Rogue Soul (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 3) (15 page)

On a sob, she collapsed to her knees. He was gone. And she was here. A god. More alone than she’d ever been.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bruxa’s Eye, Present Day

Ana filched the cell phone out of the back pocket of the bruiser leaning on the bar and slipped toward the exit. She’d left the hotel room an hour ago, intent on finding a way to call her friend Esha. She’d called her from Cam’s phone the other day, but she wanted to check up and didn’t want to have to ask Cam to borrow his phone again. The bar down the street had seemed like the perfect place to find a phone, and the big ugly brute who was currently berating the bartender fit her criteria of people she didn’t feel guilty stealing from. And stealing was the only option, considering that pay phones weren’t exactly plentiful in the middle of the Amazon.

With the phone clutched in her hand, she pushed through the side door of the bar. The alley outside was narrow and dark, but it was perfect. She didn’t feel like company right now, and the quiet would allow her to hear anyone sneaking up on her.

After a bit of cursing and fiddling to make the phone work, she punched in the number of her one and only real friend. And she could really use a friend right now.

“Esha?” she said when the ringing ceased and the line clicked.

“Ana? What the hell are you doing with a phone? Moved up from blenders?”

Ana laughed. Esha thought her obsession with the modern technologies that Otherworld lacked was hilarious. It was the reason she knew Esha’s phone number even though she didn’t actually have a phone. When Esha had gotten her cell, Ana had insisted on calling it a dozen times from the home line. Thank gods she remembered the number now. “Fates, I miss you!”

“Then come see me!”

“I wish.” Normally she aetherwalked to visit Esha, popping in to see her for a few hours whenever she could. "How’s Warren?”
 

“He’s good,” Esha said. “Says hi.”

“Hi back. Anyway, I was wondering if you found out anything about the Druid priestess called Druantia.”

“Yeah. She’s the top Druid priestess. Most powerful one alive. She’s creepy, too, from what I hear. Her magic is legendary, though I think she’s fallen on hard times.”

“I’m most interested in her location.” Though Ana had never met Druantia before, she too knew of her, and everything that Esha was saying was spot on. Druantia had once been extraordinarily powerful, the only mortal capable of contacting the gods directly. She hadn’t stayed mortal, though Ana had no idea how she’d made the switch to immortality. But she was grateful for it now. Druantia would be her ticket out of Otherworld. She had to be.

“I don’t have that yet,” Esha said. “I’ve asked around and someone will get back to me with something soon, I’m sure. This is about getting out of Otherworld, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s something wrong. What is it?”

“I’m fine.”

“Whatever. I can hear it in your voice.”

 
She hesitated, unsure of how to bring up any of the hundred things that were bothering her.

“I found Camulos,” she blurted.

“Really?” Nerves tinged Esha’s voice. “Are you okay? He doesn’t want to kill you, right?”

When she’d first learned that Cam might still be alive, she’d been afraid he’d want to kill her for shooting him with the arrows. Over the years, she’d repressed all the good memories of him and focused on the bad. After the nightmare she’d gone through, she hadn’t been able to help herself. But maybe repressing the good hadn’t been fair to Cam. “He doesn’t. And I’m fine.”

“How is Camulos?”

“Um, not bad.”

“Not bad? You’re holding out on me. What’s going on? Come on, ‘fess up.”

How did she even start? “He’s complex.”

“Complex?”

“We’ve got history. You know that.”

“You still have feelings for him. I can hear it in your voice.”

“You’ve got great hearing tonight.”

“Try morning. It’s three AM here in Scotland.”

“Damn, sorry about that. I guess with everything that’s going on here, I lost track of your time.”

“Don’t worry about it. Tell me about Camulos. He was your one big love.”

“That was a long time ago. And it wasn’t love. I was too young for love. And I’m not looking for that, anyway. I want to experience everything I missed out on while I was trapped in Otherworld.”

“Maybe you’re not picking the right things to make up for. There’s something to be said for quality over quantity. What I’ve got with Warren is incredible. Way better than partying and hookups. I want something like that for you, too.”

So do I. To be loved like Esha is would be amazing.
Ana started at the thought, then crushed it. “Well, it’s not what I want.”

“Liar. You just don’t know how to cope with strong feelings anymore, after being locked up in Otherworld for so long. You say you want to party and hook up with a bunch of guys, and that’s great and all, but I think you’re hiding.”

She bristled, then fought it back. Esha was just trying to help. But she
wasn’t
right about her. “It doesn’t matter anyway. For me to be able to escape Otherworld, he would have to go back.”

“What?” Esha cried.

Ana relayed what Cam had told her about the power balance in Otherworld requiring a war god of appropriate skill. It made her chest feel heavy and her mind feel cluttered just to think about it.

“There’s no way he’d be willing to return?” Esha asked.

“No way. And no surprise. It’s utterly awful there.”

“Damn. That’s just… damn.”
 

“Yeah. Now you see why it doesn’t matter if I did want something more. It’s impossible when one of us is going to end up in Otherworld.”

“Look, if there’s anything I can do, let me know,” Esha said. “And you know I love you. I think you should have other people who love you too.”

Ana’s heart thudded with pathetic gratitude to her only real friend. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, well, come see me soon.”

“I will. We’re actually headed that way. We fly out tomorrow.”

They said their goodbyes and Ana pressed
End
. She stared down at the phone, wondering if Esha was right about her not being able to cope with real feelings.
 

No way. She was coming to earth because she missed all that.

And even if the idea of Cam caring for her made her heart ping around inside her chest like a pinball gone mad, it didn’t matter because one of them had to end up in Otherworld.

 
But she wasn’t the same girl she’d once been, who’d thirsted for love and approval. She was a goddess, even if she didn’t really want to be one, and she was tough and independent and she didn’t rely on anyone. She realized that she was pounding her fist into her palm in time to her exclamations and stopped.

Loving someone was the worst way to rely on them. She relied only on herself. That’s who she was.
 

And she was going to go into that bar to pick up a man and prove Esha wrong. She shoved the phone into her pocket and spun, pushing open the door. A blast of noise hit her.
 

Shit, she was being an idiot. She scowled and let the door swing shut, dropping her back into the quiet dark of the alley. Of course she wasn’t going to go in there and pick up some guy while the gods could possibly be on her tail. She should head back. And if she were honest with herself, she didn’t really want some other guy.

She huffed, then set off down the alley toward the main street, turning onto the boardwalk toward their hotel. A stumbling pair of drunken shifters lurched in front of her, their tails hanging down behind them as if they’d let their inner animal escape a bit.

The roar of a crowd caught her attention, and she glanced left. There was an empty lot situated between two buildings, a fight ring in the middle, like the one in the Caipora’s den. It must have been darkened when she passed by it the first time. Lights now shined down on an empty ring, but from the sound of the cheers, the fighters were making their way to it.

She wanted to step off the boardwalk and wind her way through the crowd toward the ring so that she could feel the action and energy in the air. So that she could feel something other than the angst and desire that Cam dredged up in her. The din of the jeering Mytheans drowned out the howls of the jungle creatures. Maybe it could drown out the howling in her mind.

She’d just turned her head to keep moving toward the hotel when she caught sight of a flash of familiar ginger hair. Cam was climbing into the ring, his chest bare and his fists wrapped in white.

She stepped off the boardwalk and headed toward the ring. With some threatening glares, she managed to push her way to the front, so close that she could see the dark splotches on the floor of the ring. Blood from previous matches.

Her eyes raked Cam’s form, desperately tracing over the muscles that curved and cut across his bare torso. The lights gleamed off of his wide chest and caressed his chiseled arms and shoulders.
 

Ana dragged her gaze away from Cam to look for his opponent. After a moment, an enormous man climbed into the ring. He looked to be part giant, at least seven and a half feet tall and half as wide. The crowd roared.

“Cam.” The whisper slipped through her lips before she could stop herself.
 

He looked toward her as if he’d heard her, his gaze finding hers across the night. His eyes flashed. He turned to face his opponent.
 

Her heart clutched. She glanced nervously at the giant. But Cam was big too. Probably only a foot shorter than his opponent. All gods were bigger than the average mortal. Except her, the formerly mortal halfling.
 

He stood in his corner, as relaxed as if he was on the beach, and watched the other fighter. His slate eyes were calm, his pale skin and red hair gleaming in the light. He lived out here in the jungle, all northern warrior in the southern heat.
 

He would be fine. Just fine.
But she clutched her bow all the same, seeking what little comfort she could.

The screech of a whistle cut through the night, and Cam strolled to the center of the ring to face his opponent. The fight started too soon, before she could brace herself for the smack of fists on flesh.

Cam took the first punch, an anvil to his shoulder that sent him back a step. He grinned. They circled each other, and Ana’s heart lodged itself uncomfortably in her throat.

Cam landed a punch to the giant’s right cheek, another to his midsection. He was more than holding his own in the fight, despite their difference in size, and Ana found lust competing with her fear. His face looked mean, ready to hurt, and a different kind of fear crept along her nerve endings. The good kind.
 

She shivered, drawn unconsciously toward the ring. He was so big. So dangerous. So everything. Her hand tightened in a fist of want.

She was so screwed.

Cam’s muscles sang and sweat dripped into his eyes as he delivered the punch he was sure would end the fight. The big bastard across from him reeled on his feet, suspended almost comically, and then crashed to the ground. Cam stood over him, breath sawing in and out of his lungs.

This hadn’t cleared his mind as he’d hoped it would. It might have worked, if he hadn’t seen Ana standing outside of the ring.
 

“Round goes to Cam!” a deep voice hollered from the corner of the ring.

It was time to get the hell out of there and away from this crowd. Away from Ana. He climbed between the ropes just as his opponent was dragged beneath them. He grabbed his shirt from where he’d left it draped over one of the lower ropes and pushed his way through the crowd so that Ana couldn’t catch him if she followed.
 

The aggression of the fight, the bloodlust, still rode him hard. Combined with everything he was still feeling, he needed a few more minutes before he saw her again. He was starting to lose control where she was concerned. Combined with his high from the fight, it was a dangerous combination.

He unwound the wrapping on his hands as his long strides ate up the street. The tiny hotel lobby was empty and he slipped up the stairs. When he finally made it to the shower, he groaned as the water poured down over him. He shouldn’t feel old. But he did. His shoulder and jaw ached where his opponent had popped him, and his brain felt beaten up from the ride he’d taken it on these last couple days with Ana.