Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Dry, irritating, prickly, endless sand.
I scoured red mountain dunes of infinite desert and nomadic people atop their camels.
I searched the caves of mountain tribes.
I swept the rolling green hills of equestrians clad in furs with eagles for familiars.
I went further south than any god had been.
Every village, every city, every language, every, every, every, every.
Castles, rooftops, taverns, windows, villages, huts.
I verged on madness as my nine planned months bled into nine savage years before I found her. One would imagine it would be difficult to see diamonds and pearls against the blinding sparkle of never-ending snow, but I knew her the moment I saw her.
There were nearly two hundred million mortals wandering the earth, from baking deserts to lush gardens to mountains that pierced the heavens. Why, then, for the love of all that was holy and good and immortal did mankind ever spread to the desolate Arctic?
The last place I’d searched was an expanse of frozen nothing, lit by the shimmering green of northern lights, threatened by the ocean that licked at the sea floor underfoot.
Of all the places my human could have been, why had these mortals chosen to carve homes from a never-ending misery of ice when there were lands where one could eat fresh fruit and walk barefoot year-round?
I’d love to grab every member of her new people by the shoulders and beg them to return to a land with grass and crops and warmth.
There was an agoraphobia that came with the endless sky, the endless land, the flat blue in all directions above and flat white in all directions below. It was a purgatory of its own design.
Izi would have loved the irony of me being exiled to this barren wasteland.
Amagi—her proto-Sumerian moniker for ice—had nothing on the frost-bitten expanse where, at long last, I found a soul that glowed like the rarest of precious gems. She was clad in sealskin furs, strips of leather holding her warming coat together.
Her hair was as dark as it had been in past lifetimes, with wind-burnt cheeks, full lips, brown eyes and…
My immediate urge upon discovering her was first to weep for joy. Hope and light exploded within me, a magnet once more drawn to its purpose.
My relief was fleeting.
I spied the milky glitter shining around a young girl wrapped tightly in furs as if she were the sun itself. The excitement ceased before I could savor it. Shala—Eleni—Love—hadn’t even seen me, and she was already terrified.
I had not arrived in a moment of peace.
The northern wilds and its people were unfamiliar to me, but I knew humans, fathers, and men.
I recognized a fist raised in violence when I saw it.
One foot in front of the other, I sprinted toward them, jaw clenched, ready for battle. I swung for the man, bracing for the crunch of bone, the ripple of flesh, the bloodied teeth that would stain the snow.
Instead, my hand passed through the attacker as if he were little more than smoke.
Panic wouldn’t serve me.
I lifted my hands before me, wondering who I could call upon. What god would permit me to be seen? What form could I take that her eyes might perceive? How could I save her?
Another step back, rattled, frantic, desperate.
I understood from her cowering posture, and her place on the snow, that this was not the first time she’d been hit. From the hands raised to protect her face, her flinch, her meek cry for mercy, I knew she didn’t expect this to be the last.
I needed to do something.
There had to be a way.
A weapon.
A loophole.
His fury goaded me into action. This man could be their king for all I cared.
If he struck her one more time, I didn’t care where we were, who she worshipped, or who this inferior mortal was.
If he hit my human, I would savor the popping socket as I ripped his arm from its shoulder, salivating as his blood drained onto the permafrost.
Maybe her eyes were closed to me, but there were other things her people could see. Their totems, their guides, the animals that stalked the snow dunes…could it work?
Fuck. I was the Prince of motherfucking Hell. If I said it was, then it was so.
Fury took shape, and I let it overcome me. It ripped my clothes, it fractured my jaw, it turned my fingers to claws, it salivated with the threat of an apex predator as I unlocked raw, unadulterated power.
Time moved differently for me than I did for the mortals. I processed everything in the time it took for four distinct, thundering footsteps to hit the snow. I tore myself from the space behind the veil, springing forward with no regard for the consequence. With it came a lifetime of emotions.
I meant to shout, but a guttural, rumbling growl came out in its place.
Rage became me as I tore from the unseen land, snarling with the fury of a thousand monsters.
This time, I knew before my corporeal form crunched against ice and snow that I was not landing on the frozen tundra with the feet of a man.
I had no idea what shape I’d taken, demon though I was, there was nothing human about my build.
Shala—Eleni—Love—stood behind me.
My jaws snapped together, frothing with intent as I stared into the face of hate.
The man yelled something new, something I couldn’t interpret, though it sounded like a stream of curses.
Biting wind whipped ice-sharp snow from the endless expanse, tousling hair in places I’d never felt before. The fur-trimmed coat of the man before me moved with the howling air as his eyes darkened, teeth bared.
Another lifetime passed for me in the heartbeat it took for the mortals to react.
Curiosity was my primary word for how I’d described each new experience with my human. I’d figured out the rest later.
Original pity over the death sentence she didn’t deserve? Curious.
Sadness over her mistreatment? Curious.
Staying with her simply because she’d asked? Curious.
A desire to find her again? Curious.
Obsession and its evolution through lifetimes? Curious.
The speed with which I named it in truth—love—despite never before having encountered the emotion? Fascinating.
And now, a newly curious thing happened in my moment of explosive madness.
Fury solidified in a shape of its own in the most literal of senses.
The mortal male’s hand was on a weapon in an instant, but the height of his brows, the drop of his jaw, his backward stumble, told me plenty.
A loud, angry accusation. The man shouted something I couldn’t understand, but given his wide-eyed, slack-jawed horror, it may have been Beast! Monster! Or my personal favorite, Demon!
A snarl sliced through his shock.
I understood the heart of the exclamation, though it came in a language I didn’t speak. I wasn’t even familiar with the linguistic origins of the word. The horrified declaration that transcended translation.
His hand grasped at the weapon strapped to his hip.
My jaws snapped, frothing, lips pulled back an inch from his face.
I was too close for his harpoon to be of any use to him.
The girl—for she was not yet a young woman—plunged her fingers against me, into what must have been fur. With it came the clutch of inexplicable trust. Whatever I was, whoever she was, she knew I was there for her. I’d burst from the ether in a moment of torture. The bond was instantaneous.
The man’s testosterone-fueled madness outweighed any wisdom. He took the two steps backward to create the room he needed to draw it from the leather holster around his waist. The light hit the serrated spike.
Whether for fishing, murdering beasts of the land, or just punishing cowering daughters, the thorny fin on one end may as well have been shark’s teeth with saw-like ridges running its length.
The man bared his teeth, face contorting with hate as he hoisted his blade.
His hand was meant for her.
The killing blow was directed at me.
He brought it down with its full weight, cutting through a thick fur hide and embedding in my shoulder with a thwunk.
At least, he might have embedded it in my shoulder, had I been made of hair, blood, and bone.
After all, I was corporeal, but I wasn’t.
Only a god can kill a god.
Maybe I deserved the title. Maybe I didn’t. But one thing was for certain: this violent human male was not worthy to stand against me.
He waited for the embedded weapon to give me pause, to make me retreat, to so much as elicit a sound.
His panic came from my lack of reaction.
The whites of his eyes matched the ground around him.
His face became a blanched mask as he fell, scrambling backward, rump hitting the ice as he clawed against the snow.
With an animalistic humph, I shook the weapon from my shoulder.
It clattered to the ground. Only then did I understand what he saw in the reflection of his wide-eyed terror.
A wolf, whiter than the endless winter, stood taller than the man’s shoulder.
Its diamond eyes looked back at me. Its lips peeled away from its dripping fangs as the rumbling snarl shook the frost upon which it stood.
I looked back at the beast within me. Knowing it protected my human, I loved every hair and dripping tooth of my new, monstrous form.
I salivated as I imagined sinking my teeth into his flesh, bone bursting from joints as it ripped beneath my divine wrath.
I’d been a terrifying wolf for barely three seconds before realizing if I had caused the man fear, then even with the bond, the presence of an enormous beast may start to scare the girl.
I hadn’t spent much time around mortal animals, but I’d seen the domesticated cats, dogs, and birds that humans often kept as pets.
With the man still scrambling backward in abject terror, I turned my attention toward my human.
I lowered my ears, looked back at her with wide, peaceful eyes, and dipped my head as close to the ice as I could to try to win her favor.