King of the Gods Read online

  King of the Gods

  Book 1

  J. A. Cipriano

  Copyright © 2018 by J. A. Cipriano

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

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  Also by J.A. Cipriano

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Thank You for reading!

  Author’s Note

  Glossary

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  Also by J.A. Cipriano

  The Pen is Mightier

  World of Ruul

  Soulstone: Awakening

  Soulstone: The Skeleton King

  Soulstone: Oblivion

  Bug Wars

  Doomed Infinity Marine

  Doomed Infinity Marine 2

  The Legendary Builder

  The Builder’s Sword

  The Builder’s Greed

  The Builder’s Pride

  The Builder’s Wrath

  The Builder’s Throne

  The Builder’s Conquest

  Starcrossed Dragons

  Riding Lightning

  Grinding Frost

  Swallowing Fire

  The FBI Dragon Chronicles

  A Ritual of Fire

  A Ritual of Death

  Elements of Wrath Online

  Ring of Promise

  The Vale of Three Wolves

  Crystalfire Keep

  Kingdom of Heaven

  The Skull Throne

  Escape From Hell

  The Thrice Cursed Mage

  Cursed

  Marked

  Burned

  Seized

  Claimed

  Hellbound

  The Half-Demon Warlock

  Pound of Flesh

  Flesh and Blood

  Blood and Treasure

  The Lillim Callina Chronicles

  Wardbreaker

  Kill it with Magic

  The Hatter is Mad

  Fairy Tale

  Pursuit

  Hardboiled

  Mind Games

  Fatal Ties

  Clans of Shadow

  Heart of Gold

  Feet of Clay

  Fists of Iron

  The Spellslinger Chronicles

  Throne to the Wolves

  Prince of Blood and Thunder

  Found Magic

  May Contain Magic

  The Magic Within

  Magic for Hire

  Witching on a Starship

  Maverick

  Planet Breaker

  1

  I wiped the sweat from my brow and glanced up at the blue sky overhead. It was only 9 AM, but I could already feel the sun beating down on me just like it had done every day for the last month. See, I’d had the great idea to join the archeology club’s volunteer group and, as such, had been reduced to slave labor on the Greek island of Delos. Spending the summer in Apollo’s birthplace getting college credit had seemed like a great idea at the time, but now that I was here, I was beginning to have second thoughts.

  For one, I wasn’t used to the heat and the humidity, and the combination was still getting to me even after a month. For two, well, I sort of missed my dad. I wouldn’t tell him that of course, but ever since he’d adopted me after my parents died when I was two years old, we’d spent every summer traveling from dojo to dojo learning from the world’s greatest martial arts masters. It sounds more fun than it is, especially when you’ve done it for twenty or so years.

  I loved my dad and everything he’d done for me, but if I were being one hundred percent honest, I’d admit that part of my reason for wanting to go on this trip was to skip out on the whole punching boards under the tutelage of aged Chinese monks old enough to make my sixty-year-old father seem like a spry youth.

  “Luke, water?” Gina, one of the girls from my class, called from a few feet away. She was dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt and had one tan, lean arm extended toward me with a plastic canteen full of water.

  The rest of her features were muted by the sun at her back, making it so I couldn’t make out her movie star good looks complete with blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. It was just as well. My dad would never approve of a girl like Gina, and even if he did, I wouldn’t want to date a girl I could snap over my knee with minimal effort. Still, it was still fun to look. And imagine …

  “Yeah, please,” I replied, reaching out and taking the offered canteen. I popped the top and took a long swig before wiping the water from my lips with the back of my hand. I’d long since given up trying to be graceful on a dig site. I’d never really been good at it anyway. Growing up with no mother will do that, I guess. No one to tell me to keep the toilet seat down or whatever.

  Gina tossed her trademark starlet smile at me as her fingers brushed her long blonde hair behind her ear. “No problem, Luke.”

  She knelt down next to me and gave the artifact I was carefully uncovering a cursory glance before looking at me. Her eyes roamed over me hungrily, although I wasn’t sure why since she’d never paid me much attention before. No, she was always more into the guys who were more concerned about their cars than digging in the dirt for treasure.

  Even if I wasn’t wearing my dirty, sweat-wicking cargo pants and a black tank top I hadn’t washed in two days, I wasn’t a traditional sort of handsome, even with muscles honed by decades of martial arts practice. They may have been great for busting cement blocks, but they also didn’t make me look like I belonged on the cover of a muscle magazine either. Hell, even if I had one of those musclebound bodies, well, let’s just say if plain were in the dictionary, my picture would be next to it. If this is where you say, “But Luke, plain is in the dictionary,” I’ll start ignoring you. You’ve been warned.

  “The professor mention when lunch will be?” I asked hopefully. It was always a bit of a tossup when food would be served since everything on Delos seemed to run on island time, which was not very fast at all. A catering company operated by snails would have moved quicker, and when you started working at five in the morning, having lunch at one or two o clock wasn’t exactly awesome.

  The lack of food combined with the backbreaking labor was doing a number on my metabolism. I hadn’t been very big when I’d started working here at the beginning of summer, and already, I’d dropped a size or two. I’m sure that was great for some of the girls, but it only served to make me look like a skeleton.

  “He says it will p
robably be around noon, so you know, maybe one thirty if we’re lucky.” Gina finished looking me over and stood, brushing the dust off her beige pants and glancing around.

  “Figures,” I muttered, shaking my head in dismay as my stomach rumbled like a runaway whale.

  “Any new discoveries into Isis’s history?” she asked as she started to turn away, obviously eager to get back to her own work. Still, I was the only one up here, and I’d half-hoped she’d come to help me excavate the object I’d been working on for the last two days.

  As she began to walk away, I shrugged a little to myself. She had been nice enough to bring me some water, and that was good enough for me. My own canteen had run dry an hour ago, and I’d been reluctant to trek the half mile down the hill to our encampment to get some more.

  “Not yet, but soon.” I gestured to the chunk of obsidian with an Egyptian Ankh carved into its surface. “Maybe today, even.” I smiled at her retreating back. “Would you like to help me?”

  “Oh, you know I would, but you’ve been saying that for two days,” Gina replied glancing at me and smiling as she stuck her headphones back into her ears. “But when you actually are close, let me know, and I’ll definitely help.” She waved at me.

  “Will do,” I smiled and nodded. While I was sure I was close, Gina wasn’t wrong, and she had her own work to do. I could get it done on my own, even if some help would be nice. She probably thought the same about her own project.

  I brushed my dark hair out of my face and tucked the strands escaping my ponytail behind my ear. Then I shoved my earbuds back into my ears, cranked up some Nickelback (Hey, don’t judge.), and got my happy ass back to work. This thing wasn’t going to uncover itself, and when I was done, the credit would be all mine. Yup. I’d just dig the damned thing out myself and march down to camp with it.

  Turning back to the symbol that was barely visible beneath the dirt I’d painstakingly brushed away, I began to work. No one seemed as interested in it as I was, probably because Isis wasn’t a Greek god. At some point in the past, the Greeks had built a temple to the Egyptian deity up on this hill in the most sacred of the Greek islands, but even though I’d asked why, no one seemed to know. In fact, I’d been the only one from our little delegation to do more than walk through the structure since we’d gotten here.

  Still, an hour later, the ankh was completely visible. It wasn’t big, maybe the size of a softball, and as I cleared away the dirt, I realized there were faint flecks of gold in the etching. A grin spread across my face. This thing had been decorated with gold, and while the stuff may have been more common than sand in Egypt, it wasn’t super common here in Delos.

  A triumphant cry erupted from my lips as I clutched my hands into fists and pumped them in the air. Whatever I’d found was valuable and important. I leaped to my feet, intent on running the half mile down to the base camp, grabbing my professor by his lapels, and dragging him over here when a pulse of light from the ankh caught my eye.

  I stopped, my heart practically beating its way through my ribcage as I slowly knelt back down over the object. It had flashed with purple light, but that seemed impossible. I’d either imagined it, or the flash had been a trick of the light. Neither of those was worth getting worked up over.

  “I probably just need some water and shade,” I murmured, slowly getting back to my feet when the damn ankh began to glow with purple light like someone was filling the symbol with the ink from one of those glow in the dark bracelets. I swallowed hard and dropped back to my knees in the dirt.

  “What’s going on?” I asked cautiously, but the only response I got was the wind whistling across the desolate temple. That’s when I did the dumbest and bravest thing I could possibly imagine. I reached out and touched the symbol with my left index finger.

  A lavender spark leaped from the surface of the stone and zipped across my skin. Strangely enough, it didn’t hurt. In fact, it was sort of pleasant feeling, leaving me with a strange sense of warmth. Purple light flared along my skin as the scenery around me grew hazy, and for a second, I could see wavy lines of energy drifting up from the stone all around me. It sort of reminded me of heat lines, but it wasn’t anywhere near that hot and those lines tended not to be purple. The smell of dust and plant life filled my nostrils as I sucked in a breath, and I swear, I could taste the life of the island itself.

  Lightning crackled in the sky above, and I swung my head upward to see dark clouds swirling in the once-clear sky. It reminded me of every bad tornado movie I’d ever seen. That was probably not good.

  The purple light was slowly spreading up my arm, but I forced myself to ignore it because, so far, it hadn’t hurt me. No, what I needed to do was get out of here before that storm kicked off.

  I scrambled to my feet as thunder rumbled above like I’d angered Zeus himself. For all I knew, I had. Here I was in the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and my dumbass had started digging at a temple dedicated to an Egyptian goddess. My blasphemy knew no limits.

  “If you strike me down, I’m going to be pissed,” I called to the heavens as I hauled my sacrilegious butt away from the temple. With any luck, I could be back at base camp before Zeus dared to blast me from the earth.

  “Don’t go,” a faint voice begged from behind me. I spun before I could stop myself. Call me a sucker if you want, but I wasn’t one to turn away from someone who obviously needed help. As I looked around desperately for someone, my hands curled involuntarily into fists and adrenaline surged through my veins.

  There was nothing on the hillside with me. So, what had I heard?

  “Who’s there?” I asked as I took a cautious step toward the glowing purple ankh.

  “You can hear me?” the voice replied, relief and confusion filling it in equal measure.

  “Yes?” I offered, still looking around, but seeing nothing. Still, I could have sworn the ankh pulsed with every word I’d heard. That was impossible though, right?

  “Thank the gods,” the voice said, and this time, I was certain the symbol I’d excavated flared. “Can you help me?”

  “How am I going to help you when I can’t even see you?” I asked, taking a step toward the source of the voice. That was when it finally dawned on me that the stone I’d been excavating for the last two days was speaking to me.

  I was talking to an object I’d uncovered in the temple of Isis. I swallowed hard. Was Isis, a five-thousand-year-old Egyptian goddess, speaking to me from her temple in Greece?

  “Oh, my bad,” the voice replied, and before I could blink, the ethereal form of a woman manifested in front of the stone.

  I could still see the pulsing purple ankh through her nearly transparent form, and near as I could tell, she was linked to it by a chain of burnished amethyst light rooted to where her heart would have been if she’d been corporeal. Which she wasn’t. Not even slightly. I could tell because, from the calf down, her legs disappeared into my backpack like she was Casper the friendly ghost.

  Unlike Casper though, she was relatively normal colored and looked to be in her mid-twenties. Her hair was the color of black ink, and she was so damned hot, I nearly swallowed my tongue.

  “What are you?” I asked as I halted my forward movement, raised my glowing fist in front of me, and dropped into a fighting stance. “Some kind of ghost?”

  “Some kind,” she replied, shooting me a sarcastic smile. “My name is Aziza.” She held her hand out to me like there was some way in hell I’d shake it. “High Priestess of Isis.”

  “Don’t come any closer,” I warned. I was the son of Chuck Peters, one of the most famous martial artists in the world. I’d trained in everything from Aikido to Iaijutsu. I wasn’t afraid of no ghost.

  Instead of ripping out my heart with her ghost powers, Aziza smiled at me and shook her head. “I won’t hurt you if you promise to do one thing for me.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, immensely proud that I’d managed to hide the justifiable fear in my voice. I had just stepped from junior a
rcheologist to talking boxes and ghosts, so caution was the smart play.

  “Reach into the box and pull out the object inside.” She gestured toward the glowing ankh. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  I was about to reply when a low, guttural howl unlike anything I’d ever heard before exploded across the horizon. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up as a primal fear rose in me and strained at my self-control.

  That was the howl of a predator, and judging by the sound of it, the thing was not only huge, but it was way closer than I’d like. How was that possible? I was on an island filled with tourists, guards, and other students. There was no way something like that should be here.

  Aziza’s face grew worried. “Hurry!” she cried, gesturing for me to move it along. “Before they get here and kill you!”

  “Kill me? Why me?” I pressed, right before another howl cut through the distance, low and hungry sounding. It was way closer. If the other one had come from down the block, this one was at my neighbor’s house.

  Instead of responding to me, Aziza dropped to her knees in the dirt and tried to pull something from the stone, but her fingers passed right through the rock. She glanced back at me, her fear replaced with something that was a cross between determination and anger.