Owner (Blood Brotherhood 2)

“One of mine? She might have been, once. Now of course, she’s just another person in a big wide world of oh-so-many people. Being special is no longer special.”

“You don't understand, Skathi. She's not merely a little wild. She’s absolutely out of control.”

“Then control her, Thor. By any means necessary. You were going to do that anyway. That’s why you brought her here. Why do you pretend to hesitate? Are you looking for my blessing?”

“I’m looking for your help, for an explanation…”

“But you already know the answer, child,” she says patiently.

We have circled the house and returned to the front door.

“It is time to go in,” Skathi says. “Time to deal with the one you love.”

“THOR!”

I hear Anita screaming my name, almost as if on cue. Things happen with a strange sense of timeliness here. The fates are strong. Everything happens for a reason and a meaning.

Her cry of fear and perhaps pain is enough to send me flying up the stairs, three at a time. I burst into the room and find her sitting up in bed, soaked in sweat. She must have fallen asleep, but that sleep was clearly not restful.

"What's wrong?”

“I dreamed about…” She takes a deep breath. "The hammer, and what I did with it to that man.”

“I’m sorry.” I wrap her in my arms and snug her close. This is the first time I have witnessed anything like a conscience in this woman, and it is very reassuring to see. I was beginning to think she was a stone-cold psychopath incapable of regret and therefore incapable of other softer feelings, like love. This breakdown, painful as it may be, shows that she has potential.

“I cracked him open like a fucking Kinder Egg," she sobs. “And then he was just… everywhere. All over me. And he was…” She shudders in my arms. “Warm. That's what body temperature means, you know?”

“I do know.”

“And it was on me. Sticking to me. In my hair…”

“I know. I washed it from you.”

“You did.” She looks up at me. "You were there for me. In the grossest way possible. I mean, truly disgusting.”

“Yes," I agree. I cannot hold back from smiling. There is ever a sense of humor about her, a lightness even in the darkest moments. I used to think that lightness was part of her pathology, a sign she didn’t feel the darkness. But that’s not true. It is her way of desperately trying to claw away from it.

“I want to see all the things you consider disgusting,” I tell her. “Not just the brains of your fallen enemies, but the other things you hide away inside. The feelings. The fears.”

She lets out a groan that might almost be a growl. “It’s easier not to.”

“I know, and yet, I’m going to make you. Because if you don’t, you’re going to be as much of a monster in your waking hours and tormented by them in your dreams.”

Anita

All this talk of sharing feelings and truths, and he’s still a complete mystery. Seems hypocritical, and I intend to point that out.

“You still haven’t told me what happened to you. What made you what you are, what gave you the hammer, what…”

It’s his turn to screw his face up. He doesn’t want to relive whatever it is. I feel bad for making him, but he is the one insisting on talking, and he is the bigger mystery.

“If I tell you, it is something you must keep between us, and it is something you must not question. I have told nobody what happened to me all those years ago, because it is stranger than anybody will believe.”

“I'll believe,” I promise.

“I died," he says. “My family and I all died. It was an accident. We were skating on an icy pond near the home, one that had been skated on for generations. And one day, for a reason we’ll never know, the ice cracked. Every single one of us went in…” He pauses and takes a ragged breath, like a boy trying to suck air into his lungs. “My father was not a strong man, not a well man. He wasn’t able to save us, and the waterlogged winter clothes dragged us all down. Me, my sisters, my mother, my father. All the way down to the bottom. I was seven years old, and I remember it. The cracking of the ice, the water so cold I almost didn’t feel it. When something is that cold, you become part of it faster than you know.”

"You seem very alive,” I point out.

“Skathi took me from the ice. Unlike me, she is a goddess. Literally. She lifted me from the water and she placed a shard of the hammer inside me. Yes, it is a relic of great power. You already knew that. It has the power of death, but it also contains the power of life. It animated me. It made me alive again. And it gave me power. Made me a tool of the god. So the hammer is mine, insomuch as it is me. As in, I am it. You didn’t steal my hammer. You stole a part of me.”