Scorpion Trap

by Pippa Dacosta

  My trembling hands gripped the six-inch-thick stone rim. The rage boiling my insides and the fear icing up my heart did nothing to stop the inevitable. If I was a monster, then now was the time for the truth to come out. If I was Apophis, why couldn’t I save myself? Why was I climbing into my own coffin?

  I fought the compulsion and pushed back against Osiris’s hold—shoved with everything I had, every rage-filled Ace Dante part of me. Cracks appeared, and needle by needle, I unpicked his mental grip. But not fast enough.

  “This is a mercy,” Osiris said.

  I sat inside the sarcophagus and stretched out my legs like the lamb to the slaughter.

  “I told you the truth, and this is how you repay me?” The words trembled off my tongue.

  “Lay back.”

  I did.

  Osiris leaned over and braced an arm against the opposite side of the sarcophagus, bringing him so agonizingly close, yet so far out of my reach. I’d have sold my soul and the souls of a dozen innocents to punch that smug face. My hand twitched, but it wasn’t enough. Given time, I might be able to break free of his compulsion—that alone was a testament to either his waning power or mine growing. But I’d run out of time.

  “The truth is,” he sighed, “I must do this. I am the custodian of this world. I’ve been preparing for my brother’s return since the moment we imprisoned him. I cannot allow him to ally with you. This world, with all its technology and electronic infrastructure, is more fragile than the last world Seth helped destroy in the sundering. My brother has the ability to crush this world, and you would stand beside him. I know you. I’ve always known you.”

  “You knew me, Osiris. But today, I am not Apophis.”

  “You will be.”

  “Then kill me. Better that than…” Being buried alive in eternal darkness.

  His smile was a sorry thing. I wanted to rip it off his lips.

  Fear. I was familiar with it, but not this brittle terror. The sarcophagus lid would slide closed, plunging me into the dark, and I couldn’t stop it. I’d been helpless before, like when he’d commanded me to kill or dropped me to my knees with just a word, but this…

  “Do this and there’s no going back. Trap me in here and when I get out it won’t be Seth hunting you down. If I am Apophis, then you know what I’m capable of.”

  He hesitated, and so he should. As Apophis, I could destroy him. But the hesitation faded behind a flicker of righteousness I hadn’t known he possessed. “Some of the past should be left buried, lest we repeat the same mistakes.” The lid shifted, stone grinding on stone. Already the light was fading. “You are a good man, condemned by your past, shackled by the lies of your future. But that part of you is a fabrication, and it is breaking down. I must do this, and you already know it. If you could stop the apocalypse by condemning one man, you would.”

  Stone rumbled and shook. Grit crumbled. The lid closed, and the light shrank until only a sliver was left, and then that too vanished. All around me was nothing but darkness—a darkness with a weight to it that tasted like blood and felt like ashes on my lips. A darkness of my making. I raged and spat curses and vowed to destroy Osiris, but the darkness surrounding me came to life, and too soon, it drowned me in its poison.

  Chapter 19

  It didn’t take Shukra’s betrayal, or Isis’s manipulation, or Seth’s attack for me to believe. Osiris’s having me crawl into what would be centuries of torment broke the lies open, revealing the truth inside.

  As I dwelled in my own poisonous darkness, hours, days, weeks passed. Time became nothing. I saw cities crumble, deserts rise up and swallow entire towns, and I started to believe.

  “I am Apophis.” The words drifted, rough but insubstantial like ash.

  I curled my hand around Alysdair’s grip, and the sword came alive. Its ancient song hummed, and its magic poured up my arm. The sword knew the truth. It always had. I just hadn’t listened.

  Apophis. End of All Things.

  “I am Apophis.” Harder. Firmer. Real.

  Time flowed. The familiar darkness was all I had to cling to. Osiris’s compulsion fell away like rusted cage bars. I pressed my left hand to the inside of the sarcophagus lid and pushed.

  “I am Apophis.” Truth.

  The lid creaked and shifted. Grit rained over my clothes. Dark waves of my true, unhindered power rolled over me. And then a thin line of light opened, guiding me toward freedom.

  For too long, I’d lain in the dark, hidden, unseen, nameless.

  Nameless no more, I pushed the lid from the sarcophagus. It toppled and hit the floor, cracking on impact. I climbed from inside my coffin, the sword ablaze and as hungry as I was. Not for life, or good, or love, or all those Ace Dante things, but hungry for vengeance. Hungry like only a god knew hunger.

  “I am Apophis, nameless no more.”

  As I headed for the door, a distant voice whispered across my ragged, ancient soul, More than darkness.

  Ace’s adventure continues in Serpent’s Game! Read on for the first chapter!

  Click here to buy Serpent’s Game today.

  Serpent’s Game, Soul Eater #5 - Excerpt

  New York.

  Eight point four million souls.

  From my viewpoint crouched on the rooftop, they flickered and glittered in my vision like countless city lights scattered across the cityscape. If the rumors about me were true, I had the potential to reach out and capture every single immortal soul in my hands and swallow them down. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried before. I’d failed, but I hadn’t known who—what I was then.

  Apophis. Evil incarnate. It’s one thing to hear you’re the biggest bad there ever was, and another to believe it. And I did believe. I didn’t have those memories or that power, but I believed they were locked away inside me. A gift to myself. A way to hide in the modern world. And it had worked—until Isis.

  I wasn’t fully Apophis yet, but the truth was inside me, slumbering like the old gods. That made me dangerous.

  Movement down on the street caught my eye. A man moved through the late evening crowd, collar up, chin tucked against his chest, his pace brisk.

  I straightened and walked along the roof, keeping him in my sights.

  He jogged across a side street, weaving through stationary traffic. The glance over his shoulder sealed it. I got a look at his face, tight with concern and guilt, but in his eyes, a glimmer of truth exposed him. Joseph Aaron, fresh out of prison where he’d learned a few new magic tricks, like how to siphon magic and hoard it. Most witches worked in covens, but not him. Joe was a loner and up to trouble.

  I tapped my earpiece. “I’ve got him.”

  “Where’s he heading?” Cujo’s small, disembodied voice came back.

  “East Sixty-Eighth. Looks like home.”

  As Joe turned left below, I followed my rooftop path and took a running leap to the next building, keeping Joe’s hasty getaway on my right. He had no idea a monster was watching him. I almost felt sorry for what was about to happen. Almost. He’d stolen magic and used it to manipulate people around him. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have worse things than me coming after him—things that would use his stolen, compromised magic against him and against innocent people who didn’t know any better.

  Joe stopped beneath a spindly tree and broken streetlight, looked around him to check he was alone, and dug into his pocket, probably for a cellphone. He should have been heading straight back to his apartment. Something had spooked him. Likely me.

  “Ace?” Cujo’s grumble sounded in my ear. “Remember what we talked about?”

  “I’m good.” I stepped up to the edge of the roof.

  “We both know that’s a lie.”

  I chuckled at the sour note in my friend’s voice and stepped off the edge. Five stories sailed by. I landed in a crouch, feeling the impact through my bones but riding it out. Joe spun and watched me straighten, watched me lift my eyes to his. Alysdair hummed melodically against my back, ever hungry. My duster coat—t
he second in recent months—had gained a few new battle scars. I knew the picture I painted, as did most who followed the urban legend of the Nameless One. He recognized who I was, but he couldn’t know what I was.

  He flung his cell at me—the only thing he had in his hand. I leaned to the side, and it flew right past. It shattered against the wall behind me.

  “I hope that wasn’t the latest model?” I asked. He had more magic than most people in this city, and he’d thrown his phone at me? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. I stepped forward.

  Joe cowered back. “Wait.” His bottom lip quivered. “I don’t have any cash. Don’t hurt me.”

  His clothes were tatty, and his chin was a mass of whiskers. Everything about him screamed that life could have been kinder, but the truth was in his eyes… and his soul, which slithered and knotted inside him like a bucket full of eels. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you you can’t lie to a soul eater?”

  He knew then that his act was pointless, and from one blink to the next, his vagrant act peeled apart. His glamor dissipated in a fine mist, revealing the sharply dressed, keen-eyed individual beneath. His fear had vanished, replaced by an aura of smugness and a sharp smile on an even sharper face. He lifted his right hand.

  “Catch me if you can.”

  With a click of his fingers, he vanished. Gone. Or so it would seem. But I was aware of his MO. I’d been watching him since Cujo had tipped me off about the jewel and fine arts thief that apparently disappeared in front of security cameras.

  He hadn’t chosen the spot beneath the broken streetlight by accident.

  At my feet, where the tree branches cast skeleton shadows, those shadows rippled like a sheet lifting around something hidden beneath. I watched him sneak off inside those shadows. Hiding in shadows wasn’t an easy trick to pull off.

  “The thing about borrowed magic is,” I said, following the shadows as they stretched out and bled into each other, “it’ll never be as strong as soul-born magic. The second you’ve severed it from its source, it’s compromised.”

  I trailed after the shadow and watched it crawl up a wall and around a corner into a quiet, leafy residential street. The first streetlight popped and died, and the shadows continued to move.

  “So when someone like me comes along,” I continued, striding alongside the shadow, “it’s almost too easy to take it back.”

  I plunged my hand into the shadow, appearing to bury my arm up to the elbow in the wall. Joe’s slithering presence recoiled, but I was done playing games with this fool. I yanked him free from his hidey-hole and slammed him against the wall. Something cracked. Pain flitted across his eyes. He wasn’t smiling now.

  “Didn’t it ever occur to you that something might come looking for that magic you stole?” I leaned in, letting him get a good look at my eyes. Whatever he saw there widened his gaze until tears swam in his vision. My grip tightened on his neck, choking him. “There are worse things out there. Things you could only imagine in nightmares.” His soul recoiled as I rooted around inside the man’s eternal life force because he needed to understand. “This isn’t a game. This magic isn’t your ticket to whatever you think you deserve. It’s your death looking you in the eye.”

  “Ace…” Cujo queried from so very far away.

  I ignored him as easily as ignoring a fly.

  “You have no idea about the creatures that would gladly sup on your soul as though it were nothing but a delicious treat before the main feast.”

  Joe’s eyelids fluttered and his pupils widened, allowing me to delve deeper. He had no defense, no means to stop me. His hoard of borrowed magic and its tricks weren’t enough. I tilted my head as I studied the things I found inside this mortal man. Dreams dashed. Lives ended by his hand. Not just a jewel and magic thief, but a coldhearted killer too.

  “We’re the same, you and I.” My voice had taken on an edge and an accent that curled and flicked, laden with the old world and the old language, with sand and smoke. The edges burned.

  This killer’s soul was mine.

  Something bright white and barbed snapped down my left arm, through my shoulder, and struck somewhere in my chest. I recognized it as pain, but I didn’t feel it as such.

  “Ace, you sonofabitch, don’t make me wheel my ass down there!”

  Cujo’s voice joined that detached pain and pulled me back from the brink, back into my skin. Shock did the rest. I dropped Joe and forced myself back three steps, almost stumbling into the street. The magic thief spluttered and wheezed on his knees, drawing in breaths like they were his last.

  I lifted my left hand. The sleeve fell, revealing the slave cuff beneath. It glinted under the pale light. A reminder. A precaution. It had worked.

  “Cops inbound,” Cujo barked. “Get your ass out of there. Now!”

  I locked glares with the wan-faced Joe and narrowed my eyes. “Your trinkets and jewels were either destroyed or returned to their original owners. Mark my words, thief. I know you, and I will find you. I suggest you try to—”

  The gun was unexpected. So was the shot. But there it was, in his hand, and there I was, turning into the kind of hungry shadows that made his look like mist. My smoke and ash were made of the things he called nightmares. I didn’t speak the words, didn’t judge him. I just swallowed his soul in one satisfying embrace.

  “Daquir,” I whispered, twisting now-human lips around the word and turning Joe’s remains to dust, scattering the thief and killer into New York’s diesel-tainted wind.

  By the time the cops rounded the corner, sirens wailing, I was a block away, collar up. I hid the sword at my back and strode into the late evening flow of people with a sated smile on my lips.

  Buy Serpent’s Game by clicking here.

  Sign up at www.pippadacosta.com for free ebooks and get notified when the next Soul Eater book is on sale.

  A note from Pippa on research

  KV5 is a real tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Excavations have been underway for years. It is the largest tomb in the valley and one I’ve always been fascinated by. As Ace mentions, KV5 does not have a typical tomb layout, so there is speculation as to exactly what the ‘tomb’ was for, if not for a sarcophagus. Archaeologists continue to make discoveries there today.

  Likewise, Senenmut is real, as is the mystery surrounding his death. An important man in his time, he was Hatshepsut’s chief advisor and possible lover. But his body/tomb has never been discovered. It could be that he was murdered by Hatshepsut’s nephew and rightful pharaoh, or that we simply haven’t found the right tomb… yet.

  Egypt has not yet given up all of her secrets. There are still many mysteries to uncover beneath the sands. Perhaps, even some gods?

  I adored adding some of these facts into Ace’s adventure in Egypt. I hope you enjoyed reading them.

  Also by Pippa DaCosta

  The Veil Series

  Wings of Hope ~ The Veil Series Prequel Novella

  Beyond The Veil (#1)

  Devil May Care (#2)

  Darkest Before Dawn (#3)

  Drowning In The Dark (#4)

  Ties That Bind (#5)

  Get your free e-copy of ‘Wings Of Hope’ by signing up to Pippa’s mailing list, here.

  Chaos Rises

  Chaos Rises (#1)

  Chaos Unleashed (#2)

  Soul Eater

  Hidden Blade (#1)

  Witches’ Bane (#2)

  See No Evil (#3)

  Scorpion Trap (#4)

  Serpent’s Game (#5)

  Edge of Forever (#6)

  Science-Fiction

  Girl From Above #1: Betrayal

  Girl From Above #2: Escape

  Girl From Above #3: Trapped

  Girl From Above #4: Trust

  New Adult Urban Fantasy

  City Of Fae, London Fae #1

  City of Shadows, London Fae #2

  About the Author

  Born in Tonbridge, Kent in 1979, Pippa's family moved to the South West of England where
she grew up among the dramatic moorland and sweeping coastlands of Devon & Cornwall. With a family history brimming with intrigue, complete with Gypsy angst on one side and Jewish survivors on the other, she draws from a patchwork of ancestry and uses it as the inspiration for her writing. Happily married and the mother of two little girls, she resides on the Devon & Cornwall border.

  Sign up to her mailing list here.

  www.pippadacosta.com

  pippa@pippadacosta.com