“Tra k-dae amcru-kak sra ksork, kosec amcru-kak esk kassrakamsk, omd kae kuir amcru-kak aeuirk.” In a blink, his eternal life was mine. I smiled as his expression collapsed into one of horror and his soul filled the well within. He didn’t react when I looped the whip around his neck and pulled, choking off all remaining semblance of life.
“Ace, move!” Cat’s cry speared through the melee.
I dodged a sword, cracked an elbow into what I assumed was the owner’s face, and then flexed my magical muscles, sending a ripple of dark power through the room. It shuddered through the floor and the walls, reminding every soul present whose damn home this was.
I’d devour every one of these imbeciles if they didn’t back off.
Cat’s claws glimmered in the blinding light, and for a terrible second, they arced for my throat. I wouldn’t have escaped the attack … had it been meant for me. She blocked Anubis’s backhanded swipe, snatching his wrist and holding the god’s arm rigid an inch from my face. God and shifter locked eyes. I’d been a victim of Cat’s glare before. She could shrivel a man’s soul beneath that gaze, but she couldn’t hold Anubis at bay. A warning growl rumbled through his massive chest, and he swept her aside like she was nothing but air, flinging her into the cushioning crowd.
I threw out a hand, the spellword on my tongue, but he batted my arm aside, nearly taking the limb off. He pushed forward, forcing me back. His rumbling turned to full-blown growls that had my instincts demanding I run.
“Who are you to think to spell me, Mokarakk Oma? Who are you to wield Justice against my wishes? Who are you?”
He’d backed me against the wall beside the open prison doorway. He could rip out my heart, cave in my skull, or crush my chest at any second. His question was the only reason he hadn’t. If only I knew the answer.
Shu’s blast struck him from behind. It was a messy splash of power that did little more than shove Anubis forward, but I’d seen her cast it and slid to the side, twisting enough to tackle the god side-on just as Cat came in like a storm of teeth and claws. Anubis attempted to face the onslaught, but his balance toppled out from under him. I shoved, kicked high, and sent the god stumbling into the prison.
Shu slammed the door on his enraged howl.
It wouldn’t hold him for long.
Cat, Shu, and I straightened and turned toward the crowd. Hundreds stared back, eerie in their silent judgment. Another time, I might’ve said something worthy of the Soul Eater that would’ve had them running back to their houses. But pain throbbed through my wrecked body and these souls weren’t my problem—not anymore. Cat and Shu flanked me, one armed with teeth and claws, the other cloaked in bruised, pulsating magic. If the crowd surged, we might cut our way through, but not without taking some serious injuries, and Anubis would be on us. No, there was only one way out of this.
I drew on the background ripple of power, breathing it into the real me. My human outline shifted, blurred by shadows that shouldn’t exist inside the chamber’s light. I absorbed the light. The Halls power responded to my call, feeding into me like it had since my return, and the crowd eased back, out of my path. They didn’t have a choice. They felt the invasion as I met their gazes, each in turn. They knew I could do to them what I’d done to thousands before. Those at the front bowed their heads, but not in respect. Fear had them hiding their eyes.
Anubis’s thunderous growls accompanied our unhurried walk through a sea of souls.
It was only outside the chamber, as the light softened among vast, decorated pillars, that reality crashed back in and I could breathe again, rooting myself back inside my wounded flesh and aching bones. I paused and reached for a nearby pillar. After spreading my hand against the splash of hieroglyphs, the native power poured in and filled out my bones once more.
Shu’s magic sparked at my back while Cat radiated icy menace beside me.
“We need to find a mirror or a reflective surface to get home.” I kept my voice low. We were out of the chambers, but the Halls were vast and riddled with guards. This wasn’t over.
“The fountain in the plaza,” Shu said.
The fountain of diamonds. It would suffice. I nodded and pushed off the pillar. The plaza was close. We were almost free...
“Are you all right?” Cat asked. Concern, coupled with her gentle tone, almost tripped my stride. Her gaze landed on the ragged mess that was my back before flicking back to my eyes. I couldn’t deal with the pain reflected there. Not now.
“I will be,” I said, picking up my pace through the twisting maze of chambers. What’d she’d done for me, what they’d both done … part of me didn’t trust it and searched for an ulterior motive, but an honest spark of hope warmed my battered heart. Cat had followed me into hell, and Shukra? Had she truly given up redemption for me? “We’ll all be fine once we get out of here.”
Screams sailed through the Halls, coming from ahead, not behind. The grand portico loomed ahead. Duat’s saturated light poured in, and the vast Halls steps fed down to the plaza, where the fountain sparkled.
A mass of a bird-like dragon, known only as the Recka, stood between the fountain and us.
“Well, shit,” Shu spat.
“I thought I’d killed it,” Cat snarled.
The Recka—its eye sockets now hollow, bleeding holes—spread its golden wings, planted a taloned foot on the edge of the fountain, and bellowed its battle cry.
13
The fountain’s rim shifted beneath the Recka’s weight. Cracks snaked up the stone, and diamonds spilled over the Recka’s black talons.
“We don’t have time for this.” My fingers twitched, missing Alysdair’s comforting weight. “Distract it.”
“With what?” Shu replied. “Good looks?”
The Recka’s head swung straight toward us, its hearing picking up the slack from its missing sight. That hooked beak could easily snap a body in two, and those talons would make short work of our flesh.
“Mokarakk Oma!” it crooned, its eyeless, eagle-like face somehow looking pleased. “You draw from this land, from Duat. Did you think your home would release you so soon?”
“Spread out.” I descended the Halls stairs one slow step at a time. Shu and Cat did the same, veering toward the outer fringes of the plaza. “How about telling me something useful, like who summoned you?”
The beast reared onto its hind legs and shook its massive head. It puffed out its chest and opened its wings, sending up swirls of sand. “I am the Recka. The earth quakes. The souls flee—”
“Can we skip the ego-stroking monologue and get to the part where you tell me who sent you?” A few more stairs and I stood at the foot of the steps, the Halls of Judgment behind me, Cat and Shu moving into flaking positions. “You and I have no quarrel.”
“All have quarrel with Mokarakk Oma. It is in your nature to defy.”
So this was how it was going to be? I planted my bare feet in the warm sand, seeing solid stone beneath. And beneath that, the undercurrent of power streamed. Home, that power promised. The souls might despise me, but this land was mine. The Recka was right. Duat wanted me to reach for it. The land would never turn its back on me.
“Let us pass.”
Its head swooped in low, showing me the ragged, weeping holes where its eyes had been before it met Cat. “He who summons me forbids you to leave.”
“And who exactly is he?”
“I answer to the God of Storms, Lord of Red and Black. The Usurper commands the Recka.”
Shock stalled my thoughts, bringing the moment to a screeching halt. The Usurper. Only one god went by that name. Was the Recka speaking of Seth? But that was impossible. I smiled at the absurdity of it. Perhaps the Recka had lost its ancient mind to madness. Seth, Osiris’s brother had been lost to obscurity for millennia.
“I smell your fear, Mokarakk Oma. You should fear Him. He comes for you.”
“Seth is gone.”
“Mm …” The Recka’s tail swung low, sweeping up a cloud of dust and a
lmost taking Cat out, but she vaulted over the tail and looked to me for the command to strike. But I couldn’t. If what the Recka had said was true, this was larger than me. Bigger than Anubis’s revenge or even my punishment. If Seth was truly awake, he’d come for Osiris, for all those who’d fought against him. I thought of the fragility and ignorance of the human world. It wasn’t prepared for Seth’s return, for the skies to turn red, for the rivers to bleed. It never would be.
I could feel Shu’s gaze on me. She’d heard and knew what mention of Seth meant. There was nothing I could do, not now and maybe not ever.
“I’ve been hunted, accused, and almost condemned.” Tingling warmth embraced my wounded back and slipped across my skin. Home, the power sang, lending me its strength. “You will not stand in my way.”
The Recka bowed its head low again, bringing it so damn close its breath blasted over me. “He knows your true name, Mokarakk Oma.”
I nodded at Shu and flicked a hand at Cat. Cat lunged first, launching a cutting attack on the Recka’s flank. The beast flinched, swung its head toward the source of its pain, and screeched so loudly and sharply that the sound shuddered through nearby buildings, dislodging stones. I dashed under the belly of the beast. Shu struck next. I didn’t see her attack, but the Recka’s cry shattered the air and it whipped around, snapping at the spot where Shu had been standing moments before.
I wove through its legs, darting low and fast, my battered heart thudding hard and my legs burning. Above, the Recka shifted. I watched its talons sweep up and slam back down again. One shot. Just the one. I launched myself at its left foreleg, grabbed the dormant slave cuff locked around my wrist, and cried out, “Dekuvm.” Disown. The cuff clicked loose.
“I uvm aeui!”
I threw the trinket, tossing with it the blast of power I’d been gathering since I’d rested against the pillar in the Halls. It grew and latched on with a satisfying cha-chink. Ignoring the Recka’s incredulous screeches, I dashed toward the fountain, already saying the words. “Ovam kur ka, kur I ok uk sra oer, sra aorsr, sra resrs, omd sra dord. Ovam, omd varcuka ka srruisr.”
The fountain’s surface rippled. “C’mon!”
Shu was the first through. The diamond water took her in and swallowed her up. “Cat, now!”
Cat sprinted around the Recka’s flailing legs, avoiding its lashing, massive tail. The beast flung out its wings, knocking out half a building. It roared and threw its weight around, then tried to get its beak under the cuff. It couldn’t get it off, not without my permission.
Cat vaulted over the fountain’s edge without so much as a second’s hesitation and plunged through the doorway.
The Recka must’ve sensed a change. It stilled, its massive chest billowing with air.
“I own you,” I told it, sending my voice out. The souls looked on from their hiding places. “I own the Recka.” The words rolled through the empty streets. All would hear.
My gaze snagged on Anubis standing on the Halls steps, fury lighting his golden eyes. Dozens of temple guards spilled in behind him, but none ventured past.
“This is over,” I told him. “Do not come for me.”
The god straightened his spear beside him, his fingers tightening around the shaft. Something in that lupine gaze didn’t sit easy with my soul—either distrust or curiosity. We both knew this wasn’t an end, but a beginning. When the dust had settled, he’d find another way to condemn me, and he wouldn’t be alone. Seth was waking.
The Recka huffed and clawed at the cuff. “Shame-shame-shame,” it mumbled like a petulant child. I could see how the Nameless One owning it might leave a stain on its epic résumé. “I am legend! This cannot be.” It shook its foreleg and gnawed on the cuff.
“Cukkomd, Recka. Guard my home.” I stepped over the fountain’s rim and let the doorway between worlds suck me through.
14
The bitter smell of burnt diesel tainted the warm summer air, sirens wailed somewhere beyond the thick barrier of trees, people meandered, slowing their frantic race to get from A to B, and contrails laced the wash of blue sky.
Central Park, New York.
Damn, I’d missed the city.
I’d been back a day. Not long. My head still buzzed with power and my shredded back burned and itched, but I was Ace Dante again. I needed this time to resettle inside this world, find my place among normal people living their normal lives. Grocery shopping, subway queues, unpaid bills, a constant flow of traffic and noise. The light here didn’t slice into my skull and the souls inside the people wandering by weren’t aware they had a predator in their midst.
I leaned forward, braced my arms on my knees, and rubbed my hands together. Human. Ace Dante. That was me. That would be me, once I could shake the sensation that something fundamental had shifted inside. I blamed it on healing, on the out-of-sorts feeling that’s normal when switching between realms, but those were lies. More lies. Something inside had dislodged or changed. I couldn’t decide which.
Seth was stirring, might even be awake. The Recka was mine. I’d compelled Anubis and defied him in the Halls. And inside the Twelve Gates, I’d seen impossible things. Sure, I could stick my head in the sand and pretend to be Ace Dante, but the facts remained, and unlike me, the facts didn’t lie.
A shadow blotted out the sunlight, instantly sapping me of warmth. Squinting up, I frowned at Shu.
She licked strawberry ice cream from a cone, turning it to catch the drips. “Get your own.”
We hadn’t spoken much since the doorway had dumped all three of us—dressed like Ben-Hur extras, the one’s who’d been trampled by horses—on a street corner in the middle of the night. Cat had slinked off into the dark, but Shu had stayed overnight at my apartment to help patch up my wounds. We’d both crashed sometime in the morning. By the time I woke hours later, she’d already left.
“Don’t say it,” she mumbled around a mouthful of ice cream.
“What?”
“Any of what you’re thinking.”
“I have no idea what—”
“Your accent has slipped. You should be more careful concealing your true self. You’ve made a few more enemies. They’ll come looking.”
I wet my lips and resisted the urge to clear my throat. She’d been right about the New York accent. I’d forgotten how to be Ace, but not all of him. Just a few quirks. They’d come back soon, once I remembered them. “What you did—”
“It happened. I’d prefer to pretend it hadn’t.”
“But you—”
“Do I have to slap you? Because I will.”
I let a grin slip through and leaned back, propping an ankle on a knee. “I’d like to see you try.”
“You won’t see anything—”
“I’m sorry.” I said it before she could butt in.
The ice cream paused near her lips.
“I didn’t know—didn’t realize. It never occurred to me you could change.”
She eye rolled so hard I felt it. “And there you go, getting soft on me. Well, don’t bother. I still hate you. That hasn’t changed. I have a journal filled with every possible use for soul eater organs. I keep it under my pillow. I plan to sell it to one of your enemies. I just haven’t figured out which one yet. There’s a long list.”
Rubbing at my mouth didn’t wipe away the smile. “I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, for Sekhmet’s sake. Don’t flatter yourself. Anubis had already made up his mind. It didn’t matter what I said in there, he was going to condemn you.”
“He didn’t though.”
“No. I guess the current God of Justice bows to its judgment just like the rest of us.”
I didn’t need to argue with her. We both knew she’d gone above and beyond to help me. But sure, if she wanted to brush it off as nothing, she could. Didn’t change the fact she’d sacrificed potential freedom for me.
“When are you seeing Cujo?” I asked.
She hesitated at that and took a few seconds to sweep up the m
elting ice cream with her tongue. “Maybe I won’t. Maybe it’s time we left New York.”
I remembered the snippets I’d seen of her struggling with the curse and Cujo’s concerned face. “You should see him. And we’re not leaving. I’m done hiding. The gods know where we are. They can come to us.”
“They will.”
The unspoken threat of Seth’s name hung in the air. A cool gust of wind whipped Shu’s hair around her face.
Did she know I’d compelled Anubis? If she didn’t, I wouldn’t mention it until I figured out what it meant. For that, I needed Mafdet to open the little black box with the strange snake-headed-jackal hieroglyph. More than ever, I suspected the answers were in there.
“There’s one god I’d like to see,” I said.
Shu’s dark eyebrow arched.
“Bastet. Cat’s right. She’s missing for a reason. You can trace her, right?”
Shu focused on her ice cream, turning the cone in her hand and attacking it from a better angle.
“Like you did the witch’s arm?”
“What if she doesn’t want to be found?” she asked without looking up. “Isn’t there a saying about letting sleeping cats lie?”
“That’s dogs.”
“Same thing.”
“It really isn’t.” I got to my feet, ignoring my protesting muscles. “If I can find my wedding band to anchor the spell, will you do it?”
She gave a long, dramatic exhale and took way too long to think it over, when we both knew there was no good reason for her to refuse. “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.” She didn’t meet my eyes and instead focused intently on her ice cream.
“We could go on vacation,” I deadpanned, starting down the path.
“I’d rather go to hell,” she called after me.
The charity dinner displayed all the dazzle and pomp you’d expect from New York’s high society as they attempted to convince themselves that giving away cash for a good cause bought them lighter souls. Watching from the fringes of the room, I knew better.
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 12