don’t you get it? It will kill him!”
“No, it won’t,” Louis-Cesare said, pulling me back, pulling me away. Leaving the tiny looking man in the burnt and filthy robes, standing all alone at the top of the massive staircase.
But not for long.
The wall I’d just driven through exploded, sending huge stones tumbling over the floor, each as big as a small house. Fortunately, we’d retreated out of the way, into the shadow of a lion headed goddess whose name I couldn’t remember. Right now, I could barely remember my own.
Because the giant shadow of the great beast had just fallen over the stairs, blocking out the light, leaving Hassani all alone in the darkness.
“We have to help him,” I whispered.
But Zakarriyyah was shaking his head. “He has all the help he needs,” he said softly.
I had no idea what he meant. There was nobody else here. And, worse, the trip through the crypts hadn’t put a mark on the creature. That armor-like hide was a little dustier, but if it had picked up so much as a scratch, I didn’t see it.
How did you fight something like that? How did you even start? If massive boulders hadn’t hurt it, I doubted any weapon we had was going to do any better. Not that I had any left in the first place—
And then the snake started talking, and I forgot to care. I forgot everything except the words echoing and echoing—inside my mind.
It was like a thousand voices speaking at once, each in a different language. But the English words were louder, or maybe they were just louder to me. So loud they hurt, like nails scraping the inside of my brain.
Until Louis-Cesare’s arms tightened, and the screaming became softer. More like a shout in the ear instead of a megaphone. Not pleasant, but bearable.
