Chapter 49
Alex
Imhotep strode forward like he owned the place. It was amazing. None of the people paid any attention to him as the wind whipped around us, flicking dried mud off his body until he no longer looked like some strange swamp being.
My mouth dropped open as we approached the henge. Damn. They'd tied this girl to a couple of posts right in front of one of the gates. I could tell there was something going on because there was darkness, inky blackness in the rectangle of the gate itself. The girl was struggling against the ropes that held her, her robes whipping around her body as one of the robed things stood in front of her. I couldn't tell what he was doing, but she did not appear to enjoy it at all.
I noticed Cheri was also struggling with one of the creatures, his tentacle showing as he looped it around her waist and pulled her back to him. He had one of those curvy daggers in his other hand. I yelled as he drove it through her back until the point burst out of her chest, blood soaking into her shirt in a widening stain.
Imhotep flung a hand toward the thing and its head exploded. We both stopped at that, Imhotep staring at his hand, a dawning light of inhuman glee on his face while I was wondering just how he'd retrieved his magic. Maybe I should have figured on it as we approached something that seemed wholly magical.
Lightning ripped out of the sky to strike the Creature, as my uncle called him. Thunder pealed so loud I clapped my hands over my ears and dropped to my knees the sound hurt so much. When I looked again, Imhotep stood in a patch of burned sand, glass lay smoking around his feet. He laughed, tilting his face up toward the storm as though daring it to try again.
He walked forward again. I was out of my league and knew it so I darted over to where Cheri had gone to her knees.
"Pull it out!" she ordered through gritted teeth.
I stared at the hilt of the dagger for a moment, then grabbed it with both hands and pulled it out as straight as I could. A scream ripped from her and then she was on hands and knees, groans escaping her until she coughed up about two tablespoons of blood, panted for a moment and then rocked back to squat on the sand. She licked her lips like she was hungry and refrained from looking around at me.
"Thanks. I don't suppose you have a chocolate bar on you," she half asked.
My hands dove for my pockets. Lint. I shook my head. "Sorry. No." I wanted to reach out and touch where the wound in her back had been, but thought better of it. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," kinda growled at me. "Let's move." She didn't turn to look at me before we were moving, essentially following Imhotep's path into the henge.
Ahead of us, the Egyptian had stopped and was staring at his surroundings. "Stop!" he bellowed. "As High Priest of the God Ra, I forbid this!"
