“I saw it, but I didn’t realize what it meant. What she meant to you.”
“She called to me early, but I didn’t realize it. I guess I was too angry then. Only when I began my training on Santa Costa did I understand it was Her voice that I heard. The more I learn about Her, the more I get to know Her, the more I became aware it was inevitable that I would stand against Chaos.”
He nodded. “I think you’re well-suited to each other.”
“Thanks.” She dipped her head. “I asked Her blessing while we waited for you to . . . you know.”
“I appreciate that,” he said. That she would do that for a stranger she wasn’t sure she trusted touched him. “I tend to call that time sleeping without dreaming, but it’s nice to have someone watching over me. Even nicer to have Ma’at’s blessing. Isis is my patroness.”
“Makes sense.”
She headed back out to the garage. He followed.
“Of course,” he said as she scanned the vehicle for anything she might have left, “the entire pantheon has had an impact on my life more or less, especially after I traveled north and became part of the pharaoh’s army.”
She closed the hatch on the SUV. “Now you want to be chatty?”
“I did promise to share stories. Besides, I want to make amends.”
She settled her hands on her hips. “You want to stay here, don’t you?”
He rubbed a hand over his braids, feeling sheepish. “If you don’t mind, yes.”
“Don’t you have a hotel room or something?”
“Checked out.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re here.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I’m not trying to be a babysitter.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “What are you trying to do, then?”
“Keep you safe.”
“And who’s keeping you safe?”
He blinked in surprise. He had Anansi, but most of the time the demigod couldn’t interfere. At least not when it came to direct conflicts. “Uh . . . ”
“Uh-huh. You realize that if you answer, ‘I can take care of myself,’ you’ve lost your argument?”
“You got me.” He walked to the open garage door, stopped, turned, and said, “I know you can take care of yourself and I’m sorry that I ever thought otherwise. I’ve seen for myself that you’re more than capable of handling whatever comes your way.”
“Well. Umm, yeah.”
The warrior saw the compliment had clearly made her uncomfortable.
Taking out his car keys, Khefar pressed the button to unlock the Charger and exited the warehouse. Kira followed him onto the sidewalk and watched as he got into the car.
She moved closer as the garage door closed behind her. “What are you doing?”
“Getting comfortable.” He eased the driver’s seat into a reclining position.
“Are you really going to camp outside my door like that?”
“If I have to.”
“It’s broad daylight.”
“The seat’s comfortable enough.”
“Liar.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I could just call the police.”
He sighed. Why did I think she’d make this easy? “I’d rather you not.”
“Yeah, I think I’m a little scared of what your version of resisting arrest looks like. But you can’t stay out here. Come back around in the morning like a normal person.”
“What if the Avatar pays you a visit? What if it conjures another seeker?”
“I gave you your dagger back, remember? If he conjures another seeker, it’s coming after you, not me.”
She was right. Another seeker would immediately go on the hunt for the dagger, since it had always been the target. Perhaps the better tactic to protect Kira was to draw the Avatar as far from her as possible.
He was about to turn the ignition on when she turned to the front door. “Come on.”
He stared after her, wary. “You’re inviting me in?”
“Call it my reckless demeanor.” She unlocked the door, swung it open. “Come in before my rational self takes charge again.”
Chapter 17
Khefar quickly popped the trunk open and got out of the car. He grabbed a duffel bag from the trunk and shouldered it. After locking the car, he followed Kira in. “Thanks.”
“You want to thank me, you can pay me in information. Especially if we’re going to be working together and all that. Have a seat.” She gestured toward the sofa, then headed for the kitchen. “Want something to drink? There’s water and energy drinks, and some of that juice Nansee had this morning.”
“Water will be fine, thanks.” The warrior dropped the duffel on the floor and sat down. “So you’re okay with working with me?”
“Okay enough. I got an extrasense hit that the dagger’s safe with you.” She returned with two bottles of water and handed him one. “By the way, where is the old man?”
He accepted the bottle with a murmured thanks. “I’m not my sidekick’s keeper. He comes and goes as he sees fit. He’ll return when he’s ready or should I really need him.”
“Humph.” She folded herself into the chair opposite him. “Must be nice, to have a demigod at your disposal as you complete your task.”
Khefar laughed. “Anansi does as he wants, when he wants, as long as it doesn’t upset Universal Law. My burden is my own and though he may tell me if the life I saved has placed me closer to seeing this eternity I’ve been condemned to end, he doesn’t help me achieve my goals. Besides, why would you be jealous of one demigod tagging along with me when you work for an international team of metaphysical bounty hunters?”
She answered with a smile. “Your demigod is more entertaining than my bureaucrats.”
“I’ll give you that.” He paused, then said, “What other hit did you get?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said you got a hit that the dagger’s safe with me. As much as I appreciate the magical vote of confidence, I find it hard to believe that’s the only information you gathered this afternoon.”
She waved a hand toward the worktable on the other side of the room. “You saw all the stuff I brought back with me. I still have a lot of files to go through and I didn’t want to touch Bernie’s personal stuff while in the section chief’s conference room. The only other thing I got while I was there was that the Avatar’s name might be Enig. Doubt that’s a real name, but it’s all I’ve got so far.”
“Enig. The name doesn’t sound familiar to me, but I can probably dig up some information tomorrow.”
“I’d appreciate that. We can divide and conquer some of this research, then regroup and come up with a game plan. We took out the seeker, so I hope we bought some time. My gut tells me the Avatar will probably be on the offensive again tomorrow, the day after at the latest.”
“Twenty-four hours to find and eliminate one of the most powerful Shadow creatures walking the planet,” Khefar said. “One who would probably stop at nothing to get the dagger.” He took a sip of water. “I’m not a Shadowchaser, but I’ve come up against some of the second-tier halfings, the Adepts. Two of them cost me my dagger.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Two months ago, in Germany.”
“So somehow your dagger got from Germany to London in four weeks.”
He turned to her. “How do you know it was four weeks?”
She set her water bottle on the table, still adorned with Nansee’s mud cloth and vase of flowers. “As my handler, Bernie had to put in travel requisitions with Gilead a minimum of three weeks out. His records from the London office show he put in a travel req to come see me four weeks ago. Why would two Adepts want your dagger?”
“Why would an Avatar want my dagger?” He sank into the couch cushions. “The Dagger of Kheferatum. A pretentious name for a pretentious weapon.”
“Is it sentient? The way it shared its history with me . . . it felt as if it was alive.”
“The destruction of your village.” Her voice was soft, sympathetic. Neither of which, Khefar felt, he deserved.
“I fed the dagger’s bloodlust, its need to unmake. In a way, I poisoned it. In my grief and madness I caused the dagger to become unbalanced. I’ve spent the last few centuries trying to wrestle it back to center.”
“Have you ever thought about destroying it?”
He recoiled at the thought. The dagger sent a warning pulse too. “No, the dagger can’t be destroyed, at least, not unless it’s in very specific controlled circumstances. I don’t know what those circumstances would be, because destroying the dagger honestly has never crossed my mind. I have to figure that any misstep in getting rid of it would result in the unmaking of creation.”
“That’s a lot of power,” she said quietly. “And not only have all sorts of human and nonhuman people been looking for it for a millennia or so, now you’ve got Shadowlings after it too.”
“It seems like it.” He’d found and killed the two Adepts who had taken the dagger. He did not want to think about the dagger in the hands of an Adept and especially not in the hands of an Avatar.
She leaned forward as if she’d just thought of something. “Yesterday when we fought the seeker . . . ”
“What about it?”
“When you took up my Lightblade, it still held my extrasense. You were able to use it as if you were me. You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“Why?” He gave her a look out of the corner of his eye. “Did I violate some sort of Shadowchaser code?”
“Yes. No.” She shook her head. “Look, Lightblades are bonded to the Shadowchasers who wield them. My blade is an extension of me, of my magic and my will. It’s a protective measure so no one else can channel the blade’s power. Anything of Shadow can’t touch them—not without losing a limb or worse. At least, that’s been my experience.”
“I told you, I’m not of Shadow.”
“I know that. So what are you, then?”
“I am a warrior, a master of weapons. Your blade knew that. It wanted to protect you from the seeker demon; it allowed me to use its power to save you.”
“Wait. Are you saying that my blade talked to you the way your blade talked to me?”
“Your blade isn’t as chatty.” He looked down at his weapon, suddenly feeling tired. “Or as arbitrary.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“About what?”
“I don’t think your blade is being arbitrary. I think it’s challenging you.”
“Challenging me? You might be right.” He was beginning to wonder if he was still up to the challenge.
“Think about it.” Earnestness lit her eyes. “Your blade is the very essence of Balance. Make and unmake. Creator and destroyer. Its nature is to be in balance. It’s challenging you to get it back to center.”
“You think so?” The hopefulness in his voice sounded unnatural to his ears. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt something akin to hope. It had been too many years, too many lives ago.
She nodded. “Your blade could have called an Avatar to it when you were killed in Germany. . . . Man, it’s so weird saying that! Anyway, it could have fallen to Shadow then, but where did it end up instead?”
“With an antiques dealer in London.”
“With an antiques dealer in London who also happened to be a handler for the Gilead Commission. My handler. Do you think that was random?”
Khefar had seen his fair share of randomness over his lifetime. He’d also been around long enough to see patterns and purpose that most humans didn’t. To him this seemed to have the hand of the gods in it.
“I think I need to go give thanks to the goddess.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then stood. “Come with me.”
He followed her to the table on which he’d earlier placed the box.
“This worktable is where Bernie first showed me your dagger and where your dagger talked to me,” Kira said. She took a small white box off the table and clutched it close. “Bernie never made it to the lower level of my place while he was alive, so I’m taking him now. Will you get that other carton? Thanks.”
Wordlessly, Khefar retrieved the storage box, then followed her down the spiral staircase to the lower level. They entered a large but cluttered office through a door she had to unlock. He could tell from the feel of it that the area was special. She might let visitors into the main level. In a pinch she probably even let someone use the bathroom on the uppermost level. He doubted that she ever allowed someone on this level.
“This is my main office. If you like, you can use this room.”
He looked at the replica mural of Queen Nefertari at the back of the room. “You have a copy of a mural from the Valley of the Queens.”
She smiled. “Would you believe me if I said it came with the place?”
The panel slid to the left when she pressed a hand to it. They entered a lighted hallway stocked with a wide variety of weapons, some of them of a type he’d actually used during his lifetime.
“You also have the Weighing of the Heart ritual painted on the wall back there.”
“That’s my altar room, sacred space. I think you’ll understand why I don’t let anyone else in there.”
“Of course.”
“This is my private office,” she said, stepping into a smaller room. Overhead pot lights bathed the room in a muted glow, and a task light sat ready on the desk. He thought he’d seen plenty of books upstairs, but this room overflowed with volumes safely tucked behind glass doors. Khefar assumed that for these to be in a private underground office, the tomes had to be extremely rare or extremely dangerous. Probably a bit of both.
“My dagger remembers being in here,” he said, dropping a hand to the hilt. One of the shelves of books actually weren’t books at all, but a trompe l’oeil facade.
“I sealed it away for its protection and mine,” she explained. “If you’d rather use this room instead of the outer office, that’s fine. I have some incense in the desk drawer there.”
“Thank you.” He caught her free hand. “I mean that. You didn’t have to bring me down here or offer me a place to pray. Thank you for trusting me with your space.”
“You’re welcome.” She pulled away, wrapping her arms around the small box. “I’m going to go introduce Bernie to Ma’at. Why don’t I just meet you upstairs when we’re done?”
“All right. Thanks.”
He lit a stick of incense, setting the burner on the floor in the center of the room. Kneeling, he cleared his mind completely, concentrating on his breath, his heartbeat, his soul, and gave thanks to his goddess.
“Hail, Mother of All, Luminous One who thrusts back the darkness, who illuminates every human creature with your rays, hail, Great One of many Names . . .”
After finishing his prayers, Khefar returned to the upper floor. Since Kira hadn’t returned yet, he decided to make himself useful by heading upstairs to strip the sheets from her bed. His demon-poisoned wounds had seeped onto the linens. Other than the stains, he knew most people would be less than pleased to sleep with sheets someone had died on, even if he had also come back to life there.
He’d noticed a stacked laundry set tucked behind a pocket door in the master bathroom, but had no idea where clean sheets were and no inclination to go snooping. Instead, he put the linens into the washer, added detergent and bleach, and started the wash cycle, then retreated downstairs, hoping Kira would be back.
Kira looked up from a spread of the delivery menus on the kitchen breakfast bar, staring up at the Nubian as he descended the stairs. She could clearly hear the rumble of her was
hing machine on the floor above. “You started my laundry?”
“I didn’t take the sheets off the bed before we left,” he explained. “I noticed the laundry alcove when I took a shower this morning, so I thought I’d— Hey, are you all right? Should I not have done that?”
“No, it’s—it’s all right.” Gods, with everything else going on, I’d forgotten he’d slept in my bed—correction, died and been resurrected in my bed. She smoothed a hand over the quartz countertop, willing the cool surface to soothe her psyche. “I’m just, well, people in my house is new to me, especially in places I consider sacrosanct. Immortal men with domestic streaks will definitely take some getting used to.”
“If it makes you feel any better, after four thousand years I’m still not good at any sort of cooking that doesn’t involve meat over an open flame.”
She laughed at that. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I have lots of takeout menus to choose from. Unless you’re still full from Chef Nansee’s resurrection feast?”
“No, I’m starving. What is there to choose from?”
They quickly chose a restaurant, then Kira called their orders in. She hung up the phone. “We’ve got about thirty minutes before the food gets here. So how about we spend it with you telling me everything you know about Shadowchasers?”
He took the chair she’d vacated earlier, stretching his legs out. She remained at the counter.
Khefar smiled. “I’ve just picked up a little bit here and there in my travels.”
She laughed derisively. “Given some of the comments you’ve made, it doesn’t seem to me that you’ve picked up ‘just a little bit here and there.’”
“You’re right. I’ve encountered a few Shadowchasers on my journey. You have been called many things over the centuries. I think the first person that I knew as something close to a Shadowchaser was called a Light-bringer and I met him some three thousand years ago.”
“I guess Gilead has been in existence for three thousand years.” Such longevity would go far in explaining why they seemed so set in their ways.
“Some form of Gilead has probably been around since humans had higher functioning capabilities,” Khefar said. “Remember, your organization is based on maintaining the Universal Balance between Order and Chaos, Light and Shadow. That belief goes back to the dawn of humankind.”
Shadow Blade Page 15
