Persuasion (Curse of the Gods Book 2)

by Jane Washington

  “Guards!” someone up the back of the room yelled, and the dwellers all scampered from the room with the speed of mice in the night, disappearing through doors and sections of the wall until only the faintest hint of something still hung in the air of the empty room.

  Guilt, I thought. I actually felt as though I could feel the guilt that they all left behind in their bid to escape. Or maybe the guilt was mine, because I had been peering through a crack in the wall and spying on them like a pervert.

  “Where are the guards?” I asked Coen, attempting to turn around so that I could face him.

  “Right behind us,” he said, his arm solid around my midsection, locking me in and restricting my movement. “Trickery is masking us.”

  Since he was speaking normally, I assumed it was fine for me to also speak normally. “Will we get into trouble for being here?”

  I cringed, because the ‘normal’ tone that I had been hoping for had come out as a squeak—evidently a side-effect of the hug that my brain was trying to trick me into thinking that Coen was giving me. He was warm and solid behind me, and his fingers were playing with the bottom of my shirt. Casually tugging it, almost too gently for me to notice.

  “What was that?” a voice asked, only a few feet away. It definitely wasn’t the voice of an Abcurse.

  Coen stiffened, his hand whipping up over my face, covering my mouth. “They shouldn’t have heard you say that,” he muttered.

  “I don’t know,” another voice answered, evidently unaware of Coen’s words. “Check in the storage, I’ll search the entrance chamber. Someone might have followed us in.”

  “Don’t move,” Coen cautioned, as a door swung open, flooding light into a room that I hadn’t even realised I’d been standing in, thanks to the darkness.

  It was a tiny room and all five Abcurses were squashed inside. Coen had turned just enough for me to make out the others: Siret was standing by the door, his arm bent and notched against the doorjamb as he casually stared at the guard. Aros was behind him—looking uncomfortably cramped against the wall—and Yael was on the other side of the door. Rome was behind Coen, attempting to tuck his massive arms into his sides. He looked like he was literally wedged in between cupboards. We would probably need machinery to get him out.

  They were all looking at the Minateur guard, who was passing his eyes about the space, disregarding the five massive bodies squished within.

  “Will he come in?” Rome grunted to Siret.

  “Of course not,” Siret replied, as the guard’s eyes came to rest on me.

  The guard paused, and then his eyes widened. “Dweller? What the hell are you doing in here?”

  And then he took a step inside.

  “What the hell?” Siret seemed outraged that the guard had disobeyed his prediction.

  He reached behind him, and Aros took that as a sign to grapple with something on one of the shelves, slapping it into Siret’s outstretched hand.

  “Oh crap,” I said to the guard, noticing the old frying pan. “You shouldn’t have taken that step.”

  The guard opened his mouth to reply, but the frying pan slammed into his face before he could get any words out.

  “Could you not kill him?” I asked Siret, wrenching out of Coen’s arms. “He didn’t really do anything wrong.”

  Coen grabbed a hold of the back of my shirt, indicating that I hadn’t so much wrenched out of his arms as he had allowed me out of his arms. And now he was holding me back again.

  “He disobeyed Trickery’s power,” Coen reasoned, as Siret raised the frying pan threateningly.

  “C’mon,” I begged, trying to take another step. The hand in my shirt still held me back. “He didn’t know he was disobeying your power. He didn’t do it deliberately. Also, I’m a little confused. How was your power supposed to stop him from coming into the room?”

  “It wasn’t.” Rome sounded gruff and uncomfortable, which wasn’t a surprise, since there was a shelf trying to cut into his midsection. I felt sorry for the shelf. “He just masked the room to look like there was nobody in here. He wasn’t supposed to see you, dweller.”

  “Did I break Siret’s power?” I asked, a little shocked. I was pretty good at breaking things, but this would have to be the first time I’d broken a god’s magic.

  Was that even possible?

  “Of course it’s not possible.” Siret sounded a little defensive, and he looked like he wanted to hit the guard again, his grip tightening on the handle of the frying pan in preparation.

  “Well it’s not his fault—oh my gods, is he bleeding?” I had started toward the fallen guard, only to notice the slow pool of maroon liquid that was creeping across the store-room floor.

  Siret lowered the pan, probably picking up on the note of hysteria in my voice. I knew, on some level, that the Abcurses were technically above reproach, since they were gods and everything. That still didn’t prevent the panic from creeping up on me. I was sure that someone would walk in at any moment and find us like this, and then we would all be sacrificed to the gods.

  Which just proved how unreasonable I had become.

  Siret stepped in front of the body just as I lurched forward, but a voice outside the room caused us all to come up short.

  “Gary—you in there?”

  “No wonder he went and got himself knocked out with a name like that,” Yael said, drawing my eyes for a moment. He spoke at a normal volume, so he either didn’t care about being found out, or else Siret was still masking us. Or … attempting to mask us.

  “Is the body hidden—” Aros started to question, before the door opened again and another man stepped into the room.

  He stepped on his friend’s finger and didn’t even flinch, so I supposed we were all cloaked again. Until his eyes found me, just as the other guard’s had.

  “Dweller?” he questioned, a click before a frying pan clanged loudly against his face.

  “Stop doing that!” I yelled at Siret.

  The new guard fell onto the old one, forming a small pile of lank limbs in front of the door.

  “What else am I supposed to do?” Siret asked. “Our powers are getting stupidly weak. Persuasion’s magic probably won’t work—it takes less effort to alter what a person sees than it does to change their will.”

  “You made that sound like a super reasonable explanation on purpose,” I accused, frowning.

  He managed to stop his smirk from appearing, but I could still see it in his eyes. I briefly considered how I would be able to get revenge on him for always being on the point of laughing at me.

  “Careful, Soldier.” He swung the frying pan up, resting it over his shoulder. There was a little speck of blood on it. “It’s not just our power that we lose if we spend too long in Minatsol. We also tend to lose a little bit of reason right along with it.”

  “Just a little?” I asked, my eyes on the frying pan. I wasn’t scared of them. Not even a little bit. Never had been. Other than the times when I thought they were trying to kill me—

  “You always thought that we were trying to kill you, Rocks.” Aros spoke up from my side, arguing with my thoughts as though I had aired them out in the storage room for them all to have an opinion on.

  “Do you really wonder why?” I flung my arm up, pointing at the frying pan.

  A frying pan which seemed to have disappeared.

  I flicked my eyes to the floor—to where the bodies should have been, and the anger deflated out of me on a sigh. “You’re wasting your power, Five.”

  “Not quite,” he replied, just as the door burst open. Again.

  I quickly jumped forward and grabbed Siret’s arms, yanking them toward me. No way in hell was there going to be a third body! He swore just as something heavy slammed into my foot with a loud clunk, and my leg buckled in pain. I released Siret and started hopping around, holding onto my foot after the frying pan attack. My grab had startled him enough that he’d dropped it.

  I’d forgotten all about the next victim�
��right up until I hopped into him. Hands wound around my arms, steadying me, and a broad face grinned down at me.

  “Hey,” said Mountain Man—who, by the way, I was starting to get a little suspicious of. I was running into him with the same frequency that I ran into Emmy, which was not normal, considering Emmy was my best friend and pseudo-sister, while Mountain Man was just some guy whose lap I’d accidently sat on that one time.

  “Hey?” I replied with a question, wondering why he wasn’t recoiling in fear from the sight of the nightmare-cleaning-closet-from-hell.

  Siret must have hidden them all again. Apparently I was still the only one his powers didn’t seem to cloak anymore.

  “Were you spying on the dweller meeting?” Dru asked. “Seems like they would have welcomed you in, since they couldn’t stop talking about you. You shy or something?”

  I frowned. “You were spying on the dweller meeting?”

  He released me, and I tried to take a step back, except my foot landed against something that felt like flesh. Possibly a guard’s arm. I cringed, staying where I was, which was uncomfortably close to a sol I didn’t especially feel like talking to.

  Or did I?

  “No,” Yael muttered, his persuasion ringing through the air and wrapping around my neck in a gentle caress. “You don’t.”

  “You’re right,” I answered automatically, my mouth speaking the words required of me, even though a small part of my mind wondered why I was speaking at all.

  “I’m what?” Mountain Man was confused, the smile slipping off his face. “I was just saying that I saw a bunch of them sneaking below the temple and I followed them.”

  “Oh, huh?” I tried to focus on him, but he was starting to waver in my vision. I wanted him gone. Now. “I wasn’t paying any attention. Can you leave now? I’m super busy.”

  His frown began to form, twisting his handsome features into something more familiar on the face of a sol: disapproval. His eyes flicked over my right shoulder, and then my left, before settling back on my face.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, a hint of force to the words.

  “Practising my speech,” I automatically replied, not even blinking an eye. “I want to be ready for the next secret dweller meeting. ‘Specially since they’re all expecting big things of me. I’m probably going to be the leader of the dweller rebellion. They’re probably going to make me the dweller queen.”

  His grin was back, and he was rubbing a hand along the base of his neck, considering me. “I think you’re the worst liar I’ve ever seen. Dwellers are usually really good liars.”

  The urge to get rid of him was building, clamping around my neck with less gentleness and more urgency.

  “I HAVE MY PERIOD!” I choked out in an abrupt shout.

  The smile dropped off his face again and both of his eyebrows shot up, framing his face in a perfect display of shock.

  “Right,” he said. “I guess I’ll … just … leave you to it, then?”

  He seemed to be asking for my permission, but when I only gave him a dumb look in response, he quickly backed out of the room. I turned to face the others as Yael’s Persuasion finally began to trickle out of me, leaving me with a body full of fury and a temper that was willing to let me act before I could think through what it was I was doing.

  “You.” I seethed, marching right up to Yael and poking him in the chest. “You are going to pay for that.”

  He caught my finger, easily pulling it away, and I tried not to flinch at the angry fire in his eyes. Why the hell was he angry?

  “Try it, Willa-toy,” he taunted.

  “Guys, let’s clean up the mess before we add to the body pile, huh?” Siret was the voice of reason—for once.

  He did have a point, though. The bodies had shimmered back into existence and I could see that the puddle of blood was growing larger.

  “Did you kill them?” I asked Siret.

  “No, he didn’t.” Coen was the one who answered me. “Let’s get out of here before Strength punctures an organ.”

  I swivelled my head toward Rome, who was a little red in the face, and gave a nod, quickly pushing out of the room. Yael caught my elbow before I was even out of the door, and I tried not to lean into his touch.

  You’re angry at him, I reminded myself, because he’s an asshole.

  “Actually,” he countered carefully, “I was trying to avoid a disaster and we didn’t have time for that idiot to hang around playing some pathetic sol flirting game.”

  “He wasn’t flirting,” I shot back, a little of my anger returning.

  “Yes, he was.” Yael was really digging his heels in. Nothing new there.

  “Kiss and make up, you two,” Coen grumbled. “We don’t have time for this shit.”

  Yael’s eyes immediately flicked down to my mouth, and a spark flared up inside me, hot and urgent. I stumbled right into him, my body tripping itself up just to get closer to him, and his hands caught my arms just below the elbows. He was suddenly so close, his scent surrounding me, his eyes darkening above me.

  “Not literally, for fuck’s sake.” Coen grabbed the back of my shirt again and pulled me away from Yael, spinning me around to face the bodies in the store room.

  The heat dropped right out of me.

  Well that’s an effective mood-killer.

  Siret chuckled, bending down by the body on top, his hands disappearing along the side of the guard’s neck.

  “They’ll be fine,” he announced, stepping back and kicking the door shut. “Although you’ll probably want to make sure they never see your face again. It might be a bit hard to explain how you—a dweller—managed to single-handedly take down two Minateur guards without even lifting a finger.”

  “I have skills,” I announced. “By the way, you only checked one of them. The other one might be dead.”

  “Would you rather know that he’s dead, or live with the hope that at least one of them is alive?” he asked, already walking away from the room after Rome and Aros.

  Yael followed, and Coen finally released my shirt, though he gave me a nudge in the direction of the others so that I wouldn’t attempt to go back into the storage room.

  “He’s just lazy,” I told Coen, glaring at Siret’s back. “He’s trying to make me look like I’m overreacting, but he’s too lazy to check the other guy’s pulse.”

  “You should get revenge on him,” Coen advised.

  “I should!” I immediately tried to kick my walk into a run—taking Coen’s suggestion as permission to punch one of them—but he caught my shirt again.

  I was forcefully halted, bouncing back onto the balls of my feet. When I glanced over my shoulder, Coen was grinning. Actually grinning.

  “I didn’t mean now,” he told me, shaking his head. “How about we get back to the rooms first, and then you can shout about your period for a little while.”

  I flushed, even though I should have been beyond shame by that particular point in my life. “Four was using his stupid power on me.” I dragged my feet as we followed the others out of the temple and back into the courtyard.

  It was much colder now, and somehow even darker than it had been when we had gone in. I could feel the cold of the pavers seeping through my boots. I had the oddest sensation creeping over my neck, too … as though the statues of the gods were watching me walk away.

  “Persuasion made you say that?” Coen asked, the subtlest trace of sarcasm to his words.

  I tried to answer him, but sweat was starting to break out over the back of my neck. “Ah … yeah … no—I mean no, he—”

  I swayed, slowing to a stop as a frigid wind brushed over my shoulder. My stomach clenched sickeningly, and my mind chose that really convenient moment to grapple with all of the possible ways that the gods might be haunting me. I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes catching on the statues that stood tall, guarding over the temple.

  “Quick question …” I reached out, my fingers tangling in material. Coen’s shirt. I gave i
t a tug, drawing him closer to me. It seemed fair, since he was always doing it to me. “Can the gods see out of those statues?”

  “No, Dweller-baby. They’re statues.”

  I released him, dipping my head into a short nod. There were no sassy retorts on my tongue, only bile.

  Something was wrong.

  Eight

  My knees buckled first, dropping me to the ground as my fingers slipped from Coen’s shirt. Sweat was coating me and it felt like my breathing was shallow. I only liked that sort of breathing when I saw an Abcurse without a shirt. And not that it was really an important thought right at that moment, but those five wore way too many clothes.

  “What’s going on, Willa?” Coen was already pulling me to my feet, and some of the weirdness lifted at his touch.

  I took a staggering step closer to the statues, feeling a strange pull in their direction. “I think you’re wrong,” I murmured.

  The others must have doubled back to us, because I could hear Siret’s laughter.

  “Don’t even mention that to Yael,” he said. “We’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Coen ignored his brother, capturing my hand and lacing our fingers together. “Rarely am I wrong, but I’ll bite … what do you believe I’m wrong about?”

  I stood right below Staviti’s monument now, and I had to place my hand against the pillar below it. I needed to get closer. To feel the smooth marbled stone.

  “The gods are in these statues,” I found myself saying.

  The others stepped in to the side of us. No one responded to my statement. Instead, they tilted their heads back and looked up. Just as I was doing.

  “I can feel him.” The words burst out of me and then, before I could say another thing, my legs were out from under me and I was gone from the temple.

  We moved so quickly that my head spun, forcing me to close my eyes tightly and press against whoever was holding me. There hadn’t been time to see which of the Abcurses it was, but I knew it was one of them. The little scrap of soul left inside me was all content and happy.

  The arms around me tightened, but we were slowing enough that I could open my eyes and look up. Coen. He toned down the god speed as we traversed the hallway to reach his room, and when those hard-as-stone eyes lowered to meet mine, I opened my mouth, and words started spewing out.