by Leia Stone
Releasing the Gods
The Titan’s Saga Book One
Jaymin Eve
Leia Stone
Copyright © 2019 by Leia Stone and Jaymin Eve. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced. Stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, live or dead are purely coincidental.
Stone, Leia
Eve, Jaymin
Releasing the Gods
For information on reproducing sections of this book or sales of this book go to www.leiastone.com or www.Jaymineve.com
[email protected]
[email protected]
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Wrath of the Gods
Acknowledgments
#ForAllOfOurAmazingReaders
Chapter 1
Sometimes your life can change in a single moment. Or for me … with a single dare.
“I double dare you, Maisey!” Matt drawled out; he was half a dozen beers in and looking ready to tip over. “Remember your favorite hashtag: YOLO.”
I was five tequila shots in and definitely ready to tip over, but what were twenty-first birthdays for if not to get smashed? A grin pulled at my lips as my friends and work buddies from the Crab Shack chanted my name and my favorite hashtag. It was common knowledge that I was the #HashtagQueen.
I pointed a wobbly finger at Matt’s chest. “Well, if you double dare me, I don’t see how I can refuse.” Logic was not my strongest suit on a good day, and with this much liquor pouring through my system, I was going to show Matt who was boss.
The beach party erupted into applause as I set down my shot glass and kicked off my sandals, toes digging into the warm sand. Summer nights in Santa Barbara were heaven; the weather was sublime and the parties never stopped.
“Be careful!” my friend Shauna called out as I started my climb up the rocks to the supposedly haunted cave. Shauna was a buzzkill ninety-nine percent of the time, but she was a good friend and I wouldn’t judge her—too much—for her general love of sobriety and lack of need to get shitfaced and party with the rest of us.
I waved her off, grabbing the rock in front of me and hauling myself up. “I’m just going to get a selfie, then I’ll be right back down.” Everyone here knew I was selfie obsessed. It was basically who I was. Unless you wanted to look deeper. And who ever did that anymore?
“Remember, when you get to the top, you have to scream ‘Matt has a huge dick’ from the top of your lungs,” Matt reminded me.
Yeah, that was totally going to happen.
#Not
I nodded, hiking higher up the rock, bare feet finding footholds way better than I could in sandals. I swear I didn’t even know what shoes were for.
The music started again and I grinned when I saw that I was already halfway up. Matt had been too scared to climb up here, telling me stories about how the cave was haunted because people had seen weird lights and smoke up here last year. But, seriously ... haunted my ass. I didn’t believe in ghosts or any of that shit. Mermaids maybe but, again … logic.
My friends let out another cheer and I thought again how nice it was of everyone from work to throw me a twenty-first birthday rager. It was a Wednesday night and we all had shifts waiting tables tomorrow, but here they were getting plastered with me like the good friends they were. The only friends I had…
The rock had gotten super steep now and I thanked myself for investing in those rock climbing lessons at the gym. I was nearing the top when my foot slipped and adrenaline burst through my veins, chasing some of the alcohol away. Reaching out blindly to catch myself, I grabbed on to a sharp slice of rock, and it cut into my palm immediately.
“Fuck!” I hissed, before thankfully regaining my footing so that I could let go of the rock and find a less stabby place to grab.
I peered down, saw crimson blood spurting all down my palm, and a fit of giggles erupted from me.
Holy shit, I was wasted. This should hurt, like really hurt, but it didn’t.
It will tomorrow.
Not one to quit a double dare, I climbed the rest of the cliff as best I could with my injured hand and reached the top in what I personally felt was record time. Standing, I swayed a little and looked down at my friends, who cheered as they stood around the raging bonfire. The last light of day was leaving the sky and soon we’d be plunged into complete darkness.
“Matt is a giant dick!” I screamed from the top of my lungs, thrusting a fist into the air for good measure.
Everyone burst out laughing, all except Matt, and then I pulled my cell phone out.
I needed a really spooky cave selfie for my Insta page. I almost had ten thousand followers and Shauna thought I could become an influencer and get paid to advertise skinny tea and shit if I got to 100K. So I was on a mission. Social media influencer in the making. #Blessed #SkinnyTeaIsLegit
Most of my photos were of me in bikinis because I had zero shame in my game and needed money. But sometimes I took cool pics, like this haunted cave picture I was about to snap. And I always made sure to tag my favorite “save the whales” charity, because in the end our world was fucked if someone didn’t try and save it. Even one small part of it.
Stumbling into the cave, I suddenly had the very real thought that an animal could live in here. Like a bobcat or even a mountain lion. That did creep me out.
“Hello, anyone here?” I asked, like the stupidest heroine in a horror film. I flicked on my cellphone light, and when it lit up the cave wall I gasped. “What the hell is that?”
My heart knocked against my chest as I stumbled forward to get a closer look at the engraved circular … piece of art? If you could call it that. It looked like a circle with shiny marble in the center and a bunch of carvings around it. One of the carvings was of a face.
Now I knew why this cave was called haunted; it had some old archeological shit up here. This would be perfect for my selfie.
Stepping closer to it, I tripped over a rock and stumbled forward. Putting out my hand to catch myself from knocking out my teeth on the shiny marble, I winced as my injured bloody palm smacked into the center of the stone.
Shit. Ouch.
The tequila must have been wearing off already; pain started to throb in my palm.
Before I could even lament the fact that I would be picking dirt chunks out of my cut for a week, a faint white glow emitted from the stone. My eyes widened as a deep buzzing worked its way down my arm and into my body. Then, before I could cry, or freak out, the white light turned a hazy hot pink.
What in the...?
All I’d had to drink was tequila … but I wouldn’t put it past Matt to drop acid into my drink or something crazy like that. It took my brain far too long to process that my hand was still pressed to the glowing, vibra
ting stone wall. When I finally pulled it away, I left behind a bloody handprint.
The macabre artwork from Yours Truly seemed to fade and blend into the images that had already been there, and I backed up slowly. What the hell was going on? Just as I was about to turn tail and run, the bloody handprint on the marble stone began to … melt or fade away, and in its place a landscape slowly formed.
Acid, definitely acid.
I was having the craziest hallucination ever. Looking through this … hole in the cave wall, my gaze fell onto a desolate land of sharp rocks and red glowing embers.
“Maisey!” Shauna called out from below, her voice high and tinny.
I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot as a half-naked, gigantic muscle of a man suddenly stepped into view. Confusion crossed his face as he looked through the cave window and into my eyes, then that confusion turned into scorn as he raked his eyes across me.
I gulped in air, trying to figure out if there was any way this was really happening. I’d never seen anyone that looked like him—not ever—and I lived in a beach town full of hot surfer boys.
This dude was something else.
Hot as fuck … like smoking hot. But also … dangerous. He was nearly seven feet tall and looked like he could eat an entire cow for dinner. His hair was black as the night sky, his eyes a dark blue color with streaks of gold, and his skin was a few shades lighter than bronze. He was painted in dark shadows and shades of gold, making him look more like a sculpture than human. That half-lidded look of his was assessing me as hard as I was examining him.
When our gazes locked, I made a small screeching sound as my survival instincts finally kicked in.
Guy was hot as fuck but also looked like an axe murderer.
Run!
“Hey there,” I said weakly, backing away.
His eyes cut through me, biting … confused.
“You released me?” he asked, his voice deep and gravely, his well-shaped eyebrows rising in surprise. He spoke with a mild accent that I couldn’t place, stumbling a little over the words like it was his first time speaking in a while.
I simply nodded. “I’m on acid.”
Because what other explanation was there?
As he stepped through the cave wall and stood before me, it all became too much for my brain. That’s when the darkness slammed into me and I passed out.
Chapter 2
I assumed that I only lost consciousness for a few moments, because when I came to he was still standing in the exact same position, looking around the cave, that slightly confused—intimidating—expression on his face.
With a groan, I rubbed at my head, before remembering that I’d cut my hand and was now probably wearing a grisly mask of my own blood.
“Shit.”
His head turned back to me as I cursed, and I found myself scrambling away from him.
“Are you a ghost?” I asked.
Maybe that would explain him. I mean, this cave was haunted, right?
He narrowed his eyes on me, giving me the “are you fucking stupid?” look, before he took a step forward. For the first time I managed to drag my eyes off his perfect face to notice that his mostly bare chest had an armored plate on it, gold and bronze, with symbols etched into the metal. The symbols looked a lot like the symbols on the portal thing, and I was starting to get a really bad feeling about what had just happened here.
He’d said “You released me” right before I passed out. Which meant…
My eyes landed back on the portal, and that bad feeling intensified.
“Where am I?” he asked, in that same deep, accented voice. “What time is this?”
“It’s like 8 P.M,” I stuttered out. “In Santa Barbara.”
He shook his head. “No. What time on the calendar? What age have I found myself in?”
Oh Jesus. I was starting to understand what he wanted to know. What I didn’t understand was why he wanted to know it. Because surely it wasn’t because he just stepped out of a stone wall portal. Right?
#I’mSoScrewed
“It’s the age of social media, dude,” I said, trying to lighten the mood in here before he killed me. “Twenty-nineteen.” He still looked confused, so I added: “Two thousand and nineteen AD.”
I’d been half joking, but some clarity appeared on his face. “It’s been … over a thousand years.”
Oh fuck. He’d better not be talking about how long since he’d stepped out of a wall, because there was only so much my tequila-addled brain could handle at this minute.
“So … this has been…” horrible, scary, completely fucked up. “...fun and all … but I’ve gotta go now. So … like … have a great life.”
I scrambled to my feet and launched myself toward the entrance of the cave. I’d made it two steps out when an intense pain ripped through my spine so fast and painful that I cried out.
He had me. He hit me or something.
I looked over my shoulder to find that he was still at least six feet away from me. The pain intensified, making me feel like I was being ripped in two, and this time I screamed.
My friends must have heard from the beach. They were suddenly shouting my name, and I heard scrambling below as some of them started to climb up to me. I could just barely see over the edge of the cave to their frightened faces below.
Before I could say anything, strong hands wrapped around my waist, hauling me up off the ground and back into the cave. The moment he touched me, the pain faded, and I was left breathless and totally freaking out.
“Put me down!” I demanded as he held me over his shoulder like a caveman. No guy had ever held me like this … like I weighed fucking nothing. How strong was this guy?
He moved and more of our bare skin touched as something dark and potent opened up in my chest, warmth spreading through me. He set me down and then stared at me for many long moments. Was he a Viking or something? Because there was no way he was a normal dude from around here.
No freaking way.
“I wonder,” he mused aloud, staring at my chest as if he expected something to pop out of it.
His head moved closer to mine as his grip around my waist tightened. “Only one way to find out,” he whispered.
Then he chucked me off the cliff.
Another scream ripped from me as I sailed through the air, the pain returning, slicing through me, along with the fear that I was about to die.
#FML
Before I had too much time to anticipate my demise, my fall started to slow, and like I’d been attached to a large elastic cord, I was flung back up, almost landing on the angry giant that had just tried to kill me.
Motherfucker!
He caught me with one hand, his head tilted like he was observing me. Or a bug. That was exactly how I’d look at a bug that was in my hand.
“There’s a life debt between us,” he said, and the heavy, graveled undertones of his voice added some extra scary to those words. “We’re bound…”
Swallowing hard, I shook my head. “Look, I’m sorry for whatever is happening here, but please don’t throw me off the cliff again.” I spoke to him like the big fucking stupid oaf that he was, using a low, calm voice and small words. “I’m only twenty-one. I’ve barely done anything in my life. I’m not even at ten thousand followers on the ‘Gram. I volunteer cleaning up plastic from the beach and donate to Save the Whales foundation. I’m pretty much a good person. I need to live!”
I babbled when I was drunk and scared, and for most people it would have seemed shallow that I couldn’t die until I got more social media followers, but the truth was, I’d set myself some goals and I was not fucking dying until I achieved them. I wasn’t meant to be a waitress forever. I just wasn’t.
Weird cave giant be damned.
He just grunted as if he didn’t care about a word I’d just said.
“I can’t believe you tried to kill me,” I said slowly, before I pushed hard against his chest, trying to break free of his hold. “Let me
down, you … murderer.”
He seemed taken aback as he opened his arms, letting me fall to the floor.
“Ouch!” I rubbed at my ass. Fucker was too tall to be dropping people like that.
“I was testing a theory, and now we know.” He shrugged like his little theory test didn’t just involve almost murdering me. “Trust me, I do not want to be bound to you. I don’t need any complications in my life now that I’m no longer imprisoned.”
I’m sorry, did he just say imprisoned?
#HotFelonAlert
It explained why he’d just tossed me off a cliff testing his theory. Was probably imprisoned for murder.
I stood to my full five-foot-six height and puffed out my chest. “Look, pal, I don’t know where you’re from, but when people bother us here on Earth we don’t just kill them!” Mostly. We thought about it but didn’t follow through. #MoreAccurate
He frowned. “I haven’t been to Earth in ages, but are you sure that’s right?”
Oh God. Matt better have dropped me acid or I feared I was losing my mind.
In one quick movement, he reached out and grabbed my bleeding hand, pulling it to his nose and sniffing. “I see,” he growled, yanking me closer to him, and with one hand lifted me up and over his shoulder like a damsel in distress.
“What are you doing?” I shouted, kicking and screaming. “What do you see?”
What did he see? Was there something in my blood? That handprint had seemed to be the catalyst to opening the … the wall.
He walked to the cave entrance. “Now that I’m free, my family will look for me. We need to hide until my powers return.”