Chapter 14
Anubis
The Chamber of Eternity was smaller than I expected.
Intimate, barely larger than Jessica’s bedroom.
Every surface blazed with hieroglyphs that seemed to pulse with their own light, symbols of life and death and rebirth woven together in patterns that hurt to look at directly.
The air itself hummed with power so thick I could taste it, metallic and electric on my tongue.
In the center of the chamber stood a flat, raised platform, carved from a single piece of black granite and covered in golden symbols that I recognized. The ankh, a djed, and a scepter. Eternity, stability, power. They were the fundamental building blocks of immortal existence.
“It’s beautiful,” Jessica whispered, her voice echoing strangely in the enclosed space. “Outstanding in beauty and terror.”
“Yes.” I pulled her close, feeling her heartbeat racing against my chest. “Are you certain about this? Once we begin, there is no stopping. The magic will run its course.”
“I’m certain.” She looked up at me, and despite the fear in her eyes, I saw determination there too. “Make love to me, Anubis. Make me immortal.”
I kissed her then, slow and deep, tasting the salt of her tears and the sweetness of her resolve. She responded in kind, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer with desperate need.
“I love you,” I murmured against her lips. “Through all of eternity, I will love you.”
“Show me.”
I walked her backward toward the platform, my hands working at the buttons of her blouse. She helped, tugging at my clothes with shaking fingers, and within moments we were both bare, skin against skin in the pulsing light of the chamber.
The magic recognized our intent. The hieroglyphs blazed brighter, and I felt power beginning to gather around us, swirling like a vortex with us at its center.
“I feel it,” Jessica gasped, her eyes wide. “The magic. It’s…oh wow, it’s everywhere. Powerful.”
“Let it in. Do not fight it.” I lifted her onto the platform, spreading her out on the cool granite. The symbols beneath her glowed, responding to mortal flesh in ways they had not in millennia. “The magic will guide the transformation. All you need to do is surrender to it. To me. To us.”
“I trust you.”
Those three words nearly undid me.
I settled between her thighs, my weight pressing her into the platform, and felt the magic intensify. The air crackled with power. The symbols on the walls burned so brightly they cast dancing shadows across Jessica’s skin.
“Anubis,” she breathed. “I need you. Please.”
“I wish I could take the time to taste you, to prepare you,” I panted. “I can’t fight the magic long enough.”
“It won’t be a problem. I’m soaking wet for you.”
I entered her in one smooth thrust, and the world exploded.
The magic roared to life around us, through us, binding us together in ways that transcended the merely physical.
I felt Jessica’s life force like a blazing star.
She was mortal, finite, and she burned so brightly because her life would not last forever.
My own divine essence responded, reaching for her, wanting to merge with that incredible light.
“Oh, Anubis,” Jessica moaned, her back arching off the platform. “What is…it’s so much…”
“I know, I feel it as well.” I moved within her, slow and deliberate, feeling the magic building with each thrust. She clenched around me, drawing me in deeper. “The transformation has begun. Your body is absorbing my essence, changing, becoming something more.”
The hieroglyphs on the walls were spinning now, symbols breaking free and swirling through the air like golden fireflies.
They settled on Jessica’s skin, burning themselves into her flesh in patterns that matched the ones covering the chamber.
She cried out, but not in pain, in pleasure so intense it bordered on overwhelming.
“It burns,” she gasped. “I’m on fire, but it’s so good. Yes. Keep it up. Anubis, oh… so good…”
Buried inside her, I felt the change overtaking her.
I sensed her mortal flesh transforming cell by cell, drinking in my divine power and reshaping itself around it.
Her heartbeat changed, slowing, becoming stronger.
Her breathing deepened. The fine lines around her eyes, laugh lines I had traced with my fingers a hundred times, smoothed out, not disappearing but settling into something timeless, unchanging.
She was becoming like me.
The thought filled me with awe. She was mine forever.
I increased my pace, driving into her harder, faster, and she met me thrust for thrust. Her hands clawed at my back, her legs wrapped around my waist, and the pleasure building between us was almost secondary to the transformation occurring.
Almost.
“I can feel you,” Jessica said, her voice taking on the strange harmonics of an ancient power. “Inside me. Not just physically. I can feel your essence, your power, your…” She gasped as I hit a particularly sensitive spot. “Oh, fuck, right there.”
“Language,” I murmured, but I was smiling.
“I’m being transformed into an immortal being by having sex with a god in a magic pyramid. I think I’m allowed to curse.”
Fair point. I smiled and moved my hips the way she wanted me to again. “Like that?”
She groaned. “Yes.”
The golden symbols had covered nearly all of her skin now, creating intricate patterns that complemented rather than concealed her natural beauty. They pulsed in time with our movements, growing brighter as the pleasure intensified, as the transformation neared completion.
I felt my control beginning to slip. The sensation of her body changing beneath me, becoming something eternal and divine, was almost too much to bear. My divine nature was manifesting. Golden light blazed from my eyes and my true skin. It filled the chamber until everything glowed with radiance.
“Anubis,” Jessica cried out, her voice layered now with a power that had not been there before. “I’m close. I’m so close.”
“Let go,” I commanded. “Surrender to it. To the magic, to the transformation. To me.”
She shattered with a scream that echoed through dimensions, her orgasm triggering a cascade of magical energy that slammed through both of us.
I felt the exact moment of her transformation’s completion.
The instant her mortal essence crossed the threshold into something eternal, her life force, once finite and blazing, expanded outward, becoming infinite. Becoming divine.
I followed her over the edge, my own climax ripping through me with enough force to make the chamber shake. Divine essence poured from me into her, the final piece of the transformation, and I felt it settle into her newly immortal form like a key turning in a lock.
For a moment, we were one being without separation between mortal and divine, or death and life. We merged completely, existing in perfect unity.
Without warning, the magic released us from its grip.
We collapsed together on the platform, both trembling, both gasping for breath we no longer technically needed. The golden light faded, the symbols on the walls settling back into static hieroglyphs, the power that had filled the chamber receding like a tide.
But Jessica… Jessica changed. I pulled back to look at her, and my breath caught.
She glowed, not with external light, but with an inner radiance that made her skin luminous, her eyes brighter.
The symbols that had burned themselves into her flesh during the transformation were still there, faint golden tracings visible beneath her skin like tattoos made of sunlight. And her eyes…
Her eyes had changed. They were still her warm brown, and still hers, but now there was depth to them that had not existed before; a sense of vastness, of time stretching in all directions.
An immortal’s eyes.
“Did it work?” she asked, her voice still carrying those strange harmonics.
“Yes.” I touched her face with reverence, tracing the subtle changes. “You are immortal now, Jessica. Eternal. Mine for all time.”
She sat up slowly, looking down at herself. “Woah.” She raised her arm and inspected the golden symbols tracing patterns across her skin. Her eyes narrowed as she studied her hands.
“I feel different,” she said. “Everything feels different, sharper. More than before. I hear things I couldn’t before.”
“Like what?”
“I think it’s the movement of sand outside the pyramid; it’s kind of scratchy.
I hear the whisper of wind through ancient corridors, the…
” She stopped, eyes widening. “Is this what it’s like?
I think I hear souls. They’re faint; distant, but I can hear them.
The dead, passing through the underworld. ”
“You are connected to my realm now,” I explained. “As part of my domain. While you are not a god yourself, you’re something close. Divine enough to sense what I sense, to exist as I exist.”
“This is my new normal? My forever?”
“Forever.”
She looked at me, and I saw the reality of what she had chosen finally settling in. Forever. Eternity. No end, no escape, just existence stretching forward indefinitely.
“Forever,” she repeated. Then she smiled. “Well. I guess we’d better make it count.”
I laughed, relief and joy flooding through me. “I intend to.”
We took our time getting dressed, both of us adjusting to Jessica’s new reality.
She moved differently now, with more grace and more confidence that came from knowing her body would not fail, would not age, would not betray her.
When she fumbled with her blouse buttons, frustrated, they fastened themselves at her will.
“Wait a second. Did I just do magic?” she asked, staring at her hands.
“You are divine now. Magic is part of your nature.”
“That is going to take some getting used to.”
“You have eternity to practice.”
We emerged from the chamber to find Ra and Osiris waiting, patient as only ancient gods could be. They took one look at Jessica and smiled.
“It is done,” Ra said, a tone of satisfaction filling his voice. “Welcome to immortality, Jessica Thomas.”
“Thank you.” Jessica’s voice held steady. “For this gift. For saving my life.”
“Do not thank us. Thank Anubis,” Osiris said. “He is the one who loves you enough to share eternity with you. We provided the means.”
Jessica turned to me, and the love in her eyes, ancient and new all at once, made my heart clench.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For choosing me, for making me immortal.”
“It was my honor. Thank you for accepting,” I said. “And for choosing me.”
“We should probably discuss some logistics,” she said after a moment. “I’m immortal now, but I still have a life and a home and a daughter who’s going to notice if I stop aging. Not to mention my friends and neighbors.”
“We will figure it out,” I promised. “Together. We have a lifetime now.”
“Together,” she agreed. “For the next few thousand years at least.”
Ra laughed. “I like her. You chose well, Anubis. She has the right attitude for eternity.”
“She does,” I said, pulling Jessica close. “She truly does.”
We left the pyramid as dawn broke over Cairo; the sun rising to paint the desert in golden light. Jessica turned her face toward the light, and I watched her glow with it, radiant and eternal and mine.
She was immortal now.
We had forever.
And I intended to spend every moment of it loving her exactly as she deserved. We had rewritten her story together, with a little help from the oldest of the gods.
Take that, cosmic order.
Jessica squeezed my hand, and I felt the answering pulse of divine power; hers now, as much as mine.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“Now?” I smiled. “Now we call your daughter and explain that you will attend her college graduation and her wedding, and her children’s graduations. And their children’s graduations. And…”
“I get it. I’m being ridiculous.” She laughed. “Forever is going to be complicated.”
“At times, yes.”
“Worth it though?”
“Without a doubt or question.”
We walked together toward the waiting car, two immortal beings in a mortal world, ready to face whatever eternity threw at us.