Thanks for reading this far! I'm having fun. Comment any theories please, and I might just answer if you're right. Probably not... but maybe. ((wait, now I sound like that add.)) Also, I apologize if i make any mistakes as I describe the tunnels... it's been a while

Chapter 8

House of Catacombs

"What is this place?" Anubis asked as we crawled down the tunnel from the library.

"This is a tunnel," I told him sarcastically because honestly I didn't know how else to answer him. It wasn't like I'd ever been down here before!

"Aww shit!" Anubis yelled back. What happened? Were the others up ahead? "It's a dead end," an annoyed A told me. "My mom must have been pulling our legs."

I didn't know her at all, never mind as well as her son would, but I couldn't help but feel that Nina had been serious. She seemed to be seriously worried about Sarah and the others and I couldn't blame her. I didn't know what was going on in this insane house, but I knew danger lurked in these tunnels.

"Look around. Maybe there is some sort of button that opens it," I suggested. If not then I didn't know what we would do. There had to be a way into the main tunnels; I knew Nina wasn't lying!

"There's nothing... oh, wait, I found something!" Anubis yelled back. Yes! Yes! Yes! I knew there was a way in, I knew it. Moving forwards after Anubis I found myself surprised that there was more light in the main tunnels than the library one. Actually... someone had placed lamps along the tunnels. "You think this is my sister's work?"

"Probably," I told him as I looked around the room we'd entered.

I hated it whenever I went under tunnels because I was always afraid they'd collapse. Even down here I felt the familiar twinge of worry. What if these tunnels did collapse? They had to be hundreds of years old and around when the whole earthquake happened. Was there any real guarantee that these tunnels wouldn't break and I'd end up with Anubis house on my head? I almost considered turning back, but Sibuna had come this far. We had to keep going.

As I looked around the room I could suddenly imagine six teenagers, one of them who had to be a younger Nina, standing in an arrangement holding reflectors. one of the kids who was the spitting image of Alice, spoke to another who was blindfolded. The words 'literal blind date' popped into my head and I had no idea why.

"And then you can have my children before we ride off into the sunset," Anubis told me clearly thinking that I wasn't listening. (Well I wasn't before, but I was now.)

"Shut up," I told him before pushing ahead in the tunnels in a failed attempt to forget my unnerving vision.

"Just for my own sake, does that happen a lot? You zoning out and then acting like you saw a ghost?"

Sliding to a stop at Anubis's spot-on words I turned and spoke. "Your mom implied that they used to come down here when she was at school here. Did she ever tell you any stories of her adventures in high school?"

"Nothing of any impor..." Anubis began before tilting his head. "Wait a minute. There was this one story. It scared the heck out of Sarah, I didn't mind it." (Yeah he did.) "She said there once was a girl who found herself threatened by an evil ghost of an Egyptian queen, Senkarah. To appease to ghost she had to perform a series of tasks. One was assemble a key, another cross a bridge with swinging swords, another required her to cross a spider-web, there were a few more I think, but I can't remember them to be honest."

"Was there one where she had to bounce light off reflectors?" I asked quietly desperately hoping he'd say no.

I wasn't that lucky. "Yeah I think there was something about mirrors in there! Why, did your parents tell the same story?"

I considered lying to him, but Anubis was all I had in a house where everyone else hated me. (Possibly because I was an evil Egyptian god's puppet... I hadn't quite determined if I was evil or not yet.) "My parents never told me any stories. Back then, when you were talking and I wasn't hearing you, I saw them. I saw your mom and her friends, the other ones who lived in this house, holding up reflectors in the shape of a falcon."

"Sorry," Anubis told me backing away slowly, "But are you saying that really happened and you just had... a vision of it? You can't expect me to believe that's possible."

"Anubis," I said placing my hand on his shoulder, "We're doing this because your sister and the other are in danger from an evil Egyptian serpent god who, according to mythology, eats the sun every night. I think anything is possible at this point."

Anubis nodded in agreement as we headed further down the tunnels. When we reached a room with a game board of sorts I stopped, and Anubis spoke again. "Just so we're clear, you're not doing this because of Sarah and the others. You're not even doing this because of my mom. You're doing this because you want to be part of something amazing and looking around down here... that you are. Whatever is really going on, because to tell you the truth I don't believe in any gods, it is absolutely amazing, and I'm glad you let me come."

Anubis was right; this isn't for Sarah or Nina or anyone but me. Sarah and her gang could get themselves killed by Apophis and they might just deserve it the way they've treated me. Still, I wasn't just doing it for me- the whole universe would explode if Apophis got his way. I knew that from my mythology books. Who would have thought Luce Ra defender of the Universe against evil Egyptian gods with her partner Anubis, named after a (maybe evil) Egyptian god.

"We should head back," I told Anubis. "I have no clue where we're supposed to go from here, this looks like the end of the tunnels. Anyway I want to go back without the library and I don't know how long it will take."

"Good. Let's stay inside where it's at least a bit warmer. It's freezing outside!" Anubis answered looking tired as he turned around.

I laughed at his shivering. "You'd hate New England then. It's way colder."

"Doubt it," he answered.

"It is."

"Nope."

"Oh I'm so not doing this," I told him with a laugh that echoed through the tunnels.

"You know what this place reminds me of?" Anubis asked right as we reached the end. "The catacombs of Paris."

"Didn't they bury bodies down there or something?" I asked feeling a chill as we stepped into the forbidden basement.

"Yeah, they did didn't they. Still has the same feeling though," Anubis told me before heading upstairs and back through the oven (apparently you only needed the key one way).

Looking back towards the secret passages I shook for a moment knowing instinctively that there was a lot worse things than corpses down there.