I broke the stare and tugged my coat back on. “Thank you, but the wound will be fine. I just need time to heal.” I almost laughed at my words. Time was the one thing I didn’t have.
“You don’t get to turn away from me, Ace Dante, or Apophis, or whatever you’re calling yourself now. You owe me more than that.” She trembled, but not from fear. Anger had her on the edge of reason. I’d betrayed her, lied to her, treated her like something to be used and discarded. I deserved her wrath.
“You’re right. I do owe you more. I wish I could say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I regret what I had to do, but I’d do the same again tomorrow.” Her cheek twitched. The words hurt her, but the truth often hurt. “I can’t give you what you want.”
“I’ve only ever wanted the truth from you.”
I scooped up the breastplate and brushed off a layer of dust. The matte-black armor beneath reflected nothing back. “Now you have it.”
“When you have your way and you stop the sundering, what will happen to the good gods?”
“There are no good gods.”
“Bastet—”
“Cat, the gods are everything that is wrong with the worlds. There are no exceptions. When they are gone, the people will be free of them forever.” And free of me, I added silently. She understood, just like she had once told me. She understood everything. Quiet stretched between us, one hungering to be filled. The almost inconsequential Ace Dante part of me wanted to reach out, but whatever he felt, whatever I had once felt, had been burned up, just like the ashes of the fallen city I was trying to save. As cold as I was inside, I would miss Cat. I’d miss many things once this was over. Admiring New York from the rooftops, Shukra’s smart mouth and whip-smart intelligence, Cujo’s forgiving friendship and good nature, and Cat… her ruthlessness, her protective instincts, and her willingness to believe in the good in me.
I owed these people everything. Without them, I would be the monster they feared.
“I have to talk with Nile and Chuck—” I had hoped Cat would follow. But after leaving the washroom, I looked back down the debris-scattered corridor to find I was alone.
Chuck radiated enough hatred to make up for Nile’s eerie calm. I sat on the arm of a couch set aside from the main area, still within listening distance of the others, and assessed both kids. Chuck chewed on her nails, making a point of not looking at me. Nile had tipped his head back and seemed lost in thought. His accelerated aging meant he could easily pass for Chuck’s brother. I wondered what lay in store for these two godlings. Godly offspring didn’t fare well—used, traded, manipulated—and those who weren’t born immortal usually died before reaching their twenty-first birthday. Bastet had tried to save Chuck from that fate by keeping me out of the loop. She would have succeeded had Osiris not godstruck Chuck and raped her to kick-start his “prophecy.”
Shukra dumped blank sheets of paper on the table between me and the kids and handed the kids a pen each.
“Draw each of the symbols you painted over the buildings,” I told them.
Nile took up his pen and leaned forward. Chuck silently watched her son scribble a few images. After a few moments, she turned her soul-eater eyes on me and threw the pen at my chest. It bounced off and clattered to the floor.
“Draw your own stupid pictures.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged her legs. This wasn’t going well.
I scratched at an eyebrow and considered all the ways I could approach this. “While you have your tantrum, people are dying.”
“Because your best buddy Seth is killing them. Why didn’t you stop him? Oh, wait, because you let him out, then you sided with Osiris to get Nile, and then you handed my son over to Seth. Not satisfied with that, you blinded him. Remind me again why I should help you. I hate you. I can’t stand to even look at you. I don’t want to be your daughter.”
She had her mother’s ability to cut with a glance and butcher with her words. I had once admired Chuck. She hadn’t had the best upbringing, but she’d survived through ingenuity and a stubbornness not to let the world kick her in the teeth. She’d made mistakes, and she had learned from them. Had I still been Ace Dante, I’d have been proud of her. It wasn’t easy staring into the face of a monster.
“If you don’t draw the hieroglyphs, I’ll compel you to.”
“Mind rape me? Do it. Prove what I already know.” Her lip curled. “You’re no better than Osiris.” She unfolded her legs and stood. “In fact, don’t bother. I already know you’re worse.”
“The things I did were necessary.”
“No, they weren’t.”
“You can’t possibly understand—”
“Oh, I understand.” She jabbed a finger at my face. “All that power and you hide behind lies. You’re a coward. Ace Dante would never have—”
“Sit.”
She sat.
“Pick up the pen.”
She scooped down and picked up the pen. “I hate you so much—”
“Draw the hieroglyphs—”
“I’m going to kill you.” Her arm trembled, but she had no choice. The compulsion had its teeth in her. She drew the marks, her pen tip digging deep into the paper.
She finished up her markings and threw the pen down. Lifting her head, she swallowed and twisted her lips around a grimace. Her cheeks glistened wet with angry tears. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m going to kill you and I’m going to take your soul so you don’t ever come back.”
I blinked away and lifted her drawings along with Nile’s. The markings, when placed together, told an interesting story. “If this works, you won’t have to.”
I caught Shukra’s eye and joined her and Cujo tucked into the corner. She removed her boots from the table so I could spread the papers out. “You remember how witches have tried to trap me over the years?” I began, pushing Chuck’s threats to the back of my mind. Shukra leaned in and examined the marks. “Osiris’s weapon isn’t a weapon at all. It’s a trap. He’s built a replica of the cage Kenny and his witches used against me. But this is…” The warehouses, the markings, the scrolls. “This cage is huge.”
“The trap is huge,” Shu corrected. “But the cage won’t be.” She pointed at one marking, the crocodile with three lines. “Once triggered, the power contained will be reduced to almost nothing.”
“Like a genie in a lamp,” Cujo added.
Shukra nodded. “Allentown, my building—they are miles apart, but they must be linked, like a net closing. That suggests the trap has been woven through the entire city, perhaps farther. To escape a trap this size, you’ll have to leave the east coast.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I scanned the elaborate markings. Each one was familiar, but modified. Whatever I might think of Osiris, he was a clever son of a jackal. “What triggers it?”
Shukra shook her head. “Osiris himself, perhaps. I’m not sure. It’s not clear. It could have been in motion for decades.”
Nile had told me the trap was in motion now. The countdown was nearing its end. Osiris could spring it at any time. “What about the scrolls? Was there anything in them that might tell us more?”
Shu leaned back and tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “They were summoning scrolls, used to collect and funnel power toward a point, a target.”
“What target? Where?”
Shukra tapped the scribbled image of a snake-headed jackal. “You.”
“Can we stop it?”
“If you had weeks to find all the scrolls, destroy them all, and then locate the buildings Nile left his marks of Light all over, then sure.”
“I have days,” I said. “Probably less.”
“This kind of spell, it’ll take vast amounts of power. Osiris will need to be close by and completely focused. I doubt he has the power to pull this off. He hasn’t been properly worshipped in thousands of years.”
I glanced at Nile. He was sitting quietly on a couch, barely moving, breathing steadily. Nile: Thoth’s soul, blood of Apophis and Bastet,
Osiris’s son. The kid had the pedigree, and he was a ticking bomb in terms of Light. Combine that with Osiris’s power. The stopping-time stunt Osiris had pulled on the highway outside New York, designed to remind me exactly who I was dealing with, had also shown me something I hadn’t realized at the time. The God of Resurrection had been holding out on me. Clearly, he had been worshipped on the quiet. The orgies, the never-ending parade of companions, his position as New York’s mayor. He had been worshipped by mortals in various ways through the more recent centuries. Osiris had the juice to pull this off.
“He always knew this was coming. He told me as much. Power won’t be a problem for him. But we have the one thing he can’t proceed without.”
Cujo and Shukra discreetly glanced over at Nile. We were in agreement. The kid was key. Osiris would be coming for him.
The son was always going to sunder the king, also known as the End of All Things. Nile was prophesied to end me, and if Osiris had his way, his prophecy would be realized.
“So, what’s the plan?” Shukra asked. “How do we stop it?”
“We don’t.”
“What?”
“We make it bigger.”
“Bigger? Are you insane?”
“Have you met me lately?” I flashed her a familiar sideways grin. “I intend to build a trap within a trap.”
Shukra’s lips twitched. “All right. How do we do this?”
“Not we. You.” I explained how she would need to contribute to Nile’s graffiti spree by adding my name on various buildings throughout Manhattan. My written name—the snake-headed jackal—had been erased in all but a few places. The throne back in Egypt and the little box that had held my past locked away inside it. Shukra would bring my name back into the present, ending at my temple. As a sorceress, she would add a touch of power to each symbol, giving them resonance. Those who saw the name, human and creature alike, would know me. Their fear was my power. And I needed all the power I could gather for this to work.
“I’ll make sure no one harasses you at the temple,” I said. “Once you’re there, add every godly name alongside mine. All of them inside one cartouche and then light it up.”
“All of them?”
“Every single one.”
Shukra nodded. “You know, if you collect their names like that, they’ll come looking.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Cujo had fallen silent during my discussion with Shukra, but he was listening. And I suspected I knew exactly what was going through my friend’s mind. Once the trap was set, there would be no escape. For anyone.
“Take Cat,” I told Shu. “She’ll help if you ask her.”
Shukra gave Cujo’s hand a squeeze, and after scooping up her jacket, she left in search of Cat.
Cujo rubbed a hand over his face and slumped back into his chair. “Is there anything of Ace Dante left in you?”
“If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
His gaze wandered to the boy. “That’s not exactly an answer.”
I owed him more, didn’t I? “Yes, he’s here. He’s the part of me that wonders what will happen to you when this is over.”
“I’ll be all right.” He nodded, convincing himself as much as me. “I’m a survivor.”
I believed it. I caught myself looking at the girl, Chuck, standing beside the window. She had pulled the sheet back and was peeking at whatever kind of desolation she saw outside.
Cujo had seen me watching her and offered up a sad smile. “You don’t intend to survive this, do you?”
“If I’m known, if I’m worshipped, I’ll be the worst of all the gods. That can’t happen. This world doesn’t need gods to govern it.”
His smile grew. “That right there, that’s Ace Dante talking.”
The man’s grin was infectious. My lips lifted, just enough to hint at a smile. “I have no right to ask this, but will you look after Chuck?”
“Seems like she does all right looking after herself.”
“She likes to think so.”
He considered it carefully, rubbing at his whiskered chin. “There’s a lot of you in her. She’ll be fine. But I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“Keep her straight. She’s a soul eater. It’s a heavy burden.”
“Maybe you should go talk to her? She’s angry with you, she has good reason to be, but if you explain…”
“No.” My gaze fell on the snake-headed jackal symbol scrawled onto a piece of paper. “I am her father by blood. That is our only connection.” I rubbed a thumb over Bastet’s wedding band wrapped around my finger. Isis had told me that caring was the hardest part of eternal life. She’d had a point.
“Shukra told me everything,” Cujo said. “All that you did. When I lost the use of my legs, I went through months of physiotherapy. It hurt physically and… and in the head, yah know? It’s what it did up here”—he tapped his temple —“that did the most damage. It hurt so bad sometimes I didn’t want to live. I know you did things you hate yourself for. I figure some choices you’d probably make again and do differently.” He didn’t glance at Nile. Didn’t have to. “Nobody else will tell you because they either hate you or they’re too scared to, but… thank you for trying—even if you did maybe fuck it up—but at least you did what you could. Shukra told me she…” He hesitated. “She’s proud of you, her soul eater. Don’t tell her I told you. She hates the thought that she might be catching emotions.”
A light, bright laugh slipped free. “I can’t imagine Shukra handling emotion well.”
“You’d be surprised.” He laughed along with me.
“She should get a hobby to distract her. Taxidermy.”
We both laughed harder until Cujo reached over and squeezed my arm. “Thank you, Ace.”
I planted my hand on his. “It’s not over yet.”
“You’ll beat them. All of them. Screw Apophis. I have faith in Ace Dante.” His eyes glistened. He pulled his hand back and swallowed. “We’re gonna be okay.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “you are.”
Chapter 11
“It’s done,” Shukra said. She had called me outside the building while the others rested. “Just the temple left to mark and then the fireworks begin.”
A softer breeze whispered across the sand blanketing the street. It felt like midnight, though with the red cloud cover, every passing hour felt like night and had for weeks. But still, in my bones, I felt there was a new day on the horizon.
“Did Cat help you?” I asked.
“Yes, but when I told her I was coming back here for you, she made herself scarce.” Shukra tucked her thumbs into her pants pockets and scanned the street with its hollowed-out buildings and abandoned cars. “The whole world is pissed at you,” she added.
I nodded. “In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s my specialty.”
“Seth has taken your temple and splashed his sand everywhere. There are priests crawling up the walls.” She shrugged. “Not literally. Not yet anyway.”
“Good. I need Seth at the epicenter.”
“The trap within a trap…”
“And I’m the bait.”
“You’re really doing this?”
“Yes, with your help… Do you remember the illusion spell you cast to make it look as though Isis killed Chuck?”
She breathed in and out through her nose slowly, making a point of not looking at me. “Possibly.”
“Could you do it again?”
“Maybe. With a whole lot of power to back it up.”
A few moments passed, and we fell into an easy quiet. It wouldn’t last. The storm was coming, and soon, none of us would be able to escape it. “Cujo tells me you’re going soft,” I finally said. “He said you’ll be wanting a puppy next. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for the commitment.”
She looked horrified, mouth agape, until I couldn’t hide my smile any longer, then her eyes narrowed to razor-like slits. “I’m only sorry I won’t be the one who gets to kill you.”
<
br /> “If there was any sense of justice in the world, it would be you, Shukra.” I adjusted Alysdair’s weight against my back and caught the glitter of something hiding in the shadows inside an abandoned convenience store across the street. There were others. I’d seen them shift in the dark, felt their souls recoil from me even as their curiosity got the better of them and drew them near.
When one enormous black scorpion scuttled down the side of the storefront, Shukra tensed and readied her diesel-tainted power.
“Don’t,” I told her.
Another scorpion scuttled up from an underground parking lot. Another dropped from a streetlamp, legs rippling as it ventured closer. They had been in the shadows around the building for hours, waiting. Before long, a dozen had gathered on the street in front of us. Stingers twitched and pincers clicked.
“Cukkomd,” I whispered, infecting them all. They shuddered beneath my mental hold. “Vrusacs,” Protect. The scorpions hunkered down, as eager as puppies to obey. Enormous, man-killing, venomous puppies. “Su.” Go. They scurried off into the shadows surrounding the group’s camp.
“Now who’s going soft?” Shukra remarked.
“Bastet isn’t back, and I can’t stay here to keep them safe. We’ve got a world to save and gods to kill. You ready?”
“Always.”
I left Shukra with a disconcertingly calm Nile a block away from my temple. With every step that brought me closer to the old department store, I shook off more of what it meant to be Ace Dante, letting the dark creep back in and guard me like part of my armor. I swept sand from my path with a thought, aware I was already being watched. The closer I got to the temple, the more the old temptations tugged on my resolve. Seth’s power had wrapped itself around my building like a choking weed, but he hadn’t been on the throne long enough to sink his roots into the foundations. Deep inside the stone, the temple was still mine.
The robed priests made no move to stop me as I climbed the steps. Most I recognized. Most had fallen to their knees for me, easily switching sides. I couldn’t blame them for wanting to survive.
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