Gameboard of the Gods (Age of X #1)(116)
Author: Richelle Mead

“Where,” she demanded, “did you get it?”

“Get what?” asked Mae. Seeing Callista snapped her out of her malaise and put her back in tough prætorian mode.

Justin already knew what Callista was referring to. Before his ill-fated trip to the casino, he’d sent the picture of Mae’s necklace off to the authorities in the respective castes. On impulse, he’d also sent a copy to Callista.

“A couple of my genetically perfect castals had it,” he said, leaving Mae’s name out of this for now. “Does it mean anything to you?”

“It’s the symbol of the servants of the Morrigan.”

Immediately, Justin sifted through his mental files of gods and mythology. “Celtic,” he said. He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. “She fights with warriors in battle and appears to people before death….”

Mae gave him an incredulous look. “You knew there was a goddess like that and didn’t make the connection?”

“That applies to a hundred gods around the world,” he shot back. “I didn’t know which one it was. Death and battle are pervasive themes in the human experience.” He turned back to a scowling Callista. “She’s tied to other things too.”

“Silver and moonlight?” suggested Mae wryly. “And crows?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “And cows too, weirdly. Some also theorized she was a triple goddess and would’ve possessed other attributes through her different aspects.”

“Not in the beliefs of her recent followers,” said Callista. “They were—are—focused on her darker parts. They prefer power over enlightenment.”

“How do you know so much?” asked Mae suspiciously.

“Because Amarantha is a warrior goddess, and I make it my business to know about rivals.”

“I thought Amarantha was a goddess of magic.”

“She’s both.” Impatient, Callista fixed her dark gaze on Justin. “You have to stop the Morrigan. Her people will kill again.”

“I know they will! What do you think I’m trying to do here?” he asked. “If you know so much, where are they?”

Callista looked sheepish. “I don’t know. On a Celtic grant probably.”

“Very helpful,” he grumbled.

One thing that made plebeians scornful of patricians was that at times it was really hard to define a genetic profile for an ethnic group. Sometimes the genes were telling. Often, castes went by phenotype, which could make things messy when a nationality could have any number of features. The Celtic castes were all over the place on their true ancestral appearances. Some argued for a light-haired, fair-skinned presence while others insisted the Celtic people had migrated from Iberia and had darker looks. The competing Irish castes—the Erinians and Hibernians—were particularly dysfunctional. Half the time, the traits a caste selected for seemed arbitrary. The Welsh caste had split the difference in accepted Celtic traits, and most citizens had pale skin, black hair, and dark blue or brown eyes. There were also two “meta” Celtic castes, which embraced multiple nationalities, much as the Nordics allowed all the Scandinavian regions and Finland.

The bottom line was that there were any number of Celtic grants this cult could be hiding in. Picking up his ego, Justin told it to bring up any servitor records of the Morrigan. It pulled up an investigation and subsequent license denial from twenty-six years ago—which made sense if that was when the genetically engineered castals had stopped being created. Their last location had been a plebeian city, which only complicated things.

“They didn’t stay shut down,” Callista told him. “They disappeared from my people too, but we get enough hints now and then to know they’re still practicing.”

“Yeah, it’s been a little more extensive than ‘hints.’ We can probably assume it’s a light-haired caste, based on the description of the guy who visited the victims.” Inspiration suddenly struck Justin. “Hang on,” he told Callista. He issued a series of commands to the screen.

It divided into two images, one of which was Callista’s face. The other half displayed a map of the land grants in the Great Plains region of the country. Red dots in each grant marked the patrician victims, while green dots displayed the other living eights and nines in their respective castes. Yellow dots outside the borders indicated the plebeian deaths.

“You’ve got a lot more plebeians there than patricians,” Callista observed. “Even counting the living ones.”

“Because we’re only looking at these five grants,” he said. “The Morrigan’s people probably worked on other castes. They just haven’t had any deaths to catch our attention. I bet there’s a perfect patrician for every plebeian there. And statistically, you’d expect some plebeian deaths to occur for nonsacrificial reasons.”

Mae suddenly stood up. “There’s a pattern.”

“There’s always a pattern.”

“No, look.” She pointed. “All the plebeian and patrician deaths make a circle around this grant. Is that the Pan-Celts?”

“Yes,” said Justin, excitement racing through him. “One of the metas. Light haired, just like our guy.”

“A lot of area for a group to hide out,” said Callista with obvious dismay.

Justin shook his head in bitter amusement. “It’d be nice if your interest in stopping them was out of altruism for those poor victims, but something tells me you’re more concerned with getting rid of a threat to your group.”

“She should be,” said Mae unexpectedly. “Because they want to kill her.”

Both Justin and Callista stared. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“Because he asked me to. The, uh, guy who visited the others. He’s come to me a couple of times.”

Justin couldn’t formulate any words right away. “What? And you only just now thought to mention it?”

“Don’t take that tone,” she snapped. “I didn’t make the connection, any more than you did with a goddess who apparently fits all the criteria we’ve got! I thought he was trying to extort me for the Swedish mafia.”

“What’s going on?” asked Callista, angry at being left out.

“Oh, I must have forgotten to mention that the uncontrollable force that follows Mae is the Morrigan.” Seeing Callista’s mouth drop in shock, Justin quickly preempted any protests. “Don’t question or make accusations. We’re dealing with it.” He turned to Mae. “He seriously asked you to kill her?”