The Spy Who Totally Had A Crush on Me by Michael P. Spradlin

CHAPTER ONE
It Ain't Over
From my hiding place in the rocks behind the stone altar, I watched as Simon Blankenship unrolled the Scroll of the Enlightened and began to read from it in a long dead language. He was dressed in his full-fledged Mithrian regalia: flowing black robe, golden medallion and a ridiculous looking helmet that had a pair of bull horns jutting out of each side. A truly comical look. In fact if I wasn’t scared out my wits, I’d be laughing right now. What a meathead. But he didn’t know I was here. I was going to have to be very careful to make it out of this temple alive.

Simon was here to begin the first phase of a ritual that he hoped would unleash the mystical forces of Mithras, the Roman God of the Afterlife, upon the earth. Nobody knew for sure what exactly would happen if Mithras was released from his captivity in the Underworld, but since he was defeated in battle by a girl and sent there well over two thousand years ago, we all assumed that when he got out he was going to be in a very bad mood.

Slowly and quietly, I reached into my fanny pack and pulled out a small device about the size of a cell-phone and very quietly switched it on. The power light flashed on and I could feel the device begin to vibrate in my hand. I set the timer on the device for thirty seconds and then ever so gently set it on a small ledge that jutted out from behind the altar. I removed a pair of specially designed earphones, placing them over my ears. Crouching behind the altar I waited, counting down with the timer on the screen of the device.

I’d just activated an all-sonic stun transmitter. Brent Christian, who was my classmate at Blackthorn Academy back home in Pennsylvania, had recently invented it. It’s funny that I now refer to Blackthorn Academy as my home. When I first got there a few months ago, that certainly wasn’t the case. I did whatever I could think of to get out. Then all of the excitement happened and ultimately I decided it was better to stay and fight than spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. More about that later. Right now I had to concentrate.

I was here to retrieve the Book of Seraphim. Somehow Simon or one of his followers had managed to steal the book from where we had it safeguarded at Blackthorn Academy. We don’t know how he did it. We just knew we had to get it back.

The all-sonic stun transmitter was supposed to generate a very high-pitched sonic blast when it ‘detonated.’ It would basically knock everyone down who wasn’t wearing the proper sound proof head gear, rendering them unconscious for a few minutes. If it worked, you could take out a room full of people with no smoke or explosions that would seriously injure anyone or destroy any priceless artifacts you might want to preserve. At least that was the theory. We’d tested it a few times and it worked fine. My only fear was that whenever we were around Blankenship things had a way of going wrong. Deadly wrong. So this was the first real test for Brent’s little device and I needed to keep my fingers crossed.

The rest of the Mithrians, there were about ten of them in the temple, were chanting along with Simon. This must be the Ritual of the Undead that Mr. Kim had told us about. Simon, acting as the high priest, would read the names of long dead Mithrians from the Scroll of the Enlightened and would then call upon their spirit power to help him summon Mithras from the Afterlife. Except that Simon didn’t know that in another fifteen seconds he was going to have a very large and painful earache. That would sure put a damper on your zombie party. Freak.

Brent’s device worked just like it was supposed too. When the timer counted down to zero, it let out a wailing high frequency blast. Through my earphones it sounded like a loud humming sound. Those that were standing in the temple were driven to their knees by the force of the sound. The device tweeted its little song for ten seconds and by then, everyone including Simon, was on the ground hands over their ears, lapsing into unconsciousness.

When it went silent, I tore off the earphones and jumped up from my hiding place moving to the front of the altar. Simon lay sprawled on the ground in front of it, his right hand still clutching the scroll. I grabbed it out of his hand and pulling a collapsible knapsack out of my fanny pack I snapped it open. I stuffed the scroll inside, reaching down to yank the medallion off of Simon’s neck stuffing that in the knapsack too. Then I turned to the altar and saw the Book of Seraphim lying there before me.

The Book of Seraphim was the key to everything. It was written thousands of years ago by the Emperor Flavius, the last Emperor of Rome and last High Priest of Mithras. It was a written record of Mithras’ battles with the forces of Etherea, Goddess of Light. The Roman Empire was about to fall, facing defeat from the forces of Queen Naromi of the Persian Empire. She and her followers worshipped Etherea. Flavius believed that only darkness could defeat light so he called upon Mithras to restore the power of the Empire and beat back the forces of Etherea. But to make things simple, he messed up. Misread a couple of prophecies. Made some bad mystical decisions and in the end was soundly whipped by Queen Naromi’s forces. So he wrote everything down is this big book, sent his men off to the far corners of the world to hide the sacred relics of Mithras and then pretty much was relegated to a footnote in history.

According to legend, this great victory gave Etherea the power to banish Mithras to the Afterlife forever, which she did. But of course, there was one little problem. You see those Gods and Goddesses were tricky. They always left an out or a backdoor in all their little proclamations. The prophecy delivered by the Gods, said that when both Mithras and Etherea were re-born in human form, then they ‘shall battle each other for dominion over mankind.’ For a long time nobody believed any of this. It was just one of those cute legends that was known to a few scholarly types and generally not believed or accepted until now.

That’s because, several years ago Simon Blankenship uncovered the Book of Seraphim in a Mithrian Temple in the desert of Kuzebekistan. When he found it, all kinds of weird stuff happened to him in the temple and it turns out that he is (or thinks he is, I’m still not convinced about all of this) Mithras reborn. We know this, because Mr. Kim, my headmaster at Blackthorn Academy was with him on that particular mission and saw what happened in the temple with his own eyes. So all that was left was for Mr. Kim to find Etherea reborn before Simon and if you haven’t guessed by now, that’s where I come in. Me, Rachel Buchanan. Goddess reincarnated. Let me tell you it’s not as cool as it sounds. But again, more of that later. Right now I had a madman to foil.

The Book of Seraphim is big and heavy. Its cover is encrusted with jewels and the binding is made out of thick leather. There are a couple of hundred parchment pages in the book. So it’s not like we’re dealing with a little paperback here. I hefted the book off the altar and put it into my knapsack, slipping it onto my shoulders, and took a quick look around the altar. We’d lost track of Simon for the last couple of weeks and I needed to make sure that he hadn’t somehow found the other missing relics. I didn’t see anything so I went to step over Simon and make my way to the entrance of the temple. I needed to get out of there.

I had my eye on the door. Every one of the Mithrians was still down. I was going to make it. At least I thought so until I felt Simon’s hand reach out and grab my ankle.

“Not so fast Etherea,” he said.

I tried to kick away but he had a grip like steel.

He jumped to his feet still holding onto my ankle so now my leg was waist high. Remembering a Tae Kwan Do move that Mr. Kim had taught me, I bent my standing leg and leapt into the air swinging it up to land a solid kick to Blankenship’s chest. It staggered him but not much. He’s a tough guy, a former Navy Seal and Black Ops Agent so I wasn’t going to win a street fight with the guy. Still I was counting on him to be a little woozy from the effects of the sonic stun device. My kick worked to the degree that he let go of my foot and I landed on my feet. I turned and ran, but he was quick. He grabbed me around my neck and tried to yank me off my feet.

I clasped my hands together and spun around on my right foot hitting his arms at the elbow as hard as I could. It was a nifty self-defense move when someone was choking you, and it was almost impossible to counter. I managed to knock his arms loose but as I spun around to face him, he came back at me quick as a cat and grabbed my throat with both hands. This time he had me good and I tried to drive my arms like a wedge up through his arms to break his grip but he was too strong. I was starting to get light headed and I couldn’t breathe. I tried the arm maneuver again but I had even less energy for this attempt and his hands stayed wrapped around my throat. With one last effort, I reached up and grabbed the horns that stuck out of his helmet. I pulled the helmet forward so it covered his eyes. Then with all the strength I had left I took my fists and hit both sides of his helmet right over his ears. It made a very loud thunking sound and Simon screamed and let go of my throat and tried to pull the helmet of his head.

I turned to get out of there and then saw that I was sunk. The other Mithrians were waking up and two of them stood in front of the door. There was no way out. I was trapped.

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Spy Goddess Book Three: The Spy Who Totally Had A Crush On Me, is a manuscript I had written for a long time. After the decision was made to discontinue the Spy Goddess series in novels after two books Spy Goddess: Live and Let Shop and Spy Goddess: To Hawaii with Love, I was of course disappointed. Then the series was given another life in two manga volumes The Chase For The Chalice and the Quest For The Lance. Those volumes unfortunately never caught on either.

The thing was, I had already written the third novel in the series, The Spy Who Totally Had A Crush On Me and there it sat on my computer drive, gathering dust. Then a strange thing happened. I started getting emails asking if there was going to be a third novel. And more emails. And more emails after that. It made me wonder.

Then it became a lot easier to publish an ebook on your own. So here it is. It's a brand new story. The same characters, plus a new guy who might be a good guy or a bad guy but either way, he sets Rachel's blood racing.

I'll need your help though to make this experiment a success. First of all, if you want more Spy Goddess novels, you have to by this one. And review it on review sites and tell your friends and get them to buy it. And who knows? If it proves worthwhile, I might write another one! It's all up to you!