Chapter Twenty-Four
TALIK
Talik kneeled next to Khalida, careful not to touch her. She held on to her knees, rocking slightly back and forth, her body hunched over as her breaths came out ragged.
Pain and guilt covered her scent. It hit him hard, making him scramble backward. Memories he had tried to forget were hurtling back to the forefront, forcing him to re-evaluate his old decisions. Nothing mattered.
He couldn’t change the past, no matter how much he wanted to.
“They used Sidra,” Khalida whispered.
Every word was like a knife to his chest, one that twisted deeper with each passing second.
Talik closed his eyes as he let her anguish roll over him, let it become his.
A part of him sighed in relief. Khalida knew it hadn’t been real.
But that hadn’t stopped her from trying to grasp onto the memory.
Hadn’t stopped her from running through the catacombs until she was isolated.
Alone, just like she had been five hundred years ago. The grief would forever be below the surface, entwined with who Khalida was today. Just like it would forever be a part of him. Talik pushed down the dark thoughts that crawled from the edges of his mind. They were never far away.
“Khalida.” He reached out to touch her but stopped himself before he made contact, quickly withdrawing before she noticed.
He had lost that privilege a long time ago.
He wanted to give her the time to mourn, but time was something they didn’t have.
They were no longer alone. “It was the Anki manipulating you.”
Khalida’s head snapped up. Her eyes glowed with fury. They appeared neon in the darkness. She stood and shook herself before she slowly drew the sword. “You heard it as well?”
Talik nodded. But unlike Khalida, he’d immediately known it wasn’t their daughter. Winding back time and rewriting history was not something even the ancient gods could do, no matter what their whispered promises alluded to. “Yes.”
Her yellow eyes filled with agonizing pain.
She pieced herself together, one emotion at a time, and like a switch, she was back to the Atlantean he was used to seeing.
The Khalida in front of him was now an impeccable soldier, who would do anything to execute her mission.
Not the grieving mother, who had believed for a moment that Sidra was alive.
She looked at him slowly, likely trying to see if any part of his armor had been as affected as hers. He shook his head. He couldn’t let her see the damage, not without hurting her again.
She stared into the darkness, a glint of ice in her gaze. “Promise me I get to kill Ninhursag.”
Talik blinked, his mouth suddenly dry. “She is a god.”
“Not to me.”
***
TALIK
“That is the third time we have passed the carving.” Talik pointed out. He was tiring of the senseless walking. It had only been thirty minutes since their “discovery,” but it felt like hours. “And the second fresh apple core we have found.”
He took a breath and counted to five. The air was still musty and stale, and they were no closer to finding their way out. He had thought Dante had exaggerated how he and Idris had gotten lost, but now it was clear it had been undersold.
Tapping his watch, the bright screen flashed. According to it, they still had comms with the surface. He didn’t believe it. They had heard nothing for the last hour. Not even static.
“What does your watch say the time is?”
Khalida turned her wrist. Talik shook his head. “The analog one.”
“We have been in the catacombs for just over three hours, give or take a few extra minutes.”
His stomach panged, the edge of hunger biting into him.
As if he hadn’t eaten anything in more than twenty-four hours.
Something wasn’t quite right. It hadn’t been that long since Khalida had commented about how far they had come, but there was something off.
And it was just not that they were walking in circles but stopping meant that they were giving up.
They needed to find a hint or a clue as to how to break the cycle and actually return to their original path before whoever was fucking with them got tired and stopped playing with them.
Khalida had yet to lose the perfect soldier facade, instead she wore her rage like armor. He knew more than most how much the pretense cost her, and he did not dare challenge her. In this mood, he was likely to get stabbed.
Khalida pushed the core away with her sword, a scowl on her face. “I don’t think the wayfarers or gods eat apples.”
“Neither do I.”
It meant that someone else was down there with them.
“Can you find a scent on it?” Khalida asked as she rolled the core toward him.
Talik lowered himself to the ground and closed his eyes. He sniffed the air near the core and instantly sighed. After the day they’d had, they should have earned some points or a minor win at the very least. But lady luck was not on their side. “No. There is a distinct absence of a scent.”
“Familiar?”
“You also, unfortunately, got acquainted with him last week,” Talik answered. Out of all the people, both human and Atlantean, there was only one who could cover their scent like this. “Lucien.”
Her scowl deepened. “Are you positive?”
He stood, putting his hands in his pockets, and kicked the core to the closest wall. “Yes.”
The bastard was watching them. Lucien was someone who could help them find a way out. But he was clearly not that way inclined.
“Prickly bastard is probably playing both sides,” Talik mused, loud enough that his words echoed through the tunnel.
Let Lucien hear him, and then maybe they’d have a chance of convincing him to help them.
Or at the very least, Khalida could vent some of her frustration out on Lucien and test how well his mixed Atlantean and Anki genetics healed.
Lucien may be the forgotten son of Queen Vandana, but there was likely a reason he’d been erased from their history.
Rieka’s long-lost biological uncle was a mischievous bastard.
And Talik was positive that everyone who’d encountered Lucien last week would have preferred if he had remained a long-lost relation.
“What is the charge on your blasters?”
He unholstered Rose, rereading her charge. Seventy-eight percent. He glanced at Blanche, scowling as he read the numbers a second time. She was at sixty-two percent.
That shouldn’t be possible. He hadn’t used them at all, and the blasters could maintain their charge for months. He double-checked the four magazines.
“They are lower than they should be.”
Khalida moved toward him. She flicked her braid over her shoulder as she stopped in front of him. After pulling out one of her blades from her boot, she gave it to him, careful not to touch him. His skin prickled at the barest hint of her.
“I didn’t realize you cared.”
“Remember, if you die, I die. And I have already told you I don’t plan on dying.” Khalida turned, walking back. “Don’t lose it.”
In the lowlight, the knife’s blade gleamed. It was beautiful as expected and perfectly balanced. He didn’t recognize it. The blade wasn’t one he had left for her, instead it was one from her own personal collection. The weapons Dante had provided them had been practical but plain.
“I mean it. I want it back.”
“You don’t trust me?” Talik asked innocently.
“I believe the saying is once a thief, always a thief.”
He couldn’t argue with the truth. His youthful activities had been less than stellar.
Talik looked up at the ceiling for what was the hundredth time. And stopped. Along the ancient structure, there was a crack—that hadn’t been there the last time they walked through. He picked up the flashlight, moving to the original tomb where they had found the carving, and shone the light on it.
Khalida followed his gaze.
“Fuck.”
The symbol’s angle was slightly off. Only a few degrees lower than it had been previously, but enough to be noticeable. As was the new pool of water near the corner of the coffin. But that shouldn’t be possible—not without the catacombs experiencing some kind of cataclysmic earth tremor.
Which should have been impossible without them noticing. But they had learned the hard way that impossible wasn’t what they thought it meant, especially when they were dealing with ancient gods.
Khalida moved in front of him and stood in a defensive position, both swords out as she surveyed the area. But there was nothing there but darkness and the hint of pomegranate he had sensed earlier, a second before they had heard Sidra’s laughter.
“Do you smell that?”
The catacombs had suddenly become enveloped in the scent of fresh dirt just after rainfall.
He moved closer to Khalida, unable to resist the pull from her. Even if it was only temporary. “Want to make a wager?”
She raised an eyebrow, her eyes alight with energy. “Now?”
Talik smiled. “Who will get the larger body count?”
Khalida leaned forward, so close he could smell her scent and the excitement that ran through her.
“Me. I always do,” she whispered. “Duck.”
He moved instinctively and pivoted out of the way.
Out of the corner of his eye, there was a flash of movement.
He drew Rose out and fired at the ceiling as something moved insanely fast against the sandstone blocks.
Rose left big ugly gouges in the sandstone.
He moved slightly closer. Black blood dripped from the ceiling, landing in large globs. The blood smelled like compost.
“What the actual fuck?” he muttered as he looked at the charge. Rose was down to fifty-nine percent. And except for the blood dripping onto the ground, they did not know who or what they were up against. The serpopards didn’t move like that or hadn’t in Egypt. “What was Ninhursag the god of again?”
Now was not a good time to forget details.
“Apparently she created humanity...” Khalida’s voice trailed off.
Talik did a double take. “No fucking way.”