Goddesses of War (The Guardians of Tara Book 4)

by S. M. Schmitz

  “None of us can,” Loki interjected, stepping out of Cameron’s reach just in case the sun god decided to force him to shut up again.

  Tyr grabbed the back of Loki’s shirt and lifted him from the ground with his one good hand. Loki’s feet dangled as he yelped, but Tyr shook him like a rag doll and hissed, “What have you done?”

  “It’s not me!” Loki insisted. “Put me down and I’ll tell you!”

  Tyr didn’t loosen his grip so Selena put a hand on his arm and spoke quietly to him in that same gentle, maternal way that could compel trees to dig up their roots and move for her. And as always, she succeeded. Tyr lowered his arm and let Loki’s feet back onto the sidewalk but he stayed close to his prisoner… just in case.

  “I really wish you gods would stop trying to choke me,” Loki complained, rubbing his throat.

  “Loki,” Cameron warned. “I will break your nose again.”

  “Why is it,” the crazy god sang back to him, “no one among you has bothered to do better research?”

  “Because we’ve been a little busy,” Ukko snapped. “Thanks in large part to you.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Loki agreed.

  “I’m going to kill him,” London mumbled. “I’m going to finally snap and kill him.”

  “Huh,” Cameron said. “And all along, I thought I’d be the god to make you snap.”

  “You and me both,” she agreed.

  “Don’t you keep a list, Sun God?” Loki asked. “Just check your list to see who might be here and interfering with your senses.”

  “That’s it,” Cameron announced. “Put him on a spit. Let’s roast him.”

  Tyr grabbed his shirt again and told him, “Next time we bind you in a cave, I will find an immortal venomous snake to hang above you.”

  “How?” Loki asked innocently. “Your Irish friend here will have killed all the immortal snakes.”

  Selena looked up from her cellphone and sighed loudly. “I can’t find anything on gods who stole power from other gods.”

  “Not stealing,” Loki corrected. “Simply weakening.”

  “I am this close to never healing you again,” Selena warned.

  Loki rolled his eyes and gestured toward her cellphone. “You won’t find the answer there. No one ever knew Koschei could do anything but survive even the most brutal damage to his body because he keeps his soul somewhere else.”

  “Whoa,” London interjected. “First of all, how the hell does someone separate their soul from their body? And secondly, what does that have to do with how our senses are being weakened?”

  “I don’t know how he did it,” Loki answered. “Perhaps you should ask him.”

  “Spit and fire,” Cameron reminded him.

  “Whatever you think you’ve lost will return to you as soon as Koschei is dead,” Loki explained. “He disrupts the natural order of any world he enters. He is chaos personified.”

  “Chaos,” Badb repeated softly. “Osiris killed Set so—”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be the other way around?” Kevin interrupted.

  “You’re going to have to forget everything you know about mythology,” Cameron told him. “Because apparently, men got most of it wrong.”

  “Didn’t get Loki wrong,” Kevin argued. “He’s definitely an asshole.”

  Cameron snickered and Loki lifted his chin in the air again as if he still couldn’t imagine why the world had ganged up against him.

  “My point is that we don’t have anyone to talk to about gods who cause chaos,” Badb finished.

  “But we only need to kill Koschei,” Athena pointed out. “And he’s greatly outnumbered here.”

  Cameron had produced his own cellphone and glanced up at the Greek war goddess. “Um… any chance you know where there’s an island with a chest that contains a hare in which there’s a duck in which there’s an egg in which there’s a needle in which there’s a soul of a creepy sorcerer god?”

  Athena blinked at him then snatched the phone from his hands so she could read the Wikipedia page he’d pulled up. “Well, that’s incredibly stupid even for mythology,” she muttered.

  Cameron nodded in agreement. “At least his soul isn’t hidden in a snake.”

  Athena held up his phone and said, “You forgot to mention it’s buried on a magical island that can disappear with the tides.”

  “Any chance one of you can control the ocean?” Thor asked.

  “Poseidon can,” Ares answered. “But that’s assuming any of Koschei’s myth is accurate.”

  “Most myths contain some grains of truth,” Badb said. “We’ll just have to figure out what parts of Koschei’s are accurate.”

  “I’m from that part of the world,” Ukko offered. “And I never encountered an island that disappeared and reappeared magically.”

  “You’re really turning out to be pretty useless so far,” Cameron told him.

  “Any chance I can go back to the aquarium now?” Kevin asked.

  “Depends,” Cameron responded. “Any chance you have the soul of a Slavic god trapped in a needle-egg-duck-rabbit?”

  “Yeah,” Kevin said, completely deadpan. “It’s next to the seahorses.”

  Cameron nodded smartly. “Good call. Putting them next to the sharks is just begging for trouble.”

  Ukko sighed heavily and grabbed the phone away from Athena. “He did hide his soul, but we all know it’s not in a needle-egg-duck-rabbit. It’s an allegory like most of our stories so figure out what it actually means and we can defeat Koschei before he drains so much of our power we become useless.”

  “You’re already useless,” Cameron mumbled.

  Ukko narrowed his eyes and tossed his phone at him.

  “Am I really the only one who’s curious as to why Nergal came to New Orleans at least twelve hours before we did?” Nemain asked.

  The other gods shuffled their feet awkwardly because, as usual, they’d gotten so distracted by arguing with each other no one had bothered to ask what might have been the most important question for them all: What was Nergal doing in New Orleans to begin with?

  “Loki,” Thor demanded, “if you know anything about this city, start talking.”

  “I know quite a lot about this city,” Loki replied, his crazed smile spreading across his thin, narrow face.

  “I swear to God, if you give us a history lesson…” London began, but Loki’s smile widened and he asked, “Which god? Me?”

  “I’m punching him again,” Cameron decided.

  “Why are Nergal and Koschei here?” Thor growled. Tyr still gripped the trickster’s god shirt in his hand so Thor stepped closer to him, Mjölnir appearing in his grasp.

  Loki eyed Mjölnir carefully for a few seconds before smiling at his former friend. “Have you ever noticed how perfectly your quests converge? Why did you choose central Texas, of all places, to rebuild a home?”

  Thor and Tyr glanced at each other then shrugged. “This continent mostly hadn’t been invaded yet. The gods who’d lived here for millennia weren’t in any competition with us.”

  “But what led you here in the first place?” Loki pressed. “And why that particular area?”

  “I’m sick of his games,” Tyr hissed. “I’ll bring him to Findias and let Sigyn deal with him for a while.”

  Loki’s eyes widened and he shook his head quickly. “I’m not playing games. It’s hardly my fault you’re not terribly bright.”

  Cameron snorted so Selena slapped his arm again.

  Loki’s wild eyes shifted to the young god and he raised his arm and exclaimed, “It’s because of him!”

  “Me?” Cameron exclaimed back. “I wasn’t even born yet. And Midir was still dead. Now who’s not terribly bright?”

  “Fate had already chosen you,” Loki insisted. “Nobody knew yet, but it led everyone here. We’ve all been converging on you.”

  Cameron’s normal smartass demeanor finally cracked as he backed away from the god of mischief, shaking his head slowly. “Why wo
uld Fate lead everyone to me? I thought I was supposed to be one of the good guys here.”

  “Exactly,” Loki sang back. “And you alone have the ability to do something no other god in this world can, not even Selena.”

  Selena’s fingers slipped around his hand but his entire body felt numb as if his senses had suddenly vanished. “What?” he asked weakly.

  “Perhaps,” Loki offered, “you should return home and ask your ancestor what he’s been hiding from you. Because you only thought you’d left the Games of the Gods behind you, Sun God. But nothing ever really changes.”

  “Lugh,” Badb whispered.

  Cameron swallowed but couldn’t look at his friend, the goddess who loved his ancestor and likely wondered if he’d betrayed her as well. He couldn’t even address her when he turned to Nemain and ordered, “Keep this group together. Selena and I will be back soon.”

  Before Nemain or Badb could protest, Cameron and Selena returned to Findias to find out what game Lugh was playing now.

  DUSK HAD FALLEN on Findias but the bright white marble paths reflected the moonlight, creating illusions of glowing trails weaving through the Land of the Dead. As far as they knew, Lugh was still staying with Uscias as a home had to be built for him, one he planned on sharing with the legendary war goddess of the Tuatha Dé.

  As they approached the red palace, the door opened before Cameron could knock and Uscias immediately smiled at the young gods. “You’re back far sooner than I anticipated.”

  “We need Lugh,” Cameron told him. “It’s kind of an emergency.”

  Uscias’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise but he stood aside and ushered them in. “Check the library,” he advised. “I suppose some old habits die hard.”

  Cameron squinted at him and asked, “Is that supposed to be some sort of pun?”

  Uscias’s cheeks darkened as he cleared his throat. “Slip of the tongue, I’m afraid.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Selena reminded him. “Kinda in a hurry still.”

  I really don’t want to be here, Cameron told her silently. I like Lugh. He was one of my best friends as Midir and now, he’s kinda like my mentor. Loki seemed to think he could unravel my whole world.

  Yeah, but it’s Loki, Selena pointed out. We can never really trust what he’s saying anyway. We’re really just looking for confirmation the god’s as crazy as we’ve always believed.

  Cameron offered her a weak smile, but if that were true, why did he feel so nauseated by confronting Lugh now?

  They paused by the library door and caught a brief glimpse of Lugh pulling another book from a shelf then returning to a seat behind the wall. But the old sun god sensed them in the hallway and called out to them, “Come on in. You’re not disturbing anything.”

  Cameron closed the door behind them and for the first time, Lugh put his book down and studied the young gods more carefully.

  “Oh,” he said. “Something’s wrong.” Lugh rose slowly from his chair and took a deep breath. “Badb?”

  “She’s fine,” Selena assured him.

  “Look,” Cameron sighed, “I know we should be careful about believing anything Loki says, but he claims everything is converging on the part of the world where I was born and raised because of me. Something about being able to do something nobody else can… and he claims you know what that is.”

  Lugh arched an eyebrow at him and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You’ve already demonstrated you can do a lot of things nobody else can. I think he needs to be a little more specific if we’re going to get anywhere.”

  “Is there anything you haven’t told me?” Cameron pressed. “Like maybe how to get around these gods preventing us from summoning them?”

  “Cameron, if I knew how to do that, I would have told you weeks ago. All I can tell you is how they’re doing it, and maybe you can figure out the rest on your own.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” Selena offered.

  Cameron shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “But we know how they’re doing it. They concentrate their power to mask themselves.”

  “Not quite,” Lugh clarified. “Powerful gods like Huitzilopochtli can do that, but the weaker ones? They’ve been hiding from you and they shouldn’t be able to.”

  “Okay,” Cameron said. “Then how are they doing it?”

  “I’m afraid you’re not going to like my answer,” Lugh said.

  “Lugh,” Cameron groaned. “I left your girlfriend in New Orleans with Nergal and Koschei on the loose, just—”

  “Koschei?” Lugh gasped. “He’s in New Orleans?”

  “Yeah, probably. Know him?”

  Lugh shook his head and his vibrant blue eyes flickered to Selena before settling on Cameron again. He marched over to where the young gods stood by the doorway and grabbed Cameron’s arm, pushing him back toward the hall. “You have to get back to her.”

  “Lugh, what is going on?” Cameron yelled.

  Lugh’s eyes seemed erratic and crazed as he turned his attention to Selena and begged, “Please. Return to New Orleans before it’s too late.”

  “Okay,” she promised him. “But if you can help us protect Badb, we need to know how.”

  “It’s Koschei,” Lugh groaned. “I don’t know how many gods are involved with him, but he’s the reason you can’t sense some of these gods and summon them. And chances are, nothing you’ve done lately has mattered. Those gods you thought you killed… they’ll be back, Cameron. They’ve been hiding their nature from you because their souls are no longer in their bodies. And if you don’t hurry, all of your friends could die.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Badb paced in front of the closed bar in the hotel lobby, occasionally pausing to read the label on a bottle then setting it down again as if she were genuinely searching for her favorite brand of vodka. Cameron watched her grab another bottle from the edge of the bar and set it down without even bothering to look at it.

  “Badb, if you need a drink, I’ll make you one,” Cameron offered.

  “You don’t even drink,” she responded, her voice indicating her mind was far away, perhaps in the Otherworld with the god she loved.

  “True,” Cameron acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t make a martini.”

  “Martinis don’t have vodka in them,” Selena pointed out.

  “Vodka martinis do,” Cameron argued.

  “Would you two shut up about vodka?” Nemain yelled.

  “Sorry,” Cameron and Selena mumbled.

  Only the Irish gods and Athena had assembled in the lobby’s bar to discuss Lugh’s revelation that all of their work over the past couple of months may have been for nothing. If he were right, each of the gods they thought they’d defeated and had saved Earth from were still out there, their bodies healing to return to the battle once more.

  Selena groaned and buried her face against Cameron’s chest. “If it were so easy to become immortal, why would the New Pantheon have ever needed me?”

  “Because it’s not easy,” Athena countered. “And giving up one’s soul to gain this kind of immortality… Selena, look at what it’s done to them. You already know Ukko isn’t evil and never had any intention of becoming like them. But honestly, I didn’t know it was possible. I thought it was just… horror stories we told each other as kids.”

  “Like campfire ghost stories?” Cameron asked.

  Athena lifted a shoulder at him. “Yeah, pretty much. When Ares and I were young, we would tell each other stories about gods who traded their souls for eternal life so that even falling on the battlefield wouldn’t be permanent, but it made them vicious and unable to tell right from wrong.”

  “Like Christians selling their souls to the Devil,” Selena murmured.

  “Sort of,” Athena said. “But these gods aren’t selling their souls to anyone. If I’m understanding Lugh’s fear correctly, Koschei knows how to entrap their souls in some sort of enchanted object. The gods’ bodies will just heal or regenerate beca
use the soul is what gives us life. But it’s also what keeps us from destroying the world.”

  Badb slammed another bottle onto the top of the bar and shouted, “But every single god, Cameron? The gods who tried to kill my sisters?”

  Cameron threw his hands up and protested, “Why are you yelling at me? I didn’t do it!”

  “So Koschei has a vault of evil-god-souls stashed away somewhere,” Nemain sighed. “Probably wherever they’ve hidden the Stone of Fal.”

  “Doubt it,” a familiar voice responded, causing everyone in the room to jump and spin around toward his voice.

  “Lugh!” Badb exclaimed. “Are you out of your mind? You can be destroyed here.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I have to admit: That would kind of suck.”

  Badb reached for his arm but her fingers passed through him. She put her hands on her hips instead and hissed, “Go back to Findias. I am not asking.”

  “I’m still researching Koschei to find information that may help you,” Lugh explained. “We obviously need to figure out where his enchanted vessel is. And I also didn’t get the chance to tell Cameron and Selena that I doubt the Aztec gods are involved with him because they have Huitzilopochtli to protect them... usually. But gods like Enlil and Tarhunt? Yeah, I think they’d do something like this.”

  “Fine,” Badb snapped. “Then I’ll go back to Findias with you where you can safely tell me whatever else you need to explain about Koschei’s soul-sucking.”

  “That’s totally pervy, Badb,” Cameron said.

  Badb glared at him before returning her glare to her boyfriend.

  “But it’s not you I need to talk to, Badb,” Lugh said. “Cameron came to Findias because he wanted to know what Loki meant about all roads leading back to him. And I think I know why, but he left before I could tell him.”

  “You made me leave,” Cameron pointed out.

  “True,” Lugh acknowledged. “But can you blame me for freaking out? What Koschei is doing… Cameron, this is apocalyptic-level evil. These gods have to be destroyed. And I think I know why all of this has converged on you.”

  “Oh my God,” Selena whispered.