Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (122 page)

He gave her a smirk. “Sorry.”

“Why did you leave? I thought you were staying the night.” She ate some of the cereal while she waited for his explanation.

He took her face in his hands. “You look so cute first thing in the morning.” He kissed the top of her head.

“How would you know? You weren’t there.” She couldn’t hide the slight hostility in her voice.

“Was too. I didn’t leave you till dawn. I wanted a quick shower and a moment with my sisters. They had news.”

Clifford put his paws on Than’s jean-clad shins.

“Hey, boy. Good morning to you, too,” Than said, patting the dog.

“So, what was the news?” Therese stood to rinse the bowl in the sink. “Want some?”

“No thanks. I already ate.” Then he said, “The news is complicated and I’m not sure…”

She left the bowl in the sink, turned, and pressed herself against him. “Tell me. I want to know.”

He toyed with her mussed up hair, straightening it, smiling. “You’re so cute, and you’ve been so happy. I hate to…ruin that.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist. “As long as I’m with you, I’ll be happy.”

The doorbell made her jump. “Who could that be? I’m not dressed.”

Hold on. He vanished and then instantly reappeared. “It’s Pete Holt.”

She sighed. “Oh God. Will you get it while I run up and get dressed?”

“He won’t like that.”

“Too bad.”

She dashed up the stairs and quickly changed into a knit top and matching short skirt. She brushed her hair out, glossed her lips, and hustled back down.

Pete lingered at the front door, a wide space between him and Than. He wore jeans and boots and no shirt and was sweaty and grimy, as though he had just finished cleaning the barn. “Hey, Therese.” Pete’s voice was sobered, nearly grave.

“Hey, Pete.”

“Sorry to barge in…”

“Don’t apologize.”

“My mom sent me to deliver your earnings. She would have given them to you yesterday, but…Hey, are you feeling better?” He glanced at Than and back at her.

“Yeah, thanks.” She gave him a hesitant nod. “And thanks again for covering for me. I hope it wasn’t too much of a drag.”

“Not at all.” He gave Than another glance.

They all three shared a moment of awkward silence without looking at one another.

Therese finally said, “Well, hey, thanks for coming by.”

“Oh, sure. Here’s the money.” He held up a white envelope. “I don’t want to get your house dirty.”

She crossed over to him and took the money. “Thanks.”

“I’ll give you a call later. And hey, Mom says you’re welcome to come visit any time if you get bored and want to, I don’t know, hang out while we work the horses.”

“Thanks. Sounds good.”

She followed him through the screened porch, where Pete turned to her and muttered, “Are you two going out or something?”

Therese blushed. “Um, or something, I guess.”

He glanced once more in Than’s direction. “Bye, then.”

“Bye. Thanks again.”

She felt sorry for him as she watched him leave. When he was in his truck, she waved once more before going back inside. Than was waiting for her. He, too, appeared sobered.

“You could have a good life with Pete.” He said this without looking at her. “He’d make you happy, and you wouldn’t have to leave. You could live among the living. You could see sunrises and sunsets. He could give you everything I can’t give you.”

She stood in the living room across from him. “Don’t. Please.” She could see the diseased elm through the kitchen window and a sudden urge to chop down the dying branch overcame her, but she pushed it down, thinking she was losing her mind.
She
couldn’t chop it down.

He met her eyes but said nothing.

“Is that what you want?” The hostility from earlier crept back in her voice.

“This is about you, about what’s best for you.”

“Then quit talking like that.” She stormed off to her parents’ room. In her mind, she thought, “If you can hear me, Than, please follow me. Please come in behind me and put your arms around me and tell me you will never say such a thing again.”

She stood there just inside her parents’ room waiting. Seconds later, he swept in behind her with his arms around her waist and clasped across her stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She turned in his arms and kissed him, closed her eyes, and touched his neck with her hands. “Me too.” Then she played with his shirt and asked meekly, “Are we still going to Greece today?”

“If you wish.”

“Then we better get busy. Why don’t you tell me what your sisters learned about McAdams while I start bagging some of these clothes?” She went into the closet and grabbed four or five hangers with clothes and laid them on the bed. Before Than had begun his story, she said, “Oh. I remember the last time my dad wore this shirt.” She swiped the tears away as they fell unexpectedly down her face.

“Maybe you’re not ready for this.”

She rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I want to do this.”

Than sat on a chair in the corner of the room and talked as Therese created piles of her parents’ possessions and then bagged them in giant black yard bags she found beneath the kitchen sink. While she worked, Than explained that McAdams was the CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company in Texas that bought counterfeit drugs at cheap prices from a manufacturer in Pakistan and sold them to customers at regular market prices. McAdams then split the profits with the Pakistani manufacturer, who was also able to provide forged approval certificates, valid samples for occasional testing by regulatory agencies, and pay-offs to agents when needed. The manufacturer had connections with various foreign rebels and so was able, through McAdams, to develop and sell the mutant anthrax to them. Than explained that when McAdams got wind of her mother’s research at Fort Lewis College, he ordered her execution because he feared he wouldn’t get paid if his customers heard that an antidote was being developed.

Then she asked, “But why would McAdams still want me dead?”

Than stood up and put his hands on Therese’s shoulders. “His men weren’t after you that night. They were after your aunt.”

“
W
hat do
you mean they were after my aunt? What has she got to do with any of this?” Therese asked, her face twisted up to his with confusion.

“Maybe you better sit down.” Than wished he could shield her from this news.

“Okay,” she murmured and sat on the edge of her parents’ bed.

He stood in front of her. “Your aunt works for a pharmaceutical company, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“A few months ago she attended a professional conference in Dallas. She went to lunch with a group of attendees, all salespeople like herself, and they got to talking about where they were all from, about their families, and things. Carol mentioned how proud she was of her sister, a professor at Fort Lewis College, who was going to be honored this summer for her outstanding work. Someone asked what work. Carol talked about the antidote for the mutated anthrax. One among the group worked for McAdams.”

Therese’s mouth dropped open, and she sat stunned for several minutes. She looked as though she had lost the gift of speech.

Than touched her shoulder. “Therese?”

“So that’s how he found out about my mom?”

Than nodded.

“Carol can’t ever know this.” Therese stood up and twisted her shirt in her hands. “This would absolutely kill my aunt. We can’t let her know. Oh my God.” She paced around the room. “Oh my God.”

“She doesn’t have to know.” He could hardly keep up with the combination of silent and spoken prayers.

“Please don’t let her know,” she either said or prayed. “Please protect her, forever. I can’t stand this.”

Therese continued to pace. “But is McAdams still after her? I mean, is my aunt in danger?”

“I and many gods promise to protect her.” Then, gingerly, Than explained, “McAdams murdered his informer, the one who lunched with your aunt, James Barber. He’s in Tartarus now. That’s how Tizzie discovered the connection. She got him to talk. Tizzie thinks McAdams is afraid that if the media show pictures of his informer once someone realizes Barber’s missing, your aunt will recognize him and remember having lunch with him, and that she might eventually put it all together.”

“Oh no.”

“But Aphrodite and Cupid are with her and Richard today. They won’t let anything happen to her. And even with Ares trying to thwart their every move, Tizzie and Meg are close to finding McAdams. Barber said McAdams is meeting with his Pakistani manufacturer today. Tizzie and Meg and I will be waiting for him. It won’t be long now.”

Than could hear Therese’s prayers, for she directed them to him. She was explaining to him that it was one thing when Therese thought that McAdams and his men were after
her
; but it was another thing entirely to learn the bad guys were after her aunt. Since the death of her parents, Therese hadn’t been too afraid of dying. She wasn’t going to commit suicide, but if death happened on its own, that wouldn’t be so bad. That had been her attitude. She hadn’t tried to be careful. She hadn’t stayed up nights worrying about her safety. If she couldn’t fall asleep, it was because she missed her parents and longed to be with them, not because she was afraid to die. “I want to be with you, so death is no longer scary,” she prayed. But now that her aunt’s life was in danger, now that her aunt was the target, Therese was overcome with fear and a deep desire to seek out McAdams and put a stop to him.

“Help me avenge the death of my parents,” she said suddenly, and now he could see she was speaking, not praying. “Help me kill McAdams and protect my aunt. I don’t want to wait another minute.”

He put his arms around her rigid body. “Calm down,” he whispered. “I’ll help you. But calm down. I don’t like to see you so upset.”

She relaxed a little in his arms and put her head against his chest.

“Listen,” he said softly. “Let’s finish sorting through your parents’ things and take the donations to the goddesses’ charities in Greece. We want to make sure we have them on our side before we get you involved. You’ll need their protection as well as mine. Maybe there’s something you can do for Artemis as well, since she has also vowed to stand by you.”

“I’ve already thought of something.” She looked up at him. “I want to donate my earnings from Mrs. Holt to a wildlife preserve.”

Than was full of admiration for her. “Excellent. She’ll like that.”

They spent the rest of the day sorting and bagging Therese’s parents’ clothes, shoes, accessories, and a select assortment of books, magazines, and jewelry. Often Therese would stop, hold something up, look at it and remember. Tears would flow down her face like a waterfall, but she’d slap them away and keep going, and Than felt lost and helpless, unable to comfort her. They took only one break, for a short lunch of egg salad sandwiches Therese made for them, and by the time they were satisfied, they had ten large garbage bags and four cardboard boxes ready to donate, and it was seven o’clock in the evening.

“We’ll have to go to Greece in the morning,” Than said. “I promised my sisters I’d help them now. I’m already a little late.”

“Can I come?”

He cringed at the thought of his sweet Therese seeing the hideousness of the Furies, the blood pouring from Tizzie’s eyes, the vicious snakes, the fierce falcon, the howling hounds; but, he supposed she would have to see these things eventually if she were to follow him to the Underworld and live there with him.

Therese quickly added, “I hate being on the sidelines all the time. This is about me and my family and I want to help.” She clutched the locket from Athena, which she wore around her neck, and he sensed the determination to wield her own kind of power.

He looked at her, still considering.

“Unless I’d be a liability,” she said.

“You’re not too tired?”

She shook her head. “Please?”

“Do not leave my side, got it?”

She nodded, smiling, and prayerfully thanking him. Out loud, she said, “Got it.”

“And wear Aphrodite’s robe just in case we get separated.”

They went upstairs to her room, where she found and put on the robe.

“If we do get separated, concentrate on your room, on this spot, with all your might. The robe will help you get back here.”

“Okay.”

He could feel her trembling beside him and could see her shaking as she put her arms through the sleeves. “Try it out first on your own. Think of your kitchen. Concentrate really hard on the spot in front of the kitchen sink.”

Therese closed her eyes. She prayed to him the entire time, explaining that she felt a pressure against her body, like plastic wrap enclosing her, and then, a second later, he watched her open her eyes where she was standing, or stumbling rather, in front of the kitchen sink. She grabbed onto the counter to get her balance.

“I did it!” she shouted.

The police officer sitting out on her deck turned from where he had been eating his sandwich, his feet propped up on his cooler. He looked at Therese through the window. She gave him a wave to let him know everything was okay.

Than, who had been waiting for her, said, “Okay, here we go. But hold tight to my hand and don’t let go unless I tell you.”

“I promise.” Then she said, “I better tell Officer Gomez I’m leaving.”

“Good idea, but hurry. We’re late as it is.”

She quickly poured some lemonade into a glass and took it out to the officer. She practically ran back into the kitchen, anxious to get started on their journey.

“Where are we going?” she asked, taking his hand.

“Peshawar. A city in Pakistan.”

T
herese closed
her eyes against the bright light, and held her breath as the invisible plastic wrapped itself around her. When she opened her eyes, they were standing in the early morning sun in an abandoned alley. The foul smell of urine and rotting food accosted her. She gagged.

She followed Than, stepping over rubbish and weaving through garbage cans to a dusty window in the back of a metal building. Like Than, she peered inside, but it was difficult to see anything.

“My sisters must be around here somewhere.” He closed his eyes and appeared to be in deep concentration. Then he opened them and said, “This way.”

“So you can communicate with your sisters telepathically, like ESP?” Therese asked as she rushed beside him.

“ESP?”

“Extrasensory perception.”

“Telepathy is not an ‘extra’ sense for a god. Just as I hear your prayers directed to me, they can hear mine and I theirs, though the sounds can get distorted.” Then he said, “Turn here.”

A pack of skinny dogs, crouched around a half-eaten carcass, looked up at them and were about to bark when Than said, “Silence.” The dogs obeyed and went back to what they had been doing.

Than led Therese around the side of the building from which they could see a road and a jeep approaching. Than flattened against the building, pulling Therese beside him. “They’re meeting us here.”

“The people in the jeep?”

“No.”

Before he said more, Meg and Tizzie appeared before them. They too pressed their backs against the building, out of site of the jeep, which had stopped now. Therese could hear men talking and the jeep doors slamming shut. Then she heard laughter. The laughing stopped at the sound of another vehicle approaching.

A man Therese could not see spoke in a harsh voice. The only word she recognized was, “McAdams.”

Meg signaled the others to follow her to the back of the building, back to the heaps of rubbish and garbage cans. The dogs looked up as the group passed by and then the animals returned to their carcass.

The gods and one human huddled behind the building where Tizzie said, “I’ve found a place in the building where Therese can hide while we use invisibility to get McAdams.”

Meg snarled, “I can’t believe you brought her, Than. You know Ares is against us. You’ve endangered her life, our mission…”

“Enough,” Than said. “This is her battle, too. I’ll stay beside her but will help if you need me.”

Than held tightly to Therese’s hand and the bright light surrounded them. They reappeared behind a metal pallet stacked high with cardboard boxes. Through the boxes, Therese could see three men gathered in the middle of a large room full of machines and assembly lines that at the time were not running. Two of the men were dark-skinned and holding weapons, but the thin, bald, white man trembling before them must be McAdams.

“May I remind you that you work for me!” McAdams shouted. “We stand to make a lot of money together, and you can’t do it without me. Damn it, you cowards, put away your weapons!”

“What happened to Grahib?” one of the darker men demanded.

“McAdams had him killed,” the other said. “He had his own informer killed, too. We can’t trust him.”

“But I have your money. If you kill me, you won’t get paid,” McAdams said. “Those other men betrayed us. I only kill betrayers. You are good men who have served me well. I can still get you the women I promised, the red-head and her virgin niece. Trust me. Money and women. What could be better?”

“Security,” one of the men replied.

Than nodded, and whispered, “I know. We need him alive.”

The one man said to the other, “Let’s just do it. Do it now!”

They pointed their weapons at McAdams and pulled their triggers. A loud roar echoed throughout the building as Therese watched in terror. She was shocked to see McAdams standing unharmed, but then Tizzie appeared before him. She spit the bullets into her hand and gave the men an arrogant smile. Blood spilled from her eyes and snakes coiled and hissed in her hair. The two men turned on their heels to hide, one of which came to the very spot where Therese and Than were huddled.

“Go now,” Than said urgently. “Go back to your room. Concentrate. Now!”

Therese shut her eyes and focused on her bedroom, but then an image of her grandmother’s green carpeting in her old house in San Antonio entered her mind, and before Therese knew what was happening, she found herself standing in her grandmother’s old living room in San Antonio. Everything smelled new, and the furniture had all been removed.

“Oh, hello,” a woman’s voice came across the room. “I’m sorry, but the open house ended over an hour ago.”

“I’m, um, so sorry,” Therese said. “I’ll, um, just show myself out.”

“Are you okay? Did you come with your parents?”

“I’m fine. My parents are waiting for me outside.”

She went through the front door and recognized her grandmother’s old street just visible in the dusk. The woman from her grandmother’s house stepped onto the front porch and watched as Therese hurried down the sidewalk. She walked a little way further and found a cluster of trees, but before she could god-travel, a scrawny old man approached her.

“Hey, girlie, you got any spare change for a starvin’ man?”

Therese turned and ran down the darkening street. She wasn’t sure where to turn. Tears welled in her eyes as she rounded a corner and saw a park up ahead which vaguely looked familiar. Two teenagers were snogging on a bench, but Therese crept behind some bushes and deeper into trees where she closed her eyes.

She tried to focus on her bedroom. A strong image of Clifford waiting for her on her bed made it easier this time. She was so afraid and wanted Clifford! She hadn’t been much help on this journey. How stupid she had been to think she could help the Furies! The invisible plastic wrapped itself around her, she held her breath, still focusing on Clifford on her bed, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself standing on her bed looking down at her dog wagging his tail at her.

She went downstairs and was surprised that Carol and Richard weren’t home yet. Officer Gomez still sat out on the back deck, so she felt fairly safe. After letting the officer know she was home, she put Clifford on a leash and took him outside in the front to do his business. Then she came inside and grabbed a cookie from the countertop, nearly eating it whole.

Therese looked at all the bags and boxes lined up on the floor of her parents’ bedroom and wondered how they would transport them all to Greece. She was too tired to think long on it, though, and before she realized it, she had curled up on her parents’ bed beneath their covers, trying to smell their scents and trying to erase from her mind the scene that had transpired before her in Peshawar. Clifford sat in the corner of the room. He had never been allowed up on her parents’ bed, and even though he probably knew her parents were gone, he couldn’t bring himself to break the rule.

She was nearly asleep when the phone rang. She answered the one on her parents’ bedside table. It was Gina Rizzo. Gina had never called before.

“What’s up, Gina?” Her voice was deep with sleep.

“I just wondered if you heard the news about your friend Vicki.”

Therese sat up. “Uh-uh.”

“Oh. Well her mother committed suicide yesterday. She slit her wrists with a razor blade and bled to death in the master bathroom. Vicki was home when it happened. Isn’t that terrible?”

Gina’s voice sounded more excited than sad, and that eerie excitement drove Therese to anger.

“I’ve gotta go,” Therese said. She hung up the phone and left her parents’ room and was sick in the kitchen sink.

Through the window, she caught sight of the diseased elm tree illuminated by the moonlight. Then, in something like a blind rage, she ran down the stairs to the unfinished basement, another project her parents had planned to one day complete. She went past the washer and dryer and stack of dirty laundry. She grabbed an axe and went through the basement to the garage, which opened to the side of the house. She squeezed by her father’s Chevy truck, pulled out a ladder, and dragged it uphill to the diseased elm tree.

“What are you doing?” Officer Gomez asked.

“Fixing that tree!” Then she went back for the axe. She practically dragged it out of the garage door and up the hill.

“You’re going to hurt yourself. Why don’t you wait until someone can help you?”

Ignoring the officer, she climbed up the ladder and stretched herself out as tall as she could and hammered the blade of the heavy axe against the dying branch. It barely made a scratch, but she brought that axe up and she struck the branch again, despite the police officer’s protests. She was going to save this dying tree. She was sick of watching the disease slowly suck the life from it, and she was going to put a stop to it once and for all. She struck the branch again and again, nearly toppling over once, till it hurt her arm to keep raising the axe, and then she did it several more times. She broke through the bark, but she could see that she had been right all along. She could not chop down the dying branch. She could not save the tree. She dropped the axe, climbed down from the ladder, collapsed on the dirt, and cried.

And then it began to rain.

The officer went to the overhang to get out of the rain and didn’t seem to know what to say.

Clifford barked at him from the back door. She could see Clifford looking at her through the glass pane. He was probably worried she had lost her mind. He should be, she thought.

She pulled herself up, leaving the axe to rust in the rain, the ladder to stand like an unfinished promise beside the elm she could not save. She looked over at the other elm a few yards away. Her mother had said that if they did not stop the disease from getting the one tree, it would eventually spread to its twin. It seemed wrong that two such magnificent living structures should be the victims of a life-sucking fungus to be left withering skeletons that would eventually break, crumble, and decompose and then disappear from sight altogether, as though they had never existed.

“It’s okay, boy!” she hollered to her dog, who had started to whine, but before she left the tree, she caught sight of something shimmering in the adjacent cypress.

She walked in the rain toward the shimmering tree, blinking her eyes several times and rubbing them. The forest was dark on this side of the house where the moonbeams couldn’t reach. And maybe the rain was blurring her vision. But, no. Even with her eyes rubbed dry, the tree shimmered. Therese backed away now, frightened.

“Come inside!” Officer Gomez called out.

“Do not be afraid,” the tree said. “I am Artemis, goddess of the wood, and I will not harm you.”

Therese held very still, not sure if she should speak. She swallowed hard and waited.

“I am pleased with your stewardship of the forest and the animals that abound in it. You have won my heart.”

Therese couldn’t make out an image of the goddess, just the shimmering tree. “Thank you. I’m grateful.”

“Like Aphrodite and Athena, I have gifts for you, but mine are far better than theirs. Aphrodite may have saved your dog from death, but I have given him immortality.”

Therese sucked in air. Did she just say that her best friend Clifford would never die? “Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!” She glanced at Clifford still looking at her through the back door. His tongue hung happily from his mouth as the stubby tail wagged back and forth. He seemed to understand what had happened to him. He would be able to go with her now and live in the Underworld! “I don’t know what to say.” Tears pricked her eyes.

“Therese!” Officer Gomez called again. “What are you doing out there? Come inside!”

“Wait,” Artemis commanded. “There’s another. Whereas Aphrodite gave you a traveling robe, I now give to you a beautiful crown. It is made of the finest pearls and diamonds, and when placed upon your head, will make you invisible to mortal eyes. It is waiting for you on your bedroom bureau.”

Therese put her hands to her cheeks. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Don’t forget your promise to me, Therese. The wildlife preserve. I am counting on your offering.”

“Yes, m’am. I’m pleased to give it.”

“Is there anything else you would ask of me?”

“No, m’am it’s just…” Therese faltered.

“What is it?”

“My friend Vicki. She’s all I can think about right now. Her mother committed suicide yesterday. If I can ask something of you, I ask you to please watch over her and help her, if you would.”

Before Therese had finished her sentence, the cypress no longer shimmered and the rain no longer fell, and Therese had the feeling the goddess was no longer there.

The crunching sound of gravel made her aware of Carol and Richard pulling up the drive in Carol’s little red Toyota Corolla. Carol waved to her before driving into the garage beside Therese’s father’s pickup. Therese wondered whether it was her request of the goddess or the appearance of her aunt and uncle that had made her disappear.

A few minutes later, Carol and Richard came through the back door, Clifford scrambling out ahead of them to growl at Officer Gomez, standing beneath the overhang of the house. Carol and Richard looked across the deck to where Therese stood beside the elm, the axe, and the ladder, still flabbergasted by Artemis’s visit and the news of her gifts.

“What have you been doing?” Richard asked.

“Um, I was trying to save this tree from the Dutch elm disease. Mom and Dad were going to chop off that dying branch and treat the roots, but…well, I couldn’t do it.”

“You should have told me,” Richard said. “I’ll take care of that for you.”

“Sweetheart, you’re soaked and your backside is covered in mud. And you could have hurt yourself.”

They went inside, including Officer Gomez, who moved to the screened front porch to avoid the rain, which had started falling again. After a shower and change of clothes, Therese came back down to hear about her aunt’s day while Carol made spaghetti and Richard sat on the sofa with the news turned down low. Therese showed Carol the bags and boxes she had lined up in her parents’ room, and Carol was amazed by all she and Than had accomplished. Therese told her about taking the things to charities tomorrow—though she failed to mention they were located in Greece.