Kat Dubois Chronicles
Page 15
I felt torn, paralyzed by indecision.
Nik glanced at my left forearm, where the list of names of my dead were etched in At ink, shielded by my leather sleeve. Nik couldn’t see it, but this close, I had no doubt that he could sense it. “Do you really want to add another name? A human life . . . with such a fleeting, fragile soul. It’ll be your first true murder. The first time you’ll end someone’s existence, absolutely and completely.”
I shook my head slowly as his words sunk in, each a dagger twisting into my gut.
“If you think you’re ready for that guilt, Kitty Kat, by all means . . .”
I bowed my head, my eyes drifting shut. Every single person I’d killed up until now had been a Nejeret—traitorous to some degree, but a Nejeret containing an immortal soul in the form of a ba all the same. Each of my victims had continued on in that other form after I’d ended their earthly life. I couldn’t say the same would happen for the soul of any human Dom’s ba took over. Just as I couldn’t say the same for my mom. Much as I wanted to see Dom again, I couldn’t do it. Not like this. I wouldn’t be able to face him, knowing the price some poor human had paid in order for him to live again.
“I’m sorry,” I told Dom, voice soft as I reached for the orb containing his everlasting soul.
“So am I,” Mari said. As she spoke, my fingers passed through the orb’s no-longer-solid surface. She reached up and behind her, pulling herself into the helicopter’s cabin.
My eyes widened, locked on the place where the orb had been. The inky anti-At had evaporated, giving way to a shimmering silver mist that scattered in the wind. It was Dom’s soul. And it was floating away.
Panic surged, making my heartbeat trip over itself as it sped up. “Nik!” I shouted. “Can you capture him?”
The helicopter’s blades picked up speed, sending the silver mist this way and that, scattering it further and further.
“I’ll try!” he yelled.
I glanced at Mari. She was watching us with sad eyes from the back of the helicopter as it lifted off. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed, tears streaming down her cheeks.
I considered leaping off the edge of the building in an attempt to latch onto one of the helicopter’s landing skids, but it would be suicide with the handcuffs still in place.
“He’s too scattered!” Nik called, bubbles of crystalline At pocking the air above the roof like three-dimensional polka dots containing pieces of Dom’s soul.
I stood on the empty helipad, watching the last remnants of Dom blow away like so much dust in the wind, my heart shattering. I’d failed him.
He was gone. Really gone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Can you call him back somehow?” Nik shouted to me. His hair was matted to his scalp, and his cheeks were high with color. He was pushing his sheut to the max, juggling all of those little bubbles of At, even while creating new ones to trap this or that little tendril of Dom’s soul. He wasn’t giving up.
His determination soaked into me, and I shed my suffocating cloak of surrender. “Call him back how?”
“I don’t know. Maybe write his name or draw a picture of him? Something?”
“I don’t have a pen or paper or—”
“You have skin!”
My eyes widened, and a moment later, I dropped to my knees. I drew a dainty needle dagger from the sheath sewn into my left sleeve and didn’t hesitate to scrape the sharp tip across my wrist. The blade bit into my skin, the sharp sting no match for my resolve.
D—O—
“Is it working?” I yelled to Nik as I began the M. It was awkward with the handcuffs still on.
“I think so, but—”
Halfway through the M, I glanced up at him. He was maybe ten yards from me, halfway between the helipad and the cluster of restrained security guards. And between us, a glittering silver mist was gathering, condensing into a mystical fog. It was working. It was really working.
“Dom?” My chin trembled, and I let out a shaky laugh, tears streaming down my cheeks. Setting down the knife, I reached out with one hand. My fingers sifted through his ethereal form like he was no more substantial than the air. The essence of him—his soul—tangled around my fingers in thin, ghostly filaments. “Stay with me?” I asked. I begged. “Please.”
But even as I spoke, the shimmering mist that was him thinned.
“Hurry, Nik! Before he’s too far away again!”
The mist parted as Nik pushed through. He crouched before me, elbows on his knees, and squinted around. “I’ve surrounded all three of us by a dome of At, but Kat, I can’t let you out without losing some of him in the process. Bits of his ba are clinging to you . . .”
I hunched over and renewed the efforts on my arm with the knife. Maybe if I could just finish writing his name, I could coax him into me. Then, I could carry him with me forever.
“Kat.” Nik’s fingers wrapped around my knife wrist. “Stop. You have to stop.”
“No, I don’t.”
“It’s time to let him go.” Nik brought his hand to my face like he was going to make me look at him, but I slapped it away. “Even if I captured him in At, then what? Are you really willing to hold him prisoner like that? For how long?”
I screamed, slamming the knife down on the cement tile so hard that the thin steel blade snapped in two. I glared at Nik, eyes burning with fury caused by the truth in his words—a truth I wasn’t ready to face. “I’ll find a way to bring him back.”
“Let him have peace.”
“I can’t,” I said, eyes on fire with something else entirely. Tears streamed down my cheeks. “Two days ago, I drew a picture of him, and he raised his head and looked at me and told me he was alive, and it was him, Nik. For a few seconds, it was really Dom in that picture. He looked me in the eye and told me to find him, and I promised him I would.” I cleared my throat and leveled my voice. “I’m not giving up on him yet. I’ll share my own body with him if I have to.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Kitty Kat.” Nik’s voice held a fierce warning. “You have no idea what it’s like to never be alone in your body.” But he knew. He’d done it for thousands of years, sharing his body with the soul of the god, Re. He might’ve been alone in his skin now, but the haunting pain shadowing his eyes was enough to give me pause.
“But I promised him . . .”
The rising sun peeked over a nearby building, brilliant sunlight streaming in through the At surrounding us and setting Dom’s ba aglow. Realization dawned just as suddenly.
In that drawing, it was him. With that single sketch, ink on paper, just for a blip of time, I’d captured Dom’s soul—when it had still been inside him. Now, here his ba was, homeless. What if I gave it a home? Not another body, exactly, but something else. Something like the sketch, but better. Something to tide him over until I could figure out a way to give him a body that didn’t include murdering a human.
“I think there’s another way . . .” I fished my drowned phone from my coat pocket and set it on the helipad. “Do you mind?” I asked Nik, holding my cuffed wrists out to him.
Without a word, he touched the chain connecting the handcuffs. The metal turned opalescent one second as Nik transformed it into At, then seemed to evaporate the next, leaving my wrists naked of all but ink and blood.
“Thanks.” I hunched over on my knees and drew the second needle dagger stowed in my other sleeve, holding it by the blade like it was a harmless pencil. With the tip of the blade, I started etching Dom’s face into the phone’s reflective surface.
Dom. I focused every ounce of brainpower on thinking about my half-brother. On remembering the way his dark eyes could pin me in place the same way, whether they were filled with disappointment or with pride. On remembering the way his severe features softened on those rare occasions that he smiled. On remembering how he would slick back his black, chin-length hair whenever he had something to say but was holding his tongue. On remembering how he listened. How he’d chosen
to spend time training me when there were a million better things for him to be doing. On how he’d given a shit about me, even when I hadn’t.
I wiped a raindrop off the phone’s surface with the side of my hand. An electric charge seemed to pass through me and into the phone.
“Kat, look . . .”
I shushed Nik, adding shadows to Dom’s face in the form of faintly etched lines. I wiped away another raindrop. “Do you mind?” I said, glancing at Nik, then up at the cloudy sky.
Except the sky was an iridescent color. Because it wasn’t the sky, but Nik’s dome of At. And the those weren’t raindrops; they were tears. My tears. There was no wind or rain in here. No sound but our own.
It took me a moment to realize I could see the dome of At clearly, not through a shimmering, unearthly silver mist.
“Where’d Dom go?”
Nik’s face was ghostly pale. “I’m pretty sure he’s in there,” he said, reaching out and tapping the side of the dead phone.
I stared at the image etched on the surface. At first I thought it was a trick of the eye, but ever so slowly, I watched the image of Dom’s face move. His lips parted. His mouth opened. And he let out a silent scream.
“He doesn’t look too comfortable,” Nik said dryly.
“I did it.” I looked from the phone—from Dom—to Nik and back. “I really did it.” I held up the phone like I was taking a selfie. “Can you hear me, Dom?”
Ever so slowly, the etched likeness of him shut his mouth. The rough copies of his eyes seemed to be seeking without seeing.
“I promise I’ll make you more comfortable soon, and I swear to all the gods who’ve ever existed, I will make you whole again.” I tucked him back into my pocket, then met Nik’s eyes. “Don’t tell anyone about this yet,” I whispered. “I don’t want them to get their hopes up.”
Nik said nothing for long seconds, just looked at me with those pale, guarded eyes. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll keep your secret,” he said. “For now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nik and I burst out of the Columbia Center to the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue. My helmet was gone, likely stolen by some enterprising passerby, but the Ducati was still parked there, illegal as ever. I’d feared it would already have been towed. But, after everything, I’d only been in the building for maybe twenty minutes. I’d have bet a tow truck was already on its way. But it wasn’t here yet.
“Can you ride?” I asked Nik as we sprinted to the bike.
He looked at me, You’re kidding, right? in his eyes.
I snorted. “Good, because you’re too tall to ride behind me.” I handed him the key and waited for him to mount before kicking my leg over the seat behind him.
The Ducati Monster is not a bike designed with multiple riders in mind. Sure, it’s got a narrow little extension behind the main portion of the saddle for a passenger and two tiny little kick-down pegs on either side, but the crunched-up position isn’t comfortable for the passenger, and the rider has to deal with the annoyance of being top-heavy and having the passenger leaning on them, due to the passenger’s raised seat. But damn, in all black with just a hint of candy-apple red, the bike is sexy as hell. And it can move. To say I loved my motorcycle was putting it lightly.
“And Nik, if you crash this bike . . .”
Nik kicked the bike to life like he owned it and, fingers gripping the handlebars, waited for me to wrap my arms around his waist from behind before putting it in gear and turning the throttle. We’d never sat this close together before—not ever. I was pressed up against the back of him, our bodies touching from knees to shoulders. I’d ridden with other people a few times, but it had never felt this intimate.
“Relax,” Nik said over his shoulder. “I know what I’m doing.”
But the tension coiling through my body had nothing to do with the bike or his riding ability and everything to do with him. With his body, snug between my legs.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, Nik and I shared a kiss. It was back during his possessed-by-a-god days, and the god, Re, had flipped out almost the moment our lips touched. It had been a breaking point for Re, forcing him to wrest back control from his host. It had had the feel of a last-straw moment. A shattering of a pact between the two beings sharing his body.
We’d never talked about it, about any of it—the kiss, the explosion, Nik’s increasingly tenuous relationship between himself and his now-former resident god. Considering Nik’s arm’s-length attitude, I doubted we ever would. But sitting there, my legs straddling his, I couldn’t help but wonder what if?
Nik braked at a stop sign, placing his feet on the pavement on either side of the bike, and turned his head so he could see me. “Where to?” We were at a literal fork in the road—right would take us to the hospital, left back to my shop. But there was nothing left for us at the hospital. At least, nothing urgent.
“Back to the shop?” I said, resting my chin on Nik’s shoulder. After the events at the Columbia Center, I had no doubt that the police would eventually find their way there, but I figured we had at least an hour or two. I was planning to head back to Bainbridge—finally—where I would give the Dom situation my full attention, but there were things I needed to grab from my place. Things I didn’t want the cops or anyone else to find, my tarot cards and the At ink chief among them.
Plus, I stank. I reeked of mildew and seaweed, thanks to my dip in the waterway and the slow dry that had followed. The smell was strong enough that I couldn’t ignore it; it had to be overwhelming to Nik. “I could really use a shower.”
“You said it . . .” Nik turned the throttle, launching the bike forward before I could smack him.
We arrived at the shop less than ten minutes later, parking in the back alleyway, right near the shop’s back door. It felt like weeks since I’d been home, though it had been less than a day. So much had happened. Too much. I didn’t want to think about it all.
The shop would be opening in a couple hours, and I needed to be far from there when it did. I had to clean up and clear out—or clear out as much as I could as the place’s owner. It was too risky to hang out there, and the cops paying me a visit was the least of my worries. Mari was a loose cannon, and I was a loose thread. I didn’t know if anything she’d said was the truth, or if had all been a lie to ease her getaway. Would she come after Nik again? How badly did she need him? What kind of bargain might she try to strike next—either Nik helps her or she kills me? Lex? His mom? None of those were acceptable possibilities.
I unbuckled my sword’s shoulder harness as I tromped up the stairs to the apartment ahead of Nik. I unlocked the door and shouldered it open, already shrugging out of my stinky leather coat. “I’ll be quick,” I told Nik as I crossed the living room to the kitchen. I set the coat and sword on the table, then pulled out a chair and sat with a groan, bending over to untie my combat boots. Salt had crusted into the laces, making the knots insanely stubborn.
“Looks like you had to go through a regeneration cycle,” Nik said from just behind my chair.
I froze while untying my boot, peering at him out of the corner of my eye. I hadn’t noticed him draw so close. He was looming over me, his gaze scrutinizing, eating a piece of cold pepperoni pizza.
I finished untying the right boot and moved on to the left. “Will you grab me a piece? Or just pull out the whole thing?”
His shadow moved away from me. “Mari wasn’t sure how bad she got you with that knife.” I heard the fridge open, then close, and Nik set a ziplock bag of cold pizza slices on the table near the edge. “Bad enough for you to look like you just escaped from a prison camp.”
I tugged my left boot off. “Gee, thanks.” I pulled off the other boot, then straightened and grabbed a piece of pizza. “So what happened to you, anyway? Garth barely survived . . .”
“But he did?” Nik pulled out the chair opposite mine. It wasn’t a large table, so it didn’t put him more than four feet from me. “I wasn’t sure he would.”
Nik nodded slowly, nibbling on pizza crust. “The fucker jumped us. Hopped right off the overpass and landed on my shoulders, knocking me out cold for a few seconds. I came to my senses and managed to shove him off the cop before, well . . .” Nik laughed under his breath. “Not soon enough. I’m just glad the guy’s alright.”
I leveled a steady stare across the table on Nik. “And the Nejeret—what happened to him?”
Nik met my eyes, then looked away, a wry grin on his face as he shook his head. “I don’t know. Mari showed up before I could finish him. She would only agree to take me to you if I let the little shit live.” His pale eyes returned to mine, shining unexpected emotion. He smirked, ruining the moment, and said, “I couldn’t let you fade into nonexistence, now could I, Kitty Kat?”
I’d have been flattered that he cared if I didn’t know that he was even more attached to this world as it was now than Mari was. If I were to be erased from the timeline, millennia of Nik’s life would be altered, thanks to the complicated tangle of time travel. I’d never considered that the ramifications of my life might be so far-reaching. But they were.
I looked at the Eye of Horus tattooed on my palm. Maybe Nik and Mari would’ve returned in time, before the anti-At infecting my body erased me completely, and maybe Mari would’ve released Dom’s ba, allowing it to return to his body. Maybe Nik would’ve listened to Mari, agreed with her logic about saving our people, and gone to work with her at Ouroboros of his own free will. Maybe. But maybe not. We’d never know.