The big cat goddess lifted her head and sniffed at the air once more, smelling the new world on my clothes—heat, pollutants, and the metallic taste of technology. She pulled her lips back in a snarl.
“Cukkomd.” I poured too much power into the walls and stepped back as fragments of ceiling collapsed around me. The last thing anyone needed was Sesha free in the new world. I’d tell Osiris she was awake. The gods were his problem, not mine.
The passage collapsed on her enraged howl, driving Shu and me out into the stifling hot terrace. Amun Ra’s sanctuary doors sealed shut with a thunderous bang, and the library was once again hidden from all.
Shu panted, hands on her thighs. She looked over at the bundle of scrolls under my arm, grinned, and held out her fist.
I bumped my fist with hers and said, “Best tomb raiders in Egypt.”
“You know it.”
Senenmut’s scrolls were scattered like rugs across the hotel room’s tiled floor. I’d considered taking the scrolls and Shu into Luxor, somewhere away from Isis, but I figured the goddess was less likely to suspect anything if we stayed closer to the hotel. So Shu and I had ordered a room service banquet and charged it to Isis’s account before settling down for a long night of reading.
Most of the scrolls had seen better days. Despite the care of their custodian, the majority were badly damaged, not helped by removing them from Thoth’s library. Opened, they spread from the bed to the door, depicting Senenmut’s various building projects throughout Waset/Luxor and into the Theban valleys. All the plans corresponded with sites I recognized, all but one…
“There…” I stepped around the scroll, folded my arms, and glared down at the faded outline depicting a pr-djt, a flat-topped tomb, the oldest style of burial shrines. They looked like stepped pyramids. “Where is that?”
“Aren’t there several mastabas left?” Shu replied, using the Arabic name for that design.
“This one is different. See there, it’s tilted, facing down. Most are aligned on an east-west axis, aiding the soul’s passage into the underworld, but this one faces the opposite way, as though whoever it was built to contain is barred from the underworld.” A tiny cartouche marked the corner, so small I almost missed it. “And there’s that…”
Shu poured herself a glass of wine, took a gulp, and maneuvered her way around the scrolls. “Ah…” She’d spotted the name. “Suddakk uk Resrs.”
Goddess of Light.
Shu snickered. “That’s a small tomb for the bitch queen.”
“Because it’s not for her, but she commissioned it.” Crouching down, I flicked the scroll on an angle, admiring the sharp lines intersecting the tomb from all directions. “Passages,” I murmured. But something about the angle of those passages seemed familiar.
I moved around the scrolls, searching for the ancient, faded map of the two valleys. Shuffling a few scrolls around, I got the maps resting against Isis’s tomb in the center. “You see it?”
Shu squinted. “The tombs in both valleys line up… They all have passages running toward this one.” She pointed at a vast maze of a tomb. “Whose tomb is that?”
“That is the largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings, built for Ramesses the Second’s many sons, if you believe recent experts. KV Five. It’s still being excavated.” I knew the tomb only from the news reports of its discovery in the nineties. I’d dismissed it as yet another piece of the old world, dug up, turned over, and exposed to prying eyes.
“After what I’ve seen today,” Shu said, “you’re about to tell me it’s some kind of elaborate bathing temple for the gods or some other ridiculously self-indulgent nonsense—like where they went to worship cats or something?”
I crossed the room and snatched up my cell, ignoring the missed calls notifications. A quick Wi-Fi search revealed KV5’s existing layout as it stood today. I knew what it wasn’t. “KV Five’s not a tomb, despite what the professionals think. I reckon it’s a grand entrance for whatever Senenmut built Isis. Look at the layout. The passageways are too small to transport sarcophagi through. It was never meant to be used for burials. It doesn’t even look like the rest of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.”
I held the phone out to Shu. She took it and turned the phone sideways to glance at the layout.
“Those passages lead right to Isis’s secret, deep inside the al-Qurn peak,” I continued. “And now we know where the doorway is.”
“But no key.” Shu sighed.
“But no key,” I echoed.
She handed the phone back and downed the rest of her wine like it was water. I took Shu’s glass, refilled it from the bottle, and poured a glass of my own, my thoughts wandering. The wine was local, rich and syrupy, the type sold unofficially under the table in the souks or freely given in six-star hotels.
Karnak glowed in the distance, drawing me out onto the terrace and into the warm early evening. I leaned against the balustrade, glass in hand. “It was thought Senenmut died before Hatshepsut, though his body was never found—until now. Rumor in Duat is that Hatshepsut’s nephew had Senenmut killed to weaken his aunt’s reign. It worked. Not long after Senenmut’s disappearance, Hatshepsut died and her nephew took the throne.”
Shu leaned against the balcony wall behind me, keeping to the shadows. “How very Game of Thrones.”
“If you’re a goddess and you have your subjects building a secret tomb, what do you think happens to those subjects once the job is done?”
“Ah.”
“Exactly. History made Hatshepsut’s nephew a convenient scapegoat. I’d take a stab in the dark and guess Senenmut ran or Isis had him killed. His body survived, but the head… That was removed before he was entombed. We need to find out by who. Clearly, Isis didn’t do it. She had no idea the skull wasn’t inside.”
“Hatshepsut?” Shu suggested and came forward. She leaned on the balustrade and looked down at the almost perfect surface of the pool in the gardens below.
“It seems likely. Or priests, if she had them. Either way, they’re all long dead.”
“So how do we talk to a few thousand-year-old dead pharaohs?” Shu smiled sympathetically, already knowing the answer. She had her talents—making spells from body parts and generally being a thorn in my side—and I had mine—getting up close and personal with eternal souls.
“It’s not that simple. Her soul could’ve passed over into the afterlife. If it hasn’t and it’s still around in Duat, it’ll be in the River.” The last time I set foot in the River, the ferryman’s boat had capsized and the souls had tricked me into believing Cat had drowned. I no longer had the promise of redemption hanging over my head, but souls weren’t the easiest things to reason with at the best of times. Finding Hatshepsut in the River would be like finding a single grain of sand in the desert… in a sandstorm. “Even if I find the soul and focus it enough to get it talking, there’s no guarantee it’ll remember anything from the correct past life. And there’s the fact I eat souls, so… yah know, there’s that hurdle to get over.”
“Pussy.”
My laugh came out as a snort. “You think I’m afraid to go back after everything that happened?”
“No, I think you’re afraid of you. But what the hell do I know? I’m just a rotten soul in a pantsuit.”
Until recently, I’d have agreed. “You’re more than that.”
She waved a hand, sweeping the comment away. “Keep all that gooey friendly shit to yourself.”
“I mean it. You’re a good friend, and lately, I’ve been an ass.”
“You’ve been an ass for centuries.” She threw her glare to the starlit sky. “Sekhmet save me, the self-centered soul eater had an epiphany.” When she was done mocking me, she leaned a hip against the rail and asked, “Since we’re BFFs, when will you tell me about the other scroll you stole?”
“What other scroll?” I lied smoothly.
“The one you hid while room service kept me busy.”
Oh-kay then. And there I was thinking I’d got
ten away with that. I opened my mouth and—
“Bullshit me and this budding new friendship of ours is as dead as your common sense.”
—closed it again.
Shu examined her nails, their points liable to turn into claws at any moment.
It was time I stop shutting Shu out. She’d earned my trust. I gestured for her to follow and stepped back inside the hotel room. “Shut the doors.”
As the doors clicked closed, I removed the scroll from under the bed—the best hiding place I could find on short notice—and set it down on the sheets. I frowned at it instead of opening it right away. Rolled up, it didn’t look like anything special. Just another papyrus, like all the others in Sesha’s library.
Shu sighed dramatically, gripped the edge, and yanked it open, revealing a spread of red hieroglyphs. I scanned the text with Shu silent beside me, but the words, and their meaning, might as well have been the ramblings of a madman.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I grumbled. I’d hoped it would say something about the mark and why or how it was connected to me.
“Some godstruck priest wrote that a thousand years ago, and you’re surprised it’s nonsense?” Shu eyed me, not the scroll, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the text.
The writing on the scroll was a list of devastations. Floods, crops set ablaze, villages reduced to dust. On and on the list went, with no explanation, just disasters, one after another. Halfway down the scroll, the list cut off.
“It’s unfinished.” I flipped the scroll, expecting to find more on the back. Nothing besides that one symbol in the bottom right-hand corner, facing inward. The snake-headed jackal. The symbol that kept stalking me. The same damn symbol on Ammit’s box, a box warded against me, a box that was missing, along with Mafdet. Osiris knew the symbol, but he’d lied about as soon as I’d brought it up. Why? Why would a god as powerful as Osiris need to lie? Why, why, why…
I snatched up the scroll and headed for the door.
“Ace?”
Isis’s room was a few floors above. She’d be inside.
“Why is that scroll so important to you?” Shu followed. She didn’t know about the symbol or the missing box, or how it kept haunting me like I should know it. The less she knew, the less it could come back and bite us in the ass.
Isis had answers. The goddess knew exactly what was going on. She would know what the symbol meant, and while I was there, she could tell me exactly where the missing archaeologists were and the real reason she’d brought me to Egypt.
“Ace…” Shu slammed her hand against the wall next to the elevator, her glare true and hard. “If you go up there like this, she’ll get her claws into you.”
The elevator numbers counted down.
“I can handle Isis.” I pushed the words through clenched teeth.
“Oh, you can? Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like she can handle you. Just because you got Anubis to sit for you, doesn’t mean Isis will. She’s screwing with you, making you doubt everything you know, making you think you have power over her. She’s setting you up, and you’re walking right into it.”
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen… The floor numbers ticked down like time running out. “I do have power over her.”
“No, Ace. Only the power she’s given you, and she’ll take it away.”
I met Shu’s uncompromising glare. She knew me, probably knew me better than anyone this side of Duat. Cursed together, we had no choice but to know each other. But she understood, too. Like me, she’d been trapped under a god’s thumb for centuries. She’d endured their special kind of mental torture. “I’m done being used. Aren’t you? She’ll tell me what I want to know—”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll call Osiris back and tell him everything that’s happening here. Every. Thing. He’ll have to listen. He knows it anyway. He knows his wife is a scheming, power-hungry bitch, but he’s too afraid of her to do anything.”
Ten, nine, eight… I wasn’t backing down.
“Ace, look at me.”
I did, and I saw the passage of time in the lines around her eyes, and her lips were no longer twisted in a snarl but pressed into a reluctant grimace. There was nothing Shu could say or do to stop me, and that’s why she looked sorry.
“There are things you should know,” she murmured.
“That’s exactly why I need to do this.”
“No, you don’t understand—”
The elevator pinged, and the door rumbled open. I stepped inside and jabbed the penthouse button.
Shu stuck her foot in the door. “Don’t go. Let me finish.”
“If I don’t go now, then nothing will change. Aren’t you tired? Because I am. I am so fucking tired, Shukra. Tired of the gods and their insanity. For too long, Osiris has clicked his fingers, and I’ve snapped to heel. I am done with it. I’m done with all of it. The gods, the hate, the feeling that everyone knows the secrets but me. And I’m starting with Isis.”
“Rile her up and she’ll kill you.”
“She would have already if she could.”
“Memories can be altered. She could have already tried and you wouldn’t remember.”
“I’d know it,” I dismissed.
Shukra bit her lower lip, the gesture entirely too human. “As a friend, I’m asking you not to go.”
I smiled, but it was a slippery thing that quickly fell from my lips. “I don’t have a choice.” This wouldn’t end with the skull. Isis would have another task for me, and deeper inside her claws would sink. If I didn’t stop her, she’d use me over and over, pitching me against her husband until Osiris figured it out. Better for me to tell him on my terms, whatever the fallout may be. But before then, and before she killed the archaeologists like she had Senenmut to keep her secret tomb safe, I needed Isis’s answers.
Shu nodded once and freed the door. “Whatever happens, you know I’ll always have your back.”
At my stiff nod, the door closed, and the car lifted me toward Isis’s floor. I’d confront Isis and demand my answers, whatever it took. The goddess didn’t control me. I had control. Soul Eater, Nameless One, Godkiller. She should fear me, and she did. I knew it. I’d seen the fear in her eyes. She knew too much, knew everything. And now she’d tell me why.
The elevator pinged and the door opened. I stepped out into the hallway where I’d met the godstruck hotel staff member barring her door, but now the man who’d refused to let me pass sat slumped against the wall, his guts sliced open. Blood leaked in a vast pool around him. His eyes were wide, dead and unseeing.
Two others lay motionless where they’d fallen. The door to Isis’s suite hung open, marked by bloody handprints. The carnage continued inside. A dozen dead, the splatter of blood bright against silk sheets and polished floors. The stench of wet meat coated my tongue and clogged my throat.
For one horrible, gut-wrenching moment, I feared the body-shaped mound on the bed was Isis. If she was dead, Osiris wouldn’t stop at killing me; he’d go on slaughtering until half the world was queued up at the Twelve Gates. I tugged back the sheet, saw the dull brown eyes of another woman, and shuddered. Dead, all of them, but not Isis.
These people, Isis’s godstruck staff, had been caught unawares and slaughtered before they’d had a chance to run. Something powerful had done this. Isis herself?
The goddess’s hijab lay discarded near the window. I lifted it from a pool of blood and breathed in Isis’s intoxicating flowery scent. She wasn’t careless enough to leave a scene like this behind. It didn’t seem possible—Isis was too powerful—but what if she’d been taken?
I wrapped the hijab around my fist and dialed Shu on my cell.
“That was fast,” she answered.
“We have a problem.”
Chapter 11
“We should tell Osiris,” Shu said.
I put that gem of advice down to the fact she wasn’t thinking clearly while surrounded by so many dead bodies and potential spell ingredients.
Crouching beside the body of a young man, I whispered, “Daquir,” and the last corpse dissolved into ash. I couldn’t devour the blood, but hopefully Isis would see to that when she returned. If she returns. She would. She had to. Otherwise, the fallout from Osiris would be biblical. The only upside was, as the messenger, he’d obliterate me first so I wouldn’t get to see the reign of wrath he’d herald in across several continents.
“Isis is fine,” I said and straightened. “Like you said, nothing can touch the Goddess of Light. The last thing we need is an emotional Osiris breathing down our necks.”
Shu paced back and forth by the open terrace doors. Her sandals hissed through the fallen ash from the other bodies I’d disposed of, stirring the remains and lifting the acrid smell into the air.
“So let’s get the next plane back to New York and pretend we were never here.”
Back and forth, she paced. This wasn’t like Shu. Her nervousness couldn’t be over the fact that a dozen people had died here, and it certainly wasn’t because Isis was missing. But something had her spooked.
“We can’t leave. There are innocent people caught in this. The archaeologists—”
“There are more archaeologists,” Shu snapped. “I’ll find you another one.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I replied carefully, like handling glass. “I can’t abandon them.”
“Ugh. I preferred you when you didn’t think you were some kind of hero.”
“I’ve changed, and so have you. You don’t really want to leave those people with Isis?”
“Don’t I?” She stopped her pacing and fixed a hand on her cocked hip. “What good is a dead hero?”
I stood and brushed ash from my pants. “We’re staying.”
The curse made sure she couldn’t leave without me, and she wasn’t about to throw down over it, even if she was pissed. I moved around the blood splatters, letting her stew in her own anger.
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