Cat had fed the manager some lies about a medical condition and how I’d be fine once the non-existent insulin took effect.
So now it was just me, cold and motionless as stone, and her. Kabechet hadn’t made an appearance, but she wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble just to see me paralyzed. She could only be here for her father, which meant any second now, she’d come through that door and take my lifeless body home.
With a growl, Cat hung up the phone and turned her worried gaze on me. My eyes were open, but besides that, I didn’t move. Didn’t blink. A look of horror had crossed her face when she’d reached for the pulse point at my neck, only for relief to flood in at the slow thud of my heart. Not dead. But instead of that fact pleasing her, she’d scowled at me as though this was somehow my fault.
The wyvern’s poison would wear off eventually. Meanwhile, Kabechet was coming and I couldn’t lift a finger to stop her.
I’d never met Anubis’s daughter before hitting it off with her back in Long Beach, when I was still pretending to be on vacation. At least I didn’t believe we’d met, but with Kabechet’s skills, who knew. She was as much a mystery as the Recka. Sometimes female, sometimes male. Sometimes human, sometimes … not. She’d hidden her power from me and that took the kind of magical juice only demigods could wield. Her half-human aspect gave her an edge. Few saw her outside of Duat, where she worked as Anubis’s chief embalmer and preserver. Even fewer knew what she looked like. But one trait remained constant: her silver eyes. Anubis, like almost all the gods, had slept around before the sundering, when gods and humans lived in harmony. Every one of Anubis’s spawn had silver eyes.
Cat stopped beside the bed. From my angle, I could see the corner of her mouth, her smooth cheek, and flicks of her short blond hair.
“Shukra did this.”
No, she didn’t, I thought.
“You don’t trust her.” Cat’s Boston accent was back, sharper and more grating than ever and blurring her r’s.
You need to find her. She can lift some of this poison.
“I gotta keep her away … somehow.” Cat started pacing in and out of my line of sight. “Redemption. I knew it as soon as that Recka thing said what Anubis was offering. I should have acted. Should have stopped her.”
Despite being a slab of stone, inside, I smiled. Cat thought she could prevent Shu from doing anything she pleased. Cute. And typical of feline stubbornness.
“Why do you have to be so—”
I waited for her to find the right word. I couldn’t do much else.
“—so you?”
It’s not like I threw myself in front of the wyvern.
“I sensed something in the woods, but I didn’t expect it to come from above.”
You could’ve warned me. I listened to her boots pad across the carpet, back and forth, back and forth. Man, she was pissed, and scared. Scared for … me?
“Trouble seems to seek you out. I have no idea how you’ve lived as long as you have.”
Laying low. Not stirring up trouble. You’d call it hiding behind Osiris. Seriously, you need to get Shu. Kabechet will be here soon.
Cat stopped at my bedside again, closer this time, close enough for me to see how she was breathing quickly and chewing on her lip again. If she chewed any harder, she’d draw blood.
“You’re useless. I know what you can do, I saw it, and instead you run and hide. Look at you now. It’s pathetic.”
Ouch. Dig the knife in a bit deeper why don’t you. By Sekhmet, give it a twist while I’m helpless.
Her face suddenly filled my vision—which is unnerving when you can’t blink or look away. Her lips held a permanent semi-snarl. I’d only seen her flash the rare smile when she let her lighter side out to play, and that wasn’t often. Her pale face appeared too smooth to be real, mostly because it wasn’t. She was half cat, and while her human half was convincing, she’d always be a little too feline to really pull off her human guise, especially with me scrutinizing her an inch from my face. And there, my gaze tugged, tunneling into her. She hissed and looked away but didn’t pull back. Slowly, she turned her head and crept her gaze across my face, this time avoiding my eyes.
“My name is Catalina. I haven’t told you because … well, because you’re not wrong, calling me Cat. And after a few weeks, it didn’t matter.” She paused, perhaps waiting to see if her revelation might get a spark of acknowledgement from me.
Since we’re sharing, I bought the goldfish bowl for the office to see if you’d sit and stare at it for hours. You wouldn’t believe how disappointed I was when you ignored it. Now I gotta feed the damn fish.
She straightened, and I lost sight of her for a few beats. Straining to see didn’t help. I couldn’t twitch an eyelash, let alone turn my head.
“I can’t stay here. I need to do something—anything.”
Get Shu.
She headed for the door. “Shukra will talk, one way or another.”
Threatening her is a bad idea. Just bring her here.
She flashed a rare, whip-quick smile. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Ha ha.
The door clicked closed, and I was alone. It didn’t take long for the creaking of settling wood and occasional phantom thud to grate on my nerves. Instead of focusing on what I couldn’t do, I channeled all my attention and thoughts into my right hand. It had flopped onto the bed and now hung off the edge, limp and useless. I searched for the feeling that would give me back control of my fingers and tried funneling all the energy into one tiny gesture. A twitch would do. In many ways, Cat wasn’t wrong. I was supposed to be a feared entity, something to frighten little godlings with, and here I was, helpless as a newborn lamb. Well, that would change soon, if I could move a finger, an eyelash—anything.
The door clicked. Shoes padded across the carpet, and Kabechet leaned over me. She’d chosen to appear as Bethany-Jane, the woman from the resort. Long honey-blond hair flowed over her shoulder. Rosebud lips. Fine, beautiful eyes. Okay, so maybe I should’ve seen it coming. Nobody real was that gorgeous. She didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. Her smile said it all. Predators smiled like her, and with a father like Anubis, a predator was all she could be.
She brushed the backs of her fingers down my cheek. I knew this not because I felt it, but because I heard my day-old stubble scratch against her smooth skin.
“Hello, lover.” Her voice was entirely wrong from the girl I remembered. The tone was deeper and rough as stone. She still sounded female, but only barely, verging on inhuman. If I’d had any feeling, I’d have felt my skin crawl.
“It is time for the Nameless One to return home and face Judgment. He’ll notice me then.”
Can I take a rain check on that?
She stood and turned toward the shabby dresser, its mirror pitted and cracked around the edges. As the old words spilled from her lips, a breeze filtered through her hair, and with it came the scent of baked sandstone and lush reeds. Duat.
Now would be a great time for Shu and Cat to return.
Any time now.
“Ovam kur ka, kur I ok uk sra oer, sra aorsr, sra resrs, omd sra dord. Ovam, omd varcuka ka srruisr.” Open for me, for I am of the air, the earth, the light, and the dark. Open, and welcome me through.
If I’d had any doubt about her pedigree, those words would’ve sealed it. Only gods could open doors between worlds. I was the exception who proved the rule.
My finger twitched and my heart thudded a little harder. If I could lift my hand, maybe I could—
Kabechet scooped me off the bed and threw my considerable dead weight over her shoulder, bruising my ego. The room flipped upside down until all I got was an eyeful of Kabechet’s back. Being slung over someone’s shoulder wasn’t the most flattering way to return home, but it wasn’t as though I had a choice. Her hair tickled my face. I felt it. My fingers curled into my palm. Feeling tingled through my right arm. Alysdair was close, under the bed. If I could just—
The door rattled and someth
ing fast and hard slammed into Kabechet’s side, jolting the demigoddess sideways. She fell against the dresser with a pained grunt, but it was too late. The momentum and Kabechet’s shove had me falling forward. I couldn’t reach out and snag the mirror’s edges to stop myself from passing through. A moment of weightlessness took hold, the air pushed in, and the sudden dark swirled, ripping away any sensation of which way was up. It couldn’t have lasted longer than a few seconds, and then I was unceremoniously spat out somewhere mind-numbingly bright. My ribs and thigh hit a flight of stone steps that didn’t give an inch. Pain stabbed me behind my eyes and up my side, and the sweet-smelling Duat air poured over my tongue and down my throat. I gulped at it, the old scent of home bringing me back around. Once again, I felt rooted in my body.
Squinting into the light, I shielded my eyes and tried to get my bearings of where exactly the doorway had deposited me. High stone walls crowded around narrow alleys and the moving wisps that my mind was having a hard time piecing together were in fact curious spirits—souls—that gave me a wide berth. If they knew how weak I was, if they knew who I was … I turned my face away, hiding the wince as I tried to push up from the steps and find my balance.
The air crackled above. I flung out a hand and grabbed at the sudden appearance of a dark shape before it could spill down the steps and land in the crowd of curious spirits. Cat—fresh from the doorway—whirled on me, claws extended. I snatched her wrist, yanked her against me, and smothered her mouth with my free hand. At the quick shake of my head, her wide eyes narrowed.
Whatever she would have said would have given away our location, and right now, I needed to get out of the open and away from the hundreds of intangible spies fixated on us.
Cat blinked away from my glare and darted her gaze around the dust motes gathering in the light like clouds of mosquitos.
I pulled her into motion, sensing her alarm and hoping she could keep it to herself until we were out of sight.
The alley narrowed, and above, the walls seemed to climb up forever into a washed-out sky. Beneath my grip, Cat’s pulse raced. She wasn’t meant to be here. What in Sekhmet’s name had possessed her to follow me through?
The narrow alley spat us out onto the fringes of a park, only here the stone glowed, the flowers bloomed impossibly bright, and the vast fountain overflowing with water that looked like diamonds was larger than most people’s homes.
Cat made a noise, but whatever she needed to say I silenced it as I dragged her down an empty cobbled street. Through twists and dogleg paths we turned, hurrying up and down steps until I stopped outside a door half buried in the road. I flung it open and shoved her down the steps into the cooler shadows before she could blurt out the million questions bubbling in her gaze.
Dropping the door closed behind us, we descended below street level, through a narrow corridor, and out into a courtyard surrounded by three stories of overlooking balconies. The abandoned riad had belonged to my mother. When alive, she had owned many of the oldest parts of Duat. Now these dwellings were owned by her many offspring, perhaps some even belonged to me.
Sand as fine as ash banked against the walls in places, but the small fountain still trickled, its gentle tinkle fighting against what would otherwise have been silence.
Cat stumbled to a stop and gaped up through the center of the house to the patch of pale sky above. Behind her, I finally relaxed the hold I’d been keeping on my magic, knowing the souls wouldn’t venture inside one of Ammit’s private dwellings. With any luck, the fact that two apparent strangers had appeared out of nowhere wouldn’t get back to Anubis anytime soon.
“Where…?” Cat’s voice rebounded around the courtyard and echoed through the empty house for several seconds.
“What were you thinking?” I kept the anger out of my voice, but in doing so, the question sounded flat and cold.
When she turned to look at me, I remembered she might see something different than what she was used to. This was my home, and already I felt power seeping from the earth, from the walls, and into my skin, warming me through. Cat might be unable to place exactly what was different about me, but she’d feel it, her instincts kicking up her heartbeat.
Threat, her senses conspired to tell her. Run, hide, or fight?
She blinked. Her throat moved and her lips parted, all those questions in her head vying for attention. “You were …” Again, her voice echoed. She winced.
“Nobody can hear you outside these walls.” Ammit had made sure the screams of the damned wouldn’t carry far. “Cat, you can’t be here.” My tone was still off, or had I always sounded distant and hard like the stone surrounding us here?
“That woman—”
“Anubis’s daughter. One of many. Probably thinks she can catch her father’s eye if she catches me first.”
Whatever Cat had been about to say, she forgot it as I approached. A shallow cut across her cheek wept blood, and after I noticed that, I also realized she’d clasped her side.
“Are you wounded?” I reached out a hand to examine her face but stopped when my shirt cuff hitched up, revealing a golden band loosely enclosed around my wrist.
I stared at the thing like I’d grown an extra limb. How? When?
Grabbing it, I yanked, knowing full well no amount of tugging would get the damn thing off. Kabechet must’ve snapped it around my wrist while I was too numb to feel it.
“Sudk ba dokmad!” Gods be damned!
I headed for the fountain and plunged my arm into the water. “Ovam kur ka, kur I ok uk sra oer, sra aorsr, sra resrs, omd sra dord. Ovam, omd varcuka ka srruisr.”
Nothing happened. No doorway. The fountain tinkled and the words echoed around us, hollow and useless. The words should’ve created our escape route back to New York. I repeated them again, drawing on the latent power around me and pushing it into the incantation. The rippling water reflected only my shadowy outline. No rippling current. No way back.
“What is it? What are you doing?”
The wretched cuff wouldn’t come off, not while Kabechet was alive. I’d never, in all my years, had one used on me. If I wasn’t so pissed at the demigoddess dumping me back in Duat, I’d be insulted.
“It’s a slave cuff,” I mumbled, too affronted to be enraged.
Moving silently to my side, Cat leaned in to get a closer look. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” Only my ego.
She winced at the cool snarl that had followed my denial. I drew in a slow, steadying breath, reminding myself to rein in the power. Cat didn’t need the Soul Eater; she needed Ace.
In the glittering, too-bright sunlight, she’d never appeared so pale, at least not to me in the few months I’d known her. This place—Duat—and the souls she’d seen, she wouldn’t process any of that yet. To her, this place would look and feel like a dream. Too bright, too quiet, too harsh, too empty. Not real, her human mind was telling her. She couldn’t possibly be in the underworld. It was one thing believing your soul was eternal and it ending up in a place like this, but another thing witnessing it with your very own human eyes.
“It means I can’t open a doorway back,” I said, swallowing the snarl.
“Oh.” There wasn’t much to that “oh.” She’d left her thoughts back on the steps she’d stumbled down and would go through the motions until reality caught up with her.
“It means I’m stuck here,” I added. “And that means you’re stuck here with me.”
“Oh,” she said again.
That wasn’t even the worst of it. If I didn’t get back to Shu in a few hours, the curse would dig its heels in, reminding me how my soul was bound to hers. Once that happened, Anubis would strike. The curse would kill Shukra—wherever she was—and dump her soul here. Anubis would get two birds with one stone. An eternity of torture waited.
I had to find a way out of Duat—and fast.
5
The cuff wasn’t coming off. I searched the house for anything remotely close to a weapon, but the dwelling wa
s as empty as a robbed tomb. It didn’t matter. No normal weapon could cut the cuff off—the cuffs were magically bound to the slave. If I’d had Alysdair, maybe I could’ve worked it free and probably would’ve lacerated my arm in the process. But Alysdair was back at the Inn, on the wrong side of reality. I wasn’t escaping the cuff without Kabechet. She’d be close behind us, but so would Anubis.
Cat hadn’t moved from the fountain. She hadn’t moved at all. When I returned, the cuff still obviously attached, she hurriedly wiped tracks of wetness from her face.
“Is this hell?” she asked.
“Depends on your perspective.” My smile slid right off as she turned to face me, fresh tears glittering in her eyes. “Hell isn’t a physical place. It’s a notion, an idea, a way of explaining the torture the gods are capable of. Souls arrive in Duat before they’re judged and sent on their way to the afterlife or to be resurrected.”
She heard the words, but their meaning didn’t stick. The Halls of Judgment, wandering souls, scales of justice—it all sounded too alien.
“Those things by the steps … when I came through, I saw them all around you. You were glowing with them.”
“The Halls spirits. Souls.”
“They were beautiful.” Her lips twitched as though laughter might be brewing there. Shock. If she dwelled on it, she’d probably lose her mind to the insanity of finding herself among gods and souls. Hopefully she’d instead swallow the insanity down and chalk it up to experience. Cat had better manage her fear, because getting a mentally unhinged shifter out of Duat came with its own special problems.
“Don’t think too hard on it,” I said.
She’d seen only the bare minimum. Once she saw the Halls, or the magnificent mer reaching toward the sky, she’d lose her shit. And I didn’t have the luxury of riding that out. This was Duat—Anubis’s front yard. If he didn’t already know we were here, he would soon.
“You look different,” she said, her tone shifting toward the curious.
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 5