by Anna Leonard
Jon. Agent Patrick. Where the hell are you?
There was no answer. Fine. She was on her own. She always had been, really.
Inside, in some deep shadowy recess of her soul, something stirred and stretched, restless.
“Damn it, what do you mean you can’t get a signal?”
Jon was ready to rip some hair out. His own, another’s, he didn’t much care. The moment Lily had walked into that damn restaurant the entire plan had gone to hell and it kept getting worse.
“Tell me again how a woman disappears from a restaurant with only thee exits, all of which were supposed to be watched by trained officers? Tell me again how the newest equipment we have can’t track the woman who disappeared from that supposedly secured and observed location? And tell me—”
“Sir, if you would calm down…”
“Don’t sir me. Just get me a signal.”
He stalked off, leaving the small bustle behind as he stood under a tree, looking up at the sparse brown leaves without seeing them.
Nobody had taken this seriously enough. Not even him. Oh, he had taken the Night Serpent seriously enough—another data point for his charts, another example to build his theories around…another step up the agency ladder. Another career milestone.
But not as a threat. He hadn’t considered the man enough of a threat. Not a deadly one. Not one he, in his ego, couldn’t counter, just by being smarter, better prepared. His ego had put Lily in this situation. His arrogance had put her directly in the worst possible situation.
He turned away from the others and slammed his hand into the side of the tree. The pain didn’t help.
Where are you, Lily? Help me find you….
They walked up a flight of stairs, and the floor changed from concrete to rough carpeting, like you might find in a low-end office building. A fire door swung open under the Serpent’s hand, and Lily walked through into another room. This one was larger, with a skylight that let in faint sunlight.
Morning. She had been in that room overnight. The good guys weren’t coming.
There was an arch against the far wall, made out of what looked like foam plastic, spray painted black, just like his last one. It was probably twice as tall as she was, and wide enough that she could have walked through it with her arms outstretched—assuming that she was then willing to walk into the wall it was leaning against. Directly in front of the arch was a large step, maybe five feet long, and draped in a black cloth.
Lily felt her gorge rise. It was the storefront all over again, only on a larger scale. And instead of seven house cats, he had one big cat to sacrifice. And he would make her watch, she had no doubt about that. And then she would follow, if—when—that didn’t work. Would his…whatever he had that kept the cat obedient, would it have worked on more than one? She didn’t think so. It was almost a shame he didn’t take the pair, then.
“Beast. Sit. There.”
The cat walked to the step and dropped his haunches, curling his paws under him and watching the man with an unblinking gaze.
“And you. Must I rechain you, or will you behave?”
“What am I going to do, make a break for it?” She looked down at herself, then back at him.
“Good. You have nothing to gain from fighting me. And you would lose. Again.”
Lily sank against the wall, as far from the arch as she could get, drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. She was alone. She had no wires. No bulletproof vest. No cell phone with panic button. No…She made a noise that could have been a cry or a snort of laughter. No pants.
The Night Serpent was drawing a circle on the floor with red chalk. There were sigils along the circle. Seven of them. Something in Lily’s memory—no, not her memory, that other memory—stirred, recognizing it, but she refused to allow it to rise into awareness. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. And even if it mattered, what could she do? The spark that had allowed her to talk back to the Night Serpent had gone as quickly as it appeared, leaving her cold and empty.
She had failed. Whatever madness the madman wanted, he would get.
The circle completed around the steps, he stood on one of the sigils—Ren, her other-memory told her. Name.
Sekhem. Energy of the dead.
Ab. Mother’s heart.
Akh. The immortal aspect.
Ba. Personality.
Ka. Life force.
Sheut. Soul-shadow.
The seven sigils. The seven cats. The seven parts of the human soul. Sekhu. The physical remains. The Serpent himself.
What was he doing?
Another memory crawled upward. Doors. Great heavy sliding doors, sealed with the touch of the Protectress, the fierce Lady of Flame, the goddess Bast. Bastet. Lady Mother.
The seven parts of the human soul. The parts of death. The doors to the underworld. Turn a key. Open a door. The words he had spoken rattled around in her head, fluttered delicate wings in her brain.
He wanted to open the doors to the underworld, to travel the paths of the dead. He was looking to reclaim the life that those shortsighted, hidebound fools had taken from him. A way to go back and exact revenge.
Impossible. She raised her gaze to the ceiling, as though expecting something to appear. Wasn’t it?
He did not think so. He thought it was possible. The prickling of her skin told her that she—some part of her—thought it was, too.
The cat stirred, restless, clearly not wanting to remain passive. The Serpent—she could think of him no other way now, clearly seeing in his movements the relentless, almost hypnotic movements of a cobra—touched his amulet, and the cat stilled. The light glinted on his knife. Another life, another glorious, innocent life, sacrificed to his ego. His hunger.
“I’m sorry, beautiful one,” she said to the cat, barely a whisper, but she saw the ears flicker toward her, and knew that it was listening. “You really do deserve better than this.”
You cannot allow this.
You cannot allow this.
You cannot…
I know! she shot back, furious.
The voice, startled, left her alone.
The Serpent raised his knife, as though showing it to others in the room, and started to chant. A part of Lily recognized the words, but she let them wash over her, becoming background noise. It wasn’t important. What was important was…
What? What was she supposed to do?
Stop him!
It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t smart. It was pretty much doomed to failure. And yet, without warning, a hundred and thirty pounds of incensed female slammed into a hundred ninety pounds of muscled male.
Surprise was in her favor. Entirely focused on the ceremony, his arrogance allowed him to ignore her once she agreed to stay still.
But that surprise fled, and once he recovered from the stagger, a powerful backhand across her jaw sent Lily halfway across the room.
“Bitch! I would have rewarded you, made you as powerful as you once were, but again you defy me!”
Instinct made her reach out when she saw his hand coming at her. Her fingers closed around something even as she was moving backward.
It was a toss-up who was more surprised: Lily or the Serpent, when she looked down at her hand and—despite vision dizzy from another probable concussion—saw the chain from around his neck wrapped in her fingers.
The amulet, freed, had slid off the chain and landed on the floor between them with a hard clunk. It laid there, a seven-sided disk made of bronze about the size of her palm, with a triangle-shaped hole cut in the middle. There were small red stones set in it, and some sort of writing between the stones.
The Serpent lunged for it at the same moment Lily shoved herself across the floor, trying to get to it first. The amulet was the secret. If he didn’t have it, he couldn’t control the great cat. Or the smaller ones. His power—his danger—lay in possessing the amulet.
He reached it first.
Desperate, Lily scooted backward, and, instead of trying
to attack him again, flung open the door behind her.
“Go!” she screamed, loud and harsh enough to make the Serpent pause, his hand just over the amulet, for an instant.
In that instant, the cheetah leaped off the step and disappeared out the door.
“No!” he cried, scooping up the amulet and racing after it. Lily rolled over onto her side, ignoring the crackling of her ribs, and closed her eyes. All right. All right.
In that instant, she could feel the great cat moving through the halls, heading unerringly for an open window at the end. Muscles flexing for the first time in days, blood streaming, eyes alert. The human was behind, but far enough that the nasty-smelling metal could not affect it. They were on the first floor, and the air between the cat’s whiskers was testing the distance, the width of a half-open window, the environment outside the window even as its muscles were bunching to leap, land and escape.
Gone.
The rush of power hummed in her veins, and Lily smiled.
She kept smiling even as the Serpent slammed back into the room, grabbing her by the arm and hauling her painfully to her feet. She kept smiling even when he slapped her hard across the face with the hand holding the amulet, the metal cutting her cheek open.
She kept smiling even as he hauled her across the room and shoved her down to her knees on the step.
“She thought to trick me. She thought to cheat me again! But not this time. No, not this time. She outwitted herself. I know what the key is. The true key. The reason I failed last time, more fool me. It is not the beasts whose blood binds the way, but Hers. And you are Her, here and now. You are the key.” He fumbled for the knife with his free hand.
It is time, my daughter. You are almost done. Come home now to me.
The priestess smiled, and opened her eyes. Everything was brighter, sharper, the colors muted but the details clear, intense. When he raised the knife over her head, the itch in her fingertips became a burn. When the knife came down, she blocked it with her arm, her claws raking along his skin. The smell of blood rising from the scratches she left behind made her smile into a teeth-baring grin, her lips pulled back to better taste it in the air.
She twisted under his next blow, her spine moving, more supple than anything human could manage. All hesitation, all distance was gone, and she lived in the moment, felt herself caught up in the greater pattern. She was connected. She landed a blow to his face, claws scoring him under his nose, up the side of his face.
“Bitch.” The Serpent spat at her, a gob of saliva landing on her forearm. She could swear she heard it sizzle, even as he yanked her by the hair, bringing her face onto the floor. She felt the knife hiss against her skin, down the line of her spine, and she smelled the familiar tang of her own blood as it came to the surface. His hand scraped along the cut, pulling the wound open until she screamed from the pain, his hand dipping into the wound. Pain moved into agony, and she convulsed, arms and legs flailing as though in a fit.
Just as she thought she might—must—pass out from the intensity, he dropped her, moving across the room. He was muttering something under his breath, getting louder as he strode to the makeshift archway. The words swam in her ears: she thought she should understand them, but they refused to make sense. His intent, however, was unmistakable.
No! the voice—her voice—cried. It must not be allowed!
She rolled onto her side, stretching out as though she could reach him by force of will alone. Her fingers, the small, sharp claws curling out from under the tips, flexed, and then fell to her sides as her strength failed her.
I am not enough. Not then. Not now.
He was shouting now, flicking his fingers onto the archway—no, through the archway. The words were not in English, but she understood every one.
“If you will not accept the key, then let the lock be broken! If you will not accept the key, then let the lock be broken.” Again, his voice shaking with the force of his words. “If you will not accept the key, then let the lock be broken! With this once-sanctified blood, let the lock be broken, and the gates be opened!” He flicked his fingers again, scattering blood—her blood—into the space under the archway. “Open the secrets of the underworld to me! I will walk forever, and know death never again! Never again, do you hear!”
“You fool,” she whispered. “You horrible fool.”
He flicked blood again, a third time. And the archway shimmered, a terrible, awe-ful blackness taking form…
Chapter 18
The archway might only have been foam. The wall behind it might have been solid as stone could get. But that was in this world, and the Night Serpent’s actions had broken the Gate between this world and that one. Sprawled prone across the step and bleeding heavily, Lily could only turn her head and watch as the black swirled and emerged from the archway, the wall-that-had-been now an abyss of flickering black sparks rising from a darker black pit.
She was Lily. She was herself. But the priestess’s memories stayed with her, surging through her, telling her what to do.
She slid backward, her body screaming protest, until she was off the step, half hidden behind it. The Serpent stood in front of the archway, his arms spread as though welcoming a bride, or a long-lost friend.
Fool, she thought, the back of her neck hackling. Fool. It was as much a hiss as a thought. The muscles in her legs and arms twitched to be away, to leap and race down the hallway, away from what was coming, but she could barely move beyond where she had landed. Her spine twitched, as though a tail had just swished in agitation behind her.
This is…Bad. So very very bad. The priestess’s memories were telling her that, but Lily knew it for truth on her own. Whatever was on the other side of that Gate, she did not want to be around for its arrival.
The sparks grew, coming closer, and her nose scrunched at the horrible smell that reached it: dank and dry at the same time musty and sharp. Underlying it all, bitterness. It was familiar, the way too many things recently had been familiar.
“Goddess, no, Mother, protect me!” she whispered, her eyes going wide and dark as the room filled with an ominous light. Things were visible now through the archway: large, misshapen things, moving with a heavy shuffle that did not hide the sense of menace rising from them.
The Serpent shuddered, his entire body quivering under the force of their approach, but he held steady. No one could ever have said that he was not brave. But he had never been privy to the workings of the temple, to the doings outside of the public eye. He was not a priest, despite the amulet he held. The amulet that would do nothing to protect him against what was coming.
I cannot allow this, Lily thought. I cannot allow this to happen. She owed him nothing; she would have been pleased to let the walkers of the underworld teach him what it meant to truly walk the Paths of the Dead. But it would not end there. The woman-she-had-been knew that, knew that the way she knew everything else. The Gate was locked for a reason. Locked, and left closed for all these ages…
Dizziness assaulted her, the blood loss and stress conspiring to make her head swim. Visions assaulted her: the long deserts of home, the cool marble, the sun and shimmer of light on the river followed in an endless stream of other lives. The cold of a forest where no light broke through. A wooden house filled with the emptiness of loneliness and age. A long gilded hallway, empty but for the ghosts of couples dancing. More, until the last, of standing at the doorway of the shelter. Terrified, determined and holding tight against the wave of uncertain emotion. She had thought it was internal, her own failures battering against her.
Now, in this instant, she knew it for what it had been: the welcome of the hundred-plus souls within, their small sparks recognizing what had been so deeply hidden within her.
All this, filtering through her like water into limestone, leaving behind the grit and coming out cleansed and whole. Complete.
She was the priestess. The priestess was Lily.
Eight times she had failed. Not from any flaw within
her, save the one she allowed others to place there. Doubt. She had not trusted herself.
The first figure stepped across the sill of the arch. Another followed, hard on its heels.
Lady of Fire, Guardian of the Hearth, allow me to serve…
The words of the morning prayer rose to Lily’s lips, even as she forced her body up into some sort of crouching position. The pain faded, and she felt her body begin to…
Change.
“Naaaaaaaah!” The sound was torn from her throat in a long scream: a mad, wild sound. Ignoring the pain of her ripped and bleeding body, she threw herself forward, stretching into the air, her arms forward, legs back, head tucked as she went past the Serpent, past the misshapen figure, to the archway itself. Her paws flexed, huge curved claws extending to swipe hard across the face of the archway, knocking several of the shambling figures a few steps back into the swirling abyss.
Another swipe, and the misshapen things retreated farther. They moaned, hungry for the light and life held in front of them, and Lily snarled, a harsh-edged, angry warning. She had no desire to destroy them—it was not their fault the door had opened—but she would not allow them to leave the underworld, either. Dead was dead, and must not move among the living again. The worst zombie movie ever barely touched on the horrors that would follow, not only for the living but also for the dead whose ka, spirit, would be disturbed, unable to find peace while their bodies walked….
Go sleep, she told them, her voice a harsh snarl. Return to your crypts and fade into the shadows so your souls may be reborn without burdens, without pain. Sleep, sleep forevermore.
The words failed to halt them, and the figures started to shuffle forward again, drawn inexorably toward the light and warmth of the living world.
She raised a paw to stop them, part of her dimly aware that her hand was glowing with a faint blue light. Or was it just the way her skin looked against the red-black light coming from the Gate?
Stop, she snarled. Go back. I command you. Her body lurched forward, the adrenaline that supported her initial lunge having long since drained away. One of the figures lurched as though a mirror image. Its face was misshapen, eye sockets torn, nose ripped and decaying. It looked at her, not with hatred, but pleading.