Damaged Gods by K.C. Cross, J.A. Huss

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - PELL

Aside from moving the Jeep from the front to the back the other day, it’s been a really long time since I drove anywhere. Grant hasn’t been all that fun to hang around for the past few decades, and now that I know he really was working against me this whole time, my aversion to going places with him makes sense.

I guess I always knew, but before Pie told me that he snuck his books out, it was just a hunch.

Now it’s real.

And that sucks.

But what sucks more—what really pissed me off—is he has no right to taint Pie’s mind like this. She’s already confused and even though I don’t know a lot about her life, I get it. She’s under the impression she’s crazy because of that bird.

And maybe she is, I don’t know. I never saw her talking bird. I’ve seen a bird. Just looks like a normal bird to me. But the sanctuary is real. This curse, as crazy as it sounds, is also real. And we’re living in the real world at all times, even though there’s a wall up that separates us from them.

That’s why I’m taking her to the gas station.

Except… when I pull up to the crossroad where that gas station was the last time I came by here, it’s just a shell. A rusted-out sign, no gas pumps, no phone booth, and the windows to the little store are all boarded up. So I just idle at the stop sign across the street.

“What are we doing?”

I look down the road to my left, then to my right. “This used to be open.”

“Like fifty years ago, maybe. Do we need gas?”

I look down at the gauge. “It wouldn’t hurt. But that’s not why I brought you here.”

“Why then?”

I put up a hand, asking her to be quiet. “Just let me think for a moment. I need to find another one.”

She points to the left. “I think the highway is that way. There should be a gas station near the on ramp.”

I look down the dark, lonely stretch of road. It’s as dark as dark gets, even with the moon. Because the moon is almost always hidden by the tops of trees. This is what it means to live in this part of Pennsylvania. Thick, encroaching woods and no sky to speak of. That’s what I miss most about the Old World. At least the part I lived in. There was always so much sky.

“Pell?”

“Hmm.”

“Well, what are we doing?”

“OK. We’ll go that way.” I turn left and we drive for a while. There are houses, most of them with porch lights, but there are no street lamps out this way. So that feeling of being trapped in the trees never quite diminishes until, sure enough, the road opens to reveal a highway and just past the on ramp, there is a gas station.

“Do not pull in, Pell.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You.” She laughs a little. Well, maybe more of a scoff, really. But it’s good to hear something other than panic. She was really upset back there in the cottage. Like losing her damn mind upset. I hate Grant. I never really liked him—he walked around in an aura of assholiness. And he did fuck me over pretty good. But that’s not why I hate him. He has no right to confuse this girl the way he did. She’s teetering on the edge. And I guess he knows that, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s filling her head with this bullshit story about not being real.

“It’s fine,” I say. “I don’t care if people see me. They won’t believe their eyes anyway. People believe what they want to believe. And they want to believe there is no such thing as a satyr chimera. So I’m good.” Pie ponders this as I make my way across the highway and pull into the gas station. But then I notice something. “Shit. They don’t have a phone booth here?”

“Phone booth?” Pie looks at me like I’m the crazy one. “There are no phone booths anymore.” Then she shuffles through her purse and pulls out one of those pocket phones. “We have cell phones now. Did you bring me here to make a call?” Then she giggles a little and some of the anger leaves me. “We could’ve done it back on the country road outside the sanctuary.”

I pull up to the gas pumps. “Shit. I forgot. OK. Well, call your parents then.”

“What?”

“I want to prove that this is all real. You’re stuck in the sanctuary with me, and that’s kinda like being in a different world. But this world, it’s still here, Pie. You’re not hallucinating. This isn’t a dream, you’re not dead, you’re not in purgatory. We’re just stuck in a stupid curse. But we still have access to this world. And I’m gonna prove it to you, because you’re going to call your parents.”

She frowns.

“Now what?”

“I don’t have parents.”

“What do you mean?”

“I never had a father. At least, I never knew him. And my mother dropped me off at CPS when I was nine because I refused to say that Pia wasn’t real.”

“I don’t understand. Your mother abandoned you?”

She nods.

“Oh.” This fucking night. Nothing seems to be going right. But all I can do is shake my head, look out the window, and mutter, “What a fucking bitch.”

“Tell me about it.” Pie sounds tired.

I look over at her and suddenly she’s someone else. Someone who was walked out on. Someone alone in this world, like me. Like Tomas, too.

She interprets my staring as expectation. “I have her number, so I guess I could call her, but—”

“No. Fuck her. Someone else. Call someone else. A friend. Even if I wasn’t trying to prove a point, you have to do this so they don’t worry about you.”

“Oh”—she laughs a little—“trust me. No one is staying up at night calling hospitals and wondering if I’m dead in a ditch anywhere.”

“Well, why not? What the hell is wrong with them?”

“No. You don’t understand. I don’t have… friends. Just Pia.”

“Well, you can’t call her. I don’t know much about the pocket phones, but I’m pretty sure your bird doesn’t have one.”

Her laugh is bigger this time. “No. She doesn’t have a phone. She’s never needed one. She was always just… there. And now she’s not.”

“You don’t have anyone you can call to pull you back from the edge, Pie?”

“Umm.” She looks a little panicked. Like this is a quiz question.

“Look, I’m not judging you. Hell, I don’t have anyone either. But I need you to know that I’m real. And if you’re sitting here with me and talking to someone out there at the same time, that’s how I prove my existence.”

She nods, looking at me solemnly. “OK. I have one person. I was on my way to see her when I got sidetracked by the caretaker job. Jacqueline. She was my foster sister in one of the homes I had to live in when I was a teenager.”

“OK. Call her. I can get out so you can have some privacy.”

I reach for the handle of the Jeep, but Pie puts her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be dumb. You can’t go out there. Someone could pull up for gas. I will pump the gas and make the call.”

I’m very focused on the way her hand feels on my bare shoulder, but before I can make sense of it, she pulls away and gets out of the Jeep. I watch her with a new interest as she walks into the store and interacts with the clerk inside. She comes back out, cell phone pressed to her ear, her mouth moving, her lips curving up into a small smile. And she comes over to the Jeep again, over to my side, and then starts pumping gas.

I can hear little bits and pieces of her conversation with her friend Jacqueline, but not enough to make sense of it. The gas pump clicks off, and Pie removes it from the tank as she makes a promise to go visit this friend one day soon. Then she looks down at the phone in her hand and I guess the call is over.

My eyes track her as she walks around the front of the Jeep and then she slides in next to me, sighing. “We got a full tank. I’m thirty dollars more in debt, and…” She pauses and her head slowly migrates my direction. “Thanks. She was actually so happy to hear from me. She said she thinks of me all the time and that I can come visit her any time I want. She just bought a house. She went to college, Pell. I never knew. She’s doing so good. She even has a guest room.”

Pie looks away, out the front window. Her shoulders drop. Relax. Like a whole world of tension was just lifted off of them. “I never knew, ya know?” She looks at me again. “I never knew I had someone. Not until this very moment.” She blinks, her eyes a bit glassy with tears. “Thank you.”

I nod at her, getting it. “No problem.” I start the Jeep. “It’s a crazy world so… yeah. It’s easy to start thinking it’s just you, when it’s not. It’s just… a crazy fucking world that never made much sense in the first place.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “It sure is.”

I’m really happy for her. I truly am. But it’s hard not to compare our lives.

She has someone, I do not.

She could, theoretically, leave the sanctuary for good one day and never come back. The chances of that happening for me are pretty much zero. But even if my curse was broken, where the hell would I go? I’d be a satyr chimera in a modern world and then what?

And it’s not like I even wanna be a human man. I don’t.

I just want to be me.

I just want to be with my own people, in my own time, and live my own life.

That’s never going to happen. Even if the curse is broken.

Pie and I drive in silence for a while. She messes with her phone. I’m not sure what those things actually do, but then she asks me, “Why do they call it Saint Mark’s?”

“What do you mean why?” I shrug. “It’s just the name.”

“But Saint Mark was a real person. So says the internet.” She holds up her phone. It’s lit up bright with a lot of words. “He was a real saint, at any rate. And maybe you guys even lived around the same time. So I have to assume that he’s part of this. The sanctuary is part of a church.”

“A church?”

“One with saints?”

I actually guffaw. “No, Pie. We’re not part of a church.”

“Then why is it called Saint Mark’s?” She shrugs, like this is obvious.

I let out a long breath, trying to search for an answer, but I just don’t have one. “I guess… I don’t know.”

“You’re sure the sanctuary isn’t connected with a church?”

“Hundred percent.”

“Well. Then it’s a mystery, I guess. But a weird one.”

“Yeah,” I sigh, then concentrate on driving.

In fact, we’re both silent after that. We say nothing all the way back to that abandoned gas station, and then Pie says, “I know what you’re thinking. But you don’t have to worry.”

I smile a little as I turn right, heading back home. “What am I thinking?”

“You’re thinking I’ll leave you one day. That I’ll go to Jacqueline’s house and stay in her guest room. But don’t worry. It’s not gonna happen. This curse has been in place for two thousand years. I know I was all confident in the beginning, but I get it now, Pell. Reality check, right?” She sighs. “I just don’t have what it takes to change anything here. That is painfully obvious.”

I wasn’t really thinking about her leaving. Not after her comment about the sanctuary’s name, anyway. But it’s hard not to think about it again now. It sucks that I’m stuck here. And I know I’ve been a jerk to all the other caretakers over the centuries, but that was all bitterness on my part. Maybe even jealousy. I don’t have those feelings for Pie. I want to be supportive of her. I wouldn’t want her to be stuck here with me. It’s not fair. She didn’t ask for this. She just wanted a place to settle and catch her breath and I totally get that. So I say, “You don’t know that, Pie. I think your fresh perspective on things is exactly what this place needs. So don’t sell yourself short. It could happen.”

“No,” she says without emotion. “It’s not gonna happen. I mean, even if I did manage to figure out how to break the curse, Grant said the debt book is a trap. He says you need a spell to get out of it. And I think he’s right. I’m so in debt already, it’s such a joke. And we’ll never stop needing things. Even if it was keeping track and erasing debts, there will always be new ones. Like this gas.”

“The Book of Debt isn’t fake, Pie. It does keep track. And it’s honest.”

She does a half-hearted shrug. “It’s not likely, Pell.”

“You want me to prove that true too?”

“How?”

“Simple.” I find myself grinning. “All you have to do is please me and watch your debt disappear in real time.” I pull into the sanctuary’s back lot, park the Jeep, and turn it off.

And when I look at her, I realize she’s suspicious of me again, all my goodwill suddenly erased. “You want me to wash your feet, Pell? Like a fucking slave?”

“That’s just one way.”

“You want me to—”

I point at her. “Do not say ‘blowjob.’ I will stop talking to you forever. I’m not a bad guy. I didn’t write that book. I didn’t make up these rules. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m stuck here, just like you.”

She lets out a long breath. “Then how? If not feet, if not…” I caution her with my eyes. “If not that other thing, then how?”

“You could polish my horns. No one’s done it in a very long time. They could use it.”

She actually checks my horns for dullness and I have to cover my mouth with my fist to hide my amusement. Is she slow? Is she crazy? Is she naïve?

Or is she just cute?

“And this will knock a debt off?” Pie seems dubious.

“A nice chunk,” I say. “I like the horn polish. A lot. It feels good. Like a back massage. And the debts are erased according to how much you please me.”

“Why is it like that?”

“Why is it like what?”

“Why does this curse care about your… pleasure?”

“Huh.” I think about that for a moment. I feel like I know the answer to this, but I can’t quite conjure it up. “I dunno. I can’t remember.”

“Well, it feels like a plot device to me. It feels… fake.”

“For fuck’s sake. None of this is fake. You’re wearing the ring. You’re trapped here. The gray mist. The apothecary. Fucking Tomas! It’s all real.”

She exhales loudly, not looking at me, just focusing on something outside by the lake for a few moments. “Did Grant ever polish your horns?”

“Never. I didn’t let him touch me. That’s probably why he thinks it doesn’t work. All he ever did was cook for me. And in the beginning, we used to go drinking. And he’d glamour me. He knows that worked. So all that shit he talked to you, that’s all it was. Just shit. He’s a fucking liar.”

“I don’t know. He seems to be in control of things.”

“In control of what?”

She turns her head to look me in the eyes. Her eyes are a very pretty blue color. Like cornflowers. And somehow, maybe the moon is reflecting off the lake or something, but her eyes are lit up with a little glow. “He wasn’t old, Pell. He was young when I saw him in town. He looked exactly the way he did when I first saw him. Before he took the ring off. He knows things. And he’s in control of things.”

“How?”

Pie, of course, has no answer for me.

“I mean… that’s not possible. He had debts. He had so much debt, Pie. It would’ve taken centuries to wipe it away.”

“It’s an easy explanation,” Pie says. “That book is bullshit.”

“No.” I’m shaking my head. “You saw him get old.” I look at her for confirmation and she nods. “So it’s not bullshit. The debt caught up. He got out of it. But how?”

“I think he really does do magic, Pell. Like…” She sucks in a breath and then blows it out with her words. “Like big, bad, serious magic. He said he had a spell. He offered it to me. He told me how to make money. He said I could stay for as long as I wanted, make money on the outside, and then he could call up a new caretaker with another flyer when I was ready to leave.”

My mouth drops open. “What did you say?”

“I told him to shove it up his ass. Sorta. But I’m not interested in getting rich off this curse. That’s such a bad idea. And I don’t want to leave. Not yet. And anyway, we already know where another caretaker is. Russ Roth is my ticket out if I ever do want to go.”

I knew Grant was powerful, of course. He’s been very busy in that apothecary for decades. And the greenhouse is—I point at Pie. “At some point, sooner rather than later, remind me to show you the greenhouse. Maybe he fucked that all up too, but I doubt it. He didn’t know when you would come. I mean, did he know you were coming?”

“No. He was surprised. And all the way across the sanctuary. He was so out of breath when he finally found me in that front hall, he could barely talk.”

“Right. That’s good. If he didn’t know you were coming, then the greenhouse is safe.”

“What’s the big deal with the greenhouse? You got tomatoes out there or something?”

This girl. I swear. Is she slow? Is she crazy? Is she naïve?

She is just cute.

“The herbs. We need them to restock the apothecary. We’ll have to go through it and get rid of all the plants he harvested. It’s gonna be a mess, but it’s gotta be done. The magic is important. We can look at that tomorrow. Tonight”—I point at her—“I’m gonna prove that the Book of Debt is real and you are in control of it.”

Pie shrugs, flips the door handle, and gets out. “OK. Prove that I can work this debt off just by making you happy.”

I get out too and wave her forward towards the gate, smiling to myself. Because this is gonna be fun, I think. We walk through and I head towards the path instead of turning towards the cottage. Pie balks, stopping in place. “What’s wrong now?” I sigh.

She looks up the hill towards the cathedral, then back at me. “I don’t want to walk past those tombs. Can’t we do it down here?”

I nod in the other direction. “All the stuff is up there. The tombs can’t hurt you.”

She tsks her tongue and shakes her head. “I don’t believe that for a second. There are monsters inside them. And I’m pretty sure that those statues outside are just a glimpse of what’s waiting inside the tombs. I can’t really see them in there, but I feel them moving around. They make shadows. And they could just slide out and take me as I’m walking.”

“They can’t, Pie. That door you see, it’s not really there. It’s just an illusion.”

She is shaking her head now before I’m even done talking. “Oh, no, it’s not. I can feel them.” She gazes up the hill where the tombs pack the lawn shoulder to shoulder. “And there are so many of them.” Pie looks up at me, eyes wide and questioning. “Why are there so many of them?”

“It’s continuously being populated. Like the upstairs of the cathedral.”

She looks around, trying this explanation on for size. “But where do they come from? I mean, if it’s continuous, then where do these monsters start? Like… if this is their end, where is the beginning?”

“Huh. I guess I never thought about that.”

“How could you not think about that?”

“In my defense, Pie, I’ve been here for a long fucking time. When I first got here, it was just me and Tarq. And Tomas, of course. He was already here though. And he doesn’t live in a tomb, he’s… never mind. My point is, these tombs all came later. Little bits at a time. One here, two there. And then, before I knew it, the place was full.”

“And you never bothered to wonder where they were coming from?”

“Well.” I let out a long exhale. “I just figured the curse was making the rounds.”

“Making the rounds?”

“Yeah. Like… um. You know. There’s a lot of fucking monsters out there, all over the earth, and it just takes time to find them all to pack them up in tombs.” She actually stops walking to look at me. “What?” I ask.

She just shakes her head. “I don’t know what I think about that.”

“About what?”

“Are you clueless, ignorant, or just… Zen?”

I laugh, point at her. “Not sure what the Zen thing is, but I choose that one. The others are most certainly undesirable. Anyway,” I add, before she can think up more questions about that line of thinking, “you can’t get in the tomb, this is my point. Only I can enter the tombs. But here’s the catch on my side, I can’t see the doors.”

“What?”

“Yeah. It’s a paradox. I can enter, but can’t see the doors. You can see the doors, but you can’t enter. And none of them can come out. Trust me. I’ve been here two thousand years and not a single monster has found their way out of those tombs. So when you walk alongside me up this path, you can’t even see the doors. No shadows at all.”

She looks up the path again and her shoulders relax. “Oh. OK, then. But”—she turns back to me—“how do you get inside your tomb?”

“Well, that one’s mine and I can see the opening.”

“So I can’t ever go into your tomb?”

“Why the hell would you want to go in there?”

“I dunno. To see where you live.”

I spread my arms wide to encompass the entire sanctuary. “I live here. You can see all of it.”

“So your tomb though.” She is not letting this go. “It’s like your bedroom? Your private chambers or whatever?”

“Sure. It’s like my bedroom, I guess. But it’s not a bedroom. It’s the woods.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“No. How is your tomb the woods?”

“It’s like the cathedral. It’s different on the inside than it is on the out.”

“Like my cottage.”

“No. Not really. That’s like… I don’t know. Personal design preferences or whatever. My tomb is more like the hallways up the staircases.”

“What hallways? I need to hear all about this. Like… right this very moment.”

“You’d rather hear about my tomb than know that the Book of Debt is real?”

She smirks up at me. “You just want me to polish your horns, don’t you?”

“I mean…” I begin. She laughs. “I can lie and say no. But. Yeah. It feels good. It’s been a long time since I had a horn polish.”

And even in the dim moonlight filtered through the tops of trees, I can see her blush.

Is she slow? Stupid? Naïve?

No.

She is just cute.

I wave my hand towards the path. “Shall we?”

I take her back to the steam cave where we left the Book of Debt. I open it up to her page.

Pages. She’s got quite a few of them already.

This makes her deflate a little, but I’m ready. “Look.” I flip to the first page of the book and point to all the ways she can work off her debt. Of course, her eyes only see the sex. And she’s about to start pointing that out when I smack her finger away and show her the only one that matters tonight. “Right there. ‘Polish horns.’”

She leans down to get a better look at the elaborate calligraphy. “One thousand? Is that in dollars?”

“Dollars,” I confirm.

“How come it’s dollars? Shouldn’t it be in… drachma or something?”

“You’re definitely not stupid.”

“What?” Her eyes narrow.

“You’re close. The drachma? But that’s Greek. In Rome we called them aurei or denarii. It’s actually pretty complicated. But we’re not in Rome, so we don’t do things like the Romans. We’re in PA, and we do dollars.”

“Hmm. OK, then. I’ll take a horn polish for one thousand, Alex.”

“Who’s Alex?”

She smiles, pats my chest like I’m simple. “It’s not important. Let’s do this.”

And do I detect a little excitement in her voice?

I do believe I do.

I grab a wooden box off a nearby ledge and set it on a stone table just to the left of a configuration of rocks that allows me to sit and lean forward, resting my head on a smooth, flat stone to give her total access to my horns. I take out a pot of polish, remove the lid, and give it a smell.

“Mmm. That kind of smells good.”

“Sandalwood oil,” I say. “It’s old. But the paste is infused with magic, so it’s fine. One day though, you should learn to make your own batch of horn polish. It’s better that way. It will leave your imprint on me.” She goes still at this, maybe thinking too hard about that and what it might mean. So I change the subject. “Just dip your fingers in, get a little bit of paste, and then rub it into my horns.”

She nods to herself, like she’s having a whole internal conversation, then sucks in a deep breath and dips her fingers into the jar.

I lean forward on the stone, my chest pressing against the smooth rock, my face resting on my hands. And I close my eyes and almost moan when her gentle hands begin massaging the oil into my horns.

It’s not as tame an act as I let on. My horns are twisted and hard like bone, but just picturing her hands as they slide around the curve of them turns me on a little.

It’s a lot like a handjob, actually.

“They’re hot,” she whispers.

“Mmmm.”

“How come they’re hot?”

“I’m made of fire,” I mumble.

“What?”

“Pie?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I enjoy it, at least?”

“Sorr-ree. Jeez.”

I pick up my head and look her in the eye. “I know it’s weird and you’re uncomfortable, but I don’t care. It feels good and I want to enjoy it. It’s been a long time. And I’ve never had a woman in here with me. This is… quite nice.”

She frowns a little, but nods. “OK. I’ll shut up.”

I feel a little bad for being so blunt. And now I can’t enjoy it because I feel bad. “Fuck it. If you need to talk your way through it, then fine. Talk. It will still feel good.”

“Never mind,” she says. “We both want to get the maximum benefit out of this, right?”

I put my head back down without answering her and she resumes her massage.

Maybe this is just a transaction for her, but that’s not how it is for me.

I am starting to enjoy Pie Vita and the debt is a reassurance to me.

I don’t know how Grant got out of his debt and got his youthful body back, but Pie isn’t anything like Grant.

There is no way she will break this curse and that means I could get stuck here with her forever.

I’m perfectly OK with that.