Under the Moon by Natalie J. Damschroder Read Free Book Online

away from the source of her power who may be a target of those who want to do harm will be assigned a protector.
    —The Society for Goddess Education and Defense, New Member Brochure
    …
     
    Quinn tried, but despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t sleep very long. There had never been any question that they would try to stop this guy. Nick hadn’t bothered to suggest they hole up so he could bar the door and keep her safe. Sam had automatically gone into investigative mode. She knew their priority was still keeping the leech away from her, but none of them wanted anyone else to be harmed.
    Every time she started to doze, her brain woke her with a new angle, so finally she got up and returned to the computer. She spent hours doing research, both online and in some of the historical archives on the Society website, trying to figure out what “rogue” meant in the context of either goddesses or protectors. There wasn’t much about rogue goddesses. They documented the birth and progress of every known goddess and, since one was born an average of once every year and a half, it wasn’t difficult to do. Lineages made it unlikely that a new goddess would escape the notice of the Society. If a goddess was unable to pay her Society dues, a sustenance fund covered it.
    Quinn knew a few goddesses who disdained the politics of the organization, and a few more who preferred a freer existence, but they all still maintained minimum levels of membership to stay part of the Society’s community. In the last hundred years, three goddesses who had problems with the Society had been labeled rogue. Only one had gone on to do things that went against their general moral code.
    Quinn supposed that would be hard for regular people to believe. Goddesses were all about power, after all, and power corrupts. But as far back as goddess history went, the abilities that came with their heritage had been accompanied by compassion and wisdom. Goddesses were rare; goddesses doing harm even more so, and those that did were quickly taken care of. Gods were nonexistent. Some claimed men hadn’t learned the lessons of corruption and therefore eliminated their line of descent long ago. Quinn didn’t quite believe that. Goddesses were still human, and there were plenty of normal women who were corrupt.
    Others thought one or more of the “original” goddesses, who’d had much greater abilities in a world unpolluted and not yet depleted of resources, had deliberately eliminated the gods’ ability to procreate. No one knew for sure.
    Regardless, even in the information Quinn had found about the rogue goddesses, there’d been no mention of rogue protectors. Maybe the Protectorate archives contained something, but of course Quinn didn’t have access. She wasn’t sure if Nick did, but he was treating the whole thing so lightly, she didn’t trust him to check.
    She needed to go to Boston.
    …
     
    “I don’t know why we can’t take the Charger, that’s all.” Nick slammed the driver’s door and unlocked the trunk. After handing Quinn her duffel, he unloaded his pockets into the trunk’s storage case. She counted two pistols and three knives.
    “Because I don’t want to take three days to travel,” she said. Again.
    “ You wouldn’t be driving. It would be no more than twelve hours there, twelve back, tops. That’s barely a day.”
    “I’m in a hurry.” She swung her bag over her shoulder and headed toward the terminal. “What’s your problem with flying, anyway?”
    “It’s not the being-in-the-air part—”
    “Let me guess. It’s takeoffs and landings.”
    “Nope. It’s the lack of viable escape routes.” He held out a hand to stop a cab so they could cross to the terminal. “Kinda hard to protect you when there’s nowhere to go.”
    Quinn smiled. “Great, you can relax. There won’t be anything to protect me from.”
    “Never let down your guard.” He moved ahead of her to scope out the counters. Midafternoon, midweek,