Nefertiti’s Curse: An Urban Fantasy Read online

  NEFERTITI’S CURSE

  By Jamel Cato

  NEFERTITI’S CURSE

  Copyright © 2018 Jamel Cato

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Version k4.3

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  POSTSCRIPT

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tannersville, Pennsylvania

  Four flashlights illuminated the body.

  Lewayu, who had fired the shot, said, “It’s dark but I know what I saw in the scope.”

  They were in a clearing on a forested ridge of the Pocono Mountains. It was nearly three in the morning and the full moon lit the area with a blue luminescence.

  Xavier knelt for a closer look at the pale, naked body. The victim was a Caucasian male in his twenties. The gunshot wound in his temple was still moist.

  “Look at the pattern in the dirt,” Lewayu said as he traced it with his flashlight for corroboration.

  The outline around the body was unmistakable. It had the shape of a fallen lycanthrope, complete with a tail. But the body on the ground was human. Unless the corpse grew fangs and fur, they had all just become accessories to a murder.

  “I’m going to take some samples,” Maya said, removing her backpack. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Lewayu said. “I’ll help.”

  “What should we do with the body?” Zildan asked. “I’m pretty sure we can’t follow the usual protocol now. Should we just leave it for the cops?”

  Everyone looked at Xavier.

  “We’ll take the body to the lab so Bethany and Chiyem can do a full workup,” he said.

  “Don’t you think that will raise a red flag?” Zildan asked.

  Xavier whipped his head toward the new scent he had just picked up in the bank of trees to their left.

  The other three immediately pointed their firearms in that direction.

  A naked young woman limped out into the clearing. Leaves haphazardly decorated her messy mane of blonde hair and her body was marked with more than a dozen red welts. She was dragging a badly bruised left ankle.

  “Please,” she sobbed. “Please don’t hurt me.” She lifted her arm to shield her eyes from the brightness of Xavier’s flashlight, exposing her breasts.

  “For Pete’s sake,” Maya said, pulling off her shirt and heading toward the woman.

  Shining his light on Maya’s back, Xavier marveled at how compactly her wings folded around the straps of her bra. “Maya, wait,” he said.

  “It’s okay, X,” she said.

  She walked over and handed the woman her shirt. “Put this on.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said, pressing the small shirt to her chest and staring at the diminutive stature of the Asian woman who had given it to her.

  On her best day in high heels, Maya was all of four feet tall. “Don’t mention it. Sorry I don’t have a spare pair of Vickies to go with it.”

  The woman looked down at her groin in embarrassment. “Oh my god.” She tried to cross her legs, but her injured ankle would not cooperate with the maneuver.

  Maya turned to wave the others over.

  The woman yelped and hobbled backward.

  Maya, a subspecies of Fae that had originated in Southeast Asia, almost put a nine-millimeter round of silver nitrate into the stranger before realizing the woman had been startled by the sight of her wings. She unfurled them to their full height. They were translucent and crisscrossed with fine veins that sparkled in the bright moonlight. “Oh, these. Just ignore them.”

  But the woman was wide-eyed. “You...You have wings.”

  “Says the girl with her ta-tas out,” Maya said.

  Zildan handed the woman the black plastic tarp they had planned to roll around a dead lycanthrope. “Here. This’ll cover more than Maya’s Barbie shirt.”

  Maya narrowed her eyes at him. “Remember that Zil the next time somebody posts a video of your ears on YouTube that you want me to take down.”

  That remark drew the woman’s attention to the pointy, elongated ears sticking out on either side of Zildan’s tattered Yankees cap. She wrapped the tarp about herself in stunned silence.

  “What’s your name?” Xavier asked her.

  “Megan.”

  “Why are you in the woods in the middle of the night, Megan?”

  She lowered her head. “Bobby and I were. . .we thought it would be exciting to, you know, try someplace different.”

  “Bobby?”

  She nodded toward the body across the clearing. Then she began sobbing again.

  But Xavier pressed on. “Why are you still naked? Your clothes weren’t nearby?”

  “Seriously?” Maya asked.

&nbs
p; “Bobby swore he heard someone out there,” Megan said. “I begged him not to leave me alone, but he said he would be right back.” She wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “The next thing I heard was a gunshot.”

  “Are you sure it was a gunshot?”

  Her eyes cut to the rifle slung over Lewayu’s shoulder. “I’m sure.”

  “I would totally believe your story,” Xavier said, “but you still smell like a werewolf.”

  The others began to back away.

  “How can you keep from shifting during a full moon?” Xavier asked.

  When the woman replied, her voice was an octave deeper than before. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “We can help you,” Xavier said.

  She sneered. “Like you helped Bobby? Like you helped that coven of witches in Norristown or Lady Luck when she passed through Atlantic City? No thanks.”

  Xavier frowned. Everybody was a critic. What happened to the witches and the Goddess of Good Fortune were long stories, but what happened to Megan’s boyfriend was not.

  “Bobby was rabid,” he said. “He killed a whole family two nights ago and six people in the last seven days.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “He was going to bring the DSO down on all of us. You know that, which is why you broke your ankle and lacerated half your body chasing him through unfamiliar woods.”

  “Go to hell,” she said. “You and the rest of this circus act.”

  “We can put you with a pack. You’ll be safe.”

  “Bobby was my pack.”

  He sighed. “Suit yourself then. When you decide to stop living like an animal, get in touch with Isabella.”

  “The only thing I’m going to get in touch with,” Megan said, “is his throat.” She threw off the tarp and lunged at Lewayu. She was fully transformed to lycanthrope form by the time she reached him a few seconds later.

  But Lewayu had anticipated the attack and took to the air in the form of an Owl just before Megan’s claw sliced the empty space where he had been standing. His clothes and rifle fell to the ground in a heap.

  Megan roared up in anger at the escaping bird before pivoting and slashing Zildan across the cheek.

  This left the others no choice. It was a full moon.

  * * *

  After helping Maya tend to Zildan’s wounds, Xavier walked over to Megan’s bullet-riddled corpse, which was now a human body with no sign of its canine doppelganger other than a rough outline in the dirt.

  He took a deep inhalation of the cool mountain air, lamenting the trouble that was sure to follow.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The New Jersey Pine Barrens

  Baynin tossed the twisted metal remains of the hellfire cannon into the dirt. It took tremendous mental effort to avoid limping on his injured leg.

  His first inclination had been to force them to commit mass suicide as punishment for their impertinence. But then he realized that the ingenuity they had shown in finding a weapon that could harm him was a resource that should be exploited, not destroyed.

  “Make yourselves known,” he yelled out.

  Large bipedal primates covered in various shades of brown fur began stepping out from behind trees. Within moments he was surrounded by at least two hundred of the creatures, a third of which were infants and juveniles.

  He was surprised by the number of them. The Sasquatch tribe had grown tenfold in his centuries of absence.

  One of the creatures, a male with streaks of gray in its fur, broke from the group and approached him. “I am Om’Risi, a descendant of Ra’Shem.”

  Four thousand years earlier, Ra’Shem had been the fiercest warrior among the small group of Sasquatch that Baynin had turned into a terrifying mercenary troop he would sell to whichever human despot paid the most.

  “Why have you taken up arms against your master and creator?” Baynin demanded.

  “You were among the soldiers who invaded our territory. It took some time for our warriors and machines to recognize you. Please forgive our ignorance, Father.”

  Baynin wondered when they had learned to lie. The small track-wheeled cannon that had burned his leg with hellfire light had bypassed a dozen other combatants to specifically target him.

  “Kneel before your lord,” he said.

  Every Sasquatch fell to its knees except for one.

  He approached the relatively small female, who was shaking and bleeding tears of blood from the strain of resisting the pressure of his will on her mind. This would be Yefet, the one he had come for. He placed his palm against her forehead.

  Her mind was flooded with terrifying images and notions of her worst fears. She struggled against this psychological onslaught for almost a full minute before collapsing to her knees.

  “Bastard,” she snarled.

  “What have I done but show you the depth of your fortitude?”

  “The word for it is torture.”

  “If you can be tortured by your own thoughts, then I have traveled a great distance for nothing.”

  “The distance was not great enough.”

  He extended his hand and lifted her to a standing position. “Have you chosen a mate?”

  “I make love to battle,” she said.

  “Then I shall be your mate.”

  She furrowed her brow. “But you are my master. Among my people, mates are equals.” Then she gestured at his human-sized body. “And you lack the...attributes I could have in even the smallest Sasquatch male.”

  The insolence of this declaration made her realize she was speaking without the heavy weight of his will overpowering her own.

  “I am your master. I am your mate. From this day forward, I am everything to you.”

  She stepped back. “What if I refuse? What if I believe I do not need a mate to be whole?”

  He waved dismissively. “Then you shall waste your life in this forest hunting small animals and hiding your existence from humans instead of being at my side as I build a new world where your people can be free.”

  “How can we ever be free when we are like puppets to your magic?”

  He stepped away from her to address the entire tribe.

  * * *

  After Baynin had departed with Yefet, a warrior came to stand at Om’Risi’s shoulder as their leader looked upon the impromptu celebration that had broken out.

  “What troubles you, Great Claw?”

  “The older I get, the easier it is to find things to trouble me.”

  “He gave us his word.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But still you doubt.”

  “He knew we were lying about the hellfire cannon.”

  “I saw no such indication.”

  “Did you recognize the tongue he used to address the tribe after he healed Yefet?”

  Tu’Lok thought for a moment. “It was one of the Mayan dialects.”

  Om’Risi enjoyed studying the etymology of the countless languages the Gift of Tongues enabled them to understand. “It was the Buetl tongue of the Motonac people.”

  “I am not familiar with their story.”

  “They were a prosperous people, but they lived in an arid plateau where access to water was a constant problem. After one bad drought, their King went on a pilgrimage to a distant land that many visiting traders claimed had found a solution to the water problem. While the King was away, the Motonacs ruled themselves by law and the decrees of a council of elders. Many came to believe they no longer needed a King. Two years later, the King returned to his people with detailed plans for building a dam to divert water from the Usumacinta River. The people toiled for three summers to build the dam. A feast was called on the day the dam was completed. At the feast, the King removed a critical stone that broke the dam and caused a terrible flood that wiped out the entire population. When the drowning people asked the King why, he said, ‘I promised to bring you water and I have kept my word.’”

  They stood in silence for several minutes.

 
Then Tu’Lok asked, “What is your plan?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Oslo, Norway

  “Hell’s Stew in ten minutes!” her husband shouted in Norwegian from the kitchen.

  “I’ll be there in nine!” she yelled back through the open door of her home office.

  Jonas went back to bellowing the fisherman’s song he loved to sing while he cooked, filling their small home with his baritone voice.

  Astrid Hellstand sat at her desk with a wide smile. This was the happiest she had ever been. Twelve years earlier, her academic career had blossomed when she changed her focus from gender studies to mythology. Her passion for the topic radiated so brightly from her research and conference talks that she became one of the leading minds in the field. This, in turn, led to her becoming a consultant to the Royal Ministry of Special Affairs, the secret government agency responsible for controlling Norway’s supernatural population. She had already discovered on her own that several beings from ancient mythology were real but working with the MSA gave her the rare opportunity to meet the good ones and help fight the dangerous ones. She would have done this work for free, but her part-time consulting work earned her substantially more than her faculty position at the University of Oslo.

  Her rising stature and income had been too much for her ex-husband’s ego to bear. But Jonas had stitched the emotional suture left by her divorce and fulfilled her in new ways. He was the famous singing captain of a small boat that offered guided tours of the Oslo fjord. They had struck up a relationship after Astrid corrected some entertaining but wrong information Jonas had just given her tour group about Viking women. He had responded to her verbal reprimand by presenting her with an outrageously fake aluminum battle bra with pointy cups and a Made in China decal that he told the group his great-great-great Viking grandmother had worn before she learned that Viking women never had battle bras. He then fell to one knee and belted out a song of apology. He was the antithesis of Rikard, her judgmental physics professor ex, in all the ways that counted. And he cooked.

  She stopped tapping at her keyboard when she realized Jonas was no longer singing. She checked the little clock in the bottom corner of her screen. Only six minutes had passed.