Marcus inhaled suddenly, just as Neffe slid to her knees beside him. His eyelids opened, and eyes of molten gold—not shimmering with divine power—skewered me. He was alive. Apep was gone, contained in a prison of solidified At. And Apep’s sheut was . . . well, I didn’t know where. At that moment, I didn’t care.
I threw myself on top of Marcus and sobbed against his neck. “You came back. You came back,” I cried, over and over again. “You were dead, but you came back to me.”
His arms encircled me, and his lips brushed feather-light kisses against my forehead and temple. He took hold of either side my face and lifted my lips to his. “Always,” he murmured. “I will always come back to you. Not even death could keep me away.”
My whole body was shaking. “I don’t understand what just happened . . . how you—Apep—he was possessing you, then . . .” I clung to him. “There was so much pain, and then you died. I just don’t understand.”
“I do,” Re-Nekure said from behind me. “Powerful new life forms within you, dear Alexandra, an irresistible host—or rather, hosts—for the sheuts you both carried.”
Slowly, I pulled back from Marcus and looked over my shoulder at Re-Nekure. “Wha—what?”
“Congratulations to you both.” He smiled, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone look more pleased with himself. “I’m sure you’ll be wonderful parents.”
49
Take & Give
Sitting at the end of one of the longer At tables near the center of the dining hall, Nekure tilted his head to the side, listening to something nobody else could hear. With a nod, he looked at me. “He says that you must’ve conceived when you, um”—his eyes flicked to my parents, who were seated to my right, then to me and to Marcus, who was on my left—“you know, earlier . . . underground . . . right after . . . anyway, and he says that the ‘sucking void’ you felt, followed by the burning sensation, was the two newly forming bas within you absorbing the power.” He was speaking for Re, as wielding Nekure’s sheut had exhausted the older being, and he could no longer maintain adequate control of Nekure’s body.
Once the chaos and confusion had settled, Marcus had ordered most of the Nejerets to either tend to their regular tasks around the underground Oasis or to venture aboveground to deal with the approaching helicopter. Just a handful of my personal guards remained in the hall with us, along with my family and close Nejerets friends, who were also seated around the rectangular table.
Only Dominic was absent; as soon as Marcus had learned it had been Set who’d called to warn us of Apep’s possession of Marcus, likely saving my life, he’d sent Dominic topside to await the helicopter’s landing and escort Set down the tunnel into the Oasis and to Nuin’s palace to join us.
“So,” Nekure said, “it looks like the process that’ll restore ma’at has really begun, and Apep”—Nekure tossed the crystalline orb containing Apep’s inky darkness into the air a few feet, catching it easily—“is no longer a threat.” He raised the orb in my direction like he was toasting with a glass. “Tiny guardians of ma’at to our rescue, just in the nick of time . . .” One pierced eyebrow arched higher. “Remind me to thank the little monsters when they’re old enough.”
Smiling and shaking my head, I gave Marcus’s hand a squeeze under the table. It definitely hadn’t sunk in yet that I was pregnant. With twins. Who were pretty much going to be gods. Nope, that hadn’t sunk in at all. Because when it did, I thought I’d probably faint.
My mom shifted in her chair beside me, her attention on Nekure. “Now when you say ‘monsters,’ do you mean that my grandchildren will be, ahem, inhuman?”
Nekure barked a laugh. “Absolutely.” Glancing at Jenny, who was seated across from me, between Alexander and Grandma Suse, he added, “Well, two of them, at least. We won’t know whether Jenny’s kid will manifest or not until the twins come into their power and get rid of the Nothingness and return stability to the At, and all that . . . which should happen sometime around puberty, or so Re thinks.” He flashed my mom a grin and widened his eyes, like he was sharing some exciting news. “We’re in a bit of uncharted territory here. But anyway, you could end up the proud grandma of three inhuman beings.”
My mom blanched.
Bumping my shoulder against hers, I met her warm, brown eyes. “They’ll be human enough,” I assured her, then felt some of the color drain from my own face. I didn’t actually know for sure. For all I knew, they might be just as incorporeal as Re and Apep were in their natural state. Fear churned in my belly, solidifying into a heavy lump. I glanced at Nekure, and when he nodded, I forced a smile and met my mom’s eyes. “Promise.”
“Do not fret, Alice,” Aset said. “You will find that a Nejeret child with a sheut is much like any other baby.” She flashed her son an affectionate smile. “Though sometimes they prove to be a little more trouble, depending on what that sheut enables them to do.”
Nekure grinned.
I sat back in my chair, the events of the past month, not to mention the past hour, finally starting to sink in. A relaxing combination of exhaustion and relief settled over me, overshadowing the rather hearty dose of anxiety I felt every time I thought about the divine lives taking shape within me—Marcus’s and my children—and I sighed.
We’d done it. We’d really done it. The universe wasn’t going to unravel. My family and friends—everyone—weren’t going to die or be unmade or whatever other unpleasant mode of destruction accompanied “unraveling.” We’d done it, saved the world, and now all I wanted was to sleep for about a month, safe and snug in Marcus’s arms.
Marcus’s desires were apparently in tune with mine, or possibly it was because our bas were so wholly entangled now, but he draped his arm over my shoulders, leaned in, and pressed his lips against my cheekbone. “Let us retire, Little Ivanov . . . little queen . . . I’ve always been a selfish man, and I find that I’m not in the mood for sharing you right now.”
He extended the wispiest tendril of his ba and caressed the outer edges of mine, and I drew in a shuddering breath.
Heat suffused my cheeks, spread throughout my body, and made me desperate to be alone with him. I cleared my throat. “Don’t you think we should wait for Dom and Set to get down here?” I glanced at the orb of seething obsidian. “I mean, what if that’s not all of Apep?”
Marcus pulled away, and he, too, sighed. “It is, I assure you.”
“But how do you know?”
Laughing bitterly, Marcus shook his head. “Because Apep was so convinced of his triumph that he withheld nothing of himself, kept no part of his knowledge separate from me. So believe me, Lex, I know.”
I bit my lip. “Okay,” I said, pushing my chair back to rise. I glanced at the faces of the people sitting around the table, the people I loved, and opened my mouth to excuse myself for the evening.
A sharp crack boomed outside the palace, the reverberations echoing throughout the cavernous room.
I stared at Marcus. “Was that—”
“Gunfire?” He was suddenly on his feet, as were the rest of us. “Yes.”
By the time we reached the main bridge crossing the canal to the tunnel side of the oasis-cavern, two figures stumbled out of the tunnel’s mouth. It was Set and Dominic, father and son, looking so strikingly similar. Dominic was leaning heavily on Set, his hand pressed against the lower portion of his ribcage and his lips tinged red.
“Oh my God, Dom!” I exclaimed as I lurched across the bridge ahead of the others and ran up the slightly winding, paved pathway toward them. I glanced over my shoulder to call for Neffe, but before I could even say her name, she rushed past me, right behind her father and Aset.
I turned my attention back to Dominic; he and Set were less than a dozen paces ahead. “What happened?” I slowed as I took the final few steps. “Who—how—”
Marcus reached them first, helping to ease Dominic down onto an intricately carved At bench on the left side of the pathway. “Who did this?” he demanded, his focus int
ense on Set.
“I did, Heru,” an impossibly familiar voice said from a ways up the pathway.
I raised my head and stared at the two shadowed forms standing several hundred yards away in the mouth of the tunnel, and when my eyes confirmed what I’d heard, my mouth fell open. “Carson?” My graduate school peer standing in the ancient, ancestral home of my nonhuman people was yet another impossible thing to add to those I seemed to make a habit of collecting. “What—you—what are you doing here?”
He flashed his familiar, boyish smile, but it appeared a little strained. “I’d love to fill you in Lex . . . some other time.”
I started shaking my head ever so slowly. Was it possible that he was Nejeret? The implications . . . it didn’t make sense.
Kat was beside him. At first I thought their arms were linked like they’d been out for a friendly stroll, but then I realized that Carson’s hand was gripping Kat’s arm just above the elbow. Focusing on Kat’s face, I saw that tears dampened her cheeks and reddened her eyes.
“He shot Dom,” she shrieked. “And my mom’s—”
“Be quiet, Kat,” Carson snapped. He lifted his other hand, and light from the LED cords lining the path glinted dully on dark metal—a handgun. He aimed it at Kat’s head. “Dom, there, tells me you’ve managed to trap Apep,” Carson said. “Give him to me, and I’ll let sweet, innocent Kat here live.” He tilted his head to the side and jammed the nozzle of the gun against her temple. “Don’t, and, well . . . I’ll start with Kat, then we’ll see how many of you I can take out before you get to me.” He grinned that familiar, boyish grin again, and I felt instantly ill.
“Carson . . .” I took a step toward him. Then another. Part of me felt certain that my eyes weren’t seeing correctly, that my ears weren’t hearing what my brain thought they were hearing. And another part of me felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Carson was one of the few people from my past, human life who I’d considered a real friend. Was that all a lie? Was he an agent of Set—of Apep—like Mike had been? I’d been lied to and betrayed by a lot of people over the past year, but that didn’t make Carson’s betrayal any less shocking . . . or painful. “Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice sounding hollow as I continued my slow, stunned ascension up the pathway.
His lips spread into a weak half-smile, a mere shadow of his usual grin, and he shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“You swore an oath to me,” Marcus said, appearing at my side.
Carson shrugged. “Some oaths supersede others.” He twisted Kat’s arm, making her cry out, and fixed his stare on Marcus and me. “I’d stop there, unless you want to see what the inside of a half-manifested Nejerette’s brain looks like . . . and I rather like her, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t force my hand.”
Marcus and I stopped immediately, neither of us willing to risk Kat’s life in a game of chicken. “Who are you working for?” Marcus demanded.
Frowning, Carson stared up at the cavern’s At ceiling like he was thinking exceptionally hard. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you now.” When his eyes once again focused on Marcus, he grinned. “We call ourselves the Kin.”
I was having such a hard time reconciling my memory of the young archaeologist I’d known back in Seattle with this seemingly unstable and undeniably homicidal Nejeret that his words barely registered.
“Whose kin?” Marcus asked.
Carson’s grin widened. “The Kin. I’m sure you’ll hear more about us soon.”
I frowned. The Kin?
I could practically feel the rage crackling around Marcus. “What do they want with Apep?”
Carson shrugged. “I only know what my mission is, not why I was assigned it.” His eyes flicked to some point beyond us, and I heard footsteps behind me.
I risked the briefest glance over my shoulder and saw Nekure making his way up the pathway ever so slowly. He held Apep’s small, spherical prison up and gave it a little shake. “Let the girl start walking this way, and I’ll throw it to you.”
Eyes wide, I stared at Nekure. Was he really considering handing Apep over . . . after everything we’d done to trap him? But the more I considered it, the more I understood his reasoning, and the more I agreed with his decision. It didn’t matter who actually had possession of the Apep orb, because only three living beings could free him—Nekure and my unborn children.
Carson shook his head. “Throw it to her,” he said to Nekure, “and I swear I’ll let her go.”
“Your words are worthless,” Marcus said, his voice low and cold. “You’re proving that right now.”
Carson shrugged. “That is a matter of perspective.”
I met Nekure’s eyes while Marcus traded barbs with Carson and, as quietly as possible, said, “Can you do anything from here?”
Nekure shook his head, which meant Carson was too far away for him to use his sheut to do anything to stop the younger Nejeret. And as far as I could tell, I no longer had access to Re’s sheut at all, so I couldn’t do anything. Which meant there was only one way out of this new tangle that didn’t include anyone else getting hurt. Not that I would’ve minded Carson suffering a bit, but still . . .
“You’ll let her go?” I asked Carson. “You promise?”
He nodded. “Once I have Apep, I’ll keep Kat with me as collateral. When we get to the helicopter, it’s her choice whether she stays with me or returns here.” He paused, then added, “Either way, she’ll be unharmed.”
I eyed him, then Kat, who looked absolutely miserable and utterly terrified. “And why would she ever choose to go with you?”
“Because her mother is waiting for me back in the helicopter, making sure the pilot remains obedient.”
One glance at Kat told me his words were true. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that he wouldn’t hurt Kat unless he had to, not if he was working with Gen. Whatever her faults, Genevieve Dubois loved her daughter very much.
“Fine,” I said with a nod. “Do it, Nekure. Give him the orb.”
Marcus slipped his hand in mine and squeezed, all the while glaring at Carson. “If you go back on your word,” he said, “if you harm her, we will hunt you down and make you beg for death.”
“But we will not grant you the release of death,” Set said as he took up a post between Nekure and me. “Not for years.”
“And when we do,” Nekure added, “your death will come in the form of a prison of At, slowly crushing you until you are no larger than this.” He lobbed the orb containing Apep toward Kat, who caught it with a slight fumble.
Concern, or possibly fear, flashed across Carson’s face, and he licked his lips. “Understood,” he said with a nod and started backing deeper into the tunnel. “Don’t follow us.”
“Kat,” Aset called from beside Marcus. I hadn’t heard her approach, but there she stood. “I’m sure your mother must love you very much, but know that we do, too. She is not the only family you have. Remember that when you make your choice.”
I thought Kat nodded before the darkness swallowed her completely, but it might have been a trick of the eyes.
“Poor child,” Aset said. “She cared for him a great deal. I think she may even have loved him. Such a betrayal . . .”
I stared at her, stunned for about the millionth time that day. “What?”
Nekure grunted and crossed his arms. “It was merely an infatuation. She’ll get over it.”
I frowned up at the empty tunnel. “So much has changed . . .”
“Indeed, Little Ivanov,” Marcus said, rubbing his thumb over the back of my hand. “Indeed.”
50
Now & Always
“I’m glad you chose to stay,” I told Kat. It was the middle of the night, and we were sitting at Dominic’s bedside, in his room on the second floor of the Heru palace, watching his chest rise and fall while his body healed the hole in his lung. He looked older and thinner, but he was alive, thanks to a combination of Neffe and Aset’s medical skills and Dominic
’s own regenerative Nejeret abilities.
“It wasn’t really much of a choice,” Kat said. She bit her lip and shot me a sideways glance. “I mean, not really. My mom—I don’t know what’s going on with her. It’s like she’s been brainwashed or something. And then Carson . . .” She swallowed roughly and looked away, staring at Dominic’s shoulder. Her chin trembled. “I hate him. If I ever see him again . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut and several fat tears broke free, gliding down her cheek. “I never want to see him again.”
Shaking my head, I reached for her hand. “I’m so sorry, Kat. What he did was awful—unforgivable, I know. But your mom . . .” I shrugged. “Maybe there’s still hope for her.”
She glanced at me. “You think?”
“I honestly don’t know, but I promise we’ll do what we can to figure it out.”
“That we will,” Marcus said from the arched doorway.
I looked up to find him and Set walking into the room, one after the other, and felt the oddest sense of déjà vu. “It seems so strange to see you both here . . . but so normal at the same time.” I laughed softly as I gave Kat’s hand a squeeze and released it before standing and walking into Marcus’s open, waiting arms. “If not for your clothes, I might believe I’d traveled back in time again.” I smiled against his shirt. “I kind of miss the kilts . . .”
Marcus chuckled. “I must admit that I miss seeing you dressed in the attire of that time, as well.”
Set cleared his throat, and my cheeks heated instantly.
I peeked at him, offering him a small smile. “I’m pooped. You’ll sit with them for a bit?”
He nodded.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Kat said. “I’m perfectly capable of watching Dom do nothing all by myself.”
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