62. GODRIC

“This has to be the sign this Afterworld is ending. Godric the Great has found the only one in Existence who dares snub him.”

The deep, amused voice slithers over me like a writhing den of vipers.

I must be in a worse state than I realized if I hadn’t felt his approach. Not that my obliviousness surprises me. Amidst the chaos that is Noctis, I only feel her.

I only ever feel her now.

“This deserves a whole chapter in the Codex Celestia. I would call it ‘Wen the Sword of Heaven Lost His Edge,’ or ‘Wen Heaven’s Sword Was Blunted.’”

That acid-drip of my existence. Now, more than ever, since I made him my third-in-command. When I knew he’s the only nephilim who would disregard the sacred chain of command. Which he does. Continuously.

The cocky wanker thinks I won’t obliterate him when he disobeys me, even when he causes untold mayhem, under direct command of my—our father. It’s only in my best interests not to kill him, and to keep him this close. It will be worth all his aggravation when the time comes, and I maneuver him into his position.

Or so I keep telling myself. But that prod in my arse has been making another idea seem more attractive. Throwing him in the deepest dungeon in Carcerem, and forgetting he ever existed.

As if to underline the benefits of doing so, he snickers, “I thought it an impossibility, but the Sword of Heaven has found his match. Is there anything you wouldn’t let her get away with? Is it because you afraid of her, now you know she’s a Null?”

I grit my teeth hard enough the whole bar vibrates.

The hulking bartender turns in alarm, and it’s only then I realize it’s Elijah. Unlocking my jaw before I shatter every bottle in the soaring shelves behind him, I point to the one in his hand, then tap the bar-top.

Elijah’s expression betrays momentary surprise, before the sculpted darkness of his face closes on the impassiveness of the soldier and subordinate that he is by day. He’s the newest member of my Guard, and one of the nephilim I’ve personally trained. He holds a special position in my regard, having developed no presumptions or familiarities with me. Not like the bloody bastard breathing down my neck.

As Elijah places the bottle and a glass before me, I contemplate smashing them. Into Gideon’s face. It may afford me a measure of relief, seeing shards embedded in his dashing face, and blood soaking his designer clothes. The bloody peacock is always groomed to perfection, and dressed like a haute couture model.

Knowing he would relish it dissuades me from giving in to the urge. That and the fact that it exists, when I never used to have urges.

And to think I threatened those wet-nosed cadets with dire consequences if they started a brawl. I’d be setting a pathetic example if I started one myself.

But then, with Gideon, it wouldn’t be a fight, but another battle in the war he’s been waging on me since the accursed day he discovered he’s my sibling. My semi-sibling.

I would subdue him, of course, and this time I’d damage him enough, he’d suffer for a few days regrowing what I would pulverize. But he’s powerful enough that this won’t happen before our clash wreaks untold destruction.

In all of our previous conflicts, he’d been the instigator. If I rise to his bait and initiate a showdown, everyone will realize I have developed a temper. I can’t land the first punch and expose the frayed state of my mind, or risk anyone extrapolating the reason behind it.

Her.

So far, every side believes my meticulous misdirection concerning my involvement with her. Even Gideon, though he’s taunting me about her, has no idea of the depth of my affliction.

So, no, I can’t get any relief by decimating both Gideon and this place. And he knows it. It’s why he parks his bloody arse next to me, smothering me in his created-for-him cologne, and patented-for-me pestilence.

“It’s priceless, really. You might be holding the leash, but she’s the one who’s leading you by the nose, isn’t she?” I don’t answer and he croons—croons. “Wen’s got your tongue?”

As he laughs heartily at his own joke I revise my stance on not pulverizing his face, before proceeding to the rest of his bones.

Instead of the sweet release, I pour myself a glassful of the vile drink, and toss it back. The Nephilim-grade alcohol fails to even warm my numb-with-fury mouth.

Gideon leans closer until his breath is fanning my cheek. “I see she’s also got your balls.”

I sigh. “Bugger off, you pernicious git. I’d rather not turn Noctis to rubble. Again.”

His raucous merriment plucks my nerves with a discordant twang that makes me wonder if he’d survive me putting my fist through his skull. “You just made sure I stayed to pester you. It’s one of my life’s rare pleasures, making you foot the bill in the aftermath of our skirmishes.”

A familiar voice pipes up at my back. “Do it, Deon. Noctis could do with a major overhaul.”

“Indeed,” yet another overfamiliar voice drawls. “I’ve become fully desensitized to its current offerings.”

Tory. And Lorcan. I didn’t feel their approach either. But here they are, joining their cousin in slipping another notch of my compromised control.

They, too, have been making me revise their importance to me. Especially Lorcan. As one of the three who somewhat realize the reality of my situation with her, on top of being constantly in my face, he’s rapidly becoming intolerable.

His arm crashes on my shoulders as he jumps onto the stool at my other side. “My father, being the bloody archangel-pleaser that he is, keeps resisting my expansion plans for this dump, especially my gambling annex—when he’s been hankering for one for a millennium. I’ve been considering trashing this place myself, just to force his hand.” He gives me a squeeze, one of his invasive expressions of “affection,” which he never before inflicted on me. I give him a contemptuous glance and he grins at me like a deranged hyena. “If you do it, you would grant me the perfect excuse to eat my gambling den, and have the cake of not deepening Father’s dissatisfaction with his firstborn.”

“Which is as deep as the oceans he presides over,” Tory snickers.

Lorcan snorts. “If only he had more depth to his complaints. It’s always the same arse-aching sermons about my being a ‘manipulative wretch’ and an ‘irreverent disappointment.’”

“I’m rarely in agreement with Gabriel,” I mutter. “But in this instance, he’s a meticulous judge of character.”

Lorcan booms a laugh that shatters a few bottles behind Elijah as he snatches the one in my hand. “Go on, you two strapping lads, work out some of your exasperating sibling rivalry shite. Everyone in Afterworld would be thankful if you two put each other out of commission for a few days. It’s winners all around.”

“Bloody Heaven, yes!” Tory crows from behind me. “I want to see you two pummeling each other into tenderized meat slabs.”

I exhale, managing to cause only a minor tremor this time. “You lot are too chipper. It’s clear I’m not giving you enough to do. This changes now.”

“Not enough, you say?” Lorcan barks another laugh and lands a slap on my back that would have torn the torso off any other being. “You made me fly around the globe nonstop for a solid week, and it was all a wild-demon chase, you detestable bastard.”

I give him another sidelong look. Lorcan isn’t usually this—hyper. And never this—rancorous.

“And the moment I returned, you made me Uber Wen here.” He tips half the bottle down his throat, then slams it down, barely missing my hand, before he turns in his seat, his lips spread in an almost-manic smile, and his eyes eddying with something I haven’t seen there since that time he caused a tsunami. “You’d think I’m your slave, not your second-in-command.”

Tory insinuates herself between me and Lorcan. She always avoids even meeting my eyes, ever since I made it painfully clear, literally, that if she wanted to be in my Guard, she’d stop trying to make me bed her. Which would have been only once, anyway.

Now she glares up at me, her eyes simmering with the battle-blaze of her Michaelblood.

I raise an eyebrow. “Anything I can do for you, Ashtoreth?”

Her face darkens at my disdainful use of her full name.

She spits in my eye, also literally, the droplets of her wrath hitting my right one. “You’d think we’re your thralls, not your Guard, with the way you compelled us this morning.”

I wipe away her spittle, tamping down the temptation to swat her and Lorcan into a pile of broken bones and macerated flesh, before using Gideon as the wrecking ball that would bring this place down on top of everyone in it.

“What the blasted Hell are you talking about?” I grit.

Gideon closes in on me, until I’m sandwiched between them. This is getting strange. They never come this close, let alone touch me.

“We’re talking about how you bulldozed our minds with compulsion,” Gideon hisses almost in my ear. “I still have a splitting headache, you fucking pillock.”

I expand my chest, and with it my natuq, pushing both to a safe distance. Safe for them. “Compulsion isn’t one of my powers, you bloody malcontent.”

Gideon presses back. “As if anyone knows what powers you really have. Even if you don’t have that one, plenty of dark spells for it, and you have access to them, don’t you? Along with every sort of abominable contraband.”

I stare at my semi-sibling slash nemesis, and frown.

He suspects I’m more powerful than everyone thinks. And that I’m stockpiling Supernatural weaponry.

While this makes him a more unpredictable quantity than I believed, it’s a concern for another time. The urgent one here is that he does think I compelled him.

I give him my blankest stare. “Why would I compel you, when I can order you?”

His answer is as spit-laden as Tory’s. “Because you’re a son of a cosmic bitch. It’s the reason you do anything.”

This makes me turn to him. “Leave my mother out of this. Unless by cosmic bitch you mean our father, then by all means, go right ahead.”

His eyes flare with blue-hot flames, and it’s only then that I realize he looks different. A far cry from his usual suave-killer self. He actually looks a tad—unhinged.

He sounds even more so as he rumbles, “Oh, you don’t want your mother mentioned? When you massacred mine?”