Claimed by Gods

by Eva Chase

  “What in Hel’s name was that?” he snapped.

  “Get off me!” I shoved him away, jerking my arm out of his grasp, and dove with my wings surging out over my back. I could hear the TV going in the basement. Ivan would be down there in his stupid little man cave. Pathetic fucking man who’d smack around a little kid. My anger seared through me, burning dark and deep. The rest of the world around me faded amid that roar.

  He was never going to touch my brother again.

  “Ari!”

  Hod tackled me from behind as a wall of his shadowy magic slammed into me from the other side. We both crashed into the lawn, just a few feet from the basement window I’d been aiming for. I hissed and lashed out at him with elbows and knees, but the dark god pressed me into the earth with his hands and tendrils of shadow.

  “Let me go,” I said, outright flailing now. “He deserves it. He deserves every bit of hell I can rain down on him. Fucking bastard.”

  “Ari.” Hod’s voice was low but strained. “This isn’t your place. You can’t just go around killing random people because you’re angry.”

  “He’s not a random person. He’s the asshole who hurt my little brother. Get the fuck off me!”

  “I’m not going to,” Hod said. “Not until I know you’re listening. And I’ve got more power in one hand than you’ve got in your whole body, valkyrie, so don’t try me.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I have to do this. You don’t understand.”

  Hod’s eyes gazed down at me, flat and yet fathomless at the same time. “Then why don’t you tell me about it?”

  I dragged in a breath—every muscle quaking at the sensation of being pinned down, all that fury and pain and guilt writhing inside me—and burst into tears.

  Hod flinched and leapt back. The shadows clinging to my legs loosened. I slapped my hands to my face, but they couldn’t hold in the tears or the sob that wrenched up my throat. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Get a hold of yourself, Ari.

  I swallowed hard and swiped at my eyes. A few tears streaked down my cheeks, but I managed to inhale without a hitch. Hod stood braced between me and the basement window, his eyes wary, his mouth twisted. Lord only knew what he was thinking now.

  When he spoke, his voice was still strained, but there was a softness to it I’d never heard before. “Go ahead and tell me. I’m all ears.”

  The corner of my mouth twitched despite myself. My fury had spent itself with the tears. Now all I felt was an aching emptiness inside.

  Had I really wanted to be a killer? I didn’t know. But then, I already was one.

  I’d never killed a human being before, though.

  I wet my lips and drew up my knees, resting my hands on them. My gaze stayed on my dirt streaked fingers as I found the words. “It’s not a very exciting story. I had a crappy mom. She liked to date crappy guys. My older brother tried to protect me, but he was practically still a kid himself.”

  “Your older brother,” Hod repeated.

  “Francis.” It’d been years since I’d said that name out loud. It made my mouth turn dry. “He gave me that switchblade. Told me it was his way of being with me, if he ever wasn’t there, if I needed it. But even when things got really bad— I didn’t use it when I should have. I gave in. Such a fucking coward. When Francis found out, he attacked the guy. The guy attacked back, slammed his head into the corner of the kitchen counter.”

  I sucked in another breath. “Second-degree murder, they called it.”

  That was one memory I’d never be able to shake. I didn’t want to. Francis deserved better than being forgotten, even that last gut-piercing moment when I’d stood over his crumpled body seeing the blood pooling beneath his pale hair, with tears blurring my vision and a shriek in my throat.

  “The man who did all this,” Hod said. “He’s in prison now?”

  He didn’t ask what I’d given in to. What Francis had found out. I hadn’t known I could feel as grateful as I did right then. The memories of those awful nights, pressed into my lumpy mattress, willing my mind away while that bastard grunted and pawed at me and more… I would have left those behind forever if I could. They wrenched at me too much even when I didn’t look at them directly.

  “Yeah,” I said. “At least five more years before he’s got a chance at parole. But Ivan could turn out just as bad. I can’t let anything happen to Petey. I can’t just let things happen, let him get hurt because I didn’t try to stop it.”

  My voice had gone ragged again. I shut up. We stayed there through a long stretch of silence.

  “I do understand,” Hod said abruptly.

  My gaze jerked up to his face. He was frowning, his head bowed.

  “What do you mean?” I said. How could a god have any fucking idea—

  “I know what it’s like,” he said, “to feel like you killed someone you love.” He laughed roughly. “I know it better than I’d wish on anyone. At least you— How old were you, Ari?”

  My fingers dropped to the grass, twisting into the strands. “Twelve. But it doesn’t matter. I still should have done more.”

  “You can’t, though,” Hod said. “It’s already over. All you’ve got left is the rubble in the aftermath.”

  He said it with a hollowness that resonated with the empty ache inside me. I wanted to argue, but that statement was true, wasn’t it? Even if I stole Ivan’s life from his body, it wouldn’t change a damned thing about what I’d done or hadn’t done ten years ago.

  Hod held out his hand to help me up. I hesitated and took it. His grip loosened when I was on my feet, but he eased a step closer, raising his other hand cautiously. My breath caught as he rested it on my hair just above my ear. Not close enough to be an embrace, but maybe as close as I could have accepted right now anyway. Part of me wanted to lean into him and part wanted to run away, so I just stayed where I was, in between. Held but not quite held.

  “You won’t let him down,” the dark god said quietly. “I can tell. There’ll be a way. It’s just not this.”

  My throat choked up all over again. I blinked hard. I still didn’t let myself step right to him, but I leaned my head into his touch, just a little. Taking the comfort he was trying to offer just for a moment.

  The energy that whispered beneath the dark god’s skin was the same golden warmth as Baldur’s and Thor’s had been. In that way, he and his twin were completely the same.

  “I want to believe that,” I said.

  “Stranger things have come true for you in the last week, haven’t they?”

  I looked up at Hod even though I couldn’t exactly meet his gaze. His mouth had quirked with a bittersweet smile.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re not killing anyone tonight. Let’s get home.”

  20

  Baldur

  Loki had the laptop open on the dining room table, chuckling to himself as his long fingers clattered over the keys. The rest of us peered at the screen from our cluster around him. Windows of text and images flew by on the screen.

  “Gods using computers,” Aria said. “I’m not sure this is a good mix.”

  Her tone was teasing, but when I glanced at her, her face looked drawn. Was she worried about the laptop or something else? An echoing worry stirred inside my chest.

  “It’s an excellent mix,” Loki declared. “My new electronically inclined friend—the one who gave me this computer, not the computer itself, as much as I adore it—set me up with some picture recognition software. In theory, it should seek out matches for those symbols the dark elves are using through all the public photographs on the internet. We’ll be able to see if there’s anywhere they’re particularly condensed.”

  “And if there is, that should be where their gate from Midgard to Nidavellir is,” Thor filled in.

  “Exactly! No need for us to run all over the world to find it. Although I won’t fault Muninn for keeping up her search that way.”

  “It’ll only work if they were careless enough to leave signs that obvious,” Hod said. />
  Loki waved him off. “Oh, take your gloom and doom someplace else, nephew. I have internet access. Soon I will rule the world!”

  He winked at Aria, and she smiled, but there was tension in her expression that I couldn’t help seeing. It sent a shiver through my nerves.

  “Any tools we can use to get us closer to Odin are a blessing,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll come up with something useful.”

  “There,” Loki said. “The god of light has spoken. No further argument necessary.”

  “Let us know when you’ve solved all our problems, then,” my twin muttered. He turned to go, hesitated, and lifted his eyes in my direction with a motion of his hand to follow him.

  I walked with him out into the hall and up the stairs. His hand skimmed the banister, a barely necessary point of orientation. His movements looked a little stiff, though.

  “Are you still in pain from yesterday’s attack?” I asked. “If you need me to work more healing—”

  Hod shook his head with a jerk. “I’m not asking for anything from you. Everything is perfectly healed. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  He led the way into the study and stopped by the desk. For a moment, he just stood there, bracing his hand against the wooden surface.

  “Brother,” I started.

  He swiveled abruptly to face me. “We’ve never talked about it,” he said. “What happened—the mistletoe, Loki’s ploy… Not really.”

  A chill so strong and swift I couldn’t displace it swept through me. “Because we didn’t need to,” I said, pushing warmth into my voice and trying to let it warm the rest of me. “I know it wasn’t your fault. I know you never would have meant to. There’s nothing more to be said.”

  “There is,” Hod insisted. “Allfather help me, brother, I don’t know if I ever even apologized. It was so long, in between, and then after we were just glad Ragnarok was over, and I never wanted to press you. I never wanted to remind you of what you must have been through. But I know it can’t have been easy for you.”

  “Hod,” I said. “It’s done. I don’t think about it, ever.” I didn’t let myself. “You can absolve yourself.”

  “Can I? It was my hand. It was my doing as much as his. I know he likes to blame everything on the damned prophecies, but you never deserved a fate like that. You—”

  “It’s done,” I snapped. The words crackled from my mouth as if the ice inside me had mixed with my voice. “We’re in the light now. Let us stay there.”

  Hod winced, his whole body going rigid. A sharper agony wrenched through me. I was supposed to be here to keep the peace, to bring joy, not lose my temper when he was obviously only trying to help, as unwanted as that help was.

  “Baldur,” he said roughly.

  I touched his arm before he could go on, summoning all the warmth and light I had in me. Letting it wash over those prickling reminders of the past and melt them away. I might have said it badly, but what I’d said to him was true. We had to focus on what we had now, where we were, and all that was good about it.

  “There’s nothing to apologize for,” I said, “because there’s nothing to forgive. We had our roles to play, and we did, and everything happened as it was supposed to happen. I promise you, I don’t bear a single shred of resentment.” That much, at least, was also true. “Let’s think about what’s ahead of us, not what’s behind.”

  Hod paused and then nodded. “I shouldn’t have disturbed you. You’re right.”

  He sat down at the desk. I glanced around at the rows of books ranging from old to new across the shelves, and a quiver of that chill stirred inside me again. “Be peaceful,” I said to my brother, and went out to chase a little more peace for myself.

  The music room was my surest route. As I headed toward it, the creak of the stairs drew my attention.

  Aria was climbing up from below. That discomforting aura still hung around her. My heart squeezed.

  I wasn’t sure I’d been able to comfort my brother all that much, but I could offer more to our valkyrie. I should, or I’d be failing her too.

  I waited for her to reach me. She gave me a questioning look with a raise of her eyebrows. I nodded toward one of the doorways down the hall.

  “Would you join me in the music room? I feel that perhaps we could use something to clear our heads for the challenges still ahead of us.”

  She inhaled sharply, and for a second I thought she was going to refuse. Then she shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “It definitely can’t hurt.”

  She trailed behind me into the room. Simply stepping inside sent a wash of calm through me. I breathed in the scents of fine wood and polished metal, and everything inside me stilled.

  Yes, this was what I needed. I couldn’t ease the chaos going on around us unless my own spirit was easy. And if I could make Aria’s spirit rest easier too, then at least I’d have accomplished something fruitful today.

  Aria cocked her head as she considered the rows of instruments. “I don’t know how to play anything. I don’t even know that I’m that great a singer, but if you really want the company…”

  “You enjoy it, don’t you?” I said. I’d felt the pleasure of it in her when she’d sung briefly along with my viola the other day. “That matters more than skill.”

  She snorted. “I guess that depends on who’s listening. But okay. I don’t know if we know many of the same songs, though. How up are you on the latest pop charts?”

  I chuckled. Just talking with her was already setting me more at ease, before I’d even picked up an instrument. She always seemed so… impervious.

  “Not the most recent ones, perhaps,” I said. “But I am intrigued by current music as much as by the classics. I may just be a few decades out of date still. Whenever we travel down to Midgard, I’ve always got a lot catching up to do.”

  “A few decades. Let’s see. Why don’t you tell me what music you like from the most modern eras you’ve caught up to, and we’ll figure out where I can fit in.”

  I considered my most recent dabbling. “I have become rather fond of Liza Wang and Ahmed Rushdi, but I suppose English songs are a better bet?” Her puzzled look was enough of an answer. “I have found much to appreciate in the works of Elvis Presley, and Stevie Wonder, and The Beatles.”

  Aria laughed. “Seriously? All right. I can work with that.” She cracked her knuckles. “I had at least three music teachers in school who were Beatles maniacs. Let’s medley that up. Do you know ‘Ob la di, ob la da’?”

  I picked the acoustic guitar off the wall. “Well enough to manage the tune.”

  A glow came into Aria’s face as we launched into the song, matching the glow that spread through my chest as my hands moved over the strings. There was something so pure and joyful about calling forth a beautiful melody from such a simple object. If she didn’t hit every note perfectly, it didn’t matter. Her voice wove through the sounds of the guitar from that song into “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Hard Day’s Night.”

  I started picking songs somewhat at random, just to see where we could match. If she didn’t pick up the thread partway through the first verse, I simply switched again. Aria grinned, caught up in the challenge.

  Without thinking about it, I shifted from the more energetic songs into softer tunes. My thumb strummed the opening chords to “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away,” and Aria’s mouth twisted.

  Her voice spilled out as sweet as before, but lower, with a slight tremble as she reached the chorus. No, this exercise had gone in completely the wrong direction.

  I stilled my hand against the strings, and her voice faded out. She shook her head, running her fingers back through the messy waves of her hair.

  “Sorry, we can try again.”

  “You were fine,” I said. “You were great.” Perhaps right now I needed to take a direct approach. The subtle one clearly hadn’t worked well enough. “Whatever’s wrong, Aria, you’re with us now. We have hundreds of years of experience tackling whatever the realm
s throw at us. We’ll see this through. It’ll be all right.”

  She looked at me from behind her hand. “You can’t know that,” she said. “You don’t even know what’s bothering me. What if it isn’t all right? Not every problem gets fixed, you know.”

  “Then you set those concerns aside and find other things to take joy in,” I said. “Why dwell on what you can’t change?”

  “Because you don’t know whether you can or not?” she said with a swing of her arm. “Anyway, it’s not as if you can just ignore everything that makes you upset, bury it forever.”

  I blinked at her. That was the only thing you could do, often enough. “Why not?”

  “Because… because it’s still there. And you’d know it’s still there, even if you’re not letting yourself think about it. Even if you’re distracting yourself and acting like there’s only the good stuff. I’ve tried it. It never works for very long.”

  Something tightened around my chest, not exactly painful but not comforting either. The comment that tumbled out wasn’t one I might have said otherwise. “If you bury it deep enough, it can be gone for centuries.”

  Her gaze focused on me. I made myself look back at her, even though the sensation inside me had tightened even more. “It’s not really gone in that case, though, is it?” she said quietly.

  “It may as well be,” I said. “If it never comes back up. In which case, what does it matter, if everyone’s happier that way?”

  “I guess I’m just not that good at burying things.”

  I set down the guitar beside my stool and stood up. “Then let me help you.”

  She held herself in place as I stepped closer to her. I raised my hands to either side of her face, just barely grazing her cheeks with my knuckles. She could sense my surface emotions just as I could sense hers. I thought of the last few days, of everything I’d seen of her, and let admiration flow from me to her.

  “You found us a way back to the Allfather,” I said. “You’ve fought for yourself and for the rest of us. You have wings to soar on and strength no mortal can match.”