I heard them before seeing them—a storm of snarls, yips, and growls.

I’ll devour them all.

The door to my mother’s chambers flung open—untouched—in front of me. Jackals—countless numbers of them—tore muscle and flesh from my mother’s bones. They bickered and snarled over her carcass, like she was meat.

The ice inside me shattered. A vicious, barbed spell built up in a blinding surge and exploded outward. With no focus, no anchor point, it whirled around the room, sweeping through the demons it touched, sinking its claws deep into their souls, and ripping them into shreds from the spirit outward. The spell swelled, and I fed, taking them all in, their poisonous darkness filling me up.

I fell hard to my knees as the screams poured in, on and on, threatening to sever my soul. Heavier and heavier, they pushed down. So many and so much darkness. I could contain them. I had to. None would escape.

I doubled over and heard the sound of my own ragged cry until it twisted into a monstrous roar. And then it was over. Silence flooded the room, only interrupted by my tattered gasps.

The quiet was too thick, too heavy.

I smelled hot blood and ash, tasted the souls on my lips, and felt them burn deep inside.

Ammit was gone. If her soul had been here, I’d probably devoured it. I might never know, and it was too late to find out.

“Daquir,” I muttered, releasing the spellword, and watched the dancing embers eat up the remains of the demons and the only god who’d ever cared enough to guide me. She’d been my protector in a world filled with monsters, and she had been the biggest, most terrifying monster of all. Someone had gotten to her, someone she hadn’t seen coming.

Hours could have passed, or minutes, or no time at all. I knew I should move, that time would continue with or without me, but if I moved, I might break. That many souls… I’d taken them all. They strained and heaved and wrestled, but they were mine. Delight and ecstasy raced through my veins, lighting them on fire. I could do anything in that moment—raze buildings, move mountains, devour the sky—and I wanted to take it all and make it mine. I could. I dug my fingers into the marble floor. Cracks snapped outward, sounding like the gunfire from the mortal realm. New York. I had to go back. Chuck, Bast, even Shukra needed me.

Godkiller.

I pushed my body into motion, watching the shadows shudder in the corner of my eye. A broken laughter bubbled up my throat. I swallowed it down—for now.

With every step, flakes of ash stirred. Slowly, my thoughts pulled away from the stretching power and organized themselves around the present. The chamber was in chaos. Furniture was scattered and broken. Ammit had fought, but not as strongly as she could have. The jackals had come for her while she was weak and waiting to take her slumber.

I wandered through the room, absently righting furniture or kicking aside broken statue fragments.

“Soul Eater?” A serving boy stumbled inside the room. On seeing me, he froze.

“Inform Anubis that Ammit has been killed,” I said, voice cutting.

The boy hesitated. He couldn’t miss the ash, and being of Ammit’s house, he’d know what I’d done. He’d feel the pulsing magic broiling around me and taste it on his tongue.

“S-sire?” he stammered.

Anubis wouldn’t react well to the news. The boy was afraid, with good reason.

I picked up a small box from where it had fallen near her bed. Hieroglyphs of my mother’s name ran along its edges, coupled with a symbol I didn’t recognize—that of an animal with the body of a jackal and the head of a snake. Gems glittered at its corners. The artwork was precise, and old, before my time. The box was important. I knew every item of Ammit’s, every hiding place, every sacred token, but not this.

I gave the lid a twist. It didn’t move. I tried again, failing to crack the seal.

“Sire, I—”

I launched the box across the room. It bounced off the wall and skidded across the floor in front of the trembling kid.

“Go or by the damned I’ll sunder your soul where you stand!” A compulsion whipped out with the words.

The boy’s whole body jerked upright, out of his control, and then he was gone, sandals slapping on the hallway until the silence devoured that noise too.

I stared at the empty doorway and listened to the dark things inside me scream.

Whispers crept into the chamber. Liar. Thief, they hissed. Then I heard laughter, twisted and malicious. Madness. The laughter was mine.

Too many souls.

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Too much darkness.

Too heavy.

I couldn’t stay here in that room. If I did, I’d never leave. Already part of me wanted to stay and take up the mantle again. It was mine, wasn’t it? I’d judge them all and find them damned.

Liar. Thief, the whispers proclaimed. They’d be silenced once I devoured them all.

The laughter cracked and fell away.

I placed one foot in front of the other. That was how all journeys started, no matter their destination. One step and then another. Simple, really. One step. Two. Three. Faster.

No, I couldn’t stay. A world away, people needed me. But more than that, if I stayed, I’d fall, and this time, there would be nothing left of my soul worth saving.

I picked up the little box and left. I paid the ferryman with Osiris’s final coin. He didn’t speak, and neither did I.

The oars stroked through the river of souls, swift and silent.

* * *

By the time I returned to New York, another day had passed.

My apartment greeted me with its typical New York somber ambiance. Scaffolding had clad the building for weeks. Boards and poles blocked the light. Considering some of my more sensitive activities, I had kept the blinds closed. I stepped into the cold and the dark, not bothering with the lights.

“Poison” started playing from my cell the second I got in. I switched it off, found the vodka bottle and a glass, and slumped in the chair by the bed.

I’d witnessed horrors, I’d been on the receiving end, and I’d been the perpetrator. It took a lot to break me down. The last few days had ground all the fight right out of me—that and the slippery wave of souls rippling under my skin.

The sounds of traffic lulled my already numbed mind. The alcohol did the rest.

Maybe I should have stayed in the underworld. Anubis was difficult to speak with, but he might have known something. As it was, all I’d done was arrive too late to stop my mother’s slaughter and run.

I swallowed a deep gulp of vodka.

I’d made a deal to kill Thoth, for nothing.

“Great job, Ace.” I lifted the glass in salute. “This is why we don’t work for gods.” I took a drink, letting it burn all the way down to the heat inside my soul.

Give me stupid rich kids any day. They were so much easier to frighten.

I should have been trying to think around what was going on, but really, I couldn’t think at all. Too many black souls whirled inside. I’d swallowed down a storm. I could probably threaten Osiris with all the juice I’d absorbed. I’d fail though. I always did.

A few knocks at my door punctured my thoughts. I waited, in the dark, in the quiet. Shu wouldn’t knock. She would have kicked the door in. Whoever it was would go away.

“I know you’re back.”

Bast. I smiled a bitter, hollow smile, and rolled the cool glass against my cheek. She wouldn’t leave. Gods didn’t know when to quit.

“Come on in.”

She clicked the door closed behind her and strode over, stopping a few feet away to cross her arms and frown at me. “Why are you wearing a suit? I thought it was all robes and jewelry back home?”

“There was a party. Didn’t yah hear?” I slurred.

Her frown darkened. She snatched my bottle away. “This isn’t like you.”

“Clearly this is exactly like me. Who else would I be like? Give that back.”

She looked at the bottle and then at me. “Your eyes are dark.”

“Yes, they are, so give me the vodka back and leave me stewing in the souls of the damned.”

“How many?”

“I lost count.”

“Why?”

I finished off the vodka in my glass and leaned my forehead against it. “Ammit is dead. I got there too late. I…lashed out.”

Between one long blink and the next, Bast disappeared, but I heard her rattling around my kitchen. When she returned, she poured me a fresh glass, filled hers, and then sat on the bed. Her knee brushed against mine. I expected her to flinch away, but she didn’t. She had to feel the darkness I’d gorged on. How could she stand to look at me, to touch me?

“Anubis will be furious,” she said, tasting her vodka and scowling into her glass.

“That’s nothing new.” I slumped lower in my chair and closed my eyes. “I’m tired.”

She knew I didn’t mean physically tired, but soul tired. It was a whole other exhaustion, an all-consuming tiredness that ate me up from the spirit out.

“You’re too young to be tired. You’re grieving.”

“Grieving?” The insane laughter was back, but this time I confined it to my thoughts. “She kicked me out, Bast. She gave me—my life, my soul, all of me—to Osiris to do with as he saw fit. She knew exactly what she was doing.” Maybe she’d hated me all along—the liar, the soul thief. “There was no love lost between Ammit and I.”

She stayed quiet, probably because she knew the truth: I’d deserved it.

“Don’t do this to yourself.”

“I’m not doing anything. It’s everyone else screwing with me.”

“You’re not the same. I was wrong.”

She hadn’t seen the smile on my face when I’d consumed the soul of the demon that had attacked Chuck. She hadn’t heard me laugh after I’d gorged myself on jackals. And she didn’t know how I’d drunk the blood of an innocent with Osiris and Isis looking on. I hadn’t changed. If anything, I was worse for pretending I could change. Osiris knew that and probably always had.

She settled her hand on my arm, drawing my eye. “I’m sorry about Ammit, I am, but I need you, and not like this.”

What did she expect from me? I couldn’t save people. That wasn’t me. I condemned them.

She looked at me with hope, and that was even more crippling than if her dark eyes had accused me. I didn’t deserve her hope.

She moved her hand away, but I caught it and turned it over, marveling at how smooth her touch was. She briefly looked into my eyes, despite knowing what resided there.

“Don’t go.” I hated how I sounded. I’d been the one to leave her, but I couldn’t be alone. I didn’t want to be tired and alone, listening to the whispers condemn and the souls accuse.

“Ace…”

Lifting her hand, I lightly kissed the backs of her fingers. She would turn me away, and so she should. A muscle fluttered in her cheek, her teeth gritting. We were thinking the same thing, how this was a terrible idea.

I set my glass down on the side table and pushed from my chair. Slipping a hand into her hair, I kissed her before she could tell me to stop. A gentle taste—something to keep me from the dark. When she opened up to me, I welcomed her and deepened the kiss, caught by a raw and sudden urgency to lose myself in the feel of her.

Her fingers made quick work of my shirt buttons. Her bold hands pulled me closer. Her nails scraped my back, and then it all became a rush of hungry touches and breathless pleas. I’d missed her, more than I’d ever let on to anyone, including myself. I’d let her go and pushed her away because I’d seen her soul, and it was light. So light and so good. I hadn’t expected that.

Light and dark. The dark in me would have destroyed the light in her.

But after all that had happened, I needed her with me. It was selfish, and I knew that too. I needed a little light before the dark swallowed me down for good.

I really hadn’t changed at all.