Chapter 26

26

Darcy opens his mouth and breathes in loudly, tasting the air. He smacks his lips, considering whatever he’s tasting. I don’t smell anything, and the room we’re in isn’t exactly a clean room. It’s Stalker Steve’s bedroom, and the sheets on it still have the same cumstains that they had the last time we had sex on that bed.

“Gross.”

“What?” Darcy asks, following my gaze.

“He hasn’t washed his sheets since the last time we had sex on that bed,” I explain, pointing to the cumstains.

“How do you know they’re yours?” he asks, leaning over to smell the sheets. “They are, but how do you know?”

“I stared at them for an hour while he yelled at me when I broke up with him.” I watched them dry while he yelled at me. It was annoying, but, “He needed to get his big emotions out, and I didn’t mind letting him vent since I was breaking up with him out of nowhere. I thought sex would help make it less of a blow, but I think I timed it wrong. Anyway, dude hasn’t washed his sheets since then. That’s a pretty bad sign.”

Darcy looks back at the guy with his chest cavity open. “There’s a lot of bad signs in here. I’m not getting anything from him. The stasis magic keeping his insides inside him is preventing me from getting any scent off him. There isn’t even a signature on the spell for me to track, which is annoying, but not impossible to get around.” He’s just thinking out loud, really.

“Are we going to find out what happened to him?” I ask, wondering if that’s something we do. I mean, the dude has already been something like eviscerated, so there’s not a lot we can do about him wrecking my apartment.

Darcy eyes me. “Do you want the person who thought it was ok to do this out there walking around free?”

I laugh at my man. “You killed my neighbor with one punch for threatening me. I don’t think I’m the person we want making decisions about whether we pursue murderers.”

Darcy’s phone chimes, and mine follows suit the next moment, but it just vibrates in my pocket.

I pull it out to a message from Romily.

Romily: Where are you? (Bellamy is worried.)

Bellamy: I’m not.

Me: My ex’s house. He’s dead. picture

Romily: Woah. How are his organs still inside him?

Me: According to Darcy: stasis spell.

Romily: Weird way to kill a guy.

Me: He was like that when we found him.

Darcy: We’re going to go find out who did this to him. Anyone want to join?

Bellamy: Bring me over.

Darcy smiles at Bellamy’s offer.

Darcy: Sure, Red.

Bellamy: I don’t think I can let you call me that anymore.

Darcy: I can’t promise not to, since I’ve been calling you that for a decade, but I will try.

I reach over and rub his back, leaning down to kiss his cheek. “You’re a good man.”

He snorts. “Neutral at best. But I’m loyal to Bellamy.”

Romily: Keep us updated.

Me: Sure.

Darcy mutters something under his breath and snaps his fingers, and about three minutes later Bellamy appears on a very truncated version of an array.

He greets us with a nod, stepping off the array, and cocks his head at the corpse as the array sort of folds up and sinks through his pant leg on his thigh.

“Is that a permanent array?”

Bellamy points to Stalker Steve. “That’s unusual.”

Darcy answers my question first. “I put an array on him so I could bring him to me if there was a need.”

“Nice.” I might want one of those later.

“Are you going to break the spell?” Bellamy asks, getting us back on track.

Darcy grunts. “It’s the only way to get a taste of the person who cast it. It’s gonna stink when I do, though.”

Bellamy grunts back. They’re kind of cute together.

“I’m getting best friend vibes.”

Bellamy glances at me, then back to Darcy, and he smiles softly. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

Darcy grabs his shoulder and squeezes it. “I wouldn’t have said that until the day we found you in Arktis.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “You’re just so fuckin’ stubborn.”

Darcy chuckles. “I’ve earned the right to be stubborn.”

Bellamy nods once and points to the corpse. “Go on. Let’s see how long he’s been like this and who did it.”

Darcy lets him go and steps up to the body. He cuts his finger and touches the body dead center. The air pressure changes like a door just opened, and suddenly all the internal organs become external organs. They don’t all fall out, because people’s organs are attached to their insides, but they sag and the intestines start falling out. It immediately stinks like death and feces, but I grew up on a farm, and those smells were part of daily life there. Well, not the death smell, but even that happens on the farm.

Darcy steps away from the body and starts yanking spell components from his pouches, throwing them at the body instead of using his bowl to mix them first. He mutters the entire time, then he pauses and looks back at us. “Grab me. I’m dragging us through a teleport the hard way.”

Bellamy grimaces but puts a hand on his shoulder, so I follow suit and thread my fingers through the digits on Darcy’s free hand.

“Try not to think about anything,” Darcy warns us before he throws one last powder—the glittery one—and it feels like my entire body explodes into atoms that are sucked through a tiny hole in the universe.

An instant later, I’m back in one piece in a different place. Bellamy tosses his lunch, every pain receptor in my body is alight with fire for long enough for me to cut off a scream, and then it’s all over.

Bellamy straightens, wiping his mouth. “I hate teleporting like that,” he complains, pulling a sword from a sheath I didn’t even know he was carrying.

I glance around where we’ve ended up. We’re above the clouds on a mountain top, on a lush green field of clover full of bees of all kinds. A gazebo at the center of the field catches my attention. Three people sit around a banquet table in the middle of it, laughing and chatting, and I get the feeling that I shouldn’t be here.

I don’t know why, but there’s something inside me that demands I leave as soon as possible. My instincts are going haywire with the need to flee.

One of the people in the gazebo turns, and I take a step forward, ignoring my run-away instincts with the pleasant surprise of recognition. “Loki?” I call, waving to the guy I went on a couple of dates with a few years ago.

Loki smiles widely, shooting up from his chair and running down the steps of the gazebo to greet me.

Darcy growls, and it rumbles the entire mountain top, stopping Loki in his tracks. “Avatar!” he calls with delight, like he didn’t realize Darcy was here until he growled.

“What the fuck?” Darcy demands, stepping in front of me. “How do you know my mate?”

Loki shoots me a wink. “I know him in the biblical sense.”

I laugh, resting my hands on Darcy’s shoulders. “No, you don’t. Stop teasing Darcy. Loki and I went on two dates, and we never even kissed. He was a fun date, though. What’re you doing here?”

Loki gestures around him. “This is my haven away from the corruption of the council. I suppose you all fixed that now, though.” He gestures to Bellamy. “Hello new Avatar of Good. Welcome to Olympus.”

Darcy pulls Loki’s attention back. “Did you kill that stalker?” he demands.

One of the other people in the gazebo joins us, and I skip around Darcy to her, hugging her tight. “Tia!”

“What the fuck is happening here?” Bellamy demands, just as strongly as Darcy did before.

Tia hugs me warmly, kissing my cheek with her kohl black lips. “Hey, baby. It’s good to see you. Eris!” she hollers, and the other person in the gazebo huffs, hollering back.

“I’m not getting a sunburn because your favorite chaos goblin is here. Eli, come over here to kiss your auntie!”

“What?” Darcy and Bellamy say in unison.

I wave at Aunt Eris, stepping back from Tia’s warm hug. “I didn’t know you guys knew Loki. How’d that happen? Are we really on Mount Olympus? That’s awesome. I thought it was just a myth.”

Tia takes my arm, leading me toward the gazebo. “We go way back with Loki. We’re all gods, so we’ve been around the block a couple of times with him.”

Loki takes my arm on the other side, laughing.

I look over my shoulder at Darcy and Bellamy. “Come on, I know them. Aunt Eris is my MawMaw’s sister.”

“Adopted sister. I adopted her,” Aunt Eris corrects me.

I shrug. “Blood or not, you’re family.”

Under the shade of the gazebo, I kiss Aunt Eris’s cheek. “So you’re a goddess? Does MawMaw know? She’s going to be mad if I found out before her.”

Eris arches a brow at me, pulling me into the chair beside her. “Please, boy. Your MawMaw and I have no secrets from each other. How’s she doing anyway? It’s been a minute since I called on her.”

Tia and Loki take their seats across from us, and Darcy and Bellamy sit on my other side.

I reach out and take Darcy’s hand again. I think we both need the connection right now. It feels right to touch him while we’re here. There’s just something about the place that has my hackles rising. Probably my Hell dragon not being comfortable in what’s essentially the realm of the gods. “Oh, she’s lively as ever, but you should call her. I’m going to get Darcy to take me home before the semester starts. I think they’d get a kick out of him. He’s my mate, you know? I’m a Hell dragon and a feu follet.”

“And an oracle,” Tiamat adds, popping a meatball in her mouth and licking her fingers.

“Of which god?” Bellamy asks, taken aback.

“Harmonia,” Aunt Eris smirks.

“MawMaw?” I didn’t realize my grandmother was a god. “Good for her.”

Aunt Eris laughs, ruffling my hair. “I fucking love you so much.”

I lean into her. “Love you too. What’s an oracle anyway?”

“It’s a person who can be inhabited by the spirit of a deity. If Harmonia’s body is destroyed somehow, she can transfer her consciousness into yours. Her current body was acquired well over ten thousand years ago, but we all keep oracles on hand just in case,” Loki explains.

“I’d never allow a deity to take you over,” Darcy growls, promising retribution if MawMaw ever tried to kick me out of my own body.

“It’s fine. I’m sure she’d find a new one as soon as possible. MawMaw loves me. Plus, I’m pretty sure she prefers being a woman, you know?”

Darcy scoffs like he doesn’t believe me. “I ain’t letting her take your body.”

Aunt Eris scoffs right back. “Harmonia would never hurt our Elijah. If she needed a body, it would be temporary, but we’re really good at keeping our physical forms alive and healthy,” she assures me.

I squeeze Darcy’s hand, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Thank you for caring about me. You’re an excellent mate.”

Darcy grunts, but he turns and meets my lips in a chaste-ish kiss. I immediately surrender to him, taking what he offers and giving back everything he asks for. It’s just a short, simple kiss, but it’s a relief to have it in such a creepy place.

When he releases me, I turn back to my friends and family, probably wearing a dopey smile. “So did one of you kill Stalker Steve?”

Loki raises his hand. “That was me. I needed to get Darcy here, and I knew he’d follow that trail to the end.”

I squeeze Darcy’s hand as he glares at Loki. “Why the fuck would you want my attention?”

Loki gestures, encompassing all three of the gods. “Because we had to fake our deaths when the last Avatar of Neutrality was imprisoned with the universal force. We’ve been hiding from the powers that be for thousands of years, and it’s time to bring this universe back into balance. You need the gods of chaos, and we need you, but since you killed Apophis for his part in Bellamy’s abduction, we thought it’d be best not to aggravate you. Consider Stalker Steve a peace offering.”

“Did you—” Whatever Darcy is trying to say, he chokes on his own words, squeezing my hand hard enough to pop a couple of my knuckles. “How did you know I would be the next Avatar?”

The three gods look at him with confusion and curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“Ya done inserted yerself into my mate’s life in order to control me, and fer that I should slaughter ya here and now. I ain’t gon’ do that because my mate loves ya, but I ain’t gon’ be controlled by ya either. Who the fuck do you think I am and how did you know I’d be the next Avatar?” Darcy’s fury shakes the ground, but it’s just a reflection of the trembling of his hand. He’s angry, but that’s coming from a place of fear.

I kiss the back of his hand, reaching with my free hand to draw his attention to me by cupping his delicate chin. “Mate,” I whisper softly, leaning in close.

Darcy blinks at me, and the ground stops shaking. “I ain’t lettin’ any more gods git ahold o’ me.”

“No, you’re not. You’re the guy people call when they want to murder gods. These gods are here to help you—they’re not trying to get murdered. I don’t think any of them knew we were fated mates before we did, do you?”

Darcy stares at me for a moment before he draws in a tight breath, loosening his hold on my hand. “Yer right, Peach. Th’ain’t no way they knew before us.”

I peck a kiss to his lips. “Didn’t think so. And if they step out of line, I’ll sic my MawMaw on them. She’s scary when she’s mad.”

Darcy laughs, blowing out a breath and turning back to the gods. “Alright. Whatcha want from me?”