Prologue #2
Clyde screamed, stumbling from Anya as green flame erupted across his hands and surged up his arm.
Flesh blistered and peeled away, revealing stark white bone.
His screams turned ragged. He dropped to his knees, the fire devouring him.
He threw his head back, his silhouette flashing white-hot before the flames vanished, leaving only a heap of bones and ash.
Francis hadn’t even had time to blink.
“W-what is this?” Roy stammered, wiping his nose from where George had slugged him. “A curse? The mummy’s curse? Please help me, God, I—”
Caspian stepped forward, eyes still glowing. “Your gods can’t help you now.”
More of those flames sprouted at Roy’s feet.
Francis had never seen that color of fire before. He stumbled back, head shifting from side to side, but there was nowhere to go, nothing but an empty desert.
But surely that would be better than here.
Roy’s scream, choked and broken, sounded almost worse than Clyde’s. Francis was closer to Roy than he had been to Clyde. Close enough to see how Roy’s flesh bubbled and burst as the flames crawled up his arm.
Crawled so slowly.
He’s making sure he suffers, Francis realized. Confirmed it when he saw the cruel, satisfied smile on the boy’s face.
“Caspian, stop! This isn’t you,” Anya snarled. She faced the archaeologist. “Hurry. Get Cleo.”
The boy ignored her, focused on Roy. Francis had to get out of here before the kid finished off Roy and turned to Francis for his next plaything.
“Enough!” Anya roared. Something broke out of the sand around the boy. Giant snakes. No, not snakes. Vines, beautiful vines, blooming with golden roses. They shot toward the boy.
He raised a hand. Flames leapt from them, spitting onto the briars, wilting the roses and turning the vines to dust in an instant. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Francis started to run, but the first step he took, his leg sank knee-deep in the sand. He attempted to scream but inhaled a mouthful of dust, then he couldn’t see.
The sand around him was moving. He tried to quell his panic. Away. He had to get away.
He fought his way through the storm, but the sand swallowed his steps, dragging him deeper. His footing gave, and he slid, sliding back down to the center.
A flash lit up his vision. Probably not a good sign. But like a moth drawn to candle flame, his eyes were drawn to the light. He came upon Roy, just as the flames were devouring his face.
Francis threw up in his mouth. He was next, no doubt about it.
There was so much sand swirling about, he couldn’t find a path. He ran, smacked into a pillar. His head ached, vision swimming.
Then he saw what was in the eye of the storm—Caspian, the little boy. He stood at the squall’s heart, screaming. Or laughing. Francis wasn’t sure. Flames circled him too, but they didn’t seem to devour him like they had Clyde and Roy. These flames appeared to be dancing with joy.
A powerful wind lifted Francis off his feet. He gripped the pillar, digging into the old carvings to keep from getting dragged away and swallowed by the sand.
There was a flash in the air, not green light but gold. A woman.
Not a woman. An angel, with wings of pure radiance.
An angel come to save him.
He blinked, and she was gone. But now the woman Anya was in front of the boy, a hand shielding her eyes as she took deliberate steps toward him.
“Get away,” the boy cried, panic lacing his words, then slower, softer, “The world belongs to the Green Flame.”
“That is not what you desire, Caspian,” Anya said, kneeling before him. “That is not your heart talking.”
The wind picked up, so strong, Francis could barely hold on to the pillar. It pulled in great waves from the surrounding dunes, sliding sand down into the entrance of the tomb, burying it. At least I won’t have to climb back down all those stairs.
“You are kind and loving and brave.” Anya grasped Caspian’s hands.
“I can’t stop this,” the boy wailed. “He’s in my head.”
Green flames crawled up her arms too, just like Clyde. Just like Roy.
And it must have been hurting her real bad, because she grimaced and let out a pained groan. But she didn’t let go of the boy’s hands.
“Remember who you are, Caspian.” She dropped her forehead to his, and the flames curled in her beautiful hair. “Trust yourself to find the way and…”
He was crying, Francis realized.
“I c-can’t.”
“Say the words, Caspian. You know them,” Anya gritted out. She sounded in a lot of pain.
Sand sank faster, gathering around Francis’s feet. He gripped the pillar and climbed.
“Yes, you can. I know you can,” Anya yelled. “You control your own destiny.”
The little boy screamed, and the sandstorm got worse. Lightning flashed within it, green lightning, and Francis couldn’t see the sky anymore. But he couldn’t focus on any of that. The sand kept rising, and he wasn’t a very good climber.
“Trust yourself to find the way,” Anya cried. “When the path is lost…”
“When the path is lost,” Caspian repeated slowly, as if each word was difficult, “the journey…”
“You can do this,” Anya said.
Francis took her words as his own encouragement, kicking, trying to get out of the rising sand. But his legs became trapped. He tried to kick free, couldn’t.
The desert was going to swallow him whole.
Sand rose around Anya and the boy too, the flames trying to consume her, but she didn’t let go of his hands.
“The journey begins…” the boy said and released a long breath. And when he blinked his eyes, they weren’t green anymore. The flames were gone. Caspian shook his head. “I can’t stop this storm!”
“Then we’ll find our way out,” George cried. He rode atop the camel, breaking through the haze. “Together!”
“George!” Anya said, standing. “You brilliant fool!”
“We’ll never make it out of this!” Caspian yelled. “The sand is going to bury us.”
“Don’t worry, kid,” George said, grabbing the back of Caspian’s shirt and lifting him up. “This old girl always knows her way out of a storm.”
“You and that camel,” Anya scoffed but winked at him.
George put Caspian in front of him, one arm on the reins, the other wrapped protectively around the boy’s waist.
As if that boy wasn’t a monster who had just done…that…and was actually his son.
George spurred the camel forward, abandoning the woman. As for Francis, the sand was near up to his chest. As far as deaths went, suffocating beat burning, he supposed.
Someone grasped his arm, yanked him clear out of the sand. Before Francis knew what had happened, he was bouncing on the back of the camel behind the archaeologist.
“W-what are you doing?” he cried.
“We don’t leave anyone behind.” George reached past the boy in front of him and patted the camel’s neck. “Come on, girl. You know the way.”
Cleo bleated and tore through the storm.
Francis awoke to a crackling fire and a clear night sky. The winds had died down, and he must have passed out on the camel. What had happened?
A storm. A real bad storm.
The archaeologist sat next to the fire and stirred a pot over it.
Cleo, Francis’s new favorite animal, lay resting.
Anya had a notebook in her lap, scribbling away.
Relief flooded Francis. She’d made it back.
She hadn’t been on the camel, had she? And nearby, the little boy was whittling a piece of wood.
They didn’t seem at all concerned that he was there.
Did any of that even happen?
“Ugh, this is awful.” Caspian threw the wooden piece onto the sandy ground.
Francis peered at it, not quite ready to let these strange people know he was awake.
George placed the stew down before the boy and picked up the wooden piece. He squinted his blue eyes at it. They were mighty blue eyes. Now that Francis thought about it, this man looked too young to be the boy’s dad. “This is supposed to be Cleo, right?”
“Yes,” the boy mumbled. “I was going to give it to Anya, to thank her for…”
“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself.” George smiled and ruffled the boy’s hair in a much nicer way than Roy had ruffled Francis’s. “I’d say it’s rather cute. It’s got character.”
“Did I hear my name?” Anya placed her notebook down and went over to them.
“This is for you,” Caspian muttered and wiped his nose. Something dark, maybe blood, ran from it.
Anya took the camel from George, and a huge smile appeared on her face. “I love it,” she cried and embraced the boy.
He stiffened, as if he didn’t know what a hug was, before he carefully wrapped his arms around her.
“Can I give you something now?” Anya asked, pulling back.
The boy nodded.
“Hold out your wrist,” she said.
Caspian did, and Anya hovered her fingers over it. She had beautiful hands, long and delicate. Everything about her shimmered with beauty. Like an angel. And by the way the archaeologist stared at her, he thought so too.
“Hold still,” Anya said, and a band around the boy’s wrist glowed.
Glowed with beautiful golden light.
But Francis had seen enough weird stuff today not to question it.
The light faded, and a golden bracelet appeared around the boy’s wrist, inlaid with roses.
“Is this like a bargain?” Caspian gasped.
“No, it’s a gift.” Anya opened her palm to reveal the wooden camel. “You have shaped this. Now shape yourself, Prince of the Below. You decide what to do with the magic you bear.”
The boy smiled, and he waved his hand. From the ground sprouted a briar with a purple vine and black thorns.
The next day, the family—Francis supposed even if the boy wasn’t their son, they were a family—dropped him off at a port with enough money for a ticket back to England. And he was so glad about it.
But as Francis stepped onto that ship, he vowed one thing.
He was never going to rob a mummy’s tomb again.