Serpent's Game (The Soul Eater Book 5)

by Pippa Dacosta

  “Cujo highlighted a few other locations,” Cat continued. “Hotspots. One near the silk mill and one near the old train yards. The god-child, this Nile, he’s in Allentown for a reason, so I doubt they’ve gone far.”

  My cell hummed against my leg. I scooped it out of my pocket and frowned at Osiris’s name on the display. If I didn’t answer, he’d probably appear. Cat had so far stayed outside of Osiris’s reach, and I needed it to stay that way.

  Cat eyed me curiously. “You gonna get that?”

  I held up a finger and walked the phone across Starbucks. “Yes?”

  A young couple sent me dry looks.

  “My seers tell me there’s a storm coming.”

  I laughed like I hadn’t laughed in weeks. I laughed so damn hard the nearby couple decided it was time to leave, and the line of folks desperate for coffee pretended not to notice.

  His quiet fuming grated down the line. I was so tempted to push him. I knew exactly which buttons would get a reaction, but enraging Osiris wouldn’t help me locate Nile. “What else do your seers see?” I asked.

  “That you’re at its center.”

  “Mm…” I caught Cat’s eye. She had sharp hearing and might have been able to pick out my words from the murmuring crowd. “What color is the sandstorm, Osiris?”

  “Red.”

  No wonder he was worried. “Maybe your seers are showing you their wishful thinking? The last seer you employed, you cut out his eyes and sent them to me. Doesn’t exactly inspire staff loyalty.”

  “Where’s the boy?” he demanded.

  “I’m close.”

  “Close is not good enough. You’ve had days.”

  I held my tongue. It would be easier if your wife wasn’t playing deadly games with my past.

  “I was sorry to learn of the death of Mrs. Nick Jones,” Osiris added as a reminder of what happened when I defied the gods.

  I ran my tongue over my dry lips and swallowed a string of curses. “I said I’d get the boy, and I will. Don’t push me or I’ll hand him over to your lovely wife instead.”

  More silence, this time heavy with impending rage. “I am fully aware of my wife’s indiscretions.”

  “Her indiscretions make you look like an impotent pretender. Maybe you should be keeping an eye on her instead of me?”

  “My wife is no concern of yours. Bring me the boy. Stop wasting time. You have a day, or I will tear that city apart regardless of the people who get in my way. You do care about the people, don’t you, Mokarakk Oma?”

  “Sure.” I care about reducing you to a pile of ash.

  “You had better hope my seers are wrong.” He didn’t believe his seers, not completely, but he was concerned. Good. Let him sweat. He’d already made mistakes. While he fretted over me, he’d make more.

  “Yes, milord,” I drawled and hung up on his growl. Baiting Osiris was turning into my new favorite pastime. A shame it wouldn’t—couldn’t last.

  Cat was leaning back in her chair, sipping her coffee, when I returned. She eyed me over the rim of the oversized cup. “Are we getting company?”

  “Not if we find Chuck and her god-child today.” I used my phone to search the areas Cat had isolated from Cujo’s notes. “Both those locations are industrial. The train yard has a dozen warehouses. The silk mill looks like it’s under development.” It would take us too long to thoroughly search both locations together. “You take the mill, I’ll take the yard. No heroics. If you see anything, call me.”

  She still eyed me over her coffee, her expression static. “Do you think you hurt Bastet?” she asked.

  Did I? I’d given up the memories for a reason. Something had happened between Bastet, me, and Chuck. The evidence was stacking up. “No. I cared a great deal for Bastet.” I had cared—I still did—but what I felt for Bastet didn’t prove anything. Shit happened, mostly to me.

  My insides squirmed at the thought of what could have transpired. The not knowing was a toxic thought eating away at my already undermined psyche.

  Cat nodded, downed the rest of her coffee, and swiped the picture of Chuck from the file. “I’ll take the mill,” she confirmed, “and I’ll call you in if I find something.”

  Chapter 14

  Allentown’s train yards had once been a bustling hive of activity, but with the town’s decline in the eighties and nineties, the yards had shrunk and several nearby warehouses lay empty. I strode across the railroad tracks snaking through the yard. Metal glistened. The rain had stirred up the smell of damp steel and diesel. It wasn’t yet dusk, but it might as well have been. Black clouds hung low over the long single-story depot buildings.

  I’d taken an indirect route into the yard, over a fence and through patches of overgrown brush. If the god-child Nile was here, I wanted to scope out what I was dealing with before he threw me through another window.

  Painted red fire escape stairs clung to the side of the nearest building and led to a door with weeds sprouting from its frame. I started toward it but stopped, freezing on the spot. Invisible magic crawled closer, lapping at my clothes and licking over my exposed skin. Alysdair gently hummed against my back. The touch wasn’t malevolent, but it had the slippery sensation of déjà vu behind it. Approaching Nile and Chuck would have been so much easier with my memories intact.

  The fire escape groaned as I climbed higher. Weeds had glued the rusted door shut, but a broken window provided a long view inside the warehouse and the array of markings painted across the entire floor. Nile had been busy. The floor and walls were coated in hieroglyphs, and they all throbbed with a baritone beat. This wasn’t some amateur throwing a few symbols together and hoping for the best. The designs here all worked in harmony, each one building on the next. But building to what?

  Nile was crouched near the far corner, paintbrush in hand, and behind him stood Chuck, arms crossed, chewing on her lip.

  They’d rigged a few floodlights that buzzed in pools of light and trailing cables.

  Marking a building like this would invoke some of the old magic. Over time, like Egypt’s ancient tombs and temples, that magic would latch on and grow roots. An empty depot was an unusual place to attempt such a thing. Whatever Nile’s intentions were, he was almost finished.

  My cell vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it. As helpful as Cat’s claws were, I didn’t want her getting too close to the truth about Bastet—whatever that may be. No, it was time I had a little one-on-one chat with Nile and Chuck.

  After working my way around the outside of the building, I checked a side door for magical traps, didn’t sense any, and quietly pushed inside.

  “How much longer?” Chuck asked. Her voice echoed around the building, masking my approach.

  “Almost done…” Nile swept the brush across the floor, painting out a new mark. He moved fast, barely hesitating. To cover the inside of the entire building must have taken him days.

  “I know you’re here, Soul Eater,” Nile said without looking up.

  Chuck yelped as I emerged from the shadows. She threw her fury-laden glare my way. I lifted my hands.

  “I told you he’d find out,” Chuck told Nile. “He’s more clever than he looks.”

  “I don’t want to hurt either of you,” I said.

  Chuck’s lips twisted. “Too late.”

  Nile continued painting. His shoes scuffed across the gritty floor as he repositioned himself.

  “What is this?” I asked, stepping around what looked like a representation of a crocodile with three lines painted above it. Some of these marks, like that one, didn’t have a translation. But combined with the others, they took on meaning. From what I could make out, the paintings were designed to pull power in like water down a drain.

  “This is just something I gotta do,” Nile replied. He ended his brush stroke with a flourish and dumped the brush in the paint pot. From his crouch, he flicked his bangs out of his eyes and looked up. “I was curious about you, but walking in dreams is confusing. I wasn’t sure who you were bac
k when we first met. You killed that creature and would have killed the guy who was filming if I hadn’t distracted you. I thought you were one of the bad ones.” He straightened and tilted his head, studying me curiously. “When I saw you in my home, I acted to protect my mom. She told me later how you’re supposed to be on our side?”

  I lowered my hands and watched the kid study me, the two of us sizing up the other. We hadn’t officially met before, but like his magic, there was something startling familiar about him—about them both.

  “I’m not convinced, but Mom says you’re cool, so whatever, man. But if you hurt her, I’ll kill you, just so we’re clear.”

  His mom, Chuck, had sharpened her glare into a dagger’s edge. “I’m sure Ace will apologize. Any second now.”

  “Your son’s the one who threw me through a window.”

  Chuck rolled her eyes and flung a hand out toward Nile. “Look at him.”

  I did. I’d been looking at him since I’d arrived. He had the darker skin and black hair of the gods, not to mention Osiris’s suave DNA.

  “Does anything look a little weird about my son? Huh? You’re supposed to be the guy with all the answers, so tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do with him!”

  I stepped closer, and they both tensed. “Okay. I’m going to be straight with you—”

  “I was waiting for you!” Chuck snapped. “You and Bastet. And when you didn’t come, I had to… I know this is all screwed up. I just… I was scared, okay? It was bad enough being pregnant with Osiris’s child, but to have to go through the birth on my own? And then when he started… When he…” She waved her arms around, indicating everything in the vicinity. “All this. Look at him! Look! He’s eighteen months old going on nineteen! You have no idea what I’ve been through. It’s hard enough being a mom, but when your kid turns out to have these freakish abilities and there’s nobody… nobody who can help.” She marched up to me and looked right into my eyes. Her lips quivered, but her eyes burned with a fierceness I recognized all too well. “I hate you!” Her eyes shimmered with tears, but also with flecks of gold that had no right to be there. The deeper I looked, the more her gaze pulled me in and the more my instincts started screeching alarm bells.

  Chuck landed a punch to my chest. I barely felt it beneath the pull of her gaze.

  “Did you hear me?” She drew back, ready to hit me a second time.

  I caught her arm. “Your eyes.”

  She landed her other fist to my side.

  “Let her go, man.” Nile’s warning buzzed annoyingly in my ear.

  Chuck tried hitting me a third time, but I caught her jaw and yanked her close.

  “No.” Gold-flecked eyes. Eyes that beckoned and pulled and called to the soul. “It’s not possible.”

  “Get off me!” She tried to pull away from me.

  “Get off her, man!”

  Magic flooded the building, sweeping in like a wave to where Nile stood, soaking it up.

  I shoved Chuck back too harshly. She stumbled, almost falling, and then started reeling off some colorful insults, but I was beyond listening. The girl had soul eater eyes.

  I staggered as my thoughts reached for an explanation. She looked like Bastet, had the same sharpness about her, and she had soul eater eyes. If I’d locked gaze with her for a moment longer, she would have seen my soul. Bastet had walked into my office twenty years after the last time I’d seen her. Twenty years after I’d walked away from our relationship… Cat had told me Bastet had a daughter. “How old are you, Chuck?”

  “I’m not telling you shit! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I knew what Cujo hadn’t wanted to tell me. I knew why Bastet had come back. It hadn’t been about missing women at all, not really. This girl… Chuck was my daughter.

  Nile’s magic hit me like a semi. I slammed into a wall side-on and met the floor face down. It all happened in a blink, too fast for me to counter, the magic too powerful to belong to anyone but a god.

  Nile was a god.

  Chuck was my daughter.

  Panic caged my heart and squeezed my lungs.

  Nile’s outline hovered in my hazy vision. “She says you’re helpful, but I don’t see it. You should leave before I crush you like a bug.”

  The answers were all there, staring down at me. I couldn’t leave now, not with the truth so close. “Wait, I can explain.”

  “Seems like you can’t be trusted,” Nile snarled. “And right now, I don’t need people like you around. I have work to do.”

  “Nile.” I shook some sharpness back into my sight. “Hear me out. I didn’t remember, but… Chuck, she’s—”

  “There are things I know but Mom doesn’t.” He crouched and draped his arms over his knees, fixing me inside his luminous glare. “I see the truth in people the same way you see souls. Call it Thoth’s gift. I am a truthseer, and do you know what I see around you, Mister Ace Dante? Lies. Lies and lies and lies upon lies,” he crooned. “You carry them like a shroud. Lies about who you really are. Lies about Bastet. Mom doesn’t know she’s your daughter, but I do. Grandfather Ace isn’t one of the good guys. You never were.” Closer, he whispered, “After I dream-walked into your life in New York, I saw more about the truth of you. I saw how you killed Bastet by driving that sword on your back straight through her heart. You were cold when you did it, like you didn’t even care. Mom doesn’t know, but I do. I know all the truths, Grandfather, and I think it’s time you left Mom and me alone. Don’t you?”

  I clutched his arm, no longer sure what to say or do. I’d heard his words, but I couldn’t give them weight or thought. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. More than darkness.

  Her eyes were sorry.

  Bile burned my throat, and ash ate at the corner of my vision. Inside, the souls screamed louder than ever before. “Nile, listen. The memories were taken from me. I don’t understand any of this. I just want to help you and Chuck. I came here to help. Osiris is looking for you. Everyone is looking for you.”

  Nile prized my fingers off. “The truth has no time for your lies. The End is coming. I have work to do, and you, Soul Eater, are in my way.”

  ‘Pick up the sword.’ The memory of Osiris’s voice swirled through my thoughts. ‘I want you to know, this was the lesser punishment.’ Alysdair had hummed in my grip, hungry. ‘Kill Bastet’.

  No.

  It couldn’t be.

  Kill Bastet.

  Osiris’s compulsion. I remembered exactly how those words had gripped me and how I’d gripped the sword in turn. I had killed her. I remembered. Oh, by the gods, I remembered everything.

  But you couldn’t compel someone to kill a god. It had always been that way. Yet Osiris had. I’d picked up the sword… No, no… It hadn’t been Osiris. That darker part of me, the hungry dark, had wanted to kill her.

  “By the gods… I killed her.”

  “He looks sick,” Chuck was saying.

  I had my hands under me, my head bowed. The smile on my lips wasn’t my own, but it fit well enough. The laughter in my head wasn’t mine either, but it drowned out the terrible sound of souls screaming, so I kept it. Ash spun around my hands, flowing like water.

  “He is sick,” Nile replied.

  I could make all of this go away.

  It would be easy to stop fighting, just like Isis had said.

  “Do you remember when I found the kitten on the street?” Nile asked Chuck, their voices far away. “It was sick too. You told me then that sometimes it’s better to end a creature’s suffering, to put it out of its misery.”

  “Nile…” Chuck’s voice wavered. “Wait, I know it looks bad, but he did help me—”

  “He killed your mother. I’m not waiting for him to kill mine.”

  “My… what? Who… Bastet? He killed her? She was… she was my mom?”

  The card castle was collapsing. I killed her. I am the dark.

  Nile’s magic thundered closer. I lifted my head and watched Nile march Chuck away. His magic
, amplified by the markings, swept around them and came at me, so vast and so sharp it would have been like drowning in a sea of glass.

  I flung out my hand. “San.” Stop. And just like that, it did.

  Oh, this would be too easy. I climbed to my feet, feeling oddly solid and rooted in the moment. Ash fell from my fingers and rained around my boots. Chuck and Nile stopped. The boy was a puzzle. Mortal, but brimming with godly energy. How curious that one so young should have so much power at his disposal. He had the old ones in him. Osiris, Thoth, and me, Apophis. Nile’s power didn’t come close to what I was capable of, but it was a curious combination nonetheless.

  Chuck yanked free from her son’s grip and whirled. “Ace?”

  I smiled at her—daughter. Yes, she would be useful in the days to come.

  “That’s not your father,” Nile said. Energy crackled in his purple eyes.

  His comment amused me. Considering his godly lineage, he was hardly her son, either. I would enjoy quashing that one’s ambition.

  A fist cracked across my jaw and whipped my head back. Brittle pain exploded in my cheek. I spun and recognized the cat shifter with Mafdet’s blood in her veins right before she kicked me dead center in the gut. There was a time when that kick would have knocked me off my feet. Not now. I stood rigid, caught her ankle, and twisted, wrenching a cry from the shifter. She fell, pain screwing up her lovely features.

  “Good kitty…” I drawled and returned my attention to the boy and his mother. “You were right,” I said, leisurely making my way through the painted hieroglyphs. Those little markings quailed beneath my feet. “About it all, Truthseer. I killed Bastet. In my very… very long life, I admit that was one of the highlights.” I freed Alysdair from its sheath and curled my fingers around the ancient sword’s grip. Hungry she was, like always. The marks etched deep into the blade glowed a cool green, and as I watched, they swirled and slithered, reshaping the sword into its true form. Alysdair was not its name. The blade had not been forged by human hands. Its edge was made of stardust and its grip from the bones of worlds so old they had no names and nobody left to remember them. Nobody but me. The sword was older than time and at home in my hands.