Tongue Tied
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the motion picture The Mummy. I wish I was, but sadly, I have no rights to anything. Please, please, please don't sue me. I also have no money.
AN: Thanks to ForgottenStars, vampiremistress2sexy, Mariella D'Angelo, Evanesce, and OceanFae! Appreciate all the reviews, and here's another chapter for you!
Chapter 9: An Even Bigger Mistake
It was dusk by the time both dig teams exited the underground chambers, the sun blood red and sinking fast beneath the horizon line. The unbearable heat of the day had faded into something more manageable, but it was still noticeably hotter outside than it had been underground. Madeline nearly stumbled when the force of the heat slammed into her as she climbed out of the tunnels. Jonathan squinted into the disappearing sunlight beside her, fanning himself with his pith helmet. Rick seemed unbothered, striding ahead of them, in a hurry to put their camp into order. Evelyn was still in the tomb with their mummy, claiming she'd join them soon… she just wanted to look at one more thing.
They all stuck to the decision to join forces at night, and everyone congregated in the sandy courtyard just outside the entrance to the tunnels. As the sun continued to slip out of sight, Madeline and Jonathan returned to their original camp and gathered up their belongings. Rick stayed behind to build a fire-pit and start up a blaze. The fire was already going and crackling merrily when she and Jonathan returned to the American's camp with all their things in tow.
Speaking of the Americans, all three trigger-happy cowboys were crowing and drinking and celebrating their find, clearly ecstatic about those silly jars. Chamberlain, on the other hand, had holed himself up somewhere with his precious book. As Madeline, Rick and Jonathan went about setting up their camp, she eyed their festivities with some trepidation. They all seemed so joyous and loud, and it didn't match the eeriness that was slowly blanketing the city as the sun disappeared and the sky turned black.
The American's hired diggers were acting a bit strange, huddled together on the outskirts of camp, whispering and shifting about nervously, their eyes darting suspiciously all around them. Madeline determined that they were the source of the eeriness; their obvious unrest certainly put a damper on things. She wondered about the diggers and their disquiet for a few moments, but ultimately shrugged and wrote it off. The warriors in black had promised further retribution, after all; if they didn't leave, they would die. Possibly tonight. If something was worrying the diggers, that threat would certainly do the trick.
The memory of the handsome warrior and his dramatic proclamations made Madeline shudder despite the warmth now radiating off Rick's fire. She wasn't cold, and strangely, she wasn't terribly afraid. Her thoughts had wondered once again to her battle with the tribesman, and the inappropriate thrill it gave her. Even now, knowing that another attack by the desert warriors could end in all their deaths, the thought of crossing her guns with his sword yet again made her mouth run dry with anticipation, not dread.
She gave her head a shake, settling in around the fire with her brother and Jonathan. Nothing good could come of her weird fascination with fighting the handsome warrior. Instead, she should focus on something far more sobering; the horrible mummy they'd found that morning, for example, or maybe the very real issue of their imminent deaths.
Rick took a seat beside her on a low, long, bench-like rock. He poked at the fire with a stick. Madeline stared at the sparks, trying to turn off her stupid, stupid brain. On the far end of the rock sat Jonathan, also staring into the fire, and between him and Rick, for some odd reason, sat Beni, the American's spineless guide, cooking something over the fire on the end of a long poker. Madeline wasn't quite sure why the back-stabbing rat was anywhere near them at all, hanging around people who clearly wanted nothing to do with him, but neither Rick nor Jonathan told him to leave, so Madeline decided to keep her mouth shut.
Daniels, Henderson and Burns left their own campfire, as well as their celebratory libations, to take seats across the fire from them, chuckling and looking very smug. All three men had brought along their canopic jars. Clearly, they had come over to rub their find in Rick's face.
"Say, O'Connell," Henderson announced, waving his falcon-headed jar at Rick. "What do you think these babies will fetch back home?"
"We hear you guys found yourselves a nice, gooey mummy," Burns added with a chuckle. "Well, congratulations."
"You know, you dry that fellow out, you might be able to sell him for firewood," Daniels flat out laughed at them.
Rick rejoined with a single, sarcastic chuckle of his own.
"Look what I found!"
Evelyn's voice suddenly rang out behind them, and Madeline swung her head around to watch the young woman jog excitedly over to the fire. She had fistfuls of something cradled to her chest.
"You're in her seat," Rick said to Beni. Beni laughed, and made the mistake of not moving. "Now!" Rick ordered.
"Yep," Beni said, losing the smile and immediately getting up for Evie. He made his way to the end of the rock where Madeline was seated, as though he intended to sprawl out on the ground beside her.
"Don't even think about it," she snapped before he could sit. Beni jumped back up halfway through sitting down, and raced over to the Americans, where he took a seat beside Daniels instead.
"Scarab skeletons!" Evie was saying as she sat down between Rick and Jonathan. "Flesh eaters. I found them inside our friend's coffin."
The something in her hands turned out to be dozens of little, dark gray beetle fossils. Rick, Jonathan, and Madeline drew closer to her, staring at the large, dead beetles in her hand, and Evie quickly poured some into Rick's palm. The skeletons clacked together like beads or pebbles. "They can stay alive for years feasting on the flesh of a corpse," Evie continued. "Unfortunately for our friend, he was still alive when they started eating him."
"So somebody threw these in with our guy, and then they slowly ate him alive?" Rick asked incredulously. He wasn't the only one shocked. Henderson stared at Evie with sudden interest, Burns frowned as though he was a little frightened by the idea, and Daniels wore a look of disgust. Madeline personally felt Daniels' pain.
"Very slowly," Evie replied, grinning wickedly.
That was it, Madeline decided. The girl was insane.
"Well, he certainly wasn't a popular fellow when they planted him, was he?" Jonathan interjected.
"Probably got a little too frisky with the pharaoh's daughter," Rick joked, giving Madeline and the Americans the eye.
Evie laughed slightly, but continued on with her educational lecture. "Well, according to my readings, our friend suffered the Hom-Dai, the worst of all ancient Egyptian curses, one reserved only for the most evil of blasphemers. In all of my research, I've never heard of this curse actually being performed."
"That bad, huh?" Rick asked.
"Yes, well, they never used it because they feared it so," Evie went on. "It's written that if a victim of the Hom-Dai should ever arise, he would bring with him the ten plagues of Egypt."
Madeline glanced over at the three Americans, who were still fondling their jars, but now they had fallen silent and lost their smug smirks. Their expressions were almost nervous, not unlike the behavior of their clearly anxious diggers. She had no idea why they suddenly looked so concerned, but something told her that if they were worried, it could only mean bad news.
Later that night, when the fires had dimmed and the entire camp was nearly dark, save for the glow of the embers and the light of the moon, Madeline tossed and turned on her bedroll by the fire-pit. She couldn't sleep – in fact, she wasn't even tired. Maybe it was all the excitement that had occurred during the day, but she was far too wound up to even consider drifting off.
She sighed heavily. "Rick," she murmured, looking over at her brother, who was sprawled out on his own bedroll right beside her.
Without even opening his eyes, he replied. "Go back to sleep, Maddie."
"How can I go back to sleep when I haven't been asleep yet?" she retorted.
Her brother sighed, clearly not in the mood to deal with her. He still didn't open his eyes. "I'm not doing this right now, Maddie," he replied. "Go to sleep."
Madeline huffed. "Fine," she replied. "And don't call me Maddie."
"Good night, Madeline."
Madeline sighed again, and rolled over. After about five more minutes of failing to sleep, she looked over at Jonathan. "Jonathan," she hissed.
Nothing. He didn't even stir.
"Jonathan? Jonathan!" she hissed, louder and more insistent. "Oh, come on, I'm bored. Wake up!"
Jonathan remained still. Madeline gave him a little shake, but he didn't respond. With a heavy sigh, Madeline gave up. Nothing short of a bomb going off was going to wake up Jonathan.
She got up, pausing only momentarily to look for Evie, who had disappeared. Not seeing her anywhere, Madeline shrugged her shoulders and walked over to the high wall around the city. She climbed up the old, crumbling rocks that were jutting out haphazardly like some kind of crazy staircase, and miraculously managed to get to the top of the wall without falling. She took a seat and looked out over the desert.
The sand and rocks stretched for miles, rolling dunes one direction and pebbly plateaus in the other. The sky was black and clear and endless, stars stretching as far as she could see. They looked so much clearer out here, away from the harsh gaslights of Cairo. Everything around her was cast in pale, spooky blue light from the huge, not quite full moon hanging much lower in the sky than seemed natural. Madeline's breath caught as she gazed at the sight. In spite of everything, there was something truly beautiful about the desert at night.
After a few minutes of just looking around, she caught sight of movement in the distance. Frowning, she squinted hard at the horizon line, nearly indistinguishable in the darkness. Maybe she was mistaken, but it looked like a group of people on horseback were riding toward the city.
Madeline once again recalled the words of her handsome desert warrior – er, not hers, obviously, just the, of course she'd meant the. "You have one day," he had said. Well, their one day was up now, wasn't it? It looked like they were coming back to make good on their promise.
Madeline bit her lip. She should go back to camp and wake everyone up, she decided. But before she could act on that plan, chaos erupted from her side of the wall. A sudden powerful wind blew through the ruins, lifting up her braid and her shirt. The wind was loud; it moaned and groaned and screamed as it blew across the sandy city and straight through her bones. Then Chamberlain's horrified shout echoed through the night. "No!" he cried desperately. "You must not read from the book!"
Madeline whirled around, looking back at the camp. Evie stood at their dying fire, Rick at her side, both of them hunched over the big black Book of the Dead. Apparently she'd stolen the book from the stuck up scholar, and now she was trying to read from it. Chamberlain was still at his tent by the entrance to the city, but even from this distance Madeline could tell he wasn't just angry; he was horrified. Both Evie and Rick looked up at him guiltily.
That's when Madeline heard the roaring coming from behind her. She turned back to look out at the desert. The approaching horsemen had disappeared now, engulfed in what could only be described as a giant black cloud, somehow even blacker than the black of the night sky… and that giant black cloud was coming quickly their way. Madeline squinted at the approaching cloud. It was buzzing and chirping and whirring and honestly, it looked like a swarm of… grasshoppers, maybe? Beetles? Locusts?
Madeline turned back to the camp. "Run!" she hollered. "Run! Go!"
Everyone started racing toward the tomb. Madeline leapt down off the wall, hitting the soft sand and rolling before bouncing back to her feet. Rick was stock still across the ruins, staring at her. "Go! I'm coming!" she shouted, running towards him.
Rick nodded and took off as fast as his legs could carry him. The entire camp was panicking, the diggers shoving each other out of the way and taking out tents as they stampeded towards the tunnels. Rick, Evie, Jonathan and the Americans were right on their heels, getting stuck in the mob as everyone in the camp ran for it. Madeline raced across the campsite, feeling acres behind everyone else. The locusts had made their way into the city by now, flying much faster than she could run, and they were crawling all over everything. There were so many of the swarming insects that the world around her was turning black. She swatted at the buzzing pests, running like mad towards the opening into the underground city. She was almost there when her eyes fell on the Americans' Egyptologist. He was the only one left outside, and he knelt in the sand by the door, staring straight ahead, clutching The Book of the Dead to his chest like a security blanket. Hell, the man was covered in locusts, and he hadn't even bothered to brush them away.
She stopped, stared, attempted to ignore him and run for the tomb, and then cursed loudly as her conscience got the better of her and she found herself racing to his side. Why she felt the need to risk her life for a man she didn't even like was beyond her, but she just couldn't leave him to the bugs.
"Hey!" she exclaimed, giving him a slight shake. "Are you all right?"
"What have we done?" he asked nobody in particular, not even Madeline. He stared vacantly ahead at nothing.
Okaaay. He was clearly suffering some sort of nervous breakdown. Madeline really didn't have time to deal with this shit. "Come on!" she exclaimed, tugging on his arm. She glanced around at the swarming locusts, flying all around her head. "Come on!" she repeated.
He shook his head and sank further to the ground. Madeline gave him one last shake and, receiving no response, decided to let him fend for himself if that's the way he wanted it. She got back to her feet and continued her race to the safety of the tomb.
But before she could enter, a strong hand roughly gripped her arm and pulled her back. "You cannot go in there!" a man's deep, heavily accented voice bellowed at her over the roar of the locusts.
"Why the hell not?" Madeline demanded, jerking her arm back. She looked up and found, to her surprise, that she was staring into the big brown eyes of her – no, not hers, the, she meant the – the handsome, black-robed warrior she'd fought the night before. He was wearing his turban again, and his black scarf covered the bottom half of his face, but still, she recognized him.
"Uh…" she said eloquently, blinking like a moron. Speaking to the man was much harder than expected now that he wasn't attempting to kill her. "I mean…"
"It is not safe!" he yelled, cutting off what was sure to be an idiotic comment. He had to fight to be heard over the approaching insects.
Madeline scoffed, drawing her brows together incredulously. The man must be off his rocker. "Not safe?" she exclaimed, waving her arms around at the swarm. "Um, hello!"
The desert man met her eyes and took a deliberate step forward, seizing her arm again. Then he tugged his scarf down around his neck and, with surprising patience, explained, "They are harmless locusts; they pale in comparison to what lies beneath the city. This is the first Plague of Egypt, correct? And who do you think brings this plague upon us?"
Madeline stared at him. Slowly, his argument absorbed into her head. "Um…" she said stupidly. His nearness had a seriously negative impact on her intelligence – which was, admittedly, already on the low side of things. "You mean, the… walking... talking... mummy?"
He nodded. "Precisely."
In her mind, Madeline cursed at herself for sounding like an idiot in front of the strange warrior. If he wasn't so unexpectedly attractive, she wouldn't be stumbling over her words and piecing together sentences only a toddler would be proud to produce. It was always the same; handsome men made her incapable of forming coherent thoughts, and she suspected they always would.
Out loud, she merely stuttered, "Right… um… okay. I… uh… guess I'm convinced."
The warrior looked appeased. He nodded again and released her arm, ducking through the swarming bugs and yelling to his men in Arabic. The black-robed men and their horses were taking over the ruins, swatting at locusts as they filled up the city. Madeline's Arabic was atrocious, and with the deafening roar of the locusts – which were now crawling all over her, gross – she could barely understand a word he or any of his comrades said. Suddenly, however, it dawned on her that not only was there a walking talking mummy who embodied all evil in that tomb, but there was also an ex-legionnaire who was very much related to her bumbling around down there as well.
"Rick!" she exclaimed, her hands flying up to her mouth.
The desert man's attention snapped back to her. "What?"
"Oh, um… my, uh… my brother's in there!" she shouted over the locusts.
Understanding lit his eyes. He seemed to know exactly what she intended to do. "Don't do it!" he yelled at her.
Madeline met his eyes and actually formed a decent sentence. "Thanks, but… I'm going to do it."
She turned tail and ran for the tomb. "No!" the desert man yelled, lunging for her arm. He missed, however, and Madeline soon found herself deep underground, stumbling through the pitch black tunnels.
It was too dark and far too quiet. She could barely see her hand in front of her face. In the distance, she could hear running footsteps and occasional screams. Every once in a while, a cold, moaning wind gusted through the narrow corridor, and Madeline would shudder, but not with the chill. She felt her way around every corner, dreading what might be on the other side. With every step, she half expected something to come up from behind and snatch her.
Despite the eeriness of the place and the hairs standing straight on the back of her neck, Madeline pushed on through the winding passages, brushing aside cobwebs and squinting through the darkness, determined to find her pain in the ass of a brother, and her pain in the ass of a new friend, and his pain in the ass of a sister, and get them all out of Hamunaptra before whatever lurked within the tomb found them first.
Suddenly, nearby, a gunshot rang out, echoing through the tunnels. She knew immediately who had fired the gun. "Rick!" she shouted, racing at breakneck speed down the dark passage and hopefully towards the sound.
She turned a corner and stopped short, her hand grabbing at the stone wall as she stumbled. A young man lay face down in the sand, moaning in agony. "Rick?" she asked, her voice high and breaking. Suddenly she was even more afraid than she'd been before. If that was her brother….
"Help me!" the man pleaded in a muffled voice, as though he were trying to talk around a sock.
It wasn't Rick. Madeline sighed with relief, and instantly felt bad for doing so. The man on the ground was Burns, and it seemed he'd lost his glasses.
"Hey, Burns?" she asked, approaching him carefully. "Are you all right?"
He turned wildly towards her voice and Madeline jumped, yelped, and then promptly gagged. "Damn!" she exclaimed, unable to control herself. The man stared back at her with empty, black eye sockets, blood and bruising forming on the nearby skin. Burns was missing both his eyes!
"Help me!" he repeated. "He took… he took my eyes, and he took my tongue."
His words were again muffled, but Madeline understood him well enough. "Damn it," she murmured, wondering what she had managed to get herself into this time. She knelt beside him, cringing. "Why me? Goddamn it, why me?"
"Please…."
At his pained voice, Madeline snapped out of it. Clearly, if anyone had the right to be asking 'why me' right now, that person was Burns. Besides, she had to get the two of them out of the tomb. This was no time to freak out, no matter how disgusting Burns looked. "It's going to be all right, Burns," she said firmly, shaking off her mounting panic and taking charge. "I'm getting you out of here."
"Thank you." He sounded nearly hysterical. "Thank you!"
Madeline helped the poor man to his feet and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "By the way," she said almost conversationally as she tried to support him out of the hall. Burns' boots kicked uselessly against the sand. "Have you seen Rick? Er… I mean… heard him, maybe?"
Again, his voice verged on hysterical. "He… left… me…"
"He left you?" Madeline echoed in surprise. "That doesn't sound like Rick."
Suddenly, a loud, inhuman roar echoed through the passage, sounding as though it had come from directly behind them. There were no words to describe the deep, rasping bellow, and the unearthly way it ricocheted around the maze, shaking the whole place at its foundation.
Madeline jumped about ten feet in the air, her skin crawling and her hair on end. She spun around and promptly dropped Burns back on the ground. "Oh my God!" she shouted in horror.
"No…" Burns moaned pathetically. "No…."
It was the mummy they'd found beneath the statue of Anubis, standing in the corridor and staring at her with Burns' eyes, newly placed in its head. The desert warrior had warned her she'd find this thing down here, but hearing about it and seeing it were two entirely different things. She'd fancied that she believed him when they spoke outside the tomb, but now she knew she hadn't truly believed the mummy would be awake, walking and roaring and stealing people's eyes, not until she'd seen it herself. Even now, some small part of her still didn't quite believe.
It crept closer to her, in long, slow, stalking movements, the way predators advance on cornered prey. The once dead man hissed something at her in ancient Egyptian, and although she couldn't understand a word, she got the idea that he wasn't asking her about the weather.
"Well, that explains a lot!" she exclaimed in a rather high pitched, hysterical tone, backing away from the undead creature as it continued approaching her. The mummy was growling low in its throat like a rabid dog. Madeline reached into her holsters, pulled her pistols, and opened fire.
The monster went down, and Madeline headed back for Burns – only to freeze and continue her backwards march when the mummy suddenly leapt to its feet again, apparently unscathed. He charged at her, and Madeline stumbled backwards, emptying her pistols into his decomposing body. Nothing stopped him. Her bullets ran out, guns clicking uselessly, and Madeline's back hit the wall. She was trapped.
The mummy's crooked jaw fell open and another unearthly, inhuman roar echoed through the tunnels. He kept coming at her, and Madeline choked on what might have been a scream, if she'd allowed it to grow up. Just as she was about to really panic, a dark figure appeared beside her and a large, tattooed hand flew out at the mummy, with a small birdcage in its grasp. A tiny black kitten sat demurely in the cage – until it caught sight of the ugly, rotting mummy, and let out a frightened hiss. The mummy, to Madeline's surprise, let out a roar of fear, and dissolved into a cloud of dust that spun quickly down the opposite passageway.
Madeline turned to the kitten's owner in shock, with her mouth hanging wide open. Again, she found the handsome black-robed warrior standing at her side. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. His comrades appeared from behind him, filing quickly and methodically into the passageway, all of them carrying torches that filled the dark, creepy space with warm, flickering light. He thrust the kitten at an underling and immediately turned on her.
"Are you injured?" he demanded.
Madeline blinked, feeling the stupidity returning. "Um… no… I… is that a kitten?"
"Get him out of here!" the man shouted in Arabic. Madeline swung her head in the direction he was yelling to see several of the warriors lifting Burns from the ground and carrying him down the exit passage. Her warrior grabbed her by the arm and began pulling her after them.
Madeline was still in shock. She knew she sounded like an idiot, but she couldn't shut up. "What just happened?"
He ignored her. "Seriously, did the mummy just run away from a kitten?" she asked. Again, she was ignored. "Why is he afraid of kittens?" She still received no answer and yet, she was still incapable of shutting up. "Why do you have a kitten?"
Silently, he dragged her back out of the tomb, accompanied by his men and their burden. Once they reached the outside, he let go of her arm and began yelling in Arabic. Madeline looked around the dig site. It was virtually deserted and far too quiet. The locusts had largely dissipated, and Chamberlain was still on his knees, shaking yet unharmed, but that mattered little to her. What did matter to her was that Rick, Jonathan, and Evelyn were nowhere to be seen.
She turned back to the desert warrior, who had finally stopped screaming in Arabic. "Um… thank you," she managed to stutter.
He nodded. "You are welcome."
"You saved my life," Madeline continued. She winced at her idiotic comment. Way to state the obvious, moron. She took a deep, steadying breath. "I just found that odd because you were trying to kill me, so… yeah, thank you."
"You already said that," he replied.
Damn you, Madeline thought. You are not making this any easier. She stared at him a second longer, and then held out her hand. "I'm Madeline O'Connell," she announced.
He stared at her hand. Madeline stared back. A few seconds ticked by, possibly the longest seconds of her life. "Um… see, now you tell me your name and take my hand and then we shake each other's hands and that's how… that… works." Madeline's explanation faded away. She swallowed. God, she was being an idiot. "Um… it's an American thing… Americans do that when we meet people… we can do this the way your people do, if you want… I don't know what that is exactly, but, um… you could just tell me… um… yeah…."
She trailed off, wincing and cursing silently at herself. Stop talking! She shouted in her head. Just stop talking before they declare you the village idiot!
His mouth contorted momentarily, but he immediately composed himself. Great, she thought. Now what? Is he going to have some kind of a fit?
Suddenly, to her surprise, the desert man swung his hand up and grasped hers, shaking it firmly. "My name is Ardeth Bay," he said, inclining his head ever so slightly.
Madeline smiled. "So, uh… what… who are…" she trailed off, waving around at the other men, not really sure how to proceed with the question. Ardeth answered anyway.
"We are descendants of the Med-jai. Pharaoh's bodyguards," he explained. "And we have guarded this cursed ground for thousands of years, ensuring that the creature you saw tonight would never rise again. And for thousands of years we were successful – that is, until tonight."
Madeline swallowed. Oops. Boy, did he sound pissed.
"Sorry," she replied inadequately. "I mean… just so we're clear, resurrecting dead people was not my idea." He raised an eyebrow. Madeline sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I mean…. Hell, I don't know what I mean. Just sorry. I'm sorry on the behalf of everyone. Why is the mummy afraid of kittens?"
His mouth contorted again, and he ducked his head to hide it from her. Madeline frowned at him, shaking her head slightly, but he spoke up before she could ask him if he needed to sit down or something. "Cats are the guardians of the Underworld," he explained. "Until the creature has regained his full power, he will fear them."
"Oh," Madeline murmured, nodding her head. "So… kittens are mummy repellant. Right. Makes sense. Kind of."
There was a long silence, save for the clatter of horse hooves and the shouting of the Med-jai. Chamberlain was still silent, but Burns was moaning pitifully. She stared at Ardeth, who in turn stared at her. Then, suddenly, she heard running footsteps and swung around to see who was racing out of the city. She thought for one, terrifying, stupid second that the mummy had gotten over its ridiculous fear of cute, fluffy kittens and was coming back for more. Ardeth, perhaps, had thought something similar, as he seized her arm and tugged her back from the entrance to the tunnels, sending her tripping through the sand and stumbling to a stop behind him. But the mummy did not appear at the entrance; instead, Rick, Evelyn, Jonathan, Henderson and Daniels all tore out of the tomb as though the mummy was mere feet behind them, chasing them from the city.
"Rick!" Madeline shouted in relief.
Rick skidded to a stop, looking up at the sound of her voice, and she saw relief etched on his face as well. "Maddie!" he shouted back, marching towards her. His eyes took a quick sweep of his surroundings, taking in the throng of Med-jai warriors, and immediately his stance turned military. He drew both his pistols, and his companions instantly followed suit. The Med-jai returned the gesture, guns and swords flying out all over the camp.
"Get away from my sister," Rick snarled at Ardeth.
Madeline rolled her eyes and stepped out from behind Ardeth, inserting herself between the two. She attempted to push down Rick's pistols, but her brother fought her. "Rick, don't be an idiot," she snapped. "They didn't do anything!"
"I told you to leave or die," Ardeth announced. Madeline sighed in mild irritation and looked at him over her shoulder. "You refused. Now you may have killed us all. You have unleashed a creature we have feared for more than three thousand years."
"Relax, I got him," Rick returned.
"Oh, no you didn't," Madeline informed him.
"Yes, I did."
"No, you didn't."
"Yes, I did..."
"No mortal weapon can kill this creature," Ardeth interrupted. "He is not of this world."
He turned away from them after this dramatic proclamation, issuing orders in Arabic to his men. Rick scoffed, but Madeline silenced him with a shake of her head. Before she could explain to him exactly how she knew that Ardeth was right, several Med-jai stepped forward and deposited a whimpering Burns at the feet of his two friends.
There was a collective gasp of horror, and both Henderson and Daniels got down on their knees to tend to their wounded buddy. Burns was still groaning, clearly in pain, his unseeing eyes staring at a random point in the distance. Madeline turned away, suddenly uncomfortable, and folded her arms protectively in front of her chest.
"You bastards!" Daniels spat furiously.
"What did you do to him?" Henderson demanded, both he and Daniels turning angry, accusing glares on the warriors.
Madeline understood where everyone was coming from; these men had attacked them on multiple occasions and clearly didn't care about shedding blood to achieve their mission. Still, judging from what Ardeth had said to her and what she'd witnessed in the tunnels below, their mission was pretty damn important. She'd had enough.
"They didn't do anything to him!" she retorted, turning on her group. "That thing you were running away from down there? It did this. It tried to do more!"
"We saved him," Ardeth interjected coldly, and Madeline huffed out a sigh, slightly irritated that he kept interrupting her attempts to defend him. "Saved him before the creature could finish his work. Now leave, all of you, quickly, before he finishes you all."
He issued another order in Arabic, and his men marched off, brushing past Madeline and her companions. Ardeth took up the rear, stopping beside her and Rick. Madeline met his eyes.
"We must now go on the hunt," he told her. "And try to find a way to kill him."
Madeline opened her mouth, but Rick spoke up, drawing Ardeth's eyes away from hers. "I already told you, I got him," he insisted. Madeline rolled her eyes.
"Know this," Ardeth snapped at him. "This creature is the bringer of death. He will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never stop."
His men were already clambering onto their horses, hollering at one another, their horses' hooves pounding on the sand as they galloped towards the exit. Ardeth marched after them, broad shoulders swinging in time to his long, purposeful gait, and Madeline found herself staring after him again. He swung up on his horse and shot them one last look over his shoulder, meeting her eyes once again. Madeline stared at him, her teeth catching at her lower lip, and he turned from her slowly, kicking his horse. The Med-jai galloped through the hole in the city walls, and disappeared into the desert.
"Doesn't listen worth a damn, does he?" Rick said.
"Neither do you," Madeline retorted. "Rick, you did not kill that mummy."
Rick looked at her. "What, now?"
"You didn't kill the mummy," she repeated. "I saw it after you shot it. And then I shot it. A lot! It didn't do a damn bit of good! The only reason Burns and I are here right now is because Ardeth saved our asses."
"Who the hell is Ardeth?" Rick demanded.
"The leader of the Med-jai," Madeline returned. At her brother's blank face, she rolled her eyes and explained further, "You know, the warriors that keep trying to kill us? The guy who just scolded you big time?"
Rick looked reluctant to believe her, but he didn't respond. Madeline stepped away from him and addressed the entire group. "We have to get out of here," Madeline announced loudly. "Now! Or seriously, that thing is going to kill us! Let's go!"
No one argued with her. Apparently they were all just as anxious to get out of there as she was. Everyone hastily gathered only the most important of their belongings, leaving their tents and fire-pits as they were. They all clambered onto their horses and camels, the few remaining, panicking diggers taking off long before everyone else, shouting in fright and kicking up huge clouds of dust.
Madeline swung up onto her own camel with surprising ease, but she was so eager to leave, she didn't pay the small success any mind. Soon, they were all hurrying away from the city, galloping past the crumbling walls and into the desert beyond, racing their camels furiously into the night.