Read this awesome excerpt from Jane Unwrapped!

Some tombs should never be opened...

Fluorine uranium carbon potassium. Jane’s experiment really went wrong this time. After a fatal accident, teen scientist Jane becomes the first modern-day...mummy. Waking up in the Egyptian underworld without a heart certainly isn’t the best—especially when it means Anubis, god of embalming, has to devour her soul. Yuck. But when Jane meets the drop-dead gorgeous god, suddenly she's thinking this might not be the worst thing to happen. And then she is pushed to do the impossible—just time-travel and kill King Tut. Well, every experiment has variables which can end in disaster... Jane just wishes she could decide whether she wants to strangle Anubis or kiss him.

EXCERPT

Fact: The last thing I remember is falling from my inner tube into the churning waters of Skutz Falls and not being able to resurface.

Fact: I am in a black desert, talking to the Egyptian god of the dead.

Hypothesis: I drowned.

Experiment: To be determined, because for the first time ever, I have no idea where to go from here.

          “What is this place?” My voice sounds distant, as if I’m hearing it through a wall.

“The Duat.”


“What’s that?”


“The gateway before you reach the Field of Reeds.” I must give him a blank stare for he shakes his head and says, “The resting place for pure souls. Paradise.”

“Paradise,” I whisper and sit up. My wet swimsuit clings uncomfortably to my skin. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

The jackal shuts his eyes. “To live where the sun rises from the earth, where food and drink are never-ending, where every rush that springs from the ground shimmers like gold...no, it is not too bad at all.”

I close my eyes and replace the darkness with that image. At least that gives me something to hold on to. The god approaches and motions for me to crouch down to him. He sniffs my hair, arms, feet. Warm breath blows the wet strands of hair from my face: the first breeze I’ve felt here. Then he lays his head against my chest, its weight humbling.

“So sad you will never see it.”

I stand. “What?”

He squints his eyes and sighs deeply, sadly. “How could I not have realized...?” Anger surges in his voice as he says, “You don’t have a heart.”

I place two fingers on my neck. No pulse. Check my wrist. Nothing. I stare blankly at my pale skin. “A corpse doesn’t need a pulse.”

The hackles on Anubis’s back rise and his ears flatten. “But it’s more than that. There’s not even a heart inside you. You reek of it...”


“Of what?” I whisper.


“Emptiness.” The jackal circles around me, teeth glittering in the light.


“Where is my heart?” I grasp at my chest.


“It doesn’t matter, but you can’t go to the scale now. You don’t have anything to weigh.”

“Weigh?”

          Anubis growls and slams his paw against the ground. “Keep up! You don’t have a heart. That means you have nothing to weigh against the Feather of Truth.”

“I need my heart...”

“How else will the king of the underworld be able to judge you?” he says. “Your heart determines if you are pure enough to enter paradise.”

          No, I can’t be trapped in this place! The golden image of paradise fades from my mind, the nothingness creeping its way back. “There has to be another way.”

          “There is none.”


“So I’m stuck here?”


“Oh no,” Anubis says. “No one stays here forever.”


“So what happens to me?”


“Well, Jane Ezrael,” the jackal says with half-lidded eyes, “I eat you.”


JANE UNWRAPPED is a young adult mythological fantasy, released by Entangled Teen Crave on October 12^th, 2015. Join the authors for Egyptian-themed fun with videos, art, and giveaways at www.leahkatewrite.com