“After all Shokpana did, you punish her?” Anubis sputtered.
“You should not question our ways,” Xevi spoke up from beside him.
Anubis blinked. “You see the spirits now, too?”
“Of course,” Xevi huffed. “You are not the only one with powers—I have always spoken to them. They just chose you over me.”
“Tell him the rest.”
Anubis’s heart seized. He turned to see an apparition, none other than Helena. Although she had never been much for affection, he rushed towards her, pulling her into his arms. “Forgive me for not saving you.”
She gently drew away. “We will talk, but first Legba must tell you the truth.”
Legba scowled. “It does not involve us.”
“It involves him,” she shot back.
“I want no part,” Legba asserted and with a pop, he disappeared. Okanu followed suit, leaving Xevi the last one standing.
“I want no part of your struggle, either,” he said with a sneer. “I will be helping make sure the living stay that way.” Then he too disappeared.
Thomas approached from the shadows, up to where Helena stood. “Oh, my dear friend,” he said sadly.
“You both are immortal,” Helena observed.
“I could not get to you in time,” Anubis told her, “or you would be, too.”
“I can do more for us in the Middleworld,” she assured him. “I can travel through what is left of the realms and eavesdrop when I need to.” She turned towards Anubis. “There are other blood drinkers besides the one who turned you and the Ancient Ones you left behind.”
“David.” Anubis nodded. “And my brother, Libraean.”
“There are others who have cropped up as a force against you, who are destroying the realms, and who seek to destroy your Egyptian family. You need to find David and warn him.”
Anubis heard crashing and turned to see the last of the structures crumble in the flames. The entire village was lost. “We need somewhere to go until the humans can rebuild. There we can figure out how to contact him.”
“I know a place,” she said.
The memory faded, leaving him in darkness. Anubis rose to his feet, startled to see Helena standing where he once married her, so long ago. They no longer needed candles, two dead things walking around the land of the living.
“You really have been trapped in memory,” she commented softly. “You were lost in a trance for hours.”
“Since they arrived, I seem to be pulled back towards my former life,” he admitted. He fell back down onto the rock he’d been sitting on. The thin stream that once wound through the grotto had split in two, its soothing trickle amplified within the dome of rocks.
She followed suit, sitting between his legs so he could rest his chin on the top of her head as he hugged her. “Did you know Lucius was my father?”
“I actually did not,” she replied. “Apparently there are some secrets even I cannot uncover.”
“What do you remember most? Your life as the goddess Hel or your brief life as a human?”
“So you are not only nostalgic, you are speculative,” she remarked.
“I think I am finished with my human life,” he told her.
“Honey, you have been finished with this life since you got here,” she laughed.
“I am serious.”
She turned to face him, squinting as she studied his eyes. “When this is over, we will find a place to store your body. Then I will take your soul.”
Anubis was surprised. “Is it that easy?”
“I’ve always known how to bring you to the Middleworld,” she said. “I simply waited for you to be ready. You put your people first, and I respect that about you. But I did make a deal with Legba long ago that your soul will belong to me.”
Anubis struggled to find words, touched by the gesture. He’d long accepted her sarcasm and aloofness, they were qualities he liked about her. But this felt like something quite different. He cleared his throat. “Where will we store my body, then?”
She stood and smiled. “When this is done, I will show you.”
ANUBIS
The tempestuous wind had made violence of the sea, but Anubis walked down the shore unaffected, his bare feet sinking into the sand. The squalls that whipped around him roared in his ears, but it was no match for the thoughts crowding his mind. He tried not to think, for he knew all was handled, but the emotion trapped in his throat begged for release.
Before he realized where he was going, his legs instinctively carried him to a grotto, one he hadn’t entered for many years. The steady drip of water was a welcome reprieve from the billowing wind, but the scent of cool, dank earth and stale sea water brought him back to the time when he was human.
He could almost see her silhouette against the candlelight, almost feel her heated breath on his skin. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself for yet another intrusive memory that refused to stay buried. Soon the revolting stench of burning flesh bit his nose, tortured screams filling his ears. Too tired to resist, he slipped to the ground, succumbing to the obstinate pull of memory.
It was the moment he turned.
He hadn’t realized he’d died, for it wasn’t unusual for him to visit the spirit world unintentionally. But when his eyes opened to see the three doors and gray walls, he felt disoriented and confused, as if it had been a mistake. The feeling was compounded by the presence of Mama Mawu, who wore a youthful facade of fresh, unlined skin and supple lips as she looked down at him with love in her eyes.
