Damaged Gods by K.C. Cross, J.A. Huss
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - PIE
Three things go through my mind simultaneously when I wake in the morning.
One. He’s still here. He’s still in my bed.
Two. He’s got his arms around me. Like, we are full-on spooning. And that means his morning wood is pressing right up against my ass.
Three. None of this is terrible.
I mean, he’s half monster. There’s no getting around that. But his monster bits aren’t as scary today as they were earlier in the week. Seeing him come at me that first day—that was like seeing a demon out of Hell. He was terrifying on a level that I wasn’t able to comprehend.
And yes, he was kind of a dick the first couple days. But yesterday he was… well. On a micro-level, he was my hero. He pulled me back from the edge. And OK, I wasn’t in danger of actually jumping, but I was in the middle of a serious struggle and he put me in the Jeep so he could refocus me.
Talking to Jacqueline was the reality check I needed. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her until I heard her voice on the other end of the phone last night. She is my tether to the outside. That’s what Pell did for me last night.
He gave me a tether. He was my hero.
Sure, I’m still stuck in the curse, but we’re stuck here together. It could be worse.
He stirs behind me, but doesn’t wake.
I gently move his arms so I can slip out of the bed, then go downstairs and throw some more wood into the water heater thing. He’s still sleeping when I get back upstairs, so I use the bathroom. When I’m done, I check myself in the mirror as I brush my teeth. My hair is a little wild, but in a sexy way. I splash cold water on my cheeks, apply some of the fancy lip balm I bought in the spa boutique during the shopping spree that cost me my eternal soul, then take a deep breath and step back into the bedroom.
He’s awake, sitting up in bed with his lower half hidden under the covers, and even though the horns kinda ruin the illusion that he is just another man and not really a monster, there is no way to deny that Pell is sexy as fuck. And he’s grinning at me.
I walk over to the closet and pull a light satin robe off the hanger. I bite the tags off with my teeth, then slip it on, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”
He grins bigger. But all he says is, “Cute.”
“Right.” I point at him. “Is she slow, stupid, or just naïve?”
“Cute,” he repeats.
And now it’s getting awkward. “So. I guess it’s time to feed you. What do you want for breakfast?”
He doesn’t say it, but I hear it anyway. You.
I bite my lip, unsure what to do. Maybe letting him sleep in my bed was a huge mistake? Does he think we’re like… a couple now? Because we’re not. He’s got a very nice upper body and no lie, that dick of his would definitely be a pleaser. But he’s still a monster. I’m pretty sure there are rules against falling in love with a monster.
He pushes the covers away, swings his legs out of bed, then bends over with his face in his hands, like he’s a slow waker and needs a moment.
But that’s not what he’s doing. He’s thinking or something. I’m just about to leave and go make breakfast when he slowly turns his head towards me. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Me?” I point to my chest. “What am I thinking? I’m not thinking anything.”
“You’re thinking, He’s a beast. He’s half animal. He and I aren’t going anywhere. And I get it.” He pauses here to stare into my eyes, checking to see if I’m listening. Checking to see if I’m taking him seriously. “I get it. You’re a very pretty human. And you’re stuck here with me. Tomas and I are the only people you will ever get to be yourself with. And that can lead to things, or feelings—”
“Pell. Look. We slept next to each other for one night. It’s no big deal. You were being… heroic last night. Saving me from my fear of living all the way down here in the cottage. That’s all it was.” I smile broadly at him, trying to make myself believe that line of bullshit I just spewed. But my heart is beating wildly because everything is different right now. Nothing is the same between us. And it’s not about the hornjob or sleeping next to each other last night.
There is something different about us.
“That’s all it was?” he asks.
I nod. “Yep. And thank you, by the way. For coming down here with me. But you won’t have to do it again.”
He stands up. No pants. And I have to remind myself that his kind don’t wear pants. “You’re not afraid of the monsters anymore?”
“I am.” I keep my eyes stoically trained on his. I will not look down. I will not. “But I’m not gonna stay down here in the cottage.” I look around at the bedroom and then my eyes wander to the loft and get caught on the shutters of the tall windows down below. “It’s weird. There’s something wrong with it.”
Pell looks around too. “Looks pretty nice to me.”
“That’s just it.” I look back at him and shrug. “When I first applied for the job and Grant mentioned the caretaker’s cottage, my mind conjured up this image, ya know? A cottage. Quaint, cozy, fireplace, and kinda French countryside.” I point to the open half wall. “The shutters on the windows. And on the outside, it doesn’t look anything like the cottage I imagined. It’s really just another stone building with some cool symmetrical windows. But in here it was everything I pictured. Right down to the shutters, Pell.”
He’s got a stupid grin on his face. And then he sighs and shakes his head a little. “This is what’s worrying you? The décor is yours and doesn’t go with the outside?”
“What? It’s creepy, don’t you think?”
“Pie.” He walks over to me. I will not look down. I will not do it. He puts his massive hands on my shoulders and looks down at me with a pretty serious face. I have to tilt my head way up to meet his gaze, that’s how big he is. “It’s magic. Don’t you get it?”
He lets go of my shoulders, but grabs my hand and leads me downstairs and out into the cool morning air. He points up the hill at the top half of the cathedral that’s visible from down here. “That’s the same way. On the outside it’s one thing. It’s a church, it’s a cathedral, it’s a sanctuary. But what is it on the inside?”
I huff out some air as I pull my skimpy robe tighter around me. “I’ve noticed. It makes no sense.”
“It’s the same thing here. All the buildings here are like that. Even the tombs. The inside is magic, Pie. And these buildings will adapt and change. The caretaker cottage adapted to your expectations that first day. And I think it’s kinda cool.”
“How do you figure?”
“It recognized you.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“Why not?”
“Because then… then this whole thing becomes something inevitable. Like… fate. Like I never had a choice in it.” I look up at him. “How did you get like this? Were you born this way? Are monsters just real and you’re one of them? Or were you a man once?”
His smile falls immediately. “Oh. I get it.”
“Get what?”
“This is about the hooves, right? The horns, the fur. This is where you try to reconcile the two parts of me. Because you need me to be one or the other.”
“I’m not judging you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“You absolutely are judging me, but that’s not what I’m getting at. You can’t cope with the idea that I’m just… both. Man and monster.”
I turn away from him and go back inside.
He follows me. “I get it. I’ve lived in this body my entire life, so there’s part of the answer to your question. I am a satyr chimera. I was born a satyr chimera. But I am still very much a man. I was born a man too.”
I check the water heater fire, throw some more wood just to make it flare up, and then go back upstairs and start the tub for a bath. Again, he follows me. So I guess I have to say something about his last comment. “I’m not insulting your manhood, Pell. I’m just curious.”
He leans against the doorjamb as I sit on the edge of the tub, waiting for the water to get hot. “You’re not hearing me. I’m not insulted. I’m just frustrated that you fucking humans can’t cope with things like me. I have to be myth. I have to be cursed—”
I throw up my hands. “Dude. You’re completely cursed!”
“I am cursed to stay here as the monster of Saint Mark’s. But I wasn’t cursed into this body. I was made this way. Just like you were made that way.”
I try to rewind the conversation to see how we got here. Because just a few minutes ago we had this weird, but nice, morning glow going on and now we’re suddenly in some kind of identity fight. “Look, I appreciate what you did for me last night. My only point is, you won’t need to stay down here with me anymore because I don’t want to stay here.”
“Where will you sleep then?”
“I dunno. I’m sure there’s a room in that giant fucking cathedral with a bed.”
“OK. Do you know how the rooms work up there?” He nods his head to the cathedral.
“What do you mean, work? They’re rooms.”
“They’re variable. The inside of that place changes all the time. Just like the inside of this cottage. The only rooms that stay the same are the rooms on either side of the entrance halls and that main staircase. Upstairs it’s all magic, all the time.”
The water is finally hot so I plug up the tub, get up, push past him, and go back out into the bedroom to grab some clothes. “What kind of magic?”
“It’s a…” Pell pauses like he’s thinking. “They’re like… I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like a record of all the days.”
“Oh, yeah. Tomas mentioned this. OK. I’m following. Go on.”
“It’s just magic. Naturally magic. And magic isn’t good or bad, it just is.”
“Well, that’s not true. This is a curse, remember? That’s obviously bad.”
“You’re assigning feelings to a force, Pie. Is wind bad? Is rain bad? Is fire bad?”
“It can be.”
“Yep, it can be. But the wind blows sails, and the rain grows crops, and the flame lights your way home. None of that is inherently bad. And neither am I.”
“Whoa. That came out of nowhere.”
He sneers at me. “No, it didn’t. You think I’m evil because I have horns. You think I’m a monster out of Hell because I have hooves. This is the whole point of what I’m trying to say. I’m not good, I’m not bad, I’m just a flame in the dark.”
“OK. I completely follow that logic. But what I’m also hearing is that you’re both. You can destroy and save.”
He spreads his arms wide, an all-encompassing gesture. “Aren’t we all?” But he’s no longer sneering at me, so I feel like we’ve arrived at some kind of common ground.
“I guess,” I admit. “But I don’t have a monster side. I’m just cute, remember?”
His wide grin is back and this tells me that while we have not really settled this, he’s comfortable ending the convo here. “Take your bath, wear comfortable shoes, and meet me in the cemetery when you’re done. We’re taking a trip today.”
“A trip? Not to Granite Springs, I hope.”
He growls. “No. And don’t bring that fucking sheriff up again. The more I think about what happened to you last night, the angrier I get.”
“I didn’t bring up the sheriff. That was you.”
“Well, don’t do it again.”
I push him out of the bedroom. “Go away. Your man side is showing.”
I take my bath and put on a really cute light-blue sweater dress with some knee-high brown boots with a short heel and pull my hair up in a simple ponytail. These clothes are nice, but if I had known that I’d have to work off the price by giving a monster a hornjob, I might’ve thought twice before buying them.
But then again… I twirl in front of a gorgeous gilded full-length mirror that was not even here when I woke up this morning and decide, Nah. I’d have bought it anyway. These clothes might be expensive, but they are clearly quality and I feel like my status in life went up several levels just by putting them on.
Pell is sitting on a tomb at the top of the hill. He’s backlit by the sun, and the silhouette of his horns looks a little ominous. In fact, for a moment I think he’s someone else. But he stands up as I get closer and that mirage fades. He meets me on the pea-pebbled path with a scowl.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
He looks down at my boots. “I said comfortable shoes.”
“These are comfortable.”
“Could you walk a thousand years in those shoes?”
“What?”
“Because that’s what we’re about to do.” Then he takes my hand and pulls me towards the cathedral.
A thousand years.
I let that sink in.
“We’re going back in time? Tomas said we could do this. Hey, where is Tomas? Should we be worried about him? It’s been two days now.”
“No. Don’t worry about Tomas. He’s got his own issues going on. But trust me, he’s not going anywhere.”
“Huh. You know, Grant said that same thing to me when I asked about Tomas the first day.”
“He said what?”
“That Tomas wasn’t going anywhere. He’s not like you. And he’s not stuck in the tombs—by the way, was that big black one there yesterday?” I look over my shoulder at the new mausoleum.
“No. New tombs pop up all the time. That’s why the cemetery is so crowded.”
This makes me shudder. I don’t like the tombs. I don’t like the statues in front of them, I don’t like the doorways—which, by the way, are no longer there. So Pell was telling the truth. I can’t see them when we’re together. But everything about the cemetery is monster.
And I have a feeling that Pell is the exception to the rule about monster behavior. Some of those statues are terrifying.
These thoughts distract me as we enter the cathedral and then we are standing in the center of the lower great hall, looking up at the staircases.
“Tomas said they have lots of rooms up there.”
“They do. But they’re not really rooms in the general sense. They are points in time.”
He’s still holding my hand. Like we’re a team. And this feels real. I just have a sense that this is what the curse is about. Me and him. Monster and caretaker. Fighting our way through life together.
That might be overly dramatic, but at the very least, I’m here to support him.
But what is he doing?
“Why are you here, Pell?”
“Hmm?” He’s not really paying attention to me. He’s looking intently up one of the stairwells. His gaze falls down to me. “What?”
“OK. So I’m here to take care of you.”
“Right.”
“Why are you here?”
“I was cursed.”
“By who?”
He nods up. “I can show you, if you want. I can’t guarantee we’ll find it today. It could take hours, or weeks, or years to find what you’re looking for up there. But we’ll find something interesting, that’s for sure.”
I look up at the stairwell and take a moment to reflect on what he just said. “We’re going back in time?”
“Kind of. It’s not real, Pie. It’s magic. Sometimes you’re almost real, ya know? You can eat the food, talk a little with the people, participate. But other times you’re like a ghost. Just floating through.”
“Wow. That’s… kinda creepy.”
“There is no creepy. There is just misunderstood.”
I don’t really agree. Because I feel like that brand-new black tomb is watching me. But whatever. I don’t think anything can hurt me when Pell is around. And even though I don’t think I will be sleeping down in that cottage anymore, I appreciate the fact that he stayed to protect me last night.
“You ready?”
“I’m a little nervous, to be honest. What will we find up there?”
Pell shrugs. “You never can know. We don’t have to go. But we could stumble into something amazing if we do. What else do you have to do today?”
I point at him. “Well, since I didn’t get a chance to please you with breakfast, I’m pretty sure there’s a hornjob in my future.”
He squeezes my hand a little too tight. “Stop saying that word. It was kinda funny at first, but now it’s just fucking stupid.” But he’s smiling, so I’m not gonna stop teasing him about my job here. “Besides,” he continues, “you’ll have plenty of chances to please me up there.”
“Oh, I feel a challenge coming on. I’m in. Let’s go.”
We walk up the steps slowly. Almost reverently. And this makes my heart jump with uneasy expectations. What kind of things will I see today?
Like the other staircases, the steps are shallow and short. It’s barely a step and you just want to extend your legs and take many at a time. Pell could take ten of them at once if he stretched, but he doesn’t because I can only manage to climb three at a time. And when we get to the top we pause. It’s a long, endless hallway with hundreds of doors lining either side.
And if I had any doubts that this place is made up of magic, they’re all gone now.
“OK.” I don’t know why I’m whispering. “I’m suddenly nervous. And how do we know which door goes where?”
“We don’t,” Pell says. “That’s kind of the fun of it.”
“But—we could end up somewhere terrible. Like in the middle of a battlefield.”
He sighs. It’s sort of a wistful sigh. “One could hope.”
“You want to be in a war?”
“Not any of the modern ones, no. But I would not mind going back to my real life. I would not mind getting another chance to see it from another perspective.”
“You were a… what? Like a gladiator?”
“No, not really. I was someone’s property. Someone important. But I was a child back then so I did childish things.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe you’ll see?” Perhaps sensing I’m about to chicken out of this little adventure, he pulls me down the hallway. “Relax. It’s not real, remember.”
And then, before I can respond with any more objections, we’re standing in front of a set of double doors that look exactly like the ones I came through that first day.
I panic. And I’m about to pull my hand away and just go back downstairs to the world I somewhat understand when he pushes the doors open and we find ourselves staring into the banquet room of a medieval castle. There are hundreds of people here all dressed up like actors on the set of Game of Thrones. And when I look down, I’m dressed that way too.
Gone is my light-blue sweater dress and knee-high boots. Now I’m wearing a dusty-pink velvet gown with an empire waist and a corset that is trying its best to suffocate me.
And when I look over at Pell, I gasp aloud. “Your legs!” Then I look up at his head. “No horns! And your hair!” He’s not a monster anymore. He’s a man. Just a man. But wow. He’s way more than just any ordinary man. He’s like a very fucking sexy Viking warrior. And his clothes. The pants are black leather, worn and well used like his black boots. And his upper body is covered in a leather coat that fits tight to the waist, then opens up in a V for ease of movement.
He grins. “Pants. I knew you’d like that part.”
I feel a little guilty about this. So I tsk my tongue. “I’m over it now, Pell.”
“When in Rome…” He shrugs. “Anyway, I don’t know where we are, but this is what they wear here.”
And he’s right. Everyone is dressed like us. Or we are dressed like them. Women are all floating around the middle of the room in their elaborate gowns and all the men look like they are about to fight in a fancy war.
Pell leans down and whispers, “I think it’s a wedding.” He’s still very tall, much taller than me. But he’s not nearly as towering as he is in real life.
I study the room. The middle is filled with dancers, the edges with happy people, drinking and eating. Servers flit in and out of the crowd carrying trays. And at the top of the room is a long table of men and women wearing clothing that clearly indicates they are the hosts here. The young couple in the middle must be the bride and groom. He looks drunk, she is blushing profusely, but also looks like she’s having some wedding-night jitters.
Pell squeezes my hand. “Ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“To join them, of course.”
“Uh… no,” I say. He laughs at me. “I mean, we don’t even know these people. Won’t they get mad?”
“They don’t see us. We have to participate to make them see us.”
“And what do I say when they ask if I’m with the groom or the bride?”
“They won’t. Trust me. I’ve crashed thousands of parties like this. Besides, I’ve got man legs, Pie. Tell me that doesn’t delight you.”
I look him up and down. His blond beard is longer than the scruff he wears in real life. But it’s neatly trimmed. And his hair is long and thick. He really does look like a fucking Viking.
He grins down at me, waiting to see what I will say next.
“I am… delighted,” I say. He huffs at my word choice. “But I don’t know how to dance like that.” I point to the people in the center of the room. It’s a very coordinated dance with lots of turning, and changing partners, and all kinds of moves I do not have.
“Should I teach you?”
“You know that dance?” I snort.
He leans down again, so far down, his mouth is right up next to my ear. His whisper is loud and the hum, in combination with the light breath of air, makes my stomach go all soft and fluttery. “What part of ‘I’m two thousand years old’ aren’t you getting?”
He’s teasing me. I can hear it in his tone. But he’s serious too. Because I’m really not getting it. And he’s probably starting to change his mind about that whole cute thing. Pretty soon he’s going to be pointing at me, saying, “Slow.”
“Trust you.” That’s what I say back.
And at this, he nods. “It wouldn’t hurt.”
I shrug. “OK, monster. School me in the ways of medieval wedding dances.”
He steps in front of me, bows a little, but his eyes never leave mine, and then he extends his hand, inviting me into this magical dream with him.
I take that hand and when we walk forward, we’re walking down steps. A very grand entrance. And when I look over my shoulder, I have a little wave of panic that someone will close the door and we’ll get stuck here, lost forever in a dream-world filled with well-dressed Vikings.
“It’s not going anywhere,” Pell says. “They can’t see the door, they can’t close the door, and even if we lose sight of it, that door will never lose sight of us.”
I’m not sure what that last part means, I just know it’s more than I understand right now.
We pause at the edge of the dancers and Pell leans down to once again whisper in my ear. “Stop thinking, Pie. Just be here. That’s the only thing this place is good for. It’s just a moment and we get to crash it. There is nothing to fear here. It’s nothing more than magic. It would be a sin not to enjoy it.”
And he’s right, I think. To be in the moment and not live in it is a sin.
So I let him lead me into a dance I do not know, shoulder to shoulder with people who do not exist, and it doesn’t matter. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, or stuck in the sanctuary, or hell, if I’m being honest, stuck in this life.
Moments count.
Especially moments like this.
I had nothing going on before Saint Mark’s.
There is nothing in that old life that can compete with this monster man and his magic room.