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.
“That should do it.” He looked over at Dumuzi with Dagon. “They’re still working on theirs, so let’s see what Lahar and Shamash have come up with, shall we?”
This time he let Verrie hear him.
Lahar, Sham, we’re ready for you to show us what you’ve got.
The one named Shamash popped in out of thin air, and the one named Lahar subsequently walked through the door. At Verrie’s raised eyebrows at the two different modes of entry, Marduk gave her the reason.
“Shamash has gone through the amulet ceremony with his Chosen, so he can mist in and out of places at will. Lahar has yet to meet his significant other, so he is tied to his body within one hundred yards of his descendants—Glory, Douglas, and Quinn—and completely invisible if they’re not around. Hence, Sham materialized, and Lahar had to use his own two feet.”
“Sucks to be you, man.” Shamash clapped Lahar on the back. The big golden cat god had only gained total control of his body a few weeks back, so his teasing was mild and from the heart.
“No problem. You’re just jealous I’m so good looking, I don’t need to hide with invisibility like you.” He made a fake grimace at the golden-curled god, but Verrie knew it was all for show. She looked the two gods up and down. They were, without a doubt, both very good looking. One might even say “smoking.”
Not.
What? The word sprung out of nowhere….well, not nowhere. She turned narrowed eyes to the red-head still bending over the table. A slight tinge of crimson stained his cheeks. Oh yeah? He’d sent her that terse, one-word command? Was he reading her mind now?
Well, read this, buddy.
Verrie screwed up her face and thought back to the ass and ball fantasy she’d had before. She had nothing to lose. If she and hunky green-man were destined to be mates, she wanted…no, needed to see if he’d be any fun in the sack. God or not, it would suck to go from no sex to boring sex again.
Dumuzi’s mild redness became a hot glow. Hah. The huge god liked it. Score. Verrie wanted to do a high five with someone.
Score? Really Mom? It was Sienna’s voice that came back to her, not the deep growly one she’d expected. Do you have any idea you’ve just transmitted your very inappropriate picture to everyone who can do this mind-thingy?
Oh shit. It was Verrie’s turn to color up. She’d only wanted to poke Dumuzi a little, but instead ended up embarrassing the crap out of herself…and him too if his dropped head was any indication.
Apparently, the Blue Hills population didn’t find any of it inappropriate.
Lucky man, Muze, the periphery voices began.
Hopefully, veggie-man, you can grow some big ones to keep her happy.
Full hands are happy hands.
I love me some ass time.
The last one was Lenore.
Verrie wanted to disappear into the floor.
“Listen…I’m sorry. Uh,” Listen, I’m sorry, she said it both ways, waiting to get a reaction from the only one who really mattered.
Dumuzi didn’t turn around, but my Lord. Did he actually just wiggle his tush at her?
First things first. His strong but amused voice made her squirm in more ways than one. I’m teaching you how to talk selectively which is what I’m doing right now. Until then, no more outbursts. Do you feel me?
His words threw her provocative pictures right back into her head…in full color.
Verrie gasped as she swallowed which sent her into a paroxysm of coughing. Her eyes watered. But oh, the big devil. Verrie’s toes wiggled in delight. He was someone who could take shit and dish it back.
Her lifelong crap-o-meter just nudged a little toward the positive direction.