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

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - PELL

I don’t realize that I’ve been holding my breath, watching her, until she disappears—just disappears in front of my eyes—and then I let it out in a rush. Really, really hoping that this won’t somehow backfire on me.

It won’t. I say that again in my head. It won’t.

Pie will come back with the book, we will get knowledge, we will banish the sheriff, and she will bring news of Tarq. This thought alone is enough to make me hope. Because I want to talk to that bastard again so bad. I don’t mind Tomas. And lately, I sorta like the dude. But he’s got issues that will always stand in the way of a closer friendship. I can’t trust him. And it’s not just his dragon form, either. He’s opportunistic. Always has been. And hey, isn’t everyone? Aren’t we all?

To a degree, yeah. We think of ourselves first.

But trusting Tomas comes with… consequences. It’s like making a deal with the devil. You know you can’t trust him, but you want to. So bad. Because the devil has what you need.

And in Tomas’s case, it’s friendship. It’s company.

But I know better.

My point is, it was me and Tarq. And I know he’s probably thinking, That fuckface Pell left me here in this tomb to rot. And he’ll have feelings about that if Pie and I can find a way to get him out. But I actually crave that fight. I want that argument. I just want something from my old, real life to come back.

I want him, in his natural satyr chimera form. Because he is like me.

I want to be with my own people.

The rooms upstairs are great. Without them, I’d be insane by now. But it’s fake. It’s all fake and it’s all been fake the entire time I’ve been in this curse.

Just give me something real, ya know? I don’t care if it’s an argument. In fact, an argument would be just fine with me. Arguments are overflowing with feelings. I want those emotions again.

I want to see my friend.

I also want to go down that that tomb and pace in front of it until Pie comes back, but I’m afraid that my presence there will block her exit.

But I do walk down the hill a little, just until I’m at that rise that allows me to see over the wall and the caretaker’s cottage, and find the lake. I sit down on my favorite crumbling tomb base and just breathe. Trying my best not to look over my shoulder in the direction of Tarq’s tomb to see if Pie is on her way back yet.

Time might be different in there, I don’t know anything about Tarq’s tomb.

Time is not different in my tomb, but that’s not saying much.

So I just gaze out at the lake.

When I first got here in the New World, I used to come to this spot and sit on this tomb every single morning and every single night. I wanted to go out to that lake so bad, but my caretaker at the time was a dick of a man called Ignacious. He never let me leave the sanctuary. If I tried to follow him out the gate, he’d just refuse to leave. So there were no lake trips and by the time he left and Michael took his place, I had forgotten that I even wanted to go out to the lake.

Tomas joined me once in this lake trip planning though. His imagination came up with a whole day out there. We were gonna go swimming, and have a picnic, which was a big deal back in those days. And we were gonna make a canoe and paddle around. Then just lie on the shore and soak up the sun. Tomas always did like the sun.

This makes me chuckle.

And this chuckle makes me realize that I’m… happy.

How did that happen?

Pie, I think. And that trip upstairs. Seeing her as a wood nymph chimera. God, she was pretty. And even though I was convinced up there that she was some kind of goddess, I realize now that I was just drunk on hallway doors.

Something moves out by the lake. A deer, maybe? It’s skulking through the woods on the north side of the water. But it’s too far away for me to really get a good look at it.

That would be nice though. To see a deer today.

A deer. Like Pie was.

I get up off the tomb, take one look over my shoulder just to make sure Pie didn’t come out of the tomb—she didn’t—and then start walking down the hill. I’m going to go up to Pie’s second-story window and look out at the lake until she comes back.

When I enter her cottage, the scent almost overwhelms me in the best way.

I like her. I like her a lot.

I’m glad she’s stuck here with me. I could live in this curse forever if she had to be stuck here with me.

I take the stairs two at a time and then cross the room, throw the curtains aside, lift the sash, and breathe in the lake air.

It’s got to be the same air as I breathe inside the sanctuary, but it feels fresher. Crisper. The November day is both cool and warm. The sun is out and it hits the lake at such an angle that it shimmers gold.

I am caught up in this shimmer when the figure steps out of the woods to the left of the lake.

I just… stare at him for a moment. Unable to speak. And then he’s walking towards the sanctuary.

Then he’s there. Just below me in the parking lot.

“Hello, Pell.”

Grant is young again, just like Pie described. So fucking mid-century perfect. Slicked-back hair. Khaki pants, a style from decades ago. Plain, white t-shirt with a button-down, not buttoned down, over it. Plaid, of course. In light blue and gray. His shoes are loafers, his face clean-shaven.

He is something out of the past but wholly here in the present too. He is my Grant. Not the old man he should be after fifty years inside this curse. Especially since he had fifty years of debt when he left.

I narrow my eyes at him and call down from the window, “What do you want?”

He shoots me one of those aw-shucks shrugs, his shoulders high, his smile broad, his hands doing a mea culpa. And there it is. He did this. It was a plan. He knew, probably from the very moment he walked into my curse, that he was somehow… immune.

“I knew she would come,” Grant says.

“Who? Pie?”

“Who else?”

I huff. “You couldn’t have known that. The bloodline—”

Grant chuckles, cutting me off. “The bloodline? How are you so stupid? After all these years, Pell? How?” His laughter is bigger now. Louder. “You’ve had two thousand years to figure it out, and still—here you are!” Now he guffaws. “I mean, dude! Get a fucking clue!”

This is where I would usually say, What are you talking about? Please explain. But I don’t need to. Because for some reason I cannot fathom, this is the moment when I realize I’m wearing a veil.

Not a literal one, of course. A magical one.

Someone—maybe Grant, maybe not—has put a spell on me the way he put a spell on the town.

I have been made to forget things. Or unsee things. Or maybe just not know things.

And this conversation with Grant—who is most definitely not a human boy called Grant—has broken the spell.

So I already know what he’s talking about when he starts explaining it.

“You’re a joke, Pell. Don’t you get it? Satyrs? Are you fucking kidding me? No one takes you seriously. You’re entertainment. We made you for parties. So we could parade you around with your giant, always-erect cocks to amuse guests. That’s all you are. Just a fucking joke. Do you really think I need your help to get that book?” He nods his head towards the cemetery. “Pie is getting it for me right now. And the best part of that? You sent her in there!”

“You.” I don’t say it, I growl it. “You did not make me.”

His face goes still. And suddenly, all of the sunlight in the sky is gone. There is nothing but darkness over the lake. His voice booms with anger. “I made her. She made you. Therefore, I made you.”

“I see the logic,” I say. Because he’s talking about Ostanes. “Saturn.” I snarl the old god’s name. “That’s who you are, right? And that’s fine. I give no fucks at all who made me.” I hike my thumb over my shoulder and his eyes once more dart to the cemetery. “And you might be in charge of shit outside, but this place? This place belongs to me.”

The sun is still shining very bright in the sanctuary sky.

He has no power here.

And now it’s my turn to laugh. “I didn’t figure it out. So maybe I am stupid. Maybe I am a joke. But you spent fifty fucking years in here and still you had to finally walk out with nothing.”

“Nothing?” He guffaws again. “I didn’t walk out with nothing. I took what was mine. And in my stead, I left Pie. She is mine too, didn’t ya know?”

I don’t answer him. Of course I didn’t know. There was a magic veil over my eyes. But I should’ve seen this coming. Especially after that romp in the hallway forests.

A wood nymph chimera.

My type. Hell, I practically spelled it out for her that day in the apothecary.

I’ve always been partial to the nymphs. Willowy girls with evil intentions lurking in the forest.

You like bad girls?

I do.

I’m not bad enough for you?

Not even close.

And there it is. Well, she’s bad enough now, I guess.

“Sorry for that,” Grant says. Saturn. Whoever the fuck he is. He shrugs again, another mea culpa. “If it makes you feel any better, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She really does think she’s some poor, crazy girl from Philly who conjures up imaginary friends and stumbles into monsters and curses because of one bad decision to party on Halloween.”

“Wait.” I think I stop breathing. “What?”

Grant sighs. Then frowns. “She’s not real. She thinks she’s real. She thinks she lived that life. She thinks she is that girl. But her life started the moment she woke up in the Grotto Our Lady of Lourdes at Mount Aloysius College. She’s a phantom, Pell. Just one of my magical ghosts sent in to do a job.” He nods his head in the direction of the cemetery. “And that’s exactly what she’s doing.”

My own words come back to me again.

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 his way out of those tombs.

He sent her here to trick me. To make me send her into Tarq’s tomb to get that book.

The book he needs.

The book that will redistribute power and change everything.

But not just the book.

He needs more than that book.

He needs Tarq.

Did I just create a hole in the paradox that could allow Tarq to escape?