Page 11 of Ride or Die
“Say that immunity gets you in,” Harrow interjected. “Could you find your way to him?”
“Hmm.” I found myself mimicking her head tilt. “That’s a good question.”
When Anunit teleported me to Dis Pater’s house to retrieve a saint bone, she located it by following a trail my essence left each time I astrally projected myself there. Unless she could somehow track Kierce using a similar method, we would be out of luck. Still. It was an idea. A chance.
That was more than we’d had a minute ago.
Narrow as the trail was, we broke into pairs to fit better. I was smug when Anunit chose me over Harrow as her companion, which left me questioning when I had become jealous of their bond. Then I figured he probably thanking his lucky stars she hadn’t picked him, so it all worked out in the end.
“What did Ankou wish to tell you?” Her whiskers flexed back and forth, her nose quivering. “When he got you away from the Harrow?”
The Harrowwas an upgrade fromthis body, her former nickname for him, but she could still do better.
“Ankou claims Kierce is a god killer but that he doesn’t remember having that power.”
“There is much your consort cannot recall, and his power is vast.” She dipped her head. “It would explain why Dis Pater is content to possess one vassal when most gods keep many. That power would make your consort unrivaled among his peers, but holding on to him would require every ounce of Dis Pater’sstrength and focus. And that is with Kierce unaware of that power, if he does in fact wield it.”
Pretty sure if Kierce knew he was a god killer, he would have slaughtered Dis Pater after he killed me in the train shed.
But Dis Pater enjoyed scrambling Kierce’s brains, so…I couldn’t rule anything out yet.
The topic of god killing spun my thoughts toward another topic I had always taken care to avoid. But, if it could connect dots between Kierce and this potential ability, I had to know. “Can I ask you something?”
“You wish to know how my people died out.” Her weary tone conveyed an expectation this question would surface between us sooner or later. “What have you been told?”
“Kierce told me the gods of men hunted the Alcheyvaha to extinction.”
“He is not wrong, but there is more to the story.”
“Will you tell me?”
“As mankind rose to power, animals became their prey. And, over time, the gods of men grew stronger.” Her claws dug into the rock, flexing with her temper. “They grew stronger than us, and they wanted the divine beasts to bow to them. They sought to tame us, domesticate us, treat us as pets, but we refused to lose our wildness.”
To show my support the only way I could, I rested my hand on her spine.
“One of the new gods, a god of the hunt, saw the beauty in divine beasts. He befriended the Alcheyvaha in an effort to forge goodwill between his kin and ours and, after many years, he came to live among us. Decades passed in relative peace, and he fell in love with a female named Dinorah.” She closed her eyes. “He mated her, in the way of our people, but his kin refused to honor the bond. Instead, they claimed he was lying with beasts, despite Dinorah adopting a human form to be with him.” Hereyes opened on me. “So, he broke ties with his kin, denounced his title, and stayed among the Alcheyvaha with his mate.”
For a brief moment, a tickle in the back of my mind attempted to supply a name for the god of the hunt, but it was there and gone too fast for me to grasp it. The fact she hadn’t spoken his name once hinted at a wealth of pain behind the word she couldn’t bring herself to say. I wanted to press her for it, to relieve that mental itch, but I couldn’t when her gaze remained hollow. “What happened to them?”
“The gods swore revenge for the shame he had brought upon them.” Her claws flexed as she relived those dark memories. “A year later, they invited him to dine with them, to make amends. He went, believing he could put an end to the animosity, but they came for Dinorah while he was away.” An exhale flared her nostrils. “They killed her in her sleep and stole her left femur to hone into a blade.”
“They used the bone blade to kill the Alcheyvaha.” A chill seeped into my skin as the truth sank into me. “What did the god of the hunt do after he learned what had been done to Dinorah?”
“He was taken by his family. Most believe he ended his own life while in their custody.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “To live without her was more than he could bear.”
There was more I wanted to know, like how a bone killed the old gods, but the story had hit her hard. I should have let it drop then, given her a moment to compose herself, but I blurted out, “You knew her.”
“She was my daughter,” Anunit rasped before padding away.
Part of me wished I had never asked her to reopen this wound, but I hadn’t known the cut ran so deep. To protect their legacy, I would have to first learn their history, but I could have let her come to me.
With two leaps, she was out of sight, gone to patrol ahead, leaving me to trudge on alone.
We tooka break underneath an overhang about the time my legs were ready to fall off my body.
Though Harrow avoided using his magic, he set aside his usual moral quandaries to conjure a ring of fire that burnt along the perimeter, preventing uninvited guests from dropping in for a visit while we were resting up for the last big push to reach Kierce.
The timing of his arrival in Abaddon, and the smoking lizard carcass, no doubt played a role in his willingness to cast a protective spell.
