Edge of Forever (The Soul Eater Book 6) Read online

  “You’re the lie! You’re the—”

  “Seramca!”

  Silenced, the sorceress’s glare burned hot.

  I blew the ash from my hand into her face. “Ash is all that’s left of the man’s life. The sooner you accept your situation, the longer you’ll live.” I strode to the door and opened it to find two priests waiting. They both had Seth’s name in hieroglyphs branded into their necks. I stepped outside the room, forcing them back a step. They lifted their chins and sent their gazes over my shoulder and through the door to where Shukra thrashed against the bedpost.

  “Yes?” I hissed. Cockroaches everywhere. No, not cockroaches. Scorpions. Spies. These two had listened through the door and absorbed every word to take back to Seth.

  “The Lord of Red requests your presence.”

  For a moment, I considered yanking out their souls and turning their earthly bodies to ash, but these men were little more than Seth’s puppets. My rage wasn’t for them.

  Turning my back on the spies, I closed the door, catching Shukra’s glare. Believe, I tried to convey with my expression. Trust in the lie. Her eyes widened in the last second. Trust me. I closed the door on her. She would know. She would understand. All this was only as real as I made it, and I was very, very good at pretending. Hand in my pocket, I slipped the ring onto my middle finger and closed my hand into a fist around it. Shukra was right. I needed it. The ash had been a trick. Misdirection.

  Seth’s priests observed every second I delayed.

  “If anyone so much as passes over this threshold,” I warned. “I will have their souls. Do you understand?”

  The men stiffened at my tone. “We worship the Lord of Red. We do not answer to y—”

  I caught the chatty priest’s shirt lapels and yanked him off his feet. “I don’t care if you’re fucking Ra reborn, nobody gets through this door!” He saw how veins of fire ate at my irises, and in the dark of my pupils, he saw the end of the world. I knew because I saw it every time I looked in the mirror. And sure enough, the men suddenly reeked of fear.

  “K-kur Apophis,” he stammered.

  The other dropped to a knee and bowed his head. “Forgive us, lord.”

  I planted Chatty back on his feet and straightened his collar. “I’ll be sure to convey my pleasure at your devotion to the Lord of Red.”

  Chapter 2

  Trust in the lie.

  Those words had become my curse and my salvation. Trust in the lie. Trust in the lie. Trust in the lie. Four little words were all that remained of my control. Without them, I would have crumbled like the Manhattan streets I now walked through. Crumbled and devoured until I could devour no more.

  Sand had buried the sidewalk and piled high against storefront windows. It poured into doorways, buckling buildings under its weight. Sand ate at all the edges, all the lines of modern New York, aging the city beyond its years. In the slouching high-rises, I saw echoes of Egypt’s ruins.

  Osiris had been right. This world was weak. It had no defense against the might of the gods. Infrastructure had fallen in hours. Power, communications, all of it had blinked out beneath Seth’s raging storm. Manhattan belonged to the old gods. The city’s carcass, the first of many, belonged to me.

  Have its remains, Seth had said. A gift to seal our partnership and a promise of more cities to come. Now, ash rained from the sky and settled among the sand. Snakes the length of buses and scorpions larger than cars invaded the old buildings —all from mu moka, drawn out of their slumber by my risen power.

  A thousand hidden eyes watched me pass. Ash stirred under my boots and swirled around the ankle-length coat I’d taken from a rack back in my department store temple. Power hummed across my skin, tickling the fine hairs on my arms and down my neck. And this was just the beginning. If I allowed it, I could continue the charade until it was real. I’d be a god sitting atop a throne made of dead worlds. I’d done it before. History had no memory of those worlds because I’d swallowed them out of existence. But I was tired. So tired of seeing the End in my eyes. So tired of the ash and the dark. Change was necessary.

  A god cannot change.

  Watch me.

  Alysdair—the Eye of Ra—hummed a warning against my back, and up ahead, standing in the center of what had once been the bustling Times Square, stood Seth. The Lord of Red had left the desert storm on the outskirts of the city, but that didn’t reduce his presence. Dull red armor—the color of dried blood—absorbed what little light seeped through the clouds. He’d slicked back his scarlet hair. His eyes burned as crimson as a dying sun. Seth had once conspired to kill Osiris, and he would have succeeded if not for Isis’s intervention. Seth and I, we agreed on much.

  I stopped at the edge of a curb, careful not to step down into the layer of sand. I’d seen how quickly his sands could strip flesh from bone.

  Sand spilled in waterfalls from windows and over cracked television screens, reminiscent of blood. Its constant hiss reminded me of the snakes gathering in the basement below my building. Until the rivers run red. I barred my thoughts from my face and pinned a lopsided smile there instead.

  “How fares the boy?” Seth asked, turning away from the desolation to focus on me. He had taken to speaking English, though his voice held an exotic, alien accent that lifted the end of each word. He had said he found it amusing to converse with military generals in their own language before his storm sucked up their fighter jets and tanks and spat them out as wreckage.

  As far as I knew, nuclear weapons weren’t yet on the table, probably because nobody wanted to be the one to wipe Manhattan off the map. The bones of the city were still here. It could still be saved. I hadn’t given up on it yet.

  Trust in the lie.

  “The boy is… difficult,” I replied. The hissing sands soaked up my words, killing any echo.

  “Mmm…” Seth’s attention wandered away from me along the hollow building facades. “His mind is human, is it not? Have you lost your finesse for breaking minds, Apophis?”

  “A broken mind will not yield how the weapon he was building works.”

  “Then try different means. His mother, the girl, where is she?”

  Hiding, hopefully.

  He waved a hand, grasping at Chuck’s name. “Use her to incentivize him.”

  “My spies are uncertain. Though I now have the demon sorceress and intend to find out.”

  Seth didn’t know Chuck was my daughter. Just Nile, Cat, and Cujo knew that—all of them mortal. All easily breakable should pressure be applied. Since Nile was my charge, I controlled what information escaped him. Hopefully, Shukra had hidden Cujo well. Cat was Cat. She would keep the truth close for the girl’s sake, not for me.

  My thoughts tripped. Cat’s alive.

  I’d given up trying to save my soul. What did the death of a shifter mean to a worldkiller? But to hear those words, to know she had survived—it helped me cling on and acted as a reminder that this act wasn’t yet me. Cat rightly hated me. They all did. But they were alive to hate. So far, no matter what it looked like on the outside, my lies had worked.

  “Is something distracting you from your task?” Seth inquired as he came closer. Sands shifted between us, opening a path for the god.

  Thoughts of Cat slipped through my fingers. “What could distract me?” I lifted a hand and let the falling ash settle in my palm. “This is what I am made to do. But I find I am… bored by it all.”

  “Bored by victory?” Seth bristled. “I can only travel as far as the worship allows. This land is not the old world. My name is new on this American soil. But they whisper it. And the whispers grow. I will have more—”

  “Is it your name they whisper?” My smile ticked up.

  Kur Apophis. Kur Apophis. Kur Apophis. Oh, I could hear the whispers, hear their numbers growing. Seth was formidable, but it was my name the people of this world truly feared. Word was spreading. The End of All Things had awoken. And I was hungry.

  Soul Eater. Liar. Thief. Godkiller. D
evourer of Worlds. Lord of the Dark. All Seth had was his sand, and by his faltering glare, the god was beginning to feel the strain of keeping his storm churning.

  “You should rest and regroup,” I suggested, knowing exactly how it sounded.

  “I have no intention of stopping.” He smoothed back a few strands of hair that had fallen forward over his eyes.

  Good. While he pursued his reign here, he wasn’t watching Duat, where I had no doubt Osiris and Anubis were rallying. Seth couldn’t fight a war in two worlds. While he pushed forward in one, he had to withdraw from the other.

  “I will deal with the boy,” I told him. “While he is restrained, the weapon is useless.”

  Seth’s eyes narrowed to slits. He attempted to cut his glare in deep, but he met my soul-eater glare and looked away. “Perhaps you should join me on the storm front, Apophis? Let the humans see the nightmare they worship.”

  If I went to the storm front, as I had in the early days of this new sundering, I might not come back. To be worshipped by tens of thousands—tens of millions… It would be too much power, too much of a temptation. “If I abandon Manhattan, Osiris will move in.”

  “We have heard no word of Osiris—”

  “I killed Isis.” My grin was real. The memory of killing Isis was a fine one and strong enough to send a throb of power through me. “His madness will ensure he strikes, and soon.” Alysdair hummed pleasantly against my back. The sword and I were in agreement. Isis hadn’t needed to die for my plan to work, but by Sekhmet, I had lusted after her death for centuries, and I’d be damned if it hadn’t felt glorious to drive Alysdair through her rotten, twisted heart. Godkiller.

  Seth bowed his head. My argument was solid, but it wouldn’t hold for long. He would expect me to show my face to the masses. No true god shunned worship.

  “I suspect my brother is in Duat,” Seth said, “rallying his forces. If you are bored in this realm, perhaps you should visit Osiris there?”

  “Perhaps I will,” I replied, my smile a slippery thing. I did need to return. I needed to do many things, but it all had to fall into place in the right order, or this elaborate charade of mine would collapse. First, Nile had to talk. I needed that weapon, if those markings he’d drawn were indeed intended to create a weapon.

  “Until the rivers run red.” I turned my back on Seth, his glare burning through Alysdair and into my spine. A shudder threatened, but I walked through it until the weight of the god’s stare had vanished. A glance over my shoulder confirmed so had he.

  Chapter 3

  Nile had been picking at the window locks, probably using the fork that now lay innocently across the kitchen. My priests had cleared the room of anything he could use as a weapon. All that remained of the department store kitchens were the stainless-steel work surfaces and chipped tile floor.

  I raised a brow at the window and the kid sitting on the drainer. He flicked his gaze up and then lowered it again, staring at a spot on the floor. His floppy hair hung over his eyes, and his jaw was set in an all too familiar Osiris-like picture of indifference. The slave cuff I’d locked on his wrist glinted, a reminder that he wasn’t going anywhere without my permission.

  “Even if you do pry that window open and escape, there’s nowhere to go,” I said.

  He scratched at his cheek. “I’d be away from you.”

  “That cuff means my spellwords will reach you wherever you are. Plus, I have eyes all over this city. How far do you think you will get?” I leaned against a countertop opposite him and folded my arms.

  “I will escape.” He looked up. “And I’ll tell them everything.”

  I assumed “them” meant Chuck and Cujo, and now Cat. “Go ahead. There’s nothing you can say that they don’t already think they know.”

  He shook his head and absently rubbed at the cuff, his frustration showing. Had I tied him up, had I tortured him or broken into his mind and compelled him as Seth had suggested, Nile would have known exactly what to think of me. But I had done none of those things. I had given him to Seth, but my priests attended to him day and night. His every whim was answered. All but freedom. That I could not give him.

  “Tell me about the weapon you were crafting in the train depot in Allentown.”

  He laughed at the demand, the same one he had heard day after day for two weeks.

  Nile looked like a normal teenage boy on the outside. But his power was potent, a heady mix of Osiris’s Life and Thoth’s truth-telling soul. And then there was a little of me inside his genetic makeup, which was probably where the attitude came from. Chuck, his mother—my daughter—had the same talent.

  Nile had seen through all the lies in me. A god-child, but human, which condensed his power into a mortal lifetime, hence its potency. He had been constructing something when Osiris had taken him. Shortly after, I’d snatched him from Osiris and delivered him to Seth as a gift. Seth had no interest in the boy beyond what his brother was planning. And so here we were. I had no intention of hurting Nile, but I’d come too far to have my plans fail because of one stubborn kid.

  “People are dying while you cling to your silence,” I told him.

  “Stop killing them, then.”

  “I’m not—” I interrupted myself and eyed the closed kitchen door. Always listening. “You know I could compel the answers out of you.”

  He shot me a fiery glare. “No, I don’t know that. If you could, you would have already. So lay it on me, Granddaddy.” He threw his arms wide and smiled triumphantly when I didn’t move.

  On the street, when I’d handed him over to Seth, I had silenced him and his magic with a word. The compulsion hadn’t held for long. He didn’t know it, but any godly compulsion would slip off him in minutes, even with the cuff on his wrist. He was godly enough to resist compulsions. But a lot of damage could be done in a few minutes. Both Osiris and Seth could wreck Nile’s mind in that time. I had saved the ungrateful teen from them, but if he didn’t talk soon, he would leave me with little choice but to hand him over to Seth.

  I sighed. “What I saw, the markings you were creating, together they looked like a summons or a way to focus power. But why that building? Why that location?”

  “Everything you’ve said has been a lie. If I answer, how do I know you won’t tell Seth, huh?”

  I didn’t answer. My words would carry too far.

  He hopped down off the countertop and swaggered up to me, getting in my face. “There’s a darkness in you. You can’t hide it from me. You can keep me here forever. I’ll never tell you what you want to know.”

  “This world doesn’t have forever.” I shoved him back, adding too much of a push behind it. He stumbled against the counter. “I am more than darkness.”

  More than darkness. Bastet had been right when she had said those words all those months ago. Whether she had truly known me or sensed something out of place, she’d known enough. I’d killed her. I’d wanted to kill her. But that was not all of me. It couldn’t be, or I would have shredded the kid’s mind by now.

  I used my thumb to rub at the ring on my finger. There was still a long way to go. None of this was over yet. But it would be. History was crowding in. I could feel it building like Seth’s storm. Something was coming, and the kid knew all the answers.

  Nile’s glare flickered, doubt briefly undermining his hatred and fear. He caught the glimmer from my ring. “How is it I see both lies and truth in you?” he asked, quieter now. “Tell me that.”

  I pushed off the counter and straightened, looking down at the kid as he searched my eyes for that elusive truth. “You will talk. And when you do, we had all better hope it’s to me. Summon me once you decide I’m right.”

  As predicted, the door swung open as I approached, and an eager priest—a young woman charged with attending to Nile—stood on the other side. She bowed her head as I passed.

  She had heard every word.

  Aika waited in the hall. Behind her, dull hieroglyphs throbbed to life along the walls. The eff
ect beat at my mind. A familiar electrical charge crackled across my skin.

  Aika had steel in her gaze, likely because I’d reduced her to a salivating slave. Any other priest would have delighted in the abundance of power I’d shared. She bowed her head, letting me pass, her silence loud. She followed close as I swept through various abandoned floors and up the escalator to the living, breathing parts of the department store. Power lapped at my skin and sang at the back of my mind, joining Alysdair’s pleasant humming. Inside the temple, I was at my strongest, but also at my weakest. Temptation throbbed through my veins. The ages-old need to take, to own, to devour, to be exactly the thing I pretended to be.

  As we walked, Aika’s silence stretched.

  “Your life before, what was it like?” I asked.

  Her court shoes clicked against the floor. “I worked in law.”

  “A lawyer?”

  “Yes. Corporate.”

  “You were good at your career?”

  “I protected the interests of my employers.”

  Her ruthless efficiency would have been considered an asset. I had no trouble envisaging Aika addressing a courtroom on behalf of faceless corporations. It was her job to root out holes in testimony. Her mind would be turning over mine.

  “Is something distracting you?” I asked. Before she could answer, a young man I didn’t recognize appeared from a side door, swept in, and handed me a glass. I sniffed its contents. Wine? I arched a brow. Gifts from my followers weren’t unusual and ranged from abandoned trinkets found in the ash to art and weapons. Wine was a new one.

  The man bowed low. “While out on their rounds, your scouts discovered a container by the pier carrying imported wines. This one is from Italy. It says it was made with only the finest—”

  I handed the glass to Aika. “Any vodka?”

  “Er…” He lifted his head and quickly dropped it again. “I… I wasn’t told… Vodka?”