Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (274 page)

“What on earth have you been up to? You look like you’ve been in a fight.” There was no accusation in his voice, just disappointment. I opened my mouth in denial but he said, “You have blood on your coat.”

“Oh.” I frowned at the spots of dried blood on the front of my tan coat. “This is my favorite one too. I’d better put it in cold water.”

“Sara,” he said in warning tone. I stopped and he sighed heavily. “What happened?”

I made a face. “You say that like I’m out there brawling every other day.”

“So you were in a fight.”

Busted
. “I had a perfectly good reason.” I held up the cat so he could see it over his monitor.

Nate stared at the scrawny bundle of fur in my arms. “Is that thing alive?”

“Of course it’s alive!” I stroked the cat’s head and he purred loudly. “Do you think I’d be walking around with a dead cat?”

“Do you want me to answer that?”

I made a face. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m into voodoo now and I thought I’d start with zombie cats.” I wondered what he’d think if he knew that there were people out there who really could reanimate corpses.

He stared at me like he was trying to decide if that was a joke. I used the opportunity to try to slip away.

“Not so fast. You still didn’t tell me what happened. Sit.”

I took the chair in front of the desk and laid the cat on my lap as Nate maneuvered his motorized chair around the desk. He parked it two feet from me and said, “Spill it.”

I told him about seeing Scott and Ryan chasing the cat and how I followed them to the beach. With as little detail as possible, I related the altercation between me and Scott, making the fight sound more like a shoving match than a fight. I still felt so ashamed and afraid of what I’d done that I really did not want to relive it.

“So where did the blood come from?”

“Um… this poor little guy is all scratched up. It must have come from him.”

He case a suspicious look at the cat. “Speaking of your new friend – what do you plan to do with him?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Clean him up and feed him for now.”

Nate was silent for a long moment. I waited for the double scolding – one for fighting and the other for bring home yet another stray. My uncle isn’t an animal hater. He just likes order in his home and animals aren’t exactly the tidiest roommates.

As if on cue, Daisy, our three-legged Beagle limped into the room. I don’t know how she lost her leg. I used to see her around the waterfront and it amazed me how well she moved on three legs. One day six months ago she didn’t move fast enough and got hit by a car. Healing her took a lot out of me but I saved her. Nate was not happy when I came home with a dog, but who could put a three-legged dog out in the street? Now Daisy was his almost constant companion and, though Nate would never admit it, I knew he liked her company.

Daisy came over to me and sniffed and the cat let out a warning hiss. Chastised, the dog sat back on her haunches to watch the newcomer from a safe distance.

“Sara, you’re seventeen, too old to be fighting with boys down at the wharf no matter what the reason.” I tried to speak up but he held up a hand. “You spend too much time alone when you should be going out with your friends, having fun. And you should be dating boys – not fighting with them.”

I squirmed on my chair. I was pretty sure no other teenage girl had a parent telling them to go out to parties and date. “I have friends,” I argued weakly. Okay maybe I had never dated and I wasn’t a social butterfly but I did have friends. As for girls, well they didn’t seem to warm up to me much. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t that they hated me; they just didn’t seem comfortable around me.

Nate scoffed. “Friends like Greg you mean? There is a model of good behavior. I suppose that’s where you learned to fight.”

“Greg is not a bad guy – and no, he didn’t teach me to fight. Just because he’s a biker doesn’t make him a criminal.” There was that
one
thing but I didn’t think juvenile records counted once you reached eighteen. And I wasn’t about to bring that up to Nate.

“He might not be a criminal but he’s no angel either.”

I had to suppress a smile because Nate was right about that. Greg was definitely no angel. A year older than me, Greg was already the school bad ass when I started high school and met him for the first time. He grew up working in his uncle’s bike shop and he was tougher and brawnier than half the senior boys and not afraid to show it. There was something about the roguish tilt of his head and the gleam in his green eyes when he smiled – or scowled at you – that either drew you in or scared the heck out of you. I wasn’t sure if it was the way he did his own thing without a care for anyone’s opinion or the fact that he could have bullied anyone in school and chose not to, but I liked him immediately. He didn’t really associate with the other students so I’m not sure why he decided to befriend me. One day he just started sitting with me at lunch and when he got his first bike he gave me rides and took me to Jed’s with him and his friends. I even had a crush on him for a short while until his friend Mike told me I reminded them of Greg’s younger cousin which put a damper on any romantic notions I had for him.

I missed Greg. He and Mike had moved to Philadelphia right after graduation to work for Mike’s uncle who owned an automotive parts plant. It wasn’t the best job in the world but as long as it paid the rent and kept his bike running, Greg was happy. We kept in touch through email but it had been over a week since I last heard from him.

“Greg moved to Philly, remember? I haven’t seen him since June.”

“Well I won’t pretend to be sad about that.” He tapped the arm of his chair. “What about Roland? I remember when you two used to be inseparable. And Peter too.”

“We still hang out. We just like to do some different things now, that’s all.” It wasn’t that Roland didn’t try to include me, and I
did
go to an occasional party with him. I just wasn’t into partying as much as my best friend. Roland understood that even if no one else did.

“It just seems like you’ve become more closed off the last few years. It’s not healthy to shut everyone out.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s my fault. I left you alone too much when you were younger. I know I’m not your father… I just wish I knew how to get through to you.” He gave me a pleading look. “You spend so much time alone or off doing God knows what. I have no idea where you are or what you’re doing.”

“Nate, I–” I faltered because we always seemed to end up here. I mean what was I supposed to say?
“Hey Nate, guess what. I saved a life today. I have this amazing power that lets me heal things. But I can’t fix your spine because it doesn’t work on humans. By the way, can I invite my troll friend over for dinner?”

He pressed a button on his chair and it began to back around the desk again. “Go get some dinner. I left lasagna in the oven for you.”

I carried the cat to the kitchen and found a can of tuna for him, making a mental note to pick up some food for him tomorrow. Daisy followed us and I poured some food into her dish before I popped my own dinner in the microwave.

Nate’s lasagna was one of my favorite foods but I could have been eating cardboard and not noticed it with the myriad of emotions swirling through me. What had happened to me on the beach? In the span of a few hours I went from saving a life to hurting someone. Seeing what I was capable of freaked me out more than a little.

To top it all off I had lied to Nate again. I sat quietly at our small kitchen table pushing my food around with my fork. I hated deceiving Nate, but there were too many things in my life that I couldn’t tell him about. It was easier to let him be disappointed in me than to try to tell him the truth.

I wished there was a way to bridge the distance between us. He was all the family I had and I knew my dad would have wanted us to be close. It wasn’t Nate’s fault; he had been a good parent to me after my dad’s death. I was pretty messed up when I came here and I never opened up to him as much as I could have. And then I discovered Remy and the real world and suddenly I had all these secrets I could not share with anyone.

It’s not that I didn’t care because I loved Nate more than anything in the world. We just had so little in common. Nate was one of those people who didn’t believe in the paranormal or supernatural or anything that did not have a solid scientific explanation. He never read fantasy fiction or watched supernatural movies or TV shows. It drove him nuts when I watched Buffy reruns so I usually watched them in my room. In some ways, he was more closed off than I was and I wasn’t sure he could handle learning about my power and the real world around him.

I rinsed my plate and retreated upstairs with the cat in my arms. The top floor of our building was split into an attic and an open space that served as my bedroom, kind of like a loft apartment without the kitchen. On one side stood my bed, dresser and desk. Beneath the large window on the other side was a faded green couch that was barely visible beneath the clothes and books strewn across it, and beside the couch were two tall overflowing bookcases. My dad had been an English teacher and he had loved books, especially the classics. He used to say “No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.” I looked it up a few years ago and found that it came from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Sometimes I’m not too sure about God, but I agree with my dad and Browning about books. I’ve read all of his books and added my own to the collection. I think he’d be pleased to know I grew up to share his passion for reading.

The walls of my room were bare except for a few pictures of my dad and some of me, Roland and Peter. Roland called the room depressingly empty and lamented the fact that I refused to replace my dad’s old stereo with a newer one. But I liked my space. It was private and I had my own bathroom, even if it was the size of a closet. The best part was that the room had lots of windows with a wide view of the bay. What more could a girl want?

“Alright cat, let’s get you cleaned up before you go anywhere near my furniture.” I grabbed Daisy’s shampoo and a towel and proceeded to wash the filthy animal from head to toe. He was too lethargic from his meal and the healing to put up much of a fight and he purred like a little engine when I toweled him dry. I set him down on an old blanket on the couch and he stretched happily and curled into a ball, completely at home.

After I set up the litter box used by our last feline guest, I left the cat to his nap and jumped in the shower, hoping the hot water would wash away more than the grime from today’s events. But nothing could cleanse me of the memories of what had happened with Scott. I had always thought of myself as a good person, but only a monster would relish hurting a person the way I had. I shivered despite the hot water flowing over me.

My thoughts went to the little boggie family as I dried myself and I wondered how they were doing. Instead of grieving the loss of a child tonight, Fren and Mol were at home with their new baby. I had saved a life today – that had to count for something. Was that enough to redeem me for the awful thing I’d done after?

Dressed in a cami and my favorite pajama bottoms, I popped in a Fleetwood Mac CD and carried my sketchbook over to the bed. I inherited my dad’s CD collection after he died along with his love for seventies rock. It was one of the few things Nate and I had in common – our taste in music – and he even borrowed it on occasion. I shook off my regret as I flipped open the sketchbook to a clean page. If it wasn’t for this whole secret life thing I had going on, my uncle and I might have been a lot closer than we were.

I thought about the boggies, summoning an image of the tiny boggie infant I’d held in my arms. My pencil flew over the paper as I tried to capture his likeness. I drew him in my hands because that was my clearest picture of him, the moment he opened his mouth and bawled for the first time. When I was finished, I smiled at the drawing of the little creature, his squashed face scrunched up unhappily and his tiny mouth open in a silent cry. I was no da Vinci but my sketches weren’t half bad. It wasn’t like I shared them with anyone anyway.

A tapping at one of the windows drew my attention away from my sketch and I ran over to open the window to admit a large black crow. He cawed and flapped around the room a few times before landing on my outstretched hand.

“Harper, it’s about time you came home,” I scolded him, stroking the soft feathers at the back of his neck. He’d been gone for two days and I was worried he’d gotten into trouble. Technically, he didn’t live with us but he liked to hang out here, especially on the roof. He had kind of adopted me after I saved him from Scott but he still liked to go off and do his own thing.

“If you’re hungry, there’s food in your dish,” I told him when he shifted restlessly, a cue that he wanted a treat. I wasn’t surprised when he left my hand and flew out the window headed for the roof. More than once I’d suspected he understood me when I talked to him. I read that crows very intelligent and Harper had gotten a good dose of my power when I’d healed him. Who knew what other affects it had on animals?

I left the window open for him and sat down at my laptop to check out the online activity. Today was the second time I’d used troll bile to purchase medicine for Remy and I was paranoid as hell that someone would trace it back to me and especially to Remy. It was the main reason I dealt only with Malloy. For all his crafty ways, Malloy was very discreet about his business. In his line of work he had to be if he didn’t want to end up gutted in an alley.

The message boards were busy. There was no mention of troll bile but another thread caught my eye – one about vampire activity in Portland. Vampires were the most common topic discussed on the boards and there were always tons of posts about vampire sightings though it was pretty easy to distinguish the real deal from the hype. I’d never seen a vampire but I knew plenty about them, mostly learned from Remy, and my education had taught me that Hollywood and fiction writers have absolutely no clue.

Vampires usually keep to large cities where their hunting can be camouflaged by the higher crime rate. They live in covens and like to hunt in small packs and, while they are mostly active at night, mature vamps can handle exposure to daylight as long as it is not direct sunlight and not for long periods. Younger vamps, those less than a hundred years old, not strong enough to withstand even a minute of daylight. Most vamps, young and old, wouldn’t risk the chance of meeting the sun so they stay hidden during the day.