Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(74)

I shrugged. Sweat beaded on my brow. My magic was running dry. Yet more dogs continued to pour from the catacomb’s mouth; more dogs sucked my soul into them and awoke.

“You should bury ’em,” Jie declared matter-of-factly. Then she pointed back toward our distant airship and pyramid. I forced myself to squint, to listen to what she said. But blood roared in my ears. So many leashes binding these Dead to me.

“Blessed Eternity,” Oliver swore. “That’s bloody brilliant.”

“What is?” I croaked out.

“Have them lay down in the sand around the pyramid,” Jie said. “Then we cover ’em with sand. A surprise army.”

It was a good idea. “Go,” I mumbled, latching my eyes on to the dunes around the pyramid. On the obelisk. “Go.”

In a great grinding of bones, the dogs moved. As one, they jogged over the sand, bony tails hanging and torn cloths swaying.

They shone like white gold, reflecting moonlight and moving in perfect unison. Shadows flickered beneath them, and their bone paws crunched easily through sand.

Jie nodded, her face lined with purpose, and after setting her shovel on her shoulder, she jogged after them.

And beside me, Oliver said, “Amazing what you can accomplish on your own two feet, El. Just . . . amazing.”

“I cannot tell if that is a compliment.” I turned toward him. “Or an insu—” My words died in my throat.

The wind had shifted—and the light had somehow moved with it to cast Oliver in a full, lustrous moon.

Wide shoulders, a narrow waist, curls whipping in the wind, and a profile with a slightly hooked nose.

My lips fell open. My heart slowed.

Oliver had changed. Again.

It was not just his nose either. His jaw was stronger. His lips rougher. His eyelashes not so full.

And it was my fault—I knew it was. When his demon soul had passed through the spirit curtain at my brother’s command, Oliver had shifted into a human form. Like water solidifying into ice was how he had described it. And it was as if the more he stayed in that ice form, the more solid it became. The more familiar and used to a body he grew. And the less his soul—his spirit form—became the natural, familiar existence.

And it was my fault, because our bond was turning Oliver into a man. It was changing him into the one thing he did not want to be.

Which left me with only one course of action left. If only I could summon the courage to do what was right.

“The falcon has stopped moving,” I said quietly to Joseph. Several hours had passed since raising the dogs, and it was midnight now. As Joseph unwound copper lines, walking backward so the wire rolled out, I followed behind and kicked sand over it. So far, two lines were buried in concentric circles around the obelisk—each ring twenty feet apart.

“You are certain it has stopped?” Joseph asked.

I nodded and followed behind Joseph to sweep sand over the wire.

Daniel was at a makeshift table on the other side of the pyramid. He had set up his crates below the balloon, and now glowworms illuminated gears, screws, and tools while he hammered away at pulse pistols.

He was crafting a spring-loaded cap that would catch the fired bullets and force them back down the barrel to be fired again. When spiritual energy crossed the copper line, it would detonate the pulse and hold the mummies in place—and their souls would cause the pistols to detonate over and over. They would, we hoped, be trapped by their own energy.

Meanwhile, Jie shoveled sand over my dog army. They lay crumpled and lifeless. Twenty-five rows of twenty-five moving out beyond the copper booby traps. And then another fifteen rows on the other side of the pyramid, near Daniel and the balloon.

“Just in case,” Jie had said.

“Can you sense where the falcon or Marcus is?” Joseph asked. “Is it the Valley of the Kings?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I can only sense that they have stopped. And that the falcon has not lost sight of Marcus.”

“All right. Let me know when he moves again.”

“Of course.”

El. Oliver’s voice filled my mind. I have found another catacomb. Come quickly—you will see me beside the sphinxes.

I sighed tiredly and set off once more into the silver, moonlit ruins.

Oliver had traveled far, though, and it took me almost ten minutes to find him. He stood beside a head-sized stone—a whole row of stones, actually, each ten paces apart.

“This is a sphinx?” I jogged to Oliver’s side; and sure enough, as I approached, I could see the faintest shape of a headdress . . . and then a face.

Oliver waved Milton’s booklet at me, the pages rattling in the breeze. “There used to be an entire avenue lined with sphinxes on either side. And at the end of it, there was a temple dedicated to Apis. I suppose that vague bump over there is it.”

“Dedicated to whom?” I asked, squinting at a mound in the distance.

“Apis. He was a god in the shape of a bull. And bull mummies seem formidable indeed.”

I bit my lip, unsure what to say. I was so deeply grateful that Oliver continued to fight on my side—that he sought to help. . . .

But I could not let go of this coiling guilt inside me. I knew what needed doing—and this only confirmed it further.

Yet . . . I didn’t want to.

So as Oliver walked onward . . . and then onward some more, I simply followed in silence. Sphinxes’ heads poked up with regularity, some more intact than others. Whoever this Apis god was, he was clearly important. Soon the mound ahead began to look less like a pile of moonlit sand and more like a small building. Each step brought bricks into focus.