by Jax Garren
“Who is this?” Had Freyja given out his number? Normally he’d be pissed—for obvious reasons, he strictly controlled who had his personal cell number. But if it was the only way she could get a message to him...
“A friend of a mutual friend.”
“Is she okay? Have you heard from her? Who is this?” In his desperation he was spitting questions like a faucet. Slow your roll, Marquez.
“Uh, she’s fine at the moment. She gave me this number to contact you.” The voice hesitated for a moment. “Call me Sekhmet.”
Surprise made him straighten up. “Freyja knows another conduit?” Which... why wouldn’t she? He’d assumed it was the two of them against the world, but she’d been a conduit for longer than he had. Had she been working with a different partner before he came along, despite her protests that conduits worked alone?
He tamped down the uncomfortable amount of jealousy that brought up. The more the merrier, as far as he was concerned. If two was good, three was better.
Unless Freyja was dating Sekhmet. Sure, she’d said she didn’t have a boyfriend, but was that splitting hairs? And if so, why wasn’t her girlfriend taking care of Bryn?
He smacked his forehead, trying to get his insane inner monologue to quiet. Freyja wasn’t anything like Estelle, who’d cheated on him for a better contract—and tried to justify it as a business decision. Freyja wasn’t even his girlfriend. He had no right to act out of jealousy just because he wanted her.
“Uhh...” was Sekhmet’s response, like she didn’t want to lie but wasn’t happy with the truth. “No, I’m not a conduit.”
“Wait. Are you the one who got a car into the YMCA gymnasium?”
“Yeah. That was me.”
So she had some kind of magic. He’d deal with that later. Along with his crazy jealousy. Only one thing was important right now. “Where is Freyja? What’s going on?”
A sigh. “She gave me a message to give you, and I don’t really understand it. But it does not give me a good feeling.”
He swallowed the lump of fear that was forming. If she was okay now, he still had a chance to keep her okay. “What’s the message?”
The woman—sure, he’d call her Sekhmet—cleared her throat. “‘Retrieving M.’”
“What?” Angry fear made him sit upright. “M” had to be Macha, which meant Freyja was heading to the underworld. An underworld? Irritation made his muscles tight. Why would she attempt such a stupid thing? They’d talked about this. But maybe that was what she had to do to get released.
Which meant that Macha, the murderous conduit setting border towns on fire, was working for the government. Giant fucking shock. Or not.
“I take it you know what that means,” Sekhmet said.
“Where am I supposed to meet her?”
“Uh, nowhere? It just says, ‘Be back this afternoon. If not, please check the book for help.’”
Fury rolled through him—fury at Andromeda, at the military, but mostly at Freyja for agreeing to this stupid-ass idea without bringing him in. Partners. She’d said they were partners. “Oh, fuck no. Is that all she said?”
“Uh... ‘Trust my friend who’s giving you this. She has the pages’—she means the conduit book pages; I’m translating them.” Rafael wrinkled his nose. He’d said he’d get that done and hadn’t had a chance. “Next she gives a phone number for ‘S from our list’ and then says, and I quote, ‘I can’t thank you enough for what you did. Please keep her safe no matter what.’ Is that her mother? She said something to me about her mother. I thought her mothers were dead. I’m really confused and really worried.”
He pressed his forehead, trying to contain his terrified anger at her stupidity. If she legit thought there was a way in the Book of Conduits to retrieve someone from Kur, then why wasn’t she starting with that?
Because they didn’t have it translated—didn’t even have most of the pages—and didn’t know if there was a god who could yank people from the underworld, and, if there was, if they had that godstone in their stockpile. Too many didn’ts and ifs, and she didn’t have time. It would take months to figure all that shit out, and they could still come out with nothing.
No, that was not going to work for him. He’d told her rescuing Macha was above their ability, and he still believed that. But there was strength in numbers. “How good a friend are you?”
“She’s in a lot of trouble, isn’t she?” The woman sounded about to cry.
“Yeah. And helping her out’s going to be seriously fucking dangerous.”
“I’m just a person,” she said quietly.
He started his car. “I can change that.”
Chapter 7
RAFAEL DASHED FOR THE motel room, a million thoughts spinning through his mind. First, he had to see if he could break into Giselle’s phone and call that bitch Andromeda. But as soon as he opened the door he froze.
Smoke hung hazily throughout a room that had been completely trashed. In the middle of it, Bryn—he assumed—stood literally inside a bonfire, channeling... somebody.
With a white Aztec skirt and feathery headdress, he’d have said her costume resembled his, if instead of a happy-go-lucky bard he was the psycho lord of hell. The lower half of her face was painted black, while the upper was covered by a flame-red mask. A dead bird hung in front of her forehead among turquoise beads. Her ears were gauged with bone-carved snakes spitting fire, and in case that wasn’t enough fire snake, an actual flaming snake glared at him from over her shoulder, where it appeared to be holstered to her back.
“What did you do?” he yelled at her, irritated as all hell as he grabbed wadded and slashed sheets to start smothering the flames—and it came to him. “Xiuhtecuhtli?” She-uh-teh-coot-lee—Freyja was right that Aztec names were next level. He wasn’t sure how he knew Bryn was channeling the Aztec god of fire while he was still Rafael, but that was who she was. “Are you crazed?” Poor choice of words. “This room is a mess! Bring back Idunn!”
The snake lunged at him, and he jerked backward in reflex. If he hadn’t been on his knees pounding out the fire, he’d have had a snake to the face.
He pointed a finger at the snake. “We are from the same pantheon; you do not scare me.” Maybe it scared him a little. And he wasn’t currently channeling Huehue. “Where’s Freyja’s phone?” Freyja had kept it in her pouch, and last night Idunn had pulled it out—along with half the other contents. Which were now scattered around the disaster of a floor. “We have company coming, and you are not introducing yourself like this.” He inched around the room, looking for something recognizable in the shamble it’d become. “Fuck.”
Lance and Lyssa had trashed a room once—they’d declared it their beholden duty as rock stars. Rafael had headed out with a woman before too much havoc had been wreaked, but he’d gotten an earful from Trevor, their manager, about reining in his bandmates, along with a good look at the bill. It wasn’t long after that he’d decided to clean up his shit.
At least a cheap motel bill couldn’t be quite as horrible as what his sister and best friend had racked up. Or it wouldn’t be if the whole damn motel didn’t go up in flames.
“Freyja,” she said slowly, voice smoky.
“She’s going to Kur. We’re going to help her. Or I am. With Sekhmet.”
“I go.”
“You made a mess,” he announced, finally getting the last of the fire out.
“Cold,” she said, like that explained everything.
He glared at her as he got up and went to the untouched air conditioner to turn up the temperature. “You change the thermostat. You don’t use the furniture for kindling.”
There—he snatched up the phone. Huehuecoyotl could transmogrify, and not just into animals and insects—into people. He cut his forearm on the stone’s sharp edge, channeling the god, and immediately thought of Freyja’s face—her wide-set eyes, sharp nose, and the faint laugh lines at the corners of her mouth.
Bryn-as-Xiuhtecuhtli screamed, and he ignored he
r. He opened his eyes to see Freyja’s face staring back at him from the black of her phone’s screen, and he crossed then uncrossed his fingers, hoping he could fool facial recognition.
It worked. Rolling his tense shoulders back, he shifted back to Coyote as he scrolled through her contacts. When he found Ande, he typed out a message.
Bryn screamed again, and he turned back to her. “Bring back Idunn. You’re not a help to me this way, and we need to help Freyja. Your daughter. Bíum, bíum.”
The snake hissed at him, and someone knocked at the door. Bryn turned her hand over. A ball of flames appeared in it.
“Don’t set anyone on fire. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” He turned to the door. “Who is it?” Because if it was the motel owner, no amount of money was covering this shit up, and he had more important things to do right now than deal with the cops.
“Sekhmet.”
He gave Bryn a quelling look. “She’s going to help get Freyja. Don’t set her on fire.” He opened the door. “Come in.”
A woman entered in a black wrap that covered her head and nearly dragged on the floor. The top had been pulled low to overshadow her eyes, and she held it closed next to her nose so that he could barely see any of her. Something about it reminded him of a woman practicing religious veiling—she held it naturally, not like someone who was trying to hide. Sekhmet paused on entering the room and looked about. “Problems?”
“You noticed?” The snake hissed, and Rafael shot it a dirty look. “Can you get your xiuhcoatl under control?”
Sekhmet’s voice was dry with nervous humor as she said, “I’m going out on a limb to guess you haven’t had a chance to pick a stone for me yet.”
“No. I came back to find the motel room looking like this. Neat, huh? I’m Coyote, by the way. Good to meet you. Please excuse the mess.” He held a hand out toward Bryn. “She’s traumatized—badly. Really fucking bad shit happened. But between getting shot and Freyja gallivanting off to the underworld, I’m not at peak sympathy mode at the moment.”
Freyja’s phone dinged, and he checked the message, surprised that woman had actually bothered to text back. All it said was, Jashak salt dome. Midnight.
He took a deep breath. “Jashak salt dome.” He pulled out his own phone to look that up.
Sekhmet chimed in, sounding surprised, “Is that where she is?”
“We’re supposed to be there at midnight. Hopefully she’ll be there too. Or it’s a trap. I need to figure out where it is.”
“Southern Iran, close to the Persian Gulf. I’ve been there, on a visit to my aunt in Shiraz; we took a side trip.”
“Iran?” He leaned back against the wall, fear rising in his chest. “Shit. I can get us there, but by midnight tonight? That’s...” He could charter a direct flight—painfully expensive, even for him—but that would still be cutting it close. And that was even assuming the Iranian government allowed them to land.
“Unless she means midnight in Iran, which is”—she pulled a phone out of somewhere in the black veil—“three thirty our time. That gives us about five hours.”
He banged his head back against the wall. If they got on a jet right now they’d be way too late. “Can you get us there like you got Freyja to the gym? Or does your magic work that far?”
The woman shrank in on herself. “Yeah, I can do it.” She looked scared.
He softened his tone. “You don’t have to come—just get me there. Storming the gates of the Sumerian afterlife wasn’t on my schedule for tonight either.” He took a slow, shaky breath and gave her a serious look. “However, the more of us there are, the better chance we’ve got.”
“Or the more of us who will die.”
“Yup,” he said, lightly as he could. He frowned at Bryn, wondering if she’d be more of a help or a hindrance. Regardless, he needed to get the lava god with a fire serpent out of her.
“You’re really walking through hell for her,” Sekhmet said with a tone of awe.
He blinked at the stark way she put it. “Kur. It’s an underworld, not actually, uh, hell hell.” He tamped down the squirming discomfort. “Or, I hope not, anyway.”
Another knock at the door turned his attention from that dreary thought. He gave Sekhmet a questioning look. She walked to the door and checked the peephole, then her shoulders relaxed. “I called S, the other number she left. His name is Shawn, and he’s bringing the book.”
Rafael motioned for her to let the man in. He’d never met Shawn Hudson, but Freyja had taken photographs of entries from his copy of the Book of Conduits. He’d agreed to give Freyja the book if she found him the godstone of Osoosi, a Yoruban hunter god. Rafael had no idea which godstones Bryn had collected—and she didn’t seem to know anymore, either—so it was entirely possible they already had it in the stack that was... He looked around the floor. Where had the godstones ended up?
Fuck this mess...
Sekhmet opened the door, and a slender man in a polo shirt entered, eyes widening with nerves as he looked around. “Oh... my.”
“Get in or get out and shut the door,” Rafael barked at him. He rubbed his aching forehead. “You’re safe here. Probably. She’s not doing so well.” He pointed at Bryn-as-Xiuhtecuhtli, who yelled about being the wall and dove over the remnants of his bed, landing with her head under what was left of the bedspread, with her green-underwear-clad ass in the air over the broken side rail.
Why did her Aztec goddess get underwear and his didn’t?
The serpent undulated out at them, hissing fiercely. Rafel turned back to Shawn with a tense smile. “Do you have the book?” With it they could hopefully ID Bryn’s godstones and then cobble together a coherent team.
Shawn timidly came farther into the room, clutching a very old book to his chest with gloved hands. “Yes.”
“How much do you want for it? I can get you cash.”
The man clutched the book closer, like a precious item. “I’m not interested in—”
Power surged from Bryn’s corner. All eyes turned to her as the snake gave a final hiss and disappeared as her clothes turned into a Grecian-style flowing dress with a cloak. She turned upright to face them, and her eyes were back to blue, hair back to blonde, the matted mess of it now thin, neat dreadlocks. In her hand she held a bell. “Lock your mouths that shalt not cry about the things that here ye spy. Secrets bound once thrice hast rung, I bind your heart and bind your tongue.” She rang the bell three times.
Sekhmet and Shawn looked at each other, then to her, then to Rafael.
Rafael shrugged. “No clue.”
“Shhhhhhh...” Bryn said, finger to her mouth. Her face scrunched up carefully, like she was trying really hard to do something. “Secret,” she finally said. “Bind.”
“I think,” Rafael interpreted, “she cast a spell on us so we can’t talk about what we see here.”
Bryn wagged her finger between Sekhmet and Shawn.
Rafael couldn’t help a grin at her trust. “Correction. She cast a spell on you two.”
Bryn gathered something up in her skirts and brought it around to where the three of them waited. Then she dumped the entire stash of godstones onto the floor.
Sekhmet gasped.
Shawn put his hand over his mouth. “Oh my gods.”
“Gods indeed. Anyone who joins me to save Freyja can use one on the rescue mission.” Rafael gave them the most charming smile he could muster with a headache and no sleep. “Ever wonder what it’s like to be a god?”
Bryn shook her rune set and tossed them into the pile of godstones as Shawn and Sekhmet knelt beside her.
With agile hands, Bryn began to sort through the stones as Shawn opened his book and flipped pages.
Bryn tossed Rafael another obsidian one, and he caught it. “This won’t give me a fire snake, right?” he asked.
She blinked at him, then started laughing, like he’d said something hilarious, before she went back to sorting. “Freyja give you fire snake. Don’t need more.”
He raised his brow in surprise at her dirty joke. Was it appropriate to flip off his partner’s mother? If she was making comments like that, then maybe it was. He shot her the bird, and she laughed even more.
She shook her pointer finger at him. “Like you.”
Inordinately pleased by that, he sat on the floor with them and tried to flip through the book while Shawn was studying it, looking for whoever Bryn had tossed him. “I like you, too, ma’am. Even if you torched our room.”
She looked around in confusion. “Oh.”
Then she shoved a stone at Sekhmet, who snatched it up with a squeal. “You have actual Sekhmet! I’m going! I’m going with you!”
Chapter 8
“WE’RE IN... IRAN?” Giselle moved the colorful curtain back from the window of the cluttered, rustic outpost she and Ande had magically arrived at. Outside, craggy mountains rose majestically on either side of the valley they were in. “It’s beautiful.”
“Your scarf.” Ande handed her a bright red rectangle of fabric with a paisley pattern and then wrapped a different one around her own head, slowly enough that Giselle could copy the movement.
“I’ve never been out of south Texas. And we’re in Iran.”
“Yes, we’re in Iran. And your lack of travel is something you should fix. What are rich boyfriends for?”
Giselle wrinkled her nose. “He’s not my boyfriend. We’re work partners.”
“Mm-hmm. Well, get him to take you somewhere interesting, whatever you’re not calling it. He will.”
A woman dressed in bright colors came in and offered them a reddish-brown tea and a tray of white and brown confections with green nuts. Ande spoke to her in something that sounded like the language Rawan spoke on the phone with her grandparents. Which made sense. Rawan’s parents had emigrated from Iran.
“Sit. Have tea,” Ande ordered in a weary voice.
Giselle sat on a yellow-painted chair and took the tea. The woman offered her a cube of sugar with tongs.
“Oh, I don’t normally take—”
The woman pretended to put it between her teeth, then offered it again.
