*******
Stacy woke abruptly and sucked in a sharp breath. Her head felt like a nail had been driven into each temple; she knew it was a side effect of the spell used to knock her out, but that knowledge did nothing to reduce the pain. She began to inwardly curse herself for giving away that she was awake but stopped when she realized there was no point. Whatever god had thwarted her attack had been the one to awaken her, she was certain, and he would know she was awake no matter whether she tried to hide it or not.
Mikhail. The loss drove a stake through her heart. The green drake had been her only real friend, her only real confidant, for years. Now wasn’t the time, though. Sitting up, she willed herself not to cry, not to show any emotion at all as she faced whatever she must.
She looked around; she was in a small whitewashed room that held only a bed and a chamber pot. The sole door was made of bars—a jail cell, then. She searched for the elemental flows she knew must be around her and found nothing. The lack of flows was strange. Stacy had been able to sense the elemental powers since before she really knew what they were. The void she found herself newly inhabiting was unsettling.
The door unlocked and opened, a pretty Amiotrite walking in with a tray. As she set it on the foot of the bed, Stacy looked closely. She didn’t appear to be armed. Stacy moved quickly, reaching over to seize the girl’s arm to gain a hostage and start getting out of this horrid place.
It didn’t work as she’d hoped. An unseen force picked Stacy up as she moved and flung her back against the wall, her shoulder making contact with a thud. She blinked her eyes against the stars of fresh pain and rose, rubbing the shoulder to verify that nothing was broken.
A dry chuckle sounded from the hallway, followed by a familiar voice. “You’d think the intellectual prodigy wife of Matthew, the greatest of the gods, would know better than to attack the water girl,” the voice said, its source materializing in the doorway into a face she knew all too well.
“Ben’thra,” Stacy said, barely controlling the rage she felt and now focused on the god. “I should have known the traitor was you.” Stacy thought back to her marriage ceremony at which she’d met all of her husband’s peers, including the fool who was in front of her. He was the mastermind behind the attacks against the nuclear power stations, apparently for no real reason other than the fun of it all. That, and he held some sort of long-term animosity toward Matthew, one that her husband wouldn’t explain. She’d vowed revenge on Ben’thra at the time for the attacks against her own power station, and some day, some how, she’d make good on that vow.
“Traitor? To what, my dear? Oh, never mind. You can call me all the pathetic little names that you know, and the fact will remain that you’re my prisoner.”
“What does a god need with a prisoner?”
“Well, nothing, of course, but Matthew wouldn’t like it much if I let them kill you. I dare say you deserve it, though, with your little rampages. Do you have any idea how many of my people you’ve killed?”
Stacy did. She’d kept count. “They declared war against the gods.”
“What do you care? You’re not a god.”
“I’m married to one.”
“Yes, and seeing another,” Ben’thra said, his voice amused. He pulled her sensor-disabling device from his pocket and tossed it up into the air to make sure she saw it. “What, don’t you think I recognize Michael’s work?”
“Give that back,” Stacy snarled.
“Or what? This room is shielded against you touching magic, dear, in case you couldn’t tell. Ah, I see from your expression that you can tell. Good. Are you planning to squirt water through your mouth at me, then?”
“He’ll come for me, asshole.”
“Yes, I’m sure he will. But which he will it be?”
The leer on Ben’thra’s face told Stacy he was wondering the same thing she was. Matthew would notice she hadn’t returned eventually, of course. She knew he could find her, and his sledge-hammer approach could easily pound its way in here, without a doubt. But Michael would notice she hadn’t returned also, and probably before Matthew. He could easily slip in and rescue her, but would he?
Damn Ben’thra—it was a game, to him.
Ben’thra erupted in a ribald laugh. “I see the fear on your face, dear,” he said. “This is going to be delicious.”
Stacy sighed. “Look, you’ve made your point. You’ve punished me. If I promise never to attack your people again, will you let me go? Please?”
“Of course not, dear. Have fun down here in your little cell, and don’t try to hurt the poor girls who bring you food and water, or you’ll end up hungry and thirsty.”
Ben’thra waved a lazy farewell and disappeared, leaving Stacy alone. She hadn’t seen the door close during their conversation, but it didn’t surprise her that it was tightly latched. She heaved at it with all her might and wasn’t surprised when it didn’t budge. She peered between the bars both directions and saw nothing but a long and empty hallway, a whitewashed wall taking up the entirety of the opposite side of her field of vision.
“Hello? Anybody?” she yelled. Her voice echoed back from both directions without response. She was alone, truly alone for the first time in a long while. She sat on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest as tears came to her eyes.
Mikhail was dead. She had watched him fall, powerless to aid him.
Stacy sobbed, a keening cry of mourning coming from her soul through her lips. She lost track of time as she cried, alternating between whimpers and racking sobs, eventually crying herself into exhausted sleep.
A hand on her shoulder gently shook her awake. Her eyes adjusted to the dim glow provided by the moonbeam coming through the cell door, and she sensed Michael’s hawkish profile above her.
“Let’s get you out of here,” the lord of magic whispered and then kissed the side of her face. His breath slid over her cheek and warmed her ear. It fanned the flames of emotion back to life, all the anger and mourning of the day melting into a searing ember of passion. She pulled his face down to hers for a long, deep kiss.
“Your husband…” Michael started to object, pushing her away slightly.
“…hasn’t even realized I’m missing yet,” Stacy interjected. “I need you now.”
She and Michael had flirted heavily before, but they had never crossed the line into betrayal of the vows Stacy had taken on her wedding day. As much as she loved the game, that was a line she’d vowed not to cross. As often as she had used love, and as much as the thought of being with Michael made her insides quiver, she could never, ever, bring herself to commit the ultimate sin.
Until now.
As the emotions coursing inside her hammered on the helplessness she felt in her captivity, her body burned white-hot. Silently, the pair relieved each other of clothing and joined their bodies together, writhing and turning as one on the small jail-cell bed. Michael used no magic to enhance the experience, but between the emotional release and the length of time Stacy had fantasized about this moment, magic couldn’t have enhanced it much anyway. Her passion rose and crashed as the pair reached a climax simultaneously.
Stacy laid for several long moments in Michael’s arms, breathlessly replaying the highest high.
“I suppose you won’t be needing my assistance after all,” Matthew’s voice sounded dry and clipped from the corner.
Stacy’s heart skipped a beat as she leaped out of bed, fumbling her clothes back on in the dark. “Matt,” she breathed, panic filling her voice, “this wasn’t….”
“Don’t lie to me, Stacy,” Matt said, the command cutting her off.
“Well, Matthew, old chum,” Michael said, regaining his typical leering tone. “Seems we have something interesting to talk about once we’re all safely away from here.”
“We have nothing to talk about,” Matt said. As if to punctuate his words, he turned in the moonlight, gathered a tremendous flow of air and earth elemental energies, and pressed it against the w
all. The cell wall shattered like thin glass, fragments of rock and metal flying out across the hall to bounce against the other side.
“Matt, don’t…” Stacy urged, unable to complete the sentence because she had no idea how far her husband’s anger would take him.
“Shut. Up.” Matt said, and flicked his hands, sending the soldiers who Stacy could hear coming down the hall flying, the crash and tell-tale sound of bones cracking serving as evidence that they hadn’t managed the flight well.
“Master, we should go home,” Crystal heard Sorcha’s voice say as the silver-haired thrakkon stepped into the moon’s light that was now filling the room. “It’s not worth this.”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” Matt said, his voice calm and fluid with murderous intensity. “Go home, Sorscha. I will be there soon.”
The thrakkon leveled a murderous glare at Stacy, and then vanished.
The outside wall of the keep disappeared as Matt raised another vortex of energy. Stacy was shocked; what remained was nearly a meter thick. The power required to destroy such an edifice was amazing.
“Matt, no,” Stacy begged again, hot tears of frustration, shame, and guilt forming in her eyes.
The dry laughter of Ben’thra echoed through the chamber. Stacy felt Michael’s hand clench at the sound. Matt screamed an obscenity toward the other god and walked through the two new openings he had created. Flame erupted from his hands as his body grew, surpassing three meters tall. The spout of red and orange snaked around, catching humans, carts, and structures ablaze. Stacy heard screams rising and joining together into a song of pain and terror.
“We should go,” Michael’s voice whispered into her ear.
Numbly she nodded. “Let’s get a safe distance away, but I want to—have to watch to make sure he’s okay,” she said.
Michael chortled and said, “I’m sure Matt will be okay, dear, but—fine. You should have the opportunity to watch the destruction your actions have wrought.” Stacy felt the lurch as he teleported them to a position above the city, hovering in the moonlight above a town being incinerated. Michael had chosen the distance unfortunately well, she thought—far enough away to avoid the heat and shrapnel of flying stone, yet close enough to hear the screams of dying people and the crashes of collapsing structures.
“My actions?” she said, the words coming out distractedly as she watched the carnage below. “It takes two to tango.”
“Only one of that two was married to him,” Michael said, his dry voice unusually somber as he watched the destruction being rained on Cenna.
“We should go stop him,” Stacy said, Michael’s words hitting her hard. Part of her had wanted this, had wanted to see Mikhail’s death avenged, but the savage destruction of an entire city made her heart sink.
“Stop Matthew? It would be easier to stop the planet in its rotation around the sun, dear,” Michael’s mocking voice said. “In terms of brute force, he is the most powerful of all the gods save the mother and the father. I’m far better with finesse than he is, but as angry as he is now he’d just blow through me. No, I think you just need to stay and watch the show.”
The pair floated in silence for the next hour as Matt’s rage leveled the city. Wood buildings burned, fanned to drastic effect by wind gusts powered by Matt’s flows of air. Stone constructions exploded or imploded, depending apparently on Matt’s whim. He seemed to be saving the central keep for last, but as he turned around from the last building that had stood toward the one in the middle, the god roared and brought a wall of air and earth energy down, flattening the massive stone edifice and all its inhabitants in an instant.
Matt, who now towered nearly ten meters in height with eyes that glowed red, stood like a statue in the middle of the city he had just razed. A human—Stacy couldn’t tell male from female at the distance—darted from a fallen building nearby, and the god raised his foot to stomp its life out. Slowly, Matt lowered his foot again, rage apparently spent. He turned his massive head to look directly at Stacy, eyes burning holes through her soul, and then he vanished.
“We should probably go too,” Michael said, and he teleported them back to his estate.
As she adjusted to the familiar surroundings of Michael’s workshop, Stacy became aware of the elemental forces surrounding her again. “I can touch the flows again,” she said in relief to no one in particular.
“Yes, Ben’thra only had you shielded in that room,” Michael said.
Stacy spun and looked at Michael, her mind still too numb to immediately understand what he had said. Slowly it dawned on her.
“How did he do that?”
“It’s pretty easy, actually. Ka is the primal force, and with it you can shield someone against all the subordinate flows.” Michael had given Stacy lessons in ka before, but she was finally coming to understand its full power.
“He, Ben’thra that is, played a dirty trick today.”
“It was worse than dirty, Stacy. It pitted two gods against one another, and it ended with the destruction of an entire city-nation.”
“Don’t forget it got me separated from my husband.”
“No,” Michael said, his voice sharp. “You got you separated from your husband. Don’t blame that on anyone else.”
Stacy sighed and sat on a chair, the calm and cool façade she had regained slowly fading away again. “Well,” she said, “it’s going to be tough to talk him into taking me back, isn’t it?”
Michael snorted. “Talk him into taking you back? Good luck. He’s already had your belongings teleported here, and Sorscha has instructed my steward to make sure you know you’re not welcome there.”
Michael’s words felt like knives to her stomach. Stacy tried holding her composure but failed, collapsing into sobbing spasms.
“There, there,” Michael said, stroking her hair.
“At least I still have you, right?” Stacy said once she regained her ability to speak.
“Me? Whatever would you want with me? I don’t do relationships, dear.”
Stacy stood shakily, wondering whether she had spilled every tear she had available. While she understood what Michael was telling her, nothing about it felt real. It would probably hit her in the gut later, she knew. Later, she would have to deal with it all. Later. Till then, she was happy that her brain still worked logically. “Well,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Can I at least have a room here for a while?”
“Absolutely, my dear. I’ll have the steward lead you to one of the adept’s quarters.”
It was an insult for her to be relegated to the plain rooms of the other humans who were studying magic, but she was too drained to concern herself with the matter. Exhausted, she followed the thrakkon to her new room and her new life. As she collapsed onto her new narrow bed, she had just enough strength remaining to glare into the dark of the room around her and once again swear, “Ben’thra, someday, somehow, I’ll get you back.”
Undercover Truths - Undercover Lies Page 4