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Carver rolled his eyes.
“You know, he doesn’t even need it,” Gil whispered. “Vampires don’t sweat. I’m extra hairy, like, everywhere, and if I miss just one shower it’s wet dog city. It’s so unfair.”
No sweating, and no body odor for all eternity? Suddenly the little perks of undeath were looking very appealing. Very briefly I considered the possibility of letting Sterling turn me after all, just in case this whole find-the-Codex thing didn’t work and I needed to worm my way out of the Dionysus problem. But Carver threw us a withering glare. Gil stopped talking at once, and I coughed softly into my fist.
The corner of Amaterasu’s mouth quirked in amusement. “Your two proteges are – interesting, in and of themselves. One is tainted by the moon curse. The other is tainted by something greater. Something worse. It’s very bold of you to have brought them here. Uninvited. Without telling me.”
“I thought you might find them interesting,” Carver said. “There’s something to learn from everyone, after all. Someone told me that once.”
Amaterasu smiled, but only briefly, the turn in her lip vanishing as quickly as it appeared. “Yet I also notice that you’ve come without an offering. You are really testing my patience with these breaches of etiquette.”
Carver sighed. “I’ve grown accustomed to your unique way of doing things. The radiant Amaterasu demands an offering when you enter her domicile, not before. Isn’t that how you like things to work?”
She smiled again, more broadly this time. “How sweet of you to remember.” The smile vanished. “An eye. Give me one of your eyes.”
I froze. Was she serious?
“Only an eye this time?” Carver chuckled. “And here I thought you would ask for my heart.”
What the hell was going on? I’d never seen this side of Carver. Then again I’d never seen him interact with anyone outside of our little circle of unfriends at the Meathook. I watched the two of them with interest, my mind recording everything, eagerly taking notes.
But the flirtation had ceased, at least for the moment. Carver reached up to his face, his fingers digging into the socket of his eye. I squirmed as I watched him pluck the entire eyeball out of his skull, and I waited for the accompanying gush of blood – but it didn’t come. The eye swiveled around in his hand, as if it had a life of its own, and its gaze came to rest on me. I can’t tell you how I know, but I swear it winked at me.
He stepped forward, hand outstretched, presenting the eyeball
to the sun goddess. Her expression remained unchanged, but I could tell that her cheeks were rosier.
“Then this is mine to keep?”
“The gift matches the receiver. I know you’ll make full use of it, even though you can already quite literally see everything under the sun.” Carver chuckled again. “And I can always make another.”
Make another. I knew that like Thea, Carver was an accomplished enchanter in his own right, crafting the ensorcelled jewelry he constantly wore on his fingers. It wasn’t a stretch to assume that he also created that thing that he plucked out of his eye socket. Was that how he located me, how he always knew where to send Sterling and Gil before I joined their little crew?
Amaterasu grinned openly, letting the eye roll about in the palm of her hand before pocketing it somewhere in the folds of her immense garment. “Ask, and you may receive.”
“You know of the nature of – some of my colleagues. We have a preference for moving in darkness, but there’s something we must do that necessitates working in the daytime. I request you gift us with some method of temporarily blotting out the sun.”
Amaterasu laughed. “Truly? You ask me to hide my countenance from the world?”
“Yes,” Carver said, a smirk on his lips. “I’d say around two in the afternoon, in Valero. The Gridiron, specifically. Pacific Standard Time.”
The goddess laughed even harder. “Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? I’ve retreated from the world before, when my brother frightened me so much that I hid myself in a cave.” She lifted her chin, her spine straightening. The light pouring from her skin shone even brighter. “I will never be made to dim my radiance again.”
“Please,” I blurted. “Hear us out.”
Was I talking out of turn? Sure, but maybe this required a stronger hand. Carver was banking on his prior relationship with the entity, on this play of flirtation and gentle mockery. We needed an alternate approach, good cop, bad cop. Ultimately, I just didn’t want to die, and I knew that finding the Codex was the key to saving my hide. And fine, yes, saving the potential dozens or hundreds of other innocents that the Viridian Dawn could hypothetically harm with its insane magi-terrorist attacks.
“We’re looking for an artifact that’s in the possession of – well, of unsavory characters. They’ve killed twelve mortals already, and driven a thirteenth into insanity.”
“It is no concern of mine whether – ”
“And they did that by corrupting a god’s possessions.”
She stopped, regarding me coolly. Ah, that was it. Now it was personal, and I didn’t have to actually state the rest of my point in order to make it clear. The silence rang louder: the Viridian Dawn could go for Amaterasu’s relics next. If anyone had divine artifacts worth worrying about, it was the Japanese goddess of the sun.
“We’re unsure of how these people – the Viridian Dawn, they call themselves – came to acquire artifacts belonging to the gods. But they did, and in corrupting one such relic, they’ve killed many. Who’s to say that they won’t go for the treasures of other gods? It’s worse than thievery,” I said, somehow keeping a straight face as I spoke. “They’re playing with things that don’t belong to them, that they don’t deserve.”
“Like Prometheus.” Amaterasu frowned, and her chin lifted even higher. Aha. I hit it on the mark. This would jeopardize her pride. The light from her skin glowed even stronger, reflecting off the pure walls of crystal that made up the barrier to her dimension.
