Read Vesik 04 - This Broken World for Free Online

“Dad apologized again. I did not see that coming.”
    “I didn’t either,” I said. “Stubborn old bastard.”
    “That was an amazing, horrible, amazing afternoon.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “that pretty much sums it up.”
    “You’re going to find Koda, aren’t you?”
    I nodded. “How’d you guess?” I gave Sam a sideways glance.
    “When the mood changed from family bonding awfulness, I was pretty sure. Hell, Demon, I don’t think you spoke another sentence longer than two words before we made it out of the house.”
    I laughed. “You’re not wrong. I haven’t talked to him in a while. Since he gave me that manuscript.”
    “That wasn’t long after Cassie …” Sam grew quiet and her gaze wandered to the passenger window.
    We’d lost Cassie in a fight with an Old God. Gurges, god of steam and wind.
    “You really think Glenn is going to start a war over Cassie?”
    “Maybe he would,” I said. “Cassie was a very old friend to him. She was a loss to us all, but don’t forget Ezekiel killed nearly an entire city of Fae. Almost ten thousand dead, all told. There aren’t many people who wouldn’t go to war after that.”
    “They are gods, Damian.” Her gaze swung back to me. “What’s going to happen?”
    I glanced at Sam and took a deep breath. “I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s going to suck.”
    “It scares me. The world at large isn’t ready to see two gods tearing each other apart. If they’re freaking out about that crappy video, what’s going to happen when they get some real footage? A witch hunt with nuclear arms?” She crossed her arms and her head thumped against the window. “Ow.”
    I normally would have laughed, but my brain was following Sam’s train of thought. Commoners weren’t known for their compassion for and understanding of things that go bump in the night. They were already assembling a task force. If they had a task force, they probably had a strike force. What would they do when the things that haunt their nightmares came at them, guns blazing?
    We drove the rest of the way to the Pit in silence.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    M y quiet steps on the wooden stairs fell away to nothing as I reached the carpet on the second floor of Death’s Door. I took a deep breath, letting the smell of the old books settle around me like a mantle of security. I knew I probably wouldn’t be back for a while, so I might as well drink my fill.
    I didn’t waste any time, but I savored the walk between the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Ancient grimoires, interspersed with manuscripts and books on the history of more magical creatures than I could ever hope to memorize, stretched to the ceiling far above.
    My reading sanctuary waited for me at the end of the aisle. A small shelf of my randomly stacked, current reading material was above the chairs. Yellowed manuscript pages and leather-bound tomes debating the innocuousness—or undiluted evil—of soularts were the flavor of the week. Koda, one of the wisest men ever to lead the Society of Flame, had me questioning what was right and wrong. He’d lived and died in times when dark necromancers were one of the worst plagues upon the world, but still he debated their alignments. Whatever I believed, it was a dangerous road either way.
    I slid the old trunk out from its nook in the wall behind the leather chair. Wards were carved deeply into the dark wood, concealing the trunk from most of the world. Zola said they could prevent anything contained within it from being tracked. It had been a gift from the man known only as Ward, a celebration of Zola gaining the right to vote. My hand trailed along the gouges in the wood and the old iron that formed the metalwork along the corners.
    Zola had dealt with the worst humanity had to offer in her lifetime … slavery, war, betrayal, oppression. My thoughts shifted to Hugh. The loss his people had incurred was immeasurable. Would his involvement with me drag the entire pack into a fool’s war? I