Immortal Desires: A Depraved Gods Novel

by Elle Lincoln

  My head jerks up. “He did. That’s an odd thing for a human to say.”

  “It is.”

  A chill works it was up my spine as I turn back down the road my feet silent and soft in the snow. My eyes remain on the door we just left, but the closer we get the more confused I become.

  “Rocco…” My eyes widen as I stare at the door. There, in the snow, are our footprints. “Tell me that I’m not crazy.”

  “You weren’t crazy, that’s not a bar.” In front of us sits a bakery, complete with painted images of pastries on the windows.

  “Is this where we came out of?” I look at the ground and the footprints. “How?”

  “I think it’s best we don’t question this.” Rocco backs away slowly. “If we need that pub again, it will find us.”

  “But what the fuck was it?” I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the crazy one here, given my fae blood and all.

  But a silent swirl of energy rips my attention from the bar-now-bakery.

  “Flynn.” Mae’s eyes are wide, her skin pale against her beautiful freckled face. “We have a problem.” Her voice cracks just a bit as the scent of blood tickles my nose.

  Chapter 6

  Mae

  I pull Rocco and Flynn to the little shop where death permeates the air. Rocco instantly dissolves into his smoky form, and Flynn holds a hand over his mouth. Argos sniffles in the background, lamenting that her soul is lost forever.

  Me? I do my damn best to keep from breaking down. I didn’t know Delores well, and our meeting wasn’t memorable in a good way. The loss of her spirit, however, is something I feel in my core. I’m angry for her, and the need for redemption laces my veins, which is something foreign to my usual gentle nature.

  Maybe I’m more like Gram than I thought. I just never had a need to delve into that fiery spirit, though it must have always been there, lurking in the background.

  “What happened here?” Rocco solidifies with a cough, billowing that deep black smoke over the body.

  My hands form fists that I prop on my hips. “This is a dead woman,” I reply, snark and sarcasm obvious in my tone. “One who just so happens to have lost her spirit and magic.”

  Flynn’s head snaps to me. “Same as Bodb?”

  I nod mutely in reply. A thought tickles the back of my brain. “Flynn, our magic, where is it stored?”

  “What do you mean?” His dark brows pull low over his eyes, lit with an inner flame.

  I point to Delores. “Why gut her? Morrigan mentioned Bodb was gutted as well. Why? Do we have a medical examiner?” I hate that this world is just forming, that hospitals sit in deserted silence with their facilities so fucking useful and yet go unused. Especially now that we need them.

  Flynn crouches before Delores, reaching out to the ether to pull a small knife from what looks like thin air. Instead of replying to me, he pokes through her organs and intestines.

  “Do you even know what you’re looking for?” I muse.

  “I know basic anatomy, but immortals have an extra gland, if you will.” His hand sinks into her chest, breaking apart her ribs.

  “I’m out.” Rocco gags, holding back the bile I can see constricting his throat.

  “Go,” I address Argos. “Get cleaned up.”

  His pale, tear streaked face watches at me as though he hears my words but can’t quite understand them.

  Rocco grips Argos by the arm, steering him from the small room and Flynn’s brutal inspection.

  “Flynn,” I whisper pointlessly, since it’s just us now.

  “It sits above the heart. My mom spoke of it once after she gutted a man. She told me we were similar in many ways but this one.” With a squish and a crunch, he pulls her heart from her chest.

  My eyes tear up and I glance to the ceiling, breathing through my mouth to slow my pounding heart. I shiver and count to ten, taking deep breaths.

  “It isn’t here.” He stands and I make the mistake of looking at him—and essentially the heart in his hand. His thumb grazes the top where something was torn free of the curvy muscle. “Ripped free, they must have reached up there.” He glances back at the body. “They aren’t strong.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” My hands flutter out to the entrails that stain the wooden floor.

  “It took me a few minutes to break through the sternum, but whoever did this ripped through the belly and reached up to get to the heart. They could only remove the gland.” He rests her heart back on her stomach, his hands dripping with blood. “They aren’t strong,” he repeats.

  “Flynn, I doubt I could rip through that chest like you did.” Why is this even the conversation we’re having right now?

  “Ah, but you could with your strength, you just aren’t there yet.” I roll my eyes. “Hear me out. An immortal could surely rip through a chest, but a mortal couldn’t, even if they wanted to. There’s a difference there.”

  “So, we are looking for a mortal.” A changeling, to be more precise. But how do I bring up that topic when his mother gave me the idea?

  “It appears so, but what does a mortal have to do with an immortal gland?” He flicks his hand, scattering the blood.

  “Do I have one of those?” I muse out loud.

  “More than likely. And how would a mortal know about it? Most immortals don’t know it even exists,” he grumbles, before walking free of the room. I follow on his heels, glad to escape the gruesome scene. He kicks open a door to a bathroom, yanking a towel from a rack. The sink is pointless without electricity. This world holds so many luxury items and yet none of them can even be used.

  “What now?” I chew on my cheek, feeling out of place and out of time.

  “We need to get rid of the body.” Flynn looks at his hands in disgust. “I need a shower.”

  “That’s it? You need a shower,” I scoff. “We need to find out who’s doing this. We need to get a hospital up and running. There is a huge hospital down the street just sitting there.” My words come out in a rush, jumbled together in a desperate attempt to find a solution in this mess.

  Flynn just leans against the sink, smiling at me. What he finds so funny in this situation is beyond me.

  “What?” I ask in exasperation.

  “You want nothing to do with leading in any political way, yet here you are demanding electricity be restored to a vacant hospital. It’s a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?” he challenges, his words irritating me with their truth.

  “Flynn, someone is murdering immortals, stealing a magical gland, and we don’t know why, and we have no way to warn people. We’re sitting ducks in a time of darkness.” There must be a solution sitting just beyond our fingertips.

  “Then come to a meeting.”

  “I’m not sitting around a table talking when I’m better with action. You all just talk and what are you doing?” They do nothing, that’s what.

  “We must have some agreement. It’s but an hour of your time, surely you can spare that.” I swear there’s a mocking tone to his words and again he might be right.

  “We need to understand what that gland does.”

  “Agreed,” he states, surprising me. “Let’s head back, shower, and eat. I’ll send someone for Madam Delores and see if we can find a medical examiner in the prison.”

  I wince forgetting about the humans holed up there. I head out the back, stepping through the magical barrier and into fresher air. It isn’t until I step outside when I breathe a sigh of relief as cool, brisk oxygen enters my starving lungs.

  Instead of ghosting to headquarters, I decide the long walk with fresh air will help clear my head. “So, you mind walking?” I glance to Flynn’s hands, hoping he won’t mind too much.

  He holds his hands out before ripping off his jacket, and rolling up his sleeves. He sets his hands on fire burning the blood off. “I should have done that in the first place.”

  “Nice trick.” His arm wraps around my waist, pulling me close as we walk in silence until it become unbearable. “What did
you find in Ireland?”

  “The oddest things.” This confident man holding me speaks in tones of confusion. “A man. I thought he was a man. We stopped in a pub to have a drink while we waited for you, but when we left, the pub was a bakery.”

  “How is that possible?” This magical world is full of more secrets and wonder than I could have ever dreamed of.

  “You tell me.” It’s a casual statement, one spoken from his bewilderment, yet I can’t help but feel like it’s directed at my little secret.

  I break, knowing I can’t keep anything from him. “I went to the library instead of searching for the magical signature of wisdom. Which, by the way, is not in the otherworld.” He grunts as he listens. “I came across a book.” Still leaving his mother out of the topic, I finish, “It was about changelings.”

  His steps falter. “Aren’t they a myth?”

  “You tell me.” I throw his words back at him.

  “Touché,” he concedes. “You have to realize that my time in the Realm wasn’t full of warmth nor compassion. My mother created a portal allowing only Rocco and I passage, and only at select times and places where we would be unseen.”

  “Why?” That sounds as though she was hiding her son, and I’m not entirely sure I get that from her. Then again, death changes a person.

  “The fae overthrew the gods from their own world, barring them access. That’s why the Realm fell, or rather died. The gods were tied in a way unseen to the Realm. Unseen to the fae. As more and more gods became involved in mortal woes, the fae grew angry, deciding they would keep them from their homelands. But the fae forgot that the Tuatha De Danann have mortal responsibilities. The fae didn’t have that, they don’t have that. They are descendants of the Danann, born of God and man. Cursed to never be truly immortal.”

  “How is that possible?” Truth be told, I’ve only ever met one fae and she just so happens to be dead.

  Flynn taps his head. “Mortals cannot handle the curse of immortality. Their minds are partially human, remember?”

  I do remember having this conversation in passing, but not in any great depth. I nod for him to carry on.

  “If the court knew what my mother had done, they would have killed her on sight.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Gave birth to me, a halfling. She wanted a girl.” His laugh is full of regret, but at whom, I don’t know. “She thought my father had already sired a son, an untruth.”

  “I think I recall something about a first born with a god and the fae or mortals will always be a god.”

  “Correct.”

  “So, they had to have had multiple children with humans for the fae to come along.”

  “Also correct. But they were altered in a way the ancients didn’t think possible. After a time, they become prisoners to their insanity. The gods banned relations with humans.”

  “Yet you carried on a relationship with me,” I point out.

  “I did.” He squeezes me to his side. “And it was illegal in their eyes.”

  “Ironic, considering they don’t believe in policing,” I say with a dry tone.

  Flynn chuckles at me, the rumble vibrating my ribs. “No, that they don’t, and yet it’s the one thing they can agree on.”

  “So, your father warning me away was because you were breaking the rules of their world.”

  “I’m not sure what his true motive was, but I’m certain that had something to do with it, and the fact that my uncle approved of the union.” His brows scrunch up at that.

  “Your uncle approved of us?” Which one? The one who died? I wonder. Yet I don’t recall meeting him.

  “He loved you the moment he met you.”

  My heart skips a small beat, fluttering in my throat with a premonition that one of Flynn’s secrets is about to reveal itself. “Flynn?” I question, turning my body toward him, a breath huffing out to a cloud before my face.

  “I’m going to tell you something and I want you to have an open mind.” He looks down at me, this time locking his eyes with mine. A vein pulses on his forehead, giving away his worry over how I’m going to react to this.

  “Alright, let’s hear it.” I cross my arms, moving away from him just as snow begins to flutter from the sky once again.

  “Do you remember our first date?” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

  “Yes, we went for sushi.” My brow furrows as he shakes his head no. “The next day, when you and Rocco showed up with coffee then?”

  “Yes, do you remember what we did that day?”

  “We went for a walk through a market, heading for some fresh bread. Why?” My pulse begins to hammer. I know there are creatures able to fuck with memory, it’s happened in the past once before, but now I’m beginning to wonder just how many times that truly did happen.

  “You remember the alley?”

  “Flynn, out with it, what happened that day?” Irritation causes me to lash out at him.

  “You met Bodb in that alley after we were attacked by my father’s men.” He takes a calm step back, holding up his hands.

  He’s probably afraid I’ll chop off his head with the scythe that suddenly appears in my hand. “Flynn.”

  “I thought your memories would have returned by now, but Bodb was a tricky man. He would have set it to come forth when the time was right.” He takes another step back.

  But before I can advance on him, the memory becomes crystal clear. The alley. The men, no, shifters, coming after us and Bodb taking my memories. But most of all, I recall being unafraid of the entire situation.

  I send my scythe back to wherever it goes and return to face the direction we had been heading. I grind my teeth, trying to decide how angry I should be with him. After all, it wasn’t Flynn who stole my memories, but Bodb.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice sounds harsh, even to me.

  “It honestly just hadn’t come up until now. He knew that if you remembered...”

  “I’d never have left and I needed to leave.” What a bunch of righteous bullshit. “He took the choice from me and that isn’t something I’m okay with. The choice should have been mine.” I stop looking at Flynn, turning away from his intense eyes. “My body, my choice.”

  Then, I see it. That small flicker of something, something he’s been hiding from me. A secret more recent than this one. He averts his gaze, spinning back to walk down the street and away from me.

  But I know, I know he’s lying to me, even if in his fae way he isn’t lying at all. But then Rhia pops in beside me, walking beside me just out of view of her son—not that it matters, he can’t see her anyway.

  But she’s made her fucking point just as she disappears. He isn’t the only one keeping secrets. With a sigh, I catch up to him.

  “Is there anything else you need to tell me?” I try to word it so he can’t evade the question.

  “There is always more to tell, Mae. You’ve been home but a handful of months, less with me. There is more, there will always be more.” As he speaks, he doesn’t once look at me, but straight ahead.

  It’s an answer, just not the one I wanted.

  Chapter 7

  Mae

  “There she is!” My gramps’s jovial voice echoes through the foyer of the large building Flynn calls home and headquarters. His feet tap on the marble as he rushes toward me. Gramps’s strong arms sweep me in for a tight hug, reminding me that while he may be aging, his strength doesn’t waver.

  My eyes close as my worries fade away in his embrace, the scent of tobacco surrounding me, engulfing me in a bubble of protection I’ll never tire of. Most little girls have their daddies to be their knight in shining armor. I have Gramps. There aren’t a lot of grandfathers willing to raise a small infant, taking on the role of mother, father, grandmother, and grandfather. But he did, and I will forever be grateful for him.

  It’s also the one reason I haven’t rushed off to look for my biological parents—wherever they may be. I understand their reasons for
staying away, they magically couldn’t see me without death taking them. But that restriction is no more.

  He kissed the top of my head in the usual greeting, another smile stretching across his wrinkled face.

  “Want to explain the muttonchops?” I finally ask, the new facial hair bugging me, since they wasn’t there the time I last saw him.

  He takes a step back, self-consciously patting his cheeks. “Well, yes.” He gives me that no-nonsense look. “I quite like them.” I glance at the rest of his ensemble. He always was a sharply dressed man, though preferring a casual look while at home, favoring tweed over a suite jacket, like a professional professor. Today, he’s added suspenders to the mix. I’m beginning to wonder if this is the new norm as we slip centuries back in fashion.

  “They suit you.” I give him a quick peck on the cheek before threading my arm in his and steering him toward the kitchen.

  “Thank you.” He pats my hand this time. “The cook has a lovely spread out right now.”

  “The cook?” I frown, surely there are better things to do than hire a cook.

  “Yes, well, it might be quiet now, but every room has been filled. Some come and go, and Maryann keeps this place running.” This only causes me to frown harder. “You’ve been sulking for nearly a month.”

  “I wasn’t sulking. I was trying...”

  “I know what you were trying to do. It is what it is, but you are here now.” He steps ahead, pushing the swinging door open. “I also know it isn’t under good circumstances either.”

  I sigh, choosing to ignore that for the time being, and step into the large kitchen. The lighting here is brighter than anywhere else, since large windows peek into the courtyard, allowing the sun to naturally illuminate the space. Witch globes decorate the high ceiling in smaller than usual spheres that grant an ambient atmosphere during dinner. But right now, sweet scents, yeast, and varying meats assault me, making my stomach rumble with needy hunger.

  “Oh! Is that her?” A small head pops up with curly, light brown ringlets. Her head bobs around the counter where she comes to face me. My shock must be apparent, because her cheery red lips smile wide with pointy little teeth. “I’m a brownie, dear, now shut yer mouth.”