by Jean Murray
“Kendra?”
He scanned the room. The book she had been carrying sat on the bed. He proceeded to the side of the mattress and ran his fingertips on the cover. The duvet was perfectly undisturbed. He turned and moved toward the bathroom. Empty.
Isis. He had left her unguarded in the time he spent with Bakari. He dashed out the door into the hallway. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to pick up on her scent trail.
If anything happened to her…
The fragrance of flowers carried along the long hallway past Bakari’s room straight toward the iron entrance. Where the hell was she going? She had an overriding fear of the dark and hated the dungeon.
He dematerialized midstride and reappeared at the base of the prison steps. Her scent permeated the air with a heavy sweetness. With rapid footfalls he turned through the labyrinth of passageways. He halted when he saw her.
Kendra stood at the precipice of darkness. The toes of her shoes met the line of the shadow perfectly. Her fists were clenched, as she stared into the dark corridor. This was not any corridor, it lead to the cell that held Kepi’s sarcophagus.
He approached slowly, so as not to startle her. “Kendra?”
She turned to the call of her name. The torches on the walls cast unnatural shadows on her face, making her look old and withered. Coldness crawled against his skin, as if seeing her that way heralded some premonition. The picture scared the hell out of him.
Her severe expression did not change when she turned her gaze to the darkness. “Kendra.”
“I hate her,” she said without looking at him.
He knelt on one knee and looked down the black corridor. At the end a thick reinforced metal door and an impenetrable spell sealed the prisoner inside. A cold and desolate energy emanated from Kendra’s soul which only made her morphed features more alarming.
She shifted slightly on her feet. A flash drew his attention to her left hand. He had not seen it at first because her body blocked his view, but he recognized it immediately. A Mevt dagger gripped in her palm. Bakari’s death dagger. Only two existed in the world.
A god could live without their heart, but the soul was always bound to it. In Bakari’s hands, the spell on the dagger could sever that bond—killing the god. He did not blame Kendra for wanting to do it. He wanted a try at the goddess, but it had to be his brother who wielded the weapon. For more reasons than him being the Death god, Bakari needed to purge Kepi from his life.
“Look at me,” he said and took her free hand in his. Her brown eyes darted to his face. “I know Bakari’s suffering has affected you deeply. And your father’s.” He reached out and cupped the side of her face. “Kepi’s time will come. She will pay for her offenses.”
“Not soon enough.”
“You know Bakari has to do this. He needs to do this.”
She looked at the dagger in her hand and rubbed her thumb over the scorpion on the hilt. “He has other plans.”
The brown eyes that looked up at him were filled with pain. Other plans?
“Did he say something to you?”
She shook her head. “I stole the daggers off his wall and tucked them in my book.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “What do you mean he has other plans?”
She looked away. “I see and hear things when I touch certain objects. The history.”
“What other plans?” he repeated.
“He plans to use the daggers, but not on Kepi.”
“On who?” He raised his voice and shook her gently.
“On himself.”
Bomani wavered slightly, his life source sucked from his soul. He never got to tell Kendra about the blood-bond. Would Bakari knowingly kill himself and take her with him? Based on how he left him, anything was possible. With a sense of extreme urgency he grabbed Kendra’s hand. “Where is the other dagger?”
“In my room still tucked in the book.”
He rose and pulled her down the corridor. Her shorter strides slowed him. Without warning he scooped her up and dematerialized before his next step hit the stone.
He reemerged in the palace hallway and shouldered the doors at a dead run. The wood creaked under the force and the latch splintered. He set Kendra next to him and took the last remaining steps to the bed.
“See the book is where I left it.”
Bomani touched the cover with his fingers. It was in the exact same place. His eyes trained in on the duvet. An indentation marked the area to the left of the text.
“Gods.” He flicked open the top cover, but he knew it would be empty.
“It’s gone.” Kendra grabbed the book and shook it. “Oh, no.”
His brother must have known she stole the daggers from his room. “We need to find him.” Bakari had not completed the act or Kendra would not be vertical, but how long would it take? She dashed out the door before he could stop her. “Wait.”
Ignoring him, she threw open the door to Bakari’s room and ran inside. He caught up to her in the bathroom. “He’s not here.”
“We need to notify Asar.”
“I should have taken both. Why didn’t I?”
He knelt and grabbed her by the shoulders. “We will find him.” He must be found or she will be dead. “We will have a better chance with more of us looking.”
Grabbing her hand, he dematerialized again. When they reappeared, she staggered.
“You have to stop doing that or I’m going to pass out.” She leaned against the wall for support while he banged on his Sire’s door. Please, let him be here. He rapped on the door harder, almost splitting the wood.
Asar opened the door with a towel wrapped around his waist. “This better be good, Commander.”
“Bakari…” Bomani could barely formulate the words. Asar’s eyes snapped to Kendra’s hand that held the Mevt dagger.
“Where?”
“He is not in his room. I do not know.”
Lilly appeared in a white rob behind Asar. Her face reflected the sudden concern manifested by her mate. “What’s going on?”
Asar turned and grabbed a pair of pants off the bed. “We need to find my son.”
“Where is Kamen?” Bomani asked.
“Human realm with Kit.” Asar pushed out the door followed by Lilly. His eyes gravitated to Kendra. “He will be here shortly.”
The air became heavy around Bomani, signaling Kamen’s arrival. Black smoke swirled from the floor up. Kamen stepped clear with Kit in hand. His uncle’s black eyes met Asar’s and he nodded. Without a word Kamen took off down the hall.
Asar turned to Lilly. “Stay with Kendra. Do not leave her.”
Lilly nodded and turned her unreadable gaze to her sister. Kendra’s eyes flicked from Lilly to Asar and finally came to rest on Bomani. She grabbed his hand and brushed her small thumb against his raised tattoos.
Bomani smiled and kissed the top of her hand. “We will find him.” She pressed her lips together and nodded. In a fraction of that moment he tried to memorize her face hoping it was not the last time he would see it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fine scroll work decorated the handle. The blade split down the center creating two separate jagged shafts. Bakari clutched it like an old friend. The spell impregnated into the steel of the weapon made it a god’s nightmare.
Sever. Pierce. Destroy.
He pressed his forehead into the scorpion imprint on the handle, gathering his courage. Pain. Guilt. Self-Hatred. Freedom resided in the point of the dagger pressed to his bare left chest. There were so many reasons to complete the act and so few reasons not to.
He deserved every painful and agonizing moment of his torture. Kepi had done his father a favor by taking him, removing the cancer that was growing in Aaru in the form of his son. Why did his father not see the monster he sired? Bomani did. His brother defined the assets of an honorable male. All the qualities he lacked. Whatever honor he appeared to have was a fallacy. A pretty picture painted f
or those to see, but underneath the surface no honor remained. Gods, he hated himself.
He was home in Aaru and nothing had changed. He continued to ruin peoples’ lives by his mere presence. He was unworthy of the life force that flickered in his heart.
He barely made it out of his room. It took three crafts of wine to dull the anxiety of being out in the open. Thank the gods he was strong enough to dematerialize. He would have never made it to the cell.
His refuge sat before him, his home for five long years. As long as the lid was closed Kepi could not touch him. The scorpions sealed in with him made for better company, even their stinging barbs and venom were a fathom better than her, even as he had screamed out in agony. The venom took him to the precipice of death, but would never push him over. He always returned for another day of torture. He had welcomed the pain from the venom rather than what Kepi offered to him outside his tomb. What she made him do to obtain food.
He was too weak to refuse. Too much a coward to die from mere wasting away.
Things he had yearned for so long, he now had and did not want. He had gotten his life back through his weakness and cowardice. He could have died with honor, but when he was at his weakest he took the easy way out to survive. Bomani would have refused even on his death bed. His brother had no fear of dying. Even though there was an afterlife for a god, it was a life without their earthly powers. They existed no different than humans. Powerless.
He would ensure he would not receive even the sanctity of the afterlife. Suicide would ensure he would go only to one place. A place he belonged on so many levels. Duat. A place for murderers, traitors, and criminals. He was no different, was he?
Despite the agonizing pain in his chest, his hand stayed, unengaged in his destiny in hell. Holding on to his last moral thread of decency was the life of his butterfly. If she truly carried his mark, as Bomani said, he would take her with him in his death. Not into the afterlife she deserved, Kendra would be condemned to his fate in Duat’s gates.
His blood. He honestly did not remember doing it, but it was the only explanation. He remembered the fear and panic with her lifeless body in his arms. He had felt his life force fade with every agonal breath she exhaled from her body. He remembered feeling relief that his life was coming to an end. A peace he had not had in years. All he had to do is let her human body die, and he would go with her.
The pain in his chest and the guilt in his heart blurred those moral lines and forced him to focus on his only means of escape. With tears in his eyes he pressed the tip of the blade so it pierced his skin. He clenched his eyes shut and tightened his grip on the hilt. His arms shook, as he forced the blade deeper. His blood warmed the skin of his chest and ran down his abdomen.
He stalled short of his goal.
A nagging desire in the midst of his distress held him captive, the same one that had been present in the cell and later in his mind. Protection and love for the human. He tried to tell himself it was his base nature to protect the Goddess’ children, but honestly he never cared for them or their pleas.
No. His feelings were directed at Kendra. She alone. Was it possible to fall in love in a fraction of those seconds upon his awakening or even before that? Was it solely because of her blood-bond with him? He told her he would never hurt her and here he was trying to kill himself, knowing he would take her with him. Would he betray his promise to her, as he did his father?
He pulled the dagger away from his chest, and bellowed in anguish and frustration. He hung his head between his knees and sobbed. The pain in his chest burned like molten lava, but he would endure it for her. So she could live.
The moment he dreaded had come. The heavy oppressive weight of another god filled the room. He looked up to see his uncle consuming the door frame of the cell.
“Nephew.”
Bakari tapped the blood-stained tip of the blade into the stone. “Uncle.”
Kamen moved casually inside the cell, like any other day he would visit. He sat on a stone pillar and leaned his elbows on his knees.
Bakari looked at Kamen. He expected to see the fiery glow of anger in his uncle’s eyes, but was met with a non-judgmental gaze. “Father will be here soon, yes?”
“Just you and me, right now.”
So like his uncle to be short and concise. No extras. He did not come storming in demanding he hand over the blade, instead he sat and waited. Bakari sighed and laid his head in his hand. “How do you know if you are in love?”
“What?” Kamen wiped a hand across his jaw, obviously startled by an unexpected topic. He cleared his throat and glanced around the room. “You are asking the wrong god.”
“When do you know?”
Kamen scratched the base of his neck and blew out a heavy breath. “I guess when you are willing to sacrifice for them. Their happiness becomes more important than your own.”
“Mmm.” Bakari tapped the flat side of the blade against his palm. “Even though you can never be with them?”
Kamen leaned on the stone wall. A weighty cloud of sadness covered his features. His uncle lost someone long ago and he paid for that mistake every day thereafter. “Yes.”
“I cannot stay in the palace,” Bakari said, resigned to the fact that he would see many more days of pain and misery.
“Feed and you could be done with this.”
“I have no honor to receive such a gift.”
“Then find it. Make it.” His uncle stood up and held out his hand and gestured to the dagger. “This is not the way.”
“How? What you ask is impossible.”
“You could have chosen the easy way out. Ended it here, but you withhold. In that lies honor.”
“Is it enough?”
“It is a start. Eventually, you will do this for yourself, not just for Kendra I suspect.”
“Unlikely.” He grabbed the craft of wine in his hand and swirled the dark red liquid. Close, but far from what he truly desired. His yearning to have her wrapped in his arms again burned as hot as his thirst. He remembered how her auburn curls clung to his skin and the sweet smell of her. Could he offer her anything?
“They are special,” Kamen said in a low voice.
“Huh?”
“The females.”
“Father said as much, but I still do not understand.” Exhausted, Bakari leaned his head back on the cold stone.
“Demi-gods.”
Bakari lifted his head. “Demi-gods? It is…”
“Forbidden?” Kamen crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Mother Goddess’ descendants.”
“What?” Bakari shot to his feet. Kendra was the daughter of Mut, the Mother of the Gods and leader of the Creation Pantheon. One of the most powerful gods, next to his father. It explained the muted energy that flowed in and around her and the other women. Her power to wake and bond with him so completely. His craving for her.
“The blonde has glyphs.” Bakari gestured to his own on his forearms.
“She is Asar’s mated wife.”
Bakari cursed. His father bonded and married a Creation demi-god. Asar had triggered the release of Lilly’s powers. What the hell had happened while he was sleeping? He grabbed his head to lessen the stabbing pain splitting his reality.
“My father. Married?”
“Happily.”
“Are we talking about the same Underworld god?” His father was a great man, but his temper was renowned to be the worst. His father actually smiling and laughing was incomprehensible to him.
Kamen kicked at one of the books on the floor. “After you were taken, it was a very dark time. Kepi had set a trap to cut your father’s soul out of his chest. She used the gate key to the Underworld and his soul to raise her reven army.”
“Soulless?” Bakari asked, horrified. Gods, the pain his father must have been in. His father’s soul gave him the power to judge the souls of the deceased at the gates of the Underworld. Without it…
“He had lost everything that mattered. Not much different f
rom where you stand now.”
His father contemplated suicide? Impossible. Bakari wiped a hand down his face in disbelief. His father seemed so stable now. Balanced. He could not maintain that without a soul. “The blonde female?”
“Lilly grew Asar a new gods damn soul.”
Bakari swayed on his feet. Not because of the volume of alcohol he drank, but from the deluge of information. If his uncle’s intent was to distract him from his own misery and suicidal ideation, it worked. His brain was spinning. He laid the dagger on the sarcophagus’ lid and leaned his elbows against the intricate carvings. “I think I am going to be sick.” Had he missed that much in five years? One thing did not make sense. “How did Kepi escape her tomb? How did this all start?”
The line of Kamen’s mouth thinned. “Menthu placed a curse upon Kepi’s tomb, awaiting the perfect time to wage war against the pantheons. The Mother Goddess beat him to the punch, sent the eldest daughter to the dig site with her father.”
“Her demi-god blood opened the tomb,” Bakari said, astonished.
“It has been a maelstrom since.” Kamen stiffened slightly and looked over his shoulder. “Our time has come to an end, nephew.”
Bakari slid the Mevt dagger across the surface of the lid to his uncle. Kamen’s enormous hand clamped around the now dwarfed blade. He tucked it into his pants and pulled his black tunic over it.
Kamen slapped Bakari on the back and squeezed behind his neck. “Find your honor.”
Bakari straightened up off the sarcophagus. He had an enormous mountain to climb. He did not know how he was going to make it, but one thing was certain he could not descend any lower. His mistakes of the past would haunt him, if he did not confess the truth of his deceit.
The coldness of his father’s dark energy pushed into the small cell. Bakari turned to face his judgment. He knelt on one knee and bowed his head. “Father, forgive me for I have betrayed you.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kendra leaned heavily against the stone wall and closed her eyes. The room was still spinning from teleportation.