Devilish Game (Shadow Guild: The Rebel 4)

“You can read it?” I asked, hopeful.

“Yes. Not every single word, but most.”

“That’s some skill,” Mac said.

“I’ve got some weird ones.” Seraphia pinned me with an expectant glance. “Now get turning. Let’s find that symbol and figure out what the hell is going on.”

I did as she asked, carefully turning the pages, and searching for the symbol.

A tiny wisp of smoke seemed to hover over one particular section, so I turned to it, almost immediately finding the same symbol that I’d seen when I’d touched the kidnapper. “Here it is.”

Seraphia nudged me aside, clearly excited. She bent over the text and began to read silently. I tapped my foot, anxious to hear what she was learning.

Finally, she looked up, a frown on her face. “The language is Ugaritic, like I thought. This discusses the Temple of Anat at Ugarit.”

“I only understood some of those words,” I said.

“Right. Of course. You are, in fact, not a nerdy old scholar.”

“Sadly, no.”

“Well, Ugarit was an ancient Canaanite city on the coast of what is now Syria, right near the Mediterranean. It’s really ancient—the first signs of habitation are nearly eight thousand years old. The heyday was about 3,500 years ago, though. Thousands of people lived there until the Sea Peoples destroyed the city in 1190 BCE.”

“BCE?” I asked.

“Before Common Era. Same as BC, but in science-speak,” she said.

Holy crap that was old. “And the city is still there?”

“It’s rubble now, but yes,” Seraphia said. “The ruins are still there.”

“Isn’t Syria in the middle of a civil war?” Mac asked.

“Yes, but I don’t think it’s active in Ugarit. The city itself wasn’t destroyed in the war like some of the other cultural heritage sites, fortunately.” Sadness flickered in Seraphia’s eyes. “It’s rubble only because it is so ancient. But you should be able to find the outlines of the old palaces, houses, libraries, and temples.”

“Including the Temple of Anat,” I said. “Who was she?”

“She was a goddess of war and peace. Birth and death. She was worshiped in quite a few countries, but Ugarit has a temple dedicated specifically to her. And another to her brother Baal.”

“Goddess of war?” I asked, remembering the crimson magic that had flashed in my mind. It had come with the sounds and smells of war. Had she been trying to contact me?

No, that was crazy. Totally crazy.

But Grey had said my magic was growing.

Was it somehow connecting me to an ancient war goddess? Were they even real?

Nope, still crazy. I shouldn’t be speculating about that when I needed to be finding my friends. “Our answers have to be at the temple, then.”

“Maybe our kidnapping victims, too,” Mac said.

Hope flared. “With any luck, yes.

We need to go immediately and do recon. We’ll pull a rescue mission if it’s possible.” But how the hell was an ancient war goddess related to this? “Are gods and goddesses real?”

“As real as you or I,” Seraphia said. “But they’re rarely found on earth, and they are definitely not human.”

“Neither are we, technically,” I said. “There’s something a bit different about us, right?”