Scorpion Trap

by Pippa Dacosta

“Ah.” Shu yanked a desiccated skull free from under a collection of junk. “Finally.” She beamed. “And it’s ripe too. You feel that power?”

  I did. The skull’s harmonic hum made all the other items in the museum pale to little more than trinkets in comparison, which meant it was as dangerous as I’d feared. “Hand it over.”

  Shu’s smile cracked. “We’re going to destroy it, right?”

  “Right. Hand it over.” I held out my hand.

  “Then let’s do it now.” She lifted the skull high, about to smash it to smithereens.

  “Don’t!”

  Shukra’s smile turned to dust and fell away. She lifted her chin. “And we’re keeping it because…?”

  “The archaeologists. I need it as leverage.”

  “Fifteen lives to keep whatever power is in that hill trapped? Seems like a decent trade to me.”

  “Not to me. Hand it over, Shu.” I still had my hand out, waiting for her to do the right thing and give it up.

  She turned the skull over in her hands, dislodging flakes of dark, paper-thin skin. They stuck to her white pants and peppered her sandals. “I think I’ll hold on to it, seeing as you’re all doe-eyed over Isis.”

  Whatever issues Shu and I had, there was no way I was letting a sorceress of her talents keep that skull. With it, she could cause a whole load of mayhem, and I did not have the patience or time to play her games.

  “Shukra,” I warned, “give me the skull.”

  “I don’t think I will.”

  She turned on her heel and was almost at the door when I said, “Tell me right now you haven’t screwed with my head and you can keep the skull.”

  Her shoulders straightened and the air in the room contracted, getting a whole lot colder. Seconds ticked on. Part of the museum sighed, and the walls creaked. “It’s not what you think.”

  The bitter taste of rage burned my throat and tongue. “You have been in my head?” The words came out icy cold. Isis was right. Shukra had spelled me. I didn’t know when or why, but she’d manipulated me. That changed everything.

  She lowered the skull to her side and slowly turned. Her eyes looked sorry, but I couldn’t trust it—or her. She’d been inside my head. In all these years, she’d never stooped so low.

  “I knew it was a bad idea. I told you this would happen.”

  Betrayal cut me as deep and true as a blade. “You didn’t tell me shit, Shukra. Give me the skull. I’ll deal with the fallout once we’re back at the hotel.”

  Her thumb brushed over the skull’s hollow eye socket. “I can’t give you this skull.” The tip of her tongue swept across her lower lip. “Isis has her claws in you. It started at Karnak. You came back reeking of her then, your eyes all godlike and brimming with her power. You’re more than in her confidence; you’re in her bed. I smell her magic all over you. You’re Isis’s bitch.”

  She was wrong, but her words didn’t matter anyway. They might as well have been dust, just like our fake friendship. “And you’re in my fucking head!”

  “I’m in your head because you asked me to, you ungrateful boksord! I’m so done with your drama.” She whirled and burst through the door, out into the museum’s cramped halls.

  I marched after her, building power with every step. It was easy here, surrounded by the past. I drew on the thousands of artifacts, pulling their lonely songs into me. Too easy. More came, and the old world rushed in to my veins, stripping away Ace Dante and turning out the truth inside. But Shu felt me coming, and with the skull in hand, she had her own mystical battery backup armed and ready.

  I lashed out, intent on taking her legs out from under her. Shukra spun and pulled up a shield of violent purple and black light. “You’re a special kind of stupid, Ace Dante.”

  She snarled a short, sharp spell and lifted the skull, punching the power home.

  The blow hit me and did something to my power—made it crawl back under my skin and boil me from the inside out. Glass shattered, and somewhere in all the chaos, I felt the countless little jagged daggers dig in, but pain was a symptom of being a man, and I wasn’t one.

  I lunged—all of me, all that I was, all that I could be, made heavy and hard by reality—and scooped up Shukra into a storm that tore into her magical reserves and ripped them apart. Her soul was there, a dank, throbbing, dark thing fringed in pulsating red. Take it. I could, but if I did, Osiris’s curse would fling me back into the underworld and alert the god that all was not well with his soul eater.

  My hesitation was all Shukra needed. Suspended in my storm, she strained against my hold, clasped her hands around the skull, and chanted twisted demon words. Whatever it was, she slapped my power back down with the same force I’d only ever felt from the gods. The skull had turned her godlike. But I was worse than any god, and it was time Shukra remembered.

  I came back to myself on my knees, coughing up ash.

  “Abaq hadiaan! Abaq hadiaan!” Arabic voices boomed.

  Something cold and hard dug into the back of my neck. I figured it was a gun when my arms were yanked behind my back, but seeing as I was still trying to put all the pieces of my human mind back together, I didn’t fight.

  Shu lay on the museum floor, her dark hair plastered over her face. Out cold. Not dead, because if she were dead, the curse—

  A blast of agony tore up my back, ripping me open. I heard my scream and felt my body buck and crumple. The curse. Gods be damned, no!

  Shukra lay on her side. Security swarmed around her body, but as the curse dragged me down, pulling all of me out of one reality and into another, her body dissolved into ash and collapsed, just like the countless dead I’d devoured.

  Chapter 15

  “Well, this is… unexpected.” Osiris drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne. I didn’t see him do it because I was face down on the floor and having a hard time breathing, but I figured it was a throne by the elevated sound of his voice and how it echoed around a room large enough to hold his ego.

  The rustle of fabric told me he’d moved. “I haven’t needed to do this in a very”—closer now—“very, long time.”

  He rolled me over, or someone did. I couldn’t bring myself to care. I blinked into the light and saw his horribly striking face peering down at me. Memories from another time and place overlaid the present, another moment when I’d lain on the floor and Osiris had leaned over me. I’d been cold then. This time, I was hollow.

  He spread his hand across my chest and pushed, crushing me into the stone. The god’s eyes blazed as he spoke the next words, turning the air syrupy on my lips. “Mokarakk Oma, aeui ora kema em orr sremsk, orr reqak, orr kuirk.”

  The curse ran steel rods down my back, arching me off the floor. It didn’t stop there. As Osiris’s words rolled over and over, the rods drilled deeper and deeper, sinking into my soul where they slammed home. I hit the floor, numbed and lost. Osiris brushed his hands together—just taking out the trash—and turned back to the dais. Too-bright light dazzled off his golden armor.

  The curse had been broken. Had I done that?

  No, not broken. He’d strengthened it. Somehow, I’d weakened it, but now it was back, locked around my soul, as strong as ever. I must have shaken some of it free when I attacked—

  “Shukra?” I croaked.

  “Mm…” He was far away again, words drifting. “Concerned, are you, for your condemned sorceress?”

  What in the hell had happened? My body’s dead weight felt as though it might burst into a thousand pieces. Fragile, so fragile. Or perhaps that was my mind. The museum, the skull, the power. Shukra had flung it at me, and I’d flung it right back. “I killed her?”

  “You two had been getting along too well lately.”

  “Is she… alive?”

  “Alive?” He paused for dramatic effect because he was an asshole. “Yes. It was a simple matter of snatching her out of time before Anubis could sense her arrival. He’s been… distracted. I brought her back. I am not done with either of you.” />
  Osiris needed her? I’d always thought she was just my punishment, nothing more. My head throbbed a deep, heated ache that threatened to eject the contents of my stomach all over this nice polished floor… wherever this was. Duat, by the piercing light and intoxicating spiced smells lacing the air. Osiris’s underworld residence.

  That meant Isis was close.

  Oh, by the gods. If he so much as mentioned his wife, I was screwed. Did he already know? If he asked me a question and I lied, he’d know. He’d compel me to answer. My heart started beating somewhere near my throat. I willed the brittle signs of panic away. I had to stay calm and pretend this was all about Shu and me, not Isis. I could do that. I could lie to Osiris without the muddying effects of alcohol blurring my body language. I had to.

  “What were you doing in Cairo?” He sounded casual, almost humorous.

  Bile burned my throat. “A lead… Shu and me. The scrolls…” I stared at the ceiling, wishing my way through it and back to New York.

  “Scrolls?”

  “Scrolls… in New York. Ancient. Powerful.” I’d been working on discovering where those scrolls had been coming from for months. Right now, they acted as a decent excuse for returning to a country none of us willingly went to.

  My gut heaved. I rolled onto my side and swallowed the warm saliva pooling in my mouth.

  His silence ate at my nerves. Any second now, he’d snap. He knew I’d accompanied Isis to Egypt. He knew his wife had asked me to help her kill him. No, not kill him. Destroy him. That was a lot worse. Killing he could survive.

  “Husband…” Isis purred.

  I jerked my head up and saw her sweep up the steps—all glitter and silk—to where Osiris stood watching me. She slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him down into the kind of kiss you had to stay up late to watch on TV.

  I’m dead. I am so very dead. She’ll tell him everything and plant the blame at my feet. He’ll grind me into ashes and throw me into the Twelve Gates’ winds, never to be found again.

  “It seems our soul eater had an altercation with his sorceress,” Osiris explained, that ringing note of humor still there. “I had to leave an exceedingly dull budget meeting to return here and resurrect the demon woman.”

  “Oh? I find I could not care less, dear husband,” Isis drawled in that honeyed wine voice of hers. “Come. Leave the monster on his knees or send him back to wherever the curse claimed him. His presence here is abhorrent.”

  “Do you not find it odd, my light?”

  “I find his entire existence odd.”

  Osiris looked into his adoring wife’s eyes. “Were you not also in Egypt?”

  Isis blinked and her smile gained a wicked depth. “I was. For the same reason as he, in fact. The scrolls. There is something familiar about them. Don’t you agree?”

  Osiris pulled his gaze from his wife and staked it on me. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Oh, but he did. The lying bastard. If I’d had room in my head for more plots and mysteries, I’d have been all over that. But while I lay bruised on the inside from the curse tearing me a new one, I barely had enough presence of mind to remember to shut the hell up.

  “Send him back. I would like to know who is behind the scrolls, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

  A telltale muscle jumped in Osiris’s jaw. “Indeed, I would.” The smile he dragged onto his lips was wooden. He sank his fingers into his wife’s hair and kissed her as though he owned every inch of her. She gave as good as she got, but it wasn’t love driving her heat. She hid it well, so well that nobody knew or noticed how much she hated with her body and words.

  I knew what that hate felt like, but at least I could see it coming. Osiris was blind. If I didn’t hate him so much, I might have pitied the god.

  Osiris peeled himself from his wife and approached me. The fear I felt was real as he gripped my shoulder. Out of all the gods, he had the power to end me for all eternity. But not today. “I am not done with either of you.” I clung to those words as he spoke the spell to open a doorway, and with a disorientating push and pull, he dumped my abused body back on the museum floor, surrounded by broken glass and scattered artifacts. Shukra stirred awake on the floor.

  I somehow got my feet under me and stood, even as the room spun. The skull, carelessly tossed among a pile of exhibit debris, caught my eye. We’d made one hell of a mess, but with our bodies having vanished, the guards had called it quits for the night.

  “Get up,” I barked at Shu.

  Her glare met mine and tension snapped between us. She probably didn’t know I’d killed her and Osiris had brought her back. As far as she was concerned, she’d been unconscious, seconds had passed, and that was all. I didn’t plan on enlightening her.

  “We need to leave. Now.”

  She dragged herself onto her feet, eyeing the skull in my hand. She’d lost. The skull was mine. Accusations simmered in her unyielding glare. She thought I was compromised when she was the one who had compromised me.

  I couldn’t deal with her and Isis and the skull and whatever was in that valley all at once. First, I needed to know where the archaeologists were. Once they were safe, the skull would be destroyed, and I’d go back to New York to deal with the fallout of Shukra’s betrayal. Osiris hadn’t killed me. Everything was still salvageable. As for accidentally killing Shukra, she’d deserved it.

  Shukra had remained quiet during the entire flight back from Cairo, and she was quiet now as our chauffeured car bumped along the dirt roads leading away from Luxor airport. Through tinted windows, I watched the sun go down behind jagged, barren peaks, bleeding violent purple across the sky—the color as angry as the heat Shukra was radiating. She and I had a serious problem, but it would have to wait.

  I clutched the gritty skull in my left hand, knuckles aching. The skull of Isis’s lover and the key to whatever was hidden between the valleys as well as my leverage for getting the archaeologists back.

  Shukra muttered something under her breath. It sounded distinctly like spellwords.

  “Don’t make me ask Isis to put you back in the locket,” I warned.

  She snorted gruffly and continued glaring out of the window. “I knew where I stood with Ace Dante.” Her voice held a dry, sardonic edge. “You…” Without looking, she swept a hand up and down in my general direction. “I don’t know who you are.”

  “It was a mistake to even consider trusting a soul like yours. A soul I saw during our disagreement, by the way, and it’s still black as pitch. So I guess you haven’t been working as hard at redemption as you’d let on. Why am I not surprised?”

  She turned her cutting scowl on me. “I’d forgotten what it was like hating you. Thank you for reminding me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You asked me to take your memories.”

  My chuckle held its own coarse edge. There was no scenario where I’d trust Shukra enough to let her take memories. I wouldn’t trust anyone with that, let alone an enemy of some five centuries. “And why would I do that?”

  She twisted in her seat, angling her body and rage at me. “Something happened to you. I don’t know what exactly, but you were devastated. You asked me to take a bunch of memories, so I did.”

  There was nothing in that sentence that convinced me. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe me or not. I don’t care. It doesn’t change the truth.”

  Closing my eyes, I pinched the bridge of my nose and rubbed away a threatening headache. I’d thrown a lot of power at Shu—too much. She’d deserved it. She’d rummaged around my head and changed parts of me. Not even Osiris had been so bold. There are lines even the gods won’t cross. Shu had scrubbed out those damn lines. How could I believe a single word that came out of her mouth?

  I blinked to clear the exhaustion and dragged a hand down my face. “You’re undoing this as soon as we get back to New York.”

  “It’s not that simple. Once the memories are gone, they’re gone.”

  That
was not the correct answer. “Then you make it simple. Why did you really go into my head? What did you change?”

  “I’m telling you, dumbass. If you’d stop being stubborn, you’d hear it. I took a few days, that’s all. Days when Bast was with you.”

  “Bast?” What by Sekhmet did my ex-wife have to do with any of this? “I haven’t seen Bast in almost a year. Not since she asked me to find…” I scratched around my memories for why the Queen of Cats had appeared in my office all those months ago and promptly left again. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been important. “…something. Missing women or something. I refused, and she left. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Nobody has seen her since. She didn’t leave. I saw her with you. Right around the time your mother died and the girls were being murdered.”

  “What girls?”

  Shu clicked her fingers. “Exactly.”

  This was ridiculous. “You must think I’m an idiot. I’m not listening to your lies.”

  “There was one girl. You took her back to your place. Scrawny thing. She looked a lot like you, only prettier—”

  “Stop!” Pain stabbed at my eyes. A hangover coupled with exhaustion was kicking in. Add to that the power come down from screwing around with Isis and all I wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep it off. “Just… stop, Shukra. Even if you’re telling the truth, I can’t believe it. You’re in my head. I can’t believe anything about you.”

  “You’re so hung up on getting answers to cryptic symbols that you aren’t even asking the Bitch Goddess the right questions. Ask her about the girl. Ask her about Bast and about Osiris fucking escorts and getting them pregnant.”

  The things Shukra was saying sounded alien, but the passion behind them was not. It would be easier to believe her, but I didn’t have the option of trusting her, not anymore. Once we were back on US soil, I’d dig up the truth, but that life among New York’s sleepless streets and wailing sirens might as well have been a thousand miles and years away from this life in Egypt.

  Through the window, sandstone houses had given way to rock faces and roads gouged out of cliffs. The purple sky had turned liquid red. “This isn’t Luxor… Driver…?”