Amen Ra

The next morning found me waking to a tangle of two matched bodies. Judging from how deep they were sleeping, they had not let my disinclusion from the rest of the evening hinder their progress. The bed was moist in places, and I was in need of a shower. I greeted the sun with a smile, and ambled naked into the bathroom. I did not know how long they would be able to keep Ormandi. She did not have the same ability to call aid that I did, and because of her like to make enemies of just about everyone, she would not have had the allies to call, anyway.
I worried about her anyway. I took the time to wash the sweat and salt from my hair - it was a little longer, now, almost long enough to bind up at the back of my neck. I had noticed that I was a little taller in this body too. Today we would have to find a better method of finding each other when I died. As pleasent as the sentiments were, I could not keep dying the little death forever. That would come after breakfast. As I passed the tangle of limbs on the bed, pale and dark, I wondered if it wouldn't have been better to create a set - a whole pack of them.
I think I was not only overly tired, but perhaps my views were more than a little skewed by the events of the past few days. I was skewed enough to cook breakfast, trusting that their accute senses of smell would bring them down the stairs to the hot bacon smell. I was correct, they both trailed down - Wolfe with the decency to put on a full set of pajammas, though they did not fit him very well, and Jackal wearing only a set of sweatpants and the Ankh I had grown accustomed to seeing against his olive toned chest.
It was almost a normal morning, almost normal, with the sound of the ocean outside, and the three of us eating casually. I even found it in me to laugh - and they found it to laugh with me. I found the honey again in the refridgerator, and things enough to make pancakes. It was Jackal who remarked on how very normal things could be, even if it were two hounds of death and the god of the sun, all settled in to breakfast in a house that they did not own.
---

What I wanted at that time was just to believe that the plan, convincing as itmay have been, was nothing. There had been so many others, so many failures. I had no reason - besides Isis's backing of - to believe that that this plan would be any more of a success. I had allready won two allies, the Jackal gods were lounging in a tight fitting pile of contrast on the couch and I had escaped imprisonment once allready. Despite the gravity of the information that Wolfe had brought yesterday, and Ormandi's capture, I was confident.
Imagine my surprise when -he- showed up, more alive and more real than I had been in his time. He showed up, long hair gleaming in the sunlight, smile bright and so full of malice. He appeared on the doorstep and rang the bell like any proper visitor. I was surprised enough to answer it, surprised further when he stepped inside, shining like the moon even indoors. He borrowed the light of the sun, and reflected it in his own power.
Aten was taller and wider than me, classically handsom, perfect to a fault.
"Oh, little brother, where have you been?" His voice brought the jackal gods running, boots catching easy traction on the wooden floor of the foyer. I imagined them with raised hackles and exposed teeth. Aten represented an era that had endangered us all. Aten was our replacement - one rogue Pharaoh had fallen out with me, and insisted that a single god would do. He had created and empowered Aten with an insistance that his subjects all worship him. At the same time he had crippled our ability to do anything, our powers turning to nothing for the first time. It was the first thunderous shock, the noise of our fallibility, which we were living the echoes of today.
Our faithful servants waited - Pharaohs pass. Our worship was returned to us with his death, but we had been weakened in their hearts and minds. It left us open to downfall - and we fell. As all gods will do, sometime.
"I am not your family," It is so wonderfully easy to be cold with the truth. "And I've been here."
Aten lowered his eyes only briefly to the brothers, allowed himself a smirk. He has none of my inability to lie. He savors that, rolls the words around in his mouth like a fine alcohol. He finally spoke when he had enjoyed the taste, and the sight of me and my dogs for long enough.
"All that you're missing is a pony," He smirked, rolling his eyes upwards. He tipped his fingers to his brow in a mock salute. "Anubis, Ap-uan, and last of all, Amen-Ra."
"I want you to tell me why you're here." At that moment, I realized how easy it would have been to use the real power of truth, and speak him away. I could speak the whole plan out of existance - but what would that do for me? I existed, I had what power I did through the will of others. Who was I to take will away from anyone? Even those who would harm me - that was their will. They had that right. I would rather have spoken myself out of existance.
Aten held up a finger, passed beyond me with a nasty expression, and made his way into the kitchen. He was helping himself to the coffee, pouring into a cup that I had set out for myself. He drank it black.
"I'm here to take your place," He said simply, raising my cup as if in indication. "Again."
I could only wait for him to explain, following his motions with little interest. The Jackal gods had followed us into the kitchen, and watched him from close to the table with the expression of hunters watching some sort of animal that is too much trouble to pray on. It may just bite back hard enough to wound them - they were wary.
"In this country," His fingers encompassed America, by guesture and my guess. "I have again risen to power."
"And how's that?" Jackal had found his way back to the table, practically radiating irritation.
"A nudge and some press connections," I got the feeling that Aten had not taken his downfall with anything like good grace. In fact, I knew he hadn't - I'd wrestled him out of supremacy myself. "And a cult will form."
"So you think you can beat us with twenty measly followers? Thirty?" Jackals teeth were set together so firmly as he spoke that his words were almost too soft to be heard. Wolfe looked livid as well, but remained quiet. Jackal had said enough for the both of them.
"There are people who are so tired of God," Aten reguarded the brothers as if they were small children, to be humored. He seemed to grow as he spoke. I suspected magic, but it meant another thing, too, than just him dicking with us. He wasn't lying. "It takes three things for faith, boys. Do you know what they are?"
I knew what was coming, but I honestly wished the answers were truth, humility, and devotion. Wolfe and Jackal remained silent.
"First, people. They need not even be -your- people," Aten made a gentle guesture with my coffee cup. "Then money. Found groups, fund activities. Make things free, and best of all - make them fun."
"But the most important thing-" He continued, "The thing that really makes 'em line up - is a better promise than the other guy."
It was the simple, ugly truth. Unfortunately it required a base of followers to get the ball rolling. In an age where we were taught to students as mythology, it was difficult. Make that Nigh unto impossible - I had never met with success, nor had Syrus, for all his attempts. It seemed that Aten had succeeded where we had failed.
"Instead of the difficult choice of Hell in life and Heaven afterwards, or Heaven first and then a long roast - we offer eternity to the just, instead. They need not follow certain rules, or retain sexual purity outside of marriage, or even be kind to their fellow man. It's all a matter of enemies, Amen-Ra. Help me to fight them, and I will give you this prize. The enemy of my enemy is my follower."
He turned his gaze on me, focusing in on every tiny detail in my face. "Isis's plan was to remove you from the loop, but I've had a far better idea."
Wolfe, who had been occupying his hands with his brother's tense shoulders looked up, eyes on me as well. Jackal's gaze followed too, slowly. No pressure, now.
"I can promise you eternity." And with this, Aten held out the hand not bearing the cup. "You'll rise back to power - of course, not as the king of gods- but still," His voice gained a compelling quality, now. More magic. "A far cry from where you are now. Will you claim my enemies as yours?"
"No." I did not even have to think.
Aten could not have looked more unimpressed. He seemed as if all the size he had gained left him in an instant. He turned his attention on the Jackal gods. "And you? Will you throw away this opportunity, too?"
He needn't have even asked.
---
These were not the replies that Aten was looking for. In fact, our stubborness in the face of his 'civility' was enough to enrage him. He glowered at me, his hand making a quick motion with my coffee cup, and then it was no longer a cup. Rather, it was quite a mess. Jagged flakes of ceramic slid in trails of coffee across the teal kitchen tiles, leaving Aten with a very sharp piece in his fingers. Both of the jackal gods were on their feet, but they did not even begin to concern Aten. It took two steps for them to get to me, and only one for Aten.
Still, he went around me at first, determined to slaughter my defiant pets. Or at least, this was the only rationale I can come up with for his actions at this point. The hounds of death were quick, but Aten was faster, a curtain of blonde hair for less than a moment, and Wolfe fell, thighs bloody. It was a smart move. The long cuts would cause the arteries there to drop the blood from his body, with the kind aid of gravity.
Jackal lasted a few moments longer, but he was blinded by his anger over Wolfe's - fatal - injury. He dove for Aten's neck, hands becoming paws in midair. Aten braced one arm up, caught jaws with the power to crush bones on the forearm instead of his neck, and drove the shard of cup deep into the soft tissue between Jackal's neck and shoulder. His body was black on a floor that was very rapidly turning red.
Pharoah's god paused only long enough to select another piece of cup from the floor before rounding on me. I admit, I wanted nothing more than to run, but he was bleeding too. His arm was torn in ragged lines where Jackal had bitten him. It galvanized me, and I drew up whatever weapon my questing fingers found on the counters behind me.
I'm afraid to say that my steak knife came up painfully short of what I had hoped for - an Uzi perhaps - a rocket launcher. Hell, even the toaster. It didn't matter anyway, there was no chance for me. It was like slow motion when it flew away from my fingers, skidding throuch coffee and blood, and colliding at last with a side clad in black fur and blood.
When Aten drove the spike of ceramic into my heart, he bore me to the floor, his blood mixing in mine as it flowed from his arm over his weapon of choice. He straddled my chest as I gasped for oxygen, and leaned down close to my ear.
He whispered my true name, then. Through the pain, I remembered the twinge I had felt the previous afternoon. So, Isis had told him.
He whispered it six times.