Shadows of the Gods (The Unbreakable Sword Series Book 1)

by S. M. Schmitz

  “I’m out of ideas!” she hissed. “Ukko’s telekinesis is more powerful than mine. I can’t fight him!”

  Cameron nodded as the brown haired god put his palms on the surface of the roof. “I know.”

  She had the sudden urge to kick him again.

  “You’re not very graceful,” he commented. “Try to be a little more careful this time.”

  “What?” Selena shouted.

  His hands wrapped around her waist again and her feet lifted in the air before she could scream or protest. That brief sensation that her body had lost all weight and was just floating in empty space washed over her and then her feet hit the hard, tiled roof of the opposite building and she fell forward, scraping her hands on the rough texture. She moaned in pain as Cameron landed next to her and pulled her to her feet, and below them, the crowd broke into thunderous applause.

  That mischievous grin snuck across his lips, but Selena didn’t find anything about their current situation amusing. “The New Pantheon is going to have a hell of a time cleaning up this mess. You know how many people are down there snapping pictures and taking video?”

  “Cameron, if this is really your plan for getting us all the way to the river, I’m not going to make it. You’re going to kill me!” She held up her bloody hands, and he flinched and pulled off his gloves then stuffed them into his pockets.

  “Hold my hand,” he murmured in her ear. “Make it look casual.”

  He slipped his hand around hers and that warm, tingling sensation passed through her. She didn’t need to slow down or look at her other hand to know that it was healing as well. The pain in her ankles lessened until it disappeared altogether, just as they reached the edge of the roof. The crowd on the street had swelled to hundreds of enthusiastic spectators, and the chants began immediately: “Throw her! Throw her!”

  Selena rolled her eyes and scanned the crowd for Ukko’s tall blonde head, but she couldn’t spot him. That was far more concerning than when she knew exactly where he was as he followed them on their rooftop trek across the city.

  The corner of Cameron’s soft pink lips turned up in that sexy smirk and he lifted a shoulder at her. “We have to give the people what they want.”

  “You’re still not funny.”

  Block after block the crowd followed them across rooftops and narrow streets filled with taxis and pedestrians and occasionally, the horse-drawn carriages with tourists who would look up and reach for their phones to snap pictures of the display above them. Every time she landed on a new roof, sprawling just as ungracefully as each time before, she would push herself to her feet and search the sea of faces, all of them bursting into boisterous applause, some spilling their drinks in the process but they didn’t seem to notice. But she didn’t see Ukko again.

  And each time, Cameron would immediately grab her hand and begin to heal her, and she knew it had to be wearing on him, the physical exertion and the constant healing, but he kept smiling at her and running as quickly as they could over the rooftops down Conti Street. In the distance, they could finally hear the sirens of the police trying to clear the streets so they could follow the crazy couple running along the rooftops.

  Cameron studied the crowd then looked out at the empty lot in front of them. Selena was about to tell him he’d better not even think about throwing her that far, but instead he suggested, “Let’s climb down. Keep the crowd close to us but don’t let them push in on us so that we can’t get to the river.”

  Selena nodded and Cameron stepped onto the fire escape first. She caught sight of the cropped brown hair on the head of the god who had tried to climb one of the buildings earlier waiting on the street below.

  “One of them is down there,” she whimpered.

  “They’re all down there,” he replied and kept climbing. “Come on.”

  She followed him and he waited on the sidewalk, his hands gripping the sides of the steps, until she was on the ground with him. People immediately swelled around them, but Selena prevented them from crushing in on them. Occasionally, their drinks would suddenly and inexplicably tip from their hands and they’d stare dumbfounded at the dark puddles by their feet. Cameron and Selena walked briskly past them and Selena found herself wishing she could offer to buy them another drink – after all, it was her fault it had spilled.

  Cameron pulled her faster and faster down the street toward the levee. His eyes kept darting over the heads of the people who Selena allowed to press near them without slowing them down, an invisible barrier preventing them from stopping their escape. She kept trying to spot Ukko again, his tall blonde head normally towering above others, but he had vanished, disappeared, perhaps, into the Otherworld.

  Selena’s arms broke out into goose bumps at the thought of him returning to the Otherworld to get Quetzalcoatl as a sort of vengeance for their treachery. They reached the levee and climbed the grass embankment and the crowd climbed with them, chattering and calling to them the entire time, but she wasn’t listening. She doubted Cameron was either.

  At the top, she could see the slick black water of the river rippling like an anaconda and the imagery and reminder of Quetzalcoatl’s animal form made her shudder violently. Cameron squeezed her hand and leaned closer to her ear. “I’ll get you away from here, Selena. I promise.”

  She didn’t have time to tell him what had suddenly scared her so much. They were coasting down the other side of the levee toward the river and words from the crowd began to make sense to her now. They were chanting in unison. They thought he was going to attempt to throw her across the Mississippi River. She didn’t feel so bad for spilling some of their drinks anymore.

  Cameron leaned close to her ear again and murmured, “We’re getting on that barge. As soon as we’re down, push it away from the bank – as far out as you can get us.”

  “There’s somebody in the tugboat, Cameron. They’ll probably shoot us!” Selena said.

  “Well… let’s hope they don’t.”

  His hands wrapped around her again and lifted her and she wanted to close her eyes, to hide from the shouts of the excited crowd who were yelling at her as if she were some knockoff Cirque du Soleil performer, to hide from the large metal sheet floating on the river with the wooden pallets that hadn’t been unloaded and that she’d most likely careen into, but it was over too quickly. She landed as gracefully on the barge as she had on the roofs and her ankle twisted and screamed and she screamed along with it.

  She heard Cameron’s boots as they hit the metal of the barge and she remembered to push it away from the bank. She rolled over just as the man with cropped brown hair jumped from the dock into the river and missed the edge of the barge, falling into the dark slick water.

  Cameron immediately dropped to her side and grabbed her hands, the pain in her body lifting into some other plane, perhaps vanishing with Ukko into the Otherworld. That was one man she wouldn’t mind giving her pain to.

  He had given her enough over the past three years.

  As the physical pain dissipated, her head cleared and she realized the crew aboard this barge were shouting at them. She sat up slowly and groaned and turned around, hoping no one had a gun pointed at them. She sighed when the three men looked more surprised than on the verge of committing murder.

  “Let me do the talking,” Selena whispered.

  Cameron just shrugged and helped her to her feet.

  “Please,” she begged, and she brought out a little of the Georgian drawl she’d learned to cover over the past three years, hoping it would make her seem more innocent and endearing, “I’ve got a restraining order against my ex but the cops won’t enforce it and he’s trying to kill me and my boyfriend. He just chased us through half the French Quarter.”

  The captain of the tugboat looked her over carefully then looked at Cameron even more carefully and shook his head slowly. His ship was still pushing the barge toward Baton Rouge on its own. “What the hell did you do to my boat?”

  Selena grimaced and turned
back toward the French Quarter, which she could no longer see. The barge was traveling far faster than traffic was allowed to on the river, but she didn’t know if there were some group of… river cops… to stop them.

  Cameron snickered, and she looked up at him. He rolled his eyes and muttered something about her being a terrible liar.

  “Ok, true story,” Cameron said. “We’re demigods trying to escape a group of gods who want to force us to work for them but we don’t want to because we’ve always suspected they’re involved in some pretty horrific shit. And given they work closely with several government agencies as part of a counterterrorism program, you can probably imagine that people who aren’t cool with torture or murder try to avoid those assholes. But gods like a pecking order and they think they’re on top of it and if you refuse to join them, they’ll most likely kill you. Oh, and your barge is moving because she’s making it move.”

  The captain’s eyes shifted between them and Selena squirmed uncomfortably. “I know it’s hard to believe,” she started but the captain snorted and cut her off.

  “More believable than your story actually,” he said.

  “Seriously,” Cameron added, “that was a pretty lame story.”

  A brilliant streak of lightning tore through the sky ahead of them and the sharp crack of thunder quickly followed. Heavy rain pelted her skin, stinging as the sudden downpour instantly drenched everyone standing on the barge. They ran toward the tugboat and the crew members’ eyes betrayed their fear and desire to get rid of this strange couple who were bringing them back toward Baton Rouge and who had brought the wrath of a storm god down on them all.

  Selena leaned against the far wall of the tugboat and pleaded with the captain. “Can you just bring us to Baton Rouge? We’ll stop there and get off. Unless Ukko stole his own barge on the river, he’s not chasing us right now. He’s just planning on finding us wherever we go and he will. We just need a decent head start. Please.”

  The captain grunted and scratched the back of his wet head. “You’re going to have to slow down, Miss, or the Coast Guard is going to be after us.”

  Selena nodded and slowed the barge down. She didn’t admit to anyone she hadn’t known that was one of the jobs of the Coast Guard. She’d heard of the Coast Guard, but she thought they patrolled… well, the coast.

  “A little slower,” the captain instructed. “Or you could just knock this off and let me operate my own boat.”

  “Will you take us to Baton Rouge?” Cameron asked. “I’m almost positive as soon as we’re off your boat, Ukko won’t mess with you. They try to stay inconspicuous, and he’s got a big enough mess on his hands with the stunt we pulled in New Orleans.”

  Selena put her hands on her hips and smiled slyly at him. “Was that part of your plan all along? Draw a crowd knowing it would slow them down trying to deal with the evidence of what we did and who was chasing us?”

  “Hey, I’m not funny and annoying. I’m not an idiot,” Cameron said, smiling back at her.

  Selena’s heart fluttered as she stared back into his chocolate brown eyes, water droplets dripping from his hair, which looked almost black from the rain, onto his unshaven face. Even though the inside of the tugboat was cold against her wet skin, she felt her body warming again from embarrassment or attraction or both. She looked away from him as one of the crew members grabbed something from a tall metal shelf and tossed it to her. She caught the towel and thanked him but couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes now.

  She knew humans weren’t psychic but they weren’t stupid either.

  “All right,” the captain sighed, “I’ll drop you off in LaPlace. You’re on your own to get the rest of the way if you’re trying to get to Baton Rouge. Don’t know how I’m going to explain this to my boss but… I guess some things are more important than a job anyway.”

  Selena lifted her eyes and smiled at the captain. “You’ve saved our lives. I hope that at least gives you something you can be proud of.”

  “Miss,” he said, still smiling at her, “I was Navy and in Desert Storm. I’ll just add this to my list.”

  Cameron nudged her arm and winked at her. “I could totally be a SEAL.”

  Selena shook her head at him. “With your attitude, you wouldn’t make it past the first day of boot camp.”

  The captain snickered and stepped up to the control panel at the helm. “We gotta pecking order, too. Both in the Navy and on this boat. And you took off leaving half my crew stranded in New Orleans. For the next four hours, you two are part of my crew. Which one of you can cook?”

  Selena immediately pointed to Cameron.

  The captain smiled at them again and nodded toward a door. “Both of you get down into the galley and see what you can come up with. And for God’s sake, don’t catch my boat on fire.”

  Selena glanced at Cameron whose eyes laughed but, completely deadpan, just assured him, “We’ll be careful, Captain. Promise.”

  Selena had never even heard of LaPlace but at that moment, she didn’t care where it was. It wasn’t New Orleans and Cameron had miraculously helped her escape the New Pantheon again.

  He was either insanely lucky or insanely gifted. She was betting on luck, and sooner or later, his luck would run out.

  Chapter Eight

  After docking at the port of South Louisiana in LaPlace, Cameron and Selena had to hitchhike the thirty remaining miles to Baton Rouge. Traveling in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler hauling some sort of chemical that required hazard signs all over the tank made Selena even more nervous than she’d been running along the rooftops in the French Quarter, but Cameron just chatted with the driver the entire way like they did this sort of thing all the time. And like he wasn’t obsessing about Ukko suddenly finding them and causing this truck to tip over, resulting in some sort of hazardous chemical emergency on I-10.

  The driver pulled off the interstate onto Siegen Lane in Baton Rouge and found a large, mostly empty lot to park in. Cameron had put his gloves back on while they were on the tugboat so he didn’t hesitate to shake the driver’s hand and thank him again for his help. Selena eyed his gloved hands with envy for the first time, thinking how much easier his life must be by disguising the sensation his touch caused. Maybe she’d been wrong to think she shouldn’t hide behind tightly woven materials that combined rubber with cotton fibers to prevent the transfer of electricity. If that’s what was even occurring when they touched someone.

  As they walked away from the eighteen-wheeler, Selena asked him how he survived the unbearably hot summers here in clothes that didn’t breathe.

  “It’s more breathable than you think. And besides, even humans survive the summers here by staying in air conditioning.”

  “But how? Wouldn’t you need a material that doesn’t conduct electricity?” Selena asked.

  Cameron stopped walking and blinked at her. “What do you think we are? Electric eels?”

  Selena threw her hands in the air and sighed. “I don’t know! How does all of this work then?”

  Cameron shrugged. “We’re not exactly going around shocking people, Selena. Haven’t you ever noticed that any material between your skin and someone else’s will prevent them from feeling anything?”

  Selena shook her head and looked away from him, pretending to study the twinkling lights of the businesses down this busy street. The clock inside the cab of the eighteen-wheeler had told her it was almost five a.m. and she was so tired, the lights kept swirling together in orange and yellow patternless shapes. “I’ve already told you. I just tried not to let people touch me at all.”

  Cameron lifted a corner of his long-sleeved shirt and grabbed her hand. “It’s just cotton. All you have to do is make sure it’s a tight weave, and you should be fine. Of course, your gift is more powerful than mine, but I think it’ll still work.”

  She glanced at his gloves again, and he smiled at her. “There’s a Wal-Mart down the road. We’ll stop and buy you a pair.”

  Selena arched an eyebrow at hi
m and smirked, “Wal-Mart sells real leather?”

  Cameron smirked back at her. “Into leather, huh?”

  “Making it weird again, Cameron.”

  Cameron kept smiling at her as they stood at the corner near a traffic light waiting to cross the street. “You would look hot in leather.”

  “I would be hot in leather,” she mumbled then felt a little slighted at his emphasis on would. She glanced down at her tacky Saints outfit. “This is comfortable,” she said defensively.

  Cameron laughed and put his hand around her arm as the light changed and they crossed the street. “You look hot in gaudy yoga pants and t-shirts, too. I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t. But it makes you uncomfortable when you think I’m hitting on you so I’m sorry.”

  Selena bit her lip and urged her heavy legs to keep pace with him. She felt like she could sleep for a week. “Are you hitting on me?” she asked quietly when they reached the other sidewalk.

  Cameron let go of her arm and glanced down at her, and she couldn’t be sure given the yellow incandescent lights of the businesses and streetlamps, but she thought he might be blushing again. “No. I mean… I’m not…” He sighed and pulled a glove off so he could rub his tired eyes. “You are beautiful, Selena, but I’m honestly just trying to help you. I’m not trying to sleep with you or anything.”

  Some odd combination of relief and regret washed through her, and she kept her eyes focused on the street ahead of them. She didn’t see a Wal-Mart anywhere around here. Cameron wiggled his fingers back into his glove then pointed to a shopping center on their left.

  “So much walking,” Selena breathed.

  Cameron nodded in what appeared to be equal commiseration. She wondered again how much all of that healing and physical exertion had taken out of him, and even if he was lying to her about his affiliation or lack of affiliation with the New Pantheon, she felt sorry for him. He’d never hurt her, not intentionally, and had been risking his own life and physical comfort for her.