“A cop?” Lex asked, at the same time as Heru said, “What symbol?”
I couldn’t ignore Heru’s question. He was a man whose passive greatness was so stifling that if you told some random human that he was a god, nine times out of ten they’d shrug and nod, admitting it was a possibility. “A snake eating its own tail,” I told him. “It helped me link the disappearances to the Ouroboros Corporation.”
Heru’s golden tiger eyes narrowed.
“Mari’s working with them,” I said. “Did you know that?”
Lex’s mouth fell open, and Heru shook his head ever so faintly.
“So, yeah . . . she’s not ‘missing.’” I gripped the side of my abdomen, still aching dully from the stab wound. “She’s the one who did this. I’m pretty sure she has Nik . . . and she managed to get me with an anti-At dagger.”
“What?” Lex was standing before the word was out of her mouth.
“I’m fine,” I said, holding out my left hand, emblazoned with the black-veined Eye of Horus. “Turns out my sheut’s good for more than just drawing pictures, reading fortunes, and finding people . . .”
Lex moved closer, crouching and eyes squinting as she studied my palm. “What is that?”
“At ink,” I told her. “Nik made it.” I shrugged out of my jacket and set it on the chair beside me. “It’s what these are, too. The only permanent ink there is for a Nejeret.”
“And it protected you?” Lex asked, looking from my hand to my face and back.
I nodded vehemently. “And that’s not all it did.” I remembered the way it had itched, then burned, when Mari had first emerged from the container. “I think it tried to warn me that I was in danger—I just didn’t know it.” I stared hard at Lex. “You guys should seriously consider letting me ink you with one of these bad boys. Could save your life . . .”
“I’ll think about it,” she said with a frown.
I looked at Heru. God or not, it was my turn to spear him with a hard stare. “How’d this all happen? How did you let it? And how the hell did the Senate not know what Ouroboros was up to?” Not that I really had any clue what exactly they were up to, just that it involved abducting Nejerets and human kids and apparently tearing the bas out of their Nejeret captives. “Even Nik’s been paying attention to them. He said their ‘life extension’ products seemed fishy.”
“For some time,” Heru said, “it has been my belief that there is corruption within the Senate.” Irritation tensed his exotic features. It was the most emotion I’d seen in him in years. Then again, this was the first time I’d seen him in years.
I scoffed. “You think?” I’d sensed that vein of corruption the day they tasked me, a nineteen-year-old freshly manifested Nejeret who just happened to be invisible in the echoes thanks to the first time Mari stabbed me with an anti-At dagger, with hunting down and eliminating their enemies.
Heru’s responding stare put mine to shame. “All of this stays between us.”
“I literally talk to no one.” At least, no one who mattered to them. “Who do you think I’ll tell? My receptionist?”
The corner of Heru’s mouth twitched like he was holding in his amusement, but Lex frowned.
At the sound of footsteps coming from the hallway leading to Dom’s operating room, all three of us swiveled our heads. Neffe approached, scrubs smudged with crimson bloodstains, dark hair held back by a blue cap tied behind her head, and a surgeon’s mask pulled down below her chin to reveal her striking face.
Born during the most famous ancient Egyptian period, the New Kingdom’s Eighteenth Dynasty, to Queen Hatshepsut and the great god Heru—the very same Heru sitting in the waiting area with me—Neffe was a stunning vision of a woman. And her brain was even better; her intellect and skill as a healer was nearly unmatched. Though her personality left something to be desired.
“How is he?” Lex asked, taking a step toward Neffe, hands wringing. Lex, Dom, and I shared a father, and she and Dom had always had a special bond.
Neffe took hold of Lex’s hands, showing more compassion than I’d have thought her capable of. “It is not good, I’m afraid. Aset is still in there, leading the team, but . . .” She shook her head, her honey eyes filled with sorrow. She and Dom had been a part of each other’s lives for centuries, so I don’t know why it surprised me so much that she actually gave a shit about him. But it did. “He’s not healing. No matter what we do, it’s like working on a patient with a severe autoimmune disease—the exact opposite of what should be happening.”
I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut again. Surely I hadn’t skipped over the part about Dom’s ba having been torn out of his body, had I? I quickly reviewed our conversation so far in my mind, and much to my shame, I had. “It’s his ba,” I said, standing and retrieving the anti-At orb out of my left pocket, then holding it out for the others to see. Neffe reached for the shimmering black orb, and I quickly drew it back to me. “Don’t touch it!”
Neffe pulled her hand back. “Is that—”
“Anti-At?” I said. “Yes.”
Her eyes rounded. “But how are you—”
“It’s a long story,” I said with a huff. “The point is, Dom’s ba is in here, courtesy of Mari. Is there any way you can get it out of here and back into him?”
“Short of a needle made of anti-At . . .” Neffe shook her head. “No, I don’t believe so. Not even Nik would be able to break through it.” She turned and started back toward the hallway. “This changes things. I’ll return shortly with a new assessment of the situation.”
I went to stuff the orb back into my pocket, but Lex grabbed my wrist. “Is that really him in there?” she asked, bringing her face close to its poisonous surface.
I pulled free from her gentle hold. “So Mari claims . . .”
“Can he hear us?” Lex asked, straightening as her eyes moved from the orb to my face and back.
I lifted one shoulder and shook my head. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Mari did this?” From the hard glint in Lex’s eyes, I wagered that Mari—whatever reasoning she’d had behind splintering Dom’s body and soul—was about to get far more than she’d bargained for. Heru was shit-scary when he wanted to be. But if there was one person I didn’t ever want to piss off, it was Lex. She’d been through hell traveling through time across millennia to get back to us, and she knew what it meant to lose everything. I mean, come on—the woman birthed the two new, true gods of our universe.
And she loved Dom as much as anyone. Maybe more. If there was anyone I pitied right now, it was Mari. She was in for a universe of hurt.
Chapter Seventeen
I’m not used to sitting still without having something to do. I’ve always got a pen in hand, a tattoo machine, or my tarot cards. I had none of those things in the hospital waiting area, and once the food was gone, it was painfully dull, which only increased my anxiety about Dom. If only I had my cards . . . but then they’d have taken a dip with me in the waterway, and I doubted even their magic ink would’ve survived that.
The minutes felt like hours, the hours like days. Not that I’d made it even a half hour sitting down there, doing nothing, but still . . .
I pushed up out of my chair maybe an hour after I woke to the scent of cheap burgers and fries. “I need to move,” I said, reaching my hands over my head and arching my back in a stretch. Now was as good of a time as any to search for Garth. “I’m gonna walk around.” I picked up my leather jacket off the chair. It wasn’t cold in the hospital, but it wasn’t toasty, either.
Lex’s eyes moved to the jacket in my hands, then back to my face. “Oh, um, alright.” Did she think I was ducking out? Not that I could blame her if she did. My track record was less than stellar in the slinking-away department.
I set the coat down, hoping doing so would do enough to reassure her that I really would come back. I did pull the anti-At orb from the pocket, though; I wasn’t willing to leave that behind with a bunch of Nejerets. To a human, it would be r
elatively safe—erasing them from the echoes, but nothing more, since no ba connected them to that higher plane. But to a Nejeret with a ba, it would unmake them, body and soul. Only I had immunity, thanks to the Eye of Horus inked in At on my hand.
Once the orb was out in the open again, Heru’s eyes locked onto it.
“I’ll be back in a bit.” I checked the clock on the wall. It was nearly five in the morning. “The cafeteria opens soon. Maybe we can grab breakfast when I get back?”
Lex nodded. “That sounds good.”
I found the stairs and headed up a floor, wandering its hallways and corridors while I tossed and caught the orb, over and over. I passed someone in scrubs every now and again, but there weren’t too many people around. Certainly not many visitors at this hour of the morning, and none of them cops, which I figured would be the first sign that my hunt for Garth was bearing fruit. Nobody seemed concerned about my presence, at least not once they caught sight of the bandage on my abdomen. I supposed they thought I was a patient, even if I wasn’t wearing a hospital gown.
Harborview Medical Center is an enormous facility made up of at least a dozen buildings, some connected, others standing on their own small block. I mostly just stuck to the main cluster of five interconnected buildings. After I’d done a full circuit of the second floor, I moved up to the third using the same stairwell as before.
It spat me out into a waiting room filled with cops. I froze in the doorway, heavy fire door propped open against my shoulder. All eyes were on me.
Their scrutiny was so intense that I started to ease back into the stairwell, but when my brain finally put two and two together and I realized this must be where Garth was being treated, I changed my trajectory. Slowly, I pushed through the door and into the waiting room. I spotted walrusy Officer Henderson sitting in the corner in jeans and a wrinkled blue polo. He was easy to recognize, even out of his uniform.
Henderson stood and I planted my feet, head held high, bolstering myself for the inevitable ejection from this apparently cop-only shindig. “I suppose you’re looking for Garth?” he said as he drew near.
I nodded, my gaze flicking to the side at a whispered “Ink Witch.” I ground my teeth together.
“Come on.” Henderson waved me onward. “He’s been asking for you.”
My eyes widened, stinging as shame welled within me. It had taken me hours to come looking for Garth, I’d been so focused on Dom. Sure, I’d been passed out most of that time, but I certainly hadn’t come as soon as I could’ve.
Henderson led me through the wide entrance into the intensive care unit. Lead settled in my stomach. It was my fault that Garth was here. The space was bustling with activity, and the incessant cacophony of arrhythmic beeping was enough to drive a Nejeret nuts.
We made a right, then a left, and Henderson stopped at the third doorway on the right. He reached into the room and knocked on the open door. “You decent, kid?”
“Why?” Garth said. “You looking for a show?”
My lips curved into a small smile at hearing his voice. He was alright.
Henderson laughed, a low, rough sound that came from his belly. “You’ve got a lady visitor.”
“I said no strippers!”
Henderson gave me a questioning look.
I crossed my arms and raised one eyebrow. “I’m not a stripper.”
“Kat?” Garth asked from within the room. “Is that you?”
After a deep breath—and another—I walked into the hospital room. Garth was propped up to a reclined sitting position, an entourage of beeping machines and IV bags on racks surrounding the upper half of his bed. His distinctive, noble features were mottled with bruises and cuts, and his hospital gown looked flimsy on his large frame.
“Hey,” I said, forcing a lame smile.
He scanned me. “You look like crap.”
I laughed. It only sounded slightly nervous. “Right back at you,” I said with a halfhearted wink. I sat in the chair some visitor before me had left at his bedside.
“What happened?” he asked, his eyes searching my face. “When you didn’t show up, I thought you’d pulled a fast one on me, but then your friend was there, and then we were jumped by that guy from—” He cleared his throat, then succumbed to a pretty painful-looking coughing fit.
I reached for the plastic cup and pitcher on his wheely tray and poured him a glass of water.
“Thanks,” he said when he’d regained his voice. “I was afraid . . . I thought he must’ve gotten to you first.”
I narrowed my eyes. “He who?” Maybe someone else who worked with Mari?
“The guy from the bar—you remember him, don’t you? The bartender . . . ?”
The blood drained from my face, and I went cold all over. That fucking shitstain—I still didn’t know his name—must’ve overheard Garth say “Nejeret” in the bar. I pressed my lips together and focused on breathing through the sudden spike of adrenaline. I would kill that fucker. It would be the first time I’d killed someone I’d had any kind of sexual involvement with, but that wouldn’t stop me. My gaze strayed from Garth’s as memories from that stairwell flashed through my mind, and silence stretched between us.
“Kat?”
I refocused on Garth. “How do you know what I am?” I asked, shooting a quick glance at the door. I had to know just how much he knew, just how dangerous he was—to my people, and to himself.
He was quiet for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Do you know anything of my people’s history?” he said, so softly that I wouldn’t have been able to hear him if I’d been human. His gaze met mine like he was waiting for an answer. Like he knew I’d heard him.
My eyes narrowed, just a little. “The Squamish? Some . . .” I knew what most kids who grow up in Seattle know: that the Squamish had been moved onto a reservation in the mid-1800s, and that their chief had been the famous Chief Sealth that Seattle was named for. I also knew a smidgen more—over a century ago, the Squamish helped a Nejeret who was lost in time: my half-sister, Lex.
“I changed my last name to Smith when I was in middle school,” Garth said. “Kids can be cruel, and they thought I was trying to claim that I was the prince of Seattle because of my last name.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Seattle.”
My eyebrows rose, and I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “So Chief Sealth was your—”
“Great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, yes,” Garth said with a nod. He stared past me at the broad window. “And my family has passed down a certain secret history, one that belongs only to us.” He sipped his water. “My people believe that everything has a spirit—the eagles and crows, the trees, the Puget Sound . . . even the land itself. One day, two centuries ago, the spirit of a doe took human form and tasked Sealth’s grandfather with a sacred duty. He was to teach his children of this duty so they might be prepared when the day came.”
I licked my lips, already guessing where this was going. “What was the duty?”
“A woman would arrive one day, another spirit, and she would need my family’s help.” He looked at me, saw me, and ever so quietly whispered, “Her name was Alexandra, and she was a Nejeret.”
I stared at him, stunned into silence. He was so much more entangled in our history than I’d feared, and I was suddenly terrified that our burgeoning friendship would be the thing that brought the rage of the Senate crashing down on him and his family. I had to put some emotional distance between us, and I had to do it now.
“I did,” I blurted, eyes locked with his. “Pull a fast one on you.” I glanced down at my hands, fingers knotted together. “But I swear it was only to keep you out of danger, not to put you in it, and I’m so sorry.”
“Oh.” He sounded hurt. Good. Now I just had to make him see. Make him understand.
I forced myself to look at him. “I mean it, Garth. This thing that I’m investigating—it’s bad. It’s so much worse than anything you could’ve imagined, and I didn
’t want you to get drawn in any deeper. My world’s not safe for people like—”
“Just stop,” he said. Now it was his turn to purposely not look at me. “You should probably go.”
“Garth—” Maybe I’d hurt him too much. If he wasn’t willing to listen to me, he might be more of a danger to himself than he was before.
He turned his face further away from me. He wouldn’t listen to me. Not right now. I’d have to find another way to make him listen. To make him understand just how important his silence was.
I nodded and stood, swallowing roughly. “Do you know what happened to Nik?” I asked.
Garth shook his head. “He was there when I blacked out, gone when I came to.”
My nostrils flared. This was on me; I accepted that. But it was also on that damned bartender. And he would answer for it—just as soon as I’d dealt with Mari.
Chapter Eighteen
After leaving Garth’s room, I headed back down to the waiting area. The moment I saw Lex, sitting there, looking generally miserable, I realized there was maybe one way I could get Garth to listen to me and lift my half-sister’s spirits a bit.
“Hey, Lex,” I said as I drew nearer. “There’s something I want to show you.”
She glanced at Heru, her hand settling on his knee. An unspoken conversation passed between them, and he nodded. She leaned in, kissing him on the cheek, then stood and smoothed down the front of her sweater and jeans.
“Come on,” I said, leading her back the way I’d just come. “It’s not far . . . just up a couple floors.”
Lex looked over her shoulder, her lip pulled between her teeth and her brow furrowed.
“It won’t take long,” I promised. “Just trust me.” I couldn’t help the lilt of a question. I didn’t know if she trusted me at all anymore. And if she did, I wasn’t sure whether she should.
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 12
