Scorpion Trap

by Pippa Dacosta

  The chauffeur’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. “Yessir?”

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “Queens Valley. Goddess of Light is waiting.”

  I hadn’t had a second to process what he’d said before Shu lunged across her seat, fingers spread like claws. She angled for the skull, her eyes ablaze. I twisted out of her way and planted the ball of my hand between her shoulders, slamming her face first against the door. When she spluttered words that sounded as though I really wouldn’t like their outcome, I clamped a hand over her mouth, leaving her nose free so she could breathe.

  “Don’t push me, Shu.”

  She hissed something behind my hand, but the spell snuffed out.

  Maybe she should go back into the locket.

  The car pulled up at the foot of the Valley of the Queens a few minutes later. When the chauffeur opened the back door, I shoved Shukra out ahead of me and grabbed the skull. Nobody was prying it from my hands.

  Isis cocked her head at us. She was back in modern clothing, hijab framing her face, long cloak buckled against the cooling night air. I’d expected her to be surrounded by her godstruck masses again, but she was alone.

  The breeze held whispers, old words and old memories. I gritted my teeth and shoved all the timeless nonsense away. Ace Dante. More than darkness. I had archaeologists to save.

  She held out her hand. “The skull?”

  I brushed dirt off my pants and straightened my shirt, buying time. The valleys appeared abandoned. Just Isis, me, Shu, and the driver who’d wisely returned to the car. “Where are the archaeologists?” I asked.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I already told you. I do not know and do not care.” She sighed and the breeze sighed with her, hissing through the dry grass. “Come, Mokarakk Oma, let us be done with the dead and return to the living.” She turned, started up the path toward Senenmut’s tomb, and called back, “The sorceress stays here.”

  The valley lay exposed under the encroaching night. Long shadows draped down the cliffs. Even the goddess Isis appeared small and insignificant below the al-Qurn peak pointing toward the stars.

  Sucking in the dry air, I tightened my grip on the skull and started forward.

  “The only power you have over her is that which she gives you,” Shu said, lending the words enough weight to lift the fine hairs on my neck. “Don’t forget that.”

  I hesitated and looked back at the sorceress with a soul as black as mine. Waning light reflected in her dark eyes, but she didn’t smile. If anything, her lips turned down. I could only trust her to betray me. It had always been that way, even now when she looked at me as though she’d just said goodbye.

  “For what it’s worth, you won,” I said. “You had me fooled. I believed you were a friend. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  She bowed her head, acknowledging my words and their weight. “I hope your poor choices haunt you in the Twelve Gates.”

  “As will yours.”

  The air cooled the higher I climbed. Dust caked my lips and tongue, tasting coppery. I slogged a few strides behind Isis. The battle with Shu had left me wrung out and bruised to the core. I’d have preferred to be rested and strong for whatever was coming, but delaying would only make Isis suspicious. I still had the skull in my possession. I could crush it the second Isis made one wrong move. This was my game, not hers. I had control.

  Isis stopped at Senenmut’s entrance and peered down into the hole. “This feels right. Don’t you agree—”

  A rifle crack split the air a fraction of a second before pain exploded through my shoulder, jerking me clean off my feet and into the tourist information board. Wood cracked, and so did my back. Hot and fast agony washed down my chest and yanked me to my knees. I’d barely realized I’d been shot when another crack echoed in the valley. I winced, but the pain didn’t come.

  Isis had her hand up, curiously eyeing the spinning bullet an inch from her palm. She closed her fingers, crushing the bullet to dust, and scattered it into the wind.

  “Who dares attack me?!” she demanded, her words echoing over and over. Silence answered.

  Whoever they were, they were well hidden among the shadows. Blinking my watery eyes, I scanned the rock face. Hundreds of fallen boulders provided excellent cover in the near darkness. I couldn’t see anything out of place.

  The skull.

  It lay on the path where I’d dropped it between Isis and me.

  I shuffled forward. My left arm hung numb and useless, and the pain in my chest and shoulder had turned into a throbbing heat that beat in time with my heart, but it was only pain and only my arm. If they’d aimed between my eyes—

  Another shot rang out, and this time a blaze of light flooded everything, shattering my night vision but also, I suspected, stopping the bullet from finding its target: me.

  “Foolish mortals!” Isis yelled. “I am timeless! Your guns are sticks against me!”

  “It’s not you… they’re shooting at… Your Highness,” I wheezed.

  Isis toned down her light and blinked down at me, remembering I was behind her, bleeding out in the dirt.

  Why was I the target? It had to be the skull.

  Shadows moved among the rocks. I counted six, maybe seven, through my swimming vision. One looked familiar. Tall, slim, and young with a narrow, cocky face… I’d seen him before. Not recently and not in Egypt. Somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Another life. Another… time. Unconsciousness tugged at my vision. No, I couldn’t afford to black out. I yanked myself back into the moment, denying pain its choking hold. Just pain.

  I hissed as Isis grabbed my dead arm and unceremoniously pulled me upright. The goddess kept her hand spread against my shoulder, and warmth poured over muscle and bone. She avoided my eyes and watched the shadows of approaching men and women. I swayed on my feet as her healing touch stitched muscle and skin back together and tried to focus on the figures converging on the path. Gravel crunched behind me. I staggered and turned. More were coming up the valley, all dressed in black, all armed with rifles.

  Isis lifted a hand and made a pushing motion, I assumed to fling them back the way she’d done many times with me. Nothing happened.

  She tried again. Nothing. She released my arm and stepped forward—into a crackling barrier of light just like hers, only this one she couldn’t push through or control. “What is this?” she demanded.

  The skull sat an inch outside the light cage. I prodded the crackling bars. They gave, just a little, but the second I pushed harder, the barrier hardened against me. I’d never seen anything like it. Godly, definitely, which begged the question of whose godly power this was.

  “By Isis,” a familiar male voice began, “all that has been, that is, or shall be, no mortal man hath ever unveiled.”

  Isis didn’t react, though I knew how the words cut her. Judging by the cocky look on the man’s face, so did he. I’d seen that grin before, in Macy’s. This cocky bastard was the sorcerer who’d placed a tracking spell on Shukra… That spell had brought him here. What had his master said all those days ago? Something about wanting the Dark One and my help. And then Isis had gutted him.

  Cocky Steve slid his attention from the goddess to me. “Small world, isn’t it, Soul Eater? My name isn’t Steve, by the way. It’s Avery. And had you stopped to listen to my master, Sebek-kuh, instead of giving Isis time to find and slaughter him, you would know exactly why I tracked you halfway around the world.”

  “This cage cannot hold me for long,” Isis announced, sounding put out but not much else. I believed her. She’d break the cage and kill everyone here with a click of her fingers. “If you want to survive this encounter, you will release me. Now.”

  If these people wanted to survive the next few minutes, they had a lot of explaining to do. I wasn’t even sure I could save them. Nobody puts a goddess in a cage and lives. “Why are you here?” I asked Avery, ignoring the fuming goddess beside me.

  As he crouched and scooped up the skull
, his shirt cuff pulled back from his wrist, revealing a familiar hieroglyph. Priests. Oh, wonderful. Of course they were priests. But who did he worship?

  “For this,” he said. “For Hatshepsut. And if you want to be romantic, for love. Generations have trained for the moment the Goddess of Light returned to the Queens Valley. We knew she would return when enough time had passed and the dust had settled.”

  Isis bristled. “You miserable worm. Your kind should worship me!”

  A woman circled the cage, clothes as black as her complexion and her strides confident and familiar. We’d walked the souks together. Masika came to a stop beside Avery, tucked her thumbs into her black combat pants pockets, and regarded me clinically.

  “Hi,” I said. It was all I could think to say, because damn, I’d been had by an archaeologist.

  Masika’s lips turned down. “Hey.”

  “When I told you the gods were real, I guess that was old news?”

  She shrugged. “You clearly needed to get it off your chest.”

  “I saved you from her.” I pointed a thumb at Isis. “That makes me one of the good guys, right?”

  She winced. “We know what you are.”

  “At least someone does.”

  “You’re not as clever as you think you are, Dante like the Inferno. You weren’t interested in me. You wanted information about Hatshepsut.”

  “No, you’re wrong. I wanted information about Senenmut and the skull, but—”

  Isis eye rolled so hard it cut me off. “Hatshepsut wasn’t even a god. Your worship of her has been a waste.”

  “She was a better woman than you,” Avery replied with enough venom to sign his own death warrant.

  A static crackle danced across Isis’s clothes as the goddess contained her rising power. “Your blessed Hatshepsut helped Osiris butcher Senenmut.” She stood still, too still, radiating a rage that reduced cities to dust. Maybe these fools couldn’t sense it, but I could.

  Avery stepped closer and stared down the Goddess of Light. I was looking at a dead man. “As you pointed out,” he said, “she was human. She had no choice but to obey the gods. You cannot blame your mistakes on the people under your spell. But we are here to right the past.” He lifted the skull and gave a single nod. “Lost to generations, we’ve been looking for this for a very long time. We had hoped the goddess would bring it with her to Egypt, but despite her reverent guards, we found nothing at the hotel. And here it is, brought right to us by the Soul Eater.” He addressed his eager crowd. “Finally, we end this and lay this man’s soul to rest.”

  They shared a round of cheers and backslapping with no idea of the massacre about to befall them. It would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous. Avery headed toward Senenmut’s waiting tomb. He was about to return the skull to Senenmut’s body, reuniting the missing piece and potentially freeing whatever power was lying in wait.

  “You can’t.” I stepped forward and pushed against the barrier. It gave like before, but I didn’t have the power to break it. Soon, I wouldn’t need to. “If you return that skull, it’ll free whatever Isis has trapped inside her shrine.”

  Avery ignored me, but Masika’s glare wavered with uncertainty. She knew about the shrine.

  “Don’t,” I whispered. “Something’s down there. You told me you believe in magic. You said you feel it. Then you have to know there’s another reason for all this beyond what you’re trying to do.”

  Avery descended the ladder into the tomb, followed by three more acolytes. I had a minute to convince her to stop him, and all the while, Isis stood cool and immobile beside me, watching.

  “The Soul Eater…” Masika smiled sadly. “The infamous liar.” She stepped so close to the barrier that my reflection peered back at me in her pupils. I could dive in and capture her soul. The barrier couldn’t stop me. We both knew it, but she turned away too soon for me to grab hold of that shining brightness inside her.

  “Sebek-kuh and Avery were going to ask you for help,” she explained, “knowing the Goddess of Light would soon search for Senenmut’s body. Hatshepsut believed Senenmut was the goddess’s weakness. Isis loved him, still loves him, and that love made her vulnerable enough to trap.” She brushed valley dust off the rocks piled around us, revealing the markings of the trap Isis and I had walked straight into. “But you dismissed Sebek-kuh. Isis killed him and recruited you instead.”

  “Do you think I had a choice?”

  “Neither did Hatshepsut when the gods ordered her to kill the man who mattered more to her than life. Had you listened, you could have helped us.”

  “I don’t make a habit of listening to rotting souls—demons.”

  Masika looked at Isis when she said, “Maybe you should, because there are worse things than demons.”

  Masika and her archaeologist priest were living on borrowed time, and Isis’s growing smile proved it.

  “We had a backup plan, though. Avery faked buying minor curse ingredients from your sorceress and planted the tracking spell on her as a last resort, knowing she has to stay close to you and that you would return to Egypt with Isis.”

  “How could you know I’d come here?”

  “Because of the shrine,” she replied, confusion muddying her expression. “The Dark and the Light, Night and Day…”

  The Dark and the Light? “You know what’s in the shrine?”

  Isis slammed her hands into the cage. The world erupted in a blast of jagged white light, almost washing out my vision, but I saw Masika’s body jerk and her head bend at a sharp angle, her neck broken, and then she dropped—discarded. Isis’s cruel laughter filled the valley. More rifle cracks splintered the night, but they were too late. I was already dissolving into ash and shadow and streaming between the fleeing people into the tomb. Isis would kill them all in seconds. They’d sealed their fates when they trapped the goddess and killed innocents to get what they wanted. I couldn’t save them and get the skull, and whatever I’d felt in that shrine was worse than their deaths.

  I was almost at the burial chamber door when a wave of power rolled over everything, simultaneously pushing me down while lifting me higher and choking control out of me. Power. So much blinding power. The surge was alive, and real, and… conscious. It was all too much. I fell into being Ace Dante, trapping myself in human skin, bone, and muscle before the presence could trap my soul-eater mind in madness.

  In the burial chamber, I stopped. I was too late.

  Blood-red light reached from inside the sarcophagus and consumed the priests. Avery’s face withered, shrinking around bone, and his terrified eyes turned to dust in their sockets.

  I watched the life get sucked out of four priests, leaving behind empty, weightless husks.

  The sarcophagus lid slammed shut, and the red light vanished inside. But it wasn’t over. The ground trembled. Grit rained from cracks in the tomb ceiling, and beneath the deep rumbling, all I could hear was Isis’s bone-chilling laughter.

  Get out of the tomb, instincts screamed at me. Out of the valley. Run. Run far. Don’t stop.

  The priests had set free something terrible and world changing. I could feel it, same as I knew the sun would rise every morning. I stumbled back through the tomb, brushing the walls and tearing away hieroglyphs beneath my fingers. Run. Go before it sees you, finds you… and makes you see. Makes you remember… The voice in my head sounded like mine, but the words felt off-center, like looking in a mirror. Something was wrong inside. Some deeper part of me had shifted sideways.

  I was coming undone.

  “Come, monster.” Isis’s smooth voice crooned, in my head or by my ear, I wasn’t sure. The world moved, or my place in it did. “I’m taking you home,” the goddess whispered, but fear had a hold of my heart. Fear that everything was about to change.

  Chapter 16

  The tomb, KV5, was everything I’d expected. Not a tomb at all, but an elaborate mazelike entrance to the vast, beating heart of power that lay beyond.

  Run. Get away
. You aren’t ready. You don’t want this.

  Doubts chipped away at my sanity, but a larger influence kept me moving forward, deeper into the entranceway. The need to know the answers, the need to see the truth, drove me forward. It was here. Close.

  If Shukra were here, she’d keep me level. She’d send me back. She’d stop me. But I couldn’t trust her, and I didn’t trust the voice in my head either. The voice sounded a lot like mine, only different—like the voice made of power and hunger, the old me who’d gorged on souls and would have continued to do so if he’d gotten away with it. The one who’d ridden out the Twelve Gates and compelled Anubis.

  Stop. Don’t go any closer. You’re not ready.

  I stumbled down a slope and shot out a hand, smudging the hieroglyphs. Paint peeled off as though it had dried only yesterday. The words, their story, beat against my hand, hot and thick.

  “Rarru…” I whispered, needing to feel the magic reply, needing it to ground me, because all was not right inside my head. But the old magic hissed back, cutting into my thoughts.

  “Kurbeddam.” Forbidden. Barred.

  I’d never been denied before. I yanked my hand back, stung.

  These moments are not yours. None of this belongs to you. Leave. Go.

  “Come…” Isis purred. She slipped a smooth, cool hand in mine. “Come and see what has been taken from you.”

  I pulled back, but her fingers turned to steel. “I can’t…” The voices clamored, their songs turning to howls. Stay, go, run forward, run back. So many voices. So many missing pieces. So much power….

  “I know, dear monster. That is why you must.”

  She tried to pull me forward again, but I dug in my heels. “No. What is this? What’s happening to—”

  Her lips were on mine, her tongue pushing in. Her mouth and her hands scorched where they touched me. Do Not Touch—Do-not-touch-do-not-touch. But I was, for too long and not long enough. Her light tasted like sweet poison to my oil-black soul. I didn’t want Isis, I never had. I wanted her light, her power, and everything that made her godly.