Stella rolled her eyes and kicked one foot up on the table. “You say it as though it’s my fault. I was saving your ass, Stanford. I was saving your ass while you were cavorting with some British whore…”
Frustrated by Stella’s jealousy, Ben rose and leveled his finger at her. “Enough. This is no time for your petty jealous bullshit, Stella. We’re toeing a really fine line between saving the world and becoming massive criminals. I appreciate what you did for us, but I’m not going to bother defending myself because this is neither the time nor the place. If you can’t keep your shit together, you’re going to have to go.”
Stella stared at him with wide eyes, and while Ben expected her to scream and rage, Stella instead got up and quietly left the room. He heard her bedroom door slam a few minutes later, but he just didn’t care. He couldn’t keep his focus on her happiness, not yet. She’d turned from a very strong, willful woman into a neurotic mess in the span of a week, and Ben didn’t have the energy for it.
“Well that settles that,” Andrew said with a small laugh.
“Please don’t,” Ben said with a groan. “Just decide who is coming with me and tomorrow we drive down. I’ll have a list of the officers on scene so we can form our plan before going in.”
“Tonight I’ll go out and see if I can find any trace of Asclepius in this realm,” Andrew said, his voice more subdued than normal.
“Fine,” Ben said. “I’m going for a walk, I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
Without waiting for an answer, Ben grabbed his coat from the back of a chair, went out the door and down to the beach. As the gentle sea air rushed around his face, Ben felt his anxiety and fear start to bubble over. He managed to stay together until he lost view of the house.
He was tired, he was sore, and all he wanted were answers. Was his sister alive? Could she be saved? What was Nike up to, and in all honesty, was saving the world really going to be worth it? His hand began to itch, a familiar feeling from when he was young, a rookie detective, and he spent many hours taking out his pent up frustration and aggression out at the shooting range or gym.
He’d been stuck in the house for too long, with too many beings, without any sort of release. The beach near the house was rocky, but there were a few sandy parts, and as he walked down the shore a ways, he saw remnants of some party. Beer cans, cigarette butts, blackened wood in a poorly-dug fire pit.
Ben began to collect the cans, and he stacked them all neatly in a row, along the tall, jagged rocks that face the shoreline. The grass near the water was course, rough, whipping against his legs, and the wind was heavy, but he didn’t care. He pulled his gun out of his pocket and aimed.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Five in a row, the bullets hitting the cans made a soft tink sound, and they topped to the sand a few feet away. It wasn’t as good as being at the range, seeing the targets slide up, being able to picture the face of the person he was really hating right then, and letting loose right in the center of their imaginary forehead.
But, it helped.
Ben began to restack cans when he heard the subtle shifting of sand. He glanced behind him, ready to chase away whoever dared follow him, but it was Jude, and he instantly felt himself calm down. The immortal stood there, the wind whipping his curls across his forehead, his slightly too-large shirt rippling slightly against his chest. His hands were firmly shoved down into his jean pockets, and he looked almost… serene. It was an expression of an emotion Ben hadn’t experienced in what felt like a lifetime, and involuntary tears prickled at the corners of his eyes.
He tried to clear his throat as soundlessly as possible as he finished putting up the last can. “Hey,” he finally said as he took his spot, just a few feet further back than his first shot at the cans.
Jude gave a slow nod and then watched as Ben fired off two shots again, not missing either can. The echo of the second gun-blast rolled through the hills near the house, and then faded. Jude smiled and cocked his head to the side. “You know, for the two millennia I’ve been alive, I’ve never in my life handled a gun.”
Ben’s eyebrows rose high as he shifted the firearm in his hand. “Are you serious? Never?”
“It was never necessary,” Jude said with a shrug. “Mark, well…he’s…what’s that word used for it? A crackshot?”
Ben chuckled. “I can imagine. He seems ruthlessly skilled in a lot of self-defense techniques.”
Jude huffed a small sigh and held his hand out. It took Ben a moment to realize what Jude wanted, but oddly, without hesitation, he handed the weapon over. Jude inspected it for a moment, lifted the barrel, aimed at the can, and fired. He missed, and Ben found himself surprised at that.
“Not as easy as it looks,” Jude commented.
“It’s not like the movies,” Ben confirmed. He stood behind Jude and the immortal raised the weapon. Ben corrected Jude’s posture slightly, adjusted his arms a little, and directed him where to look. “You just sort of…squeeze. And watch for the recoil.”
Jude gave a nod, fired the gun, and the can tinked off the rock and into the sand. He smiled and handed the weapon back. “I see.”
“At least you’re easy to train,” Ben said. There were two cans left, but he holstered the gun. “You might want to practice more, this might come in handy.”
Jude looked back at the house, just a small, square building off in the distance. “I’ve never felt the need to defend myself before.”
“Yeah well, this time you’re fighting for the world,” Ben said. He brushed a few stray hairs from his eyes and put his hands into his pocket, mimicking Jude’s stance. “You might not ever need to fire one, but a gun comes in handy when some crazy goddess is threatening your very killable friends.”
“Friends,” Jude said. He paused, his face blank, and then melted into a small smile. “It’s odd to think of it that way, but I suppose we are.”
“Pretty fucked up way to make friends, though,” Ben said and both he and Jude shared a quiet laugh. “But we haven’t killed each other off. Yet.”
“Give it time,” Jude said, and then winked. “We should probably get back, you know. Alex gets awfully antsy when we wander for too long.”
“Ah, that cocky ass can suck my—” Ben stopped, realizing that what he was about to say might come across as insensitive, so he licked his lips and said, “He needs to relax.”
“I think he’ll relax the moment this is over and those who were meant to die, are dead. Those who are meant to live will do so, and we’ll go back to the places we were before this ever happened.”
“Do you really think there’s going to be an end to it?” Ben asked, and it was an honest question. “So what, we stop Nike, sure, but what else is out there?”
Jude looked at Ben for a long time, his intense stare trapping Ben’s gaze, and then slowly but surely, he started to back away. He took a few steps, watching Ben, before he turned. Wordlessly, Ben felt rooted to the spot until Jude’s form had become a dot on the horizon. If he squinted, he could just barely make out the form of Jude hopping back up onto the porch and taking his usual seat on the swing.
It had been an honest question, full of his deepest fears since this whole mess with Nike had started. What if there was some other god just waiting to take her place? What if it was never going to end? They could just keep going until Ben was either dead or emptied, and his body used as a god’s puppet.
The thought of that made him feel sick, and he had to sit for a moment to calm himself. He could barely bring himself to wonder what Abby had gone through, what she still might be going through, and the fear that it might happen to him too was overwhelming.
The chill in the wind increased, and Ben knew it was time to head back in. He took a few steps and turned, seeing the sun’s glow flash on the cans. As though by instinct, Ben ripped his gun from the holster, aimed, and fired. Bam! Bam! The last two cans were in the sand, and Ben let out a shaking breath. He hadn’t lost his touch, and when the time came, he w
ould be ready to fight. If he had to, he would aim his gun at his sister’s head and fire. He would watch her body crumple and fall, taking Nike with it, and as much as it destroyed him inside, he knew he could do it. He didn’t have any other choice. Not really.
Chapter Four
The very back of the house, which faced the curve in the road, had a rather severe drop off from the back porch. It probably should have been fenced, but Jude was glad it wasn’t as he sat there at the very edge, looking off to the green rolling hills as his feet swung freely off the sides of the wooden floor. He loved that even in this modern world, they’d managed to find a home where only the occasional car passed. There were no cell phone towers, no Starbucks, no skyscrapers marring the skyline as he looked out to his left where the sun fell, dipping slowly down into the water.
The back door slammed, making Jude jump a little. Normally he was completely in tune with those in the house, and it wasn’t easy to sneak up on him. Today, however, Jude was distracted from his talk with Ben, and he hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on.
Looking up, he saw Alex walk over, keeping a polite distance until Jude gave him a slow, quiet nod. He didn’t mind Alex much, and in fact, sometimes enjoyed his charismatic attitude. He particularly enjoyed the strange but interesting nicknames he gave to the members of the house, often because it irritated them and when they were irate with Alex, they didn’t bombard Jude with their thoughts as much.
“Am I interrupting?” Alex asked.
“No,” Jude said simply. He wasn’t sure what Alex thought he was interrupting, but then again, most people didn’t understand him. They thought him deeper, or more introspective than he actually was. They assumed he was contemplating the nature of the universe when he was merely watching a bit of grass blow in the wind. It was amusing to Jude, and he laughed inwardly when they put those things on him. They thought him near to a god, when he was just a lost, half-sane man who alternated between wanting to hug the group of people, and wanting to tie them to stakes and burn them alive.
Ben was the only one who had a different attitude with Jude, and the only reprieve the immortal had. The detective, after reading Mark’s words, was officially closed off to Jude, and even his most desperate prayers were silent to the immortal. He was the only one to give Jude any real peace in the house. Even the gods, who were typically shielded, still bombarded him with the emotions of the humans they were inside.
“Are you on board with our plan, Iscariot?” Alex asked after the pair had sat in some silence.
Jude smiled at the name and gave a little shrug. “On board?”
“Truth is, I think you’re going to bolt, and I’m not the only one. You’re not really here with us, and even your little friend Marky Mark over there has been acting really skittish. I just need to know if I need to tie you boys up in a basement hole or if you’re going to play nice.”
Jude let out a small chuckle and leaned back on his elbows, his face turned up to the slowly darkening sky. “I have no intention of leaving here. Not until we’re all ready to go.”
“And Mark?”
“He wants to go, but perhaps that’s something you should talk to him about. It’s not my place to explain his thought process.”
Alex gave a derisive snort and copied Jude’s reclined position. “I see why you like it out here.”
“Everyone says that,” Jude mused.
“Well, take it as a compliment. I mean, you’re obviously fucking nuts, but I think your brain’s a little more cohesive than everyone thinks.”
“What does everyone think?”
“That your mind is about as still and together as a cat in a bath,” Alex said and both men shared a quiet chuckle. “Anyway, Mark’s not going to talk to me, and honestly my friend, I just want to be prepared. I don’t know about you guys, but the rest of us have seen enough horror movies to know that the moment you try and get out there on your own, the bad guy comes with his ugly mask and roaring chain-saw and well… that just never ends the way you want it to.”
Jude looked over at Alex, peering deep and seeing the god within. He’d gotten better at seeing their form, though it wasn’t corporeal. It contained an echo of what they had been, and the one inside Alex was large and bright, and very beautiful. It reminded Jude of a time, hundreds of years prior, when he’d known other beautiful humans. When he’d been looked at with love and respect, and accepted, just as he was.
“I used to hide from people,” he said, startling himself with his own words. “I mean, I still do, but more so than I do now. I was afraid of them; they were never quiet, even when they weren’t speaking. They were so selfish and afraid, and they wouldn’t stop begging for some unnamed, nonexistent god to save them from themselves. They drove me mad with their questions and the way they pulled everything out of me. It was terrifying.” Jude stopped. He wasn’t entirely sure why these words were pouring out of his mouth, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He looked at Alex, but the god seemed curious, interested, and so he kept going.
“Then one day I met a man. He was older when I met him, at least for the time period, having gone grey by the time he was forty, but oh, he was such a patient man. He was famous, by all accounts, and a name that lives on even to this day. I remember staring at him day after day as he painted, talked, and oh, how everyone loved him.
“I think it had been months when I realized he’d noticed me watching him, and he walked over to me, as elegant as any woman, but tall and imposing. He smiled and he talked to me, and even though I didn’t say a single word to him, he drew me close to him and we walked through the city. He explained the wondrous things inside of his head, inventions that I thought could never be possible. As we walked I realized that for the first time since Mark, I couldn’t hear a person’s thoughts inside of my head. I heard his words, but everything else was closed off to me.
“He offered me a place to stay with him, dressed me up, fed me, and I loved him. He had students who came and went, and he fawned over them like they were his, but they never loved him the way I did. They never understood what it was like to finally have quiet, to have a person touch me and not take from me. To have a kiss, an embrace, returned and to feel that love envelope me like it would last forever.
“He was the only man aside from Mark I had ever loved. When he died, I let the others take over his estate, and I left. I couldn’t bear the city anymore when he was no longer a part of it. I realized then what curse had befallen me, to have that bit of peace only to feel it ripped away. To see people even now speaking his name, telling stories of the man he was, and only I know the truth. I find people bitter and angry, and they want so desperately to understand the things they never will. It hurts to watch them feel the pain I feel, to experience loss and love, but they are lucky because they can move on from this life and I’m doomed to walk this earth until everything around me is dust.”
Alex stared at him while he spoke, his eyes half-lidded, a small smile on his face. When the long moment between words passed, Alex said, “I knew him. He was a great man.”
Jude gave a little sigh and sat up. “Mark and I won’t leave. We’ve had enough pain and anguish to last an eternity. The Christians, the people who know nothing about what my brother stood for, say that there is a hell. I used to laugh at such a notion until I realized that this was it. There was eternal torment because I live it every day. I won’t condemn others to this fate, and we’ll do what we can to stop Nike from whatever she plans to do.”
“I’d like to know you better someday, Iscariot,” Alex said. He rose, brushing the dust from his navy blue trousers, and winked down at Jude. “I’ll see you later.”
Jude nodded and looked back out at the rolling hills as Alex’s footsteps eventually disappeared inside. He liked that man, just a little. Not as much as he might have, centuries ago, but the time for grand love affairs had passed. Jude could still feel something brewing, and he wondered if their time, the time for immortals and gods, was final
ly coming to an end.
Chapter Five
Ben paused outside of Stella’s room. He could hear music and smelled heavy amounts of smoke under the crack in the door. He knew exactly what was going on. Stella had switched over to her other self, and that was the last person Ben wanted to be around. Whoever she was, whatever she was, hated him—hated all men, in fact—and Ben wasn’t in the mood to take the abuse.
His head was pounding already, and he was feeling anxious. The longer they stayed there, the worse it was going to be. He got a sudden mental image of Greg’s battered, broken body lying on the office floor, with Nike standing over him and laughing. He could only imagine the horror Greg had suffered at the hands of the insane goddess. He’d seen the state of Mark and Jude too often in his dreams to be able to push away the images.
Ben started back down the hall, determined to ignore everyone for the rest of the evening when he heard a soft cry in Andrew’s room. He remembered briefly Andrew mentioning he was going out, and Ben realized that it was the god leaving, not the human. This was a particularly sore spot for Ben. Every time Heimdall vacated the body, the human man was stuck in a room and he wept and moaned. Ben felt it was akin to torture, no better than what Nike was doing, but no one would listen to him.
Several times now, he’d tried to break into the bedroom, but Alex stopped him, saying that there wasn’t anything Ben could do. He said that the man was frightened, but he would be fine. He swore that when Heimdall was finished, Andrew would be in a better state than when they found him.
“He’ll be clean of drug addictions and alcohol and probably live a far better life than he ever would before Heimdall took him,” Alex said the first time Ben had gotten upset.
Ben shook his head and waved off the comment. “You’re treating him like an animal. He didn’t ask for this, he was just taken. Against his will. He can’t keep leaving him in this state.”
Cry, Nike! (The Judas Curse) Page 5