Immortal Need (9 page)

“So, you want to tell us all of it?” Lei asked, dragging him from his musings as he smiled slightly.

These three knew him well. From the centuries they had lived with each other, they had learned each other’s moods and mannerisms. Lei would have sensed that he was thinking too much and given him something else to focus on. He would have to talk to the man later. Of course, he wouldn’t do it in front of anyone else, because Lei would be too hard to deal with after that.

“Well, it’s a little more than I was saying earlier,” Sevani answered.

“Oh, well, we figured that,” Valerie said. “Go ahead and lay it on us. We’ve gone through enough to get here.”

“And that is something else that we need to discuss,” Sevani said to her.

“Yes, we will,” Valerie answered, her mouth pinched as she slid her gaze to Lei for a moment and then back to Sevani. “And you guys are not going to like it.”

“One step at a time,” Alexander said. “Go ahead, Sevani, and tell us what’s going on.”

“As you know, Freya sent me here to protect Ayah from death. She is to be one of her mortal warriors. And as you have also surmised, she has the soul of Nila—the woman I killed so long ago who gave me this godforsaken curse—housed within her body.”

“I can’t believe that trifling son of a whore,” Valerie exploded, always one for emotional outbursts. But Sevani appreciated her passion, her protection, and her love for them. It was what made her beautiful to them.

“Ah, last time I checked, Freya was a woman,” Lei tossed out, laughing. “Unless we
all
missed something these last few years.”

“Yeah, I know that. That’s why the insult is even better,” Valerie said with a cruel smile. Lei laughed outright, shaking his head.

“Children,” Alexander grumbled, but he smiled.

“Sorry,” Valerie said impishly. “Please continue, Sevani.” She then lounged back on the couch, almost but not quite touching Lei. Sevani noted that Lei had relaxed as well. There was always some slim form of divide between them, and yet the two always fought to push the lines of that boundary even more. Sevani had always wondered if the two would ever acknowledge each other in public.

“Well, what you don’t know is Freya added an extra caveat to my mission this time. I suppose she thought I deserved to have a taste of Alexander’s curse,” Sevani said, waiting for the shoe to drop.

They all knew that Sevani’s curse was to make sure whatever warrior Freya chose had the exact death that she had planned for them. Of the four Watchers, though, Alexander’s curse was perhaps the worst. His job was to kill not the enemies of his chosen charges, but the charges themselves. If they were soldiers, then Alexander was the one who killed them after he had escorted them safely to their appointed location of death. Or he was the one to sneak into their homes and murder them. It was his job to deal death much more often than the others. An extra piece of his curse was darker than the others’. As Sevani figured, Valerie was the first to react.

“Wait. Wait one got damn minute. Are you telling us that tramp wants you to kill her? She’s actually requesting that you protect this woman over the next seven days only to kill her yourself? That woman is the spawn of Hel!” Valerie exploded, jumping up from her seat and pacing.

Whenever he saw her like this, all he could think was,
I am woman. Hear me roar
. He would not want to be on her bad side, ever.

“She can’t ask this of us. She can’t. She said for you to protect her for seven days only to kill her, when, on the eighth day?” Valerie asked.

“Yes,” Sevani answered and watched as Valerie grew pale.

“Oh my God,” she groaned, dropping to her knees, and Lei was at her side instantly.

“What?” Lei asked, more serious than Sevani had ever seen him. “What is wrong with you?”

“She tricked me. She wanted to make sure you succeeded,” Valerie added to Sevani.

“What are you talking about?” Sevani asked, unease spreading through him. Freya had never liked to play fair. She hadn’t with any of them. She had known, in Sevani’s case, that Loki, the trickster god, had been playing with his wife. She knew that Loki was the unknown man in the room, appearing as Sevani so that Nila would sleep with him. She’d also known that Loki was the reason Sevani had been in such a state that he’d killed his wife in a jealous rage. She had known that Loki was the one at fault, and it had not mattered. She didn’t care that another god had played with a human. All she cared about was that one of her warriors was gone. She had turned a cold shoulder to any of Sevani’s pleas for mercy or another chance. Even now she was still punishing him.

It was surprising for them all that Freya had turned a blind eye against Loki. It was Loki who had also tricked one of her sons into killing Baldur. Baldur, the god of truth, had begun having horrible dreams about his death, and the other gods struggled to find a way to stop it. They were immortal, and it should not have been possible for one of them to die. Freya rushed to find a way to save her son and traveled the world blessing everything so that it could not hurt him. She had been a kind goddess then, as knowledgeable and clever as her husband, Odin. When she’d returned home, feeling assured that Baldur could not die, the gods rejoiced. But Loki had other plans. He hadn’t liked the gaiety and had disguised himself as a hag. He’d then asked Freya what was happening and why the gods were throwing things at Baldur. She explained about the blessing she had given and that they were throwing the weapons to prove to Baldur that he was safe. Loki pestered her further until she revealed that she hadn’t blessed one thing, thinking it too small to harm Baldur anyway. It was mistletoe. Loki went to the forest to get a piece and brought it back to the festivities. He then gave it to Hod, Baldur’s brother, who was the god of darkness. When Hod threw it, it struck Baldur in the heart and killed him. Freya had never been the same.

When she failed to bring Baldur back to life, she became fragmented. Gone was the golden goddess of kindness, who was a little greedy when it came to precious metals and stones. Suddenly she was cold, tormented, and lived to inflict pain on others. She had made Loki her enemy, but she planned to defeat him at Ragnarok, the war he would cause, and supposedly win, in the future. She had turned, in the meantime, to creating the Watchers to ensure she had strong warriors at her side.

Folkvangr was no longer the home of her warriors and a married couple who chose to stay together in the afterlife in the clouds, but a home for her Watchers and military barracks for her warriors. Odin, the depressed and worried god that he was, never seemed to notice the pain his wife was in. He was too caught up in the thought of his own death at Ragnarok to take notice of anything else. Loki should have been their enemy long before the coming of Ragnarok. They should have stopped at nothing to tear him to pieces, but instead they left him to his evil work so that they might prepare. Even now Freya had allowed for some sort of trickery here to stop Sevani from being able to save Ayah’s life, and she had used Valerie to do it, with only the single-minded intent of winning. His pain and his anger expanded tenfold. That she would use one of his friends, one of his brothers- and sister-in-arms, against him, left a foul taste in his mouth. If he could kill a goddess, then it would definitely be her.

“Valerie, come on. You’ve got to tell us what you know,” Lei said. “You’re starting to scare the shit out of me, and that’s not easy.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

“Freya wouldn’t let us all come here at the same time, so I had to make a decision,” Valerie began. “I knew the one thing she wanted that would let us get here to help you. And that was my apple.” She swallowed heavily when she stopped.

“Is that it?” Lei asked, knowing Valerie better. Hell, they all did.

“I prefer not to speak on the rest just now.”

Sevani’s gaze hardened on her. “You really don’t have a choice,” he said to her.

“But I’m not in the mood. You guys are going to be pissed, and I’m still trying to figure out a way around it,” she said.

Lei reached for her, for the first time touching her in front of them without stopping himself. He softly framed her face with his hands and forced her to look at him.

“Tell me. Just talk to me as if no one else is here. It’s just you and me, in the playroom. Look me in the eyes and tell me what else Freya wanted from you.”

Valerie swallowed again, tears coming to her eyes.

“You,” she finally whispered to Lei.

“Explain,” Alexander said.

Lei didn’t look away from Valerie, but his mouth hardened. “What do you mean?” he asked her.

“Not only did Freya want the use of my apple for eight days, but she also wanted to be able to have you. She said that—” Valerie stopped, shaking her head.

“She said what?” Lei asked softly, his voice much quieter than Sevani had ever heard it. Lei brushed away the tears that had begun to gather in Valerie’s eyes before kissing her forehead. “It’s okay. What did she say?” he asked her, speaking as if talking to a frightened child.

“She said that she had seen the way I looked at you and knew that there may have been something between us. Or, at the very least, something neither of us wanted to acknowledge. And she had always wanted one of you in her bed. So she chose you. I didn’t mean to do it. She wouldn’t let us get away if I didn’t make a bargain with her. She wouldn’t have allowed us out of the house. We needed to get here. I’m sorry.”

“You did nothing wrong,” Lei said, pulling her into his arms and hugging her tight as his eyes slid closed. “You did nothing.”

“For what it’s worth, the part about you came after we made the bond. She said she wanted my apple and a boon, so I agreed. She told me after that the boon was you. If she had said it before, then I would have gone another route, would have contacted you all and told you what was at stake. I would have done anything. I don’t want to lose you.” The last statement she whispered into Lei’s chest, and Sevani didn’t comment on it.

Sevani felt their pain to his toes. Valerie had done this for him. The apple was a god’s or goddess’s most-prized possession. It was, in essence, the heart of their power. It wasn’t something they bartered with because, depending on the power, it could give the other god all their strength. For Valerie, giving up this power meant she could not provide the immortals the seeds she produced for the next eight days. It also meant that it wiped out the plan Sevani had slowly been planning to save Ayah. He had wanted to try to convince Ayah to eat one of the seeds. Then her life would be safe. His immortal life may have been forfeit, but he had decided long ago that was fine. Now, however, he couldn’t go with that plan. Ayah would not be immortal, and they had to find another way to save her. Not only that, Lei’s life hung in the balance. Freya was a cruel taskmistress, as they had all learned. If she wanted to have Lei as her own, then she would not make it easy on them. She would torture Valerie as well. She would have to watch as she wondered what would have been if they had just given voice to their feelings for each other and the emotions between them. Sevani had never understood why they hadn’t given in. They all deserved some happiness. The one time he’d asked her, she’d told him it was impossible for a goddess and an immortal who was human to bond. The only way they could have any sort of relationship was that of master and servant, and she could not make him beholden to her. Sevani didn’t know why that had to be the case for them to make it, but he understood the love that Valerie had for Lei, and she wouldn’t let that happen just so she could have a piece of happiness. He wondered, as well, if either of them would have fought to find a way in the future. Now it seemed Freya had taken that out of their hands.

“So I cannot save Ayah by giving her the seed of immortality. I had hoped, Valerie, that when you came, I’d be able to convince Ayah to take the seed of immortality, explain to her what that would mean, and save her. Freya has quite obviously taken that option from us, and so the game is very different. I have to stay my blade. I cannot kill her,” Sevani said roughly. “I cannot. Gods, I am sorry, Valerie. You have given up so much. Ayah is an innocent that doesn’t deserve to die for this game,”

Valerie looked at him with sad eyes. “In this I completely agree with you. She does not deserve it any more than we do, and we aren’t going to punish her for it. At this point we can’t allow what’s been given up to go in vain.”

“We must find a way to save both Ayah and Lei from Freya,” Sevani agreed.

“And for you not to get your ass torn out by Freya,” Valerie added.

“Don’t forget yourself in this equation. We’re not here just to save one of us, but all of us. If we can get away from that idiot goddess, it’ll be even better,” Lei growled, his anger snapping in his eyes. For a man who had a tendency to smile even when he was being deadly, the frown on his face was downright scary.

“We will find a way. We will find something to do,” Sevani said. “We don’t have a choice. I got us all into this mess.”

“No,” Valerie said, pulling away from Lei and standing, her hands clenched at her sides. “Freya got us into this. We cannot place the blame on our shoulders.”

“Has anyone stopped to think about why she wants Ayah to be protected and then killed by Sevani?” Alexander asked. “I mean, Sevani killed this woman many years ago, and she was reincarnated. Why then, now, would Freya want him to kill Ayah? Wouldn’t she have already been her immortal warrior in the afterlife if that is what it took?”

“I don’t know,” Sevani said. “It could be that she had to mature before she could become a warrior, or that I cut her down before her time.”

“But only to kill her again?” Alexander pressed.

“Who knows what the damn goddess is up to? Our job has always been to do as we’re told,” Sevani answered.

“Then we’re not going to do as we’re told this time,” Valerie said cruelly. “If she wants to play with us, we’re going to get her back. I don’t know what her game is, but there has to be a reason she wants you to kill this woman a second time. And whatever it is, it’s tied into having my apple for eight days and having Lei as her servant. We have to figure it out. Either way, we’re not losing you, Lei, or Ayah, so we’re just going to have to button down and get it. We have to protect Ayah from humans as well.”