The Trickster's Strings: A Superhero Adventure-Romance (Godsongs Book 2)

by Jax Garren

  She nodded, processing the information as bizarre-ass poetry helped her think again. “Can you get me to the other boat? Sekhmet and I can handle ten humans. Meanwhile, see what you can do about bolstering the survivors. Hopefully one of them can pilot a boat.”

  He huffed. “I didn’t even think about that. If not, surely we can figure something out. I can drive a ski boat. What’s a few dozen more buttons and levers?” He gave her a quick grin. “Also, I can handle bolstering duty. My music impressed a goddess, remember?”

  “Yeah, impressed her so much she wants to keep you.”

  “Yeah. Because I’m a badass musician, despite the haters.” He gave her a pointed look. “You go beat up criminals. I’ll go inspire scared people. We got this.” He held out his fist for a bump.

  In a rush of gratitude, she gave him a hug instead. “Freyote to the rescue.”

  That got her a giant smile as he hugged her back. “Freyote! It’s catchy.”

  “It’s horrible. But I’m using it anyway. For you.”

  He stuck his tongue out at her, then the world got large as they became dragonflies. Coyote zigzagged in front of her in a way she took to be a challenge. She zipped forward, surprised by how quickly her wings carried her—no wonder he’d started using dragonfly form. It took only a moment for Coyote to catch up, then they were racing between boats, almost giddy in the direst of circumstances.

  Everyone moved on eventually, but right now she could take this time with him for all it was worth. Any future pain would be worth the memories.

  Chapter 33

  THEY PASSED THE LITTLE motorboat transferring the human cargo, as Coyote had said, and Giselle followed Coyote into a hallway of the larger boat-yacht-catamaran thing... smuggling ship. The once lush interior had deteriorated from lack of care and sported several bullet holes and stains she didn’t want to think too much about. Just as she noticed that the area was clear, she felt Coyote’s magic leave her, making her once again her Freyja self.

  Coyote squeezed her hand and mouthed, “The rest of them are down there.” He pointed at a stairwell. “Two guards. Do you mind?”

  She glanced back out to see people being unloaded. One of the victims carried a cat. They were all right—for now. With a nod for Coyote she headed down the staircase, face turned down like a person in misery.

  The first guard casually sported a machine gun, not even keeping it at the ready. It would be better if she could do this quietly.

  The man grabbed her ass as he shoved her forward.

  “Hey!” Coyote called behind her with all the outrage he could muster.

  She shot him a glare over her shoulder. “Way to spoil the surprise.”

  As the startled men reached for their guns, she shoved an elbow in Handsy’s throat and threw her cold spell at the other. The frozen man went down as the other reeled backward, gasping for air. A swift kick to the groin—for fun—and to the head, because she needed him unconscious, ended that fight right quick.

  The dozen people in the room looked up at them with an assortment of fear and hope as she handed the dropped guns to Coyote and pulled a length of rope from her pouch to tie up the men.

  Coyote immediately launched into Spanish, hand up in reassurance, then repeated his introductions and assurances in English. He gave her a quick, “Ándale,” nodded up the stairs, and pulled his drum around.

  Assuming he was encouraging her to go, she headed back up. Behind her, Coyote switched back to English to growl, “Huehue, this is a bong. I need a musical instrument... No, I don’t want a musical bong shaped like a frog. We were doing so well for a while there.”

  Laughing at their interplay—why didn’t Freyja tease her like that?—she headed back out to the deck.

  A scream, a gunshot. The people on the deck scattered as one of the traffickers shot at a cat—Rawan—running around the deck. Two of the women started back for the motorboat, while most just ran about.

  From her holster she pulled a staff and swung it awkwardly from one end. The opposite edge whacked into the man’s wrist, and he dropped the gun with a cry of pain.

  Rawan transformed, emerging as her terrifying alter ego, and grabbed the nearest man.

  Giselle scanned the crowd. Seven men on deck—including two from Brian’s crew—plus two she’d just taken out, which meant there were still three elsewhere on the boat.

  Hoisting her staff like a lance, she slammed it into the same guy, forcing him back to the railing around the deck. One more poke in the shoulder and he went over the edge. “I recommend you get to the other boat!” she yelled over at him.

  Another gunshot, and a bullet pinged off the railing so close she felt the heat of it. Turning, she readied an arrow and shot the nearest guy in the shoulder. He collapsed to the ground, grabbing the wound, and she looked for the actual shooter amid the screaming people.

  “We’re not killing them?” Rawan yelled.

  “Not a fan of killing, but you do you. I was gonna stick ’em on the other boat and strand them. Maybe call the coast guard so they don’t die of dehydration.”

  Another gunshot, and a blaze of fiery pain skimmed her left thigh. Grazed. “Hey!” I want my shield! She dove behind a lockbox and notched another arrow.

  A dude screamed as Rawan roared like a full-on friggin’ lion. “Consider yourself lucky she’s around, you bisharaf,” she shouted, using a word Giselle had never heard but that sounded really bad. “Sekhmet wants to gut you for what you’ve done.”

  Water splashed as the man presumably went for a bath.

  Another gunshot pinged far too close to Giselle’s hiding place.

  The hissing rush of a whirlpool sounded oddly close. She poked her head out to check for the noise and the gunman. What she saw was EJ on a plume of water rising above the railing of the boat, his blue skin sparkling in the moonlight like opal. Directly in front of him, the gunman with too good aim leveled his gun at her shelter.

  EJ’s arms opened around him. Then closed. He yanked the man backward toward the water.

  The gun went off.

  One of the women screamed. Giselle’s attention redirected to her as the girl fell.

  “Ariana!” she ran to her old housemate, tripping the last remaining trafficker as she passed by. The women had turned on their captors and thrown one into the Gulf. Rawan had tossed a second. They were almost clear of the men and their guns.

  As she landed on her knees beside Ariana, she checked for the bullet. The girl’s left side, just below the ribcage, seeped blood.

  “Shit... Ariana.” She’d found her. And now...

  The girl coughed and stared up at Giselle. “What’s—what’s happening?”

  “Sweetie, you got shot. It’s... it’s in a place where you can survive until we get you to a doctor, but it’s going to hurt.” Hopefully survive. Gut wounds could be minutes or hours, depending on what got hit.

  “I’m—I’m sorry I ran away.”

  “I know, I know, honey. You always were.”

  Ariana’s eyes focused on her for a moment, confused, and Giselle remembered she had the mask on. “I don’t understand.”

  She took Ariana’s hand. “I saw your message. A friend of yours—Giselle Ryder—she told me about you. Told me to find you.”

  The girl’s eyes opened wider. “Giselle?” Then she squeezed them shut in pain. “Yeah, she’s my friend.” Her voice came out with all the bravado of someone who thinks she’s lying.

  “Stay still as you can, okay?”

  “Oh gods,” EJ said, coming up to them, dripping Gulf water and smelling of saline. “Is she...”

  “Don’t drip on her!”

  Ariana screamed and tried to back up, making the wound bleed faster.

  “Stop! Stop, sweetie! It’s okay,” Giselle reassured hastily, trying to get the woman to keep still.

  “He—he kidnapped me. This is his fault!”

  EJ looked down at the trail of blood, expression full of guilt, then his face screwed up like he�
�d say something toxic.

  Giselle hopped up and pushed EJ back. “Somebody help me with her!”

  One of the other victims came over and kneeled next to Ariana, but she glared up at EJ, venom in her tone. “He’s one of them. Toss him over.”

  Giselle gritted her teeth and kept pushing EJ backward. “He switched sides.” Once they’d backed into the hallway, she let him go.

  “They don’t—”

  “Shut it, EJ. If you say one word in your own defense, I’m going to scream. Take some damn responsibility.”

  EJ glared at her like he didn’t like her tone, but he shut his mouth.

  “Is the other boat disabled?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know how to drive this one?”

  He shrugged. “I can figure it out.”

  More screaming from outside made Freyja turn back.

  An older man with pale gray skin wearing yet another draping fabric skirt stood on the deck. From beneath a silver helmet, white hair flowed.

  “Who’s that?” she asked EJ.

  EJ came up right behind her to look, putting his hand protectively on her hip. “I dunno. Hades? My brother was trying to get his godstone. Maybe that’s how they were paying him.”

  “Mother of...” She strode out.

  “Wait!” EJ yelled, coming out behind her.

  The conduit turned, but the pair of armed men flanking him didn’t change their positions, guarding him from front and back with guns raised. These guys did not give the impression of the low-rank hooligans they’d already ousted into the ocean. Real guards.

  “I’m not in the slave trade,” Giselle commented, “but I don’t think ten kidnapping victims equal one god of death.”

  “Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s what—”

  “Your brother may have thought that, but that wasn’t this guy’s plan.”

  Hades curled his lips into a cruel smile. “She’s smarter than your brother, boy.” He whistled, and the hollow baying of hounds made eerie music across the water. A three-headed dog the size of a pony appeared by his side. “He thought I’d give this up for a few cheap whores.” He smiled. “But you’ve brought me something much better.” He flicked a gaze back to Rawan and then to Giselle. “Quality meat.”

  Giselle wanted to casually sneer at his condescending grossness, but the animal snarling in three-part disharmony wigged her out too much.

  The woman who’d led the other survivors in dumping a goon into the ocean screamed and charged for the conduit, a knife clutched in her hand.

  “No!” Giselle yelled, unsure what sort of powers Hades possessed.

  One of the gunmen trained his weapon but didn’t shoot.

  As the woman got within striking distance Hades disappeared.

  She slashed at the air where he’d been, striking nothing. “What the...”

  Then she howled in agony as her body lifted into the air. Hades reappeared beneath her, hoisting her above him. Purple energy crackled from his fingers, encasing her body in light as a cloud of mist escaped her mouth. She seized, then went still.

  Hades dropped her silent body to the ground.

  Not a movement or a breath came from the shell of a human at his feet.

  “Next?” Hades asked. “No? Well, then, young Poseidon, my brother, I offer you a boon in exchange for this greater bounty. What is it you wish?”

  Chapter 34

  RAFAEL WATCHED THROUGH the glass door in horror as Hades dropped the now dead woman to the deck and turned that cruel smile on Freyja.

  EJ, sniveling coward that he was, proceeded to offer up Freyja’s godstone in exchange for leaving the ship with her.

  Hatred for the man who’d fucked over this amazing woman time and again burned inside him, and he reached into his pouch.

  The memory of pain made him afraid, but he was no good to her like this—more of a liability than an asset in a fight. A death god needed a death god to match him, but Rafael could be even more than just a death god.

  He clutched Mictlantecuhtli’s stone in his hand and pricked his finger on the obsidian’s sharpness. The death god sang inside him, surging forward to take the reins from Huehue. But instead of giving in to the god’s demand, Rafael spun his drum around and tapped an Aztec beat.

  “Come on, come on. I know you can work together.” Or they could if a goddess was helping them to. “Come on, come on. You like this music. We can do this.”

  Pain shocked through his viscera, electrifying him as the gods fought for control and he didn’t let either one win. Still he focused on his hands, determined not to pass out. Just play.

  He started to sing softly, eyes closed as he concentrated on enduring until they found common ground.

  Just play.

  Just sing.

  Just be one with the music and with the powers until he could combine them again, this time without help.

  And do it fast, because things were deteriorating out there something fierce.

  Freyja cried out in anger. He opened his eyes to see that asshole clutch her hands and shove her backward into the wall. Her back slammed into the glass right next to Rafael, and empathetic pain shot up his own spine, giving him a focus point more compelling than his own turmoil.

  “I’m trying to save you!” the jackass yelled in her face.

  She jammed her knee up at his groin, and he dodged. Then hit her. Freyja’s head snapped back into the glass with a crack, and she shrieked in pain, her shoulders shaking in a sob.

  Fierce rage, a need for blood, filled Rafael and coalesced the gods’ warring into a single purpose. Huehue’s playful energy dimmed as he made room for the death god’s power, and the death god’s calm acceptance gave way to Huehue’s vengeful cunning. It wasn’t comfortable, the twin shocks of power unsettling and thick. But he could contain it.

  Dark Coyote rose, and he howled.

  The glass in front of him, damaged in EJ’s attack, shattered at his cry. Freyja fell through amid glittering shards. Rafael caught her in one arm and tossed up his other hand.

  “You just couldn’t tow the line, eh, jackass,” he growled at EJ. A wind of sharp ice—one of the many trials of Mictlan—flew forward, aimed for EJ.

  The asshole dodged back and down, but not far enough to avoid stripes of blood crisscrossing his torso and face. Cross that power off; Rafael had the sense that he got to use each of the eight trials—Mictlantecuhtli’s most powerful skills—only once. He had to choose carefully what he’d use and when so nobody else figured that out.

  “You okay?” Rafael asked, setting Freyja back on her feet. No time—both gunmen swung their way.

  “No!” EJ yelled.

  “Duck,” Rafael ordered, and transformed, launching himself at the first man with the craziest idea he’d had yet—and it wouldn’t even use a trial.

  GISELLE DUCKED AND gaped as Coyote—Dark Coyote—disappeared. The guns spun about as EJ, blood staining his skirt and slipping down his cheek, hopped up in front of her like a shield. On the deck of the boat, ice crystals slowly melted as the three-headed dog growled and snapped, chomping at his leash.

  A moaning gasp brought her attention to the guards. One of them buckled over as he vomited onto the deck, head in his hands like he battled a monster of a migraine.

  Dark Coyote reappeared behind them, expression dark as the grave as he intoned, “You’ll want to get him to a doctor if you don’t want him dead in, oh, four to six hours.”

  The other guard turned his gun around.

  Dark Coyote smiled with a grim twist of his mouth. “And what disease shall I give you?”

  Paling, the other man released his gun and backed up.

  “How dare you!” Hades roared, then disappeared again. Cerberus shot into the crowd, which let up a chorus of screams. Sekhmet roared, getting between the women and the demon dog as she urged the kidnapping victims toward the ship’s interior.

  Dark Coyote swiped a hand toward where Hades had been, and it caught on something. “He’s
invisible!”

  Then Coyote went sailing up into the air, as if Hades had hoisted him up, just like he’d done with the woman.

  “No!” Coyote didn’t know he could kill with a death power. Giselle grabbed an ax from her back. Judging by where her partner hung in the air, she swung, blunt side toward the god’s midsection. She connected solidly as purple electricity surrounded Coyote. Coyote dropped two feet straight downward, as if Hades had fallen to his knees with Coyote still above him.

  “No!” she wailed, terrified for his life. “Let him go!”

  But Coyote just laughed. “Can’t kill a death god with death power, idiot.”

  Hades threw him to the ground, where Coyote landed with a pained grunt.

  Giselle swiped for Hades again, but her ax connected with nothing.

  A wickedly sharp wooden staff appeared a moment later, soaring toward Coyote’s back. As if he could see behind him, Coyote rolled away at the last moment. Then he turned in the direction the spear had come from and waved his hand. Thick smoke flew from his palms, near obscuring the deck... but as the smoke moved, it coalesced around Hades’s barrel-chested form, giving Giselle a target. She readied her ax again.

  Lightning struck the deck between them, burning a black hole into the teak.

  Everyone—smoke-Hades included, turned to look as Zeus pulled himself up from a motorboat. “What is going on? You!” He pointed at EJ.

  Hades laughed, going visible again. “He betrayed you for a woman.”

  “Oh, please,” Giselle said. “Like you weren’t going to kill him and take his stone? You weren’t turning over Hades—you’re too attached.” She should know. Losing Freyja would be a nightmare, and she’d had her for less than a year.

  “This boat is mine. You will return it to me with all my cargo,” Hades ordered to no one in particular.

  “Not until I’m paid!” Zeus returned, his tone enraged. “May I remind you who the most powerful god of them all is?”

  Coyote snorted and hopped back up to standing. “Not to interrupt your Eurocentric view or anything, but... oh, wait, I’m happy to interrupt.” He waved a hand again, and a wall of water crashed over the boat to flood across Zeus, drenching him. The god lost his footing, sliding across the deck. “Hey, look! I’m Poseidon!” Another wave of his hand, and a demonic, wolflike creature appeared, mouth red with old blood and fur matted and spiked with gore. “Hey, Hades, I have a dog too!” The dog charged Hades, his open jaws as wide as a man’s waist.