Tyranny: Goddesses of Delphi

by Gemma Brocato

  “Well, good luck with scoring a date with her. Let me know how you fare. I’ll have some other options lined up for you in case you don’t get past hello.”

  While Jax collected their rubbish, Ian flipped the channel back to baseball and seemed to have forgotten about the Thanos sisters. Jax pitched the grease-stained bag into the trash, grabbed two more beers, and rejoined Ian on the leather sofa in front of the television. He wrangled the remote from Ian’s hand. He swiped his thumb over the control pad, logging on to the state-of-the-art gaming system.

  Jax wished his attraction to Clio came with the same kind of simple control, one he could turn on and win her interest. She intrigued him, made him want to know more about her. Their shared interest in history would be a good spot to start in developing a relationship with the woman. As it stood, the woman had already gotten under his skin the way no woman had in…ever. And it appeared he’d be content to let her stay there, at least until he found a way to scratch that itch.

  Chapter 3

  “Calliope, this is the second time in a month you’ve called us together for an emergency meeting.” Clio used her sister’s given name to irritate the woman, and for good measure put air quotes around the E-word as she slid onto the bench opposite her sister. The last time Callie summoned them was the day of the violent storm, when Clio first met Jax. “For a feeling? We have to have something more concrete than there’s a disturbance in the force.”

  Callie rolled her eyes and slouched against the wooden back of the booth. “So funny, Clio Schlemiel.”

  Exasperation churned inside Clio. She’d hated Callie’s nickname ever since she’d first rolled it out when they were teens. She was not awkward, or unlucky. Thankfully, Callie was the only sister who dared to continue calling her that after Clio had a fit about it. Since they’d been born eight millennia earlier, Calliope had always been the leader of the pack, leaving Clio to quietly plod along as a middle sister.

  “Who else is coming tonight?” Clio was the second to arrive. They were in a smaller booth, which meant some of the Muses wouldn’t be present.

  “Just Polly and Nia.” Callie chewed her lower lip while she eyed the front door.

  They were meeting at The Rowan Tree, their preferred pub when a meal had to be involved. None of them cooked. Domestic arts seemed to be the only area where they lacked inspiration. Kind of funny, given their roles as Muses.

  Callie’s focus was the written word. Over the millennia she’d inspired Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and countless others. She seemed most proud of her achievement with Harper Lee. It had been Callie’s idea to include Boo Radley as a character in To Kill a Mocking Bird, a fact she’d repeatedly crowed about.

  Polly, or Polyhymnia, was the Muse of Sacred Song. Over the years, her focus had shifted from inspiring prayers and hymns to making sure correct information about all manner of stuff got disseminated accurately. Her job as an investigative reporter had been essential in breaking several high-level scandals and plots. Without her influence, Clio knew countless Ponzi schemes and blatant book-cooking episodes wouldn’t have been exposed.

  Urania, or Nia, had kept her head in the clouds throughout all her incarnations. Nia was the Muse of the Heavens. Her job at the Helios Institute and Observatory fit her like a glove. Without Nia’s influence and carefully cultivated inspiration, there wouldn’t have been a Mars Rover or a Hubble Telescope. Nia’s humble deflection of her accomplishments was epic in their family. All she wanted was to allow mortals to see in deep space what she saw without the aid of technology.

  A spot in Clio’s heart warmed as her little sister walked into the slightly darkened interior of the bar. Nia’s copper-penny bright hair glittered with moisture from the fine mist that had settled over Delphi in the last few weeks. The recent weather had been extremely.

  Actually, ever since the day they’d had the summer squall. The day Jax Callahan had bumped into her life. He’d been into the library six times in the last two weeks. Each time he’d invited her to accompany him as his research assistant. Each time, she’d declined. But he’d remain at her desk, chatting—flirting, really—finding any excuse to touch her. Her skin sizzled each time he brushed her arm or shoulder. Each touch had her nerves jumping like water in a hot skillet.

  She was certain he was working his way up to asking for a date. The way he pinned her with those whiskey-colored eyes, or flashed his dimpled smile at her… Goddess, he embodied walking, talking lust.

  And she was to the point of thinking they should have sex first, then maybe think about dating later. Her most intimate spot, her brain, had started firing the second he walked through the library doors. Other parts of her anatomy had tingled in anticipation as well.

  “Hey, chicas.” Nia slid onto the bench seat right next to Clio, distracting her from the X-rated thoughts of Jax. “What gives with the weather?”

  Callie drew her brows together, puckering double lines in the center. “The weather is symptomatic of a larger problem. I’ve been getting cryptic e-mails over the last two weeks.”

  Clio gusted out a frustrated breath. “Callie, why didn’t you say something earlier?” Like the last time they were together, when her emergency meeting had been nothing more than helping Callie brainstorm her way out of a plot hole.

  Her sister’s shrug irked Clio, but she’d learned a very long time ago not to press.

  “Let’s wait until Polly gets here. I don’t want to have to repeat myself,” Callie said.

  “What’s new, Clio?” Nia asked while she consulted the menu.

  A desperate attraction to a sexy man. An overwhelming urge to crawl between the sheets with said man, and not crawl out for days. “Nothing much.”

  A waitress approached the table. After ordering, Nia said, “Well, let me tell you what’s new in my life. I finally managed to get the bozo engineer at NASA to aim the Hubble in the right direction. They are all atwitter about a new nebula that somehow, miraculously, managed to pop up. Like it hadn’t been there all along. I didn’t think he’d ever learn.”

  Clio beamed at her sister. “Congrats! How long have you been working on him?”

  “For. Ever!” Nia exaggerated. Forever in their lives was a very, very long time. “I must have nudged for at least a week.”

  Still frowning, Callie drummed her fingers on the table and squirmed in her seat.

  Before Clio could respond, Polly raced up to the table. She jostled Callie as she dropped onto the bench. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was killer. Damned rain.” She shoved her fingers through her damp tresses.

  Callie waited until after the waitress had taken Polly’s order before starting the meeting. She pulled a sheaf of papers from her bag and handed them around. “This is the latest e-mail I’ve gotten. I’ve been getting little teasers over the past two weeks. The top one, received today, spells everything out. I’ve tried to track them to their source, but the messages hop all over the world before they reach my inbox.” She pinned each of the girls in turn with a look meant to impart the importance of the message. “I think the e-mail and the weather are connected. Read them.”

  Silence ruled the table. Clio scanned the paper, then read again more slowly.

  The time is nigh. Your fates are sealed. The existence you’ve known for the millennia is at an end. Nine challenges for nine Muses. Each Muse will pair with a mortal man to solve the test. No need to look for your challenge partner. He will find you. But he will not be predisposed to your cause. A kiss will seal your partnership, but it will also free my daughters’ wings. To win, you must get this man to reject a deep-seated belief. To save your precious world, this man must ask, “What if?”

  If even one Muse fails the test, all fail. But I have decided you must continue the challenges for a chance to redeem all humankind. For each defeat, one of my daughters will be released from her existence as a magpie. An existence forced on my offspring at the order of your father, Zeus. The defeated Muse will then transform into the magpie with no chance
of redemption. And when my daughters obtain freedom, havoc will come. The world will once again belong to the gods, not to the humans.

  Your challenges begin now as warrior men rampage once more. Look to The Five Nations Block as the bringer of authoritarianism.

  “Signed by Pierus.” Polly smacked a palm on the table. “I knew that dirt-bag couldn’t stay quiet forever.”

  Clio’s world spun as she recalled the evil god who’d put his daughters above the Muses. His actions had angered Zeus, her father, so much that he’d turned the daughters to magpies. But after witnessing Pierus’s grief at the loss of his offspring, Zeus had relented enough to allow Pierus to petition for their release. Sort of an Olympian parole.

  Over the millennia, Pierus had challenged the Muses repeatedly in an attempt to release his daughters from the bird form they’d been condemned to by the supreme ruler of the gods. He’d failed each time. But that didn’t stop him from trying to resurrect a centuries old beef every once in a while. Clio still got exhausted when she thought about the first. The challenge was to travel around the globe in under a year without using supernatural powers to transport themselves. They’d nearly lost when they spent several weeks turned around in the South China Sea. Thankfully, Nia had already inspired the inventor of the compass.

  And each time he surfaced, the Muses had worked hard to beat him. If at any point they’d lost, the fate his children represented would have been released. And with daughters with names like Tyranny, Strife, Hate, Greed, the world would become a very evil place if the Muses failed.

  She put a hand to her forehead, hoping to ease her sudden dizziness. “It’s like a freaking terminal case of déjà vu. How many times have we already proven we’re better than his brats? Why is he re-challenging us now?”

  Callie shrugged. “Pierus must see something we can’t. Know something about world events we don’t. His ticket to rescuing his evil spawn.”

  “If one of us fails the contest, all fail? That’s new. What the hell?” Nia’s blue eyes held a hint of panic. She took a big gulp of wine and swallowed hard.

  “We won’t fail,” Polly barked. The fork clattered loudly when she tossed it to the plate. “We didn’t before, and this time we’ll put Pierus in his place forever.”

  “Forever? That didn’t work so great with the Titans. How many times have those idiots been freed from limbo?” Clio gripped the paper tightly between numb fingers. “Polly, what do you know about The Five Nations?”

  “It’s an Eastern European collective. Think the European Union but based on a military mission. They’ve been in the news lately for some questionable practices. Anything they can do to exploit the poorer nations near them, they’ve done. Invasion, genocide, ethnic cleansing.” Polly grimaced. “There was some think tank in DC that tried to blow the whistle on their activities months ago.” Polly curled her lip. Her look made it apparent the outcome hadn’t been entirely successful. “When the politicians refused to listen to their warnings, a couple of the senior members of the tank up and quit. I can do some digging and see if I can find any of the former employees.”

  Callie nodded. “Good. Polly, you check current information. Pierus wrote ‘once more.’ Does he mean history is repeating? Like there’s an easy solution mortals missed in the past? Clio, I want you to dig backward. Look into invasions, genocides, and the like. Not just recent ones, but events from ancient history. Go back a couple thousand years. That’s where we’ll find our answers. We’ll figure out who we need to sway to win this time around.”

  “But the challenge says one Muse, one man. How do we find the one man?” Clio questioned. This was the part that worried her most. “And what if he doesn’t want to help?”

  Callie shrugged and then cast a glance around the crowded bar, her icy blue-eyed stare skidding over all the men present. She lowered her brows. “According to the message, they’ll find us. Our test will be to inspire them to help solve the problem.”

  “Who’s first?” Nia asked in a small voice.

  “Pierus specifically mentions history. It must be Clio.” Callie looked expectantly across the table.

  Holy Hades, she did not want to go first. She did not want to go at all. Clio lifted her hands in the air. “Why me? You’re the oldest, Calliope. Why wouldn’t he start with you?”

  “Hell if I know,” Callie snapped. “It isn’t my challenge, so I have no way of knowing what the order will be.” She softened her tone. “What I do know is we’ll all have to work together to win. Just as we did when we defeated the magpies the last time.”

  Lost in thought, Clio drummed her fingers on the table. The collective of five separate countries had been encroaching on the borders of their much smaller neighbor and was poised for invasion. “What is the biggest threat to humanity posed by The Five Nations’ aggression? If they succeeded in their quest, what would be the worst that could happen?”

  “Oligarchy or despotism would be unleashed. Communism or Nazism times a billion. Think ethnic cleansing. Anyone who doesn’t hold to the same philosophy of the ruling party, or isn’t exactly like those in power, would be at risk,” Polly replied. “So Tyranny must be the first daughter up. Saving the world from oppression seems a pretty damn good reason to influence one mere mortal to make a difference.”

  Shoving papers back into her bag, Callie muttered. “Figures we’d have to persuade a man to help with the challenge we’re to solve. Pierus always was a chauvinist. Like we can’t do it by ourselves.”

  Clio bit her inner cheek to hold in her scoffing laughter. As a romance author, Callie should have seen the magic in teaming up with the right man.

  Callie snapped the messenger bag’s closures together with a sharp click. “Clio, you and I should meet with Gaia as soon as possible.”

  Their mother. Clio’s head started pounding, a raucous tempo that attempted to keep up with her heart. After many lifetimes of dealing with her mom, Clio still dreaded the doublespeak and vague references the woman preferred. It seemed like nothing she’d ever done was good enough. Especially when Callie was involved in the interaction. Her oldest sister had always been the favorite. Except for that one instance when Terri, another sister, had inspired Tchaikovsky to compose Swan Lake. Terri had been the preferred child for years after that.

  “Clio! Pay attention. Meet me at the Achilleion tomorrow at noon.”

  As much as she loved the waterfall that had been named for a garden in Corfu, going there to meet with their mother sucked all the joy out of the bubbling, churning spillway. “Callie, that’s my lunch hour. It’s my only free time all day.” Clio squinted as she sent a mental nudge toward Callie, hoping to sway the decree that she be present at a meeting with Gaia.

  Callie’s return nudge into a corner of Clio’s mind stung like a wasp. Damn, she needed to perfect her shielding from the sharpness of her sister’s non-verbal pokes. Clio rubbed her temples.

  Callie heaved an exasperated sigh. “Don’t you freaking try to nudge me. And quit bitching. I’m on a deadline with edits, but if I can make time to save the damn world, then you can, too.” Callie rudely pushed Polly out of the booth.

  As their sister cleared the way for Callie’s exit, Callie pinned Clio with a hard look, her eyes glittering in the dull light of the bar. She pushed a hank of her russet hair behind one ear, leaving the other side to swing freely against her cheek. “Do not be late, sister.”

  Heads turned in Callie’s wake as she swished out of the pub. Her graceful, statuesque frame was the very thing that inspired most men to think with their dicks, not their smarter heads. And Callie knew how to work it. Clio had to blow a kiss at five foot four to get anywhere near the height. She wished she shared the kind of sexual confidence Callie had in droves. Damn, she couldn’t believe she was still comparing herself to her sister. Not after all the years of their existence.

  Time to address the more practical aspects of the challenge. With a sigh, she surveyed her remaining sisters. “I wonder if the sudden bad weather
has anything to do with Pierus’s return? Have there been other abrupt climate shifts whenever he crawls out of the grotto? The last two weeks have felt like an ominous portent.”

  Nia grabbed the pen the waitress had left with their bill. “Good question. I’ll check. I don’t think we’ve ever noticed a changed weather pattern before.” She scrawled on her forearm. The black ink stood out on her pale skin.

  “Nia, why not use a napkin to write yourself a note?” Polly asked, laughter oozing in her question. “Or your phone?”

  “I lose napkins. I’m not likely to lose my arm, am I?” Nia’s slightly crooked smile illuminated the darkened booth. “Unless I suddenly become the Venus de Milo.”

  Clio grabbed the pen from Nia. After quickly scribbling her name at the bottom of the charge slip, she dropped the pen and pushed the paper away. “I’m going to the library to start my research. I know just the place to begin.”

  “But it’s after nine. Isn’t the building locked down?”

  “Being the big cheese has it perks. I have access.” Idly she wondered if she’d find Jax there at this time of night. He’d asked her to be his research assistant, but truth was, she could use one of her own right now.

  Good thing she was a Muse and could function on little sleep. It looked as if it was going to be a long, lonely night.

  Chapter 4

  The library’s bright portico light above her head turned Clio’s fingers into blurs of white as they flew over the keypad. Within seconds of entering her access code, the tiny LED light at the top of the pad flashed from red to green. The wooden door handle was ancient, smooth, and warm as she pulled it open. She slipped inside the vestibule and waited until the door sealed shut again. Before advancing to the front desk, she slicked her hands over her hair to remove the raindrops and, hopefully, contain the curls that appeared without fail on rainy days like this.