by Mayburn, Ann
A tall, non-descript man, he knew how to blend into the crowd. People often described him as nonthreatening, even weak. Very skinny with dark hair and pale skin, he appeared sickly and did nothing to make people think otherwise. Around campus, he usually wore a typical professor's suit and tie, along with small, round-frame glasses. He thought of these clothes as a costume, a character and persona he could put on and take off as quickly as most people changed their shoes.
If his students saw the truth of his soul and the visions his mind contained, they would run screaming.
Walking carefully over to his altar, he knelt before it and added a mixture of herbs and minerals to the blood in the offering cup. Black marble made the altar that held a statue of the goddess Eris of the same stone. Chanting softly, he lit the brew on fire. The smell of blood and herbs filled the air with an acrid stench. The bloody woman chained to the wall behind him whimpered, muffled by her duct-tape gag.
He reflected on the glory of his goddess as he descended into his spiritual center. Eris was brilliant, able to turn the hearts and minds of humans against one another through a single whispered word. Stupid humans were so easy to manipulate. All he had to do was know what their secret wishes were and convince them they deserved to achieve their desires, no matter what the cost.
This was why he’d chosen to teach philosophy. His students would often reveal their inner desires in their debating. Things they wanted more than anything else in the world. He could pull those needs out, search for those who would do his bidding, and corrupt those who could cause the most harm.
A flicker of doubt moved through his mind as he descended, his physical body breathing in scorched blood, his soul feeding on the pain trapped in the smoke. Dark seers had alerted their gods and goddesses to Eliana's coming. She would be a powerful warrior of the Creator if allowed to pass her time of Choice and become a full Chosen. It was his job to stop her.
He had seen Athena’s messenger talking with Eliana and had informed his goddess at once. Eris had been delighted. Athena was a fierce opponent in battle, but shackled by the requirement that her followers be as chaste as she was. Athena was the eternally virginal Maiden of Battle. Only virgins could enter her service. Eris ordered him to find a willing and attractive male to assure Eliana lost her virginity before Athena made her decision. He had asked why he didn't have the girl raped. Eris told him it had to be a willing decision on Eliana's part to give up her virginity.
Kyle, a vicious young man with a taste for cruelty, had been more than happy to take on the task when David approached him on Eris's behalf. He’d found Kyle last year after Eris asked he take him on as a student. While David didn't doubt his goddess's wisdom in using Kyle as a tool, he found the boy to be dull in everything but his taste for blood.
Kyle had failed to connect with Eliana so far. He’d spoken to her at a party, but that was about it. To make up for his failure, Kyle had brought the woman chained to the wall as a sacrifice. David hoped it would be enough to sweeten Eris's mood.
Opening his eyes, he found himself kneeling in the familiar white marble hall. This was his personal place to commune with his goddess. She wasn't there in her physical form. She rarely left her private temple. To have an actual visit from her was an honor he had only experienced once when she’d picked him as her Chosen twenty years ago. A giant white marble statue depicted Eris reclining leisurely on a couch while she played with the long ropy intestines of a slain man at her feet.
Flanking both sides of the hall were smaller statues representing Eris's thirteen children. Minor gods and goddesses, they served their mother and reveled in her destructive schemes. They were Battle, Dispute, Famine, Rape, Lawlessness, Lies, Murder, Oathbreaker, Oblivion, Quarrel, Ruin, Sorrow, and Toil.
“My goddess, I have come before you as your humble servant. Your will is my life,” he intoned as he waited for her presence.
The torches flickered and gutted, and a cold wind moved through the hall. As always, he was alternately terrified and exalted as the goddess’s presence filled his mind.
“What news do you bring me, servant?” It was a woman's voice, but it held the echoing shrieks and groans of the dying within.
Taking a deep breath, he said, “Kyle has failed to seduce the potential Chosen, my goddess.” He tensed, awaiting the punishment he was sure was coming for his failure.
“There is still time. My seers have assured me of Kyle's success. If he does not claim her maidenhead in two weeks, I want you to kill him and take care of it yourself.”'
His shoulders sagged in relief at her words. While she couldn't hurt his physical form here, his spiritual form would feel just as much pain, and it would not die. The torture could continue for a long time.
“Your will be done, my goddess. I will not fail you. I will paint the walls of Athena's Temple either with her maiden blood or her heart blood.” He prepared to ascend to his physical form, but a solid wall of power stood between his soul and his body. He began to tremble with fear.
“David,” Eris's voice purred in his head, the screams of terror increasing in pitch. “You have to pay the price for Kyle's failure. I need you to be dedicated to my will. I need you to remember the price you pay for failure. I need you to remember that I expect my work done quickly, David.”
Shakes wracked his body, and his stomach twisted in terror. A cold hand landed on his shoulder, and he screamed shrilly. Spinning around, he saw the statue of the god Rape standing behind him with an expressionless face. His large marble manhood stood out from his robes.
“I give you to my son, Rape, to play with, David. Do not fail me again. Remember, your failure with Eliana brought this on. Repay her for this pain.”
The torches guttered as Eris's presence left, and his pleading screams began.
Chapter
Eliana spotted Professor Klemenson at a set of tables in the back of the second floor of the library. The room was vast and held a deep quiet that only places full of books could manage. He’d picked a section that was about as isolated as he could get in this public place, and one situated so they would see anyone coming. It gave her a dangerous sense of intimacy with the handsome professor. Occasional murmured conversations broke the silence, along with the sound of books thumping onto tables in the distance.
Professor Klemenson watched her approach, a small smile curving his lips. She felt her breath catch as need warmed her skin at the sight of him. He no longer wore his suit jacket and his white dress shirt was unbuttoned enough to give her a glimpse of his chiseled chest covered with a light dusting of dark brown hair. She wanted to run her fingers over that soft pelt, to stroke him and nuzzle her face against his body. His eyes widened and she had the distinct feeling he knew she was having naughty thoughts about him. Quickly averting her gaze from his delicious body she focused her gaze on the books spread out on the table around him.
She shuffled over to the table and her arousal fled as her earlier nerves returned. Would he be appalled at how little she knew about deities and magic? How was she supposed to explain her ignorance? And how was she supposed to tell him she doubted gods even existed? He was the youngest High Priest of Odin, ever. Would he be aghast that she had never even entered a temple? The thought of the man that she had a mountain-sized crush on looking at her as though she was an idiot made her shrivel inside.
Too late to chicken out now.
She gave Professor Klemenson a bright smile. “Hi.”
He nodded back at her. The intensity of his gaze stoked the fire in her blood. They stared at each other in silence, the charged tension between them building. She clenched her thighs as his gaze moved to her breasts, and her clit rubbed against her panties.
“Um, shouldn't we have some books from class in front of us or something?” she asked to break the silence. As usual, she seemed hyperaware of Professor Klemenson. The way his strong hands moved on the table, the glint of gold from the bracelet around his right wrist, and the way his sleeves were rolled to r
eveal his muscled forearms.
“Right, yes.” He seemed to visibly shake himself and a more authoritative mantle fell over him. “Eliana, I promised I would explain some ideas about being a Chosen. Important things you'll need to remember. If you’ll have a seat I’d like to begin.”
For a moment she was tempted to pull out the chair next to his, but that would only lead to her looking like an even bigger fool as she would no doubt drool all over herself. Taking a seat across from him, she set her backpack on the ground and placed her hands on the table, looking up at him expectantly and praying her sweater was thick enough to hide her rock hard nipples. The background murmur of students talking and the copy machine humming faded as he leaned closer across the table. Her attention focused on him, and everything else faded but the amber glints in his green eyes. It would have been embarrassing if he hadn’t seemed as equally focused on her.
He drew in a deep breath and her gaze focused on his lips as he said, “I'm going to make this as basic as possible. I realize it's a lot of information to absorb at once, and some of it's hard to believe. I need you to suspend your disbelief and try to pretend everything I'm saying is true.”
With a small, wry smile, she said, “If I can believe what happened earlier today wasn't some delusion caused by drugs slipped into the cafeteria food, I can believe anything you tell me.”
“Well, yes. Today was, um, exceptional even for me.” Professor Klemenson grinned and she was struck by how young he was. He couldn’t be more than five, maybe eight years older than she was, tops. “But please call me Aiden. Hardly anyone calls me Professor Klemenson, and as your Mentor, we will be spending a lot of time together.” He glanced at her and quickly looked away. “Studying what it means to be Chosen.”
“Okay, Aiden.” The way he smiled at her when she said his name made her swallow back a sigh.
“Eliana, I’m going to be upfront with you. I read your student file before I came here and I’m aware of your atheist upbringing.”
Shame filled her and she looked away, hating the fact that this amazing man knew she’d been raised by people the world considered whackjobs. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because…” she shrugged, unable to articulate how she wasn’t freak, and that she didn’t hate him because of his beliefs. How she tried not to judge people and that she wasn’t as judgmental as her parents or as closed minded. But most of all she wanted him to like her and she’d lost more than one friend and boyfriend after people found out about her family. Not that she had much of a chance with him in the first place, but now she was sure she had none.
He reached across the table and drew her hand into his, the heat of his touch burning her skin as he held it. “Eliana, it’s okay.”
She shivered, actually shivered from the riot of pleasurable sensations coming from where there skin touched. “Thanks.”
When he removed his hand she wanted to groan in protest, but managed to hold it back. He seemed to have sensed it anyways because the corner of his mouth quirked up in a half grin before he continued. “You're going to attract different gods from now until you're Chosen. You give off energy like a light that all the gods can see. They, and their worshipers, will be drawn to you in different ways. Normally it's not a big deal, but sometimes they can get a little pushy, like Athena's owl today. They usually wait until you're alone somewhere, but who can tell what a god, or in this case a goddess, will do? They have their own thoughts about how things should go.”
“Pushy, huh? That's one way of putting it. Another way would be scaring the crap out of me.”
His laughter danced over her skin like a caress. “You handled it well.”
“Only because you were there,” she said in a husky murmur. His eyes went wide and she quickly cleared her throat. “So you’re one of these Chosen?”
“I am.”
“When did you find out? I mean did a bird come talk to you?”
He shook his head. “No, I was born into a family of Chosen so I knew, at least I hoped, early on that I would be born with the gift.”
“The gift?”
Aiden's long fingers drummed the table as his gaze went distant. She briefly wondered what they would feel like on her skin. “Not everyone is born with the essential spark that makes a Chosen. A tiny portion of humanity is blessed with the extra light, and it's those people the gods pick as their special priests and priestesses, their warriors if you will. There is a higher concentration of Chosen in major cities. We have a couple thousand here in D.C.”
“Wow.” She sat back in her chair and tried to wrap her mind around the concept. “So you’re sort of like super heroes?”
He laughed loud enough to silence the voices around them, then gave her a chagrined smile. “Kind of, but different. We’re still human beings, we’re just…blessed by our patron god or goddess more than most people. A lot more.”
“How many gods and goddesses are there?” she asked hesitantly, testing the waters to see how he would react to her ignorance.
“Hundreds of them and from all different parts of the world. Let me think of how to best explain this,” he said as he turned the book holding the map of the world to face her. “There are two basic forces in the universe. Creation and Destruction. The Creator made us, the earth, the universe, everything out of nothing. The Destructor ruled that nothing and wants to destroy everything, returning to that absence. Hence our calling them the Creator and the Destructor.”
Underneath the table, she accidentally bumped his foot. He stared at her and slowly slid his foot next to hers, keeping it still, but touching her nonetheless. She blinked at him as her pulse sped. With a hitch in her breath she moved just the slightest bit so their calves brushed and a rush of cream spilled from the swollen folds of her sex.
For gods sakes, he’s touching your foot, not your pussy. Calm down!
Aiden cleared his throat. “Each region of the world was given entities by both the Creator and the Destructor to further their cause. The faith and belief of human beings is a powerful thing. It shaped these emissaries of either side into what we call gods and goddesses. Each region and people gave different attributes and powers to these entities, and over time, the deities began to take on the emotions and personalities of their worshipers. But they didn't change who they were at their core.”
She held up her hand. “Wait, let me get this right. An entity came down to earth, sent by either the Creator or the Destructor, and imagination turned them into a god?”
“Kind of, but not really.” He locked his eyes with hers and smiled, sending delicious heat rushing through her body. “Think of it more like a piece of clay. You can shape the clay to look like something, even paint it and give it different colors. But, at its core, it's still clay no matter what you make it look like or work as.”
“Okay, so all gods and goddess are Play-Doh. Got it,” she said with a straight face, but by his less than amused expression she didn’t think she was hiding it well. Under the table, she shifted her foot ever so slightly alongside his. Her leg was falling asleep, but she didn't want to lose contact with him.
Aiden buried his face into his hands then looked up, fighting a grin. “I'll forgive you that blasphemy for now, but yes, that's the basic idea. Each of these gods and goddesses would gain more power as more people began to believe in them. The basics of worship are faith and belief. The more worshipers you have, the more power you have from their faith and belief.”
He rubbed the gold band on his wrist with his thumb. “As more cultures mixed and the people intermarried, the potential pool of gods available to a Chosen has grown as well. All you need is a drop of the blood of their homeland to be fair game.”
Slowly, he reached over the table and ran the edge of his hand down her cheek. Her eyes half closed in pleasure, and her lips parted as he stroked her skin. Oh gods, he was going to make her orgasm from simply putting his hand on her face. “Take you for example.”
“Me?” she practically moaned. She wanted to curve her face into his palm and gently bite the tender skin of his inner wrist, which made her blush all the harder. With his skin this close she drew in a deep lungful of his scent, her sex aching with the need to be filled by Aiden, as soon and as hard as possible.
He removed his hand from her cheek and drew in a shaky breath. “Yes, you. Who knows what kind of blood you have flowing through your veins? You have light brown hair and silver eyes, but your skin is like creamed coffee, and your lips are fuller than you’d normally find among European woman, at least ones that haven’t had plastic surgery. You're the result of many cultures coming together, as are most Americans, which is why the States are such a hotbed for Chosens.”
“Makes sense.” Actually, very little was making sense to her hormone-flooded brain at the moment, but she wanted to at least appear that she was paying attention.
“The freedom of religion in the United States has allowed all of these different gods to gain a foothold.” He lowered his voice and glanced at the papers in front of him as a group of students walked past the entrance to the bookshelf-lined alcove where they sat. She kept her eyes on her laptop as the girls ogled Professor Klemenson and looked at her with barely disguised jealousy.
Beneath the table, his foot shifted forward again, and his ankle rested beside hers. A warm pulse began to beat in the pit of her stomach, and she licked her dry lips. Her panties were damp with her cream and she was two heartbeats from throwing him down on the table and kissing the hell out of him.
He shook his head. “I was picked to Mentor you, and I serve a Creation Deity. If you had the temperament, the soul to serve the Destruction side, a Priest or Priestess of Destruction would Mentor you. However,” he said with a wink, “you smell too good to be Destruction.”