Chapter Seventeen

A World We Created

Khamari

There’s magic here. It’s oppressive, and it won’t let me turn away.

She won’t let me look away.

The woman, the siren, is saying my name in a way that makes me feel like I’m the key to everything she needs.

My feet move on their own, my adrenaline propelling me forward. I need to get to her. She can make me feel good. She can make me forget all that pain I’ve caused. All the pain I feel.

The siren sings to me again about creating a world of our own, living in paradise together, forever.

I jump from the boat. The dark waters cool my heated skin.

“Really, Khamari?” It’s not the woman on the beach. It sounds far away and unimportant. Like an insistent pebble stuck in my shoe. I dip my head under the water, blocking the yells coming from above the surface.

When I’m underneath the water, it fills my lungs, nose, ears, but it’s not unpleasant.

It’s calm below. And I can still hear her singing—her voice so riveting that I don’t want to move. I just want to sink deeper and deeper inside the melody.

The cool waters cocoon me as my body sinks into the sea. All is calm until something grabs my collar and pulls me above the surface. The rush of the air pops into my ears. The water attacks my lungs, and I cough harshly to force it out.

A hand smacks my face so hard my neck snaps from the violence. “Get a grip, Khamari.”

I open my eyes.

Raven. No, Texas. She’s Texas to me now.

“She’s in your head. She’s trying to kill—”

“I need you, Khamari,” the songstress sings to me. Begs me.

“Let me go. S-she needs me.” The water is not so comforting anymore. Not with me and Texas, our bodies spinning around like whirlpools. Texas is pulling me close while I’m pushing her away.

“Come to me, my love. She will find her way home. You do not need her. She doesn’t want you.”

“Shut. Up,” Texas huffs.

I finally untangle myself from her and push off, swimming to the one who needs me.

Now she’s speaking in my head. Speaking only to me. “That’s right. Come to me,” she croons. “I will show you what it’s like to be loved for all that you are.”

Texas yells behind me, trying to catch up. But she can’t swim like me. I’m a boy from the islands. Swimming is just as natural as walking.

The island seems further now. But I keep swimming, keep going. She’s worth the effort.

“Slow down, you idiot!” Texas is getting closer. I’m getting tired.

“Keep going, my love. You will be my king and I, your queen.”

“Queen?” My strokes falter.

“Yes!” she yells. “I’m your queen. Your Texas, your…your Raven.”

Raven?

I gasp, breathing for the first time in a while. The malaise the siren has over me slowly rolls away.

She’s not my queen. But neither is Raven. My body is tired, my mind defeated. I’m sinking. It feels like cement locks clamp around my ankles and wrists. Something blurry comes into view. The one I want. The one I’ll always want.

When Texas lifts me from the water, I take a deep gulp of breath. She cups my ears but yells, “Get ahold of yourself and stop listening to that psychotic mermaid!”

I blink, taking in her frown. I ease her hands away from my ears. “She’s been talking to me in my head.” I inhale. “I’m good now.”

“I couldn’t hear the conversation. But I heard her singing.” Texas waves at me to swim in front of her. I nod, realizing we’d swam several hundred yards away from the boat. After pulling myself up, I offer my hand and lift her from the water.

Texas is shivering. I drape the tarp around her shoulders.

“You need to get warm, too.” She unwinds the tarp from around her shoulders and extends it to me.

“Nah. I’m always cold.” I grab her hands. “But mostly, I’m sorry.” The scariest part is that I was like a puppet in her hands.

“S-She was in your head.” She shrugs, then she snorts. “Now you know how it feels to lose control.”

“Yeah. Not something I ever want to experience again.”

“And?” She looks at me like I entirely missed the point.

“And I won’t do that to other people. Well, only when necessary.” I squeeze her hands. “I promise.”

“Good.” She gives me a warm smile. “So what did she say to break the spell she had over you?”

“She said she was my queen.”

Her mouth pops open. “And she’s not.”

“No. You are.”

There’s no humor on her face. She’s raw and open like the girl I fell in love with two years ago when I saw her lugging her saxophone case down the hallway.

Her eyes are soft, shimmering with emotion. She swallows hard, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to grab hold of her emotions. She inhales, rough and ragged, her hands now gripping her knees.

She mutters something I can’t understand.

“What’d you say?” I ask.

“Kiss me.” She grabs my face.

I can’t answer her demand because her lips hit mine, giving me all the chaotic energy swirling inside of her. I suck her lips, taking control of the rhythm, and rock her forward in my lap. I savor all that sweetness for me. Only me.

Her kisses are more satisfying than the meal we had in the temple. I give everything—pouring in all the things I’ve felt since I left alone and stole her memories.

She breaks away, her breathing erratic. She squeezes her eyes shut. “This, uh…means nothing.”

“What?” I lick my bottom lip to make sure the sweetness hasn’t faded away.

“What just happened? That was a…I’m happy we’re alive kiss.”

I don’t let her words hurt me.

That wasn’t a throwaway kiss.

Her heartbeat isn’t skipping—it’s damn near hopscotching in her chest. The blood in her veins sings a sweet song—a song much sweeter than that siren.

But it isn’t just her body that’s betraying her lies. Raven jumped into the freezing water and saved my ass when I couldn’t help myself. And when we returned to the boat, skin-scorching fury burned in her eyes. Not at me, but at the creature who tried to lure me to my death.

I know she’s jealous. She said she’s my queen. My Raven.

I mean something to her, and knowing that gives me the fire I need to try again. To work brick by brick to build trust. Raven’s always been worth it. And she’s always been ready for whatever.

Since the time I met her, her strength, not only as a slayer but her mentality, makes me realize I shouldn’t have erased her memories. I should’ve told her the truth.

I can’t say anything right now. Something that big shouldn’t be when our backs are against the wall.

“Use my lips to celebrate…anytime,” I joke to lighten the mood.

She stands and turns toward the island. The siren is gone, and the island is minutes away.

Once the boat bumps against the sand, she speaks again. “I guess we’re going to the sandy realm. Seker, right?”

I glance at my watch.

“What’s our time looking like?”

“Not bad. Not good.” My voice is as cool as the water. But I wasted a lot of time nearly drowning.

“Don’t worry about it.” She pats my shoulder.

“Worry about what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you almost got yourself killed over a mythological thot. Or that you almost drowned even though you swim as well as an Olympic athlete.” She lifts her eyebrows as if to say, “Need I go on?”

“It’s been three hours and twenty minutes,” I say, not addressing her insult.

She nods. “We’ll make good time here…so long as there aren’t any flying electric eels. Or shady mermaids.” Her voice drops to a growl on the word “mermaid.”

“She’s got nothing on you…Texas.”

“New rule. Call me Texas when we’re on missions. Raven when it’s just you and me.”

I want to pump my fists in the air, but I keep it cool. Allowing me to call her by her true name, not her code name, is a big deal, and I don’t want to mess it up by saying something goofy.

Instead, I take a deep breath, and the smell of raw, unwashed onions hits me. My eyes water from the impact.

“Oh my God. Is that—”

“Onions.”

Raven fans herself and gags. “Is it us?” She lifts her shirt and sniffs it, barely able to pull it up from her sweat-soaked skin.

Despite the darkness of night that surrounds us, heat cloaks us and slicks my skin. I pull the thin shirt over my head.

“Aww, c’mon, man.”

I smirk. “It’s hot, Queen.” I tie the shirt around my waist. “I’ll put it back on when it gets cool.”

“Shut. Up.” She rolls her eyes and stomps off. “Don’t expect me to slob over your perfect pecs. Those days are long past.”

“I’m not trying to mess around.” I easily catch up with her.

“Sure, you aren’t.”

“We don’t have enough time.”

“We’ve got nine hours and forty minutes. All you need is fifteen minutes.” She laughs, and I can tell she’s cracking herself up, despite lying through her teeth.

“I know I didn’t erase the last time we were together. For hours.”

She shoots me a sharp look, and for anyone else, it would sever them in half.

I shrug, staring at her stomping, sucking her teeth, and looking absolutely beautiful. Despite being on the edge of the end of the world, she makes me laugh.

She makes things better. She makes me better.

But do I make things better for her? I shake my head. So far, I’m batting zero.

But it doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t seem right.

And I can’t do it. I can’t let her go. The realization crashes into me while I crash into her back.

“Yo…”

“What?” I glance away from her to whatever caught her attention. A sandy mound juts from the sand. But it wasn’t there when we got off the boat. The mound grows taller as the sand whirls around us. “It’s the next gate.”

Raven covers her mouth, coughing as the sand clogs the air. I unwrap the hoodie from around my waist and cover it around Raven’s head. I wring my damp and sandy shirt, then drape it over my head.

“Let’s go.” I tuck her to my side. She says nothing but coughs and nods.

The ground shakes beneath us. Something tunnels through the sand, causing us to topple over each other. A large, green, shiny snake sails through the air, landing in front of the sandy mound. There’s a harness around its mouth with seats affixed to its back.

We both stop and stare. Raven lets out a shriek. “I think we have to ride it,” I say, my voice carried by the wind.

“Nope. Na-ah. I’ll walk.”

“We can’t waste time,” I remind her.

“That thing is gonna eat us.” She points at it.

“His mouth is closed,” I yell louder as the wind howls. “See?”

“I can’t see a damn thing. I… Oh, wow.”

“What?”

She shakes her head as she lowers herself to the ground and mutters something in Latin. She slaps the ground, and the sand parts like the Red Sea. But the wind still howls above us.

I kneel beside her, lift my hoodie in the air, and give us cover. “What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to bring the boat over here. I think I can get the boat, and I can use the momentum of the sand.”

Every time she lifts her arms into the air, the snake lifts and gets closer.

“What am I doing wrong?”

I try to remember the path of Ra on the papyrus. I squeeze her hand when I figure it out.

“That boat is the snake.”

“What? How?”

“Think about it. There’s no river.”

“Right. So the next logical thing is to ride a giant snake?” she snaps.

“We’ve seen snakes on fire in a river. We got attacked by eels, and a mermaid tried to steal my virtue.”

“Your v-virtue?”

“It may not make sense to us, but we have to take the path laid out before us.”

She sighs. “Yeah. I saw that, too. I just thought it was a scary illustration.”

“Fine. Hold on to me.” I tug her hand, hugging her to my chest. She utters something in Latin, this time stronger, more confident. The sand forms a solid rectangle beneath our feet, then suddenly, we’re catapulted toward the snake. We land near its head. I grab the reins, pulling myself up, but Raven slips off its head. I lean over, grab her hand, and pull her up into her seat.

“Thanks.” She’s breathing hard and shaking her head, like she’s disappointed in herself.

“I’ve got you.” I look around the landscape, relieved we can breathe a little easier. “It’s a little better up here. Winds not so bad.”

“Smooth sailing from here, right?”

Raven doesn’t believe a word that she’s saying. Neither do I, but I lie right along with her.

“Right,” I agree just as a fireball flies past us.

“We’re gonna die…on the back of a snake…in Hell!” Raven screeches in front of me.

The snake we’re riding hissed behind its mask.

“No, we aren’t,” I shout, ducking from another fireball.

“Yes, we are!”

“I can’t—”

“Make a weapon. Or…I don’t know, water spikes with alchemy.”

She nods. “Right,” she huffs. “Okay, water. I need water, and we’re in a freaking desert.” She snaps her finger as she bends back, Matrix-style, to avoid fire. “Give me your shirt.”

I pull it from my head and hand it over.

A volcano erupts just ahead of us. Surrounding the volcano is a lake with steam rising. From a distance, I hear the gurgle of water, not a stream, but more rushed, forced, intense.

It’s boiling. A lake of boiling water. Not only that, the closer we get to the lake, the more fireballs come at our heads.

Wringing the shirt, she’s just barely able to fill her palm with water.

“Magna Glacies.”

A thick wall of ice forms a barrier of protection around us. The fireballs grow in number, but when they hit the ice wall, they fizzle against the icy barrier.

The snake falters and slows down like its losing battery life.

“Who pumped the brakes on this thing?” Raven yells from behind me.

“When a snake gets cold, it becomes less active. Metabolism slows.”

Cold drops of water splat my arm. “This won’t hold for long.”

“Hopefully long enough to give us distance from the lake.”

She shakes her head. “No wonder Alexander is afraid. Especially if he had to deal with this mess every day.”

Nah. I’m sure he figured out another way. And if he can survive, so can we.

I tap her shoulder. “I think we have to lower the ice wall.”

“Why?”

“Snakes hate heat. I think it changed directions because of the cool of the ice. We’re going to have let it feel the fire, too.”

“You’re right.” She nods.

“I’ll cover you as best as I can. But if you can—”

“I’m on it.” She tears a piece of the harness from around the snake’s head and then wraps it around her hands.

Then she slaps her hands together and light blasts into the sky.

“Fire-resistant gloves.”

“Can you make me a pair?”

“If I rip off more material, we’ll fall to our deaths.” She rolls her eyes and pulls off her gloves and hands them to me. “Here. You fight, and I’ll guide Slithers.”

“Who?”

“The snake.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay…lowering the wall in three…two…one.”

The ice shatters, and tiny shards explode in the air, diminishing the heat from some fireballs. I jump in front of Raven and swing. The snake bucks beneath my feet, and I nearly slip from its neck.

“C’mon, Slithers. You hate the heat. Let’s move.”

As if he can hear her, he slides and pivots in the opposite direction. I swing my fists and pound the fire. My fists rams into the fired rock. It explodes on impact. The particles from the rock sprinkle like rain.

Raven hisses when some of it hits her arm.

I pull back my punches, this time diverting the fire rocks away from her. Though we’re making distance away from the lake, the heat of the boiling lake along with the fragmented rocks singes my skin.

“God, this feels like I’m stuck inside someone’s nightmare.”

“We are. Seker to be…exact!” My voice rises when it hits me.

“Nothing to get excited about.”

“I can get inside of his head.”

“A god’s head?” She snorts. “Do they even sleep?”

Something hot burns my skin, and it’s not the fireballs—it’s guilt that churns my stomach. She doesn’t know about my growing powers.

But also, what keeps even me, the Boogeyman, up at night is that if I can do this, what can Alexander do? He still hasn’t revealed his trump card.

“Give me a few minutes.” I take a deep breath and sink into my subconscious. I quickly enter the white room, as I call it. There’s no way for me to trick a god. He’ll know even now that I’m tapping into his subconscious.

But I only want to speak to him. To calm him. To cool everything around us and keep us safe.

While I won’t attempt to trick the god, I will try to make them comfortable. Which is why I’ve built the setting of a room in a temple. Hard, carved, dusty-brown stone chairs are on a raised platform. Below us is a long table with an assortment of fruit, wine, and meats on silver platters. I used inspiration from the temple from where we first began and met Ra and Osiris.

Something fuzzy, like static, stands beside me instead of the front.

“You came,” the god greets me. The voice is not human, not male, and not female, but otherworldly.

“You were expecting me?”

“Yes. Though I thought you would come sooner. I suppose you want me to stop.”

“Yes.” I try to turn, but my neck snaps back, as if someone has my neck connected to a string that jerks me back to the front.

“You cannot see me, but I will allow for this conversation.” It steps further away from me. “The answer is no.”

“No? Why?”

“Because we should not allow you to return to The Above. Your existence is a threat.”

“I’m not here to take over the world. I want to change it.”

“Improve it, yes?” Its voice pitches high. “That is how it always starts. The surest way to become a tyrant.”

“I’m not a tyrant.”

“No. Not yet. But given the opportunity, given the chance to do good, you will try, and you will fail. You lack the ability to choose the world over your feelings. Just like Alexander.”

I try to turn my head again, but it stays in place. “Just like Alexander?”

“All of this started because of love. After he achieved immortality, he thirsted for a way to break the rules of reality. To bring him back.”

“Him?”

Seker sighs. “Why does Ptah trust you and this girl? I cannot understand it.”

While he deliberates over my fate, I keep my mouth shut, close my eyes, letting power gather inside of me. I need to get back to Raven. I don’t have time to argue the value of my life with him.

“We know how this will end.”

“How will it end?” I stand and turn to face him.

I can see him now. Seven feet–plus, a falcon mask obscures bronze skin.

“How were you able to turn to face me?”

He, like many others, underestimates my strength. “When we die, you want our hearts to be light as a feather? Well, it’s lighter when I’m with her. So I won’t stop my feelings , as you call it.”

“Do you love her? Are you willing to give her what she desires? To meet her wants and needs above your own?”

“I… Yes.” My throat tightens from my lie.

“The tablet? Will you give it to her?”

“I will after I use it—”

“No. Before. Will you go the path of your grandfather and Alexander? Put your views and desires on how to shape the world? Or will you trust your slayer?”

There is silence. Maybe it’s waiting for confirmation. Maybe it doesn’t care or believe in me.

“Do what your heart, that which is not light as a feather, directs you. Or fail.”

My heart has too many options. Keep the peace with Raven or lose Khaven forever. And I can’t fail him. I can cure him, cure the world.

But I love her. I’ll always love her.

Then and there, I decide.

I open my mouth, but before I can share my intentions, it speaks again.

“You may leave. Your head has already made the choice, and so have we.” He nods just once and then snaps his fingers. I open my eyes.

“You’re back!” Raven greets me with a smile. “You won’t believe it. The freaking snake transformed back into a boat!”

I look around, finding no fire or lake in sight. We’re floating in the barque on the river. “Good.”

“Did you challenge him to a duel?”

“No. We had a conversation.”

“They sure like to talk down here.” Raven snorts. “What did it say?”

I look at her, hoping she can see the love that I feel for her. But I can’t say the words. Not when she isn’t ready for me. Instead, I simply say: “The weight of my heart.”