Fate Forgotten (19 page)

Adam sat up and rubbed his face. The golden hue which had colored his vision was finally gone, and he had the vague feeling that he hadn’t been himself.

“Disconcerting, isn’t it?” a voice said.

He shook his head. More interference. He wasn’t sure he was in the mood for a lecture from a thunder god. Not with the hangover already throbbing behind his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Making sure you are freed from her influence. Not that I’d bother if Eve weren’t at risk.” Thor sat in an armchair in the corner of the room,
Mjölnir
across his knees. “I won’t ask what you hoped to accomplish by this; it is Sif’s reasons that concern me. What did she offer you?”

He smirked. “Isn’t that just another way of asking what I hoped to accomplish?”

The god’s eyes flashed white and he stood, filling the room. Adam felt the crackle of static in the air around him and a roaring in his ears. Thor grabbed him one handed by the throat, his face inches away. “I have killed my own to keep her safe, Adam. If you want to test your immortality, try my patience further and we’ll see what lightning and steel can do to shorten this life for you.”

He choked and coughed, collapsing back on the bed when Thor released him. Adam rubbed his neck. “I don’t believe you’d kill her too, even if I thought you could.”

Thunder rumbled outside, and the windows rattled from the power thickening the air. “After what you’ve made her life? I’ve never seen her weep, never felt her in so much agony as this. It would be a relief to her, to die now. To forget you. To move on.”

“To you?” He made himself laugh, though it hurt to do so and caused him to cough even more painfully. “She’d never have you, if she knew what you were.”

“And yet, you, her twin, are happy to associate with us. Happy to trade her for your own gain.” Thor’s hands were fists, and Adam could see him quivering, his anger throwing sparks, and disgust curling his lip. “Do you think she would have you if she knew your deceit? Whether you claim to love her or not?”

“She won’t have me.” He glared at the god. “At all.”

Thor closed his eyes and turned away, one hand still wrapped around the war-hammer. “And to spite her, you turn to Sif. Like a child, angry that he cannot have his toy. What did she offer? What did she want?”

Sif. Sif had promised him this. Revenge against Thor, first and foremost, and pleasure, too. She’d certainly come through.

He smiled. “It infuriates you, doesn’t it?”

Thor shook his head. “You really have no idea, do you?”

“I have every idea. Sif promised me you would suffer. And here you are, just as she said you would be.”

“You’re a fool, Adam.” He said it wearily, and his shoulders seemed to bow under an unseen weight. “For six months she’s picked through your mind, kept you under her power, paraded you around on her arm. For six months she used you, and you don’t even realize how.”

His stomach lurched. For the first time he looked at the clock on his wall, and the date it displayed. He only remembered one night. One glorious golden night during which she had made good on her promise that he would forget his sorrow for a time.

Thor turned then, to look back at him, the white gone from his eyes, his expression bleak. “She made sure Eve saw it all.”

Adam leaned heavily against the tiled wall of the shower, letting the noise drown out the sound of his cursing. When the water became too hot, he turned it frigid until his teeth chattered so hard he couldn’t continue swearing and he blasted himself with the heat again, burning his skin until he wanted to scream.

Eve. Evey, I’m so sorry.

But there was no response. As there had been none all day. If she refused to hear him, or she was prevented from doing so, he didn’t know, and he started cursing again that he hadn’t thought to ask her for a contact number. Why would he ever have need of it? Didn’t they have a connection that was far more useful? Couldn’t he reach her, always, without ever encountering a busy signal? Without needing to rely on the modern communication technology that pervaded everything.

Of course he hadn’t thought anything would stop him. Any
one
would stop him. He hadn’t thought he would lose six months of his life to a goddess with a vendetta against Eve. He hadn’t considered that anyone would strike at her this way.

No. This was Thor’s fault, all of it. If the god hadn’t involved himself, hadn’t gotten in the way time and again, hadn’t stalked her for three thousand years, none of this would have happened. Another reason, as if he had needed one, to hate that god and all his brethren. They had no place in this world. No right! Creation had been meant for him! For Eve!

And where were the angels? Where was Michael to strike them down? To smite them for daring to violate God’s children? Where was the Archangel when there was a true threat? Useless. Missing. Gone. Just like God, the angels abandoned them. Except to hang over their heads as a threat. Except for terrifying Eve into believing they would destroy the world because of their love.

Because of his love.

Eve, please. Please hear me.

Thor would call him selfish for trying to reach her. He was probably the reason he couldn’t hear her, couldn’t feel her. Let her hate you, Thor had told him. Let her live her life without wanting what she can’t have. But Adam hadn’t meant to hurt her this way. He hadn’t meant to make her so miserable. To make her suffer even further because of his love. He couldn’t let her think he had done this purposely.

And how could he explain himself, if he did reach her? His silence had been paid for. His silence was enforced. He sagged under the beat of the water on his shoulders, scalding him again. They wouldn’t let him speak to her. They wouldn’t let him explain himself, even if she would listen.

He slammed his fist into the tile. He could do nothing. Nothing.

The water turned cold. He didn’t know how long he’d been in the shower, trying to scrub six months of imagined soil from his skin. No amount of soap would clean his soul of Sif’s touch or scour the lies from his mind. That she had stolen the memories from him infuriated him the most. Did she not realize how much he had already lost? How little he would appreciate this added assault? If he could kill her, he would. If he could find a way. Michael, maybe, and his flaming sword.

Damn Michael! There had to be a way to find him. A way to call him from wherever he secreted himself on the earth or beyond it. There had to be a way to reach him, or how else did God’s miracles ever occur? The other pantheons would never do anything that would turn followers away from them. Never answer a prayer not addressed to them. Michael had to walk the earth still.

And that sword was the only way he had a chance of destroying Sif. He just hoped Thor wouldn’t beat him to it.

He turned off the water and grabbed his towel. He felt slightly better now that he had a goal, even if it was petty. He tried not to think about the fact that the desire to get back at a god was what had placed him in this situation to begin with. Gods. Had he been so wrong then, to consider himself one, when so many surrounded him? If he had kept his memory, and not lost the Garden, would he be as one of them? Elevated to their level of power? Would they treat him as an equal instead of a pestilence?

He would go back to Montreal first. Find Eve. Apologize in person, since they refused to let him reach her from a distance. And that would be on Thor’s head, if it upset her further. When would the god learn not to interfere? But perhaps Eve was the place to begin, regardless. She had the memories he didn’t. The knowledge of those first days. And the fear of Michael in her heart. Maybe if she called the angels, they would answer.

Scrubbing his hair dry, he sat down on his bed.
Eve?

I told you to leave her alone, Adam.

He twitched, recognizing Thor’s tone immediately.
I thought you owed her choice? Let her refuse me herself, if she wishes.

Is her silence not enough?

How can I know it’s hers, and not yours?
And then he could feel her, cold and hurt. Exhausted, but not undone.
Eve?

Her mental sigh was tired.
Six months you’ve ignored me, and now you call my name?

I wasn’t myself, Eve.
It was the closest to the truth that he could offer her while he felt Thor’s presence in the back of her mind. Soothing and calm. How could she not feel his touch?

I think you were more yourself than you realize. You did the same with Mia, after I refused you. It doesn’t matter, Adam. It was all a mistake.

I wish I could explain—

Spare me that, please.

I need to see you, Eve.

She was silent, but he could feel her still, thoughtful and confused. Then determined.
I can’t control where your business takes you. If it’s here, and with me, so be it. But I won’t change my mind, Adam, if it’s my love that you seek, or a baby of my womb.

I would never ask it of you.

So you say.
And then she was gone from his mind as if she had never been there.

He made the arrangements necessary for the following morning. He would be at her side soon enough, and she wouldn’t be able to avoid him. Not even if Thor interfered. He ground his teeth. How did Thor sit in her mind that way without calling attention to himself? How did she not realize he was there?

Thor had always seemed brutish to him. Quick tempered and easy to provoke. That he could maintain that level of contact with such subtlety made Adam uneasy. If Thor could do it to Eve, did he also do it to him? Monitor his thoughts? No. No, he would know. Adam would recognize the stench of that god anywhere, after all he had done to him.

He had to believe it, or else drive himself mad.

He shook his head and began to pack. Perhaps if he found Michael he could do more than destroy Sif. Perhaps with the angels he could drive these gods away at last. Or at least into submission.

The thought made him smile. To have them in his power would be ideal. There would be nothing that he couldn’t do, nothing that he couldn’t have. Eve wouldn’t like it, he supposed. She never wanted to rule. But the gods kept themselves from her knowledge. What she did not know could hardly upset her. Besides, she would like less knowing that one sat in watch over her, over her very thoughts, following her from life to life. An invasion of privacy. An invasion of her mind.

Yes, she would like that much, much less. If he could just get her to realize it.

Chapter Nineteen: 520 AD

The Christians spilled over the empire like a tidal wave. Flooding everything, washing everything in their new faith, in white light and clean spirits and second comings. The words of the so-called prophet were twisted to appeal to the masses. Messages of love turned to hate, turned to persecution and condemnation of sects with differing interpretations. It became the state religion, and enforced by the state. Rome had fallen in the west, sacked by Adam’s son Alaric. And it was dying in the east, though it did not know it yet. Those who still sacrificed to the Olympians did so privately, hidden and secret, and the once powerful pantheon suffered. Not just for the lack of worshippers. It was more, and so much less than that.