Chapter Twenty
Heath Gammon was pointing a gun in their direction. And damn Marcus, the noble Warrior had shifted into protect mode, making himself the target.
Sweet Merciful Lady, Riya had never felt so helpless, so powerless, so filled with terror. An unfamiliar sensation tearing through her gut, a weird churning flicker of heat. It was faint. A teasing promise of hope. She needed to grab hold of it with everything she had. And she would need Marcus to trust her.
Except Marcus had major trust issues when it came to her abilities. He thought what she did for a living was cute at best, or at the worst, lame. He refused to accept that she could take care of herself. Seriously, how many times had the arrogant Warrior literally elbowed her out of the way? Too many times to count.
He would sacrifice himself all too readily for her. It was pure instinct. Marcus wasn’t faster than a bullet, he knew that, yet, with his last dying act he would be determined to protect Riya and throttle the life out of Heath Gammon. But that sacrifice didn’t need to happen. Unfortunately, Riya had no time to convince him that she had this.
She prayed that he would trust her.
Reaching over she grabbed Marcus’s forearm, squeezing, desperate for him to understand. To trust her. Under her touch she felt him tense, was he still going to sacrifice himself? Make that no doubt fatal lunge at Heath Gammon in some Warrior - last stand - desperate bid to protect her? No, no. She squeezed his arm again harder, willing him to understand, to trust her.
And then the most wondrous thing happened. Marcus ducked.
The moment Marcus’s big gorgeous head and shoulders were out the way, Riya followed her instincts. She opened her mouth, tapping into all her fears, all her anger, and she released all that heat that was bubbling away inside of her. The flames that engulfed Heath Gammon weren’t just white hot, they were tinged with silver.
Gammon screamed, but only for a moment as the silver flames took only a few seconds to obliterate him.
All that was remained was a pool of liquid metal that had once been a gun, a small pile of silver ash and several worrisome spot fires where the hardwood floors had caught fire. There were no signs of a corpse or any human like remains. They didn’t call it Dragon’s Fire for nothing.
Damn, she should really take care of those spot fires before… oh, wait, Riya watched in relief as Hadleigh’s bridesmaid dress dodged through the wreckage of the living room and began chasing down the last few flickering tongues of fire, gambolling about like a kitten chasing a string. Thankfully, whenever it tried to play with the flames it ended up smothering them.
Panting hard, Riya swallowed, surprised to find she felt no different than she normally did. Wow, so that was what that felt like. Her brothers were going to be in for a big surprise next time they tried to light her on fire… she’d finally be able to fight fire with fire. Except… oh, shit, she couldn’t tell them about this. Anyone about this. There was only one reason for a female Halfling to produce Dragon’s Fire, they only came into their flame powers when they found their mate. Oh, crap, she’d just claimed Marcus.
Except, there was no reason for him, or anyone to know she’d claimed him, was there?
“You okay?” Marcus stared at Riya with concern. She looked dazed. He could only guess that what she had done, killing a man, was beginning to hit her.
Funny how even soaked, streaked with soot, his hair peppered with white flakes from the collapsed ceiling, her Warrior somehow still managed to look gorgeous. It made Riya want to laugh… and cry.
“Do you need a drink of water?” Marcus continued to assess Riya closely, besides a few bruises around her throat she looked to be relatively unharmed. His heart finally began to slow to a normal beat. “Or a throat lozenge maybe? That had to hurt.” He couldn’t help but wonder about the inner physiology of the Dragon clan when it came to producing that type of super-hot flame. Amazing.
“Um… some water might be-” Riya flinched as another pipe burst overhead and a second torrent of water cascaded down over them and what was left of Marcus’s ruined apartment. She looked around in horror, what wasn’t soaked through showed signs of fire damage.
“Shit.” Marcus shook his head, looking at what had once been his orderly life. It was quite literally decimated. And he didn’t care. Riya was safe. He looked up as the recently mended door to his apartment was once again kicked in, his fellow Warriors had arrived, weapons at the ready. Ah, good the cavalry. Hmmm… he found himself reaching out to grab Riya’s hand, squeezing it, suddenly he felt light headed and a little woozy.
“Marcus?” Riya was worried, he looked pale and his eyes had lost focus. “Marcus?”
Damn, she was beautiful. Even soaked, her dress torn and a smear of soot along her jawline. Riya had killed the bad guy. Opened her gorgeous mouth and let him have it. She was the whole fucking package. Brilliant, tough, sexy and deadly. But she hadn’t signed up for a life of near misses with Demons and Demi-Gods. Riya had a quiet life… with a kid to think of. But she wasn’t the stay at home sort, not if there was adventure to be had. Tonight was the last straw in a series of increasingly dangerous situations.
He’d had a big speech prepared. Listing the reasons she didn’t belong in this world… his world. But as everything around him began to grey, all Marcus could do was squeeze Riya’s hand one last time, and release it. “You’re fired.”
She was what now? Riya watched in dismay as Marcus slumped back. Drum catching him just in time before his head hit the floor, already pulling out a field med kit and beginning to deal with Marcus’s leg wound.
Riya scrambled backwards to give Drum more room. Then moved back some more. In fact, it would probably be better for everyone if she got out of the way completely.
Climbing to her feet, Riya watched Drum work for a moment, his movements professional but not frantic, he must not think the gunshot wound was significantly dangerous. That was a relief. Slowly she began to back away.
The Maat Warriors would find the rubies and see them secured safely.
Hadleigh and Vaughn were taking Asher back to the Southern Sanctuary in a few hours. Dimity would wake up to find herself unencumbered by overbearing guardians. Heath Gammon was gone, and the Warriors would deal with Belinda Forrest. The board of directors would resume interim control of Forrest Media, they’d also restore Dimity’s healthy allowance. The girl could travel the world with her friends until she turned twenty-five and officially took over the reins of her father’s company.
So, yeah, Riya’s work here was done. She had tamed a monster. Killed a couple more. Claimed a mate who didn’t love her. And was now officially fired. There would never be a good time to leave, a time when her heart didn’t feel heavy and sluggish in her chest at the thought of walking away from Marcus.
But if she stayed, she would mess up, cling too tightly, let those three little words accidentally slip out. Souring the memory of all those fun mistakes for Marcus when he realised she cared. That they had been making love. Oh, humiliation times a thousand just at the thought of his reaction.
Riya found herself all but running suddenly, she just had to grab her cases and make it to the Transportal. Back to her shop, her apartment, where she could curl up and hide until this yawning wracking pain faded to numbness. How long would it take? A week? A year? A decade?
Funny how her future had held so much promise when she had first walked through the Transportal into Maat Tower. And now, as she all but ran home, the path before her held nothing but bleak emptiness.
How had Fate got things so bloody wrong?
* * *
Marcus winced as he sat down at his desk. Not that his thigh was still worrying him after a week, but that the gym session he’d just finished had been so fucking brutal. Self inflicted of course.
His fingers flew over the keyboard, splitting the wall sized screen into six sections. Shit, the search for Mok and Set was still going nowhere.
Hmmm, the deep, highly illegal background check on Belinda Forrest was beginning to get interesting. Though it would be a long while yet before they determined her bloodline, but there was a definite pattern to her behaviour.
She’d led a naturalist cult for eight years back in the sixties. Moved into porn in the seventies. In the eighties she’d been a partner in a very successful modelling agency. Disappeared for a few years and then popped up eight years ago, acting the ingénue and capturing Fred Forrest’s heart.
His hacker squad had quickly erased all the information they found regarding Belinda Forrest’s past, couldn’t have the mundane world realise that a demi-goddess who didn’t age walked amongst them.
If she played to type, it shouldn’t be too hard to corner Belinda in the near future, especially given her photo was being circulated. She and Heath Gammon were wanted for questioning in connection to the worrisome discovery that rather a lot of money was missing from several Forrest Media company accounts.
The Board of Forrest Media had readily jumped on board the blame train, demanding that Fred Forrest’s body be exhumed and re-examined for signs of possible foul play.
Which brought Marcus’s attention to the share price of Forrest Media, it was finally beginning to upswing. The board of directors had formed a united front. Pronouncing with serious faces that they were shocked and saddened at the news that their former co-directors were missing, along with a substantial amount of money, but that their first allegiance lay with keeping Forrest Media a vital and progressive business.
It helped that Dimity Forrest had stepped up, dressed in a fashion forward hunter green business suit and announced that she would be interning at Forrest Media for the next five years, in readiness to take over when she turned twenty-five as her father had wished.
With that in mind she would remain working with the Maat Enterprises team for the foreseeable future, learning what it meant to be on the other side of a Forrest Media contract.
Vaughn had thought Dimity would baulk at his suggestion that she remain with the show for another few months. With Belinda out there, whereabouts and agenda unknown, they wanted her close in order to keep her safe. Dimity had listened to Vaughn, mulled over his suggestion and jumped on board with a surprising measure of good cheer and maturity.
She’d even happily volunteered to work with the building crew who had been called in to restore Marcus’s apartment to liveable status. Since Marcus couldn’t care less if she turned it into a my-little-pony stable, covering every surface with all things that glittered, it had been a no brainer to let Dimity step up.
Drumming his fingers on his desk, Marcus rubbed gritty eyes. He should have jumped on the jet earlier when Nate headed out for his assigned mission to Montana. The Dream Vamp didn’t seem to realise that the dark web contract out on Marcus was no longer in play, now that Gammon, the real money source behind it was dead.
He needed to focus on what was important. Training. Missions. Find Sek and Mot. Find Apep’s sarcophagus. Find Belinda Forrest. Destroy the Chaos rubies. Monitor the housing prices in Japan. And do not think about Riya Tong.
Except all he did every single minute was think about Riya. The way her… he managed to keep his flinch to the barest flicker as the Goddess Maat suddenly appeared, sitting on the corner of his desk, swinging her bare feet back and forth. He never thought he’d say it, but Thank the Sun, for the interruption.
“Maat.”
“Hey, Tater Tot.” Maat perused the wall of information. “What’s on the agenda today?”
“The usual and then some.” He shouldn’t ask, too often his Goddess only muddied the water but Marcus couldn’t help himself. “I don’t suppose you’d like to point me in the right direction?”
“Oh, Doodle Bug, you know me and my hands off policy.”
Marcus eyed his Goddess, she appeared to be a well maintained woman in her early 60’s. Her skin was a rich milk coffee colour. Her long black hair pulled back into a simple plait, the end of it brushing the desk top. She wore her habitual yoga clothes; today’s colour was a soft pink. And her feet were bare, her toenails painted a sunny yellow colour.
The only thing obviously Goddess-like about Maat were her eyes. The pupils were constantly changing. Right now they flickered with shimmering light, as if the noon sun was glaring down over a sea of endless desert sand dunes.
The thing about Maat was that she proclaimed loudly and often that she was a hands off kind of Goddess. Yet, she turned up an awful lot to interfere in the lives of her Elite Warriors for them to ever believe her.
The trick was to ignore Maat, play it cool. If Marcus didn’t give her an opening she’d have to find one and hopefully that might get something on his to-do-list crossed off sooner, rather than later.
“That… Belinda Forrest certainly has a chequered past.” Maat mused idly. And the hook was taken. Marcus’s fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up several photos of Belinda. Her wedding photo to Fred Forrest. Belinda sitting in the front row during Paris fashion week. And one of her wearing a white skimpy bikini sunning herself in Baha. Maat’s lips tugged up at the corners in amusement. “All that white… no imagination, just like her mother.”
Hah, Marcus worked hard to keep his face blank. Maat would drop crumbs of information, he just had to be patient and let her fill the silence. His Goddess wasn’t fond of awkward silences.
“Though Hathor could be quite the twisted sister. It seems her daughter takes after her mother in all ways.”
“Hathor? The Goddess of Love?”
Maat smiled. “She was quite the mercurial cow back in the day. One moment, love is kind, love is sunshine and baby bunnies. The next, love is sex, love is control, love is blind devotion. You and she would have gotten on extremely well, Fluffer Nutter.”
“Excuse me?” Marcus wasn’t taking umbrage at the silly nickname, he was used to those. But telling him he and a Goddess with a split personality would have been BFF’s was a step too far.
“Both so linear. Determined to pigeon hole people and emotions. Which is not a bad thing… when you are a noble, justice seeking Elite Warrior. You do like your black and white, Lambkins. But it’s a little dangerous for a Goddess when she can’t effectively define what she is the Goddess of.” Maat swung her legs out so she could study her toenails for a moment. “All the Gods and Goddesses of Love are a little queer, but it drove Hathor mad I think. She so badly wanted it to be one simple thing. But life isn’t simple, and love especially is a shifting target. Hathor couldn’t accept that love was the entire spectrum of light to dark. Sweet. Flirtatious. Epic. Passionate. Quiet devotion. Consuming. Pain. Tragedy. Sacrifice.”
“What happened to her? Hathor?”
“She drifted more and more to the darker end of the spectrum. Love is obsession. Love is possession. Until one day she hit upon her final legacy, the one she would pass to her children. Love is being worshipped.”
Ah, Marcus nodded. It all made sense now. Belinda’s history. The naturalist cult. The porn movies. The modelling agency. Yes, she wanted to be worshipped. That would certainly help narrow the search parameters for the demi-goddess. “I wonder how she got mixed up with Heath Gammon’s plan?”
“Love and War? Please? Ask me a hard question?”
Marcus wasn’t one to shy away from an opening like that. “How do I go about destroying the chaos rubies?”
Maat’s eyes began to darken around the edges as if a threatening sandstorm was on the horizon. “If there was no war, would you value peace as highly?” Ah, damn, Marcus fought not to roll his eyes, Maat was off on one of her tangents. “If there wasn’t death, would living a full, meaningful life be so important? If there was no poverty would the idea of wealth and power still be so highly sought after? If everyone had a full belly would there be such a constant striving need to ensure there is a healthy food source?”
“You’re talking about balance.”
“Nice to know something has sunk in over the last one hundred years. I have never said that your job was to seek out chaos and destroy it. Your job has been to seek it out and to balance it. To bring truth, justice and honour into the light. I’m a Goddess, don’t you think I could wave a hand and bring peace, love and joy to the world if I wanted? Destroy disease, war and tragedy? But if people don’t have something to strive for, then they will become apathetic and weak. They will lose sight of what is valuable and value nothing.”
Marcus chuffed a harsh breath out from between gritted teeth. “You’re saying I can’t destroy the rubies?”
“Oh, you could… eventually. You’re smart, you’d work it out. But what I’m asking you to do is think about what it will mean if you succeed.”
“No more floods, earthquakes or hurricanes for a start.”
“Really? So since you’ve had them contained there have been no landslides, no forest fires, no tsunamis?”
“Well….” Damn, Marcus found himself frowning. Only this morning he’d been reading about an earthquake in Japan. “Then what the fuck have I been doing for the past seven months?”
Maat shrugged. “Having fun trying to blow shit up?”
“You could have said something sooner.” He growled.
“Not to be a broken record, Blue Eyes, but I’ve been saying from the year dot that this world is ruled by scales. That we seek balance, but that we don’t seek to topple the scales in one direction or the other. BALANCE.”
“Fuck.” Marcus threw his hands up in surrender. “So what should I do with five cursed rubies that every damn power hungry Demi-god and Demi-goddess out there appears to know that I have and wants for their own nefarious purposes?”
Maat looked pained for a moment. “If chaos doesn’t exist, then I won’t.”
“No. You don’t get to be all mysterious and drop obscure clues. Just tell me what to do with the bloody things.”
Maat smiled, one of her enigmatic, inscrutable ones that always made Marcus want to hit something. “Why, give them back, Dew Drop.”
“Just hand them over to those assholes Sek and Mot, just like that?”
“And you’re supposed to be the smart one.” Maat shook her head slightly. “No, I’ve said enough. More than I should have, but frankly, Biscuit Breath, you appear to be… struggling.”
“What? No, I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine. You don’t look like you’ve slept in a week.”
“I have a Dream Vamp on my ass.”
Maat pursed her lips, studying Marcus closer. “And you’ve lost weight.”
“It takes a lot of energy to heal a gunshot wound.”
“So you don’t want to talk about-”
“No!” He really didn’t want his Goddess to say her name, or stick her mystical nose into his private and personal business.
“But-”
“No.” Marcus’s blue eyes were shuttered and grim, his mouth a flat line. “She’s back where she belongs, safe.”
“Safe?” Maat pondered the word as if she’d never heard it before. “Safer for whom?” The corner of Maat’s lips quirked upwards as Marcus glared at her, fire simmering in those ocean blue depths. “You’re probably right. It’s not like the Southern Sanctuary is ever attacked. Oh, it is, but thankfully they have all those strong, brawny Enforcers to save the day for your poor, fragile, little friend.”
“Riya is not fragile.” Marcus grit out from between clenched teeth.
“No? Hmmm, still, I suppose it’s a good thing she’s back home, don’t tell anyone, Gumdrop, but I heard on the grapevine that the deadbeat Dad has made contact.”
“What?” How was it possible for Marcus to feel so cold even as a red wave of engulfing anger all but ate through his gut?
Maat’s smile widened. “But you’re not interested in that, are you? You’ve moved on? Put your little mistake of a relationship behind you, correct?” Maat didn’t wait for a reply. She was just gone.
Marcus gripped the edge of his desk, the wood groaning. The only mistake would be if Riya forgave that asshole and allowed him back into her life. Shit. Shit. He had to put a stop to it. No, he had five chaos rubies to des… off-load, and a Dream Vampire to get rid of.
Shit. And typical Maat, she’d left him with more mysterious hints and clues than answers. Give the rubies back… but not to Sek and Mot? Oh, shit, no, she couldn’t mean… No.
Fucking hell, he couldn’t make this decision alone, his brothers-in-arms would need to be apprised and vote. And even if they did decide to give the rubies back, just how was he expected to achieve that… hey, two birds, five rubies, he’d get the Dream Vamp to help.
Marcus’s gut roiled and his tightly clenched fists ached. He needed to move double time. He had a lot on his to-do-list. Meet with his brother Warriors. Recruit a Dream Vamp. Off load the cursed rubies. And then and only then could he head to the Southern Sanctuary and convince Riya not to make the biggest mistake of her life. After all, he was the current title holder when it came to her committing mistakes… and he didn’t want to renounce his crown.