Gods on Earth: Complete Series (Books 1-3): Paranormal Romances with Norse Gods, Tricksters, and Fated Mates

by Andrijeski, JC

  For a few seconds, he looked around, following the direction her eyes had already taken. He focused on the bridge above them, then around at the parking lot and the rocks leading down to the water.

  Silvia listened to the waves crashing into those rocks as Thor stared out at the darkness of the bay. A handful of lights glided over the surface of the water as ships and smaller boats passed by on their way out to the open ocean, or back to one of the wharfs beyond the bridge.

  A faint frown touched Thor’s lips.

  “The bridge,” he said decisively. “Jörmungandr will want to be over the water.”

  Silvia nodded. She didn’t fully grasp his logic, since they were technically closer to the water here, but she didn’t ask.

  Instead, she turned, leading them both towards the path that would take them up to the east side of the bridge.

  It took them another few minutes to make it up to the bridge itself.

  Silvia walked cautiously along the footpath beside Thor, looking around for other people as they made their way up to the next level. When they reached the top, the line of toll booths spanned the road entering the bridge in front of them. Fog whispered over the top of the bridge, orange light flooding the nearly-empty street from the rows of streetlights on either side.

  It struck her to wonder how late it was.

  She hadn’t looked at a clock while at the apartment with Morty.

  Only a few cars passed in either direction as they walked past the toll booths and onto the bridge. She still walked by Thor’s side, but she could feel his muscles tensing as he walked, especially in the arm and hand that gripped the massive hammer resting on his shoulder.

  She wondered if the snake-god would even show.

  Maybe this was just another trick, another decoy to mess with Thor’s head.

  They’d only been walking for a few minutes when she first heard it.

  A heavy, deep rumble reached her ears, vibrating her chest and teeth, echoing in her skull. It sounded like something under the ground groaned in pain, like the Earth itself had been awakened from a deep slumber. For a long-feeling few seconds, only the sound reached her, along with a dense fear, something animal, that shot adrenaline through her veins, making her breath come in choked pants.

  Then the bridge below her began to shake.

  It started with a hard jerk, then it was moving faster, jumping up and down like someone gripped the cables from either end, yanking them up and down violently, like they were trying to throw every car on the bridge into the sea.

  Not long after that, the metal wasn’t jumping anymore.

  The whole bridge, all the cement and cars and cables, began to sway.

  “ I t is Jörmungandr!”

  Thor yelled out the words, gripping her arm to help her remain on her feet.

  Silvia gripped the metal guard rail, looking around.

  She wondered how Thor knew it was the snake god and not just San Francisco’s fault-lines, which were iffy and unreliable at the best of times. She cried out in alarm as the swaying of the bridge grew more violent, making her stomach lurch as she wrapped both of her arms around the thick railing.

  She stared out into the road, seeing Thor’s eyes trained there.

  She and Thor remained on the paved bike path and walkway, maybe a dozen yards north of the toll booths. They’d come to a complete stop to ride out the shaking of the ground and the bridge’s sickly swaying on steel cables.

  A handful of cars on the bridge had skidded to a stop, and now sat diagonally in different lanes, tail lights flashing red and orange. Other cars honked at them, accelerating crazily in their attempts to make it to the other side, weaving around the drivers who’d panicked and come to a stop in the middle of the bridge.

  Then Silvia saw him.

  One of the accelerating cars wove past a dark figure walking down the middle of the bridge, between the orange traffic cones separating the two sides of traffic.

  The car honked at the man walking there, weaving to put more distance between them, but the man didn’t slow his strides, or even glance at the offended driver.

  He walked at a strange slant, but without a single misstep or loss of balance as the bridge rippled and swayed under him.

  “Wait here,” Thor said.

  A low, dense anger rumbled his voice.

  It struck her that she could hear him clearly, despite the creaking sound of the bridge, the deep roar of the ocean under them, the shaking ground under the ocean. It sounded like the end of the world, but somehow, she could still hear Thor’s voice.

  He released her shoulder where he’d been steadying her, straightening to his full height.

  She watched as he stepped over the divider between the walkway and the road, and stepped out into the nearest car lane, walking with purpose towards the man with the black hair whose coat billowed behind him in the wind and fog.

  Silvia bit her lip, gripping the railing against the swaying of the bridge, gasping as she got thrown by the motion of the shaking earth. Her eyes never left Thor as he crossed the second lane of traffic, the silver hammer gripped in one hand. She saw a coil of blue-white lightning flicker around the thick, silver block at the end of the carved handle.

  The lightning illuminated the runes etched into the sides of the silver, making them glow.

  Silvia was still staring at those detailed lines when she blinked, flinching back, her heart pounding in her chest when a car careened around him, honking madly as it drove past at probably sixty miles per hour.

  Thor didn’t so much as glance in the car’s direction.

  “Jörmungandr!” he bellowed, holding the hammer out to one side as it erupted with another coil of blue-white light. “I would have words with you, nephew!”

  Hearing his voice, Silvia felt her heart pound harder.

  She heard the emotion there.

  Like before, in Asgard with his brother, she was startled by the depth of it.

  He was angry.

  The God of Thunder was really angry.

  Something about hearing the depth of that anger made her chest hurt.

  The two men had nearly reached one another.

  Her view of them blurred when the ground rumbled under her, sending the bridge swaying even more violently from side to side. She was kneeling on the path now, hugging the railing with both arms as she fought to focus her eyes on the middle of the bridge.

  “You will free her!” Thor snarled. “You will free her right now … or I will visit pain on you like nothing you have ever known!”

  Silvia felt her heart jump.

  Blue lightning coiled off the end of the hammer, rising up into the clouds with a cracking, deafening crash. Silvia ducked down as the sky erupted over her head. Clouds bloomed up into the sky, forming out of the fog lingering around the bridge, fed by spray and water from the ocean and San Francisco Bay.

  The cloud cover formed from all sides, rising up to fill the sky directly above the iconic bridge. Silvia stared up as more blue-white lightning crashed down, lighting up the bridge, hitting the asphalt around Thor and his nephew, Jörmungandr.

  Silvia found herself staring at Jörmungandr’s face as the shocking bolts of electricity crashed around them both, scorching the road, illuminating his face.

  He was smiling.

  12

  Negotiations Among Gods

  T he two gods were talking now, arguing in that other language.

  The ground beneath her had finally stopped shaking.

  Dark clouds continued to mass overhead, but the lightning remained over the water and above the ground. It crackled horizontally inside the vortex of swirling moisture and air, flashing light across the top of the bridge, but no longer slamming bolts into the road, or around either of the two gods.

  The bridge continued to sway, but it was gradually slowing.

  After a few minutes more, Silvia guessed she could keep her balance again, without hugging the railing for dear life. She tested that after a minu
te or so more, pulling herself carefully up off the bike and footpath and rising to her feet. She gripped the painted railing until she was sure she could stand on her own, then walked to the nearest streetlamp.

  Standing next to the lamp, she held it lightly in one hand, watching Thor’s back as he aimed guttural words at his nephew.

  She wished she could understand them.

  At the same time, she had her doubts it would help much if she did understand them.

  She definitely got the gist, in terms of the tone of their back and forth.

  She was still standing there, trying to decide what to do, trying to decide if she should venture closer, when Thor looked over his shoulder, staring right at her. His irises glowed with shockingly bright light––pale blue, sparkling with iridescence like an opal lit from within.

  He motioned her over with the hand holding the hammer.

  “My love,” he said, his voice shaking the ground under her. “Please come here. My nephew has agreed to free you.”

  Silvia flinched, and not only from the tenor of his voice.

  It might have had a little something to do with what he called her.

  Releasing the streetlamp, she threw a leg over the partition, stepping over to the other side.

  Her back to the railing, she looked to her left, scanning the bridge for headlights. But the tollbooths must have closed; she hadn’t seen a single car pass since the one that swerved to miss Thor when he crossed over to that island of traffic cones.

  She stepped out into the street.

  Still watching for traffic, she crossed off to where the two gods stood. She walked up behind Thor, watching Jörmungandr warily.

  She couldn’t help but notice the green-eyed god staring at her, a faint smirk on his lips as he watched her approach. His hood was down, his black hair ruffled in the wind, somehow accentuating the height of his dramatic cheekbones.

  He didn’t look human to her at all.

  Despite how handsome he was, he looked like an animal impersonating a human, or maybe some animal-human hybrid. The cold, predatory stare he aimed at her as she approached made her feel like a rabbit below an eagle.

  Thor held out a hand when Silvia got close enough.

  She felt that tightness in her chest relax, at least a little. Speeding her steps, she closed the distance between them. She clasped his hand, feeling a dense heat move up her arm and into her chest as she wound her fingers into his.

  She reached his side, and stood there, facing the dragon god.

  Thor looked at her, studying her face.

  Seeing the worry there, even past the light shining from his irises, she squeezed his fingers, smiling at him reassuringly.

  Thor’s mouth hardened.

  He turned back to Jörmungandr.

  “Release her, nephew,” he growled. “Now.”

  “Promise it to me,” Jörmungandr said, his words a low hiss. “Make the promise, uncle.”

  “I have promised,” Thor snapped.

  “Promise it to me again. In front of her. I want her to know what you have agreed to give me in return for her life, Thor, God of Thunder.”

  Thor’s fingers tightened around hers.

  Silvia looked up at him, her mouth pursed.

  She wondered what game this was now, that Jörmungandr was playing.

  She was completely annoyed the dragon-god would be playing any games at all, especially with Thor, given the crap Jörmungandr had pulled already. She had no idea how close she was to potentially dying from whatever was in her neck, but it struck her as designed to infuriate Thor, which infuriated her.

  Maybe more than it should have.

  Not for the first time in the last however-many hours, Silvia found herself thinking how weird it was, everything about the two of them.

  It was especially weird how much she already cared.

  She shouldn’t care this much.

  She really shouldn’t… should she?

  Fantastic sex or no, what happened to him shouldn’t matter to her this much.

  She barely knew him.

  “Well?” the Dragon God said, aiming his smirk at the God of Thunder. “Are you going to tell her, uncle? Or shall we do this another night? Risk that the Andvaranaut will not harm her over another twenty-four of her Earth hours?”

  There was a silence.

  Jörmungandr’s smirk grew more pronounced.

  “Have you changed your mind, uncle? You need only say the word. We can re-negotiate some other agreement. Or simply watch her, and see how long it takes the ring to burn through her mortal flesh––”

  “I promise,” Thor growled, cutting him off. “I promise I will not be the one to take the Andvaranaut from you. Whatever my father’s orders, it will not be me, and I will not directly aid whoever he sends in my stead… this is my promise to you, Jörmungandr.”

  Silvia tensed.

  She looked up at Thor, alarmed, but he didn’t return her gaze.

  His voice dropped to a deeper, more menacing tone.

  “That may not be something you thank me for, nephew,” Thor growled at the younger god. “My father sends me when he does not wish to hurt his quarry too badly. He sent me because you are family… not in spite of it.”

  But Jörmungandr didn’t seem interested in Thor’s words.

  “What about the rest?” he said. “What else you promised?”

  He motioned his chin in Thor’s direction, tilting his head. Jörmungandr’s movements remained strangely slow, disturbingly inhuman, sinuous in a way that made Silvia shudder. Once more, she felt like she was face to face with a cobra, not a man, or even a god.

  “…What of the remainder of our agreement?”

  Thor’s jaw clenched.

  Silvia watched the fury that rose to those blue eyes as Thor glared at his nephew.

  “It is an unnecessary cruelty,” Thor said, his eyes as hard as glass. “You ask it of me only to hurt both of us, Jörmungandr.”

  Silvia looked up at Thor, feeling a pain rise in her chest.

  “You do not wish to tell her?” Jörmungandr queried sweetly.

  “Of course I do not,” Thor growled. “But that is why you ask it.”

  “Then may I tell her? You will not interfere?”

  A vein began pulsing on the side of Thor’s neck, but he only bowed his head.

  “You may tell her… as we agreed.” Thor’s voice grew openly warning. “If you tell her accurately, you may do so without me putting my hammer through the side of your head… but if you are overtly cruel about this, nephew, if you do not treat her with respect, I make no promises as to what I might do.”

  The Dragon God chuckled.

  He turned to Silvia, that predatory look back in his eyes.

  “You may have guessed this already,” Jörmungandr said, his voice loud above the wind and the still-creaking bridge. “But you have known Thor before.”

  Silvia frowned. She glanced at Thor, then back at Jörmungandr.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. She spoke loudly, holding back her hair with one hand where it whipped around her face. “I would remember him. He’s not exactly like most humans.”

  Jörmungandr smirked at her, his green eyes even more predatory.

  “It was not in this life, human… but in a previous one. You were married to him. You and Thor, you lived together here, on Earth. Even here in San Francisco. You were his wife. He knows this. He’s known since that first night you met here. Suspected, at least.”

  Silvia stared at the Dragon God, still holding her hair out of her face.

  She shook her head finally, frowning.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in past lives.”

  Jörmungandr laughed.

  “It’s adorable you think your ‘beliefs’ somehow sway or change reality,” he said, raising his voice against a harder gust of wind. “You do not make yourself appear more sophisticated with that position… simply childlike. It is adorable, but sad
ly, also pathetic.”

  “Jor,” Thor growled.

  The Dragon God held up a hand to him, nodding.

  His expression looked faintly disappointed as he looked at her, as if he’d been expecting a much more interesting or exciting response to what he’d told her.

  In the end, he shrugged, beckoning her closer.

  “All right,” he said, sighing. “I will take it out of you now.”

  Staring at those green eyes, she blinked again, then looked up at Thor.

  “What?” She aimed the question more at Thor than at Jörmungandr. “Is that it? All of that build-up just to tell me you and I were married in a past life?”

  Jörmungandr laughed, nudging Thor and grinning into his face.

  “Did you hear that?” he sneered, winking at Silvia. “Clearly, your deep and abiding love for this mortal has made a huge impression on her, uncle. She is utterly indifferent to the news that you two were wed. Rather disappointing for you, I imagine… yet utterly predictable with these creatures. You can love them with every fiber of your being, but it is not much different than falling in love with one of your shoes. It might make a comfortable fit, even a pleasurable one at times. But, in the end…”

  Jörmungandr’s eyes met hers.

  “…it is still just a shoe.”

  Silvia gave him a narrow look, her mouth curling into a frown.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Well. I’d still rather be a shoe than a petty asshole.”

  Thor grunted.

  The sound was still more angry than amused.

  Silvia turned, studying his face, trying to get a sense of what was really behind this, but she couldn’t get much of a read off Thor’s expression.

  In the end, she was forced to turn back to Jörmungandr.

  “That’s all?” she repeated, her voice flat. “You’re finished? Because if so, can you take this thing out of my neck now?”

  That smirk reappeared on Jörmungandr’s narrow lips.

  “Of course, lovely human… of course.” He glanced down her, that predatory look more prominent in his eyes. “Although, I must confess to some disappointment I didn’t get more time to make your acquaintance, my dear.”