Pursued by the Gods

by Rebekah Murdock

  Then he sent someone else, I thought furiously, my teeth gritted so hard that my jaw ached. He seduced her, so that she would be distracted, and he sent someone after us. Maybe that was the idea all along…to get Isa and I out of the way so that he, and he alone can have her.

  I knew that I was verging on paranoia at this point. But I couldn’t stop it. My thoughts were racing, my pulse beating hard in my throat, and I stopped for a moment, leaning against a low stone wall and rubbing my palms across my face.

  I heard footsteps coming down the sidewalk, hard and fast, and I dropped my hands from my face, looking up sharply. I could see a figure moving towards me, broad-shouldered and threatening in the dark, and I tensed, already on edge from the events of the day. I’d never been much of a fighter, but I was just angry enough that I was sure I could give an attacker a run for their money.

  The figure moved into the streetlight, and Isa’s face came into view. I felt all of the adrenaline drain from my body in a rush, leaving me momentarily light-headed as I watched him approach.

  “Kavi, what are you doing?” Isa’s brow was deeply creased as he came to stand next to me, his expression worried. He was still wearing the monochromatic brown contacts that he used to hide his eyes, but I could see the glimmer of the gold behind them, and for a moment I wanted to reach out and pull him to me, to feel the security of his broad body against mine. I rarely turned to Isa for comfort—rarely turned to anyone, as a matter of fact.

  “Ravenna was with Toven tonight,” I said flatly. “And someone tried to break into the house.”

  “I know both of those things,” Isa said slowly, leaning against the stone wall next to me. “I stopped by the house, and I spoke with Ravenna. That doesn’t answer my question.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I just couldn’t be…there, any longer.”

  “Kavi, that’s our home.” Isa’s voice was quiet. “You can’t run away from everything that happens. I know that’s what we’ve been doing for a long time but eventually we have to face it. If you can’t face something so small as an argument between you and Ravenna, how can you expect to continue to face anything else that might come?”

  “Is it a small thing?” I looked down at the concrete, cracked just beyond my foot, littered with all the detritus that tourists had left behind. There was a lump of green chewing gum next to my toe, standing out among the rest. I focused hard on it, blinking rapidly as I tried to force back the sudden wave of emotion that had risen up. “All these years, Isa, and there’s never been anything like this. No secrets among us, nothing but the plain truth. We’ve hidden from everyone else—but not from each other. And now…”

  “This is new, Kavi,” Isa said gently. “We will all have to learn how to navigate this differently, if we are going to make it. But this is a small thing, when you look at everything else we have endured, and lived through. It is all a mistake—a mistake for her to ask me to keep her secrets, and to have them at all, a mistake for you and I not to have gone to her in the first place and shared our worries. So we all ask forgiveness, and we go on.”

  “And what about him?” My voice was sharp, cutting, but I didn’t care. I was beyond caring.

  Isa took a deep breath. “I don’t suppose you would be able to forget about him?”

  I swallowed hard. In the small, rational part of me that was left, I wanted to. I wanted to accept that perhaps it was all just coincidence, to trust that he would never learn our secrets no matter how close he and Ravenna might become, to believe that she would tire of him quickly and he would be nothing more than a passing footnote in our lives.

  “No,” I said softly. “No, I can’t.”

  Isa nodded as if he’d known all along that was the answer. “Then I have this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a smooth white business card, with a room number and the name of a hotel on it. “It fell out of Ravenna’s bag.”

  I reached for the card, but he held it away from me, looking at me with an expression gone deadly serious. “Kavi, if we do this, if we go find him, she may not forgive us. This may be the end of everything.”

  I wanted to deny it. But in the deepest part of my heart, I knew he was right. She would not love us more for not letting this go—for seeking him out.

  I shook my head, feeling the emotion swell up in my throat again. “Isa, he is a god. He is everything we have been running from all of this time. If he finds out we’re dead. Not just you and I, but her too. She will be doomed to the worst punishment you can imagine, for all of eternity. How can you ask me to let that go? How can we risk that?”

  Isa looked away. For a long moment he was quiet, the silence stretching out into the darkness, suspending us in the moment between choice and decision.

  “We can’t,” he said finally. He held out the card, meeting my gaze firmly. “I made a vow,” he said, his voice soft and certain. “No matter the cost.”

  ---

  Not a word was spoken between us on the taxi ride to the hotel. We paid the driver and walked through the lobby doors like a pair of avenging angels, our stride sure and firm, our eyes fixed firmly on the elevator directly ahead of us.

  “Sirs, do you need anything?” The pale blonde woman at the desk called out to us, but we ignored her, striding across the veined marble floor, the heels of my boots a dull thud. I could feel eyes on us—the woman at the lobby desk, the bartender on the far side of the room, the patrons sitting on the velvet couches, but I neither turned my head nor acknowledged them. I felt the edges of the business card pressing into my palm as I clenched my hand around it, felt it crumple in my fist.

  “Kavi.” I heard Isa murmur my name, felt the touch of his hand on my arm. “Steady, man.”

  I tried to stem the flood of anger, to tamp down the adrenaline I could feel pulsing through my veins. How dare he, I thought to myself as we entered the elevator and pushed the button for Toven’s floor. How dare he come into our lives, disrupt the one thing we’ve fought and bled and betrayed for, for more than a century. How dare he think he can have a part in this.

  “We don’t know the truth of it,” Isa said softly, his voice very near my ear. “We can’t make judgements yet, Kavi.”

  The elevator chimed, and I turned towards him. “I think I know the truth of it,” I said harshly. “I know what would happen, if we were ever discovered.”

  Isa reached out then, his hand hard on my arm as he stopped me from going through the opening doors. “Remember what we have sacrificed for her, Kavi, the things we have done for the love of this woman. He might yet do the same.”

  I shook my arm free. “There is no one here, in the realm of the gods or below, who would do what we have done, Isa. That is the truth of it.”

  I walked through the elevator doors then, out into the long hallway. I hardly needed the room number. I could feel that he was here. Isa shuddered next to me, and I knew he felt it, too. “It’s like ants, crawling over my skin,” he whispered. “Why don’t you feel like that to me?”

  “Our bond, perhaps,” I said. “Or the fact that I am a lesser deity. I don’t know.” And it doesn’t matter, not right now, I wanted to say. I didn’t, though. Whatever else were to happen, Isa was my friend above all. I didn’t want to hurt him, not even in my anger.

  We stopped in front of the door, and I rapped hard on it, my fist clenched. I felt Isa’s touch on my arm again, trying to calm me, but I was far past that.

  “Don’t hurt him,” Isa whispered. “Hear what he has to say, first.”

  “I’ll try,” I said through tightly clenched teeth. “I make no promises.”

  I heard the door latch click then, and I swallowed hard, fighting back the rising tide of fear, hard on the heels of fury.

  21

  Toven

  I hoped for a split second that the knock at the door was Ravenna, come back to see me. But I knew that the harsh, insistent sound couldn’t possibly be her, not unless she was in some terrible trouble.
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br />   That thought spurred me forward, made me unlatch the door without a second thought—the brief image of her standing outside, her hair in a tangle around her face, her eyes wide and full of terror. Ravenna, needing me.

  Oh, tell me, how many gods and men have been brought down by such a thought?

  It wasn’t, of course, Ravenna at my door. It was the shifter I had met that first night at the Mine Shaft—her guard dog—and another man that I didn’t recognize. He was tall and lean, with a face so angular and dark-eyed that for a moment I thought he couldn’t possibly be handsome—and yet he was. His hair was loose, falling past his shoulders, and I saw tension in every line of his finely-muscled body, wound so tightly that he was apt to explode at any moment. I felt the energy coming off of him in waves, shimmering in the air between us, and I knew he was no mortal man.

  She has lived far beyond her lifespan, touched by another god.

  Not a god, exactly. Nathan hadn’t been quite right but he had been close.

  Ravenna. Oh, Ravenna.

  I held back the emotion that threatened to flood me by the barest thread, swallowing hard as I threatened to contain it. None of us moved for a moment, and when I spoke, I tried to make my voice as light and jovial as I possibly could. It was only with the greatest effort that I managed it.

  “Well, it’s been some time since I’ve had a woman’s lovers show up at my door,” I said jokingly. “What can I do for you gentlemen? I’m afraid dueling is a thing of the past, but I can assure you that I didn’t besmirch the lady’s honor in any way, although I have to admit, it was a close thing.” I let a thread of my power seep into my words, weaving my signature charm around them. I leaned one hand against the doorjamb, trying to look casual and unconcerned.

  I saw Isa’s eyes travel quickly over me, taking in my black sweatpants and t-shirt, my tousled hair, my careless expression. For a moment, I thought it had perhaps worked—and it might have, if it were only him. He, after all, was only one step removed from a human man. Whether he were a true shifter or a were, I wasn’t entirely sure, but he would have been susceptible to my power, which was infinitely greater than anything he might have possessed. But Kavi was a different matter entirely.

  “Don’t be glib,” Kavi hissed, leaning towards me. “It won’t make this go any better for you.”

  I saw Isa wince, hanging back slightly behind Kavi. Strange, since Isa was, out of the two, the one with the muscle. I would have expected Kavi to set him on me, if anything, but I could feel the reticence rolling off of the shifter in waves. He didn’t want to be here, perhaps wasn’t even in agreement with the decision. I could use that to my advantage, I thought, if need be.

  “Is there a way you’ve decided this is going to go for me?” I kept my voice light, almost musical. If I’d been speaking to a human, I would have seen a slight glassiness in their eyes, a sway to their movements as I turned the tide of the conversation in my favor. I could see a hint of it in Isa. But Kavi was unaffected, and if I had had the slightest doubt about what he was, it was eliminated with that.

  “What do you want with Ravenna?” Kavi’s voice was hard, so laced with anger that I nearly recoiled. Yes, he had some power. Not as great as mine, of course—but I would need to tread carefully.

  I dropped the charm from my voice, letting the music seep out of it as I straightened, my hand still on the doorjamb, a physical barrier between him and I—one that would do me little good, if it came to that. For the first time in a long time, I regretted the powers I’d been imbued with—wished I had something slightly more substantial in a fight. The flames that came from Iad’s hands, for example.

  “I want what I am sure many men—including the two of you—want from her,” I said simply. “And she wants it in return. If she’s misled me as to the nature of the relationship among the three of you and the freedoms within it, I’m sorry for that, but it wasn’t my intention to be a party to any infidelity.”

  “I don’t care if she passes the night in your bed,” Kavi snapped, his voice so low that it almost matched Isa’s growl.

  “Well in that case…”

  Kavi strode forward then, shoving me backwards so hard that I nearly fell into the dresser. I caught myself just in time, and scrambled upright. Behind him, I saw Isa hesitating at the door, clearly caught between his urge to protect Kavi and his own thoughts on the matter. I held up a hand before he could charge at me again. “I don’t know what you’re so angry about then, Kavi, but we can discuss this, man to man. There’s no need for violence.”

  That brought him up short. “How do you know my name?” he hissed.

  “I heard Ravenna say it on the phone, just before she left this room in a rush. ‘Kavi, I love you,’ were her exact words, I believe, so you need have no worries about her keeping you a secret or sparing my feelings on that account.” I saw Isa wince, and I knew that something I had said had struck a nerve. What part of it, I wasn’t certain.

  Kavi’s dark eyes hardened. “What has she said about me? Either of us?” His lip curled as he leaned towards me again. “Speak fast. I might not be able to kill you, but I’ll hurt you badly enough that it’ll take longer than you’d like for it to heal. And I’ll have help.”

  Looking at Isa’s expression, I had some doubt about that last part of his threat, but that didn’t mean I particularly wanted to take a beating from Kavi, either. I had no doubt that his rage would have some staying power. It was coming off of him so thickly it nearly choked me to breathe the air between us.

  “Very little,” I assured him. “Only that the three of you are together…romantically, and that she was very concerned about whether or not you would approve of her interest in me. And that the three of you had come here for safety, and to make a home. Nothing more.” I raised my hands as I saw that Kavi was about to speak. “I swear. I know nothing more than your names and that you are her lovers.”

  And that you are a minor deity, and that you have done something so terrible that I cannot even begin to think of it.

  “It’s a shame for you that she had to leave before you had a chance to lay with her, Toven,” Kavi hissed. “You’ll never see her again.”

  “I think that’s a choice for her to make,” I said lightly. “She has her own free will, after all.”

  “Not in this matter,” Kavi snapped, and I saw Isa wince once again.

  “Kavi,” I heard him say, but the man in front of me was too far gone to listen to any reason.

  “I know what you are,” Kavi said darkly. “And you cannot be allowed near her. She cannot find out what you are, and I cannot risk you knowing more about us. This has to end now, one way or the other.”

  I straightened fully then, my hands dropping to my sides. “And how do you expect it to end, Kavi? Except that isn’t your actual name, is it? Likely his isn’t Isa, either, and neither is Ravenna’s her own, if I had to guess. She knows what I am,” I said flatly. “I told her, and she believed me. I was surprised by it at first, but now that I have seen you, Kavi—I know why she believes. She believes because I am not the first deity she has encountered, or touched, or loved.”

  “She doesn’t love you,” Kavi growled, and then hesitated, flinching back as my words sank in. “She knows what you are?”

  “Yes, and I know what you are. So, you see,” I said simply with a slight bow. “We are at an impasse. And what is more, I know what you must have done.”

  It had been a long time since I had seen fear on the face of an immortal of the kind that filled Kavi’s. I took a moment’s pleasure in it—after all, he had barged into my room, laid hands on me, and threatened me—but no more than a moment. After all, whatever followed, it would change all of our lives forever. And if I did what I ought to do, it would change it so much the worse for the three of them.

  And yet, knowing what I knew, having seen what I had seen, how could I? And feeling for Ravenna as I did, without reason or hope, I knew I could not.

  If you don’t, you’ll be as doom
ed as they are. Is the love of a woman who may not even return it worth this?

  I saw the same stark fear on Isa’s face, grey and cold. “How foolish you were to come here,” I said softly. “Did you not think I would know, the moment I saw you? After all, you knew the moment that you walked through those doors that I was here. I know that you did. Such as we are, we cannot hide from each other, not for very long.”

  “I thought…” Kavi’s voice was hollow, his words strangled with fear. “Please…I…”

  “So now you beg.” I looked at him, and tried not to let the pity I felt show on my face.

  “No.” I heard Isa speak and looked up, and I saw him stride towards me, running his fingers through his short, brindled hair. “No, I will beg for the three of us.” He didn’t look at Kavi as he walked forward, only went down on one knee in front of me. He reached up, slipping something out of his eyes, and when he looked up at me, I saw them shining a brilliant gold. “I am sworn to this man, and to Ravenna too, with my life. Mine for theirs, if need be. If someone must be punished for what we have done, let it be me. Whatever it is, whatever I must face, I will. But let them go.” He swallowed hard, his lips a thin line in his pale face. “Please.”

  Next to him, I saw Kavi shudder. “No,” he said flatly, and when he turned his gaze to meet mine, I saw the anger gone, replaced by resignation, and the deepest sorrow. “I did this,” he murmured, his voice soft. “For love, I did it, but I know that changes nothing.”

  I flinched, and once again I saw a vision of red hair like blood on marble, and felt the chill of the screams run down my spine. For love, I did it.

  In the end, is there nothing that we won’t do for love?