Chapter 13
Anubis
Idid not tell Jessica about the ledgers.
Eight months. That was all the time we had left.
Cherish each moment.
I had existed for millennia, and eight months felt like nothing. A breath. A heartbeat. Gone before it truly began.
Jessica noticed my distraction, of course. She always noticed.
“You're brooding again,” she said three days after Thoth delivered his message to me. She found me in the backyard, staring at the stars. “And you’ve dropped your glamour. This is the scary, intense kind of brooding that usually means something’s wrong.”
“I am thinking.”
“About?”
About losing you. About cosmic injustice. About the fact that I am a god of death who cannot prevent the one death that matters most.
“About Egypt,” I said, which was partially true. “About my duties there. I have been away for over a month.”
She sat beside me on the porch steps. “Do you need to go back? Check on things?”
“Perhaps.” I turned to look at her. “Come with me.”
“To Egypt?”
“Yes. Just for a few days. Maybe if I search there, I will find what I’m looking for.” A way to save your life.
That night, after I exhausted Jessica from vigorous lovemaking, I returned to Egypt. I locked myself inside her guest bathroom and stepped through space, folding distance until I stood once more in the desert, facing the pyramids that had stood sentinel for millennia.
The Duat called to me immediately, familiar and welcoming after weeks in the mortal world. I descended through the layers of reality, passing through the veil that separated life from death, until I stood once more in the Hall of Two Truths.
Osiris was there, seated on his throne, green skin luminous in the eternal twilight.
“Anubis.” He did not sound surprised. “I wondered when you would come.”
“You knew.”
“Thoth informed me of the ledgers. I am sorry, my son.” He gestured to the space before him. “What will you do?”
“I need to speak with the Fates.”
Osiris's expression darkened. “An unwise decision.”
“I have no choice.”
“You always have a choice. The question is whether you will accept the consequences.” He leaned forward. “The Fates do not negotiate lightly, Anubis. And they never give without taking in equal measure.”
“I am aware.”
“Are you?” Osiris stood, descending from the throne to face me directly. “Because I think love blinds you.” He inhaled. “You reek of desperation. You are planning to bargain with forces that existed before the gods themselves. That will not end well.”
“It will end with Jessica alive. That is all that matters.”
“Even if the cost is your own existence?”
I did not hesitate. “Yes.”
Osiris was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed, the sound carrying the weight of ages. “You truly love her.”
“More than I have words to express.”
“Love makes fools of even the wisest of beings. You would challenge the order of existence itself for one mortal?”
“Yes.”
Osiris shut his eyes and tilted his head back, lost in something I had no ability to comprehend. “Do not do anything rash, son. Return to your love. Give me a few days to confer with the others while you do your own research.”
“We don’t have much time.”
“All I ask is for a few days. Less than a week.” Osiris took my hands. “Less than a week is what I ask for.”
I inclined my head, bowing to my father. “As you order.” I faded back into Jessica’s guest bathroom, unlocked the door, and slid into bed next to her.
“Anubis? Where’d you go?” her voice was heavy with sleep.
“To the bathroom. Lost in my thoughts,” I murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
“Are we really going to Egypt again?” she asked.
“Yes.” I kissed her head. “Go to sleep. We’ll plan everything in the next few days.”
Four days later, when Jessica got home from an interview of her own, I crossed the room and kissed her, pouring everything I felt into it. I put all the love and desperation into it.
“Anubis?” she pulled back. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing is wrong,” I said, holding her close. “Everything is perfect. I love you. I needed you to know that.”
“I know. I love you too.” She caressed my face, concern shining in her eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I am now. If Sophie isn’t coming home this weekend, would you like to go to Egypt with me?”
“This weekend?”
“Yes.”
“Today is Friday.”
“I know. We could leave in the morning.”
“Isn’t it sudden?”
“There are... people I would like you to meet.”
She raised an eyebrow. “People or gods?”
“The distinction is blurry.”
“That’s what I thought.” She leaned against my shoulder. “Your divine family wants to meet the mortal you’ve been shacking up with?”
“Something like that.” I pressed a kiss to her hair, breathing in her familiar scent. “Will you come?”
“To meet your father, who is also the sun god? That sounds terrifying.”
“Ra can be intense. But I promise he will not smite you.”
“‘Will not smite me’ is a low bar for family introductions, Anubis.”
“Nevertheless. Will you come?”
She was quiet for a moment, and I felt her tension through our connection. “Yes. Of course. If it’s important to you, I’ll go.”
Relief flooded through me. “Thank you.” I kissed the top of her head.
What I did not tell her was that I had received a message that morning, not from Thoth this time, but from Osiris and Ra together. A summons, formal and strange, requesting my presence in the ancient temple at Giza. And specifically requesting that I bring Jessica.
When gods made requests like that, you complied.
I folded space with Jessica after breakfast the next morning and used the “divine transportation” as she called it to arrive in Cairo.
Jessica was nervous. I felt it through the ankh, and through the connection we shared. She picked at her food, fidgeting the entire time, and kept asking questions I had no answers to.
“What if they don't like me?”
“They will like you.”
“You don't know that. I’m just some random mortal woman who accidentally summoned you. I wouldn’t consider it impressive divine credentials.”
“Jessica, you are not just some random mortal woman.” I took her hand, squeezing gently. She had no idea. “You are the woman who saw a god and argued rather than cowered. You radiate a life force so bright it draws me like a moth to a flame. Trust me when I say they will be impressed.”
“I’m going to throw up.”
“Please do not. I do not wish to change clothing again.”
She laughed despite her nerves, and I felt some of the tension ease.
I had arranged for a car to take us directly to Giza, bypassing a hotel. When needed, the internet would come in handy. Whatever Ra and Osiris wanted, it required immediate attention.
The pyramids rose before us as darkness fell, massive and eternal against the desert sky. Jessica stared up at them with the same wonder she’d shown on her first visit, and I felt a pang of something bittersweet. How many more times would she see them? How many sunsets did we have left?
Not many, unless I could find a way to change it.
“They’re still magnificent,” Jessica breathed. “Even knowing what I know now, seeing them still takes my breath away.”
“They were built to humble humanity before the divine.”
“Mission accomplished.”
I led her around the tourist barriers, through paths that only gods remembered, to an entrance hidden in the base of the Great Pyramid. The stone parted at my touch, revealing stairs descending into darkness.
“Whoa. This is ominous,” Jessica said, her eyes wide.
“This is sacred.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I smiled despite my tension. “No. I suppose they are not.”
We descended, and with each step I felt the veil between worlds growing thinner. By the time we reached the bottom, we had passed from the mortal realm into something older, more fundamental. The air itself hummed with divine power.
The chamber we entered was vast, lit by torches that burned with an eternal flame. Hieroglyphs covered every surface, telling stories from before human memory. And at the far end, seated on thrones that seemed to grow from the stone itself, waited Ra and Osiris.
Ra blazed with solar radiance even in his human form. He had golden skin, eyes like captured sunlight, and power radiating from him in waves. Osiris sat beside him, green-skinned and crowned with the atef, dignified and eternal.
Jessica’s hand tightened on mine.
“Breathe,” I whispered.
“Right. Breathing. Good idea.”
We approached, and I bowed, not deeply, but enough to show respect. Jessica followed my lead, her nervousness palpable.
“Father,” I said to Osiris. Then, I turned to Ra. “Great Ra, thank you for receiving us.”
“Anubis,” Ra’s voice resonated like thunder. “And this is the mortal who has captured your heart.”
“This is Jessica Thomas,” I said. “Jessica, this is Ra, lord of the sun. And Osiris, lord of the underworld and… complicated family member.”
“Your father,” Osiris said dryly. “In most versions of the story.”
“In most versions,” I agreed.
Jessica stepped forward, her voice steadier than I expected. There’s that steel in her spine. “It’s an honor to meet you both. Thank you for, um, not smiting me on sight.”
Ra laughed, the sound echoing through the chamber. “She has spirit. I see why you chose her.”
“I did not choose her. She touched the Binding Stone by accident.”
“And yet here you are, having abandoned your post, living in the mortal world, fundamentally altering your existence for her sake.” Ra leaned forward. “That sounds like a choice to me.”
I had no response to that. Perhaps he is correct.
Osiris stood, descending from his throne to approach us. He studied Jessica with ancient eyes, and I felt her resist the urge to step back.
“You love my son,” Osiris said as a statement, not a question.
“I do,” Jessica answered.
“Even knowing what he is? What it entails?”
“Yes.”
“Even knowing that you will age and die while he remains eternal?”
Jessica’s voice never wavered. “Yes. Even knowing that.”
Osiris turned to me. “And you love her.”
“More than I have words to express.”
“Enough to defy the cosmic order for her?”