 
## **Contents**

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE DOM

CHAPTER TWO DEMI

CHAPTER THREE OMEN

CHAPTER FOUR DEMI

CHAPTER FIVE BACH

CHAPTER SIX SWISS

CHAPTER SEVEN ASH

CHAPTER EIGHT DEMI

CHAPTER NINE DOM

CHAPTER TEN OMEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN SWISS

Future Episodes

THE UNDERGODS

(Episode 6)

Eva Kane

Copyright © 2015 Eva Kane

All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Distributed by Smashwords.

Click or visit:

www.EvaKane.com

Previously on The Undergods...

  * Dom's plans to kill George Baran were foiled, forcing him to form a new strategy. 
  * Sam St. Vincent was released from jail and William forced Omen to admit that Sam is not William's father.
  * Demi continued her ruse as Sam's wife, giving the public a show while secretly leaving Sam with his true lover for the day.
  * Zero experiences his first day sober in recent memory and crosses paths with two women: an earthy woman who catches his interest and a more elusive woman who may or may not be psychic.
  * Swiss has an unexpected visit from a woman who seems to more than human, who shows her a glimpse of the future before asking for Swiss's help.

CHAPTER ONE

DOM

Dom could get used to having Phi as his right-hand man. Sure the guy liked to work remotely—even if that only meant having a wall between them—but all Dom had to do was ask for something, and seconds later it appeared in his cloud drive.

A list of key people protecting Baran? Done.

A list of associates of those key people? Done.

A list of enemies? Done.

A list of living heroes? Double done.

Dom had taken over the boardroom, projecting hundreds of profiles up, connecting them, and creating a timeline to sequence events. As it turned out, manufactured chaos required a hell of a lot of coordination and an abundance of backup plans. And the clock was ticking.

Dom was using a surveillance feed to watch one of Baran's guards interact with his wife when Zero entered the room. Dom raised his chin in acknowledgment. "Hey."

"Hey," Zero said, looking a bit flustered. "I just saw Swiss."

"Yeah?" Good. She was back. Maybe she would help.

Zero nodded, his expression solemn. "How do you do it, man?"

Dom frowned. "Do what?"

"Not tell her!" Zero said, tone hushed as he moved forward.

Dom still wasn't catching on. "Tell her about what?"

"Jack!" Zero hissed. "The whole Jack thing."

Oh. That thing. "I just don't. I let it be."

"Well, that is seriously fucked up, man!" Zero stabbed his finger the direction of Phi's lab. "That motherfucker has taken a piece of her soul and turned it into a lab rat that he tests and pokes before burning it up and starting over. I've seen a lot of backwards shit in my days, but I can't think of much that compares to how messed up that is."

Dom shrugged. "But what can any of us do about it? Even Swiss."

Zero shoved his hands in his pockets and frowned.

"It may suck," Dom said. "It may be as unethical as hell, but there's nothing either of us can do about it. Nothing Swiss can do about it. There will come a time when Swiss needs to know, but now is not that time. I mean, for all we know Phi is developing Jack so that Swiss has the perfect partner in the field. Can you imagine having a superpowered animal sidekick who thought exactly like you because they were you? You'd be all over that, and you know it!"

"No," Zero said. "I wouldn't. And I would be as pissed as hell if I knew you were keeping a secret like this from me...Are you?"

Dom sighed. "No, Zero. I'm not keeping any cloning secrets from you. But I am trying to plan the next few days here. I could use some help, but I definitely don't need any distractions. So what do you say? In or out?"

Zero let out a huff of frustration. "What I say is that Swiss going to freak the fuck out when she realizes what Phi's been doing all this time."

"Well, chances are I won't be alive to see that day," Dom pointed out. "Which is why I shared the secret with you." Dom walked up to Zero, bringing them eye to eye. "I won't be here to make sure Jack has a life outside of that kennel Phi keeps her in, so that's on you once I die. And if you want to tell Swiss, then that's on you, too." Dom turned back to his work. "But it's not something I'm dealing with now. I've got enough shit on my plate. We all do."

To Dom's relief, Zero grew quiet. There were several beats of uncomfortable silence followed by, "What do you need?"

"Ha, that's no small question," Dom said, looking over his wall and trying to decide what could be delegated. "But what you're seeing here is the network of every person guarding a door leading to Baran. What I need to do is find the weak links in the chain and make them snap."

Zero looked over the hundreds of faces on the wall. "Um, I'm less of a big-picture guy and more of a give-me-one-specific-thing-to-do guy. Anything like that yet?"

Dom glanced to the picture of Mason. "Actually, yes, there is. I might need you to shoot Mason Ward after all."

CHAPTER TWO

DEMI

Celibacy was the new black. Or at least feigned celibacy was, according to the most recent sales report. Preorders for Demi's outfits and accessories had outsold the top two competing acts combined.

And that's how it's done, bitches, Demi thought as she closed the sales report and breathed a sigh of relief in her makeup chair. She kept her expression neutral as Keshira used a brush to expertly blend highlights she'd just added to Demi's makeup. The woman worked silently, as usual. No small talk. No questions. Just quick strokes applied with expert precision.

Across the way, a loading bay door opened and Demi saw sunlight flood the backstage area. A minute later, a jeweled talent bay was rolled in by the stage team. Demi felt her stomach twist in disappointment. There was exactly one reason her music career hadn't taken off: talent bays.

The talent bay currently being rolled in was amethyst purple with the body of a sensual Shiva-like figure artistically painted on top of it. But all the paint in the world didn't cover up the fact that the bay was essentially a coffin-shaped storage for the living. Conspiracy theorists liked to use them as proof that the entertainment industry was populated by vampires. With decent editing, it wasn't a hard sell. Groups of people hopping into boxes and letting themselves be shipped from location to location? That kind of stuff freaked people out.

The industry liked to sell talent bays more as instrument cases used to care for perfect human instruments. Performers had insane schedules. Touring multiple cities in one day, giving interviews, arriving on time for appearances, and meeting fans might keep them awake twenty hours a day for weeks at a time. Years ago, such demanding schedules had been accommodated through drug use. But after addictions and overdoses destroyed valuable careers, the industry had found another path: talent bays.

A talent bay gave you rest when you needed rest, tested you for nutritional needs to keep you healthy, and alerted your management if you had a critical need that needed to be met. Nearly every producer in Reno used talent bays. Even movie studios were starting to offer them to actors to accommodate them during movie shoots and long promotion periods. They were a dream come true for globetrotters who might start their day in London and end it day in New York—or so Demi had heard.

Talent bays didn't really work on her.

That simple fact had caused every music executive to withdraw the contract offers that would have given Demi the music career she'd always dreamed of. Producers just couldn't insure a person who couldn't use a talent bay. The risk was too high. But they'd had a counteroffer: Demi didn't have what it took to be a performer, but she had what it took to credibly introduce other performers.

That was how Demi had landed her position on Global Stage. It wasn't exactly what she'd dreamed of, but it shared the stage with what she'd always wanted and it paid the bills.

Sometimes that dynamic felt like the story of Demi's life. Everything in her life was in the ballpark of what she'd always wanted, without ever being what she'd imagined.

She had imagined a life on a stage, and she had it—introducing other performers.

She had imagined having the perfect child, and she that's what she'd delivered—a child so perfect that he could not relate to her imperfections.

She had imagined she would meet Mr. Right, and she had—a man who watched over her son like a guardian angel, then left to satisfy himself with prostitutes.

She had imagined being married to a man who loved and respected her, and she was—Sam couldn't love or respect her more. He just wasn't in love with her.

It was like living life next door to the life she'd always dreamed of. So close, but still on the outside.

Keshira's voice cut through Demi's thoughts. "Blot."

Blinking back to reality, Demi blotted her lips on the tissue provided. Keshira hit the button for the next person, and when Demi didn't stand immediately, Keshira gave her an impatient look.

"Do you need something?" she asked.

Demi looked over the beautiful young woman who did her makeup before every show and realized she'd never seen Keshira smile. "Do you like your job?"

Keshira's arms folded under her breasts as she scowled down her nose at Demi. "Do I like my job?"

"Yeah," Demi said, trying to keep her tone light despite the dark look in Keshira's eyes. "Do you like doing makeup?"

Keshira laughed outright. "Honey, makeup doesn't even make the top-ten list of things I do well. I can sure as hell sing better than anyone on that stage, and you can bet your ass that I could sell more fashion than you can. But we all have to start somewhere, so here I am."

So I'm not the only one, Demi decided as she stood from the chair. Everyone who came to Reno had been the star of their hometown. Or the misunderstood one. Either way, the people who made their way to Reno had a deep-seated belief that the world should pay them simply to exude swagger.

"Best of luck to you," Demi said as she opened the glass to step into the wings of the theater, looking both ways before stepping out.

"Luck?" Keshira called after her. "I don't need luck. The shelf life of your hag ass is already long past its expiration date. One year from now you'll be wishing you were me. Just wait and see."

Well, Demi had opened the door on that one. As her producer, Arthur, would say, This is why you don't talk to the help.

A condescending stance? Sure. But more than a little true? Sadly, yes.

The usual obstacle course between Demi and her dressing room was in full swing, yet this time there was no Ali in sight to inspire Demi to maneuver the danger zone with confidence. So Demi ducked and weaved her way to the refuge of her dressing room. Half way there, one of the tech guys brushed up against her and whispered, "Polish my knob, baby."

Well, at least one person on the set had seen the café footage, it seemed. Demi had heard variations of similar comments all day online. But it was one thing to have strangers go off on social media threads. It was another to have a creepy dude you worked with whisper in your ear while he pressed his pecker into your hip. Demi didn't have time to respond before the guy disappeared into the fray. The douche had probably planned it that way.

Several steps later Demi made it to the safety of her dressing room and shut the door behind her with a grateful sigh. Time for wardrobe, Demi thought as she turned to take inventory of the racks and see what the designers of the city had cooked up for her. There was bound to be an entire rack of lingerie after her antics yesterday with Sam. Showing a lot of skin came with some technical difficulties under the hot lights, but with a little—

"Ali!" Demi gasped as she spotted her stylist sitting off to the side with unnatural stillness. "I didn't see you."

Ali's gaze seemed far away before she blinked a few times and seemed to come back to the present. "Sorry about that," she said. "Guess I was a little lost in thought."

Or something, Demi thought, concern sparking at the distant look in Ali's eyes. She looked sad. "Everything okay?"

Ali whipped out a smile then, one that didn't make it to her eyes. "Are you kidding? Did you see our numbers? Everything is just great."

Whatever it was, it seemed Ali didn't want to talk about it. Fair enough. "Too bad we can't keep riding that periwinkle and cream pony since I'm having sex again."

Ali gave her an odd look then and muttered something that sounded like, "Are you?"

"What was that?" Demi asked.

"Very true," Ali said, looking her in the eye. "So tonight it's all about the come hither allure, although I have to say that I have my concerns with how far we take it based on the hand job pictures that are viral right now."

Demi waved that off. "Oh, that's just all talk. People say what they say."

"True," Ali agreed, her eyes getting that far away look again.

Something was definitely off. "Ali, are you sure you're—"

"We just don't want to cheapen your stock, you know?" Ali said, perking up. "You gave away a lot for free yesterday at that café. A lot of pictures, a lot of action." Ali grinned as if remembering a joke. "A lot of audio. If we give away too much of you again tonight your stock will plummet. You'll become some slut everyone can dismiss—someone people think should give them everything for free."

Demi considered that. "But shouldn't I ride that publicity to sell layered lingerie? That's not giving away everything. It seems perfect. Kind of the whole What's Demi Wearing for Sam Tonight? headline. I think that's the smart play here."

"For clicks, yes," Ali agreed. "But not for sales. People will look at images of you in lingerie tonight and jack off to it, but that won't necessarily translate into sales. We'd be better to save that angle for a few weeks and go with the headline How Demi Keeps Sam's Attention. That will sell more then. Tonight, wearing clothes that everyone will be imagining ripping off of you will sell—stuff that looks proper but is totally still fuckable in a public bathroom."

As always, Ali had a point.

"A lot of fantasies were born when those videos of you jacking Sam hit the FiWi," Ali added. "Any woman wearing a classy dress associated with that fantasy will have her man's full attention, but she won't have his full attention in your second-hand lingerie. He'll default think of you as he fucks his girl, and no woman likes inviting that dynamic into the bedroom. So I'm thinking moderate cleavage and nothing higher than mid-thigh. Manhattan cocktail party attire. Dresses that are accessible yet show discriminating taste."

"Well, when you put it like that," Demi said giving in. She didn't really have much leverage when Ali had such a long track record of making the right call. Demi nearly said as much when she noticed that the distant look was back in Ali's eyes. Only then did Demi realize that Ali had skipped the whole ritual she went through every time they met in the dressing room before a show. The walk around. The personal questions. The occasional kickass back rub.

None of that had happened tonight. Something had changed.

"Ali—"

"We can start by looking—"

"Don't interrupt me!" Demi said with some force. "Something is wrong, and I respect it if you don't want to tell me. But that won't change the fact that if you need someone to talk to, I can be a pair of ears to listen, okay? Or if you need a hug? I can do that too. Whatever you need. I'm here."

The silence that followed could have been awkward. Maybe it should have been awkward, but any awkwardness faded away when Ali gave Demi's hand a little squeeze.

"Thanks for that," she said. "It's just life stuff. A lot just hit at once, but I'll figure it out."

Demi squeezed her hand back. "Well, if anyone can figure that stuff out, it's you."

"Thanks," Ali said, then looked to the racks. "Now let's go pick a bestseller."

CHAPTER THREE

OMEN

It was time for Omen to get his Osiris on. The gods had some questions.

Omen had expected the request for an emergency meeting to come sooner. After all, Omen had openly confessed to sanctioning the death of another god's son. Such an act was unprecedented among the gods. There was bound to be some push back. Either the other gods were really busy or they'd done their homework before reaching out. Probably the latter, and Omen had no idea if that was a good or a bad thing.

Joining the meeting required Omen to broadcast from the god-designed headquarters he'd inherited from the Osiris before him. It was a place Omen visited as little as possible, but it was the only place Omen could log in to attend an exclusive ennead meeting. Allegedly the security was unbreachable for these meetings—at least according to Phi. The assumption was that if Phi couldn't hack in and learn any of the identities of the other gods, then no one else could hack in to discover Omen's identity.

But that took into account only someone trying to hack from the outside in. Omen wasn't taking any chances. There was every possibility that McGee had a friend or two in the ennead willing to reverse-trace Omen's broadcast. If they did that, they could conceivably use Omen's camera to get a peek at him. So Omen was going full costume, just in case. If someone did successfully reverse-track the broadcast, they'd be looking at the same face and hearing the same voice Mason had described from the parking garage two days before.

Dressed as Osiris, Omen stepped onto the animation plate that would broadcast Omen's body language via his avatar to the rest of the group.

"Load my avatar," he said to the computer.

A charcoal black man came into view. From head to toe the avatar was shades of ash. The avatar's eyes, braided goatee, crook, and flail shimmered in true gold, breaking the monochromatic color scheme. The avatar was the inverse of Omen's predecessor, which had been all gold, with black eyes, beard, crook, and flail. It had been too flashy for Omen's tastes, even though he didn't technically have to look at himself. But all that gaudy gold had still irked him. Everything in Omen's life that had ever fucked him over had been bright and shiny on the outside. It was darkness and shadows that had always served him and kept him safe.

So he'd flipped the colors and suddenly felt right at home in his avatar's skin.

Let the other gods pretend they were something they weren't by creating sublime and ethereal avatars. Omen would stick to keeping things real. His soul was black; his heart was black; his avatar was black. All the other gods could just deal with it.

The broadcast light on the computer's display started blinking, letting Omen know that the other eight members of the ennead had finished discussing him privately and were now officially inviting him into the meeting. Happily, the full pantheon of thirty-three gods was not invited to this particular powwow, only the nine elite ennead gods.

Omen executed the command to join the meeting. "I, Osiris, judge of the dead, greet you."

The physical room Omen stood in faded away and was filled instead with the ennead council room. Gold and white archways appeared, surrounding a room elaborate enough to make royalty feel like a paupers in a higher realm. Eight avatars appeared in a circle around Omen, all of them high and holy and glowing.

Other than Ra, all the other gods had chosen humanoid avatars. Tefnut shimmered hues of blue and gold, signifying her role of keeping Reno fertile. Shu sat next to her, a finely carved masculine figure with a large headdress that indicated his role over bringing the greatest minds to Reno. Geb and Nut were fully nude, their reproductive organs always ready for reproduction, showing their dual role in ensuring that money flowed through both the sexes.

Isis sat directly to Omen's left, a collage of floral beauty, indicating her role over maintaining Reno's magnanimous image throughout the world. To Omen's right were Nephthys and Seth, the enforcers of carbon-negative growth within the city limits. Nephthys shimmered like a woman made of diamonds, while Seth went with more of a technology theme, choosing an avatar that shimmered with electronic pulses.

Then there was Ra, an all-seeing eye floating in the midst of a giant fireball. Not very subtle, which was actually ironic, because Ra rarely spoke. He listened, but he didn't get involved with the petty conversations of the gods unless something really caught his interest.

The only thing Omen had in common with Ra was that they were the only two gods of the ennead who were not founding members. The first king of the ennead had been called Atum. But when he'd died, Ra had insisted on changing the name. No one had really argued the point from what Omen had heard. It seemed when someone took down the toughest and smartest person in the room, people were willing to let certain details slide. Omen hadn't been there to see the changeover. It had happened several years before Omen had tripped into godhood, but the fact that Ra was a latecomer too always made Omen feel a bit of a kinship with Ra.

Had Ra sought Atum's throne, or had he inherited the throne like Omen had? One of these days Omen was going to find an excuse to ask.

"We greet you, Osiris," Isis said from his left, officially welcoming Omen into the meeting.

"May Reno thrive and Atlantis rise," the ennead said as one.

"May Reno thrive and Atlantis rise," Omen repeated and waited. This was their show. Omen was just along for the ride.

"You have made the past few days very interesting for us," Isis said. "Apophis has been quite adamant in his requirements that you be delivered into his hands."

Omen shook his head. "Apophis is arrogant and oversteps his bounds. He taught his son to do the same."

"But killing Travis?" Tefnut asked. "Was there no way to avoid that action?"

"I think the other option Travis offered me was to suck his dick and go to prison," Omen said. "So, yes. Travis's death was avoidable. It simply would have required me to bow to the will of a presumptuous and sadistic manchild. Apophis thinks himself high enough to command each of us, and he had raised up his son to think and act similarly."

The other members of the ennead shared silent looks.

"And if we were to honor Apophis's request for a duel with you?" Tefnut asked.

"Then I would assume you wish to see the father join the son in Hell."

Tefnut and Shu shared a conspiratorial look. Well, at least two of the eight weren't Team Apophis.

"We have reviewed your domain and remain impressed with your growing empire," Shu said. "If you were to slay Apophis, his assets and domain would become yours. As you know, these assets are also substantial."

"And a fuckload of extra work," Omen added.

"And that," Shu agreed, then gestured around the ennead. "We are in agreement that you would win in any battle to the death against Apophis. But we also believe that when we extend the offer to duel you, he will delay the date of his demand. He seems very intent on this plot of his to reach you through Richard Abba."

"So let him try," Omen said. "The man thinks he can buy anything. Let's see how successful he is at buying my head on a platter."

The avatars frowned at him collectively. Except Ra. Ra just kept being the burning ball of sunshine he always was.

Isis shook her head, speaking for the group. "This is very messy, Osiris. Your ennead duties make you directly responsible for ensuring that mortality statistics do not negatively impact tourism or growth. You should be stopping what happened to Travis, not orchestrating it."

"If the news story ended today with Apophis in control of the headlines, sure, that would put me in a really bad spot," Omen conceded. "But today isn't the end. The story will continue to develop."

"Yes," Isis agreed. "It certainly will. But how do you expect to spin the story of a young man shot in broad daylight in your favor?"

Omen felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips and decided to let it show. "Mark my words, gods of the ennead. By the time this all plays out, the world will be talking about how Reno is a place where no one is above the law. Outsiders will have long and heated debates over the double standards of their current laws and how often those who write the laws exempt themselves in the same brushstroke." Omen paused and looked around the circle. "Reno will be praised as a city where no one—not even one of the most powerful entertainment producers in the world—is above the law. People will migrate here because they will want to be in a city where no one is too big to fail—where the little guy has a shot, and the big guy gets what's coming when he oversteps. Outsiders will look at Reno and see a land where corrupt power is exposed and uprooted and society is better for it. And they will flock to our front door."

"And if you fail in this?" Geb asked.

Omen stared right back at the golden-dicked avatar. "Then I guess you can challenge me to a duel to see if you can fill my seat with your superior judgment."

"None of that," Isis said quickly, her tone very much that of a mother who'd uttered the phrase ad nauseam to children. Interesting. Was Isis a mother? "We are not gathered today to cross swords or throw out fighting words. We are here because this is untested ground for all of us."

"But Osiris puts us all in a pathway to peril!" Geb said.

"No," Omen shot back. "Gods like you put us all in peril when you allow degenerates like Apophis to buy their way into our midst. The man has nothing to recommend him. He has no class or tact, no skill or finesse. Anything he wants, he buys. Including your votes. That's why we're all sitting here right now. Because Apophis thinks anything he wants is rightfully his, and he believes his will is above reproach. Thanks to this counsel, he now also believes he has bought everyone in this city who might punish him." Omen looked around the circle. "Has he?"

"Osiris, you overstep," Shu warned.

"Do I?" Omen challenged. "Or did the overstepping happen quite a while ago and I'm the only one willing to see the fallout for what it is?"

Geb's eyes narrowed darkly. "And now you insult us to our faces?"

"Would you prefer I do it behind your back?" Omen challenged. "Look, I play my little role here. The ennead is all about manifesting a holistic vision of the future. Men like Apophis, who buy their way in, see us as servants to their personal plans. I don't walk into your turf, fuck it up, then walk off and tell everyone I'm your boss. Men like Apophis do that. And unless they are culled out with the chaff, your whole operation is fucked before you ever get to the finish line."

Next to him, Isis sighed. "I really wish you would choose your words with more care, Osiris."

Omen shrugged. "Truth is truth. No need to paint it a hue it's not."

Perhaps," Isis snapped. "But some words are heard more easily than others."

"Which is why I prefer to let actions speak for themselves," Omen said. "People ignore soft words and use their ego as an excuse to rebel against hard words. In the end the impact is the same. There's really only one language people understand, and that's action."

Geb shook his head. "Yeah. Murder certainly says something loud and clear."

"Yes, it does," Omen replied. "Let's look at the seventeen bodies Travis left in his wake in the past nine months, shall we? Let's examine his escalating pattern of killing more and more often while treating my warnings with complete indifference."

"You should have brought the situation to us for a decision," Geb pushed.

"No," Omen said. "I should enforce the rules of my domain without exception. Any who challenge me challenge my throne. That is a battle to the death. Travis lost that battle. End of story." He leveled his gaze on Geb. "You don't come to us for permission to win a fight someone brings to your feet, Geb. You conquer and move on. That's what I did. And now I'm left wondering why so many in this ennead see the McGee clan as some exception to the rule...that I'm being told I should have treated him or his family differently."

"Again, you overstep," Shu said.

"If stating facts is overstepping, then get used to it," Omen said. "Travis was being groomed by his father to dethrone a god. I have no doubt of this. I only question how many other men Apophis has in queue to step into thrones and advance his agenda of gaining control of the pantheon."

"That is pure speculation," Nephthys said.

"It is reasonable speculation," Omen replied. "Although I think I threw him off his game by taking out his son. And if I'm right, and Apophis is as stupid as I think he is, I think he's about to take a fall so big that it will be seen around the globe. And people will love it. Just you wait."

The room was silent for several beats.

Seth was the first to break the silence. "There are many who have financial and business interests tied in with Apophis."

"Then now is a time to be wise," Omen said. "Lay low. Don't draw attention. Be ready for a change of hands, and don't offer aid. Everything Apophis touches right now is toxic. All of his relationships are poison. Any god who withdraws from an alliance with Apophis should remain relatively unscathed as Apophis moves forward with his manhunt for Richard Abba. Abba wants Baran, and Apophis wants Abba. It's a karmic play that will unfold with or without our permission. So stand back and let the cards fall where they may. That is my counsel. Richard Abba is playing for keeps. George Baran had Abba's wife and daughters kidnapped, raped, and murdered. Abba is going to kill Baran, or die trying. That's a fact."

"So why didn't you kill Richard Abba when you learned all of this?" Geb asked.

Omen looked at the avatar with honest confusion. "Why would I do that? A man is on a crusade to rid the world of indiscrete sex traffickers operating within our borders. Why in the world would I protect men who record themselves raping and killing children?"

Geb's lips pressed shut while everyone else sat in uncomfortable silence as Omen studied them. Geb had just stood up for Baran. Did that mean Dom was correct in his belief that Baran was Horus?

Omen let his eyes drift around the circle, noting the covert glances shared by Geb, Nut, and Isis. They knew something and seemed divided on how to address it.

"Only Ra is aware of the identity of each of the gods," Omen said. "This level of anonymity gives each of us protection. And as long as we don't venture to exert influence in another god's domain, we don't have to worry about offending." Omen waited until all the eyes in the room were on him before continuing. "However, when we undermine another god on their own turf, that layer of protection disappears. The reigning god's response must be the same, whether the offender be god, wheat, or chaff. Do any of us disagree on this point?"

Geb's lips pressed into a hard line.

"I think we can all agree that your point is valid," Isis said for the group. "As we mentioned before, this is simply unfamiliar ground for the ennead and for all the gods of the pantheon. It merits discussion. And I am personally glad to be privy to your reasoning."

Oh, Isis. Always the peacemaker.

"And I thank you for hearing my reasoning," Omen said. "But my domain is my domain, and I will not stop Abba in his quest. Ultimately, Abba will benefit all in this ennead, so there is no need to stop him."

No one looked happy. They were all just a room full of glorious avatars frowning at each other.

"Are there any more questions for Osiris?" Isis asked.

No one moved.

"Then I think we have accomplished the purpose of this meeting," Isis said. "With your permission, I bid farewell to the Ennead of the High Gods. May Reno thrive and Atlantis rise."

They all looked to Ra, who gave three pulses of light before fading away entirely. The meeting was over.

Omen repeated the Kool-Aid boilerplate and dialed out himself.

Well, that resolved...nothing. Other than establishing that Omen was no one's favorite god, the whole meeting had ultimately brought little resolution. If anything, Omen had just pissed them off more.

Well, as long as they were pissed, he might as well add fuel to the fire.

Omen accessed the computer, selecting the feature to broadcast a message out to the entire pantheon. When the record light came on, he spoke. "Gods of the pantheon, I bid thee hail and welcome and hope that you all find this message irrelevant. There is a new drug with the street name of choo-choo. If this is your drug, I give you three days to remove it from the streets and contain it within established businesses. This drug is far too powerful for the street and could destroy Reno's reputation for the responsible and enjoyable combination of sex and drugs. This is my first and final warning that in seventy-two hours I will personally remove this drug and its network from the streets. May Reno thrive and Atlantis rise. Farewell."

There. If that didn't solidify Osiris as the least liked of all the gods, Omen didn't know what would.

CHAPTER FOUR

DEMI

Demi stood offstage, taking deep, cleansing breaths through a ventilator as the final chord played out on stage. Shiva, their guest performer for the evening, struck her final pose in fully transparent lace. Behind Shiva, her backup dancers wore less ornate versions of the same outfit—all of which would be edited for the delayed broadcast in every city outside of Reno.

Demi definitely should have gone with the lingerie approach that night. It didn't do to be outshined by a visiting artist. People were going to be buying Shiva's look all night long. Not Demi's.

"Hold," Arthur said in her ear. "Let's give her a few more seconds before quieting the audience down."

Demi had no problem heeding the request. She wasn't sure of the exact concentration of uppers being pumped into the vents, but the crowd was in absolute rapture.

The permission waiver qualified the drugs in the air as "an enhanced audience experience." But just as the audience could opt in to the high of seeing the show live, Demi and all the staff needed to opt out. That meant Demi needed to get periodic neutralizing shots and breathe through a ventilator any time she was off camera. She was the host of the show, after all. If she got even the slightest bit high off of the ventilation system, the show could go downhill very quickly.

On the stage, Shiva took a bow and the crowd roared. Shiva milked their response, waving to the back row with one hand while she pushed her other hand down the front of her transparent lingerie and palmed herself.

"Oh, Reno!" she called out to the crowd. "You make me feel so good!"

Predictably, the crowd raised its volume to a deafening roar.

"That's your cue," Arthur said in her ear.

Demi returned the ventilator to its hook and took confident steps onto the stage. "That was amazing!" she called out to the crowd. "Does it get any more amazing than that?"

Of course it did, but it wasn't Demi's job to say that.

Demi felt distinctly overdressed as she strode onto the stage in evening wear made from the violet silk Ali had liked so much. And sure, maybe it had looked stunning in the dressing room, but no one would be looking at it now. Not when Shiva and her gorgeous backup dancers lined the stage. But Demi pretended not to know all that as she moved center stage.

"Oh my God!" Demi cried out as she reached for Shiva's hand, raising it up in the air as if the woman had just won a championship. "Let's hear it for Shiva, everyone!"

The audience gave it their all as Shiva and her dancers bowed and stepped back behind their marks. A screen dropped between Demi and the performers, leaving Demi alone on the stage as the lighting design shifted to create the reveal stage for the contestants.

"Three years ago, Shiva was standing right where this year's contestants are standing now. She won your hearts then, but who has won your hearts this year and earned a spot in the next round? We're about to find out."

As if on cue, all the lights in the theater powered down. Spotlights went black. Stage lights went dark. The only lights in the entire theater that stayed on were the emergency exit lights. Demi stood frozen for a moment.

That wasn't what was supposed to happen.

Had there been a power failure? The building had like five backup systems. A complete power failure was supposed to be impossible, and yet they were all suddenly swallowed up in darkness.

"Testing?" Demi said into her mic and heard nothing through the speakers. "Arthur?"

Nothing. The feed in her earpiece was off too.

An instant later all the screens in the stadium blinked on, revealing the face of a handsome man with Latin features. He sported playfully mussed hair and a fine Italian suit accented with a gold cross around his neck. Dangerous chic. That's how Demi would describe him. And when the man grinned, the glint in his eyes left no doubt in Demi's mind that the man who had commandeered the Apophis stadium was not a man who played by the rules in any part of his life.

"Good evening," the man said, flashing a set of perfect teeth. "My name is Richard Benedict Abba, and some of you watching this right now are looking for me. And by some of you, I mean a lot of you are looking for me."

Demi's mouth fell open as she realized who she was looking at. This was the guy who had killed Patrick McGee's son? She felt her heart grow cold as she reassessed his suave exterior.

"Searching for me is fine," he said. "The problem I have with it, however, is that I'm hearing tales of some very torturous things being done in the name of finding the killer of 'six innocent boys.'" He used air quotes to reference the boys, which only served to aggravate Demi.

"Murderer!" someone in the audience called out and was joined by several other hecklers. With the sound system shut down there was nothing to amplify their cries, so the man on the screen drowned their voices out when he continued speaking.

"Based on rumors I'm hearing, I figured it might be time for a little fact checking," the man said as his smug mug was replaced with onscreen text.

Fact Check #1: Richard Abba killed Travis McGee.

INCORRECT.

Everyone in the audience grew silent as they read, then the man's face reappeared on the screen.

"Word on the street is that I am the one who killed Travis McGee. This is untrue. I was definitely present when Travis McGee was shot, but I did not shoot him or any of his friends."

New text appeared on the screen.

Fact Check #2: Richard Abba paid the shooter to execute the boys.

INCORRECT.

Richard Abba's pretty-boy face reappeared on the screen. "I was not the shooter, nor did I pay the shooter. I didn't need to. Travis McGee was already a walking dead man due to the fact that he'd become a bit of a serial killer by intentionally administering drug overdoses to Reno citizens. Travis had been warned by a mob boss to cease his actions or he would join his victims in the grave. Unfortunately, Travis didn't take this warning seriously because he thought his daddy had enough clout to keep him safe. Long story short, Travis McGee was shot by a man who was happy to remove a serial killer from this earth for free."

The stunned silence in the audience mirrored Demi's response. There was no way any of that could be true. Could there? It had to be a lie.

New text appeared on the screen.

Fact Check #3: Psycho ninjas wearing white masks executed the boys.

INCORRECT.

"I do confess that there was an individual on the murder scene wearing a mask," Richard said from the screen. "This man wore a mask to protect his identity. But I assure you that there was only one person wearing a mask—not an army of them—and it was this masked man's role to ensure that only Travis McGee died that day. You see, there were a lot of people and a lot of guns present on the scene, leaving room for a blood bath. You might say the masked man's role was to play guardian angel for everyone who was not named Travis McGee. And I feel compelled to point out that this masked man did his job very effectively. Everyone except Travis McGee was alive when we left, a fact you will see in just a moment."

Fact Check #4: Richard Benedict Abba is a killer.

TRUE!

Demi blinked, reading the text twice before Abba's face popped back onto the screen.

"I did not kill Travis or his friends, but I want to make it very clear that I am not a good guy. Up until last year, I made my living as a drug dealer. And yes, I am a killer. In fact, I killed someone yesterday. This guy."

An image popped up on screen of a Latin-looking man in his forties. Good skin, nice hair, and a suit that screamed money.

"This man was Arman Aldo," Abba continued. "Less than twenty-four hours ago, I saw to it that he died as horrifically as he lived. And to be truly forthcoming, I must admit that he's the eighth man I've tortured and killed. And without Patrick McGee's bounty on my head, Aldo would have never moved within my grasp. So for that, Mr. McGee, I thank you."

"Dude, that's fucked up," someone called out from the audience, but Demi felt too sick to say anything at all.

"But why is he telling us all this? you may be asking yourself," Abba continued. "It's a fair question, so I'll answer it for you." His eyes grew intense and a bit scary on the massive screen. "I'm telling you this because while all you citizens are out hunting me down like a fox, the corrupt motherfuckers of this city are circling the wagons and protecting the last man on my kill list."

Kill list. The moment the man uttered those two words was the moment Demi actually believed she was looking into the eyes of a stone-cold killer. She had no doubt that Richard Abba had killed eight men. Or more. Suddenly her feet didn't feel so certain beneath her.

"I just told you that I've killed eight men," Abba said matter of factly. "But there are nine men I swore to put in their graves. The ninth man knows who he is, and he knows why he's going to die. He knows that fifteen months ago, in an effort to force my cooperation, he kidnapped my wife and two daughters. He drugged them. He repeatedly raped them, and, in an to encourage me to fulfill his demands, he sent me the videos of the things he did. When I was unable to get him what he wanted within forty-eight hours, he killed my wife and daughters in the most depraved way imaginable while forcing me to watch remotely."

Stone-cold eyes stared down off the screen—the eyes of a killer with no regrets. Demi felt a shiver run through her.

"That is why no matter how many favors George Baran calls in, he will die in the most depraved manner I can imagine for him. Every man who helped George Baran kill my wife and daughters is dead. Baran is the only man left to die. After that, I don't give a fuck what happens to me. But do not doubt me when I say: Baran. Will. Die. And it will be horrible."

No one heckled the stone-cold killer now, but Demi could see thousands of comms light up as people started initiating web searches.

"So that's why I was at the parking garage two days ago," Abba said. "Because I knew Travis McGee had a hit going down on him, and I knew Patrick McGee would recognize my face and put a bounty on it. And I knew that bounty would be an irresistible lure for Arman Aldo, which it was. And it was also supposed to open the door for me to reach Baran. Unfortunately, that last part has not worked out so well. George Baran is calling in favors and surrounding himself with an impenetrable army, which leads us all here—to me interrupting your regularly scheduled programming."

Abba leaned back and turned his ladykiller smile back on, making Demi's stomach turn—not because Abba was gross. Because he wasn't. The primal allure in his eyes was the stuff that started cults.

"We've now reached the part where I tell you how I'm going to get George Baran delivered to me with a bow on top." A diabolical smile curved his handsome lips, and when he spoke next it was with a voice that could charm a snake. "Are you listening? Because I'm going to tell you the truth. Until George Baran's allies drop him at my feet without a backwards glance, I'm going to tell you what the rich and powerful of this city don't want you to know."

Holy shit, this man is dangerous! Demi thought even as she felt the allure of what he was laying out in front of all of them.

Ripples of conversation began to arise in the audience as people started learning who George Baran was and discussing amongst themselves. Demi heard words like pedophile and sex trafficking from multiple areas and got the sense that George Baran wasn't a man who many people would easily align themselves with.

"Don't worry," Abba continued. "This won't be a case of he said/she said. I'm not going to tell you things and just expect you to trust a killer. I'm going to show you that I'm telling the truth. So let's rewind two days, shall we? I already told you how Travis died, but this is what happened after we left."

Abba's face was replaced by an HD video recording in an old-Reno parking garage. A censored-out figure lay on the cement while six guys in their twenties spoke frantically into their comms. The video froze, and an arrow appeared on the screen, pointing to the blur.

"For the more sensitive eyes that may be watching, we have blurred Travis's body in this broadcast," Abba said in a voice over. "As you can see, when we left the scene, Travis was dead and his friends were all alive. They're terrified, but they're alive." The tape started rolling again as Abba's voice narrated. "Now what happens next takes place over about fifteen minutes. You can view the raw video on FiWi without alterations, but for the sake of time, I'm going to fast forward to some of the key parts."

As promised, the image started moving quickly up until a town car pulled onto the scene. Demi felt the urge to look away—to leave the stage and refuse to see what he was showing them—yet her feet stayed right where they were, and her eyes stayed fixed on the screen. Whatever happened next, she needed to see it.

"Here we have the arrival of Patrick McGee and his security team," Abba narrated as the video played in double speed. "McGee listens to what the boys have to say and handpicks who investigates and reports. McGee asks his son's friends to demonstrate how they'd been tied up. As you can see, they all cooperated. Also a key point, this is the part where two of the guys who were allegedly mortally wounded on the scene walk out of the garage with McGee's security to get a ride to the hospital. Spoiler alert: They don't make it."

Demi felt her stomach sink as the video continued to fast forward, showing Patrick McGee talking with the boy who had survived while the other three guys had their hands tied over a pipe in the background. Police appeared on the scene, and then Wyatt Snider, a reporter Demi knew well, joined the gathering group. The video paused.

Something very bad was about to happen. Demi could feel it in her bones.

"And now for the answer to the five-million dollar question," Abba said. "If I didn't kill Travis's friends, who did? Well, I'll show you. Please, if there are sensitive eyes in the room, cover them or turn off the TV at this time. Because I'm going to let it roll."

Without any other introduction, the video commenced playing at normal speed with everyone over near the boys who were strung up and hanging by their hands. The sound was barely audible.

"Say that these motherfuckers work as a team," Patrick McGee was saying. "Wearing a black uniform with a white mask. They're fucking cowards fighting against progress by use of intimidation and violence even as they hide behind anonymity."

"Got it," Wyatt said from next to him, head nodding. "But how did they lure your son here to a condemned area? And why did they target him?"

"Them," Patrick corrected.

Wyatt looked confused. "Them?"

"Yes. 'Them' not 'him.' Six of the city's youth died here today." Without warning, Patrick McGee pulled a gun out from under his suit jacket, pressed it to the temple of the friend nearest him and pulled the trigger. With the way the three young men had been strung up, that one bullet passed through all of their heads in one push, and they all slumped as one.

Demi felt the air leave her body as she gasped in shock. The guys hadn't even had time to cry out in alarm, but everyone in the audience at the Apophis did. The collective gasps and stunned cries nearly drowned out the audio of what came next.

"Shit!" Wyatt gasped up on the screen. To his credit he looked surprised by what had just happened before his eyes. But to Wyatt's condemnation, he didn't sweat what he was seeing either. He rolled with it. "Warn a guy, will you?" he said. "I think you got splatter on my pants."

The video disappeared, and Richard Abba's face returned to the screen, looking both grim and determined. "And that, my friends, is the answer to how six boys died in a parking garage two days ago, rather than just one. One died because he gave some very powerful people the middle finger and thought his daddy would protect him. The other five died because daddy wanted a good story to sell all of you so I would be apprehended quickly." Abba's eyes narrowed with honest hatred. "And, I'll be honest, I would have let Patrick get away with his story if he and his ilk weren't building a fortress between me and George Baran at this very moment."

Richard Abba sent a cold smile to the camera. "So this message goes out to all the ilk out there. For each day you protect George Baran, I will reveal sins worthy of your crucifixion. I won't tell you who will be next. It'll be a fun surprise. And the surprises will continue until one of you hands me George Baran. Those are my terms."

The audience suddenly got very active, dozens of people moving to the doors while others initiated calls. No one seemed panicked per se, but some of them had a fire lit under them by what they'd just heard.

"As for the rest of you—the non-ilk—let me be very clear here," Abba continued. "There are no good guys in this story. I am not good. Baran is not good. McGee is not good. Anyone else slugging around in this muddy story is not a good person. Everyone involved in this deadly play is a sinner from top to bottom, so I don't want to hear of any more bounty hunters torturing information out of people in the name of avenging six innocent youth. If you want the five million dollars, fine," he snarled. "But don't pretend you're a hero. And don't imagine you're immune to the blowback of dealing with the black underbelly of this town. Because shit is about to get hairy, and if you're in the mix, then you're fair game. This is your only warning."

And just like that the theater lights blinked back on. The stage spotlights returned to full luminosity. The recording indicators on all of the cameras blinked back on, all of them pointed at Demi.

No one in the audience was looking Demi's way at this point, but everyone at home certainly was. Had they seen what she just saw? Where was Arthur? What was her cue?

To her surprise it was Bruce's voice that came into her ear. "That broadcast pirated every station and website in Reno. It played everywhere. Your producers are scrambling."

For some reason the update calmed her. She wasn't the only one freaking out that moment. She was just one of the few people whose reaction was being broadcast live.

"Well, that was quite unprecedented," she heard herself say. "I know we promised you a results show tonight, but I have a sense that our time tonight will be cut short in order for twenty-four-hour news to discuss weightier matters, like fact-checking this unauthorized broadcast and discussing how Reno's airwaves were hacked tonight."

"Very good," Bruce said in her ear. "Now cue the booth to cut to commercial. They're chasing their asses up there."

"Please enjoy a word from tonight's sponsors and stay tuned. We will be right back to let you know if this interruption is a true breaking story or an awful prank. Stay tuned."

"Bless you!" Arthur all but yelled into her earpiece. "I have one employee who kept her shit together through all this, and it's the one in front of the camera. I will fucking have your babies for this!"

Demi maintained a somber expression until the lights on the cameras blinked off. Then her hands dropped to side as she looked for a place to sit. "I think I'm going to puke," she muttered as she braced her hands against her knees.

When her eyes were open, she felt dizzy. When they were closed she saw a single bullet blow out the sides of three boys' heads.

The video wasn't fake. It certainly could have been, but her gut said it wasn't. Patrick McGee had killed his son's friends—all but one of them. Richard Abba had made Demi a believer when it came to that. And while she was no fan of Abba's, she had to admit that she felt some sympathy for his cause.

If someone had killed William and made her watch she might just be in Abba's shoes...or hire someone to be in his shoes.

A wave of vertigo hit Demi like a gust of wind, nearly taking the ground out from under her until an arm wrapped around her waist and secured her upright. Demi sent a grateful look to her anchor and locked eyes with Ali.

"I've got you" Ali said and suddenly Demi shattered, sagging against her stylist.

"I need to see William," she heard herself sob as she wrapped her arms around Ali and held on. "I need to see that he's okay."

"We'll get you home," Ali said. "He's safe and sound. But we'll get you home so you can see it for yourself."

"Okay," she whimpered before looking up to the sound booth. "Arthur? I need to go. I need to get home."

"Go," he said, sounding tired. "We've been pre-empted and half the audience has already walked out. We'll figure out how to salvage this and get back to you."

Demi looked back over to Ali. "Get me to my car."

Expression grim, Ali nodded and led Demi off stage.

CHAPTER FIVE

BACH

Dom's broadcast had Reno's FiWi overrun with data requests.

Less than fifteen minutes after Dom signing off, over 300,000 unique users had clicked on the parking garage video. Over 50,000 users had clicked on the virtual tour Bach had made of Baran's executive suite of a prison cell, which was more of a remote mansion with a pool, putting course, and equestrian arena than a cement cell with bars.

Dom had insisted on putting up his own rap sheet along with Baran's. He'd also made public the list and profiles of his first eight victims along with images of his wife and daughters and their autopsies. It had been a difficult choice for Dom to make, but it was having the desired effect. Viewers—women especially—were outraged.

Within forty-five minutes the fan pages started appearing along with PhotoShopped images of every variety. Predictably, all of the pages and images were polarized in their calls to action. A group of women had apparently homed in on the fact that Dom had been wearing a periwinkle and cream leather band in his video and volunteered to channel Dom's wife during sexual intercourse. Another group decried Dom's vigilantism and had scheduled a candlelight vigil to pray that he turn himself in. Other groups intended to march on city hall to demand McGee be prosecuted for the murders shown in the video. But by far the most popular sites were the ones analyzing the posted videos and attempting to verify authenticity based on technical analysis. The top site of all these was, unsurprisingly, broadcasting out of The Aqueduct, where analysts were posting their independent analyses of each of the videos on an aggregate website.

On the flip side of all of this was the world of Patrick McGee desperately trying to cover his ass. Patrick was already cracking the whip on creating videos explaining how the video in the pirated broadcast was an absolute fraud created solely through cinematic effects.

The amount of information flowing all at once was far beyond any human capability to analyze, but Phi's computer categorized and prioritized each search for Bach, allowing him to see the most pivotal data requests made by people on Dom's watch list first. Reactions like Damian Adler signaling those loyal to him to be ready for a shift. The shift. Adler sensed the end of McGee on the horizon and was coiling like a snake to wait for the perfect moment to strike.

McGee would definitely fall by the end of this, but not by the undergods' hands. They were setting the stage, yes, but McGee had made his bed long ago and he was about to lie in it. He just didn't know it yet.

It was moments like this where Bach had hope for his future and his own plan of vengeance. Some day, some way he may just pull it off.

But for the moment juggling all the data flooding the system was a full-time job, so Bach settled in and got to work.

CHAPTER SIX

SWISS

Swiss smelled blood. Human blood.

After being released from work early, she had thought to return to Hell to check in, but the smells stopped her. The sounds had sickened her.

Visually the city didn't look much different, but it sounded all wrong and smelled of desperation. Anxiety built in Swiss's body, tensing her muscles as she tried to comprehend everything hitting her radar.

She hadn't encountered most of it before—at least not since gaining her upgrades. It was dark shit, though. Broken bones and bleeding veins and slap of flesh on flesh—and those cries were definitely not the cries of pleasure that usually filled Reno's night.

People were being tortured out there.

Dom's video had done exactly as he'd hoped. It had scared the shit out of Reno's rich and powerful, and it seemed those rich and powerful were responding by throwing their weight around.

Swiss hated that her mind immediately went to The Aqueduct. She still hadn't checked in with Gideon about the incident that had set off his panic response. All she knew was that Gunnar had taken a McGee henchman there, which meant the bar was definitely on McGee's radar. The Aqueduct wasn't the safe ground it once was. It had been breached.

Swiss seriously needed to find the time to corner Gunnar and ask him what he was thinking when he walked Deacon through those doors. He'd totally fucked with Swiss's homeostasis. Gideon was good enough to take care of any trouble riffraff might bring, but he wasn't a one-man army. He couldn't handle a full clan.

The urge to move closer to The Aqueduct was strong, but Swiss resisted. What was the point? Nothing had truly changed. If there was a problem, Gideon's comm would alert her and—

Swiss stared at her comm, wondering if she was seeing things. The display flashed Gideon's name in red. That meant injury. The night before it had flashed yellow, indicating a panic response. But red? Gideon was in actual trouble. It wasn't her imagination.

Swiss barely remembered to walk into a blind spot before going super nova in the direction of the bar. Everything around her moved into extreme slow motion as she navigated with what would seem super speed to others, although Swiss perceived her own actions in what seemed normal time. That meant that five minutes later—her time—she was running up the street adjacent to the back alley of Ash's bar. However, when she checked her watch, only a few seconds of actual time had passed.

Swiss heard the sickening crack of lead hitting bone in the alley.

"Bach," she whispered into her comm. "I need an assist. Can you shut down the surveillance around The Aqueduct. I have some assholes beating down a friend of mine."

"Give me a second," Bach said in her ear, then he went quiet for several precious seconds.

Swiss inhaled as she waited for Bach's cue. Her acute senses told her all the blood in that alley was Gideon's. He hadn't gotten a defensive hit in, which meant the attackers must have blindsided him.

The sick sound of flesh striking flesh bounced its way down the alley, hitting Swiss's ears in a flutter of sound.

"Tell us how you know Richard Abba!" a male voice roared.

Wait, what? Why in the world would these guys think Gideon knew Dom?

There was the wet slap of bloody spit splashing on the cement followed by Gideon replying, "Tell me where you learned to hit like a fish."

One of the men let out a humorless laugh. "Oh, hear that? He's still a funny man."

The next strike was to the abdomen, which Swiss could tell Gideon absorbed like the trained marine he was. Swiss inhaled deeply, trying to get a read on everyone's mental state. After several breaths, she realized the man delivering the punches was getting off on it—a true sadist. And he was getting exactly what he wanted out of this ambush, because Gideon's breathing was ten shades of wrong, crackling with every inhale and exhale. He had blood in his lungs and needed a doctor. The beating had to stop now, yet Swiss didn't know if she had enough control to subdue without killing.

She couldn't go in full force. She needed full restraint. One hit. That was all she could allow herself if she wanted to keep her sanity.

Swiss rolled her shoulders, trying to release the building tension. "Bach, how are we on cameras?"

"You're good to go," Bach replied after a brief silence. "Cameras are offline."

Taking a deep, allegedly cleansing breath, Swiss stepped out of the shadows, putting a little bit of sex in both her walk and her talk as she moved into the scene in front of her. "What's with the beat down, boys?"

Gideon glanced up her way, one eye already swelling shut, but both eyes very pissed off. He recognized her immediately, and she could see the look of frustration that crossed his face when he realized she would be saving the day. Injured as he was, Gideon's ego wasn't happy to see her.

Gideon recovered quickly, however, spitting on the shoes of his closest assailant before answering her. "These guys think my business is their business."

The three attackers had Gideon on his knees with his hands cuffed behind his back. Seeming confident that they had him contained, all three men turned to face Swiss as she approached.

"Turn and walk the other way, little lady," the shot caller said. He was the only one without a weapon in his hand. The man to his left had a lead pipe, and the other man had a knife. They all had guns tucked away.

Swiss kept moving forward. "Oh, I don't think you understand. You're beating up my employee right now, and I didn't give you permission to do that. Do you understand the position that puts you in?"

All three men came to attention and focused on Swiss more seriously as Gideon spit up another wad of blood.

"You saying you own this bar?" the shot caller asked.

"No," Swiss said, coming to a stop ten feet away from them. "I do not own the bar."

"So he works for you on the side?"

Swiss dabbed her finger in the air in the direction of the shot caller. "So you're the smart one."

Gideon actually chuckled, and rasped, "Relatively speaking."

The medic in Swiss didn't like what she heard. At all. Gideon wasn't at death's door—he would be fine so long as he didn't take any more hits—but that didn't mean Swiss wanted to prolong his suffering by playing cat and mouse with these guys for too long.

Still, Gideon was a witness, which meant she needed to watch her use of upgrades and keep things light.

Swiss swallowed back the metallic taste creeping up on her tongue. "Untie him."

The men laughed.

Swiss looked to her friend. "Gideon, why have they tied you up?"

"Because he has answers we want," the shot caller answered for him.

Just then Bach's voice piped up in her comm. "Okay, the three guys you are dealing with right now are Julius Hanover, Blake Jepson, and Mario Rivera. Julius is the one who just spoke and Blake should be a tall man with a beard, if that helps."

It did. Blake had the pipe—well, two pipes. One in his hands and another tenting his pants since this was his kind of foreplay. Mario had the knife, and Julius was running point.

"What answers do you think my man has?" Swiss said, looking at Julius. "Because I can assure you he knows nothing I don't."

"Looks like someone on Team McGee sent them," Bach said in her ear. "Not sure why, although Gideon did knock out one of their men yesterday at the bar."

In front of her, Mario tapped Julius on the arm. "Man, maybe she's the unidentified number on the call list. It would make sense"

"I'd listen to him, Julius," Swiss said. "Mario's not as dumb as you think."

Julius went for the gun under his jacket, leveling it at her. "How do you know our names?"

Swiss lifted her mouth in a one-sided grin. "Because you're sloppy, greedy foot soldiers. Especially Blake here." She tapped her hip to indicate where Blake's chub was showing through. "Combining business and pleasure? Really?"

She saw Julius's finger squeeze, her mind effortlessly calculating the trajectory of the bullet and slowing time as she leaned out of the path of three bullets fired in rapid succession. Heart-heart-head. The guy was government trained.

Once the bullets passed, Swiss returned to real time.

"Trust me when I say you don't want to try that again," she said calmly.

Next to Julius, Swiss sensed Blake going from wood to rubber in the space of a few heartbeats as he realized Julius had just missed three point-blank shots. As the dumbest of them all, even Blake's lizard brain had picked up on the fact that shit didn't get much deeper than what he was standing in.

"What the fuck?" Julius said, twisting his gun to the side and looking at it like an imposter. He was mid-blink when Swiss moved forward and twisted the weapon from his hand. By the time his blink was complete she was standing in her original position holding the warm metal like a dirty rag.

"Let's try this one more time," she said. "Why did you ambush my employee? Or should I tell you why you did it and why you're going to regret that choice for the rest of your life?"

Julius stepped forward, reaching for his gun. "How did you—"

The audacity of the man's approach had Swiss's primal brain roaring. Not knowing what she'd do if Julius actually tried to attack her, she gripped the gun and shot one leg out from under him, forcing Julius to take a knee.

"Tut-tut," she said lightly, even as turned to liquid fire inside her. "That's not an answer to my question."

Julius was trained enough not to make a sound as he went down. He'd likely been shot before. Good.

"Let me make the situation here very clear," Swiss said. "Gideon works private security. For me. The number he messages, that you find so suspicious, is mine. And I am not Richard Abba."

Swiss dropped the gun then, and when all eyes across from her tracked the falling gun in reflex, Swiss made her move in semi-super speed. She disarmed Blake first, stripping the pipe from his hands before he knew it was gone. Then she used it to smash Mario's knee. Before Mario's face even registered the pain, she swung back around to ball-bash Blake before walking behind each man, removing their stowed guns, and tossing them to the side.

Keeping the pipe in one hand, Swiss returned to real time, retrieved Mario's knife, and cut Gideon's restraints as Blake and Mario wailed. Good thing the bar was soundproof.

Swiss crouched in front of Gideon, checking him for injuries. "Can you get up?"

The guy was wild eyed. She didn't blame him, but she could play it cool and reinforce that he hadn't seen what he thought he saw.

"I...uh, yeah," he managed.

She helped Gideon up, handing him the pipe once he had his legs under him, and turned him to face the incapacitated men. Well, semi-incapacitated. Julius attempted a hobbling getaway, and before fully thinking it through, Swiss threw the knife in her hand his way, landing it in his leg tip first. This time Julius did scream as he went down, once again joining Blake and Mario on the ground.

Swiss looked over the downed men and motioned to Gideon. "I need to get this guy to a hospital. I hope you don't mind. But before we go, I'm going to let him show you how a marine hits."

Gideon's body was stiff with damage as he looked at the pipe then back at her, contemplating what she was offering.

"It's up to you," she said with the indifferent gaze of a soldier.

Gideon's jaw clenched, his eyes humiliated as he gripped the pipe and swung down into Blake's ribs like a man chopping wood. The effort may have hurt Gideon as much as Blake, but Swiss let her friend go to town on the men who ambushed him. It was insta-karma and she wasn't going to stop it unless Gideon was actually close to killing one of them.

So she stood to the side and monitored with more than a little jealousy, counting broken ribs and watching the periphery for witnesses until Gideon sagged and leaned onto the pipe like a cane. "I think I'm ready for that hospital now."

"Let's do it," Swiss said, walking up and draping his arm over her shoulder. "I've got you."

"Thank God," Gideon muttered, then passed out where he stood.

With her new strength, Gideon's dead weight was barely noticeable as she slung him over her shoulder and carried him to the nearest ER.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ASH

Ash stood frozen in place, phone in hand, staring through the security window facing the alley.

Holy. Shit.

That had not just happened.

Three men still laid in her back alley beat to all hell. Ash's heart hammered in disbelief. It had been Ali—Ali with a buzz cut, but definitely Ali. She had walked onto the scene almost the exact moment Ash had looked through the window to check on Gideon.

He'd been gone too long, was all Ash could remember thinking when she'd decided to check on Gideon. On any other day Ash wouldn't have thought anything of it, but then she'd remembered what happened the day before with Deacon. It had taken only a fraction of a second for Ash to be in serious trouble and Gideon had been right there. He had been watching out for her, so she'd started watching out for him and...

What had she just seen?

Gideon and Ali knew each other, that was for damn sure. The soundproofing of the building had put the whole scene on mute for Ash, but by the looks of it the two of them knew each other pretty darn well.

Ash wasn't sure how long she stood where she was before she saw the guy with a knife in his leg bring his wrist up to his mouth to access his comm. The man seemed to be calling in his status to someone. As she watched the man speak through clenched teeth, Ash realized she still had her comm link open and ready to dial the police. She had been about to call law enforcement to save Gideon's ass when she had seen the sexiest pair of boots she'd ever laid eyes on strut down the alley like they owned the place.

In a split second, the woman in those boots had everyone's full attention.

Ash had been momentarily distracted as she'd searched for a Buy button to appear over the boots, as if the scene were happening on TV. No doubt Ash would have lost a day's profits on the purchase. But after getting a good look at the drool-worthy outfit, Ash had moved her eyes up to the woman's face. Carmel skin, full lips, intense eyes.

It had been the eyes that brought it all home. Ali looked different—a lot different—but Ash knew those eyes. She knew that face. Ash knew Ali, but she definitely did not know the person who had just floored three hitmen in the blink of an eye before calmly handing Gideon a pipe to pummel them with.

That was an Ali Ash had never met.

But she would think about later. First things first.

"9-1-1," Ash muttered, trying to get focused as she made the emergency call. Now that it wasn't Gideon on the ground she was feeling much less inclined to get paramedics on the scene. But it needed to be done.

Gideon works for Ali, was all Ash could think as she waited to move through the emergency queue. Gideon's worked here since I opened, and whenever I'm on shift he's in the bar...even yesterday, when he wasn't supposed to be here, he was here...and he works for Ali."

"9-1-1 emergency," a voice on the other side of the line said in Ash's ear.

"Uh, yes. I have three guys in my back alley that look like they need medical help. From what I can tell they lost a brawl, but I don't want to go out there in case one of them still has a gun. I heard one go off not too long ago." That was a lie. She'd seen it go off. The building's soundproofing had prevented her from hearing it, but hopefully no investigators would notice that.

"I have your location, ma'am. Police and EMS will be there in approximately three minutes."

"Thank you," Ash said. "They're in the alley behind The Aqueduct. I'm inside if there is any need to speak to me."

"I've made a note," the operator said. "Thank you for your assistance this evening, Ms. Travers."

"You're welcome," Ash said and cut off the call.

Help was now on the way, but what the hell was Ash supposed to do now? What was she supposed to tell them if they asked questions?

"Think, Ash, think," she muttered to herself.

Her instinct was to message Gideon, but she'd just watched him pass out. Even if she messaged him there was next to no chance he'd be awake to see it.

But Ali might.

Ash let that thought sit for a moment before thinking What the hell? and opening her comm to message him. Whatever she said had to be something benign, something that didn't hint to the fact that she'd just seen what she'd seen.

"Gideon," she said into her comm. "I have three broken men in the back alley, and you're missing. Everything okay?" She pressed send and felt tension build inside of her with every second that passed without a response.

She just kept seeing Ali's face in profile. How calm it was. And when that guy in the middle had pointed the gun at Ali, Ash had felt her heart pound in her throat. She'd been terrified. But Ali hadn't been. Not even a little bit.

And then she'd dodged those bullets. How the hell had that had happened? It hadn't even looked like Ali moved, and yet there was no denying the man had missed three impossible-to-miss shots.

Then suddenly Ali had the gun.

Ash must have looked away for a second or blinked exceptionally long, because bam. Suddenly Ali had the weapon in her hands. Like magic.

But it was the part where Ali had taken the three men down that was really on loop in Ash's mind. Such speed. Such precision. But more than that, the look on Ali's face the entire time was something Ash had never seen before—cold confidence.

Gunnar always joked that Ali was the only one who could maybe beat him in a fight. Um, yeah! Never mind that Gunnar was at least seventy pounds heavier than Ali. There was no way Gunnar stood a chance against what Ash had just seen.

Ali was...different.

Ash's comm pinged with a message, text not voice. Her display said it was from Gideon. Sorry about the mess, it read. I'm headed to the hospital right now. Don't think I'll be back to work tonight.

Ash pressed record. "Don't worry about the mess. EMS is on their way. Should I tell them about you? They're going to have questions."

This time the response came back quickly. Tell EMS that a friend took me to the hospital. But yes, it's okay to mention that they attacked me when I took out the trash.

"I hope you look better than these guys!" Ash replied. "Which hospital are you at? I want to come see how you're doing."

Mount Moriah Medical.

Ash read the text several times. Ali was at Mount Moriah. If Ash went there she and Ali would be face to face for the first time in years. Why? Because Gideon worked for Ali and the two of them were close enough that when Gideon got into trouble Ali was the first one on the scene.

What the hell had been going on under her nose for the past two years? How had she missed it?

"What's going on back here?" Lex asked from behind, making Ash jump in surprise. "The EMS counter popped on behind the bar. Did I miss something?"

Ash's eyes darted to the security window, and before she could figure out what to say, Lex walked up behind her and looked out the window over Ash's shoulder.

"Holy shit!" Lex said.

"That's exactly what I said."

"What happened?"

The urge to tell everything to Lex was strong, but a little voice in Ash's head told her not to. Lex couldn't keep the secret for the life of her. Whatever Ash told her would be all around the bar within twenty minutes. Making a snap decision, Ash showed Lex the last few messages on her comm.

"Looks like these guys jumped Gideon while he was bringing out a load of trash."

"Gideon?" Lex repeated skeptically as she looked out the window again at the writhing men. "Our Gideon did this? The little guy whose jeans I don't even fit into?"

Ash shook her head back and forth. "I know. First he knocks out the guy who attacked me yesterday—"

"Now he tromps three gangsters when they ambush him in an alley?"

Not exactly, Ash thought but said, "I know. I'm still processing it, too."

Lex kept watching the guys. "Are they even still alive—wait! One of them just tried to get up. Totally didn't make it, but he tried."

"They need doctors," Ash said, just to say something.

"Understatement award," Lex said then frowned thoughtfully. "Seriously? Gideon? You saw him do this?"

"I saw the end of it," Ash said before she could think better of it. Damn. If Lex repeated that to Gideon, then both he and Ali would know that she saw them. Was there a way to back pedal? "Just like you're seeing it," she added. "Then I noticed Gideon was missing and texted him." Ash motioned to her comm messages again. "Now you know as much as I do."

EMS chose that moment to rush onto the scene, flooding the area with thermal light to scan the area for weapons. Once they'd gathered the weapons Ali had left on the scene, they moved to the men's sides to assess them for transport.

"We need to get back to the bar," Lex said, even though she didn't make a move.

"Yeah," Ash agreed.

They both stood in place for another beat before Lex muttered, "Gideon. Who'da thought?" then turned on her heel and headed back to the front.

Ash let her bartender go, her pulse thudding a little harder as she made a snap decision. Walking into her office, she shut and locked the door behind her.

"Phineas?" she said to the empty room.

"Good evening, Ash," her e-host replied. "What can I do for you?"

"I want to see video footage for the past fifteen minutes for the back alley."

"Well, this is quite embarrassing," Phineas replied. "But I can't do that for you. I'm looking through the memory chips now, and it looks like all cameras within a quarter-mile of the alley went offline up until four minutes ago. Do you want me to show you footage starting from four minutes ago?"

How had Ali turned off the cameras? Ash spent her days with hackers and software engineers, and she didn't know a single one of them who could hack her system.

Apparently Ali's hacking skills were right on par with her fighting skills.

"Phineas?" she said.

"Yes, Ash?"

"I need you to step aside and let me speak directly to the computer."

CHAPTER EIGHT

DEMI

While Demi's rational mind had never doubted William's safety, it felt good to poke her head into his bedroom and witness it herself. Her little genius boy was right where he was supposed to be. And he was safe.

"Hey, you," she said, stepping into William's room. "How's my boy?"

William's head tilted to the side as his eyes looked over her. "I am healthy and engaged in expanding my knowledge set. You are home three hours and twenty minutes early. Why?"

Healthy and engaged. What more could a mother ask for? "We had a hiccup at work."

"Are you referring to the pirated broadcast?" William said, his gaze in her direction but off to the side.

Demi froze. "Wait. Did you see that?"

William head tilted quizzically. "Of course. 94.3% of the population of Reno witnessed the broadcast."

He couldn't know that percentage, she thought even as she knew that somehow her son did know such things. But how? How could William know a statistic like that and Arthur not know?

"I have been watching bet boards populate with wagers on when and how Richard Abba will kill George Baran," William added. "I have never ventured a wager before, but I am considering it in this instance."

"Nuh-uh," Demi said, reaching for his tablet. "You will not be betting on something so morbid. Not in this house!"

"So I may place the bet when I next leave the house?" William asked, his expression pure innocence as he allowed his tablet to be confiscated. Once Demi had the tablet in her hand, she didn't know what to do with it. William had never allowed it to be taken before. Since Demi didn't want a meltdown, she tossed it on the bed where it would be momentarily out of reach.

"You will not be placing any bet at all. Not until you're of legal age."

William pondered her words for a moment. "You are agitated. Did you find the pirated broadcast upsetting? Many did."

"Yes," Demi said, hating that she felt worse now than when she had walked in. She wanted to hug her son and instead she was being condescendingly interrogated by him. It just felt upside down. "I found it upsetting."

"Because you realized that the owner of your workplace was videoed executing three young men? Do you worry that his actions put your job in jeopardy?"

God help her, William was right. Demi hadn't even considered that yet. She'd been too focused on getting home to check on William, but he was right. Patrick McGee owned the Apophis. He owned her show. If he truly was guilty, what did that mean for her? It felt like a terribly selfish question to ask, given the gravity of what other people were dealing with, but it was still a question that needed to be asked.

Would she have a job on the other side of this mess?

Demi half-collapsed, half-sat on her son's bed and rested her head in her hands. Could nothing in her life be easy? Did everything have to feel like it was bigger than her?

William drew closer, and Demi nearly jumped when she felt his hand rest on her back. William was touching her of his own free will. The gesture brought tears to her eyes as she forced herself not to pull her son into her arms.

"Mother, I am quite concerned for your wellbeing," he said, surprising her yet again.

William thought about her? The realization made her heart feel warm, although the sensation was short lived.

"An energetic shift has occurred across all I see. I do not understand it, but I understand that things will be changing. Disruptions will become more frequent. People will become fearful and make atypical choices, and I worry that without strong allies you will not survive this shift."

Demi raised her face from her hands and looked at her boy. His hand still rested on her back, creating a warm spot while the rest of her grew cold. "That is a lot of worry for one little body, William."

His heterochromatic eyes gazed back at her. "It is not an unfounded worry, Mother. The calculations paint a one-sided picture, beginning with the disloyalty of Sam."

Demi stiffened in response. "William, you are not to accuse your father of such—"

"He is not my father," William said matter-of-factly. "Although I am curious as to why you would create a ruse to convince me that he is. You must see that all physical evidence points away from Sam's paternity. Combine that with the fact that he is exclusively homosexual—"

"William!" she said in reflex, but she didn't really know what to follow it up with.

William removed his hand and studied her facial expression. "Sam has a sexual relationship with Andrew, not you. I believe you are friends with Sam, but you are not his lover and he is definitely not my father."

Demi fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She was so not ready for this conversation. Give her a decade and she still wouldn't be ready for it. But that didn't seem to discourage William from plowing on.

"It became clear to me on the drive home with Hale."

Wait, Hale? What about Hale? Had he said something to William to set this all off? She'd kill him!

"I witnessed your behavior in the café," William said. "I watched how both you and Sam looked at Hale as you sought to arouse yourselves, and I observed as Hale willfully chose to be blind to Sam's homosexuality and your obvious sexual availability."

He doesn't know what he's saying, Demi told herself, then tried to believe it.

"That was when I knew for certain that Hale had once known my biological father and Sam had been the man you sought to fill the father role when my biological father died."

Demi's breath caught. William couldn't know that. Any of it. All the mortifying observations aside, there was no way William could have just picked all that up out of the air. Demi sat up and looked at her son. "Did Hale tell you all that, William?"

"No," William said. "In fact, he initially denied it, and I do believe that he has convinced himself that you are Sam's lover. Even now. It helps him believe that he has done right by my biological father to have you cared for while he sees to my needs. I still haven't figured out all the details, but of that I am certain. But if you tell me of my father, perhaps I will understand more. What was his name?"

For the second time that night, Demi felt a little dizzy. There were at least five things William had just said that she should be objecting to, but she found that she just didn't have the energy. "Hale didn't tell you his name?"

William shook his head. "He said it was not his place."

"It wasn't," Demi said, even though she found herself wishing that Hale had overstepped his bounds anyway. Maybe then she'd have less of a headache building behind her eyes.

"Perhaps it is time you tell me of my conception and how you came to be married to Sam."

God willing, that would happen never! "Not tonight," she said in reflex. "I don't think I have it in me tonight."

"Then please inform me of my father's name."

It wasn't a question. It was a polite command. Demi closed her eyes, knowing that refusing her son would bring more headaches than giving him what he wanted. "Alejandro Tomas."

It had been a long time since she'd said that name. Years. A name with so many memories attached. So much confusion. So much heartache. And while Demi wallowed in all that, her son reclaimed his tablet from the bed, typing rapidly. Then he frowned, scrolled through some pictures, and projected one up into the air.

"Is this him?"

A familiar face stared back at Demi from the hologram. It was a shot taken of Alejandro at a winery. He and the owner posed together, each holding a glass of red wine in their hands. Demi took a deep breath and drank the picture in. She'd forgotten what a keen dresser Alejandro had been. And that hair of his. He'd been so finicky. When they got up in the mornings it had taken Alejandro at least twenty minutes longer to get ready than it took her. He'd loved to look good, and this casual picture taken of him was evidence of that. Always photo ready. That was Alejandro.

"I can see by your expression that you were lovers with this man. But this is not my father, Mother."

Demi blinked back to the present. "Actually, yes, William. Alejandro is your father. I have no reason to lie about that."

William studied the man and frowned. "I'm sorry, Mother, but no. There is less than a nominal chance that this man fathered me. My genetic testing identifies me to be of northern European descendant with less that 1% Italian genetics. This man has the genetic markings of a full-blooded Italian. If he were my biological father, I would have a significantly altered genetic makeup."

"William," Demi said, suddenly feeling very exhausted. "Trust me when I say that this man is the only man who can be your father."

William blinked several times. "Did you get pregnant intentionally?"

"No," she said impatiently, before she could think better of it. "I had no intention of becoming pregnant."

"So you were on birth control?"

You. Are. Five! Act like it! she screamed in her mind as she considered simply walking out of the room.

"You don't need to answer that. Of course you were. What form of birth control were you using?"

Yes. It was definitely time to call it a night. Demi stood up. "William—"

"Mother, these answers are important to both of us," William said with eyes that pierced through her fatigue and fear. "I cannot help you in the future if I do not know the truth. Believing lies creates a false premise for subsequent deductions. For example, Hale believes you and Sam are in love, which is why he will forsake us when his other loyalties demand it. He does not understand that Sam loves another and will ultimately tire of your ruse of marriage. That will leave you alone with me, which is treacherous ground." William shook his head solemnly. "Lies have consequences, Mother. Sam is not my father. Alejandro is not my father, but I am certain Alejandro knew my paternity. I am certain your pregnancy was planned on his side and he took great comfort in knowing that he was not the father. It allowed him to pass the responsibility of watching over us to Hale with a clear conscience." William paused then, his head tilting quizzically. "Wait. Are we certain that Hale is not my father?"

Every cell in Demi's body froze at the thought, making her forget how to breathe even as her heart pounded. But no. There was no way Hale was William's father. First off, that was a scenario far too good to be true. Second, she would have definitely remembered that conception.

"No, William," she said. "Hale and I have never—"

"I know that much. But why would Alejandro purposefully inseminate you? And when he did, whose seed did he use?"

File this under: Questions I Never Imagined a Child Would Ask Me. Demi was too numb to consider the question, not to mention come up with a response. Also, seed was a word she never wanted to hear again. It was right up there with insemination.

God, what an ugly word!

Besides, there was no way Alejandro had done that to her. No way. Her birth control had simply failed. It happened—maybe only 0.03% of the time—but it had failed. Demi had accepted that long ago.

"Mother, I am not an accident," William said in a reverent tone. "No one wishes to be candid in answering my questions, because I think each of you is afraid of the answers. The questions disrupt your homeostasis."

"No," Demi said on a resigned sigh. "I'm not afraid of the answers, William. I just know what I know, is all. I lived it."

William watched her for several seconds. "Then perhaps it is time to revisit what you know. Because Alejandro is not my father, Sam is not your faithful husband, and Hale, our best ally, is consciously distancing himself from us. He has delegated our security to others so that he can serve a separate loyalty I have yet to uncover. The fading loyalty Hale bears us is greatly influenced on his belief that Alejandro is my father and his belief that Sam will be faithful to you and protect you in his absence. Both these premises are false, which leaves us greatly exposed to this new unpredictable disruption."

Demi knew her son was probably making sense, but her mind didn't see where he was coming from or where he was going with his train of thought. She got that William didn't believe Alejandro was his father and that he was convinced Sam was gay, but she didn't understand why he thought any of that would matter to Hale. Everything William said seemed to come back to Hale, which was bittersweet for Demi. Sweet because the thought of Hale made her heart kick up a notch; bitter because of the coldness he continuously sent her way. Six years of near-daily contact, and she couldn't even call Hale a friend with confidence. Hale and William were friends, most definitely. But none of that affection or attention made it Demi's way.

Call her selfish, but she wanted the connection her son had. Was that too much to ask?

"Honey," Demi said, knowing it was time for her son to learn at least one hard truth. "I know that Hale is the only bodyguard you have known, but there are others. It's very likely that Hale will move on to another client one day. And when he does, we'll hire someone new, okay?"

William grew dangerously still, his breath becoming shallow pants.

Oh, wow. That was fast, Demi thought as she sought a way to back pedal away from a breakdown. "I mean, Hale loves you very much, but he is an employee. Do you understand? He is not family. Hale has no obligation to stay with us."

Yeah, that hadn't helped. Although Demi could see William fighting back the urge to rock his body and flap his hands. He was reaching for composure rather than simply flipping out, which was a very welcome new development.

"No one sees," he muttered, his head shaking back and forth. "How does no one see?" Then William closed his eyes, covered his ears, and started rocking. "How come only I see it?"

Wait, was William crying? Actual tears?

The realization had raw instinct taking over as Demi reached out and pulled her son into her arms. And, miracle of miracles, William allowed himself to be pulled against her.

"Oh, honey," she whispered, pressing a kiss to his hair. "I'm sorry. I didn't phrase that very delicately, did I?"

William didn't answer, so she kept on rocking him and holding him until he pushed away and said, "Three hundred."

Demi blinked in confusion. "What?"

William stepped away and dried his eyes. "I need to be alone now."

"Are you sure?" Demi hedged. "You were upset just now. That's not a good time to be alone."

William shook his head. "No. It makes me feel more alone to explain things to you and see that you do not understand anything I say. I will feel much better with you gone."

Wow. A dismissal that went right to the heart. She wasn't going to sleep a wink tonight. She knew it.

"And Mother?"

"Yes, William," she said through a sigh.

"One of the many reasons I know that you and Sam are not lovers is that you have taken no birth control measures to prepare for his return. I understand that the two of you have the bond of friendship, but with what is coming you will need the bond of a mate. A loyal mate. I am not an easy child, but Hale can give you a less complicated child. One that is easier to love. And I am convinced that the two of you would never tire of each other sexually. The chemical attraction is simply too strong to fully dissipate."

"I..." Dear God, what on earth could she say to that? Well, besides Sign me up! Could she say that only in a child's mind were things that easy? That if a man wanted a woman he would find an excuse to touch her at least once in six years? That the mere thought of what William was suggesting made her want so badly that she felt she might break even as she felt like she was betraying everything she had? "I need to go to bed."

William frowned. "Did you hear me, Mother?"

God, maybe Omen was William's father. They both questioned her listening skills in the same impatient tone.

"Yes," she managed. "I heard you. And think we could both use some alone time now."

"Very well," William said and immediately fixated on his tablet as she walked out of the room feeling very much like a zombie.

CHAPTER NINE

DOM

Dom was fairly certain that of all the places bounty hunters were searching for Richard Abba, Mason Ward's bedroom wasn't high on the list.

As the sole survivor of the parking lot fiasco, Mason had been a key player in the hunt for Dom over the last forty-eight hours. But the second Dom's pirated broadcast had played over the airwaves, Mason's father had gone into lockdown mode. The fortress that the Wards called home had been transformed into a prison designed to lock the world out. Mason and his mother were inside while daddy dearest scoured the city for the evil Richard Abba.

It was exactly the opportunity Dom needed.

Gaining entrance had been easy. Zero had delivered a long-range shot that drugged Mason into a happy place, and Phi had redirected the security as Dom made his way into Mason's room for a quick setup.

Swiss was the pro at hooking people up to Phi's equipment, but Phi had insisted that she not know about this little trip of theirs. Something about her being an unsympathetic self-identity or something like that. Whatever the reason for cutting Swiss out of the action, the punchline was that Dom had to step up and do the task himself.

After laying Mason's unconscious body face-up on the bed, Dom opened the reference image Phi had made for him and started attaching the leads to Mason's head. When he did it correctly, that spot on the reference image turned green. Incorrect placement earned a red light and directions on improving the placement.

It took forty-five minutes for Dom to get all the leads right and another thirty to get the transmitters and other equipment up and running.

"Man," Dom muttered when the reference image indicated the setup was complete. "It shouldn't have been that hard."

"Agreed," Phi said through the comm. "That was tedious."

Dom raised his middle finger into the air in response but kept his tone neutral when he spoke. "So what do I do now?"

"Make sure no one enters the room."

"That's it?"

"That is the only useful thing you are capable of. So yes, that's it."

Dom's fists clenched as he fought back counterproductive words. "All right. I'm in position. Do whatever it is you do."

"Commencing," Phi said, leaving Dom to sit on his ass for several hours as he did God knew what inside Mason's mind.

CHAPTER TEN

OMEN

Omen had learned long ago that if he wanted to know what's really going on in people's lives, he had to watch when no one else was looking. It wasn't polite, but Omen had never cared much for polite society. He cared more about impolite truths. He cared about things like how Zhang planned to play both sides of the next day's negotiations. He cared about who Sam called on his first day out of prison.

And standing in the shadows in the rear corner of Sam's office, Omen had a clear view of who Sam couldn't wait to talk to.

Andrew Koch. That's who.

"I'm thinking about you, too," Sam cooed to the other man. Omen nearly lost it. He'd been wrong, and William—a child years away from puberty—had been right.

Omen had absolutely misread the Sam situation. He never did that...at least he never got things wrong when Demi wasn't involved. The woman was kryptonite.

"Come see me," Andrew pouted on the screen, his red silky robe parting on his lap to provide a tease of flesh that had Sam's full attention. "Tomorrow night isn't soon enough, baby. I need you inside me tonight."

It took all the self-control Omen had not to walk up to the screen and tell Andrew he was fired. Effective: Immediately. Instead, Omen stayed in the shadows and listened.

"I just can't make that work. Not tonight," Sam said. "I have a meeting, and then I need to get home. The paparazzi are all over my ass."

"I wish you were all over my ass," Andrew pouted, earning a hissing breath from Sam.

"Baby, I need you to not talk to me like that right now," Sam said. "I have a business meeting, but I'll call you back after, okay? It shouldn't take long."

"Mmmmm. A quickie," Andrew said. "I'll take one of those when you're done."

Sam shook his head, smiling. "You're horrible. And I'll call you back. I promise. Once I'm done with this meeting."

Andrew frowned. "If it's a real meeting, why didn't I see it in the books?"

"It's with a stakeholder," Sam said. "He wants to talk to me before the meeting with Zhang tomorrow."

"Why didn't he schedule through me?" Andrew pressed. "And why is the meeting at 11:00 at night?"

"Hey, it's possible that it's a perfectly reasonable time for a meeting where the stakeholder lives."

"Well, it's not perfectly reasonable here," Andrew pouted.

"I'm serious," Sam said. "I need to go."

Sam blew two kisses at the screen, signed off, and leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He took another breath, adjusting himself under his trousers while Omen fought the urge to beat the shit out of the man. But before he took things to those lengths, he needed to find out just how complicit Demi was in the whole situation.

Was Sam cheating, or did Demi have his back in all this?

A quick search on Omen's comm of the hotel comings and goings earlier that day supported the latter option. Andrew had arrived at the hotel at 11:50 a.m., and left shortly after 6:00 p.m. Demi and Sam had arrived at 10:23 a.m. but departed separately. Demi had left at 1:37 p.m., and Sam had exited the hotel at 5:53 p.m.

Their first day back together and Demi had left her husband with his lover after three hours. Demi wasn't stupid. She had to know about Andrew.

But Omen wanted to know for sure before he said anything.

Using the skills he had honed in his childhood, Omen slipped out of the office unnoticed and walked over to the elevators. When the door opened, Omen used that as his cue to return to Sam's office for the meeting. Sure enough, Sam had heard the elevator and stood waiting for him.

"Hale, so good to see you again," Sam said, beaming that bright smile of his.

"You, too," Omen said evenly. "I hope you had a nice day off."

Sam's eyes twinkled. "Perfection, really. Remind me to have you plan my next vacation. The entire day was heaven. It's going to be hard to come back to work."

Omen nodded, swallowing back the questions that wanted to come out of him. "Were you able to take a few minutes to give yourself a reminder tour of the building?"

"It looks great!" Sam said, walking around his desk and leaning on it. "I like the new plants."

"Lanae took the lead on those changes."

Sam accessed his comm. "Add to to-do list: Send thank you note to Lanae regarding new plants."

The comm pinged its acceptance of the note, and Sam looked back at Omen. "So...Zhang tomorrow. That's going to be fun."

"You'll need your game face on," Omen agreed.

"So what are my marching orders, boss?" Sam asked, absently checking his reflection in a mirror. "I'm told that Zhang's going to offer $20 billion for the contract."

"And you're going to require 200 billion liquid karat," Omen replied.

Sam's mouth fell open. "Uh, care to repeat that?"

"You heard right," Omen said flatly. "You're taking 200 billion karat, or you're walking."

Sam stared at Omen, blinking as he processed that. "That would literally be the biggest liquid karat transaction ever."

"I'm aware."

Sam leaned against his desk and exhaled, wheels visibly turning in his head. "Does Zhang even have access to that kind of money?"

"He has access," Omen promised.

Sam shook his head. "Zhang is going to want an explanation for a demand like that. It's going to offend his honor."

"Of which he has none," Omen said. "But you will appeal to his appearance of honor as you negotiate. We both know that the rules all change once the prototype moves to China. Zhang will run the factories fourteen hours for us then run them ten hours for the black market."

"The contracts are very specific," Sam said. "If Zhang does that, we pull production rights."

"After he already has the prototype," Omen countered. "If we give him even one day with DragonFyre, Zhang will have everything he needs to fill the black market, with or without our business. This is how he works with everything he manufactures. If we want him fully on board, then he needs to have some money to lose. He needs to lose more money off of black market sales than he gains. And that only happens if he is heavily invested in the brand. Zhang needs to see a pathway to profit that is jeopardized by blackmarket sales."

Omen walked to Sam's desk and picked up a folder he'd placed there earlier, opening it and handing it to Sam.

"We'll offer Zhang generous payment per unit to show that we value him. We could manufacture in America, but Zhang is the best, and we want him. He'll do the math and see he has much to gain by meeting our demands. He'll set a record for the largest liquid karat transaction and receive international news coverage. He also becomes the highest-paid Chinese manufacturer in the world, which will give him a few more peacock feathers to show off at parties."

Sam's eyes moved over the outline Omen had prepared for him, his skepticism shifting into amusement. "Hell, if we make this deal, Archetype is going to hit the international news as well. This is insane."

"And it's all or nothing," Omen said. "Anything less than 200 billion and the black market starts peeking back into the picture. Zhang knows that. And when you propose this arrangement, he'll know that you know it, too. He might not be too happy about it, but he'll respect you more for it. And if he respects you, he's likely to make the move."

Sam took a deep breath. "Well...I'm glad you didn't wait until tomorrow to spring this on me. I'm going to need to sleep on this one."

"Indeed," Omen said, thinking of Andrew's come-hither call from just a few minutes before. "I should probably get you home. We all have an early morning tomorrow."

"Of course!" Sam replied, his smile a bit too canned. He'd been considering taking a detour to Andrew's. Omen could see it in his eyes, and fought the urge to grab Sam by the collar and remind him that the days of thinking with his dick had disappeared the day he agreed to be appointed as Archetype's President and CEO.

It was an offer that never would have been extended six years ago had not a then-pregnant Demi run into Sam's arms. At the time, Sam had been nothing more than a late-blooming MBA student. Sam had needed a job. And given that Demi was willingly sharing Sam's bed and she needed to be cared for, Omen had made Sam an offer he couldn't refuse.

Although, looking at the present situation, maybe Sam should have refused. Or maybe Omen should have considered that the only reason Sam and Demi had been sleeping in the same bed at the time was because Sam's student apartment had only one bed. And maybe Demi had felt safest in a gay man's bed while she tried to figure out how to handle her advancing pregnancy.

Omen still remembered the image the two of them had made in bed together, Sam's arms holding Demi as she used his pillow for a chest. One glance and it had seemed so obvious what was going on. Add that to the flirtatious and knowing ways they had bantered in public, and the solution to everyone's problems had seemed so clear to Omen. Sam needed a job; Demi needed a husband; and Omen needed a front man. And the fact that the arrangement put Omen in the position to keep his eye on Leo's child? It was perfect.

But now Omen was realizing that the situation had seemed too perfect because it had actually been too perfect.

And it had taken a five year old to open Omen's eyes.

It made Omen question what other obvious things he was missing.

Across from him, Sam shut the folder and took a deep breath. "I don't think I'm going to sleep tonight. Or, if I do, I'm going to be dreaming conversations with Zhang over and over."

"You'll do great," Omen said. "Let's get you home, though. Sleep may not come, but you can give it a try."

"I guess," Sam said as he led the way out of the building.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SWISS

Slipping out Gideon's of hospital room at Mount Moriah Medical and into Mario's room took no effort at all. Given a choice, she would have chosen to interrogate Julius, but the man was in surgery. Mario would have to do.

To better question him, Swiss did a quick background check on Mario. He was a transplant from northern California. He had started out working at one of the McGee hotels before proving himself to be of greater use to the family. Mario had been muscle for Patrick going on three years now, which was no small accomplishment. McGee muscle made big moves in broad daylight. It was difficult not to be caught or shot, but Mario had managed to avoid both.

That said a lot about him, but it wasn't information that helped Swiss effectively interrogate him. For that, she had needed to go back to his days in California. Who had he been before moving to the city to play with the big boys? Mario had been a child once...what had that child believed? What had he wished for? What words would make him eager to speak, rather than hesitant? What had been important to Mario's mother?

Once Swiss had found that, she knew what to do.

Knowing the doctors would have Mario sedated, Swiss brought her own medications to Mario's bedside. One to wake the man up, and one to get the truth out of him.

She applied the truth serum first, letting the compound hit Mario's system while he was still asleep. Then she pushed the drug to wake him up. Moments later, Mario's eyes fluttered open, studying the room as if it were a breathtaking landscape.

"Welcome, Mario," Swiss said softly in his ear, careful to stay out of sight. "Do you know where you are?"

The man let out a little giggle. "Yes."

"Can you tell me?" Swiss asked.

"Heaven." He giggled again. "I didn't think it existed."

"But now you can see that heaven does exist?" It wasn't a planned question. Swiss was honestly intrigued.

"Yes," Mario drawled. "And it's beautiful!"

Swiss arched a brow, curious as to how the drug was hitting Mario. Swiss knew what the drug did. She'd had it used on her more than once, but she'd never seen anything heavenly under its influence. Maybe it was the cocktail of drugs in Mario's system that was taking him to new places. That worked just fine for her.

"We're so glad to have you here, Mario," she said softly into his ear. "This is a place where you leave all your worries behind. All the pressures you knew down on earth don't exist up here. There is only peace. There is only harmony."

Mario's head bobbed up and down. "Dio, I feel it."

"And there is even more than what you are feeling now," Swiss said into his ear. "So much more. But to experience it, you must let the world go, Mario. You must confess your sins so you can be forgiven. Are there any sins you need to confess, Mario?"

The man groaned, his lips turning down. "Too many."

Well, this was going to be fun. "Too many what, Mario?"

"Sins," he breathed hopelessly. "I lost my faith on earth, angel. My sins are great."

"Too great for the Lord?" Swiss asked.

Mario hesitated, then smiled. "No. Nothing is too great for the Lord."

"Yes. And all the Lord asks is that you let the world go, Mario," Swiss urged. "That you renounce your sins so that He may cleanse them."

Tears started streaming down the man's face. "I don't deserve it, angel. I don't deserve heaven. I should be in hell."

"Why is that, Mario?" she asked kindly. "What have you done?"

Mario pressed his eyes shut and shook his head. "No. I don't belong here. Send me away! Now! Before God sees me!"

He was yelling, which was likely to draw attention. Swiss needed to calm him down.

"God cannot see you now, Mario," she said softly. "You are still unclean, and no unclean thing can be in God's presence. We must cleanse you first."

Mario shook his head. "But I've committed murder, angel. You must know that I've killed God's children. I didn't want to, but I did. Thirty-seven times. How can I be made clean of that?"

The anguish in his voice caught Swiss unaware. He sounded honestly sorry. "Can you remember the names of the children of God you have slain?"

Mario's head bobbed up and down. "Yes."

"Then speak their names for me."

He did, and Swiss recorded the list to look into later. When he was done, Mario was quick to step into the next sin minefield. "I was also a pervert on earth. I enjoyed shocking people in the Red Light District. I did things. Bad things. But only because people were watching. I liked seeing the looks on their faces as they watched me do horrible things. It made me feel strong to know I could do what others feared to do, even as they wished to be in my shoes."

"Yes," Swiss agreed, trying to take control of the conversation. "You did many unholy things with your time on earth, didn't you, Mario?"

More tears built in the man's eyes as he nodded. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"I forgive you," Swiss said gently into his ear. And strangely enough, she did forgive him. But she still had questions. "But I must say that we weren't expecting you for some time, Mario. You were meant to live many more years. What happened?"

"What happened?" he echoed in confusion.

"Yes," Swiss said. "Do you remember how you died?"

Mario went quiet for several moments. Those moments stretched into minutes, but Swiss waited him out. Lag time just meant that the drug was really settling in and taking hold.

"I tried to kill a man tonight," Mario said after nearly four minutes. "I was supposed to ask him questions and then kill him."

"Why were you going to do that?" Swiss asked, keeping her voice high and light.

"Because..." Mario went silent for another two minutes before continuing. "The tide is shifting. I had to pick a side. It's hard to understand that up here where everything is peaceful. But down on earth, you have to pick a side. I had to pick a side."

"And did you pick the right side?" Swiss asked.

This time the response came quickly. "Yes. Damian will come out on top. I have no doubt. Patrick is going down. I had to pick Damian."

Interesting. "And why did Damian Adler want you to kill for him?"

One minute passed. Two minutes. Three. "The bar," he said at last. "Damian says a god owns it—not the true God, of course. Just rich guys in Reno. I was supposed to find the one who owned the bar so we could target him in the big move."

That made no sense. If Damian was looking for a god, why had Swiss overheard Julius asking Gideon about Dom? Julius hadn't asked about the owner of the bar. He'd asked about Richard Abba.

Swiss was missing something.

"The big move?" Swiss asked with childlike innocence. "What move is Damian planning to make?"

Mario started laughing and shaking his head. "I'm so glad I'm not going to be there. I'm so glad I'm here. I don't want to sin anymore. I just want to feel this way forever."

The plea in his voice almost made Swiss pity the confessed killer. "You don't want me to send you back?"

Mario's head shook fervently. "No. The world is a horrible place, and I am a horrible man. I think I would make a better angel."

"But knowing what you know now, don't you think you could be good?"

Mario hesitated, then shook his head again. "The pressures are so strong. They always win."

"But you can leave Reno," she said. "You can move somewhere else and live a simpler life."

Swiss let the suggestion settle in for a couple of minutes before moving on to try for the answers she needed.

"Did Damian ask you to kill a god, Mario?"

The man shook his head. "I wasn't found worthy. There are only four who get the honor. Julius would have had the honor of being the fifth, if we'd found out who owned the bar. Julius would have made that kill and gotten the throne."

Swiss felt her blood run cold. If Damian was trying to find the owner of The Aqueduct, then someone was definitely coming for Ash next. What the hell? How had things spiraled so quickly?

It was hard to keep her voice angelic with her next question. "Who does Damian think owns the bar, Mario?"

"He heard something that made him think a god named Osiris is using it as a front to support Richard Abba's efforts. The woman who manages it is just a front, but Osiris owns it."

That was some seriously bad information, and it was all Swiss could do not to charge out of the room to find out how it had landed in Damian's hands. To stop herself, Swiss gripped the side of Mario's hospital bed to keep her in place.

"But I don't think Osiris is the god that runs the bar," Mario volunteered. "I think it's a black woman. The one who killed me. I think she's a god. I think Julius figured it out, too, and tried to shoot her to get her throne. But she ended up killing us instead."

For several moments, Swiss could not breathe.

She'd fucked up. Big time. There was no one else to blame for the fact that she'd walked onto the scene undisguised and left witnesses that could identify her. At least two people had guessed her for what she was, and she had no idea what that meant. For anyone.

"It's for the best, though," Mario said, cutting into her thoughts. "Damian wouldn't have been happy at Julius for jumping the gun. All the gods are supposed to go down on his command. It can't be separate, or it gets too hard to control the story."

Against her will, Swiss was intrigued. "And what is the story?"

Mario frowned, his eyes focused on the ceiling. "Why is heaven fading? I can't see it anymore."

Swiss felt a hint of panic. Apparently the drug cocktail that had him seeing pretty was wearing off. "Doctors on earth are working very hard to save your life, Mario."

"No!" he wailed. "Don't let them have me! Don't make me go back!"

He was yelling again, but none of the staff seemed to be hearing it.

"Perhaps your time on the earth is not done after all," she said softly. "Perhaps there is still time for you to be the man you wish to be."

Mario shook his head, crying. "No. Please, no. I don't want to be that man again. Keep me here. Keep me safe."

"But if you go back to earth, did you not just say there are four lives you can save?"

Mario's head kept rolling side to side. "No. I can't save them. No one can."

"Not even the Lord?" Swiss asked serenely.

Mario stilled.

"Do you wish to do good, Mario?"

"Yes," he whispered, the word barely audible.

"Then tell me the names, and we shall see if the Lord sees fit to save them for you."

A new wave of tears silently streamed down Mario's face.

"Do you think Damian Adler is a good man, Mario?"

"No," the man said quickly. "He is a horrible man."

"So do you think he should be allowed to kill to gain power?"

"No!" Mario said, his voice full of conviction.

"Mario, who is Damian Adler planning to kill? Who does he consider to be gods?"

Mario's breathing became slow and even, the tears stopping. For a moment Swiss wondered if he had fallen asleep.

"Mario, who should the heavens protect to keep Damian Adler from growing in power?"

The man stopped breathing for several seconds, and Swiss was about to reach over and check Mario's pulse when he spoke loudly and clearly. "The heavens should protect Patrick McGee, George Baran, Sylvia Delacorte, and Marcus Hawthorne. These are the gods Damian plans to kill!"

Swiss took a moment to process the viability of all the names.

Everyone who knew anything about the gods knew Patrick was Apophis. The man named his businesses and buildings after his godly alter ego. But the other three were very discreet. There was a high probability that Baran was Horus, which was the sole reason Dom had been brought into the undergods. But the other two were 50/50, at best.

Damian Adler was gambling with his kill list. No wonder he wanted all the hits to go down at once. And probably in the same place, too.

What was Damian planning?

"Angel?" Mario called out. "Have you left me?"

"No," Swiss whispered. "I was seeing if these four can be saved on your behalf."

"And?"

Um. What could she say? Baran was definitely dying, and she had no interest in saving McGee's ass. But the other two? "Two of the names you have spoken have finished their time on earth, Mario. They shall pass. But two of the names you have asked us to protect have more life yet to live. In your name, we shall do our best to see Damian's plan fails on their behalf."

Mario's face grew relaxed and he smiled. "That's good. Thank you."

"Thank you for praying for them, Mario," Swiss replied, reaching for the needle that delivered Mario's prescribed sedative. "Our hands are tied without prayers asking for our help."

Mario smiled. "My mama always said that."

"Your mama was smart," Swiss said into Mario's ear as she pushed the sedative drip into his IV line and waited for his eyes to drift shut.

Maybe Mario would remember the conversation, but it was likely he wouldn't. Either way, it felt good to end the conversation on a good note, because heaven knew there were a hell of a lot of bad notes still left to process.

Where was she even supposed to start?

Swiss was still standing over Mario, debating what to do, when Phi's voice came into her ear. "You realize that you must kill all three men now, correct?"

Thanks for reading the first half of Season 1 of The Undergods.

Are you ready for more? I'm ready to write it, but I need your help. The more people know about the series, the quicker future episodes can be released.

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See you in Episode 7!

Eva
