“Who are you?”
“Thor,” he says.
“Oh, fuck off.”
“Not literally," he sighs. “It’s a common name where I’m from.”
“Oh. Okay. Sorry. How do you know my name?”
“We’re looking for you, my brothers and I. We’re aware of what happened with Bryn.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“I can explain a great deal to you, if you’ll come with me.”
“I am not going anywhere with anyone, especially anybody who calls Bryn a brother.”
He gives me a sympathetic smile. “I understand. Bryn is off-putting. Let me at least buy you something to eat.”
That I can agree to.
We happen to be standing about ten feet from an Italian restaurant. That’ll do. Anything will do right now. I have never been this hungry in my entire life. It is a gnawing in my belly, a constant ache that has left me tired and slow and vulnerable to this offer from the stranger named Thor. I am sure he has already messaged the others he spoke of to tell them he has found me. I need to eat, and then I need to run.
The bread basket is my first victim. It falls before my ravenous appetite and is followed by not one, but two main meals. One chicken. One beef. Both in my belly.
“You’ve not eaten in some time.”
"They don’t give you food for free.”
“I am sure a girl with your looks could find a man to feed her.”
I shoot him a nasty look. “If you think that is a compliment, it isn’t. I don’t want to depend on any man to survive.”
“So you’d rather starve instead?”
“I’d rather get out of here. I want to go home.”
“Back to America?”
“They’d never let me leave. I think there’s still charges pending or something. I don't know, now that Jonah’s…” I choke up. It doesn’t feel real. And it especially doesn't feel right. Jonah is the most capable person I know. He’s like a snake or a cockroach. I can't imagine him running away and dying here, though I guess I am not that far off from doing just that myself.
We both underestimated the world. It’s harsher, and blander and crueler than he or I gave it credit for. I guess we were sheltered. And now one of us is forever gone and I’m being picked up by random Norsemen named Thor. Except he's not so random, is he? He’s an associate of Bryn’s, part of his twisted dark world, no doubt.
“Who are you? How do you know me?”
“I knew your mother. We all did.”
“Who is we?”
"The Brotherhood.”
“So you're like monks and priests. Fucked-up people posing as religious whatever.”
“That’s a surprisingly accurate way of describing it.”
He has a good sense of humor. I have no humor left. I am so deeply miserable, so lost in grief and the world around me I can’t even manage a hint of a smile.
“Why are you all so obsessed with me? Or is it just Bryn who wanted to fuck my mom and had to settle for me?”
Thick blond brows head toward a thick blond forelock. “You have a mouth on you, don’t you.”
“I have nothing left to lose.”
“Then I won’t waste your time with platitudes. I’m going to tell you what Bryn should have told you from the outset.”
“And that is?”
“You are of the bloodline of the angels.”
“Bullshit.”
Thor ignores me and keeps talking.
“In the beginning, it was common practice for angels to mate with humans. Not so much in the past few hundred years. Not since humans discovered mass media and microwaves and began to reject the divine in droves. Modern man has no use for the angelic realm, but before penicillin and Uber and all the rest of it, divine intervention was the only salvation one could hope for. Angelic matings were not entirely rare. Your mother was of the bloodline, and you were conceived of an angel too.”
I sigh. It all sounds properly mad. I’m thinking some kind of shared delusion or mass psychosis. Except for the fact that I glow when I’m furious, and I can move through space like it isn’t there. I always knew there was something different about me. Something that set me apart. I had to hide my true self for so many years I never really made friends. I couldn’t risk them seeing me.
Jonah never had that problem. He was always simple and mundane. I used to envy him. Now I wish I could swap places with him. He would deal with all of this so much better than me. I feel weak and pathetic, and I know that the man buying me two lunches is just as keen a predator as Bryn was, he just hides it better for now.
“You’re telling me an angel fucked my mom?”
“An angel came to her and blessed her with you.”
“With his cock.”
Thor’s lips twist. “Probably. Yes.”
“Why?”
“God knows. I mean that quite literally. Unfortunately, having faith also means living with logical inconsistencies and being uncertain of reasons. For whatever reason, your existence was divinely ordained. You are no accident.”