by I. T. Lucas
But by their expressions, it was obvious he was on his own. He wasn’t sure, though, whether they were siding with Annani because they agreed with her, or because they feared the Goddess’s wrath.
CHAPTER 19: ANDREW
“What health inspection?” The Doomer who’d opened the door was talking to Andrew but his eyes were trained on Annani’s seductive smile.
Andrew flipped closed his inspector badge, which the Doomer had summarily ignored, and stuffed it into his jacket’s inner pocket. Apparently, it had been a waste of time and resources to bother with obtaining authentic documentation. All that had been needed was a pretty girl with a smile. Not that Annani was a girl, but she sure as hell looked like one. And she had a killer smile.
Well, it wasn’t a complete waste. With the badge and inspection order made and delivered on such a short notice, Andrew had gotten to show off his impressive resources and connections.
Puffing out his chest, Andrew cleared his throat. “It was all arranged with Mr. Dalhu. Could you please tell him that Mr. Wyatt from the health department and the nurse are here to check for the mold infestation? I’ve already explained everything once. I would rather not have to repeat myself.” Andrew affected a haughty, impatient tone.
Without acknowledging Andrew, the Doomer smiled at Annani and stepped back. “Mr. Dalhu is indisposed at the moment, but if you cleared this with him, then by all means, come in.” He extended his arm and with a dip of his head invited Annani to go ahead. Following her inside, he left Andrew to trail behind.
“How can I be of assistance? Miss.?”
“Rebecca… “ Annani pointed to the name tag pinned to the lapel of her short nurse’s dress. “Nurse Rebecca McBrie.”
Annani’s outfit looked dangerously close to a naughty nurse’s costume, even though it was the real thing and had been purchased from a de facto nursing supply store.
Cinched with a matching belt, the white dress accentuated Annani’s tiny waist, and with its top buttons unfastened, the top of her braless breasts were enough to cause a riot. White pantyhose and flat, white shoes completed the fetching outfit. She had tied her voluminous red hair in a loose bun, leaving a few wayward strands to frame her stunning face.
The Doomer was practically drooling, enthralled even before the Goddess used any of her formidable powers.
Apparently, she didn’t need to.
Gazing up at the tall guy, Annani said, “Any room with a chair would do. And a door. I need to take skin and blood samples from each occupant.” She smiled and winked. “In privacy.” She touched the guy’s chest.
The Doomer sucked in a breath. “Of course, let me show you to the study.” He reached for her arm.
“Hold on…” Andrew stayed the guy’s hand. “First, I need to collect a few samples from the walls, and Nurse Rebecca is not allowed to draw blood unsupervised. Standard protocol.” He’d promised Kian not to let her out of his sight. Not that he would’ve even without that promise. “Please, assemble the home’s occupants first, and once everyone is here, we’ll go ahead and test each one individually.”
The Doomer narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Andrew for a long moment as if just realizing that there was someone besides Nurse Rebecca in the room.
Andrew managed to look down his nose at the guy with all the self-importance of a pompous city official, but as the seconds ticked off, he tensed, expecting the Doomer to smarten up and turn them away.
“What is your name, big guy?” Annani touched the guy’s bicep. “Oh, my, you must work out, like a lot. Look at those arms.” She brought her other palm and tried to connect the fingers of her tiny hands around the muscle he was now flexing for her. “I cannot encircle it even with both my hands… the fingers do not meet… so strong…” she gasped.
“Edward.” The Doomer grinned like an idiot, Annani’s somewhat odd speech pattern escaping his notice as he flexed both arms for Nurse Rebecca to squeeze and ooh and ah over.
Hell, with how he was ogling her, a gorilla could’ve been crapping in the middle of the room and he wouldn’t have noticed.
“So, are there any other big, handsome boys like you in the house? Or are you the only one?” Annani batted her eyelashes.
Damn, she is overdoing it. And calling the Doomer ‘boy’? A dead giveaway.
“You’ll be the judge of that.” The Doomer pulled out his phone and texted. “They’ll be coming down shortly.” He smirked as if sure that he was going to win the good looks contest.
Unbelievable, the guy was buying her act.
Annani stretched on her toes and pulled him down to whisper in his ear, “I am sure none is more handsome than you, Edward… I love this name… Edward… so masculine,” she breathed.
Were all men so gullible? Or was this particular Doomer exceptionally stupid? Annani’s acting was bad, like in a third-rate porn bad. Yet considering her vast experience, she must’ve known what she was doing.
But come on, Andrew would’ve never fallen for that.
Perhaps she had been utilizing that influence thing. Though if she had, Andrew hadn’t detected a thing.
Well, instead of observing Annani’s antics, he should get busy with the samples he was supposed to collect.
Andrew snapped on a pair of latex gloves and proceeded to scrape some paint and dust from the baseboards at the entry and the living room, depositing the samples inside little plastic bags and scribbling notes on the tags attached to them. All along, he kept Annani in his line of sight.
When all six Doomers surrounded tiny Annani, he got nervous. But he had nothing to worry about—the other five were just as dumb as the first.
Or maybe she was just that good.
“I’m done with the samples, gentlemen. Let’s proceed with Nurse Rebecca’s tests,” he announced as he pushed through the wall of meat to get to Annani.
“I’m going first,” Edward volunteered. “Wait here for your turn,” he instructed the others.
As he took Annani’s elbow and led her to the study, Andrew followed, closing the double doors behind him.
“Grab a chair, darling,” Annani said, depositing her medical kit on the long table in the center of the room.
The study was more of a library, with shelves full of leather-bound books, a few oversized leather recliners, and two chairs at each side of the long mahogany table in its center.
The Doomer calling himself Edward sat next to where Annani arranged her tools and laid his forearm on the table.
She flicked on the closest reading lamp and trained the light on the crook of his arm, then leaned and touched his shoulder. “Are you nervous, big boy?”
Now Andrew could detect a faint hypnotic undercurrent in her melodic voice.
“Not at all, sweetheart.” It took the Doomer a second or two to lift his stare up from her cleavage and gaze into her eyes.
He was hers the moment their eyes met.
The Doomer seemed paralyzed, not even blinking.
Annani said nothing as she looked into the guy’s eyes, absentmindedly brushing her fingers through his hair as if to soothe him while she played with his memories.
Fascinated, Andrew watched the Doomer’s face. There was something familiar about the guy, and he had a nagging feeling that he had seen him somewhere before.
Andrew would’ve dismissed it as a strange déjà vu, but as each of the Doomers took his turn submitting to Annani’s ministrations, the feeling grew stronger.
It took all six for his brain to make the connection. Without their beards, they were not as readily recognizable, but eventually it all snapped into place.
As it turned out, the twelve recent visitors from Maldives he’d been searching for were Dalhu and his men.
Serendipitous or what? Finding the answer to the mystery was an unexpected bonus to this little stint.
And who said good deeds went unrewarded…
Once the Goddess was done, she closed her medic case and waved the six stupefied guys goodbye.
“Piece of pie.” Annani high-fived Andrew the moment he closed the front door behind her, then pumped her small fist and whooped like a cheerleader whose team had won.
She was bursting with energy as they entered his car and all through the drive back to the keep, excited over what she perceived as a wonderful adventure. “A refreshing break from my routine,” she confided in him. “Oh, Andrew, I cannot remember when was the last time I had this much fun. I have been stifled in this role I have been stuck in: playing the queen mother, hiding away in a remote place with barely any mortals to play with.”
She sighed. “It is not who I am on the inside. I crave adventure, excitement.”
If she weren’t who she was, he would have patted her knee for reassurance. But come on, she was a freaking goddess, for God’s sake, and for all he knew, she might’ve smitten him for daring to touch her.
But as she continued without pause, he realized she only wanted his ear and wasn’t expecting a response.
In this, Annani was a typical woman.
Finally, she stopped long enough for him to ask the question that was bothering him. “I’m curious, what exactly will these Doomers remember and what they’ll forget?”
Annani shrugged. “They will remember nothing about Amanda. I erased, or rather muddled their memory of ever seeing her picture or even taking it from Mark’s home. I also muddled their memories of going after Michael and Syssi, and of searching Amanda’s lab. Other than these, I didn’t mess with anything else.”
“Did you leave them the memory of our visit? And why? Isn’t it dangerous? They will know what you look like.”
“Think about it, when I was done with one of them and proceeded to the next, we were still there for the first one to remember.” She said it as if he was a little dimwitted for not figuring it out. “If it were possible to thrall them all at once then maybe I might have been able to do it. But one at a time? No. And besides, they are males. So they will only remember that Nurse Rebecca had a lovely bosom. Not much more than that. No thralling required.” She smirked.
Andrew chuckled, she had a point.
“Today was great. I feel alive.” Annani threw her hands in the air and began singing a merry tune in a foreign language he couldn’t place.
Not that he cared. Her siren voice was so beautiful, he could’ve listened to her endlessly. Andrew idly wondered if that voice of hers could be used as a weapon. Probably. It had an enthralling quality, powerful enough to lure men to follow wherever she wanted to lead them.
A smile tugged at Andrew’s mouth. Was that the real story behind the siren’s song legend? The voice of a goddess? Or goddesses?
As he parked in the underground garage, Annani didn’t wait for him to open the door for her. She was out of the car before he even cut the engine. No doubt running to tell Amanda the good news.
Andrew waited for Kian and the other Guardians to file out of their SUV before heading up.
The Goddess’s ebullient mood evidently hadn’t waned in the short time it had taken Andrew and Kian to get up to Amanda’s penthouse. Prancing around in her short nurse’s dress, and tiny, white nurse’s flat-soled shoes, she was in the middle of recounting the story for Amanda’s eager ears.
Andrew found that he was fond of the Clan Mother. With how she looked now, exuberant, like a young girl in a Halloween costume, it was easy to forget that Annani was the most powerful being on earth.
Earlier, as they’d readied to embark on this evening’s information containment mission, Andrew had braced himself for having a lousy time in her company, expecting the Goddess to have a condescending diva attitude. But it turned out that she was a riot to be around. And besides her little tiff with profanity, the Goddess seemed to embrace contemporary culture wholeheartedly and was surpassingly well versed in many of its nuances.
Though somewhat intimidating, Annani was a lively and pleasant companion. In fact, if she were an agent, he wouldn’t have minded to have her as a partner. He had always known the power a beautiful woman had over men, but he’d underestimated to what extent. Someone like her would have made his work so much easier, keeping men stupefied and easy to manipulate.
Andrew sighed. If he were ten years younger, he would’ve petitioned his superiors for a drop-dead-gorgeous female partner. But his time as a field operative was a thing of the past, and he had no need for a partner. Gorgeous or not.
Sitting on Amanda’s deep cushioned couch, Kian glared at his mother. Probably still sulking over her flagrant disregard for her own safety. Or maybe it was her brushing off his protests and overriding his authority that had him fuming. Most likely both. Andrew sympathized. If it were his mother or his sister, he would’ve felt the same.
The guy was holding Syssi glued to his side as if he feared she might get infected by Annani’s recklessness.
It didn’t seem to bother the Goddess, though. “You should have seen Andrew, flashing his fake inspector badge with such pompous superiority, just as a city official would. Your brother is a fantastic performer, Syssi,” Annani chirped as she paced around, too excited to sit down.
Andrew lifted off the chair to offer a mock bow. “Thank you, thank you all.” He affected a snobbish British accent to everyone’s delight.
Except Kian’s.
It seemed that a scowl would be the guy’s only expression for the foreseeable future.
Pushing up from her chair, Amanda wiped a stray tear from her eye. “You have no idea how much I appreciate what you have done for me. I love you all. Thank you.” She sniffled, first reaching for her mother and pulling her in for a hug, then Syssi and the reluctant Kian—saving the biggest hug for Andrew. “I’m sorry that I’ve missed your command performance.” She flashed him her beautiful smile.
Damn woman, why did she have to get this close?
As her soft breasts pressed against his chest, and her belly brushed against his arousal, the contact sizzled through his skin as if it was branding him.
And that smile…
Oh, God, that smile…
The heat sliding through his veins crept all the way up his neck and was about to engulf his ears. Great, just what he needed. Blushing like a schoolboy for everyone to see because a girl that had a crush on someone else had smiled at him.
Been there, done that, wrote the book, sold the rights to the movie.
That first time, he’d been only ten years old. Not that being a kid had made it any less traumatic. Karina, he was never going to forget her name, the girl he had a crush on since kindergarten, had seemed to like him too, giving him false hope. But by the end of fifth grade, she’d told everyone she liked Ben Brook and had obliterated Andrew’s young heart.
Lesson learned: until Amanda made up her mind one way or the other, he was not going to succumb to her considerable charms.
No siree, Bob.
Easier said than done, though. No man in his right mind could help wanting a woman like her. Andrew detested the useless pining. As the saying went, want in one hand, shit in the other… Andrew had a bad feeling about which one he was going to get.
Desperate to divert attention away from himself, he gently dislodged Amanda’s arms and turned to face Annani. He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to spoil your good mood, but I am curious to hear what else the Doomer had to say, specifically about their organization.”
“Well, yes,” she said, plopping down onto one of the overstuffed armchairs. “First, I need something to drink. I feel a little parched. Would you be a dear, Kian? And pour me something sweet and tangy? You know what I like.”
“Sure.” Kian managed not to sound surly. He pushed off the sofa. “Anyone else?” he asked as he headed to the bar.
“I’ll pass,” Andrew said.
Amanda lifted her hand, “A margarita for me.”
“Syssi? Anything for you?”
“I’ll have the same.”
After mixing the three margaritas, Kian handed one to Annani, then delivered the other two to Syssi and Amanda
.
Annani waited patiently for Kian to pour himself some scotch and go back to his seat next to Syssi.
Sweeping a quick gaze over her audience, she made sure everyone’s eyes were trained on her before she began. “Navuh has his own little island somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and no one aside from him and his sons knows exactly where it is. The mortal pilots transporting people and goods to and from the island are heavily thralled to guard the secret, and the planes they fly are windowless. Everyone and everything is carefully checked for tracking devices before being allowed on board, then checked again upon arrival.”
“Clever…” Andrew muttered.
“Indeed.” Annani nodded gravely and continued. “The island serves as the home-base for his army of immortals, which just as we had suspected has close to ten thousand brutally trained warriors.”
“Damn,” Kian bit out.
Ignoring his slip, Annani sighed and took a long sip of her drink. “The island is also known as Passion Island; a large-scale, lucrative brothel, secretly serving a select clientele of very rich, powerful mortals. The women, serving these clients and the soldiers, are snatched off the streets from all over the world and forced into servitude. They can choose, however, between sexual service or manual labor as cooks, maids, servers and the like. Once enslaved, they are never allowed to leave the island. A highly guarded portion of this brothel is a prison within the larger prison, segregating the Dormants from the rest of the compound. Paired with mortal clients who possess traits valuable to Navuh, mainly physical size and brutality, they are bred to produce boys to be turned and serve in Navuh’s army, and girls who remain Dormant and serve in the brothel once they turn fifteen, continuing their mothers’ task of producing the next generation.”
Amanda sucked in a breath. “That’s terrible, no wonder Dalhu was appalled by the idea of a female Guardian.”
“Well, Doomers’ opinion of women is not exactly a newsflash,” Kian snorted. “Inferior, and good for serving males and breeding only.” He pinned her with a condescending look.