I marched to the center of the field, not a single person standing in my way. When I reached the fifty-yard line, I held out my arms to either side, threw back my head, and screamed as strands of At and anti-At shot out of my hands. They arched high overhead, dive-bombing down on the shadows surrounding the field.
Every place those tendrils touched a tainted shadow soul, the true brilliance of its soul burst forth. The taint flowed through me in a torrent, and the glow of emerging souls quickly became blinding.
It was working. I laughed out loud, even as tears leaked from my eyes. It was actually working.
Between one heartbeat and the next, my connection to the soul-energy flickered, then died out completely. Without the collective’s help, I lost my hold on maybe half of the shadows, those tendrils of At and anti-At snapping back into my ba. The recoil knocked me onto my knees, bruising my soul.
All around me, the glow of those emerging souls dimmed as the taint swallowed them up once more.
I’d been so close. I couldn’t give up now. I wouldn’t give up.
I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, willing those threads of At and anti-At to reemerge. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my teeth ground together. I poured everything I had into cleansing the shadows.
But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t strong enough.
All around me, the whispers and moans of the shadows grew louder, and the heartbeats of the people surrounding me slowed. The shadows were feeding again, making up for the damage I’d dealt them by devouring the souls nearest them. They were killing these people.
And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I felt a hand press against my chest, just over my heart, and a swell of energy bolstered the strength of my ba. My eyes snapped open.
Nik was kneeling on the turf before me, his hand to my heart and his face just inches from mine. I felt ten times stronger with him there, and those stubborn strands of At and anti-At stretched out from my hands, seeking out the shadows once more. Those otherworldly strands weren’t moving nearly as fast as before, but at least they were moving.
But it still wasn’t enough. The shadows were in a feeding frenzy, and the people weakening all around me wouldn’t be able to outlast the time it would take me to disarm their attackers.
“I can’t do it,” I whispered. “I’m not strong enough.” A tear leaked out of my eye, gliding down my already damp cheek.
Nik rested his other hand on the crook of my neck and leaned in, gently pressing his lips against mine. “Yes, you are, Kitty Kat. Look around you,” he said as he pulled away. “These people believe in you. I believe you. You can do this.”
I shook my head, more tears breaking free. He didn’t understand. I wasn’t enough to save these people. Isfet would have been, but not me. I’d made a selfish choice back at the house, choosing Nik over the rest of the world. And now, faced with the grim reality of the situation, I knew it had been the wrong choice.
I flinched when someone touched my shoulder. For a fraction of a second, I was convinced it was a shadow. But the hand was warm. It was alive. And, miraculously, it spurred another, smaller surge of energy within my soul.
“I believe in you,” a woman said, and I was surprised to find that I recognized her voice.
I craned my neck to see Alison kneeling behind me, her hand resting on my shoulder. A weak smile touched her lips, and she bowed her head.
Someone else touched my lower back, also whispering, “I believe in you.” Someone else touched my other shoulder, someone else, the top of my head. And with each of these touches, the strength of my ba spiked ever higher.
Those spikes turned to surges as I watched the people surrounding me link hands. Hundreds of souls joined with mine, lending me their strength. Together, we were more than the sum of our parts. Together, I thought we might just be strong enough to defeat the shadows. Not just those here at Newport High School. All of the shadows left over from the Cascade Virus.
I straightened my spine and stretched out my arms to either side of me. Those threads of At and anti-At lashed out from my hands, striking their victims with a vengeance. The rush of the taint siphoning in through my soul increased until it was nearly overwhelming. All around the field, the glow of the trapped souls blazed as the shadows stifling their brilliance faded.
First one shadow soul fell, the pristine soul beneath slipping away into Duat. Three more followed in quick succession, and then it started to snowball. A dozen . . . fifty . . . a hundred . . . the air temperature rose until it felt nearly tropical to my cold-numbed skin.
Unexpectedly, my connection to the soul-energy rekindled, and I was suddenly a star, shining blindingly bright in the center of the football field. There was no stopping me—us—now.
I sent those otherworldly threads farther out, seeking the shadows all over the Pacific Northwest. All over North America. All over the world.
We cleansed the taint from the final soul in a matter of seconds, and the crowd let out a collective sigh. Hands fell away from me. Others, farther away, unclasped. People stepped back, until it was only Nik and me in the center of the field.
I knelt there, bowed over, my forehead resting against Nik’s chest. I was panting and weak, but I was still alive. I raised my head and met his eyes, and my lips spread into a grin, wide and disbelieving. “It worked.”
“See,” Nik said. “I told you you could do it.”
“Told you so?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “Really?” I found his hand and gave it a squeeze. I couldn’t have defeated the shadows without him. I couldn’t have done it without any of them.
Nik helped me up to my feet, and I looked around. The people were watching on in silence, almost like the crowd was holding its breath. Almost like they were waiting for me to speak.
I inhaled deeply, uncertain of what to say. So I started with the obvious. “Thank you,” I said, my voice faint. I cleared my throat and took several more deep, sustaining breaths. “Thank you,” I repeated, stronger this time. “All of you. Thank you for teaching me what true strength is. It doesn’t come from years of training or from immortality—it comes from within. It comes from the soul. And you all have the strongest, most beautiful souls.”
I scanned the faces of the people surrounding me. I thought I should’ve felt awkward with all of them staring at me, but I didn’t. I felt connected to them. I felt like this—us working together—was right. “You know, we’re not all that different . . . not really. I know things are confusing right now with the Nejerets coming out and everything. And after what happened here, I know it feels like your world isn’t yours anymore . . . like things are spinning out of control. And if you think things are going to get worse before they get better, you’re probably right. But you know what—we just proved that so long as we work together, like we did tonight, we’ll get through whatever comes next.”
I released Nik’s hand and walked over to Alison, clasping her hand and raising it up into the air. “Because if we work together, we can do anything.”
I thought that maybe, just maybe, no matter what danger lurked beyond the horizon, we would be able to handle it. Without Isfet.
So long as we could continue to work together . . .
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Quite the speech,” Heru said as he walked up the steps of the bleachers, his loafers making the metal rungs clang.
Several people had pulled out their cell phones after the last shadow fell, and from what I’d overheard, my off-the-cuff address of the crowd had already gone viral. Not quite the lay-low image I’d been trying for, but what the hell. Sometimes change could be a good thing.
Nik and I were sitting on the top row of the bleachers, watching the people receive medical treatment down on the field. Nobody had bothered us up here. Even the PNS crews were keeping their distance.
I studied Heru’s features. He didn’t seem angry, which surprised me. In fact, he looked pleased.
Maybe even a little smug.
“I’m not sorry,” I said. “I had to come here. It had to be done.”
“I can see that now.” Heru placed one foot on the next bleacher down from ours, leaning forward and resting his forearm on his knee. “You did the right thing, Kat—for these people, and for ours.”
Well damn it all to hell if that didn’t warm my tarnished soul. And then he uttered the four little words I never thought I’d hear him say.
“I’m proud of you.”
* * *
The end
Thanks for reading! You’ve reached the end of Soul Eater (Kat Dubois Chronicles, #4). Keep reading for more Kat adventures in Judgement (Kat Dubois Chronicles, #5).
Judgement
Book Five
Chapter One
“What’s wrong?” Nik asked, watching me pace. He was leaning against the wall to the left of the door leading out of our cozy little waiting area. And I’m using the words “cozy” and “little” lightly. The private lounge was palatial. Literally, it was a room in a palace.
We were in the old Nejeret Council headquarters in Rome, a relic from days long past, back when Nejerets had been ruled by a patriarchal group of seven men. Heru had been among them, as had my father, Set. But the Council of Seven had gone the way of the pharaohs . . . as had the governing body that replaced it, the Senate. Now we were back to a good old-fashioned feudal monarchy, with Heru as the high king. And in true feudal fashion, war was an ever-burning fire threatening to reduce us all to little more than ash and bone.
Nik and I had been busy little bees the past two weeks, attempting to stave off that dire outcome. Since the shadow souls incident, we’d been spending most of our time gateway-ing around the world, meeting up with small groups of Nejerets—the good guys who supported Heru, not the asshats supporting the rogue Senate, of course—and addressing live audiences of humans, just like Garth suggested weeks ago to make up for my one-fingered PR blunder. Only now we were attempting to counter something much more devastating, PR-wise—the damage caused by the Senate’s ever-increasing hostilities against humanity. It was why Nik and I were in Rome in the first place. In a few minutes, we would be onstage once again, “the Goddess” and her Nejeret friends, addressing yet another crowd of gathered humans.
The now-defunct Council headquarters was a stunning complex—an old palazzo dating back to the thirteenth century that took up an entire city block in central Rome. It was extravagant, with plenty of lavish marble inlays, gold leafing, and arched ceilings. And, like many an Italian palace, there were frescos for days and artwork galore. It was over the top in a way mastered by the Italian nobles of old. And apparently embraced by the Nejerets of old as well.
The private lounge where Nik and I had been hanging out for the past twenty minutes was toned down from the main gallery by just a hair. Whoever decorated the room had tried to warm it up with Persian rugs and upholstered seating, but no amount of furnishings could dampen the effect of the immense oil portraits of Nejerets lining the crimson walls in their gaudy gilded frames or the enormous, intricate crystal chandelier glittering giddily over the center of the room.
I stopped mid-step under the chandelier and looked at Nik, one arm hugging my middle, the other raised so I could chew on my thumbnail. He looked like he could’ve been posing for some avant-garde fashion magazine. He was leaning one shoulder against the wall by the oversized door, head tilted to the side and fingers tucked into his trouser pockets, his tailored pinstripe suit fitting him just right and tattoos peeking out here and there. He looked damn good—more than good enough to momentarily waylay the worries making me pace, replacing them with more pleasurable thoughts for a few seconds.
Nik raised his pierced brow, the corner of his mouth lifting into a slight but satisfied smirk. He liked that he could distract me by simply sharing the same space as me. I would never admit it aloud, but I kind of liked it, too.
“Well?” he said, the one-word prompt knocking my thoughts back out of naughty-land.
Right, he’d asked me a question: What’s wrong?
I cleared my throat. “Nothing,” I said, gaze sliding away from his to the small, round table in the corner of the room.
I’d left the velvet drawstring bag holding my deck of hand-drawn tarot cards on the table. They’d been burning a hole in my pocket, so I’d taken them out, hoping that by removing the distraction I would be able to focus on the upcoming address. The meeting scheduled to take place in the ballroom downstairs was the most significant yet, with over two thousand humans slated to attend.
But now, having the tarot deck out in the open was just making the problem worse. I’d taken to pacing around the room, if only to distract myself from the urge to pull out the cards and flip through them in an impromptu reading. This was so not the time. I needed to focus . . . to get my head in the game. I did not need to be preoccupied by thoughts of even more what-ifs and oh-shits. Not right now.
If we could just get the humans to trust us—if we could just convince the governments to agree to work with us—we would be able to launch a coordinated assault on the Senate and finally wipe them off the playing field. But while the vast majority of humans still gazed at me with a fervor of divine adoration, the logical-thinking, slow-moving governmental bodies were harder to sway. Humanity’s growing fear of the Senate and what it might do next overruled their love of me, and no matter how hard I tried, I’d yet to find a way to tip the scales in favor of a full-blown alliance.
“You do seem rather agitated,” Dom said from the little mirror pendant hanging on a leather cord around my neck.
I clenched and unclenched my jaw, then forced myself to look at Nik again. “I’m fine,” I said, both to him and to my incorporeal half-brother.
“Right . . .” Nik crossed his arms over his chest, the fabric of his suit jacket straining oh so faintly at his shoulders.
“Little sister . . .”
Damn it. They both knew me too well to believe my attempted blow-off.
I huffed out a breath, hands falling to my sides. “Alright, fine. You’re right. It’s just that—” I pressed my lips together, inhaling and exhaling deeply through my nose. “It’s going to sound crazy, but—” I shook my head. “I don’t know . . . something just feels off. Like really, really off.”
I raised a hand to run my fingers through my hair, realizing too late that I was messing up Lex’s styling. It wasn’t anything fancy, but she’d given me a super neat left-side part—one she said made me look very respectable—a hairdo to match my respectable outfit and respectable shoes and the air of general respectability I was supposed to convey as the Nejeret figurehead. I was playing a part these days, showing the world that Nejerets were productive, law-abiding, respectable members of society. We had to do everything we could to counter the negative stigma and mistrust caused by the Senate’s seemingly never-ending string of terrorist attacks.
“Damn it,” I said, using both hands to comb my hair back. I pulled the hairband off my wrist and tied my hair up into a ponytail.
Nik’s eyes never left me. “You were tossing and turning all night,” he said.
It was my turn to smirk, though my heart wasn’t in it. “And whose fault was that?”
Nik chuckled, and the wicked glint in his pale blue eyes caused a blush to rise up my neck and cheeks, leaving me on the verge of overheating. “After that, Kitty Kat,” he said, his expression turning serious. “Did you see something in your dreams?”
“Was it another echo?” Dom added.
Chewing on my lip, I shook my head. In fact, I hadn’t seen a single vision of the future since vanquishing the shadow souls a couple weeks back.
“No, nothing like that,” I told them both. “I don’t even remember my dreams from last night.” I shrugged halfheartedly, gaze drifting away from Nik’s. I looked from portrait to portrait, like the Nejerets captured in oil paint centuries ago might hold the answers. “I just—I don’t know. This feeling is . . . I d
on’t really know how to describe it, other than off-ness.”
It was like I knew something bad was going to happen. Like I was watching a horror movie, and the suspense was building and the music was telling me to tense up for a big scare. That was it—that was the feeling exactly. Except this wasn’t a horror movie; this was real life.
I looked at Nik, a chill creeping up my spine. “Something’s coming, Nik,” I said with absolute certainty. “Something bad.” I could feel it in my bones. In my soul.
Nik frowned. “Any idea of what?”
I gave him a pointed look, eyebrows raised and lips pressed together.
“Right,” Nik said. “Stupid question.”
“Mm-hmm . . .” If I knew the answer to the what question, I wouldn’t have spent the past ten minutes pacing around the room like a caged animal trying to figure it out.
I returned to pacing, making a full circuit around the room and letting my thoughts circulate with me before saying anything more. “Maybe this is a new power manifesting,” I finally said as I passed Nik, focusing on the upside. “I could end up with a nifty Spidey sense. That wouldn’t suck.”
“And it would be nice to know our efforts are paying off,” Nik added.
I grunted my assent.
When Nik and I weren’t attempting to sway humanity to our side, we’d been spending our time back at Nik’s secret cave in Port Madison, working on training my ever-expanding powers. For months, my magical abilities had been growing in leaps and bounds . . . until I’d started trying to purposely hone and cultivate them.
I’d hit a wall. Sure, I was way better at wielding At and anti-At and connecting with the soul-energy than ever before, and my drawings were so lifelike that they were verging on Peeping Tom territory, but I hadn’t had a new power show up in fourteen days, and the universe seemed to have zipped its lips where echoes were concerned. It was beyond frustrating. And also so very typical. It almost felt like the universe was playing a joke on me.
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