silver eyes shown in the darkness, staring back at her. It took one cautious step toward them, and then another. The ground shuddered with each footfall.
“Gideon!” Asha strained at the stone and felt the dragon within her awakening, its soul growling and preparing to roar, coiling to strike out, readying itself to swallow her whole and seize her body again.
“To hell with his sword.” Taziri stood up, stepped into the road, and raised her left arm. She yanked a small switch and the medical brace on her forearm snapped open and a small revolver rose up as a trigger mechanism swung up into her left hand. And as the monster charged at her, she fired.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.
Click.
With each bang, a small bark of flame and smoke burst from the tiny gun, revealing the face of the beast, its brightly colored feathers, its huge unblinking eyes, and its smooth black beak, all rushing across the road bellowing with rage, threatening to crush the Mazigh woman beneath its feet or tear her in half with its vicious beak. But with each bang, the beast winced and recoiled, stumbling forward to the edge of the road as the blood ran down over its face. After the final shot, the huge predator groaned once, and toppled over on its side, gasping, only a few scant paces from the engineer’s feet. Its massive belly heaved and heaved, and then it lay still.
Asha stared at the enormous body, and then slowly tore her gaze away to look at Taziri. The Mazigh woman was breathing fast and thin as she lowered her arm to her side and looked back at Asha. Her eyes were wide, her lips pale, and her complexion nearly white.
Then Taziri’s trembling lips parted in an uncertain smile and she said, “You people and your swords.”
Chapter 29
While Asha held the fallen stone, Taziri helped Gideon and Wren crawl out from under it. The youthful soldier emerged with a cough and a grin, dusting himself off and bemoaning the small tears across the back of his jacket and pants. Wren fared far worse, and it only took Asha a moment’s examination to find three separate fractures in the girl’s left leg. And when she bumped the injuries, the girl screamed.
“Sorry,” Wren said. She looked even paler than usual, her face shining with sweat, and she took quick, shallow breaths as she tried not to move or jostle her broken leg. “I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been in the road…”
“You’re alive,” Taziri said. “That’s all that matters. We can fix a broken leg. Don’t you worry for a minute.”
Asha rummaged through her bag for something to give the girl in black, but she had already given all of her anesthetics to the people back in the road by the bonfire. She exhaled and rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do for you until we get back up to the city. Then I can splint this and make you some fresh painkillers.”
“It’s all right,” Wren said as she leaned back against the wall behind her. “I can sit still for a little while. Go on. Go finish it. Find Omar.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Taziri volunteered. She nodded at the shattered magnet device. “It’s not as though there’s much else I can do now anyway. Plus, I’m out of bullets.”
Asha hesitated and glanced at Gideon, who nodded and shrugged as if to say that he couldn’t think of any better course. So she patted Wren’s hand, thanked Taziri for staying with her, and stood to leave.
With Gideon at her side, she crossed the road and circled around the huge feathery beast to stand before the dark pyramid. The light of the seireiken only served to paint the face of the ancient tomb in starker whites and blacks, revealing every tiny crack and gash in the stone walls.
“Together this time?” Gideon winked at her.
She nodded.
Stone by stone, level by level, they climbed up the stepped face of the pyramid. Some sections were harder to cross than others, but some were so broken and decayed and collapsed that there was an easy trail to follow with steps and handholds on every side. And so in only a quarter of an hour and without incident, they reached the summit where the small yellow signal fire burned high above the dark streets of the necropolis.
From their airy perch, they looked down a stone corridor to a small chamber with a round hole in the floor where bright torch light flickered and soft voices echoed.
“Do we have a plan?” Gideon asked.
“I can’t be certain, but I think there are only two people left inside,” Asha said as she tilted her dragon’s ear toward the torch light. “Both immortal. So let’s be quick. Find Omar and get him to safety, and then deal with Lilith.”
“Who does which?” he asked.
“We both do both, together.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the glass vial with the powder mixture she had completed earlier by the fountain. With the open vial in one hand, she took a second vial from her bag, one that tinkled softly as the liquid inside sloshed back and forth, and she poured the warm water over the powders.
Then she quickly replaced the rubber stopper, shook the vial several times, and rolled it down the stone corridor. The vial rattled softly on the bare stones, and then rolled off the edge of the hole and vanished into the chamber below. A moment later they heard the glass shatter, and a steady hissing sound filled the air.
“What was that?” Gideon asked.
Asha hurried forward to the edge of the hole and looked down. A thick white smoke was filling the room below, and she could hear people coughing.
“A distraction. Let’s go!” She set her bag aside and slipped over the lip of the hole and into the room below. Holding her breath and narrowing her eyes, she darted forward through the smoke, following the sounds of the coughing and the sounds of the paired souls of the immortals. In the wider chamber, she found one of the strangers was to her left and the other to her right, and the one on the left sounded more male, so she turned in that direction.
“Who’s there?” a woman yelled.
Asha ignored her and a moment later she bumped into a table and through the smoke she saw a man’s boot and leg on that table.
“Gideon! Over here!” she called out.
Out of the smoke, the blazing white shape of the soldier’s triangular blade came hissing and crackling with tiny lightning arcs on its surface. Gideon stepped past her, coughing loudly as he inspected the table and the man on it, and the chains binding the two together. And then he gently sliced the chains and shackles apart with his seireiken as though the restraints were no stronger than butter and cheese.
The prisoner sat up, coughing and waving his hand at the smoke. “Thank you,” Omar wheezed.
The smoke began to thin away. Asha could see more and more of the room now, including the far wall and a thickly padded chair, and several trays of moldy fruit and bread.
And a woman.
The woman was tall and slender, and her bare arms were fairly muscular. Her long black hair shone even through the haze, and her blue silk dress shimmered with silver chains and bright, glittering jewels. She stood in the archway between them and the hole in the ceiling that led back to the outside world, and she placed her hands on her hips with a very stern and cold expression on her face.
“Gideon,” she said. “How unlike you to barge into my home, uninvited and unwelcome, with some other woman.” She gave Asha a brief and disapproving glance. “I expected better manners from a man as honorable as you.”
“I came for Bashir,” Gideon said. “We’ve already freed all of your other slaves, and healed them as well. You can’t hurt them anymore. Not the mortals, or the immortals. Horus and Isis are safe, too.”
Lilith groaned and rolled her eyes. Then she tilted her head to one side. “Why would you do that? Why bother? Where’s the profit in it? Where’s the pleasure in it? Are you really such a small creature that you would enslave your will to someone else’s notion of justice or honor, to labor in these so-called good deeds just to earn
