We only have each other. I want to be there for them.
I turn out the light on the nightstand and slip into the cool, clean-scented sheets next to him. In the quiet of the room, I study his face for a second, then lie down to sleep far on my own side.
When I wake up in the night, I’m warm and cozy. My cheek is pressed against warm skin and hard muscle, and suddenly I wake up all the way with a jolt.
I’m curled up against Wilder. My head is on his shoulder, and his chest rises and falls steadily. The moonlight that seeps in this room through the window lights his handsome face.
I’m scared I’ll hurt him, laying against him like this, even though it feels so good to be close to him. I start to shift away, but his arm catches me, pulling me close to him.
“Where are you going, Iz?” he murmurs, and he sounds half-asleep. “Finally got you right where you belong.”
He falls asleep again right away, but I stay awake.
I can’t stop thinking about what he just said.
No one wants us here, but when I’m close to Wilder, I do feel like I’m where I belong.
Chapter Sixteen
Van
Around me a cold mist curls and a mystical forest with impossibly large trees and glowing flowers surrounds the field I stand in. The earth feels soft beneath my feet, and everything here seems to belong…except for me.
From somewhere in the mist I sense a disturbance. It makes the hairs on every inch of my body stand on end. A shape draws closer, and I take a step back. The shape belongs to something powerful and dangerous.
And then he emerges.
Easily seven feet tall, the man wears armor from head to toe. A dark fur cloak wraps across his massive shoulders, and I can’t see much beneath the helmet except two piercing blue eyes and a long, dark beard. In his hand, the monstrous man carries a huge sword--the same sword that now belongs to me.
He lumbers toward me like a dinosaur. The earth shakes beneath his feet. But his power isn’t just in his size and strength; this man is a god. There’s no denying it.
When he draws closer to me, he stops. The urge to fall to my knees sweeps through my body, and I struggle to stay on my feet until my legs finally collapse under me. His gaze seem to burn into me.
“Son of man,” he says, and his dark voice seems to echo in the air; it holds me in its spell. “You have been chosen.”
Fear and awe rush through me, but at least my voice sounds steady when I speak. “Chosen for what?”
He tilts his head, studying me. “To bring us back to life. To break us from our prisons and rule the world once more.”
“Rule?” I ask, before I can question the wisdom of that question.
It isn’t like we haven’t heard this spiel a million times since we showed up here: the gods want to rule, they can’t be trusted, and everyone thinks we’re too weak to hold the gods in check. But maybe the gods have their own perspective.
“Yes, a god can only rule. He cannot be a part of society. It’s impossible.”
And they say that now I’m a god. What does that mean for my future?
“But I don’t want to rule,” I tell him. It’s bad enough I’m supposed to take over my father’s company; I don’t want to take over the world.
His mouth draws into a grim line. “And they don’t want you to rule either. The creatures who dared attack gods don’t understand their place in this world. They don’t realize that they should be on their knees before you. But with time, they will learn, or they will be destroyed.”
This time when I open my mouth, his gaze flickers to my face, his blue eyes blazing with heat. I try to speak, but no words come out.
“We are Tyr, the god of war, glory, justice, and oaths. And when I am fully reborn within you, we will begin again to change this corrupt world. Any who do not fulfill their oaths, any who are cowardly in the face of war and danger, will taste the justice of my sword.”
Quite the monologue. His eyes blaze with power, and suddenly, I understand why the students here fear us so much. Tyr will stop at nothing to remake the world as he wishes to see it. Damn what anyone wants...including myself.
Fear and defiance intermingle within me until I don’t know what I’m going to say next until I hear my own words. “But you aren’t Tyr now. I am. And I don’t want to kill and punish.”
Something dangerous flashes in his eyes. “No, of course you do not, for you are not worthy. But soon you’ll have the honor of being my vessel. Your flawed thoughts and ideas will be pushed aside for mine, and the old ways will return.”
My heart races. “No. I won’t let that happen.”
This time, the massive god smiles. “You won’t have a choice.”
My alarm rings, and I shoot awake. I’m drenched in sweat and shaking. My dream, no, my nightmare, felt so real. And yet, it couldn’t be.
Could it?
Without letting myself dwell on it longer, I rise and get ready for my day, even though I don’t feel like myself.
In the corner of my room, my sword sits like a reminder that not everything I fear is just a figment of my imagination.
A short time later, I’ve showered, my hair is combed and neat, and I’ve dressed in the uniform I found hanging in my closet. But as I stare at my reflection in the mirror, I can’t help but feel even more like a fake than usual.
Adopting a persona is something I learned from an early age. Wellingtons are expected to be perfect, in appearance and in all ways. Even as a child I remember being told, “Wellingtons don’t cry,” “Wellingstons don’t shout,” “Wellingtons don’t run.”
Somewhere over the years I’ve mastered the persona of “Van Wellington,” and the ability to pretend to be someone else has been invaluable. In a way, it’s protected me from every hard moment in life, because I just distance myself. I could pretend bad things were happening to Van Wellington, but not me. Not just Van.
But now?
I can’t escape this the way I’ve escaped other things in the past. Inside of me is a god. A god I’m not sure I can control. And from our limited time here, I’m pretty sure everyone plans to kill me and my friends.
Life has changed. It’s no longer about pretending to be the man my parents want me to be. Instead, it’s about surviving to see tomorrow, protecting those I love, and mastering my worst impulses. The god within me wants to drag me down into the pits of my own mind and take over my body.
Well, fuck him. I won’t let him take anything away from me. I’ll fight for myself and my friends, and anyone who crosses me--from the god within or the idiot students at this school--will find themselves regretting it.
I just have to figure out how.
A light tapping startles me from my thoughts, and I turn to the door. “Come in.”
Izzy enters my room, and for a minute all I can do is stare. She’s wearing the female version of the uniform I wear. While mine is a white shirt with the school logo on it, a tie, and dark pants, hers is a similar white shirt and tie, but paired with a little skirt that draws attention to her mouthwateringly sexy legs.
“Uh,” she says, shifting uncomfortably. “If you don’t come out for breakfast now, you’ll miss it.”
I keep my tone steady, trying not to betray my attraction to her. “Sounds good.”
Turning to scan my room to see if there’s anything I should take with me, my gaze lands on my sword. Take it or don’t? Then, beside it, I spot a leather sheath I hadn’t seen the night before. It’s appearance makes me uneasy, but it would make carrying the damn thing easier.
Going to the sword and sheath, I put the sheath on my back and slide the sword in. I’m surprised by how lightweight it feels. In fact, it’s almost as if I’m carrying nothing at all. It feels like an extension of my arm. Not like when I first got it.
A shudder moves through my body. No, it’s more than that. Better than that. It feels right to carry the sword.
“Are you taking your sword?” Izzy asks, frowning.
I don’t want to tell her that there’s no way in hell I’m walking around this campus completely weaponless, but I don’t want to scare her. “Why not?”
“Shouldn’t we at least try to look like we plan to get along with the students here?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Do you think that will stop them from attacking us?”
Her mouth draws into a thin line. “Well, no.”
“Then the sword stays,” I say, and plaster on a smile. “Now, you said something about breakfast?”
As I follow her from my room, I glance back once, my gaze sliding over the golden crown by my bed, and then see my own reflection. Is it just me or do my eyes look like a paler shade of blue? Like the god, Tyr?
A shiver runs down my spine, but I close my door on my reflection.
I have enough to worry about right now.
Chapter Seventeen
Mr. Time
“We’re never going to know how good or bad they might be if you kill them first,” I say in exasperation.
Brenda smirks, the tattoos on her face shifting with the movement, as she sits across from me. She sits with her leg thrown over one arm of the chair, idly filing her nails like a teenager rather than a witch of as many years as she is. “Nothing is likely to kill them. Except the Godslayers. Or the gods themselves.”
“They don’t know that.”
She sits up, her high-heeled boots hitting the wooden floor with a thump, but her tone remains as casual as ever. “You should’ve heard how my boys said he reacted. His spear kept flickering in and out of existence, but he couldn’t reach it. He can heal the others--he can heal anyone--but he was bleeding and on the verge of crying once they had him on the ground, kicking him--”
“Shut up, Brenda,” I interrupt. I don’t relish anything about this.
She shrugs. “He drew blood, though. That one boy against four vampires, and he didn’t do half-bad. Mortal boy has fight in him.”
There’s an almost admiring note in Brenda’s voice that tells me that Wilder did better than ‘not half-bad’. Brenda is a warrior, and she does appreciate another warrior.
Not that admiration will stop her from killing these god-children, if she can.
“Wonder if he has enough to keep the god under control,” she adds.
“Odin didn’t take him over, even though Noah was in pain and afraid,” I point out.
“Who knows if Odin even offered, or if he enjoyed watching his vessel suffer?” she scoffs. “The boy didn’t make a choice to stay in control of Odin. He doesn’t have that power yet.”
Still, it’s a good sign. A sign that these children could be powerful enough to keep control of the gods. But I won’t admit that to the witch who thinks I’m a fool to give the humans a chance in the first place.
“Perhaps you’re right.” I hesitate. “There are better ways to test them.”
“Are there?” she asks. “Or do you just hate seeing their mortal selves hurt? They have to be put in danger--”
“They have other desires,” I say.
Her eyes widen, her perfect red lips tightening in irritation. Right. Brenda hates to be interrupted.
Right now she’s probably imagining choking me to death with my own entrails.
But I’m still her boss, so she schools her face to neutral. Probably promising herself: entrails later.
It’s hard to relax and enjoy a cup of coffee sitting across from Brenda, that’s for sure. Even the good blonde roast stuff that my elvish secretary picks up from Starbucks on her way through the mortal world.
“What do they want?” she demands, her voice clipped. “Since you know them so well.”
“Answers,” I say, the next test coming to me as we speak. “They want answers. Izzy wants to know about her family. The boys are scared of the threats they face--thanks to you and your happy little band of violent hooligans--and maybe, if they have any sense, they’re afraid of the gods themselves…”
“Answers is a bit abstract,” she points out. Then a contemplative look comes over her face. “Although maybe we could torture them with--”
“I have a better idea.” Good lord, I don’t want to hear Brenda’s detailed torture plans. I’m sure she always has a few at the ready. “One that puts them in the driver’s seat on whether they’ll let the gods take them over or not.”
‘What’s that?”
“The painting of Veritas,” I say. “It’s in the secret library. We’ll make sure they know about it--”
“You want to set them up to steal? Come on. That’s hardly worth killing them over.”
Sometimes, I doubt Brenda really wants to give them a fair shake for some reason.
“It won’t just be theft at stake,” I tell her. “If they break in, we’ll have set up a series of trials for them to pass through--”
Brenda’s face lights up. “Now we’re talking.”
“I’d love to see you put your formidable imagination to use,” I say, “but remember. We’re not supposed to be the bad guys here.”
She pulls a face. She doesn’t appreciate my insinuation. “Sometimes I think you forget what the gods have done before.”
Just her words summon a sequence of images that flash through my mind and make my heart race: buildings on fire, bodies in the ash, the acrid scent of smoke choking the living as the gods rampage through the rubble mercilessly…
“I can never forget,” I say. “But they could be useful too.”
Brenda stands from her chair. “I know you think you can keep the monsters on chains. But I doubt that those children that the gods infested will be the heroes you think they will become.”
“We’ll see,” I tell her. “I’m on their side, but if they fail us, I’ll be the one to see them imprisoned once more, even at the cost of the children’s innocent lives.”
Even if doing so will kill me.
I think of Izzy sitting so bravely in the car with me. All I wanted to do was pull her into my arms and reassure her that I cared about her. That I would do everything in my power to keep her safe, just as I did before. I wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone so deeply that it cut me like a knife.
But I couldn’t reveal our connection.
“Good,” Brenda says, already sashaying toward the door. “I’m off to devise some lovely tortures for the library.”
“Trials,” I shouted behind her. “Trials, not tortures.”
She flashes me a smile over her shoulder. “Right. My mistake. Slip of the tongue.”
Gods save these poor kids.
I might be the one to imprison them in the end, if necessary, but I didn’t want to be the one to test them. The truth was, they needed to be handled harshly, not with the kid-gloves that I would use. It was the only way we could be sure. It was the only way I could justify to all those powerful beings shouting for their deaths that they wouldn’t be a danger to us.
But letting other people do the dirty work hurts too. I think of Izzy’s face, so like her mother’s, and I reach for the brandy on my desk.
She deserves better.
Chapter Eighteen
Izzy
I slipped out of Noah’s room and left him sleeping so I could dress. When I go back to his room to check on him, the shower is running. I perch on the edge of the bed, and find my hand absently drawn across the still-warm sheets where Noah slept a few minutes before.
A rueful smile twists my lips. I’ve finally got you back right where you belong. He probably doesn’t even remember he said that. He was really out of it last night.
But I hope he does.
The shower cuts off, and a few minutes later, Noah leans in the doorway. He’s wearing nothing but the black school trousers and belt, and a few surviving beads of water trickle down his chest toward the chiseled lines of his abs. His hair looks a darker shade of blond than usual when it’s wet, and he runs his fingers through it distractedly as he gazes at me, ruffling it. It looks good ruffled.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning.”
Tension seems to drip between us, moving slower than that bead of water sliding down his washboard abs.
“How do you feel this morning?” I sit forward, studying him carefully. There are vivid bruises across his chest and abs, and the cut still hasn’t healed on his lip. But he looks better.
He scrubs his face with his hand. “Confused. I don’t remember much about what happened last night. I remember them laughing at me, calling me Odin, but not…. I don’t remember what they look like.”
I think of the murderous looks that crossed our friends’ faces last night. “Maybe that’s for the best.”
We don’t need to find more trouble.
“How is that for the best? We could be sitting in classes today with people who want to hurt us.” His voice is frustrated.
“From what the witch said last night, they’re scared of us, or at least scared of the gods inside us,” I remind him. “People do awful, crazy things when they’re scared.”
I’m thinking of what happened last night, so I’m surprised when Noah says slowly, “Like abandon the girl they love?”
My gaze jerks to his. “What are you talking about?”
“The way we all just…” he shakes his head, “abandoned you.”
Relief floods my chest to hear him admit it, as if something inside me has just unknotted. At least we see things the same way. I didn’t think they cared about what they did when they walked away from me, but if Wilder regrets it, maybe he never entirely stopped caring about me.
My lips twist. “I thought we weren’t talking about it.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened. And now I don’t know how to move forward…”
“Move forward?” I frown, but my heart is beating fast. What does he want to move forward with?
Does Noah want to kiss me in the daylight too?
“We’re all here together,” he says slowly. “It just seems like we could have a second chance at what the guys and I screwed up before because we were stupid kids—”
Magic For Dummies: A Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance (God Fire Reform School Book 1) Page 10