CHAPTER TWELVE #2
It was the night before his first day at seminary.
Mina’s half-hearted attempt to get God’s attention.
He’d stolen a bottle of his mother’s wine that she saved for holidays and guests.
He knew she would never miss it. It was his first time drunk.
The pocket knife his father had given him as a baptism gift when he was twelve was just sitting there on the corner of his desk. It had felt like a sign.
It hadn’t been a big deal, really. He’d bandaged himself up, thrown away his blood-soaked jeans, and told himself he was fine.
If he’d really wanted to end things, he would have.
Surely everyone found themselves in a moment like that at some point in their lives.
Things would be better once he started seminary, he’d told himself.
Everything would be different. He would be different.
“When you drew this cut into your skin, you brought your soul to a precipice. To the shores of the underworld. It was there, lapping at your toes.”
“I didn’t really want to die.” Mina wasn’t sure if that was true.
“You were still there, Mina. On that edge. Maybe one day you would have taken that final step. Maybe not. But when you stepped into this temple, the underworld remembered your soul. The taste of it. The smell of it. It called to you. It brought you to me.”
“And then you saved me.”
“No, Mina. I merely showed you the abyss. Reminded you that it didn’t have to be your future. That all you had to do was turn around and make it your past. So I stood behind you, held out my hand, and hoped you would take it.”
“But still, you knew. You knew that even after all of that, I would still be dragged to the underworld by your father.”
“My job is to do what I can to ready the souls in my care before I lead them through the underworld where my father weighs their hearts. If they are a worthy soul, they are brought into paradise. If not, they are cast into the abyss. Some require a little help. Like you. Three days I am given. But you were different, Mina. I could not part with you. And now the time has passed, and my failure to deliver a soul has been noticed. My father, Osiris, requires that either I shepherd you to the underworld or else…” Anubis paused, reaching up to the gold scarab around his neck and thumbing it nervously.
“It doesn’t matter. I will not bring you.
I cannot. You have so much life to live, my kianga.
So much still to experience. And so, one day, we will have to part.
I will have to send you back to your world. ”
As Anubis spoke, slowly taking his human form, Mina took his god’s hands in his.
It wasn’t possible that this was about to end.
Surely Anubis would find a way. He was a god.
He’d managed to stretch three days into a year.
His magic would find a way to give them more time.
But the pain on Anubis’s face made Mina sick with dread.
To a god who lived forever, a human life must feel as temporary and impossible to contain as a wisp of cloud in a jar.
“You showed me the way back from my own personal abyss. I’m not going to let you fall into yours.
” Mina stared into Anubis’s blazing red eyes.
“Nothing is forever, Anu. But that doesn’t mean that just because something isn’t forever, it’s not worth having while you can.
We have now. Are you going to keep denying yourself the gift of now?
” Mina stepped forward, sliding his hands around Anubis’s hips.
“No, my kianga. My beloved.” Anubis’s human eyes blazed. “I will never deny you. Never again.”
Anubis took Mina’s face in his hands and kissed him with a passion the god had never shown before.
Full of love and desperation. Anguish and despair.
It was hard and sweet, wild and sour. Anubis’s tongue searched ferociously for Mina’s, tears soaking into both of their mouths.
Anubis reached around, grabbing a fistful of Mina’s shendyt and ripping it from his body before doing the same to his own.
Mina felt Anubis’s cock explode forward and press down half the length of his leg.
Mina caged Anubis’s head in his hands, his fingers catching briefly on the golden rings that looped through the god’s ears.
Mina couldn’t pull him close enough. Taste him fully enough.
He threw his body up into Anubis’s arms, and the god caught him, rolling their coiled and tangled bodies onto the bed as Anubis climbed on top of Mina.
“It is true,” said Anubis, breathless into Mina’s open mouth. “We may not have forever. But you will be mine for whatever time we do have.” Anubis’s teeth found the tender flesh above Mina’s thrumming jugular. “Tonight, I claim you.”
Mina whimpered, throwing his head back over the side of the bed, eyes rolling momentarily across the dark corner behind the green statue. Suddenly, he remembered who was still there, hiding in the shadows.
And then there was a shift. A growl, low and dangerous, rose above him. Mina looked up, and his stomach sank. Anubis was not looking at him. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the figure, hidden in perfect darkness, that had underestimated the eyesight of a jackal—the intuition of a god.
The green fire blazed brighter, lighting up the room.
There, barely visible behind the statue, was Devon’s soft outline. His pants unbuttoned. His hands rubbing. Stroking. Watching. Mina’s breath caught in his throat as he felt Anubis’s teeth release.
If Mina hadn’t been terrified he was about to see his classmate be devoured on the spot, he would have had to laugh at the sight of Devon’s deer-in-the-headlights face as he slowly removed his hands from inside his unzipped seminary khakis.
“Um. Mina?” he said, his eyes growing wider. Without having to look, Mina knew what was happening. He could hear the stretching of bone and skin. He could feel Anubis growing heavy above him, the bed creaking under his increasing weight.
Mina looked up at the form of the jackal hovering. Snarling.
“Anu, it’s fine. It’s ok.” Mina reached up, placing a hand on the jackal god’s neck, hard and hot as iron and thick as a small tree trunk. “He’s just one of my classmates who got separated from the group.”
“It seems the temple has delivered a replacement soul,” Anubis growled.
“Mina…” Devon’s voice shook.
“Before I drag you to the underworld, I will remove each limb from your body. Deceased souls are easier to manage than attached ones.”
A strangled sound came out of his classmate.
“It’s ok, Devon.” Mina stroked Anubis’s neck, ran a hand up his jaw to his ear, rubbing the point between his finger and thumb, staring at the god, willing him to look down. “Anubis won’t do that, because he knows it’s not what I want. Right, Anu?”
Finally, the low growl subsided, and Anubis looked down.
“You are ok with this mortal interrupting our mating?”
Mina cleared his throat. “Um. Well. No. But that doesn’t mean you need to tear him limb from limb. He’s a student like me. And he’s obviously like me in other ways too,” Mina said, as the sound of Devon pulling up his zipper echoed through the room.
“Sorry,” Devon said sheepishly, staring down at his shoes.
“You remember what a mess I was when you found me. People like us, we’re lucky if we get a chance to find and accept who we really are.
Whether by accident or not, Devon showed a true part of himself to someone else today.
And now he doesn’t have to shoulder that burden alone. This is a good thing, Anu.”
Anubis’s eyes softened. A wolfish smile pulled at the edges of his mouth. “Your heart is remarkable, Mina. My kianga. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Anu. Now, maybe we should figure out what to do with Devon that doesn’t involve ripping his arms off and throwing him into the abyss.”
“That sounds awesome,” Devon said, stepping out from the shadows. A tentative smile hung on his lips, but his tanned face was flushed as he wrung his hands like he’d had too much coffee.
Anubis and Mina climbed down from the bed and walked over to Devon.
“So,” said Devon, “I obviously have a lot of questions like, Who is that? And what the hell? And what were you two about to do? And what the hell?”
“It’s ok, Devon.” Mina reached out, taking Devon’s hands in his to stop their endless wringing.
Devon looked at the floor. “Did you mean it?” His hands twitched in Mina’s. “About…you know…me? And not being alone…or whatever?”
“Yeah, Devon. I meant it.”
“Because I’ve been kind of a jerk to you. I don’t know why. I guess I’ve always known that I’d never be able to fully accept this side of myself. And I’ve always guessed that you were like this, too. And maybe I thought you were more accepting of yourself somehow, and that made me feel jealous.”
Mina snorted. “You jealous of me? You’re joking…”
“Mina.” Devon dropped his chin to his chest, leveling his eyes at Mina with one quirked eyebrow. “You’re so goddam hot. And you ooze sexuality. You can’t tell me you don’t know that.”
Mina felt his own cheeks blaze. “Yeah, um. No.”
“The way you bend over in your desk when you go to get something from your bag. The way you look at other guys like you want to swallow them whole. There’s just this palpable heat that comes off of you sometimes, and it makes me crazy.”
Devon looked down, clearly embarrassed at the admission, and as he did, his eyes went as wide as saucers before looking away again.
Mina thought for a minute he’d made a face or done something wrong, but then he realized what had embarrassed Devon.
He was still completely naked from Anubis having ripped off his shendyt.
And he was fully erect. Mina’s own eyes grew wide at the sight. Has my cock gotten bigger?
Mina looked at Anubis, who was grinning stupidly from ear to ear. I love gods, Mina thought.
“So,” Mina said, heat rising up in his chest. “You guessed this thing about me. I had no idea about you. That means you hid it pretty well.”
“I guess so,” Devon said, still pointedly looking away from both Mina and his engorged cock, which indeed felt like an entity all to itself. It had grown to almost match Anubis’s in size and girth. Ten inches long and at least three wide.
“That’s not good. It means your heart is fractured.” Mina pulled his shoulders back and cocked his head. “You’re not living your truest self.” Mina glanced again back at Anubis who nodded slowly. “We’re going to have to do something about that.”
Devon’s eyes moved slowly back to Mina’s, darted down to his cock, bulged briefly, then back to Mina. “What do you mean?” he asked, an undeniable shake in his voice. An unmistakable thrill rising through him. And a very obvious boner pushing itself against his khakis.
Mina fluttered his eyes closed. Electricity filled the air, static and the smell of ozone before a lightning strike. He opened his eyes and continued, his voice dark and husky, “I sense you know what I mean.”
With Devon’s hands still clutched in his, Mina turned and pulled his classmate toward the doorway at the end of the room leading to the mummification chamber. But before they stepped through, Anubis snagged Mina’s arm, pulling him aside.
“Go ahead in,” Mina said, gently pushing Devon through the doorway.
Anubis smiled down at Mina once the two were alone. “I sense something new rising up inside you.”
“So do I,” said Mina, though he couldn’t say exactly what it was. It felt big. Like he’d been kneeling all his life, and now he was standing. He felt bigger. Braver. Truer somehow.
Anubis stepped away for a moment before coming back with a new shendyt, black this time, like Anubis’s, which he fastened to Mina’s thin hips and which barely covered Mina’s enormous cock that hung thick and fat between his legs.
“Yeah, are we going to talk about whatever unholy magic you worked down there?”
“Nothing wrong with yours just the way it was. I just sensed that, for the task at hand, an upgrade might be enjoyable.”
“I mean, I’m not complaining,” Mina said, dancing his hips from side to side as his new tool slapped against his oiled thighs.
“Here,” said Anubis. “Let’s complete your new look.”
To Mina’s lean biceps, Anubis clamped two golden cuffs.
In an X across his chest and back, a black leather harness, woven with gold.
From the mantle over the fire, he pulled down a small jar with a brush sticking out from the top and proceeded to paint dark lines along both of Mina’s eyelids, ending in a long line at each outer corner so that his eyes mirrored the dark and severe look of countless depictions of Egyptian royalty.
On his head, nestled in the wild curls, Anubis placed a delicate crown of gold, and around his neck, a golden chain with a black stone scarab resting against the middle of his chest.
“There,” Anubis said, smiling. “Now, you look like a god. And, I have to admit, I really, really want to fuck you.”
“Patience,” Mina said, with a cheeky wink.
Before Mina stepped into the mummification room, Anubis pressed the cold metal handle of the flail into his hands.
“Just in case,” he smirked.