She should take the items down to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and get everything properly appraised, but they could just as likely confiscate them and toss her in jail rather than cut her a check.
He rifled through the box, studying the objects, most of which she had no clue as to who they belonged to. Many were heirlooms, handed down from generation to generation, unfortunately, her bills and Ridley didn’t care. Pieces of jade, blue lapis, a smooth rock of red jasper. A gold necklace inlaid with garnet, turquoise, and amazonite. She had gold and silver trinkets of different sizes. Ivory statues of Bastet—the Avenger of Ra—and Horus—a sky god.
Vito held up her mother’s silver teardrop earrings to the light. Emeline wanted to snatch them back, but…He separated them from the rest of the jewelry and pulled the onyx figurines of minor deities and a worn iron Ankh, partially embedded in stone, from the box. Hieroglyphics were carved into the flat, jagged piece jutting from the stone. Vito ran his finger over the glyphs and disdain twisted his lips before he put it aside.
“A book? Do I look like a library?” He held up a worn leather tome.
“How did that get there?” She flipped through the pages, recognized the squiggly writings and drawings as Grand’s, and dropped the book into her purse.
“Most of this stuff isn’t worth anything.” That was his opening line, how he set the tone for all transactions. He fingered a few items. “Hmm, this is interesting. What is this?” He lifted the broken object.
Emeline shrugged. “I don’t know. Part of a scorpion or scarab maybe.” She didn’t care. The object was gold and hopefully worth enough to get her out of town.
He placed the piece on a scale. The numbers flickered for a second then settled. His gaze narrowed and shifted between her and the object. “Where did you get this?”
“I told you, from my grandfather.” Interest gleamed in his eyes. “I got more,” she lied. She had no idea what else was stashed in the basement where she found this box after she’d rummaged through all the bedrooms. A group entered, bringing a gust of cold air with them.
“All right,” he sighed, ready to wrap things up. “Some of this stuff I can sell as estate jewelry. The rest I can melt down. I’ll give you five fifty for everything and that’s because you’re pretty.” He leered. A few key teeth were missing from his grill. He shouldn’t smile, but with five hundred on the line, she wouldn’t be the one to school him.
Her gut knew she could get more, but she had been to all the other pawn shops in the area and their offers were less. She didn’t have time to waste traveling downtown in the hopes of getting more. The one thousand in her bank account wouldn’t last long, especially for two people to settle in a new town.
Emeline glanced at the teardrop earrings on the counter behind the bulletproof glass. She wanted them back, not for the value…
She studied the ring on her third finger of her left hand. Her mother’s engagement ring. A diamond chip surrounded by silver to give a sparkly illusion. For fifteen years, the symbol of her parents’ love never came off her mother’s fourth finger. Emeline wore it to keep the hounds away. Sometimes the tactic worked. A few men still honored the symbolism.
She worked the little ring off her finger and plunked it down on the counter. “How much will you give me now?”
Emeline left the shop with six hundred dollars. The last fifty cost as much as it took to get.
“Pretty girls shouldn’t cry,” some guy said as she pushed past him on the way out of the store and into a stiff breeze. The wind whipped the tears from her eyes before they stained her cheeks.
Sometimes crying was all you had left. But not today.
***
Avery parked a few blocks away from the abandoned row house. No need to advertise he was doing something illegal. A yawn threatened to escape. The few snatches of sleep in the last thirty-six hours were catching up. His brain ping-ponged from one dilemma to the next. Roman pulled in behind him. Five men dressed in black exited the cars and walked the remaining distance. Two crises at the same time weren’t uncommon, yet he didn’t buy it. Seemed like the family had a target painted on their collective asses, but by whom and what? First Alamut, now Reign. Who else planned on roach crawling their way out of the woodworks?
They entered through the back of the house. Everything seemed the same as they walked through the living room, past the dining room, and entered the kitchen. Faded linoleum, faded appliances and dinette, and old, faded wallpaper decorated with fruit baskets. They gathered in front of the basement door. Weapons drawn, clutched tight. Avery had a gun in one hand and a sword in the other. EJ led the way into darkness. The stairs complained as they descended, yet held together. The same motion light flicked on, though with Roman’s blade lighting the way it wasn’t needed.
They gathered at the rim. “See, hole in the ground. Just like we said.” EJ’s voice filled the silence. Then he jumped.
Too bad he didn’t go head first, Avery thought.
One by one, they followed him down. Avery brought up the rear. His stomach heaved and he fought the sickness attacking his body and mind. He wondered what Roman would do with the slumbering quimaera. They couldn’t leave them there. Yet part of him didn’t relish the thought of slaughtering defenseless creatures, even if they were seven-foot monsters.
A greater part of him wanted blood.
He never wavered. For him, everything was cut and dry, black and white. He’d eliminated the gray areas in his life at age ten with great prejudice. So why did he feel something akin to sympathy for the creatures?
Shit! His thoughts and emotions were all knotted together and the more he tried to unknot them, the tighter they became.
“Whoa! What the—”
“—where are they—”
Lost in thought, Avery had fallen behind the group. He jogged to catch up and quickly reached the bottleneck at the opening of the tunnel. He peered over Quin’s shoulder.
The pit was empty. “Head for the ladder. We need to check the rest,” Avery said. He didn’t trust himself being this close to Roman. Being near him caused all the darkness he’d buried to surface.
EJ walked out onto the catwalk. Thane followed. The metal shifted under their combined weight. “Must be the big dinner I ate.” EJ patted his stomach then grabbed the first rung and climbed. Next Thane, then Quin.
Avery went next, treading carefully across the span as dirt and rocks sprinkled from the loosened joint supports. He’d made it to the ladder when he looked back at Roman who had stopped mid-way on the catwalk and was leaning over the railing.
Avery gritted his teeth and stepped back onto the catwalk which shifted again. Slowly, he forced himself to stand close to Roman. Avery’s gaze switched between Roman and the pulsing blade. A slow burn worked its way up his back and down his weak arm.
Avery gave himself a mental slap and the sensation receded. He followed Roman’s gaze to the vacant nest. Together they studied the greenish goop layering the walls and pooling at the bottom.
A rock pelted Avery on the shoulder. He looked up at the trio peering over the rim of the pit. EJ gave him the arms wide, palms up, what-the-hell sign. As if Avery knew what was going through Roman’s mind. The catwalk groaned again. “Roman. This platform is unstable.”
Roman’s gaze landed on Avery and stripped him down to his marrow, field dressed him like a deer shot behind the ear. He didn’t know how Roman did it, but Avery felt him probing, grating against his core. Roman knew enough of his secrets and Avery wouldn’t give up any more.
Avery lunged, moving forward faster than the laws of physics allowed, even while he saw the question in Roman’s eyes and his blade rising.
The catwalk gave way. Avery held onto the rail as the structure careened into the opposite wall. Every bone in his body rattled. The damaged muscles in his arm and shoulder screamed. He glanced down. Roman had dropped into the middle of the pit, his sword iridescent, picking up the surrounding colors. Light flared from the blade and the
goop caught fire. Screams echoed and ricocheted like a dagger between Avery’s ears. The cries resonated in his bones.
Green flames enveloped the gelatinous mass and licked their way up the walls, racing away from Roman’s blade, straight for Avery. It climbed the broken catwalk, screeching—an ungodly sound—as flames followed.
The ghostly shrieks iced his veins. Dangling in the air, Avery couldn’t move. Mesmerized by the impossible wiggling toward him, and the flames racing behind, he was caught in a moment, reliving a past he couldn’t escape.
EJ’s voice came at him from a distance, screaming his name. But Avery studied the flames drawing closer. As he had that night when he took matters into his own hands and watched the blaze engulf his home…and his parents while his little brother bellowed in his arms.
Goop climbed over his left foot, his pant leg, crawled up to his knee. Flames engulfed his foot. Cold flames, like skin touching dry ice, it burned. The patch of destroyed flesh on his right shoulder joined the riot and flamed. Instead of moving, Avery welcomed the pain.
Something slapped the back of his head, jarring him. He looked up. EJ had him by the collar. “Come on,” his brother shouted.
Avery couldn’t; his arm had seized into one colossal spasm. His fingers were numb and slipping. “Give me your good hand.” EJ took command of the clusterfuck the mission had descended into. Avery reached up. And fell into the lake of green fire.
Chapter Nine
For hours, Khuket hovered above the city. She floated on a gentle draft, letting the wind carry her along to conserve precious energy as she stretched her senses. Alamut was near. She sensed him and wouldn’t cease until he paid for his treachery. She had to act fast. The energy she siphoned off Avery in the lake was a limited resource. The chaotic fuel coursed through her body, strengthening her, though not for long. Without his essence, she would dissipate. She had to bring her dinner to heal. But first, she needed to find Alamut.
SET had released her from her prison on a mission of vengeance. She was sent to make Reign Nicolis suffer in all possible ways, and by extension, SET’s wife Nephythys, for her infidelity with the human. Khuket had failed. Now her only redemption lay in regaining her army from Alamut and finishing the mission, which shouldn’t have been difficult. The souls she’d set free were attuned to her, not Alamut. She should’ve been able to pinpoint them anywhere on this planet housing billions of beings, but a void was all she sensed, occasionally broken by glimpses of Alamut’s presence surfacing.
Frustration ate at her. With every second, power leeched. Until Avery succumbed, submitted himself completely to her will, it would be this way. She would always live on the edge of starvation.
Worse than dead, powerless and vulnerable. SET had truly trapped her. Without Avery to sustain her, SET had the only energy she could digest. But to return to him unsuccessful at the task he had commanded, begging for his favor—he would toss her back into her cell, and torment her for another twenty thousand years. There was always room in the lava pits. A shudder raced through her body. No one deserved that fate.
Foreboding touched her mind, whipping her to the left. Somewhere out there, in the quiet, Alamut and her army moved.
I’ve found you.
Khuket unfurled her bands. Against the wind, she propelled herself forward, using more energy. In this, she would not be denied. A rainbow pattern of chaos stretched before her, each strand denoting a different flavor: blue for loss, crimson for lust, red for pain in varying degrees.
Those were not what she searched for. Tonight, she hunted for an area devoid of color. An area deeper than the darkest night, filled with beautiful chaos. She found it, a black hole on the outskirts of town. Over buildings, the Harlem River, and highways, she raced to another abandoned factory.
Not trying to hide her ire, Khuket burst through the skylight. Shards of glass rained on the ground where her army waited, seven abreast, in neat formation. The blinding light of a vortex surprised her, jerked her to a halt. A contingent of quimaera—her quimaera—filed through the opening, destination unknown.
“I thought you were dead.”
Alamut’s voice spun her around. He leaned against a wall in his human form as Daniel Nicolis. Tall and muscular with dark hair and blue eyes, he radiated arrogance, the same arrogance he had when she first met him. However, now there was something more. His fear had fled and with his fear went his chaos, because in the human soul, one couldn’t exist without the other.
“I live to see all who have betrayed me suffer,” she said. Alamut should know something about betrayal. He had collaborated with Anubis to destroy Anubis’s mother, Nephythys, and cripple his father, SET. Unfortunately for Anubis, Alamut put his need to hurt Roman Nicolis before his need to obey his master.
“Where are you taking the quimaera?” She floated closer to him.
“Somewhere safe, where I can train them to be warriors.”
Another dimension was the only place where he could achieve that level of security and privacy. A dimension she would not be able to find. How did he have this power?
A jewel-encrusted dagger twinkled at his waist. The power signature, unmistakable. An Anu’Ra! An ancient relic of the Egyptian Gods. She knew of the Staff of Ra and the Serpent bracelet. Where did this dagger come from? Which god controlled it? What power did it wield? She wanted it. Needed it. Wouldn’t leave without it and her army.
In a blink, she covered the distance separating them, ready to smother him in her embrace. The quimaera stopped their march into the vortex and rushed to block her. This shouldn’t be possible when she was the goddess who activated them. SET gave her the power; she was to control them, not Alamut.
“Heel, you treacherous dogs. I am your master. Defend me!”
Instead of obeying, they settled into an attack stance. Their jaws dropped open, exposing rows of jagged teeth, their tails poised, claws primed. Furious at their betrayal, she reached for their souls to bend them to her will.
They charged. Claws slashed into her bands and ripped into her body. Too shocked to scream, Khuket turned to flee, but they surrounded her. Their claws held onto her form and pinned her to the concrete floor. She couldn’t fight, infecting them with anarchy proved useless since the chaos populating their souls mimicked hers.
Jaws snapped, much too close to her head. For a moment, they fought each other for the right to behead her. Teeth grazed her skin, drool coated her face. Deathly still, she waited.
Malevolent threads curled from her wounds. She couldn’t move to staunch the flow. Soon, nothing would matter. All her lovely chaos would return to the earth and be reabsorbed by every creature. Glorious destruction, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes would occur, and she would not be here to enjoy the moment. Slain by her own army and a being beneath her, she would weep if she had tears.
Footsteps clicked on the concrete. The quimaera’s snarls abruptly ceased and they parted for their new master. A human amongst the monsters, though he was the most monstrous of them all. He crouched next to her. The dagger so close, but she couldn’t spare the energy to reach for it and dash away.
He leaned close enough for his stale breath to fan her face. “Not how you expected things to end when you barged in here,” he tsked and wagged a finger in her face. “You gods, you’re all alike. Predictable. You flex your mighty muscles and wait for the earth to tremble. But when it doesn’t, you don’t know how to adapt. You assume the lowly humans are still Neanderthals, struggling to fashion weapons and build a fire. Sorry for this rude awakening, but your species has just dropped a rung on the food chain. Thanks to me. I have defeated you, Khuket. I will defeat all the Egyptians. I will rule.”
He will rule? Never!
One of her bands whipped from her body to snatch the dagger from his hip. She yanked it from his waist and, with a burst of energy she couldn’t afford, shot to the ceiling. Daniel roared. Khuket glanced down. His face elongated and transformed into a snout filled with jagged teeth. His neck fanned
and scales sprouted from his skin and a spiked tail snaked from his lower back. His body mass tripled until he was much larger than the average quimaera. Daniel had shed his mortal coil and become Alamut. None of this slowed him down. He continued to close the distance between them.
She clenched the dagger, the jewels digging into her hand, and turned to meet him. Claws outstretched, ten razor-sharp tips rushed to finish the deed his army—her army—started.
Another thing taken from her. First her family, then her pantheon, then her freedom, now her army. Her tattered bands snapped, cracking like bullwhips, slicing into Alamut’s thick hide. Still, he came, jaw unhinged, rows of teeth gleamed. Khuket raised the knife and slashed.
He rolled, twisting in mid-air. She missed him, yet somehow managed to tear a hole in the sky. A vortex formed in the rip; she turned to flee, but parts of her had already crossed over the event horizon. No matter how hard she fought, Khuket couldn’t escape.
Alamut latched onto her hand. He would free her. Then kill her to assuage his wounded pride. Alamut pried her fingers open, laughing as the blade dropped into his palm. He shoved her into the vortex. Tumbling head over heels, she landed back in the same place she had escaped from, her cell in Duat—hell.
“No!” she screeched, over and over again. She crawled to the doorway, gouged the hieroglyphic with her fingernails to no avail. She screamed until her voice gave out and all she could do was whimper. Victory so close. Now all she had was certain death at the hands of a god who mastered the skill long ago.
“What are you willing to do for your freedom?” The voice came out of the darkness.
Khuket turned. Anubis—The Jackal—Guardian of Souls and only son of SET and Nephythys, stood in a corner of her cell. Was he there all along? Watching? Judging?
“Where is SET?” She wouldn’t tolerate the lower god’s presence. Khuket tried, but couldn’t gather enough of herself to stand. Instead, she collapsed onto the warm earth.
Evermore (Descendants of Ra: Book 3) Page 7