A family of five blocked my line of sight, forcing me to ditch the line and skirt the crowd for a better view. By the time I’d taken up a spot near a stack of trays, Shu and the guy were exchanging packages. Cash would be landing in Shu’s hands, and in his hands I’d likely find another minor talisman or a small handwritten scroll and a bottle of sand for effect. These four, in their pencil skirts and pressed shirts, would be looking for career-boosting spells. Harmless, just like the last two buyers I’d shaken down.
The deal concluded, Shu left the group and strode toward the exit. All four in the group watched her go until she’d almost slipped back into Macy’s lingerie. I pushed away from the wall and was about to resume my stalking, but then the buyer picked up a McDonald’s napkin, hastily scrawled something on the paper, and with a flick, lit it on fire. The napkin was gone in a blink—turned to ash. None of the diners noticed. No one did but me.
I eased back against the tray rack. That little flourish of magic had just earned Shu’s buyer a place on my watch list. Another sorcerer? Maybe Shu hadn’t sold him a harmless spell after all.
The four packed away their phones, shrugged on their jackets, and hitched up their bags, back to smiles and small talk. I trailed after them through the lingerie racks and stuck to the buyer when they each split up without a single goodbye between them. He sauntered through the kitchenware aisle, his swagger down to an art, and took the escalator down. A few shoppers behind him, I leaned on the rail and got a good look down the spine of escalators that made up Macy’s middle, feeding shoppers in and out of ten floors of all-you-can-buy retail.
Shu’s buyer hit Floor 6, sprang from the escalator like a horse from its stall, veered back on himself, and shoved his way down the adjacent escalator. He stopped long enough to look up, right at me, and toss me a salute. Then he was off again, shoving shoppers out of his way as if they were bowling pins.
Why do they always have to run?
All pretense of stealth gone, I shoved past the anxious shoppers, ignoring their alarmed bleats, and bolted down the adjacent escalator after the cocky bastard. Some days, it would’ve been so much easier to be the monster who stripped souls from bodies like peas from a pod. You’d be surprised how much easier it is to get around when you’re made of sand and smoke. Couldn’t do that in Macy’s though. Wasn’t worth the godly fallout.
Shu’s buyer had a decent head start, but I had the advantage of carving through his wake of surprised civilians. I was on him in seconds, my grip locking on the lapels of his expensive jacket so I could stand him up against a wall beside a stack of folded Levis and expressionless mannequins.
“Whoa, buddy,” he stammered. “Whoa, whoa—okay, okay, easy—”
“What was with the hand theatrics back there?” I demanded.
“Hey, this is out of line.” He raised his voice, and despite having my face in his, he wasn’t nearly as afraid as he should’ve been.
Shoppers stopped and gawked. Someone pulled a phone from their pocket. I didn’t have the sword or coat on me, but that didn’t mean I wanted my face all over the internet. Store security wouldn’t be far behind either.
I dropped Shu’s buyer onto his feet and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Ah, c’mon, Steve. I was just screwing with you, man.”
He grinned back at me and shrugged his jacket back into place, so damn sure I wouldn’t start something in public.
My fingers dug into his shoulder. I leaned in and whispered, “Cukkomd.”
The spellword poured in through his ear, straight to the part of his human brain that was hardwired to answer the old words. My friend Steve was now putty in my hands.
“Don’t talk. Follow me.”
I threw my arm around Steve’s loose shoulders, tossed a smile at the folks now grumbling and moving on, disappointed they hadn’t gotten their Macy’s punch-up, and guided my new friend toward the restrooms.
We had company in the men’s washrooms. Steve stood dull-eyed and dopey beside me as I waited for people to vacate the stalls, using the good old-fashioned eyes-on glare to get the guys hustling.
Alone, I said, “Hurzd.”
Locking the main door closed and running a quick gaze around the polished tiled walls, I noted there weren’t any cameras.
“So, here’s how it is, Steve. Mind if I call you Steve?”
He shook his head, looking somewhat startled. He was probably still trying to figure out why he wasn’t fighting me, why all of this was playing out without his participation.
“Yeah, compulsion, it blows. Trust me, I know. But you ran, so that makes you a suspicious target. Then there’s the little deal you did with the sorceress back there.”
His dopey eyes widened.
“Yeah, her. All that wouldn’t usually be enough for me to throw the command whammy on you. Unfortunately, the trick you did with the napkin … that’s what caught my eye. So …” I leaned against the sink next to him. “Tell me all about that spell you cast when the sorceress turned her back.”
His jaw worked, pale lips puckering. He tried to hold the words back, but while I had a grip on his mind and body, he wasn’t winning this one.
“Minor spell. Tracking.” He struggled, visibly shaking. Poor bastard.
“You’re tracking the sorceress?” I asked, needing confirmation.
He nodded.
“Why?”
“To find the soul eater.” And there we go … the truth shall come out.
“What soul eater?” I asked as a test.
“Sebek-kuh says there’s one in the city. The sorceress is known to work with it.”
It? Ouch. “What does this Sebek-kuh want with the Soul Eater?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Are you lying? You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Steve?”
“No. No … why—what—I don’t know why I’m here. I shouldn’t be talking to you. He’s waiting.”
“Who’s waiting? Sebek-kuh?”
He nodded again.
“You’re meeting him?”
“Yes. I was told to cast the spell and go straight back to him.”
I smiled and slapped Steve, the nervous wreck that he was, on the back. “Well, let’s not keep Mister Sebek-kuh waiting.”
My new friend Steve worked in administration for Macy’s, granting him personnel access throughout the building. He kindly obliged to take me on a tour of the basement, where Mister Sebek-kuh was due to meet him in delivery bay 32B. Refrigerated trailer units idled in their bays. Macy’s back-end staff pushed wrapped and stacked trolleys from inside the trailers, making enough commotion to distract them from office worker Steve and me strolling by.
After telling Steve to carry on as though I wasn’t there, he did exactly that and swaggered up to bay 32B, where a guy in a grey hoodie and matching pants waited.
Using some stacked yoghurts as cover, I gave Sebek-kuh a casual once-over. He stood hunched over, his shoulders pulled in, his back bowed. From a distance, he had a frail look about him, as though a strong gust of wind might blow him over, but I wasn’t buying it.
“Did you mark her?” Sebek-kuh asked, his voice a papery wheeze. I barely caught the words over the din of the delivery vehicles.
“Yes.”
“She didn’t see?”
“No.” Steve’s shoulder twitched. My compulsion still had its hooks in him, but he was fighting to shove my control off him like someone trying to wipe off a cobweb. He had some skill, this one. Given enough time, he might even work himself free of me, but Steve wasn’t my problem.
Sebek-kuh was laughing. At least, I think that was the rasping sound he was making. “Good, good,” he exhaled.
I couldn’t get a good look at his face beneath the hood, but I’d seen enough possessed people over the decades to know a demon when I saw one, especially one that had spent a little too long hidden inside its host, rotting him from the inside out. I could smell its tainted soul like a
cloud of diesel smoke.
“You have done as I asked. Now for your reward …” Sebek-kuh extended a pale, gnarled hand. His twig-like fingers held something that gave off the same foul sensation as his being.
I stepped out from behind the yoghurts. “Get behind me.” Steve obeyed, scooting around behind me as he twitched and mumbled. I’d have to release him soon or risk permanent damage.
“I hear you’re looking for the Soul Eater?”
Sebek-kuh lifted his face. Fluorescent lights pooled in his sunken eyes and glistened off the pearly white teeth behind his tight, desiccated lips. He resembled something an archaeologist might dig up, and beneath the oily taint of his soul, he smelled of baked clay and hot stone.
“Soul Eater?” His lips pulled up at their corners, cracking his cheeks.
“In the flesh, which is more than I can say for you. Someone left you out in the sun too long.” I stopped a few feet in front of him. He had a wall at his back and to his left. His only exit, if he decided to bolt, was on my left, alongside the trucks. He only looked like he was one breath away from death. “All you had to do was pick up the phone. These days, every god and their enemy has me on their friends list.”
“You would listen…?”
I screwed up my nose and pretended to think on it, noticing the camera blinking down at me from the corner. “Listen to a demon? No.”
I didn’t have Alysdair—I really needed to start the whole coat and sword gig again—so the unfortunate demon would have to check out the Soul Eater way. He still had eyes, even if they were weeping pus. Not long ago, I might’ve shied away from devouring a soul like his. These days, I wasn’t as fussy. He should not be in my city.
“I came for you … Mokarakk Oma, for the Dark One who walks with you.”
The Dark One was Shu, obviously, and I was done listening to lying demons. I checked the camera again. Whether knowingly or by accident, Sebek-kuh stood beneath it, likely inside a blind spot.
“I need your help, Mokarakk Oma. I need—”
A blade of light erupted from his foul guts, jolting the demon’s hijacked body as though he’d been shocked with ten thousand volts. What little blood was left in him oozed from the wound. The blade jerked, stuck on his ribs, and then cut clean through, opening up the body from gut to gullet. The body collapsed in on itself, slumping in a heap of awkward body parts and leaking fluids.
Isis blinked innocently. “Were you in the middle of something?” She gave her wrist a twist, vanishing the blade, and planted her hand on her hip. She’d toned down the goddess aura and wore a reserved green pantsuit and cream jacket, but she still carried a luminous glow that would have any nearby humans inexplicably swooning in her presence.
“Holy shit,” Steve gasped.
Isis flicked a finger at my temporary friend. “Rephrase.”
“I—I … my god.”
She rolled her eyes. “So dull.”
She clicked her fingers and Steve was gone. Vanished. Just like the blade. I didn’t have the heart to ask where, but I suspected Steve might wake up with no memory of the past twenty-four hours—if he was lucky. If he wasn’t so lucky, he might not wake up at all.
“Isis,” I greeted carefully. The camera still blinked in the corner, but I suspected her natural brilliance would blind the lens.
“You didn’t get my note?”
“Note?” I asked even more carefully, tiptoeing around playing dumb and being deliberately disrespectful. I’d gotten her note asking for my help and mentioning something along the lines of how she “knew who I was.” I’d burned her note right after reading it. That had been two weeks ago.
She stepped over Sebek-kuh’s crumpled and rapidly decaying body, bringing her almost nose to nose with me. I wasn’t backing down, even as my heart thudded hard in my chest and every instinct demanded I drop to a knee and bow my head. The real-world sounds faded beneath the spell her beauty wove. I wasn’t immune to her, and wishing I were didn’t change a damn thing. Power throbbed around her in a warming, tempting caress. She was the Goddess of Light and of the Sky, Queen of Gods. Compared to her, I was a cockroach she could crush under her heel.
Paper crumpled in my hand. I frowned down at it, preferring to look there than in her eyes and fall into that scorpion trap. “What’s this?”
“Tickets. The flight to London Heathrow leaves at ten p.m. You will, from there, take a connecting flight to Cairo, or I will tell my husband how you have, on numerous occasions, attempted to seduce me.”
I swallowed, or tried to, but I found my mouth dry. “I’m not going back to Egypt.”
“Oh, dear, it appears as though you believe you have a choice. Silly, delusional Soul Eater.”
I stuffed the tickets back in her hand, giving her the smallest shove. It was all I could do, but it gave me enough momentum to turn. “I’m not going. Tell Osiris you were hot in the sack, but I’ve had better.”
She wouldn’t do it. No way. If she were going to play the Osiris card, she’d have used it by now.
“Oh? My darling husband?”
I spun around. She’d manifested a phone and was holding it against her ear.
Her eyes sparkled. “There’s something I must tell you—”
One stride in her direction and she showed me the lock screen. She hadn’t made the call, but my hammering heart and cold sweat had me rethinking my choice. “You’re insane.”
“Blasphemy.”
“Blasphemy? Peaches, I’m just warming up. I don’t care if you’re the goddess of the fucking past, present, and future. I’m not going back to that godforsaken city. Find some other schmuck.”
“Ace Dante …” There was power in the way she said my name—the manufactured name, the superficial mask—as though she could tear it all away and reveal the truth of me beneath. “You have questions. You saw impossible things in the Twelve Gates—”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I know who you are, and I’ll tell you everything. But first, you will go to Cairo.”
Cairo, Egypt. The land time forgot. The land the gods had sundered. The land the sands devoured.
“Fine. These had better be first class.” I snatched the tickets back and stuffed them in my pocket. “Shu will have to come.”
“I will deal with the demon sorceress.”
“Why am I going to Cairo?”
Her finely lined dark eyes flashed with sharp, deadly intelligence. “I’ll tell you once we have arrived.”
“Wait.” No, no, no. Please, by Sekhmet, tell me I misheard. “We?”
Her smile spoke of illicit promises. “Osiris will never know.”
Also by Pippa DaCosta
The Veil Series
Wings of Hope ~ The Veil Series Prequel Novella
Beyond The Veil (#1)
Devil May Care (#2)
Darkest Before Dawn (#3)
Drowning In The Dark (#4)
Ties That Bind (#5)
Get your free e-copy of ‘Wings Of Hope’ by signing up to Pippa’s mailing list, here.
Chaos Rises
Chaos Rises (#1)
Chaos Unleashed (#2)
Soul Eater
Hidden Blade (#1)
Witches’ Bane (#2)
See No Evil (#3)
Scorpion Trap (#4)
Science-Fiction
Girl From Above #1: Betrayal
Girl From Above #2: Escape
Girl From Above #3: Trapped
Girl From Above #4: Trust
New Adult Urban Fantasy
City Of Fae, London Fae #1
City of Shadows, London Fae #2
About the Author
Born in Tonbridge, Kent in 1979, Pippa's family moved to the South West of England where she grew up among the dramatic moorland and sweeping coastlands of Devon & Cornwall. With a family history brimming with intrigue, complete with Gypsy angst on one side and Jewish survivors on the other, she draws from a patchwork of ancestry and uses it as the inspiration fo
r her writing. Happily married and the mother of two little girls, she resides on the Devon & Cornwall border.
Sign up to her mailing list here.
@pippadacosta
pippadacosta
www.pippadacosta.com
[email protected]
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 14