“Run,” I breathed the word so it was barely more than a whisper, but Kenny heard. As soon as he turned, disappearing among the witches, I wrenched up their pitiful barrier and dropped the pretense of being anything other than the Soul Eater. I sloughed off my humanity and let the blackness in my soul rise up, fill me out, and wrap me in magic. To them, I was a storm of night and dust.
The witches’ screams fluttered around me, mingling with the tickling, little spells they flung my way. Their efforts were pitiful.
They should have left me well alone when they had the chance. Now the genie was out of the bottle.
Scooping up the canopic jar, I flung it hard against a temple column. Black threads exploded from inside. Those threads rose up, curling and knotting, and then speared into me—through me. The souls I’d devoured centuries before howled and wailed. So much power. All the souls, the lives I’d stolen, they filled me out and made me whole. In the shadow of the temple, the truth of me was revealed. Home, my soul crooned.
I turned and eyed the fleeing crowd.
I’d start with these witches. I’d drink them down, but I had no intention of stopping there. A whole city of souls slumbered outside these walls, and this time, Osiris wasn’t here to stop me. I wasn’t sure Osiris could stop me.
“Tra k-dae amcru-kak sra ksork, kosec amcru-kak esk kassrakamsk, omd kae kuir amcru-kak aeuirk.”
The spell fell from my lips. I could feel their lives—bigger and brighter than what each person could account for. The little mortals and their precious, immortal souls. They were all mine.
“Ace!” My name, flung at me through the chaos.
The crowd parted, and in that fraction of a moment, I saw Shukra freed from her summoning circle. Cat stood beside the sorceress. They regarded me as though readying for battle.
“You are Ace Dante,” Shukra yelled. “You have a name.”
She strode forward through the people. Her black hair whipped loosely and wildly around her face, and her eyes glowed bruised purple, stirred by magic.
“You are not this creature.” She spoke with ferocious passion, throwing her words like knives. They struck through my madness and sank in deep.
The people, their souls, each of them glowing bright in the dark—I would’ve killed them all. I wanted to. She was right. This wasn’t me. I did have a name, and I needed to be the man, not the monster.
The skin on my fingers shifted and settled like desert sands revealing something terrible and hidden and forgotten by time. I wasn’t too far gone. I could get myself back. I just needed to hold on to my name: Ace Dante, the cursed one. I liked it this way. I needed the control so I could live the life I’d carved out for myself.
“Ace?”
Shukra was close. I lifted my head, but it wasn’t a human woman in a suit I saw in my mind. She was demon, her fingers clawed, her snout bristling with teeth. She’d tried to trick me by appearing human. I knew her. I’d hunted her down and condemned her soul. She was my enemy.
Too late I realised the memory of her as demon was in my head. Power burst through my body, exploding what was left of my human act and turning me into darkness threaded with burning sand.
Shukra launched a spell. I’d tasted its like before. It struck me, sinking its barbs in, but it wasn’t enough. I lunged at the sorceress—and immediately rebounded. A barrier rippled between us. I circled her, flowing through the air like water. The witches were forgotten. Everything was forgotten, but not the sorceress. Shukra should have been condemned. This time, I’d destroy her soul for all eternity. I’d held the power of judgment in my hands, and her condemned soul was mine to take.
She spun in her protective cage, keeping her eyes locked on where mine glowed in the storm of shadow and dust. I could taste her fear and feel her poisoned soul recoil.
“Ace, this is who you were, not who you are. What did you see in the tower?”
The tower? A memory sliced through my thoughts: an obelisk reaching high into a lightning-filled sky. Not real, but real enough. Shukra had been there. I’d fought Osiris and Isis… Thoth. Thoth was behind this. The god’s touch—no more than a tiny golden thread—slithered away from the spark of recognition.
Shukra was right. I wasn’t the Godkiller. I was Ace Dante: cursed, but free because of it. I leaned on vodka and helped those who’d crossed the gods. Ace Dante—that man was me.
“Remember who you are. Rakakbar.” Remember.
Shukra wasn’t my enemy. She hadn’t been for centuries.
I stopped circling Shu’s cage and reformed, pulling myself into a being, turning from the dark and the sand into a figure and a form. A man, not a monster. I looked at my hands, now solid and real.
A pale hand touched my arm, and I looked up to see Cat with something like concern on her face. Concern and fear.
Shukra stepped through her shielding spell so that it crumbled away. Fear shone in her eyes, and the same fear writhed in me. That had been close. Too close.
“I have to get to Thoth.” I swallowed, washing sand from my tongue. “Before it’s too late.”
Chapter 10
The three of us strode into the stone-and-glass foyer of T&T Law, Shukra to my left, and Cat wrapped in my coat to my right. They radiated tension, both watching me like I was wired to explode. I was. The need to devour shifted beneath my skin like the timeless sands I was made of.
I am Ace Dante. I am Ace Dante. I am Ace Dante. Over and over I repeated it, overriding the twisting restlessness and the need to grab hold of anyone nearby. I’d look into their eyes, sink into their souls, swallow their minds, consume their lives, and take every last drop of—
“Ace?” Shu shot me a querying glance.
“I’m good,” I snarled back through gritted teeth. All I had to do was get to Thoth and stop this itch to devour. I’d stopped it before. I could stop it again.
It was early, and the foyer was virtually empty except for a hawk-eyed receptionist who peered at us over the top of her smooth marble desk. She waited until we were almost past her before announcing, “Good morning. Please sign in.”
I stopped, planting my boots on a small section of the T&T logo inset in the polished floor. Columns of early morning daylight stretched across the floor toward the elevators. That’s where I needed to go, but my feet weren’t moving. The receptionist glowed faintly in my peripheral vision. I already knew, without looking, that her soul would be light.
“Lady, we’ve had a rough night,” Shukra was saying. “Is the boss man here? Tall, skinny guy. Looks like an undertaker.”
I headed for the desk, acutely aware of Cat hovering close to my arm. On the way over, we’d arranged for her to gut me the way she had those priests if I started to devour. The look in her eyes had told me she’d enjoy doing it too. I wasn’t sure whether she liked killing or relished the thought of killing me. Either way, she’d get it done.
I snatched the register, took the receptionist’s pen, scribbled Godkiller on the visitors’ page, and shoved it back. The receptionist flinched at something in my smile or my eyes—probably their blackness.
“Call him. Tell him I’m here,” I said.
She looked at the name and then back at me. Her shrewd eyes flicked over all three of us before she picked up her desk phone.
“Mister Thoth, it’s Lucy at reception. Yes, I know it’s early, I just…there’s a man here to see you.”
I heard Thoth’s dead-flat tone as he asked, “Who?” and a twitch pulled something inside tighter. Dammit. There it was, the unmistakable sensation of a hook snagged inside my psyche. He had me at the end of a string.
“Godkiller, sir,” the receptionist replied and then hung up the phone before I could catch the reply.
“He’ll meet you on the twelfth floor. He said to tell you you’re late.”
I smiled back at her and watched fear crawl over her expression, taking pleasure in the uptick of her heart and the flush of blood to her cheeks. Would her soul taste sweet? You could never tell by a
ppearances alone.
“Ace Dante…” Shukra warned, mindful to use my full name to yank me back.
I slid my gaze toward the sorceress. Cat stood beside her, ready to pounce. The two of them together could slow me down and perhaps even stop me. Or I could stop them both right here before we took another step.
“Don’t say it,” Shu warned. “If you tell me to sit this one out, I’ll turn you into a snake, tie you in a knot, and pick your scales off one by one. Don’t think I won’t.”
That was more like it. A real smile teased across my lips. “All right, let’s move.”
The elevator music tinkled out a painful rendition of “99 Red Balloons” as the door rumbled closed and the mirrored walls closed in.
“How are you going to play this?” Shu asked, staring at my reflection. She’d lost her slick, not-a-hair-out-of-place appearance. Her dark hair was fanned over her shoulders, her pantsuit was creased and splattered with what could possibly be blood, and her eyes were fierce and determined. Whatever my answer was, she’d follow it through. Our shared curse guaranteed that. But there was more to her resolute gaze. She knew this elevator was only going one way for us.
“Let me talk to him. Whatever game he’s playing, he’ll undo it or I’ll bring Osiris into this.” I was betting on the chance that Thoth didn’t want Osiris involved in this any more than I did. We could come to a resolution, Soul Eater to God of Law.
“Are you going to kill him?” Shu asked.
Cat flinched and frowned at us. “What?” she snapped.
I waved a hand at her. “I promised to kill Thoth for Osiris. Keep up.”
“Imbecile.”
I added, “Why couldn’t you have been a useful shifter? Something big with claws. What good is a house cat against a god?”
She glared back at me, a muscle pulsing in her pale cheek. “People tend to keep quiet when there’s a tiger sitting on their desks. A house cat, not so much.”
“Reconnaissance is your speciality?”
She arched an eyebrow in response, which I assumed meant yes.
“In that case, make yourself useful by reconning Thoth’s office and stay hidden until…well, until shit gets messy.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
Wow, it must be cold up there on her pedestal.
“Did I mention how I hate cats? Do you see Bast here? She’d tell you to do the same.”
Cat focused on her own reflection. The floor numbers counted up—nine, ten, eleven—while she chewed on my order.
“Fine.” Shrugging off my coat, she handed it back. The second I took it, she disappeared in a flash of light and crackle of energy, leaving the tiny, green-eyed black cat. The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and the cat dashed ahead, disappearing down the hallway.
I pulled my coat back on, soaking up Cat’s residual warmth. A familiar scent—summer meadows mixed with a heated hint of musk—snagged on my memories. Bast. More than darkness. I could taste her on my lips and feel her close, but I couldn’t recall from when or where. The scent was Cat’s—being a member of Bast’s clowder, their scents were mingled—but the memories seemed new and so close I could almost see them.
“Ace?” Shu stood in the hallway, eyes patient.
The doors began to close, jolting me into motion. “Shu, listen.”
We ventured slowly down the hallway. Windows on either side revealed empty offices. Either it was too early for the working day to begin, or Thoth had cleared out his associates.
“I’ve met Thoth a few times. I figured he was more interested in staplers than godly games, but clearly, I was wrong. I don’t know what he’s scheming here. I need him to talk, to tell us everything, so don’t rile him up.”
The hallway ended at a vast open-plan lounge and office, complete with couches, presentation dais, and, of course, the sweeping desk at one end, behind which Thoth sat, back straight with his fingers steepled in front of him.
The last time I’d seen the god, he’d gotten me out of jail. Here, in his building, surrounded by the business he’d moulded probably for centuries, he seemed to be larger in stature. He still looked like he’d snap in two if you bent him over your knee, but a low-level undercurrent of power that was almost undetectable filled this room. Had I not been jacked up on souls, I probably wouldn’t have sensed it.
It took Shu and I too long to walk from one end of the room to his desk, and all the while, Thoth watched us approach, his grey eyes unblinking. It didn’t escape me how the gods had once sat proudly in throne rooms and watched their supplicants walk toward them, head bowed, feet shuffling.
“You’re a hard man to incentivize, Mister Dante.” Thoth reached down, opened a drawer, and lifted Alysdair onto his desk.
The unsheathed sword glowed a dull green. It wasn’t just the unexpected appearance of my sword that unbalanced me. As soon as I rested my gaze on the naked blade, my thoughts fogged over and my fingers itched. I wanted nothing more than to leap onto the desk, snatch up the sword, and plunge it into Thoth’s chest.
I clenched my hands, crushing the rampant killing desire. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Alysdair had secrets for me. All I had to do was pick it up and those secrets would be mine. I found myself stepping forward and straightened, pulling back.
“Gods do not like to fashion curses,” Thoth said with a flick of his long, bone-thin fingers. “Meddling in minor magic is beneath us, and I prefer to wield the power of words, but on this occasion, I made an exception with the assistance of some eager priests.”
The priests worshipped Thoth? “I met your priests. It didn’t end well for them.”
“Unfortunately, it hasn’t ended well for many of their kind over the years, but the old magic is stirring, and the devoted are rising. They came to me, begged to be in my service. I agreed on the understanding that they would curse you. But, as we have all witnessed, curses can be unwieldy and unpredictable at the best of times.”
“I hate to upset your ego trip, but I can’t be cursed,” I said dismissively. “It’s a one-time deal. Osiris owns my soul.”
A razor-edged smile alighted on Thoth’s pale, thin lips. “Osiris recently killed three seers, all of whom accurately predicted that you had no intention of killing me.”
“You’re well informed.” Other than Shu and Cat, only Osiris knew about my deal to kill Thoth, and he never would’ve told Thoth that he’d ordered me to kill him, but Isis? It didn’t take much of a stretch to believe that Osiris would mention the deal to Isis, or that she might pry the information out of her husband. Isis had been meeting with Thoth.
Isis had been sharing her husband’s pillow talk.
Thoth’s gaze slipped away from me and fell to the sword. “What would the seers say now?”
“They’d tell you to shut up and give me my damn sword back.” I sounded nonchalant, and I was. For the first time in weeks, the restlessness I’d been battling with had vanished. This was the most content I’d been since Bast had walked into my office and I turned her away. This desire, this hunger felt as though it belonged. It felt right. If I could just get my hands on Alysdair, everything would all click into place.
I reached out a hand but snatched it back. There, that need to kill…
“You cursed me?” I asked.
“No.” He tapped a fingernail against Alysdair’s naked blade. “I cursed this remarkable weapon.”
He cursed my sword? Cursed Alysdair. Some things are sacred. If I didn’t want to kill him before, I did now.
His lips ticked—not from a smile, but from something sharper and slippery. “Every time you held this sword or wore it close, the curse ate at your subconscious. For weeks, since we met at the police department and you warned me of Osiris’s intention, it’s been chipping away at your complacency and worming its way inside your mind to find the creature within that lets nothing and no one stand in the way of the hunger, Soul Eater.”
At least Osiris hadn’t gone behind my bac
k when he cursed me. His curse had been a public display, an example of what could happen when you crossed the God of the Underworld. Thoth’s curse, however, had been underhanded and sly. But what had I expected from a god apt at bending the truth to suit his laws?
“Why?” How far had his curse dug in? Were any of my thoughts my own? I was used to Osiris yanking my strings, but this…this undermined all of me and poured doubt over everything I’d said and done. He’d gone too far.
“To make you truer to your nature and turn you back into the monster you are. You had no intention of killing me, Mister Dante. Your warning months ago and subsequent delay made that clear. Now, however, the desire to kill consumes you.”
“You want me to kill you?”
“It’s what I’ve been waiting for. Unfortunately, the curse isn’t precise. The priests were confident you would eventually find your way to me, but you’re unpredictable by nature. You hunted the witches first, drawing attention to yourself in the process.” Those thin lips ticked again. “I prefer discretion.”
Had he completely lost his mind? “I can’t kill you.”
“You killed Ammit,” Thoth said matter-of-factly.
“No, I didn’t. That rumor just won’t die.”
His steely eyes dropped to the sword. “In order to curse the sword, I imbued it with power—my power. That sword, when in your hands and your hands alone, will kill me.”
I curled my fingers around the handle. Alysdair tingled in my grip, as hungry and eager as the truth of me Thoth had awoken. A small sigh slipped from my lips. Now I was complete.
“Why not do it yourself?” I asked. Pieces of me shifted and settled, completing the picture the curse had sketched.
Thoth hesitated and a shadow passed over his face, briefly revealing the skeletal deity beneath. He didn’t want to answer, but Thoth could not—or would not—lie. He wouldn’t give up the truth if he could help it, but I needed to know what was at stake. Osiris wanted Thoth dead because he believed the god was screwing Isis. Thoth wanted himself dead for reasons unknown. And I was the chump caught in the middle, holding the murder weapon.
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