Page 49 of Merciless
Look closely at the departed. Do you see them?
It took me a moment, but after some squinting, I did. Hovering over the dead bodies was some light, ethereal substance like smoke. It hovered a few feet in the air above the deceased, moving and shifting in space, like a person who couldn't get comfortable.
Their humanity was stripped away, their bodies driven like vehicles, and now they have been ejected from life altogether. I must put them to rest.
I understood right away. These people, people thatIkilled, needed peace.
Okay,I agreed.
Do not feel guilty, son, Hades told me as we approached the shimmery, smoke-like substance.They will understand that we have set them free. I'm only shepherding them to their final state of rest.
It was over quickly. The death god waved my hand through the smoke, which felt cool to the touch but charged, like static electricity, and used my mouth to utter one word.
"Rest."
The twisting, writhing movements of the cloud gradually stilled and then faded away into nothing. The tension in the air that I hadn't noticed before was gone. The eerie silence of the courtyard now felt peaceful, if even tranquil. No ghosts would haunt this place. With any luck, we would leave no remnants of the Sha at all.
"What now?" I turned back to Mari and Gunner.
"Now we go to the Sha and end this." Gunner's lip curled, and I wasn't certain if it was really him or Horus speaking. That could have been the sky god himself, seeking retribution against his brother, or his bonded human wanting it for him. "He already knows what happened in this courtyard and is sending double the amount of troops in hopes of overwhelming us. We'll cut through them easily and head directly for him."
“And if we can’t kill him?” Mari’s weird, glowing eyes shifted between me and Gunner. Now that I was getting used to it, they looked cool on her, like she was some kind of comic book superhero.
“Then we’ll find and kill his council members, as we discussed,” Hades said.
“The last time Set took form as the Sha,” Horus used Gunner’s pretty-boy lips to smirk, “he was torn apart by a pack of jackals. Some say he was trying to raise an army from the dead, and the jackals were sent by Anubis to protect their graves.”
"So hopefully guns will be enough?" Mari asked, already loading up on the rest of her weapons from her toppled bike.
"They should," Horus answered. "He can certainly be killed by earthly means, but the jackal incident has made him cautious. I imagine that’s why he’s never revealed himself publicly. We should expect him to be heavily guarded."
Mari's gaze focused on me, but I knew it was Hades she spoke to. "Can you do the same thing to him that you did to this swarm? Kill him with a single pulse of power?"
"Sadly, no, daughter," Hades replied.
I wish you wouldn't call her that. It feels really weird coming out of my mouth, I informed him.
Hades ignored me. "With a few exceptions, gods' abilities are for humanity, not for each other." He directed my eyes toward Gunner. “I suppose that’s why Anubis chose to use jackals the first time around.”
“You’re correct,” the sky god confirmed.
Mari accepted that answer, nodding curtly as she holstered a handgun and filled her remaining pockets with loaded magazines. "Then I'll be happy to fill him up with holes and watch him fade away."
Nineteen
MARIPOSA
We hurried across the fortress, making our way easily through any swarm that tried to surround us. A single pulse of power radiated out from Jandro and everyone was dead in the blink of an eye. Hades put the souls to rest, and Horus directed us closer to the Sha's inner chamber.
It all started to make sense to me as we got closer. The Sha was never seen out in public. Even his own soldiers within the compound knew him as General Tash, and only the General Council members that Andrea told us about, had a direct line to the mysterious general.
The Sha was afraid. I'd even go as far as to say that he was a fucking coward.
He knew a gun could kill him, knew his earthly body was just as vulnerable as any other body. The mysterious general persona, all the mind-controlled soldiers he threw into battle like they were nothing, it was all just to protect his slimy, cowardly hide.
The deeper we marched into the fortress, the hotter my anger burned. The Sha threw my father out into battle and stole my husbands, probably to use them as more armor to hide behind.
To my surprise, Freyja seemed pleased at my budding anger. I felt her within me and sort of outside of me, like a friend walking so closely behind me that I could sense her just over my shoulder.
