Dogs and Goddesses Read online

  Kammani rubbed her forehead. She was getting a headache. She never whined and she never got headaches; this world was changing her… . No. She was a goddess; she was going to change this world.

  “What did you do to my people?” Samu said, thunder in his voice.

  “It wasn’t me. Ishtar seduced the people from me. I tried to stop her; I tried many things …” She remembered what some of those things were and talked faster before he could ask. “… but she betrayed me and sent me into the desert; she took my robes and my rings; she took my people and my power—”

  “Here,” Samu said, focused as ever. “How did we end up here?”

  “Munawirtum told Miriam that after Ishtar imprisoned me in the sand, the Three took the priestesses into the secret room and gave them drinks so they would sleep safely until my return. But I could not return without worshipers.” She sat down on the altar step. “Without worshipers …”

  “Gods cease to exist,” Samu said, sympathy in his voice now. “So why have you risen again?”

  “I was called,” Kammani said proudly. “Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of voices cried out my name.”

  “And said, ‘Come to Ohio’?”

  Kammani glared at him. “No, Sharrat did that. She seduced the man who opened the temple and made him bring it and the other priestesses here, to this new world, out of Ishtar’s reach. Her granddaughter is the new Sharrat.”

  “Shar,” Samu said. “She is not Sharrat. And this is not our land, and these are not our people. And you are not telling me everything.”

  “But she has Sharrat’s fire within her,” Kammani said eagerly. “You can see it in her. It’s deeply buried, that passion, but she is the new Sharrat, one of the Three—”

  “Yes,” Samu said, “but the Three are different now. And they do not remember.”

  “They will.” Kammani stood up. “They will remember as the people remember. The people called me, Samu-la-el, or I could not have risen. A thousand, a hundred thousand, a million voices called my name and I rose.” She took a step toward him. “And now together, we will rule this world.” She put her hand on his arm, sure of him again. “Come. I have waited long for you.” She unfastened the pin at her shoulder and gestured toward the secret door as her robe fell open, and she smiled at him, knowing her body was magnificent, irresistible in the light from the torches.

  “I must return to Shar’s temple,” Samu said, his eyes cold on hers. “I swore I would return with Wolfie.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Wolfie said from behind Sam.

  Kammani grabbed her robe, suddenly feeling naked. “Are you dead to carnal pleasure?”

  “I swore,” Samu said. “I must go.”

  “WHAT?”

  “MAY THE SUN SHINE ON YOU,” Sam said, and walked out, Wolfie scrambling for the doors in front of him.

  “It is different here,” Umma whispered beside her.

  “It’s not that damn different,” Kammani snapped as she pinned her robe together again. Fucking god-kings, thought they ran the universe.

  Bikka clicked her way across the stone floor. “Cheetos?”

  “NO!” Kammani said. “We will follow the old ways! THINGS WILL BE AS THEY WERE!”

  “Nooooo,” Bikka whined as Umma sidled away.

  “Professor Summer?”

  Kammani looked toward the doors that Samu had left open.

  A young man stood there, tall and well-muscled, brown-haired and blue-eyed, looking confused and angry and …

  Healthy, Kammani thought.

  “Professor Summer’s office is locked,” the man said with ill-concealed impatience. “And I gotta turn this in.”

  Kammani took a step closer. “You are Sharrat—Shar Summer’s?”

  “I’m her student,” the young man said. “I need to put this paper in her office… .” He looked around. “What is this place?”

  “Welcome,” Kammani said, gliding toward him now. “This is the Temple of Kammani.”

  “Oh!” The young man’s face cleared. “Yeah, right, my sister told me.”

  Kammani stopped. “Your sister?”

  “Bun Essen,” the young man said. “She said it was some kind of sorority. Like she needs another sorority.”

  He snorted and then smiled at Kammani, taking her in with open admiration that was balm to her ego. “Although if you’re in the sorority, hey, I’m there.”

  Samu had been stupid in the beginning, too.

  And four thousand years was a long time to sleep alone.

  “I’m Doug,” he said, frankly staring at her body now.

  “Come in, Doug,” she said, loosening the pin on her robe. “I have much to show you.”

  “Like what?” Doug said.

  You try to walk out of here, I’ll turn you into the dog you are, Kammani thought, and let her robe drop.

  “All right,” Doug said, and started toward her.

  NINE

  At eleven, Shar pushed the last of the revelers out the door of the coffee shop, many of them with boxes of cookies in their hands, and surveyed the damage. The place was a mess, but it was nothing they couldn’t clean up in the morning, so she went into the kitchen.

  “Have you seen Abby?” she said to Bowser, and he growled, “Upstairs,” while Bailey mumbled in his sleep, curled next to him.

  “Well, tell her I locked up,” Shar said, and went out the back door, flipping the lock so it would catch behind her. The night was cool, and she rubbed her hands over her arms and then slung her bag over her shoulder and started down the alley toward home. It was pitch-dark, but it was Summerville, so she was safe—

  A huge shadow loomed up in front of her and she screamed.

  “It’s us,” Sam said.

  “It’s us,” Wolfie said.

  “Stop doing that,” she said, and walked past Sam, her heart pounding from more than the fright. It lifts, I can feel my heart lift when I see him, and it must stop doing that.

  “Stop doing what?” Sam said, falling into step beside her, a bulwark in the dark, as Wolfie pattered beside them.

  “Rising up in front of me,” Shar said. “Coming out of nowhere.” Different verbs, Shar, different verbs.

  He stopped walking and then Wolfie did, too, but she kept going.

  “It’s just creepy,” she said, and he said, “Shhhhh.”

  She turned around and he had his head up, the way Wolfie lifted his head when he was listening. She listened, too, but there was nothing except faint laughter from the street and the soft sounds of the night. “What?” she said, but he had already turned around and was going back down the alley with Wolfie at his heels, past the courtyard of Abby’s coffeehouse, and she followed him until he stopped at a large closed Dumpster.

  “That’s it,” Wolfie said to him, and Sam nodded and lifted the Dumpster lid with one hand to look inside.

  “What’s it?” she said to Wolfie, and Sam reached into the Dumpster and pulled out a plastic grocery bag, full of something … moving. Shar stepped back and Sam let the lid fall as he carefully opened the bag and reached inside.

  “Help,” something cried faintly, and she went closer as he pulled out a little red-brown dog with floppy ears. “Help,” it said again and she reached out without thinking and took it from him, cradling it in her arms.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, her voice choking as she stroked the little guy. “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”

  “WHO DID THIS THING?” Sam said, and she looked up, tears in her eyes even though she was angry, too.

  “Some college kid,” she said. “They get puppies and kittens and when the year ends, they just leave them, sometimes at the animal shelter, and sometimes they just turn them loose. It’s awful, but this …” She looked down at the dog in her arms, its dark little eyes imploring her in the dim light of the alley as it wept. “You are going to be just fine, now,” she said, stroking him as she cuddled the puppy close. “You’re safe. You’re coming home with us.”

&nb
sp; “I WILL FIND WHO DID THIS,” Sam said.

  “No, you won’t,” Shar said. “Whoever it is, is gone. We have to get this little guy some food. Come on.”

  “Food!” the puppy cried, and Shar cooed and cuddled him all the way home while Wolfie trotted at her side, barking up, “You’re okay! You’re all right now!” until Shar shushed him, while Sam strode at their side, keeping watch.

  At home, she put the puppy down in front of Wolfie’s food dish and water bottle, and he went to town while she patted him all over, checking him out for injuries. His little ribs stuck out more than they should, but otherwise he was in good shape.

  “He’s a dachshund,” she told Sam as the puppy gobbled so fast he choked and then gobbled again, “probably about a year old. See how his chest hasn’t dropped yet? He’s still growing.”

  “Good eater,” Wolfie said, watching his food disappear.

  “We have more food,” Shar told him, but she pulled the puppy back after a couple of minutes, afraid he’d explode. “You can have more later,” she said as she brought him back into her arms. “There’s always food here. Really.” She patted his back and he burped and sighed. “What’s your name, little guy?”

  “Milton,” the puppy said.

  “There’s your first clue,” Shar said to Sam, still patting. “His owner was probably an English major.”

  “Why would someone do this?” Sam said, and she looked up to see the distress on his face.

  Slayer of Demons, Greatest of Kings, she thought. Savior of Puppies.

  “Dogs aren’t sacred to us,” she said, holding Milton close to her. “Well, not to all of us.” She looked down at Milton, his eyes half-closed now that he was stuffed to the gills. “Some of us still worship them.”

  Sam reached down and she gave Milton to him automatically, struck by the gentleness in his huge hands as he lifted seven pounds of puppy.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, and Milton threw up on the Dick shirt.

  “What a shame.” Shar stood up.

  “He ate too fast,” Sam said without anger as he handed Milton back.

  And then he took off his shirt.

  Goddammit, Shar thought, and turned away, holding Milton close to her. You start thinking somebody is just an ordinary nice guy who loves dogs, and then he takes off his shirt and you remember he’s a god again. She kept her back to him, but the memory of that broad muscled chest, the dark hair curling thickly there … She realized she was breathing deep and her skin felt odd. Prickly. Hot. “You had to throw up on him, didn’t you?” she said to Milton.

  “I need a shirt,” Sam said from behind her.

  “I don’t have one that would fit you,” she said. “Where’s your red flannel?” She waited a moment and then steeled herself and turned around.

  He was gone.

  Maybe he’d gone to get another shirt. From the Big and Tall department at T. J. Skank.

  All right, enough, she told herself. This jealousy is ridiculous and so is all this hyperventilating you’re doing. If you’re a goddess, act like one. The guy is a promiscuous flunky of Satanella. If he kisses you—the world went wonky for a minute at the thought—you’ll turn into a Mesopotamian zombie, serving that little freak Kammani. You want him out of here; you want him gone; you don’t ever want to see him again—

  Sam came back into the kitchen, buttoning his flannel shirt. “May I spend the night in your temple, Shar?”

  “Sure,” she said. Well, hell, he’d just saved a puppy. It was the least she could do. “You can have my grandmother’s bedroom.”

  She went to the archway into her grandmother’s room, still carrying Milton, and pulled back the heavy curtains that separated it from the kitchen. “I haven’t dusted in here for months.”

  Milton sneezed.

  “I’m used to dust,” Sam said, and he sounded so modern for a moment that she stared at him, but he was looking around the room as if he’d been there before, and the expression on his face said it wasn’t a good memory.

  “This isn’t where she sacrificed you, is it?” Shar said, horrified.

  “No,” he said. “That was in the secret room with the altar. Where Kammani is now.”

  “Oh,” Shar said. “What was this?”

  “Shall I take Milton from you?” Sam said to her. “Or will he stay with you tonight?”

  “This was Sharrat’s bedroom here,” Shar said. “Did you live here with her?”

  “I never lived with Sharrat,” he said, sounding surprised.

  “She was your lover,” Shar said.

  “No.”

  It didn’t sound like a lie.

  “But you knew her. Well.”

  He met her eyes. “Yes.”

  Just hell, Shar thought. Her grandmother had died twenty years before, but Shar still remembered the drive in the old bat, the determination in the silky voice that had said, You’re not what we need, girl, you’ve got no backbone, but you’ll have to do. Sharrat had probably been hell on wheels back in Mesopotamia. A real match for a god.

  Shar swallowed. “I’m sorry, Sam. She lived a long time; she was in her nineties when she died. My mother said she was waiting for something that never came.” She tried a smile. “I guess that was you.”

  “No,” Sam said. “That was Kammani. Sharrat lived to serve her goddess.”

  “Oh.”

  The silence stretched out between them as he stared at her, his eyes dark and hooded, looking down on her, and then he smiled and reached out and scratched Milton behind the ears, and she thought, Touch me.

  “You are very like Sharrat,” he said, and she stepped back.

  “No, I’m not. I’m not anything like her. You made a mistake on the goddess thing; it’s just not me.” She smiled as brightly as she could as she held out the drowsy puppy. “I’m going to be up for a while, so why don’t you take him?”

  Milton yawned as he was passed over. “Food.”

  “Sleep first, baby,” Shar said. “Then you can have more food in the morning.”

  “Plenty,” Wolfie barked from her feet.

  “The sheets on the bed are clean, but they haven’t been aired out,” she told Sam, backing toward the archway and the kitchen. “If you need anything …”

  “This will be very good,” he told her, and she nodded and went out, closing the curtain behind her fast, narrowly missing Wolfie.

  “Watch it,” he growled, and waddled over to his ravaged food dish.

  “So what happened?” she whispered to him.

  “He ate all my food,” Wolfie said, looking at his dish.

  Shar opened up the dog food bin and filled it. “No, I mean with Sam and Kammani,” she said when Wolfie was crunching away.

  “She wanted him to stay,” Wolfie said around a mouthful of nuggets. “He was mad at her. He said no.”

  “Really?” Shar said, and then felt ridiculous for caring. Grandma Sharrat had had the right idea. No fooling around with playboy gods who owed allegiance to crazy, top-heavy brunettes …

  He was right through that archway, behind that heavy curtain, in a bed. If she went in there and crawled in next to him, she was pretty sure she could have him. Everybody else has, she thought, but it was a knee-jerk reaction, a cheap ploy by her conscious mind to flatten her subconscious that was still back there, crawling into bed with him, sliding against that massive body, feeling the fur of his chest on her skin—

  She shivered, and then something started down low, a kind of chill that made her breathe faster, and she leaned against the wall and thought, I really want him, more than I’ve ever wanted any man, more than I’ve ever wanted anything; I need him.

  “Damn it,” she said, loud enough that Wolfie stopped eating for a moment. I need something to do with my hands, she thought, and then saw the paint stacked in the corner, eighteen gallons in different colors, with the brushes and rollers and the stir sticks and an opener right there. “I’m going to paint,” she told Wolfie, and took off her jacket, ignoring th
e fact that her hands were shaking.

  The colors were luscious when she opened the cans. The first one was a rich honey yellow; the second, a deep cinnamon; the third, the blue of the night sky. “Blue is for my bedroom,” she told Wolfie, who said, “They all look the same to me,” and went back to his food bowl.

  “The yellow in here,” she said, and picked up a paintbrush, brand-new, thick, with shiny bristles that gleamed in the light from overhead. She ran them over the palm of her hand, and the stroke and the tickle there made her draw in a sharp breath and shiver. She dipped the brush into the rich paint and then held it above the can, watching the paint run off in ropes, creamy and thick, and the beauty of it as it looped back into the can made her breathe in a deeper rhythm, like music starting in her head, an insistent beat that tripped across her nerves. She imagined something as silky as the paint sliding across her skin, someone’s hands sliding across her skin, the beat in her blood solid and strong. The paint was so there, in that moment, real, and she straightened and slashed the bright brush across the stone gray on the wall, and the amber leapt out at her, making her draw in her breath, and she said, “Yes,” and dipped the brush in and slashed again, and then again, splashing the light to obliterate the dark, gasping with the color as the heat rose, the contrast and the slide making her breathe harder as she stroked away the gray, painting faster, watching the room begin to glow, getting dizzier and dizzier as the beat began to coil tight within her, and when she finished the third wall, she stripped off her top and then her pants to paint in her underwear, panting and shivering. The sweat dripped from her as she shook with the beat in her blood, her body splashed with color, sticky with heat, and she looked at the fourth wall and thought, Red, and picked up a new brush and dipped it into the brilliant red-orange paint.

  The color struck her hard, glowing on the brush, and she splashed it over the gray, dripping and spattering. And when it was done, when the color was huge, glowering at her, overpowering, she picked up the yellow brush again and slashed the amber paint into the red, once, yes, twice, yes, again and again until she leaned on the table, let her head fall back, breathed in deep, felt all that tension twisting deep inside her, thought, Yes! and tried to let go, and then something inside her said, No, it’s dangerous; go back, and she felt it all slipping away.