To Love a God

by Evie Kent

  Today was no different.

  They arrived in their ridiculous ceremonial robes, like I gave a fuck about how they dressed to deliver my latest plaything. Behind those white masks, eyes darted about, most familiar, but two I didn’t recognize—the most nervous of the bunch, flicking around as they wheeled my delivery box in. I gave them some space, hands entwined behind my back, watching, unblinking, tension steadily rising off the nine humans the longer they lingered in my tomb.

  Always nine.

  Again—like I actually gave a fuck about their numbers. Apparently, because there were nine realms in our universe, the worshipping simpletons figured all they sacrificed to me had to come in sets of nine as well.

  One cloaked figure stood guard at the opening in the bars that stretched from one wall to the other, a cell door constructed two centuries ago when I’d first demanded a pretty face to keep me company. That little doorway meant nothing, open or closed: the ward trapping me inside this infernal mountain stood beyond it. Even if I charged the bars, shoved the nine aside and killed them where they stood, it wouldn’t matter. Revna’s magic would hold me. Keep me. Bind me to this fucking place.

  Forever.

  Hidden to the world, myself included, the witch’s ward cloaked the mountain, muted my godly gifts, yet allowed all others to pass freely.

  Sometimes I wondered if its invisibility was a mercy; if I had to see it, day in and day out, for eight long centuries, I’d have lost what was left of my mind.

  Under my watchful eye, the cloaked humans moved efficiently. This was an offering none of them had participated in during their lifetime, but their fathers or mothers would have instructed them in the proper way. Bring the crate inside. Remove it from the little cart with its squeaky wheels. Arrange it in the sunlight spilling through the cave’s mossy mouth—and then get the fuck out.

  Nine pairs of feet scampered off as soon as the task was done, the last of the lot slamming the door shut behind them. Seconds later, the bars electrified again, jerking to life with a familiar hum. Still I waited, waited, waited until I could no longer hear them, their breathing, their stumbling footsteps—my twenty-first-century acolytes. Only when we were truly alone, I pounced.

  Hurrying up the last gentle incline of my self-made ramp, I crossed over to the large wooden crate with barely contained glee. Giddiness finally wrung an authentic smile from my lips, and I smoothed a hand over the polished pine panels, the four corners sharp enough to draw blood.

  This moment was my favorite of the ritual—the anticipation before I finally set eyes on her. So much possibility. So much potential.

  Most of all: someone to share in my miserable solitude.

  Unable to stand it a second longer, I ripped the sealed lid clean off, hurling it aside with such ferocity that it shattered to bits of kindling when it hit the cave wall.

  Oh.

  There she was.

  Inside, dressed in the usual slip of white cotton, a fabric that turned sheer in the right light, was my gift. Curled up, slumped over—beaten? I frowned at the brace around her swollen ankle, the bandages around her wrist, then reached inside with a trembling hand to brush the hair from her face. More marks. More cuts and scrapes. Was she a fighter, or did this generation simply not understand what I demanded of them?

  A quick clench of my teeth. A flash of fire in my chest.

  And then gone.

  Replaced with anticipation again. Yes, she appeared battered, her white skin peppered with color, but that was all cosmetic, all fixable. Easily.

  Her unconscious body coiled around a loaf of crusty bread—freshly baked, from the smell of it. A few huge bites were missing from its head, crumbs littering the base of the crate, and I leaned an elbow on the wood siding as I swooped her hair behind her ear, smirking.

  Hungry thing.

  I could take care of that, too.

  You’ll want for nothing here… if you’re a good little human.

  And they usually were. In the presence of a god, what choice did they have?

  I ducked down, and as I slipped my arms around her to hoist her up and out, I caught a whiff of the world. Of trees and earth. Of something floral and sweet in her midnight-black hair. It was—intoxicating. My eyes drifted shut, and I lingered, just taking her in…

  Until she sucked down a sharp breath.

  My eyes flew open, hungry for that familiar shade, the blessed sheen that I craved—

  Only I hadn’t time to lose myself in the green I’d expected, the hue that had been all but teased in her photo, because Nora Olsen suddenly slammed the base of her palm into my throat. It smarted a little, the blow forcing a cough out of me, but I reared back more out of surprise than anything. She seized the opportunity to leap from the crate in my absence, but then yelped sharply when she landed on that bandaged ankle. The little—tall, lithe, willowy—human doubled over with a ragged gasp, briefly gripping the side of the crate for support before launching herself at the bars.

  A distinct bzzzzz erupted as soon as she touched one, jittering up her arm.

  “Fuck!”

  The electric jolt had her in its thrall, briefly pinning her in place as it coursed through her body, before she finally wrenched her hand away and toppled backward. She hit the ground hard, crying out again, and then scrambled back, back, back until she collided with the cave wall.

  And I just—watched.

  Because.

  Fuck me, that was new.

  And a little exciting.

  Absently massaging my throat, I tracked her path from the crate to the bars to the wall. The little thing had looked like some poor lost bird stuck inside a hall, fluttering around the rafters, slamming into windowpanes as it searched for an out.

  Usually they were so docile in the box.

  They came to me crying, cowering, and I coaxed them out with sweet words and fanciful promises, luring them into my arms with time and care. Precision. I had my speech memorized, a handful of perfect phrases that always won them over. Every time. Without fail.

  Well. Actually. Once, a century and a half ago, one of my lovelies had crawled out of the box raring to go, her hands in my hair, her lips to mine. In fact, we’d fucked on the box itself—immediately. They were all told why they were brought here, and that one—Lorelei—had known her place from the start.

  But that got old fast.

  It always did.

  Sex was great until it wasn’t.

  Fun until it wasn’t.

  Exciting—until it wasn’t.

  But that was what they thought I desired, above all else, and sometimes I forgot…

  Forgot that there was more to companionship than carnality.

  Shoved up against the wall, knees to her chest, a sweating, panting, shaking Nora glared at me. Face curtained with thick black waves, she had proven herself to be a treat already—so much more than just the physical similarities to her.

  “Hello, little human.” English. This one was American, even with that Danish family name. I always spoke their native tongue; we had so much stacked against us already. No need to complicate things. Hands in my pockets, I tipped my head to the side, smiling down at her. “You look positively wretched.”

  And truly, she did. Bruises marred her face. Cuts on her hands, her fingers. That disgrace of an ankle, so swollen it was a wonder she could put any weight on it at all.

  But that was surface-level nonsense. A bit of dirt and dust on an otherwise perfect specimen, and I had all the time in the world to polish her up, really put my back into the task.

  When she said nothing, those quivering lips pressed firmly together, I started toward her. Prowled slowly, steadily, my every step making her shrink and retreat into stone that would never yield, never swallow her up like she wanted—for this was a mountain without mercy. Best learn it now, little human.

  For all her glowering, her efforts to make herself as small as possible, Nora Olsen was far lovelier than her picture had suggested. Tall—taller than the oth
ers, an adequate match for my substantial height. Long limbs, lean but strong, her calves defined, her arms wiry. A lot of force behind that strike to my throat… Athletic.

  My smile sharpened. I rather liked that—an agile sacrifice, someone who might finally be able to keep pace with me.

  But… Details, details, details. The odd brown freckle dotted her flesh, her skin white but sun-kissed. Black hair, thick and wavy and long. Well-groomed, this one, her fingernails neat and uniform. Sharp facial features, her chin pointed, her cheekbones severe enough to hollow out her face. Thick black brows and lashes.

  I crouched down in front of her, and she shuffled back, panic flashing across her lovely, lovely eyes. In time, she would get accustomed to my movements, to the fluidity and grace of a god. Head cocked to the side, I studied those eyes. Perfection. Just what I wanted—the ideal shade. Green overall, but with bursts of brownish gold around the pupil.

  Almost exactly like…

  Keen on a closer look, I seized her by the chin and dragged her forward for a bit of scrutiny. Nora whimpered and resisted—no surprise there. Her hands shot up as if to fight me properly, but they stilled and dropped back down to her sides moments later, her eyes everywhere but me. I huffed a soft chuckle, mapping the freckling constellations over the bridge of her nose and across her high cheekbones. No makeup, not even a bit of color on her eyelashes. No gloss on her full, succulent lips. Nothing.

  Just raw beauty.

  Lovely.

  Well, except for all these gashes. My eye twitched as I took in the cuts and bruises, and still clutching her by the chin, I used my free hand to heal. It had been some time since I used the gift, but it came back swiftly—the release of gathered blood, the sealing of torn flesh, the smoothing of a bruised brain. I saw to all of it, face first, then drifted meticulously down her body, unfurling her by force to tend to every last wound. She fought me, even though I knew she felt instantly better under my care, her pain gone, her injuries vanquished. Nora tugged against my every grasp, ripping her hand away when I was through with it, jerking back against the wall when I’d finished walking my healing fingers across her battered rib cage.

  I ended on that ankle, my pièce de résistance. Badly sprained, horribly bruised. Here, I took my time, using both hands to undo her bandages. She winced and twitched, her lovely eyes filled with tears when I poked at the ball of inflammation engulfing the top of her foot all the way to the little bit of bone jutting out at the side.

  Must have been rather painful…

  Slowly, mouth warped in a wolfish grin, I lowered myself to her foot. This time, she couldn’t look away, not when our gazes tangled, and not when I brushed my lips over the injury. Her flesh prickled all the way up her leg, right up to the cotton skirt she had jammed between her thighs to hide herself away. A slight lift of my brow had her flushing, cheeks a brilliant red, the rest of her face deathly white.

  Cradling her ankle in both hands, I healed her. The inflammation shriveled, the sprain corrected. No longer would she limp or hobble, no more would she cry out in agony when this foot bore her full weight.

  I expected relief, perhaps even a bit of gratitude when I glanced at her again, but was instead met with confusion.

  Fine. Fair enough.

  After planting a chaste kiss on the top of her foot, I eased up so that we were right in each other’s eyeline.

  “Forgive me,” I rumbled, still cradling her foot, “but I so hate it when they send me broken toys.”

  Her blushes evaporated at that, her lips thinning, her whole body stiffening before me. Let her be indignant at the insinuation; I had just healed her every ailment—the perfect segue to trust, whether she liked it or not. Smirking, I flexed her foot back and forth to show the depth of my reach, her skin so smooth and her toes…

  I paused, frowning down at them.

  What the fuck was wrong with her toes?

  They weren’t broken, but…

  Well, even the prettiest humans had their flaws.

  With a teasing line on the tip of my tongue, I looked into her perfect eyes again. “You know—”

  And before I could get the rest of the jest out, Nora fucking Olsen kicked me square in the face.

  4

  Nora

  Something crunched under my heel, the impact skittering up my leg, and the psychotic dick in front of me reeled back with a shout. His hand shot to his nose—hope I broke it, you gorgeous freak—and I shot to my feet. The cell bars had already proven to be a no go, and I wasn’t about to try my luck there again; one intense shock that glued me in place was enough for today, thank you very much.

  As I sprinted across the landing, I initially gave my sprained ankle some leeway, limp-running to compensate—but I didn’t need to.

  He…

  He had healed it.

  All of it.

  The shock made my knees buckle, and I skidded into the cave wall with a ragged gasp, then pushed off it and trundled down the slope leading me deeper into this nightmare. Although it was hard to think—coherently, anyway, my mind racing, thoughts jumbled and melding together into nonsense—I did notice one thing: all the stone in here was so… smooth. Unnatural. Sure, water could round out rocks, but not to this scale.

  They said he’d been in here eight hundred years. Plenty of time to round out the edges—

  No.

  Not a toy. Not a toy. Notatoynotatoynotatoy—

  Run!

  The momentum sent me flying off the ramp and into some warped version of an upscale downtown condo. I slowed briefly, eyes wide, chest aching and breath coming fast. Was that a—kitchen? A nicer kitchen than mine had been, at that. A table and bench seating. So big. And a sitting area—open concept was in with cave interior decorators, apparently?

  “Fucking go, Nora,” I hissed, pushing off the balls of my feet and racing for a dark doorway at the far end of the sprawling cavern. Swathed in shadows as soon as I crossed the threshold, I staggered down two shallow—again, smooth as fuck—stairs, then slammed into another hard wall. My hands took the brunt of it, then my knees, pain flaring in an otherwise perfectly healed body. After he’d touched me, it was all just… gone. No more headache. No more dizziness. No more nausea or sharpness over my ribs. No more swollen ankle and cheese-grated hands.

  What the fuck.

  What the fucking fuck?

  Shaking, I patted along the wall like I was in the most fucked-up haunted house of all time, just waiting for another sicko to jump out of the darkness and scream bloody murder an inch from my face. Twice my hands plunged into nothingness, and as my eyes took their sweet-ass time adjusting to the black, I vaguely made out a pair of rooms just off the main hall—but beyond the fact that they were dark, they lacked any further details. For all I knew, they could have both been chock-full of torture devices designed just for me.

  “This is a coma dream,” I muttered with a shake of my head. “This is a fucking coma dream. It’s not real.”

  Only when I snagged my pinky toe on something rock-hard along the wall’s base, the blooming pain was very, very real.

  Another corridor branched out to my left, this time with a light at the end of it. In fact, the whole arched doorway glowed golden, and I took off running, not stopping, not even slowing when I felt a breath on the back of my neck—not until I made it out of the darkness and into…

  A pool room?

  No.

  None of these were rooms: I was inside a fucking mountain.

  You know, in my coma dream.

  Because obviously I had hit my head during that fall and I was still unconscious.

  There was no other explanation.

  He…

  He wasn’t a…

  I raked my hands through my hair, taking in the landscape’s shift. If this was someone’s home, then this would be the pool room—what with the giant body of water to my right, the surface rustling like it had a current. Probably ice runoff melting from the mountain’s cap, a stream that eventually b
ecame the modest waterfall that spilled from the ceiling down the far wall and into the pool.

  Also in the ceiling, right there in the middle, directly over that stretch of dark sapphire-blue water, was a giant, gaping hole to the outside world. Sunlight slanted in—and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  The burst of hope pinwheeling around my chest was both explosive and short-lived. Because… How the fuck was I supposed to reach the hole? Like the first cave I found myself in, this one was also domed, the rocky interior smooth. The walls lacked handholds, and the arched ceiling offered nothing—no grips, no rivets, nothing to grab if I tried to somehow swing across to the opening.

  Fuck.

  Shaking, panting, I quickly studied the footpath that stretched on ahead. It wrapped around the mountain lake, carried on past the wall with the trundling waterfall, then met with another dark opening, nothing but black beyond.

  Nope. I swallowed hard, all that hope dwindling to nothing. No more darkness. No more shadows.

  But I couldn’t stay here.

  I had to—

  “Where are you going, little human?”

  The hairs on the back of my neck shot up, and adrenaline spiked so hard and so fast that it felt like my heart was about to burst out of my chest. His voice—smooth as silk, deep and ancient, masculine and richly smoky… It rumbled in my ear, licked a blazing path down my throat. I whirled around with a scream, expecting to find him there with those brilliant green eyes, that smirking mouth, a rugged jawline and a shock of dark auburn hair.

  I found nothing instead.

  Still alone in this place.

  He…

  I rubbed at the back of my neck, frantically searching the shadows for that man.

  Was I losing my mind—or had they told me the truth about him?

  No. I refused to believe it. Refused to accept that all the stories were true, that there were—creatures—out there from legend and myth, beings that walked this earth who looked like us, sounded like us, joked like us… and were anything but human.