But he was none of those things at the moment. His body hurt from head to toe, full of scars and gouging incisions still in need of serious healing. He had never been a good invalid, however, so he kept moving, refusing a sickbed, knowing that eventually the physical agony would fade away…that this healing pain was nothing compared to what he had endured. The mending carvings in his body were child’s play in comparison to their acquisition.
“In a minute,” he called to his friend.
He turned the word friend over and over in his mind. Maybe Jackson was still the friend he knew and loved. Or maybe he was just another evil thing wearing the skin of someone he trusted. That was all he could think of ever since Jackson had explained to him what a Bodywalker was. A soul from ancient Egypt, reborn in a host body, supposedly living a symbiotic life with that host. So his best friend was, at best, compromised. At worst…Leo hoped like hell he wouldn’t need to kill his brother in order to get at the thing existing inside of him. He’d be damned before he would sit on the sidelines and let a thing like Chatha take over his best friend. That Bodywalker psychopath had seized the innocent mind and body of a Down syndrome man, the ultimate wolf in easily recognizable sheep’s clothing. But according to Jackson, there were the good Bodywalkers, the Politic, like the ones residing in Jackson and his significant other, Marissa, and there were the bad Bodywalkers, the Templars, who subjugated the existing soul inside of their new host and completely hijacked them.
As far as Leo was concerned, there was very little difference. And on top of it he had learned a very valuable lesson. Never turn your back on anyone, no matter how soft and innocuous they may seem. And right now that included Jackson and Marissa. Bodywalker pharaohs.
Compromised.
Leo straightened, dusting the corpses of the grass blades he had mutilated off his jeans. He remembered a little too late to do so with a measure of gentility, but a blinding sensation of pain quickly reminded him. He stood for a moment, his rear teeth clutching tightly to one another as he rode out the wave of it. He took a slow deep breath in through his nose, and then exhaled in a forceful stream. Better. It was better.
He walked over to the porch steps, but remained at the foot of the stairs, keeping his distance.
“What’s up?”
“Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Nothing much. Just sitting around and healing. I think I’m a little too idle. I don’t do well with too much downtime.”
Jackson’s eyes reflected his understanding. Nothing sucked more ass than being forced to sit still and do nothing.
“Besides, I’m not sure I can keep from stabbing your housemate through the eye with a pencil for much longer.” Leo pantomimed the stab, including a vicious little flurry of movement that translated into scrambled brains via an eye socket.
How could Jackson blame him? Their “housemate” was Kamenwati, the former right hand of the Templar leader Odjit and the sole means of introduction between Leo and the demented Chatha. Kamen had set Chatha on Leo like a rabid dog, supposed vengeance for the nearly dead state of his mistress. Leo had cut the bitch’s throat, completely unaware of who and what she was, unaware of her import to the Templars. All he had known at the time was that she had killed Jackson.
Or so the story went. Apparently his memory had been completely wiped out of the entire encounter, a method of guarding him against exposure to the existence of the Nightwalker races—these creatures of the night with immense powers. But by robbing him of his memory, they had robbed him of the opportunity to be on guard against the revenge that had been exacted via Kamenwati and Chatha.
Leo was more than a little angry about that.
He took in a slow, soundless breath, corralling his rage, leaving his face placid.
“He’s not a housemate, Leo,” Jackson said with a frown. “People under heavy guard and who are being grilled nightly for information are hardly invited guests.”
“I don’t care if you pull his fucking nails out every night!” He rounded on Jackson with a vicious vent of ichor. “He deserves to die and I’m itching to do the deed! If you want to keep that from happening then I need to get the fuck out of here. And frankly, you should be in a rush to send me on my way because I’m not too sure you’re going to make it through the next twenty-four hours either.”
“Leo!” Jackson barked his name, getting to his feet. “I am not your enemy!”
“No, but you harbor him! Or maybe you are my enemy. I have no idea what that thing squirming around inside of you is. All I know is that no one in this house can be trusted. There are too many variables at play and I’m not about to sleep soundly here while trying to figure it all out. I’ve had it up to my craw with blind faith and trust. I’m leaving at daylight, and from what I understand you can’t follow me and neither can any of those Gargoyles. The beauty is I can move in daylight. I can get thousands of miles away from this fucked-up world of yours before sunset and believe me when I say you won’t be able to find me.”
“You think so?” Jackson lashed back at him. “I’ll find you, Leo. You’re thinking in human terms, my friend. This is a Nightwalker world. I live with Gargoyles that have wings and a smoking-hot sense of smell. Or maybe I’ll get Docia and Ram’s little Djynn friend to snap her fingers and bring you right back to where you are standing now.”
“That just proves my point. The Jackson I know wouldn’t try and strong-arm me into anything. He would have let me live my life on my own terms. But now you have all this power”—he scoffed in disgust, sweeping an acidic look over Jackson—“and no one to stop you from using it however you like.”
“The Jackson you know would fight for you,” Jackson said, his anger spinning away as his voice grew softer. “He would make sure you took care of yourself. He would want to see you healed before letting you run off half-cocked so you can show the world, and more importantly yourself, what a badass you are.”
“The Jackson I know would never talk about himself in the third person,” Leo snapped.
“Really? Is that how you want to justify all of this? Discarding me because you don’t understand this world you’ve been thrust into? The Leo I know wouldn’t run away like a scared little girl. He’d face his fears, face the world around him. I need you, Leo. I need people I know and trust here.” He stepped forward and Leo couldn’t help himself, he stepped back in instant retreat. The action made Jackson frown. “I’m facing an enemy with the powers of a god, Leo. A god I know very little about. The Templars are out there, just waiting for a new leader to step into the vacancy left behind by Odjit. And they don’t even know that the players have changed. That the god Apep was reborn into Odjit’s body. As far as they know they are following their Templar leader, and not this…this thing Kamenwati has resurrected!”
“All the more reason to kill him,” Leo spat. “Tell you what, give me a pencil and five minutes alone with him and then I’ll stay.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Jackson bit back grimly. “Even if he wasn’t going to play out as a powerful ally now that he’s defected to our side, I’m still Jackson Waverly inasmuch as I am Menes, Bodywalker Pharaoh. I will never have it in me to sentence any man, good or evil, arbitrarily to death.”
“Arbitrary? The fucker set a psychopath loose on me! I can still feel that monster’s hands inside me fumbling around, trying to decide which part of me he was going to show me next! He deserves to die. Horribly, painfully. And soon. Because if you think I’m going to let this just slide…”
“Leo, you’re human. You’re frail and mortal, a brittle thing, as you already have learned, in the face of the power he and his kind can wield. You wouldn’t even come close to him.” Jackson sighed and rubbed at the tension coiled in the back of his neck. “Do you really think a part of me doesn’t want to let you at him? Doesn’t want to do it myself? But the knowledge Menes has of the last time this demon god sought to rule in this realm is terrifying. I’ve gotten no more sleep than you have since you
came back, sunlight or no sunlight.”
Leo quieted. Jackson had been awake? “But I thought…?”
“Thought I was paralyzed in daylight? I am…if that daylight touches me. The windows in the house are polarized. If there was some kind of attack on this house, do you think we would want to be caught helpless? Does that make any sense?”
Jackson saw the anxious thought that flitted across Leo’s features. “And yeah, I’ve heard you every single time you’ve woken up screaming like some inhuman thing. Did you really think no one would notice?”
“I don’t know,” Leo sneered, “you seem pretty good at ignoring the other inhuman things in your house.”
Jackson sighed. He had known going into it that there would be no reasoning with his friend. He’d never really been able to influence Leo once his emotions began to propel him into something. In spite of what he would like to reflect to everyone, Leo felt and felt deeply. All Jackson had ever been able to do was try to remind his friend to be the better person. But if he took that tactic right then, Leo would most likely deck him and put that pencil in his eye.
“I am an inhuman thing,” he said softly. “And that will never change. Not until I am truly dead and gone from this world. And when I think of living this life with you hating me and what I am, it’s a very painful proposition. But not half as painful for me as it will be for Docia, the woman you helped me to raise from a little girl, who loves you like a father, a brother, and a mother. What about her, Leo? Are you going to jam a pencil in her eye and call it a day?”
The bald query took Leo aback, as it was meant to do. It also made him angrier because Jackson was clearly manipulating him with his weaknesses. And yet…most infuriating of all…Jackson had a point. If he were to drink the Bodywalker Kool-Aid, then that meant Docia was every bit the girl he had loved for all of her lifetime. Only now she was more. More beautiful, more powerful, more wise. In fact, after watching her closely this past week, he began to notice a quiet strength and confidence that had not shined from her before Tameri, her Bodywalker, had made her into a host, housing within her like some sort of existential hotel.
Considering she’d had to die before she could become a host, well, it still made him sick to his stomach when he realized that, if not for Tameri, Docia would have washed up a bloated, broken corpse on the banks of the Esopus River after she had been pushed off the bridge straddling it. He had almost lost her. He couldn’t deny that he might owe Tameri some gratitude for her intervention.
But it was hard to get past the idea that the brother and sister were different now, and that he did not trust them the way he’d always had. Then again, he doubted he would ever trust anyone ever again. Certainly not anyone from this world, this covert world that normal, fragile mortals lived in utter ignorance of.
As for Docia’s Bodywalker lover…despite the fact that Leo had never seen her happier, more vibrant and more alive…he was very much opposed to that match. Back when Ram had been an “original,” as they liked to call it, he had been one of the most notoriously cruel pharaohs of Egypt, the vicious Ramses II. Leo had been raised a good Catholic boy in a devoutly Catholic household, and though he didn’t hold much with it anymore, he remembered his catechism and the brutal stories of Exodus. Was he supposed to take their word for it that Ram was now a good man? For that matter, was he supposed to take them at their word that they were this enlightened version of the Egyptian hierarchy? They were embroiled in a civil war, just how enlightened could they be? As if his thoughts had conjured him, Ramses II, presently known as Ram, walked out onto the porch. After giving Leo a brief nod of acknowledgment, he took a seat in a chair near Jackson, facing him. He sat on the edge, elbows propped on knees. Jackson retook his seat as well.
“Brother, we need to talk about some things,” he said to Jackson, almost as though Leo weren’t standing right there. It made Leo bristle with rapid fury, the anger almost virulent.
“Sure you want to do that with a lowly human around, brother?” he spat out. There was no familial blood between them, Leo thought angrily. Never had been to hear them talk about it. Each had been pharaoh in differing dynasties. It had not been until lifetimes later that they had become friends to each other. Become brothers. Just the same, this man had no idea what it meant to be brother to a man like Jackson Waverly.
Ram looked at him with a calm, assessing gaze then turned back to Jackson. “You aren’t yet used to your new host body,” he said. “Your power is used without control and focus because your host needs training.”
“The host has a name, pendejo,” Leo snapped.
Ram looked at Leo again, that infuriating contemplative look in his gold colored eyes. Seriously? Leo thought. The guy looks like a Navy SEAL Ken doll. Blond hair, gold eyes, and an ouroboros tattoo on his tanned forearm.
How the fuck does something that can’t walk in daylight manage to get a tan?
“It is merely a reference, ‘your host’ is used much in the way ‘your brother’ or ‘your sister’ would be used. But if it makes you uncomfortable I will keep it to proper names.” He turned back to Jackson. “Jackson can call on the power you have to react to things emotionally. He doesn’t have your mental discipline.”
“Jackson probably has more discipline in his little finger than the two of you together,” Leo scoffed. “He’s a cop. He confronts the possibility of death every time he makes a traffic stop. He faced down a meth head tweaking so bad that he shot down his K-9 partner and yet Jackson proceeded to shoot the fucker in the kneecap and the hand. Do you have any idea what it takes to remain calm enough to make those two shots that quickly? Do you know what it took for him to not kill the bastard? Outside of Docia and me, that dog meant everything to him. So don’t sit there and act like he’s some kind of unruly child knocking around in there getting in your way.”
“That wasn’t what I meant in the least,” Ram said softly. “I know he has discipline. I know he is capable of a great deal of self-control and has the ability to act decisively in dire circumstances. But he trained with that firearm day after day after day and learned how to use it to the best of its ability. If we did not train him with this weapon that has the potential to level a city block, that would be the irresponsible thing to do.”
Well, shit.
“Anyway,” Ram tried again to address his superior, “we need to practice and there’s no better place.” He indicated the wide, flat wasteland that stretched out beyond the cultivated landscaping of their property. The house stood alone, a single road leading in to it and miles of land in every direction. Even sitting on the porch you had the sensation of sitting in an oasis at the center of a vast desert. “Nothing but the coyotes to see us.”
“All right. When would you like to start?”
“Next eve. Marissa is settling into herself now. Hatshepsut and she are Blending well together. She seems genuinely happy.”
Three male heads turned to look at the woman in the garden. She was literally playing in the dirt, making little mountains of rich black topsoil from a gutted bag of it. She was smiling, clearly enjoying herself. Leo frowned. He couldn’t say he knew Marissa Anderson well, but from what he’d gathered she was as uptight, polished, and sophisticated as any psychiatrist could be. She probably would have died first before being seen in jeans and bare feet, like she was right then.
Oh. Hey.
He wasn’t really amused when he realized that was exactly what she had done. Died. Or just about. He was a little fuzzy on the hard details of how exactly one became a Bodywalker, and frankly he wasn’t all that interested. It wouldn’t change the way he felt. It wouldn’t bring comfort.
“I’m out of here,” Leo said, derision in every syllable of his words. He pushed between the two men and went inside the house.
Ram watched the other man Jackson considered his closest friend leave, and waited until the door shut behind him before saying, “He’s going to be a problem.”
“You’re wrong,” Jackson countered.
“He’s going to be difficult, but he wouldn’t do anything to endanger me or Docia.”
“I’m keeping a guard on Kamenwati twenty-four hours a day, but it’s not safe to have the two of them in the same house.”
“I don’t see how we have much of a choice,” Jackson said with a frown. “Leo is nowhere near ready to leave, no matter what he says, and Kamen needs to be under our close control. He may have used Leo as an olive branch to get to us, but that doesn’t mean I trust his motives entirely.”
“Nor do I,” Ram agreed. “Let’s make sure you’re at full strength and skill first. Docia needs training as well. And Marissa makes three. I’m the only one whose been Blended with my host for more than a month. Frankly that makes us far weaker and far more vulnerable than I would like. Especially in light of this new danger Kamenwati says we are facing. If he is to be believed at all.”
“Agreed. Do you disbelieve him?” Jackson asked.
“No. Unfortunately I do not.”
“It would take something quite radical to make Kamenwati switch allegiance away from Odjit after so many lifetimes of being her first general. I often wondered if they were lovers, connected together like Hatshepsut and I. I suppose this absolves me of that notion.”
“I never thought I would see the day when he would leave her side in order to join us on ours,” Ram said.
“I did.”
Ram raised a brow. His short laugh was obviously incredulous.
“Truly, I did,” Jackson assured him. “There was always something…feverish to the way he sought his battles with us. And I don’t mean feverish in the way that Odjit was, high with the fever of fanaticism. There was a part of that aspect, but I always thought it was to different ends. Odjit was like any bewitching cult leader, alluring and promising the true path…spouting that we, the enemy, were the reason why we would be kept from the light of the sun, should Amun ever rise again. But in the end she was simply hungry for power, as so many people are. But for Kamen…” Jackson tapped a thoughtful finger against the wood of the chair arm. “Kamen was seeking something. I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I always thought that if I could just get him in a room, face-to-face, that he might listen to a voice of reason.”
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