Shifters Gone Wild; Collection

by Skye MacKinnon

  “Where do we need to go for your scorpions?”

  “Below.”

  He didn’t question my crypticness. Probably because his temple held just as many secrets as mine did.

  Finding what I was looking for, I pressed my fingers into the button and prayed to myself that it would work.

  A sigh of relief escaped as a grating sound filled the temple as the secret door slid back and revealed the room below.

  “Sneaky,” Sed muttered.

  “It’s the best way to protect the bounty of my temple,” I said, only half paying attention to the surroundings.

  “You’ve got that right.” The awe in his voice as he looked around my golden treasures was incredible.

  This wasn’t even the best part, but he wasn’t to know that yet. Not when he hadn’t seen the beauty of thousands of scorpions dancing over each other as they thrived.

  I turned to the left and slipped down a small corridor. Just a little further and I’d get to see my beauties again. Guilt filled me at how long I’d left them alone. I really shouldn’t have let my own vanity keep me away for so long.

  “Just a little further,” I whispered to myself, the excitement of what I’d get to see filling me.

  Hastening my steps, I entered the room where my scorpions would be and gasped.

  Tears sprung to my eyes as I took in the sight before me. The horror almost too much to cope with.

  Sed pulled me into his arms just as a heaving sob came over me. My beautiful scorpions. Dead. Gone.

  “It’s okay,” Sed whispered. “They won’t all be gone.”

  His words made it worse and my sobbing worsened. I didn’t want to think about what the consequences of this could be for me. I was weak enough as it was, the lack of familiars could do even more damage to that.

  “Nothing can be done,” I murmured against his shirt, pulling him closer and trying to get as much comfort out of the contact as possible. I wouldn’t admit it out loud but I needed his reassurance more than he could even imagine.

  “That’s not true…”

  “It is. Look at them,” I demanded.

  I felt his head move as he took in the sight before him. I couldn’t look again. Not at the evil results of whoever had done this. The only word I could think of to describe it was a massacre. The cracked shells and ripped off claws were strewn across the cold stone floor, no care given for where they landed. How someone could have been so disrespectful to them was beyond me. Maybe I should have left a priestess here after all. At the time, I hadn’t wanted to risk anyone here without me. Now I wasn’t so sure. Hindsight was a wonderful thing to torture myself with.

  “It’ll be okay.” Sed’s voice shook as he spoke.

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

  “Some of them will have survived,” he assured me.

  As much as I appreciated his optimism, I didn’t think there was any truth in his words. Whoever had done this had been on a mission to destroy. Which would mean it had to be purposeful and that couldn’t be forgiven. I just wished I could discover who’d done it. They’d quickly be discovering what it meant to have the wrath of a goddess on their side.

  I might be weak as far as my magic was concerned but that didn’t mean I wasn’t powerless in other respects. My own poison was far deadlier than that of my scorpions. One sting and I could decide just how painful and long death was going to be.

  “We need to look around and see if there’s anything to help us work out who did this,” Sed suggested.

  I nodded, unable to form any words and just wanting to get things over with. I pulled away from him and stormed back through my temple, looking for the clues he was so sure must be lingering there. Whoever this was hadn’t cared that I’d find out, otherwise they’d have cleaned up after their massacre down there.

  Nothing seemed to be disturbed, which I found suspicious in itself. Why would someone go far enough to cover their tracks here but not below? It didn’t make any sense.

  “I think I found something.”

  There was a note in Sed’s voice that I didn’t like at all. Whatever he’d found wasn’t something I was going to like and that worried me.

  My footsteps sounded louder than ever as I crossed the temple to get to him. Possibilities ran through my mind but none of them explained why he was standing at one of the walls examining the carvings. Except for…

  “No.” My hand covered my mouth, trying to stop the horror from escaping.

  “I think so,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  I reached out my hand and ran my fingertips over the scarred wall, tracing the symbols that should be there. “How could someone do this?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know,” he responded sadly.

  His voice betrayed what I was thinking. Whoever did this knew what it would mean. Even more than the scorpions, this screamed of someone wanting to drain me of all the power I had in the world.

  “Who would even do this?” I whispered, not taking my hand away from the wall.

  “Someone who knew what it would do.”

  “But who?” I tried to ignore the tears were starting to form in my eyes again. This hadn’t been a good day so far but I suspected it was only going to get worse.

  Sed moved away from me and examined the other paintings, no doubt looking for what I couldn’t.

  Something deep in my gut said he’d find exactly the same, putting me in more danger than I’d even dreamed of. I focused in on the damaged wall in front of me, letting the truth sink in.

  I hadn’t been forgotten, I was being erased.

  Chapter 7

  “It’ll be alright, Sera…”

  “Don’t coddle me.” I knew Sed didn’t mean any harm but that also didn’t mean I wanted to hear his assurances.

  He understood as well as I did what the destroyed cartouches meant. There was no coming back from being that forgotten. If it had been done all over the rest of Egypt then I was going to be in trouble that rivalled the depth of the Nile in flood.

  “We can work out who it is…”

  “Can we just not for now?” I asked. “Let’s just have something to eat and go to sleep.” The words slipped out before I thought about being in his room as I said it.

  This hadn’t been my plan but Sed had made a very reasonable suggestion that this was the most private place in his temple, even more so than the room I’d been given, and that we wouldn’t be disturbed as we tried to work out what to do next. The only thing was that now we were here, I didn’t want to focus on the truth of what had happened. At least for one evening.

  “Alright, what would you like to eat?”

  “Surprise me.” I gave him a weak smile and watched as he left the room. Now I thought about it, I was particularly hungry. Hopefully things would seem all that more manageable when I was full.

  He slipped back into the room moments later with a platter of fresh fruit and nuts, accompanied some honeyed flat breads. My stomach growled loudly at the thought of how delicious a meal this would turn out to be. I hadn’t had any of the things he’d brought in such a long time.

  Other than the obvious, I did have to wonder why I’d stayed away from my homeland for so long.

  “Would you like some wine?” he asked.

  I nodded, eager to take the edge off the events of the day and stop obsessing over what could be happening to me soon.

  He passed me a full glass and I took it eagerly, raising it to my lips and taking a sip. It was good. So good, I almost suspected he was using his ceremonial stash for me. If that was true, I appreciated it.

  He indicated to one of the chaises he had scattered around the room and I took a seat, helping myself to a date from the platter he set down between us.

  “This is delicious,” I said after a few more bites.

  “Everything tastes good when you’re hungry,” Sed assured me.

  A laugh escaped me. “More like everything tastes good when it’s homegrown.

  He rel
axed into his seat, clearly put at ease by my compliments. “Yes, I miss the food here when I’m away. Coming home and getting to eat it is like a treat again. It’s something I look forward to.”

  “I get that. Do you grow all of it here?”

  “Some of it comes down from the fields outside the city too, but all of it is grown and tended to by my priests in one place or another.”

  I smiled weakly at the unintended reminder that I didn’t have any of that. There was no chance of having my own food grown and tended to by priestesses. Not unless some kind of miracle happened.

  “I’m sorry…”

  I waved away his apology. There was no need for it. “I know you didn’t intend to.”

  “Is it something we can rebuild?”

  I frowned. I hadn’t thought about it that way. Would it even be possible to build a following again? Especially in this world where not everyone believed in our existence anymore. That was one stumbling block too many for me.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Are you sure there aren’t any followers around still?” He took a flatbread from the platter and folded it in half to eat it easier.

  I thought for a moment, considering everything I knew about how our magic and our names worked. “Potentially. I still have a little magic though it takes a crazy amount of time to recharge it.”

  “You must still have some followers. But where are they?”

  I shrugged. They were never going to have been at the temple, not after I shut it down long before any human was born. The only people who could possibly still be around who knew where it was, were the two demi-goddesses who were members of my priesthood. I doubted they’d risk betraying me though. It wasn’t worth their lives. The magic that made sure they existed also didn’t allow for that betrayal. They’d die where they stood the moment they decided to go behind my back.

  “You look lost in thought,” Sed observed.

  “I’m trying to work out where to go from here,” I admitted. “There doesn’t seem to be much left for me.”

  “That’s not true.” He leaned across the platter and placed a hand on my knee.

  I wasn’t able to ignore the warmth of his skin as it seeped through the thin material of my skirt. I leaned into him, not fully in control of what I was doing. Like the gentleman he was, Sed shuffled away and removed his hand, breaking the contact between us and removing the intimacy of the moment.

  As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I missed the closeness. I hadn’t felt like that about another person for years. Not even just for fun.

  Sed coughed loudly. “Who would even have a reason to do this to you?” he asked.

  I shuffled in my seat. The question had been playing on my mind since the moment I’d seen the scarred wall and one name kept coming forth. I just didn’t want to admit it to Sed.

  “Sera?”

  “Can we focus on healing Osiris first and then working out who is trying to erase me from existence?”

  “No.”

  I jumped, his answer not the one I expected at all. He’d been so supportive up until now, it was difficult to believe he didn’t want to be that person.

  “I don’t mean to be harsh, Sera. But they’re all tied together. You said yourself that you don’t have many powers at the moment. How are you going to help Osiris if that’s the case?”

  I shrugged, not really wanting to deal with the implications of the very true statement. “I’ll figure something out. Not all of my worth is in my magic.” In fact, most of my worth wasn’t in the magic I could do. I’d trained to practice healing and medicine thousands of different times over the years, each time learning more skills I could use on gods, humans, and animals. It wouldn’t even be bragging to say I was the most trained healer in existence.

  “Can you heal a god without magic?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then we’re not risking it. Can you imagine being the one to tell Isis you can’t heal her husband.”

  I shuddered at the thought. Isis was a lovely woman until Osiris was threatened, then she was a force to be reckoned with, and not one that anyone would possibly want to go up against. Ever. I certainly had no plans to get on her bad side.

  “Good point,” I admitted.

  “Right, so who do you think it could be?”

  “Kuk,” I answered instantly. “He’s the only one I can think of who’d go out of their way to do this to me.”

  “Why?”

  My feet suddenly became far more interesting than they ever had before. My history with Kuk was complicated at best and I didn’t particularly want to talk about that with Sed, especially not with how he’d made me feel with something as simple as a hand on my leg earlier. I definitely wasn’t ready to ruin the chance of anything between us.

  No gods. Remembering that rule was becoming difficult with him around. He definitely muddied the water a little.

  “Sera?” he prompted.

  “It’s complicated,” I muttered.

  “I guessed as much.” He chuckled before taking another sip of his wine.

  That seemed like a good idea and I picked up my own, taking a far bigger sip than I intended to and ending up spluttering as it went down the wrong way.

  Sed’s palm slapped against my back and the wine spewed from my mouth. Never mind my history with Kuk, I was going to put him off by my weird drinking habits. I wasn’t sure what had gotten into me, I was normally a lot smoother than this in life.

  “You okay?”

  “Been better.” My voice rasped over the words, the effort of coughing stealing any pretences of my voice being melodic.

  “One second.” His palm left my back and a pang of loss travelled through me. I liked having him touch me. Far more than I should. “Here.”

  I took the glass of water he offered and took small sips, the cold liquid smoothing out the crackle in my throat.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now will you tell me about Kuk?” True curiosity lingered in his eyes, though I didn’t want to linger too much on why. It would go away as soon as I started talking after all.

  “There’s not much to really tell. We had a relationship during the tenth dynasty. It ended.”

  “Because of Kuket?”

  I laughed heartily, as if the fact my lover had a male and female aspect had anything to do with it. We were immortal beings, gender meant very little to us. “No. It never mattered to me which form he was in.”

  “But you call him he?”

  I shrugged. “That was the form he was in when we broke things off. He’d been in it for a few years so that’s what stuck in my head.”

  “He didn’t switch between the two?” He leaned forward, clearly intrigued in a way that people only were if they didn’t have any experiences with one of the gender switching deities.

  “At some points he’d switch almost daily, and then not again for years at a time. I’d describe it as maddeningly inconsistent.”

  “It sounds like it. So why did things end if it wasn’t to do with him switching?”

  “We had a difference of opinions,” I muttered.

  “Sera…”

  “He wanted to officially merge our temples and I…”

  “Didn’t want to reveal your secret scorpion hideaway?” he joked.

  “No. I didn’t want to be one of those couples. It works for some…”

  “Like Osiris and Isis?”

  “Exactly. But just look at Seth and Nephthys. They hate one another and the whole world knows it. I didn’t want that for me and Kuk.”

  “I get that. But it might not have turned out that way.” There’s something odd in Sed’s voice, almost like relief that what he was saying wasn’t actually true. I didn’t want to delve too far into it.

  “Given the evidence now, I think it probably would have turned out exactly that way,” I countered. “Whatever the reason, I ended it and he didn’t take it well.”

  “Did he know about your secret scorpions
?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’ll know what to do to remove your name from everywhere.”

  “Yes.” I was fairly sure he didn’t need my answer. He was just thinking aloud. I did it myself from time to time, I couldn’t begrudge him that.

  “Where will he go next?”

  “I don’t know. I still have a little bit of magic, so I suspect he’ll be heading for my secondary temple.”

  “Which is?”

  “Just over the border.” I’d watched the shape of Egypt change so many times that it was hard to keep track of where they were. Thankfully, things seemed to have settled down recently but that meant my other temple was outside what would now be considered as Egypt.

  “You have two temples?” His eyebrows almost shot off his face and I had to suppress a snigger. I did love the fact everyone was so clueless about the second one.

  “It’s a lot smaller but I had it built for precisely this reason.”

  “Smart,” Sed muttered.

  “Oh very.”

  “We’ll set off in the morning?”

  I nodded, not knowing what else to say to that. We needed to go there, even if I felt funny about sharing the secret with someone else. Then again, there was something about Sed that made him feel far safer than any of the other people I’d told.

  Sed felt safe. And like trusting him was the right thing to do. Not that I knew what to do with that. Or I did. I just didn’t want to consider the option. I wasn’t ready yet.

  Chapter 8

  “NO!” I screamed, my eyes snapping open and my hand grasping at my neck, trying to loosen the hold the dream had on me.

  Scuffling outside increased my panic as I tried to work out where I was and how I’d gotten here. Memories of the night before slowly made themselves known but I still couldn’t work out what the scuffling was and what it would mean to me.

  Reaching within me, I let out a sigh of relief when I found a tiny spark of magic inside. Summoning it up, I held it in my hands without quite letting it get to the surface. If I could help it, I didn’t want to use it. Magic was rare enough for me these days. Even so, I could feel the urge for it to let go and fill the air with a show of power. Despite the situation, I wanted to roll my eyes. Magic sometimes had a mind of its own and did whatever it wanted to, despite the will of the person controlling it.