Chapter 20
“Get your filthy hands off my child, guardian, or I swear I will kill you again. And this time I promise… death will stick.”
How the hell did Manea sneak up on us?
It took every ounce of control for Jasper not to flinch. Instead, his grip tightened on Savannah’s wrist. Just before Mantus had pushed him into this bizarre world, the god had blasted Jasper with the closest thing to hellfire he’d ever experienced. Since then, Jasper had pretended to be Mantus’s slave. Luckily, he had expected the bastard to try something like that, so his angelic protection had been set to supersonic levels—that, and the extra divine love energy Savannah had flooded the trail through Hell with.
At least he hadn’t been possessed. He wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to hold off the insane deity, and then they really would’ve been in dire straits.
“I said—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, woman!” Mantus roared. He shoved Jasper and Savannah out of his way, stomping over to his wife.
Apparently, a match not made in Heaven.
“You’ve gone too far this time!”
That earned the Billy-clad god a resounding slap.
Jasper tugged Savannah against his chest and whispered, “It’s going to be okay. I’m gonna get you out of here. Let the lovebirds battle it out for top dog, then I’ll deal with the survivor.”
She turned so quickly in his arms to face him that he didn’t have time to adjust. Her hand flew up and smacked his face.
“What was that for, love?” he ground out while rubbing his throbbing jaw.
The deities’ bickering faded into the background. Relief flooded Jasper’s body, making him a little weak in the knees just gazing down at the fiery beauty glaring daggers at him. Unbidden, his hand reached out to caress her face, only to be slapped down.
“What the hell, little one?”
Another slap. “Do. Not. Call. Me. That. Again. I. Hate. It.”
“Duly noted.” He bowed his head like a schoolboy being reprimanded by the nun teacher. Then, he flashed his signature half-grin and looked up with pleading eyes. “You can discipline me really good and proper when we get out of here, and far away from the loony-toon duo.”
Light cornflower blue eyes narrowed on him for a beat more, then her lips spread into a radiant smile. “Damn straight, I will.”
“Any clue where we are? Once Mantus shoved me through the portal, I lost all sense of direction.” Jasper’s hand reached out to grab hers.
“And you gained some weird eyes…” Savannah peered up at him, eyebrows furrowed over the bridge of her nose, and her expression clouded with doubt.
“Oh, yeah.” He blinked a few times to clear the spell he’d used to change his eye color to make Mantus think he was under his godly control. “Just playing games, love.”
Savannah slumped with obvious relief. “Thank goodness, cause I don’t know what I’d have done if you’d been truly turned, and the only way out was to kill you. Not sure I could’ve done it.”
“Well, that’s somewhat of a relief that you’d have hesitated if it came to killing me.” He chuckled. As if she could take him down.
But then an unwelcome thought popped up and he frowned. Savannah was a demigoddess, if Manea was to be believed. She wouldn’t have much trouble taking down a mere guardian angel.
The tension in the atmosphere became tight and stifling as Mantus and Manea squared off against each other. Everything from the most minuscule blade of grass to the twinkling orbs flying around like fireflies over a swamp in mid-July glowed bright neon. The gods were calling forth all their power from the environment to fuel them for a death match against each other.
“We need to get out of here fast, before those two blow us all to kingdom come.” He jerked backward and turned around to find Savannah staring at the warring couple, her feet squarely planted.
“No.”
Jasper stared at her. “No? You want to just stick around and wait for the winner to slaughter us?”
“Not going to happen. Just watch and listen.” Her head nodded toward Mantus and Manea.
A whirlwind of energy raged around them in a twister formation, spitting out sparks. It spun faster and faster, closing in tighter around the couple. Neither paid it any mind. They continued arguing like the married-for-too-long spouses that they were.
He guessed that the to death do us part thing was a real bitch when you lived for eternity.
“Wait.” A delightful realization hit Jasper. “They’re not doing that, are they?” A smile brightened her beautiful face. “You are.”
The tornado swirling around them, now with full-on flames, finally got the attention of the ones captured within it. At the same moment, they stopped screeching at each other and looked around, horror filling their eyes, now wide with fear.
“Daughter!” Manea screamed.
“I am not your daughter,” Savannah spat. “Biology be damned.”
Her eyes cut to Jasper. “Does biology have anything to do with gods and such?”
He shrugged.
She turned back to face her mother. Defiance blared from her eyes. “You’re nothing but a menace… to me, to the human world, and I expect a helluva lot more.”
Mantus opened his mouth to speak, but Savannah cut him off. “You, too. Don’t try to weasel your way out of this. You’re both horrible persons… entities… deities… whatever the hell you are. You corrupt everything you touch—objects, people, worlds. The best thing I can do for you both is to end you here and now.”
A high-pitched hysterical laugh erupted from Manea’s perpetually crimson-red lips. “You don’t have even half the power it would take to kill me. This”—she waved her arms around in a full circle—“all this gives me strength, divine strength. It’s my home. It empowers me. Just this brief time back after millennia, and my powers are restored. You, pesky little one, despite being my blood, are no match for me.”
Mantus nodded his head with the Joker grin spreading across his vessel’s pale, freckled face. “She’s right. It’s why I banned her from this place, to keep her in her weakened state. That’s why I knew this was where she was headed with you. Without one of her own blood, she couldn’t pass through the gateway to here. She had been eternally exiled… until you.” He sneered.
Jasper had known Manea had been mostly dormant for hundreds of years, except for the rare trip to the human realm—one such instance being when she’d slaughtered him. But he had never known why the goddess had disappeared. “Lovers’ quarrel, huh?”
“The bitch pillaged entire continents and murdered thousands of my lovers. What was I supposed to do? Let her roam free at full strength to do more damage? The weaker she became, the less havoc she could cause. She finally became so fragile, that a shaman was able to form a weapon to keep her under wraps from all time, space, and dimension… until Billy Boy and Mama What’s-Her-Name unearthed it and set her free.” He punched himself in the chest to drive home the point. The rodeo hand and the rodeo boss had unleashed this monster.
A thought struck Jasper as a thunderbolt out of thin air. “Then, Mantus, why is it that she can waltz around without a host body, but you have to catch a ride with Billy? If she’s the weaker one, she should need a vessel too, right?”
Softly at first, but growing exponentially in volume, a giggle morphed into a full fit of laughter, complete with Savannah doubling over and slapping her knee. “You’re jealous. She’s more powerful than you, even when denied access to her reservoir of divinity. You didn’t give a damn about all your lovers being massacred by your wife, or the thousands of people slain. You locked her out for your own ego.”
As if the thought had never occurred to her, Manea slowly turned her head to glare at her husband. With the swirling energy around them making them appear blurry to those on the outside, it was impossible to miss the message in those eyes… You son of a bitch!
Jasper couldn’t help it, he laughed so hard that tears leaked from his eyes. He laughed so long, he lost his breath. This whole disaster was because of a man’s—well, a god’s—fragile ego. This was too much!
The couple’s bickering kicked back up into high gear once again. The twister sped up around them.
Jasper glanced over at Savannah. “Ready to ditch this popsicle stand?”
She chewed on her lower lip, which was sexy as hell, and shook her head. “No, I can’t kill them outright. Once we leave—if we find a way out—the tornado will disappear and then the two nut cases will be loose again. They’ll come after me. They’ll come after you. And I don’t particularly care to just leave Billy’s body behind for Mantus to play with.”
She had made valid points, but Jasper wasn’t attached to the lanky rodeo hand. He’d been willing to chalk the kid up as a loss. A sad loss, but he wouldn’t have lost any sleep over it.
“If only there was some source of water,” she muttered.
“Water? You’re thirsty?” Jasper blinked at her in confusion. What the hell does water have to do with ridding the universe of two fruit-loop deities?
“No.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “Back at the creek, the Lakota spirits told me the key to ending Manea… for good. But there’s zero water, not even a drop of moisture in this entire realm.”
Jasper considered the obvious solution was to let Mantus and Manea kill each other, but that wasn’t the best plan. If Mantus won, he’d be a menace—an annoying one, like an insistent telemarketer trying to sell him a service warranty for his Harley than a true world-ending type of villain. He’d show up to raise a little chaos and destruction from time to time, but nothing like what could happen if Manea killed her husband. All safe bets led to one conclusion—Savannah would never be safe and neither would most of humanity.
He steepled his fingers under his chin. “Is this like the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz?”
She flashed him an annoyed look that he understood to be a No.
“How much water do you need?”
“Not much. Just a drop which I can expand. Oh!” Her finger popped up like she’d just had an eureka moment. “I think I may need some sacred wood.”
“You think?” This did not sound like a solid, well-laid out plan. He preferred strategy over reckless guessing and jumping out of a plane without a parachute. That was more his guardian friend’s—Greylyn’s—style.
“I don’t have time to explain. My energy is draining.” She pointed toward Manea and Mantus.
The tornado that encircled them had slowed, the glowing lights had dimmed, and the gods had taken notice, too. Now, they were glaring at Savannah with murder in their eyes.
“My dear daughter,” Manea cooed. “You’ve been a naughty child. Your stepfather and I agree that you should be punished.” Her hand reached through the twister. It withered and died. The smile that lit her face would’ve sent David and Goliath fleeing, along with both their armies.
An ice-cold dread formed in the pit of Jasper’s stomach. “Not good.”
Manea and Mantus both simultaneously raised their hands to chest level and pointed straight at Jasper. “Yeah, not good,” they said in unison.
A blast of sizzling and freezing energy slammed into his chest, knocking him back twenty or more feet. One was going to burn him alive while the other turned him into a snow cone. His mouth opened to scream, but the next blast hit him, obliterating his ability to think, much less to speak. Sound stopped. Time stopped. He was caught in a vacuum of torment.
Part of him begged for a swift death as he had centuries earlier when Manea had slaughtered him and thousands of other warriors. Death had laughed at him that terrifying day for he had only died to his human self and been reborn a guardian angel.
The other part demanded he live to make sure Savannah survived. If he could just do that, he’d die happily. For real, this time.
A light flashed before his eyes. No, don’t let this be the end. Not yet. I can’t leave…
Another blinding light hit him, and then… darkness and peace.