Witches' Bane (The Soul Eater Book 2) (5 page)

This greenhouse, with its humid air and broadleaved plants, was a poor comparison, but the lush vegetation and earthy smell was probably as close as you could get to revisiting the old world in New York.

I pulled out a chair and sat before he could compel me to.

“Why did you let them die?” I asked. The thick, sweating foliage absorbed my voice, sealing our conversation inside the clearing.

“If they were foolish enough to allow themselves to be bespelled, they are no good to me.”

“Is that what happened?”

His brow quirked. “It would appear so, would it not?”

He pushed my tea across the glass tabletop. He could compel me to drink, but he took a perverse pleasure in knowing how I waited for the words to come.

I picked up the glass teacup and tasted the beverage, washing the taste of smoke off my tongue. Peppermint mixed with a warming spice, something like clove. I gulped it down, wishing it were two parts vodka.

“You don’t know what spelled them?” I asked.

“I have my suspicions.” Which meant he knew exactly who was responsible, and it was none of my concern. That was fine by me.

Osiris had many enemies, but few would be so bold as to spell his staff and burn down his house with him in it. Another god seemed like the only possible candidate. Either way, I had enough trouble keeping me occupied. If he already knew the answer, then it was one less job he’d throw my way.

“How long has it been burning like this?”

“Since the early hours of the morning. It’s not important. I’ll get around to fixing it. Why are you here?”

He’d let his house burn, let his people die, for hours. The functions, the parties, seeing him butter people up on a weekly basis—I’d deliberately forgotten how cruel he was behind the act. The truth was easier to swallow that way.

I turned my thoughts to the tablet and away from what I couldn’t fix. “A group of priests want your tablet. Any idea why?”

“Priests?” His frown was genuine, as far as I could tell. “How…archaic.”

“Then you don’t know of any god who’s taken a fancy to being worshipped again?”

“In New York? Who would dare?” But something moved beneath his frown, an almost indiscernible twitch, but I’d caught it. He didn’t know about the priests or who they worshipped, and that sat about as well with him as a scarab up the ass.

“Why would priests want your tablet?”

“It’s a tablet of Resurrection and Rebirth,” he said with a flick of his wrist. “Powerful in any magically inclined hands. I assume you brought it with you?”

“It’s outside. Saving your people distracted me.”

He smiled at that, and genuine humor lightened his eyes. “So eager to do good? What has become of the Soul Eater?”

Oh, he’s here.
I smiled right back. “Would you recognize a hieroglyph of a jackal with the head of a snake?”

A surprised flinch. He knew it all right.

“Do you know what it means?” I asked.

He sipped his tea, hiding the fading smile behind the movement. “No.”

I seldom caught Osiris in a genuine lie—he deemed himself above lies—but I was pretty sure that had been one. I wasn’t about to push the subject, given I was still trembling from the last compulsion. I had no wish for him to force me to watch the pair of them go at it all night. There was also the chance he’d drag any surviving staff down here and burn them alive in front of me. It wouldn’t be the worst thing he’d done.

A brief quiet settled between us, interrupted only by the patter of droplets falling onto fat leaves.

“You desire my wife.”

My heart twisted and a whole array of possible answers filled my head, all of them useless. Just like with Isis, if I answered incorrectly, I’d either insult or enrage him. I smiled what I hoped wasn’t a wooden smile, tasted my peppermint tea, and looked him in the eye. “All men desire your wife. She is the light, the Goddess of the Sky.”

“Yes, she is. But
you
want to fuck her.” He said it so casually. He’d told me Thoth was screwing Isis in that same flat tone.

The pounding in my chest might have been the onset of panic. Thoth hadn’t so much as looked at Isis in a sexual manner and he’d gotten himself marked for death.
Thoth
, for Sekhmet’s sake. Ra’s son. In the next second, Osiris could decide that I was too much trouble and be done with me. A single word—a simple command—and he could kill me. I didn’t age, but I
could
die. Wherever Shu was, she’d find herself suddenly wrenched back into the underworld, where the spirits would torture and destroy her. And all because I couldn’t get Isis out of my head.

“Yes, I do,” I said. The words tasted sour and wrong, but he’d know a lie. “But she only has eyes for her dearest, of that I am certain. What am I compared to the likes of you?” I smiled a cheap smile. “I’m nothing. Worse than nothing. She is life, and I’m a monster who was raised by river beasts.”

He considered my words carefully as the seconds ticked by. He couldn’t push the point. To do so would mean he considered me—a monster with no name—a threat to him, one of the most powerful deities to have ever existed. Clearly absurd.

“It’s been three months,” he said, his tone lifting, “and you have not fulfilled your promise.”

Ah. That. “I cannot kill Thoth.”

The world tipped on its axis. The air shifted, the chair and ground vanished, and glass shattered. In the next second, I was against a wall, with Osiris’s warm fingers locked around my throat. His golden eyes glowed, while his energy crackled around us like lightning in a bottle. “You gave me your word. Your word is binding.”

“Thoth isn’t…sleeping with…your wife,” I garbled out.

“Aeuir vurd, Mokarakk Oma!”
Your word, Nameless One!

The greenhouse panes rattled, some groaned, and a few cracked.

“Deal was…find evidence…kill him…” By
Sekhmet
, he’d break my neck. I knew it. No more New York. No more watching the sun set behind the Manhattan skyline. No more walks along the pier in the dark. No more sniping at Shu. If I died, my soul would land in Anubis’s lap and the suffering would never end. “No e-evidence,” I spluttered.

“They are meeting in secret. That is enough. Thoth dies by your hand!” Had he been able to cast a compulsion, those words would’ve done it. But not even Osiris could compel someone to kill Ra’s son.

His fingers unclamped, and I dropped to my feet, gulping down precious air. This was about more than my word. He couldn’t admit I was a threat, couldn’t get to me any other way, and so demanding I kill Thoth was the next best thing. He’d compel me, control me, and continue killing until Thoth was dead by my hand.

“Leave the tablet and make sure your task is done in the next three days.” He waved a hand and strode into his garden, his gown rippling from his shoulders like a white cloak.

Sweat soaked, smoke covered, and beaten, I flipped my coat collar up and took the nearest door outside, grateful I
could
walk away. Plenty of people in the past hadn’t.

Three days to kill Thoth.

And likely my last three days to live.

A
fter returning
to the office to find Cat nowhere in sight (I checked under the desk), I shrugged my coat and sword off and slumped in my chair. Shu was down the hall. I could hear her heels punching holes into the hardwood floor. I’d ask her about the arm, but not yet. Just for a few moments, I sat in the quiet and listened to the not-so-steady beat of my heart and the sounds of New York’s streets throbbing with life outside my window.

Witches were going missing, which I could live with if I didn’t have a severed arm with an odd marking that Osiris recognized but wouldn’t tell me about. The same marking was on a box I’d found in my mother’s chamber. A box warded against me, prohibiting only me from sensing the magic it contained.

Bast was missing—also something I wouldn’t need to get involved with, if not for the six-foot-tall warrior cat with daggers for fingernails who appeared intent on shadowing my every move.

And I had three days to kill Thoth or risk Osiris’s wrath. If I failed, he’d likely see that I lost all my current freedom. I’d probably find myself locked in some gods-awful compulsion for the rest of my days. It didn’t help that he’d called me out on being hot for his wife.
That
was out of my control. Isis had somehow gotten inside my head and was screwing with me. There was no other explanation. Somehow, sometime, she’d gotten close and she’d planted that damn seed of a thought in my head so it was all I could think about. She’d get me killed, which was probably her plan.

Add to that the fact I couldn’t go home, my only possible sanctuary, because the underworld and its denizens believed I’d killed Ammit. Anubis would skin me alive. Right now, I had no proof of my innocence, only my word. The word of the Soul Eater, a known liar so bad even the underworld had kicked him out. Home was out of bounds.

So, what options did I have?

I had Shukra, my ex-demon sorceress, Cujo, and a witch’s arm.

As though summoned, Shu strode in, suited up for a boardroom we didn’t have, and dumped the ripe-smelling arm on my desk. “You won’t like it.”

“I never do.”

Four-legged Cat leaped onto my desk and parked her feline rump on my planner. Then she proceeded to lift a paw and lick it clean. Either she’d survived Isis, or she’d left before the goddess could have her fun. I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or annoyed.

“Decided to join us, did you?” I drawled. “Shu, meet Cat. Cat is a shifter, one of Bast’s.”

Shu eyed the cat and then turned her frown on me. “I know.”

“What do you mean,
I know
?”

“You
didn’t
know?” Shu’s red lips curled at their corners, inviting a grin. “She’s been in your office for months, and you didn’t know she’s a shifter?”

I opened my hands. “How was I supposed to know? Look at her.”

Cat continued to clean her paw, obnoxiously ignoring us. The tip of her tail twitched.

Shu shrugged. “It’s obvious.”

“You knew I had a woman curled up on my desk and you didn’t say anything? What the hell, Shu? She could have been an assassin sent to kill me.”

At that, Cat sprawled sideways and spread her hind legs and forepaws as far apart as possible, soaking up all the desk space.

“She doesn’t look much like an assassin.” Shu pursed her lips, suppressing a laugh. That laugh…oh, that laugh told me the truth. She’d known all this time and deliberately kept it to herself. I’d kill her for that, when I had the time to think of something creative.

“Tell me about the damn arm,” I grumbled.

“Okay, so I tried to trace the witch, but she’s gone.”

“Thank you for stating the obvious. Without your astute observations, I may have missed the fact that there isn’t a witch attached to that arm.”

“You missed the cat shifter bunking with you.” I gave Shu the silent death stare, and she continued with a smirk. “There’s nothing left of the body belonging to this arm anywhere on earth.”

“Burned?”

“No. Gone. No earthly remains at all. Had there been anything left of her, I could have traced it, but the spell bounced back. Which makes sense when you consider the magical residue coating the arm and who it belongs to.”

“Who?”

“You.”

“What?”

“It’s yours.”

“It’s obviously not my magic. I brought you the arm. Are you confused?”

“What kind of ten-cent sorceress do you think I am? Your magic is all over this arm. It reeks of you. I could smell it as soon as you brought it to me, but I needed you out of the way to be sure. If we had access to a forensics lab, I bet the thrust pressure and signature of the cut would point straight back to that.” She pointed at my sword, currently sheathed and leaning against the filing cabinet.

I glared at Shu, at my sword, and at the damn cat. “That’s impossible. I didn’t kill the witch, and I definitely didn’t cut off her arm. Why would I?”

Shu sighed and crossed her arms. “Did anyone have access to your sword while you were at the museum?”

“It was here.” Osiris had broken in to leave his gift basket of body parts. He could have taken it, but why would he cut off a witch’s arm and bring the sword back without telling me? None of this was making sense. Although he had reacted to my mention of the snake-headed jackal mark.

“If someone did steal Alysdair, it wouldn’t account for my magic being all over the arm. I must have been there…”

“Could anyone be drawing magic out of you?”

My memory flashed to the witches doing exactly that, but that had been years ago and I’d know if someone were feeding off me. I’d feel the drain. If anything, I was restless and bloated with power, not weak from a lack of it. “No, but it wouldn’t be the first time witches tried.”

Shu leaned in closer and peered into my eyes. “Your eyes are dark.”

After too many tainted souls, my eyes turn black, a reflection of the darkness within. I hadn’t looked in a mirror recently, preferring to avoid my gaze altogether, but considering the slippery uneasiness crawling over my skin, I’d take Shu’s word for it.

I calmly blinked back at her. “I devoured a priest earlier. Cat and I killed three more.”

Shu rolled her eyes. “Whose priests?”

“No idea. They wanted Osiris’s tablet.”

“Are you sure it’s the tablet they wanted? Could it be connected to the arm, to you? Could a priest have gotten to you and made you kill the girl this arm belonged to?”

“No, no way. Priests are a pain in the ass, but that’s all. They can’t make me do anything. Besides, I didn’t kill her. I’d know if I had. It’s not something I’d forget.”

“Isn’t it?” Shu asked. “You’ve been acting like a dick lately, more than usual.”

“Just come right out and say it, why don’t you.”

“Irritable, twitchy. Last week you threatened a client, and I quote, ‘
I’ll tear out your guts and serve them on a platter to the river beasts.
’ You said those words to a paying client whose only crime was a false alarm, and you’ve been lax on keeping your power wrapped tight. Too many times I’ve felt
you
flooding the hallway. It’s creepy, and I know creepy. Five hundred years, Ace. I’ve been tied to you too long. I know you. I know when something isn’t right, and right now,
you’re
not right.”

I’d also thrown a witch against a wall and said something about carving him up to feed to Cat. And then there was the restlessness, the shifting sense of unease as though I were missing something right in front of me. Something obvious, with claws and teeth, that might swallow me down if I didn’t figure it out.

“What did you do last night, after the museum?” Shu demanded in that business-like tone of hers.

Leaning into my chair, I thought back. “Took the tablet home.”

“Walk me through it.”

I scowled at her, but Shu glared right back. She wasn’t giving in.

“Got home, ditched the suit, had a shower, and fell asleep.”

“Did you dream?”

“No, I…” I hadn’t dreamed. For three months, give or take a few nights, I’d dreamed of Isis and her honeyed words, her poisonous mouth, and other parts. But not last night. Last night, there’d been nothing. A hollow nothing. Not empty, but more a sense that something had been there but was taken away.

Shu cocked her head. “What is it?”

“I need to get to Mafdet’s.”

I was around the desk and scooping up my sword when Shu blocked the doorway.

“I’ll take you.”

“I will need you there.” If someone, or something, had gotten to me, I’d need Shu as a witness, but what I wanted was a blast through the streets on my bike to clear my head. “But I’d prefer to take the bike—”

“I’ll take you,” she said again, this time weighing the words down with a clear threat. She didn’t trust me not to walk out the door and vanish. My life was her life too, and there was no way she’d let me leave without her.

We’d fought before, many times. In the early days of the curse, we’d tried to kill each other on multiple occasions, but as time wore on, our arguments became fewer, our battles less bloody.

We’d fight again, but not today. “All right.”

* * *

A
n electronic bell
buzzed as Shu and I stepped from the rain-soaked street into the warmth of Mafdet’s Curiosities store. The bell wasn’t to alert Mafdet of her customers’ comings and goings. It chimed as a warning. Something or someone of power had crossed her threshold, and that someone was me.

Mafdet acknowledged me over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses. She had a customer at the counter gushing over a personalized papyrus. I nodded, confirming I wasn’t about to throw my weight around, and let her finish her transaction as I wandered down one of the store’s many overflowing aisles.
Kapet
, a heady blend of cinnamon, myrrh, wine, and a dozen other spices, burned somewhere out of sight. It was a traditional recipe, and one that had my memories bubbling with images of old-world temple ceremonies.

Shu picked up a squat lapis lazuli statue of the minor god Bes from an array of tiny trinkets and ornaments. She turned it over in her hand as though examining it for faults. The small measure of power emanating from the egg-sized artifact hummed pleasantly against my senses.

Shu had remained silent during the entire car ride over, likely wondering if any of this would touch her. Dead witches, strange marks, my magic all over the evidence, clear as a smoking gun.

I hadn’t yet mentioned Osiris’s demand.
Oh, hey, Shu, by the way, I agreed to kill Ra’s son.
She’d probably kill me herself as a last hurrah before the gods ripped me to shreds.

“Bes was good for a laugh,” I said. “He once inspired a whole village to dance through the night. Nothing malicious. Just wine and merriment.”

She grunted. Frolicking gods didn’t usually show up on her ex-demon radar.

“Good times,” I added with a smile. That had been before I started stealing souls, before the curse, when I’d sneak out of the underworld and revel alongside the people.

“Still in slumber?” Shu asked, placing the statue back down among its fake counterparts.

“As far as I know.”

Most of the old gods slept the eons away. Immortality takes its toll on the soul. The majority of the ancient pantheon waited, at rest forever or until something woke them. The location of the most ancient slumbering gods had been lost through the shifting sands of time, buried by the priests’ deliberate misdirection and fantasies. Then the generations of priests all died out, and the years turned into millennia.

“Some days, I’m not sure what tales are real or spun from myth.” My gaze snagged on a crude glass skull. Many of the pieces in Maf’s store hummed and sang in the background, their magic alive and needy. But the skull’s tone was jagged and discordant. It wasn’t naturally infused with magic. The skull had stolen its song.

“It’s a witches bane,” Shu remarked, seeing what had hooked my gaze.

“Don’t they use them to anchor their rituals?”

“Without it, their stolen magic would escape.” After a few moments with only the sound of Mafdet’s happy customer filling the store, Shu added with a snort, “Humans wielding magic. It’s not natural.”

“It started with the priests,” I said, mostly to myself as I listened to the skull whine. I wanted to pick it up and throw it against a wall just to stop the nails-on-glass noise. “Some of the gods imbued their most devoted followers—pharaohs and temple priests—with magic.”

“It’s always the gods’ fault. All the fuck-ups, right back to when Nut’s cunt squeezed out Isis and Osiris. And they call demons monsters. At least we don’t screw our siblings. Even demons know that’s a bad idea.” Shu noticed my frown. “What?”

“Is nothing sacred to you?”

She screwed up her face, my question having offended her. “Life is sacred. Mine, mostly. Not a bunch of inbred assholes with too much power. Take the witches. Gods let loose their magic, and now, conveniently, they look the other way while silly humans go chasing after power, but it’s not woven into their souls like it is with us, so the little people with their little lives don’t stand a chance. Once they get a feel for magic, they can’t go back. They hoard more and more until they’re overwhelmed and obsessed. And where are the gods, huh? Nowhere. Half of them are asleep. Who’s cleaning up their mess?”