Prologue
August 12, 30 B.C., Bubastis, Egypt
KETI
A snake changed my world.
I hated the venomous creatures, but never so much as I detested them now as news of Cleopatra’s death spread throughout Egypt. The finality of the asp’s bite reached the magickal side of Bubastis almost instantly, prompting a plea from my mother, Bastet, for me to come to her temple. The goddess hadn’t even needed to send a physical note. I knew on instinct alone the severity of the situation that stalked my nerves. Its turbulent energy roused me from sleep and sent me scurrying through the city streets shortly after dawn.
But nothing could have prepared me for what I’d found at Bastet’s temple.
The bone-chilling silence surrounding my mother’s home froze me to the core. I hated the quiet. It represented everything I feared—chaos, pain, the unknown of what was to come. Today it finally had dug its claws into my soul and brought forth my destiny. A fate I couldn’t ignore.
I dashed ahead as any obedient priestess would have done. As Bastet’s only earth-born daughter, my obligation to the goddess was indisputable. I held the secrets to my mother’s magick.
Picking up the pace, I trekked along the sacred stone highway leading up the temple. As I moved, the beaded hem of my kalasiris slapped against me and itched my ankles.
I peered down.
Red welts dotted my skin.
I couldn’t stop. With enemies drawing near—both human and supernatural—slowing down would have literally killed me.
My pulse raced.
At my back, a warm wind kicked up from the sand and swirled around me, carried an acrid taste that assaulted my mouth the second I licked my lips. I knew from studying Bastet’s secret texts such winds were omens of troubled times yet to come. But judging by the silence suffocating Bastet’s temple, I feared those times had already arrived.
I shuffled forward.
Having been raised in the typical Egyptian fashion to go barefoot at home, each new step pained my toes as the thongs of my jeweled sandals chafed against my skin.
I winced but carried on.
Ahead, sunlight bounced off the temple’s sandstone columns and illuminated their colorful hieroglyphics.
I squinted, dipped my head to avoid the harsh glare as I fiddled with the gold chain around my neck. The pads of my fingers burned. On a good day the sun warmed my necklace and charged the sacred scarab hanging from it with my grandfather Ra’s fiery energies. It empowered me with his warmth. When I slept, the moon balanced that heat, cooled me with its icy touch. Like my mother, the sun and moon coexisted in me. But today, the sun was unforgiving and heated the sacred scarab until its gold back had grown slick with sweat. It blistered my skin.
I panted.
Egypt was on the cusp of falling to Octavian, but the earthly war was only part of my concern. The battle among the gods was a far greater threat to my people as Bastet’s war with my brother Maahes and the Greek Titan Selene had recently escalated.
My ankle twisted.
I teetered but steadied myself.
Scanning the walkway, I counted at least ten smashed urns.
My mother’s temple had already been decimated.
Arriving at the far end of the complex, I entered the sacred chamber and gazed at the tall, black and gold cat statue depicting my mother’s feline goddess form. The gold rings that had once graced the sculpture’s ears and nose were nowhere to be found, a segment of the head chipped away, its parts pulverized on the stone floor. Also missing were Bastet’s precious gold ankh and papyrus wand.
I maneuvered cautiously around the smashed bits of the sculpture, not wanting to destroy them more.
A strip of aged linen snagged on my sandal. Following the trail of fabric and threads across the room, I lifted my gaze. My mother’s statue wasn’t the only relic to have been vandalized.
Three feline mummies—remains of big cats I personally had tended to as one of my mother’s priestesses of the dead—dangled from a raided burial alcove on the far wall, their wrappings partially unraveled, curses curling off the fabric in the form of gold-tinted smoke.
I shivered.
The temple’s cisterns no longer bore the crackle of flames, but the cold that encased me had nothing to do with the chamber’s lack of heat. Curses of the dead were now among me and not even I knew what wrath they’d unleash. Their coiled energies danced around me, sniffed at my ankles and then crept up to my neck and brushed under my chin as if marking me as their own.
Rubbing my arms, I ignored the hexes.
The heady scent of cinnamon and rose permeated the air.
Scrunching my nose, I glanced at the ground.
On the floor lay an overturned alabaster jar, its precious ointment slowly oozing from its mouth and snaking around two pieces of broken lid lying next to it.
“Our end has come, my sweet little one,” my mother said from the other side of the stone cat figure. “Selene has already killed those who tend my temple. And now I must leave as well, return to the realm of the gods for my time on earth has reached its final hour.”
I approached the statue but knew better than to step into Bastet’s powerful shadow without her blessing for me to do so. “Then it is true. The Queen is dead? Cleopatra is gone?”
“Yes. Taken by an asp.”
My mother’s words confirmed what my nightmares had revealed. My heart raced. “What do you wish me to do?”
“Protect yourself. You are my future, my one true heiress.”
“Maahes will not be pleased to hear you speak such blasphemy.” My half-brother was a fierce war god who bore an arrogant side. A side I didn’t care to antagonize.
“Maahes is not your concern. While my son may be my sole legitimate heir, he has spent a lifetime ignoring the fact that you, too, hail from my blood. And in my eyes, that sin deems him unworthy of my legacy.”
Being the one appointed to carry on my mother’s tradition could be considered by the gods as stealing from Maahes. And challenging the strong feline god of war would only bring suffering to my people. I wasn’t like my brother. I wasn’t a god. “I do not wish to take anything from Maahes. He is my brother.”
“Only by blood, not by heart,” Bastet said. “If he hasn’t recognized you by now, he most definitely will not acknowledge you after Egypt falls to Rome. He will not teach my ways, but rather will preach a perverse version of his own ideals. But you, my precious Keti, you alone share my powers, know my most intimate secrets and for this I need you to remain alive or my cult as it was meant to be, will die out for good.”
I thought of the Cat’Hu—the half-cat, half-human shifters like myself—who depended on my mother. Without Bastet’s blessing, we could not exist. If her cult was not allowed to continue, our magick would diminish, leaving us to slowly wither away and die, trapped between the human world and the feline realm. “What of Selene?” The Titan had been an enemy for years.
“She will continue to be a problem. Especially with Cleopatra gone.”
The Ptolemy’s—my now dead queen’s family of pharaohs—had brought their own gods to Egypt, including the Titans to which Selene belonged. The Greek moon goddess intruded on Bastet’s territory, for in my mother the moon and sun came together. But the Ptolemy’s favored my mother, even Cleopatra had embraced Bastet as a confidant.
“I fear you will have two enemies, Keti.” My mother continued. “Maahes will take over for my father, Ra, and lead my sun loving felines astray. And Selene will covet the moon worshipers. In the days to come, my two colonies of full-blooded felines will fall to these gods.”
That left only the half-human Cat’Hu to follow my mother’s customs. “Those like me will have no one. Our lives will be in danger as Ra will never defend us. He only favors Maahes.” I paused. The gods were closing in on me. “On the Titan side, Selene has hunted the Cat’Hu for years. And we certainly have no desire to turn to Luna for help, the Roman gods care even less for us than do the Gr
eek ones.”
A deep breath escaped my mother. “Don’t think because you are half-human that the full-blooded felines can best you. They can shift to mortal form, yes, but they have no human soul. Cat’Hu are far better being the opposite.”
Easy for a goddess to say, especially one who was about to be plucked from the battlefield. “Where am I to go?”
My mother didn’t respond.
Taking over for Bastet was a monumental task. I may have had powers and skills and even vast knowledge, but I lacked full access to the realm of the gods due to my earthly birth.
Sucking in a deep breath, I mustered the courage to voice my concern.
As I opened my mouth, shouts echoed from outside the temple. I jerked my head. A group of armed soldiers bearing daggers and spears entered the complex. “Romans,” I whispered.
Bastet leapt from the shadows and grabbed my arm. “This way,” she said, leading the two of us in the opposite direction from the rush of soldiers. She’d partially morphed into cat with paws and feline facial features. Tears fell from her glowing gold eyes. “I’m sorry, Keti. I have been forbidden to do more for you. The brute who now comes here is no mere mortal and I have been stripped of the power to spare you from him.” She pulled forward, her claws digging into my flesh. She whisked me down a dark staircase at the back of the temple. Once underground, she released me. “You alone can save yourself. Go.”
“Where?”
Again, my mother gave no answer.
Realization settled in. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere familiar, at least, as both Egyptians and Romans would recognize me, as there was no mistaking my two-toned eyes. No other soul in the kingdom had irises that each bore both the blue of the moon and the yellow of the sun. I’d instantly be identified as my mother’s half-human daughter and Ra’s granddaughter. The rare trait of having the moon and sun united in one soul, had been passed only to me. Not even Maahes bore the gods’ blessings to have dual eye color within the same irises.
Beads of sweat trickled down my face. If captured by Egyptians, depending on their faith, I’d be brought either to my estranged brother or to Selene. And neither would have the least bit of mercy on me.
If taken by Romans…well, who knew what would become of me in the care of those monsters. Octavian’s legionaries wouldn’t turn me over to their goddess Luna, they’d keep me for themselves, of that I knew from experience when having witnessed some of their previous atrocities committed against my fellow Cat’Hu. I’d fair better in Duat, facing Osiris. At least in the Land of the Dead, my mortal enemies could no longer harm me.
I reached for my mother’s arm.
She turned away. “Go, my precious Keti.”
“But I don’t want to leave you.”
My mother sobbed. “It must be this way. The mortal side of me must die so I may return to my true home among the gods. I only took this form to conceive you. My mortal death is a pact I made with Ra and Osiris long ago so I could bring you into this world. But I have stayed here far too many years, my heart not wanting to let go of you. Now it must. I was never meant to come to earth as human. And never again shall I return as that is the price I had to pay to give birth to you. The pact I made isn’t even recorded in any of the sacred texts. It is my final secret I share with you.”
I never knew pain like this as I’d never lost anyone until today. A myriad of thoughts flooded my mind. “What about all the papyri stored in the temple library? How am I to preserve those texts if I leave?”
“Khonsu will reach out to at the proper time. He is aware of the pact I made with our father and with Osiris, and he has taken my side in the war with Maahes.”
At least I would have one relative to aid me in preserving my mother’s legacy. But Khonsu was a god, not a human. And the gods didn’t appear when called by mortals, or in my case, called by an earth-born immortal, they did things as they saw fit in their own time—save for Khepri, who never had an issue with instantly unleashing an army of beetles to shield my mother’s magick from human eyes. But Khonsu wasn’t Khepri. I could wait thousands of years for my mother’s brother to bring me her library of magickal books.
The thud of sandal-clad feet stomping the ground, reached my ears.
I bit my bottom lip, held back the tears that threatened my eyes.
Giving Bastet one final glance, I turned and ran.
My heart pounded.
The whoosh of a dagger’s blade slicing through air, terrorized my ears.
Bastet gurgled her last breath.
The ground quaked, sent bits of rock and mortar falling from the tunnel’s walls.
I tripped.
Tears rolled down my cheeks. My mother had found her way back to the realm of the gods, leaving me alone on this earth.
But I could not cower. I had to stay alive to preserve Bastet’s legacy for the Cat’Hu.
I pulled myself up from the earthen pathway and resumed running, dry dirt and small stones catching between my already blistered toes.
Thundering footsteps approached.
I ran faster, my breath now coming in short gasps.
A strong hand grabbed the back of my kalasiris, forced the woven fabric of my gown to constrict around my breasts. “Not so fast bitch.” The man gripped my waist and hoisted me over his shoulder as if I was nothing more than a soulless sack of grain.
I knew from the tall Galea worn on his head, with its red feathers and intricate etchings on the metal, I was in the hands of a Praetorian Guard. Though I doubted this one protected Octavian or any other high ranking Roman as one of the symbols on his helmet was a moon chariot with the name Sele scrolled in Greek beneath it. A faint blue aura—a dead giveaway signaling he was a Selenian, a moon-worshiping feline with the ability to take on human form—emitted from his body. The beast served no earth-born emperor. As my mother had warned, he was immortal.
I pounded against his back, my fists aiming for his lungs.
The vile Praetorian kept walking.
“Very nice,” he said, slapping my ass with his free hand.
My skin went cold. A touch of ice veined through my body nearly freezing my blood.
He slapped me again, this time with more force. “My men haven’t had a riled-up woman in some time. In fact, they’ve been very disciplined and, on my orders, haven’t taken a woman since leaving Rome. It will be good for them to finally unleash themselves tonight.”
I swallowed. I bet the beast hadn’t disclosed his true nature to his men, as I’d seen what Romans did to captured feline shapeshifters, both to humans like me who could morph into a cat, and to cats like this bastard who could shift to human form.
First came the filthy cages.
Next came the prodding with hot pokers.
And finally, rape.
I could not end up as entertainment for a legion of savages.
Outside the temple, my captor led me to the river bank. “Rest up,” he said. “Tonight they’ll be no sleep for you.” He dumped me on the ground and went for my wrists with a length of rope.
As he moved, my mother’s blood dripped from the dagger secured at his waist, the crimson liquid staining the sand.
Anger brewed inside me. I bounded up and kicked the beast.
He spat at me, grabbing my cheeks with brute force. “You’re Cat’Hu,” he said. “You’re nothing. You will never win this fight with Selene.”
My face ached.
A gust of wind spiraled up from the bloodied sand, its granules swarming the Praetorian’s eyes.
Dropping his hand from my cheeks, the Roman fell backward onto a cache of spears that had been stuck into the ground and belonged to the heap of treasures stolen from my mother’s temple piled next to them. Blood seeped from his stomach.
The Praetorian’s wound failed to heal itself, which it should have, considering he was immortal. He also hadn’t shifted form which confirmed my suspicions—he hadn’t disclosed the feline aspect of his soul to his men. Or maybe…just maybe…the curses
attached to my mother’s treasures had seen fit to put this animal down as an act of vengeance. Feline immortals could be killed with a slit to their throat or to their gut with a cursed weapon.
I wiped the bastard’s phlegm from my nose and left cheek, then licked my lips, the hot, arid air having dried the life out of them.
Of course, he wasn’t my only problem. The devil had a small cohort of men serving under him and I had no desire to wait and see if they were any less brutal than was their leader.
I’d been on this earth for only a mere twenty-one years and had no wish to spend the rest of my immortal days as a slave to a legion of Romans.
But to flee, I had only one choice and it wasn’t to remain as human.
Shifting form, I turned feline and stepped away from the discarded coil of rope that was meant to secure my wrists.
The Praetorian’s men spotted me.
I leapt from the ground, an armed legionary coming my way.
A spear flew past my side. The swirling hum of at least three more followed.
I dug my claws deeper into the sand, the sun-kissed grains burning the pads of my paws.
The tip of a spear sliced my left foreleg but failed to pin me to the ground.
I bit my tongue. I’d die before giving an enemy the satisfaction of hearing me screech in pain.
At the shore, where a tributary flowed in from the Nile, a small barge sailed on the water.
The boat was my only hope. My last chance at an escape.
A soldier’s rough fingers grazed my fur.
I jumped, my right hind leg barely slipping from the man’s grasp.
I landed on the boat and huddled against the side, my sudden appearance—thank the gods—unnoticed by the barge’s passengers.
Despite the wounded leg, I scooted toward the vessel’s edge, a trail of blood following me.
Looking out at the shore, a flash caught my eyes.
On the sand, just to the left of my dead captor’s sandal-clad feet, lay my scarab.
Realms and Rebels: A Paranormal and Fantasy Reverse Harem Collection Page 107