Game Over
Author: Lana Pecherczyk
Date: 2018-07-03 04:00:00+00:00
Description: A supernatural war looms, and she is the key to unlocking it—and stopping it. Roo is desperately trying to pick up the pieces her evil father left behind, while still keeping the existence of gods a secret from humans. But the Game of Gods is ending and the pressure to live up to her true identity is overwhelming. Not to mention she keeps missing her best friend’s wedding, her unpredictable fiancé is becoming violent, and her father’s war is catching humans in the crossfire. The enemy is closer to home than Roo realizes and facing her past is the least of her worries. If she wants to defeat ev
Publisher: Prism Press

CONTENTS

Dedication

Copyright

Dear Reader

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

About the Author

Glossary

DEDICATION

For my big sis, Di, who always asks herself, ‘What would Prince Do?’

COPYRIGHT

PRISM PRESS, PERTH Australia.

Copyright © 2018 Lana Pecherczyk

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © Lana Pecherczyk 2018

Cover design © Lana Pecherczyk 2018

Interior design ©  Lana Pecherczyk 2018

www.lanapecherczyk.com

DEAR READER

This is the final novel in the Game of Gods series. I loved writing this one soooo much because I added in all the bits that I love reading myself. A trip to the Amazon, a beach in Australia, a castle in Budapest. Sigh. If only we could all visit these places in real life! Until then, I hope you get a kick out of this book.

Happy reading,

Lana Pecherczyk.

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CHAPTER ONE

WINTER IN HUNGARY. The leaves had fallen, the Woodpeckers were drumming. Not snowing yet, but soon. To say it was cold was an understatement. A wooly cardigan, knitted scarf, and thermal underwear did not tame my tremors. I sighed wistfully as I stared through a frosty window into the garden of the Budapest castle. A fog cloud misted on the glass before me and I wiped it away with my squeaky hand then pressed my palm to the cold pane.

“Roo, I’ll strap him in, then you can examine him,” Cash said somewhere behind me, his deep voice rumbling through the stone room like thunder. My powerful fiancé, and now full-blooded god, was securing an errant Player to a half-reclined seat so I could test him for the dark serum.

But I didn’t turn around, not just yet. I kept my eyes on the pull of the outside world, so different to my coastal home back in Australia. The gothic castle I was in had a circular gravel driveway with a dolphin water feature the middle. Stone Gargoyles protected the front iron gates, wings spread, ready to fly. Inside the gates, manicured lawns spread until they rolled down a slope toward an immense forest screening us from the world.

Half the plants had lost their leaves, the other half were miraculously green and emitted a soft pulse of life-energy I felt with my sixth sense. Through the window pane, this buzz sounded a little like a swarm of bees. I sometimes thought of myself as a supernatural radio picking up the frequency of life. It called to me. All of it: Life. Despite the cold, I wanted to be out there—living. But instead, I was in here, hiding away, testing gods and demi-gods for the presence of the dark serum, pretending to be the brave queen they told me I was.

The examination room I was in had only one exit, making it good for containment purposes. So, for example, if the Player turned out to be infected then we could stop him before he ran rabid, wild and free into the general public causing all sorts of mischief. One word from Cash or myself, and Jed would activate the metal grate hanging precariously over the exit. I wasn’t entirely sure what that word would be—probably shit, or run—but the gate would drop, and any mess would be contained. Today, the grate was up, leaving the draft free to wander past Jed’s watchful eye and all the way through the holes in my knitted jacket. Brr.

It only felt like yesterday the world discovered witches were real, and now, I was still coming to terms with the fact that witches weren't the worst beings to influence life on this planet. Gods were here too, and I was one of them. It had been four weeks since we’d left the Sydney Ludus: the now destroyed training ground where gods had learned how to play their game of evolution. Two of those weeks were spent with Marc jumping through the in-between, checking each continental Ludus for survivors, purging the infected and sending the rest this way. The latter two weeks were spent here at this base, pretending to be someone I wasn’t while Cash ran off with Jed to hunt defectors and the infected—or darklings as our friend Jesop liked to call them. I had little time to speak with Cash and when we finally caught up, conversation was often stilted.

Cash remembered our transient and ancient history. I didn’t.

“Roo, are you ready?” he said gruffly, losing patience.

“Yes,” I replied.

My palm slid down the cold window to drop at my side and I twisted to see Cash guarding the Player, as promised, strapped into a reclining seat in the center of the room. Cash was a tall man, lithe and athletic yet, in comparison, the seated man looked like The Hulk. He was massive, barely fitting in the chair. And I don’t mean obese, but bulky like a weight lifter. He wore a checked flannelette shirt, jeans and worker boots. Mid to late thirties. I gave the bearded man a once-over as he squirmed under the surgical lights. He looked normal enough. Definitely a Player with his tattooed star-map on one side of his stern face and neck.

I walked to the patient thinking about how Jed and Cash had found him in a Krakow bar showing off by creating fireballs. He wanted the women to fawn over him, and the men to bow to him. He was a demi-god, and the world owed him that.

But that squirm. The sheen of sweat over the bearded Player’s brow.

He’s nervous.

“Is this really necessary?” the Player asked.

“Yes.” Cash stood at my side, arms folded. Today he wore a thick leather jacket. His biceps and shoulders stretched the fabric to its limit, muscles honed from constant physical exertion and time spent fighting Urser’s rebels and rogue Players. “You revealed your abilities to the public and now you want to be let in to the refuge. Damned straight we test you.”

“But the game is over. We can do what we want,” the man said.

I held my palm up to stop Cash replying. He closed his mouth, lips pursing, eyes pinching, clearly chagrined.

“No,” I said to the man. “You can’t do what you want.”

Cash wanted to step in and reprimand the man, I could sense it. He had changed since I’d last seen him. Grown more volatile. He didn’t like me working with the infected and had told me this on more than one occasion. But too bad. I needed to do this for my sanity, my peace of mind, for my injured soul. Because of The Game and its darkness and destruction. The sin. It all originated from me. I had to do something or I would go mad.

I continued, “The Gamekeeper said this is the last round of the Game, but it’s not over yet. You can’t create fireballs out of thin air every time you want to impress a girl or start a cult. Our secret must remain hidden.”

The man snorted. “Whatever.”

“Don’t be a dickhead,” Cash growled. “Show respect to your queen.”

I cringed as more pressure lumped on my amnesiac brain.

Cash added, “Despite what you revealed, we have to test everyone we let into the refuge. The threat is real.”

“Fine.”

“Good,” I said. “You’re well aware it’s a volatile environment for Players. Urser has seen to that with his infection of a majority of you. With that in mind, after you’re cleared, you can risk staying on this planet or end your Game and return to the Empire. At the moment, we’re leaving this choice up to the individual. What was your name again?” I asked, inspecting his aura for telltale signs of fact or fiction.

“Malcolm.”

I wrote it down in the notebook beside me to disguise the fact I picked up a flicker of something in his essence. Maybe nothing.

“Okay, Malcolm, what House do you belong to?”

“Aldebaran House.”

My brows lifted. They had been the meatheads of The Ludus, always spoiling for a fight. From memory, they had also been a House in conversations with my father, Bruce Urser, a.k.a. Spawn-of-all-evil-set-to-destroy-this-planet-with-darkness-and-then-the-rest-of-the-known-universe.

The dinners Bruce hosted from his royal suite back at the Australian Ludus served more than one purpose. On the surface, they forged marriage alliances between Houses for a show of strength in the Game, but on another level, deeper pacts were made. Ones that dealt in soldiers for his dark war.

“I’m not infected. I would know,” Malcolm said.

“Only last week we had someone sitting in your position, saying the same thing. His virus had mutated. It remained dormant in his body since infection until the UV light from our scanner activated it. So I wouldn’t speak too soon,” I said.

“Just do what you gotta do and get on with it.” Malcolm’s eyes widened at Cash when he tested the straps around Malcolm’s wrists. “You’re going to watch?”

Cash widened his stance, arms folded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I walked out of our makeshift medical bay to another space where curtains shielded Lena’s operating table. Jesop had a lab station set up on the other side of the room. Neither Lena or Jesop were here, but they had left the UV scanning handheld device on an instrument trolley. I found it and switched it on. Blue light and a humming sound emitted from the wand.

“If you are infected,” I said, “I can purge the poison, so your soul can return to the Empire. Nothing to worry about.” I placed the scanner face down on the bench next to Malcolm’s chair.

“My soul is already free.”

“This should be a piece of cake then. Let’s start.” I activated the switch on the chair and watched it further recline until Malcom was lying flat, staring at the ceiling. He tugged on his wrist restraints every so often, but didn’t complain. After a Player morphed into a darkling before our eyes, the straps became necessary.

I checked Malcolm’s eyes under the lids. No filmy black residue. Good. I asked more basic questions regarding his health and checked his short, sharp responses against his aura fluctuations. The familiar routine was comforting. I felt like I knew what I was doing in this lab. Mostly, he told the truth, but a vibe underlying his words stirred my blood. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Not enough to flag as a lie, but not steady enough for truth. Just a feeling.

I flicked a glance at Cash. Often the infection carried a rotting, putrid undertone, and he’d smell the disease a mile away. Cash’s eyes locked on Malcolm with menace, but that was normal. His protectiveness around me was borderline over the top. If he was away, Marc was here watching. Jed also lurked nearby, and occasionally I’d see a handful of other nameless people protect me. Between them all, I felt like a caged Yo-Yo.

“Okay, let’s have a look.” I held the scanning rod over Malcolm’s head. Blue light reflected off his skin and revealed every blemish, freckle and wrinkle as I scanned. In recent experience, we’d discovered the serum had presented in one of two ways. The first was instantaneous. Ripples under the skin until eyes melted to black holes. The second took a few days and occurred once the UV rays from the sun had enough time to activate whatever was under the skin—perfect ticking time bombs.

I switched the scanner off and put it down. He was an asshole, but he wasn’t infected. “Okay, you can go,” I said and released his chair into an upright position before undoing his straps.

Malcolm swung his large legs over the edge. “So, I’m cleared?”

“Yes, you’re cleared,” I confirmed.

I darted a glance at Cash, who watched me like a hawk. Underneath his worn leather jacket, his muscles flexed, geared for action. I only needed to look at him weird and he would probably end Malcolm right then and there. Part of me thought his eagerness grew out of a protective instinct for his fiancé, but deep down, I knew there was something else that troubled him. A dark desire, a remnant of his violent past, skirted every behavior and thought. I’d seen it first hand when I’d once woken him from a nightmare only to have his fingers crush my neck into near oblivion.

“Jed is waiting for you outside, Malcolm. He’ll show you to your room,” Cash added.

“You’re not going to take me?” Malcolm replied.

“I think one person holding your hand is enough.” Cash took the scanner from me and returned it behind the curtains of Lena’s operating bay.

Malcolm grumbled and slid off the chair. He took a few steps towards the exit then paused halfway, his back to us.

A stillness washed over me.

Something was wrong.

The serum?

Malcolm’s aura vibrated at a higher frequency and escalated. His hands flexed at his side. I sought out Cash who had turned from the curtain. He froze, sensing danger.

“Malcolm?” I took a step forward, hesitant.

My foot barely touched the floor when Malcolm pivoted and threw two fireballs at my head. I dropped, lifting my hands, intending to throw up a shield of hard air but the fire sailed over my head to hit the curtains. So fast!

“What are you doing?” I cried, mortified. I tried to made sense of it. His aura was normal. Eyes, clear. Still no sign of the serum. This was all Malcolm.

He glared in my direction. “I was hoping to get you alone, but, oh well. May as well kill two Players with one stone.”

Behind him, Jed’s head popped around the exit, checking the disturbance. His eyes caught on Malcolm, then on Cash behind me and he gave a curt nod. Cash slipped into effortless battle mode. His face deadpanned. His body relaxed. He advanced.

“Stay down, Roo,” Jed said. He trained his gun on Malcolm’s head.

Malcolm cast a look over his shoulder and sneered. “That won’t kill me.”

“But it will slow you down.”

Fire crackled, smoldering in Malcolm’s fingers.

Jed jerked his gun. “Don’t do it.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Malcolm.” Jed’s gaze shifted to a spot to my side.

Cash stood there with wild eyes and a wolfish smile, tipping on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce. Fear sliced through me at his feral vibe. The hairs on my arms stood on end. Violence. Destruction. Cash’s hidden essence surged, exploding out of his being, coating the room thick with dread. This was new, this charged, unpredictable reaction that didn’t bother hiding anymore. It was as though his essence knew he wanted to be heard, to be feared, and it happily came out of hiding when he attacked. Everything inside me urged a retreat, but I forced myself to stand firm. Sudden movements would not be welcome.

Malcolm’s eyes focused on Cash, hesitating, as though he too sensed the shift in Cash’s aura. He lifted his smoldering palms menacingly.

I blinked.

A breath. That was all it took, and Malcolm was gone. Cash stood in his place, a bright blue flaming sword in his hand, staring at a pile of ashes drifting softly to the stone floor.

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT THE HELL was that?” I couldn’t stop the words trembling on my tongue.

I had to force myself to not believe my eyes because, although my eyes saw Malcom being murdered by Cash, my brain knew Malcolm’s soul would find its way to the nearest Purgatory, wherever that was. Still, I couldn’t help drawing my cardigan tighter across my middle.

“Cash?” I tried again, but he ignored me. I glanced at Jed for help, but he sighed and holstered his gun. He cast a sympathetic look my way then went back outside the lab to resume his post.

Cash’s blue flaming sword winked out of existence as he stepped away from the ash.

“Hey!” I yelled this time. “Don’t ignore me, Cash.”

An almost imperceptible tilt of the head was the only indication he’d heard, because he said nothing and moved to retrieve a dustpan and brush from underneath a stock trolley. He crouched down near the ashes and began sweeping them up.

“I’m not ignoring you, Roo. I’m cleaning up.”

“What the hell? Why did you do that?”

He spun toward me and pointed the soot-covered brush at my face. “Don’t ask me to apologize. I’m not sorry. He was trying to kill you. I’d do it again.”

“But…”

“This is the Game, Roo. The last one. And you’ve got the biggest target on your back.”

“That’s not true.”

He laughed, short and sharp. “Killing you would be the biggest show of power. Depending on who you speak to, your death could be seen as making a positive difference in this world, making the evolutionary reward massive. Don’t you see that’s why I was so pissed off Marc took you gallivanting around the world to save a measly few Players?”

I bit my tongue to stop the tears threatening my eyes. “I can protect myself. I don’t need you to kill for me.”

My words hit him like a physical thing. Instantly, he softened and closed the gap between us until he stood inches from my face. I stared into his chest, unwilling to meet his eyes. His jacket was open. His shirt was gray. There were two black smudges on the cotton, backfire from Malcolm’s ash.

Cash dropped the brush, and it clattered to the stone floor. He took hold of my shoulders and squeezed gently. His deep voice was velvet next to my ear. “Is that why you won’t convert to Seraphim? You think we’ll end up back where we started, with me killing for you?”

We were soulmates. Apparently that meant he could use his godly blood to purge the weak human DNA from my blood, leaving me strong and immortal like a god—the Seraphim. Like Cash. I didn’t know how to answer him. I didn’t remember my past life as the queen. She was me, but I wasn’t her. Between stories I’d heard from Marc and Cash, I’d pieced together what had happened on the day the earth stood still. The queen’s son, the prince, stole the original sin his mother extracted from her science experiments—humans. She wanted to make a world without pain. She couldn’t have known her efforts were doomed to fail. Following in his mother’s soul-science footsteps, and with Urser’s help, he’d converted it into a dark serum that melded with his own blood, and then fed it back to the people, resulting in thousands of mind controlled monsters we now call darklings.

Cash had always warned the queen against tinkering with creation, but she hadn’t listened. In the end, there was more pain than she could stand and when Cash had to clean up her mess, it almost destroyed him. It broke his soul into pieces—literally—and he became doomed to have his soul parts reincarnate separately.

The queen had become a recluse until the call of the planet and the Game somehow brought her back as a secret Player. And then she was me, and I found Cash. And now look at him. He just killed without a second thought. We were already back on the same path—history doomed to repeat itself.

“Everything I touch turns to shit,” I said, faintly. “I mean, I was the queen. She neglected her son, created new life then forced you to kill them all. I don’t want to become her because she was the queen of turning things to shit.”

Cash notched a finger under my chin and lifted until our eyes clashed. “You touched me. Do I look like shit?”

He looked incredible. Hot. Sexy. Concerned. I swallowed and averted my gaze. Big problem: there was nowhere to look but down the hard planes of his chest, ridged stomach—yes, I could see his abs through his tight shirt—lower, lower… my eyes snagged on the way he filled out his jeans. Thick thighs, strong legs, and… I blushed. A zip of electricity shot down my lower abdomen and I was reminded of how long it had been since we’d been together. Weeks. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him for long. I had to lift my gaze back to his mismatched eyes. One blue, one brown, and both drilling into me.

“Christ, Roo.” Cash’s hand locked onto the back of my neck. “When you look at me like that.”

He crushed his lips to mine and his tongue pushed passed my teeth, delving inside with a possessive intensity. Hot mess melted inside me and I moaned. Tongues tangled, tasted, danced. His powerful essence rushed into me, fanning my kindling desire and it was almost too much. Too hot. Too raw. But knowing I could undo him with a look ignited me further and suddenly, I couldn’t get enough of him. I kissed him back, without hesitation, because I missed him so much.

Even if he had changed since I’d last seen him, in that moment I didn’t care. He didn’t either. In our desperate passion, we knocked into tables, sending medical instruments flying. I needed to know he was still my Cash, despite the ash.

The ash.

“Wait.” I pulled back. He frowned, irritated, wanting more from me. It gave me the fuel to push his hard body away. “Cash, we need to talk.”

He stared at my mouth with single-minded determination and damned if my body didn’t ache for him to ignore my words, but I stepped back. I turned around and placed my palms on the cold steel bench next to the examination chair. The icy temperature anchored me.

A warm touch on the back of my neck as Cash brushed my long hair aside. The hard length of his body pushed up against me, insistent, pushing me into the bench. Hot breath hit my neck.

“Talk,” he rasped and kissed the skin beneath my ear.

A tremble tore through me and my eyes fluttered closed. Damn it.

“Stop. Jed is outside.”

“I’ll shut the gate.”

“He can see through the bars.”

“Lets go to our room.”

Our room. My heart squeezed. I’d have no resolve there.

Cash’s hands slid around to my front, tickling my stomach underneath my clothes. His fingers searched until he found the top of my jeans.

“Shit.” I grasped his wrists before he went any lower.

“I want you now,” he urged.

“How did you move so fast?” I asked. “Before. You moved from behind me to Malcolm in the blink of an eye.”

My words were an ice bucket thrown on us. He pulled back, and I spun to face him.

His broad chest heaved on a deep breath. “It’s who I’ve always been. Now that I’m Seraphim, my abilities are completely restored, amplified even. I’ve lived thrice over while everyone else has lived once. The universe must have liked my contribution to the world because I’m evolved.”

“And the light saber thingy?”

“What’s a light saber?”

“Oh yeah, you hate pop culture. I meant the flaming sword.” He’d had a sword of blue fire that appeared out of nowhere to obliterate Malcolm. In mythology, the Archangel Michael used a flaming sword. Marc told us the myth originated from Cash’s ancient exploits as the queen’s enforcer. He was the avenging angel who, on God’s word, cast the sinners out of paradise. Except, in reality it was another version of me who ordered him to kill all the people, and block them from returning to the Empire via the star-gate.

Cash shrugged. “It’s just a focused extension of my aura. It has the power to obliterate both body and soul if I choose.”

“But why did you have to kill him? Couldn’t you have resolved it some other way? Aren’t there procedures for this sort of thing?”

“I didn’t kill him. I could’ve, but I didn’t. I ended his Game. There’s a difference.”

“Can you use that sword on anyone?”

Understanding cleared his eyes. He knew where I was going with this.

“I’m not some half-cocked green teenager, Roo. I know what I’m doing.”

Unease unfurled in my gut. He could kill someone with that thing, not just end their Game, but their forever soul. With his temper, his reactions… I looked away because an even darker thought occurred to me. Cash had done this before. Jed’s lack of reaction proved it. I’d been kept in the dark deliberately.

I didn’t get a chance to explore this revelation with Cash because Jed poked his head around the wall of the exit to say, “The Tribunal wants you for the meeting.”

Cash scrubbed a hand over his short hair. “How long?”

“Five minutes.”

CHAPTER THREE

I DIDN’T FEEL very intimate after I found out Cash’s true nature had been hidden from me. In fact, I tried desperately to not feel much at all, but my swirling cocktail of emotions was too hard to ignore. Betrayal, confusion, guilt—all threatened to undo me and I had no time for that. Not again. Jed had interrupted us with a message: the Tribunal wanted to meet.

As we walked through the cold castle, I squeezed my eyes shut and blocked my feelings out. If I let one emotion slip through, the entire flood would drive in, so I forced a deep, calming breath and focused on my steps.

Step—empty. Step—empty. Step—empty. Don’t think of Cash. Don’t think of his change. He’s the same Cash, and you’re the same Roo. But the vision of him standing over Malcolm’s ashes kept flashing before my eyes.

Step—empty. Step—empty. Step—empty.

This is good. I am in control.

A sideways glance at Cash caused me to stumble. Instantly, his hand shot out to steady me. “You okay?”

Warmth bloomed in my chest.

I smiled and his lips lifted on one side, wary but happy.

I was overreacting. Totally.

We went up the maroon carpeted steps, past a few living quarters and on to a large assembly room where there were fourteen seats at the large round oak table. Ten were occupied by Watchers—Seraphim banished to live out their lives on this planet. The buzz of electricity humming from their virulent auras was loud enough that I wanted to cover my ears. I stared at the jugs of water and empty glasses while I acclimatized myself to their power.

Fourteen spaces, I mused. Perhaps two representatives from every continental Ludus were meant to be there. That would make sense.

I recognized a handful of faces, Jacine the Goddess of Love, among them. Marc was conspicuously absent, but he often was at these things. Being God of the In-Between, he often got distracted by space and time and had zero punctuality. He’d also told me once that the in-between could warp your sense of time, or perhaps it was that you could get lost there… I hoped he turned up soon. Another friendly face would be welcome.

Lena, the blind healer from Corvus House was here. Her head titled my way upon my entry. She could sense people’s emotions and obviously I wasn’t concealing mine as I thought.

Wren and Lincoln were also here, sitting together on one side. My brother’s blond scruffy hair had been trimmed to look neater, but his shirt was still recalcitrantly inside out. Wren also had short-cropped blond hair and big blue eyes. They were Players and not officially Tribunal, but since both their Houses, Urser and Cetus, were among the traitors, we needed representatives we could trust. Lincoln was what we classed “a defective download”. Despite his body being covered by an enormous star-map, he had no supernatural abilities apart from being a world-class party boy. He seemed tamer when Wren was around, though, and since Urser’s attempt to convert him to darkling, he had no love for our father of the flesh. I liked to think our friendship had brought him from the dark side, but when I saw the way he looked at Wren, I was sure I had nothing to do with it.

For the record, Wren looked at him the same way, shyly and from underneath her lashes. In fact, they could be holding hands under the table. Their auras harmoniously touched—wisps and frequencies melded together.

Her powers let her commune with animals and, after this meeting, she was taking Lincoln to Africa to rescue endangered animals from human poachers. He said he wanted to see a Safari, but I knew otherwise. He would follow her anywhere. Seeing them both together made me smile.

To one side of the table sat a pair of men I could only assume were from Eridanus House because they were Ken Dolls, the pair of them. Tanned skin, plastic blond hair with shots of silver at the temples, blue sparkling eyes and Hollywood teeth. One wore a blue suit that reminded me of a rigid Navy Captain. The second wore a white, linen shirt that opened at the neck to display the dip in his collarbone and perfect male chest. The barely restrained sneer-turned-smile they sent me pulled their skin taut as though they’d had Botox. Shiny expressionless and frozen faces. I couldn’t tell if it was from plastic surgery, or if their timeless features were a symptom of their particular Seraphim origins. Cash and I were apparently from the Orion Constellation. But Eridanus would be a separate constellation all-together and perhaps many light-years further away. It was all part of the Empire and, as far as I knew, every native from those planets was humanoid, but these two… there was something otherworldly about them. Angry dolls come to life.

Cash cleared his throat and pulled out a seat for me. “After you.”

I smiled sheepishly and sat down. I’d been staring.

A glance at my engagement ring had me twisting the band around my finger with the thumb of the same hand. Cash and I hadn’t spoken about it much since he asked me to marry him at the Libertine Ball. Obviously, we’d been busy. I hoped that was all there was too it. On the other hand, plans for Kitty and Alvin’s Margaret River wedding was in full swing. My friends were knee-deep in preparations. Kitty called me nightly to discuss color themes, venues, flowers and decorations—you named it, we discussed it. Her wedding was only a month away. She was my best friend, but she didn’t know about my engagement, or my true identity. She just thought I had witch-like abilities and could dye her hair blue and green without a trip to the salon. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her about my engagement.

“Thank you all for coming,” Jacine said, standing up. Her pink, cotton candy hairstyle didn’t move, stuck permanently in a bob position. She wore her usual white sheath dress that hugged her curves. In mythology, she had been known as the Goddess of Love and Fertility. Marc told me she got carried away creating a cult in Roman times and had to be confined to the underground London Ludus. But she didn’t let her failure beat her. She used her time to progress to Operations Manager. She was every little girl’s role model. Slick, demure, confident. Everything I wasn’t. She stared at everyone at the table until all speech halted and eyes were on her. “I know there’s a lot happening within each of your Ludus territories and I thank you all for convening here. You’ve been busy with your disaster recovery efforts, but as you know, the Empire’s Enforcer has returned and in a timely manner too. We’re in dire need of a war council, and military direction. Mr. Samson, you called. We’re here. What can we do?” Jacine nodded to Cash and sat down.

Cash called the meeting? That was news to me. Jed had made it sound as though it was the Tribunal who called. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised, Cash had not only been the Queen’s Enforcer, but he’d also been a respected military leader, reincarnated many times over.

Cash cleared his throat. “It’s been two weeks since the attack on Luduses around the world. Urser will unleash more chaos if we don’t stop him. So far it’s only been Nephilim and Seraphim souls in the crossfire, but I know for a fact he tested his serum on humans. He’s harvested most of your Nephilim stock and has left your Houses depleted. Since we’re in a”—he glanced at me—“sticky situation, we can’t return him to the Empire and seek formal aid. We must remain on this planet for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, humans currently believe the acts to be terrorism or witch—related, and our secret remains safe.”

“Would it be so bad?” Grumbled another man. When a series of shocked faces looked his way, he added, “Not the chaos part, the secret revealed part.”

His skin was dark brown. Youthful in appearance but ancient in the wisdom shining behind his gray eyes. From his accent, perhaps he was from the Afrikaan Ludus. There was nothing left of it now.

When Marc and I had teleported to each Ludus, the Afrikaan Ludus had been hit the worst. The pyramid above it was ancient and dense. It crumbled to the ground and beyond. So many died. Mainly Seraphim and Nephilim, but there were a few human casualties. The death toll was enormous. The Players who weren’t killed were converted to darklings. We couldn’t end their Game because the dark poison anchored their souls to their bodies in such a way that if we killed the host, the soul went with it. A true death. It was as though Urser played to our sense of preservation. He knew if we killed them permanently, their interplanetary homes would blame us for their loss just as much as Urser. Most Players were diplomats and people in high places. There would be an intergalactic war.

So far, those missing darklings hadn’t resurfaced, which meant Urser was saving them for something. Since the mass infection and destruction of Luduses, we’d been wracking our brains to think of a possible plan. We knew Urser couldn’t coerce Marc to transport the darklings to the Empire because their souls were tethered to their bodies. They’re atoms would entangle and they’d die. Also, the star-gate that originally brought all Seraphim to this planet was broken, so Urser can’t use that to bring darklings to the Empire that way. So, unless Urser planned on using them to control this planet, I had no idea what he wanted with them. It was the calm before the storm.

“Your Majesty?” A male voice broke through my thoughts.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, glancing around the table searching for who spoke. It was the Afrikaan Watcher who returned my puzzled look. Maybe it wasn’t him, but someone had asked me something and I had no idea who. I kept my brave face on, but inside I was sinking in shame. Real un-queenly of me to zone out during an official meeting. To cover for it, I said, “Would you mind introducing yourself before you speak? I’m afraid I still don’t know many of you.”

Mr. Ego-Anus—the name I’d decided to call the youngest of the plastic Ken dolls—rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically.

“You can start.” I pointed at him. “What’s your name?”

To my pleasure, Cash placed a firm hand on my shoulder in a show of solidarity.

Ego-Anus narrowed his eyes briefly but his companion, Sir Captain Eridanus answered for him. I named him Captain because of his navy like attire. He seemed the oldest of the plastic pair. “Please forgive us, Your Majesty, we are only fresh in from Iceland where we were staying at the time of the attack. My name is Cato and my son here is Thurstan.”

“Nice to meet you, Cato and Thurstan.” I shifted my gaze to the Afrikaan Watcher.

“My name is Zebedee, Your Majesty. I am from Draco House of the Afrikaan Ludus.”

Afrikaan Ludus, but Draco? I hadn’t heard of that House yet.

“We have few left in our House after it was slaughtered by Urser.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Zebedee,” I said. “How many Nephilim and Seraphim were taken?”

“Forty-one were infected. Sixteen were Nephilim children, twenty-five were Players who had their Game ended.” He looked around the room. “Additionally   we still have three Draco Seraphim unaccounted for. It is unclear whether they had a hand in the betrayal or were taken themselves.”

“From the intel we have, I don’t believe there are any Seraphim infected with the serum,” Cash said from behind me. “Only Nephilim and the occasional human.”

Any Seraphim missing must be a traitor or a prisoner. I studied my hands, thinking back to something Zebedee said. “Nephilim Players know their souls will return to the Empire, but did the children have a clue?” What I wanted to say was, did the children know they were being murdered, or was this shock tempered with the knowledge that they weren’t really dying, but going to a better place?

“Nephilim are not educated about the truth of their Player status until they reach adulthood. They all thought they were human. Oh, and that figure I gave you about losses was just for our House. If you want a report on the full extent of Afrikaan casualties, I’m afraid I can’t give it to you.”

Cash glanced down at me. “Do you want to know?”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“It was in the hundreds,” he replied.

I slumped in my chair. There were no words. Anger replaced despair as I dwelled on Seraphim betraying their own kind and I kept thinking of how I would have felt if, as a young child, I was suddenly thrust into the world of the gods, watching others of my kind turned into monsters. I refused to let my train of thought touch on the possibility that they were infected too. How could any decent person willingly gift wrap Players for darkling conversion when they knew they were killing their forever souls?

“This is why I believe we should go public,” Zebedee said, interrupting my thoughts. “We expose Urser, we blame him for the catastrophes, and get the human population on our side before he manages to do it first. We can use human resources to flush him out and capture him. The sooner we squash his rebellion, the sooner we go home.”

“And unleash chaos? That’s the worst suggestion I’ve heard all year,” Cato rumbled. His son snorted in approval.

“You would use humans as pawns to clean up our mess?” Another nameless Seraphim rumbled from his table seat. I was about to ask for an introduction, when Zebedee snapped, “And what do you suggest? Give them all a makeover?”

I let them bicker amongst themselves and glanced at Cash who frowned at the Watchers. Feeling lost, I looked for Marc.

“Excuse me, but has anyone heard from Marc?” I asked, interrupting.

Jacine shifted in her seat as did a few others. It was Lena who finally spoke. “He’s taken the last load of souls in Purgatory back to the Empire where he is gaining insight on how to further proceed here.”

“Oh.”

“Roo, do you have an opinion?” Cash rested a palm on my shoulder. “About going public.”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I don’t feel I’m the right person to ask this.”

“You’re the queen,” Thurstan stated.

“But I don’t know.” My pulse quickened at the irritation directed my way. “I don’t know anything.”

Someone made a sound of agreement which made me feel even less welcome.

“Like I said, my vote is for going public,” Zebedee said, turning to his neighbors. “It’s happening anyway. We should get ahead of the curve and control the dialog.”

“I agree,” Cato added. “I say this without intended offense, Your Majesty, but your original decree to remain hidden for the term of the Game doesn’t apply anymore. You’re not the same person and times have changed.”

“She’s still your queen,” Jacine snapped.

When I’d first met Jacine at the Australian Ludus, she’d treated me like a child. I hadn’t expected the Goddess of Love to have such an abrupt and crisp demeanor. The years on this planet had changed her, as it had with many of them. Another stark reminder that whoever I was before, she wasn’t all that great in my opinion. Surprisingly, the minute Jacine discovered my true identity, she became my biggest supporter. Who’d have thought?

“Was, Jacine, she was our queen,” Thurstan said. “This young woman sitting before us is arguably not the same person. She can’t remember the reason she confined us to this planet, so how is she supposed to use correct judgment to make an informed decision? The only proof we have that she is actually the queen is that she appears to have the Seraphim physiological response when her true name is called. As far as I’m concerned, anyone can fake those shivers. I move she abdicate in favor of this Tribunal. At least until we get word from the Empire.”

A murmur of approval clashed with outcries from my supporters—Cash among them. The split was easily fifty-fifty. On one hand, I was honored that people were on my side, on the other… maybe they were right.

Would they stop arguing if I said it sounded great to me? I started to reply but was stopped by Cash’s firm hand on my shoulder as he glared at the Tribunal. “Mention abdication again and I’ll abdicate you.”

“You can’t abdicate me. I’m not King. That doesn’t make sense,” Thurstan sneered.

“Sure it does. Think about it.”

My head dropped in my hand. This was going nowhere. Whatever the case, there were bigger fish to fry. My circumstances were second fiddle to Urser. This world was in danger and we were the only ones able to protect it. I sat up. That’s probably what I should be saying.

“Excuse me,” I said, my voice barely heard over the din. Thurstan flicked a balled up paper at Zebedee, provoking him. Who would’ve thought these were immortal gods? Someone had to rally them. I tried again, this time with more power in my voice. “Stop. Please, everyone can we focus on the important thing here?”

Seeing what I was trying to do, Cash added his voice to mine. “Quiet,” he shouted and slammed both palms on the table. The carafes of water and half-full cups trembled and sloshed.

All conversation dimmed.

Cash straightened, and looked down at me with an arched eyebrow as if to say, The floor’s all yours. It was then I became acutely aware that while he had called the meeting, it was me he kept deferring to. That warmth in my chest bloomed again.

I plowed onwards. “We have other pressing matters to discuss. Urser is our main concern. We deal with him first.” I angled my head to look up at Cash. “What do we know about his plans?”

I asked Cash because his past two weeks had not only been searching for survivors and infected, but scouting for traces of my father’s operations, in particular the lab he created the serum in.

Cash folded his arms, jacket creaking. “My team in Houston have been working on this for months. We’ve discovered experiments on humans with the serum but as far as we can see, they were just tests. After the initial cases, we haven’t detected any further activity. As you all know, the serum was used on Nephilim during the Libertine Ball across the world. Urser’s taken control of these darklings and spirited them off somewhere. We’re getting reports from pockets of groups still playing the Game that Nephilim in their camps have also sporadically gone missing. We’ve put the word out for survivors to seek refuge together, or to come here if it’s possible. Thanks to your queen, we have purged the few darklings we recovered and are keeping a close eye on them.

“The location of Urser’s lab has been narrowed down to somewhere in South America, but we are unsure precisely where. We have analysts assessing what we can from the country. As far as evidence to Urser’s plans, we don’t know enough. It’s all conjecture at the moment.”

I straightened, remembering something from my time living with my father at the Australian Ludus. “I overheard Squid talking about the serum production being almost finished. We could interrogate anyone I’ve purged to see if any of them saw or heard anything while they were under the influence. We might be able to learn more about the location of the lab and anything else about Urser’s whereabouts. I would imagine, that if they were used against their will, they might be forthcoming with some Intel.”

“Great idea.” Lena leaned forward. “I’ve got a mind-raider on staff. We can discretely visit each survivor and fish for information.”

I blanched. A mind-raider? It didn’t sound inviting. “Can’t we just ask them?”

“Mind-raiders are more effective. Similar to the Librarian, they can rifle through memories, but are slightly less intrusive and undetectable.” Cash paced behind me. “They can also be used to search for more Player animosity and bad blood. We had a Player attack in the medical lab today. Seems some don’t care we’re fighting a war with Urser, they only see this as their last chance to up their evolution points before the Game is canceled for good.”

“No. That is not acceptable,” Jacine said. “This is meant to be neutral territory. A temporary Ludus if you will. We simply cannot have Game plays on site. What happened?”

“I ended his Game,” Cash replied and then proceeded to explain how Malcolm had successfully masqueraded as a survivor to get close to us before he attempted to kill us.

The story plunged the group into silence, but their auras did the talking for them. Some were shocked, others appeared thoughtful as though they too were contemplating what this last chance at the Game could mean to them. Watchers weren’t Players, but they created Players in the hopes that when they returned to the Empire, their blood-tie to their progenies would pass on evolutionary points. The thing was, nobody had tested that theory yet as no Watcher had returned to the Empire. Ever.

I tuned back to what Cash was saying, “… another sentinel guarding the gate, and if we could have a mind-raider check each refugee as they are allowed into the compound, I believe that would help avoid another incident.”

“We can arrange that,” Jacine said. “What about that psychic girl who alerted us to Urser’s plan back in Australia. The Astraia House child? Can she help?”

“You mean Victoria?” I asked, remembering the awkward goth girl who tried to alert me to the problem I had with the Others, and then again to the arrival of my father on the night he destroyed the Ludus. “The seer?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

Cash answered. “She returned to the Empire. Before she left, she helped us narrow down the location of Urser's lab. We’re close. I’m in the process of getting a team together to comb the areas she’s pointed out and as I mentioned before, we’ve got a team of analysts interpreting data from multiple sources. Any sightings of darkling like behavior will be checked.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said, standing to face him.

He lowered his voice for my ears only. “Until you agree to convert to Seraphim, you’re not going anywhere.”

“I can heal fine as it is.” I grit my teeth.

“You will heal better once your human DNA is purged.”

I bit down my response. I wouldn’t talk about this here. I mean, logically, of course I knew being Seraphim was far superior to being Nephilim, but there was so much more to it and I wasn’t ready.

Marc chose that moment to grace us with his presence. He popped into being in a corner of the room, appearing as his charismatic youthful self, covered in an illusion-construct of obscenely fashionable clothing. Tight pants, tight collared shirt that looked a million dollars, and leather loafers. He smoothed his styled blond hair back from his head. The dimple in his chin twitched as he smothered a smile. “Having a party without me, ay? Where’s all the booze?”

Everyone started talking at once. Some to Marc, others to each other, and I rounded back on Cash.

“You can’t keep me locked up here like a troublesome teenager,” I hissed.

“It’s because you’re acting like a damn teenager that I can.”

“Tell me what you really think, why don’t you.”

“You were attacked in our refuge. What makes you think you’ll be fine out there?”

“I can look after myself.”

He smiled. “Roo, you’re not a fighter.”

“I was when I was queen.”

“That’s debatable, and was being the operative word. Your powers aren’t at half capacity. When you convert, then you’ll be stronger, and we can talk.”

“Again with the converting.”

“Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

Someone cleared their throat. I’d forgotten we were in front of people.

“Love, the hunter is right. Having you at full capacity is best for everyone.”

Jacine frowned at Marc. “You need to stop calling her, love. It’s irreverent.”

“I’ll call her what I bloody-well want. She’s my friend.”

“Your Majesty. Your Highness. Those are more appropriate.”

“Bollocks.”

“Well, that’s definitely not appropriate.”

“You two should just get a room and get it over with,” Thurstan grumbled from his seat.

Jacine went white and Marc went red. It wasn’t long before the entire room erupted into conflict again. It was too much. With the way all these people snarked at each other, I honestly felt like I sat in a session of Parliament. I readied to leave by gathering my bag from under the table.

Cash leaned toward me. “You’re not going anywhere. You may be the queen but you need me to go out in public with you. The human world still has protocols against witches to contend with.”

Like a slap in the face! “Why are you doing this? Why are you treating me like a criminal, locking me in a prison?”

“Because you’re not thinking right.”

“I can help.”

“You can help more once you’re Seraphim. I don’t understand why you’re resisting.”

Because if I converted, then I would be her.

I blinked away the tears. He was only trying to protect me, and a part of me knew that. In a way, he was right. Being at the same power level as my peers in the room—as Urser—was a smart thing to do. These dangerous and finicky gods could turn on me any minute. Zebedee called for my abdication. All it took was for the rest of them to agree, and I’d be out of there. The crown, I didn’t really want, but my life? Yes. I wanted that dearly. I wanted to be done with all this and move back to Margaret River. I wanted my barmaid job back at The Cauldron. I wanted to ride my Suzuki dirt-bike down Bibbulmen Track when no one was looking. It was a simple life full of simple pleasures. I was being stubborn, I knew it, especially when I was in the thick of the mess here—a mess my other self created. God, I felt like a teenager in front of these ancient people.

“Even if I convert, my memories won’t come back, will they? Lena said I might get pieces here and there but I won’t get the whole lot. I shouldn’t be the queen. I should be Roo. Let someone else do it.”

There. I said it.

After the heat from my cheeks died down, I realized the room was now silent. All eyes on me.

CHAPTER FOUR

WITH THE WEIGHT of the gods staring at me, I balked, and then my phone rang. It was the tune to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s I Like Big Butts. Must be Kitty.

I retrieved the vibrating object from the jungle of my handbag. Not too hard to find considering the sheer volume and movement the phone made. It almost jumped out. In fact, it did jump out. Right onto the table where it proceeded to vibrate and tremor its way across the expanse. It headed right for Cato and Thurstan who both widened their eyes. We all stared at the phone with different shades of horror, then I snapped out of it.

“Shit, sorry,” I said and reached for it.

No dice. My fingers slipped down the slippery phone casing and it popped out of my hold onto the wooden surface where it proceeded to jump along to the beat of the song, almost as if it were dancing.

Oh God, Sir Mix-a-Lot was now singing about round things in faces. I launched onto the table, attempting to catch the electronic bug. It jumped, hopped and skittered. In slow motion, I saw my doom. The phone moved toward Cato, his eyebrows lifted, the whites of his eyes expanded, following the intrepid path of the phone toward him. My belly slid across the wooden table, my hand outstretched. The next lyric was… Oh God… please don’t say horny. Please don’t say horny. I wouldn’t make it. At the last minute I sent my power out to catch the phone telekinetically as my body stalled at the center of the table. The rapping phone went airborne over Cato’s lap and paused, suspended mid air.

He said horny.

My forehead slapped on the table. This was not what I needed right now.

Marc laughed with a snort. “Great song choice, love. What have you got for my ringtone?”

“You don’t have a phone, Marc,” I mumbled, voice muffled.

“Oh yeah.”

Cash grabbed my ankles and slid me back to the end. The phone came with me and before I could make a bigger fool of myself, I answered the call and moved, intending to take the conversation outside. “Hello?”

“Put the Gamekeeper on.”

The words stopped me in my tracks. Not Kitty. Deep, female, distant. But certainly not Kitty.

“Who is this? How did you get my number?”

Cash tensed next to me.

“Put the Gamekeeper on or there will be suffering.”

The air halted in my lungs. My hand grew heavy, and I lowered the phone to my side. I caught Marc’s eyes.

“It’s for you.”

“Ooh. Right-O.” Always the one to miss social queues, Marc wiggled his eyebrows jauntily, probably expecting a party invite, or something. He walked around the table to where I stood and retrieved the phone. “Is that you, Dave?” he said into the receiver. “I told you I don’t do lawn bowls unless it’s nude. Perhaps a game of ten-pin… oh, you’re not Dave.”

All playfulness fled from Marc’s expression and he caught my gaze and held it. I wasn’t the only one watching him. The entire table had their eyes glued. Something was wrong.

Kitty.

“Uh-huh. Mm-hm. I see.” Marc rolled his eyes, and I relaxed a little. “No need to get snippy. I know what I agreed to. Right, we’ll see you in a few hours, then. Oh, and not a hair on the busty siren’s head to be harmed, yeah? Else ix-nay on the eal-day.” He stared back at the phone, and prodded it, frowning. “How do I turn this thing off?”

I took it from him. “Who was that?”

“Eve.”

“You mean Eve-the-witch-Eve? The same Eve who was the first of her race? The same Eve who led all witches into a peace treaty with humans so they can symbiotically leech life from the poor and the sick?”

“Yes, yes, love. All that.”

“What has she done with Kitty, and why is she calling from her phone?”

“No need to panic. Your friend is fine.”

Cash grunted. “What was the deal you made?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Marc replied and pushed an imaginary fleck of dust off his shoulder.

“Marc, you said ix-nay on the eal-day.”

Two blond brows lifted at Cash. “You know pig-Latin?”

“As does every child over four.”

“Oh.” He looked thoughtful for a minute. “That would explain how that police officer knew I was lying about—”

“Marc!” I snapped.

“Right. Deal. You want to know about the deal.” He glanced around the table. All Watchers returned his gaze.

“Go on, dove,” Jacine said.

“Yes, please enlighten us,” Zebedee added. “Why are you making deals with a witch?”

Marc sighed dramatically. “Fine. When we were searching for this bloke’s”—he waved at Cash—“Seraphim body, I told Eve she could go to the Empire in exchange for the truth about the Enforcer’s last days.”

“You can’t do that,” Jacine interjected. “She’s tainted. Unclean. Her soul will never pass the weighing ceremony.”

“Nobody’s weighing souls now, are they, love?” Marc replied.

“That’s not the point,” Cato added. “She’ll spread her abhorrent kind over the entire Empire. That’s—”

Cash silenced them both with a glare. “Nobody said that was going to happen.”

“Before you lot get your knickers in a knot,” Marc said, “I’m not intending to follow through. Now I know her location, I can go and finish her off. Easy.”

“Well, I have to come with you,” I said. “It’s Kitty. We should go right now.”

“She’s right for a few hours, love. We got time.”

“We’ve got time? I don’t know if I’m comfortable trusting a witch. We should leave now.”

“You can’t,” Cash said. “Do I have to explain why again?”

It was my turn to glare. “I can’t leave my friend exposed to the very first witch of all time. Eve had Kitty’s phone. There’s only one explanation for that—she’s in Margaret River with her.”

“Marc can handle it.”

“Cash, I’m not staying here.”

A deadly quiet stole over him, and he stared at me with a blank face. It was the kind of face you knew was put in place to hide tumultuous, simmering. He was disappointed. I knew it, but still, I needed to help my friends. The thought of a witch manipulating them when only a few months ago, they’d both narrowly escaped with their lives. Somehow, I’d managed to rationalize Petra’s attack on them as some sort of coincidence, but another witch after my friends? Not on my watch. They were my tether to the simple life, the dream.

Cash’s death stare promised consequences I didn’t want to push.

I swallowed. If the cost of my freedom would be converting to Seraphim, then perhaps I should do it. “Okay, you win.”

“You’ll stay?” he asked, dark brows winging up.

“Can we please discuss this back at our room?”

“I think everyone at this table deserves to be part of that decision.” He nodded to our company. “Don’t you think?”

Heat flamed my cheeks. How dare he?

Well, I was going to discuss the conversion, but now… “I’m going to help Marc. A witch has my friend. End of discussion.” I added quickly to the table, “No offense.”

“None taken, love,” Marc said.

“Then I’m coming with you.” Cash folded his arms.

“You can’t. You’re needed elsewhere—”

“I agree with that,” Marc interrupted. “Let her go. We can go through the in-between. I can protect her and act as her male guardian in public if the Simons ask.”

“Mind your own business.” Cash looked to the Tribunal for help. “A little help here?”

Jacine shrugged. Lena winced, probably from the intense emotion crowding her senses, and Zebedee lifted a brow before saying, “Perhaps the hunter is right and you’re safer on the grounds.”

“Obviously not, I was attacked!”

“This is true,” Cato added.

“I’m safer where nobody knows I’ll be. I’ll return as soon as we’ve dealt with the situation.”

“I’m still coming with you.” Cash wasn’t going to budge.

“You know as well as I that a plane ride to Australia is a day away. We don’t have the luxury of time. I’ll have to travel with Marc through the in-between and, besides, you have more important things to do than to babysit me. Like put together a team to trace the lab.”

“Enough.” Cato stood suddenly. “We all heard Marc say he has to be there in a few hours, thus he must teleport. She is not a damsel in distress. If she wants to prove her worth as the queen, then let her go. Gamekeeper, what news from the Empire?”

With those words, he sat down and I did too. Cash remained a statue of defiance at my back. I was sure I could hear a faint growl come from the base of his throat.

Marc blinked. “Right. Uh. Well, you see, it’s like…” He took a deep breath then met my eyes. “You’re going to have to return with me to the Empire.”

“No.” The word came out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Sorry, not happening. For starters, I have no body to return to, and second, I—”

“Love, if you don’t, then there will be repercussions. They won’t like it.”

Everyone at the table sat taller.

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.

“The Queen’s Inner Council,” Marc replied. “Her Guard. The United Peace-Keeping Force. You name it. They haven’t alerted the rest of the Empire that she’s gone—yet—but they can only hold off for so long. You have to return at some point and face the consequences of leaving.”

The air in the room dramatically dropped a few degrees and I hugged myself. “Can’t we just ignore them? They’ve put up with the queen being a recluse for a long time. Surely they can put up with me not coming back for a while.” A very long while. Like, forever.

Marc snorted. “Precisely, love. It’s been a hell of a long time, even by our immortal standards, to let the queen get away with her idiosyncrasies. She was there to justify them, now there is no one. They now know you’re not there, ruling, but here, playing games. They’re restless, and a few of their key Council members are here as well. If they don’t get everyone back, they’re open wide to a hostile takeover.”

“What? Other Council members? Who?” Jacine asked.

The rest of the table leaned in with avid attention.

“I’ve said too much.” Marc rubbed his eyes. “I can’t reveal who they are, you know that, else it could sway the Game and—”

“So they’re Players?” Jacine said, looking to her companions with curiosity. “There aren’t too many Players left, so it has to be some of them, perhaps even someone at this table.”

Until now, Lincoln and Wren had stayed silent and inconspicuous. At Jacine’s words, they both sank a little further in their chairs.

“Screw the Game, Marc. It’s war, now,” Thurstan added. “Get the Empire to come now.”

“They can’t open the gate from their side, you know that. Not without the queen there.”

“Then what repercussions will there be?”

“Love, they can’t walk through a portal here, but they will find a way. Someone smart enough will find a work around to your bio-key needed to open the gate. Because most of them believe you’ll be back, and they are loyal, they're giving you some leeway. They agree for you to wrap things up here, and as soon as there’s no danger to the Empire, they’ll be ready on their end for when you open the gate here. Until then, I’ll be taking every Player’s soul back as soon as I’m done with the bloody witch.”

Silence drifted over the table in a restless wave. Lincoln and Wren glanced at each other. I knew what they were thinking. They had an expiration date.

“So that’s it, then? Players are ordered home?” Strangely, relief washed over me as the words came out of my mouth. To have the decision removed from my hands was a weight lifted off my shoulders.

“We need our Players,” Zebedee said. “What’s left of them, anyway.”

“I concur,” said Cato. “We’re in a war. We need every soldier we can get and—” His final words caught in his throat. “I don’t want to die after all this time. I want to see my home once more.”

A murmur of agreement rippled around the table.

I got to my feet. “Let’s go then. I’ll go with Marc to deal with Eve. Cash, you go and find the lab and do whatever you have to do to secure the gate. I don’t even know where it is but let’s be proactive about sending you all home. Eliminate the danger first, then the gate.” Then a simple life with my friends. Speaking of which, time was ticking away, and I had to get to Kitty.

I expected defiance on Cash’s face, but instead found despair.

“Walk with me to our rooms,” I asked him, hoping to temper the situation. I glanced at Marc. “Meet me at the lab in five. Then we’ll go.”

“Make it twenty, love. I’m hungry and need cake. Hmm. Maybe thirty, depending on what cake the cook has made.”

“But—”

“Your friend is safe for now. No need to rush. I told her we’d be there in a few hours.”

“We’re not done here, Marc. You can finish explaining some things before you go,” Jacine said.

Marc opened his mouth to protest but was stopped by the questions of his fellow Tribunal members. I walked out.

CHAPTER FIVE

I WALKED THROUGH the cool castle halls to our suite. The further I walked, the more my heart grew heavy. Cash hadn’t followed. By the time I made it up two flights of enormous stairs to our room, I had talked myself into him not coming at all. He was too angry. The last time I’d gone against his wishes, I left him to spy on my father, Bruce. Cash hadn’t been happy. Furious, in fact. I ended up dying a few times (yes, actually dying) and he blamed his not being there for that. If it weren’t for the souls sacrificed inside me, I’d have been a goner. Now I had no souls inside me to sacrifice and if things went pear-shaped with Eve, it could be the end of me. But this was Kitty. He had to understand. I’d do the same for him.

Outside our large wooden doors, I pinched the bridge between my nose and took a deep breath, then entered.

The room was large, opulent and covered in maroon tapestries and antique portraits I was sure someone famous had painted. Many faces stared back at me, but not the one I truly wanted. I wasn’t even sure if Cash would come. My vivid imagination had him broodily staring out the window downstairs, watching the rain make muddy puddles in the ground, contemplating our relationship as much as I. The door opened.

Cash walked in and my heart skipped a beat.

His fierce gaze locked onto me.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi yourself.” He closed the door behind him and shrugged off his leather jacket. “You thought I wouldn’t come didn’t you?”

I scoffed. “No.”

He scanned my face with a small smile. “Sure you did. You were imagining the worst. Probably dreaming up some wild scenario about me brooding and eating a bucket of ice cream or something.”

“Close. You were watching the rainfall. From a window.” I grinned. “You know me so well.”

“That’s right. I do. And you can’t get rid of me that easy.” He placed his warm hands on my shoulders. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

“That you don’t know how our room stays so immaculate when we never see a maid in here?”

“I’m serious, Roo.”

My hands circled his wrists. “I will be fine with Marc.”

That despair I sampled earlier flickered again in his eyes. “You’re not at full power. You’re a sitting duck. There are plenty of Players—even Watchers—out there who want to make a name by killing you. I don’t even trust the Tribunal. I can’t lose you again.”

“You aren’t losing me. I’ll be back in a day. Two tops.”

“No, you don’t understand. You don’t remember, but I do.”

“Remember what?” Then it hit me. “Oh. It’s because I’m going with Marc, and that was like the last time you saw the queen—I mean me—before you lost me for good. The last time before I made you do those unspeakable things.” I cupped his face and rubbed my thumb along his rough stubble. “Cash. I’m coming back, and you know I’ll never do that again, but I have to make sure Kitty is okay. Please tell me you understand that.” A burst of fear froze my lungs, and I had to force myself to calm. Marc said Kitty was fine, I had to hold on to that.

But fine for how long?

He stepped away from me to a small tray near the arched window that held a crystal decanter and glasses. He poured himself a drink. The dull light from the window hit the amber liquid as it sloshed into the Old Fashioned glass. Little brown sparkles danced around the whiskey. He took a deep breath and I could see him struggling to keep his emotions in check. He shot the drink back and then poured a second glass, which he held out as an offering. “So why are you afraid to convert?”

I accepted and swirled the liquid. There were so many feelings his words conjured. I couldn’t drink. I didn’t have the taste for it.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

His steady gaze answered me.

“Okay. I guess I am afraid of the unknown, that I’ll change, that if I remember more than they say I will, I won’t be able to handle it. The queen caused a lot of pain. It’s not just the people in this world, it’s the land and the oceans and the horrible mess humanity is making. Did you know that one of the biggest contributions to global warming is the methane from cows bred for human consumption?”

Cash’s eyebrow arched. “You’re worried about the cows?”

“No, I mean, yes, but… it’s the effect humanity is having on the planet. Don’t you see it’s all my fault if I brought people here in the first place?”

“You don’t make every choice for every person, so don’t feel guilty for their mistakes.”

“But they’re my mistakes. I just don’t remember them. Once I convert, I might start remembering, and then I’ll have nowhere to hide except to answer for my original choices. Do you know what I mean?”

“So are you going to run away from your life forever? Lena said the probability of you remembering is slight. And… You’re the fucking queen, Roo. You answer when you want to answer, if at all.” His temper flared, and he gave a deprecating flinch then retrieved the still full glass from me and put it on the table.

“Let’s be honest,” I continued, “the Tribunal tolerate me. They don’t need me there. I can sense their power. Each of them is strong enough to rule instead of me. There’s just so much that doesn’t add up and I don’t think I’m capable of figuring it out. Anyway, we don’t really have time to talk about this now.”

“No one said you had to do it alone. You don’t have to do it at all.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t leave you to deal with this all on your own. Not when I created it. I just… never mind.”

Eagerly he closed the gap between us. “I don’t want you to hurt. I want you safe.”

“But I have to go and see Kitty. Nothing’s going to happen to me. Don’t worry.”

“It’s not the things you intend that happen, it’s always the unexpected that gets in the way.”

I kissed him gently on the lips, hoping to placate him, because I’d run out of words and my stomach was being pulled into knots with each passing second that I waited to leave for Kitty.

“If you converted, I’d feel better,” Cash said, looking down on me. “You’ve only scratched the surface of your true abilities. You need more training. More protection. As it is, every time I think of being separated from you, I can’t breathe for fear of losing you. The two weeks I spent hunting down those rogues with Jed, I thought of you every minute of the day. Then this morning happened and now I can’t even leave you alone in this supposedly safe fortress.”

“Cash—”

“Don’t go. Stay here. With me.”

For a minute, I thought we’d never agree. A flicker of doubt flashed before me. What if this was it? What if we were too different now?

“Don’t start imagining the worst again.”

My eyes widened, caught in the act.

“Roo, you’ve never been in love the way I am. You don’t know how this feels.”

I frowned. “I love you just as much as you love me.”

“It’s not the same. You’ve never felt this debilitating”—he hit his chest with his palm—“intensity of emotion. You’ve had one-night stands and childish crushes. You think you know what love is, but you’ve got nothing to compare it too.”

I stepped back. “Don’t belittle my feelings.”

“I don’t mean to offend, but it’s the truth. I remember everything we went through, ever. You’ve only got the last few months to draw on.”

He lifted a finger and trailed it down the vein in my neck, lighting the fuse that shot straight to my core. My eyes fluttered closed at the warm spread of pleasure and my body rocketed into turmoil. Part needed more touch, part churned to go and save my friends.

“I remember everything about you,” he whispered. “How you like to be touched. Where you like to be kissed. The mewling sound you make when I—” He leisurely stroked his hand down my front, fingertips tracing the curve of my collarbone, down, down, to the swell of my chest where he rolled my nipple through my clothing. That fuse he lit earlier sparked again and I arched into him.

“Not fair, Cash.” Chagrin warmed my face, and I glared at him. Pure want echoed back at me. My reaction only spurred him on.

He snapped our bodies together and leaned down, hot breath near my ear. “You love me to tease you, and you pretend not to like it, but you do.” He nipped my jawline. “I know this because I know you. You’ve only begun to know me.”

Despite myself, I softened against him. He had a point. I thought he was the love of my life, but it was a short life. His was immense. Not just the one as a god, as the Queen’s Enforcer, but the thousands of past lives as a human on Earth. I didn’t know all his idiosyncrasies yet, but he knew mine. “You’re right.”

He stared. “I am?”

“Yes.” I snuggled into him, my breath coming in hard, ready and eager to make peace. I’d had enough fighting.

“So, you’ll stay.”

“No, I meant, I’ll do it. I’ll convert.” It was my turn to nip along his jaw, prickly and hard.

“This isn’t a trick, is it?”

I licked. He shivered.

“No. I want to live a long life with you. I want to learn everything about you. You proposed to me wanting the same thing, and this body will pass its use-by date long before yours. You’ll outlive me by far. I want the chance to fall in love with you, over and over again. So,” I brushed my fingers on his torso, under his shirt, “baby steps, okay? Let me go with Marc and as soon as I’m back, I’ll convert.”

“Baby steps?” He captured my teasing hands and pulled them away from him. “Why not convert now?”

“You know very well the blood infusion takes time we don’t have. We’re late as it is. There’s no telling what Eve is doing to Kitty. The last time she faced a witch, she barely escaped with her life, remember? Remember her crisp skin and singed hair?” I still had nightmares about the cracking sound the knife made when Sabina sliced her skin to open up her flesh for the healing hex.

My heart leapt into my throat thinking about it.

“Okay. I can live with two days,” he conceded.

“I love you.” A weight lifted off my shoulders.

“Two days. That’s all.”

“And when I come back, we can talk wedding. You and me.”

“I can’t wait to be married to you.” His lids grew heavy and he tugged me in tight. “Then I will have all the time in the world to explore baby steps with you.”

A grin split my face and I kissed him, unable to pull my smile. “Thank you.”

“You will be thanking me in a minute.” His voice, so close to my ear, all masculine and hot, shot sparks into my nerve endings. I melted into him, compliance he took well advantage of as he directed me backward to the bed.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “For being okay with me going.”

“Don’t get sucked into any hair-brained schemes of Marc’s,” he said, peppering my face with kisses. “And let Marc deal with the witch.” He lifted my shirt. “And stay out of sight. Out of the media, and—”

I stopped his words with my lips to his. He gave a grunt of surprise then deepened the kiss, delving into my mouth with his tongue. His hidden essence came alive and called to me on a basic level. My blood sang with a savage need. I grabbed hold of his shirt with my two fists and twisted the fabric, pulling him back onto the mattress of the four-poster bed. He used his hands to brace himself on either side of my head as we fell heavily. His lips left mine for a second from the impact, then he was back again.

“God, I missed this,” he muttered into my mouth. He made long, deep strokes with his tongue.

I was beyond words at that point. I lifted his shirt. Cash tugged it back down and ran his warm hands slowly up my arms to caress my neck. He tasted the spots his hands stroked.

I writhed under his touch and pulled his shirt back up.

He pulled back, eyes glassy. “What’s the rush?”

“I have to meet Marc soon.”

“He can wait.” He resumed his exploration of my body.

I hooked my legs around his hips and popped the button on his pants. “I can’t.”

“No. You’re right,” he said, getting off me in a rush.

“That I can’t wait?” I said in a daze.

He readjusted himself and righted his clothes. “That you have to go, and I’ve waited weeks to be with you. What’s two more days when we will have forever soon.”

“What?” I sat up, everything in disarray, suddenly feeling bereft. “We can be quick. I promise.”

Heat flared in his eyes. “When I have you, Roo, I want to explore every last inch of your body. I want to take it slow, one step at a time.”

I smirked. “One step at a time?”

He smoldered. “One step. Then another. Slow, deliberate baby steps.”

I grabbed a pillow and covered my face then made an exasperated sound. When I came up for air, he was laughing at me.

CHAPTER SIX

WHEN I MATERIALIZED in Margaret River with water around my ankles, I was in a tight, naked embrace with Marc. This damned mode of traveling was so inconvenient to my dignity. I pulled away and cast him a reproachful look until he clothed me with an illusion-construct, then sloshed toward the sand bank to have a look at our surroundings. We were near the white sands where a brown river mouth met the turquoise ocean and the water melded. The early morning sun caressed my head, and the warm ocean breeze tickled my face. Life teemed around me and every neuron in my body electrified. The water wasn’t just cool and liquid, it purred and buzzed with every soft wave that caressed my ankles. My senses picked up the very soul of the earth.

Lately, it seemed as though the more time I spent in the wild, the more I wanted to roll into it like a cat in catnip. Nature wasn’t pre-conditioned like a human or Seraphim soul, it was raw, unadulterated and naive at the same time. I felt as though I should stay a while and get to know it.

It felt as though it was trying to tell me something.

The more I looked at it, the more I was drawn in, lulled by the rhythmic wash of the waves. The sunlight on the water played in patterns before my eyes, dancing and hypnotizing me. My mind seemed to fall into it, immersing. I could almost hear… something. A conversation. Many. More. I dipped my finger into the water and watched the incoherent voices swirl around. What was it saying?

My heart galloped in my chest and I had a sense that I wasn’t doing something. Not just finding Kitty but something else. I had complete awareness of my surroundings and my mission with Marc, but below me, the ocean almost wailed and keened in despair. It thought I had forgotten it. Left it behind. It was as though it was sentient and it knew me.

Marc made a sound to my right and brought my attention back to focus on our surroundings.

“Why does it hurt?” I asked Marc.

Concern laced his voice. “Did I hurt you in the move, love?”

“No,” I said quietly, eyes and mind still trying to decipher the code of the ocean. “I meant this. The water. Never mind. Forget it. I’m being stupid.”

When I looked up, Marc’s intent gaze was on my face.

I pulled my hand out of the water and trudged to the beach, trying to laugh off my unsettledness. “Marc, when I said take us to Margaret River, Australia, I didn’t mean actually in the Margaret River.”

“Can’t help it, love.” Marc stood next to me, naked as the day he was born. He put his hands on his hips and breathed in deep. “Ah. Smell that? Smells like—”

“Clothes, Marc.”

“Well, no, I was going to say nature. Smells like nature at her finest.”

“I meant, put on some clothes. You should have done it the second you did mine. People could walk around the corner any minute. We need to get to Kitty’s pronto.” I glanced nervously down the beach. All the beaches were beautiful here, but since this was the town’s namesake, it was a popular family tourist spot.

“Right. Clothes.” In seconds he wore summer shorts and a polo shirt.

“Are you sure my clothes won’t disappear?” I asked Marc after seeing how easy he made it look to materialize clothes.

“Although that makes an appealing thought, regrettably no. Once I’ve created the illusion, it’s bound to you.”

“So, it’s real then.”

“In a sense. It’s not made with the same atom arrangement as fabric or leather, but… call it a carbon copy.”

“So when I do eventually need to take it off, I can?”

“Sure. Let’s go with that.”

“You don’t know?”

He shrugged. “I don’t usually need to. The in-between takes care of it for me.”

“But it’s organic, right? Shouldn’t it pass through?”

“It is, but it’s a copy. The magnetic fields holding it together don’t hold up through the in-between for long. Complicated stuff, love.”

“I just want to know I’m not going to flash someone.”

“All good.”

For a moment I was struck with awe. He knew how to arrange atoms! And he talked about it as though it were nothing but an afterthought.

“You’re very clever, Marc.”

“I know. Don’t tell anyone.”

The humor dropped from my face and I frowned thinking about what we might find when we caught up with Eve. Marc was insistent there was nothing to worry about, and I liked believing him, but was I being naive?

“You miss it, don’t you?” Marc asked, watching me with curious eyes that reflected the azure sky around us.

“Miss what?”

His gaze swept our surroundings. “This. Everything. The feel of the sand against your feet. The connection it gives. The communion.”

We stared out at the ocean for a beat.

“You and I both had an affinity with it, love. You more so than anyone alive. This planet was to be your saving grace. Being married to the king, you helped him conquer many lands, but you were never quite okay with the violent destruction, and then he died. You came here to make amends with the universe, to create a world at peace.”

My eyes fluttered closed. I reopened myself to the sun and let the power of life wash over me. The roar of distance waves, the whisper of the wind, the call of seagulls in the air. “I feel as though there’s something there I need to connect with, but I don’t know what it is. I thought this uneasiness I feel is because I don’t want the responsibility of being the queen, or maybe it’s because I just want to run away and live my life without all this Game nonsense, but there’s something else. I sense something else calling me. It’s like I’ve written a list of things to do and there’s an empty spot, or something blacked out.”

“Love, you were supremely connected to the core of the Universe. It’s the real reason you became so powerful. Somehow, you had a way of listening that connected you to the very spark of creation.”

“You make me sound like—”

“Mother Nature? Where do you think the name came from?” He kicked the sand. “It was the nickname your son threw at you. He meant it as a jest, but there was deep hurt in that name. He was jealous of the time you spent nurturing this young planet instead of him. Don’t get me wrong, you didn’t actually make the planet, but you nurtured it.”

“I don’t remember a minute of that tumultuous relationship the queen had with her son.” I cleared my throat, uncomfortable with the association. “Whether she meant to hurt him, or he meant to hurt her, I don’t feel I have any right to judge. If I meet him again, I’d like to think we could start fresh.”

“That’s where you are wrong, love. You are the judge. The only one linked to this great power we were all born into.”

The ocean swelled as if in response to his words, crashing on the shore, reaching for my feet. But it wasn’t rejoicing, it needed, and I felt it to my bones. I had a small inkling what Cash meant when he said my powers had only scratched the surface. When I converted to Seraphim, I’d open the floodgates. Performance anxiety spiked in my chest at the knowledge of the responsibility that power brought. “I can never live up to that expectation.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Don’t I? I sense the desperation in the wild. It needs me to fight for it, but I don’t know what I’m fighting for.”

“Cows.”

I laughed and slanted a look at him. “You’ve been speaking with Cash, haven’t you?”

“Maybe. Maybe I just think you should be forgetting about having a fresh start with the brat prince. He made his bed, and then he had to lay in it. Save your fresh start for someone else.”

A memory flashed before me. My sister, Leila, lying in a hospital bed. The witch had pushed out her soul and the body was left an empty husk, breathing on automatic. Petra had done something to her to keep the host body alive, ready and waiting for her final takeover. I remembered how pale and lonely Leila looked. Dull, damp hair plastered to her forehead. Sickly skin and hospital smells in the air. The isolation of it all struck me so much that on that day I swore I would fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. Those who were too weak. Too inexperienced. People like Kitty and Alvin. I wondered if it was possible, or if I had already failed and that’s why the queen ran away from her life of duty. She’d run away until she became me.

Someone with no memory.

Baby steps.

“So, why are we so far from Kitty’s?” I asked, keen to change the subject.

He looked at me as though I’d grown two heads. “And risk materializing in the middle of a wall? Love, I’ve never been there, I don’t know the layout, hence I could wind up in the middle of a solid structure.”

“Oh. That makes sense. Would you be hurt if that happened?”

“No. But you might. Sephie had limited travel abilities and we never tested the extent of them. It’s been eons since you were Seraphim on this planet last. Your original Seraphim body is gone. Your soul may have downloaded into a Nephilim body now, but I remind you, it is eternal. There’s no telling what evolution your soul gained from being linked to all this creation.”

Or devolution, I wanted to say. Because surely that same soul had been linked to destruction. The mention of my alter ego’s nickname silenced me. Sephie. It was too hard to think about. Right now I should be focusing on my friend. One step at a time. That I could do.

I shielded my eyes from the sun and surveyed our surroundings. I knew that if we continued along the beach, we’d find access to a road, but it was still a long drive to town. We had no phone and no money. “How are we going to get there, then? We’re running out of time.”

“One of two ways,” he said. “You point me in the general direction, and I hop to a place I can see where we won’t get noticed by the Simons. Or, two, we can hitchhike. Actually three, I can create a fake money-construct and catch a cab. What do you think?”

“I’m thinking I don’t have the time or patience for hitchhiking or waiting for a cab. Let’s hop.”

“Hop it is. Right-O, which direction, love.” He slung a casual arm around my shoulder.

Before long we stood in front of Kitty’s townhouse at the center of Margaret River. I was back in my illusion of clothes and was about to knock on the door when I had a sudden case of the jitters. I pushed my awareness beyond the door and searched for signs of life. No energy signatures. Was it empty?

I knocked.

We waited for a good five minutes before knocking again.

No answer.

The house was empty.

“No one’s home,” I said.

Marc rotated like a lost puppy. “What do we do now?”

“What time is it?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Right. Forgot who I was speaking to.” I stepped out of the shade of the portico to check the height of the sun. I had to step away from the garage to get a good look. Mid-morning. “We don’t have my phone so we can’t call. What did Eve say when you spoke to her on the phone?”

Marc shrugged. “Just to come here.”

“Here, here? Or here as in Margaret River, or—”

“Sorry love. I didn’t ask and she didn’t say.”

I stifled the urge to palm my face and took a deep breath. “I guess we can head to the bar. They might be there.”

Marc rubbed his hands together like a jolly teen. “A bar. Now you’re talking.”

“Pipe down, Marc. They might not be working. Eve has Kitty, remember?”

“Bah.” He swatted the air in my direction. “We’ll have that sorted in no time.”

The caw of a large crow sounded above us. A ticking sound on the tin roof of the garage drew our attention. The black bird hopped along the gutter and watched us with beady eyes. It’s aura was too loud for an animal.

“Familiar,” I said, grim.

“Bollocks. Just what we need.” He flung his hand out in a menacing action. “Let’s be done with it, yeah?”

The crow cawed again. This time with purpose. It hopped a few times from foot to foot as if it wanted to tell us something.

“Wait,” I cried, halting Marc’s simmering fingers. “It’s too coincidental that a familiar shows up when we’re looking for a witch, isn’t it?”

“The bloody thing is going to attack,” Marc said. “You can see it in its eyes.”

“No, I don’t think so. He might be a message from Eve. Witches can communicate with their familiars. That means I probably can too. Maybe I can work out what it’s trying to tell us.”

“But it wants to peck my eyes out. Look at it. Diseased and full of lies. Get rid of it.”

The bird watched us with interest, cocking its head.

“Not until we find out what it’s trying to tell us.”

Marc looked despondent for a minute then slapped his thigh with a revelation. “Once I saw that bleedin’ parasitic leader communicate with a spirit she charmed around her fingers. Remember that slippery shadow that followed me back in the States? She spoke to it. You used to have souls swimming around inside your head, yeah? Maybe one of them left a clue how to do it?”

“You mean Petra?”

“Gesundheit, love.”

“Pardon?”

“That’s what the civilized folk in Germany say when you sneeze.”

“I didn’t sneeze.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, I said, ‘You mean Petra?’. You know, the witch swimming around my head.”

“Not sure I’m following.”

Recently, I’d fought an ancient witch called Petra and her minion. Like Marc said, I had swallowed their souls, but the result had been catastrophic. I’d almost lost control of my body, with me trapped inside. Petra’s living Grimoire was one of the souls keeping me company, but since I ejected them all to save myself, I had only my memories of that time left. I couldn’t rifle for answers through them anymore. I had to rely on their time with me, and I spent most of that ignoring their presence.

“Petra was the witch who dumped me in the cave, remember?” Honestly, having a conversation with Marc was sometimes like teaching a toddler to tie his shoelaces. “Was that the witch you’re talking about? The one who spoke with—what did you call it—a slippery shadow?”

“Nope. Definitely not her. It was the first one. The one we’re here for. I once saw her use her ways to manipulate the little black cloud beastie. She whispered to it like a baby.”

“Whispered?”

That got me thinking. The way witches worked their magic was through frequencies. I often heard auras, as well as saw them. A loud buzz was more like a cry for attention or a high energy emotion whereas a flat, quiet sort of hum was usually someone hiding something. I could tell when my father lied when his aura completely flatlined.

Witches had essentially hacked the frequency of nature and for some reason, I was inexplicably similar to them. I’d put it down to my time with a witch’s soul within me, but now I was clean, I could still manipulate DNA.

“Was Sephie ever able to do that? Commune with nature?” I asked.

“She was nature, love. As are you if you unlock your full potential.”

I slumped. Speaking with familiars could possibly be another facet of my abilities. I wouldn’t be having trouble right now if I had listened to Cash earlier and converted to Seraphim. Instead of staring dumbly at a cawing bird, I could be communicating with it, and finding out where Eve was.

“You want my opinion?” Marc asked.

“I’m sure you’re going to give it to me anyway.”

“Eve knows who you are. She claimed to have deciphered your true nature before anyone else. This could be a test. And if it is, then surely you’re capable of passing it. Trust your instincts.”

“My instincts are telling me that bird has something to say.”

“There you go. Start there.”

I took back my toddler remark. “You know Marc, sometimes you can be very adult.”

He smirked, chuffed. “Like I said before, love. Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to uphold.”

He made a symbolic step backwards, indicating for me to take a turn at whatever it was I intended. A deep breath in and out and I relaxed. I could easily draw in the familiar’s soul and know everything, but I refused to do that. The consequences of soul-eating last time still rattled my cage every time I remembered. There had to be another way. Well, maybe I didn’t need to absorb the soul, maybe I just needed to somehow touch it.

Or, I could try listening harder, see if that worked. First, I’d have to move away from Marc. His godly aura was a little overpowering compared to anything else.

I stepped closer until I was right underneath the bird and craned my neck to view it better. There was still a lot of noise in the area.

“Would you mind stepping further back?” I asked Marc. “Your aura is quite loud.”

He took a giant backwards step onto the small patch of garden grass. “Here?”

“Further.”

Another step. “Here.”

I closed my eyes. “Nope. I can still hear you.”

A crashing sound. Marc cursed under his breath. When I opened my eyes, he was in the garden bed, on his rear end in the middle of a daisy bush.

“Sorry!” I called. “But, that’s good. The energy of the plant life around you seems to have blocked some of your vibe. Don’t move.”

I turned back to the bird who gave a small caw of approval. “Don’t get cheeky, bird. He’ll fry you to kingdom come. Right. What do you want to tell me?”

It squawked.

I locked onto it’s unique signature and was able to filter all else out. The incessant buzz of nature dimmed, Marc’s dynamic energy quieted, and I shut my eyes to hone in on the bird’s energy with razor sharp focus. Its frequency pulsed at me with an odd rhythmic beat, almost like putting my fingers on a pumping audio speaker I couldn’t hear. Or, perhaps, as though I held my fingers to someone’s throat as they spoke. I both felt and heard at once.

There was definitely a message there, a repeated series of patterns.

I made a frustrated groan. “I can’t do it! It’s like trying to read lips with zero experience.”

“You can do it, love. I have faith in you.”

“Argh.” I lashed out at the bird with my sixth sense, hoping to connect somehow with its energy.

Usually, when I sought contact with a being like this, the energy connected to me like a tap being turned on. Life-force flowed unfettered and fast. This time, I turned the tap on slowly and let it trickle then flow around me, and I listened.

“Say it again,” I urged the bird. When it cawed, understanding pecked at my mind. “Almost there.” I inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Again.”

“One in the bush, two in the vineyard.”

“Vineyard?” I opened my eyes. The bird hopped in glee. “You mean my old home?”

It hopped again then gave a short squawk. Instead of an indeterminate sound, I understood in the affirmative. I was right.

Elation lifted me. I grinned and whipped around to face Marc. “I’m right!”

The daisy bush completely camouflaged his body. His head popped up. “I knew you had it in you.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

WE ARRIVED IN one of the Urser Estate vineyards, on a sandy path between some vines. I noticed the dying grapes first and the eternal sadness leeching up through my bare feet. Just like the crow, I felt an overwhelming urge to communicate with nature. Under my toes, the thrum of energy had a pulse and a beat. I couldn’t decipher it, but I picked out emotions, none of them good.

I reached out to gather a shriveled grape into my fingers. “It’s a sultana.”

“Yes, it all looks rather neglected,” Marc said.

“Bruce said he would sell the place, but… he obviously hasn’t.” I walked along the path, dodging the gnarled and gangly vines growing wild and free. A sparkle of light caught my attention and I narrowed in on a perfectly formed cobweb, intricate and complex, and perfect. There in the center, waiting for its next meal, was a stunning spider, gently swaying in the breeze. A crow cawed nearby and hopped between skeletal vines, pecking sultanas for food. Usually this time of year, I could walk down these aisles and pluck a juicy grape from the plentiful clusters, but the summer had been harsh and the vines had not been watered. I kept walking and emerged in the small field in front of the manor where even the grass and weeds were drained of color and crisp to walk on. It broke my heart. The Urser Manor loomed on the other side and I swore then and there that I would return. I would bring this place back to its former glory. I wanted to save the planet, but this would be my first step. My baby step.

“Been rather busy trying to take over the world, I suspect,” Marc added.

A sharp surge in energy within the house snapped my attention that way. “Eve. She’s in there and she knows we’re here.”

Marc stopped me by a hand to the shoulder. “I need to tell you something about the witch, love.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly.

“She said she met you before. Her name is Sabina.”

I gaped. “You mean the nice witch who helped me heal Alvin and Kitty after Petra and the Inquisitor?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what she did for you, but I can tell you this, she’s a very good liar. Almost had me fooled.”

“That’s unexpected.” I blinked a few times, unsure what to make of it. “Thinking of the way she acted around me—all calm and kind—it’s hard to believe she helped me heal Alvin and Kitty for her own personal gain. She didn’t seem like that kind of person, but I suppose she is a witch. What does she want with me?”

“She wants to go to the Empire. They all do.”

“It’s not the paradise they all think it is. Not when I ran away from it to come here.”

Marc studied me for a minute. “We all have differing ideas about paradise, love. Belief is a funny thing. It can make you survive when all hope is lost, and it can cast you down and do despicable acts. One thing is for sure, it breeds distrust. One man’s god is another’s devil. Go in with both eyes wide open.”

“Once again, you are too smart for me.”

“I like this compliment thing. Keep them coming.”

“Well, I guess we should go and see what she says.”

We walked to the front of the Federation style house and up the porch steps to the door. It was open. We let ourselves in.

From the moment I crossed the threshold, a piercing sense of otherness washed over me. It was more than a startling sense of déja vu. It was the dusty emptiness of a home void of humanity—a skeleton if you will. This was the home I’d spent a good portion of my life in. My sister and I had never gotten along, but she had confessed her wishes for a fresh start right where I stood. She’d come running down the polished mahogany balustrade staircase and shoved her jar of nightmares into my hands. It had been the first step in what I’d hoped was a new beginning for us, but it was the end. That was the last time I’d seen my sister for who she truly was. And then she was gone. Petra possessed her that day.

Why had Eve chosen this place?

To unsettle me, no doubt.

In front of me was the living room. Two brown leather Chesterfields sat facing each other in front of an antique fireplace. The room was flanked on either side by staircases that led up to the second level where the bedrooms were. On the walls, photographs of the ancestors of my birth mother peered down at me. I knew now that she was just a pawn to my father. He claimed to have loved her, but she was only a surrogate to his cause. There were many women around the world he impregnated for the purpose of making soulless Nephilim bodies for our Seraphim souls to inhabit in this insidious Game. The Watchers bred with humans, the Nephilim bred with Nephilim. For a god to take away the chance of having a normal child from a human, like my mother, was horrendous. The more I thought about it, the more it rankled. She thought she was giving birth to new life—a new soul. Instead she got me.

As the queen, I created life on this planet, but I also created the Game which was fast becoming the opposite of life. I’m glad it’s ending.

We followed Eve’s signature into the kitchen where she sat at the table drinking a cup of coffee and toying with her smart phone. She looked the same as the Sabina I remembered. Middle-aged. Slim and in a drab blue dress with a white Peter Pan collar. Kind eyes, short brown hair, and a calming aura that projected trust and peace. The perfect motherly type. I half expected to smell cookies baking in the oven, but I could only smell her rose perfume.

A quick scan of the house, and I knew we were alone.

“Where is my friend?” I asked.

She lifted her head and smiled. I had to remind myself Marc said she was a liar. That calming sense projecting from her aura must be fake. My father could control his aura, she probably could too.

“Good to see you again, Roo.” The kindness dropped from her eyes as she took in Marc. “Gamekeeper.”

“Witch.” Marc rolled his eyes at her and then made his way to the fridge. He opened the door and took a peak inside only to shut it with a screwed up nose. “Disgusting.”

Eve scrutinized me. “I see your aura has changed since I last saw you. I take it you’ve managed to get rid of the extra baggage weighing you down?”

“Let’s get this straight, Sabina… Eve, or whatever your name is. I’m not here to chat. I’m here for my friend. Where is she?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

“What?”

“Well, as you can see, she’s not here.”

“But you said if we didn’t come, there would be suffering!”

“I had to get you here somehow, didn’t I. And to be honest, I wasn’t after you, dear. It was your Gamekeeper friend here. He owes me.”

Marc stopped his investigation of the cupboards and turned around. He leant his hip on the kitchen counter top. “So, Little Red’s friend is okay?”

“I assume so. I just stole her phone.”

Marc’s face lit up and he turned to me. “I guess we can get this over quicker than we planned. Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?”

“I want to check that she’s telling the truth first.” I used telekinesis to drag Eve’s phone across the table to my hand. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I borrow this for a minute, since it’s not yours anyway.”

“Be my guest.”

I dialed Alvin’s number. After two rings, he answered.

“Hello?”

“Alvin, it’s me.”

“Who’s me, and why do you have Kitty’s phone? Did you steal it?”

“It’s Roo, you doofus.”

“Roo You-Doofus? Sorry I don’t know a Roo You-Doofus.”

“Alvin!”

A muffled laugh on the other end. “Oh, well, I wouldn’t know what your voice sounds like anymore. Can’t remember the last time I spoke to you as you only seem to have ears for my soon to be wife. Should I be offended you haven’t actually called me?”

“You know we’ve had super secret wedding stuff to talk about.”

There was scuffling and feedback across the line and then Kitty came on. “Babe! You found my phone. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I totally lost it! The last time I remembered seeing it was when I lent it to that nice nurse about… ahem… never mind. Wait, does that mean you’re in Margs?” Her voice sounded strained with the last words.

“Yes I’m in Margs. Are you okay?”

“I am now. I’m super excited. We can talk wedding plans in person. You can try on the bridesmaid dress!”

“Sounds good. Where are you?”

“At The Cauldron.”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon.” I hung up the phone and eyed off Eve. “You didn’t hurt her, why?”

“I told you once, and the fact still stands. We’re not all like that rotten soul, Petra. Some of us are trying to just get along.”

Even though her aura conveyed her words to be true, a niggling feeling in my belly said not to trust her. It could also be the fact Marc stood behind Eve’s back miming “Don’t trust her” over and over.

He walked around so she could see him. “But that’s not the truth, is it Eve? You don’t want to ‘just get along’. You want to go all the way to the Empire.”

She took a deep breath and sat back down. Her finger traced a pattern on the table and her eyes looked inwards. “You know what I want. I have gone as far as I can on this planet. I’ve tried to make peace with the humans, but it’s not enough. They still treat women as second rate beings.”

“Are you for real?” I said. “That’s because you witches invade female bodies! We’d made good headway for women’s liberation before you all waged war on humans, trying to take what you wanted. What did you think they’d let the possessed roam around willy-nilly?”

“I admit, the war was a mistake. Since then, we’ve tried everything in our power to co-exist peacefully. We’ve healed their number one disease. We take only dying hosts and give them a new lease of life. They still treat us as separate.”

“That’s because of witches like Petra.”

Eve flattened her lips and turned away from me to Marc, clearly having had enough of our argument. “I want what you promised.”

“I don’t have to do anything when I can end you right now,” he replied. “If you ask me, all this nonsense can be dealt with by removing the source of the problem.”

Eve’s head snapped up with a scowl. “You made a blood pact with me.”

Marc shrugged and made a show of checking his nails, apparently bored.

Eve looked to me for support. “Tell him I’ve done nothing but help you. I’m not like the others.”

“Why did you lie about your identity?” I asked.

“Because I would’ve scared you off. And because I knew who you truly are. I kept your secret.”

“My secret?”

“Yes, that you’re the queen reincarnated in a Nephilim body. I knew the first moment I laid eyes on you.” She leaned forward in her chair. “Do you want to know how I knew?”

My eyes darted to Marc. Eve’s words must have triggered his curiosity because he stopped inspecting his nails and focused his full attention on the witch.

“I recognized your soul.” Eve cocked her head. “I was one of the first humans you created. Don’t you think a child always remembers her mother?”

I shivered. Gross. “I’m not your mother. And I didn’t create witches.”

“You’re everyone’s mother, dear. And you have the power to give and take it all away.”

“Right, I think that’s quite enough from you, witch.” Marc lifted his hand, his aura crackled with surges of energy.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Eve said calmly. “I have information you need.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Don’t buy into her lies, Roo. She’s full of shite.”

“I know where Urser’s lab is. The exact location,” Eve said.

I gasped and caught Marc’s eyes. “We need to know.”

“Blimey, love. I’m never taking you to a poker game.”

“Where is it?”

“No,” Marc said. “We don’t need her help. We’ll find it anyway. Best to get rid of her now.”

Eve’s aura skipped a beat. It was the first sign of weakness I’d caught from her. Her brows lowered and her eyes darkened in a simmer at Marc. “Why do you hate me so much? What have I ever done to you?”

Marc looked taken aback. He blinked a few times and sputtered. “It’s my job to rid the world of your kind. You’re a danger to the Simons.”

“But me, personally? I haven’t hurt anyone.”

“Now, now, I don’t think that’s quite true.”

Eve’s frown deepened. “Fine. You don’t want to take my word? You want to push my hand? I may not have hurt your friend this time, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have a safeguard in place. I treated her today at the hospital. I had ample opportunity to cast a hex on her. Or maybe I added it all those months ago when I healed her.”

“No,” I whispered. “You haven’t.”

“You’ll never know, will you, and do you really want to take the risk?”

“I say we waste her,” Marc said. “I’m too hungry to put up with her lies anymore.”

“No, Marc. We can’t,” I said. “We can’t risk it.”

“Love, a word. Sidebar.” Marc took hold of my hand and in a flash we stood outside in the vineyard again.

A slight sense of disorientation was all I felt. I must be getting used to the mode of traveling.

“Love, I mean this in the most respectful way, but don’t believe a bloody word she says.”

“I know that, Marc, but the simple fact is that there’s no way of knowing if she’s hexed Kitty or Alvin—but probably Kitty because she treated her at the hospital. Oh God. Why did Kitty need to go to hospital? What isn’t she telling me?” My heart thudded in my chest and suddenly I had trouble breathing. Either one of my friends could be in danger. A hex could turn their insides out, it could give them cancer, it could—

Marc slapped me on the face. “Get a handle on it, woman.”

“Marc!” My palm rose to cover the burn on my cheek. “What the hell?”

“Sorry, love. You were cascading into hysteria.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“You weren’t?”

“No! Maybe. I don’t know. Why did you do that?”

He had the decency to look ashamed. “I saw it on the tele-box. I thought that’s what you do when a woman goes barmy.”

“Remind me not to watch television with you.”

“Um—okay. Right. Don’t tell the hunter. Well then… the hex. There’s no way of knowing if she cast it for sure?”

“Well, I could probably sample some of their blood. It often tastes a little different when it’s been hexed. But with a witch her age and with her experience, she could easily find a way to get around that.”

“Are you saying I actually have to take her to the Empire with me?”

I shrugged. “Did you promise what you’d do with her once you got there?”

His face deadpanned. “No, I didn’t.”

“So, deal with her when she’s there. Entangle her atoms for all I care.”

“Yes, that does sound inviting. Okay, fine. You know I only concede to you, don’t you, love?”

“I don’t deserve it though. I don’t remember the person you think I am.”

He placed a palm on my cheek. “You are who you are.”

A few seconds later and his blue eyes still stared at me. His aura swelled.

“Marc,” I said, awkwardly. “I think we can go now.”

“Right. Right.” He dropped his palm. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“You show us where this lab is, and then remove whatever you’ve done to Kitty and you can go to the Empire. I guarantee it,” I said to Eve back in the kitchen.

She squinted at me as though she knew there was more to it, but in the end, gave a regal nod. “Very well, the lab is in South America.”

“We knew that. Can you be a little more specific?”

“In a jungle.”

“Which jungle.”

“I could tell you, but then my leverage is gone, isn’t it? I’m not stupid. I know there’s something else you aren’t telling me, but for now, it will have to do.”

“Right. Good. We’re all in agreement then,” Marc said, clapping his hands together. “I need a little more information than somewhere in a jungle. Which one, the Amazon is a big place, then there’s the Atlantic, and—”

“My plane leaves for Argentina in five hours. I’ve programmed my travel itinerary into this phone. I’ll meet you there in a day or so. And if you can bring your friend who speaks to animals, that would be best.”

I frowned. “You mean Wren?”

“Yes.”

“Not acceptable,” I said. I wasn’t willing to put any more of my friends in danger. “I could speak well enough to the crow. I’m sure I will suffice.”

Eve’s eyebrow lifted. “You spoke with a familiar, not an animal. We need your friend’s unique skill set, believe me.”

“Why?”

“We have to see a man about a donkey and then the donkey about a man.” And with that, Eve left us.

“Okay, that wasn’t weird,” I said to Marc after I was sure she’d exited the house.

“You’re not wrong there.”

“Well, we know she’s telling some truth. Cash said they’d narrowed down the lab to the Amazon jungle. Hopefully she will take us the rest of the way.”

By the time we figured out how to get the phone and ourselves to The Cauldron, it was half an hour later. In the end, Marc took me through the in-between then went back via cab to collect the phone.

That left me with some private time to reconnect with my friends.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHEN I WALKED into The Cauldron, my old bar and workplace, I didn’t know what to expect. The same, something different, anything at all? It had almost burned to the ground recently but as I stepped beyond the glass doors, I smiled. It was still being renovated, but essentially the same. It even smelled the same—like stale beer but now with an overlay of fresh paint. Witch-themed paraphernalia decorated the walls. Crows, broomsticks, gnarled branches and jack-o-lanterns with flickering candles inside were on the walls. Tables and booths surrounded a dance floor that lit up on a Friday night. It was almost ready for re-opening.

My long time friend wiped the dust off the table at a newly installed booth. Kitty looked completely different from the last time I saw her. She used to have a head full of blue and green mermaid hair, but after being caught in the fire, she now had two-inch, naturally brown hair feathered around her face. Her pouty lips were still bright red, as were her polished nails. She had a subdued nature about her. No longer the wild, sexy strumpet that made all the boys in the bar go crazy with desire. I could be projecting. Maybe she was just bored.

“I’ll have a Brew to Forget, thanks barmaid.” I smirked at Kitty as I walked in.

She looked up, grinned, and rushed over, ditching her dirty wash rag over the bar bench as she came. She gathered me into a hug, suffocating me in her ample bosom.

“Babe, am I glad to see you.” Then as quickly as she pulled me in, she pushed me away with a frown. “But you waited long enough! You’ve been gone for ages.” She peeked over my shoulder. “Where’s that hunky hunter of yours?”

I blushed. “He’s working. But—” I glanced at my empty ring finger. I had left the ring at the castle because it couldn’t travel with me. Thinking of it reminded me of how I used to flick it with my thumb to swing the diamond back to the upside of my finger. The band was too big for my finger, but I didn’t like being parted from the ring for long enough to send it to the jeweler to fix. My thumb gravitated to shift the phantom ring back into the correct alignment. A nervous tick. I missed him.

Kitty caught me eying off my finger.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she stated simply and lifted an arched eyebrow.

“Cash and I are engaged.”

Kitty squealed. So loud.

I clapped my hands over my ears, but joined her jumping on the spot like a teenager who’d won tickets on the radio.

The swinging scullery door burst open and Alvin jogged out. “Where’s the fire?” he called, extinguisher in his hand, ready to release.

When I first met Alvin, he was a larrikin of epic proportions. His dark skin came from his mixed Phillipino-Australian heritage. He used to be chubby—too much beer—but after Petra had hexed him with aggressive cancer, I’d responded with my own healing hex and told his body to fix himself. I won. He’d woken up fit as a fiddle with a buff body to boot. I was pleased to see he continued to look after himself, or the directives still held.

“Oh, it’s you.” Alvin’s brown eyes met mine and he lowered the extinguisher.

“Alvin!” Kitty admonished. “A little more enthusiasm, please.”

When Alvin glanced at Kitty, it was clear he was head over heals in love. He’d do anything she asked, even pretending to forgive me. His dig earlier at not calling him held a hint of pain.

“I’m sorry, Alvin,” I said. “I owe you both an explanation for why I’ve been so vague about my travels.”

He folded his arms. “You’re in America one minute, Sydney the next. Now you’re in Europe. You haven’t shared much. You’ve spoken to Kitty about the wedding, but not one phone call for you’re old pal, Alvin. That cuts Roo. It cuts.” He tapped his heart. “We get it you’re under the guardianship of a super-secret hunter dude but we worry about you, you know?”

Kitty lifted her brows and nodded. “Babe, I love that you love talking about wedding stuff, but I know you’re distracting me. There's something going on with you and we wish you’d talk to us about it. Is Cash treating you okay? What’s happening with your father?”

I slumped. “Come on. Let’s sit and I’ll talk.”

We gravitated toward an empty booth and I spent the next twenty minutes telling them everything about my last few months over a beer. And I meant everything. If there was any benefit to me being who I was, it was to break the rules for my loved ones. They wouldn’t go and blab to the press. They’d kept my secret when they thought I was a witch, they’d do it now. By the time I finished, they looked like they were going to vomit.

“Get out,” Kitty said, face pale. The tone of her voice sounded like she was kidding, but she had no emotion on her face. For a moment, I considered maybe she really wanted me out, but then she shook her head, eyes wide. “My best friend is a god. Are you freaking kidding us? Are you joking?”

“No.” I bit my lip, kind of shrinking down into the leather bench seat.

“You mean to tell me, my best friend is a god.” She repeated and turned to Alvin. “That’s what she said, right? A god. A freaking god.”

Alvin still stared blankly at me. “You fixed me,” he eventually said. “You were stronger than the strongest witch but you’re not a witch. Holy fuck.”

“Babe.” Understanding dawned in Kitty’s eyes. “You’re not a witch, so you must be something else, but… I never once in my life imagined… wow. Just wow. You’re a god.”

Knots pulled my stomach tight.

“Kitty, she’s not a god. She’s the God. Didn’t you hear her? She’s the one responsible for the creation of our race.” Alvin’s hands clenched around his glass of beer. “I—” He shook his head, dazed. “I don’t know…”

“I always knew God was a girl.”

“Please don’t call me that.” I shook my head. “I’m not the person people pray to. That’s someone else. I’m still Roo, and I don’t have the same kind of skills that she did. I mean, I did. I don’t now because I don’t remember my original life, and I’m still kind of at half-capacity until I purge the human genes from my body in favor of Seraphim, but that’s another story for another day.”

“But, I, you—” Alvin vaguely pointed at my face and then the rest of my body. Then he shook his head again. “Nah, you’re taking the piss, right? You’re joking.”

“Oh, you want some proof?” I asked. When Cash first told me about our origins, I scoffed at him, so their reaction was well warranted. “Marc will be here soon, and then we’ll teleport back home. And if Cash were here, he’s got this light-saber sword thingy and he moves like really fast, like a blur.” I frowned. “I can do a few things, but you already know most of my abilities.”

Alvin started laughing. A real, raucous, belly shaking laugh. “You got me, Roo. Where’s the cameras?”

My heart sank. Had I made a mistake telling them? In a small voice, I replied, “No. I told you already, no. Don’t you trust me?”

“Alvin.” Kitty swatted him repetitively until he calmed down. She turned to me and patted her hair. “Can you still do your magic hair dye thing? I really miss my blue and green.”

All the tension left my body in a burst, causing me to giggle awkwardly. Classic Kitty. I lifted my eyebrows. “I can do one better, I can make it grow back, too!”

Kitty reached across the table to take my hands. “Babe, I’m so glad you’re back. And not because of the hair thing, I really missed you. How long are you staying? For good? We have urgent wedding plans. It’s in a few weeks—oooh, a double wedding?—and also because we can’t find a decent enough replacement for you at the bar, and also I don’t know if you noticed but your old home is falling apart, someone needs to fix it up. It would be a shame for that heritage home to go to waste.” She almost went blue from speaking so much in one breath.

“And the wine,” Alvin added, finally settled.

“Guys, I want that too, like, really want it. You have no idea.”

I spent much of my teenage years picking grapes, tirelessly working those fields to make production schedules. The Merlot would stain my fingers for days, but it was good, honest, simple work. I thought about the big empty house and the land, the vines outside… their cry for attention. My smile faded and the backs of my lids burned with the desire to pack up everything and start now. I wanted to create the life my mother had wanted before my father cruelly took it away by getting her pregnant with me. Maybe that feeling deep in my gut was guilt, because surely I was as much to blame as Bruce. Those photos of her ancestors in the hallway were a reminder of that. They went as far back as a hundred and fifty years, depicting candid family shots taken in the estate, then stopped shortly after I was born. I contemplated my beer. It was almost empty. Marc would be here soon, and that meant my time was up.

“So, Roo?” Kitty broke through my thoughts. “Are you staying long?”

“Kitty,” Alvin said quietly and placed a hand on her shoulder. “She’s not going to come back. She’s a god. She’ll probably be gallivanting around the universe or something. There’s an Empire to rule. Worlds to save. Life to create.”

“Oh no,” I said. “I’m not messing with anything like that ever again.”

“Is that true?” Kitty’s green eyes watered. “Will you go?”

I took a deep breath. “Once we’ve stopped Urser from doing anymore destruction, I plan to come back here. Honestly, I do. I want a simple life with my friends.”

“Hey, I take offense to that. We’re not simple.” Alvin poked his tongue at me.

“Of course not!” I laughed. “You’re the best things in my life. Apart from Cash.”

“And me, love. Don’t forget me.” Marc arrived and walked up to our table. Actually, it was more of a strut. Marc never simply walked. His stride held a confident swagger and complete awareness of his perfect specimen of a masculine body. He’d forgone the recent illusion construct of a polo shirt and pants for tailored khaki shorts and a tight linen shirt, open at the top, showing a taste of tanned and sculptured pecs. He dropped the phone onto the bench and gave my companions a curiousness yet nonchalant once over. He winked at Kitty, then his eyes snagged on the beer. “Having a little drink-poo without me, love? Tsk, tsk. Shame on you.”

Alvin hooked a thumb toward Marc. “This is your god friend?”

“God friend!” Marc turned to me. “What kind of nonsense have you been spouting?”

“It’s okay, Marc. They won’t tell anyone.”

“Love, a word. Sidebar. Again.” He took my forearm and lifted me out of the booth to guide me to the bar. “You know you’re forbidden to reveal our secret to the Simons. I’ll have to send them a dream to wipe their memories. Or kill them.”

“No.” I held up my hand. “They’re fine. Honestly.”

“What if news of you being here gets out? We’ll have every Player and his poodle trying to assassinate you.” He folded his arms. I’d never seen him so serious. “The bloody hunter will have my hide if he knew I let you blab.”

“No one’s going to kill me. Didn’t I make the rules of the Game, anyway?” I asked hesitantly. “I say my friends are trustworthy and they can know.”

Doubt flickered in his eyes.

“Look, Marc. I’m going to convert when I get back, and then I’ll be back to being me—Sephie, or you know. Whoever. The point is, it’s okay. My friends are okay. They kept my witch-like abilities secret for years. They can keep it quiet now.”

He squinted at me, his long lashes darkening his eyes. “You’re not going to do this all the time, are you? Blab to your friends?”

“No, no! Just these two. That’s it. I promise. I don’t have any other human friends, anyway.”

“Well, I suppose you are the queen…”

There was no need to tell him I didn’t intend to stay that way, and I hadn’t figured it out yet, but I wasn’t going back to the Empire, no matter who ordered me home. I wanted here. With my friends. With Cash. Maybe adding a photo or two of my own to the ancestor wall at the Manor. I waited expectantly, a fact he reveled in. My attention locked solely onto his pondering face.

“… and I am hungry,” he continued. “I don’t really have time to clean up a mess if we’re to be fed before Argentina.”

“Did someone say Argentina?” Kitty called from the booth. I swear that girl had hearing like a wolf.

“Someone called me Simon, too. I’m Alvin. Not Simon.”

Marc’s lips parted and I knew he was going to explain the simple thing, so I shoved my hand over his mouth. “Don’t you dare speak.”

He mumbled and I narrowed my eyes, daring him to defy me then finally conceded. He breathed a sigh and nodded. I took my hand away.

“These are my friends, Marc,” I warned. “As you are.”

“Fine. Friends need shots.” Marc rubbed his hands together and ran his gaze over the bottles of spirits behind the bar. “Let’s see, Gin? No. Don’t want to end up with a sad face, now do we? What about Vodka? Ooh. Tequila. Perfect aperitif before hitting up the Amazon.”

“I don’t think we have time for shots, Marc.” I’d promised Cash I would only be a few days.

“Bollocks. The witch hasn’t even hopped on her plane, yet. We’ve got plenty of time.” He pointed at Kitty. “I’ll take five rounds of Tequila Slammers, please, love. With salt. And one of those slices of petite lemons. Five should give me a tickle-buzz, right, love?”

My blank stare just spurred him on.

“Ten. Maybe we need ten with our metabolisms.”

I turned to Kitty and held up a finger. “One.”

Kitty gave Alvin a humorous glance then they both exited the booth, bringing our empty glasses with them. Kitty took her place behind the bar and Alvin stopped by my shoulder.

“You want something to eat, Miss High and Mighty?” he asked. “The kitchen has just been stocked for the reopening on the weekend.” He paused. “You still eat, right?”

“Of course! And, yes, I’d love something. Marc, too. Thank you, Alvin.”

I left them all to get acquainted and stepped outside to update Wren and Cash.

I used Kitty’s phone to call Wren first, because Eve had said we needed her animal speaking abilities. A Donkey. I shook my head at the thought. Seriously, a talking donkey. I hadn’t seen Wren work her animal magic, yet, but I knew she could communicate with them. And what the hell? I had a sudden thought. What if Eve was lying? And this was all some wild goose chase, because, apart from Winnie the Pooh, whoever heard of a talking donkey?

Regardless, I contacted Wren and discovered she had just arrived with Lincoln in South Africa, about to embark on their rescuing of elephants from hunters on safari. Lincoln resented Bruce for keeping him hidden in the underground Ludus for most of his childhood meaning he rarely saw the sky. After hearing Marc’s decree at the Tribunal meeting about the Game almost being over, he was living it up with his girl, visiting the best nature had to offer. It made me smile to think that at least some of his time on this planet was happy, but now I was about to interrupt it. Damn.

When I asked Wren to meet me, she and Lincoln jumped at the chance. Apparently Argentina had one of the best waterfalls in the world. She’d said they could meet us in Buenos Aires in ten hours. That was a few hours sooner than Eve was expected. After I finished making plans with Wren, I called Cash.

He didn’t pick up.

CHAPTER NINE

“WE HAVE TO go back for Cash,” I said to Marc, who sat at the bar eating salad pieces with a toothpick. “He’s not picking up his phone.”

Marc looked up. “You talking to me, love?”

“Who else?”

He wiped his chin with a napkin. “Not to worry. He’s most likely gallivanting around, showing off the size of his sword and telling some poor sod what to do.”

Could he take nothing seriously? “But he needs to know we’ve found a clue to the lab. He needs to know about things.”

“Despite what the world says about women, you’re not owned by him, love. You can make your own decisions.”

“I know that.” Chagrin warmed my face. “It’s out of respect that I want to keep him informed. Plus, it’s Cash, my soulmate. I don’t want secrets between us.”

He made a gagging sound. “Do you have to get all mushy?”

“It’s not just that, it’s the fact that Eve is a known liar, you said it yourself. What if the danger’s not passed and—”

I stopped talking when Kitty pushed through the scullery doors with a second bowl of salad. I had almost said something about Kitty being used as leverage, but shut my mouth quickly.

“Why don’t you just leave him a message, babe?” Kitty said and handed me a knife and fork.

“You heard that?”

She smirked. “Sound travels in here. Send the text message, then sit down and eat. I’m sure he’ll get back to you.”

At the smell of the food, my stomach cramped in excitement, and my mouth watered. “Good point.”

I fired off a quick text on Kitty’s phone, outlining our travel plans. Cash would need to know more, but for now, that would do.

After our meals, I stole a few minutes out the back with Kitty to begin the restoration process for the return of her blue and green hair. My true purpose was to take a sample of her blood to see if I could detect signs of Eve’s hex. If it was there, I should taste a tingling taint, almost as though I’d placed my tongue on the tip of a battery. Thankfully, Kitty was well versed in the gross process of hex making—I had to mix her DNA with mine then alter it and return it to her body. The process is where all the bewitching horror stories came from—men claiming to have just kissed a woman to be suddenly under her spell.

In the privacy of the small office, I nicked the tip of her finger with a knife, tasted the drop that welled and created a hex in my mouth. Once I had thought of the right words to craft the change in her DNA, I spat some back onto my fingers and rubbed it in her scalp. I was the grossest thing ever, but it worked. Within seconds, her plain mousy brown hair morphed into a mix of turquoise and blue.

“Babe,” Kitty gushed as she checked herself out in her small compact mirror. “It’s perfect.”

“The blue is a little greener this time, but you know, it’s not a precise art.”

“Like I said, it’s perfect.” She rubbed her hand over her short hair and it shimmered like a wave.

“I also added a directive for the hair to grow at three times the speed for the next few weeks, so it would return to shoulder length in no time.”

“Oh my God. Thank you. It will be better for the wedding.”

A small smile tugged my lips. I couldn’t share in her enthusiasm because I did taste something foreign and suspect in her blood. It wasn’t strong, but it was there. Eve could have easily planted a disease in her, or some sort of mind control thread… there were too many unsavory possibilities. That tingle was definitely there. Whether it was an echo of the healing hex Eve had cast on her after the fire, or whether it was something new, I couldn’t tell. Just that it was. The sooner we uncovered Urser’s lab and destroyed it, the sooner we could come back here and keep an eye on Kitty. Then Marc could dump Eve’s soul at the Empire and let them deal with her.

Kitty swiveled on the office chair, knocking over some papers in the tiny room. We both bent to pick them up.

“Now, what about your wedding?” she said, handing me her pile. “You seriously aren’t making plans?”

“Let me get through this trip to Argentina first.” I gathered the paper on my lap and straightened them.

“You’ll be back for our wedding though, right?”

“I know I’ve been flakey lately, but with this, I promise. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away from seeing my two favorite people pledge their love to each other.”

“Babe, you’re my Maid of Honor, remember? You haven’t even seen the dress I picked out for you.“

“You picked out a dress for me?”

“Sure. I know you don’t have much money. What with your father being the spawn of all evil. So, Alvin and I put in and bought you something special.”

“Oh, Kitty, that’s so kind of you.”

“I have a photograph on my phone. You wanna see?”

“Definitely. But show me at the bar. We can’t leave Marc alone with all that alcohol.” I put the stack of papers in my hand on the desk, then turned to leave.

Kitty grabbed my hand, stopping me. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I met her eyes then looked away immediately. “What do you mean?”

“Uh-uh. Babe, I know you. There’s more to this unexpected visit than just a drop in.”

My jaw clenched and I let the air ease in and out of my lungs. My gorgeous friend. How could I tell her that her life might be in danger?

She tightened her grip on me. “Finding out you’re not who you think you are must be… disorienting to say the least. Are you okay?”

A burn began at the back of my throat. As soon as anyone asks if I’m okay, immediately, I’m not. Why is that? It’s as though I didn’t even know I wasn’t fine until she asked.

“I’m worried, Kitty.”

She didn’t say anything, just watched me.

“I’m worried that I can’t live up to expectations, that I can’t fix everything I broke. People are dying because of me.”

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I created this world, so that means I made the mess it’s in.”

She blinked rapidly and let go of my hand.

For a moment, pain lanced through my heart. She hated me. That must be it. I reached for anything I could grab in the office. A piece of paper from the top of the stack. A draft menu. I picked it up and pretended to read.

“Babe.” Kitty’s hand pushed mine down so I couldn’t see the paper. “Look at me.”

I did.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time going to church, it’s that God gave us all free will. What we do with our lives is our own business. You can’t blame yourself for people making the wrong choices. You’ll go insane if you do.”

“I know that makes sense, but…”

“No buts.” She stood up and surveyed her well rounded rear. “Seriously, can you do something about this butt?”

I giggled. “I think your butt is fine.”

“That’s more like it. No more sulking, please. The only time you can blame yourself is when you see wrong things happen and you do nothing at all. And that’s not the Roo I know. You'll do nothing on the day you die, right?”

I nodded.

“So, cheer up. We’ve got weddings and parties to think about. Let’s take things as they come and—”

We heard glass break in the bar and someone yelled “Taxi!”

“—You’re right. We shouldn’t have left your friend with the alcohol.”

CHAPTER TEN

WE ARRIVED IN Buenos Aires on schedule and waited in the airport lobby for Wren and Lincoln.

“There they are,” I said to Marc and waved at the petite couple exiting the arrival gates.

Wren wore a pair of khaki shorts, hiking boots and plain black singlet. Next to her stood a stranger. It was Lincoln, but he looked completely different from the last time I’d seen him. Not only was there a broad smile on his face. His attire was similar to Wren’s: khaki shorts and a linen shirt (inside out of course). They looked very much like a sun-kissed couple fresh from a safari adventure. Guess his time away from Seraphim politics was doing him good.

Lincoln spotted me and waved back.

“Thank you for coming,” I said as they arrived and gave them both a hug.

“Oh, no problems.” Wren smiled. “Like I said, Lincoln’s keen to see the giant waterfalls.”

“Yo sis, wassup?”

“Hi bro. You look snazzy.”

“Snazzy? I look dope, you mean.”

“Cool,so… you don’t mind cutting your holiday short either?”

He shrugged and flicked a glance to Wren. “As long as we’re together, it’s cool. Yeah, so, Iguaza Falls.” Lincoln blushed and pulled out a folded map to study. He found what he was looking for and pointed at it. “See?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Wren added, appreciatively eyeing him off. It was a glance filled with naked emotion and I doubted she thought anyone would notice, but I did. Her aura reached toward him, and even though he wasn’t looking back, his aura reciprocated the attention.

My insides warmed knowing I’d helped put those two together. After we’d escaped the Ludus in Australia and made it safe to the refuge, I made sure the two were placed in the same room as often as I could—I’d even asked Jacine to house them a room apart.

I remembered when I’d first had the inkling they’d make a good pair. It was after a dinner in Urser’s apartment. Both had been too shy and stunted by their mentors to even dare hope there would be a possibility of friendship. Not when they were traded like cards to make new Players and alliances. So glad none of that was happening now. They may be Players, but they had true feelings, and being partnered up to breed against your will was a gross violation of basic rights. Yet another thing that was indirectly related to the choices I had made as Queen. When I questioned Marc about it once, he’d replied with, It was the only way to prevent war. And it worked. But since I’d become a recluse soon after the Game began, I didn’t think I was happy about it, even then.

Wren and Lincoln discovering their feelings for each other was the only good thing I could say that came of dinner with Urser.

“So, Roo,” Wren asked, “where are we headed first and”—she looked around me—“you’re alone?”

I checked over my shoulder for Marc. He’d disappeared the second they arrived. He hated standing still for long, always claimed to get antsy with the need to move to another location. I always thought he just liked to make an entrance, but he swore it’s something to do with his restless atoms. Probably just picking up some chick in the airport bar.

“Marc’s disappeared, and we don’t have to meet Eve for another few hours so, yes, I’m alone.”

“Where’s Cash?” Lincoln frowned, adjusting his backpack to his alternate shoulder.

“Oh, thanks for reminding me. Can I please use your phone, Lincoln? I need to contact him and let him know we’ve arrived.” This no phone business was really becoming an issue. Telepathic powers would be good right about now.

Lincoln pulled his phone from his backpack and handed it to me. I punched in Cash’s number and dialed.

It went straight through to message bank.

Damn it, missed him again. I left him a message updating our progress.  There was a Cash-shaped gap in my heart that grew with each passing hour we were apart. I knew I told him I didn’t need him to protect me, but maybe I wanted him with me. His touch, his lips, his embrace. I was such a goner.

I loved it.

To my complete annoyance, Marc didn’t return to us for another few hours. We’d eventually gotten tired of waiting and settled at the airport café to replenish our energy with coffee and cake. Despite working on calming them down, my nerves amped up—I supposed the coffee didn’t help. Tea would’ve been better, but Marc wasn’t here to correct me and I was ready to put out a missing person’s report. When I finally spotted the King of Swagger walking toward us, my nails were chewed down to the wicks.

“Where have you been, Marc?” I asked. “Eve will be here soon and we haven’t had a chance to debrief.”

“Settle down, love. You didn’t need me here for that. I assume you’ve already done a bang-up job.” He turned to Wren and Lincoln, who had half fallen asleep on some chairs. “Am I right?”

Wren rubbed her eyes. “Yep. She’s told us everything.”

“That’s not the point, Marc. You better not have been picking up some girl in the bar while we’ve been waiting for you.”

He frowned at me. “I’m not a complete degenerate, love. I was doing research.”

“You were? What kind?”

“Well, I popped into a few of the local—ahem—bars and asked if anyone knew about there being any new manufacturing plants set up recently near a jungle.”

“And?”

“Well, it just so happens there were zero sightings of muchacho canche, not enough to concern us, anyway.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Blond men.”

“Why would you ask that?”

“It would be a sign of Urser’s henchmen if they’re Nephilim.”

“Clever.”

“Of course.”

“So, did you find anything.”

“Nada,” Marc said. “He must be using locals or we’re in the wrong place.”

Lincoln straightened. “Didn’t Eve say the lab was in a jungle somewhere?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Well, there are no jungles near here. We’re way too far south. Like opposite end of the continent south.”

I rubbed my temples. “That’s not good. Not good. I can’t believe we didn’t realize that. Maybe Eve is lying after all.”

“I’m not lying.” Eve had arrived. She too was dressed in explorer attire. Shorts, a linen shirt and hiking boots. I felt slightly overdressed in my denim-construct jeans and blouse, but then again, so did Marc in his carefully constructed tweed, three piece suit. “We have to catch a connecting flight to Padre Aldimz,” Eve continued. “We have twenty minutes till boarding time.”

Marc gasped and slapped his hand to his chest, offended. “I don’t fly.”

“To the Amazon?” Lincoln asked, wide eyed.

“Yes. We land in a place called Peurto Maldonado.”

At the mention of the town, Marc became very still.

“From there,” Eve continued, “I have a man who will meet us and take us to the donkey.”

Marc rolled his eyes. “First off, I’ll meet you there. Second, I’ll wager I can find out where this lab is before you have a chance to speak to the donkey. In fact, I’ll be able to deduce the location before your plane arrives.” He snorted and mumbled under his breath: “Simpleton.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Eve smirked. “The donkey is the only living animal who survived returning from the Bay of Skulls. It’s the only living thing who would remember how to get back there. That’s why we need your friend.” Eve’s eyes landed on Wren.

“You think Wren can get more sense out of the donkey?” I asked.

“Yes. We know the lab is somewhere around the Bay of Skulls, but can’t pinpoint the location. I heard Wren has a remarkable talent deciphering the fractured thoughts of animals.”

Wren blushed. “Yes, well there’s a trick to it, you see—”

“Witch, you’re on.” Marc interrupted and flared his eyes at Eve. “I win: No more Empire for you.”

Eve laughed, her kind round eyes full of mirth. “What are we talking about again?”

“I’ll find the lab before you, of course, and when I do, our Empire deal is off.”

“And when you fail? You’ll let me taste your blood, god.”

Marc squinted at her, his lips pressed white. “Deal.” He spat in his palm and held it out for Eve to shake. “Looks like things just got interesting.”

“They weren’t enough already?” I blanched.

“Not nearly.” Marc glanced at me. “Are you coming with me, or taking the boring route. The race is on.”

Panic gripped my heart. My eyes darted between my friends, the witch who blackmailed us, and the god who I wasn’t sure I should leave on his own.

“Go on,” Wren said. “We’ll be fine.”

“Yep.” Lincoln placed a hand on Wren’s shoulder. “See you in a few, sis.”

“I suppose there’s nothing for it then. We’ll head to Peurto Maldonado and meet you there.”

Marc tugged me close and brazenly took us through the in-between while standing in full view of the public and cameras.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WE ARRIVED IN the jungle and hot life punched me in the face. Energy rolled over my body like a bucket of steaming water. It took me a moment to adjust. I inhaled sharply, pulling away from Marc to see better.

Our sudden arrival had caused a flurry of action above us. When I looked up, I caught glimpses of red, green and blue as a flock of macaws flew away through the dense vegetation. Monkeys called from the trees, alerting each other to the presence of intruders. A buzzing sound emitted all around me. It took me a while to distinguish the buzz of insects from the frequency of nature’s life-force I sensed. One giant aura surrounded me. It was amazing. I’d never seen, or felt, so much wonder.

And—

A sting on my right thigh.

I slapped the skin on instinct.

Mosquito.

“Damn it.” I inspected my hand and the blood smeared over it and gasped. The little buzz of life snuffed out because of me. “Oh no! I killed it.”

“Not to worry, love. It’s only a pest. Follow me.” Marc turned on his nude heels and pushed some ferns out of the way before plunging further into the deep forest.

His potent aura emitted a frequency I could track. I tried to cover my private bits with my hands, but every five-seconds, found myself shooing the mosquitos away.

Sting.

I shooed.

Bite.

Double shoo.

“Come on bugs. I get that you’re trying to have your dinner, but please don’t use me.”

I don’t think they heard.

I jogged through the jungle, trailing Marc’s energy signature. The floor was muddy and soggy and, with each step, the delicious earth squelched through my toes. It made me tingle and giggle in delight. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to visit a jungle. I could’ve sworn I heard the overgrown vegetation sigh as I ran past. A monkey sound came from right above me, loud and crystal clear. I jolted. My hand slipped on the branch I held and it swung back.

Whack. Right in the face.

“Goddamn it, Marc.” I moved the offending branch. Big mistake. Something long, green and slimy shook loose.

Snake.

Air solidified in my lungs as the writhing object landed with a thud near my feet. It didn’t move. I didn’t move. We watched each other. We stared. I sensed its tiny life pulse gently within its body and I held my breath while I waited to see what it would do.

“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered. Slowly, I crouched, never taking my eyes from it. I held out my hand. “I’m sorry I disturbed your resting place.”

The green snake’s tongue forked out again then it slithered into the undergrowth.

“Wow,” I whispered, then—sting. I whined. Mosquito got me on my stomach this time. It took me two minutes too long to realize I could alter my internal biological makeup to repel mosquitos. As quickly as I could, I plucked a leaf from a nearby plant, popped it in my mouth and chewed, all the while focusing inwards, urging my body to alter the smell of my sweat to match the scent of the plant. I didn’t know if it would work, but it was worth a shot. As long as the mosquitoes didn’t think I was a tasty human, I’d be all right. After a brief feeling of ghostly ants crawling over my skin, the hex came into effect and I chased after Marc.

So consumed with thoughts of beating the mosquitoes without actually killing them, I barely noticed I had broken through the jungle and into an evergreen clearing in front of a wooden and thatched bungalow. Bungalow was the wrong word. It was a series of bungalows stuck together to make a mega-bungalow. On one side, a wooden platform lay open wide with a white wicker table and chairs. To the rear, the platform extended to another area that had a series of empty hammocks dangling from rafters. I caught a glimpse of a lagoon with mini waterfall trickling down some rocks into the pool. I’d bet my bike that beautiful water would calm my hot skin and I died to jump in.

I returned my gaze to the front of the bungalow where mesh blinds separated me from the interior, no doubt in place to keep the mosquito and insect life out. The blinds rose up to a tapered ceiling, and then up and beyond to a balcony I guessed might be the main bedroom. “Marc?” I called out. He was up there somewhere, I could sense him.

The balcony screen door opened. He popped his head out. “In here, love.” Then he disappeared into the bowels of the house.

For modesty, I ripped off a giant fern frond—apologized to the fern for breaking it—and then used it to cover my nudity. I walked up the wooden steps to the veranda and let myself in.

The interior was just as exotic as the outside. A raked ceiling with exposed rafters, cool tiled floors, and carved wooden furniture. I located the staircase and went up a level. The room I entered was a bedroom, like I’d guessed. White linen on a king sized bed, mosquito nets hanging from the ceiling, cushions everywhere, and Marc raiding a wardrobe on the right.

He wore gray, lightweight pants and had a bare torso.

He yanked a group of clothes from the cupboard, picked a white, long sleeved shirt and held it out to me. “This might fit you.” Then he returned to his rummaging.

“What are we doing” I asked. “Why don’t you just cover us with illusion?”

“Because, love, we’re in the jungle. It’s hot, damp, dirty and sweaty. It’s a biological Molotov cocktail that leaves the construct either chafing or disintegrating.”

“Oh.” I slipped the white gauze shirt over my head. It came to mid thigh.

Marc slipped a similar shirt over his muscular frame. He slid on some hiking boots.

“They fit.” I marveled. “Are we in your house, Marc?”

He grinned and winked at me and instantly I remembered how still he became when Eve named the town we were to travel too. Cheeky bugger.

“My home away from home. That witch think’s she’s got one over me, but she’s got another thing coming.”

“Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that Urser’s lab is around here, and you have a house here?”

“No. I have many homes. Too many to count, but this one in particular is in this part of the world for a reason. As soon as the bloody witch mentioned Peurto Maldonado, I knew exactly where Urser’s lab would be.”

“You did? Why?”

“You know how we’ve spoken of the star-gate that connects this world to the Empire? The portal?”

A cold feeling settled in my bones. “It’s nearby, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “And if Urser has set up shop here, then it’s clear he’s planning to bring his army of darklings back to the Empire. It must be very close. The gate is in walking distance.”

“I thought they didn’t have the key to open it.”

He gave me a sad look. “You’re the key, love.”

“I’m not fully Seraphim, though.”

“It may not matter. When you were under the control of that witch, she tasted the vial of your original blood from the Empire.”

“I remember, it tingled and felt… right.”

“And if she tasted it, you’ve tasted it. You may already be going through some sort of transformation. It might be all that is needed for the gate to recognize your biometric signature… then there’s the hunter.”

I thought of how Cash was able to convert to Seraphim using the blood of the queen, and how he wanted me to do the same using his blood. “He’s my soulmate… his blood is linked to mine, right?”

“Correct.”

“So his blood might open the gate too. Cash could be in danger.”

“Right. We need to get going.”

“What about the rest of me? I need pants and boots.”

“Hmm.” Marc stared at his wardrobe. “I don’t have female clothing.”

“That’s not something I thought you’d lack with all your lady visitors.”

“Well, we’re all usually naked here, love. And the housekeeper isn’t here, so I can’t borrow her clothes for you.”

“And I spoke too soon.”

“There’s a small village nearby, we can find you something. We have to be quick.”

My eyes widened. “But I need pants before going to the village.”

He found a light cotton sheet and tossed it to me. “Use that like a sarong.”

I twisted it through my legs and used the corners of the sheet to wrap around my middle. I was left with a version of flowing harem pants. Marc helped tie it off at the back.

“There you go, love. All better. Let’s go.” Marc rushed downstairs. A door opened on squeaky springs, then slammed. I followed him, shaking my head. A few seconds later, I heard an engine roar to life. Nearing the sound, I came to a door that led to a garage. Marc sat on an ATV, grinning, patting the seat.

“Get on.”

“Oooh.”

“It’s got four wheels instead of two, but I knew you’d like it. Come on. Chop, chop.”

I hesitated.

He waved at the sheet around my waist. “Just gather the sheet-pants up and keep it out of the wheels. There’s also a poncho in the compartment back there if you don’t like the rain. You’ll be fine.”

“No, it’s just that… I usually drive. Can I? Please?”

“I was counting on it.”

“Really?”

“You don’t think I actually know how to work one of these contraptions, do you? Starting it was hard enough.”

“I suppose not. I haven’t ridden one of these since the vineyard, but it’s like riding a bike, right?” I laughed.

I hitched up my sheet-pants to straddle the ATV before him. In no time we were roaring out of the shelter and onto a muddy path, heading back into the jungle.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I DROVE LIKE a bat out of hell. Marc directed me by tapping me on a shoulder. Right to go right, left to go left. Through muddy lanes and dirt tracks only the locals would know, around fallen forest debris and, within moments, we found ourselves out of the jungle and near a village. Clusters of huts lined up in sporadic rows, with locals milling about their day, the sound of chatter and laughter everywhere.

The sky was beginning to darken. I wasn’t sure if it was caused by the encroaching night, or if a storm was coming. Since we’d landed at the airport, I’d lost concept of time. Skipping through the in-between had thrown me completely off. I now understood why Marc was always so flighty with time management.

A rumble in the sky answered my question for me. A storm. The rain held off, but the air was thick with potential downfall, and a drizzle misted the air leaving my skin damp and sticky. The mud coating my legs didn’t help, but I was pleased to say I had zero mosquito interactions meaning my homemade and cruelty free insect repellant worked a treat.

We drove further into town, almost running over a group of scrappily dressed teenagers who’d come to the street to point and smile at Marc and his blond hair.

The instant I got off the bike, Marc pushed some cash into my hand. “There’s a street market over there. You can find boots etcetera. I’ll start my investigation over there.” He pointed to hut that looked fairly similar to the rest of them.

“A bar?”

“A tourist bureau.”

“Right.”

“And then I might have to go up to the local village leader’s house down the way. Won’t be long. You know how to call me if you need me.”

“You mean say your true name?”

He didn’t wait for me to finish and walked away.

I guessed that was a yes, then. I glanced at the wad of cash in my hand and had no idea what the notes equated to in Australian or American dollars. Nevertheless, I squelched through the mud street in the direction Marc had pointed, all the while smiling confidently at the stares pointed my way and hoping no one was going to mug this obvious tourist. Strangely, I was having too much fun to care. After a while, most people ignored me and turned back to their tasks.

It wasn’t hard to find the market. I rounded a corner and there were many tables set up with canopies overhead to protect from the rain. Piles of goods were stacked high, almost toppling over. The din of conversation amplified and merged with the bleating and grunting livestock further beyond the tents. One vendor had fruit and vegetables, another had brightly colored folded up fabric. The latter was the best place to start for clothing.

I smiled as I approached a middle-aged woman standing behind a table. She had wrinkled brown skin, dark straight hair and crinkles around her eyes. Sitting next to her, whittling a small piece of wood was an old man. The woman slapped him over the head as I drew near. Could be her father, or an older husband. From the feel of their intertwined auras, they were definitely linked somehow. It was sweet. She folded and refolded items of brightly colored clothing as she continued to speak to the man. Pinks, reds, yellows, blues. Dull wasn’t a word I’d use to describe this authentic Peruvian stall.

“Excuse me,” I said as I approached. “Do you sell shoes?”

She froze, taking me in, hands hovering on a striped poncho.

The old man kept whittling. Then he noticed the woman’s lack of voice. He leant to the side, out of the shelter of the fabric stacks and spotted me. His eyes widened and he said something in a tone of awe. The woman responded in another language and smacked him over the head again. Both their eyes ran over me with curiosity. The woman shook her head, then straightened herself. She spoke to me, but I couldn’t understand a word.

“Um, no hablas español.” I pointed at my feet. “Shoes?”

She smiled, clapped her hands, and nodded then said, “El zapato.”

The man gave me a toothless grin, lifted his bare foot and then pointed at his gnarled toenails. “No necesito zapatos.”

“Um.” Was he asking me to buy him shoes?

The woman shook her head and grinned some more. I loved how the wrinkles around her eyes deepened. She pulled out a series of boxes from under the table. After some more language wrangling, I managed to find some pants similar to Marc’s. I was just paying the lady when a group of teenage boys came running up.

One of them pointed a camera-phone at me and took a snap. A flash illuminated the undercover area and my eyes went momentarily blind.

No reception my ass, I thought. That was definitely a phone. Marc just didn’t want me holding him up. The old woman reprimanded the boys, who were laughing and snickering and pointing at the phone screen—probably making fun of my sarong. Seeing my disapproving stare, the woman beckoned the offending boy over and confiscated his phone, cursing and shaking her fist at him.

“How much for the phone?” I asked, holding out a few bills of cash.

The woman’s eyebrows went up. She held up her phone questioningly.

I nodded. “Yes, the phone.”

“Oh, no, no, no.” She shook her hands in front of her face. “No sale.”

I returned the bills to the roll of cash and then held out the entire roll. “Please?”

Her eyes widened and I enticed her further by wiggling the roll.

She snatched the whittled statue of a macaw from the old man and showed it to me, making lots of cooing noises and urging me to buy it instead.

“It’s very nice, thank you. But I’d like the phone. Please?” I pointed again.

She conceded and handed it to me.

“Thank you, thank you,” I said, smiling and clasping my hands together at my front.

The woman gave me my package, and threw in a pair of socks and a touristy red and pink Peruvian shirt. She clicked her tongue and grimaced at my attire, then grinned and directed me to a small hut nearby. She must want me to change into my new outfit. I smiled and thanked the two of them again.

The hut was a little dingy and dark, but it had a mirror. I nudged myself into the room and almost dropped my package when I saw my reflection. My hair had plastered to my face from the drizzle of rain, but that wasn’t the worst thing. I knew why those boys were snickering. My white linen top had gone see-through in the wet.

I slapped my palm on my face, heat flushing my cheeks. No wonder the woman threw in another top for me. How embarrassing. I took a deep breath, changed into my new outfit and pulled out the phone. It was a satellite phone.

Immediately, I dialed Cash.

He picked up.

“Who is this?” His voice came out gruff.

“It’s me,” I said, smiling. “Roo.”

“Christ, Roo. Where are you?”

“Didn’t you get my messages?”

“Yes, but I was on a plane. I’m in Houston. Where are you now? Please tell me you’re still at the airport. I can book you a flight here.”

“I’m in some village in a jungle. We’re following a lead to find Urser’s lab—get this, the star-gate is somewhere here. Marc said it was within walking distance from his bungalow.” I filled him in on what had happened, and how our plans had derailed when Eve blackmailed us, and how now Marc was trying to beat her at her own game by finding the location of the lab before she did.

After I finished relating the tale, the line muffled as though he covered the phone with his hand. I swore I heard him let loose a string of curses.

When he returned to the phone, his words came out slow and measured. “You are to stay put and wait for me and my team. Send me your GPS coordinates. You said it was a satellite phone? There’s an app in there that should tell you your location.”

“Cash, we’ll be fine. I didn’t call you so you could rescue me. I just thought you might be worried. We’re not here to engage or anything. Just getting a location of the lab. Then we’ll come back and hand over the details so you and your crew can go in and do your thing.”

His voice turned deathly dark. “Marc’s antics in Buenos Aires Airport were broadcast on the internet. People know where you are.”

“He was caught on camera dematerializing?” Unease unfurled in my stomach. “But I’m not there now.”

“All you need is for one more slip and Players from around the globe will be coming for you. Worse, Urser gets wind of you being so close to his base of operations and his entire darkling army descend. Stay put. Stay out of range of cameras and—”

I made a choking sound.

“—Roo? Are you there?”

“Yes, I…”

“What is it?”

“These kids took a photo of me and, hang-on”—I brought the phone down from my ear—“let me check something.”

I scrolled through the open apps on the phone. There was no way they’d uploaded the photo of me. The data bandwidth here was probably non-existent. My heart leapt into my throat. There it was.

A photo of me. Slightly see-through top.

Posted online. Geo-tagged.

“Oh my God.”

“Roo?” Cash’s urgent voice punched through the phone speaker. “What?”

I put it back to my burning ear. “I think it’s too late. Search: Chica mojada hace Perú online.”

The silence was worse than Cash’s wrath. Nothing came down the phone at all but perhaps my imagined sense of his heavy breathing, bulging forehead veins and steam blowing out of his ears.

“Let me speak to Marc,” he finally asked.

“Cash—”

“Put. Marc. On.”

“Okay, okay.”

I wedged the phone between my shoulder and ear, gathered my old clothes and nudged the hut door open with my hip. Marc couldn’t have gone too far.

When I stumbled out and into the mud, I found myself surrounded by a group of men wearing black ski-masks pointing automatic rifles at my face.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

AT LEAST TEN men surrounded me. On further inspection, some of them could’ve been women. All had wiry, malnourished shapes and desperate eyes peering from behind crudely cut holes in black masks. No, they weren’t ski-masks, but black strips of fabric wrapped around their heads like sinister mummies. A few of them had Kevlar vests over their dirty clothes. Each had an automatic weapon of some kind. Some had machetes, and one man… he had a white, hand-painted skull and crossbones on his vest. With a guttural voice, he barked an order to the men at his right. Two of them stepped forward and grabbed my upper arms, dragging me forward.

I lost control of my package. It dropped to the floor, including the phone. They pulled me forward and my legs dragged in the mud behind me.

My heart kicked in my chest. Wildly I looked around for Marc.

He wasn’t there.

They dragged me over fallen stacks of colorful clothing. The old woman who’d served me was gone. The toothless man was no longer there. The naughty teenagers were gone. Even the animals in the forest seemed to have run off in fear. Silence had descended over the market. Oh God. Was that blood on the canvas ceiling? A fine mist of red arced in a line, as though someone’s artery had been hit and a macabre impressionist had painted on the roof. The closer I peered, the more red splashes and smears I found. Behind, at the fruit and vegetable stand. Further along, the livestock… dead. It was then I noticed the blood dripping from the machetes of the soldiers. No.

My heart refused to comprehend the sight before me.

No.

Then I saw two small, dirty feet with gnarled toenails sticking out from underneath the market stall.

“What have you done?” I screamed and kicked behind me, twisting and writhing to get a foothold. I gathered the life-force blistering from my captors and pulled it into me, until I filled to the brink.

And then agony lanced the back of my head. I blacked out.

I came to in the back of a Jeep bouncing along a path as it drove deep into the jungle. Well, that’s what I surmised. I had no idea of our location, except to see endless forest and gray sky whipping past at frightening speed.

It seemed I was in the roofless trunk of the car. Every bump and divot caused my body to jostle and hit the sides. I caught glimpses of the backs of guards in the seat in front. They hadn’t noticed me coming to. Quickly, I assessed my situation. My feet and hands were bound together in a hog tie, and I had a dirty rag stuffed into my mouth, tied in place. It tasted like chemicals and inhaling the sickly sweet smell made me woozy. Must be drenched with a drug of some kind to keep me docile, or asleep. On another whiff, my eyes and my brain rolled and I gagged. My sluggish body refused to do my bidding. Energy was beyond my reach. Everything felt heavy, but one thought stabbed through the mist: Say Marc’s true name, and he’ll know which direction they took me. He would come for me.

If he was alive.

“Egnatius,” I tried to say, but it came out a garbled mess through the mouth gag.

The two guards heard my sound and turned. They said something in Spanish to each other. One of them jabbed my head with the butt of his gun. Pain lanced but I didn’t pass out. My body worked overtime to heal. They hit me again. This time, I felt something crack in my skull and oblivion swallowed me whole.

When my eyes opened, it felt as though I’d been asleep for a long time. Lethargy coated my bones like chains and dragged me down. It was an effort to breathe, and pain still throbbed at my temple. Gingerly, I raised my fingers, testing, half expecting half my head to be caved in. I couldn’t move.

Still hog tied.

A chemically soaked rag covered my mouth.

I blinked and took a moment to let my situation soak in.

The scent had dimmed. Must be why I’ve come awake. It was drying out and weakening. That and my wounds had healed, hopefully.

If my captors were human, they wouldn’t expect me to be awake. If they weren’t human… they could be coming any minute.

I forced myself to focus on the rag in my mouth. Telekinesis worked via an extension of energy, and all I had to do was form it into a thin, sharp line to cut like a blade. I sent it from my mouth, outward. Easier said than done. It took me a total of twenty-six tries before I was able to get it to work. The rag sliced in two and fell from my face. I gulped in air then gagged at the rank, sour atmosphere. Quickly, I sliced my bonds apart and released my hands and feet. My head throbbed. I tested the wound site at the back of my crown with gentle fingers.

I hissed. Definitely a lump. It was hard, sore and a lot better than I expected. No crushed bones, at least, not anymore.

I flexed my fingers, free of constraints. Fat load of good that did me. A quick survey of my surroundings had me placed in a small, plain wooden room that smelled like urine and defecation. The only source of light came from cracks under the ramshackle door. The room appeared empty, no other life-sources with me, only the shadow of a disgusting metal pot in the corner. I could only imagine what that was used for. The foul smell curled my nose.

Focus, Roo. Focus. Survive.

I covered my mouth and closed my eyes, intending to send my senses out for reconnaissance, but flashes of the bloody village hit me and a cry of anguish ripped from my soul. Those people. The animals. The entire village—all gone. It was my fault because surely they were after me. Shame washed over me. I came here, thinking I could help, and it cost these people their lives. Time to get out of here. Cash was right; I should’ve stayed at the refuge.

I squeezed the tears away, wiped my eyes and tried again. I sent my awareness beyond the confines of the hut. Wherever I was, so were about twenty other people. My guess was they were the soldiers who took me. But were they Player, human, or did they work for Urser?

Anger churned. If they worked for Urser, if they damned well brutalized the village on his orders… My eyes burned. My chest ached. I thought of the old couple who’d helped me. The muddy feet poking out from behind their table. The ache spread and my throat closed up.

The whittled macaw rocking gently on the floor.

My hands curled into fists.

They would pay for this.

The way the soldiers had taken me, leaving no survivors as witnesses, suggested my existence was to be kept secret which meant my captors were under the control of a Player, or even Urser. Normal humans wouldn’t give a damn if the general public knew I was here. It had to be like Cash said; Players saw Marc’s antics online, then linked the photo of me and had come to finish me off. Another assassination attempt to score them evolutionary points for being the fittest in this game of survival.

Already a part of me linked to the energy signatures outside. I extended that reach to connect wholly with my surroundings. Nature reacted to my call, quivering on a plucked string. Life teamed down the live wire I’d sent out. It slid down the line until it leached into me. With my soul supercharged, my awareness grew. I could hear birds cawing in the trees, frogs croaking, insects chirping… and something else.

Souls. All kinds of souls—many with the gritty taint I’d come to expect from darklings or witches. They were gathered close by.

One split from the group and headed my way. Direct and with purpose. Human.

I hesitated.

I had to be smart. Why obliterate these people if it made me just as bad as them, plus they could lead me to the instigator… to Urser.

As the person arrived outside my hut, I powered down.

“Egnatius,” I said quickly and then the door to the hut opened, flashing me with blinding light.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“YOU’RE AWAKE,” CAME a deep gruff voice.

I shielded my eyes.

“How did you get free?”

I dropped my hand and my vision took a moment to adjust.

It was the leader of the group, the one with the white skull and crossbones painted on his Kevlar vest. A single drop of red had landed under one eye of the skull like a bloody tear. His mummy mask had been removed to reveal his face. Matted black hair hung around his head and came to his collarbones. He had olive pock-marked skin, a handlebar mustache, and a white puckered scar running down one side of his face and through one white eye. The other brown eye glared.

I wanted him angry. Angry people made mistakes. “I can see why you wear the mask.” I indicated to his face. “Someone got hit with the ugly stick.”

His fist struck me on the cheek and numbing pain exploded.

I tasted blood in my mouth and spat at his feet. “What do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

He grunted and grabbed a fistful of my hair. He yanked and pulled me out of the hut so fast I toppled into the mud at his feet. Rain splattered next to my hands, pooling around my fingers. I bit my lip to stop myself retaliating. I had to keep him angry. If he remembered I wasn’t drugged, he’d put the gag back on, and then I’d be weak.

I’d end him first.

He kicked me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. While I wheezed and gathered my breath, I checked my environment, looking for Marc. He wasn’t here. The rain came down heavier than before, but I could see more huts. More importantly, there were solid brick buildings that looked completely out of place in the Amazon jungle. From within them, I sensed a multitude of souls, including some larger, more virulent souls. Seraphim, or Nephilim. Must be.

“Get up,” the soldier said.

When I didn’t move, he kicked me in the face. I coughed blood onto the mud and tried again to whisper Marc’s true name again, but the swelling in my lips made it warble. It sounded more like Neeshus than Egnatius. I winced. If he didn’t show up soon, I was on my own.

First, I needed to know where Urser was. Then I would obliterate this compound.

“I said, get up, you filthy whore.” He kicked my side.

I saw stars and spluttered, then laughed, rolling onto my back. “You kissh yo moffer wif dat filshy mouf?”

“What?” he crouched down to my level. “Speak clearly, whore.”

I swallowed. Took a breath and allowed my body to heal. The pain in my lips lessened, itching as cells knitted together. The man’s eyes were glued to my mouth, no doubt watching the phenomenon of Nephilim healing before his eyes. Part horrified, part fascinated, he straightened.

“I said,” I wheezed, “you kiss your mother with that filthy mouth?”

He pulled a knife from his belt and slammed the blade into my shoulder, pinning me to the ground.

“Ah, Jesus.” Agony clouded my mind and I squeezed my eyes shut while I managed the pain. When I could breathe again, I opened my eyes and stared him down. “I’m surprised you even have a mother,” I continued. “With a face like that, my bet is you spawned from a snake.”

He growled and twisted the knife by the hilt, burying the blade deeper into my flesh. My scream ended in a stilted choke.

“If it weren’t for the money, I’d kill you right now,” he said and yanked the knife out. He wiped the knife clean on his thigh.

My eyes narrowed. So he was a mercenary for hire. Human, too. Seeing him wipe my blood on his thigh gave me an idea—I could hex him. I just needed to get my hexed DNA into him. The blood on his thigh had no directive in it, and it wasn’t anywhere near his skin or mouth.

While I scrambled to my feet, I formulated a hex in my mind, repeating words until all I thought of instructions to implant in his body. While I thought, I bit my lip and let blood pool with saliva in my mouth. I spat in his face.

My pink saliva landed on his cheek, ricocheting into his exposed eye. He squinted and recoiled then wiped it with the back of his palm. But it was in his eye. That was as good as getting it in his mouth or straight into his blood system. Hopefully the rain didn’t wash too much away before the hex had a chance to mesh with his biology.

He yelled out to some companions I couldn’t see.

Someone with rough hands lifted me from behind, under the arms. Initially, I resisted. I scratched at their fingers to pry them off. Curses spat from their mouths but, before they retaliated, I made myself go limp and dangle, compliant. It wasn’t hard. My stab wound still hurt. An injury like that would take time to heal. Plus I needed a moment to arm myself with my second hex. I stared down at my palms and willed the skin open to reveal red flesh underneath and repeated my directive in my mind. I held my bleeding palms to their scratched fingers under my armpits. The hex passed unchallenged and I waited for evidence it had worked.

“Vámonos.” The one-eyed leader indicated for the men to follow him and walked toward the brick structure.

The building was two stories high and completely sheltered by trees, hidden from any satellite or drone trying to pick up new buildings. No wonder Cash had a hard time isolating the complex. It was modern which led me to believe it had been built recently. Briefly, I considered breaking free using telekinesis, but as we grew closer, I recognized some of the energy signatures inside. Urser was there. I frowned. That can’t be right. I sensed other, more familiar signatures: Wren, Lincoln, and another coming toward me.

The double doors opened in unison, splitting in the middle to reveal Eve on the other side, one hand on either door handle, holding it wide.

The sinister smile warping her features told me all I needed to know.

I shrugged the soldiers off to stand tall. They complied, as I knew they would. The hex had them in my control, waiting for my orders.

“You sold us out,” I said to Eve.

“Come, come, now Roo. Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”

Her words hit me squarely in the chest and wrenched. She was wrong. I was surprised. Part of me trusted her. I believed her when she said she was on our side.

If Marc was free, he’d be coming. So would Cash. They’d walk right into a trap.

“You fucking bitch.”

She smiled. “Are you going to come without trouble, or do I need Fernando and Raoul to drag you. I know Eduardo is itching to get his hands on you.”

I glanced over my shoulder.

The two soldiers, Fernando and Raoul, I assumed, still had their masks on. They cradled their rifles like babies, eyes expectantly on me. Eduardo, the scarred leader, bared his teeth. I couldn’t tell if my hex had worked on him so had to confirm. I just needed an order that wouldn’t seem suspicious to Eve.

“Take me to Urser,” I said, looking him squarely in the eye first, then settled on Eve.

Almost simultaneously, Eve indicated for Eduardo to take me and he launched toward me. But I saw him move first. And if he moved first, chances were he was mine.

Fernando and Raul urged me forward with the butts of their guns.

We followed Eve down brightly lit corridors with white walls. I caught glimpses of medical labs and equipment through the windows of doors as we passed. That could be where they did their initial testing. Occasionally, I saw bodies in there, some alive, and some not. A few were darklings and others were human. Not all of them were alive.

There was one room, completely open as if they wanted me to see. It had a metal table with a cadaver on it, chest cracked open like a butterfly. The sight was horrifying enough, but when I caught the toes wiggling on their own, I almost vomited. That person, or Nephilim… or darkling was alive. The lab attendant looked up as I passed—two eyes peering at me from over a surgical mask—then someone shut the door to hide the experiment.

A warped sense of reality swirled around me. This was worse than we’d imagined. How many people had suffered in the name of perfecting their dark serum? I couldn’t tell if it was my nervous energy, or the ghosts of the experimented, or perhaps I worried that the surprises weren’t over, but the sick feeling grew. I’d already gotten one thing wrong. Eve wasn’t the kind woman she claimed to be. Despite Marc’s insistence of her rotten core, I’d paid it no mind. Idiot. I was an A-grade idiot. How many of my instincts were wrong?

One thing was for sure, I wasn’t without backup. The three armed men behind me would do anything I told them to, including die for me. And I was okay with that. They killed the village. They didn’t deserve to live. Let their next life be a rat or a cockroach.

Eve led us through a final door and we emerged into a large sitting room. At first glance, it appeared to be an employee lunch room. To one side sat a kitchenette, including a fridge, a microwave, plates and cutlery. Two orange corduroy sofas were in the center of the room. Wren and Lincoln sat on one of them. Urser on the other.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LINCOLN AND WREN sat with their hands tied to their thighs, palms up. Both were gagged, but their clear and drug eyes free tracked me across the room as I walked closer. My heart stopped when I saw a syringe sticking from their thighs, twitching slightly as they breathed and inadvertently moved their legs. Black liquid filled each syringe.

Bastard. Fucking bastard.

I should slice his head off with my power. I should slice him right now.

But there was no telling he’d die from that. Out of all the Watchers, and despite him being a father figure during my early life, he was the most mysterious. I knew little about his Seraphim abilities, except he could shake the earth and glamour others under his control. I also knew he was from a war planet, like his brother, the king and conqueror of the Empire—my ex-husband. But you didn’t get to be as powerful as he without strength. I needed more information.

Heat bubbled at my fingers and I flexed.

My gaze bounced between Bruce Urser and my friends. Urser was huge. His presence filled the two-seater sofa entirely. My whole life he’d been a regimented military man. There were rules and regulations in our house. Clothes had to be ironed, beds made a certain way, sheets folded and tucked in the corners. Seeing him in his neatly pressed uniform and military style buzz cut, I could see nothing much had changed. He sat stiffly, barely moving. He was cold, calculated and precise. He didn’t waste breath unless he knew it went to good use. Everything had a purpose—including the uniform. He wanted me to think that he had the might of an army behind him, ready to move on his word. He even had a black handheld radio pinned to the tab on one shoulder. I lifted a brow at the medals pinned to the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Gave yourself a few medals, did you, Bruce?”

He stood up and sneered. “Ah, Your Majesty. So kind of you to join us.”

“Cut the bullshit. I get it. You got me. You and your bloody witch of the century pulled the wool over my eyes and now I’m here.”

“No ‘father’ anymore? No ‘daddy dearest’?”

“Pfft. When did I ever call you ‘daddy dearest’? You and I both know you’ve never been my father. You’ve only ever been Bruce Urser to me. This whole Game is a sick ruse and the fact that I landed in your House surprised you as much as it did me.”

His eyebrow twitch was the only sign my words made any impact. His aura flatlined, and his face deadpanned. Like I said: Control.

“When are you going to understand that you can’t beat me?” he asked. “I’m always two steps ahead of you and I don’t even try.”

“Gloating isn’t an attractive look on you. Besides, the Game isn’t over yet.”

He laughed. “You think I care about the Game?”

I folded my arms but didn’t take my eyes off him. Damned if I let him stare me down.

“Please, Roo, take a seat.” He waved at the seat he’d vacated. “I’m sure we can be civil about this.”

“Civil? You’ve stabbed my friends with loaded syringes. Your men beat me.”

“A small price to pay for compliance.”

“Hasn’t anyone told you terrorists aren’t negotiated with?”

He sighed. “And as long as they stay still, they’ll be fine. Please, sit.”

A quick glance at my soldiers had them waiting patiently for instructions. I didn’t want to reveal my secret command, so chose to ignore them and hoped they’d stay waiting.

“Are you okay?” I mouthed to Wren and Lincoln as I sat down.

Wren’s red-rimmed eyes stared back, and when I glanced over at Lincoln, I noticed his were red too. I frowned. Wren’s gaze darted to her arm where a line connected her wrist to the syringe. If she made a sudden movement, the liquid would deploy into her blood stream, flooding her veins with the dark serum. The same contraption was rigged on Lincoln’s arm. They had to stay completely still.

Bruce smiled.

Inside, I seethed. He knew I wouldn’t be swayed by their deaths, so a simple death threat would be wasted on me. They were Players. Their souls would travel to Purgatory and Marc would transport them safely home. But this… the serum would turn them into darklings, meaning he could control them, and worse, if he killed them, they would die a true death if I couldn’t purge the infection out of their systems first.

“How did you get the recipe for the serum?” I asked, eyes burning. “I thought it was original sin extracted from souls. It was destroyed years ago when the prince died.” It’s what Cash sacrificed his life for. “How did you get it back?”

“Despite what the myths say, the serum was never destroyed. It never really existed in the first place. Granted, what we have now took us some time to perfect. We lost a lot of subjects in our efforts to control Seraphim, but the Nephilim Players proved to be the perfect bridge between human and god.” Bruce casually walked to join Eve near the kitchenette. He picked up a knife from the counter and then moved to the window sill where a small pot plant sat. He sliced his palm with the knife until a black welt appeared. Black ink bled in drops and spread to cover the leaf in a silent dark plague. The plant turned gray, the leaf withered into ash and scattered to the bench. He slid a glance to me. “You might be life, but I am death. Sin is my specialty.”

A chill traveled down my spine. There was nothing left of the plant. Could he do that to everything, people included? I thought back to what they'd told me about the prince and the queen. The story was that she extracted original sin to make perfect beings. The prince stole this extraction, and mutated it for his own purposes to create the plague that twisted people into monsters. But Urser said, Sin is my specialty.

He laughed, supreme satisfaction dawning on his face. “Finally. You see.”

“It all came from you,” I said. “It was never something the queen extracted. It was never something the prince had twisted. It was always something you put in. You wanted to control Seraphim all along, and the darkling Players are only the beginning. Do your Watcher pals know what you’re planning to do to them? Do they know they betrayed the queen for another death sentence?”

The ground rumbled and a storm shadowed Bruce’s face. “You,” he spat. “You keep calling her the queen to distance yourself. But you can’t run from your own mistakes.” He stepped toward me. “You can’t hide from yourself, and soon you’ll see everything you created turn to dust, starting with your friends. And then finally, Ursa Constellation will have its day—like it should’ve in the beginning.”

If I ever had any doubt, I knew now that he hated me with a passion. I must have done something terrible to him to deserve his malice. If he wanted me dead, he could’ve killed me a long time ago with a simple touch. No, there was something more.

I studied him. “I must have pulled one over you for you to go to this much trouble. What was it, did I steal someone you love? Your best friend? Your brother?” His control cracked. Little slivers of energy slipped through tiny fissures in his aura. “Oh! That’s it.” There had been a flicker of emotion in his eyes when I said the word brother. Was it Envy? Pride? I kept pushing. “I stole your brother, the king, and then he had no time for you after we married? Did he spend too much time with me and forget about you?” Another crack in the fissures. This time when I said the word me. “No. You didn’t want your brother. You wanted me … but… not for love. Your brother got me instead of you which meant he married into the royal family. He got to be king, while you—”

The ground shook beneath us. Plates and dishes fell from the sink. And I shifted in my seat. Still, I smiled.

“You know nothing of my relationship with my brother.”

“The shaking walls might beg to differ.”

The ground shook again, this time, the syringes wobbled so much Wren and Lincoln whimpered and winced.

“You’re a bastard, you know that?” I shot Urser daggers.

“Perhaps to you, but to others”—he jerked his chin toward Eve—“I’m a saint. A god. The Almighty.” He stepped to a window and peered through the blinds. “Now, all we need is for your knights in shining armor to turn up, and then I’m done with you.”

So Marc was alive, as was Cash. At least that was good news.

“What do you need them for when my blood will open your gate?”

He spared me a look, eyes narrowed. “So you know.”

“Of course I know.” I glanced at Eve. She also widened her eyes a fraction. “I also know what you’re planning to do once you get the gate open.” I didn’t, but let them think I did.

Urser turned to Eve. “If she knows, then the others will too. They might think this is a trap and come prepared. There may be more coming.”

Eve closed the gap between them and lowered her head to talk to Bruce discreetly.

While they were distracted, I took the chance to get the attention of my friends.

“Hey,” I whispered.

Lincoln’s baby blues widened.

I made a show of looking at the needle in his leg. He frowned at it then back at me.

I inched my hand his way and sent my energy forth in a whisper to connect with the syringe, testing for weaknesses. But before I acted, I needed to power up. It had been a long time since I’d eaten and, after healing a crushed skull and casting a couple of hexes, my reserves ran low. I considered siphoning straight from Urser and Eve—weakening them at the same time as energizing myself—but dismissed the urge. They were too practiced and would sense me before I took enough to attack. Instead, I sought out the soldiers. I let their energy trickle down through our connection. The surrounding world grew clearer, brighter, more alive. I felt a pulse beat in each body. I smelled the blood crusting on Eduardo’s blade, and I tasted the last meal cooked in the microwave. The animals were alive in the forest behind the windows. There was more energy out there for me if I let it in, but nature was wild, raw and unrestrained.

All three soldiers faltered, stumbled as I drew on their essence. Life-force flowed into me like my own personal brand of ecstasy. It was hard to stop, but I need the soldiers functional. I needed their protection. I cut my line of fuel and, slowly, surely, surrounded Lincoln’s hypodermic needle with my power. I squeezed until the needle compacted, collapsing in on itself. There was no way the black liquid would make its way through the cavity now. Lincoln caught wind of what I was doing and nudged Wren with his shoulder. She met my eyes, swallowed, and then gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

Quickly, I checked that Urser and Eve were still preoccupied, then concentrated on Wren’s needle and did the same. It bent oddly to the side. Wren winced.

Sorry, I mouthed from my spot on the couch opposite her.

Soon I had both blocked and ready for extraction. On second thought, it was best I released their harnesses to give them access to remove the syringes themselves. Squeezing solid air was one thing, but slicing was another. At this distance, I worried I would miss and end up hurting them, especially after I was juiced up with soldier energy.

It would be better if one of us pulled the needles out manually.

I rubbed my sweaty palms on my thighs and checked Eve and Urser one last time. Eve was explaining something to Urser. I slowly stood. He reached to activate his shoulder mic, depressed the button and spoke into it. Then his gaze swept my way.

Shit.

In one fluid movement, I yelled “Protect me” to my soldiers and launched over the coffee table separating the two sofas. Each of my hands landed on one of my friends’ legs and pulled the needle out. Then I let my power zip through my fingers and sliced the bonds apart.

A wave of invisible power hit me and I was thrown backwards. My back skidded across the coffee table until I hit the soft cushions of the couch behind. I stood but was hit by another wave. The momentum sent my legs flying over my head in a flip and soon I found myself sprawled on the floor behind the couch, trying to catch my breath. I blinked, staring at the tiles under my palms. Wow. So fast.

As the soldiers rushed to my side of the couch, I struggled to comprehend how I’d been thrown across the room.

Air?

I shook my head. Unless Bruce had some power I wasn’t aware of, it must have been Eve with her telekinesis.

Double shit.

My hand found my stomach. It was wet. The second I became aware of the wound, pain swamped my brain. I glanced down. Red sticky mess oozed through my fingers.

It was okay. The wound was closing. I was okay.

Hiding behind the sofa, I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on breathing through the pain. A couple more seconds and my insides wouldn’t fall out. Just another breath. And another.

I tested my stomach and breathed a sigh of relief. Intact.

Slowly, heavily, I got to my feet, ignoring the pinch at my gut.

When I straightened, Eve stood behind Lincoln and Wren’s couch. Each had a hand still secured. I’d failed in releasing them completely. Eve had a controlling hand on Lincoln’s shoulder, and Urser had his palm on Wren’s cheek, tilting her face back toward him. He stared into her eyes, speaking, mesmerizing her.

“No!” I screamed. “Get away from her!” I spun to Eduardo. “Shoot Urser and Eve. Save my friends.”

Eduardo aimed his rifle at Bruce but, before he could shoot, the doors burst open and a horde of darklings swarmed in. Each having once been human or Nephilim, was humanoid in appearance, but their eyes were black, their hands were like claws, and they gnashed their sharpened teeth with feral appetite. Urser had injected his darkness into them, and now they were evil incarnate, ready and willing to do their master’s bidding.

“Attack her,” Bruce called and pointed at me.

“Shoot them,” I cried and pointed at the darklings. “Shoot them.”

My three soldiers swiveled their weapons and fired. The roar of rifles discharging filled the small room and then a different sort of rumble shook my feet. I looked down. The ground shook.

Urser watched me with a crazy glint in his eye and his hands flexed toward the floor. From where I stood I could feel his power pushing into the ground, disrupting it. The walls trembled around me and the blinds on the windows rattled. He could bring down the building if he wanted to.

The ground shifted and the windows shattered, showering my back with broken glass. A surge in life-energy behind me was my only warning before a mass of bats and birds swooped inside.

I screamed and dropped to the ground. It was chaos. The animals torpedoed in through the open windows and flapped around the room, creating a dark mass of wings and fury. My heart squeezed. Fear locked my muscles. Wren. He’s got Wren doing this. I had to save her.

There was one thing Urser didn’t count on. More life in the room meant a bigger power supply for me. But tapping that source meant I would tip the balance of nature. I’d be killing innocent creatures to save myself. A snarl near the darklings had me glancing that way. The soldiers had run out of bullets and the feral beasts breeched the room. I was running out of time. I pushed away the fear locking my joints, and opened myself to the hurricane of electrical life-force. A silent tsunami hit me, lighting me up, but I pulled on the source until my hair lifted with static electricity, strands floating in a gravity defying response.

I needed to defeat him. End this now. Once and for all.

I removed all traces of reticence and opened myself wide, screaming as electricity burned and ripped my insides, stretching my half-human vessel to the brink. My body bowed under the pressure. Birds and bats dropped, one by one, depleted as their energy flew from them to fill me. I was power. I was life.

Eventually quiet descended. Naught but the sound of rain falling beyond the open windows could be heard.

Pitter patter. Pitter patter.

And the click of the soldier’s guns as they tried to shoot with empty magazines. They’d followed my last directive to a T. Shoot them. Shoot them, I’d cried. And they kept shooting darklings with no ammunition.

Bruce and Eve stood behind Lincoln and Wren, eyes like globes as they took me in. They knew what I had done. They knew what I could do. But Bruce wasn’t afraid. He cocked his head as he watched me, silently assessing.

Near the door, more darklings clawed their way in over their fallen comrades. They saw the soldiers clicking their weapons, aimed at the fallen monsters. They howled in some sort of pack grief mentality then swarmed on my soldiers. Flesh ripped from bone and, in a bloody mess, the soldiers were no more. One by one, the darklings raised their heads, lions feasting on an expended gazelle, and locked awareness onto me. Hungry.

“Get her,” Bruce roared. “Bring her to me alive.”

My body trembled. Fuck.

With no time to hone, or craft the purpose for the power inside me, I released in the direction of the darklings heading my way. An eye-watering missile of raw energy shot from me. I screamed as it ripped away, shredding my being. Agony hurtled through my skin and the darklings in the front line vaporized into red mist. My energy surged through the next line of darklings. Just like the time I pushed a familiar’s essence out of a horse, the darkling bodies were separated from their essence. Unlike the horses, their bodies fell limp to the ground and the souls didn’t dissolve into the Earth’s atmosphere, they ceased to exist. Most of the energy I’d gathered from the birds was gone as suddenly as it arrived and dizziness overcame me. I dropped to one knee, glass crunching painfully under my skin.

I knew now what Marc meant when he said human bodies weren’t strong enough for Seraphim souls. My instincts kept sucking more life into me, filling up again, but my body crumbled from the inside. I felt it withering. The wrongness inside… it made me sick. Made me want to gag. My hand gripped the back of the sofa to steady myself. I looked over the edge.

Wren swayed in her seat, still under the influence of Bruce, and Eve stood behind Lincoln with her fingers wrapped around his throat.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WET WIND WHIPPED my back through the open window, painting my skin with rain and soaking me through. Pain radiated at my knee from the broken glass. Cold fingers slid down my spine, but I didn’t shiver. I felt the heat of life in that rain. In every damned drop of water falling from the sky, blowing through the window and landing on my flesh. Pure, unadulterated energy. It was the warm ocean in Margaret River lapping around my ankles. It was the frosty breeze in Budapest kissing me goodnight. It existed in the wildlife in the forest, in the plants, the trees, deep underground in the crawling insects, and it knew me. It connected through me and vibrated, alive and sentient, happy to be recognized. It called to me. It pressed down and I hurt with blissful awareness. I knew if I took anymore into me, my raw senses would overload. Nerve synapses would fry. But, like a junkie the day after, my blood sang for more even though deep down, in some distant part, I knew it would kill me.

I pushed the awareness to the side, where it waited in my periphery, eager and willing. I would not be pushed into anything, by anyone. Even nature itself.

I could do this—save my friends and survive with my mind and body intact. I locked onto the scene before me and calculated. I still stood between the sofa and the open window. Urser and Eve were behind Lincoln and Wren and the pile of dead darkling bodies blocked the exit. I did’t want to risk burnout, so had to avoid using energy. One option was to get to the remains of Eduardo and retrieve his machete. It was somewhere nearby. It had to be.

No. It was too far. Too impossible. No time.

And the energy inside me rolled like the tide, insistent. It hurt to hold. I almost laughed manically, for how could I hold the ocean? Instead it came out as a whimper and a burst of electricity shot from me prematurely. Smoke curled from my fingertips, sizzling and searing.

Eve still stood behind Lincoln with her talon like grip on the fragile flesh of his neck. Urser stood behind Wren, her mind completely under his control. She stared vacantly, swaying.

My bones were tired and alive at the same time. My body blistered from the inside. More energy simmered beneath the surface of my skin. I was breaking. I had to do this now.

“Let them go.” My voice sounded different, deep and hollow, as though echoing in my ears. I straightened and flexed my fingers. They sizzled in the moisture flicking in on a gust of wind. “Beg, and I may spare your life.”

Bruce laughed. “You’re the one who should be begging.”

“I decimated your darkling army. You have it wrong.”

“You think that was all I have?”

Anger ripped a snarl from my throat and I punched my energy-laden fists to the sofa. It skittered right, out of my way. I strode forward, kicking a fallen machete out of the way. I didn’t need it now. I slammed my fist into the coffee table, splintering it. It felt good. Hurt good.

Eve dragged Lincoln backward over the couch and Bruce did the same with Wren, putting the sofa between us. I screamed in frustration and simply stepped over it. They backed away until they were against the far window, wind and rain gusting in over their heads through the broken blinds.

My pathway was clear. Nothing but air between me and the four.

They were too calm. Too practiced. Schooled. As though they’d planned this move and were waiting for me to advance. Too easy.

Bruce glanced at Eve and jerked his head back, signaling a retreat through the windows.

Eve’s eyes widened as she glimpsed the open window over her shoulder. “Through the rain?”

“Yes, through the rain.”

“Didn’t plan on the rain, did you, Eve?” I said, inching forward. Witches hated the rain. They feared it. Water was one of the only things that could kill them. Drown a witch and her energy dissipated and dispersed. Like a lightning bolt striking the sea, the electricity of her life would conduct from drop to drop of rain until there was no more. The only thing saving her right now was the body she hosted inside.

“Shut up,” she said. “You don’t know what we’ve planned.”

“Oh, I think I do. All of this. You planned all of this. But you don’t know what I know.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes at me, calculating. “Leave. She’s bluffing.”

Eve inched backward, tugging Lincoln by the throat. She took her eyes off me to check the rain.

“Go,” Urser urged, and yanked on the broken blinds, clearing them from the window.

But Eve hesitated, fear in her ancient eyes.

Why was he so insistent on leaving if he knew his army was coming to rescue him?

Unless they were too far away to get here on time.

Was it really possible Bruce thought he was no match for me? But that last blast of energy I used to move the couch near depleted me. If I kept my bluff going, I could force them to release my friends before they went. Or I could replenish. If my body could take it. But there were no bats, no birds and no soldiers to siphon. The only life available was before me. Four people, only two I was prepared to tap.

I pushed my essence outwards to connect with them, but it went sluggishly. Air dragged into my heaving lungs. I had to connect before I could pull, before I could drain. My weakened body had trouble recovering from the recent surge. It wasn’t doing as it was told.

Panic gripped my heart and squeezed. Maybe that’s what he wanted. To drain me. To deplete me.

“Back away, Roo, while you still can. My army is coming.” Urser squeezed Wren’s shoulder. “And with this one, I’ll have an army of darkling animals as well. I’ll be unstoppable. And then I’ll take the gate.”

“You don’t have the key,” I said. “You need my blood.”

“Are you sure? The hunter is your soulmate. His blood will do.”

Suddenly, our future was laid out before us. With absolute certainty I knew it wouldn’t end well. I let out a sob I couldn’t hold.

“I’m sorry,” I said to my friends. “This is all my fault.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Roo,” Lincoln said, catching my attention. While his mouth spoke, his eyes directed my attention elsewhere. To the machete on the floor between us. “We all made our own choices. You have to trust me.”

Trust me, he’d said. My brain scrambled to make sense of his intentions. He wanted me to trust him. With the machete.

“I’ve never been good at much in my life here, but there’s one thing you know about me for sure,” Lincoln said. “One thing we’ve always had in common.”

He wanted Urser dead.

I darted a glance between him and Urser, who stood marginally closer to me, holding Wren like a shield before him. Lincoln had access to the soft part of Urser’s side. His underbelly and vital organs.

With my power, I threw the machete, hilt first, toward Lincoln. He plucked it out of the air and flipped it to stab through the gap of his own arm and body. Behind him, the blade sank into Eve’s soft flesh. It was enough for her to loosen her grip on his neck. That was all he needed to twist free. Lincoln’s face contorted with concentration and he spun toward my father, blade slicing forward.

Too quick. It happened too quick.

Bruce wrenched Wren around and shoved her toward Lincoln.

Lincoln’s blade plunged deep into her chest, front and center. Blood spurted from the wound. Arteries hit.

“No!” Lincoln screamed and let go of the knife. The hilt wobbled as Wren staggered back, surprise flaring her eyes.

“Wren!” I shouted and staggered forward.

Blood leaked from her mouth. She dropped to her knees. Lincoln caught her in his arms. “No, Wren,” he cried, face crumpling. “Don’t. Don’t leave me. We haven’t finished our adventure. Heal.”

But the instant he said the word, Urser reached down and touched Wren’s cheek.

A flitter. A feather light touch. That was all he made before he launched out the window, escaping.

“No!” I cried. “You bastard!”

Dark veins burst from the contact point on Wren’s cheek. Her mouth opened to a wide O shape and she choked. The poison invaded her body.

“Do something, Roo. Help her!” Lincoln grabbed the front of my shirt and shook me.

“I-I…” Fierce determination gripped me and I wrapped my fingers around the hilt of the knife in her chest. I pulled.

I sliced my palm and laid it on her chest. Warm liquid oozed between my fingers and I screamed in my mind for her body to reject his poison.

“It’s not working,” I said. “Her heart isn’t beating fast enough. It’s not circulating my antidote. I don’t even know if his poison is the same as the dark serum.” Even Urser said it took them years to perfect the serum.

“What do we do?” Lincoln said desperately.

I handed him the blade. “Kill her. Save her soul. Send it to Purgatory.”

He didn’t hesitate. He took the blade and, with a keening wail of anguish, drove it back into her heart, twisting. The life left Wren’s eyes, her vibrant aura rose from her body and dissipated into the atmosphere. Lincoln looked to me for guidance. “Did it work? Is she safe?”

“Yes. I sensed her soul leave. She’s okay.” I cried. Hot, wet tears streamed down my face and I tugged Lincoln into my embrace. “I’m so sorry, bro.”

For a minute, he stiffened, then he softened into me. His hands slapped around my back and he gripped tight, crying into my shoulder. His body trembled in my arms.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered and stroked his hair. “She’s okay. She’s fine. You did the right thing. She’s safe.”

I kept whispering comforting words until, sniffing, he pulled away and looked into my eyes, frowning. “She didn’t deserve this. She was the kindest, most caring soul I ever met.”

"I know.”

He moved to Wren’s body and picked her up, shifted her onto his lap. He stroked her cheek. “We had plans to travel the world. We had plans, Roo.”

My heart ached for him. “I’m so sorry, Lincoln.”

“That fucking bastard. I’m going to turn him inside out.”

“I’m right there with you, buddy—”

I stopped talking. Movement on my left.

Danger imminent, I froze.

Eve had her hand plastered to her wound but, unlike me, she had to hex herself to heal her body. Nephilim bodies healed on their own, but witches had to direct their body to heal. Eve could either save her host’s body, or escape with her life. The heavy rain outside prevented her from leaving in spirit form.

Her eyes grew feral with the awareness she was locked in this room with me.

Looking back now, I should’ve known. A cornered caged animal never conceded.

Eve hissed. Her eyes bled to black as she channeled her energy, preparing to fight.

I did the same. With all that I could, I scraped the bottom shelf of my ocean and lifted it up. I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Eve’s arms floated at her side, lifting slowly, blood stained palms facing the ceiling. She kept hold of my gaze as broken shards of glass trembled at her feet, shimmering and lifting into the air. Big, glistening triangular blades of glass rotated in the air.

“Don’t do it, Eve,” I warned, readying myself to throw up a shield of air.

I thought she would come for me. I prepared myself to make the barrier in front of me, but she twisted to face Lincoln, still holding Wren, his back to us. I threw air her way, to try and intercept, but she threw the glass at Lincoln. I wasn’t quick enough. Shards jackhammered into my friends. Their bodies shook as though being shot, but it was glass, not bullets that riddled their skin and lodged in deep, preventing healing.

I screamed and opened the floodgates. The energy bustling outside in nature poured through me in an avalanche. Rain, air, and debris flew inside the room from all windows. I was a conduit for the storm. A hurricane exploded around me, whirling, lifting pillows, plates and furniture into the air. It was the water I was interested in, and as I approached her, I forced it into her body, through every orifice. Water plastered to her skin and ran upwards in rivulets into her horrified eyes, her mouth, her nose. She tried to scream, but no air could escape. I stalked toward her, sending everything I had her way. Agony sliced through me. Too much. My body couldn’t take it. My right knee folded and I collapsed, hitting the tiles. My hands landed with a thud on the floor. I was burning, from the inside. Consumed.

But I kept going.

I crawled, malice spewing from my eyes.

“Drown,” I spat. My hands slapped on her fallen, writhing body. “Fucking, die you witch.”

Black ooze gushed out of her eyes. It was her stained life-force trying to escape, but it had nowhere to go except into the puddle around her where it drifted and dissipated.

And then she was gone.

Lincoln made a gargling sound. I wrenched my tormented body around and somehow made it to him. So much blood. So much lost life.

“Roo,” he gurgled. “Don’t save me. Let me go.”

Tears burned my eyes. Water welled. “But…”

“I want to be with Wren.”

My lips mashed together. I nodded.

“When I get back, my memories come with me, right?”

“Yeah, buddy, I think they do.”

“Good. I want to remember her. Let us make this last trip together.”

I was all out crying now. I nodded. “Whatever you want.”

He choked, eyes wide as he tried to control his convulsion. When he was done, he licked his lips and solemnly met my eyes. “Do you want me to tell them anything when I return?”

Clarity hit me in that moment. It was as if everything I’d learned over the past few months finally sunk in. I always tried to deny being the queen because she was destruction as well as creation, but I couldn’t run from my instincts. I had the power to take life, and to give it. I had to embrace my true nature if I wanted a chance at defeating Urser. I licked my lips.

“Tell them,” I said, “that Urser has perfected a way of infecting Seraphim to control them. Tell them he wants Ursa Constellation in power, and he’s been plotting this entire time to get there. He’s declared war. Tell them the queen says to be ready.”

I placed my palms on his chest, trying not to knock the glass speared in random places for fear of hurting him more, but he was beyond pain now.

He nodded grimly. “Do it.”

With the last of my reserves, I sent a pulse of energy through him and pushed his soul out. It fizzled and popped as it bled into the atmosphere.

Silence.

There was no other aura in the room but me.

A great, wracking sob shook me and I collapsed on the floor.

“I’m sorry, Kitty,” I whispered, because I may have just signed her death warrant.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“LOVE?”

I groaned in the cold darkness and blocked my ears. My head pounded and every noise hurt. Words without words were all around me. Everywhere. Whispers of a thousand soulless voices called to me from somewhere.

“Love, wake up.”

Light pressure on my cheek opened my eyes. The whispers hushed, stopped chittering, as though they’d heard him, too. Directly in front of me was Marc’s face, worry etched deep into his eyes. He sighed in relief.

“Marc?”

“Love, I’m sorry. I couldn’t find you. There’s something about this place.” He was crouched over me, frowning. “And your aura is quiet. Small. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I wanted to answer him, but through the open windows, nature called to me. It beckoned. The voices were out there. Thousands of them, coaxing, pulsing through the wind. They tickled my skin, testing me. They wanted in. “No, you can’t.”

“What, love?”

“I’m not talking to you.” A mumble was all I could manage.

“Who are you talking to?”

“The Universe. The Earth. A thousand souls of the night. I don’t really know… just that it wants me,” I slurred and tried to get up, but couldn’t move. So tired. “It’s talking.”

“Don’t move. You need medical attention.”

“I’m okay.” I licked my lips. My throat was so dry.

“Your aura is so weak. What did you do?”

What did I do?

Lincoln. Wren. Gone.

Kitty.

My throat closed up and I wheezed, trying to catch a breath.

Panicked, Marc gathered me into his arms. “Take it easy, Sephie.”

“I’m not”—I choked—“her yet.”

“Relax. Breathe.”

“Get your hands off her.” A dark, masculine voice pierced the air.

Cash vaulted through a window, mindless of the broken sill.

That first sight of him burned into my brain. It was a sudden stroke of clarity in my otherwise blurry mind. His golden skin, stern but beautiful face, and thunderous eyes that connected to my heart. Like the storm that had passed. My storm.

He landed next to me, breathing hard and panting as though he’d run a marathon, and pried me from Marc’s hands. He palmed Marc’s chest, shoving him away. “This is your fucking fault, Gamekeeper.”

Uh-oh. Official names. Cash was pissed. I touched him, feeling the sharp angles of his cheekbones and jaw, the stubble he’d been too busy to shave. A sheen of sweat shone on his brow.

“She needs medical attention,” Marc said, ignoring Cash’s animosity. “Where is everyone? I thought you brought back-up.”

“I ran here.”

He ran?

“She depleted herself fighting Urser,” Marc said and rested a palm on my forehead. “Her body is weak. Close to crossing, I can sense it. We need Lena.”

“I said, get your hands off her.” Cash shoved Marc again.

My breathing accelerated, my chest tightened. “Stop it.” The words took too much effort. “Stop fighting.”

“Take my energy,” Cash ordered.

“No, this is my fault, take mine, love.”

“Stupid men,” I slurred, eyes rolling back. “The world will give me her energy.”

“No, love. Don’t do it. You’re not strong enough to let it in. Your body is weak. Do you hear me?”

Don’t let it in. I locked onto those words and used them as my anchor.

A sharp sting in the crook of my arm roused me from sleep.

So I was alive.

Still hurting.

Oh God. Pain strapped me down. I whined, grimacing in the glare of blinking lights overhead. What was happening? Where was I? Bright lights. A few more seconds and the room came into focus.

A medical type room. Sterile white walls, stainless steel equipment… and I was on a bed. A gurney. It was a doctor’s surgery, or… must be one of the labs. Nausea rose violently in my stomach and I retched. That body. Chest with ribs open like a butterfly. My skin was clammy.

“Hurry,” someone said… Marc?

The sting again. I glanced down at my arm. A clear, plastic tube stuck out of it. “What the hell?” I tugged.

“Leave it in, Roo.” Cash growled from beside me.

I glanced over. He lay on a twin hospital gurney a hand’s-width away. Marc stood next to Cash with the end of my tube in his hand. He connected it to a needle in Cash’s arm.

“This is a bad idea,” Marc mumbled. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing?” I murmured.

“We’re infusing you with my blood,” Cash said. “Jesop and Lena are on their way, but if we don’t…”

His voice faded and dark clouds battled bright spots in my vision. From a distance I heard male voices. I fought for clarity, came to, and tried to pull the tube out. I knew it was stupid. My Nephilim body had burned out. I remembered that. But the only other choice was to let Eve win and Lincoln suffer. I knew the consequences. Still… “I’m not ready to die.” I faded out.

“Roo.” Cash’s voice broke. “Don’t you die on me, Roo.”

I sobbed and licked my lips. “The voices are quieter now. I’m okay.” But as the words came out, I knew in my heart that I wasn’t okay. A wrongness sat heavy in me, like a rolling stone, falling, gathering momentum. It was my soul trying to leave my broken body.

His hand floundered until he sourced my own and gripped tight. “You will die without this. You will leave me, and I can’t have that.”

“But—” I took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Do this, or I come with you.”

I craned to see him.

For a serious man, always stoic in his delivery, his eyes today told a different story. Desperation reflected back at me. He locked onto me with dogged determination. “I’m not doing this without you.”

Of his meaning, there was no doubt. He would follow me to the grave.

“Then distract me. Tell me something good about her. Tell me about the moment you fell in love,” I whispered.

“You stopped me from killing a bug…”

I almost laughed but I had no strength. It came out as a strangled sigh.

“It wasn’t even a beautiful bug,” he continued. “It was the ugliest, most annoying thing I’d ever seen, but you protected it with fury. It was after… after the king had died. I’d been promoted up the ranks of the Royal Army and was tasked with increasing your personal security. Nobody wanted the job because they thought you’d killed your husband. You didn’t—we know that now, but then I was ambitious, egotistical, and didn’t give a shit whether you’d killed him or not. I’d blasted any opponent who dared to face me, and yet I still had the need to fight. I knew trouble was brewing between the worlds and wanted a piece of it. Roo? Are you listening?”

“Yes, keep going.”

“I found you in the royal garden, sitting on a bench, watching an empty playground. Your husband was gone. Your only son hated you for it, and you were alone. You should’ve been broken, but you were a delicate flower showing its framework of steel. When I came next to you, and swatted the bug sitting where I would, you blocked me… ‘It’s just a bug’ I’d said”—Cash laughed—“to which you replied ‘And you’re just a Seraphim, yet here we are, sharing the same air, made from the same stardust, the same energy.’ And then you looked at me with these big beautiful eyes full of defiance, and I fell in love.”

I blinked drowsily, letting the deep timbre of his voice soothe me. I laid my head back and closed my eyes. “Tell me more.”

“…I didn’t know then, that it was the moment I fell in love, but those words represented everything. You shielded the bug, picked it up and lectured me on keeping the Universe in balance. Its leg had been damaged from my haste. You took my hand, placed the bug on it and somehow healed it. I understood my purpose then: I was death, and you were life. The perfect balance. We could fix the Empire together.”

Marc cleared his throat and patted Cash’s arm, tube fitted. Dark, red liquid filtered from Cash’s wrist and through the clear tube to a bag where it gathered in size and would soon feed into me.

Cash squeezed my hand, eyes boring into mine. “No matter how divided we became, remember that, Roo. We’re two halves of the same whole, we will always find our way back to each other.”

“You’re not death, Cash,” I croaked. “I stared into Urser’s eyes today and saw myself reflected in them. I’m death.”

“No,” he insisted. “You aren’t. Believe me, Roo. You can’t be, because you’re the only thing keeping me in balance. You stop me from going dark.”

“It’s okay,” I sighed. “We’ll be okay.”

I blinked. My eyes burned. It took me a moment to realize my arm was burning too.

I thought I had experienced pain before, but nothing prepared me for this. It started as a warm, liquid trickle—the blood—and it sped from my arm straight to my heart, flammable and already in cinders. And then came the all-consuming agony as every pain receptor in my body ignited at once. Paralyzed with feeling, I could only look upon my companions, and hoped they understood the soundless cry for mercy in my eyes.

“Roo?” Cash was the first to notice something was wrong.

But his blood kept coming, flooding me with razors.

“Roo?” he asked again. “Are you okay?”

It felt like an eternity passed before he plucked out the intravenous line from his arm and slung his legs off the gurney to stand over me. “Something’s wrong.”

Marc was suddenly on the other side of me, touching my arm free of tubing. “She’s hot.”

“It wasn’t like this with me. Roo, are you in pain?” Cash asked.

I couldn’t answer.

“Her energy is fading,” Marc said, voice tight.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Enforcer, that it’s not working. Quick, put the tube back in your arm. She needs more blood.”

Cash hastily reconnected the tube to his intravenous needle and I tried to tell them, I really did, but the burning blood continued.

They argued then, but I don’t remember the words, only the thunderous inferno in my blood, turning everything white.

I screamed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I DIDN’T REMEMBER much in the days that followed, except the discarnate voices, the mind numbing pain, the white noise. Time passed in fractured pieces. Together with vague memories and Cash’s recounting of events, I managed to gather a semblance of what happened.

My initial screaming had lasted hours and only abated when Lena turned up. She’d cursed their ignorance and, with Jesop’s alchemic help, replaced the IV of Cash’s blood with something else they’d concocted.

Then I disappeared. Literally. Cash had come back to the surgical room to sit with me and found my bed empty. There had been only one way out of that room and I hadn’t left through the door. Nobody knew where I went, and I didn’t remember myself, but two days later they found me lying in the mud, naked and shivering, on the floor of the village square, right near the stall I’d purchased my clothes from. The same village Urser’s soldiers had murdered. I was clutching the wooden carving of the macaw in my white knuckled fist. The rain poured down, soaking my body and everything around me. I do remember something about that moment: the cool water helped my suffering as though it were a friend, trying to wash my tears away with theirs. Cash had gathered me in his arms and took me to Marc’s bungalow where he cleaned me, placed me in the white linen bed, and drew the mosquito nets in a waterfall.

I remembered Lena examining me as though I watched through two parts of myself. The one that screamed in silent agony, and the one that watched unfeeling and hollow from a distance. That part—the cold, detached part—was trying desperately to preserve a sense of sentience from the torment clouding my consciousness. The clarity never lasted long. Moments, flickers, and then I was back to the blanket of agony.

“What’s happening to her?” Cash had asked at one point, taking a seat on the bed next to me. He shifted a stray hair from my cheek and gazed at me with pained eyes. I remembered thinking he looked tired and scruffy. His beard had grown and his clothes were crumpled. He had a twitch in one red-rimmed eye.

To them, I stared at the ceiling, catatonic. To me, I held on by a thread. The flames, the fire, the burning inside still consumed all feeling and emotion in my body, leaving a raw husk of consciousness to exist in nothing but the moment, flitting between what happened in front of my eyes and what happened elsewhere—where the whispers told me to look. Pleas for help and cries for recognition called to me from every living thing. Not just the life-force in my immediate vicinity, somehow I felt it everywhere and it felt me.

Lena’s hands flowed over my form, sensing with chi, as she replied to Cash, “You weren’t supposed to give her such a large dose of your blood in one sitting. It’s a progressive process. You may not remember when you converted because your injuries were extensive, but small doses of the queen’s blood were administered over a period of time on an alternate cycle with another formula. Breaking up the conversion helped the mind cope with the transformation. And when you were done with the transfusions, you had your ancient memories to draw on. They told you how to use your abilities. The queen is a child in this sense. She remembers nothing of her previous life and we’ve just unlocked her soul’s full potential. Her body and mind are overwhelmed with her new strength. You threw her in the deep end and expected her to swim when she’s still learning to walk.”

“This is my fault.” He scrubbed his face, voice cracking.

“And mine,” Marc said, stepping into the room, hesitant.

I remembered furniture crashing, then. Vases, chairs, knick-knacks, whatever Cash could get his hands on, he threw at Marc. Most of all, I remembered not being able to care, only to watch it unfold as the voices of pain drew me deeper into them.

The second time I disappeared, they found me in a clearing not far from Marc’s bungalow. It rained still. Cash said I had tried to burrow myself into the soggy mud. I tried to get into the earth. But it was the spark of life beneath me I wanted. It called to me, it was in pain, like me. I wanted to get down to the core, to somehow find the source of the suffering, but it was too much. I knew it was my fault. I brought the pain. I brought these people to the planet.

I brought Urser.

When we got back to the bungalow, once again, Cash washed me. This time, he forwent the bed and took me outside to sit. I supposed he thought I kept gravitating to the earth, so being outdoors would help. It did, I guess, because for a moment, I sat there. Until I tried to drown myself in the pool to block out the noise.

And so it went on for weeks, as did the relentless rain. I would disappear and turn up nearby in the forest, outside the bungalow, or in the village. I remembered little, except Cash’s steady presence throughout it all. And then finally, he gave up.

He left me in the clearing in front of Marc’s bungalow. Instead of taking me away, washing me, and setting me in the safety of the house, he laid down next to me. His large body sank into the mud with me and he slung a heavy arm over my body, burrowing his face into my neck. It was one of the first coherent memories I had. For some time I laid there with Cash’s warm body next to mine. The pitter-patter of rain on the forest leaves gave me a sliver of solace. The sun rose and set, and through it all, he stayed. Others tried to take us away, but Cash wouldn’t let them. He refused to eat. Lena came to replenish our fluids, but the truth was I didn’t need it. I took my sustenance from nature, from the very energy surrounding me. We stayed until plants grew around us, entwining our legs, blooming pillows under our heads. Finally, someone could sense the planet’s longing and every life form wanted to get closer to me. A gray monkey hopped down from the tree and hovered nearby, curiously chittering. Soon, more animals joined. Birds. Bats. Crawling things.

The monkey came to my face and picked at my hair. Something snapped inside Cash and he plied his warm body away from mine. He ripped the vines tangling our bodies. He tore them into tiny pieces and threw them at the animals. The monkey screeched, sharp teeth chattering like pincers. Cash roared back with the ferocity of a lion and the little animal escaped up the tree. Cash raged at the trees, punched them, shook them. He found an axe in the garden shed cleaved through trunks with the focus of a madman. Thunderous rumbles shook the earth as each tree fell. Animals protested. The cacophony of life interrupted echoed inside me, pulsing the pain, making it worse.

But I said nothing.

So he kept building. He moved each trunk around me to make a shelter, stacking them feverishly. On and on he went, chopping trees, ignoring the damage he caused until I could take it no more.

“Stop,” I whispered one morning. “You’re hurting it.” My first words in weeks, almost too quiet to be heard under the static of the rain, and the ruckus around me, but he heard. My hunter.

He straightened from his task, tying logs with the very vines that kept entwining around my body. The makeshift hut was three courses high already. When he heard me, his eyes were wild and reflected the morning light. He vaulted the logs and landed next to me. His t-shirt clung to his thin body, ripped, battered and stained.

“Roo? Where does it hurt? Tell me.” He called out for Lena, for Jesop, anyone still near.

“Not me. The trees. You’re hurting them. I feel it.”

His laugh was manic, a mix of exhaustion, hysterics and something else I couldn’t place. He shook his head, briefly squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re worried about the tree’s pain. Of course you are.” His head dropped to my chest, heavy and warm, and he gathered me close to him. His body shook and shuddered. Laughing or crying.

“How about this pain?” He kissed me, desperate and deep. It wasn’t fueled by desire or want, but raw unfettered need. A need that coursed through our connection. It pushed at me, hot and demanding. I felt the twisting ache in his essence as it poured in an avalanche. He was right. He hurt. So much. His pain was different to the rest—to what I felt from the earth beneath me. Compared to him, the world was hollow, and distant. He was a shot to my heart. It sparked and I gasped.

“I don’t fucking care about the world,” he said. “Just you. And I’ll keep chopping down trees until you make me stop because at least I can do that. If nothing else, I can build a shelter over your head. I told you once, you’re the one who keeps me in balance. Without you, I’m nothing.”

He stood, rubbed his palms on his pants. I must have made a conflicted sound because he leaned down and said, “You don’t like it? Stop me.”

Turns out, I did stop Cash. Not immediately, but eventually. In the time it took me to move, he’d built the hut up to five courses high around me. There was no ceiling, and the rain fell on my face, but his words echoed in my head with every swing of the axe.

You don’t like it? Stop me.

With every felled tree, every echo of the earth’s pain, I knew his was greater. He needed me. The world needed me. We needed each other. Another spark ignited and soon, my desire was strong enough to drown out my agony. I rose, staggered, leaned on the log wall and stumbled toward him as he hacked another tree to death.

I emerged from the hut and, looking back now, I realized he sensed me coming. He must have. But he ignored me until I placed my hand on his forearm just as he retracted for another swing, ready to chop.

“Stop,” I said.

He slumped, axe heavy in his hands. “I thought you’d never ask.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A FEW MONTHS later, I was back at the refuge in Budapest, meditating in my room. I found it helped block the noise I heard from all living things. The hum and the whispers, the constant buzz. The collar they’d put around my neck also helped, but I preferred not to think about it. It reminded me too much of the collar from when they suspected me of witchcraft. A clasp at the back emitted an electromagnetic field that transmitted through the thin wire surrounding my neck, essentially disrupting the frequency of life-force before I sensed it. It also temporarily blocked my powers. This new collar was an invention from the surviving members of Cetus House. Cash was the one who suggested the upgrade, pointing out the similarities of my abilities and witchcraft. Wearing it didn’t bring me as much peace as they’d hoped.

With my eyes closed and breath steady, I emptied my mind of all thought except awareness of my body. My heavy limbs sank into the soft cotton of the bed, my lungs lifted in rhythmic patterns and my heartbeat pulsed gently in my ears. The noise around me drifted away until the beat and my breath was all I could hear.

Months had passed since Wren and Lincoln died, yet my emotions were still raw. My power stemmed from a connection with all living things and there was much about it that I had to learn. Staying in the confines of Jacine’s medieval castle was the safest place for me while I climbed my way back to normalcy.

Normal. I almost snorted at the thought. The action made me realize I’d pulled myself out of the calming depths of meditation. I was so far past normal it wasn’t funny.

The door opened, rousing me further.

“I was down in town this morning,” Cash said, striding in, excitement animating his features. “Oh, sorry. You’re meditating. I’ll come back later.”

“No, it’s okay.” I sat up, blinking the peace from my eyes to watch him walk over with a brown bottle in his hands. He’d put his weight back on but retained the scruffy hair and short beard he’d adopted in the jungle. He wore jeans and a simple long-sleeved black t-shirt that clung to his sculptured torso, a sight I’d never get tired of. I leveled a languid smile at him to which he caught and hesitated. We hadn’t been together in months and every time I saw his sexy face, my body wanted him with an intensity I’d never felt before. It was as though with my conversion to Seraphim, came muscle memory of our centuries together and I wanted a taste. But, for all of my effort, he would stop my wanton ways before we got too far because his hidden essence could topple me—even with me being at full power now. We couldn’t risk overwhelming my new but damaged and delicate sensitivities. My new priority had been working with healers to desensitize myself to every spark of life around me.

“Tell me,” I said. “What have you found?”

“So, I remembered something from one of my past lives,” he continued. “I followed the memory, and found this.”

“What is it?”

“Look.” He held it out, flashing a grin. I dragged my eyes from his adorable face to investigate the bottle.

“It looks like a bottle of wine to me.”

“Not just any wine.” He sat next to me, shoulder to shoulder, and rubbed a thumb across the grubby label. “Read it.”

I squinted at the faded words. “Chateau Margaux. Okay. What does that mean? Is it old?”

“It’s virtually ancient. Once, I worked as a gravedigger and buried it with some old rich guy. Bottled in 1787. The last known bottle of Chateau Margaux was knocked over by a waiter at an auction a few years back. That makes this the last bottle in existence.”

“You robbed a grave? Gross.”

He shrugged. “Nobody was using it. You wouldn’t believe its value today. Half a million dollars.”

“Still gross. Eww. You want to sell it?”

“I want to drink it. At our wedding.”

“You’re so weird.” I laughed, but my heart cartwheeled. It was the first time we’d mentioned the ‘w’ word since I’d converted and this was his way of being romantic. So much had happened and I wasn’t sure what was up or down. I knew we loved each other, but Urser was missing and silent, as though waiting for me. It made me suspicious. Everything he did was for a reason, and he usually had me eating out of the palm of his hand. A curl of anger unfurled in my gut. Eve and the entire trip to South America had been carefully orchestrated by him. It made me think, what else had been his doing? Wren’s death? Lincoln’s? Had he dangled Eve in front of me knowing I would do anything, including use all of my reserves, to end her? Probably. He wanted my blood to open the gate.

Then there was Marc. I hadn’t seen him since. I knew he blamed himself for taking me on the wild goose chase in the Amazon. I wanted to explain to him it was nobody’s fault, even if Cash insisted it was. I shut that down immediately. I was a grown woman. I chose to follow Marc so I could deal with the consequences. If Cash or Marc wanted to blame anyone, it should be Urser. Only through Jacine did I discover Marc had returned to the Empire with the souls from Purgatory, including Wren and Lincoln. He’d taken any Player he could. With Bruce’s dark gift revealed, it was safer that way. Our numbers were dwindling.

Maybe that was Urser’s plan, too.

And of course, there was me. My infinitely inconvenient powers. My missing time. I had the body to match my soul, but not the memories. Not that I wanted them. They said I might remember, but I hadn’t. Nothing. Except… there was one dream, maybe a memory. I was watching a boy play on a playground, and I felt the love in my heart bloom when he looked over his shoulder to check if I was watching. He was an auburn haired boy with bright brown eyes and it was a face so foreign to me, yet I felt such strong love. Each time I woke, I discounted the dream as something morphed from Cash’s memory of me when we first met—back at the Empire, the same time I’d chastised him for swatting a bug. I tried to ignore the feeling of loss when I woke up from the dream, but it niggled. It could be the prince, yet another person I’d let down.

Speaking of letting people down, my thoughts traveled to Kitty. So far no hex had been activated, but I’d still let her down. I missed her wedding.

“You don’t like it?” Cash asked, seeing my face. “We don’t have to drink it.”

“No, I love it.” I kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I love you, I just…”

“You missed your friend’s wedding.”

I sighed. “How do you always know what I’m thinking?”

“I told you, I know you better than yourself.”

It was true. Kitty and Alvin would have married over a month ago. I called her the moment I was able, but it was too late. Not knowing if I was alive or dead, she’d postponed it. I was supposed to be her Maid of Honor. That conversation had been short and sweet. She must hate me. I stared at my hands. I’d been calling her often to make amends, but it felt inadequate.

“Roo, look at me.” Cash put his finger to my jaw and tilted my face until I looked him in the eyes. “They’ll get over it.”

Pragmatic and straight to the point, my Cash. Never one for sugar coating things. I opened my mouth to respond, but suddenly he frowned. He cocked his head, listening intently and cursed. “I have to go.”

He pushed the bottle into my hands and got up to leave. Seconds later, a knock came at the door. A brooding mask fell over his countenance and he opened the door.

“I told you to wait for me,” he snapped rudely to somebody in the hallway. He braced the doorframe with an arm and blocked my view of the person with his body.

If I wanted to, I knew I could take the collar off and sense the aura to decipher his or her identity, but I was doing my best not to. I might end up overwhelmed. Lena said, that in time and with practice, I would learn to control it better, but for now, keeping myself separate to the energies around me was best. The desensitizing therapy was working in small steps, but I had a long way to go. Marc was the prime candidate to teach me more, considering he sensed auras as well as anyone, but like I said, he was gone and my heart ached every time I thought of that. Of course, there were always people back at the Empire who could help—apparently I had an army of private physicians—but I rebelled at the thought of leaving Earth. My life was here, and there was too much to fix. Starting with Urser.

It was the one thing that broke through my stupor—the desire to right the wrong and to stop the pain. That dream of a simple life, tending to the vineyard and perhaps starting a family was calling me. That, and Cash’s steady presence.

The female voice in the hallway sounded insistent.

“Let me get my things,” Cash said.

I got off the bed and padded barefoot across the carpet to the door.

Cash noticed me coming over and frowned. “Don’t worry about it, I got it. Go back to meditating. I’ll be back soon.”

He tried to shimmy through the crack in the door, but I stopped him. I opened the door wide.

“Hi Jacine,” I said with a wry smile.

“Your Majesty.” Jacine’s blue eyes widened. She wore a simple white sheath of a dress, patent leather heels that matched a shiny leather strap around her throat. Her baby pink bob had faded, and a silvery blond shone through. “Are you well?”

“Fine thanks,” I mumbled.

She wrung her fingers together.

“Roo, it’s okay,” Cash said. “You don’t need to worry about this.”

“The simple fact that you said that makes me think I do. What’s happened?”

“Not a word, Jacine,” Cash warned her then glared at me. “You’re not ready.”

“I think I am. It’s been months, and I feel good.”

“Last night you teleported to the bathroom in your sleep.”

My cheeks flamed. Marc’s ability had somehow developed in me. I’d always been able to travel with him, but in the centuries the queen had cloistered herself, no one really knew what she had become. I couldn’t create illusion-constructs or anything like that so the teleporting was useless unless I wanted to go around in the nude and, besides, I couldn’t control where I zapped to. But did Cash have to remind me of that in front of Jacine?

“Marc isn’t here to teach me, so that part is just going to have to do. Maybe I keep teleporting because I’m tired of being cooped up in here. Don’t try to shelter me, I can take it.” I focused my gaze on Jacine. “Now, tell me what it is.”

“Some information has come to light and we’ve called an emergency Tribunal meeting.”

Always with the meetings. “Well, that would involve me, right?”

“Jacine, give us a minute. I’ll be down in five.” Cash shut the door, closing Jacine off. He arched an eyebrow at me.

“What?”

“You’ve managed to keep yourself from crawling into the dirt because of the collar, but you know as well as I that you’ve only just begun to desensitize yourself. You need more therapy before you can call yourself fully healed.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. It’s not just the collar helping me. In fact, we’ve been talking about removing it. I’ve got better control now than I ever had before.”

“No, you haven’t.”

I threw my hands up. “What do you call it then?”

“Not good enough. That’s what I call it. What happens if your hold slips and it comes crashing back in?”

“It won’t.”

“I’m not budging on this.”

“I can’t stay locked up here forever!”

“You want proof?” He cupped my face between his hands and kissed me hard, parting my lips with his tongue and delving inside. A spark of desire shot down my spine and I moaned, melting into him, tasting him. He smelled like rain and it made me want to drink him in. He knew I’d wanted this, I could feel his aura in that kiss. His energy bypassed the collar and he teased me with want. My hands slipped around his firm torso and flexed over the hard length of his back. I tugged him closer, laughing into his mouth.

I’ll show him proof. I opened my senses a little further, letting his essence trickle through. In a slippery zing, it cascaded into me, lighting me on fire, but I held strong. Hearing my heart gallop in my chest, and smelling my desire, Cash growled and pushed me back against the closed door.

“Roo,” he said, strained. He nipped my bottom lip.

“See?” I breathed. “I’m fine.”

“I’m not convinced.” He kissed me again, this time slower, controlled. While he distracted me with his tongue, his hands trailed down my neck, my shoulders, my chest. He found my breast and kneaded with his fingers, giving my nipple a tweak at the end. He swallowed my cry of pleasure-pain with a deeper kiss. Yes. This. I needed this. His energy trickled through, growing more insistent, forcing his emotions on me. Hope, love, lust, admiration and…

Pain seared my insides and I screamed. White haze clouded my vision. My knees went weak and I collapsed, eyes watering.

“Shh,” Cash whispered as he caught me. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

He took me to the floor and held me as I rode out the suffering.

“Breathe,” he said. “Focus on your breathing. In. Out.”

He breathed with me, coaching with his words, until the pain subsided and I was a pile of trembling mess in his arms. I whimpered, devastated, and slammed my forehead onto his chest. “Why can’t I control this?”

“You’ll get there. Just give it time.”

“You did that on purpose.” I wanted to hit him, but I couldn’t. He was right. Deep down, I knew it. I wasn’t ready.

“Roo,” he said softly. “When you and I can be together—fully—without you screaming in pain, then you can remove the collar and join us at the meetings. Until then, as much as it pains me to say, the second Marc gets back, he can train you, start honing your new skills. Too many people are at risk otherwise.”

I frowned. “What do you mean? Aren’t I just hurting myself?”

“Nobody knows what you’re capable of and your powers almost killed you.” A flicker of pain crossed his features. “But, I didn’t fall in love with a quitter, did I?”

I shot him a sardonic smile. “No, you didn’t.”

“So, you won’t give up. You’ll get better, and then we’ll get to the real work.”

His words incited inspiration. I wanted to stop Urser and end the Game, but I knew he was right. I could do none of it in my condition, but that didn’t mean I would sit idly by.

“Fine. What should I do, then?”

He crossed the room, picked up my phone and handed it to me. “Call your friend. Sort it out. Tomorrow morning we’ll continue therapy as planned.”

“That wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about.”

“Roo. Call your friend.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

IN THE MORNING I called Kitty. Because of the time difference it was still early afternoon where she lived. She answered on two rings.

“Babe, how are you feeling?” she asked.

It warmed my heart because she still thought of me first, before anything else. I didn’t deserve that. “I’m good. Getting better. How are you? How’s Alvin? I know he probably hates me, but if he’s up to it, I can talk to him, too.”

“Why would he hate you?”

“Because I ruined your wedding! I feel terrible.”

“Uh, I think you have a pretty good excuse. Besides… it wasn’t all you that caused the delay.” Her voice trailed off, her tone changing.

Oh no. “Is everything all right, Kitty?”

“Yes, it’s fine.”

I didn’t believe her. Instantly I thought of Eve and her threat of a hex. I hadn’t revealed my suspicions because if Kitty knew the possibility was there, like a ticking time bomb set to go off any moment, then she’d never get a good’s night sleep. I could examine her when I saw her next. Of course I had to control my abilities first. Then again, I could have her sent here.

“Roo? Are you there?”

“Yes, sorry. Just thinking. Are you sure everything is okay? What about you, how are you feeling?”

“I’m good. We’re all fine. Better than fine.” She sighed. “I suppose the news is going to come out sooner or later. I may as well tell you now.”

“Tell me what?”

A pause ticked away as I imagined the worse. The last time one of them was hexed, Alvin almost died. Petra had convinced his body that it was riddled with cancer. I still remembered his skin, sallow and sunken.

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted.

I forgot to breathe, and then I said the stupidest thing I ever could say, “You can’t be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Um, I meant that I’m surprised, that’s all. Congratulations.”

“Well you don’t sound very excited.”

“I am, I am! I’m so happy for you.” But the hex…

“Roo. Babe. I can tell something is up. Are… are you jealous, or something?”

“No! Absolutely not. I—” I paused. Swallowed. Okay. Here goes. “Kitty, there’s something I’ve been keeping from you because I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Okay, now I’m worried.”

“Damn it!” My eyes watered and I bit my tongue. If I told her now, she might go and do something stupid like abort before we even had a chance to confirm the damage. I could just imagine her getting into hysterics because she thought the witch had programmed her body into making demon babies or something. No. I couldn’t let her worry. “Kitty, my recovery is taking longer than I thought and I don’t know when I can commit to coming back to Margaret River.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a beat. “Is that all?”

“Yes.” I lied.

“Babe,” she admonished. “I thought you were going to say something horrible, like, you’ve got ten days to live so make it good. Don’t ever say something like that again, do you hear?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Good—wait. You don’t have ten days to live, do you?”

“No. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

She breathed a sigh. “Okay, good. Now we got that out of the way, do you have a ball park for dates? Because I really don’t want to get married without my best friend, and, what about you and Mr. Devilishly Handsome? I know there’s been a lot going on for you two, but surely you’ve realized how perfect you are for each other by now.”

“Yes, we still want to marry. There are a few un-choice things keeping us apart at the moment though.”

“Has he gone away?”

“Not that kind of apart.” My tone was loaded with insinuation.

“Oooh. Bedroom talk. Babe, you know I’m right here. Give me the goss.”

A smile crept up my face and I felt like we were sitting next to each other, back at her place on the couch, a coffee in our hands. I filled her in on my performance issues.

“Hmm. Let me get this straight—you kiss and you burn up inside. You know there’s a cream for that, babe,” she joked.

“Har-har.” The sarcasm dripped from my voice. Still, I smiled along with her. “It’s just frustrating that’s all.”

“Do you know what you need to do?”

“What?”

“Get drunk.”

“I don’t think that’s a solution.”

“No, I mean it. Just think about it. Alcohol is a social lubricant, right? It loosens the body, breaks you free of inhibitions.” She sighed. “The last time I got drunk, Alvin and I decided to try something new. We started off—”

“Stop. Kitty. Stop. It’s Alvin. He’s like a brother to me. Gross. I don’t want to know that level of detail, thanks.”

“What?” she whined. “If I can’t talk about it with you, who can I talk about it with? Anyway, I was just going to say, that was the night we got pregnant.”

My gut twinged. The baby.

“Kitty, promise me that if you feel the slightest bit off, you’ll tell me, okay?”

“You won’t hear about my sexy times, but you’re all ears about me driving the porcelain bus?”

“What does that even mean, Kitty?”

“Morning sickness. Vomiting in the porcelain toilet. You’ve never heard that expression?”

“No.”

“Babe, you really are from another planet. You’ve been gone from Australia for too long.”

We laughed then, joked some more and kept going until finally, with tears teasing our eyes, we fell into a comfortable silence.

“No, seriously babe. Get drunk, boink your fiancé. What have you got to lose?”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

“Roo?” Kitty ventured, hesitant. “Promise me you’ll never leave.”

“You mean like, leave-leave?”

“Yeah, like interstellar leave.”

“I don’t want to, even if they try to make me.”

“They might force you to go?”

I shrugged, but realized she couldn’t see that down the line so said, “I’m working on it.” So far, the best scenario I could come up with was that the gate stayed closed, or it was destroyed.

“Well, if you need help plotting, I’m only a phone call away.”

“I love you too, Kitty,” I said.

“I can’t believe my best friend in the world turned out to be… I can’t even say it. It does my head in. Have you given any thought to your future here, in Margaret River? Will you take back the vineyard?”

I remembered the state Urser Manor was in when I visited, and the glory it used to be. Lush green fields. Juicy grapes on luscious vines. Now it was withering and dying. That house deserved a happy family running through its halls. A kernel of hope twinkled deep inside me at the thought. Maybe, just maybe, that happy family could start with Cash and me. I sighed. “Margaret River is one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice. You’d better hurry coming home. Summer is nearly over and the surfing season is almost over. That means the surfers and their buff bodies are almost gone.”

“We can’t have that now, can we?”

“So… back to the wedding. We’re going to have it as soon as my morning sickness is gone. About a month away the doc said. I want to still fit my dress. Do you think you could handle that?” The sound of Kitty holding her breath was obvious.

“Yes. I promise.”

“Don’t promise, because that’s not working. Just try really really hard, okay?”

“You got it, sister.”

We said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone. Morning sun streamed through the large arched windows, and the snowy landscape cast a bluish hue. The weather was cooling down in Australia, but it was still icy cold here. I shivered and hugged myself. What was I thinking? It would never be warm in Budapest, but it was good enough for me to continue my training. Cash said to take my time, but…

Four weeks.

Sure. Plenty of time.

I eyed off the bottle of Chateau Margaux, on the bedside table. Maybe Kitty had a point. I picked up the bottle and turned it idly around.

The door opened and I startled.

“Just me,” Cash said, coming inside and closing the door behind him. “You ready to see Lena?”

I hastily put the bottle down.

“Everything okay?” Cash asked, a wary eye on the bottle. “You dropped that like it was on fire.”

“Nope. All good.” I smirked. Couldn’t help it. Already I imagined getting drunk with him. It would take our immortal bodies something massive to get there, though. Gallons of alcohol. Suddenly, the task seemed impossible. Perhaps Lena would know of something that worked for us better.

“Roo,” Cash said, eyes narrowing. “You look like the cat who’s caught the mouse.”

“It’s nothing. I swear.”

“And Kitty, how is she?” He gave me a sidelong glance as he collected my coat from the rack.

Now it was my turn to be wary. There was something about that look.

“As a matter of fact, she’s pregnant.” I grinned, coming up to him as he held the jacket out for me to slip into. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

If I had taken a second longer to sheath myself in my jacket, I would’ve missed the flicker of horror dance across his features before he settled into a more forgiving surprise. When I faced him again, warm in my puffer cocoon, I studied him. With Cash, there was no way of telling if he lied, even if I did have my full strength abilities. Unlike every other soul on this planet, the only way I sensed any emotion from him was when we kissed.

He flashed his eyebrows. “Pregnant?”

“I know it’s not ideal given her situation.”

He gulped. “Situation?”

“Why are you looking so weird? I meant the situation about her possibly being hexed.”

“Right. Yes. That was what I was thinking too.”

“Right.”

“Did you tell her? About the hex?”

“No. Not yet. I couldn’t worry her needlessly when we aren’t even sure ourselves. It could still all be a hoax. A careless word from us could have catastrophic consequences to the unborn child. She might freak out and terminate. I don’t want that.” I clenched his shirt, pulling the fabric at his chest into my fists. Determination pulled my face tight and I nodded to myself. “I’m going to get better, learn to use my abilities properly, and then I’ll find a way to test her more thoroughly. There has to be a way. I have four weeks to find out, then I promised we’d be at the wedding with her in Margaret River.”

He went quiet.

“Don’t worry, Cash. I can do it. I’m going to work hard, and before you know it, we’ll be back in sync.”

“Yes, in sync.” The faraway look in his eyes betrayed his thoughts.

“And then we’ll be going at it like hoppity bunnies,” I tested.

“Yes, bunnies.”

I rolled my eyes. “And we’ll have a million bunny babies and maybe even adopt a few whales.”

“Mmm.”

“Cash!” I slapped him on the shoulder.

“What?” He flinched, then met my gaze, clouds dissipating from his irises.

“For someone with superhuman hearing, you sure are deaf.”

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

“Never mind.” I took a few deep calming breaths, closed my eyes and centered myself. The peace I sought came easier each time I made my mental exercises. When I opened my eyes, Cash was staring off into space again. “C’mon. I’m ready to go,” I said.

“Where’s your phone?” he asked. “I’ll keep an eye on it while you’re in therapy.”

“Good idea,” I said, giving him the handset. “Lena doesn’t like me bringing it in.”

As we left the warm comfort of my room, I took once last glance at the bottle of red. Four weeks. I was willing to try anything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CASH DROPPED ME off at the basement lab where Lena and Jesop worked, then he made his excuses and went to deal with something enforcementy. It felt odd visiting as a patient when I’d spent the first portion of my stay here purging the dark serum from infected Players and Watchers. I’d had it all sorted then. My powers were well within my control and I knew exactly where my limits laid. Now, I was on the opposite end.

As I walked through the stone arched entrance, I took a moment to take in the scenery before me. The room was split into a few examination areas with reclining chairs and curtains, and a lab area with microscopes and other technical pieces of equipment. Lena, with her long flowing silver hair and gauze blindfold, had her hands running over a person who laid back on a reclined chair. The privacy curtain wasn’t drawn, so I guessed it was an informal visit.

Jesop sat in the lab area some feet away, twirling something liquid in a test tube. His gift of alchemy meant he could change the structure of matter at an atomic level. Because he was in Corvus House with Lena, he dedicated his skill to prolonging life and for the best intentions of our race. He was a Player, though, which meant he could return to the Empire at any moment if he was fired upon by other Players and killed. Lena was a Watcher, meaning she was Seraphim and stuck on Earth. If she died, it would be permanent. No returning to the Empire for her. The chilling reminder skittered down my spine. The Game wasn’t over, and I was the only one who could do anything about it. Nobody would listen to me, though, unless I could control of myself.

So far Marc had rounded up many of the Player stragglers and returned their souls to the Empire. According to the Ludus records, there were thirty-two Players left with tracking chips still activated. Like Jesop, these had decided to stay on Earth to help us at the refuge. There were almost two hundred Nephilim unaccounted for. These were most likely turned into darklings, making their bio-signature not recognizable to the tracking system we had inserted at our registration for the Game. The traitorous Watchers had no trackers in them, so we had no idea how many were gone. We just had to estimate based on the amount that went missing when Urser attacked Luduses and infected many with the dark serum.

“Roo, you’re here.” Lena’s head lifted from her task and tilted my way. She couldn’t see through the blindfold covering her empty eye sockets, but her senses saw for her. She probably picked up on my guilt. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” she said.

“No rush,” I replied. “I’ll just go and say hi to Jesop.”

I walked through the cold, stone room and made it to Jesop’s side. He leaned in to the ocular end of a microscope, inspecting the slide beneath. He sat with his hoodie pooled around his shoulders. The Corvus House logo spread across his broad back. It was the symbol of a blindfolded crow, wings spread. The motto of Corvus House was about crows never pecking the eyes out of another crow. Of course, in Latin it sounded more romantic. It was supposed to represent a sort of Hippocratic oath, similar to the ones human doctors took.

Jesop kept his head and jaw shaved, a style that forced his sharp features into focus. From the profile, the angles of his face stood out, making him a clear biological descendant of Lena. Strong, determined and steady. Where Lena imbued a calming, no-nonsense confidence, Jesop came with the impetuous temperament of a teenager. Except he was well over six-foot tall and in his mid-twenties.

“Hey, mate, how are you?” I asked. He was also brought up in Australia so had a slight Aussie twang to his accent. Every time we spoke, our local vernacular had a way of resurfacing.

He tilted his head toward me to let me know he was aware, then went back to his study. After a minute of silence, he stated simply, “Roo.”

He never liked me at the start, I was sure. But I liked to hope I’d grown on him. I sometimes wondered if the Players I clashed with had a problem with me back in the Empire and, unknowingly, they carried the innate feeling forward into this world.

“What you looking at?” I asked after a while.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

He sighed and sat back. “I’m testing the effect of receptor binding specificity on the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of a darkling virus vaccine.”

I stared for a few seconds, letting the big words soak into my little brain.

“You don’t know what I said, do you?” he asked.

“Sure I do. You’re creating a vaccine.” He said the word vaccine, so that must be it. Then the gravity of it hit me. “Wow. You’re creating a vaccine. Really?”

“Don’t get too excited. Nothing is working yet.”

I leaned on the counter to get closer to the microscope, as if I could determine whether the sample was effective by staring at it. Jesop raised an eyebrow as I moved into his personal space. He slid the scope an inch away from me.

“So,” I said, “what’s not working? Is it because it originates from Urser and the dark serum might be different every time?”

“How did you know that?”

“I saw him kill a plant with a drop of blood. Then he touched Wren and black things sprouted on her face. Was crazy scary.”

He scrubbed a hand down his face and checked over his shoulder. “Don’t you have therapy to start?”

“You mean the therapy to return me to my rightful power as Queen of all living things?”

“Do you want a medal or something?”

“I’ll give you a medal in a minute.”

“Yeah, real mature, Roo.”

We scowled at each other. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious. I wasn’t. Then he grinned, shook his head and returned to his work.

“Go bug the Gamekeeper with your childishness,” he grunted. “You two are peas in a pod.”

“I’m childish!” I scoffed playfully, then seriousness stole over me. I leaned on the bench with my elbow, chin in my palm, pouting. “I would, but he’s not back from his trip to the Empire.”

Jesop’s eyes met mine. “Yeah he is. Got back last night. Maybe you stink or something. Must have been all that crawling in the mud you did in the Amazon.”

“Because I like you, I’m going to ignore that. He’s back. Really?”

“Yep. Saw him in the kitchen on his way to the Tribunal meeting. He was pestering the cook for some honey cakes.”

“Huh.” It seemed everyone was invited to that meeting, except me. Then a thought hit me. “So, the vaccine… Urser said it was never a serum in the first place, but I figured whatever he’s done to his blood to make its poison transmittable must be a serum, right? My memory is a little hazy, but I think he said it took him some time to work out how to make it work with Seraphim and Nephilim, as opposed to the easier infection of humans. Nephilim were the perfect bridge between the two species.”

Jesop straightened like he’d been electrically shocked. “His blood. Oh my God, Roo, you’re a genius.”

“I am? Yeah I am. What did I say?”

“I’m ready now, Roo,” Lena called. The person she’d been examining was gone, freeing up the reclining seat. “Come and sit down. Let’s talk.”

I turned back to Jesop. “I think you’re doing a stellar job, by the way. And…” I paused after taking a step away. “I never thanked you properly for helping me recover back in the Amazon, so thank you. I’m really glad you’re here.”

Before he could complain, I hugged him. His lanky frame stiffened beneath me and I laughed. His cheeks went red.

“Peace-out, Jesop,” I said.

“Whatever, Roo,” he mumbled with a grin, and went back to work.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“OKAY, YOUR MAJESTY, please lie down so I can assess your condition.” Lena gestured to the long patent leather recliner. It was a pale, dusty blue thing and had come straight out of one of the Librarian’s Ludus chamber. And that gave me the jitters—remembering what happened to me when the Librarian had her fingers in my temple always made me cringe. But that was months ago and I’d been here many times. Plastic squeaked as I eased myself on. I don’t know why Lena couldn’t just put me on a chair, or a normal gurney. This was way too clinical and a contradiction to the manner of her examination. Her skills were emotion based. Reclining on a comfy couch would feel more like a therapist’s office. I’m sure I’d be more forthcoming.

“For the hundredth time, please call me Roo.”

A derisive snort came from the back of the room where Jesop worked.

I shot a withering glare laced with humor and then made myself comfortable. For the past three weeks I’d come here daily. Each time Lena called me Your Majesty and I’d said to call me Roo. Every time Lena ignored me, and Jesop snorted, and I shot the stare his way. That’s why I smiled. Routine bred complacency and comfort. Everything was going to be okay.

Her cool palm pressed to my forehead. “How have you been feeling?”

“Um, okay I guess.”

“Headaches, pain?”

“Not too much.”

“Anything out of the ordinary?”

“There was one episode when”—I glanced at Jesop warily and lowered my voice—“I kissed Cash. His essence was too much and, well, you know.”

Another snort from Jesop and I could’ve sworn I heard a mumbled, His essence was too much, before a second snort and, That’s what she said.

Lena’s brow furrowed but she ignored him. “I thought you weren’t being intimate until we had this under wraps.”

“That’s what Cash said too. I thought I could handle it. Seriously I did. I’ve been doing really well and… it was just a kiss. Needless to say I was proven wrong. It hurt like hell.”

“But you got on top of it easily?” Lena’s hands hovered down to my chest area, sensing my inner energy. “You used our techniques and the pain receded?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, that’s good. And are there any other side-effects of the conversion, or other abilities surfacing that we need to prepare for?”

“You mean besides the pain of all living things and the sporadic teleporting to strange places in my sleep? No. Not yet.” We had been over these questions repetitively, and so far, the answers were basically the same. “Same deal. Then again, I haven’t been out of the grounds much or exposed myself to multiple energies at one time.”

Her palms moved to my stomach. “So just to clarify, the teleporting, better, worse, same?”

“Well, Cash found me asleep in the bathroom last night. In an empty tub. I was wearing a nightie before bed, and turned up nude, so definitely wasn’t sleepwalking.”

Jesop laughed.

“Excuse me Mr. Nosey,” I called over. “If you can’t be professional about this, you can leave.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Lena said. “Jesop? First and final warning.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled and hunched over his scope.

“As I was saying, it’s still on the grounds and mainly happens only when I’m asleep.”

Lena made a sound of discernment, similar to a hum, but she didn’t elaborate. Made me think she knew something she wasn’t ready to reveal.

“Well,” Lena said, “your readings are good. Stable. I think everything you’ve explained can still be gauged well within the normal limits and expectations of your current situation. We can start the second part of your therapy session.”

I pulled myself up into a seated position, legs dangling over the side of the chair while Lena felt around the nearby table for her notebook. She uncapped the pen that had been sitting in its folds and held it out in Jesop’s direction.

“Jesop, honey, can you please take some notes?”

“I can do it if you like,” I offered, thinking it must be hard to do that without the function of her eyes.

“That’s not necessary. Jesop understands my shorthand and knows what details I need recorded. You just relax and worry about yourself.”

Jesop was on a wheelie stool and instead of walking over, he pushed off the bench with his foot. The sound of plastic wheels skittering across stone filled the room. Then he hit the bench next to Lena and hopped off. He offered the seat to Lena. She graciously took it. I watched for a minute as they relocated to a stainless steel table next to me and quietly discussed her readings of my aura while he quickly scribbled. Lena said something and Jesop’s tall lanky frame leaned down to confer with her as he flicked through some recent pages of the notebook. Softly spoken words and little nods of approval gave me a sudden sense of déjà vu. From the way they moved—excited, thoughtful and pensive at the same time—I felt drawn to them. Every day for the last few weeks I’d watched them during moments like those with a sense of affinity.

“Did we work together?” I asked, swinging my feet so they moved idly beneath my recliner.

Lena’s head tilted my way and she paused. She said nothing, only frowned.

“I meant,” I added, “did we work together when I was originally here as the queen—in the beginning. You seem like the kind of person I would have worked with to get this”—I waved around the room—“science experiment off the ground.”

“Did you have a memory?” she asked, interested.

“No… just a feeling.”

“If you’re alluding to creating life on this planet, then yes. We did. Sometimes very closely.”

“Were we friends?”

Lena’s mouth twisted and, without full access to my aura sensing abilities, I couldn’t decipher her meaning. The collar still blocked a large portion of my skills.

Her naked expression of sadness hit me in the chest. She’d suffered so much. She lost her eyes because an original darkling (created by my apparent son and/or brother in law) scratched them out. And that wasn’t the worst thing the queen and her family had done to her. What I had done to her. I’d let them suffer, and then condemned all Seraphim to be Watchers, despite their loyalty to me or not. I must have been unable to discern if they were traitors so banished them all and Lena had been stuck right in the middle of that decree.

“So you must hate me, right? For being the queen who kept you confined to this planet?”

She sighed. “I think it’s long past time to feel anything as primitive as hate. It’s a strong word. Perhaps once or twice I did, as did many Watchers, I’m sure. It’s complicated now. However, many of us are questioning our beliefs after Urser unleashed darkness once again. We thought the danger was long gone and the quarantine should be lifted, but it’s back. It will always be back as long as he is alive. If we feel hate for anyone, it’s Urser.”

I grimaced.

“You’re not convinced,” she added.

“No. I feel as though—”

“It’s a burden you have to bear.”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

Lena wheeled her stool closer to me and placed a palm on my leg. “I believe this guilt you feel is part of your problem.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I sense it oozing out of your every pore. You need to accept what has happened. Stop looking to the past, because then you’re not focusing on what’s in front of you. You miss so much. Shouldering the blame for all of the world’s problems will only send you insane. In fact, it almost did.”

“The Amazon,” I said, nodding, looking at my entwined fingers.

“No, the Empire.”

I glanced up. “What do you mean?”

“You really don’t remember do you?” I sensed a change in her then, a tumbling of walls. Her shoulders relaxed as air left her lungs. “You spent so much time locked away in reclusion, dwelling on your guilt and pain, that you forsook the people who needed saving here on Earth. Do you really want history to repeat?”

A burning hit the back of my eyelids. I had people who cared for me now. Cash, Kitty, Alvin… “I will be better.”

“I know you want to be, but you won’t be until you accept the past and know that you can’t control everything in the future.”

I inspected my fingernails. They’d been picked short from my daily chewing, and without being able to use my abilities, I had to refrain from making them nice again. No purple colored nail polished tips. Just worn, jagged edges.

“How do I accept something I don’t remember or fully understand?”

“That’s something you’ll have to work out. For the most part, this is where the relaxation techniques and coping mechanisms you’ve learned will help. Soon, it will become second nature. The meditation is going well, yes?”

“Yes, it’s fine.”

“Good.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Don’t strain yourself,” Jesop mumbled.

“Jeez, you’re on fire today, aren’t you?” I snapped at him.

He arched a brow at me. Lena chose to ignore the snark. I had a feeling Jesop tested me like this to help me focus on something else apart from what I knew was going to happen next: the hour long session of pain. Just thinking about it pulled all the muscles in my neck tight.

“You were thinking?” Jesop reminded me.

“A friend of mine said that getting drunk would help me relax and lower my inhibitions, maybe making it easier for me to open up my senses.”

Lena tapped her finger on her mouth. “It could work. It’s a crude technique, but if your anxiety levels are lowered then you’ll react less to the energy you sense, or care less about feeling guilty. Then again, it could cause your body to completely give way under lack of restraint and you could end up catatonic again. No, I don’t think so. There’s no way of testing it. Too risky.”

I slumped. “And I suppose I’d have to drink an entire bottle of whiskey to get drunk enough for an hour of buzz.”

“More,” she said. “That’s the rate of human alcohol needed for Nephilim inebriation. Which you aren’t any more.”

“Really? That sucks. You Watchers can’t get drunk? No wonder Marc drinks so much.”

“Marc is a delinquent. That’s why he drinks so much.”

“Surely there’s something made for Seraphim that works like wine for humans.”

“Oh yes, I didn’t say there was nothing for us. Just nothing we can get here on Earth. Ambrosia existed only in the earliest days here until it got used up. Without the proper ingredients to make more, we eventually ran out.” She shrugged. “Losing our senses and inhibitions isn’t exactly ideal when we could risk exposing our identities to the human race, anyway.”

“Like I said. That really sucks. If it were up to me, I’d send you all home right now.”

Both Lena and Jesop stilled.

“It was a joke,” I added. “I don’t really know how to do that.”

“But you see, it is up to you, Roo,” Jesop said. Lena clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Look, I know I can leave any time with Marc, but I can’t leave Lena here unprotected.”

“Yeah, I get it. We have to stop Urser, right? And the gate can’t be opened, not without my blood or something as a biometric key, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Lena said.

“And my current blood-type is too dissimilar to my original to work, right?”

Jesop was the one who answered, as he prepared the alchemic concoctions that had transfused into me over the last few weeks. “I’ve done all I can to replicate what was left over from the original and from your blood now. The thing is, your current DNA sequence is in a state of flux. You keep changing. And the replication I’ve made is always going to be a cheap knock-off. I guess we’ll find out if its worthy of opening the gate when we actually get a chance to be in front of it. Hasn’t Urser commandeered it?”

“We think so,” I replied. “ It’s near the lab we destroyed. But, you know I’m all willing, right? I’d do that in a heartbeat to get you away from Urser. We’ll get the gate back, and we’ll get it to work. Don’t worry.”

“Roo,” Lena said. “Like I said, stop blaming yourself. Focus on healing, then we’ll worry about the rest later. Attempting to open the gate now would only pose another risk. We have a duty to eradicate the virus Urser’s created before it wipes the world, and infects the Empire. ”

“Do you think there’s another way to send you home without risking that?”

“That’s why I’m working on the vaccine,” Jesop said. Then he turned to Lena. “Do you need me anymore?”

“No, you can return to your work. Thank you.”

A note of sadness had crept into both of their voices. Jesop was a Player and free to leave for the Empire any time he wanted. In fact, we’d all encouraged it. The danger that the dark serum would fuse his soul to his body was too great, and if that happened, he’d never return home. He insisted on staying to help anyway.

So I could put up with his snark because there was a heart of gold behind it.

“The sooner I can desensitize myself, the sooner I can kick Urser’s butt and you can all go home. Let’s do this.”

We removed my collar. At first, it took me a while to get used to the pain. I spent the next hour routinely running through my relaxation techniques to get on top of my senses. Once that onerous task was done, I had to learn to reopen myself to the energy in the room, a sliver at a time until I could push my awareness out a foot, then a yard, then more—inch by inch. When I could cope with Lena’s and Jesop’s aura energy, I pushed further out of the confines of the thick stony walls of the room and beyond into the gardens and the buzz of life from nature. By the time we were done, my body was covered in a thick layer of sweat. I beat my personal best, though. I extended my awareness across two rooms on the interior, and on the exterior, to the edge of the forest that surrounded the castle. One attempt, I’d sensed about seven people at a time and had zero episodes of crippling pain. It wasn’t until I sensed the immense block of nature that I really packed it in and collapsed, writhing in agony. At the start of my therapy, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as anyone other than Cash without wanting to vomit from pain.

“Good session,” Lena said, patting my leg. “You’re improving. We’ll adjust the settings on your collar to allow a little more energy in. At this rate, you’ll be fully recovered in a few months.”

“A few months! I don’t have a few months.” Kitty’s wedding was a few weeks away. I covered my face, thinking of her unborn child. I had to get on top of this so I could help her. I couldn’t ruin her second go at marital bliss by delivering the news her child could be hexed.

“We can’t rush it without risk,” Lena said.

“But I’m needed,” I said. “There are so many things I can do to help.”

“Patience. Now, if you will excuse me, our session is over. I have a house call to make.” With the grace of someone who had sight, Lena packed up a medical bag and left the room, her long skirt trailing behind her. She really was amazing.

But months… My limbs liquefied and I flopped backwards onto the chair, groaning, feeling very much like a drama queen. I reclined and rested the back of my hand on my forehead. “This isn’t going to work. I need to be better, now.”

“You heard her, Roo. It takes time. Stop complaining.”

“No, you don’t understand. There are lives at risk. A baby!” I chewed my lip. “Don’t tell Lena, but I’m going to try the drunk thing.”

“You’re pregnant?” Jesop gasped.

“No! Definitely not.” Cash and I would have to have sex first for that to happen. Still, a small niggling feeling in my gut made me disappointed that I wasn’t saying to Jesop, Yes I’m pregnant. I quickly shook the thought away. Cash and I were way off discussing that topic and it certainly wasn’t the time or place to play happy family. “It’s a friend of mine who might be hexed. Eve may have done something to her before she died, and I believe I have the skills to detect the truth, maybe even fix it.”

“Lena might, too.”

“But I’ve used witchcraft before and, unless I’m mistaken, Lena hasn’t.”

“No. She hasn’t, but you still need to say something.”

“Not with this. It doesn’t look good if I selfishly commandeer her to Australia when she’s needed here. I’m confident I can work it out once I harness my full powers. So I’ll try the alcohol.”

“Really? You’ll drink a few bottles of rum in one sitting?”

I glanced over at him. “Sure, why not. Well, maybe not rum. There’s got to be something out there that’s high in alcohol content and will work faster. So, yeah. I can take it. Can’t be worse than what I’ve already been through, right?”

“Well, I never pegged you for a party girl, Roo.” Jesop grinned.

“I live to please.” I sighed and slung my legs over the chair and pushed myself off. “Thanks for your help, Jesop.”

“Wait. Before you go.” He held up a finger to me and ducked under his desk. I heard the sound of a tiny fridge door open, bottles tinkling, and then a soft slam as it closed again. When he resurfaced, he held a small corked test tube filled with pearlescent golden liquid. “Take this.”

“What is it?”

“Ambrosia.”

I gasped and rushed over to collect it. “But I thought it was all gone?”

“It is. I made more.”

“Are you allowed to do that?”

“Why do you think I waited until Lena was out before I showed you?”

“But… how did you do it?”

“I’m an alchemist, Roo,” he stated, as if that meant everything.

“You found a stash somewhere and replicated it, didn’t you.”

“Yeah. A few years ago one of the Watchers—”

“It was Marc, wasn’t it?”

“—gave me an empty bottle. Yes. Yes it was Marc. The sample was enough to scrape for traces of Ambrosia and replicate. I’ve been making bootleg portions since.” He gave me a stern look. “You have to promise to use it wisely. Don’t overdo it. Just a drop on your tongue will give you the same intensity as a standard drink for humans. It takes about the same time to wear off too.”

“Okay. A couple of drops, no problem. Got it.”

“Make sure someone else is with you too. I don’t want this ending in disaster and tracing back to me. Don’t double dose because you’re impatient. And don’t go getting addicted to it. I won’t be your drug dealer.”

“Okay. No problem.”

“And don’t give it to humans. It can kill them.”

I saluted. “Anything else?”

He grumbled. “No, that should do it. Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this?”

I surprised him with another hug.

“Please stop doing that.”

“I can’t. You’re so nice.”

He scowled at me but leaned into the hug.

“Thanks, Jesop,” I said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

JED PICKED ME up from therapy. I needed a chaperone in case I had an episode, and with the new adjusted and lowered settings on my collar, that may well be the case. Although, Cash must have been confident of my condition because this was the third time this week he’d sent Jed in his stead. Still, I wasn’t complaining. I gave Jed a quick hug when I saw him, noticing hard biceps under my hands. The ex-police officer was always fit, but it seemed he’d been bulking up.

“I haven’t seen you for a few days,” I said. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” he replied vaguely and walked out of the lab.

I stuck my head outside of the room, testing the new settings. After a moment to acclimatize myself to the biting cold and tingle of energy coming through the sensors, I stepped fully out. A recent snowfall had transformed the gardens into white lumps of odd shapes. Snow-laced evergreen vines covered the facade of the medieval castle and sparkled like diamonds in the sun, and the ground was covered in a white shimmering carpet that stretched to the forest in the distance. The sight took my breath away every time. We walked around the castle to the main entrance. I was so enthralled by the beauty of the white gardens that I almost missed a pair of Watchers walking down the steps as walked up. Cato and Thurstan sidestepped me.

“Watch it,” Thurstan said, a cloud puffing from his mouth.

“Thurstan,” his father warned.

“It’s okay. Sorry, my fault.” I blew air on my hands to keep them warm.

“Apologize, Thurstan.” Cato placed a firm hand on his son’s shoulder.

Thurstan glared at his father but turned to me, conceding. “I apologize, Your Majesty. I will take more care in future.”

With that, they went down the steps and toward a shiny black car where they got in and drove off. Jed and I watched them whisk away down the curving driveway and out the electric cast iron gates.

Jed made an unsettled sound deep in his throat, as though he were sizing up what had just happened and didn’t like it.

“You don’t like them?” I asked.

“I don’t know what it is. Just a feeling, I suppose. Nothing to worry about. Come on, let’s go.”

He smiled at me, eyes twinkling over a freckled nose. His auburn dyed hair was cut short and curled a little at the ends. Enough to flick over his ears that stuck out. Similar to Cash, he wore a long black-sleeved shirt and dark trousers. His arms were definitely thicker than I remembered, more muscly. He had been working out. I studied him surreptitiously as we walked. Someone to impress or gearing up for the impending battle with Urser?

“So, the usual.” I patted the small sheen of sweat that had appeared on my forehead. “What does that mean?”

“The usual? Oh. You mean what have I been up to? Well, wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes. Yes I would. That’s why I asked.”

“Relax, Roo. No one’s keeping secrets from you.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Right.”

We continued further into the foyer of the giant castle. It still surprised me that the enormous stone structure belonged to Jacine. I would’ve pegged her for a five-star modern hotel sort of gal. I wondered if the place held any sentimental value. To have been a fly on those walls over the years, the things you’d see would be fascinating.

“Either way,” Jed added, “you’ll have to get over it until you’re better.”

“Ugh. Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

As he led the way toward the steps, I thought of something.

“Do you know where Marc is? I’d like to see him.”

“No, I don’t know where he is. Thought he was at the Empire.”

“He was, but Jesop said he saw him in the kitchen last night.”

Jed was silent for a bit, then said, “Didn’t think he’d be back so soon.”

“Not you too.”

“Me too what?”

“Don’t blame him for what happened to me. It was my fault I went to the Amazon.”

“Mm.”

“So you haven’t seen him?”

“No. Sorry.”

“All right. Onwards and upwards then.” I patted the test tube of Ambrosia in my pocket, thinking of how I would use it to seduce Cash. A sneaky smile spread on my face as a plan formed in my head. I felt positively wicked. First I would have to spike his food or drink. My plan would only work if he was a little drunk, too, because if he was completely sober, there was no way he’d be intimate with me. Of course I’d never entertain the thought of actually drugging him! But a drop or two wouldn’t go astray to loosen him up. I remembered the first time I’d met him when I served him a drink at The Cauldron. I’d thought the same thing then, too. I laughed. Nothing much has changed.

“What’s so funny?” Jed asked.

“Nothing. Just thinking about planning something special for Cash. Can we stop by the kitchen? I want to pick up something nice to take back to my room.”

Jed shrugged.

Guessed that was a yes. Instead of heading up the enormous stairs, we bypassed them to find our way to the kitchen. Situated in a far nook of the castle, we had to walk through a few passageways before we got there. The smell of garlic and butter cooking preceded us, confirming our correct trajectory. My stomach cramped in delight.

As we approached, voices halted me outside the open stone arched doorway. I held up a palm and Jed stopped next to me. I made the shush sign—finger to the lips—and focused on the voices.

“You said the honey cakes would be ready five minutes ago.”

“No. I said they be out of the oven five minutes ago. Don’t get your knickers in a knot.”

“Well, it’s the same bloody thing, in’it?”

I smiled. Marc.

“No dear, it is not,” the female said.

“Why aren’t they cooling already? Is it my presence? Am I making the room too hot?”

A snort and a chuckle I assumed came from the cook, then: “Dear, you make every room hot.”

“See, this is why I like you, love. You’re so perceptive.” Thwack. “Ow. Why did you do that?”

“Because they’re not ready yet.”

“But I don’t like waiting.”

“Sometimes waiting is the right thing to do. Eat the cakes too early and you scald your mouth. Then again, wait too long and the cakes are stale.”

“How do I know when they are ready?”

“Maybe you should stop hiding in the kitchen and ask.”

Silence extended.

“You’re not talking about the cakes are you, Maggie?”

An agreeable sound came as it seemed Maggie paced around the room.

I cleared my throat and entered the kitchen.

Marc sat on a stool at the center island, chin in his hand, drooling over a set of steaming cakes on a cooling rack. He wore his youthful teenager appearance, dressed in tight jeans, skin-hugging shirt—open at the chest. When I entered, he whipped his head my way. Icy blue eyes widened. A glance at my collar. A conflicted frown, and then he disappeared. The tiny grains of dust and particles that made up his clothing construct cascaded to the ground.

The cook cursed. “Now I must sweep that up.”

As you would expect in a castle like this, the kitchen was a carved, raw stone structure but with modern appliances. Stainless steel benches for food preparation contrasted against the antique oak table taking up the rest of the room. There were tins and pans and utensils hanging from hooks around the room. Lavender bunches hung upside down over the stone archway behind the stove along with Rosemary twigs entwined into a bouquet, and garlic from string. Unlike the rest of the castle, the room was warm and welcoming, perhaps an atmosphere helped by the plump (but not overweight) cook wearing a gray apron now using a dustpan and brush to sweep up the mess Marc had left. She had thin brown hair tied at the nape of her neck into a knot. Her cheeks were flushed red and perspiration dotted her nose and forehead, giving her pale skin a mottled look.

“Can I help you, dears?”

I stared for a moment, trying to ascertain if she were human, Nephilim, or Seraphim. A surge of irritation flashed in me. If I hurried the hell up and got my abilities under control, I’d know that straight away. In the end, I settled for Hungarian.

“Hello,” I said and gave a short wave. “I’m Roo. I’m… ah… I’m staying here with Cash.”

She gave Jed a knowing look then smiled at me. “I know who you are, dear. I’ve been making your meals for the past few months.”

“Oh. Great. The food tastes wonderful, by the way. Really top-notch stuff.”

“Top-notch, huh? I’ll take that as a compliment. What can I do you for?”

“I’d like to have a nice meal made up for tonight, it’s a special occasion for me and Cash.”

Maggie tried to hide a smile as she returned her pan and brush to a hidden alcove. “And what do you want for tonight? The rest of the house is having Brisket.”

“Um.” I had to think about it. Cash’s eating habits were still a bit of a mystery to me. I’d bet if she asked him what I wanted, he’d have an answer quick smart. “Brisket is fine, thank you.”

“And the cakes. You should take all of them to your room.”

“All of them?”

She smirked. “Then a certain someone will have to stop dilly dallying and finally get out of my kitchen.”

Smart lady, that Maggie. She set the cakes in a Tupperware container and urged Jed to help me take them up to my room. They smelled delicious. If Marc didn’t turn up, I certainly wouldn’t have trouble polishing them off.

Jed walked me through the large castle until we got to my upstairs room. After I said goodbye to him, I set about the room to arrange everything for my romantic dinner for two. I shifted the tiny round table closer to the window that looked over the grounds painted in sunset oranges and pinks. The bed was already made, and the rest of the room was immaculate. As usual, the cleaning fairy had been in while I’d been out. The four-poster bed had its coverlet straightened, its pillows plumped and the white curtains drawn back to reveal said pillows. I found the bottle of wine Cash had brought and placed in on the table with two wine glasses, and then I put the vial of Ambrosia next to it. Seeing the little tube of glittering liquid made my gut twinge. For a moment, I stared at it stupidly, then realized that feeling inside was guilt. And rightly so, getting Cash drunk to seduce him was a low thing to do… even if it did mean I might get control of my abilities. I also might not.

Perhaps this was a bad idea.

I took a shower and thought it over some more. I had no solid plan, but I knew I had to do something. What were my alternatives? The slow going therapy while Kitty’s unborn child was in danger? It wasn’t good enough.

Every time I closed my eyes to wash my face under the hot stream, I saw flashes of the dead bodies in the Amazon village. They haunted me nightly. More so than losing my friends Wren and Lincoln. Yes, the images of their deaths were painful, but knowing their souls were safe and sound back at the Empire helped with that pain. Living like this was not on. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had responsibilities and friends to protect, not to mention all the innocents in danger from Urser’s macabre plans.

I shut off the shower faucet, listless determination twisting my heart into confusion. I wanted—needed—to do something useful. My mind and skin were red raw, but I was determined… not desperate. I knew now that I couldn’t go through with Operation The Hangover. Cash’s dignity would remain intact. Instead, I dressed in some sensible jeans and a t-shirt and sat, barefoot, on one of the chairs next to the round table with my chin in my hand, staring at the vial.

I still stared when, a few minutes later, came a timid knock at the door.

“Come in,” I mumbled.

The door creaked open, ajar for a few inches, and then paused. Mildly interested, I flicked my gaze to the gap to see if I could ascertain who was beyond the door. The collar around my neck still blocked the majority of essences and life-force from my senses. But, a little was all I needed to tell who was there. How could I miss him? His aura was always so virulent.

“Come in, Marc.” I went back to staring at the vial. Surely my answer was in there somewhere. “I have your honey cakes.”

The door swung all the way open, as though he’d decided to dispense with the shenanigans and project bravado instead. Marc stood in the hallway, dressed in a dapper three-piece-suit. His hair was brushed and styled, and he appeared in all honesty to be in his Sunday best.

“Come in, Marc,” I said again.

He took a deep breath and entered, shutting the door quietly behind him.

“I missed you,” I said. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

His blue eyes popped at my words. “You missed me? I mean, you’re not angry at me?”

“Why would I be angry at you? I’m not Cash. He’s grumpy at anyone, please don’t take his moods to heart.”

“But I’m responsible for you almost dying. Real dying. Not fake dying.” The words choked out of him. I’d never seen him so distraught.

“Really, Marc. I’m fine. And I’m a big girl. You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do.” I shook my head and went back to the vial. “Frankly, I’m a bit sick and tired of people thinking they can make my decisions for me. Sit down, have a cake and let’s talk.”

Marc promptly sat down opposite me on the only remaining chair, chewed his lip and fiddled with his suit collar. Eventually, I was silent enough for his gaze to wander down to the table to what I was looking at. Immediately, his expression lifted to joyful glee.

“Hello, love. What’s this?” He picked up the Ambrosia and twirled it against the halogen lighting of the room, letting little shots of light twinkle and reflect on his fingers. Then he said with a knowing gleam in his eyes: “You’ve been holding out on me.”

And with that, the tension between us dissipated.

“Are we having a party?” Marc smirked.

“No. Well. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Then what is it, love? You can tell me.”

I sighed. “I’m sick of this collar. I’m sick of this room. My friend needs help. Nobody is telling me anything about what’s going on out there. What else. Let’s see, oh yeah, I want to get drunk on Ambrosia so I can take the collar off and fix myself.”

“Get drunk and fix yourself.” His eyebrow raised on one side and for a moment I thought he was going to berate me, then: “Where do I sign up?”

“You’re not going to tell me it’s a bad idea?”

“Ambrosia is never a bad idea. Now, let’s see. We could just pop a few drops in our mouth but it’s got a bit of a bitter taste. Better use it with a glass of this.” He picked up the expensive bottle and inspected the corked neck.

“Oh, probably not that,” I said. “That’s a special bottle Cash—”

Pop!

“I’m sorry, love, what were you saying?”

I dropped my head in my palm. The glug-glug sound of wine being poured made me groan in exasperation. A sweet yet slightly tangy and plummy scent filled the air. Cash was going to kill me. I lifted my head and eyed off the now half empty bottle. “What the hell, I guess, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?”

“That’s my girl. Here you go.” He handed me a glass and then swirled the burgundy fluid in his glass. He sniffed and moaned appreciatively. “Smells like bloody good plonk, this does.” He took a sip. “Mmmm.”

I hesitantly lifted the glass to my lips and let the rich bouquet infuse my senses before I swilled in my mouth. The instant satisfaction and warmth radiated through my body and all my muscles relaxed. A sigh escaped me.

“So good.” I licked my lips and took another sip.

Marc turned the old bottle around in his hands. “Where did you say you got it?”

“It’s Cash’s. It’s, like, hundreds of years old or something.”

“What?” Marc choked on his drink. “The hunter’s?”

“Don’t worry, we can save him some.”

“Yes. Good idea, love. We’ll save him some.” Marc’s expression turned serious and he placed the bottle back on the table with care. He picked up a cake. “So how does getting sloshed help with your problem?”

“Well, the idea is that, after I’m drunk, I’ll take the collar off and the energy I sense won’t cripple me anymore because I’ll be too drunk to care.”

“Right. Right. Uh-huh. And what happens if you do care?”

“Well, I guess, you can pop the collar back on.”

Marc eyed my collar suspiciously. “And the hunter was okay with this?”

I laughed. “No. He thinks I should take my time with the therapy, but … did you know I’ve been teleporting myself in my sleep?”

“Yes. I did hear about that, love. In fact, old mate hunter has been riding my coat tails to come and see you to help. Bloody sod has been calling my true name for days. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to avoid you, but I honestly felt terrible about what happened.” He widened his eyes, his cheeks flushed red. Blinked a few times. Then he unstoppered the Ambrosia and added a few drops to each glass. He took a long, languid sip. “Blimey, this is good plonk.”

“Yeah, you already said that.” I laughed, because I was feeling light headed too.

“Right. Right.”

“Now you keep saying right.”

We both laughed some more. We ate some more cakes. For some reason they tasted especially delicious. We had another glass, then danced around the room to Prince. After half an hour or so, I was hardly able to stand without swaying, but it didn’t matter because we were dancing. Marc’s three-piece suit was minus a piece. His torso was covered only in his vest with the white shirt sleeves rolled up and his tie had been removed but now wrapped around his head like a sweatband.

“Let’s try some teleporting,” Marc said. Cake crumbs flew from his mouth when he bopped and grooved.

“I’ll have to take my collar off first,” I said, panting from exertion myself. My hand drifted to my neck to feel around for the clasp mechanism at the back, but there was nothing there. Bare skin met my touch. “It’s gone!”

When I shot Marc a panicked glance, he raised his eyebrows dramatically as if to say, See what I did there?

“You took it off?” I asked. “When did you do that?”

“Love.” He danced a few steps and pointed at his chest. “God.” Danced some more. Pointed again. “In-between.”

I stood, rooted to the spot. How long had it been off? How had I not felt Marc’s aura in the room? Oh no. It was there. Buzzing energy pushed at me from his direction. It had been there all the time but I’d been so caught up with my dancing, singing and laughing that I hadn’t noticed it. It was there, but I could handle it.

I laughed, surprised and relieved at the same time. “I’m okay!”

“Course you are. Now, let’s try this.” Marc danced across the room to the window table where the cakes were. Half the Tupperware was now empty and for a moment I had a shock of guilt as I thought of Cash and our dinner. He hadn't returned to the room and I hadn't sent the final word for our meal to come up. It was getting close to midnight.

“Right. Let’s do this.” Marc rubbed his hands together and crouched down next to a cake he’d placed on the table. He eyed it off as though it were his arch nemesis from high school. “Look at this cake, yeah? But I don’t want you to look at it as though it were a cake. Look at it as though it were a cake because of what is around it. Got it?”

“Nope. Doesn’t make sense.”

He blew air out of his mouth then shifted his weight. “Okay. Try this. It’s a cake. But it’s also a piece of food on a dinner table. Right?”

I scratched my head.

“I need another drink.” Marc poured two more glasses and then dropped a few more doses of Ambrosia into the mix. He swirled and handed me a glass.

I hesitated with the glass hanging mid-air between us. “Cash should be back.”

“Bah, he’s too busy with the special War Council business.”

“Special? What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know. Something or rather. A sinister thing Urser did has them all with their knickers in a tizzy.” He burped. “I mean knot. What was I saying?”

My mood darkened and I snatched the glass from Marc and took a swig. “What has Urser done this time?”

He laughed. “What hasn’t the miscreant done, is the proper question, am I right?”

I took another sip. Panic started to pierce through my pleasant buzz and I didn’t like it. Another sip was needed. “Go on.”

“Go on what?” His eyes lit up and he wiggled in excitement. He took his glass back and drank deeply. “Ooh, a talk show? Yes. Let’s go on a talk show. I hear Parkinson is pretty good. Or that other fella, James Cordon Bleu, or something. What was his name? Great idea, love. We can snap there in an instant!”

“No, I meant, go on with your story. What has Urser done?”

“All right, love. No need to get stroppy.” He pouted and sat hard on the edge of the bed. “Now, let me see. What was he doing? Whom are we talking about again?”

“Urser,” I ground out. I must have the patience of a saint.

I casually retrieved the wine glass before it spilled from Marc’s wobbling hands.

He saw that as a sign to get comfortable. He popped the buttons on his vest and removed it, mumbling about impractical real clothing then curled up on the bed. His eyes were puffy and drooped languidly as he zeroed in on my expectant face. “Oh, yes. Urser. He’s outed us to the world. Holding hostages or something on live television.”

My stomach dropped so fast, its contents burned the back of my throat. “Why wasn’t I told?”

“Like me, love, you’re not deemed responsible enough for these things, I gather. Now, turn the light off will you. That’s a good love.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I SCULLED ANOTHER glass of wine and left Marc snoring softly on my bed.

“Not responsible enough?” I muttered as I stomped through the castle. “I’ll show them responsf-resfp—” I couldn’t get my increasingly addled brain to function enough to speak clearly, but I didn’t let that stop me.

I stalked through the halls. Okay. I didn’t stalk. I stumbled. Occasionally my hand may have leaned on a wall. And yes, there was an instance where I knocked into an antique buffet that held an arrangement of fake Peonies.

Crash!

Okay.

They weren’t fake. They were all over the floor. Water splashed on my bare feet and bled to paint the carpet a dark, macabre maroon stain. I blinked a few times at the mess, deciding what to do, and then used my power to shift the broken shards to one side of the room. As though invisible strings pulled each piece of china and flower, the mess slid until it disappeared underneath the buffet.

Yep. I could do this.

My body tilted to the side, my head cocked and I concentrated on the puddle of water until it also slid was under the buffet table.

Yes. I fist pumped the air then growled menacingly. I was a bad-ass. Got this sorted. Yep. I sorted this energy thing, didn’t I?

One foot in front of the other, I somehow managed to follow the direction of the largest gathering of energies in the house and found myself standing—swaying—at the front of a closed door.

I placed my palm on the wood to give my brain a few minutes to catch up. It was still back in the foyer, trying to pick up the pieces of the Ming Vase and Peony petals. Plus, those auras inside were powerful. Strong. Vibrant. Insistent. Phew. I waved my hand in front of my face to fan myself. The energy added a level to my inebriation that twisted my head inside.

But I didn’t run. I didn’t scream.

I could do this.

I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing.

My equilibrium tipped. Whoops. Don’t close your eyes. Don’t close your eyes.

I opened my eyes.

I was fine.

Dandy.

I leaned in close and listened. Raised voices.

Arguing as usual. Would they ever learn?

I almost knocked when I caught the mention of my name.

“I’m not going to tell you again. Leave Roo out of this. The fact that you’re considering it makes me think you’re hiding something.”

It was Cash. Aww. My hand covered my heart. He was sticking up for me. Wait. Why was he sticking up for me?

“I get your insinuation. Believe me, the last thing I am is beholden to Urser. His planet all but destroyed mine in their early conquest to rule the Empire. If it wasn’t for the queen’s marriage to his brother, our home would have been obliterated. Their marriage brokered a peace that affected the entire known galactic civilization. I’m also acutely aware that after the king died, Urser tried to sway his people to dissolve the peace deal. If it weren’t for the queen’s Earth experiment, war would have erupted between the territories for sure.”

A few murmurs of approval. I zeroed in on the direction of each voice and tried to pair it with an aura I recognized.

“Then why are you willing to cater to his demands?”

“He’s right, Thurstan, dove. You’re sounding suspiciously like a traitor.” Jacine.

“There’s no love lost between the queen and I. I’ve made that abundantly clear when she banished my father and I to this planet without a fair trial. I wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t think we had another option.” Thurstan.

“No.” Cash’s growly voice again. “We won’t bow to Urser’s demands.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re in love with her. Take your emotions out of it, man.”

“You’re willing to risk the safety of every life on this planet for that?”

Who said that? It wasn’t Thurstan this time. I pressed my ear against the door, palm on the wood.

“It’s not that bad yet, and you know it.”

“Not that bad?” A pause. “Take a look. What more do you want?”

What were they looking at?

“Jacine, what has Marc said about all this? Why isn’t he here?”

“He said that as long as the Simons—sorry, dove. I mean the humans—as long as the humans aren’t being hurt then he’s got no right or reason to interfere. He’s still following his original orders the queen gave before she… well, you know.”

“Not being harmed?” Someone scoffed. The voice was deep and slightly accented. Maybe Zebedee. “What do you call the destruction of all the Luduses, including the civilian casualties? And the village in the Amazon?”

“Shh. Something is happening. Turn it up, Jed. That last screen.”

I frowned. Screens?

Slowly, another voice became louder. But this one was not attached to an aura. It sounded female and hollow, and … yes, it must have come from a television.

“…until demands are met, and their queen shows her face, then I’m afraid we’re all at risk. After the display of force that left our town hall reduced to rubble, we’re at a loss. With disaster unfolding around the world, we’re not sure what support this little country town will get from state authorities. The black-eyed beings are everywhere, but they seem to have settled until the deadline for demands. There’s one on every street corner—in the town, all up the main street of Margaret River…”

What? My hand dropped from the door and I stepped back, in shock, then I quickly leaned closer to the door to keep listening. There was more: “Hmm. Yes. Thank you Jessica. If you’re just tuning in, the truth is out there… we thought Witches were the darkest thing we had to face, but it appears our worst nightmares have come true. Every myth, every bedtime story you’ve heard is real. Gods are real. And they’re not here to—”

The door opened and I jumped back.

Suddenly, Cash’s handsomely rugged face was all I could see. “What are you doing here, Roo? Is everything okay?”

“Hey you.” A smile expanded my cheeks and I flared my eyes excitedly. “I found you.” I swayed, and I think I even hiccuped because my hand was suddenly covering my mouth.

“Are you … drunk?” he hissed, as though he were trying to hide his voice from the rest of the room. He scrunched up his nose as though my smell offended his delicate sensibilities.

“Who me?” I looked behind me.

“Yes. You.”

I stood frozen, eyes wide, trying to decide what to do. Then I shouldered my way into the room. “What’s going on here?”

Deep down, even in my intoxicated state, my internal alarm sounded. I knew they were hiding something from me. More than what I’d heard on the television. It was a feeling that didn’t sit right and I couldn’t focus long enough to determine if it was guilt, because I was royally screwing things up, or if it was a feeling of being snubbed. Or perhaps it was something far deeper that sang to my insecurities.

“No, don’t.” Cash tried to pull me back outside, but it was too late. I saw the television screens plastered over a back wall. I saw what was on them and the floor swayed under me.

Hastily, so no one noticed my discomfort, or inebriation, I swept a glance around the room. It was quite large. A massive oblong table was at the left end which had a map of the world laid flat. Pensive Watchers gathered around the map quite like a group of Nazis plotting in an underground bunker. Except, they weren’t staring nefariously at the map with little soldier statues on it, they were staring at me. Jacine, Cato and Thurstan with their perfect Botox faces, and Zebedee with his long priest-like robe. A few other nameless faces watched me. Some with scorn. Some with curiosity. Then I saw Jed, arms folded, a frown creasing his brow. He’d been on the phone. He said something to the group and they returned to their debate over the map.

The table Jed was at had a group of people taking phone calls and recording messages. I didn’t recognize any of these people. Workers. When you took it all in, the screens on the walls, the people discussing, the note taking… it was like a newsroom, or a first response ground-zero intelligence room for a disaster. My stomach kept churning because my body knew what my brain struggled to comprehend. Urser had come out of hiding. There was too much activity, at least eight screens, all showed a different news channel around the world. My eyes were a little blurry and I had to squint to focus. Some had reporters standing in front of different disasters. A fire. A building collapsed. A terrorist attack at a football stadium—people running everywhere. Then… I noticed a scene that I recognized—the one that matched the TV news presenter. Margaret River.

My heart pumped. Once. Twice.

I stepped closer to the wall of screens and focused.

A woman spoke into her microphone, but it was the text scrolling along the bottom that grabbed my attention.

Armageddon unless demands are met.

I whipped my gaze around to Cash so fast that I almost lost my balance.

“What the hell is happening?”

He pinched the bridge between his eyes, then met my eyes. “You’re not supposed to be here yet and you’re not in a state to see this.”

“What are you keeping from me?”

Cash picked up a remote and turned off the screens. One by one the video images winked out of existence.

Jacine stepped up, chin jutting out. “She deserves to know.”

“Know what?” I insisted with a crazy laugh lighting my eyes up. “Because it looks to me like Urser’s threatening to end the world. But that can’t be true. You’d tell me something that important, right?”

“Calm down. He’s not threatening the end of the world, he’s threatening the people in it.” Zebedee shot me a patronizing look and shifted a chair out from the planning table. “Sit down before you hurt yourself.”

While my face showed a frozen image of calm, inside I seethed. How dare he try to mansplain this to me. I knew we were in dire straits if Urser revealed our identities to the world.

I folded my arms and turned back to Cash. “What are the demands?”

“Nothing we can’t handle.”

“Urser wants your blood. Literally,” Thurstan blurted.

His father gave him a look of disdain, but it was nothing compared to the pure, lethal warning that bubbled behind the surface of Cash’s eyes.

“What?” Thurstan shrugged, unfazed. “She needed to know.”

“He wants my blood? I’m assuming for the gate I’m yet to see and we’re yet to take control of?” I asked.

“Correct,” Cash said on a sigh.

“And you all think I should give it to him? Fine. Sh-s…f—” I bit my lip to give myself a moment to concentrate on the words my drunk mouth was trying to form. Heat flushed my cheeks and I had a moment of deprecation. I shouldn’t have drunk the Ambrosia. I cleared my throat. “I’ll give it to him.”

“Roo,” Cash said. “He wants you as well.”

Power swelled in my body. My fingers sparked and, chagrinned, I had to drop my hands to my sides to avoid burning holes in my clothes. I mistakenly thought that part of me would be controlled once I converted. A tightness coiled in my stomach at the thought of my friends back home. Shit. Shit. Holy mother of… “Turn the screens back on. Show me.”

“No. You aren’t ready for this,” Cash said.

“Give it to me!” I snatched the remote from his hands and turned the screens back on. I walked up to each screen and soaked it up. I studied the unfolding doom. Darklings swarmed into streets, usually with a Seraphim or Nephilim guiding them. Humans were being pushed around, corralled into cordoned off areas like cattle. “Where is that? What are they doing to those people?”

“Nothing yet,” Cash said.

“You call that nothing?”

“Thus far, no human has been harmed. Urser is smart. He knows if he does, he’ll break the rules of the Game and trigger the wrath of the Empire,” Cato said grimly. “Only property has been destroyed at this point in time.”

My gaze locked on the screens again. There it was, in full color, the disaster Cash kept from me. Why? Was I really that weak, that stupid?

Take a look at yourself. You can’t even stand straight, came a bitter voice from deep in my mind. For a moment, I feared The Others were back but it was just me. Just my subconscious mocking me.

“Roo,” Cash said softly. “It’s a spectacle. He’s doing it on purpose.”

“I don’t think so. Look!” I waved at the wall of destruction. “It’s Margaret River. My home! How long have you been keeping this from me?”

Everybody avoided my eyes and no one said a word.

“Cash?” I urged. “How long?”

His jaw clenched, teeth ground. “He’s been trying to smoke you out since the Amazon.”

All the blood drained from my face. I waved at the blank screens. “And was it always like that?”

“He started with one country, then expanded. Margaret River happened earlier today.”

“I have to call Kitty.” I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and dialed. It was close to midnight here, which meant it should be mid-morning there. She’ll pick up. She had to.

No answer.

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe, the room swayed and I bent over with my hands on my knees. My stomach rolled and I wished away the effects of the alcohol. “Oh God, oh God. We have to go there. We have to stop him. This is my fault. I’ll hand myself over!”

“You’re not thinking straight. This is all an elaborate show. He knows once he starts publicly harming humans that Marc—and any of us—can kill any of them without hesitation or repercussions,” Cash said, placing a hand on my shoulder and guiding me back up. “Giving yourself up would mean he’s got access to the other worlds. We can’t allow that.”

“He’s right,” Zebedee’s eyebrow arched condescendingly. “There’s more at stake here than one little country town.”

“Kitty is pregnant!” I put all of my emotion into those three words. A baby. A new, innnocent life coming into the world. My voice trembled. “I can’t let this suffering happen because of me.”

“Roo, you’re tired and drunk.” Cash tried to usher me out of the room. “Go to bed and sleep it off. We can talk about this in the morning.”

I couldn’t believe it. In front of everyone, he was saying these things to me, treating me like a naughty child. I surveyed the room. All those faces were looking at me with judgment. Scorn. Embarrassment. Disdain. I finally saw things clearly. They all thought I was useless.

“You lied to me!” I palmed Cash’s chest. The damned immovable mountain didn’t budge and that made my heart pump even faster.

“That’s not true. I didn’t lie to you.”

“You told me to stay in my room and focus on my therapy. You said everything was fine.”

“It is fine, we have it under control.”

The searing pain in the middle of my chest grew. “You don’t believe I’m capable of helping. You’re just like them.” I pointed at the others. “You think I’m a joke. A baby. I thought we were soulmates.” His earlier words of encouragement—Baby steps, Roo—had a different meaning. “You think I can’t handle Urser. You think I can’t even handle myself, well guess what, buddy!” I pointed at my neck. “It’s gone! I did it.”

“Stop overreacting, Roo.” Cash dipped his head to try and keep his words for my ears only. “You need to go to bed and sleep it off.”

“Stop saying that! I don’t need to sleep any-tfshing off.” I lost balance trying to swat him away.

He caught a whiff of my breath. “You drank our wine? The one we’re saving for the wedding? And… is that Ambrosia I smell on your breath?” Then his face truly twisted into something that made shame well from the deepest part of my heart.

Emotions slammed into me, and I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out of there.

He gripped my shoulder. “I know that look in your eye. Do I need to send Jed with you to make sure you go back to your room?”

I tried to yank out of his grip but couldn’t disengage. I had a vision of myself throwing a tantrum like a toddler trying to wrench free from his mother in a mall. The notion sent a wave of fury hurtling through me and I glared at Cash. “You think you can lock me up like a prisoner?”

He stared back with an unreadable expression.

“Let her go, dove,” Jacine said. “Where will she run to? She’s safe on the grounds.”

“Yes, let her go. She’s embarrassing herself. Let the grownups clean up her mess.”

“You shut your mouth.” Cash let go of me to turn the full force of his scorn at whoever spoke—Cato, Thurstan… who cared?

It was enough of a distraction that I ran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I RAN THROUGH the castle, out and into the night. My eyes burned. I was a child among gods. A tempestuous, temper tantrum-throwing toddler. The overwhelming sense of failure crashed over me. I wasn’t this queen that led them all to peace. I never would be! Cash knew that. The look in his eyes when he found out I’d drunk our wine said everything. It was something I couldn’t hide from anymore. I didn’t know what was worse, Cash not following me, or the fact I was glad.

I crashed to a stop in the snow-covered courtyard, panting and breathing hard. The quiet, calming ambiance of the area was a stark contrast to my heavy breath and thumping heart. Running water poured from the mouth of a dolphin in a fountain at the center of the round gravel driveway. Someone had scraped snow from the floor, leaving the walkway to the garden clear. I knew I should be cold, but I was too drunk to care. I walked around the fountain, gulping in fresh night air. The cold stones beneath my feet cut, but the sensation gave me something to anchor to. The Ambrosia made me queasy and I needed that link, that tiny pulse of stabbing pain waking me up, taking my mind off what I’d left behind.

I kept walking, mindless of the stones until my feet landed on the soft, fluffy snow that separated the castle driveway from the forest. The sliver of pain slicing my feet turned into a torrent. Agony shot up my legs, through my bones and straight to my spine. I made a soundless scream, seized and collapsed, hands splayed in the soggy snow. Electricity ripped through me. What the hell was happening?

Nature.

Being cooped up inside the stone walls, I’d forgotten about its anguish. I may have mastered sensing auras of people, but not of the world. My muscles froze and locked. The sensation had been so strong, so sudden, that all I could do was breathe through it. But I didn’t fight it. I let it in because, unlike before, this time I recognized the pain. It matched what I felt deep inside my soul. We were sorrowful and used. Chewed up and spit out.

All those times I tried to help, to be a better person—to create a better world—ache twisted my heart—had I really been making a fool of myself?

My mind melded with the earth’s and I had trouble distinguishing our thoughts apart. Urser used me. Humans used me. Our whole life was to the beat of their drum. The Inquisitor had me running away from him, hiding my true nature and flinching every time I heard the flick of a cigarette lighter strike. People lit fires, burning me for fun. Then I met Cash and walked to his beat while he trained me. They said they loved me, tended to me, nurtured me, but now they pillage me, poison me. Sure, he helped me get away from Urser and control my powers, but he was always the one making decisions and the simple fact was, I was never in control.

Let the grownups clean her mess.

Anger surged in my soul, in our soul. No more running. No more hiding. I slammed the heel of my palm on my eye socket and forced myself to remember my mediation techniques.

Breathe. In. Out.

Again.

My tears fell to the earth. I watched as my sorrow met the pain offered up to me. I watched as they became one. We understood each other.

Breathe. In. Out.

Again.

I pushed my essence into the ground and felt a response. An awakening. An acceptance that went both ways. We were opposite ends of the same telephone wire. The wind sighed around my head, caressing my skin. The birds calling in the night suddenly took on a musical sound. The ground shuddered under my touch and deeper, further beneath, there was an echo of recognition. It was as though the world exhaled in trembling relief. It was not alone anymore, and neither was I. I wanted to cry some more, but sweet, sweet tears of joy. We could do this.

The pain ebbed, but power grew, expanding through me. Sparking, zinging into my palms, tingling my bent knees on the grass, tickling the back of my bare toes on the ground. This was life at its purest, and it welcomed me. I’d never have to borrow from another soul if the earth offered her unlimited supply freely. Slowly, surely, feeling came back to my muscles in a burning sensation that shocked me. The effects of Ambrosia withered and died. What was left was a single-minded clarity. I was done running away. I was done with being told what to do and how to behave and feeling guilty for not being their savior. I’d never be the person they wanted me to be, but I could be the best version of me.

I stood. I leaned back on my heels, palms on my thighs, and then staggered to my feet. I wanted to get out of here. Trembling hands weighted at my side and I stared to the shadowed forest ahead that lined the property. I walked toward it—

—and was stopped by a sharp pain in my middle. I glanced down, surprised. Why was an arrow shaft sticking out of my hip? Blood poured down the curve of my thigh and onto the white ground before my healing ability staunched the flow and eventually stopped it.

And then something strange happened. The earth shrieked in my mind. The wind picked up speed until it howled all around, pushing the leaves of the forest into a frenzy, sending snow flying from its bows. Even from my distance to the fountain, fine drops of arctic water hit my cheeks as wind carried it from the dolphin’s mouth. My hair lifted off my neck and whipped around my face. It was as though the earth felt my injury with me. And it was angry.

“It’s okay,” I said quietly, to the earth and to myself. “I’m okay.”

The wind speed dropped a few knots but didn’t settle completely. I became aware of an energy shift in the air to my right, and another arrow zoomed past my head. A part of me had sensed that movement in the air, as though a ripple in water, and I ducked just in time. In the same instant, I detected a number of souls converging on me in a hostile manner and understood: The castle was being attacked!

No. I was being attacked.

I urged my heart to slow its thumping beat. I had to remain calm, or else the earth would sense it. The distinct snap and twang of a bow releasing sounded in the night. Adrenaline surged in me and pushed the last remnants of Ambrosia out of my pores. But it rooted me to the spot, senses thrumming like a live wire, breath held in my lungs. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Then wind surged in a roar around me, snapping me out of my daze in time to duck as another arrow whizzed by my ear. A gust of wind knocked it off course until it embedded in the stone of the fountain behind me. It lodged in the dolphin’s tail.

“Thank you,” I mumbled to the earth and gave it a quick pat before standing again.

My hand enclosed around the length of the arrow in my hip and I braced for pain. My knuckles tightened on the thin rod until they were white. I can do this. I yanked and screamed, doubling over for a minute to catch my breath while my body healed anew. It only took a few seconds and then I stood tall again. Jeez. Who used arrows these days? I ditched the shaft at the ground and faced in the direction of the souls converging on me. Survival instinct took over. I armed myself with energy and let it show. White light sparked at my fingertips and cascaded to the ground.

Five shadows disengaged from the darkness at the edge of the forest. All wore leather hunting outfits, as though they were on their way to a Cosplay for Robin Hood. I raised my hands, palms out in warning. “Come any closer and I’ll deem it an act of hostility.”

“We’re not afraid of you. We know what you are,” one male said, knocking his arrow and pointing at me. His accent sounded local. He was tall and slim with a brown beard growing down his neck. A full quiver was slung over his shoulder. Half his chest was shielded with a leather plated chest guard. This guy was a serious bowman, but he was wrong to attack me.

“If you really know what I am, then you know it’s a mistake to misjudge me,” I added.

My sparking hands cast an ambient, blue glow that mixed with the yellow tinge coming from the castle’s outdoor lights. The result was an eerie, green glow that touched every surface around me.

How did the men get past the security at the gate? They must have injured the guards somehow. And if they did that, then they had the means to incapacitate beings of power. The five people—oh my God!—I gasped. A step backward betrayed my shock. These were human. Not Nephilim. Not Seraphim. Just poor misguided humans. All dressed in hunting leathers, playing at some savior notion. They thought they were heroes, or perhaps they were deranged.

The bearded man in the lead twitched his finger on his nocked and braced arrow. His arm trembled from the strain of holding the drawn string taut.

“I swear to God if you let that loose, I’ll…” I bit my tongue to stop myself saying something I’d regret.

“You’ll what? Bewitch us? Bleed us dry? We’ve seen what your kind can do. We know who you are.”

“You don’t know anything about me!”

“We know you’re the mother of evil. You created witches,” said another man. He was younger and sported a green leather jacket with a hood.

“I did nothing of the sort!” But even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew them for the lie they were because, wasn’t I responsible for bringing life to this planet?

“That’s what the god said. He said you’re the one responsible for all of our pain.”

His words cut, but I shook my head. No. I couldn’t accept blame for every little thing that happened after. People made their own decisions. I didn’t hold a gun to anyone’s head to force them to turn evil. That was all Urser and his destructive ability to kill and create with his dark power. It was probably how he’d manage to evolve all these years instead of devolving like Soul-Eaters. He had created life. It may not have been good life, but it was something he gave to the Universe.

“You’re the reason my wife got possessed.”

“And my daughter,” another said.

“A witch killed my cousin,” said the third.

The hurt in their voices was clear, but: “Uh-uh, pals. I didn't force a witch to possess your wife. I’m sorry for your loss, but I can’t control what happened. I wasn’t even on this planet when witches were created!”

“You think that matters to us?” He jerked his bow in my direction and stepped closer. “You think that makes a difference to all the suffering because of what you started?”

I threw my hands in the air, exasperated. “What do you want from me? To bring your wife back? I can’t do that!”

“We want you to pay. We want to hand you over to the god who wants your blood. He said he’ll take the witches with him when he leaves. We want to do something so nobody else suffers like we have.”

“Trust me, I don’t want anyone else suffer, either. But you have to admit, how do you know he’s the one telling the truth? What proof has he given you that he’s for real?”

I knew I’d hit a mark when they all glanced at each other briefly.

“He’s a god,” one of them said.

“So am I. I’ve been fighting against him all this time. The people at this refuge are fighting against him. The only difference is that we want to avoid innocent loss of lives. He’s the one responsible for the bombings of all the National Treasures—the pyramids, the Opera House. He did that. Not me.”

The youth lowered his bow, but his father frowned and shook his head. “No… I don’t know.”

“Those creatures you saw on the news… do they look innocent?”

“No,” he shook his head.

“Urser is the one who made them. Not me.”

Just then, I felt another shift in the energy around me—a pulsing of atoms and molecules—a ripple that alerted me to another presence.

Cash.

None of the five had seen him, but he was here, somewhere. His aura didn’t shout at me like the rest of them, but through my soulmate connection and the earth’s awareness, I knew exactly where he was. The last time I’d seen Cash in action was when he obliterated poor Malcolm in mere seconds. He doesn’t think. He acts. All the hairs on my body stood on end and, for the first time that night, I was afraid.

Slowly, I raised my palm to the five. “Don’t move.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A GROWING SENSE of dread unfurled in my gut as multiple larger than life energies arrived behind me. Without turning, I instantly recognized a few auras belonged to the gods who had been in the War Room with Cash: Jacine, Cato, Thurstan, Zebedee. Jed and a few other lesser souls were also filtering out to see the show.

And then there was Cash. He encroached from the side, unnoticed in the dark shadows lining the wall of the castle. Slowly, slowly, and step by step, he came closer.

In a panicked moment, I saw a flash of the worst unfolding. Cash would eliminate these men without thinking twice, and the gods would take out anyone he missed. Then, once word got out to the towns around us, there would be no denying what these people thought of us. We would be the devils Urser described. I couldn’t let that happen.

“Everyone, stop.” I held up my hand and looked in the direction I knew Cash was coming, but he was either not paying attention to me, or he thought I was speaking to the humans who had in turn noticed the gods behind me. Cash sidled closer. Closer. The Robin Hoods tensed.

“We’re not who you think we are,” I said to them. “The story you’ve been told is a lie. You have to believe me.”

“How do you know what we’ve been told?” asked the youth in a green jacket.

“That’s enough. Don’t engage, Jack. She’ll twist your mind,” said the bearded leader, looking more and more unsure. His urgent words were more to persuade himself, rather than to convey a message. “The god said she would do this. He said it!”

“Look,” I started. “I know that—”

“Enough,” Cato interrupted behind me in an explosion of sound and energy. His aura unfurled from his body and for the first time since meeting him, I gauged a true sign of his age. He was strong. Lethal. Gravel crunched with each footstep Cato took closer.

“You’re trespassing,” he said to the attackers. “You have exactly thirty-seconds to turn around and leave. Thurstan—” He indicated for his son to flank my other side.

My fingers sparked and, for a minute, I lost control of my thoughts. One second they were on the danger in front of me, the next, I was paying too much attention to the men sliding to my side. Were they going to undermine my authority? And I didn’t mean that in the sense of myself being their damned queen, but in the sense that I had built a rapport with these people. Granted, our connection might be all in my head, but I didn’t want anyone going off halfcocked and injuring these people. The wind rose in a gust to show me its support.

“Get back,” Jack said, eyes wide when Thurstan stepped forward.

“Do you know whose castle you’ve trespassed on, boy?” Jacine’s voice was liquid silver as she confidently stalked closer. “I mean, you’ve heard the rumors in the town, have you not? They myths, the stories, the Pied Piper who lured men to their deaths with the sound of her voice… the goddess who stole husbands from wives and gave them pleasure unbound until nothing else in life was good enough and… well, you know. There’s a reason no one comes here anymore.”

I slapped my palm on my face. “Not helping, Jacine.”

“What?” She whined and glanced at me wide-eyed. “I don’t do it anymore. I’m reformed. But I could.”

“Let’s just all calm down a minute,” I said. “Nobody is turning anyone into a pleasure slave.”

Jacine pouted but stepped back to align with us.

Archers flicked their gaze to each other. Fear crept over their features. Two stepped back, and checked their rear, readying for a retreat. I felt their intentions as clearly as if they spoke. The cold earth beneath me was aware too. Its energy zipped up through my bare feet to strengthen my bones with power that crackled and sparked out my fingertips and licked up my arms. We were alert. Aware. Cautious. But we were hopeful.

I moved forward hesitantly. All arrows zeroed in on me. I stepped again. “Buddy, like I said, we’re not the bad ones. We didn’t make witches. That was Urser. The man you saw on TV.”

He narrowed his eyes, affronted. “Liar.”

“One more step and we fire,” Jack said. “We don’t need you alive to bring you back.”

Jacine laughed. “You can’t kill us boys.”

“You’re right. Not with regular arrows.” The bearded man reached behind him and pulled a black tipped arrow from his quiver. His crew also reloaded with black tipped arrows. “But with these, we stand a chance. Made from Obsidian and dipped in Nightshade.”

I had no idea what that was but auras around me skipped a beat.

“You see,” the man said, “it was those stories and myths you speak of that sent us on the right path to find your weakness. It took years—decades—and generations of us, but finally, we found something, and from the look on your faces, we’ve struck gold.”

“Why are we even talking with these interlopers?” Thurstan waved his hand and water from the fountain arced out of its container and hovered in a menacing bubble overhead, suspended between the attackers and us. Cato placed his palms together, almost as though he were praying but it had a sinister and deadly vibe. His eyes locked on the archers.

“We’re not leaving until we take her to the god.” The bearded man, who appeared to be the leader, nodded in my direction. “This is our final offer. Let us take her and we’ll leave without hurting anyone else.”

Silence expanded in the courtyard and for a moment, I believed my companions weighed up the option of handing me over.

I stepped forward, palms out, one in the direction of the attackers and one at the gods behind me. “We need to solve this without violence. They’re humans.”

Like an apparition, Cash’s sword lit up in his hand and revealed his location to the group. He was only feet away, eyes narrowed and locked on the closest attacker to him. It was Jack. Jack swung his bow toward Cash and released. His arrow flew.

“Fire at will.” The bearded leader loosed his arrow in my direction but I was watching the young Jack reaching to reload his bow, not noticing Cash and his fiery freight train coming toward him.

“No!” I screamed, letting all my anguish out. That one word had multiple meanings: Stop, don’t harm, protect, save. The sparks in my hands intensified like lightning and suddenly I wasn’t standing between Cato and Thurstan, I was in front of Jack, my palms out, watching Cash’s sword of fire swing toward my neck.

“Shit,” Cash spat as he reined his might at the last minute. He rolled to the side, effortlessly redirecting his strength to stand before me. The sword reduced to embers. Suddenly, his fierce gaze snagged on my now nude body and he forgot all about attacking Jack. His expression morphed into horror. “You teleported!” And then, “I almost killed you.”

“They’re human, Cash. They’re innocent.”

Seeing me jump between gods and humans, everyone stopped.

“No one is innocent.” Cash flashed a snarly smile over my shoulder. It was the kind of smile you’d see on a wolf before it ate prey.

I launched forward and threw my arms around him. “Please.”

His face softened as he took me into his arms. He draped his jacket around my shoulders. It didn’t quite cover all of me, so I dropped my hands to cover my lower private bits. Cash glared at the gods behind us with calculating intent. I couldn’t see the gods behind me, but something unsaid must have passed between them because, suddenly, Cash’s warm body left mine. Sensing the attack, the archers loosed their arrows with a twang, water splashed and crashed and bright flashes of red and yellow light scalded my eyes.

I threw up my hands to shield myself in a moment of sheer panic. “Stop!” Why won’t anyone listen to me? Help!

The earth heard my plea and the ground rumbled, moving us all helter-skelter in a haphazard way. I almost lost my footing but braced in time to see great spears shoot out of the ground and curl around each individual. It happened so fast that it took me a moment to realize the projectiles weren’t spears but vines. Each tendril twisted around the legs of gods and humans alike, growing and tightening until they were all rooted to the spot, cocooned to the head in plant life.

A sliver of sensation trailed up both my ankles, knees and thighs. I glanced down to see vines sliding up my body. Unlike the burst of fury that covered the others, it was a gentle, reverent caress that had each leaf and tendril weaving over my body to cover my nakedness. By the time the vines finished entwining, Cash’s jacket had fallen to the ground and I was left with a green woven dress that hugged my body and trailed around my ankles. As I stepped forward, the last vestiges of roots broke away from the ground and snapped to dangle like nature’s bridal train.

Cash writhed and struggled within his cocoon, face contorted and red with effort. With his strength, it would only be a matter of time before he broke out of its hold. He spotted me walking, he noted my new clothes with wide, comprehending eyes. “Roo. This is your doing?”

Too angry to meet his inquiring gaze, I looked away from him. I’d asked him to stop, to spare the humans and he ignored me. He placated me with a warm leather jacket, then did what he wanted anyway. The other gods and humans all spoke at once, but I ignored them too. I stepped around the pillars of plants and people to inspect the fallen weapons. Bows and poisoned arrows littered the grassy ground.

“Take the weapons,” I said to the earth and the ground opened to swallow them whole. When I looked back to the faces of the people around me, they had gone silent, thoughtful, maybe fearful.

“I had hoped to resolve this all without violence, but you’re all just as bad as each other,” I said.

“Roo. This is irrational. You’re making a mistake. Let me go.” This came from Cash.

“Listen to your man, Your Majesty. You’re still drunk. You need to—” Thurstan shut his mouth when he caught the seething glare in my eyes.

“Roo,” Cash warned again. “Let me go and I’ll sort this out.”

I screamed in exasperation. “I immobilized all of you without harming a hair on your heads and you’re treating me like a second rate citizen. I know I make mistakes. I make them all the time. I know I don’t remember my centuries of life experience like you do. I’m new and fresh just like them”—I pointed to the archers—“and guess what? Humans make mistakes, too. It’s how they learn. So I’m not going to be afraid anymore to keep trying because failing is making me a better person. So if it’s okay with all of you, I’m going to keep doing stupid shit because it’s the only way I know how to be me.” I gasped in a deep breath of air on my last word and eyed each of them. Cato, Thurstan, Jacine, Cash, Zebedee. Jed, the archers. I stepped around them all, circling, thinking, until finally I came up with a plan. I stood still and spoke. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to do something really stupid, right now.”

I walked up to the Robin Hoods and stood in front of the leader.

His face was pale and his eyes widened. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. I want to let you go. Will you return the way you came and never come back?”

He glanced at his son, Jack, and both nodded to each other.

“We will go. Anything you say, we will do. We are in your service.”

“What?”

“You are the god we should have listened to.”

“No. No, that’s not what I want. Just—will you go? Be with your loved ones. Forget about this. I’ll make it right.”

He nodded.

“Good.”

Once by one, I allowed the vines around them to unravel and return underground. True to their word, each interloper left, running back into the darkness of the forest until I sensed their auras fade.

Cash’s fist punched through his captivity. I met his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he had the chance to tell me how dumb and juvenile I was being, I stepped through the in-between.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I ARRIVED IN a room I knew well in Margaret River—Kitty’s living room. Alvin was standing in the open plan kitchen, putting away some cutlery. Metal clinked and clattered and then a drawer whooshed closed. He was the epitome of health, wearing a singlet that displayed his muscled arms, skin browned from spending a summer in the sun. Kitty sat on the sofa, flicking through a trashy magazine. Her hair was growing nicely into shoulder length blue and green waves, and her stomach had a slight curve to it, almost negligible if I didn’t already know she was pregnant. It was a perfect scene of domestic life.

“Whoa!” Alvin shouted when he saw me. “When did you get here, Roo?”

“Roo?” Kitty jumped from her seat on the blue sofa. The magazine fluttered to the floor.

“Sorry!” I cried and glanced down, fearing I’d be stark naked.

“What on earth are you wearing, Roo?” Alvin asked.

The plant dress was still woven around me. Must be organic enough to hold its shape through the in-between. It seemed a little tattered, but was holding. I straightened. “Sorry. Thought I’d be naked. I’m so glad you’re both safe.”

My friends stared at me wide-eyed.

“Uh, babe, do you want some proper clothes?” Kitty spared a glance at her fiancé.

“Right. Clothes.” Alvin dashed out of the living room.

“No, I’m okay, really.”

Kitty turned to me, frowning “Babe, you shouldn’t have come here. Those things are herding people up in town. Alvin and I have managed to avoid being caught up by staying in our home, but … we don’t know how long that’s going to last. It’s dangerous.”

I thought back to the images I’d seen on the television screen at the refuge. People were being corralled into pens. “Has anything happened yet?” I asked. “I mean, apart from people being treated like livestock? What are they doing? Tell me about it.”

Kitty pursed her red lips. “First, coffee.”

Alvin returned with a balled up package of fabric and threw it at me from the other side of the room. “Heads up.”

I plucked the unraveling dress from midair. I stretched it out and then folded the fabric over the arm of the sofa, smoothing the wrinkles, thinking, I didn’t need it. I didn’t need clothes because I’d made my own. Holy cheese on a stick! I actually knew how to make my own clothes out of vines and—my mind stopped suddenly. The enormity of what I’d done back in Budapest hit me and dizziness overcame me. I moved to the front of the chair where my knees weakened and I collapsed. I was a god. Shit.

“Alvin. You wrinkled it!” Kitty groaned, mistaking my mood.

“Makes a better projectile, bubby-cakes.” Alvin kissed her on the cheek.

“Bubby-cakes?” I screwed up my nose and laughed. It was just the right thing to hear to snap my head from the clouds. I gathered my unruly long hair into a twist at the side of my neck as I watched Kitty and Alvin fuss around the kitchen, preparing drinks in perfect harmony. Alvin got cups down from a top cupboard, Kitty spooned coffee, and then Alvin added the sugar—knowing exactly how many Kitty liked in her drink. Tears burned the back of my lids and the ache in my chest grew. I wanted what they had. Cash and I were supposedly soulmates, but our minds were out of sync. I’d asked him to trust me with the humans, and he didn’t. He’d asked me to take things slow with my therapy and I’d rushed it. It didn’t matter that I was now coping better with my abilities. I’d stomped on his heart to get here.

No time for self wallowing. Kitty was pregnant. In danger. The town was in danger. And I was here to fix it all. I had to get my head back in the game.

By the time Kitty and Alvin joined me on the sofa, I’d mentally pep-talked myself into sitting taller. I took my mug from Alvin.

“Thank you,” I said. “So… tell me what’s been happening. I want to hear it from you two.”

“Have you seen the news?” Kitty asked as she settled back into the sofa. Alvin stretched an arm around her shoulders and sipped on his drink.

“Bits and pieces.”

“Well, they arrived yesterday. They say they’re here for our protection.” Kitty snorted.

“Yeah, right.” Alvin rolled his eyes. “As if.”

“What do they need to protect you against?” I asked.

“You, babe.” Kitty frowned. “They’re saying you created witches and that you might come back to make more.”

“Oh for goodness sake.” I joined Alvin in the eye roll. “Of course Urser would say that. He’s trying to smoke me out.”

“Your father?”

“Bruce. Yes. But he isn’t my father. I mean he sort of is, but it’s complicated.”

“They’re the dangerous ones, right?” Alvin asked, his arm tightening around Kitty’s shoulders. “I mean, they have really black eyes, like sharks, and they’re bloody well not giving anyone a choice about moving into their supposed safe zones.”

“They are dangerous, you’ve been right to stay out of sight in your home. They’ve been infected with the same darkness that Urser used to make witches, but he’s perfected the process. It’s taken him years to do it, except now he can turn anyone into his mindless slave.” I took a sip of the coffee, preparing myself for what I was about to say next. “So, I guess, there’s nothing for it. I’m going to fix them. I’ll get the dark taint out of their bodies, then send their souls home. I’m tired of sitting around and waiting for someone else to do what I should have done a long time ago.”

“You go girl!” Kitty fist pumped the air.

Alvin’s face turned serious and his muscles tensed. “Do you need help?”

My heart softened a little and I gave them both a small smile. “Thank you but, no, I can handle these on my own. There’s only a few, right?”

“Maybe ten or so?” Kitty replied.

“That we’ve seen,” Alvin warned.

“No problems. I got this.”

“But you’re here on your own, right?” Alvin continued. “Unless your friends are in town?”

My reply caught in my throat and I shook my head. I took another quick sip of coffee and let the sweet bitterness infuse me with strength. “I’m here on my own. I’ll get going in a minute and sort these people out. I’m stronger now. I’m not afraid to do this on my own.”

“Babe,” Kitty breathed. “It’s never good to be alone.”

I squeezed my eyes and blinked away the burn, then quickly changed the subject. “How have you been feeling Kitty? With the pregnancy?”

Kitty rubbed her hand over her belly. “I’m feeling great. No morning sickness, no tiredness. I’m showing a little faster than I hoped but, other than that, great!”

Showing faster? I squashed my panic, so I wouldn’t conjure visions of alien babies, or some sort of witch-hybrid like in the Underworld movies—no wait ––that’s Vampire-Werewolf hybrid. But still. What if it’s a Werewolf? A tiny gasp escaped my throat.

“Is something wrong?” Kitty frowned. “I know I’ll probably have to let out my wedding dress a little, but it’s not that bad is it?”

“Oh no, sorry, I was thinking of something totally unrelated.” I could almost hear Cash’s voice telling me to stop overacting, but couldn’t help myself. “So, do you think you got the conception date wrong, maybe?”

“It’s possible.” Kitty tapped her chin with red manicured nails. “Although, it could also be the fact that Alvin’s got super fit genetics now, thanks to you.”

Alvin kissed his bicep and winked at me.

Kitty swatted him playfully. “So it’s probably just going to be a super fit baby. The doc said all is normal and, with all things considered, we’re on track for the wedding.”

“Fantastic.” I clapped my hands then gave them both the eye. “You’ll tell me if something is wrong, though won’t you? I mean, having a god for a friend has some benefits, you know?”

Alvin gazed into his fiancé’s eyes with cloudy love. “I’m sure anything we have is going to be perfect the way it is.”

Kitty replied by kissing him on the lips.

“Aww, you guys are so cute.” And a load off my worrisome shoulders. I’d forgotten about Alvin’s supercharged genes. After Petra hexed him, I hexed him back with a stronger directive for his body to fix anything that was wrong, hence the super fit body and perfect health. “Just curious, Alvin, have you been sick or had a cold since that day you were hexed by me?”

“Not even the sniffles.” He raised his eyebrows with an impressed expression.

“Great.” I stood up to leave. “Don’t leave the house until you hear it’s safe.”

“How will we know that?” Alvin asked.

“You’ve got a point,” I replied. “I guess, the media coverage is getting out somehow, so there must be people who aren’t being captured. Either way, when I get rid of all the darklings, I’ll come back and let you know.”

“Roo?” Kitty’s voice wobbled.

“Yeah?”

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

“You know it. I have a wedding to get to.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I STEPPED THROUGH the in-between, aiming to teleport into a clearing on the edge of town. Lots of nature there, and usually few people. The main strip of town was a short walk away.

The instant my bare feet landed on the grass of the clearing, the glare of the sun hit my eyes, blinding me. I shielded my face, frowning. I didn’t remember the sun being so high. Time had warped. I took a step on the carpet of grass, and felt my dress break apart. Glancing down, I noticed a piece of disintegrating leaf and touched it. Within seconds, the rest of the outfit crumbled to the ground. Wow. Not built for lasting trips through the in-between.

Looking around me, I confirmed I was alone. Nothing but grass, trees, birds and the sound of the wind blowing softly through the leaves. I listened more intently, thinking I should be hearing cars drive along the main road just beyond the break of trees, but there was nothing but the silent omen of what I’d find in town.

I had to hurry.

I asked nature for a new dress. She was there waiting for me, eager and compliant. Roots and tiny tendrils shot out of the ground to slither around my legs and body until each length had weaved to create the most beautiful lace-work I’d ever seen. The sun sparkled on the dewy leaves like diamonds. The finished product was pliable with the texture of a soft basket weave. It melded to my torso and hips where it dangled to my feet in tassels. Little white flowers bloomed across my shoulder straps and trailed down the middle of my back like tiny white buttons.

“This is beautiful,” I gushed and swirled. “It moves with me. It’s perfect. Thank you.”

A gust of wind lifted my hair in response and I was sure I felt a swelling of pride coming from underground. I sighed and crouched down so my hand stroked the grassy surface, letting each blade of grass massage my fingers. “When this is all over, I swear I’m going to make things right for you.”

Another gentle gust of wind answered me and then I stood up.

“But first, we have some work to do.”

I made my way into town, stomach tensed with nerves. Shops were closed. Streets were empty. From the short flashes of media footage I’d glimpsed, the people were being held in a park. The one at the other end of main street was the obvious choice—central and open.

I noticed the first darkling a few minutes into my walk, standing outside the town bakery and looking rather like a Secret Service Agent. That was the first thing that threw me off. No wonder the Robin Hoods had believed Urser when he said I was the one causing trouble. This darkling looked similar to a trusted government authority, instead of the feral beasts that attacked me in the Amazon. He wore a gray suit, had his short dark hair plastered down, and had a coiled plastic wire running from an ear piece to his jacket where a shoulder microphone was attached. His biceps almost split the seams and I had the sense he could snap bones in an instant. The darkling’s aura was gritty and made my stomach curdle. Like Alvin said, his eyes were like a shark’s and every so often his head would turn to survey the empty street.

When he caught sight of me, he began walking my way.

The sun warmed pavement burned my feet, but diminished my connection to the earth’s raw power. I still had my own innate ability, though, so let my hands fill with energy and hid them behind my back.

“Hello,” I said to the darkling as we came within earshot of each other.

“You must return to your home, human,” he replied in a gravelly voice.

“Yeah… not happening. I’m here to send you home. Are you Nephilim or Seraphim?”

He frowned and cocked his head, but said nothing as he tried to compute my duplicity. He was probably used to the town’s folk running every time he spoke to them.

“Look, buddy,” I added. “I need to know what to do with your soul after I purge you.”

Those must have been the magic words because his mouth opened in a spiked, toothy snarl. He snapped my way viciously, feral beast come out to play.

“My Grandma, what big teeth you have.” I jumped forward and slammed my palms on his chest, letting my energy out in a blast, effectively Tasering him.

He convulsed under my touch as the scent of ozone and burning rayon filled the air. That was close. I wiped my forehead. His teeth had narrowly missed my nose. As he slid against the bakery window to the ground, I surveyed the street for witnesses. No one yet.

Quickly, I knelt beside him and ripped his jacket and shirt open to reveal his chest. A star-map on the torso confirmed he was a Player. I used my power to slice his flesh and place my own sliced palm onto his wound and set to purging the poison from him until black residue oozed silently from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. I stood back to assess with bated breath.

Slowly, the man’s eyes returned to a shade of blue that matched the sky. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, smearing the black liquid like day old mascara. Then he noticed the stains on his hands. Then he noticed me.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Roo. I’m the one who purged the darkness from your soul. What’s your name?”

“Ah.” He scratched his head. “I think it’s Nathan.”

“Hi Nathan. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Another frown and a vacant look in his eyes. That wasn’t good.

“Were you at a Ludus?” I tried.

“Ah. I was at the… um… why can’t I? Oh yeah, I was at the Libertine Ball, then there was a weird smell. That’s all I remember.”

“Good. That’s good. Libertine Ball. You have a star-map so you must be a Player. Were you graduating, or were you celebrating other members of your House being released into the Game?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You have an American accent.”

He nodded. “I’m American.”

“Do you remember what House you belong to?”

His eyes lit up with recognition. “Yes, Astraia House; The Fates.”

I snorted. “Well, buddy, you should’ve seen that coming.”

“No, my ability doesn’t work like that. I can’t see the future, only traces of the past when I touch objects.”

“Does it work on yourself?”

Nathan ran his fingers over his palms and then slotted his hands together and closed his eyes. After a while, his eyes opened and his skin paled. I didn’t need to ask to know that he’d seen the things he’d done as a darkling, and he was sickened by them.

“I’m sorry Nathan. That shouldn’t have happened to you.”

“Not your fault,” he mumbled and looked at me.

I looked at him.

We stared.

“Yeah. It kinda is.” I inhaled deeply. Here goes. “I’m the queen. I’m sending you home.”

“To the States?” he said hopefully.

“Nope. Purgatory, then your real home. I’m sorry. Game Over, buddy.” I didn’t wait for a rebuttal. I didn’t wait for questions. I placed both my palms on his chest and pushed with my power. His soul ripped from his flesh into the atmosphere beyond, a ghostly shadow of his body. His essence dissipated and drifted away, pulled by a magnetic force to the nearest purgatory, which was probably underneath the rubble of the Opera House in Sydney. But I wouldn’t worry about that. Marc could handle bringing the souls back to the Empire. My priority was first and foremost to eradicate the darklings.

“Right.”

Nathan’s body was an empty shell, slumped on the floor beneath me. I should probably get rid of it considering it was evidence. The last thing I needed was for humans to discover a demi-god’s body and dissect it. I wanted to make things simpler here on earth, not more complicated. My hands filled to the brink with energy and I let it flow into the body. Fire erupted. I jumped back just in time to save my tendrils from catching. I wiped my hands down my leafy dress and glanced down the empty street.

Then I kept walking.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

IT TOOK MOST of the afternoon, but by the time I reached the opposite end of the main street, I’d purged seven Players of their dark taint and burned their bodies to ash. My limbs felt heavy, and my feet dragged. It may be late in the day here, but back in Budapest it was the early hours of the morning. Past my bedtime, that’s for sure.

Kitty had thought there were about ten darklings hanging around—that she’d seen—so I was still missing a few. I couldn’t quit yet. I cast a glance back the way I’d come. Nothing but deserted street and a series of body-shaped scorched marks.

The closer I walked to the park at the end of the street, the more I felt the swell of auras like a beacon. I followed the sensation until the park came into view and watched from a distant pathway to try and understand the dynamic. The park was shaped in a triangle with tall Karri and Gum trees sheltering the grassed clearing. Any town resident not safely sequestered at home was gathered at the center of the park, huddling around each other for support. A woman with long dark hair broke away from the group. She stumbled, legs caught in her long skirt as she asked the nearest darkling something.

His response was to snarl and snap with Pirahna-like teeth. A ball of fire manifested in his palm and he held it menacingly at the woman.

A Police Officer jerked the woman back to the safety of the group and the darkling extinguished his flames. I gasped when I saw the officer’s face. It was Warren, or Wozza as Jed had called him. He’d been there when Tommy had died. Next to him, I recognized the shire’s mayor—his face grim and restrained as he darted a glance to the right. I followed the mayor’s line of sight to where news vans lined a side street, acting as a backdrop for dozens of camera crews and reporters. They weren’t corralled like the rest of the townspeople, which meant Urser wanted them free to record the event. He wanted the world to see. Whatever happened next could have serious international repercussions.

I moved off the sidewalk and into the park where nature rejoiced at my return. With the most confidence I could muster, I walked straight up to the darkling who had threatened the lady. He was slim, short and young. Upon seeing me, he bared his pointy teeth.

“We’ve been looking for you,” he growled.

“What a coincidence. I’ve been looking for you, too.” I slammed the heel of my powered palms into his chest and let loose. An almighty thunderous crack resounded as more energy than I intended ripped into him. Smoke curled from my touch and he crumpled to the ground, stunned.

Screams erupted from the closest in the crowd and the precarious control shattered. People ran in all directions. The ground shook with the stampede to escape.

“Don’t run. I’m here to help,” I shouted, but no one heard me. I caught the word witch a few too many times on the wind and it tore a desperation from me I didn’t know I felt. “Stop! Seriously. I’m here to help. I’m not a witch like he said.”

It was chaos. The mayor ducked and hid and the crowd dispersed as though there had been an assassination attempt. The few police officers who had been in the group had their guns out, but didn’t know what to do. Point them at me, at the feral and hissing darklings, or back at me. I caught a cameraman with one manic eye on me while the another had his camera pointed at a journalist speaking into her microphone. The woman waved her hand in my direction and then the camera panned to me. I froze—a deer in the spotlight. This was not going according to plan. Who was I kidding? There was no plan!

The two remaining darklings hurled toward me from their opposite ends of the park. One was a woman, one a man. A groan at my feet showed the one I’d felled awakening. Shit.

“Keep him there,” I said, directing my intention into the earth. Vines slithered out of the grass to wrap around the darkling. “Actually, that’s effective. Secure the other two.”

Vines rocketed from the ground to secure their legs. The black-eyed woman halted in her tracks, quickly swallowed by roots to her neck. But the male kept coming. He was fast and strong. His teeth were gnashing razors. Every time a vine wrapped around one of his limbs, he ripped it off with seeming ease. Tendons bulged out of the sides of his neck and veins writhed along his forearms. My God, he was massive.

He made it a few yards from me, and kept coming, arms flailing, hands clawing at the tireless vines reaching to restrain him.

I took a step back. “Okay, the vines aren’t working. Time for plan B.”

The earth lent me her energy and I accepted. I pushed air toward the darkling and hardened it. He became a solid statue, frozen in movement, a hand suspended on its way to rip a vine from his shoulder. His face locked into a forever grimace of the worst contortion. Yeah, I got this.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to pull faces in case the wind changed?” I said as I stepped closer for inspection. His eyes followed me. Creepy.

A quick glance at the crowd had most of them evacuated to a safe distance. Some had disappeared all together. The brave few that were left loitered behind the camera crew. All watched me like frightened little bunnies. Warren stepped out, scratching his graying head.

“Roo?” he asked, hesitantly.

“Hey Wozza.” I gave a small, stupid wave. Didn’t know what else to say.

He smiled. “I knew what he said wasn’t true. I knew you’d come to help.”

I smiled back as relief coursed through me. I pointed with my thumb over my shoulder. “I’m just going to get rid of these things, okay? Then you can go back to your lives.”

He nodded.

It was good to know some of them weren’t so quick to believe Urser’s lies. Still, they kept their distance and the camera crew kept recording. One news presenter spoke quietly into her microphone, probably narrating the event.

With nowhere to hide, I turned back to the first two darklings still tied to the ground under a mountain of vines. I purged them, and then set them free to a chorus of gasps and cries from the bystanders. That left me with the monster frozen in air. I walked up to him and stood in front, weighing my options because the instant I released him from the airlock, he’d come flying at me. In the end, I asked the earth to sink him to his shoulders, leaving just his neck and face exposed.

“That’s more like it,” I said and dispersed the solid air around his face. “Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” He snapped at my approaching hands. “Okay, the easy way.”

I pressed my palms to his head and unloaded voltage until his eyes rolled and he convulsed to a stop. Then I purged him as well. Blackness oozed out of his orifices to drip to the floor where it soaked into the ground. I felt a shudder in response, and blades of grass wilted and died—evidence of Urser’s sinister taint.

“I'm sorry,” I said to the earth. “I can see why you hate this so much.”

The ex-darkling groaned as fog cleared from his eyes.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Dorian,” he replied.

“Your House?”

“Draco. American Ludus.”

“Well, Dorian, it’s your lucky day. I’ve saved your soul from eternal damnation and am sending you home. Well, to Purgatory. Technically the Gamekeeper will send you home.”

“What? It’s over?”

“Yes.” I glanced over my shoulder to our captive audience. I didn’t want anyone hearing what I had to say next so used my body to block their view of Dorian then lowered my voice. “Do you remember anything about your time in the dark?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve been contaminated with Urser’s taint and it allowed him to control you. It turned you into a mindless, rabid killing beast.”

“Oh. For reals?”

“Yeah, for reals. Didn’t seem like you did anything here to hurt anyone but I can’t account for your time with Urser. So I take it you remember nothing?”

He shook his head and looked thoughtful. Then his skin paled. “I remember some.”

“You do?”

He nodded and squeezed his eyes shut. “Bits and pieces. The things I did.” And then the big man suddenly turned into a sobbing mess.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” I touched the top of his head gently. “If there is there anything you can tell me about Urser’s plans, it will help us stop him from doing this to more people.”

“The last thing I remember was being herded like cattle into the Libertine Ballroom. It was odd because the ball wasn’t due to start for another half day and none of us were prepared. We didn’t even get to dress in our masquerade costumes. We thought it might be a final surprise trial, but then… that’s all I remembered.”

“Who herded you there?” I asked with a growing sense of dread.

“Every Watcher in the place, that’s why we believed them. We trusted them.”

My eyes closed with the ramification of what I’d just heard, but I couldn’t let it show on my face. The entire American Ludus was compromised. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes to meet his.

“Thank you, that information is helpful.”

“Also, while I was”—he gulped—“the other thing, I remembered there was someone Urser had feeding him information. Someone close to you.”

“Oh, that was probably Petra when she was inside me. But she’s been gone for months now.”

“No, it was recently. Only days ago. It’s how we knew you would come to rescue this town first. They wanted your actions caught on camera.”

The air solidified in my lungs. My heartbeat kicked it up a notch. “Is there someone here controlling you?”

“No. They set us up then left.”

I could breathe again. “They set you up, all right. They had to know ten of you weren’t a match for me.”

Dorian shrugged. “I’m sorry, I don’t know much else.”

“Any last words?”

“Tell my budgie I love him.”

“Like, as in a bird?”

He nodded solemnly.

“Okay then.” I had no idea where his budgie was, or even if it was alive because the American Ludus had been demolished to the ground. No use dashing his hopes now. “If it’s worth anything, I’m going to do my best to fix this mess, but I’m afraid it’s game over for you.” I placed hands on his shoulders and closed my eyes then pushed his essence out. It separated from his body with ease and drifted away. The ground rumbled then swallowed his body until there was nothing left but dirt.

A flash went off as a photographer took a snap, reminding me they were there. I considered disappearing, but was done running. Time to clear things up.

“Uh, okay,” I said, walking up to the media. “Hi. So, if you want a statement from me, I guess I can make one.”

They stared for a moment. I think one cameraman peed his pants and that made me feel terrible. They were afraid of me. I swallowed and inhaled deeply and looked for a friendly face. Warren was still there, and seeing him gave me the guts to keep going.

“Look. Is your camera on?” I asked the brunette woman with her microphone hanging idly in her hands. She nodded. “Okay, great. So here’s the thing. I’m going to lay it all out there. Gods are real, that is true. We came here thousands of years ago and created humans in our image. We wanted to create beings with the best parts of us, and none of the worst and seeing as power corrupts, we left that part out. But, here’s the thing, Urser got a few things wrong. I wasn’t the one who created witches. He was, and now he’s telling lies to make the good guys seem like bad guys. But I’m here to clean up his mess and send every god who does not belong here home. My goal is to leave you all to live your lives without any divine intervention.”

The female journalist seemed to regain her composure. She shoved the microphone into my face. “What makes your truth more believable than his truth?”

“You mean apart from me saving you all from the darklings? Those creatures were turned evil—infected from the same taint that created witches. Urser can infect anyone, not just gods. That means you too.”

“Richard Brutherford, Chanel Nine News.” Another man shoved a microphone at my face. “It sounds like gods and witches have been running rampant on this planet for centuries. What have they been doing all this time? I mean, why emerge now?”

“Well, I don’t. I…” The question completely threw me off. I had no answer. “I guess they were playing a game.”

“They think human life is a game?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. It wasn’t supposed to hurt humans.”

The brunette shouldered Richard Brutherford out of the way, holding her mic near my face again. “And you said you created us, but then you must have created witches because they’re a derivative of a human soul, right? If you had the power to stop them, why did you leave their evil unchecked for so long?”

“I didn’t.” I blinked. “I didn’t know, I don’t remember anything of that original life.”

“You don’t remember your life? How are we supposed to trust your words if you can’t actually remember?”

“Just who exactly are you?” another fired. “You don’t look very god-like to me. I mean, what are you wearing?”

My heart kicked in my chest and I had the urge to fan my face.

“Well, I’m Roo. I used to live at the Urser Estate.”

“I thought you said Urser was the man responsible for the monstrosities.”

“He is—”

“But you’re an Urser too.”

“—No, I’m… yes I am but—” I stepped backward.

“And you expect us to believe that you’re different from him?”

“I—” I had to get out of there.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I MATERIALIZED IN my bedroom of the castle. The cold hit me like an ice wall and I ran to my closet for a warm jacket. Once safely ensconced in its folds, I surveyed my room. Dawn streamed through the stained glass windows, painting the furnishings in a rainbow of colors. And there on my enormous bed, surrounded in pillows and blankets, snoring peacefully was Marc. He hadn’t budged in hours.

With my head still spinning from the media and the battle, I was extremely tired. I considered whether I should seek out Cash but quickly dismissed the urge. Why should I report to him when he lied to me? Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t going to run away and never tell him what I had done in Margaret River. After all, that was my main beef with him. No secrets. We had to be open and honest with each other if we had a hope of defeating Urser and discovering who was the mole in our midst. Like that last darkling said—someone was feeding Urser information. I knew I had to tell the Tribunal, but didn’t have the courage yet. The very thought of ensuing panic was almost too much. They’d insist on another stupid meeting, it would take hours of debate, and I was tired. A quick nap first, and then I’d have the energy to face them. I stumbled to the bed and poked Marc in the hollow of his cheek. His head was the only part of his body visible. My soft and luscious duvet covered the rest.

“Hey.” Poke.

He growled, scratched his nose and rolled over. He pulled his blanket away from me and resumed snoring softly.

Poke. Poke. “Marc. Wake up and go to your own bed.”

“I don’t want any. Go away.”

I growled. Poke.

“Whaat?” he mumbled. “I’m not working today. Calling in sick.”

“Are you sick, or just hungover?”

He rolled back to face me and opened a dubious eye. “What are you doing in my room, love?”

“You’re in my room. You passed out on my bed, remember? I want it back.”

He glanced down at the bed. “Oh. Well, there’s plenty of room for two.”

I pulled the covers from his body. “Out.”

“Spoil sport.” He vanished, leaving the real three-piece suit he’d worn the previous night in his place.

I grumbled and grimaced but tugged the clothing out and left them on the ground. After shedding my coat, I unwound a few vine tendrils, but eventually gave up and slipped into the still warm and soft as clouds bedding. Within minutes, I was asleep.

A loud bang woke me and I jackknifed into a sitting position, blanket clutched at my chest. The winter daylight had almost vanished from the windows and the room was cast in a cool, shadowed haze that led me to believe it snowed outside. A black man-shaped shadow stood in the doorway, holding it open.

“So, it’s true,” Cash said abruptly and stepped into the room. “You’re back.”

He let the door close softly behind him and flicked the light switch, illuminating the room further. His hard expression could have been chiseled out of rock, as was the rest of his tense body. He wore the same clothes he’d had on when I’d left him: a black t-shirt, leather jacket, and jeans. His hair was ruffled, his jaw had stubble, and he looked all together scruffy and delicious. When his gaze caught on me, indecipherable emotions ghosted his features. He caught sight of the heap of clothes on the floor and made a choked sound. “Is Marc still here?”

“No,” I said, recoiling, catching his drift. “God, no. I kicked him out the second I returned.”

He relaxed and exhaled. “Good.”

“Did you honestly think”—I glanced at Marc’s clothes and flinched—“that… I don’t know, what did you think? Seriously?”

“What did I think?” His deep voice rose to fill the room. “You drink the wine for our wedding, you share it with Marc”—he scrunched up his nose—“get drunk on Ambrosia, leave us all wrapped up in vines and then leave without an explanation. You didn’t tell anyone where you were going. We had to find out from the television that you were in Australia.”

“Don’t you dare lecture me on keeping secrets.”

“That’s different and you know it.”

“Look, I am sorry about the wine, truly I am. I can promise you I deeply regret drinking it without you. But I’m not sorry I got drunk. I’m not sorry I took a chance and trusted my instincts. Marc was there when I needed a friend and you were off evading and keeping secrets. I didn’t tell you where I went because you would’ve stopped me. You already demonstrated I wasn’t to be trusted, multiple times. You spoke over my head to the other Watchers. I didn’t want the humans harmed. I said to leave them alone and you ignored me.”

“You’re right. I did ignore you because you were drunk. Intoxicated.”

“See, that’s the thing. I wasn’t anymore. As soon as I was attacked, I pushed it all from my system. I can do that, remember? But no one spared a second to listen to me. They all thought I was still the broken little girl who couldn’t think for herself. In come the miraculous all powerful gods to save the day and completely override my decisions. The second I said I was going to leave, your mouth was already open with whatever retort I knew was waiting on your tongue. I could tell from the look on your face that you were going to say something derogative, so I didn’t explain, I just left.”

“You know what I was going to say?” He made it to my side in two swift strides, gaze burning into me, hands gripping my shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak, searched my face with his eyes, then suddenly let go and stepped back. He picked up my coat from the floor and threw it on the bed then stalked to the closet, speaking over his shoulder as he went. “Get dressed. There’s something I need to show you.”

I stared at my jacket in disbelief. Just like that, he expected me to drop everything and go with him. Never mind that he interrupted my much needed sleep. Never mind that we’d been having a serious conversation.

“No,” I said.

He pivoted from the closet, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “What?”

“I said, no. I’m not going anywhere.”

He ignored me and fished out a pair of snow boots and replaced the sneakers he had on. Then he got out a pair for me. I caught his lips lifting on one side in a smirk.

Mocking me?

My vision went red as anger consumed me. I had to draw in slow and steady breaths to calm my furious heart. When my words came out, they were through clenched teeth. “I’m not going with you, Cash. Just because you’re good at ordering people around, doesn’t mean I’m going to jump in line like the rest of them. If you want our relationship to survive, then you have to start treating me as an equal.”

His small smile split to a full faced grin he had to tamper down. He nodded silently as he exposed my feet from the blankets to tug my boots on. He draped the jacket around my shoulders then tugged me in close. The proximity of our faces made his amusement impossible to miss. Then his mood changed. He seemed to look inward and something else flickered in his eyes. Something that made me reach out and rest a palm on his cheek.

“Why did you smile?” I whispered.

“Because you’re back. You came back to me.”

I frowned and for the first time understood what my disappearance would’ve been like for him. We’d been separated too much over our lifetimes. I nearly died a few months ago. And he’d died many times. I sighed. “After everything we’ve been through, did you really think I’d run away? Whatever this is, we can work through it.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He shook his head and lowered it. When he lifted his gaze, my breath caught. “Roo, when you took control last night, stopped things from getting out of hand, and said the things you did, you were a different person. I saw life in your eyes. You knew exactly what you wanted. You were confident and passionate. For the first time since you converted, I knew in that instant that you were back. Do you understand me? The woman who dreamed big enough to end war in the Empire was alive again.”

“But, I still don’t remember, Cash.”

“It doesn’t matter. Do you know what I was going to say before you left yesterday?” Butterflies in my stomach as he leaned closer, intensifying his hold. “I was going to tell you my true name.”

The world stood still.

“You were?”

“So you could call me if you needed me and I would find you, no matter where you were. I should have told you as soon as I remembered after my body converted to Seraphim, but I wanted to save it for a special time.”

“Oh.” Heat washed my cheeks as the enormity of what he said soaked in. That meant he trusted me, but… “So why did you ignore me in front of the others?”

He pulled away with a frown. “I shouldn’t have done that. Can you please get dressed so I can show you something? We can talk more there.”

I opened my mouth to criticize, then stopped short. He asked. He didn’t order. “Okay, but I need to get rid of the vines, and add more layers. A jacket and boots won’t cut it.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

WE FOLLOWED A narrow path out of the property and into the surrounding forest, heading into the snow covered mountain area. Twenty minutes later and we were huffing and puffing steam from our mouths as we trudged up a slope. It hadn’t been a heavy fall, yet drifts of fluffy clouds were plentiful and I had the urge to make snowballs. I was just about to open my mouth to ask how much further, when Cash pulled up short near a frozen river bed.

“It froze recently which means we can see something normally hidden,” he said and turned to me. Under the light of the moon, the soft shadows of his face and sparkle in his eyes was just visible. When he looked away, I followed his gaze to see little blue lights twinkling along a pathway that led alongside the riverbank to a cliff with a frozen waterfall. The water had formed a long, languid and shiny slope. Blue and white crystallized reflections sparkled like a spilled diamond necklace.

“Wow,” I said.

“It’s beautiful, but not what I was going to show you. Now that it’s frozen, it’s safe to pass. Come on.” He took my gloved hand in his and tugged me further up the path, toward the waterfall. The lights guided us around and behind the frozen wall to a passageway that led into a cave opening. The air was warmer inside and I could hear the drip of water echo in the distance.

I looked at Cash questioningly.

He shot me a cryptic smirk and kept walking. His smugness infuriated me. We’d hardly said a word the entire journey and I was beginning to lose my patience. We’d been in the middle of a heated and important conversation that I wanted to continue, but I also wanted him to trust me, so I had to trust him. Stifling my irritation, I focused on the changing temperature. The more we walked, the warmer it got. The sweet but slightly moldy smell also got stronger. I peeled off my gloves and unzipped my jacket. We followed blue fairy lights until we rounded a corner to a large cavern with a natural stalactite ceiling. Carved limestone stairs led down and plateaued to a smooth, polished ledge leading into a turquoise pool brimming with steaming water. A strip of underwater lights was the only source of illumination in the room. I couldn’t tell if the three mini waterfalls dribbling out of rock formations on the far wall were man-made additions or a natural occurrence. Whatever the case, the slow steady sound of water filtering into the pool was incredibly relaxing.

“Okay, I take back my first wow and up the ante with a whoa. This is incredible.” My voice sounded hollow.

“It’s a hot spring,” Cash revealed and stepped down to land on the bottom platform. He raised his hand for me to hold and helped me down. His cheeks flushed the same pink as the tip of his nose. It almost looked like a blush. “It’s said to have healing and restorative powers. You exerted yourself in Margaret River. Plus, I know you’re always cold here, and thought you might enjoy it. It’s a bit of a hike, but worth it if we need some privacy.”

Privacy? Just what kind of thing was he planning to show me?

I cleared my throat and pretended not to pick up his serious seduction vibes.

“Is this a discovery from one of your past-life memories?” I asked, gazing in wonder at the long limestone walls that seemed to be made of a similar pattern as the waterfall outside. A natural energy thrummed off the walls. It came at me through a frequency that instantly pierced my tension and soothed, begging me to drop everything and float away.

“No,” he laughed sheepishly. “This is all Jacine, I’m afraid. There’s hundreds of hot springs in this country and this one is her little secret.”

I crouched low and dipped my fingers in the warm water. “It’s the perfect temperature.”

When I stood, Cash’s expression had turned serious. He opened his mouth to say something but I held up my hand, cutting him off. “Look. I have to stop you right there. I know what you’re going to say.”

His jaw clamped shut. “You do, do you?”

“Yes I do.”

“Alright, then.” He positioned himself on the edge of a step and settled in with a smirk. “Let’s hear it.”

I shot a derisive glance back and gestured to our surrounds. “I think it’s pretty clear. You’ve brought me to a secluded hot spring. You want to get in my pants but, to be honest, I’m still miffed over our lack of synchronicity and your total disregard for my feelings. I got news for you, buddy. We need to talk about our feelings from time to time. We can’t have a lasting relationship without honesty and trust.”

“You done?”

I put my hands on my hips and stared down at him, a rebuttal on my tongue. “Yes. Fine. I’m done.”

“Good. I completely agree.” He peeled off his jacket and shed the boots.

“You do?”

“Absolutely. While, I’m all for ‘getting in your pants’, I brought you here because there’s some things I need to say and I’d rather do that without a hundred other people listening in. The castle walls have ears and I’m not sure who I can trust.” The humor hadn’t left his eyes as he studied me until his words sank in.

“Oh,” I said. So, he didn’t bring me here to get in my pants. Well, that was disappointing. I guessed I secretly wanted him to. I hugged my jacket to myself, and then something he said sparked a memory. The darkling in Margaret River told me Urser had someone working for him. Cash must know. I gave a more meaningful, “Oh. You’re talking about the traitor we have feeding information to Urser. A darkling mentioned something about a spy before I ended his game.”

Instantly, his humor dropped and the cold, calculated soldier was back. “Come and sit down. I’ll get us a drink.”

“A drink?” I asked as I lowered myself to his step and perched on an edge. We were still a few feet from the water.

“Yeah.” He moved to a dark corner of the cave that I hadn’t noticed on entry and disappeared down a tunnel. His voice echoed back. “There’s another room back here that's always stocked with supplies.”

I discarded my jacket and used its softness to pad the step underneath me so my seat was comfortable. My T-shirt already stuck to my skin from the humidity. My feet were hot in the boots, so I took them off to leave my feet bare. When Cash returned with two ice-cold glass bottles of water, I guzzled mine down greedily.

He came and sat next to me. “What you did in Margaret River seems to have worked.”

“What do you mean?”

“Darklings from around the world have withdrawn from their locations to whereabouts unknown.”

I hadn’t thought about repercussions around the world. “That’s a good thing, right?”

“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. They left without word, without preamble and without any indication of their reaction to your purge. It all appeared too convenient for my liking and when you consider the retreating darklings somehow managed to evade our trackers, there’s something fishy going on.”

“They evaded all of your trackers? How is that possible?”

“I don’t know. I took all the necessary precautions—I had a different House representative at each location, hoping that if one of them was a spy for Urser, they couldn’t all be, and we would trace at least one group.”

“But they’re all gone?”

Cash nodded, took a deep swig of his drink, then a deep breath. “The Tribunal are constantly bickering and sometimes I’m not sure if they want to stop Urser, or if they want to overrun the planet and rule. Tell me more about the spy.”

“After I purged the darkling, he remembered being woken in the middle of the night and told to go to the Libertine Ballroom. The entire Ludus population had been woken and herded there. They thought maybe it was a surprise trial, but when they got there, well… you know what happened next.”

A deep line etched between Cash’s brows. “What Ludus was that?”

“American, I assume.” I chewed my lip. “He was from Astraia House, so he could access his memories from when he was under the darkling influence. That’s when he remembered someone on the inside feeding Urser information.”

Cash cursed. “Zebedee. It has to be.”

“Are you sure? Zebedee seemed pretty cut up about his House being demolished.”

“No, it makes sense. He’s been the biggest voice against you here. He’s called for you to abdicate and for the Tribunal to takeover, many times. It has to be him.”

“I don’t know, Cash. Thurstan and Cato don’t like me either. In fact, no one really likes me. It could even be Jesop or Lena. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no love lost between Zebedee and me, but I hate to assume. We should just ask him.”

“Ask him? Are you joking?”

“No I’m not. I can monitor his aura, see if he’s lying.”

“He’ll see us coming a mile away.”

“Not if I ask him alone.”

“No. Out of the question.”

I stood up and put my hands on my hips. “See, this is the kind of thing I was talking about earlier. You don’t give me a chance to do my bit. You don’t listen to my suggestions.”

He got up and stood in front of me until all I could see was a face full of brooding, male entitlement. “I’m listening. But I don’t hear a good suggestion. Do you know what Zebedee’s ability is?”

“Nothing I can’t handle, I’m sure.”

“He’s a pyro.”

“I can create fire too.”

“You can’t create fire. You cause flammable objects to burn. He can incinerate the air if he chose to do so. He’s a thousand times more skilled at controlling fire than you. Roo, you’re not invincible.”

He made a frustrated sound and pivoted away to pace the length of the pool. When he came back, he pointed his finger in my face. “You want to talk about not listening? You keep going off half-cocked before getting the full story. You’re setting yourself up for disaster with Zebedee before doing enough reconnaissance.”

I captured his finger in my hand. “Going off half-cocked? Look who’s pointing the finger. Literally! You’re the one who turned a Player into ash without a second thought.”

He yanked on his finger, but I didn’t let go and ended up colliding with his solid chest. He caged me in with his other hand and a pained look swam across his eyes. “Can’t you see I’m trying to protect you?”

His mouth slammed into mine and his emotional floodgates opened. In one split second, I felt everything his ability shielded, and then some. His fear, his love, his desperation… his want. There were so many feelings tearing into my subconscious that I couldn’t tell which were his and which were mine, but I didn’t care. He was never good at explaining his feelings, but this… this I understood. He ferociously poured all of his longing and all of his need into that kiss. I gripped his scruffy hair and tugged him closer, as if that were possible. My response was all the permission he needed to slip his hands under my top, brand my skin with his burning fingers, and blaze a trail upward until he lifted my shirt clear over my head before dropping it to the floor.

Naked from the waist up, I stood there marveling at how he looked back at me with such hunger and desire that I was left speechless and paralyzed. It was the same way I felt. Then we were back in each other’s arms.

“I’m sorry.” He kissed my neck.

“I’m sorry too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” My head tilted back as he continued to savor my neck. Pleasure rippled through my body, eliciting a moan from my lips. He responded with a deep masculine sound of approval that rumbled from his throat and tugged my body flush against his. He nipped my ear, breath hot on my neck. “If you want to take the lead, then you take the lead.”

“Say the what now?” I pushed his chest until he stumbled back, confused.

“I meant, with this Urser business. You can take the lead, and I’ll do whatever you want. I don’t want to fight.”

As if that ended the conversation he pulled me back into his embrace and lowered his lips to my bare chest but—

“No. Cash.” I placed my palms on the side of his head and lifted. I arched back so we were eye-to-eye. The urge to say Haven’t you been listening? was overwhelming. “I don’t want one of us to lead, I want us to be equals. Partners.”

His frown deepened. “I’ve never had that. We’ve never had that.”

“Precisely. I don’t want history to repeat itself. We’re partners in this, all the way. Not just marriage.”

“You want me to be your king?”

“No! I mean, of course I would… but I don’t want to be Queen at all.”

His face deadpanned and he let go of me. I folded my arms to cover my chest and backed up. My heart clenched at the thought that perhaps he wanted the opposite. It had never occurred to me and I suddenly realized I was guilty of the exact thing I had accused him of.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have been clear with you from the start. I guess we both have some lessons to learn about partnership.”

He scrubbed his face with his hand as if to wake himself up. My worry intensified. “Okay,” he said. “If you don’t want to be Queen, what do you want?”

“What do I want?” I thought about it for a moment. “Okay, let me preamble my next words by saying this isn’t an order, it’s not an ultimatum, it’s just my feelings. I want to rid this planet of Urser and his stupid darklings. I want to send all Players home and then I want to restore this planet to the pristine glory it was before our kind came and decimated it. Then, when all that is over, I want live out my life simply, here—hopefully with you in it. I know it’s a lot, and maybe impossible, but it’s a dream, and you asked, so there it is. On the table. Your turn. What do you want?”

“You.” His eyes softened and he stepped closer to me. “Any which way I can.”

“No,” I whined softly. “That’s the same as me dragging you around and ordering you to do things. There has to be more to your life than me. That’s not a partnership.”

His hands tightened on my hips and tugged me close. “I can’t help it. You have no top on and that’s all I can think about.”

“Cash, this is serious.”

“Fine.” He swiftly pulled his shirt over his head and threw it behind him. His body was carved to perfection, each ridge and valley of his chest and abs so defined he could have been made from stone, and it was a low shot. He knew how much I loved staring at him. He shrugged as if to challenge me. “You have no shirt, I have no shirt. How’s that for equal.”

“Not the kind of equality I was talking about.”

He stared. A minute ticked past. And another. Then: “Tiarnan.”

“What?”

“That’s my true name. You’re the only person beside myself to know that, and if you say it—”

“Tiarnan?”

Cash cursed and doubled over, bracing himself on his knees as a severe wave of unbridled tingles and tremors crashed over him. Muscles rolled under his skin as he tensed struggled to remain upright. It was entirely possible the ground rumbled, but I couldn’t hear it over the roar of blood rushing in my ears. Wow. He breathed deeply until the sensations stopped a full minute later. I was about to apologize—or congratulate him—when his head whipped up and his molten gaze locked on mine with a single minded purpose. “You’re going to be sorry you said that.”

I squealed and backed up, a thrill rising through my body. Fear, anticipation, or enjoyment, I didn’t care. I was done arguing.

“You want to know what I want?” Cash asked. “I want for you to be naked”—he stalked toward me—“for me to be naked. For us to be in that water and”—he popped the button on the fly of my jeans and pushed them, underwear and all, to the floor—“and for us to be whispering our true names to each other until the walls crumble from our desire.”

I shivered in expectation.

“It was your plan, all along, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe. Now, I’m afraid I’m a little overdressed.” He took my two hands and guided them to his velvety abdomen. “What were you saying about us being on the same page?”

“Fine, I give up,” I whispered and undid the buckle on his pants. Never taking my eyes from his, I lowered my mouth to his chest, let my lips find the taut pebble of his nipple and circled it while my fingers slid inside the barrier of his pants and pushed down.

He made an appreciative grunt and cupped my rear. Before I knew what was happening, we were kissing in the warm water. Our hands were all over each other, groping, touching, taking, and it was almost as though we’d been waiting years. We kept slipping under the surface and coming up for air. The pool wasn’t that deep, but we couldn’t focus on which limbs to put where until Cash hiked me up to sit on the smooth lip of the pool. He stood, waist deep in front of me, burning gaze locked on mine.

“Promise me you won’t run off again without me,” he said, voice strained.

I trailed his cheek with a feather light finger. “I promise. And promise you won’t keep secrets from me anymore.”

“Never.” His strong hands slipped behind my upper back. “Lay down.”

He supported me as I leaned backward until my shoulders rested on the smooth, polished limestone. He loomed over me and touched his lips to mine in a soft caress. Then he tugged me gently toward him until my hips dipped into the water, floating perilously close to his eager body. The weightlessness made me listless and, every time he moved, the warm water splashed onto my cooler naked torso, tormenting me with delightful sensations.

As he straightened his body, his hot and calloused hand slid sensuously down from my collarbone, trailing a rivulet of water. His firm pressure circled my breast and then nipple, eliciting tiny sparks of ecstasy that skipped over my skin, making me squirm. He continued to stroke down my abdomen and across to my hips where he gripped tight and entered me with a single, hot thrust. Water splashed and I gasped. Every nerve in my body rejoiced.

A low, breathy sound escaped him as he ground into me, reveling in his own sensations. Then he pulled out in a steady, controlled motion until only the tip of him touched me, teasing. Looking up at him, I was completely taken with everything about him. He wanted me. Needed me. And for the first time it really hit me, I needed him too, and that was okay. His body tensed, skin tight over sinuous threads, every muscle straining for control, then he pushed forward, penetrating as deep as he could.

The sharp sting of pleasure had me crying out and I lifted to meet him, greedy. “More.”

“Hold on to the ledge,” he said and helped me find the edge of the pool to grip with both hands. He plunged, leaving me trembling in desire, and then continued—in, out, in—relentlessly, until I thought of nothing but the feel of him and the build of rapturous sensations. My thighs clenched and I gasped with the oncoming climax, gripping the ledge tight.

“Not yet.” Cash pulled me upward so fast I became light headed and clung to him. My body was hard against his chest, and sitting back on the edge of the pool, not floating in the water. We embraced for a moment—hot naked bodies pressed together. Then he drew out of me. He whispered my true name hotly near my ear and entered deep.

An intense shock-wave of ecstasy crashed through me. My mouth opened in a silent cry as white shrouded my vision, and the euphoria stole all sense from my mind. I bit down on his shoulder to muffle my scream. My fingers clawed into his back, nails tore into his skin, while the earth quite literally shook beneath us. Then I might have cursed, or called for divine intervention, but wave after wave of bliss bewildered me until he entered me again, and again, in slow, languid strokes.

Unable to move, I moaned and flopped backward until my back hit the smooth stone. He continued moving inside me until I went limp, unable to do anything but gaze at him while he submitted to his carnal instincts with increasing momentum. Each time he plunged, he brought himself closer to release—the crease of concentration in his forehead deepened. And then I whispered, “Tiarnan.”

He let out a suppressed roar that trembled the air. His fists punched beside my head, cracking the rock, and then he collapsed on top of me, face buried into my neck while he rode the sensations until he could breathe again and made tiny satiated sounds. Tiny flecks of limestone crumbled from the stalactites above us and for a moment I panicked that we were going to bury ourselves in our wanton disregard. But the cave roof held, the walls stood firm and Cash kissed me softly on the lips, on the chin, on the neck, whispering sweet nothings until I guided his mouth back to mine.

After a few moments he gently coaxed me into the warm water and we floated listlessly, staring into one another's eyes.

“Sometimes I wish you would remember us,” he said quietly, after a time.

“My heart remembers.”

A sharp breath escaped him that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“Don’t knock it! I’m serious. From the first time we kissed, my body recognized you were special to me. That feeling doesn’t leave.”

“I suppose you get to fall in love with me all over again. Lucky you.”

My turn to snort. “Joke’s on you. I’m already madly in love with you.”

“Good.” He gathered me into his arms at the same time as a tumble of dust crumbled from the stalactites above us. We glanced up and he grinned. “Told you we’d crumble the walls.”

“Mm,” I said and sank further into the soothing warmth. “Maybe next time we don’t test the structure of the cave.”

“Nah, you got it sorted.”

“You trust me to hold a collapse and get us out?”

He enveloped my hand in his and pulled it to his heart. “I trust you with my life. Always have.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CASH AND I fell asleep on a bed of our jackets and some towels we’d pilfered from the store room. The night had been filled with precious moments, sleep, and tangled limbs. By the time morning came, my stomach growled at my laziness. I was starving, and not the only one.

I pulled my shirt on and sat on a step, tucking the hem of my pants into my boots. Cash had just finished buttoning his coat so gathered the fallen mess of towels to discard in a laundry hamper in the store room. He was a step back into the cave when he tensed. A glance my way, and a finger to his lips had me pausing. The hairs on my arm rose to attention and my internal alarm bells went off. Cash cocked his head, listening, and prowled up the steps to the cave exit. His hunter persona replaced the serene side I’d spent the last hour getting to know. Now, each step fell quietly, cautiously until he backed up on the side of wall next to the doorway, face hard with lethal readiness. Within moments, our relaxed hideaway haven became the worst imaginable setup for an ambush.

Cash didn’t move.

I opened my mouth to speak when he hissed, “Shh.” He waved for me to come to him. In a burst of speed, I closed the gap between us and thumped into him. He drew me to his side and whispered, “I smell something off.”

I stifled a laugh as a teenager joke about smells came to mind, but was abruptly shut down when I picked up the very real threat in his eyes. I took a deep breath and forced my hyperactive imagination to calm down. Okay, Roo. Not a time for jokes.

And then I felt it. A dark energy intruded down the tunnel from the waterfall. I peeked around Cash’s body to look. All I could see was a faint lighter circle at the end of the long, shadowed corridor. My eyes saw nothing, but my sixth sense picked up energy. Gritty, slick, and dark. My heart sped up. I clutched Cash’s jacket at his chest, eyes wide. “There’s something out there.”

He caught my gaze. “Friendly?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never felt this presence before—no wait. I have. In Houston. It was the slippery essence that followed Marc around.” Oh shit.

“Stand back.” Cash moved me behind him then activated his sword. Red, yellow and white flickering flames extended from his right hand with an almighty crackle and hiss that echoed in the cave. If whatever was out there doubted we knew of its existence, it didn’t now.

“Wait,” I said, stopping Cash from moving. I focused my attention down the pathway to confirm. The dark energy retreated. Fast. “It’s leaving.”

Cash launched himself down the path in pursuit. His flaming sword carved a streak that went so fast it painted a stroke of light. He got to the end of the tunnel, paused and then his silhouette vanished.

Just like that, he was gone.

I groped wildly with my senses for his aura, but was unable to grasp him. If he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t. Bile rose in the back of my throat and I imagined the worst possible. Nothing. Nothing out there. I stifled a gasp. Was he—?

Cash’s shadow reappeared at the entrance and I let out the breath I held. He extinguished his sword and stalked back down the internal path toward me.

“It’s gone,” he stated gruffly when he got to the chamber.

“There was definitely something there.”

“I agree.” He picked up my jacket from the floor and handed it to me. “Put this on and we can go back. I think Marc’s had enough beauty sleep. Time for him to answer a few questions.”

I donned the coat and rushed through the tunnel to where he’d stationed himself at the cave opening to keep watch. The air was cooler and occasionally, a gust of icy wind breeched the area we sheltered in. It had begun to lightly snow and I dreaded the walk home, especially with something hunting us. That reminded me. I slapped him on the chest with the back of my hand.

“What was that for?” He scowled at me.

“For going off half-cocked. You had me thinking someone had...” I swallowed the lump in my throat, unable to finish the sentence. When his silhouette had vanished, the worst kind of dread had gripped my soul.

“I was just checking the perimeter.”

“I know that, now.” I shook my head. “Jeez, I’m sounding so high maintenance. I know we promised each other we wouldn’t run off like that, and I’m only now realizing how out of reach that promise might be. I’m sorry. I’ll try to worry less when you’re doing your thing.”

“Don’t. It’s how I know you love me.” His warm lips touched mine in a gentle caress. “Just try and trust that I know what I’m doing,” he added.

“And where does that leave me?” I breathed, trying to gauge his response in the blue shadows of the night. “How can I do what I do and not worry you’re worrying about me?”

He was quiet for a stretch as he understood what had just happened. “Just make sure you tell me first before you gallivant around the world.”

“Gallivant?” I poked him.

“You know what I mean. I’d rather be with you, but I’m acutely aware who I’m in love with. Promise you’ll tell me where you are so I can come if you need me.”

“Okay. I can do that.” I stood on my tip-toes and kissed him quickly on the lips.

We made our way outside. Cool air slammed into my face and ice crunched under my feet. I glanced down to investigate. Large shards of ice littered the pathway and, for the first time, I noticed something missing from the cave opening.

“Holy moley,” I said, pointing at the debris. “That’s the waterfall.”

This time, I didn’t miss the smirk on Cash’s face as he stepped into the moonlight. “It was good for me too.”

I snorted then stiffened as I sensed an aura approaching fast. Cash’s advanced hearing must have caught the jogger at the same time because he also tensed. Before he could go flaming Samurai, I held up my palm. “It’s okay.”

A few seconds later, Jed came running toward us. “There you are.”

“Here we are,” Cash repeated with a stern look on his face. “I told you I didn’t want to be interrupted unless the world was ending.”

The grave look Jed returned told us everything.

Back at the castle, we’d shed our snow sodden clothes and joined the rest of the Tribunal in the makeshift War Room.

Members of the Tribunal sat at the round table in the far corner of the room.  The television screens were off, and the somber tone was amplified by the vibe from each aura as the group spoke in hushed tones to each other. Thankfully, the table was covered with various breakfast food. I didn’t think I could hide my tummy rumbles if I didn’t eat, plus it gave me an excuse to survey the room without speaking. I plucked a croissant from a tray and nibbled as I took stock.

A leader from each surviving House was present along with their seconds or a trusted Player. Cato and Thurstan sat together, looking very much like the cruise ship captains with their white suits and tailored shirts. Lena sat next to them in her powder blue robe with matching blindfold. Jesop stood at her shoulder, also wearing the signature powder blue of Corvus House. Zebedee was next in line in a black robe cut and tailored to his long body. His dark eyes, skin and hair contrasted with the rest of the people at the table, except one other person I didn’t remember meeting. A woman with olive skin and a short afro sat next to him in a tight, wrap dress that had a snake emblem on the breast. Epsilon House. I thought all of them had disappeared after the fall of the Australian Ludus.

My gaze snapped back to Zebedee for a minute. The last time I was in here, I’d made a fool of myself and he’d made a derogative comment about letting the grownups handle the situation. I could feel aversion boiling off his aura as he met my gaze. He was probably right. I had acted like a child, but my instincts proved right. I’d conquered the blockage over my power and saved a number of souls. I wasn’t backing down, now. I had as much right to be here than anyone else.

I chomped on the buttery croissant.

On the other side of the room, sat a number of lesser important people near the phones. Jed was among them. He gave us a quick smile then his face returned to its stony countenance as he eyed off the Tribunal, waiting for the show to begin. He stood with his arms folded, biceps pushed out, obviously tense. Marc, on the other hand, who for some reason lounged at that table instead of the main one, was completely ignorant to my arrival. For once, he wore an outfit I’d never seen on him: a pair of training sweats that hung loosely from his hips and a T-shirt. It looked as though he’d been out for a morning jog, if you could believe it. Then my eyes snagged on the some reason keeping him at the table. A young red-headed woman in a white tennis dress, showing him how the phones worked. Marc made all the appropriate agreement sounds, but his eyes were never on the phone, they were roaming her face. He must have felt my presence because he looked up suddenly and met my eyes with a brief smile.

I turned to Cash and nodded Marc’s way.

Cash tilted low to speak in my ear. “I’ll nab him before we finish.”

I nodded and let Cash lead me to an empty seat. He stood behind me while the last remaining Watchers trickled in and took their seats. In the end, the room was filled to capacity. Everyone had turned up to this meeting. Whatever had happened must be dire. Cash’s steady grip on my shoulder and his cynical gaze over the gathering, had me believe he thought the same thing. One of these people was a traitor.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“THANK YOU ALL for coming,” Jacine said, taking the lead. Today she wore a long, dark woolen cowl-necked dress that hugged her figure. The pink was fading from her impeccable hair to reveal a white washed color. She sent a meaningful look my way before speaking. “I’m sure most of you have heard the news, but I’ll repeat it for the sake of latecomers.”

I sunk a little lower in the seat. She redirected her glance to the end of the room where Marc tittered with the red-head as she gestured at the old-school phone handset. All eyes in the room moved to follow Jacine’s gaze. Still, Marc had no clue, or didn’t care that we all waited for him. I reached with my power and lifted the phone clear out of the girl’s hands to float high above their head. An instant scowl crossed Marc’s face as he fronted on us.

“You ready to join us?” I asked.

Marc’s eyebrows lifted sky-high as he noted the attention on him. “Didn’t see you there, love, what with all that glow about you. Finally deigned to join us, then?”

A smile battled a scowl on my face as I watched him saunter over. He gave Cash a wink and then stood next to him, facing the table. “Right. I’ve got my glad rags on, ready for action.”

“Not just yet, Marc, we have to be in consensus that’s the right course of action.” Jacine indicated to the table, garnering nods from all of them.

“No consensus needed. The sod has broken the terms of the Game, the terms of the banishment, and well, the bloody terms of life. By the power vested in me, I’m ready to exterminate the lot of them. This is what I’ve been put here for. Just let me go and do my job.”

“I’m sorry, did you say exterminate?” I swung to look at Marc.

“Nobody’s going anywhere until we know what’s happened,” Cash said, interrupting. “Jacine?”

Jacine opened her mouth to speak, but Marc beat her to it. “He’s gone and massacred an entire airport full of innocents.”

The blood seeped from my face. “Where?”

“Brazil,” Jacine added. “It appears he’s heading back to the gate, this time with an army decimating anything in his path.”

“Why is he going to the gate? I thought it was useless without my blood?”

“He must know something we don’t,” Cato said. “The Gamekeeper is right. We can’t afford to stand by and let this happen.”

“Are you implying I’ve been doing nothing to stop Urser?” I was shocked at his tone.

“He doesn’t need to imply,” Zebedee replied. “It’s the truth.”

Cash let go of my shoulder and glared at each of them. “Do I need to remind you all that the course of action we’ve taken so far has been of our own devising? Roo’s recovery as such has given her little say in our directives. In fact, the moment she was strong enough, she took it upon herself to start purging the souls—your House souls—from the darkness.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late. Her actions have directly caused Urser’s current course,” Zebedee added. “It’s obvious. He was placated until she poked her nose into the business.”

My stomach rolled with the realization that he spoke the truth. Innocent people were alive until I jumped to Margaret River with a drunken God complex and the desire to prove my worth. Cash said Urser had pulled all the darklings out of their occupied countries and I thought I’d won. I thought I’d scared him off and he’d run away with his tail between his legs, but I was wrong.

“He wanted this all along,” I said quietly. “And I’ve walked us all directly into his path. He lured me out to my home town, threatening to hurt them all. Think about it. He systematically threatened the occupants of multiple countries, and when I didn’t move, he made for Margaret River. It was a test, to see if I would come. And I did. Now, he’s killing people, he knows I’ll come.” I met Jacine in the eye. “He wants me at the gate, doesn’t he?”

“No,” Cash said before Jacine had a chance to speak. “You’re not going.”

“Like I said,” Marc added, “I’m free to waste them all.”

“Those people are only breaking the rules because Urser has forced them. They’re not in control of their minds. Will you damn their souls to finality because of Urser?” I said.

“Love, I can be there in an instant.”

I stood up. “So can I.”

“So come.”

“We’ll all go,” Cato said, standing too. “If there were any a moment that we all need to show a united front, it’s now.”

“I agree,” Zebedee said, rising. “With all of us there, we can surely take him out with the least amount of casualties possible. Cut the head off, and the beast will wither and die.”

“Right.” Marc pointed at him. “I’ll go and get it done. You chaps can join in when you get there.”

“Hold your horses, Marc,” Cash said. “I have sleeper security teams dispersed around the gate. We planned for this. I’ll redirect them to join the local authorities in their efforts to stop Urser.” He looked at Jacine. “So, has it just been the airport?”

“No. They’re leaving a trail of destruction, heading back into the Amazon, toward the gate.”

“Do you have an ETA?”

“A couple of hours.”

“We can’t wait,” I said. “Marc and I can be there instantly. You can send your men to catch up with us, Cash, and then the rest of you can join.”

“You’ll be walking into a trap.” The disbelief on Cash’s face said it all. “You think dying is the worst thing he can do to you? The darkness he spreads can infect Seraphim too. The fact that he hasn’t done this already only speaks to an ulterior motive.”

A flash of Urser’s rotten power decimating that plant at the lab entered my mind. Cash was right. He’s had this destructive power for a long time. I was almost too afraid to ask, “And what is that?”

“If he infects Seraphim as well as Nephilim, he’ll burn through his allies on this planet. But what if he gets the gate open? He won’t need allies once he’s reunited with the rest of his war planet. He won’t give a shit who he infects after he’s got a free path home. Am I the only one who remembers why he agreed to come to Earth in the first place? It wasn’t to be among the first pioneers in the new life. It wasn’t even to test the safety for his people. It was to discredit everything the queen was doing. Does no one remember his scathing reports back to the Empire’s Board of Safety?”

Around the table, people shuffled, shrugged and murmured.

“What are you talking about?” Cato asked.

Cash opened his mouth to elaborate, but Lena spoke instead. “I remember,” she started as the memories came to her. “The heads of Houses had to write efficiency and safety reports. The intention was to have an independent body assess the reliability of the Earth project before allowing Seraphim to visit.”

“That’s right,” Cash added. “Urser had never hidden the fact he disapproved of the project, in fact, he took every opportunity to tell anyone who listened that he hated the queen acceding the throne after his brother died. And now he’ll be armed with a weapon that’s been tried and tested, ready to use of his own volition. I think his ploy had never been about control of this Earth, but of the Empire.” He turned to me. “This is a trap. After you proved you could teleport on your own, he knows only you and Marc can come in time to save the people he threatens. Once he has the two most powerful beings on this planet in his grasp, it’s no big step in logic to see he’ll convert you to darkling so he can control you.”

“So I’m supposed to let all these people die because of me?” Tears burned my eyes.

“I might have something,” Jesop said from his spot behind Lena. He pulled a plastic vial from the front pocket of his hoodie and placed it on the table. “This is the vaccine I’ve been working on. It’s only been tested on Lena, and we’ve only had one round of exposure to measure against, but as you can see, she’s doing fine. She’s not infected.”

“How are we supposed to tell?” Thurstan shot. “We can’t see her eyes to see if they’re dark.”

Lena’s head made a move, as if she were rolling her eyes. “I’m sure the Gamekeeper and the queen can attest to my soul’s purity.”

“She looks fine to me.” Marc gestured for Jesop to roll him the vial for a look-see. “Where do I sign up?”

“Anyone wishing to vaccinate can meet Jesop in the medical lab after this meeting,” I said.

And then, a funny thing happened. Everyone made to move as if my word was final. They’d seen my test of power and now they deferred to my instruction. My chin jutted in pride and for once I felt as though I knew what I was doing, and then Cash burst my bubble when he raised his voice, “Sit down, everyone. We’re not done yet.”

I frowned at him.

He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher and then surveyed the room. “So, to be clear, we all agree we travel to Brazil as a united front. All of us together.”

“Except Marc and me,” I added, knowing full well he was trying to avoid that exact thing. His flared nostrils, and crease between his brows proved me right. I met the eyes of everyone else at the table. “Is anyone opposed to Marc and I heading in first?”

A few uncertain glances flittered around the room and I could feel the weight of Cash’s eyes boring into me. Jacine was the one to speak. “You are Queen. You are free to do as you please.”

“Right. Good. Well, that’s settled. Marc and I will go to the medical lab to be the first vaccinated. After that, we’ll head to South America. The rest is up to Cash to coordinate.”

“Roo.” Cash grabbed my arm as I made to leave. “Don’t.”

“We’ll talk about it at the lab.”

“There’s another matter we need to discuss while everyone is here.”

My insides tightened. Please don’t make a big deal, Cash. Let me go.

Then he spoke, proving me wrong: “I think we should all submit to an aura integrity check before the vaccine is administered.”

“Are you doubting me?” Lena’s hand fluttered to her throat. “Do you think the vaccine hasn’t worked, because I can assure you, Jesop and I have been working tirelessly on it, and I would never have submitted myself to it without being certain it was ready for testing.”

“No, Lena, it’s not you,” I said.

“It’s come to our attention,” Cash said, “that one of you is a traitor, and we mean to find out who.”

Collective gasps sounded around the room. Confusion, wariness and surprise broke out amongst the expressions at the table. Each person looked to the left or right of them, caution creeping over their features. Tension expanded, blanketing us all. Even the lesser gods near the phones weren’t immune. With Marc’s help, we’d screen them all.

“Cash, please man the door. Anyone attempting to leave without submitting to a check will be reprimanded and make no mistake, if you are the person we’re looking for, there will be no mercy. Marc, please join me with the inspection.”

“Love, don’t you think this is a little overboard? I think I’d know if anyone had been keeping things.”

I took a deep breath then looked him in the eye. “Cash and I sensed the entity that followed you a few months ago.”

He blinked rapidly. “No, that’s not possible. I killed it.”

“I don’t know what to tell you other than it’s back.”

“You’re sure?”

I nodded.

“Blimey.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Zebedee said, standing up. He nudged the woman next to him. “But I want to hear more about this supposed traitor before I agree to any examination.”

The Epsilon woman nodded. “I too would like more information.”

“Marc?” I gestured to him.

“Well, you see, it’s like this. Something dark and slippery followed me for the better part of weeks. Gods, I don’t know how long it had been watching, undetected. Jacine, you remember, don’t you love?”

“You mean that thing you sensed at the London Ludus was actually a thing listening in on our conversation?” She was horrified to the point that I wondered what they’d been speaking about. “I thought you were just making an excuse to get out of there.”

“It was real.”

“Why are you only now telling us about this?” Cato narrowed his eyes at Marc.

“Because I thought I killed it when I visited the witch, Eve.” Marc’s gaze went dark and distant as he recalled the situation. Suddenly, his blue eyes locked on mine and widened.

“What?” I asked.

“Eve controlled it, like a snake charmer. She told me the Dark Lord had sent it. Considering our dear hunter’s recently returned memories told us the prince died with him all those years ago, I thought she meant Urser. Either way, I took the entity through the in-between with me. When I returned, he was gone. I assumed his atoms entangled, or he was lost to time.”

Pins and needles prickled my skin. “Marc. Didn’t you say the entity followed you through the in-between?” I asked. “That day you interrupted me shopping. You said it had followed you.”

Marc failed to grasp my meaning. “And?”

My head dropped into my palm as I sought the courage to speak. Silence expanded.

“She means you didn’t kill it. It’s not like a normal soul. It’s atoms didn’t entangle when you let go.” Cash’s voice came from behind me and I knew he’d taken up a stance at the door, preventing anyone from escaping. “Whatever—whoever—followed you is still alive.”

“That thing followed me for weeks. Possibly longer. I could only follow it after I became aware of it. What if it’s gotten better at hiding?” The understanding hit Marc squarely in the chest and he staggered. “You mean to tell me that bloody Urser could know everything, even this meeting?”

“Yes, and going by the quality of the intel Urser has been receiving, the source of his knowledge must be in this room.”

Chaos erupted, voices raised, as everyone stood to defend themselves. Watchers pointed fingers at each other. Cash had his eye firmly on Zebedee. Marc stepped back to the wall, looking despondent. And most of the people at the phone table crossed the room and stood behind a Watcher in a show of House support. All moved, except one.

Jed.

Jed sat back casually, arms folded, eyes on me.

The raised voices of arguing Watchers faded to white noise as my whirring thoughts clicked together, puzzle pieces slotting and fitting in place. The walls closed in on me in warped focus.

Jed with his black hair regrowth. It should have been blond, like the genetic anomaly in all other Players. Jed with his missing abilities. He said he was too insignificant for a large star-map, and we’d never fully checked. Now I realized, it was all so convenient. Coldness trickled down my spine when I thought of Jed being outside the cave, minutes after we’d chased the dark presence away. Oh, he had abilities all right, he was only hiding them. It was Jed all along, but I had been blind-sighted because he was my friend.

The same friend whose lips curved in a secret smile, just for me, moments before blackness erupted out of him and the room disappeared into darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“WHAT THE HELL was that?” Cash shouted, rushing to me as the shadows in the room dissipated, along with any trace of Jed.

I ran to the spot Jed had sat in and groped the air, flailing, trying hopelessly to catch any sense that he was still there.

“It was the presence,” Marc said, coming over.

“Where’s Jed?” Cash asked, seeing my panic. “Was he taken?”

I shook my head wildly. “It was him, Cash. He was the traitor.”

“Jed?”

“Who’s Jed,” someone said behind me the same time as another voice chimed in, “Did he just teleport?”

“He’s gone, so I guess he did.” My voice came out in through a daze. I still couldn’t believe it. My mind groped for a reason my logic was wrong, but it had been there, right in front of my eyes. That smile. That connection. He knew I’d figured it out, and he smiled.

“Are you telling me that someone else can travel through the in-between?” Jacine asked. “Marc? Is that possible?”

“Well,” Marc replied, “Sephie, I get, but this other bloke… I have no idea who he is? What Ludus was he from?”

“Australian,” Cash said.

“What House?”

“Ah.” Cash pinched the bridge between his nose as he tried to think. “I don’t remember. He always said he was too insignificant to come from a major House.”

“So, nobody knows who the bleedin’ hell this man is, or where he’s from?”

“You’re the Gamekeeper!” Jacine threw up her hands. “You tell us.”

“I transport the souls. I don’t catalog them and record them!”

“Guys, guys. Please.” I waved my hands in a downward motion. “Let’s just calm down a moment. He’s gone. He’s the traitor. That means he’s not listening.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh gods, he was in my castle!” Jacine cried. “The refuge is compromised.”

Marc strolled over to Jacine and wrapped his arm around her trembling shoulders. “Don’t worry, pet, we know what to look for now. We’ll find the kid.”

“The kid,” Cash said suddenly, frowning. I thought maybe he disagreed with the term because Jed wasn’t that young. He wasn’t old either, maybe in his thirties, but I supposed next to Marc, most people were young. Cash continued to pace, eyes flicking to and fro as he calculated. Then he stopped and caught my eyes. “I think I know who he is.”

Instead of revealing his thoughts, he cursed. Then he swore some more and slammed his fists on the table.

The only one not cowered by his sudden outburst, I crossed the room to place a steady hand on his shoulder. When he looked up, sweat beaded his forehead. “It’s Alkiemon. Your son.”

“What?”

“The bloody prince,” Marc said.

“Think about it,” Cash continued. “If I survived that day, it’s not a far stretch to imagine he did too. That dark, slippery essence he can detach from his body, it’s eerily similar to what a witch can do, right? He had the first black serum oozing through is veins, but he had too much control. I don’t think Urser meant for him to attack the first settlement when he did. Since then, Urser has spent years perfecting the serum so he’s got full control of any new darkling he creates. Jed—Alkiemon is the prince, and now he’s evolved into something else. He’s helping Urser finish his original plan: To create an army to take over the Empire.”

I sat down hard on a chair. This was way above my pay grade.

“We need to involve the governing authority at the Empire,” I said finally. “Surely there’s more people who can help. It wasn’t all me, was it?”

“They can’t help until the gate is open. And besides, nothing’s changed,” Cash said. “We knew we had a traitor who had inside knowledge. So we’re no worse off than before.”

“That’s right,” Marc added. “I’m still going to exterminate all of them.”

Cash shot him a jaded look. “I meant that we can use the knowledge the prince gained against him. For starters, what can we do to up the ante on what we’ve already planned? How can we surprise him?”

We were all silent for a few minutes, letting his question gestate.

Then I thought of something. “The vaccine. Can it be adapted for human use?” I thought of James and his infection. “Urser has used humans before, he could do it again.”

“Yes,” Jesop said. “I can adapt it for humans. But how would we get it to all of them in time?”

“I could help with that,” Cato said.

Everyone in the room gave him a curious look.

“The water supply,” he elaborated. “Thurstan and I can use our abilities to spread the vaccine exponentially—even carry it to the air if we need.”

“Great. When Jesop creates a big enough batch, you two do that. Unless anyone has a problem with that?” I asked.

I caught Cash’s eyes, expecting him to have something to say, but he was already looking at me with a small knowing smile. “Good thinking.”

A little warmth bloomed in my chest and I smiled back, but then Cash’s mood darkened and I knew I wouldn’t like the next words out of his mouth. “There’s another way we can surprise Urser,” he said. “I’ll travel with you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.

“Lena,” Cash looked at her. “Being soulmates means I’m connected with Roo, right? Do you think it’s enough to get me through the in-between?”

Lena appeared thoughtful for a minute. “In theory, it’s possible. If that Jed truly is the prince, and he’s developed the ability to travel through the in-between, then perhaps that ability has been in his genetics and passed down from the queen. Considering you’re the queen’s soulmate and her blood was used to convert you, yes … it’s possible, but not a certainty.”

“But I stole that ability off Marc, didn’t I? Accidentally, I mean. It wasn’t on purpose.”

“If you took that ability from me, love, it happened long ago—perhaps even when we were children,” Marc added. “We grew up as neighbors and best friends. We spent a lot of time together. While you were always able to travel with me, you’ve never been able to do it until now. I think it evolved in you.”

“So it’s settled, then.” Cash clapped and rubbed his hands together. “We’ll all get vaccinated, then head to the gate. The rest of you can follow the traditional way, by plane.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” I held up my hand, heart thumping wildly. “We haven’t settled anything. What happens if you die while traveling?”

“Should we at least test the theory?” I asked. “Lena?”

“I don’t think testing would make a difference. It’s either going to work, or it won’t. If you want to take a risk, it won’t matter if you make a short trip, or a long trip,” she replied.

“That’s right,” Marc added. “Your atoms either entangle, or they don’t.”

“I don’t think that will happen.” He looked me in the eye. “I have faith you will keep me safe.”

The niggling feeling in my gut didn’t agree with him.

A few minutes later I followed Cash into the medical laboratory in the castle basement. He’d arrived first and flicked on the lights to illuminate the cold, stone room. Equipment had been cleaned, sterilized and neatly put away for the day and a station had been set up near the plastic covered recliner that had a rack of vials on a metal table, ready with syringes. Lena and Jesop had obviously expected everyone to agree to the vaccinations.

“Right, I’ll go first, shall I?” Cash removed his jacket, folded it neatly, and then handed it to a wide-eyed me. I took it on reflex.

Lena and Jesop were still to enter the room, so it was just me and my misguided fiancé.

“Cash, you can’t come with me through the in-between.”

“I’ve thought about it, Roo, and it’s something he won’t expect. Neither of them will.”

“But…”

His gaze turned fierce. “You expect me to let you be bait without me?”

My mouth hung open.

“That’s what you were planning to do, wasn’t it? Be bait, let Marc somehow swoop in from the side? Well, I got news for you, Urser knows everything about you. He knows everything about Marc. But he won’t see me coming. My re-emergence in this body wasn’t in his master plan.”

“Neither was mine!”

Cash sighed heavily. “The last thing Jed—Alk—”

“Don’t say his name!” I said, cutting him off. “He’ll know we’re talking about him.”

“Good. He should know we’ve figured it out. We’ve already said it a few times, anyway.” A sharp, harsh laugh escaped him. “You know it was me saying that to you once, long ago: Don’t say his name. And you didn’t care. Looks like our roles are reversed.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked lost in thought for a moment, then refocused on me. “Just before the disaster that ended your experiment, all those years ago, I was lecturing you about your recalcitrant son. I was worried about his unstable behavior, and you told me there was nothing to worry about. You loved him, even then, despite his bratty attitude. You had faith that all he needed to get over his father’s death was some time on this planet, surrounded by the new marvels you’d created. I should have trusted my instincts, but instead, I let you placate me. I won’t let you go without me, Roo.”

I lost all energy and sidled up to him in the chair. I climbed on and slotted myself between his big body and the side of the plastic recliner. It was a snug fit and I ended up more on top of him than not. My hand curled around his middle. “Cash, I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t.” His big hand landed around my neck and he squeezed gently. “My soul was split into three. You brought me back together. You can keep me in one piece. I know you can.”

“I’m only beginning to understand the complexities of the in-between. What if your soul gets lost again? What then?”

“Then you’ll have to come and find me.”

Lena, Jesop, Jacine and Marc all entered at that point.

“You lovebirds want a minute?” Marc said.

I cleared my throat and slid onto the floor. A breath of silence passed. Cash rolled up his sleeve and presented his forearm to Jesop. “I’m ready.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

AFTER WE VACCINATED, we sat and waited a few minutes in case adverse effects presented. Cash, Marc and myself ended in the kitchen to wait out the time. I was still hungry, and wasn’t the only one. We hashed out our plan over scones and coffee—well, Marc had tea. We’d meet at Marc’s cabin, which was close enough to the gate that we could ride his bike and survey the situation before flashing into the thick of things. The risk that something happened on the teleport journey was too big to arrive dead on into battle. Plus the humidity meant Marc’s illusion-construct ability was glitchy, and who knew what mine would be like, so we all needed to clothe ourselves and he had supplies there.

Once we were done planning, we received one last check from Lena and made our way to the front courtyard. The icy cold bit into my face and drilled down to my bones—it would be a stark contrast to the stifling weather we were heading into. We didn’t bother dressing in warm clothing because it would all be left behind.

Cash was strong, he would survive this.

But maybe being strong has nothing to do with it. Maybe we weren’t as similar as I thought. That little doubt sitting on my shoulder wouldn’t shut up. Yes, Cash and I had been cut from the same cloth in these new bodies, and it had rescued both of us, but we were also different, and I remembered little of what made me so knowledgeable in the past. What if I wasn’t strong enough to contain him? I watched him stomp his feet, and blow on his hands to ward off the frostbite. Through his T-shirt and jeans, the angles of his lean body and musculature were the picture of perfect health. The perfect specimen to live a long, fruitful life. Unless I fucked up.

An ache twisted in my chest with the very real possibility of a life without him. I couldn’t accept that. I needed him with every buzzing molecule of my being. If he didn’t turn up on the other end of the ride… a lump formed in my throat.

“You ready?” Cash’s deep, masculine voice snapped me back to attention. He placed a steady palm on my shoulder. Under the overcast sky, his blue and brown eyes looked the same shade of gray. They were constantly changing color, but they were always filled with emotion when he looked at me. And now was no exception. I’d given so much of myself to him, and relied so much on his steady guidance, that I was afraid of who’d I’d become without him by my side.

“Stop it,” he said and dipped to catch my fallen gaze. “We’re doing this. It’s going to be fine.”

I made a string of stifled sounds and scrubbed my face, wanting to speak the reply that hung unsaid in the air, But what if it’s not?

Cash notched his finger under my chin and kissed me. White electricity zinged down our connection and I sank into him, melting in the cold air. He let me feel everything he was in a wave of emotion through his essence. It flowed into me, unfurling warmth like a hot drink. When his lips left mine, I felt bereft but better at the same time.

He shifted a stray hair from my face. “Just follow your instincts. Whatever happens, I know you’ll find me.”

I nodded and then glanced at Marc. “So, explain to me again what you did when you first took me through the in-between?”

Marc came to stand next to us, seemingly impervious to the cold. “Right, kids.” He placed a palm on both Cash and my shoulders. “I brought you in close, like this”—Marc drew us against his long body, like a hug—“Cozy, isn’t it?”

“And then?” Cash prompted gruffly.

“Right. And then I expanded my aura to fully contain both of us and made sure not to let go. Do you think I should carry all of us?”

“No,” Cash replied. “Lena said you’re too different than me. It has to be Roo.”

I took a deep breath. I could do this.

“Ah, Marc. You can let us go.” I raised a brow at his snug contact.

“Sorry, just enjoying the one and only three-way I’ll ever have with you two.” He sighed dramatically and stepped away.

I chuckled and even Cash gave a short laugh. It released the tension gripping our minds.

“Right, give it a go, love. Encompass him. I’ll watch to make sure you’re all over him, yeah?”

“How is it everything you say has a dirty double meaning?” I said.

“Me?” He looked shocked. “You're the one with the mind in the gutter.”

I released my energy from the confines of my body and let it flow around us. I’d never done this exact thing before, so it was all theory, and that’s what scared me. Just keep letting it out, coat Cash until he was as much a part of me as I was with him. Marc circled us with a wary eye, scrutinizing the air around us.

“Looks good to me,” he said, “but I can’t tell if the hunter’s aura is contained. It’s invisible. I can see his body is enveloped, but I’m afraid I don’t know how accurate that is.”

I exhaled sharply and my energy snapped back into me. “So we might be missing the mark? We can’t do this then. I’m sorry, Cash, but I’m not willing to risk your life on a maybe.”

“Blood,” Lena said, from behind us.

I twisted to find Jacine guiding Lena down the steps of the castle to meet us at the courtyard. When they reached our side, Lena elaborated. “Blood is your connection. You’re linked on a biological and metaphysical level that only you truly understand. You’re the one who made the soul-link in the first place, and even if you can’t remember it, you’ve got that instinct still inside you. It drives you every time you use your power. How have you linked with Cash in the past?” Lena asked.

“Well…” I thought for a moment. “We’ve done our mentor-progeny ritual via the blood bond. I also used a blood connection to pull Tommy’s soul into Cash… oh!” I gave Cash a coy look. “We kiss.”

Cash returned my look with a flick of the eyebrows.

“Well, that’s my suggestion,” Lena continued. “Connect with him, any which way you can, then make sure you hold onto him with every atom of your being.”

“Sure. Easy,” I murmured. “What can go wrong?” Only annihilation and entanglement of every particle in our bodies.

Jacine disengaged from Lena and crossed the short distance to Marc. She spoke quietly and I couldn’t hear her words, but their body language said enough. He gave her his full attention, and bent down when she reached up to cup his cheek. I averted my gaze to Cash who had a tiny smile quirking his lips. He’d heard what was said.

“Alright, then,” Marc called out to us. “I’ll see you at the cabin.”

With that, he vanished and all the particles of dust, construct, and sand that had collected on his body showered to the ground.

I stared at that small pile with foreboding.

“Let’s do this.” Cash took my hand in his.

Jacine and Lena retreated to the steps to watch us from a distance.

“Okay, hold your palm up,” I said and Cash showed me his hand. I used my power to sliced both our hands and hold the wound open. Then we joined hands in a grownup version of a childish pact. “I want you with me until we arrive at our destination.”

“I want to be with you until we arrive at our destination.”

Then he enveloped me with his free arm, hand cupping my rear possessively, and laid his lips on mine. Without thinking further, I opened myself to our connection and willed ourselves across the other side of the world.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

JUST LIKE EVERY other time I traveled, I arrived in a blink of an eye. I knew I had come to our destination because humid heat slammed into my face, smothering my airways. Dawn peeked through the gaps in the forest leaves and cast the dense underbrush with dappled misty light. Monkeys whooped, insects chirped and birds cawed. But no Cash.

Time stood still as I took in my surroundings and the very obvious lack of warm body next to mine. He had to be here. He had to be.

“Cash!” I cried out, my voice echoed in the vast forest. Monkey’s screeched in response. I flailed around, moving ferns to see better at my feet.

Dirt.

It was all muddy dirt.

No.

All form and function left my mind and all I could think was that I’d lost him. My senses flared out to scan the area, but nothing. He was invisible. I forced myself to calm but couldn’t help my rising panic. Then, through the naked connection at my feet, the earth echoed my pain, and I almost lost my shit. Did that mean it knew? My eyes burned, my throat closed up. No. I had to be sure. I slammed my bare fist into the dirt to latch onto the metaphysical veins of the earth’s life-force. Life pulsed beneath and, like a magnetic reaction, was drawn to me, little worms of electricity snapping home to shoot power up my arm. “Find him,” I commanded, voice a thin rasp. Filaments of energy burst from my hand, symbiotically searching through the vast network of the forest for an echo of myself—Cash.

If he was here, I would find him. If he wasn’t here…

I felt it—a whispered response, a ping. Tension released in a sudden surge from my muscles, leaving me limp with relief. He was here, lying prone on the ground a few feet away. I wept. Sobbed. He was here. He was here. My legs weakened, and my strength failed as I allowed a moment to process. Then I was up, crashing through the ferns, plants and trees. Anything and everything in my way moved, either telekinetically, or out of some precognitive reaction, or perhaps I’d stepped through the in-between. I’d never know—only that I was simply there when before I was not.

“Cash.” I fell to my knees in front of him. He lay on his stomach, face down. Unmoving. I touched the skin on his bare back—warm. His neck—hot. “Hey, wake up.” I shook him. No movement. “C’mon, Cash. Wake up.”

I gripped his shoulders to roll him over. He was heavy. He was a mountain and I was the wind. But I didn’t give up. I pumped power into my arms and gave an almighty heave until his body turned to lie face up. Dirt covered his lax, chiseled features, and muddy debris plastered his naked body. Wet leaves, soggy sticks, and soil. I wiped grit from his mouth and then rested my palm, hovering over his airways. Breathing. Thank God. I fumbled against his neck to find the artery. Life rhythmically pulsed back at me. So why wasn’t he waking?

“Baby, I’m here,” I said and cupped his face. Hot tears dripped from my eyes to paint streaks on his dirty cheek. “We’ve got work to do. Wake up.” I kissed him gently on his soft lips, then sent sparks into my fingers and zapped him on the chest like a defibrilator. His body convulsed and arched upward. “Wake up!”

He groaned, hand coming to test his temple, tongue spitting more sand from his mouth.

“Oh thank God,” I cried and collapsed on him, clutching him hard with my trembling fingers. “Baby, you’re okay.”

“Baby?” he croaked. “That’s a new one.”

I coughed a laugh and pulled back to see his gorgeous eyes peel open. “I’m sorry. I know we don’t use words like that.”

“No, I like it.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think I just hit my head.” His fingers touched his temple and he winced, then he glanced down his body. “I’m naked.”

“Yep.”

“Also, I think something bit me.”

“Welcome to the jungle.”

Marc’s cabin was only a few minutes away, so we got walking.

“You need to learn how to do that clothing construct thing Marc does,” Cash glowered and ripped a fern off a passing plant to shield across his lower section.

I smirked back and tapped the hastily wrapped vines I’d commanded to grow around my body. “I’m happy with my living dress, thank you.”

“Yeah, well, a dress doesn’t exactly cut it for me.”

“I’m also happy with you just like that, too,” I teased, eyeing his powerful and sinuous form. The golden skin was still smudged with dirt, but it gave him a wild look that disheveled him in the most appealing way. “Besides, Marc’s illusion constructs don’t work so well here. We need to get real clothes. He said it’s something about the weather, but I don’t know. Could be more to it. We’re close to the gate, aren’t we?”

“Yes—shit.” Cash turned to me suddenly, eyes lighting up. He lowered his voice to a dangerous level. “Jed.”

“Here?” I hissed and pivoted to check my six. All these emotions I hadn’t faced yet knocked through me. He had been one of my closest friends. My mind whirled with my body as I surveyed the trees. The betrayal was starting to sink in.

“No, I meant he knew you were at this cabin recovering after the Urser incident. It’s possible he knows we’d come back here. We need to be careful.”

We crept through the edge of the forest to enter the clearing in front of Marc’s cabin. The same bungalow style structure greeted us, but this time, with the addition of the makeshift cabin Cash had built while I was sick. It was still only four roughly hewed walls, minus a roof.

I pushed my awareness into the area, but sensed only Marc. “I think we’re good.”

Cash cast a wary eye around and developed a glazed look that I knew meant he used his heightened senses to listen and smell anything out of the ordinary. He gave a curt nod. “I agree. We’re good.”

“We should probably clear that for Marc when this is all done.” I indicated to the makeshift structure.

“Couldn’t agree more, love,” Marc called out through the wire screen of the front door. He opened the door with a creak and stepped onto the porch. He was already dressed in a white cotton shirt and gray slacks and had a bundle of clothes in his arms. It wasn’t the playful Marc I was used to. This man had an abrupt vibe and irritation swam over his aura. “You’re late.”

“We only took a few minutes longer than you,” Cash said as he unashamedly dropped his leaf cover and slipped into a pair of sweat pants. “We’ve still got time. The last we heard, the army was a few hours from the gate. Most of my security teams were routed to assist the human authorities, but there is still one team in position near the gate, waiting for us.”

“You’ve got it all wrong.” Marc gaped at us. “It’s been hours. And it will take another hour to get to the gate on foot.”

By this time, I’d shed my vines and replaced them with a soft, gray linen blouse and cotton pants. “What do you mean, hours?”

“I mean, it’s called the in-between because time travels differently when you’re in it. Most of the time, here on earth, traveling is instant, but there are times when slipping through the dimensions can warp reality. If you’ve been hours, you’re lucky you arrived at all. Just another reason for not arriving bang on in the thick of the battle. It can be disorienting when your ETA is out.”

The close call brushed iced fingers down my spine and I locked eyes on Cash. I walked over to him to touch him. I had to make sure he was real. His face had gone hard. I grasped him around his firm shoulders and squeezed. The discord in his stormy eyes faded as he looked down at me. He bent down and briefly touched my lips with his. “We’re here, that’s all that matters.”

“The good news is that the rest of the Tribunal won’t be far away, but the bad news is that Urser has likely taken the gate. We won’t know until we get there.”

“Marc and you should teleport,” Cash said to me. “If they’re already there, they’ll hear the motorbike coming a mile away. I can run and be there in twenty. That way, I won’t turn up with you and will still have the element of surprise.”

Marc held out a hand to me. “Looks like our clothes are going to waste.”

“I can ask the earth to cover you too.”

As I placed my palm in his, he gave me a wolfish grin. “I’ll most likely be too busy to be concerned with clothes, love.”

“Pick off the darklings first,” Cash warned. “I know you want to save as many as you can, but no quarter, Roo. If it comes to a choice of your life or theirs, you choose yours.” It was all happening so fast. We were late. Urser was there. We’d have to—

Marc pulled me through the in-between.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

THE CABIN DISAPPEARED and we materialized in a forest with trees lifting so high we couldn’t see the sky. Green and brown trunks cast streaky dark shadows around us. A buzzing came from somewhere. A teeming of life up ahead. While I acclimatized to the new sensations, tendrils sprouted through the turned earth at my feet and clothed me. When it was done, I stepped forward, tracking the concentration of the buzz of life, through the thick forest. It must be a gathering of people. I pushed leaves, fronds and ferns aside until the gloom subsided and daylight burst in my eyes. I was pulled back so suddenly I almost fell backward.

“Careful, love.” Marc kept a sturdy hand on my shoulder. “Don’t know what’s down in that water.”

My heart leapt into my throat when I looked down and realized I’d narrowly missed falling to my death. The grassy platform we were on dropped suddenly to a rocky cliff sparsely covered with jungle underbrush. It went down for what seemed like miles until it hit a cascading, murky brown river. On the other side of the chasm, another jagged cliff rose with menace. I took a few steps back to safety.

“We’re here,” Marc whispered. He crouched to monitor our environment and nodded to our right. “And we weren’t the first.”

I followed his gaze to a rickety bridge made from rope suspended across the river and disappearing into mist. Resting against the two poles holding the weight of the bridge were two dead bodies. They’d been deliberately propped up so that they would be noticed. Soldiers. At least, I thought they were. Each had on a black military uniform that had been ripped to shreds, as was the flesh on their bloody faces and arms. Cut to ribbons, were the words that came to mind.

“Who do you think they are?” I asked.

“The hunter’s men. Must be. Look at that insignia.” He lifted a tattered patch with the tip of his finger.

Samson Investigations.

I sighed knowing the guilt Cash would feel when he discovered them. Through the gaps in the black fabric, I caught flesh colored with a star-map. They were Players. Definitely Cash’s men, then. Hopefully their souls were released to Purgatory. Insects buzzed around the bodies and the blood had coagulated. They’d been here a while.

A loud bird squawked nearby and more took to the skies in a burst of wings. On high alert, I let my sixth sense fly, scoping for the enemy and found auras everywhere. Little sparks of life echoed back at me, on this side of the bridge, and across the chasm. But the question was—friend or foe?

“You feel that, love?” Marc asked.

I raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“Their auras aren’t right,” Marc elaborated. “Focus.”

I concentrated a little more and used my whole body to listen. Yes, he was correct. The auras pinging back at me had a gritty taint. Could be darklings. Could even be familiars or witches. And across the swaying bridge, beyond the mist and the forest on the other side, I sensed the strongest signatures of all. Gods.

“How far away do you think Cash is?” I asked.

“He’s fast. A few minutes. Five, ten, tops.”

“We should probably wait, right?”

Before Marc could reply, a scream across the bridge curdled my blood.

“That’s the only way across, isn’t it?” I pointed down the bridge, stomach twisting into knots.

“Got it in one, love. The temple is over there.”

I eyed the bridge. “Surely this can’t possibly be safe. Why didn’t we teleport straight to the temple, or at least to the other side?”

“Been a while since I’ve been there and we don’t know what we’ll find. Popping in willy-nilly has its disadvantages, you know that—don’t ever forget it. Once, I teleported to this massive gathering of Simons at a music concert, and the in-between stole time. Was supposed to arrive before the crowd, but wound up smack bang in the middle of the concert. People around me got hurt. Anyway, don’t worry, the Incas were masters of engineering.” He gripped the railing on the bridge and shook. The bridge swung a little. “Sturdy as a ship. The temple ruins are just on the other side. Plus, if you fall, you can always teleport before you go splat in the water, yeah?”

There was that scream again. Female. Definitely. Something about it seemed familiar.

We had to get moving. Cash would have to catch up.

“Sturdy as a ship,” I murmured. The brown river was so far down. I gulped. “So the Incas built this? Are we going to have to deal with tourists as well as Urser?” All those auras I sensed—not all of them were gritty.

“No, love, this temple has been hidden from the likes of men. My cabin isn’t the only one around the jungle neighborhood. Since we had the Incas build the temple to hide the gate, we’ve rotated security duties amongst the Houses and kept it from being discovered for centuries. As far as the modern world is concerned, this is just jungle.”

“Good,” I said. “ Let’s go.”

“That’s my girl.” Marc took the lead and went onto the bridge. It swayed and moved with every step until he was half way. He flashed a grin over his shoulder. “You know this can hold an elephant? You can come on at the same time as me. It won’t break.”

I eyed off the rope with suspicion. Was that green and black residue jungle rot?

“Love, if you must, just teleport to the other side, but then you’ll have to wait to dress again.”

My dress would hold, but it wouldn’t last long.

“I’m coming.” I held my breath and stepped out. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. I kept my gaze firmly ahead and routinely put one foot in front of the other at a snail’s pace. Think of the scream. Someone needed help. All those auras. For crying out loud, I could do this. After all, I was about to walk into battle with a god who could wither life with his touch, and another who could… what could Jed do? He could push his dark soul out of his body and spy on people, but there must me more to him. People were afraid of the myth when they spoke about the prince who ruined the world. Maybe he was the one who controlled the darklings, and Urser was the enabler. Maybe Jed had been pulling the strings all along, I mean, he had to be pretty manipulative to masquerade as a friendly police officer all these years.

My rambling thoughts were enough to distract me until I got to the other side, safely on solid ground. I pushed my awareness forward, as though looking at a satellite heat map, and I honed in our targets with my mind’s eye. Not just head on, but all around us. Hiding. Waiting. But the strongest were beyond the next break of trees in the direction Marc said the temple ruins were. Had they noticed us?

A sense of doubt washed over me. If all of Cash’s backup was gone, then it was just us until the other gods arrived with Jacine. By our calculations, the in-between robbed us of half a day. Not entirely enough to allow for a plane ride from Europe, but closer. Could Marc, Cash and I be enough to handle the enemy? An answering gust of wind and tickle at my feet told me the earth was by my side. Lives depended on it. Grow a thick skin, Roo. Keep walking.

The mud, rocks and debris at our feet increased the further we walked into the hilly forest, down an overgrown path. Wary about the proximity of auras I felt coalescing around us, I failed to watch in front of me. I stumbled over the leg of a dead body sticking out from the bushes at the side. Another soldier. Sickness rolled in my gut as I surveyed ahead. Body after body littered the pathway. We were too late. Cash would be devastated—these were his men. Employees at his security business, human and Nephilim alike. The consequences for their deaths would be grave.

I glanced at Marc and recognized my own determination painted on his face. We would avenge this. We would seek justice. I armed myself with energy, felt power crackle at my fingertips and urged myself onward, after him through the mud.

Through it all I had the distinct feeling of foreboding. The energies around us knew we were here and they did nothing, just watched. Waited.

“No hesitation, love,” Marc whispered by my side. “Ready?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

WE EMERGED FROM the trees to a clearing. I glimpsed rocky Incan ruins covered in moss and exposed roots, and then we were besieged. A swarm of darklings came at us from all sides, but we’d been expecting them. My instincts snapped into motion and I threw power in a deadly arc that cleaved bodies in two. Guilt stabbed me in the chest, and I knew I shouldn’t, but I mourned the souls I destroyed, for each darkling death meant an end to their forever soul. For some stupid reason, I’d hoped I’d be able to help them. No time now. Marc winked out of existence and appeared beside another darkling with a hand gripped around its throat. A second later they were both gone. Marc appeared a few feet away, hands empty only to do the same with a third darkling. The fourth he shot fire at. The flaming body kept coming toward us, unperturbed, so Marc took him through the in-between.

The ruins loomed up high like a primitive pyramid, but it’s rocky walls had crumbled with age, and vines wrapped like a mummy’s shredded shroud. There was something beyond the dark gaping hole at its entrance. More gods, and a frequency that pulsed with unnatural energy. Could it be the gate, switched on?

As if looking at the empty entrance summoned attention, a small group of five or so came out of the doorway. They had virulent auras so were most likely Watchers teamed up with Urser. My suspicion was confirmed when I recognized a particular dark skinned woman and man—Ava’s parents from Epsilon House. Pontius and Octavia. Pontius wore his black Epsilon blazer, as though he still held onto the structure of the Game, but Octavia had foregone her Tribunal white and instead wore a khaki green pant suit. Both were among the first to sacrifice their progenies to the dark serum. They glared at me with animosity then cast a glance to Marc who stood to the right of me, fists clenching, muscles in his arms wreathing. Pontius and Octavia stayed on the steps. Behind them, Urser appeared.

“So nice of you to finally join us.” He sneered and left the group at the door to step down the temple stairs to another stony level. “To be honest, I expected you to be here a little earlier, I mean”—he squinted redundantly at the gray sky—“It’s just gone noon. But here you are. Just you and the Gamekeeper.” He laughed incredulously. “Against all of us. It’s like you’re not even trying.”

So he had no idea Cash was here. Good. At least that part was good. Mistaking my silence for doubt, he added, “Your hunter’s men are all gone. We considered adding them to our dark army, but as you can see, we’re quite overcrowded as it is.”

The auras hiding in the forest began to emerge. Some dressed in rags and were more monster than not. Some were clothed in a uniform as though Urser had raided an army surplus store. These seemed to have their wits about them and more like the Nephilim I’d purged in Margaret River. Whatever they were, whoever they were, they were many.

“You won’t get away with this,” Marc said simply.

“We already have,” came a voice behind me. There had been no aura there before. I whirled around.

Jed.

Like a ghost, he’d appeared behind us to block our exit. He was the face of someone so familiar yet he felt foreign. The notion forced me to question my beliefs. My brain struggled to put names to my rising emotions—this was my friend of more than three years. It was the same face tanned from the Australian sun, the same light dusting of freckles across the nose, and the same ears sticking out from under dark auburn curls. But, no, in this shadowed light, the auburn was now black. Another illusion. Perhaps it had always been black and I’d been a fool.

“Why are you doing this, Jed?” I asked, desperation and hope leeching into my voice. My friends were the one constant I had in this world. And he had broken that idea, shattered it to pieces.

“You know that’s not my name, mother.”

“It’s the only name I’ve known for you.”

“Not true.” He cocked his head to the side studying me. “Alkiemon, Al, Son. Take your pick.”

I couldn’t answer. Just stared.

“You may have lost your memories,” he continued, “but you are the same person inside. You murdered my father and then you created this world instead of dealing with your grieving son. You might run from your problems, but I don’t. Well, it’s time to go home, mother. Time to face the music.”

“You little twat,” Marc said. “It was never Sephie’s fault. Your father was a warmonger from Ursa Constellation, just like his brother. Treachery was bound to catch up with him. For all we know your bloody uncle there killed his brother.”

“If you believe that, then you’re as much as fool as her,” Urser added.

I gasped. “I would never have killed my husband, no matter how much we didn’t get along.”

Jed laughed. “How would you know? I watched you for years as a failing human, and your stupidity and dumb faith were insufferable. Now you are only a shadow of your former self. You used to be a force to be reckoned with. A match for the strategic marriage you were sold into. Oh, I know you hated my father. You tolerated him so long as you were free to execute your own egomaniacal plans to create a world in your image. I mean, how narcissistic can you get?”

“I’m sorry, Jed. I truly am. I can’t speak for that woman I used to be, but I can speak for myself now, and I would never leave a loved one to suffer. Never.”

“Guess I wasn’t one of your loved ones then.”

“You miss the point. You are now. You have been for years. There’s still time to walk away from Urser. We can start again.”

A moment of silence passed between us, and he stared right into my eyes, into my soul. I almost thought I had him, but he laughed. “Start again? How many times must you start over before you get it right? My father was a powerful and ruthless leader—he did what was needed to make the Empire great, first time round. He took what he wanted.”

“And look what happened to him,” I added.

Jed scowled. “You came along and turned it all to shit. Lucky for me, I take after my father.” Jed looked over my shoulder to Urser. “Bring them out.”

There was nothing I could do or say that would ease the malice in his eyes. Perhaps I caused him a lot of pain, but I wouldn’t let him murder more innocents to prove his point. I had to protect this world as best I could. That I knew I could do. Or I could die trying.

Slowly, I formed directives in my mind and filtered them into the earth. A rumble came from beneath us that gathered momentum. I intended to use nature to secure any Watcher or darkling on nearby soil, so I let the vines grow, hidden beneath the earth, writhing like snakes, ready for deployment. They might not hold them forever, but they would give us a fighting chance to escape. I almost released but a merciless, keening wail stopped me. Coldness swept over me and I paused—kept the vines hidden, swimming beneath the surface. It was the same female scream from earlier, amplified. It echoed all around, and I couldn’t tell where it originated.

Jed took up a station at the bottom of the steps and smugly folded his arms. Why did he leave his post blocking the exit? Unless… unless he knew there was no way I’d leave now.

“Roo!” A female voice squeezed out from behind him. I whipped my gaze up  to see the last people I expected to find in the Amazon. Kitty and Alvin were being shoved down the moss covered temple steps by a single curved pole brutally piercing both their shoulders. They wore dirty clothes covered in blood. The same clothes they wore the last time I’d seen them in Margaret River. Then, they were the perfect picture of domestic life. Now, they limped, pale faced and distraught, barely standing through the agony I knew would be radiating from their bloody shackle. My eyes met with theirs and a multitude of words passed unsaid. The person holding the bar between them jerked them forward to the final grassy landing at the foot of the steps. Kitty wailed. The rod diameter wasn’t huge, so I had hopes it missed vital organs. If one of them moved, the other bled. The coldness in my veins turned to pure, hot fury. It was more than hostage detainment. It was torture.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Leave them alone.” But shout was all I could do. Vines would be too slow. Telekinesis too sloppy. I could miss my enemy and hurt my friends, make it worse… Options flailed in my mind. My fault. This was my fault. Friends weren’t a strength. They were a weakness. To me, and to them. I should never have taken the darkling bait and traveled to Margaret River to ensure their safety. It was a big target on their head. Now they knew I’d do anything to save my friends. Stupid. I was so stupid and inexperienced. Jed knew exactly how much I cared for them. I should have stayed away.

Urser preened from his position up high. His companions did too. My gaze darted between them and Jed and my friends at the foot of the steps.

“What do you want from me?” I asked Jed. “My blood? Let them go and you can take it.”

“No, love.” Alarm widened Marc’s eyes. “No one is worth it.”

I ignored him. I just needed Kitty and Alvin closer, then I could use the vines or hardened air to shield us from them. Sure, they’d find a way to break through, they were gods. But by that time, we’d be back over the bridge and Cash wouldn’t be far. “I’m serious. Let them go. You can take me.”

I left Marc to step forward and show my commitment.

Jed laughed and shook his head with scorn. “You’re so easy, it’s almost no fun. I spent my life here on this filthy rotten planet, dreaming up ways to knock you from your high horse, and now look at you. Pathetic. Weak. Once we realized it was you in that body, it’s been no effort to put our plans into place. You’ve fallen for our lies each and every time.”

“Because she has a kind soul that you’ll never understand,” Kitty spoke up, voice cracking, skin pale.

“Jed, I don’t understand. We were friends. I know some of our time was genuine. Don’t do this. Please. Kitty and Alvin were your friends too.”

“Put the collar on and we will let them go,” Jed said. “You have my word.”

The collar?

“No deal,” Marc said. “Your word means nothing, Prince. Let the humans go and I will make it quick. Can’t say the same for the rest of you.”

“Give it up, Roo.” Urser called from the top of the steps in a bored voice. “I’m out of patience. End this before you hurt your friends. You’re clearly outnumbered.”

He was right. There may not have been anyone immediately behind me, but I felt grimy darkling essences everywhere. Deep in the temple ruins, waiting with Urser. In the forest around us, milling about. Even further back, across the chasm and on the other side. So many blips of life pinging back at me.

And then… oddly, one by one, I sensed them wink out of existence. Goosebumps erupted on my flesh while I tried to make sense of that. First, the life-forms across the bridge, then, closer, the auras surrounding us in the forest—they disappeared.

Cash was here.

He wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. Soon, he’d bring his deluge of vengeance to the army. There would be no hiding him.

It was enough to spur me forward. “Fine. Bring me the collar.”

“No, love. I can’t accept this.” Marc put a hand on my shoulder.

“It will be okay, Marc.” I implored him with my eyes. Come on. Use your other sense, Marc. Cash is coming. “We will all get through this.”

But Marc only had eyes for Octavia as she came down the steps with a collar dangling from her hand. The instant her boots touched the soil, the earth was ready to claim her. I held off. It was a hard lesson to learn, but acting without thought would have repercussions. Instead, I surveyed the contraption in her hand. It was an exact replica of the one I wore after my transformation to Seraphim. The same collar that blocked my access to my power. Jed must have leaked the information. Octavia held it out as she closed the gap between us. She opened the collar and brought it near my neck. Marc instantly flashed to her. A blink. That’s all it took and then Octavia was gone, her clothes fluttered in tatters, and the collar clattered to the floor.

Marc was back at my side, giving daggers to the Watchers. “Approach her again, I dare you.”

Pontius howled from his post near the temple door. White snakes of light burst up both his arms—lightning. Electricity was bad where Marc was concerned. It disrupted his atoms and stopped him from teleporting. Pontius threw himself down the steps. I thought he would launch at us, but he went for Kitty and Alvin.

It was then Cash emerged from the forest and, without mercy, cut through the remaining darkling army. A sword of fire in each hand, he whirled, stabbed, sliced. Stepped over bodies. Amputated. Surged. He was so fast that he was a blur. My eyes could barely keep up with him.

When the rest of the Watchers understood what happened, Urser shouted down, pointing at me. “Get her.”

Pontius, already armed with electricity changed his momentum to charge around Jed and aim my way, ready to unleash. Marc dematerialized from my side to Pontius’s and grappled to shift his aim. The bolt redirected into Jed’s body to fill him with light. His veins became pulsing strobes and he crumpled to the ground. Shock registered on Pontius’s face as he looked down at Jed’s charred body. And then Pontius was no more—ripped through space and time. Marc reappeared at the foot of the steps and urged Kitty and Alvin toward me.

This was my chance. I let the restrained power beneath me erupt. Mountains of vines speared toward the sky. They spread in an explosive arc around the perimeter of the temple like a wall of weeds, thickening—a giant beanstalk come to life. I caught a last glimpse of Urser’s furious face as he hurtled down the steps. The shield wouldn’t last long. I could already feel the earth’s pain as Urser attacked with his decaying power.

Cash was suddenly at my side, hot palm bracing the back of my neck, looking deep into my eyes. “You okay?”

I gave a curt nod and he let go to cast a critical eye over the scene. “We have to get Kitty and Alvin to safety. The vines won’t hold.”

“I know,” I said, stepping toward Kitty and Alvin. “Urser’s destroying the wall already. I can strengthen the shield with hardened air, or keep feeding more power into the plants.”

“No time.” Cash beat me to our friends. He took Kitty gently into his arms and held her steady then met my eyes. “Roo, cut the pipe.”

I gripped the bar between Kitty and Alvin and fed power into the metal structure, focusing like a laser. Heat bloomed under my touch until it sparked, melted and eventually separated.

Kitty slumped forward, and Cash caught her. Alvin tried to help, but stumbled, almost falling.

“Let Cash take her, Alvin. Marc, help me take Alvin.” I lifted the arm on his good side and helped Marc adjust himself underneath.

A screech overhead drew our attention.

“Holy cheese on a stick,” I said. “They’re climbing over the top!”

Up there, high on the wall of vines, a darkling skimmed his way over the structure.

“Go!” I screamed and we ran.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

WE RAN AS fast as we could through the uneven jungle, slipping and sliding on the sticks and mud. Cash cradled Kitty in his arms. Marc and I shouldered Alvin, one on each side. Every few seconds I sent an arc of power behind us, just to make sure. If it hit anything, I never knew.

We got to the bridge and Cash put Kitty down, but she swayed on her feet.

“You have to carry her, Cash. She won’t make it across by herself,” I said.

In his eyes I saw a battle. He knew what was coming and he didn’t want to leave my side.

“I can flash out of here. You can’t. I’ll be right behind you.”

He grit his teeth, scooped Kitty up and tentatively made his way across. Alvin followed shortly after, but the bridge creaked under the weight. I knew Marc said it could hold an Elephant, but I think he was being overzealous.

Horrible, snarling and snapping sounds made me whirl to check my rear. The skies darkened and the light mist of rain grew thicker, more ominous. Light was fading faster than nature allowed. Something supernatural was happening. Full of twisting energy, the fog stirred my insides. The darklings weren’t the worst thing coming after us.

“Marc. Look.” I pointed into the black cloud.

Marc turned to see. “It’s the prince.”

“I thought you killed him with the lightning.”

He gave me a disparaging look. “Gods don’t die that easily.”

“Shit.” I glanced back across the bridge at Alvin crossing as fast as he could. He kept a brisk pace despite the sway of the rope. “Might be a good time to start thinking of plan B.”

“Go, love. Help your friend. I’ll hold the bastard off.” Marc’s hand gripped my shoulder, his face in front of mine. In that moment I saw so much more than the cheeky god who wasn’t responsible enough to be in the War Council. I saw his plan in his eyes, his sacrifice. He’d always regretted the first time he ran from the fight—that first time he took me as the queen away from this planet. The time Cash had died. The time I became a recluse. Now he was going to do the opposite.

“No, Marc.” I choked, shaking my head. “That’s not what I meant. Another plan B. Teleport to the Empire and tell them to be ready. Marc!”

The black cloud breeched the forest and Marc shoved me back toward the bridge. He turned to stand head to head with the darkness rolling in. I could see him, but I couldn’t distinguish his aura from the black fog enveloping him. He flashed a last look over his shoulder. “Go!” he shouted, moments before he was swallowed by the bloom.

I gasped, frozen in place.

Marc!

He was okay, he had to be. I stupidly took two steps forward then jolted backward as hands emerged out of the fog, reaching for me. Urser. A scream bubbled in my lungs as the rest of him materialized. He snapped the collar around my neck, essentially cutting me from my power. I felt as deprived of life as I did when I was collared all those other times. No energy sparking in my periphery, no fizz of electricity. But plenty of fear. Human and vulnerable.

Still willing to fight.

I slammed the heel of my palm into his nose. His head whipped back, bloody, and I pivoted, running to the bridge. I launched onto it, over the void, knuckles white as the rope I held. I had to get to Cash. Torrents cascaded beneath me, roaring. A gust of wind pelted my side and I was sure I felt water spray my face. Impossible to have come from so far below. Must be the sky. The coming rain. Or the dark misty clouds. Oh God, Marc.

I glanced up to see Cash hand Kitty to someone on the other side. Alvin was almost there. Squinting, I could see the other gods—the Tribunal. Relief surged through me. Backup had arrived. We would be okay. Another gust of wind from behind and I moved so fast my hands burned on the rope. But then… something under my hands darkened. The rope. It turned black. A jolt of fear sliced through me. “What the hell?” I looked down at the roped rungs beneath my feet. The blackness whizzed ahead to coat the white bridge in jagged increments, all the way to the end. The twine under my fingers plucked and frayed as though jungle rot ate the fabric from the inside. I craned behind and my heart stopped.

Urser crouched with his hands on the bottom walkway of the bridge, rot and decay bleeding from his touch. He shook the bridge, injecting more of his power into it. It creaked, it moaned and it made tiny plucking sounds as the rope disintegrated.

And I was on it.

I weighed my options. I couldn’t teleport—the collar blocked me. It was a long way down. The way to Cash was further than the way to Urser. And Alvin was still on the bridge.

Urser saw me calculating and shouted above the wind: “Keep going and you all fall. Come back, and you live.”

“Let him get off first.” I stared him down with fury. “Then you can take me.”

He glared at me. Then he let go of one hand, palm raised in surrender and the rot stopped on that side. The bridge held it together. Barely. Until the weight of another body tested its strength.

Cash.

Alvin was still a few feet from getting off, but Cash had returned to the bridge and squished past Alvin. The he came toward me with inhuman speed.

A growl ripped from Urser’s throat and he plunged his hand onto the fibers again, sending a new wave of decay. I felt a shift in the air as the bridge crumbled and snapped, the tension dissolving. Without thinking, I ran back the way I’d come and dove at Urser, tackling him to the grassy ground. He was harder than I expected. The wind knocked out of me as my smaller, powerless body rebounded off his and I rolled. Urser moved. Fast. He scrambled back to the bridge in a vain attempt to touch the rope, to finish what he started. In the end he didn’t need to.

Cash’s weight was enough.

A loud snap sounded.

I rushed to Urser’s side and caught the blur of Cash’s body—a dark falling star.

My scream was cut short as two rough hands ripped into my hair, pulling me backward onto the grassy plateau. I tried to grasp my head, to stop my hair ripping from my scalp, but couldn’t.

“You’re coming with me,” Urser growled. He didn’t wait for me to get up. He pulled by my hair. My legs grappled with the ground to keep up, and I struggled, writhed, fought to get back to Cash. Pain exploded behind my eyes and my vision failed. Urser hit me again, this time sending my sight completely black. I should have stayed on the bridge. Maybe I could’ve taken the collar off in time. Maybe I could have saved him.

When I came to, I was being carried over Urser’s shoulder, my head and torso hung over his back, arms dangling. The black mist had retreated. There was carnage everywhere. Blood. Smears. Body parts. But no Marc. No Cash. And no back up. The broken bridge had seen to that.

When I closed my eyes, I saw the shadow of Cash’s body, falling in slow motion. The image replayed, stuck on repeat. Questions bombarded my mind. Had he enough distance to jump the rest of the way? No. Had he somehow managed to cling to the rope and swing to one side? I had no idea. Could he survive the fall? Tears burned my eyes. I had to shut it from my mind. I had to get away. I surreptitiously fiddled with the collar and was rewarded with a tiny electric shock that jolted through me.

I quickly closed my eyes and played dead when the sound of crunching steps got closer. Someone else was here. We walked for a little more, until the light dimmed, and I noticed the drip of water. The hollow, dank smell of musty air. A breeze fanning my cheeks through the jostling. The temperature dropping. I would have shivered inside the dank, stone temple except I felt nothing. Numb. Not even when Jed approached from somewhere and took me from Urser’s punishing grip.

“She’s awake,” Jed said.

Fuck.

He dragged me off Urser. I kicked and lashed out, but my blows were ineffectual without my power feeding into my hands. I was weak. Human. Jed took me through the dark corridors to an enormous room that opened to high ceilings. Light came through holes above in rays of dust. Mold soured the walls. Invasive vines grew through gaps in the damp and glistening, rocky enclosure. Instruments of modern technology contrasted with the ancient ruins. The equipment reminded me of the inside of a computer.

And then I saw it. The gate. Made from an obsidian like substance, the slick doorframe screamed foreign. In front of the large doorframe sat a stone podium with wires shooting out of it, reminiscent of the woody roots on the ceiling. I’d never in my life seen anything like it. The monolith structure was surely the star-gate they all spoke of—the wormhole that opened a portal between worlds.

Urser left us to check on a stack of large, black cargo crates and then greet the remaining traitorous Watchers as they entered the room. He was bringing more than darklings back to the Empire. Those crates were numerous. More serums? More destruction? How could those people let him do this? It was their world he threatened.

“Where’s Marc?” I asked Jed. “Is he alive?”

Jed hit me in the head and I blacked out again.

When I woke, he was in the process of unceremoniously yanking me to the podium near the gate where he slammed my wrist against the smooth tablet top. He strapped my hand down, then pulled a knife and stabbed my palm, welding it to the surface. White hot agony sliced up my arm, but I didn’t scream. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Blood oozed onto the podium tablet and filtered to a catchment where it drained into the device. Jed watched as red liquid oozed from my veins, eventually slowing when I healed.

And he watched. Everyone watched. And waited. Something was supposed to happen, but the tablet and podium beneath my hand remained lifeless. The obsidian doorway remained dormant.

Jed gave a sidelong glance to Urser. “It’s not working. You said it would work.”

Urser glanced nervously at the Watchers and then came over in a few quick strides. He lowered his voice. “You’re the one who said she’d fully converted.”

They acted in a hurry. Nervous. Which meant perhaps they knew someone was coming. Perhaps the other gods found a way across the chasm. Or, Marc. I gasped. Cash? Who else would they be afraid of?

Hope flared in my chest.

“She has converted,” Jed hissed. “Maybe we need more blood.”

He twisted the knife in my palm until the pain caused spots to dance across my vision and I finally screamed. But whatever they expected from the gate didn’t happen.

“I know why it’s not working,” I gasped.

“Bullshit. You remember nothing.”

“Who is left alive?” I asked. “Of my friends. Tell me and I might help you.”

Urser narrowed his eyes at me. I had a good, hard look at him. Lines creased around his eyes. Short, military styled hair not so neat anymore. Stubble peppering his chin. He wasn’t as collected as he led me to believe.

I continued pushing. “I know you have someone prisoner, or perhaps someone is coming. You’re nervous. You’re rushing. Making mistakes.”

Jed shook his head. “Don’t tell her.”

“You have me where you want me,” I pleaded. “Tell me if my friends are alive and I’ll tell you why the gate isn’t working.”

“You’re in no position to bargain.”

“I need the collar off,” I blurted. “It’s not just my blood, but my life-force needed. The collar disrupts my full biological-connection. It means you need all of me. Soul and all.”

Urser cursed. “That’s why it never worked with a sample. Thaw him halfway, then bring him out.”

“No,” Jed replied. “Take the collar off and I’ll make her open the gate. We don’t need him.”

“You fool. She can travel through the in-between. Just like you. Take the collar off and without incentive, she’s gone.”

“Fuck.” Jed punched a nearby crate. When he turned to face me, the area around Jed’s lips turned white. A withering stare and he stormed out of the room. Minutes later he was back.

With Cash.

CHAPTER FORTY

CASH WAS WET, through and through. He hugged himself and rubbed his arms briskly. Almost rags by now, his thin clothing was covered in filth and blood from his recent battles, and whatever he did to survive the fall. His thick lashes lifted to reveal eyes reflecting the magnitude of emotion I felt.

“You’re alive,” I said.

“Lucky for him your water gods were quick to respond,” Urser said. “Unlucky for him they put him right in Jed’s path.”

“Marc’s alive,” Cash said quickly. “He escaped.”

When I caught the quick pass of frustration between Urser and Jed, I knew Cash’s words were true. Cash opened his mouth to say something else, but Jed struck him across the cheek. Cash’s head whipped to the side. When he turned back to Jed, his lethal gaze promised death. Jed must have seen the same thing because he hit Cash again. Black blood spurted out of Cash’s mouth to splat on the rubble. That shouldn’t be black. A dark stain painted his lips. I thought it was blue from the cold, but, no. The serum? But we’re vaccinated. Cash sucked a rattling breath in and coughed uncontrollably. He fell on one knee, casting his face into a stream of light filtering from the ceiling somewhere.

The horror of his pale skin hit me.

“What have you done?” I glared at Jed, then at Urser.

“Nothing that can’t be reversed.” Urser came to stand next to me. He waved back at Jed. “Thaw him some more.”

Thaw him? So not the serum. Something else. Or… someone else.

Black dots pebbled on Jed’s forearm until they ran rivulets down to his hand. Mist formed and broke away to float in front of Cash’s face.

Cash’s eyes widened and he jerked back, but the mist collided with his skin. A painful sound ripped from the back of Cash’s throat.

“Stop!” I shouted, and winced when my jerk tugged at my hand, still pinned to the tablet by the knife.

“Relax. I’m extracting it.” Jed rolled his eyes at me. Blackness swam out of Cash’s mouth and returned to Jed. Cash relaxed, the color returned to his lips. “I don’t know why you’re so against this,” Jed continued. “I am what he made me. He should experience it firsthand. When he exploded that day, all those years ago, he tried to break me apart, but the darkness in my veins kept me together. I was nothing but mist and energy for such a long time. It hurts me to be in that form as much as it hurts someone to feel it against their skin. Even worse inside. I have no chance of a normal life now. I’ll never have an ordinary relationship.”

“You did this to yourself,” Cash growled. “You were the one who defied your mother in the first place. The fact I had trouble with your death stroke is a regret I will always carry.”

“And now look where we are,” Jed sneered.

“Enough,” Urser said and reached for my collar. “When I remove this, you are going to open the gate. You are going to let us all pass through and you are going to stay in case the gate closes before we have all left.”

“Then you will let us go?” I couldn’t believe it.

“What do I care what you do once we are gone? We will destroy the gate on the other end. We have what we want. We don’t need this useless planet so far away from everything else. Once the gate is destroyed, it will take hundreds, if not thousands of light-years to get here by conventional methods.” Urser passed a scathing look over me. “I wanted you out of the Empire and off the throne. Now you are. Mission complete.”

Mission?

Slowly pieces of the puzzle came together.

“You once told me the Seraphim are a very patient race. Now I see what you mean,” I said as the pieces came together.

“There’s my clever girl. Not so stupid after all.”

“No. I’m not.” On both accounts. Not his, and not stupid.

“What does he mean?” Cash asked.

“It was his plan all along,” I replied. “All these millennia we thought he was trapped by the queen’s quarantine, but… he planned it that way. Marc told me once that time passes differently over there. A couple of weeks pass here and only a couple of days there. The Ursa Constellation dignitaries were against the queen’s peace project from the start. Getting me off the throne was the true purpose of his being here.”

What I didn’t say was there were two advantages to the difference in the passage of time between the worlds. He could afford to spend more time here, planting the seeds of his plan, while the Empire carried along, not missing their dignitaries too much. That was also the appeal of the Game.

“Good. Now that’s cleared up, open the gate.” Urser unclasped my collar and life surged back into me. Like a cold drink on a hot day, I felt replenished. It wasn’t as much as if I were outside in nature, but enough I could feel each individual life-force around me.

I hesitated.

“Roo,” Cash rasped and caught my eyes. “Don’t. I love you, but don’t. This was never our plan.”

He knew things that I didn’t. He remembered the world I was opening a door to and he didn’t think I understood. But I did. It was time I embraced my true identity. I had to trust in the laws of the universe, and trust my friends on the other side had taken my message to the authorities. Like Urser said, I wasn’t as stupid as he thought and I knew Cash would get that if he gave me a chance.

“You’re right,” I said. “This wasn’t the original plan, but it’s okay, Cash. We’ve done our job. We played the Game. We followed the rules. We sent as many souls as we could to the Empire. It’s up to them, now.”

I hoped he read between the lines. I winced and twisted the blade in my hand until blood flowed fresh to coat the tablet in red. Dizziness clouded my vision for a moment, then a roaring sound came from the doorframe and the emptiness between it became a solid wall of colored, granular light. Like the mist near a waterfall—it was blinding. Everyone in the room thought so too, their gazes squinted into the sight.

But I knew what was coming. I’d hoped. Thinking quick, I pulled the knife from my hand, and ran across the stones to Cash. Jed shoved him my way so he could get past us to the gate. I collided with Cash, both of us falling to our knees.

“Are you okay?” I held him.

“I’m fine.” He coughed then lowered his voice. “Let’s get out of the way before they come.”

I smiled. He knew.

Urser barked orders and the Watchers in the room leapt into action. They went to the crates, picking them up, angling themselves in the tight space to cross to the portal.

Then the light flickered at the doorway as though the current was being interrupted. Jed moved to stand in front of it, caution etched on his face. He leapt to the side, just in time as body shape broke the light filaments and people walked through the door. Not people. Soldiers.

A team of them. All tall, dark, wearing smooth helmets that hid their faces. Their one-piece suits were made of something seamless and futuristic. I didn’t need to guess where they came from. They hustled into the room and fanned out in military formation. They had no discernible weapons, but held their gloved palms face out in a menacing way. An enormous soldier in a light suit came in after them. His shoulder width was the size of two people. He surveyed the room with a robotic, almost casual turn of the head. Then he dropped a silver orb the size of a baseball on the floor.

It rolled until it hit Urser’s feet.

Urser glared at me in accusation. He roared in defiance and the ground shook as he used his power to rock the foundations. Dust and rocks crumbled from the ceiling. Jed’s face contorted into vengeance and his arms beaded with black residue. A burst of light emitted from the ball on the floor, and then…

Nothing.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

MUD. WATER DRIPPING. Birds cawing. Monkeys chittering. These things I heard so I knew I was outside. Caution prickled my skin, along with a soft tickle of the wind. It smelled fresh, not moldy like inside the temple. I sent a tentative probe of energy below ground. Yes. Outside. The energy in the earth beneath me purred, as though suddenly coming aware of my lucidity. I opened my eyes slowly and discovered I was at the foot of the temple, laying on a soft blanket of all things. The fading sun cast orange and purple clouds. It was almost night time. Which meant I had been out of it for an hour or two.

“She’s awake.” A voice I recognized sent a happy feeling spreading through me.

“Marc!” I croaked, dry mouthed.

A few feet away from me, Marc stood at the foot of the temple steps speaking with a small group of people. He wore similar clothing to the soldiers. It looked foreign and wrong in the jungle. A seamless shirt that was almost the same shade of gray as the pants molded to his legs. Seeing the silver starburst brooch on his chest sparked a memory. Images of soldiers coming through the gate flashed before me. In helmets with visors closed over their faces. They all had the silver brooch. The orb one of them dropped was sliver. And then at the end, just as the orb exploded, I caught Marc striding through the rainbow gate. He’d been wearing those clothes when he’d walked through.

Marc came over to me with a smile. “Looks like plan B worked.”

“Who are those people?” I asked, tension coating my insides.

“They’re your subjects.”

I glanced over his shoulder to the group trying not to look at me. “Right.”

The giant soldier with the lighter uniform had his helmet retracted to reveal a face with a crooked nose. He had strong carved features and intelligent eyes that held a twinkle of mischief. He appeared middle aged but, with Seraphim, it was hard to tell. Next to him stood an extraordinarily beautiful woman with long black hair and olive skin. Her cryptic smile made me nervous. She knew me. A trio of soldiers came down the temple steps, helmets retracted to reveal serious faces. Jacine, also in the group, appeared to be giving directions. When she glanced at me, she wore the first genuine smile I think I’d ever seen on her.

“Where’s Cash?” I asked Marc hesitantly.

“He’s with Lena over there. Had some more of that vile stuff in his lungs.”

I followed the direction he pointed and relief thumped my heart. Cash sat on another blanket and did his best to put up with Lena’s hands hovering around his chest. He glanced at me in a way that suggested he’d been checking every other minute because when he caught me awake, he swiped Lena’s hand impatiently and then turned back to her with an apologetic face, indicating my way. He made to move, but Lena stopped him with her index finger in the air. A soldier held a device in front of Cash as though scanning him.

“Is he okay?” I asked Marc.

“Right as rain.”

“What happened to Urser and Jed?”

He scratched his head. “I don’t know what to say except it’s all been taken care of. They’ve returned to the Empire… and, well, I wouldn’t want to be them.”

I shivered. “Did they devolve?”

“You could say that.”

“Is Jed okay?” I couldn’t help asking. Part of me will probably always worry about him.

“He’ll live. He’s basically human now, but he’ll live.”

I exhaled. “And, the darklings? I should go and fix them.”

“Love, help arrived. Your work is done.”

That concept was so foreign I couldn’t focus on him for a moment. Then the urge to get to my feet superseded all else. I had to see Cash, to touch him, to make sure he was real. I still saw him falling from the bridge every time my eyes closed. Within seconds I was at his side.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, hesitant to touch him and interrupt Lena’s work.

“I’m fine.” He gave the soldier with the device a scathing look. “Lena’s just being thorough.”

Lena tilted her head my way. “Good to see you are up. Those Mind Frags can be disorientating.”

“Mind Frag?”

The soldier, a thin man with a long face rattled off a scientific explanation, most of which I missed, until he gave me the abridged version. “The silver ball that gave off the light. It’s designed to momentarily wipe the mind of all people who see it. Unless you’re wearing a helmet, of course.”

Marc came up behind me and cleared his throat.

The soldier saw him and widened his eyes. “Sir?”

Sir?

“You are in the presence of the queen. Address her appropriately.”

The solder looked back at me and realization dawned on him. His cheeks flushed beet red. “Apologies Your Majesty, I didn’t recognize you.”

I grimaced at Marc. He was one to talk about appropriate behavior. Jacine said those same words to him all the time.

Lena pulled her hands from Cash. “I think the taint is leaving on its own. Your body is taking care of the healing.”

“Thank you,” Cash mumbled and got to his feet.

“Kitty and Alvin?”

“Treated and back at the bungalow, resting,” Marc replied.

“The baby?”

Lena smiled at me gently. “The baby is fine.” She caught my worried look and then added: “On both accounts, she is fine. Jesop told me about your concerns, so we checked her for an active hex. We found none, but I flushed her system with a cleansing tonic just to be sure.”

I sighed in relief. Instantly Cash gathered me into his arms. I melted against his warm, hard chest as he crushed me in his embrace. He pushed me away momentarily to check me over, then, satisfied, pressed his lips to mine in a deep, passionate kiss that had his emotions slamming into me so fast my mind wiped again.

“Wow,” I said when he finished. “What was that for?”

“I love you. That’s all.”

I blushed. “I feel the same.”

Marc cleared his throat behind us. “Hate to interrupt, but time for you to meet some people.”

He took a look at my tattered vine dress and scooped up the blanket to drape around my shoulders then scrutinized my face. He licked his thumb and wiped my cheek as though he were a mother cleaning a child.

“Stop that.” I swatted him and then hugged the blanket close.

“Sorry, it’s just that—” He paused. “I’ve spoken about you a lot. This new you, I mean. It still might be a shock for some people, so… prepare yourself.”

“Great,” I mumbled under my breath. Cash put his arm around my shoulder. The weight comforted me as Marc led us to the group at the foot of the steps.

Upon seeing me, all soldiers with retracted helmets bent on one knee reverently. The black haired woman did too. Jacine hesitated a moment, then joined them on the grass.

“Please get up,” I said, eyes wide.

The large soldier with the lighter uniform looked up at me through his short lashes, the glint of humor still there. Then his face split into a grin. He stood and helped the black-haired lady next to him up. They were all smiling.

“Have I missed something?” I asked, darting a glance between them all. Even Marc smirked at me.

“You don’t recognize us,” the black-haired woman stated, then squinted as though trying to decipher me. “Take a closer look.”

A test, then? I stepped back and focused on their energy. The man… was familiar. Yes, her too. I knew them, but their auras were powerful. I would remember meeting gods like them. Unless, they weren’t… “I know you, but you’ve changed. You were both Players?”

The man grinned. “If I could turn this uniform inside out, you might recognize me better.”

I gasped. “Lincoln?”

“Yo, sis.” The teenager lingo sounded so foreign from the burly man, but… that cheeky glint in his eye.

Despite looking like he could crush me, I rushed him for a hug. His enormous arms surrounded me and lifted me off the ground. The other soldiers in the group looked at us oddly. This mustn’t be proper protocol for royalty, but, “Dude, check out your guns. You weren’t kidding when you said you had a feeling you should be bigger.”

The woman slanted an amused look at him.

“Oh my God, then this must be”—I looked at her closely—“Wren?”

She nodded demurely.

“You’re both not what I expected.”

Lincoln, or whoever he was now, smiled. “And now that our memories are unlocked, we can see you are not who you used to be as well. There is much we need to discuss.”

“I hope that’s a good thing.”

He didn’t answer the questioning lilt in my voice. “Let me formally introduce myself. I am Barzillai of Ursa Constellation and Commander of the United Peace-Keeping forces. This is Keturah of Cetus Constellation—Keturah, are you alright? What’s happening to her? Keturah?”

“Stop saying her true name you blabbering idiot,” Marc scoffed. “We use pseudonyms here.”

Wren—Keturah had folded forward to brace herself on her knees, breathing deeply through the shudders and tingles riding her nerves. Lincoln—Barzillai, rushed to her aid, but she swatted him away, and placed the back of her palm to her forehead. “That was… interesting.”

“True name?” Barzillai appeared confused then shot Marc an accusing look. “Why didn’t this happen when I said my own name?”

“Only happens when you speak another’s, like in prayer.”

“This is the Seraphim phenomenon you’ve been bragging about? Doesn’t look that great to me—”

“Barzillai,” Marc said smugly.

The enormous soldier grunted, cursed and squeezed his eyes shut, tensely holding onto his decorum as the euphoric sensation rippled through him.

Marc burst out laughing. He whooped loudly and slapped his knee, then punched Jacine lightly on the shoulder as if she’d appreciate his joke. She fought a smile. The three soldiers just looked at us like we’d grown extra heads.

“I think I will call you Lincoln while we are on this earth.” Keturah still retained a blush in her cheeks, and patted her soldier’s arm. “Perhaps refrain from saying my true name while we are here. I can be Wren, one last time.”

“Boring,” Marc said with a wink Jacine’s way. “The true name is half the fun of this planet.”

Lincoln took on a deadly serious scowl and individually pinned each of us with his stare. “Why didn’t I remember this from the Game?”

Marc shrugged. “You were a Player. We don’t share much with Players in case you go running back to your friends when you get home to the Empire. She’s fine, relax.”

I cleared my throat. “I appreciate you coming here, but it’s getting dark. We should probably get home.”

“Good idea,” Barzillai said and made a sweeping motion up the steps. “After you. We can debrief when we get back. Ursa Constellation is regretful that one of our own has caused this drama. He has no honor and we wish to begin making reparations.”

I balked and looked back the other way. “I meant maybe get to the bungalow, or something.”

Barzillai stared at me. “But… the minute we woke in our natural bodies, we remembered your last message to us. Ket—ahem—Wren and I found each other and petitioned the Council to put together a team in case the gate was reactivated. When Egna—ahem, sorry, I’ll get this right—Marc turned up with the news of your son’s plan we were able to put it all into action. We assumed because you told Marc to come here, it was all over now and you’d return with us.”

Hearing about Jed, a spear of guilt hit me. After everything today, I still felt like I’d lost somehow.

“Where are Jed and Urser now?” Cash asked.

“We’ve taken them into custody and off planet. All of their belongings have been taken into evidence. They will be tried and punished accordingly, although I dare say their devolvement is almost punishment enough. Your Majesty, you are required to give testament. We’ve been instructed to bring everyone back to the Empire and then destroy the gate, thus leaving the humans to their own devices.”

“Great. Just one small detail.” I caught Cash’s eyes to makes sure he felt the same way. He smiled, so I said to Barzillai, “You leave us behind.”

Cash nodded. “I think we’re done with the Empire.”

“For now, anyway,” I added quickly. “I’m no good to Jed like this. I want to help clean up the mess he and Urser left behind. Marc can always come back and take us at a later date. Maybe. Plus…” I sent a slice of sympathy into the earth at my feet and an echo bounced back at me. I hadn’t forgotten my promise to help undo the devastation of mankind. “I have work to do here.”

“So do I,” Cash added. When I gave him a questioning eye, hoping he didn’t mean following me around, but he replied, “Witches.”

“Of course,” I said.

“But…” Marc started then stopped. We all watched him while he contemplated.

“Marc,” I said. “You’re free. You can do what you want now. No more Gamekeeper.”

“That’s the thing, love. I’m not sure I know what I want. I’ve fallen in love with this world and its people. The football, the cricket, tea… the—” he cut himself off and glanced at Jacine. “You’re ready to go to the Empire, aren’t you?”

She fretted. “I-yes, I wanted to go home, but… darling, are you going?”

“Pet, are you going?”

“I asked you first.”

“No, you asked me second.”

“Marc,” I said abruptly. “Don’t stay on my behalf. I’d love you to visit any time, but Jacine can’t travel like you. She either has to stay or go.”

Marc placed his palm on Jacine’s shoulder. “Then it’s settled. We’ll go. You and the hunter stay.”

“I’m not sure if it’s as easy as that,” Barzillai said.

Cash almost growled. “We’re doing you the courtesy of telling you our plans. If you want to go against us, you’ll have to take us by force.”

Barzillai’s mouth tightened and he glared at Cash. “That can be arranged.”

Keturah put a hand on Barzillai’s arm. “Can we not say that the gate was destroyed prior to retrieving all that remained? It will buy us some time, at least.”

“Please Barz—I mean Lincoln?” I whined.

From the way his lips twitched, he tried to suppress a smile. After a moment, he conceded with a short nod. “Fine. The gate was destroyed before we could safely return all Seraphim bodies to port. Those who are left behind will be marked as non-returning souls and we will make provisions without them.” He paused and met my eyes. “It will be sad to lose the chance to get to know this new version of you better. You would have done great things.”

“She has already done great things,” Cash corrected him. “It’s been too long since we’ve been there. Too much has happened. It’s time for a break.”

“You will be missed,” Keturah agreed. “But, I understand. There is much to do here. I can hear the animals calling. I am tempted to stay, too, but”—she caught Barzillai’s eye—“I am now needed elsewhere. Not all of us are blessed with a clean slate.”

Cash and I looked at each other. Clean slate.

Eight Months Later

“He looks nervous.” Cash leaned over to speak in my ear. He nodded at Alvin who stood at the front of the open shed on a makeshift podium surrounded by extravagant sculptures of vines and flowers. On both sides of him, the vines twirled upward to meet up the top in an arch, sprinkling them with falling Star Jasmine, red Kangaroo Paw and other native flora. Having a friend who could commune with nature made for excellent wedding flower arrangements. The warm spring breeze drifted through every so often, ruffling the decorative arrangement bringing the scent of the flowers and freshly cut grass down to the rest of us sitting in pews. With a swell of pride, I eyed the bountiful green vineyard and blue skies beyond the podium.

We were back at the Urser Estate in Margaret River and for the past few months had been busy bringing the vineyard back to life and readying it for this event. Still in my name, the Estate was the perfect place to settle while we all recovered from our Amazon ordeal. With a bit of hard work, some elbow grease, and a little sneaky help from my abilities, we got the grounds and vines flourishing with ripe grapes. We had been back to the States a few times to visit his family, and to help Cash’s hunting business recover from the soldiers he’d lost. Witches were still around, but we were making headway tracking them down. I had high hopes they’d be eradicated completely in a few years and had also been in talks with the United Nations to loosen the strict protocols against women. I’d also taken that opportunity to start work as an environmental ambassador. I know, very grownup of me.

Another grownup thing was that I knew I’d have to deal with Jed eventually. His loss had affected me more than I wanted to admit. Despite his proclamations that there was no saving us, I couldn’t give up on him. One day I’d return. We hadn’t heard a peep from our friends across the Milky Way, and that’s how we liked it. For now, anyway.

Especially on this important day.

Alvin cut a handsome groom in his charcoal suit and slicked black hair. Next to him, a priest in a robe waited patiently with his fingers interlocked in front of him. Next to me, my husband wore something a lot less formal, a white shirt with the collar open. His short blond hair was styled impeccably, and his stubble had been trimmed to perfection. He’d also cut a handsome groom when we got married ourselves a few months ago. Our ceremony hadn’t been as extravagant as this. We’d just wanted to formalize our union as quick as we could and it ended up being us, a few witnesses (a.k.a. Kitty and Alvin) and Cash’s family in the States.

I glanced at Cash and remembered him looking just as nervous as Alvin. Probably why he’d made the comment just now; He’d remembered how it felt to be waiting for the bride. Yes, Alvin looked anxious. Perhaps a little more so than expected. He was head-over-heels in love with Kitty but, after waiting months for their bodies to heal from injuries, and for Kitty to have the baby, they were eager and ready for this new chapter in their lives—as were we all.

“Well, they’ve been through a lot,” I said to Cash and lightly tickled the chubby infant cradled in my arms. “Isn’t that right, little one?” I made a soft cooing sound. “Mommy and Daddy have been through a lot. They deserve the best wedding the world has seen and Aunty Roo and Uncle Cash are going to make sure they never, ever have to deal with bad people again.”

“What happened to your voice?” Cash asked, looking at me oddly but with the ghost of a smile on his face.

“I’m making baby talk. That's how people talk to babies.”

“Why would people talk differently to babies? They don’t understand words yet.”

He was completely serious.

“Here.” I held out the little swaddled package to him.

Out of instinct, he shifted to take the baby, despite the horror widening his eyes. “But what do I do?”

“Just hold him. I want to take another photo for the wall in the Manor.”

“But…” He leaned down and sniffed the baby’s head. “Smells… innocent.”

I grinned. Seeing the big, lethal man holding something so precious with a soft, reverent touch brought a tear to my eye. I took a photograph with my phone.

He gave me a sideways smirk. “That wall is fast running out of room.”

I grinned back. “I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“I meant”—he scrunched his nose in an adorable way to rub against the baby’s nose—“you need to save room for our child.”

My hand fell to my stomach and rubbed the small, hard swell. He was right. We’d need plenty more room if we were going to capture the long, happy future we planned, starting with the little guy growing inside me. When I looked up, Cash was staring at me with glistening eyes full of affection. He shifted the baby to the crook of one arm, and reached out to cover my hand on my stomach with his warm, larger one.

Then the Wedding March came on and everyone turned to face the rear of the heavily decorated and artfully rustic shed. The small crowd hushed and all eyes were locked on the stunning beauty walking down the aisle in a wedding dress that clung to her curves and fanned out at her feet. In the end, we’d decided babysitting duties trumped Maid of Honor, and I was completely okay with that.

A collective sigh whispered across the room. Kitty was breathtaking. Her blue and green hair had been artfully swept in finger waves to the side and tied at the nape of her neck in a bun. Apart from the colored hair, she looked like she stepped straight out of a silver screen movie. She got to where we sat and gave me a red lipped grin, then made a little finger wave to her baby and continued her way to the podium. Alvin helped her up the small step and they turned to face the priest.

I took another photograph with my phone.

We had all been through a lot, but as I watched Cash smile down at the bundle of new life in his arms, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. Here was life in its purest form. Simple. Honest. Innocent. This was what it was all about.

—THE END—

Thank you for reading this final installation in the Game of Gods series. This is my first series and I hold it close to my heart. If you liked the book, please spare a minute or two to write an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews are how other readers make informed buying decisions, and I need your help for that.

I’m now busy writing the next series. Follow me on social media, or at my website lanapecherczyk.com.

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me!

Lana

Xx

Amazon Link | Goodreads Link

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OMG! How do you say my name?

Lana (straight forward enough - Lah-nah) Pecherczyk (this is where it gets tricky - Pe-her-chick).

I’ve been called Lana Price-check, Lana Pera-chickywack, Lana Pressed-chicken, Lana Pech…that girl! You name it, they said it. It’s Polish, but I’m Australian (I only know the curse words). So if it’s so hard to spell, why on earth would I use this name instead of an easy pen name?

To put it simply, it belonged to my mother. And she was my dream champion.

For most of my life, I’ve been good at one thing – art. The world around me saw my work, and said I should do more of it, so I did.

But when at the age of eight, I said I wanted to write stories, and even though we were poor, my mother came home with a blank notebook and a pencil saying I should follow my dreams, no matter where they take me for they will make me happy. I wasn’t very good at it, but it didn’t matter because I had her support and I liked it.

She died when I was thirteen, and left her four daughters orphaned. Suddenly, I had lost my dream champion, I was split from my youngest two sisters and had no one to talk to about the challenge of life.

So, I  wrote in secret. I poured my heart out daily to a diary and sometimes imagined that she would listen. At the end of the day, even if she couldn’t hear them, writing kept that dream alive.

Eventually, after having my own kids (two firecrackers in the guise of little boys) and ignoring my inner voice for too long, I decided to lead by example. How could I teach my kids to follow their dreams if I wasn’t? I became my own dream champion and the rest is history, here I am.

When I’m not writing the next great action-packed romantic novel, or wrangling the rug rats, or rescuing GI Joe from the jaws of my Kelpie, I fight evil by moonlight, win love by daylight and never run from a real fight.

Visit my website lanapecherczyk.com or follow me on social media here:

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GLOSSARY

CURSE:

When a witch casts a hex that cannot be reversed.

Darklings:

Beings (either human or Nephilim) who have been infected with a poison similar to Original Sin and have become rabid beasts.

The Empire:

The intergalactic group of constellations ruled over by the Queen.

Familiar:

A witch who hasn’t advanced to possessing human bodies yet, only animals

The Game:

Gods from another planet download their souls into half-human, half-god bodies (Nephilim or demi-gods) and race to see who can make the most positive change in the world, without revealing their abilities to humans before they die. When they die, their souls are returned to their godly bodies and the mysterious laws of the universe govern whether they’ve played the game well and receive a boost in evolution (new powers) or devolve (lose powers).

Gamekeeper:

A.k.a. Marc. True name is Egnatius. As the Gamekeeper he is responsible for keeping all Players and Watchers in line. Also known as the God of the In-between.

Hex:

When a witch uses her own DNA which has been loaded with a directive to alter the DNA of a victim. A hex can only be transferred by biological means. Usually sliver, blood or other body fluid.

House, Ursa:

The constellation where Bruce Urser originates. Also the Constellation where the king came from. This house has been known as a brutal war planet. It’s motto is: Victoria Aut Mors (Victory or Death). The bear is its emblem.

House, Epsilon:

Octavia and Pontius are the heads of House Epsilon. Their motto is: Non Loqui Sed Facere (No talk but action.)

House, Eridanus:

Led by Thurstan & Cato Eridanus. They have water powers and Cato has been likened to the god Poseidon. Their motto is: Semper Virilis (Always Virile.) Their emblem is flowing water.

House, Aldebaran:

The meat heads of the Ludus. Their motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, higher, stronger). Their emblem is the bull. Most of this house have super strength.

House, Corvus:

Led by the blind healer Lena. Her progeny is Jesop, the alchemist. Their motto is Corvus Oculum Corvi Non Eruit (A crow will not pull out the eye of another crow). Their emblem is the crow. This house is dedicated to healing.

House, Cetus:

Mathieson is the head of Cetus. The motto is Scientia Potentia Est (Knowledge is Power). Their emblem is the Kraken. Most members of this house usually are very clever or have a way of knowing how things work.

House, Draco:

A little known House. Motto unknown. Leader is Zebedee. Emblem is a dragon. Most of this house has some sort of fire ability.

House, Lyra:

Lyra House has the motto: Astra Inclinant Sed Non Obligant (The stars incline us, they do not bind us). Most of Lyra house are Sirens.

House, Vernalis:

Leader of this House is Jacine (other wise known as Aphrodite). Their motto is: Amor Vincit Omnia (Love conquers all). Their emblem is two fish entwining.

In-Between:

The term used for the void Marc travels through when he teleports to another place. Sometimes time moves differently here and he can emerge having lost hours or days.

The Ludus:

The underground education facilities the gods use to educate trainees. It is also neutral territory so the Game isn’t actually played on site

Nephilim:

Half-human, half-god body for the sole purpose of inhabitation of a godly soul to play the Game on Earth.

Player:

An intergalactic god/Seraphim who has downloaded their soul into a Nephilim body for the purposes of playing the game on Earth. Players have no memory of their life beyond this planet, but they retain the memories of their time on Earth once they have returned to the Empire.

Star-Map:

The tattoo like marking present on all Player bodies that points to their godly soul’s point of origin in the cosmos.

Seraphim:

An immortal being from the other side of the galaxy.

Witch:

An evil, twisted spirit who can possess the body of a human, and pilot the body as they wish until they burn through the host and have to seek out another. Witches can manipulate cosmic energy, including understanding the frequencies the human body works with, making it easy for them to control the human body consciously the way our body works subconsciously. Witches can only possess female bodies.

Seraphim:

An immortal humanoid race with god-like abilities from the Empire.