Marked by the Demigod

by Alessa Winters

  With a sigh, Aimes flops on the other side of the couch, all her internal resolve crumbling in the face of Katya's questions. "A guy was flirting with me, and when the guy went to the bar, Jake just...showed up."

  "Iakov, Aimes. His name is Iakov." Katya snaps, before scowling into her water bottle. "So he teleported directly into the bar, I take it?"

  Her jaw sets without her controlling it. "I didn't see him, but one moment he was just sliding into the booth. And then he teleported me to a bunch of snow to hear a bunch of wolves or some shit and then back to the bar, and then he wouldn't give me his phone number."

  Katya's eyebrows steadily rise through the whole thing. "Wolves?"

  "He said they were Arctic wolves. It was cold." Aimes hugs herself in memory of the frigid.

  Katya scratches the smart cat's head. "He probably took you to Siberia," she says, thoughtful, as if it isn't a big deal. "We know he does a lot of business there, it wouldn't surprise me."

  Aimes shrugs into herself. Siberia is a hell of a lot farther than whatever part of Canada she thought he took her to. "He then took me back to the hotel and I, I dunno, thought I could get him to talk to me."

  Katya scoffs. "Yeah that's not gonna happen." Her eyes spot the large packet of paper, still sitting on Aimes's dinner table. "I take it you haven't read that yet?"

  "He… suggested he had me under some kind of watch. He knew about the dryad punching me out."

  "Makes sense," she says, voice as carefully government neutral as possible. "It would be bad for him if something happened to you."

  "But he didn't step in." Aimes flops her head back on the couch. "He knew that shit was happening but he didn't step in."

  Katya looks woefully out of her element. "I wish I could tell the other people at the support group who your guy was," she starts. "Cause then you could actually talk about it and not have to be like… this."

  "Thanks."

  They lull themselves into a quiet moment, and for a few brief seconds it almost feels like it's like any breakup, with her ranting to her friends. Like there’s anything normal about it.

  "Then why does it hurt?" Aimes blurts out, and immediately wishes she hadn't, horridly vulnerable. "It's just, I hardly know him, it was a hook-up -"

  "- and then another one, apparently" Katya interjects.

  Aimes steamrolls on ahead. "And him disappearing like that hurts! It actually hurts! Like he was..." She trails off, scowling down at herself. Like he was an actual boyfriend? Like she actually knows him?

  Katya briefly closes her eyes, then leans forward. "Aimes, just cause he came and saw you..." She takes another deep breath, the stress line deepening between her eyebrows. "It doesn't mean that what he did isn't any less messed up than it was before."

  It stings, but Aimes pets the smart cat for a few second, and the smart cat sort of disinterestedly purrs at her. "Well, at least we know that me flirting will get him to appear."

  The crease deepens dramatically. "Aimes, don't."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he is a dangerous man." Katya says, simple, blunt. "Because he's dangerous, and now he's scared." Katya's phone beeps, a simple ding of a sound, and she falls silent as she digs it out and reads the text.

  It's only the months she's known Katya that Aimes can read her face falling before her official "things are fucked up but I can't reveal that" mask snaps into place. "Something bad?"

  Katya stands up, shoving her phone into her purse. "Something unexpected." She clips out, then hesitates. "Read the packet, don't text me any questions that have his name attached."

  Aimes nods, really not wanting to read the packet. "I took a picture of him," she blurts out. "When he was asleep."

  "Delete it." She strides out, closing the door with a snap.

  She thinks for a second, but yeah she is not gonna do that.

  The packet is...elucidating. Troubling. And read like much worse fantasy than the packet Katya gave her months ago.

  Apparently, Iakov is a much bigger asshole than even Katya suggested. With a documented history that stretches back around 300 years - she had sex with someone over 300 years old - that mostly included Iakov avoiding people and leaving a wake of bodies behind him whenever anyone tried to control him.

  Aimes curls herself into a ball after reading the packet, cause apparently she magically married the villain in every bad fantasy novel, all because of a drunken hookup in Kansas City.

  AIMES (10:22 PM): Jesus Christ he's evil.

  KATYA (10:23 PM): Yes.

  That doesn't help.

  Two days later,

  AIMES (9:29 AM): Can I call him Voldemort to you in texts?

  KATYA (9:31 AM) As far as I know he has never committed genocide.

  Trixie's been kinda sorta dating Kristopher for four months now, and Aimes is just now getting to meet him, but she really feels that that's much more cause of Trixie feeling skittish more than anything against Aimes, so she goes into this more than a little curious.

  They pick a bowling alley in Burbank, something inoffensive and as suburbia as they can get in the area, and Trixie's already gotten a lane when she gets in.

  Trixie waves Aimes over frantically, her arm hooked around the elbow of a very tall, very handsome African American man. "Aimes! Over here!" She says, a bit loud, one of her tells for being unreasonably nervous about something.

  The man extends a hand out to Aimes, shaking it with a bit more reserve than Trixie has. "Hey, I'm Kristopher." His voice is deep, with a hint of a Southern drawl.

  "Cool, I'm Aimes." And she sneaks a glance over at Trixie, who looks the most anxious, shifting back and forth in her shoes with wide eyes. "Bowling?"

  Trixie grabs onto Aimes's arm as if it’s a lifesaver. "They're part of a bowling team, Aimes. They have competitions. Save me."

  Aimes laughs, then laughs again cause it's so outside of all the shit she's been dealing with that it's perfect. "So now you won't be the worst bowler, is that it?"

  Trixie isn't kidding, Kristopher and his friends are ridiculously good at bowling and utterly wipe the table with them. As soon as Aimes gets back from grabbing a ball Trixie grabs her arm again. "Well?" she asks, her voice tight.

  Aimes not sure if it's a race thing, or a general attractiveness thing, but Trixie is far more anxious than she had anticipated. "He seems nice. Handsome."

  Trixie's face relaxes, just a hair, and Aimes throws her free arm around her friend. "Hey, you like him, and you work things out. This sounds like a good thing."

  Trixie all but melts in Aimes arm, burying her face in Aimes's shoulder for a brief second. "Thanks," she mumbles before pulling away. "It's still new."

  "It's been what, five months?" Aimes teases back.

  "That's what's new about it." They both pause and watch as Kristopher executes a perfect strike with perfect form.

  "And he's a lawyer?"

  Trixie nods, her face a weird mixture of fear and pride. "Yeah. Yeah he is."

  Out of the corner of her eye, a flash of black hair and pale skin makes Aimes's head turn, but she sees no one who matches what she thought she saw out of the corner of her eye.

  12

  She's going crazy, and that's the only word for it.

  She sees flashes of him, flashes of Iakov, everywhere. Everywhere.

  Sometimes it's a silhouette, someone with his distinctive long nose, his long hair. Sometimes she swears she sees his face, deep in a crowd, and it's insane.

  There's no reason why this should be happening (at least, not according to Katya), unless he actually is showing up.

  Which Katya says is possible, with a grim set to her mouth and a furrow to her brow.

  The hollow feeling in the center of her chest doesn't go away, as she travels and as she jumps from convention to convention.

  After hearing nothing from Dave for a while, she's almost shocked when she gets a work order to troubleshoot their systems, but she dutifully packs up her diagnostic bag and heads over to Pasadena
.

  Dave raises his eyebrows when he sees her, but otherwise doesn't comment as she sits down with her toolkit.

  "Hi Dave, great to see you too," she says, only a bit sarcastic.

  She starts the basic diagnosis system that doesn't generally find anything worth fixing but is a good thing to do in case there's the totally obvious fix.

  It's a quiet moment, one where she's able to solve a tiny problem, one they're probably not even aware that they're having, before letting the program continue.

  He sighs again. "People like me are being targeted. And I don't know why." He fidgets, and the only other time she's seen him fidget was when he had to break the news to her about the marriage. "More people've shown up dead, more than I've ever seen happen."

  And it's in line with what Katya's said, and her skin crawls, thinking of the large packet on her coffee table and the things Iakov says isn't true. "I've heard."

  His eyes narrow as he watches her type. "You know something of this?" He ventures.

  And again, she wishes she could tell him. "Only a bit." She admits, twisting in her chair to face him. "Remember that dryad that punched me?" She waves at the tiny scar that remains of the split lip. "Katya said he died."

  His eyebrows flash up, then back down. "Right." He frowns at the computer.

  There's a lull, before Dave tips his head back and stares at the ceiling, blinking . "Be careful who you talk to," he rasps, and his voice seems strangely affected. "Not...not everyone in this strange little community is altruistic."

  And the computer dings again, to a much bigger problem that would indeed cause the issues they'd been having, and she swivels back to the computer, her heart racing. "I've been getting that impression."

  Later that day, she impulsively invites Katya out to the mall, after Katya's off work. It's one of the funniest things she's ever seen.

  Katya's still wearing the suit and the combat boots, and though she hasn't seen it, Aimes would bet money that she still has her pistol tucked into the holster at her side.

  Katya's face is spooked as they poke around the tiny stores in the Glendale Galleria, as if she expects everything to have to boil down to her work in the end. And, after a brief stop in Target, she blurts out, "Have you heard from Jake recently?"

  Aimes shakes her head, trying not to smile at Katya's obvious discomfort. "Nothing you don't know about," she says, ducking into the Bath and Body-works and smelling some of the candles.

  Katya follows her, her brow furrowed. "Then why invite me out?" She seems so honestly bewildered.

  "Because you don't seem to relax, so I thought doing something semi-normal would be fun?"

  Katya raises an eyebrow at her.

  "I mean, the most personal information you'll share is about your receptionist, so --".

  And Katya's shoulders drop and she rolls her eyes. "And she's still having issues with that one guy, and we don't know what's up with him," she complains, and the transformation out of work mode and into gossip mode is immediate. "He seems to be completely normal, like normal normal, but she swears that sometimes - but only sometimes - he's more like her. More..." She glances around to the Bath and Body-works, but the store clerks don't pay her any attention. "I'd say she's just seeing things and trying to figure out if she has a chance of being with this guy without, you know, harming him, but she has some of the best intuition that I know of."

  "Which is why she's your receptionist." Aimes finishes for her.

  "Yeah," Katya says, glumly. "I chatted with the guy, but not in any official category, and he seemed to be completely normal. Even a bit of a mess."

  Aimes thinks for a second of the drop dead gorgeous Miri in Katya's office, and tries to imagine her with someone who's a mess. "That's odd."

  A smile tugs at Aimes’s face as Katya continues ranting, and feels almost, almost like their friendship is normal.

  She comes home from a three-day convention in Newark to find Iakov leaning against her kitchen counter, drinking a glass of water.

  Aimes freezes, before very carefully setting down her keys. "Hello," she says, tentative.

  The smart cat twines between Iakov's legs, the traitor.

  He lifts the glass in greeting. "Nice information pile you have on me there." He nods at the coffee table, where the pile of papers still lays under a few books. "Your friend Katya do that?"

  Aimes sets her overnight bag down on the couch with a deliberate movement. His eyes follow each little movement, his face twisting. "She thought it'd help."

  "Help?" he asks, and she can't tell if his voice is bitter or angry, and her heart starts pounding.

  "Help understand. What was going on." she says, shedding her coat and hanging it up, as if this is a normal conversation. "How long have you been here?"

  "About three hours." He sets the glass down, just as deliberate. "Not everything in that pile of papers is true," he says, crossing to her. Almost tentative, he reaches a pale hand to her arm, as if to pull her into an embrace. "It's good to see you."

  And it's awkward, so awkward, and Aimes doesn't even know what to say or do, and she resists the urge to pull away. "I was on a plane three hours ago, a convention."

  He nods, a smirk playing across his face for a brief second. "East coast, right? New York, New Jersey, that area?" His hand moves idly on her arm, derailing her thought and crashing it in a fire. "You don't have to be afraid of me."

  The words hang between them, heavy, before Aimes looks up and locks eyes with him. "It'd be a lot easier if I learned stuff about you from you, instead of government officials," she blurts out. "I've seen you like three times and you haven't...stuck around."

  He grips her arm a little harder for a brief second, before gentling. "You were on a plane, are you hungry?" A flicker of a smile flashes across his eyes. "I know a place."

  Her skin crawls, but she shrugs that off. "Sure, I could eat." It feels like she should say no, that she should shut the door on him and not look back, but this close to him and the world seems a bit narrower, a bit kinder, and a bit brighter.

  It's irrational, she knows, she knows, but it’s awfully hard to be rational so close to him, breathing in his cologne. Out of a lack of anything else, she says, "where do you have in mind?"

  He gives her a critical eye over, then shrugs, as if her appearance doesn't matter, and they disappear without even so much a noise.

  And she's outside a tiny restaurant, one with warm lights inside and the smell of bread baking. He pulls her inside; it's warm, it's cozy, with kitschy decorations and decorative plates everywhere.

  The sound of soft talking fills the air, and it's definitely not English.

  Barely even giving them a glance, the maitre'd pulls two menus and walks to the back. Iakov follows, his hand slipping down her arm to grip her hand.

  If it wasn't for the very real jetlag she'd think she was dreaming.

  They're led to a small table in the back of the room, with tall seats so no one can look in.

  Iakov watches her, as she opens the menu, then back up at him. "It's in German. I don't speak German."

  He takes the menu from her. "Polish, actually. No better comfort food."

  The faces around her match her ideas of Eastern Europe. "Poland."

  He nods, his eyes never leaving her face.

  "Wow," she says, out of a lack of anything else, her mind reeling, but in a tired way, in a way where she feels that she will definitely freak out later. But right now she's jet lagged and it smells amazing. "What's good here?"

  A faint hint of a smile, and it's beautiful. "Pierogies, mostly. I'll get some, I love them."

  As if summoned, the waiter appears, and Aimes sits back as Iakov converses with him for a few minutes, and glances around.

  Everything feels like it would be upsetting if she had more energy, but as it is it's just soothing to be warm. "What've you been up to lately?" she says, her mouth on automatic, as if this is a normal date.

  He raises a sharp eyebrow at her, be
fore shrugging and leaning forward. "International crime."

  He has to be shitting her, and she cracks a smile at him. "Right. Anything impressive?" The waiter sets down two beers in front of them, and she takes a swig. It's warm, yeasty, and not at all what she expected.

  He drinks his own beer for a second, looking all too posh to be drinking something as common as beer. "Mostly been running," he says, muted, like the act of saying that hurts something deep inside. "It's not been an easy few months."

  Again, way more than she wanted to deal with while jet lagged, so she takes another drink. "Somehow I gathered that. What with the shooting." And the running. And the fact he slept with her in the first place, which sits weirdly in her stomach with the warm beer.

  The waiter drops by a steaming platter of pierogies, with a dish of applesauce and sour cream. Iakov's eyes light up for a brief moment, before he visibly gets control over his expression. "More people've tried recently, but haven't gotten that far."

  "Why though?" Aimes asks, too tired to not be direct, her eyelids heavy already.

  His face shutters closed. "Katya tell you to ask that?"

  She shakes her head. "She hasn't told me to ask you anything, really." She reaches and grabs a pierogi, imitating his movements. "I think, I really think, she strongly doesn't want to be involved."

  A brief flicker of satisfaction races across his face.

  "I think she's scared of you." And now she's rambling, the words tumbling over themselves in her mouth. "She sorta skates around anytime I bring you up, unless it's to give some measurable detail."

  He smiles, quick, and his entire face seems to soften with the action. It's a good look on him. "Katya's decent, just overly dedicated to her job," he says, grudgingly. "She keep my secret?"

  "As far as I know."

  "Good." He sits back, face pinching closed again. "So my brothers want to rule the world, as you do."

  "As you do." Aimes repeats.