Chapter Twenty-Two
A white cat was sitting on the sarcophagus.
That same white cat that had made itself abundantly available of late was seated tall and proud, tail wrapped around its paws, atop the ancient and powerfully warded sarcophagus that held the sleeping goddess, Amunet.
The room was excruciatingly simple for a room that held something as sought-after as the former queen. It was four walls, rising overhead to a single point that indicated the room had been built in the shape of a pyramid.
The bricks were yellow sand, branded with hieroglyphs depicting scenes from the Book of the Dead. Four torches graced the same walls. Moments after the party arrived, the torches erupted into flame one after another, until all four were blazing bright.
Soon the room was well lit. The fire crackled, and shadows danced along the walls.
The cat’s blue eyes glinted, reflecting the light of the torches on the walls – and the ones Nicholas and his companions had brought with them. According to Dannai, technology would not work for long in the Duat. There were several reasons. For one, most modern technology required an internet connection – the Duat was not big on the internet. It was as far off the grid as you could possibly go. The other reason was that batteries had fittingly short lives in the Land of the Dead.
So they’d armed themselves with torches and lighters before casting the spell, not knowing what to expect when they arrived on the other side.
Now they lowered them, and Imani spoke a word of power. The fires in the hand-held torches flickered and died, leaving only the wall sconces blazing. They would reignite at a moment’s notice with another spoken word, so everyone held on to them and looked around.
Nicholas rolled his sleeve back down over the wound he’d carved in his left forearm. The blood had been a necessary component to getting past the guardians of the gates to the Duat. It could have come from any one of them. But his need was greatest – so he’d insisted the blood come from him.
Dannai Caige was the flesh and blood daughter of the woman in the sarcophagus. She was part werewolf, part witch – part goddess. As such, her spell and his powerful blood had been strong enough to not only bring the lot of them into the Land of the Dead, but to take them directly to Amunet’s chamber.
Now Dannai eyed the cat sitting on top of the sarcophagus and bit her lip. She drew close to D’Angelo, but being a Nightmare, Nicholas easily heard what she whispered. “Is that… I mean, do you think that’s….” Her voice trailed off.
Dannai was nervous. In a manner of speaking, both of her mothers might be there in the room with them at that moment: The goddess Amunet, sleeping and warded – and the high witch Lalura Chantelle, resting on top of her in the form of a cat.
For what it was worth, Nicholas would bet the farm that the cat was Chantelle. They had the same aura. It was something Nightmares were good at – sensing the inside of a being, regardless of outward appearances. There was definitely far more to the feline than met the eye. To say nothing of how the cat seemed to be around in times of need.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said D’Angelo, but his gaze said something different. It was more warm and familiar than wary when he looked at the cat. No doubt, he was recalling the incident with the chess pieces in his mansion’s study. The cat had given him a warning. And it had done so in a very Lalura Chantelle-like manner.
The Vampire King took a step toward the sarcophagus, but stopped short of approaching fully. He waited a moment, then tilted his head to the side. His gaze narrowed.
Nicholas sensed a change in him at once. It was adrenaline. D’Angelo was suddenly alarmed about something.
“The last time you appeared in my company,” he told the cat, “you came to warn me.”
D’Angelo’s words sank into the shadows in the corner of the room and seemed to echo. Then a portion of the wall to the right of him phased out.
Nicholas did a double-take. One by one, the others in the room noticed the shift as well. One moment, a six-by-six section of brick was solid, real and new. The next, it was wavering to reveal bricks crumbling and ancient, their hieroglyphs worn and unidentifiable. The shift moved back and forth for several seconds before solidifying again into the new yellow bricks of the pyramid-shaped room.
No one spoke. But they glanced at one another – and then at the cat. The cat stood up, and jumped off the sarcophagus. The party scrambled to get out of its way as it moved into the shadows and the torch above it flickered. They watched the torch go out. Smoke trailed up toward the point of the pyramid.
A corner of the room phased out, revealing a crumbled wall just as before. A second torch began to flicker. It, too, went out.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Jesse Graves.
“Someone’s coming,” said Dannai. Her eyes darted from corner to corner, and Nicholas realized the white cat had disappeared. “The balance of living and dead is being tipped. This many people are not meant to cross the barrier. Not alive, anyway.”
The corner came back into focus, just before a section of ground began to phase out. Jesse Graves grabbed Imani Zareb and pulled her back out of the way as the sand shifted, disappearing and reappearing as the room became even newer, then non-existent, then old, and finally settled back into the present.
“Everyone get ready,” said Nicholas.
“Nero is approaching,” warned Minnaea. Nick nodded at her.
The future Nightmare Queen would be with him.
Another section of wall, this one encompassing the point at the tip of the pyramid, began to shift. However, rather than swing back and forth between time frames, the shift spread down the sides of the walls. The sand beneath their feet shook. The air in the room grew colder.
“This place is going to toss us all out on our asses,” said Dannai. She moved toward the closest wall and reached out to touch it. It gave little resistance before giving beneath her hand as if the clay of the brick were still wet. She quickly turned to Nicholas. “There are too many of us. If it gets bad enough, we could even break the fabric of the Duat, tearing down its walls. You will have to grab the queen immediately and hang on tight. I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be here together, and to be honest I can only hope the Duat sends us back to the same time and place we came -”
There was a gasp on the other side of the room, and suddenly Lily Kane’s form was wavering. “Sorry guys, I’m being thrown out!” she cried out just before Malcolm Cole shot forward and wrapped his arms around her. Wherever they were headed, they were going together. The magic of the room swallowed them in a shroud of darkness and a blast of wind, and then that darkness shrunk until there was nothing left but a pinpoint of black.
The pinpoint went out like a light on a vintage television, and all was quiet. For several long seconds no one moved and no one said anything. But the room remained solid, a beast temporarily satisfied.
And then one entire section of wall began to crumble inward, its bricks reforming until a long, slim stairwell rose in an ever-narrowing passage to somewhere unknown. The last two torches went out.
Nick, Andros, Minnaea, Jesse and Roman glanced at each other. They were the ones who could see in the dark. Imani Zareb whispered a magic word. Nothing happened, so Nicholas assumed it was a short spell allowing her to see in the dark as well.
Roman nodded to Nicholas. The vampire sensed the same thing Nicholas did. Or maybe it was that he could scent their living, flowing blood drawing nearer. To Nick, it was a dichotomy of impressions that confirmed for him that two specific people were approaching. He sensed a vibration in the air that was composed of both anticipation and unease. Adelaide – and Nero.
They were here.