Goddess

by Julie Anne Lindsey

  “Will you tell us who has done this so we can find our men and bring them home?”

  My heart clenched. If I was right, we could get the men back. Men who hadn’t wanted to go. “Yes.”

  The man made a break for the door and was captured by a dozen angry Vikings. They dragged him to the center of the foyer and forced him to his knees under the chandelier where Liam’s great-grandmother had hung herself, hoping to trigger her Viking genes.

  “I’ll tell you anything,” he begged. Tight blond curls framed his face in a style of centuries past. Wide green eyes pleaded for mercy.

  “Where are my men?” I startled myself with the question I hadn’t intended to voice. Mason had agreed to ask the questions. “Are they dead?”

  “I don’t know.” Fear coated his words, making it impossible to sense anything else.

  “Explain your guilt.”

  His teeth chattered. His gaze moved across the crowd. “I meet with Adam Stian every few days and report what goes on here.”

  Adam. He’d posed as a coed last month and befriended Allison in search of the prophesied leader. We’d assumed the leader would be Justin until I died. “What do you say to him?”

  The man hesitated, and Oliver shoved a booted foot against his back.

  “Ah! Stop. Please.” He waved his hands in the air and batted tears from his eyes. “I tell him our numbers and your habits. I listen for your swim and school schedule, the times you’ll be at work. Things like that.”

  “Why?”

  Liam scoffed. His face contorted in anger. “Why do you think? So they can ambush us and kill you.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” the man cried from his knees. “I’m only a messenger. They don’t let me in on any of their meetings.”

  I glared at Liam for smarting off to me. I knew what Liam thought the Stians wanted. I’d asked what the guilty one thought they wanted. Now I wouldn’t get that answer. “They won’t let you into their meetings. What do they let you do?”

  A sob burst from his quivering lips. “Live. They let me live.”

  “What else?” I crouched beside him. “Tell me something else. Something I can use to protect my men.”

  “They’re regrouping. Attacking smaller clans and persuading undecided ones. Their leader is called Calder. He’s diabolical. You don’t want to mess with him.”

  “Actually, I do. I want my men back.”

  A cheer rose up behind me.

  “I don’t know anything about that. No one said anything about taking men. I was only here for information. I didn’t want to do it, and I never told them more than I had to. I swear. They don’t know about your gifts. I never told them. They only know of the sword. They saw that themselves.”

  Liam morphed in a heartbeat, gaining twenty pounds of muscle and embracing his original form. “You told them of her gifts.”

  “I didn’t. I swear.”

  Liam’s thin measure of control was slipping. “You brought it up. You say you fear them. Why should we believe you’d withhold anything they asked? You lie to our faces and sleep in our home.” Betrayal, guilt, and terror coursed around us like bands of toxic gasses.

  The man held his hands out to me, whimpering, snot streaming from his nose. “The Stians believe you are taking their men. They think you’re planning an ambush on them. They’ve seen your scouts and have lost five warriors. They blame you.”

  I gasped. “Someone’s taking their men too.”

  “Yes.”

  Liam produced his light saber from thin air and held it overhead.

  A riveting calm cut through me. The calm of resolution when a decision was made.

  “Were you to hurt Callie?”

  “No! Never. I wouldn’t.”

  The escalation from query to action sped past me like an out-of-control freight train. “I believe him.”

  Liam didn’t look my way. He stared sadly at the lump of a man before us. “I can’t trust him. Without trust, there is nothing.” His sword swept through the air, leaving a green arch of light behind it. The man’s head rolled free.

  My legs shuddered beneath me. The terror constricting my lungs dissipated, making room for the contempt my heart produced by the second.

  I didn’t even know his name.

  * * * *

  I waited in Liam’s room while the men cleaned up evidence of the murder I’d caused. Nearly an hour passed before he showed himself.

  He had the audacity to say, “I thought you’d left.”

  I crossed my arms. “We need to talk. I’m not going anywhere until that happens.”

  Liam shut the door and stripped out of his bloodied clothes. He opened the en suite door and splashed water up his arms and over his face.

  “You’ve been dodging me for days. You’re hiding something from me. Yeah. I can tell, but you already know that. Which is probably the reason you’re dodging me. You don’t want to talk about it? That’s fine, but we’re going to talk about what just happened downstairs.”

  “What happened downstairs was I saved countless other lives. Yours included.”

  “What happened was murder.”

  He tipped his head back and barked a laugh. “That’s ridiculous. The man was a spy. He admitted to it. He told us the Stians are regrouping. We don’t have time to entertain that kind of treason, Callie. In case you’ve forgotten, there’s an army of giants in town at this very moment, plotting to kill us.”

  I stomped my foot, wishing for something to punch or throw. “No, I haven’t forgotten the giants, you enormous Viking ass!”

  Liam raised his hands overhead, as if it was a burden to deal with such a petty child. Caring about murder. I must be crazy. His gravelly voice churned with emotion. “The Stians will stop at nothing to take every advantage. That man had to die. You know it as well as I do. I saved you from making the choice.”

  “It was my choice. Not yours.”

  Patience warred with anger in his eyes. “Taking lives comes with a great burden. I didn’t want you to face that. Not now. Not yet.”

  “Not. Your. Decision.”

  He raked both hands through shaggy hair and yanked open the closet door, redressing in crisply ironed jeans and a freshly pressed cotton shirt. As if this was a party gone poorly or an argument over online gaming. “For gods’ sake, Callie. You can’t even wield your own sword.”

  My mouth fell open with a pop. Fury bubbled like rocket fuel from my curled toes to my gritted teeth. “Did you stop to think, for one minute, that maybe the giants are the ones taking our men? Did you even hear him say the Stians have lost five? Five, Liam. Five men. They think we took them. The giants are here for Vikings. Do you think they care which Vikings?”

  Liam blanched.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  I opened the door with a flourish and stared at my stunned boyfriend. “Don’t lecture me about shouldering burdens again. You have no idea what I’m burdened with. You’re too busy avoiding me to ask.”

  I stormed down the steps and through a gathering storm. Like the insane person I was becoming, I raised both middle fingers at the sky.

  I would wield my sword, unite my men, and beat those effing giants, and I’d do it at Liam’s side, not behind him. Good intentions or not. I didn’t need a guardian. I needed a partner.

  Chapter 11

  I took my books to work with me Sunday and piled them on the spotless countertop. Midterms loomed like a guillotine over my academic neck, and I was guilty. I hadn’t studied in weeks. I wrote papers at the last minute and did daily homework in the locker room before swim. The strange new world I lived in, where reality and fiction collided, reminded me of a fairy tale. A Grimm tale or maybe Alice in Wonderland, but she had it easy. If she’d endured the insanities of Wonderland popping up in her real life while applying for college and explaining away white hair streaks and an eye color change, maybe it would have been a fair comparison.

 
; I dragged a highlighter over my classroom notes.

  Allison danced around the empty tables, earbuds in, ponytail swinging. Her grades were phenomenal. She’d sat in bed studying for the last three weeks.

  I repositioned my feet, careful to avoid the place where Buddy had died. If it hadn’t meant so much to his mother that Roll With It stay open, I’d have refused to step foot inside. Showing up was tougher every time.

  “What’s wrong? You need some help?” Allison stood before me, hips swinging. She held one earbud away from her ear.

  “I was thinking of Buddy.”

  Her gaze moved over the space where he’d fallen beside her in two pieces. She was unconscious at the time, so she hadn’t seen it happen, but the look in her eyes said that didn’t matter. “Being here honors him. He wouldn’t want the enemy to win.”

  Being here honors him? Those words sounded suspiciously like something a Hale would say. “Yeah. I know.” No wonder she came back to the scene of her attack so easily. Oliver probably used his influence on her.

  My pencil cracked.

  “Yikes.” She twisted her mouth. “You do need help. What are you studying?”

  I dropped the pencil pieces and pressed fingertips to my temples. “Everything.”

  She laughed.

  Liam had used his influence on me after the rodeo. How could I be sure that was the only time? He told me once that their influence ruined relationships. Eventually the women wondered if they truly loved the Hales or if they were victims of their persuasion. Was that why he was avoiding me? Guilt? What would he have influenced me about?

  The bell above the door jingled and rattled against the glass. My day brightened.

  “Hey.” Justin tipped his hat to me and smirked at Allison. Last I’d heard, their text war had escalated to emoji blasts. Unicorns. Ninjas. Random directional signs. Allison sent a selfie of the inside of her nose. He sent a pic of his foot.

  I loved them both so much. “Did you come to tease her IRL?”

  He sauntered to the counter and leaned a trim hip against the glass. “Nope. I came for coffee and an apology.”

  Relief washed through me. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Not you.” Justin laughed, a sad, humorless sound. “Me. I’m sorry.”

  Allison rolled her eyes and turned her back on us. She shoved her earbud back in place and returned to dancing.

  I approached him with open arms.

  To my relief, he scooped me up and squeezed. “I don’t know what my problem is lately. I’m not sleeping. I’m obsessing over nonsense. I shouldn’t have upset you. I should’ve taken another day to work through things.”

  “It’s okay.” I had a good idea of what influenced his erratic behavior lately. Given five minutes of peace, I’d have confronted Nym about it already.

  He rubbed my back. “I’m an ass. I told you I need time, but the only person I want to talk to is you.”

  Allison made a funny noise but didn’t stop dancing.

  He waited a long beat. “Have you ever had déjà vu?”

  “Sure.”

  “I feel like I’m living in a constant state like that. Where everything is repeating, or reminding me of something I forgot.”

  I glanced out the window as a group of locals passed by. “Like an appointment?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know, and I’m driving myself crazy trying to figure it out.” He watched Allison, singing silently.

  She lifted her gaze to meet his and pulled her earbuds free. “Me too.”

  Uh-oh. “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve been talking about it.” Justin shook his head. “It’s been like this for both of us since that night.”

  Allison bit her lip. “We think something else happened here.”

  I fought the urge to text Liam for help. He was still on my crap list. “Like what?”

  Justin shrugged. “We’re not sure. The stories we were told at the hospital didn’t make sense. I blacked out and fell into our pond? I can’t get okay with that. Why was I at the pond? Why would I black out? Who took me to the hospital?”

  Allison wound the tip of her ponytail around one finger. “And what are the odds of that bizarre thing happening the same night as my bizarre thing? Buddy was murdered and I was stabbed. Stabbed. They didn’t even take the money.”

  They had wonderful points. All things the Hales and I had discussed at length, none of which we could change once the tragic night finally ended. There was only so much time to clean up two crime scenes and a couple dozen fallen Vikings. “It does sound hinky when you say it like that.”

  Justin tucked his thumbs behind a big silver belt buckle. “We think it’s a cover-up.”

  “For what?”

  “Aliens,” Allison whispered.

  A laugh burst between my lips and I smashed them shut. “Sorry. You said aliens?”

  Justin rocked on his heels. “Or the Japanese Mafia. You know, because of the unnamed weapon, possibly a sword situation. We don’t have details yet, but we’re positive both our accidents are related, especially since we both have sensations of memory loss.”

  “Okay.” My heart raced. If they were remembering, maybe it was time I told them the truth. Liam had warned this could happen. I wished Mason was nearby to ask for advice. I flipped through a mental list of alternative responses.

  Aliens or the Japanese Mafia. Wow.

  My skin prickled with sudden dread. I scanned the street outside the window, seeking the source, praying I wouldn’t run into a Stian while I was alone with two human friends.

  Justin leaned his elbows on the counter. “Allison thinks those guys from her college were in on it. Maybe even aliens. Remember them? Adam and Tony? They hung out with me for a while, introduced me to their friends, then poof. I fell in a pond. Someone stabbed Allison and those guys disappeared.”

  Outside the window, a man with no hair and an angry face caught my attention. He marched toward the diner, glaring. He grew taller with every step, stretching as proximity revealed his true size. Which was jumbo-size. Giant size. A strange blue shimmer covered his skin, like heat clinging to asphalt in the summer. When his gaze caught mine, he bared his teeth.

  Shit.

  I jumped. “You know what I think? I think these are very interesting theories and we should talk about them. Hash it out. Brainstorm. How about now?” I rushed through the words, shuffling Justin and Allison to the farthest table from the window. “You guys sit here and I’ll grab some food for thought. Be right back.”

  “Weirdo.” Allison took the seat facing the front and Justin sat beside her.

  I ran down the narrow hall to Roll With It’s back door and stopped. I needed a more developed plan than “run and lead him away.”

  I swallowed my pride and sent Liam a text. “9-1-1 Diner.”

  “Give me a minute to hit the ladies’ room.” I yelled down the hall to my friends and closed the bathroom door so it’d look like I was inside. Buddy’s prized katana, the sword he’d tried to defend us with, lay on a shelf beside a box of things his mother hadn’t collected. I made the sign of the cross and unsheathed it.

  Armed, I slipped into the alley on silent feet. If I caught the giant by surprise, I had a chance of surviving long enough for Tom or Liam to save me.

  My phone buzzed with a text from Liam. “Stay inside.”

  Too late. The back door snicked shut behind me. The giant waited in the alley, posing with his weapon. He wrapped big sausage fingers around the hilt of a small crescent blade. “Hello, Goddess.” The baritone of his voice rumbled the ground.

  I tried congeniality. “Nice to meet you. You are?”

  “Gil of Niflheim.”

  The words ignited something carnal in me. The muscles of my arms and legs tensed to spring. I gripped the sword tighter, ready to defend my friends. I had to do whatever was necessary to keep Gil outside the deli.

  “I’m Callie of Zoar. Any specific reason
you’re carrying that weapon?”

  He circled me slowly. “I’ve come to take you with me.”

  “Where are we going?” A glimpse of my reflection in a puddle revealed bright amber eyes. Holy crap. Again with the amber?

  He smiled a slick, greasy smile. The blue haze over his skin twinkled in the sunlight. “Close your eyes.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Goddess. That was not a request.” Before the threat registered, he lunged for me.

  I jumped aside, crouching in defensive mode, the sword trembling in my hand.

  He chuckled. “You’re a fast little thing.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Like a rat.”

  “Yep. Just like.” I positioned both hands on the hilt of Buddy’s sword and summoned a lifetime of courage I’d never had. Unable to attack, I rolled against the Dumpster, creating an impromptu shield.

  He sliced through the air beside my head, nailing the Dumpster and gashing my shield.

  I had nowhere else to hide.

  Weeks of defense training snapped into focus, and I dove toward him, catching his calf with the blade of the katana and earning a thunderous response.

  I pressed palms over my ears as he roared and kicked me into the brick building behind me. Oliver’s words charged to mind. Never let your guard down. A smattering of crumbled brick rained over me, and something crunched in my head. I struggled to my feet, bracing for another hit. My pulse beat in the hand bearing the sword’s weight. I’d mistakenly tried to cushion my impact with the wall. The skin on my wrist swelled and throbbed. My phone buzzed inside my pocket.

  Gil drove his blade toward me at inhuman speed. I dove for him again, catching his side with the katana. The skin beneath his jacket gave way to my blade, darkening on impact. Images of Buddy’s death straightened my spine. I wouldn’t tolerate any more death here. Resolution carried me toward my opponent. Wind whipped through my hair, and fire danced over my skin. I straightened to my new height of five eight and lunged into warrior pose.

  Gil clutched his side and checked his hand for blood. His palm turned up purple. Fury poured off him in hot, pungent waves. He punched the wall, pummeling brick to dust where my head had been one heartbeat before.