Cameron rolled away from them and felt a familiar, welcome sensation.
“Let’s see if you bastards burn,” he suggested. His prison filled with fire and their screeching made his headache return, but this was a different pain, the normal kind of headache he’d expect after something so loud and deafening exploded right next to his ears.
And it meant his fire could at least slow these spirits down.
A door opened and light from a hallway peeked above his flames. Over the roar of the fire, he thought he heard Nergal saying, “What the hell?”
Cameron pushed his fire through the doorway and held out his hand, his Spear appearing even though he already felt weak again. Whatever those spirits had done to him, he wasn’t a powerful enough healer to remedy it on his own.
Nergal screamed as his body caught fire and Cameron walked through his flames, pushing the Sumerian god to the ground. He held the tip of his Spear above the war god’s heart and demanded, “Where is Selena?”
Even though Nergal writhed in agony from the fire that consumed his body, he laughed. “And do you really think I won’t be back, Sun God? You can kill us over and over again, but you can’t ever actually win.”
Cameron arched an eyebrow at him and shrugged. “Then I guess you’ll just have to get used to dying,” he said as he thrust his Spear into the war god’s heart.
CHAPTER SIX
As the fire spread behind him, Cameron opened doors, searching for Selena and Badb. He silently called out to her, asking if she could hear the fires raging around the building, hoping it would at least give them an idea of where she was being held prisoner.
No, she answered. I don’t think I’m in the same building, and I doubt Badb is either. You need to let the others know—
I’m not doing anything until I find you, he interrupted.
Selena sighed heavily in his mind and scolded him for interrupting her and being stubborn. Just get our friends to help search for us. I can heal myself, but I can’t fight those spirits off since I don’t have a cool supernatural power like fire.
Cameron paused in front of another closed door, his hand hovering over the doorknob. Selena, you can bring people back from the dead. How is that not the coolest supernatural power there is?
Because it’s not helping me escape right now, she countered, her mental voice adopting a sad and frustrated edge. I guess you and the others were right all along. I do need constant bodyguards.
Cameron pushed the door open, revealing another empty room. Don’t do that. If you could still draw on my gifts, you’d have torched these bastards and escaped already.
Selena fell silent again, but he could sense her concentration on something around her. She was listening, but it wasn’t his fires she heard. Um, I think Enlil just learned you killed his son. Again.
Technically, Cameron corrected and Selena groaned, It’s not ‘again.’ I’ve never killed Nergal. I killed his other son, and that asshole had better still be dead.
Cameron, let the building burn. Badb and I aren’t there. Get help. And for God’s sake, hurry.
Cameron allowed his fire to consume the entire building, and as he transported himself to the W Hotel, he asked, Which god? Me?
I’m ignoring you from now on… even if I am incredibly bored in here, she teased.
“Cameron?” Nemain said. “Where are Selena and Badb?”
He took a deep breath, remembering Badb’s anger that controlled her when Tarhunt killed Macha. The last thing he needed now was having to babysit Nemain if her own rage overpowered her.
“Athena,” he said, “don’t let Nemain wander off without you.”
“Oh my God,” Athena whispered. “Where’s Badb?”
“I don’t know,” Cameron admitted. “Nergal’s spirits abducted us, and he and his father separated us. I can still talk to Selena so I know she’s okay, but Badb…”
He bit his lip and watched Nemain carefully as that deadly anger transformed her pale gray eyes, darkening them until they appeared black and empty. Athena grabbed her hand to keep her from leaving and asked, “Can you feel her?”
Nemain shook her head, her other hand curling into a tight fist, and hissed, “That bastard is mine.”
“We’ll find her,” Cameron promised. “How could Huitzilopochtli not want the power of the Mórrígna? I’m positive she’s still alive.”
“She’d better be,” Nemain replied, “or I’m going to the Seventh Heaven myself and destroying every god that gets in my way.”
“I’m okay with that actually,” he told her.
“Not now,” Athena said sharply. “London, you and Ares search the Warehouse District. Ukko, you’ll stay with us and we’ll—”
“It seems,” Loki interrupted, “that one of you would have the sense to ask your prisoner who used to work with these gods where they might be hiding your friends. Apparently, I’ve overestimated your intellect once again.”
“Please let me kill him,” London begged.
“No way,” Tyr said. “If anyone is going to kill him, it’ll be me. I’ve wanted to longer than anyone else here.”
“My sister and Selena are missing,” Nemain yelled. “Shut up!”
She yanked her hand away from Athena and grabbed Loki by the throat who croaked out, “Not again.”
“You,” she hissed, “had better not mess with me. Just tell me where she is.”
“Let me speak then,” he whispered.
Nemain loosened her grip but didn’t let go.
“I can’t be certain,” he claimed. “But I suspect your friends have been moved out of New Orleans. Huitzilopochtli does want their power, but they’re gods and he has to get them to the Seventh Heaven in order to perform this ritual.”
“Loki,” Thor warned, “if you lie to us…”
“I have no reason to lie,” Loki claimed. “He’s put a bounty on my head, and I’d rather it stay attached to my body. Besides, I actually like your healer. The rest of you…”
“Loki,” Thor warned again.
The Norse trickster god squinted at Thor but told Nemain, “Your sister is probably in Mexico City as is Selena.”
“Um… why?” London asked.
“Tenochtitlan,” Cameron guessed. “Hell, for all I know, I was there too. And it could explain why we still don’t hear sirens even though I set a building on fire.”
“Please don’t drag me to Mexico,” Kevin begged.
“Tyr, can you stay here with Loki and Kevin?” Athena asked. “And Loki, if you know anything else…”
Loki shook his head as Nemain let go of him, her sword already in hand as she prepared to leave for Mexico City—with or without the other gods. “I only know Huitzilopochtli was oddly attached to a city where he was no longer revered,” Loki explained. “If you find your fire, Sun God, your friends are probably nearby.”
Nemain pointed her sword at him and threatened, “If you’ve led us on a wild goose chase, you’ll wish you’d never left that cave.”
“Oh, trust me,” he cooed. “I already do.”
Nemain shot a nervous glance in Cameron’s direction, but with no other leads and no better ideas, they had no choice but to follow the advice of a god whose sanity was long gone. And if he were wrong, Badb and Selena could run out of time.
“THIS IS RIDICULOUS,” Athena complained. “Are we supposed to wander around Mexico City just hoping we weren’t conned by one of the biggest con artists among gods?”
“Well,” Cameron countered, gesturing toward a burning factory that firefighters were still trying to control, “he was right about my fire.”
“But we can’t sense anyone,” Nemain said. “What exactly are we supposed to do?”
“Can you still talk to Selena?” Ukko asked.
Cameron nodded. “Yeah, but she’s already told me the room she’s in is completely dark plus the pervy spirits are in there with her. And if they lay a hand on her, I’m going to lose my mind and smite the whole damn city.”
; “Good thing I got away from them then,” Selena said.
Cameron spun around, blinking at her as if she were only an apparition, so she arched an eyebrow at him and smiled. “Turns out spirits aren’t immune to telekinesis and are surprisingly easy to throw across a room.”
“Selena,” Cameron breathed, throwing his arms around her and silently vowing never to let go again.
“Wait,” London said. “You were only guarded by these spirits? Why would Enlil not have every god at his disposal guarding one of the most powerful deities in history, particularly one who could grant immortality to Huitzilopochtli?”
“And why was Nergal the only god guarding Cameron?” Athena added.
“They expected them to escape,” Ukko said. “And they knew we’d come for Badb.”
“It’s a trap,” Ares realized. “And we walked right into it.”
“You did,” Enlil told them, appearing beside the Guardians but this time, he hadn’t come alone.
Every god they’d fought for the past two months, including those they thought they’d killed, had come to Mexico City.
And they’d brought Badb’s body with them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nemain’s eyes burned as brightly as the fire Cameron had ignited to escape Nergal as she stared at her sister in Xipe Totec’s arms. Nergal’s spirits had surrounded them as well, but the Gatekeeper didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t seem to notice Athena either, who had drawn her sword, demanding they put down the body of her best friend.
Selena had pulled away from Cameron, her own attention fixed on the dead war goddess. Cameron felt numb and he knew he should act and help his friends but how? He kept expecting Badb to wake up, to draw her own sword and behead the god holding her, to let out her infamous battle cry.
But Badb never moved.
Distract them, Cameron, Selena instructed. I’m going home to find her.
Selena disappeared before he could ask her what she planned on doing even after finding Badb’s spirit in Findias. If she had just died, Selena could pull her back to her body, but she’d already reached the Land of the Dead. What good would it do any of them now?
Cameron’s inability to act was broken when the ground began to shake beneath their feet. He stumbled but Thor grabbed his arm and kept him from falling. But he’d witnessed the unmitigated fury of one of the Mórrígna before.
As if her grief could be felt all the way in the Otherworld, Macha appeared at her side, her eyes blazing just like her sister’s. The rumbling in the ground intensified and the buildings began to shake and crumble as their anger and sorrow transformed into a devastating earthquake.
“Stop,” Cameron begged. “People are going to die!”
“Our sister is dead,” Nemain and Macha both answered, their voices eerily synchronous. “What else matters?”
Athena grabbed his other arm and begged too. “You have to do something. You don’t understand—they can’t help it. The Mórrígna are basically the same goddess in three bodies. They’re as dangerous as a god without a soul now!”
“This was a terrible design flaw,” Cameron responded.
“Cameron,” Athena cried, “help this city!”
Macha and Nemain marched toward the gods who’d killed their sister, and he thought he noticed Xipe Totec smiling as if this had been their plan all along.
And then he realized this had been their plan all along.
Huitzilopochtli wasn’t attempting to relive the days when he’d been worshipped in this city. He was destroying it because he felt betrayed by the mortals who’d given him power.
“Oh my God,” Cameron said. Nobody asked him which god.
He ran his fingers through his hair because short of killing Nemain and Macha, he had no idea how to stop them. But this city was home to over nine million people, and they’d all die at the hands of the Irish war goddesses.
Only the Guardians would have been strong enough to stop Huitzilopochtli from his revenge so he’d gotten them to destroy his former home for him. If Cameron weren’t so horrified, he would have admired how clever the Aztec god’s plan was.
The skyscrapers began to collapse and all over Mexico City, he heard the screaming of terrified people, the wailing of sirens, the disintegration of millions of lives. Rather than leaving, Xipe Totec and the soulless gods stayed just beyond the reach of the Mórrígna to keep their destructive anger in the city.
As another skyscraper broke apart in the distance, Cameron panicked and his helplessness erupted. “Stop!”
Neither Nemain nor Macha obeyed but all around him, the world stood still. Debris froze in mid-air, the screams and sirens fell silent, and the ground quieted. Athena gasped and turned in a slow circle, but it was Ukko who asked, “What did you do?”
“I don’t know,” Cameron said. “I just panicked.”
“You froze time,” Thor murmured. “Nobody has ever been able to do that.”
“He and Selena have always been able to control what time they come back to on Earth after being in the Otherworld,” Ares said. “Nobody has ever been able to do that either. We shouldn’t be able to control time.”
“Would you get over my ability to manipulate time and just stop Macha and Nemain?” Cameron snapped.
Athena took a deep breath and approached the war goddesses carefully. “Macha, Nemain… please,” she pleaded. “Look around you. Just go to Findias and—”
“Not until they’re dead,” Macha answered.
For the first time, Xipe Totec’s bravado faltered. Even if the surviving Mórrígna killed them, their bodies would return, but with time suspended around them, the annihilation of what used to be Tenochtitlan would fail.
But Macha and Nemain suddenly stopped, their eyes paling and their expressions shifting from a consuming hatred to confusion. Cameron took a hesitant step toward them, but Selena grabbed his hand so he shot her his own confused look.
“Don’t underestimate me, Son of Danu,” she told him.
“Have I ever?” he responded.
Selena nodded toward Badb, and just as he’d prayed to see only moments before, the war goddess’s eyes opened and her sword appeared in her hands. With a single swift, smooth motion, her blade swept across Xipe Totec’s neck and his head fell to the ground.
The Guardian’s surprise passed quickly and they fell on the other gods whose bodies crumpled under the onslaught. But Cameron remained by Selena’s side, literally holding her upright as she urged the spirits of those who’d died in Mexico City to return. As the last of the mortals’ lives had been saved, she collapsed into his arms and mumbled, “Take me home.”
Cameron transported the survivors away from the wreckage then brought Selena back to Murias where the Dagda and Aonghus waited with news about her father.
CAMERON LAID Selena in their bed and pulled Bridget into their room. “Stay with her in case she wakes up before I get back. Please,” he said then quickly added, “Your highness.”
Bridget rolled her eyes but smiled at him. “Go, Sun God. I’ll defend her from all the pervy heart stealing gods here in Murias.”
“You’d better,” Cameron replied then quickly added, “Your highness.”
Aonghus grabbed his arm and yanked him into the hallway. “You’re home. No one can interfere with your powers here. She’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”
“All right,” Cameron relented. “It’s just… I’ve lost her before—”
“I know,” Aonghus assured him. “I remember.”
The Dagda waited in his great hall in front of Lugh’s tapestries, tracing his fingers over the Stone of Fal, the last of their Treasures to come home. As Aonghus and Cameron entered the room, he let his hand fall and shot Cameron a strained smile. “How’s Selena?”
“She’ll be okay,” Cameron assured him. “You know huge feats of healing just take a lot out of her right now, and she somehow found Badb’s spirit and got her back into her body.”
“Yeah,” the Dagda sighed. “Cameron,
that’s…” The Dagda sighed again and ran his hand down his long red-brown beard. “I can’t believe we almost lost the Mórrígna. And I can’t believe Selena saved them.”
Cameron picked nervously at a small chip in one of the Dagda’s chairs and nodded. It would be a long time before he could purge the image of Badb’s lifeless body from his mind.
“So you found something in Ailill’s house?” he asked.
Aonghus reached into his pocket and pulled out a notepad, the kind Cameron used to keep in his kitchen to jot down grocery lists. He smiled at his sort-of foster-son and pointed to the notepad. “Forgot to do your shopping? Where does the Dagda’s chef get all his ingredients? I haven’t found the Trader Joe’s around here yet.”
“Actually,” Aonghus responded, “you’re not too far off.”
“Ailill took off looking for a Trader Joe’s? I’m pretty sure there isn’t one in Murias. Maybe we should check Gorias.”
“Cameron,” the Dagda groaned.
“What?” Cameron asked innocently. “Some of the Greeks live there and if anyone were to build a huge grocery store, it would be those guys.”
“I don’t even know what to say to that,” the Dagda admitted.
“Read it,” Aonghus said, handing him the notepad.
Cameron glanced at the paper then up at Aonghus. “I know this restaurant. It’s where Nemain kicked our asses at an eating contest.”
Aonghus pointed to it and said, “Yeah, I thought that was in New Orleans.”
“Right, but unless Ailill was planning on ordering some shrimp remoulade, why is this place so significant?”
“Maybe because you and Selena were there,” Aonghus replied. “And there’s probably a reason Ailill knows about it and thought it was important.”
“So they’re using a popular restaurant as their headquarters and Ailill conveniently left its name written on a piece of paper before taking off?” Cameron handed the notepad back to Aonghus and shook his head. “That’s either a diversion or another trap.”
Goddesses of War (The Guardians of Tara Book 4) Page 5
