by LJ Vickery
Veronica moved to wrap her daughter in a smothering hug. “You should have told me, anyway. I would have preferred that over you and Riley resorting to drugs.” It was pretty clear to Dumuzi Sienna’s friend had gone along with the partying to show solidarity. Neither one of them fit the profile of bad-kids-smoking-and-drinking-in-the-woods. Hell, they’d been quoting Shakespeare and knew about Mesopotamia. No way were they total stoners, these were a couple of smart, motivated girls.
“You would have worried too much and probably messed up your life by coming to be with me…like now.” Sienna’s voice was accusing, but her look was pure love. She backed down. “So, now what?” She wrinkled up her nose.
“Now, we help you get rid of the evil voices, for good.” Enlil ground a fist into his palm. The wind god was always up for a good fight.
“Evil voices?” Frank picked up on that one. “How do you know what Verrie and Si ah hearin’?” She was looking protective and pissed.
“If everyone could just settle down, I’m going to try to explain,” Marduk groused, clearly exasperated at all the chatter. He barely managed to be polite while telling everyone to shut the fuck up.
The room quieted.
“Thank you,” he acknowledged. “Now, I’ll begin by giving you a brief history of our group.” He looked around while everyone settled. “We are―thirteen of us here in the room―ancient Mesopotamian gods who were sent to hell thousands of years ago for various trumped-up charges,” he dared to sneer at the king. “When it was decided we’d suffered enough in the Underworld, we were given a second chance. We were sent to earth, to Merrymount, which is now Quincy, Massachusetts, in the year 1624 to perform a task. The problem was, within four years of being here, we screwed up on our assigned duty. But instead of going back to hell, we were left to wander the Blue Hills, invisible for all time, or so we figured.”
The stunned expressions on the women’s faces told it all.
“Thankfully, we were wrong.” He sent a blazing hot surge of energy toward his wife, Tess. Thunder rolled outside.
Yeah, yeah. Get on with it, Muze smirked. Everyone knew the two were inseparable.
“We discovered―last year in April―we could regain our bodies. It took a while to find out why, but eventually, we discovered it would happen by one of two methods…uh, actually three.” Marduk looked from Dumuzi to Sienna knowingly. “We either found the person who was destined to become our eternal mate, or a semi-mortal whose bloodlines we had contributed to…”
“Meaning we’d gotten ourselves…uh, busy in Merrymount,” Anshar sent waggling eyebrows in Frank’s direction for her previous comment, “and planted a few seeds.” This one was aimed at Dumuzi who barely held back a snarl.
“I get the pitchah,” Frank smirked and turned her attention back to Marduk. “So, keep going.”
“Thank you,” he nodded. “We’ve since found out sometimes a child of a Chosen even a mother or a sibling can make the happy event of embodiment happen.”
“So, let me get this straight. If there are three ways for you to become visible,” Veronica repeated, “when you meet someone who has the power, how do you know which category they fall into?”
She was now more than studiously avoiding Dumuzi.
“With a descendant or a periphery relative, we get no strong feelings of possessiveness or…”
“Horniness?” Sienna was quick on the uptake. She turned to Dumuzi who wanted to duck under the conference table and hide. “Now I get it. You were totally uncomfortable with me because I made you visible,” she pondered, “but I didn’t make you want to screw…”
“Sienna,” Her mother’s nearly hysterical voice tried to stop where things headed.
“Let me finish, Mom.” Sienna never took her eyes off of the vegetation god. “I didn’t cause any lust in you, and that’s why you were all pouty and shit. You thought I was your eternal…whatever. But I wasn’t. And,” she added cannily, “as soon as my mother walked in the door, I ceased to exist.” A sly grin grew on her face.
“I’m right, aren’t I? It’s my mother who does it for you. She’s the one you want.” Sienna’s excitement bubbled over, and she addressed Veronica again. “That means you have no choice, Mom. You’re going to be a freaking goddess like these other guy’s wives. That is so wicked cool.”
“Oh, no.” Veronica held out her hands, rose from her chair, and backed up a few steps, shaking her head. “No way. That is not going to happen.”
“Verrie, calm down.” Glory moved in behind the wide-eyed woman. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” she used a calming tone. “Let Marduk tell you everything before you freak out.”
Veronica looked like she wanted nothing more than to flee but let herself be led back to her chair where she sat heavily.
Dumuzi wished she’d look at him again, just once. Since their original connection in the hallway, she’d done a great job of shutting him out…and it bothered him. Somewhere deep inside his chest was the need to let her know everything would be okay…even when she looked like she wanted nothing from him. But shouldn’t he be happy she was shutting him out? Isn’t that what he hoped for?
“Thanks, Glory,” Marduk picked up where he left off. “Fortunately, or unfortunately,” Marduk gave an apologetic shrug toward Veronica, “the Chosen of a god―which is what we call his eventual mate―is inexplicably drawn to her fated immortal, so no matter how she thinks she feels, she will relent to a mating in the end.”
Now there was no mistaking the gasp from Veronica as she dropped her head and cradled it in her hands.
“And that’s good for us,” Marduk held his hands up and gestured all around. “Because if all of us don’t join with our Chosen by September fifteenth of this year, we’ll be pulled back to the Underworld…forever.” He let that one drop, and the room went dead silent for a full minute as he let the newcomers digest this shit piece of news.
“I have a question,” Frank piped up. “Which ones a you ah gods, and which ones ah…” Her mouth fell open in a large, shocked “O.”
Dumuzi turned. Perfect timing, the blue guys had just slipped into the room.
“Ignore them for a few minutes,” Marduk ordered and addressed his long-time companions. “Original thirteen gods, please join me, front and center.” Anshar, Dagon, Enten, Enlil, Lahar, Emesh, Dumuzi, Shamash, Ishkur, Ninurta, Kulla, and Absu came to stand next to Marduk. Once they lined up, the thunder god spoke again.
“Before you are the original thirteen,” he explained. “You can only see twelve of us because Ninurta hasn’t been turned visible by any mate or relatives yet.”
Dumuzi looked at the woman named Frank who seemed to be counting…then counting again. “Well I’m not shooah if I’m the one ta point this out, but yoah wrong. I’m countin’ thirteen.” She tipped her head adorably to one side and chewed on her bottom lip. Did Ishkur just groan?
Marduk pointed to Ninurta.
“Shit. You see him?”
Dumuzi flinched. You knew when the boss’s voice cracked, something was pretty weird.
“Yeah. Kinda grumpy lookin’ fella with spiky dahk haiya and gray eyes?”
“Okay,” Marduk thrust a hand into his own thick, dark “haiya” and shook himself like a big dog. “One question, then we’ll leave it for now. Gods-dammit, we need to focus on one issue at a time.” He ran his eyes knowingly down the line of gods. “Gentlemen?” The single word posed a question. They all knew what the thunder god asked. Was anybody else feeling a “Chosen-like” attraction to any of the females? The boss got a negative head-shake from each god, and Dumuzi was pretty sure, despite Ishkur’s horniness, they were being honest.
“Alright, fine.” Marduk was willing to put that to a temporary rest. “Do any of you other ladies see Ninurta?” When all of them nodded yes, he grimaced. “Fine. But believe me when I say, to the public in general, he’s still invisible. Right Flick?”
“Yeah. I still can’t see his ugly ass,” the agent confirmed.
Marduk enumerated, “First, we’re going to solve the mystery of the voices which we immortals have already ascertained come from some form of Underworld demon.” He ignored the look of shock that passed over the women’s faces.
“Secondly, we’re going to attempt to tie all of your hearing-voices episodes to those of Dumuzi’s…events. It is my belief he, in a really fucked up way, has been preparing himself for this moment all his life.”
Now Dumuzi felt stunned. What was Marduk getting at?
“And third.” There was no mistaking the edict from Marduk. This was not a request. It was a demand. “Dumuzi, you will get to know Verrie in the next few days. You can fill her in on all your glorified titles—god of vegetation, god of swamps and marshes, dominion over wild creatures, etc.— then the two of you will mate.” He turned softer eyes to Veronica. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”
Chapter Nine
Verrie’s head spun by the time Marduk dismissed everyone except her party of four and a handful of…gods―if that were to be believed. She had to assume they were telling the truth. They’d convinced her daughter, and Sienna was no fool. Some fairly compelling evidence must have been presented. Either that or Si had grasped on to the spoon-fed explanation for the invading voices, seeing it as a less painful route than being diagnosed as schizophrenic. Verrie didn’t want to capitulate that easily, but it sure did seem like a nice get-out-of-jail-free-card, an easier route. And speaking of easy…
Verrie’s eyes slid across the room. Dumuzi sure was one easy-on-the-eyes male. She tried not to fixate on the man, uh, god, but she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off him. At the moment, Dumuzi was gazing over his friend Dagon’s shoulder, pointing at some dates they were writing on a timeline similar to the one Marduk was preparing in front of her. She sighed. The guy was fucking gorgeous…no…luscious. That was the right word.
Verrie had been celibate for so long, she wondered if drool oozed from the corner of her mouth. Right. She’d need to get that under control. Even if things happened the way Marduk said, no way she and Dumuzi would be sexually compatible. Hell no. Who was she kidding? Honestly, Dwight Dick-head hadn’t just left her because of the voices—that had only been the final straw. No, the predominant reason for their separation was he’d finally tired of the way their sex life played out. And there was every reason to believe she and Dumuzi would reach that same insurmountable impasse.
The man―she still couldn’t use the word god even mentally without flinching―was six-foot-two or -three with massive shoulders tapering down to a broad chest, flat stomach, and…damn, she couldn’t go there. She swept her gaze back up to the mop of copper-colored hair that curled around his ears and ran riot, down past the collar of his forest green t-shirt. She couldn’t possibly know for sure―her one look at his face had given rise to her ridiculously feminine swoon earlier in the front hallway―but she swore his eyes were deep earth brown, flecked with verdant mossy hues. Major sigh.
God of what? Verrie couldn’t remember Marduk’s exact words.
She tried to pull her eyes away, but the angle of his body had his ass pointed directly at her. And what an ass—Verrie stood mesmerized, her palms crimped—the guy filled out his jeans in all the right places. The material hugged his lean hips and transitioned smoothly to delineate two taut globes she knew would flex delectably under her fingertips. The thought of what lay further south had her hands curling even more. If she transitioned from his ass to between his legs, his balls would be―in contrast―the softest of orbs that would tighten up into his septum when she teased…
“Mom?” An elbow to her side brought Verrie out of her stupor. “Marduk just asked you a question, like three times.” She dropped her voice to a whisper, “Stop looking at his butt.”
Great, she was an embarrassment to her seventeen-year-old daughter. What did that say for the state of her sanity? And Sienna was right. She should have finished lusting after nice asses years ago. Shit, she had finished with all that. What was it Marduk had said about an undeniable attraction? Could that be the reason her libido ran riot?
“Not to worry, Sienna.” Marduk’s eyes had clearly followed Verrie’s to Dumuzi. “Your mother has a lot on her mind.”
Was that a smirk the big guy was trying to hide? Verrie gathered her best, stern guidance counselor demeanor and wrapped it around herself like a shield, determined to ignore the man who would be her…mate? Holy hell. What had Sienna gotten them into?
“Yes, Mr. Marduk. What was the question again?” Verrie became all business.
“You can drop the Mr., Verrie, it’s just Marduk.” He turned back to the drawing in front of him that showed a timeline from the sixteen hundreds to present day. “I’d like to work backward and try to get a good idea of when you, Sienna, and your mother may have been episodic. Perhaps you even remember a grandmother?” Marduk looked up, expectantly, but her negative shake dashed those hopes. She’d never known her grandmother…or anything about her. Aunt Frank shuffled her feet as Verrie studied the paper.
It already had her birth date and Sienna’s and her mother’s year of death. Now, if she could focus, Marduk wanted the time periods when the voices had invaded and when they’d gone dormant. It seemed important to him, and if it helped Sienna, Verrie would do her best to remember.
“Well, certainly I heard them today upon landing. But I’ve been living in Colorado for the past nine years and haven’t heard a peep since I moved there.” She looked up at her daughter. “When did the voices start for you, honey?”
“It was during the third week of school, last fall. I wrote it down. September nineteenth.” Verrie saw Sienna’s body tremble and moved to hug her around the waist. “I was in gym class, of all places, and the voices just came out of nowhere.” She gave a wry smile. “I must have zombied out because I got a volleyball to the head, and everyone said I went down like a sack of rocks.” Sienna looked knowingly at her mother. “I remembered what you had gone through, so I didn’t say anything about the invasion in my head to anybody but Riles.”
“Yeah, and it freaked me out,” Riley conjectured, “because we’d always talked about it with Gram. She kinda knew from family history, it was only a matter of time until it got to Si.”
“Why didn’t you girls tell anybody?” Frank’s voice was troubled. “Whydya try to deal with it on yeh own?”
“Well, like I said before, I wanted to finish high school here with my friends. I figured if I could keep it a secret, Dad wouldn’t send me to a mental hospital, and eventually, I’d join Mom after graduation.” Sienna shrugged as if her plan made a lot of sense.
“So we started doing a few things…”
“Like smokin’ pot?” Frank cut in.
“Well, yeah, Gram. Sienna found it cut the voices down to a low growl…and I knew you’d want me to help her out, so we did it together.” Riley’s defiant stance dared anyone to argue.
“And your father?” Verrie asked.
Sienna dropped her head.
“He found my stash one night, then a pipe after he’d told me to smarten up. I guess getting thrown in jail was the last straw for him. Who knew he wouldn’t come bail me out?” she pouted.
Verrie would have known.
“It seems like that all worked out for the best,” Marduk’s insightful comment brought them back to present. “Now we can work to find out when and how the voices come and how we can stop them.” He paused. “Give me a moment, will you?” The silence didn’t last long before the god explained.
“I’ve got Lahar and Shamash on genealogy duty. They’ve found some interesting stuff and will join us as soon as they’re finished. Apparently, someone did a good job tracing your family history, so they’ve been able to find quite a bit.”
“Ah, shit, I could’a told ya that,” Frank stated. �
��I was just waitin’ ta see how much we could trust ya, but since yeh at tha computah, yeh gonna find out anyway.” She squared her petite shoulders. “Verrie’s mom and I spent a long time diggin’ through old stuff in my attic and lookin’ in the Boston Library ahchives researchin’ ah family lines. We thought it was cool that ah muthahs and grandmuthahs wuh friends, and that we’d been told it had been that way foh-evah.” She looked toward Verrie now. “I’m sorry I nevah told ya about yeh grandmuthah, but I didn’t want ya to think you wa cursed to become crazy. She heard the voices too. It was easiah not ta let on about that…oah that I knew about her.”
“So you ended up putting it up on one of those genealogical sites because…?” Marduk left the question hanging.
“Cuz if anything happened to me, I wanted Verrie or Si or whoevah came aftah them to be able to trace ah connection…without all tha crazy-ass stuff gettin’ in the way.”
Verrie thought she might want to sit down. “So, Aunt Frank, you knew my grandmother?”
“I knew yeh grandmuthah and yeh great-grandmuthah. They both had tha…demons, too.” She narrowed her eyes at Marduk, still clearly not willing to trust him one hundred percent. “They were just a lot stronga than yeh mum, God rest her soul.”
“So, to get back to this,” Marduk reminded them. He’d filled in the date for the nineteenth of September, and with the ladies help, got at least four other episodes of Sienna’s on the timeline. They subsequently went back nine years to map some of Verrie’s.
She recalled exactly when she’d heard them first and remembered a few that had fallen on significant dates—a homecoming football game, the day of her first ultrasound while carrying Sienna, and on one on her ex’s birthday which ended up as a huge fight that led to their acrimonious divorce.
Frank was even more help, pinpointing a few of Verrie’s mom’s worst moments. The woman’s first episode had occurred on Halloween day when she was eighteen, and there had been a really bad one the day before her marriage to Verrie’s father. Marduk nodded his head, satisfied.
