The Road Less Travelled
The road to Luxor was shaping up to be the longest trip of Marc Spector’s life.
For a start, his back was absolutely killing him from sleeping on that shitty old couch. There had been only one bed in the safe house, and Marc absolutelyrefused to give Zara the satisfaction of him fighting her for it – so he’d crashed on the couch, fuming over Khonshu’s orders and the knowledge that in the morning, he was going to feel positively arthritic.
And for the main course: Steven would not shut up about how Marc was acting around Zara. Marc sat sullenly in the passenger seat of the truck, caught in a seemingly endless internal argument with Steven, who was convinced he was doing his absolute best to antagonise the woman he now had to work with by Khonshu’s decree. Like it was somehow his fault that the avatar of the goddess of war was one of the most combative people he’d ever met. Maybe that’s why Sekhmet chose her, he thought to himself. Like attracts like, and all that.
“You could at least try to get along with her,” Steven urged, clearly trying out diplomacy for his new tactic. “She’s really very lovely when you actually talk to her.”
“You do know she was talking to you because she thought you had the scarab, right?” Marc pointed out. “She had an ulterior motive the whole time.”
For the first time since they’d sat in the car, Steven went quiet. Guilt shot through Marc like an arrow, and he tried a gentler approach. “Steven, I understand that you like her. But we don’t know her at all.”
“Your stupid pigeon seems to trust her,” Steven reasoned, but his voice in Marc’s head was a little deflated. “And he’s a god. Maybe think on that.”
“Are you all right?” Zara’s voice jolted him back to the situation, and Marc blinked at her. She raised her eyebrows. “You’ve barely said a word in hours.” She shrugged. “I mean, not that I’m complaining.”
Marc sat up straighter. “Well, I didn’t think it would go over well if I told you how many times you’ve messed up the lyrics of basically every song.”
“Ha!” She exclaimed, and she seemed genuinely amused as she flicked her long, dark braid over her shoulder. “What are you, some kind of music snob?”
“I just don’t understand how you thought it was ‘lips’ instead of ‘hips’,” Marc reasoned, just barely stifling a laugh. “The song is literally called ‘Hips Don’t Lie’.”
Zara glanced at him, raising a brow. “Because lips…can lie?”
“But hips don’t,” Marc quipped, his mouth pulling into a smirk. “That’s the premise of the song.”
“Well, maybe she was clarifying that although lips can lie, hers don’t.”
“She was still saying ‘hips’.”
“Well I was learning on the go,” Zara rebuked, a little incredulous. “I can’t always know every word to every new Beyoncé song.”
“That song is at least fifteen years old. And it’s Shakira,” he finally released a chuckle, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard it.”
Zara went silent, and Marc got the distinct feeling he’d hit a nerve, though he couldn’t imagine why. What did she care if she hadn’t heard the song before? If Marc didn’t know any better, he’d think she was embarrassed.
After a few more miles of silence, Zara spoke. “I suppose I should tell you where we’re going.” She didn’t look at him. “And why.”
“I know where we’re going,” Marc replied, trying to sound as un-antagonistic as possible, for Steven’s sake. “You said Luxor.”
“I meant where, specifically.” She still didn’t look at him, hazel eyes still focused on the road. Her lashes fanned over her cheeks as she sighed – long and dark, casting shadows in the noon light. “We’re going to the Temple of Ptah, in Karnak.”
Marc nodded slowly as he tried to connect the dots in his brain, before shaking his head. “You’ve lost me.”
“It’s a temple sacred to Sekhmet that she shares with her husband and son, Ptah and Nefertum,” Zara explained, finally sparing him a fleeting glance. “Sekhmet wants me to take the scarab to the seat of her power, so she can protect it. I’m sure Steven has heard about it.”
Steven had, of course, heard about it.
“Oh my days, yes,” he exclaimed, his voice full of excitement in Marc’s head. “The temple has seven gateways, it’s bloody amazing! And a sanctuary to both Sekhmet and Ptah…oh, I’ve always wanted to see it.”
Zara inclined her head at him questioningly, and Marc gave a nod. “He’s heard of it.”
She turned her eyes back to the road, and Marc tried not to notice the way they caught the sun, like pools of honey. Zara exhaled slowly. “Is it just me, or is this highway really empty? There’s practically no one else on the road.”
“Seems that way,” Marc agreed, forcing his gaze away from her. The words seemed to pull on his lips, the ever-increasing curiosity about the one thing they seemed to have in common winning out over his stubborn urge to keep his cards close to his chest. Finally, he turned to her again. “How did she get you?”
Zara frowned. “What?”
“How did Sekhmet get you to be her avatar? What did she offer you?”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, before re-focusing on the road. “She…found me, when I was lost.”
A very vague answer. Marc knew he shouldn’t push, but the combined force of both his and Steven’s interest won out. “Lost, how?”
He saw her hands tighten slightly on the wheel, slender fingers turning white at the tips. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“And you dodge a lot of answers.” Marc shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Forget I asked.”
The silence returned, stretching onward like the road in front of them, before Zara finally broke it. “I…I didn’t know who I was. I was trying to reconnect to myself, my past, but – ” She cut off, her eyes locking with his for a split second. Hers seemed to be brimming with memories. “I couldn’t find it.”
Something in her voice knocked a wave of anguish into Marc, and he forced himself to look away from her, out at the road. “Talk to her,” Steven urged, pressing him. “You owe her an answer, at least.”
All right, he thought. All right.
“I was dying,” he murmured, and he saw her glance at him again out of the corner of his eye. “My servitude to Khonshu is the price I paid for my life.”
She smiled sadly, seeming far away. “The power of a god is mighty, but it always comes at a cost.” Suddenly she leaned forward over the steering wheel, squinting at something in the distance. “What the hell is that?”
Something was up ahead, just far enough out that Marc couldn’t make out its shape. Zara kept her foot on the accelerator, but there was a tension in her frame that hadn’t been there before. Marc peered out the windscreen again, the revelation hitting him like a blow to the chest.
“Not what,” he breathed. “Who.”
The figure raised what looked like a stick above their head, bringing the object down with force. They both realised too late as the ground spewed purple, the crack in the highway shooting towards them with lightning speed, blinding them with its intensity. Zara tried to swerve but it was too late – the car was lifted off the ground by the force, sending them spinning through the air. Marc reached out to grab Zara as the world spun, the car flipping across the road like it was a mere toy, thrown by a child. The world shifted before his eyes, the force slamming Marc into the door.
And then everything went black.