I pivoted and came face-to-face with Azrael himself. I blocked his first strike, aimed at my neck, and succeeded in knocking him backward.
We dueled. My wrath smoldered and my body ached, but I needed to keep a level head. Azrael cut at me, and I parried. With a slight shift in his weight, Azrael transformed the cut into a thrust. I dodged his blade, just barely.
Azrael must have been drawing on the cyclops’s extrasensory perception, because for every blow that should have landed, I was met with a swift counter. He drove at me relentlessly, forcing me backward, keeping me off balance. I fended him off desperately and tried to counter, but Azrael did not yield. I dodged at the last moment so that the blow meant to slash my throat only grazed my skin. I stumbled backward as Azrael ordered one of his soldiers to “capture the sunborn.”
I’d not let him take you from me again. Invigorated, I moved on instinct. I lunged, and this time, the point of my sword drove into Azrael’s shoulder. But as I jerked back to recover my weapon, Azrael’s own dagger thrust into my abdomen, driving up under my ribs. He withdrew his blade with a sickening squelch, and I knew that this was a mortal wound. You cried out as I dropped clumsily to my knees. My blood spilled onto the square and collected in the cracks between the cobblestone. So much of it, like a crate of wine overturned.
When I regained consciousness,or something like it, I was on that familiar desert plateau, facing the sunborn temple, this time with your cat in human form at my side. She must have collected my soul at Bastet’s behest. It was with profound sadness I realized that I’d not held you one last time or told you that I loved you. I now knew the unique suffering of so many souls I’d reaped in my long service, their lives interrupted without being given the chance to say goodbye.
“Did the revolution succeed?” I asked Spooky.Were you safe? Were you free?
Spooky tilted her head and motioned for my spirit to continue its journey. I approached the perimeter of the temple and the golden walkway that lead to Bastet’s city of light. The queen, in all her exaltation, emerged to greet me.
“You’re earlier than I expected.” Bastet looked me over, perhaps trying to discern the reason for my sudden appearance. My spirit still held the evidence of violence, the whip mark across my chest, the bloody hole in my abdomen, and the other, less obvious injuries to my person.
“There was a battle,” I said simply.
“And you fought well,” Bastet said.
“It’s not over yet.”
“It is for you,” she answered with complete certainty.
She turned, intending for me to follow, but I hesitated, for how could I leave you, defenseless and grief-stricken? My soul ached for yours. It called for you across the realms like the sirens screaming their doleful cries only to hear their own echos in return.
“I can’t,” I faltered.
“You’ve endured this fate before,” she remarked. “Orlando and Lior before him.”
“You know about them?”
“I knoweverything, bloodborn.”
There was some comfort in having my secrets and shames laid bare, all my crimes and passions, amounting to one long life. Had I lived well? Had I acted honorably or was it only ever in my own self-interest?
“Was I good?” I asked Bastet.
She turned and stared at me. The empathy emanating from her countenance was rare for the divine, but her answer did not reassure me.
“No, Henri, you were not good.”
I suppose that I knew it already. I’d killed a lot of people, and not always for a righteous cause.
“Like so many others, you are a complicated being. You act according to your passions. In ignorance and in fear. And even in your love for another, you are greedy and covetous.”
“Did I deserve him?”
“No,” she said with a slight shake of her head, and I knew it to be true.
“I can’t leave him,” I said again.
“Your neglect allowed for Lior to be tortured and killed, and your denial resulted in Orlando’s death. How might you fail Vincent?”
There were so many ways that I could fail you, had failed you.
“I don’t know, but I do know that he makes me better.”
“But do you do that for him?”
Did I?
“I would die for him again and again. My only wish is to protect and care for him.”
“And possess him.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I want him to belong to me, for us to belong to each other, if only for a little while longer.”
Bastet’s dark eyes assessed me, peeled back my layers of humanity and divinity, my faults, my weaknesses, until at last, she said, “You may not return to him, bloodborn. You are not worthy.”
Devastating as it was, she spoke the truth.
