“Very well,” she turned her defensive posture into a confident lean back. She almost threw her feet up onto the table. Almost. “I have something I can give you to show my willingness to cooperate. The two twenty megaton thermonuclear warheads your agency has place here as a first strike capability are utterly worthless.”
The man tried to sit completely still, but he failed to stop the slight cock of his head that revealed the flesh-colored earpiece. Someone was talking to him, the people that were really playing the game.
“Go on,” he stated slowly.
“This portal is connected to the heart of the Queen’s territory. It’s not exactly a novel idea to shove powerful explosives through a door and try to seal it. It is your own tactical doctrine for urban operations. Albeit, these are nukes and not grenades you’re lobbing through the door. However, you’ve missed the mark rather severely. You don’t really realize who you’re dealing with. Queen Maeve created the Faerie realm. She is a living embodiment of power. Your laws of physics and theories of the universe are more malleable than you think. If you push those weapons through the portal, depending on her mood, she will dismiss them into nothingness with a wave of a hand, or just send them back . . . with a few tweaks so you can’t stop the countdown.”
She looked down her nose at the wolf, and let a little of her power leak into the room. Just a glimpse, not anything spectacular. To his credit, again, the man didn’t flinch. He had a spine. She’d seen it before in soldiers. They didn’t fear death, but the show wasn’t for him. His superiors were undoubtedly monitoring the room with mundane and magical equipment. She’d just shown them a sliver of what a normal noble Fae was capable of. If they took that and multiplied it by orders of magnitude, they still wouldn’t be close to a fraction of Maeve’s power.
“You could say I just saved thousands, if not millions of lives, Agent Dud. I’m not sure what the population of Dublin is nowadays, but them all being saved from sudden incineration by forty megatons of enriched plutonium earns me a little acceptance stamp into your realm,” she returned her face to the sweet smile she’d begun with.
She wasn’t playing by anyone’s rules but her own, and it was so incredibly freeing. She even thought about changing up her look, but dismissed the thought. When she came for Cam, she wanted him to know just who had arranged his downfall.
“You’ve got my attention,” the agent said. “We’ll get the paperwork started, but we need more. Troop strengths, enemy disposition, attack vectors and standard operating procedures if you have them.”
“Very well,” Aveena continued to smile. “We’ll talk more once the paperwork is completed.” In a power move as old as time, she got to her feet, bid him good day, and left the room.
“Your move, humans,” a single step and she was back in the accommodations she’d been given.
If she wanted, she’d be long gone from this place. The wards the mages had layered around the complex were designed to keep people out, not in. That might change, but she would be out of here before they figured it out.
***
“Boss, it’s me. Don’t shoot me with your sex pistol or anything.”
Venus had been lost in thought; looking over second quarter earnings and loss statements. It wasn’t a panty dropper by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something thrilling about seeing how much money was moving around in the vast organization she’d built from the ground up. There was more than one way to get stimulated.
Dani walked into the room, arms raised, and smirking.
“Is that what Dameon calls it? His sex pistol,” she raised an eyebrow at the dwarf.
Dani’s on-again, off-again relationship with the werewolf leader of the local Fang and Claw biker gang chapter was well known, but one deep breath from the queen of all succubae, and she could tell it had been off-again for a long time. That didn’t matter for the subject of this conversation. Without exception, every man she’d known in the last century had a nickname for their member.
“Nah, he yells ‘Welcome to the Thunderdome’,” she replied with a grin, while making a jerk-off motion with her hand.
Dani was an essential member of her organization. Venus knew she was irreplaceable as an armorer, fighter, friend, and bodyguard to Lilith; she just hoped that one day the dwarf learned a little class. To rise beyond her current station, Dani needed to have tact and finesse. Walking into the CEO’s office with a dick joke locked and loaded wasn’t how you advanced your career.
“Can I help you?” Venus steepled her hands and waited for the request. Dani was one of the few people with access to the inner sanctum, and standing orders to enter if needed.
“Lilith found Cam,” the dwarf got right to the point.
A mix of emotions flooded through Venus. First was frustration. She’d had her people working around the clock to find out what happened to Cameron. She had lawsuits pending against the UN for their treatment and loss of him, and she hated the hit her reputation had taken when one of her people had been violently snatched up in the middle of Manhattan. Months of money and effort had revealed nothing. Today, Dani just walked into her office and said he’d been found. It irked her that she hadn’t been able to manipulate her daughter and Cameron to transfer his contract to her. Primarily, because if he was in her harem, this never would have happened.
The second emotion was relief because now that he was back, she could recoup any losses on deals she might be able to back out of. It also allowed her to stop petitioning the Fae. Her constant summons were starting to look pathetic.
Still, she couldn’t stop the third emotion, suspicion, from rearing its head. She knew what Cameron was. She knew the Aesir blood that flowed through his veins, and the great possibilities that represented. She knew she needed to be cautious. He was smart, dangerous, and the Fae would never just let him go. She’d already completed her initial plan concerning him, but there were still many more possibilities.
She got to her feet, and placed a hand behind her back for support. It was instinctual, but completely unneeded. Despite all the magical tampering she’d attempted over the millennia, a pregnancy for her still took nine months to complete. She was only nearing the end of the first trimester, but she was already showing. Even more so, she was feeling this little one. She always did when they were going to be powerful.
That made her smile as she gave her stomach a rub, which more than anything else made Dani uncomfortable. The dwarf was willing to let half a biker gang of shifters run a train on her, but confront her with pregnancy, and she’d cry uncle. Just another aspect of the mystery that was Dani.
“Where is he?” she flicked her hand and the screens around them came to life. She hit touchscreens to bring up the resources she had in play all across the world. If the feds ever got access to this data, they’d toss her into a deep, dark pit and throw away the key.
“Um . . . she’s not one hundred percent sure. She said south,” Dani shrugged.
“That doesn’t help,” Venus set her jaw and looked over her assets. “South is Tikal territory.”
“Maybe not that far south,” she heard the hope in Dani’s voice as the dwarf indicated sections of the map.
“We’ve got a heavy boarder presence, and might be able to make a quick incursion if he’s close,” Dani started to gesture at possibilities.
“I won’t reignite a war. Not even for Cameron,” Venus stated.
She had plans for the man, but she had to weigh the costs and benefits in a situation like this. He’d already served his core purpose. Anything more would be preferable, but it wasn’t necessary. Was it preferable to get him back, or lose dozens of lives and millions of dollars before she got the Tikals back to the table for peace talks? That didn’t even take into account the resources it would take to rescue him from Tikal territory in the first place. With a heavy sigh, she had to admit, that like everyone, he’d already become expendable.
“I’m not saying start back up with the Tikals, but I could d
o some recon,” Dani suggested, but Venus held up her hand to stop her.
Dani was too essential to send into Mexico on what might be a wild goose chase.
“We’ll table this conversation. When my daughter is released, we can sit down and come up with a more actionable plan. I’m not prepared to go off halfcocked, lose people, and reignite a war that is just starting to cool.”
“But this is Cam,” the dwarf came precariously close to whining.
“I understand that but . . .”
There was a sudden inhalation of breath, and it looked like some invisible string had been wrapped around Dani’s throat. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she stood on her tippy toes while her whole body convulsed. Despite the violent shakes, she stayed on her feet. When she let out her breath, and settled back onto the ground, she was different. Her back was straight as a board, with none of the cocky swagger she wore like a badge of honor. Her face was calm, serene, and didn’t look like it was about to say a joke that would get her sent to HR for sexual harassment training.
She might still look like Dani Underwood, but she wasn’t; and that was confirmed by the two black orbs that opened to stare back at Venus.
“You look well,” Dani opened her mouth, but it wasn’t her voice that came out. It was accented, crisp, and familiar. “What do I address you by now?”
“I’ve been going by Venus for over two thousand years,” Venus shot back, her mind whirling to figure out why she was here. Why now? “Almost as long since I last saw you, Nyx.”
Not-Dani Nyx gave a smile. “It has been a while,” she didn’t wait for an invitation before she pulled out a chair and took a seat.
“Please,” Venus ground her teeth. “What’s up, Sis?”
From a biological standpoint, Nyx and Venus were not blood relatives; but some things were deeper than blood. Being worship by entire civilizations as gods tended to form bonds between beings; especially when some of those gods started mysteriously dying off.
Venus knew for a fact, Nyx had offed Hephaestus; but the Hellenic god of the forge was actually an iron kissed Fae, not a supernatural of their realm. Venus knew this because she’d asked Nyx to do it. Venus was tired of the whole Aphrodite – one of her previous identities – and Hephaestus love story. The Fae was as ugly as described, and mass belief in things helped shape reality; even hers. She found herself being drawn to the Fae, sharing his bed, even loving him. For fucks sake, his cock naturally had warts on it! She couldn’t have that. She couldn’t let something exercise that type of power over her; so, she did something about it.
Likewise, Venus had dealt with Zeus on Nyx’s behalf. The old horndog tried to fuck her every chance he got, and anything else with a hole for that matter. It didn’t matter to the thunderbird shifter; man, woman, beast, he’d fuck anything. It had been comparatively easy to slay him. She just needed a reason; and her Strangers on a Train deal with Nyx was just the excuse. Murderous oaths sworn in blood and magic created one hell of a connection, and for lack of a better term, Nyx was the closest thing to a sister the succubus had.
“I’m keeping watch, as always,” Nyx sounded bored, but she couldn’t escape what she was.
Nyx was once revered as the goddess of night, but like most of the ancient deities, the myths didn’t live up to reality. She was a wraith. The first wraith as far as Venus knew. Nyx was old with a capital O, older than Venus; and from a time before everything was purely flesh and blood. Nyx wasn’t fully corporeal like a shifter, vamp, or succubus; but to say a wraith was a ghost wasn’t completely accurate. Their reality was different than other supernaturals.
Nyx could manifest physically as an incredibly beautiful woman; beautiful enough to make Venus jealous. Such a manifestation took a combination of will and power that weakened her physical form. It was nowhere as weak as a human, and definitely stronger than most Fae, but it could be killed; and a creature as old as Nyx didn’t put herself in a position to be threatened.
The old wraith preferred what she was doing with Dani; a forced possession. Even strong minds couldn’t stand up to the sheer force of will than an ancient entity brought with it into the mental octagon. Right now, Dani was beaten, bruised, and locked away in a corner of her own mind. The dwarf would get over it . . . maybe, it all depended on her resilience.
When forcing a possession, Nyx was able to harness the powers of her vessel’s physical body on top of her own part-spirit intangibility. She could fight as Dani, make Dani take all the hits, even sacrifice the dwarf; all while Nyx escaped virtually unharmed. It made the old god incredibly powerful, versatile, and near-impossible to kill; which was why she’d lived when others had died in ancient struggles, feuds, and more than one apocalyptic bloodbath.
However, Nyx’s reality came with a downside. A portion of her being was always confined to the spirit realm. It wasn’t the Land of the Wild Hunt the Fae used; although, as far as Venus knew, Nyx had access to that space as well. The spirit realm was a thin borderland that encircled the mortal realm. It housed Nyx, her children, and the spirits of the restless dead who’d failed, or had no desire, to pass on to what came next.
The spirit realm wasn’t a realm as much as a thin bubble of energy around the mortal realm that other realms butted up against. Most realms only had one realm adjacent to theirs, but some had multiples. As far as Venus knew – and she’d done a lot of research on this topic – the mortal realm had no fewer than five realms that butted up against it. It was the largest confluence point that anyone in this section of the inter-realms knew of.
Two were closer than others; literally shoved against the mortal realm with only the thin sliver of the spirit realm separating the two. That made them easy to access, and malleable to the collective wills of the other.
It sounded crazy that three separate and distinct realms were so close that they could influence each other. Venus had her suspicions, and the evidence pointed to these two realms actually having spun off of the mortal realm in some type of cosmic baby making that even she didn’t understand. Thinking about it gave her a migraine, so she didn’t spend a lot of time on the subject.
Places like the Faerie Realm were farther away. Their connection was more of a tether or chain than bumping uglies. Still, as the Fae had adeptly shown, travel between those connections was frequent, but often one-sided; depending on the cosmic frequency of the realms.
While it was fascinating stuff, and humans could live their entire lives without gaining the knowledge in Venus’s head; ultimately, it didn’t matter. Nyx’s curse was to walk that boarder between realms as a sentry, or an early warning system. When something was coming, the ancient goddess and her children usually knew before anyone else; which was why Venus wasn’t keen to throw her a party and catch up on the last two thousand years of gossip.
“Keeping watch, you say,” Venus replied conversationally; requesting nothing, and giving nothing in return.
Nyx’s face grew hard. “You’re putting this realm in danger, Venus,” Dani’s black eyes stared at Venus’s protruding belly. “I understand your plan, but I don’t think it will succeed.”
“You know nothing,” Venus snapped back, power flexing in the air around her.
It was instinct, and Nyx brushed it off; the posturing between them was pointless. Both knew what the other was capable of, and were able to counter it. When you asked an ancient power to kill another ancient power on your behalf, you better make damn well sure you could avoid getting stabbed in the back. Neither Venus nor Nyx were stupid, and they’d learned to defend themselves if necessary.
“I know more than you believe,” Dani’s body gave a very-sexual shudder as Nyx drew in a breath. “I had one of my disciples taste him, Rhea,” Nyx slipped, and called Venus by the first name she’d ever bestowed upon herself.
Venus snarled and had to control herself not to lash out. When she’d been Rhea, she’d been different, naïve, and devoted to different goals. The cost of all of that had been to watch her fi
rst children die when she was too weak to defend them.
“Never again,” she’d told herself.
Rhea had died long ago, before man ventured forth from caves, and it was a low blow to bring her up again. Despite the intentional, or unintentional – it really didn’t matter – slip, Venus regained her composure. It didn’t matter if Nyx had uncovered everything she was trying to do, the wraith was powerless to stop it.
“He is exquisite,” Nyx continued, “and also in danger. His enemies draw near.”
“He is capable of defending himself,” Venus replied reflexively. She couldn’t show any more weakness.
“If you say so,” Dani’s shoulders shrugged. “But if you fail to act, I’ll take that as permission,” Nyx gave one last smile.
Dani chin dropped to her chest, and her body went into another set of violent convulsions. Venus waited for them to pass, thinking fast.
“Wha . . . what the shit was that!” Dani came back to herself, jumped out of the chair, and searched for a weapon on her belt that wasn’t there.
“Never mind that,” Venus brushed it aside. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“What . . . mind . . . changed . . .” Dani’s eyes were scanning the room for threats while trying very hard to escape her sockets.
“I want you to put together a team; a small, but trusted team. We can’t move into Tikal territory until we know Cameron’s location, but we can pre-position resources to make the extraction as painless as possible,” she waved her hand in a clear symbol of dismissal.
“Y . . . yeah,” Dani shook her head and headed for the door.
Venus could practically see the thoughts on the young dwarf’s face. “Did that really just happen? Did I just pass out? Did somebody slip something into my morning coffee?” Dani looked back and gave Venus a look. “Did she just pull some sex juju on me and munch on my rug?”
All of it was Dani’s brain attempting to come to grips with the mental violation that had happened. If Venus was being honest, the best way to deal with it was to ignore it. The human, and even supernatural, mind was quite adept at explaining away something weird. How else had the supernatural community been able to remain hidden for so long? Answer, most humans chose to believe the weirdness around them was something completely explainable.
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