It was the reason we’d been created. This was the reason. To put down this menace. And that new someone wanted to rescue Amon, but she didn’t necessarily want to save him for the same reasons I personally did.
I…we…blinked. Something was changing. Though I made a feeble attempt to stop it and take control of my body again, I somehow knew that if Tia and I were going to be able to use our power fully in the way we needed to, we had to allow this change to happen, and we needed to embrace it. Feeling more than hearing Tia’s agreement, I took a deep breath and let go, becoming more of an observer than a participant.
Our claws dug into the edge of the wall as we leaned forward, gouging deep scratches into the iron. Flecks of it shaved away and rained down upon the heads of the beings beneath us, but the disturbance went unnoticed. The bodies didn’t seem to be aware of much more than their own suffering.
Just the idea of entering the same space these bodies occupied made the blood in my veins run cold. But this only impacted the tiny tamped-down version of myself. The part of me that was sphinx feared little. As I crept along the edge, looking for the quickest and quietest place to descend, I steeled my resolve, knowing I’d soon be surrounded by the lost dead.
Just then, the voice spoke again. I froze atop the wall and looked down. The Minotaur had coiled his whip and stood immobile, his head lowered. Puzzled, I looked for the source of the voice. I’d thought he was the one who’d been speaking. But then I saw her.
She was difficult to make out at first. A dark sort of cloud surrounded her, obscuring her until she wanted to be seen. It moved with screeching winged beasts that flapped leathery wings, giving me tiny glimpses of the being that stood in the center of their menacing flock.
Slowly, the writhing mass approached the Minotaur and a long and lovely limb reached out toward the pale monster. Her fingernails were painted black, her skin a greenish gray. The wings pummeled his body but he didn’t flinch, even when several of them bit him hard enough to draw blood that trickled brightly down his ashen arm.
As her hand slowly encircled the Minotaur’s large bicep, the creature smiled blissfully. Even from a distance I could see that he quivered in pleasure at her touch.
“Can you sense her, pretty godling?” the woman asked Amon as a long leg emerged from the winged mass. “She’s very close. Perhaps if you’re…cooperative,” she tantalized, “I’ll chain the two of you together so you can watch as I suck the life from her.”
Her voice seemed familiar. I’d heard it somewhere before, but at that moment, I couldn’t place it.
The reddish-black bats fluttered closer to her form, eventually settling on her back and shoulders to form a flowing cape. The smaller silvery-winged beasts alighted on her head and became a gleaming headdress. The effect was chilling, especially when the minions sitting on her shoulders raised their sharpened wings in the form of jagged, spiked epaulettes that protected what might otherwise have been a vulnerable throat. My hands itched to test the edge of my spear-knives against her living armor.
She was beautiful, with long hair piled atop her head, and she was curvy in a femme fatale kind of way. Every inch of her looked like the queen of the netherworld. Dr. Hassan had shown me pictures of the Devourer in a book on the drive to Luxor. That Devourer looked like a monster hippo with sharp teeth.
The real version, however, looked more like the kind of woman who wrapped every man she met around her little finger with one glance and then took them for everything they owned. It was all too easy to imagine her chewing up her victims for breakfast, spitting out their mangled carcasses, and rounding up another dozen for lunch. She was alluring and cunning, dangerous and provocative—exactly like the black widow she appeared to be.
“Ah!” She laughed, a sound at once lovely and utterly frightening. “She brings your heart. This is even better. Now I can take my time to savor the taste of you for centuries!”
The wanton gleam in her eye or the way she licked her cherry-red lips might have been mistaken as suggestive, but the part of me that was Tia knew