I do not own TVD or TO or The Mummy
This chapter got really long (by comparison to other chapters in this story)
Enjoy
Elena was honestly unsure if she felt safer now that the camps had joined together. It was rather unnerving the way the other men leered at her. Kol hadn't noticed yet, but she knew they had been staring at her ever since she stepped through their encampment that first day on the path to the ruins.
She could feel their eyes, and knew they would be present the moment she joined the group around the fire.
Perhaps that was why she had told them to go on ahead while she went back to take another look at the sarcophagus. She'd told them she just wanted a moment to examine the hieratic without them vibrating with imaginary fear behind her; Kol had stage whispered that she had no sense of self-preservation, but made no attempt to stop her from taking the torch back into the cavern.
Kneeling on the floor she used every ounce of physical strength she possessed to drive the burning torch into the sand beside the coffin. Once secure, she straightened her spine, tucked her hair behind her ears and leaned over the lid of the coffin; the smell of decay made her nose wrinkle.
Breathing through her mouth was somehow so much worse. She decided to stick to her nose; eventually she would stop registering the smell.
She blew gently over the lid to dispel the dust that had settled when they'd left the room and ran her finger along the chiseled lines. Her eyes grew round when she translated what had been missed earlier and reached into her bag to double check her findings with a notebook she used for research.
The book had taken on some water during the escape from the burning boat but luckily had not been destroyed. The pages were slightly warped and the ink smudged but she could still make out the notes she had created.
It took very little time to discern that she was right. For extra proof she held her breath and leaned over the lip of the coffin. Her fingertips slid past the remains of wrappings and scooped up the dried contents from under the body.
"What is this stuff?" Kol wrinkled his nose at the chunk of hairy meat. "It smells like that digger who dropped dead."
Nik and Beni shared a grin while checking on the roasting meat.
"You didn't?" Kol's eyes grew round and dropped to the half-eaten hunk of meat in his hand. "We're not…"
"Relax, mate," Nik laughed. He lowered the stick back over the fire. "It's just rat gizzards. They smell terrible and taste even worse, but that's the best the desert offers."
Nik and Kol lifted their eyes from the fire to watch the gloating Americans. They were sure to be insufferable after the find they had made earlier in the day.
"Say O'Connell, what do you think these'll fetch back in civilization?" Damon ran his finger over the rounded body of the jeweled jar in his hand.
Lucien leaned back and fixed them with a cocky smile. "We heard you boys found a nice juicy mummy," he twisted his canopic jar and glanced at the jackal head. "Congratulations."
"If you dry him out you might be able to sell him for fire wood," Kai chuckled darkly.
No respect for the dead, Elena shook her head as she approached the fire and heard the American party laughing heartily at their own joke.
She came up; stepped over the low stone wall they were using to block the wind and sat between Kol and Nik. She dropped a dusty pile of skeletons onto the ground.
"Look what I found inside our new friend's coffin," she picked up one and ran her fingers around the rounded edge. "Scarabs; they're flesh eaters. They stay alive for years feasting on the flesh of corpses, or in this case…" she trailed off and shrugged when she saw Kol shudder.
"I'm famished." Her eyes flickered to the roasting meat. "Rat gizzards for dinner?"
"I'll spare you the indignity of asking how you knew that," Kol watched her pluck the finished meat from the end of the stick when Nik presented it to her.
"It's the desert," she shrugged, "what else is there?"
Nik speared another piece of meat and held it over the fire. With his free hand he picked up a skeleton and turned it over.
"Are you saying somebody threw these things in with our guy," he lifted an eyebrow, "and they slowly ate him alive?"
"Very slowly," Elena grinned and popped a piece of meat into her mouth. It tasted truly terrible, but her gnawing stomach seemed to like it well enough.
"He clearly wasn't a popular fellow," Kol examined the pile in front of him. What a terrible way to die.
"Maybe you were right," Nik hooked his elbow over his raised knee and chuckled. "He might have gotten a little frisky with the pharaoh's daughter."
Elena rolled her eyes and pulled her notebook from the bag across her shoulder. She opened to the relevant page and passed it to Kol.
"According to my reading," she pointed to the looping handwriting, "he suffered the HOM-DAI. It was the worst of all ancient Egyptian curses, one reserved for only the most evil of blasphemers."
A hush had fallen over the assembled group. Elena couldn't even feel their leering gazes when she leaned closer to the fire. Her eyes had taken on an intensity that chilled her companions to the core.
"In all of my research, I've never read of this curse actually having been performed."
"That bad, love?" Nik checked the roasting meat.
"Yes," Elena nodded. "They never used it because they feared it so much. It's written that if the victim of the HOM-DAI should ever arise, he would bring with him the seven plagues of Egypt."
"The ten plagues?" Nik felt for his pistol still hooked to his belt. "You mean all ten plagues."
"Like what that Moses guy did to that Pharaoh guy?" Beni twitched. Chills raced down his spine.
"That's one way of putting it," Elena lifted a blanket from behind Kol and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"Let's see, there were frogs, flies and locusts…" Kol could see the discomfort in the small man's beady eyes.
"Hail and fire," Damon chimed in.
"The sun turning black," Lucian added.
"Water turning to blood," Kai hummed.
"And people covered in boils and sores," Kol finished the list.
A sense of unease settled over the men. Elena looked from one frightened face to the next and laughed before pulling a stick from the fire.
"Fried gizzard?"
Elena stepped out of the temple where she had slipped away to freshen up for bed. She had taken a small amount of water with her inside before stripping down and wiping as much of the dust away as she could.
She ran her fingers through her damp curls. She would have loved nothing more than to have dunked her head in clean water and washed her chocolate tresses two or three times in order to feel clean again, but there was not enough water to waste on such things; her hair would only get dirty again in the morning. She had settled for ringing out the cloth and patting the worst of the dust from her hair.
She lifted the edge of her skirt to descend the stairs and walked past the sleeping diggers. The poor men were utterly exhausted after a day of excavation.
She froze in her tracks when she spotted the Egyptologist. He was flat on his back with a jeweled canopic jar beneath his right arm, but it was what was under his left that drew her attention.
Elena bit her lip and shifted in the sand. She looked over her shoulders cautiously to ensure the entire camp was asleep before quietly approaching.
Her eyes flickered to his face as her hands curled around the edges of the artifact. Carefully she pulled it free from his arm and breathed a sigh of relief when he remained sound asleep.
Straightening up she hurried away on the tips of her toes feeling very much like a child again sneaking a midnight cookie from the kitchen.
She dropped onto the blankets by the campfire and stared at the glistening black book in her lap with wide eyes. Her fingers hesitantly traced the edges of an eight pointed star.
Four scarabs flanked the corners from which the book was held together with gold bindings.
"You really want to be playing around with that?"
Elena jumped and lifted her eyes to find Nik propped on his elbow. His blue eyes flickered to her slim finger. The book felt warm beneath her skin.
"It's just a book," she shrugged and reached for the key, "no harm ever came from reading a book."
Nik sat up and moved to sit next to her when she opened the cover. The fire flickered violently when the lid hit the ground. He could see the sudden trepidation in Elena's eyes before she shrugged. He could almost hear her inner thoughts: it's just a coincidence.
Elena lowered her eyes and used her finger to guide her reading.
"Ahm kum Ra. Ahm kum Dei," her arm began to tingle at the shoulder as she read aloud; it spread down her skin and into her body. There was an intense moment where every muscle in her body was coiled tightly before the energy snapped and rushed up and out through her mouth.
Deep underground the air grew warm in the hidden chamber beneath the feet of Anubis. It pulsed, shimmered, and slid beneath the lip of the coffin that had been left half-open.
For a brief moment nothing happened, but then the twisted neck snapped around and the crusted eyelids popped open to reveal empty sockets.
Dr. Maxfield bolted upright when the wind howled through the camp. His eyes darted frantically from side to side before locking on the woman. She was bent over something black and reading.
"No," he jumped to his feet and screamed. He could make out her words the closer he got. "You must not read from the book!" He raced towards her, but skidded to a stop when a piercing sound screeched over the sands.
Nik and Elena leapt to their feet.
Kol jerked awake and joined them as the piercing scream grew louder and louder. He peered out over the desert as the Americans came rushing from their tents.
The darkness shifted and writhed. It wasn't until the wall was nearly upon them that they realized what it was.
Nik grabbed Elena's arm, swiped up the elephant gun and raced in the direction of the crevice where they had repelled. Kol was right beside them swinging one arm over his head in an attempt to wave off the locusts now swarming around their heads.
The locusts beat through the air and swarmed around the bodies of everyone. From a distance the sound of a man's death screams could be heard as he was devoured by the vermin.
The trio disappeared beneath the earth as the Americans vanished into the temple.
Dr. Maxfield stood frozen by the fire. He stared at the book with hollow eyes as locusts covered his arms.
"What have we done?"
The campfire was sucked upwards into a whirlwind by the vermin and extinguished leaving him alone with the bugs beneath the faint light of the moon.
"What the bloody hell just happened?" Kol raced down the twisting corridor while slapping at his arms.
"Grasshoppers," Nik gasped for breath after they came to a stop. "Billions of grasshoppers."
"That's an over exaggeration," Elena shook the insects from her arm. Her skin crawled; she could still feel them on her.
Her breath caught when Nik reached out and plucked a locust from her hair. She squealed and immediately started running her hands through her hair. She shook the dark tresses violently until she was certain there were no more locusts on her body.
"Isn't that one of the plagues?" Nik tilted his head and squinted at her in the dark. He struck a match and lit the torch Kol held out from the wall. He took it in his hand and used it to light the second.
"It's not a plague," Elena threw up her hands in exasperation, "it's generational. Every few years the locusts of Egypt have a population explosion and they all take flight."
She spun on her heel and brought her foot down. She resisted the urge to squeal when something squished under her boot.
Nik lowered his torch towards the sand strewn floor and cocked an eyebrow.
"Okay…" he straightened up and turned to face her, "… what about the frogs?"
Damon wasn't sure if he tripped over a stray stone or if one of his companions had knocked him down.
The impact with the ground knocked the air from his lungs. His vision blurred around the edges as his head smacked the hard floor. The impairment did not go away when he climbed to his feet.
He was still rubbing his head and squinting into the tunnel. His steps were staggering when he began to move again in the direction he thought his friends had taken and shouted their names as he went.
Elena's nose wrinkled as she stepped between the bodies of the frogs; it was nearly impossible since they were everywhere. Nik and Kol were not concerned about stepping on the creatures, but Elena had always hated the amphibians. Kol had once hidden one in her bath; she had screamed and proceeded to give him a black eye.
Her heart stuttered in her chest when she saw them stop a few steps in front of her. A moment later she saw why as the ground began to shake.
The sand boiled like a pot of water. A large hill formed in the middle and rippled outwards in a circle. It was a moment before the sand broke apart.
Elena screamed and Kol swore.
Nik managed to swallow his scream that would most certainly have been shrill and turned around with the siblings. They ran in the direction they had come in an attempt to escape the chittering scarabs salivating at the thought of living flesh.
Damon would have loved to have moved faster, but his stomach was turning violently. He was certain he would be sick if he moved above his staggering shuffle or let go of the wall to which he clung.
The path ahead was blurry and seemed to spin in his vision. He groped the wall, not trusting his eyes to guide his feet.
He stopped when a figure emerged around the corner in front of him.
"Kai?" Damon squinted. The figure was roughly Kai's height. "Is that you?" He stumbled forward when the figure didn't move. "Lucien?"
He tripped and stumbled when he was a few feet from the figure. His nose wrinkled when his hands caught the slimy surface of the figure's chest and the putrid smell penetrated his senses.
Damon jumped as if he had been burned. He pulled his hands back from the inside of the figure's body and squinted at them and the rotting flesh clinging to his healthy skin.
A skeletal hand clamped over his mouth before he could scream.
The trio raced up a staircase only a few feet ahead of the mass of scurrying scarabs. Their chittering sent a wave of cold fear down Elena's spine.
Nik's eyes narrowed in concentration when he saw the pedestal. He veered to the left and jumped through the air to land on his feet. Looking up he saw that Kol had jumped with him.
Elena had been a couple of steps behind and she could tell by the way Nik reached out to steady her brother that there was definitely not enough room for her over there. She ran a few steps passed them and leapt off the right side of the staircase to a grotto sticking out from the wall.
She held her hand to her chest and attempted to catch her breath as the horrid mass of scarabs scurried between her and them. The ear-piercing chittering made Elena shudder violently. She leaned back as if to put more distance between her and the beetles.
Her startled yelp was drowned out by the herd when the wall moved and she fell backwards.
Kol watched the scarabs vanish through an opening at the top of the stairs before looking across the way with Nik.
"Elena?"
Elena gasped and sat up. She ran her hands through her hair to shake out the sand and looked around. Her heart pounded violently as she climbed to her feet.
The room she had emerged in was pitch black. She could see nothing beyond the faint line where the floor had met the wall.
She patted the stone wall praying it would open again; it didn't.
With a shaking breath she began to feel her way along the wall. The stone was cool beneath her fingertips and led her away in what she hoped was the direction of the exit, or at the very least light.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she rounded the corner and saw the man standing in a shaft of moonlight. The lecherous gaze she had detested would be a momentarily welcome feeling.
"Hello?" She called gently. "Can you help me? I've gotten lost."
He turned around when he heard her soft voice. His desire to tell her to run was there but his tongue was not.
Elena's eyes filled with fear when instead of a lewd stare he was watching her with empty eye-sockets. Her chest rose and fell rapidly when she screamed and backed away.
She bumped into something and screamed. She spun on her heel and stared up into the rotting face of the mummy.
Her third scream could've woken the dead.
She backed up quickly into the far wall. Her messed hair fell over her shoulders and clung to her sweaty face.
His bright blue eyes ran over her body from bottom to top as he took in her torn skirt and ripped blouse. Had there been flesh surrounding his eyes it would have stretched wide upon viewing her face.
"Amara?"
"There's got to be a trapdoor around her or something," Kol muttered. He ran his hands around the inside of the grotto. "There's always a trapdoor."
Nik looked up from where he was checking the other side and turned towards the distant sounds of male screams.
Kai, Lucien and a digger came running down the stairs. There was a loud chittering sound behind them.
"You two better run," Lucien didn't stop to see if they listened.
Kol and Nik jumped from the grotto that was easily reached from a downward angle and ran with the American's as the scarabs raced in their direction again.
Nik stopped with the intention of helping the digger who had fallen down, but it was too late.
The man screamed in horror. His eyes reflected the knowledge that he was about to die as the scarabs ran over him. There were so many that by the time they left the body it was little more than a skeleton.
Elena could do little more than draw in ragged breaths as the dead man advanced on her. The sand seemed to swirl around his legs in a mini whirlwind.
She was not a believer, but dammit there was proof in front of her and it splintered her heart with fear.
"Help me…" her voice was little more than a whisper: a quiet plea to the blind man. "…please."
Her only reply was a gurgling moan, but he did reach blindly in her direction. Before he could reach her he was grabbed and thrown onto the ground.
The mummy brought his foot down on top of Damon's chest and held out his decomposing hand to Elena.
"Kadeesh pharos Amara!"
Elena shivered and backed further into the wall. It took a moment for her to get around the image of a live tongue flapping in his putrid mouth before she processed what he had said.
"Come with me my princess, Amara."
There was the sound of pounding footsteps that should have drawn her eyes but she couldn't look away.
Nik flew around the corner and ran straight towards her.
"What the hell are you doing?" He grabbed her upper arm. "Now is not the time to explore the ruins! We need to go!" A line appeared between his brows when he caught the look of pure terror in her eyes.
Slowly he turned around before jumping back. His heart leapt into his throat as he stared at the dead man. He held tight to Elena's arm and started sliding along the wall to put distance between them.
The walking corpse glided with them. Each sideways step reminded Elena of an animal stalking its prey; her eyes kept flickering from his putrid face to the sand swirling around his feet.
From the corner of her eyes she saw Damon starting to crawl in the opposite direction.
The creature stopped suddenly and unhinged his skeletal jaw. His mouth stretched to an impossible size before he released a horrific, primordial shriek.
"AMARA!"
Elena screamed.
Nik shuddered and spun the leather strap of the gun around. He pointed at the beast and fired.
The corpse flew backwards of his feet with his ribcage blown half off.
Nik took Elena's hand and ran. He led them through the rushing wind and swarming sand until they were stumbling through a large crack that would lead them out into the night.
They froze when the sound of guns cocking made their blood run cold. Looking up they lifted their hands and stared down the barrels of ten guns.
Elena swallowed nervously and met her brother's eyes. He was on his knees with his hands on his head alongside the American's and the Egyptologist.
"I told you to leave or die," Elijah stepped through the assembly of warriors, "you refused, and now you might have killed us all. You've unleashed a creature that we've feared for more than four thousand years."
"Relax," Nik rolled his eyes, "I got him."
"No mortal weapon can kill this creature," Elijah shook his head. "He is not of this world."
Had father not hidden you away you would have known this, Rebekah scoffed. Had father not hidden you away you'd have never brought that woman here.
She had ridden all night to reach her father who had at first denied everything until she told him of the mark the blonde man bore. It had taken them the better part of the morning for him to recount the tale.
"We're talking about the same creature, right?" Nik cocked an eyebrow. "The walking corpse with a really big mouth and really bad breath?"
Silas advanced on the sweaty man who shook and cowered in fear. He kept holding up the many talismans around his neck.
The man tired him greatly, but he stopped the path of his skeletal hand that had been reaching for his throat.
He recognized the last talisman and the pleading prayer.
"The language of the slaves," his grotesque eyes stared at Beni, "I may have use for you, and the rewards," he reached into his rotted ribcage and extended a hand full of maggots that parted to reveal glittering gold and shimmering jewels, "will be great."
Silas lifted the broken canopic jar that had held her heart.
"Where are the other sacred jars?"
"What did you do to him?" Lucien stared in horror when Damon was dragged through the line of black clad warriors.
"We saved him," Elijah snapped. "Saved him before the creature could finish his work. Now you need to leave, and quickly before he finishes you all."
Father had wanted the half-brother protected, so protected he would remain; even if Elijah thought it incredibly foolish to let him go without a word.
"You're not going to kill us?" Kol's eyes narrowed. He clamped his jaw when Elena gave him a look that said 'shut up'.
"No," Elijah shook his head. "We must hunt him down, and try to find a way to kill him, before he consumes the entire earth." He turned and started walking.
Elena blinked when he took the arm of the lone woman in the party and spun her around. It had looked like the blonde had wanted to say something.
"I already told you I got him!" Nik yelled after the retreating group.
"Know this," Elijah spun on his heel and nodded to all of them, "the creature will come for you. He must consummate the curse and until he does he will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never stop."
He turned and jumped down into the crevice.
"So we're just not telling him then?" Rebekah crossed her arms over her chest.
"What's the point?" Elijah's jaw ticked. "We'll likely be dead soon," his head snapped in the direction of the shriek, "It might have been different if they hadn't woken the creature." He walked with his sister towards the back of the group. "You never did tell me the whole story."
"You want to hear it now?" She gave him a wry look while drawing her blade. "We're going to be dead soon."
Nik took Elena's arms and hoisted her up onto her camel before jumping up behind her. There was no time for her to mount on her own.
Dr. Maxfield clutched the black book to his chest and jumped onto another camel and followed everyone out into the night. Without his own guide he was relying on the other to get him safely back to Cairo.
The moment the last camel ran from the ruined city a skeletal hand broke through the sand.
The wind carried the sound of his voice over the sand. It made the hair on the back of Elena's neck stand on end and a chill race through her body. The reins of the camel shook in her hand. She swallowed and leaned back into his warm chest when he steadied her hands.
"AMARA!"
What do you think?