“And you don’t have hands.” I squared my shoulders. “So, it’s up to me.”
The cat ghosted over and looked up into my eyes. “Yep, you’re your mother’s daughter, whether Eris wants to admit it or not.” Her ears flattened. “Remember when that clique of cheerleaders was bullying you in high school? Mary offered to let you graduate early so you could get away from them, but you wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Why would I let a bunch of stuck up little bitches run me out of my school? I had just as much right to go there as they did. It was all bullshit.”
“Yes, but the point is they were making your life hell, and you refused to give in. Nobody would have blamed you for leaving.”
“I would have.”
“That’s what I mean.” She walked a figure eight around my feet, her shoulders butting my calves in a comforting silken stroke. “Whether you remembered your mother consciously or not, you were still her child. You wouldn’t back down. She raised you to be brave, and you are brave.”
“Yeah, Mom and Dad worked hard at that.” I remembered our daily magical combat practice, the sword drills when Mother’s weapon was longer than I was tall. I couldn’t have been more than three at the time. “She used to tell me, ‘Never back down from a fight, Summer. Other lives than yours may be on the line.’”
“I remember.” Looking down into Calliope’s intense blue eyes, I saw her utter belief in me. “And Ulf was right when he said she’d be proud of you.”
Her faith bolstered my confidence. I could do this. It might not be any fun, but it was necessary. I picked up the sheathed sword and slid my hand into the coiled tiger tail of the basket hilt. The cool metal began to warm, and the coil suddenly jerked tight around my wrist in a painful clamp.
The gold heated, grew hot. And hotter still, until I had to fight the instinct to jerk my hand away. Teeth gritted, I held on until I could smell my own flesh sizzling. “Fuck you, bitch! You’re not forcing me to give up.”
I took hold of the rapier’s sheath in my free hand, jerked it off, and threw it aside. It clattered across the floor. “Eris!”
She answered in a sandstorm, first as a rattle of hot sparks that built rapidly into a scouring acid rain. “I can’t believe you had the gall to touch my hilt again. Have you decided you’re ready to die after all?”
Hissing breath through my teeth, I showed her my memories of the night’s events, from our capture through Paladin’s destruction of our enemies. “Their crimes are driving him insane. He needs you to drain away the evil.”
“And your mother needed him in the hour of her death. Instead Paladin left her to die alone.”
“You know perfectly well my mother begged him to save me. He didn’t want to leave -- it haunts him to this day -- but she wanted at least one of her children to live.” And it was true. I could see the memory Paladin had left behind in my brain, the pain and regret he felt.
“Yes, she sacrificed herself for you. And look how you turned out.” Her contempt scalded me. “A weakling. And stupid as well, to walk into such an obvious trap as the one Valak laid for you. And now you expect me to save your equally gutless lover from his own weakness? Ha! This world is well rid of him.”
“He is the god of justice, Eris! The world needs him!”
“He’s a god of justice. There’s plenty more where he comes from.”
I’d never felt such rage, not even when it seemed Valak was going to kill us all. After all the people he’d saved, he deserved better from her. “How dare you?” I snarled, so angry I told her exactly that I thought. “You crawled into that sword when your last host died, and you quit! And you call us gutless?”
“What did you say?” Her power began to pound at me even harder, no longer a sandstorm but thudding fists battering my bones, deforming my flesh. “Watch your tongue, worm!”
Fury alone kept me on my feet as she ripped at me. “Kill me if you want, but that doesn’t change the facts. Paladin loved his hosts every bit as much as you loved your Aaron. But he never retreated, never hid, no matter what price he had to pay.”
I showed her the memories of all the men and women who’d fought beside Paladin, who’d worshiped and believed in him. I showed her his love for my mother, so intense he gave her up to save me, though it was the last thing he’d wanted to do.
I showed her how Paladin had suffered when he absorbed the evil of Valak’s serial killers, drinking the consciousness of murderers and suffering the fates of their victims. All in order serve justice and save those who would otherwise have died. “Meanwhile you hid!” I spat, letting my own contempt show, even as she howled around me like a hurricane. “You couldn’t stand the pain of losing one host, when he’s lost hundreds!”
“You know nothing about me or my Aaron! He was brave and brilliant and the greatest host I ever had. You’re not even fit to say his name!”
“Then he’d be ashamed if he knew how you’ve hid from the world! If he knew how callous and vicious you became, he’d curse your name.” With all the strength of my fury, I spat, “You know what? Forget it! I’m better off without you. What good is a coward’s power?”
“Good enough to end you!”
“Go ahead! Do it! At least I won’t die haunted by the memories of your failures!”
“You bitch!” She hit me in a blinding wave of magic, flaying my consciousness, searing me until I smelled my own skin crisping, felt it peeling away from bleeding bone. The pain was a shrieking devil with red-hot claws and no mercy whatsoever.
I didn’t care. All I felt was rage and loss. My mother, my father and Richard had all died. Now I was going to lose Paladin. This metal cunt could have helped me save him, but she was too wrapped up in herself to care.
But there was someone Eris had cared about. So I threw her own words back at her. “My mother would weep!”
The heat and fury intensified, and I knew she was about to burn me out of my own brain just as Valak had threatened to do. Dead, I’m so dead, and I’ve just killed Paladin…
Damned if I’d surrender. I braced myself against the howling wind, my lips peeled back from my teeth as I screamed defiance at Eris. At death. At life, from taking away everyone I’d ever loved. “Paladin, I love you!”
He wouldn’t hear me, but still I tried, sending the magic pouring out of me into the howling dark…
The flaying power storm abruptly died to a hot wind, then finally ceased altogether. I staggered and almost fell on my ass.
The silence after the roar of her anger almost seemed like its own kind of assault. I looked down at my hands, dreading what I’d see from gripping that burning hilt. To my astonishment, there were no sign of burns at all. Not on my hands, not anywhere. The crisping skin and singeing hair had been an illusion.
“I couldn’t burn Barbara’s child.” Eris sighed, sounding weary. Probably tired out from beating the hell out of me. “And you still wouldn’t give in, no matter what I did to you. I’ll give you this, you don’t lack courage.”
“Do you really think my mother would have raised a coward?”
“No, I don’t suppose so.” She fell silent for a long moment while I tried to recover my breath and shake off the effects of the battering. “You are so much like your mother. Too much so. Otherwise I wouldn’t have tried so hard to get rid of you. Her loss… She reminded me of Aaron, you see. So selfless.” That last sounded a little bitter.
Wait, she’d damn near killed me because I wasn’t a coward?
“If you expect logic from gods, child, you’re looking in the wrong place. We’re creatures of faith. Faith is never logical.” After another pause while I fought to recover my breath, she said, “This plan to save that idiot god of yours is dangerous, you know.”
I straightened in hope. Had I convinced her after all? “We can’t just let him go mad, Eris. He’s suffering.”
“Did it ever occur to you that he deserves to suffer? Look at what he’s doing to you.” She gave a disgruntled huff. “He’s taken in too
much evil. I’m not sure even I can filter all of that, and even if I could, it would have to flow through you. It could destroy you.”
I snorted. “Damn near everything I’ve done tonight could have destroyed me.”
“I noticed.” Eris emitted a bad tempered growl. “Very well, you romantic idiot, I’ll help you save your god.” Her mental voice dropped to a mutter. “Your mother loved that great lout almost as much as she did you.”
My shoulders sagged, and I sighed in relief. Becoming aware of the pain in my hands, I eased my grip on her hilt one finger at a time as I started looking around for the sheath. I spotted it on the floor, picked it up, and slid the rapier into it.
“Are you all right?” Calliope’s tail lashed in anxiety.
“I think so.” My skull thudded like a drum line, and the room revolved around me a couple of times before steadying. “Everything seems to be working.” Kind of.
“Thank the Elder gods,” the cat sighed. “That was entirely too close.”
I gave her a tired smile. “Worked, though. She’s going to help us. Now all I have to do is find Paladin.” I raked one exhausted hand through my hair. “How long was I out of it?” I needed to figure out where he could be.
Calliope’s tail flicked. “About an hour.” She grimaced, as if at an unpleasant memory. “Which you largely spent screaming, by the way. Listening to you was one of the ugliest experiences in a very long life full of ugly experiences.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t exactly a party from my end either.” I rubbed my forehead in frustration. “How the hell am I supposed to find him?”
“You could always try his cell.”
“Damn, why didn’t I think of that?” I started to reach into a pocket, only to remember it wasn’t that easy. Just like everything else tonight.
Calliope figured out the problem about the same time I did. “Oh, hell. Paladin doesn’t have a phone.”
“And if he does have one, it belonged to Valak. Can you imagine the calls he’d get?”
“Eeeeewwww.”
“Exactly.” I slumped. “How the hell am I going to find him before he does something to himself or someone else?”
“Well, you two have been psychically linked for the last twelve years. Try to sense him.”
It was worth a shot. I closed my eyes and tried to quiet my racing mind. Remembering the calming technique Paladin had taught me, I pulled in a deep breath and held it, then blew it out slowly. I breathed that way for a few minutes until my panic began to ebb and I could concentrate enough to reach for my magic. “Paladin?”
Nothing. I poured more magic into the probe and pictured his handsome face, letting my need fuel the search.
And there he was, a blaze of dark power just a few blocks to the southwest. I tried to touch his thoughts, but his only answer was a roar of fury.
Paladin was in combat. I had to get to him, and I had to do it before he killed somebody.
I went to a cabinet, jerked the door open, reached in, and snagged my mother’s sword harness off the hook. It was only as I attached the sheathed weapon and buckled it on that I realized I’d known exactly where the harness was. I hadn’t had any idea a moment before.
“You have more power than you realize, and more knowledge than you know,” Eris said in my mind. She answered my next question even as it occurred to me. “I can touch your thoughts as long as you’re in contact with me.”
I could touch hers, too. I felt how desperately she’d craved human contact these many years, and how much she’d missed Mom. I also felt her sense of failure that she’d been unable to save her in the end.
Damn. Eris had blamed herself for my mother’s death more than she’d ever blamed Paladin. She’d only rejected him because he reminded her of her failure and loss. In fact, even as she’d attacked me, she’d desperately wanted me to prove myself worthy. But she was equally determined to keep her power out of the hands of anyone who might misuse it.
I had been afraid partnering with Eris was going to be a nightmare -- that she was such a flaming bitch she’d be hell to deal with. Instead there was a basic decency to her, just as there was in Paladin.
“Don’t assume I won’t give you hell if you deserve it,” the goddess told me. “I may have gotten bored, but I haven’t gone soft.”
“Well, nobody ever called you the goddess of warm and fuzzy.” I headed for the study door and stepped out into the wine cellar, Calliope at my heels.
“Did you get a lock on him?”
“Yeah. He’s a few blocks to the southwest. Feels like he’s in a bar brawl or something. I can’t get through to his mind, but I’m pretty sure I can find him.”
The cat darted out of the way, and I pivoted the wall to conceal the study again. There were far too many magical weapons in that room to leave the door unlocked.
I took the stairs two at a time, Cal bounding ahead of me. “I’m going with you,” she told me.
I hesitated. “Actually, I think I’d better go by myself. Paladin and I need to have a long talk in private.”
The cat’s ears rotated back, and the tip of her tail flicked once. “I hope you don’t think you can start leaving me at home every time you go off to fight. I am a cat goddess, not to mention your familiar. And I can hold my own.”
“Plus you turn into a giant death kitty.” I sighed as she glared up into my face, not mollified at all. “Look, I know you can fight. If you couldn’t, Mom and Dad certainly wouldn’t have used you as our bodyguard when we were growing up. But Paladin is not going to hurt me, and with all the Valakans dead I’m not likely to run into something I can’t handle.”
“They’re not the only bad guys in this city. Wherever there are Demis and magic, there are going to be assholes to prey on them.”
“True, but we’re in for at least a couple of weeks of peace before the asshats show up. And I do need to talk to Paladin alone. There’s a lot of shit we’ve got to hash out.”
Her right ear flicked restlessly. “All right. But you tell him if he hurts you, he’s going to answer to me.”
“He’ll answer to me first. I’m not helpless, Cal.”
“Now, that’s the Elder Gods’ own truth -- just ask Valak. Go bring our boy back.” On a mutter she added, “The idiot.”
To my surprise, the Kia sat in the drive. Evidently some kind Demi had dropped it off, since we’d left it at the Demifair. Whoever it was must have magically hot-wired it, since I still had the keys. Either way, I was grateful. I’d thought I’d have to call an Uber.
Instead I got in my car and followed the sense of boiling rage that led to Paladin.
* * *
It wasn’t hard to find the bar he’d chosen for his drunken brawl. It was Zap, the bar once beloved by Valakans.
Which was now surrounded by patrol cars, parked with their doors hanging open and lights revolving.
Oh shit. I parked in a fire zone, despite the likelihood of getting a ticket with all the cops around. Flinging the door open, I jumped out and ran toward the building, casting a quick spell to camouflage the sword hanging diagonally across my back. Otherwise, the weapon was guaranteed to get me arrested. This might be an open carry state, but that didn’t apply to giant butcher knives. I was about to get in enough trouble as it was.
I strode into the bar, only to stop short in dismay. It looked like every redneck and cop in Graven County was in Zap. And each and every one of them was trying to kill the others with bare hands and beer bottles.
Oh, fuckety fuck fuck. I scanned the heaving, cursing crowd until I spotted a knot of blue backs struggling desperately with someone in the middle of the pile.
One of the po-po went flying, somersaulted over the walnut bar, and vanished behind it with a thud. For a moment I spotted Paladin’s rage-contorted face as he struggled with the shorter cops.
“Hell,” I growled and headed toward him, weaving my way around drunken brawlers when I could, knocking them out of the way when I couldn’t. For the first time, I f
ound myself using my strength in a situation where I wasn’t fighting for my life.
A brawny redneck took a swing at me, apparently seeing me as an easy target. I pivoted out of the way as smoothly as Jackie Chan, then stepped in again and popped him in the face. He went down like a sack of cement. I stepped over him and headed for Paladin.
From the corner of one eye, I saw a man’s body flying at me. I caught him in midair. He felt as if he weighed no more than a basketball as I dropped him on the floor and kept going. I gave him a quick scan, just in case, but I hadn’t hurt him.
I reached the crowd of cops just as Paladin broke free. He had at least two sets of Taser leads stuck in his big body, but the electricity had done nothing whatsoever to even slow him down. A bruise decorated one handsome cheek, and his mouth was curled in a snarl as he elbowed one of the cops in the mouth. Ouch.
Which was when one of the po-po stepped back and drew his gun.
Suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. The spell I needed leaped to mind -- something Paladin had left behind in my head -- and I fired a sleep spell at the cop. He slumped to the floor, the weapon tumbling from his hand.
Now if only I could do the same to everybody else in the room. Unfortunately, the fight with Eris had taken a toll on my magical reserves. I needed more juice than I could generate by myself.
Drawing the rapier in a hurried hiss of steel, I pointed Eris at the ceiling. The spell I chanted grew stronger as it burned up the sword’s gleaming length, then exploded over the room with a rolling crackle and the sharp scent of ozone. Everybody in the room collapsed, out cold.
Everybody, that is, but Paladin. He stared at me in shock, the frenzied rage fading from his eyes.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I gritted in frustration. “Do you really have to take your bad mood out on a bunch of innocent human cops?”
“They’re not innocent,” he snapped back. “They attacked me.”
“Probably because you were kicking somebody’s ass, and the bar had to call them.”
Paladin (Graven Gods Book 1) Page 20
