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

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  “Mom,” I called out. “Are you here?”

  Beyond the vast river of soul-energy, the darkness that was Aaru loomed, growing ever closer. I tried to slow my steady drift toward that prison, flailing my black- and white-streaked golden arms and kicking against the flow of the soul-energy, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. Aaru was closing in fast, and once it had me, it wouldn’t matter what Mari did. I would never wake up.

  “Mom,” I called out again. “I need your help!”

  The soul-energy stirred, swirling and eddying like I was stuck in a changing tide.

  “Please,” I begged, “I need your help.”

  Aaru was getting way too close for comfort. Another few seconds and it would swallow me up.

  This was a mistake. I’d been stupid and rash, acting without thought, caring little about the possible consequences. I could picture Heru’s reaction when Mari told him I’d died—and how I’d died. He would be angry, but not surprised. He’d always seen me for the reckless mess I was, and now I’d gone and proved him right.

  Those vibrant streams of energy writhed all around me, tendrils wrapping around my arms and legs, snaking around my waist, stalling my movement toward Aaru.

  A face appeared directly in front of me, the slivers of soul-energy forming a final, thin film between Aaru and me. It was my mom, her multihued features twisted in anger and fear. “You shouldn’t be here!” she hissed. “I told you to stay away. You have to get out of here! Leave before—”

  “I can’t leave,” I told her, “not yet. Mom—I need your help.”

  “Kat, my love, you must go,” my mom urged, “before she senses your presence here.”

  “Isfet?” I said, remembering half a second too late about Re and Apep’s no-talk fail-safe. Apparently, it didn’t apply here in Duat.

  “Don’t say her name!”

  “So she is evil?” I searched my mom’s familiar features. “Please, I have to know.”

  My mom’s face shifted in the soul-energy, almost like she was shaking her head. “Not exactly. She’s neither good nor evil; she simply is. Her sole purpose is to protect the universe using any means necessary. She has no conscience. No emotions, at least, not in the way that we do.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “When she took on my shape, she forged a direct connection between us. I could see and feel everything she thought. Everything she felt. This will not end well for you, sweetheart. She’ll use you up until there’s nothing left of you but ash and memory.”

  I gulped. That didn’t sound so good . . . for me. But what about everyone else? “Is the danger she talked about real?” I asked. “Or was she just lying to get out of Aaru?” I knew my mom well enough that she would try to save my life no matter what, even at the expense of everyone else’s. That was one place we disagreed.

  “She is not lying,” my mom said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she is not capable of lying.”

  I frowned, thinking of The Devil card. It spoke of deceit, but not outright lies. “Well . . . do you know what it is—the big ‘threat’? Is she really our only hope?”

  “I do not—” My mom’s eyes opened wide. “She’s coming,” she said just a moment before she disappeared.

  Something grabbed my arm. “Daughter?”

  I craned my neck to look behind me.

  The mass of soul-energy wore the shape of my mom, even spoke in her voice, but this being was not her. This was Isfet—or, at least, a spiritual hologram of her—the universe’s consciousness, speaking with me from her prison in Aaru. “Why are you here? Is it time?”

  “Time?” I swallowed roughly. Could she sense my doubts where she was concerned? Could she feel my fear? “Time for what?”

  She blinked multicolored eyes and tilted her head to the side, confusion warping her borrowed features. “Why, time for my escape, of course.”

  I shook my head, wanting nothing more than to get away from her. “No,” I said hesitantly. “No, not yet.”

  “Oh.” Her face fell, her grip loosening. “Then you must return to the physical realm.” She was already pushing me toward the barrier. “You cannot die. I need you alive.”

  “What?” I shook my head. “No, wait.” I frowned, thinking fast. I’d flubbed the meeting with my mom; this might be my last chance to get the answers I needed. “I—I have to know. What happens after I get you out of Aaru?”

  Isfet’s rainbow gaze grew distant. “Disaster is on the horizon. We must all fight if we are to survive.”

  “Fight what? How?” I couldn’t resist asking the thing I feared most. “Is it me? Am I the thing you’re so afraid of?”

  Isfet tilted her head to the side, once again displacing her—my mom’s—facial features for a fraction of a second. “You are not the enemy at the gate, daughter,” she said, reaching out a hand to trail her fingertips along my forearm, tracing the thickened veins of At and anti-At. “You are the sword I will use to defeat them.”

  “Them, who?”

  “The makers . . .” Her features grew unfocused for a fraction of a second, like her hold was slipping. “I must restore my connection to the rest of this universe, or they will destroy everything,” she said. And she couldn’t lie.

  So, the choice was to leave Isfet in Aaru to protect myself but leave the universe and everyone and everything in it to fend for itself against these “makers,” or to let her out. Let her use me. One last sacrifice. Third time’s the charm, right?

  I felt a sudden, sharp tug within my chest and heard three faint words echo all around me.

  Wake up, Kat . . .

  Shit. Time was up. Mari was trying to revive me, and I still didn’t have any answers about what was going on at the school. I’d been too sidetracked by the bigger-picture shit.

  I gritted my teeth and tensed every inch of my soul, fighting the pull to return to my body. “How do I defeat a shadow being?” I asked.

  “Shadow being?” Isfet repeated back to me. She stared off at the transparent barrier between Duat and the physical realm. Her gaze grew unfocused, and a moment later, her borrowed features contorted in rage. “Abominations!” she hissed. She gripped my arms, fingers like talons. “You must cleanse them, before they consume more of the soul-energy!”

  The shadows consumed soul-energy? Was that what was causing the current imbalance and making the song of ma’at so awful?

  The pull came again. Must’ve been the second shot of epinephrine.

  I groaned, fighting it. Mari’s attempts to revive me hurt worse than dying had.

  I reached out, gripping Isfet’s color-changing arms, hoping holding on to her would anchor me here for just a moment longer. “How?” It was hard to speak now, like my nonexistent lungs couldn’t suck in any nonexistent air. It was hard to do anything other than fight the pull. “How do I cleanse the shadows?”

  My fingers slipped through Isfet’s arms, my soul no longer as substantial as she was in this place. I was being dragged away from her. I had seconds left, max.

  “You must draw on your connection to the universe,” Isfet said, losing her form as the distance between us grew. “You must consume their darkness and free their souls.” She was little more than a voice now. “And then you must free me, or everything you love will be destroyed.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I sucked in a breath, gasping for air like I was drowning. My heart drummed against my sternum—buh-DUM buh-DUM buh-DUM—threatening to break free. I was shaking, freezing but on fire from the inside out. I kicked my legs and scratched at my chest, my lungs and heart and whole body aching.

  Isfet’s words replayed in my mind.

  . . . draw on your connection to the universe . . . consume their darkness . . . free me . . . or everything you love will be destroyed . . .

  Nothing she’d said made much sense, and I was even more confused after talking to her and to my mom than I’d been before. I’d never been more pissed off to be alive. I nee
ded more time in Duat. But it was too late now.

  “Stop, Kat,” someone said. Someone right on top of me, from the sound of it. Someone straddling my hips and holding my wrists, from the feel of it. Someone who wasn’t Mari. Someone who couldn’t possibly be real, couldn’t be here, because of all of the usual questions—how, why, and huh?

  “Fuck,” Nik hissed in annoyance. “Stop fighting me!”

  I opened my eyes, yanking my wrists free instinctively to cover my chest. “What the hell are you doing here,” I tried to demand, but the most I could get out was “Wha—” My lungs seized up, and my tongue refused to cooperate with the signals my brain was sending it. I was too cold from the ice bath, too jacked up from the epinephrine. It wasn’t a pretty combination.

  Shocking the hell out of me, Nik moved to sit on the floor beside me and scooped me up, hugging me to him. I felt like a limp noodle in his hold. A frozen, deep-fried, very limp noodle. And he felt like heaven, with all of that warmth and steadiness. My mind screamed for me to shove him away and demand to know what the hell was going on—for real, this time—but my frozen body and traumatized soul wanted nothing more than to soak him up.

  I clung to him even as he clutched me more tightly. Tears welled in my eyes. Not tears of anger or frustration or hate. These were a rare variety of tear, one I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced before. One I couldn’t define as anything other than good. Great. Wondrous.

  My throat tightened, and my erratically beating heart swelled. This was the third time Nik had been around when I’d either died or been well on my way there. This was the third time I’d seen evidence that he really, truly gave a shit about my life. Specifically, that my life continued on. Third time—I couldn’t turn a blind eye to what was right in front of me. To what the tarot cards had tried to tell me. Not anymore.

  Nik cared about me. Deeply. And, damn it, much as I’d tried to ignore my own feelings toward him, I cared about him. A whole damn lot. Our complicated past, what felt for so long like an unbreachable barrier, no longer mattered to me. Neither did the fact that he’d led an insanely long, complex life way before I’d even been born. It didn’t matter that he’d been involved in some really damn important shit. Like, universe-saving shit.

  Because so had I.

  My anger at being yanked out of Duat before I’d had the chance to get a clear explanation from my mom or Isfet about anything evaporated. I would figure it out, just like I had figured out how to cure everyone who’d been sick with the Cascade Virus. I would do it, because I had to.

  And now, cocooned in Nik’s sturdy embrace, I was more determined than ever to get the job done without dying. To figure out how to deal with Isfet and the big, looming danger without losing my life. It had been a long time since I’d truly cared about my life, but it looked like Nik’s caring was rubbing off on me. I wanted to be around to see where this thing between us could go. Even if he ended up crushing my heart, I thought it would probably be worth it. If it felt this good to simply be held by him, it had to be worth it.

  Amazed by the thoughts spinning around in my mind, by the emotions making my soul sing, I placed my open hands on Nik’s chest and pushed away from him a few inches. I needed to see his face, his eyes . . . to confirm that what I was feeling between us was real. That it wasn’t all in my head, the wishful longing of a perpetual teenager.

  Nik resisted, but only for a moment. When I saw his face, his expression wasn’t one of wonder or tenderness, as I imagined mine must’ve been; it was thunderous. The tension turning every inch of his face to stone spoke of anger, the deep crease between his brow of pain, the wild cast to his pale eyes of desperation.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, voice harsh.

  Plenty of things, but none that I wanted to tell him right then. At that moment, I only wanted one thing—him.

  With both hands, I reached up, gripping the sides of his head, and pulled his face down to mine until our lips touched. His lips were fire to my ice, making mine burn and tingle as I absorbed his heat.

  A low, rough noise rumbled up from deep within Nik’s chest. His hand clamped around the back of my head, and he opened his mouth, deepening the kiss. His stubble was rough against my face, and he tasted faintly of chocolate, coffee, and cigarettes.

  That first taste of him awakened something inside me, something raw and unbridled, savage and ravenous. Sure, I’d had lust-at-first-sight for Nik pretty much since the first moment I saw him, back when I was as afraid of him as I was intrigued by him. How could I not have wanted him? He was the single most stunningly beautiful person I’d ever seen, and his do-what-I-want, zero-fucks-given attitude only amped up his sex appeal.

  But what I was feeling now was way more than the eagerness of long-denied, bottled-up attraction. This was hunger. Need. Desire beyond anything I’d ever felt, and I’d felt a lot, with more people than I could remember. This was something different. More. New. This made everything I’d ever experienced before seem like a watery reflection of what real passion could be.

  And I needed more.

  Without breaking the kiss, I twisted my body, getting my knees underneath me, and crawled onto Nik’s lap. His arm wrapped around me as I straddled him, his fingers splaying across the bare skin of my lower back. I tugged at the lapels of his leather coat, trying to push it off his shoulders. I was practically naked, and he had a lot of catching up to do. Fair was fair, after all.

  But the coat wouldn’t budge, and I growled in frustration. I needed to feel his skin on mine as much as I needed to take my next breath. More, even.

  Nik grunted and released me to help, straightening as he tore off his coat and flung it off to the side. I gripped the bottom hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up, and Nik raised his arms, letting me yank the shirt off over his head.

  Bare from the waist up, Nik wrapped his arms around me, crushing my breasts against his chest. My skin zinged everywhere it touched his. My nerve endings felt electric, alive in a whole new way. I ran my fingertips up and down his back, memorizing the topography of his taut muscles, savoring the way his skin responded to my touch with the rise of an endless string of goose bumps.

  A feminine throat-clearing broke through the haze of lust, and we froze.

  Mari was in the bathroom with us. I’d forgotten all about her. Apparently, we both had.

  She sort of laugh-coughed. “So, this is awkward . . .”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I hate to interrupt, but you’re blocking the doorway . . .”

  Mari’s words broke the spell woven by our combined desire, and heat of another kind entirely suffused my body, making my neck and cheeks burn. I hid my face in the crook of Nik’s neck, where one of the ancient goddess Isis’s wings stretched out over his skin in black ink, and waited for my breathing to slow down. Without the distraction of making out with Nik, I could feel the full effect of the epinephrine coursing through my veins. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  My thoughts raced, amplified by the drug. What had I been thinking? Doing this here, now . . . ever. Throwing myself at Nik like I had was bad enough, but that Mari had been there to witness the whole thing—that was soul-crushing. Knowing her, she’d never let me live it down.

  Nik chuckled, the laughter making his chest vibrate against me. Apparently, he wasn’t so put off by our audience.

  Mari crouched down beside us. I could feel the displacement of the air. “How do you feel, Kat?” she asked me.

  “Like I want to die,” I grumbled.

  Beneath me, Nik’s whole body stiffened. He didn’t seem too fond of my joke.

  Mari patted the top of my head. “Maybe give death a break for a week or two. We almost didn’t get you back.”

  I didn’t bother telling her I’d been fighting her attempts to revive me. Then they’d both think I was genuinely suicidal.

  I pushed away from Nik and stood, avoiding looking at him or Mari. “Well you did get me back,” I said, trudging out of the bathroom. I grab
bed a throw blanket off the foot of the bed and wrapped it around my shoulders to use as a makeshift robe as I headed out to the kitchen in search of food. I was ravenous.

  The first cupboard I opened was filled with cups and dishes, the second spices and such. The third cupboard I searched was a gold mine of protein bars, dried fruit and nuts, and vitamin- and electrolyte-enhanced drink mix. I grabbed a bag of dehydrated pineapple, a few protein bars indiscriminately, and a container of drink mix, then turned to the fridge for a bottle of water.

  “Actually,” Mari said, emerging from the bedroom. Nik followed behind her, pulling his T-shirt on over his head. My eyes couldn’t help but linger on his inked skin. “I didn’t revive you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, tearing off half of a ring of dried pineapple with my teeth. I twisted the cap off the water bottle as I chewed, dumping a packet of the drink mix—raspberry lemonade, it turned out—into the bottle and shaking it up.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Mari said. “I tried to bring you back, but you wouldn’t wake.” She glanced over her shoulder at Nik, who was leaning against the doorframe behind her, arms crossed over his chest. “But the second he touches you . . .”

  Water bottle inches from my lips, I met Nik’s pale blue eyes. I could only hold his penetrating stare for a couple seconds. Lowering the bottle, I adjusted the blanket so it was covering me more securely. The entire back of the thing was drenched from my hair, but at least I wasn’t standing there in my underwear.

  “You’re like the princess in a fairy tale,” Mari said. I wished she would just shut up. “True love’s kiss . . .”

  I scoffed, rolling my eyes, and turned my back to both of them. I slammed the bottle of fizzing water, then tore open one of the protein bars, took a bite—carrot cake, or something trying really hard to taste like carrot cake—and inhaled deeply through my nose.

  This blanket wasn’t doing much for my self-confidence. I needed my clothes. And my boots. Then I’d be back on familiar ground, and I might—might—be able to face these two.