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

  “The box.”

  “Ah.” Her eyes crinkled. “That wicked thing. Did you finally figure out the snakes took it from me? Snakes! From me! They were part of the reason I came back. I was weak there and none of us can afford to be weak. Time is coming undone. Gods awaken. I must remember what it is to be the Slayer of Serpents. I cannot afford to be weak and neither can you.”

  “A girl opened the box.”

  “Impossible.” She waved a hand. “No girl could open that box. Only a god, and no minor one at that.”

  “You didn’t open it?”

  “No. Like I said, I was weak. Still am. I should have slumbered, but I would have missed too much.”

  “But only a god could open it?”

  “Only a god, and there are few of those in New York.”

  Indeed. I had my suspicions. “The power hidden inside that box transferred to the girl—”

  Mafdet shook her head. “My condolences.”

  “She’s not dead.”

  “She will be.”

  “I need to get the power out. How can I do that?”

  Mafdet barely considered it for more than a few seconds. “Death and resurrection.”

  “No. There must be another way.”

  She wet her lips and studied me. “Someone put that power inside that little box and wrapped it so tightly I believe it was never meant to be opened by anyone besides the original craftsmen. Find whoever made the box, and you will have your answer.”

  I was afraid she’d say something like that. I closed my eyes. What would it take to catch a break? Just one little lucky break? “I made the box.”

  “You?” Mafdet frowned and then laughed. “No, I don’t think so! The power inside that little box was colossal. You are not that powerful, Nameless One.”

  Oh, to be able to laugh it off and tell her I’d made a mistake and go back to the way things were. “I made the box,” I repeated, harder this time. “I sealed that power in there to hide it from both worlds and from myself. That box is the truth. Its power is mine.”

  She blinked and realization dawned on Mafdet’s face. The lines around her eyes widened first, and then her mouth relaxed, her lips parting. The rumors that I’d helped Seth escape. The fact she already knew I wasn’t what I appeared to be. How I’d commanded the Recka. Liar, thief. Duat’s bad boy. Condemned Soul Eater. And worse. So much worse.

  “You’re not a god…” But her words trailed off. She came closer and peered into my eyes and studied my face. “Mm… Slumber can take many forms. Some take it literally, others find another way.” She reached out a hand, but I jerked away. “Yes. Yes, there is something sleeping within, and it is a hungry thing. Which god are you?”

  Her throat moved as she swallowed. Realizing she was standing too close, she stepped back. “The box is yours. Then its contents will answer to you and only you. Now I think it’s time for you to leave, Mokarakk Oma. Soon, it will be time for you to pick a side. The Lord of Red is coming. He sought to provoke Osiris by taking Duat, but his brother did not come. Your human home, your human people, are not prepared.”

  “It won’t get that far.”

  She nodded, either believing me or believing I’d try to stop it. “Leave. The next time we meet, I sincerely hope it is not behind clashing blades.”

  I bowed my head as a sign of respect and then turned away. “As do I.”

  Her warriors silently watched me venture out into the storm, reminding me there was no neutral ground when gods went to war.

  Chapter 11

  Chantal’s breathing came fast and shallow. I could only imagine the torment the power was subjecting her to. It would shred her mind and then her soul until there was nothing left but a mindless carcass.

  And I had no fucking idea how to save her. The contents will answer to you.

  The magic was mine, so I should know how to save her. Say the words, touch her, open myself to it, any or all those things? Problem was, I didn’t know where to start. In five hundred years, I’d never felt so useless. But I wasn’t about to stand by and watch her die.

  I heard Cujo’s wife arrive downstairs and Cujo ask about the medication, knowing it was pointless but it at least offered hope. The strain in my friend’s voice was for another reason, though. We had to tell Judith the truth—all of it—and then I’d invite Isis into their lives. It was the only option I had left.

  I’d meant what I’d said. I would do anything to save Chantal.

  I nodded at Cat waiting silently at the foot of the bed and left the room.

  “Judy,” Cujo began the introduction as I descended the stairs. “This is Ace Dante. He’s a colleague and a friend…”

  Something was wrong with Judith’s face. I’d seen her pictures. She was a woman in her late thirties, full of light and smiles, but she’d weathered around the edges a little after Cujo’s accident. She looked up. Her eyes were as gray as slate. Her lips were skewed. Deep-seated instincts recoiled. I knew her… No, not her, but the soul buried deep inside and wrapped up in layer after layer of illusion, making it difficult to pin down.

  Shukra appeared, slammed an elbow into Judith’s back, sunk her fingers into the woman’s hair, and slammed her face first into the wall. “How do you like that, bitch?!”

  Cujo exploded. “Shukra! What—”

  I leaped over the banister and landed behind the two women. “Shukra!” Carefully, oh so carefully, I added, “Let her go.”

  A curl of laughter pealed from Judith’s lips. I knew that laugh and wished I was wrong. I so wanted to be wrong, but as that laughter sailed through the house, it changed, becoming soft and sweet like honey.

  “Isis.” I cast Cujo a warning glance to back off but kept my attention trained on the goddess. The man’s eyes widened as the name and its implications hit him.

  “Call off your sorceress whore,” Isis ordered, her voice not quite right while tumbling from human lips.

  Shukra leaned in close to the goddess. She sucked in a breath, drawing Isis’s scent over her tongue. “I have you. Right now, I have you. If you hurt them, if you’re behind this, I’ll tear that pretend mortal body apart piece by piece and make you suffer the way a god has never known. There was a time when my name was uttered in fear. A time when I toyed with minor godlings and used their insides as decoration.”

  “Release me!” The compulsion hit like a sledgehammer. It rolled off me but slammed into Shukra. She tried to hold on, but couldn’t stand against Isis’s power.

  With an enraged cry, Shukra flung herself backward, and in the cramped hallway, she shoved into me. I steered her toward the silent Cujo and watched Isis turn to regard us all. The woman who’d been Judith melted away. The illusion wobbled until Isis shook her head, spilling her dark jewel-studded braid over one shoulder. The mundane clothes fell away like petals, revealing Isis in all her godly splendor.

  “Where’s my wife?” Cujo yelled, his voice breaking.

  I stepped between them.

  Isis’s melodic laugh sounded like falling glass. “Oh, that woman. What a bore she was. Do you know she spent far too much of her limited time collecting dog figurines? Limited lives, and yet they waste it on idle follies.” Isis flicked a nonexistent strand of hair out of her face. “Her body is in the little building out back. I didn’t have time to dispose of her flesh. The beetles and worms of this world are feasting on her soft tissue as we speak.”

  The moan that broke from Cujo was a sound I’d heard too many times from victims over the years. Grief and the knowledge that he could do nothing.

  “Get out,” I told her.

  Isis smiled her syrupy smile. “Was that an order, monster?”

  “Ace, get her away from here before I get us all killed,” Shukra said, voice deadly calm. The acrid smell of diesel fumes choked the air: Shukra’s magic.

  “Get out of this house,” I told Isis again.

  “Oh, but don’t you want to know about the box?”

  Realization and dread knocked me back. S
he’d opened the box. It was her all along. She’d given the box to Chantal, dressed in the illusion of the girl’s mother. A woman she’d killed. And she’d done it to get to me. Chantal lay dying and her mother was already dead because Isis needed leverage.

  The hallway, the rooms, the house suddenly felt too small. The people, the street, the city. Too small. All of it. I heard the storm rage and the souls howl. “GET. OUT!”

  Power ripped from me and thrust into Isis, arching her body back and lifting her clean off her feet. In a blink, she was gone. But not far. The unique touch of Isis’s golden glow loitered behind us, somewhere close outside.

  I turned to Shukra. “Get him upstairs. All of you stay in Chantal’s room. I’m ending this now.”

  I didn’t know if they’d replied. I’d thrown open the door and marched into the front yard to find Isis wobbling to her feet in the grass.

  “Kneel!” The compulsion lashed.

  She wavered, arms flailing, and dropped to her knees in the wet earth. Her laughter was back, but jagged and broken.

  I locked my hand in her hair and yanked her head back, forcing her to face my glare. I wanted to dive into her soul and shred it. I didn’t care about the fallout. “There’s a line. That man and his family were never part of our world. You crossed my line, Isis.”

  “Hurt me…” She gulped. “And you won’t save the girl… in time.”

  Pure, unfiltered rage so potent it almost tore away any pretense of me being a man washed over me. I lifted Isis off her knees and held her close. “You have no notion of what you’ve done by waking this thing in me. I could tear out your soul and make you walk the Twelve Gates for all eternity. You know this, and yet you still provoke me.”

  “That is… not you.”

  Oh, she was wrong. It was me. It had always been me. I breathed in her fear, tasted it on my tongue, and savored it. The world-shattering part of me stirred and shifted as it realigned. I could break this goddess and all the others. I could not be stopped. I was before their time, before them. I was born of the dark, born in the beginning. There had never been a world without me in it.

  Fear widened the goddess’s eyes. “Not yet,” she whispered. Not yet, not yet, not yet. More than darkness.

  I flung Isis down. “Heal the girl, or by Amun Ra, I will destroy you in this life and the next forever.”

  Isis’s long dark lashes fluttered against her paling cheek. “I cannot.”

  A ripple of electric energy flexed outward. The world breathed in and out around my place in it. Slumbering power—the type entire civilizations had been built on—stirred beneath my feet. “You have no idea the control it’s taking not to tear you apart. Heal her,” I raged, pouring a compulsion in and drenching excess power over Isis.

  Her eyes rolled back as my power clashed with hers. Her body trembled. Blood prickled her skin. But she clung to consciousness. “I… cannot.” Her fingers dug into the mud, nails cracking and snapping. “The power… you possess… it is ekamka.” An old word, meaning larger than life, larger than the world.

  I had Alysdair in my hand and saw precisely how I would drive the blade through her rancid heart. I’d sink it in deep, as deep as the sword would allow, and I’d drink down her soul, swallowing her Light and gorging myself on the timeless power that made up Isis. It would be wonderful. And it would be right. Destroying Isis would save thousands of lives. Destroying Osiris would save thousands more. But that wasn’t why I wanted to do this. No, my motives were not honorable. Honor was in my way. The truth was in the way of the Dark.

  More than darkness.

  I saw another goddess. Not on her knees, but seated at a table. She looked at me, her eyes sorry as I plunged Alysdair into her heart.

  Bastet.

  No, no, no… that wasn’t real. That wasn’t me.

  More than darkness.

  Godkiller.

  Liar.

  Thief.

  I was all these things.

  No, no. Not yet. Not me.

  “The girl is dying.” Isis’s poisonous words found their mark and summoned me back from madness.

  I’m losing my mind.

  “Ace!” Cat. She stood on the front porch, and inside the house, a young girl’s soul screamed. Silent to all but me.

  Chantal. Save Chantal. Do this one last good thing. The rest… the rest could wait.

  “What do I have to do to save her?” I ground out.

  Isis’s crooked smile clung to her pale lips. “Stop fighting.”

  I remembered my first real job as Ace Dante. Shukra and I were in London. The year was 1666. The bubonic plague had swept through the cobblestone streets, killing countless and wiping out entire generations. Fear and superstition had a stranglehold on the people, turning the city into a powder keg. And among it all one of Shukra’s old demon associates was living like a king. She tried warning him, but I found him, judged him, and had Alysdair devour him. He didn’t go quietly. The fire he left in his wake raged for four days, destroying 70,000 of London’s timber-framed houses. The number of the dead was never officially recorded. Bodies were burned to nothing. The medieval City of London was reduced to a pile of ashes.

  That was what history remembered. History lied.

  It was the first time I’d lost control. Osiris had stopped me as he had every time afterward. He was the only one who could.

  In the centuries since, I’d tried to save my soul. I’d tried to save the souls of countless people. And maybe those I’d saved over the years had gone on to do honorable things. Perhaps that was my legacy? But you couldn’t polish the black out of the night, and no amount of good deeds could change my nature. Until recently, I hadn’t realized the scale of what I was trying to do. The Nameless One had gorged on souls. He’d horrified the denizens of Duat. But I’d started believing he could be fixed. He could do right. He could save enough souls to save his own.

  What a fool I’d been. The ship had been sinking from the beginning, but instead of keeping a rowboat afloat by doing a good deed here and there, I’d been trying to raise the Titanic.

  “Place your hands on either side of her face.” Isis’s words quivered. Pale as milk, she looked ready to collapse. If I hadn’t needed her to bring Chantal back from near death, I might have shattered her soul and gone right on killing.

  This magic, these memories, I was about to let it all back in. Ace Dante couldn’t survive the truth of me, but neither could Chantal. I had to do this.

  Chantal’s skin was damp and deathly cold under my hands. To Cat, Shu, and Cujo, she looked near death, but the girl’s soul—what was left of it—shone. It wasn’t too late to bring her back.

  Let this be the last good thing I do… Let this work.

  Isis leaned in so close her words touched my cheek. “Place your mouth on hers and invite the truth of you inside.”

  I looked at her and searched for any sign of deception, but the goddess’s tired eyes were honest. She nodded, encouraging me.

  I wet my lips and once more looked down at the girl. Her closed eyelids twitched. Chantal would live. Once I got the magic out of her, Isis would heal her. It would be over for her, but not for me. For me, it might just be the beginning…

  Ace Dante’s life had been a wild ride while it lasted.

  A hand settled on my shoulder. Cat’s fingers squeezed.

  “You should leave,” I told her. “All of you. I don’t know what will happen… after.”

  Judging from the defiance on his face, Cujo wanted to argue. I could almost hear him telling me, “Good folks don’t leave their friends behind,” but this was different, and he understood this could be goodbye. The life of his friend for his daughter’s. I hoped he knew I gave it freely. Shukra stood behind him. A rock. A warrior. An impossible miracle of a woman. She would protect him.

  Chantal’s soul spluttered.

  “Leave,” I said again. My time was up.

  Closing my eyes, I leaned over and pressed my lips to Chantal’s. Power buzzed through
the touch, tingling across my tongue and down my throat. The urge to pull away almost broke me, but I shoved it back. Fear sent my pulse skipping. I unfurled some of the power in me—the old, hungry part—and reached inside the girl with it.

  “Tra k-dae amcru-kak sra ksork, kosec amcru-kak esk kassrakamsk, omd kae kuir amcru-kak aeuirk.” The sky encloses the stars, magic encloses its settlements, and my soul encloses yours. I’d spoken those soul eater words for centuries, words that broke open souls and let me swallow them down whole and sweet. Now, those words cracked a young woman’s soul open, revealing the rotten, feasting thing inside. I recognized it as a part of me, a part of the true dark.

  “Rasirm.” Return.

  Cracks appeared. Pressure built. The process was in motion and couldn’t be stopped. Whatever made me Apophis began working its way through those cracks, leaking out of the light and wrapping itself around me. It shivered and twitched, rose and curled over me. I stared into the truth of my past and saw the dark staring back. Five hundred years of hiding. Before that, a thousand years of imprisonment, buried inside an Egyptian mountain. The weight of that truth and those memories would crush me.

  The dark struck, slammed into and over me, and then there was…

  Nothing.

  I blinked at the girl lying on the bed. I was still me. Nothing had changed. I felt the same as I had before.

  “It didn’t work,” I whispered. No, it had to work. I had to save her. “Chantal?”

  Her face had warmed. Color touched her lips.

  She gasped, snapped her eyes open, and screamed.

  Chapter 12

  “You okay?” Cat asked, jogging to keep up with me as I strode down the Jones’s garden path toward the Ducati.

  “Uh-huh.” Oh sure, I’m okay, as long as we don’t mention the silence at the back of my mind and how it’s about to break.

  “Is Chantal okay?” She thumbed over her shoulder at the Jones’s family house.

  I didn’t look. If I did, I’d only see sand and ash and decay. “She had one hell of a fright, but she’ll be fine.” I swung a leg over the Ducati and rocked the bike upright. Ash brushed across my knuckles. I shook it off. Cat couldn’t see it. Nobody could see it but me because it wasn’t real. Not yet.