The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Constance knelt with her head drooped, her blonde bob hanging in disarray around her face. Her shoulders rose and fell with each halting breath. “I’ve been in contact with her,” she said, voice hoarse. “She’s here, in the city . . . underground.”

  I looked from Constance to Nik and back, seeing the shock and uncertainty I felt mirrored on his face. I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you telling us this?”

  “The disease was never supposed to get out,” Constance said, raising her head to peer up at us. A hint of defiance shone in her eyes. “It was created as collateral. When Initiative Industries first brokered the negotiations between Ouroboros and your Senate, your people would only agree to support our longevity research with funding and”—she glanced away, clearing her throat—“resources if we helped them develop the disease.” By resources, I had no doubt that she meant living test subjects. People, human and Nejeret alike. “It was their way of ensuring we didn’t go back on our word and tell the whole world about them.” She looked at me. “About you.”

  I scoffed. “What does this have to do with Mari?”

  “She and I oversaw the development of the project, but Scott and Gregory handled the day-to-day while Mari and I worked on something that wasn’t strictly on the books.”

  “The ba transfer,” I guessed.

  She nodded. “The technology to remove a Nejeret’s ba already existed—all we had to do was figure out a way to transport fragments of ba into a human subject. Mari theorized that even the smallest, microscopic amount would spark the transformation . . .” Constance shook her head. “But every single time we tried the procedure, the second the balance between human soul and Nejeret ba shifted in favor of the immortal side, the anti-At we’d used to transport the ba fragment would eat away at the newly forming ba like acid through flesh, and the subject would die.”

  Constance looked at Nik. “You’re the one she told me about, aren’t you—the one who can make the transfer work?” There was a flicker of hope in her eyes, even after everything.

  Nik didn’t respond, didn’t even nod. Instead, he looked at me. “Even with Mari’s help, there’s no guarantee that this’ll work. It’s still just theoretical. And assuming the procedure is successful, there’s no way of knowing how much of Garth will be left once his soul is transformed by the ba. He might not even be Garth anymore.”

  “But it’s all we’ve got. Even if there’s only a one percent chance that this’ll work, the odds are still better than if we let the disease run its course,” I said, sounding a little lost, even to myself. I was grasping, and I didn’t care. “He’ll die, Nik. We have to try.” Gods, I sounded like a broken record.

  It took Nik a long time to answer, but finally, he nodded.

  I exhaled heavily, relieved to still have him not just on my side, but at my side. I looked at Constance. “You know exactly where Mari is? You can take us to her?”

  With a hand on the corner of the table, Constance climbed up onto shaky legs. “Yes. Yes, I can, but . . .” She licked her lips, wringing her hands. “I want something in return.”

  I felt the corner of my mouth twitch, and a quick glance at Nik showed the hint of a smirk curving his lips, as well. “What do you want?” I asked her.

  She looked from me to Nik and back. “Use me as a guinea pig. If the procedure doesn’t work, I’ll die, but if it does work . . .”

  “You’ll live,” I said with a rough laugh. “And a hell of a lot longer than you would’ve otherwise.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she said, and to my amazement, she meant it. “If it works, you have to promise to use the procedure on my son. It’s the only way he’ll ever have a chance at a normal life.”

  I stared at her, weighing her request. Was it possible that everything she’d done had been for her kid? I would never say I approved of her methods, but I couldn’t deny that she was a solid mother. Maybe a little extreme with the whole putting the well-being of her kids first—ahead of the whole damn world—but she wasn’t all bad.

  Finally, I shook my head, a wry smile twisting my lips. “Why the hell not,” I said, offering Constance my hand. Besides, I needed her just as much as she needed me. Some of the best partnerships started that way.

  Constance shook my hand, and the agreement was made. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  I pulled my hand back and turned to the two men huddling at the other side of the room, as far away from us as possible. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, boys.” I dipped the tip of the needle dagger in the vial of infected blood to re-coat it and stalked their way. “So . . . you two were in charge of the day-to-day operations on this project. Isn’t that just fascinating?”

  They exchanged a look. It reeked of piss on this side of the room, and it only took a glance down at Scott’s trousers to see why.

  “I wonder who might’ve let Sammy out?” I stopped a few feet from them and waggled the tainted dagger in front of their noses. “Who wanted the disease to get out—to spread?”

  They recoiled.

  I crouched down, elbows on my knees. “First person to spill the beans doesn’t get infected . . .”

  “It was me,” Scott blurted. “I did it.”

  I blinked, taken aback by the quick response. I hadn’t expected it to be so easy to get a confession. I also hadn’t expected that confession to be a lie. “Now why would you ever lie about a thing like that?”

  Gregory sighed, and the older man’s entire demeanor changed. Not just his demeanor, his whole damn appearance. He stood, his head filling out with thick, dark brown hair and his face shedding several dozen years even as his shoulders broadened and he gained a few inches. The muddy brown of his irises gave way to an ethereal bronze that shimmered with an alien light and swirled with a whole galaxy’s worth of stars.

  “Because I compelled him to,” he said.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed, standing and stumbling back a few steps. Gregory—or whoever the hell he was—wasn’t human. And he wasn’t even Nejeret; no Nejeret had eyes like that. The man standing before me was a fully-fledged Netjer, an actual, full-powered god, like the two who were currently still on sabbatical from our universe.

  Vines of At shot past me as Nik reacted, but those indestructible ropes evaporated into a rainbow mist before they even came close to touching the Netjer.

  I took another step backward, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. My heart hammered in my chest as I struggled, fruitlessly, to come up with a plan. But a Netjer is basically all-powerful. There was nothing I could do to this guy that he couldn’t fend off, let alone throw back at me tenfold. There was no way for me to beat him and a gazillion ways for me to die trying.

  I took one more step backward and ran into Nik’s warm, solid body. The sudden contact made nearly jump out of my skin.

  “Just me,” Nik said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He rested his hands on my shoulders, and I took comfort from his touch. Drew strength from it. Maybe I couldn’t beat this guy in a fight, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to run away with my tail tucked between my legs.

  I straightened my spine and locked stares with the unwelcome Netjer. He wasn’t from our universe; there were only four Netjers native to this place—the original creators of this universe, Re and Apep, and the new gods, my niece and nephew, Susie and Syris—and this Netjer was most certainly none of them. He didn’t belong here.

  “Who are you?” I asked, voice hard and surprisingly steady. Go me.

  The Netjer clasped his hands behind his back. “A visitor.”

  “Well, you’re not welcome here,” I snapped. “Go—”

  Nik gave my shoulders a squeeze, and I shut my mouth, however reluctantly. “Why are you here?” he asked, sounding a whole lot more in control than I had.

  “I’ve heard much about you, Nekure,” the Netjer said, using Nik’s true, ancient name. “Re speaks of you often.”

  I felt Nik stiffen behind me.

  “What do you want?” I asked.
/>
  The Netjer leveled a cold stare my way, and his scrutiny paralyzed my lungs. “It would be impossible for your mind to understand my desires while in your current form.”

  “Why are you here?” Nik asked, repeating his earlier question.

  The Netjer’s stare shifted to Nik, and only then could I suck in a lungful of breath. “To observe,” he said and turned away to stroll toward the sealed-off wall of windows. “To learn.” He glanced at us over his shoulder. “To decide,” he said a second before he evaporated into a glowing, writhing mass and floated through the wall of windows.

  “Wait!” I shouted after him.

  But he—it—was already gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “To decide,” Lex said, her brow scrunched as she studied my face. “That’s what he said—to observe, to learn, and to decide?”

  We were sitting at the table tucked away in the breakfast nook, surrounded by windows giving us a view of the storm pouring rain outside and bending the trees this way and that. The manicured gardens behind the house were already covered in a bevy of pine branches and bunches of leaves, and the angry clouds in the sky only seemed to be darkening.

  “No and,” I said, “but yeah, those were his words.” I took a gulp of my Cherry Coke. Their house had one of those fancy pop machines that could make essentially any flavor of carbonated beverage. It was pretty awesome, and the sugar and caffeine were doing wonders to fend off the shock of the Netjer run-in. “What the hell—” I glanced at Reni, sitting in the high chair beside Lex at the table, snacking on string cheese. Her onyx ringlets appeared almost blue in the stormy afternoon light. “Sorry. I meant, what the heck is a fu—freaking Netjer doing here? Did Susie or Syris mention anything about a visitor?”

  Lex shook her head, her fingers automatically going to the At falcon pendant hanging on a silver chain around her neck. It had been a gift from her godly children given to her just a few minutes before they left for the Netjer home universe three years ago, and it’s the sole link between this universe and wherever they are, at least so far as us lowly Nejerets are concerned. I crossed my arms over my chest and sniffed. Apparently some Netjers could come and go as they pleased.

  “He had coppery eyes,” Nik told Lex, “if that helps the twins identify who he is. I think that part of his physical appearance was genuine, at least, though I don’t know about anything else.”

  “He dissolved into one of those shining light blobs like the twins did,” I added, though I doubted that helped at all. I lifted my glass to take another sugary sip.

  “I’ll talk to the twins,” Lex said. “See what they know.”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t suppose there’s any way that they can come back here and, oh, say, deal with this whole mess, can they?”

  Sighing, Lex shook her head. “I wish . . .” She picked a stray chunk of string cheese off her shoulder, seemed to think about what to do with it, then handed it back to her daughter, who grinned and popped it into her mouth. I wondered if Lex had been considering eating it herself. “They’re stuck where they are until the other Netjers decide they’re capable of tending to this universe.” Her shoulders bunched up. “All I keep thinking is that maybe the other Netjers sent this guy here to watch over things in the twins’ absence, but . . .” Her shoulders dropped. “I don’t know.”

  I snorted a bitter laugh. “Well, if that’s the deal, he sure is doing a bang-up job.” Shaking my head, I tapped Nik’s arm with the back of my hand and said, “We should go.” We’d spent too much time discussing the “visitor” already, and Garth’s life was sand in an hourglass.

  “Oooooh . . .” Reni pointed in Nik’s and my general direction. “Pretty colors!” She clapped her hands together, causing a few cheese bits to go flying.

  I exchanged a quick, confused glance with Nik, then looked at Lex, eyebrows drawn together.

  Lex raised one hand and shook her head. “I have no idea. She’s been seeing things that are invisible to the rest of us lately—must be her sheut maturing.”

  Like Nik, Reni was one of the few Nejerets to have been born of two Nejeret parents, thanks to a little loophole in that whole Nejeret reproductive snag. Lex and Heru were what Nejerets called a “bonded pair,” a rare set of true soul mates, their bas resonating perfectly with one another. As a result, they were one of the few Nejeret couples able to reproduce together. They were also addicted to each other—physically—and would die if separated for too long. A tough bargain, but one they seemed content with. And unlike Lex, Heru, Aset, and me, who’d all gained sheuts later in life by Susie and Syris, Reni had been born with hers, courtesy of her unique parentage. She was growing up with a sheut, giving her access to unknown powers at a very early age. She fit into the small fraction of the Nejeret population born with sheuts—Nik, Mei, and Mari, among them—and it would be a while before the full extent of Reni’s innate powers was clear.

  I exchanged another look with Nik, frowning this time. What did Reni see when she looked at me? Or at us? “Right, well . . .” I pushed my chair back and stood, and Nik did the same. Lex followed a moment later. “We’re taking Constance with us, but we promise to bring her back.”

  “Fair enough,” Lex said. She followed us to the front door, standing in the opening as we made our way down the porch stairs. “You don’t want to see Garth before you go?”

  The muscles in my shoulders bunched up. The thought of facing him without having a way to save him made my stomach turn. Guilt. Dread. Flat-out fear. I was sick with all of it. But not as sick as Garth would be soon, especially if this didn’t work.

  I shook my head, unable to turn around to look my sister in the eye.

  Lex sighed. “Alright, well, will you tell Heru to come join me when he’s finished?” He was in the dungeon, where Nik and I were headed to pick up Constance, the third member of our impromptu ambush-Mari team. He’d been leading the charge on interrogating the board members ever since we started sending them through the bedsheet gateway, and I had no doubt he was extracting some pretty juicy information.

  I nodded, turning partially to wave at her. “And you’ll have Dom pass on whatever you learn from the twins, yeah?”

  “Of course,” Lex said with a nod. At the sound of a high-pitched shriek from within the house—either a laugh or a cry, I couldn’t tell—she cringed, then shut the door. I loved Reni, but man, the kid was just so very toddler.

  I passed through the gateway I’d drawn on the wall of the garage, right on top of Heru’s dungeon, and stepped into a crowded pub. Constance followed me, Nik right behind her. I’d been nervous about creating the gateway to the Pike Brewing Company, an always-bustling brewery and eatery located in the warren beneath Pike Place Market—I wasn’t eager about exposing so many people to the now-infectious Constance, but so long as she kept her hands and her fluids to herself, all of the innocent humans would be safe.

  I’d have chosen a less-crowded destination, but this was the place in the market I knew best—and hence could draw best—and the gateway had been a breeze to create. My only other option was the oh-so-famous fish market upstairs, and that was way too exposed for an out-of-thin-air appearance. At least down here there were doorways to pretend to pass through, not to mention alcohol to dull any onlookers’ senses.

  “Lead the way,” I told Constance, holding my arm out for her to pass me by. I figured I didn’t have to worry about her bolting—helping us was her only chance at surviving the disease. The only way she’d ever get to see her kids again. The only way her son would get better.

  Pike Place Market is a multistoried maze, with ramps and hallways and in-between floors aplenty, and our route through the tangle was far from a straight shot. We headed up to the main outdoor level, passing by the famed fish market, narrowly dodging the huge Coho salmon being lobbed around to entertain the tourists, and wound through the throng to an offshooting stairway that led to the lower floors—or, at least, to parts of the lower floors. We passed by a free-trade jewe
lry and trinkets shop, a seller of miniature cars, animals, and pretty much everything else, and a kitschy magic shop on our way to a locked door marked “Restricted” tucked between the odorific men’s restroom and a used bookstore.

  When we reached the door, Constance produced an inky black key made of anti-At, and Nik and I both recoiled instinctively, however minutely. Touching the stuff wouldn’t hurt Constance, since she didn’t have an eternal ba—yet—but it would unmake any Nejeret from the soul out. Except for me, thanks to the protective Eye of Horus symbol tattooed into my palm. The At-inked symbol had already saved my life and my ba from the effects of anti-At, and it had the obsidian striations marbling through the opalescent ink to prove it.

  Constance unlocked the door, and the three of us entered a narrow, steep stairwell lit only by a few ancient-looking bulbs in caged light fixtures high up on the walls.

  “Cozy,” I commented, eyeing the flickering lights. About one in three bulbs actually worked.

  “This leads to an old utilities room,” Constance explained without looking back. She was concentrating on the slightly uneven stairs. “The market made some updates a few years ago, and this area’s not in use anymore.”

  “That explains the excellent upkeep,” I said, glancing back at Nik.

  He breathed a laugh, but no hint of a smile touched his lips. He had his game face on. Not surprising—Mari wasn’t his favorite person, and she was one of the few people whose sheut power was a match for his. She was one of the few people who could pose an actual threat to him.

  Constance led us deeper into the market’s underbelly, and we entered a defunct boiler room with a hodgepodge of breaker boxes lining the brick walls to what appeared to be a bricked-over doorway. At least, until Constance wound her way through the ancient machinery filling the room and depressed a single brick to the right of the old doorway, then pushed on the area of newer bricks. It gave in with the grind of stone on stone until there was an opening plenty wide enough for a person to fit through. The space beyond was pitch-black, even to my sensitive eyes.