Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
M
r. Time
“We’re never going to know how good or bad they might be if you kill them first,” I say in exasperation.
Brenda smirks, the tattoos on her face shifting with the movement, as she sits across from me.
She sits with her leg thrown over one arm of the chair, idly filing her nails like a teenager rather than a witch of as many years as she is.
“Nothing is likely to kill them. Except the Godslayers. Or the gods themselves.”
“They don’t know that.”
She sits up, her high-heeled boots hitting the wooden floor with a thump, but her tone remains as casual as ever.
“You should’ve heard how my boys said he reacted.
His spear kept flickering in and out of existence, but he couldn’t reach it.
He can heal the others--he can heal anyone--but he was bleeding and on the verge of crying once they had him on the ground, kicking him--”
“Shut up, Brenda,” I interrupt. I don’t relish anything about this.
She shrugs. “He drew blood, though. That one boy against four vampires, and he didn’t do half-bad. Mortal boy has fight in him.”
There’s an almost admiring note in Brenda’s voice that tells me that Wilder did better than ‘not half-bad’. Brenda is a warrior, and she does appreciate another warrior.
Not that admiration will stop her from killing these god-children, if she can.
“Wonder if he has enough to keep the god under control,” she adds.
“Odin didn’t take him over, even though Noah was in pain and afraid,” I point out.
“Who knows if Odin even offered, or if he enjoyed watching his vessel suffer?” she scoffs. “The boy didn’t make a choice to stay in control of Odin. He doesn’t have that power yet.”
Still, it’s a good sign. A sign that these children could be powerful enough to keep control of the gods. But I won’t admit that to the witch who thinks I’m a fool to give the humans a chance in the first place.
“Perhaps you’re right.” I hesitate. “There are better ways to test them.”
“Are there?” she asks. “Or do you just hate seeing their mortal selves hurt? They have to be put in danger--”
“They have other desires,” I say.
Her eyes widen, her perfect red lips tightening in irritation. Right. Brenda hates to be interrupted.
Right now she’s probably imagining choking me to death with my own entrails.
But I’m still her boss, so she schools her face to neutral. Probably promising herself: entrails later.
It’s hard to relax and enjoy a cup of coffee sitting across from Brenda, that’s for sure. Even the good blonde roast stuff that my elvish secretary picks up from Starbucks on her way through the mortal world.
“What do they want?” she demands, her voice clipped. “Since you know them so well.”
“Answers,” I say, the next test coming to me as we speak. “They want answers. Izzy wants to know about her family. The boys are scared of the threats they face--thanks to you and your happy little band of violent hooligans--and maybe, if they have any sense, they’re afraid of the gods themselves…”
“Answers is a bit abstract,” she points out. Then a contemplative look comes over her face. “Although maybe we could torture them with--”
“I have a better idea.” Good lord, I don’t want to hear Brenda’s detailed torture plans. I’m sure she always has a few at the ready. “One that puts them in the driver’s seat on whether they’ll let the gods take them over or not.”
‘What’s that?”
“The painting of Veritas,” I say. “It’s in the secret library. We’ll make sure they know about it--”
“You want to set them up to steal? Come on. That’s hardly worth killing them over.”
Sometimes, I doubt Brenda really wants to give them a fair shake for some reason.
“It won’t just be theft at stake,” I tell her. “If they break in, we’ll have set up a series of trials for them to pass through--”
Brenda’s face lights up. “Now we’re talking.”
“I’d love to see you put your formidable imagination to use,” I say, “but remember. We’re not supposed to be the bad guys here.”
She pulls a face. She doesn’t appreciate my insinuation. “Sometimes I think you forget what the gods have done before.”
Just her words summon a sequence of images that flash through my mind and make my heart race: buildings on fire, bodies in the ash, the acrid scent of smoke choking the living as the gods rampage through the rubble mercilessly…
“I can never forget,” I say. “But they could be useful too.”
Brenda stands from her chair. “I know you think you can keep the monsters on chains. But I doubt that those children that the gods infested will be the heroes you think they will become.”
“We’ll see,” I tell her. “I’m on their side, but if they fail us, I’ll be the one to see them imprisoned once more, even at the cost of the children’s innocent lives.”
Even if doing so will kill me.
I think of Izzy sitting so bravely in the car with me.
All I wanted to do was pull her into my arms and reassure her that I cared about her.
That I would do everything in my power to keep her safe, just as I did before.
I wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone so deeply that it cut me like a knife.
But I couldn’t reveal our connection.
“Good,” Brenda says, already sashaying toward the door. “I’m off to devise some lovely tortures for the library.”
“Trials,” I shouted behind her. “Trials, not tortures.”
She flashes me a smile over her shoulder. “Right. My mistake. Slip of the tongue.”
Gods save these poor kids.
I might be the one to imprison them in the end, if necessary, but I didn’t want to be the one to test them.
The truth was, they needed to be handled harshly, not with the kid-gloves that I would use.
It was the only way we could be sure. It was the only way I could justify to all those powerful beings shouting for their deaths that they wouldn’t be a danger to us.
But letting other people do the dirty work hurts too. I think of Izzy’s face, so like her mother’s, and I reach for the brandy on my desk.
She deserves better.