Godkiller (Hidden: Godkiller Saga Book 1)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  I kept going, I guess, because she loved my father. She lived by his side for thousands of years, and, in his way, he’d loved her, too. She still mourned him. I feel like, in many ways, she knew him better than anyone. I can admit that I miss the bastard.

  I realized that my father would have had no such sentimentality. If he were alive, he would have killed Persephone himself, no matter what had once been between them.

  I am not my father.

  I sat with her a while longer, then got up and left, locking the door behind me. I could feel her relief when I left, her hatred and fear when I arrived every day. She blamed me for his death. My existence, period, had changed the world of the gods forever. And the Titan Hyperion had escaped to our world because the Old Nether had been weakened… by my indirect actions. So, yeah. She blamed me.

  But no more than I blame myself.

  As I made my way back up to my throne room, I nodded at the various demons, souls, and imps that I passed. The souls were a new thing we were trying. Often, beings who had been involved in law enforcement during their lifetime wanted an eternity of protecting and serving. Those that did, and who had lead good lives, I took into my service. They patrolled the Netherwoods under the watchful eye of Eunomia’s friend and fellow Guardian, Quinn. The giant Irishman was tough, loyal, and had an absolutely filthy sense of humor. I liked him, and I knew E trusted him absolutely. That was all the recommendation I needed.

  I entered my throne room/office to find the big red velvet chair closest to the fireplace inhabited. I walked over and bent, kissing my daughter’s shining raven curls. “Morning, Zoe.”

  “Morning,” she said, flicking a glance of her green eyes up at me before going back to her book. “Shanti warned me you were going to make me read this crap in high school,” she muttered.

  I grinned. Even when I felt like I was about to be crushed under the mess that is the rest of my life, Zoe had a way of bringing me back to Earth. My experience in homeschooling supernatural kids had started with Shanti, who’d come to me after being turned into a vampire against her will when she was sixteen. I’d heard the same whining and groaning from her, and Brennan had done the same to Nain when Nain had taken charge of his education as well. All of our groups’ kids: Hades, Zoe, Sean, Michael, and Hephaestus’s younger daughter, Rose, were homeschooled, because there wasn’t a public or private school on the face of the planet that would have been able to handle them.

  “You know you love it,” I said.

  “I hate everyone and want them to die,” she muttered, waving her paperback copy of Wuthering Heights around for emphasis.

  “I felt the same way the first time I read it. It grows on you,” I said with a shrug. “Have you seen your brother this morning?”

  She shook her head. “Grandma’s pissed, too. He was supposed to be working with her today.”

  I’ve long since given up trying to rein in my children’s language. They live with me and Nain after all. I studied my daughter. She was fifteen now, and I could see the woman she’d become. Her dark hair cascaded in waves over her shoulders, and her big green eyes had already broken more than a few teenage shifter hearts. Her skin was a warmer tone than mine, almost an olive complexion instead of my paleness, and where I’m kinda scrawny and short, Zoe is statuesque. Still, we look close enough alike at first glance that you almost wouldn’t know she’s adopted.

  “And Michael’s pissed at him again, too,” Zoe went on, still looking at her book.

  “Why, now?” I asked. Michael, Hephaestus’s son, was Hades’ closest friend, and frequently got fed up with my son’s crap.

  Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know. Rose said something about it. I assume it’s the usual crap of Hades being an asshole.”

  I nodded. This was not news. I love my son, but he’s frequently an asshole. It’s just who he is.

  “Okay. I’m gonna work a bit. You can stay if you want,” I told her. Zoe doesn’t feel like she fits in many places, and the Netherwoods are maybe the one place in the world where she feels anything even remotely resembling peace. She’s one of those things, like me, that never should have existed. I was born of two gods of death, who ordinarily can’t create life. Zoe was born of a demon and a shifter, a combination which, everyone has sworn to me, will lead to her eventual insanity as her shifter side and demon side constantly battle within her. Demon/shifter children, when they happen, are killed at birth. I found Zoe and adopted her. If anyone can help her, it’s me. She’s often quiet, overly serious, and full of rage. She stays in the Netherwoods as much as possible because she feels saner there than in the mortal realm. Her mother was a tiger shifter, and we’ve all been secretly dreading the day she finally learns to shift, because she’d be so much more dangerous. Shifter kids usually learn to shift around puberty, but she hasn’t done it yet, and I know it bothers her.

  I went to my desk and thought at my aunt Megaera, another Fury along with my mom, to bring souls for me to judge. I spent a few hours doing that, getting through several dozen souls, and Zoe stayed with me the whole time. I knew she couldn’t see who I was talking to, couldn’t hear them respond. She saw me, and she saw Megaera, and she heard our side of the conversations. Mostly, she read and she scribbled in one of the notebooks she always seemed to have with her.

  When I finished up, I was looking forward to a long hot bath and then getting dirty all over again with Nain, who’d left me that morning with a mental image of what he wanted to do to me that had immediately sent my pulse racing. Having Persephone around had only worsened his mood, which meant that we were arguing even more. Which led to even more angry make-up sex. At least she was being of some actual use in that way.

  So of course my messaging app chimed at me, telling me that the new group of demons we’d tracked coming into the city was causing trouble over on the west side. I sighed.

  “Feel like going out on a call with me?” I asked Zoe.

  She closed her book and tossed it onto the chair. “Are you going to let me get a punch in this time?” she asked as she pulled on the reinforced uniform I’d had made for her. It was very similar to what I wore: black pants, black top, and there was paper-thin armor inside that protected her from blades and bullets. As I watched, she pulled on the choker necklace Heph had made for her. It was much less bulky than a helmet, but it created a forcefield around her head and neck, ensuring she’d be protected there as well.

  “Only because I love you,” I told her. She rolled her eyes and took my hand, and the next instant, we were standing outside of a strip club.

  “Why’s it always somewhere gross?” Zoe asked.

  “They’re attracted to the emotions. Lust, desire. They end up at places like this or in places where there’s a hope they’ll get into a fight.”

  “And sometimes, the place is both things,” Zoe said as a body came flying through the front door, landing at our feet.

  “Sometimes,” I said with a sigh. “Ready?”

  She nodded, and we charged in as the panicked patrons of the strip club streamed out. It was easy to spot the three demons inside, and Zoe got the first punch in.

  And because she’s mine in every way that has ever mattered, she smiled when he grunted in pain. Zoe always seemed to take special pleasure in destroying demons, which had freaked me out at first, considering her adopted father is one. But she’s very close to Nain, and she sees him as more of a Nether god than a demon, which I guess is almost true.

  She punishes demons because she hates the demonic side of herself. And I don’t know how to make her feel differently about who she is.

  One more thing to figure out. Hopefully I can help her through it before she’s as batshit insane as I am.

  Chapter Four

  Day ten of Persephone being back in our world, and yet another day in which I’d spent hours trying got contact Nyx, with zero luck. This had never happened before, and it felt like we were at a standstill. I guessed it was possible she was in a deep godsleep, which was what s
he spent most of her time doing when she was in her home realm, but she’d never ignored my call before. Add that to the last thing Persephone had seen of Nyx, and none of it seemed promising.

  If these things, whatever they were, had gotten to Nyx, overpowered her, the Creator, the most powerful being in our world… none of that boded well for us.

  I wished I could just focus on that, but today was something different, and I needed to be alone, at least for a little while.

  I stood on the roof of the Fisher Building, Detroit spread out before me like the mystery it is. Even after all these years, my city is both my home and my exile, my heart and the thorn in my side. I heard sirens wailing through the streets below, and even all the way up there, at the top of the world, I could feel the city’s unique energy, like a heartbeat that ran through everything.

  I should have been in the Netherwoods, or at the loft. There was always some asshole looking for me, needing something or other, but all I wanted, just now, was to be alone. This date, for better or worse, knocks me on my ass every single year.

  You’d think it would be something deep like, oh, this is the day my father died, or this was the day my child was born. Or maybe that this was the day I realized we’d lost over two and a half billion people to the undead wars. No. I’ve gotten used to birth and death.

  After all, I’ve been killed and reborn literally dozens of times. I lost count after a while.

  No, this day, September 21st, was the day I made Brennan break his bond with me. He’d bonded with me without my knowledge, some shifter god bullshit. Neither of us had understood it at the time. And we fell in love, and we pledged ourselves to one another.

  And then I was trapped in the Nether. Not the Netherwoods, but the Old Nether. And I was murdered over and over again… and Nain was back when I’d believed him dead.

  I’ve never regretted choosing Nain. He’s my soul, or he would be if I had one. But I lost both a mate and my right hand the day I forced Brennan to break our bond, and nothing has been the same between us since.

  I mourn him, and he’s still here. I see him at holidays and we still work together sometimes, and every once in a while, things feel normal between us, the way they had at the beginning when we were friends. But then I feel the empty place inside me where my bond to Brennan used to be. I’d thought, when I’d bonded to Nain again, when I’d claimed him as mine the way I’d once claimed Bren, that that emptiness would be filled. But it can’t be. It’s a void that sits there, right beside the bond I have with Nain. And I mourn for Bren, too, because when I made him break his bond with me, it meant he’d never be able to bond another. He’s with Eunomia. He loves her more than just about anything in the entire universe, and he can’t bond to her the way he should be able to. I hate that, for both of them.

  I closed my eyes and listened, trying to shake off this stupid melancholy bullshit.

  The fact was, Nain had helped me become powerful, but Brennan had been there for me when I’d been on the path of becoming who I am. Any good in me? That’s there in large part because of his influence. So, yeah, I mourn what we used to have, and I can’t be around Nain at times like this because he can read my fucking mind and emotions through our bond and the last thing I want to do is talk about this.

  Demons don’t handle jealousy well, even when they don’t have any reason to be jealous. If I’d thought the years and the stability of our marriage would temper Nain at all, I was wrong. He was just as rage-filled, just as brutal, just as possessive as ever.

  Ten years since the undead wars. Ten years since Brennan and Eunomia pledged themselves to one another. Thirteen years since we’d broken our bond, and I still felt the loss of it. Not just mentally or emotionally. It was a physical thing, the feeling that something was missing inside me.

  I wondered if he felt like that. Mostly, I wondered why I couldn’t just let it go. I didn’t want him back. Didn’t wish for the way things used to be. But immortal shit is weird. Just look at Persephone and my father.

  I hated that I understood her a little more. I’d never thought about it really, that she felt the same thing I did, that little void where a connection used to be.

  I hated understanding anything at all about her.

  I spread my wings and launched myself into the sky over the city. It was quiet. Relatively speaking, anyway. There was always something going on, but nothing that had anything to do with me. The years since the end of the undead war had been mostly peaceful.

  Anyone who had dared to oppose me was dead.

  The usual shit still happened. Vampires continued to be assholes, demons continued to be even bigger assholes. Werewolves still lost control on occasion, and the occasional witch or warlock still decided to try to show me what a badass they were by coming at me.

  Eunomia had been warned, at the end of the undead war, that the barriers between worlds were falling, damaged forever, weakened by the things Persephone had done in her attempt to bring Hades back to life.

  She’d failed, of course, and we hadn’t seen a single sign that the warning E had received was anything more than Nyx with her usual gloom and doom bullshit. I wondered, for the first time, if this had anything to do with what she’d foretold. She was missing. And these beings, whoever they were, were unlike anything Persephone or anyone who’d looked into her mind had seen before. We were getting nowhere on the Nyx question, and the longer it went on, the more on edge and panicky I felt.

  I veered north. There were always dead to judge and send to their eternal home. If I was going to be useless for anything else, I might as well spend some time with dead people.

  I landed in the Netherwoods and made my way into the palace. The demon guards at the front door both gave me respectful nods, knowing better than to bow to me, and opened the enormous ebony wood front doors. I walked through to find Brennan sitting on one of the black stone benches in the foyer, elbows resting on his knees.

  I stopped dead. “Bren,” I said in greeting.

  “Molly. We have a situation.”

  I studied him as he stood up. His long blond hair was loose, and he wore his usual jeans and flannel shirt. You’d never know he was a god. Well. Grandson of a goddess, formerly bonded to me. Basically immortal, as far as any of us can guess.

  But then, I guess I don’t exactly look the part, either.

  “Something you and E couldn’t handle? Right,” I said as I started walking past him.

  “You know those militant assholes? The AntiTheists?” he asked.

  “What about them?” The AntiTheists were a group that occasionally carried out terrorist attacks, meant to punish those who believed in and supported me. They always preyed on the unprotected. Cowards.

  “Yeah,” Brennan said, falling into step beside me. “They all seem to have gathered. They killed most of the people in the town they gathered in, and they’re going after more.”

  I felt my power surge, Nether (the primordial goddess I shelter in my body and with my power) rising inside me in response to my anger.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Remember that cliff where Lethe used to live? Where they built that monument to you?”

  I met his eyes. “Why didn’t you go after them?”

  “We tried. We can’t get to them.”

  I froze. “What do you mean you can’t get to them?”

  As he answered, I saw it all playing out in his mind. “I mean there’s some kind of forcefield or something around them. We can’t touch them.”

  I started moving again and he followed me into my office/throne room/whatever the hell it was. He stood by and watch as I geared up, pulling the tunic and corset people were used to seeing me wear over the black tank top I’d already been wearing, then swapping out my Chucks for the knee-length black leather boots that completed my uniform. It was functional now, too. Hephaestus had imbued it with the same armor that Zoe wore, a barrier to blades and bullets. Some still got through, but then my healing factor took over.

&
nbsp; “Where’s E?”

  “She and her sisters are gathering the dead, which is why she sent me to get you.”

  “I should get Nain,” I said.

  “I think the two of us can handle this. Or we’ll discover we can’t—”

  “You and E couldn’t handle it, but you and I are supposed to manage just fine?”

  He gave me a look. “Yeah, I expect you to be able to handle things that E and the other immortals can’t.” His gaze bored into mine. “I don’t especially want to be here, and I really don’t want to be around Nain right now. Can we get this over with?”

  I guess that answered my question about whether he had to deal with the same things I did on this day. I could sense his emotions, a frenetic, turbulent combination of anger, loss, irritation, and general discomfort. Usually, we were okay with one another, and the only thing I felt from him, emotion-wise, was calm, with a little undercurrent of reticence. Thinking we could come out of what we had totally unscathed had been a dream, but it was generally all right.

  I didn’t answer, instead taking his arm in my hand and focusing, transporting us to the cliff where E had once searched out the goddess of the winds and dreams. I let go of Brennan the second I could, and he pulled the two short daggers that had become his weapons of choice over the past few years out of their sheaths. E’s influence, I thought with a smile. Daggers were her weapons.

  I unsheathed my sword, its black flames flickering in the gray early morning light. It used to throw me off, stepping from one time zone into another, but not anymore.

  It wasn’t exactly hard to find the assholes we were looking for. Just as Brennan had said, they were gathered right in front of us. The second they saw us, they started booing, hissing, cursing my name. In some cases, they laughed, confident in whatever protection it was they thought they had.

  “I hate these dickheads,” I muttered to Brennan.

  “Do you see the barrier?” he asked quietly. I hadn’t at first, but before long, I could make it out. I’d expected to see the kind of forcefield witches could make. Our friend Ada made the strongest protective barriers I’ve ever seen. This, though… this was different. Mechanical in nature rather than magical.