by Heloise Hull
“Not much of anything.”
“Good. It’s not a tongue, then.”
We continued our descent. I could hear whispers whipping around us, their meaning just out of reach, but their despair was clear. “Ignore them,” Tiberius said. “Or we’ll never make it to the bottom.”
I gulped and closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on the sound of Aurick’s voice, the way it resonated in my chest and brought me peace and calm, even in my darkest moments. I needed a little of that right now. The pressure was increasing as if we were under water and sinking fast. I had the strange feeling of being watched.
“Get ready,” Tiberius said.
“For what?”
“The landing.”
As if Tiberius had pulled the ripcord on a parachute, our bodies snapped taut and our descent slowed. We were no longer falling uncontrollably.
“We were never out of control, you know,” Tiberius said, taking a nut out of his cheek and cracking it.
“You’re having an inflight snack?”
“I get hungry when I get nervous.”
A moment later, my feet hit the ground, and I tumbled to my knees. Immediately, Thoth’s presence overwhelmed me. It started as a chill over my shoulder before skittering across the nape of my neck and down my spine. “We’re close,” I whispered.
Tiberius shivered. “What do you feel?”
“Cold. Fear. An all-consuming rage.”
“Yep,” Tiberius said. “Sounds like a god.”
“Hey!”
He patted his paw on my cheek. “Sorry, but it’s true.”
“Tiberius, I keep getting snippets of…”
I would never know peace with Thoth by Ra’s side. And so? I ran. The Runway Goddess. The Wandering Goddess. The Distant Goddess. As much distance as I could bear. It was never enough.
“Ava?”
I blinked my chipmunk guide back into focus. “I’m getting old thoughts of mine. There’s a specific reason Thoth hates me enough to curse me for thousands of years. I know gods are supposedly immortal and all that jazz, but it feels extremely personal.”
Thoth wants to meet in the golden temple at sunset. He says he has a plan. I can’t keep up this charade.
Tiberius yanked me back to the present. “Let’s keep moving,” he said.
We ducked into an ancient garden, the twisting walkways in various states of death and decay. The ground shimmered in the ever-present moonlight, and it was difficult to keep our feet on the damp stones. The gardens were mostly wild and left to their own devices. Topiaries that once resembled great peacocks and snarling bears were now shaggy beasts. Fountains laid broken on the ground, and the bushes were simultaneously overgrown and brown with rot.
This was where I hid Thoth’s consciousness? Or maybe he’d created it himself. I wonder if it said more about him or me.
“Stay with me, Ava. Keep yourself intact. You’re not a MILF. You don’t have to be frightened. You know what you need to do.”
“Thanks,” I murmured as we entered the maze. The sky was a study in gray. Curled, dark rose petals dotted the hedgerows, and skeletal vines crisscrossed the stone pathway. Shades drifted through the shrubs dressed in powdery linens that hung limply on their emancipated frames. Matching lion statues towered in their fractured glory at the far end of the row. I exchanged a look with Tiberius and pressed ahead.
We passed circles of spotted toadstools and tantalizing trickles of water, but my guide kept me straight. Spindly spires rose black against the gray horizon. It was a castle straight from a fairy tale, except I doubted the happy ending existed in this one.
And still, we walked.
After an hour, we were no closer to finding the exit. “Didn’t we pass that suspicious shroom two turns back?” I asked.
Tiberius wiggled his nose. His whiskers were drooping and his eyes tired. “I’m not sure.”
I crossed my arms. “This is silly. I’m blasting through.”
“I think I’m supposed to caution you here, but I’m totally and completely on board.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. That was all the support I needed. I put my hands against the dried bushes and pushed my mother magic forward. Dew drops oozed from the brown branches as the last remnants of stored water was forced from their veins. The spout of water swirled and nourished the cracked earth. And then came the rain. It hammered at us, decimating the branches where I stood. Torrents crashed down, clearing a path that zagged unevenly. It felt as humid as the tropics.
“Tefnut, goddess of moisture,” Tiberius intoned reverently. “Look!”
My heart pounded in my chest like it wanted to pierce my ribcage, grab a canoe, and escape with the debris. There, watching the water sluice away the deadened vines and branches, was a golden man. Lacewings rose up from the surge to escape the waters, but it made him look more mystical than the giant I already knew from my dreams.
It was Thoth, and in Nibiru, he wasn’t passed out on some marble slab. He was leaning against a column with his arms crossed, smiling.
He called in a great voice, “What took you so long, little wolf?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Thoth lifted a lazy hand, swirling his fingers. He wore a golden kilt edged in black thread that echoed his kohl-lined eyes. His chest rippled with the same swirling hieroglyphs I recognized from his body on Aradia. His head was completely shaved and there was no soft spot on his body. Nothing to suggest vulnerability, physically or emotionally.
“Welcome, my little wolf, my little love.” He directed his predatory gaze away from me. “You brought company?”
At his words, Tiberius launched himself flying squirrel-style in the space between us, trilling and chucking madly. He bared his tiny, nut-worn teeth, while every strand of fur stood on end.
I was impressed by his bravery, but Thoth swooped his hand and threw my protector backwards. He sailed through the air, hitting the ground with a dull thud.
“No!” I jerked forward, but Thoth wagged his finger back and forth, a corner of his mouth twisting up in a menacing smirk. I froze, scared to take another step. Scared of what Thoth might do to Tiberius.
With my eyes, I studied him carefully for movement, and with my other senses, I searched for signs of life. His whiskers twitched and a single paw waved in the air. I let out a huge sigh of relief. At least he was alive.
“Will you ever stop running, Runaway Goddess?”
Hating myself, I turned away from Tiberius and refocused on Thoth. Soon, I couldn’t even do that and dropped my eyes. Gazing at Thoth for too long felt dangerous. His presence was fire—
But you are the water.
I lifted my chin once more. “I’m not running now.”
Thoth smiled languorously. “There’s a first time for everything. I must say, it surprised me that you came. I thought surely I would have to coax you here, eventually. I like that. It makes you interesting, again. Your mortal lives were quite dull. Almost as dull as those last days in Egypt.”
Rage bubbled under my skin, but I controlled it. For now.
“I couldn’t care less if you find me interesting or not. Honestly, I could think of a billion other things I care more about. Like the reproductive cycle of moss. I bet that’s freaking fascinating compared to your wants.”
Thoth laughed, a great ringing laugh. “And here I thought you’d be less entertaining as a mortal, middle-aged woman.”
“There’s a lot you don’t understand,” I said, taunting him. Drawing him closer.
It didn’t take much. In mere heartbeats, Thoth was a breath away, his fingers wrapping around my elbow. He smelled like cinnamon and sandalwood, and he left indents where he grabbed me. “You always were more trouble than you were worth. Running like that? Forcing me to follow you?”
“Did you ever stop to think I didn’t want to be followed?” I said, slipping my hand into my pocket.
Thoth sneered. “Of course you wanted it. You love being the ce
nter of attention. It’s why chaos thrives in you, so like a woman.”
I ignored that last bit. He was testing me, trying to get a reaction to better understand what powers this reincarnation possessed, but I refused to play along. After all, I still had the advantage of surprise.
With a flick of my thumb, I undid the silver cap and closed my eyes. All my Tefnut magic focused on the water inside. I felt it calling to me.
“Expand,” I commanded.
It rose from the bottle in a crystalline arc, swirling and dancing in the air. This was new, using Tefnut’s magic. I liked it. The taint of chaos was cleansed by her dewy waters. But quickly a spring rain turns to a flood. That was where my chaos came into play. I had to control it or all would be lost.
I saw confusion flash across Thoth’s face.
“Yes,” I said, deciding to embellish a bit. “I am fully aware of who I am and how to access her powers. And yes, I understand now how you wiped my memory after every reincarnation.”
I clapped my hands and the waters dove at Thoth, growing and multiplying until his head was encapsulated inside a pool of forgetfulness. The waters wet his long eyelashes and dripped down his cheek. His kohl-lined eyes blinked furiously, but the black didn’t run.
I redoubled my efforts, doing my best to keep the water in contact with Thoth’s skin. Every time he opened his mouth, I forced it onto his tongue. On earth, this task would’ve been as simple as snapping my fingers, but here in Niribu, it took all my concentration.
For a beautiful second, Thoth’s eyes lost their focus. His body flickered, parts of him becoming translucent, but I could feel him fighting me, struggling to get free of the water’s hold. I only had a few more seconds. I hoped it was enough.
Something touched my leg, and when I looked down, I found Tiberius with his paw on my knee, feeding me energy, giving me strength. The waters continued to swirl around Thoth’s head.
It didn’t matter. Thoth’s eyes were open now, clear and full of malice.
“Tiberius, it's not working. Why isn’t it working?”
“He gave it to you while you inhabited a mortal body,” Tiberius fretted. “He must be too strong in this form.”
“Well, get him out of it!”
“I can't! I'm not a god of alchemy. I don't even have opposable thumbs.”
Thoth shook his head, breaking my hold on the water, and slowly wiped his face with the back of his arm. He licked his lips and rolled the taste around his mouth a few times. “Clever,” he said. “From the source?”
“Nothing but the best for you.”
“And in charge of your goddess powers, too?”
My hands buzzed and fizzed, the chaos mixing with the moisture.
“And yet it is not enough.” Thoth watched us with mild amusement. “Still, it’s not very fair fighting two on one,” he said, flicking a hieroglyph at Tiberius.
“No!” I shouted as my guide, my daemon, my friend dropped to the ground like a stone, except he wasn’t a stone. He wasn’t even a chipmunk anymore. He was a slug-like creature with bulging eyes and bulbous ends.
“How does it feel to look upon a daemon’s true form? Does it disgust you?” Thoth asked. I heard real curiosity in his voice.
I wasn’t sure if that was true. Thoth could be tricky. No one knew that better than me, and it was hard to imagine this creature being my Tiberius, but now wasn’t the time to get into a metaphysical debate. I yanked my gaze back to the god. “Only one thing here disgusts me. Want to take a wild guess?”
“How about I show you what disgusts me?” he replied silkily. “I can shift this space you sheltered me in. What period would you like? I quite prefer the Old World myself.” He passed his hand over my eyes and the landscape tilted. It was us, but we stood in an illusion of ancient Egypt.
I found myself in a building, its stones blindingly white. Palm trees dotted the horizon. Despite being a memory, it felt more solid than anything in Nibiru. The silk against my belly and thighs was soft, and I hated how much more real it felt than Aurick’s illusion. Thoth’s memories of us together were so strong, I could even see scarab beetles scattering in my wake. They scurried up walls, disappearing into the cracks.
Ahead, Thoth stood framed between date palms. His back was to me, as if I were not a threat. As if I were nothing.
Against my will, I followed him out onto the veranda, a glittering gold dress sparkling in the midday sun, the air heavy with the scent of lotus blossoms and a silted river. Sweat already beaded along my neck and under my breasts. If I had any doubts as to whether I could be harmed here, the answer seemed simple. If I could sweat, I could bleed. If I could bleed, I could die. I would lose Ava forever.
Thoth didn’t look at me when he spoke. “You have loved me in many lifetimes. You cannot help it. All of this rancor, this supposed hate, is a mirage. It disgusts me that you pretend it never happened. I would have thought the centuries as a mortal would have softened you, Tefnut. Shown you how much better life would be with me. At any rate, you could never hate me. Not truly.”
His voice was low, almost plaintive, housing either true vulnerability or yet another manipulation.
“One may not truly hate the dark, but that means one cannot truly love the dark, either,” I said. They were Cleopatra’s words, and I cringed as I spoke them, knowing how fighting him turned out for me then. With death and despair. Blood and dirt.
“Luckily, I don’t need love to survive. I don’t even need you to be willing,” Thoth said as he turned around.
He towered over me, his form blotting out the sun. Denying me its strength. With arms like stone, strong enough to lift the stars, he pulled me toward him. In a movement, he had swept me onto him, forcing my legs around his waist. So I bit him, drawing golden ichor from his lips that tasted of something sweet. Nectar. I spat out his blood.
“When will you understand?” I said softly as he dropped me and held his free-flowing lip. “I want nothing to do with you.”
Thoth wiped the ichor, spreading it like a golden stain across his cheek. “And so those other times we were together, they were what? Lies?”
Thoth shifted our world again, back into another of our memories. I barely had time to exhale before:
A thick, white band was strapped across my chest as if its gauzy material might actually support my breasts. When I looked up, all I could see was a canopy of palm fronds and towering acanthus-carved columns painted in brilliant azure. A black wig with cones of incense and golden beads sat heavy on my brow, and discs of hammered gold were strung across my forehead.
Memories. These were mine. I felt it in my gut.
Thoth’s hand lazily pinned mine to the linen on the floor of our temple. His mouth and nose moved in concert down my bicep, around the gold bands encircling them, and into the hollow of my elbow. He was warm and beautiful and his weight deliciously heavy on me. I measured the distance between his thighs and wrapped my arms around his back to bring him closer, and—I blinked, biting back a scream of pain.
This was my memory, but I didn’t want it.
Thoth pulled away a moment, allowing coldness to sweep in from where he had pressed against me. Something was seriously wrong with me if I craved and missed his touch once it was gone. I knew it in my heart.
“What’s the matter, my love?”
Somebody else called me that. In friendship, though. Someone not of this time. I didn’t say a word as my mind roved through the possibilities. It wasn’t just me. Everything was wrong. This was wrong. Thoth was wrong.
I stood, yanking the sheets around my hips and wondering how to escape this nightmare. I could not let him continue to manipulate me.
Thoth joined me, pushing my shoulders back as he craned his neck to watch me. He was still hard as he tried to pull me closer. “Tefnut?”
“Don’t touch me.”
Thoth’s eyes hardened in a more familiar way. “What is going on?”
Warm trickles of my chaos wound up my arm, superheating th
e gold bangles and giving off a scent of desert winds. Thoth took an involuntary step back, his mouth in a hard line.
“I said, don’t touch me.”
He held up his hands. As if he was ever conciliatory.
“I’m taking us out of this grotesque charade you call love.”
His eyebrows dropped in confusion, but I yanked on that little memory of consciousness buried in my brain.
In a whoosh, we were back to Nibiru, back to warily sizing the other up. Mists had rolled in while we surfed through our memories, so thick it was choking. But I noticed the roses along the maze, burrowed deeply in the hedges. Everything else remained frozen in black and white, but the curved edges of the roses were red and rapidly colorizing. I tore my attention away and centered it on Thoth.
“How did you do that?” he asked.
“You mean, how did I change our past? You didn’t think after all of those memories you gave me in dots and dashes, like some Morse Code, that I would let you keep going? No. I will them to be different and they are.”
Thoth’s black eyes were a deep pool, as pitiless as they were bottomless. “You are merely working within the confines of my curse.”
“Oh really? Want to know something else? That wasn’t the first time.” His jaw ticked slightly, so I continued to taunt him. To show him I wasn’t afraid. “Go back, search your memories of the festival Ra held for me when you dragged me back. I think you’ll find they’ve changed. Something to do with a bronze mirror?” I waited, a mocking smile on my lips.
Thoth’s eyes went milky, but he blinked them back to black moments later. “You managed to make your memories held within the Emerald Tablets do your bidding.”
“That’s right, buddy. So if you thought I was scary then, imagine what I can do to you now.”
“You would deny the fact it was us in love? That you took Shu back into your bed to hurt me?”
“Seeing as you took my memories, uh no, that doesn’t ring a bell.”
Thoth whipped us again into a newer memory. Relatively speaking.
I wore armor of the medieval period and gripped a broadsword. My muscles were honed from battle, and I was overwhelmed but angry. Across the field, lion shifters had engaged Krios and were toppling the final pillar to lock the gods beyond Axis Mundi.
