“Do this the right way.” I panted, swallowing down the burn of bile. “Weigh my heart for the murder of Ammit. If the feather rises, I’ll accept whatever fate you see fit.”
He considered it, and those golden eyes almost appeared human for a fraction of a second. He didn’t want to do this, and had he not made such a spectacle of my capture, he could’ve gotten away with not weighing me but in Osiris’s absence and my forced sabbatical, Anubis ruled over the Halls of Judgment. He had to be seen doing the right thing. He didn’t have a choice.
A murmur rumbled through the crowd and scuffling drew Anubis’s glare to the back of the chamber.
“Ace!”
I froze the defiant expression on my face and swallowed back the sudden rise of panic. Cat. I didn’t look, even as Anubis’s lips peeled back in the onset of a snarl. I couldn’t look. Fear spilled ice through my veins—not for me, but for Cat.
I had seconds to act, a heartbeat in which to concoct the lies and make them all believe.
This was going to hurt.
“Bitch!” I hissed, staggering to my feet. At the word, Cat’s frantic face swung my way. The sight that greeted her washed the color from her face. Two temple guards escorted her by the wrists through the crowd as she writhed and struggled. “Come to watch the results of your handiwork?”
The shock on her face sliced deep into my already vulnerable soul. I gathered up the new pain and twisted it into something resembling rage, so that when Anubis slid his keen eyes over me, all he saw was disgust at the raw betrayal.
“You confirm you know this female?”
“She’s the reason I’m here.” I couldn’t have stopped the shivers from jolting my body if I’d tried. He’d see it, and if my lies were solid, he’d consider my reaction one of rage.
“Ace, what—”
I lunged her way, snapping the chains tight. “You’d better hope I’m condemned here today!” Fear drove venom into those words, turning each one into vicious lashes. “Because if I escape, you’ll be needing that redemption you betrayed me for.”
There, the flicker in her eyes, the straightening of her back. The change was slight, but enough. She understood.
Cat shook off her guards, lifted her chin, and dropped to one knee. “Anubis, God of the Damned, the Soul Eater is yours. I claim my reward of redemption.”
12
Tension hung thick in the silence. The people here stood too still to be human. Gods, demigods, reanimated souls. They looked on, waiting for Anubis to say or do something, anything. The god’s brow had tightened in a peculiarly human expression of irritation. His personal vendetta wasn’t playing out like he’d expected.
I swayed and spread my stance, fighting the combined effects of exhaustion and blood loss to stay upright.
“Human,” Anubis grumbled in throaty English, turning away from Cat to once again focus on me. “How is it you are here?”
I’m sorry, Cat. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you from this. But all you need to consider right now is your own life. Do whatever it takes. Say whatever it takes to get away.
“Kabechet and I worked together to subdue the Soul Eater.” Not a single quiver undermined her words. She was in literal hell, surrounded by souls, and knelt before a god more ancient than time. Cat, the carnival survivor. Something like pride lit a tiny flame of hope within. You crazy cat. You might just pull this off.
“Kabechet is dead,” Anubis remarked, fishing for her reaction. “Her soul has already passed through these Halls.” If the passing of his daughter cut him up, he didn’t show it.
“I killed her when it became clear she was planning to take your reward for herself.” Clear as day, no hesitation. Even I was starting to believe her. Cat made a fine liar.
Fixing my expression as rigid as stone, I didn’t dare look her way. Anubis was looking for a connection, for the lie, but he wouldn’t find any evidence of it on my face. I’d lied for decades inside these halls. What was another layer of deceit?
Anubis inclined his muzzle. “What is your relationship with the Nameless One?”
“Bastet, my queen, is missing. I have reason to suspect the Nameless One is embroiled in her disappearance. Their relationship was … tumultuous. I’ve been observing him since she vanished.”
Whispers of “Godkiller” sailed over the crowd. I raised my top lip in a sneer but kept the denial off my lips. Telling them Thoth was the only god I’d killed, and then explaining how he’d made me do it, didn’t seem like the best defense. Only the scales could help me now.
“Were you observing the Nameless One during the time he stands accused of killing Ammit?”
“No.”
Anubis chewed over those facts as he turned and took up his seat on the elaborately decorated throne. “If another does not wish to claim redemption, the prize is yours.” To the guards, he said, “Bring me the sorceress.”
As the prison door behind me heaved open, I wondered if I’d been right about Shu. Was she here to claim redemption for herself? Revenge festered the longer it was left alone. Shu’s hatred for me wasn’t something she’d kept quiet. The vurk, the Recka, her convenient absences at just the right moments. Someone had summoned the beasts to track me.
Guards escorted her in, shoved her to her knees, and hooked her chains into the floor. I cast her a quick sideways glance—the first good look I’d gotten of her since Kabechet dumped me back in the underworld. Her long dark hair veiled her face. If I could see her face, would I see guilt in her eyes? I never had before. Only malice and contempt. Did my fate really rest in the hands of my enemy?
“Sorceress,” Anubis said. His claw-tipped fingers drummed a rapid beat on the throne’s arm. “Were you aware the Nameless One planned to return to Duat?”
“Yes,” Shu replied.
“Osiris’s curse prevents him from returning home. Would you concede his return was unusual?”
“Very.” She lifted her head. Her hair fell back, revealing the stubborn set of her jaw. She looked the part, her shoulders rigid and back straight, though nobody but me would notice her lip tremble.
Anubis leaned forward, lowering all the might and weight of a god’s glare on her. “Do you know why he returned?”
“At the time, no.”
“His later explanation?”
“His mother was suspected of taking her slumber. He wanted to see her before she did.”
Cunningness shone in Anubis’s eyes. “What possible reason could Mokarakk Oma have to visit a goddess who publically debased him, besides one of dark intent?” He was asking the room again, playing up to his rapt crowd.
He knew my relationship with Ammit had been strained. Inside this very chamber, I’d thrown several vicious curses at her as she handed me over to Osiris. Each one had slid right off her crocodilian skin. For Anubis, those events would seem like yesterday. I clearly had motive. If Ammit had decided to take her slumber, I wouldn’t have been able to find her or reach her for however long she slept—potentially forever. If I’d wanted her dead, that would’ve been my last chance. Even I struggled to understand exactly why I’d bothered to return to Duat that night.
I was the liar, the thief, the Godkiller with a stain on his soul that he might never wipe clean. Not a single being inside this chamber believed I was innocent. Not even me.
“Weigh my heart against this crime,” I said again. “Trust in the justice of the scales.”
Shu stiffened. “Ace, wait. There are things you do—”
“Silence!” Anubis boomed.
A jackal-headed guard stepped in and jabbed the butt of his spear into Shu’s cheek. She whirled on him, her chains pulling tight, and loosed a demon hiss. “Hit me again and I’ll shove that spear so far up your pretty kilted ass you’ll see it in your dreams!”
The guard growled down at her, not the least bit concerned by her threat. He evidently didn’t know Shukra like I did.
She swung her rage-twisted glare at Anubis. “Ace didn’t kill Ammit. He’s a stubb
orn, righteous, egotistical pain in my ass, but he enjoys living too much to throw it away over vengeance. As much as it pains me—like swallowing a scorpion— to say this, Ace isn’t the same today as he was when you and the gods condemned him.”
That sounded a lot like Shukra defending me. I tried to swallow, but my dry throat had seized, and my racing heart didn’t help.
Shu turned her seething glare on the crowd. “He’d have killed Ammit and the rest of you limp, lifeless fuckers if he could’ve gotten away with it. My guess is, back then, y’all did the right thing by bitch-slapping him down. He needed it. Krek, some days, he still does.”
The crowd grumbled and jeered.
“You can stop helping now,” I muttered.
“Left alone, he’s got some serious restraint issues. You were right. He was dangerous. Left unchecked, he’d have torn through all of you. I’ve seen him lose himself and it ain’t pretty—”
“Stop helping,” I growled, watching Anubis’s lips tick upward in a hungry grin.
“But that’s not who he is now. The curse, living as human, maybe it changed him. It changed me. He’s sore, don’t get me wrong, and he really doesn’t like any of you, but killing Ammit? He’s not that stupid.”
Her dark eyes flicked to me and then away in the space of a second, and all I could do was stare at her like she’d lost her mind.
Anubis shifted on his throne. “And sorceress, if I offered you redemption, would you say the same?”
I closed my eyes and turned my head away, to stop myself from saying what I truly thought of this bullshit pantomime. Shu had helped me—in her own way. She’d done enough. But to turn down redemption? Nobody in their right mind would decline that offer, especially someone with a stain on her soul as black as hers. Redemption was a one-way ticket to her soul’s immortality. Without it, when her judgment came, she was damned.
“What say you, Shukra, Sorceress of the Nile?” Anubis pressed, a cruel lilt of humor lifting his words. “Will you speak the truth and discard these lies to lift the burden of sin from your soul?”
Do it, I thought. Someone needs to get out of this alive.
Shu grumbled a low chuckle. “You know what I think? Although it clearly doesn’t matter because you decided the outcome of this apparent trial centuries ago—”
The guard stepped in, spear raised, but Anubis lifted his hand and stopped the impending strike.
Shu looked the jackal-headed God of the Damned in the eye—the only being in creation who could free her soul from the devastating sins of her past. All she had to do was tell the crowd I’d planned to kill Ammit all along. Just speak the words and Anubis would use them as an excuse to forgo using the scales. She’d be free, and I’d be … destroyed. Just like she’d always wanted.
I couldn’t breathe.
Shukra held my life in her hands.
Defiance burned in Shu’s glare like it always did. “I’ve already spoken the truth. Those big ol’ dog ears of yours must not have heard me.”
The strength went out of my legs, either from the blood loss or from the shock at having Shukra give up the promise of redemption. My knees hit the marble, cracking what would’ve been jabs of pain up my thighs had my back not already been an overpowering mass of throbbing agony.
Anubis stood. “The testimony of the sorceress is no testimony at all.” He started down the steps, looming closer. “It is clear Mokarakk Oma has corrupted his cursed companion.”
My laughter was back, spilling from my lips the same as blood flowed down my back.
Murmurs of uncertainty and discontent whispered through the crowd. Justice wasn’t being served. But if the tide was turning, I was too far gone to care. Shukra had tried. Hopefully, I’d done enough to save Cat. I couldn’t save myself, but I’d always known that.
Anubis stopped before me. His clawed hand scooped up my chin, forcing me to fix him in my blurry sights.
“All are tried in these Halls.” He addressed the crowd, but all I could hear was the pounding of my heart, and all I could see was how the god’s eyes burned with righteous vengeance.
These were my last moments inside a life resembling normalcy. Soon, torment would be my prison, and after that, nothing. Silence. True death. I’d known this was my fate, I’d known it was coming for me as sure as time couldn’t be stopped, but I’d never really believed it. It wasn’t fair. I was immortal, but what good was immortality without having lived? I wanted more. I wasn’t finished. All the years, after everything I’d seen, and this was how it would end? Where was the justice in that?
“All souls passing through these Halls are granted justice by the weight of their hearts.” He plunged his hand into my chest and wrapped long, warm fingers around its pounding mass. A bitter chill snatched at my lungs, shrinking me down. Fear. Anubis yanked my heart free and lifted the bloody, throbbing organ above my head. It shouldn’t be possible, but it beat in his hand and inside my chest. I groped at my chest, feeling for a gaping hole, but there was no sign he’d torn the organ free. I’d seen it happen in others countless times before, but my mind and body couldn’t fathom how that bloody heart in his hand beat to the thud of blood rushing through my veins.
Panic tightened my breath. It had seemed like the only way out at the time, but as Anubis presented my heart to the scales, I couldn’t trust my innocence. What if, somehow, I’d killed Ammit and didn’t remember? I arrived right after she’d died. I’d seen her body, and yet … memories could be altered and time could be lost. Doubt gnawed at my confidence. What if someone had stolen the truth from me? What if I had killed my surrogate mother? Every soul in this room knew I was capable of it. I’d wanted to kill her. I’d wanted to kill them all. Godkiller. I had motive, and I’d had means. Had I killed her?
My breath came in rapid snatches. I’d killed, I’d stolen innocent souls, and I’d devoured them for the high. Liar, thief. I was an abomination of sin in these halls of light. The scales would out me.
Anubis set my beating heart down on one scale and collected the large white feather that would be weighed against it. If—when the feather rose, my fate would be sealed. I looked at the feather, really looked at its silvery edges and silken barbs like I’d never seen it before. My life, all it amounted to, would end under a single, light-as-air feather. I’d judged so many, I’d heard them cry and beg for forgiveness, and I’d feasted on their sins, but before now, I’d never really understood what it must’ve been like in those last terrifying seconds, facing down the barrel of despair.
“For the crime of Ammit’s demise and robbing the Great Devourer of her eternity in the Fields, I submit Mokarakk Oma’s heart to Justice.”
He lowered the feather onto the opposite plate. It would rise, and my heart would fall, weighed down by sin. I was so convinced that I saw it happening and knew it was over. Even as the crowd gasped and Anubis’s growls rumbled through the walls, I saw centuries of life fall away behind me and the future turn to ash.
“Ace …” Shukra’s voice found me, lifting me out of my dread to find that the feather had descended. “Look.”
My heart had risen above the feather’s plate. I blinked.
I was innocent?
I was innocent.
All around, the unsettled voices grew louder.
Anubis lifted the feather, waited for the scales to level, repeated the words, and set the feather down again. Its plate drifted downward. My heart was lighter than the Feather of Truth.
Innocent.
Inarguable proof.
I sucked the stifling air over my lips and breathed it down. Not guilty.
The heart on the plate dissolved into ash and the sensation of wholeness filled me out again, chasing away the fear. Innocent.
“What of Thoth?” someone in the crowd called.
Shu hissed at them and yanked on her chains.
“Godkiller,” another voice rose up.
A line of tension pulled through Anubis’s back. The god lifted his head, not yet turning to fa
ce me. Would he let the judgment stand, or cast it aside for his chance at vengeance? If he chose to repeat the ceremony, instead accusing me of Thoth’s death, the outcome wouldn’t be the same.
Shukra cut me a warning glance, one sharp enough to draw my eye to where her fingers swirled in my spilled blood, drawing intricate glyphs. A glimmer of understanding passed between us. This wasn’t over. Just because I’d survived the scales, it didn’t mean I’d survive Anubis.
As soon as I carefully loosened the coil of power wrapped inside, a heated shudder rolled through my shivering muscles. Nearly drained, aching, and numb, I might only get one well-aimed shot at stopping him.
Shu wet her lips and nodded at Cat. The shifter had stilled, her nails lengthening into claws and intent holding her rigid. Behind her, the crowd stirred, dividing the guards’ attention. Cat didn’t look at Shu or me. Her cool, predatory glare was fixed on Anubis.
If I could get free—hopefully using the spell Shu was concocting—and cause enough confusion, there was a chance we could escape the Halls and this realm, now that the slave cuff was useless. Anubis would still be gunning for me, but he always had been.
Anubis faced the crowd. The accusations settled and time held its breath. “Mokarakk Oma is innocent of this crime. The true perpetrator will be found.”
Chaos exploded in the chambers, igniting the tension and turning the stifling air hot with rage. If Anubis didn’t kill me, the mob would.
Shu’s hand came down, slamming into the marks she’d made. A ripple and crackle of power rode through the blood, skittered over my body, and shattered the chains. I rose, already yanking on the latent magic provided by my home, as Anubis golden-eyed glare found me through the noise and mayhem. He hadn’t moved. He didn’t need to. He could strike me down with a gesture.
The leathery sound of the whip carved through the madness. I spun, catching the guard’s wrist before he could flick it and land that lash. His eyes widened at the same moment I tunneled deep inside and hooked into his twisted, black soul. This one had enjoyed his work a little too much.
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 11