What gods incite, p.1
What Gods Incite, page 1
What Gods Incite
A Novel of the Frost Arcana
Clara Coulson
What Gods Incite
Copyright © 2018 by Clara Coulson
Cover Design by Christian Bentulan at http://coversbychristian.com/
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All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
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For more information:
http://www.claracoulson.com/
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To contact the author, email claracoulson.author@gmail.com
To all the cute cats I saw on the internet this week.
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
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
To Be Continued
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Chapter One
Pettigrew was a rundown town that smelled like a dumpster fire. The stench probably had a lot to do with the blackened remains of the town’s northern half, which had been the victim of a drone strike by the US military after the town rebelled against the purge protocols. Several of the missiles struck a fertilizer plant, the town’s biggest employer, and the plant exploded with enough force to level every building within half a mile of the epicenter. It had been seven years since that catastrophe, seven years of driving rains and harsh snows and strong winds, yet the whole place still smelled like shit.
Amazing.
As I stood on the southern edge of town, nose wrinkled in disgust, I wished I had chosen anywhere else to scavenge today. But Pettigrew was over twenty miles from Kinsale, too far for most citizens to trek across the stretches, and as a consequence of the drone strike, the population had emptied out before the nukes fell. Which meant all the intact businesses on the south side hadn’t been completely looted during the collapse. There was a Kohl’s and a Macy’s, a Lowe’s and a Walmart, and even a Bed Bath & Beyond. I could have my pick of the lot. And I sorely needed it.
Because some dickwad blew up all my stock a month ago, along with my house.
Raiding what remained of the stores closer to Kinsale had only restored me to a third of my former inventory, because those stores had been picked over multiple times by the local mob’s scavenger packs, along with countless refugees who traveled the major highways leading into Kinsale. To get the good stuff nowadays, you had to head farther out, to the places where mundane humans refused to tread for fear of getting eaten by the wild things that roamed the land.
On the one hand, it was a pain in the ass to travel this far with no car. On the other hand, the stuff I could scavenge in Pettigrew would be good quality and would attract more customers to my new store, which I’d established a little closer to the market square than my last one. Thanks to the fact I’d blown most of my savings paying a witch to heal everyone who survived the cavern of nightmares, and the fact that I no longer had Mo swinging by with a big order once a month—he was in jail on a felony drug conviction—I needed my “stuff store” to pick up more interest with the good citizens of Kinsale.
So here I was, in a town that smelled like literal shit, with a list of things I needed to loot from a defunct Bed Bath & Beyond.
The post-apocalypse was truly a wondrous era.
I’d made good time getting here because the wintery weather had finally let up over the past two weeks, and the roads were fairly clear of ice and snow. This had allowed me to bring a large metal wagon along on my scavenging trips, so I could make fewer runs with more reward. The wagon, an industrial number covered with more than its fair share of rust, squeaked along behind me as I tugged it down the main street that led to Pettigrew’s version of “downtown.” A few blocks dotted with big-box stores, a few boutiques, and a smattering of townhouses. The growing town had apparently been in the middle of gentrifying when the collapse brought it to its knees.
I stumbled upon the Bed Bath & Beyond first, tucked into one side of what had once been a shiny new shopping center with a pretty fountain in the middle of a circular parking lot. The fountain was full of dirty water and dead bugs now, and the thin brick façades of the buildings had been heavily weathered by the continual winter storms. Someone had spent a great deal of money constructing this shopping center, only for it to end up the same way as all the other abandoned buildings in the world. By the time people no longer needed to live in the protected cities, this place would be nothing but husks and sunken foundations. What a waste.
Yanking my wagon onto the covered sidewalk of the shopping center, I headed around to the entrance of the Bed Bath & Beyond. The glass front doors were intact and appeared to be locked. Unless somebody had broken in through the back, the inventory should still be in good condition. Anyone who came by could break the glass with ease though, so I didn’t bother to try and pick a lock to preserve the building’s security. I punched through a pane with my gloved hand, waited for all the glass to settle, and then unlocked the door. Leaving my wagon on the sidewalk, I entered the building, tugging my list from my pocket as I passed the checkout area and entered the towering aisles.
The next forty minutes passed in a blur, and I kept an eye on my watch to make sure I didn’t spend too long searching for the softest towels or the prettiest comforters. I’d stripped my second glamour early on in my trek to put more pep in my step, but I was still going to have a long walk home. And with the ever-present cloud cover, it got dark pretty early in the day. Half fae I might’ve been, but even I wasn’t bold enough to traipse around the stretches at night. There were too many feral werewolves, too many flesh-hungry ghouls, and countless other predators that thrived under the cover of darkness. I could only fight off so many before one of them made a lucky strike.
Becoming something’s dinner was not on my to-do list.
Once I loaded my arms and shoulders and pockets with everything I could carry, I exited the store and neatly piled everything into my wagon. I ran through my list with a pen, checking off all the bedroom and bathroom supplies I’d been short on. What I’d collected today would be enough to last a few months, based on my current rate of sales. Satisfied, I grabbed the wagon handle and continued on around the circular sidewalk, searching my mental map for the location of the Lowe’s in relation to the Bed Bath & Beyond. It should’ve been the closest store to…
A line of smoke curled into the air three blocks to the east.
It hadn’t been there when I first went into the store, and judging by the height of the smoke, the fire beneath hadn’t been building for long. There was no way a fire could’ve started naturally in this soggy, cold environment, which meant someone had set it. I considered the possibility that some travelers, maybe refugees, had stopped in Pettigrew for the day, but the town was off the beaten path, the interstate four miles west. Some paranormals then? There were those who chose to live in the stretches despite the danger because they’d grown wary of living among humans after the purge. But they typically lived in well-defended enclaves and they didn’t venture out much.
I stripped off my first glamour with a quick whisper to heighten my senses, and listened. The town had been silent upon my arrival, except for the squeaking of my wagon and my footsteps, and as I focused on the area surrounding the fire, I didn’t hear any new sounds other than the crackle of something burning.
Campsites were loud. People talked. Pots and pans clanked. Tents rustled. So whatever the source of the fire, it wasn’t a group preparing to hunker down for the night.
Dread settled low in my gut.
I really needed to move on to the other stores and gather the rest of the supplies on my list, but it would be foolhardy to stay in a town with unknown elements. If there were paranormals hanging around, there was no guarantee they would play nice with a half-fae. A lot of paranormal communities didn’t like the idea of faerie rule any more than they did human rule. The sídhe were not kind and benevolent leaders handing out candy and rainbows. If you stepped on their toes, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill you. They ended the war and saved intelligent life on Earth as a matter of pragmatism, not compassion. There were practical benefits to keeping the planet habitable and preserving civilization.
What they’d gained from protecting this world was greater than the cost of their efforts.
A basic cost-benefit analysis. That was all that had saved us from the end.
What a comforting th
An even less comforting thought was that the source of the fire could loathe fae politics more than me, and could lump me in with the full-bloods if we ran into each other. I didn’t want to come to blows with someone over a slight difference of opinion. My plate was already full, and I didn’t want to add unnecessary fights and preventable injuries as a side dish. The iron wound in my shoulder was still healing, almost two months later, and it ached if I pushed myself too hard. My nasty gut wound had been healed by a witch, but the regenerated muscles had been extremely stiff and weak afterward, and I’d spent the last few weeks doing a new exercise regimen to strengthen them.
Adding another injury to that list would only make it harder for me to weather whatever Abarta threw at me next.
I debated what to do. Leave and make another trip to Pettigrew later in the week, hopefully after whoever was here had moved on? Or stay and gather the rest of my supplies so I could restock my store in time for Friday’s big sale that Christie had spent a great deal of time helping me plan so I could bring in more business in the long term and soothe my aching bank account? The first choice would make me feel safer now, but the second, if it didn’t end badly, would be better for my bottom line. The only alternative to raking in more revenue through my store was taking on more stretch jobs, and that wasn’t any less dangerous than what I was doing now.
Hm. Why don’t I take a quick peek and see if I can find out what I’m up against before I decide?
I parked the wagon against the window of what had once been a high-end hair salon and crept two blocks down the street before cutting through the parking lot of a bank. The column of smoke was one block over, so I would have a vantage point of the fire if I took the high ground here. Since my second glamour was already down, I jumped up to the roof of the bank and landed in a quiet roll, then crawled on my hands and knees to the opposite side, careful not to expose my head over the short rim of the flat roof. I listened for a few seconds, and when I heard nothing except the wind rattling something against a fence, I peeked over the lip.
A trashcan.
Someone had set a metal trashcan on fire.
It was sitting in the center of a McDonald’s parking lot, filled to the brim with papers and strips of cardboard. The lid of the trashcan had been left sitting a foot to the side, neatly in line with the trashcan itself, like someone had carefully placed it there. Besides the trashcan and lid, the parking lot was empty. No people loitered around the fire to warm themselves or cook food. And through the tinted windows of the nearby restaurant, no silhouettes moved about, clearing tables and cleaning floors. No makeshift camp was being set up inside to keep travelers out of the elements for the night. The trash fire had been set and abandoned.
Why would someone take the time to gather dry kindling to set a trashcan alight, only to do absolutely nothing with the resulting fire?
The dread in my gut grew ten times heavier. Wait a second…
They had done something with the fire. They’d used it to lure me here.
A presence flittered into existence behind me. Cold. Oppressive. Calculating. The hair on my neck rose, goose bumps racing down my arms. Alarms went off in my head as the unmistakable tendrils of bloodlust rippled through the air and snaked around my body, setting off a hundred chills. The creature behind me wasn’t human. Wasn’t even close.
The words to drop my third glamour and raise a shield formed on the tip of my tongue as I whirled around to face my adversary. But before I could loose the first syllable, before I could lift my arm into position, a hand shot forward and collided with my face. The impact tore me off my feet and drove me into the rooftop so hard it cracked. Pain exploded across the left side of my face, and I tasted blood where my teeth cut into my cheek, skin split wide open. My vision danced, seeing double, and my brain couldn’t detangle the confusing signals fast enough to get me moving before the assailant bent down and grabbed my collar.
He hoisted me up with one hand, as if I weighed no more than a feather, and drew me close to his face. The man was not broad or tall, but he was quite possibly the most terrifying creature I’d seen since I walked into the basement of Abarta’s base and came face to face with an old and angry god. His skin was pale in the sense that it almost had a silvery undertone, as if mercury had been injected into his veins and spread all the way to his pores. His irises were a dark and stormy blue, but from a distance, they would appear violet, the color thrown off by the crimson rings around his pupils. The man’s lips were pulled back into a sneer, flashing a canine too long to be anything but a fang, and the furious look betrayed his otherwise dapper appearance.
The man was a vampire in a nice suit. A ruthless killer with a blue silk tie.
And I was royally fucked.
Fear overpowered the pain in my face, and adrenaline rode through my system in a towering wave. I had to force myself to remain still instead of breaking out into a fruitless struggle to free myself from the vampire’s grip. My unglamoured strength, plus a dose of magic energy, might overpower his raw strength, depending on his age, but his speed was something I couldn’t compete with. Vampires were not only the fastest creatures on Earth, they were faster than most full-blooded sídhe, who often needed to use magic to make up the difference in combat.
That wasn’t to say a sídhe couldn’t crush a vampire with ease. They could. The two were equally hardy when it came to taking physical damage—that is, they healed fast—but the sídhe packed a far greater magic punch. A sídhe could take a vampire in a fight any day.
But I wasn’t a sídhe. I was half a sídhe, and that made all the difference.
In the time it took me to siphon magic into my arm and wrench the vampire’s vise-like fist from my shirt, the man could ram his other hand into my abdomen eighty times, fast enough to mimic a knife, and butcher me worse than the Spear of Lugh had last month. If I made a single wrong move, did anything to tempt this vampire to kill me, I’d be gutted or headless or both before I even saw the attack coming. Hell, I hadn’t even sensed the guy climbing onto the roof until he was already standing behind me. He’d moved so quick, my heightened senses had been caught completely unaware.
The man’s gaze roved over my face, and he sniffed loudly several times. His tongue flicked out, wetting his lips, and he said in an oil-slick voice, “Half fae, not human. The scouts had you pegged wrong.” A tiny grin crooked the corner of his mouth. “You smell similar from a distance, so it’s an understandable mistake. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I swallowed, throat dry as sand. “Um, yes?”
“An irrelevant mistake as well.” His grin widened, flashing that fang again. “Half fae is human enough for us.”
“What—?”
His other hand flew up and jabbed me in the neck, stunning my trachea. He then reeled me in, his breath ghosting across my ear, and whispered, “You’ll do just fine for dinner this week.”
Breathless, stars in my vision, I didn’t realize I was moving backward until my feet slipped over the rim of the rooftop. The vampire launched me from the roof of the bank, and I soared in a broad arc fifty feet through the air, over the burning trashcan, and crashed into the broad chest of someone waiting at the end of my trajectory. My right shoulder popped out of its socket, and I choked out a pained gasp as I rebounded off the second vampire, who didn’t even budge at the impact. I collapsed to the asphalt, spittle dripping off my lips as I coughed, lungs burning from a lack of oxygen, shoulder screaming.
The second man didn’t give me time to recover. Continuing the stun tactics, he hoisted me to my feet by my hair, pinned my arms behind my back with one meaty hand, and slapped his other hand over my eyes. “You try to get away,” he said, “I snap your neck. Got it?”
