“No.”
“Good.” She hadn’t passed through the weighing chambers either or journeyed into the afterlife. I’d have known about it if she had. So she wasn’t dead. Finally, some confirmation of what I’d already known. Cat would be pleased. Then another thought occurred to me. Would Cat leave when I told her Bastet was alive? An empty sensation had me shifting against the doorway. I’d gotten used to having her around, even if I did go out of my way to rub her fur the wrong way. If she left, it would just be Shu and me again … the same old routine, same old cases, same old arguments. Cat had brought something to my days that I hadn’t realized was missing. A pleasant distraction, or something more?
What difference did it make? We had to escape Anubis before I could even begin contemplating my life back in New York.
“Shukra is dying,” the ferryman said.
I cursed in the old language. Cat turned, her keen ears pricking at the sound. Her gaze settled on me first, lingering a second too long before she clocked the ferryman behind me. She hesitated, probably wondering whether to interrupt, and then continued roaming. She brushed her hand over a colorful bloom, sending feathered seeds into the air.
“While you slept, I cast an omsedusa over you, but it will not last. Neither Shukra nor you will survive the separation.”
A delaying spell. But not even the ferryman could halt Osiris’s curse. Only returning to Shu would do that.
“You must face the God of the Damned.”
I knew that, and my lingering here, pretending it was because I needed to recover, wasn’t helping anyone. “In the Gates, I saw … impossible things.”
“The Gates reveal your fears.”
But desolate cities, worlds turned to dust, rivers of blood? “You’ve known me my entire life.”
“Indeed, Ammit’s charge, the Boy Who Would Not Be Told.”
He’d dragged me out of the River of Souls as a kid too many times to count. Insolent and petulant, he’d called me. But in the absence of other soul eaters, I’d turn to him for advice. Not much had changed over the years.
“I was always the Nameless One.” The next question lodged in my throat, along with the breath I needed to speak it. I remembered how I’d thrown the spellword at Anubis and how it had dug in, rooting the god to the ground. But I couldn’t ask. It wouldn’t come. Not a question, then. A statement. “I’m more than that.”
Thoth had thrown many words my way while revealing his plan to be reborn. I’d thought him insane then, and yet … “The truth has been taken from you.”
“I do not have your answers, Mokarakk Oma.”
Ammit’s box. The girl with eyes like mine. Something was wrong with my life. Something had shifted sideways, dislodging me from my own path. I’d felt it since Thoth’s curse had latched on, trying to steer me into killing him. Or had I felt it before then? Had the wrongness always been there?
I was about to voice my questions, when Shukra’s mental wail shattered my thoughts and what felt like my skull. The vicious assault sliced through my psyche, severing my consciousness in a single, devastating slash.
“There is a way.” The ferryman’s strange, dislocated voice bobbed in and out of range.
“Help him.” Cat. Yes, Cat was there. That was good.
“I do not believe he would wish for this.”
dO IT. anYTHING. sTOP tHE Pain. The madness was inside my head. I needed it out. AnYthinG! I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t unclench my teeth to push the words through. Blazing agony boiled the blood in my veins. The curse was killing me. I’d survived the Gates, but I couldn’t beat this.
“His resting place is well concealed,” the ferryman admitted, his tone grave amongst his already somber words.
WhAt!? SlUmBeR?! No. NO—no.
“He would never be found, but the slumber can be as final as any death.”
A thunderous growl shook the earth, unmistakably lupine. Unmistakably godly.
Too late. Anubis was here, and the choice had been made for me.
11
“Hey, Shu. How’re things?”
“Oh, you know, a main course of mindfuckery with a side order of eternal torment.”
Considering how we were both hanging from chains in complete darkness, it was a miracle I could muster up a smile, but it slid right off my lips in the next heartbeat.
Shu wasn’t done. “If that son of a jackal doesn’t kill you, I will, and I’ll make you watch while I dice up all your important parts and feed them to that damn stupid fish you bought.”
“Leave the goldfish out of this.”
Her deep chuckle travelled into the nothing space around us before petering into silence.
On the bright side, having Shu suspended a few feet in front of me had freed us from the curse’s chokehold.
After a few moments of silence that could have been hours, Shu asked, “Are we dead?”
The worst part was I wasn’t sure. I figured my silence was answer enough.
“Maybe Anubis thinks forcing me to look at you for eternity is torture enough?”
It would’ve been a few decades ago. These days, though, not so much. More painfully empty seconds ticked by.
“Can’t you use your mojo and get us out of here?” Shu asked, apparently allergic to silence.
I blinked and squinted at her gray outline. “Sure, I’ll get right on that.”
“I saw it, yah know. Some of the things you did here. The curse had me down for the count, but I dreamed. They weren’t dreams, though, were they? What happened in the Gates?”
“What’s up with you and Cujo?” I’d meant to divert attention away from me, but the question cut into her so keenly that she huffed and mumbled a crude curse. “What are you doing, Shu? Don’t you think he’s suffered enough?”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
Well, that was true. Cujo had dodged a demon-shaped bullet there. He was better off without us.
“What about Cat?” Shu asked.
“What about her?” I hid the irritation, mostly. And then I realized Shu would hear it in my voice anyhow. She knew me too well not to.
“If you get to judge who I like, I get to judge you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Self-righteous hypocrite.”
I rolled my head back, resting it against the stone wall, and closed my eyes. The dark inside my head was as dark as the room, or hole, or wherever we were.
I’d woken pretty much where I was, hanging from my wrists. I only knew there was a floor from scuffing it with my toes.
I hadn’t seen Cat since collapsing in the garden. Maybe Anubis had been so focused on me he hadn’t thought to look twice at her. Hopefully the ferryman could help her finally escape Duat, because I sure couldn’t. So far, all I’d managed to do was help her lose one of her dwindling nine lives and scare the crap out of her.
“I approve.”
Even though Shu couldn’t see my frown, I still sent one her way. “Of?”
“Cat.”
“I don’t remember asking for your approval.”
“And I don’t remember giving a shit.”
Maybe this was Anubis’s idea of torture. Give it a few more hours and I’d probably gnaw at my wrist just to get free and kill the mouthy sorceress.
“There’s nothing between Cat and me.” I sighed and tried to shift some of the numbing pain from my shoulders to my arms by lifting the weight off one wrist and piling it onto the other. All it did was rattle the chains and sprinkle pins and needles through my muscles.
“There should be.”
Gods, was I really listening to a condemned demon giving me relationship advice? “Anubis, kill me now.”
She chuckled a dirty demon sound. “What do you think he’ll do to us?”
“Make us wait here until we’re sick of the sight of each other, until we start thinking he’ll never let us out, until we thank him for torturing us just so we know there’s more to life than this … hole.”
She considere
d that for a while. Her chains clanked and she hissed out a breath. “I survived you. I can survive that.”
She probably could too. Until Anubis tore her soul out and plunged it into the Gates, where she’d join the other lost souls for all eternity.
“How did he get you?” she asked. “I mean, besides the curse knocking you down for the count. How did you get stuck in Duat? I thought you could open a doorway whenever you wanted since Osiris lifted that restriction of the curse.”
“Kabechet locked a slave cuff on me.” Damn thing was still on me too, nestled up around my bicep. “And then Cat came through …”
Silence for a few beats. “Cat followed you into hell? Wow.”
“Wow what?”
“Nothing.” More silence. “That explains the body.”
“What body?”
“At the Inn.”
What damn Inn? I was about to ask exactly that, when Shu added, “She wasn’t screwing around when she killed that bitch. Doubt Kabechet even saw it coming. Nobody will miss her. Anubis has so many offspring I doubt he’ll notice.” She continued speaking, but my thudding heart drowned her out.
The stain on Cat’s soul. The sin that had tipped her over the edge. Murder.
“Throat cut from ear to ear. Tore out her heart too. Do you know how hard it is to do that? You have to go in under the ribcage, but the diaphragm is just as difficult to get through. If you weren’t hot on her, I’d so—”
“Stop talking.”
Cat had killed Kabechet, but she’d done more than that. She’d deliberately killed, knowing exactly what she was doing. That’s why Kabechet hadn’t followed me through the mirror into Duat or come to collect on her bounty.
“Bae sra resrs,” I cursed. “I need to get out of these chains.” I bucked against the wall with renewed urgency. I’d already tried yanking myself free, but I’d given up once my wrists had bled raw. Fresh blood flowed again.
“I could work some blood magic on the shackles, but I need more blood …”
I got some swing on, shifted my weight, and then snagged the short length of chains above the shackles on either side. Biceps locked, pulling the restraints taut enough to burn pain through my arms and shoulders, I lifted my bodyweight, heaving myself in a U until I’d straightened my legs above wherever the chains were hooked in. I had a few seconds to poke about with my boots before my arms gave out. I found it, a ledge of some sort, and hooked my toes over it, freeing my arms from my full weight. My head spun and my body demanded to know what the fuck I thought I was doing.
“Guess that means your slave cuff is just fancy jewelry.”
Sekhmet’s ass, she was right. During my first attempt to open a doorway beside the fountain in Ammit’s riad, Kabechet must’ve still been clinging on to life. So the cuff had worked, preventing me from going back. I hadn’t bothered trying since. Why would I? But with its owner dead, the cuff was just a useless trinket—until I snapped it around someone else’s wrist …
Sending a ripple down the chain, I unhooked it from its latch. The second one fell away just as easily. I dropped to the floor, absorbing the impact with a grunt. Now all I had to do was find a way out of this black hole.
“Are you free?” Shu asked incredulously.
“If by ‘free’ you mean still trapped in this room with my worst enemy, then yes.”
“Get me down.”
“I can’t. The chain hooks are too high up.” I ran my hands along the wall, brushing over patches of damp and decay that I didn’t want to think too long or too hard about.
“Son of a jackal, get me down. Now.”
“Shh.” I pressed my ear to the wall. A gentle whisper of air tickled my right cheek. Homing in on it, I dipped my fingertips into a deep vertical groove in the wall.
“Ace Dante, if you leave me here, I will rain pain down on you, the likes of which you’ve never known. It’ll make that time I tasered you in the spine feel like foreplay.”
I curled my fingers around a ring and pulled. Light blasted over me, so blinding it sizzled my skin. “I’ll be back …”
I had to return for her. The curse made damn sure of that. I stepped into the light as the door clanged closed behind me, cutting off Shu cursing my name.
Squinting into the light, shapes took form, colors bloomed, and an all-too-familiar jackal-headed figure loomed out of the painful glare.
I knew this place.
The weighing chambers.
My heavy heart sank.
Anubis backhanded his spear across my forehead with enough force to shatter granite. The impact very nearly tore my consciousness away. I didn’t hit the floor. How could I when two temple guards caught me on the way down? They yanked my bleeding arms behind my back and marched me forward as the bleaching light of the weighing chambers stabbed into my skull.
I was out of the pit, but I’d landed right in the fire.
I hadn’t returned to the weighing chambers since the gods had called me out as a thief, liar, and all-round evil bastard. Not much had changed.
Heat clawed at me, sucking moisture from my tongue and leaving my mouth as dry as sand. Light reflected off every shining, brilliant surface, slicing into my already battered and bleeding skull. I saw flashes of color and recognized faces among the crowd. Minor gods and their servers, the denizens of Duat. Every single one of them knew the sins of my past. They’d all likely been present when Osiris had publically cursed me all those centuries ago. I wouldn’t be so lucky as to get away with a curse this time.
Anubis had made some improvements to the chamber, I noted, tracing the channeled-out grooves in the floor. The chains still shackled around my wrists had been latched onto hooks. Even if I could break free, the guards would be on me in a blur. I could throw a spellword, like I had before, but given my weakened state, there was no guarantee it would stick. If I had any hope of beating them all, I’d need to take down the entire crowd of hundreds in seconds; that kind of power took time to build.
“Kneel, Nameless One,” a guard growled and cracked a staff across the back of my legs, making damn sure I dropped to my knees over the groove patterns. No prize for guessing whose blood would be flowing through those channels soon.
Anubis climbed the steps to the dais beside the huge weighing scales, scales I’d once had the honor of presiding over. Now I kneeled before them. That thought tugged on my lips and prompted a small chuckle to work its way free.
Anubis turned to address the crowd. His golden eyes surveyed the room until coming to rest on me. Black jackal lips rippled over pearly teeth. No book or portrait could ever capture the savageness of his creation. Part man-like, part beast. He didn’t possess the ability to be merciful, he didn’t regret, he didn’t doubt. He lived to serve Justice.
There was little point in begging or pleading my case. I didn’t have one. Besides, nothing I said would change his mind.
“Must feel good, huh.” My smile grew. “Finally, you’ve got me on my knees.”
Anubis nodded at the guards flanking me. One moved in, snagged my shirt, and ripped it free. I caught the familiar leathery sound of a length of whip hitting the floor. I didn’t see him swing it, though I couldn’t have done anything to stop it if I had. The whip’s tails cracked across my left shoulder blade, biting in and tearing away flesh, flash burning a volley of pain down my back that clamped my jaw shut.
“Mokarakk Oma.” Nameless One. The old language poured from his lupine lips, carrying the power of the true ancients. The depth of it rolled like thunder, like he could command mountains to bow before him. “Do you know why you are presented before us in these chambers?”
Heat and blood throbbed its way down my back. I lifted my head and fixed the god in my sights. “Because you’ve got nothing better to do?”
The whip cracked. Fire flashed across my back. My insides tried to roll up my throat. On my hands, I spat to the side and sucked in air through my nose.
Anubis’s responding growl sent tremors rumbling through the pi
llars. “Osiris was lenient with his judgment.”
Lenient. Right. Five hundred years as Osiris’s bitch. Five hundred years trapped in the human world. Five hundred years tied to my enemy’s soul. But sure, we’ll go with lenient.
“The God of Life ignored my warnings,” Anubis continued. “The Nameless One is not to be allowed to roam free. He should be destroyed. He will sin again. All agreed.”
He spoke to the room, not to me, because this was a show, a ceremony. They’d all been waiting a long time to get the Soul Eater on his knees. I could see it in their eyes. They watched me bleed, watched me suffer, and they all yearned for more.
“Not all agreed,” I began. “Ammit—”
“DO NOT INVOKE HER NAME, Godkiller!”
The whip hissed and cracked.
—again—
Blood veined down my braced arms.
—again—
Tiny splatters rained over polished marble.
I’d found the real reason Anubis had brought me here. “I. Did not. Kill. Ammit.”
“Liar, thief, monster,” the crowd hissed, their accusations tumbling over and over.
—crack—
My vision blurred.
—crack—
“Stop!” I bellowed, throwing a fractured attempt at a compulsion with it. I wasn’t ready. More time. More focus.
Anubis lifted his clawed hand.
My hand slipped on the swelling pool of blood. I lifted my head, but the dark throb of unconsciousness threatened to close in, so when I spoke, the words were directed at the floor.
“This is not justice.” I said it quietly, yet somehow, my voice filled the chamber. “I am paying for my crimes by the judgment of Osiris. I am guilty of terrible things. But this …” Louder now. “This is not justice.”
“You would deign to speak to me of justice?” A dangerous, calm undertone lifted Anubis’s question.
“Someone needs to.” I winced, expecting the lash to strike again, but as time ticked on and the pain didn’t come, I lifted my head and found Anubis observing me, jaw clenched, holding himself in check.
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 10