This Eternity of Masks and Shadows by Karsten Knight

Author:Karsten Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Karsten Knight
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A Serpent in the Path

Nook was having a bad day.

He’d started off the morning responding to a stalking case—an obsessed fan who had broken into the house of the famous swimsuit model Voluptas. In the dead of night, the Roman goddess of sensual pleasure had woken in her bed to find a masked intruder sheering off a lock of her signature golden hair. Just as startled as she was, the man had chosen that moment to profess his love for Voluptas, while assuring her that the hair would be an important addition to the shrine he was building for her. Fortunately, her wild shrieks had sent her two pet Dobermans scampering into the room, at which point the man had jumped from her second-floor balcony and fled into the woods.

The suspect had also left a severed goat’s head in the goddess’s bathroom as an “offering.” Upon finding the bloody head, Nook had said to his partner, “Mating rituals have really changed since I was younger.”

Now Nook would have to scour all the lewd Instagram messages and unsolicited photos in Venus’s inbox to identify suspects, a cumbersome task given that she received hundreds a day.

To make matters worse, that pesky journalist Quinn Cypress was haunting his precinct, trying to sniff out dirt about Raijin, the debacle at the Museum of Fine Arts, and how the police had let one of their criminal informants take hostages. He was getting enough grief from his captain already, and Nook knew he was one strike—or one scathing exposé—away from surrendering his badge.

To top it all off, he was recovering from a raging hangover.

His head still felt like an ice pick had been driven through it when he arrived at Senator Ra’s estate. Ra, an American history buff, had purchased a Colonial mansion in Concord, just downriver from where the first shots of the Revolutionary War had been fired two and a half centuries earlier.

Security guards with assault rifles stopped him at the front gates. One of them scrutinized his badge, then had a muffled conversation into the radio clipped to his shoulder, before finally waving Nook through.

As Nook stepped out of the Challenger, Ra emerged from the front door, arms spread and the usual smile plastered across his face. “Somebody call animal control—there’s a bear loose in my yard.”

Nook forced a smile in return. The two had attended university together, but Nook had been a few years the senator’s junior, and they’d never been particularly close. Still, ever since graduation, Ra had acted like they were old chums whenever their paths crossed.

Nook nodded back toward the guards at the front gates. “Blame your welcoming committee. They’re sure packing a lot of firepower to protect a god with literal firepower.”

“Oh, they’re mostly for show, so Madison and Dima feel safe whenever I’m away in Washington.” Ra clapped Nook on the back and led him toward the house. “Can I get you a drink? I just opened a bottle of small-batch bourbon.”

Nook winced at the thought of it, as the dull ache behind his temples continued to throb.

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