“You are not the only pagan god we approached,” Michael informed him. “We have several agents working on our behalf. She thought you would be happier here with your wife. We were trying to be kind.”
David crossed his arms. “You thought I would be distracted here,” he corrected him, “so whoever you have working for you can kill the rest of them without me interfering.”
“Regardless of what you think, our hands are tied. It is her magic that is keeping you here, not ours. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have more pressing matters to attend to—”
David inhaled, and the settled feathers and debris began to rise again in the breeze.
“Do you not hear us?” Michael sputtered. “There is nothing we can do, threatening us with your windstorm will not solve anything—you are defying the Holy One Himself!”
David suddenly realized his way out. He thought of Gaia, knowing she’d be heartbroken when she learned what he’d done. I’ll find a way to return, he promised. Then he took a deep breath and pulled all the emotions he’d just dismissed until the hall resumed its chaos.
The angels shrieked with fury at the raucous tornado, dissolving into their true selves, creatures that looked like swirls of feathers and eyes without discernable shape. They advanced to attack, but David fell backwards, shielding his eyes as he slipped through the floor, down below the clouds, and swirling in the wind before he hit the ground. Dazed, he tried to stand, but the earth trembled, cracking beneath him. He was struck with a vision of Lucius beside him, catching his golden eyes as the two of them fell, plummeting through layers of rock until the fire at its core grew so warm that David could no longer keep his eyes open. And then, everything went still.
CHAPTER 6
THE MASTER OF SECRETS THE KINGDOM OF DAHOMEY, 1858
anubis
“My brother is dead.”
Anubis looked up from his desk at the woman standing before him. He realized the sun had set hours ago and his office, situated in the far corner of the temple, was completely devoid of light. He removed his tinted glasses, tossing them down onto an open book as he stood to light one of the nearby lamps. He turned back to Helena to read her expression, grateful to learn she wasn’t angry.
Though her skin was pale and her hair the color of the sun, she wore Dahomian style clothing, the fabric heavily draped over birthmarks that covered her entire left side. Though they crawled up the side of her face, giving the illusion that she had once been badly burned, she was still strikingly beautiful. Just as beautiful as he had known her to be in the Underworld, though he did wonder at times if his taste wasn’t the most conventional. She carried a bottle of rum by the neck, her bare feet sweeping the dusty temple floor.
“Which brother?” he asked her.
“Both, actually,” she said. “I received another message from Odin. Apparently, the wolf died protecting the witch on her journey here.”
Anubis frowned. “And my family?”
“They are all still en route as planned,” she assured him. “So will you be joining me?” She held up the bottle. “Loki and his detestable offspring are all dead. There should be a celebration.”
Before he could say anything, she flopped down on his desk and took a long swig of the dark liquid.
He smiled, and sat down beside her.
“Thomas said you had a full day’s work today.” She pressed the bottle to his chest.
Anubis took a sip, enjoying the myriad of flavors on his tongue. She’d mixed it with hyena blood. “A young boy was stung by a scorpion today. As you can imagine, the entire family was frantic.”
“Did you save him?”
“Of course,” he said, passing the bottle back to her. “It’s the least I can do while I’m here.”
She chuckled. “Oh, how they would react if they ever found out how much their beloved Anubis hates being here.”
He slid her a look. Only she knew how miserable he had been since his rebirth. After centuries of ruling the Underworld, content to remain in the Otherrealms while the other gods swept in and out of them, he had been rudely ousted from his home—a place he wasn’t even sure existed anymore. He yearned to be back, the physical world a bit too hard and bright for his liking, even after the sun had long abandoned the sky. He missed the dead. “I had a purpose in the Underworld,” he reminded her. “What can I do for them now except prevent them from dying for as long as I can? Once they die, they will be doomed to wander, and I am powerless to help.”
“I know.”
He snatched the bottle from between her thighs and took another swallow. He wasn’t sure how long ago it had been since he first met Hel, the Norse Queen of the Dead, but it felt as if she’d been with him since the beginning. She bore witness to his trials and triumphs with the African kings, watching him fight any way he could against their tyrannical rule, against them selling humans to maintain their wealth and power. She knew him as a mortal shaman, the upcoming High Priest, and after he’d transformed, when the soul of Anubis roared to life.
Suddenly he saw their first meeting clearly, as he stood on the dreary shores of the Underworld dressed as Osiris, waiting for Mr. Aymen to cross the river to his realm. The old pagan had beamed immediately upon sight of him, though his jaw dropped when Anubis informed him that he would not have to suffer the twelve trials his ancestors once had, and that although he kept the old religion sacred, he could pass directly to the place where his soul would be weighed against the feather.
It was after he passed the test and ascended to his preferred heavenly realm that there was a sudden, loud pop, and down from the black skies dropped a woman unlike anyone he’d ever seen before.
He remembered being frozen in surprise, shifting back into his original form as he watched her rise to her feet and look around. Her entire left side was a decaying corpse, skeletal ribs popping out of her black, necrotic flesh, but her right side bore pale, supple skin, a bright blue eye, and soft waves of gold hair. Both her good eye and her rotten one settled on Anubis, her half-lipped mouth turning down into a frown.
“Where am I?” she demanded.
“The Underworld,” he replied.
“This is not my realm.”
He realized she was a goddess. “You have somehow crossed into Duat, the Egyptian Underworld, which is my realm. My name is Anubis. I am the one who sends your souls to your realm.”
“Oh yes, the Guardian.” She nodded with recognition. “But why am I in your realm?”
Anubis frowned. “I am not sure. The magic I put in place to keep the boundaries between netherworlds held firm for eons.”
“This no longer seems to be the case.”
Anubis scanned the shores for Thoth, locating his thin frame bent near the rocky banks. “We will figure it out,” he promised her before calling out to his trusted friend and associate.
Thoth moved towards them in careful approach, his box of scales in one arm and a rolled piece of parchment in the other. Although the humans painted him with the head of an ibis, he preferred to look human when he wasn’t working, letting the image fall away as he grew closer, revealing a narrow, gentle face, soft brown eyes, and the tiny spectacles he wore to complete his paperwork. He was a bit taller than stocky Anubis and quite slender, drifting along the shores with graceful and deliberate poise, rather like a cobra. “Hello,” he greeted the strange woman without hesitation.
