Chapter 5
I realized I was subconsciously fidgeting with my lapel pin as I assessed the room for dangers, warning signs, idly listening to Tory speak about her school. The pin was a GT symbol my design crew had come up with for my new company, Grimm Tech. Sharp, sleek, and to the point. Not many knew exactly what the company would be doing, but all assumed it was basically a rebrand of Temple Industries.
Which was true. But it also wasn’t entirely true.
The Research and Development group of Grimm Tech would maintain a lot of projects off the books, so to speak. Because I was building a magical arsenal of my own devising. Something to help keep everyone safe. Cutting edge stuff. A combination of science, technology, and magic. Over the past few months, I had swiped quite a few things from Pandora’s Armory to study, returning them promptly only to borrow yet another set of doodads. Pandora had been pleased to see me finally playing with my toys, but I was still very careful. The things in Pandora’s Armory were dangerous, deadly, and had been locked away for a reason.
Grimm Tech was just in the startup phase. I hadn’t even looked at properties yet, let alone construction companies and architects.
I had hired Greta, her grandson, Yahn, and two other previous employees of Temple Industries so far. Othello – a hacker friend I had met in college – had performed due diligence on each of them, making sure they weren’t corporate spies, they were good at their job, and that they were aware of magic. Yahn, being an intern, hadn’t had the magical awareness, but he had received one hell of a crash course an hour ago.
The crew was already hard at work on some fun projects I had come up with. Like the magic balls I had tested today, in fact. We had an old warehouse – revamped and retrofitted – in Soulard, not too far from my bookstore, Plato’s Cave.
Greta had been the only one I personally knew beforehand. One of the Old Guard from Temple Industries, she was a cantankerous, but lovable employee; one I could trust implicitly. She was only recently coming to grips with the magical side of the world – since no one believed in that kind of thing – but was well-versed in the traditional side of a technology company, so that we could eventually pursue projects for the Regular world, like many that Temple Industries had pursued. So that investors might see profit potential without me having to explain the crazily high R&D expenses on the books.
As if I had whispered her name, a voice suddenly spoke beside me. “Mr. Murdock,” a crotchety voice murmured from my left. I turned to see Greta discreetly pointing her chin at a man standing a dozen feet away. He wore a sharp suit, and had beautiful young escorts on either arm, guiding him to the stage. I pretended not to notice them – the Reds – as he gave me a polite nod. I smiled, nodding back, wondering why the hell the Reds were hanging on his arm. He had been very adamant about wanting to invest into Grimm Tech, but I had yet to speak with him.
I nodded to Greta, putting Mr. Murdock on my list for later. Greta wore a matronly suit, bangles covered her arms, and hairspray had transformed her head into a helmet. Greta had been the Executive Secretary at Temple Industries, and had beaten me upside the head – literally and metaphorically – with her Bible for the brief time I had run the company. She had made sure I didn’t screw up anything too badly. Like I potentially had with Yahn, her grandson.
Of course, after the Grimms had sabotaged my company, she had taken a hefty settlement, and retired to focus on spreading God’s word. She had later adopted a stray pigeon outside my bookstore one day while hosting a bake sale with her Bible students.
I nodded at the man standing over her shoulder, thick, dark hair brushing the tips of his shoulders. His name was Eae, an Angel – or pigeon, as I called him – and his face looked cut from marble. To me, his eyes seemed to pick up the light like a mirror, creating a golden halo around his irises, and his black suit bunched up around his shoulders like he was wearing old-fashioned shoulder pads. “Sup, Pigeon. Shoulder pads went out of style a long time ago.” He muttered something under his breath that I didn’t catch. “Got your smiting paddle ready? Just in case any of these kids need an Old Testament lesson in manners?”
The Angel bit his tongue, flashing me a deep scowl. “One day, Temple…” he finally warned.
I batted my eyelashes at him. “And you’ll be there, waiting for me, Feathers. It’s why you took the job. You know, after you Fell—”
He stammered angrily, “I didn’t Fall, I am being taught patience and humility.”
“Right—”
Greta gripped my arm with an iron, old-woman claw, an inherited skill granted to all women once they became grandmothers. “Watch your tone when speaking with an Agent of Heaven. Have some decency,” she hissed.
I smiled playfully. “He knows I’m just ribbing him. Sometimes my mouth just moves on its own.”
“We’ve all sinned and fallen short—”
“Who’s that?” I interrupted. Greta and Eae turned to look, and I slipped away. I heard a muffled curse, but kept walking as Tory continued speaking about the primary mission of the school. I found myself scanning the crowd, marking potential investors. Many had reached out to me expressing interest, but I had yet to accept anyone. Grimm Tech was a long way from that.
I had shaken many hands this evening, entertaining many offers, and none of them had set off magical alarm bells. Next step was Othello digging into every inch of their lives – without them knowing – to make sure they weren’t a plant.
Paranoid?
Yup. And proud of it.
Because there was a lot of shit going on in the world right now, and—
“Watch it, you vile street urchin!” a thick, baritone voice shouted. I flinched, instinctively ready to fight my way out of a warzone, because the last few years, that’s all my life had been.
But all I found was a portly white-haired man, sporting a red sleeve on his otherwise immaculate white dress shirt from where one of the servers had spilled a glass of wine on his way by. The server – one of Tory’s more advanced students (read less bestial), was fumbling with the spilled glass, and in his effort, ended up dropping the rest of the carefully balanced tray of drinks all over the man, the remaining glasses falling to shatter on the ground. The beefy server was the weregorilla student I had been hoping to talk to about his stalker problem.
Everyone nearby turned, and Tory suddenly giggled into the microphone, noticing the action, her noise amplified by the dozens of speakers surrounding us. Tory regained her composure after a moment, picking back up where she left off after apologizing to the crowd.
“Now look what you’ve done! Do you have any idea how much this suit cost?” The portly man was seething, shaking a fist, his red cheeks puffing at the beefy server, who looked utterly embarrassed.
But even worse… He looked on the verge of shouting right back.
Or… something a lot more primitive.
I intervened before the situation escalated to the server slicing the man into banana bites. “Easy, Sir. Let’s get you cleaned up. I’m sure he didn’t mean—”
The man rounded on me, and his features immediately changed from anger to greedy anticipation. “Ah, Master Temple. I hear a Happy Birthday is in order.” He waved a hand dismissively while he spoke, signifying that he was merely following etiquette to the letter, if not the intent. “Just the man I wanted to see. Bad enough to waste my precious time attending this sorry excuse for a charity, for a sorry excuse for a school.” He reached out to attempt to place his clean arm on my shoulder, trying to deliver camaraderie by osmosis or something. I politely stepped just out of reach, masking my motion as trying to step out of the mess on the floor as I faced him.
I didn’t smile. He rolled his eyes, grinning as if trying to console me. “Honestly, charities don’t have to be hopeless. There are many groups that our type of crowd wouldn’t mind throwing money at. You didn’t have to concoct one of your own. We do have our dignity, you know.” He winked at me, chuckling. “Now, about Grimm—”
�
�What. Did. You. Say?” the server whispered, interrupting him. I glanced over to see his arms quivering as he stared at the broken glass on the ground. Then his arms began to actually ripple beneath his tuxedo, and his hair began to grow longer, thicker, wilder. It was barely noticeable, but I knew what to look for.
The Freak was about to Freak out.
Shift.
But at least Tory’s presence would prevent him from mauling everyone in sight.
Still, I didn’t want to take any chances. I reached out to grab the portly man by the shoulder, “Right. Let’s go find somewhere quiet to discuss Grimm—” but my fingers suddenly tingled where they had touched him.
I reeled back in surprise, staring first at my hand, and then at the portly man.
He smirked, and then winked with eyes that were much too deep and aware. Like an entirely different persona than the greedy businessman I had seen so far. Before I could speak, he rounded on the server. “What I meant to say was that I would rather toss quarters at the homeless than drop a penny to help the likes of you people,” he sneered, leaning forward.
My shock and alarm was yanked away as Tory suddenly shouted at the crowd. “You people might want to get the… frick out of here!” Then she began cackling uproariously into the microphone. The crowd simply stared at her, frowning in confusion.
Gunnar and Alucard flinched, bewildered as they turned to stare at Tory. Then the fire alarms went off, and their postures shifted from confused to predatory in a heartbeat, gazes roving the room for threats. They simultaneously slipped from the stage in different directions like shepherd dogs, urgently ushering people outside as if they had planned it all along.
I risked a glance back at Tory to see she was clutching the podium as if it were the only thing holding her up. She frowned down at her champagne glass, wobbled a bit, and then righted herself, taking a deep breath.
Screams, arguments, and angry shouts rose like a tidal surge, because rich people didn’t like being told what to do. This was punctuated by the bleating of the fire alarm, which seemed to send tiny spurts of adrenaline straight into my brain via my ear canal. Tory stared at the crowd, most of whom were being frantically forced out the room, and mouthed a single word.
No…
Then she collapsed like a sack of bricks, her eyes rolling back into her head.
I turned in horror to the server. Shit. No more Beast Master to keep the shifters at bay.
The kid was staring down at his wrists, which were suddenly sprouting long, wiry fur.
“The Academy says, Hello,” the portly man murmured behind me. I had completely forgotten about him in the chaos. “Toodles, Temple,” he said, and suddenly disappeared.
I heard Alucard and Gunnar, as well as a handful of his werewolves, shouting over the crowd, trying to calmly force everyone out of the building. The last of the guests were finally shoved out the door, and the doors closed loudly, blocking any guests from sneaking back in unannounced. Leaving me in a room full of panicked shifter servers, who looked just as terrified as I felt.
But for different reasons. They were scared of the alarms, the panic, Tory passing out.
I was scared of them.
I let out a sigh of relief to see Eae standing where I had abandoned him, in front of Greta, arms outstretched as his heavenly gaze flicked from one server to the next, the shoulders of his suit perched up higher than usual, like he had inflated his shoulder pads. He had chosen to stay behind, lend me a Heavenly hand.
Sweet. It was about time the Angel carried his weight.
The server in front of me cried out as his shirt ripped open, revealing a heavily furred chest. Then his shoulder seams burst open and he hunched over, hammering his fists into the ground, right into the broken glass, because his arms were suddenly as thick as my thighs, and twice their normal length. He completed his shift, clothes shredding and popping as they tore free from his now, much larger, body.
Weregorilla.
Why did it have to be the weregorilla? The one I had been planning on talking to anyway, about my earlier meeting in the warehouse district. And now I was going to have to subdue him?
He lifted one calloused fist, glanced down at the blood, and then gave it a long, wet lick between his ape-like canines. He lifted his head, his eyes rolling back into his skull for a moment as he let out a deep chuffing sound.
I spotted the Huntress carrying Tory off the podium, and I noticed Alucard and Gunnar had returned, and were now herding a large swarm of servers into one of the back rooms, trying to get them as far away as possible from the gorilla before he gave them any ideas. Gunnar shot me a panicked look as if to say, it’s the best I can do. I’ll be right back. Then he was gone.
Which left me and Eae with three servers. Two struggling against their shift, and my gorilla. But they all suddenly turned, as if sharing one hive mind, to stare at the doors where the guests had disappeared.
Because predators loved it when prey fled.
I was the only one who noticed the older gentleman standing in the corner. He winked at me, turned to face the wall, and extended his palm towards the surface.
But his palm was suddenly an extension of live, smoldering coals. And the wall instantly roared with flame, crumbling and cracking as it was engulfed. Then he turned his head to look back at me, and this time, all I saw was a face from hell, made entirely of red, white, and orange burning coals. His eyes and mouth were black pits, but I could still tell that he was smiling.
Then he also disappeared as the wall began to splinter and crumble, spreading the fire higher.
Shifters didn’t like fire. It did something to their animalistic brains.
The other two completed their shift in an explosion of fabric that I didn’t have time to study, because the gorilla suddenly rounded on me, roaring like this was all my fault. Shit.
Chapter 6
Ignoring the fire, I double-checked that no Regulars were present, and called Stone Skin around my fist. A handy – no pun intended – spell I had used to take on a group of gargoyles once. Basically, changing my skin from soft mortal squishy stuff to that of a statue. It wasn’t permanent, more like body armor. But I pretended I was the Iron Fist. Because, why not?
I gave him a right cross straight to the nose while he was still roaring, feeling cartilage crunch underneath as his war cry abruptly became a squeal.
Before he could Donkey Kong me, I dropped to a crouch, and shouted, “Hadouken!” as I cast a blast of ice at his chest. It shattered on impact, knocking him back a dozen feet as the explosion of ice cubes ricocheted off him. His eyes were murderous, and he roared at me again, this time much more… invested.
Now, roaring might sound cliché. It’s not. Ever heard a gorilla roar?
Those that have, understand me. For the rest, the sound was primal, ferocious, and struck a space deep inside my chest, trying to convince me on a biological level that I needed to flee while I still could. As if the gorilla had told each of my individual cells that he was going to tear them to shreds, slowly.
I pointed at his torn suit on the ground. “That was a rental. You’re going to pay me back for that, kid. Or else I’m changing my mind, and giving you to the gorillas downtown like they so politely asked me to do earlier today.”
Some part of him heard me, but he was too hyped-up to listen. Still, it bought me a few precious moments as he shook his head, silently fighting himself. Enough time to notice that the one corner of the room was burning hotter, and smoke was slowly filling the space. I took stock of the dozens of buckets and tubs near the tables, each full of champagne and other assorted beverages. And they were all brimming with ice.
I pulled heavily on my magic and connected the heat from the flames with the ice. The heat melted the ice in an instant, it was that hot. I cut the connection before the heat could set the water to boiling, possibly melting through the tubs. Then I took a deep breath for round two, groaning as I collected the moisture in the tubs into one large, quivering orb of w
ater before me.
Through the floating water, I saw that the gorilla had regained his special purpose: to eat my face. But he was still a safe distance away, so I let out a shout, and cast the water like a tidal wave at the wall of flames.
Which, in hindsight, was pretty stupid.
The wall of water blew out the fire in an explosion of steam. But it also tore through the weakened wall, revealing a lawn of fresh green grass lit by the fading sun, and the sound of sirens in the distance.
Which was when the weregorilla tried to bushwhack me, having closed the distance quicker than I had anticipated. He swung his fists down at my outstretched hands, luckily striking the one with the Stone Skin. I heard his forearms snap, but I was still knocked on my ass from the force of the blow as he yowled in agony, beefy arms now useless tentacles of flesh. Chips of stone broke away from my armor, weakened by the blow. I couldn’t take another hit like that.
“Stop taunting him, and shut him down!” Eae yelled in a tight voice. I turned to see him struggling against a weregoat of some kind, gripping it by the horns to keep it away from Greta – who was swinging her purse over his shoulder, hitting the goat upside the head with the metal buttons and zippers. The goat bleated in pain as one of the zippers caught his eye.
Eae used the distraction to twist his forearms and fling the shifter across the room into the podium, destroying it in a cloud of splinters. He flexed, and his wings burst out of his suit, shredding the fabric as they arced out above his back, trebling his size. His wings were a mottled grey, still impressive, but looked more weathered, beaten, and downright sickly than when I had first met him. Because when I had first met him, his wings had been made of elements: stone, ice, fire, and ether. But that was before.
He hadn’t made Daddy happy when he blundered the demon situation that had plagued my city in the past. His Nephilim children had wrongly hunted me down to give me a whooping. Since then, he had been serving time on earth as penance. So, he didn’t have his full mojo back yet. Still, half an Angel was a whole… hell of a lot, so to speak.
Tiny Gods: A Nate Temple Supernatural Thriller Book 6 (The Temple Chronicles) Page 3