Which was unsettling, since he spent a good deal of his life tupping.
“Tarts?” Allixta sneered. “You are such a whore.”
A former slave, he’d known his share of insults; most didn’t bother him. Now his claws sharpened as he remembered his queen’s words from so long ago: You possess the smoldering sensuality of the fey and the sexual intensity of a demon. . . . I have a use for you after all.
Old frustrations made his tone sharp: “On the subject of whores, did I ever get around to swiving you, witch? For the life of me I just can’t remember.”
Darach bit back a roughened laugh as he pulled on his tunic.
Allixta leveled her green gaze on the wolf. “Something to say, mongrel?” Then she turned to Rune. “Trust me, baneblood, if I could stomach your befouled body long enough to bed you, you’d never forget it.”
Befouled. Rune loathed his blood. Worse, she knew how deeply he did. Some things in his mind were too prominent to disguise from prying eyes.
He reached into his pocket, seeking the talisman he always kept near. Carved from a demon ancestor’s horn and inscribed with runes even he couldn’t decipher, it always helped him focus, reminding him to look toward the future—
Suddenly Sian’s head jerked up. “My brother is dead?” Sian’s twin, the Father of Terrors, had been as hideous as Sian was physically flawless.
Rune nodded. “Killed in a blood sport contest. Murdered in front of cheering crowds.”
Blace shook his head. “Impossible. A primordial like the Father of Terrors can’t be killed.”
“He was slain—by a mere immortal,” Rune said. “These days in the Gaia realms, they no longer fight one species against another; they’ve allied into armies. And more, these immortals don’t just take down primordials. They assassinate gods.”
Allixta smirked. “Perhaps your dirty blood has finally rotted your brain. Deities can’t be assassinated by immortals.”
He turned from her and addressed the others: “Several gods have perished, all in the last year. Including one of the witch divinities.” While Allixta sputtered, Rune reeled off names of old deities, extinguished forever. He studied the set of Orion’s shoulders for signs of tension.
How would a god feel about the deaths of his kind?
Orion just stared at the worlds flickering past.
“Why do you trust this information from your . . . nymphs?” Allixta demanded of Rune.
“Because I pay them well in their favorite currency: stiff fuckings with a stout cock. It just so happens I’m rich beyond measure.”
Before she could launch into a scathing response, Blace said, “These assassinations have occurred. Read his thoughts, Allixta. The information is there.”
“They seem connected,” Sian said. “It’s as if someone is trying to attract our notice. Our very presence. Who would dare?”
“A Valkyrie named Nïx the Ever-Knowing,” Rune answered. “The primordial of her species.” According to the nymphs, Nïx had orchestrated these killings. “She’s a soothsayer and a wish giver. Close to goddesshood.”
Orion often made allies of enemies—he had with Blace, Allixta, and two of the sleeping Møriør. Would the god enlist the primordial Valkyrie?
Orion raised his flattened palm. The projections slowed, then stopped on an image of a crimson planet. He tilted his head, perceiving things no one else could.
Weaknesses.
He could see vulnerabilities in a man, a castle, an army. An entire world.
The Undoing slowly curled his fingers to make a fist. The planet began to lose shape, crumbling, as if he wadded up parchment.
Was Orion mimicking the destruction? Or causing it?
The world dwindled and dwindled, until it . . . disappeared. A whole realm—gone. The inhabitants dead.
Orion turned to face the others. His expression was contemplative, but his eyes . . . dark and chilling, like the abyss Sian hailed from. His fathomless gaze fell on Rune. “Bring me the head of the Valkyrie, archer.”
No enlistment. Just death. Why not attempt to sway Nïx? Two seats remained at the table, and a soothsayer was always an asset. Lore held that she was one of the most powerful oracles ever to live.
Too bad she couldn’t see her own future.
Rune shrugged off his curiosity. He had no love for Valkyries anyway. They were staunch allies to the fey, a colonizing species of slavers and rapists.
Judged by the company you keep, Nïx.
Rune knew she prowled the streets of a specific mortal city—a place of ready sin—from sundown to sunup. There was a large covey of water nymphs nearby. Tree nymphs as well.
They had eyes and ears in every pond, oak, and puddle.
In the name of duty, I’ll pump them for information. As Rune had answered so many times over the millennia: “It is done, my liege.”
FOUR
New Orleans
PRESENT DAY
Oh, gods, Rune, so close! Pleasepleasepleaseohgods, yes, yes, YESSSSSS!”
When Jo’s super-hearing picked up a third woman screaming her way to ecstasy—from the same location—her curiosity got piqued.
Time to finish up with the guy she was strangling.
She’d pinned him up against a brick wall, unmoved as he squirmed. He’d come into her territory, carrying a pimp cane?
In Jo’s mind, pimp cane signaled open season. Then the fucker had used it on a prostitute, a girl younger than Jo. The chick huddled on the curb, cheek swelling as she watched Jo delivering punishment.
“You gonna come back here?” Jo asked, though he couldn’t answer. She squeezed till things broke; this guy’s windpipe was crushed. “Huh?”