Gorgon Read online

  Gorgon

  Sam and Sam Book Seven

  Chloe Garner

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2019 Chloe Garner

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Covers by Christian

  Published by A Horse Called Alpha

  Work by Chloe Garner

  Anadidd’na Universe

  -Rangers

  -Shaman

  -Psychic

  -Warrior

  -Dragonsword

  -Child

  -Gorgon

  -Book of Carter

  -Gypsy Becca: Death of a Gypsy Queen

  -Gypsy Dawn: Life of a Gypsy Queen

  -Gypsy Bella: Legacy of a Gypsy Queen

  Other Urban Fantasy

  -Hooligans

  Science Fiction

  -Portal Jumpers

  -Portal Jumpers II: House of Midas

  -Portal Jumpers III: Battle of Earth

  Space Western

  -Sarah Todd

  Raef was pacing.

  Isobel sat on the couch reading a book, pretending to ignore him. It was best to wait.

  He’d been to Afghanistan, just recently back. Usually the trip to the front was enough to calm him for a while, but he’d been agitated for months now. He would have taken her to Serbia if he could, but there was no way for her to blend in and make a home, so she’d been here mostly on her own for the last couple of years.

  It was civilized, as places went. Crowded, at times. She’d moved several times since they’d come to the US, never finding a place where she really stuck. The world was a wide place, but often the cities of America felt wider.

  She missed her friends, when she’d had them. She missed Raef when he was away.

  She missed lots of things.

  GORGON

  The place reeked of Carter. Great stone walls formed not only the outside of the mansion, but also the interior, in some places covered in tapestries and in other places just bare stone, cold, impenetrable.

  So very, very Carter.

  And yet, she was rapidly falling in love with it. The shape of the place was a maze, dim and cool, a fortress. It was the very opposite of the house she had bought with Justin out in the suburbs of Connecticut, and perhaps that was why she loved it.

  The first time she’d fallen in love, tried to make a plan for her life, she’d tried to walk away without actually walking away. To make a hole in her life where normal could live, where she could pretend she’d never met Carter, never learned the secrets.

  It had ended disastrously. She tried not to think of that day, not to adopt its pain back into her life. She’d grieved, she’d blamed herself, she’d gone on a demon-murdering rampage, and she’d turned the page.

  This time was different.

  She was in a fortress, she was married to a man who knew most everything of relevance about her life and her history, and her closest friends were all a part of that life. They hunted, they killed, they enforced. Both her husband and her best friend were psychics. She had a small staff of demons, one bound to her and the others donated from their bound masters as liaisons to her.

  She was becoming important. She’d been important for a long time. A long, long time, it often felt. She’d been the only way of reasoning with Carter. If nothing else, it made her very special.

  But things had changed. She’d stretched herself, growing further than even Carter might have predicted, and while she didn’t hold a candle to his power, she was inarguably the second most powerful person alive, and she was stepping into that in a real way, now.

  She was done running.

  The mansion was a part of that.

  Trigger said that Carter called the place Krah-nisch’ti Renouch Rehn. The stronghold where you come and don’t leave. Jason said it sounded like Hotel California. Samantha had issued an order that no one would use that name, nor respond to it. Jason thought she was being silly.

  Jason didn’t get chains of command, nor - apparently - power struggles with Carter.

  She’d asked Sam what he would call it, if he got to pick. He’d chosen Eloin Anadidd’na Anu’dd. The place where friends were welcome. Or, depending, the house of ‘hello, friend’: quite elegantly and simply, Samantha’s house.

  She hadn’t realized how much angeltongue he’d picked up in the last few years.

  There hadn’t been a lot of stuff to move in, given that she and Sam had lived in a sparse apartment in New York while Jason had been gone, and then lived out of her Mustang, Justine, after that. When she’d first seen it, she’d worried that Eloin would be a vast empty space.

  That wasn’t how it had turned out.

  Between Ash, all of her stuff with Sam, the little that Maryann had from Doris that she called her own, and the various things that kept mysteriously appearing from Carter, the disorganized sense of clutter was beginning to get to her. She was going to need to get her hands around who and what went where, before too long, but for now she was just…

  Taking space.

  That’s what Maryann had called it, and it had struck Sam funny. When Samantha had asked about it, he’d told her that it was exactly what Doris would have said.

  Right this minute, she wasn’t taking that much space, though.

  She and Jason were sparring in the main room, with Kelly jumping in and out as it suited him, attacking one or the other of them seemingly at random. The walls were dotted with demons and human house staff who had known this was happening and had spirited away from whatever they had been doing in order to watch.

  Samantha was enjoying herself.

  She was fighting barefoot more often these days, as the smoothed-down texture of the stone was growing increasingly familiar to her, as well as because it seemed to bother Jason. Kelly, baby angel and wide-eyed observer of all things human, couldn’t understand either side of it. As far as Kelly was concerned, fighting should be done in proper attire at all times, and on stone, you wore soft-soled shoes and controlled, but loose-fitting clothing.

  Kelly was form-perfect with his angel blade, but lacked creativity, and no matter which of them he chose to attack, he kept getting sent back to the wall to regroup.

  Jason was on a tear.

  Kara was watching.

  Samantha had a firm grip on time, bending it not quite as much as she would in a real fight, but enough to give herself ample time to react to Jason. He was doing the same, it appeared. Small mistakes here and there, but much, much more flair than normal, and an enthusiasm that went beyond normal training. Samantha could feel the steady baseline of amusement as Sam watched. He and Jason were twins, fraternal, and anything that made Jason want to show off was necessarily funny to Sam.

  Unless it wasn’t.

  Today, it was funny because it was Kara, and Kara had long since ceased to be impressed by what Jason could do with the demon sword he had gone to Hell to buy. Outwardly at least, she put on a bored face, standing with one hand against the wall and the other on her hip, long hair tossed casually over one shoulder as she watched with her head tipped to the side.

  It was distracting Jason, and despite the extra effort he was putting in, Samantha had him on the ropes. She was stalling, now, teasing out their practice session to get as much out of it as she could, because Jason and Kara were leaving today.

  Kara’s Seeker had found something in Maryland, and after a short but intense conversation last night, Jason and Sam had agreed that Jason belonged on the road, and that Sam would feel better - and Jason would prefer as well - if Jason went with Kara.

  So they’d spent the morning packing.

  It was bittersweet. Sam and Samantha had gone off grid for almost six months as a honeymoon, but that had been different. Everyone knew that they would eventually get back together and go back to
doing what they’d always done.

  The problem was that Samantha couldn’t do it anymore. She had too much power to just ignore the responsibility she was capable of carrying, responsibility that now included a Child.

  She blocked a pair of ill-conceived attacks and put Lahn’s leading point into Jason’s stomach, right on the edge of severing the fibers of his tee shirt, but no further. She saw the malicious play in his eye as he considered trying to impale himself, and she watched it, ready to react, for the long stretch of bent time before he decided she’d punish him for it and it probably wasn’t worth it.

  Among Samantha’s people, you won a fight when you could draw blood but didn’t. If you did draw blood, you lost. Simple, straightforward.

  Intentionally hurting himself was dishonorable and cheating, but Jason wasn’t really one of Samantha’s people. Not really. And he’d do it to annoy her, if he weren’t already beat and looking at a long drive to Maryland after this.

  They stood, frozen, for a fraction of a second, long enough for both of them to know it was over, and Samantha let Lahn drop. Anadidd’na held her position for a moment longer, then Jason put the dragonsword back in her sheath behind his back. Samantha swished Lahn through the air once, then put her away in the custom sheath underneath her shirt and behind her back.

  “Damn, I’m gonna miss that,” Jason said.

  “Gee,” Kara said. Jason grinned at her over Samantha’s shoulder.

  “Good win,” he said as Kelly launched one final attack at the two of them. Jason grabbed the angel’s wrist and pulled him off balance as he got in range, and Samantha put her hand up, letting Jason drag the poor boy nose-first into the heel of her palm.

  “Ow,” Kelly complained from the floor. “No fair.”

  “What about it?” Samantha asked.

  “You ganged up on me,” he said. “And you hit me.”

  He stood, wiping vermillion red angelic blood off his lip with the back of his sleeve.

  “You attacked both of us,” Samantha said. “And you did it after the fight was over.”

  He looked from one to the other of them as the break in his nose made the tectonic shift back to whole with a nose-wince and a snap. Samantha felt Sam wince and she scolded him playfully. Angels had a very different awareness of pain. She wouldn’t have done it, otherwise. He knew that, but he couldn’t help but feel bad.

  He was a good guy.

  Jason, on the other hand, wasn’t.

  “Hey,” he said, holding up a cupped hand.

  “No,” Kelly said.

  “Yup,” Jason said, shaking his hand back and forth.

  “No,” Kelly said.

  Jason mimed throwing.

  “Get the ball.”

  “Jason,” Kelly complained. Jason shrugged.

  “It’s over there.”

  Kelly sighed, trudging away after the imaginary ball.

  “Is that ever going to get old?” Samantha asked.

  “Don’t think so,” Jason said. “I’ll let you know.”

  He grinned. Samantha hugged him hard.

  “I’m going to miss you,” she murmured.

  “I know it, Sweetheart,” he answered. “Take good care of my brother.”

  She nodded and let him go.

  “We should hit the road,” Kara said, coming up to put her arm around Samantha’s waist. “Always fun, Sammycat.”

  “Yeah, good to see you, too,” Samantha answered.

  Sammycat, Jason mouthed. He wasn’t allowed to use it, and it had always astonished him that she let Kara call her that.

  “Stop in when you’re around,” Sam said, coming to hug his brother. That was pain, there. Sam and Jason had traveled together, hunting down and killing things of a supernatural origin since they’d been sixteen. Rangers. Their Seeker, Simon, had been their only consistent contact for nearly a decade, though they certainly had people they considered family, in that life.

  The honeymoon had been so different. Everything was supposed to go back to normal, after that. And here they were saying goodbye. Sam would have to learn how to have a home.

  Samantha worried, sometimes, that he would get stir crazy, but he thought she was being silly. That didn’t change anything. It takes a long time to learn a new normal when you spent most of your teens and twenties doing one thing.

  “You aren’t helping,” Sam muttered, coming to put his arm across her shoulders.

  “Sorry,” she answered.

  The room had emptied, leaving just the four of them.

  “Call when you get there,” Sam said.

  “If I remember,” Jason answered. There was a resignation from Sam, recognition that he hadn’t really expected Jason to remember, nor Kara. The two of them were people who lived in the moment, and as much as they loved each other, Jason would never miss Sam so much that he’d call out of sentiment.

  “Yeah,” Sam answered. Jason shrugged.

  “Is what it is, dude. You two be good.”

  “Not likely,” Kara said with a sideways grin. “Come on, no one died. We’ll be around, you guys will be around. This isn’t the end of the world.”

  Jason extended his hand to Sam.

  “Good luck, man,” he said. Sam nodded. This was it.

  “You, too.”

  There was an exchange, silent. One that Samantha felt through her bond to Sam, but that she stayed out of, keeping her mind as quiet as she could.

  “Come on, Kelly,” Jason called.

  “What?” Kara and Samantha asked at the same time. Jason flashed a grin.

  “Old promise,” he said. “You need him, gimme a call.”

  “Can’t find the ball,” Kelly called from somewhere out in the hallway.

  “Leave it,” Jason called back. “I’ve got another one.”

  Kelly stuck his head around the doorway.

  “Don’t throw it.”

  “Promise,” Jason said with a wink for Samantha.

  “But…” Samantha said. Kelly was earnest, honest, and energetic, exactly the personality type most likely to grate on Jason’s nerves. Kara was looking at Jason with bemusement. Jason shrugged.

  “You think you’re the easiest person in the world to live with? You’re surrounded by demons full time. Think about it,” he told her.

  Samantha frowned, suppressing smile.

  “Hadn’t looked at it like that.”

  Jason nodded.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I still think he’s going to end up with Maryann. But Trigger and the rest of them? I can’t blame him,” he said. “Come on, kid.”

  “Let me get my stuff,” Kelly said. Jason raised an eyebrow.

  “You don’t sleep, and you can be anywhere on the planet just by thinking about it. Why does your stuff have to live in my car?”

  “Because that’s where I go,” Kelly said, confused. Samantha grinned.

  “It helps him find his way back if you abandon him, for one,” she said.

  “Like I’d do that,” Jason said with a mischievous grin. “All right. Get it done, or you’re doing it while we’re on the road.”

  Kelly glitched out, and Samantha wondered for a moment exactly what stuff he had.

  “We didn’t talk about this,” Kara said. Jason shrugged.

  “Promise is a promise.”

  “I guess,” Kara said. “But he gets his own room at night.”

  “Are you kidding?” Jason asked. “He’s sleeping in the car.”

  “Doesn’t sleep,” Sam murmured, and Jason shot him a look.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Sam smiled at the floor.

  “All right, that’s enough of this,” Jason said. “We’re hitting the road. Tell the angel to catch up.”

  Samantha knew Kelly would be waiting for Jason and Kara outside. Surprised as she was that Jason had volunteered to take Kelly along, it somehow felt like a natural fit. The mansion wasn’t a good place for the angel. Not the way it was going to end up being as word got out that she’d tak
en Lindsay’s region.

  No, he’d be happier on the road, in the light and with company that assumed that all demons were open season. Kelly was completely unsuited for the politics of Samantha’s people.

  As was Jason, as she reflected on it.

  She and Sam walked to the tall pair of doors at the end of the main room, Sam leaning against the wall and Samantha leaning against him to watch Jason and Kara walk toward the front doors and leave.

  The doors closed behind them, and they were gone.

  Samantha felt a chill, and she wasn’t sure if it was hers or Sam’s. He put his arms around her waist and rested his chin on top of her head.

  “Sam?” a quiet voice asked. Both Samantha and Sam turned their heads. Maryann was standing in front of the pair of thrones - Carter’s wicked sense of humor again - that made up the entire list of furniture in that main room.

  “Yes,” Samantha said. “What is it?”

  “There are people coming.”

  <><><>

  The woman would have passed Jason and Kara in the driveway. Sam hadn’t been watching - Maryann was purpose-built to be aware of the things that went on, around the building and across the land around it, and it felt nice to just be inside his own head for a while.

  To not be anxious about everything that was happening.

  Samantha was calm. This surprised him. With Jason leaving and Ash staying, taking over Lindsay’s role and actually cooperating with something Carter wanted her to do, he would have expected a sort of frenzy from her, but she was placid, watching the woman walk across the preposterous stretch of stone in the front room. She wore a long hooded cape and tall boots that folded down at the knee in a distinctively piratey fashion.

  “Who is she?” Sam asked, feeling the familiarity Samantha had with her.

  “Her name is Jalice,” Samantha said quietly. “She’s a demon hunter.”

  “Hello, Demon,” Jalice said darkly.

  “Yeah,” Samantha said. “I should mention that she considers me a demon.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow, tipping in to lean against the back of Samantha’s chair. He couldn’t bring to call them thrones, and he couldn’t bear to sit in the second one meant for him, so he stood beside or behind Samantha. Trigger teased him about it, but he liked it better than the stupid throne.