Sunroper (Goddesses Rising)

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  And the worst things—the addicts in the meeting room and Anson’s death. Marley hated not knowing what had become of them. Had the police shown up? What would they think had happened when they couldn’t find heroin or cocaine in their systems?

  “So you don’t know if he was trying to get powerful again,” Quinn summed up, “or trying to put an end to everything. Why didn’t you get it worked out beforehand?”

  Marley kept her eyes on her bowl of chicken saag and basmati rice. Her face heated with shame. “Because I was afraid to. The possibility occurred to me when we learned about the meeting—that if he could get inside and get her to bestow power, he could leech her and then I could nullify him. But then he suggested he go, and I got suspicious. I didn’t want to endorse that kind of a plan in case he really just wanted the energy.”

  Nick tore off a piece of garlic naan with his teeth and chewed, shaking his head. “You should never have let him go in there.”

  “Obviously.” She shot him a dirty look. “But even setting aside the fact that it was unlikely that he could take any power anyway, they seemed very strict with their protocols. I thought she’d refuse to give him any flux because he hadn’t followed the progression. I didn’t know he knew her.”

  Quinn wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Well, it doesn’t matter whether he was good or evil. It’s over.” She put her hand on Marley’s and said softly, “If he was truly changing, really wanted to make things right, then I’m glad you gave him a chance and I’m sorry he died that way.”

  Marley drew a shaky breath. “Thank you.”

  “Now we have to figure out how to deal with the rest of this.” She looked across Marley to where Gage sat. “You’re awfully silent over there. Have you told your father what happened? About the addicts?”

  He shook his head while he finished chewing. “I haven’t told him anything.” He studied Marley for a few seconds before straightening and setting down his fork. “But I’ll have to report in soon. He knows about Cressida and the flux. He tasked my brother with joining the Deimons and infiltrating their interactions with the goddess so he could assess the threat to Numina.”

  Marley stared at him. He hadn’t told her that. She cleared her throat and stuffed rice into her mouth. She could hardly judge anyone for keeping secrets, but after the kiss in the hall and his proclamation of interest in her, she couldn’t escape the sting of betrayal.

  Gage seemed to have noticed her reaction. His hand on the bar tensed and flexed. “My brother bailed, though. I teamed up with Marley and Anson to find out what the goddess and Aiden’s friends had done, how deep he was in and whether it was against his will or not.” His hand curled. “It’s not.”

  “And your father is going to want to know that,” Nick said. “What will he do if he believes his son and the others are in charge of this?”

  “I have no idea,” Gage admitted. “And seeing how extensive this whole thing is—the danger level is a lot higher than he thought at first.”

  “What do you mean?” Quinn asked.

  Gage hesitated.

  Marley shoved her bowl away. “This can stop here.” She looked at Gage, then her sister. “I get that you guys are on opposite sides. You have interests to protect. I would say we should all lay everything on the table, but as I’ve already done that, it’s easy for me.” She laughed, but no one else did. Her throat tightened. “If you guys feel it’s not in your interests to proceed, that’s fine. I can go on by myself. That was my original plan, anyway.”

  She waited, the ache now making it difficult to swallow. If Gage and Quinn wanted to end this here, she couldn’t blame them. But as desperately as she’d wanted to push away Riley and Sam the other night, she wanted her sister and brother-in-law to stay. To stand with her and fight, the way they’d all fought together before.

  What it meant to her future if they left…she didn’t want to consider.

  Quinn’s hand landed on Marley’s again, even while she met Gage’s eyes. “No. Just because Harmon and I represent different organizations doesn’t mean we’re against each other. You can trust me to keep this to myself.”

  Marley’s throat loosened, and her breath came out in a noisy, betraying rush. Quinn squeezed her hand and released it. “Let’s move this into the other room. If you’re amenable?” she added to Gage.

  He nodded but stayed where he was while Quinn and Nick left the room. He leaned toward Marley and kept his voice low. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything. It’s not about Numina. It’s about family.”

  Another band around her lungs snapped open. “I understand.”

  “Probably not enough. My dad, my brother, and I have made every decision together since my mother died. It didn’t matter how far over our heads something was, Dad always brought us into it. Aiden…” He shook his head and stared off to some distance only he could see. “This situation has changed everything. It’s hard not to bring my father in, and I can’t promise not to tell him anything. Some things he’ll need to know.”

  The pressure returned, though to a lesser degree than it had been a moment ago. “You don’t have to do any of that. You don’t have to stay. If you want to tell him everything and come at the problem from the Numina side, I have no right to stop you. Cressida is one of ours, and she’s hurting yours. That’s the bottom line.” She hated the words coming out of her mouth, true as they were.

  But Gage shook his head. “No, the stakes are higher than that. It’s not black and white. Numina is not healthy right now, and if I tell my father everything, he won’t be able to keep others from finding out. Some of them would use it to take the whole thing down, destroying people I care about—on both sides.” He stood and gripped Marley’s shoulders. “And that’s the real reason I can’t leave. I care about people on both sides.” His fingers tightened when he said the last three words.

  Marley closed her eyes, swallowed, and admitted, “Me, too.”

  …

  Gage tilted until his forehead met Marley’s. He closed his eyes and breathed her in, so grateful that she was whole again. He hadn’t stopped being terrified from the moment she crashed through that window until she came out of the shower, walking normally with no sign of the freak-out she’d had earlier. He was really afraid he was about to lose her then, when she’d folded up into a frantic ball of pain.

  “Swear you’re okay,” he whispered.

  “I swear,” she whispered back. Her lips were almost close enough to brush his, and he eliminated the gap, unable to keep himself from tasting her. Her mouth opened softly, an invitation, and he stroked inside, filling himself with her essence as she let him fill her. Her hands stroked his jaw, and he flattened his against her back to keep her close.

  But people were waiting, so he reluctantly released her, catching her fingers as they walked to the other room. She didn’t say anything but didn’t pull away until they got there.

  Quinn sat curled against Nick on the couch. There weren’t any other places for Gage to sit close to Marley, so he balanced on the arm of the chair she’d selected.

  “You’ve probably figured out,” he began, “that Numina is unstable. There are certain factions that are struggling to regain power they’ve lost, and they’re willing to use methods that we as a whole eschew.”

  “Yeah, we have experience with some of those ‘factions,’” Nick said wryly. “I assume you’re not going to tell us you and your father are part of one.”

  Gage ignored the sarcasm in his tone. “My father has been working hard to hold together the core of Numina without violating codes that have stood for centuries. When he sent Aiden to learn about Cressida, he simply wanted a way to level the playing field a little.”

  “In a ‘see, you have bad people too’ kind of way?” Marley asked.

  He gave a nod and a shrug. “Basically. When Aiden reported that he wasn’t going to follow through, though, Dad asked me to take over. Both to find out what the goddess was up to and to pull Aiden out, if I could.” H
e rubbed his palm with a thumb. “I’m going to have to tell him some things, but it’s not in anyone’s interest for him to know everything.” He proceeded slowly, knowing Marley wouldn’t appreciate where he was going. “This situation poses risk to all of us on multiple levels. One of our early concerns was that knowledge of flux use could damage reputation and standing in normal society. Even if the general public doesn’t know exactly what it is, it’s a drug. Imagine if Darren Pettle was outed as a flux user.”

  Quinn and Nick murmured in agreement, but Marley hugged herself and drew up her knees. “I think Pettle has more to worry about than a four-game suspension by the NFL.”

  Gage was getting to that, but not yet. “If the splinter factions find out about flux’s existence, they’re going to want it. I don’t know why Cressida hasn’t reached out to them yet.”

  “She might consider them too high of a risk herself,” Nick said. “She’s in total control right now, right? They wouldn’t be as pliant.”

  “True.” Gage nodded. “Plus, if potential customers found her, so would fathers of her current clients and other Numina who would want to crush her for daring to taint us. They will definitely underestimate her power and that would turn bloody.”

  He took a deep breath and rested his hand between Marley’s shoulder blades. “Then there’s the flux itself. When I first started looking into the Deimons, no one had any concerns about side effects. It’s just energy. But we’ve seen evidence that it can change people.”

  Marley’s shoulders tightened. Gage rubbed them soothingly but felt as if he were petting a tiger.

  Quinn was watching Marley, her brow puckered. “Change them how?”

  “Josh in the club was overly aggressive with the girl,” Marley said. “And Gashface seemed pretty wild.”

  “And those guys we found, they showed classic signs of addiction and withdrawal,” Gage added. “But it goes beyond that.” He braced himself to tell them about Marley’s breakdown, but to his surprise, Quinn beat him to it.

  “What’s it doing to you, Marley?”

  Marley shrugged and wrapped her hands around her ankles. “Nothing. I told you, it goes inert.”

  “You’re lying.” Quinn’s sharp words cracked through the air, and she rose. “I can see it, Marl. It’s… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like the opposite of life. It’s not you, but it’s part of you.”

  Gage’s heart pounded harder with every word Quinn uttered. Whatever that meant, whatever she was getting at, sounded even worse than he’d feared when he started them down this path.

  Marley threw her legs down. “You’re just seeing the void where my vessel used to be. The part of me that was taken.”

  Quinn shook her head, hard. “No. That part of you originally radiated energy. After you were leeched, it was dormant and broken. This is different. It’s dark and it’s absorbent, and there is no way it’s not changing you!”

  Gage prepared for Marley to explode, to argue that it didn’t matter, that she had a job to do. But when she rose, her body was relaxed, almost languid. “Well, it’s not. I’m not Numina. I’m not a goddess. Whatever enables me to nullify flux deactivates it. No one can take it or use it. It’s done.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly and with such calm that no one seemed to have a response. Gage relaxed because with the way Quinn had taken over, his part in leading them to the possibility wasn’t as obvious. He didn’t think Marley would take kindly to having attention called to what she might see as a weakness and what he was afraid was something more insidious.

  But he’d take her insistence at face value because he didn’t like the alternative.

  How someone had come to mean so much to him in such a short time was difficult to process. His first reaction as he charged to Chris’s apartment had been fear not just for her but for himself. Her spot in his world was already solid enough to leave a painful hole if she left it. And now he wanted to protect her almost as much as he wanted to protect Numina and his family.

  It was a little disconcerting.

  Marley was pacing now, as she was wont to do, laying out her plan to go to LA and find a way to stop the goddess. She raised her eyebrows at Gage, fingers poised against her bottom lip—a thinking pose.

  “I’m in, of course,” he said.

  Marley turned to Quinn, who shook her head regretfully. “I can’t. Now is the worst time for us to leave. I’ll stay here and keep a lid on everything. If I can’t prevent Numina from finding out what’s going on, at least I can give you some warning if it’s coming your way.”

  “Okay, then.” Marley cracked a sudden, jaw-stretching yawn that immediately triggered a matching one in Gage. He tried to cover, but Nick saw and grabbed his wife, heading for the door.

  “We’ll get Riley and Sam to meet you in LA,” he said in the hall. “You two can’t do this alone.”

  “No!” Marley waved her hands. “Absolutely not. They just started their honeymoon.”

  “Yeah, in San Francisco. So they’re already close. They’ll get their vacation; don’t worry. I’ll make sure of it. But there’s no way any of us are letting you do this by yourselves.”

  “Appreciate it.” Gage tugged Marley back by the wrist. “Don’t argue. Please.”

  She huffed but didn’t protest further. After a hug for Quinn and a kiss on the cheek to Nick, she said, “I’m going to bed. Thank you, guys.” She curled her lip at Gage on her way past, but her eyes crinkled a little, too, so he knew she wasn’t really annoyed.

  “Keep us posted on everything.” Nick slapped a hand on Gage’s shoulder when they reached the foyer. “Sorry about being so suspicious and everything when we first got here. There’s a history.”

  “I know. I get it.” A pang hit when he remembered that Anson—the history—was dead. “I’m here to take care of her.”

  Nick winked. “Be careful. That tends to get a guy in for much more than he bargained for.”

  It hit Gage, as he closed the door behind them, that that was exactly what he wanted.

  More.

  Chapter Eleven

  Shadow and light, sorrow and joy, always balance our lives.

  —Goddess Society health and wellness newsletter

  T

  he aircraft-warning light from the top of a nearby building shone directly between the drapes and into Marley’s eyes. She pulled herself out of bed to tighten them, hoping the darker room would help her sleep, but found herself pushing them wide instead. She folded her arms and stared out at the cityscape. Tiny cars glided up and down the roads below. Blue and red lights flashed in three different places, unrelated disturbances. Some of the towering structures glowed with light while others were mostly dark. None in her sight were completely empty, though. Even the darkest ones showed where someone was working late, cleaning or struggling to finish a legal brief or some other normal thing Marley had no clue about.

  The glass held her removed from the silent busyness and should have been soothing, relaxing, but it didn’t change anything. She still wouldn’t be able to sleep when she lay back down on that bed. She’d close her eyes and even get her body to relax, but her brain would replay that yellow river pouring into Anson until his ravaged body gave up.

  She swiped tears off her cheeks. Maybe if she could get her feelings straightened out, she could settle enough to rest, but it was impossible to separate grief from guilt, anger from appreciation. Was the grief for the man she’d thought he was when she fell for him years ago? Or what she thought he was becoming now, someone worthy of a partnership or even a friendship. Her guilt was multifaceted, too. That she always, always misjudged him. Whether he’d been trying to be hero or villain tonight, her assessment had been wrong. The anger was the only easy part, applicable to any of his possible intentions. He’d played her, regardless of his goals, and he’d risked the entire mission.

  But he’d gotten them this far. He’d tracked down Cressida. Their conversation had revealed helpful information, even if he
hadn’t known they could hear it. And without his detour from the plan, they’d never have learned about everything the goddess and her minions were doing. She had to appreciate that.

  The door behind her opened, and her heart gave an odd double beat as she turned to face Gage.

  He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb and held up two white mugs. “Hot chocolate.”

  Marley smiled. “Spiked with brandy?”

  “Cognac. Duh.”

  She laughed, as he’d obviously intended, and some of the weight lifted. Leaving the curtains open so they didn’t have to turn on a light, she met Gage at the bed. They sat facing each other, cross-legged, and she took her steaming mug from him.

  “Thank you. It smells great.” The combination of warmth, sweetness, and alcohol served to do what the view had not and she began to relax. In the soft, dim light, Gage looked less haggard. He’d changed into soft-looking sleep pants and a white V-neck T-shirt. His knees touched Marley’s lightly. She sipped her drink, savoring the creaminess. “You made this with milk and cocoa.”

  “You need the protein, and the milk might help you sleep as much as the brandy does.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How are you holding up?” His voice was low and raspy. It curled around them in the dark, part of the comfort of the night, but also curled through her, stirring an inappropriate response.

  She wrapped both hands around the mug to absorb the heat. There was only one way to answer that question. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He said it with such compassion and lack of judgment that she blinked back tears, tilting her head to stare at the shadowed ceiling as if it had the power to keep the emotion at bay.

  “It’s okay to be sorry he’s gone.”

  It was the perfect summation of everything she’d been analyzing a few minutes ago, and it broke her. She leaned to set the almost-empty mug on the nightstand and covered her face with her hands, suppressed sobs racking her body.