Sunroper (Goddesses Rising) Read online

  Gage finally recognized the next person who entered the room. Brad Carmichael had gone to prep school with Aiden and, like Gage’s brother, was probably a couple of years older than most of the other guys in here. Gage’s heart began to race, and he stared at the door, not sure if he wanted his brother to come through next or not.

  Brad stepped into the room a few feet, looked around importantly like some kind of Secret Service pretender, and nodded back at Flashlight Kid. Gage recognized the next two people, too—Tony Dicenzo and Christopher Wilson. Chris was Aiden’s best friend. So where was Aiden?

  The boys lined up about two feet back from the edge of the runner. Exactly eight beats later a woman glided in. Her steps were so slow and graceful Gage wished she’d lift the hem of her long, billowy, golden dress so he could see if she was literally gliding. His heart beat harder, but this time not from nerves. This had to be the goddess, the provider of flux.

  He couldn’t define her ethnicity, some exotic blend of many races, and had to guess at her age. She didn’t have the soft look of someone in her twenties, but her face was unlined. She could be anywhere from mid-thirties to mid-forties. Her dark gold hair rippled and flowed down to her elbows, in curls over her chest, and past her waist in the back. She held her hands loosely clasped in front of her at first, but as she moved along the runner they spread slowly out to the side, her hair rising into the air without a breeze, and she flew the last few feet to the chair.

  Gage blinked, dazed. The goddess stood for a moment, her arms still upraised as she faced her acolytes, who stood in half bows so they could keep their eyes on her but still pay her the respect she commanded.

  Her hair had dropped, and Gage frowned at it. Less of a glowing gold, it was now simply blond and not as long as he first thought. She sat, and Gage wasn’t nearly as dazzled as he’d been a few moments ago. He canted a look at Marley, who scowled fiercely at the scene. He hoped she hadn’t noticed his temporary trance. He’d met a few goddesses in his life, and none had had such an effect on him. Hell, even the most powerful Numina, who claimed the strongest influence, couldn’t use it at will like that.

  Flashlight Kid shut and locked the door before joining his friends while the three older guys stood at ease behind the group, looking smug and superior. When the goddess spoke, all of their eyes widened and jaws went slack. Looking at them, Gage would have thought she had the most melodious voice and said the most incredible things they’d ever heard. But her voice sounded pretty normal to him, if slightly rough. Like she’d lived hard, maybe drank a lot.

  He wanted to ask Marley if she was similarly affected but had no way to do so. He doubted she’d give him a straight answer, anyway.

  “I see new faces,” the blond goddess said, gesturing with one arm and a closing sweep of the hand. Gage frowned. The movement had been reminiscent of how she’d moved across the barn, but instead of graceful, it struck him as melodramatic.

  “Please stand and introduce yourselves.” She nodded to the first kid on her left, the youngest looking. “Tell me why you are here.”

  The boy stood and wiped his hands on his khakis. He glanced down at the person next to him, who nodded encouragingly. Curls flopped into his eyes when he faced the goddess. He shook them back, looked terrified, and let them fall in his eyes again.

  “Madame Cressida. I mean, Madame Lahr. Um…Cres—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Ma’am. I’m Ricky Pettle, and I’m here because I want…” His voice jerked higher when his friend punched him in the leg. “I mean, I’m here to learn from you. My brother told me ser-serving you was the best thing he ever did.”

  She inclined her head. “As indeed it was. I read that he leads the NFL in kickoff returns.”

  Gage shook his head, sure he couldn’t have heard such a line from someone like her.

  But she continued, “His Rookie of the Year status seems a foregone conclusion, young as the football season is.”

  Now Gage knew who the kid was. He had two older brothers, one a year older than Gage. He’d refused to go into the family business, which had collapsed with the real-estate crash in 2007. The middle brother had been an undrafted free agent—meaning no team wanted him at first—but now he was wowing everyone with his abilities. His performance so surpassed his college achievements that rumors of drugs were rampant. But no one would find anything—they couldn’t test for flux.

  “Uh, yeah,” the kid agreed. “So, that’s why I’m here.”

  “You seek to play football?” She sounded skeptical and with good reason. The boy was scrawny. Gage suspected if he dug up photos of himself at that age people would say the same about him, and he was built well enough now. Not NFL level, though.

  “No! I’m more of an artistic type. A writer, actually.”

  “Ah. Come forward.” She stood as he approached, his head bowed. “Look at me, please.” He raised his head, and she brushed the curls out of his face. His eyes closed, as if her touch was pure ecstasy. Was she giving him flux already?

  No, he looked disappointed when she released him.

  “Have you paid your tribute?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he rasped.

  “And what are your goals? What type of writer do you wish to be?”

  “An essayist. I have a contract with a publisher, and there’s a tour…” His voice trailed off.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out what he wanted. Interviews and book signings wouldn’t be successful if he was as tentative and dorky as he presented now. Gage didn’t know if flux could make him confident and attractive, but the kid clearly hoped it would.

  Silence filled the room while she seemed to consider. “The potential returns have value,” she acknowledged. “Agreed.”

  She made a swooping motion with her hand, and the kid shrieked as he flew into the air, arms and legs flying backward. He flipped head over tail and hung over his friends, as if being held up by some invisible giant.

  Gage gaped, glad the kid had made so much noise and covered his own indrawn breath. Marley had clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide above it. Cressida lifted one arm as if holding the boy in the air. She flung the other toward him, and a shaft of yellow light shot across, striking him in the chest before it expanded to surround him and then sink into his body. His second outcry was more a shout of joy.

  The kid lowered to the ground. He landed on his feet but didn’t stay on them, crumpling into a heap that everyone ignored as Cressida took her seat again.

  “Who’s next?” she asked in a pleasant voice that sent a shiver of dread down Gage’s spine.

  Another of the attendees stepped forward. Gage wasn’t sure he wanted to watch this again, and clearly Marley didn’t either as she slithered backward, tugging at his arm. When she was far enough back, she rose to a crouch and beckoned him with an impatient hand. Slowly, quietly, he followed her to a gap in the wall where doors obviously used to be. He supposed they’d have tossed hay from here onto trucks or something. Marley leaned out, nodded, and swung over the side. By the time Gage looked, she was halfway down a wooden ladder attached to the wall. She had to skip rungs that were broken or missing, and for a third of the drop, there was only one side rail.

  Gage’s mouth dropped open watching her navigate the mess without hesitation. She looked up at him from the ground, fists on her hips. No way he could do that. He was a lot heavier than her and was missing whatever gene or superpower let her be so frigging silent.

  She widened her eyes and firmed her lips in a “come on!” expression. His ego wouldn’t let him refuse.

  Far more slowly than she had, he lowered himself onto the first couple of rungs. His hands ached from gripping the splintery wood until he was sure the support under his feet would hold. He had to bite back a yelp when a large splinter punctured his palm. He had about twelve feet to go.

  Screw it.

  Pushing off hard so he’d hit a grassy area instead of the harder ground at the base, he absorbed most of the impact with his legs,
bending his knees deep and letting his momentum take him straight into a roll. He came up on his feet and was immediately dragged toward the woods by Marley, who ran almost too fast for him to keep up. Or at least with his sleeve bunched in her hand.

  “What the hell?” he hissed when he thought they were far enough away not to be heard. He yanked his sleeve away. “What are you doing?”

  “We couldn’t be caught in there.” She motioned to him to follow and kept going, somehow seeing a path through the trees in the very dim light.

  “No shit. I’m surprised you didn’t leave me there.”

  She cast a speculative look over her shoulder, one that swept over his entire body. “It was pretty clear you weren’t part of all that. I assume you followed me thinking I was her.” She finally halted in a gap between a giant oak tree and a tangle of vine-choked shrubbery.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “You’re obviously not.”

  “No.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I can trust you. What’s your goal here?”

  “We don’t have time for that.” She pulled out her phone and began typing on the screen. “I’m not going to have much of a window to do this. You should just stay out of the way.”

  Yeah, that was going to happen.

  “To do what? Who are you texting?”

  “My getaway driver.” She slid the phone into her back pocket and stared back the way they’d come. Her stance shifted, as if she were preparing to run again.

  Gage blocked her. “What are you going to do?”

  Her jaw tightened. “Look—”

  “No, you look. I’m not getting out of your way unless you tell me what’s going on. I know some of those guys. I don’t like what’s happening in there, but I won’t let you attack them.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to—Okay, fine. I’m just going to take what they were just given. That’s all.”

  Something he’d read from Aiden’s laptop—an e-mail exchange or something posted on the message boards—filtered into his head. A guy complaining that his flux had been taken or something. On top of it came his memory of her brief touch on Josh’s elbow.

  His head spun. This was so not the world he lived in. “You can steal their flux?”

  “I nullify it. It goes inert. They can’t use it, and they can’t accept any more. And I’m not letting those guys get out of here with it.”

  Gage had seen Josh on flux, and he suspected the four Numina who’d been arrested for robbing a casino had been on it, too. So he understood where she was coming from. But that wasn’t his primary goal. He had to find and extricate Aiden from whatever involvement he had in this.

  His father’s needs, though, weren’t so specific. He wanted the summit to succeed, and from what Gage had just witnessed, having information on the goddess wasn’t going to provide the even playing field his father hoped for. If some of those guys’ fathers found out what was happening, they’d want to bury the goddesses.

  “Let me help,” he said.

  Marley shook her head. “I don’t want this to become a big fight, and those are your people. You’re better off—”

  “I’m not standing back here while you put yourself at risk,” he growled. “I don’t care how capable you are.”

  She smiled. “I was going to say you’re better off following the goddess. I expect the guys who came in with her will leave with her, too. They might lead you to Aiden. Or to their headquarters where I can pin her down and figure out how to stop this.”

  Gage settled, recognizing the logic in what she was saying. “You could still need backup.”

  She shook her head. “I have it. We’ll meet back at my motel. I have a feeling you know where that is.”

  He quirked a sheepish smile.

  “Okay, then.”

  Something banged in the direction of the barn, wood on wood, and voices filtered through the trees. They weren’t close enough to see much, but the goddess in her gold dress headed off into the woods with three figures.

  “Go,” Marley whispered. “Good luck.”

  Gage hesitated, but this was her world, not his. He’d have to take a chance and hope to hell it didn’t bite him in the ass.

  “Be careful,” he said. But as he headed off to follow the goddess, he had the uneasy realization that his path might be the more dangerous one.

  Chapter Five

  The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

  —Aristotle

  M

  arley didn’t spare more than a moment worrying about Gage. Somehow, in the short time they’d spent in the loft, everything had changed. They’d shared the same appalled reaction to Cressida Lahr’s actions, and even though Gage hadn’t said it outright, she could see that he was on board with stopping it.

  Sending him after the goddess might not have been the best move, though. Marley didn’t know if he could find out her destination without being seen, and that woman was powerful enough to detect his presence even if he was stealthy. She could hardly believe they hadn’t been detected in the loft. Maybe Lahr didn’t have that particular ability, or maybe it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone could be there who wasn’t supposed to be. Either way, they were lucky.

  She hunkered down in the brush as the group of men from the barn passed nearby, presumably on a path. They came close enough for her to detect their signatures. Most of the eight were Numina. The regular guys hunched and acted furtive as they walked, but a few of the others surrounded two in particular, jumping around and arm-punching them. Those two were practically vibrating in her head with the flux they’d been given. They’d either received more than the ones she’d nullified before, or those guys had used some up by the time she’d found them.

  She couldn’t let these two get out of her reach. If she lost them, they might hurt someone. She crept through the darkness, following them. They’d grown a little louder, their movements more obvious, but they still spoke in whispers and low voices she couldn’t make out. Within two minutes she spotted the glint of moonlight on metal in what appeared to be a large clearing. A parking lot? Once they reached their cars, she’d have less chance of success. She had to make her move now.

  She snuck closer, pinpointing the two with flux, looking for openings. Damn it for being October. They had long sleeves and long pants, so only faces and hands were exposed. And the others still crowded around her targets.

  She hesitated as they approached the final bend before the clearing. This was going to completely expose her. There was no way to do it that they wouldn’t notice. After tonight, they’d all be on high alert.

  Marley dashed out onto the muddy path and toward the crowd, plowing through a gap between two of the boys. She shoved them to opposite sides, registering the crashes that told her they’d landed several feet into the woods. Three guys in front of her turned—one had flux. Marley reached for his face. His eyes widened, and he fell back with a scream. His buddies moved in to protect him. Marley dodged a punch and blocked a kick before tossing both boys out of her way.

  Her target had recovered from his surprise and stood in a fighting stance now, his feet dancing. Marley flew toward him, able to place her feet firmly despite the mud, her weight balanced perfectly to prevent slipping. He misjudged and threw his punch too late. Marley was already inside his range, so his fist went past her ear. She wrapped her hands around his arm, twisted, and threw him over her shoulder. But she hadn’t managed to touch skin, so she had to move in again, trying to get to a vulnerable spot.

  He groaned from the ground and tilted his head back, looking for her. She loomed over him, reaching for his face, and he raised his hands to stop her. Marley slid her hand across his palm, and it was done.

  His cry of loss and outrage was almost heartbreaking. But she steeled herself against it and turned to seek his much-smarter buddy. Marley had noted the positions of the three remaining guys through the last few seconds. One of the sober Deimons had run for the vehicles. Another stood with a switchblade
, but he hovered nervously on the sidelines, breathless and scared, holding the weapon so loosely he couldn’t cut butter. The fluxed guy stood in the middle of the path, and before Marley had finished turning from the nullified one on the ground, a wave of energy hit her.

  His first use of his bestowed power.

  Her mouth opened, preparing a scream. She expected pain or a blow that knocked her on her ass like Gashface’s blast had. But none of that happened. Instead, she absorbed the entire wave, just as if she’d touched the man who’d used it. There was the same awareness of a void where the energy had been a split second before, but something was different. She felt it change this time, sensed it sinking into her. After that it was nothing. But she was more.

  “Nice try,” she said. “My turn.” She started for him, half hoping he’d send another wave her way. A craving she hadn’t felt in years cramped her chest, igniting a spark of fear. But she didn’t have time for that. She doused it and lunged.

  And missed. He turned and ran—again, smarter than his buddy. But Marley wasn’t just some chick in tight jeans and heeled boots. She caught up with him at the edge of the clearing. As she emerged from the trees a sharp pain slashed across her right side. She gasped and turned to see the kid with the switchblade. He’d swept aside her leather jacket and cut her. How the hell had she lost track of him?

  Through a furiously cold, green haze, she grabbed his weapon arm and twisted until it snapped. When he screamed, his friends scrambled to a halt and started back toward them, stumbling when they saw her. Marley ignored the warm wetness on her side and stomped across the old, weedy gravel.

  “No!” The guy held up his hands in front of his face. “Don’t kill me!”

  “Shut up.” Marley caught him by the back of the neck as he fell. He dropped to the ground and wept.

  “Nut up and help your friend,” she told him. “He needs medical attention. And listen good.” She bent forward to get in his face. “If the rest of your buddies are smart, they’ll learn a lesson from this and stay away from Cressida Lahr.”