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CHAPTER
EIGHT

Marty stared at the bubbling remnants of what had attacked them. The body of the attacker only moments earlier had been a corpse like any other dead thing, with its jackal-like neck twisted at an unnatural angle. And just as Marty crouched down to get a closer look, its skin shimmered with a glow that coalesced into a floating ball of light.

Was that a will-o’-the-wisp?

He’d heard of such things, glowing balls of light, but never seen one. Marty had always understood they were either folklore or associated with the gases given off by swamps or garbage dumps.

The shimmering ball drifted toward him. Before he could move out of the way, it touched his hand and disappeared. A tingling sensation traveled up his arm, spreading throughout his body. It was almost as if he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket. Except it wasn’t painful.

It was invigorating.

He felt goose bumps rise on every inch of his skin.

He looked over at Lowanna, who was watching François dig a grave with his ankh, still weeping, though now silently. She looked different. Clearer, as if his vision had improved. Something about her was suddenly more eye-catching.

Adrenaline?

Then he breathed in deeply, feeling a shiver of exhilaration run up and down his spine. Hanging in the air were the coppery scent of blood and the thick musk of sweat. He sensed the chlorophyll from the grass, the smell of the freshly turned soil, the musky odor of whatever it was that had attacked them, and even his own sweat—and every scent was intense.

The creature’s body started to smoke.

Marty took several steps back. The monster’s skin sloughed away and turned into a dark-gray sludge. The animal scents gave way to the combined reek of bleach and decay.

“It looked Egyptian.” Surjan wore a look of disgust on his face. “What was that thing? Anubis, is that what he’s called? The god of the dead?”

Marty shook his head. “Not Anubis. Anubis has a jackal’s head, and that’s all. Dr. Frankenstein randomly slapped this monster together, without regard to species.”

But it wasn’t random at all.

Marty had been too shocked during the encounter to even think straight, but now he knew what the monster reminded him of.

With the body decomposed and melted into the soil, he saw the sandals it had worn. The Egyptian-style kilt under the robes. Most of all, the jackal’s head with the long donkey-like ears, squared at the top.

Not a jackal’s ears. A donkey’s.

For an Egyptologist, all of these things pointed to one thing and one thing only.

“Seth,” he said.

This thing may not have been the Seth from Egyptian mythology, the brother of Osiris, the god of war and disruption, but it had looked exactly like what Marty had seen on tomb walls up and down the Nile.

And in the pictographs atop the Jebel Mudawwar.

“Seth?” Surjan frowned.

Marty’s heart thudded loudly in his chest. He wondered aloud, “And when he’s killed, all hints of him vanish?”

Surjan knelt by the remnants of the creature and with a stick dragged a woven basket from the sludge. He looked inside it and frowned. “Slabs of dried meat.”

Lowanna walked around the remnants of the creature, took one look at the basket, and kicked it over, sending its contents flying. With an expression of disgust, she looked back and forth between Marty and Surjan and said, “There’s something about that stuff.” She paused, seemingly at a loss for words. “It’s . . . it’s—”

Haram?” Kareem staggered toward Marty with a somber expression. “Is it haram?”

Haram was Arabic for forbidden.

Lowanna nodded. “Yes, it’s haram. I don’t even know how I know, but it’s not for us to eat.”

Kareem handed a metal object to Marty and said, “I found this in the grass. It flashed a red light when you kicked it out of the demon’s hand.”

“Are you okay?” Marty put a hand on the young man’s shoulder.

Kareem’s lower lip was trembling. “My uncle was a good man. He died like a hero, praise be to God.”

Marty looked down at the medallion. It was the size of his palm and bore an engraving of an infinity symbol, like the numeral 8, lying on its side. He turned it in his hand and frowned. Or maybe it was just an eight. It couldn’t really be either, though; neither symbol had been invented by 2200 B.C.E.

Marty pocketed the medallion and moved to where François was trying to lift Abdullah’s ruined body. “Let me help you.”

“No!” François turned his back to Marty and staggered toward the shallow grave he’d dug. “This is my doing, I’ll take care of it.”

Marty watched as the sixty-something-year-old man carefully lay Abdullah into the freshly dug trench. The Frenchman was muttering something, his face wet with tears.

This reaction was not what he’d have expected from the money guy. He’d gotten the impression that François had always been rich, and that he looked at everyone else as a tool to use as he willed. And with enough money, he was probably not wrong. Such care over a corpse, such distress at the death of an employee, seemed out of character.

François made the sign of the cross and bowed his head. “I’m sorry, my friend. I wish that I could have helped you more in this lifetime. If the God of Abraham, the Gods of Egypt, or whoever might be listening, maybe this can help you in your next life.” He pulled out his wallet and lay it on Abdullah’s chest. Then he lay Abdullah’s ankh in the grave beside him.

Lowanna walked up beside Marty. He put his finger to his lips and pointed at the grave site.

With one hand pressing down on the wallet, François sobbed silently and began chanting in Arabic. “O Lord, forgive Abdullah bin Rahman and elevate his station among those who are guided. Send him along the path of those who came before, and forgive us and him, O Lord of the worlds. Enlarge for him his grave and shed light upon him in it.”

Surjan knelt beside François. “It’s getting late. Should we make camp?”

François sat up straight, his eyes bloodshot and his expression vacant. He grabbed a handful of the soil he’d dug up and dropped it onto Abdullah’s body.

Gunther and Kareem had also come to pay final respects as François continued slowly pouring soil back into the hole.

“François?” Surjan asked again.

Anger flashed in the Frenchman’s eyes and he spoke in a hoarse whisper. “I don’t care. I’m not making any more decisions and I am not responsible; no more, do you hear me?”

As François continued pouring one handful of soil after another into the hole, the rest of the crew turned to Marty.

They were looking for an answer.

Marty glanced to the west at the sun hanging low in the sky. “Okay, let’s set up a camp. Kareem, you start the campfire. Surjan, you and Lowanna see if you can find food and water.” He hesitated, because he didn’t want to feel responsible, either. “Does that work?”

The crew nodded and went their separate ways.

Marty approached Gunther. He tilted his head toward François and whispered, “Can you help Kareem and also keep an eye on François? You know them both better than I do, and you’re better at—”

“I got it.” Gunther nodded. “What are you going to do?”

Marty looked over at the remnants of the monster. “You know what that thing looked like, right?”

Gunther nodded, and despite several days’ exposure to the sun, he looked pale. “I was at a distance, but unless I was hallucinating, it sure as hell looked like you were scrapping with something that had come to life from Egypt’s past. Its mythical past.”

“It was Seth. Or at least something that sure looked like all the images.”

“Like the images on Jebel Mudawwar.”

Marty nodded. He pulled in a deep breath and his mind reeled with the myriad of faint scents he detected. “I have to try to figure out what that thing was.”

Gunther glanced at François, who was still dropping one handful of soil at a time into Abdullah’s grave. He put his hand on Marty’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “If you need to talk, just let me know.”

Marty walked over to the remnants of the creature, knelt down next to the sludge, and picked up one of its sandals.

He’d seen this style of sandal before, many times.

In burials that had been sealed shut thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

He’d never seen one this big before.


Surjan hefted the spear he’d taken from the monster. It was perfectly balanced and reminded him of the spear he’d trained with as a kid. He glanced to his right and found Lowanna digging around a plant with the sharpened end of her ankh. “You find something, love?”

“I’m not your love.” Lowanna grabbed at the base of the plant, arched her back, and pulled with both hands. She grunted and fell backward with an explosion of dirt.

As the dust settled, she held up a web of roots with at least a dozen fist-sized radishes hanging from it. Suddenly she turned to the north. “I hear something.”

Surjan crouched in the grasses and scanned the prairie. “What do you hear?”

Before she could respond, he felt a vibration in the ground followed soon after by the sound of hooves. He tightened his grip on the spear and Lowanna whispered, “I think those are impala. You don’t normally see them this far north, but there’s nothing normal about this place.”

Keeping his head low, he spotted the animals racing across the savannah. They formed a herd of nearly one hundred deerlike animals racing across the savannah.

Lowanna pointed in the direction of the herd and said, “There are young ones and two injured animals at the back of the herd. Please don’t aim for the young ones.”

Surjan crept forward.

The wind was blowing toward him, which was perfect. They wouldn’t catch his scent.

They turned and began to move slowly toward him.

He stretched his arm, preparing for the throw. Worrying that the injury to his forearm would impede his aim, he probed at it and felt no pain.

That seemed wrong, so he unwrapped the bandage to look at the wound, just in case.

And there was no wound.

He stared briefly, but then shook his head. This was a mystery for later, maybe to share with the whole crew. He tucked Marty’s bloody shirt strip into his pocket and settled into a throwing posture.

He adjusted his grip on the spear and waited. As the herd raced from east to west, he spotted one of the larger animals near the back. Its hind leg was bloodied already and it lagged behind the others. Surjan breathed slowly as the thunderous sound of the herd rolled over him.

Just as the back third of the herd approached, he adjusted his stance and his vision focused on his quarry. He hadn’t thrown a spear in twenty years, but the lessons from his childhood flooded back.

Wherever his fingers pointed upon releasing the spear was where the spear would go.

Even injured, the animal was likely running at forty miles per hour.

At one hundred feet, feelings of isolation and despair washed over Surjan. He’d felt sympathy with his prey before, but this was more distinct than he’d ever experienced.

He threw the spear, making sure to aim directly ahead of the animal.

The weapon sailed through the air. At the last moment, just before impact, the impala saw the incoming projectile and turned. The spear penetrated deeply into its chest, sending the animal tumbling to the ground.

The remainder of the herd veered away from Surjan as he stood and raced toward his quarry.

The spear had gone directly through the front shoulder, into the chest and out the other side, killing the animal instantly.

It was a clean kill.

And much easier with a spear than with a knife.

Surjan placed his hand on the neck of the animal and whispered, “Thank you, Lord, that with each breath, during moments of pleasure or pain, we are brought closer to you each day. Thank you for this bountiful gift and it will not go to waste.”

As he pulled the spear from the animal, a ball of shimmering light leaked up from within the animal’s body. His eyes widened and he struggled not to sully his just-finished prayer by blaspheming.

The glowing orb drifted toward him. The same thing had happened when he’d killed the addax, but this time he was ready for it, and he wasn’t afraid. He reached forward and as his fingertips touched the edge of the light, a sense of pins and needles raced up his arm and spread through his body.

He felt a wave of odors wash over him as he suddenly detected the coppery smell of both the old and fresh blood coming from the corpse of the impala, the scents subtly different. There was also a musky aroma he didn’t recognize coming off of the animal.A hundred yards away, he heard Lowanna digging in the dirt for more plants.

Through the soles of his feet, he felt the vibrations of the herd as they raced to the west.

He grabbed the impala by its horns and began dragging the hundred-plus-pound animal back to camp.

Lowanna joined him as she hoisted a bag of plants over her shoulder. She pointed at the impala. “The herd was better off with that one culled and it knew it.”

“Did it . . . tell you this?” Surjan asked.

She shook her head. “It would have attracted other predators if you hadn’t helped.”

“Helped?” Surjan looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Marty said you didn’t like the idea of killing animals.”

Lowanna made a huffing sound as she waved his comment away. “That’s ridiculous. Some things need to happen for the good of the rest of us. We need food to live. That animal was a risk to the herd.” Lowanna looked up at Surjan and frowned. “Are you okay? You seem troubled.”

As they returned to the camp, Surjan sensed the rest of the crew’s footsteps before they even crested the hill. The campfire was lit and for the first time that he could remember, he breathed in the scent of smoke and could tell that most of the smoke was still coming from burning grass and the wood had yet to fully catch fire. He hadn’t even consciously been aware that the smell of burning grass and wood differed.

Surjan stopped for a moment and inhaled. Why was he suddenly aware of so many different scents all around him?

Lowanna looked back at him with a puzzled expression. “Hello? Are you okay?”

He opened his mouth to respond, shut it, and then shrugged. “I think so. It’s just now hitting me how different this place really is.”

“Better late than never.” She smiled and motioned for him to follow her. “Come on, let’s get back to the fire.”

Surjan put a smile on for her. His mind was racing.

Something had changed about him, and it had happened after he’d killed that animal.


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