The Book Of Lust 03

I had expected to be woken with the soft, sensual lips of a mocha-skinned beauty on my morning wood.

Surprise, surprise... Kedesh had other plans.

"Holy fuck!" My spluttering shout of surprise as I started awake was prompted by the bucket of ice water dumped on my head and the sight of a man standing over me. I bolted upright, shaking water from my eyes and staring in horror.

From the neck down the man was relatively ordinary-looking in the light of the bedside lamp: simple camo shorts, matching tank top and a rippling musculature that was practically tearing through his deeply tanned skin. But from the shoulders up he was something else entirely.

That's not possible...

I knew my Egyptian mythology well enough to recognize what I was seeing, but my mind still couldn't comprehend it. From the shoulders up the man had the snarling head of a jackal, and the bared fangs of a desert dog are not the most pleasant image to wake up to.

"Who are you? What do you want? Did Reshep send you? Or Min?" I babbled, my hands balling into fists even though I doubted I could do much against this muscled humanoid and his flesh-rending canines.

Almost as unexpected as my drastically-altered morning plans was what happened next. The jackal-headed man stepped back and crossed his arms, giving me a stern look. "Dude, chill out. Did Kedesh not tell you to expect me?"

I blinked to a stop. My heart was beating out of my chest and my brain, slowing down from breakneck speed, suddenly had no words.

Wait... What?

"Uh... No?"

The man sighed, shaking his head. "Classic. Why would I expect her to?" Then, rolling his yellow eyes, he spoke again. If you've never seen a jackal head speak, it's an unnerving sight. The mouth and lips of a desert canine are not intended for the formation of human words, the tongue is too long and floppy and the teeth are designed for ripping meat and snapping bone. Nonetheless, the being spoke in perfect English with a hint of an American accent. "So I guess you must be pretty damn confused, then?"

I swallowed, hard, and nodded. "You could say that, yeah. Are you Anubis?"

I figured it was a pretty good guess, since the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld was the only jackal-headed deity I knew of, but the man just chuckled softly. It was a surprisingly warm sound. "No, man. Not nearly that big of a player. I get that all the time though." He extended a hand, stepping forward and grasping my astonished forearm in a warrior's grip. "I'm Bet, servant of the goddess Kedesh and personal trainer to my mistress's mortal champions."

My head was spinning. "This is not happening..." I looked at the digital clock on my bedside table — 5:00 am. "I'm having a really weird dream, right?"

Bet released my hand and shrugged his muscular shoulders. "Dream or not, it's time to get up and at 'em."

I pushed myself back and leaned against the headboard, rubbing my eyes. "Can we go over this again? Slower? With a bit more of an explanation? Assume that Kedesh has told me absolutely nothing."

Which, if she didn't have the power to turn me into a mindless sex slave, I would be pretty irritated about.

The jackal-man chewed on his lip for a moment pensively. The human expression looked, once again, quite out of place on the muzzle of an Egyptian carrion scavenger. Then, he turned and walked to the corner of the room where he sat in the armchair and stared at me.

"Alright," he said. "I'm not really surprised, honestly. Mistress Kedesh can be mysterious and evasive at times. She wants her servants and champions to learn to adapt and overcome their challenges using swift thinking and cleverness. Probably why she didn't mention me to you."

"Mmm..." I said, breathing deeply to try and eliminate the sleep from my body.

Why is it so early?

"I guess I failed. So if she

had

mentioned you, what would she have told me?"

Bet nodded. "If we were in the Western world, you might call me a guardian spirit. Mistress Kedesh awakened me from centuries of sleep so that I could train you to overcome our foes." He cast a critical eye up and down my body. "And I can see why she did. No offense, man, but you aren't really champion material just yet."

I frowned slightly.

I'm in pretty good shape, thank you very much.

Then, I gave the guy another onceover.

Compared to most...

"Thanks," I muttered. "So what exactly are you training me to do, aside from wake up at ungodly hours of the morning?"

Bet grinned. It was the first expression that fit his canine features. "Put some clothes on, mortal man, and I'll show you."

The jackal-headed creature strode out of the room and I got up, stumbling around and throwing on a pair of gym shorts and a tee shirt. My head was still spinning.

Just go with it,

I ordered myself, running my fingers through my hair and rubbing my face.

Just let it play out. This isn't the weirdest thing that's happened to you in the past few weeks.

Bet was waiting for me in the living room of my suite, arms crossed and staring out the large glass doors onto the terrace. Beyond the doors, the city lights of Cairo were twinkling in the light of the early morning dawn.

As I walked out, I realized something else and froze. "Bet...?" I asked in a low, tense voice.

He turned to face me.

"Where's Marisha?" My body was taut and coiled. I wasn't sure what I would do if he'd done something to my companion, but now that I'd noticed her absence it wasn't like I could just ignore it.

Bet raised his hands placatingly. "It's okay, man, don't worry. I just moved your girl to another bed before I woke you up." He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder at the second bedroom. Marisha and I had never needed to use it, but through the open door I realized I could see a dark figure among the inviting white sheets. "I'm not a total dick." He smirked again. "You were the only one who got to wake up with an ice bath."

I let out my breath and relaxed. I shook my head. "I can't even try to figure this out anymore. What are we doing next?"

Bet was already striding toward the front door. "Follow me."

Casting one more wistful look at Marisha's slumbering form in the luxurious comfort of the hotel bed, I followed my new 'personal trainer' out of the hotel room and into the darkened corridors of the predawn building.

We headed for the elevator, and as I followed Bet into the gilt box I thought of something else. "So how do we deal with the fact that you have the face of... you know...?" I moved my hands vaguely.

"A wild African canine?" Bet finished my question. He glanced over my shoulder and gestured with his chin to the mirror set in the wall of the elevator. "See for yourself."

I turned around as he hit the button for the lobby and the elevator began to descend. "What the hell...?" I blinked and shook my head, staring in disbelief. In the mirror, standing directly beside me, was a tall man wearing Bet's clothes. The only difference was, instead of a jackal's snarling head mounted on his shoulders, the man had a handsome, clean shaven face with a deep tan and a look of Middle Eastern heritage. "Is that... you?"

Bet shrugged his rounded shoulders. "It's what the mortals see when they look at me. My disguise, if you will."

My eyes flickered back and forth from the mirror to his face. Staring down at me were the yellow eyes of the desert dog. "So... if that's the case," I said, "why is

this

the face I woke up to this morning?"

The ancient Egyptian guardian spirit chuckled softly and gave me a slap on the shoulder. "You're a lucky guy," he told me. "As the champion of the goddess Kedesh, you can see through the petty illusions and tricks that disguise the world of the divine from the eyes of mortal men and women."

"Mmm..." I muttered, rubbing my face as the elevator doors slid open. "I feel

so

lucky."

Bet ignored me, simply walking straight and confidently across the lobby and out through the sliding glass doors into the already hot air of the Egyptian morning.

Waiting for us outside was a black sedan with darkly tinted windows, and he opened the door for me to climb into the backseat.

"Where are we going?" I asked, sliding inside onto the leather seats.

"Your new temple of worship," Bet told me with another dog-like grin. "The iron temple."

He drove us through the early-morning streets, somehow already packed with traffic. As we drove, he spoke. "Mistress Kedesh thinks that we have two or three months to whip you into shape before her husbands have fully awakened. In that time, I am going to need to transform you from an ordinary mortal man into the kind of warrior who can stand up to two fully fledged gods and their hordes of minions. That means a strict training regimen, which means that you do exactly as I say." The spirit took a sharp turn down an alleyway that was clearly not meant for motorized vehicles and began to thread us through a series of backstreets. "Is that understood?"

I nodded. "If you can keep me from getting killed by a pair of ancient deities? I'll do anything you want."

We slid to a stop in front of a battered old warehouse with a cover of corrugated sheet metal hiding the entrance. Already, my brain was bursting with questions.

"Not that I'm complaining," I said as I stepped out of the air-conditioned car and took a deep breath, "but how do we have so much time? Kedesh was up and running in less than a day. Should we not be prepared for more immediate danger?"

Bet stepped out of the driver's side and closed the door. He clicked the keys, making the sedan chirp as it locked, and then gave me a sideways glance. "When you first awakened our mistress," he said, "I believe there was a ritual enacted that filled her with an immediate dose of life essence. Am I right?"

"Oh... Right..." I gave him a look of slight discomfort.

What does this guy think of me sleeping with his boss?

I coughed self-consciously and continued. "So what you're telling me is that my... ahem, life essence... is what let her get up and running so quickly?"

"Exactamundo, my man," he said. "And we don't think Reshep or Min were woken up in the same way. Mistress Kedesh suspects that the cosmic reverberations from her awakening is what is nudging them out of stasis, which means that they'll take a while longer to get moving." Bet produced a key from the pocket of his shorts and knelt, inserting it into a padlock that held the door to the pockmarked concrete.

"So why don't we find them now?" I asked as he stood with a grunt. "Kill them while they're still groggy. It seems like a much better idea than waiting for them to get powered up, mobilize some sort of divine army and come after us."

Bet shook his head and heaved, rolling up the warehouse door. "No offense, man," he said, "but even half-asleep these guys are more than a match for us. You have potential, sure, and I'm," he shot me a cocky grin over his shoulder, "well, me, but we need to unlock that potential of yours before we even stand a chance."

"So what are we here for?" I asked as the shadowy warehouse opened up before me like the mouth of a deep, dark cave.

Bet took a deep breath and strode inside. Flicking a switch on the wall, he called, "We're here to make you feel pain."

The lights flickered on overhead slowly, like they were wary of revealing something out of my darkest nightmares. But when I finally saw what was laid out before me I felt a sigh of relief sweep through me. It was just a gym. In fact, it was a pretty nice one, considering the building's rough exterior.

Bet grinned at me from the light switch as I came inside. "Sorry for the theatrics, man," he said. "I just love making a good entrance."

I rolled my eyes and then clapped my hands, rubbing them together. "So this is

actually

what we're doing?" I asked. "Lifting weights to prepare me for the apocalyptic return of two sleeping gods?"

Bet shrugged. "It's a start," he said cryptically, then gestured to an open space in the middle of the long, high-ceilinged room. "We'll warm up over there."

Bet led me through what I can only imagine was an ancient Egyptian series of warm-up exercises. They were nothing like I'd seen before, some strange combination of yoga-esque contortions and calisthenics. Then, we hit the weights.

I usually liked to keep in pretty good shape, but when Bet started to put me through my paces I realized that I'd gone a bit soft. Weeks of relaxing by the pool had done my body no favors, and before that it had been several months since I'd even seen a gym as Marisha and I researched the expedition that had started this whole crazy mess.

I grimaced as I struggled with a weight that had once been fairly easy for me, but Bet gave me a hearty slap on the back.

"Don't worry about it, man," he chuckled. "We'll have you back in shape in no time. You have no idea what you're going to be capable of."

Bet, of course, had no trouble with anything that we did. I got the feeling he was just enjoying himself, almost relaxing, as he threw around weights that seemed cartoonishly large.

I grunted, sweated, and felt my shirt begin to stick to my back as the hot air from outside started to seep in through the cracks around the door and the sun rose outside above the warehouse. After an hour or so in the weight room, Bet called us to a halt. I was gasping for breath now, no longer caring about looking stoic and badass but simply hot, sore and wrung out.

"Was that it?" I asked, hands on my knees. I pushed hair back from my forehead and stared up at my dog-headed trainer.

Bet simply bared his teeth at me in a smirk. "I told you we were here to make you feel pain," he answered. "And I was only half joking. Follow me."

I pushed myself up and followed to the back of the warehouse, threading through weight machines we hadn't used yet but I worried were going to be on our to-do list in the coming days. In the far corner was a rickety metal staircase that spiraled in a tight curve down into the dark.

"Come on, champion," Bet told me. "Let's get round two rolling."

We descended into darkness, and into an even stranger room than I would have anticipated. Bet hit a wall switch and the lights once again flickered to life. This time, however, instead of revealing modern weightlifting equipment I was stunned by the sight of rack after rack of ancient technology. Weapons.

The room was long and wide, almost as large as the footprint of the warehouse above our heads, and the walls and the far third of the space were filled with the broadest array of weaponry I'd ever seen. Swords, spears, axes, maces, flails and all manner of other pre-gunpowder armaments. I stood for a long moment in shock.

"Holy shit..." I muttered after a moment, crossing the large, empty space in the center of the room in a trance.

Bet stood back and watched, not moving as I picked up a curved Egyptian khopesh from its rack and raised it to my eyes. The sickle-shaped blade curved wickedly and glinted in the dull, overhead light. I brushed my thumb along the outside edge and felt the razor sharpness. The only difference between this blade and the replicas I'd seen or the museum pieces I'd examined was that this sword was obviously made with modern materials. Instead of bronze or iron, the blade shone silver like some sort of steel alloy, and the handle was leather wrapped around some sort of bone.

"What is this for...?" I asked, turning to face the jackal-headed spirit and hefting the weapon. It was lighter than I expected.

"What is any weapon for, dude?" Bet answered. He crossed the room as I stood staring at the blade and reached out for it, fingers open expectantly.

I raised an eyebrow at him but handed it over.

"You've chosen your first lesson." Bet nodded at another khopesh on a nearby set of pegs and then turned on his heel, stalking to the center of the open space.

I grabbed the second sword warily and slowly approached him, holding the weapon low at my side. We faced each other for a moment, and I felt like there was a tension between us, tightening like a thread until it was just ready to snap. Bet stared into my face, his yellow eyes intense and his body completely still.

Speaking felt like a violation of some unspoken agreement, but I swallowed painfully and asked. "What now?" My voice wobbled and creaked like an old rocking chair. These swords were razor sharp, and I was worried that Bet actually expected us to—

In that moment, Bet attacked. He raised the curved sword and swung it, his powerful muscles bunching and sending the weapon sweeping my way with lethal force.

I yelped, startled, started to move but was far too slow. I knew in that moment that I was going to be sliced wide open. But then...

Something strange happened.

Suddenly, my own blade was there, between Bet's sword and my body. I felt a fierce pain in my chest and in my forehead, a splitting headache like I'd used Kedesh's powers far beyond my capacity.

Blade clanged on blade with a sound not unlike a frying pan being dropped on the kitchen floor, and I staggered back, one hand grasping the khopesh and the other out to one side, balancing me. In that moment, I didn't even realize that I was holding the sword in my nondominant left hand. My heart was racing in my chest and my mouth was dry. My brain was a single mantra that thundered through my thoughts and cleared out everything else.

I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead...

The jackal-headed warrior took a single step toward me, his own blade rising for another strike, and then, even as my breath caught in my throat, he stopped. Bet stepped back, the khopesh drifting down to his side and away from his body. "Are you alright?" His canine features were twisted into an expression I didn't recognize. Could it possibly be... concern?

My blood was drumming in my ears, my heart was about ready to rip its way through my ribcage and my head felt like it had already been split in half. The world twisted on its axis and I staggered. The pounding in my forehead was stronger, like something in my brain was trying to tear itself free. "What the hell—?" I started to ask, and then the floor dropped away beneath me.

I felt the last hint of my consciousness pull itself free from my grasp and I fell, the sword clattering from my hand as I plummeted into darkness.

* * *

The temple around me was magnificent. From my dais, I could look out between the massive columns over an expansive green garden, watered by gushing blue fountains and tiny canals crossed by small, ornate bridges.

Two slaves, naked but for tiny white skirts around their hips and matching strips of cloth across their young, bouncy breasts, approached me with offerings on a pair of golden platters. One was a tray heaped with cuts of meat and freshly baked bread, the other with fruits, freshly washed and beaded with cool droplets of water. I could feel myself salivate, but my eyes weren't on the food.

Deeply tanned skin shone in the sunlight, smooth and unblemished.

"Champion?" asked one of the maidens, her large, doe eyes downcast submissively. I could feel her emotions, her thoughts, stirring in her mind. At this point it wasn't even conscious; my powers were an extension of myself, subtly ensnaring the minds and bodies of those who ventured close to me. I sensed the heat rising through her, flushing her skin and tingling deliciously between her smooth thighs. "Is there anything else you..." Her eyes flashed between my legs to where my long, thick manhood lay, half-awakened. "Desire?"

I wore nothing to cover myself, nothing to hide my body from the world. This was who I was, lust and passion incarnate, the living champion of a goddess. On my chest, I felt the pulse of my tattoo, the roaring lion's head of my mistress.