Glory slumped down in her seat. She felt drained, and she felt played, and she couldn’t even think about that right now though, because before she knew it, she would have groping, filthy hands on her body. So enough talk. Let front seat prick think he’d fucked her up while she schemed.
A weapon. She mused that Jenson’s gun, balanced on his leg, was pretty damned close now that the boss man had made her move away from the door. There was a possibility she could grab it. She closed her eyes. She staked out her move, and now she’d conserve energy until the right time.
Glory. I’m here.
Glory must have almost fallen asleep. She blinked in confusion. There was no way she’d heard Enten. She had to be in that weird twilight place between waking and sleeping where you imagined things that weren’t real.
Glory. It’s Enten. I know this seems strange, but concentrate. You should be able to talk back to me.
Okay. She was awake. Part of her happily heard Enten’s voice. The other part, seething, hissed at the air around her. Are you a god? If attitude came across with this crazy mind-speak thing, Enten couldn’t help but hear hers.
Yes, Glory. I’m a god. He didn’t sound happy. Good.
God of what? She asked. There was no way she would cut him any slack. Even about the condition Lahar told her was Enten’s most sensitive issue. Does it have anything to do with you being cold?
That would also be a yes.
Glory pictured his face, and knew that he sighed, reluctant to part with the information.
So these asshole kidnappers are right. You collect human women for fun, totally freak them out, and throw them away? Glory didn’t have to wait a second for his reply.
No. Absolutely not. You are my Chosen, which may not mean anything to you right now, but believe me, it will.
Glory grew even angrier at his vague assurances. Enough of the bullshit. We’ll talk about this later. Right now, can you get me out of this car?
She could feel his uneasiness.
Yup. And it’s not going to be pleasant. Seatbelt, Glory, he told her.
It’s already on.
Good. Because the guys are coming to get you.
The guys? Not you?
Because of you, Lahar and I can’t be invisible right now, but as soon as the car has stopped, I’ll be there. Nothing could keep me from your side. Do you understand? You mean the world to me, Glory.
She floundered for something to say to his unexpected declaration, but Enten continued.
Now hold on tight. Things are going to happen. Right. The fuck. Now.
Chapter Fifteen
Enten growled, pissed he couldn’t be an immediate part of the action. But he couldn’t dispute that it was a good thing Shamash remembered he and Lahar would regain their bodies within one hundred yards of Glory, or they’d both resemble road-kill right now.
Instead, they had easily found the white car when he and Lahar―purposely winging it a few scant feet above the ground―had crashed and burned. Tumbling into the short shrubs by the side of the road, Enten struggled to his feet.
Lahar got up, brushed himself off, and misted out, immaterial again. Shit, Enten, let’s go. They’re getting too far away, and I want to be there when the bastards try to run.
Enten nodded in agreement, cold coming off him in waves that froze the scrub at his now nonexistent feet and withered the leaves on the nearest trees.
And chill, will you? Outdoor air conditioning is one thing, but frostbite in summer is a total bitch.
Enten took several deep breaths as he and Lahar hoofed it, as fast as their god-speed would take them, in the direction the vehicle had been traveling. They didn’t dare fly. Another drop would be damned inconvenient, not to mention painful.
Luckily, Marduk kept them appraised by mind-link. Half a mile ahead, the thunder god had positioned himself in the front seat between the bastard Matthew and one henchman who they called Dunst, straddling the middle console.
It’s a squeeze, but I managed.
If the situation were any different, Enten would have laughed. Anshar’s in the back between Glory and a guy named Jenson. None of the humans are aware of our presence, but they will be really soon.
Enten continued to run while listening.
As soon as we reach a stretch without traffic, we’ll both appear at the same time. I’ll slam on the brakes and grab the wheel from Matthew to get us over onto the shoulder to incapacitate the two in the front. Anshar will make sure Glory stays safe and take out the asshole in the back.
Marduk’s directions were clear, and Enten knew as soon as the car stopped that the rest of the god-posse would drop on the scene in case Marduk and Anshar ran into any trouble.
Head silence descended. It took a lot of time before Marduk found the right stretch of road, and Enten chafed under the quiet.
The boss finally came back online. I’ve found a good spot. Very little traffic. Get ready. Coming up in three…two…one…now. Enten pictured Marduk punching a suddenly tangible foot down on the brake pedal and wrenching the wheel from Matthew’s grip, turning it hard to the right.
What the fuck? Enten heard Matthew swear through the channel Marduk left open. He could just see the car now, far ahead, and held his breath, seeing it lurch from side to side. But Matthew was no match for Marduk. Enten had every expectation the thunder god would win the battle for control.
****
Glory sat still for the whole thing, incredulous, but also poised and damned ready to step in if Marduk needed help. Gods or not, she’d pull her own weight.
Marduk worked the car to the side of the road, and she watched the shithead in the passenger seat come alive to clock him repeatedly on the jaw.
The guy…god growled angrily. “You do not want to do that, ass wipe.” He freed one hand from the wheel and thrust it out, latching onto the guy’s neck.
Okay. So he didn’t need her interference. The car spun to a stop.
Before Marduk had total control of the situation, Matthew opened the door and tumbled out onto the grassy shoulder. Glory wrung her hands in frustration. Marduk, occupied with bad guy number one, payed no attention to the defector, and Glory gasped in horror as Matthew, from where he lay on the ground, pulled a gun from the small of his back.
She turned to Anshar for help, but he had his own battle in the back seat. “Let the fuck go, douchebag.” The god growled. Another gun wavered between mortal and immortal, swinging from side to side, luckily pointed at the ceiling of the car.
Glory stopped being shocked at the gods’ sudden appearance long enough to get her brain functioning again. “Matthew’s on the ground with a gun,” she yelled to Marduk. Shit. It might be prudent to flee the vehicle.
She, unlike Matthew, bolted from the car and remained upright…but only for a moment. As she rounded the door, a hand wrapped around her ankle, and before she could kick out at whatever pulled at her, she got yanked down and found herself on top of a prone Matthew. His gun came up to the side of her head.
“I know the rest of you freaks are here,” he yelled into what appeared to be thin air. The only thing Glory could see for sure? Enten and Lahar pounding on anxious feet, heading toward her and the disabled car.
Matthew shouted again. “If I feel any interference at all, physical or otherwise—like if my gun starts to disappear or a single weird fucking thought begins to infiltrate my head—I’ll shoot this bitch,” he warned. “I will.” Glory knew he was dead serious. He had nothing to lose.
Slowly he rose, dragging Glory’s unwilling body up with him as she frantically looked around. She saw that Marduk had finally choked front seat guy into oblivion, and Anshar had finished with Jenson in the back, bringing the butt of the gun down hard on the man’s head. The two gods now remained poised in the doorways of the car, unsure as to their next move. Clearly it depended on Matthew.
“Let her go,” Marduk used a calm voice.
Glory heard sirens in the distance. Someone driving by had called the
cops, thank God.
“The state police from Sturbridge are coming.” Marduk warned. “Their barracks are less than ten miles away so they’ll be here soon. Think Matthew. If you let Glory go, you can run.”
Glory held her breath. Hopefully Matthew would grab the idea of fleeing.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But I can’t see your insubstantial buddies, and they’ll attack me, or…or…drop trees on my head, or let loose with winds and rain.”
Her hopes were dashed when Matthew shook his head.
“Uh, uh. If I let go of her, I’m fucked.”
Given no options, Glory took control. She pounded her heel down on her captor’s foot, and struggled mightily in his arms to give the four substantial gods the opening they would need to move closer. But without warning, Matthew lowered his gun and… Glory screamed in shock and pain. The asshole had shot her in the thigh. Her leg buckled and she would have fallen, except for the tight hold he had around her waist.
She vaguely heard sounds of rage and disbelief from the standing gods and noticed, as if from a distance, that Matthew now had the gun aimed at her hip.
“Don’t anybody move,” he ordered. “You can see I’m not fucking around. I can drag her dead weight a long way, so it doesn’t matter to me how many holes I put in her.”
Glory whimpered, scared out of her mind.
“Shut up, bitch,” he hissed, and wrenched her body into his side. Glory felt another blinding flash of pain.
She gasped out incredulously. “I think…he…just broke a rib.” Tears erupted from her eyes to stream down her face.
Enten practically crackled with fury. All he needed was one second where the bastard let down his guard and Enten would make him sorry he’d ever lived. His cold emerged and seeped toward Matthew, turning the ground between them into a wasteland of lifeless grass and hard ice.
Matthew gaped at the creeping freeze, holding the gun up to Glory’s head. “Stop that shit or she’s a dead woman.”
“Enten. Control yourself or leave,” Marduk’s harsh voice rang out.
Enten roared. “How would you feel if it was your Chosen?” Inside he seethed.
“I’ve been there, Enten. Remember? It happened with Tess. Just stay calm. I promise everything will be okay.” Marduk’s face remained hard.
A pained sound came from Lahar. Because of his familial ties, Enten knew he had almost as much trouble staying calm.
“We’ll save her, brother,” Lahar choked out, as they both watched the blood drip down Glory’s thigh. “Marduk’s right. The cops are on the way, and we’re all surrounding him. He has no place to go, and if he…kills her, we’ll be on him in a second. He can’t risk that. He needs her alive.”
Enten looked around and caught the eye of each invisible being. He felt the calming energy of his brother Emesh, the love pouring off Tess, and the comforting energy of Shamash, Dumuzi, Ishkur, and Ninurta. With a concentrated effort, he took a deep breath, and the ice retreated. He had to believe everything would be all right, but he vowed if Matthew so much as scratched his Chosen, all bets were off.
Enten glared while Matthew clearly assessed his situation. He had to know that if he tried to run with Glory, the gods would make it difficult for him to go fast and far, and the cops would be on him, easily tracking Glory’s blood through the woods. But Matthew’s eyes lit up as if he’d had an idea. Enten tensed.
Ereshkigal. Matthew sent out, and every god heard his plea. I’m in fucking big trouble here and sure would appreciate it if you could get me out of it.
Every god’s mouth dropped open, and Enten was no exception. Had Matthew just hailed Ereshkigal?
Come on, baby. Where are you?
What the fuck? It couldn’t be possible. But almost immediately Enten felt a strong energy whip up out of nowhere. Strong, immortal energy that coalesced a few yards away, concentrating on the immediate area around Matthew. The winter god knew what would happen next if he didn’t intervene. And refusing to panic, he took a calming breath and leaned toward the coming vortex. He needed to time things just right. He’d only have one shot.
Sure enough, Matthew and Glory began to dissolve, and Enten launched himself forward, throwing his body across the intervening yards. He grabbed hold of his woman’s good leg and pulled her from Matthew’s now insubstantial grip. There was a gun report and a sharp pain, but his last-minute lunge had done the trick. Matthew disappeared. And Enten had Glory.
“Oh my gods, are you two okay?” Tess became material beside them—against her husband’s explicit orders—and knelt down next to Enten and Glory. For some reason, Enten couldn’t answer or move.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Marduk sweep quickly toward them, and he carefully rolled Enten off Glory’s leg and over onto his back. Enten worked his mouth. He could feel it, but nothing came out. He breathed in and felt excruciating pain. Dammit. He’d been hit. And the shot seemed to have been dead center in his throat.
“Can you move your limbs, Enten?” Marduk’s voice came to him, soft and urgent.
Enten raised and arm and then a leg, struggling to remain conscious.
“Good. It didn’t go through his spine.” Anshar nodded above him.
Well, good. It would take a fucking long time to heal from a spine injury.
He fuzzily watched Tess shift her attention over to Glory, and closed his eyes in thanks. He could see his Chosen was awake and alert, despite losing a lot of blood. He witnessed her painful wince as she tried to sit up, and Enten lamented having to drag her to the ground with a possible broken rib, but dammit, he couldn’t help but be relieved that she was alive to feel pain.
“I’m fine,” she protested as Tess tried to urge her gently back down. “But Enten. Is he…is he?” Glory had probably seen the bullet hit his neck, and not knowing anything about gods, thought he was dead. He waived Tess aside as Glory propped herself up over him and focused on his eyes, probably to avoid looking at all the blood spilling from his wound. He kept his own open, blinking to let her know he was alive.
“Don’t you dare die on me now, do you hear?” she told him tremulously, with a firm edge of conviction even a drifting Enten wouldn’t dare disobey. “We have a lot to talk about, and you’re not escaping me that easily.”
He gave her a minute twitch of his bottom lip to let her know he was amused. Her eyes filled with tears, but she’d taken it as a “yes” because she settled back on the ground beside him. Immediately her her eyes rolled back in her head and she lost consciousness. As the world blurred around him, Enten realized he wasn’t far behind.
“Well if this isn’t a cluster-fuck,” Marduk spat out in frustration. “The cops are almost here, and we haven’t begun to work out what explanations we can give them. Like where we’ve all come from and what’s happened.”
He ran a worried hand back through his hair. Only he, Tess, and Anshar had IDs. Glory would be on the world’s radar, but Enten and Lahar were as yet undocumented because―up until a few days ago―they had been invisible. If all that wasn’t bad enough, once the paramedics started treating the wounded and got a load of Enten’s body temperature, they were going to think he was either dead or a bleeding freak of nature. Yup, frigging cluster-fuck.
Eight state troopers descended on the scene, along with two ambulances, and the required fire engine, even though there wasn’t any smoke. At least not yet, Marduk huffed. He wasn’t sure what would be coming out of the lieutenant’s ears in a few minutes.
The thunder god would try to keep as close to the truth as he could. They were just doing their job, and he needed to make it as easy for them as possible. It didn’t hurt that Tess, his lovely pregnant bride, stood by his side as he spun his tale. He let himself be interviewed while the paramedics went to work on Glory and Enten.
“We were visiting Glory’s mother at her assisted living home in Agawam, when we noticed Glory being stuffed into a car by three thugs. We hopped in my brother Enlil’s vehicle and followed.” He took a
deep breath to appear shaken. “After we passed through Palmer, we noticed the car swerving erratically and figured some kind of struggle was going on. Glory said she choked the driver, forcing him to go off the road.
“The one in the back seat,” Marduk crooked a finger at the now revived Jenson, cuffed and sullen. “Hit her in the face, but not before she managed to get the car stopped. We came up behind, pulled over and jumped out,” He indicated himself, Tess, Anshar, Lahar, and the prone Enten. “Sending my brother, Enlil, to find help.” He scanned the road, as if in search of the nonexistent vehicle.
Marduk’s voice lowered to a throaty growl. “The driver grabbed Glory and used her as a shield, shooting her in the leg and squeezing her until he broke her ribs. Our man on the ground, Enten, threw himself at the bastard and got shot in the neck, but managed to pull her away before the guy took off.”
One trooper scribbled like mad. “We’ve got the dogs coming to see if we can track the perpetrator down,” he assured Marduk.
Good luck with that. Invisible, Emesh shook his head and spoke to the immortal group while lingering at his brother’s side. I hope Matthew is deep in the bowels of hell, and speaking of which…
Leave it for now, Emesh. Marduk spoke into the surrounding gods’ heads as well. Yeah, he was worried and puzzled that Matthew had called Ereshkigal, but now was not the time to alert the Underworld king. We have other things to worry about right now. I’ll speak to Nergal as soon as this mess is cleared up.
The trooper spoke again. “So you have no idea what they wanted from Miss Wingfeather?”
“No idea. We’ve only just recently met her, but she and my wife hit it off and she wanted us to meet her mother. We don’t know that much about Glory, but we’ll vouch that she’s good people. She runs an ad agency in Northampton.” Marduk gave over the name of Glory’s firm. “I’m sure her coworkers can tell you more about her.”
The officer nodded his head. “Fine. Now if I can get all of your information, I can finish things up.”
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