Egyptian Rhapsody

Part Three

 

ZZZZZ

 

“Coffee, coffee, coffee,” Ben chanted piously, cradling the take away cup of coffee that he’d just bought from Starbucks on his way home from the hospital after a grueling and outrageously long shift.  He was so exhausted that he was starting to hallucinate, hence the coffee.  Sipping what he was certain the gods would now consider to be nectar, he pulled his car away from the curb and started the trek home.  The thing with any take away container is that they are made to be cumbersome and useless.  The second sip Ben took saw the plastic lid come askew and scalding hot coffee poured over his chest, causing the young intern to howl and drop the jumbo size cup. “Shit, shit, shit…”

 

He cursed, still trying to drive and pull his saturated shirt away from his chest.  A quick glance down showed that the cup had mercifully remained upright, but was threatening to overbalance at the first pothole he hit and unfortunately Sunnydale was full of potholes.  Keeping his eyes fixed on the road, Ben cautiously reached down, only to be pulled up short by his seatbelt that, as usual, had locked into place.  Rolling his eyes, Ben released the belt, silently vowing to get it fixed sometime in the near future, and leant over to retrieve the cup of coffee. 

 

It was probably a mistake to take his eyes off the road, even for that brief moment where he’d picked up the cup. As he sat back up, grinning like a maniac at the successful retrieval of his precious coffee, there was something strange bounding directly towards his car.  The two macabre creatures that held a small chest between them never stopped moving and their feet rose to travel over the car.

 

“Oh shit,” Ben screamed, slamming on the brakes.  His coffee hit the windscreen a millisecond before he did, shattering the glass and careening over the bonnet, colliding with the chest and knocking it free of the creatures’ hold.  The front of the car collapsed under the force of their jump as they bounded onto the roof and Ben skidded along the rough surface of the road, taking the chest with him.  Unconscious and bleeding, he finally came to a halt, the chest settling down beside him while the lid lay a few feet away.

 

The militia creatures looked at each other from the top of the car and shrugged.  Vaulting down, they collected both the fallen human and the chest, easily hauling both to their final destination. 

 

***

 

Giles frowned slightly, looking at the stranger in the long black robes from under the ice pack that he held to his throbbing forehead.  “I’m sorry, but who are you again?”

 

“Ardeth Bay,” the stranger replied, standing tall and proud while the others blatantly stared at him.  “I am part of an ancient secret society, the Medji, and we have a sacred mission that has been passed down through the generations. For over four thousand years we have guarded The City Of The Dead, we are sworn at manhood to do any and all in our power to stop the Creature from being reborn into this world.”

 

“Yes, yes,” Giles shook his head, trying to clear the confusion that clouded his mind. “And you’re here because?”

 

“Really, you’ve been hit in the head too many times, Giles,” Buffy declared, pulling back the icepack and ensuring that the bump on his head wasn’t swelling anymore.  “Impending catastrophe.”

 

“Yes,” Ardeth replied, fixing his eyes on the blonde.  “Tell me, the Creature was still in its mummified state?”

 

“Mummified?” Buffy shrugged as she replaced the icepack.  “It was gross and rotting, my hand got stuck in it. If you want to call that mummified, then yes.”

 

“Mummified?  A Mummy?  The impending catastrophe is a Mummy?” Giles asked somewhat skeptically from beneath the ice pack.  “You mean a dead thing wrapped in linen bandages and all that?  Let me guess, he was cursed…”

 

“Yes, with Hom-Dai,” Willow murmured, nervously pacing behind the small group that was gathered about the table, and more often than not she would glare stakes at Spike who was lurking in the shadows of the stairwell. 

 

“How do you know about this?” Giles demanded, twisting in his chair to glance back at the redhead and she held up the leather-encased journal.

 

“Read a book.”

 

“Oh,” Giles frowned and turned back to the stranger who stood proudly before them.  “So the curse?”

 

“The Creature was the High Priest of Osiris at Thebes during the reign of Pharaoh Seti the First.  He and the Pharaoh’s mistress, Anck-su-namum, shared a forbidden love and together they murdered the Pharaoh,” Ardeth explained.  “Anck-su-namum took her own life when their deed was discovered and her soul was condemned to the dark underworld…”

 

“Let me guess,” Xander demanded.  “This Priest guy decided to work some wicked mojo and bring back the love of his life?”

 

“Yes, for the love of Anck-su-namum he was willing to defy the gods,” Ardeth acknowledged.  “But the resurrection was interrupted before it could be completed and the High Priest and those who had helped him were put to death.  The Creature himself was cursed with the Hom-Dai,” he nodded in acknowledgement of Willow’s general direction. “It was the worst of all ancient curses and one so horrible that it had never before been bestowed.  The Creature was sealed inside a sarcophagus with sacred flesh eating scarabs and the sacred spells were destroyed ensuring that he would remain the undead for all of eternity.”

 

“Obviously that didn’t work if it’s up and walking about,” stated Spike from under the stairwell, earning a venomous look from Willow.

 

“And we all know whose fault that is,” she muttered, turning her back to the blond to pace.

 

“Yes, once more the Creature has risen and is a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater who has the strength of ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility,” Ardeth paused momentarily, the words seemingly echoing about in the ruins of the shop as everyone stared at him, mouths hanging open. 

 

“Honestly, men!” stated Anya, rolling her eyes towards the heavens and immediately drawing everyone’s attention.  The general look of bewilderment made her shrug and she began to explain herself.  “You can be certain that a male created this curse and they have no common sense when it comes to these things.  After all you would assume that they’d understand the basic concept behind the word curse ~ it isn’t meant to empower the victim, it is meant to torture and torment.  Now had they let an Egyptian woman devise the curse you can be certain we wouldn’t have this problem at all…”

 

The room was still silent and the general look of bewilderment that had graced the features of the small group turned to incredulity.

 

“What?  It’s true.  Egyptian women are delightfully devious,” Anya assured them all.  “I remember this one girl from Alexandria, her husband had this young concubine type thing set up ~ your basic dirty old man scenario ~ anyway, she wished that he'd sustain an erection at all times, except for when he actually came to do the deed, then he went all soft and squiggly.  Then there was another girl from Cairo who wished that whenever her ex got it on with another women that he'd be the greatest lover known to history and more or less instantly gratify the girl he was with ~ the real screaming 'til you're hoarse, fireworks type orgasm..."

 

"And that's a curse?" asked Xander skeptically.

 

"Well, at that exact moment, when everything is contracting, his penis would turn into an asp and bite the girl, which more or less resulted in instantaneous death.  Of course he was stuck then, as I said muscles clamping down and all, then a few hours later rigourmorteous would set in,” Anya smiled broadly and shook her head at wonder of the deviousness of the curse.  “He was often trapped with a corpse for any number of hours and what with the heat and everything..."

 

"Thank you very much, Anya," snapped Giles as both he and Xander crossed their legs. "For painting that most disgusting picture, but I really don’t think now is the time for a trip down memory lane.  We need to stop this…this thing."

 

“We have a greater chance of defeating the Creature in its weaker state, mummified,” Ardeth stated.  “If it regenerates, then his powers will grow and he will bring about the ten plagues of Egypt.”

 

“The ten plagues?”  Willow shifted nervously and she stared at the foreigner who seemed just too calm for his own good, she just knew frogs had to be involved somewhere. “You mean all ten plagues?”

 

“Like what Moses did to that Pharaoh guy?” Anya asked brightly.

 

“Well, yes,” Giles stated, casting his shop assistant a wary glance.  “That's one way of putting it.”

 

“Let's see, there were frogs,” Anya frowned, counting on her fingers as she listed the plagues. Behind her, Willow whimpered and dropped down into a chair at the back of the table, she just knew frogs had been one of the plagues, she just hated and loathed frogs.  “Flies, locusts, hail and fire, the sun turning black, which we already have going, water turning to blood and my personal favorite: people covered in boils and sores…”

 

“I know I’m going to regret this,” Giles murmured, closing his eyes briefly before fixing them on the ex-demon.  “But how do you know that?”

 

“You had to ask,” Xander moaned, sliding off the table.

 

“Well, I decided that since I’m an American citizen I need to have a religion,” Anya shrugged.  “So I’ve been researching some of the more popular beliefs in the States…I’m thinking about becoming a lapsed Catholic.”

 

“Lapsed Catholic?  Surely you mean a Catholic?” Giles asked, quite certain that Buffy was right ~ he’d been hit far too many times in the head.

 

“Oh no, then I’d have to go to church every Sunday and I couldn’t have sex,” she stated.  “It’s far easier to become a lapsed Catholic, then all I have to do before I die is say sorry. Not that I really have any faith in the Christian beliefs.  Look at the Christian God, it’s a foolish god, contradictory even, and if He does exist then he’s a paranoid delusionist.  All you have to do is read the Ten Commandments, they say that you shall not worship other gods because He is a true and jealous god, which basically states that other gods exist, but that we should only believe in the one god because He told us to…”

 

The room fell silent as everyone stared blankly at the ex-demon who was certainly doomed to Hell if God did exist after her little blasphemous speech. 

 

“Remember that you did ask,” Xander stated pointedly.

 

“And I can assure you,” Giles winced as he reapplied the ice pack, blocking his view of the chaos of the room.  “I wish you’d stopped me.”

 

“Hey,” Willow stood up, drawing everyone’s attention.  “As much as I appreciate a good religious debate, I think we have bigger issues to discuss here.”

 

“Yes,” Ardeth stated.  “Undoubtedly the Creature will be seeking out those who were present when the chest was opened.”

 

Willow spun about, paling even more.  “Excuse me?”

 

“What?” roared Spike, stepping out from the shadows and glaring balefully at the stranger.

 

“The chest that held the Book of the Dead, it is cursed,” Ardeth stated calmly, moving around the table to face the two.  “The Creature will seek out those who were present when it was opened and assimilate their organs and fluids in order to regenerate.”

 

“Assimilate??  ASSIMILATE?!  This is great,” Willow stated sarcastically, turning away from the stranger and the others gathered at the table.  “Spike opens the chest, reads the book aloud and now…now we’re doomed to be assimilated to regenerate some walking plague, together no less…at least I won’t have to worry about the frogs…”

 

“This isn’t good,” Buffy stated, staring up at the man in the robes who’d been nothing but the bearer of bad news.  “Is there anything that can stop this Creature, does he have any weakness at all?  I mean he tossed me like a rag doll…”

 

“See, I told you not to touch anything but oh no, Mister I’m-Still-The-Big-Bad had to go and bring about the end of the world,” Willow snarled at Spike, totally ignoring Buffy’s question.

 

“Hey,” Spike hollered back at her, taking a step forward to tower over the redhead. “You didn’t tell me not to touch anything until after I read the book and you were the one who started to read it in the first place…”

 

“Why…you…” Willow couldn’t manage another word as she launched herself at the vampire, her hands reaching out to wrap about his throat.  While she knew it wouldn’t kill him, throttling him seemed the sanest thing to do.  Only her hands never reached their goal, instead an arm wrapped about her waist and hauled her back.  He smelt of sand and sweat, the foreign smells were even more aromatic from being baked in a fiery sun and Willow’s eyes fluttered shut as Ardeth twisted her away from the vampire.  There was a wind blowing, warmth wrapped about her and she clung to the black robed arm that held her upright as the smell of the desert surrounded her while hot sand burnt her feet.

 

“My grandfather thought highly of your ancestors, he would have given his life to protect them and I will do the same for you,” Ardeth murmured against her ear and Willow snapped out of her desert stupor to find herself still in the Magic Box, held in the very strong arms of a warrior who was vowing to protect her.

 

“Yeah, like some guy wearing a dress is going to be able to protect her,” Xander muttered.

 

“It’s not a dress, those are sacred robes,” whispered Anya and Xander stared at her, she had a silly grin on her face and her eyes were glazed over.  He’d seen that look a million times before, usually accompanied with any number of romantic sighs just after she’d watched some sickeningly sweet girlie video.  Never had he seen the look directed at another man, until now.

 

“Anya,” admonished Xander.  “You’re drooling.”

 

“This isn’t helping,” Buffy stated, standing between the two and watching as Ardeth continued to calm Willow while Spike slipped back into the shadows of the stairwell.  “Willow, you said something earlier on about a book being able to kill this…this Creature.”

 

“Does this Creature,” Giles asked, leaning back in his chair and glancing at the Medji. “As you keep calling it, have a name?”

 

“Yes,” Ardeth released his hold on the redhead and turned to face the older man.  “But it is not spoken.”

 

Giles lifted the icepack and stared most disbelievingly at the man.  “Why not?”

 

“To give the Creature a name would give it strength,” he declared, tilting his head slightly and causing his hair to fall across his face in the most enchanting way, well enchantingly enough to cause Anya to sigh and Xander to grimace.  “It would acknowledge its existence.”

 

Giles closed his eyes and replaced the icepack.  “Of course.”

 

“The book, Willow,” Buffy demanded, shaking her head at the currently useless Watcher, who would have perhaps been more helpful unconscious on the floor.

 

“The book?”  Willow repeated and frowned.  “Oh yes, it was the Book of the Living.  The Book of the Dead was sent, so surely the other book would be here as well…”

 

“No,” Ardeth stated.  “It is not.”

 

“What?  Why not?” it was a question that was asked by at least three of the occupants of the shop and the Medji shook his head, eliciting yet another sigh from Anya as his hair moved and with a dramatic flare of the robes he turned to face the Slayer.

 

“The Book of the Living, the gold book,” he explained.  “Was destroyed in 1933. It was melted down so that the sacred spells and supplications could not be used against the Creature…”

 

“And no one thought to destroy the other book as well?” demanded Xander and he smirked superciliously.  “Guess these sacred Medji can’t be that wonderful if they don’t think to destroy the only thing that could release the Creature that they are sworn to watch over.”

 

“Xander,” reprimanded Anya, glaring at him disapprovingly and he watched as she turned her attention back to the Medji, that silly smile crossing her face as she tangled a lock of hair around her finger and slowly inched closer to the man.  It was typical, Xander thought, Willow was hanging off every word the guy said and Anya was trying to impress the bastard with tales of her past, not to mention the flirty moves she was doing…playing with her hair was her way of saying she wanted sex, now that she’d learnt the meaning of tact.

 

“The Book of the Dead was thought to be lost in 1933, in the ruins of the Oasis of Ahm Shere and it remained buried beneath the sands until 1939, when the site was disinterred by a German archeologist and his team.  Fortunately the Medji,” Ardeth stressed the word as he tilted his head slightly in Xander’s direction.  “Led by my grandfather, were able to retrieve both the book and the Creature.”

 

“Then how did the book end up in London?” Willow asked quietly from behind him and Ardeth turned to face her, his dark eyes locking on her green.

 

“My grandfather wanted to ensure that the Creature would never again be called forth and so once the corpse returned to the original burial place at Hamunaptra, he took the book to England, entrusting it to the care of the O’Connell’s.  It was the only place my grandfather considered safe.”

 

“Oh…” Willow murmured softly, moving closer to his warmth and the draw of the desert that was wrapped about him  “But they died years ago, why wasn’t anything done then?”

 

“It was.  With the blessing of their children we ensured that all of their possessions relating to Egypt and the Creature were to be lost, locked away from the world and securely mislaid in the red tape of the legal system…”

 

“Only someone found it,” Giles concluded from under his icepack.

 

“Yes,” Ardeth turned again to face the table and Willow moved in closer to his back, the dark cloth of his robes seemed to be ingrained with the primeval nature of the desert from the years spent living in Egypt.  “A young intern to the London law firm that handled the estate.  We were notified immediately and by the time I reached London the book was already on its way here.”

 

“Great,” Buffy declared somewhat dejectedly as she slumped into a chair next to Giles.  “So how do we stop this thing if we don’t have the gold book?”

 

“I will contact my fellow Medji and inform them of the state of affairs,” Ardeth declared.  “They will be here as soon as they are able, that will at least give us the advantage of numbers…”

 

“And how are you going to do that?” Buffy asked sarcastically.  “Send off a messenger bird?”

 

“No,” Ardeth’s brow furrowed as he drew out his mobile phone.  “Text message on my satellite phone…what do you think this is, the Middle Ages?” he shook his head as he applied himself to the task of creating the needed message while continuing the conversation.  “Until they arrive we need to ensure that the Creature does not regenerate, it is our only hope of defeating it.”

 

“Well you know letting some ancient Egyptian Mummy suck the life out of my friends was not high on my to do list…” Buffy began, only to be cut off by Spike.

 

“Friend?” he asked, stepping out of the shadows and joining in the general conversation. 

 

“Don’t push it, Spike,” Buffy glared at the blond before turning her full attention back to Ardeth who was now flanked by Willow and Anya, both of them wearing the most smitten looks on their faces.  “So how are we supposed to stop this thing?  I mean he’s stronger than anything I’ve ever faced, if he charged in here now there’d be no way in Hell that I could stop him.”

 

“We’ve got Red,” Spike declared, shrugging nonchalantly as Ardeth completed the text message and pulled his robes open to return the phone to its original hiding place.  “She just does that ‘disperse’ thing and poof, he’s gone.”

 

"My," Anya crossed her arms, bringing one hand up to caress her lips and her eyes glazed over as her gaze dropped to Ardeth's crotch. "You've got quite a big sword."

 

"Okay, Anya, impending apocalypse with lots of gooey things, I don't think the size of his 'sword'," Xander emphasized the word by striking up quotation marks in the air with his fingers as he turned to face the stranger in black, who pulled forth his impressive silver weapon. The words of scorn died off as Xander stared at the huge piece of metal. "Wow...that's a big, sharp, metal, and not at all the phallic symbol I thought Anya was referring too, sword."

 

"It is not a sword," Ardeth replied, tilting the blade and catching the light. "It is a scimitar, a sacred and ancient Medji weapon that has been handed down through my family. It hasn't been used in warfare since 1933." A smile broke out across the somber face. "This is going to be fun!"

 

***

 

Ben groaned, the exquisite pain of gravel rash and general bruising forcing him back into consciousness.  He shifted slightly and winced, there was nothing soft about the floor he was lying on, in fact if he had to hesitate a guess he’d say he was resting on sandstone.  Scuffing about, Ben attempted to find some sort of balance so that he could get to his hands and knees, but it was to no avail and after his fourth attempt he simply slumped back down and excruciatingly rolled over onto his back.  He squinted into the darkness, silently assessing his injuries, and then he heard it.

 

Somewhere in the darkness something was moving, he could hear it creeping towards him.  It wasn’t so much the sound of footfalls that alarmed Ben, more the lack of them.  Instead there was a rasping of air, the type of sound that he had heard any number of times before at the hospital, a death rattle.  But that was generally just once, now in this darkness the sound was repeated, over and over again.

 

“Who’s there?” Ben demanded, despite the pain the question caused him.  There was no answer, the rattle just moved closer as the stench of putrid flesh filled the air and Ben gagged, but he never had the chance to vomit. Claw like hands tangled in his shirt and the room seemed to explode in light, illuminating the inhuman face and the mouth that was opened wide, mocking the very scream that left Ben’s lips as the life was drawn out of him. 

 

Imhotep dropped the wizened corpse to the ground and grinned, flexing his hands and reveling in the solid flesh that made up his fully restored body.  Strength was his as was power, and it all led him closer to the one thing he desired.

 

***

 

“Kitty, kitty,” Spike sung, holding the cat in the air, dangling it above his face and he shot a look at Willow, propped up on Xander and Anya’s bed, fervently rereading the journal.  They’d been stuck there for ages, locked safely away in the couple’s bedroom with the cat that Tara had brought over after a phone call.  Xander, Buffy and Tara had gone back to the Magic Box to retrieve the necessary volumes of supernatural law that had been forgotten in the mad rush to get Willow and Spike to safety, while the Medji, Anya, Dawn and the still severely concussed Watcher were on the other side of the locked door.  Spike sighed and shook the cat. “How the hell is Kitty meant to protect us?  Bat the big bad to death?”

 

“Cats are the guardians of the underworld…” Willow mumbled, not even bothering to look up at him and Spike cocked his scarred eyebrow.  She was oddly quiet, especially when she was anywhere near the Medji, almost like she was in some sort of trance and it unnerved Spike somewhat.

 

“In other words, you haven’t the faintest idea.  After all, love, he’s cursed, he can’t enter the underworld so why would he be scared of their guardians?”

 

“Same reasons you scream in agony if you touch a cross…” Willow glanced up him and the poor half grown cat he still held suspended above his face.  “I suppose what we are really trying to do is create a simple illusion, bringing a little of the underworld to here so that the place is off limits to him…”

 

“Hmmm,” Spike drawled sarcastically, morphing into the demon and growling at Miss Kitty Fantango.   She hissed and struggled in his grasp, setting herself free and scurrying away from the vampire to hide under the bed and he chuckled.  “Oh yeah, that little kitty is really going to scare away…”

 

“It’s not the chest,” Willow whispered, turning pale as she reread the passage that described the sacred chest that had housed the Book of the Dead in Hamunaptra.

 

“What?” asked Spike, frowning slightly as he watched her, the fun of teasing the cat put aside for the moment.

 

“The chest that we opened, it wasn’t the chest that’s cursed,” Willow looked up at him, her brow furrowed with worry and the heavy ornate silver cincher of her outfit tinkled as she shifted on the bed.  “They took the chest.”

 

“They?”

 

“Those things that were at the Magic Box, that’s what they were fetching,” Willow insisted, jumping off the bed and handing the book to Spike, pointing out the passage.  “That’s why the Creature didn’t try to suck us dry at the cemetery.”

 

“Then what the hell was he after at the cemetery?”

 

“I…” Willow didn’t have the chance to answer the blond as the double glass doors that led to the small patio outside exploded, sending shards of glass flying through the room.  Reacting purely on instinct, Spike grabbed her and dragged her close, cradling her in his arms as he leant over and turned his back to the maelstrom.  It seemed to be forever before the roar faded and the room stilled.  Ever so slowly, Spike straightened up and, ensuring that Willow was safely behind him, turned to face the doors and the huge man who stood before the ruins clad in a simple loincloth.

 

“Oh shit.”

 

ZZZZZ

 

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