Page 16 of Ride or Die (The Body Shop #5)

“ W hat do you want from me?” I couldn’t look at him any longer. “Why evolve me?”

“Is a father not allowed to take an interest in his daughter?”

An earnest curiosity filled his tone, and I didn’t trust it for a hot minute.

“You put a hit out on me ,” I reminded him, “so forgive my doubt.”

“You are everything I dreamed you would be and more.”

Those horrible black feet approached until he stood before me, almost in touching distance, not that he was in any danger of me bridging that gap.

I could smell him now. Bonfires. Metal. And beneath that, his scent carried an undercurrent of ozone and cold earth. “Words every daughter wants to hear.”

A subtle vibration moved through the floor, but he didn’t acknowledge the disturbance.

“My greatest creation.”

Even for a parent, that sounded weird. But, as the creator of mankind, I got a clearer picture of what Dis Pater meant when he called me an experiment in the conversation I eavesdropped on between them at his house. “And what purpose did you have in mind for your creation?”

“You are to unlock untold powers and allow us to bask in the former glory of our pinnacle.”

There was a lot to unpack there, but I got hung up on one word. “Us?”

“You are my child by blood, but others contributed to your conception. A creation such as yourself is too glorious to be born of a single collision between egg and sperm.” He overlooked my outward cringing at his phrasing.

“They have a vested interest in you and your future. As long as you continue to perform as expected, you will be cared for. Cherished. You will want for nothing.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Willful disobedience will produce the same end result as the discovery of any other defect.”

That sounded a whole lot like if I didn’t play along, I would become a terminated experiment.

“Gotcha.” I cozied up to Anunit, taking comfort from her presence, grateful for her extra solidity while in Abaddon. “Mind clarifying the bit about performance expectations?”

I had always known I was odd, that my powers didn’t work right.

I wasn’t necromancer enough for the Society of Post-Life Management to recruit me, which had landed me in hot water with their sentinels more than once.

Even before Lyle set me up to take the fall with them.

They may not have wanted me, but they also didn’t want me earning a living doing what came naturally to me.

Given my very limited experience with peer reviews, mostly with negative results, and zero experience with measuring up to parental expectations, I was a smidge nervous about his definition of defect .

“You are the embodiment of my aspirations,” he assured me. “Truly magnificent.”

Since I wasn’t about to point out I had felt like a fish out of water all my life when he was so proud of the person I had become, I tread carefully when I asked, “What were these aspirations?”

Another shake rattled the floor, and this time, Ithas lowered his brows in confirmation he felt it too.

“Your consort has come for you,” Anunit said softly.

Too bad I had no way of knowing if rescue or murder was on his mind.

“Consort?” Ithas returned his attention to me.

“I should have known Dis Pater would fail in his attempts to quell your connection. He is a fool who has grown impatient. Creation requires time, and perfection is never achieved on the first or even second attempt. I have invested centuries on this design. Countless lives and resources have been spent to achieve you, and I will not rush through to completion. Not when I am closer than I have ever been to the fruition of my labors.”

Oh, yeah. This guy was out of his ever-loving mind. A total mad scientist.

God, the irony of choosing the nickname Frankie when I had been Frankenstein’s monster all along.

Those implications were too vast and painful to contemplate, so I zeroed in on a more immediate topic. “What connection do I have to Kierce?”

There was one. I was sure of it. Growing more certain by the minute.

“None of importance, and one that will soon become irrelevant.”

A cold stone dropped into my gut. “Leave him out of this.”

Laughter spilled from his lips in a black wisp of smoke, as if he were so amused he couldn’t hold on to his form.

“That is quite impossible, as he was the inspiration for this experiment.” His dark eyes fastened on me.

“You were not made for him, if that is what concerns you. You were made because of him.”

“Kierce is ancient.” I didn’t mean the title of Viduus, I meant the man. “How is that possible?”

“You are not the first of your kind. You are simply the latest, and most promising, iteration.”

Ithas held out his hand, and a gleaming bone, maybe three or four feet in length, materialized across his palm. I was no expert on swords. Other than the fact that one end was pointy, I didn’t know much about them. I had, however, watched enough K-dramas to decide he held a Hwando-style blade.

A craftsman had carved it—from the ornate hilt to the shattered end of the blade—as one piece.

A fractured sob cut its way free of Anunit’s throat as she beheld the weapon.

“Anunit?” Stroking her soft cheeks, I forced her attention onto me. “What’s wrong?”

A soft ripple of energy brushed my senses as a faint resonance hummed in my bones.

The same resonance, now that I thought about it, I always felt in the presence of Alcheyvāhā remains.

“The god killer blade,” she rasped, her voice breaking in tandem with her heart.

Dinorah.

That was one of Dinorah’s bones.

No wonder Anunit wailed beside me. Dear God. That sword was all that remained of her daughter.

“Fang of Dinorah.” Ithas hummed. “That is the name it was given by the artisan who forged this truly fascinating piece.” He closed his fingers over the hilt, angling the ruined edge toward us. “This weapon ended an entire pantheon of gods, and in so doing, birthed a precious resource.”

“The remains of the Alcheyvāhā aren’t a resource to be exploited by greedy gods, and that sword should be laid to rest among its people.” I held out my hand. “As the guardian of the Alcheyvāhā, I demand you return it. I will see that it’s given proper funerary rites.”

“That, I cannot do. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to a patron of mine.”

There was no point arguing with god logic, they were too entitled, so I set the matter of ownership aside and attempted to ferret out the other gods involved in my creation. “Then why do you have it?”

“The Alcheyvāhā believed that Berchem’s family killed Dinorah and, in his grief, he killed himself.”

Berchem.

A faint buzzing at the base of my skull drowned out his next words, but I shook off the disorientation. That was it. The name forever on the tip of my tongue. How did I know it? What did it mean?

“The truth is far worse,” he was saying when my ability to concentrate returned to me.

“Berchem wasn’t allowed to end his life and join his mate in the hereafter.

No. His family wanted him to suffer. Eternally.

” His gaze lowered to mine, and I glanced away quickly.

“They bound his powers and sold him to a god as a slave.”

As the pit in my stomach tunneled deeper, I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “No.”

He couldn’t mean... That was impossible. There was no way.

“Allowed to live. Forced to exist without her. To know that their love caused the downfall of her once mighty people. His agony...” Ithas inhaled softly, “…was exquisite. The self-loathing alone would have fed me for centuries.” He shook his head.

“Sadly, I wasn’t the god they approached with the bargain. ”

The dull thump of my heart made it hard to hear him. “It was Dis Pater.”

“To summon Dis Pater, they marked the soul of one of their own. Sacrificed another of their family so no one who came after would dare defy their rule.” He chuckled at their folly.

“They offered Berchem when Dis Pater came to collect. Dis Pater wasn’t interested in the chaotic potential, but he knew the story, and he had always been a collector of cursed items.” He lifted the blade.

“He agreed to take Berchem, under the condition he was given the blade, Dinorah. He claimed it was so the young, power-hungry pantheon couldn’t use it against him as they had the Alcheyvāhā, but the truth was Dis Pater wanted to possess its lethal potential.

Leverage to hold over all our heads should any of us dare cross him. ”

Hot tears stung the backs of my eyes. “Berchem’s own family hated him that much.”

“Yes, well, species rise and fall. I have seen the birth and death of infinite races. Mankind has endured.” I heard the pride in his voice.

“But mankind is also fickle in its beliefs, and gods require consistent worship to survive. Godkind can evolve, but their potential for growth is stunted by that exact changeable nature in their food source.”

“As you said, Dinorah is a weapon that could slay another pantheon of gods given the chance.” I wished I hadn’t spoken its name when Anunit sucked in a sharp breath, but I leaned in to this new topic, eager to escape the heartbreaking tale of Berchem and Dinorah.

“Why would Dis Pater entrust it to you?”

“The Alcheyvāhā are extinct.” He spoke to me as if I were a child.

“But their magic lives on. Imagine if we could do more than siphon residual energy like sucking marrow from the bone. Picture a new generation of gods capable of harnessing the limitless potential of the burial grounds, no longer reliant upon human worship to sustain them.” His eyes glittered with possibilities.

“A living demigoddess—a demi titan —with Alcheyvāhā blood can tap into that collective power, absorb it, share it with others. She would shake the heavens until Olympia itself fell, and her offspring would provide fine husbands and wives. Conduits of a power mightier than any before seen.”

Demititan? Demigoddess was bad enough, but this was next level confusing. Cue identity crisis 3.0.

“You said it yourself. The Alcheyvāhā are extinct.” I got a very bad feeling about where the missing edge of Dinorah had gone. “Dis Pater told me I’m not Alcheyvāhā, so how can their blood run in my veins?”

“Bone marrow creates red blood cells. A specimen this old would normally only yield DNA samples, but I spent the better part of a century coaxing an inch-long piece back to life within a host by performing the bone marrow transplant on infants.” He ran a thumb over the broken end.

“None of them survived adolescence.” His brow knit into a frown.

“That was the moment I decided my next embryo would possess two distinct blood types, that of its Alcheyvāhā donor and that of its own. Chimerism is what they call it. Though you are chimeric in so many beautiful ways.”

The dullness in Anunit’s eyes terrified me when they met mine, as if she were no longer seeing me.

For the first time since entering Abaddon, she felt ethereal, like she might disappear.

“That’s why I can speak to her when no one else can. That’s the bond we share that she’s sensed all this time.” I caressed her, hoping to coax life back into her but fearing my tainted touch would push her over this final edge. “You put part of her daughter in me.”

That was the reason Anunit had chosen me to succeed her.

She sensed my stolen heritage and trusted in it—and me—without understanding why.

Now that I knew, I wished I could forget.

But that wasn’t fair. I wasn’t to blame for Ithas or his methods in creating me.

But I would make sure I was the last experiment he brought to life.