Dogs and Goddesses Read online

  Kammani’s eyes trailed over the seats, finally locking on the empty one between the professor and Bug-Eyes. She took in a deep breath, and did not look happy. Daisy wondered if she and Bailey could make a break for it and maybe find a nice, sane obedience class at the Y, but she didn’t want to do it while Kammani was watching. Although Daisy didn’t really believe that the woman could shoot death lasers with her eyes, she kinda believed the woman could shoot death lasers with her eyes. She tightened her hold on Bailey’s leash and he yipped and scrambled his toenails on the floor, trying to rush Kammani.

  “Noah Wortham, my attendant, will assist”—her eyes locked on Bailey—“those who need assistance.” Her eyes trailed the room again, from woman to woman, and then she disappeared behind the heavy drapes as Noah emerged and walked over to the teenagers, who giggled louder. Daisy leaned toward the professor.

  “Times like this, I’m glad I’m not a virgin,” Daisy said, and the professor smiled.

  “Why?” the skinny brunette said, her eyes wide.

  “Oh, because of the sacrifice,” Daisy said, grinning.

  “What?” the brunette said, and her dog moved closer to her protectively.

  “Oh, nothing,” Daisy said. “Dumb joke.” Bailey jumped four feet in the air as Noah walked over to them, and Daisy shifted her focus to the cute trainer.

  “Why does he do that?” she asked. “That’s not normal, right?”

  “It’s normal.” Noah smiled at Daisy as he handed the brunette a dog cookie. “Hi, I’m Noah.”

  The brunette took the cookie. “I’m Abby. This is Bowser.” She gave Bowser the cookie and he inhaled it.

  “Hey, Bowser.” Noah shifted over and gave Daisy a cookie.“Hi.”

  Daisy felt her face spread into a goofy smile. “Hi.” Bailey scrambled his front paws over Noah’s knees, and Noah knelt down and petted him. “Hey, guy.”

  “His name is Bailey. I’m Daisy.”

  Noah looked up, his eyes locking on hers, and Daisy was grateful for the poor lighting as she felt herself flush. Criminy. It was like high school all over again, only this time with dogs. Bailey leapt up and slobbered all over Noah’s face and Daisy grabbed his harness and pulled him back, shoving the cookie at him to keep him off the cute trainer.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s not my dog.”

  “It’s okay,” Noah said, wiping at his face. “Jack Russells are enthusiastic like that.”

  “Enthusiastic, huh?” Daisy said. “That’s some diplomatic phrasing.”

  “Let me show you something.” Noah motioned for her to kneel on the floor.

  Daisy glanced at the brunette, who had a wry expression that told Daisy she saw right through the whole thing; then she looked at the professor, who was observing them with detached interest.

  “Okay.” Daisy knelt down next to Noah as he put one hand on the tip of Bailey’s ear, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. Bailey sat down and panted quietly as though good behavior was something with which he had a passing acquaintance.

  “Big faker,” Daisy muttered to Bailey.

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing,” Daisy said. “It’s just that he’s impossible no matter what I do, but you rub his ear for half a second and suddenly he’s calm.”

  “It’s a pressure point.” Noah took Daisy’s hand, and Daisy put a concerted effort into ignoring the tingles she felt at his touch. He guided her fingers to Bailey’s ear, keeping hold of them there, his touch gentle and yet oddly powerful. “Just put your thumb and forefinger on opposite sides and rub gently right … there.”

  Noah kept his hand on Daisy’s, helping her find the pressure point. Bailey panted happily, his focus flickering from her to Noah and back again. As their fingers moved in time together, the lighting seemed to change, to get brighter. The stone floor and walls seemed to shift to a less oppressive gray, and the heavy drapes seemed less black and more a deep, shimmering midnight blue.

  “Weird,” Daisy said, her eyes on Noah.

  “Yeah,” Noah said, his voice quiet.

  Then he stood, and Daisy looked up to see Kammani standing behind him with a tray of drinks, staring down at Daisy in disapproval. Kammani’s presence in the room was huge, and Daisy felt like a little girl being reprimanded by the teacher. Slowly, she shifted back up to her seat as Noah moved on to offer a dog cookie to the professor.

  “I’m Noah,” he said.

  “I’m Shar,” Daisy heard the professor say. “And this is Wolfie. Can you tell me—”

  “You will drink,” Kammani said, handing Abby a Dixie cup. She almost smiled at Abby—not quite, but there was approval in her eyes as she watched Abby take a sip—but when she turned to Daisy, her eyes were dark again.

  “You will drink,” Kammani said again, her voice sharper than it had been with Abby.

  “Why?” Daisy sniffed at the cup. “What’s in it?” Kammani stared down at Daisy; she seemed the type of woman who was not accustomed to being questioned. Daisy squared her shoulders, looked Kammani in the eye, and spoke slow and loud.

  “What. Is. In. It?”

  Light flashed in Kammani’s eyes, but Daisy didn’t back down. This woman had interrupted her flirting; she was not going to get away with intimidation tactics, too.

  “It’s a tonic,” Kammani said. “Very delicious. Drink it, and you will know.”

  “It’s really good,” Abby said.

  Fixed under Kammani’s gaze, Daisy raised her cup.

  What’s the worst that can happen? she thought, and drank.

  After half an hour of be-the-alpha-dog lecture from the very attractive Noah, Shar got tired of waiting for an opening to ask about Kammani Gula again. So when Noah called two little dogs into the circle, she slipped out of her chair and stole through the curtain in back of the altar to find Kammani, Wolfie padding behind her on the stone floor. The area behind the curtain was as large as the space in front but dark as all hell, and Shar was moving cautiously toward the back wall, her hand out in front of her to keep from running into anything, when Kammani spoke from behind her, making Shar start and Wolfie yelp.

  “You have left the others.”

  “Yes.” Shar turned, seeing the woman’s hourglass shape dimly in the gloom. “Could you tell me where you found the name Kammani Gula—”

  “I am Kammani Gula,” the woman said, a thrill in her voice, and Shar squinted to see if she was kidding. “You have not drunk your tonic.” She gestured to the gap Shar had left in the curtains, and Shar saw the full cup of punch she’d stashed under her chair.

  “I’m not thirsty. Look, I think it’s very creative”—weird as hell—“that you took the name of a goddess as your own, but what I need is your source, the place where you found her name.”

  She stopped as Kammani moved to the gap in the curtains to frown out at the teenagers who were making kissing noises at two new dogs. She raised her hand, and the dogs came daintily across the floor and into the darkness to her, leaving Noah dogless.

  He walked over to Daisy and said something, and Daisy handed him Bailey’s leash.

  I’m sorry I’m going to miss that, Shar thought, and turned her attention back to Kammani. “Okay. So what I need to know—” She stopped again, distracted as she saw the dogs up close: even in the dim light, they looked like tiny tan giraffes with fluffy white pom-pom crowns and little grinning faces, one taller and more slender, the other one shorter, with sharper, deeper, smarter eyes. “My god, those are Mesopotamian Temple Dogs. I thought they were extinct.”

  “Bikka and Umma,” Kammani said. “They are at my side always, to serve me.”

  Bikka and Umma smiled up at Shar, their bizarre little doggy faces alight with intelligence. Well, Umma’s was. Bikka’s bore a striking resemblance to Paris Hilton.

  Wolfie grumbled.

  “Right,” Shar said. “About Kammani Gula. I’m familiar with Gula, the Goddess of Healing whose sacred animal was the dog …” She looked down at the Temple Dogs again. “�
�� but I can’t find anything about Kammani Gula except for the first chapter of my grandmother’s book. Could you give me your sources for her?”

  “Your grandmother is writing a book on the goddess?” Kammani tilted her head, more human now in her curiosity.

  “Was,” Shar said. “A book on Mesopotamian goddesses. After she died, my mother finished writing it, and I promised my mother I’d complete the citations—”

  Kammani faded back into the darkness as Umma took a dainty step closer to Wolfie and Wolfie pressed close to Shar’s leg.

  “Hello?” Shar squinted after Kammani, annoyed that she was being ignored again, and then Kammani returned, holding another cup of punch.

  “This tonic is a recipe from my family,” she said. “You will drink my family’s tonic, and I will show you Kammani Gula for your family’s book.”

  “I don’t think …”

  “Drink,” Kammani said in a voice that had some thunder in it.

  Shar took the tonic. Holding wasn’t drinking, but maybe Kammani wouldn’t notice.

  Kammani nodded once. “I will show you Kammani Gula and then you will return to Abby and Daisy.”

  “Who?” Shar said.

  “Bring your cup.” Kammani went to the altar again and came back with a flashlight.

  Shar followed her to the center of the wall, and Kammani clicked the flashlight on.

  A huge naked goddess sprang into sharp relief, towering over them.

  Wolfie barked, and Shar said, “Oh,” and almost spilled her tonic.

  “Kammani Gula and her priestesses,” Kammani said, gesturing to other figures down the length of the wall. “She inspires great passion in those who follow her. Can you not feel it?”

  “No.” Shar took a couple steps back to see the stone goddess better, Wolfie still pressing close. “I don’t do passion. I do research.”

  Kammani Gula was a large-eyed, full-breasted, tiny-waisted, winged woman standing on two Mesopotamian Temple Dogs, a whip in her left hand and a knife in her right.

  “She’s … lovely … ,” Shar said. And armed.

  Wolfie whined.

  “But I need a source for her—,” Shar began.

  “The inscription is here.” Kammani pointed her flashlight at the cuneiform carved into the wall next to the figure, and Shar leaned closer to translate.

  Kammani Gula, Goddess of Love, Goddess of Life, Goddess of Healing.

  Damn. Okay, so it was a source. But it was a source on a stone wall backstage in a college auditorium in Ohio, and it hadn’t been authenticated or even noticed until now, and that was going to raise some questions.

  Shar smiled tightly at Kammani. “You know, I’ve been in this auditorium many times, and I’ve never seen this bas-relief. This part behind the curtain is always dark and full of boxes, but still, you’d think somebody would have seen this and mentioned it to somebody. My grandfather brought this temple back from Turkey and had it rebuilt as the history building, and even he never mentioned it. So I’m skeptical—”

  “Your grandfather moved this temple,” Kammani said, her voice sounding odd.

  Shar nodded. “It’s the only step temple in Ohio. We’re very proud. But I think I would have—”

  “You know nothing, then?” Kammani sounded upset. She tightened her grip on the flashlight, and the beam jerked onto the next figure.

  Shar sucked in her breath.

  The figure next to the goddess was male.

  He was tall, looming over her on the wall, and his forehead was broad, crossed with commalike stone curls, and his eyes—

  Kammani moved the light back to the goddess. “You can see—”

  “Give me that.” Shar took the flashlight from Kammani and focused it on the man again, letting it play over him as she took in the hooded eyes, the square jaw, the broad shoulders, the slim hips, the massive calves …

  She drank some tonic.

  The taste flooded her mouth and filled her senses, biting and sweet, honey and cinnamon and something like the night sky, anise maybe, warm and rich and satisfying. She sipped again, inhaling the scent, and the heat of it went into her bones as she looked at the man.

  He looked powerful. Forceful. Certain. Skilled … She felt herself flush, and Wolfie whined at her feet and pressed closer.

  “Who is he?”

  “Samu-la-el. God of the Summer, King of Kamesh, Defender of the North, Slayer of Demons.” Kammani recited the titles as if she were saying, Plumber of Sinks, Mower of Grass. She took the light from Shar and moved it back to the huge goddess on the wall beside him. “Kammani Gula is the great goddess, mother of all things, and those who follow her …”

  Shar listened with one ear, knowing Kammani Gula was important, but …

  Slayer of Demons.

  She took another drink and felt the heat flood her again, and then she saw the knife in the goddess’s hand and realized what it meant.

  “Oh, hell. She sacrificed him.” Bitch.

  “For the good of the people,” Kammani said, sounding annoyed at the interruption. “A good king dies for his people, and then his goddess raises him again. He serves his goddess.”

  Kammani glared at her for a moment and then went back to praising the goddess, and Shar sipped her tonic, trying to concentrate. She had to be practical: the guy on the wall had been dead for several thousand years, and she had her grandmother’s book to finish, and—

  Slayer of Demons.

  She ripped the flashlight out of Kammani’s grasp and put the light back on the god.

  Samu-la-el. He was beautiful and that bitch Kammani Gula had killed him. Shar stared up into the hooded eyes, empty sockets now because the clay and stone imbedded for eyeballs were long gone, but still piercing, staring down at her, transfixing her. This was a guy who kicked demon ass and took invader names. In cuneiform, of course, but still—

  God, he was amazing. She stared at him, her head swimming, feeling breathless, dizzy—“

  Daisy and Abby are waiting for you,” Kammani said, sounding annoyed. “You should be with them.”

  Get off my ass; you’re not my grandmother. Shar drained her cup, letting the richness of the drink flood her, and then she put the cup on the floor and reached out to touch the cuneiform that spelled the god-king’s name. Samu-la-el. Not the kind of guy who’d give a woman a Taser. She let her fingers slip to trace the line of his side as it tapered to a flat belly, slim hips—

  Wolfie barked, and she jerked her fingers away and turned to say something to distract Kammani from the fact that she’d been feeling up a stone god, but Kammani’s gaze was through the curtain and across the room where the two teenagers were feeding one of the Temple Dogs something orange. Kammani yanked the flashlight out of Shar’s hand and turned it off. “You will join Abby and Daisy,” she said, and walked off through the slit in the curtains toward the teenagers, leaving Shar in the dark.

  She couldn’t see the relief anymore, but he was there. She put her fingers on the wall again, reaching up this time to feel the comma curls across his forehead, wondering who had smoothed them and comforted him after battle, who had put her head on that broad chest and sighed, who had wrapped her arms around him, risen to those hips, cried out in the night—

  Wolfie barked, and Shar dropped her hand.

  He’s dead, he’s dead, and you are too old and too practical for hot dreams of cold heroes.

  She turned her back on him and looked down at Wolfie, who was trying to avoid the little Temple Dog Umma’s polite but insistent gaze. “Come on, baby,” Shar said, “we’re finished here,” and led him and Umma through the curtain to the circle where she sat down, dizzy with tonic and a little depressed.

  Slayer of Demons, she thought, and closed her eyes.

  Abby shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and Bowser moved a little closer. “I shouldn’t really be here,” she whispered to the tiny blonde next to her. “Bowser’s a perfect gentleman.”

  “Heh. Wanna trade?” the blonde whispered back a
s the professor picked up her punch cup from under her chair, looking depressed. “So, why’d you come if Bowser’s so well behaved?”

  Abby shrugged. “Instinct, I guess. I just arrived in town and I kept running into flyers and I thought it might be a sign.”

  “From who? Kammani? ’Cause I can tell you right now she’s a fruitcake, extra fruit.” The blonde hauled her hyper Jack Russell back toward her.

  “No, from my grandmother. I just inherited her coffeehouse, and I …”

  “Oh my god,” the blonde said, taking a good look at Abby. “You’re Bea’s granddaughter?”

  The trainer glanced their way and grinned good-naturedly, but Kammani, who was just a little too much like Abby’s mother for Abby’s comfort, glowered. “Did you know my grandmother?” Abby whispered, only slightly chastened.

  “Oh, hell, yes. Bea was the best.” She held out her hand. “I’m Daisy. I live on the third floor. You’re my new landlady.”

  A moment later Kammani was looming over them, looking pissed. “You are not obedient,” she said in the tone that Abby’s mother used when a client was being difficult.

  “Just making friends,” Daisy said with a grin.

  Kammani’s eyes narrowed, and to Abby’s surprise she didn’t object. “Good. The three of you shall be friends.”

  “Three of us?” Abby asked, confused.

  Kammani looked over at the middle-aged professor sitting beside them, holding the cup she’d taken from beneath her chair and looking at Kammani with clear dislike. “The two of you and Sharrat.”

  “Shar. Sharrat was my grandmother,” the older woman snapped.

  Kammani seemed to control herself with an effort. “The three of you shall be friends,” she said again, and glided away before anyone could do more than stare at her.

  “So,” Daisy said, leaning toward Shar. “What’s the verdict on this one? I’m leaning toward spooky with a side of nuts.”

  Shar rolled her eyes. “She’s just upset because somebody dropped a house on her sister.”