Page 21 of Dark Gods
“How do you eat an elephant?” she’d always ask when one of life’s little frustrations that had seemed monumental at the time had pushed my patience to its limits.
“One bite at a time,” I muttered under my breath, flinging the loop of my latest vine. This time, it actually caught on a rock and I tested its security before I put my weight on it. Slowly but surely, I was making it up the mountain and the only thing keeping my fear of heights, which was a lot worse in practice than in theory, at bay was the knowledge that we couldn’t actually be as far up as it felt like.
“I see the summit!” Daphne cried. She was already so far up I couldn’t even see her feet through the clouds, and Helle wasn’t far behind her. Phrixus disappeared next, leaving me a few yards below.
By the time the clouds closed in around me, I was starting to be able to breathe. A pity, because the oxygen was far from optimal. I took it one step at a time and when the mountain’s summit finally came into view, I realized the others must have gone up ahead. The only question was, where?
The silence was my first cue that something was wrong. Not the auditory silence, since the whipping wind made that impossible, but rather the absence of good energy that should have huddled around three people who’d just climbed a mountain together.
I reached up to find my next handhold, but something wasn’t right. It was solid enough, and well within my grasp, but I couldn’t gain purchase. My hand kept slipping off and even with gloves, I was too numb from the cold to realize it was covered in a slick, oily substance until my feet slipped out from underneath me. My left hand released the vine as I reached for another handhold in panic, but my right was slick with whatever substance had been on the rocks and when I finally caught it again, it slid from my grasp so rapidly I felt a vine-shaped burn gliding along the inside of my palm.
As I went tumbling toward the ground, I could hear the twins’ laughter ringing in my ears through the howling wind. Thelastthing I heard as I hit the ground was bone snapping, but unconsciousness mercifully closed in before the pain could come.
Maybe the drop was further than I’d thought.
9
The first thing I remembered after falling was the sound of a machine beeping incessantly. Every needling high-pitched chirp sent a fresh wave of pain through my head, which already felt like it had been taken apart and pieced back together with superglue. The cheap kind that just sticks fingers together forever and doesn’t even hold a jewelry clasp together for long.
I heard voices, but it took awhile for my head to clear enough to make them out and opening my eyes was a lost cause.
“Don’t lie to me.” It took me a moment to recognize why the harsh voice sounded so familiar. I’d heard it recently, but the jovial tone Thor had used in class was long gone. “I know this is about your stupid little game.”
“It wasn’t us,” Loki answered, his voice smooth with indignation. “And even if it was, don’t pretend like you never took part in the Hunt while you were a student.”
“Shaving cream in the target’s locker, love letters with forged signatures. Kid stuff,” he shot back. “No one ever ended up in the hospital. Certainly not an eighteen-year-old girl.”
“Then perhaps this generation is simply more evolved than yours, brother,” Loki said in a snide tone. “Women being equal and all that.”
I heard the sound of a struggle followed by a heavy thump. Someone being shoved up against a wall?
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit, Loki. You screw this up, it’s your head on the pike,” he growled in a tone far more menacing than I would have imagined him capable of, especially toward his own brother. “You can tell your little friends that, too.”
Loki didn’t respond for a long moment. I was finally able to open my eyes, but I was keeping them shut.
What the hell were they talking about? Screw what up?
“It’ll be handled,” Loki finally said. All the snark in his voice was gone and what was left behind was almost human.
“It had better be,” Thor grunted. The door slammed and I laid there, contemplating just how long I was comfortable being alone with Loki when he thought I was asleep. Before I could come to a decision, his voice let me know I wasn’t alone with my thoughts, and it had returned to its usual seductive, teasing quality.
“You know, if you’re going to pretend to be asleep, you might do it less gracefully,” he mused. “A drool bubble here and there. It’s more convincing.”
I opened my eyes to glare at him, but when I sat up in the hospital bed, everything ached. I looked down at myself and realized my arm was the only thing in a sling, even though from what I remembered of the fall, I’d expected to wake up in a body cast if I woke up at all.
“You wanna tell me why you’re in here, or should I just strangle you now and let security sort out the details later?”
He snorted, leaning casually against the wall with his arms folded and his hair obnoxiously perfect. Seriously, how did he even get it to be that shiny without making it greasy?
“You’re welcome to, but I think you’ll find them woefully unresponsive. Bunch of potheads, the lot of them.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, not in the mood for games. Especially since I was already involved in one I’d never asked to play.
“Can’t a guy check on an injured classmate out of concern?”
“A guy could. You’re more in the cockroach category, as far as I’m concerned.”
He chuckled, sidling closer to me. “Touche,” he purred, running a finger along the outside of my sling. “Can I sign your cast?”
