Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Van
It’s raining today. The sky is filled with dark clouds that turn the world to a strange grey. Behind the clouds, the light of the sun illuminates them, creating a strange world of grey light and a swirling mist.
Any smart person would be tucked away inside on a day like this one, but no one has ever called me smart. I stand outside the gates of the school beneath the relative shelter of a tree, just off the main road, waiting. I shove my hands deeper into my jacket and shiver against the chill in the air.
But even though I’m freezing my ass off, I don’t care. There are people in my life who I will always come for when they call. Rain, fire, zombies, I don’t give a shit. I’ll always come.
The familiar sound of the beater car reaches me before I see her car.
I move away from the shadows of the tree and crouch lower in my hoodie as I move closer to the edge of the road, so that she won’t miss me.
The green car, with peeling paint and a newly cracked windshield, moves slowly down the dirt road, which is now more mud than road.
When she reaches my side, she stops. I open the door, which groans, and then I climb in. “Sorry, I’m tracking in mud and rain,” I say, closing the door behind me.
Instantly, her arms close around my neck, and she begins to cry.
“Julie, what’s wrong?” I’d been worried when she’d called, but now my stomach has dropped. Julie didn’t cry.
She draws back and I stare into the face of my nanny and the woman who helps to run my parents’ household.
The years have been hard on her. Gone is the woman who used to run and play with me.
Now, she’s a grandmother’s age with deep lines carved into her face.
Her perfect black hair is streaked with nearly as much grey as back, and her brown eyes have deep crinkles beside them.
And yet, her face is more beloved by me than nearly anyone in my life, save the guys and Izzy. This woman was the only reason I was only half as fucked up as I am. Without her, I would’ve become an uncompassionate, money-grubbing, piece of shit like everyone else in my family.
One day when I had my family’s money, Julie would get anything she wanted from me. A house. A car. Someone to clean her damned house.
“Are you okay?”
Her hands capture the sides of my face. “They feeding you enough?”
Tears stream down her face, and I know something or someone has hurt her, but I play along. “Yeah, but their cooking isn’t half as good as yours.”
She smiles through her tears and slowly releases my face. Continuing to drive just a little further, she pulls off the road beneath the shelter of a massive tree, and the pounding of the rain over our head grows quieter.
I reach across and take her much smaller hand, squeezing it, waiting for whatever brought her to seek me out on such a terrible day.
“I’m not going to work for your parents any longer.”
I stiffen, shocked. Julie doesn’t have a lot of options, and I’d have thought her loyalty to my family had no end. “Why? What happened?”
Julie is quiet another minute that feels like a lifetime. “You’re not human anymore.”
Whoa. “What?”
“When you came home after they accused you of burning the school down, I watched your dad tear into you. And even then, I could feel you were different. That you weren’t human anymore.” Her gaze slides to me. “What are you?”
“What are you?” Slips from my lips before I can stop it.
She releases a slow breath. “I’m a brownie.”
“A brownie?”
“I’m half brownie, half human. We’re rare, of course.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I tell her, searching my mind for any myths about her kind.
“We’re known best as helpers around households. Creatures who like to clean and care for their families. Beings that love sweets and can remain with a certain household almost indefinitely. I, unlike most of my kind, still age at a relatively normal rate, and I’m not bound by most of their laws.”
I exhale slowly, shocked. “I had no idea.”
She smiles. “It’s okay, humans rarely see what’s right in front of their face. Now, Van, what are you? Not a vampire or a shifter. There’s no malice that I detect inside of you. You’re like nothing I’ve seen before.”
I look down at my hands, not realizing that I’d clenched them together, and spread my fingers, staring down at my palms. She surprises me by taking my hand again and squeezing it in hers.
Does she know that I’m afraid to tell her?
She’s the only person who loves me, and actually knows me.
If Izzy and the guys had any idea of the things I’ve done, they could never love me.
But Julie will. She always will. Won’t she?
“I’m…I guess…a god. Tyr, a god of war, heroic glory, justice, and oaths.
He’s inside of me, and we’re sort of...battling for control.
It sounds like I either need to keep him locked away, or they’re going to imprison us both to keep him from taking over once more. ” Slowly, I look up to meet her gaze.
Does she hate me like the others? Does she not believe me?
“Oh, Van,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted this for you.”
“How could you have known?” I say, trying to force a smile.
Her gaze holds mine. “You don’t understand. It’s that girl, Izzy.”
I frown, a protectiveness flaring within me. “What do you mean? This isn’t her fault.”
She looks away from me, out the window to the rain.
“The girl was marked, Van. I knew that from the first time I saw her. She was marked by a twisted ritual that left her vulnerable to so many things. I wondered who hated her enough to do such a thing, but I always worried about the way you boys were drawn to her. All of you have that same spark inside of you, one that called to the gods--and made you vulnerable to her weakness.”
My heart races. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“All you boys have Scandanivan ancestors. If I were to bet, those ancestors were touched by the gods. They were given…certain attributes that were carried down the line. Some of your ancestors may have been remarkably brave, strong, intelligent, or capable, while others simply didn’t allow those attributes to blossom. ”
“What…?” I stare at her, my mind turning.
She looks back at me. “You boys were meant for greatness. You were meant to do good things in this world. Fate drew you together, but unfortunately, it also drew her to you.”
“Don’t say that.”
Her mouth pulls into a thin line. “All I mean is that none of this was a coincidence, Van. And I also mean to say that the gods may have thought that taking control of all of you would be easy, but it won’t be. That fire I saw inside of all of you, it has the potential to beat the gods.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her, and I sound lost to my own ears. “I’m not the man you think I am. I’m flawed. There’s something…evil inside of me, even before the god. I’m my mother and father’s child, no matter--”
“Van.”
I look up at her, and this time she squeezes my hand.
“There is nothing evil inside of you. You’re simply…human. You’re flawed. And that’s okay.”
I don’t know why I’m shaking. “I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can fight the gods or protect my friends.”
“You can,” she tells me.
I feel like something inside of me is crumbling, and the knowledge makes me tense. If that thing crumbles, I don’t know what it’ll unleash.
“You called. You said you needed to talk to me. Was it about you quitting?”
She stiffens and pulls her hand from mine, her eyes wide. “No.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
Time stretches between us as her eyes fill with tears once more. “Vampires.”
My entire body stiffens.
“They came to the house looking for you. Your parents were out of town, but they wouldn’t leave until we told them where you were. They…they killed everyone in the house except for me. I used my powers to hide, but I heard it all. I saw it all.”
“Julie.” I sound like a boy when I say her name.
“They know you’re here. The servants broke…” Tears pour down her face. “They’re going to come and find you. They said they didn’t like you sniffing around looking for them.”
I collapse back against the seat and stare out into the rain. The faces of our dozen servants flash through my mind. They were a loyal bunch. A good bunch. And now they were dead because I failed to protect them.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she says.
But I know it is. I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting my rage. Fighting not to come undone.
The god’s voice inside of me whispers, “That was cowardly. There was no justice in their actions. Give me your oath. Give me your oath, and we’ll destroy them together.”
“No!” I don’t realize I’ve shouted it until Julie wraps me in an embrace.
My entire body shakes. “Where will you go?”
Julie answers slowly. “I don’t know.”
My mind begins to turn. “Do you like the ocean?”
She nods against my shoulder.
“I have a little house along the beach in California, left to me by my grandmother. It’s in my name alone. Go there and live. Be safe. I’ll send money when I can.”
She draws back from me. “Are you sure?”
I nod and touch her face softly. “I’ll always take care of you, as long as I can.”
“I know that,” she tells me.
I give her the instructions to reach the house and text the caretaker, letting them know to expect her.
When everything is arranged, we sit in silence once more, both of us knowing that this could be goodbye forever.
Both of us knowing that I might not have the strength to fight the god inside of me.
“You’ll be careful,” she says, drawing the words out.
“Always,” I promise her.
We hug again, clinging to each other like lost leaves in the storm.
And when she pulls back, her gaze holds mine.
“I didn’t mean to say that Izzy was a problem.
She is as much a victim to this as you are.
And I know that you love her, that you’ve always loved her.
I just meant that all of this was fated to happen. ”
I force a smile. “Well, it seems like the best thing I can hope for is to smash the gods down inside of us and live a decently normal life. Damn immortals.”
Julie gets the strangest look. “Why not just kill them?”
“Immortals, remember?”
Her brows draw together. “Van…gods can be killed.”
I don’t breathe for a long minute. “No, they brought godslayers who can trap us away again with the gods, like what happened before. But no one has a way to kill them.”
She leans closer to me. “Van, they trapped them away because they didn’t know better, but there is a way to kill them. But only you guys can do it.”
“How?”
“It’s as easy as defeating them. You have to use their powers against them.
Only the power of gods can destroy them.
But you have to be careful. The people who did this to Izzy, they weakened her so the gods could use all of you.
They’re out there, and they want the gods to be reborn. They want them to take over.”
I shake my head. “So we have to use our own powers to--”
Her gaze goes behind my head, and her eyes widen. “You have to run now, Van. Go back to campus.”
I look behind me and see nothing. “Julie--”
“Run, Van. Run now.”
I start to shake my head. “If there’s something--”
She reaches across the car and throws my door open wide and the wild storm enters. “Go now, or we’re both dead!”
The terror in her face makes me move. I leave the car, slam the door behind me, and she shifts the car into drive. I watch for half a second as she turns her car back the way she’d come, and then I do as she said: I start running.
But even though I shouldn’t, I look back as I race for the school. I sense more than see someone in the shadows of the woods watching us, and I know deep in my heart they want us dead.
Turning back, I run faster, faster than I’ve ever run before. My feet seem to shake the earth, and I feel like a god racing on a new world. Power flows through me in a way it never has before. Not as something wild and uncontrollable, but as a part of me, like it burns in my veins.
When I reach campus once more, I wait until the gates open to let another car out, and I rush in before the guard can spot me. On campus, no one is out, everything is silent.
Not knowing what else to do, I run until I reach that hill, and I stare down once more at the blackened pits. When I close my eyes, I can feel it once more. The magic of the gods flowing through this place.
These pits and these bones were no accident. Someone is preparing for a ritual.
I can feel it. But what is the ritual for?
And which of my friends is not who they think they are?
I think of what Julie said. Could we really kill the gods inside of us by using their powers against them? I feel Tyr tense within me, and I smile.
The god is afraid.
Which means she was right.
My smile widens and I lift my arms to the fury of the storm.
Maybe we were fated to become the gods.