by Jax Garren
Stay or go? How could Vince leave without Javi?
Then again, how could Vince get Javi away from that circle of fucking vampires?
Emma kicked upward at the masked man, aiming for a groin shot. The man dodged, putting his head in Vince’s range.
Vince punched with all his strength.
The masked man swayed, righted himself, and smiled with the cunning grin of a predator. “Run,” he whispered. “I’ll catch you.”
Terrified, Vince charged up, still looking behind him to see what was happening. The masked man dodged another blow from Emma and grabbed her head. Three snaps led to a horrifying crack, and Emma lay still, her neck at an unnatural angle.
Vince faced forward and sprinted, horror giving him speed. He’d bring help—somehow—but there was absolutely nothing he could do by himself.
His right ankle was caught in an iron hold, tripping him. He slammed face first onto the stairs.
Twisting onto his back, he kicked out. The masked man was somehow already on the staircase, moving too fast to follow. He ignored the blows and gripped Vince’s ankle firmly, dragging him down toward the jeering crowd.
Emma’s body blocked the path, and Vince knocked into her soft form, sending her corpse thumping down the stairs with him. Bile rose in his throat at her inert body gliding with the bonelessness of a snake. Nobody alive moved like that.
“Don’t hurt him,” Tzitzi ordered. “I still want him to dance.”
Dance? Was she kidding?
No. She was shit-brained crazy.
His ass hit the ground, and the masked man yanked him to standing. On the other side of the room, Javier was carried out, screaming for Vince and for Emma as he fought to get away.
Legs shaking, Vince jerked from the masked man’s grasp. His fear fed his fury with each scream down the dark hallway. “Like hell I’ll dance for you.”
Tzitzi strode forward, all confidence and no grace. “You’re not dancing for me. You’re dancing for the gods. You will dance, my army will drink, and you will offer yourself in sacrifice.”
Mask shoved him forward, making Vince stumble and then right himself. “I suggest we skip the formalities and go straight to the sacrifice,” Mask said. “We can feed ourselves elsewhere.”
Tzitzi placed her hand on Vince’s chest, right over his thudding heartbeat. Oh, God, they’d mentioned something about needing another heart. As in Aztec human sacrifice? The room closed in on him as fear made him dizzy.
“I feel your heart racing,” she said, her voice full of awe. “He has to be willing. Our Lord won’t look kindly on an unwilling sacrifice.”
“Fine,” Mask grumbled. He snapped his fingers, and someone shoved another pulque into Vince’s hand.
Vine shoved it back. “I’m never going to be willing.” Not that it would do him any good. Dozens of hungry faces surrounded him, their excitement infecting the room with manic power.
“Drink,” Mask insisted, sounding far too reasonable. “It’s going to be a long night.”
Vince licked his lips. “And if I don’t?”
Mask shrugged, his voice chillingly calm. “She said she can’t cut out your heart until you agree. She didn’t say I can’t break all your fingers to garner that compliance. I suggest instead that you drink and dance and have a pleasant last night.”
Beside them a vampire dragged Emma’s body out the same door they’d carried Javier, hauling her by her ankles with her face scraping the floor. It shouldn’t matter how they carried the dead. It wasn’t like Emma could feel it. Still, the casual disdain was inhuman.
He wasn’t going to make it out of here alive. Tears came unbidden to his face as he thought of Rhiannon and his friends.
Of Charlie. What had that vampiric fucker not told him?
Research Notes
HUEHUECOYOTL
I admit to a long-standing fascination with the gruesome aspects of the Aztecs—particularly the Mexica people who ruled the empire from Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City). They were, and still are, infamous for their varied and, uh, creative use of human sacrifice, which I researched for Immortal Longing. If you’re interested in a romance with some scarier bits and an HEA, check it out. I have a ton of research notes in the back on Aztec sacrificial practice, and I’ve also written about this topic for #RAAH.
But when I created Rafael, I didn’t want a blood-and-violence god. I wanted somebody fun—everybody has fun gods, right? When I discovered Huehuecoyotl, I immediately knew I’d found the right god. Huehuecoyotl is a trickster—like Loki from the Avengers—but he’s also a god of song, dance, sex, and partying. He’s bisexual, friendly, and capricious but can cause a lot of problems when he’s bored. It’s been fun pairing him with Rafael, who used to be more like Huehue but is trying... maybe a little too hard... to go the straight and narrow. Being Huehuecoyotl gives him a chance to let loose and be a little more himself again.
Freyja
My grandfather—who died when my dad was two, so I never met him—was an immigrant from Sweden. When I was a kid, I decided that he was my guardian angel. And since he was from Sweden, clearly that made him a Viking. I had a Viking guardian angel—take that, other guardian angels! While I no longer picture an angel in full Viking regalia defending me from harm, I never dropped the fascination with my northern ancestors. I’m going to refer to them as Norsemen, as most pre-Scandinavian people weren’t actually Vikings (a word that means “raider” or “pirate”).
Freyja is a what’s-not-to-love goddess. (Okay, yeah, ignoring the fraternal-incest parts of the myth. What is it with old pantheons and twins having sex?) The Norsemen imagined the gods to be tribal, and though they worshipped the gods of the Aesir tribe, they believed there to be many other tribes of gods. In their history of the heavens, the Aesir went to war with the Vanir, the end of which ended in a peace treaty where each tribe sent members to the other to live. This introduced Freyja and Freyr, from the Vanir, to the Aesir. The Vanir were people of the wild, while the Aesir were representations of civilization. Or as civilized as Thor and Odin get! Freyja brought with her wild magic, seidr. Seidr is oracle magic, granting the user visions of the future and, for the very powerful, the ability to reshape it. The tools on Giselle’s altar were all inspired by grave findings from Norse seidkonur (literally, “witch women”).
In addition to being a goddess of war and magic, Freyja was (in)famous for her conquests. Everyone wanted her, and she was more than happy to take advantage of that. Her husband, Od, was always traveling, and while she missed him deeply—weeping tears of amber at his loss—they had an open marriage, which (from what I can tell) wasn’t uncommon in Norse households. There are some people who believe Freyja and Frigg (as well as Od and Odin) are actually the same goddess (and god), one representing the freedom and high spirit of youth and the other the wisdom and stability of age.
Freyja and Odin are tied together in many ways, and one of the more interesting is the afterlife. Many people are familiar with Valhalla, the place in Norse myth where warriors go when they die in battle. What interested me, though, is that Freyja actually gets first dibs for her hall at Folksvangr, and Odin gets whomever she leaves behind.
Brisingamen
Freyja’s famous necklace Brisingamen was made for her by three dwarfs, and she paid for it by spending one night with each one of them. The myths don’t specify what it does, other than look really pretty. I gave it the ability to raise the dead based on the story of Hogni and Hedinn, two kings who, along with their armies, are destined to fight and die and resurrect to fight again until Ragnarok. In most versions of the story, the kings are fighting because one kidnapped the other one’s daughter and married her, and the daughter uses a necklace to resurrect the fallen on each side. There is, however, one version in the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason in which Freyja is the one that sets them eternally fighting in order to get her necklace back from Odin, who’d had Loki steal it. These myth variations gave me the idea of making the necklace bring the dead t
o life.
Runes
In Norse mythology, the gods are not all knowing, but one god in particular—Odin—repeatedly shows himself willing to go the extra mile to learn. In one of his more famous stories, he hangs himself on a tree (think “hanged man” in a tarot deck) with a spear in his side as a sacrifice to himself, and is granted the knowledge of runes in recompense.
Runes come in several varieties, depending on what era you’re looking at, but the set most people use today is known as the “Elder Futhark.” “Futhark” is the sounds of the first six runes: Fehu, Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raidho, and Kenaz. (Much like alphabet is alpha + beta or A+B.) It’s the “Elder” because it’s an attempted recreation of the writing system used by the Germanic tribes during the Migration Period (fourth to sixth century CE-ish—although the script is possibly older), making it the oldest of the three most used runic systems. While there wasn’t any literature written with the Elder Futhark, it has been found on gravestones, carved into weapons, and used in graffiti and for other artistic (or not so artistic) purposes. (It brings me great joy that humans have been making graffiti for thousands of years).
Besides being an alphabet for writing, runes are also used for divination. Each rune has a symbol that goes with it—Fehu is cattle (i.e., money), Uruz is a wild ox, Thurisaz a giant, etc. and so when the runes are tossed, a practitioner will read the future or take advice by interpreting the symbols that come face up.
Runes are sometimes put together into a bind-rune, which is supposed to create a magical protection or can imbue an item (or person, in the case of tattoos) with the energy of the runes. This historicity of this usage is under debate, though runes were definitely carved into weapons. The modern logo for Bluetooth is a bind-rune of Haglaz and Berkano from the Younger Futhark, used in honor of King Harald Bluetooth, who introduced Christianity to Denmark.
Ishtar / Inanna
Ishtar, also known as Inanna depending on when/where you’re talking about, is one of the original badass goddesses. Her worship flourished in ancient Mesopotamia (the regions now known as Iraq and Kuwait, along with parts of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey) throughout the Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian periods (from around 3000 BCE to the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE). Ishtar/Inanna is a god of both war and sex (not so much of love, though...), and the poetry written to her was surprisingly graphic. Seriously, how many times can one poem’s narrator request a dude to “plow” her “vulva”? Inanna was the favorite subject of the poet Enheduanna, who was a high priestess to her. Cool fact: Enheduanna is the first writer in human history whose name we know; anything written prior to her is anonymous—making the world’s first known author a woman. Take that to your next trivia session!
Ishtar is possibly most famous now for her appearance in the epic Gilgamesh, where she attempts to seduce the hero and gets uppity when he turns her down. But her stories are incredibly varied, as she is the most written about deity of ancient Mesopotamia. Her symbols are the lion and the eight-pointed star. She was worshipped by prostitutes (possibly involving sacred prostitution) and is often depicted in the nude, as I stuck poor Giselle when she channeled her. Her other famous stories involve a failed trip to the afterlife in an attempt to take over from her sister Ereshkigal, the goddess of the dead (more on that later...), her marriage to the shepherd Dumuzid (with many, many, oh so many poems about their raucous love life), the time she tricked Enki, one of the most powerful gods, into giving her the “mes”—the sacred powers of civilization, including everything from laws and weaving to truth and victory—as well as dozens of other stories. Love or hate her, Ishtar is depicted as an audacious, sexually liberated, greedy go-getter who didn’t let anything or anyone stand in her way.
Amazons
For more on these amazing ladies, check out #RAAH on Instagram (or Facebook), where I did a whole write-up on them. For here, it will suffice to say that the Amazons were female warriors of the Scythian nomads, a people who roamed from Mongolia to Turkey from about 900 to 200 BCE, though records of the Amazons specifically all come from the western edges near the Black Sea—modern-day Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Amazons were horse-riding archers known for trick shooting who might’ve been the first humans to invent pants (trousers). Also, they really liked marijuana, with tools for smoking frequently buried with them. The Greeks were fascinated with the Amazons, creating entire works of fiction based around these “wild women of the east,” which is where we get a lot of our information—and misinformation (they didn’t cut off their boobs; can you imagine doing that without antiseptic??)—about these historically documented warriors.