She growled at him like any wounded animal, but did not strike at him. When he pulled her huge clawed hand away, it wrapped around his and she whined. He wadded up his scarf and placed it on the wound.
“Just a scratch,” he told her.
“Hurts,” she moaned thickly. Her voice sounded masculine. He didn’t think she could say anything without the low rumble in her chest. Even with the wulfsyl, her speech was rough and broken.
“You’re very delicate for a werewolf.”
“I am not! That knife was as long as my claw.”
“Hardly.” He lifted the cloth. The wound had bled profusely, but the blood was already drying and crusting around the hole. “It’s practically healed already. So is your shoulder.”
That made her smile, baring her sharp teeth.
Malcolm turned back to Mansfield. “Where’s the box?” The ambassador clutched his shattered leg, crying and moaning. Malcolm strode over and stepped on the man’s bloody knee, eliciting a horrific scream. “Where is the box?”
Mansfield snarled through his twisted, bloodless lips. “I smashed it.”
“I smell ashes on him,” Charlotte offered. Malcolm caught Mansfield’s frenzied glance toward the empty hearth.
“Watch him,” he told Charlotte.
“Can I eat him?” Charlotte growled, and licked her lips. Mansfield went silent and pale.
“Not yet.” Malcolm went to investigate the hearth. There was nothing but cold ashes in the stone maw of the fireplace. He ducked down and looked up into the cavernous chimney. Reaching his hand up, he searched the dark flue. He stretched his fingers, sliding them through grime and cold embers along the damper ledge. He touched a smooth carved surface. With a tug he produced the ebony box. It was intact. “We need to get this to Simon.”
A loud roar came from outside. Malcolm ran for the door and saw the square steeple of St. Mary disappear below the surrounding rooftops. Charlotte came up beside him and whined.
“Are we too late?” she asked, pushing her large head past Malcolm.
“No,” he told her firmly. He took a step forward.
Charlotte grabbed the box from Malcolm’s hands and jumped away to land in a crouch. Her wound spurted again from even that small exertion.
“You’re still wounded,” he protested.
“I’m faster than you.” And she was gone, racing toward the collapsing house of God.
The Skin of Ra buried Ash in a layer of flashing linen. Simon and Kate fought to reach the necromancer, to do something, but a barrier of cloth whipped through the air. Time and again, the hardened linen slashed at them, raising welts and slicing skin. Kate had depleted her cache of vials. Meanwhile, Hogarth tended to Penny, who lay covered in blood from wicked gashes on her head and shoulder, barely conscious. Finally, the newly re-formed mummy of Ra sent its ruined tentacles out to grasp the skeleton of the poor church. It lifted itself above the sanctuary and began to crawl away.
“Where’s it going?” Kate gasped, wiping dust from her eyes.
“I don’t know,” Simon said. “But if it ate Ash’s magic, it may be even more unstoppable. I want you to get clear while I—”
“You cannot be serious starting that sentence,” she replied with a flash of anger. “I will beat the self-sacrifice out of you if I must.”
Simon raised his eyebrow and gasped out a weak laugh.
Suddenly a howl filled the church. Simon spied Charlotte as she leapt over the jagged wall around them. The ebony box dangled from her jaws. Hope flared inside Simon until the mummy suddenly stopped in its perch high above the ruin. Without shifting position, it struck out at the young werewolf. Charlotte bounded off crumbling walls, cracked marble, and smashed pews with glowing tentacles in pursuit. She pivoted and spun in a miraculous spectacle of agility, hurdling through coils of living, smoldering flaming linen. The Skin of Ra gathered its mass and flung itself at her, tendrils snapping out and missing her by scant inches.
Then Charlotte favored her side and faltered. A tendril seized her left thigh and lifted her up. Charlotte took the box from her teeth with a clawed hand that was already transforming back to human. She flung the ebony case with the last of her unnatural strength. It sailed end over end through a grasping coil of linen into Kate’s waiting hands.
She quickly studied the hieroglyphs on the box and began to recite loudly in ancient Egyptian. She was the only one with a decent chance at reading the spell properly.