Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“Drive,” I said.
Lu put the truck in gear and gunned it.
The god grew large, larger but did not step aside.
The truck hit fifty, sixty, eighty miles an hour, but Mithra just smiled and opened his arms wide.
We were going to hit him. There was no avoiding a collision.
I shifted my hold on Abbi, pulling her against me and bracing my other arm on the ceiling of the cab.
Lu gripped the wheel and locked her elbows, bracing for impact.
Eighty, eighty-five miles an hour.
He was there, right there.
Lu yelled.
But there was no impact. We blew right through him.
All the light in the world went off, then snapped back on again.
We sat at a small outdoor café table, beside a quiet city street. Large pots of flowers along the buildings and cobbled walkways sent heady fragrance into the soft breeze. Birds sang in lush green trees, and the low murmur of people around us filled the space.
The buildings, the language, the coffee set in front of us made me think we might be in France.
Well, not literally. Mithra was a god of contracts, of bindings. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t lie and cast an illusion if he wanted to.
I had to believe we were still in the truck, still on Route 66. I had to believe this god couldn’t just snap his fingers and alter our reality so easily.
But he was a god. And gods could do anything.
“Brogan and Lula Gauge.” He lifted his cup in a toast. “It has been some time since we last spoke.”
“Since you tried to kill us,” Lula snarled.
“That too.” His smile was small and mean.
“The answer is no,” I said.
“You don’t even know what I am here to offer.”
“The answer is still no.”
“I don’t like you,” Abbi said.
Mitha’s expression slipped from mostly human, to something cruel and bestial.
“You are insignificant to me.” He snapped his fingers and Abbi turned into a small brown rabbit with one white foot.
She stood on her back feet and hopped, kicking the air.
Mithra snapped his fingers again.
Abbi froze as if he had just pressed a pause button.
“Let her go,” I said.
“When I choose.” He sipped his drink and inclined his head. “If I choose.”
Have I mentioned how much I hated this guy?
Lorde, standing on the cobbles next to Lula, pressed her ears back and growled.
Mithra raised his hand, fingers ready to snap.
“Stop!” Lula grabbed Lorde’s collar, and Lorde immediately sat. “We’re listening,” she said. “Talk.”
Mithra’s smug expression made me want to pop him in the nose just to see if he’d bleed.
He relaxed his hand and settled his cup onto the saucer. The liquid in it was not coffee. It was nebula fire that smelled of hot stone, burned copper, and ash.
“You may know I have been watching you.”
“No,” she said. “We didn’t know.”
“We don’t care,” I said.
“You should.” He waved at our cups encouraging us to drink.
The liquid smelled strongly of coffee, rich and real. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Lu pressed her palm on the table, her fingers so stiff, her knuckles were white. “Why were you watching us?”
“Because I see all contracts. You recently entered into a contract with a god. You bound yourself to him, even after you denied me the same.”
“Again,” I said, “you tried to kill us.”
“You,” he said to me, “I would have killed. You,” he nodded at Lula, “I would have left exactly as you are. Why ruin a masterpiece?”
Pop him in the nose and punch him in the throat.
“Ate and her monsters turned you into powerful tools that can find the spell book of gods, touch it, and unleash its power. It would have been better for…well, the mortal world at least…if I had killed you both.
“I was willing to take you off the chessboard…then. But now…now I think I might give you exactly what you most need to survive.”
Lula and I exchanged a look. Was he gonna give us the same sales spiel every god, devil, and monster had rolled out over the years?
The old—I see you have a problem, and I assure you, I am your only solution—pitch?
I couldn’t help it, I snorted.
“You think I won’t kill you?” he asked.
Yes, he was a god of immense power. There was no questioning he could kill us if he wanted. But from the time and effort he was putting into convincing us he had the upper hand, that he had the solution to all our problems, told me just the opposite.
If he’d wanted to kill us, we’d have already been dead.
He wanted us alive.
Because he wanted something from us.
“No, go on. What are you planning to give us so we can survive?”
It must have been my tone, because his eyes narrowed.
I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting.
“I am the god of contracts, rules, and justice. Any contract made can be unmade by me. Any contract.”
If he was waiting for some kind of big reaction he didn’t get it.
Lula shifted her grip on Lorde, encouraging her to lie down. “We know who you are.” She sounded as bored as I did. “What’s the offer?”
Again, the lines between his eyebrows showed his annoyance.
“I will release you from Ate’s claim. I will break the contracts with which Cupid has bound your lives, your souls to him. I will break the deals you have made with the demon prince and that useless excuse of a trickster, Raven.”
Time ticked. Lorde growled again, a low sustained warning. The people around us went on living their lives, as if we weren’t even here, as if they couldn’t see us.
In all likelihood, they couldn’t.
I knew my answer. It was the same answer I’d always had for gods in general and this one god in specific.
Hell no.
I thought Lula would be on the same page, but she had surprised me in the past, so I looked to her.
“No,” Lula said.
Okay, maybe we were on the exact same page.
Mithra didn’t like being defied. But then, I’d never met a god who did.
“I don’t offer this to you lightly,” he warned.
“Light, heavy,” I said, “the answer is still no.”
He pulled his shoulders back and scowled.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me.” Every word fell like a hammer striking concrete. “I have watched Ate manipulate you. I have watched her break and mold you into the instruments she needs to control the power in the spell book. She has no right to that power.”
Lula’s expression was fierce, but her voice was steady. “We agree. The book should not be in Ate’s control.”
He nodded like we were on our way to finally signing our lives over to him.
A pen appeared in his hand. It glinted with rare metals and stones bound with ribbons of stars.
“Give your lives to me,” he ordered. “Relinquish the spell book into my care. You will be at my summoning if the book is to be accessed. You will cast the spells within it at my demand.
“In return, I will break the bonds Ate has placed upon you. I will break the contracts Cupid forced you into. I will put an end to the agreements, promises, and deals you have made with all monsters, devils, and demons.
“Give your souls to me and bow to my grace and rule.”
Paper shimmered into existence, glowing on the table between us.
The city and people all seemed more distant as if we were leaving a dream behind us.
Birdsong silenced. The wind died. Colors drained to gray.
Mithra changed too. He was taller, grander, and unsettlingly alien in a way a human could never achieve. His power radiated a tempting perfume that I knew only masked endless corruption.
The look of determination on Lula’s face was the same as mine.
We were going to fight another god, this god.
Again.
We had escaped him once, but I’d been a spirit and had more power to help Lula get away from him.
I wasn’t a spirit now. We didn’t have god-killing weapons. What did we have?
Lu had her knives hidden on her, because she always had her knives hidden on her.
I still had the vampire-killing knife Ricky had given me.
None of our knives would kill a god.
But we were about to find out if they would slow a god down.
I readied myself to hit him with everything I had, to give Lu and Abbi and Lorde as much time as possible to run.
To get free.
“We understand your offer,” I said, leaning forward to rise, one hand reaching toward the pen (which I absolutely was not going to touch), the other curling around the hilt of the knife at my hip. “And our answer is no.”
Mithra towered over us before I could register the motion. His power crackled with lightning.
“You dare…” he bellowed.
But I was moving, ignoring my instinct screaming that this was my death, this was my end.
I surged to my feet and rushed around the table, knife drawn to plunge in his throat.
Lula, faster than me, stronger than me, scooped up Abbi, who was no longer frozen, and set her safely on the ground.
Then Lula didn’t bother with dodging around the table. She threw herself over it, straight at the towering deity.
She was there, already there before me, her knives flashing.
I thought I saw movement at the corner of my eye.
Abbi drew up, a furious swirl of silver moonlight and blackness—a girl, a warrior in silver armor, a bunny, a girl again—magic lapping around her.
She disappeared, leaving us behind to fight this fight. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except—
—Lula, a blur of fury and anger—
—Mithra, untouched. The inhuman cruelty of his smile as he lifted one hand—
—Thunder splitting the sky in two, a roar so loud, I yelled and heard nothing—
“Stop!”
That voice was in my head, my soul, in the very air I breathed.
Even though my knife was a fraction away from Mithra’s neck, even though Lula had plunged both her blades into his chest, we were frozen.
Luckily, so was Mithra.
“You have no authority here,” the voice—Cupid’s—said, his words dripping in rage that burned. “You have no power here.”
The memory of Raven telling us Cupid had come to Earth in his god form to fight Ate, to free us from her when she’d kidnapped Lula and tried to kill me, flashed through my mind.
Raven had said when a god fought a god on Earth, it wasn’t something that could be ignored. All gods would see it. And since most gods were secretive assholes, they avoided battles in this reality.
But we were on the brink of two massively powerful deities fighting to the death on this earthly plane.
Mithra stepped back.
Lula’s blades slid free, bloodless. I still couldn’t move, not even enough to reach for her hands.
Mithra took one, two steps away, while Cupid—
—massive as the universe, pure white wings spread to the sky, golden armor, golden bow in hand, a quiver of gold and lead arrows over one shoulder—
—stepped forward, beside us, then in front of us, protecting us from Mithra’s power.
His presence was soothing, a dense forest shade against a punishing sun.
I could breathe again. I could move again.
I wrapped my arms around Lula, just as she grabbed for me.
“You dare challenge me?” Mithra roared. “Here, upon this earth?”
“Stand between me and those within my protection, and I will challenge you throughout all realities and existences, Mithra. Leave now, and our quarrel ends without your destruction.”
“You may be old,” Mithra said, “but the scales of justice are not in your favor, Cupid.”
“Justice never misses its mark.” Cupid lifted his bow. “And neither do I.”
Mithra showed no emotion, but something about him changed. His power grew darker, heavier.
The panic was back, telling me to run, now.
I pulled Lula closer, bracing for the explosion.
Then…
…we were in the truck, canted onto the shoulder of the road, the black clouds of an old storm rumbling away across the distant New Mexico horizon.
“Brogan?” Lula reached for me as I reached for her, our hands (always) finding each other.
“I’m fine. You?”
She nodded. “Abbi?”
“I’m right here,” Abbi said from outside my door. “I called him. I could see him, so I called him because we needed help. We needed a lot of help.”
“Who?” Lula asked. “Who did you call, Abbi?”
“Me,” Raven, the trickster god said, leaning into Lula’s open window. “She called me.”