by Jax Garren
He felt significantly less sorry for her when her hand cupped his ass as she pushed him forward, toward a different one of the many doors in the temple. He sidestepped, trying to get away from her clutching hands, but she propelled him harder.
“Don’t struggle with the inevitable, darling. It’s unbecoming.”
“I think you missed the point of my song.” But for all his working out, his strength was no match for hers. Her fingernails dug into his glutes like miniature pickaxes, and as he tried to turn around, they drew blood.
Why was he trying to fight her? That was fear making him stupid. He elongated his body until he dropped to the floor as a black mamba, fastest snake in the world, and tore off for the center of the temple.
“Stop!” Ereshkigal cried in the most imperious voice he’d heard from her yet.
Mid-temple, Nergal raged, his body literally on fire as he swung his fist indiscriminately about.
Freyja, glorious warrior that she was, used her new disappearing act for all she was worth, going immaterial with every punch Nergal threw, then landing a swing of her own.
Unfortunately, Nergal, getting smarter than a bag of bricks, turned on the others, raising his fists toward Sekhmet and Bryn.
Freyja jumped in front of them, and Coyote realized she would stay material to protect them, taking that punch herself.
He whipped his way over to Nergal’s feet and bit him on the ankle. The giant stumbled back, ruining his swing, and Rafael turned into a dragonfly to avoid getting trampled.
Osiris grabbed Sekhmet and hustled her toward the exit.
“Coyote!” Freyja yelled, scanning for him. He flew to her, hovering in front of her face, until she nodded, grabbed her mom’s hand, and sprinted for the door. He zipped to the exit, passing her and then the others—including, thank the gods, Macha, who waited just outside the temple—to scout the area. Had the gidim returned? Were the gates still open? What did they need to do to get the hell out of the underworld and back to the land of the living?
Chapter 17
COYOTE FLEW OFF AT an impressive clip, and Giselle breathed in relief as she followed her team out of the temple, running straight through Nergal as she did.
Outside, they all sprinted around the building, and she slowed her pace, making sure her teammates stayed in front of her. When they reached the straightaway to the staircase, Coyote re-formed and jogged along beside her.
“We’ve got ninety-nine problems.”
“But I ain’t one?” she asked him.
His serious expression broke into a hint of his usual grin. “Never, mi diosita. Or at least, not usually. The gidim have swarmed the courtyard, and the gates are closed.”
“That’s more than ninety-nine problems,” Osiris observed, looking over the edge of the stairway at the throng below.
How many steps could they get down before the gidim noticed them and rushed up?
The earth shook behind them with Nergal’s stomping rage. The entire party glanced from one to another and then began racing down the steps, more willing to take their chances with the gidim than the gods, at least while Nergal was around.
“What are you doing?” Macha asked, voice grating. “You do have a plan for this, right?”
“Yeah,” Rawan said snidely. “Toss them you so we can get away.”
Macha froze for a moment, and Giselle grabbed her wrist. “That’s not the plan. She’s giving you a hard time because she hates you.”
Macha actually laughed at that and began running again. “Join the club. Channeling isn’t a popularity contest. No, really, what’s the plan?”
Giselle pursed her lips, frustrated as fuck with her answer. “There isn’t one.”
“What?” the horrible woman yelled. “How are we here with no plan? What kind of morons are you?”
Giselle put a finger in her face, nearly bouncing it into her nose on accident as they jounced down the ridiculously long staircase. “Your boss sent me down here to retrieve you, assuming I’d get killed at the gate. So far, we’re doing better than that. You got any brilliant ideas? We’re all ears.”
From behind them, Ereshkigal yelled down, “Come back, my dears. You have nowhere to go. Come back and you may live.”
“That’s not a terrible off—” Macha’s words cut off when Bryn grabbed her by the nape and the woman turned into a toad.
“Did you just—” Giselle started to ask.
Bryn smiled and shoved the animal into Freyja’s pouch.
“Okay.” Giselle grinned too. “I think we should leave her that way. They didn’t specify I had to return her in human form.”
Bryn lifted her hand up, and Giselle gave her a running high five.
When her hand touched her mother’s, the connection felt incredibly right.
Then it hit her that Bryn used to give her high fives all the time. Nostalgia made a tear appear in the corner of her eye, and this time she didn’t even try to stop it from falling.
Almost as if they could sense the moisture, the first row of gidim looked up, expressions ravenous.
They still had two stories to go.
Behind them, Nergal took his first step down the staircase, and the whole palace shook. Giselle—along with everyone else—lost their footing, sliding toward the hordes of the dead.
“Didn’t you have an idea?” Coyote yelled.
“No! I didn’t!” Giselle yelled back.
“No, him!”
Him who?
“Uh...” Osiris, who’d spent the whole trip barely holding it together, waved his arms in the air, and water welled up from the ground a few yards from the path. The dead turned from their fascination with the living to the easy source of hydration and ran for it. As Osiris continued to work his magic, more pools of water appeared, and more and more of the gidim ran for them, drinking and splashing and going as bonkers as toddlers in their first rain.
“Woohoo!” Giselle yelled, slapping him on the back as they righted themselves at the base of the temple. “You’re amazing!”
They dashed straight for the closed gates. Osiris cleared his throat self-consciously. “Osiris was lord of the annual flooding of the Nile. They want water...”
“That was perfect,” Coyote assured him.
But one gidim dressed in dusty orange wasn’t running for the water, she was still running for them—and smart enough to aim for the gates to meet them there. Freyja yanked an ax from her holster. She didn’t want to kill... Wait, could you kill the dead?
But when they were about ten yards away from the exit, Bryn stopped. Behind them, Nergal still pounded down the steps, but his strides created mere tremors here on the ground, instead of the quaking sway they’d made in the heights of the temple. Regardless, with the gates closed, the five of them plus frog were about to be trapped. Maybe when they got closer, the gates would open. Or would breaking their deal invalidate everyone’s license to exit?
Whatever. Get to the gates. Giselle grabbed Bryn’s arm. “Mom, let’s go.”
“Sofia,” Bryn whispered, staring at the lone woman who stood in front of the exit to Kur, directly between the stone monsters framing the gate.
A chill ran through Giselle as she halted and turned to face her other mother, the one who’d given birth to her in a prison nineteen years ago. Instead of the withered gray form of the ancient dead, the woman’s black hair fell down her back in ragged disarray and her blue eyes gleamed with a dangerous light. She still wore a prison jumpsuit, but even that shapeless garment couldn’t hide the shapely figure it contained.
Her mother was gorgeous.
As if everyone sensed the weight of what was happening, her teammates stopped, facing the dark-haired woman with the tense hesitancy of an old-fashioned duel.
“I can get you out,” she called. “And I can stop him.” She motioned with her chin toward the rioting god behind them.
“No,” Bryn said simply.
Sofia shrugged one shoulder. “Then die here with me. You always said
we’d be together forever.”
“Oh. Oh! Oh!” Rawan yelled as she apparently figured out who the woman was.
Skin prickling in anticipation, Giselle slogged forward, albeit more slowly, as she took in the face of the parent she’d never met but knew everything about—at least, every terrible thing the papers had said. Sofia Messner was the most infamous murderess since Bonnie Parker. She’d only killed one man, but she’d driven a spike through his brain on a livestream while channeling Ishtar, thus ensuring conduits would be made illegal at the earliest congressional opportunity.
Though she hadn’t known any of this until her eighteenth birthday, Giselle had quickly developed and nursed the hope that Ishtar had warped her mother’s brain and the violence she’d committed hadn’t really been her.
Sofia’s gaze passed over the rest of them like they were chess pieces before returning to Bryn with a less calculating stare. Coyote put a hand on Giselle’s arm, trying to keep her with the group, but Giselle slid away and toward her birth mother, which brought her to the woman’s attention.
The smile Sofia gave her was inviting and provocative and reminded her oh-so-much of Coyote. “You have it, don’t you?”
Giselle blinked, unsure what she meant.
“Nergal will be here any moment, and the five of you will join me, stuck here. I will stop him, but I need two things from you.” She glanced at Osiris. “Resurrection.” And then back to Giselle. “And my godstone.”
Giselle stopped short, the blood draining from her face. Her mother wanted Ishtar back. No, she wanted to return to Earth and be Ishtar again. That was a truly awful idea.
“Nergal’s off the ziggurat,” Sofia said, voice calm but intense.
Giselle glanced behind her. Sure enough, Nergal had landed at the base of the temple, a mere hundred yards from them. He swiped at the gidim, flinging wet bodies aside carelessly. She could fight him, but... “The gates?”
Sofia kept steady eye contact with her. “The galla will open them for me.” And by me, she meant Ishtar. Her lips pursed briefly. “As soon as we find them.”
With a roar, Nergal bounded toward them.
“Fifty yards,” Sofia said. “What’s your plan?” When Giselle hesitated, Sofia looked back to Bryn, her perfectly sculpted expression fading into pain. “Bryn, babe, I know you’re angry, I know you’ll sacrifice yourself, but these children as well?” She took a step forward, more of that crystalline exactness melting into a real plea. “We never got to talk. I have so many things to tell you. So many things to explain.”
Bryn looked back, expression stricken. Nergal was nearly upon them. “Do it,” she said to Osiris.
Giselle turned and readied her ax for the first attack.
“Do it!” Bryn yelled, throwing her hands up to cast as she turned to the sun god.
Nergal’s mace came wailing down, and Giselle went ethereal, letting it slide through her and slam into the ground. As she stepped out of his weapon, she began the first swing of her ax, becoming material just as the metal made contact with his leg. Blood spurted in a small stream, nowhere near what it should have been for the might of her blow.
Coyote flipped his drum around. It became a guitar once more, and he began singing the same song that had calmed the galla before. The first galla appeared almost immediately, then more, as if he was summoning them with music.
Behind her, a bright light flashed, and Sofia screamed. Giselle couldn’t help going immaterial and turning to see what was happening. A bright flash of light engulfed her birth mother as Osiris held her face in his hands and chanted.
Excitement—or horror—filled her as she realized they were bringing her birth mother back with them. Twenty-four hours ago, she’d had no family. Now she was going to leave Kur with both of her mothers.
Nergal’s mace swung through her, and she scowled up at the dumbass who couldn’t seem to figure out that he couldn’t hit her. Which... was a good thing.
Nergal roared, his anger drowning out Sofia’s pained screams.
Bryn, from a good ten feet away, chanted something and waved a hand his way. Green gas escaped from her fingers and formed a cloud around Nergal’s mouth.
He took a step toward her mother, coughing and choking like the cloud was getting to him. Giselle raised her weapon to swing.
“The godstone!” Rawan yelled from right behind her.
Giselle shoved her hand into her pocket and hesitated. The reason she hadn’t had a family was because of what Sofia had chosen to do with this stone. The reason she and Coyote had to watch out for the police was because of Sofia’s choices. Sofia said there was an explanation, but how could any explanation account for all the damage the woman had done?
“Do you want them to live?” Sofia’s weak voice called.
Giselle looked to Bryn, who shrugged helplessly. “She’s strong enough to help us.”
“I don’t feel so good...” Osiris called, signaling that his godstone was about to give out. Did he even have another one?
She looked to Coyote, who now stood amid a crowd of the wildly shaped demons. He caught her gaze through the shifting black smoke. “Do what you have to. We’ll fix it later.”
She let out a small laugh. “The story of our lives, eh?”
Was this how Bryn and Sofia had gone down? Did danger and tragedy beget danger and tragedy until it snowballed into a mess beyond recovery?
Nergal, despite the hacking cough, swung at Bryn, and her mother—her real mother, not her birth mother—barely scrambled out of the way. Behind them in the field, the water was drying up—either from being consumed or from Osiris’s fading power, she wasn’t sure. But soon the gidim would be on them as well.
With a scream of frustration, she snatched Ishtar’s godstone from her pouch and tossed it behind her, then rushed to swing at Nergal before he could hurt her mom.
A wild rush of power ran through the courtyard, unlike any channeling Giselle had ever experienced.
From the ziggurat, Ereshkigal screeched in rage, a crazed noise that boded no good whatsoever.
Ishtar, draped in a glorious, one-shouldered gown of silk fringe, with the same stacked-bone hat as the other Sumerian gods, strode forward with the grace of a queen. She pointed both middle fingers up to the palace in a very modern “fuck you,” then snapped her fingers at Nergal. The god turned to her and swung his mace.
With a pound of wings, Ishtar took flight. She grabbed his wrist in both hands, moving with his swing to spin him about. Fire raged down his arm and engulfed Ishtar’s upper body in orange light. She laughed like it tickled and muttered in some language Giselle had never heard before. The mace exploded, sending metal shrapnel flying. Ishtar ignored it and pulled a star from her belt. With a shake, it became a hooked sword.
Maybe giving her the stone had been a fucking terrible idea.
Freyja looked over at her team. Rawan was on the ground with Osiris, who was painfully and forcedly transforming back into... Shawn the architect? At least Coyote had a growing cavalcade of galla around him, who seemed ready to follow his lead.
Bryn cast another spell, distracting Nergal as Ishtar struck his side, in a well-oiled effort that spoke of shared history. Ishtar laughed gleefully and sent Bryn a smile that the woman returned with pride. Her mother had had a partner. And things had gone terribly wrong.
The gidim began to shuffle toward them as the ponds dried up and mud became less interesting than people. “We need to get out of here!” Giselle announced to the power couple taking down a god.
Ishtar wrinkled her nose and looked back. “Galla! The gates!”
The gathered demons looked from Coyote to Ishtar and back, as if confused. Coyote pointed to the first of seven obstacles between them and freedom. “Open the gates!” At their combined persuasion, the demons charged the first obstacle, sliding through it like smoke.
The first gate parted slowly with a groan and creak.
Giselle picked up Shawn, ready to get him through as soon as they were
wide enough to fit a man, and hoped that Ereshkigal’s blessing on their exit would get them across the border. “Hekate! Get Coyote!”
The first of the gidim launched into fighting range. They avoided Nergal and the women he fought, instead charging for Giselle, Rawan, Shawn, and Coyote. “Take him,” Giselle ordered, shoving Shawn into her roommate’s arms.
Giselle drew a whip from her holster and cracked it. At the motion and noise, the first of the gidim backed up, giving the gates time to peel back just a bit more. To her relief, Rawan dragged Shawn to safety on the other side.
“Go!” Giselle yelled to Coyote. He backed up quickly, still playing his ode to the galla, but he stopped at the doorway. His eyes widened in concern, and fear shot up Giselle’s back. He couldn’t get across. “No, no, no! Mom!” she yelled, desperate for help getting him to safety. “He needs Hekate’s stone!”
Ishtar shot Giselle a look of bafflement so intense Giselle struggled to remember what she’d said, but more gidim surrounded her, forcing her mind back to the fight to keep them from Coyote.
“Start closing the gates!” Bryn ordered as she ran for Coyote, and he shouted her instruction to the galla.
Then Ishtar whacked Nergal across the temple, dazing him. “Pull. I’ll push,” she yelled to Bryn. Bryn stepped across the line, past the rapidly closing gates, and grabbed Coyote from behind, following instructions as if she trusted Ishtar implicitly. Ishtar sprinted forward, grabbing Giselle’s arm in a heavy clamp as she passed.
“Go immaterial,” Ishtar whispered in a husky voice that had more softness than Giselle had expected. “I may have to pull you through the gate.”
“Pull me...” But like Bryn, she did as her bio mom said, and somehow Ishtar held on to her, though she shouldn’t have been touchable.
Oh, gods, they were going to survive this because of Ishtar, but what were they bringing back?
Chapter 18
ISHTAR SHOVED COYOTE into the gap as Bryn yanked from behind, and somehow he was back to the living. Ishtar turned sideways and slipped between, yanking Giselle behind her as the gate slid through her immaterial body.
