When I glanced back again, the woman had returned to the shelving and seemed to be reconsidering her wine.
“Regular?” I asked the cashier.
He grunted. “Never seen her before.”
I paid for the goods and headed for the door, when her quiet, calming voice called out, “Red bridge.”
I paused in the doorway, the bell above chiming.
She lifted her wine bottle, showing me the covered red bridge pictured on the label. “My favorite. At least, I think so. I’m not sure …”
Crazy as a temple cat, I thought.
Back at the car, I asked Cat to take the wheel and woke Shu by slamming my passenger door closed and tossing the Hershey bar at her. She’d sleep through the apocalypse. “Breakfast.”
She grumbled something like “thanks,” or possibly “screw you.”
Cat pulled the rental away from the gas station, still stewing in silence, but now Shu was silent too. Tension crackled against the back of my neck. Shu and Cat had deftly avoided each other since they’d met, rarely saying more than what was absolutely necessary. I couldn’t blame Cat’s wariness around Shu; she knew what Shu was. But there was little reason for Shu to tiptoe around Cat—besides the claws. Whatever their problem was, they managed it, and I added it to my growing list of things not to get involved in.
I shoved the sandwiches into the footwell. “I got you tuna.”
One of these days, Cat might crack a smile at my not-so-subtle puns, but today was not that day. All I got in return was the same prickly quiet.
Checking the side mirror, I glimpsed a beat-up Volkswagen behind us. I’d seen it at the gas station. I kept an eye on it as it fell farther and farther behind, until it disappeared altogether. We’d ventured far enough north that traffic had thinned to a dozen cars an hour. A tail would be obvious.
I slumped against the door and my eyes drifted closed.
“Where are we going?” Of course, Cat chose to get talkative now.
“North,” I replied, keeping my eyes closed. The tires droned on, cushioning my sleep-deprived thoughts.
“Are we running? Again?”
“No.” I cracked an eye open and saw her lips pinch together. “Maybe.”
“Do you have any kind of plan at all, or are we just going to keep driving until we hit the border?”
With a humph, I straightened and eyed the fir trees hugging the roadside. Chatty Cat ensured sleep was off the table. If she wanted me to talk, then it might be a good time to explain how the God of the Damned wanted to strip my soul and throw me into eternal torment.
A rusted road sign loomed ahead: North Elway.
“Take a right.”
“Here?”
“Do you see any other rights?”
“All I see are trees.” She turned off onto a single-track road toward Elway, then caught my eye, not needing words to demand answers; her look was enough.
I couldn’t blame her for being suspicious. “Look, the smart ones, the guys who live, they’re the ones who don’t run toward the god who’s got a hard-on for decorating their temples with their intestines. Smart guys run away and live until they can figure out how to stab the bastard in the back when he’s not looking.”
Cat snorted. “Wow, the scary and awe-inspiring Soul Eater is a coward.”
I heard Shu rustling the candy bar and knew without looking that she was smiling.
“Awe-inspiring?” I asked. “Did Bast say that?”
Shu’s little laugh mirrored the same humor as the smirk on Cat’s lips.
“An awe-inspiring acehole,” my demon sorceress remarked.
“No.” Cat’s smile wriggled as she fought it down. “My queen, Bastet, calls you many things. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her call you inspiring. Her favorite, when referring to the Soul Eater, is nti tikr hati. I looked it up. It means—”
“I know what it means.”
Shu snickered. I flipped her off. And the quiet returned, thick as ever. Bastet had every right to be angry. I was the one who ended our relationship not long after it had begun. A soul eater and a goddess with a soul as bright as hers? That would never end well. Look at me now, on the run from Anubis. I would’ve dragged her neck-deep into my sins. I’d done Bast a favor by letting her go. She could call me what she liked, so long as she did it from a distance.
Twisting in the passenger seat, I regarded my two skeptical travelling companions. “Cat, you haven’t met Anubis. If you thought Osiris and Isis were insane, you’ve barely scratched the surface of what the rest of the pantheon look like. Anubis doesn’t pretend to be human. He’s old as dirt, and the old ones get creative with their torture. He’ll tear me into living pieces and scatter bits of me to the four corners of Duat. And he can do it too. If you knew him, you’d run.”
“He’s right,” Shu confirmed. “Anubis is your worst fears shaped into a god.”
I gestured at my partner, using her rare agreement as proof.
Cat paled. “Why’s he coming after you now?”
Good question. It had to be because of the events of the last few months. Godkiller. That wouldn’t go unnoticed for long.
I clenched my teeth and glared ahead at the sweeping road. “We’ve never seen eye to eye. After I got kicked out of the underworld, he would’ve come for me, but Osiris’s curse had laid claim to my soul. Ozzy owning me and the fact I’m stuck on Earth has kept him at bay. After I was implicated in Ammit’s murder, and with Thoth’s death added to my admittedly suspicious rap sheet, you might say I’m persona non grata.”
“Anubis wants to decorate the Halls with Ace’s heart, liver, and lungs,” Shu said cheerily. She grinned. “And other more private parts.”
“And by definition, yours too,” I flung back at Shu.
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten how I’m tied to your forsaken ass.”
“Good. Don’t. Because you can damn well guarantee that if he finds me, I’m dragging you back with me to face judgment.”
That killed the conversation, until a few minutes later, when Shu said, “My judgment might have changed.”
I laughed, hard and sudden. “It’ll take more than a few centuries of playing nice in a human body to wipe the filth from your soul.”
The silence rushed back in, sharper than before, setting my teeth on edge. I knew why my skin was trying to crawl off my bones as the creeping sensation of Shu’s glare crawled up my neck. The look in her eyes spoke of murder.
“Stop the car,” she said quietly. Too quietly.
Cat didn’t have to be told twice. She rolled the rental to a stop on the side of the road. Shu was out and marching ahead fast enough to flare her knee-length coat. The sun cut through her black hair, barely penetrating its depth. She headed for a covered bridge, one of those typical New England postcard bridges made of painted red timber, nestled among majestic pines.
“You going after her?” Cat asked.
“And get a shot of toxic magic to the chest?” I looked at Cat like she’d lost her mind. She looked back at me like I was the scum of the earth. Cat needed to remember a few things she’d clearly forgotten about Shu. “Shu is a damned soul, damned a thousand times over, and a demon sorceress. Don’t ever forget that, or she’ll have you eating your own tongue before you can beg for your life.”
“Wow, you really are an asshole.” Cat was out and walking away, toward Shu, who was leaning against the rail beneath the covered bridge’s shadow.
I went over the conversation again in my head, wondering at what point it had careened into a burning pile of wreckage.
Watching the two of them under the covered bridge, peering down into the river below, it occurred to me that now would be a grand time to switch to the driver’s seat, spin the car around, and put as much distance between us as possible. I’d have done it too if I wasn’t cursed. I’d get ten or twelve miles away from Shu before forgetting where I was going in such a hurry. After twelve hours, nausea would kick in, followed by a chaser of heat so fierce I�
�d want to peel my skin off to escape. But at that point, the curse would just be getting warmed up. An insatiable thirst I’d kill to quench would then accompany the heat, the sickness, and the disorientation. Beyond that, I couldn’t be sure what would happen next as my mind and memories of past attempts to break free were a muddle of pain and broken images. The curse alone wouldn’t kill me, but I’d wish it could. I remembered enough to not want to let it get that far. It would kill Shu, eventually.
We weren’t escaping our fates, not while they were so tightly entwined.
A large shadow slid over the road, scooping out a chunk of glaring midday sun. I squinted up, catching the glare as the shadow dipped low. The silhouette doubled in size and thinned at the same time, revealing the outline of wings and a serpentine tail the size of a small aircraft.
Impossible.
The screeching caw sealed it.
The Recka.
It can’t be, the rational part of my brain denied. Part bird, part reptile, the Recka was a myth.
This very solid-looking myth alighted on the bridge roof, its taloned feet dislodging slats. It whipped its tail through the air and turned its vast yellow-eyed glare my way.
I was already reaching behind the driver’s seat for Alysdair as I tore my gaze away. Cat and Shu couldn’t have missed the bus-sized beast on the bridge roof. Despite its mammoth bulk, its size wasn’t its worst weapon. Neither were its claws nor its beak, designed to hook into flesh and pick its victim’s bones clean.
I bolted from the car toward Cat and Shu, loosing a high-pitched whistle through my teeth. The women turned to snatch a look at me, but the Recka lifted its bird-like head and screeched, demanding all eyes turn to it.
Godsdammit!
“Sans!” I wrenched on my waning magical reserves and flung the word at the Recka. The threads of the spell wrapped around it, ensnaring it tightly and coiling close, but the Recka strained against the restraint, and with an angry toss of its head, it broke free and narrowed its eyes on me. I should’ve known the spellword wouldn’t stick, but it had been worth a try. If a single word could beat the Recka, it wouldn’t be a legend among the pantheon.
How had it escaped Duat?
Cat had her claws out, and the smell of Shu’s burnt blend of magic filled the air.
“Don’t look in its eyes!” I yelled.
The bridge roof creaked. An internal beam clattered onto the asphalt as the Recka’s weight tested its construction. Another plank cracked, peeled off, and splashed out of sight into the river. The roof wouldn’t hold, not for much longer. Neither would we.
“What is that?” Cat shrieked as I slowed to a trot behind the pair.
Grabbing her shoulder, I spun her around, facing her toward the car and away from the enormous winged serpent. “Run. Don’t look back.”
She twisted and stepped away, her face the picture of startled frustration. “I’m not running—” Her bottle-green eyes simultaneously accused and condemned me, right before her gaze darted over my shoulder.
I caught her cheek and forced her to look into my eyes instead; the lesser of two evils, in this case at least.
“Don’t meet its gaze. You heard of Medusa?” I didn’t have time to explain that the Recka was exactly where the Greek myth had come from, but most modern folk knew something about the Medusa myth.
Cat nodded, catching on to my meaning.
“Good. Go. You can’t fight this one.”
She stumbled back, her brow creased and her eyes fixed on mine, even as my unique talent sank deeper. She wanted to look at the Recka, her human instincts telling her she needed to look, because the Recka was doing everything it could—stomping, cawing, flapping its wings—to pluck on that primeval part of Cat’s mind that demanded she face the threat.
She took a few steps back then turned and ran for the woods.
My gaze snagged on Shu, who was looking at me while keeping the Recka in her peripheral vision. “Is that the—”
“Recka? Yes, yes it is.”
My demon sorceress, who’d spent centuries cutting off and grinding up various body parts and souls, paled. “Ra help us.”
Ra wouldn’t be dropping by any time soon. We were on our own.
The Recka shifted its massive bulk, turning on its hind legs to angle its long scaled body. I kept my eyes on its scaled chest. How was I going to get Alysdair through that armor?
“You don’t happen to have the Eye of Ra hidden in your coat?” Shu asked, her voice small.
The Eye of Ra was a weapon that changed its form into whatever its wielder needed it to be. Ra had used it to defeat the Recka in a battle that had turned day into night. The Recka hadn’t been alone and neither had Ra. Seth had been there.
Shu and me? We weren’t in the same gene pool as Ra. Even if the Recka happened to be having a real bad day, we weren’t much more to it than cockroaches it would soon pick apart. The only reason it hadn’t killed us yet was because we were too easy. It was looking for a trap, but the joke was on it. There was no trap. Someone had woken it for a soul eater and a sorceress. Any second now, it would realize this and we’d be kibble.
The Recka reared back and flapped its wings, letting us get a good look at its gloriousness. Light rippled down the golden flanks of its wings that looked like brass. For all I knew, coming straight from Duat, those wings were brass. It swept its head low, bringing it to what would be eye level if we’d dare look right at it. A rattling, purring noise sounded from the back of its throat.
“How about you distract it,” I said, speaking from the corner of my mouth, “and I’ll stab it somewhere soft when it’s not looking?”
“Mm …” the Recka purred, and then it spoke in perfect, clipped English. “I know you …”
Osiris’s balls, it speaks.
And it had understood.
Legend had conveniently omitted that vital piece of information. I couldn’t tell whether it was talking to Shu or me, but the fact it had spoken at all was enough to freeze me rigid. We were dealing with an intelligent being. That changed everything.
“Soul Eater.” The low, rumbling purr was back, and I got the impression its voice didn’t come from anywhere near its beak, but from somewhere deeper inside. It probably didn’t speak English either; it was projecting its thoughts at us, translating them into something Shu and I could understand. “Liar …” it said, stretching the word out as though it were savoring it. “And yet … something … something about you. Something unaligned. Something familiar. Something missing.”
“We haven’t been properly introduced.” I fixed my gaze on a ridge of spiked bone that ran around its forehead, gathered behind its head, and travelled down its long neck. A crown of bone.
“Relics of a dead world, your kind and I.”
I found myself wanting to meet its yellow eyes, even though I knew the second it would take to flick my gaze over would be the last time my heart beat.
The Recka spread its wings and launched from the roof, only to land in a blast of backwashed wind and dust. “The God of the Damned awaits your soul.”
“Of course he does.” I chuckled, just the once, because I was having a fairly reasonable conversation with the Recka, a beast as old as creation, and I was very likely about to die here, on a New England road in the middle of nowhere. I deserved death and probably the eons of Anubis’s torture that would follow, and after that, the endless nothing of having my soul destroyed, but I hadn’t thought it would happen quite like this. Mouthing off to the gods, sure. But swatted by the Recka in New Hampshire? Not even Osiris’s finest of seers could’ve seen that coming. There were worse ways to go.
“We’re a long way from Duat. How’d you find me?” Yeah, the quiver in my voice wasn’t worth hiding. We all knew my road ended here.
“You are prey, hunted by those who seek the Soul Eater and his cursed demon. You have many eyes on you.”
“Did Anubis send you?” I couldn’t imagine even Anubis had the godly balls to ask anything of t
he Recka, but someone sure had. It hadn’t decided to wake itself from its slumber to come look for me all on its lonesome. Had it?
“Many answer the call for the promise of redemption.”
“Anubis is offering redemption for my death?” That was a sweet deal, worth more to some than others. I’d do almost anything for a chance to cleanse my soul. Maybe I should’ve handed myself in. A chance at redemption meant those with the blackest, damnedest of souls would be climbing over each other to get to me.
Shu shifted beside me, remarkably quiet. She was very good at becoming small when she wanted to. I imagined redemption sounded damn fine to her ears too. Did she have something to do with the Recka finding us here, or the vurk attacking us on the beach? There was no doubt in my mind that Shukra would’ve handed me to Anubis on a platter if she’d known about the reward. It wasn’t much of a stretch to believe she did know and had kept it from me.
Was that what this was? Shu’s get-out clause? Had she summoned the Recka?
I shoved those thoughts aside. What was done was done. Right now, I had more pressing concerns. If we survived, Shu and I would have a heart to heart—her heart at the point of my blade.
“I’m flattered Anubis thinks I’m worth the effort.”
The Recka moved, planting its talons to my right as it swooped its head in low. I skipped my gaze away, stumbling back a step, and lifted Alysdair on instinct. The blade caught a sliver of sunlight and tossed the glare across the Recka’s eagle-like face—or what I could see of it. The creature flinched, recoiling by a fraction, just enough for me to notice. Had the light hurt it somehow? We were standing in broad daylight. I couldn’t see how light alone would give the Recka pause, but something had. Had the sword? Could Alysdair devour its soul if I found a weak spot and had enough time to recite the words?
“Will you look me in the eyes, Soul Eater?” the Recka crooned and started circling me, each footfall rattling the ground beneath us.
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 3
