“You used it? What’s down there?” Asha asked.
“The undercity.” Bastet pouted at her. “I just said that.”
“But what does that mean?” Wren asked. “A sewer, a cellar, a dungeon?”
“No,” Bastet said slowly. “It’s the undercity. It’s a city. Under. The city.”
Asha and Wren exchanged a quick look of confusion, and the herbalist asked, “And you live there?”
“Sure, with the rest of our family. But not here. Not this part. It’s not safe here anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time,” the Aegyptian girl said.
“Not safe for you? But you’re immortal,” Wren said. “What’s made it dangerous?”
This time it was Bastet and Anubis who exchanged the uncomfortable look.
The dour youth sighed. “It’s complicated. Suffice it to say that if your friend was taken by the beasts into the undercity through this door, then he is already dead, or soon will be.”
“I don’t think so,” Wren said. “He’s immortal, too.”
“What?” Bastet slipped off the fountain and deftly caught her cat mask to keep it from slipping off her head. “He’s immortal? What’s his name again?”
“Omar,” Wren said. “Omar Bakhoum.”
Bastet gasped and grabbed Anubis’s arm and began shaking it violently. “That’s it! That’s the name he was using right before he left! Yes, that’s it!”
“Are you sure?” Anubis asked. “It’s been at least ten years now. And he’s used hundreds of names over the years.”
“Yes, I’m sure!” She slapped his arm and turned back to Wren with a wild-eyed smile. “It’s him, he’s back! I was right, it was him! He’s back!”
“Who?” Asha asked.
“Grandfather!” Bastet exclaimed. “Your friend Omar is my grandfather, Thoth!”
Asha paused, watching the various expressions of excitement and confusion play over the faces of the two girls. The grim youth merely raised an eyebrow and snorted.
“Oh gods,” Bastet whispered. “But that means they took him. That he’s down there.” She turned to look at the fountain again. “That she has him. Oh gods.”
“You only just realized?” Anubis sneered. “This is the end of everything.”
“End of what?” Asha asked. “Who has him? What are you talking about?”
Bastet said nothing, but her hand covered her mouth and her eyes narrowed as tears gleamed on her lashes, and she gasped. Anubis stepped away from the fountain wall and put his arms around her, and she cried softly into his tunic.
Asha and Wren looked at each other, and at the fountain, and waited.
Anubis looked up. “Our grandfather was the first immortal, and he made others immortal, over time. First our family here. Then others in the east and the north. There were three in Damascus. A soldier, Gideon. A nun, Nadira. And a courtesan, Lilith. They were supposed to help Grandfather in his studies. Gideon was to study sun-steel, and Nadira was to study aether. They both did this for a time, and then moved on to do other things.”
“And Lilith?” Wren asked quietly.
“Lilith was tasked to study the art of soul-breaking,” Anubis said. “The science of dividing an immortal soul, to manipulate flesh through the soul. You are both examples of this. You, with the dragon, and you, with the fox. This is what Lilith has studied for the past two thousand years. But unlike the others, she never lost interest in her task. And several years ago, she came here to Alexandria to continue her work.”
“Why here?” Asha asked. “Did she come here to see you?”
“She did ask my father for his help,” Anubis said. “But he refused her. Still, she stayed. There was something else here that she needed to continue her work.”
“Sun-steel,” Wren said. “She needed sun-steel. She was taking it from the Sons of Osiris, wasn’t she?”
Anubis nodded. “She was. I suspect that is why she sent her servants to dig through the temple ruins. To find more of the metal. Seireikens, jewelry, even raw ingots.”
“So, it was Lilith who made those two creatures?” Asha said. “She took that man and woman, and put animal souls inside them to turn them into beasts? Into slaves?” She felt a familiar old anger begin to burn in her belly, and deep within her breast the golden dragon’s soul coiled and growled.
“Yes.” Bastet stepped back from her cousin, her arms wrapped tightly around her belly, her cheeks glistening with tears. “She’s done it hundreds of times. Maybe more. They usually don’t last very long. They kill each other, or they kill themselves. And if they tried to come out of the undercity, then Anubis or Horus would kill them. Or Gideon.” She sniffed loudly. “But those two tonight. They were… They were family.”
“My parents,” said Anubis. “The man with the head of an aardvark is my father, Set. And the winged woman is my mother, Nethys.”
“Lilith tricked them,” Bastet said, wiping the tears away. “She took them one by one, trapping them and turning them against each other, luring them into her home where she imprisoned them, and changed them.”
“I’m so sorry,” Wren said. She took the girl in her arms and the two embraced in a soft collision of black skirts and loose hair, with Jagdish squeaking between them.
Asha looked up at Anubis. “Are there are others like them? Are there more?”
The youth nodded. “Lilith also has our cousin, Horus, and his mother, Isis. They too have been… changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Asha said. “I assume you’ve tried to find them, or rescue them?”
Anubis nodded. “We know they live in Lilith’s refuge in the undercity, but it’s too dangerous for us to go there now. If we venture too close, Lilith releases her monsters to chase us away, or to capture us. I assume she would also take us, transform us, and make us serve her as well.”
“But why?” Wren asked. “Why do that? Why do any of it?”
Bastet sniffed and said, “I don’t know, really, but I think she fell in love with the knowledge that Grandfather gave her. The ability to cut and weave souls as a tailor does with cloth, to reshape living flesh, to bend it to her will. I don’t think she has any particular use for them. She just likes doing it. I mean, she’s never sent her servants out here to get gold or anything. She’s never tried to move up into one of the city palaces, or to seize the throne of Alexandria, let alone Eran.”
“Bastet is correct,” Anubis said. “Lilith is not a creature of greed or politics. She’s in love with her own power, and if left unchecked, I believe she would live on forever in the undercity, stealing her servants from above and twisting them into strange shapes for her own amusement. It’s a sickness in her. An obsession.”
“What about Lilith herself?” Asha asked. “Has she transformed her own body, too?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t seen her in years,” Bastet said.
The doctors, the Sons of Osiris, and now Lilith. It never ends. Go a little deeper into the shadows, and you’ll always find yet another monster waiting for you, yearning to destroy innocent lives for no reason at all.
Asha rubbed her eyes. “What will Lilith do with Omar? Transform him like the rest of your family?”
“Most likely,” said Anubis.
“How does she do it?” Asha asked. “Tell me what she does, exactly. Maybe if we know enough about it, we can undo it.”
Wren shook her head. “Omar taught me all about soul infections. He couldn’t cure the fox plague in Ysland. He couldn’t take the fox souls out. That’s impossible. They mix together, your soul and the second soul, like fresh water and brine. The best you can do is what he did to me, and the rest of my people. Add a third soul, another element to keep the second one under control. But it’s very delicate. This third soul must be stronger than the second one, and able to balance it perfectly without causing any new symptoms.”
“What did he use?” Bastet asked. “To fix you, I mean. What was the third soul that Grandfather gave you?”
“His own,” Wren said. “He’s immortal. Healthy. Sane. And very human. It keeps the fox soul inside me from changing my body beyond my ears and eyes.”
“Maybe we can do the same thing,” Asha said. “We have two immortals right here. Maybe if we can give pieces of your souls to the people Lilith took, they’ll change back.”