Sledge and Safiya were kept unconscious with chloroform ("not chlorophyll" quipped Jacob wryly) while Mort attempted some skin excoriation to remove the playing-card-sized "loyalty" hieroglyph tattoos, (the top tattoo, a permanent version of the one Mort had drawn on Sledge).
Mort cut down to the fascia, with the scalpel from his med bag, in a neat square, and peeled the sheets of skin off. Then he tried the awkward task of stretching the surrounding skin back over the wound, and suturing it closed.
Ebony stayed and guarded the unconscious Sledge and Safiya, while Mort and Jacob took hand-sketched drawings of the four hieroglyph tats, and the fifth one of Safiya's, to Abu. He identified the hieroglyphs as Loyalty, Commune with the Dead, Speak Egyptian and Sixth Sense. The extra one was Cold.
Poor Sledge and Safiya were kept locked up in Mort's safe-house all night. They were in utter agony from the cuts, and were kept heavily sedated.
By the morning, the magical hold that the creature had over Sledge had waned, and he was back to his old self again. Safiya too. She turned out to be a Cairo student. Her and her brother, Osiris, had been kidnapped and bewitched months ago.
Sunday Morning June 15
As soon as it was light, Ebony checked out the Elfrith Alley mummy apartment. It appeared normal, however the solicitation of prostitutes (that Ebony was with two days before) was no longer there; not one. Ebony inquired around the local shops. The hos had been seen only last night.
Ebony quickly checked the parking garage and, sure enough, the Chevy Caprice was there. She contacted the party and they decided to call the Prospero and STRIKE FORCE.
Detective Noble arrived with some extra cops, and they checked out the site of the hos. The area had recently been sluiced down. Noble brought in the forensic boys. They found a severed finger up on one of the internal walls. It had a finger-print and was identified as one of the call-girls.
They updated Noble on everything else, including the magical tattoos and the mummy apartment, and asked for heavy help (like a swat team or a Special Patrol Group). Noble and Prospero were loathe to do this.
"When you have large police action against the Supernatural," Detective Noble said. "You get big breaking of the Veil problems. The officers that survive end up with mental scars which haunt them for the rest of their lives. Or else they go insane."
"But," she added. "We can help you in other ways."
Noble gave Sledge and Safiya some healing salves (which all but cured the frightful dermatological mess that Mort had inflicted on their backs), and she gave Ebony an Incendiary Stick. This looked like a common-or-garden wooden police baton, but if you twisted the handle a certain way, it would burst open and burn with the intense heat of white phosphorus.
"But don't let a vampire catch you with this," she warned. "Else they will kill you - utterly."
Sunday Afternoon June 15
Mort experimented with the Cold hieroglyph. He copied it onto Ebony's back using a permanent marker pen. And then poured some Nile water onto it, as suggested by Abu. Ebony found that if she concentrated on the drawing, then she could stick her hand into the freezer and the cold didn't affect her.
So Mort drew Cold tats on everyone with the marker pen. They worked on everyone except Juan.
Sunday Late Afternoon June 15
Wanting to do it before dark, they decided to go in to the apartment.
The apartment door was cold to the touch. Everyone activated their Cold hieroglyphs, and then Ebony picked the lock.
The entire room was cold. There were two skeletal dogs there. They attacked, but Theo made short work of them with his katana. No sign of any people, so they approached the basement door. It turned out to be solid iron and had been bolted and reinforced. They couldn't make any progress.
Lieutenant Prospero was phoned. He sent a squad car to secure the area, and sent Detective Noble with a police-issue hydraulic battering ram.
It was now 90 minutes before sunset.
A few solid bashes smashed the door frame, and the solid iron door tumbled down the stairs into the basement. In went some molotovs, which made fire and choking smoke.
Gun shots came from within.
Sledge came to the fore, and he shot at the shadowy figure down there. Sledge took some wounds, but the shooter was dropped. It was Dr Khalfani ("Mr Fez"). He was hiding behind a huge stone sarcophagus. Mrs Khalfani was cowering in the corner.
The room was bedecked like an Egyptian tomb: the huge stone sarcophagus centre stage, with hieroglyphs all over the walls, complete with canopic jars, shabtis, scarabs, and other funerary items ... and the pieces of twelve prostitutes scattered about. The place was also freezing cold, with ice on the floor.
Jacob, Juan, Mort and Theo lifted the lid of the sarcophagus together; it was very heavy. Ebony hurled in some litre containers of oil, and then her incendiary stick.
There was a roar and a scream. The lid shot up, out of their hands, as the thing within stood up violently. It leaped out of the sarcophagus and raked Theo. Then it bellowed, on fire, burning fiercely, and it ran from the room. Sledge opened up with his .357 magnums, called-shots to its head. He got in some good hits because it stumbled and fell on the stairs.
With the white phosphorus burning hot and fierce, it didn't take long for the creature to burn into a charred skeleton. There were about 40 minutes to sunset.
Dr Khalfani was still alive, barely, so they patched his wounds. Mrs Khalfani was none the worse for wear; a bit of smoke inhalation. Safiya's brother Osiris wasn't so lucky. His body, well, pieces of his body, were scattered with the prostitutes'. The intense cold had started to wane, so Detective Noble and Juan could come down.
Mort wondered if any of the hieroglyphs on the walls of the tomb were the magical type. Since they could not be photographed, he took some photos with his phone-camera of each wall, and sure enough, there were holes in the picture where the magical ones were. Maybe one in twenty.
Ebony gestured to the hieroglyph-encrusted sarcophagus: "At least, now we can replace the museum's one," she mused.
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