Scorpion Trap

by Pippa Dacosta

  Problem was, the worlds wouldn’t wait for me to be ready. This was happening now. Seth was licking his wounds somewhere. He’d strike, and soon. If I didn’t tell Osiris his wife and I had freed his brother, we were all screwed. If I did tell Osiris, I was screwed. Either way, my future didn’t look bright. The only way I’d survive would be by embracing the truth and turning myself into the embodiment of evil. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

  “What are you still doing here?” Shu strode in and scribbled something into the planner’s few remaining slots for next week. “You have a ten-a.m. appointment in Newark. Unless you’ve sprouted wings, you won’t make it before twelve.”

  My ash fingers rippled. Embers fizzled along the lines crossing my palm and crumbled to dust on the planner.

  Shu picked up my glass of vodka and helped herself to a sip. She turned and headed toward the door.

  “The scrolls…” I said, making my fingers solid and human again.

  She paused in the doorway. “They arrived yesterday. I haven’t unpacked them yet—”

  “Not Sesha’s scrolls. The ones that have been plaguing this city by turning up in the hands of inexperienced kids…”

  She leaned a hip against the doorframe and finished my drink in one gulp. “What about them?”

  I’d wondered how to approach this. On the flight back from Egypt, I’d run the conversation over and over in my mind, but there was no easy way to say it. “After we got physical in the Cairo museum, Osiris intervened.”

  Shu shuddered. “I wondered what that slippery feeling was. The god’s been screwing with me, hasn’t he?”

  “You died. He brought you back.”

  She blinked, careful to hide her reaction. “You haven’t killed me in a while. I guess we were overdue.” The lackadaisical words belied the thin, taut line of shock hidden beneath them.

  “That’s what he said.” My smile was sharp and far from kind. “He also said he needed you and, among other things, mentioned some scrolls he knew absolutely nothing about.”

  Still, her face revealed nothing.

  “He lied,” I added, watching her closely.

  There, a twitch, her mask cracking.

  “How long have you been working for him?” I asked.

  “Since the beginning.” She didn’t even hesitate.

  “You weren’t just cursed to me, were you? Does he compel you the same way he does me?”

  She swallowed loud enough for me to hear and found a spot on the floor midway between the door and me to stare at. “I had planned never to tell you, but then things changed and we got busy. There just wasn’t a right time.”

  That was the most lame-ass excuse I’d ever heard. “You had five hundred years.”

  “No, I haven’t.” She lifted her head and frowned, crinkling the skin around her eyes—eyes rimmed in purple. “Because in the beginning you were even more of an asshole than you are now. We’ve gotten along recently.”

  And that was about to change. “How far does his influence go?”

  “He asks about you and I tell him. I enjoyed it, at first. Told him a bunch of lies just to see you suffer. Then, after a while, he got bored and stopped asking. I figured he’d forgotten, but then he wanted me to distribute the scrolls. Said to see that they landed in certain places with certain people—”

  “They aren’t just minor spells. The magic in those scrolls is so potent it’s almost sentient. People have died because of those scrolls.”

  She shrugged. “People die falling down stairs.”

  I didn’t want to do this, but she hadn’t left me any other choice. “You got inside my head and stole my memories. Memories surrounding the last days of a missing goddess who happens to be my ex-wife. Memories that, according to you, I can’t get back. And now I’ve learned you’re compromised by Osiris—”

  “Like you aren’t,” she scoffed.

  “You’re fired.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You really are.”

  “I don’t accept.”

  “You don’t need to accept. You just need to leave.”

  She glared at me like she could set my soul on fire at will. “Your four o’clock appointment is some hotshot movie producer who says his film set is haunted by Nefertiti’s chi or shadow or some shit.” She marched up to my desk and slammed my glass down. “And if you think it’s that easy to get rid of me, then you haven’t been paying attention these last few hundred years.”

  “I know I can’t get rid of you,” I said, calmly peering up at her, “but I can stop you from getting too close, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  “You act like you’re some righteous hard-done-by schmuck that the gods all pick on, like none of this is your fault. When will you see the real problem in your life is you?”

  She had no idea how right she was.

  My cell chirped a message alert.

  Come

  Now

  -Osiris.

  “Shit.”

  What he hadn’t texted was how, if he had to call, he’d compel me. I snatched up my cell, coat, and sword, shoved past Shu, and hammered down the stairs.

  “Your appointments?” Shu called.

  “Not your problem!”

  I’d known Osiris would summon me. I’d been back on US soil less than a day and knew it was coming, but what I didn’t know was if Isis was back too or how much Osiris knew about what had happened in Egypt. Did he know Seth had been roused? Did he know I’d played a major part in releasing his brother? Did he know who I was supposed to be? I was about to find out.

  I should have picked up the vodka on my way out the door. I was going to need it.

  I pulled the Ducati up beside Osiris’s Tesla and kicked the bike onto its stand. His grand neo-classical house shone under New York’s thin sunlight, reminding me too much of Duat’s proud columns and sharp glare.

  The God of Life, Death, and Rebirth waited inside, and he could continue to wait. It was the only power I had over him—for now.

  Straightening on the bike, I dug out my cell and dialed Cujo.

  “It’s about time you called,” Cujo grumbled. “There’s some new info on the break-in at Mafdet’s store. Some snake skin was found—”

  “And I need to hear it, but right now, I have bigger issues.” I swung my leg off the bike and straightened Alysdair, snug between my shoulder blades. “Stay by the phone. If I don’t call you back in three hours, pack a bag and take a vacation. Anywhere. Just get out of New York and don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

  “All right.” No arguments, no questions. He knew when to listen and when to act. “God trouble?”

  I started up Osiris’s driveway. Gravel crunched and birds chirped enthusiastically like this was any normal New York day.

  “Some things happened in Egypt.”

  “Things like you lost your wallet, or the we’re all gonna die kinda things?”

  I kept on walking, wondering how much to tell my friend. He already knew too much. Every time I called him up, every time I brought him in on a case, it buried him deeper in my shit. Mortals standing in the way of gods fell all too easily, and Cujo was an easy target.

  “Would you say I’m a good man?” I asked, marching up Osiris’s steps.

  The line fell quiet. He’d be wondering why I’d asked. He’d sensed the tone. It sounded like goodbye.

  “The fact you’re asking answers your open question, don’t it?”

  Maybe it did. Or maybe this Ace Dante charade of mine was good, but like a mortal’s life, it wouldn’t last.

  “Are you about to do something stupid?” he asked. “Is Shu with you?”

  “Egypt was a clusterfuck of stupid, and no. Wait by the phone.” I hung up and breezed in through Osiris’s front door. No guard greeted me in the vast, open foyer. I’d sucked the souls out of the last ones, and Osiris hadn’t bothered replacing them, seeing as the entire house was a front. Shu had accused me of looking like Osiris, but if Isis’s re
velations about my identity were right, the goddess’s husband and I were more alike than Shu could have imagined. I still hadn’t wrapped my head around the repercussions and couldn’t until I knew for certain. Being Apophis was… too much, too big, too… wrong. The missing box was the key, but until I found it and opened it, I’d have to answer to Osiris and pretend like everything was peachy.

  “Monster…”

  Isis descended the sweeping staircase, wearing a symphony of blue silken gowns that flowed from her shoulders like water. So she was alive, then. Seth hadn’t killed her. Pity. This whole thing would have been a lot easier to explain to Osiris without her there to twist him around her little finger.

  “Osiris summoned me,” I explained, cold and direct.

  “Yes.” She swept across the floor and reached for my arm. A gesture too familiar for the Goddess of Light and the Soul Eater. I stepped back, making it clear where I stood. Her glower could have cut stone. “We do not have much time, and there is much to discuss,” she hissed, keeping her voice low so her husband dearest wouldn’t hear.

  “What lies to tell him, you mean?”

  “You do not understand.”

  “Oh, I do, and that’s the problem, Your Highness. I understand all too well how you plan to set me u—”

  “Mokarakk Oma.” Osiris didn’t need to raise his voice to silence us. The barely restrained rage scratching through my name did that.

  Isis and I turned toward the god. He stood on the first-floor landing, one hand resting on the banister. The sweater and black pants should have diminished his presence, but they only made the great weight of his power seem more controlled. I’d seen Osiris enraged, seen him flatten small armies and help sunder the old world beneath a sweep of his golden crook and flail to bring about a new world. The expression on his face wasn’t rage. This was colder, as though all his molten rage had been poured into a mold and shaped into something harder and stronger. I got the distinct impression he was done with our bullshit.

  I imagined I could hear Isis’s heart racing, but figured it was more likely my own.

  It didn’t matter if he’d heard Isis and me arguing. He’d have to be an idiot not to suspect even the smallest of conspiracies against him. If I blurted out the truth, he’d likely kill or maim me. I didn’t know what he knew, and until I did, silence was my best defense.

  Osiris ran his hand along the banister and started down the stairs, one painfully slow step at a time.

  Running would be the smart thing to do, but there was nowhere in this world, the underworld, or the afterlife I could hide from Osiris.

  If I was Apophis, the epitome of darkness, now would be a fantastic time to fire up that ancient mojo… Any time now…

  “Husband, allow me to explain—”

  Osiris lifted a hand, silencing his wife. “No, dear wife, allow me to explain.” His penetrating dark-eyed gaze slid from Isis to me, noting how the goddess stood too close to his pet soul eater. Isis took a step away, cementing her guilt. It would have been hilarious had I not been about to get my ass handed to me.

  “You”—he nodded at me—“followed Isis to Egypt. You followed her to the Valley of the Kings where she hoped to find the lost body of her lover.” Isis winced, but her husband only had eyes for me. “There, you stumbled upon Seth’s prison and you freed the Usurper as vengeance against my control over you.”

  When he put it like that, of course I looked like the guilty party, exactly as Shukra had suggested, exactly as Isis had whispered in his ear, and exactly as I’d known all along how this would play out.

  It was time to find my voice. “Why would I follow Isis to Egypt?”

  “You are not the first to love the Goddess of Light.”

  I almost laughed in his face. Love Isis?! He was the only one alive and crazy enough to fall into that trap. But to deny it would insult them both. Still, insulting Osiris had to be better than getting strung up, drawn and quartered, and left out in the sun to bake, like the last poor bastard who’d fallen in love with Isis.

  “You know the problem with gods?” I growled out. “You all believe your own divine PR campaigns.”

  Isis shifted, quietly moving behind her husband in a submissive position. A good place to be, because I was done holding my tongue and dancing around truths and prophecies and lies, so many lies.

  “I don’t love Isis. I don’t even like her. I don’t hate her quite as much as I hate you, but it’s a close call. She’s a grade-A sociopath, and so are you. So are the rest of the gods awake and breathing today. Driven insane by time and power, you’re so consumed by your own divinity that you can’t see it for what it truly is: a noose around your necks. Your world is dead. Your time is dead. Get over yourselves. You could do a lot of good in the new world, but you can’t see past your own egos to try. That makes you a bunch of hypocritical, inbred assholes.”

  They’d both fallen still and silent, but I had plenty to say to fill that silence.

  “Isis believes she can use my desire for her against me, and she did, but let’s not mistake desire for love, Osiris. You’re not an idiot. It’s not even your wife I want, it’s her power. So sure, when Isis asked me to go to Egypt and threatened to tell you how I wanted to get her in the sack, I figured a trip back home was the lesser of two evils. I was wrong, but then I’m wrong about a lot of things—like who I really am…”

  A nerve twitched under Osiris’s eye. Maybe he had something he wanted to say, but I wasn’t finished.

  I pointed a finger at the suspiciously quiet Isis. “I went to Egypt to retrieve a skull for her on the premise that she didn’t want you knowing how she was chasing after a lost love. I didn’t want to go back. I never have. I’ve avoided that place for hundreds of years, thinking it was my choice not to go back. But now I know why I’ve never wanted to go back.”

  “He’s a fool and a liar,” Isis sneered.

  “No! What I am is tired of shoveling your lies, Your Highness.”

  Osiris, now as still as the many statues of himself, watched, waiting for me to tighten that noose around my neck.

  “Your wife killed Ammit,” I said. “Your wife forced me to go back to Egypt, and, in all honesty, I don’t think she cares about an ancient love, because as she admitted, time has sapped her ability to care about anything but herself. She didn’t want to find a desiccated corpse; she wanted the key to Seth’s tomb. The key was me and her working together. All that light, and she’s as rotten in her core as I am. Osiris, your wife wants you gone. She’s tired of living in your shadow, but she can’t come at you head-on, so she used me, Thoth, and probably countless others over the years to undermine your reign. And now she’s released Seth, the only god who can knock you off the top spot. So sure, pin all the blame on me if you want. Let her distract you. Really, at this point, I’m already screwed. Just know that as much as I hate you, when you fall, and you will, it wasn’t by my design. Look no further than your bed to find your enemy, or continue to be blinded by her light. What do I care? I’m just the Nameless One…” I hadn’t realized how close I’d gotten to Osiris, but as I squared up to the god and looked him in the eye, I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t the Ace Dante he controlled. Not anymore. “I’m just some wayward orphan son Ammit found in the mud, right?” He didn’t blink or turn away, and as my hunger rose, soul-eater urges took hold. I whispered, “Do you keep me controlled because you know I’m a lie?”

  “Husband, silence him.”

  But Osiris was listening and those dark eyes of his held my unblinking glare, waiting for me to crumble. But I wouldn’t because the truth was out and holding me up.

  “Ask yourself,” I said more quietly and so close to the god that my words were almost intimate, “did I release Seth or did your devoted wife?” For the first time in five hundred years, Osiris looked back at me, not as a tool, but as an equal. My words traveled soul deep where he couldn’t deny them.

  His hand locked around my throat, crushing tight. I brough
t my arm up to break his hold, but his grip was stone. Alysdair.... I reached behind…

  “You are right,” Osiris snarled. “Thank you, Mokarakk Oma, for opening my eyes to the truth.”

  My fingertips grazed Alysdair’s hilt, but I couldn’t grab hold of it.

  His fingers tightened, threatening to snap my neck. “You are both traitors.” Osiris flung his free hand out, blasting heat and light toward Isis, but I couldn’t turn to see the outcome. I heard her piercing scream though, and then silence.

  Osiris’s grin was a twisted thing, made of poison and vengeance, jealousy and insanity. He lifted me off my feet. “So many secrets. Let me reveal one to you. My eternal love for my wife is matched only by my wrath. When I learned of my wife’s affair, I ensured Senenmut’s soul was sealed inside his sarcophagus. His mortal body crumbled, but his soul burned on for centuries, trapped. How will your soul fare trapped in stone for eternity?”

  In a blink, we were gone from the entrance hall and inside a small dark room that reminded me of the Cairo museum. Intense spotlights illuminated an unmarked stone sarcophagus. A modern-day tomb, likely hidden beneath his house or somewhere inside its walls, and I was about to become its resident.

  I thought of sand and shadow and all things—

  “San,” Osiris growled, stopping my change dead in its tracks. “Cukkomd.” The compulsion sank its fishhooks in, driving them so deep that when he released his grip, I couldn’t move. Just like all the times he’d frozen me inside my skin, I couldn’t reach Alysdair against my back or lift a hand to stop what was coming next.

  Osiris shoved the stone sarcophagus lid aside, the sound rumbling like thunder. “Place the sword inside.”

  I pulled Alysdair free and laid the sword gently inside the sarcophagus.

  “Climb inside.”

  As the words wormed into the part of my mind susceptible to his commands, I wished I were Apophis, or anything or anyone else, so I wouldn’t walk into this forced slumber—because that’s what this was. My mind wouldn’t survive. I’d have to sleep to survive; otherwise, trapped inside the stone, I’d go insane.