The Curse in Her Blood

Chapter 3

Sarah

Robin wasn't beside me anymore.

Jack had been telling us all about Set. God of Chaos and Violence. King of Duat the land of the Dead. About how his powers had been stripped, his body broken, his kingdom torn asunder as punishment for what he had tried to do. Trying to put a mortal on the throne, a mortal who chose to be unfaithful, a claim he refused to believe. He waged a war against Horus the man he claimed raped his woman, and the upper kingdom. How he had lost his powers and how they were holding him.

Mercury rested between the metal walls. I could feel it sloshing around as if it were pressed against me. He didn't even need to tell me for me to know it was there. Mercury kept evil at bay and Set was inherently evil. So the Mercury would keep him under their control. Still, somehow, I knew that even though he was supposed to be contained and they had wards and spells, mercury and steel, that he could get out any time he wanted. The Mercury wasn't affecting him like they it was supposed to. I don't know how I could tell, I just could.

And then Robin was gone.

I felt the heat of something on my back and when I turned to where Robin had been, I saw her moved. Six feet forward and on the other side of the glass.

"Shit!" erupted out of Jack. An alarm was pressed, it shrieked in my ears. I tried not to panic. Set was coiled in chains there was no way he could get out of them... right?

Jack was fiddling with the electrical panel. I wanted to scream that magic messes with electronics but there was no way I could know that as true. I looked back to Robin and Set was free and she was unmoving. I slammed my fists against the glass and screamed her name but she still didn't move.

"The codes are scrambled. He's messed with the key pad. He's not supposed to be this strong. How is he doing this?" Jack called over the wail of alarm.

Set had Robin's head captured between his hands and I lost it. It was like something else had hold of my body and I wasn't in control anymore. I grabbed the weird gun off of Jack's hip, shoved him aside and fired the electrified bullet straight into the keypad. It shattered, sizzled and the lock sprung open.

And Robin screamed.

That sound. It pierced me. It spurred me forward. It had me through the door and at her side. I ripped her out of his grasp, leveled the gun with his chest and then fired, over and over until he was nothing but a writhing mass on the floor.

Guards rushed forward. I've been splattered in Set's sticky burning black blood. Behind me Robin was still screaming. She clawed at her head as if she were in agony, men in white lab coats looked her over, tried to calm her though they seemed more interested in testing her and finding out what Set did to her.

I couldn't keep listening to her scream, so I swatted everyone away from her, grabbed her hands and knocked her out.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Jack asked me.

Robin had a strange yellow hazy halo that I figured everyone had to see. "She can't process the spell. It'll be easier for her if she's unconscious for it."

"Spell?" he echoed.

"Yeah, that halo, the yellow around her head. That's a spell. Don't you see it?" I asked him. The look on his face told me that no, he did not.

"Does the halo tell you what he did to her?" he asked.

"It doesn't talk," I answered bitterly and he turned away from me muttering something about how the two of us were so strange. It hurt. I didn't want him to think I was strange. Silence descended upon the group around me and in that silence I finally notice the way my body is reacting. My breathing is laboured like I'm under water, there's a soreness in all of my joints and my limbs are starting to feel really goddamn heavy.

I doubled over trying to breathe through the pain that shot into my core, trying to force the air into my lungs, but I couldn't breathe. The world got spotty, and all I could think was that this whole blacking out shit was so much easier with Robin rubbing my head and coaching me through slow steady breaths like I didn't know how to breathe.

And then I blacked out.

-GBB-GBB-GBB-

I wake up in a white sterile room and someone holding my hand. For a brief second I hope for Jack, but I know even before I open my eyes that it's Robin beside me. I turn to her and I see it, that pity in her eyes.

Heavy activity brought on spells. Dizzy spells. Fainting spells. And with them came Robin's lectures which were arguably worse.

"Are you okay?" she asks me.

"Uh... bitch... a mummy was Frenching your damn ear. Are you okay?" I shoot back because my cancer is nothing compared to an ancient Egyptian curse and the mummy that came with it that seemed to be hella interested in my best friend.

"Uh... yeah. Actually. I feel fine," she answers. "I don't feel any different... do I look different to you?"

I look her up and down, and other then she was now in a white hospital gown, she looked like the same old Robin. "Yeah. You look fine."

"Well you look like shit," Robin tells me and I scowl at her. "Don't look at me like that, you do. You need to either slow down or take some sort of medication."

"I. am. Fine," I snap.

"You're dying."

Both of us turn and Jack is standing in the doorway. "Both of you are,"

"What are you talking about, Robin's fine," I growl to him. I know I'm dying he didn't have to remind me.

"Sarah, the tests came back, the cancer has spread to your lungs," he whispered. "Just like Robin's curse seems to be fanning out through her blood. We expect her to be fully infected by the end of today."

"What does the curse do?" she asked. "Cause... I mean... I feel fine."

"We're not sure. We need to take you to see Miss Het, she'll be able to tell us more," he said. "So, Robin will come with me and Sarah you can stay here and rest..."

"Hell no, I'm coming with you people," I tell them and then I force my legs to swing out from under the blankets they have over me.

"You're too weak you need to rest," Jack complains, but Robin helps me up, knowing me well enough to know that I won't take no for an answer.

"I'm going. Simple as that," I tell him. "I go where Robin goes, and vice-versa. So you can either keep arguing or get me a wheel chair, cause I don't think I can walk all the way there."

What I don't tell him is that, no matter how I feel, being with Robin makes me feel better. I don't tell him that for the first time I'm actually afraid of this whole cancer business actually ending my life, but I'm even more afraid of Robin dying.

Finding a cure for her curse is more important to me than getting treatment. But that is something I don't try to tell Jack because he wouldn't understand. But I know. I know Robin knows and she does so just by looking at me.