The Tainted Web (The Godhunter, Book 7)

by Sumida, Amy

  I called my Nahual again and felt her happy little cat dance as she swished forward and slid her paws up my arms once more. I felt the magic surge out of me and into the wine, filling it with my essence. Then I lifted it to Azrael and he drank of me, completing our holy communion.

  Azrael gasped, throwing the empty cup aside and staring down at me with flashing diamond eyes. He turned me around with a forceful twist, putting my back to his chest once more, as his wings urged Kirill forward. I felt it then, the connection had overlapped. The men had pieces of me and I had pieces of them but the magic of the communion had sealed all three of us together somehow, wrapping around us like Azrael's wings. Heaven had given us its blessing.

  Then Kirill's mouth was on mine, his hands along the sides of my face, as Azrael's hands roamed over me, divesting me of my clothing. It happened so fast, one second we stood basking in the communion, and the next we were writhing on the soft carpet of grass, sunlight warming our bare flesh where it shone through the trees.

  Kirill was beneath me, his hair spread out like a blanket behind him, his eyes staring up at me with more love than I felt I deserved, and I touched his cheek gently as Azrael stroked my skin with fingertips and feathers. Beneath my skin the magic rose, a tingling warmth that seemed to meld us together, sinking into one man and then leaping through the air into the other until we were all connected in a passionate circle. Then it was a tangle of mouths and limbs, hair and wings. I found myself astride Kirill but facing his legs so that I could take Azrael into my mouth as he stood over us.

  It made a memory flash through my mind, of back when Azrael had first asked to court me. He wanted to be sure he could handle sharing me with other men and had asked to watch me with Kirill. I'd indulged him but hadn't told Kirill, making love to my lion while the angel stood before me, visible only to me. I'd wanted to do this then but knew it was too much of a betrayal to Kirill, bad enough he was being observed without his knowledge, to actually bring another man into bed with us without him knowing, would have been too horrible to contemplate.

  But now Kirill knew and my angel stood proud before me, available for me to touch and taste while I held Kirill inside me. It occurred to me that our previous experience was probably why Azrael had been okay with sharing me with Kirill. He already knew what it would be like but now, this communion we shared had created a special bond between us that would ensure it would always be this way.

  It was different than when I was with Kirill and Trevor, not necessarily better, but different in the way that wolves were from birds, one ran through the forest and the other soared above it. When I was with Kirill and Trevor, I was carried along with the pack and the pride, racing across the earth with wild abandon. We had the Froekn Binding added to the lion magic between us and it was amazing but now Azrael and Kirill shared something magical too and being with them meant having both the earth and the sky. It was flying among the clouds before swooping down and trailing my hands over the top of thick grass. It was a roar in my heart and a rush of wings in my blood.

  It was Heaven.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Such beautiful eyes. Like the ocean under a mid-day sun. Bright green, translucent and streaked with deep blue. Although they could get stormy, it could rain in those eyes and sometimes there was even lightning within them. I sighed.

  “Vervain?” I focused on his lips as he said my name. Strong lips, lips that used to kiss my own, once upon a time. “Vervain?”

  “Huh?” I shook myself out of my reverie.

  “Did you hear me?” Thor asked, looking a little concerned.

  “No, I'm sorry,” I flushed and realized I'd been fantasizing about him again. It was getting ridiculous. I'd just made love to an angel and a werelion, we'd shared a holy communion. Thor shouldn't have held any kind of fascination for me and yet there I sat, zoning out on him like a smitten teenager. “I'm a little tired.”

  “I said,” he frowned at me, looking seriously confused, “since you can use the goggles to keep an eye out for the spider, couldn't you use them to find him, watch him from a distance, and determine where his base of operations is?”

  “Oh,” I sat up straighter, “yeah that's a great idea. You're brilliant!” I clamped a hand over my mouth before I could gush over him any further.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Persephone whispered to me with wide eyes.

  “I don't know,” I whispered back.

  “Well stop it,” she glanced at Thor, who was glaring at us, along with Kirill, Trevor, and Odin.

  “I'm trying.”

  “Are you two quite done with the whispering teenage girls routine?” Horus asked with a bored air.

  “Just about,” I stuck my tongue out at him.

  “I really think some of us should go in with you this time,” Trevor pushed aside the banter.

  “To what purpose,” I shook my head. “It's a covert mission and now that I know to use the goggles, we don't have to worry about a confrontation.”

  “Yes,” Finn made a face at me, “but you inevitably find ways to fuck up the best laid plans.”

  “Hey,” I made a face back at him.

  “It's kind of accurate,” Odin shrugged.

  “Oh not you too,” I looked over at him, aghast.

  “Mom, I'd feel better if someone else went with you,” Vidar added as he flung his long black hair over his shoulder in a very feminine gesture.

  “No fair,” I pointed a finger at him, “using the son card. Have you all forgotten the imps? They may be small but they're fire fey and they're bad ass. Not to mention, inside the Inter Realm, they're even more formidable. I really have all the back up I need.”

  “Thank you, my Queen,” Meilyr nodded proudly.

  “Fine,” Trevor waved a hand in a frustrated manner. “Take your fey and leave your god friends behind, Vervain.”

  “What the fuck, Trevor?” I gaped at my alpha lover.

  “Ever since you started going into Faerie, we've started to lose you, bit by bit you're becoming more fey and less goddess,” Trevor growled.

  “This is a hell of a conversation to start now,” I felt my blood start to heat. “And you've forgotten that I'm human too.”

  “I'm not the only one who thinks so,” Trevor looked at Kirill and Odin, and they both gave me bashful nods.

  “Are you serious?” I huffed. “You think I'm becoming more fey? Here's a clue, you assholes, I am fey! Now my fey ass is going to go into the Inter Realm and save all your god asses with my fey family and I don't need any of your god damned god magic to do it!”

  I stood up, knocking the chair back out of my way. I stomped to the library, each step an angry echo that fell into the shocked silence I left behind me. Part of me wrenched at the thought that I'd hurt my men but another part of me didn't care. It whispered that no one had loved me truly since Thor. This was why I'd been so attracted to him lately, I could sense their betrayal.

  “Fuck,” I growled as I drug a hand over my face. “get it together, V.”

  “My Queen?” Meilyr stood at the front of an imp cluster, all the little faces focused on mine.

  “Sorry guys,” I smiled at them but it may have come off looking more like a grimace. “It's okay, I'm okay, let's do this.”

  They nodded and we jumped in.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Being in the Inter Realm seemed to have both a calming and an exhilarating effect on me. My senses were on hyper-alert and with the addition of the goggles, I caught every glimmer of action. I stepped in further, walking through the threads of flying information, already used to the sensation of tingling energy merging with mine, and after awhile of peering about, I found him.

  “I see him,” I said to the imps and they gathered around me.

  We hunted the spider, following from afar, and watching carefully as he defiled thread after thread in the Inter Realm. It took all I had to stay back and let him wreck havoc but we had a bigger payoff in mind. Finally, he seemed to ha
ve enough of it and he turned about, racing off.

  I tracked him all the way to a large office building and watched through the diaphanous walls as he approached a large column of sickly green light in the center of it. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of tainted threads were attached to the column, pulsing out globs of venom like long lava lamps set on high speed. The spider jumped straight into that central shaft of poison, and disappeared. We approached after a few minutes went by and there was no sign of him returning.

  “Do you want to go through?” Meilyr eyed the column with me.

  “Is it safe to go into that?”

  “You've gone through a hub before, the information can't hurt you, you won't even have to view it if you choose not to. Simply harden your energy field to keep it from sinking in.”

  “Alright then,” I waved a hand to the column, “lead on.”

  He jumped in without hesitation but I took a moment to cloak myself with invisibility before I leapt into the column. The exit was fast but not fast enough. I thought I'd done what he'd said, hardened my energy, but it wasn't hard enough. Some of the filth being sent into the web seeped into me, giving me glimpses into the horror that could be wrought with just a computer and a deviant mind.

  I gasped and threw myself back against a wall to recover, as I surveyed the scene before me. We were in a huge room filled with computers. People sat at cubicles, typing away, talking on the phone, or printing things. All in all, a normal office space. Except for the strange machine at the center of the room. A machine we'd just popped out of.

  It was a shiny metal tube with buttons in bright colors just begging to be pushed, and cords bristling from it like tentacles on a robotic octopus. All the computers were plugged into the tube, undoubtedly sending bursts of evil down their wires and straight into the machine. The whole room glowed with the overlay of the Inter Realm but it was filled with noxious colors and every person in the place radiated some horrible picture of the grotesque person they really were. I couldn't take it, I pulled off the goggles and stuffed them into the inner pocket of my leather jacket.

  I slid horizontally down the wall, to peer over the shoulder of a pinch-faced man in a suit. He was posting on a white supremest website, organizing a nice get together involving lots of guns(which he wrote that he'd be happy to provide) and a Mexican restaurant. Let's just say they weren't going for the food. I was barely able to restrain myself from hitting that man over the head and destroying his computer.

  A jaunt around the room gave me several versions of the same sort of thing. Blogs, websites, and messages urging people to hate and hopefully hurt other people. I shook my head and started to edge toward the door, hoping the imps would either stay put or follow me closely, when a woman started screaming. I stopped automatically and looked over my shoulder at a woman who was sitting calmly at her desk while she screamed dramatically into her phone.

  “Please hurry, they're gonna kill us all!” She hung up with an evil grin and then stood to the applause of the room. “Thank you, thank you. When those teenagers finish their rampage through Searidge Mall, the cops will be waiting to gun them down. Nice and tidy.” She dusted her hands off as she received more applause. “Bonus, here we come!”

  I gaped and hurried out of the room before I started screaming too. I had thought Tlaloc was the most horrifying god I'd ever met but this went way beyond killing children. This was getting children to kill other children. It was evil and that evil was very visible through the magic lenses of Tlaloc's goggles. All the people in the room(and they were people, not a god to be found) were coated in a thick, pulsing, angry, black energy, like wildlife caught in an oil spill, on top of the horrible images of their true selves.

  We passed a room where a big screen showed a bunch of drivers license pictures in which the faces constantly shifted. The plaque on the door read “Identity Theft Department”. Then another room with a wall of several screens showing aerial views of places all over the world, with red spots indicating some kind of movement. This one was labeled “Terroristic Tactics”. I stumbled quickly past a door marked “Child Pornography”, knowing my mind couldn't take seeing whatever was inside there, before I came to “Drug Trafficking” and then “Facebook Havoc”. It went on and on, each room filled with people intent on ruining other people's lives... and not a single god in the bunch. I was utterly repulsed.

  I took a moment to catch my breath and quell my nausea, the sound of maniacal fingertips tapping away on plastic keyboards becoming a grating soundtrack to my horror flick of an adventure. The determined typing was broken periodically by screaming or shouting but no one really paid it much mind besides myself and possibly the imps.

  “The woman we set up with the serial killer made it to a phone,” someone announced from the room on my left, catching my attention.

  “Reroute the 911 call to our server,” a woman said and then she answered, “Hello, 911, what's your emergency? Can you tell me your location? Don't worry ma'am, I'm sending someone right now. Stay on the line with me.”

  I felt little hands slide into mine and I squeezed them tight as we listened to her reassure the woman, telling her over and over that the police were on their way and she was going to be okay. Then the woman on the other end started to scream, so loud it could be heard through the receiver, and the woman pretending to be 911 hung up.

  “And that's how it's done,” she said to the man who'd directed the call to her.

  “Holy shit,” I sniffed back the tears I hadn't realized I'd been crying and pulled us down the hall as I whispered to the imps. “I just need to find out where we are and then we can leave this fucked-up, death-dealing office.”

  “To the right,” Meilyr whispered back.

  The hall split, a corridor opening up to a reception room of some kind. Though who they'd be receiving here was beyond me. They had their crimes carved into metal plaques for all to see, and I hadn't even made it all the way down the hallway. You wouldn't think they'd want any visitors but there it was, a reception area complete with desk and bored looking receptionist, browsing through Pinterest on her computer.

  And on the wall behind her was a sign that read “Iktomica Technologies”.

  I wasn't happy with just that though, I wanted more. So I sidled closer to the desk and saw two little business card holders placed front and center. In one was a card declaring that Iktomi Blackspider was the CEO and founder of Iktomica, and the other held cards which proclaimed that Mica Wilycoyote was CEO, and co-founder.

  “Hi, Monica,” a man came up beside me, startling me backward a few steps.

  “Hi, Torrent,” she smiled back at him. “How's the boss today?”

  “Fine,” he nodded and smiled distractedly as his eyes slid over and met mine. I inhaled softly and he smiled a little. He could see me. “He's on his way.” He seemed to be talking to me, “better get busy.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” Monica laughed as Torrent headed straight for me.

  Before I could do anything, he had my arm in a vise grip and was hauling me down the hallway. I looked him over, trying to find a weakness, looking for the best place to attack him. He was tall but then everyone seemed tall when you only stood five foot three... and a half. Obviously he was strong, I couldn't pull my arm free and believe me, I tried, but you wouldn't know it to look at him. His was a leanly muscled frame, though I wouldn't call him skinny. He was actually thicker than I immediately thought, being one of those guys that looked thinner because of his height.

  He had short, platinum blonde hair, almost pure white but I'd seen the purest white hair there was on King Cian and Torrent's wasn't near as pristine, it had a little tinge of yellow to it. His skin was porcelain pale and just as perfect, I couldn't see a single pore. It was like he'd been painted, airbrushed, or something. His eyes were intense, a vivid lime green, and when we finally reached the relative seclusion of the hallway, he turned them on me. From that proximity I could see how clear they were, no tints or striations li
ke normal eyes have. It was like they were made of glass. He looked like a giant doll.

  “What are you?” I whispered.

  He pulled back a little, startled. “I'm surprised you noticed, most people don't.”

  “How could they not?” I glanced down as I felt the imps grab onto my legs.

  “Should we attack, my Queen?” Meilyr whispered.

  “Hold, creatures,” Torrent held up a hand. “We don't have time for this, he approaches.”

  “Who?” I looked over my shoulder.

  “Iktomi of course,” he frowned at me and gave me a nudge toward an open door. “You must flee, Godhunter. You shouldn't have come here.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “Not now,” he growled and pointed at an open desk, the computer left on. “Go! And quickly!”

  We ran for the room and I pushed the imps ahead of me. I felt them disappear into the Inter Realm, one by one until there was only me. I breathed a sigh of relief and reached for the screen. A second before I made contact, something pulled me back and I got a glimpse of triumphant black eyes before my world went as dark as that stare.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  My shoulders ached, my fingers were numb, and there was a pounding in my head but the pain was different, muted somehow and yet amplified. Like when you burn your hand and the pain recedes only to return worse. Even while its gone, you know the pain is still there, waiting for another go at you, and all you can do is try to will it away, fight it off with your mind. That's what it was like, mind pain.

  I opened my eyes slowly, getting little flashes of odd landscape until I blinked it into focus. Even after several blinks, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I shook my head, tried to wipe at my eyes, and realized I was dangling by my wrists. I wiped my eyes against my arm and looked up. I was hanging from a sturdy branch on a dead tree, just like everyone else in the nightmarish place. I at least had one advantage over the rest of my companions. I was alive.