The Game of Gods Box Set

by Lana Pecherczyk

  Seraphim:

  An immortal humanoid race with god-like abilities from the Empire.

  Game Over

  For my big sis, Di, who always asks herself, ‘What would Prince Do?’

  Chapter 1

  Winter in Hungary. The leaves had fallen, the Woodpeckers were drumming. Not snowing yet, but soon. To say it was cold was an understatement. A wooly cardigan, knitted scarf, and thermal underwear did not tame my tremors. I sighed wistfully as I stared through a frosty window into the garden of the Budapest castle. A fog cloud misted on the glass before me and I wiped it away with my squeaky hand then pressed my palm to the cold pane.

  “Roo, I’ll strap him in, then you can examine him,” Cash said somewhere behind me, his deep voice rumbling through the stone room like thunder. My powerful fiancé, and now full-blooded god, was securing an errant Player to a half-reclined seat so I could test him for the dark serum.

  But I didn’t turn around, not just yet. I kept my eyes on the pull of the outside world, so different to my coastal home back in Australia. The gothic castle I was in had a circular gravel driveway with a dolphin water feature the middle. Stone Gargoyles protected the front iron gates, wings spread, ready to fly. Inside the gates, manicured lawns spread until they rolled down a slope toward an immense forest screening us from the world.

  Half the plants had lost their leaves, the other half were miraculously green and emitted a soft pulse of life-energy I felt with my sixth sense. Through the window pane, this buzz sounded a little like a swarm of bees. I sometimes thought of myself as a supernatural radio picking up the frequency of life. It called to me. All of it: Life. Despite the cold, I wanted to be out there—living. But instead, I was in here, hiding away, testing gods and demi-gods for the presence of the dark serum, pretending to be the brave queen they told me I was.

  The examination room I was in had only one exit, making it good for containment purposes. So, for example, if the Player turned out to be infected then we could stop him before he ran rabid, wild and free into the general public causing all sorts of mischief. One word from Cash or myself, and Jed would activate the metal grate hanging precariously over the exit. I wasn’t entirely sure what that word would be—probably shit, or run—but the gate would drop, and any mess would be contained. Today, the grate was up, leaving the draft free to wander past Jed’s watchful eye and all the way through the holes in my knitted jacket. Brr.

  It only felt like yesterday the world discovered witches were real, and now, I was still coming to terms with the fact that witches weren't the worst beings to influence life on this planet. Gods were here too, and I was one of them. It had been four weeks since we’d left the Sydney Ludus: the now destroyed training ground where gods had learned how to play their game of evolution. Two of those weeks were spent with Marc jumping through the in-between, checking each continental Ludus for survivors, purging the infected and sending the rest this way. The latter two weeks were spent here at this base, pretending to be someone I wasn’t while Cash ran off with Jed to hunt defectors and the infected—or darklings as our friend Jesop liked to call them. I had little time to speak with Cash and when we finally caught up, conversation was often stilted.

  Cash remembered our transient and ancient history. I didn’t.

  “Roo, are you ready?” he said gruffly, losing patience.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  My palm slid down the cold window to drop at my side and I twisted to see Cash guarding the Player, as promised, strapped into a reclining seat in the center of the room. Cash was a tall man, lithe and athletic yet, in comparison, the seated man looked like The Hulk. He was massive, barely fitting in the chair. And I don’t mean obese, but bulky like a weight lifter. He wore a checked flannelette shirt, jeans and worker boots. Mid to late thirties. I gave the bearded man a once-over as he squirmed under the surgical lights. He looked normal enough. Definitely a Player with his tattooed star-map on one side of his stern face and neck.

  I walked to the patient thinking about how Jed and Cash had found him in a Krakow bar showing off by creating fireballs. He wanted the women to fawn over him, and the men to bow to him. He was a demi-god, and the world owed him that.

  But that squirm. The sheen of sweat over the bearded Player’s brow.

  He’s nervous.

  “Is this really necessary?” the Player asked.

  “Yes.” Cash stood at my side, arms folded. Today he wore a thick leather jacket. His biceps and shoulders stretched the fabric to its limit, muscles honed from constant physical exertion and time spent fighting Urser’s rebels and rogue Players. “You revealed your abilities to the public and now you want to be let in to the refuge. Damned straight we test you.”

  “But the game is over. We can do what we want,” the man said.

  I held my palm up to stop Cash replying. He closed his mouth, lips pursing, eyes pinching, clearly chagrined.

  “No,” I said to the man. “You can’t do what you want.”

  Cash wanted to step in and reprimand the man, I could sense it. He had changed since I’d last seen him. Grown more volatile. He didn’t like me working with the infected and had told me this on more than one occasion. But too bad. I needed to do this for my sanity, my peace of mind, for my injured soul. Because of The Game and its darkness and destruction. The sin. It all originated from me. I had to do something or I would go mad.

  I continued, “The Gamekeeper said this is the last round of the Game, but it’s not over yet. You can’t create fireballs out of thin air every time you want to impress a girl or start a cult. Our secret must remain hidden.”

  The man snorted. “Whatever.”

  “Don’t be a dickhead,” Cash growled. “Show respect to your queen.”

  I cringed as more pressure lumped on my amnesiac brain.

  Cash added, “Despite what you revealed, we have to test everyone we let into the refuge. The threat is real.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good,” I said. “You’re well aware it’s a volatile environment for Players. Urser has seen to that with his infection of a majority of you. With that in mind, after you’re cleared, you can risk staying on this planet or end your Game and return to the Empire. At the moment, we’re leaving this choice up to the individual. What was your name again?” I asked, inspecting his aura for telltale signs of fact or fiction.

  “Malcolm.”

  I wrote it down in the notebook beside me to disguise the fact I picked up a flicker of something in his essence. Maybe nothing.

  “Okay, Malcolm, what House do you belong to?”

  “Aldebaran House.”

  My brows lifted. They had been the meatheads of The Ludus, always spoiling for a fight. From memory, they had also been a House in conversations with my father, Bruce Urser, a.k.a. Spawn-of-all-evil-set-to-destroy-this-planet-with-darkness-and-then-the-rest-of-the-known-universe.

  The dinners Bruce hosted from his royal suite back at the Australian Ludus served more than one purpose. On the surface, they forged marriage alliances between Houses for a show of strength in the Game, but on another level, deeper pacts were made. Ones that dealt in soldiers for his dark war.

  “I’m not infected. I would know,” Malcolm said.

  “Only last week we had someone sitting in your position, saying the same thing. His virus had mutated. It remained dormant in his body since infection until the UV light from our scanner activated it. So I wouldn’t speak too soon,” I said.

  “Just do what you gotta do and get on with it.” Malcolm’s eyes widened at Cash when he tested the straps around Malcolm’s wrists. “You’re going to watch?”

  Cash widened his stance, arms folded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I walked out of our makeshift medical bay to another space where curtains shielded Lena’s operating table. Jesop had a lab station set up on the other side of the room. Neither Lena or Jesop were here, but they had left the UV scanning handheld device on an instrument trolley. I found it and switc
hed it on. Blue light and a humming sound emitted from the wand.

  “If you are infected,” I said, “I can purge the poison, so your soul can return to the Empire. Nothing to worry about.” I placed the scanner face down on the bench next to Malcolm’s chair.

  “My soul is already free.”

  “This should be a piece of cake then. Let’s start.” I activated the switch on the chair and watched it further recline until Malcom was lying flat, staring at the ceiling. He tugged on his wrist restraints every so often, but didn’t complain. After a Player morphed into a darkling before our eyes, the straps became necessary.

  I checked Malcolm’s eyes under the lids. No filmy black residue. Good. I asked more basic questions regarding his health and checked his short, sharp responses against his aura fluctuations. The familiar routine was comforting. I felt like I knew what I was doing in this lab. Mostly, he told the truth, but a vibe underlying his words stirred my blood. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Not enough to flag as a lie, but not steady enough for truth. Just a feeling.

  I flicked a glance at Cash. Often the infection carried a rotting, putrid undertone, and he’d smell the disease a mile away. Cash’s eyes locked on Malcolm with menace, but that was normal. His protectiveness around me was borderline over the top. If he was away, Marc was here watching. Jed also lurked nearby, and occasionally I’d see a handful of other nameless people protect me. Between them all, I felt like a caged Yo-Yo.

  “Okay, let’s have a look.” I held the scanning rod over Malcolm’s head. Blue light reflected off his skin and revealed every blemish, freckle and wrinkle as I scanned. In recent experience, we’d discovered the serum had presented in one of two ways. The first was instantaneous. Ripples under the skin until eyes melted to black holes. The second took a few days and occurred once the UV rays from the sun had enough time to activate whatever was under the skin—perfect ticking time bombs.

  I switched the scanner off and put it down. He was an asshole, but he wasn’t infected. “Okay, you can go,” I said and released his chair into an upright position before undoing his straps.

  Malcolm swung his large legs over the edge. “So, I’m cleared?”

  “Yes, you’re cleared,” I confirmed.

  I darted a glance at Cash, who watched me like a hawk. Underneath his worn leather jacket, his muscles flexed, geared for action. I only needed to look at him weird and he would probably end Malcolm right then and there. Part of me thought his eagerness grew out of a protective instinct for his fiancé, but deep down, I knew there was something else that troubled him. A dark desire, a remnant of his violent past, skirted every behavior and thought. I’d seen it first hand when I’d once woken him from a nightmare only to have his fingers crush my neck into near oblivion.

  “Jed is waiting for you outside, Malcolm. He’ll show you to your room,” Cash added.

  “You’re not going to take me?” Malcolm replied.

  “I think one person holding your hand is enough.” Cash took the scanner from me and returned it behind the curtains of Lena’s operating bay.

  Malcolm grumbled and slid off the chair. He took a few steps towards the exit then paused halfway, his back to us.

  A stillness washed over me.

  Something was wrong.

  The serum?

  Malcolm’s aura vibrated at a higher frequency and escalated. His hands flexed at his side. I sought out Cash who had turned from the curtain. He froze, sensing danger.

  “Malcolm?” I took a step forward, hesitant.

  My foot barely touched the floor when Malcolm pivoted and threw two fireballs at my head. I dropped, lifting my hands, intending to throw up a shield of hard air but the fire sailed over my head to hit the curtains. So fast!

  “What are you doing?” I cried, mortified. I tried to make sense of it. His aura was normal. Eyes, clear. Still no sign of the serum. This was all Malcolm.

  He glared in my direction. “I was hoping to get you alone, but, oh well. May as well kill two Players with one stone.”

  Behind him, Jed’s head popped around the exit, checking the disturbance. His eyes caught on Malcolm, then on Cash behind me and he gave a curt nod. Cash slipped into effortless battle mode. His face deadpanned. His body relaxed. He advanced.

  “Stay down, Roo,” Jed said. He trained his gun on Malcolm’s head.

  Malcolm cast a look over his shoulder and sneered. “That won’t kill me.”

  “But it will slow you down.”

  Fire crackled, smoldering in Malcolm’s fingers.

  Jed jerked his gun. “Don’t do it.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Malcolm.” Jed’s gaze shifted to a spot to my side.

  Cash stood there with wild eyes and a wolfish smile, tipping on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce. Fear sliced through me at his feral vibe. The hairs on my arms stood on end. Violence. Destruction. Cash’s hidden essence surged, exploding out of his being, coating the room thick with dread. This was new, this charged, unpredictable reaction that didn’t bother hiding anymore. It was as though his essence knew he wanted to be heard, to be feared, and it happily came out of hiding when he attacked. Everything inside me urged a retreat, but I forced myself to stand firm. Sudden movements would not be welcome.

  Malcolm’s eyes focused on Cash, hesitating, as though he too sensed the shift in Cash’s aura. He lifted his smoldering palms menacingly.

  I blinked.

  A breath. That was all it took, and Malcolm was gone. Cash stood in his place, a bright blue flaming sword in his hand, staring at a pile of ashes drifting softly to the stone floor.

  Chapter 2

  “What the hell was that?” I couldn’t stop the words trembling on my tongue.

  I had to force myself to not believe my eyes because, although my eyes saw Malcom being murdered by Cash, my brain knew Malcolm’s soul would find its way to the nearest Purgatory, wherever that was. Still, I couldn’t help drawing my cardigan tighter across my middle.

  “Cash?” I tried again, but he ignored me. I glanced at Jed for help, but he sighed and holstered his gun. He cast a sympathetic look my way then went back outside the lab to resume his post.

  Cash’s blue flaming sword winked out of existence as he stepped away from the ash.

  “Hey!” I yelled this time. “Don’t ignore me, Cash.”

  An almost imperceptible tilt of the head was the only indication he’d heard, because he said nothing and moved to retrieve a dustpan and brush from underneath a stock trolley. He crouched down near the ashes and began sweeping them up.

  “I’m not ignoring you, Roo. I’m cleaning up.”

  “What the hell? Why did you do that?”

  He spun toward me and pointed the soot-covered brush at my face. “Don’t ask me to apologize. I’m not sorry. He was trying to kill you. I’d do it again.”

  “But…”

  “This is the Game, Roo. The last one. And you’ve got the biggest target on your back.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He laughed, short and sharp. “Killing you would be the biggest show of power. Depending on who you speak to, your death could be seen as making a positive difference in this world, making the evolutionary reward massive. Don’t you see that’s why I was so pissed off Marc took you gallivanting around the world to save a measly few Players?”

  I bit my tongue to stop the tears threatening my eyes. “I can protect myself. I don’t need you to kill for me.”

  My words hit him like a physical thing. Instantly, he softened and closed the gap between us until he stood inches from my face. I stared into his chest, unwilling to meet his eyes. His jacket was open. His shirt was gray. There were two black smudges on the cotton, backfire from Malcolm’s ash.

  Cash dropped the brush, and it clattered to the stone floor. He took hold of my shoulders and squeezed gently. His deep voice was velvet next to my ear. “Is that why you won’t convert to Seraphim? You think we’ll end up back w
here we started, with me killing for you?”

  We were soulmates. Apparently that meant he could use his godly blood to purge the weak human DNA from my blood, leaving me strong and immortal like a god—the Seraphim. Like Cash. I didn’t know how to answer him. I didn’t remember my past life as the queen. She was me, but I wasn’t her. Between stories I’d heard from Marc and Cash, I’d pieced together what had happened on the day the earth stood still. The queen’s son, the prince, stole the original sin his mother extracted from her science experiments—humans. She wanted to make a world without pain. She couldn’t have known her efforts were doomed to fail. Following in his mother’s soul-science footsteps, and with Urser’s help, he’d converted it into a dark serum that melded with his own blood, and then fed it back to the people, resulting in thousands of mind controlled monsters we now call darklings.

  Cash had always warned the queen against tinkering with creation, but she hadn’t listened. In the end, there was more pain than she could stand and when Cash had to clean up her mess, it almost destroyed him. It broke his soul into pieces—literally—and he became doomed to have his soul parts reincarnate separately.

  The queen had become a recluse until the call of the planet and the Game somehow brought her back as a secret Player. And then she was me, and I found Cash. And now look at him. He just killed without a second thought. We were already back on the same path—history doomed to repeat itself.

  “Everything I touch turns to shit,” I said, faintly. “I mean, I was the queen. She neglected her son, created new life then forced you to kill them all. I don’t want to become her because she was the queen of turning things to shit.”

  Cash notched a finger under my chin and lifted until our eyes clashed. “You touched me. Do I look like shit?”

  He looked incredible. Hot. Sexy. Concerned. I swallowed and averted my gaze. Big problem: there was nowhere to look but down the hard planes of his chest, ridged stomach—yes, I could see his abs through his tight shirt—lower, lower… my eyes snagged on the way he filled out his jeans. Thick thighs, strong legs, and… I blushed. A zip of electricity shot down my lower abdomen and I was reminded of how long it had been since we’d been together. Weeks. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him for long. I had to lift my gaze back to his mismatched eyes. One blue, one brown, and both drilling into me.