The Wild Moon by Riley Storm

Chapter Forty-Six

I blinked awake blearily.

What the hell? When had I fallen asleep? Angrily, I turned my head to the side, looking for Vir, demanding answers. We’d been talking about the barrier, and he’d told me nobody but me came through, and then suddenly I was awake. That reeked of god-interference, and I didn’t like it.

He wasn’t around, though, not that I could sense. For the time being, I was alone.

Taking advantage of that privacy, I carefully sat up in bed and pulled up the oversized sweatshirt, doing my best to keep the girls covered. I inspected my side, noting that the healing was kicking in.

It was going to be gross for a day or so before the fresh, pink skin that I could see forming at the center took over, but I wouldn’t be weak for long. Some food, another period of rest, and I would be right as rain. Physically, at least. My mental psyche was another matter entirely.

Gods. Honest to goodness gods.

I climbed across a mile of covers and sheets to finally reach the edge of the Vir-sized bed. There was no way I could rest any longer. Not in bed, at least. Maybe I wasn’t up for another brawl with Johnathan, but I could walk around the god-lair at least. That wasn’t very taxing. Besides, I had too much mental energy to sit still.

Grasping at the waistband of the sweats, so they didn’t fall mid-stride, I walked out from the partitioned sleeping chamber and back into the main part of his lair.

“How long was I out?” I asked, spotting Vir over by the hearth fire in the library section.

He was busy staring into the flames. Normal flames, I noted, yellows, oranges and reds. None of his blue.

“As long as you needed to be,” he said. “Time works differently here. It would be impossible for me to quantify it to you in ways you would understand.”

“Oh,” I squeaked. “Right. And, um, just to clarify for me. Where are we? And what is that place with the gates? What is going on here?”

Silence.

Vir continued to stare into the flames. I watched and waited for a response. He’d heard me, I was right next to him, but his attention was on the flames. Following his gaze, I, too, stared into them for a long time, trying to spot whatever it was he could see, but it must not have been for mortal eyes because all I saw was the fire.

“We are in the Direen. All of what you have seen is of it.”

When Vir finally spoke, I jumped, having been so used to the silence, the sound of his whisper was more akin to thunder.

“I know that name,” I said quietly. My father’s teachings were coming back to me. All the stories, the ancient legends, and histories of the gods. The Direen was spoken of often and described in great detail.

“I’m not surprised,” he said.

“The Direen is supposed to be the Paradise of the Gods,” I said.

“Yes.”

I had so many questions, but of them all, one rose closer to the surface than all others before.

“Then why does it look so…dead? Not here, but out there. It’s not very paradise-like. Unless you have some sort of twisted sense of what paradise means.”

“No,” he said, still staring into the flames. “It’s not. It hasn’t been that way for a thousand years.”

The pain in his voice crushed my very soul. I gasped, tears falling abruptly from my eyes. It hurt. Physically hurt me just to hear him speak of it. I cried out as his agony washed through me. Humans aren’t made to handle that sort of pain, and I fell to one knee.

It passed, but still, Vir stared into the flames, unseeing, or uncaring, of what his power had done to me. Slowly, I got to my feet, trying to compose myself.

“I don’t understand, Vir,” I said once I found my voice.

He turned to me, still shirtless, still sexy, but somehow haunted by what he’d seen in the flames. “I know.”

“Help me understand?”

Vir nodded and reached out, taking me by the waist. I had just long enough to notice that his touch was warm and that his hand fit around my waist in interesting ways before we blurred up through the rock and were standing on a hill.

I leaned on him. “Warning, dude. A warning, please. For my sanity,” I gasped.

“Sorry,” Vir said, sounding truly apologetic. “It’s been so long since I’ve dealt with a human. I forget your kind cannot handle the travel very well.”

“If I had a moment to prepare myself, it might be different,” I said, glaring at him.

We were outside again, I noticed, seeing the starscape above us. It was the same one I’d been greeted with every time I dreamt of Vir.

In fact, we were on the same hill I arrived on. There, in the distance, the giant stone gates rose, the wall on either side leading off into the distance farther than I could see.

Rock crunched under my bare feet as I did a quick circle, confirming we were where I thought we were.

“Why bring me here?” I asked, the gates looming over us even at this distance, dark and foreboding. I couldn’t stop staring at them. What was their purpose? Who had built them?

“Once, a long time ago, this place was nothing but white, pink, and gold,” he said. “Light was everywhere, and everything was shiny. Perfect. Beautiful.”

“A paradise,” I said quietly.

“Yes,” Vir replied. “Precisely.”

“But not anymore.”

He shook his head. “Those gates used to stand open. Always. Everyone was welcome here, beings from all realms. I used to spar with Hades and Horus, among others, every decade or so. Our battles were legendary.”

I watched Vir’s face as he talked, seeing the shine of his eyes, the twitch of his lips, as he relived memories that had to be millennia old. I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

“Trees,” he added. “There were trees everywhere. Giant ones hundreds of feet tall lined the road.”

He gestured from the gates, pointing to the east to a line of smaller hills in the distance I’d never noticed before. I wondered what had once been there.

It was impossible to picture what he was describing. The world I looked upon now was the complete opposite of what Vir described. Dark, always so dark, covered in blackened rock.

“What happened?” I asked in a hushed whisper. “Everything is so bleak. And crunchy. The rock is so messed up.”

Vir looked down at our feet. “That is not rock upon which you walk,” he explained.

“It’s not? What is it?” I asked, taking a step, more non-rock crunching underfoot.

“Bone.”

I gagged. “What?” I hissed, staring at my feet. Then around me.

“Layer upon layer of bone.” His words were hard. Angry even.

“So many,” I whispered. “Whose bones? There weren’t that many shifter gods. Not to cover this much space.”

Vir shook his head. “We don’t leave bones when we die.”

I swallowed nervously, remembering his warning at the tunnel about how our presence would have attracted attention. “Vir,” I said, my voice shaking, “who does leave the bones?”

“They do,” he said.

“They?”

“The enemy,” he said with a shrug. “The ones that come from beyond the Gates. From another realm.”

“Which realm do they come from?” I asked.

It’s not like I was an expert on other realms or anything. Until this morning, I’d thought Earth was the only realm. Now I knew that not only were the shifter gods real, but so were the ancient Greek gods, the ancient Roman gods, even the Egyptians seemed to be represented with his mention of Horus.

That left a lot of possibilities, and I was going to go out on a limb and say there were probably others I’d never heard of.

Vir opened his mouth to answer. Simultaneously, his eyes locked on to something in the distance, and his body tightened.

“We must go,” he said quietly. “We’ve lingered for too long.”

“What happens if we linger?” I asked, nervous anticipation filling my chest. I had a suspicion what his answer would be.

“They’ll come,” Vir said. “For both of us. You have to go. I can only hide you here for so long.”

He picked me up, careful to avoid my wounded side, though it barely hurt anymore.

“Wait!” I yelped, suddenly realizing what he was going to do. We were going to poof again. “Wait-wait-wait!”

Vir didn’t wait.