Sett and his King (Demon Gods #3)

5. Sett

Sett

H ow?

How had Horus cheated death?

Ani should have known. He would have sensed it. But he was there when we defeated him and he had confirmed Horus had died.

And yet…he was back.

He was still alive and back to his old games. And poor Drew was suffering as a result. Before long, his brother would too.

Was there no end to my brother's twisted appetite?

Drew stood and looked at me.

"Let's go," he said and offered me his hand as if we were friends. Equals.

My heart ached. It had been so long since I'd been treated as such. If Ani were here he'd find the act insolent. It probably was. Yet, I didn't find it in me to care.

I raised this foreign hand of mine and his fingers wound tightly around it. When he held me like that, when his body heat was so directly linked with mine, it felt as if I could follow him anywhere but I knew that was ludicrous.

We fled the witch's quarters out into the streets. The chilly drafts crawled all over my skin making me feel more awake than ever, lighting up this body I possessed to the very core.

I should be furious for this intrusion. For being summoned into this realm, the House of Geb, without my permission. For being shoved into a different body, forcing my old one to perish. The body that had belonged to him. The body he had touched so many times. The body he had loved like it was something holy. A part of me was furious.

But the other part, the bigger part, was glad I had another chance at killing my brother all over again. This time I'd make sure I succeeded. I'd make sure he paid for his crimes and ceased to exist once and for all.

It wasn't before I managed to take a couple of steps when noise blasted at me from every direction. People milled around us dressed in strange clothes and yet stared at me as if I was the weird one.

Metal contraptions passed by with flashing lights, people who talked to themselves or into small stones. Tall buildings that looked busy and all too wrong. It was a foreign world. Nothing like I remember from five thousand years ago. And yet the gaps in my knowledge filled in little by little, second by second, as the body I possessed and its lingering spirit merged with my own becoming one.

Soon, my own soul would snuff out anything human in me, but not before the knowledge I needed to adjust assimilated with my own.

"Shoot," Drew said, glancing at the curious people around us and turned into a side, less busy, street. "I'll get you some clothes when we get home. I can't have you walk around like that. We'll draw attention."

I glanced down at my furry robe and raised an eyebrow.

"There's nothing wrong with my attire, is there?"

Before Drew could answer, the human consciousness in my head gave me the answer.

Words like creep, demented, caveman floated in my brain and I fixed the robe tighter around me. The people of Geb had turned very judgmental.

"Here. Follow me." Drew turned into another, even quieter street and stopped in front of a red wooden door and slid a key into the keyhole.

The door opened into a small hallway. There was a staircase at the other end leading to another hallway but as he shut the door behind us I observed the countless family paintings on the walls.

They were so lifelike, even the ones in black and white. I'd never seen anything like it. Such raw talent for painting likenesses.

Photographs.

They were photographs.

"My family over the centuries," Drew said, noticing my amazement. "There. That's us." He pointed to a portrait by the stairs and I leaned in to find a much younger Drew, a shorter boy I assumed was Gene standing in front of a happy, smiling couple.

"You've got a great family," I said as a pang made my heart skip a beat.

We used to be like that. Ra, Ani and I. Before Horus had destroyed our family.

"Had," Drew reminded me and climbed the stairs.

I nodded with a sadness that probably matched his own and followed behind him but when I reached the top, I found myself into a bedroom.

"Huh?" I looked around me.

The staircase behind me had disappeared, replaced by a door that led to a hallway with more pictures on the walls. And a shotgun that should look out of place but didn’t for some strange reason. Maybe it had something to do with how historic the house looked. Although, the bedroom we were in was anything but. The walls were painted a light pink and there was a large bed in the middle. However the space next to it was even larger. A whole wall full of cupboards brimming with clothes.

A wardrobe.

"How did that happen?" I asked.

"I'm sorry. The house has a mind of its own. It probably sensed we needed to get you a change of clothes," Drew said and brushed his hands over the clothes hanging in the large wardrobe.

A mind of its own?

Now that I didn't need my human consciousness to teach me. I knew of them very well.

"You have a stēgi!"

Drew turned around, shock written across his face.

"You know about stēges?"

I chuckled. "Of course. They used to be commonplace in Greece back in my time. Even some of my people used to have them. But…are you Greek?"

Stēges had been an essential part of any Greek witch. Living, breathing houses that always provided shelter and protection for their owners. They were envied across Geb but the only way to inherit one was by lineage alone. Which was how some of my people had come to inherit stēges. By marrying Greek witches.

"I am." Drew frowned. "Don't I look it?"

I shrugged. "I don't know how things have changed since my time. But Drew isn't a Greek name. And neither is Gene."

Drew rolled his eyes with a laugh. "Yeah well, my actual name is Andreas. Which is anglicized to Andrew. But I hate it. So Drew it is. And as for Gene, his name is Evgenios. Or Eugene, in English."

I sighed.

"Why would you change your name when you have such a beautiful one to start with? Both of you."

"Thanks," he said, biting his lip but not bothering to answer my question.

Instead, he turned his back to me and started going through the clothes before him. He picked up a few articles which he spread over the bed before he looked at me.

"The house has gone all out for you. I've never seen these clothes before," he said.

I walked around the bed and stood next to him looking at the garments spread before me and feeling the energy emanating from Andreas crackling in the air like log fire.

"What strange fabrics." I ran my hand over a few of them. Some of them were rough, some of them stretchy and others very soft. There didn't seem to be any consistency but the more I explored, the more I liked the feel of some of them against my skin.

I lifted one that was both flexible and delicate. It was thin and light.

"Ah. A tank top. They're very comfortable. Very casual. People wear them to exercise or to chill out at home."

I raised an eyebrow at Andreas and he smiled.

It was a beautiful smile. Genuine and tender. It made my heart skip a beat.

"It's usually worn with sweatpants." He lifted a pair of cotton trousers in the air and passed them to me.

I pushed the fur coat back and started getting dressed when Andreas gasped.

"Oh…uhm…you might want to put underwear on before…"

He avoided not only my gaze, but all of my body and I smirked. Was he being shy? Or...

Respectful.

Hm...

Apparently humans had also turned into prudes about naked bodies. How intriguing. It hadn't seemed to bother him back at the witch's cave.

"Underwear? What on Geb are those?"

He opened a drawer and pulled out a tiny piece of fabric and presented it to me while staring at the wall next to him.

Those were the weirdest garments I'd seen and despite understanding what they were thanks to the human's consciousness in my head, it still made no sense why anyone would want to restrict their genitals to such a degree.

Even after putting them on I couldn’t understand. They were uncomfortable. There was no space to move or breathe or touch myself.

But if constricting myself made Andreas more at ease around me than that was what I'd do.

"Better?" I asked when I was all dressed.

He turned to look at me, his head barely moving when he nodded. "Are you hungry? Let…let me show you around." He moved toward the door and I followed with a smirk but when he opened it we found ourselves into another bedroom. This one had no wardrobe. Just a bed and bedside tables and very dim lighting.

"Agh. Stop it," he mumbled under his breath and came out of the door again.

We found ourselves into a hallway and Andreas seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

"I would love to give you a tour of the house, but Spiti likes to rearrange everything so I doubt it'll be helpful. This is usually the way to the kitchen," he said and ushered me in through an arched opening at the end of the corridor.

Only it didn't lead to the kitchen.

It led to a bedroom yet again. This time the bed was twice the size of any bedroom I'd ever seen. It was also even dimmer than before.

Andreas huffed.

I couldn't help but stare at the back of his head and chuckle.

Either the stēgi had a very lewd personality, or it knew what Andreas was thinking and wanted to please him.

Did that mean Andreas found me attractive? That he wanted to be with me? And why did the thought make me hard?

The only thing that made me hard was the thought and memory of my husband. No one else.

"We need food. You hear me? Food!" Andreas gritted his teeth, staring at the ceiling before he marched right out of the room and back into the hallway.

He stood by the arch and I took my place next to him. The kitchen was clearly there, past the arc, a very modern-looking room with yellow and silver tones that reminded more of a blacksmith’s workshop than anything.

"Thank you," Andreas mouthed and we crossed under the arch again.

Only to walk into a bedroom once again. This time it was pitch-black. There was only one bed. A large bed that stretched from side to side. The only light came from a red light on the wall that spelled SEX .

Neon lights. The word came to my head along with the context and it took everything in me not to laugh.

"Something you'd like to tell me, Andreas?" I turned and smirked at him.

"Screw this. I'm not hungry anymore." He shouted and spun around. "If you want to be a child, be a child."

We came out of the room and into…the kitchen. Despite reaching our destination, Andreas growled and collapsed onto the nearest chair.

"I hate you sometimes," he mumbled.

"I hope you don't feel embarrassed. Stēges can be feral spirits sometimes."

Andreas scoffed. "Embarrassed? Me? Why would I be embarrassed? I've got nothing to be embarrassed about. Other than my house being a dick!"

He shouted the last part at the ceiling, as if that was where he imagined the face of his home's spirit being.

It was quite endearing. Back in my time, stēges were revered and respected regardless of their attitude. It was bizarre and funny seeing how Andreas interacted with his.

"It's okay," I said. "If you're attracted to me. It's only natural."

Andreas whipped his head toward me so fast it gave me whiplash. "Excuse me? You think highly of yourself, don't you?"

"Well…I'm used to being admired. I am a god. It comes with the territory. But my heart belongs to someone else."

Andreas huffed and rolled his eyes. "Trust me, mister. I don't care who your heart belongs to. I'm not interested."

He got off his chair and approached a long cupboard and pulled a pot out of the…the fridge. Then he proceeded to divide some sort of stew equally between two plates and warmed them up in the…microwave.

There were so many names for things in this day and age it was giving me a headache. I had no idea how I'd know what half the things Andreas was doing or using were if it weren't for the lingering human consciousness inside the body I possessed.

"There," he said after the food was warm and as I got busy eating, he served me iced water and a glass of red wine.

"A man after my own heart," I said, trying to lighten the mood, but it had almost the opposite effect.

"Listen, Sett! I have no interest in being another god's…plaything. Okay? I just need your help to save my brother and that's it. Now can we eat so we can go out there and find this scarab?"

I nodded and watched him eat his food while I tried to put myself in the young man's shoes. After all, I'd been in his shoes once upon a time. I'd been my brother's plaything and target practice. I'd been his prisoner like Andreas was now. I couldn't blame him for feeling like this. For thinking we were all the same if that was his only interaction with a god. But it still hurt. And I didn't know why I cared.

All I cared about was bringing my brother to an end. Nothing else mattered or would ever matter to me. Not even handsome Greek witches who could definitely steal my heart if I wasn't still in love with my late husband.

"Andrea? * *! You're home. And you've got company," said an old woman stepping into the kitchen.

* ? Pronounced An- dre -a with the emphasis on dre. Male names in Greek usually end in -s. They usually drop the -s in the vocative declesion (if this is too linguistic for you—trust me it is for me too—just think of it as this: If someone’s calling someone’s name, the -s is dropped. I wanted to use some authenticity in the manuscript, especially since Yaya is Greek through and through. Hence why Yaya calls Andreas “Andrea” when she’s talking to him. If she was talking about him, she would address him as Andreas. There’s your Greek lesson for the day. lol