Murdered Gods (Shadows of the Immortals Book 2) Read online

  MURDERED GODS

  Marina Finlayson

  Copyright © 2016 Marina Finlayson

  www.marinafinlayson.com

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Marina Finlayson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth).

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.

  Cover design by Karri Klawiter

  Model stock image from Taria Reed/The Reed Files

  Editing by Larks & Katydids

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  Published by Finesse Solutions Pty Ltd

  2016/12/#01

  Author’s note: This book was written and produced in Australia and uses British/Australian spelling conventions, such as “colour” instead of “color”, and “-ise” endings instead of “-ize” on words like “realise”.

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  For Connor and Jen. Thanks for all the plalks.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  ALSO BY MARINA FINLAYSON

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  It’s not every day you have a beer with the Lord of the Underworld. I’d shared drinks with him before, but that was when I thought he was a vampire named Alberto Alinari. Today he’d revealed, in spectacular fashion, that underneath the undead exterior he was actually Hades, king of the dead.

  I was surprisingly unfazed by this discovery. What can I say? It had been a rough couple of days. Stealing magic rings out from under the nose of the most powerful fireshaper in the land, statues coming to life, betrayals and counter-betrayals … yeah, it had been a busy week. And we weren’t done yet.

  The beer was cold, and most welcome after the oh-my-God-I’m-about-to-die stress of the fight outside. The wet glass left damp rings on the shining wood of the bar. It wasn’t like Alberto—excuse me, Lord Hades—to forget the coaster, but I guess it had been a stressful morning for him, too, what with saving us from imminent death, just in the nick of time. Alberto always had been one for the big, showy gesture.

  “You going to drink that, or just push it around in circles?” the Lord of the Underworld asked in a rather testy tone. He was most particular about the pristine surface of his bar, which he usually kept polished to a shine you could see your face in.

  I picked up my glass and chugged the beer, the amber liquid sliding down my parched throat, then slammed the empty glass back down on the bar. “Drink it.”

  He raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. I’d always thought he looked like the stereotype of a vampire—dark hair swept back from a pale, high forehead, with a certain air of elegance in his clothes and manner. Now I wondered if he really looked like that at all.

  “Another?” he asked.

  “Please.” I watched him refill the glass, then rather pointedly wipe the bar clean of wet spots. “Unless you’ve got some ambrosia back there.”

  “It’s overrated.” He poured some milk into a saucer and set it beside the beer. Syl leapt up onto the bar and lapped daintily at it. “Fine if you’ve got a thing for liquid honey, otherwise you’d probably find it too sweet.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

  *Me either,* Syl said into my mind, her pink tongue carefully cleaning drops of milk from her whiskers. *Ask him what Hell’s like.*

  *If you stayed human for more than two minutes at a time, you could ask him yourself.* I’d seen her human form twice in the last twenty-four hours, and that was twice more than I had in the whole of the last three months. Surely now that Anders was dead she didn’t feel the need to hide the fact that she was a shifter any more?

  The whole situation was surreal. The shapers’ gods—who I’d never believed in—were not only real in a vague, watching-over-us kind of way, but actually physically present in the world, and taking part in the action. As if it wasn’t bad enough to be mixed up with the shapers themselves, without throwing divinities into the mix.

  “Why have you been pretending to be a vampire running a pub in the middle of nowhere if you’re actually a—a god?” I could hardly even say it. Already, the proof was growing hazy in my memory, as if my mind were trying to protect me from the knowledge. Had I really seen him surrounded by swirling shadows? Driving his hand into a man’s chest, killing with his touch?

  “Eternity is a long time.” Alberto’s dark eyes watched me intently, though he lounged against the other side of the bar, apparently relaxed. “I’ve been many things, and lived many places. After the first millennium or so even a god gets tired of adulation, and anonymity starts looking really attractive. Celebrity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know.”

  “So you decided to try life as a vampire bartender?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? I’ve been worse things. Besides, in times like these, it pays to keep your head down.”

  “Times like what?”

  “Times when humans get it into their heads to start killing gods and stealing their powers.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. How can you be killed if you’re immortal?”

  He sighed. “Oh, trust me, there are ways. And ‘immortal’ is a human interpretation, anyway. An easy word for a difficult concept. From a human perspective, ‘immortal’ is as good a word as any. At any rate, the shadow shapers don’t seem to be having any trouble. In the last year, my underworld has been flooded with gods, all turning up looking absolutely stunned to find themselves dead. It’s practically a war, but one we don’t have any idea how to fight.”

  *I thought those ancient Greek guys were all about the fighting?* Syl said. *Well, that, and the sex. Every second story had Zeus bonking someone else.*

  “Why not?” I asked, doing my best to ignore Syl’s commentary. Hades probably wouldn’t appreciate my sniggering while we were discussing something so serious. I shot Syl a dirty look, but she blinked those big, green eyes innocently.

  “We’re a suspicious lot,” he said. “We’ve had to be, to survive this long. We all have our ways of protecting ourselves. Yet somehow these shadow shapers are getting through our defences, capturing even the mightiest of us. People who ought not to be vulnerable. No one knows how they’re doing it.” He sighed. “Which of course makes everyone even less trusting. Honestly, trying to get gods to work together is like herding cats. No offence, Syl.”

  She stuck a haughty pink nose in the air. *I don’t see why people have to pick on cats for their metaphors. It’s not like herding anything is exactly easy, is it?*

  “So you’re hiding out here?” I certainly had been. Berkley’s Bay was a great place for it: quiet, with a large transient population.

  His saturnine brows drew together into a frown. Oops. Maybe gods didn’t like suggestions of cowardice. “I’ve been here for years, since long before this trouble started. Let’s just say, anonymity is particularly attractive right now.”

  So, definitely hiding, then. I di
dn’t know why he couldn’t just admit it. If it was true that the shadow shapers had some secret way of sneaking up on the gods, or whatever they were doing, there was no shame in wanting to stay hidden safely away.

  I looked around the bar, which was not as dark as it normally would be at this time of day. The building had no windows, since vampires and daylight don’t get along so well. Two sets of doors stood between the interior and the street outside, with a small space in between, like the airlock in a spacecraft. Alberto the vampire had always been very particular about making sure the clientele only opened one door at a time, to stop the light from entering.

  Now the inner doors hung crazily from their hinges, and the outer doors were gone, having been blasted into the street when Alberto had joined the fight outside. Bright morning sunshine stretched in a long golden stripe across the patterned carpet and threw the floral carvings on the front of the bar into relief.

  “So what are you going to do now?” I gestured at the light, and the broken doors. “Everyone will know you’re not a vampire, as soon as word spreads.” If the shadow shapers got wind of what he’d done, how long would he stay hidden? “Will you stay?”

  “Will word spread?”

  *He’s kidding, right?* said Syl. *Has he met Tegan?*

  Tegan was the weretiger who ran the hair salon right next to my bookshop. Like most hairdressers, she had an easy way of chatting with her clients. If you wanted to know what was happening in Berkley’s Bay, Tegan’s salon was the first place you went. Tegan had taken one look at Jake, covered in blood and practically incoherent with exhaustion, and bundled him into her car.

  “Tegan will be at the hospital by now. And if everyone in the place hasn’t heard the story within the next half hour, I’ll die of shock.”

  Alberto smiled. Hades smiled? Dammit, I couldn’t think of him as Hades. For the last three months, I’d known him as Alberto, my employer and benefactor. And now, apparently, my very own deus ex machina. “Tegan will have forgotten the more troubling aspects of our little drama by the time she reaches the hospital.”

  “She will?” It took my brain a moment to catch up. God, I was tired. I’d been awake for over twenty-four hours, most of them under high stress. “You mean you’ve … magicked her to forget?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I am the master of the underworld and all it contains.” When I continued to stare blankly, he added pointedly, “Including the Lethe, river of forgetting.”

  *Cool,* said Syl. *Magic mindpowers.*

  “What about the others who saw?”

  “All taken care of, though there weren’t as many witnesses as you seem to think. People tend to duck for cover when shapers duke it out.”

  True. The street had cleared faster than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking competition once Jake and Anders had started lobbing fireballs at each other.

  “And what about me?” I glanced down at my beer with sudden suspicion. “Am I going to forget too?”

  “Do you want to?”

  Did I? Did I want to forget that wild ride in the car, with Holly snarling at me in her wolf form? Did I want to forget the moment her baby had slithered into my hands, slippery with blood and birth fluids? Or the moment Jake had thrown himself in front of me to save me from Anders?

  “I think I want to see Jake.”

  He was a fireshaper, just like Anders, the man who’d tried to kill me. I should have hated him, but other, more difficult feelings kept bubbling to the surface. Hate was easy. Acceptance was the real challenge. I wasn’t ready to think beyond that, however cute his shaper arse looked in tight jeans, or whatever his molten blue gaze did to my insides.

  I drained the last of my beer and slid off the bar stool.

  “Before you go—” Alberto’s pale hand caught at my wrist. His flesh was cool, and I felt sure that if I had touched my fingers to his pulse points I wouldn’t have found a heartbeat. The vampire illusion was compelling. “Tell me about this ring Anders sent you to steal. Where is it now?” His voice was still light, as if he spoke of something of no consequence, but the pressure of his fingers was firm. This ring was important. But then, I already knew that.

  “Jake had it in his pocket,” I said, meeting his gaze squarely.

  That was true. Jake had had it in his pocket. Right up until I slipped it out while he was unconscious and snuck it into my own. It rested there still, pressed against my hip bone. If Alberto had looked down, he would have seen the slight bulge it made in the smooth line of my jeans.

  His face paled, though a moment before I would have said that was impossible. “Jake has it?” It was a ring of power; I knew that much. People had already died for it. But it was what I didn’t know about it that had led me to … acquire it. “Then I’ll accompany you to the hospital. If it’s what I think it is …”

  Now that could get awkward. Darkness swirled about him like a cloak and I glanced uneasily toward the door. What was the big deal with this ring? Seemed like every man and his dog wanted to get their hands on the thing. Anders had called it the “avatar of Apollo”. And here was a god, one of Apollo’s kin. Who better to take charge of such a dangerous object? The sensible thing to do would be to give it to him and be shot of it. Who wanted to make an enemy of a god?

  “Actually, I think I might go home and shower first before I head over to the hospital.” I forced my hand not to stray in the direction of my pocket. Sensible be damned. That ring had whispered to me, as if it were alive, when I’d first slid it onto my finger. If I was going crazy, I at least had to know why. “I’ll meet you there.”

  His gaze took in my blood-spattered appearance. Very little of the blood was mine, but I wasn’t a pretty sight. “Not a bad idea. They’ll think they have another patient if you go in looking like that. Don’t be long.”

  He strode out into the bright morning sun. He’d have to fritz a few more people’s memories if he insisted on wandering around in broad daylight like that. This ring must be super important to him. It had certainly been important to Anders—enough for him to kill to get it. What did a shaper want with a god’s ring? Everyone seemed to want it, from Hades to Jake and the rest of the Ruby Council. What was the big deal with it? And if it was Apollo’s ring, where was Apollo?

  Syl stalked along the bar and sat herself down directly in front of me. *All right, what aren’t you telling me?*

  For a moment, I considered lying to her, but Syl was my best friend. If I was going to do a runner, she at least deserved to know the truth. I pulled the ring out and laid it on the bar.

  *Oh, shit,* she said. *You didn’t.*

  “I did.”

  It was a showy piece; a golden sun, with stylised rays spiralling off it. She laid one delicate black paw on it. *I was afraid of that, when you said Jake had it like that. Do you think gods can tell if you lie to them?*

  “How should I know? I’ve never met any before.”

  *Please tell me we aren’t giving this back to the Ruby Adept.*

  “Of course not.”

  *Then what are we doing with it?*

  “We aren’t doing anything with it. I’m taking it back to Newport.” Back to the city of my birth, to the mother who’d told me never to return.

  *You’re going back there? What for?*

  I swiped the ring off the bar and shoved it back in my pocket. “I need some answers. About me. About my father. And especially about this ring.”

  Every time I touched it, I could feel the damn thing calling to me, like a telephone line with a really bad connection. It felt like if I only concentrated a little harder I’d be able to make out what it was saying.

  And that was freaking me out. Was I going crazy? Maybe madness ran in the family line. I had to know.

  *I’ll come with you,* Syl said. The little black cat stared up at me, green eyes unblinking.

  “You can’t. You’re a shifter. They don’t take too kindly to those in the human territories.”

  *Then I’ll be your pet cat. No one has t
o know.*

  I strode out of the pub, with her trotting at my heels, her anxious face turned up to me. “Turn human, and you can come.”

  *I’m happy the way I am, thank you.*

  I snorted. Happy? She was too frightened to come out of her cat form—she just wouldn’t admit it. “Anders is dead. What are you afraid of now?”

  *Nothing. I just like being a cat.*

  “It’s not normal, Syl. No one stays in their animal shape forever.”

  *Sure they do.*

  “Okay, nobody who wants to stay sane, then.” I unlocked the door to our apartment and she brushed past me. “You have to come out of there before you forget how to be human.”

  Her tail twitched angrily. *Don’t tell me what I have to do. You’re not a shifter! I’m a cat and I’ll bloody well be a cat if I want to. Now shut up and pack. I’m coming with you, you ungrateful ape.*

  And she said I was stubborn. A better friend would probably have argued more. It was a risk, even though Syl had already proved that she could happily stay in cat form for months on end. But I kind of needed the moral support. Or immoral, in Syl’s case.

  I sighed. She was a big girl; she could make her own decisions. “We’d better get moving, then. Once Alberto discovers that Jake doesn’t have the ring, the shit’s really going to hit the fan.”

  ***

  I threw a few things in a backpack. My knives, I still wore in their sheaths; the ring was in my pocket—there wasn’t much else I needed. Just my human ID, a couple of changes of clothes, and all the money I had stashed down the back of my underwear drawer. They may have hated shapers in the human territories, but they liked their money just fine. I left my phone in the bedside drawer: I’d been tracked via the phone before, and I wasn’t going to fall for that again.