What was I doing?
I turned away from them and studied the dozen or so weight-lifting machines. From Zeus’s clipped conversation, I got that he had been just about to steal upstairs to warn Thor and Odin. None of these guys would leave without the others. A phone lay broken on the floor.
It was here I felt something cold on my neck. I stiffened in fright as a hand grabbed my hair. “You move and you bleed.”
A haze descended over me.
So the guys on the floor weren’t all dead.
Zeus turned, looking annoyed, like we were disturbing him or something. “Later,” he said.
“Drop the phone.” The man said to Zeus, holding me in front of him, knife to my throat. I tried not to panic, to move, even to swallow as the blade bit in. The whole room seemed too bright.
Zeus smiled coldly. Instead of dropping the phone, he took a few steps toward me, and casually raised a gun and pressed it to my forehead.
I gasped.
“She moves and she bleeds?” he said. “Okay. And so do you.”
I felt like I was seeing the scene from outside my own body, everything slow, surreal.
“I mean it,” the man said.
“You guys still using tungsten shot?” Zeus continued. “My guess is yes, and that this bullet from your friend’s piece will pierce clear through her skull and right into your jugular. Shall we test it?”
My knees went liquid. The tick of the wall clock became deafening.
Zeus’s eyes were cold on mine. “How long have we known each other, honey?”
“Uh…” I couldn’t think. A day? No, less….
“Go ahead, tell the man the truth.”
“S-since this morning. Around eleven.”
Zeus sighed. “Hopefully my partners gave you a satisfying sendoff. I am sorry about this.”
“What?”
He winced, as if preparing to shoot me. Expecting spatter, I realized with horror.
“No!” I cried.
The man shoved me. The knife was off my throat and he was backing away, moving behind a workout machine, apparently deciding stacks of metal weights were more bulletproof than my skull.
I put my hand over the place the knife had bit in. Blood. But not much.
Zeus stalked toward the guy and followed him around and around the largest weights machine. The man kept going in circles until Zeus simply pulled the thing over, crashing it sideways. Then he jumped over it and kicked the guy.
In the face.
I’d never seen anything so bluntly violent. It was nothing like a karate kick—no jumps or spins, just Zeus’s foot coming out of nowhere and snapping viciously up into the man’s face. The man convulsed on his feet and then simply crumpled down on top of the machine and rolled onto the floor.
I covered my open mouth with my hand. Was he dead?
Zeus whipped a towel over his shoulders to hide his bloody arm.
“Thank you,” I breathed. I guess.
“Thank you?” Zeus came toward me now, eyes dark and ferocious. “I would’ve just as easily killed you. I would’ve done it in a heartbeat—don’t you ever doubt it.”
“What?”
“I do what I need to do to protect the group, and that doesn’t include you. I know you’re having fun playing house right now, but that’s something you need to understand.”
“I was delivering a message, not trying to join your group.”
Zeus shoved the gun and the phone in his sweatpants. “We gotta get out of here.” He stalked out through the pool area. I followed him. We went through a series of doors, and then out into the cool, starry night. I touched my neck. It wasn’t bleeding as much.
Pop-pop-pops like firecrackers sounded out in the distance.
“They breached the room,” he said as we hurried across the parking lot to the van. “Get in back.”
I jumped in and closed the door. He started up the van and drove. Slowly. Meanderingly, even. In this way, he made the van itself a disguise.
I marveled at the extreme discipline it would take to drive so listlessly instead of frantically racing across the lot. I mean, killers were after them. Thor and Odin, presumably, were waiting somewhere.
‘…that doesn’t make you part of the group.’ Zeus had said. His words stung, but they confirmed so much about these guys—particularly the idea that they had survived against dangerous enemies by a fierce, almost wolf pack like loyalty, sacrificing outsiders and even their own safety for each other.
A wolf pack thing—or a god pack thing. And he’d made it painfully clear that I was the outsider.
I wished I was inside.
It was the flowers that saved him from me hating him totally at that moment.
Zeus rounded the side of the hotel and slowed near a thicket of bushes that hugged the corner of the hotel. Thor and Odin burst out, piled in, and we were off.
“Denko,” Zeus said to Odin, who was riding up front as usual. “Had to be.”
Odin nodded. “Denko.”
Zeus pulled onto the main thoroughfare and drove at the speed limit.
Thor scooted over. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I whispered. A bit of a lie. I was still shaking.
He inspected my neck, palpating the skin around it. “What happened?”
Zeus said, “Down in the weights room one of the ops tried to hold Isis. But we convinced him she was nobody. Wouldn’t you say, Isis?”
“I think it was made clear, yes,” I said.
“He tried to hold you?” Thor said.
“So I threatened to shoot them both,” Zeus said, like it was nothing.
“Through my skull,” I added. “A two-for-one.” I felt proud of myself for speaking of it so casually. I felt Odin’s eyes on me. “It was most delightful,” I added, not even looking at him.
“It was stupid. Mess with the bull, you get the horns.” Zeus was quoting some movie I couldn’t place at the moment. I wondered if he meant it for the guy he’d kicked in the face, like that guy was stupid to have messed with him, or if he meant that for me.
“Zeus, you need medical attention,” Thor said to him sternly.
“Let’s put down some distance first,” Zeus said.
Thor turned to me then, and he put out his hand, palm up. I rested my hand in his and he closed his fingers around mine, and just held my hand there in the back seat.
Such a simple gesture, but at that moment, it meant everything, and I felt linked to him. I knew I was an outsider—Zeus had made that clear, but Thor let me in a little, right then and there.
Chapter Three
‡
The guys drove through the night, taking turns, stopping once for burgers for Zeus, and once for medical supplies. We switched off seats after that. I was allowed to ride in front, and Thor got in back with Zeus and dug a bullet out his arm—right in the back seat. When I figured out what was happening back there, I was horrified. “Odin!” I said, tipping my head at the back seat. You could see the weariness in Odin’s eyes; he was too tired to be driving.
“Don’t worry, he’s a doctor.”
“A doctor?” I said.
“That’s right,” Odin said. “What’s so weird about that?”
“You just don’t see that many bank robber-doctors,” I mumbled. Plus, he seemed to be the least responsible of the three of them. The others were all into keeping him in line, it seemed.
These guys didn’t add up. Thor a doctor. What was Odin? Zeus?
There was some gutter dog in Zeus, that’s for sure. I didn’t know if I’d ever get over the feeling of his gun at my forehead. Or the way he stalked that guy, then delivered that weirdly vicious kick. I would’ve just as easily killed you. I would’ve done it in a heartbeat—don’t you ever doubt it.
I’d heard the darkness in Zeus’s words. But not necessarily the truth. Or was I fooling myself?
Zeus was a force, like a storm: frightening and magnificent to behold, with a charged power churning inside. Maybe I shou
ld’ve been angry at him for being all, would’ve just as easily killed you, but you don’t get mad at a storm for blowing things over.
Or ripping up flowers.
I asked about the room service waiter and the man in the workout room. What if they recognized me and put them together with the bank job?
The guys thought that was funny. “These operatives don’t give a fuck about any bank. It’s under their radar. Banks are not their concern.”
“Then what is their concern?” I asked. “Who are they? Why are they after you?”
Zeus said, “One more question like that and you’re on the side of the road, deal or no deal.”
“We actually have two deals now, I believe,” I said.
“Two?”
“That’s right,” I said. Zeus was none too pleased to hear about the price I’d demanded for my messenger services. But the exchanges really did help put me on a peer level with the god pack, as least in a limited way.
At around two in the morning, we crashed in a roadside motel in Missouri, just outside Kansas City. Thor and I bunked in one room and Odin and Zeus in another, and sex was definitely not in the air—we were all dead on our feet. Thor didn’t even wash up. He just collapsed on our king-sized bed. I brushed my teeth using my finger and Thor’s toothpaste, and then I, too, collapsed, stretched out next to Thor under the cool, clean sheets.
I woke up in the early hours with Thor snuggled up to me, whispering something. Was he trying to wake me up?
“Thor?”
Thor whispered some more, a stream of nonsense. A bad dream, I realized. I couldn’t make out most of the words. I got a lot of no’s and don’ts, and out-of-context phrases like don’t leave Venus. His sleeping face was a mask of pain.
Don’t leave Venus? Was he having a bad dream about interplanetary travel? Dreaming of a movie?
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re okay.”
He squirmed and turned onto his back. I waited, but he said no more.
For all the guns and domination and violence, I had the sense, watching Thor sleep, that he had a little Peter Pan in him. All three of them did, really. They were running, these guys, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d been abandoned, too. Lost, bereft.
More. A hole was in them—that was my sense.
My badass Peter Pans.
I touched Thor’s hair. I liked the notion that maybe I’d calmed him in his nightmare. Like I’d helped.
These guys scared me a little, but they also galvanized me.
Here I was in a shitty motel with a headache and no toothbrush, lying next to a doctor turned bank robber who was also a sex maniac who carried a gun, and a fugitive on some scary wanted list. And I was feeling slightly sore from fucking him and another guy, emotionally exhausted from almost being killed. And I was opting to stay. It seemed like something only a twisted person would do, but there it was. I wanted to stay.
I felt like I was home. Like I could finally breathe.
My mind floated back to my sisters. Would they have slept? I’d brought up the topic of contacting them on the road last night.
Later, Zeus had said.
Thor flopped back over onto this other side, but I still couldn’t sleep. I wandered into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My hair—now there was something to freak out about. I looked like an insane, redheaded Dutch boy. Maybe I was turning sociopathic.
Some time later I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to the scent of coffee and the sounds of Thor packing stuff up. He’d slicked down his curls and had donned a brown sports jacket and jeans and boots, a get-up that made him look more like a movie director than yesterday’s slick businessman. When I commented on his new look, he pulled out mirrored aviator glasses and put them on, which made him look downright dashing.
“You have as many looks as a Ken doll,” I teased.
He came to the bed and put his hands on either side of me, and leaned down close still wearing the sunglasses. No more smiling. “But I believe I have one look a Ken doll never has,” he said.
My belly tightened. “I do believe I saw that look yesterday.”
He stayed looming over me, all dressed up and spiffy compared to my scantily clad self. I liked lying under him like that.
Goosebumps rode my skin as he touched my throat, drew a finger down the center of my chest. “Do you know what Odin said about you?”
“What?” Energy stirred on my skin wherever his finger touched. He drew it down, down toward my belly.
“Odin says a frisson of vulnerability turns you on. I’m inclined to agree.”
“Oh, yeah? Is Odin a psychoanalyst from Vienna now?”
“Let’s just say Odin has your number. Odin has everybody’s number.” Thor stood. “Unfortunately, we have to go. We have a lot to do.”
So we were all business then. I got up and put on my shabby bank teller outfit.
We took a cab to downtown Kansas City. Luckily, our first stop was an upscale department store where I picked out a trio of lovely sundresses and some awesome tops and pants, the sorts of things Isis might wear. And then we went to a beauty salon on what Thor termed “the rock ’n roll side of town” for new hair.
I took the chair in front of a purple-haired stylist who curled her heavily pierced lip in horror as she inspected my knife-chopped locks. “It was definitely a hasty job,” I said “But I want a big change anyway. Can we make it short and pink?”
“Hold on,” Thor said. “Pink?” He shook his head.
“She should have the style she chooses,” the stylist snapped. “You want pink? Pink would be gorgeous on you.”
“But if she looks too radical or out of the ordinary,” Thor said, “she could lose the very important position she currently has. She might cease to be effective in her profession. Which has a public interaction component.”
“He’s right,” I said. “How about jet black?”
Thor shook his head.
“Dark brown,” I said.
This, too, Thor vetoed.
“What?” I protested.
“Come here.”
“One minute,” I said to the stylist. I took off the plastic poncho she’d put on me and followed Thor out onto the sidewalk, glaring at his back the whole way to the corner of the building.
“You can’t have your hair short and dark.”
“Why? It’ll look totally natural.”
He took off his sunglasses and eyed me straight on. “No go.”
“Why not? It’s blonde or nothing? Is that the deal here?”
“You can’t have it dark. You have to trust me.” The gravity in his voice suggested a world of pain, of trouble.
Slowly things assembled themselves in the back of my mind…the hole, the rules. And the way I fit in, at least with Thor and Odin, almost like there was a place for me.
The sense of a ghost.
“Because that’s how she had it,” I whispered.
He cocked his head, as though confused, but I suspected he understood.
And then it came to me. Don’t leave Venus…or rather, don’t leave, Venus.
“Venus,” I added.
He set a hand on the wall to the side of my head, and then he set his other hand on the other side, caging me in. “None of us told you that,” he said accusingly.
“You told me! You said it in your sleep. Don’t leave, Venus, you said.” It hadn’t been about planets. Venus was the girl.
His gaze remained keen.
“Is it that hard to put together that a girl came down this road with you guys before? Your rules? The undercurrents? It’s pretty clear.”
He pondered this, then straightened up. “Congratulations. Now you know why you can’t make it brown.”
I had the strange feeling I’d betrayed him by analyzing his sleep talk. It made me feel a little bad. “Sorry,” I said.
He put his hand around the back of his neck and stared up at the sky. I waited, noticing he had freckles across his nose, so
light they were almost translucent.
What in the world had happened to Venus?
“Tell me,” I said.
He took his hand from his neck and looked at me then, lashes pale in the morning sun, contrasting with the rich blue of his eyes. I said nothing more. Thor was the sensitive one, the communicative one, the one who got out of line most easily. I felt like if I gave him space, he’d fill it with information.
And then he did.
“She’s the reason you can’t stay,” he said.
“But I want to stay.” I couldn’t believe I’d said it, but I had. “I don’t want to go back.”
He squinted into the sunlight; I suspected the squint was more to cover up happiness than to protect his eyes. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what this is.”
“I know enough of it to know I love it here. I love this whole thing.”
“You’ve been with us a day.”
“Sometimes, Thor, people just know things. Sometimes in life you make a big decision on an instant of information and you know you’re right. Haven’t you ever done that?”
The way he looked at me, I knew that he had. That he understood. “I want you to stay,” he said finally. “I want you to. I can tell that Odin does, too.”
It was a strange moment of honesty between us, and there I was, taking off from the top of the rickety ski jump, ready to plummet to the earth and be shot on up into the sky.
“Two against one,” I pointed out.
He smiled bitterly. “Aren’t you observant. But keeping you with us is not something for a quorum. It’s all or not at all. The thing is—” Here he paused. “I’m telling you this in confidence. I’m telling you because—I don’t know why I’m telling you.”
“Okay.”
Thor smoothed back his hair. “The thing with Venus is that it was only supposed to be a sex thing. We met her at a hotel bar and let her think we were traveling on business, and we made up those rules, you know, if she wanted to travel with us she’d obey these rules.” He paused as a couple passed. “They’re the rules we told you. She’d just been fired, we were flush, and so it was all fun and games. And then she helped us out in a pinch. Does that sound familiar to you?”
Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire Page 210