Fate Forgotten (29 page)

Loki dropped, and Thor kicked him away.

She stared at him for a moment longer. Her hand on his arm. Her eyes narrowed just slightly, and her head tilted to the side. He gently pushed her hand away, and turned from her, using the bond they shared to repress the memories she sought. The ones that stirred in recognition. He painted over the image of his own face in her mind, changing the color of his eyes, and turning his hair black instead of red-gold.

And then he left the tavern altogether, to stand outside in the rain that had come with his anger. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the sky. He tried to tell himself, for a moment, that he would not have killed Loki. But it was too large of a lie, and too appealing of a truth. If Eve had not intervened, Loki would have been dead.

He looked back into the front room through the window. Eve was helping Loki up from the ground. The god had somehow obtained a split lip, and she dabbed at the blood with a towel. Her back was to Thor, and Loki stared over her shoulder at him and grinned.

Lightning flashed and thunder cracked overhead, loud enough to cause mugs to rattle. He would kill him next time. There was no question in his mind. If he touched her without her consent, harmed her in any way, Loki would not survive the encounter which would follow.

As he watched Loki attempt to insinuate himself into Eve’s life over the next weeks, Thor meditated on the power Eve had shown. Meditated, and wondered. Had Odin been right? Had she held him to her will all these years, not realizing that he would not die?

He pulled his hood down farther over his eyes when Eve approached him and refilled his mug. Her forehead furrowed as she glanced up at him, but then she smiled and he felt his heart race. “I’ve never seen a man drink as much as you do and still be able to walk himself out the door.”

“No doubt.” Perhaps he had been drinking overmuch, but it was difficult for him to watch these other men grope her. It was difficult for him to watch Loki worm his way into her good graces. Though each time she rebuffed the Trickster, he felt a little more hope. If she could fend off Loki, surely her brother would be no threat to her.

Thor’s hope that Adam’s reign as pope would cause enough unrest to slow Athena and Ra’s plans had been crippled before he had even voiced it. Adam had not lasted two months before he had revealed himself to be so corrupted by such power that the archangel Michael himself had thrown him from Saint Peter’s chair. He had been lucky to escape from the angel with his life.

Eve frowned again. Setting the pitcher on the table before him. “Have we—”

Another patron bellowed for more drink, pounding his fist against the table top. She sighed and picked up the pitcher, glancing back over her shoulder at Thor as she walked away.

He slouched in his seat and tried to pretend he wasn’t watching her as he pulled his hood down. From his position against the corner of the room, he had a clear view of the rest of the tavern. Men filled the tables in the front of the room, not bothering to seat themselves at the bar against the far wall when Eve would refill their glasses no matter where they sat. Behind the bar was the door to the store room and the kitchen. The cook had long gone home. No one came this late looking for food.

Loki was among the group which had just called for Eve, and he grabbed her backside as she leaned to fill a glass. She spilled beer on the table, and slapped his hand away. The men laughed, and thunder rolled outside. Thor felt his eyes burn, the color draining from the room. But not yet. He had to wait.

A man entered the tavern from the rain and removed his hat. Eve smiled at him in recognition. “I’ll have your wine in just a moment.”

“My thanks, Lilah.” He nodded and took a seat with two other men. Regulars all three. Thor was still trying to decide if the man was married or not, and if he wasn’t, whether he was trying to work up the nerve to ask Eve for her hand.

Eve slipped around the bar into the store room to find the wine, nearly disappearing from sight. Loki pushed back his chair, excusing himself to piss, and followed her. Thor’s knuckles ached from the fists his hands had made, but still he did not move. He had to wait. Wait until she asked. And if he saw what she was capable of to protect herself, so much the better. It was information he needed when her brother’s memory was returned.

It was dark in the room, but he could make out the shadow of the two of them, and the white of Eve’s skirt. It looked as though Loki was backing her against the wall. Eve slipped beneath his arm with the wine she had been after, but he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back roughly. Thor heard a hiccupped exclamation, and then a crash, and…

Help!

Before he could make it across the room, four other men had risen as if sleepwalking. Loki was grabbed from behind and thrown off her.

The Trickster landed at Thor’s feet.

He smiled wolfishly and grabbed Loki by his shirt, dragging him out of the tavern. Dirt and filth covered the street and the rain beat down on the cobbled stones, lightning crackling. Thor tossed him into the biggest puddle he could find.

Loki scrambled to his feet in the mud as Thor stalked toward him. “You can’t hurt me, Odin-son. You’re bound by the Covenant.”

Thor grinned and grabbed him by the throat.
Mjölnir
hummed in the back of his mind. Eve would not spare him this time. He was not within her tavern. And Loki had earned this.

“You broke the Covenant when you interfered with God’s daughter, Loki. Or don’t you remember? We agreed she would not be touched. And I would watch her.”

Loki struggled against his grip, and Thor felt him begin to shape-shift, but he pulled him closer to his face, staring into the Trickster’s eyes and clamping his mind around the power before it could be done.

Loki hissed, and his eyes widened with panic. “Only Odin can strip our power!”

“Is that so?” Thor tightened his grip until Loki’s eyes bulged and the god’s throat popped, then crunched. “No more lies, Trickster. No more interference. No more games.”

Loki choked something, but Thor had done enough damage he could not speak. Never again would he whisper lewd suggestions in Eve’s ear.
You’ll be punished.

“It will be worth it,” Thor agreed.

He braced Loki’s body with his other hand, and tore the god’s head from his shoulders.

The body dropped and a bolt of lightning incinerated it. Loki’s eyes stared at him in shocked surprise, and then closed. What was left of the god’s essence slipped out of the world, back to the gates of Hel.

Thor threw his head into the gutter. It was where the Trickster had always belonged.

He inhaled deeply and let the rain wash the blood from his hands and from the street. Let it cleanse him and calm him. And then he went back into the tavern. Eve stared at him, the pitcher in her hands, as he took his seat at the table in the corner. The other men had returned to their chairs, laughing amongst themselves as if nothing had happened. Thor suspected they would not remember that anything had.

She filled his cup and waited. He tapped his fingers on the handle of the mug, willing her to turn, to leave. But she didn’t, and when he lifted his gaze, her expression was inscrutable.

He raised the mug and swallowed a large mouthful of ale.

“Don’t let me see you kill another man again,” she said.

Thor looked into her eyes, and wondered how much she had seen. What would she let herself believe? But he would have killed Loki a hundred times over to protect her. He would have killed any god who tried to hurt her.

“As you wish,” he said.

She topped off his mug with what remained in the pitcher, and walked away.

Chapter Twenty-nine: Present

Eve was able to join the others for dinner that night, a fact that was celebrated with a fine sparkling white wine and a meal of her favorite fish. She never got tired of eating fish. Maybe because there had been so little of it to eat in her first life, when they had lived off the land, hunting what the lions did. Fish hadn’t come into her diet until a later life, and then of course there had been Thorgrim, much, much later.

But as hard as she tried not to look, her gaze kept going to Lars. He had been seated at the foot of the table, between Juliette and René, who both seemed unreservedly pleased to see him. Horus asked her for the salad, seated across from her, and she shook her head, tearing her eyes away, and smiling at him as she passed it. Garrit sat at the head of the table, and Alex in his high-chair positioned at the corner between them. He was happily playing with his food, and the Belgian Shepherd Garrit had gifted her with as a wedding present lay beside the baby’s seat, snatching up pieces of dinner that inevitably landed on the ground.

“How long will you be with us, Horus?” she asked. It was the first opportunity she’d had to speak with him since the train, really, that hadn’t revolved around how much pain she was feeling.

He shrugged, the movement surprisingly graceful for an older man. “That will depend upon your husband and Lars, I think. As long as I’m needed, certainly. And it is a great pleasure to visit these lands again, see this house.”

“Have you been here before?” The way he talked made her think he held some kind of nostalgia for it.

“Oh, yes,” he said. And there was that amusement again. Never far from him, when they spoke, it seemed. “But it was a very long time ago. Sometimes it seems another lifetime. I used to be something of an architect, you see, in my youth. I helped with some of the renovations.”

Garrit coughed. It almost sounded like a strangled laugh, and she glanced at him, but he only shook his head and sipped his water.

“Architecture seems a long way from homeopathic remedies.” Everyone seemed to be paying attention to the amount of wine in her glass and food on her plate. She wasn’t sure if they were more worried about her overeating or not eating enough, but it annoyed her either way.

“Quite, yes.” Horus said. “I took an interest in herbal remedies while I was in China and learned as much as I could. I have a great appetite for knowledge.” He smiled that grandfather’s smile. “Not unlike yourself, I think? Do you not also collect herbal and traditional remedies?”

She wondered where he had learned that, and glanced at Garrit. But had Garrit even known? She didn’t remember mentioning it to him. Her education in this life had been in history.

“I have, in the past.” Considering that medicine had descended into drilling holes into the heads of patients, or else engaging in exorcism, the knowledge had proven more than useful. “It seemed prudent at the time. But I never did learn the technique you and Lars used to help alleviate the pain.”

“It’s very uncommon.” Horus said. “Very few are able to master it.”

Juliette leaned over. “Abby, you have barely eaten.
Monsieur
Amon, you must not keep her from her food!”

Horus bowed his head. “You are right, of course,
madame
. Forgive me.” But his eyes sparkled, and Eve thought that he enjoyed humoring Juliette.

What had she missed while she had been sleeping? She caught Alex’s bowl before he could throw that to the dog as well, removing it from his tray. But even Alex seemed to have become used to the two men. He smiled now at Horus across from him, and Horus made faces back until he laughed.

Garrit seemed to be the only person who wasn’t entirely thrilled with his guests. He kept frowning in Lars’s direction, which of course caused her to look to see what the man had done, and didn’t help her at all to focus on not thinking about Thorgrim. The strangest part was that Lars seemed to be doing nothing more than eating, and chuckling at René and Juliette’s banter. Eve never even caught him looking at her, something which she wasn’t sure she was pleased or disappointed about. Pleased, she decided with determination. She was married. She had a son. She could not feel this way about another man. She had never felt this way about another man. Not ever, in any of her very long lives.

She grimaced, and glanced in his direction. When he met her eyes, she felt herself flush, and dropped her gaze to her plate, pushing some of the food around it.