The two still standing circled around me. They kept their distance, but they watched . . . they weighed and measured me. They had knives, I noted, longer than mine and glinting copper in the late afternoon light that streamed through the tall, arched window openings. It didn’t matter. Their knives wouldn’t save them. Not from me.
“Go,” I said as I turned in a slow circle to keep them in my sight. “Run from this place and never return, and I will spare you.” I raised my hand, palm up. “I would run, if I were you.”
The one on the left looked like he might bolt, but the man on the right laughed.
“So be it,” I said. I created a sheet of At as thick as a single atom on my upturned palm and expanded it toward the Nejerets’ necks with merely a thought.
Both sets of eyes widened for the briefest moment as the invisible guillotine sliced cleanly through their flesh before I retracted the sheet of At. Almost in slow motion, their heads slid forward while their bodies remained in place. Their fleshy skulls landed on the floor with a smack, rolling in haphazard directions while their bodies crumpled nearby.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
My gaze glided to the doorway, where Ankhesenpepi stood, one shoulder leaned against the grooved frame. “I honestly thought Heru was the one Re had given his sheut to, but you . . . that was an exquisite display of wielding the power.”
I tilted my head to the side, watching the slender, beautiful woman. She seemed so much more brittle now—too severe, too harsh, too sharp.
Her lips spread into a wide grin. “I will put on an even more stunning display when I am wearing your skin.” Her eyes were filled with a telltale inky darkness, slithering around on the surface of her irises.
I thought that should have elicited a reaction from me—a scream, maybe, or at least a shudder. But all I did was return her measuring stare. “Apep,” I said with the barest nod.
Apep-Ankhesenpepi’s lip curled into a sneer. “Heru’s whore.”
I raised one shoulder and let it drop, unaffected by her words. “I take it that this is all your doing.” I gestured to Nuin, who was still gagged and tied to the bed a few feet behind me, his gut sliced open. His laborious breaths told me he was still alive. I drew on the coolness seeping into my soul from the foreign sheut I possessed. The inner chill helped me to maintain my composure while, inside, part of me was screaming in rage and agony and horror.
With a low chuckle, Apep-Ankhesenpepi pushed off the archway and took slow steps into the bedchamber. “Yes,” she hissed, her eyes trained on me. “And imagine my surprise when I discovered only the tiniest slivers of sheut inside him. I let him keep those slivers, let it sustain him while Ipwet played. The old bag was so desperate for revenge . . . to make Nuin feel the pain she felt every time she gave birth to one of his little whelps.”
When Apep-Ankhesenpepi was only steps away from me, she leered, her eyes scanning over me from head to toe. “Not quite as lush as this one—I’ve quite enjoyed the days I’ve spent in Khessie’s body—but I think I will enjoy possessing that lithe body of yours as well . . . playing with it . . . with Heru . . .” Her next step brought her almost within arm’s reach. “I do so prefer female bodies; there are so many more ways to possess them . . . to invade them . . .”
“You are boring me,” I said as I took a step back and raised my hand. Vines of At sprouted from the polished floor, wrapping around her ankles and climbing up her legs, effectively restraining her. Another At dagger appeared in my hand, and I wrapped my fingers around its hilt.
Apep-Ankhesenpepi smiled. “Besides Nuin and Heru, how many other Netjer-At men have you let bed you, whore queen? Nekure and Set, I assume, since you spend so much time with them, as well. When I am wearing your body, I will take them all, over and over again.” Her gaze flicked behind me, to Nuin. “Except for the Great Father.” She cocked her head to the side. “Although I suppose we could engage in a little necrophilia, just this once . . .”
She was goading me, I realized. “You want me to kill you,” I said, willing my dagger back out of existence. I narrowed my eyes. “Why?” Awareness dawned a moment later. “Ah . . . because you cannot leave that body while it still lives.”
Behind me, Nuin said something incomprehensible against his linen gag.
I looked over my shoulder, and the moment my eyes landed on his savaged body, the cold, detached veil his sheut had settled over me evaporated, and panic surged in my chest.
“He is too far gone—”
“Shut up!” I snapped, flinging out my hand and erecting a glassy dome of At over Nuin’s bed, sealing the two of us in our own, private world for however much time he had left.
I sat on the edge of the bed and reached for his gag. I sliced it off with a small, sharp At knife, then did the same with the cords binding his neck, arms, and legs. A film of tears coated my cheeks.
“My Alexandra,” Nuin rasped as I finished cutting through his ankle bindings. He took a shallow breath. “Apep is . . . correct. I am dying.”
I took hold of his hand with both of mine. “Let’s go into the At. You won’t feel the pain there.”
He shook his head. “My body is . . . too weak. If I go into the At . . . it will fail . . . and I will not be able to . . . tell you what I must . . .”
I swallowed thickly, holding in a convulsive sob. I’d known this was going to happen, that he was going to die while I was in this time, but knowing it and watching it were two different things entirely. I loved him, and the thought of losing him . . . “Tell me what to do, Nuin. Just tell me what to do. There has to be some way I can use the sheut to—”
“No . . . my dear, sweet Alexandra.” He laughed softly, but it quickly turned into a cough and a pained grimace. “I always knew . . . this would be when this body died . . . I just didn’t know how . . . it would happen.” He coughed again. “Quite painfully . . . it would seem.”
My head was shaking from side to side, and my mouth was open, like I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what.
“You must be careful . . . of the oneness. Your mind is not capable . . . of continuing to function fully . . . when you’ve embraced the sheut . . . so completely.”
“The ‘oneness’?” I asked, wondering if he was referring to the cold detachment that had taken over, allowing me to kill four people without hesitation or remorse. I’d killed four people . . .
Nuin’s eyes shifted to some point behind me, and before I could launch into a full-on breakdown, he said, “Ah . . . your boys . . . have arrived.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Heru, Nekure, and Set racing into the room. Apep-Ankhesenpepi appeared to be having some sort of a fit, flailing and shouting nonstop against the At vines binding her, though I had no idea what she was saying, and I really didn’t care.
I met Heru’s eyes through the barrier only briefly before turning my attention back to Nuin.
He swallowed, the action visibly difficult. “I thought . . . we would have a little more time . . . but we do not.” Another shallow inhale. “Lower the barrier . . . Alexandra. My end . . . draws near and . . . there is something . . . I must do . . . before . . .”
I straightened, released his hand, and rose, moving to the place where Heru stood on the opposite side of the At barrier, his hands pressed against the glassy material. I raised my hand and placed my palm against his. The solidified At melted away in a colorful mist, and Heru’s arms were suddenly around me in a brief but intense embrace.
When he released me, he took two large steps toward Nuin’s bedside. “Great Father,” he said as he knelt and bowed his head. “I have failed you.”
“You have not.” Nuin’s voice was barely a whisper. His eyes met mine over Heru’s close-shaven head. “Come here . . . my Alexandra.” He held up his other hand, and I moved around the head of the bed to sit on the opposite side.
I had a vague awareness of Nekure keeping Apep-Ankhesenpepi quiet and Set moving closer as I took hold of N
uin’s hand. A tingling warmth engulfed my fingers, spreading up my arms and settling in my chest. “Nuin, what—”
“I have made . . . the sheut within you . . . whole.” He smiled faintly, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears. There was no longer any hint of any shade of red, orange, or gold in his irises. “You must . . . be careful . . . of the oneness.” A moment later, Nuin touched the fingertips of his other hand to Heru’s forehead.
Heru closed his eyes and shuddered, and I assumed he was feeling the same odd sensation I’d just felt as Nuin implanted the last remainder of Apep’s sheut within him.
Nuin removed his fingers from Heru’s forehead and raised his hand to the side of my face. His skin was icy against my cheek. “You have a few weeks at most . . . before the sheut overtakes you. You know what you must do.”
A chill enshrouded me, and shaking my head, I searched his face. Dread was a snake writhing in my gut. “But I don’t even know how to get home.” If he died, I never would. And in a few weeks, I would follow him to the grave, as would Heru.
Nuin’s eyes held no hint of the rainbow shimmer at all, only a pale opalescence akin to moonstone, haunting in its unfamiliarity. “Simply enter the At . . . ba, sheut, and body . . . thinking of your time . . . and you should be transported . . . there.”
I was still shaking my head. “But how?”
He took a slightly deeper, shuddering breath. “Remember when I . . . pulled you into a time . . . of my own making?”
I nodded.
“Just walk into a wall of At . . . into, not through . . . and you will enter . . . that plane.” A cough wracked his body, and things in his ruined abdomen squished and squelched.
I swallowed a gag.
“Remember what must . . . be done if . . . Apep cannot be . . . trapped.”
Eyes stinging with a resurgence of tears, I swallowed. “I am afraid. I am so scared of not being.”
His gaze softened. “As am I . . . dear Alexandra. As am I.”
Chin trembling, I turned my head and pressed my lips against Nuin’s palm. “I love you, old friend.”
“And I, you . . . my Alexandra,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Now listen . . . closely. Unpleasant things . . . have happened . . . will happen. Let them . . . for your future . . . for the future.” He paused. “You must save Aset . . . from her captor. Tell her who . . . you are . . . so I will know . . . to find you . . . to protect you.” He exhaled completely and closed his eyes.
The three of us held our breath, waiting, hoping those eyes would open again. I bit my lip to hold in a convulsive sob.
Nuin’s eyes opened and focused on me. He licked his lips, coating them with blood-tinged saliva. His faint smile was kind, and it broke my heart.
“I believe . . .” His fingers slid down the side of my face. “. . . in you . . .” His hand hit the thin mattress with a soft thud, and he exhaled again.
His eyes remained open, but they were no longer seeing.
42
Destroy & Protect
Nuin was dead.
I felt a pulse of electric power in my chest.
Nuin, who’d been around my entire life, who’d watched over me, protected me, befriended me . . . was dead.
The power—coming from Nuin’s sheut—pulsed again, thrumming in time with my heartbeat.
“Alexandra . . .” Heru’s voice was barely a whisper, but the soft sound was overflowing with warning. “Your skin . . .”
I looked down at my hands, at my arms. Ribbons and tendrils of misty At thrashed around me, making it look like I was covered in flames of every possible color. I jumped to my feet and started backing away from the bed. I had to flee. I had to get away from these people that I loved before I incinerated them all. I had to—
The power spindled inside of me around the sheut, a tiny tornado of relentless, endless energy not of this world. This was different than before. More. I didn’t have enough time. I didn’t have any time.
“Shield them, Nekure!” I shouted, and the words were overrun by a scream. My scream.
The power broke free, a supernova of light and electricity and destruction. I had no choice but to throw my arms open, to let the fabric of space and time pour through me and expand in a world where it had no place, where all it could do was destroy.
The floor shook beneath my feet. Crackling and roaring and thunder filled my ears. I could hear screaming.
And laughing.
Apep-Ankhesenpepi was cackling joyously. “I was wrong about you,” she said. “You are not Heru’s whore; you are the mistress of death and chaos—of me—and you will kill them all for me.”
. . . you will kill them all . . .
More of the At poured through me, invading this world. Expanding into its cracks. Tearing it apart.
“Kill them all. Let me taste their confusion. Let me feast on their horror. Let me bathe in their misery. Kill them all for me. Become me.”
Kill them all for me.
Become me.
My eyes snapped open, and I speared Apep-Ankhesenpepi with a glare. “No. Way. In. Hell.”
She was standing within a thin, semiopaque cylinder of solidified At with Heru, Set, and Nekure. All three men were on their knees, trying to keep from falling over completely as the palace shook, and Nekure’s hand was pressed against the wall of At, feeding everything he had into it to hold it in place against the relentless onslaught of energy flowing out of me.
Some hidden history threaded through the sheut entered my awareness, and I understood. This moment, this choice—my choice—this was what had led to Apep’s downfall to begin with. He—no, it, as I now knew that neither Apep nor Re, Nuin’s true name, were of any gender—chose to let its sheut take control, to lash about, wild and free. This was what sparked the chain of events that led to Nuin—Re—tearing away Apep’s sheut and hiding with it in an unborn human child. This unraveling chaos was the future Apep desired.
But it wasn’t the future I desired.
I controlled the power; the power didn’t control me. Screaming, I gritted my teeth and pulled the energy back.
It resisted.
I pulled harder. Dropping to my hands and knees, I dug my fingers into the solidified At floor like it was room-temperature butter, and heaved.
The unleashed power sunk hooks into the largest, sturdiest thing around—the limestone cliffs surrounding the oasis.
Using every drop of willpower within me, I yanked one final time.
The cliffs gave way, the power snapping back inside me with such an intense reverberation that I was knocked onto my side, momentarily stunned.
A deep rumble vibrated in the air. A monster, groaning as it opened its mouth to swallow us all.
Not a monster . . . the cliffs were groaning; they were collapsing. I could feel them. I could feel everything—every life, every ba, every stone and tree and molecule of At. Now that Nuin’s sheut was whole within me, I was connected to it all.
And I was about to destroy it all.
“NO!” I pushed up onto my knees and thrust my hand over my head, willing the most enormous At structure I’d ever created into existence.
The dome slammed into place, surrounding every part of the oasis within the encircling cliffs. I could feel the rocks crashing against its surface, some as big as buses, some even larger. But I set the dome of solidified At, and it held. Even as my hand slipped away, as I fell back onto my side, as darkness seeped across my vision, it held.
PART SEVEN
Netjer-At Oasis, Egypt
Present Day
43
Kat
. . . and minutes later, when I woke, you were cradling me in your arms. And can I just say that nothing can give a hangover like a sheut explosion.
I laughed out loud. Lex had been through so much, but it was like writing to Marcus was her outlet, the one way she’d learned to deal with all of the crazy without actually going crazy. My laugh faded quickly as I glanced down at the words filling the page. Ma
rcus was going to be pissed when he found out about what Nuin told Lex—that she might have to sacrifice herself to give the rest of us a chance, and that, even if everything worked out, their kids would end up being god-slaves to universal order for, like, ever.
Lex had been gone for almost a month, and Marcus was slowly unravelling—not because of bonding withdrawals or anything like that, but because there seemed to be no end, no winding-down of her adventures in the past. I thought he’d actually started to think that his past self had managed to find a way for Lex to live out the thousands of years separating us from her, and that this Marcus would have to wait four thousand more years to ever see her again. It didn’t even matter that it was impossible . . .
And I was pretty sure Marcus didn’t give a flying crapola about any of this Apep-Set or ma’at stuff. All that mattered to him was Lex—Lex returning, Lex ridding herself of the sheut poisoning her, Lex having twins . . .
Staring at the words she’d inscribed so long ago, I let out a heavy sigh and stuck out my lower lip. Marcus might actually start caring about that “bigger picture” stuff now that both their fates—and their unborn kids’—appeared to be zooming toward a brick wall otherwise known as complete-and-utter-destruction if they failed. If they failed . . . we were all dead.
My chest clenched, and I felt something wet on my cheek and hastily wiped it away. I was not crying. I wasn’t!
With a sigh, I turned the page and continued recording.
At least the dome really did hold, and I really didn’t kill everyone. My God . . . can you imagine? I’m having a hard enough time dealing with the fact that I killed four people, and that I hardly cared that I was killing them while I was doing it. It’s sick and twisted and totally creepy, and it’s definitely something that’s going to haunt my dreams for years . . . assuming we have years . . .
Anyway, after the sheut explosion, Nekure wrapped Apep-Ankhesenpepi’s wrists in chains of At. He created an At dagger and held it flush against the front of her neck. Of course, when I opened my mouth to warn him that the threat of death was more like promising to fulfill Apep’s deepest desires, Apep-Ankhesenpepi slammed her head forward and slit her own damn throat. We’re just lucky that Apep hasn’t been able to do the same with Set. If Set didn’t have a will of iron . . . but he does, so it’s no use worrying about something that won’t happen.
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