“Get dressed you two. I’m making coffee.” Her cousin’s voice drifted in from the direction of the kitchen.
Gigi dived out of bed and began searching for clothes. Oh, Goddess. Oh, Goddess. To be caught in flagrante delicto by Darcy, of all her relatives. There was going to have to be a discussion. Lots of teasing. Taunting. Not to mention a boat load of knowing looks. Hold on, actually, of all her relatives, Darcy cared the least when it came to gossip. Her hackles actively rising anytime someone mentioned romantic entanglements.
Perhaps this situation could be managed. Darcy was a vault when it came to her friends and relatives personal lives. Not because she took their privacy seriously, no, because anything involving other people’s emotions bored her silly. Generally she tended to wander away from those types of conversations rather early in the piece in search of something to kill.
Running a brush through her hair, Gigi finished, tossing it Nico’s way, his hair was getting longer, those curls of his were getting out of control without some guidance. Okay, she wasdressed, in a borrowed blue sweater and matching leggings. Nico was good to go in a grey sweater and black sweat pants.
“Listen.” Stepping into his personal space, hmmm, he smelled nice. Down lady parts, down. You had seven, no, nine rounds with him last night. The sun was high in the sky, it had to be mid-morning here in Italy. Break time was over. Going up on tiptoe she whispered into his ear. “Just act like nothing happened between us.”
“What?” Nico was confused, all he wanted to do was sweep Gigi up into his arms, strip her and return to bed. At the same time his survival instincts were flaring and he was glitching between fight or flight mode.
“Hurry up you two.” Darcy sing-songed. “Coffee is getting cold and I have a long list of people to torture… I mean talk to today.”
“Just follow my lead. Don’t bring up sex. Don’t refer to it in any way, even obliquely. Don’t even think about it.”
“She is aware there’s only one bed in this place, isn’t she?”
“Of course. Trust me, if we don’t bring it up, she won’t. This is Darcy we’re talking about here, she’s only interested in two… three things. Keeping the inhabitants of the Sanctuary safe, killing anyone who even thinks about looking her way wrong, and Declan.”
They entered the kitchen cautiously nevertheless, to find Darcy seated at the small round table, black blunt Louise Brooks styled hair gleaming, wearing a bold chartreuse plaid mini skirt with black and bright blue lines running through the tartan material. And she was rocking a blue t-shirt that had pink sparkly writing on it –…make me care, I dare you. Pink knee high patent leather boots bringing the outfit together.
“Finally.” Darcy gestured at the two seats across from her, where mugs of steaming coffee waited. “Sit your butts down and let’s get on with the debrief.”
“Are Nell and the baby safe?”
“Yes. She’s not happy discovering a gaggle of Love Deities are targeting her unborn child for as yet unknown nefarious reasons, but Maat’s Warriors are on high alert protect mode, so she’s dealing. Complaining a lot that they’re getting underfoot, but dealing. Now. Thanks to research conducted by Aunt Patricia and our librarians, I’ve managed to make some big deductive leaps with my web magic. So here’s what we think is going on. Back in the day, Hathor, Egyptian Goddess of Fertility and Love, helped Sek, Mot and Bal kill their sister and try to steal their father’s powers. The plan being they would desecrate the Earth, that those Gods and demi-assholes recruited to the Cabal would rise up and rule. Sek, Mot and Bal having been promised Hawaii. Unfortunately for them, Apep is a canny bastard and his soul escaped to Aaru, the ancient Egyptian version of heaven. Taking most of his chaos mojo with him. Putting the take over the Earth plans on standby. And forcing his sons to spend the next five thousand years leeching what little power they could from Apep’s mummified remains in order to keep them on the Demi spectrum.”
“So Hathor is the brains behind all this?” Gigi sipped her coffee.
“Doubtful. More likely she’s just one of many recruited to the cause. But she’s clearly been working behind the scenes since the very early days this plot was first hatched to secure herself a greater slice of the end of days prize. However, something has changed in the last two and a half years. Perhaps someone higher up the chain is getting desperate. For years Hathor’s eldest daughter, Neith, or as we know her now, Belinda Forrester, was happy to dabble in the minor league worship game. Running a free for all sex cult in the sixties. And a modelling agency in New York in the eighties. Suddenly though, a few years ago, Neith sets her gaze on multi media empire builder Fred Forrester. Marries him and he promptly dies.Setting Belinda up to inherit a number of global cable networks and newspaper interests.”
“But Riya and Maat’s Warriors nixed all that. And Belinda, Neith, slipped away during the fallout.” Gigi had heard the story from Riya herself.
“Yes. I think Hathor is looking for leverage over the rest of the deities involved in this Cabal. Whoever controls the media during troubled times controls the narrative. However, when those plans went south Hathor had to resort to plan B. Somehow she got wind that my soon to be born niece was displaying major power whilst still in the womb. Copper has interacted with the baby, advising she packs a wallop and tastes of sunlight. The kid isn’t even born yet, imagine what she’ll be capable of when she gets older and her powers mature and potentially increase.”
“Hold on.” Nico held up a hand. “I read all those Enforcer case notes we were given. Isn’t Cum Hua, the Aztec God of the Underworld, up to his eyeballs in the Cabal? And isn’t his stated goal to eat all the light on Earth so he can rise up and rule. No light, no sun. Wanting the baby makes no sense.”
“Yeah. The thing you have to know about the deities is that a lot of them are very blinkered, and not very bright. We think whoever the brains behind the Cabal is sold Cum Hua a pack of lies. Got him to stir up trouble as a distraction. We’re pretty sure the sun is safe. But whoever has greater control over it once the so called final apocalypse is triggered, they’ll be sitting pretty once the dust is settled. Rather than scrabbling around for higher worship numbers, all they’ll have to do is throw their sun fuelled weight around. And when it comes time for them to divide up territory, it would put them in line for a really nice healthy portion. Top tier city or country at the very least.”
“I just want to say I hate the Gods, they’re assholes.” Gigi got up to fetch more coffee.
“No one is disputing that fact.” Darcy observed dryly. “So Hathor, who is an old school deity and doesn’t like to get her hands dirty, says to her daughters, bring me the baby. Lucky for us, Neith and Qetesh have a very unhealthy competitive rivalry thing going when it comes to their mother’s approval and love. Neith, being more tech savvy, jumps the gun when she sees that one of our Great-Uncles accidentally posted on the internet - and not the family intranet - that he was looking forward to attending an upcoming baby shower. Which was immediately postponed due to a Maat Warrior conflict of interest. But Neith doesn’t know that, hiring a contractor, providing them with a syringe full of poison and directing their attention to Gigi’s place. The plan being to taint all the frostings, and on the big day in the resulting chaos of death and sickness, more hired contractors would steal away Nell and the baby. My bad, there were so many baby shower dates being floated that I never made the connection between the first intruder’s appearance and the party.”
“That was the half owl woman I killed. I thought you said she was descended from one of the Goddess Athena’s Owls of Wisdom?”
“She is, or was. But she’s estranged from the family. At this stage we think Athena is in the clear. Anyway, owl girl is dead. However, all Neith knows is she disappeared and never came back. And being rather one note, like all deities, decides not to re-invent the wheel when she gets wind somehow of a new date. But Neith’s intel is patchy, she doesn’t know it’s been rescheduled again almost immediately, spending big bucks on hiring shadow ninja dude to infiltrate Gigi’s refrigerator. Meanwhile, Qetesh, who I suspects spies on her sister, heard about Neith’s plan, and decided it sounded excellent. Plus, she has all these mindless toga wearing golden dudes just sitting about getting dusty. So she arms one with instructions and asyringe full of poison and goes the savoury option and sends him to the Five Alarm. Both intruders die that night. But I’m thinking the moment you touched that cursed ring, Nico, you triggered a link between you and Qetesh. Which at the time, I’m sure she thought was a win. But instead of buckling under and becoming one of her mindless drones, you fought against the connection.”
“Probably why she appeared in person at the Mount Olympus party, she was trying to figure out what had gone wrong.” Gigi mused.
“Actually, I think it might have been more than that. I don’t know if his resistance sent up a signal, or maybe there was something different about the connection. But I’ve rewatched the footage from that party. When Qetesh touched you, yes, I’m sure she was trying to exert her control, but I also think she was, for want of a better word, tasting you. That look of shock on her face, I don’t think it was because you didn’t fall to your knees and begin worshipping her. I think it confirmed something she suspected, because if you keep watching Qetesh after your encounter, her face suddenly lights up, and I’m thinking she had her confirmation that you’re fire touched. And that’s when she activated the tainted cherubs, determined to own your ass, even at the cost of upsetting Zeus.”
“What the fuck is fire touched?” Nico really wanted to know.
“You, the entire Yanez line. You’re the descendants of the Aztec God of Fire, Kuat. It would explain everything. How Matias managed to survive carrying around a big slice of the Goddess Ixchel’s power in his head for over a decade. And how a smaller blast of Ixchel’s power triggered Copper’s inner Goddess DNA, elevating her, and further explaining why Ixchel was unable to reclaim that power. Copper was too strong for her.”
“That’s all just supposition.”
“The librarians did a deep dive into the Yanez family tree and there were lots of unexplainable fires, miraculous survivorstories and major hints of power and magic in your heritage. The records don’t go back thousands of years. But my web is singing a pretty tune when I float the idea you’re a descendant of Kuat.”
