Chapter 6 #2
His explanation was simple. “There are things I’m capable of, depths I can reach inside a person’s mind most cannot.
They’re brief and fleeting, and out of deep respect, I wouldn’t normally disturb them, but they exist, and there is a part of your dear grandfather’s mind that remembers you quite clearly.
A place where he loves you, his little shish kabob, more than he loves anything else. ”
Tears sprang to her eyes, hot and aching. He’d called her that as far back as she could remember, because his lemon chicken kabobs were her favorite meal.
She pulled her grandfather’s weathered hand to her cheek and whispered, “I love you, Papa. I love you so much. I miss you.”
He squeezed her hand back, looking her directly in the eye with the kind of love he’d once showered her with, before reverting back to that slack-jawed expression.
Tightening his favorite sweater around him, she went to the small fridge he had in his room and grabbed his favorite soda, cracking it open to offer it to him, but he didn’t take it, worrying her all over again.
“Papa, it’s your favorite. Orange soda. Don’t you at least want a sip?”
Suddenly, Harvey, Marty, Wanda, and Darnell were in the doorway, their footsteps soft, their eyes concerned, filling the room with their support.
“Is everything all right?” Harvey asked, kneeling beside her.
Dom blinked and muttered, “I don’t know. This…this is my grandfather. He has Alzheimer’s and usually at night, he’s pretty feisty. But when we found him, he was sitting just like this in a silent daze.”
Harvey lifted his sharply chiseled chin…then he did something Dom didn’t expect. He took her grandfather’s hand in his big palm and held it. “Sir, I’m Harvey Larsen. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
She stared at him, her heart thumping wildly in her chest at his kind gesture. “I don’t think he understands.” Of course he didn’t understand. She wasn’t sure why she said that.
Harvey smiled at her, his eyes soft and as perfect as the man himself. “It’s okay. If there’s ever a time he does understand, we’ll have been properly introduced.”
Dom swallowed hard at the lump in her throat, fighting hot tears at Harvey’s thoughtful answer.
Marty, Darnell and Wanda stood just inside the doorway before they, too, came and introduced themselves. Each of them taking Stavros’s hand, speaking to him as though he understood what they were saying.
They talked to him in such a respectful, dignified way, as if having a conversation with someone whose mind wasn’t addled, that Dom had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from falling apart.
Nina came back into the room, her eyes filled with concern as she scratched her head and looked to her friends.
“Did you find anything or anyone?” Dom asked, the worry that no staff could be found growing worse.
She tapped her nose, her eyes narrowing. “Not yet, but can you guys smell that shit?”
Marty and Wanda’s nostrils flared before Marty murmured with a frown, “Huh. Yeah. I can. What is it?”
Wanda frowned, too, as she smoothed a hand over her trousers. “I can. It smells old. Like when you open a box that’s been sitting in your basement in the damp and it hits you in the face.”
Dom sniffed the air as she rose to her feet, but she didn’t smell anything except for her papa’s Ben Gay. “Okay, so what does this smell that only you guys with super smellers can smell mean?”
Harvey rose, too, with a long, raspy sigh, jamming his hands into the pockets of his puffy black vest. “It means the Jotnar.”
Oh, all these crazy words. How would she ever learn them? And why did the Jotnar sound like a curse word?
Her heart shot straight up to her throat. “The what?”
“Giants,” MC replied. “They’re gods of chaos.”
And?
The first picture that came to mind was the Jolly Green Giant, a happy guy on a can of vegetables. “Why do I get the impression they’re not like the guy who says, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ in all those commercials?”
Marty held up a hand, setting her purse on the credenza where her papa’s TV sat. “Okay, say no more. First course of action, make sure the staff and patients are safe. Ladies, let’s do some hunting. Harvey and Darnell, you two stay here with Dom and her grandfather and keep them safe.”
Safe? From?
The ladies exited the room with haste, while Dom clenched her hands together, licking her dry lips.
“What does giants mean? Giants as in big guys with clubs who stomp all over unsuspecting towns, crushing them to oblivion? Those giants? Or Goliath giant, and is there even a difference? A giant’s a giant!
And why are they here at my grandfather’s memory care facility?
” she squeaked, her brain abuzz with questions she wasn’t sure she wanted answered.
“Let’s make sure everyone is safe before I explain any further, Dominique,” MC soothed.
She narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion, planting her hands on her hips. “Translation? Before we explain to Dom the trouble we’ve laid at her doorstep, let’s be sure the trouble we laid at her doorstep hasn’t already made trouble?”
Harvey winced, his handsome face sheepish. Grabbing her hand, he held it, making her instantly feel safe—which was weird.
“Sort of.”
His answer left her incredulous, but not speechless.
Yanking her hand from his, she waved a finger under his nose.
Spikes of anger sizzling along her spine.
“Sort of? My grandfather and his friends are in danger and all you can say is sort of? I’m here to tell you right now, Thor’s overly large, weird offspring, if anything, and I do mean anything happens to my grandfather or any of the people here, if one hair on their heads is out of place, I’m coming for you, and I’m going to use your little friend the talking hammer to wreak havoc!
If you think what happened in my apartment was bad, wait until you have to wipe the remnants of your brain matter up off the floor with a damn mop!
And then? Then I’m going to merrily march your little friend to the scrapyard and have him melted down to the size of a charm on a bracelet! ”
With that, she decided to make a break for the bathroom down the hall, where she fully intended to empty the turmoil captured in her stomach into the nearest toilet—in privacy.
She pushed her way out and began to head down the quiet hallway when she was bulldozed by what could only be described as something gargantuan and akin to the side of a brick wall.
Crashing to the ground, Dom wheezed, fighting to catch her breath, the impact was so violent. Her back stung with a sharp pain, as if she’d been stabbed with a hot knife.
She didn’t have time to process what was happening before a hand—and she knew it was a hand because the fingers, massive and long, curled around her jaw and covered her mouth—hauled her up against its wall-of-granite chest and squeezed until her eyeballs bulged.
Then there was the smell, described perfectly by Wanda. Damp, old, like a box that had been closed up in a basement.
Someone, someone so strong she couldn’t move an inch, whispered in her ear, sinister and deep, “Hand over Mjolnir, or you’ll suffer the consequences!”