Strange and Ever After (33 page)

Stupid girl!

It crashed into me. I straightened, the curtain flickering and fading—but briefly granting me absolute clarity.

The Old Man, cane in hand and toothless mouth wide, roared at me,
By blood and moonlit sun, stupid girl! You cannot enter without the clappers. Only by blood and moonlit sun.

I stumbled back from the curtain. It flamed once, so brightly my eyes screwed shut. . . .

And they stayed shut, for with the disappearance of the curtain, my body fell into a deep and thoroughly dreamless sleep.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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I awoke, the Old Man’s words resounding in my skull. By blood and moonlit sun
. It was meaningless to me.

As I sat there staring at the ceiling, a hiccup caught in my throat. It was as if a taut line were slackening—whirling back into me.

I shot up in my bunk.

The falcon was returning. A day after I had raised it, the leash that bound us was drawing tight.

Scrambling from bed, I bolted to the cargo hold. Daniel’s crates were back inside, the hatch open. In moments my feet sank into the sand, and I ran toward the pyramid. The sun was in the western sky—midafternoon—and if Marcus took as long returning here as he had traveling south . . .

He would arrive in the middle of the night.

I found Joseph pacing beside the obelisk—back and forth along the sand, up the pyramid, down again, and eventually in circles. Daniel waved at me, crouched beside the outermost buried copper line. Jie stalked among our buried army.

“He’s . . . coming,” I said breathlessly when I reached Joseph’s side.

His lips pinched tight. He nodded once, and I could see him mentally counting the hours as I had done.

“What should I do?” I asked.

“What we have been doing.” He opened his hands. “Waiting. Restoring our strength. And praying.”

The day passed accordingly, with obsessive checking and rechecking of our traps. Then a meal. Then more checking and rechecking. But our ambush was as well laid as we could make it.

Three giant circles of copper wire were rigged to the pulse pistols, plus a final fourth line that would detonate the pulse bombs. My twenty-five rows of dogs before the obelisk and fifteen rows behind the pyramid were hidden and ready. They shimmered with dormant power, awaiting my command to reawaken.

And always, the falcon closed in.

Before the sun set, Daniel moved the balloon to a less obvious location farther in the ruins. He came shuffling back to us just as the moon started to rise. Joseph took up residence atop the pyramid, spyglass at his eye. Daniel, Jie, and I sat at the bottom—hand in hand. Then we all began our mind-numbing wait once more.

The moon slid by overhead. The stars twinkled. The breeze never stopped.

A
clack!
sounded from atop the pyramid. “He comes,” Joseph shouted. Then he skipped quickly down the stone steps.

For a split second my heart clenched so tight, I couldn’t breathe.

But then Jie pushed to her feet, cracked her knuckles, and said, “Hey, we aren’t dead yet.” And Daniel rose, his face tight but eyes bright.

Joseph dropped to the sand beside us. Beckoning a crooked finger at me, he strode toward the obelisk.

“Remember what I told you,” he said once we were out of the others’ hearing. “You take them and you leave.”

“Only if it’s the last option.”

He did not reply. He simply offered me the spyglass and said, “The Pullet is with them. And it is worse than I feared, Eleanor. It is a true monster of darkness, so you must prepare your army now.” Then he marched off to help Daniel.

Closing one eye, I lifted the spyglass . . . but Marcus was still so distant. His balloon was a mere white ball on the horizon with a snaking shadow below.

No,
not
a shadow.

My stomach lurched into my throat. I swayed back.

The long, winding shadow was the Black Pullet. Its wings gleamed—pure gold, as the Old Man had said. And the waves rippling alongside the Pullet were the mummified imperial guards.
Hundreds
of them.

“God save us,” I whispered. But no sound would come. My lungs ached with a feeling I barely recognized—as if they were trapped beneath a thousand stones. How many villages and farms had they trampled on their way north? How much waste had Marcus left in his path?
At least Saqqara is isolated,
I thought. But it held no comfort.

For I was afraid.

Truly
afraid.

I lowered the spyglass, clacked it shut against my chest, and thrust it into my pocket. Then, without thinking, my left hand reached for my other pocket—and my mind reached for Oliver.

But the ivory artifact was gone, and so was my demon.

And I
could
do this on my own.

So I withdrew my fingers, curling them into a vicious fist. And then I inhaled until my ribs bowed outward.

It was time to end this.

My heels dug into the sand as I picked up speed. Daniel flashed me a grim nod as I bolted past. . . .

But I barely noticed him. My attention was on my army now. They would topple beneath those imperial mummies, but at least they would be a distraction. As soon as I had crossed the final ring of copper lines, I began to draw in my power.

With each hot breath, I sucked in the magic. With each sliding step, I wrapped it around my heart.

I sprinted to the dogs, and when I sensed the skeletons beneath me, I slowed to a walk . . . then a careful creep. Bones rolled beneath my feet, and my magic throbbed in my chest.

At last, when I had reached the center of the dog graveyard, I stopped and opened my arms wide.

Dust billowed over me. Moonlight shone down. Then, with my left fingers flexed taut, I poured my magic from me. “Awake.”

As before, the magic sifted into individual sparks. Hundreds upon hundreds spiraled out to each and every skeleton. Then they stabbed in, nestling deep within the dog’s bones . . . and the strands of magic pulled tight. Over and over, my power gushed from my heart until every ancient hound was awake—and was
mine
.

Then, with a tired breath, I pushed back through the rows and jogged toward the pyramid—toward Jie. She waited at the obelisk, Joseph beside her. His face was unusually pale, his forehead pinched, but otherwise he looked ready.

Jie, on the other hand, fidgeted and swung something in her hand.

A sword.

“Take this,” she said, extending it to me.

My forehead bunched up. It was a dented, chipped thing as long as her arm and double-edged.

A laugh escaped my throat. “This was from Philadelphia. The ancient Roman sword you stole from the Centennial Exhibition.”

“Yeah.” She bared a tight grin. “It still works fine, even if it is a thousand years old. I’ve kept it in my luggage since Philadelphia.”

My left hand wrapped around the hilt. “But what will you fight with?”

She wiggled her fingers at me. “These will do fine. Here . . .” She moved to me and slid the sword behind my belt. It was stiff, but it was also accessible. Then she laid her hands on my shoulders. There was no missing the terror in her eyes.

“Be careful, Eleanor.”

“You too, Jie.”

She grunted her agreement and turned to Joseph. “I’m not much for prayer, but now seems like a good time, yeah?”

He nodded absently, his gaze locked on the southern horizon. As I set off toward the north side of the pyramid—toward the second dog graveyard—I heard him begin to chant beneath his breath. The words were Creole, but the message was clear:
Please let us survive this night.

I reached the base of the pyramid and wheeled around it—only to skitter to a stop. Daniel marched toward me, his bandolier in hand, though only two pistols remained. His jaw was set, his spine straight.

In two long strides, he closed the space between us, dropped the bandolier to the sand, and tugged me into a fierce embrace.

His lips were on mine. It was a desperate kiss—a kiss to end the world on—and I thought I might crumble beneath it . . . except that I fought against the tide of need, and I kissed him just as hard in return.

I clutched him to myself, digging my fingers into his back,
into his hair, biting and tasting until our lips were raw and I could not breathe.

Until Daniel broke away. His lip bled, his chest heaved. But his fingers stayed in my hair, and he touched his nose to mine. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Please survive this night. For me.”

I nodded. Then he brushed a final kiss over my lips, hefted his bandolier, and strode around the pyramid without looking back.

And I did not watch him go. I kicked back into a run, the sword banging against my leg as I raced toward our secondary army.

As I had done before, I navigated to the center, called in my power as I moved, then
released
it. “Awake, awake.”

In four thunderous heartbeats, the dogs awoke—and our army was complete. Now
I
simply had to get into position.

By the time I had ascended the pyramid, hunkering behind the top step and easing out the spyglass, the obelisk’s shadow had shifted—and Marcus’s balloon was fully in sight.

Holding my breath, I raised the spyglass to my eye.

The Black Pullet was undoubtedly worse than I had ever feared. It was no chicken, nor a cockatrice—nor any monster I had ever imagined. Such black scales seemed to absorb the light. And yet its wings were brilliant, blinding gold. It slithered over the sand on four talons, its snakelike form twice as long as the balloon’s shadow.

And on either side of it, droves of imperial mummies marched in perfectly uniform lines. Each of their steps was a bounding leap.

I wrenched my gaze up and honed in on the balloon. On Marcus’s face. He had a spyglass of his own, but he was focused on the obelisk. On Joseph standing beside it. And next to Marcus, her gaze also straight ahead, was Allison.

My blood curdled. Yet . . . Allison did not look like herself. Perhaps it was merely the shadows, but her face seemed withered. Skeletal even. And her posture was hunched, her arms clasped tight.

And the fleeting panic returned. Had she been compelled?

No,
my gut told me.
She chose this
.
Long ago, she chose this path.

I ducked behind the step, crouching out of sight. Daniel and Jie would be taking up their positions beside Joseph now, and there was nothing left for me to do . . . but wait.

And as Joseph had done only minutes ago, I prayed. I prayed to anyone or anything that would listen. The Annunaki, the jackal, the spirits of the dead—I begged for them to see us through the night.

But no warm, answering presence came to me. No reply or acknowledgment that a god listened or cared. And I suppose I hadn’t expected one.

Time trickled past, painfully slow. I heard every scrape of wind over the pyramid, every murmur of Jie’s voice, every spin of a pulse pistol chamber . . .

Until a steady thumping took over. Until rattling armor dominated all.

“Eleanor,” Joseph roared. “Get ready!”

I scuttled to the edge of the step and peeked around the corner, pressing the spyglass to my eye.

Marcus’s balloon floated closer, his army marching in their constant rows . . . and the Black Pullet sliding along like a cobra.

Then, five hundred paces away, the balloon stopped moving—and the mummies all froze. A rope heaved over the side of the balloon’s basket, and in a quick move, the Black Pullet snapped the rope in its fangs. Then it towed the balloon down, bit by bit, until Marcus was close enough to jump out and tie the rope to a boulder.

My gut heaved. The Pullet was not just a creature of wealth and immortality. It was also a servant able to do its master’s bidding.

Allison scrabbled from the basket next, but her body almost caved in when she hit the sand. Then, in aching movements, she hobbled around to face us. No shadows blanketed her face. Only pure moonlight.

My body went limp. The spyglass almost tumbled from my grasp.

Allison Wilcox was an old woman. Lines seamed her face, and white streaked through her hair.

The ivory fist
.

With that thought, the image of the desiccated Marquis formed in my mind. The ivory had sucked away his life.

And now it had sucked away another’s. Allison’s. And I did not think it had been her choice.

I tried to look away from her, but I couldn’t. No vengeful satisfaction moved through me. Only gaping horror.

I slid the spyglass back to Marcus. He was watching the obelisk, his eyes thinned. Suspicious. He was not a stupid man—he knew the Spirit-Hunters would not offer themselves up openly. Yet our traps were well laid, and he did not spot anything.

So with a dismissive arch of his eyebrow, he flicked his wrist toward the pyramid . . .

And half the mummies launched at us.

I shoved to my feet, pushing the spyglass deep into my pocket. Marcus’s eyes lit on me, and a slight mask of surprise settled over his features. But otherwise he let his mummies continue their charge. . . .