Hidden Realms

by Dean Murray

  “Who? The Skotadi?” I hadn’t considered that they could do that.

  Nathan flagged down the bartender, ordered a six pack to go, and then turned to me. “They have connections that can keep things from going public.”

  I thought about Callie, who I couldn’t imagine keeping quiet under any circumstance. What would they do to someone like her, who wouldn’t buy whatever cover story they came up with?

  “Nathan…” I stopped when the bartender returned with the beer, and waited as Nathan handed over the cash. Once we were alone again, I asked, “How far would they go to keep someone quiet?”

  He studied me for a moment before he answered, “I don’t know.” He was lying.

  “I need to check on Callie.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Just let me call. I won’t talk to her,” I pleaded. All I needed was to hear her voice.

  He actually looked sorry for me. Unyielding, but sorry.

  “Would they hurt her?” I asked.

  He thought about his answer and, when he finally gave it to me, I knew he was giving it to me straight. “I doubt it. Covering up you and Gran would have been difficult enough for them. They wouldn’t want to make things too messy for themselves. Secondly, they’re probably watching her, waiting for you to contact her.” He studied me as I registered his words, and then softly added, “I’m sure they figured out something for everyone, including her, to believe.”

  I stared back at him and saw the sincerity in his eyes. He wasn’t sugar-coating anything for me. I only hoped he was right.

  And I hoped, just this once, that Callie had managed to swallow bullshit.

  CHAPTER 13

  Back at the cabin, Nathan twisted the caps off two beer bottles and handed one to me.

  “I think it’s about time we have a chat,” he said and motioned for me to follow him onto the back porch.

  He claimed a seat on the top step and slid over to make room for me. The steps were narrow enough that our shoulders touched, but I got no comfort from that. I sipped my beer nervously, afraid to know what he had to tell me if he thought I needed a drink to hear it. This was what I had been waiting for, wasn’t it? So why was I so anxious?

  Night had closed in fast. The tree line was barely visible, but Nathan stared at it like it had him captivated. I knew that wasn’t the case. He was stalling.

  “Want to do that I ask and you answer thing we did last time?” I offered.

  “I don’t think that will work this time.” I was about to ask why when he asked me a question of his own. “So, what all do you know so far?”

  “Hmm, well, I’ve learned some people aren’t completely human,” I said conversationally in an attempt to mask the jitters. “You age slowly, are super strong, and are at war with a bunch of guys that are after me, but no one knows why. How’s that for summing it up?”

  He didn’t look at me when he spoke. “Do you still want to know what I am?”

  I swallowed to dislodge the lump in my throat. “Among other things.”

  Nathan took a swig of beer. “They still teach Greek Mythology in school?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t know what I had been expecting, but that was definitely not it. “Uh, yeah. Sophomore year.”

  “Did you get a good grade?”

  Was he kidding? Why did that matter? “I don’t remember.”

  “Do you remember anything about it?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  He finally looked at me. “Trust me.”

  I sighed loudly, not seeing the point, and struggled to remember something I had figured as pointless to know two years ago as I did now. “There are gods,” I said quietly, and peeked at Nathan for encouragement.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “That’s all you learned?”

  So much for encouragement.

  I tried again. “They were immortal.” I looked at him, hopeful. He nodded and waited for more. Boy, he was tough. “Didn’t they all have their own special powers or certain things that they were known for?”

  Nathan’s eyes lit up. “What kind of powers?”

  I scoffed. “You expect me to remember that?”

  “Zeus?” Nathan probed. When I shrugged, he continued, “He was the leader of all the gods. Poseidon, his brother, was ruler of the oceans. Hades, his other brother, was ruler of the underworld. Remember them?”

  “Now that you mention them,” I mumbled.

  “There were others. Artemis, the goddess of nature, Aeolos, the god of air, Apollo, the god of prophecy...” He trailed off and looked at me as if he were willing me to figure it out on my own.

  I mentally reviewed the clues. Leader, rulers of oceans and underworld, nature, air, prophecy. I have heard him mention some of those words before—a few days ago while we walked through the woods and talked about the twelve specialties he and the others of his kind had.

  “Was there a god of fighting?” I asked timidly.

  His voice was soft when it reached my ears. “Ares, the god of war.”

  I swallowed the lump that had returned in my throat. “Was there a Mr. Fix It? And a Rainman?”

  “A Mrs. Fix It. Athena and Coeus.” I saw in his eyes that I was on to something.

  My jaw dropped open. “Are you trying to say you’re a god?”

  He stared at me like he hoped I was joking. “Humans can’t be gods. They’re immortal remember?”

  “But you’re not...” I stopped, and my eyes widened. He wasn’t all human. “Part-god mutt?” I whispered.

  Was that possible? Were there such things as part-gods?

  He swallowed a gulp of beer and said, “Demigod.”

  For being only one quietly spoken word, it packed a hell of a punch. In the recesses of my memory, something was triggered. There had been a test question. What is the name given to the offspring of a god and a mortal, who has some, but not all, of the powers of a god? The answer had been demigod. I had gotten it right. I had also been under the impression Greek Mythology was, well, a myth. I now assumed I had not been right about that one.

  “You know what a demigod is?” he asked. He looked nervous when his eyes met mine.

  I nodded. “Is that what you are?”

  He shook his head. “Demigods are my distant ancestors. My kind is a type of hybrid part-god human. Over time our bloodlines have become more saturated with human blood, making us less powerful, but god blood is still in us, giving us certain strengths.”

  He was part god. That was definitely not what I had been expecting. He looked at me anxiously and I racked my brain for something, anything, to say.

  “So you got those specialties you told me about from the blood of your ancestors, from gods?” I stammered.

  “I’m descendent of four different bloodlines. Some hybrids have more than me, some have less. We’re all of varying degrees of strength, depending on how strong our bloodlines are, but we’re all much more human than god-like these days.”

  “These days?”

  “In the beginning, when the blood was more pure, hybrids were very powerful. Human blood has weakened us over time.”

  I scoffed. If he thought he and the others were weak, I would hate to have seen what the earliest ones had been capable of.

  “How long have hybrids been around?”

  He shrugged. “The beginning of time.”

  So it wasn’t a myth. Gods were real, and I was in the presence of a not all human, part-god. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that, but I knew it didn’t freak me out. It was better than the other possibilities I had considered: part-alien, part-robot, top secret government experiment, science fair project gone bad...that sort of stuff.

  “Okay,” I said and sipped my beer.

  Nathan stared at me. “Okay?”

  I offered him a timid smile. “What do you want me to say?”

  He looked both puzzled and astonished. “I don’t know. I’m sure you have questions.”

 
And he was going to answer? I kept my head down to shield the smile on my face. “Why are you telling me now?”

  He pulled on his beer to postpone his reply. “Because you were right,” he finally admitted. It sounded like the words were foreign to him, and I doubted he had ever muttered them to anyone, ever. “You should know since you’re involved. That doesn’t mean I know why you’re involved, but I will keep you in the loop as we try to figure it out.”

  I bit my lip to hide the huge grin on my face. “We?”

  He let out a long sigh as he rolled his head side to side. “Yes, we. Don’t make me regret this.” He fixed me with his gaze. “What questions do you have?”

  I had so many I didn’t know where to start. I aimed to review what I had already learned, and build from there. “You said before that there were twelve specialties.” He nodded and I continued, “Why twelve? I know there more gods than that.”

  “So you did pay attention?”

  I shrugged. “Only enough to pass the class. But I remember being forced to learn nearly a hundred of them.”

  “More than that even, but not all of them procreated with humans. From the ones that did, dozens of demigods were made. All but twelve of the demigods were killed at the start of the war. That’s where the bloodlines come from. Those twelve demigods.”

  “What war?”

  “The war I told you about last night.”

  “They’ve been fighting the same war since the beginning of time? Why?”

  He took a drink as he considered his answer. “You remember how I mentioned the brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades?”

  “Yes.”

  “A very long time ago, Hades grew power hungry and he rose up against Zeus. He used the aid of his children, the demigods born to him, and he almost overthrew Zeus. Poseidon came to Zeus’s aid and, together, the two of them defeated him. Hades was banished to the Underworld, never to return to earth. But his demigods could, and so they did his dirty work for him. Using humans, they created the hybrids, the Skotadi, as their army.

  “The demigods descended from both Zeus and Poseidon rose against Hades’ army and created their own, the Kala. Somewhere along the way, someone discovered the use of diamond as a weapon. A lot of demigods were destroyed before its effect was realized. Only twelve demigods remained in the aftermath, and they have been in hiding ever since.”

  I nearly laughed out loud. “They’re hiding?”

  “The balance between the two sides is very unstable. There are eight demigods on the side of Zeus and Poseidon, four on the side of Hades. Thanks to his manipulative nature, Hades more than makes up for the lack of numbers. It’s a close battle. Neither side can afford to lose a single demigod. So they sit back and let us hybrids do the fighting for them.”

  “That’s cowardly, don’t you think?”

  He shrugged. “That’s the life I know. It’s the way things are.”

  “So the demigods are mortal? They can be killed?”

  “It’s difficult, but possible. It’s believed that only a demigod can kill another demigod, and only with a diamond weapon. Some say a very strong hybrid may be able to, but there aren’t any hybrids that strong anymore.”

  “So is the war even going anywhere? Will the balance ever shift?”

  “It doesn’t seem likely anytime soon. Hybrids now are so weak and have such a miniscule effect on the balance, and we’re killing each other in mostly equal numbers anyway.”

  I shuddered at his words. I had seen him take down roughly a dozen Skotadi so far. At any point, he could have been killed. Out there, somewhere, Skotadi and Kala were battling to the death because their ancestors started a war they were too cowardly to finish. It angered me the more I thought about it.

  “What?” he asked, studying my sour expression.

  “It doesn’t seem fair what you’re forced to do,” I muttered.

  “At least I chose the good side, right?”

  I started to smile, and faltered. “Wait. You can choose?”

  “Yes. The early hybrids, the ones with the purest blood, had no choice,” he explained. “The pull towards whatever side created them was impossible to resist. As the bloodlines weakened, the pull lessened. We get a choice now.”

  “Why would anyone choose the Skotadi?” My thoughts ventured to Alec. Had he chosen that route as Nathan claimed?

  “Most hybrids will choose to follow in the paths of their hybrid parent. If they were born into a Skotadi family, they will usually choose that route. Some will switch sides, but not many.”

  “Do you have to choose? Can’t you stay out of it and lead a normal life?”

  “Our lives can’t be normal,” he said. “First of all, humans notice we don’t age normally. We have to keep a low profile around them. Secondly, hybrids can recognize each other, so we would always be at risk. We find safety in numbers, by working together.”

  “You were alone,” I pointed out quietly. And he hadn’t kept so low a profile around me that I hadn’t noticed something different about him.

  “I lived alone, but I had regular communication with the rest of the Kala.”

  But why me? Why had he saved me? Let his guard down around me? I was a human and, on the much larger scale of his world, insignificant. As I stared at him, trying to gather the strength to ask him again, he examined his empty beer bottle with exaggerated intensity, doing a good job at pretending he didn’t know I was on the verge of asking something big, something he wouldn’t want to answer.

  “I need another beer,” he observed. “How about you?”

  I lifted my nearly full bottle and shook my head. He retreated inside for another, bringing a stop to the questions. I wondered if his powers of evasion were god-given. How about stubbornness? Was there was a moody bullhead god who had an undocumented lovechild out there somewhere? If so, Nathan was definitely of that bloodline.

  When he returned, we both took a drink to fill the silence. Funny, I had thought the beer was for me. Now, I was sure it had been for him all along.

  “Gran’s one too,” he blurted out suddenly, causing me to choke on my beer.

  Gran was part-god? I realized now I should have expected that, but really, I hadn’t seen it coming. He didn’t stop there with the surprises.

  “She’s also my grandmother,” he added quickly, and took a long swig as I stared at him. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and continued, “Well, actually great-great-great-great-great-grandmother.” He hesitated like he was counting how many greats he had listed.

  When he turned to me, my mouth was gaping wide open. “How is that possible?”

  “I told you that we aged slower.”

  “That much slower?” She had to have been ancient.

  Nathan shrugged. “The purer the blood, the slower we age. Gran’s seven generations more pure than I am.”

  “How old is she?”

  “I lost track.”

  “How old are you?” I asked curiously.

  “Twenty-two,” he returned automatically.

  I shot him a doubtful look as I sipped my beer. He shrugged.

  “When were you born?” I rephrased my question.

  He eyed me warily. “1978.”

  My jaw dropped again. “So that makes you what? Thirty-something?”

  He made a face and groaned. “No. I’ve just been in my twenties for a long time.”

  I chuckled at his expense, and he glared at me, but with the hint of a smile in his eyes.

  “You’re her grandson. You’re Nathan...Young?”

  He nodded. “The last name was Gran’s idea. Creative, huh?”

  I got it. Young. Ha-ha. Good one, Gran. But how weird was that? Because I hadn’t known my given surname, and had taken Gran’s when I came to live with her, Nathan and I now had the same one? It made me feel dirty for finding him attractive. Worse…what if we were related somehow?

  I remembered a conversation Gran and I had about a year ago. She had told me about a grandson of hers b
eing the only family she had left, and that she didn’t get to see him as often as she would have liked. I had gotten the impression she had been hinting at a match-making attempt. She wouldn’t have done that if we were related. I surveyed him out the corner of my eye. I couldn’t believe she had done it anyway.

  “She told me about you,” I said softly.

  Nathan, beer to mouth, turned his head to me abruptly.

  “Only a little,” I added quickly. “She didn’t tell me you were, you know...you. She said you were the only family she had.”

  He drank his beer and looked distantly into the dark night.

  “Does that mean she was the only family you had too?” I asked quietly.

  I didn’t expect him to answer and, when he nodded, my breath caught. The rest of his family—mother, father, brothers and sisters if he had any—were all gone. We had a lot in common. And we both loved Gran.

  “She was all I had too,” I murmured before I remembered that wasn’t entirely true.

  “She wasn’t all you had.”

  My head whipped around to his so fast I feared I had given myself whiplash. Nathan stared straight ahead with an almost bashful look on his face, effectively avoiding my questioning eyes. Was he referring to himself? Had he been there all along? The questions hung in my throat and I choked them back.

  Nathan finished off his beer and went back inside. I assumed for another one. His departure shut the door on my questions again. Granted, this time it had been my own stupid fault for not having the nerve to ask. He had given me a chance, and I had chickened out.

  He returned with two more bottles and handed one to me. I took down what was left of my now warm beer with one gulp and set it aside to make room for the new cold one.

  “What do you think happened after we left? To Gran?” I braced myself for an unpleasant response. I wasn’t sure I would like what he had to say, but I needed to know. I needed closure.

  Nathan stared into his bottle thoughtfully. “Knowing Gran, I’m sure she took out as many of those bastards as she could, and went down fighting.”

  Tears stung my eyes. While better than not knowing, the truth still hurt. “Why would she do that?” I whispered to mask the quiver in my voice.