DON’T MISS THE FIRST FIVE AND A HALF BOOKS OF THE IRON DRUID CHRONICLES BY KEVIN HEARNE

Hounded

Hexed

Hammered

Tricked

Trapped

Two Ravens and One Crow: An Iron Druid Novella

Grimoire of the Lamb is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey eBook Original

Copyright © 2013 by Kevin Hearne

Excerpt from Hunted by Kevin Hearne copyright © 2013 by Kevin Hearne

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America by Del Rey, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY and the Del Rey colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-54829-0

www.delreybooks.com

v3.1

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

First Page

Excerpt from Hunted

About the Author

People today think ancient Egypt was ineffably cool. I blame this misconception on hieroglyphics and (to a lesser extent) on the Bangles.

The truth is that the ancient Egyptians regarded most people as chattel for the ruling class and practiced some of the blackest magic history has ever seen—or, rather, hasn’t seen, because they were deadly serious about keeping their secrets. But they wrote such happy tomes as The Book of the Dead and illustrated joyful kids’ books like Little Scarab Shat Blood and Anubis Eats the Hearts of the Disobedient. I’m not kidding; I saw them before the Library of Alexandria was ruined by Emperor Aurelian.

I saw plenty at Alexandria in its heyday. In fact, I saw quite a few things I never should have seen, which is why I now avoid the country when I can. My logic, if it could be called that, suggests that if I never think about the country again, the old deities of Egypt will forget that I once snaffled their sex rituals and necromantic tomes. Calls from Cairo, therefore, automatically excite more than their fair share of suspicion. When I picked up the phone in my shop and the voice in my ear identified himself as “Nkosi Elkhashab from Egypt,” I toyed briefly with the idea of hanging up before he could even state his business.

The problem was this: Long ago—in what I suppose I must now call my “youth,” even though I was already a couple of hundred years old at the time—I raided an extremely restricted section at Alexandria. It was at the behest of Ogma, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, so to please that particular god I wound up vexing several others in the Egyptian pantheon. Not so much that they would take the trouble to hunt me down, but neither am I precisely welcome in their territory anymore. Bast, in particular, has several bones to pick with me, aside from the fact that I’m not a cat person. I have a book of hers—or, rather, a book that belonged to her cult—that contains some fairly lurid descriptions of her “mysteries.” It is physical evidence of the old saying that there is more than one way to skin a cat: The parchment itself is made of catskin—a fine quality bordering on vellum—and the cover is a thicker, tanned catskin leather to protect the contents from minor water damage. I’d thwarted a couple of attempts by her agents to steal it back or assassinate me, but I could also say the same for most of my Egyptian collection. Almost all of it had been cursed or enchanted in some fashion and had given me more trouble than it was worth. I held on to it now just to be stubborn, to say “Neener neener!” to all those ancient mages and gods who thought they could scare a Druid into giving away his hard-earned (if ill-gotten) library. I tended to hoard magical tomes the way dragons hoarded treasure—and protected them with the same ferocity.

Mr. Elkhashab, however, wanted what amounted to a cookbook. “If you are the rare-book dealer Atticus O’Sullivan …?”

“I am.”

“Then I am told you have a collection of extremely rare works from Egypt,” he said, his voice rich with the lilt of an Arabic accent. I could easily speak Arabic with him, but it was better for now to let him assume I was an American and, therefore, statistically speaking, limited to English and two years of another language in high school.

“Are you from the Ministry of Antiquities?” I asked. These days, admitting you had old stuff from Egypt would earn you a visit from men with mirrored sunglasses.

“No, Mr. O’Sullivan,” he chuckled in surprise. “My relationship with them is rather strained. In any case, I doubt they even know of the existence of the particular work I’m looking for. Nor are they likely to care, since it has nothing to do with the pharaohs. It’s simply a book written in Coptic, either first or perhaps second century, and it contains a collection of recipes for cooking lamb. Might you have anything remotely resembling such a book?”

I did indeed. Privately I called it the Grimoire of the Lamb, because it was otherwise untitled. It had somehow been shelved incongruously amongst some darker works at Alexandria—including Bast’s catskin collection of sexercises, which I now called Nice Kitty! This was the first time anyone had ever asked about the grimoire, however. The number of people who could speak Coptic today, including myself, was probably only a few hundred. I’d kept the book as a curiosity, but this man’s inquiry raised a whole new line of questioning.

“I might,” I said, and fished for more information. “Can you give me any more clues about what this might look like?”

“I have never seen it or read any descriptions of its physical appearance. But it was thought to have been in the Library of Alexandria at one time.”

Affecting my best clueless-American tone, I said, “Didn’t that burn down?”

“Yes, but the book I seek was removed prior to that.”

“It’s pretty old, then. Papyrus or parchment?”

“Parchment of unusual quality.” He’d nailed it. What was his source?

“It’s probably severely degraded by now; might be unreadable. Would that be a deal-breaker for you?”

“No, not at all, sir,” he said.

I walked out from behind the tea station to the rare-book case on the north wall of my shop; the sale of something like this could ensure a profit for the year and maybe the next one as well, recession or no. Not that I couldn’t afford to take a loss. The sale of rare books and antiquities was just one of many get-rich-slow schemes I’d come up with throughout my very long life. The slow part was living until pop culture aged long enough to take on the luster of dignity and the physical product deteriorated to the point where it could whisper of a halcyon epoch before the buyer’s time.

My rare books were heavily secured for both the mundane and the magical world. I didn’t need to unlock the bindings and disable the wards just to check on the grimoire—I could look through the bulletproof glass. It was still there, sitting amongst my Egyptian goodies.

“All right, I have it. Thirteen recipes for lamb.”

“Excellent!” The excitement in his voice carried across the Atlantic very well. “How much? I can wire you the money immediately.”

“No, you’ll need to purchase it in person.”

A pause on the other end of the line. “Can you not ship internationally?”

“I can, but I won’t. This is a magical text. I don’t trust them to the mail.”

“Magical? It is an ancient cookbook.”

I couldn’t believe he was trying to play dumb now. I had that market cornered. “Mr. Elkhashab. Where did you hear of this book and where did you hear that I might have it?”

“Your store is world famous for antiquities,” he said, not answering either question. “I’m simply contacting as many rare-book dealers as I can.” I gave up trying to be patient. Normal customers don’t look for ancient Coptic texts that should have been burned long ago.

“Please do not insult my intelligence. Earlier you said you had heard that I might have it. So you were either lying then or you are lying now. I do not need to sell this book, Mr. Elkhashab. I am quite content to keep it, because I think we both know it is the only copy in existence. If you wish to purchase it, you will need to make a trip to the United States and negotiate with me in person. I will not deal with representatives, lawyers, or even familiars.”

He didn’t splutter or feign ignorance of familiars. He merely said in a stiff voice, “It will take me some time to get there.”

“I’ll be here,” I said, and then added, “Most likely,” since I didn’t know what kind of time he was talking about.

“Then I will see you soon,” he said, and hung up. I promptly forgot about him and prepared a blend of Creativi-Tea, since I had some fantasy role-players coming in for their weekly dungeon crawl, and the DM always wanted a little something extra to keep him on top of his players. It was similar to Mental Acui-Tea, which was my most popular blend around midterms and finals. During those weeks, students from Arizona State would file into Third Eye Books and Herbs and buy plenty of sachets to get them through the week—their rationale being that one week of real studying would make up for a semester spent staring at the bottom of a red plastic kegger cup instead of their books. Word of my “sick tea”—where sick had somehow been transmogrified into a positive adjective rather than an indicator of disease—had spread throughout the Greek societies after it helped one frat member pass his finals. This testimonial, along with some others, had given my shop the nickname of “Sick Hippie’s” amongst the wasted dude crowd, as in, “Bro, I need to pass or I’ll be cut off from my trust fundage. Let’s go get some tea at Sick Hippie’s.”

For the record: I am not a hippie. But I guess in today’s world a knowledge of herbs and a counterculture vibe was enough to earn me the label.

I happily lost myself in the daily needs of the shop and thought nothing more of the Egyptian, until he walked in a week later.

When he crossed my threshold, I knew immediately, because the wards on my shop warned me that a magic user had entered my personal space. That’s about all they did, though; I hadn’t set up anything to shut down Egyptian magic systems—the odds of having to deal with that in Arizona were pretty slim.

He was a middle-aged man with a lengthy but well-groomed beard; it was forked and fell below his sternum. He had wrapped the “tines” of the fork in strips of leather, allowing a puff of hair to explode out the ends. An unabashed unibrow protected deep-set eyes, which flicked about nervously. His hair was hidden underneath a rounded white brimless hat halfway between a skull cap and a fez, the sort commonly seen in North Africa. His kaftan and pants were similarly white, though the kaftan was embroidered with gold thread around the neck and the buttons in the center, and also around the edges of his sleeves. It was a look, in other words, that suggested he was a devout Muslim. I suspected that was a convenient disguise for him, though, or he wouldn’t be tripping my alarms as a magic user.

After a quick scan of the shop, during which he determined that I was the only employee currently working, he looked disappointed and approached me at the tea station. “Pardon me,” he said in his accented English. “But I am looking for Mr. O’Sullivan.”

“That’s me.” A twitch of the unibrow indicated his surprise. I look like I’m twenty-one and far too young to be an expert on anything, much less rare books. But he recovered quickly.

“Excellent! I am Nkosi Elkhashab. We spoke on the phone about the Coptic book full of lamb recipes.”

“Ah, yes, I remember,” I said. “I assume you wish to see it.”

“Yes. If it is indeed the book I seek, I hope we can come to some profitable agreement.” He was all smiles and charm.

“I’ll be happy to show it to you,” I said, “but after lunch.” His face fell. “The book is not currently on-site,” I lied, “but in a secure location. If you come back this afternoon, I will have it ready. Enjoy Tempe, in the meantime. Mill Avenue has many diverting places to shop and eat.”

The unibrow dipped in the middle, signaling his displeasure, but it smoothed out as he realized that anger would do him no good under the circumstances.

He nodded curtly and said, “Until this afternoon, then.”

I nodded back. “See you.” I watched him leave and then picked up the phone to call one of my attorneys, Hal Hauk. As a lawyer, he had his hands in more than a few kinds of pies. As a werewolf, he had his paws in some additional pies made with supernatural ingredients. Some of them were shady. Seedy, even.

“Hey, Hal. It’s Atticus. Need everything you can dig up on a character calling himself Nkosi Elkhashab out of Egypt.… As soon as possible.… Yep.”

Hal would hire a private investigator and they’d do what they could from this end, then they’d hire someone in Cairo to find out more. In the meantime, I had my own methods of finding out the truth, and that’s why I needed some time before I sat the grimoire down in front of this guy. He couldn’t be simply a gourmet out to find a gastronomic miracle. Modern recipes for lamb have come a long way. Look at what those guys on the cooking shows can do with mint jellies and mango chutneys.

I closed up the shop a few minutes before noon and hopped on my bicycle for the short ride home to the Mitchell Park neighborhood. I waved at the widow MacDonagh as I passed; she was cradling a glass of Tullamore Dew and serenely perusing the pages of a gory British crime novel. She was a sweet lady from the old country for whom I occasionally did some yard work, and who always enjoyed harassing me.

“Ye should wear a helmet or some knee pads, ye know,” she called from the porch. “It’s dangerous to be that sexy ’round here, heh heh.”

At home, a couple of barks came from indoors: my Irish wolfhound announced that he was guarding the place before he realized it was me. Through the special binding I’d created between us years ago, I heard his thoughts in my head: <Atticus, is that you?>

Yep. Home for a quick bite and to pick up something. Think you can handle some tuna salad for lunch? I opened the front door and he was there, tail wagging. I gave him some love behind the ears and chucked him under the chin.

<Maybe if you subtract the salad! It will make my breath smell like ambrosia to cats. Or even like catnip to cats.>

Sorry, Oberon, they’re not going to get stoned on your tuna breath.

<I suppose that would skew things unfairly to the dogs if that were true, wouldn’t it? Well, can we chase the tuna with a slice of turkey or something?>

Sure. I opened three cans of tuna—two for Oberon and one for me—and mixed up a quick salad with some celery, chives, chopped grapes, and mayo. I slapped this mixture between fresh bread with some romaine lettuce and called it lunch. I took it with me into the garage, where I had a large iron trunk bound shut in several ways. Only one of them was a traditional, mundane padlock. It took me about ten minutes to unbind everything, but once the lid was free to lift up on its hinges, I extracted a scabbard with a very special sword inside.

It was Fragarach—absolutely no relation to Fraggle Rock—an ancient Fae sword that I had come by about as honestly as I’d come by the Grimoire of the Lamb. Since there were a couple of Irish gods who’d dearly like to have it back, I tended to shield it in iron from divination and not play with it too much. For this occasion, it was worth the risk of revealing my hiding place. Fragarach’s name in Irish means the Answerer, due to an enchantment on it that forces targeted dastardly types to answer questions truthfully. It would help me solve a mystery that had perplexed me for centuries.

I had the grimoire waiting on the counter for Mr. Elkhashab when he returned to the store. While the light of avarice blazed in his eyes as he flipped greedily through the pages “for appraisal,” I brought out Fragrach from under the counter and spoke the words that would ensnare him.

“Freagroidh tu,” I said, and the Egyptian wizard was abruptly caught in a hazy blue aura that would not let him move or speak untruths in answer to my questions.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Nkosi Elkhashab.” So he hadn’t been lying about that.

“What is your quest?”

“To find the lost book of Amun.”

I would ask him more about that in a moment, but I couldn’t resist completing the Monty Python line first: “What … is your favorite color?”

“Red.”

“Why do you wish to find this lost book?”

“The thirteen spells will restore Egypt to its rightful place as supreme among the world.”

So it wasn’t an ordinary cookbook after all. “You told me they were lamb recipes before. What are they really?”

“They are recipes to alter fate. Six recipes alter your destiny in different ways; seven alter the destinies of your enemies.”

“Let me guess. The thirteenth recipe slays your enemy.”

“Correct.”

Well, I no longer had to wonder why this book was in the restricted section. “Why do all the recipes involve lamb?”

“None of them involve lamb.”

That slowed me down. “Lamb is listed as the first ingredient in every recipe.”

“No. The lamb is supposed to be sacrificed to Amun before you begin the recipe.”

Gods below! Blood sacrifice to kill your enemies or make yourself rich or whatever definitely classified the grimoire as a book from the dark side. And this guy couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.

“Where did you hear about this book?” I asked him.

“I used to work in the Ministry of Antiquities. We discovered some records at the Alexandria site some years ago, and I came across a reference to the work there. It made clear that the book had been removed before Aurelian. Its existence was confirmed in other work I recently discovered.”

“How did you find out about the sacrificing of the lambs and everything?”

“It is described in the writings of Nebwenenef, Egypt’s greatest sorcerer. He is the author of this grimoire.”

I blinked, then swallowed. In the origin story of Druids that every archdruid taught his apprentices, Nebwenenef was the name of the sorcerer who’d killed the Saharan elemental five thousand years ago. But the grimoire was a first- or second-century work. How did he write it if he’d already been dead for three thousand years? “Where did you find these writings?”

“Underneath my home.”

“It was buried?”

“Yes.”

“Who else has seen these writings?”

“No one.”

That was a small blessing, at least. “Do you know who I am?” I asked. This was a rather important question and not intended as a threat to him in any way. If he knew too much, I’d have to leave the area.

“You are Atticus O’Sullivan, rare-book dealer.”

“That’s all you know about me?”

“You clearly have some magical talent. I am not sure how much or of what kind.”

Maybe not all was lost, then.

“How did you discover I might have a copy of this book?”

“I summoned an imp of the Fourth Circle of Hell. He told me.”

Well, that would do it. And it also meant I was probably still safe here; the imp would have already traveled back to hell without telling anybody else where or who I was, or this guy wouldn’t be standing in front of me now. “So you dabble in all sorts of black magic, not simply the Egyptian sort?”

“Yes.”

“And the imp told you what about me, exactly?”

“He said you possessed the lost book of Amun and thought it was a cookbook. He said your magic was probably earth-based.”

Clever imp, leaving out the fact that I was a Druid. “What else did the imp say?”

“He said you have excellent defenses but cast few offensive spells, if any.”

That was true enough. When I wished to give offense, I usually gave it with the blade of Fragarach.

“Hypothetical question. If we were in a galaxy far, far away, would you try to become a Sith lord?”

“I do not know what that is.”

“Sith lords can shoot lightning out of their hands, and they cackle maniacally as their enemies turn crispy before their eyes.”

The Egyptian smiled. “That sounds very good. Yes.”

I’d heard more than enough. I neatly snatched the grimoire from his fingers and placed a protective hand over it, then dispelled Fragarach’s binding and lowered it.

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Elkhashab, but this grimoire is not for sale.”

His eyes blinked rapidly. “Not for sale? But you told me to come here to negotiate.”

“Negotiation does not guarantee that you will be able to purchase the goods.”

I began to pull the grimoire closer to me, and that’s when everything went pear-shaped. Without a single telltale warning in his facial expression, Elkhashab’s left arm snaked forward and he punched me. Not hard enough to break my nose or anything—it was more of a jab than a determined attempt to destroy my face—but it was enough to make me rock backward and take my hand off the grimoire. That was all he wanted. He grabbed the book and bolted for the door, figuring that if he couldn’t buy it, he’d simply steal it.

He plainly did not know much about my magic. Before he was out the door, I began to construct a binding between the leather of the cover and the wool carpet I kept as a doormat. Since both were of natural materials, once I energized the binding the book would fly out of his hands and I’d be laughing at him.

It didn’t work out that way.

I energized the binding and the book tried to escape, but he held on with one hand and made a gesture with the other like flicking water from his fingers, and the binding broke.

I was so shocked that he was halfway across Ash Avenue before I could think to try again. But now he had the grimoire held close to his chest, and my line of sight was ruined. I watched him scramble into a rental car across the street and thought a different binding would serve me well. Though pure synthetics shut me down, nature is present in even some of our most refined products: I bound the rubber of his tires to the bitumen in the asphalt concrete as I strode forward to reclaim my property. South of University Drive, Ash Avenue doesn’t have a lot of traffic, so I didn’t need to worry much about getting plowed into the pavement.

He started the car and shoved it into gear. When it didn’t move, he rolled down the window and looked at the front tire. I activated my faerie specs—a charm that allows me to see in the magical spectrum—to see what he would do. I wanted to know how he destroyed my bindings.

His aura was strange. Next to his skin, he was limned in white, like any magic user, but beyond that it was muddy, as if somebody’s kid had decided to mix all the finger paints together to see what magical hue would result. Tiny flashes and hints of color winked here and there, but mostly it was monkey-shit brown.

Elkhashab flicked his fingers at the front tire with the same motion he’d used before, and I saw what appeared to be a spout of water gush forth and blanket my bindings. It was odd, undisciplined magic; bindings have definite structure and appear as Celtic knotwork, and even the magic of other systems, like Wicca or Vodoun, have an orderly look to them as they execute. His magic looked like a particularly splody ejaculation.

He tried to accelerate, but the back tire held him fast. The bindings on the front tire had already melted—or perhaps dissolved—away. He flicked his fingers toward the rear, the bizarre miniature flood gushed forth in my magical sight, and my binding ceased to exist.

Elkhashab stomped on the gas and squealed away with the Grimoire of the Lamb. I let him go because I was fighting ignorance as much as the man himself. His magic was a little frightening. The tattoos that bound me to the earth and allowed me to draw on its power were bindings as well. Could he toss some of his magic spooge at me and unbind me from the earth? I needed to find out, but not by trial and error. The error could well be fatal. Instead, I’d see what Hal had turned up and shift myself to Egypt before Elkhashab could fly out there. When he got home, eager to sacrifice a lamb and start some evil shit, he’d find me waiting for him.

He’d also be extremely paranoid. If I were Elkhashab, there would be no way I’d ever believe that someone like me would simply let him go. And he’d be right.

I called Hal on my cell phone. “Hal, have you got anything on that Egyptian character yet?”

“You haven’t even given me two hours, Atticus,” Hal growled.

“He just stole one of my rare books. One of the really evil ones.”

“Not one of those summoning ones where you can call up something to eat Utah for breakfast?”

“No, it’s the kind where you can kill anyone you want. Ideal for political assassinations.”

“Shit. He swiped it from under your nose?”

“He’s a serious magic user. He’s got something that can dissolve my bindings. I need to go after him in Egypt, and I need some help tracking him down.”

“You want me to contact a pack there?”

“Is there a pack in Cairo?”

“Sure is. Guy named Yusuf is the alpha.”

“That would be wonderful. I only need their tracking services. You know I’m good for whatever they charge. And please email to me whatever info you dig up and I’ll check it when I get to Egypt.”

“What are you going to do when you find him?”

“He wasted his chance at mercy when he stole the book. And he told me what he’s going to do with it.” He’d also told me who had written it, and that made the grimoire itself something I should have burned long ago. “So I think I’ll be applying Druidic law.”

“Going to kill him, eh?”

“Old school.”

About five thousand years ago, the Sahara Desert was a lot more lush than it is today. It was still a desert, but more like the Sonoran Desert—plenty of plants and animals around, instead of miles of sand dunes and a few weak clumps of sharply bladed grass. It wasn’t all that bad a place, until the sorcerer Nebwenenef bound the Saharan elemental and tried to take its power for his own. He died trying to contain it, and the elemental died as well, its magic spreading up the Nile river valley, lying around for other wizards and Egyptian gods to feast on. The desert became an überdesert, and Gaia decided that sort of thing should never happen again. That’s why she created Druids.

The primary responsibility of Druids is to protect the earth’s elementals from any sort of magical attack. Mundane attacks—like stopping industries from polluting the environment—are not really our business, but people tend to think that’s the sort of thing Druids would be worried about. I do worry about it, of course, but those attacks happen on such a vast scale that there’s very little I can do—and those sorts of threats to the earth didn’t exist when Druids were first conceived.

Guys like Elkhashab, who desire power over men, sometimes try to harness the power of the earth to do it, however, and in those rare cases there’s quite a lot I can do. Elkhashab’s counter to my bindings indicated that he had a trump card for the earth’s magic, and as such I was quite literally bound to destroy him. Plus, you know, anyone following in the footsteps of Nebwenenef demanded all my attention. And he’d also punched me.

I wouldn’t underestimate him again; this might go quickly, or it might not. If the latter were to be the case, I needed to make arrangements.

The current girlfriend was first: Since I couldn’t tell her that she was dating a man who was thirty times as old as her grandfather and who sometimes had to deal with shady warlocks, a text message that I had a family emergency and I’d be gone for a week would have to suffice. We traded texts for a bit; she offered condolences, wondered if she could help, hoped it would work out for the best, and that was that.

Oberon was a little harder to convince.

<I want to go with you! I’m supposed to protect you and wag my tail in an encouraging manner when you are afflicted with self-doubt!> he said.

It’s going to be extremely dangerous, Oberon.

<All the more reason I should go! My teeth are sharper than yours, and once I take something down to the ground, it doesn’t get up.>

How many cats do you think you could handle at once, Oberon?

<What does that have to do with the price of beef in Boise?>

There’s a cat goddess there named Bast. She doesn’t like me at all and has forbidden me to return to Egypt.

<So? You’ve been to Egypt anyway, haven’t you?>

Yes, but only in the deserts, where there were no cats. This time I’ll be going to Cairo, where there will be plenty of them.

<Well, can’t you do something to make her purr?>

I don’t think so. A lightbulb turned on in my skull. Well, now that you mention it, maybe …

<Then it’s settled! You’ll do that thing and I’m coming along.>

I could probably use someone to watch my back.

<I’m useful like that!>

The store was much easier to take care of. I didn’t have any employees yet who could run things in my absence, so I simply closed up the shop with a sign outside promising to return in a few days. Before I did so, I removed Nice Kitty! from the rare-book case. Perhaps a peace offering would make searching for Elkhashab a bit easier.

According to my driver’s license, I had recently turned twenty-seven, two whole years past the point American rental car companies considered me responsible enough to rent one of their vehicles. Age restrictions of all kinds tend to amuse me. I secured a compact car and squeezed Oberon into the backseat with a giant rawhide bone to keep him busy. I took Highway 87—the Beeline, the locals called it—north to Payson, and then 260 east toward Christopher Creek, up on the forested Mogollon Rim. There I could park the car in a campground and shift planes, using a tether I had created to Tír na nÓg.

Once I chose a spot at the Tonto–Horton Creek campground, Oberon bounded out of the car and barked at the surrounding ponderosa pines.

<Count yourselves lucky, squirrels! I know you’re out there! If I didn’t have pressing business on the other side of the world right now, you’d never see the sun set!>

They can’t understand you, Oberon.

<Oh, I think they understand well enough from my barking.>

They are indeed lucky. Let’s go.

I had Fragarach slung across my back in a scabbard and Bast’s prehistoric porn instructions in a leather satchel; I had wrapped and bound the book three times in oilskin to protect it. There were also two daggers in the satchel, because I thought there was a chance of some quick and close fighting. I put one hand on Oberon and another on a tethered tree; Oberon put a paw on the tree as well, and then I pulled us along the tether to a similar tree in Tír na nÓg, far from the Fae Court and those who would like to find me. Not wishing to linger and risk the chance of being spotted, I redirected my focus and searched for a suitable place to shift into Egypt. I had created tethers there long ago in case I ever needed to visit on just such duty as this, and though I tried to maintain them along with the occasional help of Fae rangers under the direction of Brighid, First Among the Fae, many were missing now, no doubt destroyed by an ever-expanding city. The best I could do was a date ranch north of Cairo. I’d made the gamble that the trees on the ranch would stick around awhile, and it had paid off.

Cairo was nine hours ahead of Phoenix, so we arrived there at three in the morning. It was harvesting season for the dates, but it would be hours before the workers came along to discover us. I cast night vision on us both and we stole out of the grove undetected.

<It’s fun to sneak around. It’s like we’re ghosts! Or shadows!>

And you look marvelous.

<We are handsome phantoms, aren’t we?> Oberon said.

Yeah! You know, that would be a great band name.

<And we’re on a world tour! Where are we now?>

North of Cairo. We need to find an Internet café so I can see what Hal has dug up on this guy. Keep an eye out for cats, but, whatever you do, don’t bark at them.

<Can I growl?>

No. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Just give me a heads-up if you see them coming.

We managed to hitch a ride into town in the back of a flatbed truck, but the early hour frustrated me. Until people woke up and cafés opened, there was little I could do. Still, we were hours ahead of Nkosi Elkhashab, who might still be waiting to board a plane back in the United States. Even if he was already airborne, we still had a few hours before he could possibly touch down and clear customs.

We hadn’t specified to the truck driver where we’d like to be dropped off, and in hindsight that was a huge mistake. He stopped near an open-air market, saying he had to pick up a load of bread from a local bakery and drive it back north, and we thanked him for his courtesy.

That’s when a quizzical meow ruined everything.

<Cat alert!>

Thanks, I heard. I saw too. It was a gray tomcat with white socks, peering out from the darkness of an alley.

I asked the driver before he ducked into the bakery which way to the Nile. He pointed east and said, “A few kilometers that way.”

Let’s go, Oberon. Stay by my side. Do not attack or even give a dirty look to a cat here. I ran south toward a major street that ran east–west. Oberon easily kept pace with me.

<Are we really running from a cat?>

He and every other cat in the city, yes.

<What if they attack?>

Then you may kill if you have to.

<Seriously?>

Seriously. But once they begin attacking, they won’t stop. We want to avoid that as long as we can. There are thousands of cats in Cairo and only two of us.

<Oh. How much is a thousand again?>

Oberon was great about picking up new words from me and improving his speech all the time, but he had difficulty holding on to concepts of time, and any number larger than twenty was simply “a lot” to him.

It’s more than you’ve ever seen in one place before.

<Well, there was that one time you showed me what a pet store was like. There were a lot of cats in there.>

Right. So think of how many cats would be in twenty pet stores.

<Whoa. That’s a huge mess of cats.>

But now double or even triple that, and you’ve got a thousand.

<No way! That’s not fair!>

Exactly. That’s why you don’t want this fight to get started. It won’t be fair.

We turned left and headed east toward the Nile. For the first half kilometer or so, we were in the clear—at least as far as cats were concerned. In the crepuscular light of an approaching dawn, I could see that the air wasn’t very clear. There was plenty of smog and a thin cloud of dust blown in from the desert, and I smelled more rotting garbage than I would have liked. Since the muezzin hadn’t sounded yet for morning prayers, traffic was still extremely light—and that was a blessing, because there didn’t seem to be any discernible laws that drivers followed. I was nursing a faint spark of hope that we might have gone unobserved when Oberon jinxed it by remarking that we appeared to be running away from nothing.

<Maybe you’re overreacting, Atticus. It was only one meow from one cat, after all. If those toy terriers at the dog park ever find out that I did this, I’ll never hear the end of it. They’re terrible bullies, you know. You wouldn’t think it, but they get all up in my nose because they know their humans will protect them.>

Before I could reply, a low, querulous “Rrrrrow!” chased our heels, and a black cat darted out from an alley to pursue us.

I slowed temporarily to kick off my sandals and then sped back up, chest heaving now. I had a limited supply of magic left in my bear charm and no guarantee of running across a place where I could recharge; this stretch of Cairo was well paved, so I was cut off from the earth. The riverbed of the Nile was my best shot, but I wanted to be ready in case an opportunity presented itself and to conserve my magic while I could.

<Okay, now I feel really stupid. Before I was just running with my human in the dark, but now I’m running away from a mangy alley cat. In public. You think maybe someone is following this on a military satellite camera? The night-vision ones where everybody’s green? What are the odds that this could go worldwide on YouTube?>

There’s more at stake here than your canine reputation, Oberon. This is just the beginning. You notice the cat hasn’t closed the distance? It’s not trying to catch us yet.

Oberon checked his six and fell back a few paces in the process but quickly resumed his place at my side. <All right, I’ll admit that is weird. You’re pretty fast for a human, but catching you should be easy. What’s it waiting for?>

Friends.

We were passing through a residential area now, with apartment buildings on either side and cats coming out of the windows and emerging from the alleys. Flashes of white and gray and orange in my peripheral vision told me cats were flooding out of their homes along this street and coming from blocks away to join in the hunt. Those that emerged ahead of us didn’t get in our way but rather waited for us to pass and then joined the growing herd of felines that followed us at a distance of six meters or so. Bast was behaving exactly as I predicted: She’d take me down with overwhelming numbers, sacrificing as many of her people as needed to finish me off.

Our procession started to cause trouble at intersections—at least, in those where there was any traffic to speak of. Oberon and I weren’t slowing down for anything, and the cats weren’t slowing down either. If there was too much cross traffic to risk stepping into the street, I turned south and ran until there was an opening, then darted across with Oberon and took the next left to continue east toward the river.

One of these zigzag moves resulted in a few of our pursuers getting run over. There was lots of yelling and leaning on car horns, not to mention plenty of blood and fur, but the cats were unfazed. The survivors kept coming after us, swarming around and between the cars, never varying their pace, and more joined them all the time.

<Well, there are enough of them behind us now that running makes sense, so that’s good.>

They all want to kill us, Oberon! How is that good?

<I’m trying to accentuate the positive here.>

A breath of damp, dirty air invaded my lungs, and I smiled in relief; the moisture indicated we were approaching the Nile, though it was still an uncomfortable distance away.

It was creepy being chased by that many cats. Their feet made no noise, but I knew they were there, because a good number of the house cats had little bells around their necks, and those become damn menacing when there are more than two on your heels.

I smirked and shouted at the city of Cairo, “ ‘Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ ”

<Hey, isn’t that Metallica?>

Close. John Donne. We’re getting close, Oberon. I can smell the river. How’s your breath holding up? Can you sprint with me?

<I thought you were already sprinting.>

I’m going to use some magic to increase my speed, see if we can leave the kitties behind. I can use it on you too if you need it.

<Give me just a little to see, and if it’s too easy, then I’ll tell you to keep it. I’m not going full speed yet.>

I withdrew the daggers from my satchel as I ran, and once I had them gripped in either hand, I spoke the binding that would let me use the stored magic of the earth as my own energy, allowing me to run even faster without tiring—as long as the juice held out. I hoped it would last until the river. I created a similar binding for Oberon.

A startled collective yowl rose up from the herd of cats behind us as Oberon and I suddenly pulled away. They spent some time trying to catch up, and when they discovered they couldn’t, the character of the pursuit changed. The cats that were converging on us from the sides and ahead of us—those that were actually coming from the river—didn’t let us pass anymore. Or, rather, they didn’t let me pass. Oberon wasn’t the target. That didn’t stop him from snapping at the odd cat that veered within range of his jaws.

For my part, I only needed to keep them off my face and neck. There isn’t much else a single cat can do to bring down a human quickly, and they knew it. The knives scythed the space in front of me when they jumped, feline screams rent the early-morning air as they fell to the sides, and I kept running. I tried not to do any permanent damage; I was making quick slashes, never stabbing, and hoping that Bast would feel properly guilty about this later and help those that were injured.

Deflect and maintain speed, I told Oberon as he fell behind to shake ‘n’ snap a cat’s neck. Killing isn’t necessary, and it takes too long. We don’t want the horde behind us to catch up.

<Great big bears, Atticus, I think you’re right! I just got a good look, and I don’t think that many cats should be allowed!>

How many are back there?

Oberon whined. <Atticus, I don’t know! My brain hurts. I think my mind has officially been boggled.>

A tabby latched on to my left shoulder, and I spun around to launch him off me. He left deep gouges in my skin as the centrifugal force threw him into a wall, but those would heal. I couldn’t slow down. The spin gave me a brief glance of our pursuit, and I could see what had boggled Oberon’s mind. There were far more cats back there than anyone could handle. I fought the nascent scream of panic growing in my belly.

We still had a quarter of a kilometer to go, and the cats weren’t thinning out. If anything, they were getting worse. I ducked a Siamese that screeched in dismay as it sailed over my head, then struck out with my right to knock down a portly Persian as I rolled my left shoulder back to let a Peterbald ping off my arm with nary a single claw’s scratch. The cats that tried to attack my legs were either kicked away or tossed aside as I churned ahead; my momentum was too great to be stopped by a ten-pound cat.

There were more ahead of me, bounding in my direction. Perhaps more than I could plow through. Oberon was providing some protection on my right side, and I was glad he’d talked me into bringing him along. I might have already gone down if it weren’t for him.

“Bast!” I shouted in Coptic. I didn’t know how to speak the truly ancient Egyptian language, but I felt reasonably sure she would understand the form of it commonly spoken until the seventeenth century. “I know you can hear me!” She’d identified my presence on the basis of one cat’s pair of eyes, so she’d have to be deaf if she couldn’t hear me through the ears of however many hundreds she had following me now.

“We don’t have to do this! No more of your people have to get hurt! I can return what was stolen! Let’s stop and talk!”

The cats didn’t stop coming, and I didn’t stop running or cutting them down as necessary. Oberon didn’t stop batting them away or snatching them out of the air and tossing them aside. That was all okay. The overture of diplomacy had been made. Bast was far too proud to answer right away.

It was a mess of gore and screams for a while, my knives flashing in the wan light of a gray cloudless dawn. Lights began to flick on in the buildings we passed, slumbering citizens awakened by cries of rage and death and offering up Arabic WTFs in the still, dry air of their apartments. And then the Nile beckoned, black waters lying still without sufficient sun to light the ripples of the current, the stench of oil and untold shit rising from its surface instead of the fresh breath of life it used to be in ancient days.

The juice ran out fifty meters from the riverbank and I slowed, lungs heaving and informing me in no uncertain terms that they hated me to dickfinity.

<Hey! Where did all the love go?> Oberon asked.

Keep going! We have to make it to the river!

<I feel like I have all the turbo capacity of a dachshund right now.>

We can’t stop or we’re dead.

We had built up something of a lead on the horde, but they were closing fast and yowling victoriously now that they could see we had slowed. There were no more cats in front of us. They had all engaged us earlier, and now they were either pursuing us from behind or licking their wounds.

The tiny little bells grew louder. They were almost upon us and my body wanted nothing so much as a sensible jog, but I kept pushing. Thirty meters. Twenty.

There was a railing ahead that marked a ramp down to some private docks, where a few small pleasure craft were anchored. The docks were fairly long, so there were some shallows, which was good for me. The cats would be on me before I could get there, however, and that was bad.

The bells from hell were right behind me now. I switched the dagger in my left hand to my right, awkwardly holding on to both in one hand, and then slapped my left hand onto the back of my neck and held it there. I wasn’t swatting mosquitoes; I was trying to stay alive. Not two seconds after I did so, the cats began to jump onto my back and claw at my legs. The scabbard of Fragarach, strapped across my back, gave them some extra purchase on my torso. They made angry kitty noises and tore through my shirt, trailing blood underneath their claws, but they couldn’t sit on my shoulders and bite through to my spine with my hand protecting the back of my neck. They tried to chew through anyway, biting and scratching everything they could, while I twisted and stumbled forward in an effort to make the water. Oberon briefly interposed himself and gave me a wee bit of space to turn the corner on the ramp. I dove and rolled, being careful with the knives, but not being careful at all about delivering some punishment to the cats hanging on me. They fell off under the impact, breath knocked out of them. Oberon’s bulk as a rear guard prevented any more from jumping on me while I was down, and I got up, a bloody, exhausted mess, and staggered toward the docks.

Come on, buddy, I said, a dagger in each hand again. Into the river we go.

<Right behind you.>

I couldn’t get a full breath. I was too slow. Three more cats jumped on my back and more ran under my feet as I tumbled into the Nile. The water stung and cooled my cuts at the same time. The cats clung tightly and tore more of my flesh away—entering the water hadn’t deterred them at all. More were jumping in; I heard and felt the splashes. I didn’t know where Oberon was.

And then my foot touched the silt of the riverbed, the tattoo on the sole automatically renewing my connection to the earth. The energy of the Nile welcomed me, and I welcomed it as it rushed to replenish my spent energy and provide even more for healing or whatever else I needed.

I exploded to the surface, and the turbulence of it—combined no doubt with the current—tore away the few cats that had followed me in. Where I was standing, the water was just beneath my rib cage. Oberon paddled nearby. Cats were leaping into the river after me, falling short, and then discovering that they couldn’t swim for shit—that is, they may have been able to keep their heads above water, but they weren’t going to give me much of a fight. I was protected by the hull of a boat on my left, but there was a dock to my right. A few of the smarter cats scampered down it and leapt at me from there, but now that I could face them and not have to worry about overwhelming numbers from every direction, I could bat them away into the Nile and let them deal with the problem of swimming.

Go back a bit to where you can stand with your head out of the water, I said to Oberon. As cats go by, dunk ’em.

<I can stand as it is,> Oberon said, and proved it. His head and neck were safely above the water. <What about your back?>

Don’t worry, I’ve got this now. The few that were trying to swim my way were having a tough time fighting against the current. Those that made it to me couldn’t leap or get any leverage whatsoever, and a brief scratch or bonk on the head sent them floating downriver. The ones jumping off the dock at my face were slapped out of the air, and once they hit the water they didn’t trouble me again.

Cats filled the dock and the shore, and the noise was getting ridiculous. Despite the hour, people would soon come to investigate and take pictures with their cell phones. I didn’t want that.

“Bast!” I called over the din, speaking in Coptic. “I can return the book of your mysteries! I can give it back to you right now! It’s in excellent condition! We don’t need to do this! Please don’t make me harm any more of your people! Let’s talk!”

The cats all stopped moving at once, save for the ones already in the river. They simply sat wherever they were and stared at me. There wasn’t a noise except for a few splashes and the sound of Oberon panting.

Oberon, don’t do anything more. Let the cats go for now.

<Okay.>

A low female voice rose from the docks. I didn’t see any cat move its mouth, but it came from one of them.

“Hrrr. Show me the book.”

My leather satchel was under the surface of the river, and I pulled it out now, putting the daggers inside.

“The book has been in the water?” the voice cried. “It’s useless!”

“No, no!” I said. “It’s protected. It’s in a waterproof wrapper. I will show you.” Pulling out the oilskin parcel with Nice Kitty! inside, I unbound the oilskin and stuffed it back into my satchel. I held Bast’s book of mysteries carefully by my fingertips, trying to demonstrate my great respect for it. I still didn’t know which cat was Bast—or if she was simply speaking through one of them—so I spoke to the cats on the dock in general.

“Unlike so many other old treasures, this book has resisted the ravages of time,” I said. “I have kept it sealed away from the air. Every word is still readable. Think of it, Bast! Given to the right people, this book could revive interest in you like nothing else! You would receive prayers again, grow powerful. Your influence could spread beyond Egypt, and you could enjoy the worship of millions!” This was unlikely and wishful thinking, but I knew it was thinking she would very much want to believe. As if to emphasize my point, the muezzin began to buzz throughout Cairo, calling all Muslims to prayer. Bast knew what that meant: Another god was getting the worship that used to be hers. I kept selling.

“These other gods have their holy books translated into every tongue, and now humans bow to them around the world. You could do the same with this. How many of the other Egyptian gods could manage this? None. In truth, Bast, I have done you a great service by preserving it so well.”

“Hrrr. Give it to me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

From the back rank of the cats, a slight shift of shadowy movement attracted my eye. It grew taller; it was a shorthaired black cat with yellow eyes and a small gold hoop earring high up on its left ear. It continued to grow and change until I was looking at a woman with a cat’s head. The woman had clothes on where the cat didn’t, and I thought that sort of trick could revolutionize fashion. She had one of those giant golden necklaces draped over her shoulders, like one sees in the art of the pyramids, but she didn’t have a headdress. From underneath the gold necklace fell a white linen dress, belted below her breasts with a rich blue sash. Her arms, while bare of clothing, were covered in soft black fur and the occasional golden circlet; she had human fingers but very feline claws instead of fingernails on the ends of them. The muezzin finally stopped blaring and we could speak without shouting.

“Hrrr. You will give it to me now, human.”

“Call me Atticus. I’d like something in return.”

Bast’s eyes widened at my presumption. “Ridiculous! You stole it! Return it now and take your punishment!”

“No, that’s not how we’re doing this. Remember, I’m doing you a favor by returning it. You thought I was dead and your book lost forever until I showed up today.”

The yellow eyes now narrowed to mere slits. “You are not a normal human.”

I dipped my head in thanks. “It’s kind of you to say so.”

“Why are you in Egypt?”

“In one of life’s great ironies, someone has stolen a book from me. I have come to steal it back.” And prevent him from harming the earth, I didn’t say.

Bast’s cat face lost its suspicion and seemed amused. “Hrr! Hrr! Hrr! Was it an Egyptian book stolen by an Egyptian?”

“Yes.”

“Then there is no crime. It is justice! Do you know who stole it?”

“A man named Nkosi Elkhashab.”

Bast blinked. “You mean the crocodile priest?”

Crocodile priest? That would make him a follower of Sobek, the god of the Nile. Suddenly the nature of his magic was clear. Water softened and carved away the earth on a regular basis. No wonder my bindings had dissolved. No wonder his aura was muddy brown.

“Yes, that’s the guy. Do you know where he is?”

“Is this information what you wish in return for my book?” Bast said.

“No.” I shook my head. “I want your permission to travel Egypt freely and your word not to reveal my presence here in any way to any other being.”

“Hrrr.” This time when Bast smiled, it looked predatory. “That is acceptable to me. I walk away with my book, and you walk away to be destroyed by Sobek’s chosen.” She held out a gray hand, palm up, to receive the book.

“Let me hear you swear it first, please,” I said.

Bast hissed a little with impatience. “In return for the book in your hand, you may freely wander Egypt and not be bothered by any of my people. I will not reveal your presence here to anyone—”

I raised an eyebrow and cocked my head to signal she’d messed up. She knew it.

“—Very well, or to any god or animal. Now, give.”

Happily, I waded forward and gave her Nice Kitty! Bast would hand it to some human scholar with woeful personal security and I would steal it back and destroy all records they made. The world really didn’t need a reborn cat sex cult.

Bast flipped briefly through the book to make sure it didn’t contain cartoons or something. She purred in pleasure for a moment and then remembered I was watching.

She hissed in earnest this time, then said, “May Sobek devour you.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Well, may harmony find you, Bast, and I am sorry for any pain I’ve caused your people.”

She ignored me and walked away in the manner for which cats are renowned. She and the book faded into the gray light of dawn, and the horde of cats began to disperse in her wake.

<Yeah!> Oberon said as Bast faded from view. <One hound versus thousands of cats, and the hound wins!>

What about the Druid?

<Quiet, Atticus. I’m having a moment here. Basking in my own glory.>

When you’re finished, let’s go find a place that will let us drip dry on their floor.

My shirt was shredded and my cuts hadn’t fully closed up yet. I refilled my bear charm with all the magic it could hold and then activated my healing. The ugliness would fade over time. My priority now had to be getting some local cash, a set of dry clothes, a temporary cell phone, and then some food and an Internet connection.

People began to appear on the streets after morning prayers, and I asked them for directions to the nearest bazaar. A few blocks’ walk to the north, the flash of a credit card, and some spirited haggling provided me with almost everything I needed. I got directions from there to an Internet café—such places were more ubiquitous then, in the years before the iPhone.

Once I got Oberon settled with some sausage and carefully camouflaged under my table, I logged in to my email and found a nice dossier on Nkosi Elkhashab waiting for me from Hal’s private investigators.

Hal had highlighted something for me: Elkhashab had been dirt poor until he’d joined the Ministry of Antiquities after college. He showed no signs of abnormal behavior until about a year into the job, when he suddenly began to buy real estate far above his income bracket and then lots of expensive goodies with which to line the walls. There was no indication he had another job, so the question on everyone’s mind—Egypt’s as well, for he’d been investigated—was, where did he get the money?

Elkhashab’s story was that he had been selling his “art” to wealthy collectors abroad. His art consisted of some uninspired splatter paintings—the efforts of a person who looked at Jackson Pollock’s work and said to himself, “I could do that.” But the Ministry of Antiquities suspected, and I had no doubt they were correct, that the purchase price included rare Egyptian treasures, and Elkhashab was smuggling those abroad via different channels to his wealthy “art collectors.” He was titling his pictures along the lines of “Small Bust of Sobek, Twelfth Dynasty,” so that the ministry would know precisely what he was slipping past their guard. They never caught him, but they did fire him on general principles.

Twenty years later—he was now in his mid-forties—he still made a living via his art. Some of it was probably legitimate; he was commanding such high prices for his work that rich people thought there must be some value to it. But the ministry felt that the smuggling continued. They theorized that he had found a tomb somewhere in the region of Al Fayyum, near what the Greeks called Crocodilopolis, and he was selling off its treasures piece by piece. He was under electronic surveillance around the clock.

Most disturbing to me was the fact that Elkhashab had two residences, not one. There was one in Cairo and another in Al Fayyum, about eighty miles southwest. I could hardly lay in wait at both places, so I’d have to call that number at the bottom of Hal’s email and take an educated guess that the dirty deeds would most likely be done in Al Fayyum.

“Greetings from an old wolf in America,” I said in response to a gruff greeting.

“Who’s this?”

“A friend of Hal Hauk’s in Arizona.”

The tone of Cairo’s alpha changed abruptly. “Oh, sure, I know Hal,” Yusuf said.

“He told me you and your boys may be able to help me out.”

“Help with what?”

“Watch an address in Cairo for me for twenty-four hours and report all comings and goings.”

“You don’t need my boys for that kind of work.”

“The resident is a sorcerer and may try to slip by unseen.”

“I stand corrected. You need us.”

The incredible usefulness of werewolves—and also the reason why you don’t want to get on their bad side—is that they’re immune to almost all magic. Think you’re invisible? Nope, not to a werewolf’s eyes. Think you have an impenetrable magic ward protecting all your goodies? You don’t if a werewolf walks across it. Like the honey badger, the werewolf takes what it wants. Sure, you can pick a fight with a werewolf if you have some silver, but you’d better have enough for the whole pack. And if other packs get word that you go around killing werewolves … well. Let’s just say that nobody tries to mess with werewolves anymore.

I made arrangements with Yusuf and gave him my number in case Elkhashab showed up. He’d send the bill to Hal and everyone would be happy.

In America—before the widespread use of GPS devices—if you wished to go somewhere you’d never been before, you hired a taxi. If you were brave, you asked your father-in-law. In Egypt, you waved some money around in the bazaar, and plenty of people would happily volunteer to take you where you wished to go. We got picked up by a family of three, who were delighted to spend some time driving us around, especially since I paid for all their gas and then some.

I am not ashamed to say that, spread out in the back of an old pickup, Oberon and I napped on the way down.

Al Fayyum—spelled many different ways and sporting many different names through the centuries—is most likely the oldest city in Egypt. Herodotus described a labyrinth of surpassing magnificence there, better even than all the other wonders of Egypt, and evidence of his tale remains, but it’s a bloody wreck because some ancient Roman choad ordered the place quarried. Still, despite this defilement and many others, Al Fayyum has yielded its fair share of archaeological finds. The Ministry of Antiquities had good reason to suspect Elkhashab of finding something in the area: Chances were if you dug deep enough, you’d find something no matter what.

There’s an inland salt lake there called Lake Moeris, or Birket Qarun, and it was on the eastern edge of this lake that the old cult of Sobek flourished. In Crocodilopolis, they used to keep a real crocodile swathed in bling and fed on a diet of soft pink fleshy things. It was the lap of reptilian luxury back in the day. The new lap was on Elkhashab’s property, if Bast’s word could be believed. More of an estate than a house, ringed by a wall made of river mud and gated, it was east of the old site of Crocodilopolis and north of the ancient labyrinths.

Al Fayyum was not nearly so paved as Cairo, so I had little trouble accessing my magic there. Oberon and I took a leisurely stroll around Elkhashab’s estate, making no effort to conceal ourselves. I was looking at the walls in the magical spectrum to see what kind of wards Elkhashab had put around it. Bizarrely, he didn’t have any, except on his gate. That told me he had to have something frightful waiting on the other side of the walls that couldn’t be seen from the gate.

I did a pogo leap up to take a peek at the top of the wall. No wards there either. So I leapt up again, slapped my hands on the top, and pulled myself up for a good look, not caring who saw me do it.

He had something frightful waiting behind the walls, all right. It was a damn moat. A deep and wide one. And it was filled with hungry crocodiles. I had to admit that was pretty badass.

A few of the creatures spotted me and shifted, hoping to get a nice bite if I cooperated and leapt down to provide them breakfast. I toyed with the idea of calming their tiny reptilian brains and swimming right by, but it was too great a risk. There could be a big monster hiding under the black water that I wouldn’t catch, and then he’d certainly catch me.

Elkhashab had laid out his estate like a lion or tiger exhibit at a zoo. Inside the walls, the earth rose sort of like the mound of a volcano, so that the inside of the wall was much taller than the outside and impossible to jump over. By filling that with water and reptiles, he’d also made it impossible to jump over to safety from the outside. His house therefore rested on an island accessible only by the narrow strip of land leading from his gate.

I knew that couldn’t be the only entrance, though. A sneaky bastard like Elkhashab had to have some other escape route, especially since he was smuggling artifacts out of the country. He probably had a Scooby-Doo bookcase inside that revealed spiral stairs, and if you followed them down, you’d be in some creepy catacombs and eventually find a ladder that led to a trapdoor hidden in a warehouse or someplace else innocuous.

The chances of finding his secret passage inside were much greater than finding his exit point, but I had to get in there without tripping his wards. He had to come home to happy, undisturbed wards on his gate if I was going to ambush him properly.

I took one last look around and then allowed myself to slip down off the wall, disappointing the residents of the moat.

“All right. I’ve seen enough. To the casbah!”

Oberon trotted beside me, tail wagging. <I hope we’re going to rock it. Whatever you saw over that wall reminded you that you should buy me some snacks, right?>

“Um. Right. And we need to find a place for you to hang out for the day. It’s going to be impossible for you to come inside.”

<Nothing’s impossible!>

“Can you swing paw over paw on a rope without falling into a moat full of crocodiles?”

<Dang it! Is there really a moat full of crocodiles?>

“Yes, there is. We’ll hide you well. I don’t want anyone to think you’re up for grabs.”

I bought some food and water for Oberon and a few bones for him to gnaw on, and then we found a nice roof—there were plenty of the flat kind in Al Fayyum—where he could lounge unseen and undisturbed. After wishing him an excellent nap, I returned to the bazaar to purchase a good length of rope, a small anchor, and a single length of steel rebar. These would allow me to negotiate the moat.

Back on top of Elkhashab’s wall—this time with camouflage cast on myself—I set the steel rebar about halfway into the hardened mud, with a little magical encouragement. After tying one end of the rope to the rebar and the other to the anchor, I created a binding between the steel of the anchor and the wall of Elkhashab’s back patio; his house was constructed of the same adobe material. Once I energized the binding, the anchor flew to the house and stuck there without me having to throw it.

I had rather a lot of slack to take up—I’d overestimated the distance—and had to retie the rope on my end to make it taut.

All this activity had drawn the attention of Elkhashab’s crocodiles. Even though I was in camouflage, once I began to swing over their heads they threw off their customary torpor and became quite excited, scrambling over one another and trying to position themselves underneath me. They smelled what they couldn’t see. Hissing, snapping fights broke out. I have never felt so potentially tasty.

Once I had passed over the moat and it became clear that I wouldn’t fall into their waiting mouths, most of them gave up, but a few pursued me onto land, cleverly deducing that I’d have to drop down at some point. I slowed and found the small, hungry threads of their conscious minds and told them I wasn’t breakfast. Really. Go away. Back to the moat, there’s a good croc. They obeyed sluggishly, but they obeyed, one at a time, and I was able to make a soft landing next to the crocodile priest’s patio and dissolve my camouflage.

A quick glance at said patio in the magical spectrum revealed that—besides being expensively furnished—it was warded. So were all the windows. I didn’t intend to use any of them, anyway. I snuck around counterclockwise, to the side of the house where there was a thin strip of glass block high up in place of a full window. My guess was that this was a bathroom. Chances of plumbing being right on the wall beneath the blocks were slim. The chances that Elkhashab had warded his bathroom were even slimmer.

This adobe made of river mud was precisely the sort of thing I appreciated in construction materials. Though it took longer than I may have wished, it was not difficult to unbind it and watch a me-shaped hole appear in the wall. I still had to cut through some insulation with a dagger and then kick through some thin drywall inside, but it was easier than trying to dismantle an accomplished magician’s wards.

The first of many shocks in Elkhashab’s house came in a whiff of cinnamon apples. He had one of those plug-in air fresheners glowing softly next to the sink. Neat patterned towels, fluffy and folded, waited to complete hand-washing rituals. Not what I expected from a crocodile priest. Apart from that, the room looked unused—far too clean for an evil warlock’s daily use. I concluded with satisfaction that this was a guest bathroom and Elkhashab wouldn’t check it when he came home.

I stepped back outside for a moment to top off my bear charm. Fully charged, I crept back in with my faerie specs on, looking for more wards, and worrying a bit about mundane security as well.

I closed the bathroom door behind me, hoping he wouldn’t notice in his hurry to play with the grimoire. Outside, there was a short hallway leading to what I presumed were bedroom doors. Elkhashab didn’t strike me as the sort to share the same side of the house with guests, so I ignored these and moved on. There was a spacious living area with a giant TV and shelves lined with priceless figurines of this god or that goddess. On the opposite side of that, I found a foyer leading to the front door; I searched for a security system but found none. I could see wards around the front door instead.

An arched passage led to a kitchen, but there was likely little of interest in there. Another arch seemed to do nothing but give a view of a magnificent statue of Sobek set in a lighted niche, but once I got closer I saw that another hallway beckoned. These might lead to Elkhashab’s private rooms. I checked the door and doorjamb of the first one before opening it. No juju. No hairs across the threshold. And unlocked.

It was a study. A writing desk sat facing the wall shared with the hallway and door; the other three walls were lined with bookshelves. Centered between them was a comfy chair with a table and reading lamp next to it.

I clapped my hands together and rubbed them. Scooby-Doo’s legacy had to be here. Pull the right book and one of those bookcases would move aside. Or … I pranced over to the reading light and pulled the dangling chain. It turned on!

But nothing else happened.

Damn.

I began to systematically pull on every book he had on his shelves. Some of them were interesting, some were genuine grimoires I might enjoy snagging later, but most were dreck. None revealed a secret passage. I moved aside the comfy chair. I lifted the rug to look for trapdoors. Nothing. The writing desk, a long shot due to its placement, was similarly uncooperative. I sighed heavily and admitted that I could have been wrong.

There were other rooms to check. The whole house, if necessary.

I exited the study and closed the door behind me. I turned right to the next door and examined it as I had the first one. This door had nothing in the way of magical traps, but it did have the old hair-across-the-doorjamb trick. I opened the door and then bound the hair back into place as I closed it. Feel secure, Mr. Elkhashab. Nobody opened this door.

The room was an art studio. Canvases of ugly splatter paintings rested against the walls, five or six deep. An easel near the window had plastic sheeting spread underneath it with liberal staining. Despite this precaution, the floor of the studio—cheap linoleum tiles—had been anointed with droplets of various colors. A low countertop with cabinets underneath held his art supplies—lots of paint tubes and a container of paintbrushes, along with turpentine. A sink waited nearby to wash away the excess. On impulse, I tried the faucet. It sadly provided naught but hot and cold running water.

The canvases hid no secret doors behind them, and I was starting to get seriously frustrated. I’d been searching for an hour and had nothing to show for it. I moved the easel. I picked up the ceramic pot full of paintbrushes. I pulled up the edges of the plastic sheeting. I got a whole lot of nada.

Desperate, I began picking up the mess of paint tubes scattered about the counter, one by one, feeling intensely stupid as I placed them back exactly as I’d found them. Something clicked after I picked up the tube of phthalo blue. My eyes darted around the room, looking for canvases falling away. Nope. Behind me, the easel rested serenely, except for the ungodly mix of colors scattered about the legs.

On the other side of the countertop, however, a neat little square of darkness beckoned. There was a set of stone steps leading down to something that was no doubt very naughty.

I circled and took a few steps down, looking for a way to close the door. Elkhashab would never leave it open when he wanted to perform his dirty deeds. There was a rather large button labeled CLOSE in Arabic script, but it had an odd white glow around it, so I hesitated. A few more steps down and I lost all light from the studio, but there was a dim glow from some light source farther down, whether a tunnel or a room I could not tell. I cast night vision and scanned the area carefully with my improved sight. I spied a smaller, unlabeled, and non-glowing button at the base of the stairs and pushed that instead. The door mechanism slid shut and a set of dingy old incandescent bulbs winked on, illuminating what turned out to be a tunnel after all and making my night vision unnecessary. I dispelled it and proceeded cautiously down the passage, which had smooth walls of the same adobe material used in the rest of the house.

I really was walking down the tunnel; there was a fairly steep grade, almost to the point where I wished there had been a staircase instead. Clearly this delved underneath Elkhashab’s moat and continued on from there. After a few hundred meters it dropped again, even steeper, and soon the wished-for steps appeared to ease the descent. Once the tunnel leveled out, a brief three or four meters led me to a stunning room that Elkhashab had very little to do with constructing. He’d put up the lights, no doubt, and his presence was smeared over the chamber like a greasy film, but there was no doubt that this room was at least twice as old as I was. Far beneath the well-documented and preserved ruins of Crocodilopolis, a grand hall stretched before me, supported by massive pillars of stone. Sarcophagi stared at me with four-thousand-year-old eyes, not with the heads of humans or Anubis but with Sobeks, unlike any ever seen before. They didn’t rest prone but leaned upright against the wall. It was an archaeologist’s dream. Or a dark wizard’s. I had never seen a Sobek sarcophagus before, but in this room there were at least twenty, each seven feet tall. I wondered if the mummies still remained inside and if they were well preserved. I paused to take a closer look at one that seemed to be in particularly good shape.

On top of the crocodile head was the tall yellow headdress and red disk signifying Amun-Ra. Instead of the customary crook and flail held by the pharaohs, this carved figure held a was scepter in the right hand, signifying power, and the ankh in the left, held by the loop and with the base pointing up to the figure’s right shoulder. The human body was carved from limestone with tiles of colored stones inlaid, mosaic fashion, to provide color. Some of these were gilded, and jewels still gleamed around the neck. The crocodile head was polished basalt and skillfully carved. The teeth were limestone but had been painted white at one time. Much of that paint had deteriorated, but a few discolored flecks hinted at what it must have looked like when new. The scepter and ankh were not carved of stone but appeared to be gilded bronze.

I wasn’t an expert on Egyptian artifacts by any means, but these sarcophagi couldn’t be older than the Middle Kingdom period—and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were from the time of the New Kingdom, judging by the craftsmanship on display. Normally the limbs and feet on sarcophagi were mere suggestions, painted on or highlighted with the slightest of bas-relief sculpting, but these were fully sculpted.

Miraculous that it hadn’t been plundered—not only by Elkhashab but by centuries of grave robbers. Yet there was no other treasure in the room, so if it was a traditional burial chamber, then quite a bit of stuff was missing. But why take everything else and leave these untouched? Most curious.

I was about to reach out and touch the ankh when I heard the swirl of water and an animal grunt from the next chamber down, traveling and echoing the way sound will when water and stone is involved. I froze.

There was much more than Elkhashab’s handiwork to fear here. Aside from whatever made that noise, untold ancient hoodoo could be waiting to descend upon my head—perhaps from this very sarcophagus. Though my cold iron aura would most likely protect me, prudence dictated that I shouldn’t touch it without checking it in the magical spectrum first, and I let my hand drop. These weren’t going anywhere; I could come back to examine them later. I had much more reconnaissance to conduct.

I crept down the hall in front of the line of sarcophagi, my eyes toward the center of the room. Elkhashab’s string of bulbs, spaced at odd intervals, created puddles of yellow like streetlamps, allowing the edges of the room to languish in shadow. Past the first set of pillars, I saw some familiar markings on the floor: a circle enclosing another circle, and inside that not a pentagram but a mixture of lines, Hebrew characters, and mystical symbols straight out of The Greater Key of Solomon. The White Knife and the Black Knife were there, the Sickle, the Sword, and all the rest too. Elkhashab was definitely more than a crocodile priest. He dabbled extensively in the dark end of the magic pool, like Nebwenenef before him.

A supporting wall forced me to move toward the center. A doorway there led to another room, decorated with bas-relief doodads heralding Sobek’s spiffiness. At least, I inferred as much from the gaping maw of a crocodile sculpted at the top.

The next room was poorly lit. A single light made a half-assed effort at fighting the darkness from the edges. The scent of water and fetid rot twitched at my nostrils; something had died in there. Maybe many somethings. The pervasive miasma was enough to make me draw Fragarach from its sheath.

Two steps into the room, I heard the water gurgling again. Cursing the weak effort of the token bulb, I recast night vision to better see what I was missing. The chamber was of a similar size to the one I had just left, except that in the center of the room there was no floor with mystical symbols scrawled across it; rather, a black pool with ripples betrayed recent movement. Pillars rose out of it to support the ceiling.

There was no great mystery about what awaited me in the gloom. Elkhashab, that pantweasel, had left me with one or more crocodiles to deal with. A faint electric hum drew my attention over my left shoulder.

A large old-fashioned freezer lurked there, a thick cable snaking from underneath it to the room I’d just vacated. He must have run the electricity behind all the sarcophagi. I opened the lid and saw that it was full of steaks and roasts. Oberon would have approved. I took a few out and threw them to the edge of the pool, then tossed a final one into the pool itself. Something responded in the dark, and I slid along the wall counterclockwise, holding my sword point in front of me. Anything that wanted to eat me had to eat my blade first. Once I’d started to move along the longer wall, a splash sounded from the space I’d vacated, followed by serious macking noises. I saw gold glinting in the dim light, and then an enormous pocked back stretched sinuously into the water: It was the largest crocodile I had ever seen, festooned with enough metal to make reestablishing the gold standard plausible. I hurried to the next supporting wall and another doorway. There was nothing that I could see to keep the crocodile from entering the next room, but perhaps it didn’t want to leave its comfy mini-swamp with easy-to-hunt rump roasts.

The subsequent chamber was fairly well lit, like the first one, allowing me to dispel night vision, but its contents were entirely different. Instead of sarcophagi along the walls, there were boxes—the wooden kind you used to see a lot of before the planet started to run low on trees and people figured it might be better to use recycled cardboard instead. They were probably full of the treasures missing from the burial chamber. I left them alone, figuring it was best to leave it all conveniently packaged for the Ministry of Antiquities. I was much more interested in the creeptastic vibe coming from the far side of the room.

Elkhashab had repurposed an ancient stone worktable, perhaps originally intended as an embalming station, by turning it into a makeshift altar. It was stained with fluids that were supposed to stay on the inside of bodies, and there were a couple of smallish skulls on either end. Around the altar itself he’d drawn a couple of large circles, symbols of invocation and protection written along the circumference and ritual materials placed carefully inside. Adjacent to these were other circles—the summoning kind. Circles of binding with pentagrams. A telltale whiff of sulfur confirmed that he’d successfully summoned physical demons here, not just the spirits suggested by the first room’s circles. He had the seals of calling, binding, coercion, submission, and banishment painted perfectly between the points of the stars. Almost too perfectly.

I scanned the altar again with a new suspicion. The two skulls were facing at exactly the same angle. He had some bowls full of ritual ingredients—salt and salamander tails, that kind of thing—and those bowls were precisely equidistant from one another. The candles were brand new and of the same kind. The ritual knife was placed perpendicular to the edge.

I thought back to the guest bathroom with the air freshener and the primly folded towels. The order of the library. Even the studio, meant to look sloppy and spontaneous, had been carefully arranged that way. This guy was an obsessive–compulsive.

It made sense. The precision required to be a practicing magician was no joke.

I decided to mess with him. A fingernail’s scratch across the seals of coercion, submission, and banishment would drive him crazy. He’d spend hours repainting just to make sure everything was perfect. That is, if I didn’t kill him first.

Golden figurines of Sobek, Amun, and Amun-Ra stood impassively on the altar, their dead painted eyes calmly awaiting tribute and sacrifice. I smirked; Elkhashab appeared to be hedging his bets on which form of Amun would get all the love. Amun had been a headliner in the early Egyptian dynasties, but he had to share top billing with Ra later on, and Sobek was considered in some tales to be a manifestation of the combined god Amun-Ra. Elkhashab must be harboring doubts about which was to receive sacrifices from the Grimoire of the Lamb.

This room was the last one. Nestled in the corner behind the altar, off to my left, a spiral staircase twisted up into the ceiling. If it led all the way up to the surface, that was how he smuggled stuff out of here. He would never leave his house with contraband when he was under surveillance; he would choose to emerge elsewhere.

It also explained why he never went for the big score with a sarcophagus; never mind that it would invite too many inconvenient questions, there was no way he’d get one up through that wee well. I doubted he could get one up through the steep tunnel that led to his studio either. I wondered why he hadn’t installed a rudimentary lift instead. Too conspicuous?

The staircase bore investigation. It was probably my best way out, after all. But the altar needed a closer look first. I circled it and discovered a small table nestled against the far side, almost like a hallway desk, yet lower in height so that it was invisible while looking at the altar from the direction I’d entered. Stacked on it were two sheaves of paper—no, parchment. Incredibly old stuff too, mostly illegible, the ink having faded and flaked away after centuries. In the magical spectrum, the writings were quite clear, however; they glowed with ancient hoodoo. I’d bet five biscuits that these were the writings of which Elkhashab had spoken—the writings of Nebwenenef.

My immediate impulse was to destroy them, but I decided against it, figuring that Elkhashab would notice right away and know that someone had been there. Like everything else around the altar, the sheaves were placed and organized with attention to detail, and I didn’t want to give myself away yet. I’d definitely come back and take care of them before I left, however.

I turned my attention to the staircase. It was a sturdy metal one; it didn’t creak or shiver as I ascended, and my inner ninja approved. My stomach, however, began to rebel as I got closer to the ceiling. Something smelled foul up there—but it was a different stench from the one in the chamber of the crocodile god.

Once I got my head in the space between the ceiling and the floor, I paused. The smell was definitely coming from the room above, but I couldn’t see very much. Silently, I withdrew a dagger from my satchel and poked it up through the hole to see if it set off any kind of trap. I wiggled it around. I swirled it all around the edges. Nothing.

I did a quick peekaboo, feeling silly, but whatever—I didn’t want to end more than two thousand years of existence as a victim to one of Elkhashab’s booby traps. No reaction, and I didn’t see much of anything. It was fair-to-middling Stygian darkness in there.

Casting night vision, I took a longer peek and did a complete survey, three-sixty. There was a break in the railing of the staircase so that one could enter or exit on this floor. It appeared to be a single chamber, smaller than the ones downstairs. There was a lone sarcophagus here, but a more conventional type rather than one of Sobek. It was situated conventionally as well, resting prone instead of leaning upright against the wall. Three large cages filled the rest of the room, and it was from them that the stink emanated. Behind me, there was just the bare stone wall, and the staircase continued to wind above into farther unknown levels. I put my dagger away.

I climbed and left the stairs to check out the cages. The first one held a small skeleton without a skull. The next held a rotting corpse, also headless, dressed in tatters of once-white linen that had been chewed on by rats. Or maybe by those flesh-eating scarab beetles from The Mummy, which still gave me nightmares. I couldn’t tell if the body was male or female, but it was young. I remembered the two skulls resting on the altar; I’d thought them there for gravitas or a sense of theatre, but the bastard had actually sacrificed kids. Sure, demons would let themselves be bound for one of those.

Another still form lay in the third cage. The legs faced the door and the rise of shoulders concealed the head—if there was one. The reek was awful; there was a bucket filled to the brim with waste in one corner. Strangely, it gave me hope.

“Hey, kid,” I whispered. Then I realized I didn’t need to whisper and I should probably speak in Arabic. “Wake up!” I called. No reaction. My throat tightened, but I shouted it again. The child didn’t move.

Concentrating on the lock, I bound the metal tumblers to the unlocked position, swung open the door, and entered the cage. The boy—for it was a boy, about ten years old or so—still had a head. He was alive but unconscious, and the pulse I felt at his neck was weak. He was probably dehydrated and starved. Elkhashab had just left him in here while he went off to America to steal an ancient grimoire.

I couldn’t let him stay here any longer. He needed medical attention now. As I had done before with Oberon, I created a binding so that this boy could use the magic stored in my bear charm for energy. Once the binding was complete, his eyes popped open and he scrambled away from me until he was at the back of the cage, his hands raised defensively as he begged in Arabic not to be killed.

“Salaam,” I said in the same language. The poor kid had every reason to be terrified. “I’ve come to take you out of here. Let’s get away from that man.” I backed out of the cage and left the door open, speaking to him from freedom. “Come on.” Belatedly, I remembered that he probably couldn’t see anything. He might be thinking that I was Elkhashab. I cast night vision on him and spoke again. “Let’s go. Up the stairs. Let’s get you home. Your parents are worried.”

I hoped he wouldn’t take too long to decide. The energy in my charm wouldn’t last forever and was already getting low.

The boy’s eyes grew wide. “You don’t work for him?”

I snorted and shook my head. “No. I prefer life over death. If anyone dies today, it will be him, not you. Come on.”

“Who are you?”

What a great straight line. A few different superhero names rushed through my head, Whiskey Man being my favorite for its rather dubious heroism, but he might not have ever heard of whiskey here. “Call me Atticus,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Hamal.”

“Are you from Al Fayyum, Hamal?” He nodded. “Good. Home is upstairs. Let’s go.” I held out my hand to him and he moved at last. He rose to his feet and shot toward me, leaping into my arms and wrapping his legs around my waist like a much smaller child. He held me tightly around the neck.

“Okay, that’ll work too,” I said, and carried him up the staircase. It rose past another darkened floor, a chamber full of more wooden boxes, then another, and then a period of traveling through solid rock. We arrived finally in a small room, clearly modern, and just as clearly a changing room. Several different outfits hung on hooks, to allow Elkhashab to emerge into the world looking completely different from however he’d entered his house. A small bank of TV monitors showed four different views of some barren desert, no doubt the area around our exit point. No one was currently pictured. I dispelled our night vision.

There were no giant red buttons here to tempt people; Elkhashab was confident that no one would find this place by accident. A simple switch on the wall next to the staircase opened a sliding trapdoor that turned out to be a piece of a fake boulder. Said boulder was hidden inside a thicket of thorns, which made our emergence a tad painful. but also completely hidden from view.

I wondered who had built all this cloak-and-dagger shit for Elkhashab. I wondered if they were still alive or if they had turned into dinner for the crocodile god below.

Once out of the boulder, I waited for the trapdoor to slide closed automatically, but it didn’t. That meant that there must be a switch around somewhere to close it. After a bit of searching—made more difficult by Hamal’s refusal to let go of me—I found a small painted button at the base of the same boulder. That closed the door.

Following some footprints, I took the path of least resistance out of the thicket. We were on a rocky outcropping in the desert north of the lake. The center of Al Fayyum was a few miles away to the south.

“There, you see?” I said to Hamal. “Sunlight. You’re safe now.” The boy said nothing, but he began to cry. No tears, though—that was a bad sign. He needed fluids desperately, and the lake wouldn’t provide any. It used to be freshwater, in ancient times, but today it’s a saltwater lake, cut off from the flow of the Nile.

With earth under my feet again, I replenished my bear charm and drew more to run quickly. I had no idea where to find a hospital.

I hugged the lakeshore and headed south until I hit the suburbs of Al Fayyum and found a bazaar. People were looking at me curiously—what was that white man with the sword doing carrying that filthy boy?

It was a good time to gamble on basic human decency. I began to call for help in Arabic. “This boy needs water! I found him in the desert!” I was surrounded in no time by four or five locals. Outside Al Fayyum’s oasis, the desert was harsh and unforgiving, and the people knew it well.

I broke the binding that fed magical energy to Hamal, and his grip about my neck slackened enough that I could lay him down and kneel by his side. Somebody had a canteen of water and put it up to Hamal’s lips.

“Not too much. He really needs medical attention. I’m a stranger here. Is there a hospital nearby?” I wanted to keep things moving along before people started asking me questions like, “What were you doing in the desert?”

An argument broke out regarding the wisest course of action—calling an ambulance, or grabbing a doctor one person knew a block away, or carrying him all the way to the hospital ourselves because, you know, who knew when the ambulance would get there? For just a moment nobody was looking at me, so I cast camouflage and backed away.

They noticed me disappearing, but they couldn’t figure out where I’d gone to. I stayed still and heard them quickly dismiss me, because the kid was what mattered. Exactly. Satisfied that Hamal would be taken care of and returned to his family, I hoofed it back to the ruins and gingerly crept into the thicket, where I pushed the button on the bottom of the proper boulder. The smooth mechanism slid aside and I began my second descent into darkness, fully recharged, lips pressed tight in a grim line. It was far past time for the crocodile priest to get his.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t get his until he showed up. I checked my cell phone on the way down: no messages from Yusuf in Cairo.

I parked myself next to the stairs on the floor where I’d found Hamal and settled down to wait. Elkhashab would be coming, I felt sure, to try out the Grimoire of the Lamb as soon as possible. And he’d do it at the altar with the Amun idols, not anywhere else, and when he did, I’d take a pound of flesh for Hamal and those other poor kids.

If Elkhashab didn’t come back soon, the authorities might swarm down here and take care of everything, because Hamal would eventually start talking. I’d rather inform the authorities myself, though, after the grimoire was safely back in my hands.

It occurred to me to wonder why archaeologists had never found these chambers. They were buried deep, no doubt, and there wasn’t a convenient pyramid above ground shouting, “Here’s where all the plunder is!” but they had all kinds of little electromagnetic radar scanner doodads these days to search for chambers like these. My guesses were that Elkhashab had spoofed their findings with his ritual practice or greased some palms—or else the real Sobek was exercising himself to keep his treasures hidden. Considering how eager Bast was to have her book returned to her, I didn’t think it unreasonable to expect Sobek to be just as protective of his legacy.

During the archaeological orgy at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Egyptian gods reveled in the attention they were getting around the world. But I knew that not everything had been found, and I’m sure the joy of the gods ebbed away when they saw that the new attention they received did not translate into new worshippers. They were still keeping plenty of secrets. This place was one of Sobek’s.

The more time I had to think, the more I began to respect Elkhashab’s cleverness. He clearly had the talent and the stomach to do what was necessary to deal with demonkind, but he must have realized that continuing to kidnap and kill kids was simply unsustainable to do all he wanted to do. But if he could accomplish basically the same sorts of things by dispatching lambs instead of children, well, he could continue that ad infinitum. Nobody cared if you slaughtered lambs. They expected you to slaughter them when they sold them to you.

A splash and a terrified bleat let me know that Elkhashab had finally arrived, lamb in tow. He’d feed his giant croc and then enter the room directly below. I drew Fragarach as silently as I could to get ready and crouched near the staircase.

The bleating continued and grew louder, and Elkhashab’s quiet cursing could be heard underneath it.

“I’m going to tranquilize the next one and have done with it,” he muttered. “Can hardly wait to sacrifice you. There. Stay there.”

More bleating, then a soft plop as Elkhashab dropped something—perhaps the grimoire?—on the altar. “There, Nebwenenef. I have brought it, you see?” he said, his voice full of victory. There was rustling from what sounded like several plastic bags being set down and dull impacts from the contents inside hitting stone. A sharp metallic ring announced a knife being yanked from its sheath.

“But, first, I have older business to conduct. Hamal!” He crooned the name, lengthening the last syllable. I nearly snarled aloud. Most serial murderers don’t want to know the names of their victims. It’s easier to sleep at night if you have killed only victims instead of people with names and families. Elkhashab was a different kind.

I hadn’t planned on him coming up here—I imagined sneaking down while he was busy doing something else—but if he wanted to stick his head up through that hole, so be it. It would be a cleaner and quicker death for him than I’d anticipated.

Silently shifting so that I’d be behind his head when he came up the stairs, I cocked my sword hand back. His boots made a dull, hollow sound on the stairs. His white cap rose out of the hole like a giant marshmallow, then the back of his neck, and I swung—but he must have heard or sensed something, because he ducked back down and Fragarach whiffed, clanging loudly against the staircase’s main support.

“Shit! Who’s there?” Elkhashab cried.

I cursed silently and moved away from the stairwell. Only an idiot stays where the enemy can locate him.

“Is that you, Hamal? How did you escape?” The sorcerer thought about it and then realized that didn’t make much sense. A ten-year-old boy wouldn’t hang around to ambush him when he had an escape route handy. Elkhashab’s conscious mind slowly caught up with what his subconscious had absorbed.

“No. That was a sword. It’s you. The American wizard.” He switched to English. “I know you’re there, O’Sullivan. I don’t know how you found this place, but you’re going to die here.”

He didn’t say anything else, and I was faintly disappointed. I’d been hoping for a longer monologue. Perhaps he was waiting for me to respond? Fat chance of that. I wasn’t going to sneeze or fart or do anything else to give away my position, least of all stick my head down the hole. Nor was he going to give me another free strike. It was something of an impasse.

He was listening hard. I heard nothing but the occasional bleat of the lamb. Elkhashab grew weary of that after a while and began to move. He struck a couple of matches to light some candles on his altar. A bowl or two got picked up and put down again. He muttered unintelligibly; either it was just very low volume or it was a language I didn’t understand.

A sharp intake of breath—a hiss of pain. What the fuck was he doing? The mumbling resumed, but it quickly rose in volume until it was distinguishable as a chant in an absurdly old language, one with lots of gutturals and fricatives.

Gods below! He was summoning a demon, using his own blood so he could send it up here to off me. If he was occupied doing that, then he couldn’t be watching the stairwell to take a potshot at me; he had to concentrate on the ritual. I decided to risk a peek.

Padding forward to the well, I stretched out prone on the floor, then held on to the edge with my right hand as I dropped my head and left shoulder down into the stairwell far enough to steal a quick look.

The light coming up from the lower chamber was a yellow-orange, but as I descended it turned red, and a sound like someone slamming a refrigerator door really hard foomped and rattled the staircase.

“Yes!” Elkhashab cried, and the light turned yellow-orange again. My eyes dropped below the ceiling to catch the crocodile priest in the midst of an ecstatic fist pump. He faced a demon in his circle of summoning, ignoring the choking brimstone fumes that filled the chamber. I could tell he was winding himself up for a cackle of glee before he told the spawn to eat me, but then a deep-fried gravel voice answered in much the same tone of victory, and Elkhashab’s face went slack as he realized something had gone horribly wrong.

“No!” His tone had changed to the raw falsetto of pants-crapping panic. He was discovering that he could not cow his personal demon into submission with a broken seal, or coerce it to do his bidding with the seal of coercion broken as well, or indeed even banish it now. The scratch of my fingernail and his hurry to kill me had slain him. All he could do anymore was scream as the demon’s claws opened up his belly and his guts slithered out. He screamed for a long time. The demon made sloppy chewing noises as he ate Elkhashab alive.

Justice.

I pulled myself up as silently as I could, but the demon had to know I was there. A demon’s ability to sense prey was unmatched. He’d come for me next, but if I tried to escape up the stairwell, he’d come for me sooner and I’d be in a poor position to defend myself. As it was, I had a couple of advantages most mortals did not: I had a cold iron amulet bound to my aura, which protected me from most magic, and my sword cut through any armor. Demons didn’t wear chain and plate or any other kind of traditional armor, but some of them had magical armor that made them immune to conventional weapons. Fragarach wasn’t conventional.

I backed away from the staircase, because I had a feeling the demon was faster than me, even if I juiced myself up. I went ahead and did that, of course. If I made him come all the way up and locate me before he could charge, I’d have enough time to take my own shot. He might, in his hubris, even let me take a free swing at him.

Elkhashab finally died, and the demon seemed to lose interest. No fear and pain there anymore. The lamb, I realized, hadn’t bleated in a while. I didn’t know if it was dead or if it was hoping the demon wouldn’t notice it. I hadn’t seen it when I played peekaboo, but neither had I looked for it.

The demon was free to do as he wished. The one who had summoned him was dead; all bindings were off. The lamb, if it was still around, wasn’t much of a soul. The demon came after me instead.

He made no noise on the steps with anything that could be called feet; there was simply a sort of deep drumroll and he was there—glowing orange like banked embers around the edges, a mouth and a distended stomach and two pairs of huge arms to shove food down the maw. He didn’t have any legs at all; his black body was rounded like a balloon. He moved on his knuckles, and his mouth sneered at me.

“Khaja gorl mahka …” the demon began. The voice sounded like a grumpy Tom Waits mixed with an acetylene torch. I didn’t let him finish. I didn’t understand him anyway. I lunged much faster than he expected and lopped off his front left arm at the elbow.

The creature was shocked but utterly savage in reply; he roared and swung at me with his right, able to stay balanced on the back two arms, and my attempt to block cost me a broken left wrist. Both of us staggered back, wounded and wary now. I decided that attacking was my best strategy; the demon was probably unused to playing defense, and I had to make the most of my few advantages, especially since I was operating on a limited supply of magic.

I brought the sword around high on his left, precisely where it would be most difficult for the demon to block. He rotated to his side to avoid the blow and countered with a swing from his back right arm. I’d anticipated this and pivoted away, much as he had. Those back arms didn’t have huge claws, I noticed. Those were used primarily for movement.

He was faster than me but crippled and unused to fighting against swords. All the demon had seen so far was two slashes. He might have concluded that this was all I could do. I feinted another hack at his left side and then twisted my wrist, sweeping the sword down and across my body to meet the right cross I knew would be coming. As Fragarach arced up, it caught the demon’s wrist from underneath and severed the clawed hand. This move left my right side exposed, however.

The demon lost his shit. Down to just the two back arms and seeing an opening, he launched off his back right, and his left fist hammered my ribs. They cracked and I went down, wondering what happened to all the air in the world.

I didn’t know how I was ever going to get up. My left wrist wouldn’t support me. My ribs wouldn’t let me roll to my right. I couldn’t breathe. I supposed it was okay, though. This seemed the type of demon to bring the fight to you—especially if you were vulnerable.

He had not landed gracefully, but the creature was shifting for a charge. I lifted Fragarach’s blade to make sure it couldn’t be trapped against the floor, then folded up my legs to reduce the target. That was about all I could manage without any air. I gasped for some and kept an eye on the demon.

He let loose with a thunderous roar scented with all the joys of ass and pestilence. The faint whiff I got made me grateful that I couldn’t inhale a lungful of it. The beast’s teeth were mismatched ebony punji sticks, showcases of rot and an example to all who refuse to floss.

One massively knuckled hand swung forward, planted itself, and then seemed to buckle at the elbow. It stopped and swayed. The loss of blood—ichor, rather—from two severed limbs was taking its toll.

The creature spat, “Barg rah!” That was a “Fuck it!” if I ever heard one. His back arms churned and his damn black teeth were sunk into the side of my calf before I could move. I grunted and swung Fragarach at the top of his head, shearing off a slice like a cantaloupe. The blow rocked him back, and the teeth popped out of my leg before he fell over and dissolved into a sulfurous puddle of goo. The corporeal form of demons never lasts long once they’re unbound.

I expelled a sigh of relief and relaxed for a moment—or at least as much as I could, considering my injuries. But the stench of the room and my pressing need to get in touch with the earth drove me to action. Despite being fully charged when I came back down, I had burned a lot of juice to boost my speed, and I didn’t have enough left to do any serious healing. I compromised by shutting off the pain so I’d be able to move and concentrate. My calf, while probably infected with something nasty from the demon’s teeth, was still capable of functioning. Getting up was a bit of a chore, with cracked ribs and a broken wrist, but the legs weren’t in terrible shape, and I could go back downstairs and retrieve the grimoire—or, better yet, destroy it along with the writings of Nebwenenef.

Figuring I was all alone, I kind of clomped down the metal stairs when I should have kept quiet. It prevented me from hearing the noise in the next room until I reached the stone floor. I froze at the bottom of the stairwell and heard the chalky grind and thud of stone scraping against stone. The jaundiced light of yellow bulbs revealed a disturbing shadow moving on the floor. It grew as it approached the door to the chamber I thought of as the crocodile lounge. Being careful to make no sound this time, I minced behind the altar. Elkhashab’s torn and partially eaten remains littered the front, I noticed, along with his plastic grocery bags. The grimoire lay open between the candles he had lit before his death. A tiny noise of fear drew my eyes to the wall on my left, back near the door. The lamb was still alive and cowering near the boxes of untold treasures. The shadow took on a solid presence at the doorway, and I crouched down out of sight as it entered with heavy, grinding footsteps.

Whatever it was scared the bejesus out of the lamb, for it screamed and quite probably shat where it stood. I risked a peek around the corner of the altar, figuring that whatever had entered the room would be focused on the lamb.

It was one of the Sobek sarcophagi—or, rather, the front of it—the lid now ambulatory, a lurching stone-and-metal horror with its backside missing and much of the paint worn away, but possessing a full complement of limestone teeth in a maw of basalt that it was now able to open. The legs functioned like articulated action figures, with stiff movements allowed by cracks in the stone around the knees and hips. The gilded bronze scepter of power that looked so fascinating when it was art turned abruptly sickening when it was wielded on living flesh. That’s what the unholy thing did—it crushed the lamb’s spine with the scepter in its right hand, then tossed away the ankh in its left, and picked up the body.

I had a lot to process and little time to do it.

First, how had this thing come to life? Was it, in fact, living, or was it undead? That was an important distinction for me, since Druidry forbade me to harm living things through binding or unbinding. On the one hand, its stone body and the fact that it had torn itself free of a sarcophagus suggested something undead or animated along the lines of a golem, but on the other—what if it was a manifestation of Sobek?

That was possible but unlikely to my mind. Back in Cairo, Bast had manifested first as a cat and then took a semi-human form, so it would have made more sense for Sobek to take over the living crocodile in the next room than to animate the sculptured lid of a sarcophagus.

Said sculpture didn’t pause to provide me with an explanation. It placed the head of the lamb between its black jaws and tore it off with limestone teeth, then spat it out hurriedly and lifted the carcass above its head, letting the blood drain from the body into its mouth.

It didn’t swallow because it didn’t possess a throat, just a closed-off surface like a hand puppet—but the blood didn’t spill out the sides either. Instead, it was absorbed into the stone. I silently triggered my magical sight, which drained my magic down to dangerous lows, but it revealed to me that this thing wasn’t Sobek—it didn’t have the blinding white aura of a god. Instead of being suffused all over with the white power of magic, the sculpture had its power centered at the back of the mouth, where the blood was pooling and disappearing. In other words, it was ordinary rock and metal animated by an extraordinary spirit. I would ponder later whose spirit it might be and why and how it had animated that sarcophagus at that particular time. A better question to ponder right then was how I was going to prevent it from tearing off my head too and gulping my blood like an energy drink.

Running away sounded attractive. The sheer size of the thing—seven feet tall and the width of a bookcase—would make navigating the spiral staircase difficult. But I didn’t want to leave behind the grimoire—nor did I wish this thing to grow any more powerful than it already was. How to defeat it?

Fragarach wouldn’t do me any good. It was great against armor but not so good against rock. Few martial arts were great against rock, now that I thought of it. Probably because one so rarely sees possessed sarcophagi.

Perhaps I could unbind its feet—which were only half feet anyway—and it would fall down and go boom. It was worth a shot, especially since I’d have nothing left afterward but some dregs to keep my injuries from distracting me.

I banished my magical sight mentally by using my charm, but there was no way to perform the unbinding silently. I whispered the words, of course, but even that sound echoed in the stone chamber and alerted the thing that it wasn’t alone. It stopped drinking blood, cocked its head, then turned my way. It spotted me peeking from behind the altar as I finished the unbinding and energized it.

The lamb dropped from its grasp, forgotten, and its mouth opened wide. I think it would have bellowed or hissed if it had any vocal cords, and I kind of wished it did, since its silence was creepy. It whipped its left hand down to point at the floor near its ankles. Nothing happened—visually, at least. I could imagine very well what had happened in the magical spectrum, for that gesture was familiar to me, thanks to Elkhashab. My earth magic had just been canceled out by Sobek’s water magic, a small flood drowning my bindings, and now I had nothing of significance left.

Hiding was pointless. Pushing up off my right hand, my left still useless, I rose from behind the altar and drew Fragarach. It would do me little good against the stone but would provide some defense against its weapon, which had a flared crest at one end and two forked tines at the other. I circled around the altar to my right, which would force the thing to pivot on its uncertain feet to face me.

It knew what it was doing with that scepter. Displaying a dexterity wholly alien to most rocks and much more fluid than the movement of the legs, it twirled the was in front of it and then lashed out as I approached. I deflected the first blow, then another, and its skill was such that I found myself fencing with it for a brief time. Its mouth remained open, silently promising to end me. But its weapon was inherently slower, and I was able to slap away a blow and use the opening to deliver a straight kick to its abdomen. Lacking heels on which to stagger backward, it toppled over. As it fell, however, it whipped the scepter around and hooked my plant leg—my left—with the crested end and sent me tumbling on my ass. When I collided with the ground, something crumpled further inside; now my ribs were not just cracked but broken and, in all likelihood, scraping my spleen. The fresh bloom of pain prevented me from rolling out of the way or moving much at all. It gave the Sobek creature the chance to sit up and swing at me again with the scepter, the crested end aimed at my face. Having no other choice, I threw up my left forearm to block, and it did so but scored another break in the process. It wasn’t useless after all. Just painful. Wincing as I moved, I rolled out of range before another blow could rain down, using my right arm for support.

We were both slow to get up but for different reasons. I had broken bones, and it was a ridiculously top-heavy monstrosity trying to stand without any heels. It managed to get halfway up, lost its balance, and crashed to the ground again.

As I regained my footing and my magic ran out completely, letting me feel all the agony of my broken arm and ribs, I realized that keeping this thing on the floor might be all I could reasonably hope for. I didn’t have a jackhammer handy. Magically we were at an impasse as well: Even if I had any magic left, the sculpture had already demonstrated that it could dissolve my bindings, and anything it threw at me would be deflected by my cold iron aura. It didn’t know that yet, though. It gestured at me with its left hand—and snapped its jaws shut when nothing happened. My amulet kind of wiggled on my chest, but that was it.

“Ha! Suck it, Sobek. Or whoever you are. Kind of stupid to take an earth form if you’re a water sorcerer, don’t you think?”

I doubted it understood English, but I knew it could hear me, because it had reacted to my whisper before. It was also clearly able to see. So despite the lack of anything akin to normal eyes or ears, the spirit possessing that form had some basic senses. A bit slow on the uptake, though. It kept flicking its hand at me and expecting something to happen.

“Why now?” I asked it, thinking aloud. “You had centuries of time and presumably several years in the recent past during which you could have stumbled through these chambers. What changed?”

It gave up on trying to hex me and attempted to stand again, a noisy, scraping business that made the hairs on the back of my neck try to flee. A well-placed kick kept it seated, and I danced out of the way of a scepter strike. The strain of dodging aggravated my calf, however, where the demon had bitten me. My pain kept developing layers and flavors; this one burned with a dull fire.

“I came through here hours ago and you didn’t budge. But after Elkhashab—” That was it. Elkhashab had brought the Grimoire of the Lamb and an actual lamb in here, right past that thing, which mattered because the first item on its to-do list when it became mobile was to eat the lamb. And the sacrifice of a lamb was required before performing anything in the grimoire. Instructions on how to use the grimoire were in the writings of Nebwenenef, and Elkhashab had even spoken his name.

“Nebwenenef?” I said, and the stone image of Sobek stopped trying to get up and jerked its head toward me in recognition.

Oh, shit. The legend of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Somehow he’d found a way back to the semi-living. The grimoire must have been his ticket back to power—that and those writings on the table behind the altar. The writings that had glowed in the magical spectrum when I looked at them.

A fact few people realize until they experience it is how crippling pain can be. I wanted to dash around the altar, scoop up that sheaf of parchment, and destroy it. My upper body and my calf informed me that there would be no more dashing. I limped there, anyway, as quickly as I could, during which time Nebwenenef lumbered to his feet. I sheathed Fragarach behind my back and, as I passed, picked up one of the candles Elkhashab had lit. Once behind the altar, I set the candle on the small table next to the ancient pieces of script, picked them up by one edge, and held them over the flame.

Nebwenenef had my measure now. If he could keep me at a distance, I wouldn’t be able to knock him down, and I didn’t have my sword out to deflect him anyway. He began twirling the scepter around, building velocity, and I stole a glance down at the parchment, which should be merrily ablaze.

It wasn’t—because water mages tend to protect themselves from fire, and at this point I had very little doubt that these writings were, in some sense, a piece of Nebwenenef. The water mage had bound himself to the liquid of the ink. If I kept at it, eventually the fire would win, but that could be minutes or even hours away—time I didn’t have.

The scepter crashed down across the altar and smashed the top of the candle, but I wasn’t there. I’d backed up, out of range, keeping the altar between Nebwenenef and me. I took a step to the right and he took one to his left, a juicy noise from Elkhashab’s remains squelching underfoot.

Since my left hand wasn’t gripping anything soon, I used my teeth to hold the parchment and tried to tear it, but it might as well have been steel plate. The sheaf had been warded with all the protections Nebwenenef could muster. Well, it was time to truly lay my hands on the work and stop messing about with the edges. Or, better yet, to put my useless arm to good use again.

I kept an eye on Nebwenenef and draped the sheaf over my left forearm, so that the flat of the first page rested against my skin. Whatever magical secrets it held should dissipate in a few seconds after my cold iron aura had a chance to work on it. It took only a second for Nebwenenef to know something was wrong, however. He shuddered, losing his motor functions for a moment, and nearly slipped in the slime of Elkhashab’s guts. He knew he couldn’t let me stand there and continue, so he circled around to my right, toward the staircase. I moved to keep myself opposite and allowed the first page to slip from underneath my thumb and fall to the floor. I rested the second page on my left arm and kept my feet moving. Nebwenenef shuddered again, and the fluidity of his arm movements noticeably decreased. My own mobility was jeopardized as I nearly lost my footing in Elkhashab parts. Nebwenenef took advantage and thrust at me across the altar with the forked end of his scepter. I saw it coming but had nothing to block it with, and my own fluidity of movement was gone thanks to the broken ribs. My attempt to sidestep was too slow, and he pierced me in the left breast, though shallowly. The tines weren’t barbed, so they slid out when I backed away, out of his reach, careful not to slip in the slime. I dropped the second page and laid the third one across my arm, continuing to walk backward from the altar and leaving bloody footprints on the stone. Nebwenenef raised his scepter, as if he would hurl it at me like a spear, but he was rocked—so to speak—by a third series of fits, and the scepter dropped from his grasp. He kept from falling over only by bracing himself against the altar. When I moved on to the fourth page, he collapsed altogether, out of my sight. There were two more pages to go, and I made sure to give them a dose of cold iron too. I held on to the last page when I was finished and returned to the altar to try an experiment. Hearing nothing from behind the altar and stepping carefully around the mess, I held the last page of parchment over the sole remaining candle and was gratified to see it light up quickly this time. Good riddance, Nebwenenef. He’d lived and supposedly died long before the pharaohs but had somehow arranged this little scheme, his spirit still bound with the elemental magic he’d stolen and then spread throughout the Nile Valley.

He obviously wasn’t one for talking, but I wished I could have asked him how he did it. I guessed that he had never really died so much as dissipated. Here, near Crocodilopolis, he’d slowly collected a shadow of himself and engineered a method by which he could return to power, influencing this priest or possessing that sorcerer to write down what he needed to reconstitute himself in a physical form, binding a piece of himself to ink and parchment, and then, gulled by visions of power and thinking it was all for Amun, someone like Elkhashab would assemble what Nebwenenef needed to bring himself back. I’d have to reexamine my other Egyptian grimoires to see if any of them could be used in a similar fashion, and likewise go through Elkhashab’s writings to make sure he hadn’t been influenced to write down anything in modern Arabic. I wondered, not for the first time, what else might have been destroyed at the Library of Alexandria. That fire might have inadvertently delayed Nebwenenef’s return by many centuries.

I put the parchment on the altar to burn out and then picked up the Grimoire of the Lamb and set it alight as well. I would make sure to torch the other parchment pages I’d dropped, but picking those up could wait until after I had a chance to heal. I’d give them a read and see if they listed other books besides the “lost book of Amun” that would grant an enterprising sorcerer power for the low, low price of a blood sacrifice. Stepping around to the stairwell, I saw the Sobek sculpture sprawled awkwardly, facedown, in a manner that would be extremely difficult to explain to scientists. No one would believe that someone had carved the stone that way, and yet there it was, inanimate rock. I placed my foot on the back of the head, not as a gesture of victory but to make doubly sure that Nebwenenef was thoroughly exorcised from the stone. The glimpse I’d seen of his power had been centered at the back of the throat or head, and it cost me nothing to apply a little bit more cold iron there.

Climbing the stairs was a slow exercise in hurt and lightheadedness. I thanked the gods below that Sobek hadn’t chosen to manifest like Bast had. Two sorcerers with the ability to use his magic had given me more than enough trouble.

Night had fallen by the time I tumbled out of the boulder and reconnected with the earth with a sigh of relief.

Oberon? Can you hear me?

<Atticus? Where are you?> His voice was small and uncertain.

A bit far away, I guess. Kind of messed up and need to heal. Will you be okay there until the morning?

<Can’t I come to where you are?>

I’m worried someone will catch you if you run through the streets by yourself.

<You think they can catch an Irish wolfhound on the run?>

Maybe you’re right. Can you remember how to get to Elkhashab’s place?

<Sure.>

Okay. Run to the back of his place and I’ll give you directions from there.

While I began to heal in earnest, I gave Yusuf a call in Cairo and told him to bring some of the boys down to Al Fayyum. They could go down into Elkhashab’s hell with me and dismantle that Sobek sarcophagus lid and loot it by way of compensating the pack. I’d unbind that anchor from the back of his house and try to cover up evidence of my break-in. I’d also hug every single one of those sarcophagi to dispel any trace of magic about them. I didn’t want there to be the slightest chance of Nebwenenef surviving this time. After I took whatever additional grimoires Elkhashab had hiding in his library, we’d dial up some real authorities and let them find one hell of a crime scene and an archaeological bonanza. Hopefully before Hamal woke in the hospital and told them where everything was.

“Hopping in the car now,” Yusuf said. “See you soon.”

Since Bast would be eager to enlist the help of a human to spread the word about her old mysteries, I’d try to snatch Nice Kitty! before I shifted back to Arizona, but if it didn’t work out, I now thought it would be an acceptable loss for ridding the world of Elkhashab and Nebwenenef for good. Defeating such was my raison d’être, after all, the sole reason Gaia had gifted me with my powers. Though as the last of the Druids I am sometimes afflicted with survivor’s guilt, that day I felt that I had justified my continued existence. I deserved a beer.

Oberon found my hiding place about a half hour later and sneezed.

<Auggh! Atticus, what have you been rolling in? We need to run you through a car wash!>

Sorry, buddy.

<I know I’m supposed to lick your face affectionately at this point, but perhaps I can do that much, much later.>

Completely understandable. I want to get cleaned up as well. How’s your brain? Have you unboggled it yet?

<I think so. I took several naps on that rooftop to think it over, and I’ve come up with a visual metaphor that makes sense to me. You know those videos of summer music festivals that always show huge crowds of high people to make the band members feel super-famous? It was like that, except the cats weren’t drunk and stoned and wearing jorts. They were pissed.>

So you and I would be members of the band in this visual metaphor?

<Heck yes. I want to be a lead guitarist like Slash, because he shreds like no one else. In fact, now that I think about it, I want a huge top hat pulled down over my eyes. And one of those fake cigarettes made of bacon-flavored candy.>

All right. Then who am I?

<I don’t know, Gwen Stefani? You have the abs to pull it off.>

I laughed, and my ribs reminded me they weren’t healed yet. You advise me well.

<How long are we going to stay here, Atticus?>

As briefly as possible. I’m more than a little creeped out, and I almost didn’t make it out of there.

<Well, can we play around in the forest where we left the car before we go home to Tempe? If I don’t give the squirrels a courtesy chase, they’ll feel insulted.>

All right. But you should be thankful the Egyptians didn’t have a squirrel god.

<Auggh! Thanks for the mental image, Atticus! I’m going to have nightmares now!>

That’ll make us even. I’m going to have nightmares too. Plenty of variations of being eaten by cats, crocodiles, and demons.

And Hamal would no doubt have his share of night terrors. He’d be haunted for the rest of his life by his experience in Elkhashab’s crypt. I’d try check on him before I left Egypt and see if there was anything more I could do.

Damn all hieroglyphics for making the ancient Egyptians look cool. Those old gods were best left in oblivion; you’d think the fact that they appeared most often on tombs would be a big hint that they weren’t friendly. I’d happily spend the next thousand years never hearing about Bast or Sobek or any of them, but I knew I’d have to come back to face them again someday—and more sorcerers like Elkhashab. The lure of power is simply too attractive, and the pyramids still float like bait in a sea of sand, waiting to hook the next person mad enough to trade his humanity for his ambition.

Read on for an excerpt from Kevin Hearne’s

Hunted

I drew Fragarach and charged him; there was no time to talk. He could set everyone on fire with a wave of his hand, so I preferred that he focus on me rather than watch him cook Granuaile and Oberon to ashes.

I was a little fire-shy after getting cooked myself by some dark elves, but Loki’s fire was the magical sort and I knew my cold iron aura would protect me from it. He giggled as his right hand disappeared and the stump of his wrist became a flamethrower. Heat rained down on me as I leapt at him and slashed down with my sword. He was quick and stepped back, but I opened up a long wound down his right thigh.

Loki roared and turned off the flames. His eyes boggled at me as his head twitched. I should have been barbecued but clearly wasn’t. “You can’t burn us, Loki Firestarter,” I said. “We’re all protected.”

You’re not protected, I told Oberon with a quick thought. Get Granuaile out of range.

<Right.>

Loki waggled a finger at me and squinted. “You are nuh-no construh-uh-ukt,” he stammered. “Dwarf-ff-fffs sssay they don’t nuh-know you. Llllliar!”

“Who cares what the dwarfs know or don’t know?” I smiled in a fashion that I hoped was unsettling. He was already mentally unstable and might therefore be more susceptible to intimidation. “All you need to know is this: I’m the guy who’s going to kill you.”

Loki’s eyes widened and he took a couple of steps back as I advanced. But then his right arm disappeared behind him, he arched his back a bit, and the arm reappeared holding a very long sword that ignited from guard to tip as I watched.

I frowned. “Now, where, exactly, did you pull that from?” His daughter, Hel, had done something similar; she kept her knife, Famine, lodged between her lower ribs on her left side. She must have learned the trick of using the body as a scabbard from dear old dad. As shape-shifters, they would have the knack.

<Kind of recasts the meaning of the word badass, doesn’t it?>

Oberon, tell Granuaile to talk to the witches. They need to charm Loki if they can.

<Okay. But it makes you wonder what he’d look like on one of those airport body scans.>

Loki’s eyes went dark and he raised his sword. Hurry, Oberon! The flaming blade fell, but I wasn’t there. I leapt directly at him again, because the best thing you can do when facing someone with enormous reach is to get inside it. I didn’t hack or stab at him but delivered a straight kick between his hips, right in his center of gravity. He doubled over, let go of the sword as he staggered, and then fell heavily. I heard Polish behind me but kept my eyes on Loki. He shrank and morphed and sprang to his feet—this time as a Vedic demon with blue skin, four arms, and a blade that he pulled directly out of his body in each hand. He smiled with especially sharp teeth and twirled the swords at me, and I didn’t have time to wonder until much later how he’d ever come across that particular form.

I had to fight my feet not to give ground. It had been quite some time since I’d practiced against more than two blades. When I was younger and everyone had a sword, you were more likely to run into that sort of thing. Nowadays you were more likely to run into multiple guns than multiple swords.

Loki’s newly black eyes shifted from my face to a point over my right shoulder. He blinked hard, blinked harder, shook his head, and his swords stopped moving. He tried to refocus on me but his eyes drew away once more, and this time he flinched backward and dropped a couple of his weapons. The hands slapped at his eye sockets, and then he pressed his palms into them.

“Nuh! No! Ssstop!”

Worried about me, he lowered his hands and peeked over his fingers to make sure I wasn’t about to run him through. That’s when Malina stepped in front of me and tossed her hair at him. That did it. His hands dropped, his jaw dropped, and the other two hands still holding swords dropped as well.

“He’s charmed now,” Malina said over her shoulder, her gaze locked on Loki. “You can kill him and get this over with.”

“No, we don’t want to kill him,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because if we do, Hel will know it and launch her army out of spite. Ragnarok will begin. Hel would much rather start the show with Loki than without him, see. She has daddy issues and doesn’t want to win without his approval and participation, so if you keep him busy we’ll be in good shape.”

“How do you know this?”

“Loki’s been looking for me for about four months now. Well, he’s been sleeping for most of it, but still. Hel didn’t make a move in all that time except to protect him.”

Roksana, the witch with a mass of curly hair tightly bound behind her in a ponytail, spoke up in her proper diction: “You want us to keep him charmed for an extended period?”

“Yep.” I grinned at her.

Malina snorted. “This man is extremely unstable, and it will take a lot of work to keep him calm. You saw that it took several of us to subdue him just now. What do we get out of this, Mr. O’Sullivan?”

“Well, you get a world without Ragnarok, for starters. And I can buy you all some of those shiny black boots you tend to like.”

“That is unacceptable. I might as well let him go right now.”

“You’d help bring about the end of the world?”

“He seems to want to end you first, Mr. O’Sullivan. So tell me why shouldn’t we let him go.”

“I can score you some Girl Scout Cookies. You can’t get Thin Mints in Poland, can you?”

“Be serious.”

“Samoas, then?”

Malina simply glared at me.

“All right,” I said, “what do you want?”

“You have given me the impression that we’d be not only saving your life but saving the world. We need more than cookies for that.”

<I knew it. If you give a witch a cookie, she’s going to ask you for a glass of milk.>

“Understood, Malina. But what? I don’t know what you think I can give you.”

“I want Poland to be free of vampires.”

A silence grew in the field and Granuaile eventually broke it by saying, “Is she trying to be funny?”

“When and for how long?” I asked.

“After Ragnarok comes and goes or in a year: If we are here, and you are here, and vampires are here, you keep Poland vampire-free by whatever means necessary.”

“All big ifs. But, all right, it’s a deal: One month of keeping Loki captive equals one year of vampire-free Poland.”

“That is acceptable.” We shook hands on it.

“By the way,” I said. “Hel has this hound called Garm, who can track anything, even across planes. She will send him to find Loki. When he does, Hel will bring an army of the damned to protect her father. Good luck with that.”

About the Author

KEVIN HEARNE is a middle-aged nerd who still enjoys his comic books and old-school heavy metal. He cooks tasty omelets, hugs trees, and paints miniature army dudes. He lives with his wife, daughter, and doggies in a wee cottage.