The Tainted Web (The Godhunter, Book 7) (19 page)

It was different than when I was with Kirill and Trevor, not necessarily better, but different in the way that wolves were from birds, one ran through the forest and the other soared above it. When I was with Kirill and Trevor, I was carried along with the pack and the pride, racing across the earth with wild abandon. We had the Froekn Binding added to the lion magic between us and it was amazing but now Azrael and Kirill shared something magical too and being with them meant having both the earth and the sky. It was flying among the clouds before swooping down and trailing my hands over the top of thick grass. It was a roar in my heart and a rush of wings in my blood.

It was Heaven.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Such beautiful eyes. Like the ocean under a mid-day sun. Bright green, translucent and streaked with deep blue. Although they could get stormy, it could rain in those eyes and sometimes there was even lightning within them. I sighed.

“Vervain?” I focused on his lips as he said my name. Strong lips, lips that used to kiss my own, once upon a time. “Vervain?”

“
Huh?” I shook myself out of my reverie.

“
Did you hear me?” Thor asked, looking a little concerned.

“
No, I'm sorry,” I flushed and realized I'd been fantasizing about him again. It was getting ridiculous. I'd just made love to an angel and a werelion, we'd shared a holy communion. Thor shouldn't have held any kind of fascination for me and yet there I sat, zoning out on him like a smitten teenager. “I'm a little tired.”

“
I said,” he frowned at me, looking seriously confused, “since you can use the goggles to keep an eye out for the spider, couldn't you use them to find him, watch him from a distance, and determine where his base of operations is?”

“
Oh,” I sat up straighter, “yeah that's a great idea. You're brilliant!” I clamped a hand over my mouth before I could gush over him any further.

“
What the hell is wrong with you?” Persephone whispered to me with wide eyes.

“
I don't know,” I whispered back.

“
Well
stop
it,” she glanced at Thor, who was glaring at us, along with Kirill, Trevor, and Odin.

“
I'm trying.”

“
Are you two quite done with the whispering teenage girls routine?” Horus asked with a bored air.

“
Just about,” I stuck my tongue out at him.

“
I really think some of us should go in with you this time,” Trevor pushed aside the banter.

“
To what purpose,” I shook my head. “It's a covert mission and now that I know to use the goggles, we don't have to worry about a confrontation.”

“
Yes,” Finn made a face at me, “but you inevitably find ways to fuck up the best laid plans.”

“
Hey,” I made a face back at him.

“
It's kind of accurate,” Odin shrugged.

“
Oh not you too,” I looked over at him, aghast.

“
Mom, I'd feel better if someone else went with you,” Vidar added as he flung his long black hair over his shoulder in a very feminine gesture.

“
No fair,” I pointed a finger at him, “using the son card. Have you all forgotten the imps? They may be small but they're fire fey and they're bad ass. Not to mention, inside the Inter Realm, they're even more formidable. I really have all the back up I need.”

“
Thank you, my Queen,” Meilyr nodded proudly.

“
Fine,” Trevor waved a hand in a frustrated manner. “Take your fey and leave your god friends behind, Vervain.”

“
What the fuck, Trevor?” I gaped at my alpha lover.

“
Ever since you started going into Faerie, we've started to lose you, bit by bit you're becoming more fey and less goddess,” Trevor growled.

“
This is a hell of a conversation to start now,” I felt my blood start to heat. “And you've forgotten that I'm human too.”

“
I'm not the only one who thinks so,” Trevor looked at Kirill and Odin, and they both gave me bashful nods.

“
Are you serious?” I huffed. “You think I'm
becoming
more fey? Here's a clue, you assholes, I
am
fey! Now my
fey
ass is going to go into the Inter Realm and save all your
god
asses with my
fey
family and I don't need any of your
god
damned
god
magic to do it!”

I stood up, knocking the chair back out of my way. I stomped to the library, each step an angry echo that fell into the shocked silence I left behind me. Part of me wrenched at the thought that I'd hurt my men but another part of me didn't care. It whispered that no one had loved me truly since Thor. This was why I'd been so attracted to him lately, I could sense their betrayal.

“Fuck,” I growled as I drug a hand over my face. “get it together, V.”

“
My Queen?” Meilyr stood at the front of an imp cluster, all the little faces focused on mine.

“
Sorry guys,” I smiled at them but it may have come off looking more like a grimace. “It's okay, I'm okay, let's do this.”

They nodded and we jumped in.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Being in the Inter Realm seemed to have both a calming and an exhilarating effect on me. My senses were on hyper-alert and with the addition of the goggles, I caught every glimmer of action. I stepped in further, walking through the threads of flying information, already used to the sensation of tingling energy merging with mine, and after awhile of peering about, I found him.

“I see him,” I said to the imps and they gathered around me.

We hunted the spider, following from afar, and watching carefully as he defiled thread after thread in the Inter Realm. It took all I had to stay back and let him wreck havoc but we had a bigger payoff in mind. Finally, he seemed to have enough of it and he turned about, racing off.

I tracked him all the way to a large office building and watched through the diaphanous walls as he approached a large column of sickly green light in the center of it. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of tainted threads were attached to the column, pulsing out globs of venom like long lava lamps set on high speed. The spider jumped straight into that central shaft of poison, and disappeared. We approached after a few minutes went by and there was no sign of him returning.

“
Do you want to go through?” Meilyr eyed the column with me.

“
Is it safe to go into that?”

“
You've gone through a hub before, the information can't hurt you, you won't even have to view it if you choose not to. Simply harden your energy field to keep it from sinking in.”

“
Alright then,” I waved a hand to the column, “lead on.”

He jumped in without hesitation but I took a moment to cloak myself with invisibility before I leapt into the column. The exit was fast but not fast enough. I thought I'd done what he'd said, hardened my energy, but it wasn't hard enough. Some of the filth being sent into the web seeped into me, giving me glimpses into the horror that could be wrought with just a computer and a deviant mind.

I gasped and threw myself back against a wall to recover, as I surveyed the scene before me. We were in
a huge room filled with computers. People sat at cubicles, typing away, talking on the phone, or printing things. All in all, a normal office space. Except for the strange machine at the center of the room. A machine we'd just popped out of.

It was a shiny metal tube with buttons in bright colors just begging to be pushed, and cords bristling from it like tentacles on a robotic octopus. All the computers were plugged into the tube, undoubtedly sending bursts of evil down their wires and straight into the machine. The whole room glowed with the overlay of the Inter Realm but it was filled with noxious colors and every person in the place radiated some horrible picture of the grotesque person they really were. I couldn't take it, I pulled off the goggles and stuffed them into the inner pocket of my leather jacket.

I slid horizontally down the wall, to peer over the shoulder of a pinch-faced man in a suit. He was posting on a white supremest website, organizing a nice get together involving lots of guns(which he wrote that he'd be happy to provide) and a Mexican restaurant. Let's just say they weren't going for the food. I was barely able to restrain myself from hitting that man over the head and destroying his computer.

A jaunt around the room gave me several versions of the same sort of thing. Blogs, websites, and messages urging people to hate and hopefully hurt other people. I shook my head and started to edge toward the door, hoping the imps would either stay put or follow me closely, when a woman started screaming. I stopped automatically and looked over my shoulder at a woman who was sitting calmly at her desk while she screamed dramatically into her phone.

“Please hurry, they're gonna kill us all!” She hung up with an evil grin and then stood to the applause of the room. “Thank you, thank you. When those teenagers finish their rampage through Searidge Mall, the cops will be waiting to gun them down. Nice and tidy.” She dusted her hands off as she received more applause. “Bonus, here we come!”

I gaped and hurried out of the room before I started screaming too. I had thought Tlaloc was the most horrifying god I'd ever met but this went way beyond killing children. This was getting children to kill other children. It was evil and that evil was very visible through the magic lenses of Tlaloc's goggles. All the people in the room(and they were people, not a god to be found) were coated in a thick, pulsing, angry, black energy, like wildlife caught in an oil spill, on top of the horrible images of their true selves.

We passed a room where a big screen showed a bunch of drivers license pictures in which the faces constantly shifted. The plaque on the door read “Identity Theft Department”. Then another room with a wall of several screens showing aerial views of places all over the world, with red spots indicating some kind of movement. This one was labeled “Terroristic Tactics”. I stumbled quickly past a door marked “Child Pornography”, knowing my mind couldn't take seeing whatever was inside there, before I came to “Drug Trafficking” and then “Facebook Havoc”. It went on and on, each room filled with people intent on ruining other people's lives... and not a single god in the bunch. I was utterly repulsed.

I took a moment to catch my breath and quell my nausea, the sound of maniacal fingertips tapping away on plastic keyboards becoming a grating soundtrack to my horror flick of an adventure. The determined typing was broken periodically by screaming or shouting but no one really paid it much mind besides myself and possibly the imps.

“The woman we set up with the serial killer made it to a phone,” someone announced from the room on my left, catching my attention.

“
Reroute the 911 call to our server,” a woman said and then she answered, “Hello, 911, what's your emergency? Can you tell me your location? Don't worry ma'am, I'm sending someone right now. Stay on the line with me.”

I felt little hands slide into mine and I squeezed them tight as we listened to her reassure the woman, telling her over and over that the police were on their way and she was going to be okay. Then the woman on the other end started to scream, so loud it could be heard through the receiver, and the woman pretending to be 911 hung up.

“And that's how it's done,” she said to the man who'd directed the call to her.

“
Holy shit,” I sniffed back the tears I hadn't realized I'd been crying and pulled us down the hall as I whispered to the imps. “I just need to find out where we are and then we can leave this fucked-up, death-dealing office.”

“
To the right,” Meilyr whispered back.

The hall split, a corridor opening up to a reception room of some kind. Though who they'd be receiving here was beyond me. They had their crimes carved into metal plaques for all to see, and I hadn't even made it all the way down the hallway. You wouldn't think they'd want any visitors but there it was, a reception area complete with desk and bored looking receptionist, browsing through Pinterest on her computer.

And on the wall behind her was a sign that read “Iktomica Technologies”.

I wasn't happy with just that though, I wanted more. So I sidled closer to the desk and saw two little business card holders placed front and center. In one was a card declaring that Iktomi Blackspider was the CEO and founder of Iktomica, and the other held cards which proclaimed that Mica Wilycoyote was CEO, and co-founder.

“Hi, Monica,” a man came up beside me, startling me backward a few steps.

“
Hi, Torrent,” she smiled back at him. “How's the boss today?”