“You’re being paranoid,” Thomas told him.
“It’s only paranoia if there aren’t actually people out there trying to kill me,” Leon countered. “And since I’m pretty sure there is someone out there trying to kill either me, you, this goddess, or all three of us, I don’t think I’m being paranoid.”
Ayla stood on her toes to try to peer over his shoulder, but she could only see the trees that lined his driveway. “God? Hunter?”
“I think it’s a god,” Leon said. “Hunters travel in packs, and he’s out there alone as far as I can tell.”
Thomas grabbed Ayla’s hand and pulled her away from the window. “They’re not after me. They’re after her.”
Leon groaned and shook his head. “Are you kidding me? There were gods on her trail, and you still made contact? You still brought her here?”
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a lost god in the first place?” Thomas snapped.
Ayla ran her fingers through her long, dark hair as she scrambled for a solution to protect them all. But anything she tried to at least distract the god outside could hurt the humans living around here. “Can you disorient gods?” she asked Thomas. “Give us a chance to at least escape?”
“I don’t think you’re going to like my answer,” Thomas said.
“Just do something!” Leon yelled.
“It could kill your neighbors!” Thomas yelled back.
“Get in the basement,” Leon decided. “I’ve still got my armory, but it’s all down there.”
The walls of the house shook before any of them could reach the basement’s door, swelling and contracting like an accordion, and Ayla gasped as Thomas reached for her hand again. “How well can you control fire? Maybe you can keep it from spreading beyond the patch of trees where he thinks he’s hiding.”
“Fire?” Leon asked. “I thought you were a moon goddess.”
Ayla wanted to scowl at Thomas for bringing up her connection to the sun, but the walls pulsed again only this time, they moaned and creaked as ceiling tiles broke apart and fell on them like hail. Thomas pulled the old key from his pocket and shrugged at Leon. This was a fight they couldn’t possibly win without endangering everyone who lived around here. Leon moaned but nodded and stepped back so Thomas could open a doorway, a path of escape from an unknown god, who would destroy the entire house. And with it, all of the weapons Leon had once used to kill gods.
A doorway appeared on Leon’s kitchen wall, and Ayla followed Thomas through it onto a bustling college campus where students hardly noticed the underdressed trio who’d just appeared in the quad. As Leon stepped through, and Thomas pocketed the key, the doorway closed, leaving the smooth wall of a university hall. Leon sighed and collapsed onto one of the stone benches and covered his face with his hands. “If you two don’t get over your sanctimonious bullshit, we won’t last a day.”
“It’s not sanctimonious bullshit to refuse to kill innocent people,” Ayla hissed.
Leon lifted his head and spread his hands. “I’ve got nothing. How are you planning on stopping both hunters and gods if you won’t fight back?”
“We never said we wouldn’t fight back,” Thomas insisted. “We just won’t do it when innocent people can get caught in the crosshairs. You left the League when you realized innocent people were dying.”
“And any kind of showdown, especially one with a god, is going to draw attention to us,” Ayla added.
Leon groaned and buried his face again, so Ayla glanced up at Thomas and whispered, “How close is he to finding the rest of this spell? Is it really possible?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas admitted. “Only a few people in the entire world know it, League Masters who’ve been entrusted with keeping the veil closed. According to Leon, they once thought they’d be able to use it like a supernatural prison, but when they tried to open it again to force more gods through, some got out instead, and that’s when the war started. Humans realized they couldn’t purge us from this world by trapping us in another, so they decided to exterminate us instead.”
Ayla shivered, just as much from the cold breeze that blew a few scattered flakes of snow in her direction as from the story of their downfall, the moment men discovered they weren’t powerless against gods and could become their own gods in this world. Thomas put an arm around her and kicked Leon’s foot to get his attention. “We’re going to the union before we freeze to death and save everyone the trouble of having to kill us.”
Leon lowered his hands again, looking completely defeated already. “Sometimes, Tommy, I wonder if that isn’t such a terrible idea after all.”
Ayla kept her fingers around the paper cup of coffee she’d purchased in the college’s student union. The heat warmed them, but her body refused to recognize she was no longer standing outside in the sleet and snow, and she couldn’t stop shivering. Apparently, Thomas had opened a door to a university in Minnesota, where winter had decided to arrive early. Leon had just left their table to find coats in the bookstore, so she sat alone with Thomas now, but she couldn’t wrap her head around how close she might be to a solution to reaching her mother.
Perhaps they were wrong, or perhaps they’d never find the missing components for the spell to reopen the veil. She closed her eyes and prayed to the sun and the moon, but neither could help her with this. She prayed to her mother, who was even more helpless from so far away, yet she thought she heard her mother whispering back, “Stay with him, Ayla. He will bring you home.”
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said, his voice startling her because they’d been sitting in silence for a while now. “I should have told you we needed your help, but I didn’t want you to take off before we had a chance to explain. Or beg, if that would work better.”
Ayla stared back into his eyes, the color of periwinkles in spring, and wondered why she’d initially thought he was so terrifying. He seemed so young, still a child, scared and tired just like her. Once a god reached adulthood, whether they’d lived a hundred years or a thousand became irrelevant, but in that moment, he looked so much younger, so much more innocent than her.
“But the Otherworld,” she said. “What makes Leon think it’s safer for him there? He’s human.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “And there’s a chance some gods will escape again before we close it, which could be devastating for a lot of humans. But I’ll tell you the same story Leon told me about becoming a hunter. His parents were in the League, and they were killed when he was a child. He was raised in that lifestyle, and inducted when he was only sixteen. Honestly, I’m not even sure I remember being a teenager.”
Ayla snickered and agreed with him. Years had a way of blurring together for semi-immortal people like gods.
Thomas smiled back at her and lowered his eyes. “I think Leon was motivated by revenge for a long time. But then he met that demigoddess and saw her with her kids, and how she was just this normal woman with the tragic misfortune of having different DNA than humans, and something changed within him. It was like his light bulb moment. So I guess he figures even if the gods in the Otherworld won’t accept his presence, he’s no worse there than here.”
“They may not accept ours,” Ayla said.
Thomas shrugged and sipped on his coffee, so Ayla tilted her head at him and asked, “Can I tell you a story now?”
“Yeah, of course.”
She tugged at the zipper on her backpack and pulled out her notebook, flipping the pages until she found the sketch of a crescent moon singing above the sea with furious winds whipping at the sails of the boats on the water. “There once was a young goddess, a child really, who stood at the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and watched the dark clouds forming in the sky. It became so dark, the moon returned and began to sing to her. In the distance, she could see the boats of fishermen who’d gone out to cast their nets as they did everyday, but the storm had arisen unexpectedly, and they wouldn’t have time to make it back to shore. She asked the moon for help
to turn the tides, but the moon slept and didn’t answer her. It wasn’t time for the moon to be awake, and she didn’t know yet how to rouse it from its sleep.
“She asked the sea to calm its waters, but without the moon, the sea became angry and rose in swells instead. So finally, she called on her father and asked him to awaken the moon and command the sea to obey, but he refused because no sacrifice had been given. He told his daughter they were the masters of this world, and if they weren’t treated as such, men could return to the ashes from which they’d been born. And so the little girl watched helplessly as the winds battered the ships and the waves crashed over them until the sea had swallowed them all.”
Thomas sighed and rubbed his eyes. “He sounds like my father,” he mumbled.
“He sounds like a lot of the old gods,” Ayla agreed.
“And your drawing?” Thomas asked. “You still blame yourself? Or do you blame your father?” he asked.
Ayla glanced up at him, not really sure how to answer his question. It seemed sacrilegious to admit her father had been as flawed as most gods since he’d been dead for almost three hundred years now, but the reason she wrote in her journals and filled notebooks with sketches and private thoughts was to discern what was truth from myth, and she often felt no closer to an answer than when she began. “He couldn’t understand why I wanted to save them when they’d offered me nothing in exchange for their lives. I suppose he was part of the problem that started this war. In the beginning, I couldn’t really blame humans for being so angry. But now, both sides are just convinced of their own superiority, and it’s not about saving humanity anymore.”
“I’m not convinced it ever was,” Thomas offered. “It’s no coincidence that this whole thing started during the Enlightenment. Science gave men answers, and they realized we were never the ones causing the rain, only controlling it. The Nile would continue to flood with or without us, but piss off Hapi, and he could prevent it from providing the water the Egyptians needed to irrigate their crops.”
“Isn’t that saving themselves?” Ayla asked. “When one god can cause catastrophe, can you blame them for wanting us out of their world?”
“Isn’t it ours, too?” Thomas asked.
Ayla shrugged. “Not really. We crossed the veil thousands of years ago and found a world where people were willing to worship us, and we called ourselves gods.”
“Then what makes us so different, Ayla? My father, your father… why are we not like them if it’s in our nature to want to rule over men?”
Ayla quickly looked around the coffee shop, but most of the students sat hunched over their phones or textbooks or were immersed in their own conversations. No one cared about the seemingly young couple sitting in the back of the café. “I think for me, it was my mother,” she said quietly. “She was the calm of my father’s storm. Many of the gods fathered by Kaskuh have his temperament.”
“Kaskuh,” Thomas repeated just as quietly, as if trying to place this god in his mental pagan dictionary. “Hittite. An ancient god. And I suppose he was known for having a violent temper.”
“He was a normal god,” she insisted. “Easily provoked by humans and just as easily assuaged by sacrifices and offerings. But he was my father, and I loved him.”
“Didn’t mean to imply he was a terrible father or anything. Believe me, I get it. He was a lot like mine.”
Ayla arched an eyebrow at him and shot him a sly smile. “I shared.”
“And I appreciate it.”
“Thomas,” she scolded, “I’ve trusted you with more —”
“All right,” he interrupted, holding up a hand to indicate he’d play along. “But here’s the truth. I never knew my father that well. He visited me a handful of times, and I would visit him and his side of the family occasionally, but my mother raised me in her pantheon. Hermes was a bit —”
“Hermes?” Ayla gasped.
Thomas looked around the café, too, and leaned over the table. “Leon doesn’t know anything about my ancestry. Considering my father helped his father organize one of the largest armies to fight against the Leagues when this war started, I’d like to keep him in the dark about it, okay?”
Ayla nodded in agreement, but she was a bit star-struck sitting across from a direct descendant of one of the most powerful gods to have ever lived. Zeus’s death was still shrouded in mystery, because the League never publicized how they’d managed to kill him and the gods continued to insist it was impossible, even though the Greek god had long been gone from this world. And Hermes was one of the most brilliant tricksters among the gods. Rumors of his survival had been circulating as long as the stories of his death.
“Do you think,” Ayla whispered, “your father and grandfather are still alive but imprisoned in the Otherworld?”
Thomas shook his head and finished his coffee. “No, my dad had a lot of power, a lot of magic, but to somehow get to the Otherworld when there’s this impregnable spell? And if the hunters caught him and Zeus, why would they toss them in the Otherworld rather than killing them? No one would take chances with a god like Zeus.”
Ayla leaned a little closer to speak more intimately to him as well, but Thomas’s eyes darted above her head and she sat back in her chair instead. The crumpling of plastic accompanied Leon’s return to their table, and he pulled a black jacket from the bag and handed it to Ayla.
“Had to guess on your size. Probably should have asked before I trekked through the entire bookstore searching for something I thought would fit you.”
Ayla slipped the coat on and thanked him, but Leon didn’t sit down. He stood nervously by the table, fidgeting with the plastic bag, his eyes dancing over every face in the coffee shop.
“We should go,” he decided. “I don’t like being unarmed, and I can’t buy anything legally.”
Thomas grunted at him and shook his head. “Hunters, gods, and the ATF. Anyone else we should add to our list? How can we get on the CIA’s watch-list?”
“We can stalk the White House,” Ayla joked. “That should get us on at least three different most-wanted lists.”
Thomas pretended to give her proposition serious thought then waved a dismissive hand. “Not a fan of D.C.”
“Would you two shut up?” Leon snapped. “You’ve got the key, so let’s get out of here.”
“All right, Mr. Capone,” Thomas teased. “I’d rather not use it inside a crowded student union though. We’ll find an empty hall somewhere on campus… probably wherever they teach art history.”
“I think you’re genetically required to appreciate art history,” Ayla said. “Your ancestors inspired some of the world’s greatest works of art.”
“My genetics are confused,” Thomas countered. “That’s why we’re lost gods.”
Ayla thought about that, even though he was only being a smartass, then agreed with him. But Leon didn’t think they were funny at all. He tapped his foot impatiently and kept glancing at his wrist even though he wasn’t wearing a watch, so Thomas rolled his eyes at him but tossed out his empty coffee cup and motioned for Ayla to follow them.
Those isolated flakes of snow that had begun to fall when they’d first arrived on this campus had been joined by countless others, and Ayla zipped up her coat and buried her hands deep in its pockets as they stepped outside. Thomas pointed toward a building in the distance, but they never made it down the steps of the union. A man Ayla recognized stood on the sidewalk, watching them carefully, but his attention settled on her.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“That’s the same god that attacked my house in Nashville,” Leon whispered back.
“Seriously?” Thomas said. “How the hell did he get here so quickly then? Does he have his own magic key?”
“No, I’m sure he doesn’t,” Ayla answered. “Because I know who it is.”
“Who?” Thomas and Leon asked at the same time.
“Wurunkatte,” she breathed. “My uncle.”
Chapter Six
Fear is my constant companion. I am driven by it, controlled by it, and I will die by it. The gallows move ever closer, and they call my name.
“I can’t even pronounce that, let alone decide how we should combat a god I’ve never heard of,” Leon admitted.
“I’m clueless here, too,” Thomas agreed.
“He’s a war god,” Ayla said, watching her uncle warily. She could already guess he was hoping to bring the union down on them, but they’d stepped just beyond the reach of the debris if he caused the building to collapse now.
“The key,” Leon murmured. “It’s all we have.”
“And as soon as we get close to the side of the building, he’ll bring it down,” Ayla countered. “There are hundreds of college kids in there.”
“Ayla,” Wurunkatte called. “Are you really so helpless without your father?”
“He’s goading you,” Thomas whispered in her ear. “Ignore him and let’s figure out a way to distract him long enough for me to open another door.”
“You know,” Leon called back, “I hardly see why you’d think she’s helpless if she’s survived on her own for centuries. Seems like you’re just extraordinarily bad at your job.”
“Leon,” Thomas hissed. “That’s not the kind of distraction I asked for!”
Leon shot him an innocent look and asked, “What? We were all thinking it.”
“Actually,” Ayla corrected, “I was thinking we’ve managed to get everyone around us to stop and stare, so this is kind of a problem.”
Wurunkatte scoffed and told her, “They’re humans. They have remarkably short lifespans anyway.”
“Wow,” Thomas replied. “How are you not dead yet?”
“Huh,” Leon added. “Maybe he’s not as bad at his job as I thought.”
Wurunkatte smiled at them as the sky darkened, and the snow stopped. The gray clouds parted, revealing an impossibly black sky.
Days of Borrowed Pasts Page 4
