piece of paper caught in a fire to dance for a second, before curling up and dusting away.
Or in this case, to fall to pieces and then into nothing within seconds, like it had been hit with the world’s fastest acting acid.
Okay, I decided sickly.
That was the worst thing.
And then I floored it.
“Left! Left!” Lantern Boy yelled, as we skidded through another doorway, but there was no left anymore. The giant snake head had just taken it out, along with everything on that side. We slid through the collapsing doorway, sparks scraping off the floor, then straightened up and went barreling ahead—
And found out where all the mummies had come from.
For the record, riding through a long, dark tunnel of a room, with a bunch of sarcophagi on either side, the lids of which are either off or rattling, is a fairly pants wetting experience. Especially when paired with mummies disintegrating left and right as spirts of acid hit them. And a goddamned Lantern Boy yelling “LEFT!” loud enough to rupture an eardrum.
I veered left, which was heart attack inducing itself as I couldn’t see squat, and we were going about sixty miles an hour, and there was no actual corridor there. Or a room or even another crypt. Any of which would have been preferable to—
“Stairs!” And worse, they were going up.
We crashed into them, almost flipped, and did stand on end for a second before I could sort us out. Mummy light is not good light, but by this time, I was mostly going on feel anyway. That and sheer terror.
“Sorry!” Lantern Boy yelled from behind me as we started up.
He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded hyper, as if whatever passed for an adrenaline system in vamps had hit overload, enough to short out his good sense, fully extend his fangs, and probably tent the front of his robes if I could see them, which thankfully I could not. But it was indisputable that I had a hopped-up teenager determined to prove himself to his possibly dead boss, and for some reason, I was taking orders from him.
I wasn’t sure which of us was crazier.
But I didn’t know the layout down here, so I just kept going. When a spurt of pure acid hit the wall beside me, melting ancient stones into goo, I kept going. When the ceiling started to collapse, sending huge rocks tumbling down at us, some bigger than we were, I swerved and kept going. When Lantern Boy shoved a hand in my jacket, and sent every charm I had left tumbling down what remained of the stairs, including one that transformed into a cute little Citroen that I’d never even had a chance to drive, I Kept. Fucking. Going.
I heard the car crumple between the too-narrow walls behind us when it expanded to its full size, and wedge itself there like a barricade. One that lasted about a second when hit by twenty tons of godly fury. I heard the brain altering sound of an entire car getting crushed like a soda can behind us as we burst out into a suspiciously well-lit tunnel. And then—
“Left!”
“You asshole!” I yelled, because sure enough, the damned kid had brought us right back where we’d started.
Well, almost. We were on the other side of the great hall now, where a Louis-Cesare shaped hole was to be seen on our right, in the midst of a field of golden spikes. There were crumbled pillars and piles of rock everywhere, shambling zombies in the shadows, and vampires, beaten and bloody, but back on their feet, why I didn’t know.
And then I did, along with why Lantern Boy had suddenly gotten so perky.
The boss was back.
When I’d first seen Hassani at our consul’s court, I’d thought him fairly menacing, and not just because of his looks. He’d had an air about him, not of danger exactly, but of something. He had been completely believable as a thousand-year-old assassin and the head of a group of equally badass characters.
Which was why I’d been surprised when Louis-Cesare and I arrived in Egypt and met a mostly gracious, scholarly type with ink stained fingers and rosy cheeks above his carefully tended beard. He’d reminded me of a cross between a younger version of Santa Claus and a medieval monk. It had been . . . disappointing.
I wasn’t disappointed now.
Now he looked more like Gandalf, only not the kindly, firework-wielding version. But Gandalf the White, come back from the brink of death to