Fate of the Gods 01 - Forged by Fate (8 page)

“What else can you do?” she asked, after she had finished tying the splint, and set the kid back to its feet by the mother.

Thor helped her up from the ground, and glanced at the sky. It was sunny and bright, clear and cloudless. “See that tree, there?”

He pointed toward a medium sized oak, its boughs heavy with green leaves, and she nodded. Torching the hill would not make him a very welcome guest, and while he could have chosen one already dead, it would be more likely to catch fire.

“Don’t blink,” he said. “And don’t be frightened.”

Thor closed his eyes, and called to the static in the air, drawing it together and focusing it into the sky around the tree. He could feel the moisture following, like a sweat breaking out on a hot day, and didn’t stop the cloud from forming, though he could have. He opened his eyes and traced the path from the cloud to the tree in his mind.

There was a flash of white where the lightning followed, crawling over the tree and into the earth, singeing leaves and branches on its way. The thunderclap was immediate, startling the goats and causing the dog to start barking. But Thor paid no attention to the animals, his gaze on the girl.

Her face was white as bone and she did not turn to look at him. “You did that?”

Smoke rose from the tree, and he rang the moisture from the cloud that had formed, focusing the rain into a deluge over the area that had been struck and leaving the animals and the two of them in sunlight.

“Yes.”

“And the rain, too?” she asked.

He smiled. “The rain, too.”

She turned to look at him, almost shyly, as if she wasn’t sure if she should. “Are you an angel?”

Thor grunted. It bothered him to be mistaken for one a second time, but he didn’t let it show on his face. These people could hardly be expected to know him for what he was, and the Aesir were too new to the world to be known at all this far south, but for the word he had spread himself.

“Do angels summon lightning and rain?” he asked.

She bit her lip and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Not exactly. Grandmother Eve told us that the Archangel Michael can call lightning and fire through his sword though.” She frowned and glanced at his side. “Do you have a sword?”

“No.” Grandmother Eve. Then he had found them, the House of Lions. It did not seem possible that two Eves could exist with particular knowledge of the angels. “But in the city where I live, I have goats.”

The girl smiled, and it lit her face and eyes. Yes. These were Eve’s people. And this girl was of Eve’s blood. He could see the resemblance in that smile, the closeness of the line to the goddess they called grandmother. “What are you then, if not an angel?”

He met the girl’s eyes and let his own glow white. “My name is Thor,” he said. “God of thunder.”

Her name was Evelia. For weeks he met with her, helping her to tend the goats, and bringing rain and sun to the village to ensure a bountiful harvest. Freyr might have done better, making the grapes grow larger and plumper, and the wheat taller and sweeter, but Freyr was by now in Asgard, building his home with the other gods who followed Odin, and Thor did what he could do. It wasn’t inconsiderable.

When the time came to harvest the wheat and the other grains, he asked Evelia to take him to the village. Visitors were always more welcome in times of plenty, hospitality less begrudged, and he would be able to help in the fields while he gave them good sun.

“Mama and Papa will be happy to meet with you, when I tell them what you have done.” Evelia said, prodding one of the goats with her staff to keep it moving. The young kid he had rescued had long since grown out of his splint, and charged about the hillside over the slippery stone as if he had never fallen. “Papa won’t believe that you’re a god, of course. You’ll have to show them. Like you did with me.”

“I’ll give them any proof they require. As I have already.” Thor nodded to the wheat field outside the village, more valuable than gold for farmers. “Eve’s people, of any, should know the truth. And I can protect her, if the need arises.”

Evelia frowned. “From the man with the stone eyes. Adam. That’s why we’re supposed to be wary of strangers. No man with gray eyes is permitted on our lands. It’s one of the laws.”

“Is that how you know him?”

“That’s how Grandmother Eve told us we should. She said we would feel him, too, like fire on our skin, but if he got that close to us, it was probably too late.”

“Too late for what?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the goats.

He nudged a nanny that had stopped to graze on a bush. How she could eat anything more with her bag so heavy with milk, he wasn’t sure. They were nearly to the village now, though, and he could hear the sounds of the people within it. Laughing and shouting, barking dogs and bleating animals. The goats heard it too, and for the most part, they sped up, anxious to be milked and stabled.

“Too late to stop him from hurting us,” she said, as if there was no other answer.

Thor grunted. Evelia’s knowledge was vague in regard to Eve and her brother, but valuable all the same. He imagined her parents must know more. He hoped they did, or else this trip to the village would be wasted effort. The golden wheat reminded him too much of Sif, and he wanted to return to Asgard.

“When Eve came here last, what was her name?” he asked.

Evelia looked up at him and smiled. “Mama says she was called Helen, and her hair was the color of sunshine. She was glorious, Grandpapa says. Like an angel from God. But even Mama and Papa were not born yet when she lived here.”

He returned her smile. Helen. Then she would have come out of desperation and fear. Yes. These people would know. He would stay as long as necessary to earn their trust, as a god and as a man. And then he would return to Odin, and be very grateful for the loving embrace of his wife.

Chapter Seven: Present

Eve frowned and rubbed her face. It had been weeks since Adam’s intrusion, but she could not shake the feeling that he still hovered around her, somewhere just outside her immediate perception. It left her unsettled and worried she’d wake up in the night to see Michael and his sword standing over her bed, ready to put an end to the threat she was to the world. An old nightmare she could not stand revisiting. Worse even than the nightmares from her last life, of the mental ward, and the blood.

She set aside the invitations she’d been addressing and leaned back in her chair, letting her eyes lose focus while she concentrated on the distinct presence of her brother. There was a steady buzz of thought surrounding her. The town, which had sprung up near the DeLeon estate when she had been married to Ryam, had not grown too terribly large. But it was distracting and difficult to sift through, peppered with so much of her bloodline. A perfect place for him to hide.

Garrit touched her arm lightly. “Maybe we should take a break for tonight. We’ve finished more than half of them. My hand is beginning to cramp, and you look like you’re years away.”

She opened her eyes, drawing back to herself and pinching the bridge of her nose to forestall a headache. “I’m all right.”

“You’re worrying again. I can see it in your face. I promise you, you’re safe as long as you stay here. Forget him.”

Eve wished she had as much faith in the security of the manor, and Garrit’s ability to protect her, if it came to that. She was sure there was something they were keeping from her, but had not yet had any luck discovering what it was. Juliette had only smiled, when she had asked, telling her to leave that sort of thing to the men, so that they would not feel useless. But if something protected the manor, it had not stopped Adam from finding her within it already. She couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t fail a second time.

If she could just keep Adam away, there would be no threat to anyone once she was married. Adam couldn’t violate her marriage, as long as she loved the man, by God’s law. And from what she had seen of him in the past, Adam’s ego would not suffer a wife who could not worship him, regardless.

“I can feel him, but I don’t know where. Like he’s haunting me when I’m not paying close enough attention.”

Garrit’s expression darkened. “You think he’s still in France?”

She nodded. He was concealing himself well, but the echo of frustration hadn’t left her mind in weeks. How had he regained his memory? It couldn’t have been the angels. Michael would never have risked it.

“What can I do?”

“I don’t know. Probably nothing.”

He sighed, scrubbing his face. “I’ll call my father in the morning. I’m sure he knows a man who can help.”

“I’d appreciate that. I hate the feeling of being watched.” By Adam, anyway. The ghosts of her past husbands had been more reassuring than anything else, aside from being a reminder of her own insanity, but that was hardly something she could admit to Garrit now.

“Just worry about the wedding. Let me worry about your brother. We’ll have his picture posted in town to discourage his return, and a reward for any information offered. He can’t hide himself so well as to escape the notice of so many, every day.”

She shook her head. “It would only be possible if he weren’t hiding from me too. I suspect that takes the majority of his concentration.”

“Good.” Garrit dropped his hands to his knees and stood, smiling. “And in the meantime, we’re both going to put aside these invitations for the evening. I’m going to make some coffee.” He kissed her cheek and left the room.

She stretched and went to the window, staring into the dark. Was this some new way to punish her? For leaving the ward, in her last life? For meddling in the minds of men without conscious thought? She pressed her hand to the cool glass and tried to remember, but the drugs had left that life more of a haze than she wanted to admit, and the things she did remember made no sense. Men long dead, alive and well, appearing to her, comforting her. Thorgrim’s warmth beside her in the bed. Delusion or not, her heart had been convinced, and it still ached to think of him.

Surely Michael wouldn’t risk the world just to frighten her, though, and not just the world, but his dominion over it. For all his power, Michael was still part of God’s creation, subject to its destruction with all the rest. Any child she gave Adam would threaten the angel, too.

Lightning flashed, striking the trees at the edge of the property, and thunder boomed so near the glass vibrated beneath her palm. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. For a moment, she had been certain she saw the figure of a man outlined by the flash. She must have imagined it, though. And even if she hadn’t, the figure she had seen was much too tall and broad shouldered to be Adam. No wings, either, outlined by the white light. Her mind playing tricks on her. That wasn’t a good sign.

One of the trees smoldered and she had a distinct feeling of déjà vu. Rain beat against the window pane. Enough, she thought, to put out any fire that may have started, but she’d mention it to Garrit. She turned back from the window and put away the finished invitations, organizing those left to be done. Her eyes ached, and her head too, and she didn’t want to think about what it meant if she was seeing things that weren’t there.

Garrit was in the kitchen, standing in the dark. He stared out the window while the kettle steamed on the stovetop.

“I think I’m going to skip the coffee.” He stiffened at her voice, spinning on his heel to look at her, and she frowned. “Should we check on that last lightning strike? I saw smoke.”

In the dim light, she couldn’t be certain, but it seemed almost as though he paled. “I’ll take care of it.”

She kissed him. “I’m going to go to bed.”

“Good,” he said, glancing back out the window. “
Bonne nuit
.”