Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (47 page)

“Back to that, are we?” He let me stew in my own juices while he took a sip of wine.

“Yes, ‘back to that.’ Did you really think I would stop asking you why you wanted to see me so badly?”

“I’m curious, Christa. Do you question all the men you’ve dated as to why on earth they could possibly be interested in seeing you?”

“Of course not.” I allowed myself a mouthful of wine. It was good — fruitier than the Bordeaux we’d shared a few evenings earlier. “But you can’t tell me the situations are exactly equal. I mean, those guys aren’t — they’re not — ”

“Not the Devil?” For the first time, his smile looked a little tight around the edges. “How many reassurances do I have to give you?”

“As many as it takes to convince me you’re not up to something.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he stared straight at me, the blue eyes catching my own. At that particular second I felt as if I couldn’t do anything but look back at him. His gaze seemed to bore into the depths of my soul.

“I swear that my intentions aren’t evil,” he said. “No soul-snatching or
Rosemary’s Baby
. I promise.”

He’d said as much to me before, but for some reason this time I found myself beginning to believe him. Yes, there was obviously something going on here. I’d be an idiot if I didn’t recognize that much. But whatever that something might be, I was starting to think it didn’t involve any sort of sinister objective.

The waiter arrived with our food at that point, and I had to wait until he had safely departed before I could reply.

“I’ll stop with the questions,” I said, “but only because I’m hungry, and these chops look delicious.”

Luke shook his head slightly and said, “I suppose I’ll have to accept that for now.” He raised his glass toward me, as if conceding the point, and the rest of the dinner passed peaceably enough. I didn’t ask any more awkward questions, and tried to keep the tone of the conversation light. The booth seemed private enough, but the sorts of things I kept thinking I’d like to discuss weren’t topics I really wanted overheard. I could only hope that we’d be someplace less public later on.

A
s it turned out
, we ended up somewhere extremely not private: Griffith Observatory.

We parked the Jag in the parking structure at Hollywood and Highland and caught a specially designated tour bus to take us up the hill to the Observatory. The site did have parking, but at that hour on a Friday night? Forget about it. I wondered if Luke’s “opening doors” somehow failed to extend to good parking karma.

It felt odd to sit next to Luke on the crowded bus; we’d never been in such close physical proximity before, and once or twice I felt his knee brush against mine as the bus took a particularly tight turn on the uphill grade. Strange, too, to sit next to this being who looked like a man as we were surrounded by faces of every color and every age: I saw what looked like church or school groups, couples out on dates, families making a night of it. All so human, all so ordinary.

Except one, of course.

The Observatory wasn’t completely unfamiliar to me. My parents took Lisa and me back when we were around ten and eight, respectively — I knew we couldn’t have been much older than that because Jeff hadn’t even been born yet. We all piled into my mother’s Volvo and trekked up the 5 Freeway into L.A., stopping at Philippe’s downtown for beef-dip sandwiches before making the final leg of the journey to Griffith Park. We watched a laser show that accompanied the music from Pink Floyd’s
Dark Side of the Moon
, gawked at the Tesla coil, and stared in awe at the Foucault pendulum. Although this evening we weren’t exactly hiking up the hill, as I saw some people doing, the planetarium still had a lot of steps and ups and downs, so I was glad of Luke’s advice that I wear comfortable shoes.

No laser show this time, but honestly, I found the presentation given in the planetarium to be even more engaging. We all sat there in the dark, watching as an amazingly intricate map of the heavens was projected on the smooth dome of the ceiling above us, and listened to the astronomer who was giving the talk discuss space exploration and the mythology surrounding the various constellations. The whole time, though, I couldn’t help thinking about the man who sat next to me. Had he witnessed the birth of these stars? Could my mortal brain even begin to comprehend everything he must have seen and done throughout his long, long existence?

Feeling a bit chastened, I remained silent as we filed out of the Observatory proper and wandered through the halls. Luke paused by the Tesla coil to let a group of excited elementary school kids laugh and point at the coil before being swept on by a pair of harassed-looking teachers. I wondered if they were getting overtime pay to herd their students up here after hours.

“He was a true genius,” Luke murmured, after the hubbub had died down a bit.

“Who?”

“Tesla.” The static discharge from the coil cast odd shadows across Luke’s face as he added, “So many people have no conception of how much he really contributed to this world. You can thank Edison for that.”

“Thomas Edison?” I asked, feeling a little stupid. I had to admit that I didn’t know a lot about Tesla, but school kids in the United States got Edison’s genius drummed into their heads from an early age.

Luke began to walk toward the doors, and I followed him. We emerged into the open area outside the front entrance, where spotlights illuminated the beautiful Art Deco building and the astronomers’ statues that stood in the center of the circular drive. Although the day had been clear and mild for late January, by now the air was quite cold, and I found myself glad of the leather coat Luke had suggested I wear.

“Edison,” he said, after we took up an isolated position against a railing that overlooked steep hillsides and gave way to a staggering view of the Los Angeles cityscape, “was a jumped-up hack who stole ideas left and right and strong-armed those who would oppose him.”

“Wow,” I remarked, after pulling my coat a little more closely about me, “so much for that diorama I made in the fourth grade with Edison inventing the light bulb.”

Something suspiciously like a snort reached my ears. “It’s amazing, the impunity with which history gets rewritten.”

For some reason, hearing him speak so nonchalantly of people I’d only read about in history books brought home more than anything the reality that he was much more than a mortal man. It was easy to forget when I sat across the table from him at a restaurant, or watched him drive a car, or even (or maybe especially) when I sat next to him on a crowded bus and felt his leg touch mine.

“There was even some debate as to whether Edison should end up in Hell for his various nefarious acts,” Luke said, in tones so casual you’d think he was discussing whether to have soup or salad with dinner. “Unfortunately, God won that one.”

“Uh, God?” I asked. Having someone mention God the way I’d off-handedly refer to a coworker in a conversation was a little disconcerting.

“Most cases are fairly clear-cut, but every once in a while we have a difference of opinion.”

“I’m guessing God has the final say,” I ventured, and Luke actually laughed.

“Yes,” he said, his voice sounding ruefully amused. His face was in profile to me as he stared out over the drop-off and toward the shimmering lights of Los Angeles. The wind had picked up, and I saw it ruffling at his heavy dark hair. A few clouds began to blot out the stars; the forecasters had said a storm would be moving in over the weekend, and it looked as if they might be right.

Luke and I had this little section of the viewpoint to ourselves. I supposed the night air was now cold enough that most of our fellow tourists had decided to stay indoors. Angelenos aren’t the most hardy lot when it comes to chilly temperatures. Maybe it was the isolation that gave me the courage to ask, “What’s it like?”

He turned toward me then. “What?”

“Hell.”

With a shrug he replied, “It’s different things for different people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Even in the dim reflected lights from the Observatory, I could see him smile slightly. “If you’re worried about ending up there, don’t be.”

I hadn’t even realized I was worried about my eventual fate until he said that. Whatever else, if the Devil says you’re not going to Hell, then you probably aren’t.

“Hell is actually far less populated than some might think,” he went on, the smile fading as he spoke. “Those who have killed, those who have willfully sought the destruction of others, or whose actions have brought about the pain and suffering of many — yes, those are the people who will end up in Hell. But taking the Lord’s name in vain, or telling lies, or any of the other thousand and one transgressions people commit day in and day out — no, it takes much more than that.”

His words were obscurely comforting. Oh, there were some things in my past I wasn’t proud of, but at least it sounded as if the cosmic balance sheet was stacked in favor of the regular guy.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” he asked.

That one was easy. There were worse things than overstating the charitable contributions on your income tax or wishing that the person who just cut you off on the freeway would drop dead of a sudden thrombosis. “Standing up Anthony Whitman for the senior prom,” I said.

“Tell me.”

“Don’t you know already?” I demanded.

“I know Anthony’s side of it,” Luke replied imperturbably. “I want to hear your side.”

Was it just me, or had the temperature suddenly dropped about ten degrees? I pulled the coat more tightly against myself and wished I’d thrown on the cashmere muffler my sister bought me for my birthday a few years ago. I sighed, then said, “Anthony asked me to the senior prom — I assume you know what those are.”

“Of course.”

Right. He knew everything, didn’t he? Except, apparently, what was in my head. Thank God for small favors. “Anthony was a nice guy, but he was sort of a geek, and I had a crush on someone else — ”

“Greg Lopez.”

I felt as if I’d just been pole-axed. “How did you know that?”

“Because
he
knew.”

Well, that settled it. I definitely was not going to attend my high school reunion next summer. There was no way I could face Greg Lopez, even after ten years, if he actually knew I’d been mooning over him for most of our senior year. And here I thought no one had known about my infatuation with him, that it had been this big secret —

“Anyway,” I said, deciding I was already in deep enough, “when Anthony asked me to go I said yes, because everyone kept telling me that if I didn’t go to senior prom I’d regret it for the rest of my life. And then the night before, I realized I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to go with Anthony and have to sit there all night and watch Greg dance with Mandy Lewinson, and probably hang all over her, too. So I called Anthony and told him I’d come down with the flu and was puking all over the place.”

“I see.” Luke’s tone was so neutral I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“It was a horrible thing to do. I knew that even as I did it.” The irony of it was that I did have prom regrets for the rest of my life…just not the sort of regrets people were probably thinking of when they talked me into going in the first place. “The really awful part was that Anthony had scrimped and saved to buy those prom tickets and rent a tux and whatever, and then he was out all that money. I found out afterward that he had the stereo stolen out of his car and couldn’t even afford to replace it because of the money he’d blown on a prom he ended up not even attending.”

“It didn’t end there, though, did it?”

“No,” I replied. “I felt so awful about what I’d done that I emptied out my savings account and bought him a car stereo, then left it for him on his front doorstep. He never knew where it came from.”

“And that, my dear,” Luke said softly, “is why you’re not going to Hell.”

For a long moment I was silent. I didn’t know what to say. Even though I tried to make amends, I still hated what I had done. Anthony was a nice guy and didn’t deserve the treatment he’d gotten from me. I was a coward over the whole thing. I should never have agreed to go in the first place.

Who knows? My putting up with Danny’s neglect over the past six months could have stemmed from misplaced guilt over the way I’d acted to a similarly geeky but generally nice guy. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell why we do what we do.

Luke said, “You’re getting cold. Let’s get down off this hill and someplace warm where we can get some hot coffee.”

“Sounds good,” I said. I’d have to order something decaffeinated, but a nice warm decaf latte suddenly sounded like a bit of Heaven on earth.

We made our way back over to the stop where the buses would return us to the parking garage. By then it was almost ten o’clock, and the place had begun to close down anyway. The interior of the bus was cozy and warm, since it was so packed with people. It felt good to sit down and let the chatter in various languages surround me. It was comforting in an odd way.

Once we were back down at the bottom of the hill, we found a Starbucks at the Hollywood and Highland center (not that difficult, really — you can’t throw a rock in Los Angeles without hitting a Starbucks), ordered our poisons of choice, and talked about the planetarium. Of course we couldn’t pick up the thread of our previous conversation, since the coffee shop was crowded and noisy, but I had actually enjoyed myself and wanted him to know it.

Afterward, we retrieved the Jag and headed west toward my apartment. I was beginning to wonder whether my choice of a decaf latte had been the best one; a few times I could feel my eyelids dropping and started awake. Well, it had been a long day.

Probably Luke noticed, but he didn’t say anything. In silence he turned down my street, then pulled up at the curb. Although my block was usually fairly crowded, since most of the apartments there didn’t have garages the way mine did, somehow he always managed to get a spot out front. So much for my wondering whether or not he could use his cosmic powers to finagle a decent parking space.