"What do you have against damsels in distress?"
"It's completely unrealistic," AJ shrugs as she and Lawrence walk around the camp," most damsels handle distress way better than men do."
"Name one time that's happened with us."
"I specifically remember you blubbering like a baby when I went into labor with Tucker." He scoffs, but doesn't deny it, both of them remembering the day fondly. It was the eighth of November, snow was just beginning to fall, and AJ's water had broken during an intense game of checkers. Not only did she have her husband to comfort, but Daniels was running all over the house trying to pack their bags, Burns was trying to get the truck started, and AJ had to go back through and pack her own bag so she had something that wasn't beaded to wear on the journey back home.
Men were so useless during the birthing process that it was almost funny.
"And you weren't even the tiniest bit scared?"
"Honey, I had a five-pound child trying to escape through a sensitive part of my anatomy, of course I was scared," she laughs, gently swinging their hands back and forth between them. "The only difference was that I'd been preparing for it while you were off drinking beer in some hidden room and bragging that you'd knocked me up."
"In my defense, the beer was really good." AJ lets out a huff of laughter, smiling up at her husband. "So, how do you think Tuck's gonna like this thing?" He holds up the canopic jar, the one with the falcon head.
"Our son isn't touching that thing."
"But he wanted a souvenir."
"Then I'll spend three pounds on a Horus figurine when we get back to Cairo."
"How much is that again?" American through and through, he still refused to learn the difference between pounds and his US Dollars.
"About three dollars, honey."
"Oh... Well, okay then." As wealthy as his family was, though not as wealthy as AJ's paternal family, he was possibly the cheapest man she's ever met. He didn't buy things that weren't needed, though he still bought her nice jewelry from time to time and their son a new toy because he loved them and he wanted to make sure they knew that. AJ used to claim it as an attempt to buy her affections, but he always answered with the same phrase.
I wanted to buy something that was as beautiful as you are, but everything fell short of the mark and this is the closest I could find.
The fact that he saw her as his entire world always made her fall even further in love with him. With their son, he just loved to spoil Tucker and AJ is certain he'd be even worse if they ever had a daughter.
Still smiling, they join the rest of their group at the fire, sitting across from O'Connell, Jonathan, and Beni. "Hey, my wife says I can't give this to Tuck, so what do y'all think I could get for a canopic jar back home?"
"Probably two hundred bucks from that crazy lady in town," Burns offers. "You know, the one that collects stuffed birds and walks around with her husband's urn." AJ tried to stay as far from Jude Prichard as was possible since that time the crazy broad had tried yanking Tucker's stroller right out of AJ's hands. Of course, Prichard avoided AJ since that last encounter had ended with AJ knocking the old bat's false teeth out.
Anyone that tries to take my baby from me is going to learn that I go for blood.
"We heard you boys caught yourselves a nice mummy," Daniels laughs, nudging Burns as the other man laughs too. "Ya know, I bet you could sell 'im for firewood if you dried him out." AJ rolls her eyes at the jibe, wishing she'd been with Evy's group instead of getting cursed with the absolute morons on her left.
"Well, I think I'll turn in for the night," she says, giving Lawrence a chaste kiss before standing again. "Goodnight, gentlemen."
"Night, AJ." She hugs Burns and Daniels, then moves over to give Jonathan a hug and press a kiss to his cheek.
"Night, AJ," he murmurs, returning the hug and kiss as he'd done when they were children. "Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite." She ruffles his hair with a laugh, leaving the fire behind and going straight to her tent. It was just big enough for the cot and bags, leaving her a narrow space to pull the tent flaps closed. She didn't feel like changing out of her dress yet, the black silk of it felt nice against her skin, but she did remove the silver arm cuff, fake pearl necklace, and her heels.
"What a day," she sighs, lying back against the pillows. The night usually grew colder in the desert, and she loved the feel of the wind as it ruffled the flaps and her loose hair. She had her father's thickness and her mother's color, a dark brown that came from generations of Egyptian blood, though AJ does have a maternal grampy that had bright blonde hair.
She didn't know much about her family history apart from Nefertari, but she did know several of her father's side of the family have moved from Egypt to Yorkshire. Her favorite cousin lives there with her husband and young daughter; Emmeline Brae had always been there when AJ needed her and vice-versa, the two practically inseparable as children. She and AJ had written several letters a week after AJ was moved to Cairo to live with her uncle, the letters evolving from childish fancies to more adult things like marriage and houses.
Millie, Leo, and little Clementine were the only things AJ missed from England, but the bad memory of her parents' deaths always made AJ hold back on traveling to Yorkshire again. She missed walking through the parks with her father, missed sitting for hours in the attic with her mother; the windows stained glass that cast rainbows over a blank sketchpad. Good mixed with bad and left AJ feeling torn between Texas, Cairo, and Yorkshire.
As she relaxed further, listening to familiar nighttime noises, AJ's thoughts wandered further away from the present until she was fast asleep and dreaming of snowy evenings drinking hot chocolate beside her cousin's fireplace.
For the first time in far too long, AJ was sleeping peacefully; her dreams centered around her own family in the present time, what it might have been like if her parents were around to see their grandson. That's why she tried to ignore the high-pitched whine for as long as she could, which wasn't very long when she felt something crawling over her arm. She barely opens her eyes, spotting the insect without much trouble.
"Hello, Mister Locust," she smiles drowsily, closing her eyes again. She lay like that for another few seconds until her mind actually processed what she'd seen, then she sat up and started swatting at the bug in a panic. "Ew, ew, ew!"
"What's it," Lawrence mumbles, sitting up and reaching for her on instinct before he even realized she'd already jumped out of bed. "Baby, what's goin' on?"
"I had a bug on me." It was off of her now, but the whining sound only grew louder. "What in Allah's name is going on out there." She and her husband share a look before pulling on their shoes to investigate.
"Stay here until I say otherwise." As Lawrence walked out of the tent, AJ grabbed their bag of clothes just in case it was the tribe of Medjai come to run them off again, and walked out to stand beside her friends. She could just barely make out a black mass on the horizon, her initial thought of a sandstorm falling flat as the mass gets closer and each black dot becomes an individual locust. As a whole, everyone begins to sprint for shelter, Lawrence latching onto AJ's wrist and pulling her after him towards the entrance of the temple. "Where the hell did they come from?!"
"I ain't waitin' around to find out," Daniels yells back, AJ sandwiched between the two as they all continued to run. Behind them, someone stumbles to the ground, but AJ wasn't even able to slow down without Daniels tramping on her, so she was forced to continue forward and hope that the person would be okay.
The logical part of her mind knew this was completely common, locust swarms were generational and they procreated so much when there were a lot of green plants ready to be harvested; she's seen two of these swarms since she came to live in Egypt. The superstitious part of her, however, proclaimed this as a biblical plague that signaled the mummy's curse activated; he would be coming after them anytime and she needed to keep moving.
In all the chaos, Lawrence never noticed a pile of sand slowly forming just behind them, but it drew AJ's attention when the digger behind them started screaming and calling for them to run faster. AJ looked over her shoulder just in time for the mound of sand to be blown outward, releasing thousands of scarab beetles that just served as the icing on the cake.
"Alllaena," she curses," Lawrence move faster now or we'll all be dead in two minutes!" The locusts left behind them, the swarm of beetles picks up the chase and AJ's never felt so damn scared in all her twenty-seven years. Her heart was in her throat and her stomach had already tied itself into knots, entire frame shaking, and her vision starting to darken despite the lit torches.
Lawrence noticed the way she was slowing down and stopped long enough to throw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, the bag AJ held falling to the ground to be left behind. They ran straight down the hall for another five minutes until rounding a corner and running down a stone ramp.
"Run you sons of bitches," Lawrence calls to Jonathan and O'Connell as he passes them," run!"
"I've got some bad news," O'Connell yells breathlessly as he catches up," we may or may not have awakened our gooey friend from the coffin!"
"What the hell do you mean you brought a mummy back to life?!"
"It was your book that did it!" Too tired to argue any further, Lawrence lets out a growled curse.
O'Connell and Jonathan could have been Olympic sprinters, pushing their way past everyone else and leading the way towards the exit of the temple, all of them rounding another corner and pulling up short at what they found waiting for them. AJ couldn't see anything from her vantage point, but she knew it was nothing good by the way Lawrence went rigid beneath her.
"What is it," she whispers, though she ended up speaking Arabic on accident. She never realized when she switched languages and normally fell back on Arabic when she was emotional. "Lawrence, what is it?" She wriggles until she drops to the ground, finding herself frozen to the spot. It was a walking, talking corpse; all dirty bones with bits of moldering flesh keeping him all together and a few bandages to show he'd already been mummified. "Allah, save us."
The creature lets out an ear-piercing howl of anger, its jaw unhinging like a snake. O'Connell, never showing an ounce of fear, shrieks right back at it, using his shotgun to blow half of the creature's ribcage to pieces, the creature falling back and collapsing on the sand.
"Move," he shouts, grabbing Evy and racing forward once more. In unison, Jonathan and Lawrence grab the back of AJ's dress and haul her to her feet, Lawrence changing his grip to her hand as Jonathan let go, all of them high-tailing it away from the scene.
"Did you see that," Daniels screeches on AJ's left," it was walkin'! It was walkin'!" AJ never looked back as they ran, praying under her breath as well as she could that they all make it out alive. And it seemed possible as they left the temple, but they were brought to a screeching halt just three feet away, the Medjai barring the way to the camels, pointing rifles at the group with Chamberlain kneeling in the sand in front of them.
"I told you to leave or die," the Medjai leader says, stepping forward. "You refused and now you've killed us all, for you have released the creature we have feared for more than three thousand years."
"Relax," O'Connell assures him," I got him."
"No mortal weapons can kill this creature. He's not of this world." The leader steps aside as two of his men drag another person between them, AJ stifling a panicked sob when she recognizes the wounded man as Burns. Lawrence and Daniels kneel down, taking their friend into their arms and supporting him as he moaned in pain.
"You bastards," Daniels croaks.
"What did you do to him," Lawrence demands, tears gathering in his eyes. AJ drops to her knees beside them, tearing off part of her dress to use as a blindfold. It looked like someone had scooped the eyes right out of Burns' head and AJ was willing to bet everything she owned that it was the mummy.
"Shh," she murmurs to her friend, running her fingers through his tousled hair soothingly," you're safe now, Bernie. We're going to get you help as soon as we're back in Cairo." Until then, the obvious wounds would need to be covered to keep sand from irritating them. "It's going to be okay, I promise."
"We saved him," the leader growls back," before the creature could finish his work. Unless all of you want to die, you should leave Egypt as quickly as you can." AJ meets the leader's intense gaze, continuing to murmur to her friend. "I will try and find a way to kill him."
"I told you already," O'Connell states as the Medjai shoulder their weapons and start inside the temple," I got him." The leader pauses and turns to face the group again, looking irritated and scared beyond measure.
"Know this, the creature will be coming for you as he must consummate the curse. Until that has happened, this creature will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never stop. He is called the bringer of death for a reason." As the leader disappears into the darkness of the temple, AJ helps to put Burns up on a camel, Daniels sitting behind him to keep his friend upright.
Once they were sure neither man would fall, Lawrence and AJ find a camel of their own, AJ having to sit on it sideways because of her dress. Not even the feeling of Lawrence's arms around her could make the horror leave her, her body stiff against his as all of them rode back towards civilization.
"I'm sorry," Lawrence mutters after a few hours of silence, staring ahead of him at the desert. Grief carved new lines in his face, his lips pressed tightly together when he wasn't talking.
"Sorry for what," AJ queries, resting against him for the warmth.
"I should've listened to you earlier when you said not to open the chest. Hell, I should've just stayed home and forgotten all about this stupid city." She takes a deep breath, resting her hand on Lawrence's arm and running her thumb over the muscles there. She knew contact like this always calmed his nerves and she hoped to make him relax now.
"It's in the past, Lawrence, nothing can be done to change it now."
"I've put you in danger, I-I got my best friend wounded, and I don't know how I'm going to live with myself." She sits up straighter, cupping his face to make him look at her.
"This is everyone's fault, honey, not just yours. We all played our parts in unleashing the curse and all we can do now is pray that the Medjai find a way to stop it. No matter what happens, I'll still love you to the stars and back."
"I love you, too."
Alllaena= curse (Phoe-Sama gave me the translation over on Wattpad).
