The Holding Cell – Theos Rising Excerpt
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing snippets from Theos Rising that give a small peek into each of the viewpoint characters. If you missed Na’rina, the dryad, and Icarus, the werecat, you can reach their snippets through these links: Tea and Monster.
Publication: June 15, 2024
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Lead In: El is our last viewpoint. She’s a Sedessan, or what I’ve termed a mind walker. If she touches a person, she can read his or her thoughts, with a few exceptions. Greek mythology might have a creature for this, but when I first started on Quaking Soul years ago, this was a made-up mythical creature in my head. So even if there is a creature from myth that matches the description, the Sedessans were not based on them.
Anyway, El is short for Elodie Varela. She, like most of the Sedessans, is a spy, intelligence agent, political mover in the background. Whatever you’d like to call it. She does appear, kind of, in Quaking Soul, but it’s brief, so she brings a whole new aspect to the Hidden Mythics world. And for those of you familiar with this world, she’s Icarus’ half-sister.
The Holding Cell
The holding cell reeked of sweat, mold, and the musk of stone never allowed to dry. It wasn’t the first El had ever gotten herself thrown into, but it might have been the most crowded.
Sunlight, but no breeze, trickled in through the small window of the cavern-like room. The buzzing of the invisible sensors El had stuck on her arms before the mission told her that, despite the room’s rustic appearance, there was an invisible barrier over the window in addition to the bars. She rubbed her arms. The humidity clung to her skin. From her perch on a rocky ledge six feet above the cavern floor, El counted at least twenty mythics vying for space, although most of that number was the gaggle of imps scuttling beneath the other creatures’ feet.
Spindly, slobbery troublemakers.
Their cackling echoed against the vaulted ceiling while three grayish-green imps spit at the eyes of a small group of gnomes. The gnomes sat back-to-back, and a wave of calm washed out from them but it evaporated under the imps’ antics. Giving up on the calming, one gnome threw a rock. The imps scattered and the rock smashed against the wall, showering an ior sleeping in the corner. El snorted softly as the blocky creature, who bore the large head of all iors and appeared droopy from his nap, bowed up threateningly at everyone, unable to place who’d attacked him.
More imps ran through a group of tiny fairies and jabbed their needle-sharp claws into their delicate feet. The fairies gave high-pitched squeals of distress and danced away but their silvery blood smeared the ground from the few times they hadn’t dodged fast enough. The imps dissolved into cackling fits of laughter.
Yet another imp pair tried to climb the wall around the iron-barred door, rattling the hinges and lock, and hissing and spitting at anyone else who approached.
Imps didn’t usually gather in such large numbers. When they did, they fed off the group hysteria. Either our captors have a terrible lack of knowledge about imps, or they want to keep everyone on edge. El suspected the latter; their jailors were not stupid.
Beyond keeping an eye on the creatures, El ignored them. They would not be helpful. Having gotten thrown into the Fae embassy’s holding cell on purpose, El now needed to get out—she’d gathered the information she’d come for and there were only a few in the cell capable of helping her escape.
Because of the nature of her mission, she’d come with very little tech. Other than the sensors on her arms that told her about nearby electronics, all she had was a tracking device. She was naked without a phone or comms, but her captors would have confiscated such devices anyway.
And so El considered the other mythics in the cell. People could be as useful as technology.
***
That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by! Pre-orders for Theos Rising are open here on the website or Amazon.
Blessings,
Jennifer
