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

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - PELL

“You’re lying.” I say this to Grant with conviction because I don’t believe him. “You’ve been lying since the day you arrived here.”

Grant—Saturn—whoever the fuck he is—smiles up at me. “You never had a chance, Pell. You’ve been here for two thousand years. This isn’t a curse. It’s fate. You’re never getting out. Pie works for me, Tarq works for me—”

I turn away. I will not listen to his lies. I will not let him poison my mind with this shit. He told Pie a whole bunch of things in town too. And that was bullshit.

She’s not his. She’s real. We did the phone call. She talked to her friend. We have already proved this.

The moment I realize that, I feel… not defeated. Not better, either. There is still a bunch of shit happening that I don’t understand. And I don’t really know which part of what he’s saying is true or false, but that doesn’t matter. He can’t be trusted. He’s lying about something. And if he needs to lie, that means he has a weakness.

I will find that weakness and I will destroy this god, once and for all.

I go outside and start hoofing it up the hill.

Grant calls after me from the other side of the gate. “You know I’m right! You know there’s something wrong with her!”

But he can’t get in. When he walked out, he forfeited his right to enter Saint Mark’s Sanctuary.

I’m almost at the top of the hill when Pie steps out from between some tombs. I am so stunned by her appearance, I stop in my tracks.

Behind me, Grant cackles. “See!” he yells. “See! Look at her! Look at her! She is a creature of magic. She is a creature of me!”

Pie is crying. Shaking her head, and pointing to her feet, and trying to cover herself with crossed arms, because she’s naked.

Well, she’s got fur, so not really. But she feels naked. I don’t know what just happened inside that tomb, but it doesn’t matter. I walk up to her, put my arms around her and hold her close. “It’s OK,” I murmur. “It’s going to be OK.”

She lets out a long breath. “I don’t understand what’s happening.” Then she pulls back. Grant is still screaming at us from outside the walls, so she’s momentarily distracted by this. “Why’s he here?”

“It doesn’t matter. He can’t get in.”

Pie looks up at me. She doesn’t have a book, but she is holding a page that looks like it came out of the book I’m looking for. “Things are getting weird, Pell.” She looks over her shoulder in the direction of Tarq’s tomb, then back at me. “That was not what I expected.”

“Did you get the spell?”

She holds up the page. “He said this is it. And he said to tell you hi. But…” She waves a hand in the air. “What do we do now?” She looks down at herself. “I need a shirt, I guess. But I don’t want to go down to the cottage. So. Whatever.”

I arrange her hair so she’s properly covered. “I promise not to look.”

This makes her smile, at least. “It’s not like you haven’t seen it all before.” She pauses to sigh heavily. “Well. Should we go do this spell and get rid of that jerk?” She nods her head in the direction of still-screaming Grant. “I just want the outside world to go away for a little bit. I need to think.”

I want the outside world to go away as well. Because I’m starting to worry that Grant might not have been lying about all of it.

Pie made the phone call. That’s our proof she had a real life outside of Saint Mark’s.

But something else is going on here too. Obviously. Since she has horns and hooves right now.

I take her hand. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

We go inside and up to the apothecary. Pie sets the page down on the alchemy bench and then smiles. “Holy shit. My flannel.” She walks over to a table on the far side of the room and picks up the flannel she was wearing the day she arrived. She holds it up. “It’s a little bit bloody and it’s ripped down the back. Remember? I fell out of your freeze and hit my nose.”

“Oh. Shit. I feel terrible about that.”

“Don’t. That was like… lifetimes ago. Bygones.” She slips the flannel on with a sigh. And even though she’s still a wood nymph chimera, and nothing about this day is normal, I can tell this one piece of clothing from her past is enough to ground her for now. “OK. Let’s do this shit.”

I shouldn’t say anything. I should just let it go. But I can’t help myself. “You’re handling this whole thing”—I move a finger up and down in her direction to indicate her body—“very calmly.”

Pie shrugs. “What can I do about it?” Then she looks down at herself. “I mean, I hope I don’t stay like this forever, but I’m not going to worry about it.” Her eyes meet mine and they are suddenly serious. “Now we’re the same.” She grins at me. “Now I’m your dream girl.”

“I actually… love that. But.” I hold up a finger. “If there’s a way to get you back to your natural body, I’ll do everything I can to make it happen. If that’s what you want.”

“We’ll see.” She sighs. “One thing at a time.”

“Agreed. Let’s take a look at that spell.”

“It’s this side,” Pie says.

I take the page from her and start reading, then frown. “What the fuck?”

“What’s wrong?”

“This can’t be it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s the same spell we just did to get you in the tomb.” I turn it over, checking the back of the page, just in case Pie got them mixed up. But the back says something about wings. So that’s not it.

“What’s wrong?” Pie comes over to me and her new wood nymph scent comes with her. It’s intoxicating. But not in a magical, bad way. A good way. She smells like the forest. She smells like home. She takes the page and looks at it. “Hmm. You’re right. Only two ingredients. Bloodhorn and a dragon scale.”

“Hey, what happened to your dragon scale?”

“It disappeared when I went through the tomb door. We have a lot to unpack about that trip, but let’s just do this spell first.”

“What’s there to do? It’s the same ingredients. How can it banish something? There aren’t even magic words. It’s a fucking amulet.”

“Stupid amulets. That’s what got us into this trouble, ya know.”

I walk over to the bench I was working at earlier. There’s a vial of bloodhorn and the two remaining scales. I paint some oil on the scale with a brush, then hold it up and shrug. “There. It’s done.”

“How would we even know if it works?”

“I’ll go look for Grant and see, but I’m not feeling hopeful.”

She shoots me a look that says she’s not either.

I carry the anointed dragon scale out to the great hall with me and I’m just about to turn towards the stairs when I glance at the front windows and see Grant on the other side of the gate. “Well.” I huff. “Obviously, it doesn’t work. He’s right fucking there.”

Pie comes out and joins me. And we both watch as Grant paces back and forth. Pie tsks her tongue. “Yeah, this spell sucks. I don’t think we did it right.”

“What are we missing? I mean, it’s two ingredients. Bloodhorn and a dragon scale.”

“Maybe it’s not the oil? Maybe you need the actual flower?”

“No. That’s not how it works. The flower is OK, but the oil is the essence. It’s way more powerful.”

“But it’s not working, so…?”

I’m just about to open my mouth to agree when flashing lights appear outside.

“Oh. Shit,” Pie says. “I really hope you have another idea about this spell, because we’re about to be fucked. Russ Roth is here and he’s going to let Grant in.”

She’s right. We are fucked. A whole scenario plays out in my head whereby Russ lets Grant in, the entire world finds out about this place, and then Saint Mark’s stops being a sanctuary and starts being a lab where we are kept in cages like rats while some opportunistic corporate asshole sells tickets to our upstairs hallways like this place is an amusement park.

Pie must see the same thing in her mind, because she turns to me, clutching my arm, her eyes filled with panic. Maybe before today she wouldn’t have fared so bad if we were ever discovered. Her magic, up until now, has been invisible. But there is no way to hide… this. She is not an insane human with a personal hallucination. She is not even an eros from the caretaker bloodline. She is a wood nymph chimera.

“What do we do, Pell? Should we go upstairs and hide in the hallways?”

I consider it, but reject it. “No. That won’t work. They’ll just come in after us eventually and it’s more likely than not they’ll find us. Just like Tomas found us. And anyway, the hallways will just spit us out at some point. These people must not enter Saint Mark’s. They must not come in here.”

“So what do we do?”

“We’re missing something. This bloodhorn, I think. Because dragon scales, they’re not complicated. We have dragon scales. But bloodhorn—”

I stop.

“Bloodhorn what?” Pie is shaking me.

I point to my horns. “This is a bloodhorn too.”

“What?”

“My horns. Remember when you were massaging them and they got hot? That’s the blood in them.”

“We have to cut off our horns?” She touches hers gingerly. Like this is akin to shaving her head bald.

“Not yours. Mine.” And suddenly, I know this is the way forward. This is what I was missing. This is the actual fucking secret to everything. And all this time, it was inside me. I have been carrying the magic ingredient in my fucking horns! “I need a saw and I need it right now!”

Pie shoots me another frantic look. “Where do you keep the saws? I don’t know where we keep saws! Do we even have saws? Why would we need a saw?”

“Firewood! There’s an ax outside the kitchen for the firewood.”

“Ax?”

I grab her hand and start pulling her towards the kitchen. We weave through the hallways and as we pass the one that leads down into the dungeon, we must disturb Tomas the dragon, because there is a deep moaning beneath our feet.

We ignore that. There is no time to worry about Tomas right now. He’s obviously not in any position to help us.

I drag Pie outside the kitchen to the pile of firewood. Grant was into firewood. He was always out here chopping wood for fires. Not to cook, obviously, since all his food was poison magic. That still pisses me off. But I don’t have time to care what he was doing with the firewood. I just need the ax and I’m glad it’s here.

I grab it and hold it out for Pie.

She looks appalled. “Why are you handing it to me?”

“I can’t chop off my own horns, Pie. You need to—”

“Nope. No way. I’m not chopping off your horns with a fucking ax! That’s crazy! I’ve never even held an ax! I will chop off your head!”

“I’m immortal, who cares? As long as you get the horn.”

“First of all, I care! And second, I can’t do this spell! You have to do it!”

“I highly doubt that’s how it works. I’m the ingredient, Pie. You’re the alchemist.”

“But I’m not! I’m not magical at all.” She has to realize this is stupid. She’s standing in front of me as a wood nymph chimera. And something is squirming inside her flannel pocket.

“Pia!” Pie reaches down and plucks out a tiny sparrow. “Oh, I am so pissed at you! Where have you been? In my pocket this whole time?” Pie pouts her lips as the bird chirps.

And I’m not gonna lie, those pouty lips are very fucking cute, but we don’t have time for this. I grab the bird, stuff it back inside her pocket, and shove the ax at Pie. “Do it.”

“No! I can’t—”

“Helloooooo!”

Pie and I hold our breath as we turn and look in the direction of the open kitchen door.

They’re inside.

“Helloooooooo!” Grant calls again.

“Pie?” That’s the sheriff. “Pie, are you here?”

I take Pie’s hand, wrap it around the ax handle, and point to her. “Chop it off right now. And then dribble the blood on the scale and tell them to get the fuck out of our home! Do you hear me?”

“Helloooooo!” Grant calls again.

Pie looks absolutely shell-shocked. But she swallows hard, and nods. “OK.”

I kneel down in front of the chopping block, place my face against the scarred wood so my left horn is in the center, and then say, “Do it. Now!”

Pie grunts as she lifts the ax. And then, the next thing I know, it falls. And for a sick moment I think that it’s not enough. The force won’t be enough.

And then my mind goes black.