Chapter Five Taranis
Chapter Five
Taranis
“You’re sure this is a good idea?”
“I haven’t booked all of her time, only some of it, and only at my discretion.”
“Still, having a photographer on your heels half the time could be a problem.”
“You let me worry about my problems. You worry about yours. You’re not any closer to crushing the humans and bringing in the Elders, and it’s only been, what? Twenty-two years?”
The world’s most notorious supervillain shifts in his seat like he’s too large for it.
The Marduk is the biggest fucker I’ve ever seen, short of the reverted Wyvern.
Meaty around the trunk, meaty in the neck, meaty in the arms and thighs, and covered in tattoos, he looks like he could throw a car.
Luckily for me, I’m on his side. At least until his side ceases to serve me.
He pulls on his long, blond beard. The tattoos on his white skin look ghastly, but he’s clearly not one to give a fuck about his appearance.
He watches me with narrowed black eyes. His eyes are always black whenever he sees me.
Mine, however, remain a neutral purple. Hate me all he likes, I don’t have the energy to hate him.
I nothing him, just like I nothing most everything and everyone.
“You don’t even want your true Tratharine form back,” he sneers.
True and false. I want the power that comes with reverting to my native alien form, but I do enjoy the perks this human face gives me. Still, I smile and lie, “What can I say? Monster isn’t my dream look.”
“It’s your true face.”
“This one takes me places.”
“Burn it.”
“My face? Nah. Like I said, I’ll keep it, thanks.”
“Burn down the world that it gives you.”
“That was supposed to be the Wyvern’s job as the first among us to revert, and since you and your little minions failed to convince him to join your side, it looks like you’ll have to find another way to overthrow humanity and open the portal that allows your Elders to pass through.”
The Marduk growls and leans forward in his flimsy seat. He slams his fists down on the intricately tiled table, which groans underneath his unwavering grip. “Our Elders. Just because you forsake your Tratharine past doesn’t mean it will not catch up to you.”
It’s four a.m. and the coffee shop we’re at is empty.
It’s owned and operated by an Ethiopian woman with braids in her hair and a skip in her step.
She is so cheery it feels like a slight.
The only thing that makes it possible to overcome is the fact that the skips in her steps falter every few feet when she trips over something.
She is tall, no curves to speak of—unlike Monika, who has curves for days.
The young Ethiopian woman is also gangly and clumsy.
The Marduk doesn’t seem to notice her at all even though she’s the only other person here.
“The past is not so interesting to me as the future,” I confess, shaking off thoughts of Monika and her lush curves spattered in blood as she hauled herself up onto the station platform, crawling out of the dark. I . . . hadn’t expected that. “I want freedom from these humans.”
“Then we want the same thing. It’s just a shame the Meinad and Bia needed to remind you I’m not to be fucked with.
” His gaze moves over my face, where I still bear lingering scars from where that fucking dickhole scratched the shit out of me.
The scars will fade completely in a few days, but I can’t say I’m not annoyed.
Especially considering that I’m going to the fucking South Korean Embassy party on Friday and I don’t particularly want to be photographed looking like Scar.
I clench my teeth, disliking the implication that I’m a wild thing needing to be tamed—or worse, a toddler needing a time-out—and place my hand flat and meaningfully on the colorful tiled table between us.
“I’m only here because you’re a fucking psycho who coordinates his clandestine takeover of the entire world at the crack of dawn on a Monday morning from a coffee shop. ”
My gaze moves over his shoulder to the woman as she busies herself around her shop like we’re not even here.
The Marduk and I have met here a few times already, and though it confused the shit out of me the first time I met him here, and not at his more sinister-looking lair down at the old docks, I’ve never asked him about it.
Annoyed, I lean forward and watch the woman trip over the leg of a chair before frowning down at it, smiling, giving it three pats like it’s a small dog, and returning it to its place.
“Did you hypnotize her?” I say.
“That’s not my purview. No.”
“Is she blind?”
“Is that truly what you want to waste your time here interrogating? The coffee shop girl?” His face twitches. All over. Every muscle spasming like he wants nothing more than to reach across the table with his powers and inflate my lungs till they burst.
He’s more powerful than I am, and that knowledge hurts. That’s why I’m here. I need more. I need everything. And only when I have it will I take out the COE with his help, take him out if needed, and exist as I was always meant to: as a god of this world, worshipped by all, beholden to none.
That means ensuring that the Elders don’t make it to this planet. And that may mean going toe to toe with the Marduk. Something I’m not prepared to do right now. Not if I don’t want to end up with pieces of my pretty face scattered all over this coffee shop.
“You’re worried about my little photographer, but wouldn’t it make more sense for your little coffee shop girl to be the spy? You do meet all kinds of . . . acquaintances here. She could be taking notes.”
“No, there’s only one spy present.” His eyes narrow. He says the word like it’s an insult, but I don’t care.
I smile lazily. “If you’re confident she isn’t going to take our picture and plaster it to her six followers on social media, then I guess I’ll trust you on that.
” I watch as she refills the disposable lids and napkins at the little station set up near the exit, dropping half of them in the process.
As if sensing me watching her, she glances up as she reaches the large water cooler and, seeing me staring, gives me a little wave.
I raise an eyebrow. It seems to throw her, because she wobbles on her step stool as she pours a pitcher of water into the larger dispenser.
Water spills over the rim, and whoops—the pitcher slips from her fingers and comes crashing down.
The Marduk shuts his eyes for longer than a standard blink, his jaw grinding, but he doesn’t turn around to see if she’s all right.
Not that I expect him to. He cares even less for humans than I do.
The Marduk landed on this planet when I did, twenty-two years ago, but where I landed as a confused creature unsure of myself and this world, the Marduk landed with his memories intact of the world we came from: Tratharine.
The first time I ever agreed to meet with him as a teen, the Marduk had spun me a wild fantasy of a planet distant from this one forged in violence.
The Elders, the ruling body of Tratharine, had set their sights on Earth.
They want it for a new home, to expand, to extend their vast dominion over many planets across the universe.
And we Forty-Eight are the tools they used to do it. We Forty-Eight form their army.
Reversion is meant to happen to each of us Forty-Eight during our tenure here on Earth. Once reverted, those of us with no memory of Tratharine are set to regain them so that we share the same loyalty the Marduk already does to the Elders and the same bloodlust to enslave or end the humans.
But the Marduk hasn’t reverted yet. The only one among the Forty-Eight who has is the Wyvern, and he doesn’t seem particularly interested in aligning himself with any army.
In fact, the key to his reversion was a woman—a human woman to whom he has devoted everything, all in the name of a thing I do not understand and I know the Marduk doesn’t understand either: love.
The keys aren’t fully understood. At least, not by me. But the little information I’ve gathered from the COE is that each of us Forty-Eight has an earthbound key that will help us recover our memories, our true forms, and lead us to our weapons.
I know the Marduk fears these keys. If others revert as the Wyvern has and fall in love—uck—with their keys, the Marduk’s mission is doomed.
He’s already doomed, as far as I’m concerned.
The Wyvern is more powerful than the Marduk is one-to-one, and there are, as of now, as many Champions as there are villains willing to fight them.
But the Marduk must know something I don’t, because he remains steadfast to his original purpose and determined to see the Elders’ plan through.
I feel no such loyalty. I am loyal to only one being in the entire universe: me.
“You all right there, miss?” I call in my most seductive tone, without breaking the Marduk’s gaze. Curious because his face gets redder and redder beneath the patterns of tattoos swirling over his arms, hands, neck, and up his jaw to his beard-covered cheeks.
“Sorry!” she shouts, popping back up, drenched in water. As she looks at me, she trips over her stool again. “Don’t mind me, Mr. Taranis!”
I smirk. “She knows who we are.”
“She’s inconsequential. Now, stop stalling.” The Marduk’s gaze blazes, shining dark light over his cheeks. “I know you have it. The Meinad and Bia’s message wouldn’t have gotten through to you and you wouldn’t be here now if you didn’t. Give me my weapon.”
“A deal is a deal.”
He kicks something beneath the table. It’s a duffel bag—well worn, by the look of the frayed black stitching. “I have yours, but you aren’t leaving without handing over mine first.”
We Forty-Eight fell to Earth with our weapons, but they were taken by the SDD. The Marduk and his minions were able to break into the building some years ago and abscond with several, but the COE still holds several more. Less, now that I’ve stolen one of them.
The Marduk told me that these weapons, when combined, will open a doorway for the Elders and the other Tratharine to pass through so they can claim this world as another of theirs. They will also help us reduce the humans to servants or eradicate them altogether.
The Marduk knew I’d have no trouble stealing his weapon from the COE. I didn’t. And in exchange, among the weapons he stole from the SDD, he claims to have mine. I know the chances he’s lying to me are high, but still, curiosity compelled me to oblige.
I reach into my inner jacket pocket and pull out a flimsy stretch of rope, the one I nearly got my eyes gouged out over by the Meinad. “Your weapon, my liege.” I toss it onto the table between us, and the unremarkable black whip lands with a soft thud, unremarkably.
Yet the Marduk’s eyes go wide. He looks down at it like it’s a golden chalice offering up immortality. “You did have it. Why did you not give it to me when I first asked you for it?”
“I was busy,” I lie. The truth is that I needed time.
He is already more powerful. If he knows how to use his weapon, even if he gives me mine, that may make the deficit between our respective powers even more unsettling.
I had his weapon, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to give it up.
Bia and the Meinad, however, did indeed successfully convince me.
“Bastard,” the Marduk hisses when I don’t elaborate. He shoves back from the table. “We’re done here.”
“Mine better be more interesting than that dirty old shoelace.”
The Marduk doesn’t react except to smile. It’s a creepy fucking smile. “You’d be surprised at just what terrors I can bring with this ‘dirty old shoelace.’” His irises buzz with energy that swells between us, an invisible wave threatening to unseat me.
I clench my teeth and cling to the edge of the table as the wave rolls over me, leaving the hairs on the backs of my arms standing on end and my lungs feeling slightly breathless. Annoyed, I snap, “Enjoy yourself, then. It still does you little good, shaped like that.”
“Likewise.” He kicks the bag under the table again, and I reach down and grab it. It’s lightweight, yet metal clanks when I shake it.
“The fuck is this?” I ask him.
He stands up and starts to show me his back. “You figure it out.”
“Fucker.”
“If you want to know what your weapon does, meet me here same time next week, and we’ll make another trade,” he tosses over his shoulder.
“For what?”
“Another weapon. I’m sure it’ll be no trouble for you at all to steal from the COE again.”
It won’t, but I have no intention of helping him arm his guard. “We’ll see,” I evade.
He shrugs. “Or don’t. There’s always information you can trade.”
I have traded him information about the COE’s activities before, but it is still risky.
If I continue to help him cut off the COE’s investigations into his activities, eventually the COE might start to suspect a leak.
I don’t need their eyes turning to me. Not yet.
Not until I have the strength needed to stage my coup and wipe out their leader.
“We’ll see,” I repeat.
“Suit yourself. You know how to get in touch with me.”
I feel the burner phone in my inner jacket pocket, that slight weight, and nod.
I grab my clanking duffel bag while the coffee shop girl scuttles into the back kitchen, the wafting aroma of freshly roasting coffee beans filling the space behind her, and follow the Marduk toward the door.
Out on the sidewalk, I shout to him while he stalks away from me toward the sunrise, pulling up his black hood. “Next time, I’m not meeting you here at four a.m. Pick a different time.”
“No. We meet before the café opens to the public.”
“Then we’ll meet somewhere else at a human time.”
“No,” he seethes. Wind whips past me that causes chills to crawl up the back of my neck and sear my lungs. “Never forget: We aren’t human.”