War of Gods Box Set

by Ford, Lizzy

  “Are you going to get up?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve always been so fucking stubborn. I’m trying to help you!”

  She hurt too much to move. If she were perfectly still, she could deal with the pain.

  “You want something to drink?”

  Her head ached too much to respond. He returned a few minutes later and rustled her blanket, setting a cup beside her.

  She drank the cool fruit punch, grateful as it chilled her parched throat. She soon felt relaxed and drowsy. When her phone rang again, she stretched for it and found she couldn’t move.

  “Sorry, Sofi, but I’m taking you somewhere safe,” Jake’s voice warbled. “You gotta trust me.”

  Jake watched her slump again and rubbed his mouth nervously. He snatched her phone as he squatted beside her and tossed it in the sink above their heads, stretching to turn on the water. He wasn’t sure how well Czerno was tracking her, but the Black God’s men had grown daring enough to tear apart her apartment. It wouldn’t be long before they came for her.

  He lifted her and carried her to her bedroom, finding a spot on the bed that had avoided being shredded or covered with junk from her dressers. He quickly changed her out of her clothes and into one of his own long T-shirts, fearing her clothing would be bugged. He dialed Laney as he moved around her room.

  “Yeah,” Laney’s gruff voice came over the Bluetooth.

  “I’m bringing in a package.”

  “The one D’s looking for?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You heard him—ship it to Tucson,” Laney instructed him. “She willing to go?”

  Jake looked over at her still body, feeling somewhat guilty. Normally, Guardians were supposed to ease the transition of Naturals into their organization. However, he didn’t have time to convince someone as stubborn as Sofi to do anything, and Czerno wouldn’t wait for her to decide to go with Jake.

  “More or less,” he answered.

  “Don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know,” Laney said. “Take her there. Han knows you’re coming.”

  “Thanks, boss,” Jake said. “She’s uh, a little bit asleep. Can you just let him know she’s not really in any shape to meet D yet?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Laney said with a smoky chuckle. “Get outta here, kid.”

  “We’re gone,” Jake said with a grunt as he lifted her again. Laney hung up. Jake drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and disappeared.

  White God’s Headquarters

  Damian sat in his office before the computer, glancing between the instant messaging boxes popping up on one computer screen and the geospatial depiction of the past hundred years’ worth of battles between his Guardians and the Black God’s vamps on another screen.

  “D, you coming down for the festivities? It’s pretty interesting. They’re acting out some bizarre kid’s story for the cancer kids,” Han said, ducking his head into the office.

  “No. Talking to Dusty and Jule,” he answered without turning. “Save me some cake.”

  “Sure.”

  “The girl still sleeping?”

  “She’ll be out for a while. Jake gave her enough that she should sleep for another day or so,” Han answered.

  “All right.” Damian returned his interest to the displays, and Han closed the door softly. Dusty, can you hear me?”

  Dustin typed yes.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with your mic?” Jule, the regional commander of the eastern hemisphere, demanded with a laugh.

  Don’t know. IT issues.

  “At least it’s just IT,” Jule responded, growing serious. At the pause, Damian knew they were all looking at the geospatial depiction. His gaze roved over Jule’s European front. It was slowly being decimated and fragmented by Czerno’s blood-sucking vamps.

  “You’ve got a rat,” he said, reviewing the past hundred years of battles depicted on the map. To humans, it would look like the natural give and take of a long battle. To the three of them, the drastic changes that occurred over such a short time span after thousands of years of no change were a warning sign.

  Or more than one, Dusty typed.

  “I think Dusty’s right,” Damian agreed. “You’ve got more than one rat to worry about.”

  “I have Antoine under surveillance. I have no leads on anyone else,” Jule replied. “Thanks to Antoine, my spy network is shit right now. I’m rebuilding as fast as I can, but it ain’t easy finding new Guardians, let alone those who make good agents.”

  “Discretion isn’t a natural trait to Guardians,” Damian said.

  Just like their supreme leader, typed Dusty.

  “What’d you do to him, D?” Jule asked. “He’s been cranky all night.”

  “Chill, Dusty, it’s not that serious,” Damian answered.

  An Oracle????? Not serious? Are you fucking insane? Dusty ended his message with a string of angry emoticons. Damian could feel his ire through the screen.

  “It’s not confirmed.”

  “Wow. Why didn’t you tell him?” Jule scolded. “In fact, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just found out!” Damian snapped. “One of Dusty’s newbies called me. If one of our guys calls, I’ll go. They usually need something—they don’t call just to chat. When someone gives me some more definitive info on her, I’ll tell you.”

  “Anyway, back to my concern,” Jule said. Damian knew if they had video chat, he’d see Jule rolling his eyes. “I’m out of ideas for dealing with my traitor issue, unless Dusty can send a few spies my way.”

  I’m short, but I’ll send you a couple on loan. Want me to talk to Antoine?

  “Cool, bro, thanks. Fuck no on talking to Antoine. I need him alive and preferably in one piece, Dusty, unlike the last time I sent someone to talk to you.”

  “I’ll come to Europe after the Quarterly with some reinforcements,” Damian offered. “We may need to make a couple of less-than-discreet strikes at Czerno’s strongholds to push him back and give us some time. Can you hold things down for two weeks?”

  “I’ll do my damndest,” Jule replied. “Hey—is it just me or is recruiting getting harder and harder?”

  Definitely.

  “Yeah. I think our traitors have some influence on that, too. I’m getting reports from the recruitment team that a lot of their newly flagged Guardians are getting whacked as soon as they make the list,” Damian said.

  Ask Claire what’s going on, Dusty typed with a smiley face.

  Damian grimaced, recalling the last time he’d seen the beautiful woman, his slain brother’s wife. They never got any work accomplished when she was with him. They’d had a falling out a few hundred years before and hadn’t spoken since. He wanted to keep it that way. Sleeping with her made him feel … guilty, like he was betraying his brother’s memory. Yet, she was all that remained of his brother, and he cherished the connection. He preferred to know she was alive and well—and somewhere else.

  “I’ll assume by your silence you’re still not talking,” Jule said.

  “Nope.”

  I’ll give her a call. Maybe she can come to the Quarterly.

  “Fuck you, Dusty,” Damian said acidly.

  “Damn women,” Jule said. “I don’t know why they say you can’t live without them. I’m doing quite well.”

  Damian snorted, gaze lingering on the map. Something was really wrong in Europe, and he needed to figure out what, before the European front was overrun by vamps. His thoughts returned to the Watcher, and he wondered just how many of his problems were caused by traitors influenced somehow by the beings coaching Czerno. With any luck, his Watcher wouldn’t fail him.

  His phone rang. He glanced at the number and let it go to voicemail, not recognizing it.

  “I’ve got two rotating to Tucson,” Jule said. “They’re en route. I want Han, though, D. You promised.”

  “I know, I know. He’s sick of it here anyway.”

  A crash came from the hallway. By the sound of it, it was one of his favor
ite, priceless, Ming vases. With his luck, the kids were loose in the house. Irritated by the mention of Claire and the idea of his collectibles being destroyed, he snatched his phone to call for Han.

  “Dusty, can you—”

  A scream jarred him.

  WTF? Dusty typed.

  “What he said,” Jule echoed. “Everything—”

  A second scream. Damian rose. His door flew open to reveal a huge, furry monster with fangs.

  “What the fuck is going on? And why are you dressed like a sadistic teddy bear?” Damian demanded.

  “You need to see this, D.” The Guardian’s muffled voice grew louder as he pulled the head off the costume. By his tone, something was more wrong than the horrible costume.

  “Guys, we’ll talk later. D out,” he said into the mic before tossing it on the desk. “This better be good.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The in-between place where Jake’s drugs put her were filled with horrifying visions of Cody and other strangers dying while Dr. Czerno screamed at her to return to him in his inhuman computer voice.

  And him. Another … thing … had entered her nightmare and taken over. The dark monster sat in a dark corner of her mind and sobbed so loud, she thought them real. Once, she heard him call for help. She’d stepped near him in her dream, until he swiped at her, and she tried to free a scream from her frozen body. He retreated to the corner and sobbed while she fought the effects of the drug. The drug wore off, leaving her in a dark fog, hot and sweating with a different kind of headache, the kind she got after taking a lot of Dr. Mallard’s drugs. Groggily, she couldn’t remember taking drugs. She’d been drinking fruit punch when she felt drowsy.

  Jake.

  Furious, Sofia pushed off the bed coverings and stood, teetering dangerously before deciding to sit again. Moonlight drifted in through a window, and she stared in confusion. Her window was on the other side of her room. Disoriented, she stood up again and stumbled to the door.

  She hated the headaches and feeling like shit! She couldn’t remember the last time she felt halfway decent. Determined first to get rid of her cotton mouth and then to kill Jake, she wrenched open the door, blinded by the hall light she didn’t recall leaving on. She shielded her eyes with one hand and walked down the carpeted hall, stopping when she realized her hallway didn’t have carpet.

  Her vision was too blurry for her to see much beyond hazy shapes and colors. The carpet was a deep maroon, soft and cushy, the walls around her brown. She squinted through her fingers and braced herself against one wall to counter the effects the drugs had on her equilibrium as she moved down the long hallway.

  “Jake?”

  Suddenly, her bracing arm hit air. She tried to balance herself only to find herself toppling over and over and over down a stairwell. She landed hard on a cold floor. Pain roared through her, and she sought both to shield her eyes from a crystal chandelier blinding her and to grab her burning leg. She wore only a long shirt to her knees that twisted to her stomach with her fall.

  “Oh, God!” she grated, pushing herself into a sit.

  Her blood was a slash of stark red against a white marble floor. The pain in her leg cleared the haze of her mind, and she realized whatever was happening wasn’t a dream. Panic peaked as she looked around her. There was nothing familiar about her surroundings—nothing! Down one hallway, she heard the ring of a phone.

  Phone, police, help. Slowly Sofia stood. Her first step was disastrous. She careened into a table and heard glass crashing as the table corner tore a stripe down her forearm. Her eyes hurt too much to make sense of the world around her.

  Voices prevented her from losing herself to her pain. They came from the same direction as the phone. Whoever had brought her here was coming for her.

  Dr. Czerno. The monster in the corner.

  Fear flew through her as she recalled the disjointed dreams. She turned, slammed into something twice her size, and fell backwards. Her hand dropped from her eyes to reveal a furry, fanged monster from a nightmare framed against the light.

  Sofia screamed. It swiped at her, and she backpedaled, hopping to her feet. She ran into a blurry wall, shoved herself off, and smashed into another monster. With another scream, she bolted and careened into a door that gave.

  The room was dark aside from curtains opened to allow the moon to shine through. She staggered up, cursing the drugs and Jake for her inability to balance, and slammed into several pieces of furniture as the monsters chased her. The lights went on. Blinded, she tripped over a stool and hauled herself into a corner, chest heaving and body slick with sweat and blood.

  “What happened?” a muffled voice asked.

  She hugged her knees to her chest and peered through her fingers. One of the monsters pulled off its head to reveal a man. She squinted, realizing the two furry brown monsters were men in costumes from Where the Wild Things Are. Several more men entered the library, all staring at her in nothing short of total surprise. Either they were all huge enough to come straight out of an action movie, or her drugs had not yet worn off.

  “Gods, are you all right?” one asked finally, moving toward her.

  “No!” she shouted. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” The last thing she needed was more of the gruesome visions!

  “Sofi?” Jake’s stunned tone drew her attention. While surprised to see him there, she was struck by how well Jake fit in with the other men. He was built from the same mold—large and muscular, the kind of man more fitted to military special forces or UFC prizefighting than financial planning.

  The man approaching her had nearly reached her, and she huddled into a tighter ball.

  “Han, don’t!” Jake called. “Leave her be.”

  “She’s bleeding to death!”

  “Trust me. She’ll go ape shit.”

  Sofia wanted to pound Jake’s face in. Her heart raced to the point of pain, and she felt sick enough to puke.

  “Go get D,” the man called Han said. He squatted near her. “You okay?”

  Her gaze cleared, and she focused on her surroundings. Her first impression was confirmed—the men in the room were UFC material, all well over six feet and solid. They were all dressed for a white tie party in expensive tuxedos.

  “I gave you enough drugs that you should be asleep until next week,” Jake said, joining Han. He was also dressed for the exclusive party. Seeing him well rested and well dressed pissed her off even more.

  “Can I help you up?” Han asked, extending his hand as if approaching a wounded animal. His brown gaze was friendly but cautious.

  The others fanned out, and she suddenly felt like a lamb surrounded by a wolf pack trying to decide what to do with her. She didn’t know these men, but her instincts told her they were 100 percent predators. They moved in tandem without looking at each other, their movements controlled and efficient. If she flinched, they’d snap in unison.

  “What did you do to me, Jake?” she demanded.

  “We’ll wait on that,” Jake responded. “There’s a lot of blood. You okay?”

  “You drugged me.”

  He rubbed his mouth.

  “She’s little, pick her up before D sees the blood all over the floors,” another of the men urged.

  “Don’t touch me!” she warned again.

  Despite being able to bench press two of her, the men actually listened.

  “What happened to my floors?” a new voice demanded.

  If the men around her were predators, the man who entered next was their alpha. Unlike the others dressed for a white tie event, he was dressed in leather pants with a tight black Pearl Jam T-shirt, his hair braided, a chain from his spiked belt to his wallet, and heavy black boots. She didn’t miss the way the others moved out of his way or the way the aura of command around him filled up the room. His gaze swept around the room methodically, coming to rest on her. He approached with a slow, steady gait, like a predator inspecting its disabled prey before going for the kill.


  She tightened into her ball. He was as large as the others, with olive skin, long white-blond hair, and golden eyes the unusual color of honey. His features were firm and chiseled. He was not a pretty boy but a man with rugged, bad-boy beauty and a slow sensuality about his movement that made her heart skip a beat despite her pain.

  “You got blood all over my floors,” he told her, his golden eyes taking her in. He knelt beside Han. She tensed.

  “You can blame the Wild Things, D,” Han said. “They scared the shit outta her.”

  D reached out to her, and she recoiled, pushing herself farther into the corner.

  “Sofi, you shouldn’t—” Jake started, eyes going nervously to the newcomer.

  “Not gonna hurt you, okay?” D said, holding up his hands.

  A sense of power swirled around him that scared her. She felt it circle her, prod her, and retreat. His honey gaze was similar to Han’s: warm but wary. She ducked her head and braced herself as he reached for her again. His large hand was warm against her arm. No visions pierced her thoughts.

  “See?” he said.

  She looked up at him, surprised. By the look of understanding on his face, he knew what she expected to feel. Relief flooded her, and she flung her arms around his neck. She’d never known the power of a single touch until everyone who touched her hurt her!

  “Sofi!” Jake exclaimed. He touched her arm to pull her free, and she jerked as dark visions crossed her thoughts. She wrenched away from both men and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to stop the visions. D touched her, and the visions fled as if at his command. The warmth of his hand drifted up her arm and through her, comforting her.

  “She’s … special, isn’t she?” Han asked D.

  “Very,” D replied. “Nobody touches her.”

  His command was quiet and firm, but Sofia knew no man in the room would disobey a man like him. His hand lingered on her arm, and she rested her forehead against his fingers, comforted for the first time in months.

  “Jake, clean up the floors,” D ordered. “Let’s get you upstairs,” he said to Sofia.