Linn settled into the soft cushions and sighed. Blackie leapt on her chest and licked her face. She giggled and touched his nose. A spark of pink flew out and he jerked his head back. For a moment she was afraid she’d hurt him, but then he butted her hand with his head and began to purr.
Patches climbed up on the back of the couch and joined in the purring. Lin reached up and stroked her too, the soft fur feeling good on her sore hands.
Bes ladled stew into bowls, as they had left the pot on the banked wood stove all day. He brought the bowl to Linn and lifted Blackie down when he showed interest in the venison stew. “They’ll be eating solid food in a week. Two weeks and they can travel.”
Linn wondered where they were going, but she was too tired to ask questions right now. The stew smelled wonderful, and tasted just as good. She inhaled her bowl full, and got up to refill it. Bes was sitting at the table with the kittens at his feet drinking their milk. She joined him, feeling much better.
“There you go, color back in your cheeks. Power takes a lot out of you. You won’t be able to do this often, and when you do, lots of fuel.”
Linn nodded. She was finally filling up and starting to feel sleepy. Bes motioned her away when she got up to do the dishes. “Not tonight. Get some sleep. Go purr on her, Blackie.” He pointed at the couch and Linn went. For a wonder, so did Blackie, who resumed his spot on her chest. He was really too heavy to do that for long, so she rolled onto her side and tucked him along her arm. He complied, and then she felt Spot One jump up to curl up in the crook of her knees.
Linn was asleep before the others joined them. She dreamed of the fog again, but this time she had Lambent in her sheath, so there was no light. She was walking on and on, so tired... she tripped over something soft and fell down, down...
She sat up with a start. She was still on the couch. Lambent was on the table where she had left her after dinner. The kittens were all over her and the couch. Blackie yawned until she could see the moonlight glinting on his little fangs. He put a firm paw on her chest until she lay back down.
This time, she didn’t dream.
Chapter 13
In the morning Linn milked the goats, barely noticing Lambent at her side. Working with the sword constantly at her side had been annoying at first, but now she was used to it.
Bes wandered out, a cup of coffee in hand, and tossed hay to the horses that were in the corral off the side of the barn. “I want to get the kittens outside for a bit today. Sunny and warm.” He leaned over the gate and watched her milk for a moment.
Linn nodded and wondered if she’d get away with having a cup of that coffee. She left the door propped open when she went inside and the kittens all tumbled over to stand and sniff excitedly, but none of them stepped outside. She put down their milk and they scrambled back to eat, which made her laugh. She poured a cup of coffee and added fresh milk and spoonfuls of sugar. It still didn’t taste great, but she sipped at it.
Bes walked up onto the porch. “Come on, then,” he prompted.
Linn walked outside and Blackie followed on her heels, tail straight in the air. His ears, too big for his body, swiveled at every sound. Linn commented, “He has his mother’s ears.”
Patches and Spot Two hung in the doorway. Linn wondered if being girls had anything to do with their hesitance. Spot One ventured to the top of the steps and wobbled on the edge. Linn scooped him up and rubbed her face on his side. The kittens were still so soft, but already bigger than a full-grown housecat. He wriggled to get down and she put him back on the porch. He lashed his tail and pounced on a leaf.
Blackie prowled over the whole porch, bouncing sideways once in a while at things Linn couldn’t see. The girls finally ventured out, and Linn sat down to pat them and rub their ears. Patches climbed into her lap and watched the world from this sanctuary. Spot Two joined her twin in exploring.
Bes let Blackie climb his leg and took the big kitten into his arms. Linn winced, watching them. “Doesn’t that hurt?”
“A little, but he’s surprisingly careful for a kitten.”
“They all are. I remember my cousin’s cat had kittens a couple years ago and they scratched us all up, but they didn’t mean to.”
Blackie turned his head back and forth as they were talking, as if he were listening. Bes ran his fingers under the kitten’s jaw, which caused him to purr. “This might be the last peaceful day we have for a while, child.”
Linn bit her lip. “You said we were moving.”
He nodded. “The wards here are strong, and attuned to all of us, now. But there is a lot of open ground, and Coyote has decided to join Heff. Without him here in the mountains, watching...” He shrugged and put Blackie down again. The kitten promptly pounced on Spot Two and rolled his sister across the weathered boards.
“Why us? I mean... you’re pretty powerful. But the kittens, and me, well, we are hardly a threat.”
“The kittens are full immortals. Children of Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of war and vengeance. And the Mayan god of Terrestrial Fire, which means that like your grandfather they are attuned to volcanoes. Something I don’t think anyone has told you is that we immortals don’t have children often. For one thing, it takes a lot of Power to generate a viable pregnancy. For another, the untrained immortal child is a danger to himself and others.” He suddenly looked as old as his grey hair made him out to be. She guessed he was remembering. Her grandparents had gotten that look from time to time, and it was only now that she understood it.
“Terrible things, child, have come from that. And because a full immortal cannot be killed... we do have prisons, you know.”
She nodded. “I’d guessed that from reading the myths and legends. Even a god can be locked away with enough power.”
He nodded. “I, myself, have raised children. Over the ages I have become the one chosen to watch many children grow and guide them. Which is how I became the patron god of childbirth and children.” He grinned suddenly. “Really ought to be a woman’s job.”
Linn laughed. “I’d wondered about that. Who are your adopted children?”
“Bast is one. The other... did not stay among mortals.”
Linn looked down at Patches, now napping in her lap. “I am sorry.”
“It has been many millennia. Some days, I forget.”
The other kittens were stretched out in the sun. Blackie washed his paw, which was getting huge. Bes looked down at him. “He’s all paws and ears,” the old god said affectionately.
Linn giggled. “I hope he grows into them.”
She looked up at Bes, an odd feeling since they were usually nose to nose. “What are we doing today?”
“First, get this lot tucked in on the couch.”
Linn nodded, scooping up Patches. She suspected Bes was enhancing the kitten’s naptime to give them time for her lessons. As long as the kittens were safe. Once all the sleepy babies were poured onto the couch, she rejoined Bes on the porch in the warm sunlight, leaving the door closed behind her.
“How much tracking do you know?”
“I know what made what tracks, usually...”
“So, not a lot.” His chuckle took the sting out of that. “Let’s start with something easy. You know where we rode out yesterday, go show me how you’d tell we went through there.”
She looked out at the lush meadow and blinked. She thought she remembered where they’d ridden off the gravel driveway... She started to walk along the hard packed road, looking at the slightly looser margin. Finally she found a semi-circular mark. “Here, that’s a horse track.”
He nodded. “Keep going.”
She walked into the grass, casting about for marks of their passage. A bruised stem of Indian paintbrush, knocked flat by a hoof, earned her a grin from Bes. She kept walking on, then stopped. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Something else went through here.” She pointed at the little marks the cut across the horses’s trail.
“So it did. Go ahead and follow th
at, if you’d like.”
Linn was curious, then in a few steps more down the slight slope in a wetter place, found the clear track she’d been seeking. “Oh, it was a deer!”
“Or an elk. Good sized herd nearby.”
He straightened then, frowning. Linn felt it then... a deep strumming through her body. “What is that?” She cried out, looking toward the house. The kittens...
“Get to the house. The wards are breached,” he spat out, already running for the barn. Linn took off for the house like a shot.
She went through the front door at a run. The kittens were still asleep on the couch. The house felt still and calm, in contrast to her racing heart. She caught her breath, then loaded the rifle that hung over the door. It might not help against a god, but it sure made her feel better. Looking out the window, she saw Bes saddling the horses.
He disappeared into the barn, then came back out with big saddlebags and lashed them behind the saddles. Linn guessed they were for the kittens, but why not take the truck?
It occurred to her to wonder how her grandfather had traveled. She shook her head. The warning seemed to have settled into a low buzzing in her ears. Was it going to keep doing that, or did it mean that more than one entity was passing through the barrier? Bes led the horses up to the porch and tied them there. He looked up and met her eyes and nodded. She took that to mean "stay put."
She stood there at the window, the rifle in the crook of her arm and one hand on Lambent’s pommel. One of the kittens was snoring behind her, making a little squeaky-toy noise. Suddenly she felt like crying. She didn’t want them to be in danger, didn’t want this to be happening.
She sucked in a deep breath and steadied herself.Nothing to be done about that now, just deal with it and soldier on, she told herself firmly. The waiting was the worst part.
Bes was out of sight when she saw the first thing emerge from the forest. She couldn’t make out the shape or size of it, as it seemed to be covered in dark grey smoke. Then she realized she was Seeing it; the power coming off it was obscuring it on purpose. Bes came around the corner of the house, blazing white, and made a gesture at it, a ball of Power flying off his fingertips.
Then he turned and beckoned Linn out. She opened the door and stepped out. “Get the kittens.” He ordered. She turned at once to scoop up Blackie. She couldn’t really manage more than one at a time. He stretched and yawned.
She handed him to Bes and went back in the house, sparing a glance for the apparition that was still advancing. She thought there were three of them. She scooped up Spot One, and handed him off to Bes. It was as she turned to go back in the house a third time that she felt something hit her hard between the shoulder blades and knock her down. She was trying to get up when the house exploded.
Crying, Linn covered her head with her arms and waited until things had stopped landing on her before she looked up again. There was no fire, but the house was destroyed. The doorframe leaned crazily to the side and the wall was gone, in splinters. The kittens... She tried to crawl forward.
Bes scooped her up unceremoniously, throwing her over his shoulder. He carried her off the porch and shoved her onto her horse.
“Ride!” he bellowed, slapping the mare’s rump hard. With a squeal, the horse bounded away from the house. Linn crouched over the neck of the running horse and held on for dear life. She didn’t dare look back. She didn’t know where she was going.
Chapter 14
Sekhmet was delighted to meet Steve at the end of the high path. They stropped cheeks in the cat equivalent to a human kiss, and walked slowly through Quetzalcoatl’s gardens. They didn’t talk for a while. Both knew the battle was coming, both were ready.
“Ever thought about what it must be like to be one of the Old Ones?” Steve finally asked.
Sekhmet looked at him. He sat back on his haunches and looked steadily back at her. She knew what he meant. “Yes, I’ve thought about it. And then I forgot, because that is our gift, you and I. To forget and stay young at heart and be able to laugh.”
He flattened his ears in agreement. The Old Ones, the Olympians and the high Norse gods, had mostly forgotten to laugh, if they ever knew how. The weight of all the millennia they had seen, all the blood spilled, crushed them into solemnity. Maybe that was the reason behind this war. The absolute power they had wielded for so long left them unable to empathize with mortals.
She shook her head. “When we became gods, it was the beginning of our downfall.”
He stood and started blindly down the paths again and she paced alongside him. “The blood spilled by us, and by our forefathers, can never be returned. I became so sickened by it, at the end... I retreated to the high plane entirely. Centuries passed before I returned to see what had become of my former home. Even today...” He looked at her and she could see a single crystal tear in his eye. As she watched it fell and hung trembling from a black whisker. “To the modern world, the blood spilled hangs over the people like a miasma and holds them back.”
Sekhmet licked his cheek. He closed his eyes, and she washed his face until he started to purr. Then she pounced on him, nipping his ear as she vaulted over him. Instantly he was chasing her down the path, laughing. She let him catch her every so often, and they played like a pair of massive kittens until he had forgotten again.
Heff and Quetzalcoatl, watching from the palace, laughed.
“My garden may never be the same,” the winged serpent said with a chuckle.
“It’s worth it,” the elder immortal replied. “The very human gift of laughter and play may save us yet.”
“Yesss, the gift of curiosssity...” His hiss only showed up when he was stressed.
“The Old Ones never had it,” Heff stated flatly. “I was born on this plane, yes, but I was partly raised in Olympus. They don’t care. They don’t like change, and they hate that humans are becoming a threat.”
“So what are we doing?” rejoined the other, as if they hadn’t been in council about this for weeks now.
“Fighting a delaying action. Waiting for a breakthrough that can stop the Old Ones. Looking for a way to kill an immortal.”
Quetzalcoatl looked straight into Hephaestus’ eyes. “You never said that in council.”
“No,” Heff replied bluntly. “You knew it, though.”
The serpent nodded sinuously. “I guessed when you took the Scholar to Sanctuary. And the Old Ones must suspect, as well, or they would not have sent minions to destroy her home. It was the opening salvo in this war.”
Heff looked grim. “In the past we did not target our own kind. This time, there will be no holds barred.”
Quetzalcoatl tsk-ed at the other immortal. “You speak so much human slang.”
Heff stiffened, looking off into the distance. He remained silent and the serpent saw him visibly pale.
“What is wrong?”
“The wards around my home have been breached.”
“Go, then!”
There was a long hesitation, the god’s shoulders tensed, his muscles rolling in a massive display of his strength, and then Heff’s body slumped. “No, there is nothing I can do. It will take me too long to get there to be any good. I will send Sekhmet and Steve.”
Quetzalcoatl lifted a wing and brushed his friend’s arm with it. “I know it is hard. We need you here, though. You hold them together.”
Heff’s face looked as if it were cast in iron. “The general stays with his army. Even when his family is in danger. We need to gather all the children at the Sanctuary on Earth.”
“All?” The serpent was startled.
“If they come after one, they will hunt them all. It is our weakest point.”
The children of the gods, slow to mature into their Power, protected by gods and demi-gods all over the world, were the future. Raised as humans among humans, they were intended to balance immortals and humans. Humans, after all, had sprung from immortals. Heff believed that with time, they would become intertwined and equal. He would
live to see that, he had reason to believe, and he thought he would enjoy it.
The Old Ones liked their power, and would do anything to retain it. They might draw from the adulation of humans to feed their immense egos, but to them, humans were pawns in their ongoing battle for world domination. The children of the gods were none of theirs these days, as they had for centuries withdrawn to the citadel of Olympus.
Their withdrawal might be why humans had finally come into their birthright of joy and curiosity. Heff knew he and others who fostered human kind had also kick-started the renaissance of humanity. But it was the innate intelligence of the true children of the gods, humanity itself, sprung from the blood of the Titans, the first to slip through the cracks in the planes and come to Earth...
Heff tore himself from his wandering thoughts, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He looked into the concerned rainbow-shot eyes of his friend and squared his shoulders. “I believe we have another planning committee to ride herd on.”
He sent a sprite to summon Steve and Sekhmet to him. They met him at the entrance to the war chamber. He looked Sekhmet in the eyes and saw her fur lift along her entire spine.
“My wards were breached. Go quickly, and when you have determined the situation, all the children must be taken to Sanctuary below.”
“All the children?”
“If they will attack ours, they will attack others who have not so doughty a protector.”
Steve nodded grimly. “We run on the winds. Send sprites with us, that we may report back.”
Heff sighed. “Thank you...”
Sekhmet licked his cheek and then they both turned and raced away, their long bodies almost touching the ground with each stride.
Heff went into the room filled with a long conference table and immortals of every shape and description. It was utter chaos. All of them were talking at once. He shut the worry out of his mind and took control of the meeting.
Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) Page 7
