Chapter 16 #3
None of them had made the noise. Biz froze mid-swat, her lips pressed tight.
Vincent’s eyes were as wide as tea saucers.
Celia held her breath as a second scream pierced the leftmost passage—ghastly enough to bring vengeful mummies back to the front of her mind.
Ezra took off running toward the sound, scattering stone beetles with every step.
He could light his own way now, but Celia was determined to follow the path he carved through the scarabs.
She hadn’t come this far to stay back.
It was impossible to judge what distance they ran.
The walls crawled with color. Merciless heat pushed back.
The ceiling seemed to be dropping in on Celia.
And then, suddenly, it opened. Her locket’s light spilled in all directions, into a large chamber.
A burial chamber. The open sarcophagus at the center was a dead giveaway.
Celia noted—with a not-small sense of panic—that the coffin inside lay empty.
Someone else has gotten here first.
Aside from the discarded lid, there was no sign of gold in the room.
Nor were there any of the traditional funerary accompaniments: models of ships or canopic jars.
Granted, it was hard to take a detailed assessment of the chamber’s contents when jeweled scarabs were pouring in by the score.
Biz and Vincent burst from the tunnel as well, stepping to the side as the rest of the beetles swarmed to a spot that lay several feet away from the sarcophagus.
The small statues had climbed up on top of one another, creating two clumsy columns.
These thrashed strangely. At the edge of one tower, Celia could swear she caught sight of a flame.
Another scream filled the chamber. This time, there were words beneath. “PUT IT BACK! PUT IT BACK BEFORE THEY EAT US!”
Magic pulsed through the space. It didn’t feel anything like Ezra’s—the spell was clean and sharp, reminding Celia of the way medicinal alcohol smelled on a soaked cotton ball. All at once, the scarab amulets went still, dropping to the ground with plinks and plops.
Flames danced in midair for one second longer, before extinguishing.
Hugo is here.
He’s invisible.
That breeze in the entrance tunnel hadn’t been wind at all, Celia realized.
And the mirages outside? That must have been the rival magicians, waiting for Ezra to find a way in.
The footprints had been lost to the shifting sands.
In hindsight, this shouldn’t have surprised her one bit.
The Pratts had gotten rich off of letting others do the dirty work for them. Why would Hugo change tactics now?
“Guard the door.” The words tore out of her, guttural.
Ezra didn’t need any more urging. He ran back to the entrance, kicking aside scarabs as if they were pebbles.
“What’s going on?” Biz looked around the chamber, the whites of her eyes wild. “What happened to the treasure?”
Celia could hazard a guess. Hugo and Everett had slipped past while their group was studying reliefs in the entrance tunnel.
They’d reached the relic first. Only, in grabbing it, they’d triggered the protective scarabs.
Whatever spell they’d used to stun the stones seemed temporary—tiny semiprecious legs were starting to wiggle.
If they didn’t flee the pyramid soon, they’d get swarmed again. But the only way out was through Ezra.
They had the magicians trapped.
There would be a fight.
And it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“Hugo Pratt? Is that you? You self-serving cad!” Biz stormed through the twitching scarabs, holding a pistol aloft.
Celia froze at the sight of its cold metal.
How the hell had she gotten hold of a handgun?
“I’m going to smack every single sneer right off your face, you ponce of a party boy.
Twat in a tweed suit! Utterly tragic waste of space! Your father was right to despair—oh!”
Vincent lunged across the agitated beetles and caught his fiancée by the waist, hauling her toward the safety of the door.
No one got shot, thank goodness. Hiding behind Ezra was the right move, Celia knew.
She should probably do it too, but as soon as she started to run, her legs felt encased in stone.
It wasn’t the scarabs—though these were starting to crawl in twos and threes. They crept over Celia’s shadow, which was bent entirely the wrong way, dragging at the rest of her.
Hugo was stringing her shadow.
Pulling Celia toward the sarcophagus.
Her hands didn’t seem affected. Yet. She grasped at her utility belt, at one of the many imaginings stashed there. It blazed in Celia’s fist like starlight as she dropped to the floor and started stabbing her own silhouette, trying to free herself from the darker will attempting to overpower hers.
Another cry filled the chamber.
A figure appeared beside the sarcophagus. Everett—his shirt askew, his cheek bleeding. Something was clutched in his fist. Not an ivory tusk wand, or any object hammered out of gold. It was another scroll…
Celia’s hand whipped back to her belt, this time trying to find the Tunguska knife. It was not where she’d sheathed it.
Panic pressed into the side of her throat.
Sharp as a blade.