“Say what you have to say, brother,” Reign sneered the second the door closed.
Alexis swore she could feel the frustrated hurt rolling off him. And the love he held for his twin. Simple emotions, but they confused and embarrassed her. She hated this window into his soul. It felt wrong, a violation. “I-I need to clean up the living room.” She stepped away, rounded the corner into the living room, and stopped. She wasn’t too embarrassed to eavesdrop.
***
“Talk,” Reign said.
“Where did you get the sword?” Roman pushed.
Reign suspected it came from Nephythys. The power she endowed in him manifested in the sword when he needed it. “From the goddess, Nephythys.”
“You said she sent you here to kill Alamut. Yet when you find him, you prop him up for a chitchat instead of sticking your special blade into every piece of him. Why?”
Reign gritted his teeth. “I have my reasons for keeping him alive. Why do you need him dead?”
Roman moved too close for comfort, but Reign didn’t step back. “Because before he was Alamut, he was Daniel. A boy I took into my home, raised as one of my own and he turned, killed eleven people, and nearly killed my wife—twice! Once he was human, now he’s an immortal jigsaw puzzle lounging in my vault, reanimated by your goddess’s son, Anubis—yeah, I’ve been doing my homework. I’ve tried every way to kill him, but he won't die. Now you show up with your sword. You killed the others. I need you to kill him.”
Doing that would send him back. No matter what he told Alexis about returning to Chemmis, the heat from her kiss still lingered in his mind. He wouldn’t go back.
“No.” Inches away from each other, he registered his brother’s building rage and his own rising.
“You two are not going to destroy this house. Step away from each other.” Alexis ordered a few feet away.
Inwardly, Reign groaned. Now was not the time for her to interfere. Still, he took a step back, but his gaze never left Roman.
“Okay! Let me get this straight,” she said and moved between them. First, she faced Roman. “Alamut and Daniel are one and the same.” She turned to Reign. “And you knew all of this and didn’t tell me?” She held up three fingers and waved them in his face. “Strike three!”
The coldness in her voice couldn’t compare to the frost in her eyes.
She whipped around to Roman. “Daniel is alive and you're hiding him in your vault until you can kill him? I should arrest you.”
“Daniel doesn’t exist anymore, Detective Lever, only Alamut remains. Explain the facts to your girlfriend, Reign. And explain to her why you saved her life, and won't do what’s necessary now. I need you, Reign, tonight at RockGate.” Roman slammed the door closed behind him. Alexis’s coppery gaze burrowed into Reign.
“He has the same sentiment I do,” she said.
Though he’d never run from any battle, this fight, he wished he could flee. At least fade until he could string the correct wordage together. By the tight stance of her body, her thin lips, and furious eyes, he didn’t have that option.
“The man you know as Daniel is also Alamut, the beast that destroyed this home. I was sent here to slay Alamut.”
“By whom, you mean the goddess your brother mentioned?”
“Yes.”
“So why won't you do it?”
“Because I will not be a tool she uses to shame her son.” His jaw ground together as fury rippled through him. Never mind killing Alamut would send him back to Duat. That piece of information he would keep to himself a bit longer.
“How did she shame her son?”
“She never claimed him. Left him for his father, the God of All Evil, to raise. A motherless child in a matriarchal society is an abomination.”
“Why does she use you?”
The truth clogged his throat. “For entertainment. Life holds no value to her. Only her enjoyment matters.” She would question him more and the truth-could he tell her and watch the disgust on her face?
Shrewd, coppery eyes assessed him. Reign steeled himself for the coming interrogation. But her gaze lowered, and she nodded slowly. “Okay—” She finally spoke and the breath he hadn’t realized he held, released. “Because I don't give a rat’s ass what Alamut is. If Daniel Nicolis is alive, he’s going to jail and I’m getting my career back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Daniel shot upright. The room, the colonial furnishings, the weak afternoon sun streaming through a part in the heavy curtains, and the comfortable four-poster bed, all confused him. Until Hector’s voice filtered from downstairs. He was at the cottage on the grounds of RockGate. Bianca’s and Hector’s raised voices mixed from below.
Time to bail. He flashed from the cottage to the house opposite the factory. He approached from the rear, cautiously picking his way through the abandoned backyards of neighboring homes. Location, location, location. He didn’t buy this house in his grandmother’s name for the pleasure of owning a rundown piece of the American dream. First, he needed privacy away from the prying eyes and inquisitive minds of the family. When he began harvesting souls and transforming bodies for Anubis’s army, the factory was the perfect place to hide them.
Before Anubis gave him more power, he had spent a summer digging the tunnel connecting the two structures. Backbreaking work, even when he transformed into Alamut, but the benefit outweighed the risk.
Quick and quiet, Daniel entered the house. He paused inside the doorway while his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Passing through the house, his gaze darted to each shadowy corner, searching for an ambush. He went to the kitchen, dodged the yellow streetlight filtering through the dirty windows and eased open the basement door. The dark waited. Unafraid, he stepped on down the stairs, welcoming the inky darkness creeping up his body.
He made his way to the center of the room and dropped down into the tunnel. Motion sensors activated the lights hanging from the bedrock. Fueled by the need to be with his own kind, Daniel jogged the remaining distance and stepped onto the metal crosswalk.
Anubis’s army fermented in a greenish, amniotic, gelatinous soup in the pit below him. He shed his clothes and dived from the crosswalk. Eyes closed, he allowed himself to sink beneath the surface. The slime cooled his fevered skin as the silent malevolence oozing from the quimaera seeped into his soul, calming him. These beasts were his true family. The only family he needed.
Sometime later, Daniel surfaced. Once again, Anubis’s vis’Ra flowed through him. Rejuvenated, he rose from the pit. The slime sucked at him, unwilling to release its hold until the very last second.
As he rose, a pair of shapely legs came into view. A petite woman, shrouded in rags. Moonlight streaked from the damaged roof and dappled her skin, making her appear to be made of quicksilver. Though concerned, her presence didn’t give him pause. The dozen quimaera standing behind her jerked him to a stop.
The pit from which he ascended had a full complement of quimaeras. The beasts guarding her must have come from another. Anubis was the only one who could activate the army, so how had she achieved the feat when Anubis refused to give him the power?
Daniel touched down on the rim of the pit. The change swept through him. Bones lengthened, ripping tendons and muscles, he grew. His face and clubbed tail extended from his body. Scaly, pearlescent skin replaced his own as he completed his transformation from Daniel into Alamut, the beast. He was bigger than the eight quimaera squaring off against him. His muscles, thicker. The spikes on his tail longer. His last fight hadn’t exactly ended the way he’d planned. He would not lose again.
Alamut bellowed a challenge.
The woman studied him. Head slightly titled, questioning his presence. Unafraid, she walked around him in an arc. He maintained eye contact even as she left the firm ground and floated over the pit. He swallowed his surprised.
“I am your new master.” She pointed to the ground. “Kneel and submit to me.”
Anubis is the only master he would answer to. Alamut
lunged. This dark haired bitch would die beneath his claws.
A quimaera snagged Alamut’s tail before he reached her. Inches short of digging his claws into her body, he slammed into the wall of the pit and was dragged backward. With a flick of his tail, he freed himself and flung his opponent into the others. Alamut flipped around, caught the nearest quimaera in his jaws. He bit down on his prey’s neck, grabbed the side of his head, and ripped. Head went to the left, body tossed to the right. The rest of the quimaera charged.
“Enough,” the woman shouted behind him. The quimaera stopped.
Braced for an attack, Alamut dare not turn his back on the horde still facing him to look at the woman.
She floated into view. “They will no longer harm you.”
He couldn’t grin in this form, but he didn’t need to flash his bloody teeth. “I’m relieved,” he barked.
“You doubt my words?”
He impaled a quimaera with his barbed tail. The beast didn’t have a chance to scream before it expired. “Do you doubt my skill?”
“I could call more warriors to my aid. But I will not. Your skill has impressed me.”
Alamut ignored the compliment. He was more interested in how she did what he couldn’t. “How did you activate the quimaera?”
A smile flirted with her lips. “Which god calls you his bitch?”
It took everything in him not to leap across the distance and show her exactly which one of them owned that title. “I suspect the same one as you.”
“I answer to SET. He granted me my freedom from Duat.”
SET, the God of All Evil. The name alone sent a chill down Alamut’s spine. By the way, she spat the name, it must’ve tasted foul on her tongue.
“I stole the spirits of these beasts from Anubis.” She smirked and the tattered rags of her clothing fluttered though no breeze circled the room.
Bound to SET and thieving from his son, this woman lived dangerously. He wasn’t sure if he should make her his enemy or ally.
Wait! If SET sent her what did that mean? “Why are you here, Great Goddess?” The endearment rolled off his tongue. Better to curry favor with an unknown deity than end up dead or worse, in pieces again.
A quick spark of anger illuminated her jade eyes and the smile wiped from her face. “I am here to re-gain SET’s honor.” A chuckle burst from her, then delight crossed her features and she laughed again, this time a deep throaty sound that set his nerves further on edge.
She wasn’t much to look at, not his type at all, but with all that spiky hair and night-of-the-living-dead theme, damn if she wasn’t sexy.
SET’s honor? That meant she knew about Reign. Who was this goddess?
“Who claims you, demon?” she asked again.
If she couldn’t tell Anubis owned him, he wouldn’t volunteer the info. “I am not a demon and I don’t know which god claims me.”
“Are you the leader of these beasts?”
Sometimes diplomacy was better than valor. At least until he discovered who this deity was and how much could she aid or fuck up his plans. “I was.” He dropped one knee onto the concrete, but wouldn’t bow his head.
“You are wise. Will you swear loyalty to me?”
If it will save my life. “Yes.”
“I have no use for one such as you, a disloyal slave.”
Rankled, Alamut rose. “And what are you if not the same?”
Her features twisted and dark waves peeled away from her floating body in arcing streams. “I am Khuket, Goddess of Ogdoad, the first and last of my kind—”
“—And slave to SET,” he barked. “I am Alamut, a slave. But it’s not where I’ll stay.” He shifted to his human form and returned to Daniel. “I hate the Egyptians for what they’ve done to me and what they’ve made me do.”
Khuket floated closer to him. “Who owns you?”
Her eagerness to know seemed more than curiosity. “Anubis,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed. “The father owns me while the son owns you.” Calculation gleamed in her eyes. The deliberate assessment of a general planning a war. And he had to pick a side.
“What does SET want from you?”
“I am charged with killing his wife’s lover and returning his body to SET.”
And Anubis demands I kill him. Shit! “Let me help you. I would rather serve you than them.”
“Why should I trust you?” Her pouty lips pursed. He wasn’t fooled by the display. She was interested.
“You shouldn’t. Neither should you trust the ones who enslave you.” He turned toward the exit.
Daniel had made it to the door before her voice stopped him.
“Halt.”
Hand on the knob, he opened the door and placed one foot over the threshold, before he pivoted.
“You know well this world.” She drifted closer. Her gaze judged him.
He stiffened his spine and squared his shoulders. “Yeah.”
“Then you may stay.” She turned away.
So he had a value to her after all. “I need a better reason than that.”
“Have you love for your master Anubis?”
“I love Anubis as much as you love SET.” He stepped back into the room.
The tattered fringes of her clothes smoked and extended toward him. They quivered, as if agitated. He didn’t move as they stroked up his back, around his waist, between his legs. They violated each crevice and seeped into each orifice. She sought his truth. He couldn’t let her have it.
Rage, the ever-present companion, flooded his system and masked his true motivation. More powerful than any drug he had ever induced, rage placed him on the path to vengeance and immortality. This goddess was another hurdle to leap over in his sprint to the finish line.
Khuket withdrew. A smile flirted with her lips.
“Have I passed your examination?”
“Yes, you have.”
He stretched his mouth into a smile. “Then we shall help each other.”
“Your usefulness to me begins now. My pets hunger. They need to feed.”
“F-feed?” It took less than a minute for her to reduce him to a high school lunch lady. “What do you feed them?”
“They have a taste for flesh.”
Naturally. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find an all-night buffet. After all, this is New York.” The perfect place came to mind. The same place he had visited many times before when he was building his army. High Bridge.
***
After days of nesting in a cliff-side nook overlooking the shimmering sea, Nephythys’s Chu, essence, caught a wind current and allowed herself to be swept away. Above her, the universe waited. Though her vis’Ra came from the cosmos and—as with all things—would return, the vast expanse terrified her. The goddess, Nu, had ventured into the universe and purposely lost herself there to escape the dictates of the Pantheon. Nephythys would never be so lucky.
Tumbling on a salty breeze, this was as close to free as she would ever be. She enjoyed every second the wind buffeted her wispy form, pulling, pushing, and twisting each way. The jagged entrance to the underworld waited. She passed through the many layers of earth and arrived at her palace in the subterranean cavern.
In every direction, a bleak landscape greeted the eye. Mountains of ash shifted in increments on faint drafts of sulfuric air belched from vents on the cavern floor. Red and brown plants sprouted their lethal leaves enticing the new arrivals with their deadly beauty.
Perched on the highest peak, the gleaming ivory marble of her palace cast away the gloom clinging to everything in Duat. Her balcony overlooked every being she had judged and if she desired, she could hear their pleas.
Eons spent judging the sins of others left little sympathy in her heart for the wretched humans. They were a pestilence on the Earth, a blight that needed to be trimmed, like a thinning of the herd at market time.
She needed to see him. Anticipation increased her pace to her palace. Can you call a man whom you have never touched or allowed to
touch you, your lover? She pushed away the errant thought. Reign belonged to her, body and soul. Time was on her side. His anger would not last, could not. He would be grateful she allowed him a taste of freedom to save his brother and be a warrior once again.
Nothing mattered more than seeing him. She prayed to Ra Reign had accomplished his goal and waited to return to her. Maybe his time away made him appreciate what they had, their secret love. Treachery and danger-filled the human realm. Their simple life together with simple pleasures was enough for her and after this excursion, enough for him.
Nephythys entered through the parted curtains of her balcony. She gasped. Her beautiful bedroom with all the lovely trinkets she had collected were smashed and scattered about. But worse, her body lay in a heap on the bed. The evidence of copulation smeared on her open thighs.
She quivered in rage. How dare her nulls leave her thus! She spun around to leave and met the glacial stare of her husband. Dressed in the black with blood red trim ceremonial robes of his station, SET waited in the doorway.
In his human form, he was a tall, thin man with sharp aquiline features, slick dark hair, and trimmed goatee. His black essence swirled beneath his translucent skin and matched his sunken coal eyes.
He never lingered after their joining. So why was he now?
“Wife, rejoin your body,” he commanded.
Nephythys shimmered into a wavering female form. “Explain yourself! Why have you destroyed my bedroom?”
“I have destroyed much more than that.”
His whispered words stroked a building terror she failed to recognize until this moment. However, showing that fear would be a fatal mistake.
“Re-join your body, Wife." His voice boomed and lightning flickered in the depths of his eyes. Only once in all their time together had he used that voice with her; their wedding night when she refused to welcome him into her body…ever. That was the catalyst for their appalling…compromise. A bargain so terrible history recorded it.
Everlasting (Descendants of Ra: Book 2) Page 19
