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

by Andrijeski, JC

  He gripped his hammer, Mjölnir, tightly in one hand as he focused on his nephew.

  Jörmungandr, for his part, stared up at him, a faint smirk on his lips.

  “You promised me you would not retrieve the ring,” he said, quirking an eyebrow. Wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin, he leaned back in his chair. “Is the great Thor, God of Thunder, going to break his word? Really? Because I thought that simply wasn’t done.”

  “I do not need to break my word,” Thor growled, staring down at the other male. “Not that you have any right to speak of it, you twisted piece of rotten bull excrement. You have broken your word, a thousand times over––”

  “We made no agreement about my uses for the female.”

  “Another lie!” Thor snarled, gripping the hammer tighter. His blue-white irises flashed brighter. “You promised me, Jor. You promised you would not harm her!”

  “Impregnating her is not ‘harming’ her, uncle,” the Dragon God said mildly. “Not even by the most creative stretch of the meaning of that word––”

  “Taking her by force is not harming her?” Thor grunted, his fury growing brighter. “You have a creative way of seeing the world indeed, nephew. More and more, I fear your father’s pathological difficulty in feeling genuine empathy for those apart from himself is the only real birthright he has granted you––”

  “Yet, you still cannot be here, uncle.” Jörmungandr’s eyes shone with a harder light. “Not without breaking the oath you made.”

  Thor’s jaw clenched.

  Jörmungandr raised an eyebrow. “Are you hoping if you glare at me, I will simply hand it over? Or that I will forget you promised not to come after me, uncle?”

  “I am no longer here for the ring, pup.” Under his cold stare, a faint smile curved one edge of Thor’s lips. “Your grandfather would like to have a word with you, however. About the Andvaranaut… and about your father. Odin tells me he had quite an illuminating discussion with Loki about you, and your plans with the mortal worlds. Apparently, your father was most forthcoming. Once the repercussions for his silence were made clear to him.”

  Silvia’s eyes widened.

  She looked at Jörmungandr, and saw some of the humor fade from his eyes and lips.

  “Odin is here?” he hissed. “You lie, uncle. Odin never leaves Asgard. He has not left our world in a thousand years––”

  “I would be sure and remind him of that when you see him, pup,” Thor growled, rearranging his hands on Mjölnir’s handle. “For you, he made an exception. Perhaps you should feel honored? Since it is as rare a thing as you say.”

  The Dragon God rose from his chair.

  Something about the way he moved, the speed with which he rose to his feet, set off alarm bells in Silvia’s whole body. She got up from her chair a split-second after he did, stepping back, away from the table, even as Jörmungandr turned to face Thor.

  The Dragon God’s pupils had gone vertical once more in those shocking green eyes, and now they glowed as brightly as Thor’s blue ones.

  Silvia saw his skin ripple.

  It wasn’t a small thing, like an unconscious twitch, or a ripple of clenched muscle through the skin of one arm or his neck.

  The ripple seemed to start at Jörmungandr’s feet and coil and twist up through his back, contorting his whole spine, his legs, his back and shoulders. When it reached his neck, sliding up into his head, Jörmungandr’s whole face abruptly elongated, pushing out a full foot.

  The effect was disturbing, in part because his face remained strangely human-looking, despite the extended muzzle and nose.

  Staring at that inhuman, yet oddly human face, Silvia stepped back, feeling her heart lurch sideways in her chest.

  “SILVIA HOPE!”

  Thor threw out a hand towards her. It was the hand gripping his hammer by the bound silver and bronze handle. Runes appeared around him, shining the same blue-white as the lightning flickering off the hammer.

  “SILVIA! HOLD STILL! REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE!”

  He bellowed the words, vibrating her chest.

  She heard the fear there.

  Without a single thought going through her mind, she froze.

  She obeyed him instinctively, panting, fighting to breathe past that irrational, nearly-physical fear. She stood in the middle of the glass bauble at the bottom of the ocean, with only a few palm plants, a strange fireplace, and a few sticks of furniture sharing the space with her and the two gods.

  She had no idea what was about to happen, but she could feel the electricity flickering through the circle of glass, even before she saw another ripple course through Jörmungandr’s spine, that one thickening his neck, then elongating his face even more.

  It was starting to look a lot less human, now.

  His skin darkened as she watched, and appeared harder, more scaly.

  “Thor!” she shouted, staring at the Dragon God.

  “Stay where you are!” Thor yelled at her, making up her mind about whether to run. “Do not move, Silvia Hope! Not until I tell you!”

  She wanted to say more, to ask him what the hell was happening, but he was staring at his nephew, his eyes concentrated, and she didn’t want to distract him.

  Out of the silence, a rumbling, cracking, twisting sound grew audible, then gradually louder. Silvia looked around in alarm… then grew even more alarmed when it hit her that the sound was coming from Jörmungandr, from his body contorting yet again.

  She had time to wonder why it was so hard for him to transform this time, compared to how easily he did so in Alamo Square––

  When everything seemed to happen all at once.

  Jörmungandr exploded outward.

  He changed into his full-blown dragon form so rapidly, terror bloomed in Silvia’s heart, but too fast for her to react. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even take in a breath. She stared up at the enormity of him as he transformed and grew in the same fraction of a second.

  And damn… he was big.

  He grew as big as one of those dragons from a whole other set of myths, from storybooks about knights and princesses and castles and golden hordes.

  In reality, Jörmungandr became the dragon-like serpent she’d glimpsed in Alamo Square, but a hundred times… maybe a thousand times… larger than what she remembered.

  He grew so insanely fast, it really did look like an explosion, but his skin remained intact, changing as it blew outward, growing scales that remained as liquid as the human-like skin and flesh, growing and losing and regaining its shape––

  He was going to fill the glass dome.

  The reality of what that meant hit her, bringing her heart to her throat.

  He would fill it, then outgrow it, and––

  Thor’s hammer emitted a hard, blue-white bolt of light.

  Before Silvia could take a breath, it encased her in a dense, sizzling, lightning-expelling ball, like a kind of supernatural force-field. The current coming off it made her teeth grind, her ears ring, her feet lift off the ground. She lost audio from outside the bubble. The electricity crackled outward, pushing the two gods back, forcing both of them to retreat.

  She stared through the blue-tinted wall, trying to see Jörmungandr and Thor, even as Jörmungandr rippled outwards in another violent spasm that seemed to double him in size.

  “THOR!” she shouted.

  Her yell fell on deadened air.

  She couldn’t hear them anymore.

  She had to assume they couldn’t hear her, either.

  Before she could yell out again, Jörmungandr exploded outward even larger, crashing through the glass walls of the underwater sphere under the sea.

  Inside the ball of electric light, she got tossed sideways and upside down, thrown through the water so rapidly she couldn’t see anything but bubbles and a deep green and blue blur of water, algae, and underwater plants.

  She couldn’t see Thor, or the underwater dragon.

  Something about the ball of thunder-energy kept he
r away from the walls of the force field, her body cushioned within a strange pocket inside the charged sphere, so that she never touched any side of it.

  It also kept her from getting ripped apart as she tumbled through the ocean. She got dizzy, confused, disoriented, but something about the energy sphere kept her from getting seriously sick from the g-force, as well.

  It didn’t help her see a damned thing, unfortunately.

  Despite her gratitude for not being dead, being trapped inside the ball of light as it got thrown through the waves frustrated her.

  If it had been glass, she would have been pounding on the walls.

  She would have pressed her face to it, trying to see what was happening on the other side.

  As it was, she spun through the ocean, caught inside a disturbingly deep silence, watching the blur of bubbles and water, unable to see anything apart from glimpses of seaweed as she tumbled through underwater forests, unable to know where she was as she flipped in circles, seeing the occasional shadow and flash of bright scales.

  The ball finally slowed under the resistance of the waves, tumbling less and less fast until slowly, gradually, it came to a stop.

  Again, she had no idea just how far she’d gone.

  It felt really, really far.

  She could only float there, in the middle of the blue-white energy, frustrated as hell that she couldn’t touch the walls.

  She turned around in a circle, breathing hard, frantically looking for Thor, looking for the giant water-dragon that was Jörmungandr. She saw fish undulate and swim past. Some paused, seeming to stare at her through the pale blue light of the sphere, but none of them got too close.

  On the plus side, she could finally see, if not well.

  The water was shockingly clear. Now that she had come to a stop, she realized it was clearer than most swimming pools back home. If it wasn’t for the fizzing, blue-white energy, she suspected she would have been able to see a long way, maybe even hundreds of yards through the ocean water.

  She was gazing around, watching the fish and one of those odd, hairless monkeys, which clung to a nearby strand of seaweed, when a thick wave of water jolted the sphere, rocking it sideways and back through the waves, scattering a school of fish.

  She saw Jörmungandr first.

  He was still growing, expanding even as she watched.

  His growth looked different now that he held the shape of a dragon.

  Rather than bubbling and morphing, he seemed to expand out from all sides every few seconds, pulsing outward as his black and green iridescent scales continued to enlarge and lengthen. She watched him twist past her through the clear, blue-tinted water, sparks of magic-like energy and light coiling around him as he fattened and grew longer in jerky pulses.

  She stared at the giant creature, a sick feeling roiling her gut as she wondered what happened to Thor.

  How could he possibly stand a chance against that monster?

  Then she saw him.

  Thor gripped the creature’s thick, muscular neck, and was smashing him over the head with his silver hammer. The two of them twisted through the water together, Jörmungandr moving faster and faster, trying to shake off the clinging Thor.

  She could see them because of the coiling flashes of electricity and the clearness of the water. Just when she thought they might pass from view altogether, the water dragon changed course, twisting back on himself with his long, sinuous body.

  He began to go straight up, heading in the direction of the bubbles.

  As he did, Silvia’s gut lurched dramatically. She let out an “Oof!” of surprise, throwing out her hands and arms, alarmed at the sudden feeling of motion.

  She thought at first she’d been hit by the dragon’s wake.

  It took her another second to realize she was going the wrong direction for that; rather, the bubble of Thor-energy in which she was encapsulated had begun to rise, too.

  It moved so fast, she worried the pressure might crush her, or fill her blood with bubbles, like what happened to scuba divers who weren’t careful about rising back to the surface.

  Neither thing happened, though.

  Just like with the g-force, something in the same magic that allowed her to be inside an electrical ball of lightning, underwater, without being electrocuted or simply killed when she was thrown into the blue-white current, also allowed her to rise quickly without being harmed by the change in pressure.

  She popped up at the top within seconds.

  The ball of blue-white light bobbed there, on the surface of the water, showing her rolling waves of bright blue water, a yellow sun, high white clouds in a deep blue sky so enormous it strained her sense of reality.

  Around the ocean, or bay, or possibly even crazy-big, endless-seeming lake, Silvia saw a deep green forest, so thick with trees, she couldn’t see anything inside it.

  It really did look like the sort of place elves might live.

  Silvia was staring at the forest, wondering how the heck to get out of this thing, when a dragon’s head and long, snake-like body burst out of the water in front of her, coiling up into the sky, its whole body writhing and twisting, likely to get the god off its neck.

  Thor continued to cling to his scales, slamming the top of Jörmungandr’s head with his hammer, lightning sparking all down the length of the creature.

  Silvia watched, jaw hanging, as the dragon dove back down under the waves.

  They rose up out of the water again a minute or so later.

  Again, she stared at them, riveted.

  The crashes of the creature into the relatively calm surface of the ocean tossed the ball of energy up and down; after a few minutes, the dragon churned that part of the ocean so violently, she lost sight of it and Thor between steep swells and valleys.

  Even so, she continued looking for them, tracking their position in glimpses whenever the ball of energy reached the top of a swell. She watched them explode in and out of the ocean, with Thor on top, pounding away at the giant reptile’s head.

  The sight was so bizarre, so utterly captivating, she didn’t notice anything else until out of nowhere, someone coughed, shockingly close to her.

  Silvia’s head and eyes jerked around in shock.

  She found herself looking at a familiar face.

  He stood directly outside the ball of energy, gripping the outside of it with both hands, his feet balanced on what looked like a kind of floating surfboard. He hovered there, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only black pants, his dark eyes focused on her through the blue-white energy.

  “Tyr!”

  Silvia felt an inordinate amount of relief, seeing him there––a ridiculous amount, really, given she’d met the god exactly once.

  She had no earthly reason to trust him so much, yet something about Tyr’s stillness, his unsmiling yet low-key friendly demeanor, made him an instantly reassuring presence. Whatever the precise reason, Silvia grinned at him, noting he could hold the sides of the energy ball without being burned by the sparking charge there.

  Something else hit her a second later.

  She’d heard him, somehow. She’d managed to hear him clear his throat through the plasma, even though she still couldn’t hear anything else.

  I can speak to you like this, Tyr said, sending the words directly into her mind. Just like my brother, Thor. And my nephew, Jörmungandr.

  Can all gods do this with anyone? Silvia thought at him.

  No, Tyr said. There must be a connection there, essence to essence. Thor was kind enough to connect me to you in this way. He had this connection to you already.

  Pausing, the God of War added,

  Luckily, our nephew did not remember this, or it is possible he might have blocked that connection.

  Tyr shrugged, his face unmoving.

  Although… perhaps not. Jor’s tie to you is weaker, based on his treachery with the Andvaranaut. It is not based on a consensual sharing.

  Tyr gave her a faint smile from the other side of the
blue-white light.

  In either case, it is lucky, as I said… I suspect for my nephew, as well. Thor was quite beside himself until he realized he could still get through to you.

  The strange surfboard he stood on hovered a good foot above the ocean, yet surfed easily up and down with the waves, maintaining an exact distance.

  Would you like to get out of this now? Tyr asked politely.

  Silvia laughed.

  Then, at the puzzled look the god gave her, she nodded, smiling.

  Yes! she thought at him. And thank you! I would very much like to get out of this.

  Tyr nodded, unsmiling, then held his hands over the surface of the sphere, his eyes narrowing in concentration. Within a few seconds, the blue-white field began to fade. Silvia watched it grow dimmer and dimmer… then slowly begin to break apart, the blue-white energy dissipating like smoke in wind.

  About halfway through the dissolution, she began to fall.

  She crashed into the surface of the ocean.

  Disappearing under an enormous wave, she let out a surprised yelp when she managed to paddle her way back to the surface.

  The water was shocking, but not because it was freezing cold, like she expected.

  Rather, it was surprisingly warm, surprisingly salty, shockingly clear now that the blue-white energy field was gone. It was also surprisingly easy to swim in, even with the tall waves. She bobbed right back up to the surface and found herself treading water that was the perfect temperature, and clearer than any swimming pool she’d ever swum in.

  She looked down and could see straight down below her feet, which still wore the high-heeled shoes. The blue-green dress pooled around her legs, but when she pushed the fabric aside, she could see large fish and octopus-looking creatures swimming below.

  She was still staring down when large arms scooped her up, lifting her gently out of the water.

  She gasped in surprise, but when she looked up to see Tyr staring down at her face, she laughed, feeling herself relax as he cradled her against his chest.

  He carried her effortlessly as they glided to shore on his hoverboard.