by LJ Vickery
Matthew dropped the bag at his feet and with his left hand, he drew a knife from his boot. He pressed Tess to his chest, using the hard cast on his right arm a little more aggressively than was necessary, and with his other, held the weapon to her throat.
“If you draw blood,” she said, between clenched teeth, “you’re going to find yourself emasculated.” She held her body loosely, ready to strike if the need arose. No comment was forthcoming from this…what had Anshar called them…this Pilgrim Posse member. She had a feeling he’d been told to keep his mouth shut.
She and Mr. Silent watched the surrounding area expectantly, and Tess’s heart beat hard in her chest. She couldn’t prevent the feeling of relief that swamped her when Marduk misted out of nothingness 100 yards away, clearly having descended from the sky. He marched across the clearing and came to within a dozen feet of Tess before she heard Dagon, who appeared behind the thunder god, following closely on his footsteps. Marduk stopped and spun, keeping one eye on Tess and one on the approaching god.
“What do you want, Dagon?” His voice sounded the same, but was he even bigger than Tess remembered?
“You know exactly what I want,” Dagon answered smugly. “I want to win this game, just like you.”
What does that mean? Tess was more confused than ever.
“This is no longer a game,” Marduk bit out. “The woman is mine and you will return her or suffer the consequences.”
“Fine, if you insist. Matthew, let her go.” The response from Dagon was unexpected. Tess felt the knife lower from her throat and, rubbing the slight indentation left behind, she slowly placed one foot in front of the other and walked toward Marduk.
The god saw wariness in his woman’s eyes. Once by his side, she refused to take his hand, remaining an arm’s width away.
“What have you told her?” He spat at Dagon, his anguish apparent even to his own ears.
Tess answered. “Only what you neglected to mention about your past. Your long ago past.” She looked scared and confused. Marduk winced. He reached for her again and, before she could protest, he pulled her stiff body closer despite her resistance. His need to protect superseded her reluctance.
“I’m sure he left a lot out,” Marduk hissed, turning them both to face Dagon. He felt more in control now that he had Tess anchored to his side. “Or embellished as he saw fit.”
“Marduk, tsk, tsk,” Dagon chastised, moving ever closer. “I just told her the truth about how ruthless and unfeeling you really are. I’m hurt that you’d think I’d sully your name with lies…as if it doesn’t deserve to be sullied.” A look of pure malevolence crossed Dagon’s face, only to be quickly replaced once again with a polite façade. “Just when I was beginning to imagine that we could be friends again.” He bared his teeth in what was meant to be a smile. Too late, Marduk sensed the human behind him.
Before he could spin, Matthew thrust a knife deep into Marduk’s kidney, driving the deity to his knees. The minion wasted no time snapping a metal collar around Marduk’s neck.
“What the hell is this?” he roared, lights winking in and out across his vision. The thunder god, bleeding profusely, was aware of Tess grasping at his shoulders and his nemesis talking.
“Oh, did I forget to tell you?” Dagon gloated. “Before you thought to secure them that fateful day in Merrymount, I took some of those magic chains with me. I surmised that you wouldn’t miss a few links, and I knew a very handy blacksmith who forged them into a collar. Pity that I never found your key.”
Marduk succumbed to blackness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Handicapped by the cast, Matthew roughly dumped Marduk’s inert body on the wooden floor of the storage room, not heeding Tess’s pleas to place the big god on the air mattress.
“I’m doing you a favor, sweetheart.” Matthew was finally speaking, and Tess liked him even less than when he was silent. “Dagon’s getting some ice water and we wouldn’t want your bed to get wet.”
Dagon entered and, without preamble, threw the water on the prone deity. Marduk spluttered and came abruptly awake.
“What the…” He shook drenched hair out of his face, but was unable to rise.
“Nice to have you as my guest, Marduk.” Dagon was all efficiency now. “I’m in a hurry, so let me tell you how things are going to work.” He had Tess’s attention now.
“You will not contact your band of misfits to come find you, nor will you be able to hear them. You will not leave this property without my consent. You will not attack or harm anyone connected to me during your stay, which should be blessedly short, and you will do these things…why?” Tess knew Dagon was goading Marduk into saying it.
“Because I’m wearing the collar.” Marduk’s voice was full of loathing.
“That’s right! And just to let you know what you’re eventual fate will be, I’m off to the wilds of Tasmania to find some small silver…although, the humans call it osmium now.”
If Marduk’s face could have lost more color, it would have, with the impact of Dagon’s words. Tess thought she had never seen anyone look more agonized. Her god roared and wrapped his hands around the collar that bound his neck, straining at the metal, muscles bulging. He only succeeded in causing more blood to pour from his deep, back wound.
“Marduk, stop,” she screamed. “You’re only hurting yourself!”
“He’ll live,” Dagon smirked, heading out the door. “For now.”
Matthew closed the door behind them and left Tess alone with Marduk. She quailed at the gaping hole beneath his ribs.
“Why aren’t you healing,” she asked frantically. “You heal from everything!”
“It’s the collar.” Marduk dragged his way across the floor and onto the mattress, lying on his uninjured side to avoid soaking the air bed with blood. Tess pulled the chair near him and sat down. She felt so guilty, helping Dagon get him here, and now he was severely injured and in obvious pain.
“So the collar isn’t just to make you behave?” That had been her understanding from the vision he’d given her of his past.
“The chains were forged by the two deities who sent us from the Underworld. They not only make us do what our captors order, they strip us of many powers.” His jaw clenched as if fighting off pain. “You notice that Dagon told me not to contact my brothers. One power left to me was mind communication, but now he’s ordered me not to use it, and I must obey.” His eyes lit up with a hint of his arrogant self. “It will, however, still work with you.”
Tess recalled that Dagon’s order not to speak didn’t include her, and why should it? She’d kept her communications skills secret. Take that, you nasty god!
“Then there’s Huxley,” she cried excitedly. “Dagon didn’t tell you that you couldn’t contact Hux!”
“We think alike, my little Tessa-mouse. When Dagon forbid me to bring the other gods to rescue you, we quickly had Hux on the move to take bikes as close to the cabin as possible without being spotted. He’s probably completing that task now and is waiting for new instructions.”
“Call him. Or, if he’s close enough, I’ll call him!” She hadn’t quite perfected the ten-mile range that the gods were capable of, but a few hundred yards should be a cinch.
“I will call him,” Marduk assured her. “But I’m afraid his task has changed. He could try to rescue us, but Dagon has forbidden me to leave the property.” Tess was about to speak and he held up a hand. “What I need him to do now is much more critical.”
Huxley. Tess heard Marduk call in her mind and waited for a reply. It didn’t take long.
Marduk! I’ve hidden the bikes and have a clear view of the cabin, but I can’t see either you or Tess. He sounded calm and Tess was comforted.
I’ve been captured. Tess could tell how much it pained Marduk to admit it. I’m also injured and enslaved with enchanted metal. Dagon has forbidden me to talk to my gods, so I need you to pass all of this on to Enlil and the others immediately. They’ll know what you’re t
alking about. Once you’ve informed them, get back to me, and I’ll tell you what to do.
Tess tuned in as acutely as she was able and heard about one word out of ten from the absent immortals. Among them were “Dagon,” “compel,” and “key.” She heard Huxley in her head again.
They understand that you’ve been enslaved by some kind of magic and that you can’t be rescued without the collar being removed.
Marduk had known his brothers would recognize his predicament.
Enlil suggests that he and I go get the key to unlock your collar, then you’ll be able to heal and walk away.
Marduk exhaled slowly and shakily. Do it fast, Hux. Tell Enlil that Dagon is headed to Tasmania.
She didn’t know what the Tasmania thing was all about, but before the mind signal was severed completely, Tess thought she heard Enlil echo a string of blasphemies that she knew didn’t bode well.
Tess lowered her fatigued and confused body to the mattress next to the god. She had so many questions for Marduk and, while she removed the top sheet from the tangle of blankets, she vented her curiosity.
“Tell me about the key.” Tess kept her voice low and soothing. “Is it back at your compound in Quincy?”
Marduk snorted in disgust. “If only it were that easy.”
As Tess began tearing the sheet into strips she could use to bind his wound, Marduk put pictures back in her head.
Tess was, once again, at the awful night when Myles Standish invaded Merrymount and arrested Thomas Morton.
“We have to hide the chains.” Marduk had Ninurta wave his hand and excavate a spot in the floor, uncovering a large pile of links. “If Dagon has told anyone about them, we are all at risk.” Marduk looked around the circle of trusted friends. “We will all go together and do this thing. Agreed?” They all nodded, solemnly.
As a group, they scooped the links up and misted away to the nearby Blue Hills where they opened the earth in a secluded spot and buried the danger.
Tess thought this would be the end of the vision, but she was allowed to follow the gods back to Merrymount. Their faces were grim as they watched Thomas Morton being put into irons. This she had seen before. Within minutes, her gods turned into the nothing they would become for centuries.
She could hear Marduk speaking.
“We must go to Morton’s house and locate the key to the chains.”
Tess quickly found herself in Thomas’s small home, watching gods acquire and un-acquire things, searching for the elusive key. After much fruitless exploring, Lahar moved a handful of books from the shelf behind the man’s desk, and uncovered the item they sought.
“Here!” He alerted his brothers that the key had been found and reached for it. His hand came up empty. He tried again. “I can’t take it,” he puzzled. “Enlil, you try.”
He too, met with failure. After several other gods tried, Marduk knew their efforts were useless. “It must be a property of the metal that prevents us from acquiring it. We must use the powers we have over the elements to hide the key since we can’t seize it. Enlil,” he turned to face the god of wind, “use your power to blow the key from its position and send it out the door. I will call down a violent thunderstorm to clear the common. Then Ninurta will open the earth and bury it forever.”
Enlil swept the key off the bookcase and, as thunder arose and hail began to pelt the earth, he sent it across the rough wooden floor and out into the night. The gods followed. The rain doused the bonfire and people scurried for their doors. When no sign of the population remained, Ninurta, who was the best at soil-opening, split the mud and dirt, dropping the key down twenty feet into the depths. He closed it up with minimal fuss, and the deed was done.
Tess started. The vision was gone, and once again she was back in the bleak storage room smelling the metallic tang of Marduk’s blood.
“So the key has to be unearthed.” She understood the situation much better.
Marduk nodded. “And it has to be your brother or Enlil because they’re the only corporeal ones who can touch it once it is unearthed.”
“You gods are a complicated bunch.” Tess let the corners of her mouth twitch up when he looked at her. He wasn’t going to like her one bit for what she was going to do next. She reached her hands to the tail of his shirt.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Marduk flinched.
“I’m taking your shirt off so I can bind your wound.”
He exhaled as if in exasperation. “Not healing really sucks.” He raised his hands over his head, and Tess lifted as gently as possible, noting the twitching muscles that revealed his pain. Still, what a fine torso it was. Not the time, Tess.
She balled up and threw the destroyed shirt into the corner, rising from her seat and looking in the bucket that Dagon had used for water. Sure enough, there was an inch or so left in the bottom. Better than nothing. She brought it back to where Marduk now knelt on the floor, having positioned himself to be wrapped, and soaked a strip of the sheet.
“I’m going to clean it out,” Tess warned. “It’s got some dirt in it where that PP goon dragged you before getting you off the ground.”
Marduk chuckled at the PP reference while Tess attempted to be as gentle as possible.
“What I wouldn’t do for Dr. Dani-Lee now and some of her magic stitches,” Tess lamented as the puncture produced more and more blood. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
“I can’t die from it, if that’s what you’re asking.” Marduk encouraged the conversation as she indicated he should lift his arms so she could begin binding the wound.
She bit her bottom lip. “Don’t mind me if I’m a little freaked out. Most people would be in the hospital right now with tetanus shots and IVs.” She began to wind the sheets around his torso. Oddly, it seemed to be doing some good.
When Tess was finished, she tied the ends of the strips together, then had Marduk lie down. She reached out to bring the comforters over him. God help her if he started running a fever. Was that even possible? Tess thought she’d find out one way or another pretty soon.
Once the covers were in place, Marduk lifted them with one hand.
“Join me,” he urged. “If I’m not mistaken, Dagon related some tidbits about my past, and I’d like a chance to tell my side of the story.” Tess wiggled in consternation, but in the end she couldn’t resist the warm cocoon that he offered. She took off her sneakers and slid in beside him. When neither of them spoke, Marduk took the initiative.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you my story, start to finish, if you’ll fill me in on yours afterward.” He paused for her response but she still didn’t speak. She wanted to hear all about him, let him refute what Dagon had fed her, but she wasn’t keen on airing her past. “I know that guy, Gage, must have done a hell of a number on you, and I need to know just what that was so I can make it better.”
Tess looked up at him. He was serious! Marduk, the destroyer of Babylon, was going to make damaged Tess’s life “all betters,” protecting her from evil-deed-doers. It seemed a little ironic.
“You go first.” Tess looked down where her hand rested on his chest, feeling his heart beat strongly. Could he have a plausible explanation for the behavior Dagon had described? Tess sighed. It was time to find out.
She wondered if she was going to get pictures again and was surprised when Marduk started speaking in a low, well-modulated tone.
“In the days before Hammurabi, in ancient Mesopotamia…” Tess couldn’t help herself. She giggled. Nervously. He sounded like David Attenborough about to expound on the mating habits of penguins. When Marduk stopped and quirked an eyebrow in her direction, she admitted her distraction. He sheepishly responded.
“Distancing myself is the only way I can explain the god I used to be.” Marduk looked troubled and Tess felt badly that she had interrupted.
“Go ahead,” she encouraged. “I understand.”
Marduk Attenborough began again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
&
nbsp; “When I was young, no more than 200 or 300 years old, I was arrogant and filled with my own importance. The people of Babylon loved me and I let it go to my head.”
Now Tess got a picture of Marduk in her brain, white material draped carelessly, low slung on his hips, neck and arms draped with gold and women hanging on his every word as he roamed the dusty streets of a busy marketplace. Tess knew he was not bragging, and these were images of things that truly happened.
“Women fawned over me. Men sought me out to battle at their sides. I was invincible in everything I undertook. When, eventually, the people of the city wanted me as their supreme god and sought to elevate me above my friend, Enlil, I never hesitated.” Tess could feel his self-loathing.
Marduk’s pensive mood shifted.
“The next few hundred years were full of joy.” He had a far-off smile on his face. “I learned to curb my rampant ego and ruled the people as they deserved. If I had been arrogant before, now I was the picture of benevolence. I righted wrongs and brought prosperity to the land with my control over the elements. I was known as the god of order and destiny.” His voice dropped to a mere whisper.
“Then I met a woman.”
Tess shuddered. The way he said it, she knew this had been no ordinary female.
“Zarpanitu was everything I had ever wanted in a woman. She was lovely beyond words and highly intelligent. She worshiped me, yet let me know when I was out of line.”
Reluctantly, Marduk projected a picture of this paragon into Tess’s head, and Tess could only gasp. The woman radiated goodness, and there was no way, even in her jealousy—was that what she was feeling?—Tess could feel anything but understanding that Marduk would have loved such a creature.
“The problem was the attitude of the patricians who subsidized my existence. Zarpa was from a different level on the social strata and, despite her beauty, my ‘keepers’ would not allow me to marry her, although I could dally to my heart’s content.”