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

  “Rarru,” I called to the heart of Duat.

  “Raku.” Home. “Rurd uk sra Dord.” Lord of the Dark.

  The beat of life thudded through Duat, buried under sand until I swallowed the sand down and cleared Seth’s touch. Duat’s natural power thrummed in the sweet air. The Halls, the plaza, the streets, the markets—they once again shone in my wake. The Light had returned. I hadn’t created it—I didn’t have that power. I’d just… uncovered it.

  Souls spun and buzzed, afraid of the Dark, yet drawn to my presence.

  At the steps leading up into the Halls, where the statue of Osiris loomed large, barring the way, stood two gods. Physically, Osiris was dwarfed by his lookalike stone behemoth behind him, but his power charged the Halls he guarded. Anubis stood beside him, spear in hand, lupine gaze locked on me while his lips pulled back in a vocal snarl that revealed jaws of sharp teeth. The God of the Damned and the God of Life and Resurrection, guardians against the Dark.

  I made it as far as the fountain at the plaza’s center before my storm began to fracture and fall apart. Bits of me crumbled, and crinkled into ash before falling through the cracks in the stones.

  I stopped in the center of the plaza and pulled my Dark around me, folding it in like wings and shaping it into the man they all recognized, captured in armored plates of obsidian black. The souls I had summoned and remade buzzed in the back of my mind, ready and waiting for me to summon them again.

  I lifted my gaze to the two gods and smiled. “Look what the jackal dragged in.”

  “You shall not enter the Halls,” Anubis announced in his command-the-masses voice. He wore a battle-scarred chest plate and scratched greaves, but beside Osiris, he might as well have been the pet on a leash. Osiris’s radiance was almost blinding. I struggled to focus my dark eyes on his brilliance—no doubt a deliberate tactic.

  I turned my head. We had a crowd. Once, all of Duat had turned out to see me cursed and expelled from the underworld. I had been a nameless upstart then, Duat’s embarrassing orphan. Now they knew the truth of me. Osiris might have believed they were here for him, but one word from me and they would all drop to their knees, chanting, “Kur Apophis.” The souls cringed away from my gaze, so close to groveling they were already hunched over, in submission.

  “You are a thing of Darkness,” Anubis proclaimed. “You do not belong here.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Anubis’s brass balls. As a First Creation, I predated him by thousands upon thousands of years. He appeared to have forgotten his place.

  I freed Alysdair and rested the sword against my leg. Anubis hadn’t yet been introduced to the Eye of Ra. His eyes widened, and behind that gaze, his thoughts churned. How had I gotten Ra’s sword? Did he dare believe all he had heard of me?

  “What does your owner say?” I asked.

  Anubis looked to Osiris like the good little dog he was. “It is true. He has the Eye of Ra. Mokarakk Oma is Apophis.”

  A ripple of whispers surged through the crowd. My lips twitched at the familiar whispers: kur Apophis, kur Apophis, kur Apophis. The sound mingled with Duat’s musical resonance and buzzed across my skin. These foolish souls would worship me, lift me up as their new god, and in doing so they would bring about their own End.

  “Silence!” I commanded, shutting the door on temptation. The word cracked through their chanting and cut them off.

  Osiris stepped down a few of the steps, toning down his glow so I could see his face. His expression was the same haughty nothingness depicted on statues in human museums across the globe. He couldn’t show how any of this affected him, especially in front of his charges, but I knew how everything he saw, every word of mine, disgusted him, and I reveled in it.

  “You will not have this world,” he declared.

  I rolled my eyes. “Did I ever say I wanted it?”

  He blinked, genuinely surprised. I was Apophis. Of course I wanted everything.

  “No, I did not. You guess at my motives. You’re wrong.” I answered for him and then paced beside the fountain, addressing the crowd as well as the two gods. “I am the Dark. You got that right. And I have been known to…” I waved Alysdair, searching for the right word. “Consume a few worlds in the past. But the Dark is not all I am.” More than darkness. I swallowed and ran a hand down Alysdair’s smooth blade, wiping off excess power. “I am not a god,” I said to the riveted people, watching fear and awe crawl across their humble faces. “So I can see what they cannot. Too much power. Too much time. And they have forgotten what it is to care. Isis herself told me she had begged for slumber, but her husband refused her. And so the madness festered, twisting her Light, turning her goodness into something ugly.”

  “And where is Isis?” Osiris asked, rage quivering behind his words.

  “I killed her.” The collective gasp lifted my dark heart. “Frankly, by the end, it was a mercy.” I shrugged. “Godkiller. It’s in the name. And I won’t stop there. The worlds are not meant for warped gods.” Pointing Alysdair’s tip at the people one by one, I walked around the inside of the crowd. “Souls are the source of life. You do not need gods to rule over you. Not these gods, the twisted kind. They squabble and scheme among themselves for power, forgetting who it is they originally served. The old gods had their time. Those who slumber knew the truth. But those who remain cannot let go.”

  “This is nonsense,” Anubis growled, stamping the end of his spear against the polished steps. “Your words are eels designed to undermine. You sow discontent. You are a scourge. You are all that is wrong.”

  “I have seen worlds fall. Some downfalls I instigated, some worlds I watched crumble, but all had one thing in common: squabbling gods. The souls do not need gods to govern them.” I pointed Alysdair’s glinting tip at Anubis. “You are the scourge on civilizations.”

  “Osiris, destroy him,” the jackal growled.

  Osiris tensed. Irritation flashed in his golden eyes. He knew it wasn’t possible, at least not in the way Anubis wanted.

  I grinned and opened my arms. “Take your best shot.” Nobody moved. Or breathed. “So long as the Light exists, so must I.” I turned on the spot, inviting an attack. “Anubis, you talk of Justice, of Balance. You live by the Scales. Can you not see the simplicity of it all?”

  The look Anubis gave me was not one of understanding. He had tried to be rid of me many times before. He had been so sure I had murdered Ammit, but the Feather had called him out. “So you would have the gods destroyed?” he asked.

  “Destroyed or slumbering the eons away.”

  “And you?” the god grinned, jackal lips turning up. “What of you, Apophis, when all the gods are gone? Where will you be then? Will you resign, or will you take it all?”

  “I am the worst of all,” I conceded. “But at least I see that.”

  Anubis laughed. The sound growled through the foundations and rumbled across the plaza. He lifted his spear and barked, “Destroy Apophis!”

  I briefly wondered who his orders were meant for. The crowd wouldn’t dare come near me and none were brave enough to attack. By the puzzlement on their faces, few wanted to attack. Osiris’s smirk was a warning.

  Jackals burst through the crowd and launched at me from all sides. I managed to spin and duck a few, but their numbers slammed into me. Teeth clamped down on my armor and nicked my throat and face. Snarls and growls boiled from everywhere. Claws snagged. The weight of hundreds pushed me into the earth.

  “Cukko—” I spluttered, eating sand. “San—”

  I couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t draw breath to direct the power. And that’s when I heard it. The unmistakable screeching caw of the legendary Recka. Its cry shattered the chaos. Wind blasted through the heaving jackals. A vast hooked beak sank in, stabbed through a jackal’s gut, and launched the canine into the crowd. A talon snatched another. Yelps replaced snarls. The Recka plucked more jackals, stood on their wriggling bodies, and tore them in half. It tossed jackal carcasses at the steps. Blood and slippery g
uts slapped against polished marble, narrowly missing the two observing gods.

  When the jackals shuffled off, bellies rubbing the ground, the Recka lifted its head and shook out its vast bronze wings. Sprawled beneath it, I briefly wondered if the beast had come for me and didn’t want to share.

  “I am the Recka!” it announced like we didn’t already know, its voice spoken directly into our heads.

  An arrow slammed into the stone beside my head and strummed there. No ordinary arrow could cut through Duat stone. I squinted up at the roofline and recognized the warrior women zeroing in on me. Bastet’s clowder, now Mafdet’s. The Slayer of Serpents wouldn’t be far behind. Those cats would all happily tear into me, and that was not something I planned to let happen anytime soon.

  Anyone might think Apophis wasn’t much liked in the underworld.

  I lifted a hand, spread my fingers, and watched the Recka’s beak plunge down, but it swerved at the last second and swung its head to the side, sweeping down what I assumed was Anubis’s guards.

  “I know you.” The Recka brought its head in low as it said the next words. “Relics of a dead world.” Up close, its empty eye sockets were the size of craters. Its crown of bone glinted. It wasn’t here to kill me. It had saved me.

  “Cover me,” I told it, shifting into ash too quickly to know if it had understood.

  With enemies on all fronts, I funneled through the back streets, faster and faster, until ahead, the plains of mu moka stretched outward. There, on the horizon, stood the obsidian tower. It cut into the sky like frozen black lightning. The doors opened unaided as I approached and poured all of me inside. Home.

  Yes.

  This was right.

  I walked out of the embers, armor refreshed and body built anew. The jackals had been unexpected. The cats even more so. But these were mere inconveniences. I had gotten my point across. The gods were living on borrowed time.

  I paced across the center of the tower. Stairs hugged the walls and spiraled higher into the nowhere space above me. Technically, I didn’t need the gods to understand me or understand what I was doing, but it would be easier not to have to fight the souls as well. And the souls had heard my words.

  Outside, a screech sailed across the plains.

  I strode to the door to see the Recka plant its talons on a mound of rocks and flap its broad, shimmering wings. It sent out a cry that said to all listening, “I am legend.”

  I smiled at the mythical beast left over from a world I’d long ago devoured.

  I had the summoned souls that had littered the Twelve Gates. I had the Recka. Now all I needed was proof I wasn’t all bad.

  The Recka shook its head and brought its beak down low. It snuffled around my feet. “Where is the warrior cat who took my eyes? Where is she, Dark One?”

  “Close,” I lied.

  “I guarded your home while you were gone, as you commanded.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Will you tell the warrior cat? Tell her I helped you, her friend.”

  Friend was… an optimistic description of my relationship with Cat. I patted the beast’s beak, finding it warm and smooth beneath my touch. “I will.” It made a humming sound in the back of its throat, not unlike a purr. “Tonight, I must visit the house of my enemy. Guard this tower, and when I return, I will take you back with me to the human world. There, you may relay your valiant behavior to the warrior cat.”

  “Valiant. Yes. I am the Recka. We are relics. We are legends.”

  I eyed Duat, sparkling far across the red plains. “Yes… Yes, we are.”

  Chapter 9

  Osiris’s Duat residence was a sprawling single-story complex of temples and private quarters. He had summoned me into the bowels of the building after my fight with Shukra, and just as quickly, he had gotten rid of me. Now I was here on my terms. I could have walked through the front gates and announced my presence to his guards, but our little chat wasn’t one either of us wanted publicized. All I had to do was refrain from burying Alysdair into his heart long enough to get what I wanted. Easier said than done.

  Countless servants, worshippers, and priests filed through the pillared halls. I clung to the evening shadows.

  I knew it would be anything but simple as I poured my power through the corridor and approached his vast bedchamber. What awaited inside was a heady mix of Osiris’s syrupy power and a writhing mass of male and female bodies accompanied by a chorus of deep breathing, slippery gasps, and agonized grunting. Osiris was at their center, having his body worshipped in all the ways, with his head thrown back, arms spread wide, and skin aglow.

  I prowled around the outside of the room, letting my Dark touch inch outward. I had lost count of all the times he had forced me to watch these performances, all the times I would have gladly stabbed Alysdair through his heart.

  His skin shimmered, slick from the abundance of power.

  Silently, I drew up close to the bed behind him and his worshippers, and freed Alysdair. They were all too lost to his sexual thrall to notice. I could drive the sword into his back, just below the left shoulder blade. His ribs wouldn’t stop Alysdair. She’d have his heart, his soul… Nobody would be surprised that Apophis had stabbed and killed the God of Life mid-fuck. There would be a delightful sense of poetic justice in that act. It was tempting, so very tempting. He deserved it. For all the times he’d compelled me to kill innocent people, for all the times he’d made me watch. But that was Ace Dante’s anger, and it paled in comparison to mine. Osiris had led the gods in sealing me inside the mountain. He was everything I despised about the twisted gods; he was my every reason to stop them.

  I pressed Alysdair’s point into the tight muscles bunched across his back, eliciting a gasp from the god. He froze, but his worshippers did not. They stroked and licked, kneaded and writhed.

  I leaned in, pushing Alysdair in through the glistening skin, and whispered, “Have I interrupted something?”

  His people reacted as though I’d hit them all with an electrical charge. Some fell over themselves in their haste to flee the room. I grinned and watched others recoil. It appeared as though my reputation preceded me.

  A few devout worshippers remained—two women and one man—and they eyed their god for instructions. “Finish your worship,” Osiris commanded, stubborn bastard that he was.

  “Leave,” I growled at them.

  “Stay,” Osiris ordered, still frozen beneath the point of my blade.

  “Leave!” I pushed power through the word, startling the three out of the room.

  I waited out the seconds, listening to Osiris breathe. “You must have known it would come to this.”

  “Kill me and I will merely be resurrected—”

  “Not if Alysdair has her fill.” I heard him swallow. If I killed Osiris, here and now, Duat would fall under my control and no god could stop me. In the human world, Seth waited, along with billions of worshippers who would make me their one and only true god. All I had to do was drive the sword in and say the words. Osiris deserved it. It would be Justice. He could meet his wife’s soul inside the blade.

  More than darkness.

  I closed my eyes.

  A god cannot change.

  Watch me.

  I pulled Alysdair free and stepped back into the shadows crowding the edges of the room, whispering, “It would be easier being the bad guy.”

  Osiris slumped on his heels and bowed forward. The wound in his back stitched itself closed, and what little blood I’d spilled soaked into his moist skin. He took a few long seconds to compose himself and climbed from the bed. When he reached for his gown, his fingers noticeably trembled.

  “Why are you here, if not for murder?” he asked, voice shuddering too.

  “I have something you want. You have something I want. I figure we can come to an agreement.”

  He dragged his gaze over me, noting the dark armor. His lips turned down in a sour grimace. “You are the End of All Things. You have always been the End
of All Things. You do not have anything I want.”

  “No?” I leaned a shoulder against the marble wall. “At what point did you look at Isis and decide you wanted to fuck her? I mean, I get you’re the God of Fertility and Life and all that, but your own sister?”

  As I talked, he listened, but with each word, his expression tightened. “It’s disturbing how you’re a creature outside of time and yet you continue to talk like the fool Ace Dante.”

  “He and I have a lot in common.”

  “I preferred him.”

  “Because he was your man-puppet and I’m darkness incarnate.”

  “I knew where I stood with Ace Dante. You are… different. Volatile.”

  Different in an End the World kinda way. I couldn’t argue with that. “Ace and I have reconciled our differences. I created him. I also learned a great deal from living a man’s life.”

  “So I see.” He strode to a table and poured himself a goblet of wine from an ornate jug. Usually, his servers would tend to his every need, or he would compel me to do it. He eyed the goblet, and then me. “I hear the poison reached you,” he said, casually.

  “It did.” I glanced at my hand. The wound had vanished, along with the poison. Death had made me stronger. “I thought poisoning was beneath you.”

  “Isis often told me how she believed there was a subtle elegance in poisoning. It was her favorite method of ending a life.”

  “Above or below cutting throats on her list of murdering techniques?”

  Osiris glowered at my glib tone. “You killed my sister.”

  “Yes, I did. And let’s be honest, it needed to be done. She was a fucking lunatic.”

  He took a sip from his goblet and conceded with an arched eyebrow. “I loved her.”

  “Did you? Did you really? Because the way she tells it, she was little more than your tool.”

  “Perhaps I was distracted. I’ve had other priorities. Stopping the End of All Things must take priority over marital duties.”