Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson #11)(60)

“Are we where I think we are?”

He kneeled beside me. “If you think we’re in the Sahara, then yes.”

I gasped. I was standing—kneeling—in the Sahara. “Reyes, I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen anything so … so perfect in my life.”

“I brought you here for a reason.”

“Yeah?” I sat down and played in the biggest sandbox in the world.

He watched me, and I wondered what he must think of me. I must seem like the craziest kind of loser, fumbling around in his world, trying to navigate it like a child in a walker, running into walls and cabinets and knees.

I shook off the sudden feeling of insecurity, chalked it up to the freaking Sahara. If there were any one thing that could make a person feel insignificant, it would be this vast terrain. Beautiful and deadly at the same time.

I tossed sand, as blisteringly hot as it was, onto his jeans. “You could have warned me. Sunglasses would have been nice.”

He flashed his perfect teeth and picked up a handful of sand. Let it slide through his long, strong fingers. Then he began the lesson of the day. “Pick up one grain of sand.”

I picked up a handful and showed him proudly.

He grinned patiently, so I sifted it down, trying to get down to one grain. I had to wipe my hands together and start over. Finally, after much effort, I had one grain of sand in my palm. I named him Digby.

He took Digby, much to my dismay. I’d worked hard for the little guy.

After placing Digby in his palm, he held him out to me. “This is how much of you is human.”

“Okay.”

“Look around you.”

I did and then looked back at the man I’d always believed sane.

“In comparison to this desert, this is how much of you is human.”

“I don’t get it. That’s impossible. I’m human. I’ve always been human.”

“So, in your mind, you believe that you are, what? Half-human and half-god?”

“Well, up until a few months ago, I believed I was 99 percent human and 1 percent reaper. Then I was told that 1 percent had been split in two: half-reaper and half-god.”

“You can’t be half-reaper. That’s like saying a postman is half-human and half-postman.”

“Or a lawyer is half-demon and half-human?” I heard that a lot.

One corner of his mouth tugged. “Something like that. Reaping is your job, not your heritage, for lack of a better phrase. But you can’t be half-god and half-human. The human side of you is one grain of sand among the 3.6 million square miles that make up this desert. The god part is too powerful. You need to get past that, because it doesn’t work that way.”

I studied Digby. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“You keep talking as though your human body can die. And, yes, it can, but it would take something very powerful to achieve it.”

I stood and abandoned Digby by walking a few feet away. “So, if I’m cut up and thrown into a wood chipper—”

“Did the truck kill you?”

“Well, no, but we went incorporeal. On purpose. If I were unconscious or bound—”

“Dutch, this one grain of sand doesn’t control the shape of the desert. It doesn’t control the drifts. The hills and the valleys. It is infinitesimal in comparison to the desert as a whole.”

“Okay.”

“The part of you that is a god, the whole that is you. A sentient being with immense power.”

“The wind shapes it,” I argued. “An outside force.”

“Just like on the mortal plane, outside forces influence, but the body is still one. The more you understand that, the less your human part”—he held out Digby—“this miniscule aspect of your makeup, can control you.”

“And this is important, I take it.”

“There is another god loose on this plane.”

Ah. Figured we’d come back around to that eventually.

“Right now he is more powerful than you are because he knows one thing to be true above all others.”

“And that is…?”

“He cannot die. Not at the hands of anything less than a god.” He stepped closer. “And neither can you.”

I nodded, trying to let it sink in, to force it to, but there was still a part of me that just couldn’t believe it. “I could trap him like I did Mae’eldeesahn.”

He bit down, the subject clearly raw. “You got lucky.”

No way on heaven or earth could I argue that. “I agree, but—”

“We may have to fight him. But we have an advantage.”

“Yeah?”

“He is one god, just like I am one god. You, Elle-Ryn-Ahleethia, are thirteen. As far as I know, you are the most powerful god to ever exist.”

I nodded again, feeling about as powerful as Digby at that moment.

“You don’t believe me.”

“No, I do. I get it. Sort of. It’s just kind of hard to comprehend the vastness of it. It’s like when you take a native out of the rain forest he grew up in to the open plains and he sees cows in the distance, he thinks they’re flies. His mind can’t comprehend such vastness. Such distance.”

He reached out, ran the back of his hand along my cheek, his touch as light as air, but it was enough. The celestial realm hit me like a tidal wave, tossing me about again, tumbling me through space. Just for a second. Then we were on pavement.