"Stone could have been right. I don't know. I've never seen anything like them. They're not something the Enemy would normally use."
"Yeah—but Faeries?"
Athena shrugged. “We know the legends as well as anyone. As far as I know, not one of us has ever encountered anything that could be considered one of the Fey. Doesn't mean anything though. They might very well simply avoid us.
"Stone doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'd believe in something he doesn't have the evidence for."
Breed nodded absently. “Athena, thank you for coming clean with me. It's a lot to swallow at first, but ... I believe you."
"Good. Because it's the unvarnished tru—"
Breed's cell phone rang at that exact moment. Frowning, she dug it out of her jacket pocket. “Breed here."
It was Chandler, her immediate supervisor. “How are you feeling?"
"Better than I was,” she answered, a bit wary. “Why?"
"I just talked to Deputy Director Stone. He said you'd gone home sick.” Chandler sounded solicitous, which didn't really surprise her. He was a good guy, particularly once you dug down past all that macho bullshit most male cops threw out like water from a sprinkler head.
"I was really feeling crappy, but I'm okay now."
"Good. Stone has requested your assistance for the foreseeable future. You must've really impressed him."
Either that or he didn't want to expose another cop to their little community of secrets. She didn't say anything about that, though. “I'm glad. We found the missing person, but I'm afraid I don't have too many details."
"No problem, Breed. Get some rest and stay on top of things.” He cut the connection.
"Well, it looks like you get to keep me around,” Breed sighed.
"I'd expected that,” the other woman replied. “You'd better get some rest. It's getting light outside."
Breed nodded. “So what about you?"
"Well, if you don't mind, I'll watch some movies,” Athena said with a grin. “Or maybe take a nap myself. Then, once you're up and moving, we'll trek on down to Loki's lab and see what we can find out about your condition."
"Sounds like a plan.” Breed yawned. “Enjoy."
She lay in bed for about ten minutes before her brain quieted enough for her to fall asleep. She didn't remember her dreams, which, all things considered, she found to be a good thing.
* * * *
Athena blinked herself awake, realizing she'd fallen asleep with the TV on, watching one of those mindlessly sensational daytime talk shows. It was over, of course, but had been replaced by one equally distasteful. Breed stood over her, a cup of coffee in hand. “I don't know if you take your coffee any differently than your tea—or even if you drink coffee, but here."
She thrust it outward in an almost violent gesture. Athena sat up, accepted the cup gratefully, and sipped carefully at its hot liquid content. “Have a good sleep?"
Breed rubbed at her eyes. “I slept fine. Sorry if I seem a little ... weird. Waking up always seems like an assault on my senses."
Athena chuckled. “I know what you mean. I think that's why so many immortals don't sleep much at all. Waking up is just too traumatic. Other than that, how do you feel?"
"I feel great. Maybe better than I have in years. Is that normal?"
"What's normal?” She sighed. “I wish I could tell you more, Deputy Breed, but, at the moment, I don't know any more than I've already told you."
"Call me Sarah. Or Breed. I know I'm a deputy—I don't need a reminder."
"Okay, Sarah.” She cocked her head. “For some reason that name doesn't suit you. Hanging out with us, you should have a good name.” She flashed a grin. “How about Nemesis? She was a lesser deity, goddess of justice and divine vengeance."
Breed shrugged. “Sure, why not? It's not like I felt all that attached to my name. Might've changed it, but—why bother?"
Athena chuckled. “Why don't you drink your coffee, get cleaned up, and we'll get our asses down to Loki's place—figure out what virus you picked up and what it's going to do to you."
"You get no argument from me.” As the immortal sat up, she slid down to sit at the other edge of the couch. “Oh, hell. Might help if I had my coffee, wouldn't it?” She got up, went to the kitchen, and returned a moment later with her own steaming cup. “You mind if I turn on some music? I wake up better with music in my head."
"It's your house, Nemesis. I don't mind."
A few minutes later the beginning strains of Metallica's ‘Enter Sandman’ filled the small room. Athena sat back and regarded the young mortal woman with an intensity the other woman started to find acutely uncomfortable. “So. You said you wanted to be a Fed. What changed your mind?"
"Politics.” She shrugged. “I thought I wanted to protect those who needed protecting. I wanted to catch serial killers or something like that. Something..."
"—glorifying?” Athena supplied.
"Remarkable,” Breed countered. “Something I could look back on and see what I'd accomplished. All those future victims saved.
"But now the FBI is on the front lines against terrorism—worthy enough, but it's not a battle you can win. Not really. Every terrorist caught or killed is replaced by two more just like him. And some of it is just questionable, when you get right down to it. Balancing security against civil liberties—it's hard enough as a cop. As a Fed, it's impossible. What matters is getting the job done. It's as simple as that."
"So you left Quantico and came here? Did you have family here?"
Breed shook her head. “I don't have any family,” she answered. “Not real family. My mother was a junkie. She died when I was eight. From there I went to a series of foster homes. Some of them were okay, some of them were worse than you can imagine."
"Oh, I don't know. I can imagine some pretty bad things,” Athena told her.
"I suppose. Say, can't you immortals have kids?"
The question took Athena by surprise. Not so much that it came at all, but that it had taken so long to arise. “It doesn't seem like it. At least not by mortals. Believe it or not, we don't tend to cultivate that sort of relationship amongst ourselves. You'd think we would—considering that a relationship with a mortal is a doomed thing from the start. Even if it lasts, you still have to watch your mortal lover deteriorate before your eyes. In the end it just produces resentment on both sides."
"It's hard to believe none of you have ever tried it. In twenty-five thousand years?"
"Well ... maybe some have. But it's never produced a child. At least not one we've been aware of. I can speak for most of us. As far as I know, none of the hundred and seventy five that remain reachable, that participate in our community to some extent or another, have been able to procreate. Not that most have even tried, mind you.
"You said two hundred, right? What happened to the other twenty-five?"
"We don't know. You saw three of them last night. Morrigan, Manennen, and Thanatos are all of the Lost Ones, the ones who've remained under our radar for a long, long time. The fact that they've resurfaced now is pretty unsettling, to be honest. We can never be sure that some haven't gone over to the Enemy."
"Why would they do that? They destroyed your world, didn't they?"
"Hey, don't ask me. I'm sure as hell not going to do it. What would prompt someone else...” She waved a hand dismissively. “It's just something we're a bit concerned about. Especially now, since this little rebellion of sorts has reared its ugly head."
"Yeah, I didn't think that had gone over very well."
"It didn't. Deryk's furious. Being accused of being some sort of tyrant has his nose way out of joint. It amazes me sometimes he ever attained command rank in the first place. He's about as authoritarian as your average new age hippy type."
"Yet he runs a multi-million dollar multi-national corporation. That doesn't exactly jibe, Athena."
"I imagine that's where some of this comes from. Leadership is a weird thing. Some rule with a
n iron hand and find success. Others lead by motivation, by engendering loyalty that's not easily broken. Did you know all Deryk's companies offer full paid medical? The whole benefit package is amazing. Starting pay for the lowest worker is about a dollar more than most of the competition offers.
"No one, and I mean no one, leaves a Shea Industry position to work for a competitor. It just doesn't happen. It's another formula for success. Not the same one as drafted by someone like Donald Trump, but, yeah, it works.
"Most companies demand a level of loyalty from their employees that they aren't willing to offer themselves. It's kind of a double standard I think most people find objectionable. I know I would."
"So he's not a tyrant at all."
"Nope. If anything he's harder on management than the average worker. They run things his way, or find someplace else to work."
"Yet just the fact that he's running a successful company makes other immortals nervous."
"I'm afraid we're pretty suspicious of authority in general. That's probably why so many of us live here in the U.S., though Europe's getting a lot better. In some ways, at least. We don't tend to appreciate too many rules."
"Some more than others,” Breed said with a quick grin, obviously thinking of Loki.
"Some more than others,” Athena repeated, returning the grin. “So let's get in gear. I'm sure we'd both like to find out what we can about your little hitchhikers."
* * * *
As it turned out it didn't take Loki long to learn what she'd contracted. “You're a para-human,” he told Breed as the three of them sat together in the small office space at his lab. “Pretty simple, really. You'll gain enhanced abilities—like strength, speed, manual dexterity—that sort of thing. Your senses might grow more acute. Can't say about that one. Just a feeling."
Breed shot a grin in Athena's direction. “That doesn't sound so bad."
Athena shook her head. “It's not. Thanks, Loki."
"Not a problem. Besides, I never had the chance to really meet her—or offer her my thanks for helping out. Thank you,” he said to Breed directly.
She blushed. “Don't mention it."
"Stop charming the help,” Athena growled, with a wink at Breed.
"Can you go away now?” Loki said with a smirk. “I've got work to do."
"Already gone. C'mon, Nemesis."
Ten
The body came as a complete shock. Not that there was a body—nothing unusual about that—but that the body was apparently the remains of the man thought to have murdered three police officers in Lakewood several months previous.
Official cause of death was a single deep puncture wound to the center of his chest, but evidence of other recent trauma raised a few eyebrows. One was a bite mark to the side of the neck, probably within an hour of the cause of death. Some bruising, evidence of some sort of fight involving fists or feet, showed up around the torso.
What surprised the coroner, however, was some evidence that the wound in the neck and the bruising had already been healing at the point of death. Too quickly. On a hunch they ran a DNA scan. It came up about ninety percent human, less than any of the Great Apes.
He wasn't really human, but he also didn't scan as any sort of animal/human hybrid. He was a mystery. Enough of a mystery to make a small stir within the local medical community. It was only a matter of time before the press caught up with it.
Problem was, no one knew what to do with it. A few of the tabloids picked it up and ran with it, but the straight press more or less ignored it.
Summer came, and started to drift toward Autumn. Reports of small, gray-skinned humanoids living in the sewers began to surface. The local news ran it as a feature, not hard news. No one believed it, even after household pets started disappearing in record numbers. Everyone knew that both raccoons and coyotes would snatch cats and small dogs, and both had been sighted at various times and places within the city.
It was not until a pre-dawn raid at a local convenience store was caught on video that it became clear that something just wasn't right. The small gray-skinned humanoids did exist, and they were growing bolder.
Something had to be done.
In California a man burst into flames and stayed that way, alive and well, unconsumed by the inferno he'd become.
In Spokane a woman sprouted a black and green exo-skeleton.
In Las Vegas another man walked through a wall into a casino vault then walked out again the same way, carrying with him over a million dollars in cash.
* * * *
'Freak Stories’ as they'd become to be known, were an almost nightly staple on the news. Weird mutations came to be almost commonplace, affecting maybe one out of every thousand people. Along with this, however, a strange new pandemic swept the country, killing another one in a thousand people, seemingly at random, though some evidence existed to suggest it might be a new form of STD.
* * * *
A team of ten Tacoma cops descended into the sewers, armed and ready to face whatever they might encounter. Or so they thought. Nine of them never ascended alive. Only one managed to escape and, as it turned out, finally admitted that he left his comrades behind to die beneath a wave of the creatures. Even so, he suffered enough wounds in the process that no one could blame him, except maybe the families of the ones who had died, and that was because they couldn't blame anyone else.
It hadn't been so long since the Tolkein movies that they weren't immediately dubbed ‘goblins'. Then it became apparent that Tacoma wasn't the only city with this new infestation. All up and down the west coast the creatures had appeared, emerging from the sewers at night to raid.
Manhole covers were bolted in place, storm-drains welded shut, but somehow the creatures still found their way above ground. The interference seemed to anger the creatures. They began to grow bolder, hit harder, and steal anything of any value that wasn't nailed down.
The homeless began to vanish, most simply moving away from the coastal cities where they first appeared, but some simply vanishing, never to be seen or heard from again. Whispers in the dark in the shelters spoke of distant screams from below; human screams that seemed to go on forever before being cut off in an instant.
In late September a young man was apprehended while forcing one of the manhole covers free. He had a collection of small arms in a backpack, along with several thousand rounds of ammunition. Under questioning he revealed that he'd been selling the goblins firearms in exchange for various items they'd stolen from the outer world.
And, as it turned out, he wasn't the only one.
Attacks became more frequent, and more savage. Nowhere was safe. Shopping malls, grocery stores, and anywhere else where people congregated—they seemed to thrive as much on terrorizing humans as stealing anything they found valuable. The police couldn't react fast enough. Nor could the National Guard be everywhere at once.
The Goblin Wars had begun.
* * * *
Sif strode purposely down the long stone hallway, her feet making odd scuffing sounds against the fine sand littering the floor. The weight of the sword hanging from her left hip was a comforting presence, and one she'd found too conspicuously absent in the upper world these days.
She approached the double doors, hewn from the same rock as the walls themselves, with a wary expression. The two guards, neither of them remotely human in appearance, watched her as closely as she did them.
The one on the right struck her as the most intimidating—assuming she was the type to be intimidated. As much as ten feet tall, with broad bat wings folded tightly around his massive torso, he was naked, his black skin gleaming as if recently oiled. His face was classically handsome, with high cheekbones and sharp definitions, with only the sharply upraised ear-tips marking it as belonging to a non-human. His manhood, easily the size and girth of an adult horse's, hung prominently between his legs. She ignored it, as usual, though the sight of it, also as usual, made her stomach twist just a little.
His lips par
ted as he smiled, revealing a mouthful of gleaming sharp teeth. She almost expected him to speak, but he didn't. He never had.
The one on the left, in contrast, was short, slim, and vaguely reptilian, with a cold hard stare that always left her a bit disconcerted, despite the fact that he stood even shorter than she did. There was nothing overtly imposing about him, but his demeanor struck her as less human than even the nightmare he partnered with.
They stepped aside as she pushed at the doors, which swung open at her touch.
She strode into the long audience hall beyond as if she owned it. The walls were distant, and shrouded in shadow, illuminated by only a few glowing balls of light in the far back corner. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The light in the hallway outside had been omni-directional, seeming to come from no particular source. This vast chamber, however...
She continued forward, hand falling to the hilt of her sword. She knew she was in no particular danger, even here, but she found the touch comforting nonetheless.
"Lady Sif.” The voice, cultured and smooth, seemed to arc out of the darkness like a volley of arrows, sending unexpected shivers through her. As she drew closer to the rear of the hall, she began to make out the raised dais, the throne, and the shape of a man slouched upon it.
Like his servant without, the lord of this place had skin the color of pitch—so black it was almost blue. His eyes, like pits of jade fire, stabbed through the murk with a laser's accuracy. She treated him to a slight bow, all she was willing to grant. “Lord Hades."
"You are prompt, as always."
"You gave me little choice, Hades. It was either come, or give up my share of what you promised."
His chuckle was somehow both sensual and threatening at once. “You have lived up to your end of the bargain—I will live up to mine."
Privately she had her doubts, but thought it unwise to point that out now. “You entertain no second thoughts?"
His voice ground to a low growl as he replied. “In the end the Enemy has done me no greater harm than Shea and Thorne have, Sif. I will ally with them, as I said I would."
She nodded once. “Your goblins are wreaking havoc in the cities above,” she told him. “The mortals are terrified."
Loki's Sin Page 13
