by Jax Garren
The Trickster's Strings
Godsongs, Volume 2
Jax Garren
Published by Valkyrie Books, 2019.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
TRICKSTER’S STRINGS
First edition. August 22, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Jax Garren.
Written by Jax Garren.
Editor: Heather Long
Copy Editor: Abby Webber
Cover by Daqri Bernardo (Covers by Combs)
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Series Reading Order
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 1
Series Reading Order
GODSONGS SERIES:
The Trickster’s Drum
The Trickster’s Strings
- Owl’s Cry, a Godsong’s Novella (September 2019)
The Trickster’s Refrain (December 2019)
The Trickster’s Rhythm (Spring 2020)
The Trickster’s Song (Spring/Summer 2020)
Austin Immortals Series:
Immortal Longing – Vince and Charlie
- Immortal Redeemed, an Austin Immortals novella – Alex and Sofia (September 2019)
Immortal Rage – Javier and Emma (October 2019)
Immortal Fire – Elvira and... Spoilers! (Spring 2020)
Immortal Warrior – Cash and... Spoilers! (Summer 2020)
Tales of the Underlight Series:
How Beauty Met the Beast
How Beauty Saved the Beast
How Beauty Loved the Beast
Chapter 1
GISELLE’S HEART THUNDERED in horror as she spun back to the pit and to her partner as gunshots strafed the night. “No! Coyote!”
“Freyja!” Andromeda yelled after her.
She ignored the warning in her former mentor’s tone and ran back toward the line of operatives with their guns raised like a firing squad. “What are you doing?” she yelled at them.
Coyote’s green feathers disappeared into the oubliette where her mother had been lodged in filth for gods knew how long. Had he been shot? Or had he jumped?
More gunfire made nausea rise inside her. Shoot first, ask questions later. Women stored away in forgotten holes...
What country did she live in?
Shadows rose before her, turning from birds to human. She gasped as Badb Catha and Nemain—a different woman was under the latter’s mask, but she was quite clearly the same goddess—grabbed her arms and walked her backward. Badb Catha’s grip was merciless, while Nemain’s contained the hesitancy of someone new to this.
“Coyote!” Giselle yelled, struggling against them. “Please!”
“You expect sympathy?” Badb Catha spit out. “When you showed none to Macha.”
“She was trying to kill me.” Giselle twisted her arm from Nemain’s grip and clocked Badb Catha in the eye.
“Bitch!” the woman yelled.
Giselle ignored her, using the woman’s surprise to twist away.
Her feet were yanked from under her in the kind of leverage move a trained martial artist used—not the same street fighting style Giselle was used to. She landed hard on her chin in the thorny ground around the mesquite copse. To her surprise, Nemain looked down on her with the shocked expression of a well-trained fighter who’d never thrown a punch outside a dojo.
“He’s gone!” someone yelled from the clearing.
“She’s gone!” another added in surprise.
Gone. Heart still galloping away, Giselle swallowed in relief and didn’t fight when Badb Catha manhandled her back to standing. Coyote had transformed, taking her mother with him. He and Bryn were as good as escaped. She shot Badb Catha a triumphant smile. The woman pulled back like she’d punch Giselle in retribution, and Giselle put her fists up, ready to fight dirty.
Andromeda, moving with the slow purpose of a panther, arrived at their location and cocked a hip. “I’ve got her,” she told the pair. “But stay behind.” Her eyes narrowed angrily at Giselle. “I find you annoyingly hard to shoot.”
Ande was quite possibly the best archer in the world—her aim wasn’t the problem. And maybe it was that weird-ass admission of affection that made Giselle shake off the two goddesses of the Morrigan and step up to her former mentor—and former foster mother. Loyalty wasn’t something Giselle had known a lot of, and Ande, morally ambiguous as she was, apparently hadn’t given up on her yet, despite their recent falling out.
And Coyote had her mother. Hopefully they were on their way to somewhere safe.
“Morons,” Ande muttered. The conspiratorial quality to her tone made Giselle think she wasn’t referring to Coyote and Bryn. “What insect does Huehuecoyotl become? That’s how he pulled you from my apartment, is it not?”
Giselle snorted. “Like I’d tell you.” Ande’s loyalty did not extend to Giselle’s new partner, who had been the root of their falling out.
They strode on in silence for a moment, apparently marching toward a military truck waiting farther into the prairie. Compared to the crack of guns and the roar of the helicopter, the motor’s soft growl was peaceful. Behind her, the ground crunched as Nemain and Badb Catha followed a few paces behind them. Giselle contemplated her options. She couldn’t transform like Coyote. She could run, but her chain-mail tunic would slow her down. She could fight, although the odds weren’t in her favor at the moment.
And Ande had been right last week. Giselle wouldn’t actually hurt her. To paraphrase Ande’s earlier statement, she was annoyingly hard to put an ax in.
“How certain are you that was Bryndis?” Ande asked softly, staring ahead like they weren’t talking. “You were, what, six when she disappeared? Seven?”
Giselle almost stumbled in her surprise. Ande grabbed her arm and marched her forward, keeping their pace rapid and well ahead of the two other goddesses.
“How could you possibly be sure it was a woman you haven’t seen in twelve years?”
“Because she’s not just a person—she’s my mom.” The only mother Giselle had ever known. When her body had been found twelve years ago, Giselle had entered the foster system, bouncing from home to shelter to shitsville and back, until Ande had taken her in her senior year.
Taken her in and begun training her to use the godstone of Freyja, Norse goddess of war, magic, and sex. Giselle sucked at all of them, but she was working on it.
The first two, a
nyway.
Coyote’s muscled chest popped into her mind and she banished it immediately to focus on the present. Besides, she had a real crush on a brilliant, talented, nice guy whom she knew in real life. If her superhero coworker made her panties damp, that was just something she’d have to work through. She didn’t even know who he really was, other than a rich, flirtatious party boy who still didn’t seem to understand what he’d gotten himself into when he’d picked up the godstone channeling the powers of the Aztec trickster god Huehuecoyotl.
Not that Coyote was a bad guy—he had proven himself surprisingly trustworthy thus far—but he wasn’t boyfriend material by a long shot.
She just hoped he was okay and that he’d gotten Bryn safely somewhere far away from here. “You’re telling me,” she muttered to Ande, “that you had no idea who was in the hole back there?”
Ande huffed. “I had no idea there was a hole back there, much less a woman who might be the Freyja I knew in it.” At eighteen, Giselle had inherited her mother’s godstone, making her the new Freyja.
Very new. Very inexperienced. Very caught by the government after cavorting in a field with the even greener Huehuecoyotl.
They got within ten yards of the vehicle, and Giselle stopped, no longer caring who heard. “So what are you doing here?”
The Morrigan pair caught up, and Giselle took a better look at the new Nemain, Irish goddess of the terror of battle. Giselle and Coyote had defeated the previous one, which should’ve meant they collected the godstone, but Giselle had let Ande have it. It hadn’t taken the woman long to find a new conduit. This one had scarlet hair with black streaks and a mask of the same colors that swept down her cheeks in trails of black and red tears. Or blood. The woman’s bright green eyes, though, took everything in with excited wonder, a new conduit learning magic on the job. Honestly, she just didn’t look that terrifying. What had Ande been thinking?
Giselle would wish her luck, except—at least as far as she’d seen—all three goddesses of the Morrigan were super fucking evil.
Ande crossed her arms, looking annoyed as hell. “As I would’ve told you if you’d come with me before, I’m a magistrate. For now, that means I liaise with the military on who should and shouldn’t be allowed to carry a godstone. If I hadn’t been here, you would’ve been shot right along with Coyote, your godstones stripped, and your dead bodies kicked into the hole alongside your mother.”
Giselle swallowed, believing her. “And now?”
“And now we have a proposal for you.”
The military had a proposal for her? What the hell? “What kind?”
“The kind where if you turn us down, you hand over your godstone and go about your merry way, or you don’t hand over your godstone and go to prison for the rest of your short little mortal life.”
“And if I say yes?”
“You can keep the stone as long as you survive the task.”
Badb Catha’s nasty smile did not bode well.
“What’s the task?” Giselle asked.
Badb Catha responded. “Go to hell. And bring Macha back.”
Chapter 2
BY SOME BLOODY MIRACLE, the bloody motorcycles were still where Rafael and Freyja had left them. “Just shut up, please!” he half whispered, half yelled at Freyja’s mom. “If you say you’re the wall one more time, I’m going to...” Fuck, he didn’t even know. All he knew was that Andromeda and the fucking military had Freyja, the bleeding mess of a bullet hole in his thigh made putting weight on his left leg near impossible, he had an erratic, traumatized person to take care of, and nothing about this was okay.
“I am the waaaaaaaaall,” she moaned mournfully.
After wrapping a bandage around his thigh and downing four ibuprofen, he grabbed a gadget from his saddlebag and scanned the bikes for bugs or trackers. “Make fun of me for ordering spy equipment, will you,” he muttered, trying to make a joke about Freyja’s disdain for his online shopping extravaganza. But his fear for what might be happening to her right now made everything just sad.
It felt so wrong to leave.
After removing a couple electronic whatsits from each bike, he debated leaving one Harley behind for if—when—Freyja escaped. Or should he take them both?
“The wall... the wall! I am the wall!!”
That solved it. The crazy woman was not driving. Fighting off the delirium of pain, he swung his injured leg over his bike and glared at the woman. At Freyja’s mom. Bryn.
Dammit. It wasn’t this woman’s fault. She’d been through something so awful he couldn’t comprehend it. He stared at the ground, reining in the irate bleakness of his worry until he could request with some kindness, “Come on, Bryn, please get on the bike.”
She stared back at the field, one arm out as if she could reach her daughter. He swallowed, feeling her pain.
“Bíum, bíum, bambaló,” she said in a singsongy voice.
He blinked at her. “That’s the first thing you’ve said other than ‘I am the wall,’ and I... have no idea what you mean. Get on the bike. I promise I’ll get her back.” And then he’d learn to transform more than two people at once, a skill that could’ve gotten them all out. Dammit, he was still too weak. “But I need you to get on the bike so we can get out. That’s what she—your daughter—told us to do.” And he’d done it. Not that he’d had a viable alternative other than attempting to physically force his partner off the premises while her mother screamed incoherently from a hole in the ground. “We have to trust her, okay? Let’s go. Please, Bryn.”
To his surprise, she got on behind him, and her stench of too long in a hole with no latrine made his eyes water and his stomach lurch. He turned the bike on and immediately jammed the accelerator, peeling them out with a rush of wind to his face, blowing the smell away. The adrenaline hit of the wind helped him focus on something other than the pain in his leg, bringing with it renewed determination. He had a job to do.
For a solid minute nothing happened, then the sound of the helicopter blades approached. He pushed the bike as fast as he could take it, and with the modifications he’d had done, the motorcycle was soon zipping so fast the land flashed by him. As Coyote, he could see and react to speeds he couldn’t handle without the godstone activated, and it only took a few minutes for the city lights to be in range and the helicopter blades to be left behind—even the fastest helicopters couldn’t keep up with a good motorcycle. He slowed his speed and turned south, to the seedier areas of town. He and Freyja were developing a helpful rep in those neighborhoods. People there were less likely to turn him in for the crime of using a godstone.
At a craphole motel, he pulled in and grabbed a small wad of cash. Bryn’s reek came back with a vengeance. “Stay with the motorcycle. Can you stay here? I’ll be right back.”
Once again, she sorta sang at him. “Bíum, bíum, bambaló og dillidillidó.” The look she shot him was so sad.
His heart hurt as powerfully as his leg. Twenty minutes ago he and Freyja had laughed as they’d raced across the grass, searching for a vision. And now the woman he loved was in danger, and he couldn’t do shit about it. Not yet. “I miss her too. I’m going to get a room so you can take a shower.” Did they need a doctor? Hopefully not. “What do you like to eat?”
“Wall.”
He ground his teeth. “’Kay. We’ll see if anyone delivers... wall.” He turned away, transforming his face from the masked Coyote to “third immigrant on the left” as he limped into the main office, doing his best to keep an eye on Bryn as he exchanged cash for a key from a disinterested clerk.
For no reason whatsoever, Bryn dashed for the road.
“No!” He snatched up the key, not even counting his change as he yelled back, “Gracias.”
Two minutes later he was carrying Bryn, Freyja’s bag of godstones, and a pack from his saddlebags into the room, holding his breath and wincing with every step as he just focused on not passing out. His pack he dropped in the room. The godstone bag and the crazy woman�
�two things he wasn’t about to let out of his sight—continued to the bathroom with him. “Shower. You need a”—he just stuck her, clothes and all, into the bathtub—“shower.” He turned the water on, and she screamed bloody murder.
As she splashed and fought against him, trying to get out—and, okay, the water wasn’t warm yet, he got that—he realized even though the crust of grime coating her was softening as the water pounded over her squirming body, this was not going to fucking work. The fancy-ass private school he’d grown up attending had not taught him how to deal with a situation like this.
“Bryn! Calm down. I’m trying to help!”
“I am the wall, I am the wall, Iamthewall IamthewallIamthewall.” The repeat became a whirlwind of half-whispered sound as she curled up and rocked, making him feel both monstrous and so damn helpless at the same time.
It was like she was trapped in her head. Confused. Scared.
And he was a moron with two powers—transformation and affecting people through music.
He dropped back onto his ass, stretched his injured leg out, tossed his stupid feathered headdress onto the floor, and spun his drum around. Then he took a deep breath and let Coyote’s magic gather and spill out in his voice as he kept basic time on the instrument.
Sleep sound, precious girl. I’ll keep watch through the night.
The world’s been closing in on us, but for now set down the fight.
Her muscles relaxed as her breathing slowed, and he continued singing as the water warmed up. Eventually, she quieted as her arms loosened around her knees, and she rocked in time to the song.
Moving slowly and continuing to sing, he grabbed the little bottle of shampoo and started working on her hair as best he could. It had matted so badly she was going to have to cut it—she effectively had three dreadlocks and a host of scraggly flyaways.
It was turning out to be blonde, though. Like Freyja’s.
He soaped up a washcloth. At his gentle insistence, she turned her face up to him, and he scrubbed her cheeks and forehead of untold weeks—months? Gods, years, maybe—of dirt.
