Richelle Mead - Gameboard of the Gods

“Hello, hello,” said Leo, crouching near the altar. She joined him but refused to kneel. Carefully, he pulled out a wooden tray covered in velvet that had been concealed inside a hidden compartment in the back. Three silver daggers portraying the stylized crow lay on it. “How much do you want to bet forensics can match this to what killed the victims?”

A surge of triumph shot through Mae. He was right. They’d connect this group to the murders, and even if they couldn’t find the actual fanatics right away, the owners of this warehouse had to know what was happening. SCI could start with them and eventually take down the rest.

Leo started to stand when Mae caught sight of something in her periphery. She spun around instantly, aiming her gun. Her breath caught as black smoke billowed in from the wide doorway, filling up the other half of the room. It moved far more quickly than the laws of nature said it should and began to coalesce into distinct shapes. The panic she’d felt increased tenfold. “Get back,” she told Leo. She advanced forward, not entirely sure what she was walking into, only that she had to confront it.

The shadows settled into seven humanoid forms—humanoid forms carrying silver blades. And they were fast . They practically flew toward Mae, and although every piece of reason told her she couldn’t fight them, she fired anyway. She was an excellent shot, as proven at the Nordic concert, but the shadow warriors’ rapid and erratic movements made them hard to target. She finally hit two of them, and rather than go right through as she expected, the bullets made contact with a seemingly solid surface. As the bullets hit their victims, the smoky black shapes transformed into very human ones. A man and a woman, blond and red haired respectively, materialized and fell to the ground, one wounded in the shoulder and the other with a lethal hit through the chest. Whatever they were, they were mortal. The implant refused to let her contemplate the matter further because the other five forms were swarming her. Only life and death mattered now.

The attackers also felt solid when they hit her, which made sense after the killing blow from the video. She elbowed and kicked them, slipping away when the shadow people swung their daggers toward her. Just like the bullets, her kicks made contact with solid substances. In fact, each strike that connected made the dark figures shift briefly to human form. In those fleeting moments of transformation, the attackers moved at regular speeds. She caught hold of one and slammed it hard against the stone floor, revealing a red-haired man who didn’t move. The last attacker’s dagger swiped her arm but didn’t get through the fabric of her shirt. She spun around and shot him in the leg, making him cry out and fall to the ground. Ready to finish the job, she aimed her gun down at him—and heard a snick sound. She felt a biting pain in her chest and saw a small dart poking out of her shirt. She dismissed it. As scarce as guns were in the RUNA, domestic attackers often attempted poisonous hits on prætorians. There was usually some initial discomfort, but the implant was too good at identifying and metabolizing toxins. It wouldn’t take long for it to work on whatever this was. Her concern was on who had actually fired the dart. Lifting her eyes, she saw a familiar person standing at the doorway beside the staircase: Emil. Five others stood behind him.

“Such ingratitude,” he said. “For all you’ve received.”

Mae had no time for soliloquies. All she knew was that her targets were standing still. She fixed her gun on Emil but hesitated to pull the trigger as a swirling feeling stirred in her stomach. That would be the toxin, she supposed. A lightness spread through her limbs, but she took her shot anyway—and missed. Scowling, she tried to fire again, but her shaking hands couldn’t get a grip anymore. The gun slipped from her hands. It was like the recovery phase that followed implant activation, only far more violent than anything she’d ever experienced. Her knees buckled as that swirling in her stomach increased and spread to her chest. She was vaguely aware of Leo catching hold of her as she fell.

“A prætorian is only as good as her weapons,” Emil said, a smug smile on his face. “And your mortal ones mean nothing.”

“Yeah?” Mae gasped. She barely managed a nod at the man she’d killed. Her body shook fiercely now, and her vision was blurring. “Ask him if that’s true.”

“He’s just one man,” said Emil. She had the sense he was moving toward her. “His sacrifice will strengthen our mistress—as will yours. You wouldn’t serve, and now your time is up. It’s time for you to return to her and serve in death.”

Mae tried to speak but couldn’t. Her tongue seemed to fill up her mouth. Beside her, she heard Leo say, “The full moon isn’t until tomorrow.”

Emil chuckled. “Depends on your definition. It’s after midnight. It is tomorrow.”

That was the last thing Mae heard before her heart exploded.

“Have you heard anything?” Justin asked.

“No,” growled Dominic from the front seat. “Just like I hadn’t thirty seconds ago.”

Justin could forgive the gruff attitude for once because he knew Dominic was just as agitated as he was about the sudden silence. Leo had sent messages every few minutes until recently. Now, ten minutes had gone past without communication. Concerned, Dominic had queried Leo a couple minutes ago but heard nothing.

“They probably found something and got distracted,” said Justin. He was trying to reassure himself more than Dominic. As it was, Justin was fighting every instinct to go inside after them. “Leo’s too smart to set off an alarm. And Mae’s a prætorian for fuck’s sake. They’re fine.”

“You put a lot of faith in prætorians,” remarked Dominic.

“Of course I do. They’re lethal—I mean, aside from when they’re drinking heavily and acting ridiculous.”

“It’s how they cope,” Dominic said. “You have to if you’re going to survive that kind of lifestyle. They flip back and forth, but it’s always extreme—even if they’re off duty. They play hard, fuck hard, and fight hard and can switch into that ‘on’ mode in the space of a heartbeat. You ever seen Mae switch on?”

“Of course.”

“With a few rowdy zealots? That’s nothing. You see her now, with that pretty face and all those manners, and you think, ‘Oh, she’s a castal who happens to be a prætorian.’ But the truth is, she’s a prætorian first who happens to be a castal. When she switches on, when she’s really in that moment…she’ll be something else. Something whose purpose is to fight and kill with single-minded focus. And it’s not just the implant and the training. They don’t just choose prætorians on physical ability. There’s a psychological profile they screen for too, one that works very well with being pumped full of all those chemicals—and don’t think those don’t eventually take their toll.”

“You don’t like prætorians,” said Justin, knowing what an understatement that was.

“I don’t trust them,” he corrected. “They’re dangerous to others. They’re dangerous to themselves.”

Justin said nothing more, not wanting to provoke his paranoid companion. It was true that Mae was scary sometimes, but Justin had faith in her. He wasn’t sure if he had faith in the alleged charm he’d given her, though. The ravens had spent the last two days trying to teach him a symbol they claimed was one of their god’s greatest mysteries. They called the symbol algiz and had been drilling its meaning into his head over and over. The problem was, they kept giving it all sorts of definitions. Initially, it had represented protection, which Justin thought was a reasonable concept to send a warrior into battle with. But then the ravens kept elaborating. It was an elk, a yew tree, life. When he showed them that he’d memorized everything, they condescendingly said he didn’t truly know it, that it took a lifetime to understand. They did finally decide, however, that he had enough of a grasp to perform a rudimentary protection blessing on Mae. Whether it would do anything remained to be seen.