Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (128 page)

Then she picked her way back to the fruit trees to gather a few oranges, this time looking more closely at the ground for small dips where she could set more traps.

“Therese!” Than cried.

“Is McAdams climbing down?”

“Yes!”

“Is he coming after me?”

“No!”

“Where’s he going? Is he headed for the rocks behind Zeus?” That’s where she would have gone, for the lookout.

“Yes!”

“He hopes he’ll see me better from there,” she muttered.

“Exactly!”

“He’s waiting for me to wear myself out, and then he plans to come for me!”

“Exactly!” Than’s voice sounded desperate.

Therese trembled wildly. “I’ll set more traps. Shout if he heads this way.”

“I will!”

A movement in the wood caught her eye, and she froze, waited. She took a slow step and looked beyond the tree where she had seen the flash of something brownish. Now she saw it was a wild horse there with her in the wood. At first, she smiled, comforted by the vision. Then she thought of the traps. The animals!

Again in her mind, she asked, “Than! Artemis! The animals! What if they hurt themselves on my traps? Can you warn them somehow?”

“No!” Artemis called out.

“Ares!” Than shouted.

Ares? “Ares will understand where the traps are.”

“Yes.”

“But how can we warn the animals?”

“Your scent!” Artemis cried.

“They’ll avoid the traps because of my scent?” She found herself whispering rather than praying in her head.

“That will be our message! To avoid your scent!” Artemis shouted.

Therese looked at the horse. It made her feel less alone. She took an apple from her bundle and held it out. The horse’s nostrils flared, but it didn’t move toward her or away. Therese tossed the apple toward the tree. The horse trotted away.

Of course. The apple carried her scent. He had already been warned.

She spent at least two hours sharpening sticks, driving them into holes, and covering the holes with leaves, but she began to fear she might be wasting her time. What if McAdams never came this way? What if he killed her before he got hungry? She was wearing herself out. Was this worth it?

Then she slapped her forehead. Maybe she should have tried to mount the horse. She might have had a better chance against McAdams if she came at him from above on horseback.

Too late now.

She should set more traps, but she should seek a path he was sure to cross.

She gathered more fruit—oranges and pomegranates, and stuffed them in her shirt, but they wouldn’t all fit. Then she had the idea of tying the hem of the shirt in a knot and stuffing the fruit
inside
the shirt rather than gathering the edges all around. More fruit would fit this way. She wanted to collect as much food as she could because with all her traps out here, she didn’t want to have to come back this way and risk injuring herself in one of them. That would be ironic, she thought.

As she tore her way through the woods back toward the deeper canyon, she stopped whenever she found a good dip in the ground to set up another trap. She’d set down her bundle and the big rock she used for hammering, sharpen a dozen more sticks at both ends on her blade, and then stake the sticks firmly in the ground before hiding them with fallen leaves. The further she got from the thickest part of the woods, however, the fewer dead leaves were there on the ground. She realized as she followed the stream back down to the rocky canyon behind Hades that she would have to think of a different way to set traps on this side of the battlefield.

“Therese!” Than shouted.

She prayed, “Is he following me?”

“Hide!”

She looked up and realized she had now come into view of those on the side of the platform closest to her. She could see Than, Hades, and Aphrodite directly overhead. She had to remember to stay out of Ares’s view. She clambered against the canyon wall and hid beneath the cliff edge above her.

“Is McAdams following me?” she asked Than.

“Just now!”

“He’s just now leaving the rocks behind Zeus?”

“Yes!”

“Is he headed toward the woods or the lake?”

When he didn’t answer, she said, “I mean, is he headed toward the woods?”

“Yes!”

“Good. Maybe he’ll come across at least one of my traps. I think I have twelve or thirteen all around the fruit trees. But I need to think of something else down here in the canyon. There’s nothing here but rocks.”

“Yes!”

“What? I didn’t ask anything.” She thought back on what she had said. “Rocks? I should make traps with rocks?”

“Yes!”

But how? She thought. How could she use rocks to make a trap? The sticks went into hidden holes waiting for McAdams to happen by. They probably wouldn’t kill him, but he could get cut up really bad. But falling on rocks? What could she do with the rocks? Could she sharpen them? Chip them into sharp wedges? No. The rocks could fall on him. How could she make it so the rocks could fall on him? She could throw them at him. She could gather a stockpile and keep them near her hideout so that when he came for her she could launch…

Wait! Launch?

She had to work without being seen by Ares, and she had to work fast. She crept along the base of the cliff edge scanning for possibilities. She looked down into the deeper canyon below where her shield lay useless to her and out across to the other side about a fifty yards away. Think, Therese! Think!

Then, like a bullet, it hit her.

The waterfall!

T
herese filled
with hope and enthusiasm when it dawned on her that she could scuttle along this canyon wall beneath the cliff edge and make her way to the roaring fall behind Hephaestus without being seen. She prayed to Than to let him know her plan.

She would find a place behind the falls to stash her food and store her rocks, which she started collecting in her arms now. She would find a lower place, visible to Ares, to set up a decoy camp. Then, when McAdams came to the decoy, she would launch her rocks at him. The rocks probably wouldn’t kill him, but as with the traps in the thick part of the woods by the fruit trees, they would injure him and slow him down, hopefully enough for her to defeat him with her sword.

“Good!” Than shouted.

A blood-curdling wail rang out across the canyon and caused Therese to freeze. “Was that McAdams?”

“Yes!”

“Did he find one of my traps?”

“I think so! I can’t see him!” Than called out.

Whether McAdams injured himself in one of her traps or in some other way, he was nevertheless injured, and this added to Therese’s overall optimism as she scrambled beneath the cliff edge with her arms full of rocks the size of softballs. The noise of the falls thundered as she neared them and the spray hit her bare skin and chilled her, a relief after the sweat she had worked up from building her traps in Demeter’s woods.

“How long till nightfall?” she asked Than in her mind. It seemed like hours had passed, and yet the sun still bore down on them high in the sky. “Wait a minute. We never left Olympus, did we? The sun always shines, right?”

If Than answered her, she could no longer hear him this close to the crashing falls. She hadn’t thought of that! How would she make it without him?

Unlike Than and the other gods, she had no powers of telepathy and could not be sure if voices in her head were inspirations or delusions. She almost turned back. In fact, she changed her mind five or six times and nearly wore herself out beneath the cliff edge with indecision. At last she decided it was her best chance of survival to go on with her plan. “I can’t hear you anymore,” she prayed. “But I’ve decided to go on anyway.”

She reached the falls and found a hidden grotto behind the roaring water, but if McAdams came this way to her decoy camp, she would have no advantage for attack. Although there were many little nooks and crevices back here that she could climb onto, she would be open, visible, and vulnerable to his retaliation. She dropped her rocks in a heap, set down her fruit, and looked around.

At the furthest lip of the grotto on the outer edge of the falls, she found a nook way up high that just might work. If McAdams came through the grotto, she would see him, and she would be above him, with gravity on her side. She would also be hidden until he reached the point where she stood now. It also seemed, from down here, anyway, that she might have a view of the deeper canyon in case he came that route. The trick would be hauling the rocks and fruit up the steep wall nearly twenty feet to the nook. First she would try it empty-handed to see if it was possible.

Now that she couldn’t hear Than, she felt really anxious that McAdams could be coming around the corner for her at any moment, and this anxiety caused her to tremble more profoundly than she had before. The trembling made climbing up the nearly vertical wall very difficult. She used her fingers to find places in the wall to grip, and she fished around with her feet for footholds to support her weight. One false step meant falling to her death at the bottom of the canyon.

Dirt from the canyon wall got into her mouth and crunched in her teeth when she clenched them. She ran her tongue around her teeth, trying to wash it out, and she spit and gagged. She reached for another rock, keeping her mouth closed this time, breathing through her nose. A fingernail broke at the tip as she clung to another ledge, but that was the least of her worries.

Thankfully, there were plenty of strong footholds within reach of one another. When she made it to the nook, she found it was actually a cave that tunneled back into darkness. While she was glad to have all this room to store her things and move around, the unknown darkness added to her anxiety. Stop it, Therese! McAdams was the only threat worth fearing right now, she reminded herself. She walked over to the furthest edge and saw that she could indeed see most of the lower canyon from here. This just might work. There were even a few loose boulders she could move, though barely and straining with all her might. Maybe if she scooted them to the edge and found something to give her leverage, she could launch them from the nook. She needed a branch or heavy stick, but there were none around. Would her sword work, or would the rock break it? She unsheathed the sword and tested it, gently at first. The blade gave. It was too flexible. She’d have to find something else. She returned the sword to its sheath.

The sheath! It was light, but it was solid and firm. She unbelted it from her waist and tested it out. It would work! This could be her saving grace! She looked around for other such boulders and found four more loose enough and light enough for her to drag to the edge of her cave.

She re-belted her sword and sheath and climbed back down, quickly but carefully, to carry up her bundle of fruit between her teeth. Then she took the empty shirt back down and filled it with six of the softball-sized rocks. Any more than that might throw off her balance too much or be too heavy and slip between her teeth. She’d have to make a third trip down for the remaining six. She hesitated. If McAdams spotted her, she’d lose the element of surprise. Was it worth getting the remaining rocks? She decided to go for it.

Climbing up with the bundle between her teeth was not easy. She held on by the back molars, where her jaw was stronger. She couldn’t swallow properly, so she let the drool drip down her chin. Most of it was absorbed by her shirt. The rocks pressed against her neck and chest as she pulled herself up the wall. Her neck was sore from both the weight of the rocks and the position in which she had to hold her head in order to clear the rocks with her body. But her shirt wasn’t big enough to tie around her back or neck and still hold her bundle.

Now she had twelve softball-sized rocks she could throw at him and seven watermelon-sized boulders she could launch at him with her sheath. It was time to set up her decoy camp, and she’d have to move quickly since McAdams could be gaining on her at any time and she would not hear Than’s warning. She gathered up three apples and put them in her shirt to take with her.

Oh! Another idea struck her. She couldn’t hear Than, but maybe she would be able to hear several gods if they all shouted at once. She concentrated on all of them but Ares. She couldn’t risk giving away her position to him. “If you can hear me, please oh please scream yes as loud as you can when I get to the count of three. One, two, three!”

Faint, but audible, she heard the whisper of a yes.

Awesome!

Again, with great concentration, she focused on all of the Olympian gods except for Ares. “If you think McAdams is still in the forest, when I count to three, please scream yes. One, two, three!”

Again, faint, but audible, like a breeze across the canyon, she heard the gods say, “Yes.”

Awesome! That meant she had time to set up her decoy camp. She cautiously but quickly scrambled down the wall from her cave back to the grotto floor behind the falls. Then she scaled further down beneath the grotto to the deeper canyon floor, all the while being careful to keep herself hidden behind the falls to avoid Ares’s watchful eyes. She hadn’t heard him communicating with McAdams so far, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t doing so now that McAdams was down in the woods.

During her decent down the wall, she sought cliff edges, nooks, anything that might offer passage past the falls where she could be visible across the canyon from the platform and the lower edge of the forest. She needed to be seen in her decoy camp, but her entrance and exit to it should be hidden. She was getting nervous that this wasn’t going to work. Maybe she should head back to her real camp and simply wait.

But she had come this far, and this was the perfect plan if she could make it work.

“If you can see McAdams, on my count of three, please say yes. One, two, three!”

“Yes!”

Oh, no! She was expecting a no. If they could see him, where was he? “If he has made it to the edge of the deeper canyon, please say yes on my count of three. One, two, three!”

“Yes!”

Oh my God! “Is he near the larger of the two falls? One, two, three!”

“No.”

She felt some relief, but she couldn’t see it in her hands, for they trembled so badly now, she could barely grab hold of the canyon wall. She climbed down a few more feet and found another nook. It tunneled beneath the cliff edge above it, into the wall of the canyon, about five feet or more and extended out past the falls. If she were to follow it to its length, she would become visible. It was now or never if she was going to set up this decoy camp. With shaking limbs and chattering teeth, she edged her way out and looked across the canyon at the gods.

A memory of touring Mesa Verde, the ancient cliff dwellings in southwest Colorado, with her parents three years ago swept through her mind.

“Than, if you can see me, wave! I want Ares to see me, and McAdams, too!”

Than waved. She waved back and blew him a kiss. Then she saw McAdams across the canyon at the smaller fall below Aphrodite. He was without his jacket and tie, and his white shirt was stained with blood and dirt. His black pants were torn and also stained, and as he moved forward, he walked with a limp. Unlike her, he held his shield, but this, too, was smeared with blood and dirt. Either he had fallen or at least one of her traps had worked!

Still, as she looked at him, trembling like her, fumbling along the rocky quay at the top of Aphrodite’s smaller waterfall, perhaps closer to death than she originally thought, she found it hard to feel joy. Therese! Remember what he did to your parents! Remember what you have to do to be with Than! The anger at her parents’ brutal, painful murder and the hopeful expectations of living eternally at Than’s side renewed her determination. Either McAdams would die, or she would die trying!

She opened her bundle and took out an apple. Standing in sight of McAdams, she bit the apple and retreated back into the cave, leaving her shirt and the other two apples visible. Then she worried she was being too obvious in her attempts to lure him. She ran back to the edge and snatched her bundle and dragged it back out of sight. She went to the edge one more time and limped around, trying to look weaker than she was, and then she got down on her knees as though in supplication to the gods, and prayed, “Than, I’m not really injured. I am trying to appear weaker than I am to lure McAdams here. This is my decoy camp. I have another set up for attack.” She noticed how badly she trembled now that she was trying to hold still. She kept praying, “I love you, Than. I can tell the end is near. No matter what happens, after this I will be with you always, either as a god like you, or a soul among the dead like my parents. If you can hear me, please wave to me one more time.”

She watched him lift his arm up to her and wipe his eyes with the other hand. She wished she could see the details of his face, but he was too far away. She looked over at McAdams. He was drinking from the top of the smaller falls. Now he washed his face. She couldn’t see the details, but the overall smear of red was horrible.

He deserves this, she reminded herself.

She took several bites of the apple, and looked up again at Than. The other gods had crowded around him, probably realizing that this canyon was where their game would end. Surprisingly, she felt ravenous, and ate her apple down to the core. Then, looking once more at the bowed figure of McAdams, she tossed the core to the canyon floor to lie beside her shield, and she retreated to the back of the cave and out of sight of all.

From the back of the cave, she tunneled toward her real camp behind the roaring falls. She climbed back up to the grotto with her bundle between her teeth, and then rested there a moment, wondering which direction McAdams was going now. After ten or fifteen minutes, she climbed the rest of the way to her upper chamber where she had stored her food and rocks. She was still hungry, so she bit into another apple while she waited.

She couldn’t see McAdams, but she could see the lower canyon if he tried to cross it. She doubted he would attempt it since he was apparently injured. More than likely, he would come the way she had, behind the falls, and so she mostly looked down in that direction. She had her sheath unbelted and her sword on the cave floor close by. She rested the sheath over a rock to form a lever and tucked the sheath beneath one of the watermelon-sized boulders ready to launch it at McAdams when he came.

While she waited for signs of McAdams, she ate another apple and an orange. She was thirsty, and the juice quenched that thirst. She had planned to save more of the food in case McAdams dragged this battle out over the course of days, but once she had started eating, she had found it too hard to stop. Her food supplies were diminishing, and this filled her with new anxiety.

But she couldn’t stop herself from eating another apple.

On top of having only a few pieces of fruit left after her binging, she was getting sleepy. She wasn’t sure how many hours had passed, since the sun hadn’t moved from its position at high noon in the sky, but boy, oh boy, could she use some sleep! She knew, of course, that McAdams would find and kill her in her sleep and that closing her eyes for even a moment was out of the question.

The adrenaline that had rushed through her body earlier when she had heard the gods warning her of McAdams’s pursuit had waned somewhat when she saw him, bloody and limping and trembling. And now that she was full and resting in this somewhat safe cave, the adrenaline seemed to have gone out of her body completely.

Think of your parents! But even her attempts to force the images of her dying parents into her head could not pull her from this sudden fatigue and sleepiness. She would not share this with Than. She had been about to pray, “I’m sleepy,” to him, but now she realized it would only make him that more fraught with anxiety. No, she would bear this burden alone. She stood up and paced around the cave, like an animal in a zoo.