“You’re not a soul eater, but you’re very good at pretending to be one.”
“What I am is the bastard who stole countless immortal lives, and in this place, that’s about as bad as you can get. This is my home, and in Duat, I have enough power to strike fear into any and all. That’s what you saw. But even that …” I sucked on my teeth with a tight hiss. “That means exactly nothing, because right now, I’m a condemned soul inside the Journey of the Twelve Gates. All that power, all the bad reputation that has innocents quaking in their boots, and I’m terrified of what’s outside.” I jabbed a finger back the way we’d come. “And you, Catalina from Boston, should be terrified too, because whatever sin you’ve recently committed, it was substantial enough to condemn that sweet soul of yours, turning it black as your feline alter ego’s fur coat.”
“What?”
“I saw it while you were running.”
I watched the bottom fall out of her world. She dropped to her knees, sending up puffs of ash, and her stern expression crumbled, taking her anger with it. “I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to a liar. I know. So we’re both fucked. You can throw accusations around all you like and deflect all that rage and confusion on me. It changes nothing. Welcome to your last few hours to live.”
“My soul is … damned?”
I swallowed, wondering if it was blood I tasted on top of the ash. “Enough of it is.”
“But I …” She looked at her hands like they might hold the answers, and then realization widened her eyes. She turned her pleading glare on me. “Oh by the gods.”
“Don’t tell me what happened. I don’t want to know. There’s nothing I can do.”
I’d heard it all before. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t thinking. I was afraid. And then the begging would start. I’ll do anything, give you anything, just let my soul go free. They were usually lies. Some of it was true, but ragged souls leave no room for regret. I knew by the look of terror on Cat’s face that whatever she’d done, she hadn’t known it would be the final nail in her coffin. Most people lived blissfully unaware of the damage they’d done to their souls until they found themselves in the weighing chambers watching the feather rise, and then their guilty hearts fell.
She slumped back, rocking on her heels, and asked quietly, “Can we go back to the Gates and leave?”
“It’s a one-way trip.”
“We can’t just give up. The Gates—you said—”
“The Gates will pick apart your worst fears and throw them back at you. Twelve Gates. Twelve hours of your own personal torment. A soul’s final test. Ra used to travel to the Gates every night so the sun would rise each day. His fear was the long-dead Apep, the Lord of Chaos. Their battles tore Duat apart, turning the city and its inhabitants to ash.”
Cat regarded the ash strewn around us. She plucked her hands free and brushed them clean.
“At dawn, when Ra won, Osiris resurrected the city and the sun rose again. The circle of life went on.” Shoving off the rock, I crouched in front of her. “Ra’s not here, and despite what you think you’ve figured out, inside, my soul is the same as all the others that journey here. The difference is, you and I would’ve usually been weighed and devoured before this point. But you’re alive, so your soul didn’t travel here of its own accord, and well”—I gestured at myself—“the Soul Eater is on vacation. Lucky us.”
Not to mention the curse that could, at any second, sink its talons in and rip out my mind. Wherever Shu was, she might already be lost to the agony.
I’d known this moment was coming and that I couldn’t run from justice forever. Didn’t make it feel any better though. As for Cat, she was human. I wasn’t entirely sure what this place would do to her.
“So we just have to face our fears to get through?”
Just? “What are you afraid of?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
She believed it too.
A small smile twitched across my lips. Of course she’d think that. Bastet’s warrior. The carnival crash survivor. I’d lived long enough to know we were all afraid of something. Deep down, in the darkest, most hidden depths of our prehistoric minds, those fears waited with the patience of a soul eater waiting to devour us.
“Screw this. And screw you.” She got to her feet and brushed the ash from her cloak. “I’m not waiting around here to die. Your ancient ass might welcome death, but I sure don’t. I’m going back. Anubis and your godforsaken home can go hang.”
“Don’t go out there.”
“You think I’m going to let fate have me?”
I could compel her to stay, but it wouldn’t save her. It would only delay the inevitable.
Straightening, I listened to the winds and imagined I could hear her name in the storm. I wanted to tell her I was sorry I couldn’t prevent this, tell her she deserved more. I wished, just this once, I could save souls. But all I could think to say was, “Bastet would be proud.”
“This isn’t over.” Shoulders back and head up, she strode out of the cavern and straight into her fate.
“Wait—” As soon as I stepped past the opening, the howling wind slammed into me, stinging through my clothes and burning my skin. Sand and ash whipped around Cat’s obscured figure ahead, clawing at her robe, at her.
“Cat!” I pushed forward, lifting my arm in a useless attempt to shield my face from the wind’s furnace-like burn.
She turned, eyes wide. A thousand tiny cuts across her face wept blood. Her hair whipped around her head, turning dark red.
Seconds, that was all she had. That stubborn, stupid shifter, she shouldn’t have followed me. She should have stayed in New York.
She reached for me. The storm tore at her arm, tearing skin from muscle.
The wind picked her apart at the edges. I couldn’t hear her screams, but I witnessed the horror of it on her face. She was dying. Her human body was too fragile for this place. The storm around her throbbed red. Her knees buckled, but not before I caught her. She buried her head against my shoulder. The wind tore at us, ripping away whatever made me real in this world. Cat’s weight against me grew lighter and her screams faded. She clutched at my waist until her fingers crumbled and her body fell away—until the storm of souls devoured her.
Rage ignited the part of me I’d long ago buried, reawakening the truth. Cat hadn’t deserved to die. She hadn’t been judged or weighed. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t justice. Damn all the gods. This was my land, my home.
“I ok sra Mokarakk Oma, sra Emd uk Arr Tremsk, sra Daquirar, Sudderrar,” I raged into the eye of the storm.
I am the Nameless One, the End of All Things, the Devourer. Godkiller.
“Em srek vurrd, kae raku, aeui ubaae ka.”
In this world, my home, you obey me.
I flung out my power—all of it, everything I had in me—and the storm hooked in, twisting, pulling, and tearing through my center, my soul. I held on to the ragged tatters of my mind and poured myself into the howling, tormented souls until I didn’t know where I ended and the storm began.
Maybe I’d die. Maybe my ashes would be forever caught in this maelstrom. Or maybe, just maybe, I’d find her in the eye of the storm and bring her back.
9
I knew my fears.
I’d had what sometimes felt like thousands of years to fine-tune what woke me at night, drenched in cold sweat. Time is relative, after all.
But nothing could have prepared me for the nightmare I found in the eye of that storm—in the center of me.
Figments of the past, faces of those I’d killed. I heard their wails condemning me to an eternity of guilt and agony. Anubis was there, teeth bared, and others too. A young girl, a stranger. She had my eyes. And Bastet, her hand on mine, saying, More than darkness. I heard her say it, saw her lips form the words, and then she was gone, torn from me like Cat.
I saw worlds burn and cities, old and new, crumble. I watched the desert devour a once great land. But i
t wasn’t the desert, and it wasn’t just any storm. It was me. The sundering—a battle like no other—had wrenched two worlds apart. The Nile had run red with blood and the streets had flowed with it. And I’d been there. Worse, in my leaden heart, in my shredded soul, I knew I’d burned those cities and commanded the sands to rise and devour all in its path.
Among the madness, in a sudden moment of sharp clarity and roaring quiet, my surrogate mother, Ammit, smiled her crocodile smile and held out the box with snake-headed markings. I reached for it, but my fingers turned to dust, along with my apartment I’d found myself standing in. Beyond the dissolving window, Manhattan’s skyline dissolved, skyscrapers bucking under the weight of raging souls.
“What are you?” Thoth demanded, but it wasn’t Thoth peering down at me.
The hooded ferryman’s eyes glowed a subtle blue against his shadow face.
Slowly, carefully, I remade myself, filling out the body of a man. It took hours, or days, to come back into myself, and all the while, madness crooned in my ear. The curse. I couldn’t be sure of anything. This time, this place. Who I was. What I was.
Then, at the flick of an internal switch, I was solid and real again. I had a second to take in the comfortable sleeping quarters before my gut heaved up clumps of sand.
I vomited up a dry mix of ash and sand, angling away from the bed.
Cat handed me a cup of water. My fingers grazed hers as I took it. Real.
Cat.
She sat on the edge of a chair, dressed in a white gown decorated with gold lace. She offered a small, anxious smile as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
“You aren’t here.” My voice sounded like it had been shattered and hastily glued back together by clumsy hands.
“I haven’t been entirely straight with you.”
I’d seen the souls shred her flesh. I’d searched for her. Had I … brought her back? No, I didn’t have that power. Did I? Only Osiris could bring back the dead. Had he brought her back? Was he here?
By all that was ancient, I needed to get a grip on my thoughts. Start with what’s simple. Where was I? I vaguely recognized the carved doorway arches and the painted furniture. No windows. Underground, then? The pounding in my head thudded hot and relentless down my neck, hammering away any rational thought and the shocking memories that still haunted me.
I drank long and deep from the cup, concentrating on its cool, clean flow down my throat and the chill spreading from within. Was any of this real? Was I real?
“The ferryman says the curse has you. He gave you something to help. At least, I think that’s what he said.” Cat took the empty cup and refilled it from a jug. “It’s like talking with a desiccated museum exhibit.”
“How did I get here? I was in the storm, and you …” I’d heard her dying scream and felt her dissolve into nothing. “You were definitely dead.”
“I’ve been dead before. It’s temporary.”
“Temporary?”
She smiled. “I’m three deaths into my nine lives. It’s a shifter thing.”
I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to punch the smile off her face or grab her and kiss her. My heart jackhammered, pumping adrenaline and a spark of power through my veins. If I kissed her, she’d probably introduce my guts to her claws, and I wasn’t in any condition to invite that kind of attention. I fell back and blinked up at the white ceiling, wading through the fog in my head. “Give me a minute.” She did, but a minute wasn’t enough. A year wouldn’t be enough to sort through the chaos in my head. “You died?”
“Yes.”
“And came back?”
“Clearly.”
“How?”
“The ferryman almost scared another life right out of me after I woke up in a bed down the hall. He said you were here and that you needed help. I think he—or it, or whatever he is—pulled us both out of the Gates, but not before you’d been in there for ten hours.”
Ten hours. Almost the entire journey of twelve. I could’ve been the first sin-riddled soul to survive. Too bad I hadn’t lasted, but I wasn’t going back for another shot. Ever. But I had survived. That … that was impossible.
The things I’d seen in there. The sundering. The wars. But that had been eons ago. No, the Gates had shown me my fears. Nothing more. Nothing less. Who wouldn’t be afraid of the end of all things? That was how the journey stripped a soul.
I couldn’t think on it, not without the ache attempting to split my skull open. I’d need to have a one-on-one chat with the ferryman. If the wily, linen-wrapped spirit had pulled Cat and me out, then he knew a lot more than he let on.
And then, in all of this madness, there was Cat. I wasn’t buying her nine lives excuse and told her so with a heavy dose of side-eye. “You’re not just a shifter, are you?”
She smiled like I was an idiot for not realizing it sooner. “And you’re not just a soul eater.”
Maybe I wasn’t. The evidence was stacking up against me.
Anubis?! “We need to leave—”
I sat up, only for the world to spin and tip and my guts to threaten to vacate my body. Cat placed a hand on my chest and pushed me down, and I let her, because those green eyes enthralled me. I recalled exactly how she’d walked into the storm … her warrior’s soul a sight to behold.
“Rest,” she said, making it sound more like an order than a suggestion. “The ferryman says we’re safe here. I believe him.”
I watched how her lips formed the words and wondered what it would feel like to brush my lips against hers. Her mouth looked soft, inviting, contrasting with her rip-your-heart-out attitude. I might’ve tried to find out if I hadn’t felt as though I’d been torn into pieces and forced back into something barely resembling a human.
Cat spread her fingers and brushed her hand slowly up my chest. Then those warm fingertips touched my cheek and traced my lips like she was studying me, and maybe after all the things she’d seen, she needed that touch to know I was real. I couldn’t stand much more of it.
I caught her hand, stopping its exploration, and pushed her gently back. “What you saw of me …”
Monster, Isis’s voice mocked.
“Did you think you or your home could frighten me so easily, Ace Dante?”
I wasn’t sure what to think. I thought I’d figured her out, but I hadn’t even begun uncovering the real Catalina from Boston.
She left me alone with my thoughts, and the smile she’d brought on faded under the feeling that I’d come close to the yawning edge of something too vast, too dangerous, and if I pushed or dug deeper, I’d fall into the jaws of fate. The fears I’d seen, the girl with eyes like mine, the memories of a dead world, memories that couldn’t be mine though I’d seen them all the same, were they real? I’d compelled Anubis … and the storm inside the Twelve Gates—the storm I’d become … Cat didn’t know, nobody could know how I’d become that devastating, ravenous storm.
Soul Eater. Godkiller.
Those names didn’t even come close to the depths of the power I could’ve tapped into inside the Gates.
Nameless One.
Now I wasn’t sure who, or what, I was, but there was something that would give me answers: Ammit’s box with its snake-headed jackal symbol.
I jangled the cuff still clamped around my wrists even after everything I’d endured. I’d get my answers, but first I had to survive Anubis. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I had the opportunity to look fate in the eye and tell it to fuck off.
10
My modern shirt and pants were likely ash strewn about the Twelve Gates, if they’d survived at all. It had been years since I’d worn Duat’s traditional lightweight attire. I slung a shirt on over my head, shrugged it into place, and donned loose-fitting linen pants. It could be worse. Servers from godly households wore elaborate tunics, an array of anklets, decorated collars, and golden kilts.
The cuff still bothered me, especially how it glimmered in plain view, but until Kabechet found me or I
found her, I’d have to live with it.
The house I’d woken in was underground, hewn from stone as I’d first thought, but it had its own private gardens tucked in between the high windowless walls of adjacent buildings.
I found Cat there and froze in the door’s threshold. She’d knotted the long linen gown to one side, tying up the unnecessary length—probably in preparation for a quick getaway. The gown clung to her lithe figure, flowed over her hips, and swept up her back. I’d seen her naked more times than I could remember, but seeing her in such plain garments, wandering among the broadleaved plants, unfussy and somehow refined in all her lethal grace, was like seeing her for the first time.
Duat hadn’t broken her. Back from the dead, gutting ancient beasts, and playing the aloof housecat, Cat seemed indestructible. I wasn’t sure anything could break her.
“Anubis seeks the Soul Eater—” I stiffened at the ferryman’s voice so close behind me. He could’ve been there for minutes, watching me watch Cat. Spooky bastard. “—in every dwelling. Time will bring him here. The lengths to which he will go will sunder Duat once more. Justice consumes him.”
Fate was hunting me down. I didn’t take my eyes off Cat as I asked, “Do you know what she is?”
“Mafdet’s descendant.”
Mafdet, Slayer of Serpents, warrior of old, and owner of New York’s Curiosities store. Suddenly, a great deal about Cat made sense. Sometimes the worlds were just too small. “Does Cat know?”
“It is unlikely. The blood is weak, the ancestry diluted by time.”
That would make Thoth Cat’s very, very distant uncle. That kind of heritage didn’t go unnoticed.
“Does Bastet know?” It might explain why Bastet had gone out of her way to adopt the orphan Cat after the carnival accident—if it had been an accident at all. Potential godlings had a knack for attracting trouble.
The ferryman paused long enough for me to glance over my shoulder at his portent of doom outline. No face, just shadows crowding beneath the hood. Shadows I couldn’t read. Whatever he was thinking, he didn’t appear to want to answer. I tried another question instead, one I’d been meaning to ask but already knew the answer to. “Is Bastet’s soul in the River?”
See No Evil (The Soul Eater Book 3) Page 9
