Serpent's Game (The Soul Eater Book 5) Read online

  “I told you to get out of New York,” I said carefully, my anger simmering just below the surface. Mortals would live a lot longer if they weren’t so stubborn. “Shukra is dangerous.” And that was putting it mildly. Unbridled, Shukra had once wielded the kind of power that could have wiped out small villages. She had a soul as black as mine and centuries of scheming in that sharp mind. Cujo was putty in her hands.

  His lips twisted around unspoken words. “Give me some of that vodka.”

  I poured him a glass and handed it over. “You’re a grown man. It’s not my place to tell you what to do, but next time Shukra comes by, I suggest you make it the last time.”

  He eyed me side-on and gulped down the vodka, hissing at the afterburn. “You’d think after hundreds of years you’d have figured out you can’t do everything alone.”

  After a few hundred years, I’d figured out alone was the only way. “How much did Shu tell you?”

  “Most of Egypt and that you’re at least five hundred years old but she suspects there’s something a lot older in you. She told me about Seth—”

  That simmering anger burned hotter than the vodka. “I told her to cut you out.” He knew too much. “Don’t trust her.” Knowledge like that would get him killed. I had enough deaths weighing down my soul. If anything happened to Cujo…

  Cujo’s face pinched into a frown. “She’s alone too, you know.”

  “She’s the blackest demon soul in the body of a woman. Don’t for one second think she’s not trying to screw you over.” I threw back the rest of my vodka and slammed the glass down for another. I could compel him to turn Shukra away. His human mind was pliable, but that was something Ace Dante wouldn’t do. And I was Ace Dante.

  “I don’t know what happened between you, but—”

  A growl bubbled up my throat. I swallowed it before Cujo could hear. “You’re right. You don’t. Stay out of it, Cujo. Stay out of everything. You’ll live longer.”

  He was silent for a few beats. “You came to me all screwed up, begging me to help put that cuff on your arm.”

  I planted both hands on the desktop and bowed my head. I had gone to him. That had been a mistake. Knowing what I was when I crawled out of that sarcophagus, I should have walked away from it all, from New York, from everything, and kept on walking right out of Ace Dante’s life. But I couldn’t give it up. Not yet. Ace Dante was an illusion, but a sane one.

  “You have a daughter and an ex-wife.” I glared at the woodgrain, but all I saw were buildings crumbling into clouds of ash in the streets and the Hudson flooded red with blood or sand, I couldn’t tell which. Maybe both. “I’m afraid,” I said too quietly for him to hear. Afraid of what’s to come. Afraid of what I am. Afraid that no matter what I do, I can’t fight the truth and what it will mean for the people around me. “I thought I could pretend to be Ace Dante and make a difference.” More than darkness. “I know now it’s not possible.”

  Cujo grunted dismissively. “What do you think we’ve been doing these past few years? We have made a difference. The only person stopping you from continuing is you.”

  How right he was, but for all the wrong reasons. “You should leave.”

  “Osiris screwed you up before, but not like this. What the hell happened to you?”

  He buried me alive, buried me in the dark, made me face the truth. I crossed the room, heading straight for the door. “Maybe you should consider early retirement? Get off the front line?”

  Cujo’s glare was as cold and hard as iron. “I didn’t retire when that god blasted me into traffic. I’m not retiring now.”

  But he was leaving, I noticed as he wheeled toward me. That would have to do for now. I opened the door.

  “Next time you see Shukra, tell her…” I trailed off as Cujo’s eyes widened.

  I opened the door wider, and the coppery tang of blood washed over my tongue. And then the rest of the picture fell into place. Naked pink skin covered from head to toe in streaks of blood and fleshy chunks. For a gut-wrenching moment, I thought the blood was hers and scanned her body for wounds. Then the catlike green eyes peered out from blood-caked blond bangs, and a steady, reassuring smile lifted the corners of her lips.

  “Can I use your shower?” Cat asked.

  Chapter 3

  Cat sauntered past me and a speechless Cujo into my apartment, leaving a trail of bloody footprints on my wooden floors, and disappeared into the bathroom.

  “There was a beastie out back,” she called. The door hung ajar, letting out the hissing and splattering sounds of water.

  The blood and the was in her sentence likely meant the beastie was dead, but I locked the front door and checked the windows to be safe. Late night traffic rumbled by several stories below. Headlights bounced as cars hit drains and potholes. Sirens wailed far off like always. New York’s rhythm droned on, familiar and comforting. Nothing appeared amiss.

  “That’s the most I’ve seen of a woman in years,” Cujo remarked with a hint of surprise in his voice. He was a difficult man to shock, but Cat had succeeded within three seconds. They’d met briefly when she worked at the office, but as far as I knew, he had no idea she was a feline shifter.

  “Keep an eye on the windows,” I told him and strode to the bathroom door, only to stop and stand outside like an idiot. I should knock, even though it seemed ridiculous when I’d just gotten a real good look at all of her. The door was open, so…

  “If it can’t wait, then you can come in,” she said, those acute ears of hers probably picking up my heartbeat.

  I pushed inside, glad for the steam and condensation clouding the shower glass. Her outline moved inside the fog in a tantalizing hint of curves and strength. My imagination filled in the blanks, drawing a fine image I likely wouldn’t be able to get out of my head anytime soon. Last time I saw her, she’d told me I was in the way of her finding out the truth behind Bastet’s disappearance. That had been months ago. Now here she was, in my shower, washing off blood.

  “I went to your office,” she said. “It’s all closed up.”

  “It’s a long story,” I dismissed. “The thing you killed, is its carcass out there?”

  She snorted, disgusted that I had questioned her methods. “I kicked its remains down a few storm drains. There are alligators in the sewers, right?”

  “Crocodiles.” Good. I knew the resident crocodile shifter who dwelled beneath the city. She’d make sure there would be no phone calls to the cops, animal control, or Osiris. “Describe the creature you killed.”

  She dropped her hands. They’d been up in her hair, kneading and swirling my tough-guy caffeine and motor oil shampoo into mounds of bubbles, making it damn difficult for me to keep a hold of my train of thought. Cat and I… Well, there wasn’t a Cat and I. She’d spent months spying on me in cat form, determined to find a link between me and her missing queen, Bastet. Whatever we were, it was strictly professional. Mostly. There had been moments when we were trapped in Duat where I’d wondered if there might be a chance at something more, but she’d made it clear what she thought of me when she called me a liar and accused me of hiding information about Bastet.

  “Did you forget your pleases and thank yous while I was gone?” she remarked, a smirk hidden in her voice.

  “I er… It’s been an interesting night.” And her arrival had thrown me off my stride. “Tell me about the creature you killed—please.”

  “There. That didn’t hurt. The beastie had a long, thick, muscular neck like a giraffe.”

  “A giraffe? An African giraffe?”

  “No, the lesser known wild giraffes of New York. Of course the African giraffe.”

  I felt her eye roll without seeing it. She had hold of what I figured was my soap and was moving the bar into all the curves and valleys I was not at all interested in.

  “Long tail too,” she explained. “I suppose that makes sense if you’ve got a top-heavy head.”

  “What kind of head?”

  “Catlike. Had a st
ocky body too. It was strong, hit like a sledgehammer but moved slow. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “You sure?”

  “I know what a cat’s head looks like.” I couldn’t see the side-eye she threw me, but I felt that too.

  There was an Egyptian beast that fit her description—the kurvord—but they were so rare that I’d never seen one. Mostly feline with a bit of snake thrown in, hence the long neck. Long before the sundering, the gods had kept them as exotic pets. Kurvord were vicious things but slow, as Cat had discovered.

  “What was it doing?” I asked.

  “Hanging out behind your building and peering into windows.” She shut off the water and opened the shower door. I’d like to say I didn’t look, but I did. I looked long and hard, making it all the way up to her lips, which were pressed into a tight line.

  “Did you enjoy the tour?” A blond eyebrow arched.

  A smart comeback existed out there somewhere, but the seconds passed and the opportunity to say something clever went with them. I masked all these thoughts from my face, all but my mild approval. She’d hear the uptick in my heartbeat, and there was nothing I could do to hide it. I couldn’t hide other very human reactions either. I might not have been human, but neither was she. We’d survived the Twelve Gates together. She’d stood beside me in the weighing chambers and watched my heart get weighed against the Feather of Truth. Cat knew more about me than anyone else this side of Duat, but she didn’t know the truth. She knew Ace Dante.

  As my thoughts churned, she stared straight into my eyes. Cat had always possessed the uncanny ability to stare through me—a feature cats everywhere possessed. Maybe she could see my soul?

  Once the tension had cranked up to the point where I could feel it crackling across my skin, I grabbed a towel and handed it to her, using the small task as a distraction. It didn’t work. The evening’s events and her surprise arrival had left me running to catch up. I hadn’t expected her, or this, and I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me. She’d left in search of answers, and here she was again. What did that mean?

  “Thanks.” She didn’t smile. Cat rarely did smiles. But I caught a glimmer of amusement in those bottle-green eyes. “I needed that. Bastet had it so much easier. A click of her fingers and she’d be dressed.” She wrapped the towel under her arms and over her breasts, tucking the edges in tight. “Us normal shifters have to consider the inconveniences of being without clothes after the change.”

  Normal shifters. I wasn’t sure there was such a thing.

  I got the distinct impression I hadn’t spoken in a while and should say something, but I couldn’t decide what. In five hundred years, I could count on one hand the times I’d been rendered speechless without the use of magic. This was one of them.

  “Do you have any clothes I can borrow?” She ruffled her hair and headed for the door.

  “Some of Shu’s spare outfits… if you don’t mind leather and fur.”

  Cat chuckled, and it wasn’t until we were out of the bathroom that I realized why. So far, I’d succeeded in making an idiot of myself. I blamed it on the vodka.

  “Thank the lord, you’re covered up,” Cujo drawled from the spot he’d taken up by the window. “I don’t think I could have survived seeing more of you. Not that it’s a bad thing—seeing you again. I mean, it is… good that you’re here.”

  At least I wasn’t the only idiot in the room.

  I dug out some of Shukra’s emergency stash of clothing and tossed them onto the bed. Black pants, a black leather waistcoat, and what most would assume was a fake snakeskin jacket. I’d seen her skin the snakes. Shukra wasted nothing. I considered warning Cat the jacket was real, but remembered how Cat had carved out the Recka’s giant eyeballs—a half-bird, half-dragon creature—and slung them over her shoulder like purses. I figured she wouldn’t mind real snakeskin.

  Cat dressed while Cujo and I stood guard at the window. She zipped up the jacket and said, “I can’t find Bastet. Every lead is a dead end. Every single thread. I’ve followed them all.”

  I continued staring out of the window, not seeing the street below or the glitter of lights from the buildings. Not seeing anything but the swirl of sand. Distant winds howled like those in the Twelve Gates. A never-ending storm. Why did it feel as though that storm was closer?

  “Did you know she had a daughter?”

  I blinked. The sound of the wind shut off, and the street was once again a normal street. No sand in sight.

  Bastet had a daughter? That seemed like something I should have known, but in the span of Bastet’s long life, our marriage hadn’t accounted for more than a blink. “I er… No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Look at me.”

  I turned my head. Cat stood by the bed, arms crossed, looking like a woman forged in fire. Her eyes were hard, her expression unwavering. She reminded me of a blade, honed into a precision instrument created to kill.

  “I told you all I know,” I said. She’d accused me of lying. She likely didn’t trust a word I said. If she was here, then she had good reason to be, and it had nothing to do with our time in Duat.

  “I believe you.”

  “You do?”

  She dropped onto the edge of the bed. “I’ve searched through everything. I know more about Bastet than anyone alive today, and I know despite your many, many faults, she cared for you. I’ve watched you, I’ve worked with you, and I’ve seen things I probably shouldn’t have survived. There is more happening here than Bastet’s disappearance. Once I started thinking bigger, I considered Thoth’s words the night we killed him—”

  Cujo’s intake of breath cinched it. That large, unwieldy secret was out of the bag. I winced and looked down at my friend. He’d suspected I’d lied to him about that night, saying we’d spent it getting drunk and high.

  “You did what?” he asked.

  I shot Cat a warning glare. She shrugged.

  “It has nothing to do with you,” I told my friend.

  “Like hell it doesn’t!” Cujo wheeled back, giving himself room. “You killed a god?”

  And in the scheme of bad things I’d done, god-killing was third on the list, right below almost screwing Isis and—oh yeah—releasing Seth. Not to mention the whole I’m the apocalypse bombshell. But sure, let’s all get bent out of shape about Thoth’s suicide by soul eater. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Thoth asked for it. Literally asked for it. I just happened to be holding the sword.”

  “How is it I did not know about this?” Cujo’s wide-eyed stare bounced from me to Cat and back again.

  “Because you didn’t need to know,” I told him.

  “You were there.” Cat piped up nonchalantly, ignoring the warning in my glare. “Thoth had you godstruck. He was going to kill you, but Ace, Shu, and I took him out before he got the chance. You’re welcome.” Now Cat dragged her lazy stare to me, reminding me of the cat who used to sit on my desk and shove anything off that wasn’t nailed down. “He deserves to know. Nobody likes having their memories screwed with.”

  “I was… godstruck?” A shadow passed over Cujo’s face. Memories, I suspected, of another time when the gods had fucked him over. “When were you going to tell me?” Cujo asked, his voice icy calm.

  “Never. I’m trying to protect you.”

  “I’m in a wheelchair, not a damn child.”

  “There are things you don’t know—”

  “Because you won’t tell me. Why do I have to learn what’s really going on from your sidekicks?”

  Cat bristled. “I’m not his sidekick.”

  I offered my empty hands in surrender. “Okay, you know what? It’s been a long night. I can’t do this right now. I’m going to take a walk around the block to make sure there aren’t any more kurvords peeking in windows.” Cat looked as though she was about to speak up, so I shot her down with a glare. “Both of you stay here.”

  “Ace,” Cat said firmly. “I’m not here to condemn you. I came back to help you.”

 
; Help me?

  What was wrong with these people? Didn’t they understand the closer they got to me, the more likely it was I’d hurt them—or worse?

  “I don’t need your help.”

  What I need is for everyone to get out of my way.

  I brushed by Cat, grateful she didn’t attempt to stop me because the sound of the storm was back howling in my mind like the past was trying to engulf me. I wouldn’t—couldn’t let it. Not yet.

  More than darkness.

  Chapter 4

  I’d forgotten my coat and sword in the apartment, but since Cat had already killed the kurvord, and considering they were myths among myths, I wasn’t expecting to encounter any more on my brisk walk around the block.

  Focusing on the kurvord kept the storm at bay, and with every step, the howls receded, leaving behind a single wave of icy shivers. I shook it off and strode on, hands in my pockets and head up. As for what a kurvord was doing hanging around my tiny corner of the neighborhood? I wasn’t buying coincidence. Someone had sent it or set it free nearby. I had my suspicions.

  After Osiris discovered his wife and I had been plotting against him, he’d promptly clicked his fingers and banished Isis somewhere. She hadn’t been present at any of Osiris’s public appearances since. I could write her off as a suspect. Even if Osiris knew I wasn’t trapped in the sarcophagus, he wouldn’t send a kurvord to do his dirty work. It would be perceived as a weakness, and the last thing Osiris wanted was to be considered weak around me, knowing, as he did, who and what I was. Anubis could have sent a kurvord, but he wasn’t a showman and had less extreme methods for attracting my attention—like sending a jackal. As for the rest of the pantheon, most ignored me unless they wanted to hire me, and these days, the Godkiller was out of action.

  But there was one god I’d recently helped awaken, and given the kurvords rarity, my suspicions fell on him. The Lord of the Desert. Seth. He’d already sent the ancient and legendary Recka after me. For all I knew, he had pockets full of sand and kurvords. Seth was out there, licking his wounds, building his forces, buying time. With no word of him or any hint of his awakening since my return from Egypt, a kurvord could be him testing the waters. Or should that be testing the sands?