Iwasstillpacingwhen the door opened. Two guards waited for me in the hall. They were identical twins, standing on four thick legs and resembling iridescent green scaled maned wolves with needle-like spines starting at the end of a truly impressive collar of rich black fur. Above their wide orange eyes, tall ears rose, their ends curled in towards each other. They were roughly the same height as some of my mother’s quarter horses, and looked like they weighed close to a thousand pounds each. Just who the fuck did Anubis think I was?
This was overkill.
The one on the right cocked its head at me, its mouth opening to give me a toothy smile.
“The Lord invites you to dinner. Please follow us.”
The voice was feminine, lilting even and didn’t match at all the creature it spoke from.
“Are both of you female?” I asked, wishing I had my plasma rifle on me.
They smiled at me now, orange eyes flashing. “Yes. Thank you for asking,” the left twin said.
“Please follow us,” the right twin said, her tail twirled behind her like a cat, long and slender.
I narrowed my eyes at them. “And if I refuse?”
A giggle erupted from their throats, akin to a hyena’s cackle but deeper, richer. More terrifying. All the hair on my body stood on end. Their smiles stretched wide, like the Cheshire Cat.
“Then we will drag you,” they intoned together.
Something told me they hoped I’d refuse so they could do just that. I could fight them, but they stood fifteen hands tall and looked to have what appeared to be retractable tiger claws on the end of their six toed feet. Judging by the way their shoulders were shaped more like a big cat, they could use them with devastating effect.
No thanks.
I choose life.
I walked out into the wide hall. “After you.”
Their grins shrunk a fraction in disappointment before they turned and started down the hall with their tails waving in the air like those siamese cats from that kids movie. I’d been upside down the last time I’d come this way so I’d missed all the details. There were still all the gilded framed photos of random things. Some had alien portraits, others held landscape paintings, but I’d failed to register just how loudly painted the hall was. It looked like Elton John had thrown up in here. It was a kaleidoscope of pinks, purples, greens and gold. The long rug covering the flooring was a plush pink shag that looked like it had been stolen off an Austin Powers set.
I followed them past closed doors with numbers painted on them in alien script, each door a different wild theme, and turned right twice down two more hallways that were the mirror image of the one my room was located in. I was guessing that Iwas in the guest quarters, with how many bedrooms were in this part of the palace. Finally we came to a tall grandiose archway depicting twisting gold serpents with three heads coiling around the columns, and through them was a bonafide throne room half filled with junk pushed to the far wall. It gathered around the bronze throne so that it looked like Anubis sat on a junk pile.
I stopped to stare at the body bleeding on the stairs to the dias. The blood had thickened into a pool on the floor. It smelled like Anubis in here… and rage. The hair on my neck stood up and I jogged a little to catch up to the twins.
Past the throne room was a wide hall, then double silver doors with a raised galaxy carved on it that moved with the planets orbiting a star at the center. The twins pressed their shoulders into each door and pushed them open, revealing a moody purple dining room. A long silver table took up the center of the room with eight heavy ornately carved chairs around it. The table was laden with food, steam rising off platters of meat. It smelled like a smokehouse and my painfully empty stomach jerked like it was going to try to beat me to the table.
Anubis rose from his chair at the head of the table, drawing my attention to him. I blinked, momentarily stunned at the ridiculousness of his outfit. The male was wearing tight metallic gold pants that molded to his muscular thighs like wet paint. A belt made out of what appeared to be rubies hung low on his hips, and a sheer gold shirt clung to him like a second skin, the stiff glittering collar flaring high around his neck like something out of an Elizabethan painting. His feet were bare, canid, with each claw painted a bright cherry red. He wore several rings on his toes that matched the rings of gold around his ankles that jingled slightly as he shifted around the table.
“I’m so glad you chose to join me, Callie. Please, have a seat,” he said, pulling out a chair to his left, which would put my back to the door. The glimmer in his eye told me that he knew it too. Iclenched my teeth hard but sat down, letting him push the chair close to the table. He poured a dark black liquid from a gold pitcher into a fancy glass goblet with a flourish before plunking it down in front of me. The bracelets on his wrists clinked together like a chorus of mocking laughter. He had jewels on every finger, too. They glittered under the low light of the floating balls suspended over the table, each one a different size. With the deep purple of the room, the lights looked like stars.
The air felt heavy, heated a touch too high, and combined with the rich aroma of fire seared meat made my eyelids feel heavy. It was only the gnawing beast my stomach had turned into that kept me conscious. I didn’t know if this was a deliberate choice to make me more relaxed, or if Anubis just preferred it hot and humid. I snapped upright when my eyes dropped low enough to nearly close, giving my head a shake to clear it before aiming a glare at him.
“Why am I here? You do realize my people will come for me, right? We are in the middle of a war.”
Anubis nodded his head and hummed as he forked a mini mountain of meat onto a delicate looking glass plate and placed it in front of me. There was a fork and knife to the right of the plate, sitting on top of a napkin that looked to be made out of spun spider web, it was so fine.
“You are here because I wanted you here. I am the Lord of Erral, Watcher In The Deep, He Who Wanders, Blood Of The Fallen, and I always get what I want.” He said all this nonchalantly, fixing his own plate and sitting down to take a bite before looking at me with a smile while he chewed his food, his fork held aloft.
Oookay.
“Look, you Anubis wannabe clown, I don’t care who you are. Either you let me go before my people get here to burn your little playground to ashes or I am going to off you myself. You can’tkeep me. I will find a way to escape eventually. You’ll catch me a few times, no doubt. But I’ll keep trying. Over and over until all your resources are spent trying to keep me contained andthenI’ll kill you.”
He smiled slowly, sat his fork down and leaned back in his chair.
“I am not an Anubis “wannabe”. IamAnubis. Or at least, that is what they called me on your little planet. You may call me Rathal. It is my preferred name, one I reserve for close friends… or lovers.”
I threw up my hands. The male was so arrogant I could hit him over the head with facts all day and he’d still be full of himself. This stupid, pigheaded—wait, what?
