[Excerpt removed]I'm still on hiatus until July 16, and my comments for this blogfest might be a little bit slow, but I'll get there! I hope you enjoyed Mia's bickering :) And also I hope my French isn't too terrible.
The world roared with silence and despair, so loud that his laugh disappeared, like a pebble dropped into a pit that never stops falling. He cracked his knuckles, and she flinched at the pop of the joints. If she could have spoken, she would have screamed, but it wouldn't have mattered. No one would have heard her, either.
"I would apologize, but I know you'd prefer my honesty." He had a feral smile that would have been more at home on a wolf's face than a man's. "And the truth is, after what your husband did to me, this is really only fair. An eye for an eye, so to speak. He took my head, so I'll drive you out of yours."
She wrapped her arms around her knees and pressed herself harder against the wall, cold and unforgiving stone. It was always stone. Why was it always stone?
"Do you know," he went on, "I didn't expect it to be so easy. It kind of takes some of the fun out of it, now." He inhaled deeply through his nose, and exhaled with a sigh. "But I do love the smell of fear and agony. All these women who walk in beaten and walk out emptied of their entire reason for being. What is a woman, in this day and age, without the means to bear children?"
Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she couldn't even sob aloud. He had taken that from her, just as he had taken the wombs from the others. She would heal, of course, and in a week she'd be able to speak again, but for now, while he worked, the only noises she could make were the whisper of cloth against skin and the sweep of her bare heels against the tile floor.
He crouched before her, holding the white nodes in his fingers, strung with thin wires that she had not yet managed to snap quickly enough to stop the pain they caused. His eyes swept over her and then he smiled again and set them down on the countertop above her.
"You're not going to be good for me today, are you?"
She bared her teeth, her fingers curling into claws. He was too fast for her to hurt too badly. Somehow his hands always found her wrists before she could make him bleed.
He tsked and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, opening it up, white and clean. He didn't meet her eyes as he began to refold it on the diagonal. "Then I guess I'll have to do something about it."
She lurched away, but the stone wall and the cabinets served him now instead of her. What had been the safety of shelter now became a cage, and he dragged her out, laughing while she struggled, and bent her over the cold metal counter, her arms behind her back. Her wrists were trapped by his long fingers and he tied the handkerchief around them so tight her blood stopped flowing. The nodes rested just beyond the tip of her nose.
He released her once she was bound, and she straightened, backing away. He paced after her, slow and easy. They both knew what came next. They both knew that he'd win, in the end.
"If you behave, maybe I'll tell you what happened to your child," he said, the wolf's grin stretching across his features when she froze. "You want to know, don't you? Why they made sure it wouldn't live?"
She pulled at the binding on her wrists, her nails digging into her palms, but there was no give. Cold sweat trickled down her spine. Kill him. She wanted to kill him. If he knew, he had been part of it; she understood that much by now.
"Oh, no," he said, picking up the nodes and stepping toward her. She didn't step back. "No, it wasn't me who ordered it, though I would have taken great delight in doing so if I had known what kind of trouble you'd be to me. I didn't even know you existed, then." He nodded to the chair, straight-backed and maned with wiring. "Sit down, and I'll tell you everything."
Her baby.
"That's it," he murmured, when she stepped forward.
The silence roared in her ears, an ocean pounding against a cliff face. She trembled at the sound, and the emptiness that would swallow her whole. He was near enough to touch her, to press the white nodes to her temples, her forehead. His fingers trailed along her jaw as he finished, then traced the shape of her lips.
She snapped at him, her teeth finding flesh and bone. He laughed, forcing his finger harder against her teeth.
"Go ahead," he said. "If you have it in you, after all I've done, I'll call it a success."
They stared at one another. The taste of copper and venom filled her mouth.
"Do it."
She spit out his finger and turned her face away.
He chuckled low and threw her into the chair. "Maybe you'll feel more cooperative tomorrow."
Tears blurred her vision and she closed her eyes. He tightened the straps of the chair around her ankles, and across her chest, still laughing to himself. She let the silence wash over her, the roaring ocean and the desperate agony.
Then fire ran through her, hot and fierce, and even without her voice, she still screamed.
Me: So why did you go?
Adam: To give her my blessing, I suppose. To prove that I wouldn't interfere.
Me: That doesn't make any sense.
Adam: I needed her goodwill. You know as well as I do that there was no hope of getting any of the rest of what I wanted. She was pathetically in love with that man, and once she said her vows, once she chose to marry for love, there was no hope for anything else. If it had been another lifetime, I might have tried to take her, but holding Eve against her will isn't an easy thing to accomplish, and it would only have made her even more suspicious of me. Besides, the DeLeon's aren't a family to be trifled with. Maybe if she had been some poor Farmer's wife, it would have been different. But that family wouldn't have rested until she was found. And like I said, she was in love with him already. It wouldn't have mattered.
Me: You DID try to take her in another lifetime. When she was in love, and it didn't stop you.
Adam: That was before she was under the protection of that Norse oaf. The man she was married to… well, he made me look like the better option, no easy feat when she knew me for what I was. And the man she loved was dead.
Me: You couldn't have known that.
Adam: You'd be surprised how quickly word spread then. Rumor, of course, saw to that. The goddesses had more freedom then, and we all knew the story of Helen's abduction. Especially in Troy.
Me: Ah. Of course.
Adam: You think you wouldn't believe a goddess who stood before you in all her glory? Mistrust would have insulted her, and the punishment for that was fierce. You'd have listened too. You DO listen, too.
Me: That's different. And we're not interviewing me. We're interviewing you.
Adam: Are we?
Me: Yes. We are.
Adam: And yet…
Me: If you’re going to be difficult, I’m sure Thor would love to share his thoughts.
Adam: I’m sorry, what were you thinking earlier, about not believing a word spoken by gods and goddesses who entertain themselves with mortal lives?
Me: Olympians. Thor is different. You know he is better than I do. And if he weren’t, Eve never would have loved him.
Adam: Just because he prefers to hand out justice rather than whim doesn’t make him different. He still interferes for his own reasons and to allay his own boredom. It passes the time. And good as she is, it’s no different for Eve. We all need distraction. Sometimes, if you meet the right person, you can even forget you’re going to have to watch fools make the same mistakes generation after generation. At least until that person dies and your left alone to contemplate your fate. Again.
Me: I thought you liked it.
Adam: The alternative is death by flame and lightning. And what waits for an immortal after death? What happens to a god when he dies? I don’t even think Thor knows – does he?
Me: It’s never come up.
Adam: Of course it hasn’t. He wouldn’t want to frighten you.
Me: But you’re not a god. If everyone else God made gets Heaven, why don’t you?
Adam: Who said?
Me: Said what?
Adam: Who said everyone else God made gets anything? God didn’t. I would know. And if you won’t trust Olympians, you can hardly trust Michael any further. Talk about having ulterior motives.
Me: What about Gabriel?
Adam: Gabriel does what he’s told. And says what he’s told to say. How much of that was ordered by Michael, and how much by God Himself is a mystery. But I, for one, won’t stake my life on any of it. And since this is, supposedly, an interview about me, I assume it is my life under discussion?
Me: I knew this was a bad idea.
Adam: You’ll be grateful later when all of this starts spinning stories in your head. And then I’ll be back, and you’ll be glad I didn’t try to shelter you from the truth.
Me: Gee. Thanks.
Adam: The least I could do.
I sighed and looked up. "Look, Jake, I'm sorry. But we both knew that whatever this was, it wasn't going to last."
"No," he said, his face hardening into lines I didn't like. I had never really liked his face, but when he laughed, when he was talking, it was easy to forget. His charisma overpowered you. Except when he was angry. Then it was just frightening. "This was my chance. Our chance. After all this time. Now you're going to just throw it away for some pro-wrestler-looking idiot?"
"You really shouldn't call him that," I mumbled.
"Yeah, well, he can grind my bones to make his bread if he's offended."
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. Because it was true and ludicrous and Jake didn't even realize what he was saying. The lines in his face were deep grooves, now. He wouldn't have found it funny if I started laughing.
Donnar smiled. An altogether different expression from the one he had shown me earlier. This one was dark and smug and threatening, like a wolf stalking prey. He didn't have to say anything. Jake stepped back.So yeah. This is me selfishly preserving words I can't even justify keeping in my writing when I'm not writing for anyone else. For my own amusement. Feel free to disregard!
"It is one thing to treat a woman the way she likes to be treated," Donnar said, his voice low. "And quite another thing to manhandle her without respect. Touch her in anger again, and I'll rip out your throat."
My stomach turned to ice. "Donnar!"
"It's all right, Hannah. I'm sure that Jake understands my meaning."
"You can't just go around threatening people with death," I murmured.
Donnar turned to me, one eyebrow raised, and I realized very suddenly that he absolutely could. We stood on his lands. And even if we hadn't, there was very little he could not do.
I took his hand and drew him away. "What you can do, and what you should do are two different things," I said. "And I let him treat me this way. Punish me, not him, for the result."
Donnar smiled, smoothing the frown from my forehead. "I will be many things for you, anything you wish me to be, but not your judge. I am not your god."
"You aren't his, either."
Donnar glanced back at Jake, and I saw what he did. Red hair and enough height that he would have been tall beside anyone else. Anyone but a god. "Viking Irish, I would guess."
"Then only half yours. Let him go."
