Page 6

CHAPTER 6

A voiding humans became harder the farther into town Pan walked, or more correctly, limped. He’d finished the sandwich and fruit and broken into a small building filled with tools. A workshop of some kind, he assumed. It smelled terrible but had provided a place to hide and rest during the day.

When darkness fell, he snuck out and continued the trek to fuck knows where. Once again, he was hungry and bleeding, and his mood had gone from frustration to annoyance to wanting to burst the eyeballs of the next person who looked at him without dropping to their knees in worship.

Of course, he couldn’t pop eyeballs with magic, so he’d have to use his fingers, which would be rather too much effort. Humans should show a little more gratitude that he hadn’t left a trail of dead bodies behind him. If he’d had magic, he would’ve. If he had magic, he wouldn’t be cold and hungry and filled with a thirst for murder he’d never experienced, but he understood why some gods indulged.

And he still had no idea where he needed to be, only that he wasn’t there yet and that Wales was a very large area to cover on foot.

Aside from seeing one dragon fly overhead, he hadn’t seen another Tarikian. Everywhere he looked, there were blessings and curses at the same time. He wanted his people as much as he wanted to avoid them until he’d reconnected to magic. Explaining his current situation to Tarikians, who’d be expecting things from him, was more than he could stomach.

He needed shelter.

And clothes.

He couldn’t continue walking around wearing nothing but a fur coat. That alone attracted stares, and if humans stared too closely, they’d see his horns, which might lead to problems. If he had magic, he’d hide the horns. He’d also give himself hooves so he didn’t have sore feet.

He ranted under his breath as he trudged along the broken path and jumped over cracks. In some areas, there were no lights. He walked past crumbled buildings, where humans worked to rescue survivors.

While they weren’t praying to him, he had enough of a heart that he’d have offered assistance if he had magic. Was there any magic to be found in this cursed world?

Now he remembered why it had been so long since his last visit.

It was always fun to be worshipped, to be the center of attention, and bask in the magic, but he had so few followers in this world, there had been precious little to enjoy last time…aside from the orgies and drugs.

Paris had been an empty glass liquor bottle sparkling in the sunlight. A memory of last night’s excesses, so delicate that any sudden movement might cause it to shatter into one thousand deadly pieces. There’d always been a new adventure around every corner.

Why couldn’t this be Paris?

He blamed the selkies for that. If he hadn’t been at their party, he’d have been somewhere else. So he would’ve arrived somewhere else. It was definitely their fault.

When he found a Strega, he needed to find out what the fuck happened. While the weirdness had been discussed, no one knew what was causing it or why it was happening. Besides, human things arriving in Tariko had been more of a curiosity than a concern.

As much as he wanted to avoid his people until he had magic, he was also lonely and lost. He didn’t like either sensation. He didn’t like being anything less than godly.

That’s what he was. Or what he should be.

Being disconnected from magic was unsettling. Someone, someone powerful, had broken magic, and something horrible had happened. If he didn’t know, how was a Strega supposed to know? Unless there was something now written in the fate lines that explained this disaster and how to fix it, but he doubted it. The fate lines were never that helpful.

It wasn’t as though humans had never come to Tariko; humans had arrived and settled centuries before Tarikians had stopped visiting the human world.

Why had they stopped visiting?

Had it been the lack of magic?

He scowled, trying to remember what the human world had been like centuries ago when they’d still prayed to him and others. At some point, humans insisted on hunting dragons, and then they’d turned their attention to others. Anyone who wasn’t human was deemed a demon.

He touched his hair. Fingers tracing over the curve of his horn. It was a good thing he didn’t have hooves.

The banished one had turned the world against them. So they’d let him have it.

In hindsight, they should’ve done something about him, but if they started voting to kill a god, it was the opening of a door where any one of them may find themselves being snuffed out because someone didn’t like their methods.

Now he was stuck in a world where some humans might try to kill him, and others might feed him a cheese sandwich. How did he tell the two apart?

It also meant that the dragons were in danger, along with all beings who didn’t appear human. And what exactly was he going to do about it?

Flap his stolen coat at armed humans?

He should’ve stayed at the beach, even though every bone in his body had urged him to leave. While he didn’t know where he was going, he wandered wherever his feet took him…did that mean there was a trace amount of magic calling him?

It was the only logical answer.

In that breath, he didn’t want to go any further. He was tired.

Not bored, he knew what boredom felt like. But his bones were tired, like he wanted to sit down and not move until he’d feasted and rested. True sleep, not the kind where he jerked awake to every sound or passed out from too much alcohol and sex. Or the kind of deep sleep some gods took, a few decades when they needed a break from everything.

Actual rest, or he’d fall over.

Ugh, this body was completely mortal and incapable of doing anything. He needed to get to wherever he needed to be, and he couldn’t do that while hungry and hurting.

He stopped, watching some black ropes spark on the road.

Never had he been so disgusted in his entire life. This body was dictating his life. No. That was ridiculous. He refused to be beholden to a bag of flesh. He was a god.

He created his own appearance. He controlled his body.

Not the other way round.

Yet, he had no control over his appearance at all, and this was not an appearance that he took.

He lifted his gaze from the sparks to take in the much shorter and smaller buildings. He’d been so busy avoiding people he hadn’t paid much attention to where he was going. Not that it mattered, as he didn’t know where he was, only that he needed to keep moving.

These were not restaurants or other shops. They were houses.

On Tariko, people often left boots by the door and clothes on the line. Perhaps the same was true here.

From within some houses, he heard low voices. Others were silent, the occupants asleep or away. There were no laundry lines out the front of the houses, but he saw one with a neat row of colorful boots lined up by the door. He darted up the path.

Five sets of boots in various sizes. It was a pity the red-spotted ones were far too small as they were very pretty. Keeping low, he measured his foot against the boots and pulled on the green pair that fitted. Out of habit, he offered the household a blessing for serving their god.

He wasn’t their god.

And there was no magic to bestow. He was just a thief.

Wearing his stolen boots, he crept away.

Even though his feet ached, walking became more pleasant, and he felt blessed. For the first time since waking, he smiled. Magic delivered him boots to make his journey easier. He couldn’t feel it, but there must be magic.

And he needed to believe it was calling to him. That magic would grace him with clothes and the other things he needed to get to where he needed to be and do whatever he was needed to do. He was, after all, a servant of magic who shared it with those who needed it most.

Today that was him.

With a renewed sense of confidence that everything would be fine because he was a god, he kept walking. As he did, he noticed the way cars had been abandoned, unable to be driven on the cracked roads. Some of those cars had open doors.

Every time he saw one, he stopped to look inside.

The first three were fun, and he found several packets of nuts and dried fruit in one. The next ten were tedious…but the last one was parked in front of a house that had a line covered in clothes hanging under shelter. He crept up to the line to assess the clothing.

None of the items seemed familiar.

But he’d already noticed the changes in fashion.

No one on this world got around in tunics or togas anymore—they hadn’t been in fashion the last time either—nor had he seen a single dapper suit. He touched the clothes on the line, thick pants made of rough material, stretchy pants made of thin material. All the clothes were damp, but he took the thin, stretchy ones, hoping they’d dry faster, along with something that appeared to be a tunic that stopped at the waist—far shorter than even elves dared to wear them.

Elves preferred tight pants and tunics that showed off the entire length of their leg. He hoped there were some elves here and not only because they were good at fighting and how to hold a wedding feast.

As well as how to dress.

Not wanting to be caught with the stolen clothes, he moved on before pausing in the shadows to pull on the tight black pants, which hugged his skin in a clammy embrace, and the equally clinging tunic. It was almost a relief to pull the coat back on.

At some point, he needed to discard the coat, which seemed like a terrible waste. Wars had been fought for selkie coats and selkie brides.

He didn’t want to be at the center of a war. That wasn’t his kind of thing. Though a few gods loved a battle and got a real boost out of fighting. Bridget visited this world more than him for that exact reason. There was always a good conflict, and even though it wasn’t in her name, it didn’t really matter. She claimed to be checking up on the banished one and trying to unravel his work.

Though it had been a while since anyone heard from her…

He added the banished one to his list of problems. If the banished one had taken out Bridget, Pan was fucked. Had the banished one found a way to take revenge on all the gods who’d forbidden him from returning home?

That was extremely disconcerting, and there was no one to warn.

There were smarter and more powerful gods than him, and they’d reach the same conclusion. What if they didn’t? What if they were all dead?

No, he refused to consider that he was the only god here. The man on the news called this a global event. That meant his people were scattered everywhere. And that the gods were everywhere.

The beating of wings made him look up as a dragon flew low over the road as if hunting.

Pan whistled, catching its attention.

“Dragon, we have met before,” he called in Dragon. He wasn’t sure that was entirely true, but it was a good guess.

For a moment, he thought the dragon might ignore him—that would be a new low. But today had been a day of finding new depths, and he doubted he’d reached the bottom yet.

But the dragon circled back and landed on the road. Its golden eyes narrowed as its nostrils flapped. “What are you?”

“I am Pan, the sun eyes.”

The dragon took a step closer. “You smell of the wet furred ones. You do not smell of magic.”

He tried not to wince at the dragon noticing his lack of magic. “I wear the coat of a wet furred one. Tell me, where is the city you protected?”

“In pieces.”

As in destroyed or scattered? Or was the dragon being dramatic? “The palace. Does it stand?”

“It’s broken and screaming. My mate is missing.”

That didn’t sound good, though he wasn’t sure what the dragon meant by the palace screaming, but it was a landmark, and there’d be a Strega and a lord and maybe a temple to him. “Take me to the palace and I will arrange for the guards to help find your mate.”

How long before the dragon started burning shit to find his mate?

The dragon pulled a face as though swallowing a rancid fish. “You have no magic.”

Pan lowered his voice and pushed power into his words, though there wasn’t much given his lack of magic and his current state of exhaustion. “That is why I need to reach the palace. Do not defy me, Dragon.” He took a step closer. “This is not our world, but I have walked this ground before.”

The dragon’s claws scraped over the road. “Everything smells strange.”

Pan nodded. “I agree. Let’s go to the palace and find the Strega.”

A brilliant plan. Once again, he thanked magic and his own ability to sense it, even if it was so faint that he couldn’t use it and the dragon couldn’t smell it. That made more sense than there being no magic at all.

That was plainly ridiculous.

A world without magic…that would be chaos.