Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) (18 page)

Thor looked amused. Though there was still
that edge there. That edge that the mere mention – let alone the
actual presence – of Loki seemed to produce. It was sharp,
palpable. I almost felt like I could reach out a hand and touch
it.

It was a wound of divine, god-like
proportions.

“
I have a list of
complaints,” Anubis snapped, “I don't want anything like this
happening again. I have already registered a complaint with the
Office detailing recent underwater disturbances around my tunnels.
I also don't like the way some of my—“

As I’d dealt with Anubis before, I knew
that the guy could bark and bark for ages. If we let him, he would
literally chew our ears off. He would also get one of his whiz-bang
quick scribes to write out a couple of hundred scrolls detailing
each and every complaint he had to make. There would even be
pictures and diagrams.

Thor had enough experience with Anubis too
to know not to stick around. He turned to the Egyptian god and
bowed his head low. “Your complaints will be brought up with the
Powers that Be.” He turned sharply and furled a hand out towards
the door behind us.

Though Thor – with his mighty grip and
mighty strength – had a hand over my wrist and was pulling me
towards the opening door between the Dead, I resisted.

I held my ground. I didn’t want to go back
in there.

He turned his head. “We aren't going back to
visit Hades,” he assured me with a dip of his chin. “Come along,
Details. I want to get this over with. Ambrosia have a happy hour
at seven tonight.”

I rolled my eyes at him. Grinning, he pulled
me through the Door of the Dead.

He was right. We didn't end up back in
Hades' halls. We didn't end up in any other death god's house
either. No. We ended up under the ocean.

Under it.

For a second, I forgot I'm immortal.

I struggled, flapping my free arm around and
trying desperately not to open my mouth.

Thor laughed. I heard it too, though I was
under water. I was a goddess.

“
You have become far more human
than I thought, and it is funny.” He demonstrated his mirth by
laughing so hard that several schools of nearby fish turned tail
and swam as fast as they could in the other direction. “You are
wearing these PJ things and trying not to drown when you are under
water.” He laughed again.

I was starting to confirm something I
already knew: Thor's sense of humor was as blunt as a plank of wood
to the face.

“
Ha, ha, you are funny,” I
snapped back. I noticed the way the fabric of my top was billowing
and puffing up with the swirl and current of the water. My hair was
a mess of floating tendrils playing around my face, and my bare
feet were sinking slowly into the soft sand underneath
me.

It was a magical scene, despite the
laughing Nordic god. The color of the water was deep blue, and I
could see the sunlight above refracting through it. There were
various fish swimming by, though they were giving us an excessively
wide berth (likely they had heard of Thor's ridiculous appetite for
wild boars, and wondered whether that extended to
fish/sharks/whales/anything at all that wasn't vegetables or
fruit).

The coral and seaweed glinted softly all
around us, and the shadows cast by the great banks of pockmarked
rock off to my side hid more colorful wonders.

Before I had a chance to march off, Thor
yanked on my arm as he propelled himself upward with the speed of a
missile.

He'd obviously been serious when he'd said
he didn't want to miss happy hour at the Ambrosia. He probably had
another date with the forest bimbo from my office, I thought
bitterly.

We crested the surface.

I glanced around us. We were close to some
white glistening strip of beach somewhere. Considering there were
more than a couple of beaches on Earth, I could hardly locate our
exact position. I tried to peer around us, tried to spot anything
that might give me any more clues.

“
Greece!” Thor roared. “I
wonder where my yacht is?” he mumbled to himself as he twisted
around.

Greece. Greece? When he'd said we were going
home, I'd thought we'd pop up from a drain in my house or
something. Greece was on the other side of the world!

“
Ah ha!” Thor rumbled as he
spotted a nice massive yacht on the horizon. It was anchored far
out from the shore, bobbing in a glistening and sparkling
ocean.

I'd never been on a yacht before. I’d been
in a building made of glass and diamond that floated next to the
sun, and a hospital made into the clouds, and in the Underworld –
but I'd never been on a yacht.

Why was I thinking this now of all times?
Oh, that's right: it was that or thinking about how gently yet
firmly Thor held my wrist.

So, yachts, then – this would be fancy. I
threw myself into the thought as best I could. I wondered how
stupidly large this boat would be and how gaudily it would be
decorated. While Thor was more grunge, when it came to his alter
ego, Zeus, that man-god knew how to live. There would be sashaying
women, gold-plated taps, and an entire tugboat nearby to store his
wine collection. I was sure of it.

Thor thankfully didn't shoot us along the
top of the water towards his yacht. If any humans had been watching
from the beach, two people skimming along the top of the ocean
moving faster than a torpedo would be worthy of note.

Instead, the boat came to us. It was the
maritime equivalent of Lassie. I wondered whether just as Mjollnir
was magically bonded to Thor, he'd extended that power to include
yachts too.

Soon enough, the yacht crested aside us. As
it neared, and as it moved far quicker than any normal yacht could,
I realized how un-yacht-like it was. It was far more of a giant,
well-endowed cruise ship.

Typical Zeus.

As soon as it was beside us, a rope ladder
was thrown from the deck high above. It would be one of the
sashaying goddesses throwing it down, I was sure.

Thor climbed first, wanting to get on board
as fast as possible to change into his white pants and polo top.
Hell, he'd want to put some white golf shoes on too and a big
watch. He might even put a couple of gold signet rings on both his
pinkies.

I forced myself to snigger as I climbed the
ladder behind him. Though I was trying valiantly to push it from my
mind, there was a swirl of complex feelings twisting their way
around my gut like a leviathan. I’d spent a whole life (which was a
long time for a goddess) hating Thor in all his guises. I’d thought
I’d known everything about him – every detail of every identity.
Every way he laughed arrogantly, every way he railroaded others.
Every single detail of every single expression and movement.

Now I was realizing there were a set of
details I’d never had the opportunity to learn: precisely how it
felt to be close to him.

I was filled with frustration, tingly
excitement, and annoyance all at once.

Thor jumped lithely onto the deck of what
could only be called the world's biggest yacht. I followed
slowly.

I paused to stare around me. Thor hadn't
rushed off to change into his yachting-tycoon guise. But I’d been
right on one account: the place was posh. By posh, I meant posh in
a god-like way. There were even sashaying goddesses, as predicted.
Hell, one of them had a bottle of champagne in one hand.

Thor/Zeus was so predictable. Before I
could point that out, I heard a slight swoosh from behind
me.

Something coiled around my middle. It was
cold, it was wet, it was strong.

It yanked me with all the strength of a
giant. I lost my grip on the rope ladder immediately. As I sailed
back down the side of the ship, and a tentacle wrapped around my
middle, I screamed, “Not again.”

Something – a sea monster, likely – had gone
and snatched me off the side of a ladder for the second time in two
days. Was this a record? Or was this how sea monsters rolled these
days, considering there were a whole lot less heroes to tangle
with? Did they trawl around looking for goddesses to attack in
precisely the same bizarre way? Had this particular sea monster
spied me walking down under the water but put off capturing me on
the off chance I could find a ladder to mostly climb up
instead?

Bloody sea monsters!

My thoughts happened before the monster
could get moving. By moving, I meant pelting. With me tightly
coiled in one of its fat tentacles, said denizen of the deep did a
180, then shot off back under the surface.

I had the odd but fitting thought
(considering my line of work) that hopefully by diving this monster
wouldn't draw any unnecessary human attention.

As my body plunged through the water, the
tentacle wrapping more tightly around my middle, all those thoughts
faded away. The mere fact I was being kidnapped yet again came to
the fore. The pain, the cold, and the fear.

The monster moved fast, shooting through the
sea, its tentacles propelling it along with great, monstrous tugs.
I could see them virtually grabbing the water as they moved around
me.

The one that held me hardly moved. Until
it twisted around and brought me face-to-fang with one of the
giant, rotting-meat-covered teeth in its wide mouth. It had been
intending to glare at me, but with it being mostly tentacle and
teeth, the sea monster was having trouble orienting my form towards
one of its pin-prick eyes.

As the force of the water slammed against my
face, pinning my eyes open, I felt the fear grow. It went
hand-in-hand with the cold.

The tentacle around my middle fixed me so
tightly that I could hardly move the rest of my body. My arms hung
limply over its girth, my legs slack and unresponsive.

Sharp, nasty, aching pain shot through my
sides and across my back. It felt as though the thing was slowly
crushing me under a vise.

I tried to let out a scream, but I couldn't
manage to arch my head back.

Pain. It was all I could see, feel,
experience.

Then
there was a thought. Thor.

The word itself sent a spark through me.

I felt a surge of energy combat the pain.
The power twisted itself through me, then seemed to seep into my
skin. As the tentacle pushed in, the power pushed out.

I hadn’t felt power like this in years.
Centuries, eons.

I could feel the sea monster losing its
grip. Barely. I would need much more to win the battle here.

That
much more came sailing through the
water, shooting forward with a note so loud and sharp the stones
and sand beyond and underneath all vibrated as if a powerful
earthquake was shaking through them.

Mjollnir.

The hammer, having a predilection for
cracking skulls (considering its owner) bypassed my tentacle and
smacked solidly into the head of the sea monster. There was a
resounding, ringing thud.

The tentacle that held me – much like the
annoyingly autonomous one that had snuck off with me in the flood
tunnels – didn’t loosen its grip, despite the solid blow wrought to
its head.

Mjollnir shot back through the water, having
struck its welcoming blow. I knew Thor couldn't be far behind.

That
thought did a strange thing to me: it
brought up a powerful new set of details swimming in my mind's eye
like stars shining in the night's sky. I'm sure I don't need to
tell you what those details were.

I felt my power grow again. I was not, nor
ever would be, the goddess of strength, sea-monster fighting, or
self-defense. I would always be better suited to reading tool
catalogues and astronomical data reports than fighting with god
goons.

But I was still a goddess, and given power,
I could fight.

I sunk my hands into the soft, extremely
slimy skin of the tentacle that held me. I tried to get a grip, and
when I got one, I pushed the damn thing off.

It tried to resist, tried to redouble its
grip, but it didn't matter: my power was too great. The divinity of
details was swelling within me, the serenity of facts and figures,
the metaphysical grandeur of the parts that made up the
whole.

I kicked the damn tentacle for good
measure.

That
ought to teach it. The tentacle
shuddered, then sank. I trod water and maintained my position. I
knew there was a dumb “Ha, I kicked a sea monster“ look on my face
I couldn't seem to shift.

I wasn't used to power like this. Or rather,
I wasn't used to being able to manifest details in this way. It was
usually paperwork for me, not underwater victories.

Thor came thundering through the water, and
to my perverse disappointment, he wasn't decked out in white pants
and golf-shoes.

He held Mjollnir, the hammer still
singing.

I felt a flush of energy escape over my
cheeks. Not nerves mind you, energy.

The sea monster knew the tide had changed
for him. He tried to turn slimy tail and streak off into the
ocean.

Thor grabbed said tail, climbed up it, made
his way to the thing's head, and for the second time in two days
knocked a sea monster out cold.

The thing floated down to the seabed, where
it impacted in a great cloud of sand, disturbed coral, and broken
shells.

It was over.

I looked over my shoulder to check there
weren't any more sea monsters tooling around the water. Thankfully
there weren't. That or they were waiting for me to start climbing
ladders again, the sods.