“Curran?”
The Jackal nodded. “It is how I began, as a First. What is more impressive, a jackal or a lion? Which would you fear more? To whom would you offer your prayers?”
I blinked. “You’re afraid Curran will steal your godhood?”
“Afraid is a strong word. I fear nothing.” The Jackal laid his head on his front paws and twitched his ear.
“Except being forgotten,” I said.
“There is that.”
“And how does my body fit into your scheme? Wouldn’t you be changing gender?”
“I don’t care,” he said. “A god or a goddess, as long as I grow in power.”
“One small problem,” I told him. “For this plan to work, Apep has to resurrect, and we’ve got his scale.”
“The scale isn’t necessary to his resurrection.”
“What? So we’ve done all of this for nothing?”
The Jackal raised his head. “Of course not. The scale is his armor. Without it, he will be easier to kill. He will be softer.”
“Where? Where are they resurrecting him?”
The Jackal laughed under his breath.
I grabbed his ear and sank my nails into the flesh. “Where are they going to resurrect him? When?”
“I don’t know.” The Jackal whirled and bit me, taking half of my body into his huge mouth from the side. Teeth pierced my stomach and my back. “You’re the detective. Figure it out.”
The world snapped back at me in a rush of blinding pain, and I saw Doolittle’s eyes above a surgical mask. Agony gripped my arm. Raphael snarled, “She’s bleeding!”
“It will be fine,” Doolittle said, his voice calm and steady.
Some female shapeshifter I didn’t know pulled the sheet down from me. A curved row of bloody teeth marks gaped in my stomach.
“I’m good,” I ground out. “Keep going.”
Raphael took my hand in his. I squeezed it and watched the teeth marks knit themselves closed as Doolittle finished sawing through my bone.
Finally Doolittle finished. It didn’t hurt once the bone was cut, or at least it didn’t hurt too much. Roman sat on my bed for a while and told me funny jokes while everyone cleaned up.
Finally they all left. Darkness had fallen—I had asked for the lights to be turned off, and only moonlight remained. It spilled all around me and I felt completely and utterly alone.
I let out a long breath. It sounded more like a sob.
A shadow detached itself from the bathroom doorway and crossed the floor to me. His scent reached me first, that taunting, comforting, infuriating scent. Raphael knelt on my bed, resting one arm on the headboard, and leaned over me until our eyes were level. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing. What makes you think there is something going on with me?”
His blue eyes scrutinized me. “You came out of sedation with bite marks on your stomach and mud on your feet.”
“Many shapeshifters come out of sedation early.”
He shook his head. “This is Doolittle’s sedation we’re talking about. What’s going on?”
I clenched my teeth to keep the words from getting out.
“Andi, I’m right here. Look at me.” He leaned closer. “Look at me.”
Looking at him was a fatal mistake. The words made a break for it and I couldn’t keep them down any longer. I put my arms, the good one and the one in a cast, around him. My cheek brushed his, his skin against mine, and I kissed him. I kissed him with as much tenderness and love as I could, because one way or another I would lose him.
“He wants my body,” I whispered into Raphael’s ear. “He wants to use it instead of his, because I have better shapeshifter magic.”
His arms tightened around me.
“I have to volunteer.”
“And if you don’t?” he whispered.
“Bad things will happen.” I kissed him again, my arms gripping him. “I’ll fight him. I’ll fight him with everything I have, but if it comes to that, whatever I do once he takes me over, whatever I say, it’s not me.” I whispered, my voice so quiet, I wasn’t sure he heard it. “No matter what happens, I love you. You will always be my mate. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry we ran out of time.”
Raphael squeezed me, pressing me to him. “You listen to me.” His whisper was a fierce promise. “He won’t have you. We will kill him together. Trust me. I won’t let go.”
“You may have to,” I told him. “You have to promise me that if he gets my body, you will walk away, Raphael. You’ll go on, you’ll find someone to love, you’ll have children…”
“Shut up,” he told me.
“Promise me.”
“I’m not promising shit,” he said. “I would die before I lost you.”
“Raphael!”
“No.”
He slid in the bed next to me, holding me in his arms. His scent enveloped me, and I held on to him, until I fell asleep.
CHAPTER 15
In the morning I awoke alone in the hospital room. Doolittle delivered a huge breakfast to me and stood over me while I ate every last piece of scrambled eggs, sirloin tips, and pancakes. I gobbled it up and escaped the medical ward to go look for Roman.
I found the priest of the Evil God in a corner of the northern courtyard. It was one of those small outside spaces within the Keep, shielded by a tall wall and made to provide relative privacy. To get to it, I had to pass through the stone arch, cut in the bottom of a stocky tower, and midway to it, I heard high-pitched giggles.
The black volhv sat on a bench, surrounded by a gaggle of kids, and was making small things disappear from his hands and reappear behind their ears and in their hair. A female werejackal discreetly watched him from the wall. Visitors to the Keep were never left unsupervised, especially around children.
I leaned against the wall and watched the volhv, too. There was something so joyous about Roman. It was as if part of his life was so bleak and dark that he felt the need to live the rest of it to its fullest, squeezing every bit of fun and happiness out of it. Even his martyred, put-upon sighs had a slightly mocking quality about them, as if he only pretended to be upset.
Roman saw me. “Okay, that’s enough magic for today. Scatter now. Scatter, scatter, scatter.”
The kids took off. Roman spread his arms. “Can’t help it. I’m just popular.”
I smiled and sat by him on the bench. “I have a serious question.”
“I will give a serious answer.”
“Can a god be killed?”
The humor drained from Roman’s face. “Well, that depends on if you’re a pantheist or Marxist.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The first believes that divinity is the universe. The two are synonymous and nonexistent without each other. The second believes in anthropocentrism, seeing man in the center of the universe, and god as just an invention of human conscience. Of course, if you follow Nietzsche, you can kill God just by thinking about him.”
Ask a priest a question, get an enigmatic answer. Didn’t matter what religion…“Roman,” I said. “Can I kill Anubis?”
“I’m trying to answer. Anubis is a deity, a collection of specific concepts and beliefs. You can’t kill a concept, because to do so you must destroy every human being who is aware of it. Your best bet would be to identify everyone who entertained the idea of his existence and shoot them in the head.”
“So the answer is a no?”
Roman sighed. “I didn’t finish. You want simple answers to very complicated questions. The wrong questions. The question you should be asking isn’t whether a god can be killed, but what is Anubis. You must understand the nature of a thing before you can end its existence. In Anubis’s case, his divinity is partial. He requires a mortal form to survive the periods of technology. His mortal form is just that—mortal. You know its nature. You know where to cut and how you can break it. You can end Anubis’s mortal form. Will it end Anubis? There are no certainties in this world, but I would theorize that no, it will not. As long as there is a cult of Anubis, devoted to veneration of his specific concept with a specific image, he will continue. He will be reborn.”
“How quickly?” I asked.
“How quickly will he come back if you nuke him?” Roman frowned. “His grasp on his corporeal form is tenuous. The fact that he could be killed in itself is devastating to his divinity. People don’t like to believe in gods who can be murdered and remain dead; they much prefer to believe in rebirth. If I were him, I would’ve waited a couple hundred years before I decided to get my toes wet in this magic and technology mess. So the simple answer is, he will return. But not in my lifetime and likely not in that of our children or grandchildren. I would prepare anyway, because when he does come back, he’ll be pissed off.”
“So his mortal body can die?”
“Yes. It’s just a body. Unfortunately, it’s a body with huge magical potential. I don’t know what his reserves are, but he’ll use every drop of them to defend himself. He’s been very conservative with his shows of power so far, which probably means he’s hoarding it for this final battle with Apep in case we fail.”
If the mortal body was the most likely target, then fighting him in my dreams would be futile.
Roman patted my back. “Cheer up, deadly girl. Things have a way of working themselves out.”
Not this time. But I wouldn’t go meekly to the slaughter. No, I would fight him for the lives of the people I loved to the bitter end. Win or lose, Anapa would regret meeting me.
Raphael strode through the arch, followed by Ascanio. Raphael was in black jeans and a black T-shirt that complemented his hair and showed off his carved biceps. Ascanio had somehow managed to copy his outfit so precisely he looked like Raphael’s younger brother.