by Jane Cousins
“Marcus?” Riya was worried, he looked pale and his eyes had lost focus. “Marcus?”
Damn, she was beautiful. Even soaked, her dress torn and a smear of soot along her jawline. Riya had killed the bad guy. Opened her gorgeous mouth and let him have it. She was the whole fucking package. Brilliant, tough, sexy and deadly. But she hadn’t signed up for a life of near misses with Demons and Demi-Gods. Riya had a quiet life… with a kid to think of. But she wasn’t the stay at home sort, not if there was adventure to be had. Tonight was the last straw in a series of increasingly dangerous situations.
He’d had a big speech prepared. Listing the reasons she didn’t belong in this world… his world. But as everything around him began to grey, all Marcus could do was squeeze Riya’s hand one last time, and release it. “You’re fired.”
She was what now? Riya watched in dismay as Marcus slumped back. Drum catching him just in time before his head hit the floor, already pulling out a field med kit and beginning to deal with Marcus’s leg wound.
Riya scrambled backwards to give Drum more room. Then moved back some more. In fact, it would probably be better for everyone if she got out of the way completely.
Climbing to her feet, Riya watched Drum work for a moment, his movements professional but not frantic, he must not think the gunshot wound was significantly dangerous. That was a relief. Slowly she began to back away.
The Maat Warriors would find the rubies and see them secured safely.
Hadleigh and Vaughn were taking Asher back to the Southern Sanctuary in a few hours. Dimity would wake up to find herself unencumbered by overbearing guardians. Heath Gammon was gone, and the Warriors would deal with Belinda Forrest. The board of directors would resume interim control of Forrest Media, they’d also restore Dimity’s healthy allowance. The girl could travel the world with her friends until she turned twenty-five and officially took over the reins of her father’s company.
So, yeah, Riya’s work here was done. She had tamed a monster. Killed a couple more. Claimed a mate who didn’t love her. And was now officially fired. There would never be a good time to leave, a time when her heart didn’t feel heavy and sluggish in her chest at the thought of walking away from Marcus.
But if she stayed, she would mess up, cling too tightly, let those three little words accidentally slip out. Souring the memory of all those fun mistakes for Marcus when he realised she cared. That they had been making love. Oh, humiliation times a thousand just at the thought of his reaction.
Riya found herself all but running suddenly, she just had to grab her cases and make it to the Transportal. Back to her shop, her apartment, where she could curl up and hide until this yawning wracking pain faded to numbness. How long would it take? A week? A year? A decade?
Funny how her future had held so much promise when she had first walked through the Transportal into Maat Tower. And now, as she all but ran home, the path before her held nothing but bleak emptiness.
How had Fate got things so bloody wrong?
* * *
Marcus winced as he sat down at his desk. Not that his thigh was still worrying him after a week, but that the gym session he’d just finished had been so fucking brutal. Self inflicted of course.
His fingers flew over the keyboard, splitting the wall sized screen into six sections. Shit, the search for Mok and Set was still going nowhere.
Hmmm, the deep, highly illegal background check on Belinda Forrest was beginning to get interesting. Though it would be a long while yet before they determined her bloodline, but there was a definite pattern to her behaviour.
She’d led a naturalist cult for eight years back in the sixties. Moved into porn in the seventies. In the eighties she’d been a partner in a very successful modelling agency. Disappeared for a few years and then popped up eight years ago, acting the ingénue and capturing Fred Forrest’s heart.
His hacker squad had quickly erased all the information they found regarding Belinda Forrest’s past, couldn’t have the mundane world realise that a demi-goddess who didn’t age walked amongst them.
If she played to type, it shouldn’t be too hard to corner Belinda in the near future, especially given her photo was being circulated. She and Heath Gammon were wanted for questioning in connection to the worrisome discovery that rather a lot of money was missing from several Forrest Media company accounts.
The Board of Forrest Media had readily jumped on board the blame train, demanding that Fred Forrest’s body be exhumed and re-examined for signs of possible foul play.
Which brought Marcus’s attention to the share price of Forrest Media, it was finally beginning to upswing. The board of directors had formed a united front. Pronouncing with serious faces that they were shocked and saddened at the news that their former co-directors were missing, along with a substantial amount of money, but that their first allegiance lay with keeping Forrest Media a vital and progressive business.
It helped that Dimity Forrest had stepped up, dressed in a fashion forward hunter green business suit and announced that she would be interning at Forrest Media for the next five years, in readiness to take over when she turned twenty-five as her father had wished.
With that in mind she would remain working with the Maat Enterprises team for the foreseeable future, learning what it meant to be on the other side of a Forrest Media contract.
Vaughn had thought Dimity would baulk at his suggestion that she remain with the show for another few months. With Belinda out there, whereabouts and agenda unknown, they wanted her close in order to keep her safe. Dimity had listened to Vaughn, mulled over his suggestion and jumped on board with a surprising measure of good cheer and maturity.
She’d even happily volunteered to work with the building crew who had been called in to restore Marcus’s apartment to liveable status. Since Marcus couldn’t care less if she turned it into a my-little-pony stable, covering every surface with all things that glittered, it had been a no brainer to let Dimity step up.
Drumming his fingers on his desk, Marcus rubbed gritty eyes. He should have jumped on the jet earlier when Nate headed out for his assigned mission to Montana. The Dream Vamp didn’t seem to realise that the dark web contract out on Marcus was no longer in play, now that Gammon, the real money source behind it was dead.
He needed to focus on what was important. Training. Missions. Find Sek and Mot. Find Apep’s sarcophagus. Find Belinda Forrest. Destroy the Chaos rubies. Monitor the housing prices in Japan. And do not think about Riya Tong.
Except all he did every single minute was think about Riya. The way her… he managed to keep his flinch to the barest flicker as the Goddess Maat suddenly appeared, sitting on the corner of his desk, swinging her bare feet back and forth. He never thought he’d say it, but Thank the Sun, for the interruption.
“Maat.”
“Hey, Tater Tot.” Maat perused the wall of information. “What’s on the agenda today?”
“The usual and then some.” He shouldn’t ask, too often his Goddess only muddied the water but Marcus couldn’t help himself. “I don’t suppose you’d like to point me in the right direction?”
“Oh, Doodle Bug, you know me and my hands off policy.”
Marcus eyed his Goddess, she appeared to be a well maintained woman in her early 60’s. Her skin was a rich milk coffee colour. Her long black hair pulled back into a simple plait, the end of it brushing the desk top. She wore her habitual yoga clothes; today’s colour was a soft pink. And her feet were bare, her toenails painted a sunny yellow colour.
The only thing obviously Goddess-like about Maat were her eyes. The pupils were constantly changing. Right now they flickered with shimmering light, as if the noon sun was glaring down over a sea of endless desert sand dunes.
The thing about Maat was that she proclaimed loudly and often that she was a hands off kind of Goddess. Yet, she turned up an awful lot to interfere in the lives of her Elite Warriors for them to ever believe her.
The trick was to ignore Maat, pl
ay it cool. If Marcus didn’t give her an opening she’d have to find one and hopefully that might get something on his to-do-list crossed off sooner, rather than later.
“That… Belinda Forrest certainly has a chequered past.” Maat mused idly. And the hook was taken. Marcus’s fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up several photos of Belinda. Her wedding photo to Fred Forrest. Belinda sitting in the front row during Paris fashion week. And one of her wearing a white skimpy bikini sunning herself in Baha. Maat’s lips tugged up at the corners in amusement. “All that white… no imagination, just like her mother.”
Hah, Marcus worked hard to keep his face blank. Maat would drop crumbs of information, he just had to be patient and let her fill the silence. His Goddess wasn’t fond of awkward silences.
“Though Hathor could be quite the twisted sister. It seems her daughter takes after her mother in all ways.”
“Hathor? The Goddess of Love?”
Maat smiled. “She was quite the mercurial cow back in the day. One moment, love is kind, love is sunshine and baby bunnies. The next, love is sex, love is control, love is blind devotion. You and she would have gotten on extremely well, Fluffer Nutter.”
“Excuse me?” Marcus wasn’t taking umbrage at the silly nickname, he was used to those. But telling him he and a Goddess with a split personality would have been BFF’s was a step too far.
“Both so linear. Determined to pigeon hole people and emotions. Which is not a bad thing… when you are a noble, justice seeking Elite Warrior. You do like your black and white, Lambkins. But it’s a little dangerous for a Goddess when she can’t effectively define what she is the Goddess of.” Maat swung her legs out so she could study her toenails for a moment. “All the Gods and Goddesses of Love are a little queer, but it drove Hathor mad I think. She so badly wanted it to be one simple thing. But life isn’t simple, and love especially is a shifting target. Hathor couldn’t accept that love was the entire spectrum of light to dark. Sweet. Flirtatious. Epic. Passionate. Quiet devotion. Consuming. Pain. Tragedy. Sacrifice.”
“What happened to her? Hathor?”
“She drifted more and more to the darker end of the spectrum. Love is obsession. Love is possession. Until one day she hit upon her final legacy, the one she would pass to her children. Love is being worshipped.”
Ah, Marcus nodded. It all made sense now. Belinda’s history. The naturalist cult. The porn movies. The modelling agency. Yes, she wanted to be worshipped. That would certainly help narrow the search parameters for the demi-goddess. “I wonder how she got mixed up with Heath Gammon’s plan?”
“Love and War? Please? Ask me a hard question?”
Marcus wasn’t one to shy away from an opening like that. “How do I go about destroying the chaos rubies?”
Maat’s eyes began to darken around the edges as if a threatening sandstorm was on the horizon. “If there was no war, would you value peace as highly?” Ah, damn, Marcus fought not to roll his eyes, Maat was off on one of her tangents. “If there wasn’t death, would living a full, meaningful life be so important? If there was no poverty would the idea of wealth and power still be so highly sought after? If everyone had a full belly would there be such a constant striving need to ensure there is a healthy food source?”
“You’re talking about balance.”
“Nice to know something has sunk in over the last one hundred years. I have never said that your job was to seek out chaos and destroy it. Your job has been to seek it out and to balance it. To bring truth, justice and honour into the light. I’m a Goddess, don’t you think I could wave a hand and bring peace, love and joy to the world if I wanted? Destroy disease, war and tragedy? But if people don’t have something to strive for, then they will become apathetic and weak. They will lose sight of what is valuable and value nothing.”
Marcus chuffed a harsh breath out from between gritted teeth. “You’re saying I can’t destroy the rubies?”
“Oh, you could… eventually. You’re smart, you’d work it out. But what I’m asking you to do is think about what it will mean if you succeed.”
“No more floods, earthquakes or hurricanes for a start.”
“Really? So since you’ve had them contained there have been no landslides, no forest fires, no tsunamis?”
“Well….” Damn, Marcus found himself frowning. Only this morning he’d been reading about an earthquake in Japan. “Then what the fuck have I been doing for the past seven months?”
Maat shrugged. “Having fun trying to blow shit up?”
“You could have said something sooner.” He growled.
“Not to be a broken record, Blue Eyes, but I’ve been saying from the year dot that this world is ruled by scales. That we seek balance, but that we don’t seek to topple the scales in one direction or the other. BALANCE.”
“Fuck.” Marcus threw his hands up in surrender. “So what should I do with five cursed rubies that every damn power hungry Demi-god and Demi-goddess out there appears to know that I have and wants for their own nefarious purposes?”
Maat looked pained for a moment. “If chaos doesn’t exist, then I won’t.”
“No. You don’t get to be all mysterious and drop obscure clues. Just tell me what to do with the bloody things.”
Maat smiled, one of her enigmatic, inscrutable ones that always made Marcus want to hit something. “Why, give them back, Dew Drop.”
“Just hand them over to those assholes Sek and Mot, just like that?”
“And you’re supposed to be the smart one.” Maat shook her head slightly. “No, I’ve said enough. More than I should have, but frankly, Biscuit Breath, you appear to be… struggling.”
“What? No, I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine. You don’t look like you’ve slept in a week.”
“I have a Dream Vamp on my ass.”
Maat pursed her lips, studying Marcus closer. “And you’ve lost weight.”
“It takes a lot of energy to heal a gunshot wound.”
“So you don’t want to talk about-”
“No!” He really didn’t want his Goddess to say her name, or stick her mystical nose into his private and personal business.
“But-”
“No.” Marcus’s blue eyes were shuttered and grim, his mouth a flat line. “She’s back where she belongs, safe.”
“Safe?” Maat pondered the word as if she’d never heard it before. “Safer for whom?” The corner of Maat’s lips quirked upwards as Marcus glared at her, fire simmering in those ocean blue depths. “You’re probably right. It’s not like the Southern Sanctuary is ever attacked. Oh, it is, but thankfully they have all those strong, brawny Enforcers to save the day for your poor, fragile, little friend.”
“Riya is not fragile.” Marcus grit out from between clenched teeth.
“No? Hmmm, still, I suppose it’s a good thing she’s back home, don’t tell anyone, Gumdrop, but I heard on the grapevine that the deadbeat Dad has made contact.”
“What?” How was it possible for Marcus to feel so cold even as a red wave of engulfing anger all but ate through his gut?
Maat’s smile widened. “But you’re not interested in that, are you? You’ve moved on? Put your little mistake of a relationship behind you, correct?” Maat didn’t wait for a reply. She was just gone.
Marcus gripped the edge of his desk, the wood groaning. The only mistake would be if Riya forgave that asshole and allowed him back into her life. Shit. Shit. He had to put a stop to it. No, he had five chaos rubies to des… off-load, and a Dream Vampire to get rid of.
Shit. And typical Maat, she’d left him with more mysterious hints and clues than answers. Give the rubies back… but not to Sek and Mot? Oh, shit, no, she couldn’t mean… No.
Fucking hell, he couldn’t make this decision alone, his brothers-in-arms would need to be apprised and vote. And even if they did decide to give the rubies back, just how was he expected to achieve that… hey, two birds, five rubies, he’d get the Dream Vamp to help.
Marcus’s gut roiled and his tightly clenched fists ached. He needed to move double time. He had a lot on his to-do-list. Meet with his brother Warriors. Recruit a Dream Vamp. Off load the cursed rubies. And then and only then could he head to the Southern Sanctuary and convince Riya not to make the biggest mistake of her life. After all, he was the current title holder when it came to her committing mistakes… and he didn’t want to renounce his crown.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Here. Drink.”
Riya jumped, stabbing herself in the thumb with the needle she was holding. Ouch. When was the last time she’d done that? When she’d been thirteen? Twelve? “How did you get in here? And it’s way too early to…oh.” Riya’s gaze travelled past her looming mother to the glass sliding doors that took up the entire rear wall of her workshop. Outside the sun was sinking low over the horizon, sending out orange and red fingers of colour across the sky.
“I broke in.” Elisabeth Bright-Tong wrinkled her perfect nose as she looked around the workroom. The air smelt stale. The light dim, giving the room a cave like feel. There were piles of half finished clothes strewn across every surface and the contents of several sewing boxes spilled haphazardly across the floor, very unusual, given her daughter was normally an organisational freak when it came to her design room and her tools.
Even more disturbing was what was draped over the only mannequin in the room. Elisabeth didn’t claim to be a fashion expert but even she recognised when something was downright fugly.
Thankfully, she could fix two things immediately. Striding over, Elisabeth cracked open one of the doors leading to the large deck and the stairs that led down to the sandy beach below. Cool salty air rushed inside, hmm, that was better. Next, the lights. Elisabeth detoured via the door to hit a couple of switches before heading back to Riya’s long work bench.