by S T Branton
Haunted By The Gods
Forgotten Gods™ Book Seven
ST Branton
CM Raymond
LE Barbant
Haunted By The Gods (this book) is a work of fiction.
All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2018 ST Branton, CM Raymond, and LE Barbant
Cover by http://www.bookcoverartistry.com/
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
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First US edition, December 2018
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Author Notes
Connect with CM Raymond and LE Barbant
Dedication
To Gavin, Hank, and Simone. May you find magic everywhere and causes worth fighting for.
Thanks to the JIT Readers
Misty Roa
Mary Morris
Crystal Wren
Angel LaVey
Terry Easom
Micky Cocker
Larry Omans
If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!
Editor
SkyHunter Editing Team
Prologue
The girl with the pink ribbon had been warned not to go into the forest alone. As she ran, she could hear her mother’s voice, full of loving concern, filling her ears with words of caution. Her voice spoke of darkness, of monsters, and of shadows that moved on their own. She thought those were simply old wives’ tales meant to scare babies, not big kids like her.
Until now.
She could barely hear anything over the sound of the wild drum of her heartbeat in her ears and her own frantic footsteps as she crashed through the brush, but the child didn’t dare slow down. She knew it was there behind her and probably gained ground with each passing second. She thought she heard it breathing.
The taste of fear was bitter on the back of her tongue. She was so focused on flight that she barely noticed the dark, gnarled branches that snatched at her face and left scratches on her arms, legs, and cheeks. One branch caught the end of her pink ribbon and almost ripped it from her hair. The girl yelped in protest. She struggled to free herself, but the ribbon went taut in her hands, hopelessly entangled.
She couldn’t leave it behind. Her mother’s hands had woven it into her hair after breakfast that morning. “My little princess,” Mama had said.
The girl glanced over her shoulder and back down the path of tangled undergrowth. Nothing stood out, but the thing had to be there somewhere, still hunting. Her little heartbeat went into overdrive in her chest. Her every instinct told her to abandon the ribbon and run as fast and as far as her body allowed. If she escaped, she’d be hopelessly lost, but being lost was better than being caught.
The pink ribbon frayed from her desperate tugs. She set her feet in the underbrush and yanked with her whole body. The more she tried, the tighter the knot became. The air weighed heavily around her. Was it darker now too?
A sharp snap brought her attention to the now slack pink strip in her hands. For a moment, her heart sank at the sight of the damaged ribbon, but her disappointment was quickly replaced by relief. Now that the bow was broken, she was free to escape. Guilt welled in the back of her mind, but she could resolve it later.
She spun and fled deeper into the forest, where the sunlight didn’t seem to reach. The trees arched over the narrow passage and their boughs twisted like long, clawed hands locked together. Out of the corner of her eye, they seemed to move—not sway with the breeze but deliberately reach toward her. Behind the mask of branches, knotted faces set with deep, dark eyes grinned maliciously.
A lump grew in the girl’s throat. She pushed it down and willed herself not to cry. Already, the breath ran short in her lungs. She couldn’t afford to waste it sobbing. Still, a few stubborn tears blurred her vision and almost leaked out. She lifted an arm to brush them away and didn’t see the root that jutted from the soil directly in front of her foot. She barely even felt herself trip. All she knew was that suddenly, she sprawled forward and landed hard.
Pain radiated from her ankle but it was dulled by an immediate rush of panic as the girl realized she had stopped her frantic run. She rolled onto her back, and her gaze searched the dimness for a sign of her pursuer. Shadowy tree trunks rose around her, and she knew for sure they were moving now. She could see them shift position and trudge closer to where she lay prone. The movement made the ground tremble—or maybe that was simply her imagination.
The girl choked back more tears and kicked her good foot to scoot herself back along the dirt. Her ankle felt hot, and it throbbed in time with the side of her face that had struck the ground. She was smeared with dirt and leaves, and her once neat hair was now a mess of tangled curls.
Mama would be so upset. But being in trouble was better than being caught, even if it was big trouble.
That was what she thought when the hulking shadow obscured her field of view. Slowly, cold with terror, the girl whose pink ribbon had been lost to the trees turned her petrified gaze upward. The creature she beheld at that moment was almost beyond her comprehension. It had a wild and grizzled, fur-covered appearance, and its wolfish features shielded bronze eyes that gleamed in the shadows. Patches of gray and white stood out along the muzzle. It stood on two feet like a man. That part, she didn’t understand.
The shock gave her enough time to notice the fangs in its mouth. Her senses returned, and she began to scream.
Chapter One
The early winter sun shone brightly, but its warmth did nothing to thaw my numb face and hands. The frozen earth drained my body heat as I lay on my stomach in the grass at the top of our lookout knoll. Dan, our resident military expert, held a position on my right. Luis, reformed small-time gang member extraordinaire, had taken point slightly ahead of us. We peered over the edge of the rise at the scene sprawled below. A group of soldiers about ten strong had huddled all their shit around them as a protective barrier. From my vantage point, I saw a wagon, a couple of beat-up Humvees, and a horse cart minus the horse.
Their protection was nothing fancy, but thes
e guys clearly understood that any barrier was better than none. My interest, though, focused on the boxes in the center of their makeshift hold. A fort like ours could use the large, roomy storage crates.
I glanced at Dan and he nodded.
Luis shot us a look over his shoulder. His trusty rifle was strapped to his back, and he reached tentatively for it. His eyes waited for a signal from either one of us. The problem was that he was in front, which meant he called the shots. The three of us and the group that waited quietly at our backs currently followed him on his first mission.
“Now?” Luis mouthed. He’d given up on the subtle plea for help. As one, Dan and I both shrugged. He rolled his eyes and turned his attention to the cluster of guards around the boxes. With a small frown, he studied them for any obvious weaknesses. I clearly saw an opening at the back of their formation, and I knew Dan had noticed it too. But we kept our mouths shut. The kid had to learn. If things went bad, we could salvage it.
Luis took a deep breath and shook his head from side to side. He held his right hand up in a fist, which quickly sprouted two fingers, and finally morphed into a single forward point. “Now or never,” he said out loud and lowered his head to speak into the walkie-talkie secured to his shoulder. “Go.”
Down below, a swarm of friendlies emerged into the open and engaged the enemy on the front side. As I’d hoped, Luis took our contingent around to infiltrate the back while half the guards were otherwise engaged. We stuck to an army crawl for as long as possible and slithered through the frosty grass.
“Up!” Luis commanded. We sprang to our feet and hit the ground running. I drew the pistol at my hip. It felt weird and oddly wrong not to have the Gladius Solis right there, but I felt that to wield a god-weapon might undermine Luis’s authority a little. Besides, we all knew it was overkill against presumably human opponents. Plus, I had the hilt tucked safely away on the other side of my belt, just in case.
Our bull-rush into the guards at the rear tumbled them like bowling pins. Rather than fire his gun outright, Luis used it as a bludgeon, a much quieter strategy I approved of. Maintaining stealth under these circumstances demonstrated that he had thought ahead and analyzed our best options. I flipped my pistol and head-whipped the nearest guard. He crumpled into a pile, and I moved on. Business as usual.
“Get to the crates!” Luis called. A second enemy appeared in front of me, and I struck him in the face. My concentration was on those boxes. Everything else was a subroutine and nothing I hadn’t done a hundred times before.
Then I saw something new. The center crate, larger than the others, shifted. The side facing me fell open to reveal a masked figure dressed in black. In an instant, I stared down the barrel of a gun.
“Well, well,” a voice said from behind the mask. The words were low and menacing. “Time’s up, hero. You walked right into death.”
I lowered my stance instinctively. The muscles in my core coiled and tightened to propel me the hell out of harm’s way. But before I could react, the masked man pulled the trigger.
A gasp of air rushed into my lungs at the moment of impact. My only thought was, Damn, that hurts. I looked down as a bloom of red burst across my chest and spread so fast that it was hard to tell where it had started, except for the pain.
“Shit!” I shouted. “I’m hit!” That was not how I’d expected my day to go.
Dan swiveled toward the sound of my voice, his eyes wide. “Vic, no!” He charged toward me.
I dropped to my knees. “You’re too late, Dan.”
He slid beside me as I collapsed. Some of the scarlet liquid dripped onto the ground.
“No!” Dan grasped me around the torso and lifted me gently into his lap. “Stay with me, Vic. You can make it.”
I coughed as my hand fumbled toward him. “Tell Luis…this is his fault.” My head rolled to the side, and I exhaled a final breath.
“Vic? Vic! No.” Dan laid me back onto the grass, clenched his fists and lifted them toward the sky, and screamed, “Why?” at the top of his lungs. The sound echoed through the open area. He pointed his finger at the man in the mask. “You!”
The masked man’s laugh started out sinister. “Not so tough without that sword, are you?” he asked. Dan held his defiant position, and after a beat of silence, the bad guy busted out into real, genuine laughter. He pulled his mask off. “Sorry! I’m sorry. This dude cracks my ass up.”
Dan’s face immediately eased into the familiar gregarious grin. He stood and held a hand out to help me up. “I took drama in high school and college, and…uh, obviously, I missed my calling.”
I dusted myself off and winced as my hands brushed over the scarlet paint stain on the front of my vest. “That’s definitely gonna leave a mark.” I wouldn’t say it out loud, but the paintballs packed way more of a punch than I had expected. My left boob was not happy.
“That’s my bad,” Deacon said apologetically. “I didn’t want to fire on you at such close range, but I was too swept up in the plot. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “The point was to make it as realistic as possible so Luis can learn. Speaking of…”
I turned as the kid jogged toward me. He took one look at my chest and grinned.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” I told him. “But remember, I’m a member of your squad whom you lost on this mission, and that might change things dramatically for the rest of the team.”
He grew solemn. “Right. I gotta work on keeping tabs on all my guys. Or, you know, girls.”
“Nice save,” I answered. “That said, each operative carries the burden of responsibility to make choices that will keep themselves and their squad mates safe. You’re the leader, but once you’re in the thick of it, there’s only so much you can do to protect your crew.”
“Don’t I know that,” he muttered.
I continued. “What I’m saying is, I probably should have prepared individually for the possibility of a trap, even if we didn’t discuss it. And I should have been more cognizant of where I was and what could have happened. If there’d been more than one baddie in those crates, I would’ve been more screwed than I already was.” I gestured to my “bullet wound.” “Assuming that’s possible.”
Luis nodded again. His face was completely rapt, and he hung on to my every word. I would’ve been the last person to appoint myself as a teacher, but he could’ve learned from anyone. He was a sponge for this stuff. “Gotcha, chief,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Hey, you’re not off the hook yet.” I clapped my hands to get everyone else’s attention. “Let’s break for a post-training debriefing in ten.”
They all stopped and snapped a salute. “Sir, yes, sir!”
I gave Dan and Deacon both a look. “Which one of you is running Bootcamp behind my back?”
Chapter Two
The whole company from the training exercise gathered in front of me and filled the middle of Fort Victory’s second common room. We had defaulted to using the living areas for everything, including strategy meetings because no one had yet displayed any desire to enter the building that still stood unoccupied behind the garden. Aside from removing the bodies, not a single soul had set foot in that place since the general’s death. There seemed to be a tacit agreement to try to maintain the fort’s warm, safe atmosphere as long as we could.
To that end, the men and women before me held steaming cups of coffee and hot cocoa in their hands. We were bundled in hoodies, sweaters, and blankets against the cold, and the peaceful drone of quiet conversations permeated the room. I stood with Deacon, Dan, and Luis and surveyed the sea of faces. With a rare sense of peace, I drank in the way things were in that moment. No chaos and no intrusions of sickness or violence. Nothing more than a self-built, self-trained citizens’ militia, working through its training on a normal day.
It felt awesome. We all savored it because we all knew deep down that it couldn’t last for much longer. The gods were still out there. I still had a job to do.
As usual, Dan started the debriefing with a general recap. “Numbers in the casualty reports are down on both sides, which is great news,” he announced. “The fewer people who give up the ghost when it’s all fake, the better. It means you’ll know what to do if it ever gets real. And don’t forget, even if you’re a baddie in training, we want you to live ʼcause when the shit hits the fan, you’ll be on our side.” The recruits murmured. “Now, let’s give our young commanding officer Luis a hand. This was his first mission in the lead, and I think he did a commendable job.”
Applause rose from those assembled, punctuated by a few cheers. Luis smiled somewhat awkwardly in acknowledgment. “Thanks, guys. I’m doing my best out there.”
Dan clapped him on the shoulder. “I see real improvement, my friend. Keep up the good work.”
Luis glanced at me, and I echoed Dan’s support with an encouraging grin. Over the last week especially, the kid had come out of his shell and had proven his worth. Hell, he was the one who’d uncovered the massive stash of paintball equipment in the first place and so made training operations possible. The least we could do was make sure he benefited.