False Gods (Sins of the Father 2)

I clenched my teeth. No way was he dead, just off to lick his wounds. And when he came back, I knew that there would be hell to pay.

38

Sterling went through his third towel, retching and complaining the whole time as he wiped more of the Cube goo off his body. It was hard to tell where the black blood ended and his leather jacket began, and there was a good chance his clothes were permanently ruined. But what I found more interesting was how the Lorica had shown up bringing towels at all.

“Standard procedure,” Maharani told me, a look of boredom in her eyes. “There’s often at least one person on hot cocoa duty as well. Just in case.”

And no matter the situation, the Lorica’s teams could just as easily teleport in and out whenever they pleased, to retrieve more resources for whatever was required for a cleanup. We were still at the warehouse, my legs, for once, happy to resist the urge to flee at the first sign of the Lorica showing up.

On Rani’s command, a squad of Wings had appeared. Those were mages who specialized in teleportation magic of various flavors, and their job was to transport both supplies and the Lorica’s less transportation-competent members, whether it was to a battle, or to conduct what was referred to as a cleanup.

“This isn’t new to you, I trust.” Rani waved a hand at the fifteen or so men and women who had spontaneously popped into existence. “The Mouths are there to wipe memories, in case there are any witnesses. And the Hands, well, you know how it is with the Hands.”

The Mouths were Lorica mages who used telepathy in all its forms to delete the part of a civilian’s brain that might have spotted a manticore flying overhead, or witnessed a hobo firing lightning bolts out of his fingers. The Hands were combat specialists, second only to Scions in how dangerous they could be. Even in noncombat situations, it was always a good idea to have one or two Hands, er, on hand. Just in case.

Some Hands had extensive experience with healing magic, however, and one of those was attending to Florian’s bruises, running her fingers lightly over his brow, across his forearms. I might have imagined it, but I thought I saw the Hand giggle as she slipped a piece of paper into Florian’s pocket. Attaboy. He looked down at himself, then back up at her, confused.

A couple of Mouths had worked in tandem to help subdue Wyatt Whateley. His sword was returned to him, and together Wyatt and Mistleteinn were teleported by a friendly Wing all the way back to his sumptuous house over in Silver Lake.

And I’d never known it to happen to a god, but Mouths were engaged to erase Skirnir’s memories, too. It took five of them, perhaps because he was still an entity despite his state. A couple of Hands and Wings were sent to escort him and Gambanteinn home to his apartment, where he could continue to live his life unmolested, I hoped, by gullible alraunes and nephilim who just happened to be conned by trickster gods.

Speaking of which, Loki had disappeared, though not without a trace. They found a note in his armchair, addressed to me, that promised payment in full. My mouth soured just at the sound of that. Knowing Loki, that could just as easily be interpreted as a threat.

But he’d better cough up, I thought. This whole thing at the warehouse was a gigantic mess, initiated by a single entity’s boredom. I wanted out of all that, out of this life where my location burned as bright as a bonfire on the arcane map, where any Tom, Dick, or Harry Houdini could easily track me down.

Maharani cleared her throat as she tapped her foot in front of me, one eyebrow cocked, both expectant and analytical. “You’re off the hook, Mr. Albrecht. We won’t be hauling you in – at least not this time.”

“Really?” I forced myself to stare her in the face, using every ounce of my willpower to avoid glancing at her new lock of gray hair. “What gives? Not that I’m complaining, honestly.”

“Because with or without Laevateinn, Loki would have found some way to catalyze his insane plan. All he really needed was power sources, which you so conveniently brought to him.”

I toed at the ground, scratching the back of my wrist. “Sorry.”

“Well, as luck would have it, we managed to halt distribution of these – gods, whatever these things are. I couldn’t imagine the headache our PR department would have had to deal with if these monsters had made it out all across California.”

I chewed on the inside of my lip, drumming up enough courage to test her with a question. “So what you’re saying is that we saved the day?”

Maharani scoffed. “Hardly. If I hadn’t intervened, the collision of energies might have been more catastrophic. Explosive. But – I do very much appreciate your cooperation in the matter. Your commitment to righting your own wrongs has not gone unnoticed.”

But that was when it clicked for me. Arachne commanding Beatrice Rex to hide Laevateinn made sense all along. They were supposed to prevent all of this from happening. I felt guilty for a moment, but the reality was that Loki would have found his sword at some point, one way or the other. Arachne’s solution was delaying the inevitable. By some happy accident, we’d nipped the problem in the bud by destroying every last living Cube.

My chest puffed out and I grinned. “You’re welcome.”

She frowned. “Not so fast. This is not a matter of the Lorica thanking you. I’m only saying that we may be growing more sympathetic to your existence, and more aware of the possibility that you are not, as was originally presumed by the rest of the Scions, a threat and a menace. I will be the first to admit that the Lorica does indeed wield a heavy hand, especially when it comes to matters of the demi- and nonhuman species. But only time will tell.”

I shrugged. “Look around you. I don’t know what else I could say or do to prove to you that I’m just a really good boy. I mean, I am part angel.”

Maharani’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the other part that I’m worried about. Good evening, Mr. Albrecht. The less we see of each other, the better.” She turned away from me in a swirl of silks, and just like that, I was dismissed.

“Piece of work, that,” Sterling said sulkily, rubbing at a spot on his cheek. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Fantastic idea,” Florian said, stretching his arms, then groaning as his joints popped and creaked in a way that most definitively proved he was both a little bit human and a little bit sequoia.

“I’m beat. Let’s head out.” And I was just about to, leading the three of us out of the warehouse in a direction that I knew wouldn’t take us past the Lorica’s cleanup crew when – well, something nudged up against my shin. I glanced down at it, recognizing its whitish, gelatinous sheen.

“What the fuck,” Florian yelped. “Don’t move, I’ll squish it.”

Metal sang as Sterling unsheathed his katana. “No no, let me do the honors.”