I hurtled down the stairwell and ran into the lab. Gasps and shouts heralded my abrupt entrance.
Automatically, I shielded my eyes from the faux daylight burning bright overhead as I scanned the faces of at least a dozen Nejerets. Neffe remained in the back corner where I’d found her earlier with Aset, but Aset herself was making her way across the lab toward me.
They wouldn’t have heard the disagreement that just happened over their heads, not with all of the security reinforcements and soundproofing laced through the lab’s walls and ceiling. It was as solid of a bomb shelter as, well, an actual bomb shelter. In fact, there was a veritable warren of underground tunnels and buildings beneath the surface of the compound, a safety measure as much as a way to expand without disrupting too much of the natural beauty on the ground and drawing unwanted attention from humans in the area.
I skirted around a cluster of three Nejerets huddled at a laptop at the nearest workstation, heading for the opaque plastic wall that blocked off the quarantine area. It was where any live subjects were kept—a.k.a. humans infected with the Cascade Virus. Not that we were susceptible to the virus, but we also weren’t eager to spread it to those who were.
“Kat,” Aset said, picking up the pace to head me off. “What are you—”
I stopped her with a look. I had no clue what my expression was, but the rage and betrayal I felt toward Nik for his attempt to manipulate my mind had warped my features into something frightful enough to stop her in her tracks.
Unconcerned, I pushed through the plastic doorway, not pausing for the disinfectant spray in the pseudo-airlock, and tore the next zippered doorway open.
Six cots arranged in two rows filled the space within the enclosed area, and only half were occupied. Mari lay curled up on her side on the farthest cot on the left, her back to me, unmoving save for the slow rise and fall of her rib cage. I made a beeline for her.
“Hey,” I said when I reached the cot, grabbing Mari’s shoulder and giving it a solid shake. “Mars, wake up. I need your help.”
Her muscles tensed under my hand just a moment before she twisted and lashed out, an anti-At dagger materializing in her hand, black as obsidian.
I caught her wrist, halting the blade a scant inch from my throat.
Her eye rounded. “Jesus, Kat, you look like shit.” Her voice was hoarse with sleep, and her stare fixed on my hand. “What happen—”
I leaned in, forcing her arm lower. “We don’t have time for any of that right now, Mars. I need you to come with me.”
The black dagger evaporated into a fine, inky mist, and Mari flopped over onto her back on the cot, pulling her wrist free of my grip. “Why?” She rubbed her eyes. “I have work to do here, and—” Her eyelids opened even wider than before, and she sat up abruptly. “What’s going on?” She stared upward, her gaze gliding along the ceiling. She was sensing the unbroken anti-At barrier surrounding us. “It’s all around us. That’s—” She shook her head slowly, her mouth working but no sound coming out. “That’s impossible,” she finally said, voice distant. “I was asleep. I didn’t create this. It’s imposs—”
“Nik did it.”
Mari refocused on me, shock fading to irritation in her jade-green eyes, which slowly narrowed to slits. “I’m sorry—what?”
“He’s been hiding a whole crap-ton of shit from us.” From me—that was the part that really stung, topped off by the cherry of an attempted mindfucking. “Listen, Mars”—I gripped her shoulder—“I know you’ve got research to do, but I really need your help.” I emphasized my plea with a gentle squeeze. “Just give me a night. Just one night—when the sun rises tomorrow morning, you’re free to—”
“I’m in,” she said, slaughtering my queued-up pleas.
My eyebrows rose, and it took me a moment to regroup. I’d expected to have to do a lot more begging to get her to agree to help. Not that I was about to talk her out of it.
“I’m not making any progress here, anyway,” she said. “We’ve hit a full-on brick wall with our research into the Cascade Virus.” She pulled her arm free from my grip and raised both hands to work on fixing her mussed bob. “What do you need me to do?”
So many things, but I thought it best to start small. Leap one damn hurdle at a time. “Make me a knife, first off,” I said, drawing the combat knife I kept tucked away in my boot sheath. “An anti-At version of this.” It would replace the mundane knife and function as a repellant to any Nejeret who might try to stop me. If Nik or Heru or anyone got close enough, one nick from an anti-At blade would erase them from existence forever. Nobody would risk it.
“You are running out of time, little sister,” Dom told me. “They’re discussing the best way to contain you. It’s only a matter of seconds until they come down to get you.” For a moment, I was clueless as to how Dom could possibly know that, but then I remembered the compact mirror I’d lent to Lex. She probably didn’t even realize that she was giving me ears into their discussion through Dom.
Mari took the combat knife from me, turning it over and over as she studied it. There was a sizzle in the air, and blackness crystallized the blade, though the handle remained the same. “It won’t work on Nik,” she warned me.
I hadn’t considered the fact that his new—or new-to-me—power would render him immune from the soul-erasing effects of the black-as-death material. “Well,” I said, “we’ll just have to do our best to avoid him.” Just for the night. All I needed was a single night, enough time to gain some minimal control over my own expanding sheut power and rescue Garth’s mom from the single greatest threat to her life—their mortality.
Fury would sustain me, motivate me. I could already feel my connection to the universal energies strengthen . . . could sense the otherworldly power welling within my sheut. I was overflowing with it; if that wasn’t enough to make the transformation procedure work, then nothing would be.
“Heru truly wants you on his side,” Dom said. “Nik wants Heru to teleport him down here with him so he can contain you in anti-At until the threat has passed, but Heru wishes to give you the chance to surrender . . . to ‘fall back into line.’”
I snorted and shook my head. Despite our pretty damn epic falling-out, Nik still knew me well. He knew I wouldn’t give up, that “falling into line” wasn’t even in my radar.
“What?” Mari asked.
I touched the mirror pendant, telling her I was receiving intel from Dom.
“Oh, right,” she said, pulling a phone from the pocket of her lab coat and unlocking the screen with her thumbprint.
“What are you doing?” I asked. This was hardly the time to make a phone call. “We ran out of time, like, yesterday.”
“I’m texting my mom,” Mari said. “We’re going to need her help if we’re going to have any chance at all of evading Heru.”
“Heru is on his way now,” Dom warned.
There was a silent crackle in the air, and I spun around in time to see Heru materialize within the quarantine area. Luckily the two infected humans resting down here were passed out, either asleep, sedated, or comatose, depending on how far the disease had progressed within them. Otherwise, they’d have been in for quite the show.
“Speak of the devil,” I said, hiding the newly minted anti-At knife behind my back. If Dom was right and Heru was still rooting for me to come to my senses—so to speak—then there was a chance that talk could buy enough time for Mari to convince her mom, Mei, to join the fun. Mei shared the ability to teleport with Heru, only she had centuries more experience with the power. She was quicker. Better. Having her on our team would give us the edge we needed.
Heru stood a few yards away, head held high and eyes locked with mine. He looked like he had no intention of moving, let alone of attacking, but with him, looks could be very deceiving. Like Nik, he was one of the few people alive who could—and likely would—beat me in a fight.
I gripped the hilt of the anti-At knife more tightly.
“Cease this chil
dishness, Kat,” Heru said, his voice silken steel.
A chill crept up my spine. An instinctive warning from the part of my brain that gave a shit about self-preservation. The part that didn’t understand just how far past caring about my own life I was at that moment. I would see this through, no matter what. Charlene wasn’t dying on my watch.
“Stand down, and all will be well.” Heru’s presence only fanned my anger, turning it to rage.
“And if I don’t?” I said, the words grating in my throat.
My eyes burned with the overwhelm of emotion. This man was my lord, my king. I’d pledged my loyalty to him, years ago. I’d put my faith and trust in him. And even though he currently faced me emanating an aura of threat, I still believed he was the right person to lead our people. The fair and just choice, if not necessarily the most compassionate Nejeret alive.
“Kat,” Heru said, tone both patronizing and filled with disappointment. “Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to find out the consequences of further disobedience.”
He was wrong. What I didn’t want was to use the anti-At blade on him. In my heart, my soul, I knew I didn’t want to unmake him—and not only because doing so would unravel his thread from the fabric of history and plunge us all into the unknown chaos of a world where he’d never existed, though that was a big part of it. I believed in him, still. But I didn’t believe in blind faith, and that’s what he was asking me to give him. To give Nik.
It stung that he couldn’t return the favor, that he couldn’t believe in me.
“I can’t believe you’re listening to him,” I said, jaw aching from clenching so hard. “It’s highly unlikely that Re’s actually talking to him. You know that, right?” I scoffed. It didn’t matter if I believed what I was saying; it only mattered that my words bought us time. “I mean, Lex has to use a magical pendant to talk to the twins across universal boundaries, but suddenly Nik can do it willy-nilly and you just believe him? Please, explain to me the logic there. Tell me how this makes any sense at all.”
Heru’s nostrils flared. “I must entertain the possibility that Re is truly in communication with Nekure.”
I groaned in annoyance and rolled my eyes.
“You’ve always been reactive, Kat, and now is no different. You’re thinking with your heart, not with your head.”
“Oh, really . . .” I was trying to save a life—one single life—not let someone die based on the unsubstantiated claims of a man who might just be insane. Felt like pretty sound reasoning to me. I planted my hand on my hip, fully intending to drag out this argument as long as was necessary.
“Nekure hadn’t heard even a whisper from Re until three days ago,” Heru said, raising a hand to stop my protests before they could start.
“So what?”
“Humor me,” he said. “Just for a minute.”
It struck me that Dom was right; Heru wanted me to come around. That realization caught me off guard. Like I said, he’s a good guy. The right guy for the job. I almost felt bad for him that he was stuck giving a shit about me.
I pursed my lips. It was the only way to guarantee I held my tongue.
“Assume, just for a moment, that Nekure is correct, and somehow a connection has been reestablished between him and Re,” Heru said. “This connection only became apparent after we carried out three ba transference procedures.”
As he spoke, the gears in my mind whirred. It was a coincidence, most likely. Correlation doesn’t equal causation.
“If Nekure’s claims are correct and he is hearing Re’s voice as a direct effect of the procedures,” Heru continued, “then somehow, the transformation of human souls into Nejeret bas—of mortal into immortal—has weakened the barriers between the Netjer universe and our own.” He paused, his stare intense, but not menacing. “If the transformation of just three souls has done this, what will happen after three more? Or just one more?”
Heru took a step toward me, then another. He was maybe nine feet away now. Close enough that a solid lunge would put him on top of me. “Are you really willing to gamble with the stability of our universe?” he asked me. “With the fate not just of humankind but of all life?”
His words were starting to get to me, and I shook my head like I was casting off a swarm of fruit flies. “And the twins?” I asked, grasping the threads of logic that were way sturdier than this hearsay-based conjecture. “Any word from them?” Heru and Lex’s godly children were, after all, the designated Netjer caretakers of this universe. They were always tapped in to it, on every level, no matter their current absentee status.
Heru inhaled and exhaled slowly, then shook his head, a simple slice left, then to the right.
I felt that crackle of energy behind me and knew that Mei had arrived. I was out of time. No more wavering.
Heru’s focus shifted past me, and the corners of his mouth tensed. His knees bent, just a little. He was making his move.
I pulled the anti-At combat knife out from behind my back and held it in front of me defensively.
Heru’s eyes widened when they landed on the glimmering onyx-like blade. He was erring on the side of caution by believing his nephew’s story, but it was clear that he wasn’t willing to risk temporal suicide for the sake of defending something that might be.
“I have to go,” I said, lowering my chin. I extended my arm behind me, and I felt Mei’s warm fingers wrap around my wrist. “I made a promise.” Not a second before the world was overtaken by iridescent fire.
We were gone, nothing but burned bridges in our wake. I’d kept my distance from my people for years. Now, with a single decision, I’d made my split from them absolute. I could never go home again.
Here’s to hoping it was worth it.
Chapter Seventeen
My lungs seized up. My heart strained to pump. I was frozen. Immobile. Both there and here. Dead and alive. Existing and not.
And then there was a whoosh, and oxygen-rich air rushed into my lungs. My heart stumbled over itself in its eagerness to return to business as usual. I dropped to my knees, Mei’s hand slipping off my arm, and touched my forehead to the sodden, mulchy ground. It was wet, muddy, but at least it was cool.
“Is it always like that?” I asked, gasping for delicious air. Thank the gods that traveling through gateways was a totally different experience from teleporting.
“Pretty much,” Mari said. “But you get used to it.”
I turned my head to the side so my cheek was touching the ground and watched Mari’s slippers move into my range of vision. Apparently, she’d been going for comfort lately down in the lab. Her wool-lined moccasins sank into the rain-soaked earth as she stood with her toes nearly touching a glimmering wall of absolute, light-sucking blackness.
I pushed myself up so I was kneeling. I was a little dizzy, but at least I was upright. “So, next time should be better?” A quick glance around told me we were just outside the compound’s walls in a wooded knoll about a quarter mile from the gate.
Mei offered me her hand. “It took Mari a couple hundred jumps to get acclimated.”
“Awesome.” Before I accepted her proffered hand, I tucked the anti-At knife into my boot sheath and wiped the mud from my face with the front of my shirt. “Thanks,” I said as Mei helped pull me up onto unsteady legs.
She released my hand and gave my shoulder a gentle pat. “Always glad to help.”
“This’ll just take me a sec,” Mari said, both palms pressed against the anti-At barrier. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line. She’d never been able to handle anti-At as quickly or nimbly as Nik could At—chalk it up to thousands of years of practice, I supposed—but this long of a delay was unusual for her.
I started counting the seconds as they passed. “What’s the holdup, Mars?” I asked when I reached thirty.
With an exasperated grunt, Mari let her hands fall away from the wall. “The barrier’s not just made of anti-At,” she said, then slapped the t
hing. “He cheated! It’s laced with At, too. I can’t break through even a small part of it.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled and exhaled slowly. “That sneaky turd,” I said under my breath.
Well, I had no choice but to throw a Hail Mary now. I climbed to my feet and raised my left hand. The Eye of Horus tattoo burned the closer my hand came to the unbreakable barrier.
“What are you doing?” Mari exclaimed, making to reach for my wrist.
I swatted her hand away, stopping a second attempt with a look. “Trust me.” After a nervous deep breath, I slapped my palm against the barrier. There was no guarantee that such a massive amount of soul-eating anti-At wouldn’t overwhelm my protective ward and consume me, erasing me from existence entirely. After all, I’d only tested it with a baseball-sized ball of the stuff. But I was out of options.
My palm was on fire. I gritted my teeth and held my breath, waiting for the telltale tingle of anti-At invading my body, hungrily seeking out my ba.
It never came.
I blew out my breath in relief and opened my eyes. Both Mari and Mei were watching me, hands to their mouths and twin looks of horror in their eyes.
“See,” I said, “easy peasy.”
Ever so slowly, Mari lowered her hand. “You’re insane,” she whispered.
I snorted, playing at nonchalant when I was anything but—my heart was pounding. “Like that’s news to anyone.” I gave the dome a sideways nod. “C’mon, let’s get this over with before Heru gets a lock on our location.”
Tentatively, Mari raised her hands and replaced her palms against smooth, obsidian surface. The skin around her eyes was tight with tension. She looked at me, uncertainty written all over her face. “How exactly is you touching the barrier supposed to make this work any better?” she asked.
“Where’s the trust, Mars? Don’t I always have a plan?”
She laughed, a shallow, dry sound, and shook her head. “No, actually, you never have a plan.” And then she closed her eyes, concentration warping her delicate features.
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 46
