No Less Days

by Amanda G. Stevens

  David’s mouth dried, but no, the man couldn’t see them. It was a reasonable guess.

  “So yeah, that’s the deal. I’ll let these chicks go once you show up.” The call ended.

  The two of them barreled back inside and swept the little store in a few seconds. Tiana and Moira were gone.

  Zac shoved his phone into his pocket as they met at the back door, where their caller must have entered and left. “Empty lot?”

  “Other side of this wall. I should stay out of sight.”

  “He’s been watching us all day.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Not that it mattered at this point. David had lowered his guard for the first time all afternoon, and Tiana might pay for it. Tiana, whose days could end. His stomach became a burning knot.

  He shook his head. Clear thoughts. Clear objective. He motioned Zac to follow him outside and halted when they stood more or less where they’d been standing before. “Walk past this copse of trees, veer left. You’ll be standing directly behind Appleseed, where there are no windows. Unless someone blunders onto us, we’ll have privacy to deal with him.”

  “Where’ll you be?”

  “I’ll have your back, but he won’t see me.”

  Zac nodded. “I’ll let him know.”

  Wise? Yes. David nodded back, and Zac stole away through the trees. David drew his weapon, held it down at his side, skirted to the right, and crept toward the clearing. And began to pray.

  FOURTEEN

  The Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war …”

  The mission’s grip on David’s mind was twice as strong now as it had been when he pursued this man the first time. And yes, it was the same man—no hoodie today, green T-shirt and blue rain jacket, jeans, black trainers, a leather-banded watch on his left wrist and what might or might not be a gun in his right hand, pressed into the center of Moira’s back. Brown hair, pale blue eyes, clean shaven, straight nose, eyebrows thick enough to make up for the receding hairline. David cataloged every feature as if he would be helping a sketch artist later. He might be. This store had only one security camera, pointed at the checkout counter. Maybe a coincidence, or maybe the man knew it.

  “Zachary Wilson,” he said. “Can I call you Zac?”

  “Not while you’re threatening innocent people,” Zac said.

  “Where’s your buddy?”

  “Keeping an eye on you.”

  The man shuddered then drew back his shoulders, though it made him no taller. “Pull up your shirt.”

  Zac lifted the hem and turned a full circle, then let it fall. Over the course of the afternoon, the scars had vanished. “See, no gun. Now what’s this about?”

  His tone was a balance of bored and put out. His posture was relaxed, his mouth at ease, no tension in his jaw or his eyes.

  The man spluttered, and the barrel of his gun wobbled against Moira’s back. In contrast to Moira’s blank expression, Tiana was biting her lip and staring at Zac as if the sight of him kept her composed. David slunk nearer under cover of a brush heap, mowed down weeks ago and left to dry out. He hunkered twenty feet behind Zac, to the left of everyone, not as near as he wanted but unable to close any distance across the clearing without showing himself. That didn’t make him useless, unless the other man pulled the trigger first.

  “It’s about—I stabbed you last night, man; that’s what it’s about.”

  “Obviously you missed. Let the chicks go so we can talk.”

  “I did not miss!” The wobbling arm again. Not a killing machine. In fact, this man might never have perpetrated violence before last night. The bravado of his phone call had dissolved. “The knife went right into you, twice. I made sure. And here you are anyway, which makes me right about everything.”

  A chill raced over David’s arms. He strengthened his grip on the gun.

  “See, I know what you are, Zac.” The man’s eyes sparked with excitement. Anticipation. He nodded toward Tiana and Moira. “I think they do too.”

  Zac took one step closer, blocking half the line of sight. David ground his teeth.

  “You’re a god.”

  “I’m … what?”

  “I’ve always believed in you. That you visit us. But which one? Who are you?”

  In the pause, the whisper of breeze through dry leaves was too loud. Civilians crossed not far away, laughing, the sound cutting off as they entered a store and let the door shut behind them.

  “Come on, after everything I’ve risked, you have to tell me. Who are you really?”

  “Thor,” Zac said.

  The man’s mouth opened. After a moment he blinked and nodded. “You’re shorter than I would’ve guessed, but that’s just your human form, right? To help you blend in? You still look Norse.”

  “Yep.” Zac shifted from one foot to the other. “And these are my servants, kept in thrall. So let them go.”

  “They’re just human, right? They can get hurt.”

  David’s jaw felt ready to crack. Be careful, Zac. Might not be in the man’s skill set.

  “This conversation goes no further until you let them go,” Zac said.

  “Compromise. Pick which one you want.” The man nodded from one woman to the other. “No compromise.”

  “I’ve got the gun.”

  “And I’m Thor.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. You’re right. Okay, you go on.” He motioned Tiana toward Zac.

  Tiana took a few wobbling steps across the clearing, steadying with every step, lips pressed into a controlled line. David aimed past her and Zac but still had no clear shot.

  The man kept the gun trained on Moira. “When she’s gone, you can go.”

  Moira nodded, submissive as any compelled servant of a god.

  Tiana neared him. Almost safe. It was almost over. David strove to keep praying, but the only words in his vocabulary were innocents and save them and center mass. He hurled them toward heaven and grasped for others—Lord God and please.

  She passed a yard from him. He should spring to his feet, gun raised, aimed at the man. He should move to shield Tiana.

  No. Stay down.

  Moira took a step away from the gun, and there it was, the open shot at last. The kill shot. No commander in his ear whispering green, but he didn’t need permission for this.

  “Go to the car,” Zac said, and Moira followed Tiana around the store.

  Safe.

  David’s finger withdrew from the trigger well.

  “I let them go,” the man said as if he’d done something uncommonly noble. He lowered the gun to his side, a blurred sweep of motion. “Now we talk. Just you and me.”

  “Hey, buddy,” Zac called. “Come on out.”

  David stood as he’d wanted to do moments ago, gun held at chest level, pointed at the man. With a yelp the man dropped the gun. As David strode toward him, he scrambled back.

  “I wasn’t going to shoot anybody.” His glance bounced between David and Zac, face flushing red. “It’s not even loaded.”

  David lowered his weapon and snatched up the one in the grass. The man shrank from him. Good. He checked the chamber—empty.

  “You’re an idiot,” David said, “and you’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “It’s not loaded.”

  “You deliberately made us believe otherwise!”

  “Hey,” Zac said.

  Right. Thor’s servant. David turned his back on the cowering simpleton and offered the empty gun to Zac.

  “Take it with you,” Zac said.

  “I have a license for that,” the man said.

  “Do you have a license to terrorize women with it?” David didn’t try to tame the growl behind his words.

  “I’m sorry.” He seemed to believe the two words pardoned him.

  David dropped the empty gun, holstered his own, then headed back to the Jeep as adrenaline continued to pummel him.

  Tiana.

  She’d never been in danger. But his pulse didn’t believe that yet. Neither di
d the constricting muscles in his chest. Someone had held a gun on her. Seconds in the past. He drew as deep a breath as he could. Past. It was past. He couldn’t let it dig a groove into the record of his brain. That record already had a few places that tended to skip, get stuck.

  Motion helped him work it through. He skirted the populated pathways, hugging corners of buildings, angling through maple and oak copses whenever possible. He wasn’t in the mood to be observed by strangers.

  He’d parked in one of the gravel lots behind the library, bordered by a tiny parklike area. Thick wooden posts had been laid along the ground to separate grass from gravel—a casual space and mostly empty. Picnic tables stood at intervals in the grass, and Moira and Tiana sat side by side at the one closest to the Jeep. Tiana’s shoulders were hunched.

  He strode toward them, both of them alive—Tiana alive. The last of the fight-or-flight response, preferably fight, drained from his system.

  He stopped in front of them, and Tiana stood.

  “You’re all right?” he said.

  She nodded. Trembled less than he did at the moment. “I might have some terrifying dreams for a while, though.”

  “The gun wasn’t loaded.”

  “What?”

  “Where’s Zac?” Moira said.

  “Talking, I imagine. He seemed in no hurry. Ordered me to go, which I had to do, as Thor’s bodyguard.”

  “If he doesn’t contain this …”

  “I assume that’s what he’s about now. I doubt the man will talk if a god tells him to shut up.”

  Tiana set a hand on his arm. “What about you, are you okay?”

  His chest heaved. He sank onto the picnic bench as she rubbed warmth into his arm.

  “David?”

  “You’re—you’re fine?”

  If that gun had held bullets and if one of them had pierced Tiana’s body—a dozen images, jerking bodies of men, impact of bullets, blood spray, arms and legs left on the battlefield, open unfocused eyes—he shook his head.

  “Completely fine,” Tiana said.

  “Then so am I.” The women’s expressions didn’t buy it.

  Zac, feel free to show up anytime now.

  Thor must have telepathic powers. The man strode into view a minute later, ease in his step that bespoke success. Their assailant didn’t follow him.

  Moira stood. “Where is he?”

  Zac shrugged. “Wherever he wants. I swore him into the Friends of Gods and Demigods Society.”

  “You’re not serious,” Moira said.

  “His name is Paul Tait, and he’s thrilled to be trusted by Thor. I don’t know if he’ll break the pledge of secrecy or not, but it was all I could do aside from locking him in David’s house for the next fifty years.”

  “And if he does tell the media?” Tiana said.

  “He’ll look mighty stupid, eh?”

  Moira shut her eyes and pressed her thumbs into the sockets. “Does he live here?”

  “No. That chick who took my picture two days ago? She posted it everywhere, and he saw it. When I left, he said he’d stay a little while and commune with my spirit.”

  “He’s beyond obsessed,” Tiana said. “He’s unstable.”

  Flippancy left his face, if only for a moment. “I’m not arguing that.”

  “What if he decides some other guy is Thor too? What if he decides there are demigods all around us, and he should stab a few to prove it?”

  “As long as they didn’t fall from a tightrope recently, they should be safe,” Zac said.

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I told him I’m the only one of my kind on earth and any further violence from him would hurt a mortal person like himself. He believed that. He said he would never hurt a human. If he’d thought he could kill me, he wouldn’t have attacked me.”

  “Unstable people aren’t always predictable.”

  “I know that.” He touched her shoulder. “But I’ve been reading people for a long time now, and I’m telling you, he’s not going to hurt anybody else now that he’s fulfilled his quest.”

  Tiana crossed her arms. “It’s not a guarantee.”

  “Do you want to call a mental hospital and try to commit him? You’re a stranger; you don’t have anything like guardianship over him, and he’s competent enough to drive here from Indiana.”

  She twisted her thumb ring. “A hospital wouldn’t keep him.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.”

  “Then you call the police and give them the knife. It’ll have his fingerprints on it, and you can say you found this weapon and don’t know who the blood—”

  “No,” Zac and Moira said together.

  David pushed to his feet as he echoed them. She didn’t know what she was saying.

  Tiana threw her hands out, palms up. “It’s the only evidence we—”

  “A forensic lab is not getting a look at Zac’s blood,” Moira said.

  “They won’t know it’s his.”

  “They’ll know it’s nothing they’ve ever seen before.” A blaze lit behind Zac’s eyes. “One person will show another until the right person starts a true investigation.”

  Moira chimed in as though the conversation were a baton they passed along. “They identify us, they come for us, and they take us.”

  Tiana looked to David—for the voice of reason, she probably thought, for backup—but this same knowledge had lived in him as long as he’d known what he was. His voice came out dry and strained.

  “That’s what happens to oddities, Tiana. Since the beginning of history.”

  “You’re not specially gifted heroes,” she said.

  “Exactly,” Moira said. “If a group of people—the government or somebody else—comes to take me, I won’t be breaking handcuffs and walls. I won’t be running in a blur to escape them. I won’t even hear or smell or sense them coming.”

  “All we’ll manage to do is keep breathing while they vivisect us,” Zac said quietly.

  Tiana shuddered and ducked her head to stare at the ground. She wouldn’t argue further, at least not this point. She knew history too well to say it could never happen again.

  David paced away from the others. They had put into words things he tried not to imagine. He made a fist and pushed it against his other hand.

  “I hate this,” Tiana whispered.

  “This is how it is,” Zac said.

  She closed her eyes and nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

  “If I thought he was going to hurt mortals, Tiana, this would be a different conversation. He was after me. It’s over.”

  Moira stood. “We should go.”

  As they drove away from downtown, they passed two cop cars. Maybe Moira’s call from the night before had caused increased patrols. Maybe somehow it would be of use. They remained quiet as David drove back to his place, until Tiana met Zac’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “You think he believed you, really? That you’re Thor?”

  “He believed.”

  A tremor ran through her.

  David gripped the wheel tighter. Alive. Never in danger. Soon he’d be able to rest in that.

  Zac turned to Moira with a feeble smirk. “Simon’s going to love this.”

  The moment they got back to the house, Zac went to the living room and asked permission to bring the turtle out. David nodded. Zac opened the lid of the terrarium and lifted her and set her on the carpet. He watched as she craned her neck in his direction, the rest of her motionless.

  “I have never owned a turtle,” he said.

  “Me either.” Tiana crouched beside her, and the creature withdrew halfway into her shell. “She’s so interesting.”

  “She?”

  David left them to bond over his pet. In the kitchen he made coffee only to do something with his hands. Moira stood in the doorway between the rooms and watched not Zac and Tiana, but David.

  “Thank you for doing that before Zac had the idea,” she said as David poured in the water.

  �
��Oh?”

  “He can’t make a drinkable pot to save anyone’s life.”

  David chuckled.

  She leaned on the doorframe. “You’re not fine.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been quiet since the encounter with the numbskull.”

  He poured grounds into the filter, pushed it into place, hit the button, and a green light promised coffee in minutes. He pulled down four mugs and tried to decipher the question behind her remarks.

  “Sometimes panic isn’t obvious,” she said.

  “I’m not panicked.”

  “Not now, of course.”

  He set one finger against one of the mug handles and turned the mug in place. He looked up at her. “I know this is well meant, but it’s not necessary. I’ve been fine the whole time. Besides, I’ve never had a panic attack.”

  “Never?”

  The way she said it, he would bet one or more of them had. Two lifetimes were enough to accumulate a cause or two. He shrugged. “A few tough memories made in my time, sure. Sometimes they hit hard. That’s all.”

  “Do you have triggers?”

  “What’s this third degree now?” He went to the carafe and filled the mug, sipped the coffee black. Mm, just right.

  Moira’s face held no apology. “Letting someone know about triggers is simple common sense. Suppose we’re all out camping and a beehive falls on your head and oh, look, David’s phobic about bees?”

  “You’d be informed at that point, no doubt.”

  “David.”

  Another sip. He held the bitterness in his mouth a moment before swallowing. “I simply prefer weapons not be aimed at innocent people.”

  She leaned her elbows on the counter and studied him. “Especially Tiana.”

  The truth of it clamped a fist around his gut.

  She rounded the counter to stand near him, picked up the carafe, and poured her own coffee. “Sugar?”

  “That ceramic jar beside the stove.”

  Tiana’s laughter rang from the living room. David looked toward the sound, and Moira smiled. His face flamed.

  “You blush adorably,” Moira said.

  “She’s thirty-one.”

  “And she wandered town with us most of the day, and I never wanted to slap her unconscious, which shouldn’t have surprised me. You wouldn’t be attracted to a bimbo.”