Nefertiti’s Curse: An Urban Fantasy Read online

  He put his hands up in mock defense. “Listen, you didn’t need to come over here and threaten me with your tattoo. She’s not going to get a broken heart over one conversation.”

  “Too late.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “She just met a hot guy who thinks she’s smart and funny and who spends as much time playing that juvenile video game as she does. He never let his eyes drift down past her mouth and he knew what Sajala meant in Hindi without Googling it. And even though he’s black and kind of looks like one of those rappers with all his tattoos, he paid for his dessert with a Centurion card like the self-important business men who come here for meetings in our private dining area. And he knows about Mother.”

  Xavier smiled up at her. “So you think I’m hot?”

  “I think, Mr. Hill, that you should tear up that slip of paper with my sister’s phone number and the cheat code that will let you sneak weapons into Norm City through shipping containers on the dry dock level.”

  “You don’t miss much do you?”

  “For people like us, that’s a survival skill.”

  “Do you always interfere in your sister’s love life?”

  “Only when it’s in her best interest.”

  “Like anytime you think someone out of her league might be interested in her?”

  “Like anytime a guy who is already in a relationship with a celebrity shows an interest in her. A celebrity who, by the way, has a huge secret the guy would hate to get out.”

  He tore up the paper.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest

  “Soul Bringer! Soul Bringer!” the Chupacabra youth shouted in Portuguese and Guajiro as it ran through the center of the secluded village.

  Most of the villagers stopped what they had been doing and gathered outside the hut where Elpidio and Enieda lived. This annoyed Cezar, the tribe’s chief, who believed the tribe should always gather outside of his hut as a matter of respect.

  Ten minutes later, Cezar, Elpidio and Enieda kneeled before Baynin, whom they knew as a deity named Soul Bringer.

  The stench of the chemicals in the composite wood floor of Baynin’s trailer irritated Cezar’s nose. The offensive structure, like Elpidio’s laboratory, was made of artificial materials from the human world. It stood out from the rest of their village like a festering keloid scar. Its interior was outfitted with all manner of human furniture except a bed or other flat surface large enough for sleeping. Soul Bringer had proclaimed that he did not require sleep. This had been borne out by the spies Cezar had sent to the hut at every hour, all of whom reported finding the god who looked like a human fully awake and engaged in some arcane task.

  “Rise,” Baynin commanded. The three small canine creatures rose to bipedal postures, their long claws clacking against the floor as they went. Their bodies were covered in a green-hued fur that matched the bark of the local trees and their blunt snouts were full of serrated fangs. Cezar was the largest male in the village, but the tips of his ears barely reached the height of Baynin’s chest. Most stood only as high as his waist.

  “What of the harvest?” Baynin asked Enieda.

  “The storehouse is one-half full, Soul Bringer. There are two hundred and twenty-eight seedlings growing in the dark wood grove and one thousand four hundred and thirteen seedlings gestating in the lightwood grove, half of which are from the sapling with the latest version of Elpidio’s accelerant.”

  Baynin was pleased with this news. “How long before the storehouse is full?”

  “Seventeen days at the current rate of production.”

  Cezar said, “I will see that the rate of production is doubled.”

  Enieda glared at him.

  “Is such an increase possible?” Baynin asked Elpidio.

  The rotund little creature pushed its bifocals further up its snout. “Well, I don’t mean to say that our chief is incorrect but it’s just that the rate of production has an upper limit that is a function of the mass of each tree. We have already repurposed every water pathway and all the nonstructural lignin to reproductive duty. If we convert any more the saplings will collapse upon themselves.”

  Enieda put a comforting hand on Elpidio’s shoulder. “Our chief is suggesting that he will double production by working our tribe twice as hard if Soul Bringer will provide us with more saplings.”

  Cezar gave Baynin a fang-filled smile.

  “You shall receive no further saplings,” Baynin said.

  “But Soul Bringer,” Cezar protested. “Can you not pass beyond this lowly plane of existence and retrieve more saplings from the Celestial Void? It would only help us heed your command more quickly.”

  Baynin raised one eyebrow in warning.

  Cezar lowered his head. “Forgive me, Soul Bringer. Sometimes my passion to please you overtakes my wisdom.”

  The four of them discussed other logistical matters for before Baynin dismissed them.

  After the Chupacabras had gone, Yefet hopped down from the ceiling rafter where she had been surreptitiously observing the conversation. “The one called Cezar will come up against you.”

  “Indeed,” Baynin said.

  “Do you wish me to bring you his head?”

  “Not today.”

  “I found the plot where they are trying to cultivate the seeds they stole from you. It is half a kilometer from here.”

  “How have they fared?”

  “A weak sapling has sprouted from the ground, but it has only borne a single fruit the size of a marble. And it was as hard as a stone. I doubt it could be eaten.” She handed him a smartphone. “I took these photographs.”

  He scrolled through the pictures. “Disappointing. Was Elpidio’s scent still in the air?”

  “Yes, as well as that of his mate. There were six other scents, including those of the two warriors who wait upon Cezar. There were two corpses in a shallow grave nearby. I assume these were the workers who tilled the plot.”

  “You left the plot undisturbed?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well done. You are free to do as you please until sunrise.”

  But Yefet did not move to leave.

  Baynin looked up. “Speak your mind.”

  “Do you know where my loyalty truly lies?”

  “I have always known.”

  “And still you keep me by your side?”

  “Perhaps I am a fool.”

  She knew that was the furthest thing from the truth. In the months since he had whisked her away from the banality of the Pine Barrens, she had learned he was a shrewd judge of character and a brilliant strategist who always seemed to be two steps ahead of his opponents.

  “Or perhaps I am,” she said. “I do not wish to be a pawn in the destruction of my people.”

  “And yet my back remains whole.”

  She looked away. In the beginning, Baynin would use his magic to command her not to harm him while he slept. And despite what he told these tiny forest creatures, he slept as often as any mortal. One evening he retired and gave her no command, saying only that she could do as she pleased. That night, and the two that followed, she had loomed over his sleeping body clutching a dagger.

  At first, she rationalized her inaction by telling herself that he would probably heal before she could dispatch him. By the third night, she simply accepted that she was not yet prepared to sever the bond that had developed between them. More than once he had healed her body of battle wounds that would have otherwise been fatal. And he had never used his magic to force her to mate with him even though she saw the way he devoured her body with his eyes and how often he copulated with human females. Some part of her was also beginning to embrace his vision of a sanctuary free of humans. The preceding months had exposed her to the genocidal atrocities that humans continue to commit against non-humans despite their dominance of the entire world.

  “Give me your word that you will never use me to bring harm upon my people or anyone that I
love,” she said.

  “You have my word,” he said with no hesitation or equivocation.

  She felt a wave of relief.

  Baynin openly admired the curves of her body once again.

  Her relief momentarily turned to concern that she had just accepted a gift for which he expected to be rewarded.

  But all he said was, “You should speak with Enieda.”

  “But you commanded me to remain hidden from these creatures.”

  “She is aware of your presence.”

  “You are sure of this?”

  He met her eyes and she looked down in submission, regretting the question.

  “After you visit with Enieda, you may return to your people for three days so that you may become the mate of the one you truly favor. Return here to me on the fourth day.”

  She tensed. Had she no secrets? “All of my people witnessed you declare that you are my mate. It is doubtful any male will believe you have not made it a reality.”

  “A mate who will not accept your word is not one who deserves to accept your body.”

  “Those words will not warm me on cold nights.”

  “Tell him that I used my magic to force you to do it.”

  “You would have me lie?”

  “I would have you be happy.”

  She had trouble reconciling this side of Baynin with the one that would sometimes cause him to rest his head in her lap after battle. “Your ways are often beyond my understanding.”

  He laughed. “Spoken like a true mate.”

  She set her jaw. “If I choose a mate from among my people, it would not be right for you to have me after that, even by way of your magic. Nor would it be right for you to look upon me with desire as you often do.”

  “You have many demands today,” he said.

  “One day of demands in exchange for a lifetime of my loyalty.”

  “Your true loyalty?”

  “All the loyalty I have to give.”

  “Then I also give you my word that once you mate with one of your people, I shall never touch or look upon you as a mate would do.”

  She bowed in gratitude. “I shall go seek out Enieda.”

  “Return to me in four days,” he said, turning away to examine a set of schematic drawings.

  * * *

  Sometime later Enieda stood alone and nervous next to Cezar’s secret sapling. She was armed with a high voltage taser and a sonic whistle, either of which would decimate any of the jungle’s traditional predators. Yet she still found it frightful to be alone outside the village.

  But the note that had been left in her hut had been clear about the time and location. Only five others were aware of this site and none of them could have composed the note, which contained details only she and The Watcher could know.

  She had decided beforehand that she would wait for no longer than one hundred beetle chirps before sprinting back to the safety of the village.

  On the thirty-third chirp, she sensed something behind her. She spun with the sonic whistle primed in her snout, then nearly swallowed it when she gasped at the sight of Yefet.

  The bipedal monster stood taller than the roof of every hut in their village. It was taller than Soul Bringer, taller than any beast she had ever seen with her own eyes. It was shaped like a human, but with thicker mass and more elongated limbs. Its body was covered in most places by thick fur the color of seringueira roots, some of which had been shaved into decorative plumes. It had the breasts and wide hips of a female. Curiously, its face, which was more pleasing than frightening, had the same high cheekbones and evenly spaced features as the females in the shiny booklets of pictures that human missionaries left behind at their campsites.

  She yelped the rainforest version of “Pie Grande”.

  Yefet cocked her head. “That term offends us in any language, Little One. And my feet are quite small.”

  Enieda was shocked. “How can you speak our tongue?”

  “My people speak all tongues.”

  “Like Soul Bringer. Are you of his people?”

  “He is to my people much as he is to yours.”

  “Ah,” Enieda said.

  “How did you come to know of my presence here?”

  “You have magic that hides your body from the eyes and nose, but you still disturb the jungle in a hundred ways when you are near.”

  “What ways?”

  “Insects becoming silent. Empty tree branches sagging as if they held the weight of ten monkeys. And the fabric covering the glass portal in Soul Bringer’s hut does not sway when you cling to the roof and block the mouth of the machine that blows cold wind.”

  Yefet was mildly alarmed. “All of your people can sense such things?”

  “No. I am the only one who has breathed in the dust. Some of the others notice when the crickets stop singing, but they believe we are being stalked by a jaguar that is too young to remember what happened to the others that mistook us for prey.”

  “The dust you breathed was from your mate’s laboratory?”

  “Yes.”

  Yefet gave some thought to speaking in a way that Enieda was sure to understand. “How? That hut has special machines that prevent any wind from escaping its walls.”

  “Our tongue does not have words for many of the things created by human science, but this does not mean you need to speak to me as if I am a child. Tell me the words so I may learn them. Or bring me books as Soul Bringer does.”

  Yefet nodded and began speaking in Portuguese instead of Guajiro. “I am sorry. I can see that a bright fire burns behind your eyes. Elpidio’s laboratory has what the humans call a filtration system that stops air molecules in the interior from being injected into the outside environment.”

  “Yes, molecules,” Eneida said, also switching to Portuguese. The fil...filtration system did not stop some of these molecules from clinging to the fabric of the white coat that Elpidio wears when he works there. The coat was a gift from Soul Bringer, who said that all serious scientists wear such a covering when they work in laboratories. It made Elpidio so proud. He almost never takes it off. When it begins to stink of his sweat, I take it to the river and wash it. I understand now that every time I do this I throw the molecules from the coat into the air and inhale them. After the tenth time I had done this, I began to see the jungle differently, like I had woken from a long sleep. I took to washing the coat every other day.”

  “Soul Bringer knows you have been awakened,” Yefet warned.

  “He has never spoken of it directly, but months ago he began to bring two sets of books when he visits us. One set of science books for Elpidio and another set of books about everything that he brings for me. The books for me are called Encyclopedia. Did you know that humans have traveled to the Moon?”

  “Why are you helping Cezar steal from Soul Bringer?”

  Enieda gazed down at the pathetic sapling. “For the same reason you have not taken him as a mate. He is often a kind master, but he is still a master. He lies to us about many things. I know that he sleeps. I know that he is not a god.”

  “Cezar will betray you.”

  “Soul Bringer will betray us as soon as the storehouse is full. Do you think we do not know of the power of the fruit we grow? He has caused it to be toxic to our bodies, but still we know. Elpidio says this toxicity can be overcome. After all, it was not toxic when Soul Bringer first fed it to us so that we would become more than animals.”

  “Can Soul Bringer reach into your mind and force you to do things against your will?”

  A look of dread appeared in Enieda’s eyes. “I have never known him to do such a thing. He has this power?”

  “No,” Yefet lied, choosing to assuage the fear of her new ally.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Brookeville, Maryland

  After leaving Patni, Xavier rented a car and drove forty miles outside the District.

  He rolled down his window and pressed the intercom button at a barbed wire gate protecting a compound of
cinder block buildings and double-wide trailers that was not visible from any road.

  “You lost boy?” a male voice with a pronounced Southern accent asked from the intercom’s crackling speaker.

  “I’m here to see Jacob.”

  He rolled up his window without awaiting a reply.

  The gate slid open just wide enough for him to scratch both of his car’s outside mirrors on metal barbs. He drove up a winding road and then parked between two pickup trucks. One truck had dark tinted windows and a triple rack gun mount while the other sported chrome rims and a window decal depicting a little boy urinating on a monster.

  A burly man in a sleeveless muscle shirt opened the door of the main building when Xavier raised his fist to knock on it. “Look everybody,” he said in the same voice from the intercom. “It’s the supernatural Rodney King.”

  Kent Milner was literally built like a linebacker. According to the file Maya had compiled on him, the twenty-six-year-old bodybuilder had once been a starting linebacker at the University of Alabama with a good chance of being drafted into the NFL before surviving a troll attack that left his family dead and one side of his body in no shape for football. Milner loathed all supers, but he reserved extra hate for those who didn’t appear Caucasian or who believed in peaceful coexistence with humanity.

  “Actually,” Xavier said, “I’m more like the supernatural Toussaint L’Ouverture.”

  Sensing mockery, Milner stepped toward Xavier.

  Then, from Milner’s right, a man in his early fifties with a muscular build and a remarkable resemblance to the actor Harrison Ford, said, “The tree of liberty will spring again from the roots even if the trunk is cut down.”

  It was a close paraphrasing of one of L’Ouverture’s most famous quotes.

  “Jacob,” Xavier said.

  Instead of returning the greeting, the man said, “L’Ouverture was a tactical genius, but don’t forget he died in prison because he was betrayed by his own people.”

  Jacob Jeremiah Kraken was a formidable man. An Army Green Beret and West Point graduate with advanced degrees from Princeton and King’s College, he had served multiple tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and countless classified missions. He had held leadership positions with both the CIA and the DSO. And though it was hard to tell from their intentionally modest compound, he was currently the head of one of the world’s elite monster hunting organizations. Kraken Security had killed or captured three of the DSO’s Top Ten Most Wanted Entities and collected twelve of the twenty largest bounties that the agency had ever paid out.