Bullshit. My father was an animal.
“Animals miss their home, too.”
Right. He was in my head. No thinking, then.
“Do you know why others fear you? They call you beastkin, they try to kill you? It is because of this. Of beastly memories you carry in your blood. The Firsts, the pack leaders of your kind, were made in much the same way as you. When primitive man prayed, he prayed for strength. His life was ruled by forces beyond his control: lightning, rain, wind, sun, and things with teeth that sought to eat him in the night. So the primitive man resorted to begging. He prayed to the predators, to those stronger than he, and sometimes, very, very rarely, his prayers were answered and a boon was granted. The Firsts, they are a perfect mix of human and animal. You are not, and thus you do not have the Firsts’ strength or control, but you share in their memories. You see the world through your mother’s eyes and through your father’s.”
“I see it through my own eyes.” Drat. Shouldn’t have said anything. I clamped my mouth shut.
The Jackal chuckled.
The sun had set behind the hills. Dusk claimed the river. Gloom wove its way through the palms. Faint tendrils of steam escaped the river, still warmer than bathwater.
“I want your body,” Anapa said.
“That’s flattering, but no.” I couldn’t help it, it just burst out.
“Not in a sexual way, you foolish child. The body I wear in the world is a part of my bloodline. But he is weak. Its magic reserves are meager. Make no mistake, if Apep is resurrected, the assistance I can offer you will be limited at best. Your body is strong. Your blood is rooted in the same place as mine. We’re both a mix of beast and man. You’re a more suitable host than any of the other shapeshifters I have encountered.”
“I’m a hyena. You’re a jackal.”
“I will make do,” Anapa said.
“And what happens to me?”
“You will merge with me.”
“You’re lying.” I knew it. I felt it in my gut.
The Jackal lapped the river. “Perhaps.”
“Why would I throw my life away?”
“Because I am a god and I asked for it.”
“You are not my god.”
The Jackal sighed. “That is the trouble with this age. There was a time when thousands would slit their own throats for my sake.”
“No. There was never that time.”
The Jackal bared his teeth. “What do you know, whelp?”
“I know human nature. We might sacrifice a few, because we are stupid and hardwired for group survival. But we would never die in the thousands because a god wished it. Those kinds of numbers require material gains, like power, wealth, territory.”
The Jackal stared at me. “Give me your body.”
“No.”
“There may come a time when you will say yes.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
The Jackal laughed softly. “Look over there.”
I glanced up and saw a man. He stood in the river, nude, with the waters lapping at his thighs. The last rays of the setting sun colored his side, throwing orange highlights on his skin, tracing every contour of the etched muscle. He looked so…perfect. Except his face was a blur.
“Who is it?”
The man’s body arched up, his back bending back at an unnatural angle, the ridges of the stomach muscles stretching and his face came into focus. Raphael.
A figure rose above him, an eight-foot-tall man with the head of a jackal. He raised his hand, a golden staff in it, and passed it over the body. The skin over the Raphael’s chest and abdomen split.
I gasped. No!
Blood fountained, coloring the waters of the Nile. Raphael’s muscles opened like bloody petals. Anubis held his hand with outstretched fingers and a human heart, steaming hot and drenched in blood, tore itself out of my mate’s chest and landed in the god’s clawed fingers.
My own heart skipped a beat.
Anubis waded through the water toward me, the heart still beating. I tried to back away, but my feet sank into soft mud.
The god bent over me and offered me the heart. It was terrible. Dread pulsed from it in waves. Dread, sorrow, and guilt. It was choking me.
“Take it.”
“You bastard! I’ll tear you apart!”
Anubis raised the heart, holding the bloody organ just inches from my face and let it go. It hung in the air, terrible, bleeding drop by drop into the Nile.
The river faded. When I awoke, the faint rays of the sunrise, weak and transparent, sifted into the room through my window. I had slept for barely an hour.
I smelled a familiar scent and turned my head. At the other end of the room, near the wall, wrapped in a blanket, with his pillow resting on the floor, lay Raphael. He was back in his human form, and his dark hair fanned across the pillow, his profile perfect against the pale fabric.
He must’ve let me have the bed, because in our beast forms both of us wouldn’t have fit on it.
I looked down and saw myself on the sheets. I had turned human during the night. Olive mud streaks marked my ankles in two smudged rings.
Fear curled in the pit of my stomach, scratching at my insides with icy claws. I wanted to crawl out of my bed, tiptoe across the room, and slide under the blanket with him. He would put his arm around me, and I would lay safe, wrapped in him, breathing in his scent. It would be only an illusion of safety, but I wanted it so, so badly.
I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to give my body to any gods. For the first time in my twenty-eight years I was truly living. I wanted to love and to be loved in return. I wanted happiness, and family, and children. I wanted a long life and I wanted Raphael to live it with me. I was terrified that I would fail and little Brandy would pay for my mistakes. Fear gripped me, making it hard to breathe.
I couldn’t tell Raphael. He would throw his life away to save me.
I was so scared, and I lay there paralyzed, unable to think of anything but Raphael’s heart dripping blood into the Nile.
I crawled out of bed, wrapped my sheet around me, walked across the floor, and crouched by him. “Raphael. Raphael…Wake up.”
His eyes opened, so blue. He reached out and pulled me down next to him, curving his body around mine.
“Raphael…”
He pulled me closer.
The heat radiating from his chest burned my back. “Raphael…”
“Just lay with me,” he said.
I shut up, stretched against him, trying to banish the gaping hole inside my chest. We didn’t have much time. We didn’t have any time at all. I cradled that knot of pain and he pulled me close.