Freya

by Matthew Laurence

I narrow my eyes, then follow his gaze. About twenty feet away, Samantha’s having her usual outcast meal in the Forbidden Zone. This time, however, she has a visitor: her father, Gideon Drass. My lips twist, and I set my tray back down.

  “You’ve been listening to them?”

  “And you,” he says with a sly smile. He pulls an exaggerated sad face and draws a tear down one chiseled cheek. “Boo-hoo, Freya’s got self-control, whatever shall we do?”

  “Yeah, old news. What are Samantha and her father talking about?”

  He rolls his eyes and takes another crass bite of his meal. “The usual clichés.” He mimes a girlish pose. “Oh, Father, I’m torn between familial respect and the need to be my own person!” He frowns and his voice deepens. “Daughter dearest, I love you and can’t help wanting to protect you, even if my overbearing choices are driving you away.”

  “They’re people, not tropes,” I say, glaring.

  “And we are gods,” he says with a knowing look. “Billions of them, a handful of us. Now tell me whom I should paint with broad strokes.”

  “Shut up,” I hiss. “I can’t hear them.”

  “So Garen thinks you’re different?” Dionysus asks, ignoring me. “You frustrate him because you make choices he can’t predict, yes?” He tilts his head back and tosses another piece of sushi into his mouth, arcing it like a piece of popcorn. “Hmm. Chablis, I think,” he murmurs to himself, and the glass of wine in his hand flickers and refills with what I assume is the perfect vintage.

  I sigh noisily and stare at him. “You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”

  “Indulge me, and we’ll see,” he says, smirking. “Come now, fair one. What’s the harm in a little indulgence now and then?”

  I maintain the stare a little longer, then blow out a breath and hold up my hands. “Fine. What do you want?”

  “So many things,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. Then his demeanor changes in an instant, downshifting from lecherous to suave. “But I’ll settle for a conversation.”

  “Why?” I say, picking up another piece of sushi as daintily as I can. “Still hoping to talk yourself into my pants?”

  That gets me a full-throated laugh. “Always. But not only for that. Our mutual friend is right: You are different. To Garen, that makes you a threat. I, however, find you a curiosity.” He pauses. “A marvelously curvaceous one, at that.”

  I flip him off. “Get to your point.”

  “My brash little love, I’m already there. Can’t you see? Not long ago, such denials of my astonishing charms were cause for some … mild rudeness on my behalf.”

  “Mild?”

  He waves a hand. “Do you see me tossing you through any walls now? Or displaying the slightest unease at your baffling prudishness?”

  “I assumed you’d given up.”

  He scoffs. “I would never insult you so. No, I simply realize it is because you are not yourself.” He holds a hand to his chest, and those crazed eyes fill with sadness. “You have my deepest sympathies, sweet girl, for you are lost. After all, what goddess of love would deny herself such pleasures?”

  One with standards, I barely manage to avoid shouting. “That it?” I say instead. “We done here?”

  He sighs. “You cannot see it, can you? Clearly, this detachment was not a conscious choice on your part.”

  “A conscious—well, of course not,” I say, feeling like I’ve missed something. “What, like you can just decide you’re going to be a wild card?”

  “Yes,” he says, fixing lust-filled eyes on me. “Precisely that.”

  “Nonsense. What god would—”

  “None, of course—a god can no more choose to walk a different path than a man can change the color of his teeth.” He flashes pearly whites at me. “Ah, but between a path and a brief pause along the way, there exists a world of difference.”

  “I’m going to miss the rest of their conversation if you don’t get on with it,” I hiss, flicking my head at Samantha’s table.

  “Very well. A moment, if you please?” He closes his eyes and furrows his brow. “A sane god would never want such a thing, no, but—” He grimaces. “With enough—mmf—dedication and—nng—strength, great things can—can be—” He grits his teeth, tightens his fingers on the table, and twists his face like he’s fighting through a briar patch in his head. Then his features relax and he lets out a relieved sigh. He shakes himself, opens his eyes, and … my jaw drops. Those eyes—

  They’re normal.

  “Achieved,” he says in a pleasant, mild-mannered tone.

  I sit back in shock.

  “Kind of neat, right?” he asks, sounding for all the world like an average guy dropping by for a quick chat.

  “What did you do?” I ask, leaning in to peer at him. Damn, he’s hot when he’s not insane.

  “Shut it off,” he says simply. “I don’t have worshippers, remember? I have power. I serve no one but myself, and that means I can change myself.”

  “Please tell me you’re going to stay this way.”

  He grins, and it’s actually endearing for once. “If I could, I think I’d have a shot at those pants of yours after all. The irony is not lost.”

  “Why can’t you—”

  “Because it’s not me, Freya,” he says with a look of Oh well. “It’s a trick, a show of strength, not a way of life. You can only ignore what you are for so long.”

  “That’s not true!” I say, tapping my chest. “Look what I’ve done!”

  He shakes his head, and that roguish grin turns pitying. “By losing everything? I’d rather not. Give it time, sweetheart. I see in you a goddess on the rise. With that power will come the same urges that define us all. You have ignored your calling for now, but that cannot last forever.”

  I glare at him. “I am my own person.”

  “For now,” he repeats, and a tremor passes through him. “Ah, you see? It’s coming. Why do you think I’m showing you this? We’re no different, Freya—the only thing that separates us is time.”

  The very notion sends a chill down my spine. “Oh, I beg to differ, you hideous throwback.”

  “I feel the storm,” he says, a faraway look in his eyes. “Delirium, delight, the call of merriment … they are not far now. So tell me, in these last moments, what do you ask of a god touched by mortality?”

  Still feeling staggered, I try to put my thoughts together, to form the most important (and relevant) question I can imagine. “How can you do it? How can you go back to letting your nature control you, to give up free will, even for a second?”

  He laughs, and it seems I can hear a hint of madness in it. “I was made, Freya. Made—just like you—for a purpose. I live, breathe, love, kill for it. To have that taken from me? A crueler fate could not exist.” He catches my gaze with those human eyes of his, and I’m stunned to see them shimmer with tears. “You ask how I can submit to it, and all I can wonder is how you can stand to do anything but. I am so sorry, sweet girl.”

  His breath hitches. He shudders, snaps his eyes shut, and grips the table again. There’s a pause as the muscles in his arms flex, and then he looks at me, a wretched leer curving his granite lips. Demented dreams swim through those eyes, and my heart sinks as I realize the spark of humanity he summoned is lost somewhere within.

  “Come find me when you find yourself,” he purrs, dabbing a finger in the soy sauce on his plate. “Then we’ll see what I can find.” He lifts his hand between us, waits a beat, then licks away the liquid with a long, incredibly suggestive stroke of his tongue.

  “Gag me,” I say, sneering.

  He chuckles softly and picks up his tray. “Privacy, as promised, for our little lost goddess,” he says, rising. He leaves with nothing more than a bounce of his eyebrows.

  I take a moment to mentally scrub myself, trying to wipe the entire unsettling conversation from memory. I don’t care what he thinks—even if I gain in strength, draw a little closer to the principles that created me, I’ll never be
anything like him. Love and war are far removed from the unleashed desire that defines that creature. He’s just trying to mess with me. If anything, it’s probably all some idiotic scheme to get me in the sack.

  I sigh, shake my head, and close my eyes. Time to snoop. The background murmur of gods and Finemdi staff fades. After a moment of searching and sifting, the clipped, tense conversation between Samantha and her father swims to the surface.

  “—just don’t see why we can’t have a nice, normal conversation for once,” Gideon is saying.

  “Dad, please,” Samantha hisses. “Look around and tell me how any of this is normal!”

  “Which is exactly why we need to find it where we can,” he says, sounding desperate. “Come on, Sam. Where’d my little scientist go?”

  “She’s right here, Dad,” she says, slapping the table. “Alone in the corner, like usual.”

  “This again?” he says, and I can hear the eye roll. “Do not look to the company for friends—that’s all I’m asking! You have a life outside this place—what about your classes?”

  She makes an uninterested grunt.

  “Hey, I thought you were doing great. Not many teenagers can say they’re taking classes at a graduate level!”

  “Yes, that’s all the cool kids care about these days: how many grades I’ve skipped.”

  “Well, fine, join a damn book club or something!”

  “Oh, right, I forgot it was so easy,” she says, matching his sarcasm. “Should I get on that normal-people stuff before or after I review my next delivery of magical artifacts?”

  “Do not take that tone with me,” he says, going into authority mode. “This job is your choice. I’ve always supported you, but there are rules!”

  There’s a clatter as she snatches her tray, piling utensils onto it. “Sorry, sir. You’re right. I guess I’d better get back to work.”

  “Sam, come on, you—look, you’ve barely touched your food.”

  “Thanks for the chat, Gideon,” she says in a dead voice as she goes.

  For a moment, there’s just the sound of her stalking away. Then, once she’s out of earshot, Drass lets out a frustrated groan. I turn my head and crack an eye to see him rub at his mustache, deep in thought, before returning to his dinner. Once it’s clear nothing else is going to happen, I tidy up my eating area, pick up my tray, and hunt for the Hawaiian sisters. Smiling when I spot them at their usual table, I make my way over for a bit of pleasant conversation for a change. The rest of my meal passes uneventfully, with the exception of Hi‘iaka’s awesome story about the time she got into a contest of strength with the Anemoi (Greek wind gods of the cardinal directions). I’m not going to get into it here, mostly because I can’t do her sound effects justice.

  I look at the clock as I head out of the dining hall and realize Nathan still has an hour of class left. I grimace in annoyance, though not because he’s missing dinner (the kitchens are open late, so he can always order à la carte); it’s that I’ve just reminded myself what I learned in my own recent lecture. The meal was a nice distraction, but it’ll take a sushi roll far better than even the beauties I had for me to quench my rage at Finemdi’s perversions. Using the powers and abilities of gods like playthings, dismembering creatures like Ahriman for trinkets, and—

  Hey.

  A thought strikes me, and I realize it’s something that’s been bouncing around in the back of my head ever since I left Adam’s presentation. I turn it over a few times, looking for problems and liking it more and more. It may not come to anything, but at the very least it’s something different from my hate for Finemdi, which is actually very refreshing—I was getting tired of leaving those sessions with nothing to do beyond whining about how much I dislike them.

  Now I have a wonderful new idea percolating alongside the ever-present disgust. Hell, it’s a good thing I attended that lesson; I need to find a certain place inside Impulse Station, and I’d never have known to look for it without Adam’s lecture.

  For once, I get to ditch the map. Even if I were willing to spend the ludicrous amount of time needed to scan every floor and hallway, what I want won’t be on it. That’s fine. All I need to do is follow my nose, so to speak. I wander aimlessly for a few minutes just to put some distance between myself and the other deities leaving the cafeteria, then close my eyes and concentrate. As a divine being, I can sense all sorts of things beyond mortal ken. Gods have an odor all their own, as does magic. It’s an aura that ripples under reality, infused with the philosophies and traits of whatever spawned it. Until now, I hadn’t really bothered to pay much attention to the auras of anyone or anything in this place; the building’s so overloaded with divine creatures and artifacts it’s like walking into a scented-candle store for the soul. Now, though, I have something to look for.

  The entire place hums with energy. Hestia’s everlasting electricity, countless defensive wards, and the trails of dozens of gods all bathe the complex in mystic echoes. Only one of these has what I’m looking for, however—a dull, throbbing ache of calamity hidden among the crowd. I catch the scent and begin moving immediately. It’s not hard to remember what I felt when I reached for that piece of Ahriman back at Inward, and even the vaguest whiff of his aura calls to me like a siren. I wander the halls for almost half an hour, sliding against walls, turning away from dead ends, and drifting down stairwells. Finally, I find myself standing in front of an unlabeled door on the first sublevel of the complex: just a boring entrance in the middle of a boring hallway. It doesn’t even have a key card reader. Completely unremarkable in every way, except for the aura that calls out from behind it with promises of agony and despair.

  I take a deep breath to steady myself, then turn the handle and push the door open. It’s pitch-black, the light from the hallway casting a murky pool just inside. I blink at the darkness before me, reach around for the light switch on the interior wall, and give it a flick. Harsh fluorescents snap to life, bathing the room in a pale white light. I cock my head to the side and frown. Instead of the arcane ritual site I’d been expecting, I find myself staring into a storage closet. Metal racks line the walls, filled with spare equipment and office supplies. It might be a little larger than most storage rooms I’ve seen, but the poured concrete floor in its center is completely bare. There’s nothing here.

  I’m about to shut the door in annoyance when a thought strikes me. Those racks … why are they only attached to the walls? Why not fill the empty space in the middle of the room, too? And when in the history of humankind has a storage closet ever had a bare floor? There should be all sorts of detritus—boxes, fallen equipment, forgotten provisions—littering the ground in there. I turn back and step into the room, closing my eyes and focusing on the aura I’ve been tracking. Yes, it’s definitely coming from here. I walk farther, skin prickling from the negative energy that surrounds me. It feels like I should be tripping over Ahriman, or at least whatever they’re using to clone his aura.

  I bend down to examine that too-clean floor and grimace as the wave of cataclysm swells. Here. It’s practically oozing out of the concrete. I straighten up, nodding. They must have hidden it somehow, burned it into the floor with a spell and then made the whole mess invisible. If I were stronger, I might be able to overcome whatever illusions they’ve cast here, but as it is, I already have everything I need to know. When Garen or anyone else toting a piece of Ahriman gets teleported out of danger, this is where they go.

  Satisfied with my new knowledge, I move to the door and reach to turn off the lights when everything flexes for a split second. It’s as if the entire storage closet is a pool of liquid with some deep-sea leviathan trying to thrash its way to the surface. A strange crawling sensation ghosts through my skull, and then there’s a dull whump of displaced atmosphere as something bursts into existence in the center of the room.

  The figure wheezes, inhaling a lungful of air and twitching on the floor for a moment before rolling over. I gasp as I recognize her immediately. Wisps of
smoke trail from a singed lab coat, her glasses are cracked, and her hair is plastered to the sides of her head by blood and sweat, but there’s no mistaking the girl’s identity. I move back into the room to lean over the panting wreck of her body, and pale green eyes focus on me with almost comical alarm.

  “Don’t tell my dad,” Samantha Drass says in a terrified whisper.

  13

  LITTLE SECRETS

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “My dad,” Samantha gasps. “He can’t find out.”

  “I’ll remember that next time I see him at bingo night,” I say, extending a hand. “Can you stand?”

  She frowns, then grabs my hand, gathers her legs underneath her body, and pulls herself upright. “Ohhh,” she groans, staggering against me for support. Blood spatters against the clean concrete below, along with a beat-up high-tech remote.

  “We need to get you to Medical,” I say, trying to peek inside her lab coat and gauge how severe her injuries really are. She’s holding one hand to her stomach and hunching over, making it hard to see.

  “No, no, just … let me look here,” she mumbles, stumbling away from me and moving to the shelves.

  “Duct tape can’t solve everything, Samantha,” I say as I watch her paw through the cleaning supplies.

  “Liar,” she says with a half smile, still going through the shelves.

  I move closer after watching her leave bloody handprints on a few boxes. “Samantha, you need help. Come on, let me—”

  “Ah,” she interrupts, pulling a black-and-yellow screwdriver off the shelf. “I knew they’d have one here.”

  I frown. She doesn’t strike me as delirious, but then, psychology was never my strong suit. “Okay, you have your screwdriver,” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders. “Now let’s take it to Medical and get you all better.”

  “Wait,” she says, fiddling with the tool. “It’s not what you think.” She opens her lab coat, and fresh drops of blood fall to the floor. She holds the device between shaking hands, tip pointed at her midsection, then gently brings it in to touch her skin.