Immortal Need (6 page)

“I’ll round up the boys. Send me your location, and we’ll be there,”
she thought back to Sevani. Because they ate the seeds produced by her power, she had a connection to them, one they kept well hidden from their nosy jailer. From anywhere they could contact Valerie, and she would get them what they needed. Valerie’s seemingly miraculous ability to get them what they needed confused and irritated Freya to no end, something that Valerie was rather fond of doing.

Valerie got up from the lounge and tied the blond strands of her hair into a ponytail as her gray eyes scanned the sky. Next to the pool, where she could see the heavens, she could forget, for a time, where she was, what was asked of her, and the situation they were all in. Here she could imagine that she was just a normal woman, not akin to a goddess in her own right, and had no worries.

But it was time to return to reality, and she would not let Sevani down. She went in search of Lei first. He had just returned from a mission and would be high off his success. He’d also be the one to jump at the chance to go to the human lands.

Her long legs took her quickly past the gym and sauna and right to the playroom. They’d all thought of her as just a beautiful face when meeting her. She stood six feet tall with rounded hips, full breasts, and pouty lips, and she could toss each and every one of them on their assess. Now they didn’t just see her as a beautiful woman but a counterpart. She was one of them, who just so happened to be female. She’d grown to know them all over the time they’d shared together. She knew their likes, their dislikes, what made them tick, and what set them off. To assuage their boredom, she often did things to bother them just to see them squirm. So, she knew just where to find her first quarry, and, if she knew Lei, which she did, he’d have his head buried in the newest
Call of Duty
game—shooting up zombies with his chopper.

Men and their toys.

When she heard the sounds of rapid gunfire, she knew she’d made the right call. Lei sat on a dark chocolate couch, leaning forward so hard he was almost falling off. The dark paneling of the room had been the guys’ choice, along with the multitude of swords, guns, and knives mounted all over the walls. The punching bag and mats in the far corner had been her idea. Sure, it would have been better suited in the gym, but she enjoyed irritating them with pictures of their faces as she pounded out her paces. But seeing as Lei was so engrossed in the screen, she had a better idea. She slipped up to the console and pushed the power button.

“Hey! I was on round thirty-eight. This is the second
Black Ops
. Do you know how hard it is to get past level twenty?” Lei yelled, jumping to his feet. “I had the chopper, ray gun as secondary, all of the drinks,
and
I was on solo-play.”

“Doesn’t matter, Sevani needs us.”

“Even he would have waited until the end of the round or told me to pause it,” Lei grumbled, his blond hair falling over his deep green eyes as he shook his head.

God, the man was yummy. All muscle, tone, and smooth pale skin, he was a man a woman wanted to sink her teeth into. He didn’t have Sevani’s need to put his honor first, though she loved that about Sevani, or Alexander’s brooding nature. No, Lei was a man whose smile hid so many deeper meanings. She used to make him listen to a song about a girl with a broken smile, over and over again, just to annoy him. But it ended up that the lyrics were so true that she’d made it his song in her mind. He’d taken the joy out of messing with him when he ended up loving the song, and the band, but it didn’t matter. She thought that he deserved a woman who would look past his bad-boy history and see the man he really was. Of the three men she lived with, there was no other who had the competence to love with his entire heart like Lei did. Some part of him was still untouched by Freya’s games. Somehow he’d survived his centuries of living with some of his innocence, but she’d never tell him that. She saw it when he completed a mission, when he cared for them when they were hurt, or when he looked at her. She felt it to her toes. Alas, they were not meant to be. They could never be.

Shrugging off the suddenly morose thoughts, she pasted a smile on her face and canted her hip. She’d worn the red string bikini she knew he liked, not caring if she had to be sure not to move too quickly or she’d pop out. Then again, it may not be a bad idea.

“What’s wrong?” Lei asked then, and it took a moment before she realized he meant the situation with Sevani. Oh well. She knew better than to entertain thoughts like that anyway. She shouldn’t have to keep reminding herself there was no chance with Lei. Just because she fancied herself in love with the man didn’t mean that it was going to happen. Not in this lifetime, at any rate, and they both would live a long time indeed.

“He says he needs us, and that’s all.”

“Then I’m in. He doesn’t usually ask for help. Backup, yes, but not help. Anyway, can we disappear from the Queen of Mean without her bothering us?”

That would be the problem. Freya kept good tabs on her Watchers when they were within Hel’s—oh, Folkvangr’s—walls. They’d have to find a way to go assist Sevani in a way that was plausible.

“Think we could make it convincing that he needs backup?”
she thought to him. Out loud, she sighed and shrugged.

“For one of us, yes, but not for all three of us to leave,”
Lei thought back. “How dangerous is his mission?” he asked out loud.

“It seems serious,” Valerie returned absently, thinking. She’d become used to holding two separate conversations with the men when they were within Freya’s lands. Even if she was only talking to one of them in a room, the others would fill in the conversation to make sure to hide the hidden mental conversation.

When you were up against a goddess, you had to use anything you had.

“Alexander is not on a mission. Maybe Sevani could get injured? Freya can’t see as well into the human world. They don’t believe in her anymore,”
Valerie thought to him. It was true. Many of the gods had issues seeing into the minds of humans when they were outside the human world. When the Norse gods and goddesses had been respected and feared, they had been able to monitor Earth as if it were Aesir and Vanir, the realms of the gods and goddesses. Aesir was represented by Odin, the last god still working in the human world, on the good side anyway. Freya represented Vanir, along with her aunt Nerthus, and Hel. Loki, though at one time a god of Aesir, was now a force unto his own, and had crossed the line from mischievous to evil with ease.

She figured he’d downright loved when
Thor
came out, conceited ass.

Still, the gods and goddesses had to work within the boundaries of what humans believed when on Earth. Peplo, or the veil that the goddesses of fate, the Norns, wove destinies from, was thick now around the human world, where self-discovery and questioning faith was rampant. If they could get to Earth, they could move freely.

“I don’t think that Sevani is injured. Short of near decapitation, he would not get us there under any pretense,”
Valerie thought as they spoke aloud about random options.

“Then we need Alexander. He thinks well at times like this.”

“Alexander,”
Valerie called,
“we’re in the playroom.”

It didn’t take long before a man as large as a linebacker stepped into the room asking where his favorite gun was. His swarthy skin, dark hair, and eyes as black as midnight made him stand out against the pale combinations of Lei and Valerie. Nearly six foot seven, he moved with a grace almost difficult to comprehend, but his strong jaw, full lips, and thick black eyelashes that framed mesmerizing eyes could cause a wet dream. If she hadn’t been so caught up in a green-eyed and blond-haired devil called Lei, Valerie may have asked to climb Alexander. The men she worked with were eye candy for sure, and that helped those lonely nights when she wished she had someone beside her.

“What is it?”
Alexander asked, his deep voice rumbling through Valerie’s mind. Where Lei’s was cultured, deep, but smooth, Alexander’s was nearly hard to understand. It was hard to concentrate on the words when her body was vibrating from the pitch. Years of practice had taught her to prepare for the feeling, though, and she had learned to understand him better.

“Sevani needs our help, and we have to think of a way out of here,”
Valerie replied and included Lei in the conversation. The men couldn’t communicate with each other mentally unless she set up a link through her, which meant that she would also hear everything. When they wanted to speak with each other when in the human world, they had to use their phones or seek each other out. With her, though, they could speak to each other.

“Hmm,”
Alexander returned. Not that she expected anything else. Alexander wasn’t one for idle chat.
“Let me think on it a moment.”

It should have irked her, she supposed, that she needed their input on how to get away from Freya’s prying eyes. Valerie was the eldest—cough—and strongest of them all. She could easily think of a way for the guys to get out. They could go to assist Sevani on the mission. It wasn’t odd for that to occur when one of them wasn’t on a job. No. The problem was Valerie getting away.

Valerie had known from her birth that she would never be a free goddess, and she’d never liked the fact that they thought of her as one. Unlike humans, she’d been born fully grown, plucked from the roots of the tree of life by Huginn and Muninn. The twin ravens flew all over the world to bring back information to Odin. They were unsure how she came to be, just that she existed, and was born of the tree of life. Odin had been obsessed with possessing her.

Odin, contrary to historians and scholars, was not a benevolent or even caring god. He was but an immortal forever enraptured by the gaining of knowledge. If it would teach him something, he had to have it. Who else would pluck his eye out just for wisdom? The information he craved most, however, and which was forever elusive, was how he would survive Ragnarok. When the end came, the god-king would fall, and he feared for his life. He didn’t want to die. Death for an immortal was some nebulous thing that existed only on the fringes of their minds. It wasn’t that they
couldn’t
die. It was that it was nearly impossible to kill them. As it was, Freya’s son, Baldur, resided within Hel because he’d been murdered. Loki had proven that a god could die.

They’d all mourned the golden child of Freya and had, for the first time, known what fear was. The seeds that could be plucked from Valerie’s aura had become prized. She carried the gift of immortality with her, and the gods thought it would stave off death itself. She’d shown them how wrong they had been. She hadn’t been able to save Baldur. He’d died not just by the arrow to the heart, but by godly interference. The gods could make pacts among themselves and, if they did, had to abide by them. Hel, the goddess of death and the afterlife, would have revived Baldur if every creature on Earth had wept for him. Loki had hidden himself on Earth and hadn’t shed a tear. Baldur was left to reside in Helheim, the real one, with Hel. There was nothing Valerie’s golden seeds could do. And so she became a kept pet, a goddess who could heal wounds and make humans immortal. If she could not save them from death, then she could at least serve another purpose.

Odin had made her slip a seed into a god’s mouth so that he would still give his wisdom after he, literally, lost his head. Sif had gifted the dwarfs that had given her back her hair with immortality. Now Freya made her keep the Watchers alive to attend to whatever plans she created. The last chore she didn’t mind. Of all the beings she had given immortality to, these men deserved it the most—not for punishment, or for missions, but because they were born in the wrong place and at the wrong time. They deserved new lives, new starts. Alexander was probably the most deserving of them all. He was the only Watcher who did not save lives, but made sure they got the deaths meant for them and then escorted them to Valhalla for Odin or Folkvangr to be taken by Freya to her realm. Alexander had taken revenge for horrors unimaginable and was forever being punished for it. He had been given a raw deal in life.

The gods and goddesses were always making deals, and she had something that Freya had always wanted. If she could just find the right offer, she was sure that Freya would take her up on it.

“I know what to do,” Valerie said as she shot out the room.
“Just keep talking, guys. If this works, I’ll be coming back to tell you we can leave,”
she thought to them.

“Be careful,”
Alexander answered.

“Val,”
was all Lei said, but he didn’t have to say more, and he wouldn’t when Alexander could hear.

“I’ll be safe,”
she said back to them both. When she reached the pool area again, she stopped, chest heaving, as she struggled to breathe.

“Freya,” she summoned, closing her eyes and praying to the goddess. As a goddess, Valerie could request an audience with others when she needed it. She didn’t often use it, but it came in handy when she needed to.

“You rang?” Freya said, and Valerie spun around to face the goddess. Freya, never without her glowing necklace, lounged on the chaise that Valerie had vacated earlier in little more than three scraps of golden fabric that was supposed to be a bathing suit. The triangles over her breasts only covered the areolas, barely, and the third triangle, well, Valerie didn’t look there for long. Freya, though, was stunning. She was milk white, but her shoulders were touched with the barest of golden flecks, and her lips were as red as an apple. She watched Valerie with a crooked half smile and a raised eyebrow.

“It’s been a while, Goddess,” Valerie began.

“Quite. But you are of little use when you aren’t popping out seeds, so why would I see you?” Freya tossed back, her expression never changing.

Bitch. Perhaps Odin, Freya’s husband, had been overzealous in acquiring Valerie, a woman who mirrored his wife in looks, if not in temperament. Valerie had known that she would receive Freya’s scorn no matter what she did, so she chose, instead, not to acknowledge it. One day, though, she’d make the witch bleed. That thought always turned her rage into happiness.