Witches' Bane (The Soul Eater Book 2) (2 page)

I left the bike and jogged between parked cars. A heavy, starless sky pushed down from above. It had to be past 11:00 p.m. Floodlights chased away the shadows from every possible angle. A place like this was never truly dark, not with the Manhattan skyline glittering across the inky black Hudson.

I scooted in front of a car with steamed-up windows and onto one of the walkways. Shrubs crowded the path ahead. Around a corner, the floodlit tennis courts loomed. The cold kept all but the hardened away, leaving the courts empty but for my four guys, who were striding with purpose toward the center of the closest court. I hesitated. The location, their behavior, it didn’t feel right. The curse pushed, urging me onward.
Retrieve my tablet.
The breeze, rich with a briny river smell, hissed through the bushes, carrying with it the distant sounds of a helicopter and the blaring horns of river traffic. A crack sliced through the quiet, followed by someone clapping and snippets of encouragement. The nearby baseball field was occupied.

I was moving out onto the court before I realized my feet had carried me forward. Osiris’s order beat over me. All I had to do was
get
the tablet. As soon as I fulfilled that order, I’d have control back. My realtors had their heads down and their hands on the four corners of the tablet. They didn’t see me coming. The Hudson breeze carried a new sound, that of their chanting. Were these idiots really about to ignite a spell right out in the open for all of New York to see?

The tablet, clasped between all four of them, steadily brightened and purred its magic into the air. I could taste it, Osiris’s magic: heady, verdant, and powerful.

Retrieve my tablet.

I bolted forward and hit the first guy from behind, kicking his legs out from under him. He fell backward into my arms. I shoved him aside and released my right fist into the jaw of another. He spun and went down onto his knees all too easily. A third bolted, taking the tablet with him. He obviously had no idea who he had on his tail, or else he would’ve handed the tablet over and said thank you for the pleasure of losing.

Whoever he was, he damn well knew how to run. He sprinted off the tennis court, down the path running half the length of the football field, and shot through the bushes like the goddess Neith’s arrow. With my head down and chest on fire, I was gaining on him. I’d have him in a few more strides.

He glanced back, saw me, and veered left toward the practicing pitcher.

“Whoa!” the pitcher reeled back while his slack-jawed batting pal looked on.

Witnesses. Wonderful.

At the last second, as I reached for Speedy Gonzales’s flapping jacket, he swerved right. I cut him off, tackled him from the side, and drove him face first into first base. He let out a bark and tried to scrabble away, all arms and legs. Skinny bastard. Reaching under him, I got my hands on the tablet and yanked. The curse screamed inside my skull—
retrieve my tablet
—desperate to complete the compulsion.
Retrieve—retrieve—retrieve.

The skinny guy jerked his head around, showing me a tattoo of a half circle and two dashes below his left eye.

A priest?!
My surprise almost lost me the tablet.

Why couldn’t it just be someone who’d picked an Egyptian symbol at random and painted it on his face because why the hell not? This was New York. No, he and his pals had to be gods-be-damned priests.

“
Ba suma, kuir craosira,
”
he snarled.
Be gone, foul creature
.

So he did know me.

More words spewed from his lips—Egyptian spellwords. The type a midtown office worker had no right to know. I hadn’t seen a priest in a very, very long time. The zealots had gotten their asses handed to them during the sundering, and yet here four of them were, trying to activate a tablet in a park.

“Really? You’re trying to spell
me
?” I laughed. It sounded sharp and unhinged, but I didn’t care in the slightest.

“
Koqosa
!”
Savage!

A jab to the nose shut him up and freed the tablet from his grip. Finally, I had it in my hands and Osiris’s curse unpicked its claws. Slowly, much too slowly, control lapped back in, filling out all the vital parts of me. Relief flooded in. Rocking back on my heels, with the guy still trapped under me, I sighed. At last, I was my own person again.

Something smooth and cool pressed against my temple and trembled there. “Drop the tablet,” a nervous voice stammered.

I was done with these fools. I knocked the guy’s gun arm up, snatched the pistol out of his hand, and tossed it with force behind him. A few seconds later, it landed in the Hudson with a splash. Nervous Guy yelped and staggered back, his bravado going the way of the gun.

Straightening, I plucked my sweat-soaked shirt away from my chest and frowned at the pitch dirt smothering my borrowed pants. I didn’t care about the suit, but I did care that I had to ride home caked in dust.

“Now that I have control of my faculties, let me give you some advice.” I shook out my hand, pain crackling across my knuckles where I’d clocked a priest in the face.

The two of them watched me with not nearly enough fear in their eyes. These priests were new, probably first generation. Their knowledge of the Nameless One had likely been shared in whispers and rumor, and they didn’t believe it.

The priest I’d punched groaned and spluttered, struggling to find his feet.

I backed up. “If you’re going to steal from Osiris”—I yanked on my cuffs, rolled my shoulders, and took a few more steps back—“make damn sure you have the magical balls to back it up.”

“You don’t frighten us, Nameless One,” Nervous Guy replied.

I snorted. “All that means is that the god whose feet you lick hasn’t told you the truth.”

The lean guy to my right started whispering, low and deadly. His magic, what little he was building, fluttered around him.

I snatched the baseball bat from the batter gawking at all this from the sidelines and launched it with a right-arm flick. The bat glanced off the chanting priest’s cheek, whirling him around on the spot. By the time the other two priests noticed, I was in the face of the lean one, having passed right through his tickling cloud of magic. I pressed a finger to his mouth, pushing his lips into his teeth. “Stop, or I’ll rip your tongue out, grind it into dust, and sprinkle it in my coffee.”

His eyes—now locked on mine—widened, and I felt his soul squirm under my gaze before I deliberately blinked away, freeing him of what could’ve gotten personal real fast.

These idiots should be grateful I’d overpowered them without going to the deadly lengths I was capable of. If they’d put up a fight, I would’ve killed them all to retrieve the tablet. Priests or not.

The pitcher was on his cell, talking to the cops and trying to be discreet as he relayed my description. My time was up.

“Who do you worship?” I asked.

They gave me a strict, steely-eyed stare. They weren’t about to give up their god anytime soon.

“Next time, pick a minor god to steal from.” I saluted them with the tablet. “You’ll live longer.”

I’d made it a few feet away before the breeze carried someone’s whisper to my ear. “Godkiller.”

My stride tripped, and the vast well of darkness in me twisted, demanding I turn around and show them exactly how much of a killer I could be. But I, not the curse and not Osiris, had control. And I wasn’t a monster. I wasn’t even the monster the world thought me to be. I hadn’t earned the name
Godkiller
, but I’d yet to figure out how to shake it off, so it followed me, hanging over my head like an executioner’s axe.

My steps grew heavy as I kept right on walking, but instead of unleashing my wrath, I flipped up my middle finger. These priests would live to make mistakes another day—hopefully one day soon. And I’d be right there, scaring them half to death.

I tucked the tablet under my jacket, and its magic seeped through my shirt, feeling me up to get the measure of me. After a few strides, it recoiled and its sweet musical hum faded. It had found its answer.

I smiled. Two priests down and two pissing their pinstriped pants. Just like old times. “Still got it.”

“
Y
ou’re late
,” Shukra growled while blocking the main office door. She must’ve heard me trudging up the stairs and sprung into position before I could take refuge in my office and slam the door on her. “The landlord wanted us both here at nine.” She tapped her wrist, even though she’d never worn a watch. “Where were you?”

It was 10:00 a.m. and none of her business.

She wore a spotless cream pantsuit, as if the color might compensate for that black soul of hers. It did, however, contrast nicely with her dark skin and darker hair, currently plaited so tightly that it smoothed out the fine lines around her eyes and made her look ten years younger. Of course, she looked in her mid-twenties going on at least five hundred: the number of centuries we’d been spent in each other’s company since Osiris bound us together.

I waved Osiris’s tablet at her, hoping it might buy me entry into my office.

She spread her stance, arms crossed and face set like a temple guard. At five feet and a few inches, she would’ve made a short temple guard, but what she lacked in height she compensated for through her terrifying ability to utter a few words that could turn your insides into your outsides.

“What’s that?” she asked. Her top lip curled, revealing perfectly neat and white little teeth that made the heat in her glare all the more dramatic.

“Don’t ask.”

“Is that the tablet that got stolen from the Met last night?”

She had to ask. She couldn’t just let me pass. I sighed, resigned to the fact that I wasn’t getting past her. “Is this a conversation for the hallway?”

“Do you have to answer every question with a question?”

Narrowing my eyes, I replied, “Do you?”

“You said you’d be here.”

“What are you, my wife?”

She blinked—probably for the first time since I’d arrived—and lifted her head, rearing to strike. “I’m worse than that. I’m your business partner, and we’re at risk of being tossed out if we don’t pay the rent.”

Like she cared. This business was like the countless other businesses we’d set up in the hundreds of years we’d been stuck together. She was the number cruncher, and I was the muscle. She was the con artist; I was the closing strike. The lure and the net. And that usually worked fine for a few decades, until it was time to move on. We’d been in New York a lot longer than a few decades and in this building for at least ten years, helping those who’d had the misfortune of crossing the gods. Shukra didn’t care about this business, or the last ten, or the fifty before that. All she cared about was staying in the curse’s prescribed safe zone and keeping me alive so she didn’t get yanked back to the underworld, where the demons would tear her body and soul to pieces. This wasn’t about helping anyone but herself.

Why, then, was she looking at me like I owed her an explanation?

“Do I have to say the magic word to get into my office?” I could. I had a few spellwords I could throw her way. Almost had them balanced on my tongue. Usually, it took considerable forethought to stir up my magic, but today, it was alive and hungry.
Restlessness
—the same feeling I’d experienced during the unveiling at the museum right before the snakes and theft had distracted me. I didn’t really want to throw down with Shu in the hallway over a missed appointment. Or did I?

She must have realized that whatever she wanted from me she wasn’t about to get, because she stepped aside.

“We need to up our prices or do more.” Her voice followed close behind as I stomped down the hallway. Shu’s office was to the left. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ventured in there. She locked it when she wasn’t in, and I tried to avoid her when she was.

“How can we do more? Either the clients are there or they aren’t. It isn’t as if we can advertise.
God steal your firstborn? Supernatural plague of locusts in your backyard?
”

“You could look into the missing witches. They’d pay.”

“No,” I replied on reflex. Dime-a-dozen witches playing with what they didn’t understand weren’t my problem.

“By
Sekhmet
, why not? You’ll take cash from almost anyone, why not them?”

“We don’t get along.” I flashed Shu a raw smile, casting a flick of magic because I could. It had been waiting in me, coiled, waiting to strike, and I wanted to push her back from asking her irritating questions.

She recoiled, like I’d intended, but the confusion that crossed her ink-dark eyes—like maybe my small magical flick had hurt her—hadn’t been part of the plan. That couldn’t be right, because nothing hurt Shu. Anyone that had in the past, she’d hanged, drawn, quartered, and eaten, storing the leftovers for later. Demon sorceresses don’t let anything go to waste.

I opened my office door to the sound of Shu’s heels hitting the floor like nails being driven into a coffin and found a black cat sprawled across my new desk. “Scram, feline.”

The tip of the cat’s black tail twitched. It lifted its head and blinked lazy green eyes at me, daring me to shoo it out the door. I’d given up trying to kick the cat out. It always came back through some unseen hole. I needed to hire pest control to find and block that hole. Until then, we had a mutual disrespect for each other. It slept all over my office, knocked everything off my desk, and made a nuisance of itself, and I let it.

On the desk, behind the cat, sat a wicker basket. Around the size of a toaster oven, it didn’t look threatening, but I’d learned in my many, many years not to trust unexpected gifts—or surprises.

Without taking my eyes off the basket, I set the tablet down on a shelf and rounded the desk. I couldn’t feel any beat of magic coming from it, but that could mean whatever was inside was shielded. Or maybe it was just a gift and I was being paranoid.

Scooping up my phone, I dialed Shu’s line. “Did you leave me a gift?”

“Is it ticking?” she asked, deadly serious. She understood the potential of unexpected gifts the same as I did.

“No.”

“Hissing?”

“No.”

“Your door was locked this morning. I locked it myself last night.”

Whoever had gotten inside didn’t use doors.

Shu hung up and was in my doorway the next second, head cocked and eyeing the basket like it might bite her. She ventured closer, and the cat let loose a vicious hiss and sprang from the desk to a high shelf where it tucked its paws under itself and glared. The cat and Shu didn’t get along.

“Do you recognize the wicker?” she asked.

“No. Doesn’t look significant. Could be store-bought.”

Shu wrinkled her nose. “You smell blood?”

I hadn’t before, but I did now. I reached for the lid, heard Shu suck in a breath, and then lifted it off. The wet, coppery smell hit me hard and coated my throat. Inside, laid out and pinned with some care onto a base of black silk, was a human heart, a pair of blue eyes, and something pale pink and wrinkled that I guessed was brain matter.

“That’s a statement,” Shu remarked with an inordinate amount of glee.

Whoever had left the gift had also left a note wedged under the heart. I plucked the note free and peeled the blood-encrusted envelope apart.

“Can I have those?” Shu asked, leaning over to get a better look at the contents. “When you’re done?”

“Vulture,” I mumbled and pried the sodden slip of paper open. The handwriting was a continuous liquid scrawl, written with a fountain pen and adorned with needless flourishes. Given its origin, I was surprised he hadn’t used an ibis quill dipped in virgin’s blood.

The eyes belonged to a seer, the heart to an empath, and the brain to a telepath. The eyes no longer see, the heart no longer beats, and the brain no longer thinks. They each shared a single purpose: to determine when the Nameless One would fulfill his bargain with the God of Life. All three were explicit. The Nameless One has no intention of killing Thoth. They lied, and so I present to you the results of those lies.

I dropped into my chair. Shu was talking, saying something about a spell she could concoct with the eyes.

Three months ago, I’d agreed to kill Thoth, a god equal—if not greater—in power to Osiris, but only if Osiris lifted one part of my curse, allowing me to return to the underworld to see my mother, Ammit, before she took her slumber. My mother had been slaughtered moments before I arrived, and I stood accused of killing her, hence the reason the Nameless One had a new name: Godkiller. The reunion, my trip home—none of it unfolded the way I’d planned, but I had made a deal with Osiris, and I was bound by my own words to kill Thoth. The gift basket was Osiris’s way of reminding me to get on with it.

The note ended with, “
Bring me the tablet,
”
and signed off with a swirling “
O.
”

I could ignore his written words, just not the verbal commands. A very large and very dangerous part of me wanted to tell Osiris exactly where he could shove his tablet. He’d killed three people, people who’d told him the truth, and he’d kill more until the deed was done.

I had no intention of killing Thoth. I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d agreed to it. It seemed so… trivial now. I’d agreed to kill a god just so I could walk the underworld again and bid my foster mother farewell, a mother who’d given me to Osiris to do with as he pleased? I must have been out of my mind. But I had agreed, and Osiris hadn’t forgotten.

Kill one god to please another. There was no way I’d come out of that alive.

“What does it say?”

I’d forgotten Shu was there, reading me with those keen eyes of hers. I scrunched up the note and tossed it in the trash. “Osiris. Being a dick.”

“What a shame he didn’t add a penis to this collection. The spells I can craft with fresh genitals…” She beamed like it was Christmas morning. “Yah know, if you’d let me sell the more potent spells, we could earn—”

“Get out.” I swallowed, or tried to, but the inside of my mouth had dried and my frayed nerves were buzzing. “Take the basket with you and destroy its contents.”

Her hands locked onto the basket’s edges. I fixed my gaze on hers.

“Destroy all of it,” I repeated, leaving no room for misunderstandings.

She grumbled something in the old language, but she left with the basket and kicked the door closed behind her.

I had the vodka and glass out the second I heard her walking away. Shu couldn’t know about my deal to kill Thoth. Not yet. This was her life too, bound to me like a ball and chain. As much as her demon nature repelled me, we’d forged something of a relationship, albeit one built on a foundation of hate. If she knew what I’d done, she’d lay into me. Or worse, she’d try to find a spell that would probably result in more dead, innocent people. She couldn’t go up against Osiris. She was powerful, but Shukra wasn’t a god.

After pouring a generous splash of vodka into my glass, I lifted it to my lips and stopped. A pair of green eyes caught my attention. The cat was watching me from high on its perch, quietly unimpressed.

“Don’t judge.” I threw back the drink and let the heat travel soul deep, where the darkness churned.

Godkiller.

I preferred
Nameless One.
The Nameless One had a job to do. He kept the streets clear of demons, spirits, and all the other monsters the underworld spewed forth, and he helped those who found themselves caught in godly crossfires. He was cursed, but he lived with it, because he deserved it. That was simple, and it went some way to cleansing the black inside. But Godkiller? Godkiller was something else. Something like I’d been before, when I’d gorged on souls, good and bad, devouring them all and judging none. I accused Shu of having the blackest soul I’d ever witnessed, but that was a lie. If I looked long and hard in the mirror, I’d find the darkest and heaviest soul there ever was: mine.

I’d take the tablet to Osiris and try to talk him out of the deal. There was no other way.

Shoving the drink aside, I woke my sleeping computer and opened a few emails. One from Mafdet with the monthly breakdown of Shu’s buying habits. No news on my mother’s box, which I’d given to her to crack open.

At the bottom of my inbox, an old email from Bastet, Queen of Cats and my ex-wife, waited. It had been sitting in my inbox for three months and included details on her missing women. She’d asked me to take on the job. I’d refused. We’d argued, like we always did, and she’d left. I hadn’t heard from her since. Being a god, she’d let years pass before walking back into my life like I’d last seen her yesterday. But something bothered me about her quiet acceptance. I’d expected more of a fight. And she hadn’t replied to my email asking to meet and discuss the job. She must have gotten to the bottom of the case on her own.

I clicked the email and dragged it to the trash folder, but I didn’t let go. Maybe one more follow-up email wouldn’t hurt. After that, I’d forget it. I meant what I’d said to her; we never worked well together.

I dragged the email back to the inbox and hit reply.

My cell rang, playing the chorus of “Stand By Me”
by
Ben E. King. I dug it out. “Hey, Cujo. Last night, it wasn’t—”

“Get your ass to my place, Ace. There’s a guy here, really wants to speak with you.” Cujo’s gruff words held a jagged, angry edge. Someone had gotten his panties in a twist.

“Can’t this guy come in? I’m pretty busy.” My planner was empty, as usual, but I didn’t like doing business at Cujo’s home. The gods and their ways were my world. Cujo didn’t need that in his living room.

Shuffling ensued, and then a new voice filled my ear. “I need your help. No more brush-offs. Get here now, or I’ll put a bullet in your friend’s head.”

The line went dead before I could demand his name or counter-threaten him.

Scooping up Alysdair and my duster coat from the corner, I left the office and shouted down the hall at Shu that I’d be back in a few hours. With the sword snug against my back and a purpose occupying my mind, a smile rode my lips the whole way to Cujo’s apartment, right up until I noticed his door was ajar.