War of the Gods Complete Series Boxed Set

by Meg Xuemei X

  The black fire was rumored to come from Hades’s realm. That was how Apollo and Phobos were sure that I descended from the God of Death. I’d discovered that I also possessed blue fire when I encountered Phobos the first time. Neither my mates nor I had unveiled its origin, but it came in useful, like now.

  A golden shield materialized in Ares’s hand, blocking my flames. My black and blue fires spun around the edge of the shield, sizzling in rage as they failed to find a way in.

  Ares chuckled. “I’ve invented more methods to distract, surprise, and kill than you could dream of, little girl. But I enjoy you throwing all that at me. My son debriefed me on your fires in great details. Any god who possesses godly fire has only one kind, but you possess two. So Aphrodite brought the case to her husband. Hephaestus is no fun, but he’s a diligent, brilliant researcher. He can’t stand an unsolved puzzle, and he can never fight the urge to create a device to counter any superpower. So he forged this shield to neutralize the combinations of fire from hell, Earth, and heavens.”

  “And I bet your lovely lover Aphrodite stole the shield for you to get another unlawful bang from you,” I said.

  This time, Apollo threw his head back and guffawed. “That was colorful.”

  I mentioned the God of Love and Beauty to diffuse any idea Ares had on sharing me with Apollo. It would be easier to beat one rapist than two.

  “Aphrodite and I are no longer together,” Ares said. “We’d been with each other for too long. Plus, gods don’t think like a mortal or a supernatural. We don’t have moral boundaries as the weaklings do. You’ll change your way of thinking as time passes. We’ll have a positive influence on you. Apollo and I have decided to co-invest in you, but you still need to pass a test.”

  “What if I don’t pass the test?” I asked in a hiss.

  “Then you’ll be no use to us,” Ares said. “My son insisted that you are the most powerful, meanest bitch he’s ever met. Apollo insisted that you could be our queen and our honed weapon against all sides, and finally against our father. He’s ruled for too long. We need a new regime.”

  “Right, that’s you and your buddy Apollo.”

  A rush of adrenaline shot through me.

  Indeed, the gods were going to war with each other, and these two hooligans thought to use me as a pawn and a weapon in their revolt. They’d both revealed their ambitions and grand plan, because they were so sure I would never escape them.

  They believed I was a permanent fly in their web.

  “But if you’re useless to us, we’ll dispose of you,” Ares said. “Beautiful women are a dime a dozen, but one who can match both Apollo and me in power is rare. I’ve torn the torque off your neck to give you a fighting chance, to see what you really have.”

  He twirled his shield like a pro and studied the fires. “The black fire comes from Hades. Only he and his descendants can wield dark fire from the Underworld. Like Apollo, I also sensed death essence in you. But you’re something more. I need the blue fire as a sample to test it, so we can find your other origin. Hephaestus is an expert in the identification of unknown powers.”

  Before he could dismiss his shield and store my fires, which still danced along it, I summoned them back. I wouldn’t allow them to collect a sample of my power, to learn more about me and then figure out more ways to counter my magic.

  Now, how was I going to overcome the two shielded, powerful major gods in front of me?

  Fleeing was the best strategy.

  Teleport. I centered my mind.

  I imagined a swirl of colors and light around me, like what happened with Pyrder’s teleport, delivering me out of here. I pictured the feeling from Reys’s shift—stars and space and vertigo. I had once teleported Amber and myself to the middle of the pool that was reserved for elite students in the Academy, and I didn’t mind getting wet and cold again.

  As long as I could get the fuck out of here.

  I thought very hard of my destination—of my home, where my mates were.

  Return to them! I commanded.

  Vertigo came and joy filled me.

  Shit! I was teleporting again. It was happening! I swirled up in the air, higher and higher, a blinding light flashing by my eyes as Apollo’s hall blurred around me.

  “Bye-bye, assholes!” I shouted. “Too bad I can’t shove my fires up your asses sideways. Another day to look forward to, then!”

  I stretched my hands high above my head, picturing myself falling into my mates’ arms. Whose arms did I want to fall into first? All of their arms.

  They would be overjoyed at seeing me return. At that thought, tears welled in my eyes. I couldn’t wait to stand before them, to proudly proclaim, “Hey dudes, look, I rescued myself!”

  They would be so impressed I returned to them all by myself, and in no time at all! I remembered the looks in their eyes when I made my first grand public speech to call all the supernaturals and humans in the Academy to unite and fight against the gods—our common enemy.

  It was intoxicating to be bathed in my mates’ pride of me.

  They’d compete to dote on me. Their hot kisses would fall all over my face and my body. And then there would be more… My face flushed, and my heart pounded at the prospect of tangling with my mates under the sheets.

  The wild wind ceased. Colors and light and dizziness faded.

  “Welcome back, little Cass,” Apollo’s voice sounded wickedly giddy beside my ear as I landed in a stagger.

  Ares joined his laughter. “How was the trip, doll?”

  I snapped open my eyes. Cold dread drenched the joy and relief I’d felt mere seconds ago. I didn’t return home. I didn’t return to my mates.

  I’d teleported from one side of the hall to the other, near the window.

  I’d never left Apollo’s palace.

  “What the actual fuck?” I cried in outrage.

  “You can’t phase out of any god’s realm,” Apollo said. “This dimension lies atop Earth. To come or go one has to travel through the slipstream to my dominion. As you can see, I don’t even need spells to ward my palace. My realm is connected to my will. Everything here is bound to me and me alone.”

  Except for me. I hadn’t surrendered to him.

  How could my mates find me then? How could I escape if the slipstream was the only way out of here? I might never see them again.

  “You’ll be mine, too,” Apollo added in utter arrogance.

  Fury burned within me, deep and bright.

  “Then come and get me, assholes.”

  I pulled all I had—my flames, the residual magic I’d once gathered from all the mages, the stirring Earth elements, and my mates’ power that had partly become mine after our mating bond ritual, and my rage—and tossed them toward the sun god and war god.

  Ares raised his sentient gold shield. It could detect any threat as soon as it appeared and shelter its owner. If I had a chance, I’d take down this God of Blacksmiths first, so there’d be no one to create shielding weapons to protect the rest of the gods.

  Apollo raised his legendary lyre to defend himself. For double safety, he also moved, ducking behind Ares’s shield, just as my flames melted his lyre.

  He was incredibly fast, but he wasn’t left completely unscathed.

  The mix of my complex powers scorched a patch of his red-golden hair, and his left toe seemed to be gone along with the shiny leather shoe.

  He roared in pain and fury.

  To my dismay, I noticed his missing body part and hair were already growing back. The chairs where Apollo and I had been sitting, and a wall that my flames had burned down, also returned to their former shape from ashes.

  “What kind of fuckup is that?!” I demanded in desperation.

  “You need to learn a lesson, you insolent little bitch,” Apollo hissed. “It’s not that easy to take down a major god.”

  He dashed out from behind Ares’s shield and pulsed in blinding white light. The intense heat of a sunbeam blasted toward me. He was the God of
Sun, and he wasn’t holding back now.

  “You don’t want to kill her yet, Apollo!” Ares warned. “I’m not done with her!”

  My eyes widened in fear. Now I was done. Now the heat would melt my bones. I hoped it would be a quick death. But then the image of my mates’ agonized, devastated look as I was taken flashed in my mind.

  I wouldn’t leave them behind. I wouldn’t allow the gods to break their hearts and destroy them.

  The onslaught of the mages’ collective ice, hail, and storm had once awoken the dark monster in me. It now arose again, wanting to devour, to destroy, and to tear apart everything in my path.

  A mass of darkness poured out of me, swirling around me like a liquid black mirror to shield me. Even with its shade, I could still feel the intense heat from Apollo’s sunbeam, but it couldn’t burn me to ashes as I’d feared.

  My darkness roared and dove to meet Apollo’s white light. It wrestled with my opponent’s star power, growling like a beast locked away in the abyss for too long.

  It pushed back the wall of light that tried to trap me, eating into it, and clawing it apart. But the light replenished again, faster than my dark mass could devour it.

  The God of Sun had endless solar energy, but my reservoir was running out. I was the youngest goddess. I was like a fetus compared to these ancient gods. It’d be a while before I reached my prime, and I had yet to learn how to harness my dark beast.

  My enemy and I had come to an impasse.

  With Apollo’s light encaging me, I could be trapped here forever. I now regretted I hadn’t pushed myself harder on learning my deeper powers when I’d had the chance.

  “She can hold your light from the sun with her darkness,” Ares said, nearly awed.

  An annoyed expression bled over Apollo’s face. “The little brat has a lot of powers. We have yet to discover what other nastiness she’s stored. You shouldn’t have taken the torque off her. Now how are we going to contain her?”

  “Where does her dark power come from?” Ares wondered. “It’s not from the Underworld. She’s developed something else we aren’t familiar with. Can she mutate powers? Fuck me!” His golden eyes went wide, flaring with fiery color. “Have you seen the trickle of red fire within the web of her dark mass?”

  “She can’t have the dragon fire,” Apollo said dismissively. “I fought a dragon and slew it. I’d recognize true dragon fire.”

  I’d heard the story he was referring to. Queen Hera sent a giant dragon to hunt Leto, whom Zeus had fucked and impregnated with Apollo and his twin sister. In revenge, the sun god slew the dragon assassin with super silver arrows made by Hephaestus.

  “You killed Python, a minor dragon,” Ares countered. “But Cass’s red fire has the heat signature of the Dragon God.”

  “I was once nursing the concept that she was from the bloodline of the Dragon God,” Apollo said. “But you know and I know it’s impossible. He left an eon ago, after the great dragon war on Earth. We must investigate and get to the bottom of this. When it comes to the little goddess, a lot of things don’t add up.”

  While they discussed my bloodline and powers, I was feeling more and more toasted by the sunbeam’s heat. My darkness was getting weaker under the constant bombardment of intense light. Beads of sweat streamed from my temples. I couldn’t hold my power forever, and I didn’t seem to have anything else in my arsenal that could teach the ancients gods a hard lesson at the moment.

  Anxiety roiled in me like acidic waves. Sweat dripped into my eyes. I fought the need to blink away the sting for fear that the two assholes might pull another stinky stunt if I even blinked.

  A trace of my red fire, the one they thought might be dragon fire, returned to me, bringing a string of Apollo’s sunbeam to my lips.

  I blinked. My power was communicating with me. It wanted me to have a taste of the enemy’s sunbeam.

  The beam of light didn’t burn my lips but tasted like an exotic energy drink. Apollo’s light didn’t come from our sun but from an alien star, since he wasn’t a native.

  Behind my shield of darkness, my face broke into a wicked grin as I came to a realization. I drank from Phobos and siphoned his alien god energy. I could drink from Apollo as well. And while he sent his alien sunlight to chasten me, he had no shield anymore.

  Cautiously, I let my darkness open a crack to allow a stream of Apollo’s sunbeam to flow into me. I sucked it in and gasped at its pureness.

  Fuck! It was like the most potent drug, delicious and addictive.

  I commanded my darkness to retreat. Apollo’s sunbeam, now unhindered, floored me.

  “No!” Ares shouted. “Stop, Apollo! Kill her and the game is over!”

  But the God of War was too late to reach me and shield me.

  Apollo cursed. “I didn’t know she was stupid enough to commit suicide—”

  He drew back his sun power in a panic, but I’d leeched onto it. The sunbeam poured over me, bathing me in energy, flowing within me, and merging with the trickle of red fire.

  My whole body radiated glorious light. I became a little sun.

  The two gods stared at me in a stupor.

  “It’s payback time, bitches,” I said with a predatory smirk.

  I didn’t even throw up my hands. With mere a thought, I flung all the fires I had at the gods, including the sunbeam power I’d just collected.

  I’d learned to channel powers that weren’t mine when Apollo, disguised as Noah, ordered the mages to toss their collective magic at me in the training field of the Academy.

  And now I assaulted the two gods with Apollo’s power mixed with mine, pushing my way beyond my own limits.

  Boiling over with radiant energy, I had no mercy. I had no moral compass. I only sought to destroy.

  A wave of fire and light surged toward my enemies at lightning speed. Ares’s shield erected instantly, and Apollo dove behind the war god. The tool of the God of Blacksmiths could detect my intention the very moment it formed, but the smith’s shield wasn’t strong enough to fend off my new mutant power, which began to melt it away, eroding its protective power.

  One more blast from me, and I’d end these two clowns and go home.

  I bounced on my heels, grinning and cheering. Just as I was about to hurl another fire and light wave at them to finish the job, a flash of shadow reached me.

  I was fast, but it was faster. Before I could shove it away with all the power and violence in me, the torque click closed around my neck.

  Casting away his half-melted shield, Ares alighted before me, wicked delight glinting in his golden eyes. “Now, little kitty, you’ve passed the test. You’ll be mine, and I haven’t wanted anyone like this for a long time.”

  Now I knew that Ares’s best talent was his speed. No one could compete with him when it came to velocity. He’d lost only part of his left hand, burned away by my power when he reached me. It was already growing back—the bones snapped into place, the flesh extended, and two of his fingers emerged and finished with nails.

  He also regenerated faster than I thought possible.

  I clutched the torque and pulled with the rest of my strength but, like before, no power of mine could break it apart.

  I fought back my tears and pulled the torque again.

  “Now you know what she is, Ares. She can even drink a major god’s energy. She can take my sun power and turn it against us. No god among us can do that. It’s the first time in our history that a new brand of species, which was born of us, can turn us to food. She makes us into her prey. If we can’t harness and control her, we’ll have to kill her, and kill her thoroughly, before it’s too late.”

  My mother had taught the vampires how to thoroughly kill me—cutting me to pieces and separating every piece of me to the farthest corners of the Earth.

  Fear pumped into my veins, turning my hot blood to chunks of ice.

  “Have you ever watched Jurassic World, a century-old movie made by mortals, Apollo?” Ares asked.

  “Se
riously?” Apollo responded back with disgust. “You watched mortal trash? It’s poisonous to good minds!”

  Ares ignored his comments. “A character in the movie said, and I quote, ‘You made a genetic hybrid. Raised it in captivity. She is seeing all of this for the first time. She does not even know what she is. She will kill everything that moves. She is learning where she fits on the food chain and I'm not sure you want her to figure that out.’ End of the quote. Cass Saélihn is one of a kind, a unique hybrid, and in a league of her own. No matter how much of a threat she poses to our race, she’s ours. She’ll be ours.”

  I snapped back from the stupefied surprise of being caged again.

  “Fuck you, assholes! Fuck you all! I’ll never be yours,” I screamed and jumped up to deliver a devil’s kick to the war god’s fucking face.

  Ares snatched my feet and twirled me in the air as if I was but a ragdoll. He didn’t fling me away like what Apollo had done, but put me down and pulled my back against his hard chest.

  His strength and power overcame me, binding me, no matter how I kicked and screamed.

  “Will you calm down, little doll?” he asked. “The fiercer you struggle, the more aroused I grow. I’m losing my grip on my control, and you don’t want that.”

  As he mentioned it, I became aware of his enormous erection pressing against my back. A chill of revulsion ran through me. I froze and stood deathly still.

  “Ares.” Apollo reached up to cup my face. “We agreed to share. She’s mine, too.”

  “Indeed,” Ares said. “She’ll bear us the strongest offspring.” He pulled me harder against him with backbreaking strength, wanting every inch of me clinging to his. “Congratulate yourself, Goddess Saélihn. You’ll be the queen to two of the most powerful gods and mother of our endless line of children.”

  “Only in your nightmares!” I shouted, ready to fight again.

  “Hello. Hello?” A female’s high-pitched, musical voice sounded darkly amused. “Am I too late for the party? And what have I missed, dear brother?”

  6

  Prince Pyrder