The Trickster's Drum (Godsongs Book 1) Read online

  A shot of panic almost made him pinch into a ball—he’d felt the freedom, of course, but he wasn’t used to sitting in a skirt. Not willing to give her the satisfaction, though, he forced himself to stay relaxed. Or to fake it, anyway. He wasn’t Rafael, hunted by the paparazzi. He was a god. “What, was underwear not invented back in the Aztec days?”

  She laughed a throaty sound and filled a pipe. “God costumes are more inspired than accurate, adapting themselves to the wearer.” A match hissed, and she inhaled as she lit, taking sweet smoke into her lungs. She leaned forward again, blowing a puff into his face, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t take a deep breath and hold it for just a moment. “The last Huehuecoyotl had underwear. And a shirt. What does that say about you?”

  Rafael shook his head at how deeply wrong she was. So, yeah, he’d had a few tacky photos taken for press junkets, but he had not suggested them. He was not an exhibitionist. But he was pretty, and he knew it. It would be nice if music was all about, you know, the music. But he wasn’t that naïve. Pretty sold albums, which allowed him to write the kind of music he wanted instead of bowing to the studio’s every wish. So he grumbled and took off his shirt when his manager told him to.

  The costume wasn’t about his personality, but it might be karma biting him in the ass.

  She offered him the pipe, holding the sweet-smelling temptation in front of him on a really weird day. At his hesitation, she grinned, challenging him. With a promise to himself that this was not going to be a regular thing, he took it, puffing once for smoky courage. And nearly coughed at the instantaneous jolt. Damn, that shit was strong.

  Andromeda dropped to the couch beside him, somehow taking another puff of the super-pot and yet acting like nothing was scrambling her damn brains. “Like it?” She patted his knee. “There’s plenty more.”

  For the first time it occurred to him that this woman might just be way out of his league. “No, thank you.” He closed his legs. “I just want help learning to use the godstone.” Had Freyja sent him here intending for Andromeda to take it so she wouldn’t have to?

  Maybe he was an idiot for trusting her, but the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

  Andromeda’s hand moved with the motion of his leg, then she walked her fingers up his thigh. “So, where are you keeping the godstone?” She turned to him, blowing more smoke his way.

  Gods, it smelled good. He could already feel his shoulders relaxing into compliance.

  No, no. Keeping the godstone. He scooted over and removed her hand from his thigh, where it had headed dangerously close to no-underwear territory. Going commando hadn’t bothered him until a crazy woman was trying to get up his skirt.

  “Look, if you’re not going to help me, I’m just going to go. Thank you for the hospitality.” Fuck, Freyja had set him up. And he liked her. He rose and made a straight line for the door.

  “Stop.” Andromeda’s voice had enough command to stop a five-star general. He turned with his hand on the knob to find her relaxing on the couch with a friggin’ bow and arrow pointed at him.

  He tipped his head at the way she held the smallish weapon horizontally in front of her, an arrow notched and pulled lazily back. “Not to be an asshole or anything, but I think you’re holding it wrong.”

  “You’ll find I can hold it all kinds of wrong and still shoot your ass. You’re ten feet away and I’ve been an archer for over two thousand years.”

  He blinked as that soaked in. “Two millennia, eh? That’s uh... what god is Andromeda?”

  “I’m not a god. I’m an Amazon.”

  He nodded, still taking everything in. “Like Wonder Woman?”

  She snorted. “Yeah. My invisible jet is parked on the roof. Want to take a ride? The godstone. On the table, please. I won’t tell anyone who you are.”

  He licked his lips and straightened his back, debating how wise it was to play chicken with an Amazon warrior. Probably stupid as shit. And still, he heard himself say, “No.”

  She sighed. “I’m not fucking with you, kid. I don’t want to kill you in my living room, but I need that godstone. Set it down, and you can go your merry way. I’ll even pay you for it.”

  “I don’t need money.”

  “What do you need? I can get it.”

  For one wild and weird moment, the memory of Freyja batting a magical spear with a tree branch clouded his mind. He shuddered with need, not for the woman—although that would be nice—but for something more that she was a part of. “Magic,” he finally said. “I need magic in my life. Meaning. I need purpose.”

  Andromeda groaned as she stood up, taking a more proper archer’s pose. “Gods save me from idealists. First arrow goes into your shoulder, second in your eye. On the count of three, two—”

  He should do something. Transform? What other spells did he have? But his mind seemed blank, whether from the drugs or the sudden spike of fear, he had no idea.

  Behind Andromeda, Freyja rose up silently and lifted a long-handled ax until it just touched Andromeda’s throat. Her voice wavered as she said, “Stop, Ande.”

  Andromeda’s eyes widened, then glittered as if she was more fascinated by Freyja’s choice than afraid of the weapon at her throat. “Well, well, and with my ax.”

  “I sent him here for help, not to get shot.” Her voice lacked conviction, like maybe she had sent him here as a setup but had changed her mind.

  “Don’t make threats you won’t go through with, girl. I could shoot ten arrows, and you’d stand there and do nothing.”

  Freyja’s arm was trembling, whether from the weight of the ax or the weight of the decision she was making, Rafael wasn’t sure. Her voice, though, was steady as a rock. “In the eleven months I’ve known you, I’ve come to the conclusion that you aren’t the kind of person who’d shoot an unarmed man. Maybe I was wrong, or maybe your threat is as empty as you think mine is. You really want to find out who’s right?”

  The women held firm and still for a moment, the tension ratcheting up to unbearable levels. But one thing brought a slow and sure smile to Rafael’s face. Regardless of what Freyja had done in the woods, she was on his side now. He nodded his chin at her. “Hey, mi diosita! Nice to see you again.”

  “Kinda busy,” she said through her teeth.

  “You know,” he continued, feeling the need to bring the tension in the room down a scooch, “it has recently come to my attention that unwanted sexual advances create an uncomfortable environment for coworkers, which I’d like to think of us as.”

  Andromeda scowled at him, but—glory be—the bare corners of Freyja’s lips curled up like she was fighting a grin.

  Win. “I just want to make sure ‘my darling goddess’—that’s what mi diosita means, roughly—didn’t make you feel like I was demeaning you.”

  Now she was definitely laughing, even if no sound came out. “No. It’s fine. You are nuts, though.”

  “What about ‘nice breastplate’?” He wagged his eyebrows suggestively as he slowly scooted forward, then pressed a finger to his lips and hissed in disapproval. “No, that’s definitely going too far.”

  Her laughter was audible as her cheeks turned pink in a precious little blush. “Shut up! I’m trying to save your life! You could, you know, exit the door like a smart man.”

  “Oh, I’m not all that smart.” No way he was leaving her with this crazy bitch after she’d stood up for him like this. Either they both got out, or neither of them did. “If it makes you feel safer around me, I’m quite convinced you could kick my ass, plus you’ve been doing this god thing longer than I have”—he kept going farther into the room—“so despite my testicles, I don’t feel that the power dynamic is going my way. And I’m okay with that.”

  Andromeda stomped her foot. “Arrows and axes, sweet young things. Flirt later. Fight now. And I swear to the gods if either of you goes out that front door, it’ll be with an arrow through your skull.” She drew the bow back farther, and Freyja did indeed hesitate.

 
Rafael did not. As the arrow sang, he transformed into a grasshopper and leapt under the couch.

  “Where did he go?” Andromeda yelled.

  “I can’t believe you tried to shoot him!” Freyja yelled back.

  “I completely believe you didn’t behead me. Go to your room. I’ll deal with you later.”

  And he was past Freyja’s ankles, between her and the glass doors. Returning to his god form, he threw open the balcony door and grabbed Freyja around the waist. “I think this will work.” He yanked them both outside, transforming as he went, and hoped he wasn’t wrong, because he was about to throw them off the balcony.

  Chapter 8

  GISELLE SCREAMED AS she fell out the doorway and the world grew to immense size around her. Coyote’s arms turned fuzzy as the wind seemed to whip them around the balcony in a tumbleweed of legs—how many legs did they have?

  Confusion spun her head, and she looked down to find herself on top of a spider. So... a coyote wasn’t the only thing Coyote could become. Behind them, the door opened farther, sending a gust of air-conditioning toward them.

  Afraid she would fall off, she reached for Coyote-spider’s neck and realized he wasn’t the only one who had turned into an arachnid. She tried to yell at him, Stop stop stop! But no sound came out. She couldn’t speak!

  Andromeda stomped onto the porch, each footfall sending a mini-quake through the ground, and Coyote did not stop stop stop—instead he flung them right over the edge of the balcony. Her stomach shot up into her head as they fell. I’m going to be sick.

  Which wouldn’t matter when they splatted on the damn pavement six stories down. But a wind current picked up their tiny bodies, and suddenly they were soaring sideways.

  Calm down, Gi. Think. She reached for her boot knife to... no idea what she was going to do with that... But it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t on her, because she was a fucking spider.

  She pounded on Coyote’s stupid back with her tiny legs and debated biting him and injecting whatever poison her body carried into his neck.

  Something caught them from behind, like a bungee cord, swinging them backward toward the next apartment building. She looked behind them to find webbing trailing from Coyote-spider’s abdomen. It appeared to attach to a railing, which they now accelerated toward with terrifying speed.

  Her stomach lurched again. The web snapped—or he dropped it, or something—and suddenly they were dropping vertically again in a death roller coaster she wanted the fuck off of.

  She pounded on his head in fury. Sure, she’d been disappointed in Andromeda’s bloodthirstiness, but she was accustomed to that sort of disappointment. Dealing with selfish, immoral people was something she had under control due to over a decade of experience. Riding a flying spider across condominiums while she was denied all access to her powers was not.

  Another catch jolted them upward, this time penduluming toward a fourth-story balcony with a family cooking barbecue at what was probably a small grill on their deck. The flames snapped and hissed like a hellish inferno as she and Coyote sailed for it. She clung as tightly as she could without hands to Coyote, and to her great astonishment, they landed not in the fire but on the railing next to it.

  Her racing heart started to slow as Coyote, whose wobbly legs betrayed just how not in control of that situation he’d been, crawled a few steps to the side.

  A giant eye attached to a giant, bespectacled face appeared right next to them. “Daddy, why did the spider climb on top of the other spider?”

  Coyote edged them sideways, sticking to the wood as they crawled over the edge this time instead of dropping down into the wind.

  “Well, honey, when two spiders really love each other—”

  Coyote shook, and this time it felt more like a laugh than nerves. With no fingers, she stuck one of her middle legs up at him. He gave her a spider-legged high five.

  Idiot spider.

  He scurried down the balcony, then dropped another thin web, this time moving them at a more sedate pace onto the empty balcony below. As he carried her to the floor, she looked back to Andromeda’s place to see a blurry vision of the woman herself standing on the balcony staring out, bow and arrow still at the ready. Giselle shut her eyes.

  Oh gods. Oh gods oh gods ohgods! Coyote shifted around under her, and she didn’t care anymore what happened. Her mentor was never going to forgive her.

  And she wasn’t even sure she wanted the woman to. How could she shoot somebody who’d never hurt anyone?

  Oh godsohgodsohgodsohgods.

  “I know what I’m dreaming about tonight.”

  She popped her eyes open to find herself in her own body, draped across Coyote’s torso. “Oh. Gods.”

  He popped up onto his elbows and flashed her that killer smile. “Oh gods indeed. That was amazing!”

  She took a deep breath, trying to get the whirl of emotion in her head under control.

  “You were amazing,” he continued. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

  She sat back, straddling him in a way unlikely to make any man think platonic thoughts, but she was still too shaken to try moving. His body heat warmed her fear-chilled skin. Part of her, the part too alive with relief, wanted to just collapse back on top of him and expend all this crazed adrenaline in a hot kiss and whatever that led to with the hot guy. Not, of course, because of him specifically—he was a nutcase who’d just nearly gotten her killed.

  Even if, in retrospect, it had been kinda fun.

  She took another deep breath, her hands curling a little too nicely into his firm pectorals as she tried to steady herself.

  His warm hands clapped on top of hers, rubbing soothingly. “You okay?”

  She managed to nod. “Don’t ever transform me again.” Then she added, “Without permission.” Not that he’d ever get that.

  He cocked his head. “What if it’s the safest way out of a situation?”

  She snatched her hands away to put them on her hips. “That was not the safest way out of that situation.”

  “Yeah, I think you may not be the best judge of character where that insane woman is concerned.”

  “I’ve known Ande for months. You’ve known her for how long? Twenty minutes?”

  “And in that twenty minutes she tried to seduce me, get me high—which is still feeling pretty damn good if I do say so myself—and then shoot me with a bow and fucking arrow. I don’t need months to get to know her, thank you.”

  He had a point. “Dammit.” How had her hand gotten back on his lovely pectorals? “Wait, you were flying me around in a spiderweb death coaster while high?”

  “Mildly. That stuff is insane; have you tried it? I swear it normally takes more than one puff to do me in. I mean, I’m a lightweight, but I’m not that lightweight.”

  “No, we don’t get high together. I don’t even get high! I have too much to do.” And too much to lose.

  He shook his head, that exasperating grin back on his face. “What a selfish bitch she is, not sharing. You think you know someone...”

  She rolled her eyes and climbed off of him before one more beautiful smile did her in. “We’d better get out of here before she sees us. Or before whoever lives here comes out and finds us. Or before somebody calls the cops and we end up in a keyless dungeon somewhere.”

  “I’m pretty sure the American government doesn’t have dungeons.” He turned to look in the darkened windows, his cotton skirt outlining a nice tush. “You really are new to this, huh?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I’ve been training with Andromeda to learn how to fight with medieval weaponry—because who knows how to do that anymore?—but my practical experience is pretty much nil.”

  “You help out around South Chavez.”

  She hesitated, wondering how he knew. “I used to live down there. I...” She stopped before she got sappy about the woman who’d fostered her in third grade, her first placement that’d lasted more than a few months. He didn’t need to know that. “Stop
ping petty crime is not the same thing as fighting conduits or whatever the hell Ande is.”

  He studied her with a side-eye, but to her relief, he didn’t comment. “There’s no one inside, so I say we just go in this way.” He rattled the doorknob and frowned. “Who locks their balcony door?”

  She lightly pushed him aside and traced the unlocking rune on the handle. “Well, you never know when two people are just gonna drop out of the sky like a couple spiders and walk in.” The door opened with a soft snick, and she strolled inside.

  Coyote followed. “Did you just break in?”

  “I can open locks. It’s a rune power.”

  He whistled as he shut the door behind them and flipped the lock back into place, causing her to snicker. “So you can open locks, fight like hell, shoot ice from your fingers, and rock chain mail. What else?”

  “Sizing me up?” She lifted an eyebrow at him, teasing. She hoped it was a joke, anyway, and this was not some elaborate setup. There were conduits who stockpiled powers like some sort of godstone-style Hunger Games.

  His grin came back in full, blooming force. “I imagine you’d be quite a handful.”

  That made her laugh. “Do I sense a double entendre, Coyote?”

  He put a hand across his chest and gave her an expression of mock outrage. “Me? I’m a perfect gentleman.”

  “With a smart mouth,” she added. He was kinda precious, though, so she leaned in with a pleasant smile. “Look, you can flirt all you want because we both know it doesn’t mean anything. But if you get handsy, I will slice them off with my ax and shove them up your ass so far you can tie knots in your own entrails—so sayeth the Viking goddess, got it?” His jaw dropped just a little at that, and she winked before turning to look for the door. “We should probably get out of here before the owners come back.”

  “Pull up a chair. This is a demo—no one lives here—and we should talk.”

  She turned back to him. “How can you tell it’s a demo?”