Trinity: Feathers and Fire Book 9

  Trinity

  Feathers and Fire Book 9

  Shayne Silvers

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Shayne Silvers

  Trinity

  Feathers and Fire Book 9

  A TempleVerse Series

  © 2020, Shayne Silvers / Argento Publishing, LLC

  info@shaynesilvers.com

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  HARK! THE HERALD ANGELS SCREAMED…

  War is coming to the City of Fountains.

  The Four Legendary Creatures are free, the Seven Sins are running wild, the vampires are getting thirsty, and the Vatican is ready to enter the front lines.

  And Callie Penrose is at the heart of it all. The Horsewoman of Despair flicked the first domino, and the consequences are echoing throughout the various halls of power in all corners of the world. As the streets of Kansas City threaten to become raging rivers of blood, one of those closest to Callie is kidnapped, and she is forced to choose between her heart and the people who depend on her to keep them safe.

  To value duty over love.

  As the pillars of Heaven begin to crumble, it becomes increasingly obvious that all these events are coordinated rather than coincidental. Callie may have flicked that first domino, but how much can her heart handle when she learns that some of her closest friends set all the dominos up in the first place.

  Now is the time when success truly depends on how Lucky Callie can be, and whether she can determine which friends have been paid thirty pieces of silver to stab her in the back. Angels shall weep, and demons shall laugh.

  Humanity will burn and gods shall die in the wake of a Horsewoman betrayed.

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  1

  I squinted at the lethal warrior across from me, carefully sidestepping as I focused on his hips. He mirrored my every move, like a dark phantasm reflecting up from a puddle of blood. The dance of death was at hand.

  Beams of early morning sunlight pierced the shadows of the park, desperately, mercilessly, attacking the last vestiges of night in their never-ending battle of dark versus light. My foe had used the sun against me before, striking the very moment I squinted at the unanticipated brightness. I tried luring him into a similar trap, but he smiled devilishly and stepped in the opposite direction.

  “I’m growing bored,” my foe drawled. “Attack when your enemy least expects it, from a place she least—”

  He interrupted his own lecture as he abruptly blurred forward and swung his katana low in an attempt to take out my thigh. I dove towards him to disrupt his timing, thrusting my blade at his gut. I felt a whisper of fabric against the edge of my sword, but I knew he had only moved enough to avoid my strike. I hadn’t almost gotten him.

  He’d merely wanted to expend as little energy as possible to avoid my attack.

  Which was why I simultaneously rocked forward with a swinging elbow to hammer his jaw while he gloated about dodging my blade.

  Well, that had been my intent.

  But this was Ryuu, not some half-assed swordsman looking to bolster his self-confidence. Ryuu embodied self-confidence. To him, admitting self-confidence was like bragging about being able to breathe. Pointless.

  He pivoted and rolled with my elbow—impossible as it seemed—and rapped the knuckles of my sword hand with the flat of his blade. My hand spasmed and I dropped my katana even as he bumped his hip against mine and used it as a fulcrum to flip me over his body and slam me down into the dew-laden grass carpeting our make-shift arena. He rode me down to the grass, straddling me in a half mount as his arms shifted to pin my elbow and extended wrist to the ground near my ear. I rabbit-punched him in the ribs with my free hand—once, twice, three times—earning only soft grunts as consolation prizes.

  His weight atop me shifted, and I wrapped my legs around his hips to prevent him from decoupling or riding higher into a full mount that might wind up giving him a more advantageous position where he could trap me into an arm bar. He’d done that twice this morning already. I snatched one of his forearms, jerking it low between us and trapping it against my belly as I squeezed his body against me with my legs, which brought his shoulder into contact with my cheek.

  “Nice,” he growled, panting heavily as he struggled to free his arm without giving up his position. The heat of our bodies momentarily distracted me, and then I began noticing other positives about our entanglement—and not in an aspect limited to wrestling. The ebb and flow of our hips, arms, hands, and chests flexing, twisting, pressing, grinding together in a passionate embrace that could either signify love or hate, war or peace.

  We were not just wrestling on four dimensions, because layered on top of the grunts and squeezes of the visually documentable physical realm and the ephemeral white-water rapids that was the passage of time were the quantum entanglements of our minds and our motivations. Our sin and our virtue. Our past and our present.

  The space between us was life and death, and it was a heady, spiritual, incalculable plethora of immeasurable dimensions. It existed and didn’t exist at the same time, always shifting, never shifting, depending on if it was being observed and when.

  The contact points between us—although ever shifting and writhing—was the intersection of the two loops of infinity or the ouroboros that visually depicted a snake eating its own tail but symbolically implied an eternal struggle of eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. Together, we were infinity.

  Alone, we were two circles bumping and grinding.

  Which was also fun, and entirely distracting.

  “Your mind wanders, Penrose,” Ryuu breathed into my ear, sounding amused as he continued to struggle in an effort to slip free of my leg lock trapping our hips together. “I wonder on the topic…” Thankfully, he couldn’t see my face or I would have head-butted him. His breath smelled of spicy cinnamon and green tea, and I felt my mouth water instinctively as I spotted a drop of sweat on his neck, barely an inch away from my lips.

  For a single moment, I wanted nothing more than to lean forward and lick it up.

  Yum.

  I felt my tongue tingle in the back of my mouth, and then I realized that Ryuu was no longer struggling or teasing me about my focus. I shifted my head to the side, keeping my chin tucked in case it was a ruse to conquer an opening in my defenses. I caught a glimpse of his face and realized that it was calm but perfectly still. Frozen. I frowned, unsure about this strange new tactic. I could still feel him breathing and pinning me to the ground but he looked as if he’d had a sudden thought that required his full attention. Was he admitting defeat? Or maybe you gave him an unprofessi
onal bodily reaction to contend with, I thought to myself with a wicked grin. This close, I probably would have noticed such a tactic. No, scratch that. I definitely would have noticed.

  “You two should just fuck and get it over with,” a familiar voice purred in an encouraging tone.

  Since I was upside down, I pressed the back of my skull to the grass and shifted my eyes up to try and look behind me. Aphrodite, the goddess of sex, was sprawled out on the quilted blanket Ryuu had laid out earlier. She wore a shiny, satin toga that stretched from one shoulder to mid-thigh and scandalously flaunted side-boob as it barely managed to cover both of her breasts. A gold belt was cinched around her waist, looking as if it was made of golden medallions, the ends hanging lower than the actual toga. She wore golden sandals with straps that crisscrossed up to her knees before tying into pretty bows. Her thick, shiny brown hair was perfectly styled and hung down her back and over her covered shoulder, emphasizing the opposite bare shoulder and the hollow curves of her collarbone. Her somewhat large, almond-shaped green eyes glittered like dew on fresh-cut grass. I took a silent moment to honor my hatred of her raw beauty and the primal sense of physicality her very aura inspired.

  Maybe, just maybe, she’d been pouring gasoline on my libido while I’d been wrestling Ryuu.

  Then again, maybe not. Ryuu hadn’t noticed her presence, and he probably would have if she’d been toying with my emotions. It had also been years since I’d made any decisions after midnight, so to speak. Abstinence makes the suck grow suckier, I thought to myself. It was in First Corinthians. Somewhere.

  She was unashamedly nibbling on the cheese and crackers, grinning at us. I couldn’t actually glare at her from my current position, so I growled my displeasure. “Hey, goddess of sex. Good morning. I’ve been better, thanks for asking.”

  “I did not ask. It is painfully apparent to me that you have not had a good morning…yet. You haven’t even had a mediocre morning. An orgasm a day keeps the carnage at bay,” she said in a sing-song voice. She gestured encouragingly with a shooing flutter of her long, tan fingers. I scowled…as scowly as I could manage from my disadvantaged position. She let out an impatient sigh at my reaction and shifted her position to lean back on both elbows and gaze at the sky. “Oh, don’t be a prude. I’ll look away, my dears. Just get it out of your system. You’re obviously not learning much about real wrestling. Any one of my boy toys could have pinned the both of you before they hit puberty.”

  Ryuu growled, shocking the hell out of me and causing me to reflexively squeeze his hips tighter. Which…introduced me to an interesting new development. Ryuu had definitely heard the conversation, ladies. “Is…that…so?” Ryuu rasped, slowly lifting his chin and shifting his attention to Aphrodite. I pretended I had died, even though I was stuck staring at his Adam’s apple and pinned beneath his obviously operational secret shinobi tool.

  Aphrodite glanced over sharply, giving Ryuu an impressed smile. She nodded her approval at his ability to snap out of whatever magic she had used to freeze his body but not his awareness or hearing. She then ruined it by taking a full three seconds to eye him up and down with a smokier, hungrier grin before settling on his eyes. Ryuu didn’t react or comment. He just stared back, and I wished I could have seen his eyes, because her face paled and her smile faded a hair—which was the equivalent of a terrified scream from anyone else. “I retract my statement,” she said in a soft, respectful tone. Her appraising green eyes flicked to me for a moment before returning to his. “Are we still wearing masks, Ryuu?” she asked, emphasizing his name in such a way that told me she was obviously referring to him, specifically.

  He gave her a slow, stiff nod. “I would have presumed that wearing a mask would earn me your blessing, Aphrodite. Kink-shaming seems hypocritical for the goddess of sex.”

  2

  Aphrodite blinked. Then she burst out laughing, dissipating the budding tension between the pair. “So be it. Well, if you’re not going to have a go at each other, come join me. We have much to discuss.”

  Ryuu peeled off of me with such agility that it almost felt like he’d used magic. No groans, grunts, or awkward gropes. One minute we were pressed together like peanut butter and jelly, and the next he was looming over me, extending his hand to help me up. I swatted it away with a narrow-eyed glare, and didn’t bother to hide my groan as I rose up to a sitting position. My knee popped and I belted out a curse as Old Death taunted my apparently arthritic body of less than thirty years.

  I managed to regain my feet without further incident and then I brushed off my hands, studying Ryuu thoughtfully. “Masks, huh?” I asked him under my breath. I wasn’t disappointed or angry with him. I knew he had secrets. I was more curious than anything else, especially now that I realized Aphrodite knew at least one of those private details.

  He gave me a subtle, unashamed nod.

  “Okay,” I whispered back with a small smile to let him know it wasn’t a big deal. “Let’s go see what she has to—”

  “You know I can hear you,” Aphrodite interrupted in a dry tone. “You’re less than six feet away.”

  We left our wooden practice swords in the grass and joined her on the blanket, scooping up our water bottles in unison like we always did after a sparring match. Usually, we took the break to reflect on the bout, not to be scrutinized by a love doctor. The love doctor. Aphrodite watched us drink with an amused smirk, reminding me of an adult watching her preteen child interact with their first crush—when neither child had been brave enough to openly admit their feelings but to everyone else it was painfully obvious. That awkward surprise encounter at the mall that innocent daughters feared and villainous mothers coveted. I couldn’t figure out which one of us was Aphrodite’s child in my imagined scenario.

  “So,” I asked, growing agitated, “just stopping by to tease us? I already told you that I needed to have a talk with—”

  She snapped her fingers, cutting me off. “Nate Temple is going to be executed before the next sun rises. Problem solved.”

  My eyes practically bulged out of my head and Ryuu choked on his water even as his eyes flicked to his black katana propped up against a nearby stump. “What?” I demanded.

  Aphrodite nodded, solemnly, using Ryuu’s cheese knife to pare off a few slices from the wedge. “That’s what happens when there is an unspoken war with double-crossing schemers on both sides. Everyone is a double agent, so who knows who is really working for whom? Cheese?” she asked, extending me a slice.

  I shook my head, firmly, but Ryuu reached out to grab it and pop it in his mouth. His calculating gaze never shifted even a millimeter from the goddess’ eyes as he chewed.

  Aphrodite continued slicing away at the cheese, humming softly as she worked. “It’s all about the children. Always was. Always will be. Well, that and power, of course. Nate is much the same, even though he sees himself as so much different. It is rather a…divine comedy, one might say.” And her eyes flicked to me so swiftly that it felt like a slap.

  Was she referring to the Divines I had just saved from Purgatory last night? Dante Alighieri had authored the book The Divine Comedy, a first-hand account about Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. I kept my face calm, meeting her gaze directly. “I don’t see much comedy in the death of a close friend. Even less so in the death of a fellow Horseman. Or the Catalyst.” I had spoken to Aphrodite a few days ago, and she’d informed me that Nate was imprisoned but relatively safe.

  “Death,” Aphrodite mused. “I wish we had less death, don’t you, Ryuu? Immortality makes men rather paranoid, especially when they learn there is always a catch.”

  He stared at her so blankly that he may as well have been a statue. “Balance. Yin and Yang,” he said, calmly.

  Aphrodite smiled her agreement, and then sliced her palm with the knife. Deeply. Golden ichor—the blood of the gods—welled up in her palm and she studied it with morbid curiosity. “Godkillers walk the world again, those pesky little cockroaches,
” she said with an amused smirk. “Halo Breakers, Beasts, new Horsemen…what is this world coming to?” She lifted her fist and squeezed it, letting a drop fall into her other palm. It splashed, resembling liquid gold. “Ah, yes. That was why I interrupted you. Because the world is coming to an end. No need to worry about the Omega War. That was yesterday’s news.” She gauged our reaction for a few moments, enjoying the stunned looks on our faces. “So, if you ever wanted to remake that old classic film, Saving Ryuu’s Privates,” she said, “now is your chance. Before the fireworks start.” My cheeks blushed beet red and I couldn’t make myself look in Ryuu’s direction. “War is often started as a consequence of sex, so it might as well end a war, for once. Go out with a big O and a standing ovation, naturally,” she said, leaning back on one elbow with a devilish grin, obviously intending to supervise and critique our debut acting careers.

  I opened my mouth, not entirely sure what I intended to say, when Ryuu dove forward in a roll and drew his black katana, the Angel Killer. He remained in a defensive crouch, positioned between us and whatever had spooked him.

  I spun to see he was protecting us from a tall young woman, almost skeletal, standing before us with a dazed look on her face. We were in a somewhat secluded clearing of a mostly quiet park outside of the city limits, so we should have heard or seen her approach. Yet here she was, out of the blue. Aphrodite hadn’t even noticed her approach before Ryuu reacted.

  The goddess of sex gave her a condescending sneer. “The five-dollar-a-pop Johns are on the other side of the park, devil tramp,” she said in a haughty tone. “No one has time for your sob story.”

  I arched an eyebrow at her crass tone, instinctively wanting to defend the poor, helpless woman, but something about the dazed look in the woman’s eyes gave me pause. It was the vacant, glossy-eyed look of death, not drugs. And then the woman smiled, moving only her lips. Her face, eyes, cheeks, and body language did not reflect a smile. The contrast told me she was a hollow, husk of a soul trapped inside her own body. “I just want to watch, Aphrodite,” the woman said in a strange, detached voice, looking as if someone was speaking through her. “Let the children play, why don’t you? Where’s that gung-ho attitude you used to have when your husband still visited your bed? That carpe diem? That joie de vivre?”