Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Reid
I fly backwards, hitting the ground and landing hard on my back. All the air whooses out of my lungs as I stare at the cloudy sky, too stunned to move for a long minute. All I can do is gasp stupidly and fight the panic that naturally comes when it’s hard to breathe.
And also hopefully not look like a dumbass while doing it.
But I’m pretty sure I fail miserably.
Mercy leans over me, a smirk on her face and not a drop of sweat on her brow. A single piece of her dark hair has come loose, but she tucks it back into place as she tells me, “You lasted longer that time.”
I wince and take her hand, feeling like a dumbass when she has to help me to my feet. “You’re just so damned quick.”
She grins. “You know, your mouth gets dirtier every day.”
My cheeks heat. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, I like a dirty mouth.”
I wait for her to laugh or do anything to show she’s joking, but she looks completely serious. This woman is the strangest person I’ve ever met. I can never tell if she’s flirting with me, or if she’s just completely comfortable with who she is as a person.
“Izzy made friends with one of the new godslayers.”
She rolls her eyes. “Buddy, can we get something out of the way? You’re with that woman, for reasons I don’t understand, but you are, so we’re just friends. There’s no need to mention her every few minutes like I’m going to forget and maul you like some sex-starved cat. Okay?”
Geez, this woman knows just how to fluster me. “Okay.”
A group of students walk by on their way to their next class.
I recognize a familiar vampire, shifter, and a fae.
The shifter and vampire grin at me. We’ve become something close to friends through our random classes together, and they’ve heard about how thoroughly Mercy kicks my ass on a regular basis.
I can tell they’re rooting for me to win, even if they can’t stick around long enough to see it.
The fae’s gaze collides with mine, and anger blossoms in his eyes.
I look away. He didn’t need to tell me that he was more than looking forward to whatever bad things came my way. Mercy, or worse.
As she squares off with me again, her eyes take on that hard edge I’ve grown accustomed to when we train. “But for the record, I think it’s a bad idea.”
“Why?” I ask, trying to mirror her stance.
Not that it’ll matter. She kicks my ass every single time.
“Mice and cats should never be friends.”
“We’re not exactly mice,” I say, feeling offended.
“I didn’t say you were the mice,” she counters back.
We start to circle, and I’m struggling to follow the conversation and her movements. “So, we’re the cats?”
This time, she laughs. “Okay, maybe a bad example. What I was trying to say is that you guys are mortal enemies. They’re only born into this world to kill you. And as gods, you should instinctively want to wipe them from the earth.”
“But--”
Suddenly, she attacks. Her foot slams across my face, and then she sweeps my legs out from behind me. I hit the ground on my back, gasping in air yet again.
She’s there, hovering about me a second later. “Never take your eyes off your enemy.”
“That was pathetic.”
My head jerks to the side, and I spot one of the godslayers. He’s got long blond hair tied back from his face in a man bun. The lines of his face are far too harsh, and his eyes are a dull green that’s almost hazel.
Mercy helps me to my feet, then advances on him like a predator. “What’s it to you, boy?”
He makes a sound I swear is a growl. “Don’t call me boy.”
She crowds into his space, and he actually takes a step back. “Then don’t act like a fucking child. There’s never anything pathetic about learning to fight. Everyone has to start somewhere.”
“He’s a god,” the guy says, eyes wide as he looks between me and Mercy.
“What’s your name?” she demands.
“Trevor,” he tells her, drawing himself up taller.
“Well, Trevor, if you’re such a big fucking man, why don’t you fight me?”
He gives her a smug look. “I don’t fight women.”
She hits him in the face, and the big man goes down like a rock.
For a second, he lies on the ground without moving, before his eyes blink open and he stares at her in shock.
I move closer to them, feeling a little sorry for the guy.
I don’t like the idea of hitting a woman either, but the first time I told Mercy that, she made sure I realized that I sounded like an asshole.
Leaning over him, I offer him my hand. He looks between me and the woman, then slowly takes my hand. I help him to his feet, and he dusts himself off slowly, looking at us like we’re nuts.
“Maybe next time we keep this between the guys.”
Mercy takes one step toward him, and he leaps back.
“I meant so it’d be more fair!” he practically shouts, raising his hands in a sign of surrender.
Mercy freezes, and I hold my breath, wondering what the hell she’ll say to that. “Actually,” she draws the word out, “that’s a good idea. Why don’t we play with your powers a bit?”
“Play?” I ask. Whose side is she on?
Sure, I opened up the earth once and let out the dwellers of Hel to drag our enemies to a horrible fate. But I couldn’t do that everytime I got in a fight? Right?
And, truth be told, I wasn’t even sure how to do that again.
“I’d be up for that,” Trevor says, standing up a little taller.
Mercy turns to me. “You know how we practiced blasting fire in class?”
I nod, wondering where the hell she’s going with this. “Well, Hel’s realm was cold and icy. If you try to make your fire icy instead, you might be surprised by how much more control you have over it, and how much easier it is to use.”
“What is this, a training lesson?” Trevor asks, sounding irritated.
She whirls on him. “That’s exactly what it is, man-bun. You got a problem with that?”
“Uh, no, I was just saying,” he says, a little quieter.
I look over his shoulder and see the godslayer twins standing at a distance, watching us with blank faces. They barely look human. A shiver rolls down my spine. What the hell is with those two?
She turns back to me. “Okay, time to fight the bastard.” Then she looks at both of us. “But this isn’t some mauling bullshit. I’ll tell you when to stop and start. And you stay in the training area. Got it?”
I’m not sure about this idea at all, but I’m not about to look like a chicken in front of the godslayer. “Got it.”
He moves onto the dirt area, and suddenly we’re circling each other. I realize that I don’t have a clue how these beings fight, or how to fight him. Which is exactly when it hits me that I’m totally useless.
“Go,” Mercy says.
The godslayer moves with a frightening speed, his fist barreling for my face. But at the last possible moment, I twist to one side, avoiding the blow. The world around me slows down, and I realize that something has changed. Mercy is almost frozen in motion. The world around me is silent.
I turn back to the godslayer and realize that it’s like we’re caught in the center of a tornado.
He grins. “You have super speed too.”
I guess so. “You bet.”
He comes at me over and over again. Punching and kicking, circling behind me, but no matter what he does, I manage to avoid his blows. Part of it, I know, is the god in me, but part of it is just because he’s like a clumsy gorilla compared to fighting Mercy.
At last, he’s breathing hard, and I decide the hell with it and strike out. My fist connects with his cheek, and he jerks back. Spit flies from his mouth, and I freeze, shocked I hit him, when he turns back.
Anger flares to life in his face.
His hands rise in front of him, and suddenly a golden light gathers in his palms. For a second I’m confused, and then I feel the golden light pulling at me in a way that chills my blood.
That magic. It hurts. Not just me, but Hel herself.
I feel the goddess inside of me seem to really care for the first time.
My hands lift, as if outside of my control, and an icy blue flame leaps from my fingertips and hits the man, knocking him onto the ground. The golden light fades, and the sickening turning in my stomach calms.
But the icy blue flames continue to pour out of me and into the man on the ground.
“No!” I shout.
But I can feel it deep in my soul. Hel is angry.
Whatever he was doing to us was badly, really bad, and now she wants him dead.
Up until this point she seemed to dismiss them like an annoying fly, but now I can sense that her feelings toward him have changed.
She’s decided the godslayers are a danger to us, and she won’t tolerate them any longer.
It takes everything in me to cut off the flow of magic, to drop my hands and refuse the powerful goddess.
She rages inside of me, like a tiger smashing against the bars of its cage.
I can feel her so deeply that it’s hard to breathe.
The anger that consumes her is like nothing I’ve ever imagined.
It’s violence and chaos and a deep knowledge that an angry goddess is a creature to fear.
Something comes over me as I stare at the guy on the ground. His skin is covered in ice. Even his eyelashes are covered in ice.
She can’t just do this! Hel can’t use me to kill!
So I do something I never imagined. I imagine Hel inside of me, and I push her into something and lock it behind me. The image is perfectly formed in my mind, but strange. It isn’t until I realize that I can no longer feel her that I realized that I did something.
I think I actually locked her away.
At least for now.
I’m breathing hard when I crouch down beside Tevor. “Are you okay?”
His head jerks toward me, and he shivers. “Yeah…I just...I thought you couldn’t combat it.”
I offer him my hand, but he shakes his head and gets unsteadily to his feet. He starts to walk away from me, but then looks back. Behind him, the twins still stare at me, no expression on their faces, so I jerk my gaze away and back to him.
My mouth opens, but I don’t know what to say. But the guy? He looks a little scared. Of me. And I don’t blame him.
“That was fucking awesome.”
I spin around and see Mercy beaming up at me.
“Hel took over.”
“Yeah, but you fought back against her, didn’t you?”
I nod.
“And now you know how to use her icy magic.”
“I guess,” I say, then look at Trevor far away. “But the magic he used against me… I think if I hadn’t stopped him in time, it would’ve killed me.”
Mercy is quiet for a long minute. “So, now you know. They can move as fast as you can, and they have magic capable of destroying you. Which means you need to learn to interrupt that spell before they can ever unleash it.”
A tremor moves through my body.
Mercy takes my face and pulls me down to look at her. “I like you, Reid. I like Hel too. The last thing I want is for you to die. I wanted to be able to sugarcoat things for you…”
“You’ve been sugarcoating things for me?” I ask, shocked. How bad is the truth then? Mercy is amazing, but not exactly...sugary.
A darkness comes over her face. “My father is a beast, Reid. I am sugarcoating things compared to how I was taught.”
“A beast?”
She winces, but she forges on. “Yes. You’ve heard the story of Beauty and the Beast?”
I nod, confused.
“That tale was based off of my parents’ story.”
“So your dad is…?” Some kind of weird fairy tale creature?
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is that I can’t sugarcoat things for you anymore.You need to learn to defend yourself. Faster than you are.”
I know she’s right. “Okay.”
“Reid?”
I jerk away from Mercy and stare at Izzy. How the hell did she get here without me seeing her?
“Izzy.”
Her arms fold over her chest and her glare sweeps from Mercy to me. “We need to talk.”
For some reason, I kind of hope she wants to talk about the godslayers. And not the fact that Mercy was cupping my cheeks so intimately. I didn’t do anything wrong, but it kind of feels like I did.
“Sure thing.” I look back at Mercy. “We’ll talk later?”
“You bet,” she says, and there’s a challenge in her eyes as she looks at Izzy.