A creeping tightness clutched my chest. The curse. Duat swam in my vision. I clenched my teeth and drew in a breath. Here it comes.
Osiris’s curse snapped, cracking a jolt of pain down my spine and dumping me into Shu’s reality. Her scream echoed in my ears. Cujo’s wan face and worry-filled eyes peered in as he shouted something at Shu. It was all a blur of gut-wrenching pain and mind-numbing fear. Not mine. Hers.
At least she wasn’t alone.
The curse tunneled on, digging deeper and turning out the rawest parts of me. I’d been here before when we first tested the extent of its hold over us. It would shred my mind, but not yet, not this time. I could still pull back. A warning—that’s what this was. A promise of what was to come.
I woke up flat on my back with Cat’s warm hand pressed over my mouth. Her cheek brushed against mine, and her cool breath tickled my ear as she whispered, “Quiet.”
Briefly addled, I would’ve allowed my thoughts to linger on the feel of her pressed against me if it wasn’t for the intensity in her gaze.
“At least five unknowns are sweeping through the undergrowth, converging on our location,” she said.
She eased aside, letting me up. I shrugged off the curse’s lingering numbness and switched to a kneeling position, careful to keep from dislodging any stones off the outcrop. Duat blinked in the distance, but as for the threats she mentioned, I couldn’t get a fix on any sign of movement in the dark.
“I see better than you do in this half-light,” she said, answering my unspoken question.
“How far out?” I whispered.
A breeze teased her bangs as she eyed the nothing space between the rocks and the city. “Three hundred yards. Closing fast.”
Dammit. “Let’s move …”
Keeping low, I shifted around the rocks, climbing higher to get out of our pursuers’ sights.
“More inbound,” Cat hissed.
I cursed aloud this time. “Can you see a path through?”
I still couldn’t get a good fix on them in the layered shadows. I didn’t remember it ever getting this dark so close to the city and didn’t put it past Anubis to deliberately choke the light.
“Yes. Follow me.” She nudged by me, choosing her steps across the rocks with quick, well-practiced precision. “Keep up.”
Cat moved like the shadows we were running from, silently glued to the rocks as though she instinctively knew where to place each foothold. She could’ve melded with the dark and disappeared. I was about to suggest she do exactly that, when a crescendo of hisses rose up, sounding like waves rolling over a beach.
Cat hopped to the side, easily clearing a three-meter gap in the rocks. I launched after her, landed off balance, and reeled. The hisses rose up in one eager wave. A snakebite wouldn’t kill me, but I couldn’t say the same for a thousand fangs pumping me full of venom, and by the sounds of it, thousands of snakes waited below.
Cat snagged my arm and pulled me away from the edge. She rolled her eyes, but there was no time to laugh it off. Behind us, a hissing torrent grew. I glanced down. The ground rippled, alive with snakes.
“Friends of yours?” Cat called back. We’d broken into a run, skirting the rocky crest, but it ended all too soon at a jutting slab of stone poised over a thirty-foot drop. Below, the snakes writhed, knotted, and slithered up the rock face, black tongues flicking to taste the air. Even if we outran them, they had our scent. They’d find us.
“Can we wait them out?” she asked.
“Do you have a spare decade?” There was one way out of this. A very simple way.
Farther on, and just within sight, a jagged, murky fault line shimmered as if caught in a heat haze. It was a barrier, a doorway to the next part of a soul’s journey. The Gates. At a flat-out sprint, Cat could make it in minutes. But between here and there? A sea of serpents joined by a handful of underbeasts.
“Got a plan, Badass Soul Eater?” Cat had seen where my gaze had headed and knew as well as I did we weren’t getting there without divine intervention.
I looked up at the swirling hues overhead, a sky with no stars. I had minutes to make this work. Minutes in which I’d reveal to the entire realm exactly where the most wanted creature in Duat was.
I shook out my hands, spilling a little sand from my fingertips. “When I say run, run. And don’t stop for anything.”
Cat hunkered down, ready to leap from the rock.
“Not even me,” I added.
“Wasn’t going to.”
A smile hooked into my lips.
She hid her grin, but I caught the tail end of it. “Do it.”
A trickle of anticipation stirred the power chained inside. Whatever happened, whatever fate it brought to my feet, I’d enjoy this. I’m through with hiding.
Stepping forward, I balanced on the edge of the rock and surveyed the river of snakes and malformed underbeasts thirty feet below. Their bodies broiled. Their eyes shined. So many it might be all the snakes in Duat. Sent ahead by Anubis or one of the hundreds who’d like nothing more than that sweet prize of redemption.
A roll of my shoulders and a crack of my neck, I loosened a trickle of power. If I let it all go at once, I might not contain it. Drawing it out, sinking my reach into the stone, into the earth, into my home—this way was slower but more controlled. All living things contain a soul, and it was those glimmering droplets of power I was reaching for. So many. Too many?
Soul Eater.
Godkiller.
And so much more …
I lifted my arms, turned my hands palm up, and let the mortal guise shiver loose. Somewhere distantly, Cat’s gasp plucked on my human concern. A man’s concern, a worry for what Cat might think of this—of me—once it was done, but I’d already begun shedding Ace Dante. I couldn’t let my concern mean anything. And really, it didn’t. What was one woman’s doubt among centuries of living? I’d add it to the centuries of regrets.
Souls glowed like fireflies in the half-light, and I plucked at each and every one, tagging them as I wove my power through their numbers.
My hands, outstretched, rippled like shifting sand. I only hung on to the appearance of a man for Cat’s sake. I was no more human than those snakes I’d snared. But I couldn’t loosen it all. I couldn’t become the monster with Cat waiting on my command. I needed her to trust me, not run from me. But damn, it felt good to be home, to be me. It felt right. No more running.
“This is my land.” It was my voice, only now the years and leeching power lent it a jagged undertone. My words, my voice, but more. “You obey me.”
I had the souls, all of them, threaded together in one long chain. All it took was one word, a command.
“Cukkomd,” I muttered, testing the sound of it on my lips and the taste of power as it burned on my tongue. The countless snakes stilled and the rippling river of slithering bodies froze.
Shit, I couldn’t go too far … I couldn’t let this world, this life, drag me back into its clutches. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t done being Ace Dante. The time would come to shake off the lies, but I still needed to be the man, just for a little longer.
“Run.” I pushed the word through my teeth, not because of the strain of holding so many souls, but because I wanted more. I could take more. These snakes were nothing. Duat was close. What would it take to reach beyond and spill a storm through the streets, devouring all in my wake? I’d done it before, in New York. I’d swept through the streets like a plague. Osiris had stopped me then, but not this time. Not here.
I felt Cat’s absence and that flicker of concern snagged on the Ace Dante part of me. More than darkness. Yes, more than darkness. Ace Dante. The man. I had to see Cat safely to the Gates, even if it was the last good act I ever did.
I reached farther and brushed up against Cat’s luminous glow. She ran for the Gates, for freedom. She would have to survive what lay inside without me. She’d do it. She could survive anything. The unmistakable flicker of her soul shifted, pulling back from my touch,
and there, in its beautiful swirl of life, darkness throbbed.
No.
That couldn’t be.
She had a light soul. I’d seen it myself. She was good.
My power stuttered along with my thoughts. Mere seconds had passed, but in the distance, a rumbling roar sounded, sending out a wave of brittle, vengeful energy. Anubis.
But Cat’s soul …
I forgot the snakes, forgot Anubis even as the shadow of his power spilled across the land, and reached for Cat’s brilliance.
She ran as fast as the desert winds. She’d make it to the Gates.
But her soul … I saw it now, the terrible stain coating the light within her. The mark of a devastating sin. It hadn’t been there before.
Cat, what have you done?
She was damned, and unless I stopped her before she reached the Gates, her life, her soul, would be shredded by what lay in wait inside.
8
Anubis was coming. The pressure of his power filled the air, turning it bitter. I didn’t have time to care.
I had to stop Cat from reaching the Gates.
The snakes. They were mine to control. I slammed my will into each and every one and threw my intent toward Cat. I couldn’t reach her in time, but they could.
“Ksuv rar.” The compulsion stabbed through every reptilian mind, spearing into their simple souls. Stop her.
If she made it to the Gates, if she went inside …
She thought I was sending her to safety. She’d trusted me.
I was sending her to an eternal death.
Discarding all pretenses of being human and turning to sand and darkness, to vengeance and judgment, I became the devouring storm and drew my own terrible power in around me, stirring it into a frenzy.
“Ksuv rar!” I boomed. The command cracked the air and split the rock beneath me. But by the gods, don’t hurt her, I added silently.
A blast shot out of the dark, impacting hard at my center, and flung me back against the rock face, forcing me back into flesh and muscle. Only a god could interrupt me, and it was the god who strode out of the maelstrom of my making. His lupine eyes glowed golden. His lips rippled over long canine teeth. Skin so dark he could’ve been carved from slate. Part man, part jackal, he was everything I remembered and feared. In his hand, he held a steel-tipped spear, its edges nicked and savage.
Old fears reared their heads, but the acidic burn of anger turned them to ash in my mouth. This was my home, my seat of power. He couldn’t have me. Not yet. Not until Cat was safe. Our time would come, but not now.
I flung out a hand, funneled every shred of power I possessed into the single gesture, and launched the spellword as though it were a spear, one made from five hundred years of stubborn defiance. “San!” Stop.
It shouldn’t have worked. In a million years, it shouldn’t have worked.
But it did.
The word slammed into Anubis, lashed around him, and froze the god rigid.
His glowing eyes widened in condemnation and then narrowed, aglow with disgust. His lean, black muscles trembled and the terrible weight of his ancient power strained against my hold.
By Sekhmet and all that is light, I’ve compelled the God of the Damned.
I’m controlling a god …
Run!
I tore from the rocks as a torrent of shadow sailed over the river of snakes and saw Cat charge across the Gates’ threshold.
I had a second to fear, a second to doubt, but neither slowed me down. Damned, heavy with the weight of my sins, I plunged straight into the Gates after her.
“Seramca.” The spellword for silence jolted through Cat, fear and betrayal blanching her face in its wake.
I’d flowed straight through the Gates, wrapped her up in a howl of overwhelming power, and somehow poured all of the raw energy back into Ace Dante. Not that being human helped. I had her at arm’s length, pinned against the gnarled bark of a dead, skeletal tree. I knew what she’d seen, and now I’d compelled her against her will. Monster, her wide-eyed glare said.
I leaned in, her fear a sweet tingle on the tip of my tongue. “Listen.” There was too much snarl in my voice, too much of the real me. Dammit, I’d explain later, but right now, I had to hide her where no soul could hide for long. Even as time slipped through my fingers, I hesitated. She’d hate me for this, if she didn’t already.
“Listen,” I repeated but softer this time, more like the Ace Dante she’d spent months watching from a shelf up high. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that if I’d known about the stain on her soul I never would’ve brought her here, but it was too late for that, too late for everything. “Listen.” It sounded like sorry. “Follow me. Stay close. Do not stray. Don’t look anywhere but at me. We have to move fast and quiet.”
Distantly, the winds hissed across a barren, desolate land, coming closer.
She nodded and blinked, her focus adjusting over my shoulder. Lines crowded around her eyes and dug into her brow.
“No.” I caught her chin and locked her gaze on me. “Only look upon me.”
I pulled her along behind me, her hand locked in mine. Ash flowed like water, filling in Cat’s footprints and erasing any evidence of our passing. The approaching squall moaned. If I looked, I’d see the sandstorm clawing across the landscape, coming straight for us.
We couldn’t stay here. There was only one place we might find shelter. After that, I wasn’t sure how we’d escape the Gates. No condemned soul ever had.
The cave might have once been a home, but the relentless winds and eons of ash had weathered away its edges. Inside, at least, the wind couldn’t reach us. I pulled Cat to the farthest corner, deep into a cavern, and released her hand. She rubbed it, working some feeling back into her fingers, and glared daggers at me.
“I release you of my command. You can speak. The winds won’t—”
“You fucking bastard!”
I blocked the slash of her claws, but only just. She swung a fist. I’d have blocked that too if it hadn’t been for the damn piece of rock tripping me backward. Cat was on me, her hand at my throat and her claws dangerously close to my ribs, slashing open my shirt. She pinned me against the cavern wall, dislodging dust and ash.
“How dare you pull that controlling bullshit on me. I don’t care what you are, if you compel me again, I’ll yank your balls out via your throat.” Her breath sawed through her clenched teeth and those eyes looked on mine with nothing but murderous intent.
I couldn’t argue with much of that, especially with her hand around my throat. She had every right to be angry. Had there been another way, I’d have chosen it. “You don’t understand.”
“That’s for me to judge.”
“Laying into me won’t help either of us escape the Gates.”
When she realized she wasn’t about to get either an apology or an explanation, she shoved back and turned away, shaking her head and dislodging ash from her hair. “You have them all fooled, don’t you? Even Bastet. Cujo and probably to some extent Shu. They follow you, thinking you’re something, but you’re just like them—like the gods, like Osiris.”
I rubbed my throat and ran my tongue across my teeth, swallowing ash.
“I wondered why they called you liar when I saw no evidence of those lies.”
A burning sensation warmed my side. I lifted the filthy shirt and watched thin trickles of blood weep from four small cuts. Proof of how close she’d gotten.
“I don’t know what you are, but in this place, it’s not Ace Dante.”
She was right. I wore the mask and told myself I was doing some good and that in some way it made me … human. But it was lies. Lies that went soul deep.
“Are you a god?” she asked.
I snorted and leaned against a waist-high boulder, not bothering to sweep off the ash. I was coated from head to toe, same as her. “What I am is the least of our concerns.”
“It concerns me.” She spun and marched back toward me with a look in her eye that promi
sed physical pain, but she stopped short just as I tensed for another clash. “When Bastet’s clowder told me of you, the husband who’d jilted her, I dug up what I could find on soul eaters. What you are—that thing back there, that’s not a soul eater. I thought I knew you. I bet you’ve got a whole load of people who are so damn sure they think they know you too. I watched you for months. Watched you chip away at the cases that landed on your desk. Watched you try to find answers at the bottom of a bottle. I was so damn sure I had you all figured out.” Oh, that smile was all twisted irony. “My role in Bastet’s clowder was recon and intelligence. I’m never wrong. I was never wrong—until you.”
That was her mistake, not mine. “You wanna throw theories around and call me a liar? Fine, but not here. You may not realize it, but we’re so far up shit creek we’ve hit the source, and we lost the damn paddle when Anubis came knocking.” And that had been before I compelled the god to sit like a good little jackal. My stomach knotted. Way to win some favors from the big guy.
“You’re a real piece of work, Ace Dante.”
Sitting on the rock, I dangled an ankle over my opposite knee and leaned back. “All right, you want the truth? After Ammit’s death, by rights, I should’ve taken her place in the Halls of Judgment, weighing and devouring souls right alongside Anubis and in Osiris’s stead. I’m not a god, but I am a soul eater, the End of All Things.”
She smiled. “I got the same out of Shu and Cujo. It’s a pretty lie.”
Lie? What the fuck did she know? “I could suck your soul right out of your body before you could leap across this cavern and gut me.”
“A soul eater can’t command millions of snakes like you did back there. A soul eater can’t kill gods. A soul eater is a tool.”
Had she seen me with Osiris? “By Sekhmet, this is not the place or the time—”
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 8