Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) by Odette C. Bell Read Free Book Online Page B

the
silence spreading over the table like a pool of toxic waste. It was
nasty and deadly.
    This, this was why I didn't go to Ambrosia.
I was the least popular goddess around these parts, and having
verbal cat-fights with other divinities was not how I liked to live
my life.
    Also, there was the niggling fact that
while I was in my office working officially for the Integration
Office no one could touch me – or no one who didn't want to end up
in Divinity Prison. Out here – in the real world – I was the same
as the rest of them. While it was frowned upon to fight other gods,
it wasn't illegal. Gods like Thor got away with it all the
time.
    Thor loosened his arms from around his two
twittering golden goddesses and slowly ran the back of his hand
over his mouth. It wasn't to wipe anything off – there was nothing
there. For someone who ate as graphically and enthusiastically as a
pig at a trough, the guy always remained clean.
    He stood up.
    Damn, he stood up.
    He towered over me. He towered over
everyone. He also had this unique ability to cast people into
shadow even if they were standing directly by a light source. No
matter who you were, Thor always blocked you out.
    “ You hate your own kind,” he
said in a low, menacing tone.
    The sentiment rang true with the rest of
the guests at the table, with several gods nodding so vehemently
their helmets came loose and jolted down their faces.
    The other tables around Thor were also
starting to grow quiet as various divinities turned around for the
potential fight. Not that there would be a fight. Thor would bang
me on the noggin with Mjollnir, and I'd wake up in god hospital in
a week or so.
    “ She rejected my application
for a working visa last week,” one of the gods said from further
down the table.
    He was right: I'd rejected it because he was
the god of famine and he wanted to tour Africa for several
months.
    “ She stopped me from
visiting Egypt – my homeland,” one goddess mentioned emphatically
as her black cropped hair brushed against her shoulders.
    Too true. She liked to make her followers
sacrifice cats, and as a proud cat owner, I frowned on that. Plus,
it always upset the cat goddess.
    Thor spread his arms, his muscles clear and
present as they blocked out more of the light. “Look around you,
Details – do you have friends here?”
    I wanted to point out to him he was a
golden-bearded idiot for thinking the assembled gods were his
friends. They were the divine equivalent of groupies. They sat at
his table and laughed at his jokes because he was one of the most
powerful gods on Earth. If Thor fell from grace, they wouldn't
offer him a helping hand. They'd find some other table to sit
at.
    I couldn't point that out considering I
didn't have any friends to call to my own side.
    “ You consistently tread on and
get in the way of your own kind,” Thor rumbled, sounding like a
clap of thunder. The glasses on the table shook and trembled at the
sound of his voice. “You are a blight.”
    Before he could finish his sentence with
something suitably Thor-like, like “And I will rid you from the
Earth with the power of my magical hammer,” or “And I will strike
you down with a strike of lightning,” something inserted itself
between Thor and me.
    Tolus. Tolus stared right up at Thor – at
the giant menacing Nordic god who looked as though he was preparing
for a righteous and violent fight. Tolus’ eyes didn't stop
watering, nor did his frame look anything less than feeble.
Standing right before Thor brought home how tiny, weak, and humble
Tolus was. The contrast was stark, the difference as plain as black
on white.
    Yet the look Tolus gave Thor made up for
the difference in size. It was that determination I'd seen before.
The one that told you that no matter what, he'd find a way to
survive and a way to help others survive, too.
    The look had an effect on Thor, though the
golden-bearded brute was incapable of noting the exact
watery-detail of Tolus’