Going through the second chest was a far less draining experience. I gathered the items I needed—two knives and their matching boot sheaths, a bracelet that doubled as a garrote, two four-inch needle daggers, and a leather belt that concealed a stubby push dagger in the buckle. I set everything on the floor beside me and returned that chest to the closet as well.
Once the closet doors were closed, I pushed everything to the side of the room, clearing a large space. I drew the sword and set the sheath and shoulder harness on the floor by the wall with the rest of my gear. It had been years since I’d wielded Mercy, and though I kept in fighting shape, I was out of practice with a weapon.
I spent the next few hours reconnecting with my sword. Her balance, the way she cut through the air, the way she worked as an extension of me—it all felt both familiar and foreign at the same time. I practiced with Mercy, spinning, thrusting, parrying, and rolling, until only familiarity remained.
When I emerged from my office, sweaty but oddly energized, the oven clock said it was five in the afternoon. I was planning to leave for the shipyard at eight. I had three more hours to kill.
I pulled a frozen pizza—BBQ chicken—from the freezer and turned on the oven. Too hungry to wait a half hour for the pie to be done, I peeked into the cupboard to the right of the stove, fingers crossed that it wouldn’t be empty.
“Score,” I sang quietly, pulling down an unopened bag of Hot Cheetos. They’re terrible for me, I know, but that knowledge never stops me from inhaling a whole bag in a single sitting. And I’m not talking about one of the little bags. Think: family size. I tore the Cheetos open and shoved a handful into my mouth, then grabbed a Cherry Coke from the fridge. Leaning back against the counter, I alternated between scarfing down Cheetos and swigging Coke. I wholeheartedly accept that I’m the poster child for what not to eat. But then, I’m the poster child for what not to fill-in-the-blank, so why hold back?
I chomped on a few Cheetos.
How to kill the time?
I drank from the can of Coke. I ate a few more Cheetos. I looked around the fairly barren apartment, utterly uninspired.
An idea tiptoed into my mind, and I tilted my head from side to side, considering it. I set the pop can down on the counter behind me and pulled the list of names from my back pocket. I unfolded the paper, reading over the list as I sucked the spicy fake-cheese dust from my fingertips, scraping the stubbornest bits with my teeth.
I checked the clock on the stove. The oven was almost heated, and I was down to two hours and fifty-four minutes. I had a tattoo in mind for my left forearm, a piece to replace the fading tarot card, and I’d been playing with the idea of something else that would test the extent of my innate sheut power. I’d be cutting it close, time-wise, but if I wasn’t done by the time I had to leave, I could always finish inking myself later.
The oven beeped, and I tossed the pizza on the rack, setting the timer before I headed for the door to the stairs. The shop closed early on Sundays, so there was a good chance that everybody had already left. Kimi might still be here, closing out the register and doing the final clean-up, but everyone else should be gone for the day. I crossed my fingers. Hopefully that included Nik. The idea of facing him right now, after everything that happened earlier . . . I couldn’t handle it.
Thankfully, everyone, Kimi included, was gone. Even Nik. I didn’t know where he’d gone or for how long, and at the moment, I didn’t really care. I didn’t. The shop was empty, and I was alone. Which was exactly what I’d been hoping for.
I paused at the beaded curtain.
So why was disappointment taking root in my chest?
Hands in fists and nails digging into my palms, I ignored the troublesome emotion and pushed through the curtain. I gathered up my tattoo machine, a fresh needle, and a bottle of black ink, then paused, staring into the ink drawer. Tucked in the very back was a bottle that almost seemed to be glowing, ethereal and iridescent.
I grinned, swapping out the black ink for Nik’s At ink, and retreated back upstairs.
I stared at my left palm wondering what exactly I’d just created. A shimmery Eye of Horus stared back at me, taking up nearly my entire palm, reflecting colors from another dimension every time I shifted my hand and the light hit my skin differently. It was my clan’s symbol, proclaiming my permanent obedience to Heru better than any papers or oath ever could. But it was more than that, too.
The Eye of Horus was an ancient symbol, steeped with so much meaning—thousands of years’ worth. A civilization’s worth. An entire mythology’s worth. It was a symbol of protection from evil, from deceivers . . . from so many things. I didn’t know how it would work, or if it would even do anything beyond being decorative, but I figured a symbol as potent as the Eye of Horus would have as good of a chance as anything of doing something. And gods knew I could use some protection right about now.
Learning how to use the powers afforded me by my sheut was a game of trial and error. I never really knew what would work and what wouldn’t. I’d barely had the damn thing for three years. It had been a gift from the two new true gods—the Netjer, the inheritors of our universe—who’d been born just twenty years ago to Lex and Heru. And—laugh—I was their aunt. On the same day they’d gifted me my sheut, they’d left our universe and had yet to return. Sometimes it felt like they never would.
I closed my fist, then opened it again, somewhat surprised I couldn’t feel the tattoo. It had healed almost as soon as I’d inked it, as usual, but I still thought I should be able to feel a stiffness or something. The depiction of the goddess Isis in At ink on my right arm had been the same way. It just looked like something that I should feel. But I didn’t.
I glanced at the clock. Six-thirty. An hour and a half until it was go-time.
Cracking my neck, I re-inked the needle in the bottle of shimmering, liquid At and looked at the sheet of paper listing the names of everyone I’d killed. It was time to get to work on my next piece, on my memorial to every life I’d ended . . . and to every piece of myself I’d killed along the way. I brought the needle to my wrist and pressed it against my skin, starting with a G.
Chapter Twelve
The rumble of the Ducati echoed off buildings as I rode through downtown Seattle. As usual, an accident had jammed up I-5, turning the southbound lanes into a glorified parking lot. It wasn’t a major loss; I’d only have been on the freeway for a couple miles anyway, and by avoiding it, I didn’t have to deal with the high stress of lane-splitting. I was already anxious enough.
Garth would realize I’d sent him on a wild goose chase soon enough, but at least this would keep him from being able to follow me. And just maybe, after getting stood up tonight, he’d get the hint; our partnership was over. And then there was Nik. I didn’t know where he’d gone after filling in for me at the shop today, but I had a pretty damn good guess. I’d eat my boots if he wasn’t heading to the Fremont Troll to spy on me. After all, he’d overheard my exchange with Garth. I hoped my instincts were correct. I wanted both of them as far away from this Ouroboros mess as possible. I was expendable; they weren’t.
Is it weird that I was also a little giddy? It had been ages—years—since I’d seen any real action. The violent kind, not the sexy kind. My little scuffle with Nik two nights back had awakened something within me, almost like him showing up had started a domino effect that would drag me back into this world, kicking and screaming, if need be. Except I was going willingly.
I zigzagged through the streets of SoDo, the Industrial District south of downtown Seattle, and parked my bike on the east side of the Spokane Street Bridge, not wanting to alert whatever late-night workers or security personnel were lingering around on Harbor Island of my presence. Kickstand lowered, I hopped off the bike and hung my helmet on the upraised handlebar, then jogged to the West Seattle Bridge Trail, which crossed the Duwamish Waterway and carried pedestrians and bicyclists across man-made Harbor Island at ground level. It was dark out and cold at just past ni
ne at night—nobody was on the trail.
Harbor Island was a funny place—I’d been here once on a field trip for my high school economics class. We were supposed to see international commerce at work on the enormous man-made island, but we really just ended up watching an hour-long safety movie about container ships and shipyard hazards, listening to a rep from the company that runs Terminal 18—the shipping container facility taking up the northeast quadrant of Harbor Island—explain pretty much everything there was to know about containers. It was disappointing, especially since many of us had been fantasizing about climbing all over the neat stacks of thousands of containers we were only allowed to view through a razor wire–topped chain-link fence.
I reached said chain-link fence, specifically the portion blocking off the south side of the industrial part of Harbor Island, and drew my sword. One of my favorite things about Mercy was that her At blade could cut through pretty much anything, and the wire making up a chain-link fence was about as resistant to my sword as chilled butter to a table knife; cutting through wasn’t effortless, but it didn’t make me sweat, either. Within five minutes, I’d cut an opening about four feet high—tall enough for me to squeeze through without resorting to crawling.
I’d taken three cautious steps onto the parking lot of Harley Marine Services when a motion-activated floodlight winked on.
“Shit,” I hissed, slinking another dozen steps to crouch between two large white service trucks. I waited for a minute or two, listening for footsteps and engines. Hearing none, I straightened a little and made my way across the lot, moving in the shadows between vehicles whenever possible.
The next lot had to belong to an auto shipping company, because it basically looked like the lot of a car dealership. And a damn fancy one. It worked perfectly for my purposes. I managed to cross to the north end of the lot without tripping any more motion sensors.
After that, the east half of the man-made island was all Terminal 18. I stood at the edge of the packed car lot between two sedans, their black paint gleaming like oil in the dim moonlight. There was a fairly large open stretch of asphalt before the never-ending rows of red, blue, green, and orange shipping containers started, some stacked four or five high. On the far right, following the island’s artificial shoreline, clusters of cranes in twos and threes stood sentinel, burnt-orange behemoths watching over everything.
I snuck to the water’s edge, hoping any motion sensors for floodlights or cameras wouldn’t reach that far since the movement of the water would be constantly setting them off. Keeping low and moving slowly, I made my way further into Terminal 18.
Mari’s text from that morning had mentioned that the Ouroboros containers belonging to the illicit shipment would be stored between slots A-27 and A-30. According to the satellite maps I’d scoured online, row A was nearest to the water. Meaning it should be just straight ahead.
I squinted as I neared the first stack of containers—a stack of two, both green and both painted with the John Deere logo on the side. They were in spot A-13. The next stack, three containers in spot A-17—two orange, one red—were unlabeled, so far as I could see, besides a series of nonsensical numbers and letters on the door side.
I scanned the white numbers painted on the asphalt ahead. Sure enough, ten spots down, I found A-27. A stack of three containers piled one atop the other, all blue, called me onward, followed immediately by a stack of four. I jogged ahead, heart pounding and blood a raging river in my ears.
“Alright, you shitstains,” I said under my breath as I reached the supposed Ouroboros containers. “What are you hiding?” I stopped beside the stack of three, surveilling the long sides facing me. There was nothing to identify them as actually belonging to Ouroboros, so I moved around to the water side, where the container’s doors might give me some hint that I was in the right spot.
They didn’t—like so many of the containers filling the yard, they were labeled only with a series of letters and numbers, none of which made sense to me.
I took a step backward, peering at all four stacks of solid blue containers. I placed my hands on my hips and chewed on my bottom lip. They were right where Mari had said they would be, but there was only one way to find out if these were the right containers—the same way I would find out what the hell Ouroboros was up to. I had to break into them.
Drawing my sword slowly enough that the ring of At on steel was minimal, I approached the first stack. The lock on the bottom container looked complex and heavy duty, and there was no way for me to tell whether or not it was rigged with some kind of an alarm. But who says I have to go through the lock to get into the container? It would take some time and a fair amount of elbow grease, but Mercy was more than capable of cutting through the thick sheet of steel.
The tip of my sword was inches from the container’s door when I heard the creak of metal on metal. I froze, sword gripped in both hands and breath held, and scanned the containers around me.
The door of the second container in a stack of five in slot A-30 inched open.
I pulled back Mercy and raised my elbows, settling into a ready stance.
Something tumbled out of the container, falling at least eight feet to the pavement. It landed with an oomph and a groan. Not a something; a someone.
“Kat? Is that you?” It was Mari—the someone. She pushed herself off the ground a few inches and raised her head. There was barely a crescent of a moon high overhead, and across the water, Seattle far outshone the stars, but my eyes were good enough to see the lab coat she was wearing. And the bloodstains marring the fabric and the dark bruises on her face and neck. She looked like hell beaten over.
My palm itched, and I rubbed it against my jeans. “What the hell are you doing here, Mars?”
Mari coughed a laugh, spitting up something that looked suspiciously like blood. “Your concern is underwhelming, as usual.”
Hesitantly, I sheathed my sword and approached, offering her a hand up. Someone must’ve caught her poking around, but that didn’t explain how she’d ended up in one of the containers she’d all but sent me here to find.
She accepted my outstretched hand, pulling herself up to a sitting position but not even attempting to stand. She coughed weakly and clutched one side like the action hurt her ribs. “I need a minute . . .”
I nodded, still rubbing my palm against my jeans. “Is anything broken?” Because if she had any broken bones, I had no doubt she’d prefer for me to set them now rather than wait until they’d healed so much that they’d have to be re-broken to heal properly.
She shook her head, her dark bob matted in chunks. “Not for me. I don’t know about Dom . . .”
“What do you mean—Dom?” I scanned the area, searching for his lanky form but finding no sign of him. “Is he here? Where? What happened?”
“We snuck out together.” She pointed up to the partially open container with her chin. “He’s up there. He’s in pretty bad shape, though.”
Before she’d finished speaking, I’d launched myself at the container, grabbing hold of the lip. My feet scrabbled for purchase on the vertically ribbed face of the bottom container. The toe of my boot found the boxed lock, and I used that to leverage myself the rest of the way up.
It was even darker inside the container, the sliver of light spilling in through the opening barely enough to allow even my heightened Nejeret vision to make out the interior.
But I could see Dom, lying on the floor a couple yards in. Pallets laden with boxes filled the space beyond him, their shrink-wrap gleaming dully in the barely there light.
“Dom,” I said, rushing forward and dropping to my knees beside him. I turned his head so I could see his face. “Dom, are you alright?”
No response.
My heart turned to lead.
I pressed my fingers to his neck in search of a pulse, letting out a relieved breath when I found it, faint but steady enough for now. So long as his heart was beating, propelling his Nejeret blood through his body, and so
long as his injuries weren’t immediately fatal, he’d be able to regenerate.
I shook him by the shoulder. “Dom, can you hear me?”
But still, he said nothing. He did nothing. He was out cold. But I could see him; I could touch him. It was a far cry from the position I’d been in an hour ago, and I couldn’t ignore the burst of euphoria that sprouted in my chest. The hard part was over. I’d found him. It would all be downhill from here.
Chapter Thirteen
The first time I met Mari, she almost killed me. In her defense, I was trying to kill her. She’s the opposite of Nik, able to pull a far more dangerous and volatile universal energy into this realm, give it form, and shape it to her will. It was with that energy that she nearly killed not only my body, but also my eternal soul.
The universe was created by the old gods, Re and Apep, around a principle of absolute, ultimate balance known as ma’at. If At is the principle element of creation, then anti-At is its inverse—destruction. It binds to At, binds to every aspect of creation, moving it, changing it, keeping the universe from growing stagnant. We are, all of us, objects of creation, of At. Nejerets carry a little piece of At within us, in the form of our ba—our soul. Should we come into physical contact with anti-At, we’ll change. The anti-At particles, torn from their usual plane of existence, become ravenous in their need to destroy, binding with anything and everything. Binding with us, consuming our ba, until we no longer exist. Until we never existed at all. If we come into contact with anti-At, we’ll be unmade.
Which is precisely what almost happened to me, a long time ago, when Mari nearly killed me. Nik and I had fought, much like this morning, and I’d run off, dead set on avenging my mother’s death. I’d attacked Mari, mistakenly believing she was responsible, and she’d stabbed me. With a gleaming black dagger made of pure anti-At. Only Nik arriving seconds later and extracting all of the otherworldly poison from my body by binding every molecule of anti-At with its one true mate, At, had allowed me to survive. Not unscathed—my ba had been damaged and would forever bear the scars—but I hadn’t been unmade, either.
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 9
