Page 4 of The Goddess is Fierce
“Of course, you do,” Mags said. “You’re all in love with her and dick stupid.”
“You know I have a healthy level of suspicion, and I’m not ruling out itcouldbe him, but you saw all that blood. He would have gotten some on him.”
“Unless he keeps a duffle bag of serial killer clothes stashed somewhere and only his blackout brain knows the location. He could shower and change into his regular clothes before he wakes up and never knows.”
“Dude, you aredark.I dig it,” West said.
Mags just glared at him.
“I’m George’s familiar, so I’m supposed to be looking out for her, but Iwillput a curse on your dick that takes her longer than five minutes to heal off of you if you talk to me like that again.”
West needed to watch it because we wereallterrified of Matilda and Mags. Dick curses aside. Matilda and her group were fiercely protective of each other. MatildaandMina would fuck us up for talking to their girlfriend in a certain way.
“What do you think is taking so long?” Baldur asked. “Do you think my father doesn’t want to see me because I came back defective?”
“No. Azren is brilliant, and Odin sacrificed an eye for knowledge. I don’t know anything about resurrected gods, but something tells me a step got missed. They just need to figure out what it was and everything will be fine. Oh, my shit. I need to text Freya. She’ll want to see you, too. I’m guessing you’re notready to talk to Loki yet, but I know he feels terrible about killing you.”
Oh, fuck. I didn’t know if Baldur killed those witches, but I’d met Loki. He had few regrets. If we put the two of them together in the same room, someone might end up dead again. And from what I understood, Freya was staying with Loki and his family.
But George had already sent that text. There was a swarm of daisies in the air. I was guessing that was Freya.
I really liked Loki, but I hoped she left him at home.
baldur
. . .
My father still hadn’t come. Azren had been gone a while. I didn’t remember anything about being his son, and I was trying to think back about everything I’d read about Odin. I knew he was intense. They called him the All Father. He had been the leader of all the other gods in that family. Odin had other sons that were written about way more often than Baldur was.
I believed Azren when they said that was who I was, but Baldur had been dead thousands of years. Odin might not give a shit anymore. They might have all moved on.
I couldn’trememberthe woman who appeared in a swirl of daisies. I knew she was Freya because George said she texted her. But there was something familiar about her, even though I couldn’t remember ever seeing her face before. Seeing her again was comforting. She was absolutely stunning, but I wasn’t drawn to her like that. Ineededto touch her, but I didn’t think I should.
“Baldur?” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes.
I stood, but I didn’t make a move. Freya did, though. She moved like lightning and wrapped me up in a huge hug. Supernaturals avoided touching me. The two sitting in this room that wanted me to throw them around at the moon orgy were literally the first that ever wanted to. Now, I had a beautiful god hugging me so hard, it was a little hard to breathe.
“How? I’ve been on this campus numerous times as a mortal, as both a student and a teacher. I might not havefeltyou since your magic isn’t there, but I’d recognize your stupid face anywhere. You were one of the first to welcome me when I got to Asgard and you used to love pranking me. Loki didn’t tell me what he was planning or I would have talked him out of it. We were all devastated and then you didn’t come back right away.”
“Something kept drawing me here. It was even stronger this last time. It’s pretty intense now.”
“I’m guessing it was whatever god is doing this. There used to be a time when we were all over this realm. You probably came back in the United States and felt the only god on this realm, so you came to the Academy of the Profane for help. The reason the pull felt so much stronger lately is that the God of Chaos and Loki ended up in Profane and they both sired god children.
“You were drawn to the closest god because they were meant tohelpyou. You just happened to be drawn to a psycho serial killer who left me their trophies for some reason.”
“Hello? He’s been dead alongtime. The two of you knew each other from before. He could have been drawn toyouand left you those hearts,” Mags said.
The witch didn’t trust me. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t trust me either because there was a lot I didn’t remember. I felt drawn to Freya. If something in me went dark during the blackouts and I had trophies and clothes hidden somewhere, I could have left that on her doorstep.
“You’d have to know Baldur. Things were much different when people were actively worshipping us. It was a lot more violent. People didn’t negotiate or ask. If someone wanted your shit, they killed you and took it. You had to be strong enough to defend your things, so even the people whoshouldn’tknow how to fight were warriors. A lot of the gods encouraged it and asked for more blood in the form of sacrifice.
“Baldur was a God of Light. He was so fucking kind and gentle, it was almost like he was born into the wrong family. He was against all the sacrifice and violence. You’d think that meant no one liked him, but it was no secret he was Odin’s favorite. We all loved him. Even Loki loved him. Loki only picked him because it would hurt the most and he didn’t think Baldur would stay dead this long. IknowBaldur. He has the same look in his eyes now as he did the last time I saw him. He’s not capable of this.”
I appreciated her vote of confidence. She would have known me better than Azren did any better than anyone in this room. But that was all from before. I clearly came back wrong. It wasn’t just the blackouts. I knew they were all trying to figure out a motive.
Sitting here now, I was okay with it and didn’t intend to do anything about it. But what if when I blacked out, there was a deep, dark part of me that wanted revenge for how thesupernatural community treated me for something I couldn’t help?
george
