Insquidious Devotion Read online

  Galgareth was in her usual vessel, a teenager named Toby who liked piercings and dyeing his hair funky colors. It was purple and neon green currently, and he had a new ring in his eyebrow to accompany the ones in his lip and nose.

  “Of course I knocked!” Galgareth grinned. “Who knows what kind of debaucherous things you two might be up to?” She embraced Sloane. “Mm, it’s good to see you!”

  “Good to see you too.” Sloane happily returned the hug. “How are you? How’s Toby?”

  “Toby’s good!” Galgareth gestured to her face. “Got a new piece of metal stabbed into his flesh to celebrate his birthday! He’s seventeen now!”

  “Happy Birthday, Toby!” Sloane always found it a little weird to talk to Toby since Galgareth was always in control of his body, but he didn’t want to be rude.

  After all, he wasn’t like with Loch or Merrick, whose vessels were empty. Toby was a very devout follower of Galgareth and offered himself willingly whenever she came to Aeon.

  “That’s marvelous. Wonderful.” Loch pouted miserably. “Can someone please assist me? Our spawn is attempting to digest me.”

  Pandora had a very firm grip on Loch’s tentacle and was gnawing away.

  “Oh!” Galgareth snapped her fingers. “I bet she’s teething.”

  “You think so?” Sloane shut the door, frowning. “She did just have two new ones pop up, but she was born with teeth too. I didn’t even think about that.”

  “Where’s the bracelet Uncle Yeris gave you for a wedding present?” Galgareth asked. “It was made of amber. That’ll work perfectly!”

  Loch held out his hand, and the bracelet appeared. “Ah, you mean this one?”

  “Yes!” Galgareth took the bracelet and gave it to Pandora, urging her to take a nibble. “Here, little one. Try having a chew on this, hmm?”

  Pandora’s eyes widened, and she released Loch’s tentacle to eagerly accept the bracelet.

  Quickly retracting his tentacle, Loch took a step back and groaned in relief. “Oh yes. Thank you.”

  “I put a little smidge of healing magic on it,” Galgareth said, smiling reassuringly. “That plus the amber should ease the ache.”

  “Goddess of serendipity, huh?” Sloane grinned. “Of course you’d remember the one magical thing we have that’s perfect for teething.”

  “Don’t forget I’m also the goddess of love and night too.” Galgareth held her head high.

  “We may want to find a substitute for her,” Loch warned, carrying Pandora over to the small bassinet beside the couch to lay her down.

  “Why?” Sloane followed to help tuck her in. “She seems to like it. Do we really want to upset a happy baby?”

  “The bracelet carries my uncle’s blessing.” Loch stared at Sloane expectantly. “Protects whoever wears it from drowning?”

  “Are you guys planning a beach trip soon?” Galgareth quirked her brows.

  “No, but the case we’re being called in on?” Sloane turned toward her. “All the victims are drowning.”

  “And Rose was spotted, right?”

  “Rose?” Sloane frowned.

  “Rose, Tulip, Lily….” Loch shrugged. “It’s a flower.”

  “Daisy,” Sloane corrected patiently. “Her name is Daisy, and yes, she was seen with the last victim.”

  “Here.” Galgareth’s tentacles appeared, and she touched both Sloane and Loch on their foreheads. “A quick blessing for luck.”

  “Thank you, Gal.” Sloane rubbed his forehead. He happened to glance at Galgareth’s shirt, and he saw something familiar in the colorful pattern.

  The design was a wild sunburst, and there were words woven in between the waving rays of multicolored light.

  “What’s on your shirt?” Sloane tilted his head. “Well, what’s on Toby’s shirt?”

  “Do you like it?” Galgareth laughed. “Another birthday present from some boutique clothing store in downtown Archersville.”

  “The words. Is that… godstongue?”

  “Yes! I haven’t had a chance to read it all yet, but I believe it’s a blessing for Salgumel.”

  “And they just slapped it on a shirt?” Sloane shook his head. “That’s horrible.”

  “Trust me.” Galgareth smiled sadly. “Seeing a sacred prayer to my father plastered all over uppity mortal merchandise isn’t exactly my idea of reverent either, but maybe it’s a good thing.”

  “How?” Loch wrinkled his nose. “Are we getting a cut of the profits?”

  “Well no, but if people want to know what their shirt says, they might start learning about the old ways to find out.” Galgareth’s smile brightened. “It might be enough to spark someone’s interest and lead them to the gods.”

  “Conversion through fashion, huh?” Sloane grinned.

  “You never know.” Galgareth joined Sloane and Loch by the bassinet, and she leaned down to nuzzle Pandora. “Maybe this little one will even have her own worshippers one day, huh?”

  “Mmm, yeah.” Sloane chuckled to himself. “Anyone looking for help to start a large fire can call on Pandora, goddess of spontaneous combustion.”

  “That is not her official title,” Loch scolded. “We haven’t had her naming ceremony yet.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “Don’t you two have a crime scene or something to go to?” Galgareth politely reminded them.

  “Right.” Sloane fiddled with Pandora’s blankets again, watching her chew away on the amber bracelet. “Okay, she still has that bottle over there on the counter, and the formula Urilith made is in the cabinet by the fridge, and—”

  “Sloane,” Galgareth cut in. “I’ve got her, okay?” She smiled warmly. “Goddess, remember?”

  “Yes. Sorry.” Sloane bowed his head to kiss Pandora’s forehead. “Be good for your Auntie Gal, okay?”

  “Maff panic,” Pandora whispered through a mouthful of bracelet.

  “No mass panic. No.”

  “Mafff?”

  “No.”

  When Pandora pouted, she looked just like Loch.

  “We’ll be back soon, I promise.” Sloane kissed her a few more times before finally pulling away. “Okay. I’m good, we’re going. Lemme just grab my coat.”

  Loch cuddled Pandora with his tentacles and gave her a kiss. “Don’t fret, my little one. Daddy and Dad will be back in no time to cuddle you, love all over you, teach you how to flambé—”

  “No flambéing!” Sloane rolled his eyes as he put on his coat.

  “Go on! Both of you!” Galgareth shooed Sloane and Loch toward the door. “Have fun at the crime scene!”

  “Oh yeah,” Sloane grumbled. “It’s gonna be a real hoot.”

  The address Milo had texted was for a hotel near the university, and Sloane drove there with his stomach churning. Loch had taken Sloane’s phone, claiming he wanted to play a game, but he was instead scrolling through Sloane’s text messages.

  “Lochlain has invited us over to feast with him and Robert for Dhankes,” Loch was saying. “You have not answered him.”

  Lochlain Fields was Lynnette’s brother, and it was his murder that first summoned Loch down to Aeon to seek justice. After his resurrection, courtesy of Great Azaethoth, Lynnette made a ghoul copy of Lochlain’s body for Loch to use. Lochlain was a talented thief, and his husband, Robert, was a fence and broker for illegal magical items.

  “I did so,” Sloane protested. “I told him I’d get back to him.”

  “Which is not an answer.”

  “It’s literally the first of October. We have all month to figure it out.” Sloane glanced at Loch, and he frowned when he saw Loch swiping around more. “Now what are you doing?”

  “You haven’t spoken to Fred in almost two weeks. We should send him a message and check on his penis.”

  “We should not do that,” Sloane replied firmly. “I’m sure him and Ell are doing just fine.”

  Thief and best friend to Lochlain, Fred was a ghoul. While the secrets of true necromancy had been lost to the world—the miracle of Lochlain’s resurrection aside—it was possible to bind someone’s soul to a copy of their body before they died. The practice was rare, highly illegal, and ghouls had the unfortunate tendency to rot.

  This created the need for ghoul doctors like Fred’s boyfriend, Ell, who specialized in powerful magic designed to preserve and increase a ghoul body’s longevity. It wasn’t clear how exactly a ghoul could be intimate with another person, but Sloane had long decided that it was none of his business.

  Loch, however, disagreed.

  “But he’s a ghoul. Things… fall off.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “But how do they mate? How?”

  “However they want. Stop being weird.”

  “Hmmph.” Loch typed something.

  “You better not be texting him about his penis.”

  “I am… texting him about something else.” Loch poked at the screen.

  Sloane stopped at a red light and put the car in park. He then reached over to grab his phone. “Stop! Right now!”

  Loch twisted away, using his tentacles to push Sloane back as he typed faster. “I’m almost done!”

  “Oh, I swear by all the gods I’m going to kick your ass if you send him something about his dick—”

  Loch cackled, and he easily kept Sloane’s swinging arms at bay with his many tentacles. “Just a few more words… hmmm, how do you spell ‘engorged’? The automatic correction is failing me.”

  “Dead!” Sloane laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of fighting a god over what was certainly a very lewd text message. “You’re so dead!”

  “It keeps trying to spell ‘enforced.’ Hmm. Oh, I know—”

  “Loch, quit! Right now—” Sloane gasped as the car lurched forward.

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; “Hey!” Loch braced himself against the dash.

  The car was still moving—no, it was being lifted—until the front grill was parallel to the street and hovering several yards up in the air. The only things keeping Sloane from falling into the windshield were his seat belt and a bundle of Loch’s tentacles.

  “Loch!” Sloane exclaimed. “What the—”

  “This is very rude!” Loch griped.

  Sloane watched in horror as something stepped into view in front of the windshield. It was massive, horrible, too many eyes, and way too many legs, but wait….

  No.

  Too many tentacles.

  It was a god.

  Chapter 2.

  “IT’S A god!” Sloane shouted.

  “Not everything with tentacles is automatically a god,” Loch scolded. He then stared at the monster picking up the car, and he corrected himself, “Okay, but that probably is.”

  “Loch!” Sloane watched the street get farther and farther away as the car continued to lift into the air. “If we drop from way up here—”

  “Hold on!” Loch braced his feet against the dashboard, freeing himself from his seat belt and unbuckling Sloane’s. His tentacles curled tighter around Sloane, and he shattered the windshield with a thought.

  Sloane clung to Loch, closing his eyes and putting up a shield of starlight around them. “Go, go, go!”

  “Going!” Loch leaped out of the car through the broken windshield and landed safely on the street, cradling Sloane against his chest. He turned so they could look at the monster holding the car.

  It was at least twenty feet tall, a giant amorphous blob covered in hundreds of red eyes, with multiple tentacles peeking out from all over its slimy bright orange flesh. It reminded Sloane of a rotting pumpkin, both from the gooey texture and strange orange color.

  The people around them were fleeing their cars, abandoning them right there in the middle of the street, screaming as they ran away from the giant beast. Horns honked away, brakes squealed as several cars slammed into each other down the block, and the frantic wail of sirens pierced the air.

  It was absolute chaos.

  The mass panic that Sloane had long feared was right here, happening now. He could see people taking pictures and video with their phones even as they ran, and months of trying to keep the secret of the old gods’ existence was all going to pot in seconds.

  Loch set Sloane down and stepped in front of him, yelling up at the god, “Hey! Cousin Cleus? Is that you?”

  “Who?” Sloane blinked.

  “My third cousin, Cleus, twice removed, on my mother’s side.” Loch firmly planted his hands on his hips and stalked forward to confront the monstrous god. “Cousin Cleus, you put that car down right now! This is Azaethoth the Lesser, brother of Tollmathan, Gronoch, Xhorlas, and—”

  Cleus, if that’s in fact who it was, roared and promptly smashed Loch with the car.

  “Loch!” Sloane screamed. “No!”

  The entire front end of the car had crumpled like paper, and there was no immediate sign of Loch trapped beneath it. Sloane knew Loch was immortal, but he could still be hurt, and the vessel he lived in couldn’t have possibly survived being crushed like that.

  Sloane prayed that Loch was all right and focused his magic into a large shield to hold on his arm. Deflecting Cleus’s swinging tentacles with the shield, he dropped his other hand by his side to summon a sword of starlight. The surge of power burned his palm, and he gritted his teeth and fought through the pain to form the massive blade.

  Even as his heart pounded with dread, he stared up unflinchingly at Cleus.

  “Hey! Cleus!” Sloane shouted. “You’d better stop this right now because you clearly do not know who you are fucking with!”

  “I second that!” Loch’s muffled voice called out.

  “Loch!” Sloane stared at the wreckage in disbelief.

  The car tore right in half as a magnificent dragon burst forth from beneath it, and Sloane’s heart stopped at the wondrous sight. The dragon had a long neck, huge glittering wings, and tentacles at his chin and tail. He was lean, with thick hind legs, and when he roared, the very pavement quaked.

  This was Azaethoth the Lesser, in all of his glory….

  Whose back foot was stuck in what was left of the car.

  Loch growled, shaking his leg frantically, and then the wreckage went flying off into a storefront. It busted through the windows and caused a new barrage of frantic screaming. He ducked his head. “Oops.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Sloane groaned.

  “It was an accident!”

  “Where’s your body?”

  “Hmm. I think what was left of it was squished to the car.”

  “Shit! Look out!”

  Loch turned just in time to catch another car being hurled at them, batting it away with a swing of his powerful tail. The car crashed into the building across from them, and glass rained down on the streets. “Accident! Also an accident!”

  Sloane raised his shield to protect himself from the broken glass, cringing as Cleus roared loud enough to shake the ground beneath his feet. “Loch! We have to get out of here!” He looked around at the people still trying to run away from the battle. “It’s not safe—”

  “Wretched cousin! Starkiller!” Cleus bellowed. “You are both doomed!” His tentacles shot out, grabbing Loch’s neck and one of his legs.

  Loch roared in reply, and he let loose a stream of prismatic fire from his mouth, scorching the tentacles holding him. He stomped through a bus stop, frantically trying to break free.

  Sloane wove through the cars to keep up, squeezing the hilt of his sword as he prepared to swing. He went for the tentacles holding Loch’s leg, and the starlight blade sliced right through Cleus’s godly flesh.

  As tentacles burned and fell away, dozens more took their place, seemingly without end, from Cleus’s slick flesh. The new tentacles coiled around Loch’s legs and neck, squeezing hard enough to draw blood.

  Loch whipped his long neck around to blow more fire directly at Cleus, but Cleus didn’t seem affected.

  Sloane kept cutting through Cleus’s tentacles to free Loch, but there was no way to get through them all. He turned his attention to attacking Cleus directly, and he jumped up on the hood of an abandoned car to gain some ground. He flung the sword as hard as he could, cheering when the blade sunk into one of Cleus’s eyes and made him howl in pain.

  “Ha! Take that, you donkey!” Loch shouted triumphantly.

  Already summoning a new sword, Sloane called out, “Cleus! Stop this now! No one else has to get hurt! I’ve killed two gods, and I don’t want to make it three, but you’re leaving me no choice here!”

  “Never… not until he comes…!” Cleus snarled, and his bodily mass lunged forward, consuming the car Sloane was standing on. “He will be with us… soon.”

  Sloane slashed at Cleus’s blobby flesh, but he was losing too much ground and had to stumble back onto the trunk of the car. “He who? Salgumel, right? Real original!”

  “It is getting a bit old!” Loch called out with a snort, blasting another bundle of tentacles binding his legs. “We have a big family! You think they’d get bored and try waking up somebody else!”

  Sloane swung the sword over his head for another strike, but Cleus’s tentacles grabbed his wrist. The very touch of his orange flesh burned, and Sloane cried out, losing the sword. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  “Sloane!” Loch squirmed against the tentacles trapping him, roaring in frustration.

  “AVPD!” a very firm voice shouted. “You are under arrest for destruction of property, both public and private, using unlicensed magic to terrorize and create panic, and for willfully blocking an intersection!”

  “I don’t think he gives two flyin’ fucks!” another voice chimed in. “Have you noticed that he’s eating a car right now?”

  “Felony vandalism as well!”

  Sloane whipped his head around, grinning when he saw Detectives Chase and Merrick racing toward them on foot.

  Merrick vanished behind an abandoned van, and a giant winged dragon with empty eyes and thick tentacles emerged. This was Gordoth, Merrick’s true form, and he wasn’t quite as tall as Loch, but he was thicker, with big horns and powerful front arms. His lower half was a mass of tentacles, and he moved like a snake, slithering forward at lightning speed.