Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) (21 page)

I blew air through my teeth as I walked
through the doors. They were gilded, of course.

The bathhouse was huge – impossibly huge
considering the small space the Ambrosia took up from the look of
the building outside. This room alone sprawled more like a complex,
with interconnected domed-ceilinged rooms housing baths of varying
shapes and sizes. They were all magnificently decorated and smelt
of wonderful oils and scents.

They were also full of the kind of goddesses
I didn't want to pull off my jacket to reveal my clothes in front
of. There was a certain type of goddess who frequented god bars
like the Ambrosia. The kind who would hang off a certain type of
god's arm – like Thor – and giggle, twitter, and hiccup cutely
every time said god said anything at all.

I sucked at my teeth, my hand hovering over
the tie in my jacket. I was a mix of angry, worried, embarrassed,
and uncaring.

A tall, slim, beautiful flower goddess
walked past me, her skin glistening like the morning dew on my
white roses. She looked down at me, her bright eyes lingering on
the protruding bottoms of my dirty pants. She raised a single
eyebrow, swallowed a smile, and walked off with a single
high-pitched twitter.

Twittering – it was something that birds
did, I replied in my head.

Damn it. I gave a heavy sigh, patted the tie
on my jacket, and let my hand drop. If only I could return home and
have a bath in my own modest non-gilded bathroom. I could hop into
some clean, non-sea-monster ripped clothes, and climb into a
simple, non-godly bed.

Except I couldn't. I had to... what?
Return to Thor's side and watch him drink the night away while all
I could do was imagine what would happen to me next? Not that I
could imagine it – I could only become bogged down by the details
until they....

I put a hand up to my head. The damn thing
was throbbing with a familiar pain.

I waited until it subsided, then shot
several blinking glares at the room and the swanking goddesses
around me. Sod this, I decided, and turned on my heel to
leave.

Someone grabbed my wrist. A tingle escaped
across my back, but then the tingle died when a face came down by
mine.

Dear lord, it was Hera. Hera, known
official wife-kind-of-thing of Zeus. Their relationship was
complicated – everyone knew that. They had been on-again off-again
for millennia.

The same Hera had one manicured hand clasped
around my wrist, and it was clasped tightly. Any tighter and I'd
have to get some bolt cutters to snap her fingers loose.

I took a quick look from her cast-iron grip
up to her face. “Um,” I began.

In all my time as Immigration Officer for
Earth, I'd had precious little to do with Hera. Hera was a
permanent resident. She rarely travelled away from Earth at all.
From what I'd heard, she ran a successful wedding-planner business
and had a couple of posh places scattered across Greece and Italy.
She was what you might call one of the better-integrated gods. She
had many dealings with the humans, and she kept all of them civil
and within the non-interference rules of the Integration
Office.

Before her recent vise-gripping moment, I
would have called Hera one of the better goddesses out there. She
wasn't a walking bimbo, like some of them, and she stuck to the
rules without complaint, unlike most of them.

She was, however, staring down at me, her
peacock earrings jingling as she shook her head from side-to-side.
She looked angry, exquisitely angry.

“
What have you been up to?”
she said, her lipstick-clad lips puffing out with each word. Her
eyes glittered not in a pleasant, star-like way, but more like
diamonds reflecting a ravaging, all-consuming fire.

I stared up at her. Really? Could I add Hera
to the growing list of gods who had it in for me? What had I done
to her?

Other goddesses started to gather behind
Hera, and most of them had their arms crossed and their eyes
narrowed. They were Hera's groupies, I realized with a swallow.
Just as Thor had a table-full of his own giggling yes-men, Hera had
a gaggle of yes-ladies. Most of the powerful gods and goddesses
did.

I slowly tried to pull against Hera's grip.
It didn't work. She had a hold of me and had no intention of
letting go. “Umm,” I answered, “I haven't been doing much,” I said,
though it was a lie. I'd had an extraordinarily busy couple of
days. Except, for my part, I’d only been running from things. I
hadn’t been building things, destroying things, plotting things, or
kissing things – I’d just been running.

From the look in Hera's eyes, I could tell
she thought differently. “Understand that he is my husband,” she
said slowly. She obviously thought she was either talking to the
hard of hearing or the extremely stupid.

I blinked slowly back at her – confirming
everything she thought about me. “Sorry?”

“
Even in this form, understand,”
she leant in, “That he is mine.”

Dear god.

Hera's groupies all narrowed their eyes,
several of them tapping their long fingernails against their bare
arms. They looked ready – should it come to it – for a one-sided
cat-fight.

I gave out a pop of a laugh. I knew –
hell, everyone knew – of Hera's extraordinary jealousy. Once upon a
time I'd thought the goddess had been justified. Zeus was
legendarily disloyal to his on-again off-again official wife-thing.
That Hera put up with him was a miracle. Except now Hera was
tightening her grip on my wrist and staring into my eyes, one lip
kinking to the side like a sneering caricature.

“
Oh, I'm not with Thor,” I
said in a high, almost wheezing tone. Also, I wanted to point out,
Thor was not Hera's husband. Different pantheon, dear. But I knew
Hera's legendary jealousy wasn't going to be put off by the fact
her apparent husband had grown a couple of feet and had a yellow
beard. Plus, the exact demarcation between gods with multiple
identities was a confusing one at the best of times.

I kept silent and tried to smile
encouragingly.

Hera pushed her face closer to mine, her
peacock earrings brushing against my cheeks and making me blink.
“Listen to me, you small-time goddess. I will not have—“

I pulled at my hand. Guess what? I broke
free. It was a sudden thing. Just as I’d momentarily been able to
resist Thor dragging me back through the Door of the Dead, I was
able to break free of Hera's grip. Which was somewhat surprising
considering who she was and who I wasn't. Hera was a big-time
goddess. As Zeus’ maybe-wife and as one of the official goddesses
of Olympus, she was powerful, very powerful. As the numerous sea
monsters that had attacked me recently had proven, a divinity or
creature's power was what mattered when it came to strength. It
wasn't going to be down to who had bigger biceps. It was down to
who had bigger belief. So Hera should outweigh me, hands
down....

Except with one simple tug, I broke
free.

Hera looked pallid with frustration.
Whether it was from a small-time goddess somehow besting her, or
from the prospect that the same small-time goddess was wooing one
of the functional god-identities of her maybe-husband – I didn't
know. I did see her gaze shift ferociously from my hand to my face,
though.

I took several hearty steps backwards,
bringing my hands up in a plea of defense. “Look,” I said as I
continued to back towards the door. “I didn’t... I have not – I
never would,” I tried to force the words out, but they were all
frightfully jumbled. “There's nothing going on between us!” I
managed as my back rested against the doors.

Hera didn't seem ready to take my jumbled
plea as fact, and marched towards me, her arms held stiffly at her
sides and her fingers curled wickedly.

I ran. Again. This was starting to become a
habit of mine. As someone who usually went from work straight back
to feeding her cat and mulching her roses, I rarely had the need to
run or jog. Sometimes I had to walk somewhat fast when I smelt my
muffins burning, though.

I pushed against the doors, opened them
easily, and darted back into the main room of the Ambrosia. I
headed unashamedly straight back to Thor's table. Though I did, for
a split second, entertain the possibility of bolting from the
joint. All this business of interacting with other gods was what
had seen me being hunted, I was sure of it. Until that fateful day
when I'd met up with Tolus and hopped down into the flood tunnels,
I’d been a normal, decent, and self-contained goddess, always
dressed sensibly and neatly. Now look at me? Running from the
semi-wife of one of my current protector's other identities – this
was the junk plot the pulp-fiction gods would churn out over too
much coffee and too many giant chocolate-chip cookies.

The thought of running home and trying to
ignore everything until it went back to normal lingered. But I
found my legs pulling me back to Thor's table. I was in such a
state of confusion that I ran right into my chair. The only problem
was, my chair was being occupied by a rock god. I ran into him and
it was very much like running into a solid wall. I rebounded
immediately and fell flat on my back with a resounding
thud.

Bloody hell.

Thor leaned over the table and peered down
at me, as the other gods laughed heartedly. It would have looked
funny. One messy goddess in an overly large mysterious-overcoat
running right into a giant rock-man and falling flat on her
butt.

Ha, ha, ha.

I put a hand up and covered my face,
blocking them all out as I lay there.

Yes. That's it, I was going to stay here
with my hand on my face, lying on the floor of the Ambrosia until
everything went away.

I heard Hera stomp up beside me. I heard
her, because somehow those amazingly high high-heels she always
wore made a distinct and angry clicking noise, somewhat like a
fashionable and angry crab.

I kept my hand over my face.

“
Details,” Thor snapped at me,
and he almost sounded concerned, “Sea monsters in the bathroom?” he
quipped, then his voice seemed to die in his throat.

I fancied, though I still had my fingers
clutched over my eyes, that he’d looked up to see Hera stamp over
to him. Oh, the look on his face would be priceless.

“
Hera?” Thor's voice took on
a controlled tone.

“
Thor,” Hera lingered on
the
th
sound for too long.

I was more than willing to continue to lie
still until everything erupted, then crawl off under some table
somewhere to curl up into a ball of abject pity – but then
something kicked me. It was sharp, it was quick, and it was the
pointy end of a shoe.

“
Ow,” I dodged to the side,
removing my hand from my face.

Hera stared down at me, her make-up clad
eyes so narrowed they almost closed. Hera was one of the only other
goddesses apart from me who regularly wore human clothes. Except
whereas I tended towards sensible business apparel that could be
bought for reasonable prices at the local clothing store, Hera wore
high-end fashion. She was currently wearing a well-fitting, swanky
high-cut skirt and flouncy blouse with a pair of monstrously pointy
high-heels. She also had a shiny, expensive golden choker around
her throat. Oh, and a wedding ring on. Zeus and her were obviously
more on-again than off-again. Which would explain the malignant
look she was giving me.

She went to kick me again, but I dodged out
of the way.

Sea monsters, evil gods, and being kicked by
divine wedding-planners – what next?

I pushed to my feet, not wanting to get into
a goddess cat-fight with Hera in front of a table-full of Thor
groupies. They would take bets, cheer inappropriately, and ask the
god of maize for some quick popcorn.

I need not have bothered. Hera had her full
attention turned on Thor.

Thor slowly crossed his arms and stared at
her. It was hardly an endearing, lovey-dovey move. Just the
opposite. “How many times have I told you, Hera, when I’m Thor, I’m
not Zeus,” he said his words slowly and clearly. It gave the
impression that this was something Thor had repeated often in his
life.

“
Don't you give me that multiple
identities crap,” Hera spat as she clamped her hands around her
middle and tapped one of her shoes over and over again. “When you
are Zeus, you are my husband. And darling, underneath, you are
always Zeus. The golden beard and hammer doesn't change who you
are. It doesn't give you an excuse to be hanging around with
tramps.” Hera sliced her gaze my way.

Tramp? I was a tramp now? Technically, in
my current garb, I did resemble one meaning of the word, but not
the one Hera intended. The divine wedding-planner was suggesting
that I – clean loving goddess of details who spent all her nights
at home with a book and a cat – was the divine equivalent of a
loose woman.

I was wearing my PJs, for Pete’s sake. Any
of the other golden-skinned, twittering, tiny-toga-wearing
goddesses sitting at Thor's table were a better candidate for
trying to catch the Nordic god's eye than me.

Thor started off with a low laugh which
only got louder until it boomed out in great whoops. “Tramps?” He
slid his gaze over to me, caught my eye, then laughed
louder.

It was when everyone else – minus Hera –
joined in that it happened. I snapped. I pushed to my feet
stiffly.

Screw it. I'd had enough with being the
butt of his ridiculous jokes. Enough of waiting around with Thor as
he drank away precious time that should be used saving me/the
entire freaking universe. If he was this irresponsible, then so be
it. I wasn't going to wilt in his company and receive volley after
volley from his maybe-wife.