Mayhem for Suckers

by Lacey Carter Andersen

  “So we go see what he wants,” Van says, and there’s a darkness to his words that makes me stiffen. But when I turn to tell him that’s a bad idea, he’s already gone.

  “Hell,” Aiden mutters, and then he disappears in the blink of an eye.

  Wilder and Reid look at me for a second, and then they’re gone too. I don’t wait another second; I close my eyes and picture the gates around the school. A rush of air comes around me, and the smell of our delicious meal is gone. My eyes open, and we’re facing an unfamiliar man.

  He looks to be about our age with light brown hair and light brown eyes. His hair is messy. There’s a slight bump on his nose, probably from a break that didn’t heal quite right, and a few pale scars on his face. He wears a loose grey sweater and dark jeans. His shoes are expensive runners, with the company’s logo easily visible on both sides.

  There’s a strange quality to him. I don’t know if it’s because I know there’s a god inside of him, or if there’s something truly wrong with him. But I see a normal-looking man in front of me, and yet I sense something beneath his surface.

  “Hi,” he says, and the word comes out awkward.

  “Hi,” I say.

  Van shoots me an irritated look, but what else was I supposed to say? “What are you doing here?”

  He sighs like he’s really tired. “So we all know we’re gods. And that you’re supposed to be so good, and I’m supposed to be so bad. We can all accept that, right? Except, maybe we’re all bad and good. Maybe just like everyone thought you guys would be so awful, and got it wrong, they got it wrong with me too.”

  “What are you saying?” I ask in disbelief.

  “I’m…I guess…wondering if I could join your side.”

  “And why the hell would we do that?” Aiden shoots me a look that says to let him answer, before I answer for him

  He shrugs. “I guess because I can help you find the others. And because I can help you win this fight.”

  “And which god are you?” Reid asks, studying him.

  The guys draw his small frame up taller. “Gullveig.”

  We all stare.

  He sighs again, like this is all too much work for him. “I guess you big gods don’t really know about the smaller ones. Hell, the gods inside of you probably don’t even remember Gullveig.” He kicks at the dirt with the toe of his expensive shoes. “She’s a goddess who likes…the finer things. But some asshole gods you might be familiar with burned her alive…three times, actually, but they didn’t kill her.”

  My stomach turns. I knew the gods inside of us had done some bad things to humans and supernaturals. I guess it made sense that they’d do some bad things to the other gods too.

  “So, sorry, what does that mean you can do?” Reid looks uncomfortable.

  His gaze slides to Reid, and there’s an emotion I can’t name for a powerful moment before it’s gone. “I can bring wealth to me in just about any way, and I’m immune to fire.”

  “That doesn’t sound very useful,” Van says.

  I look at him in annoyance.

  “What?” he says, giving that look right back at him. “How is gold-boy going to help us in this fight?”

  “His information alone should be useful,” Reid begins slowly.

  I take a deep breath. “I don’t care about the information or his powers. If he isn’t bad, he should get a chance to prove it. At least as much of a chance as we had.”

  Suddenly, the gate slowly begins to open behind us. Mr. Time is standing still, watching us as if he’s heard everything.

  Wilder directs his gaze at my grandfather. “What should we do?”

  Mr. Time takes a long minute to answer, and then he looks at the man. “What’s your name?”

  “Oliver.”

  “And where are the other gods?”

  The man frowns. “If I tell you that before you let me in, then what will keep you from just sending me away?”

  “If you don’t tell us, you aren’t coming in,” Mr. Time counters.

  Oliver clenches his fists. “I want a deal.”

  “No deal until we know what you know.”

  Oliver’s gaze flashes with anger, then relaxes. “They’re in a castle in Scotland.”

  “We already know that,” Mr. Time says.

  The man crosses his arms over his chest. “They’re in Aberdeenshire.”

  Tension sizzles between all of us, and I hold my breath. I don’t know what to hope for. We don’t know anything about this man. He could be dangerous to all of us. But he also might be the thing we need to win this fight and save the world.

  “Come in,” Mr. Time says slowly. “It won’t be long before they know you’re here.”

  Chapter Six

  Izzy

  In the morning, we’re going to Scotland. I run after Mr. Time as the guys bring Oliver back to our house; he’ll sleep on the third floor alone where we have some security. The godslayers, our pack of gods, a new and dangerous god--our house is getting crowded.

  And I have a bad feeling about it.

  “Why are we waiting until tomorrow?” I demand when Mr. Time turns to me. “We could be in Scotland already. We could teleport and surprise them.”

  I know the guys are asking all these questions. I can feel them fuming, but we trust him, and Mr. Time does what Mr. Time does. None of us are going to waste our breath arguing with him.

  “We could,” Mr. Time agrees. “But I wanted you to feel out Oliver. I’m worried he’s leading us all into a trap.”

  “You want me to figure out if he is?” I ask, surprised.

  Mr. Time claps my shoulder. “You’re our trickster. If anyone can trick him into revealing the truth, you can.”

  I nod thoughtfully. “Okay.”

  “But be careful,” he warns me.

  “I’m always careful,” I remind him.

  “That’s a lie and I know it, granddaughter.” He rests his hand on my shoulder, and the small gesture of affection sends a glow of warmth through my chest. I always wanted someone to love me like Mr. Time seems to, ever since I was a little girl lost in the foster system. “You follow your heart even when it leads you into trouble. That’s the opposite of careful--but I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

  I smile at him because I don’t know what to say. I’m not good at taking compliments; I don’t have much practice.

  “See you in the morning,” he promises, then adds, “Brenda and Beth and I will be close tonight. If he tries anything, we’ll be there.”

  I nod, knowing they’ll be watching over us tonight.

  As I head through the beautiful, quiet campus, a few passing vamps and shifters say hello, and I smile back and greet them. The guys and I won over some of our peers in our classes, but now that we’ve fought the godslayers that tried to kill some of our fellow students, we’ve won over most of them. The campus is beginning to feel like home.

  But most of my thoughts are focused on how I can get Oliver to reveal how he truly feels. And then it comes to me…I can be my sister. We’re even identical twins; I could probably fool him without my trickster magic, if I had to. But I can easily shift myself to look just like Thea. And if I couple that with my ability to make people actually believe what I show them, he should easily fall for it.

  When I enter the house, the guys are hanging out in the living room. Wilder sits on the floor in front of the fireplace, his guitar in his lap. No matter that he’s playing absently, his deft fingers still coax a beautiful melody from the strings. Van lays draped sideways over one of the club chairs, and one of his dangling feet kicks in time with the tune without him noticing. Aiden and Reid are leaning forward over a laptop together set on the coffee table.

  More and more, they hang out as a group when we’re all in the house. From the outside, before we came to the academy, I hadn’t realized how many small rifts had opened up between them all after they began to leave me out. But now I can see them coming back together, and it makes me happy. They need each
other as much as they need me. They were never wrong about that, even though they were idiots in how they went about it.

  “Where’s Oliver?” I ask.

  “Getting settled.” Aiden makes air quotes. “I have a bad feeling about him.”

  I nod. It feels too easy.

  “He says there are dozens of traps laid around the castle,” Reid adds. “Which seems convenient for his story. We need him, and we need to go in the way he says.”

  “I’m going to talk to him,” I say.

  Instantly, their faces take on a familiar fierce protectiveness. I raise my hands to fend off the arguments before they can even start. “You guys are right downstairs. And they can’t teleport into the academy. The gates are locked. It’s just him and me, and you guys all know I can kick his ass.”

  Van snorts at that. “But would you?”

  “Loki’s always ready to turn someone into a bug, believe me,” I say. “One wrong move, and he’ll be a rhinoceros beetle.”

  “That’s specific,” Wilder says.

  I wink at him. “That’s because I’ve got a plan.”

  Wilder runs his hand through his hair, but he can’t help smiling at me, no matter how worried he might feel. “Fine. Go get him. As long as you promise to squish him if you need to.”

  This is actually part one of my plan. I plan to visit him as Thea tonight, once he’s fallen asleep and will be foggy-headed if I wake him.

  “I’ll go with you.” Aiden leaps from the couch.

  “No,” I say, pressing my hands to his broad chest to stop him. “I love you, Aiden, but tact and de-escalation aren’t exactly your strengths.”

  Reid lets out a laugh--that’s an understatement--that he smothers into the couch as Aiden turns to glare at him.

  Then Aiden turns his attention back to me. “You love me?”

  “Obvi--”

  Before I can finish saying obviously, Aiden’s mouth covers mine. His hands wrap around my hips, pulling me close, and the two of us trade a deep, long kiss. I expect the other guys might be jealous, but when I look up, they’re smiling.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I promise. My legs a bit weak after those kisses. I make it to the door though, and only once I’m in the kitchen do I let myself sag against the wall. All four of them stoke this incredible heat and lust that feels like strength and power sometimes and leaves me weak at others.

  But the way Aiden leaves me reeling soon fades. As I climb the stairs a few minutes later, I feel that sense of strength replace it. It’s true for gods and for all girls: we can do anything if we have people who love us behind us.

  I pass the godslayers’ floor and climb the stairs to the uninhabited third floor. Some crazy part of me can just imagine our godslayer friends living here, and Thea and her men, too. Maybe there’s some kind of misunderstanding and we can just fix things and I can finally have my sister back. The thought is a beautiful one, even though I know not to get too attached to it.

  I knock on the door and a few seconds later, Oliver answers.

  “Hey,” I say. “I brought up some of Beth’s cooking. I thought you might want some dinner and some peace tonight.”

  “After all the time I’ve spent with your sister, I could definitely use some peace,” he says grimly, holding out his hands for the food.

  I want to hear everything about her, and at the same time, I don’t know that I trust him to tell me the truth, even about the smallest things.

  I follow him into a big living room that mirrors the one I’m so familiar with downstairs. “Do you have everything you need?”

  He plops down on the couch and gives me a strange look, as if he doesn’t know why I care. “Sure do. Except for a surefire way out of that hell hole.”

  “Hell hole?” I ask.

  “Thea and the other guys and me…we were taken as kids,” he explains. “Mercenaries searched for the Marked and when they found us, they paid our parents off to take us…or they killed them if they said no.”

  He shrugs, as if it’s no big deal. I want to ask what happened to his parents, but I don’t want to open old wounds. “How old were you?”

  “I was found last,” he says. “I was ten.”

  He raises the coffee mug from the table between us as if in a toast. “And that’s why I like to think I’m still relatively sane and well-adjusted.”

  “What happened?”

  “I spent the next ten years of my life being raised by a maniacal dictator who punished us brutally for any infraction,” he tells me. “And he was never satisfied with our gods. He always wanted us to be more powerful.” He snorts. “As if we wouldn’t murder him if we could, if we were powerful enough… Well, I would, at least.”

  I believe him about that. His eyes have gone dark with hatred and fear.

  “How come he never found you?” he asks. “You were Marked, weren’t you?”

  I absently rub my hand over the mark on my arm, the one that became visible that night in the library. “Yeah. I don’t know.”

  “Lucky,” he accuses, and he sounds bitter about it.

  “I’ve missed my sister all these years,” I say. “I tried to find her.”

  “Be glad you didn’t.”

  I nod. “I guess I would’ve ended up like her…”

  “Your sister will do anything to win that maniac’s approval,” he tells me. “He despises her, and the more he abuses her, the more desperate she is to make him happy.”

  Those words chill me to the bone, then fury sparks. “He abuses her.”

  Maybe my sister had no choice in what she did the night the godslayers came after us, or maybe she’s so brainwashed she's lost. But either way, I’m going to save her if I can.

  And no matter what, I’m going to make him pay.

  Chapter Seven

  Reid

  I feel antsy. The second Izzy left, I wanted to go after her, but I couldn’t. If we were going to have a relationship with her, we needed to show her that we trusted her enough to handle things on her own, even if I’d always want to be at her side.

  “Can you stop?”

  My gaze jerks to my brother, who gives me his asshole look.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Tapping your fingers. You’re driving me crazy.”

  I almost shoot back at him, but I suddenly feel Hel deep inside of me. It’s strange to have her so quiet, almost gone now, most of the time. But sometimes I feel a wave of her emotions, and I know what she’s thinking. When the gods cast her down to Hell for being “ugly,” she’d never really learned how to talk to people. She either creeped them out or offended them. She doesn’t want me to do the same.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I say, trying not to sigh as I stand.

  Wilder stops drumming his guitar. “Want some company?”

  I shake my head. “It’s okay. I won’t go far.”

  I’m barely ten steps out the door when I almost run into a godslayer. Jessica’s blonde hair is tied back but looks a little messy, and she has deep circles under her eyes. I’m surprised. They’ve mostly stuck to themselves since the attack, but I have a feeling it all has more to do with mourning the loss of the godslayers who betrayed them. But maybe it was something else?

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  She wraps her arms around her chest in a vulnerable way. “We heard about Oliver.”

  I nod. News certainly travels fast.

  “You can’t trust him,” she says. “I can feel it deep inside me.”

  “You weren’t sure about us either, at first.”

  She says nothing to that.

  “Look,” I begin slowly, “we found out the other gods are in Scotland. Tomorrow we’re going to investigate things and decide what to do about them.”

  “Scotland?” Her eyes widen and she drops her arms.

  I nod, feeling uncertain.

  “Scotland,” she repeats, almost to herself, then looks back at me. “Scotland is where it all started. Where the original ceremony to unlock t
he gods was.”

  I frown. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that the gods’ followers are probably there. It means that maybe that’s where we can find out how to…how to get rid of the gods.”

  Get rid of the gods? “And here I thought we were becoming friends.”

  She pulls a face. “Not like that, Reid. I’m talking about separating the gods and sending them off into...another plane. So none of you have to carry them.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s something, Reid. It’s a link. We thought being around you guys was the best way to find the gods, their followers, and the details of the ceremony and spell…but I think we were wrong. I think the gods they intended to awaken are there. I don’t know why that marking ceremony worked on you guys too, but this changes everything.”

  I realize my mouth is hanging open and close it. I’d believed the only way to get rid of the gods was to lock us all away. But what if there was another option? What if things could go back to normal?

  Jessica beams at me. “I have to go.”

  “And do what?” I ask, head still reeling.

  “Tell the guys. And then make some travel plans. Because, apparently, the answers to everything are in Scotland.”

  My heart races. “You’ll call us and let us know what you find out?”

  She nods and leans forward to give me a loose hug. “Everything’s going to be okay. Alright, Reid? You guys focus on finding out everything you can, and we’ll finally be able to accomplish the whole reason we became godslayers.”

  She turns and bounds away, and I watch her for a long minute, feeling uncertain. Before my powers, I was nothing. Just Aiden’s brother. I didn’t have Izzy. I was just some nerd who wanted so many things he didn’t have. But then, being a god had brought so much danger and uncertainty into my life. So what did I want?

  “Boo!”

  I jump a little and turn around.

  Mercy stands behind me, and there’s a mischievous sparkle to her eyes I’ve never seen before. Her dark hair is swept up behind her, like usual, but her clothes look a little…less kick-ass and a little more normal student.