by Linsey Hall
I probably looked ridiculous, but it seemed to satisfy them. Honestly, no one seemed that into the partying, so maybe they didn’t think it was weird that we were being lazy about it, too.
Until one person grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close.
Dark eyes blazed from behind a brilliant red mask. The figure hissed, “Intruder!”
I stopped breathing. The hands tightened on my arms. Cade turned toward us.
We couldn’t fight this woman. Not without igniting a massive brawl amongst the thousands who were here. Then the gods would be onto us, and the mission would be a failure.
And we’d probably end up dead.
Nope, not a good plan.
“No.” I shook my head. “Not an intruder.”
“You invade for information.” White stars danced in her dark eyes, not terribly different from Jude’s.
But this woman was a seer. I could feel it in her magic, a sense of knowing and seeing.
“Do it. Succeed.” Her voice was desperate. “We dance forever for the Hum Has, a Mayan god of death. Destroy them and free us.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.” Oh my fates, I sounded like an idiot.
“You have our word,” Cade said. “On our honor.”
I shot him a grateful look. He sounded much more reliable.
“If we destroy them, you’re free?” I asked.
She nodded. “Their magic ties us here.”
“Okay. I promise.” I squeezed her arm. “Can you tell us where to find information?”
“In the palace of the Agni, the Hindu fire god.”
“Where is that?”
“Two—”
A dancer slammed into her, driving her away from us. She was caught up in the crowd that danced endlessly around the fire, dragged away into the darkening night.
I turned to Cade, squeezing his hand tight. “Let’s go.”
We hurried through the crowd, making it to the other side without issue. As we neared the edge and the people cleared out, I caught sight of pale stone buildings outfitted with many peaked archways. Colorful tiles bordered the similarly peaked windows, and the structures were laid out in a very geometric and orderly fashion.
“Looks Arabic to me,” I said.
“That one.” Cade pointed to a large building at the far side. “Has to be the House of Wisdom.”
It was the biggest, so I’d bet money he was right.
We ducked behind another copse of palms, and I used my magic to make us invisible again. The whole process was probably a bit suspicious if someone were looking, but it was the best I could do. Better than just disappearing into thin air where anyone could see us, at least.
We hurried from the Mayan god’s realm and started across the Arabic one. Fine sand crunched underfoot, packed hard by time. A couple of camels loitered in front of a long, low building, but they were neither pink nor did I think they would sprout wings. Veronica and Doug’s camels were definitely superior.
As we neared the House of Wisdom, a calm sense of comfort flowed over me.
“Feel that?” I whispered.
“Aye. I think it’s coming from the House of Wisdom.”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me. Dummy.
As we neared, one of the statues near the doors seemed to shift slightly. They were roughly human shaped, blending with the tile behind them. I squinted.
One moved—just slightly.
Damn.
I stopped short, tugging on Cade’s hand, then raised our joined fists to point toward the guards. He squeezed my hand once, which I assumed meant he saw them. They blended well, but they were definitely there.
I searched the rest of the building. The moment I spotted an open window about ten feet off the ground, I felt Cade’s warm breath at my ear.
I shuddered—an entirely inappropriate reaction given the circumstances—then heard him whisper, “The window.”
I squeezed an acknowledgment, and we hurried toward it, our footsteps silent. The guards were a good twenty yards away, but we couldn’t afford to make a peep.
At the window, Cade boosted me up. I scrambled through, nearly toppling off the sill and inside. Barely, I managed to grab the ledge and cling to it, but my foot hit something solid on the inside of the building.
My stomach dropped, and I looked down.
Crap!
A burly demon with short black horns glared up, unable to see me but clearly having felt my foot. His magic smelled like rotten fish and tasted like old milk.
I drew my sword from the ether and lunged for him, pointing my blade straight down as I tumbled off the ledge into the building. It sliced his shoulder, and he opened his mouth to roar.
Fortunately, I fell on him with enough force to knock him to the ground and drive the breath from his lungs. He reached for a blade at his hip, but I reared up, raised my blade, and plunged it into his heart.
He twitched, then lay still, staring straight up at the ceiling.
Cade landed softly next to me. “You made quick work of that.”
I scrambled off the demon and yanked my blade out of his chest. “Let’s hide him. He’ll disappear soon, but we don’t need to take any chances.”
I couldn’t see Cade lift the demon since he was invisible, but suddenly the body was in the air, floating toward a large potted palm. It disappeared behind the palm—not totally hidden, but good enough.
“Where are you?” Cade whispered.
I followed his voice, reaching out blindly. My hands collided with his hard chest, and I worked my way down to grip his hand. Not for the first time, I wished that Loki’s powers worked like an invisibility charm, allowing us to see each other but making us invisible to the rest of the world.
But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and I was grateful for the wealth of magic the Norse gods had given me.
Together, we moved silently down the hall. We passed room after room full of books. All of them were fabulously decorated, the most beautiful library I’d ever seen.
This place was huge. How the hell were we going to find anything in here?
We probably needed to find someone and ask. A ghost librarian like Florian would be perfect. I could command him to do my will.
Odds were slim on that happening, however.
As we walked, I realized that some of the rooms emitted more power than others. Almost like the signatures of those who had been there before.
“Do you feel that?” I whispered. “The power coming from some of the rooms?”
“Aye, but they’re empty.”
“Maybe it’s from gods who were once here.”
“Let’s find the most powerful one, then,” he said.
We searched for five more minutes—poking our heads into different rooms—before finding a room that had the strongest magical signature of them all. It was vaguely familiar.
“Cocidius was here,” Cade said.
Bingo. That was it.
We hurried in, finding a space filled with massive tables at the center and books lining walls. Several maps were laid out on the tables, and I leaned over, inspecting them.
My skin chilled.
It was a map of north-central Scotland. All the way up by the sea.
Near the Protectorate.
“They’re homing in on us,” Cade said.
Oh, shit.
“Rowan said they had a way to track my magic, but that they hadn’t figured it all out yet.”
“They’re close, though.”
I swallowed hard and turned, intending to ransack the place until I had all the answers I needed.
The fist flew at my face before I could blink. Pain exploded in my jaw, and I hurtled back against the table.
Cade spun, but a potion bomb exploded against his chest. He keeled over, slamming into the ground with a thud. Two guards stood in front of us.
Ambushed!
While we’d been distracted by the horror of the map, someone had come upon us. Heard us.
I
rubbed my jaw and tried to rise, everything going in slow motion. If I could see Cade, it meant the pain had shocked me into losing control of our invisibility. Shit.
Two guards hovered over Cade’s prone form. One turned to look at me. Quick as a snake, he hurled a potion bomb. It smashed into my stomach, coating me in a cold liquid that froze my muscles.
I stiffened, then keeled over, slamming into the ground. Pain flared in my shoulder and hip.
Wait a sec…
He’d hit me. Before the pain had shocked me into losing control of Loki’s magic.
“How did you see us?” It was nearly impossible to move my jaw, but the words slurred out.
“You think a guard in the House of Wisdom is not equipped to see through invisibility?” The largest guard scoffed, a brutish sound that was at odds with his elegant armor. “We would not be very good guards, in that case.”
He had a point. But seeing through invisibility was a rare talent. Definitely not one you saw every day.
I struggled, trying to move as my blood turned to ice. If the Rebel Gods caught us now, we were doomed.
My skin chilled, and sweat broke out on my brow.
One of the guards bent and scooped me up, throwing me over his shoulder. The breath exploded out of me as my stomach was crushed, and I barely caught sight of the other guard struggling to heave Cade upward.
Good luck with that, jerk.
Eventually, they managed, carrying us through the hall and down some steps into a large, darkened basement. The air was cool and damp—strange, for the desert—while the ground was made of pressed dirt. So were the walls, for that matter. This place had been carved right out of the earth.
Yep—twenty bucks they were about to toss us in the dungeons.
Which actually gave me a bit of hope. Better than being taken straight to the Rebel Gods, after all.
“Throw them in,” growled the guard who held Cade.
“Don’t want to break them yet,” the other guard said.
I was inclined to go with his assessment.
Please don’t break us.
A moment later, I was tossed into a large, square bin. It was about eight feet across and built of sturdy metal. A chain sagged over the top of it, trailing off to the side wall where it was wrapped around a big drum.
They threw Cade in next to me. Though my muscles were still and unyielding, I wasn’t flat as a board anymore. I couldn’t move, but at least my body would bend without breaking.
Hopefully that meant the potions were wearing off.
One guard walked to the middle of the room and bent down, heaving as he pulled up a heavy grate on the floor. The other guard shoved at the bin that we’d been thrown into.
Oh, hell no.
They were going to try to shove us in that hole.
I struggled against the potion that bound me. Though my muscles twitched a bit—small victory—I couldn’t really move.
“Cade.” My mouth took about three seconds to form the sound.
“Bree.” His mouth took at least as long.
In the meantime, the guard started to push us across the ground toward the hole. He gave the bin one fast shove, and the thing plunged into the pit.
My stomach jumped into my throat as we plummeted. The bin stopped abruptly about ten feet down, a chain pulling taut.
“This sucks.” The words came slightly faster this time, and I managed to twitch my foot a whole inch.
The chain creaked as it began to lower us into the pit. Darkness surrounded us, the dirt wall roughly hewn.
Farther and farther we went. I strained my muscles, trying to get the motion back into them. My foot twitched again, then my leg. Arms. Neck.
“Can you move?” I asked Cade.
“Aye. Mostly.”
The bin slammed to the ground, and I peered upward, realizing that it was roughly the same width as the tunnel, leaving us not very much room to climb out.
The rattling of a chain sounded from above.
“Hurry and unhook it,” one of the guards muttered.
Oh shit. They were going to drop the chain in on us. No way they’d leave it connected to the top of the pit so we could climb it.
“Get out of the bin!” I strained to move, dragging myself up the wall of the bin.
The chain had to weigh a hundred pounds. More, even. If it landed on us, it’d crush bones without question. Next to me, Cade struggled like a giant, manly newborn calf. I probably looked just as ridiculous, the potion still seeping out of my muscles.
The chain rattled louder from above.
They were dragging it across the floor.
Oh hell.
I strained and heaved, managing to flop over the side of the bin like a fish and wedge myself between it and the wall.
Jackpot.
Cade dropped down next to me just as the chain began to fall.
I watched, heart racing, as it plummeted toward us. It slammed into the bin, making it rattle.
“Oh fates.” Sweat dripped down my back.
That had been a near miss. I could heal myself, but the last thing I wanted was some crushed bones to take care of.
“Apparently they aren’t concerned with wounding the prisoners,” he said.
“Crushing them, more like.”
“We won’t have long before they alert the Rebel Gods.”
Slowly, I stood on shaky legs. The potion bomb had almost faded, thank fates. Cade joined me, looking steadier on his feet.
I perked my ears, using Heimdall’s power to listen for the guards’ presence. The sound of retreating footsteps drifted up the stairs.
“Let’s make a break for it.” I climbed over the bin wall and back into our would-be death trap.
The chain was heavy as I picked it up and studied it. “I might be able to fly this to the top. Then you climb it and we deal with the grate that’s locking us in here.”
“They obviously weren’t expecting one of their captives to have wings.”
“Dumb.” Though it probably meant that the grate was sealed with a big freaking lock.
I unfurled my wings and held the chain tightly, then leapt off the ground. The pit was barely big enough for my wingspan, but I managed to fly upward a few feet. The chain pulled at me, heavier as I got it farther off the ground.
I pushed myself, sweat dripping down my temples as I flew toward the grate above. Every inch that I managed to rise was harder and harder, the chain enormously heavy for my wings.
Frustration beat in my chest.
Finally, I made it, looping the chain through a slat in the grate above and then clinging to it, letting my body weight drag the free end downward and pulling the rest of it taut.
“Are you all right?” Cade called up quietly.
“Fine!” I gasped, just hanging there as I caught my breath and my muscles recovered. My wings burned from the strain of flying.
Once I’d regained a bit of my energy, I was able to loop the chain around itself. It caught nicely, and I figured it would hold Cade’s weight.
“Wait down there a moment!” I flew to the top, studying the grate.
A massive lock kept us trapped, and unfortunately, it was on the outside. Too far for my picks to reach if I wanted to handle it myself.
That was a problem.
Scowling, I studied the area around the grate, looking for weaknesses. Now would be a great time for another godly power to come online. There were a lot of them. Surely at least one of the Norse gods had something that could help me with this.
Instead, my magic stayed dormant.
But my gaze landed on a shimmery blue form.
A pug dragon.
My pug dragon.
“Mayhem!”
5
The ghostly pug flew over to me, some kind of large pastry in her mouth. She seemed to have moved on from hams, at least while she was in the godly realm.
“Is that baklava?” I asked.
She woofed low in her throat, careful to keep quiet.
“Think you can help us out of here?” I asked.
In response, she tossed the baklava up into the air, then caught it in her mouth and swallowed it whole. She burped a bit of fire, then turned her attention to the metal grate, bypassing the lock entirely.
She blew a blast of flame at the metal grate, and I flew down, hovering underneath and avoiding the heat of her fire. She went at it for a while, until the grate turned bright red and began to drip.
I dodged it, calling down to Cade, “Watch out!”
Finally, she created a hole in the grate that was big enough for me to shimmy through—without my wings. Her fire was coming in smaller bursts now, though. Clearly, she was running low. We’d have to make do.
“Thanks, Mayhem.”
She grinned, then flew off, hovering slightly away. I waited, giving the hot metal some time to cool, then called down to Cade. “You can climb up now!”
I flew up to the grate near the hole and touched it. Yep, cool. I grabbed on, retracting my wings back into my body, then started to do the hardest thing I’d ever done—a pull-up.
I strained to heave myself out of the hole, muscles still aching from hauling the chain. My biceps trembled, and sweat dotted my brow. Though I managed to get myself partway there, my arms gave out a second later. I barely held on to the bars as my weight jerked downward.
Shit.
Was I not going to be able to climb out of here? All the badass magic I could do—flying, for fates sake!—and I was going to be defeated by a pull-up?
Actually, that wasn’t that hard to believe. Pull-ups were freaking impossible.
I strained again, giving it everything I had, but my muscles felt like water.
“I’ll give you a boost,” Cade said.
I glanced down. He’d climbed up the chain, which had thankfully held solid for him.
My pride wanted to tell him no, but fortunately, I had two brain cells to rub together and I was going to use them. “Thank you.”
His big hand cupped my butt, and he pushed. I might have appreciated the touch if I didn’t feel like I was about to lose my grip and plummet horribly to my death.
Funny how a little thing like that could kill the libido.
With his help, I managed to flop the top half of my body onto the grate and pull myself out. Cade, of course, leapt out of there like a damned gazelle, looking refreshed and strong.