My heart thumped erratically.
“Not that you care, but I’ve been researching your history,” she said and nodded to her papers. “I think I’ve found something. I’ve been speaking with Marc and—”
“When did you see Marc?”
She pursed her lips at the interruption. “Oh, I don’t know, sometime in the ten or so days you weren’t here?”
“Has it really been ten days?”
Her blank stare was answer enough.
“I’m sorry.”
She ignored my apology. “He left me stranded at some closed local nightclub.”
“He what!”
Roo flinched at my furious tone but she lifted her chin in defiance. “He took me to this place, which was fine, because we talked and I think he needed someone to bounce things off, but then he forgot to take me with him when he left. Thank goodness the nightclub was closed, and they had working phones. If Jed hadn’t come and picked me up, I’d have been left in a very precarious position.”
“Precarious.”
“Mm-hm.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes which meant only one thing, Marc had left her stranded, nude.
The idea floated around my head, punching all sorts of nonsense out. What did she look like? Had Marc seen? Had anyone else seen her naked?
She kept talking, but I didn’t really hear her words, because I was stuck on one: naked. What game was Marc playing at? Leaving her in a foreign place, in an empty bar, nude. Completely inappropriate. I scrubbed my face as I tried to temper my rage. Breathe in. Breathe out. But the beast that was my anger crawled up my spine and raked at my heart.
“Tell me everything.” I went back to the cupboard and, again, pulled out the half empty bottle of Scotch, this time with two glasses. I poured a nip in each then handed one to Roo. “Start at the beginning. With Marc. What happened?”
I would control myself. I would.
She swirled the amber liquid, similar to her eye color, and then explained how Marc had visited, concerned about being followed. As the story unfolded, I almost forgot Marc’s blatant disregard for her decency. The news worried me the most. Marc was not one to entertain flights of fancy. If he believed he was being followed, he probably was. Roo then went on to mention Marc wanting to plant a seed to discover if Jed was a traitor.
“To be honest,” she said, “this whole thing is giving me the creeps. I’m not sure if I’m ready to play this Game business you all keep talking about. He told me to mention the Heart Scarab to Jed and then see if that filtered back to whoever he’s wanting it to filter too.”
“Go on,” I prompted and slid out a stool near the kitchen bench for Roo to sit on.
For some reason, she stopped. She stared at the stool. She stared at me. The simple action of pulling the chair out for her did something and her eyes glistened. I said her name softly, a prayer falling from my lips. I touched her hand gently to show her that, while I had not the appropriate words, I wanted her to know I was thankful for her. She blinked down at our hands and then told me how lost she’d felt without me over the past week. She lifted her eyes to meet mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For everything. I’ve been a complete jerk.”
Her scowl dropped, and she exhaled sharply. Slowly, she turned her hand to tighten around mine, then raised her other palm and pressed it gently to the center of my chest. My heart pounded against her steady weight.
“You don’t need to apologize,” she whispered.
Heat exploded beneath her touch. “There’s no excuse for how I’ve treated you.”
“Yeah, I agree. You’ve been a giant douche. Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you instead of keeping secrets?”
My hand tightened around hers as if she might let go. I searched her dewy eyes, hoping to see evidence of her true feelings, some sort of validation I was wrong about her, that she didn’t like me. “You deserve better than this. Than me. You shouldn’t have to be afraid in your own home.”
“Is that what you think?”
“You can’t lie to me; I hear your heartbeat elevate every time I’m near. It’s obvious you’re afraid of me.”
Roo started laughing. A whooping, melodious, hysterical laughing. She doubled over, clutching her stomach.
“What’s so funny?”
“If you think that’s why my heart races when you’re around…” She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, watching me with light still bouncing in her eyes. Then all humor fled, and she drew grave. “Cash, you may have your sight returned, but you’re still blind if you can’t see the real reason my heart leaps out of my chest when we’re together.”
I glanced at the floor, letting her words sink in.
“But, you deserve better,” I said.
“I don’t want better, Cash.” She inched closer to me until her nose touched my cheek, her breath tickling. “I want this.”
On a frown, I squeezed my eyes shut and reveled in the warmth radiating from her. Her feminine smell sent waves of pleasure skipping down my spine. I could feel her pulse quicken, hear it plump in her vein and hit the chain. My chain. It was all I could do to keep standing.
Suddenly, I felt the press of her soft lips on the corner of my mouth. My eyes fluttered open.
“Stop running away,” she breathed.
If only she knew how she affected me, but I never had the right words.
I supposed I could show her.
Marc
I spent the next few days dodging slippery shadows and ignoring Jacine’s call to return to Purgatory to collect souls. Whenever I felt my bones grow cold, or the air thickening, I moved on to another location. I’d exhausted all of my usual haunts and go-tos: The girls at a Columbia University Sorority; The pub on the corner of Lexington and First; The karaoke bar in the heart of Tokyo. I was beginning to feel a bit barmy when nothing actually happened. No stranger turned up. No sinister shadow came to life. If it weren’t for Little Red confirming my suspicions, I’d say I was completely off my rocker.
If I didn’t sort this out soon, I’d wind up bonkers.
Finally, on the afternoon of the second day, or somewhere there about, I decided to carry on with my original plan and visit Eve in person. She hadn’t been hard to find, practically advertised herself to the world by running that article. All I needed to do was sweet talk the magazine’s administration through a well timed dream.
Now here I was standing at the front of her house.
If the darkness followed me, well, I could handle myself.
Walking up the steps of the inner city London townhouse, I shot a quick glance down my front. Once happy with my chosen form (my younger and less recognizable self, dressed in that lucky dapper three-piece suit), I knocked on the large wooden doors. A life-force approached from behind it.
Average sized, and definitely human.
“Yes?” The door opened to reveal a woman. Tall, dark and drab. Definitely the maid.
“I’m looking for Eve, love.”
“I’m sorry, but she—”
“Let him in, Karen.” A woman’s voice carried from somewhere behind. The maid adjusted her high-knot of gray hair and pursed her lips in distaste. She gave me a withering once-over then opened the door wide.
I concentrated on the second aura now evident toward the back of the house. This one was stronger, calming, soothing. Not at all like what I’d come to expect from a witch.
That was the first thing that threw me off.
“Very well. Follow me.” Karen turned her back on me and walked further into the immaculate Art Nouveau styled home. From the doorway, I could see a sweeping metal staircase with floral ornaments and a drop chandelier dangling from the high ceiling. I stepped into the house. I shut the door behind myself and then, with a confident swagger, followed Karen. This was way too tasteful for a witch.
Two doors down was a sitting room. Inside, various board games had been set up on tables before walls of bookcases. Some of them were classic, some of
them new. From Risk, to Warhammer, to Twister. I recognized an unboxed set of beer pong, the same set I played at the sorority yesterday. My eyebrows lifted in curiosity and I itched to investigate what other games she had hidden away, but my attention drew to the woman I recognized from the magazine article sitting in front of a chess board, thinking.
“I’ve been wondering when you would show your face,” she said without looking up.
“Pssht.” I laughed through my nose. I couldn’t believe her cheek. As if. I snorted. “You don’t even know who I am.”
Eve squinted at the game, nonchalantly ignoring me. Her fingers hovered over a bishop, then moved to a knight, finally landed on a pawn and moved it two paces on the black. She glanced up and briefly met my eyes before returning nonplussed to the game. “Of course I do.”
When I said nothing, she added, “In either form you care to appear in.”
My skin crawled. Bloody witch. Bloody stinking rotten witch.
“Now, before you start setting profanities loose in your mind, perhaps you’d benefit from sitting down and playing with me. I do know how you like games.”
What? How… did she—was she so powerful she could read minds?
I scrutinized her aura, looking for signs she could do the same. Sure, she had power, but I’d been alive longer, I’d had time—eons of it. She, a drop in the ocean that was my life. It wasn’t until I scratched the stubble on my face that I realized my form had slipped from the carefree youth I’d arrived as to the older suave version I saved for more serious moments.
“A game, Marc. Come on, I know you’re fond of them. Would you care to play white?”
“What I care for, is for miscreants like you to wipe themselves off the face of this planet. That’s not going to happen, is it?”
I sat in front of the witch on the opposite side of the chess table, and stared at the pieces. It was true. I loved games. All sorts. Especially chess. Football. I loved cricket, too. Real gentlemen’s game, that. I moved a rook to capture her pawn. Easy.
“I’d like that, too,” she murmured after shifting a knight.
Right.
Odd.
Was she having a laugh?
“Great. Then it’s settled. Let’s start with you, yeah? How’d you like to do this? Fire. Dispersion. Ooh, I know a Soul-Eater now. We can—”
Eve’s brown eyes shot up to meet mine, and I halted my words.
“Yes I know all about her,” Eve said. “And she’s not what you think.”
“How the bloody hell would you know that.”
“Because I’ve met her. Besides, you would know that too but it seems as though your memory is slipping.”
Bugger. Exactly how much did this woman know?
Just then, the temperature dropped in the room, icy cold, fog misted in front of Eve’s mouth and then her eyes traveled to an area over my shoulder.
My skin crawled.
It was here. The presence.
“You’ve been followed,” Eve stated without taking her fingers off the chess piece she held.
“You can feel that?” I stood.
She stayed seated, silent, listening.
My senses twitched. I wanted to leave, but I’d only just begun. Conflicted, my fingers tapped my thigh, thrumming in agitation.
“Do you want me to get rid of it?” Eve asked.
That was unexpected. Offering to help?
Suspecting a trap, I was about to decline and leave, but something she said earlier changed my mind. She’d met Little Red. I was curious.
I assessed the witch’s aura for signs of betrayal and found only soft steady electricity. So unlike the other witches I’d met. Still baffled. But appeased. For now.
Admitting that I knew about the presence and did nothing to erase it would seem a weakness to her. And, bloody hell if I accepted help from the first of those abominations, but… it would be good to get rid of that sinister cloud stalking me and she’d be thinking she did me a favor. I could use that.
“Very well. But first, can you find out who it is?”
Eve’s eyebrow raised on one side as she stood and smoothed her palms down her regal blue shift dress.
Then she closed her eyes, breathed deep and went still. When she opened them, her eyes were black. A dark stream of smoke billowed from her mouth and dissipated into the room’s atmosphere. She was everywhere and nowhere.
The energy in the room amped up. The hairs raised on the back of my neck.
For a moment, a slither of jealousy peaked in me. It wasn’t fair that these creatures had such mighty untethered control over their energy. I’d had thousands of years to evolve, and yet I was a novice in this area compared to her. I couldn’t leave my body permanently. My flesh was anchored to my soul. This simple fact made me ineligible to play the Game the way others did, but at the same time, it gave me a unique ability to drift my atoms apart without losing my identity. A curse and a blessing.
I waited and watched.
The darkness turned up again, and this time Eve’s body pounced, catching on tendrils. I gasped. How on earth did she get her body to move when she wasn’t in it? She used her body like a puppet while her energy in the room herded the offending presence to her body where she trapped the darkness like a cockroach in bait. It flailed in her hands, unwilling to yield. Effortlessly, Eve’s body held on, pulled it close and whispered sweet nothings into the darkness, unafraid.
As though she’d done it before.
The interloper swam around her arm in a swarm of blackness, pulling in closer, as though unable to resist her call, until eventually it undulated around her limb as though a snake, charmed. The remaining putrid black smoke that was Eve’s essence flowed back into her body through her eyes, ears and mouth, like a waterfall in reverse.
As though taking her fill of a fine drink, she sighed when she returned fully to the body. She gazed at the smoke snake around her arm with curious eyes.
“Who are you?” Eve asked the darkness, licking her lips. “Who sent you?”
I couldn’t hear the whispered response.
Eve’s eyes flicked to catch mine. “He was sent by the Dark-Lord.”
“Fuck,” I spat. The Prince. “That little prick.”
“Wait—he was sent by him or…” Eve paused, straining. “Or he was sent for him. It’s hard to tell. Would you like me to get rid of it?”
“What do you want?”
Eve laughed. “Always a price, isn’t there, Marc.”
“I’m no fool.”
“Like I said to your little friend the Soul-Eater. I don’t want anything in return. I want to help.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. During her little show of power, she’d neglected to guard her aura. I could see her intentions in full Technicolor glory. “Nothing in return. Wow. You are a number.”
This sent anger rippling over her face. “I don’t want it to be this way. I never did.”
“I don’t care what you want. The simple fact is that your creations are destroying our game, and the humans inside it.”
“My creations.” She laughed. “How is it different from what you’ve done?”
“Uh, for starters, love, I don’t know exactly how you formed, but I’m not blind. I can see you have links to the darkness that was set loose in the beginning, meaning you’re original sin incarnate and your creations are the spawn of evil.”
“Ha! And yours aren’t? What about your wars? What about your evil humans, the murderers, rapists, molesters? I didn’t make those.”
“No, but…” I had nothing to respond. It was the Prince who defiled the Queen’s perfect children, and I supposed it was the Queen who created something for him to defile in the first place.
Without waiting for my next words, Eve continued her conversation with the black shadow draped around her arm. I frowned. That’s enough of that, thanks.
Within seconds, I was in front of her. My aura surrounded the writhing darkness.
“If I were you, I’d slow
ly disengage your arm from that mess,” I warned.
Eve’s eyes flared, and a vein popped in her forehead. “What are you doing?”
“Getting rid of it, of course. Do you have a problem with that?”
She swallowed. “No.”
“Well then.” I watched her slowly slide her arm back to herself and out of my range. The black smoke stayed in my trap.
I caught Eve’s gaze and lifted an eyebrow, a silent challenge, making sure she understood what I was about to do. Then I stepped through the in-between to land a few feet to the right. The darkness that had been contained was now nothing, destroyed by the fabric of the universe. At least I think it was. Either way, it no longer existed in this room.
“I owe you nothing,” I said.
“No, you don’t, but you’d like something, wouldn’t you?”
Eve’s question hit the nail on the head. I did want something. Answers. It was like she saw right through me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew my true name. She held an air of vulgar confidence, so sure in her knowledge, like she knew the hour of my death.
“What do you want?” she asked and went back to her game of chess.
“Tell me about the hunter.”
“Do you mean the one you know in this age, or the one who stopped us all from returning to Paradise.”
“You cannot return if you were never there.”
“Semantics.”
“No, you act as though you’re one of us, but you aren’t.”
She pressed her lips tight.
“You keep saying. So, which hunter—the new or the old?” She used a pawn to capture my knight.
Now, that knight needed to be avenged. I couldn’t help but sit opposite her and capture the offending pawn with my bishop. “You tell me.”
“Marc, Marc, Marc. There is no need to be so cryptic with me. I know more than you think.”
“You started it.”
Eve clicked her tongue as though I were a recalcitrant pisser. “All right. A truce then. I’ll tell you something, and then I expect you to do the same.”
The Game of Gods: Series Box Set Page 41