The Apsara Chronicles Boxed Set Read online

  “Your father’s pendant that should be lost in an inter-dimensional black hole?” asked Radhima. “Sounds like epic to me.”

  The woman made sense. And Vee had little choice if she wanted to figure this out. The box was an invitation.

  To what, Vee had no idea. But she wasn’t about to go in blind. So, she was going to do the only thing guaranteed to spoil her entire month.

  Go visit Mom.

  Chapter 10

  Vee’s fingers curl around the bronze door-handle. It’s cool and calming feel hints at nothing of what lies within the room.

  And yet she can hear her parents’ hushed whispers. She can sense their rising panic. Something is happening and Vee must try to help them. They’d made her remain downstairs, told her she was safer away from the magic.

  Vee had countered, saying how powerful she already was. But they’d gone on and on about how, at only thirteen, she wasn’t ready and how she hadn’t trained long enough. That without the proper training and experience she was a danger to herself and everyone else.

  But Vee knew they were just trying to hold her back. They don’t want her having powers, don’t want her to use those powers for the good of mankind. They want to keep them locked up inside her.

  Which is so stupid.

  She’d obeyed and waited, doing her homework at the kitchen table. Until she heard her mother call out. The fear in her mom’s voice had been enough to get her moving and before she knew it she was opening the door to the upstairs study, her heart thumping against her ribs so hard it hurt to breathe.

  The door swings open, but what Vee sees is nothing like what she’d expected. The room is bathed in darkness, and at the center, light glows around the form of a man, hovering above both her parents.

  She can only make out the outlines of their bodies, detailed by the orange-and-red glow from the suspended man.

  He is laughing as he glares at her mom and dad, sparks of lightning darting from his eyes as he looks down at a spinning vortex of color. His laughter isn’t amused. Instead, he vibrates with anger. Her dad is chanting. Sanskrit words Vee barely understands, while her mom struggles with her magic.

  Neither are able to stop the growing nexus of energy.

  Vee had known from a young age that the house her parents had bought—before she’d even been a figment of their imagination—lay above a chasm of power that connected the human worlds with that of the gods. Not many people have the knowledge or the power to access the Nexus.

  Which is the reason it had remained safe from the rest of the world. But today it looks to Vee like her parents had not heeded their own advice. Instead, they now stand over the open vortex, while a magical man rages against them.

  Vee takes a step closer and gasps as her sight kicks in. That is no man who is threatening her parents’ lives. He is a demon, his glamor cloaking him from prying eyes, and only Vee’s sight and proximity allows her to see his true form.

  Her dad’s voice rings out higher, louder and more desperate with every second that passes.

  “We’re running out of power. We’re gonna lose him.” Her mom’s voice is strident and shaky, as if exhaustion has seared its way into her throat.

  Her dad shakes his head, giving her mom that look that says “Don’t stop, don’t back down.”

  “I can’t, Raj, I don’t have any strength left.”

  Vee can see it too—the energy lines skimming her mom’s body have faded away, and if she keeps at it for too much longer she’ll die.

  Vee knows what she has to do.

  She steps forward and grabs hold of her mom’s hand. She wants to help her, wants to save her from dying while she maintains the spell.

  But the mere touch of Vee’s hand to her mom’s body funnels such an intense blast of energy into the vortex that the impact of power causes an explosion. The force rocks the room, shuddering against the floorboards, pulsing against Vee’s body, hitting the whole Shankar family hard.

  The vortex spins, sucking the demon inside so fast Vee doesn’t expect it. Neither does she expect the demon to reach out for her dad as his body is sucked into the maelstrom of color.

  Raj yells out, shouting the Sanskrit words louder. Perhaps he thinks the chanting will work, but Vee could see for herself that it is doing nothing to the vortex.

  The spinning darkness swallows Dad’s body, pulling him deeper inside as he grips onto the edge the floor. Vee lets go of her mom’s hand and leaps forward, grabbing her dad’s wrist and holding tight.

  He stares at her, horror contorting his features. “No, Vee. Stop. Let me go.” Her father screams the words at her, shocking her to the core.

  “But, Daddy. No. You’ll die.” Vee holds on tight, using her power to fasten her fingers tighter around his wrist.

  “Devi, stop her now.”

  Vee glances at her mom who hesitates, shocked as she looks from her husband to her daughter and back.

  “Devi. We don’t have the time. Make her let me go or the vortex will take you both as well.”

  Vee opens her mouth to tell her mom to stop, but a force of energy tugs on her so hard she is propelled further into the vortex. Her dad has dropped another two feet inside the spinning energy, but Vee still holds onto him, her fingers cramped, her desperation filtering right to her fingertips.

  “Devi,” her father pleads, “stop her now and save yourselves.”

  “No,” whispers her mom. “How can I do that?”

  “We agreed,” he screams, the energy whipping his voice around and around so that it echoes within the confines of the room.

  Whatever they’d agreed to propels her mom into action, and Vee senses her body close as she leans over beside her. She’d thought her mom meant to help pull her dad up and out of the vortex. Instead, she feels her mom begin to peel her fingers back from her Dad’s wrist, one by one.

  “Mom. No,” screams Vee, horrified at what her mom is about to do.

  “You have to let go, Vee. Or we will all die.” Her mother’s voice whips at her, the desperation a living thing, coiling itself around Vee’s pounding heart.

  “No. I’m not letting you kill him,” Vee screams, anger and hatred spilling from her like venom. What kind of a mother would do this?

  “Vee.” The wind within the room steals the sound and Vee barely hears it, barely sees the tears on her mother’s cheeks. She sees the fear, though, the regret and anguish on her mother’s face, but she doesn’t care. She barely listens as her mother says, “I won’t let you kill yourself. I just can’t.” The last words end on a sob, but Vee ignores the rising thrum within her heart.

  Tears stream down Vee’s cheeks and she shakes her head, concentrating on using her already-waning energy to resist the pull of her mom’s fingers.

  But she isn’t strong enough.

  When she hears the crack of bone, she knows the lengths her mom has gone to. Vee’s hold on her father’s wrist gives way at last, and his hand slips through hers, her grasping fingers reaching for him, her nails ripping through the skin of his forearm.

  Vee lunges desperately for him, screaming his name over and over as he falls free of her grasp and disappears into the spinning energy.

  And the vortex slams shut with a sound louder than a clap of thunder, sending Vee and her mom flying across the room.

  The last thing Vee remembered of that night was seeing her mom’s tear-stained face, her hazel eyes horrified, staring at the empty space where the vortex had been only moments before.

  The last thing she’d felt was the stabbing pain in the broken middle finger of her right hand.

  Chapter 11

  “How is it coming along?” the god’s voice echoed as if spoken in a subterranean cave.

  The air around the two beings flowed, eddies of cerulean and coral, colors skimming along the edge of shadows, of a darkness that would otherwise be cloying, suffocating.

  “Far too slowly,” answered Vishnu, shifting his eyes to His face, holding it there despite the sheer strengt
h and power he looked upon.

  “It does not help to be negative.” There was a smile in His voice, a benevolent softening that touched Vishnu’s heart.

  “Not negative,” Vishnu sighed, though the weight upon his shoulders bore down, relentless, unbending. “Just realistic.”

  “Have patience . . .”

  A comforting warmth on his shoulder, like the touch of the sun’s rays on a winter morning, made him look up, but he found himself disappointed. He was but a handbreadth away, but He still remained too far to reach, the distance a yawning chasm.

  Hiding a sad smile, Vishnu waited as He continued, “We’ve put everything in place. And when it all comes together, it will be perfect.”

  Vishnu suppressed a sigh, weariness and sadness weighing him down. “I wish that I had your positivity. Humanity is but a disappointing race, and yet we invest not only our time but our hopes in them.” He shifted to gaze down upon the universe, to study the azure splash of color that was the realm of Earth.

  “What choice do we have?” Vishnu directed his attention back to Him, listening to His words. “Either we do what we must, or we fade away.”

  “That smacks of a desperation I am not comfortable with.”

  “It is more than just desperation. It is a concern for destiny. The Age of Kaliyuga brings with it a level of destruction that not even a god can hold at bay.”

  “And they cannot help?”

  The question sliced the air, then hung in the room like a festering cloud.

  “Cannot. Will not. I do not know that they care to interfere. For them, what is destined shall be. But I cannot give in to that way of thinking. We cannot.”

  Vishnu nodded. “I understand. And you have my support and my devotion.”

  “In truth, your devotion would be better served if focused on them. There is much of the world that we cannot control, where we cannot affect change even if we so desire.”

  Vishnu knew what He meant. “There are many of us who have sought solace in the arms of vanity and self-service. The wayward ones must be brought back into the fold.”

  “To be punished.” There was an edge to His tone, a hardness that spoke of a loss of patience, a heart strained and tired.

  And it hurt Vishnu to hear it.

  He shook his head. “Perhaps. Should punishment be deserved. Although . . . I hope,” he cleared his throat, “I believe we can teach them to see things our way.”

  “The older gods will prove difficult.”

  Vishnu expelled a breath when he heard the subtle change in His voice. An almost imperceptible softening.

  “I expect as much.”

  Chapter 12

  Prithi ran her hands down the front of her pants, glad that the light white linen would absorb the moisture from her palms. Why she, of all people, would be nervous, she had no idea. And yet, her stomach roiled at the prospect of meeting this man.

  She pushed her hair behind her ears and straightened her jacket. Her skin itched, encased within the expensive suit which covered her from neck to ankle, yet revealed every curve of her body.

  How utterly distasteful. She felt as if her body were on show, and she hated it.

  Clearing her throat, she paced, drumming her fingers on the side of her legs as she went. When the door opened, she found herself flinching, the reaction completely unwarranted.

  She was Immortal, she should not fear a mere mortal. And yet, the intrusion on her solitude was sufficient to set her on edge.

  She found herself relieved when the man who entered proved as far from human as one could get.

  Seth.

  He walked in, long languid steps that he seemed to elongate as if strutting to gain her attention. He’d succeeded in receiving it, only she hardly thought he’d be impressed at the nature of her scrutiny.

  She studied him, bald head gleaming in the artificial lights of the office, olive skin, pale blue eyes, a nose that extended from his face, prominent and curved to a beak-like edge.

  Fitting.

  She waved him to the seat and he lowered himself into it, hunching his body into himself, his shoulders pitched high, reedy neck sunken. His human body echoed his true form with a grisly accuracy.

  Prithi moved back to her seat and sat, keeping her eyes on Seth.

  She swallowed hard. She found it a little distasteful having one such as he in her employ, but she would do what needed to be done, no matter the consequences.

  Seth was Gṛdha, a vulture aural. Grdhas were the best assassins-for-hire that money could buy.

  Chapter 13

  Vee materialized in her mother’s waiting room, given a ride there by a very disgruntled Syama. In the aftermath of the revenge threat, the hellhound had insisted on remaining at Vee’s side.

  She’d said something about a divine instruction, so who was Vee to argue?

  Syama had fussed about Vee’s visit to her mother’s office, and had finally agreed to give her a ride. Before the hellhound had transformed she’d reiterated that she wasn’t going to be held responsible if Vee didn’t survive the next altercation with her mother.

  Why did that sound a little like caring?

  Now, Vee smiled up at her mother’s startled PA, whose pretty blue eyes had widened as Vee solidified in front of her. Syama remained invisible within the cloak of her glamor, and stalked over to stand at the outer door of the room. The hellhound’s stride reeked of indignation, and Vee had to hide a smile.

  “Hey you,” said Kesha, who by now was used to Vee’s comings and goings, sudden materializations out of thin air included. “Nice of you to pop by.” The girl giggled and tossed her shoulder-length black curls out of her face.

  Vee snorted and poked a thumb in the direction of her mother’s office. “She in?”

  Kesha nodded, although Vee didn’t miss the sudden darkening of her expression. Kesha, like a number of long-serving staff, was well aware of the tension between herself and her mother. Most were understanding and didn’t pry, but there were the odd few who seemed to exist merely for a taste of the heartache of others.

  Thankfully, Kesha wasn’t one of them.

  She nodded and as Vee turned she said, “Oh, that order you made from Yu-San Corp came through. It’s in your lab.”

  Vee felt a spike of excitement at the news. She’d been working on a long-term project, attempting to create a magical-field propeller that would work like a net and which could be used by non-magical agents in the field.

  She tamped that expectant thrill down as she entered her mother’s office. Devi Shankar sat at her desk, her cell phone to her ear. She watched Vee enter the room, tracking her movements while she listened to the caller on the other end of the line. Vee passed her by and headed to the window to study the view.

  She leaned against the window and waited, giving her mother time to deal with the call. She and Devi had a peculiar relationship. Love and hate waged a constant battle within Vee’s heart, emotions directed at a mother who’d committed the ultimate crime.

  Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she needed calm for this conversation. There were far too many unanswered questions for Vee to go off half-cocked.

  Devi’s phone clinked against the surface of her glass desk and Vee shifted her gaze to meet her mother’s questioning one.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Devi, a dark eyebrow now arching.

  Vee pursed her lips and walked over to the table. She settled one butt-cheek on the table and said, “You need to come home ASAP. There’s something we need to discuss.”

  As unlikely as it seemed to Vee, her mother proceeded to raise the eyebrow even higher.

  Vee had always considered her mother a classic beauty. Heart-shaped face, almond hazel eyes, gorgeous black hair. Vee had inherited much of her looks, except her own eyes were never a constant color. Ever-changing, they often resembled the auras she studied. Despite many attempts, Vee had failed to learn to control them enough to choose the colors she wanted.

  Vee took a brea
th. “We received a package early this morning.”

  The room remained silent as Devi waited for elaboration.

  “It contained something that simply shouldn’t exist.”

  Devi pushed to her feet, spinning. “We don’t have anything to discuss.” Her tone was brusque and sharp and cold. All of which Vee was used to hearing. Still, another tiny part of her died inside her heart. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d come to see her mother clutching onto a tiny, fragile hope that things would get better.

  But she had to be honest with herself. She’d been the one to push her mother away. In the beginning, Devi had tried everything—talking, distraction, even bribery, but Vee had never been able to forgive her, never been able to forget that one god-awful night.

  What her mother had done was unforgivable.

  Would always be unforgivable because it had been a very conscious choice. One that could never be taken back.

  Vee pulled herself out of her thoughts and glared at her mother. “This isn’t a party invitation, Mother. This is serious.”

  God, the woman is frustrating.

  Devi shook her head. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.” Her voice was now devoid of all emotion, a warning sign that Vee was going to get absolutely nowhere.

  Vee got to her feet. “Fine. I’ll handle it on my own. But just so you know, this is serious. So, don’t come asking me why I didn’t tell you about it when it gets worse.”

  She was halfway to the door when her mother’s voice stopped her. “Whatever you do, don’t do anything stupid.”

  Vee straightened her spine and kept walking out into the reception room and straight past Syama.

  Her last thought was, As if you care.

  Vee stormed into her lab, further angered by the stupid door that only shut automatically—and excruciatingly slowly. She hadn’t even had the satisfaction of slamming the damned thing shut.

  The door shut Syama out, but the hellhound was well used to waiting for Vee. Usually she’d tinker around inside the lab while Vee worked, hand over relevant tools or wash equipment out. That she hadn’t entered after Vee was a clear sign she’d chosen to give Vee her space. Vee certainly hadn’t needed a neon sign to broadcast her current state of antagonism.