Seraphine Vale moved through the shadowy hallway beyond the chamber, her steps nearly silent on the Turkish rugs covering the dark tiles. After the doors whispered shut behind her, she released the breath she’d been holding. Her hands trembled, so she crossed them behind her back, forcing them still.
She knew she’d pushed him. That subtle shift in the air and the childish display with the walnuts meant her comment had found its mark. Even knowing the risk, it hadn’t been without purpose. It had given her what she sought.
Coward, she thought. False pharaoh. But she didn’t say it aloud. Not here. Not where the walls themselves listened.
Outside the suite, the corridor led into a private antechamber, continuing the dark luxury. It should have been the height of modern sophistication. Instead, there was a small stone basin on a marble pedestal, gleaming with still water like something lifted from ancient Egypt.
Not for the first time, she marveled at the hubris of the man. Of course, there was no proper restroom. No privacy or mirror lit with discreet LEDs, only this absurdity. A memory surfaced of him strutting through the building, nodding in satisfaction at his own anachronisms, while the engineers and contractors ground their teeth behind polite smiles.
With a resigned sigh, she removed her gloves and dipped her hands into the cool water, splashing it on her face to wash away the last of the cold sweat. The movement tugged faintly at scar tissue along her left side.
She dried her face and hands with a small towel before setting it neatly beside the pedestal. Then she crossed the room and lowered herself onto a narrow couch against the wall, the glow of her tablet illuminating the sharp lines of her features.
“Hunter Team Echo prepare for departure within the hour,” she said calmly into the device. “Weapons, tracking equipment, and containment protocols authorized. Priority target designation follows shortly.”
Confirmations immediately began scrolling across the screen.
She reached up and touched the dark iron choker at her throat. Her fingers moved absently across the black opals and the spiral markings of the Galla, servants of Ereshkigal, Mesopotamian Queen of the Dead.
For a brief moment, she considered pressing on the Hunters’ oaths, using those bonds until urgency became compulsion. The thought passed almost immediately. They were already loyal and would be moving quickly.
More importantly, she needed to record what she had learned. Seraphine adjusted the tablet on her knee and opened the encrypted journal.
Once again, emotional provocation produced measurable instability.
Her fingers hovered briefly over the screen before continuing.
As before, when his anger rises, his awareness narrows, creating an opening for me to scan his bonds. I must be cautious, though. After so many years, he may suspect.
The fool hasn’t learned that the first to lose control loses the battle.
She stopped typing and frowned ruefully. After a moment, she deleted the last sentence. That certainly hadn’t been true the first time they met.
She scrolled back to older entries, the encrypted text flickering across the tablet screen.
Cairo, 1980.
At first, I believed him to be another relic hunter. Efficient. Brutal. Predictable.
Her thumb tapped against the edge of the tablet. The assumption of predictability had been her first mistake.
Her tablet chimed and a message popped up:
TARGET STATUS UPDATED
Rebecca Stadler
Flight landed.
She nodded in approval and continued reading.
He is one step ahead. Excavation sites stripped clean before I arrive. Corpses left cooling in the dust. However, today I was the first to reach the prize. There is evidence that this annoys him more than losing the relic itself.
A faint smile surfaced at the memory. Then another passage.
This is not a two-sided battle. A third presence continues to interfere with acquisition sites. The pattern is consistent enough to rule out coincidence. Valuable relics disappear before either of us can reach them, yet there are never signs of conflict.
Witnesses insist they surrendered the relics willingly, but their recollections collapse under examination. Most cannot remember when the exchange occurred. Some barely remember the individual at all.
That troubles me more than his massacres. I cannot determine whether this third party is extraordinarily disciplined or something far worse.
She chuckled at the thought of how much Dr. Stone irritated him back then and continued to do so. There was one final entry in this section.
Outside Ebla, Syria, 1981
I’ve spent seven months following him through excavation sites, black markets, and burial chambers across Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. Every trail ends the same way. I’m always too late to catch him. However, evidence suggests I may soon succeed.
There have been too many times to be coincidence. He is playing games. Deliberately leaving fragments behind. The entire chase has been constructed to keep my attention fixed on him. He will learn his mistake soon enough and will be forced to submit to me.
After this, there was a lag in entries for several months, after which she began again.
I finally confronted him atop a ziggurat at dusk, not far from where I first discovered my relic. It did not go as planned.
Strange that the site of my awakening should also become the site of my greatest failures.
The first was losing my father after I used the vows binding him to my mother to compel his obedience. The second was underestimating the strength possessed by the demon I now must serve.
Seraphine hesitated before scrolling further through the entry.
The instant he turned to face me, I recognized what he was. Another bonded relic bearer. Until that moment, I had only suspected others like me existed. Seeing him confirmed it.
At least my relic possesses a degree of sophistication. An iron choker can pass as jewelry in the right setting.
That absurd golden diadem would look theatrical on almost anyone else. Unfortunately, Akemhet possesses exactly the kind of presence needed to make it seem dangerous instead of ridiculous.
I am older and have been bound longer. More disciplined in my use of my relic. And yet he already carries more marks than I do.
Five tattoos across his body, each one denoting another divine bond. There was no possibility he had earned them legitimately.
Seraphine stopped typing. Her eyes unfocused slightly as her thoughts returned once again to that confrontation atop the ziggurat, endlessly dissecting the encounter in search of some missed warning, some fatal miscalculation she might have corrected.
She remembered standing apart from him. His tattoos glowed a sickly green. Her own relic trembled at the sight. She reached out lightly, her will brushing against the invisible threads wrapped around him.
She shivered at what she sensed. What he had done was worse than any misuse of her own abilities. “You…” Her throat was dry. “You didn’t earn them, you stole—no, you consumed them.” No wonder the trail had been littered with chaos and destruction.
Akemhet’s slow, merciless smile spread as his eyes caught the dying light, gleaming with mockery. “They weren’t worthy,” he sneered.
Seraphine’s hand twitched at her side. Her relic whispered to her, urging her to seize his threads, to bend them and break him before he could strike. His stance shifted, casual yet coiled. He was waiting for her to make the first move.
So, she obliged him. Akemhet was calm, convinced he was ready for her. But she didn’t give him the kind of fight he was expecting. From behind her back, she drew twin semi-automatic pistols and opened fire.
The pistols rattled in her hands, muzzle flashes illuminating the dusk. The bullets struck home, driving into him. He flinched as they tore through muscle, dark blood spilling freely.
But it didn’t hold. The wounds began to close even as more rounds hit, sealing in uneven, creeping motions. The green scorpion tattoo along his shoulder flared, struggling to keep pace with the damage, its light flickering with each strike. He gritted his teeth, the effort catching up with him.
For a brief moment, he staggered.
She remembered exulting in the fact that she had drawn first blood. As soon as she saw it, she pushed forward. One hand kept firing, forcing him to focus more energy into his defenses, while the other reached out, extending the power of her relic.
Threads unspooled before her, woven from promises, debts, and oaths. Five threads shone brilliantly, pulsing with his every move. These were his strength’s anchors, the core of his stolen power.
If she could reach them, capture or even cut a single one, he would belong to her.
At the time, she hadn’t known the names of the bonded gods or the abilities they provided. The first thread she touched found the fury of Sekhmet; the heat burned too intensely. Another thread, Thoth, was slippery with knowledge.
Then she found it—Serket. The bond thrummed violently, unstable and raw, the newest thread woven into him. Its essence was healing and protection, and it was Serket’s energy that negated her gunfire.
The goddess’s protection strained under the onslaught, taxed to its limits, and it became vulnerable to her will. Her fingers pulled at the unseen thread, her relic urging her onward. All she needed to do was take it. With a burst of gunfire to cover her intention, Seraphine struck, casting her will into a narrow focus and latching onto Serket’s bond.
The thread resisted. It bucked against her control, slippery and volatile, the goddess’s essence fighting her intrusion. She pressed harder, trying to bend it, to force it under her command. Nothing. It snapped back, defying her. Fine. Then she would cut it.
She poured her will into the strike, aiming to sever the thread. But when her psychic blade fell, the bond held firm. Shock flickered through her. For the first time, she questioned her own power.
In desperation, she tried one last gambit. If she couldn’t bend it or cut it, she would twist it. With surgical precision, she wrenched the thread, folding it back on itself and knotting it until the connection no longer carried its energy to him.
Akemhet’s eyes went wide. He sensed the sudden silence where Serket’s power had been. Believing the bond was destroyed, he screamed in rage, then in pain, as the next burst of gunfire tore into him. This time, when the bullets rent flesh, his wounds did not heal.
He staggered, one hand clutching his side, anger and disbelief evident on his face. She pressed the advantage, reaching for the next bond even as she unleashed the twin pistols with another barrage. The battle was nearly over. He would be hers to command.
Then came the fire.
She shook out of her reverie. Unconsciously, she touched the scars running along her left side before turning to the next journal entry.
That was the true turning point of everything.
I had not accounted for his uncontrolled use of Ra’s power.
My memories afterward exist only in fragments. Heat. Light. The smell of my own flesh burning. My relic shielded me from death, but not from pain.
When I regained enough awareness to move, the entire left side of my body had been burned nearly to the bone. The sight of exposed ribs surrounded by charred flesh felt unreal, as though I were examining someone else’s corpse.
Still, I had wounded him badly. Akemhet was bleeding from over a dozen gunshot wounds. At the time, I believed we were both going to die in that desert.
Unfortunately, he remained strong enough to kill me first.
I assumed he intended to take my soul the same way he had taken the others. So, I adapted. I told him the damage to Serket’s bond was reversible.
Seraphine paused at that line.
Was that the moment everything truly went wrong?
If she had understood then that he could not devour someone already bonded to a relic, would she have made the same choice?
After a moment, she typed the questions into the journal before continuing.
This altered the encounter immediately. Until then, he had intended to kill me. The possibility of restoring the bond intrigued him more than revenge.
She mused, even then, power achieved mattered more to him than punishment.
He offered me survival in exchange for service.
I saw little choice but to accept, though I still risked negotiating my own terms. He found my audacity amusing and ultimately agreed that I would serve as a lieutenant rather than a slave.
So, I restored Serket’s thread. The moment the bond reconnected, his wounds began healing almost instantly.
I believe he realized then that accepting me as second-in-command could be seen as a weakness. He corrected that perception immediately.
He offered to heal the burns the fire had inflicted upon me. Remove the scars entirely. Then refused.
“They will serve as documentation,” he said. “A permanent record of what it costs to oppose me.”
So, this is where I find myself today. However, I believe studying him closely will eventually reveal a weakness significant enough to exploit.
She had spent nearly half a century documenting him, studying him, and waiting for the right moment. Seraphine allowed herself a faint smile as she returned to today’s entry and finished her notation.
Tonight, his irritation revealed something useful.
While scanning the primary bond, Ammit’s thread, I detected a recurring fixation centered around something called the Convergence Engine. Not just idle curiosity, but actual hunger.
I have never encountered the term before. Whatever it is, he considers it important enough to guard closely. That alone makes it valuable.
Possibly the first genuine opening I have uncovered in decades.
“You will fall,” she whispered. “And I’ll be the one to unmake you.”
The tablet chimed a second time, informing her that Team Echo was ready for departure. Seraphine approved the deployment, then added a final instruction.
“Observe only. Let her settle. I want her convinced she’s free before we close the trap.”
She closed the file and confirmed the encryption. Threads were tightening, and they needed to be cut before they locked into place. She rose from the couch and moved with quiet confidence, already thinking about which pieces on the board would soon need to shift, timing the moment when patience would turn into opportunity.
Adjusting her coat, she walked toward the transport wing, her mind already focused on what was next. Somewhere in Indiana, a potential relic-bearer had refused Stone’s protection. That meant she was alone and vulnerable. Seraphine’s faint smile appeared as the transport doors opened; she loved the thrill of a hunt.