The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series)

by Lizzy Ford

  By the intensity of his look, he was assessing her as she neared. His unnerving way of reading her condition left her a little more uncertain than she’d been with him. The distance between them seemed to be both too far and too close, and she stopped several feet away.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly.

  “Good enough,” she replied.

  The quiet between them was awkward.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m happy you called.”

  “Well, I kind of needed a ride,” she said, starting to smile. “I feel like I need a vacation.”

  “To where?”

  “Some place warm. By the ocean. With a private beach.”

  Jonny’s eyes gleamed. “I know just the place.”

  “I might need my own room,” she mused mischievously.

  “Fuck no.”

  Her body flushed with warmth from the inside out and she almost laughed at the giddiness soaring through her. Unable to take the distance between them anymore, Ashley set down Cat and flung her arms around Jonny.

  He hugged her to him hard and sighed into her hair. “Are you ready to come home?”

  “You’re, like, four years late to the party.”

  “I’ll make it up to you. I promise,” he whispered.

  “You’re sure this time?” she asked and leaned her head back to see his face.

  Jonny cupped the side of her face. “Are you sure you want the Black God in your life?”

  “This may come as a surprise, but I don’t actually hate you.”

  He laughed, a pleasantly warm sound from a man who rarely smiled. “I kinda figured that out,” he teased. “I’m sure, Ashley.” He grew more serious. “I’ve spent too long trying not to love you. I want to spend the rest of our lives showing you how much I care about you.”

  Speechless at the sentiment, Ashley felt tears sting her eyes.

  He rested his forehead against hers, and she breathed his scent in deeply. “Thank you,” he murmured.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For being strong enough to love me despite what I am. For reminding me what it means to fight for something and someone.”

  She melted against him with a sigh. “I love you, too, Jonny. Freaky Black God powers, fangs and all.” She winked. “Like I said. The vampire thing is kind of a turn on.”

  Nuzzling her head aside, he nipped at her neck before sinking his fangs into her. He sipped rather than drank before withdrawing from her neck. “Just had to make sure you’re up for what I have in mind,” he murmured.

  “Which is …”

  He grinned wickedly. “Why don’t we go find out?”

  Ashley laughed, unable to recall when she’d last been this happy.

  Epilogue

  The White God and his mate, the Oracle Sofia, watched the young lovers embrace outside the walls of the compound.

  “I told you so,” Sofi whispered.

  Damian wrapped his arms around the tiny frame of his mate. “I know, kiri,” he said softly. “You’re always right. Except when I’m righter, which I was about Jonny not being able to resist a strong yet vulnerable woman who won’t put up with his bullshit.”

  She laughed. “This makes me happy. I don’t know if I should feel that way about the Black God or not.” She twisted to look up at him. “You’ve been enemies for so long.”

  Damian smiled down at his mate and pulled her against him. She pressed her cheek to his chest, her arms going around him. “I think it’s okay. They’re a good pair,” Damian said. “I think she can keep him from doing anything stupid, and he’ll protect her from herself. I think this is the beginning of a very different world than anything we’re used to.”

  “Yeah. It is,” Sofi replied. “We’ll see an era of peace for quite some time. The Watchers will honor their promise and Jonny has the additional motivation he needs to keep his vamps in line.”

  “Can I call it or can I call it?” he boasted. “And I don’t even have your Sight.”

  “I don’t know how you do it. You’ve always had so much faith in the good in everyone.”

  “Not always. Not until I learned even I was salvageable.”

  “You were never lost.”

  “I was,” Damian replied. “Until you.”

  Sofi gazed up at him, smiling, her clear blue eyes circled by molten silver. When she used her gift, the silver swirled around her eyes, transfixing anyone who looked at her. “I would’ve found you. Eventually.”

  “On the contrary, kiri, I would’ve found you,” he assured her. “You’re my world.”

  “And you’re mine.”

  They gazed at one another for a long, tender moment.

  “Papa!” Five-year-old Aidan, their son, raced towards them from the direction of the house. He had Damian’s blond hair and golden eyes – and his mother’s molten silver circling his irises. “I won!”

  Damian released his mate and knelt to greet his son with a bear hug. “What did you win?” he asked. Aidan was large for his age but still far smaller than Damian, who towered half a head at least over the tallest person in every crowd.

  “We’re going to play vamps-and-guardians later, and I won!”

  Sofi laughed. “Aidan, sweetheart, you’re not supposed to tell people what you See of the future. Remember?”

  Aidan sighed.

  “Gods help me,” Damian said and pulled away to look at Aidan’s grinning features.

  “Come on, Papa!” Aidan shouted and started away. “It’s time to play.”

  “Go on, Aidan,” Sofi told him with a smile. “We’ll be right there.”

  They watched him race back towards the ranch house, pass the Guardians milling around the gym, and join Dusty and Bianca’s dark-haired, twin toddlers. Aidan took the hand of each girl and began tugging them towards the building renovated into a play area for the ever expanding brood of children housed at the compound.

  “Two Oracles,” Damian said. “I guess there’s a first time for everything. Peace with the Black God, a future White God with Sight.” He shook his head and rose. “I have no idea how I’m going to stay sane.”

  “You’ll figure it out.” Sofi rested against him, and he hugged her once more. “You always do.”

  In truth, he was kind of looking forward to a life of peace with his family after so many thousands of years of managing a world filled with turmoil and pain. What had started several years before as an attempt to keep his former enemy from obtaining an Oracle had changed the course of everything.

  Damian swept Sofi up into his arms. She smelled of vanilla and baby powder today, an earthy-innocent combination that made his blood burn hotter. “Aidan needs a brother,” he said, holding his mate’s gaze. Her features flushed, and this time, when her eyes swirled, it was out of desire.

  “The next one’s a girl,” she murmured.

  “Just when I thought things were getting better …” Damian winked.

  She laughed.

  “Boy, girl. As long as you’re in my arms, and our family’s together, I really don’t care.” He walked with her back towards the ranch house and disappeared inside, the love of his life in his arms.

  The War of Gods Series

  Damian’s oracle

  Damian’s Assassin

  Damian’s Immortal

  The Grey God

  The Damian Eternal Series

  Xander’s Chance

  The Black God

  “Omega” – sneak peek!

  Continue reading for an exclusive peek at “Omega” (releasing October 2015)

  In a modern world ruled by territorial Greek gods, the human race has been oppressed, exploited and now, nearly destroyed by the constant infighting of gods.

  However, a human girl with the power of a goddess is coming of age. Alessandra is the Oracle of Delphi – the last prophesized – and bears the mark of the double omega. Soon after she turns eighteen, Alessandra is told her destiny: to step between the warring gods and the human race and save
her world from certain ruin.

  For the gods, her appearance marks the beginning of the end – their end. They and the Triumvirate – leaders of the human elite – who serve them will stop at nothing to preserve their power.

  Alessandra emerges from the forest where she spent her life hidden from gods and men and immediately plummets into a race against time, gods, and herself to discover who and what she is in a world where everyone she meets has a hidden agenda, and those pulling the strings remain in the shadows.

  Before she can determine exactly what kind of savior her world needs, she must first master her power by completing three trials devised by the Triumvirate to enslave her.

  One lone girl stands between warring gods and the people she’s destined to protect, but it’s the battle to understand who she is that she must win first.

  Click here to add it to your Goodreads TBR!

  Want “Omega” updates, exclusive news, and giveaways? Join the Omega Fandom mailing list! Click here to join! (link: http://eepurl.com/bjRQCv)

  Chapter One: Alessandra

  No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.

  – Homer

  For once, Tyche, could you grant me a little luck?

  I slowed before reaching my favorite meadow in the forest, my heart racing and chest heaving. A grin stretched my cheeks, and I stopped to listen for the boy I’d challenged to a race. I heard … voices. Male and at least two females.

  “I guess not,” I muttered aloud.

  The damn nymphs had him. My giddy excitement faded. I was the one who managed to lure a teen boy from the nearby campground into our forest and, as usual, the nymphs stole him. I couldn’t compete with the beautiful women. There were thirty of them my age, all unusually perfect, feminine and graceful. Even my guardian said they weren’t normal, and we’d coined the term nymphs to describe the other girls at the isolated orphanage where I lived under the thumb of strict priests. The other girls were all my age, too, each of them destined for positions befitting their beauty, according to the priests.

  It was disgusting. I couldn’t stand them.

  Then there was me. I was an athlete, uncomfortable in anything but tennis shoes and yoga pants, terrible in school and bearing a scar from childhood across one cheek. No matter how much makeup I plastered over it or how far forward I brushed my dark locks, I wasn’t able to hide it. I was always late to class, always the last to understand whatever torture the priests were teaching us, always trying to catch the first light of Aurora in the reflecting pool or scaling a hill to watch the last rays of Hersperides.

  The nymphs laughed at me. I hated them for it and me for not being able to fit in no matter what I did. I couldn’t change the fact I was shorter, smaller and otherwise imperfect compared to them.

  “Lose another one, Lyssa?”

  “Yeah.” I heard my guardian’s approach and looked up into his scarred, ugly face. A mountain of a man with bright red hair, Herakles had never once understood why I was so disappointed to lose every guy I looked at to the nymphs.

  “If a man can’t outrun you – ”

  “– I can’t bring him home with me. House rules. I know.” It was a stupid rule. Surely there had to be one man somewhere who shared my deer-like agility.

  My guardian chuckled.

  “He was so handsome!” I whined with a sigh, recalling the gorgeous brown eyes and smile of the teenage boy I’d met today. When he had looked at me, my insides turned fluttery and warm. “He almost outran me, too.”

  “Only because you slowed down.”

  I rolled my eyes and spun away, headed towards the compound in the middle of a forest where we all lived. “So what? Everyone here has kissed a boy and I can’t even look at one without the stupid nymphs taking him away. They just bat their eyes and the boys fall all over them.” I made a show of shaking my hips and blinking rapidly in mockery.

  “I’ve never kissed a boy.”

  “You know what I mean!” Herakles was a jerk sometimes. His rules were designed to prevent me from ever having a boyfriend. There were moments when I didn’t think I’d care; my interests lay in martial arts and sports. If not for the nymphs conspiring to steal any boys I lured away from the campground and always taunting me about everything, I wouldn’t look twice at a boy. But I shared one sole trait with the nymphs: competitiveness. I wanted so badly to best them at something and earn enough respect not to be bullied every day for the rest of my life.

  “You could try studying harder,” Herakles suggested.

  “Right. Like that’s going to get me a boyfriend.”

  “There is more to life than boys and whatever else it is your head is full of,” Herakles reminded me. “You don’t need a man anyway. You can take care of yourself. I’ve trained you to survive anything.”

  “I know I don’t need one. I want one so the nymphs stop laughing at me. Just for a day, then I’d let him go like you free the rabbits I catch.”

  “You noticed.”

  I arched my eyebrow at him. “I figured it out after I caught the same one every day for a week when I was, like, sixteen. You know the nymphs don’t have to hunt rabbits, don’t you? They don’t have to run every day or build their own campfires and shelters on the weekends. They get to go to town, Herakles, and see movies!” I sighed, tortured by my miserable existence. “Can I be normal? Just for one weekend?”

  “Normal people aren’t prepared for their world to change or to face the trials awaiting them.”

  “The zombies apocalypse isn’t coming. The priests say the world has never known a time of greater peace and prosperity and the gods are happier than ever.”

  “An apocalypse is not required to announce itself,” he stated.

  I bit my tongue. I knew better than to argue with Herakles. He was of a singular mind and convinced the world was going to end any day. Nothing I’d ever said over the past twelve years had dented his obsession with self-reliance and survival. I learned to hunt game bigger than me, forage for berries, survive in extreme weather conditions and other skills the nymphs – and even my teachers – often ridiculed. Sometimes he blindfolded me or hobbled one leg or arm so I had to survive for a weekend alone in the forest with simulated physical impediments. He first dropped me off in part of the forest alone with no compass when I was nine. I bawled for a day until he came to get me. Instead of taking me back, we stayed in the forest, and he taught me to navigate by the stars.

  No one understood why he made me do these things, least of all me. I obeyed him because, above all else, I loved my Herakles, as weird as he was. While we were accepted here, we didn’t fit in at the school filled with nymphs and priests. We had to stick together, two dented peas in a misshapen pod.

  “The man you want will be able to outrun, outhunt and outsmart you. When you meet him, you can marry him. Until then, no man will do,” Herakles said.

  “I don’t want to marry anyone,” I said. “I just want to kiss him.”

  “Then you can kiss the man who catches you.”

  His conditions for me seeing someone were impossibilities. Herakles alone was the only man who could keep up with me. It was his way of saying I’d never have a boyfriend as long as I lived under his roof.

  I glanced up at the green canopy overhead. The blue sky resembled puzzle pieces from this angle, and not a cloud was in sight on this warm spring day. What torture did he have in store for me on such a beautiful Friday? I had to climb a rope or navigate whatever obstacle course he built before I was allowed to go to bed at night. Weekends were worse. I was exiled to the forest for more survival training until Sunday night.

  He was conditioning and preparing me for something. I had no idea what, and I suspected he was just a little off. A former Olympian, Herakles was the toughest, most honorable person I had ever known. He swept the annual Olympics for three years in a row before he stumbled upon me, rescued me from the house fire that killed my parents and brought us here. He didn’t respect anything but physical
prowess. He could barely read, and he had an almost allergic reaction to discussing anything regarding emotions.

  But he was my hero in every sense of the word.

  To this day, I was unable to recall what exactly happened the night I turned six except it involved Herakles catching me when I fell from the sky. Why or how I was flying, I didn’t know. I still occasionally dreamt of falling – but no fire. My life changed that night. Herakles was unwilling to talk about it even after I turned eighteen and was considered an adult by everyone but him.

  Herakles tugged the sleeve I’d tucked under my bra strap back down over the strange birthmark on my bicep that looked eerily like a double omega. The omega was the final letter in the Greek alphabet, or, according to Herakles, a sign of Armageddon. “Keep this hidden,” he reminded me.

  “I know.” I pulled both sleeves down so I didn’t look stupid with only one up.

  Picking my way through the forest back towards the compound where we lived, I considered the topic I’d been meaning to broach to him but hadn’t quite figured out the best way yet.

  “We haven’t talked about graduation,” I started. “It’s in three weeks.”

  “The world might end tomorrow. You should not think too far beyond today.”

  “Omigods, Herakles! I’m eighteen, and I’m graduating in three weeks! I want to go home!” Too late I realized I’d told him what I had hope to discuss in a calmer manner. I didn’t look back at him but focused on the path at my feet.

  “You know there is nothing for you there.”

  “So you’ve told me every time I asked. But I have to go somewhere,” I pointed out. “College. Waitress at a fast food joint. Holy Zeus, I’d become an initiate at a temple.”