by Jenna Black
Rose reached across the table and lightly touched the back of my hand, causing me to jump and shove my chair back from the table to get away from her. She stayed in her seat and raised both hands to indicate her harmless intent. I knew she hadn’t meant anything by that touch, had just been trying to establish a little human contact, but there was no way I was letting someone like her touch me.
“You have no need to be afraid of me,” Rose said. “I have lived among mortals for thousands of years now, and it has changed the way I view the world more than you can possibly imagine. You have to understand that we considered mortals little more than animals. We would occasionally adopt one as something of a pet, but we didn’t care about them, not really. They were our toys, which we could play with and discard at our convenience. I’m not like that now, but I was back then.
“The problem with our plan was that gods are very possessive, and we destroyed toys that didn’t belong to us.
“I don’t know how many we killed in total, but it was a lot. The rest of the gods didn’t appreciate us killing their pet mortals, but when Niobe explained our grievance, they agreed that Kane was at fault. He was sentenced to death—a sentence only another death god could enforce. Anderson’s father, Thanatos himself, carried out the sentence. Perhaps we should have looked askance at Thanatos being willing to kill his own son, but then again that was hardly a rarity among our kind. We all believed Kane was dead, and we stopped killing mortals, but of course none of that could bring back Niobe’s children, and her grief was . . . terrible.”
Rose’s eyes filled with tears and she put her hand to her chest as if her heart literally ached. “You can’t imagine the pain she was in, or the pain we sisters felt on her behalf. But the rest of the gods weren’t moved by our grief, and those whose mortals we destroyed wanted us punished.
“Eventually, the gods left the Earth in search of new worlds to explore, but they refused to take me or my sisters with them. They renamed us all and made us into fertility goddesses. We were sentenced to remain upon the Earth as caretakers of the humans we’d tried to wipe out. We were each given a territory, and it is our job to ensure the humans within our territories are fertile. Someday, the gods will return to check on us, and if we’ve done our jobs properly and our territories are appropriately populated, we will be freed from our obligation and allowed to rejoin our brethren.”
It didn’t seem to me that allowing a bunch of crazies who’d been willing to kill every human on the planet to be our “caretakers” made a whole lot of sense, but then so far I hadn’t seen a whole lot of god-logic that did.
“So, Niobe is still around?” I asked. I knew it was a pointless question with an obvious answer, but I felt a need to fill the silence—and maybe shut up some of the yammering that was happening in my brain.
Rose nodded. “I’ve lost touch with most of my sisters over the centuries, but it’s not like there’s anywhere for us to go. And we’ve all kept up with our duties, consecrating our altars each year so that the people in our territories will remain fertile. I suspect most of us have been fully integrated with human society. I know I have, and I don’t know how my sisters could not be as well when we have no choice but to live among you.
“When I look back on what my sisters and I did . . .” She shuddered and hugged herself. “That seems like a different person altogether. I can’t even remember what it felt like to care so little about human life, to be willing to do such terrible things without even a touch of conscience.
“I think that’s one of the reasons why most of us lost touch. We don’t want to be reminded of that time. And I know I, for one, have no interest in leaving the Earth, even if our fellow gods do come back for us.”
“You said you suspect most of you were integrated into human society,” I said. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Niobe is the exception.”
Rose nodded. “She maintains her altar because she knows it’s what she has to do if she ever wants the chance to leave the Earth. I haven’t spoken to her in at least a couple of centuries, but the last time I did, she was no more remorseful over what we’d done than before. She is still a goddess, through and through. And though she does her duty to further her own goals, she refused ever to use the new name the gods gave her. She will always be Niobe, never Blossom.” Rose smiled sadly. “I found we have nothing left in common, and that’s why I haven’t seen or spoken to her in so long.”
I shivered in a sudden chill. “You think she’s going to go on another killing spree now that she knows Anderson is alive, don’t you?”
To my surprise, Rose shook her head. “I’m not sure the seven of us could have succeeded in our plan the first time, when the Earth’s population was vastly smaller. We can cause a lot of damage just because we’re goddesses, but how could we possibly kill everyone?”
Her words might have sounded like reassurance and made me feel better if there weren’t such an obvious but coming.
Rose didn’t keep me hanging for long.
“But remember, the gods made my sisters and me caretakers of the world’s fertility. We have to renew our altars once every year, and if we delay, there will be no children conceived within our territory until we perform the ritual. So you see, we don’t have to kill anybody. We can just abandon our altars and let the human race die out all on its own.”
I tried to imagine what life on Earth would be like if there were no more babies born, and my mind balked at the enormity of it. Even before the population began to dwindle, the world would become an ugly, ugly place to be. Think zombie apocalypse, only without a clear and present bad guy to rally against, since I doubted anyone would correctly guess that the sudden infertility was caused by a bunch of fertility goddesses going on strike.
“Are you telling me that’s what you’re going to do?” I asked in a voice little more than a whisper. The answer had to be no, because there was no hint of gloating or threat in her, and there was so much worry in her eyes. But I wanted to hear her say it anyway.
“I will maintain my altar as I always have,” Rose affirmed. “But unless she has changed drastically—and impossibly—since I last spoke with her, Niobe will not.” Rose rubbed her hands together in a very human nervous gesture. “I think my other sisters have become too human to commit such an atrocity voluntarily, but Niobe . . .” Rose shuddered delicately. “She won’t be able to cope with the knowledge that Kane is alive. I fear she may try to stop the rest of us from renewing our altars when the time comes.
“That’s the reason I’m here,” she concluded. “I have one sister who I’ve been in touch with recently. Her name is Jasmine, and she’s responsible for all the islands in the world. She lives in Bermuda, and she’s supposed to renew her altar soon. But ever since that email about Anderson went out, I haven’t been able to reach her. I’ve called and called, and I’ve even gone by her home. There’s no sign of her. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
THREE
For the second time in a week, I took it upon myself to call a house meeting. If I wasn’t careful, people were going to think I was trying to take over, when in fact it was just dumb luck that I happened to be the one to drive up while Rose was at the gate.
I introduced Rose, and I asked her to tell the rest of the Liberi what she had told me. I had the pleasure not only of having to listen to it all again, but of watching the mounting horror on my friends’ faces as they found out just what Anderson was capable of.
“It’s a lie!” Maggie shouted halfway through, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Anderson would never . . .” Her voice choked off.
“Perhaps the man you know as Anderson Kane never would have committed such an atrocity,” Rose said gently. “But Kane the god and the son of a Fury most definitely did.”
Maggie kept shaking her head. I think everyone else was too shell-shocked to react. Either that or they were doing that whole manly stoic thing that gets on so many women’s nerves. Including mine.
&nbs
p; Rose finished with the kicker about the disappearance of her sister Jasmine—and about the need to renew Jasmine’s altar.
“Jasmine and I both love the Earth and its people,” she concluded. “I know that if Niobe came to me and asked me to abandon my altar, I would refuse, and I believe Jasmine would do the same.” She shivered and crossed her arms over her chest. “I also know that unless Niobe has changed considerably since the last time I saw her, she will not take no for an answer. I’m afraid she may have . . . done something to Jasmine.”
I could tell from the looks on my friends’ faces that they were still hung up on Anderson and his terrible past. I won’t claim I wasn’t pretty upset about it myself, but it seemed to me that feelings of hurt and disillusionment had to take a backseat under the circumstances.
“I don’t believe a word of this story!” Maggie said, glaring at Rose. “We have no way of knowing who this woman really is. Just because she claims she’s a goddess doesn’t mean she is.”
Logan, who was usually surprisingly even-tempered for a war-god descendant, was glaring at Rose just as fiercely, his face flushed red and his fists clenched. “Maggie’s right. For all we know, you’re some Olympian here to stir up trouble.”
No, my fellow Liberi were not the most trusting sort, and having been on the receiving end of their suspicions when I first joined them, I knew exactly how pigheaded some of them were capable of being. When they don’t want to believe something, they work very hard to keep unwanted evidence out.
“Am I the only one who remembers some of the crap Anderson said when he and Emma were fighting?” I asked. “He kept making veiled threats about what had happened to previous ex-wives. And when he found out Konstantin had tricked him into condemning her to death, he told me it didn’t hurt as much as Konstantin wanted it to because it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever done.”
“Just because he may have done bad things doesn’t mean he did that,” Logan argued.
“But he always was a little funny about how Konstantin treated his own kids,” Blake said, and he looked haunted rather than angry. “There was something a bit off in his tone when he talked about the ones Konstantin killed.”
I hadn’t noticed that myself, but I was just happy that someone was keeping an open mind.
“You’re just manufacturing evidence to support the claim you want to believe,” Maggie snapped.
“No,” Blake fired back. “That’s what you’re doing.”
The tension in the air was almost palpable, and it didn’t take a genius to sense the dangerous undercurrents. There were some hot tempers flaring, and we didn’t have Anderson around to keep it from escalating. I sneaked a glance at Jamaal, who was the most volatile and dangerous of us all, but he didn’t look like he was about to join the fray, which was a good thing for all of us.
“Time out!” I said loudly, making the requisite hand signal. “Is anyone here seriously going to just ignore the threat and hope it’s all a big lie? Because if we do that and we’re wrong, the consequences would be . . . Well, I don’t know of a word big enough to describe it. We’re talking the potential end of all humanity here. If we think there’s even a sliver of a chance that it might be true, we have to act. Is there anyone here who’s convinced they know Anderson so well that they’re willing to risk all of humanity on that conviction?”
“Before anyone gives a knee-jerk answer,” Jamaal said, “let’s all remember that not one of us”—he gave me a pointed look—“knew Anderson was a god until a few days ago.” He paused almost imperceptibly, giving me a chance to admit that I’d actually known all along. A chance I had no intention of taking him up on. “The man we think we know doesn’t even exist.”
“I’m sure he does exist,” Rose said. “He’s lived among humans for thousands of years, just like I have. There may be more to him than you knew, but that doesn’t mean Anderson Kane doesn’t exist.”
Jamaal shrugged. “Whatever. My point is that there’s obviously lots about him we don’t know. We may not like what we’re hearing, but refusing to believe it would be irresponsible.”
If you’d asked me a couple of weeks ago if I’d ever imagined Jamaal, with his incandescent temper, being the voice of reason, I’d have laughed you out of the room.
I could tell by the looks on their faces that Logan and Maggie were still resisting the truth, but they kept their mouths shut, and everyone else was trying to make the difficult transition into problem-solving mode. Because let’s face it, we had one hell of a big problem to solve.
Deciding to give everyone a hand with the transition, I turned to Rose and asked, “So, you have reason to believe Jasmine may have met with foul play of some sort, and if her altar isn’t renewed soon, every woman living on an island in the ocean is going to stop conceiving.” Rose nodded her agreement. “What is it exactly you’d like us to do?”
“Well, since you’re a descendant of Artemis, I certainly hope you can help me find and rescue Jasmine, if she’s still alive. But the first priority is to make sure her altar gets renewed before it loses its power. I imagine it would take a while before people would start to notice the effects, but can you imagine the panic and confusion it would cause if so many women stopped conceiving all at once?”
I winced. I don’t know how scientists would try to explain what was happening. Maybe they’d believe it was some kind of disease, though how they would explain its sudden spread through only the world’s islands was beyond me. What certainly would happen was a mass exodus from the islands, which could only lead to disaster as improvised flotillas of desperate people tried to make it to mainlands that no doubt would be less than welcoming. Especially if enough people believed the islanders were suffering from some previously unknown communicable disease.
“So the altar can be renewed without Jasmine?” Blake asked.
Rose nodded. “It’s only necessary that one of the seven of us perform the ceremony. I can stand in for Jasmine.”
“If that’s the case, then what exactly do you need us for?” he challenged.
Rose seemed unaffected by his tone. “Niobe knows that Jasmine’s is the first altar that needs to be renewed. If she’s vengeful enough to prevent Jasmine from doing it, then she’s vengeful enough to guard against any of the rest of us stepping in.”
“If she’s dead set against it being renewed, why doesn’t she just destroy it?” I asked. That seemed like the easiest solution from Niobe’s point of view.
“The altars aren’t really physical objects,” Rose explained. “They’re like the seeds of immortality you Liberi carry, existing on a metaphysical level. The heart of the altar is part of the Earth itself. You can destroy its physical vessel, but it will regenerate. Just like the Liberi can regenerate and come back to life.”
That was the first bit of good news I’d heard in a while. If Niobe could destroy the altars, then we’d already be too late to prevent her from doing it.
“So you want to go to Bermuda and renew Jasmine’s altar,” I said, and Rose nodded. “And you want us to provide some protection because you’re expecting Niobe to have that altar guarded.”
“Yes. I’d go by myself, but I know she will not allow me to walk up to the altar and renew it without a fight. She was willing to hurt or maybe even kill Jasmine to stop her from renewing it, and there’s no reason to think she wouldn’t do the same to me. I was hoping Kane would have the decency to help me, but since he’s not here and you are . . .”
“So basically what you want is bodyguards?” Blake asked.
“Yes, that, of course. But I also need a man to perform the ritual with me. Ordinarily, I would use a mortal, but I can’t in good conscience lead a mortal man into what may become a battle of immortals.”
Cue another round of shell-shocked looks. I don’t suppose any of us had yet put any thought into what kind of ritual would be needed to renew a fertility goddess’s altar, but in retrospect it was pretty obvious.
“You want one of us to have sex
with you on the altar,” Blake said with a cold look that sat awkwardly on his pretty-boy face.
Rose blinked in evident surprise. “Is there any man here who wouldn’t want that?” she asked, and I didn’t think the innocence on her face was feigned. She was stunningly beautiful and alluringly voluptuous, and under other circumstances and with no existing attachments, I’m sure any of our men would have leapt at the chance.
I couldn’t help surveying all their faces to see how they were taking this oddly uncomfortable proposition. Leo, our resident hermit and computer nerd, was blushing to the roots of his hair. He was uncomfortable even with eye contact, and the idea of him having public sex with a goddess was unthinkable. Jamaal was looking at the floor, his arms crossed over his chest in what I felt sure was a defensive posture. He had intimacy issues worse than Leo’s, and it was almost nice to see that I wasn’t the only one he balked at having sex with.
Blake was involved with my sister, Steph, and though he was a descendant of Eros with a promiscuous past, his face was a picture of stubborn refusal. If he felt any temptation whatsoever, he was keeping it well buried.
Logan might have seemed like an obvious choice: an unattached manly man who was both very nice to look at and driven by a sense of duty. I was surprised to find he was pointedly refusing eye contact and trying to disappear into his chair.
That left Jack, who was always eager to prove he didn’t take anything seriously. After letting a moment of uncomfortable silence pass, he rose to his feet with exaggerated ceremony and did his best preening peacock imitation.
“I will selflessly volunteer my services,” he said in a booming voice, just in case he didn’t already have our full attention. “I will joyfully fall on my sword in the service of mankind.” He put his hand over his heart and raised his chin high. “It will be a hardship above all others—”
“Oh, shut up and sit down,” Jamaal growled, never Jack’s biggest fan. “I’m sure you can think of a dozen more penis puns, but they’re not exactly original. Or funny.”
