Erecting Barriers Read online

  Table of Contents

  Erecting Barriers

  Publication Information

  Dedication

  PRAISE FOR AUTHOR

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Also Read

  Thank You

  Erecting Barriers

  by

  LJ Vickery

  Immortals Book Eight

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Erecting Barriers

  COPYRIGHT © 2018 by LJ Vickery

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Kristian Norris

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewilderroses.com

  Publishing History

  First Scarlet Rose Edition, 2018

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-1902-5

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1903-2

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Kim, my wonderful, dedicated, patient PA.

  You make me motivated, keep me laughing,

  and work tirelessly. I love you!

  PRAISE FOR AUTHOR

  LJ Vickery

  AND HER BOOKS

  “Vickery has done it again. You would think each story would be the same ole thing, but she always manages to land a fresh and unexpected twist that leaves you wanting more.”

  ~10914 Reviews

  “This is truly a wonderful series and worth reading!”

  ~A Cozy Booknook Review

  BLOWN AWAY

  “Blown Away gets a powerful five shooting stars! Once you pick up this book, you will want to read it again and again and love it, each and every time. A must, must, must read!”

  ~ Marie’s Tempting Reads

  Prologue

  Matthew ran a hand down Beletseri’s naked back. Since being turned into a god, they’d been fucking non-stop. He loved nestling deep inside his sexy goddess, and now that he had the stamina to stay hard for hours, pleasuring her in every way imaginable, his cock ached for penetration every minute of every day. His lady-love stretched like a cat beneath his palm, the indent of her spine, before it rose into her perfect ass, smooth under his touch. He’d never get enough of her.

  He rolled to his back and sighed. They needed to talk. Not something he and Bel did best. But if they were to succeed in decimating the group of immortals at the Blue Hills, a number of things needed to be hashed out. Matthew raised a hand and sent a gentle, loving spank to the posterior he’d been admiring.

  “What?” Bel mumbled, wiggling from the slight sting, and clearly not ready to emerge from her drowsy state. Matthew took advantage of her relaxed frame of mind.

  “I’ve been thinking…”

  Bel huffed air out of her nose. All right, maybe not so relaxed, but he continued, needing to get things said. “Now that I’m a god”―he’d never tire of that phrase―”shouldn’t we just go find a place to call our own and leave the annoying immortals to their own devices?”

  Beleteseri’s exhalation became a full-on hiss. She turned and punched him in the chest, momentarily knocking him backward.

  “Hey.” Matthew rubbed the spot, which when mortal would have blossomed into a deep, painful bruise. As a god, he barely flinched. “What was that for?” He growled his displeasure, and caught her hand as it raised for another blow. “We’re talking here,” he attempted to remind her. “No fighting.”

  The knowledge came into her eyes that she could no longer cow him with superior immortal strength. In making him a god, she’d relinquished that power. Matthew observed her body as she assumed a relaxed position again, and chuckled internally. He could feel her, still tightly coiled―another thing she’d given up when mating with him: her private feelings. He forged ahead.

  “You never explained why we need to go after them. Not you. Not Dagon before you.” His ex-boss fed him some crap about them being evil and setting out to destroy the earth, but he wasn’t buying that anymore. “Why don’t you make me understand what your beef is with them?”

  He felt a portal in his brain open that he’d never acknowledged. It allowed him access to what had to be a completely new dimension. Without uttering a single word, Bel commenced to send him her thoughts through this wondrous gateway. He became inundated with Bel’s feelings and pictures of her past. He saw centuries of paperwork and drudgery, very little thanks from the king and queen she served, and her futile attempts to befriend…well, seduce, the earthbound gods in question, when they were captive in the Underworld. One by one, the group of gods he’d asked about rebuffed her attempts at even platonic relationships, and he felt her deep pain at their rejections. How many thousands of years had Bel gone without a friend, or a man of worth to call her own?

  Matthew knew she purposely left out her affairs with lesser gods in her visions , such as the Underworld gate-keeper she’d used, and a score of others who were also not worthy of her greatness. But in the end, the group of earthbound immortals were responsible for shunning her and spreading rumors amongst higher deities that she was trouble, and to be avoided at all cost.

  Matthew finally understood. Instead of a fulfilled and revered employee in the Underworld, these gods had made her a prisoner, just like them. Bel was right. They didn’t deserve a happy life, eternal or otherwise.

  “So why don’t we just kill them?” Matthew didn’t understand. He’d been ordered to detain them, keep them from their women and all manner of other diabolical schemes, but he wasn’t supposed to deal a deathblow.

  Finally Beletseri spoke. “It is in the agreement that the king and queen forged when giving the gods an opportunity for redemption.” She looked like she held something sour in her mouth. “This, of course, came before the king changed his mind and decided that Marduk and crew were his new BFF’s. At the time of the written decree, when he still loathed them for being the queen’s champions, she made sure their most severe punishment, if they failed on Earth, would be a return to the Underworld.” She looked at her bed-partner slyly. “I wrote in time constraints.”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow. Time constraints?

  “They have until September 15th of this year to find the women who will make them visible, or they will all lose and get sent to Hell, forevermore.

&nbs
p; Chapter One

  Marduk looked around the conference room, but as many times as he willed it, the numbers didn’t change. He counted eight mated gods, one desperately attempting to make inroads with his destined woman, and six who had yet to find their Chosen. Being the end of March, they had five and a half months to get the final seven deities mated or face disaster.

  The task appeared daunting, considering it had taken eleven months to find the eight goddesses who now lived with them at the compound hidden in the Blue Hills just outside Boston. Despite his and his fellow gods’ Mesopotamian roots, followed by centuries in Hell, Massachusetts had been home for nearly four hundred years, and he’d be damned―literally―before he’d go back to living in the Underworld.

  He gazed at his lovely wife Tess and their new son, Girin. His gut clenched to think he might be taken away from them. No. They had to intensify their search. They needed to dig deeper into archives, send forth more foot soldiers to unearth information. To that end, he’d already employed the help of one powerful warlock and six Lauernley, a group of blue male sirens who normally resided in the Rhine Valley. They all needed to work non-stop, round the clock if they had a chance of success. The escalating tension had him on edge. Several of the finer minds in the group came up with new libraries to peruse, and Shamash―the all-seeing god of justice and salvation…salvation being key―handed out specific assignments.

  One newly turned goddess kept opening her mouth to interrupt, only to be shushed by the older, supposedly wiser god. Finally she rose to a standing position, unable to contain herself any longer. But Marduk, the god of thunder and the boss, was not interested in her tantrum.

  “Lenore. Sit down and stop fidgeting.” Marduk bit back a retort that could have been harsher. Shamash needed quiet to complete his scheduling. Lenore was the wife of Anshar―god of the whole sky―the granddaughter of the warlock Dorian, and the great-granddaughter of the Lauernley king, Waylon. With her mixed bloodlines, she was an irrepressible handful, and this morning, amongst serious talks, she behaved like a recalcitrant child. She sat, reluctantly, and glared at Marduk, purposefully raising her hand. The god of thunder sighed. He might as well get this over with.

  “What is it, Lenore?” His demeanor suggested exasperation.

  “I can’t get a freaking word in edgewise with you guys. I have to make a spectacle of myself just to be heard.” The crowd rolled their eyes. Lenore always made a spectacle, not known for taking a back seat, personality or looks-wise. This particular morning, even in her sixth month of pregnancy, she wore a skin tight, pink leather skirt and tunic combo that made it impossible not to hone in on her extremely fine feminine assets.

  “You have the floor.” Marduk felt it best she spill what she itched to say, and spare them another half hour of silent drama.

  “Thank gods.” She blew a cheeky kiss at her husband and laid on her bomb. “I think you’re going about things all wrong.” It was the last thing Marduk, or anyone at the enormous conference table expected to hear.

  Lahar, the god of logic sitting to the left of the goddess, went for the bait. “And you’re going to tell us a better way?”

  Lenore took hold of his square jaw and lowered his head to glare at him with steely determination, but popped her gum, destroying the effect.

  “I am, and you’re going to back me up.” She dropped his chin with a wink. Her husband Anshar sat back and looked smug. Marduk knew Lenore must have shared her opinions with him, and by the look on his face, Anshar felt his wife was on to something. He feigned relaxation and waited.

  Lenore backpedaled from her aggressive stance and questioned the finger-steepled Marduk. “Tell me, thunder boy, how did you first encounter Tess?”

  Marduk huffed. “You know this story. She turned me visible while I walked on Wollaston Beach.” He affirmed what everyone already knew. He had been the first of the gods―cursed with invisibility―to regain his body.

  “And Anshar?” Lenore turned to her husband.

  “You were working in Plymouth for the bad guys.” He turned to smirk at his cousin, Dagon, who had gone from evil to good. “And when you were sent to spy, I fell out of the sky at your feet.” It had been a huge surprise to Anshar…and painful. He’d dropped and become impaled on a large stump. He’d never forget the day.

  “Right.” Lenore leaned down and gave him a full-on tongue kiss, thorough but brief, and targeted Dagon, her ex-boss, next. “And how did you find Holly?”

  “She bartended at that place in Chicago. I walked into her establishment and I knew she was my Chosen instantly.”

  “Enten?” Lenore raised her brows in the winter god’s direction.

  “Absu researched and found the ancestral line that led forward from Lahar, tracing bloodlines to Glory.” He reached to the table and grasped his wife’s hand. The majority of the Chosen were direct descendants of the gods who had sown wild oats with various pilgrims, puritans, and natives back in the colony of Merrymount, circa 1620.

  Marduk, growing angry at the recounting, couldn’t help but interrupt. “We know all this, Lenore. What’s your point?”

  “Button it.” She popped a bubble again to emphasize her point. “I’m getting there.” She turned her attention to Enlil. “How did you meet Candy?”

  He looked as pissed off as Marduk, but apparently knew better than to bait Lenore. “She followed Huxley,”―Tess and Holly’s brother, now a god in his own right and mated to the goddess/doctor in the house, Dani-Lee―”and stumbled onto the compound.”

  Even though the mansion was completely cloaked to outside eyes, the persistent DEA agent had refused to give up on an anomaly she spotted in their veil of protection, and Enlil, god of wind, had gone out to confront her.

  “Absu. Your turn.”

  Marduk knew that the proper god still couldn’t believe his good fortune. He’d been the latest to mate, and his lovely bride Charlie blushed at his side.

  “Charlie is sister to one of the DEA agents working with Candy, and I met her when she visited at Christmas. Ishkur had already turned visible, and knew Charlie would be someone’s Chosen. I am just so very happy that it was me.” Ishkur had begun the direct bloodline to Charlie. Turns out that the erstwhile great-great granddads, as well as future mates, would turn visible while in the presence of the Chosen.

  Marduk waited impatiently for the questioning to end. He looked around. The other two visible and mated gods were Huxley and Jake, but they weren’t part of the original thirteen, and therefore weren’t cursed to be thrown back into Hell if all the gods didn’t find their fated women by the ever-looming deadline. Lucky bastards.

  Lenore continued. “Kulla, I know this is still a work in progress for you, but how did you meet Obedience?” The divine architect’s shoulders slumped, and his head dropped before speaking.

  “I first met her at a marketplace in Salem, in 1627. I worked as one of the more trusted indentured servants to Thomas Morton, and he often sent me far afield for trade.” He shrugged, uncomfortably. “The minute I saw Obedience, I knew her for a witch, but I also knew she was my Chosen.” He shook his head. “I didn’t have to wait for my shoulder to light up.”

  Marduk touched his own talisman unconsciously. Each god became certain of his true mate when the life-giving amulet deeply embedded in his left shoulder eventually lit up in the Chosen’s presence. The thunder god waited for Kulla to finish.

  “We had a…falling out…and she refused to see me anymore. Before I could fix things, I…we…all of us became invisible,” he lamented.

  Marduk always hated to be reminded of this failure. When they’d been unsuccessful in protecting the human they’d been sent to earth to guard, they’d been plunged into nearly four hundred years of being bodiless.

  “And in current day, how did you come across her again?” Lenore spoke gently to Kulla. They all knew he was having a hard time winning his stubborn little witch over.

  “We came to rescue Charlie at a nudist camp in California, and
I couldn’t get near the place. The containment spell Obedience wove to keep me a mile away from her when we first argued back in the 1600’s, was still in effect. I knew she had to be there. I’d only felt that barrier before when in her presence.”

  Now she lived in a cottage on the compound, and her current spell kept Kulla ten feet away at all times. An improvement, but still extremely frustrating, because now he could see her…but not touch her. They all knew the consequences if Kulla didn’t honor the witch-made barrier. Unlike a god barrier, a witch protection spell against another immortal could be broken, but the consequences of tearing it down were dire. If a god managed to deactivate the force field, anyone inside it at the time could die. Of course, Kulla never took that chance. Marduk couldn’t imagine his pain, not being able to reach Obedience.

  Lenore glanced around, looking satisfied after listening to everyone’s story. Marduk couldn’t help but speak up again. His impatience showed.

  “Spit it out, Lenore. What are you getting at?”

  “Damn, guys.” Lenore snorted. “For all-powerful gods, you immortals can be really thick.” She rolled her eyes. “Out of nine of you who are either mated, or have already met your mate, eight Chosen have been found by chance, happenstance…coincidence…fate.” She looked around. “Don’t you get it? The only Chosen found by research was Glory. The rest of us either wandered into your paths, or you wandered into ours.” She walked right up to Marduk and poked a finger into his large chest. “You’ve had us cowering around inside our borders, afraid to step foot out in public for fear of nasty old Beletseri, her fuck-buddy Matthew, and their pet demons. It’s been the wrong thing to do. Don’t you see? You guys need to get out.”

  Comprehension appeared on some faces, and burgeoning agreement on others.

  Lenore continued. “Call it whatever you want, but it’s obvious from what’s been happening that you’re all fated to meet your Chosen. The problem is, you can’t do it if you mope around here. And you don’t fucking have time to waste on letting it happen on its own. You need to force the issue. For god’s sake, get out of the house and go…do stuff.”