Age of X01 - Gameboard of the Gods Read online

  “One moment at a time.”

  “You told me your dream…but what do you really know about all of this? The bigger picture?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for almost five years. Cope. Lead a normal life. Learn as much as possible. Unfortunately, there’s no real authority to go to for this. Callista’s helped a little, but there are still so many questions.”

  Slightly calmer, Mae was able to focus more on him and noticed his shoulder, where long bloody lines cut through the shirt. “She…she scratched you with her, um, claws.”

  “Got my back too,” he said with a wince. “And she did that even before the transformation.”

  “You should see a doctor.”

  He scoffed. “No way. I’m glad you and I had this breakthrough, but there’s no way I’m talking to a professional. It’s not that deep. You can do a field-medic job on me back in the room.” The mention of his room brought back the memories of their brief moment of passion. “Mae—” he began.

  She didn’t want to hear whatever was coming and quickly pushed another topic. “That…thing that seizes me had a weird reaction to the jaguar. Almost as though they didn’t want to fight each other.”

  Justin wisely followed her lead, though he looked reluctant. “Competing gods, maybe. I want to know what the police get on her. I want to know who sent her.”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? The group behind the murders.”

  “I don’t know…jaguars and obsidian. That’s not their style. Why didn’t she use a silver dagger on you?”

  “Maybe they only save them for special occasions.”

  He gave her a long, level look. “You do realize now that this is all tied together? You, the victims, your goddess. You’re connected, no matter what Leo’s tests say.”

  Mae started to protest when she noticed Tessa coming toward them. The girl caught the tail end. “Are you talking about goddesses?”

  “SCI talk,” Justin said quickly.

  Tessa looked skeptical, but she put that aside as concern seized her. “Are you guys okay? I saw what happened from the roof…in the park….” She looked more surprised than appalled, probably because of the common nature of Panamanian shootings. “I heard a policeman saying that woman attacked Justin.”

  “Kind of,” said Mae. “It’s a long story.” Suddenly, she remembered the beginning of her earlier conversation with Tessa. “What happened to you? And being accosted?”

  Justin’s head jerked up. “Accosted?”

  “Bad word choice,” said Tessa. No one was nearby, but she still looked around nervously. “I think we should go upstairs. I’ve got something kind of important to show you.”

  CHAPTER 32

  DESPERATE TIMES AND ALL THAT

  “Something important” was kind of an understatement.

  Justin never would’ve believed Mae’s genetic past and subsequent fight with a shape-shifting woman could be trumped by anything. Apparently, it was one of the rare times he was wrong. Equally incredible was listening to Tessa put together facts in the interview with the old man. Justin had known she was smart, but even he was amazed at her ability to ask the right questions. She’d had no idea how it all worked together, but her gut had told her to just keep gathering information.

  Even prodigies needed sleep, however, and in the middle of her video’s third viewing, he saw that Tessa was exhausted. He sent her off to bed while he and Mae held a war council in his room, both of them pointedly not sitting on the bed. Exerzol had given Justin a second wind, though he was so wired by the flood of data tonight that he couldn’t have slept anyway. Mae, although not technically tired, had a weary look on her face, the expression of someone who was mentally drained.

  Justin paced the room. “It’s here, Mae. There’s always a pattern, and we’ve almost got it.”

  “I feel like we just kind of have a mess.”

  “That too. But look. There are genetically superior patricians being engineered—magically or otherwise—with the assistance of some religious group. Said group sacrifices a plebeian to do it and demands a hefty price tag, as well as devotion from the designer baby.” He thought back to his conversation with Callista and how she’d mused that a god might like “perfect” followers, though she hadn’t understood why that god would kill said creations off. Now he knew. “But if they aren’t loyal, they’re sacrificed too and ‘returned’ to their goddess. Ilias Sandberg openly refused. None of the other victims mentioned being approached, but they were all antireligion, which suggests they weren’t on board with some war or death goddess—hence they had to be dealt with.”

  “The video is real, then,” she said. He could tell it took her a lot of effort to admit that. “We were seeing some supernatural assassin.”

  “It would appear so. Mae…” For a few moments, he couldn’t go forward. Studying her and all those lovely features, he desperately wished he didn’t have to bring up a subject that would only worsen their troubled relationship. But too much was on the line. “Please hear me out. Let me finish what I’m about to say.”

  The wary look on her face said she knew what was coming. “Okay.”

  “We know now that you were engineered too. You’re the right age and have the right score. You have some ‘dark’ goddess following and possessing you, one that usually shows up when you’re fighting. I’m not exactly saying that’s a direct link to war and death, but it’s pretty close. You have to see that.”

  To his relief, she didn’t blow up at him. She simply clung to her safety blanket. “I’m not a match.”

  “I know, but is there anything else you can tell me about this goddess that seizes you? The ravens only get impressions off her. They aren’t all-knowing, no matter how much they like to put on airs. You’re the most direct connection we have. Please. Is there any other attribute you can think of to help us find these people before the next murder?”

  Part of him wanted to go back and interrogate Astrid Koskinen. She had to know more about this cult than she’d let on. And yet…she’d been so convincing when she denied any knowledge.

  She could just be better than you, Horatio said.

  I know. I could easily bring her in as a person of interest, but that’d unearth a lot about Mae, not to mention implicate her mother in illegal activity.

  They didn’t really seem to get along, the raven reminded him.

  It was true, but if there was some other way he could get what he needed to know, he’d try that first—if there was enough time. An internal struggle obviously raged through Mae. She was probably starting to accept that there were too many coincidences surrounding her life, but getting on board with this still had to be a shock to her system. She swallowed.

  “There might be. There’s this man who—”

  Justin’s ego rang. Irritated at the interruption, he started to silence the call when he saw the display showing a blocked number in Mexico. “Send call to the screen,” he told it. He answered and found Callista Xie glaring at Mae and him.

  “Where,” she demanded, “did you get it?”

  “Get what?” asked Mae. Seeing Callista snapped her out of her malaise and put her back in tough prætorian mode.

  Justin already knew what Callista was referring to. Before his ill-fated trip to the casino, he’d sent the picture of Mae’s necklace off to the authorities in the respective castes. On impulse, he’d also sent a copy to Callista.

  “A couple of my genetically perfect castals had it,” he said, leaving Mae’s name out of this for now. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  “It’s the symbol of the servants of the Morrigan.”

  Immediately, Justin sifted through his mental files of gods and mythology. “Celtic,” he said. He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. “She fights with warriors in battle and appears to people before death….”

  Mae gave him an incredulous look. “You knew there was a goddess like that and didn’t make the connection?”

 
“That applies to a hundred gods around the world,” he shot back. “I didn’t know which one it was. Death and battle are pervasive themes in the human experience.” He turned back to a scowling Callista. “She’s tied to other things too.”

  “Silver and moonlight?” suggested Mae wryly. “And crows?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “And cows too, weirdly. Some also theorized she was a triple goddess and would’ve possessed other attributes through her different aspects.”

  “Not in the beliefs of her recent followers,” said Callista. “They were—are—focused on her darker parts. They prefer power over enlightenment.”

  “How do you know so much?” asked Mae suspiciously.

  “Because Amarantha is a warrior goddess, and I make it my business to know about rivals.”

  “I thought Amarantha was a goddess of magic.”

  “She’s both.” Impatient, Callista fixed her dark gaze on Justin. “You have to stop the Morrigan. Her people will kill again.”

  “I know they will! What do you think I’m trying to do here?” he asked. “If you know so much, where are they?”

  Callista looked sheepish. “I don’t know. On a Celtic grant probably.”

  “Very helpful,” he grumbled.

  One thing that made plebeians scornful of patricians was that at times it was really hard to define a genetic profile for an ethnic group. Sometimes the genes were telling. Often, castes went by phenotype, which could make things messy when a nationality could have any number of features. The Celtic castes were all over the place on their true ancestral appearances. Some argued for a light-haired, fair-skinned presence while others insisted the Celtic people had migrated from Iberia and had darker looks. The competing Irish castes—the Erinians and Hibernians—were particularly dysfunctional. Half the time, the traits a caste selected for seemed arbitrary. The Welsh caste had split the difference in accepted Celtic traits, and most citizens had pale skin, black hair, and dark blue or brown eyes. There were also two “meta” Celtic castes, which embraced multiple nationalities, much as the Nordics allowed all the Scandinavian regions and Finland.

  The bottom line was that there were any number of Celtic grants this cult could be hiding in. Picking up his ego, Justin told it to bring up any servitor records of the Morrigan. It pulled up an investigation and subsequent license denial from twenty-six years ago—which made sense if that was when the genetically engineered castals had stopped being created. Their last location had been a plebeian city, which only complicated things.

  “They didn’t stay shut down,” Callista told him. “They disappeared from my people too, but we get enough hints now and then to know they’re still practicing.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a little more extensive than ‘hints.’ We can probably assume it’s a light-haired caste, based on the description of the guy who visited the victims.” Inspiration suddenly struck Justin. “Hang on,” he told Callista. He issued a series of commands to the screen.

  It divided into two images, one of which was Callista’s face. The other half displayed a map of the land grants in the Great Plains region of the country. Red dots in each grant marked the patrician victims, while green dots displayed the other living eights and nines in their respective castes. Yellow dots outside the borders indicated the plebeian deaths.

  “You’ve got a lot more plebeians there than patricians,” Callista observed. “Even counting the living ones.”

  “Because we’re only looking at these five grants,” he said. “The Morrigan’s people probably worked on other castes. They just haven’t had any deaths to catch our attention. I bet there’s a perfect patrician for every plebeian there. And statistically, you’d expect some plebeian deaths to occur for nonsacrificial reasons.”

  Mae suddenly stood up. “There’s a pattern.”

  “There’s always a pattern.”

  “No, look.” She pointed. “All the plebeian and patrician deaths make a circle around this grant. Is that the Pan-Celts?”

  “Yes,” said Justin, excitement racing through him. “One of the metas. Light haired, just like our guy.”

  “A lot of area for a group to hide out,” said Callista with obvious dismay.

  Justin shook his head in bitter amusement. “It’d be nice if your interest in stopping them was out of altruism for those poor victims, but something tells me you’re more concerned with getting rid of a threat to your group.”

  “She should be,” said Mae unexpectedly. “Because they want to kill her.”

  Both Justin and Callista stared. “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “Because he asked me to. The, uh, guy who visited the others. He’s come to me a couple of times.”

  Justin couldn’t formulate any words right away. “What? And you only just now thought to mention it?”

  “Don’t take that tone,” she snapped. “I didn’t make the connection, any more than you did with a goddess who apparently fits all the criteria we’ve got! I thought he was trying to extort me for the Swedish mafia.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Callista, angry at being left out.

  “Oh, I must have forgotten to mention that the uncontrollable force that follows Mae is the Morrigan.” Seeing Callista’s mouth drop in shock, Justin quickly preempted any protests. “Don’t question or make accusations. We’re dealing with it.” He turned to Mae. “He seriously asked you to kill her?”

  Mae nodded. “Wasn’t specific on the means. No mention of a silver dagger.”

  A troubling thought occurred to Justin. “Did he threaten you?” Even when he’d first suspected Mae might have a connection, he’d never considered she might be in real danger. After all, she wasn’t like the others. She was unstoppable…right?

  “What he said isn’t important,” Mae said.

  “It is if your life’s on the line!”

  “It’s not. No shadow creature’s coming after me. Worry about these other patricians.”

  “And worry about the fact that they’re eliminating their rivals too.” Callista’s face darkened with outrage. “Now do you see that they need to be stopped? For me, for her, for the others! They need to be disbanded and destroyed!”

  Justin was growing frustrated, still shaken by the idea of something happening to Mae. “Yes, yes, I know! But we can’t do anything until we find them.”

  She fixed him with a cold look. “Then I suggest you start looking. And you…” She turned to Mae. “You start taking this seriously if you don’t want to be next. I told you before. If you want to be free, you need to break them. You could save yourself and the others. I…might be able to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” said Mae.

  “Yeah, you’re doing great on your own,” said Callista dryly. “Fix this. Immediately.” She disconnected.

  Mae glared at the screen. “I really don’t like her.”

  “Yeah, well, she helped us out with the name. We know a lot about the group now. We know a lot about you, whether you like it or not.” He raked a hand through his hair with a sigh. The Exerzol was crashing down on him. “Everything except where they are. I wish you’d told me about that guy.”

  “So you could nobly throw yourself in front of me?” A glint in those eyes told him the ramifications of his earlier refusal weren’t going away any time soon. “It was my business, not yours. And I certainly never could’ve guessed the bigger picture. I thought he was blackmailing me about my niece.” She gave him a brief rundown of her encounters with Emil. It left Justin reeling.

  “Well, at least it’s still—” His ego rang again. “Fuck, doesn’t anyone sleep?” It was still synched to the screen, which identified the caller as Leo. At least he had the excuse of an earlier time zone.

  Leo appeared when Justin answered, not looking tired in the least. In fact, there was a light in his face that Justin knew well: the light of a breakthrough.

  “I’ve got it,” he said. “I know how your video could’ve been faked.”

  It
was a blow to Justin’s finely tuned theories. He’d grown comfortable with the idea of the shadowy assassin being some supernatural manifestation. If the video was proven to be a fake, then that meant the murderers had resorted to practical means, which still didn’t rule out the Morrigan’s involvement. It just meant they were using smoke and mirrors to scare others.

  Still, Justin was anxious enough to find out the results that he changed their travel plans to go straight to Portland from the Nordic grant. He considered bringing Tessa but ended up sending her home on the original flight. She’d already been involved in too much.

  When he and Mae stepped into Leo’s house, they found a makeshift movie studio. Cameras and equipment Justin couldn’t identify had been arranged around the living room, and a transparent plastic screen sat near one of the walls. He stared around in amazement.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Your answer,” said Leo excitedly. His worse half came strolling in, looking as unpleasant as usual.

  “Saw a news story about a shooting on the Nordic land grant,” Dominic remarked casually. “They say a prætorian was involved.”

  “Must have been a lucky break for them,” Mae replied evenly. “Having one on hand.”

  Meanwhile, Leo could barely contain himself. “Let’s do this.” He put on a skintight black suit and hood, similar to what scuba divers wore, except shinier. He flipped on some of the equipment and shifted the clear screen so that it was between him and them. And then, just like that, his form became translucent and smoky and shot across the living room. He took off his head covering and grinned, looking at all of them expectantly.

  “It’s not fast enough,” said Mae, speaking at last.

  “And there’s no way someone could set all this up without the victim noticing,” added Justin. He didn’t know if he should be relieved or disappointed that they hadn’t proven the fraud. “It’s a good effort, Leo. Really. But I don’t think it’s a match.”

  “Good effort?” Leo’s eyes bugged. “Do you know how long it took me to set this up? To get ahold of this kind of light-refraction equipment? I’ve looked at that video’s code a million times! It wasn’t tampered with. Whatever we’re seeing was done on site, and this is a match. If it’s not this, then it really is some kind of mystical apparition!”