Going Deep

by L. J. Vickery

  Enlil, a round of tequila shots over here, he called, heading up the party that now moved to the empty table.

  Coming right up, the god of wind replied.

  Dagon took a chair after seating a reluctant Holly. The rest of the party followed suit.

  Lenore rapped her knuckles on the table. “Everyone needs to chill out.” She checked the clock. “It looks like we have less than an hour to get things straight.”

  Chapter Two

  They all leaned in around the small table—Dagon, Holly, Anshar, Lenore, Marduk, Tess, and Huxley. Then they stared at each other. Dagon wondered who would have the courage to speak up first, then shrugged. What the fuck? It should probably be Tess. She’s your sister. You go. He gave her an elbow to the ribs, and she shot him daggers. Okay. Maybe they weren’t on those kind of terms yet. He had abducted her once, and even though he’d subsequently apologized, she might still nurse a grudge.

  “Okay, I guess this can begin with me,” Tess said, looking at Holly, obviously unwilling to take her eyes off her twin after so many years of being apart. “I recently moved away from home to a city south of Boston called Quincy and was minding my own business when this magnificent hunk of god accosted me out of nowhere.” She put a hand on Marduk’s arm.

  Holly snorted. “I’ll admit he’s too good looking to be true, but isn’t calling him a god just a little over the top?”

  Dagon made a growly noise at Holly calling Marduk good looking, but Anshar rubbed his hands in glee. His asshole cousin obviously thought this was way better than television.

  Lenore slapped at her mate. “Stop.” Then she eyed Holly. “He already has an ego that barely fits in his over-sized body. Do you really want to encourage him?”

  “But that’s the thing, Lenore. Holly needs to know that he and the rest of the guys really are gods.” Tess looked away and played with a rough fingernail she seemed to have just discovered.

  Holly looked around the table for the punchline. What she saw was a bunch of straight faces, except for Anshar’s. The guy grinned from ear to ear like a madman.

  Holly chose to pick on him. “All right, joker. Spill it.” She must have thought she’d just entered some fucked up alternate universe.

  Anshar ignored her question to issue a tongue in cheek warning. “If this goes as well as it did with your sister,” he cautioned, obviously remembering Marduk getting his nose busted. Dagon nearly groaned. Damn his cousin who couldn’t stop his lips from twitching. “We could be in for a long night.”

  “Which we don’t have,” Lenore snapped at her mate.

  Enlil had just arrived with the shots, and as he placed them on the table, the bartender/god grabbed one for himself. “Welcome to the family, great granddaughter.” He tossed it back and, without explanation, retreated.

  Nice move, asshole, Dagon sent, and got a mental fuck you, in return.

  “Great granddaughter?” Holly looked around again with total confusion. “This is all completely screwed up! No one here finds it remotely odd that a thirty-something guy would call me his granddaughter?” She pushed the still-full shot glass away and raised her brows as Tess did the same. Holly pinpointed Lenore with a laser-look. “You seem to be the only semi-sane person in this group. How about you tell me what’s going on?”

  “I’ll give it to you as succinctly as possible.” Lenore knew as well as the rest of them that they were running out of time, so she continued, clearly refusing to be chicken-assed.

  “These guys are all gods. They lived in ancient Mesopotamia, BCE…you know…Hammurabi’s Code and all that? Well, they messed up in various ways and ended up in the Underworld where they pissed off their king, Nergal, but tickled the fancy of a she-devil they call Ereshkigal.” She looked at Anshar. “Good so far?”

  “You tell it, baby.” He took his shot in a quick gulp.

  “They got sent to Earth to prove themselves in the 1600s, and with the help of your little squeeze here,” she indicated Dagon, who realized he must look mutinous, “they screwed up royally and pissed off Myles Standish, military leader of the Plymouth Pilgrims.”

  Dagon could tell that Lenore had warmed to her subject.

  “For being naughty, they got sentenced to an existence without bodies…which the bunch of invisible, immortal guys hanging around outside can attest to. Dagon, because he’d switched sides and worked for Nergal at that point, simply got put to sleep…and I don’t mean like a bad dog, although that would have been an okay solution as far as I’m concerned.” She glared at Dagon and then blinked at Holly. “Am I going too fast?”

  “Um, no.”

  Dagon watched carefully, and Holly looked like she put just about as much credence into what Lenore said as she would any drug-induced hallucination. She looked far from onboard, but she spit back dutifully, “Mesopotamia, bad gods, 1600s, screw-ups, Dagon…traitor?” Was she looking at him with doubt in her eyes?

  “Right. One day, your sister comes along, and all of a sudden, Marduk here,” she indicated the over-sized dark haired god, “finds out he’s able to hold his own penis again.”

  Marduk blushed. Anshar smirked.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Lenore grinned.

  Clearly she was not.

  “What I meant to say is that he became visible, corporeal for the first time in centuries. A mystery, right? But then along comes Enlil, the tequila guy.”

  Hey, would you bring us another round? Dagon heard Anshar send the request to the wind god. Tell-all was thirsty business.

  “He gets physical again too. But this time, unlike with Marduk at first, they figure out why. Enlil and Tess share DNA. FYI, that means Enlil and Huxley share DNA, and for the record, so do you. They look into things a little harder, and find out that they’d knocked up a bunch of women in old Merrymount…a fine and fitting name…and you, and me, and a bunch of other women yet to be found are the results of those furtive gropings when they dropped their homespun.”

  At Dagon’s behest, thankfully Lenore left out the whole Chosen thing. It would come to light sooner or later, but by that time it would be too late. Dagon would be out of the picture, and providing nightly entertainment for creatures he didn’t want to think about. Dagon frowned. Even though there was no getting around it, he didn’t have to like the inevitable outcome.

  Dagon could tell that Holly was about to protest, but Lenore kept going, barely stopping for a breath. “So Nergal resurrects Dagon and puts him in charge of finding these female descendants with the help of a group of miscreants we like to call the Pilgrim Posse, or PP for short, to stop the gods from hooking up.” Again with the daggers in his direction.

  “Turns out it’s a little more complicated than old Nergal thought, when voila I turn out to be directly descended from Dagon, and he’s reluctant to put me in Nergal’s hands. Apparently he has tender familial feelings and decides instead to mate me with Anshar, kidnap my folks, lock me up, and then come looking for the next chick on the list, who happens to be you.”

  Holly’s mouth fell open. Dagon could see the wheels turning. If she bought into this shit, she’d think that Dagon had come to Chicago to abduct her. He felt as low as dirt and did his best to avoid her eyes. Damn it!

  “Here’s the good part, though!” Lenore had obviously seen the pissed off look Holly sent his way. “He finds you and instantly feels an attraction.”

  Lenore loved this, didn’t she? Making him damned uncomfortable. Payback was a bitch, and Dagon didn’t like it one little bit.

  “One might even say love at first sight.” Yup, he could feel color creep up the back of his neck. “So now he can’t hand you over either.” Lenore’s tone went quickly from sarcastic to serious. “Nergal figures this out, or at least most of it, and gets pissed, so he enlists a worse badass than Dagon to his team. The dude’s name is Erra, and half the humans in this bar are now on his payroll.” She leaned across the table toward Holly. “Take a good look around. All these big assholes are here to take you out, but we’re betting good
odds that we can save the day and get you away safely. So whether you buy the story or not, you’ll be coming with us tonight.”

  Holly sat facing them all, lightly strumming her fingers on the table, clearly processing that her brother and sister, whom she trusted, didn’t have anything to say. They hadn’t disagreed with a single word out of Lenore’s mouth.

  Dagon felt pained, sitting by her side, and shared what Holly was going through, being able to dart in and out of her thoughts. Try as she might to combat it, she still felt the zing of attraction to him, inevitable between amulet mates. What a shit he was.

  Despite Lenore’s cut-and-dried synopsis, the story―even to Dagon’s ears―defied reason. How could Holly neatly categorize this into the scheme of things that happened to people in real life? She ran a hand back through her curls, tousling them even more, and Dagon’s quick eyes told him that Tess had seen the telling gesture too. It was a movement he’d seen Marduk’s wife make when she was nervousness. He wondered what came next. Tess had a look on her face that said she was about to rock Holly’s world.

  “Holly, you know how we’ve always felt different. You know…the dreams?” She prodded her sister to look at her. “When I brought Marduk up to meet Dad for the first time, lots of stuff came out. Among them was the fact that the three of us,” her look included Huxley, “were adopted.”

  Dagon waited for hysterics, denial, disbelief, things he himself might experience, but Holly surprised them.

  “I think I always suspected,” she muttered.

  Tess blinked but took that in stride, then gently asked, “Is it okay if we leave that discussion for later?”

  Holly nodded, and Tess drove right in with the next shocker. “Do you still have the dreams?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Holly’s face flooded with awareness. She gasped and swayed. Dagon freaked. What the fuck was Tess talking about? His arm went around Holly in support, and she didn’t shrug it off.

  Her mouth fell open, barely able to work the next words off her tongue. “Tell me, Tess.” Whatever got revealed, Dagon feared, Holly already knew.

  “The places we saw. The creatures we encountered. It was nightmares for us, but for them…it’s their Underworld. We dreamed what they lived. Night after night, we saw into their memories, became them, and watched ourselves ripped apart, only to be put back together until it happened again the next night. For the gods, it was real. It all happened.” Tess reached for Marduk’s hand and looked at Huxley.

  Their brother continued where Tess had stopped. “I never let you know at the time, but I had dreams too. Mine were different. Instead of being inside the warriors heads, I battled alongside them. When Tess brought the group up to the farm, I recognized every one of them and I’d found the warriors I’d been searching for my whole life.”

  Holly was well aware that her brother had rarely felt like he fit in anywhere. Dagon had found out that much when he and his destined mate had been getting to know each other over the last few nights. Although Huxley had successfully opened his gym, she’d told Dagon that he’d always been searching for more. Holly confronted him now. “And these guys make you feel…”

  “Like I’ve finally come home.” Huxley didn’t pull any punches. Dagon rubbed his eyes. Holly’s siblings would give her the whole scoop at a later time. Right now, she had to understand that she belonged here, with this group of gods, and she had to get onboard fast, because shit would be going down soon.

  “So have you all forgiven Dagon since he came and told you where I worked instead of kidnapping me?”

  Her question hit him unsuspectingly and Dagon reeled. He figured she’d have questions about gods, or hell, or her own fate. But no. Not his Chosen. Holy shit, he loved this woman. She’d just ignored everything she’d been hit with to make sure he remained good. Total goddess material.

  “Some of us have forgiven him.” Marduk answered. “Others will need more time.”

  Not that there would be any more time, Dagon lamented. As the events of the night played out, he was the one whose fate had already been sealed.

  He watched Holly carefully. She was strong…and determined. She had needed to be, during her years alone and on the run. She’d left her family as an unrepentant alcoholic, but had forged a new life for herself, here, alcohol free. It showed her strength. A strength she drew on now as she weighed things in her head, no longer doubting their story, preposterous though it seemed.

  Holly turned slowly and met his eyes. Dagon let out the pent-up breath he’d been holding and gave a satisfied sigh at the love he saw shining for him. He suddenly felt strong, and good. She believed the tale of the immortals, and despite his poor choices in the past, Holly also believed in him. And now, Dagon could seek vindication. In the end, when it counted most, he would stand up for what was right. He would protect his woman.

  Holly’s head moved deliberately toward him, and his heart ached as she placed her lips firmly over his. Holly seemed to inhale him as they kissed, and whatever she got from him, it clearly strengthened her resolve.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” She slapped her hands on the table. “Let’s go kick some PP ass!”

  Chapter Three

  Holly reached for Dagon’s hand and squeezed it while looking around the room. “So are we doing this, or what?” she asked.

  “Nothing’s going to happen until the bar is cleared out. Max will send the bad guys out after they’ve had last call,” Dagon informed her.” We’ll stay here and make sure none of them try anything prematurely.”

  He received a kiss on his cheek that had his heart stuttering and then watched her walk away.

  Out of the corner of his eye, two Kevlar-clad police packing some serious weaponry entered the bar. They approached Max, who spoke a few words then gestured toward Dagon with his head. They approached him cautiously.

  Marduk came into Dagon’s brain. Careful how you word this, Dagon. They’re going to want info from you, and we don’t want to be the ones dragged downtown for inciting a riot. We can’t help Holly from a jail cell. Marduk tossed back Tess’s shot then his in rapid succession. Dagon nodded to the thunder god. He’d do this right.

  “Good evening, officers,” Dagon greeted Chicago’s finest as they approached the table. He had the utmost respect in his voice. The taller of the two responded.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir, but the owner of the establishment said that you requested he call in a SWAT team for a possible gang fight. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, officer, I did.” Dagon looked directly into his eyes. “My girlfriend,” he pointed to Holly clearing tables, “is a bartender here and has been harassed and propositioned by two men repeatedly in the past few weeks. I’ve been walking her home to protect her and was told, last night, to back off.” The officer seemed to be buying his story. Of course, Dagon put a compelling edge on his words.

  “I had what you might call a heated conversation with one of them, and he must have been somewhat intimidated because he backed off.”

  The man in blue took a good look at Dagon and probably thought the men had shown some smarts.

  “Then he told me he’d be waiting tonight with friends to get what he wanted and to do some serious damage to me and my lady, so I showed up with reinforcements.” Dagon indicated Marduk, Anshar, Huxley, and Enlil who had just joined the group. “I thought we could discourage them, but they haven’t left, so I had the bartender call for your help.”

  Although the bar had emptied out, Dagon waved his hand all over the space. “They had this place packed with people tonight. One of them approached me and let me know they planned on hitting us at closing.”

  The officer looked around Dagon’s table. “I’m not sure it was a good idea to bring the ladies into this…”

  “I’m Holly’s…the bartender’s sister. Family watches out for family.” Tess held herself rigidly as she spoke.

  “…and I’m fully capable to taking care of myself,” Lenore added, wiggling fe
istily, ready for a fight.

  The cop perused the platinum-blonde woman with undisguised skepticism but caught the frantic don’t-go-there signals that Anshar made behind her back and must have figured she was either crazy or big trouble. The officer obviously needed neither and smartly zipped his lip.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, instead. “My team has already secured the alley out back, and it’s clear. You people stay put here, while we go out the main door and confront the perpetrators. When my man,” he pointed to the uniform beside him who’d been silent, “sticks his head in and gives you an all-clear sign, I want you all to go out the back into the alley and take off. Text us when you get home safely. Let the bar owner know what’s happening when he and your girlfriend finish cleaning up.”

  “Sounds like a good plan, officer.” Dagon bit his tongue. The wild card would be Erra. But if the SWAT team had the PP busy out front, Marduk’s band could concentrate their energy on keeping the war god at bay in the back. Surely eleven gods, two goddesses, and one pissed-off human brother could defeat the evil death and disaster immortal.

  The cop walked away and minutes ticked by. The group inside waited not so patiently. Absu popped in and out, keeping them abreast of the happenings on the street, and so far at least, he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Erra.

  I will give points to the Pilgrim Posse for perseverance, Absu alliterated. They are not easily deterred. Every time the law enforcement officials disburse them, they regroup in close proximity. The uniformed gentleman in charge is fast losing patience, however, and has now threatened them with tear gas and jail time. He is having his subordinates suit up now.

  Dagon pulled his phone out and the group looked at him questioningly as he dialed. He heard it ring, and there was a terse hello on the other end. “Matthew,” he barked. “Give it up. Now. You cannot win. Your ground troops will be taken out by the SWAT team, and we can more than take care of Erra with all the god-power we have at our disposal. Disband, and you might live to see another day.” Why he needed to warn the asshole, he didn’t know. He must be getting soft.