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I walked over to him, and together we looked into the large outer portion of the urn. It appeared empty. Hands shaking, I reached inside, pressing my fingers gingerly against the smooth bottom of it, refusing to believe that the vessel was as hollow as it appeared. Gunner watched me, barely breathing, as if afraid that one wrong move would doom us and our chances of finding what we sought.
I pressed down, and with the soft scrape of ceramic, the bottom plate shifted.
“It’s a false bottom,” I breathed.
Gunner didn’t waste any time, grabbing me by the hips and gently moving me aside. I wanted to protest that I had made the discovery so I should be the one to break the bottom open, but we’d already agreed that he would handle the effigy on the off-chance that there were adverse effects from touching it. I settled for watching as he wedged his fingers against the false bottom, pushing harder and harder until it finally snapped in two. He took the two halves of the broken ceramic disk out of the vessel and laid them on the desk next to the real urn.
Gunner inhaled slowly, as if amping himself up, shaking his hands out. It was the first time I'd seen real nervousness in him, and had we not been in the situation we were in, it would have been endearing.
Slowly, as if picking up a baby from a cradle, Gunner lowered his arms into the vessel and pulled out a linen wrapped object, just a little over a foot long. There was a ringing in my ears, as though this was some monumental moment in time that I’d never experience again. But also, the pulsing sense of wrongness that I felt from the moment we pulled in intensified tenfold.
“Unwrap it,” I whispered. “We have to make sure.”
Gunner’s jaw worked as he looked the wrapped lump over. “I don’t know why, but I really get the feeling I shouldn’t.”
“Wehaveto make sure.”
He knew I was right, his face becoming grim as he unwrapped the thing slowly, the small piece of fabric covering it unraveling more and more.
Finally, the object was laid bare. From the moment he pulled it out of the vessel, we both knew it was the Anubis effigy, but didn’t dare to believe it until it was right before our eyes. Gunner held it both carefully and with disdain, as if he didn’t want to be touching it, the fabric still separating his skin from the basalt itself. It was smaller than I thought it would be, for something that had caused so much grief, but it was undeniably beautiful. The gunmetal gray of the stone was nearly black, cut through with veins of brilliant gold. Just like in the pictures, it had the body of a man and the head of a jackal, the face stoic and frightening, with the arms crossed and the hands holding a crook in one and a flail in the other. There was no doubt that this was Akhenaten’s Anubis effigy.
“Gunner. That’s it. That’s really it, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, sweetheart, it is,” he trailed off, turning the thing from side to side.
I came closer, wanting a better look. “What do we do now?”
Gunner seemed to not hear me at first, but when I repeated myself he shook his head as if clearing it. “What? Sorry. I guess I call that asshole Shadow and then it’s over.”
“It’s surreal.” I bent down to see better, and Gunner stiffened. I touched his arm, and he was completely tense. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I think—”
We both froze at a sound coming from the main portion of the house, like someone stumbling around in the dark.
“Get behind me,” Gunner demanded, but before I could follow his orders, a silhouette appeared in the doorway, gaunt and tall.
The man was pale, his skin and the whites of his eyes jaundiced. He was older than Gunner, with his dirty blond hair limp and oily where it hung around his face. The clothes he was wearing look like they’d seen better days. He had a handgun gripped in one hand and held the other hand out almost nervously in front of him, as if having trouble seeing.
This was the first time I’d been in the line of fire, and I was terrified, but I couldn’t let it show, not with Gunner cradling our way out of this mess in his arms. He had promised that there would be no more hunters, so why was this guy here?
My question was quickly answered when Gunner said, in a surprisingly even tone, “Geoff. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’ve been guided here. In dreams.” Gunner’s brother-in-law gave us a shaky, manic smile. “I knew you were going to steal it. From the moment I told you the truth, I knew. You’ve always been jealous of what I could give your sister, Gunner, while you clawed your way up out of obscurity with your sad little security company. Everyone knows you’ve only been successful because you hire a bunch of goons just like yourself.”
“What is the point of asking me for help if you’re just going to go off the deep end?” Gunner interrogated. “You’re losing it, man. Just put the gun down and we’ll talk this over.”
Geoff shook his head, greasy hair flying. “No. NO. I’m not going to let you take it. Anubis has promised me that if I return his effigy then I will be blessed with good fortune for the rest of my life and beyond. Give it to me NOW, Gunner.”
“You know I can’t do that,” he said, a touch of sympathy in his voice. “Not if I’m going to protect Nellie and the kids.”
“Oh, is that who you’re worried about?” he sneered. “Because I’ve heard that you’ve been spending some quality time with Trevor’s fiancé. You’ve put more effort into protecting her than you ever did Nellie and me!”
“You’re a grown man, Geoff. Protect yourself!”
“Bullshit!” he spat out, enraged now, before he spun to look at me, pointing a finger. “And you! Do you know how much work Trevor put into making you the perfect kept woman? All you had to do was stay home, and we could have been golden, but no. You kept pushing the envelope, andmanipulatinghim, until he felt too guilty to follow through. If you could have justlistened,they would have never found him.”
The accusation should have hurt, but coming from this shambling, disgusting man, it just …didn’t. Trevor and his confidants didn’t have any hold over me anymore, I realized, but that personal growth would be for nothing if I ended up shot. Panicking was the easiest thing for me to do, but when I looked over at Gunner, one arm occupied holding the statue and the other resting on his holstered gun, I knew I had to do something different. Something that would help.
