Page 86 of Immortal Sun

I roll my eyes. “You guys are all…I don’t even know.”

“Insanely attractive?” He gives me a slight bow, holding his apple out. “Why, thank you.”

“Did you need anything?” I change the subject. “I’m researching, and you seem like the sort of guy who would sneeze on the laptop, break it, and apologize for it later.

He looms over me again, this time holding the apple behind his back, and makes a face at a drawing of a god standing at the base of Mount Olympus. “Terrible picture. You know, I didn’t even have time to wipe the blood off my face, and boom, there you have it, someone’s painting us post battle like we have time to stand there posing like idiots.”

My stomach drops to the floor. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

He jerks his head toward the picture like it’s just a normal day. “The picture.”

“That’s not you.” I’m going to strangle him—actually no, I’m going to fight anyone that mentions gods and myths.

“Oh, weird.” He shrugs. “Huge resemblance, if you ask me, and I do remember fighting a large war and nearly dying. But my mistake.”

“Right, and I’m Aphrodite.” The joke falls flat to my own ears.

He gasps, making me jump a foot. “My long-lost bride! You’ve arrived!”

I lean in. “Are you drunk?”

He snorts. “I wish. Anyway, I came to bring you something from town, kind of like a ‘yay you made it and haven’t gotten kidnapped yet’ gift, you know after the whole gas leak and having to live here with a monster. ”

My patience is truly running thin. “I’m not going to get kidnapped.”

I leave out the part where I nearly died last night and needed to be saved by two people who I would have thought preferred me dead anyway.

He hesitates, his eyes narrow. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“Your lack of memory,” he whispers. “Anyway, hold out your hand, and before you shriek and ask if it’s a spider or snake or any sort of reptile including a turtle or a salamander, wait they’re amphibians…eh, never mind—it’s none of those things. It truly is a gift.”

I don’t know why I’m nervous at his blank expression, but I hold out my hand palm up.

Slowly, his beautiful fingers drop something into my hand. I gasp. “The Eye of Horus?”

“A gift from the gods.” He grabs it and puts the black and red bracelet around my wrist. “He doesn’t often give out such gifts, it’s said it will protect you from?—”

“—Evil,” I finish for him. I flip the rock, the opposite of Ra, in my hand. To anyone it would look like a small simple blue rock with an eye on it, to me, it actually means something. It’s the antithesis to The Eye of Ra. Or at least it feels that way. Horus was the left eye, Ra was the right. “It offers protection.”

He folds his hands in front of him and winks. “I may have added a bit of Zeus’s lightning, Apollo’s sword—don’t tell him, and Mars, well he’s always pissed, so it’s easy to steal a tiny bit of juice. I did, to be fair, cook this up for you, so don’t ingest it, but you can at least accept it.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why would you give me this?”

He sobers. “Everyone needs a shield every once in a while and it pains me,” He chokes and looks down at the ground. “I failed you know.”

“Failed what?”

He sighs. “My purpose, my mission, some might say, the only path I was supposed to walk on became so dark that only humanity lightened it for me, so I failed—on purpose, but with that failure I came to realize that the reason humans are so lost is because nobody is holding out a light, we all need the light, but we need the shield when it gets dark. You’ll see the light, Cleo, you’ll see it often and what it reveals is absolutely terrifying, best you have a shield of protection, The Eye of Horus, so that when things become dark, you can still truly see.”

“That was cryptic.” I’m shaking, the rock feels heavier and heavier in my hand. I almost set it down.

“Let it.” He whispers. “Let it take the baggage. The Eye of Horus sees all, knows all, protects all, and it keeps all, let the collector collect, Cleo.”

Tears well in the back of my eyes, I don’t know why but I suddenly feel lighter. “Thank you, Enki, truly. It’s been a rough night and day.”

“It’s been a rough century.” He winks. “And don’t worry about it, someone has to have your back.” He sighs. “And now it’s my job to let you know that you need to take a break, close the laptop and go upstairs so that Cyrus doesn’t burn the house down with flames from his fingertips.”

---