I hesitated as reality fell away. The darkness I was about to consume would poison me from the inside out. Everything I’d worked for in the last few years, every good deed, every sacrifice I’d made to lift the darkness from my soul—I was about to drown it all in Sobek’s child-eating, murderous madness.
“Ace, no!”
Too late, Shu. Someone has to hold back the dark. If I closed my eyes, if I looked away, if I let him go, I could survive with the pieces of my ragged soul intact. But Sobek wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t be bargained with; he couldn’t be persuaded. He was a predator at heart. This was just the beginning.
Maybe it was better this way. It would take millennia to cleanse the rot from my soul, and I didn’t have that long.
“Ksav ovoae, Kuir Aosar.” Step away, Soul Eater. With the smooth, calm female voice, a heady and suffocating power washed over the marshland, pushing against my back and numbing my senses. There are gods, and then there are the “don’t fuck with me, I created the universe” gods. Plan B had arrived.
A chorus of clicks and grumbles joined the sweet push of power. All around the marsh, animals twittered and croaked, joining the crocodiles in their chorus.
Slowly, carefully, I unhooked my grip on Sobek’s soul and withdrew, stepping back.
He snatched at my coat. “Do not leave,” he pleaded, double eyelids furiously blinking. “Do not leave me with her. A deal—let’s make a deal. Sobek likes deals. We’re the same. Sobek knows you. Help me … please.”
I plucked his grip free and watched his expression fall and all the color drain from his face. The smattering of scales paled to a milky white, and with good reason. His gaze flicked over my shoulder, and what he saw pushed him back against the tree. He was a hair’s breadth away from running, but he wouldn’t get far.
I kept my gaze low, turned slowly, dropped to a knee in the sodden earth, and spoke the old words. “Ovamems uk sra Woaek, Musrar uk sra Reqar.” Opener of the Ways, Mother of the River. “Forgive my actions, Neith. Your son and I—”
“Seramca.” Silence.
The weight of her power lashed at my thoughts and turned them over, rifling through the memories of the last few minutes.
When you can’t beat a god, summon one who can.
“You think to devour my son, Kuir Aosar?” Neith’s flowing voice wove around me, sweeping me up. Her words held no malice, but they didn’t need to. She could strike me out of existence with the click of her claw-tipped fingers.
“Your son is not meant for this world.” I glared at a patch of turned-over leaves and listened to the crocs grumbling. Shukra was close, and Kiya too, but I didn’t dare lift my head. You don’t look upon a goddess without an invitation unless you want to spend the next decade displayed somewhere public for the entire pantheon to see. The danger of bringing in a bigger, more badass god was that they could always go biblical. But in Sobek’s case, it had been a risk worth taking.
“I do not take kindly to your sorceress summoning me, Nameless One.”
A golden glow lapped at my knee, where I’d sunk a few inches into the mud. Neith stood close, close enough that the weight of her power leaned on my wits, numbing the edges. I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. I should have felt anxious, but I couldn’t gather my senses together to feel much of anything, other than submission. Unlike Osiris, Neith had no intention of hiding who and what she was. I didn’t need to play games with her. It was both terrifying and … refreshing.
“My apologies. We were left with—”
“And to find you, of all creatures, daring to consume my son’s soul. What am I to do with a soul eater?”
This was probably the part where I should remind her who owned me, but I was still clinging to the vain hope that I could keep all this from landing in Osiris’s lap. If he knew I’d gone over his head to bring Neith in, the repercussions would give me new nightmares.
“K-kill him, mother,” Sobek stuttered.
Power, sharp and bright, lashed through the clearing like lightning. I flinched, expecting to feel it slice through me, but when the seconds ticked on and the pain didn’t come, I peeked at where Sobek had been standing and saw wisps of smoke rising off the scorched tree.
“Soul Eater.” Neith’s hand settled on my head. I ducked low, but that didn’t stop the pins and needles of power from stabbing down my neck. Her light flooded in, burning through my closed eyelids. “I know what you would have sacrificed here, I saw your intentions, but a mother is nothing if she does not have her children.”
Even if those children are monsters, I finished silently.
“Indeed.” She chuckled, and I flinched. She knew my thoughts. Damn, what else did she know?
“I also know it only takes a little light to chase away the dark.”
Her hand lifted and the painful brush of power faded. When I finally lifted my head, Neith and Sobek had vanished, Shu was plucking leaves from her ruined coat, and Kiya was attempting to corral the crocodiles to one side of the clearing.
“You!” Kiya snapped as I approached. “Stay back!”
I lifted my hands. “I can help you if you help me. Stay here, help me get these and any stray crocodiles under control, and I’ll protect you and them.”
Fear gathered in her eyes. “I cannot stay here. I do not like this world.” She looked around as though seeing the clearing for the first time and murmured, “But I cannot get home without Sobek.”
“Find all the younglings. They’ll listen to you. Bring them here. I’ll talk to Osiris about getting you home.”
“You will?”
I wouldn’t tell him everything, and the favor would come with a price, but I’d killed her brother and now she was stuck here. Nothing could erase what I’d done. Getting her and the crocs home was the least I could do. I owed her that much.
“Can you get them all here without anyone seeing you?”
“Yes.”
“Then we have a deal?”
“Agreed.” She eyed me like she still wanted to pick her teeth with my bones. Most people—once they got to know me—gave me the same look. She’d get her revenge, but not today. Today, she had the younglings to protect and a nature reserve to call home. She turned away and I let out a breath.
Somewhere in the distance, carried on the damp breeze, a car horn blared. New York lived and breathed just beyond the trees. Another day, maybe a week, or, if I was lucky, a whole month might go by with no godly bullshit creeping into the city.
I flicked my coat collar up and caught Shu eyeing me out the corner of her eye. “What?”
“You owe me a new pair of boots.”
The dagger was back in its box, tucked away inside my desk, and Alysdair leaned against the filing cabinet, the enchanted blade hidden inside its sheath. Kiya had left it outside my office door as a clear indication that she knew exactly where to find me.
Down the hall, Shu’s phone was ringing, but in my office, in the dark, all I listened to was the patter of rain against the window and the rumble of nighttime traffic. I pressed an ice pack against my cheek, the ghost of Sobek’s punch still aching.
“It only takes a little light to chase away the dark.”
When a goddess like Neith talks, you damn well listen. She knew her son was rotten to the core, and she knew I’d intended to drink his putrid soul down. Considering most gods couldn’t bare to look at me, her response had been … surprising. I’d expected her to deal with Sobek—and she had—but I’d also expected her to screw with me. Instead, she’d been nice. That was more unsettling than crocs in the sewers or a mad reptilian god in tails. Gods weren’t nice—not without a reason.
But it was done. Sobek was gone, for now, and Kiya was otherwise occupied with herding crocs.
I lifted my drink and eyed the clear vodka inside, wishing it had all the answers. Maybe if I kept drinking, one day I’d find them.
My cell rang, playing the chorus from “Red Right Hand” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. I threw back the vodka, c
losed my eyes, and let it burn down deep.
Just one loose end to tie up.
Tossing the ice pack on the desk, I lifted my cell, keeping my eyes closed, and answered. “Osiris.”
Continue the Soul Eater series in Hidden Blade, #1 Soul Eater
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About the Author
Born in Tonbridge, Kent in 1979, — "Wait a second. Let's cut to the chase. I write kick-ass urban fantasy novels with conflicted characters, breathless action, and no-holds-barred dialogue. My books may not leave you feeling all fluffy and warm inside, but they will excite you. There will be plot-twists, there will be angst, probably a few dead bodies, and very likely your favorite character will turn out to be the bad guy. Don't say I didn't warn you—”
—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 another, she has the ability to draw from a patchwork of ancestry and use it as inspiration for her writing. Happily married and the mother of two little girls, she resides on the Devon & Cornwall border.
Contact Pippa here:
@pippadacosta
pippadacosta
www.pippadacosta.com
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Copyright © 2016
The Bull Demon King - J. A. Cipriano
The Black Door - Domino Finn
Dance of the Dead - Sonya Bateman
Hard Row - Ambrose Ibsen
Angry Spark - Al K Line
Family Business - Rob Cornell
Valentine Blues - James A. Hunter
A Drive In The Country - Craig Schaefer
Chase The Dark - Pippa DaCosta
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors listed above.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictions and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All works herein are used by permission of the authors listed above.
Full Metal Magic: An Urban Fantasy Anthology Page 32