I placed the Feather gently back on the Scales. Justice had been righted.
“Now Isis,” Osiris said.
Bastet moved quicker than I could track. In a blur, she snatched Alysdair out of Osiris’s hands and kicked the god in the chest, launching him backward hard enough to crack the wall he slammed into.
Her hand curled around my wrist and yanked me into motion. Halfway down the halls, in the maze of corridors I knew well, I pulled back on her grip, bringing her up short. “Wait, we need to talk… You must understand the choice you’re making.”
She handed over the sword. “You’re Apophis. Osiris is a poor excuse for a god. And you’re leaving before all of Duat tears you apart.”
I slammed my hand against a marking on the wall. A stone panel juddered and opened, revealing a tunnel beyond. It would deliver us to a quiet back street, buying us time. “Come with me.”
“Go.” She shoved me inside. “Don’t stay in Duat while weakened, and don’t waste your time battling Osiris. It’s what he wants.” She must have seen the questions in my eyes, because she answered, “I told you, you’re more than darkness.”
She gestured down her body, instantly wrapping her bare skin in supple leather laden with buckles and bristling with short knives.
“Go,” she said. “Keep the ring on and I’ll catch up with you in New York.”
The ring. The wedding ring? Why was the ring significant? I glanced at the golden band and then up at her crooked smile.
Not a ring. A slave cuff. But how? I’d been able to take it off… “You own me?”
All this time she had known exactly where to find me. All through the years we had been apart, she’d been keeping an eye on the nameless soul eater. But why? The Nameless One was nothing. Unless she had known who I really was?
She smiled. “Why do you think Osiris wanted me gone? I know you. I’ve always known you. I may not have been sure of your name, but a name is nothing without the man behind it. Now go.”
“Seth—”
Her warm hands cupped my face. Her lips pressed against mine. The kiss burned and ended too soon. She blinked, eyes so bright, and pulled away. “Duat will endure. This is not where you’re needed.” And then she turned, plucked an array of short knives free, and strode back toward the weighing chambers.
“Chuck, your daughter, she’s alive,” I called.
She paused and nodded, but didn’t turn. “Protect her.” She spun the knives in her hands, reversing her grip, and continued onward. “As I failed to.”
I wanted to stay, to join her, to watch her circle and attack Osiris. Together, we could bring him down. It would be glorious. But the wound in my side throbbed an angry warning, and Bastet was right: this wasn’t my fight. Duat would survive. I’d done enough to unnerve Osiris and raise a storm of souls. A world away, with every hour that passed, thousands were dying. I cared enough to walk away from my fight with Osiris, but his time was running out. I’d make sure of it.
Chapter 10
Sand had climbed halfway up the walls of what appeared to be an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Queens. My link to Nile’s slave cuff had pulled me in the kid’s direction, leading me straight here. I walked around the outside and spotted the only entrance sand hadn’t barricaded. I was expecting to find footprints in the sand, but if there were any, the relentless wind had filled them in.
I backed up around the carcass of a car abandoned in the empty street and eyed the top row of narrow windows. Shukra could be alone with Nile, or I might be about to get ambushed by Cat and her feline friends. My distinctive black armor stood out against the swathes of red sand.
My side twinged. I splayed a hand against my waist. Dark blood oozed between my fingers. Damn Anubis’s spear. The tip was still inside. I wouldn’t heal until I got it out.
An arm circled my front and yanked me backward. Whispered words held me close against a rigid body. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t open up your insides and spill them all over this street.”
Cat.
“Bastet’s alive,” I replied, feeling her heart thudding against my back.
“And I’m supposed to take your word for it? I learned the hard way that only idiots and the suicidal trust Apophis.” The words brushed against my ear, warm with the venom behind them.
“That’s good advice.” Four hardened spikes pressed into my skin where the armor had weakened. Claws. She would make good on her promise. “If you kill me, I’ll just come right back. Mortal laws no longer apply to me.”
“But it would be very, very satisfying.” She pressed against my back, in a way that would have been sensual if not for the claws and the fact I was about to drop to my knees. Not so long ago, she had laid tangled in my arms, with nothing between us but millennia of secrets. Those secrets were out now, but the gap they’d left behind was a mile-deep chasm that could never be filled.
“I smell blood on you.” She sniffed. “Yours. Others. And…”
Bastet, I suspected, as she tensed.
“Me and… most of Duat had a disagreement. The gods aren’t big fans of change.”
Her breathing deepened, but her grip stayed strong. Seconds passed, dragging like hours.
I lifted my gaze to the roofline belonging to the building sheltering Nile and Shukra. Clouds churned in the red sky. The only sounds were that of the sand hissing down the street and the slow, tired thud-thud of my heart.
“You sound like Ace, but different,” Cat murmured. “You smell like him, but deeper, beneath the man, there’s ash and ancient things. It reminds me of the Twelve Gates, of the nothing smell of the storm that tore me apart. I want to hate you. I want to kill you again and again, but then I remember how you brought those witches back and how you tried to save me in Duat. And now you tell me Bastet is alive, and I smell her on you, and I want to believe you. But you lied for so long and you would lie again to get what you want.” Her grip tightened and her claws dug into my armor. “What do you really want, Apophis?”
“Whatever I say, you won’t trust my reply.”
“Try me.”
“I want to stop the gods—for good.”
“How?”
“Osiris’s weapon. It’s meant for me, but if I can figure out how it works, I’ll turn it on them all. And if that fails, I have a talent for killing gods. I was created to devour all the wrong in the worlds. All of this—the sundering—is wrong. I intend to stop it.”
“Then what? Will you stand on the ashes of this world and reign over its remains?”
“I am the End of All Things.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I twisted, caught her wrist, and yanked her arm up between us, locking her close. She pulled, but I held fast. “I didn’t want this. I never wanted this. I still care. That’s why I’ve changed. Ace Dante taught me how to care. I am him, but more, and I’m sorry—”
“Liar.” She yanked back and pressed the claws of her free hand against the wound in my side, but she didn’t sink them in. “All this time, you’ve been waiting for the moment to strike, like the true snake in the grass you are. While the other gods slept and schemed, you waited, buying up time until the world was weak and ripe for a creature like you.”
“In the beginning, yes. That was my intention. But I’ve changed.”
“Changed?” Her top lip rippled in a silent snarl. “You blinded that poor boy!”
Like a physical blow, the words struck deep and hollowed out something vital. I heard Nile’s screams all over again. “I had to,” I said, the words choking me.
“You’ve killed hundreds, maybe thousands, while you and Seth brought about the new sundering.”
Another blow. She hadn’t moved, and yet I felt each impact. “Necessary.”
“You killed me!”
And I would never forget the look of betrayal on her face. That guilt would live with me. Forever. “I needed Seth to believe. I needed everyone to believe. And I needed to believe it myself. I don’t need
to be good to do good. I am the last resort of a dying world. Don’t you see? Good doesn’t always have to be the one thing that triumphs over evil. I will triumph because I don’t play by the rules.” I released her and shoved her back, needing her away so I could think clearly. Pain throbbed up my side. “I lost my way. In creating Ace Dante, I found it again.” Blood soaked the inside of my armor, cooling as it spread. “I can’t do this alone. I need you to keep me real, Cat. You and Shukra and Cujo. Because the temptation to take and consume and devour is almost unbearable.” I could hear the whispers and the storm churning both outside the city and inside my head. Kur Apophis. Kur Apophis. Kur Apophis. Take it. Own it. Devour it all. “I asked you to trust me, and I meant it. I am Apophis, but I am also that man who drinks too much vodka and somehow believes that if he can’t save himself, he can at least save the world. If you don’t trust me, then trust him. He’s the only chance we have at saving what’s left of this city and this world. It happened before, it will happen here, and it will happen again. But I can stop it all. I am the End.”
She blinked and shook her head. “I can’t trust anything you say.”
I had told her exactly that moments ago, but only now she seemed to realize what it meant.
“He’s telling the truth,” Nile said. He stood in the doorway with a filthy rag tied around his head, hiding his closed eyes. I hadn’t seen or heard him approach, but I was grateful he had heard. He needed to. Behind him, Shukra loomed, watching with a slight smirk on her lips. “No lies,” Nile added. “I see lies clearly now.” The boy’s tone held a distant note.
I swallowed and swayed, my balance threatening to drop me on my ass. “You each have reasons to hate me. I am not here to redeem myself. I’m here to stop the sundering. Help me do that.”
Shukra stepped around Nile. She strode closer, wrapped in torn and scuffed pants and a long leather coat that looked a lot like the ones I never could keep for long. Hers had bite marks and what appeared to be bullet holes along the hem. She planted her hand on my shoulder and peered into my eyes. “I told you in Egypt. I’ve always got your back, Acehole.”
She probably understood better than anyone how I struggled to stave off the Dark. A demon sorceress turned good and an anti-god older than time. We were both impossible things. I didn’t need Nile’s truthseeing to see the resolve in Shukra’s expression and hear it in her words. She knew me. All of me. Shukra was a true friend.
“Ace Dante has a lot to answer for.” She squeezed my shoulder, let go, and sauntered back to Nile. “C’mon. All this sand is chafing in awkward places and you leaking blood everywhere will attract scorpions.”
Nile followed her inside, moving confidently without his sight. But beside me, Cat’s expression had fallen into an unreadable blankness. She waited for me to say something. Nothing I could say would make any difference, and none of it mattered anyway. As I entered the building, she stepped into the footprints my boots had left in the sand, likely counting all the weak spots in my armor for when the time came to sink her claws in.
“You let him just walk in!” Chuck’s shriek echoed through the corridors and into the bones of the abandoned office building. She jumped to her feet and glared murderous thoughts my way. The group had set up a makeshift camp in what had once been a communal cafeteria. Mobile spotlights trailed power cables across the floor and up the wall, probably to a generator. Sheets hung over the windows, keeping the light from escaping.
Shukra caught me eyeing the drapes. “We learned that the hard way. First night, scorpions got in. Friends of yours, probably.” She smirked.
Cat wasn’t smiling. She circled around the couches and tables, keeping to the edges from where she could watch me. Had there been a high shelf, she would have been on it, silently observing.
Cujo wheeled in moments later and slowed when he saw me.
“How is Chantal?” I asked.
“Safe.” A nod was all I got before he wheeled over to Chuck and told her to sit. “Remember what we talked about?” he asked her. “Don’t let the gods see how they hurt you.”
She huffed but nodded and fell into the oversized chair, glaring.
Seeing Cujo offering a guiding hand to Chuck… An odd sense of unease and guilt started squirming again. She was my daughter. I had tried to help her in the only way possible, by cutting myself out of her life. Ace Dante might have wanted to do more, but I looked at her now and saw a liability. Cujo was a better guiding hand than I could ever be.
The crowd was tough, but it beat having hundreds of priests waiting on my every word. The chances of being worshipped here were slim.
The group milled about. They appeared to fit well together. I resisted the urge to move among them. The tension had already ramped up to almost audible levels.
“Seth killed you?” Cat asked. She stood as far away as possible while remaining in the room, arms crossed over her chest.
I removed Alysdair and set the sword down on an empty couch. “Yes.” I considered sitting, but the wound in my side wouldn’t cooperate. “Is there somewhere I can get cleaned up?”
“Not healing?” she inquired.
I flicked my gaze to her and scanned the others who all appeared to be working hard at not paying us any attention. “Anubis’s spear found its mark,” I admitted.
“What happened in Duat?” Shukra had dropped into a chair and propped her boots up on a low table. She looked right at home, more so than she ever had in our various businesses over the years. Half her hair flowed loose, the other half she had pinned back with what looked like a scorpion’s pincer. More than anyone, Shukra looked as though she’d been made for the apocalypse.
“I raised an army, cleaned up Seth’s sand, and tried to get Duat on my side. It was working until Osiris and Anubis got involved.” I gestured at the wetness glistening on my side. “Anubis always wanted to stick me with his spear, and not in a good way.”
Shukra arched an eyebrow. “Looks painful.” She smiled like that was the best news she’d heard all day.
Not much had changed.
“Follow me,” Cat suggested, heading for one of the doors.
“Is that wise?” Chuck asked. “Letting him walk around in our camp?”
I turned, but it was Shukra who snorted and said, “Go ahead and try to stop him.”
Chuck looked as though she might spring from the chair and launch herself at me. The girl had guts, the kind of guts that got heroes killed. She would learn—if she lived long enough.
“But before you do,” Shukra continued. “Think about what he can do with a single word. About what he can make you do if he wanted. I’ve been at a god’s beck and call, little godling girl, and this guy, right here, right now, is the best you’re going to get.”
“He’s a… monster.”
“So am I.” Shu grinned.
I turned back and continued after Cat. The discussion would continue while I was gone. There was no use in my hearing it. Cat led me through a few corridors into the washrooms. She flicked on a work light hanging over the sink and reached up into a recess to grab a first aid kit.
“Strip,” she ordered.
I watched her fingers rip open a gauze package and bandage. She hadn’t met my eyes and wouldn’t. After unbuckling the breastplate, I shrugged it off and dropped it with a clatter. The buff leather coat beneath had fared well enough. It hadn’t stopped Anubis’s spear though, as the ragged tear in the side and the protruding metal tip revealed.
“If she’s alive, why isn’t she here?” Cat asked.
Working my arm out of the coat wasn’t easy, but with a few hitches, I managed it. Cat frowned at the wound. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the antiseptic and bandages would be wasted on me. But I appreciated the thought.
“Bastet stayed behind to delay Osiris and stop me from making a mistake.”
Cat sank her claws in, setting the wound on fire, or filling it with acid, or something equally mind-numbingly painful. I yelped and jerked. The tip slurped f
ree. Cat lifted the huge arrow-shaped head, coolly admired its construction, and tossed it into the sink.
“What mistake?” She dabbed at the wound. I flinched. “Stay still.”
Cold water fizzled against the heat.
“Wasting time and power by trying to kill Osiris.” I realized I’d been rubbing my thumb against the ring. I lifted my hand, showing Cat. “It’s a slave cuff. I should have known. Why would Bastet, an Egyptian goddess, bother with a marriage ceremony and human tokens of love?”
“Because she loved you?” Cat didn’t look up from the wound and there was no hesitation in her voice, but I knew Cat, and her words were always sharp.
Love? Maybe. But I doubted it. Knowing everything I did now. Knowing the truth of me. No goddess could ever love me. “She suspected what I was… what I am. This cuff disguised as a ring was insurance so she would always know where to find me. She modified it, I think. Made it so I could take it off, but wanted to have it on. Otherwise, I’d have gotten suspicious. She’s a goddess, after all.”
“Can’t it be both? A symbol of love and a slave cuff?”
I smiled at Cat’s words. “Your romanticism is showing.”
She blinked and started, looking up. There, in that glimmer, she wanted to believe Bastet had loved me because it humanized her idol. Cat wanted to believe many things. Somewhere behind all that killer instinct, she really was a pussy cat. I knew because I’d seen her softer side when we’d lain together. She hid it well. Almost as well as I’d hidden the fact I was a world-eating anti-god.
“You could have told me.” She tossed the cloth into the sink, and when she looked back at me, the softness had gone, replaced by steel and her killer’s glare. “You could have told me all of it, but you kept me in the dark, and then when you stole Nile and handed him over to Seth… What you did to me.”
Edge of Forever (The Soul Eater Book 6) Page 9