Amen Ra

My heart always stops that way. It doesn't say much for my staying power, to die when I come. Perhaps it'd be different during the daytime, but there had never been peace enough for me to try when the sun was up. Someday, perhaps, I would convince Ormandi to try it, but she was as she was, and that was my death, too. I do die an awful lot, it's lost it's effect, really. I blame the Egyptians, they wrote it that way.
Awfully obsessed with death. They wrote Jackal the way that he is, though I think he's happy enough to take that and run with it. Fine with me, he can weigh hearts in his palms, but he'll never have mine, no matter how many times it stops.
It was dawn when I came around, settled comfortably in a bed and with my clothes returned to me, though not on my body. I could hear Jackal pacing the hall outside, hear his breath while he thought to himself. I got the strangest impres he he was thinking about me, about simply coming in to gain that sort of power over me again - too soon, Jackal, too soon, and he'd have been my slave, dogging my every step for years until the effects of power wore off of his head. We're all like that, all of us but I. The Egyptians wrote that, too.
We were still in The Egypt, but there was no window in this room. I was in here, and there'd be a cloudy day outside. Shame - all the forecasters had predicted sun. Beach weather, even. I got up, there were comfortable pajamas situated on my current frame, cream. Everything was like sand here, I wondered who was responsible for that, if they thought it would make me nostalgic. I didn't miss the desert, the life-giving Nile, any of that. I didn't miss it one ounce. I have drowned in the Nile, and I have baked and frozen in the desert. Gabe and his family of failures, and Sky, their mother. None of that was important anymore.
What mattered right now was getting out of this place. Jackal heard me moving, paused in front of the door. He stopped thinking about trying to take me, I think, then. I was distantly fond of him, dog that he was. But Syrus, his master, would be on his way. Syrus, who had been displaced from his domain of death and souls - replaced with a sinister little goat-man with horns and a tail. I'd met Lucifer - and someday, he too would be replaced. As a rule, we don't mingle with each other. Romans and Greeks were evidence of why. I knew they were still around somewhere, each living dual lives while they tried to win dominance over each other, and fight their epic battles twofold.
My clothes smelled like sandalwood and sex. It didn't matter, I dragged them to the bathroom-closet with me, while I showered the smell of Jackal off of me, the crust of his come off of my thighs. I didn't need his smell reminding him that he'd had me. If I was sure of one thing, it was the sharpness of his nose. He could smell death acutely, he'd told me once that was how he felt me coming. He could smell me, the thousand thousand deaths, he could smell it for miles. I remembered that, now.
When I turned off the water, I could hear him pacing again. He'd have to protect me from Ormandi today, but she was slippery. He only had to protect me for just long enough. Syrus would come soon. I left my shirt open on my chest, put one knuckle to the door quickly to get his attention. Well, I could tell Syrus no, I supposed. This happens every so often. Eventually I will escape, or he'll kill me, and I'll escape that way too. When Jackal's steps faltered, I raised my voice.
"You can come in. It'll be easier that way." The khaki color was a good idea. Ormandi could
comfortably slither her way into the smallest of spaces. But she was dark, she was always shadow, inky darkness. She could not have hidden in sight in this room. Not when I turned my bed up on it's side, Jackal blinking his disbelief as I dispelled the shadows underneath. He had shed his dress shirt and jacket, but I recognized his rumpled suit pants from the previous evening. I had slept death, but he looked weary around the edges. A delicate golden chain held an Ankh safely against his skin. As long as factories in china still made them, he would breathe. I suppose it reassured him.
I had gone a safer route. There it was, the golden sun bird, tattooed on my wrist. Comforting. It was vain, I admit. It was vain to store my power there, toan ian it from my own body in this way, to draw it from those I came in contact with who saw it on my wrist and poured remembrance. Speak the tales but once, speak them to me, it was so sweet in my ears, flowed through my blood like poison. I admit that it was a horrible self-pleasure, but it was one of the few that was still effective enough on me.
"Will she really come here?" He should know better, but I sense that he's trying to make
conversation. Trying to ease the silence away so that it would not become uncomfortable. How else do you keep someone you subdued with your body from simply staring at you and thinking of your scent, and your cold? The dog is good at it. His eyes are weary, but steady. Today he feels far more tame. It's that friendly disposition toward me that I worry over. I know that with time and my body, I could steal him away from Syrus, steal him to be loyal to me only, and let death thunder at us, he could not touch the bond.
But slavery is not in my style. And freedom is not for Jackal. So, I told the truth. I spoke, and I cannot lie, Soold old the truth, sitting on the side of my upturned bed, and letting my shoulders hunch like a falcon, treed by a storm. "She always does." Ormandi would be here, and there'd be a fight, but today she would not win, though it'd be cloudy anyway. "But we may have to wait." Jackal took his cue from me, drew a chair over from the shabby table that held just a telephone. He locked the door, and lit a cigarette, encouraged by my voice to speak inanities, just a dog whining to comfort it's self.
"I want to know where Syrus is," It's difficult to phrase everything in a truth, sometimes. I could have never been on Jeopardy, that's for sure. Nobody remembers that show -now-, anyway. Jackal gave a vague shrug of his shoulders, and seemed to forget his cigarette to burn it's way to nonexistence in the ashtray. Ah, to have such a limited existence, only burning out. If I was lucky, I would exist until the last tablets of Egypt crumbled to dust in the museums, and the last pictures of them disappeared from textbooks, along with the last rumors of our stories. If I was unlucky, I would live until the sun burned out.
"He told me to catch you, and to wait." This is also truth. I find that my words are infectious, and I've got a hold over Jackal at the moment. "He didn't tell me where he'd be in the meantime."
"Seems smart enough, in case you failed."
"I didn't," And that's just a hint of his grin, tees shs sharp in his mouth as I remembered them at my neck. I lifted a hand and rubbed at the back of my neck, feeling their impression. Goddamn necrophiliac. But I suppose there was no harm done, except for the fact that he didn't rend my body to be useless, and let me fly free of this trap.
"I hope he'll get here soon." Three against one would be nice odds. It'd be good to surprise
Ormandi - she was just as uncreative as I was, and a throw in her plans may make her clumsy for days, letting the sun out on the world this late in the year. Jackal shrugged again, and twisted his cigarette out in the tray with a tired motion.
The next moment, he was dead. I'd been keeping my eye on the space underneath the table, but for a moment, I'd looked up to listen to Jackal speak. She was venomous, and had his ankle and him down, all coils and muscle at his neck while he clawed at her and barked his agony. He did get her tail though, all those rattles coming off in his fingers, bracelets clutched in his dying fist, and then he was bitten again, right along the attractive bridge of his nose, and then he was dead.
He was a hunter, Jackal, but he was no hope against Ormandi. She only hunted me, only me. We
were perfect for each other, in our lack of creativity, perfect in our lack of variation. She rose up, spreading the hood of a cobra into arms, and legs. All black, all over. She was dark skinned, dark haired, and she wore the night, stars shimmering in her dress, over her breasts.
"I won't lose today," My pride was already suffering. Truth told, I was glad she'd come early. Then I'd be able to have a normal rest of the day. Or at least, fairly normal. Jackal would have to be attended to. We rounded on each other bare-handed. I was bigger than she, but she was far more skilled, far more supple, far more able to twist my body into uncomfortable contortions while she attempted to constrict the life out of me, one way or another.
Today, we'd be fighting for a while.