I moved to stand at his side and pointed to the symbol on the ground. “Can you turn all of this into that At and anti-At combo material you built those domes out of?”
“Yeah,” Nik said, “no problem. It’ll take me ten or fifteen, though.” Ten or fifteen minutes—it sounded like forever. I just hoped we had that long.
“Well, then . . . get started,” I said, making a shooing motion.
Nik mock saluted me, then knelt at the edge of the symbol and placed his hand on one of the stones.
There was nothing for me to do now but wait. Wait, and hope and wish and pray that our clock wouldn’t run out before he finished.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Oh my God!” Lex exclaimed. I spun around to see her jogging toward me with a bulging canvas shopping bag hanging on her shoulder and her hand over her mouth. “Kat? Is that really you?”
“Mostly . . .”
She dropped the bag on the gravel driveway a few yards from me and opened her arms, throwing them around me, the multicolored glow barely making her hesitate. “Are you alright?” she asked. “What’s happened to you?”
Awkwardly, I patted her back. “I think I’m alright,” I told her, not ready to dive into the whole Duat, soul-energy thing quite yet. “What are you doing here?”
Lex released me and hustled back to her discarded bag. “I brought you some things,” she said, crouching. “Eat this.” She tossed me a banana before gathering the spilled items back into the bag and standing.
Suddenly ravenous, I tore open the banana’s peel and stuffed half the thing into my mouth. “Heru brought you here?” I said around a mouthful.
Lex nodded. “He popped in at home to let me know that all of this craziness was happening. But I had no idea you would look so . . . so different. We, um, weren’t sure what you had planned next, but we figured it would be big and you’d need all the strength you could get,” she said, handing me a bottle of water.
I gulped down the water in five swallows, then exchanged the empty bottle for a protein bar—something with dried blueberries, according to my taste buds. “Got any Cheetos in there?” I asked hopefully, eyeing her canvas sack as I chewed.
She pulled out a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and waggled it at me, only to pull it out of reach when I reached for it. “Finish that first and then you can gorge on all the Cheetos and Cherry Coke you want.”
Now my eyes bulged. “You brought Cherry Coke, too?” I asked, coughing as I choked on the protein bar. Hot Cheetos and Cherry Coke were the exact items I would request for my last meal. And considering what I was about to attempt—the sheer amount of energy I was about to expend—there was a decent chance that this very well might end up being my last meal. I cherished every single bite, savored each and every sip.
Nik finished with the stones in nine minutes, looking worse for wear. He’d pushed himself, and it might’ve made all the difference in the world. In the universe.
“Everyone move back a ways,” I said as I picked my way across the symbol. The air felt fuzzy with otherworldly energy, making my clothing crackle and the hairs all over my body stand on end.
I knelt in the center of the pupil of the Eye of Horus and placed my hands on two of the stones, one on either side of me. Closing my eyes, I bowed my head and I inhaled deeply. On my exhale, I whispered, “Go ahead.”
The collective soul-energy buzzed with excitement. And then it went eye-of-the-storm quiet.
A shock of power surged into me, forcing me to sit up straight, spine arched and head thrown back. I screamed, the only release I had from the agony burning through me. My ba was on fire, my sheut a raging inferno. I was burning up from the inside out, and we’d only just begun.
The power I was channeling increased, and I hunched in on myself, panting for breath. All around me, threads of black and white—of At and anti-At—grew out of the stones, writhing as they reached ever upward.
But that was wrong. They needed to go down, underground. Otherwise, there’d be no way to stop the anti-At from destroying every Nejeret it touched as the threads sought out the infection.
Gritting my teeth and grunting, I managed to redirect the unearthly filaments. I sent them downward, using the collective’s perception of the soul-energy and the infection consuming it all over the planet to guide the threads.
It took minutes. Hours. Days. Or maybe it was only seconds. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t think. I wasn’t in agony anymore, because I was no longer trapped in my body; I was everywhere.
I was in the cabin again, standing in the back room beside the bedside, only instead of Charlene, Cassie was tucked under the covers, tossing fitfully in a fevered sleep. Her aura was still mostly untainted, making the streaks of gray stand out in stark contrast to her aura’s natural vibrant magenta hue.
Reaching out with one of a billion ghostly, glowing hands, I placed my palm on her chest, directly over her heart. Fine filaments of At and anti-At sprouted from my hand, diving into her body.
Cassie’s aura flared for several seconds, and when it faded back to its normal glow, the gray was gone. She was healed.
Even as I worked on her, I was also in a house across the street, cleansing two people of the virus, and in another house down the road. Millions and millions of times, the same scene played out all over the world. I channeled the soul-energy, merging with it. Becoming one with it. Together, we hunted every last hint of that abominable grayness, focusing on eradicating it completely.
And then it was done. The filaments of At and anti-At snapped back into the rocks. The torrent of power raging through me lessened to a trickle. But the pain—that remained.
“Thank you,” whispered through my mind a thousand—million—billion—times as I felt the collective withdraw from me, leaving me empty and alone and shivering with cold.
I slumped forward, face-planting in the gravel but not having the strength to do anything about it. It didn’t matter. It was done, and the universe was still here. We’d won.
I used the last ounce of energy in my body to turn my head to the side. A raindrop landed on my cheek, followed by another, and another. I smiled.
And then I died.
Chapter Thirty-Three
This time when I left my body, it felt natural. It felt . . . right.
Dazedly, I floated upward, watching the chaotic tableau below. Nik, Lex, Mari, and Garth huddled around my body, movements frantic as they laid me out on my back.
“Wake up, Kat,” Mari ordered, slapping me. My head flopped to the side. “Wake up!” She cocked her hand back for a second slap, but Nik caught her upraised wrist.
“There’s no heartbeat,” he said, voice low and words rushed. “That’s not helping.”
There was a several-second stare-down between the two, then Mari yanked her arm free and averted her gaze.
“Why do you always try so hard to be a fucking martyr?” Nik said to me—to my body—moving so he was kneeling at my elbow. He placed his hands on my chest and began compressions.
Lex plopped down on her butt a few feet away, and Mari stood, hugging her middle. Both had tears streaming down their cheeks as they watched Nik attempt to revive me. Garth dropped to his knees at my feet, face blank and eyes locked on my face, searching for a sign of life.
It was endearing, all of it. If I’d known how much they all cared, then . . . well, I’d have done exactly the same thing. At least this way the universe would go on and they’d have a chance to live.
I felt a zing, and I was suddenly watching the heart-wrenching scene through a translucent film. I glanced around, surprised to find the eddying flow of the filmy multihued soul-energy surrounding me. My lazy mind pulled a word out of the far recesses: Duat.
That’s funny. What was I doing back in Duat?
I floated away from the translucent wall between this dimension and mine, soothed by a sense of rightness. A sense of belonging. I closed my eyes and drifted away with the current. The discordance was still there, marring the
song of ma’at, but it wasn’t nearly so bad as it had been before.
“Not yet!” The whisper startled my eyes open. “We still need you. Not done y . . .”
“What—” I spun around, searching the rainbow current all around me. “What are you—shit!”
A dark wall was right in front of me. Aaru—it was sucking me in, trying to capture me.
I spun around and fought my way back across the current of soul-energy. All of a sudden, it became a hell of a lot easier, like the soul-energy itself was helping me get away from that dark eternity.
“We can help you,” the voices said, the multitude settling into a single, feminine voice by the end of the four words. “I can help you.” I recognized the voice, and it broke my heart.
“Mom?”
The soul-energy before me swirled and rearranged itself, forming a vaguely human shape.
“Mom,” it repeated.
Its featureless face sharpened, coming into focus, its body gaining the curves of a woman. Of one very specific woman.
“Yes, I am the one called Genevieve Dubois,” she said. “I am all that has ever been and all that ever will be.” She touched her head with one ethereal hand. “I have been lost for a very long time, trapped . . . asleep . . . but you—” She lowered her hand and looked at me with luminous, color-changing eyes. “You woke me up.”
“Who are you?” I asked cautiously, because it was clear that whatever her claims, I wasn’t talking to my mom. “What are you? The soul-energy?” I didn’t think so, since the collective soul-energy had spoken in the plural, but this being was referring to herself in the singular.
“The soul-energy,” she said, looking around, running her fingers through the streams of color. “Yes, that is how you woke me.”
“Alright . . .” She hadn’t exactly answered my question, but she also didn’t seem all there, mentally, so I didn’t want to push the matter.
“I have a name,” she said, familiar features wavering as her head moved from side to side, like she was searching the energy all around her for the answer. “Iss—Iss—” Her face brightened. “Isfet.” She smiled a smile I’d seen a million times, even as fear paralyzed me. “You may call me Isfet. And you—you are K—Katarina. You are my daughter.”
Holy shit. Isfet wasn’t a thing, it was a being. I shook my head, afraid that correcting this—this creature that was supposedly the embodiment of pure evil was about the worst idea ever.
“I—I’m Genevieve’s daughter,” I said, not quite telling her she was wrong.
“Yes,” Isfet said. “Yes, that is correct. And Genevieve is a part of me. I see my confusion there. I have been fractured for so long it is difficult to think straight.” She looked around, her expression becoming lost, frightened. “This is not Aaru. Where am I?”
“Um . . . we’re in Duat?”
Isfet looked around. “This is Duat, yes, I recognize it now.” She refocused on me. “I am here, but I am not. You—you awakened me. You brought me here . . . or part of me.” She moved closer. “How did you bring me here?”
I raised my hands defensively and floated back a few feet. “I didn’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t bring you here. You just sort of showed up.”
“Ah . . . I see.” Gracefully, she reached out a hand, coaxing a few threads of At and anti-At to sprout from my fingers. “You are connected to my body and, through it, to the rest of me.”
“I—” I shook my head, eyes locked on the swaying threads. “I don’t understand.”
She floated closer to me, the soul-energy reshaping around her.
I flinched.
“You are afraid of me?” Her glimmering, multicolored face darkened. “What lies have the Netjers told you?”
Again I shook my head, my eyebrows drawn together. “Lies?”
A soft growl emanated from her, rumbling through the soul-energy surrounding us. “Whatever they told you, I suppose they left out the part where, while I was forming, once I’d reached maturity, they sliced me up, severing my mind from the rest of me—from my body and my soul—and locked me away.”
Something was off. Wrong. Anapa hadn’t said anything about Isfet being a, well, being. Which meant he hadn’t told me everything. Or, at least, what he had told me was skewed by his Netjer bias. Everyone is biased, and if they claim to be objective, they’re lying. He was no exception.
Eyes narrowed, I decided to dig a little. I wanted to hear Isfet’s side of the story. “Re and Apep trapped you in Aaru to protect ma’at,” I told her.
“No!” she hissed. “Ma’at is my soul, and they cut me off from it . . . to control it. A free-thinking universe cannot be controlled . . . cannot be manipulated or twisted to fit their whims. But take away my thoughts, lock away this part of me—silence me—and my body becomes their slave, my soul their plaything.”
Her claims were as farfetched as they were abhorrent. And yet, deep down, I knew she was telling the truth. I could feel it.
“Do you want to die?” she asked seemingly out of the blue.
I drew back. “Um . . . no?”
“I would make a deal with you then.”
“I’m listening.”
Isfet bowed her head in thanks. “I am awake, but I am still fractured . . . still a prisoner. Only part of me is here, and only so long as you remain in Duat, tethering me to this dimension. Once you enter Aaru, I will be trapped forevermore. Daughter . . . I need your help. I—” She shook her head, her like-my-mom’s face shifting, a ghostly shadow slipping out of place.
“I—the longer you are away from your body, the weaker our connection. I am slipping away again. Aaru is pulling me back in.” Her form grew fuzzy around the edges, then sharpened once more. There was more clarity and awareness in her color-changing eyes than ever before. “There is one with you in the physical realm whose soul resonates with yours. If you return to your body, the aura from his ba will merge with yours. It will revive you.”
My mouth fell open. “You mean, you can send me back? I can live?”
She nodded gracefully. “I can push you out of Duat, but the rest will be up to you. In return, I would ask you to find me . . . to set me free. Only then will I be whole again. Only then will I be able to restore balance—harmony—to this universe. Only then will I be able to protect you. You all . . . all my children . . . the danger . . .” She started to lose shape again.
My eyes opened wide, and I reached for her. I half expected my hands to go straight through her, but my fingers closed around her arms, and she regained her form. But for how long? “What danger?” I urged.
Her gaze grew distant. “The creators . . . the destroyers . . . a great battle looms . . .”
“No, no, no,” I said, giving her a shake. “Don’t leave yet. I need more!”
“Help me . . .”
“Alright!” I all but shouted. “I’ll do it!” I was afraid she’d “lose herself” for good before she had a chance to send me back. “But I need to know how—”
There was a pop, and the brilliant soul-energy was gone. Isfet was gone.
I could hear counting below me, and the sounds of people crying. I looked down to see my body lying on a gravel driveway in the middle of a huge Eye of Horus symbol, Nik kneeling beside my body, doing chest compressions, and a mass of other people surrounding us, heads bowed in mourning.
“Make me whole . . . restore balance . . . harmony . . .” Isfet’s voice was barely a whisper.
I floated downward, toward my body.
“Set me free . . .”
I stood at my body’s feet, staring down at myself. “I’ll do what I can,” I told Isfet, no clue if she could hear me.
And then I turned around and fell back into my body.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I sucked in a breath, then coughed. “Oh God,” I groaned, flailing my arms in an attempt to shove Nik’s hands away from my chest. Each time he pressed down, a white-hot pain threatened to knock me back into unconsciousnes
s.
Nik froze.
“I think—” I fought to breathe without causing myself searing agony. It was no use. “I think . . . you broke . . . my sternum.”
A slow grin spread across Nik’s face, and he bowed his head. “Welcome back, Kitty Kat.”
In some part of my mind, I knew it was significant that Nik was the one nearest me when I’d revived. But thought was too slippery to grasp, and it floated away.
My consciousness followed.
My eyes popped open, and I sat bolt upright, my salivary glands working on overdrive. Really, how else is someone supposed to react to the oh-so-delicious smell of bacon, pancakes, maple syrup, and coffee? Literally no other way, that’s how.
“And they say the way into a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Garth said, chuckling. “Clearly ‘they’ never met you.”
It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the bright morning sunlight streaming in through the windows. I was in my bedroom, Garth a dark silhouette standing at the foot of my bed, slowly gaining color.
I held a hand up to block some of the light from my sensitive eyes. “Hang on . . .” My voice was little more than a choked rasp. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Give me a second to kick my temporary vampirism, OK?”
Again, Garth chuckled.
I rubbed my eyes and arched my back in a glorious stretch, then scooted back and adjusted the pillows to prop me up from behind. “How long was I out?”
Garth’s good humor faded. “Eleven days. Both Neffe and Aset said it was the longest regenerative sleep they’d seen anyone go into without waking for sustenance.” He walked over to the dresser and picked up a tray laden with breakfast goodies.
“I aim to impress.” I curled my feet under my legs to make room for the tray and patted the bed. I was ravenous, which my stomach emphasized by growling so loud that I half expected the bedframe to rattle.
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 53
