Of Gods and Monsters

by Susan Harris

  Ash jerked awake, clutching her neck and gasping for air as the darkness continued to loom outside. After enjoying flying with her mom over Cork city, Ash and the rest of the Valkyrie had returned to rest before Odin’s forces struck out again. She had loved every minute of it. Despite not having her own wings, she had flown in her own way and never once had the Valkyrie look at her like she was any different from them.

  Sitting up, Ash withdrew the shard of the Bifrost from her pocket, hoping that her slips would not impact the cat at the other end of the shard, waiting for her to return.

  Maybe she should go back now and be done with it. Ash knew she was hiding from Grey, hoping distance would dilute the mate bond, but the idiot had followed her back in time, which, to be fair, was a major spoiler no matter how you looked at it.

  She was a little worried that if she returned to her present, something would have altered in such a way that she would want to go back and try and fix it again. Zach told her plenty of times she had a hero complex, that being named as Thor’s heir had put it into her head that she was solely responsible for fixing everyone’s problems.

  Ash rested her elbows on her knees and stared at the shard for some time, caught between wanting to stay and wanting to go home. Right now, her da would be going absolutely mental at her disappearance, her mom the same. She had hoped to be back before they even realized she was gone, but weeks had passed now and she was still here. Zach could only fend them off for so long.

  “You are brooding now like your father used to do.”

  Ash lifted her gaze to where Caitlyn stood, her body tilted so that she looked out into the night and at Ash at the same time. Caitlyn gave her the space to figure out what she wanted to say before she said it.

  “I’m trying to decide if I should go back now and face the music. I’ll be punished for my actions, but part of me doesn’t want to go back. Does that make sense?”

  Caitlyn offered her a smile. “It does. But why will you be punished? Can you simply not return to when you left?”

  Ash snorted. “Time travel is weird. Especially when you factor in the Bifrost. Zach could explain it way better than me. He’s super smart when it comes to stuff like this, but I think the Bifrost makes it so that time still goes on.”

  Ash heard the sadness in her tone even as Caitlyn asked, “But do you not miss your Zach? Your parents? You had a whole life before you decided to come back. Do you not wish to return?”

  Ash considered Caitlyn’s words, knowing she did miss the life she had. “It’s nice getting to know my parents as they are now. There were stories told that I didn’t believe, things Zach told me because he got to witness things that I didn’t and I always wanted to know. Dad’s always been strict but reasonable. I would ask to do something, and he would have me explain why it was important that I did it before he said yes or no. Mom was a straight, flat-out no.”

  With a smile tugging up her lips, Ash palmed the shard. “Erika still calls Dad ‘Boyband.’ Now, I know why. Mostly, though, you know I said before that I tried not to get jealous that Z saw parts of all of you that I never did. I mean, I never knew what happened to you until I was a teenager.”

  “The past is not a happy place for me, little one. Perhaps I was grateful to have one person who looked at me and did not see the broken shards inside me. I am much like that piece of glass you have been clinging to.”

  Ash snorted. “I never saw you as broken. Even when I did find out, it made me hero-worship you even more. I understood all the lessons you tried to teach me even more after I knew. I can’t tell you what happened for me to find out, but I can tell you that after it did, you had this look of fear in your eyes, and I knew you were terrified that I would be afraid of you. In all of my sixteen years, I have never, ever been afraid of you.”

  Caitlyn looked away for an age, and Ash wondered if she had said too much. Her fears were assuaged when Caitlyn began to speak. “Zach and I have that special bond because he was the first child I held after my daughter. I could not resist those eyes of his, so like his father’s. I considered I would feel resentment towards Ricky for the gift he had been given when I had lost mine. Yet I did not. I was equally afraid when I held you, a beautiful baby girl, that the memories of my past would push me back to a place I had clawed myself out of.”

  Craning her neck as if she were trying to get out a kink, Caitlyn looked at her with those gunmetal-gray eyes of hers. “Getting to know you and Zach has unlocked a piece of my heart that I feared would never be free. I found myself wondering the other day what a child of mine and Donnie’s would look like. It sounds quite silly, now that I say it, yet that is the truth.”

  “It’s not silly, Auntie Caity. You love Donnie. But as you once told me, there is no point in dwelling on what-ifs and maybes. You cannot change what is inevitable, so why waste time thinking on it if it hurts you?”

  “Perhaps you should consider your own advice. Thinking of the inevitable will not change what is meant to pass. And although none of us want to see you leave, your place is not here in your past, Ashlyn Kyria Doyle. While we lose you in one way, those of us who make it to the future are missing you now.”

  Ash glanced down at the shard, then sank back on the chair as Caitlyn left her to her melancholy. Her eyes remained on the shard until she felt a presence behind her, and she darted to her feet and glared at the deity giving her a smile that was very wolfish.

  “You said that you were leaving.”

  “I did leave. Your wolf called to me. She likes me more than you seem to.”

  Ash closed her eyes, hoping her mind was playing tricks with her, but as she cracked them open slowly, Grey was still standing mere feet from her, his scent washing over her. She licked her lips, and his eyes traced the movement, heating the blood in her veins. Grey took a step toward her.

  “My dad’s in the other room.”

  “I am not afraid of your father.”

  Ash rolled her eyes, slipped the shard back into her pocket, then took a step back as Grey watched her with that intense stare of his. She hated the fact her body was all for closing the distance and giving in to the mate bond.

  “Have you decided to come home yet?”

  His tone was even, but his voice always held the hint of violence in it, no matter what. She was never afraid that he would hurt her—the mate bond prevented that from happening—but Grey was volatile.

  “I’m considering it. I’m struggling to say goodbye.”

  Grey narrowed his gaze, his expression falling to the one he got when he couldn’t understand her emotions, because his own were pretty much nonexistent. One day, she hoped to figure out how or why he was the way he was, but that day would not be today.

  “It’s not like you belong here, Ashlyn. You have to come home eventually.”

  Ash inhaled, then exhaled slowly. “Do I? I could stay here. I could protect Zach and little me and have a whole life before …”

  Her voice trailed off as Grey blinked slowly. “You want time away from me.”

  “I don’t know,” came her honest reply as Grey began to walk around the couch to come into her field of vision. Ash made herself stay where she was as he came to stand before her. Ash drank in his handsome face, from his strong jaw and chiseled cheekbones to sinfully curved lips and even to his tousled hair that looked like he had just gotten out of bed.

  “You do know, when you look at me like you want to lick me, it doesn’t persuade me that I should give you space.”

  There was a smugness in his tone that prickled on her temper. His proximity always set her off-kilter.

  “I’m a teenager. I have hormones. And I never said that you weren’t pretty. I have eyes.”

  A slow smile crept over those lips. “You think I’m pretty.”

  “I also have said that you’re psycho, but focus on the pretty if you want.”

  Grey continued to smirk, flashing his teeth. “I will use any tools at my disposal to make you accept the mating. Have I forc
ed you into anything you have not wanted? All I have done is lay claim to my mate and allow her the freedom to grow. Apart from when I found you after you left me in the present, I have not so much as kissed you without your initiation of it. You were the one who felt the tug and came to find me. You were the one who brought us together. I might not understand many social norms, but I cannot be the only one to blame for the bond snapping into place. Tell me, Ashlyn, what do you want?”

  Right now, Ash didn’t want to think about going home, didn’t want to think about mating bonds or fate. She just wanted to set her soul on fire. Grey closed the distance between them and cupped her cheek almost tenderly, tilting her face up to his. “Tell me.”

  She didn’t so much as tell him but show him. She dragged him down until his lips collided with hers, and she groaned, her bones melting as Grey took control, nipping at her bottom lip so he could sweep his tongue against hers. Her body trembled against his, begging for him to touch her, yet maddeningly, Grey held back.

  She slipped her hands down his torso, her wolf needing skin to skin as she pulled his tee from the waistband of his cargos and placed her palms on his abdomen, the muscles tensing at her touch.

  Breaking the kiss when her lungs needed air, she kept her hands on his taut stomach, her amber eyes clashing with his, now tinged with red. His own chest was heaving, much like her own, a slow, sexy smile on his lips.

  “That does not convince me to leave you alone, my she-wolf.”

  Ash opened her mouth to retort with something snappy, but a throat cleared from off to the side. Her dad lingered in the doorway. His eyes held a hint of amber as he watched her and Grey. Ash made to step away from Grey when her dad stepped toward them, but Grey reached for her hand and held it.

  “Did either myself or your mother tell you about how we mated?”

  Her dad’s voice was soft, whimsical even, as he continued. “I was dying after chasing an unsub, and your mom, she used her powers, even though she didn’t know they were hers, to keep me alive. It made her weak and drained her, and I almost lost her. I’d been denying the bond until I had no choice but to surrender to it.”

  Ash knew that her parents’ mating bond had snapped into place before they even got to know one another, much like her and Grey, but her parents had this bigger destiny at play.

  “I was the one who forced it in place, and I was worried that I had trapped her in the bond. I was lucky enough that she was stupid enough to love me. The mating bond is magic unto itself. I can feel the tie that binds you, and it is true.”

  Derek stepped up to Grey. “You might be tied to her, but that also ties you to us. You hurt her, and she has me, her mother and a whole pack of aunts and uncles who will gut you if you harm a hair on her head.”

  Grey flashed her father a feral smile. “Ashlyn is my mate. I would never harm her. She may think me a little psychotic, as she puts it, and perhaps I am. But I would rather be restrained again against my will than harm her. Though I would love to go toe to toe with any of her so-called aunts and uncles. See how long they last.”

  Derek barked out a laugh. “Ash is right. You are psychotic.”

  Ash pulled her hand away from Grey. This was not what Ash had wanted, for her dad and Grey to bond. She growled and stalked away, heading for the door, stomping down the stairs and then out into the never-ending night.

  Taking in a few gulps of air, Ash sat down on the curb, dropped her head to her knees and groaned. Her mind was already in a mess over everything, but the fact that her dad all but gave Grey a green light to pursue her would now make him impossible. She was madder at herself for kissing him when she knew each kiss was addicting her to him.

  Her dad came and sat down beside her, stretching his legs out onto the road. “I’ve done something to upset you. I thought my understanding of the bond might help you with Fenrir.”

  Ash lifted her head, then leaned it against his shoulder. “It’s not you. It’s me. I’m confused and have been confused. We mated, and then I started to fade and I came here, and now, I want to go home, but I also want to stay. I want to go back to being that carefree teenager who thought herself invincible. I’m scared to stay, but I’m even more scared to go home.”

  Her dad wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her even closer. “I wish you could stay. Selfish of me, but I love having you here. But now, I have the knowledge that I get to spend time with you like this in the future. We raised a smart, beautiful, fearless daughter who has more courage in her fingertips than most people have in a lifetime. I hate to send you back, but I know that me in the future is probably going out of his mind missing you. Mom too.”

  Ash said nothing else, just continued to lay her head on her dad’s strong shoulder, wondering how the hell she was gonna say goodbye.

  Zach banged the door of his apartment closed, pulled his pocketknife out and slashed across his palm, then slammed his hand against the wall where he had drawn some wards, not strictly warlock-learned but ones that would keep even a rabid wolf monster out.

  Breathing hard, he shoved his glasses up his nose as he darted down the hall and into his little cave of nerdiness, as Ash called it, flung open the door and lunged into his chair. He had ten monitors all linked on a server to monitor the nine realms and anything else that he might have to find. His vamp mom had seriously hooked him up and taught him everything he knew, even if some of it was strictly not legal.

  Pulling the shard of Bifrost from the inside of his jacket, Zach slipped it into the device he had designed and created to control the magic inside it and send Ash to the past.

  “Come on, A.K., come on.” He urged the shard to spark to life, hoping his friend would feel just how much he needed her here to help him.

  “She does not want to come home just yet.”

  Zach jerked around at the sound of that smug voice, and Zach stopped wondering how the hell Fenrir had gotten past his wards.

  Outside, he felt someone try to force their way through the wards, and Zach growled. “You could at least try and be helpful, Fen.”

  “I promised not to harm you. I did not offer to aid you, cat.”

  Then the fabled wolf vanished into thin air as someone else tried again to break past his wards.

  “A.K., I need you. Please come home.”

  Silence was his only reply.

  Donnie

  * * *

  There was nothing but darkness, a vast yawning stretch of black that seemed to go on for the span of eternity. For a moment, Donnie thought that he had merely clamped his eyes shut to soften the uneasiness in the pit of his stomach, yet his eyes were open, and he saw nothing but obsidian. His body felt like it was falling, though he heard no whisper of sound, no whistle of air … it was as if the compass had taken him from a living, breathing world and cast him into another.

  He was surprised at how calm he was. A sane man would be panicking right now. A sane man would be trying to fight his way out of whatever hellhole the compass had sucked him into. Instead, Donnie just rode the sensations as if he were lying on a field in Musgrave Park after a serious knock to the head and the doctors were checking for concussion.

  His face hit solid ground a second later, leaving him to shake out his head to clear his vision and hearing. He blinked, and the black began to fade to an even more ominous ashen color. Donnie heard Ricky swear near to him and knew his friend was grand.

  Getting to his feet slowly, Donnie roamed his eyes over the place where they had landed. Everything was devoid of color, like he was staring into an old noir movie. The trees were gray and the leaves withered. The grass that should have been a rich green in color looked like razor blades, with everything devoid of its usual vibrance and washed in various shades of gray. Even the mist that lurked around them, sneaking in and out of the trees, held the promise of threat and menace.

  “Why couldn’t that bloody thing have taken us to Disneyland instead of this shithole?” Ricky grimaced as he came to stand beside Donnie, his hand
twitching to reach for his gun, which was still at his hip.

  Donnie glanced down at the compass, still in his bloody palm, the needle pointing north. To be fair, Donnie was unsure if he wanted to venture deeper into the overcast forest. But he knew of no other way to get home, to his love and to his family, so he jerked his head up and watched as the mist seemed to travel the path in which they needed to go.

  “I see that look in your eyes, Donnie. You need us to go deeper into the creepy-ass forest, right?”

  “It’s okay, Gretel. I’ll protect you from the wicked witch.”

  Ricky laughed, shaking his head as he raised his right hand. “No need. I can just burn the bitch.”

  Donnie waited as Ricky tried to summon the flames to him, but as his friend growled in frustration, Donnie realized that Ricky might not be the only one affected by whatever magic held the forest together.

  Donnie couldn’t hear a single thought in Ricky’s head.

  It felt like a blessing and a curse at the same time.

  When Ricky gave up trying to get his magic to work, Donnie told him that he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t use their powers, which seemed to comfort the warlock a little. Donnie glanced down at the compass, the heat searing into his skin until he took a step toward the opening, where two tall, thick trees formed a sort of archway into the forest.

  “Come on. We better get going,” Donnie said as he crossed through the archway and into the fog and mist. His footsteps were almost as silent as the forest itself; his boots were heavy and should have made some sort of sound as he stalked down the path in the direction the compass led him.

  Donnie was starting to feel like one of those idiots in a horror movie who ran up the stairs instead of escaping out the front door. He kept on walking and walking, Ricky stalwart by his side, allowing him to lead and to have his back.