The Grey God (War of Gods 4) Read Free Page A

handle. She struck him again and again. When she tried to close her eyes, the magic controlling her body forced them open again. Over and over, she hacked her father into pieces, sobbing and screaming.
    Finally, the magic left her. She dropped to her knees between the two bloodied corpses, hoarse from screaming. The ground still trembled, and trees fell in the distance. The stranger stepped next to her, surveying the damage. He hefted an axe.
    “Please don’t,” she whispered. “I’ll do anything. Please don’t kill me.”
    He crouched beside her, his cold smile filling her with a fear unlike any she’d felt before.
    “I have plans for you, my sweet Claire. You will do anything for me. Starting now.”
    He snatched her and sank his fangs into her neck. Claire screamed again, batting at him in desperation to escape. The man didn’t let her go until her world grew dark. She dropped to the ground, senseless.
    “I’ll be back for you, love,” the man said. “You’re mine now, and so is your lover.”
    Fading in and out of consciousness, Claire blinked to try to clear her vision. “Who … what are you?”
    He fished around in the remains of Darian and yanked free something that glimmered silver in the early morning light. She recognized the necklace that marked Darian as the White God. The man tossed it on the body of her dead father. He leaned over to her and yanked off the necklace marking her as the mate of the White God.
    “I’m Czerno, the Black God, your new master and mate,” he said. “You disabled my greatest enemy for me. I’ve got a deal with a certain faction of immortals to bring him back to life and keep him around until I need him. You, love, I have more than one use for. I’ll enjoy fucking you for eternity.”
    Czerno. Claire heard the rest of his words without registering them. Immobilized, fear rose within her as she watched the Black God lift Darian’s bloody form from the ground. He disappeared.  He hadn’t been gone long before another form came into her view. Too weak to focus, she didn’t know who it was until he’d knelt beside her.
    “I warned him,” Jule whispered. “Czerno’s marked you. I suppose this rights your wrong, though I will never forgive you.”
    He rose and left, his visit so quick, she wasn’t sure she really saw him.
    The roar of the earth grew louder. Unable to move, barely able to breathe, she watched the sun climb into the sky. It was blood red, casting a shadow the color of blood over the immortal world. The ground rumbled more violently as the sun rose, until it began to split open. At long last, she heard a familiar voice.
    “Darian!” Damian’s white-blond hair was familiar to her before his face came into view. “My gods!”
    Claire heard him drop beside the body he thought was his brother’s and begin to sob. She used what strength she had to roll onto her back, desperate for a Healer. Damian clutched his brother’s necklace in one hand, the reins to his horse in another. Two Guardians pushed him out of the way but hesitated, unable to lift a body she’d completely obliterated.
    “Don’t worry, Claire,” Damian said, regaining himself. “We’ll find out who did this and kill them. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
    She felt him lift her, falter with the shaking earth, then manage to heft her on top of a horse. She sagged against the horse’s neck.
    “ Ikir. ” One of the Guardians stepped towards him. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”
    Damian wiped his face, staring at the pulpy mess of the body before him.
    “We need to go, Damian,” Jule said, pulling his horse to a halt. “The gateway between worlds is barely holding up. We have to get you to the other side.”
    “I won’t leave him, Jule,” Damian said, sinking to his knees beside the body.
    “You must.” Jule slung himself down from the horse and dropped beside the boy-god. “There is more at stake here than your brother’s life.”
    “I can’t!”
    “The human