Page 100 of A Subtle Scar
“Do. Straight to Tiamat. Bring her back here. I will see what I can do about this.” He unfolded his wings and struck one of the naked women with them. “Hurry.”
“What, no! Stop, we have to—”
But Hermes was faster, his hold unwavering. The magic I called to push him off me didn’t come.
Hermes released me when we arrived. On a patio in a nice big garden. Things were growing a little wild here, even the lawn.
“Fuck,” I said and spun to glare at him. I had a mild case of double vision going on, but I was not going to let that stop me. “We need to go back there! After calling reinforcements. Fuck this case.”
At that point, what I’d almost taken to be part of the garden, moved, and the massive dragon that was Tiamat came into focus. Almost into focus.
I watched her turn from scaled creature to her human form, something that was as stunning now as the first time I had seen it. Fully naked, she came toward us.
“You did not call ahead, and you don’t look like you’re here for a social call,” the Dragon Mother said and walked right up to stare into my eyes with her forest green ones. She cupped my cheeks with her hands.
“No, Dragon Mother. But we need your help. It’s Ronny—”
“Why is your intended drained? Charrie should know better than to assume humans can use their powers like we gods can,” Tiamat said. Or chided.
Hermes hung his head. “Chandler did, uhm, like a trance thing? And he really wanted to go to that weird cult place after. So we went with him.”
“A bunker. I need to call someone,” I said, but Tiamat’s hands squeezed gently and held me in place.
“You need to rest. It’s the best cure for a magic drain like yours,” she said.
Magic drain?Immortals called things by different names, but I had not overused my magic. At all. And even a trance didn’t cause magical burnout. “I had a trance, yes, I’m dead on my feet. I didn’t use a ton of magic, but I tried. Pulling on it, but that freaky manhole cover stopped me.”
Tiamat cocked her head.
“That was what I was trying to say, Dragon Mother. We found a thing. I’m not sure. Ronny stayed with it. He said to bring you. It dampens magic, makes using it feel like reciting a poem underwater.”
I grabbed Tiamat’s wrists because she was the voice of reason if ever there was one.
“He’s right. Charon needs help, and I’m coming too. Can we please go now?”
“A second,” Hermes said and ran to grab Tiamat’s garden hose. “To tie them all up,” he said a little sheepishly.
“You will replace that,” Tiamat said. “I’ll bring Chandler. Show me the way.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mytwoloversvanished,and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had lied about the spell the three skull-clad ones were speaking. It was not pig Latin, but old words, what scholars today called Etruscan.
We call forth the old and the mighty, the seven sisters that hold the sky and birth the stars,they said, repeating it over and over.
The chaotic magic contained in the god coin set into the bottom of this cave thrummed. I didn’t in fact know for certain that it was a god coin, artifacts rumored to have been created either by very old gods or even by the Old Gods, all capital letters for them, and also referred to as the primary divines and other monikers.
The only reason I suspected that’s what I was seeing was a story Isis had told me once, and she was a story teller who rarely used embellishment when it came to the truth of a tale.
One of the naked and marked women attacked, her fingers standing out like claws.
I stepped aside and blocked her with my wing, then hissed with pain when those once human digits cut through my divine feathers as if they were nothing but cheap wrapping paper.
Between Hermes and Chandler leaving, whatever spell had been started by the skull-clad ones had turned these women into something they hadn’t been before. I didn’t understand it, but it was no human magic. I felt the god coin, pulsing with its chaos magic, almost gleeful.
Another woman lunged also, and this one, I chose to grab by the neck. She sliced at me with both her claw hands and got my belly with her right, the arm I was holding her with she scored with her left.
I released her. The pain was instant and bright and slicing. One hand flew to my belly covering the wounds. I had been the target of many a human’s misguided fear or fury, but none of their weapons had ever harmed me like this.
