Exploitation, p.1
Exploitation, page 1
EXPLOITATION
NEON
BOOK 5
ALLYSON LINDT
ACELETTE PRESS
This book is a work of fiction.
While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Allyson Lindt
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
1. Bragi
2. Magnus
3. Nicodemus
4. Magnus
5. Bragi
6. Nicodemus
7. Magnus
8. Bragi
9. Nicodemus
10. Magnus
11. Bragi
12. Magnus
13. Bragi
14. Nicodemus
15. Magnus
16. Bragi
17. Nicodemus
For my eternal dragon
ONE
BRAGI
A famous bard once said don’t know what you got, till it’s gone. Don’t know what it is I did so wrong.
It was unlikely anyone but me would remember who Tom Keifer was, a hundred years from now, but I would. Because despite having lost all my power—my innate sense of what the people around me were feeling, the ability to create pocket realities and blink from one place to another—I still had my immortality.
At least if I got hurt, I still healed instantly.
The loss of most of my power was why I was standing on a street corner in Chicago Underground, staring at a building with no windows or doors. How was I going to get in?
I couldn’t. That was the problem. I knew the entrance was here. I’d visited NEON plenty in the last few decades. But now that I was persona non grata, the owners’ magic kept me from seeing the place.
There was one thing to be grateful for when it came to losing most of the abilities associated with my godhood. Every time someone brushed past me on the street, each of the dozens of people milling around me like I was one of them, I didn’t feel what they were feeling.
It was like losing my sense of hearing or sight, but at least the pain of human suffering vanished with it.
Intellectually, I knew that inside, it was a massive high rise, thanks to magic that allowed doors here to open to different buildings in other places. Outside was a nondescript one story building.
No. Really. The charms on it made it so that I forgot what it looked like the instant I turned away.
Frey—Freyr, the god of passion who claimed this place as his realm—had doubled down to make sure I couldn’t find who I was looking for.
I had to, though. I needed to speak to Magnus, because of the loss of my power. The prophecies were clear about why this had happened to me…
Okay, not quite. The prophecies were never clear. But this one was about me, and I’d studied it for centuries, and I had some educated guesses about what it meant. The fact that I was impotent was an indicator that something bad had happened to Nico, and worse was about to happen to Magnus.
Something bad was vague, but welcome to the wonderful stories told by ancient dragons who were more interested in entertaining themselves than in writing their visions down in minute detail.
Not that I blamed them. The story should always come first.
Almost always. In this case, I hated that I didn’t know what I was up against or how to save the people I loved. The beings I missed so terribly it ached in every inch of me. For decades, I ignored how I felt about Nico, the phoenix I’d known for centuries. He walked away from me when I sided with the gods who were trying to keep things like losing my powers from happening.
I wanted to go to him now. Help him. Save him.
I couldn’t. My passport was expired, because why the fuck would I need to keep that current, when I had the ability to blink from place to place in an instant?
Which was why I was standing in front of where NEON was supposed to be instead. Magnus was here. I couldn’t feel her, but she wouldn’t go anywhere else.
So I’d walked into an airport with a bookstore full of the most generic books humanity had to offer, gotten on a plane, flown across the United States surrounded by screaming children and chatty people.
If I shouted Magnus’s name over and over again, would I get the desired response? Or would I land myself on a series of videos online, and earn a night in jail as a reward?
A new person—another god—appeared in front of me.
“You’re not welcome here.” Frey was lithe, with hair that flowed in blond tresses, and a presence that radiated sensuality. The kind of being people used to write ballads about. Maybe that Cinderella song was about him. “Though, you already know that.”
This was all the opening I needed. “Let me talk to Magnus.”
His appearance was deceptive. The power he held could raise nations. “You’re lucky I didn’t let someone else come out here.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t.” If I were to encounter Dahlia, a dragon, or Fen—Fenrir—a massive wolf god whose historical favorite pastime was ripping enemies to shreds with his jaws for fun—either would kill me without hesitation. Or try. That whole healing instantly thing sucked when one was being repeatedly injured. “In fact, I don’t know why you’re speaking to me.”
Frey dragged in a deep breath and his nostrils flared. “You told me how to save Fen. My repayment to you is letting you leave today with your life.”
It was probably a fair offer. I wasn’t going to take it. “I want to see Magnus. Let me do that, and I’ll go.”
“You don’t seem to understand; you have no power to make demands here.”
I had no power, period. But that was a secret between me and the fictional characters in my head. As far as anyone else knew, I was as powerful as I’d ever been. “I could stand here until you comply.”
“I could send you to Antarctica.” It seemed Frey had supplemented his negotiating tactics with some of Dahlia’s skills. That retort wasn’t like him.
“I’d just come back.”
Frey narrowed his eyes and studied me. “Would you?”
I would not. Not instantly, anyway. Given a few weeks, and enough luck to stumble on some sort of expedition or research center, I could charm my way onto a boat, and be back here in about a month. “No. I’d take vacation in the frigid weather and freeze my cock off.” I let the sarcasm drip into my voice. “What kind of question is that?”
“I’ve got this.” Magnus’s voice came from behind me.
No one on the street cared that two individuals had appeared from nowhere. But I did. Hearing her voice made my heart race, despite her frigid tone. Not long ago, I would’ve felt the antipathy radiating from her. Been bathed in her scorn before she even spoke. Even when she hated me, the feelings she radiated were intoxicating.
Now, I couldn’t sense so much as a whiff of disdain.
She was here, though. I turned to face the assassin-turned-Valkyrie. The woman with the auburn curls pulled away from her face, and the fury of a thousand armies flashing in her emerald-green eyes. She was more stunning than any goddess. Stronger. More alluring.
“Magnus.” I loved the way her name tasted on my tongue.
“Will you be all right?” Frey asked her.
She looked past me. “If he’s going to suffer, I want it to be by my hand.”
She hated me because I’d lied to her. Because I’d let her believe her sister was dead, to keep Magnus safe. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. She was a creature like no other, and I’d let the world burn to keep her from harm.
“I could send out Fen,” Frey said.
That would suck, if Fen decided I was his plaything for the night.
“No.” Magnus flexed her fingers, and the lamplight glinted off the claw ring on her middle finger. The ring was made from one of Dahlia’s claws, which granted Magnus a handful of potent, dragon-like powers. Magnus had dark circles under her eyes, and the longer I studied her, the more apparent her exhaustion was. “I’ve got this, really. Thank you.”
“We’re only a shout away, if you need,” Frey said.
A glance over my shoulder told me he was gone again. Good.
I turned to Magnus and reached for her, barely registering that was what I was doing.
She stepped back with a scowl.
I expected a wave of hate and loathing, but it wasn’t there. Or rather, I couldn’t feel it. I was grateful as fuck that I hadn’t had to feel the emotions of everyone on the plane, but losing a sense was debilitating.
I needed her to hear me out, not just because I missed her. The prophecies said—heavily implied—that when I lost my power, it would be because the people I loved were in danger. Something had happened to Nico; every instinct I had insisted as much, even without my power.
I needed to reverse that, and make sure worse didn’t happen to Magnus.
The problem would be, getting her to hear me out, and believe me on top of that.
“What’s wrong with you?” Magnus furrowed her brow and tilted her head.
The question didn’t sound like the sort of angry th ing shouted during an argument. It wasn’t a frustrated scream of disbelief. This was more curiosity.
“I miss you.” That was a good starting point.
“Are you here to beg forgiveness?”
“No.” Because I hadn’t done anything wrong.
She winced and shook her head, then turned away.
Nothing about her expressions and posture were what I expected, but that didn’t mean I was letting her leave before we finished this conversation. I grabbed her arm.
The grunt she let out was filled with pain, and she stumbled, jerking away from my touch as she fell to her knees.
“The fuck did you just do to me?” She gasped out the words.
Nothing. I wasn’t capable of it. What happened to her?
TWO
MAGNUS
When Bragi touched me, emotions that weren’t mine flooded me. I’d sensed hints the instant I appeared in behind him, but I figured it was because he was radiating extra ick.
But the moment he put a hand on me, I was overwhelmed by rage. Desire. Worship. Adoration. Concern. Self-loathing.
Okay, that last one might be mine, but I usually suppressed it better than that.
The wash was potent enough that I stumbled. Landing on my knees jarred me back into my own head.
“Are you all right?” Bragi knelt next to me.
I crawled back from letting him touch me again, and the people on the sidewalk muttered strings of watch out and idiotic girl.
One of the passersby kicked me, and the disgust and disdain roared in my thoughts.
What. The. Fuck?
I dragged in a deep breath, trying to focus myself, and stood, refusing to let him touch me again. “I’m fine.”
“I’m surprised you came out to talk to me,” he said.
Yeah, well… I had a secret he didn’t get to know. Namely that I was pregnant. And because it was a supernatural kind of thing, one of the babies was his and one was Nico’s. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, because there’s no way I can trust most of what you tell me, but… I need to know everything you do about Nico.”
Because about a month ago, Nico died, giving me time to escape from the god who wanted me dead. Since Nico was a phoenix, he came back. Neat trick. Would’ve been an even better one if his memories had come back with him.
“You’ll need to be more specific than tell me everything,” Bragi said. “But I’ll answer your questions.”
Uh-huh. As in, he’d tell me what he felt I needed to know, and leave out the rest. I’d have to do a lot of reading between the lines.
This was one of those times I was begrudgingly grateful for my upbringing. I’d been raised by a group of gods who believed they could evade the dragons’ prophecies. Those gods taught us to hunt and more on their behalf, to eliminate the threats that could destroy them.
I knew an implausible number of ways to kill. I’d also been taught how to seduce information out of people, and understanding subtext had to be second nature. Not only to find what I was looking for, but to evade punishment from our mentors.
Sometimes it was exhausting looking for hidden meaning in everything, but with Bragi it would be necessary. Especially if he sensed my wariness with those fucking empathic abilities of his, and countered before I realized that he’d reacted.
“I give you my word, that as long as I know the answer, and Nico hasn’t sworn me to secrecy, I will tell you.” Bragi used his finger to trace an X over his heart.
That was a lot of detail up front, which made me suspicious, but it would have to do. “Can we go someplace public and talk? Sit? Eat?”
“There’s a coffee shop down the street.”
I was familiar with it. Dahlia and I walked down there a lot. Both for the caffeine and to pretend we were normal, as opposed to two orphans who had somehow acquired immense power in our early thirties, and could take on most gods without batting an eye.
I was surprised Bragi suggested it, though. That he didn’t try to convince me to travel halfway around the world with him to some remote, exotic location. I was also a little concerned that he knew this area well enough to suggest a nearby coffee shop, though I could chalk that up to him noticing it when he blinked into this location.
“That sounds good.” I fell into step beside him, but kept enough space between us to avoid touching him.
The thing I hated more than anything about this was the pull I felt to him. He was a gorgeous man with light brown hair that was just long enough to curl around his collar, and piercing eyes. When he wanted it, a gift for words, and yeah, there was something appealing about the fact that he would kill for me.
I was still furious at him for lying to me about Dahlia. For locking me up for a month.
But he’d healed me when I thought I’d lost my power. He took care of me. None of that was enough to splash green on red flags, but part of me still wanted him.
As we walked, I kept getting snatches of feelings I didn’t recognize. Like a scent on the wind that I couldn’t quite identify before it vanished again.
Being surrounded by so many people was both comforting and disconcerting. Bragi didn’t tend to be an in-my-face kind of scary, but there was safety in numbers, right? On the other hand, he was a god. I was being hunted by gods. There was no one here who could stop one if my pursuers came after me, and no way for me to know if a god or one of their servants was walking next to me.
Thanks for the rampant paranoia, Life, I don’t know what I’d do without it.
Stepping into most any coffee shop was comforting to me. There was an aura of warmth that encased us, and few scents promised security better than freshly roasted and ground beans.
Great, now I was getting all poetic. The last thing I needed was Bragi rubbing off on me.
There weren’t many other customers, and the woman behind the counter looked up the moment we walked in. She gave us a warm smile. “Good afternoon.”
Bragi approached her without hesitation, as if it wasn’t necessary to do a visual sweep of the entire room. Fortunately I knew the layout from past visits—where the knickknack shelves were, the tables, and the alternate exits—but other patrons and employees always had to be assessed and stored on top of the mental blueprint.
“Hi there.” Bragi was as friendly as the woman. “I’ll have a macchiato, and she’ll have a white chocolate mocha and a blueberry muf—”
“Whoa.” Was that presumptuous asshole ordering for me? “You do not get to order my food.”
The woman’s smile faltered. “What can I get you?” She looked at me.
Damn it. How did he know? “White mocha, blueberry muffin.” My reply was sheepish. I wanted to be defiant and order something completely different, but now nothing else sounded good.
Fortunately, Bragi kept his smugness to himself. “No, not that one.” He stopped her as she reached under the glass display case. “The one next to it has more blueberries.”
I didn’t protest when Bragi paid the bill. In my experience, money didn’t mean much to most gods, since they’d seen so many constructions of it rise and fall over the centuries, and most had more than they knew what to do with.
On the other hand, the pay for an out of work assassin—me—crashing in her sister’s boyfriends’ magical condo wasn’t great.
Besides, it was my understanding that Bragi acted as his own estate for the works he’d published under various pen names throughout the centuries. Given that CS Lewis’s estate just sold the movie rights to the Chronicles of Narnia again I was going to assume he could afford ten or fifteen bucks for a nosh and a drink.
We had our pick of tables, and I chose one with the best view of everything. Being out in the open like this with someone I didn’t trust made my skin crawl, but with him, the idea of being alone made me uncomfortable, too.
I kept a shield around us—a magical, protective bubble. No one would see it, and no one would run into it. Its purpose was to block us from magical view. It was kind of like plopping a slice of another plane of existence in the middle of this one. The average person would never notice, even though there would be a slight shift in their perception and being when they walked through it, because people tended to only see what they wanted.
