The trio of adventurers stare into the eerily lit mansion. One, a weapons expert, the second, an intelligent, beautiful and charismatic leader. And Finally, the muscle, a foolish friend with a name that starts with a big D.

  Together, they face an unknown evil. The weapon’s expert checks his gun, while Big D silently thanks god that he’s not wearing a red shirt.

  “Elena?” Blake breaks me out of my internal monologue.

  “Hm?” I answer, studying the broken down mansion.

  “Are you ready?”

  I pause, meeting his eyes, then I smile. “Let’s go then.”

  I walk forward, with Blake right next to me. Damien follows a step behind, his eyes searching the mansion as we approach. I pause at the broken hinge of the gate, recognizing blood on the ground.

  The door to the mansion is open, so I motion for the two boys to hold. I search with my psi, for anyone on the other side of the door, but no one’s there. I expand my search through the mansion, and notice two men in a room on the second floor.

  I put my finger to my lips, and both boys nod. I lead the boys inside, and very faintly I can hear the sounds of two voices.

  With careful steps, we make our way to the second floor. I twist my psi, making sure that the spell I’d just learned is available at a moment’s notice.

  As we creep closer, the words become clearer.

  A deep voice rumbles through the house. “-Believe this shit man. This isn’t-” I miss the last word as the voice quiets. “Why did Doss leave us here? There’s no way Demor walks through that door once he realizes we’re here.”

  We turn down a hallway, at the end of which is a single door where the voices are coming from.

  A second voice picks up, this one rough from years of smoking, “It’s all ‘cause of your dumb ass. You fucking idiot. Now we gotta try to fucking kill Mr. Demor and his fucking guards whenever the fuck he gets-”

  “Hey, is that what I think it is?” The first man interrupts.

  “It’s a fucking car.” The second man says, his voice quieting, “Someone is fucking here.”

  “That’s why you were supposed to be keeping lookout. Shit man. We are so dead. Mr. Demor is going to kill us.”

  “Mr. Demor don’t drive no Honda Civic.” The second man says after a second, surprisingly not saying a single curse word.

  The floorboard under Blake’s boot lets out a long Creeeeeeeek, followed by a muffled “shit”.

  The door at the end of the hallway slams open, revealing a large muscular man covered in tattoos. In his hands, he holds a large machine gun. He pauses as he sees us, caught by surprise from us being right there.

  I raise my hand, “[Stop Right There]”

  Then he opens fire. My ears hurt as I maintain the psi spell, bullets stopping in mid air in front of us.

  A brief glance behind me shows the two boys with their eyes closed in preparation for death.

  Hah. Boys.

  The machine gun sputters to a stop, and the boys open their eyes. They stare in awe at the wall of bullets held in the air in front of us.

  A cigar I hadn’t noticed drops to the ground as the muscular man stares at us in shock.

  I drop the spell, and the bullets drop to the floor in a clattering of hundreds.

  “What the fuck are you guys doing?” I ask, “Shoot him!” My yell startles the two boys out of their shock.

  Damien hesitates, but three shots ring out as Blake calmly aims and fires. His hands shake slightly, but I don’t comment.

  The muscular man falls to the ground, bleeding from shots to the head and chest. Behind him stands a wiry man now covered in blood. The wiry man falls to his knees and raises his hands, a gun dropping to the floor. A surprisingly deep voice comes out as he says, “please don’t shoot. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  Damien steps forward. We move the man into the room, and Damien grabs some rope, setting down his gun to tie the man tightly to a chair, moving with surprising efficiency.

  I grab the gun that Damien had laid down when he was tying the ropes. I point it at the man’s head. “Tell me where Rose Demor is.”

  Blake looks at me in shock, while Damien steps back. It’s at that point, that I realize I’d never actually told them what was going on.

  Note to self: Give Blake a hug and a kiss. Also, get rid of any red shirts Damien may own.

  The man stares at the gun, sweat beading on his forehead. He probably realized how little I know about guns from the way I’m holding it.

  “There’s no need for guns, I’m happy to tell you anythin’ you need to know.”

  I place the gun down, and I hear a collective breath as everyone relaxes. Come on, I wasn’t that bad at holding the gun. Probably.

  “Well. Tell us then.” I say, crossing my arms.

  “I don’t know exactly where they took her, but I’ll you the address that Doss is tellin’ Mr. Demor.” He pauses, his eyes narrowing in on me, “Doss has a man just like you, you know. Able to work magic.”

  I raise my eyebrows at that, but I don’t want to delay any longer by asking more questions. “Tell me the address.”

  He does, and I motion for us towards the stash of weapons the men had. “Blake, do you want any of those?” Just from a glance, I see a rifle and some more handguns, along with a couple boxes of what I’m guessing to be ammo.

  He grabs one of the boxes.

  Then we leave, the man still tied to the chair.

  The walk to the car feels a lot shorter than the walk to the mansion. Blake stops at the driver’s door, then turns away from the car to throw up into some bushes. Damien joins him shortly after.

  I sigh as I open the car. Thankfully, Damien brought a water bottle, and I have mine in my backpack. Blake has some mints in the passenger compartment, which I also grab. Then I lean against the car and wait.

  It only takes a minute for both of them to finish up, at which point I hand Blake my water bottle and give Damien his. They both spend a minute cleaning out their mouths.

  Blake tries to hand me my water bottle, but I ignore it and say “I am not touching that.”

  “Sorry.” He says.

  I hand him a mint, “It was hard for me the first time I saw death too.”

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  “Your brother, right?”

  I freeze, “Who told you that?”

  “Sorry, I could’ve said that better. Your sister and i were talking-”

  “I don’t want to talk about that. Ever.”

  The man smartly closes his mouth, and looks away from my gaze.

  Thankfully, Damien finishes a second later. I tear my gaze away from Blake to hand Damien a mint.

  “Let’s get going.” I say. Neither of them argue as we get into the car.

  I grab Blake’s phone and put in the address.

  “That’s a weird place to be meeting a kidnapper.” Blake says.

  I nod at his words.

  “Where is it?” Damien asks.

  “Downtown, in an office building for a mattress company.” I answer.

  “Elena.” Blake says, making me look up at him. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I’ll tell you as you drive.” I motion for him to start the car.

  He nods, turning to the front and turning the key. WIth a rumble, we pull out of the driveway and make our way towards downtown.

  “From what I understand, Rose’s father is part of a criminal syndicate, and he is leading a sort of civil war in the organization.”

  We continue driving for a little bit before Blake says cautiously, “And…?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Elena?”

  “Whatsup?” I respond, acting as empty headed as possible.

  Damien cut in, “Why the hell did none of those bullets from the machine gun hit us?”

  “If I said magic, would you believe me?” I respond, leaning back and looking out the back window.

  “I would have, if you hadn’t said it like that.” Blake says, his eyes glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

  “It is magic. I physically can’t tell you more than that.” I run my hands through my hair nervously.

  “Why can’t you tell us more than that?” Blake asks the question I see both of the boys thinking.

  “It’s hard to explain. My thoughts just won’t let me tell you more than that. It’s kinda weird actually, anytime I think about bringing it up, I just can’t. I can say that I signed a non-disclosure agreement-” I raise my eyes to the sky “Which I technically didn’t sing by the by- I wonder what would happen if I tried to write it down?” My mind starts to wander as I think about ways to get around the strange compulsion.

  “Elena, come back to earth please.” Blake takes a hand off of his wheel to waive at me.

  I bring my eyes down from the ceiling of the car to look at him.

  “That man said that Doss has another person like you, what can we expect from them?”

  I frown as I think, “I don’t know. There are a lot of things in my world that I don’t understand.”

  Like us?

  Shut up.

  “What should we do if we encounter them?” Damien asks.

  I hum before answering “If I had more time, I would try to create more protection for you. As it is, you should run away as soon as you see them, and hope I can deal with them.”

  I look down at my gloved hands. I should have paid Taylor to identify more of Mr. Monroe’s abilities, but it hadn’t occurred to me at the time.

  The car is silent for the rest of the ride. By the time we find parking, the sky has almost fully darkened into night.

  We all sit in the car for a moment.

  I take a deep breath, “You guys can wait here, you know? I can handle myself pretty well.”

  Blake turns around in his seat to look at me. “Will a bullet through the brain still kill you?”

  I stare into his eyes, “You have to realize that that is a weird question to ask a girl, in any situation.” At his continued stare, I look away, “Yeah, I can heal from a lot, but that would probably kill me.”

  “Then I’m going in there with you.” Blake grabs both guns from the passenger compartment, then he looks to Damien. “You can still stay behind.”

  I turn to look at Damien. He gulps, before the resolve he’d already shown comes back full force. Damine holds his hand out. “I won’t hesitate to shoot this time.”

  Blake places the gun in his hand. “Good, Elena won’t always be able to cover for us. You can’t hesitate when someone is shooting at you.” I hear some of Blake’s father in his voice, which I don’t know how to feel about. Being raised in a military family isn’t all bad.

  You know what to do when your friend needs your help fighting gang members and rescuing kidnapped classmates.

  I open the door and step out of the car. I wonder about the person “like me”. My first guess was that it was Mr. Monroe, but the more I think about it, the less it makes sense. Doss was the name of the boss, and Scott Monroe isn’t the kind of person to share power. But it seems likely that they are a Beta Tester of some kind.

  And if they’re a Beta Tester, they’ll be able to destroy the field blocking the bullets easily. I’ll need to be ready with the other defensive spell.

  I take a deep breath as the two boys get out of the car. I look at them, and can’t see the guns on them. Good.

  We walk up to the building, and the automatic doors open for us, leading into a lobby. Two women sit at a desk, chatting lightly. Flowing water, plants and marble plants give an almost peaceful atmosphere to the place.

  The two boys shift nervously, looking every which way. I place one hand on each of their shoulders. “It’ll be fine. I doubt they want this place destroyed. They won’t start a gunfight here. At least not yet.” I wink at them.

  I pull away from the boys and walk up to one of the women. She is the older of the two, and her hair is starting to turn gray, but she gives me a practiced smile that highlights her dimple.

  “Hi. Can you help me?”

  “Of course dear, What do you need?”

  “I am looking for a friend of mine, and I was told that she’s here. Rose Demor.”

  The woman’s gaze sharpens, her smile never disappearing. “Demor? I’m afraid that we don’t have anyone by that name here.”

  I flip my hair over my shoulder, and lean onto her desk. I give her a look of disappointment and shake my head. “Really? That’s too bad. I wasn’t aware that Doss was a liar. You see, he told us that she would be here, so naturally, I assumed she would. I’ll just have to tell Mr. Demor that his daughter is dead and he is free to nuke this place to high heaven.”

  I turn around, but the woman reaches out and grabs my hand. “Oh. You mean Miss Demor, of course. That’s my silly mistake, Doss will be waiting for you on floor five. I am terribly sorry for the confusion. We weren’t expecting you so soon.”

  I reach over and pat the woman on the cheek as I smile a smile full of teeth. “All is forgiven.” I slip out of her grip, and walk back towards the boys. “We need to go to the third floor.”

  Damien starts to move towards the elevator, but I reach out and grab him by the back of his collar.

  I point to the stairwell. “I don’t like elevators, they malfunction too often. Especially when you are going to meet someone that probably makes people have ‘accidents’ for a living.”

  “Good point.” Damien says, turning around.

  I shake my head.

  We make our way up the stairwell, then pause at the top as the boys take a breather. “You guys really need to get in shape. Aren’t the sports seasons coming up?”

  Blake holds up a finger as he finally starts breathing normally. “First off, you ran up those stairs as fast as you could. Second, sports seasons? Come on, even you know better than that.”

  I smile, then turn towards the door.

  No one waits for us near the entrance, which is nice. But I do see five rough looking men in suits standing in front of the elevator doors.

  “You guys waiting for someone?” I call out to them.

  All of the men move at once. Immediately, two of the suited men are on either side of me, grabbing my arms. A third man reaches for a gun, but doesn’t raise it, instead watching all of us. The fourth man steps in front of the only man not wearing a black suit.

  I shake my head at the boys, telling them to not reach for their weapons. “Good evening gentleman.” I say. “I wasn’t expecting to be manhandled during our first meeting, but que sera sera. You must be Doss?” I look at the man in charge with a tilt of my head.

  He studies me with a sharp gaze. “Yes, I am. And you are?”

  “I’m the girl looking for Rose Demor.” I respond, smiling at him. “I’d offer a handshake, but your men have kindly restrained me from any kind of movement. “

  Doss chuckles, then motions for his men to stand down. Everyone backs off a little bit. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get up here? This is the only elevator up.”

  “We took the stairs.” I say with a shrug.

  Doss laughs. “You’re very calm. Mr. Demor sent quite the negotiator. It would be a shame if I have to kill you by the end of this.”

  “So far, you laugh at my jokes, so I like you too. It would be a shame if I had to kill you as well.”

  He hums, assessing me. “Come, you and your friends can join me in my office. I prefer my negotiations to happen there.”

  Doss turns and walks towards the only open door on the floor. His men wait for us to move, only the one man following close behind Doss.

  I look back at the boys. They stare at me slack-jawed. “What are we waiting for? Come on.”

  https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/107239/the-game-of-the-gods