Afterlife

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  But then he didn’t look anything, because flames had engulfed him. Him and all of the others. Flames fueled by my rage and enhanced by the threads of At and anti-At marbling my ba into something powerful enough to burn not only flesh and bone but the very energy that made up a Netjer’s eternal soul as well. They had taken everything from me; it was only fair that I take everything from them, including their existence.

  I glared at the Netjer in front of me, and as I watched him burn, I savored the howls and screams of the rest of the not-so-eternal beings surrounding me. I didn’t look away until he was little more than an ashy pillar.

  My lip curled into a gleeful sneer as the burned remains of what had once been an eternal warrior broke apart and drifted away in the desert breeze. Dust in the wind, motherfuckers.

  The Netjer threat was neutralized—for now. I had no doubt that more would come, sent by the Mother of All to finish the job her hunters had failed to do. Not that it mattered. Destroying these Netjers had been too little, too late. Destroying more wouldn’t bring my people back.

  I lowered my arms and bowed my head. There was nothing left for me to do. There was no reason left for me to fight. Whatever skin I’d had in the game had been flayed and discarded, and I’d returned to the world of the living only to find that I had nothing left to defend. I was the last Nejeret standing. The last of my kind.

  And that pissed me off. Royally.

  I hadn’t gone through hell—literally—and come back to life just to trade places with everyone I loved. I hadn’t come back for this, damn it. I hadn’t!

  There had to be someone left. There had to be something that I could fight for.

  Driven by the need for purpose, I placed my hands on the earth on either side of my knees, palms flat against the ground. When I’d cured humanity of the Cascade Virus, I’d been able to sense all of the infected via the threads of At and anti-At lacing my soul. Maybe I could find some lone, hidden Nejeret that same way. Maybe the Netjers had been wrong. Maybe they hadn’t killed all of us.

  I pushed the threads of At and anti-At out through my palms and into the ground. The second they made contact with the earth, I was connected. To everything.

  I could feel the pulse of the planet . . . sense the destruction the Netjers had caused, as well as all of the life thriving despite it. I could sense Cassie and the rest of Garth’s family, holed up in Nik’s cave in the foothills of Port Madison. I could sense Alison and Joe, hunkering down in a cabin on a snowy pass in the Cascades. I could sense millions—maybe even billions—of people, broken but not beaten. Humanity had taken a hit, and they were greatly diminished, but they were still here, surviving. Rebuilding. Not giving up.

  Well, neither would I.

  I searched and searched and searched for any hint of that familiar spark of soul-energy, that golden aura that marked those with eternal life. But I found none.

  Far from defeated, I turned my attention to the humans, searching among them for young Nejerets who’d yet to manifest, for those who still appeared human. I searched for carriers of the recessive Nejeret gene. I searched until my muscles started to cramp up from kneeling in the same position for so long.

  But still, I found nothing. Not even the merest hint of a Nejeret.

  Because the Netjers had eradicated my kind from the planet, just as the Mother of All had ordered them to do. They hadn’t only killed all of the Nejerets, they’d wiped my universe clean of all traces of my kind. There would be no coming back from this.

  I pulled the threads of At and anti-At out of the earth and back into my body, then raised my head to look up at the stars. An idea lit up my thoughts like fireworks in the night sky.

  The Netjers may have eradicated all traces of my kind from the physical realm, but they hadn’t touched Aaru. Because they couldn’t touch Aaru, not without risking being sucked into the hereafter themselves.

  My people were dead, but they weren’t gone. Nejerets are energy beings, and energy beings can’t die . . . not unless something more powerful than them gets its hands on them. Something like the Mother of All or Isfet.

  Or, I now knew, something like me.

  Anapa had said that not even a Netjer could break out of Aaru—that imprisonment there would be an eternal sentence even for the beings my kind considered gods.

  Well, guess what—I wasn’t a Netjer. I wasn’t anything that had ever come before. My very existence bent the rules that determined what was and wasn’t possible in this universe.

  Who was to say I couldn’t break the rules altogether?

  I narrowed my eyes to slits, that initial idea blossoming into a plan. Thanks to my brief communion with Isfet, I knew all that I was capable of. I understood the way the universe worked now. There was a chance that my people weren’t gone forever. There was a teeny, tiny chance that I could bring them back.

  With a flick of my hand, I created a doorway into Duat. The air before me split apart, and through it, I could see the multihued river of soul-energy rushing past.

  I pushed off the ground and stood, then headed for the opening I’d torn in reality. I didn’t even bother with stepping out of my body. I simply walked, body and soul, straight into Duat.

  29

  I cut across the current of soul-energy in Duat, flying toward Aaru as I’d done so many times before. But unlike before, this time I was able to stop myself before that soul-sucking darkness could draw me in and trap me once more. Within Aaru, I was all but powerless. But out here, I was a gods-damned god.

  I hovered near the barrier surrounding Aaru, just this side of the unrelenting darkness, and raised my hands, submerging them into that inky blackness. It tried to pull me in, like always, but resisting was easy enough now that I had full access to my powers.

  I sent little At and anti-At feelers into the shell surrounding Aaru, tasting the darkness. I pulled some of it into me, rolling it around to get a feel for what it really was. And what I found caught me completely off guard.

  I knew this darkness; I’d tasted it before. I’d pulled it into me and filtered it through my ba when I’d cleansed the taint from the poor shadowed souls of those killed by the Cascade Virus. This darkness was the same damn thing. I had no idea how I’d missed it, let alone how it was possible for the two to be related.

  Somehow, when Mari and the Ouroboros scientists created the gods-forsaken Cascade Virus, they must have tapped into the darkness surrounding Aaru. That was the thing even Mari with her genius-level intellect hadn’t been able to puzzle out. That was the thing nobody had been able to cure. Because nothing could destroy this darkness.

  Nothing, until me.

  With a howl, I plunged the threads of At and anti-At deeper into the dark shell surrounding Aaru. I extended those threads out as far as I could, and then I began to suck the inky darkness into me.

  It funneled into my ba, pooling there until I was overflowing with the putrid taint, and then it spilled out of me and into Duat, the inert remnants disintegrating as they were carried away by the current of soul-energy. Screaming, I channeled the darkness through me until my body ached and my soul burned. The pain was beyond unbearable. But still, I pulled more into me.

  Slowly, fissures appeared in the unrelenting darkness. They widened, more cracks branching out from the originals.

  It was working. I almost couldn’t believe it. It was actually working. The barrier surrounding Aaru was weakening.

  I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. I could feel the shell surrounding Aaru shrinking, constricting and thinning as I siphoned more and more of the darkness through my soul. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my throat was raw from screaming. And still, I pulled more of the darkness into me.

  Until suddenly, inexplicably, Aaru shrank into a pin-sized orb—a single point in all of existence. The threads of At and anti-At snapped back into me, and there was a moment of stunned silence.

  The soul-energy stilled all around me, the flow stopping for the first time ever. The song of ma’
at faltered. And I hung there, eyes opened wide and soul on fire, for an eternal moment.

  Until, with a flash of brilliant, blinding light, Aaru imploded.

  30

  The force of the concussion threw me backward, and I flew across Duat toward the hole I’d torn in reality. In less than a second, I was flung back out into the physical realm. I landed on my butt, skidding on the dry earth before slamming into the corner of Nuin’s tomb.

  “Ow,” I gasped, falling onto my side. I groaned, reaching one arm behind me to rub my bruised and battered backside. I had no doubt that everything from the backs of my thighs to my shoulder blades would soon be a mess of purple and blue, and from the feel of it every time my lungs expanded, I’d cracked a few ribs as well. I would heal, but it would take a while.

  I struggled to get my hands and knees under me, cringing from the sharp, stabbing pain along my side. Gritting my teeth, I pushed off the ground and sat back on my heels. I looked just in time to see the first few Nejeret souls hurtle through the interdimensional hole.

  With no more Aaru to hold their eternal bas prisoner, my people were free to return to the physical realm as glowing, golden energy beings. They didn’t have bodies anymore, but then, maybe they didn’t really need them. I hadn’t actually known what would happen when I destroyed the barrier surrounding Aaru, but their return was by far the best outcome.

  I didn’t recognize the first dozen or so golden souls to reemerge, but then Lex burst through the opening, clinging to Heru, the two of them holding Reni and Bobby between them. The small family flew past me and down into the tomb, where their bodies lay bloodied and broken.

  Neither willing nor able to tear my eyes from the doorway to Duat, I placed a hand on the side of the tomb and slowly, painfully, climbed to my feet. I looked at each and every glowing face as it reentered the land of the living, searching for Nik among the throng returning home.

  Aset and Neffe came through close together but flew away from the tomb, back toward Heru’s palace. From the looks of it, the souls were returning to wherever their bodies had fallen. Not that they would be able to return to their bodies—that ship had sailed—but they seemed to be drawn to those discarded physical shells, almost like they were anchored to them.

  Nik didn’t have a body anymore. What did that mean for him? Where did that mean his ba would go? Or would it be drawn back here at all? Would he be stuck in Duat, floating around among the soul-energy, forever?

  Clutching my side, I stumbled a few steps toward the interdimensional hole, watching as more and more Nejeret souls hurtled through. I would pull Nik out of Duat myself, if I had to.

  All of a sudden, Nik burst through the opening between realities, a brilliant, golden fireball hurtling straight toward me.

  I gaped, mental tailspin stalled and heart stumbling.

  Nik’s ba crashed into me, and I slammed back against the side of the tomb, bruising my back further and cracking another rib or two. The pain was white hot and blinding, becoming everything for a few seconds. But that initial spike of agony faded quickly, until the pain was nothing compared to all I’d been through over the past week. Until it was a tickle compared to the turmoil of losing everyone I loved.

  One hand still clutching my injured side, I wrapped an arm around Nik’s shoulders, and his aura flared brighter. I was a little surprised that I could touch him in his incorporeal state, but then, I’d been able to touch the shadow souls, too, so maybe I should have expected it.

  “You’re injured,” Nik said, his touch hesitant. He pulled away so he could see my face. “And covered in blood.”

  “I’m fine,” I told him. The blood was all his, anyway. I squeezed him as tight as I could, pushing through the pain and silently vowing to never let him go again. “I thought I’d lost you forever,” I said against his neck, voice high and tight. My eyes burned, a sure sign that tears were on the way.

  “Never,” Nik said, tilting my head back and bending down to kiss me. He crushed his lips against mine, kissing me like I was the thing he needed most to survive. Like I was more important to him than air.

  As my own depleting supply of air ran out, I realized that might actually be the case for Nik now that he was a free-roaming, incorporeal energy being. His ties to the physical realm had been severed, his need to breathe right along with it.

  I pushed on Nik’s chest, and he resisted at first, but finally, reluctantly, he let up. A little. I inhaled deeply, then kissed him again; it was a slower, gentler kiss, but filled with just as much passion. Just as much love and joy and longing.

  Nik molded his hands to my neck and jaw, breaking our kiss and placing his forehead against mine. His eyes searched mine, the pale blue replaced by a luminous gold so light it almost looked silver in the starlight.

  Tears welled in my eyes, spilling over the brim and gliding down my cheeks toward Nik’s hands.

  “Kitty Kat,” he said, brushing the tears away with his thumbs. “Don’t be sad. I’m here. We’re all here . . . and all because of you.”

  My chin trembled, and I had to clear my throat to speak. “I’m not sad,” I said, voice tremulous.

  And despite all of the evidence pointing to the contrary, I wasn’t sad. I was elated. I was over-fucking-joyed. I was the happiest I’d ever been in my entire life. I’d gone from the lowest low to the highest high, and the emotional shift was so overwhelming that my body didn’t have any other way to process it besides tears.

  My lips spread into a pure, joyous smile. “I’m so fucking happy, Nik.”

  Nik mirrored my smile. “And I’m so fucking proud of you,” he whispered before leaning in to capture my lips once more.

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and froze in Nik’s embrace. People surrounded us. Glowing, golden people. My people.

  Nik broke the kiss, his brow furrowing.

  I sent a meaningful look behind him, and he glanced around, eyebrows rising.

  Chuckling, Nik met my eyes once more, licked his lips, and gave me one more heated kiss. Not much ruffled Nik—certainly not an audience.

  He shifted so he was standing beside me and draped an arm over my shoulders as he smoothed his hair back with his other hand, cool as a cucumber.

  I, on the other hand, was not cool at all. My neck and cheeks felt like they were on fire.

  “Little sister,” Dom said, breaking away from the circle of Nejerets surrounding us and stepping forward. He placed his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, eyes shining with pride. “Thank you,” he said, bowing his head. “You vowed you would find a way to bring me back, and you succeeded. Perhaps now, you may find it in your heart to forgive yourself . . .” His eyes, as dark as ever, met mine once more, and his thin lips curved into a small, closemouthed smile.

  I cleared my throat, but I couldn’t find my voice, so I nodded instead. Forgive myself? Sure, I thought I could manage that.

  Behind Dom, I saw the rest of my companions from Aaru­—Mari, the twins, Anapa, and Re. Even Joju stood with them, expression stuck somewhere between astonishment and awe as he took in all the wonder that was the Nejeret Oasis.

  “Susie?” Lex said, stunned into immobility on the landing before the entrance to the tomb. “Syris?” Heru appeared behind her, Reni in his arms and Bobby standing beside him, his hand engulfing the little boy’s.

  I looked from Lex to the twins. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly four years. They’d been able to speak through a special necklace the twins had made for Lex, but that was it. No family dinners. No motherly caresses. No comforting hugs.

  “Mama!” Susie said, tears already flowing as she ran toward her mother. Syris was right behind her. Susie flung herself into Lex’s arms, and Syris wrapped his arms around both his sister and mother a moment later.

  It was one of the most touching, beautiful moments I’d ever witnessed, renewing the flow of tears streaming down my cheeks. And for once, I didn’t care at all that I was crying. I didn’t even care that others were se
eing me do it. This moment, standing in the heart of the Oasis surrounded by the people I’d thought lost forever, was worth all the tears in the world.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” a voice boomed from high above.

  My joy evaporated in an instant, and my heart plummeted. Slowly, reluctantly, I raised my eyes to the sky.

  The Mother of All floated above the Oasis, diamond skin glinting platinum in the starlight. Behind her, an army of Netjers spread as far as the eye could see, blocking out so much of the night sky.

  The Mother of All met my eyes, lip curling. “Netjers,” she shouted, “attack!”

  31

  For a moment, fear held me frozen in place as I watched the horde of Netjers descend upon us. But I’m nothing if not defiant, and I wasn’t about to go down without a fight.

  I slipped out from under Nik’s arm and thrust my hands up over my head, grinding my teeth together as I forced an avalanche of pure, sizzling energy out through my palms. The raw universal energy flowed into my ba and poured out through my hands in an endless torrent. It shot high overhead, cascading out and down until it covered the entire Oasis, a force field encasing the ancient city much as the dome of At once had. Only this shield was one I hoped the Netjers wouldn’t be able to break through.

  The first Netjers to reach the energy barrier crashed into it only to ricochet off in a shower of sparks.

  I’d been right; they couldn’t get through. They couldn’t even touch it.

  They gathered near the shield, just out of reach.

  I renewed my efforts, pulling more of that raw energy into me and forcing it back out through my hands.

  Painfully slowly, I pushed the shield farther away from us. The Netjers moved back, avoiding touching the endless flow of energy.

  Bolstered by the success, I gradually flipped the shield’s curvature from convex to concave, gathering the Netjer army into an increasingly tight cluster. I was determined to shove them all the way back to their own damn universe, if need be. And if that didn’t work, I would settle for destroying them, just as I’d done with the Netjer assassins.