by Jenn Stark
With a flick of her hand, the goddess dropped her shawl from her head, and…
And she had no face.
In its place was a mass of coiling vines, her eyeballs beady points of light, her mouth a yawning maw.
So, no. Everything definitely not okay.
“You dare to bring the power of the Denounced to my shrine?” the she-beast howled.
“Um…the what?” I asked, blinking at the unfamiliar word. Was she talking about my mother? But I’d thought her name was… “You mean Vigilance?”
“You dare!” she screamed again.
Then she pounced.
Chapter Two
“Hey!”
I didn’t have time to react much more than flipping the switch on my survival instincts. My hands came up, my legs churning backward in the weird, thick fog, and I could feel a spontaneous ball of fire begin to erupt between my fingers before I quickly yanked them apart. Very recently I’d come into a unique set of abilities that I had no idea how to manage, and I didn’t think the other side of the veil was the place to test them out. Besides, it was as if we were moving in slow motion here, our speech at normal speed but everything else oddly delayed.
And so, I easily shifted to the side as the goddess leapt at me. Her cowl slid back farther, her face now morphing from vines to…fish. Those had to be fish. Nope! Now she was covered in an undulating mass of leaves, which went from shoots to full-grown blossoms to dead and decaying petals in less than thirty seconds. This girl seriously needed a new makeup regimen.
“You doubt me,” the goddess accused, the two of us circling each other. Once again, she sounded like my mother. Or how I expect my mother would have sounded, if she hadn’t turned out to be the Disaster of the Universe. “You doubt what I am.”
“I doubt your sanity too, but don’t take it personally,” I hedged. “What brings you to Samos?”
“You did,” she seethed. “You brought the ritual to these shores again, inspiring my believers to summon me, thinking to draw me out. You dare to tempt me back into the mortal coil, knowing I must come?”
Close enough. “Worked, didn’t it?” I retorted, inching nearer to her as crackling bits of fire spit from her now-flaming face. If I could get close enough to grab her toga, I was pretty sure I could haul this human Chia Pet back to earth. I also had Armaeus to back me up, right?
Right?
Once again, there was no response from the Magician. I blew out a steadying breath, refocusing on the cards I’d drawn as the woman continued to pace around me. We had the Empress covered here. That left me with the Ace of Swords and Two of Cups. Negotiation wasn’t going so well, so I decided to focus on the Ace of Swords. In my deck, that card was depicted with a hand coming out of clouds of smoke, grasping an upright sword. The tip of the sword pierced a gilded crown, and draped over the crown were flowing branches…branches not unlike those of the trees by the Imbrasos River, as it happened. But what could the crown mean? Was this goddess true royalty? Did she think she was? That would be too much, though—she already had the Empress card covered. Was I supposed to pierce through her façade to reveal her royal stature? Or was there something about the branches draped through the crown that was important?
That was the problem with Tarot cards—they could go so many different ways. And when you really needed them to be clear, like, say, when you were being confronted by a goddess whose face was covered in bubbling lava, they could be infuriatingly abstruse.
Perhaps the direct approach was better. This creature was at an ancient binding ritual for Hera, after all. And she was a goddess. Even I could do this math. “So why are you here, Hera? Why’d you take the bait?”
“Unbeliever,” she growled. “Denounced.”
There was that word again. She didn’t deny my assertion, though, and I looked at her more closely. “Seriously?” I prodded. “You’re Hera?”
“Silence!” The illusion shattered before me as the goddess burst forward mid-snarl. She erupted into a hundred pieces—skin, bone, clothing, jewelry—all of it flying out with explosive fury. I flung my arms wide and tried to grab everything of her at once, even as I willed myself back to my side of the veil, back to Armaeus, back to normalcy, back to earth.
We crashed to the ground as one body, only the goddess’s form was hot enough to melt plastic. I shoved her away from me, staggering to my feet…
And encountered a nightmare.
Smoke billowed up from the sea, whipping it to a frothing storm of biting, salty spray. The group of cultists at the beach were now screaming and running in all directions, but everywhere they turned, they were faced with a new and even more impossible barrier. A roar of thundering hooves shook the earth from the direction of the Heraion, and a stampede of bellowing, lowing cows scattered the hapless zealots, pushing them into the marshy plane near the river. They received no solace there, however. No sooner had they crossed into the tall grass than an entire flock of peacocks burst up, wings spread wide, tails flared, their screeches setting the fleeing humans scrambling back.
Unfortunately, back was no longer an option. The marshy ground was now stained red and running with a thick red liquid that reeked of berries, and fire burst and roiled from the banks of the Imbrasos River. In fact, fire was everywhere, suddenly—racing up from the water, licking over the marsh. The laurel trees were also ringed with fire like a crown—so there was my Ace of Swords, only I wasn’t happy to see it—their flowering branches enveloped in flames.
The air was choked with the accumulated madness, and it had all come on so quickly! The reek of fire, the thickness of the smoke, the screech of birds and desperate cries of cattle, the panicked screams of humans.
And over all of it, rising and falling like a terrible wave, was a multivoiced cry of exultation—beautiful, powerful, frightening…and definitely female.
I whirled around and fought my way toward the figure standing arrayed in the center of all the chaos, a creature who drew all the rays of the sun to her body and flung them out again like a starburst. She would fry the world, I realized suddenly. She was too powerful—too strong!
“Stop.”
With that one mighty command, Armaeus finally made his presence known, his cold fury blanketing the nightmarish vision with inescapable power.
First…everything froze.
Even time itself, it seemed.
Then, less than a blink later, all of it was gone—the cows, the peacocks, the fire, the screaming, the gushing spouts of red liquid staining the marshy ground.
Instead, the cultists stood in obvious shock, staring at each other, clearly unsure of what just happened…or why they felt so weird. They hadn’t moved from their little circle around the plank of wood. Not even a single sponge cake was out of place.
In fact, the only thing that was different from my perspective was that there was a very human-looking female standing next to me and Armaeus.
Human…and naked.
“Geez!”
The goddess blinked at me, unmoving, as I scrambled over to my backpack, which I’d clearly flung away upon reentry, to pull out the change of clothes. I tossed Hera the shift and, when she looked confused, grabbed it again and shoved it over her head. She awkwardly stuck her hands through the armholes and allowed the long linen dress to drop around her body, uttering a purely feminine laugh.
I stood back as quickly as I could, staring around wildly. Unlike everyone else, apparently, I did remember the Animal Planet on acid scene that had just occurred here. Still, I made a bid for normalcy.
“I don’t have shoes, but we’ll get you those as soon as possible,” I said, but the goddess didn’t seem to be listening.
“So this is the world I left so long ago,” she murmured, but she was looking less at the marsh and ruins around her and more at her own body: her long, slender fingers, her strong arms. Tall, straight, with a timeless beauty that could have placed her age anywhere from thirty to sixty, she was ea
sily one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.
“Hera.”
Armaeus’s voice cut across us with a resonance that set all my nerves to prickling awareness, and both Hera and I turned as one. I gaped, but she actually gasped in wonder.
It was hard not to, however. Armaeus was coated in a ray of light that could have absolutely decorated Zeus when he’d first been presented to Hera all those millennia ago—and this really did seem to be Hera, given all the cows and peacocks we’d just endured. A smart female would have remembered exactly how much trouble that Zeus had caused her, but the goddess appeared more than willing to forgive and forget.
“You caused me to be summoned here,” she said, and her voice was a curious mix of sounds, I realized, like multiple voices playing on the same channel. She turned to me, and I revised my opinion about her again. Her emotions may have been that of a fourteen-year-old, but intelligence and deep knowing sparked behind those ancient eyes. “And you, despite all your power, were sent to fetch me.”
Her surprise seemed oddly weighted, but Armaeus stepped forward, claiming Hera’s attention again. Instantly, her eyes went back to being starry.
“We have need of your help,” he said, reaching for her hands.
I’d never actually seen a woman go weak in the knees, but Hera looked none too steady as Armaeus’s hands closed around hers. I expected him to say something to speak to her vanity…but he didn’t. If anything, he spoke to mine.
“My associate Sara Wilde controls one of the most powerful Houses of Magic in this world,” he said crisply. I blinked in surprise, barely masking my reaction as Hera turned to me. Why was he telling her this? “She’s proven instrumental to our cause so far, but there is still much more to accomplish.”
Much more to… I stared at him, but Hera seemed to take the information in stride. “You took significant risk with this spectacle,” she said, her unnerving voice setting my teeth on edge again. “I might not have come.”
“You might not, and yet…to walk again in sunshine, feel the world beneath your feet, it has its merits, no?” Armaeus’s words held a silken promise I’d heard too many times. Watch out, sister, I wanted to say to Hera, but for once, I decided to keep my trap shut and watch. “I think once you find how much potential there is for true transformation, you’ll thank me.”
“I think I already have much to thank you for.” Without affectation, Hera smoothed her hands down her voluptuous body, the shift doing little to hide her assets. Beside her, I suddenly felt about as alluring as a dish towel, but Armaeus wasn’t hitting on Hera, I reminded myself. He was trying to…
“Miss—”
Without warning, Hera lashed out toward me, her hand on my throat, her grip tight enough to collapse my windpipe. I was so shocked, so furious that she would dare such a thing, I struck back with instinctual rage, the sudden surge of indignation seemingly dredged up from somewhere far more ancient than my own piddly lifespan. I thrust all my millennia-old anger at the goddess and she squeaked in pain, reeling away as the fire from my hands swept over her.
She collapsed in a puddle of linen on the ground, out cold.
We stared down at her. “She was testing you,” Armaeus said thoughtfully. “Testing the strength of humans.”
“Yeah?” I scowled down at the goddess’s crumpled form, trying to slow my own spinning-top emotions, outsized reactions, and deep, abiding fury. “Well, welcome to earth.”
Chapter Three
It only took us a few minutes to awaken Hera, and she appeared to have no memory of assaulting me, or at least no shame about it. Worked for me.
At her insistence, we stuck around to watch the rest of the ritual at the beach. By the time we made our way back to the edge of the crowd, the plank was completely wrapped with willow branches. Then the cultists lofted it high, displaying it to the skies. They were singing again, and beside us, Hera beamed at them in what looked like true appreciation.
I manfully attempted not to roll my eyes, but I never was very good at being a man. “Explain to me how your, uh, ritual plank being bound to this island is a good thing?”
The goddess didn’t shift her gaze from the gathering. “They couldn’t bear for me to leave them. They knew that were I to be removed from this island, I would be defiled. So they employed all their skills to ensure I remained.”
I opened my mouth to counter this, then snapped it shut again. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Instead, we waited for the group of true believers to depart. Hera watched them eagerly, almost affectionately, her sigh sounding truly heartfelt.
“I understand that it was you who created the need in the hearts of my followers, Armaeus, to lure me here,” she said. Once again, her voice had that eerie layered sound to it, like she was using multiple voices at once, goddess-speak as produced by Mutt Lange. “Nevertheless, I find myself charmed. I will hear out your proposition.”
My brows went up at that. His proposition? What proposition?
The Magician nodded as I swung my gaze between the two of them. “Had the need not been as great, I would not have made the attempt. I am honored by your presence.”
“As I am by your call.”
Interesting. The shiver of apprehension snaking through me wasn’t about Armaeus, or about me, or especially about me and Armaeus. It was about the Council…and what exactly they planned to do with a full-on goddess.
Hera didn’t make me wait long for an answer. “Your heart also whispers that the need is great. That my ascension to the Arcana Council would address that need.”
Wait, wasn’t Hera a goddess? Wouldn’t that mean that she’d be slumming it if she attempted a seat on the Council? And more to the point, since when was hiring an actual goddess an option for a Council role? Other than the Hierophant, they were all human.
I thought about the Emperor, an asshat named Viktor Dal. Well, sort of human.
“There will be time to discuss that,” Armaeus said. “First, tell me of your time beyond the veil.” He said more, but it was in a language I couldn’t translate. His words caused Hera’s laugh to swell, however, the air suddenly so sweet, I was surprised it didn’t burst into butterflies. Armaeus was definitely working his mojo. Once again, however, the question was why?
Not for the first time, I cursed my willful lack of knowledge about the sum total of all magical beings of earth’s past and present and their conflicting mythologies. Like my willful resistance to fully understanding the true depths of my own abilities, it was seriously proving to be a handicap. When I got back to the House of Swords and had time to breathe, I’d be hiring a tutor, stat.
The journey back to Armaeus’s private jet was brief and all but silent, allowing me to recenter myself. Setting aside the reasons why Armaeus had employed my skills to recover Hera, the fact remained…I’d done it. I’d traveled to the other side of the veil and back again, bodily, without catching on fire. I didn’t know that was possible. Worse, I didn’t know who to ask about it.
“You don’t like me.”
The unexpected question slid through the canned air in the main cabin of Armaeus’s jet with the perky freshness of mountain heather, startling me from my thoughts. I turned in my seat to regard Hera and found her staring back, all wide blue eyes and radiant blonde hair.
“Um, I hadn’t really thought about it,” I replied, honestly. “It’s not my job to like you, though. It was my job to secure you. Thank you for making my job so easy.”
That shut her up momentarily, but within another few seconds, I scented vanilla and honeysuckle, and settled deeper into my seat. Who knew deities were so chatty?
“Why don’t you like me?”
I considered that as I shifted my gaze to the windows, all of them showing a white, fluffy cloudscape. It was a reasonable enough question, I supposed. Hera was a goddess; goddesses liked to be worshipped. I knew the type.
“Look,” I said, turning my attention back toward her— “Whoa!”
>
The face-shifting trick was back, the goddess’s entire skull now a mess of writhing roots that shot out about a foot only to curve back on themselves, plunging into a mass of twisting earth and stalks. At my exclamation, her head froze still for a moment, then a blink later, she’d recovered her equanimity, or at least her eyeballs. The nose, mouth, skin, and hair followed, this time a thick fall of chestnut-brown that spilled over her shoulders and pooled on the armrests of the chair, then cascaded down yet farther.
I gestured. “Check it, Rapunzel.”
Hera frowned, but her hair obligingly stopped growing, and I found myself the focus of the goddess’s intense green gaze. “It appears that I have much to learn from you,” she murmured.
“To learn, maybe. From me, not so much.” I waved toward the flight deck, which was where I assumed Armaeus was hiding to allow us some female bonding time. “Armaeus can explain the state of the twenty-first-century human and how it’s changed since…since whenever you were here last. He’s got way more perspective on that than I do.”
Hera tilted her head, and I swallowed my own disgust as a snake emerged from the tendrils of her hair and curved around her neck before slithering down her arm. It disappeared in the folds of her borrowed shift. I self-consciously lifted my feet off the floor, curling them beneath me.
“Is that seriously a thing with you?” I asked as a sprig emerged from between Hera’s folded hands.
“It makes you nervous?” Her voice was doing that layered thing again.
“Probably would avoid it on the first date.”
She frowned. “First—”
“Never mind.” I glanced back to the doorway to the flight deck, still conspicuously Armaeus-free. “So…you’re going to join the Council?” I asked, casual as all hell.
Hera plucked the sprig, and it dissolved into a dandelion puff. “The Magician is quite persuasive,” she said, which was a nonanswer as well as being irritatingly true. “And, the need is great.”
“What need is that, specifically? Or are you simply responding to a generic call to arms?”