Odin

Chapter 6

Odin sat for hours before he finally heard the subtle sound of footsteps just outside the wall of boulders making up the supports of the footbridge. He listened as the footsteps halted, then the telltale sound of stone on stone as the boulder swung open just enough to create a narrow passage. He watched as a taller, stronger version of Marie stepped into the darkness and waited as the Gargoyle who accompanied her made sure the boulder swung back into place, effectively closing off the entrance to their home. Both the female and the Gargoyle at her side, began to chatter as they walked away from the shadows Odin waited in.

“Dinner will be satisfying, tonight,” Malign said.

“We made a good trade I think,” the female that was surely Simone answered. “Don’t you?”

“No doubt, we did,” Malign said.

“Where have you two been?” Malice demanded, practically marching straight toward them.

Simone and Malign looked at each other, then at Malice, surprised at his tone.

“Out getting dinner,” she said, her tone letting everyone know she questioned his attitude.

“We’ve got beef for our dinner! Look what we found. It sat in the butcher’s window all day. Just before he closed, we traded him a portrait of his wife for it,” Malign said.

“I had to paint the portrait before we could take the beef. That’s why we’re late,” Simone explained, even if it was a little impatiently.

“You should have let someone know!” Malice grouched.

“And exactly how would we do that?” Simone asked.

Malice’s gaze swung to Malign. “You know not to stay out any longer than necessary. Once the sun goes down, it’s important that we’re back here, hidden away so that none of those who are like us have the chance to recognize us.”

“Those who are like us are out regularly,” Malign said defensively. “There are Vampires and Werewolves moving through the city every day. You know this. Why do you act like it’s a new thing? Besides, we’ve brought enough beef for all of us to eat our fill, plus breads and cheese. We were very successful in our trades today.”

“In the meantime, you could have put Simone at risk. You should have gone without her,” Malice said.

“Yes, because I’m weak and helpless and need a male to protect me,” Simone said sarcastically.

“We’ve protected you for at least half of your life, and you are well aware of it,” Malice snapped.

“And I’m grateful, which you are well aware of. But I’m also no longer a child. I can take care of myself long enough to go out and find enough food to feed us all.”

Malice glared at Simone for only several seconds more before he turned and strode away from her and Malign. “The rules have changed. You are no longer to leave here without one of us as protector at your side.”

“Hold on!” she exclaimed, jogging a little to catch up with him. “What’s happened? Why are you behaving like this?”

“I simply think it behooves us to practice a little more safety. We’ve become lax,” Malice said evasively.

“Lax? You think I believe that? We are always careful. And we’re always aware of all that happens around us. We will not be caught off guard,” Simone said.

“Is that so? Well, then I suppose you’re also aware of the Demon who is searching Paris for you? I’m guessing that you’ve already decided how to keep him from locating you, and doing whatever it is he plans to do. You surely don’t need us!” Malice shouted.

Odin, using the shadows he transported within, quietly moved closer.

Simone stopped in her tracks as Malice’s words registered. “There’s a Demon searching for me?”

“Yes. It seems he made a death bed promise to an old woman in a convent, and he’s here to carry out that promise.”

“How do you know that?” she whispered.

“I heard him speak your name. I moved closer and struck up a conversation. It seems that your grandmother has finally passed from this world. I am sorry for her loss, but not sorry enough to let him wander around undetained while attempting to carry out whatever promises he made to her before she died.”

“Great-grandmother, and what could he possibly have promised her?” Simone asked.

“I’m fairly certain it won’t be a welcomed confrontation, especially since the words, ‘forgotten entirely by the very few people who knew where she was’ were spoken.”

“I didn’t desert her! If anything, I’m the reason she was provided for in these last years,” Simone said, taking a seat on a rough-hewn chair that sat near a smooth clay wall directly across from a spit mounted over what was obviously a fire-pit. She sat quietly for a few moments before looking up at Malice. “She’s gone, then?”

“I suppose so, Simone. I’m sorry. I should have been more patient. But I do not like that you’ve attracted the attention of a Demon, who is hunting you from the shadows of the very city we’ve managed to find a modicum of peace within.”

Simone nodded.

“Come now, Simone. Surely you had to know that she would go sooner rather than later. She had to be a century old at least,” Venom said.

“At least,” Simone said.

“Then she had a long life. A good life. She had to have had, otherwise she wouldn’t have lived that long,” Loathe said.

Odin seized that very moment to step out of the shadows right behind Simone. “She had a miserable, lonely life, never knowing why her children and their children abandoned her. She believed it was because of the shame that followed her name!” Odin spat hatefully.

Simone jumped to her feet, intending to move quickly away from the Demon that she never fully believed was real until this very moment.

But Odin moved lightning fast and seized her in his arms from behind, holding her against his body. “I don’t think so, sweet. You’ll stay right where you are until I decide that you won’t.”

Every Gargoyle in the hidden shelter let loose snarls and growls, moving two or three steps closer to Odin and Simone, until he shouted at them.

“Do not move another step or I’ll kill her where she stands!”

“Let her go, Demon,” Malice growled, the rumble beneath his words deep and threatening.

“Or you’ll what? Growl at me? Do you think I care?”

“It’s alright, Malice. He won’t hurt me,” Simone said steadily.

“Foolish female,” Odin snarled at her ear, still holding her from behind.

“Don’t taunt him,” Loathe warned her.

“He won’t.”

“Why would you believe such a ridiculous thing?” Odin asked incredulously.

“Because I’m all that’s left of Marie. I’m it. If you destroy me, you destroy her legacy. The last of her blood will die, and you can’t do that because you loved her,” Simone said.

Odin’s lips pulled back from his teeth; a hiss came from deep inside him. “Don’t presume to know what I can and cannot do,” he said angrily. “You should be more concerned with your choice to live here among Gargoyles, instead of your own kind!”

“They are my family,” Simone said. “The only family I’ve known since my mother died.”

“You think I’ll pity you… I have no pity for anyone. Not anymore.” Odin’s attention shifted for just a moment in time, his heart hurting for all the time he’d lost with Marie due to his own pride, and her reaction that had hurt him so many, many years prior.

“Let me go, Orin. That is your name, isn’t it?” Simone asked.

“No.”

Malign, always one to push the envelope had been steadily creeping closer, using the very shadows Odin moved within to hide his approach.

“If you wish for her to die here and now, please, continue this way,” Odin said, turning his head only a slight bit to look into Malign’s eyes.

“I need you to release her,” Malign growled.

“Orin, please…” Simone said.

“I am not Orin!” Odin bellowed, then stepped back into the shadows, taking Simone with him as he disappeared.

Simone threw her hands out at her sides, her legs kicking in response to the sensation of falling and spinning weightless with no horizon point in sight to ground her sense of balance. The sound of wind rushing past her heightening the sensation of falling. The only constant sensation was the iron grip of an arm across her upper chest and shoulders, another around her waist, and a hard body at her back. Realizing the Demon still held her tightly, she grabbed hold of his arm where it lay across her chest, and her feet now free of the sandals she’d been wearing, sought his legs as she curled her legs around his shins and calves, securing her body to his.

Assured by the fact that the Demon held her closer rather than pushing her away, Simone began to notice more of her surroundings. She grew increasingly aware of soul-wrenching cries, ghostly hands that reached out toward her, bottomless anguish reflected in pitiful eyes as they begged her to take them with her. Her heart hurt for these souls, lost somewhere between life and death. But she did not close her eyes. She watched them all, as they watched her, eventually reaching out with one hand toward a particularly pitiful wraith child who begged her to save him.

Odin gripped her reaching hand in his own, forcing it quickly back to her own waist where he held it down while scolding her. “Do you wish to be locked in the shadows for eternity?!” he demanded angrily.

“She’s only a child,” Simone answered.

“Nothing is as it seems here!” he shouted.

Simone kept her eyes on the wraith child as it morphed from a frightened trembling child into a monster of horrific proportions with rotting flesh dangling from its teeth as it sneered at her angrily.

Simone’s breath caught in fear as she turned her head away from the creature, tucking her foot around Odin’s leg a little more snugly and tightening her grip on his arm where it crossed her chest.

Suddenly the sound of the rushing wind was no longer threatening to deafen her. The muted grays, blacks, and whites of the shadows fell away, and she was surrounded by towering trees, dense foliage, dozens of buzzing insects, the tittering of birds, croaking of frogs, mud squelching up between her toes, and a wall of hot humid air threatening to suffocate her as she tried to drag in lung fulls of the moisture laden air.

Without warning Odin let go of her, allowing her to fall to the ground.

Simone knelt on her hands and knees, her heart pounding relentlessly as she did her best to get it under control. She gasped for breath, grateful that at the very least the spinning, falling sensation she’d been enduring along with the wailing of whatever lived in the shadows had finally ceased. Minutes passed as she gradually regained herself.

Odin stood several feet away, glaring at the pitiful human female. His heart held so much resentment toward her that he didn’t trust himself to speak. Marie had after all asked him to check on Simone’s welfare, not to terrorize her. He allowed himself an inward shrug. She was here, she was well. It was a start.

Simone sat back on the muddy ground, taking a deep breath, finally beginning to breath easy before she raised her eyes to Odin’s.

His gaze traveled the length of her body from head to muddy hands to muddy toes and back. “You are filthy.”

“And you are rude,” she answered.

“You have no right to speak to me that way!” Odin insisted.

“You had no right to bring me to wherever I am without my permission!” she snapped back at him.

“You should just be glad that you are still breathing,” Odin said threateningly, taking a single step in her direction.

To his surprise, Simone didn’t recoil from his threatened approach. Instead, she performed a complete imitation of his own actions as she allowed her gaze to travel from the top of his head to his blue tinted lips, to the spikes on his shoulders, to the muscles clenching at his lower abdomen, down to his toes and back to meet his gaze. “Shouldn’t we be sitting on ice or something?” she asked, completely unaffected by his attempt to rattle her.

His face reflected his complete confusion for only a split second before he shook his head. “What do you prattle on about?”

“I’m not prattling. You just don’t seem to be able to keep up.” She gestured at him. “Ice Demon, right? Why are we in the hot jungle rather than an ice cave somewhere?”

Realizing she was more familiar with him and what he was than he’d given her credit for, his expression shifted into a blank slate. “We are not in a jungle.”

Simone looked around herself, before looking back at him. “Well, we certainly aren’t in the ice and snow either.”

Unprepared to deal with her attitude, and wishing he’d left her right where he’d found her, he turned his back on her and walked away.

“Where are you going?” she called after him as she got to her feet quickly.

Odin ignored her as he continued his path through the swamp.

“I know you hear me! Stop! How am I supposed to get out of this place?” Simone asked as she followed him.

Odin continued to ignore her.

“Will you wait so I can keep up?” she demanded, gingerly following him barefooted through the mud and foliage.

He continued walking, not looking back at her, but not making any particular effort to disappear from sight or outrun her either.

“Orin!” she shouted.

Odin stopped walking and turned to face her. “I am not Orin.”

“That’s your name, isn’t it? It’s what my mother told me.”

“She was wrong.”

“Fine. Then what is your name? What shall I call you?”

“Nothing. I am nothing to you. There is no reason to call me anything.” He turned and started away from her again.

“You cannot just take me from my home and deposit me wherever I am!” she exclaimed, coming to a stop as she gestured wildly to the swamp around them.

Odin didn’t answer, he kept walking.

“Fine! I’ll find my own way out!” she screamed at him, turning away from him and heading back the way they’d come. She made it only about thirty feet before she froze mid-step, her eyes glued to the dark figure camouflaged in the mud just a few feet away from her.

“Don’t move,” Odin said quietly from right on the other side of her.

Simone didn’t respond, she stood perfectly still waiting to see what Odin would do to get her out of this, if he got her out of this at all.

The water moccasin slithered a few inches closer, testing the air with its tongue.

Then without warning, it attacked, launching itself toward Simone.

Odin launched himself toward the snake.

Simone threw herself backwards.

Mud flew everywhere, water splashed, Odin grabbed the snake by the back of its head and threw it as far as he could into the swamp, not even pausing to see exactly in what direction it flew as he rushed to Simone.

“Did it bite you? Are you dying?” he demanded, kneeling over her and smoothing his hands over her feet and legs looking for proof of the snake bite.

“No. You saved me,” she said incredulously, watching the Demon with a shocked look on her face.

“You”re sure?” he asked.

Simone nodded.

“Come on, then,” he said, scooping her up in his arms and starting in the direction they’d been heading to begin with.

Simone looked back over his shoulder as he carried her out of the swamp, wondering just how far the snake had been flung. “I’ve never seen a snake attack like that. They usually avoid us as much as we avoid them.”

“It’s a Water Moccasin. They are very aggressive. I’ve seen them attack boats in the water until they finally realize they’re not hurting the boat and swim away.”

“No matter what I’d have done, it would have attacked,” Simone said.

“Probably. It was irritated that you were there.”

“Thank you, Ori… thank you,” she said, catching herself before she called him a name that wasn’t his.

“You shouldn’t be barefooted in the swamp,” Odin said.

Simone had been watching the beauty of the landscape around her as Odin carried her through the swamp toward wherever he was taking her. She turned her head slowly toward him as his words sank in. “I shouldn’t be in a swamp at all. I was in Paris. In my home, with my family. You brought me here!” she said angrily.

“A cavern under a bridge is not a home. And a colony of Gargoyles is not a family!”

“It is a home if it’s the safest place you’ve found, and you’re welcomed there, and the people who are there care about your welfare!” she snapped.

“It’s a hole. Under a bridge! And they’re Gargoyles, not your family. The last of your family died in a convent, after living her entire life alone!” Odin half-shouted.

“They took me in when no one else would. They’ve protected me and taken care of me since I was fourteen years old and have never asked for a single thing in return. They’re more family than any I’ve known since my mother died. I’m sorry that Marie died, but I didn’t know her. I didn’t even know she was still alive or how to find her until sixteen years ago. Maybe she wasn’t with her blood family, but she was with friends. People she’d spent her entire life with. And the moment I found out about her, I did what I could to try to help. I sent money to her, not even knowing for sure that she was still alive. I sent money to the convent in her name every chance I got, knowing that someone, sometime, might need their help again and if they did, the sisters would be able to take them in and help them because of her. You want to talk about alone, let’s talk about a fourteen-year-old child leaving home just after their mother died, in favor of whatever they happened to encounter in a place they’d never known as opposed to waiting around to find if they were next to die!” With every word she spoke, Odin’s steps slowed as her hands pushed at him. Eventually she pushed and hit at his chest so forcefully that he put her down as he listened to her angry words.

“Why would you be next to die?” he asked.

“My grandfather killed my mother! I can’t prove it, but I know he did. Just as she believed he killed her mother. When my grandmother died, he forced my mother into a marriage of convenience with a much older man, but luckily the man was kind. He cared for my mother and together they had me. When my father died my grandfather turned up at our home and did his best to force everyone to his whims. He said that since my mother was a woman, he’d take over her affairs and look after her finances for her. My mother stood up to him, and it wasn’t long after that she was dead, too!”

“How?!” Odin demanded.

“She died in her sleep. I don’t know how, but I have no doubt her father killed her as he did her mother.”

“You just left your home?”

“My grandfather came to me and said that I should thank him. He’d arranged for me to go live with a friend of his, a cultured lady in a grand home. She’d teach me all I needed to know in order to support myself. I refused to go.”

Odin watched her quietly, waiting for her to finish her story.

“He forced me to her doors. When I arrived, I found it was a brothel. I was to be sold to the highest bidder upon arrival, then join the rest of the women, working for room and board. Any extra money I made was to be returned to my grandfather.”

“Why?” Odin asked, not understanding the reason he’d send her to such a place.

“Because he wanted my father’s fortune, and I was all that stood in his way. If he removed me from the picture, it would be his. But that wasn’t enough, he had to ruin me as well. Make sure that I’d never be able to return, and why not make a little profit off me while he was at it.”

Odin stood quietly, his jaws clenched. His hands fisted as he glared at Simone.

“Just take me home. I don’t know why you’re so angry with me, but I’m guessing it’s because you think Marie dying alone was my fault. I never met her. But I’m thinking if she stayed in that convent all those years, she must have wanted to. She made that choice, so she must not have been all that lonely. She had friends, yes?”

Odin thought about all the sisters gathered in the hallway outside Marie’s room the night he’d arrived there. Some were crying. All were praying. They obviously cared about her. “I suppose.”

“She could have left if she’d wanted to. She didn’t. How is that my fault?”

He thought about the letter in the pocket of his trousers. Simone was indeed sending money to the convent every chance she got. The records he’d found in the ledger books proved it. She wasn”t lying to him.

“So you ran. When you found yourself faced with a future you didn’t choose for yourself, you ran,” Odin said.

Simone nodded. “I made my own way. I made friends. I found a new family. I want to go back to them.”

“Is he still alive?” Odin asked.

“Who?”

“Your grandfather.”

Simone smiled coldly and shook her head.

“Tell me…” Odin said.

“When I was twenty, I finally told Malice the story of how I ended up in Paris. They paid him a visit. He was bankrupt. Still living in our home. What was left of the land after being bankrupt was overgrown and unkempt. The house was falling apart. He was half out of his mind with drink. They made sure his last minutes were pained and as extended as possible.”

Odin gave a single nod, glad it had been taken care of, but disappointed that he would not be able to handle it personally.

“Why does it matter to you?” Simone asked.

“I wanted to kill him myself. I’m satisfied that at least he suffered.”

Simone watched Odin curiously as he dealt with the confusing emotions he was experiencing. “Why would you want to kill him?”

“Because he hurt you. He hurt your mother, and most likely hurt her mother, too. All of which caused Marie pain.”

“And you were in love with Marie…”

“What?!” he exclaimed.

“Marie… you were in love with her. I heard about it in stories from my mother when I was little. She taught me to believe that not everything rumored to be evil is evil. That there is good and bad in everyone and everything, just like her mother taught her.”

Odin watched Simone curiously.

“Then I learned of the stories firsthand when my family brought me back all my mother’s things. They’d found them in the attic of the house I grew up in when they went after my grandfather. It was how I learned about Marie and found the address to start sending money to just as my mother did when she was alive. And she’d kept all the correspondence between her mother and Marie. Marie wrote of you fondly. I could only surmise that she loved you, and hope that you loved her.”

“We were children! There was no such love there!” Odin insisted irritatedly.

Simone watched him. His pain was clearly visible. He was living with regret, and a lot of it. “There are different kinds of love. One doesn’t have to feel romantic love to love someone.”

Odin looked into her eyes, prepared to argue with her, but it went right out of him. He didn’t have the will to argue anymore. Simply nodding his head, he looked off in the direction Marie was buried in. “Do you wish to see her grave?”

“She’s buried here?” Simone asked incredulously.

“She is.”

Simone stepped closer to Odin and took his hand in hers. “I would very much like to visit her grave.”

He looked down at his hand enveloped between both of Simone’s. The pale white of his skin, the bluish tinge of the claws at the tips of his fingers so unnatural against the healthy pink of hers and the mud that smudged her skin. “Why don’t you fear me?”

“Do you want me to fear you?” Simone asked.

“Any sane female would,” he admitted.

Simone burst out laughing. “What about me has you convinced that I’m sane?”

Odin shrugged as he started walking, keeping her hand in his as he went. “You do live with a colony of Gargoyles…”

The splashing of her feet being picked up and put back down in the shallow water covering the mud they slogged through reminded him that she was still barefoot. He paused only long enough to pick her up in his arms again, and without explanation kept walking.

Simone rested easily in his arms as he moved through the swamp eventually finding higher and dryer ground, but he continued to hold her as he followed a path that was clear only to him. “My family has always known that there is so much more in this life than just us and the black and white lines of good and evil. Perhaps that’s why I don’t fear you. You’re not evil, Orin. You may wish that you were, or perhaps you don’t. I don’t know you well enough to say, yet. But I know that you cared very much about Marie. And I know that a male that would risk himself to protect a female he doesn’t even know from a venomous snakebite isn’t a bad male.”

Odin subtly adjusted her in his arms and held her closer. “I could be a bad male — if I chose to be.”

“But you’re not.”

“I did steal you from your Gargoyles,” he reminded her.

“You did. But I also believe you’ll take me back there.”

Odin thought about it. He might. Or more likely he might not. He moved them continually through the swamp toward Marie’s grave, holding Simone in his arms. He cared about this woman, just as he had Marie. But with Simone something was very, very different. And he wasn’t altogether sure how he felt about that. In fact, the only thing he was sure of was that he wouldn’t be taking her home anytime soon.

“My name is not Orin. I am Odin now.”

“Odin. Like the God of war and death?” Simone asked.

“I thought it fitting.”

“Better than Orin even?” Simone asked.

Odin nodded. “I didn’t like him anymore.”