Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) (17 page)

“
Seth?” Thor looked serious
and ran a hand over his beard.

“
He was after me too.” I sighed
deeply and rubbed my eyes. I caught sight of my hand – it was
filthy. By extension, I was filthy, too. It was all those rain/sand
storms and being dragged through interconnecting underworlds and
being strapped to walls.

“
I see,” Thor said. “Then let us
leave.” He shifted, casting a glance out towards
Sisyphus.

Sisyphus, for his part, looked nonplussed by
the whole thing. He was getting on with his infinite task. God
battles by his hill weren't going to stop him from rolling his
stone anywhere.

“
Details,” Thor boomed, “Get
up.”

I couldn't. Loki, before he’d disappeared
in a puff of god-hating smoke and fire, had frozen me in place. I
could manage to sit here on the floor, but that was it. My legs, no
matter how much I encouraged them, didn’t want to work.

I remained silent until Thor got the
picture. Sighing, he leaned down and picked me up as though I
weighed little more than a puff of air. He did it quickly, too – I
didn't have time to adjust to the sudden change in
altitude.

I blinked right into his face – as it was
barely ten centimeters from my own.

“
Do not worry, Details.” Thor
grinned then offered an abrupt laugh, the air from it pushing
against my fringe. “I will not eat you.”

Funnily enough, that particular thought
hadn't crossed my mind. Thor/Zeus/Jupiter didn't have that bad a
reputation when it came to eating people or gods (goats, boars, and
bulls, however, where another thing). He did, though, have this
epic reputation for sleeping around. By epic, I meant literally
that some of his exploits had been turned into bona fide epics by
poets and writers.

I didn't reply. I glanced around trying to
look at anything but Thor. Which was hard, considering he was
taking up my whole view.

“
Details.” Thor strode
forward as he talked, proving he could do two things at once. “You
appear to be weak.”

Genius.

Who knew that being chased through time by
gods and being chained to walls tended to wear you out?

I concentrated on my sarcasm. My sarcasm
stopped me from remembering what type of god Thor was. While he
wasn't nearly as bad as the white-panted, yacht-owning cad, Zeus,
he was still up there when it came to his nightly exploits.

Being scooped up in his arms was not
something I'd counted on (not that the last several hours had given
me much time for forward planning). This was a problem, a real
problem. It also wasn't fair. I prided myself on the fact I was not
one of those effusive forest bimbo-gods. I felt I was immune to the
charms of the less-than-monogamous divinities – the ones with the
smiles that could melt gold and make wild flowers start growing in
previously barren fields.

What's more, I prided myself specifically on
being immune to this particular god's charms.

That
's why this wasn't fair. Being the
goddess of details, I couldn't help but note all those goddamned
(excuse the paradox) details. Being close to Thor now meant I knew
all the facts about how it felt to be pressed against his chest, to
be barely centimeters from his face, and to feel his arms around
me.

Damn him.

This wasn't fair.

Once upon a time, I'd been able to resist
his divine charms, but now—

“
Stare at my nose,” he
said.

I blinked hard. My previous thoughts
forgotten, I tried to make sense of what he'd said. We were running
from naughty gods in the underworld, and he wanted me to stare at
his nose. “Ah... why?”

“
Details, dear Details. That's
what you live on, isn't it?” He didn't look my way as he ran
through the bleak dark halls. “Note them. You are weak. I also
don't want to carry you forever. Replenish your power. Stare at my
nose and note all the details.”

I didn't respond.

“
Stare at my nose, Details,”
he commanded in a far more Thor-like voice.

“
Okay,” I squeaked, and did what
he said. He had a nose. Yep, I could confirm that. It was
nose-shaped, had two orifices for breathing through, and had a
septum like most other freaking noses.

Really, stare at his nose?

Was he serious?

“
If that doesn't work,” Thor
twisted his head one way as we came to a junction in the darkened
and morbid corridor, “I brought you the weather report. It is
tucked into my belt.” He secured me to his chest with one arm, then
grabbed something and dumped it in front of my face.

It was a sheet of newspaper.

Thor had brought me the weather report.

I pulled it off my face and began to read
it.

Yes, that's right, I began to read the
weather report. While the Nordic god of thunder was carrying me
through the maze-like underworld, trying to save me from a
triple-god attack, I was calmly noting the forecasted humidity and
barometric pressure.

Except, and I would never admit this to
anyone, especially not Thor, I wasn't really reading it. I tried
to, oh god, did I try to. But I couldn't concentrate. All my
attention was diverted elsewhere.

And you could guess where.

We met up with Anubis. He stood at the
doorway that separated his own Underworld from that of Hades.
Though his dog-like face was sometimes hard to read, I could see
the guy was furious.

He let out a ferocious bark when he spied
Thor.

“
I know, I know,” Thor said
as he slowed down.

“
This is unacceptable,” Anubis
whined like a dog that had been left out in the rain. “The doors
between the Underworlds are not meant to be abused.”

The doors – I wanted to point out – hadn’t
been abused. The door behind him – the imposing black structure
with all the gold and silver sparkling runes painted into it (and
the numerous skulls, too) – looked fine. It hadn't been abused. The
trust between Osiris and Hades, on the other hand, had.

While Hades wasn't the nicest god out
there, he wasn't on the Integration Office's black list,
either.

That
might change after today.

“
I trusted Hades,” Anubis
snapped again. “Osiris trusted him.”

“
I will bring this up with the
Powers that Be,” Thor said powerfully.

...
He was one of the Powers that Be.
When it came to Hades, Zeus was technically the go-to guy for
disciplining the Greek gods. He was saying he would bring it up
with one of his other functional god identities... but saying the
Powers that Be sounded a whole lot cooler. Thor was hardly going to
say he wasn't going to deal with Hades’ indiscretion until he could
change into some white pants and a polo shirt, but it was the
truth.

Anubis gave a soft growl, then opened the
door behind him. He did it by bowing his head low and touching both
of his paw-like hands to the ground. The door swirled open –
swirling like it was nothing more than mist being sucked into
grooves in the wall.

As Thor walked me through, I could feel
the relief ebbing through him. Which was odd. How did I know that
the exact way he'd heaved his chest up and down was relief? How did
I know that the way his cheeks softened revealed he was letting go
of tension?

They were details, sure, but I was
extending beyond them. Way worse than that: I was seeing them as a
whole.

I put a hand up to my head again as I felt
an uncomfortable heaviness there.

“
Shouldn't you be reading
the weather report?” Thor glanced down at me, one eyebrow
raised.

“
Hmm,” I mumbled as I tried
to burry my face in the paper. “Where to from here?” I
asked.

How was Thor going to deal with this?
Despite his usual go-get-'em style, he hadn't smashed his way
through the Underworld until he'd brought all culprits to their
knees with plenty of black eyes and bruised noggins.

“
We go back to the current
time,” he said with another heavy sigh, “We must report this to my
father.”

Odin. Damn. We'd have to report this to
Odin. Which meant I had to stand in front of the old one-eyed super
scary divinity again. Great. Things couldn't get any better.

Yet I knew for sure they could get far, far
worse.

I’d only just been saved by Thor. What if I
hadn’t been? What were Hades, Seth, and Loki after? And what did it
have to do with me?

I remembered that Hades had been about to
tell me himself before Thor had walked in swinging his
hammer.

I gave out an annoyed huff at the
memory.

“
Ha.” Thor laughed heartily, and
he put me down. Abruptly too, treating me less like a goddess and
more like a bag full of trash.

I blinked up at him.

Now that we were on the other side of the
great door that separated the Underworlds, the décor had
changed.

Hardly surprisingly, there was far more
sand on this side. The corridors and rooms were all made out of
great sandstone blocks, much like the pyramids. There were the
usual ancient-Egyptian-style paintings decorating the walls,
too.

At least things were warmer here, though it
was a bit stifling.

Still, all those details weren't enough to
stop me from narrowing my eyes and staring up at Thor.

“
You can walk on your own
now.” Thor tapped his hammer as it was stowed in his belt. “I
hardly think you are the type of goddess who likes to be carried
everywhere, especially by me,” he added with a personal
grin.

I sucked in my lips slowly and tried to
convince myself that he was right.

I tried to stand.

I wobbled and stumbled. For Thor and Anubis’
part, they stood there. Anubis looked on, curious, and Thor looked
amused.

Thanks, guys.

But I did feel a little stronger.
Concentrating on details – if they had been neither the weather
report nor Thor's nose – had enabled me to restore my power. In
fact... it was coming back far quicker than it should. It was
different somehow, too. The tingle escaping deep inside my chest
and playing down my sides was qualitatively quicker and sharper
than any I’d felt before.

“
Are you going to offer your
effusive thanks for me saving you?” Thor flicked his hair to the
side like the Nordic god-version of a peppy hair model.

“
If you'd been able to hold off
for a few minutes,” I stared back at him, then found it
uncomfortable so I glanced at the wall instead, “Hades would have
told me what he'd been planning.”

Thor boomed with great whoops of laughter.
It wasn't that he was a particularly cheery fellow – it was that he
found nearly everything us small gods/mortals did to be
funny.

“
I see, you would have preferred
that we didn’t save you.” Thor nodded sharply. “Then,” he stepped
away from the door behind him and gestured towards me, “Be my
guest.”

I looked from him to the door, but didn’t
move.

“
Seth attacked me,” Anubis
growled by Thor's side, ignoring me. The great god who protected
the Egyptian dead wasn't about to let a small-time goddess-rescue
distract him. Nope, the giant black-headed dog was far more
interested in the slip-ups in god etiquette he'd had to weather.
“These actions break the rules,” he grumbled. “That Loki god – he
broke through my sand barrier, he stole his way through these
tunnels, he burnt several of my guards.”

At the mention of Loki, everything
changed. I sucked in a quick breath and watched the shadows descend
over Thor's face. Either Anubis was a ballsy god, or he didn't
realize that he wasn't talking to either Zeus or Jupiter
here.

“
It will be dealt with,”
Thor assured him, voice icier than a thousand winters. “Details,”
he snapped at me, “We must go.”

I stopped from asking Thor how he was
planning to get us from the ancient Egyptian underworld back to our
own time, because questions would be met with growls, threats, and
hammer-blows.

I crossed my arms and glanced down at the
weather report I still held. Strange that Thor, of all gods, had
such a thing tucked into his belt. Being the triple god of thunder,
the sky, storms, and whatnot, predicting the weather was not a
problem for him. He often created it.

Unless he'd picked up the weather report
for me specifically, that was.

Before I had a chance to analyze that
possibility, Thor leaned in and grabbed a hand around my wrist. I
instinctively shivered. It wasn't from the suddenness of it, or
from any real worry that Thor was going to snap it in two to prove
a point. It was from the still-fresh memory of Loki.

“
Do not worry,” Thor said,
voice soft for the first time, “I’m not Loki.”

I stared at him, relaxing.

“
We must go,” Thor said
through a deep, manly sniff.

“
How? Where?” I asked
through several blinks. Thor's grip was strong, but it didn't eat
into my skin like Loki’s had. It didn't send tendrils of ice-cold
streaking up my arm and across my chest.

It was warm.

“
How do we get from now to then?”
I stammered. “Or rather, how do we get from the past back to the
future? I got here through a rift in the Library of Alexandria, but
it has closed. I'm not sure if there are any others around. From
what I know of all the other functioning, stable space-time
portals, there aren't any others close-by.” I stopped abruptly. Was
I, goddess Officina, babbling?