Chapter 17 Aaron
AARON
Seth’s face filled every screen on the Strip. Every billboard, every rooftop display, every casino marquee. His teeth glowed so white they looked backlit, which only made the rest of him read like a badly adjusted spray tan.
“Citizens.” His voice rolled across Vegas, amplified and theatrical.
“For so long, your city has thrived on indulgence. You eat, you gamble, you sin.” His tone dipped into a sultry rumble, his eyes practically licking the camera.
“You pray at the altar of desire, only to leave empty and yearning for more. I am here to change that. To give you a life of excess, pleasure, spectacle.”
A red carpet materialized out of thin air. Literally appeared. It unfurled down the center of the Strip in one long, unbroken ribbon, trimmed in gold. Seth stepped onto it with a swagger so practiced I wondered if he spent time rehearsing in a mirror.
I was a step behind him. Decorative. Silent. A living accessory.
People poured out of buildings as if drawn by a magnet. They pressed toward the carpet, clapping with mechanical enthusiasm. Their faces told a different story. Confusion twisted their features. Some twisted their arms at unnatural angles, puppets struggling against the unseen force holding them.
Seth soaked it in like it was sunlight.
He touched his chest in mock modesty then tossed a kiss into the crowd. The wave of forced cheering surged louder.
“How can I make this world effortless for you?” Seth crooned. “How can I lift every burden, so you live only in pleasure? All I ask in return is your unwavering devotion. Your admiration. Your appreciation. Your love.”
The grin that followed sharpened so much it could cut glass.
He drifted to the edge of the carpet where a line of people clapped against their will. He stopped in front of a couple in their eighties. Their hands smacked together on command. Their faces trembled with fear.
“And perhaps,” Seth said lightly, “a few tokens of your affection.”
He lifted his hand toward the woman. Her necklace ripped from her neck and shot straight into his palm. She gasped, but her applause never stopped.
The wrongness of everything bit into the marrow of my bones.
Seth glanced over his shoulder at me, reading my expression with smug amusement. “Sentiment holds far more power than money,” he murmured. “Mortals used to bring offerings to our temples. We are reviving the old ways.”
The crowd cheered again, thunderous and hollow, and I was unable to move, unable to help, forced to watch Vegas become his temple while he paraded me at his side, proof he had already won.
The cheers pounded against my skull in punishing waves. Every clap, every forced scream from the crowd was wired straight into my nerves. I stood there behind Seth, frozen and useless.
I did this. I handed him the weapon he needed. I walked straight into it.
I’d wanted to matter. I’d wanted to be stronger, brave, invincible enough that Timothy wouldn’t have to carry the weight of me.
I wanted to stand beside him without feeling like a fragile mortal who would crack under the first bad hit.
So I let Seth change me. I let myself believe I was taking control of my life. I thought I was stepping into power.
Instead, I’d handed Seth the match and poured the gasoline myself.
Before Seth moved farther down the carpet, his gaze snagged on a girl near the front row. Eighteen at most, flanked by her parents, still clapping against their will.
“Just a few tokens,” he murmured.
With a flick of his hand, the girl’s spine snapped straight. She jerked forward, ripped from the line, her feet carrying her toward him with mechanical obedience.
“I thank you for such a beautiful trinket,” he said to her parents, dripping false sincerity as he inspected their horror-stricken faces.
In an instant, the girl’s tank top and shorts shimmered away. A glittering micro dress clung to her body, sequins catching every stray beam of neon. Her ponytail exploded into a sculpted updo, and heavy makeup settled across her features as if brushed on by invisible hands.
Seth didn’t stop there. He swept his arm over the crowd like he was selecting hors d’oeuvres. More young people lurched free, their clothes morphing into the same glitzy, hollow glamour. They lined up behind him, each wearing that awful frozen smile the moment resistance flickered in their eyes.
A parade of unwilling offerings.
The cheering spiked again, louder, emptier.
The girl cast one last look at her family. Pure pleading. Then her face snapped back into that plastic smile, and she waved as if she’d always belonged at Seth’s side.
Seth basked in it. He fed on it.
And then he turned his gaze down the length of the Strip.
Toward Sinopolis.
A slow, delighted smile unfurled on his mouth. “Time to expand my portfolio,” he said lightly. “Why limit myself to the living when the dead are so…ripe for the taking?”
My stomach dropped.
He wasn’t just parading power.
He wasn’t just taking Vegas.
He was heading straight for Timothy’s domain. The souls. The mantle. The seat Grim left behind. If Seth claimed that, he wouldn’t just control mortals. He’d control immortals. The balance. Everything.
He had to be stopped.
Before he became the god of the living and the dead.
The ground vibrated faintly beneath my feet. Seth paused mid-stride. His eyes narrowed. He sensed it too.
A hush rippled down the Strip, swallowing even the forced applause. Seth’s parade stilled. The neon seemed to dim, as if the city itself was bracing.
I swallowed hard.
“Timothy,” I whispered.
There he was, alone in the middle of the road.
Seth turned his head, slow and predatory, toward the direction of Sinopolis…and smiled like he’d just been handed the very fight he’d been aching for.
“Well then,” he said. “Let us meet with the scribe.”
The carpet surged forward, and Seth led his unwilling procession straight toward Timothy and Sinopolis.
And all I could do was follow, my feet dragging like they’d been filled with concrete, my throat so dry I couldn’t swallow, my eyes fixed on Timothy’s silhouette as if staring hard enough might somehow make him stronger than a god who’d just snapped the will of an entire city without breaking a sweat.
The carpet glided to a stop.
Timothy squared off in the center of the empty Strip, bathed in the hard glow of neon, as composed as if he were about to begin a lecture instead of confronting a god on the brink of declaring himself ruler of the living and the dead.
He wasn’t in ceremonial garb now. No armor. No theatrics.
A simple suit. His tablet in hand. His posture straight, meticulous, deliberate.
Seth slowed, amused. “Well. Look who finally decided to stop brooding and show up.”
Timothy didn’t rise to the bait. He lifted his gaze with the cool, measured clarity of a man accustomed to sorting the universe into order.
“Seth,” he said, voice precise, almost gentle.
“You have taken power that does not belong to you. You have compelled mortals, stolen offerings, tampered with souls, and violated every law our pantheon agreed to uphold.”
Seth spread his arms in mock offense. “Laws are tedious. You of all gods should appreciate efficiency.”
Timothy tilted his head slightly. “Efficiency,” he repeated. “Yes. And order.”
His fingers tightened minutely around his tablet, and it transformed into his staff. “Which is why I cannot allow you to continue.”
Seth laughed, loud and delighted. “You? By yourself? Where is your little mortal warrior? Where is the blade that could cut me? You look terribly…unattended.”
Timothy’s expression didn’t shift. Not a flicker.
“I am not here to posture,” he said calmly. “I am here to correct.”
He took a single step forward, the kind that needed no power display to carry weight. His voice remained level, not raised, but it carried down the Strip with absolute clarity.
“As god of the dead, I am responsible for the balance you have broken. And I will restore it.”
Seth’s smirk faltered.
Timothy straightened his cuffs, the staff remaining upright on its own. The gesture was somehow more threatening than shouting would have been. It was tidy. Controlled. Final. And absolutely Timothy.
“You will not keep the power you have stolen,” he said. “And I will stop you.”