by J. P. Rice
As I neared the entrance to the Triskele Room in the mountain, the vision came into sharp focus. The red petals glowed in the afternoon sunlight, blending into a vibrant green stem that continued downward until it disappeared in the snow. The winter rose. The rose from my dream. I still hadn’t deciphered its meaning.
I shook it off just as Flidais and Danu came out of the ceremony. I nodded and waved, but the two Goddesses turned their noses up at me. The bitches walked right by, whispering to each other. Whatever.
I’d made it to Goibniu’s and drank his magical elixir again. His age-defying drink had brought me back to my normal mid-thirties appearance. After drinking the magical juice, I’d found that using magic didn’t age me much or cause physical discomfort. It was the near-death experiences that had accelerated my aging. Using magic after severe injuries seemed to cause the biggest problems. I still didn’t have an exact understanding though.
Thinking about the past few weeks, I realized I hadn’t made the vampire-werewolf situation any better. If anything, I’d probably made it worse. I still had time to bring peace to the warring factions.
In typical fashion, more people wanted me dead since I’d returned to Pittsburgh. Arawn and Maeve had escaped the deal with the briefcase, but they had lost the spear. That meant they could send some of their genetically enhanced creatures after me.
Loki and Tyr hadn’t received the item they needed to kill Odin, so they wanted me dead too. Tyr had survived, but I’d scarred him terribly. A permanent reminder not to mess with me. Loki had an army at his disposal, which meant it was imperative to track down Thor and bring him to my side. If I could convince Thor to go back to Asgard, it would get Loki off my back.
Although it seemed bleak, I hadn’t given up on my husband. Until I received confirmation of his death, I would never give up hope. I planned to raise the baby dragons in his honor.
And I’d promised Darabond and myself that I would retrieve our gold locket from the Magic Council. I’d almost lost track of another faction that wanted me dead. Escaping the Lair of Justice would only enrage Merlin and the Bounty Huntress. So I had three powerful entities on my heels. I still had Zeus’s offer in hand, which was nice because my dragons had a long way to go before they could protect me.
Speaking of which, I wasn’t sure if I would accept an invitation to join the pantheon right now. If I accepted, the Gods would want me to move to Clara Spiritus and begin my training. I didn’t know if I could give up on my dragons. They were only eggs right now, and I wasn’t positive they would hatch, but I wanted to see it through.
As the dreadful winter in Pittsburgh dragged on, my mind kept going back to the Horsemen spotting. War and famine. It almost felt like the war had already started, and famine usually followed. I had to protect my city.
Flidais and Danu walked by again, whispering into their hands and ignoring me. Shaking my head, I turned to the right and entered the party. Immediately, I looked for signs of an induction ceremony. About thirty Gods were in attendance, and as I scanned the room again, I saw another twenty people mixed in with the deities. Cerridwen was in the back, stirring the contents of an obsidian cauldron. It smelled like beef stew with a heavy dose of rosemary. And, of course, Mike Merlino was here.
A tall man with wild blond curls peeking out from under a horned battle helm walked up to me. Dressed in gold and burgundy war attire, Lugh smiled and said, “I never thought I’d see that again.”
“I believe it belongs to you.” I turned and extended the spear, holding it parallel to the ground.
Lugh knelt, removed his helmet and extended two open hands above his head. I gently placed the spear in his hands and felt a spark of electricity as the object finally returned to its master. A wave of lightning ran down the spear, then transferred to Lugh’s glowing body, leaving an ivory aura surrounding him.
He stood up, tall and proud, holding up the spear so everyone could see. A round of applause broke out. I didn’t know if they were cheering for him or me. No offense, but Lugh had lost the spear. He deserved no praise. The longer the cheering went on, the more I realized nobody was even looking at me except for the Morrigan, who shrugged her shoulders.
My hopes of a welcoming ceremony fell by the wayside. I had been foolish to get excited. Delusional visions of grandeur. This fickle bunch didn’t deserve me. My father was right about them.
As I peered around the room, it was apparent I didn’t fit in with this crew. Everyone was socializing with each other, and it left me alone near the entrance. My mother strutted around like a peacock, showing off her sparkling purple dress. Everyone else knew her as the Goddess of Fire, but I knew her as the Ice Queen. Frigid. I couldn’t think of a more apt name.
Even that little bitch Alayna was here, showing off her new wings, acting as if she hadn’t starved the creatures of Sleepy Willow for hundreds of years.
Mike approached Frigid, and she threw her arms around the young man and pulled him in for a loving hug. Rage built inside me. She’d never hugged me. Never even shown the slightest bit of affection toward me. No, she had shunned me since birth. My own mother. But for the Pony Boy, she had no problem falling all over him in front of the Gods. This was supposed to be my shining moment, dammit.
My event. My apotheosis. My addition to the pantheon. However, it had turned into another episode of embarrassment in my life. If I hadn’t brought the spear, the Gods wouldn’t have invited me in the first place.
I tried to calm myself, but the dark blood took over, edging me toward malicious behavior. Fighting against it, I backed outside into the chill, hoping it would take care of the problem. Instead, the flames were fanned, and I saw the world through a stained pink lens. Five centuries of pent up anger toward my mother wouldn’t be denied. Through a roseate haze, my body started moving, but it wasn’t under my control.
About thirty seconds passed and the rage fit wore off, leaving a roomful of screaming Gods in front of me. The Dagda was standing right next to me, staring up at me with angry intensity beaming from his widened eyes. A group of people were helping someone to their feet. The sparkly purple dress.
They turned my mother around, exposing a red welt under her left eye. Had I clocked her? The horrified looks on the guests’ faces indicated that I had. I looked down at my fist, still clenched and red with white knuckles. When I noticed the Morrigan smirking in the back, I knew I had done it.
As the swirling ocean of competing cackling calmed down, everyone was yelling at me. “Why’d you do that?” “What were you thinking?” they shouted, aiming their fingers at my face in anger.
I took two steps forward and locked eyes with my mother. My entire life we’d been tap dancing delicately on top of a tinderbox. Each of us hoping the other wouldn’t start stomping.
My mother glowered at me. But her lips remained sealed. She knew if she chastised me it would cause one hell of a scene, the likes of which she wasn’t ready for. Even after five hundred years, she couldn’t come clean to the other Gods.
So she stood there, glaring, stewing and brooding. But she didn’t say a damn word. Not a peep. She couldn’t. I’d socked her with silence. I made eye contact with the Morrigan, who was grinning and nodding in sharp approval.
A warm hand landed on my arm. I turned to my right, and the Dagda said, “I believe it is time for your exit. You may return only when you are ready to act civilized.”
I took one last glance around the room to see if anyone would step up to defend me. Most of them avoided eye contact and the rest cast dirty looks upon me, judging me as only Gods and Goddesses could. I nodded with my lips pursed, turned on my heel and walked outside into the snow.
I heard sounds of shuffling feet behind me and whirled around, ready to jack someone up. The Morrigan—my only real friend among the Gods—hustled over.
“Nice punch,” she complimented.
“Yeah, this should work out well,” I responded, shaking my head.
The Morrigan said, “If only they k
new the truth, they would understand like I do.”
“It seems like everyone knows about my father, just not my mother. If I tell everyone, then I look even worse and Frigid would just deny it anyway. Whom are they going to believe? Me and you, or her?”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. She changed the subject. “I have some stuff going on that I need some help with. Need a good wing gal.”
“I do have wings when I need them.” I worried that working with the Morrigan would clash with my pledge to be a better person. Whenever we got together, destruction usually followed.
“Just think about it. We can have some fun, like we used to. And if we solve this mystery, I’ll try my best to get you Maeve’s spot.”
“Let me think about it.” I knew Titania would love to hang out with the Morrigan and cause some trouble. Earning a spot in the pantheon would be a nice cherry on top.
Maybe this was what I needed. The Gods had overlooked all my noble work involving Lugh’s Spear. I could wreak havoc with the Morrigan for the greater good. Then, the Goddess could talk me up to the rest of the Gods.
I turned to the Morrigan, and said, “I’m in.”
Black Birds
The Scarlet Dragon Saga
Book 2
J.P. Rice
Copyright 2018 by Jason Paul Rice
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All names are made up and used fictionally. Any resemblance to real people is completely coincidental. Any resemblance to real events is only part of the author’s imagination.
Cover Art by Ljiljana Romanovic
Chapter 1
Death. A necessary evil. The Morrigan would argue it was essential for life. She subscribed to the vacuum theory. The world—whichever one you inhabited—couldn’t add new life until an existing life created a vacuum for the child. The Goddess of Death had often told me, “To get, you have to give. To get life, you have to give death.”
Life. Its ending was always sudden. Harsh. Abrupt. Even for a person expecting to die. The soul required a guide to the afterlife. A merchant of death to take it to the promised land. A soul left to wander could present a grave threat to everyone.
Death cards. A card to claim a soul by destroying the host. A creation of the Sacred Circle, a collection of death merchants from various pantheons. They’d produced the cards to play poker and to pass a little time until eternity.
Who knew something would go horribly wrong?
*****
I waited near the bar in the restaurant where Thor worked as a dishwasher. The hostess at Slappy Jacks had sent for the kitchen manager about five minutes ago. I looked around the room at the patrons enjoying themselves and wondered if I would ever have a family of my own.
Recent events had put me at odds with Tyr and Loki. Their plan to kill Odin had failed courtesy of me. Loki had probably unleashed a slew of assassins and bounty hunters to take care of me. I needed to bring Thor to my side and get him back to Asgard. That would force Loki to spend all his time worrying about whether Odin would reinstall Thor as the heir to the throne.
Last time I’d seen Thor, he was drinking a 40 of malt liquor in the alley behind this restaurant. If I could convince Thor to quit Slappy Jacks and come work with me, that would be half the battle. Pittsburgh was a small place. Much smaller if I had to outrun a Norse hit squad.
The aching pains caused by Tyr’s lethal attack were getting much better. I’d thought they would all go away after I had sipped Goibnius’s nectar, but the discomfort persisted. I could handle physical pain. Losing my golden half-heart locket hurt worse than the relentless aching. By any means necessary, I planned to get it back from Merlin and the Bounty Huntress.
The stocky kitchen manager hustled across the dining room with a dirty apron draped over his shoulder. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
He started speaking before he arrived, “Listen. I’m gonna tell yinz exactly what I told them other guys. If Todd owes you money, that’s on him. We ain’t paying off any of his debts. Got it?”
I waved my open hands in front of me. “No. I just want to talk to him.”
He pulled out his phone and began scrolling. “Well, he don’t work here no more.” He stopped and looked up at me. He shoved his phone back into the pocket of his checkered pants and pointed at me. “Wait, you’re the lady we saw back in the alley. He stopped showing up the day after we saw yinz out there.”
I had suspected that. Thor really wanted to stay away from supernaturals. I asked, “Do you have a phone number or address?”
The manager turned back toward the kitchen, and on the other side of the dining room, one of the cooks was shaking a ticket order, the long, narrow receipt slithering like a snake. The manager waved in recognition and turned back to me. Shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head, he spoke quickly, “Look lady, he was homeless and without a phone, but we gave him a shot. No paperwork. Last time we’ll make that mistake.”
He started putting his apron back on, and I knew he had to get back to the job, but this gave me nothing to go on. “If I could just ask a few more questions.”
He turned to walk away and spoke over his right shoulder, “Yinz can’t. Unless yinz wanna come back in the pit and bust some suds, cuz we’re getting our asses handed to us back here. Half priced lunches. What a great idea,” he said angrily and hustled toward the kitchen.
What in all the worlds was going on here? Thor had turned into a deadbeat. Why would he owe people money? Even if he was at odds with Odin, he had access to unlimited funds. Perhaps he was trying to show his father that he didn’t need the money and could make it on his own.
Thor had gotten angry and run away from Asgard before, but he had always gone to a supernatural stronghold. Now it seemed like he was trying to stay away from that group, which I could totally understand. It was the struggling through life, owing people money, working as a dishwasher and drinking 40s in an alley that had me worried. I’d never seen a God in that situation before.
And why Pittsburgh? Thor knew it was a hotbed for the various pantheons. If I were trying to lie low, I’d want to get the hell out of this city.
Someone screamed from across the dining room, “Help. I think he’s having a heart attack.” The woman pointed at the kitchen manager, who was on the ground next to her table.
I moved in closer as a whispering crowd formed around the manager. Through the mass of people, I could see him lying on his back, clutching his chest. Panic seized control of the room and everyone went silent. Several quick-thinking customers pulled out their cell phones and called 911.
“Is anyone a doctor?” I yelled, but as I looked around the room, no one acknowledged my call for help.
I worked my way toward the kitchen manager. As I burrowed up to the front, I noticed a sharp image of the man separate from the body and stand up. Normally, I could see a soul leaving a body, but this was different. It was much more vibrant than the hazy image of a soul.
The solid image turned, and as he walked away, he left a silver trail. The silver cord. He wasn’t dead yet. Because of my extrasensory supernatural vision, the concerned customers couldn’t see the image and remained totally focused on the physical body.
The vision stopped for a second and then marched in place like a zombie. The silver cord that looked like a thick rope stretched from his chest on the physical body to his right hip on the astral body. The cord dragged the astral body back to the living one, attempting to reunite both bodies and bring the man back to life. But the stubborn astral body dug his heels into the burgundy carpet and charged ahead. Why was this man rushing fearlessly toward death?
The astral body used a karate chop motion with his right arm and his flat hand smacked the taut silver cord. I tried to turn away, but it wa
s too late. The resulting argent explosion blinded me. I got off lucky compared to the kitchen manager. Why had he cut his own cord? As I rubbed my eyes and they started to recover, I saw silver particles falling all over the restaurant and the customers were still surrounding the body.
I’d never seen anything like that before and thought about the bible passage from Ecclesiastes. “Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
He was already dead, his spirit irrevocably divided, and nothing could be done now. The body and soul could never be married again. They would now embark on separate journeys.
Not to sound morbid, but I wondered which death merchant would claim the grainy image in front of me. The man’s soul looked around the restaurant, confused and groggy. The whispers modulated into full-throated pleas of help as the patrons continued trying to assist the dead man’s physical body.
The soul wandered aimlessly in a circle, then headed straight for the kitchen. I altered my vision to fight through any illusion magic. The death merchants used invisibility spells when they claimed human souls. They could sneak onto a crime scene without being seen by anyone. Except for the soul they were claiming, of course.
While everyone was still freaking out, I followed the staggering soul into the kitchen, which was empty because the kitchen manager’s coworkers had raced out to check on their leader. The man’s soul staggered toward the back door and passed through the solid wooden structure.
I hustled across the kitchen and headed for the exit. I fastened the top button of my heavy winter jacket and opened the back door of the restaurant. A blistering howl of frozen wind slapped me across the face, invaded the winter cap on my head, dug under my scalp and caused me to shake before I got my second foot out the door. My dragon blood hated the cold.