Fate Forgotten (24 page)

“You should be fine, now,” Horus said. “Though you seem to have some bruising.” His cool fingers touched a ragged line of angry purple on her arm. The one that ached.

She stared at it in confusion. Was the headache a bruise on her head then? Where Adam’s skull had been cracked? Her ribs were aching too, now that she was sitting up. Just how many bones had her brother broken? And how?

“Thank you,” she mumbled. And she glanced at Lars then, in spite of herself, remembering the wedding when Adam had been knocked unconscious and she had gone into the dark with him. It must have been Lars then, that she had heard speaking. Lars who had knocked Adam out and left before she had seen him. His eyes were tortured. Because of her pain? It was hardly a conversation she could have with Garrit sleeping beside her.

“I’ll have the kitchen make you some soup,” Horus said, leaving them alone in the room.

With the absence of his touch, light as it had been, the pain came back. She felt tears rise in her eyes as she fought the agony of each breath she took. Had Adam broken his ribs, or just cracked them? By all that was good and holy, it hurt. How could his pain hurt her this badly? How had it never happened before now? But she knew the answer to that, too. They hadn’t been this close to one another since the Garden, and she’d felt his pain then as her own, too. The kick to his ribs throbbing in her own side. Since then, she’d never reached for him, never opened her mind to him so widely. Too widely, it seemed.

Lars pulled an armchair to the side of the bed, sitting on the edge of it and leaning forward. She strangled a sob, and he frowned, reaching out to wipe away the tears that spilled down her cheek toward her ears. The pain dulled again with his touch, and he sighed when she clutched at his hand.

She held on so tightly she worried she might be hurting him, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go or loosen her hold, in case he pulled away and the pain washed over her again. “It hurts.”

“I know.” He engulfed her hand in both of his. “I’m sorry. We tried giving you medication, but it didn’t seem to help the pain. Horus suggested something to numb your mind, but we couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t do more harm than good.”

It was a struggle to follow his words with her hand in his. The pain was muted, but his touch was as distracting now as it had been in the woods. “Horus is a doctor?”

Lars shrugged. “I think he would be called a homeopathic herbalist these days.”

“Oh.” Why did Lars affect her this way? She was married. She loved Garrit. She loved her family. But Lars was family too. Thorgrim’s descendant. That was all it was. Just a fascination with the similarity. That was all. “I wasn’t in the hospital at all, was I?”

“No.” Lars frowned. “We didn’t think it would be prudent. Physically, there’s nothing wrong with you. And there was no way to explain the bruising to a doctor. You understand what’s happened?”

She sighed. She didn’t understand anything anymore. “I don’t know. I think so. Do you?”

“In theory. Though it isn’t exactly something that family lore explains. It’s nothing you told us about.”

“Family lore.” She looked at his face, and saw the concern in his expression. The anxiety he had been trying to hide. “What did Thorgrim tell Owen? What did Owen pass on?”

“Enough.” Lars seemed to stare at their hands where they rested on top of the blanket. “Enough to know the truth. To share a vow of protection with this family.”

Garrit shifted, and Lars pulled his hands from hers before his eyes opened. He saw her awake and relief washed over her again. But not enough to block the pain that swelled, and Eve couldn’t quite suppress the cry of shock as it rocked through her bones.

“Are you all right, Abby?” He sat up. “What’s wrong?”

She grabbed Garrit’s hand, but it didn’t help the pain. Why was it Lars’s touch that made it dull, and not Garrit’s? Horus entered the room then, with a bowl of soup on a tray. He set it down and crossed to her at once, taking her free hand. It was like a balm, and she could breathe again.

“What the hell did my brother do to himself?” It came out with more anger than she’d meant, but the pain had been jarring.

Garrit held her hand tightly, his face grim. “Your father said he was hit by a bus. Mia is a wreck, as you can imagine, with a newborn to take care of and Adam in the hospital. Your mother is with her.”

She stared at him. Just stared. She didn’t know what to say. “A bus?”

“The doctors say it’s a miracle he lived.”

Lars snorted. He had retreated to the window again, and Horus had taken the seat by the bed. Still holding her hand and keeping the pain at bay. She was grateful for that, though she didn’t know how he did it. Pressure points? Eastern medicine? She wasn’t sure she cared as long as it helped.

“I don’t understand. How did it even happen?”

“No one is really sure.” Garrit searched her face. “When he carried you in, I thought you were dead, Abby.”

She freed her hand from his to stroke his face. Her husband. The man she loved. “You know I can’t die like that.”

He shook his head. “We don’t know anything about this thing that happens between the two of you. For every broken bone he has, you share a bruise, Abby, and pain. You would scream and cry in your sleep. You didn’t even know where you were half the time. You kept asking why I let you be taken to the hospital.” And she could see it had hurt him that she hadn’t realized she was home, that even ill, she might have thought he would allow something like that to happen. She didn’t tell him she had been in Adam’s head. It wouldn’t have made him feel any better.

“Delirium does strange things,” Horus interrupted. “The mind plays tricks. Even so, perhaps you can tell me what to give you for the pain, now, Abby? Would anti-psychotics help? Or perhaps some kind of sedative?”

“Anti-psychotics make me awful,” she said, glad she wouldn’t have to explain how she had been back and forth from Adam’s mind to her own. “I get lost in the past. Lose track of what life I’m living. I don’t hear anyone else, but I can’t find myself either.”

Garrit’s face had turned gray. “How—?”

She didn’t answer, didn’t meet his eyes. That had been too horrible a life to share with anyone, locked away, being fed drugs that made it all worse. And electro-shock therapy which caused her to retreat even further into her memories and previous lives.

Slitting her wrists hadn’t helped, though she had tried it out of desperation. Maybe a bullet between the eyes? But she had never been given the opportunity to test it, and she doubted it would have done the job either. She had learned a long time ago that no one else could kill her. Hurt her immensely, yes, but never kill her. Shots always went wide. Wounds always missed vital organs. It didn’t mean she couldn’t be driven unconscious by a beating that left her bleeding on the floor, though.

She didn’t remember a time when she had been more thankful to die.

A shake of Lars’s head caught her attention. His face was blank again, but she could feel the anger that didn’t show. He glared out the window and said nothing.

“Sedatives leave me open to everything and everyone,” she told Horus, forcing the memories away. “I lose control of what I hear. Everything overwhelms me.”

“Hm.” Horus nodded to the tray. “Garrit, why don’t you give her the soup. Perhaps a full stomach will do her good. Slowly, now.”

The soup was good. Not too rich. But it hurt to hold the bowl and feed herself, and she was tired by the time she was done. She felt Garrit worrying, and she sighed. “I’ll heal quickly now, Garrit. Don’t worry.”

“I could kill your brother,” he said.

She smiled faintly. “I think that would hurt even more.”

“Will you be okay if I leave you to go check on Alex? He’s been asking for you, but I didn’t want him to be frightened by all this. When you feel up to it, I’ll bring him in.”

Alex. She could feel his distress now that Garrit had mentioned it. But even her own son had been drowned out by Adam’s pain. The pain she shared. She felt a flash of guilt that she hadn’t thought of him, but even the idea of having him squirming about on the bed made her bones ache.

Garrit kissed her forehead. “When you’re up to it, Abby. Not before.
Maman
is more than capable of keeping him occupied. Just concentrate on feeling better.”

She nodded, and he left, and Lars took Horus’s place at the side of the bed. She tried to tell herself she hadn’t missed his touch, and turned her face away so that she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. Somehow she knew that when she pretended to sleep, he wasn’t fooled.

Chapter Twenty-four: Future

Adam groaned, then remembered. His head felt as if it had split open. And Eve had been too close. The Chorus. Had he brought the Chorus down on her too?

“Eve?”

“If you ever make her cry that way again, Adam, I am going to murder you. At once.”

A woman sighed. “Be reasonable, Thor.”

Athena, then. At least someone would keep calm. He sat up, though it made the pounding in his head worse. He supposed he should be grateful they’d thought to dump him in the grass and not in the pond. The park. He remembered this park, and that bench, with the maple trees. “Where’s Michael? I saw him.”

“You play a dangerous game, Adam. We do not take the threat of a godchild lightly, nor do We appreciate being made to work with these infidels to secure you.”

He turned toward the voice. Michael stared at him, unblinking, and Adam swallowed hard. He remembered his face, and it stirred the pain of that day—ash and soot and flame, waving a torch in the air. He shook himself. He didn’t have the time, now, for the distraction of memory.

“I have no intention of destroying the world while Eve lives, Archangel.”

“Then shoving your tongue down her throat was just for your amusement?” Thor’s grip on his war-hammer made his knuckles white. “You’re lucky it was the angel that took your consciousness, if it had been up to me I’d have broken half your face while I was at it.”

Michael sneered. “You have no right to interfere with the Son of God, Norseman, no matter his business. We have been lenient for far too long.”

“You were happy to have me do your job for the last six hundred years, and now you threaten me? Where were you when Adam found Eve the first time, intent on making her his?”

“She was safe in the bosom of Reu’s family, as she will always be. Your protection was redundant. Reu’s vow is still kept.” Michael said.

“No longer. Eve forbade them from binding her sons with the oath after Alexandre’s birth. But I’ve forgotten. You failed to thwart him then, too, when he played on her emotions. You have done nothing to help her!”

“God’s Daughter was given our aid when it was most necessary. She knows her place and keeps it, unlike you and all your kind. Trespassers and thieves. When God rises, you will be cast out with all the others.”

“Are you so certain, Michael, that you know your God’s mind?” Thor asked. It was a growl and a purr, but it was the present tense that startled Adam.

“What?”

They both turned to look at him. Thor’s eyes glowed white hot with his rage, and Athena kept a hand on his arm to stop him from whatever violence tempted him. Michael simply glared, looking at him as if he were an ant beneath his sandaled foot.

Adam didn’t care. He would risk whatever punishment the angel chose to deal him. To know the truth—even if he failed in every other way, was worth the pain. “God lives?”

The angel’s lip curled. “No thanks to you.”

“But God lives?”

“Of course he
lives
, you fool.” Thor said. “A god of that power is not simply made to go away. Do you know nothing of your own world?”

He ignored Thor and kept his eyes on the angel. “All this time, you had us believe He was dead. Eve labors even now under the pretense! She suffers for nothing!”

“God does not answer to you or to Eve, and nor do We.” He felt himself laid bare before the angel, every moment with Eve played without his consent before his eyes. “Tell Us once and for all your intention. Swear to Us that you do not seek her womb, that you have no intention of using the child for your own ends, and do not stand against God, your Father, now.”

It was difficult to make his lips shape the words he wanted to speak. The questions he had to ask before Michael disregarded him once more. “The sword. Give me the use of your sword.”

Michael hissed and his wings flared, filling the room with white. “You dare!”

“Where is it?” He had only just noticed its absence from the angel’s side. There was no light, no flame. No weapon of any kind. “Why don’t you have it?”

The angel raised his chin, arrogant and righteous. “Destroyed. By God’s own hand.”

“No!” Everything had been for nothing then. The pain to Eve. Her suffering. For nothing! He shoved the angel aside and stumbled away from the thrice-damned gods. He had to get to Eve. He had to apologize. He had to do something. Anything to make it right.

Thor’s hand was a vise on his arm and he was dragged back. “You have a vow to make, Adam. To your God and His angels.”

Athena sighed. “His word is meaningless, Thor. It doesn’t matter who he swears to.”