Sunroper (Goddesses Rising) Read online

  Sunroper

  A Goddesses Rising Novel

  Natalie J. Damschroder

  Also by Natalie J. Damschroder

  Under the Moon

  Heavy Metal

  A Kiss of Revenge

  If You Believe in Me

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Natalie J. Damschroder. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Edited by Danielle Poiesz and Kerri-Leigh Grady

  Cover design by Kim Killion

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-62266-048-3

  Print ISBN 978-1-62266-049-0

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition December 2013

  The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Barbie, Black Card, Bluetooth, BMW, Camaro, Cessna, Charger, Comic-Con, Cream of Wheat, Dumpster, Facebook, Frisbee, Google, In-N-Out Burger, iPod, Jacuzzi, Jameson, McMuffin, NFL, Ruger, Solo Cup, The Silent Comedy, Twilight Zone, Viper, Wi-Fi, Wolfmother, Xbox.

  To Jim, whose love, support, and belief in me make all of this possible.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The secrecy in which we have dwelled for centuries is threatened not only by modern technology, but by the actions of our members.

  —Numina internal documents

  M

  any things had changed since the day six months ago when a single touch altered Marley Canton’s entire life forever. But she was still not the kind of woman who would typically be found in a trendy dance club in downtown Boston. She could play the part, though, if she needed to—and tonight she needed to.

  “Jameson,” she said, holding up two fingers at the bartender, who nodded and reached for the whiskey. Marley gave the guy eyeballing her a polite but standoffish smile as she turned to study the dance floor and scan the clusters of tiny, clear tables along the sides of the room. She didn’t immediately see her prey, so with her drink in hand, it was time to prowl.

  Lights flashed in time to the pumping music as she moved through the room. Bodies arched and ground and bounced on the dance floor, generating a steamy heat combated by the icy air-conditioning. As she eased her way toward the far side of the room, she glanced at every face, concentrating on the younger men. The guy she was looking for was twenty-three, arrogant, and slim. She’d studied enough pictures of him online and in the tabloids to be able to recognize him even in here. Once she got close enough, she would know her target.

  She paused at the corner and angled her shoulders back to rest against the wall, sipping her whiskey to cover how closely she watched a group entering the club. It felt good to be on a mission. A few years ago, she’d lived a quiet, content life as the owner of an inn in Maine, giving lost souls a place to heal and figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. She’d been whole, happy, a middling-powerful goddess surrounded by her natural energy source, crystals, that helped her channel her power. Not that she’d used her abilities for anything special back then. But she’d fallen in love and stupidly given that man a piece of herself as well as a dose of power, allowing him to rip the rest—and more—away from her and four other goddesses before he’d been stopped. She’d helped to build a new educational program within the Society for Goddess Education and Defense, which had given her purpose for a little while, but the events of the past year had only shown her just how worthless she’d been.

  Not anymore.

  Marley glanced at the door as a woman tucked away her ID and a new group of clubbers pushed into the crowd. No sign of the guy Marley sought, so she moved on, too, striding down the long side of the club’s main area. This side was darker and filled with couples making creative use of their tongues. Marley closed her eyes and tuned in with the rest of her senses. The usual ones combined in a natural awareness of the bodies around her, but over the last few months she’d developed a new ability to detect guys like Josh, the kid she was after, because of differences in his personal energy related to his generic heritage. Almost like reading his aura, except inside rather than outside.

  She sighed and opened her eyes. All the guys over here were normal. Relatively speaking.

  “You want to say that again?”

  She stopped short and swung her drink out of the way as a tousle-haired guy in a silk shirt shoved a shorter, burlier guy into her path. Everyone around them halted—or at least paused in their dancing and flirting—and the sweet, hot aroma in the air sharpened with their interest in a potential fight.

  Burly guy shook his head slowly, a smile twisting one side of his mouth. “Yeah, I’ll say it again. Suck. My—”

  Silk-shirt guy launched himself at Burly, and chaos erupted as friends staggered around trying to separate the two. They sprawled at Marley’s feet, failing to land effective punches on each other. She wrinkled her nose against the blend of yeasty beer and fruity alcohol wafting from spilled drinks all around her, and her body curved and swayed to avoid the flailing limbs. She tried to ignore the hand-wringing laments of the guys’ dates or friends or whatever the women were. The tears streaming down their faces were an uncomfortable reminder of how it felt to be useless in a fight.

  Marley weaved toward the wall, out of the way of the bouncers pushing through the crowd, those feelings strengthening despite how poorly they fit into her current reality. She wasn’t worthless anymore. She may have accidentally created a leech by giving the man she loved a bit of power, but now she could take it away from those who didn’t deserve it.

  Bestowing power on the son of a goddess—someone who had the genes but not the legacy—was a dangerous game. Marley had misjudged her fiancé’s intentions. She’d wanted to bring them closer, to share something so vital to her identity. But she’d been played. He didn’t want her, just her power. Limited as it was, it had been enough to allow him to steal from others and keep on taking until her sister Quinn—along with Quinn’s now-husband Nick and assistant Sam—had stopped him. Quinn had drawn all the stolen power out of the leech and stored it inside her own body until a few months ago, when she was finally able to return most of it to its original goddesses.

  Except Marley. She was too damaged, and for a couple of years she’d struggled to adapt to being powerless, to being part of a community she no longer belonged in. Just like those women as they watched their boyfriends brawling on the dirty floor of a club.

  Marley straightened up, skimming her gaze across the room. The girls still stood to the side as the bouncers took care of the f
ight, just as Marley had stood by, helpless, when Quinn and a young goddess named Riley had been abducted by descendants of the gods, young men who wanted to steal their power.

  Marley would have been a liability in that fight. Not that she’d ever been a warrior, but the first time, when she and Quinn and the others had defended her inn against attack, the energy she’d channeled through crystals allowed her to disorient and even knock out the attackers without even touching them.

  But after being leeched, she had nothing. She would have become another victim to be rescued, so she’d stood by and let everyone else do the job. When it was all over, she’d vowed she’d never be that weak again. Yet here she was, standing by during a fight—never mind that this one had nothing to do with her—and struggling not to feel worthless.

  This is not why I’m here, she reminded herself. She focused on reaching out with her senses, searching for her target.

  “He’s here,” said a familiar voice in her ear.

  She shook away the memories that voice dug up and touched her earpiece. “I’m kind of stuck back here. Where did he go?”

  She tilted her head up and spotted Anson at the rail around the second floor. They’d been working together for five months now, but she still had to brace for the cascade of split-second reactions he caused, the ones telling her to run as fast as she could. He’d been her fiancé, her enemy, the man who’d leeched her. And now he was her unlikely partner, a chameleon who managed to blend in wherever they went.

  “I’m not leaving!” Silk Shirt shouted, yanking his arm away. Burly jerked forward to shove him, and the whole thing started all over again.

  Anson caught Marley’s eye and jerked his chin toward the rear of the building. “Straight back. Looks like a group of them have taken over one of the nooks.”

  Marley took a swallow of whiskey. She was still corralled against the wall, with no clear path to get where Anson indicated. She relished the woody burn in her chest and the warmth that seeped through her body. “Keep an eye on him. Let me know if he tries anything.”

  “Will do.” Anson raised a beer bottle to his mouth and kept his gaze on an area Marley couldn’t see.

  She stood still, balanced on her ridiculous six-inch heels. The clutch she held in her left hand vibrated. She wasn’t going anywhere and couldn’t see past the tangle in front of her, so she popped open the clasp to check her phone’s display. Crap. It was her sister.

  She snapped the bag closed again and took another, bigger mouthful of whiskey. Avoiding Quinn never worked, but this wasn’t a good place to take scolding phone calls. Quinn was going to try one more time, no doubt, to get Marley to go to Riley and Sam’s wedding tomorrow. But Marley couldn’t do it. As much as she wanted to be there when her friends celebrated their well-deserved happiness, she couldn’t face them. Not when all she could do was imagine the pity and resentment they must harbor for her after all that had happened.

  The noise level around Marley dropped as the bouncers finally hauled the fighters away, their pack trailing behind them. Her gaze fell on a handful of young men standing around a tall table near the dance floor. They were lanky and slouchy with long arms and legs, wearing carefully distressed jeans and short-sleeved shirts. She checked their faces and jolted when she recognized two of them.

  “What’s the matter?” Anson asked over the comm.

  She cursed to herself and drained her glass, setting it on an empty table. She shouldn’t have let him see her reaction. Their partnership only worked if they never referenced the past, and these guys were part of it. “Nothing. Burst of air-conditioning.” She rubbed her arm to illustrate. “You’re supposed to be watching our guy in the back. He still there?”

  “Yeah, just hanging out, but he’s talking up a couple of girls.”

  “I’m on my way. Keep your eye on him.” Her path was going to take her by the guys she’d just recognized, and she didn’t want Anson to spot them. They were young Numina, men descended from gods who’d kept themselves secret for years, and these particular kids had been part of the group that had abducted Quinn and Riley on Anson’s orders when he was still Marley’s enemy. She didn’t know if these guys were Deimons like Josh and his buddies, lazy bastards who wanted the power of their ancestors without having to do the work, but they were definitely Numina.

  Goddesses weren’t secret like Numina were. There weren’t many goddesses in the world, and people who heard about them didn’t always believe in their existence, but many goddesses used their abilities commercially, and they even had a professional association with the Society. They were open about what they were. But the descendants of the gods? Everyone had thought those bloodlines had disappeared thousands of years ago. It turned out they’d just taken “secret society” very, very seriously.

  The legacy of the gods was far subtler than the power goddesses wielded, much easier to keep secret. Numina had “influence,” an enhanced level of charm, charisma, and the golden touch that brought them unimaginable success in business and politics. That influence varied, though, and was sometimes trumped by greed or laziness, especially in the younger generation. Hence the Deimons, who’d named themselves after Deimos, the god of fear. They had somehow discovered a goddess who would dole out her own power like a drug, a potentially easier path to the fame and fortune of their fathers.

  Marley and Anson had stumbled across the group while researching Numina as a whole. “Flux,” as they called the drug, provided a surge of energy that also gave them abilities of the goddesses, like telekinesis or increased strength. Marley didn’t know if it also made them stupid, but one group of fluxed-up idiots had robbed a casino recently.

  That was why she was hunting them. Deimons were irresponsible at best and potentially dangerous, and the only good thing about her void of power was that she was now able to take the flux away from them, to nullify them. As far as she knew, she was the only one who’d ever had that ability.

  Tonight’s target, Josh, was seriously high on flux. Marley didn’t know if he was connected to the kids huddled in front of her, but with their history, she needed to know what they were up to.

  She eased closer and caught the attention of a passing server. “Whiskey, please. Jameson,” she added close to the woman’s ear.

  She nodded and yelled to Marley, “You gonna be here?” She pointed at the floor where they stood.

  Marley nodded back, satisfied. Now she had an excuse to stay where she was and lurk for a few minutes. The music covered a lot of the conversation, but nullifying the flux had enhanced her senses somehow in the last couple of months, and she caught snatches of it.

  “…to the beach house one more time before closing up…”

  “…with third-quarter returns better than last year, we can monetize the…”

  “…man, I need nachos…”

  “…I swear, gozongas out to here, nipples the size of…”

  She screwed up her face, wishing she’d missed that last bit. She was wasting her time—there was nothing useful here, and she didn’t detect any flux.

  The server slipped between a couple of sweating bodies and handed Marley her drink. She gave her a twenty and waved off change. The woman’s face smoothed from annoyed at the inconvenience to pleased with the high tip before she hustled away. Marley sipped and was about to move on when the young men’s conversation stopped her.

  “Did you hear what Gashface is doing tomorrow?”

  Marley tensed at the nickname of one of the guys who’d kidnapped Quinn and Riley a few months earlier. So his friends were calling him Gashface now, too? Riley must have called him that in front of the others after she’d sliced up his face. Interesting that they’d adopted it.

  “Don’t call him that, he’ll pound your face in,” one of them retorted.

  A snicker. “Yeah, right. He’s a total pansy.”

  “You haven’t seen him lately.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Marley saw the guy who’d mentioned Gashface lean on the table
. His voice hushed a little, but the DJ lowered the music to call out something garbled, leaving a sound gap she could easily hear through. The other guys at the table leaned closer to the one talking.

  “That stuff is doing something to him. He claims it’s the cleanest high you’ll ever get—no crash, no freakiness, but he’s got an edge now, man. He says he’s gonna kill the bitch that cut his face.”

  Marley froze. She didn’t just stop moving—she went so cold on the inside that her teeth chattered once before she clamped them together. Her numb fingers could barely feel the glass she was holding.

  Gashface was on flux, and the “bitch” was Riley.

  “Yeah, right,” another kid scoffed. “Says who?”

  “Delwhip.” The first guy took a casual pull from his beer bottle, clearly relishing having the floor. “His dad’s got everything figured out. Gash will take out the bitch and her friends, and then he’ll move on the board. We’ll be back on top in a matter of days.”

  Marley’s head spun, the implications almost too much to absorb. Tomorrow was Riley and Sam’s wedding. Gashface was going to attack her at her freaking wedding?

  Of course he was. Take out the bitch and her friends. That was what the kid had just said. Marley knew the name Delwhip, too. Both Delwhip senior and junior had been involved in the kidnapping—among other things—and the plan she’d just overheard was huge for so many reasons. Marley had to do something.

  In the few seconds she’d tuned out, the conversation had moved on. One of the guys raised his voice.

  “Get me some freaking nachos!” He slapped a pile of napkins onto the table to punctuate his demand.

  “Hellz yeah!”

  “I’m starving!”

  “Nothing happening here anyway.”

  The guys finished their drinks and headed toward the exit, either unconvinced or uncaring that someone they called friend might be capable of something so horrible. Marley followed them, unable to be as cavalier.

  She had to call Quinn and warn her, but of what? What if it was just a rumor? Sam would stop the wedding at any hint of danger to Riley, and Marley had hosted enough ceremonies at her inn to know what a hassle that would be. A false alarm would be one more black mark on her record.