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  Pursued by the Gods

  A Fallen Gods Novella

  Rebekah Murdock

  Copyright © 2019 by Beechwood Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Ryan Raven

  No matter how many love stories I write, I could never imagine a better one than ours.

  Contents

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  Prologue

  1. Toven

  2. Ravenna

  3. Ravenna

  4. Toven

  5. Toven

  6. Ravenna

  7. Toven

  8. Toven

  9. Ravenna

  10. Ravenna

  11. Toven

  12. Kavi

  13. Isa

  14. Ravenna

  15. Ravenna

  16. Toven

  17. Toven

  18. Ravenna

  19. Ravenna

  20. Kavi

  21. Toven

  22. Isa

  23. Ravenna

  24. Toven

  25. Ravenna

  26. Toven

  27. Ravenna

  28. Toven

  29. Ravenna

  30. Ravenna

  31. Ravenna

  32. Toven

  33. Ravenna

  Epilogue

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  Prologue

  Ravenna

  When mortals say they want to live forever, they have no understanding of what that really means, or how long an eternity can be.

  On the day I was born, my mother said she saw a white raven in the tree outside staring at her. She was very young, and very frightened, and she said the raven spoke to her. It promised that she would live to see me cut my first tooth. She thanked the spirits for bringing her solace in her time of need, and when I was born, red-faced and screaming into the bleak winter daylight, the name she gave me was the word for “raven” in our native tongue.

  My father hated it. He wanted to name me after something beautiful, like the flowers that grew in the meadow, but my mother would not be dissuaded.

  She did live to see me cut my first tooth, and no longer.

  My father rarely called me by my name after that. He called me his little owl, because as I learned to speak and became an inquisitive child, there was no subject on which I could not conjure a thousand questions. I also slept little, preferring to sneak out at night to play in the dark and wander just far enough away to give my aunts a fright on many an occasion.

  So, when I left I took the name Ravenna, as it was no longer safe for anyone to call me by the name given by my mother. Names given by the spirits have power when spoken aloud, and none of us go by our true names any longer.

  It’s too dangerous.

  I’ve grown used to hearing my new name on the lips of bank tellers, cashiers at grocery stores, even the men I love. I answer to it without the slightest hesitation—after all, it’s not so far removed from the one I was born with.

  But sometimes I long to hear my mother say the name she gave me, just once more.

  ---

  I was standing outside of a roadside motel in Albuquerque, New Mexico when I met the woman who told us about Las Vegas. Kavi and Isa were long since asleep, one on either side of the queen-sized bed that just barely fit the three of us. I’d sat up in the darkness once I’d heard their soft snores, picked up my jeans and tank top off the floor, and slipped quietly outside barefoot, cigarette and lighter in my hand.

  Men.

  They fell asleep after making love as if it were the last care left in the world, while I’d laid awake staring at the ceiling, wondering if tonight would be the night that the hunter would come to our doorstep. I imagined it a dozen different ways—if they would be disguised as a stranger in need, or if they would knock down the door like the villain in a movie, come to drag us back screaming. Most times I could put it out of my head, but at night the fears crowded in. I would stare into the darkness, wondering how many more nights I would lie between my men, the scent of them surrounding me, clinging to my skin, comforting me with the solidity of it.

  They were the one constant in a world that would never be safe for any of us again.

  The woman was standing outside, leaning up against the front of her old Buick, illuminated in the dim glow of the single working streetlight in the parking lot. She had short-cropped blonde hair, and the kind of delicate pixie face that looked beautiful with any style. She held a cigarette between her fingers, the tip glowing, and blew a cloud of smoke out as she caught sight of me. She looked me up and down, taking in my ripped, faded black jeans, my thin black tank top, thin enough that you could see the outline of my breasts. I hadn’t bothered to put a bra on, and her eyes locked on my chest, the corner of her mouth curving up appreciatively.

  “Sorry,” I said without thinking as I leaned against the wall, lighting my own cigarette. “I didn’t think anyone else would be out here this time of morning.”

  I realized my foolishness the moment the words slipped out of my mouth. By then, I should have always expected someone to be there. I should have had my head on a swivel at all times, and considering my sleeplessness, I couldn’t believe I’d been careless enough to not think of who else might be waiting in the darkness.

  Addiction was a hell of a thing, I thought, taking a drag of my cigarette. Especially when your boyfriends hated the habit, and you had to sneak it.

  “No need to apologize,” the woman said, laughing as she flicked ash onto the asphalt. “Been a long time since I’ve gotten even a glimpse of tits as nice as those. Don’t see many women in my line of work.” She raised an appreciative eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you’d let me see them for real.”

  I choked, shaking my head as I coughed. “No, I don’t think so,” I managed, caught somewhere between laughter and astonishment. Don’t let your guard down, I reminded myself. She could be a hunter. Anyone could be.

  She took another long drag of her cigarette, holding the smoke in for a long moment before blowing it out between pursed lips. “Where you headed?”

  I tensed. “None of your business,” I said sharply, straightening and stubbing my cigarette against the wall. I thought of the rifle, stashed behind the seats of our pickup; the pistol, hidden beneath the bed.

  She frowned, her brow creasing. “You’re running from something,” she said. “It’s written all over your face. All over all of you, to tell the truth.”

  “I should be getting back to bed.” I shoved my half-smoked cigarette and lighter into my pocket. “My men will be missing me.” Hear that? Men. Two of them. One of them will kill you as soon as give you a second look.

  “Oh, dangerous men, hmm? My favorite kind.” She pushed herself off the hood of the Buick as I froze in place. “Oh, I can hear your thoughts, you know. It’s a special talent of mine. Makes me a damn good whore. Best in the trade, really. And a rich woman. But not rich enough to escape what’s hunting me. So, I’m going to Las Vegas. And if you know what’s good for you, wherever you’re going now, you’ll give it up and head there too. It’s the only place, if you’re running from something not human. And from the look on your face right
now, that’s exactly what’s going on.”

  I swallowed hard. Every muscle in my body told me to run, to grab Kavi and Isa and get the hell out. But her last statement kept me there, on the precipice of fleeing. What if she was telling the truth? What if there was somewhere safe, somewhere where the things that went bump in our night couldn’t find us any longer?

  “Las Vegas is a safe place?” My voice sounded slightly strangled.

  She burst into laughter, her shoulders shaking with it. “Safe? Oh, honey, no. It’s dangerous as hell. Every damn murderer and thief and rapist who’s angered the gods or the vampire mob or the witch council or their shifter clan is there, along with a thousand desperate men and women running from some other crime they committed against one of them, whether for envy or greed or lust or love.” She narrowed her eyes.

  “If I was a betting woman, and I am, I’d say you’re the last one. It’s love you’ve done it for, whatever it is.” She waved her hand. “Oh, don’t worry. I can’t hear all your secrets, only what you’re thinking right now. And right now, you’re thinking whether or not you ought to trust me.” The mirth left her face, and she looked at me, her expression deadly serious. “Girl, wake your men up, get in that piece of shit you drove here in, and head straight for that city. Because whatever you’re running from, they’ve got no jurisdiction there. You might not be safe there, but you’ll be safe from them. And for people like me and you, that’s as safe as we can ever hope to be.”

  I stood there, dumbfounded, as she walked past me, her hips swaying in her cutoff shorts in the way that only a woman who is utterly confident in herself can walk. She looked over her shoulder once, throwing me a wink. “And if you want to show me those tits, I’m three doors down from you. Just knock.”

  I sagged against the wall the moment she was gone, my heart racing. We’d been on our way out of New Mexico, hoping to get to Colorado, to stop in the mountains for a while. We’d been on the move for days, ever since Kavi had seen a man watching him at the same street corner on his way home from work, every afternoon for two weeks. It might have been nothing. It might have been a bounty hunter looking for someone else.

  Or he might have been looking for us. Either way, it meant it was time to move on. More cheap motels, more miles on the pickup, more dusty, hot hours on the road. There was an adventurous romanticism to our lives, if you looked hard enough and thought about it a certain way. But once you dug past that, it was just living in fear, always on the run, never able to enjoy anything for long.

  I didn’t know how much of it we had left in us.

  I turned and walked to our door on legs that felt as if they had turned to water. I saw Isa sit up in the dim light, his nostrils flaring as I walked inside.

  “Ravenna, what is it? Where have you been?” His forehead creased as he scented the air. “You’ve been smoking,” he said disapprovingly.

  “My bad habit is the least interesting thing that’s happened tonight.” I pulled my lighter and the crumpled cigarette out of my pocket, dropping it on the cracked, laminated desk wedged against the wall just behind the door. “Wake Kavi up, Isa. There’s something we’ve got to talk about.”

  1

  Toven

  I came back to Las Vegas because I was bored. That’s not something that’s said all that often, but it was the truth.

  It caught my eye in the early days—back when it was trying to find its footing, so to speak, in a country that was growing up all around it. It was a city filled to the brim with grime and glamour all at once. A place that refused to settle down and fit in, and I respected that. So I lent it a little luck, and waited to see what would happen. If you know where to look, you can still see glimpses of the place that made stars of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

  But fifty years on, there’s not much of that old city left.

  A lot has changed since then. I’ve changed since then.

  Humans dream of immortality. It brings them here in droves, to a place where for a week or a night or a few hours, they have a chance to feel as if they can’t be beaten. There’s a high they seek–found in a winning hand of cards, a line of powder, or the moment of orgasm--that’s the closest they’ll ever come to cheating death. Here, they can have all of those things, possibly even all at once.

  Sometimes I think creating humanity was the cruelest thing we gods ever did.

  But that night, I was bored of even the flash and glitter that normally intrigued me. The men and women so easily charmed into my bed, the moment of intoxicating power when I could see a man down on his luck and turn it all around, or make the high-roller lose it all. What humans don’t understand about immortality is that if you go on long enough, everything loses its shine.

  Nothing can excite you forever.

  I thought it would make me happy again, to come back. I had spent three weeks slumming it in the deep south, thanks to Torde’s intervention. He had said I spent too much time in the big cities, in the places where the wealthy and well-appointed gathered, that it was well past the time when I should extend some of my influence to the less fortunate parts of the world. And so I went, because even gods answer to someone, and because he was right. There were places in far greater need of good fortune than the ones I typically frequented. I avoided them, quite frankly, because I hated seeing the things that humans did to each other, the depths of degradation that they could reach. At least in Vegas, it was well-gilded.

  I was not like Okiki, living alongside my creations in the dust that they had sprung from.

  In fact, I wasn’t much like any of my fellow gods or goddesses. At times that had troubled me, but I hadn’t seen any of them in so long that it had been pushed to the recesses of my mind. It had been years since I’d been in the realm of the gods. For most of the last two hundred years, many of us had chosen to spend as little time there as possible—and as little time together as we could. Our loyalties had been well and truly split, and I was beginning to believe that there was nothing that could heal the rift. No power above, below, or here on Earth. Not after what we had done.

  When it came right down to it, perhaps we were every bit as depraved as our own creations.

  So, I went back to Vegas after a stint in New Orleans. They had been hit by a massive hurricane—something that made me think of Valtamer for the first time in quite a long time. I knew he was somewhere deep in his ocean palace now, brooding over the fate of the humans that he couldn’t save, over the powers that even we have to answer to. I didn’t think there was a single one of us that enjoyed being ridden by the Fates, but some of us took the destruction we sometimes had to wreak harder than others. Valtamer was one of those.

  I had done my duty, offering what bits of luck I could to salvage the lives of those caught in the disaster, and I had taken some pleasure in it. I wasn’t cruel, and those despondent men and women had done nothing to deserve the hand that the Fates had dealt them. At least—the vast majority of them hadn’t. And I, with the intuition that I’d carefully honed over millennia, gave good fortune to those that I could within that majority. The others I left to their misery.

  I retreated back to my haven after that, but it seemed wrong to go immediately into the bright glitter of the modern downtown, among those who cared nothing for the plight of anyone but themselves. I wanted to be among the ones who came to forget, to blind themselves with neon and drown themselves in whiskey. The ones who craved the grit and not the shine.

  I went to an old bar, a few streets down from the Golden Nugget, a place with unfortunate décor but the right atmosphere. It took itself too seriously, and right then I was taking myself just a bit too seriously too, so we were a good fit.

  Besides, as it fancied itself an old western bar, it had some of the best bourbon you could possibly find. Normally I drank vodka martinis and champagne with the best of them, but right then I wanted a bite on my tongue and smoke at the back of my throat.

  That’s where I saw her for the first time.

  ---


  She was a waitress at the bar, dressed in the tasteless uniform of blue jeans, embroidered shirt and cowboy boots. To be completely honest, I didn’t even see her at first. I ordered a bourbon on the rocks and settled into a high-top table with a decent view of the room. There was something to be said for sipping a drink alone while people-watching, and I planned to make the most of it. It promised to be a good night for it, too. I’d already witnessed a near-fight, someone tossing a drink at their date, and an argument between a couple about how to spend their winnings for the night when she was quite literally thrown into my line of vision. She had slipped, and she crashed nearly headfirst into my table, her tray of drinks balanced precariously on one hand. I saw it list hard to one side, and I reacted without thinking, turning to meet her eyes.

  A shiver raced down my spine the moment I met her gaze. Her eyes were dark, such a deep brown that they were almost black, and I nearly forgot all about what I was trying to do. She caught the edge of the table with her hand, and the tray of drinks in her other one righted itself, the glasses staying as firmly fixed to the surface of it as if they’d been glued.

  She straightened, trying to catch her breath, her fingers still curled tightly around the edge of the table. “I’m so sorry,” she gasped.