Frozen Stiff

by L. J. Vickery

  Her ears tuned in. She heard the man from the newspaper truck toss the morning edition onto the front walkway. That meant it was six a.m. The neighbors were not close by, but at precisely six-forty, she heard the motorcycle down the street fire up and knew she only had to hold on another half hour before Pete would come.

  She almost drifted off again, but the porch door slammed and footsteps approached. Glory held her breath. She waited. She waited longer. Her eyes flew wide and her mouth dropped open as the boots walked away. The asshole hadn’t opened the lock. Glory swallowed hard. Maybe he’d forgotten something inside and would be right back. She listened intently. The car started up.

  “Oh my God.” She breathed quickly, panic clutching at her chest. “He’s leaving me here.” She began to scream.

  Enten awoke with a start. It was pitch black in the room…Glory’s room. He’d been having a lovely dream where he was warm and protected, wrapped in his mother’s arms, being scrubbed dry after a morning bath…no, a swim, because the sun shone brightly overhead and…there was screaming? Shit. It was Glory.

  “Glory. Wake up.” Enten’s words came out strangled and whispery. Damn his injured throat. His mate struggled and whimpered beside him, and he had a hell of a time getting through to her. “It’s okay, Glory,” he choked. Enten gently untangled her from the mess she’d made of the covers, but still she wouldn’t snap out of it.

  He drew her to a sitting position, but she slapped at him and fought as he tried to comfort her. He finally gave up and stretched across her for the light. “Glory. Honey. It’s a dream. It’s okay. I’m right here.” He knew his wrecked voice wasn’t penetrating. He attempted to rub her back, but every time he touched her she fought him harder…so he reached for her in a different way.

  Glory, wake up now. Quiet your mind. You’re having a bad dream and you need to come out of it.

  Glory seemed to hear his words.

  Take my hand, and I’ll help you make it better. Come on, baby, let me wake you up.

  Glory’s eyes flickered open. She drew in a huge, gasping breath as if her lungs had been shut down. She turned and saw Enten’s worried face and clutched at his hands.

  “You got me out.” Tears poured down her face. “You got me out before…”

  Glory stopped. She sobbed. Clearly the rest of some fucked up dream stuck in her head. Enten pressed close to cool the feverish sweat that poured off her body. I got you out before what, baby? He probed gently. He had no idea what had upset her, but she needed to talk about it.

  Glory was now fully awake and it looked like the terror started to leave her body. Her eyes cleared and her shaking calmed. “You got me out of the shed before I…before…”

  Enten pushed the curls off Glory’s face. Why don’t you start at the beginning? He sent to her gently. Tell me about this shed.

  “He shut me in…in my underwear.” Glory looked down at her hands, twisting in the sheets now pooled at her knees. “It was my punishment for burning the dinner.” She said it like it should make sense. Enten grew still and listened.

  “It wasn’t the first time he’d put me there.” Glory nodded, recalling. “I’d been shut in many times before,” her voice got low. “But this time he didn’t come back.”

  Enten tried to use his vocal chords. “Someone shut you in a shed and left you there?” There was an asshole to maim somewhere. “For how long?” Enten was able to make himself heard.

  “Usually it was just over night.” Glory shivered. “I learned to deal with it.” She gave Enten a tremulous look, lowering her gaze again. “I even hid water for myself.”

  Enten drew her hands away from the sheets and wrapped them in his own. “That sounds like my smart girl.” He tried to reassure her, voice gruff, needing her to continue so he could hear the whole thing. “So this time…how long were you in the shed?” He said it low, without the growl he’d normally have.

  “He went to work the next morning.” She shivered. “And didn’t open the door. He always opened the door in the morning.” She turned troubled eyes to Enten.

  “Not your fault, baby. Not your fault,” he comforted, all the while thinking how satisfying it would be when he found this prick and pounded him into the ground.

  “I was so hungry. I hadn’t eaten,” Glory continued. “And I had to…you know…use the bathroom, except there wasn’t any.”

  Enten suddenly got the picture. The prick who had done this to Glory felt like a big man punishing and humiliating his woman. It was all about power and mortification. Enten revised his agenda where the male was concerned. A pounding wouldn’t be nearly enough. A slow, degrading death. That was it.

  Glory continued. “I had to scratch a hole in the corner…in the dirt.” Her trembling lips compressed.

  He tried to reassure her. “In the old days back in Merrymount, we all used the dirt. We dug holes and did our business and it wasn’t bad. It was normal.”

  “This felt bad.” Glory shared with him quietly.

  Enten gave her hand another squeeze. “Again, babe, nothing you could have done about it. Pure survival.”

  Her eyes grew blank again as she remembered. “After that, I spent hours digging at the base of one wall with my bare hands. By the time I heard a truck pull up out front, my nails were all broken and my fingers were bloody.” Her hands curled in his.

  “Whose truck was it, Glory?” Enten pictured his beautiful girl, hurt and frightened, all alone, and he wanted to howl.

  “I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.” Enten felt her looking inward. “All I knew was I had to get out of there. I screamed and screamed until I heard a voice. A man’s voice. He came up to the shed and asked what was going on. I told him I’d been locked in and asked if he could get me out.”

  Enten could feel the embarrassment coming off his mate in waves.

  “He took a rock and hammered away at the lock until it came free. He opened the door and there I was…in my underwear, dirty and bloody and the shed smelling like…” She finished so softly Enten had to strain to hear.

  “If you could have seen his face.” Glory relived the horror. “I wanted to die on the spot. I wanted to run, but all I could do was stand there.”

  The gently lit room turned silent for a long time. Enten waited as patiently as he could for Glory to finish her story. His guts churned and his hands itched to do damage.

  “He called 911 even though I told him I would be fine. I told him to go, but he wouldn’t leave. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around me. It was brown,” she recalled as her body quivered. “I realized who he was; Zack, the package delivery man who’d come to the door at least once a month delivering the special steaks I always ordered for Pete.”

  Enten took note of the names—one good, one bad—and held Glory tighter vowing to find out the rest.

  “I don’t know how he kept me calm until the police came. I felt like I would break into a million pieces.” Glory finally stopped shaking and bent her head to fit into the crook on Enten’s shoulder. “He had always been very nice…polite. We’d made small talk at my door.”

  “What happened then, baby? Where did you go?”

  “They brought me to the hospital and assessed me. Except for a little exposure to the cold and my shredded fingers, I was fine. I had them call my mother. She came and picked me up and brought me to where she lived.” Glory’s voice shook again.

  “Okay. So that’s a good thing, right?” Enten wasn’t sure what Glory would tell him next, and his injured throat suddenly tightened again

  “When we got there, my father was home.” Tears clogged Glory’s words. “He pulled me out of the house, threw me in his car, and drove me right back to Pete.”

  Enten used all of his strength to hold himself together. “What…what did Pete do when you got home?”

  But that was it. He’d reached a solid wall. Glory shut down. Despite Enten’s patient questioning, she would go no further. As far as she was concerned, the story was done.


  Enten could just imagine the damage the prick had inflicted once she’d been returned to Pete; returned by her own father; the bastard who―Enten was now equally as happy about it as Glory―had choked on a hunk of meat.

  “But Glory, the police? The shed?” He shook his head at her. The police would have done something after being confronted with all that shit.

  “Oh, Pete was pretty well known in town…grew up in the house where we lived…mild drunk, never caused too many problems. Some of the cops knew his history with women, but nobody had ever made a written complaint. The police asked if I wanted to press charges but I was…” She hunched her shoulders. “I was too afraid,” she said dejectedly.

  She reached up and grabbed Enten’s shoulders, her face a study in anguish. “Where would I go if I didn’t live with Pete? I didn’t have any skills. I couldn’t go back to my father.” She paused as she gathered herself.

  “They did make him pull down the shed, figuring that might slow him down.”

  “And did it?” Enten steeled himself for the answer.

  “He made…uh…alternate accommodations in the basement, where…no one would hear me. The new arrangement worked out fine for him.”

  Glory jumped when something smashed just outside of their bedroom door. “What was that?”

  “That was Absu.” Enten wasn’t surprised at his fellow gods’ reaction. “Remember our invisible roommate? Did you forget he might be listening in?” By the pink in her cheeks, Enten figured that was the case.

  “He feels the same way I do about your ex-husband,” Enten bit out. He envied Absu’s ability to violently acquire and unacquire things in the other room to let off some steam.

  Enten held it all in for Glory’s sake. That wouldn’t be the case tomorrow, after he had Absu invisibly rifle the police records from the incident. Once they had a name and address, Pete would get one hell of a visit.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Enten had summoned Anshar and Lenore from Maine. They heard the whole story, and the god of the sky also wanted his shot at the dick-wad, Pete. “Let me take care of the bastard,” Anshar growled, sitting on the edge of Glory’s sofa. “My wife is a registered lethal weapon, and I kick some serious ass, not to mention we have bodies. You,” Anshar spared Enten nothing, “will be invisible once you’re away from Glory, and have limited options where retribution is concerned.” His glance also covered the incorporeal Absu. “You two know I’m right.”

  None of that had been lost on Enten, which is why he’d called Anshar and Lenore, but he was iced up to take Pete out himself.

  “Well, I don’t think any of it’s a good idea.” Glory stood in the kitchenette and poured herself a second cup of coffee. In the light of day, things didn’t seem to scare her as much, for which Enten gave thanks.

  “Really, I’ve put the whole episode behind me.” She looked around the room, including in the direction of invisible Absu whom Enten told her sat in the Windsor chair by the window. “And don’t we have more important things to attend to? Like finding this Matthew character.”

  Enten knew Glory just wanted to move forward. She explained, at length, how once her father had died and she had the safety of her mother’s place to go back to, she’d gone to the police station and to court, procuring a restraining order against Pete.

  Turns out, he was an aggressive asshole only as long as Glory’s father had his back. When the older man died, the yellow streak in Pete became apparent. The day the police came to his door, he had sullenly yet quietly vacated the premises, allowing Glory to retrieve all of her stuff and say goodbye to her hell forever.

  Coward that he was, Pete never physically attempted to come get her, although he sent many a veiled threat through obscure acquaintances. He’d contested the divorce proceedings to draw things out and make Glory suffer. But after the prescribed time, Pete had to sign the papers anyway as decreed by law.

  Glory had gotten on with her life, enrolled in classes at UMass―thanks to the small life insurance policy her father had left―and taken an entry level job at the advertising firm where she had worked her way up and was now, six years later, a well-paid producer.

  Clearly, at this point, Glory hoped the gods would forget the whole Pete thing so her life would go back to normal. Enten blew out a cold breath. Like that was possible. She didn’t yet realize the depth of the attachment between a god and his Chosen. First, he needed to take care of some serious retribution, then he needed to carry her off―caveman style―to the Blue Hills where she would be safe for the rest of forever.

  “Seriously.” She interrupted his thoughts, like she knew where his mind had been. “Shouldn’t you let this whole Pete thing go and work on keeping yourselves and your Chosen protected?”

  Lenore spoke up. “Baby, you are a Chosen.”

  Enten saw Glory’s mouth compress.

  “Whether you like it or not.” Lenore gave a succinct nod. “Which means Enten has a primal need to smother you with his testosterone, and take out any threat against you…past or present,” she said in a snarky tone, turning to blow a thanks-for-making-me-your-Chosen kiss at Anshar.

  “Right, Lenore.” Enten jumped on her statement. “I feel the need to take out the threat.” He looked triumphantly at the all sky god. “Do you get me, Anshar?”

  Anshar sighed. “Yeah. I get you.” He obviously didn’t like it, but he clearly understood.

  Enten continued. “The only reason I called you two here is to watch over Glory while Absu and I do our thing. She wants to head to her office and start setting things up so she can work from the compound.” At least Enten had won that part of the argument without pissing Glory off. Now that Nergal had given the all-clear that his suspects were rounded up and being screened in hell, they were free to stop acting like they’d thought Ereshkigal had been the bad guy.

  “Ooh,” Lenore squealed excitedly. “Does that mean we get to bodyguard you when you go on shoots with your bunch of mouthwatering models?” Enten wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure Lenore talked about the men and the women.

  Glory smiled at the petite, kick-ass platinum blonde. “That’s the plan, if I can get everyone at the office to agree.”

  “Count me in.” The newly minted goddess looked all shades of enthusiastic. “I’ll go to your office as your new security muscle, and while you’re packing up your goodies, I’ll compel all the worker bees into agreeing with everything you say.”

  Glory’s mouth hung open. Can she do that? Her eyes turned to Enten.

  “We have a few powers I haven’t told you about, yet,” he said sheepishly, exercising his newly recovering vocal chords.

  “Now would be a good time to remedy that.” Glory narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “Have you compelled me into anything?” Maybe she thought about a few of their sexual encounters.

  “Nope. Absolutely not,” Enten quickly assured her. Lenore backed him up.

  “They can’t compel their Chosen, and it’s a damn good thing or none of us would know if the kinky stuff they make us do is of our own free will.”

  “Sweetheart.” Anshar snorted. “That kinky stuff comes from your brain. It’s not intrinsic to gods.”

  An unexpected giggle came from Glory, which she tried to cover with a cough.

  “Baby, baby. Do tell.” Lenore called her out and Enten silently groaned as the platinum blonde sent a new and appraising eye over toward Enten. “What does Mr. Freeze have up his cold, little sleeves?” She licked her lips.

  Enten felt himself blush, an almost impossible feat. “There’s nothing to tell, Lenore.”

  The goddess sent a skeptical stare toward Glory, looking for confirmation, and much to his further embarrassment―and the amusement of Anshar and Absu―Glory mouthed, “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  Lenore looked giddy. “Can’t wait for girlie time,” she chirped.

  Enten grimaced.

  “But right now, I’d like to know what else you guys can do.” She crossed he
r arms purposely across her lovely chest.

  “I’ve got this one.” Anshar smirked. Enten held his breath, wondering what the irreverent god would say.

  “Besides the compelling, which we can do if we’re visible and looking right into someone’s eyes, we can ‘press’ people with weak minds to do things while we’re in our invisible state. It’s not as effective but it’s still pretty darned impressive.” Anshar looked at Enten, who gave him a nod. This was what he had in mind for the unsuspecting asshole, Pete. He strove for patience and listened to Anshar’s growing list.

  “We can acquire and unacquire things, which is how we built our homestead.”

  “I already knew about that one. I saw the rules posted on your refrigerator.” Glory giggled.

  “We’re also extraordinarily strong, and we have control over various earth elements.”

  Glory nodded. Enten recalled telling her that as well.

  “And we heal rapidly.” Anshar stroked his chin, clearly trying to come up with more.

  “Yeah, yeah. All old news. Tell me what I don’t know.”

  Lenore took over, and Enten heaved a sigh of relief. The goddess might be a loose cannon, but she didn’t have half the devilish inclinations that Anshar sported. “You’ve done the mindshare thing with Enten and the rest of us.”

  Glory nodded.

  “But, eventually you’ll learn to link en masse, individually, or to a very specific group, however and whenever you want.”

  That made Glory look happy.

  Lenore snapped her fingers. “You’ll also be able to wipe any human mind clear of thoughts and deeds. That one’s fun.” Lenore clearly thought hard. Obviously she wanted to make sure she disclosed all. A grin lit up her face. “Oh, yeah. We…you can mind suck a human to get information, but watch that one. Not everything you suck is the genuine article.”

  Enten chuckled, recalling a few past incidents, but Glory focused on what Lenore had inadvertently said. “Does this mean if I accept the Chosen thing, I’ll get all these powers too?” Enten could see Glory trying to wrap her head around everything, but sensed there was something she also reached for, something just outside of her touch. Shit. Enten sent a withering look to Lenore, shutting her up and immediately addressing what he knew would be Glory’s biggest concern.