Darkest power, p.16
Darkest Power, page 16
I burst into tears. The pain is nearly unbearable as the bead of energy leaves my body and enters his. Horus’s chuckle is dark and lonely; he falls to his knees and collapses into a heap against the floor.
I jump after him. Maybe if I pry his mouth open.
A hand jerks out and shoves me away. The energy from his palm is green; he moves to his knees and stares me down. “What the hell have you done?”
“I have no idea!” I yell. “Do you even know what you just did? You kissed me, you stole my bead—”
He shoves me away from him. “Stay back!” He holds his hands out in front of him, tiny flecks of green and yellow fire burn from his palms. His skin looks like the sun mixed with the earth; it turns dark every few seconds like the night sky. He trembles on the floor, his one eye flickers black and blue. “We need to get it out of me!” Voice hoarse, he collapses against the floor again. “Get Cassius, now! Get Timber, get everyone!”
“It won’t kill you!” I yell. “It’s going to kill me!”
“Exactly!” He laughs again, then catches himself and shakes his head. “I’ll kill you without thinking twice; I can’t be both darkness and light.” He curses. “She made me a monster. She used my eye to make me a tool. Her own god of monsters.”
Well done, I want to say. He goes to sacrifice to give me my past back and, with his sacrifice, steals our future.
I refuse it.
I rebuke it.
“No!” I yell. I have no power left, though, but I do have legs. I sprint past him, open the door and collide with Bannik.
“And the prince of the sky will become more than a god, pissing off the heavens and hell all at once, I think, is how the nursery rhyme goes.” Bannik leans against the doorjamb. “I knew you wanted something from her.”
“No.” Horus shakes his head. “I didn’t want her power. That’s not what happened. She could see through my eye. She tricked me, waited until I was weak until I gave myself to Kit.”
“It doesn’t matter, you idiot. Did I not warn you?” Bannik slams his hands against the wall by the door. A picture falls, and the glass shatters into rubble by his black boots. “Your very existence is about balance. How can darkness and light co-exist? It is a balance you have just disrupted. A fox can survive without her tails, but a fox without her bead will eventually die. So much for a happy ending.”
Tears stream down my face. He’s not wrong. I am the fox of the night, and losing my bead to the light means eventual death.
“I’ll give it back,” Horus says through clenched teeth. “I just need a minute to think.” He rams his hands through the wall next to me. Everything turns to dust around us, coating the carpeting at our feet.
His godhead in this timeline has fully returned ten times what it once was. He’s dangerous. Powerful. And he’s angry.
It’s up to me to calm him down, and Bannik isn’t helping.
“Hey…” I reach for Horus only to have Bannik shove me behind him. “Just let me talk to him.”
“He’s going to either die getting the bead out of him or become a fallen, either way, you can’t help him. All he can do is help himself.” Bannik shakes his head. “Never listen to the voices, Horus. Even if they make sense.”
“I just wanted to kiss her, then a sweet voice said to bite down.”
“That sweet voice was Apophis, and she’s come to collect her final sacrifice.” He looks between both of us and shakes his head. “You. She wants you, Horus. She already has your eye, and now that you’re powerful in this timeline, she wants you to do all her bidding. Even Cassius couldn’t fight you now.” He laughs. “Wow, and I thought I’d be the end of the Immortal Council. Meanwhile, the Egyptian god of gods has me hold his beer.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Because it’s not funny!” Bannik yells.
Ethan slams his hands against the door. “Why is everyone yelling?”
“Oh, shit,” Alex says behind him. “He pulled a full god.”
I try to take deep breaths but have nothing. Bannik pulls me against his side and hides me from Horus, using his body to guard me. “Leave.”
“And go where?” Cassius says quietly at the door. “To the very demoness that wants him? There has to be a way to help him. Until then.” He nods to Mason and Alex.
I frown. What can they do?
Timber walks in, late to the party. “What did I miss?”
“YOU!” I yell. “I heard what you said to Horus downstairs.”
Timber holds up his hands. “I was at the twenty-four-hour mini-mart down the road getting ice cream, so I don’t know what you think I did. Apologies if you wanted vanilla, most people around here like strawberry.”
“Shit.” Bannik releases a string of curses. “She used a phantom on you. She must have been collecting more beads. She always uses the same one, weird hair, tattoos down his arms, attractive and alluring. Ring a bell?”
Timber drops the groceries in his hand. An apple tumbles toward me, hitting my foot. I don’t know why I fixate on it, but the apple represents something so simple, and now everything is complicated. Now that I’ve found joy, I have nothing but an unhappy ending.
“You should have never come back,” I find myself saying. “Horus should have never looked for me, and I should have never sacrificed for him.” Tears burn my eyes and threaten to fall. “We were never meant to be in the first place. A god will always seduce a fox even if he’s all-powerful, and a fox will always give everything to their god.” I jerk away from Bannik and walk down the stairs, one by one until I’m outside.
When I finally walk at least a half mile down the dirt road, I fall to my knees, then look up at the stars and scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
猪突猛進
English Translation:
“Charge headlong.”
~Japanese proverb
Horus
I’m tied to a chair.
Bannik’s pacing in front of me with Cassius behind him, still as a statue. The rest of the girls and the kids have been sent away.
I’m basically with nothing but angry immortals being stared at like I’m the plague, and nobody knows where Kit is.
“Let me at least try to find her,” I say.
Bannik’s answer is to kick my chair back. “You stole her bead!”
“Not on purpose!” I yell. “We just need to give it back!”
“Idiots,” Cassius growls. “All of you.” His normally pale skin pinks at his cheeks. “Did you take her?”
“Huh?” Alex asks. “Take her? Where the hell would he take her?”
“Take her where? McDonald’s?” Mason asks.
Ethan curses, Bannik joins in, and Tarek walks into the room and mutters, “He means sex, dumb and dumber.”
Timber follows in after him. “If he had sex with her, then she was vulnerable, maybe vulnerable enough that if he spoke an incantation, she was able to weasel her way through the eye he gave up to pull the bead.”
I jolt to my feet, the chair still attached to me. “And you didn’t think that was important information?”
The ropes burst free from my arms while the chair crashes into splinters onto the ground.
Timber holds out a hand and takes a sip of his coffee; Alex joins in, I’m suddenly held by two powerful gods in golden rope that burns every inch of my skin with every breath.
“Sit,” Timber commands.
I don’t.
He sighs and gives Alex a “help out” look. Alex rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers. A chair comes from behind while gravity forces me down.
Bannik takes a step backward against the wall.
“I think you’re scaring the fallen angel.” Mason yawns. “Okay, information. We need information. How can you get the bead back to her without going all dark and brooding on us?”
The room falls quiet. Not exactly promising.
“I never wanted it,” I say. “I just wanted her. I wanted her for an eternity. I don’t even remember taking it.”
Bannik pulls out a chair next to me. “She gave up her nine tails, right?”
My stomach drops. “Right. Which means she’s basically lost as a human right now and could easily die.”
“Killjoy,” Ethan mutters.
“Not what I was getting at, vampire!” Bannik slams his fists against the dinner table. It collapses onto the floor, all four of the legs shattered.
“And another one bites the dust,” Alex sings, earning a groan from Cassius.
Tarek kicks at the dust on the ground and grabs the remaining chair, flipping it around and straddling it. “Why the nine tails, big guy?”
A thick silence descends over the living room before Bannik answers. “If she has her nine tails, hell if she had two tails, she could pull the bead back in, only if it’s with someone who’s… mated with her.”
I gulp.
The room goes quiet again.
Alex raises his hand. “So I think the question is, did you two—”
“You didn’t hear them?” Timber laughs. “Why else do you think I left for ice cream?”
“I put on headphones,” Mason admits.
“I was watching Dateline,” Cassius grumbles.
“And I was out for a run while Bannik stewed in the backyard,” said Tarek. “He walked on your tomato plant, by the way, Timber.”
“Son of a bitch, Bannik!”
“I SLIPPED!” he yells.
“SILENCE!” Cassius looks ready to throw something. “So the way to solve this is easy, we’ll go with Horus to the Abyss, grab the tails and come back.”
“No.” Bannik’s hoarse voice sends chills down my spine. “He can’t just steal them back. He’ll have to earn them. And even if he can fight and win, the Abyss doesn’t let you go without the sacrifice. His, I’m sad to say, will be time.”
“How much?” I ask.
“For her? For us? A few weeks.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “And for me?”
“Nine tails equal three lifetimes, Horus. You’re looking at three hundred years at the very least.”
I stand, mind made up. I grab a piece of paper and start to write. Minutes later, I’m folding it up and handing it to Bannik. “Make sure she looks up from time to time.”
“You’re not going to say goodbye?” Timber asks. “To her? To any of us?”
“Why say goodbye when I’ll be back?”
“Terminator.” Tarek nods. “Classic.”
“How can you joke right now?” Timber lunges for him.
Tarek grins, his eyes flicker with blue. “Ah, we all have our reasons for doing what we do. Sometimes, we have to walk through the darkness in order to find our true light. Good luck, Horus. We’ll keep watch.” His eyes fall to Bannik. “It is, after all, what you do, isn’t it?”
Bannik pales. “What?”
“Watcher.” Cassius’s voice booms. “You watch. You do not look away from your purpose, from your being. Will you watch her?”
A tear slides down Bannik’s cheek. His whisper is haunting. “May I die if I close my eyes just once.”
“You did, though,” Cassius says quietly. “But now I wonder what will happen when the one who chose her, who watched her, is back?”
“What?” I ask.
Bannik shakes his head. “I watched the mountain.”
“Yes.” Cassius smiles sadly. “But before you watched the mountain, you watched a tiny innocent little fox fall into a river. You kept her safe when her parents died and when the last of those who loved her left—you made a pact with the heavens, and you finally chose.”
Tears stream down Bannik’s face. “What did I choose then if you’re so smart?”
Cassius waves his hand in front of us, a star shines so brightly down on Kit, she’s lying across the grass and reaches for the star, whispering, “I choose you too, pretty star. Keep me safe.”
The star shoots across the sky and places itself above her.
“Don’t you see?” Cassius sighs. “Things always come full circle. You, Bannik, before you fell, before you stopped watching, were her star. Why else would the Creator place you at her mountain? In Asia?”
Bannik falls to his knees and screams.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s why she reached for your hand.”
Bannik doesn’t speak; he just stares at his hands as if they’re dirty like he doesn’t deserve to know even the good he did.
I sigh. “You have your job back.”
He nods his head and stands. “I won’t let you down this time. I will not fall.”
I believe him.
His shaky hand comes out to grip mine. I shake it hard. “Make sure she watches.” I shove the note into his hand.
And I take my slow walk to the Euphrates to descend into The Abyss.
This time, I didn’t choose my brother.
I didn’t choose me.
I willingly choose her, even if it means years of torture. I’ll stay, and I’ll endure. What’s three hundred years to her three lifetimes of not knowing what she was?
I smile as I walk.
And when I reach the muddy bed, I have enough power that I simply flick open the gated window and hold out my hands. “Kings of The Abyss—you have permission to imprison me.”
Chains drag against the ground, they get caught on rocks and objects. They get closer and closer.
Cold metal clasps around my wrists. “You are out of your time, god.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I think I’m actually exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
悪戦苦闘
akusenkutou
“An uphill battle.”
~Japanese proverb
Kit
I fall to the dirt, my knees hit the ground hard enough to make them bruise; I know I’ll be picking pieces of the dirt away from them later.
I’m betrayed again.
He’s all-powerful, and I’m going to die. I guess every being dies, mortal or not, something always happens, but I’ll die sooner than later after trusting him.
Trusting all of them.
I stare up at the sky, but all I see is darkness. Maybe I finally see what I feel, and now that I don’t have a star that feels it with me, I have no guilt in saying I’m sad, alone, isolated, angry.
It’s like a shroud of blackness that makes it impossible to see the stars. I reach up with trembling fingertips and then drop my hands to the ground.
I have no tails.
No bead.
I’m nothing anymore.
I want to believe it was an accident, but what about the conversation with Timber?
I crawl toward the closest tree I can find and huddle beneath it, hugging my knees to my chest. It’s Seattle, so of course, it starts to rain, though I’m protected.
A dark figure appears down the road. I immediately recognize Bannik. Great, just what I need, a fallen angel giving me advice on how to live when he’s been kept down in the Abyss for who knows how long?
He crouches down next to me. “Can I sit?”
“Can you? Sure. Do I want you to? No.”
“Foxes, always so honest despite everyone saying how much they manipulate mankind.”
“You’re no man.”
He barks out a laugh and throws his red and black hair over his shoulder. “What gave me away?”
His eyes still have pieces of white and red in them; they fade to black every time he shifts. “What used to be in your eyes?”
He stills. “What do you mean?”
“Horus is a god of the sky, you’re a fallen, and your job was to watch, so what did your eyes reflect?”
His normal scowl turns into a small smile, transforming his face. He looks beautiful, almost ethereal. I can see him in his golden armor, proud, standing on the mountain the watchers or fallen guarded, all before deciding they wanted humanity as their own.
All before they fell.
For love.
“Well…” He leans back against the tree and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks so normal again, wearing a simple black trench coat, a white shirt, and jeans with black boots. “Our eyes reflect what we worship.”
“What?”
“As angels, our eyes reflect what we worship. Imagine looking away from your only job, knowing you were to look straight to the heavens and watch, never blink, simply watch… the minute your eyes fall away from their purpose, something else is breathed into existence in your line of sight, and it gets harder and harder to look back to your purpose until you finally forget what it actually is in the first place.” He looks to the stars. “Your eyes will reflect your worship, Kit. If his eyes reflected the stars, if they reflected you—he’s good. If they reflected the bead, you would have seen it. It would have been impossible for him to hide it.”
“So why did he—”
“The all-seeing Eye of Horus. You know the stories?”
She nodded. “Some.”
“Apophis probably found a way to use his eye and see into yours, to put him in a trance and take one final treasure, one final sacrifice. Remember, the gods and goddesses used to hunt for you.”
I nod, wringing my hands together. “You never hunted me.”
“Because my job was to protect your forest. To protect everything in it, humans, foxes, cows—”
“I’m better than a cow or human,” I grumble.
“Apologies.” He holds up his hands. “I just thought it would be good to discuss moving forward.”
I stop feeling sorry for myself for one instant. “What do you mean moving forward?”
He reaches for my hand and holds it tight. “It was me. I was your star.”
“What?” I can barely get the word out. “My star? You?”
“It’s why you wanted to touch me that first night. I was reborn, returned to you, the very little fox I watched and protected before I guarded the mountain before I fell. When I was sent to your mountain, I watched you more, but with each passing year, my star diminished more and more, not because of you but because of me. It made you feel more lonely; we felt each other’s emotions. It should have been a warning for you, but you had no family—all you had was Horus to protect you, so when I finally did fall into the Abyss, you had hope that one day the god of the sky would return. Why else do you think you fell for him? Your star was gone. But, you were given the whole sky.” He smiles at me sadly. “I would have wished that for you. I’m glad that was your future, Kit.” He reaches into his pocket and hands me a small piece of paper. “And now, we might have to journey together without the sky, but I promise, your star will never again choose to fall unless it’s for the greater good of the life you deserve.”
I jump after him. Maybe if I pry his mouth open.
A hand jerks out and shoves me away. The energy from his palm is green; he moves to his knees and stares me down. “What the hell have you done?”
“I have no idea!” I yell. “Do you even know what you just did? You kissed me, you stole my bead—”
He shoves me away from him. “Stay back!” He holds his hands out in front of him, tiny flecks of green and yellow fire burn from his palms. His skin looks like the sun mixed with the earth; it turns dark every few seconds like the night sky. He trembles on the floor, his one eye flickers black and blue. “We need to get it out of me!” Voice hoarse, he collapses against the floor again. “Get Cassius, now! Get Timber, get everyone!”
“It won’t kill you!” I yell. “It’s going to kill me!”
“Exactly!” He laughs again, then catches himself and shakes his head. “I’ll kill you without thinking twice; I can’t be both darkness and light.” He curses. “She made me a monster. She used my eye to make me a tool. Her own god of monsters.”
Well done, I want to say. He goes to sacrifice to give me my past back and, with his sacrifice, steals our future.
I refuse it.
I rebuke it.
“No!” I yell. I have no power left, though, but I do have legs. I sprint past him, open the door and collide with Bannik.
“And the prince of the sky will become more than a god, pissing off the heavens and hell all at once, I think, is how the nursery rhyme goes.” Bannik leans against the doorjamb. “I knew you wanted something from her.”
“No.” Horus shakes his head. “I didn’t want her power. That’s not what happened. She could see through my eye. She tricked me, waited until I was weak until I gave myself to Kit.”
“It doesn’t matter, you idiot. Did I not warn you?” Bannik slams his hands against the wall by the door. A picture falls, and the glass shatters into rubble by his black boots. “Your very existence is about balance. How can darkness and light co-exist? It is a balance you have just disrupted. A fox can survive without her tails, but a fox without her bead will eventually die. So much for a happy ending.”
Tears stream down my face. He’s not wrong. I am the fox of the night, and losing my bead to the light means eventual death.
“I’ll give it back,” Horus says through clenched teeth. “I just need a minute to think.” He rams his hands through the wall next to me. Everything turns to dust around us, coating the carpeting at our feet.
His godhead in this timeline has fully returned ten times what it once was. He’s dangerous. Powerful. And he’s angry.
It’s up to me to calm him down, and Bannik isn’t helping.
“Hey…” I reach for Horus only to have Bannik shove me behind him. “Just let me talk to him.”
“He’s going to either die getting the bead out of him or become a fallen, either way, you can’t help him. All he can do is help himself.” Bannik shakes his head. “Never listen to the voices, Horus. Even if they make sense.”
“I just wanted to kiss her, then a sweet voice said to bite down.”
“That sweet voice was Apophis, and she’s come to collect her final sacrifice.” He looks between both of us and shakes his head. “You. She wants you, Horus. She already has your eye, and now that you’re powerful in this timeline, she wants you to do all her bidding. Even Cassius couldn’t fight you now.” He laughs. “Wow, and I thought I’d be the end of the Immortal Council. Meanwhile, the Egyptian god of gods has me hold his beer.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Because it’s not funny!” Bannik yells.
Ethan slams his hands against the door. “Why is everyone yelling?”
“Oh, shit,” Alex says behind him. “He pulled a full god.”
I try to take deep breaths but have nothing. Bannik pulls me against his side and hides me from Horus, using his body to guard me. “Leave.”
“And go where?” Cassius says quietly at the door. “To the very demoness that wants him? There has to be a way to help him. Until then.” He nods to Mason and Alex.
I frown. What can they do?
Timber walks in, late to the party. “What did I miss?”
“YOU!” I yell. “I heard what you said to Horus downstairs.”
Timber holds up his hands. “I was at the twenty-four-hour mini-mart down the road getting ice cream, so I don’t know what you think I did. Apologies if you wanted vanilla, most people around here like strawberry.”
“Shit.” Bannik releases a string of curses. “She used a phantom on you. She must have been collecting more beads. She always uses the same one, weird hair, tattoos down his arms, attractive and alluring. Ring a bell?”
Timber drops the groceries in his hand. An apple tumbles toward me, hitting my foot. I don’t know why I fixate on it, but the apple represents something so simple, and now everything is complicated. Now that I’ve found joy, I have nothing but an unhappy ending.
“You should have never come back,” I find myself saying. “Horus should have never looked for me, and I should have never sacrificed for him.” Tears burn my eyes and threaten to fall. “We were never meant to be in the first place. A god will always seduce a fox even if he’s all-powerful, and a fox will always give everything to their god.” I jerk away from Bannik and walk down the stairs, one by one until I’m outside.
When I finally walk at least a half mile down the dirt road, I fall to my knees, then look up at the stars and scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
猪突猛進
English Translation:
“Charge headlong.”
~Japanese proverb
Horus
I’m tied to a chair.
Bannik’s pacing in front of me with Cassius behind him, still as a statue. The rest of the girls and the kids have been sent away.
I’m basically with nothing but angry immortals being stared at like I’m the plague, and nobody knows where Kit is.
“Let me at least try to find her,” I say.
Bannik’s answer is to kick my chair back. “You stole her bead!”
“Not on purpose!” I yell. “We just need to give it back!”
“Idiots,” Cassius growls. “All of you.” His normally pale skin pinks at his cheeks. “Did you take her?”
“Huh?” Alex asks. “Take her? Where the hell would he take her?”
“Take her where? McDonald’s?” Mason asks.
Ethan curses, Bannik joins in, and Tarek walks into the room and mutters, “He means sex, dumb and dumber.”
Timber follows in after him. “If he had sex with her, then she was vulnerable, maybe vulnerable enough that if he spoke an incantation, she was able to weasel her way through the eye he gave up to pull the bead.”
I jolt to my feet, the chair still attached to me. “And you didn’t think that was important information?”
The ropes burst free from my arms while the chair crashes into splinters onto the ground.
Timber holds out a hand and takes a sip of his coffee; Alex joins in, I’m suddenly held by two powerful gods in golden rope that burns every inch of my skin with every breath.
“Sit,” Timber commands.
I don’t.
He sighs and gives Alex a “help out” look. Alex rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers. A chair comes from behind while gravity forces me down.
Bannik takes a step backward against the wall.
“I think you’re scaring the fallen angel.” Mason yawns. “Okay, information. We need information. How can you get the bead back to her without going all dark and brooding on us?”
The room falls quiet. Not exactly promising.
“I never wanted it,” I say. “I just wanted her. I wanted her for an eternity. I don’t even remember taking it.”
Bannik pulls out a chair next to me. “She gave up her nine tails, right?”
My stomach drops. “Right. Which means she’s basically lost as a human right now and could easily die.”
“Killjoy,” Ethan mutters.
“Not what I was getting at, vampire!” Bannik slams his fists against the dinner table. It collapses onto the floor, all four of the legs shattered.
“And another one bites the dust,” Alex sings, earning a groan from Cassius.
Tarek kicks at the dust on the ground and grabs the remaining chair, flipping it around and straddling it. “Why the nine tails, big guy?”
A thick silence descends over the living room before Bannik answers. “If she has her nine tails, hell if she had two tails, she could pull the bead back in, only if it’s with someone who’s… mated with her.”
I gulp.
The room goes quiet again.
Alex raises his hand. “So I think the question is, did you two—”
“You didn’t hear them?” Timber laughs. “Why else do you think I left for ice cream?”
“I put on headphones,” Mason admits.
“I was watching Dateline,” Cassius grumbles.
“And I was out for a run while Bannik stewed in the backyard,” said Tarek. “He walked on your tomato plant, by the way, Timber.”
“Son of a bitch, Bannik!”
“I SLIPPED!” he yells.
“SILENCE!” Cassius looks ready to throw something. “So the way to solve this is easy, we’ll go with Horus to the Abyss, grab the tails and come back.”
“No.” Bannik’s hoarse voice sends chills down my spine. “He can’t just steal them back. He’ll have to earn them. And even if he can fight and win, the Abyss doesn’t let you go without the sacrifice. His, I’m sad to say, will be time.”
“How much?” I ask.
“For her? For us? A few weeks.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “And for me?”
“Nine tails equal three lifetimes, Horus. You’re looking at three hundred years at the very least.”
I stand, mind made up. I grab a piece of paper and start to write. Minutes later, I’m folding it up and handing it to Bannik. “Make sure she looks up from time to time.”
“You’re not going to say goodbye?” Timber asks. “To her? To any of us?”
“Why say goodbye when I’ll be back?”
“Terminator.” Tarek nods. “Classic.”
“How can you joke right now?” Timber lunges for him.
Tarek grins, his eyes flicker with blue. “Ah, we all have our reasons for doing what we do. Sometimes, we have to walk through the darkness in order to find our true light. Good luck, Horus. We’ll keep watch.” His eyes fall to Bannik. “It is, after all, what you do, isn’t it?”
Bannik pales. “What?”
“Watcher.” Cassius’s voice booms. “You watch. You do not look away from your purpose, from your being. Will you watch her?”
A tear slides down Bannik’s cheek. His whisper is haunting. “May I die if I close my eyes just once.”
“You did, though,” Cassius says quietly. “But now I wonder what will happen when the one who chose her, who watched her, is back?”
“What?” I ask.
Bannik shakes his head. “I watched the mountain.”
“Yes.” Cassius smiles sadly. “But before you watched the mountain, you watched a tiny innocent little fox fall into a river. You kept her safe when her parents died and when the last of those who loved her left—you made a pact with the heavens, and you finally chose.”
Tears stream down Bannik’s face. “What did I choose then if you’re so smart?”
Cassius waves his hand in front of us, a star shines so brightly down on Kit, she’s lying across the grass and reaches for the star, whispering, “I choose you too, pretty star. Keep me safe.”
The star shoots across the sky and places itself above her.
“Don’t you see?” Cassius sighs. “Things always come full circle. You, Bannik, before you fell, before you stopped watching, were her star. Why else would the Creator place you at her mountain? In Asia?”
Bannik falls to his knees and screams.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s why she reached for your hand.”
Bannik doesn’t speak; he just stares at his hands as if they’re dirty like he doesn’t deserve to know even the good he did.
I sigh. “You have your job back.”
He nods his head and stands. “I won’t let you down this time. I will not fall.”
I believe him.
His shaky hand comes out to grip mine. I shake it hard. “Make sure she watches.” I shove the note into his hand.
And I take my slow walk to the Euphrates to descend into The Abyss.
This time, I didn’t choose my brother.
I didn’t choose me.
I willingly choose her, even if it means years of torture. I’ll stay, and I’ll endure. What’s three hundred years to her three lifetimes of not knowing what she was?
I smile as I walk.
And when I reach the muddy bed, I have enough power that I simply flick open the gated window and hold out my hands. “Kings of The Abyss—you have permission to imprison me.”
Chains drag against the ground, they get caught on rocks and objects. They get closer and closer.
Cold metal clasps around my wrists. “You are out of your time, god.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I think I’m actually exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
悪戦苦闘
akusenkutou
“An uphill battle.”
~Japanese proverb
Kit
I fall to the dirt, my knees hit the ground hard enough to make them bruise; I know I’ll be picking pieces of the dirt away from them later.
I’m betrayed again.
He’s all-powerful, and I’m going to die. I guess every being dies, mortal or not, something always happens, but I’ll die sooner than later after trusting him.
Trusting all of them.
I stare up at the sky, but all I see is darkness. Maybe I finally see what I feel, and now that I don’t have a star that feels it with me, I have no guilt in saying I’m sad, alone, isolated, angry.
It’s like a shroud of blackness that makes it impossible to see the stars. I reach up with trembling fingertips and then drop my hands to the ground.
I have no tails.
No bead.
I’m nothing anymore.
I want to believe it was an accident, but what about the conversation with Timber?
I crawl toward the closest tree I can find and huddle beneath it, hugging my knees to my chest. It’s Seattle, so of course, it starts to rain, though I’m protected.
A dark figure appears down the road. I immediately recognize Bannik. Great, just what I need, a fallen angel giving me advice on how to live when he’s been kept down in the Abyss for who knows how long?
He crouches down next to me. “Can I sit?”
“Can you? Sure. Do I want you to? No.”
“Foxes, always so honest despite everyone saying how much they manipulate mankind.”
“You’re no man.”
He barks out a laugh and throws his red and black hair over his shoulder. “What gave me away?”
His eyes still have pieces of white and red in them; they fade to black every time he shifts. “What used to be in your eyes?”
He stills. “What do you mean?”
“Horus is a god of the sky, you’re a fallen, and your job was to watch, so what did your eyes reflect?”
His normal scowl turns into a small smile, transforming his face. He looks beautiful, almost ethereal. I can see him in his golden armor, proud, standing on the mountain the watchers or fallen guarded, all before deciding they wanted humanity as their own.
All before they fell.
For love.
“Well…” He leans back against the tree and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks so normal again, wearing a simple black trench coat, a white shirt, and jeans with black boots. “Our eyes reflect what we worship.”
“What?”
“As angels, our eyes reflect what we worship. Imagine looking away from your only job, knowing you were to look straight to the heavens and watch, never blink, simply watch… the minute your eyes fall away from their purpose, something else is breathed into existence in your line of sight, and it gets harder and harder to look back to your purpose until you finally forget what it actually is in the first place.” He looks to the stars. “Your eyes will reflect your worship, Kit. If his eyes reflected the stars, if they reflected you—he’s good. If they reflected the bead, you would have seen it. It would have been impossible for him to hide it.”
“So why did he—”
“The all-seeing Eye of Horus. You know the stories?”
She nodded. “Some.”
“Apophis probably found a way to use his eye and see into yours, to put him in a trance and take one final treasure, one final sacrifice. Remember, the gods and goddesses used to hunt for you.”
I nod, wringing my hands together. “You never hunted me.”
“Because my job was to protect your forest. To protect everything in it, humans, foxes, cows—”
“I’m better than a cow or human,” I grumble.
“Apologies.” He holds up his hands. “I just thought it would be good to discuss moving forward.”
I stop feeling sorry for myself for one instant. “What do you mean moving forward?”
He reaches for my hand and holds it tight. “It was me. I was your star.”
“What?” I can barely get the word out. “My star? You?”
“It’s why you wanted to touch me that first night. I was reborn, returned to you, the very little fox I watched and protected before I guarded the mountain before I fell. When I was sent to your mountain, I watched you more, but with each passing year, my star diminished more and more, not because of you but because of me. It made you feel more lonely; we felt each other’s emotions. It should have been a warning for you, but you had no family—all you had was Horus to protect you, so when I finally did fall into the Abyss, you had hope that one day the god of the sky would return. Why else do you think you fell for him? Your star was gone. But, you were given the whole sky.” He smiles at me sadly. “I would have wished that for you. I’m glad that was your future, Kit.” He reaches into his pocket and hands me a small piece of paper. “And now, we might have to journey together without the sky, but I promise, your star will never again choose to fall unless it’s for the greater good of the life you deserve.”
