The Valkyrie (27 page)

“You look like
you need an ambrosia break.” Glory said.

“I’ve got some
coke in my bag.” Liberty said.

“I think we’d
better go and mingle.”

“Yes, that
would be the proper thing to do. Can I go have a lie down
first?”

“Sure, go up
the stairs and take the second left. I set up a room for you in
case you wanted to stay here tonight.” Liberty nodded and hugged
her friend before trudging upwards for a quick nap. Glory watched
Liberty’s back as she wandered wearily upstairs. She knew that she
had to go and find Hera and get the discussion about Chippendale
furniture over and done with.

***

Apollo didn’t
like the bar they were in. The barmaid kept flirting with him, the
slut. She wasn’t Glory.

***

Glory found
Hera playing an intense game of whist with Fortune, that she was
clearly determined to win. Hera didn’t pay much attention when she
told her that she’d accepted Ares’s offer. She asked Hera and her
fellow card sharks whether they would like a cup of ambrosian tea.
They all said yes but were rather too engrossed in the game to pay
much attention to her. Glory went and instructed one of the wood
elves to sort them out and disappeared promptly from the room,
thankful for the lucky escape.

***

Apollo still
didn’t like the bar they were in. Now the barmaid had her tongue
down his throat in the disabled loo, the slut. She wasn’t
Glory.

***

Glory went in
search of Honour and Bea. She found Honour in the garden about to
get on the Ferris wheel. Honour waved wildly for Glory to come and
join her and the pair got on. Honour had a bag of ambrosian cotton
candy with her that Glory nibbled at.

“Where’s Bea?”
Glory asked.

“She said she
felt tired so she went for a quick nap.” Honour said taking in the
view of England’s green pastures.

“In other words
she’s shagging Liberty.” Glory said raising an eyebrow.

“So that’s
definitely a thing then. Apollo won’t tolerate that.”

“Well…” Glory
said tailing off.

“Bea
intimidates me.”

“Keep your wits
about you.” Glory put a finger to her lips before changing the
subject and pointing southwards “If you crane that way you can make
out Glastonbury.”

“Oh yes, that
sword of yours in the armoury that’s stuck in a rock.” Honour
began.

“That’s
Excalibur.”

“You’re so
fucking cool, I hate you sometimes.”

***

Apollo still
didn’t like the bar they were in. Now the barmaid was sucking him
off, the slut. She wasn’t Glory.

***

Honour had
decided that they should go get a drink and have a dance in the
great hall. There was some serious pill popping going on around
them. Honour scored some MDMA off one of her cousins and was proper
going for it. Glory stood on the side watching Amethyst gurning
with some of the handmaidens from Asgard. Part of her really wanted
to join in but there was a much larger part telling her that it
would be unwise. She could feel herself being scrutinised from
across the room. She was sure it was Artemis. The DJ she booked had
been a good choice. There was a lot of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé
remixes (good misandrist classics) interspersed with some hard core
and jungle classics.

***

Apollo still
didn’t like the bar they were in. He was fucking the barmaid over
the sink, the slut. She wasn’t Glory.

***

Glory left
Honour doing the running man to
Girls That Run The World
in
the great hall. She wandered through her house to the music room
where she found an empty seat next to Athena and settled down to
some Wagner.

***

Apollo didn’t
like the strip club that they were now in. The girls looked ropey,
the sluts. They weren’t Glory. The barmaid had had her neck broken
and left out by the bins with the rest of the rubbish, the slut.
She would never have been Glory.

***

During the
concerts interval Athena turned and chatted to Glory. Most of their
conversation was about the merits of German Romanticism. Athena
congratulated her on her engagement and exclaimed that it should be
a most prosperous union. Glory wasn’t going to mention the vases.
She had decided that to do so would be unwise.

***

Apollo still
didn’t like the strip club they were in. Dionysius was getting a
private dance from a girl whose roots were showing. Hermes and Ares
were doing lines of coke off some girl’s orange peel arse. Zeus had
disappeared about twenty minutes ago with three girls and probably
wouldn’t reappear until tomorrow morning despite telling Hera that
it wasn’t going to be that sort of affair. Eros just sat in a
corner quietly getting a kick watching it all.

***

Glory left the
concert and went to go and check that the wood elves were doing
alright and whether they were running short of gin yet.

***

Apollo still
didn’t like the strip club. He was sitting in a private room making
the two bleach blonde girls fuck each other. They weren’t
Glory.

***

After making
sure that there was enough booze left, Glory went on drunk patrol
in the great hall. It had reached that part of the night where some
of the girls couldn’t handle their booze anymore. She had booked
minibuses to take everyone home once they’d had enough and she had
a spread sheet of everyone’s addresses from when she sent out the
invitations. There were a few Valkyries who had reached the point
of no return that she had to herd out of the great hall and into a
minibus.

***

Apollo still
didn’t like the strip club. He was having a threesome with the
girls now. They still weren’t Glory.

***

The concert
finished at around the same time as the card players had had enough
of losing all their money to Hera. Glory waved goodbye to them all
from the portico as they went home after a lovely civilised
evening. Liberty appeared at the top of the stairs saying that she
didn’t feel in the mood and was driving home. She’d find Bea and
Honour and take them back with her. Glory kissed her goodbye on the
cheek.

***

Apollo still
didn’t like the strip club. One of the girls was crying and the
other one was unconscious in a corner dying of internal bleeding.
They weren’t Glory.

***

The party was
winding down. The fun fair rides had stopped, all the bars had
finally been drunk dry and the DJ had turned the lights on in the
great hall revealing the stragglers who Glory quickly escorted out
of the house and into minibuses.

***

Apollo was
standing on a street corner in Soho. He picked up his phone and
checked where Glory was. He had slipped a little tracker app onto
her phone earlier in the week. He set off for Avalon as he had once
before.

***

Glory was
pleased to finally have the house to herself again. She magicked it
all clean, thankfully no one had thrown up on her carpets, and went
and sat down to the piano in the music room. She was lost in the
melody when she Apollo walked into the room lingering by the door.
She stopped playing.

“Please don’t
stop. You play so beautifully.”

“Hardly.” Glory
said getting up and rifling through the sheets for something
different to play.

“I need to
shower, where’s the bathroom?”

“I’ll take you,
it’s a warren upstairs.” Glory said about to walk over.

“I can find it
on my own.” Apollo said backing out of the door.

“What’s
wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m
just a bit drunk is all.”

“Alright, well
go up the stairs, go right and it’s the ninth door on the left hand
side. I’ll be in the library if you want me.”

“Of course I
want you.” Apollo said. He looked at Glory. How could he not want
her? Apollo felt the need to absolve himself of those whores. He
needed to wash away the unclean from his skin and purify for Glory.
He could not go near her covered in blood. He couldn’t have her
smell them on him.

***

Glory went back
downstairs and into the library. She lit the fire and curled up on
a leather armchair near it with her copy of
Wuthering
Heights
. She had read it so many times that the spine had
nearly had enough. After ten minutes she put the book down and
reflected that the last week had been so strange. Rationally she
knew that any form of relationship with Apollo was a bad idea and
had managed to stick to that for so many hundreds of years and yet
here she was irrationality itself. Glory knew then that she had to
still be in love with him. That box of Eros’s wasn’t effective
enough. Maybe she should just open it and get it done with? She
heard Apollo come in and wander around the room looking at the
volumes on the shelves. He finally selected one and came over to
Glory.

“Read to me.”
Apollo said handing Glory
Paradise Lost
.

“Alright.”
She’d barely made it through a stanza before her bra was off. She
wasn’t sure that she wanted to have sex with him.

Apollo woke up alone in Glory’s bedroom
in Avalon. He rolled over into her pillow that still smelt like her
hair and took in her scent. He loved her so much that he could
almost eat her. He wondered where she was. He didn’t like not
knowing. Apollo got out of bed to go and hunt Glory down. He
scoured the whole house but could find neither hide nor hair of
her. He pulled out his phone to activate the tracking beacon.
Evidently she was still in Avalon. Apollo found his shoes and went
outside into the grounds, his pace picked up as he scoured the
Capability Brown landscape. He broke into a run as he approached
the orchard.

“There you
bloody are.” Apollo said as Glory came into sight.

“Good morning.”
Glory said brightly from up a ladder, she noticed that he was
wearing a pair of loafers “You’re not wearing the right sort of
shoes for jogging. Those won’t give you proper support. Your arches
will collapse. God I sound like someone’s mum. Over the last two
days I’ve become sensible. I don’t like it.”

“What are you
doing out here this early.” he said trying hard to look like he
hadn’t been panicking.

“Picking
apples,” she said pointing at the basket near the base of the
ladder. “I don’t know why but I keep thinking about them.”

“That’s a
strenuous activity.” he said moving to the base of the ladder and
was holding it in place.

“Have you ever
had one of these?” she asked climbing down from the ladder. Apollo
took her hand as she climbed down and then wouldn’t let it go.

“No I haven’t.”
he said. Glory picked one out of the basket, took a bite and then
offered it to him.

“They’re
yummy.” Immortals could tolerate some fruit that they grew
themselves. Hades’ pomegranates were legendary.

“They are good
aren’t they.” he picked up the basket for her. Apollo put his arm
around her waist and steered her back towards the house where she
couldn’t get into any trouble.

“I’m think I’m
going to go back to Hackney in an hour or so.” Glory said as they
walked into the house.

“Do you have
to?”

“Yes, I’ve got
to prepare for a certain wedding tomorrow.” Glory said. Apollo
didn’t like Glory talking about it. He pushed her against the
garden wall, rolled her skirt up and pushed her knickers aside.

***

Glory got back
to Hackney and dumped her stuff in the hallway. She went down to
the kitchen to find a melancholic Liberty sitting there on her own
staring at the table.

“I don’t want
to go through with it.” Liberty said.

“You don’t have
to if you don’t want to.” Glory said.

“I do.”

“Are we the
only two in?”

“Yes, Bea and
Honour have gone to Valhalla to train.” A solitary tear rolled down
Liberty’s cheek. It fell to the ground as a small ruby.

“Why do you
have to?”

“Because it’s a
fixed point in time.”

“Why are they
making you marry him?”

“Who, my
father?”

“Yes and Bea
and Athena.”

“Eventually one
of them will have to come out on top. My dad doesn’t think it’ll be
Apollo. But I think that’s an educated guess rather than it being
set in stone.”

“They’re
playing us off of each other. I think it’s time we both came
straight with each other. You’re my best friend and I love you.
We’re each other’s only chance of getting out of this whole mess in
one piece. I think there’s something in our natures that they’re
using. If they’re expecting Apollo to fire the first shot of the
war then he needs to be at liberty to do so,” Glory paused for a
moment “and as far as I am concerned, I’m his mental little weak
spot. We all know what he’s like when he’s in love. I’m the barrel
they’ll get him over. Ares’s attempt at courtship has pushed him
down the path of self-destruction.”

“Are you in
love with him? Please don’t be, he’s unhinged”

“I know that
rationally but that doesn’t mean I can help myself. He keeps
begging me to just trust him. I don’t know my feelings. I think I
care for Ares too. Are you in love with Bea/Gravity?”

“Yes. We’re
both buggered aren’t we?”

“We’re
doomed.”

“There’s got to
be a way out of this.”

Glory’s phone
started ringing; it was her new best friend. “Hi Hera, no he’s not
here I’m afraid. No not I’ve seen him since yesterday. No he’s not
rung or text me today. I’m sure he’s probably just hungover
somewhere. Are you sure that he isn’t at Aphrodite’s? Oh really.
Sectioning her might be a little extreme. Of course, I’ll let you
know if I hear from him. Ok, bye Hera.”

“Ares is
missing right?”

“Shit. Fuck.
Shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” A tear ran down Glory cheek “He has to be
dead. How do you kill the god of war and murder? That’s my big idea
down the pan. What are we going to do now?”