“It’s the light. Cat, I need you focused—”
She lifted a hand, and for a second, I wondered if she might unleash those claws. “Your skin is darker, and your eyes … they’re golden, like Osiris’s.”
Her fingertips brushed my cheek and skipped along my jawline. I let it happen despite wanting to put some distance between us. She was mortal in an immortal realm and fucked if any of the gods discovered her here with me.
“Is any of this real?”
This wasn’t getting us anywhere. I could explain it all to her—show her my home in a way that didn’t make it terrifying—but we didn’t have the luxury of time.
I caught her hand and lowered it between us. “You shouldn’t have come through,” I repeated. “But it’s done, and we have to deal with it.”
I let go of her hand, ignoring my odd sense of concern.
“That woman, I tore into her. You were hurt, so I just—it’s impossible, but I reached into the mirror after you, and then I was here.”
I gave her what I hoped was a soft smile. At least she didn’t flinch. She would if I relaxed my appearance completely, if I released my hold and revealed how a soul eater truly appeared in his native Duat. She thought she’d seen me when I almost devoured the witches. This place amplified everything about me. It was, after all, my home.
Monster.
The Nameless One—the Godkiller—was back. And stuck here.
“This cuff isn’t coming off,” I admitted. “Kabechet has me. She’ll come looking.” And others too. Those I’d wronged and those who knew exactly what I was and wanted me to suffer. Liar. Thief. Godkiller. Anubis, though, was the worst. We had to keep moving.
She nodded and straightened, squaring off her shoulders. “Okay. I can do this. I’m okay. So, right. There must be another way back?”
“There is. We just need to pass through the Twelve Gates.”
Her eyes brightened and a touch of color warmed her face again. That was hope working its magic. “Twelve gates?”
“Twelve.”
“Gates?”
“Gates.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.” She was waiting for the but.
But I wouldn’t give it to her.
“A walk in the park.” Back for less than an hour and I was already lying.
No living person entered the Gates, and with a soul as black as mine, there was no way I’d make it through. Cat had a chance … if I got her there alive. As for me? I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
Just another Tuesday then.
Duat’s denizens milled around the trading plaza far below. The square was packed from alley to alley, with more people arriving to trade goods between the households. Colored banners hung from decorated pillars, tents gently fluttered, and traders bartered noisily beside their stalls.
“Are those normal people?” Cat asked. She’d been watching them from the window beside me, her green eyes darting, absorbing a scene below that looked a lot like a typical eastern souq—an open-air market.
As we’d ventured from Ammit’s riad through several shadow-clad alleys and into yet another empty building where we found this vantage point, Cat had kept her gaze ahead and her expression unreadable. Since the fountain, she’d packed her emotions away behind her warrior stoicism.
“As close to it,” I replied, keeping my voice hushed. Despite the bustle from below, the Duat air would carry my voice far if I allowed it. “They’re souls given flesh. Most have been judged and either didn’t want to pass on or a god claimed them. They serve the gods until they wish to further their journey or their god releases them from service.”
Cat nodded and continued to observe the market, her sharp mind working. “When you were here, did you have souls in your service?”
“I was adopted into Ammit’s household. She had several generations of servers tending to her needs.”
“And you, personally?”
“My relationship with souls has always been … different.”
She looked at me, knowing there was more to my answer, but with my arms crossed and my gaze deliberately set on the market, she knew better than to push for answers I wasn’t ready to give.
“We need to get across the plaza without anyone seeing us.” I leaned against the warm stone sill, risking the souls spotting me so I could get a better look at the rooftops. Crossing those pitched roofs was out of the question—our silhouettes would be obvious to anyone who happened to look up—but the market plaza had to be three hundred yards across. A long walk out in the open.
“We’re going to the Halls of Judgment.” She echoed the brief explanation I’d given her of where we were heading. I suspected she knew I was hiding something. She couldn’t know how I hid everything. With a bit of luck, she’d never see more of Duat than what was absolutely necessary.
Getting through the Halls undetected was impossible for most, but I had my ways. The Halls had been my home. I knew how to hide amongst its vast pillared chambers. But first, we had to cross the plaza, and that would be impossible in our modern clothing. Not to mention one look at my face and anyone would recognize me. Too close and the souls would feel my magic too. I could, of course, walk right through them, plain as day. They’d part for me, cringing away. Some may even drop to their knees. Not out of respect—I’d lost that centuries ago—but from fear. But if I revealed myself, word would get back to Anubis and the god would appear, probably before I got the chance to reach the other side. Cat and I had to do this carefully and quietly.
“You see that cart there?” I nodded across the plaza to where several carts had been arranged to best sell their wares. In this case, robes and cloaks.
Cat followed my gaze. “I see it.”
“It’s not unusual for cloaked servers to move through the plaza.” A couple moved among the crowd even now, their heads bowed low. Some gods didn’t wish to reveal their household’s presence in the crowd, so they sent their servers in subdued robes.
“Do you have money?” she asked, catching on to my plan.
I’d rarely needed coin in Duat, and only those used to pay the ferryman. “I’m not buying us cloaks. I’m stealing them.”
Thief. Old habits died hard. In my case, old habits lived forever.
Cat looked again at the carts, but this time with her predator’s eyes. “One man appears to be managing all three carts. It wouldn’t take much to distract him.” A hunter’s stillness fell over her as she narrowed her sights on her target.
“What are you suggesting?”
“When was the last time these people saw a cat?” She grinned, revealing the sharp tips of her canines.
A cat among the crowd would create pandemonium. Cats were revered as gods here, just like they had been in the old world. The plan was risky, a startled crowd could be unpredictable, but this was Cat. She’d gutted the Recka. She could handle a few hundred startled souls.
“Don’t let them catch you,” I warned, struggling to keep the smile off my lips.
“Why?” Concern almost dampened the flicker of playfulness in her eyes.
“They’ll put you on a dais and shower you in catnip for the rest of your days.”
“As it should be.” She lifted her chin and pushed off the wall without a scrap of hesitation. Inside of a single step, she disappeared inside a startling flash of light. Duat’s ambient glare soaked up the excess light, revealing the little black feline. I barely repressed a shudder. Cats.
She trotted silently across the floor.
“Hey,” I said.
She paused in a doorway, tail flicking and ears pricked. One ear pivoted, angling my way, but she didn’t deign to look back.
“I’ll meet you back here.”
Then she was gone.
It occurred to me she could just as easily slip through the alleyways and the ducts and into crevices without my help. She may even get as far as the Gates, but hiding wouldn’t save her from what awaited inside. I wasn’t sure anything or anyone cou
ld.
Walking through the empty room, I pulled my power in around me, pushing it down and cutting myself off from the warmth of home to make my magical presence small. The urge to whip up a sandstorm and tear through the plaza tickled the back of my thoughts. Perhaps I should’ve returned in a blaze worthy of the Nameless One, like the monster I was. If Anubis was so damn convinced of my guilt, I didn’t have anything to lose. But Cat did.
I jogged down a narrow spiral stone staircase, keeping my steps as light as Cat’s, and out through a doorway into a winding back street. Head down, I switched from one side of the street to the other, slipping through empty doorways and hollow houses, stirring sand in my wake. The Duat people had abandoned their village long ago, when the sundering and war ripped apart the gods’ worlds. Now they preferred the safety of the gods’ own houses.
A few weak, ragged souls—the one’s who’d been abandoned and forgotten here—parted for me. They wouldn’t dare speak of me to Anubis. Most were barely more than whispers, bite-sized morsels for something like me.
By the time I found the terraced house situated behind the old man’s carts, murmurs had spread through the crowd. I felt the change in mood as much as heard it, like an unexpected switch in the direction of the wind. The chatter grew louder. Someone yelped. A pot shattered.
I climbed through the window and dropped into a crouch on the market side.
The old man turned from his carts and wandered a few steps toward the plaza. He scratched at his neck and stood on his toes, angling to get a better look over the crowd.
I needed him farther away. C’mon, Cat. Amp it up.
Another shout. “Sra suddakk. Va ora brakkad!” The goddess. We are blessed!
The cart trader pushed into the throng. I sidestepped between the wagons, snatched up the nearest cloaks, and ducked back into the shadows. What was another sin against the swathe of black inside?
I cast a glance over the crowd and spotted the black cat ambling along the dusty awnings, effortlessly leaping from one to the other. Against the pale sandstone buildings, her coat gleamed under Duat’s intense light. She carved through the light, a sleek ripple of darkness. Watching the crowd swoon and shriek, I had to admit with a smile that Cat deserved their admiration.
Turning away, I reached for the wall to vault back through the window, but the stone wobbled beneath my grip and my hand slipped. The world tipped slightly, and the noise of the crowd thinned, narrowing into a tinny, headache-inducing whine. Distantly, I felt my shoulder hit the wall and knew I was falling, but half my thoughts slipped to a place where the air was cooler and the world was darker, tainted with the smell of hot metal and burning diesel. New York. Only this wasn’t a memory; it had all the urgency of the present. Pain thudded inside my skull, every beat pushing down and driving me into myself until the pressure threatened to crack my skull open.
“Aeui srara!” You there!
The weight of a hand on my shoulder dragged me back to the surface. I gasped, taking in sweet lungfuls of Duat air like I’d been drowning inside my own head. The curse and its not-so-gentle way of reminding me I was running out of time.
“Mokarakk Oma?” Nameless One?
The old man yanked his hand back as though the touch had burned him. His eyes widened, horror blanching his weathered, dark-skinned face.
I had my hand around his throat and shoved him against the wall before he could bleat a word. “Not a sound, old man. I was never here. If I discover you betrayed my presence, I will return and I will devour you, your household, and your bloodline. These are my words, my promise. You will forever be mine. Do you understand?”
His head bobbed. The bitter tang of his fear filled my senses, mingling with Duat’s baked spices, and for a moment, I remembered what it was like to take soul after soul, day after day, to deliver justice according to divine judgment, for fear to run through the streets like blood. To drink them down. I could take this one. By the time anyone noticed, I’d be gone. What difference did it make? I was already damned.
I probed into his soul, finding it light and tempting.
But I’d been here before—so many times—and I wouldn’t stop at one.
The witches, the museum … Thoth’s meddling. I’d come so close to discarding the pretense of being anything other than the Soul Eater. I couldn’t afford to slip. After Cat was safe, once I was alone and surrounded by my fate, I could stop pretending. I could unleash hell. But not yet. Not here. Not with this unfortunate soul as my catalyst.
“Peace be with you.” I dropped him and ducked back through the window. He wouldn’t talk, not while his fear was strong. Later, perhaps, but by then this would be over, one way or another.
6
Hoods up and the hems of our white cloaks dragging through the sand, we strode across the plaza, passing through chatter and murmurs of the blessed black cat. A gift from the gods, they said. A sign. Cat walked beside me with a bounce in her step.
When we reached the portico stretching over the vast Halls of Judgment, Duat’s daylight had softened to a red hue, painting the temple pink. Cat climbed the cracked steps and avoided gawking like a tourist, at least until we’d passed into the entrance hall, where the sixty-foot-high statue of the burial-wrapped Osiris towered over us.
Cat’s gasp sailed ahead. “Holy shit.”
I snorted and passed beneath the giant statue, heading toward the riot of color of the inner corridor. Hieroglyphs marked every conceivable surface, and, as always, the history enveloped me, welcoming me home. Power buzzed through my veins like a steady electrical current.
“Rarru.” Hello. I pressed a hand to the stone and let the familiar warmth spill up my arm and the magical resonance sing through my veins. If this was the last time I’d see my home, I wasn’t about to rush through without offering my respects.
“Oh, sweet heaven …” Cat whispered, wandering deeper into the receiving hall. Light seeped in from the hieroglyphs, illuminating her path—and her. Small shards of color painted her white cloak and her pale face and danced like sprites in her ruffled hair. She stood in a kaleidoscope of color, and for a moment, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was the one who looked dreamlike in this brilliant world, as though if I reached for her, she’d vanish.
I lowered my hand and drew my fingers into my palm, cherishing the familiarity of home while I could.
“What is this place?” She touched the wall where a scene depicted Osiris riding into battle. Isis’s protective wings were spread above him while Anubis stood guard below. The trio was unstoppable, if you believed the writings.
“The Halls of Judgment. This is one of many entrances. It would take us days to see it all. We need to keep moving.”
“Where are the people—the souls?”
“Only gods walk freely here.” I’d stopped beside her and had no intention of moving on while the dappled light touched her face. My thoughts strayed at that play of light across her severe cheekbones and over her soft lips. Or perhaps it was the too-bright glistening eyes. “No living mortal has ever seen the Halls.”
She blinked and a small, single tear fell. Something in my chest seized at the sight. A warrior brought to tears by Duat. Part of me wished she’d never seen this place. There was an order to these things. The living never saw the Halls for a damn good reason.
“Bast never said it was like this.”
“Bastet’s never seen my home.” Mention of Bast broke my trance. We didn’t have time to admire these sights. “Do you have any cash?”
“Huh?” She blinked at me as though she’d forgotten I was right beside her.
“Coins, ideally. Doesn’t matter that it’s US currency. It’s symbolic.” I dug into my pants pocket and pulled out a dime and five bucks. “No bills.” I shoved the five bucks back into my pants. “He has a thing about paper. I tried it once, and he turned it into ash before I could get it out of my pocket.”
“Who?” She searched her pockets and produced a quarter. I took it from her. I
t would do. I had some flexibility when it came to the ferryman’s fare.
“C’mon … and steel yourself. The spirit we’re about to see, he might be something of a shock.”
“Spirit?” She jogged into step beside me, her eyes dry and her expression set in that neutral gaze she’d worn since our arrival.
How could I describe the ferryman? “It’s better if you see him. Just … just no sudden movements and keep those claws of yours sheathed.”
“And if I need them?”
I smiled, and when Cat’s eyes narrowed, I knew my smile was cooler and sharper than the smiles Ace Dante wore. “They won’t be enough to save you.”
A little skiff sailed out of the fog, its stern lantern aglow, casting the ferryman in a suitably atmospheric orange aura. The air smelled damp and only the sounds of our breathing accompanied us dockside.
Cat sucked in a short breath. If she were going to lose her shit, it would be now.
As the boat approached, the ferryman’s appearance took on a vaguely solid outline. Nothing substantial shored up the earthy cloak—just burial wrappings and an outline of something man-shaped. Apparently, he didn’t always look like a man, but I’d only seen him in this guise.
Cat had stilled. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing.
“Relax,” I whispered. “You’re protected.”
“By?”
“Me.” Obviously. I frowned. “You see any other badass soul eater here?”
She didn’t look relieved. I was technically one of the monsters. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice the faces in the river.
“I’m good.” She swallowed loud enough for me to hear.
If she could handle this, she might just be fine in the face of everything else Duat might throw at her.
“Row, row, row your boat …” Cat mumbled. I checked her in the corner of my eye and saw her tiny attempt at a smile. “At least there aren’t any crocodiles.”
Not a good time to mention the crocodiles then.
She caught my hitch. “There are crocodiles?”
“No. No. None. Not right here … on this stretch.” I waved her glare away. “Pretend you’re on vacation.”
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 6