Authors: Seressia Glass
“Yes.”
“Well, then, meet the man who suggested the elephant as a war animal.”
Both agents gave Khefar a second measured glance. Kira bit the inside of her jaw to keep from smiling. She didn’t know if the story was true or not, and neither did Sanchez. But the section chief liked to keep everyone on their toes.
Sonoranvan gave Khefar another assessing look. “Excuse me for saying so, but he doesn’t look a day over thirty.”
“Multiply that by one hundred fifty,” Khefar suggested, “give or take a decade.”
“Let’s just say he’s got several lifetimes of military experience,” Kira said. She turned to Sanchez. “Are we ready for the debrief?”
The section chief nodded. “Tell us seriously what we’re facing.”
“From what we saw with the Illuminator, Hammond is an ardent follower of Shadow. He used the Journey Through the Underworld exhibit as a ruse to collect souls for Shadow using a construct that mimics the aspects of Ammit, an ancient Egyptian demoness. When the deceased reached the Hall of Judgment, his or her heart—considered the center of thought, memory, and emotion—was placed on a large scale. Ammit devoured those whose souls weren’t in balance with Ma’at’s feather of Truth and Justice.”
“So you don’t think this is the real Ammit?”
“No,” Khefar answered. “The real Ammit doesn’t put people into comas. She eats your soul. While some traditions say the soul is doomed to a restless existence, most believed that for the soul to be devoured by Ammit meant that you were forever destroyed. No passing ‘Go,’ no collecting two hundred dollars.”
“I’m not at all one hundred percent sure on the rules, but I don’t think the Lady of Shadows can enter this plane of existence as long as Balm is here. That won’t slow her down, though, since she controls Fallen and Shadow Adepts,” Kira explained. “She has someone acting on her behalf, a Lightchaser or a Shadow Avatar. It may even be the same person we encountered in London and Cairo.” Kira hoped it was. She still had a score to settle with Marit.
“Whoever it is can pick and choose which people to put into a coma. I’m not sure why the other humans and hybrids were picked as victims, but Wynne Marlowe was specially selected. These souls are being used as leverage to get us—me in particular—to come to the exhibit for some sort of showdown.”
Kira clenched her hands, anger and worry melding like alloy in her gut. “They didn’t have to go through all this trouble. Harming all these people, holding their souls as hostage.”
“They wanted you there on their terms, not ours,” Sanchez said. “Makes them think they have us at a disadvantage. I say let them keep thinking that way. People who are overconfident tend to make mistakes, and when they do, we turn it to our advantage.”
Good information to know,
Kira thought. Good thing she wasn’t feeling all that confident. “That’s the
Reader’s Digest
version. What’s the plan?”
“We’ve got the blueprints of the Congress Center, as well as the exhibit layout and the delivery area,” Sanchez said. She tapped her tablet computer, and the display wall showed the sprawling layout for the Georgia World Congress Center. “You will have the first two strike teams with you, making entry here and here. The sweepers will work from here to set up a net around the Center. We will have Special Response Teams Three and Four on standby, and the convention center’s police force and security have already been ordered to make themselves scarce.”
Kira nodded. “That will work. We don’t know what or how many we’re facing. But I’m betting that our answer lies at the end of the exhibit, in the Weighing of the Heart ceremony. That’s where people were getting their souls taken, so it’s more than likely where the showdown will take place.”
“Since they are using the Weighing of the Heart ceremony as a basis for their thievery, it might be wise to take a copy of the spells with us,” Khefar suggested.
“Good idea. If they’re using the Weighing of the Heart ceremony to take the souls, they’ve basically agreed by default to go by the rules of Egyptian funerary practices and religion. That means we should be able to use the spells from the book to counteract it.”
“Which spell, though?” Khefar wondered. “The Negative Confessions?”
“We’ll probably need that one for us.” Kira rubbed her forehead. “It’s been a long time since I’ve looked through the book of spells. Aren’t there references to prevent the soul from being stolen?”
“If you’re unsure, we’ll need to rely on the analysts,” Sanchez said. “Data is their specialty. It’s what we pay them for.”
Sanchez was right. The analysts would be a faster and more reliable resource than her memory of Egyptian funerary text. “They’ll need to work quickly,” she said. “We’ll probably need answers almost instantaneously.”
Sanchez gestured to an aide, who immediately approached with a tray of tiny communication devices. “Everyone will have communicators and will be in constant contact. We’ll be able to monitor what you’re hearing and seeing.” Sanchez turned to Kira. “Do you have a plan for returning the souls to their rightful owners?”
Kira nodded. “Kill the Ammit construct, recover the heart scarabs that were used as tokens, and, if necessary, purify them with my Lightblade, though it may be better to have a Light Healer on hand for that. If I recall correctly, there are a number of spells that protect the soul and return the heart to the deceased.”
“Good. I’ll have several analysts working the various copies of the funerary texts. Any clue you can give us as to which one we should rely on could be vital.”
“Agreed.” Kira balanced the communicator in the palm of one gloved hand and used her teeth to pull off the other glove. She held her bare fingers over the earpiece, concentrating a focused brush of power over the device. Sure, they were spares and probably not used recently, but she didn’t need to get an accidental earful of someone else’s psychic communications.
“Are you going into combat like that?” Sanchez asked.
Kira looked down at her jeans and overcoat. “Somehow I don’t think the Lady of Shadows is going to care how I’m dressed,” she said. “However, Khefar and I have extra gear in the car. We’ll gear up in the parking deck, then head out.”
“See that you do. I won’t have the Balm of Gilead riding my ass because I sent you out ill-prepared.” Sanchez turned to the guards assembled below. “We are facing a Level One incursion,” she told them. “Our enemy knows we’re coming, and in fact has done everything to ensure that we come by taking the souls of innocents on both sides of the Balance. With that sort of invitation, it would be rude of us not to show up.”
Several of the guards laughed. The room quickly sobered. “We are going to get those souls back. We’re going to save lives tonight. Given what we encountered with that Level Two event two months ago, it’s entirely possible that winning those souls back is going to cost some lives on our side. The commanders and the Shadowchaser are going to do everything they can to make sure that doesn’t happen, but make no mistake: this is an extremely dangerous situation. This mission is strictly volunteer only. No one is ordered to go. No one will be rebuked if they choose to stay behind. If you prefer not to go, now’s the time to speak up.”
No one moved. No one made a sound. Everyone waited, ready.
Sanchez nodded. “All right, then. May the Light shine on you all. Commanders, you’re a go.”
L
ess than five minutes later, Khefar’s Charger rendezvoused with two armored vans for the short trek to the convention center’s B Building loading docks. Train tracks ran beside the yard, beneath the convention center, and close to the loading docks. It was the perfect place for the Gilead vehicles to sit, and an even better vantage point from which the Special Response Teams could breach the convention center complex.
Khefar popped the Charger’s trunk and followed Kira out of the car. Luckily they hadn’t switched out gear since their altercation with the bultungin. Kira quickly stripped off her coat. She tossed it into the trunk and pulled out her tactical vest. Anticipation and fear coiled inside her, tightening her muscles for action. When it came down to it, she preferred fighting over thinking. Thinking always led to trouble of one sort or another. She couldn’t think about what lay ahead of her in the exhibit hall. She couldn’t think about Hammond’s high-pitched hysterical ramblings. She couldn’t think about what could happen once she reached the Hall of Two Truths. She certainly couldn’t think about whether or not she’d leave the building alive.
After fastening her vest, she handed a second one to Khefar, then checked the clips on several guns before holstering each in its assigned spot. Like Khefar, she preferred her blades over other weapons, but without knowing her target, she’d take all the weapons she could carry while still being able to handle herself in hand-to-hand combat.
Khefar tried the second vest on but immediately shrugged out of it. “No, thanks,” he said, handing it back to her. “I’d rather move freely.”
“Humor me.” Kira thrust the jacket back at him, turning to reach for ammunition. “It’s hours before sunrise, we don’t know what we’re walking into, and while we’re going to have the banaranjans and a couple of strike teams as backup, it’s really going to come down to you and me. I need you to make it through.”
“Since you ask so diplomatically …” Khefar took the tactical vest, slid it on. The Gilead-issued vests had lightweight body armor plates augmented with anti-assault spells that could deflect most attacks and multiple calibers of bullets. The magical enhancements wouldn’t protect against someone trying to dispatch the wearer up close, but, Kira thought, if you let the person get that close to you, you probably were beyond the need for the protective spells anyway.
“You’re going to take that artifact into battle?” Khefar asked, gesturing to the blade strapped to her left thigh.
Kira dropped her hand to the dagger, but didn’t touch it. She hadn’t told him about the Shadowblade yet. He’d just demand that she take it off, and he’d worry and wonder when she refused. He’d wonder why she had been carrying a Lightchaser’s dagger and the only explanation she could give him was that it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, if she tried to wield it in his presence and attempted to charge it with the Shadow portion of her extrasense, his Dagger of Kheferatum would react, thinking her a threat.
“Yeah,” she finally said, switching out her gloves for a fingerless pair. “I can’t just leave it lying around and blades channel my magic better than bullets. Don’t have to worry about the mechanics getting mucked up. Do you mind if I take the khopesh too? It’s got a longer reach than my Lightblade. I should be able to channel my extrasense through it with no problem.”
Khefar gave her a suspicious look before pulling the weapon out of the trunk. She’d told him the truth, but if his expression was anything to go by he knew she hadn’t told him the whole truth. His ability to read her was beginning to be an inconvenience. Luckily he had other benefits in his favor. Still, she didn’t like keeping things from him. With Comstock gone and Balm out of reach, Khefar was now the only one who didn’t judge her. It made her want to confess all to him. And she would. She’d explain everything to him once they were on the back side of this confrontation.
He handed her the scabbard without a word. She slung it over her head so that it rested diagonally across her back, enabling her to pull the blade free with her right hand. While she hoped to be able to charge the blade with her extrasense, she certainly couldn’t tell Khefar that she was half-afraid her Lightblade would fail her when she needed it most, afraid that the Shadow half of her would try to assert itself when in the presence of the Lady of Shadows and the Lord of Chaos. If she told him that, he would try to stop her from entering the exhibit, and more people would die.
A tingle of motion buzzed along her subconscious. “Bale’s incoming,” she said, pointing up. She’d notified him, as promised, of the impending confrontation on the way to the Center.
Bale and three other banaranjans glided down from the semidarkness of the parking deck as Kira and Khefar headed toward the loading dock. They shimmered into human shape. She didn’t see any weapons on them, but when your other form was something that looked like a pterodactyl, she supposed guns were unnecessary.
“All has been quiet since we got here,” Bale said after he’d fully assumed his human form. He and the others were clothed in what looked to Kira to be some sort of ninja gear. “Other than security disappearing, there hasn’t been any activity.”
“So that’s either good news or very bad news.”
“Whichever one it is, we’ll handle it.”
They joined the strike teams up on one of the loading docks. It took no time at all for the Special Response Teams to breach the loading dock entrance to the center building. They quickly fanned out, moving silently through the receiving area to the exhibition space. Kira hadn’t expected they would encounter any resistance, but the lack of challenge scraped her already bare nerves.
Would they be given passage through the display section of the exhibit, coming into conflict only when they approached the mock tomb? Or were their opponents wanting to spread them out in order to better pick them off one by one?
With no nighttime events scheduled in any of the exhibit halls, an energy-saving light scheme illuminated only the public-facing areas of the convention center. In semidarkness, they made their way down the back corridors to the cavernous hall that housed the Egyptian exhibit. They paused outside the large doors leading to the main exhibit floor, the guards fanned out protectively around them, assault rifles at the ready.
One team member extended a thin rod with a tiny mirror attached to its end and slipped it beneath the door. He shook his head and drew the mirror back. Nothing to see on the other side, or no visibility to see what awaited them.
The banaranjans shifted, restless. Kira couldn’t blame them. She was more of a charge-in-and-start-hurting-people type of person herself. The precautions were necessary: the Gilead team didn’t have innate magic, but they were doing their jobs because they were dedicated. She could swallow down her impatience knowing the Gilead teams were willingly putting their lives on the line to rescue the souls of people they didn’t know.