Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) (9 page)

I put a hand up to my middle. My fingers
brushed against the torn, wet, and muddy fabric of my blouse. I
checked for blood. Yes, gods had blood. Unlike humans, it was not
red – it was crystal clear. Also unlike humans, losing blood
wouldn’t kill a divinity. Only losing the source of their power
would. Still, blood was a useful indication of injury.

I brought my fingers up to my face. Though
there was no light, I could still see, and I could see blood.

“
You think the Immigration
Officer,” one god started, stressing the word immigration as if it
were the worst insult he could think of, “Would mind if we took the
sea monster's head as a trophy?”

Ah, yeah, yeah she would. I didn't bother
replying out loud. I stood and tried hard not to fall over.

Thor shifted his jaw around, took a sniff,
cracked his shoulders, and shook his head. “The Immigration Officer
is about to faint – you can do it while she's unconscious.”

Before I could splutter and tell Thor what I
thought of his hilarious statement – I fell over.

Thor didn't step forward and catch me. He
let me fall.

As I fell, I shut down. Unlike a human, a
god does not need sleep. They do, however, when the situation calls
for it, have to slip into a regenerative reverie – a reverie I was
falling into regardless of whether I wanted to stay conscious long
enough to stop any enterprising god from dragging a giant sea
monster head back to his Earth apartment for an impressive
mantelpiece decoration.

I didn't have a choice in the matter.

I noticed one last detail – Thor looming
over me – then I conked out.

I awoke in god hospital. Unlike
ordinary hospital, there
were no nurses or doctors. There weren’t clean
white walls or shiny expensive equipment either. Nope. I was on a
plain slab of stone in a room with all sorts of candles and incense
burning. There were potions lined up alongside me and a pleasant
breeze was blowing through the place.

I felt... better.

I also knew the incense, candles, potions,
and breeze weren't what was making me better – they were all for
show and tradition. Nope, one of the healing goddesses had done the
majority of the fixing up, and the rest had been my own
regenerative powers.

To boost them along, I sunk into the details
of my surroundings: the way my hair fluttered gently across my face
from the breeze, the way the incense puffed in great rings of
smoke, and the way the candlelight flickered to and fro. It was all
peaceful and all thankfully slow. After the speed of the – I'll
admit – one-sided battle with the sea monster, I needed to take
things slowly.

Here was where I could do that. I was
safe, there was nothing I had to do, and I could indulge in my
power all I liked. The more I indulged, the quicker I would
heal.

I felt strong enough to glance further
around the room. Lined up on the ledge to my side were various
statues, stones, and trinkets of amazing and intricate detail.
There were tiny brass boxes with enameled pictures of various
scenes. There were also pots and earthenware depicting everything
from battles to mundane chores like mucking out the sea-monster
pit.

I breathed again – though I didn't need to.
I felt the air swell around me. I felt my lips part gently.

I rose, pushing up until I sat squarely on
my allotted slab of stone.

A god swanned in. “Oh, dear, you are up
then.” He clapped his hands – which were covered in rings and
bangles – and they jangled and clinked. “You had me worried for a
moment there. Such a tight grip that nasty sea monster had around
you.” The god made a face as if he were gasping for air, then he
flopped a hand at me. “It must have been terrible.”

“
It wasn't pleasant.”

“
Now look at you, all
better. Heard you were the goddess of details,” he said, hands
moving as he spoke, jewelry moving more. “I surrounded you with all
the details I could.”

“
Thank you.” I sighed and pushed
off the slab. My feet touched the marble of the floor, but it
wasn't cold. Nothing about this place was cold. Or, more likely, I
was now so accustomed to my god-like powers that I was failing to
note the mundane and human notion of warmth.

“
As far as I’m concerned,
you are all healed – you can take a look for yourself, if you'd
like.” The god gestured towards my middle.

I looked down to see I was in a toga. I
patted my middle and felt assured it was still there. Then I went
back to the fact I was wearing a toga. I hadn’t worn a toga in at
least two thousand years. I’d worn skirts, pants, dresses – you
name it. But it had been millennia since I'd dressed in the usual
garb of my kind.

I patted my hair and realized it was being
held back by some kind of laurel. Wow, it had been longer since I'd
worn one of those.

The god noted my surprise. He gave a
pressed-lipped grimace. “Oooh, you don't like it? I tried to look
up the files to see what you wore – but I couldn't get the details.
So I popped you into the standard toga and laurel. Pale white isn't
your color? Though with that gorgeous white hair of yours, you can
pull off white better than most of the ice goddesses.”

“
Ah, thanks. The clothes are
fine,” I lied. The clothes weren't fine. They were odd. They
reminded me of a history I’d abandoned long ago. I was a woman who
lived in a cottage with white roses, a cat, and a pantry stocked
with everything you needed to make any type of muffin you could
think of. I was no longer the kind of goddess who milled around in
white togas and golden laurels and stared down on humanity from
atop heaven.

“
Now you are up, you might want
to....” The man pressed his fingers together and looked mildly
concerned.

He wasn't going to say duck, was he? Thor
wasn't waiting to thwack me on the head, final payback for my
earlier insult, right?

“
Calm yourself. You are
going to have to answer some questions, you see.” He scratched his
nose.

I frowned at him. “The Integration Office
will want to get my side of the story so it can close the case on
this. Those details will be vital to helping prevent future
incidents,” I recited the company policy easily, and with the usual
monotone voice I used as Immigration Officer.

“
Oh, that's okay then, I thought
you'd be worried, see. It's just that sometimes goddesses and gods
get nervous when they know they have to speak to Him.” The god
flopped another hand at me.

My eyebrows descended in a
twitch
. As
far as I was aware, the god I would be dealing with was Tremulous,
god of Law Enforcement. Yes, he was a brusque fellow, but nice
enough once you got to know him.

“
Sometimes gods get a bit
put-off by the one-eyed stare and the generally foreboding
countenance.” The god laughed it off now he'd confirmed I had no
problem with the whole thing.

“
Sorry? One eye? Tremulous
has two eyes,” I noted. A detail I was hardly likely to
forget.

“
Who? You'll be talking to Odin.”
He chuckled. “He's going to be overseeing this one personally. That
sea monster was one of the old ones trapped under the fjords or
something. Anyhow, it sounds as if some wayward divinity let it
loose. What, with those fjords being his territory,” the god leaned
in conspiratorially and pressed two ring-clad fingers together, “He
is a little angry.”

A little angry. Odin, a little angry. There
was a reason Thor had a temper like a super volcano. He was Odin's
son. There was a reason Odin was feared, more than any other god on
Earth. There was a reason all the other gods and goddesses avoided
him like the divine equivalent of the plague.

That
god had a temper.

The notion I would be recounting my
sea-monster adventure directly to Earth's most tempestuous god was
not a comforting one. I would rather walk right back into that
tunnel and take my chances with the creature again. “Oh. This
should be an Integration Office matter. I work for the Immigration
Office – I know the procedure. I should be talking to
Tremulous.”

“
Oh – that's right, you do work
for the Immigration Office,” his smile stiffened, “You refused my
application to go sunbathing on the top of the Eiffel Tower several
years back.”

Oh, I had, hadn't I? Because applying to
go sunbathing in public while strapped to the top of the Eiffel
Tower was never going to get approved. It was bloody ridiculous.
But you could never outright tell gods and goddesses that. You
couldn't look them in the eye and tell them they couldn't enflame a
war between France and Germany because they wanted old-fashioned
Gaul-on-Barbarian fighting action. They always assumed it was their
right, and I was the pesky idiot stepping all over their wishes.
None of them stepped back to appreciate the world was different now
– you couldn't parade among the people anymore. You couldn't sit on
top of a cliff, throwing lightning bolts at peasants and cheering
with your god mates. Doubly, triply no could you sun bake while
strapped to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

“
Anyhow,” he said, voice a touch
cooler, “He's waiting for you. I wouldn't keep him waiting long
either – he hates that.”

Yep. I imagined there was a long list of
things Odin hated: everything from frost giants, to leaking taps,
to meddling immigration officers.

Dejectedly, I followed behind the medicine
god as he led me through the halls of the hospital. The place was
peaceful and had that otherworldly feel that confirmed it was a
non-man-made structure. It was floating right in the clouds, which
was a dead giveaway.

I caught glances into rooms as we walked
along the wide corridor. I wondered – by way of distraction – what
the other divine patients had done to see themselves in god
hospital. Had they also had run-ins with sea monsters in flood
tunnels? Or – more likely – had they gotten into some riotous bar
fights with other equally riotous gods?

It wasn't enough to distract me from where
I was going. While it was true I thought Thor was the worst Nordic
god out there, I had to qualify that. Thor was rude, brash,
violent, boisterous, indulgent, and hairy. But nothing compared to
Odin. Odin was the equivalent of a god-like Christopher Lee. He had
a voice with more gravitas than a planet ripping asunder, he had a
beard whiter than the brightest light in the cosmos, and he had all
the presence of the galaxy wrapped up on itself and concentrated
down into the form of an ordinary-sized man.

Oh dear. What a day.

We soon turned a corner and straight into a
cavernous hall. Old-school divinities loved the megalithic when it
came to architecture. It reminded them of fighting giants, so they
built their homes and palaces with the correct proportions should a
giant pop their head through the window and suggest a
god-battle.

It was circular and had great big marble
pillars all around the sides. In the center was a single throne set
upon a raised marble plinth. There weren't any steps leading to the
throne, and the distance was greater than a meter – meaning either
Odin had to scramble up and down into the thing when no one was
watching... or he just flew up there.

This hospital wasn't equipped with its own
Odin-suitable throne, so the king of the Nordic gods had obviously
brought one with him. Which would have been humorous were it not
for the fact Odin stared at me while I walked through the hall.

He was not as large as Thor was, though he
was still big for an apparent human. He was in full, shiny,
silver-white armor that matched the color of his beard. Beside him,
floating on its own, was his magical spear. He had a long white
beard that cut down to the center of his chest, and white hair to
match. He had a simple golden eye patch (well, as simple as solid
gold could allow) that covered the eye he’d legendarily given up in
exchange for wisdom.

One arm rested heavily on the solid side of
his throne, the other propped up his head as he stared fixedly my
way.

I wanted to put my hands up and point out
this hadn’t been my fault. I also wanted to foolishly ask him
whether he could tell his magical spear to stop floating so darn
threateningly.

There were other gods standing demurely
before him at the foot of his throne. It took me until I stood
alongside them to realize who they were. They were the gods who'd
saved me from the sea monster. Yes, Thor was there too. He was no
longer in jeans and a T-shirt. He was wearing his full battle
armor. It was as shiny and imposing as Odin's.

Thor stood respectfully at the foot of his
father. Well, one of his fathers.

Just as Thor had multiple identities, so did
Odin. Once upon a time, Odin had also been Saturn and Cronos, the
fathers of Jupiter and Zeus respectfully. Both Saturn and Cronos
were no longer technically alive. Or, to put it another way, they
were no longer functioning divine identities as far as the
Integration Office was concerned.

When Thor was Jupiter or Zeus, he was the
bona fide leader of his own pantheon. When he assumed his Nordic
persona, he had to kowtow to his father. He was like a boy who'd
grown up to assume responsibility over only two-thirds of the
family business while his dad still held the most important
chunk.

A part of me wondered how odd it must be for
Thor to be standing before Odin. Before I could get into the
complex daddy-issues a triple-identity god would have, Odin cleared
his throat.