Wardens of Eternity

by Courtney Allison Moulton

  “Your armed soldier pals didn’t look like scholars to me,” I challenged. “They look like Nazis.”

  Her red lips flattened, though not quite in a smile. “My associates allow me the means to do my job.”

  “Which is?”

  “To bring greatness and strength to our cause,” Vogt explained, and her mouth formed a true smile, sparkling with self-pride. “We want to find beings like you.”

  “Why?” I asked, stunned.

  “Paranthropes are capable of magical or scientific feats ordinary humans are not,” she replied. “We are interested in your power.”

  “For global domination,” I finished callously for her, narrowing my gaze. “The French have overrun Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt. The British won’t let India go. Your cause is to exploit and destroy as many groups of people as possible. There is no glory in imperialism, there is only decimation.”

  “The Führer’s interests are more complicated than that,” she said. “He wants to avenge the German people for our humiliation during the Great War and to create the perfect race, the true human race. The Thule Society has begun several successful programs, including the very ambitious Lebensborn Project. But our last meeting has inspired me, Ziva, and I have seen my true purpose.”

  I pushed my plate aside and leaned forward onto the table. “Which is, Doctor Vogt?”

  The madness I’d seen before in her eyes began to glow again as she replied, “To create a god.”

  If I’d had energy, I would have laughed in her face. “You can’t.”

  Her brow raised, and one corner of her red lips tugged into a smile. “Can’t I? You saw with your own eyes mortal flesh made immortal and gifted power beyond anything in this world. Not even the old gods could stand against her might.”

  At the mere memory of Nefertari rising from the carnage and mayhem she wrought herself, the blood in my veins began to freeze with fear. “I would not call what I witnessed a gift.”

  “If you would let me study you, I might be able to recreate your abilities in our people,” Vogt explained excitedly. “Imagine the incredible things the Aryan race could do if we had power like yours. A god leading our war machines. We wish to bring unity to a broken and tumultuous world. Your kind can aid us.”

  “You want to use us,” I interjected. “But you picked me because I’m an outsider, even to them. You’ve been watching me.”

  Vogt paused, her chest rising and falling slowly. Those blue eyes seemed to slip into my skin like needles to probe the flesh beneath. “I want to be friends with you, Ziva,” she said. “But I don’t have to be to get what I want. Consider this my first petition of only three. If you refuse my third, then I will take you by force.”

  I almost laughed, but I was too tired and angry. “If you think you can take me by force then you know even less about my kind than you thought,” I warned her, my voice shaking, as I leaned across the table toward her. “Gods have tried to take me by force and yet I sit here today having my lunch. Never mind the sphinx awaiting my safe return. You remember her, surely.”

  Ursula Vogt smiled at me in a very disquieting way. “I could not forget. Your implication is clear, but please understand something about me as well. We all have our monsters. Some we keep in chains and save for a rainy day.”

  Her threat did not faze me. “I would like you, Doctor Ursula Vogt, to get out of my sight and never speak to me again. I will not be so accommodating to your presence again.”

  Several long, achingly frigid moments of silence passed between us.

  She rose from her chair and smoothed out the skirt of her belted coat. “Have a lovely evening, Ziva Mereniset. I shall see you soon.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  Nothing I could do would alleviate the tension in my shoulders from my confrontation with Vogt—not a full belly, nothing. After I boarded the ferry and got the key to my cabin—really, it was more like a glorified closet—I climbed onto the hard cot, wishing I had a change of clothes. Everything I’d had was left in the saddlebags and gone with my camel for good.

  I woke, groggy from sleep and as sore as I had been after Nasira’s first training session. That felt like a hundred years ago, even though it’d only been a few months.

  A shadow in the dark room made my heart jump in surprise. “Good evening, lady,” Baket said sweetly.

  Relief soothed my aching muscles. “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Not long after midnight,” she replied. “How did you sleep?”

  Midnight. That meant we’d departed from the docks and were floating somewhere down the Nile. I yawned and rubbed my stiff neck. “Not so well.”

  The sphinx’s head tilted to the side. “Why is that?”

  “Well,” I began, “this bed is less comfortable to sleep on than the ground, and I have a lot of things on my mind. I need to decide what I’m going to do.”

  “What we will do,” she said. “I am your friend, lady. I’m with you.”

  An invisible dagger plunged into my gut. Sayer had said the same thing. And he was gone. So was Nasira and both their parents. And both my parents. Murdered by someone I had trusted with my life.

  Oddly enough, I trusted Baket. She was a creature with human intelligence and animal-like, pure-hearted, unconditional love. Animals always felt more honest to me than humans, who were capable of such cruelty. Animals never thought to hurt anyone, even when they killed for food. They only thought of their own survival, and that left no room in their hearts for betrayal.

  I let myself succumb to the chasm in my heart, let the emptiness swarm all of my senses, but I found no relief. My body curled into a tight, trembling ball on the cot. I sank into despair with a keening wail muffled by my pillow, allowing the tragedy and brutality of what happened consume me. My sobs were ugly, shuddering gasps like I was a fish hooked and tossed onto a boat’s deck to suffocate. One moment I’d been weightless, fluid, in my element, and the next moment I’d been thrust into a world where gravity pinned me to something hard, a world that didn’t lift and propel me—a world I couldn’t survive in.

  But I would survive. After allowing one minute of grief and hopelessness, I willed myself to live, something I’d done every day since before I could remember. I closed my eyes until I stopped trembling and could breathe again, remembering I was no fish. My world was one of gravity and air. Cyrene had planned so much for so long, but she’d never really planned for me. I grew up an outsider in a harsh city with the world against me. That carved me into a woman stronger than my enemies.

  Baket’s emerald gaze filled with more glittering life than I had seen in them yet, as if the sphinx had grown a little more human or was at least beginning to understand us. “Is there some way I can help?”

  I smiled at her. “Don’t ever stop being kind. Thank you for being my friend.”

  The sphinx smiled with her human mouth. “I’m happy to.”

  “What should I do?” I asked her. “Should I keep running from them? Shouldn’t I kill Cyrene for what she did?”

  “You must ask yourself what you are willing to sacrifice for revenge,” she replied.

  “I’ve already lost everyone I’ve loved,” I argued, though I felt more exhausted than angry at that moment.

  “What you seek will take more from you,” Baket said sadly.

  I shook my head. “I have nothing else to lose.”

  The sphinx frowned. “Your goodness, lady.”

  I turned from her, setting my teeth. My throat grew tight, trapping my air, unable to expel without unleashing my scream with it. After a moment, I forced the tension from my body and could breathe again, though I felt emptier than ever before. “Maybe it’s worth it,” I whispered at last.

  “I can’t tell you the answer to that,” she said. “Only your heart can.”

  When I looked back at her, I found her with a tilted head, watching me with sympathy. “The question I need to ask myself—my heart—is am I willing to sacrifice who I am for justice?”<
br />
  “Are you?” the sphinx asked.

  “I believe I am willing to sacrifice who I am to protect Egypt and the people who can’t protect themselves from evil,” I told her. “That is the only thing for which I can justify breaking my heart. I don’t want to, but my heart belongs to Egypt, not me, and protecting this world is the righter thing to do.”

  The sphinx beamed. “A queen’s words from a queen’s heart.”

  “But everyone who cared about me—everyone I cared about—is dead,” I said, my voice so weak.

  “Forgive me, lady,” Baket said, her brow furrowing in thought, “but I don’t understand why mortals die. Why are they here and then . . . not?”

  I tried to think of a way to explain death to something that would never die. “You have a heart that doesn’t beat. Eventually a mortal’s heart gives out. All the parts in our bodies grow tired after a long life. We die because we live.”

  The sphinx closed the distance between us, her power prickling my skin, her huge, sleek body warm, and she pressed a round, furred ear against my chest. Baket fell silent and I fell with her, sucked in by the void and left breathless, until the only sound left was my pulse.

  “I hear it,” the sphinx whispered. “Your heart beats like a ticking clock, counting down until it stops.”

  Only when she drew away could I breathe.

  “I hope your heart beats for a very long time,” Baket said.

  It was such a strange thing to say, I almost laughed, but I didn’t have the energy for it. “So do I.”

  She sat on her haunches and pulled away from my face. “You will. I know you will survive.”

  “You’re a prophet then, huh?” I asked, though it was a half-hearted joke.

  “No one can see the future. We can only learn from the past and design our own fate.” Baket offered me a lily-sweet smile. “You were born a princess of ancient blood, but the gods also gave you strength, lady. Those gifts haven’t gone wasted. You have earned who you are with your wit and teeth and claws. These are admirable virtues.”

  Peace warmed my heart. “You must be the only sphinx in history who deals in reason rather than riddles.”

  She beamed at me. “Thank you, lady. You flatter me.”

  Someone knocked on my door and my body chilled. The sphinx pinned her ears, pulled back her lips to bare her neat, little fangs, and hissed. She withdrew, her powerful, slender tail lashing angrily.

  “Should I attack, lady?” she whispered.

  I shook my head, staring past her at the door. “No, we can’t afford to get kicked off the boat.”

  There came another knock. “Zee.”

  His voice filled my heart with light and broke it at the same time.

  I tore open the door and flung myself into Sayer’s arms. He made a gruff, throaty noise of surprise and his back hit the wall. We sank to the floor, our arms entwined. Tears soaked my cheeks, dampening his wool jacket as I buried my face into his chest. I crawled into his lap, pinning my body against his, letting him pull me as close as we could physically be. I cried, gasping deeply for air. He had to be real. Had to be. I could feel him and smell him. He was real.

  “Ziva, Ziva,” he breathed into my hair, whispering my name over and over.

  The boat rocked, and its sway and his touch soothed me. A chanson lulled behind the wall of another cabin. My body ceased its shuddering, and I looked up into his face, into those dark eyes. His hand touched my face, lifted my chin, and he bent over to kiss me. His lips were warm and soft, gentle against mine, though his arms held onto me for dear life.

  It seemed as though hours had passed when he put his forehead to mine.

  “I watched you die,” was the first thing I said to him.

  A low, mmm sound vibrated in his throat. “It would take more than the violence of a god to wrest me from you.”

  “Why did this happen?”

  “Because there are terrible people.”

  “Is Nasi okay?”

  “She’s okay.” He kissed the top of my head and exhaled, warming my skin. “Let’s go inside.”

  Weakly, we climbed to our feet. I smoothed out my nightgown and led him into my room. He closed the door behind himself. Finally, I could look at him. There were deep circles around his eyes, his cheeks purple and green with bruises. His sleeves covered his arms, but I remembered the blood from when he tried to tear through Cyrene’s spell. I wondered if I looked as broken as he did.

  “Where is Nasira?” I asked him.

  “A safe place,” he replied, his voice hoarse. “I got to her injuries quickly, but she’ll need time. My magic doesn’t work as well on myself. I’ll need even more time.”

  I swallowed hard, struggling to hold my heart together. “Your dad.”

  He drew a deep breath and his exhale came with a shudder, then a sob. He bit down on his lip and the muscles of his jaw clenched. I raised my hands to wipe the tears from the bruises beneath his eyes and he turned his face into my palm and kissed my skin. His arms wrapped around me and I threw mine around the back of his neck.

  “Lady,” the sphinx said delicately. I pulled away from Sayer and looked into her concerned, fearful face.

  “Oh, Baket, we’re okay,” I told her and deflated. “It’ll be okay.” As if she was the one who needed convincing.

  She nodded and curled up in a ball on the floor, though she didn’t relax.

  “What do we do?” Sayer asked, looking at me, defeat in his eyes.

  “Finish what they started,” I told him, finding a flicker of strength within myself. “We unearthed a monster. Cyrene will do everything in her power to stop us from righting this terrible wrong.”

  He shook his head. “But how? I’d trained my entire life to be faster and stronger than anything so when the moment came, I would win. And I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

  An ember of an idea began to glow in the back of my mind, one I know would burn him. “We’re only mortals.”

  “We’re no match for the queen,” he said, fear and desperation raising his voice.

  “Maybe that’s just it,” I whispered. “We need to find her match.”

  He stared at me, puzzled. “Cyrene is the strongest of us and she sided with Nefertari.”

  I braced myself for the pain I was about to cause him. “I don’t mean another Medjai. I mean Set.”

  Sayer’s jaw clenched, and he shook his head again, the gesture and his gaze harsh and rough as a brick. “No. No. His creature killed my mother. I will not beg him for help. I have nothing left but my honor, and I won’t toss that in the dirt.”

  “This is not the time to cling to our egos,” I told him delicately.

  “This has nothing to do with my ego!” he spat, his voice curdled with rage. “Set is as much a monster as the thing we must destroy. That doesn’t mean we team up with him!”

  It took everything in me to keep my voice even and calm. “I understand my decision is a betrayal against you—”

  “So, it’s your decision? We won’t even discuss it?” he interjected.

  “—but what we’re up against is greater than any of us,” I finished. “Only a god can kill a god!”

  “You have Anubis!” he shouted, throwing up a hand in exasperation.

  “Set is stronger,” I argued tightly, trying not to yell back at him. “He’s the strongest of them all and he wants the same thing we do. We’d be fools not to side with him. I’m doing this for our people, for the rest of the world. The Germans we saw in Cairo are led by a scientist who’s been researching the supernatural. She knows about us—the Medjai, magic, the gods. Yesterday she came to me in Asyut. She told me the research they’ve done is only the beginning. They want to create an artificial god.”

  His brow crushed into a frown of disbelief. “She’s mad.”

  “The threats we are up against are growing,” I told him. “We can’t do this alone.”

  “Ziva . . .”

  “What terrors will Nefertari unleash on this world if we don’
t stop her with everything we have?” I pleaded with him. “How many more lives will she destroy? What devastation will the Nazis bring upon our own people if we don’t take every measure to stop them? I’m doing this.”

  Sayer gaped at me for several moments before he closed his mouth, shaking his head, and turned away. He covered his face with his hands, then roughly ran them through his hair. His hands fell, rolled into fists, and tightened until his knuckles paled to white. When he looked back at me from over his shoulder, it was crystal clear how I had hurt him.

  “I love you,” he said to me, his words muted with sadness. “But you’re making a mistake. He will bring your doom.”

  “I don’t believe he will,” I said, sticking to my decision and knowing exactly what I was sacrificing for it. For us all. “This is the only way to win.”

  A fresh tear perched on his cheekbone, but his expression was empty and unreadable aside from the sadness, denser and more drowning than anything I’d seen before. “When we first met, Cyrene said you would save humanity from itself because that was your fate. She was wrong, you know. The only thing she was right about was your ruthlessness. You’ll save us because only you have the grit. The gods tested you well your whole life. Those trials shaped you, despite all the suffering this world has caused you, into the one person who believes it should be saved and can get it done.”

  My shuddering sob nearly sank me to my knees.

  “But not this way,” he continued, and his shaking voice rose with anger. “Not with something so evil.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, but I knew I was right.

  He came toward me, leaned over, and kissed my cheek. Warmth, then cold as he backed up toward the door. He looked at me, dead-eyed, for a moment and said, “Good-bye, Ziva. Take care of yourself.”