Read Online Grimoire of the Lamb by Kevin Hearne - Free Book Online

getting low.
    The boy’s eyes grew wide. “You don’t work for him?”
    I snorted and shook my head. “No. I prefer life over death. If anyone dies today, it will be him, not you. Come on.”
    “Who are you?”
    What a great straight line. A few different superhero names rushed through my head,
Whiskey Man
being my favorite for its rather dubious heroism, but he might not have ever heard of whiskey here. “Call me Atticus,” I said. “What’s your name?”
    “Hamal.”
    “Are you from Al Fayyum, Hamal?” He nodded. “Good. Home is upstairs. Let’s go.” I held out my hand to him and he moved at last. He rose to his feet and shot toward me, leaping into my arms and wrapping his legs around my waist like a much smaller child. He held me tightly around the neck.
    “Okay, that’ll work too,” I said, and carried him up the staircase. It rose past another darkened floor, a chamber full of more wooden boxes, then another, and then a period of traveling through solid rock. We arrived finally in a small room, clearly modern, and just as clearly a changing room. Several different outfits hung on hooks, to allow Elkhashab to emerge into the world looking completely different from however he’d entered his house. A small bank of TV monitors showed four different views of some barren desert, no doubt the area around our exit point. No one was currently pictured. I dispelled our night vision.
    There were no giant red buttons here to tempt people; Elkhashab was confident that no one would find this place by accident. A simple switch on the wall next to the staircase opened a sliding trapdoor that turned out to be a piece of a fake boulder. Said boulder was hidden inside a thicket of thorns, which made our emergence a tad painful. but also completely hidden fromview.
    I wondered who had built all this cloak-and-dagger shit for Elkhashab. I wondered if they were still alive or if they had turned into dinner for the crocodile god below.
    Once out of the boulder, I waited for the trapdoor to slide closed automatically, but it didn’t. That meant that there must be a switch around somewhere to close it. After a bit of searching—made more difficult by Hamal’s refusal to let go of me—I found a small painted button at the base of the same boulder. That closed the door.
    Following some footprints, I took the path of least resistance out of the thicket. We were on a rocky outcropping in the desert north of the lake. The center of Al Fayyum was a few miles away to the south.
    “There, you see?” I said to Hamal. “Sunlight. You’re safe now.” The boy said nothing, but he began to cry. No tears, though—that was a bad sign. He needed fluids desperately, and the lake wouldn’t provide any. It used to be freshwater, in ancient times, but today it’s a saltwater lake, cut off from the flow of the Nile.
    With earth under my feet again, I replenished my bear charm and drew more to run quickly. I had no idea where to find a hospital.
    I hugged the lakeshore and headed south until I hit the suburbs of Al Fayyum and found a bazaar. People were looking at me curiously—what was that white man with the sword doing carrying that filthy boy?
    It was a good time to gamble on basic human decency. I began to call for help in Arabic. “This boy needs water! I found him in the desert!” I was surrounded in no time by four or five locals. Outside Al Fayyum’s oasis, the desert was harsh and unforgiving, and the people knew it well.
    I broke the binding that fed magical energy to Hamal, and his grip about my neck slackened enough that I could lay him down and kneel by his side. Somebody had a canteen of water and put it up to Hamal’s lips.
    “Not too much. He really needs medical attention. I’m a stranger here. Is there a hospital nearby?” I wanted to keep things moving along before people started asking me questions like, “What were you doing in the desert?”
    An argument broke out regarding the wisest course of