Another way…
I spied the sphinx behind her. Magic hummed its siren song through the air. I let Masika go, and she stumbled forward, arms outstretched toward Isis like a little girl desperate to fall into her mother’s arms. Isis would break her neck.
I planted a hand on the sphinx’s shoulder. “Cukkomd.”
Power trilled, spilling in from the temple grounds. It funneled through my flesh and bones, down my arm, infusing the stone. The sphinx’s massive ram head creaked. Stones chipped and fell away. A massive lion paw shifted, then the other. Its body rose from its pedestal. It gave its stone head a shake and jumped down, landing with impossible grace. I had its control in my grasp and Karnak’s vast reservoir stirring beneath my will. The beast was mine.
“Vrusacs.” Protect.
The sphinx bounded forward, veering around Masika, and leaped for Isis.
Isis flung up a hand. The sphinx froze in midair.
“Ruv dora aeui!” Isis yelled, spearing me with her gaze.
All the sphinxes trembled awake, moving, creaking, crumbling from their bases.
Okay, so all I’d achieved was pissing Isis off. I could work with that.
“Run!” I grabbed Masika’s arm and turned on my heel, ignoring her meek cries. A few steps was all it took for Masika to regain control. She ran alongside me, back through the towering columns toward Ptah’s temple, where we’d climbed over the wall. “Go.”
“What—what’s going on?”
I clasped Masika’s face in my hands and added a weighty compulsion to my words. “Run home. Lock the doors. Stay there until morning. Nothing happened here. It was a dream.”
She frowned, but the words were already diving inside her mind, digging around her thoughts and realigning her memories.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hoping she didn’t remember anything about me or Karnak. “Go.”
She climbed over the wall and disappeared over the lip, safely out of sight.
A sphinx slammed into me, knocking me aside as it tried to scramble up the wall after her. Blocks crumbled and the wall groaned.
“No, you don’t…” I grabbed its leg and swung it around, tossing it into two more oncoming beasts. All three shattered in a hail of dust. Three more took their places and thundered toward me. Somewhere nearby, Isis seethed. Her power filled the grounds, pushed in, down, around.
I threw out my hands and shook off the illusion of being human. “Rarru, Kormod. Woda omd rakakbar. Rakakbar ka.” Hello, Karnak. Wake and remember. Remember me.
Isis’s laugh danced in the air through the halls and chambers, and the temple lights exploded, plunging us into a starlit darkness.
Chapter 8
“Silly monster.” Isis clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, calling all the sphinxes back to her side.
I’d made it as far as the columned Great Hall. There was no point in hiding or running. We were way beyond that. Karnak’s great pillars and walls breathed and shuddered, its ancient soul stirring, but Isis was here. What little hold I had over the temple at the beginning, the goddess had taken. Now the temple responded to her, as it should.
I stood, feeling strangely at home among the massive pillars, wrapped in the trappings of history. Perhaps my run-in with Anubis had given me the confidence to square up to a goddess, but it probably had more to do with the fact that, since returning from Duat, with the Rekka under my control and justice on my side, I’d felt different. Stronger. More centered. I’d felt like I was close to finding something that would make me whole. And here, that feeling of rightness solidified.
Thoth had also said something had been taken from me. I felt it too. Felt it in the Gates, in the thousands of souls I’d commanded in Duat, in the seconds I’d compelled the great God Anubis. And I felt it now as I stared Isis down.
If she was going to kill me, expediting my soul to Anubis, I could think of no better place to say goodbye to the world.
Sorry, Shu, but it had to happen eventually.
Isis stopped several strides away. The goddess studied me with a mixture of appalled fascination and disgust. Her sphinxes settled on their haunches, looking again like stone statues, but they were primed to charge if I attacked.
“My husband will not be pleased to learn how you attacked me.”
That was a poor card to play and a sign of how unsettled she was. We both knew Osiris would never hear of this.
“Do you really believe I care what Osiris thinks?”
She lifted her chin. Ambient moonlight sharpened her cheekbones, chiseling her features into harder angles. “The jackals tore into your wretched mother with abandon. She barely lifted a claw to stop them. I was there. You were so blinded by rage you didn’t notice me. I watched you devour their souls.” She drifted closer, moving lightly on her feet. “Your mother’s too.” Closer still. “Greedy thing, you are,” she whispered. “Soul Eater.”
Icy rage spilled through my veins, but I locked it there. My fingers twitched, dislodging ash from their tips. She had killed Ammit. I’d known it, but to hear her say the words… Another solid piece of me shifted into place.
A thread of golden light outlined her cloak, carving her out of the dark. Gold accents glinted in her skin and shimmered in her eyes. “I find myself inexplicably fascinated by the thing you are, though your very existence should repel me.”
She could crush me, but she hadn’t. She wouldn’t. I did have power here, power over her, but I didn’t understand why. “What’s the skull, really?”
Isis stepped closer. Her fingers unbuckled the Eye of Horus belt, and her cloak fell open, revealing the golden sheen of her skin beneath a gown no thicker than butterfly wings.
“You know what it is,” she purred. “You know all the answers.”
If only I did. “A key…?”
She tapped a finger against her chin and peered coyly through her lashes. “Clever monster.”
“What did you have Senenmut build?”
“Have you ever loved, monster? Are you capable?” She started circling again, inching closer with every step, her steps designed to close me inside her trap. “Perhaps in this body, you believe you can?”
I wasn’t about to let her steer the path of my questions. “Whatever you built, you need the skull, the key. You didn’t expect it to be missing. Somebody got to Senenmut first despite your efforts to conceal where he was buried.” All guesses, but they hit the mark.
She paused, standing close. Her golden brilliance shimmered. “I did not attempt to erase his name. Osiris…” Her lips pinched together. “You once told me there are many kinds of love. You are right.” Her hand gently settled on my arm. Instinct screamed at me to pull away, to get away, but I bit down on the fear and glared back at her. “Do you look upon my light as monstrous?”
I caught her wrist and twisted it, surprised to find her arm so small in my grip, her bones so fragile. A gasp slipped from her lips, but she didn’t struggle.
“What are you so afraid of?” I yanked her close, slipped my free hand around her waist, and spread my fingers against her lower back, soaking up the tantalizing power she radiated.
A fierce resistance burned in her eyes, but something else did too—something like sorrow? But that couldn’t be.
“You can stop me.” I had her, the Goddess of Light, captured against me. “Stop me.” A part of me was desperate for her to push away and end this before it went any further. But instead of pushing, she leaned in and pressed her lithe and deceptively human body against my chest and leg. Magic hummed. Her small body was nothing more than a vessel for the kind of power few got to witness, and even fewer got to hold.
“What am I to you?” I whispered, afraid of the answer more than I was of her.
She brushed her knuckles down my cheek. “You are the Dark.”
Goddess of Light.
Do. Not. Touch.
DO-NOT-FUCKING-TOU—
She tasted nothing like I’d imagined in my dreams and like everything
the old me, the real me, ached for. I’d always been a creature of hunger, always taken what I shouldn’t have, always defied the laws and rules, the gods and their ways. I swam in the River of Souls. I played with demons under the Halls of Judgment. I gorged on the souls of any I could get away with. Devil, liar, thief. And now I was kissing the forbidden, tasting her lips as though they were made of sweet poison, and cupping her face like I might break her. And then the Goddess of Light let me in, swept her tongue over mine, and ground her body against me. It was everything I’d dreamed and more…
A ferocious wave of power slammed over me, driving me to my knees at her feet. The hold I had on my human form wobbled, blurring the world’s edges, turning flesh to ash, ash to dust, dust to smoke. I grappled with control, with too much power and too much light. So much light, like I’d swallowed a million souls and wasn’t sure whether I could vomit them all back up again or hoard them close. Embers fizzled in the air as I clutched at the dirt like it could save me from breaking apart.
Isis sank her hand into my hair and yanked my head back, sending a blissful dart of pain down my spine. Pain was good. Pain meant I was real.
“What if the apocalypse is not an event?” she hissed, the sorrow burned from her glare and replaced by a rage only a goddess could muster. “What if it’s a man?” She flung me down into the dirt. “Find me the skull, monster.”
On my side, I watched her stride away—cloak billowing and stars falling around her—and clung to my humanity, afraid her light had almost ripped away whatever made me Ace Dante.
Chapter 9
“What by Sekhmet happened to you?” Shu whipped the bed sheet off, exposing my bare ass and my sword, Alysdair, lying next to me. “We were supposed to meet two hours ago to frighten Wheeler and his baby archaeologists back to England.”
Eyes closed, I buried my face in the pillow. “Ba suma,” I mumbled. Be gone.
Shu snorted at my use of the old language. “You have three seconds to get out of bed before I turn it into nails.”
I waved a hand, indicating for her to go away or go ahead, I wasn’t sure which. My head was stuffed with cotton and my body felt like half of Karnak was lying on top of me. The come down from whatever Isis had hit me with wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and neither was I.
“Three.”
“Go, do whatever you have to,” I grumbled.
“Two.” Shu’s unique blend of manipulated power hummed around the room like a sirocco wind.
I turned my head and cracked an eye open. “Nails?”
She blinked. Her dark eyebrows plunged into a scowl, and then she lunged, hands outstretched. I had Alysdair up, the blade pressed against her throat before she could put into motion whatever she had planned. The sword sang, hungry for Shukra’s damned soul.
Concern had her gaze stuttering. She wet her lips and pushed her fingers against the blade, easing it back. “Cool your jets, Acehole.” Her words were the usual lighthearted dig, but the humor sounded strained.
She hadn’t physically attacked me in decades, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t. But this was Shu… The new Shu… She was… different? My heart pounded hot and heavy. Old instincts crawled out of the box I’d hidden them in. Twisted, dark souls should be destroyed. That’s what I did. Soul Eater. But… time had passed. Things had changed.
I let her push the sword away from her throat only because she was powering down. “Step back,” I ordered.
She lifted her hands and took several deliberate steps back.
I could see the questions in her eyes, but I wasn’t playing games, and neither was she. A few ancient words, a single strike, and Alysdair might take a bite. The sword couldn’t devour her—Osiris had seen to that when he cursed us together—but it could cripple her power for weeks.
“I thought we were past all this…” Her lips twisted around something sour.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and rested Alysdair beside me. Yes, we were beyond all this. Maybe I’d overreacted, or maybe I’d stopped her from laying a spell on me while I wasn’t in my right mind. Now that I was upright, the hotel room dipped and swayed, fuzzy at the edges. I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head to realign my thoughts.
“I gave up fucking redemption for you,” she growled, “you ungrateful lizard. If I was going to hurt you, I wouldn’t let you see me coming, and you’d only damn well know about it afterward. How much did you drink last night?”
She was right. What the hell was wrong with me?
Shu dug into her jacket pocket and plucked out my cell. She showed it to me, making sure I knew it wasn’t a grenade, and tossed it onto the bed. It landed screen side up.
Missed calls: 6
From: Osiris.
Monster, Isis’s sweet voice whispered in my ear. Memories from a few hours ago. I swallowed what felt like glass in my throat and dragged a hand down my face. Ozzy was calling me. That was bad. He’d probably realized his wife had disappeared and wanted his pet Soul Eater to find her.
“Thought you’d like to know,” Shu offered.
I rubbed my finger and thumb over my mouth and scratched at the whiskers along my jaw, debating how much to tell Shu. Nothing, probably. Stick to business. The tomb, the archaeologists. Focus on that. She’d gone to see the archaeologists without me? “You went to the dig site anyway?” I asked, sounding as though I’d been dragged up from the depths of the earth and over hot stones.
“Empty.”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Nobody showed up for work today. It’s probably a religious holiday or something.”
Isis had them. Of course she did. All my magical flexing had done was expose a weakness, and now she’d use those people—including Masika—as leverage. Gods be damned, I should have scared the information out of them like Shukra had suggested.
I growled out a noise that may not have been entirely human and pushed to my feet. I had clothes around here somewhere… “We have to find the skull.” I found my pants and shirt forming a trail from the door to the bed. I had no memory of leaving Karnak or returning to the hotel. That was also bad. Me and missing memories never end well. “Are there any reports of anything… unusual last night?”
“Anything unusual like?” Shu glowered, familiar with where this was going.
“Missing people besides the archaeologists?” I winced, remembering all too well what I’d done to the witches. But Alysdair had been cursed … and I couldn’t be cursed, and Thoth was gone. Alysdair wasn’t cursed now, and I hadn’t carried my sword on me last night. Just Isis. She’d been on me, around me, in me… What had happened? There was Karnak, and… a kiss that had felt like a thunderbolt.
“The hotel staff was chattering about something this morning. The sphinxes lining Karnak’s entrance have all moved.”
The sphinxes, Karnak, Isis, power… all that power. The hotel room tilted, almost spilling me onto the floor. If it hadn’t been for the sideboard, I’d have gone down. Shu made a move like she was considering helping me. By Sekhmet, what had Isis done to me?
The mirror above the sideboard revealed a reflection that didn’t look like mine.
“That’s what I was going to tell you… before you lost your shit…” Shu’s voice trailed off. She was probably still speaking, but my thudding heart drowned her out. More than darkness. You are the Dark. Monster. Nameless One. My eyes were golden, just like Osiris’s. I blinked, and they stayed golden. I blinked again and willed the power away. Still they stayed golden, flecked with slivers of black. This sometimes happened in Duat. If they didn’t go black from swallowing too many souls, they brightened. But not here, never here, and never for long. Another blink. I glared at my face, a snarl quivering on my lips.
“Sudk ba dokmad,” Gods be damned.
“What happened?” Shu whispered, the note of fear strange in her voice.
I swallowed and squeezed my eyes closed to hide from the truth. “Nothing. Nothing happened.” But it was a lie. And like th
e ruins of the old world, all the lies that had shored me up through the centuries had begun to crumble.
The plateau outside Hatshepsut’s temple was hotter than hell, and I should know, seeing as hell was a new name for an old place that happened to be my backyard.
Three lax security guards waved Shu and me through broken security scanners without looking up from their card game, sparing themselves my wrath, which had been building since I’d left the hotel. In fact, probably long before then, since Isis had cornered me in Macy’s and demanded I go to Egypt.
“C’mon,” I grunted at Shu and started the long march up the first of three long slopes. The pair of sunglasses I’d paid too much for in the souk threw a shadow over the temple’s three plateaus. The once great mortuary temple now resembled the carcass of a long-dead animal, its ribs picked clean by sand, sun, and the ravages of time.
Shukra kept in step with me, ready to smack me down should I start raining ash and embers. She was right to be on guard. I had a track record for losing control, but I wouldn’t slip, not here.
“This place used to be beautiful,” I muttered, more to myself than Shu.
I reached the first terrace and squinted back into the sun. Gardens had once painted the grounds in lush greens. Flowers had splashed color as far as the eye could see, and the woody, spiced smell of frankincense had filled the air. Now all I saw was sand, and all I could smell was baked rock. A dead land for a dead pharaoh and a dead world.
“It still is,” she replied.
“This is not beauty.”
My cell chirped in my pocket. I ignored it and headed through the terrace toward the second ramp. The heat had driven all but the most foolish of visitors away, and recent terrorist attacks had spooked off the rest. Besides one or two ambling guards, Shu and I had the temple to ourselves. That made what I was about to do a little easier.
“Ace—”
I knew what she was about to say. Osiris. The calls. “What do you want from me? If I answer, he’ll tell me to find Isis. If I refuse, he’ll compel me.”
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