“I was on vacation until a vurk attacked me. Now I’m in the underworld with a soul eater as a guide, and I’m about to get in a boat floating on a river of fog with something from The Mummy, so forgive me if I seem a little tense.”
The boat clunked against the dock, its lantern swayed, and the ferryman held out a cotton-wrapped hand. To her credit, Cat clung on to her cool, calm expression even as I heard her heart racing.
The hollow hood turned to Cat. “Voaekams, ressra cos.” His voice sounded like whispers hissing through reeds. Cat shivered. I’d never considered him creepy, but then again, I’d grown up surrounded by river beasts. My perspective was a little skewed.
Cat blinked.
“He’s asking for payment.” I handed her the coins but spoke to the ferryman. “E rapiaks vokkosa kur ik busr.”
Cat dropped the coins into his palm and the fingers slowly curled closed.
“Passage is granted, Soul Eater,” the ferryman replied in English, for the sake of my guest.
We climbed aboard and settled at the stern, facing into the mist.
“A mortal is forbidden in the Halls,” the ferryman said, his tone even, not judging. Through the wars, the millennia, the feuds, the sundering, he’d always remained neutral. Any and all could cross the river—for payment. That was probably why he was one of few beings who took the time to talk with me. Most souls shied away.
“The rules and me never did get along,” I replied.
His answering chuckle came out as a dry huff.
I let a smile touch my lips. I’d known the ferryman my entire life. He’d never judged me, never accused. He watched and saw everything. He held a few of my secrets, and I knew beyond any doubt he’d never give them, or me, up.
“Any word from Anubis?” I asked.
A heavy quiet settled inside the fog before the ferryman said, “The God of the Damned goes to great lengths to hunt the Nameless One.”
Say what you will about the underworld, but its residents sure knew how to bleed every ounce of drama from the misfortune of others.
Cat made a small hissing sound. Her hand shot out and grasped mine in a grip tight enough to almost crush bone. I didn’t need to look over the side of the boat to know she’d seen the ghost-like faces peering up at her.
I squeezed her fingers comfortingly and her death grip loosened, but she didn’t let go.
“Redemption …” the ferryman said, sounding wistful. He didn’t need to say any more. What soul didn’t want redemption? Duat was filled with them, each one my potential enemy.
For the first time in my living memory, I didn’t look into the waters. What had once been my playground had become enemy territory, and the ancient part of me resented it enough that I could feel it burning inside. This was my home. Sure, I’d deserved banishment, I’d never argued I hadn’t, but these halls, this land and its magic, they throbbed deep in my veins like they always had. Had I not strayed from the righteous path, I could’ve presided over the Halls. In Ammit’s absence, I’d have been the Great Devourer. I would’ve been the Ultimate Punishment, the final destination for the wrongdoers of the worlds.
Yeah, I saw the irony.
Cat may have sensed a change in me, or perhaps she’d seen something I hadn’t, because she turned to me with harrowing fear in her eyes.
The skiff flipped. I reached out for something, anything. Souls washed over me, spilling in from everywhere. Phantom hands curled around my legs and arms and pulled. The light faded. My lungs burned. Down they pulled, down and down and down, and all I could think about was Cat. If the souls had her, they’d never let her go.
This wasn’t meant to be.
I kicked and twisted, fighting free, and shot toward a shadow bobbing in the swirl of gray above. I broke through the surface inside the upturned skiff. Light pooled above, cast from the souls below, and illuminated Cat’s terror-ridden face. Her teeth chattered and her cat eyes were fixed on me—but there wasn’t a flicker of recognition in them.
Treading water, I lifted a hand to touch her, but she flinched away.
“It’s okay. It’s me.” My voice bounced around the tiny upturned boat. I drifted closer, and this time, when she pulled away, I caught her shoulder and pulled her in close. Her shivering body felt so small tucked tightly under my chin.
“I … c-can … feel … t-them … all around me. I can hear them calling.”
I cursed Kabechet, cursed the damn cuff stopping me from opening a doorway home, and cursed Anubis for being a stubborn son of a bitch. I’d have cursed the entire pantheon if I could.
Clasping Cat’s face in my hands, I forced her to look in my eyes. Immediately, my talent dug in, but this time, I let it. I needed her to focus on me and nothing else. Not the dark, not the souls pawing at us from below, not whatever had flipped the boat beneath the ferryman.
“You listen to me, Catalina from Boston, Bastet’s warrior, and you listen good. You’ve never let anything beat you. You’re a survivor. I don’t need to know what happened to make you this way, but right now, I need you to remember who you are.”
She blinked. She’d never looked so vulnerable.
“I’m getting you home, no matter what. Do you hear me? You do not belong here.” I snagged on her soul—just a tiny nick on its surface before I could get a good look at it or latch on. The spirit within her flared bright and defiant. Good, she still had some fight left in her. Finally, the terror thawed from her face. I closed my eyes and turned my face away before I fell deeper into the hunger.
“I need you to swim out,” I murmured. “Head for the temple steps.”
Her chest rose and fell, driven by panic, but anger lit her eyes and that would serve her well. I’d suffer for this if—when we got out. But right now, that anger was keeping her coherent.
“You can do th—”
She vanished, yanked right out of my grip from below. One second I’d been looking in her eyes—and the next, she was gone. The souls had her. I sucked in a great lungful of air and dove under, chasing after the bubbles and her pale, flailing hands. But the deeper I dove and the more the souls pushed in, the farther away her hands flashed in the dark.
No … no, no, no … not like this. Not because of me.
My lungs burned, my chest heaved, and the swirling shadows devoured those pale, fluttering hands. By the gods, save her.
I twisted and turned and kicked at the faces looking out from the dark. None were Cat and all were lost.
No-no-no! A ripple of power shot out from my efforts to contain it—a sudden wave travelling fast. Godkiller.
I’d show them what it meant to be a gods-be-damned killer in my world, my home.
Something snagged me by the neck and pulled, lifting me clean through the water in a blur of empty eyes and hollow faces. I spluttered water on my side of the Temple of Light’s steps, blinking my vision clear to get a clear look at a sodden Cat. She sat with her head bowed, shoulders rising and falling beneath the heavy cloak as she carefully collected each breath.
“You’re okay,” I croaked. I’d seen her go down, seen the souls tear her away from me, but she was here. She was okay. A trick. The souls had played me, luring me into their numbers and all for the promise of redemption. The ferryman had yanked me out.
Cat lifted her gaze to where the ferryman stood at the foot of the steps, his arms cast out, his body a blur of light. The upturned boat rolled upright; the water within turned to mist and spilled over the sides. He turned his head. Blue eyes blazed inside the hood. “He knows you are here. Flee, Nameless One. Take her to the Gates. Rim! Su!”
“W-what did he say?” Cat stuttered.
“Run.”
A low rumbling shook the temple steps, spurring me onto my feet. I clamped my hand around Cat’s arm and hauled her up. There was one place Anubis wouldn’t follow. One place he couldn’t follow. The place where my fate and Cat’s waited.
The Twelve Gates.
7
We ran into the chilling dep
ths below the Halls, where light crept in through cracks and few gods dared to tread. This was the realm of the underbeasts. I’d had run of these tunnels as a boy, chased by the kind of creatures most called nightmares. It had been a game back then, but not today. Today we had Anubis breathing down our necks. I dragged her through the tunnels too fast for her to spot the claw marks in the wall or the scattered rags that had once been clothing.
Panting and silent, we emerged from the dark into a sprawling expanse of lush jungle. Perfume filled the air, lacing my tongue with sweetness. A sticky heat clung to my skin. Daylight had faded to a purplish dusk. Night and day weren’t fixed points here. Ra had once controlled the ebb and flow of time, but these days, in his absence, it did whatever the hell it wanted.
“Stop!” Cat barked.
I stopped and turned, my shoes crunching on the white gravel path. Cat was bent over, hands spread on her thighs and breathing hard. All around, droplets patted broadleaved plants. We were hemmed in, barely able to see the sky for all the vegetation reaching over us. It wouldn’t take much effort to ambush us, but Cat looked ready to drop and not get back up again.
“We can’t stop here. Let’s get off the path.” I parted a wall of ferns and shouldered through, relieved to hear her following close behind. The foliage thickened and pushed back until I gave up trying to physically force our way through and loosed some of my power. Rubbery leaves and ferns shriveled and curled in, parting before me. That was more like it.
The light faded with every step and the hot, wet air seemed to sap all the moisture out of me, leaving my heart pounding and my throat parched. Or was it the curse? How long had it been? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered beyond getting Cat to the Gates. I was done for either way.
Finally, the vegetation spat us out on a rocky outcrop. Duat sparkled like a scattering of diamonds on red velvet sand. I’d seen the sight a million times, but it still set my heart racing. “Baoisekir …” Beautiful.
Cat peered at Duat in the valley, the rusty nighttime glow warming her face. Minutes ticked on. A breeze pushed over the rocks, and somewhere, a jackal yipped. Then, without a word, Cat turned away and headed off the rocks, back the way we’d come. I’d be lying if I said her reaction didn’t sting, and I didn’t even understand why it hurt. What the hell did it matter to me whether she liked the damn view? I waited a few minutes to give her space and cool my thoughts, and then I descended from the outcrop after her.
She whirled on me in a hollowed-out rock face, her dusty robe rippling around her ankles. “I want to go back to New York.”
What did she think I’d been trying to do since we arrived? Give her a guided tour through the underworld? “I’m trying—”
“This place …” She sank her hands into her short hair and knotted her fingers there. “There were souls in that river. Souls, Ace.”
Okay, we were still hung up on the souls. I could see how that might unsettle her, but the souls weren’t going away anytime soon. “It’s a lot to take in.”
She let out a small, sharp laugh. “Before I met you, Bastet was the only goddess I knew, and she’s … normal.”
I wouldn’t call a woman who could turn into a full-size panther and who happened to be immortal all that normal, but Cat didn’t appear to want to argue semantics.
“Then there’s Osiris and Isis …” She dropped her hands to her sides and started pacing our small clearing. “I knew they were screwed up, but not like this … place. That thing on the boat …”
Thing? “The ferryman.”
“What the hell was it?”
A friend, I thought. That twinge returned, as though what she thought of my home actually mattered. “We’ll stop here for a few hours. Get some rest—”
“I don’t want rest,” she growled, her feline eyes narrowing. “I want to wake up.”
I leaned a shoulder against the rock, its surface still warm from the intense daylight, and reined in my twitching power. “I want to be back on the streets, keeping gods know what from seeping into New York. A bottle of vodka would go down pretty damn nice too. I want the gods to forget all about the Godkiller and for my life to go back to the way it was a year ago, when all I had to worry about was paying bills and keeping Shu in line. You think I like gods hunting me like vermin? You think this is fun for me, running and hiding in a place I should be walking tall and ruling over?”
She glared at me, but I kept my gaze drilling into the bushes over her shoulder to avoid yanking on her soul again.
“You should be ruling over this … place?” she asked, a dangerous edge to the question.
“We’re almost at the Gates. Keep your shit together or you won’t be getting out of here at all.”
“And you?”
“What about me?” I kicked at the earth before sinking into a crouch.
“We’re leaving together, right? You’re coming back.”
“Sure.” Lie. The cuff glinted, mocking me and reminding me of the lesser thing I’d become. The abandoned mutt the gods all beat on.
“Ace?” She stood in front of me, her scuffed boots stained with red sand. She crouched and peered into my eyes, searching for lies. “We are getting out together?”
“Damned souls don’t make it through the Gates.” The hope I’d seen earlier on her face fractured. “Souls don’t come more damned than mine.” I smiled and knew it cut a too-shallow line across my lips. “But hey, you’ll be fine. You can tell Bast, when you find her, that I got what I deserved.”
She hesitated and then shifted to sit beside me. We stayed like that awhile, peering into the near dark and listening to the plants sigh. The occasional chime of a temple bell reached us from the city.
“There’s no way out for you?” she asked.
“There never was. This has been a long time coming.” Five hundred years of running, of hiding behind Osiris. Some days, it felt like an eternity. Others, it felt like it was just yesterday.
“You don’t seem the kind to take it lying down.” She toed the dirt, digging small holes.
“Neither do you.” I spared her a half smile, and in the dark, I saw defiance flicker in her green eyes. “Sometimes, the only thing left to do is look fate in the eye and accept who and what you are.”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“A lot of people don’t believe in the old gods either, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”
“If I let fate win, I’d have died years ago.” She fell quiet for a few moments and then shifted her shoulder side-on against the rocks, angling toward me. “My mother worked in a carnival—”
“Please tell me she was Miss Puss-in-Boots, the Amazing Furred Woman?”
Cat’s eyebrow arched. It was too dark to tell if her lips had cracked into any kind of a smile. “Trapeze. My father was the troupe’s mechanic and maintenance engineer. The Big Top toured the east coast. We were travelling to Coney Island from Maine when a semi plowed through the central barrier and hit us head-on.” Cat pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest. “Our truck veered off the freeway into a gulley and rolled nine times. It landed under a bunch of trees. Fifteen other vehicles were involved. Ten people died, including my parents. They didn’t discover me until the next morning. I had a broken leg and a ten-inch gash in my gut. I was seven years old.”
“Brave kid.”
“Bravery didn’t come into it. It wasn’t like I had a choice.”
“Sure you did. You could have died.”
Cat considered my words before conceding with a nod. “The accident made national news. With so many of the troupe gone, the carnival disbanded. If I had any other family, I didn’t know them. Bastet had seen the show when we passed through New York that autumn. She knew what I was and took me in, even though I wasn’t exactly tiger material like the rest of her clowder.”
I could imagine Bastet seeing Cat’s talent to shift into a housecat as unique enough to add her to her extended family. She’d always had an eye for opportunity.
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“Bastet trained me. You know she has warriors who are ancient, like her. She has them all over the States, some in Europe, and a couple in the Far East. They’re all black-belt ninja cats. I mean, Bast has different clowders, each with its own specialty, but they’re all scary-ass jungle cats.”
I swallowed what was a laugh. I’d met some of those ninja cats, and they were about as fun as they sounded.
“But you know what? After hanging upside down in a truck for eight hours and waiting for the gas to ignite or your guts to fall out, I figured I could take on Bastet’s clowder. So I did. I earned my place.”
Cat’s face lifted, inviting the warm red hue to touch her cheeks. “Fate didn’t save me. I did.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, debating whether to challenge her. “Fate didn’t bust that semi’s tire or throw it into your path to set your path onto a collision course with Bastet, Queen of Cats?”
Her scowl mingled with a smile. She punched me in the shoulder hard enough to bruise. “Believe in fate if you want. I’ll believe in free will.”
Fate. I wondered what the dead god, Thoth, would think of Cat’s idea of free will and if he’d ever seen her fate in his prophecies, like he’d supposedly seen mine. Godkiller. If Anubis had his way, I’d never learn the outcome of the prophecy I’d kicked into motion by killing Thoth. It’s hard to deny fate exists once it’s grabbed you by the balls and shoved a sword through a god’s chest.
I shifted to my feet. “Get some rest while you can. I’ll keep an eye out for any trouble.”
“Ace?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
I had no idea what she was thanking me for, but I couldn’t deny I liked the way it sounded. “I’m not a ninja cat, but I’ll get you to the Gates.”
Seeing her safe out of the underworld wouldn’t wipe my soul clean, but it would help wipe the smirk off Anubis’s snout, right before he tore my throat out.
I watched the waning red light devour Duat, Cat’s words fresh in my thoughts. I had no intention of taking my fate lying down, but I didn’t want her near me, or even in Duat, when I unleashed the storm, inviting the gods’ wrath. I knew it was hopeless, that Anubis would kick my ass. Damned I might have been, but I wouldn’t make it easy for the dog-headed asshole.
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 7