your flesh and your excitement inside my body. And now, I’m going to return the gesture.”
Omar’s eyes remained fixed on the needle hovering over his skin. “That’s really not necessary.”
“Oh, but I think it is.” She pinched his arm and slid the needle under his skin.
She did it so quickly and smoothly that there was no pain, only a brief moment of warmth, and then she stepped back to watch him. Omar stared at his arm, feeling the heat building inside his muscles and shaking his bones. A discoloration appeared where she inserted the needle, and it grew quickly, becoming a hard black sheen with flecks of bright blue and green upon it.
“What is that? What did you do?” he asked, trying not to panic. But the fear was already spinning out of control in his belly and chest and it took all of his strength not to scream and beat his arms on the table, and try to shake the needle out of his flesh.
It’s inside me, it’s changing me, and you can’t take one soul out of another soul and I’m going to be a monster like Set and this is how it all ends, because I deserve it, to suffer this way, at the hands of my own creations, to be reduced to an animal, to be a thing, to be a…
“What’s happening?” he asked. His skin was still changing, becoming hard and smooth from his elbow up to his fingertips. The black armor was one continuous shell, with tiny gaps around his wrist and knuckles so he could still move them, somewhat.
“I’m honoring your Aegyptian heritage,” Lilith said. “A fascinating place, Aegyptus. A long history of powerful dynastic kings and warrior queens, the great kandaces of Aegyptus! I wish I could have met them. But there’s also your folklore, your religion. So colorful, so nuanced. Blending stories of family with images of nature.” She gently petted the shining black armor of his transformed arm.
Omar felt his flesh becoming weak and thin inside that armor, barely capable of flexing or twitching. He looked away, staring up at the ceiling, trying to think of anything other than his arm, trying to imagine that he had no right arm at all, never had, and that there was nothing to feel or be afraid of.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“The soul of a scarab,” she said, smiling. “You see? I’ve studied. The scarab beetle is immortal, giving birth to itself from its magic little balls of dung, or something. Well, I didn’t study very hard. Your ancestors had silly beliefs. It’s just a beetle.”
Omar felt his stomach churning like a bowl of cold slush, and he shivered as the first trickles of sweat began to creep down the sides of his face. He wanted to vomit and run and die all at once just to escape the feelings in his own flesh.
Is this what Wren feels? It can’t be. She’s never mentioned anything like this before. Her ears never make her sick. Maybe humans are more compatible with foxes than with beetles. Or maybe… maybe that shred of my soul inside her doesn’t just keep the transformation from spreading. Maybe it helps her to feel stable, to feel normal.
Lucky girl.
“Everything all right?” Lilith asked.
Omar just looked at her, not trusting his voice. He didn’t want to gasp or squeak, or cry, and he could feel his body on the verge of betraying what little dignity he had left.
“You’ll be fine.” She patted his beetle arm, sending sickening vibrations through his shoulder and chest. “I’ll just give you a little time alone to think about your new life here with me, and to think about whether you want to tell me about your little red-haired friend. I’ll be just around the corner, polishing my needles.”
She gave him one last, lingering look filled with a strange muddle of inviting desire and vicious hatred, and then she left.
And Omar turned his head away from her and away from his arm.
Dear Lord, I am sorry for everything I have done, and I will suffer whatever I have to suffer for it. But don’t bring Wren into this. Don’t let me betray her. Don’t make her another victim in this.
Please.
Omar shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut, and waited.
Chapter 17
Anubis stood beneath the endless sea of stars and listened to the rippling of the savanna grasses in the spring breeze. It was a warm night, one that hinted at the promise of far warmer summer nights in the months to come. The plains were alive with the distant growls of hunting cats and the cries of birds and the creaking of insects. Leopards, grass owls, and locusts sang together, heedless of each other, mindful only of the hunt.
“I’ve known for years, you know,” Anubis said. He turned slowly to look down the grassy slope at the falcon- headed youth. “Maybe I’ve always known that Osiris was my father. But I’ve never spoken of it. And why would I? We’re forever. We’re eternal. What is family to a person who is four thousand years old? Little more than a distant memory of devotion, really. An echo of love. A whisper of shared blood. I don’t know anymore.”
Horus glared up with his blank white eyes and hissed.
“That’s not the point.” Anubis returned his gaze to the heavens. “The point is that long ago, before we were gods, before were immortal, we were just people. My mother wanted a baby, and her husband didn’t, or couldn’t. So she went to her sister’s husband, and she found her heart’s desire in his bed.”
Was it loving? Did they speak of it before hand, or afterwards? Or was it a shameful deed, one done in shadows and silence, and in haste?
Did Isis know what they were doing? Did she suggest the union, or watch it, or even join in that evening’s bliss?
“I understand that part,” Anubis said. “I understand that desire, and that decision. Right or wrong, I understand it. I don’t need to know any more about that night, except that it was my mother’s choice. She wanted me, and that is all that truly matters.”
Horus let out a small noise that was part croak and part shriek, and then he started slowly climbing the steep hillside.
“But then came all the rest. You were raised by our father, Osiris, and I was raised by Set, who must have known or at least suspected that I was not his,” Anubis said. He turned and began walking along the crest of the hill, still gazing up at the stars. “The vicious beatings, the drunken slurs against me and my mother, the senseless damage to our home. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t fear him. I feared the sound of his voice and the sight of his face. I even feared the thought that he might be nearby, standing somewhere close, just out of sight. So I stayed away as much as I dared. I played in the street, and I hid in the alleys, and sometimes I didn’t come home for days. I didn’t even have the courage to stay for my mother’s sake. And I saw what he had done to her, afterwards. There were always signs. But our so-called grandfather never saw the signs, never saw the shadow behind the light. All that he could see were Osiris and Set, two clever men who could help him in his search for answers, his obsession with sun-steel. So he made them both immortal, not because they deserved it but because it was convenient to him. And you and I, and our mothers, and little Bastet were all brought along with them, swept up in the wake of their great deeds like sea foam.”
Horus reached the top of the hill and cried his falcon cry up to the stars. Out in the grasslands, a strange silence stretched across the land as even the locusts fell quiet in fear.
Anubis turned and looked up into the hideous white eyes of his brother. “Does it help? Screaming like that? I can only imagine what you’re thinking and feeling, with your flesh so mangled, with your perceptions distorted, and your will subjugated. I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
Horus glared down at him for a moment, and then swung his deadly talons at Anubis’s head. But instead of dissolving into the aether, Anubis raised his staff and caught the talons just before they struck him.
“But then, life is so rarely fair, and we mere humans so rarely get what we deserve.” Anubis slipped into the aether and emerged behind the falcon-man, and cracked him over the head with his staff. When Horus shrieked and spun around, Anubis was already gliding around him through the mist, and he struck the beast in the head again from behind, and again, and again. Horus turned and turned, and screamed and swung his talons, but he was
