The Battle Cry (The Guardians of Tara Book 2) by S.M. Schmitz

Author:S.M. Schmitz [Schmitz, S.M.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Published: 2017-02-19T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Sirens wailed all over Baton Rouge, immediately alarming both Cameron and Selena as they returned to the city to rejoin their friends in the search for Huitzilopochtli and the army he’d been amassing. Selena opened their hotel room door and summoned Badb who grabbed her hand and began pulling her away.

“We have to get to the hospital,” Badb said.

“Again?” Cameron groaned. “I thought Ukko forced Loviatar to end the outbreak. And she’s dead now.”

“She did end the outbreak,” Badb explained. “Something else is going on in Baton Rouge though. I’m not sure who’s responsible…”

The whirring of the rotor blades of passing helicopters made all three gods look to the sky where a long column of black choppers quickly approached the city. The walkway vibrated as the heavy rumbling of treads clamored down the street beside them. Cameron walked to the edge of the hotel and peered down at the street where tanks and Humvees passed in a loud procession toward downtown Baton Rouge.

“What the hell,” he murmured. “Are we being invaded?”

“Yes,” Badb whispered. “Either killing Loviatar didn’t stop whatever has been set in motion or there’s another god capable of inflicting disease on mortals because this city is under siege. And the hospitals are being flooded with reports of the plague.”

“Oh God,” Cameron groaned. “Not the plague again.”

“Which god?” Selena asked absentmindedly. Her eyes remained riveted to the procession below them.

“I don’t know,” Cameron admitted. “But Badb, look at this place. We can’t just go into a hospital and start healing people like we did in New Orleans. The government knows about us now, and they’ve ordered the New Pantheon to either arrest us or kill us.”

“But people will die, Cameron!” Badb protested.

Cameron ran his fingers through his hair as he watched the invasion of his home city, the heavy realization that people in his city had been afflicted with the plague. And then the heavier realization of exactly what this meant for him personally seemed to punch him in the chest, causing a sickening pain that made it difficult to breathe. “My God,” he whispered. “My family.”

The hotel dissolved into a quiet neighborhood with pin oak trees dotting the front yards near the sidewalks, causing the concrete to buckle and break in the trees’ stubborn insistence to spread its roots wherever it damn well pleased. Cameron felt Selena’s hand wrap around his as she stared at the modest brick ranch style home in front of them. One light remained on and illuminated the shadowy figure of a lamp through the curtains in the living room.

“They’ll be all right, Cameron,” Selena promised. “If anyone is sick, I’ll heal them.”

Cameron swallowed and continued to stare at the front door. His front door. The same door he’d unlocked countless times after school or coming home to visit during college. This was his home, and the gods had brought their own Hell to it.

“My father always told us never to trust the gods,” he murmured. “And I’m supposed to walk in there as one of them? Look at what they’re doing.

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