Sun God Seeks…Surrogate? (Accidentally Yours #3)(69)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

“Emma. Seriously?”

“I’m just sayin’.” She smiled with a goofy grin.

No, she wasn’t serious, but I appreciated the effort to make me laugh.

“All right, my little goody-goody.” She stood up. “After you eat, Zac will drive you to the camp. I’ll see you in the Control Room.”

“So this is it? We’re going to attack? So fast?”

“The troops were already on standby. They mobilized five minutes after the meeting concluded. They should be hitting the Maaskab village any minute.”

Emma turned to leave.

“Hey,” I called out.

She froze with her back to me. I noticed that today she wasn’t wearing one of her usual girly outfits, but the standard Uchben uniform: black tee and cargoes.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “I mean, with what Guy’s about to do?” Yes, Guy was a god and immortal, but that didn’t mean going head-to-head with the Maaskab wasn’t dangerous. Who knew what those monsters had up their sleeves? After all, look what they’d done to Kinich.

She shrugged without looking my way. “A god’s gotta do what a god’s gotta do. Especially the God of Death and War.” She left without letting me see her face. I understood why. Tears didn’t serve any purpose at this point.

I took a slow breath, trying not to let it all tear me up. The world now hung on a razor-sharp edge.

Selfishly, I could only think of Kinich.

***

At twenty minutes to midnight I followed Zac through the vacant lobby of a two-story office building situated at the edge of the Uchben camp. This didn’t seem like the sort of place where strategic world decisions were made.

We walked down a long, narrow hallway with glass walls and empty, dark conference rooms on each side. We turned the corner and encountered two heavily armed guards next to a harmless-looking elevator.

“Sir,” one of the men nodded stiffly when we stepped inside.

Zac, like the other gods, towered over any human. Hardened, battle-seasoned men looked miniature sized in his presence.

“God of Intimidation?” I asked.

He smiled with that knowing, insanely charming smile. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

He pressed the Down button, and I realized that the modest structure we’d entered was a façade. The heart of the operation was buried twenty stories belowground, given that he’d pressed B-20.

After a short ride down, the doors slid open. As we stepped out, perhaps due to the absolute silence of the long, dark hallway illuminated by red bulbs, I felt intensely aware of Zac—a god who didn’t know his path or purpose, yet glowed with confidence. He exuded absolute comfort with his place in the universe.

Funny how one man could flourish in the face of uncertainty while it crippled others.

“How do you make the whole ‘not knowing’ thing look so easy?” I asked.

He gently placed his hand on my lower back to guide me along. “When we each came to light, most knew right away which gifts they carried while others merely felt power, but were unable to command it. Over many centuries, those gods spent all of their time honing their gifts.”

“But not you.”

We continued along the eerie, dark hallway until we reached an iron door.

“No,” he replied. “This is why I spent my time developing in other ways. Finding peace was one of them.”

He truly had a Zen-like outlook on life. I was jealous.

“Are you saying,” I asked, “you’re okay with never finding your gifts?”

“No. But it will happen when it is meant to be. And I believe I am close.”

“Really?” I asked. “How do you know? Do you get a tingle or a special feeling?”

“A god finds his powers when he or she experiences the strength that they house. Acan didn’t know he was the God of Wine until he tried it about two thousand years ago.”

Zac punched several numbers into a keypad beside the steel door. The pad beeped and the panel door slid open.

“How exciting. So, if you took a stab, what would you guess your power will be?”

He looked straight ahead. “It is something I’ve only recently discovered: love.”

***

Zac’s little comment boggled the mind, my mind.

The God of Love?

It made sense. From the get-go, I wasn’t able to articulate or rationalize how it was physically possible for me to feel anything for a man I didn’t know from Peter or Paul, but I did. I felt nothing but warmth and affection in his presence.

Yes. It made perfect sense. Suicide made me angry and depressed. Acan made people want to party—not me, for some weird reason. Zac made me feel loved.

Except that Kinich gave you the anti-god whammy. You’re immune to their powers.

Nooo. It must’ve worn off. I wasn’t that sort of girl, the kind that hopped from one lily pad to the next. Kinich was, without a doubt, the one I loved.

He left you. Don’t forget that.

“Ready?” Zac’s towering frame turned to the side as he held the door open.

I shook my head. “Not really.” I paused in the doorway and looked up into his arctic-blue eyes. They had specs of green that seemed to dance around the pupils.

Mesmerizing.

“Zac, can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” he replied.

“Do you really think this is the end if we don’t win?”

His warm smile melted away. “Yes.”

“I see.” I turned away and continued until we reached yet another door. “Then we better kick ass.”

The door swung open in front of me. “Penelope! Where have you been?” Emma barked. “They’ve started! Oh my god, it’s a f**king mess!”

“Shit!” I followed her into a large stadium-style room. There were ten tiers, each one about ten feet wide. Each tier had a station every five feet with a computer bank, monitors, and a person frantically speaking on a headset or typing into a keyboard. A giant floor-to-ceiling screen was situated in the front of the room displaying an infrared satellite feed with little, moving, colored dots.

Emma darted to a station at the top tier’s center where a woman with golden spirals stood frantically talking with a man.

“Helena. Andrus. This is Penelope,” Emma said.

“We’ve already met.” We exchanged polite nods.

Helena, a petite, little thing, looked up at me with her bright blue eyes. “They are getting their asses handed to them. We have to do something! The Maaskab are sifting in and out of their portals so fast we can’t kill them.”