by Amy Sumida
“Of course it is,” I said dryly.
“Before we go in there; what can these gods do?” Thor asked.
“Ilmarinen makes magical things, sort of like the Dwarves,” Odin answered. “As far as battle magic, he can command the wind.”
“An ill wind, eh?” Pan chuckled.
“Vainamoinen, however, can manipulate people with his music,” Odin finished without even glancing at Pan.
“What does that mean exactly?” I asked. “Are we talking about mind control? Can he make people do whatever he wants by singing a song?”
“No; it's not that simple.” Odin shook his head. “It's a gentle persuasion with a cumulative effect. A single song wouldn't do much.”
“But the more you listen, the more control he has over you?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Odin confirmed. “But it's not a violent magic. His control is limited to adoration, love, and community. He was considered to be a hero.”
“What kind of a hero abducts women?” Apollo snapped.
Oh, yeah; I forgot to mention that Apollo had come along as well. It wasn't as if we could leave him behind. Although, I really wished we had. I had a feeling that Apollo was going to be more of a hindrance than a help.
“We don't know for certain that he's the one who took your muses,” Artemis said reasonably. “Let's not start shit in here until we have a reason to, okay?”
Apollo grimaced but nodded.
So, maybe he wouldn't be too much trouble after all.
“This place is like your Moonshine?” Arach asked me as he looked over the steady stream of people. “Humans come here to dance and drink?”
“Honestly, I'm not sure if this is like Moonshine,” I said. “So far, all they have in common is that they both play music. Let's start looking out here. I can't believe I'm about to say these words but; Apollo, give me the panties.”
Apollo fished them out and handed me the scrap of silk. Pan laughed his ass off as I took a deep whiff. I offered them to Arach, and he scowled at them.
“You wish for me to smell another woman's undergarments?” Arach asked disdainfully.
“No, but I'd like your help tracking her.”
“You shall have it,” Arach declared as he pushed my hand and the offensive unmentionable away. “I can smell her from here.” He grimaced. “But there's no trace of her in this place.”
“Smell harder,” Apollo insisted.
“It may be too old a trail,” I said gently. “We'll go inside and sniff around there too. If they're here, we'll smell them, and we'll find them.”
“And we'll do some regular investigating as well,” Thor added. “If they were here and left, perhaps we can discover where they went.”
“Okay.” Apollo sighed.
Chapter Eight
There was no cover charge nor did they check our IDs; the bouncers took one look at us and waved us in. We walked into a narrow foyer that funneled us forward into a sea of shadows split by the beams of colored spotlights. A low hum hit me both as a physical and auditory sensation. It wasn't the music that produced this hum but the place itself; the very walls vibrated with energy. As we came out into the main portion of the club, I realized that it wasn't something the gods had done either; it was the humans.
Your average human doesn't have magic, but they do possess power; raw energy. Most don't use their energy to their best potential; they never learn how to tap into it. Only those who practice meditation or are very focused are able to direct their power into becoming a force of change in their lives. Those people do amazing things, and they draw others to them with the energy they radiate. The rest ignore their power; distracted by the minutia of their daily lives. This unknown apathy creates a type of film over their energy; a bubble that's only broken with great trauma. That's why sensitive people can walk into a place where something horrible has happened and feel it; the trauma caused an energy explosion so great that it soaked into the walls. Normally, though, human energy stays bottled up.
That was not the case at Sampo.
The club patrons had expended incredible amounts of power—focused energy—and they were continuing to do so. It saturated Sampo with a hundred—possibly a thousand—times the amount that a trauma would have, except this energy was positive and if you could feel it, it was heady stuff. It made my god friends and me pause to breathe in deeply; drinking in the tingling elixir just as Sampo did and, doubtless, its gods as well.
We glanced at each other in amazement then veered to the right to make our way along a wide ledge that bordered the sunken dance floor. A strip of light outlined the floor of the dancing area, but I only caught glimpses of it through the mass of moving bodies. The scent of desire and yearning wafted up to me from the dancers. The shifting lights—hung far above the center area—gave glimpses of glassy eyes and slack mouths. Hands slid over sweaty skin and hips undulated slowly but purposefully.
A stage perched at the end of the main room; set even higher than our ledge with its lip pursed over the dance floor. It seemed more like the Emperor's stand in a gladiatorial arena than a place to perform; as if the dancers were the entertainment, not the musician. A bar pressed up against the wall on the ledge across the dance floor from ours, with a crowd of people waiting calmly to place their orders as they swayed to the music. This central room surged up three stories; open all the way to the metal scaffolding that dangled the spotlights. The upper floors all had floor-to-ceiling windows in place of solid walls. Anyone up there would be able to watch the performance but the lighting turned the glass into mirrors and hid whoever may be watching.
On the stage, Gandalf sang.
“I'm sorry; is that the guy from The Lord of the Rings?” I asked.
The singer who everyone had come to hear sat perched on a simple wooden stool, playing a squarish, long, lap harp as he sang into a mic set on a stand before him. He wore jeans, a pale, cotton, hippie tunic, and Birkenstock sandals. His long, ivory hair flowed over his shoulders to mid-back and his matching beard draped into his lap, held in place by the harp.
“Vainamoinen,” Odin named the singing god. “He's said to be the inspiration for the fictional character of Gandalf. Good guess, Vervain.”
“Shut up!” I exclaimed and then chuckled. “Did that do anything to keep Vainamoinen's myths alive?”
“Not much,” Odin muttered.
“Bummer,” I murmured as I eased to the edge of the dancing pit. “He should have at least gotten some publicity from that.”
I leaned against the metal railing that ran the length of the ledge and looked over the minstrel god. His music curled gently outward from him; lyrical tentacles that tickled their way into ears and then deeper, into brains. Invasive, persuasive, but also uplifting; it lightened the heart. I could feel the magic in it but, judging by the look of bliss on the human portion of the audience, it didn't affect me as it did them. Still, it did have an effect; I could appreciate its beauty and feel a touch of the peace it offered. Would I want to listen to this music and only it? Hell no. But now I knew for certain why humans were drawn to it.
The music was enchanted.
Not enchanting, but enchanted. It slid into the mind and saturated every thought until they were all focused on its illusion. In this instance, the illusion was pleasant; peace, harmony, and love. Vainamoinen wasn't using his influence to manipulate humans into war or hurt each other; he was manipulating them into acceptance and understanding. But did that make it okay?
I frowned as I tried to shake free of the pervasive magic. Despite its loving message, there were still undertones of domination to it. The music had subtle layers of charisma. It made humans happy and adoring. This was compelled worship.
“He's good,” Arach noted. “The magic is subtle; you don't sense it right away.”
“But all of you feel that, right?” I asked.
Everyone nodded grimly.
“Okay; no one goes anywhere alone,” Thor declared. “We need to guard each other in h
ere. This song may be positive but who knows what the next one will be. I hate to admit it, but even I can feel the spell.”
“Good point,” Hades agreed as he looked around. “And there's a lot to search. They have corridors branching off to either side of the main room.” He waved at the humans wandering down corridors that branched off the side ledges. “And we need to search everywhere.”
“You're damn straight we do.” Apollo started to head toward one of the corridors, but Thor grabbed his arm and yanked him back.
“What did I just say?” Thor growled at Apollo. “We don't just run off alone without a plan. First”—he shifted his gaze to me—“Vervain, do you smell Calliope in here?”
“No,” I said immediately; I'd been smelling intently from the moment we walked in. “Arach, how about you?”
“I do not smell the Muse in this chamber,” he declared.
“Okay.” Thor nodded and then looked at Artemis. “Go with your brother and Torrent.” He let Apollo go and waved at the hallway behind him. “Search the rooms on the left side of the corridor.”
Artemis headed off with her brother and Torrent.
“Teharon, Karni, and Toby,” Thor continued, “take the rooms on the right. Vervain, Arach, and Trevor, head across to the other corridor and take the rooms on the right. Brahma, Sara, Tsohanoai, and Estsanatlehi go with them and search the rooms on the left. Horus, Hekate, and Re, head upstairs. There are likely corridors there as well; take the left side and the left rooms. Hades, Persephone, and Azrael, you go with them to the right. Blue and Eztli, you're with me; we'll head upstairs to the right and take the left side of the corridor. Pan, Morpheus, and Finn go with my father and search the right. We meet back here when we're finished. Hopefully, we won't have to continue up to the third floor, but if we do, we'll go together.”
Everyone agreed and headed out. Trevor, Arach, and I headed back along the ledge to the club entrance. Brahma, Sara, Mr. T, and Mrs. E went with us in a single file; navigating the crowd like a snake.
“Oh, you're so big,” a redheaded woman in skintight dress slid up against Trevor and dragged her pointed red nails over his bicep. “And handsome. Do you wanna dance?”
“No, thank you,” Trevor said with a smirk. “I'm here with my wife.”
But as Trevor turned to me, a goth guy in leather and eyeliner wove his way between us and nuzzled my neck.
“You have a body made for sin,” he whispered in my ear as he set a hand on my lower back. “Care to partake in some with me?”
Trevor's smirk disappeared, but Arach reacted before my wolf could get free of the redhead. My dragon dropped his glamour for a split second and growled at the Goth while he hooked a talon in the guy's nose ring—one of those right in the center septum, like on a bull—and pulled the man away from me.
“Ow, ow, ow!” The Goth howled as he held up his hands in surrender and stared at Arach in horror. “All right; I get it! No need to get brutal.”
The Goth disappeared into the throng as soon as Arach released him, but we weren't the only ones fending off arduous attacks. Brahma's hand was around some hipster's throat, and Mrs. E had inserted herself between a blonde and her husband. Oh, and Trevor's admirer hadn't been scared off either.
“I don't mind sharing,” the redhead said as she looked me over. “I go bi for the right women, and your wife is all kinds of right.”
Trevor's eyes went wide and shiny.
“Thank you so much,” I said politely. “But we're not interested.”
The woman pouted but finally gave up, giving me a chance to extract the human from Brahma's grip and calm Mrs. E down before she made the persistent blonde cry. As soon as we were all calm and safe, we hurried to the corridor and split up to search; The Indians—both types; I wondered if Thor had done that on purpose—went left while my husbands and I went right.
All the doors were closed but not locked. I opened the first one on the right and stepped into an antechamber that served as a sound barrier between the club outside and the room within. We passed through it and came out into a sleek room of glossy golden floor, wood-paneled walls, and low lighting. Speakers piped in primal music all around us. I instantly recognized Vainamoinen's voice; obviously a recording since the god was currently singing something completely different outside.
“More magic,” Arach whispered as his eyes flashed past the glamour of brown he'd laid over them.
His scales briefly made an appearance too, but the crimson pattern near his temples wasn't as noticeable as his glowing, yellow, dragon eyes in the dim light.
I laid a hand on his arm and shifted in front of him. “Watch your glamour.”
“I'm fine now, A Thaisce,” he assured me. “It was just a reaction to the blood.”
“Blood,” I whispered.
I'd been so distracted by Arach that the sharp tang in the air hadn't registered with me. Blood had been spilled somewhere in the room recently. Trevor had gone still beside me; he scented it too. Inside me, all three of my beasts were sitting up and salivating. It wasn't human blood. No, this was the scent of prey; rabbit possibly. I took a deep sniff as I moved through the crowd. Yes; definitely rabbit and... fish?
Leather chairs clustered in groups around the room; rustic looking furniture. Something you'd expect a lumberjack to own; pieces that belonged in a lodge, not a nightclub. Humans lounged in the seats and in the open spaces between, they danced to the savage sound of pounding drums and rumbling lyrics. I was impressed that Vainamoinen had been able to put his magic into a recording; that would take a significant amount of power. I stared closer at the people as we moved past them. They didn't look as peaceful as those in the main room, but they weren't violent either. This was something else entirely. They had the look of...
“Animals,” the Wolf growled.
Arach looked at him sharply, sensing the shift from Trevor to Wolf as I had.
“What about animals?” I asked the Wolf.
“That's what the music is turning them into,” he grunted. “Not physically, but mentally. It's shifting them into a more instinctual mentality. Not pack animals, though; only solitary or mated pairs.”
Arach and I looked around the room. There did appear to be a distance between the humans that you wouldn't normally find in a club setting. A few couples stood or danced together, but they kept a wary distance between themselves and others.
“There is strength here,” Arach added as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Not nearly strong enough to suit a dragon, but still; it's significant. Heavy.”
We finally reached the other end of the room and stopped short.
“Well, that explains it,” I murmured.
A bear laid on a low dais at the end of the room. Yes; a real, live bear. Well, maybe not so much real as divine. It was a bear-shifter; a werebear, if you will. Although he wasn't in a were-form—a half-form like a werewolf can achieve—so perhaps he wasn't a werebear, just a shifter. Anyway, the Bear God lounged on his dais with an altar before him. Baskets of berries, platters of fish, and a bowl of freshly butchered meat laid on the altar. The Bear must have had his fill already because he was relaxing as he cleaned his claws.
“They're worshiping him,” I whispered. “The music compels them to, just as it compels them to worship Vainamoinen outside.”
“Vainamoinen's sharing his magical music with his fellow gods,” Arach mused. “Admirable.”
The Wolf just snarled.
The Bear glanced up, sensing the threat, and narrowed its dark eyes.
“Let's go.” I pulled the men back. “No one's being hurt here, except for poor Thumper, that is. And I don't see or smell the Muses.”
“Honestly, I find nothing wrong here.” Arach shrugged as he headed out. “If humans want to worship a bear, that's their choice.”
“I'm not sure it is,” I muttered as I left the room. “I felt a strong urge to kill something and bring it back to him.”
The men grimaced and shared uneasy glances.
“Hey, magic affects us too,” I reminded them. “We have a little more resistance to it, but we can still feel it and be both physically and mentally hurt by it. There's no shame in admitting that you felt compelled in there.”
“Wolves don't bow to Bears,” the Wolf growled and then sighed. “But I felt as if I should.”
“I didn't feel the need to worship, but I did want to hunt,” Arach added.
“All right; let's be even more careful as we look through the rest of the rooms.
The next room down was just a lounge with instrumental music piped in; no lyrics and no magic. Humans relaxed and talked casually with drinks in their hands. A bar stood at the far end; in the spot where the Bear had laid in the last room.
