CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GODHEAD
Mina wandered the dark and endless halls.
He wasn’t supposed to be in this part of the necropolis, but he didn’t care anymore.
Everything felt wrong. Sending Devon away.
Anubis hiding whatever he was hiding from him.
The control his father had over him. It wasn’t fair.
Anubis had helped him escape the chains he’d been putting on himself. Now it was Mina’s turn to help Anubis.
After about ten minutes, Mina found what he was looking for. The portrait of Osiris the professor had pointed out not long after the group had entered the temple. Mina’s thought was that if the portraits of Anubis had led him to Anubis, then the portraits of Osiris…
Mina stopped cold in his tracks. A familiar sound filled him with an instinctual dread. Voices. Ones he hadn’t heard in over a year. His group.
And then another realization came to him.
Mina was a completely different person. Not just in looks, but in every other way that mattered more.
He was truer to himself. Bolder and more sure.
And despite knowing that his new self would probably not be understood or accepted, there was a part of him, closer to the surface than he would have ever thought possible, that was excited to finally show it to the world.
It was a feeling that filled him with hope and joy and everything he knew he was always meant to feel in his old life, but that he could never manage to hold onto.
Mina couldn’t help but smirk as the relentlessly dry and pompous voice of Professor Cornelius bounced down the hall of the darkness ahead of him.
Still lecturing after three days lost in the tunnels?
Of course, Anubis did say he could manipulate not just time but perceptions.
Perhaps to them it had still only felt like a couple of hours.
“You can see here as we walk through toward the center of the structure, the artwork turns toward Osiris, god of the underworld. Not far are the mummification rooms. Perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to come across it as we search for…”
“Mina!” As the group came into view, one of the tallest of the students behind the professor caught sight of him, pointing.
Mina waved and smiled, steeling himself for the reactions and the questions.
Immediately, Mina felt all dozen eyes go up and down his body, taking in his minimal clothing, his oiled skin, his hair pulled up quickly into a half bun so that the rest of it fell in thick shaggy curls onto his shoulders.
“Mina?” said the professor with wide, unblinking eyes. “Is that you? What in God’s name are you… What’s this all about? Where did you go off to? And why are you dressed like a harem boy?”
Mina could sense more than one pair of eyes lingering on him and, having adopted some of Anubis’s sixth senses, caught a whiff of lustful desire in the air that sent a shudder of delight down his spine.
Followed almost immediately by a wave of sadness when he realized he’d once been one of them.
Sneaking glances. Hiding his true self as a matter of what had felt like life and death.
He had no interest in hiding himself anymore. And he had no plans to reinsert himself back into this old life. He had to find Osiris before it was too late.
“It’s hard to explain. I’ve been…studying, I guess? Yeah, studying. For my thesis. Anubis. Fascinating, truly. And hot. Sooo fucking hot.”
A chorus of gasps and stifled chuckles rippled through the group. Professor Cornelius’s face turned beet red as he stammered out a response. “Well, I…obviously you…I think we should…”
“I’m fine, professor. Thank you for looking for me. But you all should leave now. I’m not quite done with…my research.”
“Listen, young man, I think you’d better come with us. You’re not looking so good.”
“I really don’t have time for this, I need to...”
Before Mina could turn to walk away from the group, the professor let out an angry grunt and lunged for him, grabbing his wrist roughly and squeezing so hard Mina squeaked out a cry of pain.
“You’re delusional. Maybe your blood oxygen is low. We should get you to a hospital.”
“Let go of me.” Mina jerked his wrist, but the professor’s grip was iron.
That was when he heard a familiar voice push through the group.
“I knew you were going to be a pain.”
Devon.
Mina couldn’t help smirking devilishly at the boy he’d turned into a spent, come-soaked mess on the temple floor not long ago.
“I don’t know how you managed to shake me, but I knew I should have kept a closer eye on the loner. Why are you looking at me like that? Stop it.”
Mina’s face fell. Was Devon’s memory already gone?
“Devon, don’t you…” Mina started to say, reaching for Devon’s hand, but his classmate snatched it away before he could finish.
And then Mina remembered Anubis’s words.
“Will he remember?”
“He will not.”
Mina wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. But most of all, he wanted to be back in Anubis’s arms. To thank him for everything. To worship him. To mate with him, finally, and become his for as much time as they had left together. This had been a mistake. He needed to get back to Anubis.
“Professor, I need you to let me go now.”
“You’ll feel better once we get you out of here.”
“Let go,” Mina said more forcefully, though unable to keep the quake of fear out of his voice.
“Someone help me, he’s getting hysterical. The boy has obviously hit his head and suffered some kind of brain damage.”
Suddenly, there were hands all over him. Squeezing, pulling hands wanting to drag him from this place. Away from his Anubis. Away from his home.
“Let go!” he shouted. “Anubis, help!”
“Shh, it’s ok, we’re going to get you help,” said the professor. “Relax. Just relax.”
Mina’s bare heels dragged painfully along the hard stone ground as he was dragged down the hall. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. Where the hell was Anubis? Why wasn’t he coming?
And then, there was a rumble. Far below. So low that Mina felt it before the others, rising up through his toes.
Anubis. Finally. His god was coming for him. He only hoped he could convince him to just reset their memories and not massacre them all.
A wave of cold air blasted down the hallway, knocking the group off their feet.
Mina felt the dozen hands release him as a tangled mass of limbs and bodies tumbled and toppled over one another.
The room quaked with such violence that Mina looked around for signs that the ceiling was coming down or the walls closing in.
But there was only the deep, relentless quake.
The rope light that ran along the ceiling of the tunnel flickered once, twice, and finally blinked out.
And then everything went still.
“Everyone ok? Anyone hurt?” The professor’s voice rose above the rest, trying and failing to get the group under control as they all scrambled to untie themselves from the tangled mess.
And then, one by one, the group fell silent as something unnamable descended upon them. A dreamlike quality to the air. A complete stillness. A deathly cold. An overwhelming smell of something rotten. And then the long, slow, regular, and unmistakable whisper of a breath.
Towering above them, the sounds of ragged breathing. A glowing pair of red eyes, piercing through the darkness. Eyes that rose and fell in time with its slow breath.
“Anubis?” Mina’s voice was barely above a whisper.
A throaty rasp like a violent wind through dead branches came in reply. A waft of putrid air.
This was not Anubis.
This was someone…something else.
Mina rose to his feet, trembling worse than when the earthquake shook them all. Because if this was who he thought it was…
“Everyone, just shut up and let me do the talking,” he said.
“I hardly think…” started the professor.
“Professor Cornelius, if you want to keep all of your limbs attached to your body, I need you to shut the hell up right now.”
Mina heard the professor’s mouth open and close several times and finally snap shut with a huff.
“Osiris,” said Mina, as bravely and with as much volume as his tiny mortal voice could muster. He had faced a god before. And this was only Anubis’s father after all, right? Plenty of people had to be nervous meeting their boyfriend’s dad for the first time. This was no different than that. Right?
A bright golden glow emanated before him, around the shape of this new creature.
Though the ceiling of the tunnel was only slightly higher than the tallest student, probably a little over 6 feet, the god Osiris stood at least twenty feet high.
Somehow, the stones had grown insubstantial in his presence.
They were in a world of infinite darkness, and only the vaguest impression remained of the structure around them.
As the glow intensified, Osiris cut a terrifying shape in the darkness.
Whereas his son was full and muscular, Osiris, god of the underworld, was like a skeleton wrapped in old leather.
His skin was a pale green, and long yellow nails hung from the ends of his fingers, which themselves hung limp at the ends of his arms at his sides.
Tattered shreds of brown cloth clung here and there.
Mina might have thought him a reanimated corpse but for the firm set of his jaw and those very alive and very red, piercing eyes.
Mina stood his ground and steadied his voice. “Where is Anubis?”
“He has returned to the Duat,” the voice like dry leaves and cracking limbs replied. “He was unable to fulfill his duty, and so he will spend his days in isolation and despair.”
Despite the icy dread that the awful voice spread through his veins, Mina felt anger rise up. If Osiris was anything like his son, then the god would be able to sense it, and anger was the last thing he wanted to communicate. Mina tried to channel his feelings into determination and fearlessness.
“And us?” Mina replied. “What will you do with us?”
“I have no use for mortals. And I am tired of them. Before the day is out, I will lay waste this useless stone relic and everything inside. Be gone before you find stones upon your heads and souls ripped from your bodies without the shepherd to guide them.”
“Ok. Deal. The group will leave. Just turn back on the lights and they’ll go.”
In an instant, the warm light flickered on, and Osiris was gone. As if he’d been nothing more than a projected image, suddenly washed out with the flipping back on of the lights.
Mina turned to the group, who all looked a little like reanimated corpses themselves. The professor’s normally flustered red face was ghostly white as he quivered at the back of the group of students. Nothing but hot air, finally deflated.
“Go,” Mina said, pointing down the tunnel. “Follow the lights and don’t look back.”
“What in God’s name was that?” asked the professor. “What evil have you awoken in this place?”
“Not evil. Just something you don’t understand. And unfortunately, in your eyes, those two things are the same.”
“Now listen here, I have a master’s and two doctorates in…”
“Mythology. You’re an expert in one specific mythology, which you’ve convinced yourself is real.
Which is totally fine, but defining the rest of the world by your narrow worldview?
Forcing people to live in fear and silence for not ascribing to that view?
That’s the real definition of evil, professor.
You’re worse than any twenty-foot mummified god.
I’d take 100 of him over having to hear you talk for two more seconds.
Now get out of here before I call him back and have him rip you in half. ”
The professor huffed and pushed through the group of students and down the hall like Mina himself might morph into a terrifying deity. The rest of the group trailed behind, but Devon lingered, looking slowly back to Mina.
“Aren’t you coming?” he asked, a strange look in his eye like maybe all of this was starting to ring some distant bell.
Mina stepped toward his classmate, placing a hand on his shoulder. This time, Devon didn’t pull away.
“Goodbye, Devon. And good luck.”
Mina pressed a kiss to his cheek and turned, deeper into the tunnel. Devon was on his own journey now. And it looked like Mina’s wasn’t over yet.
He had no idea if Osiris would even hear him out, but he had to try.
Visions of lakes of fire and monstrous gods clouded his mind, but at the center of it all was Anubis. He had to bring him home.
Hell had been Mina’s deepest fear and source of all his childhood dread. And now he was marching straight for its gates.