“You sure of that, kitty cat? Valoel’s a slippery one, and even now that you’ve powered up, he can slip through your fingers.” Bastet stared at me from across her kitchen. Her eyes narrowed, then flashed bright blue for an instant. “I can sense them working through you, you know.”
“Sense what?”
“I guess you’d call them Gods…”
“They are Gods.”
“To you, perhaps. To me they’re alien beings from another dimension. Gods I don’t have much personal experience with, but the other thing I said? I know a bit. What does it feel like?”
I shrugged. “I don’t feel much of anything, except maybe a desire to boss people around like it’s my job.”
Bastet angled her eyes to the side, cocked an eyebrow, and smirked. She looked back at me. “Bubastis wants to know if you can see them right now.”
“Bubastis?”
“I’ve never told you about her?”
“You’ve told me you’ve got an invisible friend. Wait, no, let me rephrase. I’ve gathered that you have an imaginary friend, but I’ve never heard its name before…”
“She doesn’t like being called an it.”
“Okay…? And is she here right now?”
Bastet gestured with a nod across the room. “Right over there.”
I glanced. I couldn’t help it. “There’s nothing there…”
“That you can see, but she’s there.”
“And is she… a ghost?”
She chuckled. “Ghost? Honey, no. Bubastis is… let’s just call her my Guardian, and she’s also one of those alien beings from another dimension I mentioned earlier. She’s also telling me you’ve got the mark. The same mark mages get when they find their Guardians. I guess that makes us sisters, now!” She made a love-heart shape with her fingers and smiled, brightly.
“Remind me to ask your Guardian a bunch of questions, then. Personal ones. About you. Like, was Bastet always a crazy cat girl growing up? Or what even is her real name?”
“You don’t think Bastet is my real name?”
“Bastet and Bubastis are both Egyptian Gods. You carry a shiny scarab, a scimitar, and a canopic jar with a cat’s head on it. Also, the jar is covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I’m pretty sure you took the name Bastet on later in life. Either that, or your parents saw the future, knew you’d end up like this, and chose your name to fit the life they saw for you.”
Bastet nodded, impressed. “You know your Ancient Earth history… that’s very interesting, especially seeing as until tonight you knew nothing of your own.”
“A long time ago I thought maybe, if I learned more about this world, I’d remember more about my own. I always took a shine to Gods and the occult. Also, canopic jars are gross. Isn’t that where Ancient Egyptians would store the remains of people’s organs to bury with them?”
“That’s right.”
“I mean, I get the whole scarab and scimitar thing... wizards in books and movies carry weapons and amulets around. But a jar of mummified organs? I mean… why?”
A sly grin broke across her lips. “That, my dear—as well as my real name—is a story for another day. Right now, though, I feel like you should be scurrying over to your fight. Your friends waiting on you—and I don’t only mean Draven and the Obsidian Order.”
She knows about Mercutio and Romeo. Of course, she did. This was Bastet’s neighborhood. Nothing happened within its boundaries without her knowing about it. The fact that right now there was a car outside with Mercutio, Romeo, and even Kandi sitting inside of it wasn’t going to escape her notice, not in a million years.
“Alright, I get it,” I said, “You want to live on the sidelines now, and that’s fine. If you don’t want to help, I can accept that. You wouldn’t be refusing unless it was better for me if you did. But before I go, there’s something I want to ask you.”
Bastet examined me from where she stood, as if she were sizing me up. “Go on?” she asked.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Darkshard is dead.”
“I did hear, as it happens. I also heard that his circus was attacked and set ablaze. Your doing?”
“Yes. I was the one who killed Darkshard. I cut his arm off and watched him bleed to death in front of me.”
“You fought in the Arena?”
“I did. Killing him didn’t bring me any kind of enjoyment, but we can all sleep a little easier knowing he isn’t around. But he said something to me before he died… something about you.”
Bastet stiffened up, a cat with her hackles raised. “What did that snake say about me?”
I paused, watching her. “He told me you knew more than you were letting on… about the rifts. Now, I don’t know if you are or if you aren’t keeping something from me, but there’s a very real chance I won’t make it out of this alive tonight, so I’m asking you to tell me what you know.”
She walked out of her small kitchenette and went around her couch, watching me the whole time. “You believe him?” she asked.
“I don’t know… but I wouldn’t be being true to myself if I didn’t ask you.”
“True. You had to ask me, otherwise the question would’ve sat inside of you like a hairball that needs to come out. I can’t have that kind of thing damaging our relationship.”
“So… do you know something you haven’t told me yet?”
I watched her jaw clench. Her dark, sharp features accentuated by the dim light in her apartment. “I might.”
My heart started to thump against my chest. “What do you know?”
She pointed a finger as she circled me, like a big cat about to pounce on smaller prey. “You have somewhere to be.”
“Yes, I do, but I need to know what you know about the rifts. If you don’t, you’d owe me.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Would I? How so?”
“If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll take that as a sign that you don’t value our friendship enough to trust me with it. I’d be willing to let that slide, though, if you come with me tonight and help me fight Valoel. So, you have a choice. Tell me, and stay here, or don’t tell me… and get ready to fight.”
Bastet considered my words carefully, though she continued to walk around me, forcing me to turn to meet her eyes. She scratched under her chin with her fingernails, narrowed her eyes, and finally stopped.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll tell you.”
That was the better of the two choices she could’ve made, but her decision didn’t make my heart stop racing. If anything, it sped up with the anticipation of what was about to come next. “So?”
She took a deep breath. “What I’m about to tell you was something I was planning on taking to my grave. There are only a small handful of people who know. Some of them are dead, some of them are still alive today. It’s a source of… great shame for me. I can call it one of the, if not the, worst failing of my life.”
I was starting to wonder if I really wanted to know or not, but I needed her to continue. I nodded.
“I know how the rift that swallowed you up and spat you out here opened. I know how it opened, I know why it opened, and I know who opened it.”
I swallowed hard. “What?” I asked, because a more intelligent question didn’t make itself readily available. It was like my brain couldn’t process what I was being told.
“Ten years ago,” she said, “I started out as a student at a magic Academy called Dark Willow. It’s a place where only mages go to learn the art of magic, the Magus Codice, and all the other stuff us wise guys need to know to be good, responsible mages. While I was there, I uncovered a conspiracy to open portals to different realms… this kind of thing wasn’t forbidden, but special permissions needed to be taken before it could be done. The people doing it were trying to keep their deeds a secret, but I found out. I knew what they were trying to do, I knew where they might want to go with these portals, and I couldn’t let them go through with it.”
I shook my head. “I do
n’t understand. Are you saying mages opened the rift that brought me here?”
“I’ve been to realms besides this one, there’s a reason opening portals requires consent from the Magistrate. It’s dangerous. And the way these people were doing it was… reckless. Undisciplined.” She paused. “I tried to stop them. Twelve portals were going to be opened. I shut them all down except one… the one to your world.”
“Bastet… what are you… you’re telling me you were there the day it happened?”
“I may have seen you fall; I don’t know. It was a long time ago, and so much was happening… I know you’re gonna want to sharpen your claws and go and find the people responsible, but trust me, they’ve been dealt with.”
She glanced over at her soul cabinet, leaving me to wonder if she’d stolen the souls of the mages who opened the rift that brought me here. The rift that stole me from my world. The rift that… probably saved my life. That was one of the first thoughts that came to my mind. I wasn’t angry at Bastet. She’d tried to stop it from happening. If it weren’t for the rift, though… I wouldn’t be the woman I was today.
I walked over to her, but she backed off like I was about to attack. “Wait, no,” I said.
“Sorry…” she said, watching me from behind razor sharp eyes. “Instinct…”
I shook my head. “What you just told me… why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“I didn’t know how you’d react. Sure, you’re being cool about it right now, but you’ve been through a ton of shit. You’ve grown up from when I first met you.”
“You tried to stop the people who wanted to open those rifts. You didn’t open them yourself. I can’t be pissed at you for that. I should be thanking you. You almost pulled it off.”
“If I had, you wouldn’t have fallen.”
“Pretty sure I’d have kept falling… I would’ve just hit the ground somewhere miles below my city and been forced to live the rest of my life a wingless Aevian. That is, if Valoel and his men didn’t feel like following me and finishing the job… and if the blood loss didn’t get me first. If I hadn’t fallen, I wouldn’t have met Felice, Ness, or the Obsidian Order.”
“Or me?”
I smiled. “Or you. The House of Night would’ve destroyed my city regardless. My coming here after it all happened was probably the best outcome. Besides…”
I rolled my shoulders and extended my kithe from behind my back. They were too large to fit in the room comfortably, their tops just about touched the ceiling, but I’d gotten the point across. Bastet’s eyes never did relax. She approached, now, examining my wings from a distance.
“How?” she asked.
I showed her the stones. “These? It’s a long story, one I don’t have time for right now. Anyway, you’re off the hook. You can stay here while we go out and deal with Valoel.”
Bastet frowned. “You’re making it sound like I’m some kind of scaredy cat. I’m not.”
“I don’t mean to make it sound like that.” I headed for the door to her apartment. “I get that you have a thing about using magic, and I’m not going to be the person who forces you to break that rule.”
She took a deep breath, then lowered her head. “I’ll help,” she said, “After everything that’s just gone down, I can’t sit on my paws and pretend like tonight is any different to any other night. I owe it to you to help.”
“You don’t owe me anything, just so we’re clear… but thank you.” Bastet marched toward the door to her apartment, but I stopped her just before she reached it. “Aren’t you forgetting your canopic jar?”
“I’m not gonna need it tonight. When we get rid of him, he’s gone for good.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I’d never seen so many people spill out of a blue portal at the same time before. Back at the fortress, when I’d been addressing the crowd, it had looked like a huge gathering of eager faces. Here, as I watched the Obsidian Order move through the portal and into the neighborhood we’d come to, it looked like an entire army.
They marched two by two, blue light enveloping them as they stepped through the wormhole that connected two places in space and time. They were all armed, many of them were wearing armor of some kind—all of them were clad in our Order’s black jumpsuits. I could feel a sense of pride welling up inside me, especially once Fate, Felice, Ness, and Six made their way through the crackling portal.
We’d all come a long way. The longest way. And now we were here, together, getting ready to stare down the mouth of a dragon and shove a sword into its throat. I wasn’t gonna lie, a great sense of dread snapped closely at the heels of whatever pride I was feeling, but I knew we were going to make it out of this.
All of us.
Draven was the last of the Obsidian Order’s troops to make it through the portal. He collapsed it with a thought, the portal itself shrinking to become a small blue orb that floated into his hand. He pocketed it and looked around at where we all were, then headed over to where I was standing. Behind me were Romeo, Mercutio, Bastet, and Kandi.
“I see you brought backup,” Draven said. I could see it in his eyes, the fight or flight instinct we all had rearing its head. I placed my hand on his shoulder and squeezed it, trying to keep his eyes on mine. I nodded, doing my best to soothe his nerves, and he nodded in return.
“Backup?” Kandi called out from across my shoulder, her eyebrow cocked. “Baby, we’re the main event.”
“I thought we could use the help,” I said, then I scanned the spot I’d brought us to.
We were in the heart of one of the poorer neighborhoods in the city, standing near a construction site that looked like it had been abandoned years ago. There wasn’t a worker in sight, not a cop for miles, and no wandering eyes from passersby, either. The mages had put up a magic field around the area to keep the general population from seeing any of what was about to happen, and to keep anyone from fleeing. I had a suspicion that had probably been enough magic to tip Valoel off to our presence, but it was also necessary.
In all the time I’d been here, I hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave the construction site. I hadn’t felt any sudden spikes in magic. I hadn’t been attacked by an army of Serakon. I could, however, feel the Wrath and Tenacity stones. They were nearby. They were, in fact, directly in the heart of that jagged, abandoned construction site.
Valoel was still here. He hadn’t left. That could only mean he was preparing himself for our assault.
“We can use all the help we can get,” Draven said, which struck me as a little odd. Draven? Accepting help from mages?
“Good. As far as I can tell, he’s in there somewhere. I don’t know how many are there with him.”
“I’ll get some of the Aevians to take up positions in the sky and scout the area… and to watch for signs of external threats.”
“Do that. I’m going in.”
“Going in? Already?”
Nodding, I extended my hand and opened my palm. Inside, were Hope and Wisdom. “He won’t come out to get them if I wait with all of you. I need to go in on my own.”
Draven stared at the stones, then looked at me. He reached into his pocket and produced what looked like a small necklace. “You’re gonna have a hard time fighting with those things in your hand.” He passed the necklace over to me.
“Draven...”
“Here.”
He opened the small, gold locket attached to the necklace. Inside, there were two small chambers—each just large enough to house one of the stones comfortably inside. Carefully, making sure neither of the stones touched him, I placed them in the locket and closed it. Immediately, the locket’s top turned translucent, allowing me to see the stones as they rested inside.
Draven walked around me, pulled my hair up, and waited while I clasped the necklace around my neck. “Thank you,” I said, glancing at him from across my shoulder.
“You’re welcome.”
I maintained eye contact with him probably for a moment longer th
an I’d expected to, but when the moment passed, I set myself back to focus on the task at hand. It was time to become bait. “Are you guys ready to go?” I asked the mages.
Bastet arched her eyebrows at me. “Are you kidding? You’re kidding, right?”
“Watch my back. As soon as I start fighting, send in the cavalry.”
Taking a deep breath, I started walking into the construction site, stepping from the cold concrete of the sidewalk onto the rough, gravelly dirt ahead of me.
The deeper I went the less light would reach me from the streets. As far as I could tell, this was going to be some kind of shopping mall, a huge complex that seemed to go on forever. Some of it had been built—maybe a quarter of it—and that section of the mall stood at the far end of the site. If Valoel was going to be anywhere, it was going to be in there; inside that shell of a building.
The irony that the last time Valoel and I had faced off had been inside a construction site wasn’t lost on me. Life was just full of little coincidences, wasn’t it? I wasn’t going to let him beat me again, though. Not this time. This time I had three God stones and their blessing. That had to be enough to beat him and the Wrath stone.
It had to be. Hundreds of people were counting on me; that was to say nothing of the many countless thousands of people Valoel’s magic would touch if I didn’t win tonight. I had to win. I had to beat him back into the darkness and take the stones from him, no matter the cost. The comforting sound of feathery wings moving overhead filled me with hope and courage; exactly the kind of fuel I needed to continue pressing deeper into the construction site.
If I was being honest, it was starting to get a little crowded. There weren’t any machines around here anymore—they were long gone by now—but a lot of the materials that were going to be used to build the mall were still present. The deeper I went, the more they seemed to be forcing me to walk between them, like they were funneling me down a certain path.
Wings of Fire (The Obsidian Order Book 4) Page 20
