Sunroper (Goddesses Rising) Read online

  She straightened and turned, vertigo making her sway for a second. She thought she saw Sam standing ten feet away, and fearful rage rose up before her vision cleared and she realized it was Anson.

  Who was at least seven inches shorter and about two people more narrow. She faltered, now truly scared. What was happening to her?

  “You all right?” he asked when she approached.

  “Fine.” But her legs felt weak all of a sudden, and he wrapped an arm around her waist to help her toward the street. They only got two steps.

  “What the hell?” He spun to face her and yanked her jacket away from her side. “Marley, you’re bleeding!”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot.” She pressed her hand to her side and was a little alarmed at how much the skin gave along the cut. Her shirt and the waistband of her pants were soaked. But at least there was an explanation for her hallucination. “Let’s just get back to the motel and I’ll take care of it.”

  “We should go to the hospital,” Anson argued. “That’s a lot of blood.”

  “It’ll be fine,” she insisted. She let him help her into the truck and frowned as she looked around. Had he moved it? She didn’t think they’d walked as far as the original parking spot. The blood loss was making it hard to concentrate.

  Once they were on the road she pressed on the little map light and lifted her shirt to see the cut. Shit, that was bad. Not too deep but several inches long and still bleeding actively. Once upon a time she could have sealed it up with a mere thought.

  She froze, staring at the wound. It looked…smaller? That guy had sent her that wave of energy, and she’d absorbed it. Could it be giving her back her powers? She focused on closing the edges, starting at one end.

  And holy crap, it worked.

  …

  Gage checked the clock on his phone half-a-dozen times in ten minutes, when he wasn’t looking up and down the road for Marley’s black SUV. He was at the motel, but there was no sign of her. He paced for a few more minutes before the SUV finally pulled into the lot and stopped in front of a door halfway down the building. Gage strode over as a guy climbed out of the driver’s side and hurried around to the passenger door. Marley half fell out of the truck before the guy got there, catching herself on the top of the door and hissing.

  “Well, fuck. I thought I fixed that.” She looked down at her side where her lifted arms had raised her jacket and shirt to expose a slice of skin. Bloody skin.

  Gage hurried to support her, heedless of her friend making the move to do the same thing. “What happened?”

  “You’re here.” Marley tried to look at his face, the motion making her sway against his arm around her back. “Did you follow Lahr?”

  “I’ll tell you what I learned inside.”

  The other guy eyed Gage for a few seconds but must have decided Marley’s injury was more important than confronting someone he didn’t know. He opened one of the motel room doors and stood aside to let them go first.

  Gage tried to let Marley walk, but when her first step almost took them both down, he bent to sweep her up into his arms and carry her inside.

  “My hero,” she muttered, but she didn’t fight him.

  “I try.” He carefully set her on the mussed bedspread and flipped on the light. It wasn’t enough. “Hey, can you turn on all the other lights? I’m Gage,” he offered so the other guy would tell him his name.

  It didn’t happen right away. “He’s Anson,” Marley said. “And you know my name.”

  Gage grimaced. “I’m still at a disadvantage, but we’ll get to that. Can you take off—” But she already had her good arm out of the jacket. She pressed her lips together as she moved to pull it off the arm on the bloody side.

  “Fucking jacket’s ruined.” She dropped it on the floor. Anson picked it up and laid it on a towel. He’d brought the whole pile out of the bathroom.

  “We don’t want to leave blood all over the place,” he said.

  “Good thinking.” Marley inhaled deeply through her nose and held it while she stripped off her tank top. “Holy fuck, that hurts.”

  She lay back, apparently oblivious to the fact that Gage stood there staring. He didn’t know how to process two diametrically opposed reactions. Her breasts, cupped in a lacy black bra, were spectacular. The primal male part of him was full of appreciation. But blood covered her side, already dried around the edges while still seeping from a long slice in the curve of her waist, just below her ribs.

  “You need a hospital,” he told her, his voice rough.

  “Not gonna happen.” She lifted her arm and twisted to look at the wound, then fell back on the pillow again. “But I can’t take care of it myself. Sam or Nick could do it. They’d use floss or something.” Her chuckle turned into a moan. “Hell, Quinn or Riley could heal it without even touching me.”

  Quinn and Riley must be goddesses if they could heal Marley like that. But he’d thought Marley was a goddess, too. “You can’t heal it?”

  She gave him a stern look but said, “No.”

  “And I suppose Quinn and Riley aren’t nearby?”

  “Unfortunately not.” She took a deep breath and settled against the pillows.

  Gage sighed and started to roll up his sleeves. “Do you have any booze?” he asked Anson. “Something with high alcohol content. Assuming you don’t have rubbing alcohol,” he added as an afterthought. He was getting carried away with the whole down-and-dirty vibe.

  Anson brought him a hefty first-aid kit and a bottle of whiskey. Marley gave him a look this time, and he just shrugged. “A loaded first-aid kit seemed like a good thing to have around,” he said.

  Marley’s lips curved approvingly, but Anson didn’t see. He’d turned away to crack open the bottle of whiskey and set it within Gage’s reach.

  Gage flipped open the red plastic case and surveyed the contents. There were gloves and antiseptic wipes but no bottles of liquid alcohol. The wipes wouldn’t do anything on a wound that size. He did find a suture kit, complete with a syringe of anesthetic, so at least he wouldn’t have to resort to floss.

  “Good supplies,” he said. “I’m going to go scrub up.” He pulled a chair over and set up the gloves and kit on the bed. “We’ll probably need more towels,” he said to Anson. “Lay some under her, will you? And then douse the wound with the whiskey. I’ll be right back.” He went into the bathroom and started soaping up his hands and forearms. He’d done rough-and-tumble medicine before, on job sites in countries that didn’t have a clinic on every corner. Somehow, he hadn’t expected his search for Aiden to get this physical. And he had a feeling it was only going to get worse.

  He went back out to the bedroom. Anson and Marley were where he’d left them, except the room smelled like a bar now, and there was a pad of towels laid flat on the bed under her side with a rolled one, stained with whiskey and blood, pressed tight under her waist. Her arm lay across her eyes, giving him full access to her wound and arranging her breasts delectably.

  Something was seriously wrong with him.

  He sat in the chair and carefully put on the gloves from the kit. “I’m going to give you a shot, but I don’t know how long it will take to numb you.”

  “Better do two,” Anson said from behind him. “It’s a long cut.”

  “Just get on with it,” Marley growled.

  Gage had Anson open the outer packaging and only touched the sterile syringe himself. He had no idea what the nerve distribution was in this area of the body, where to inject her for maximum effectiveness. So he just injected the contents in several spots on both sides of the wound. While he did, he probed the slice a little, trying to determine if one layer of stitches would be enough. Luckily, it didn’t seem too deep. He had no idea how to do an inner layer, or even if the nylon in the kit was the right kind for internal stitches.

  He cleared his throat. “While we wait for that to work, maybe we should talk about what happened in the barn.”

  “Tell Anson what we saw.” Marley didn�
��t uncover her eyes, and her voice shook a little. Gage hoped the anesthetic worked quickly.

  He described the meeting and what the goddess had done, lifting the kid and sending energy to him in a visible shaft. “I’ve never seen a goddess in action before,” he said. “Are you all that powerful?”

  Marley peered at him from under her arm. “What do you mean, ‘are you all’?”

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Normal people don’t have the strength and control you do. Or the eyes. So you—”

  “I’m not a goddess.” Her tone was hard, flat, but somehow full of pain.

  “She used to be,” Anson said.

  Gage glanced over his shoulder to find the man watching Marley with some mix of regret and desperate longing that quickly faded into an implacable mask.

  “What do you mean, she used to be?”

  “She was leeched.” He waved his hand back and forth over his eyes. “That’s what bleached the color out of her irises.”

  “And it, what, took all her power?” He’d heard something about leeches recently, but he couldn’t remember where. Before the goddesses approached Numina, so not connected with his brother or the flux.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Marley barked, then hissed in a breath. “To answer your question, no, not every goddess is that powerful. I, in particular, have no power anymore. Not that kind.” She swallowed hard and drew a long breath. “Do you know the football player Lahr mentioned?”

  “A little.” He wondered how much she knew about the kids in that meeting. About him. His father would kill him if he revealed anything about Numina, but he obviously had ties to them or he wouldn’t be here. “He was a fringe player, a long shot to make a team. But his talent has exploded since mini camp.”

  “Which was when?”

  “June.”

  She cursed. “She’s been doing this longer than I thought. She must be giving him flux on a regular basis. Probably not just him, either.”

  Gage touched her with the needle, and she flinched away, subtly. The anesthetic obviously hadn’t worked yet. He sat back, thinking about the conversation he’d caught pieces of as he’d followed the goddess, Chris, and the rest. “After seeing the barn, I’m guessing this is her opening act. She gives them what they expect. It’s illicit, foreign, enhances the experience. Next time, she probably does it somewhere else, maybe somewhere a little classier. The tribute she mentioned is probably an escalating pay scale. Draw them in, make them feel like they’re part of something. Convince them that someday they could make the inner circle.”

  “And the ones with real talent,” Anson added, “something they can channel the energy into, are her stars.”

  “I think I heard Brad mention Vanrose,” Gage confirmed. “He’s a Hollywood producer. His first movie hit number one last month.” He poked Marley’s side again. This time she didn’t move. He leaned in and tried not to wince as he stuck the needle through her skin. “You doing okay?”

  Marley grunted. He slowly drew the nylon taut and tugged the edges of the cut together. No one talked while he stitched. He’d only gotten a quarter of the way through when Marley arched and yelled, “Motherfucking son of a bitch!” She flung out her arm, slamming her hand into Gage’s chest.

  He jerked but kept himself from puckering the wound and causing her even more pain. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” she squeezed out. She fisted his shirt in her hand and didn’t seem inclined to let go.

  “I don’t have any more anesthetic.”

  “Just get it done.”

  He did, as quickly and as gently as he could. By the time he tied off and cut the final stitch, he didn’t know if Marley was even conscious anymore. Her hand was still clenched against his chest so hard he wasn’t sure she could let go even if awake. He swabbed her down, cleaning off as much blood as he could before bandaging her, peeling off the gloves, and gathering the trash. They’d have to find a Dumpster. If a maid found all this, the management might find it necessary to call the police. The comforter would have to go, too, and maybe the sheets under it. He’d check once they got her up.

  “Marley.” He said her name softly, bending over her to see if she was awake. Her hand slowly relaxed until it pressed flat against him. Not pushing him away, but almost a caress. He laid his hand over hers, suddenly aware of his heart beating in his chest. That she was feeling it, too, was strangely more intimate than what he’d just done to her side. “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” she rasped out.

  “Let’s move you to the other bed so you can rest. There are painkillers in the kit. I’ll clean up and take the bloody stuff to dump somewhere.”

  “I’ve got it.” Anson collected the pile Gage had left on the floor.

  “No. We—” Marley opened her eyes and looked into Gage’s, visibly shifting gears and changing what she’d been about to say. “Thank you,” she murmured. “That definitely went above and beyond.”

  The motel room door opened behind Gage, then closed with a click.

  “You’re welcome.” They stared silently at each other for a few seconds. Gage was falling in love with her eyes. Most people probably found them freaky, but they were so uniquely beautiful. Something so pale, so defined by the ring around her iris and the dark purple flecks should have been cold and empty. But they were full of life, full of emotion, and it made him want to study them to see how it was possible.

  And then, even as he thought that, they went hard and cold like marble. Disappointment replaced the warmth in his chest as her hand dropped away. She lifted her head as if to rise, and Gage helped her sit up. Anson came back into the room, and Marley swung her legs over the side of the bed, her muscles tight under Gage’s bracing hands. He shifted to help her to the other bed, but she shook her head.

  “We’ve got to figure out our next move.” She pressed her hand to her side. Goose bumps rose on her exposed skin, and she nodded toward a battered leather bag on top of the dresser. “Someone want to give me a shirt?”

  Anson dug around a little and tossed her a button-down. She shook her head this time at Gage’s silent offer to help and managed to get her arms in. “So what happened after you left the barn?” she asked him. “Where did they go? You didn’t follow them very long.”

  Gage watched her fingers closing the buttons, hiding her drool-worthy cleavage. “I didn’t need to. Brad, Tony, and Christopher talked loud enough for me to hear as they hiked to a luxury rental car near the back of the property. They were driving to Albany to get a flight to New York City.”

  “Crap.” Marley slowly stood and stretched a little, testing her range. Anson pulled the covers off the bed and stuffed them into a trash bag. “New York. We’ll never find her there.”

  “Yeah, we will,” Gage contradicted without thinking. When had this turned into a team effort? When had he stopped being suspicious of Marley? Well, as soon as he’d seen the goddess in action and he knew Marley wasn’t the flux dealer, but that didn’t automatically put them on the same side. “Look, we need to step back a minute and focus on the people in this room.” He included Anson with a glance, but the man raised a hand and shook his head.

  “I’m support staff. This is between you two.”

  Marley didn’t chew her lip or furrow her brow, but her eyes warmed again as she studied Gage. “What’s your interest in all this?”

  “What’s yours?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “You already know my brother is part of it. You give me something, then I’ll give you more.”

  “Okay. My full name is Marley Canton. My sister is Quinn Caldwell.”

  “The president of the Society.” That did explain a lot. “She sent you after the goddess? She knows about her?”

  Alarm sped through Marley’s expression so quickly Gage wasn’t sure he’d seen it. “No. She hasn’t sent me anywhere. I don’t work for her. This is completely independent of the summit.”

  That was one too many sentences to be convincing, but Gage didn’t think she
was lying about Quinn’s knowledge. Her tone was more about concern that he’d somehow rat Marley out to her sister.

  But if Marley knew about the summit, she knew about Numina, too. “Why have you been following Numina?”

  “Who says I have been?”

  He chuckled. “The club. The church. Here. It’s not coincidence.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re the Viper.”

  Uh-oh. He tried to look puzzled. “We’re talking about superheroes now? Or is the Viper a supervillain.”

  “I saw your car in Boston and again by the church. You were following me.”

  He lowered his head and spread his hands to his sides in acknowledgment. “Busted. I saw what you did to Josh and decided you were a better lead.”

  “To what?”

  “To the goddess who was responsible.” He motioned in the direction of North Chatham and the barn. “My brother is involved with this somehow.” He was going to keep his father’s assignment to himself. Marley’s loyalties would always be to the other side of the summit.

  Marley nodded. “Involved in what way? Business or personal?”

  He winced. “Maybe both. I was concerned before because he’s been out of communication with us for a while, which is unusual. And after what we saw tonight, I’m well beyond concerned.”

  “You should be. Consider flux a gateway drug to a truckload of trouble.” Her lips tightened, and she eased herself down on the corner of the unused bed. Anson, who’d moved quietly around them, checking drawers and packing loose items back into the first-aid kit and Marley’s duffel, carried them outside.

  “So what’s next?” He figured they’d shared as much as either of them was inclined to, and the best way for him to learn more was to stick with her. Working together also increased his chances of finding Aiden.

  “What did you hear when you followed them?” Marley braced her hands on her knees. Her breathing had grown shallower, but she showed no signs of intending to lie down and rest.

  “Christopher said he’d arrange for the next group to meet them in the Pritchard Building,” he said. “My father owns that building.”