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“Are you volunteering?”
He raised his eyebrows at my snappy tone, and I took another drink, ignoring him. Yeah, so I wasn’t feeling my best. When Zayn had said he’d organised a private jet to land at the airport near the Abydos site, and there would be a car waiting for us, I hadn’t expected a Jeep that would only take us part of the way. Apparently Coulton had quite the gain on us, but Zayn didn’t want him to know that we were coming, so we travelled on foot through the valleys and up into the mountains where the gates were. I just thanked the gods I’d picked a pair of hiking boots over my normal loafers, because the suit and tie had proved to be the wrong choices. The tie was now in my trouser pocket, and I’d stuffed my jacket in my rucksack under the books where it was probably being crushed to death. I’d rolled my sleeves up and was considering rolling my trousers up too, though to be honest, with my pale skin, I’d probably burn in a heartbeat.
I glanced around at the other guys with only the tiniest bit of jealousy. They had apparently all got the desert combat memo and were dressed in beige shirts and cargo pants, as well as desert boots. Their packs carried much more useful things such as water canteens, food, and sunblock. I didn’t like walking into a situation unprepared though, and I regarded my books and notes at the same level of importance that Zayn held for the bag of guns and knives and goddess knew what else he carried.
I took another quick drink and passed the canteen back to Jasper. He wasn’t exactly the soldier type either, but he hadn’t even broken a sweat in the intense heat, looking like his normal cool, unruffled self. Bastard. I just hoped I’d get the chance to tidy myself up a bit before Tory and West rejoined us.
I lay back on the hard ground, gazing up into the brilliant blue sky, and remembered the way she’d wrapped her arms around my waist, pulling me in for a kiss before we’d got on separate planes. She’d told me to be careful and not to do anything dangerous. Part of me resented the fact I’d never be as useful to her as her warrior priests, but part of me felt a swell of joy at the thought that she was worried about me. We hadn’t had a lot of chances to get close in the last couple of weeks, but I had every intention of remedying that once I got home. I closed my eyes, imagining her sitting on the desk in my office, her golden legs spread wide for me as she leaned back and moaned my name as I...
“Hey, this is a brief rest, not nap time!” Jack nudged me with his foot, and I opened my eyes again and squinted up at him.
“I wasn’t sleeping. Some of us don’t have the physical endurance of GI Jane, you know.”
“I think you mean GI Joe,” Jasper commented, and I threw a small rock at his head. His hand flashed out with his feline reflexes, and it bounced harmlessly off his palm.
“Show off,” I muttered.
“Come on, we’ve still got a way to go, and the sun is getting low,” Zayn said, glancing towards the horizon.
“We’ll get there in the dark?” I asked in surprise.
Zayn nodded. “Sound will carry easier, but we’ll have the shadows to cover us, and I’m thinking we’ll shift and go in that way. We can leave our supplies somewhere close by, but we’ll find it much easier to get close to them, and they’ll find our lion forms much harder to hit than our human ones. We’ll do an assessment, then if guns would be the better alternative, we’ll double back and grab them.”
I nodded along with Jack and Jasper, even though I had no idea if it was a good plan or not. To be honest, I much preferred the idea of being in my feline form. Although I was still not up to the physical attributes of the others as a lion, I was still a hell of a lot stronger and faster in that form than this one, as I proved many times. It niggled me. I wouldn’t have access to my research if I needed it quickly though. I ran my hands through my hair, smoothing it back out of the way, and took Jack’s hand as he offered it, jerking me up onto my feet. He reached down past me and grabbed my rucksack, shoving his arms through the straps and heaving it onto his own back. He winked at me and chucked me his own rucksack, which was considerably lighter than my own, though still a decent weight.
“Right, let’s move out,” Zayn called, and we set off again, winding our way deeper into the dusty, baked mountains.
Zayn had been right. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the stars were starting to appear in the deep blue sky as we neared the position we had pinpointed as the most likely location for the gates. One would think as priests of an Egyptian goddess, we’d know exactly where the gates of the underworld were and how to open and close them, but neither Bastet or Sekhmet were goddesses of death, no matter how many enemies Sekhmet had brought death to over the millennia. Her only travels in the underworld had been with her father, and the rest of us had never been. I couldn’t speak for the rest of them, but I was feeling pretty on edge by the time we reached the curve in the valley and Zayn called a halt.
“We’re maybe a kilometre away,” he said, glancing at the GPS on his glowing phone screen. “Let’s find somewhere to stash our supplies, then Jack and I will do a bit of recon and we’ll go from there.”
We found a pile of large boulders with space below to hide our rucksacks. Zayn and Jack stripped down, adding their clothes to the pile, and then shifted. Their paws were silent on the rocks as they slipped away in the growing darkness, climbing the side of the valley to give them a better view of the enemy. Jasper and I sat under the cover of the rocks, tucking into some energy bars and quietly discussing a couple of the rituals in my notes. Although he hadn’t any working knowledge of death magic, he knew a bit of the theory, and I made a couple of extra notes and corrections.
It didn’t seem like much time had passed before Jack and Zayn appeared out of the darkness, shifting back into human forms as they moved towards us. They pulled on their cargo trousers and sat down on the ground. Their faces were grim, and I had a strong feeling we weren’t going to like what they had to say. I passed them a couple of energy bars, and they ripped into them.
“So,” Zayn began, pausing to swallow. “There’s good news and bad news.”
“Good news?” I asked.
“Coulton hasn’t opened the gates yet. He and some of the Golden Dawn priests seem to be preparing some kind of ritual, and the gods are all there...” Zayn stared off into the shadows for a moment.
“What?” Jasper prompted.
“It’s nothing. They are just... sitting there... staring,” Jack replied with a shudder.
Jasper frowned. “Hattie too?”
Jack nodded.
“He’s clearly controlling them somehow,” Jasper mused. “I just wish I knew how, unless... maybe some kind of amulet. Were they wearing anything like that?”
Zayn shook his head. “We didn’t get close enough to see that much detail.”
“What’s the bad news?” I asked as Jasper pulled out one of my books and started flicking through it.
“Coulton has Golden Dawn members with him,” Zayn answered.
Jasper looked up. “Collateral damage. Have you forgotten what they tried to do to Tory?”
