Call of the Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  Call of the Wilde

  Immortal Vegas, Book 8

  Jenn Stark

  Copyright © 2017 by Jenn Stark

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-943768-29-5

  Cover design and Photography Gene Mollica

  Formatting by Spark Creative Partners

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase/Download only authorized editions.

  Other Books by Jenn Stark

  Getting Wilde

  Wilde Card

  Born To Be Wilde

  Wicked And Wilde

  Aces Wilde

  Forever Wilde

  Wilde Child

  One Wilde Night (prequel novella)

  For Misti,

  who knows the truth beyond the veil

  Chapter One

  Nothing ruins an idyllic, sun-swept beach like a bunch of cultists gearing up for a sacrifice.

  “If you could wipe that scowl off your face, Miss Wilde, you might learn something.”

  I ignored the drawled reprimand and continued to scowl. Some skills are hard-won, and I’m a big believer in perfecting my craft.

  In truth, I had to give the gathered assembly props for method acting: all of them, men and women alike, wore pristine white robes, their hair caught loosely by golden clips at their ears, then left to flow in the wind. A few carried the big, boring slab of wood on their shoulders like it really was the queen of the Greek gods, Hera herself, and the rest sang something inscrutable as they dragged thin willowy branches down toward the water. Several of them also carried little spongey-looking desserts on wooden platters, and were even now laying the offerings out in a wide circle on the rocky beach. Making this ritual officially a cakery of crazy.

  As I watched the throng of thirty or forty Hera freaks do their thing, however, I kept up my own muttered conversation. “A trip to Samos, gorgeous Greek isle, home of stunning beaches and turquoise waters, he says. A chance to get some sun, relax, heal. And, just as I’m warming up to the idea, he mentions there’s a catch. Because there’s always a catch, right? There has to be a catch.”

  “It does make it easier to convince you to go anywhere with me,” came the mild response, once more spoken in the honeyed, aristocratic tones that never failed to get under my skin. This time, though, those tones went a little deeper. Okay, a lot deeper. Because if I was honest with myself, he was right. I did need a job to justify spending more than fifteen seconds in the presence of Armaeus Bertrand, Magician of the Arcana Council. A job and usually a payoff besides. And what did that say about me?

  Ignoring that inconvenient question, I squinted at the true believers as they laid down the long, featureless board. “Seriously, that wooden plank is kind of creepy. Couldn’t they have at least drawn a picture of the goddess on it or something? Right now, they look like they’re worshipping Home Depot.”

  The Magician didn’t seem to mind the redirection. “The earliest followers of Hera set great store by the sacred wooden effigy brought to them from Argos. Despite the cost and danger, it was transported to Samos to venerate the birthplace of the goddess.”

  “Uh-huh. More likely, the sailors lost the original statue and pulled up one of the floorboards of the ship to replace it.” I hitched my backpack higher up on my shoulder. The pack contained the change of clothes Armaeus had directed me to bring, including a dress, which I never ever wore, but, whatever. If I had to cosplay a cultist to get today’s job done, then okay, fine.

  We were two of only a handful of observers for this dawn celebration, but the Hera acolytes didn’t seem bothered by their ritual’s lack of popularity. A quick scan allowed me to take in the rest of the site. We were a little ways up the coast from the closest building, affording everyone involved some measure of privacy in the early morning light. Here the beach was quite rocky, a swath of small and medium-sized pebbles terminating in thick stands of tall grass that sprouted up from marshy ground. About thirty feet away, that same grass nearly choked the remnants of a meandering stream that still attempted to empty itself into the Aegean. The stream was bordered by squat, flowering trees.

  I returned my gaze to the knot of people on the beach. “And you think we’ll find our mark here, out in the open like this.”

  He nodded. “Samos has a way of drawing to it all that is ancient and powerful.”

  “No wonder you like it here.”

  At that, Armaeus chuckled with such unexpected warmth, I shot him a startled glance. And as it always did, the sheer impact of his presence nearly rocked me back on my heels.

  There were powerful people in the world who had not an ounce of magical ability, bona fide titans who could silence a room simply by entering it. Then there were the members of the Connected community, a tiny minority of them so highly skilled in leveraging their psychic abilities that they could be considered gods. And then there was Armaeus Bertrand, who blew both categories out of the water.

  Tall, lean, and improbably strong, the Magician wore his demigodhood like a mantle of gold. Gold was the operative word when it came to Armaeus, actually. His eyes were gilded with the color, though they could darken to almost black when he wielded his power, and his skin looked like it was burnished by the sun. The son of a French soldier of the Crusades and an Egyptian priestess, the Magician’s features were almost heartbreakingly beautiful, with high, winged brows, sensual lips, and a stern jawline.

  He stood straight and resolute, his rich black hair lifting in the morning breeze, only his gaze wasn’t fixed on me but on something at the edge of the group. Something or, more likely, someone.

  Which meant I needed to get back to the program as well. “Can you tell me who it is we’re trying to lock down, here, specifically? Because my reading wasn’t real clear. Other than we’re hunting for a woman.”

  Armaeus arched one of those high, winged brows. “You cast a reading for this search?”

  “Uh, yeah, I usually do,” I said, surprised he would ask. “You know that.”

  His answering smile was soft, even a little rueful. “You forget, Miss Wilde, I do not often have the luxury of sharing your adventures with you. Only of hearing of them when you’ve returned.”

  “Oh. Well. So anyway, I pulled cards,” I said, the flush creeping up my cheeks having nothing to do with my unreasonable awkwardness around the Magician and everything to do with the hot Aegean sun. “Three of them. Empress, Ace of Swords, Two of Cups. I took that to mean that we were looking for a woman, and we’d find her near a column. Like oh, I don’t know, that thing.” I pointed to the single remaining column far off into the distance, in the heart of the Heraion ruins. The column was a good thirteen meters high, but according to the brochures I’d snagged at the visitor center, it was only half its original height.

  “And the Two of Cups?”

  “Well, I was hoping I wasn’t going to be scoping out your next girlfriend.” I side-eyed him. “I’m not, am I?”

  To my surprise, an unfamiliar skiff of emotion passed over Armaeus’s face at my teasing words, gone too quickly for me to interpret. “I suspect that card is one of negotiation,” he said, his voice perfectly neutral.

  “Fair enough.” I turned to the group of cul
tists again, trying to decide which toga was our target. There was one figure at the far edge that kept catching my eye, wearing a robe of sky blue, not white…but oddly, I was having a hard time getting a fix on her. She kept sort of shifting in and out of view. Or maybe it was some weird trick of the sunlight. “So once we connect with her, you’re going to have to negotiate to get what you want.”

  “Not me.” Armaeus shook his head. “You.”

  “Me?” I sharpened my focus on the woman. She shimmered again as I watched…this had to be our mark. “Since when do I play better with others than you do?”

  “Since she doesn’t trust men.” At my snort, he pointed. “The fabled location of Hera’s marriage with Zeus is there, by the way, beneath those trees on the banks of the Imbrasos River.”

  I glanced briefly at the sad little stream I’d noticed earlier, then returned my attention to Blue Toga. “That’s not what I’d call a river.”

  “It’s where Hera was born, as well as where she married, according to legend,” he said. “Marriage also falls under the purview of the Two of Cups, correct?”

  “Forget Hera for the moment. Is that the woman we want?”

  Armaeus followed my line of sight, and nodded. “That is who we seek,” he said, then, after a pause: “You can see her clearly?”

  “Clearly enough,” I nodded. “How do you know she doesn’t trust men?”

  Armaeus didn’t answer that. As I watched, the woman edged closer to the cultists, staring intently while they began wrapping the wooden plank with the willow branches they’d brought along. I glanced that way too, unable to hide my disgust.

  “This whole idea of binding a plank of wood so it won’t escape the freaking island is kind of gross, for the record,” I said. “Whatever happened to the idea that if you love something, set it free?”

  Armaeus’s laughter rolled across my senses, wakening parts of my body that needed to stay well and truly dormant, if I wanted to keep sharp. As my boss, the Magician of the Arcana Council had brought me a great deal of wealth, money I’d been able to shuttle toward the protection of the most vulnerable members of the Connected community. As my on-again-off-again romantic partner, however, the Magician had mainly brought me a great deal of confusion. In my line of work, confusion could get a girl killed. Time to focus.

  “You’re going to owe me double for this, you know,” I said as I eyed Blue Toga. “I came here mostly for a vacation.”

  “Consider it a busman’s holiday.” Armaeus sounded distracted, and I knew why. Blue Toga had taken a few more steps toward the cultists, her hands now lifted and curled into fists. Was she some sort of Hera zealot too? Or did she also take issue with the vaguely rapey vibe of trussing up a helpless board?

  The woman seemed to waver again, and I frowned, trying to keep her in focus. “Um…is there something I should know about this chick you haven’t told me? Because she’s kind of not super…solid.”

  “The fact that you can see her at all is remarkable, Miss Wilde.” The Magician’s reply was casual, almost offhanded. “She’s a goddess.”

  “A what?”

  At my clear shock, Armaeus blinked down at me, and my surprise intensified. His eyes were nearly black with intensity. Usually that only happened when he was working powerful magic, but I couldn’t feel the impact of his efforts at all. Which…was weird. Yes, I was healing, but normally I was more sensitive than that.

  “A goddess?” I hissed, still stunned at the possibility. “Are you serious?”

  “I need her,” he said, apparently unruffled by the fact that these were exactly the kind of beings we were working to keep outside the veil between the earth and the spirit realm. “The acolytes here aren’t strong enough to bring her all the way through. You are.”

  “But she’s a goddess,” I repeated, in case he’d missed that part.

  Armaeus’s gaze was back on the shimmering figure. “A goddess currently trapped on the other side of the veil. So close—but not close enough. I need you to fetch her.”

  “But I—”

  “When you traveled beyond the veil before, you were required to travel with your mind. That won’t work here. I can’t have her impale herself on you in order to pass through the barrier.”

  That stopped my spluttering, and instead, I grimaced with revulsion. I remembered astral traveling beyond the veil. Hitchhikers were not a fun part of the experience. “Dude,” I managed.

  “The map you were given still holds true to grant you safe passage—briefly,” Armaeus continued. He gestured to my right arm, and I pulled it into my body, my left hand lifting instinctively to cover the tattoo that rested beneath the sleeve of my shirt.

  “How do you know that will work?” I asked grumpily, because I was seriously grumpy about this.

  Armaeus smiled, his eyes still fixed on the goddess, the mixture of cockiness and confidence in his attitude all too familiar. “I trust you.”

  “Yeah, well, I…”

  “Go now. She’ll pick up your trail in approximately ten feet. Stay with the crowd until then,” he murmured. “You’re invisible to her currently.”

  That did catch me up short. “For real? You’re wielding a cloaking device?”

  My words seemed to finally startle him out of his focus. Turning, Armaeus caught my gaze and held it. For a moment, I forgot everything except for the depths of that gold-black stare, and a thousand and one images assaulted me, most of them erotic enough to make my toes curl. Whoa.

  As quickly as the moment flared between us, Armaeus snuffed it out.

  Almost.

  “My apologies,” he said, his voice rough, almost guttural. But though he sounded legitimately contrite, there was no mistaking the intensity in Armaeus’s eyes, his body. Everything about the Magician seemed passionately focused on me for several long heartbeats, and it was all I could do to straighten slowly and take a careful step away. Armaeus drew his strength from the basest and most powerful of human energy, the creative and re-creative force of sex. Attracting his attention when he was in the throes of his magic was always a dicey proposition.

  “It’s okay,” I managed, taking another determined step back. I turned and set my jaw against Armaeus’s hungry stare, feeling its whispers slide down my back as I moved away from him. One day…one day soon…I would put the Magician to an entirely different test, I decided. When he pulled at me, instead of jerking back, I’d go willingly, eagerly into his arms, and then…

  I forced my breathing to slow, my brain to reconnect with reality. I was nearing the edge of Armaeus’s magic circle, and at any moment, I’d potentially attract the attention of the goddess at the far end of the gathering. I needed to…

  “Careful, Miss Wilde,” Armaeus spoke in my mind. “She’s noticed you.”

  White-hot pincers seared against my flesh, and it was all I could do not to scream aloud as I glanced at my body, shocked I hadn’t burst into spontaneous flame. As it was, I shoved into place every mental barrier I had, redirecting my attention from the Magician to whoever or whatever was leveling eyeball lasers at me. It couldn’t be anyone but the goddess. Because, hello, she was a goddess.

  “Who are you?”

  The voice in my head was shrill, outraged, and decidedly not Armaeus’s this time. In fact, the Magician withdrew so quickly, he sounded like a mouse scuttling back into its hole. Only the most minor whiff of his annoyance swept toward me at that characterization, then he was gone completely, leaving me to brace my mental barriers against Bad Attitude Betty.

  “Who are you!” she demanded again.

  Resolutely, I ignored the psychic assault and instead picked up speed as I headed toward the goddess. As I did so, there was no missing the heavy impress of feminine fury leveled at me. Rage that made no sense, frankly. I hadn’t done anything to this being—yet—and she could have no idea why I was here. Rather, she seemed pissed off by the very idea of me, that I’d have the gall to interrupt her while she was bus
y enjoying the molest-the-board party on the beach.

  “Who—”

  My sleeves were loose enough even with the cuffs rolled up that I could move them easily, and I reached for my right sleeve now, pushing it up high enough to bare the ring of ink that had been inscribed on my flesh as a pathway through the veil—first to Atlantis, then to retrieve a set of very special charges from their spectral prison. As I neared the goddess, I felt a familiar roil of energy surge along those sinuously woven curves, and I half closed my eyes, leaning into that power, accepting it, becoming it—

  I burst through the veil.

  Whatever I had been expecting about the prison of the gods just outside the plane of the world—this wasn’t it. I hung, suspended in a strange gauzelike mist, separating me from the cultists on the beach like early morning fog. I could hear them perfectly. I could almost see them, their bright-white togas and waving arms, all the slender willow branches moving back and forth. I twisted around, staring at them, and a longing swept over me as profoundly powerful as anything I had ever felt, anything I’d ever—

  “How dare you!”

  This time, the voice was decidedly up close and personal, and I turned with genuine curiosity to see the target striding toward me through the mist, her long blue robes billowing out around her. I still couldn’t see her face, but there was no question this goddess was the cards’ incarnation of the Empress, her body full and lush beneath her sashed garment, from what I could tell, her voice mature. Even her outrage felt ripe, fertile, every inch of her oozing feminine power, and I scowled at her in earnest as she neared. Goddess or not, Madame Ovaries needed to lighten up.

  “Hi!” I said brightly, giving her a little wave. “Thought you might want to take a walk with me.”

  The goddess jerked to a stop. She wasn’t lightening up, though. In fact, she was seething. Ah…Armaeus?

  The Magician, of course, remained silent. He was useful like that.

  “Um, everything okay?” I tried again.