An eternal storm, the likes of which had once only been found inside the Twelve Gates, raged through the abandoned Manhattan streets. From my vantage point on the department store roof, ash and embers swept and funneled between Midtown’s buildings like a tsunami of destruction. Had the city been populated, the storm would have devoured their souls at a rate of thousands per minute. The temptation to abandon my plan and push the storm farther had my fingers twitching and my might split.
Beneath me, the department store temple hummed with power. It wasn’t a pyramid like the gods had once favored to help channel their power, but it didn’t need to be. There was a time, not so long ago, when the onslaught of power would have had me out of my mind, lusting for more. The power was manageable. For now. The bait had been laid. The end was in sight. I only had to hold on to my sanity for a few more hours. After that… Well, there would be nothing after that.
“My Lord…?” The priest pulled his cloak in, snatching its trailing edges back from the wind, and bowed his head under my glare. “The Goddess Bastet asks for an invitation to enter your temple.”
I nodded and took one last long look at the jagged horizon. I could devour it all, this world and the underworld and all the souls they contained. In the past, I had. If I did, I truly would be unstoppable. The End of All Things. That is not who I am.
Bastet waited in the throne room. Wrapped in leathers and glistening with knives, she looked every bit as dangerous as her warrior reputation proclaimed.
“Leave.” I gestured at the loitering priests, dispersing them. They wouldn’t go far.
Bastet waited until we were alone, then slid her cat-eyed glare to me. “What is this? Apophis is not meant to be worshipped.”
“So I keep telling everyone, but do they listen?” Running a finger down the arm of the throne, I collected a thin layer of ash and rubbed it from my fingertip.
“Osiris is here.”
“Outside?”
“Close. Mafdet too…”
Good, I thought. But Bastet’s tone held an edge to it. When I met her gaze, she started up the steps toward me.
“Osiris speaks of saving the worlds from you.” She stopped close enough that the smell of meadows and summer drifted through my senses. “After what I’ve seen here, I am struggling to argue with him. You are… very powerful.”
I carefully asked, “Do you trust me?”
She peered into my eyes as though looking for my soul to test for its darkness. If she looked long enough, it would swallow her whole. “I did.” She trailed her fingertips down my chest plate and took up my hand. She brushed the ring still on my finger. “You have changed.”
“Whatever Osiris told you, he’s right. I am all that the gods fear, and with good reason. I could take both worlds and swallow them down.” I pressed a hand to her cheek, remembering the warmth of her, and drew her close. “But I am more than darkness. The gods will come, and they’ll attempt to stop me. They will succeed.” A frown tightened her brow and darkened her eyes. “The reign of the gods is over,” I added. “To protect this world, we need to let it go.”
Confusion muddied her expression, but not for long. When the weight of my words struck, she backed down a few steps and looked around her as though seeing the room anew. The glowing markings, the rampant power. This entire building was a lure. I was the bait. She lifted her eyes. “You would end us all?”
“It has to be this way.”
I couldn’t let her leave, and as she absorbed her fate, I wondered if I would have to fight her. Then, she stilled and composed herself. The fingers of her right hand clenched into a fist. She lifted her gaze once more. Determination burned there now. “Are you not content with this world? You must destroy the gods too? Where is the boy? I will take him from here and end this nonsense.”
I had hoped she would be different. I had believed she would understand why I had to do this. But her next word proved my hope had been misplaced.
“Cukkomd,” she whispered.
Pain lanced up my arm and yanked a hold on my psyche. Before I could realign my thoughts into figuring out what was happening, she speared a compulsion home. “Summon the boy.”
The ring. The damn wedding ring—the slave cuff had its claws in me. I reached for it, tried to get my trembling fingers around it to yank it off—
“Cukkomd. Summon the boy.”
Agony tore down my back, dropping me to my knees. The more I denied her, the more her words felt as though they were stripping skin from my bones.
“Bastet… you know me… better… than this.”
“The stubborn, confused, valiant man I knew died the moment you stabbed Alysdair through my heart.”
“A compulsion… from Osiris!”
“You agreed to it, or it would have been impossible. Summon the boy. This ends now.”
“No.” That it had come to this was proof. Time had corrupted the gods beyond redemption. There are no good gods. I had hoped Bastet was different. I’d loved her once, as Ace Dante, and now, as Apophis, those human feelings still clung on. She was good, her soul was a bright star, but she couldn’t see past her survival. If Nile came, she would kill him to stop me.
“I believed you were different,” she accused, breathing hard as my defiance tested her power.
“And I you.”
“You will be stopped, and the worlds will return to normal under our guidance, as it has always been.”
“Under… Osiris’s guidance?”
“This power… I cannot trust you.” She recoiled. “You would destroy the gods and take both worlds.”
“I thought you knew me.” I pressed my hand against the dais and spread my fingers. Bastet’s compulsion clawed at the inside of my skull, shredding pieces of my mind. Outside, the ash storm surged closer. If she pushed me too far, I would break. Why couldn’t she see the truth?
“Anubis, Osiris—”
I laughed, cutting her off. How naïve. I had been to believe Bastet was the one god who had changed, who was different from the rest. The one good god left.
A blur in the corner of my vision was all the warning I received. Bastet wasn’t as lucky. She jerked. Her mouth opened in a silent, stunned gasp. The tips of four jambiya daggers burst from her hip.
I blinked, clearing my vision. No, not daggers. Claws.
“It is you who must be stopped.” Cat’s cool, calm voice sliced through the pain in my head and swept it away.
I yanked off the ring and threw it down the steps. It bounced, rolled, and settled in a splash of bright blood at Bastet’s feet.
Bastet twisted and backhanded Cat off her feet. “What is this betrayal, Catalina!?” She pressed a hand to her side. It came away wet with blood.
Cat shook off the strike and climbed to her feet. “You are all too blinded by your pasts to see what Ace is trying to do.”
“And you underestimate the power of Apophis.” Bastet flicked blood from her fingers, more annoyed than wounded. She had probably already healed. “I had hoped, as Ace, Apophis would overcome the darkness, but clearly he has not.”
Cat’s growl chilled my blood. “You asked him to be more than darkness, and he is, but now you can’t or won’t see how he’s changed? You don’t want to believe, because if you do, you know it’ll be the end of you.” She flexed her claws and lifted her chin. “You are my queen and I love you, but you are also a product of the old world. Don’t you see this will keep happening? History will repeat itself and people will suffer for as long as the gods are alive. Ace—Apophis is stopping you. Not for himself, but for the good of the innocent souls caught up in your wars. If you can’t or won’t see that, then you must be stopped.” Cat waited, claws at the ready, stance poised to attack.
But Bastet hesitated. From anyone else, those words would have been dismissed, but Cat had always been more than a scout or foot soldier. She was probably the only person Bastet would hear out.
“Stop. Both of you. All of this is too late. Osiris wants to see me trapped, my power drained, so that he may be worshipped as the savior. What do you think will happen then, Bastet? When have you ever known Osiris to be a benevolent god?”
Ash whispered in beneath closed doors, and on those whispers came Osiris’s name. He was close.
A distant jackal’s howl echoed through the room, followed by another. Anubis. The gods were coming. It was time.
I sent out a mental call to the Recka. Be ready. I heard its cry travel through the city and my temple. Come to me.
Bastet flinched and turned on the spot, noticing how a cushion of ash had settled across the floor. She lifted her gaze to the throbbing markings on the wall. My name, but also a sense of crackling power that wasn’t mine. It built slowly, creeping in around the edges as though hoping to go unnoticed. Osiris’s trap was closing in.
I nodded. It was time. “The cycle of history repeating ends now.” I plucked on all the millions of souls at my command. Scorpions, snakes, scarabs, crocodiles. Come to me. Outside, the barren streets moved with their countless bodies.
Everything hinged on what happened next. Trust in the lie. I had to make it work. I had to make them believe just a little while longer…
An arrow shot from the dark, narrowly missing my shoulder. Mafdet’s deep laugh filled the throne room, joined by the yowl of predatory felines.
“Wait…” Bastet held out a hand. The Slayer of Serpents had arrived with Bastet’s warriors. I could only hope Cat’s words had done enough to sway her queen.
I collapsed into ash and swirled around Cat. “Trust me.”
She lifted her face and peered through me. Ash snagged at her lashes and hair. She didn’t answer, but she did smile. She wasn’t afraid, and that was enough. I scooped her up and whisked her away from the throne room, through the corridors and up motionless escalators.
The End was here.
Wind and souls howled around the department store, but on the rooftop, the air hung still.
I set Cat down and wrapped myself up in the appearance of a man once more. Cat looked on, calm and defiant. She had already faced the Twelve Gates, stood up to Bastet, taken the Recka’s eyes, and died more than once. For her, this was just another day of the week. “What you’re about to see… don’t try to stop it,” I told her.
“What am I about to see?”
“The End of All Things.” I grinned and turned away.
“Ace?”
The name drew me up short. Looking over my shoulder, I caught her half smile. “Do you die here?”
“Perhaps, but the best villains always come back.”
“Are you a villain?”
“Depends on who you ask.” There was more to say, so much more, but our time had run out. “Thank you,” I told her. There was too much to thank her for. She had believed in me and sought out the truth when everyone else had given up on it. But most of all, she had understood.
She smiled sadly and nodded.
I strode toward an elevator motor hut and crouched in the doorway. Nile was sitting where Shukra had told me he would be, knees drawn up, face pensive. “You know what you have to do?” I asked him.
“I do.” His voice wavered.
“When Osiris comes, he will need your power.” I wasn’t sure Nile would survive. For all his power, he was mortal. I could tell him everything would be fine, but he would recognize the lie.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It was always going to come to this.”
Nile was the key. Without him, Osiris’s trap couldn’t hold anything more powerful than a scarab, but with the kid’s Light behind it and Shukra’s modifications, the trap would close and seal everything inside: the gods, their power, all of it. And once the gods were gone, the sundering would be over, forever.
Nile offered me his hand. I took it and pulled him to his feet. “I understand,” he said as I guided him out onto the roof. “I understand all of it now.”
“I’m sorry there wasn’t another way,” I admitted.
“I know you are.”
I stopped Nile at roughly the center of the rooftop and mentally stirred up the ash enough to cover the markings scratched around the edges—the same markings the witches had used to ensnare me, plus a few additional modifications courtesy of Shukra. The thought of facing that trap again twisted up my insides. But it was necessary. The deaths, the lies, the sacrifices. All of them had been necessary.
I just needed one more thing to sweeten the trap.
Briefly closing my eyes, I cast my mind out as I had in the Great River when looking for Hatshepsut. Souls flickered and darted. Some rushed in, trying to flood my thoughts with their will, and others rushed away. The darker ones watched and waited for instructions.
“Goddess of Light…” I cast the name outward. “Isis, come to my side.”
A star more colorful than all the rest pulsed in the Dark. She couldn’t resist my call.
I opened my eyes. “Stay close.” Nile nodded, but I’d sent my words into the storm. From the outside, the gods saw me building an army made of all the darkness in this world and the underworld, and in their righteous fury, they had no choice but to stop me.
Mafdet appeared first, and behind her came Bastet and her elite band of warriors. Their blades glinted with the same murderous intensity as their eyes. They approached carefully, wary and suspicious. But Bastet’s determination had softened. She looked at me with the expression she had worn when I’d stabbed Alysdair through her heart. Her faith had been tested, but now, due to Cat, she truly knew the things I had done and why my soul was black. It had to be this way.
Anubis circled in, lips rippling over a snout full of teeth. Above, the Recka sent out a cry before sinking through the eye of the storm and settling behind me. The backdraft from its wings blasted ash from the rooftop, revealing some of the markings, but none of the gods noticed. All eyes were locked on me.
“Show off,” I grumbled at the Recka.
“The Recka is mighty. It is myth and legend—”
“Cat’s here,” I told it before its ego could get out of control.
It bowed its head, tucked its wings in, and muttered obscenities in the old language.
Now we just needed one last guest: Osiris. Of course, the flashy bastard was fashionably late.
“Where is Seth?” Mafdet asked, raising her voice over the howling winds. From the sly glimmer in her eyes, I wondered if she already suspected she knew the answer.
“I ate his soul with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
Mafdet snorted. Nobody laughed. Tough crowd.
The gods stared. They each knew I could topple them individually so none were about to make the first move. But as the seconds ticked on, the chances of them realizing not all was as it seemed grew.
Where was Osiris? He should have been here. This wouldn’t work without him.
“This has gone on long enough.” Anubis stepped forward. “You will cease this rampage and submit to the Scales of Justice.”
I scoffed. The little jackal god still thought he was getting my heart on a plate. “You are not qualified to judge me. Besides, all that would serve is pandering to your sense of theatrics. We all know exactly what I am.”
“The Dark will never overcome the Light. The gods will triumph.”
I rolled my eyes and started a slow, careful pace in front of Nile. “Good, Bad, Dark, Light. Day. Night. You’re all so hung up on their definitions when really, it’s all the same. It’s all just a matter of perspective. You can’t have one without the other.”
I was about to continue educating the gods, when the storm peeled open behind the line of gods and Osiris’s gargantuan statue leaned in and offered up its hand. The fingers gradually opened. Its huge stone face peered down into the palm of its hand.
Say what you would about Osiris, but he sure knew how to make an entrance. I might even have been slightly impressed.
Osiris stepped off the hand, golden armor gleaming, crook in one hand. Chuck dangled from his other hand. She hissed, spat, bucked, and kicked, but the girl wasn’t escaping his iron grip.
Kres. The scorpions should have protected her. If I hadn’t called them all to me…
Nile heard his mother’s cries and stepped forward. “Mom?”
I caught his shoulder and dug my fingers in, holding him back. He pushed against me. “Trust me,” I muttered under my breath and then touched the cuff on his wrist. “Raraoka.” Release. The cuff fell open and clattered against the rooftop. His considerable power flexed, pushing in before relaxing outward. “Trust in the lie,” I whispered for Nile’s ears only. It was a big ask. The kid had all the reasons in the world to despise me. But Nile knew the truth, and now, for the first time, he could hear the truth in my words clearly.
Light flickered in the corner of my eye. Shimmers wove through my dark storm, building, coming closer.
Nile hesitated and then backed down. When I was sure he wouldn’t bolt, I turned my glare back on Osiris. Damn him. I’d had it all under control. I’d assumed he’d focus on Nile. He’d told me Chuck was nothing to him, and yet here she was. I could only hope Osiris had left Cujo alive when he’d taken her.
I deliberately set a brittle edge to my laugh. “What is this? You brought a date? Isis would be most disappointed.”
“Hand over the boy,” Osiris demanded.
On my right, Bastet tensed. She had seen her daughter die once before, and she cared—she always had. Her eyes narrowed, fixing the god in her sights. Around her, the warrior cats slid their focus away from me to Osiris. Bastet had picked her side. Cat saw and smirked a rare and very un-cat-like smile.
“A trade,” Osiris said, gold-edged eyes on me, but his attention wandered over my shoulder to where a soul hovered in the air. Isis. He could bring her back. Alarm cracked his stoic expression. His sister-wife was almost within his grasp.
A smile lifted my lips. He knew I could drink Isis all the way down in seconds. There was no coming back from a soul eater’s bite. How much did he want the world? How much did he truly want me gone? Was it enough to spend his remaining days alone? As much as he hated his wife, he loved her too. He couldn’t help but love her. Isis and Osiris were a constant. They despised each other, but there was madness to their love. The one thing I could use against him. Isis was his weakness.
He schooled his face. “You are cornered and out of time. It’s over.”
“Not yet.”
I had to give him Nile, but I also had to make him believe the lie, make him think I didn’t want this. “It is good of you all to come. You will witness this world bow down and worship in my name.”
Scorpions crawled up and over the edges of the roof, pincers grinding. Anubis shifted uneasily. His jackals were close. I counted their souls in the stairwell—thousands. Outside my storm, the trap’s teeth drew closer. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the moment building, tightening, stretching time. Everything had been leading to this moment. The witches and their attempts to siphon off my magic, secrets found in Egypt, a prophecy of how a boy—Nile—would stop the End of All Things. And he would. Truths and lies. Myths turned to legends and breathed into life. And I was the anti-god who would stop them all. It finished here. My heart raced too hard. Thoughts whirred along with the storm raging around us. Whatever happened next, I had done the right thing. This was the only way.
“He won’t trade!” Chuck yelled. “He doesn’t care!”
“You should listen to the mother of your son, Osiris. I’ve only met her a few times. What makes you think I’d give up my impending reign over this world for a brat?”
He dropped her, but instead of freeing her, he hooked an arm around her throat and yanked her against his chest. When he produced the sword, Bastet lunged. Her warriors let out their war cries. And from behind me, jackals flooded onto the roof. I whirled in time to see one knock Nile to the ground. I kicked it off and saw Osiris throw Chuck down and make a dash for his wife’s soul. I reached for Isis’s brightness, but another jackal sprang in, sinking its teeth into my shoulder and yanking me around. Another slammed into my back, going for my neck, almost bringing me down.
“Ossacd!” I hooked into the hundreds of scorpion souls and threw them into the melee of jackals. The rooftop boiled with teeth, claws, stingers, blood, and ash. Teeth and claws clanged against my armor, scratched off, and sank in in places. I had known this would happen, I’d expected chaos, and as the battle erupted, I smiled. The End was a glorious sight.
“Nile!” I called.
There, crawling toward the smaller of two panthers: Bastet and Chuck. The big cats clawed at the jackals. Something about the sight of them twitched an emotion alive inside me. Mother and daughter. They would have this moment together, even if it was their last.
Osiris was suddenly blocking my path to Nile. He lifted Nile by the neck and plunged his hand into his son’s chest. Light exploded, washing what I could see of the world away and silencing the madness.
For the smallest of moments there was nothing.
No pain.
No time.
No beginning.
No end.
Nothing. Just eternal, endless silence. A timeless prison made of Light. Forever.
Osiris’s trap snapped shut.