Moving House

We had made one more raid like the one in Connecticut, this time against a gathering in southern California, where apparently the Neotitans had put up an independent headquarter, as a try to divert us gods in the US of A. This grouping called themselves 'The Church of Power' and were aiming at becoming high profiled by recruiting Hollywood stars. Their front had been an outlandish blend between Jedis, Jews, Wiccas and Gnostic Christians and they had been rambling about having in their possession a lot of presumingly lost documents regarding Jesus Christ's early life and early Christianity. Documents, which were said to have been lost with the arson of the Library of Alexandria. But which, according to their gospel, had really been retrieved and hidden by the Vatican and later 'liberated' from the Catholic Centre by 'seekers of the real truth'. The usual new age mumbo-jumbo in other words. All of it made up as a front for another Neotitanic brain washing centre.

We didn't have Nike with us in this raid, since she had to go back to Athena in South Africa. Instead we used Gyges and two gods called Polemos and Kyknos who was yet another couple of sons of Ares. The latter turned out to be the one I had thought was called Kick Nose on the night of my apotheosis. That expression had evoked a lot of laughter and Kyknos had received a new nickname, something he actually didn't seem to mind. With us was also a goddess called Palaistra, a tomboy-looking redhead athlete who was a daughter of Hermes and used to be the protector of martial art competitions during more peaceful times. Now she looked like something out of a Chinese historical action movie.

This time I had managed to perform better in the sense that I didn't get injured or misjudged situations badly. I hadn't retrieved any Powerstones either, I had 'just' struck down plenty of Neotitans and hoarded some Adamantine. In a way this task had been harder because these Titans lived more scattered and in a neighborhood with a lot of mortals around. As a consequence the battle had become more like a plot of assassin attacks rather than a clean-cut invasion. We had gone in against our enemies two by two and I had been teamed up with Bia of all people, something both she and I had more or less grumbled about. I was still not over her snidy comments about my injury on the way back from Connecticut. Still Ares had his reasons, perhaps he wanted to teach us to cooperate and although these raids might be imperative, they weren't that hazardous. Bia and I had broken into three posh villas and killed their Neotitan inhibitors. The mortals who was around were simply put to sleep using magic and then Bia had inflicted some hypnosis upon them making them forget that they had even been in the very house the same night. Finally all mortal DNA had been removed. Everything to avoid tying any innocent people to those killings. Then of course no sane person would utter a single word about being in the place, not when it became a homicide scene.

Okay, so the LAPD would have some thirty unexplainable murders on their hands, all performed the same night and all against high profiled leaders of an up and coming cult. I almost felt sorry for the police officers, they would never be able to solve these crimes. Still I couldn't even begin to understand how the minds of those Neotitan beings worked. They planned to mentally enslave millions of human mortals, starting at various vital points in society like entertainment industries and university areas (that had been the aim for the Connecticut branch, the universities Harvard and MIT in the neighbour state Massachusetts) and then probably striking against political centres like Washington DC and the United Nations in New York. The plans were apparently similar on other continents. Everything to get back at some gods who had overthrown a genetic ancestor. An ancestor who had been nothing but an outright tyrant. So many innocent were planned to become used and abused just so the Titans could exact their revenge.

With that in mind it had been easier to follow Bia on our three breaks and enters. Bia and I had started by a well-guarded two-storey villa at the outskirts of a fancy gated society. The electric alarms were no big deal, the right kind of magic could quench electric current. The magic alarms were a bit harder, but even for those we had ways. Special quick incantations rendered them harmless for a period of half an hour. We didn't think we would need longer than that. After rendering the alarms inoperative we turned us selves invisible and scaled the high walls.

"Dogs!" I whispered as soon as I felt the canine presences down in the garden.
"No prob'," Bia responded and for the first time I saw her using that 'lullaby stunt' of hers. As we jumped down in the grass I spotted one snoring form under a tree and another one a bit away. Dark, huge Alsatians, almost wolf-sized. Even if they weren't able to harm us they would sure have wakened up half the neighborhood had they not been put out of action.

Quickly we skipped over the sprinkler-wet grass, rounded a pool where green light reflected against marble pillars, creating an illusion of ancient Greece that made Bia muttering something under her breath. Then it was my time to prove my value. With a tiny skeleton key I picked up the lock to the terrace door in less than 30 seconds. Much smoother than a magic break-in, and less notable as well.
"Thought you was a cop in your 'former life'. Not a burglar," Bia commented.
"Know thy enemy." I returned and tried to keep the snide out of my voice.

Then we were inside and following the patterns of living beings we ascended a flight of stairs and entered a bedroom with a sleeping form. The first kill had been easy enough but the next one had been warned in spite of all our precautions and was attacking us with the speed of light, wielding a rapier of Adamantine as well as a dagger of the same material. Bia dived in for a kill and had to duck for the swinging blade and I didn't hesitate, in spite of my bad angle I intercepted the Titan and had her down in a second, severing the hand that held the blade and following up with a karate kick against the Titan's unguarded neck. Our enemy slumped in an instance and Bia was rolling out almost form under her and then she became attacked by a newly arrived Titan.

"Behind you!" she yelled at me and I spun around and managed to rise my blade just in time to block the stroke from the third Titan, the first male one.
"Two broads" he laughed as he attacked me with brute force, "is that the best Ares can do these days? Then he won't last long. I'm almost disappointed in the old Greek."
"You a salesman?" I grunted as the thug pushed me backwards.
"Huh?"
"You blab as much as one!"

The next second I stumbled over the fallen Titan who was trying to rise and grow out her hand at the same time. As I tripped and fell I felt fear and despair flush out adrenaline in my veins again, and as a stroke of luck I managed to find that cut off hand with the Adamantine dagger. When I rolled aside from the male's fierce stroke of his sword I grabbed the dagger and slashed it into the side of him, trying to twist it around and make as much harm as possible. When the 'salesman' cried out loud I was on my feet and used a kick in his butt to tumble him over his female companion. The next second Bia was beheading him and then she finished the one handed Titan as well. Her own adversary was already lying death on the floor to my right.

"Good work," Bia said. Then it came: "But lass, you need to look around a bit more to see what's going on by your flanks. Never let one enemy take your whole attention unless you are dead sure that's the only one."
"Name's Aidra, Bia! Write it down!"
"Hey, no need to be snidy. We've all.."

"Hold it!" a voice cut us off. A mortal with a gun. It seemed almost laughable. Bia put him asleep and caught him as he was falling and I picked up the Titan's Adamantine. Then Bia searched the brain of the mortal and apparently she found an address that was 'home' for the young man, because in the next moment he was gone, transported away somewhere.
"Okay – Aidra – we're done here. Let's move on!"

I made a face, but I followed Bia, thinking that next time I was definitely going to tell Ares that I really desired another companion than this superior complex ridden chick. I sure didn't give a damn that she was some 4000 plus years old and had been in more fights than there were Catholics in the Vatican, I definitely didn't need to listen to her putting me down all the time.

The same evening we took out two more Titan nests in more or less the same manner as the first one, cleaning them of every molecule of our DNA as we left. With a part of my mind I tried to get my brain around the fact that I had killed more foes in less than two months than ordinary people went to death row for. Then I reminded myself that this was a war and just like in the trenches of WWI or jungles of Viet Nam it was a dog eat dog world and you either killed or bit the dust yourself. On top of that this secret war we fought was about whom the future of this planet really belonged to. The Titans who wanted to become ruling slavemasters over humanity or the gods who wanted to see the mortal majority living in as much freedom and peace as possible.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

After these raids were done, we got a few days off. Days which I decided to spend moving house, leaving my muggy old two room rental behind and really claim that awesome space Ares had bought for me. Just the living room was larger than my old flat, with parquet flooring, newly white painted walls, a really high ceiling and a large window opening up to a terrace with a Manhattan view which was definitely in class with Hekate's. Then there was a kitchen with all modernities you can wish for and then some like a wine storage and an ice machine. There was a dining room, a room which I decided to use for office and library (not that I had that may books, mind you, but I've always dreamt of having a library. And it was never too late to start collecting, especially not since I could look forward to that extremely long divine life now.) Then there was a large bedroom with a walk-in closet and an adjacent bathroom, that one also came with whatever you might wish for in shiny white and pink marble and designer faucets and pulleys. And if that wasn't enough, there also was a sauna, even if I doubted I was going to use it a lot.

Beside the bedroom was a large room which I decided to turn into my dojo. As a divine warrior I really felt I was going to need a fancy room for exercising and battle training. Then there was a guest room which also had its own bathroom and finally a small laundry room and a storage room. All of these rooms were now waiting for me to put my marks on them, so as soon as I was done walking around and making small squeals of ecstasy, I took up my phone and called Hekate, telling what I was going to do.
"Want some help?" the goddess of chaos magic asked.
"Yeah, that would be nice," I answered seeing the two of us carrying cardboard boxes and making a face when picturing the heavy work waiting for us.
"Then we're coming!" she said and it wasn't until we had finished the call I began to wonder who on Earth 'we' were in this case.

However I got an answer to that quickly enough. When Hecate arrived she had Deimos, Phobos, Xantos, Proioxis and Palioxis in tow. They all looked like they expected a house warming party, rather than a move, where they spilled into my flat, casually dressed and chatting endlessly, the ancient and disciplined warriors transformed into urban slackers as by a stroke of magic.
"Eh," I said as they all gathered around me. "All my stuff is still at my old place and it needs to be moved here."
"Where is that?" Deimos asked and I gave him the address, and begun to say that we would probably have to rent a small truck or something. But I didn't get a chance to finish before Deimos and Xantos disappeared with two pops of inrushing air. Now, this teleportation thing, I was still not used to it, and it made me a bit uncomfortable.

"We need no lorry," Phobos stated and laughed. Then he concentrated, apparently he was talking to Xantos and his brother in my old place, and the next moment things begun to appear. Slowly first and then faster and faster, lining up themselves with small popping sounds all over my living room. Furniture grouped together the way they had stood in my old place, the book shelf still with its books, movies and records in, clothes still on their hangers stacking themselves neatly on the sofa and the bed, kitchen utensils piled upon the kitchen shelves and all those small knick-knacks ending up all over the place.
"Oh my!" I exclaimed as a row of shoes almost began to chase me, and I jumped to the side, nearly colliding with Proioxis, who together with her sister were mercilessly reviewing the containment in the book shelf. (I was glad I had gotten rid of the most embarrassing stuff, like the chick lit books and those boy band records which honestly made me barf these days.)

But the twins were going over my collection of Asian martial art movies, giggling loudly and in the end I asked them:
"What? Having a problem with a girl watching Kung Fu flicks?"
"No, but it's like – ALL war gods have those!" Palioxis said. "Including yours truly. I have ten times as many to be true."
"And you weren't even a war god when you got those," Proioxis added as she put back another vintage Bruce Lee film.
"Ten times as many?" I said disbelieving, noting that the frequency of arriving things were starting to dwindle. There came a wall clock and a half-dead palm tree. There came my old TV-set, the ironing board, a pile of mail and some plastic bags with spare light bulbs and toilet paper. And finally my cabinet with shooting competition trophy's. Then the gods themselves were back, a bit tired and smiling.
"Missing anything, Aidra?" Xantos asked and looked around at all the things.
"Nah, not really. I didn't even realize I had so much junk. Where did you find that lava lamp?"
"In a kitchen cabinet," Xantos told.
"Whew, I actually forgot I had one!" I grinned.

"We took out the trash and the old papers for you," Deimos said. "And we left behind some things we don't think you really want anymore. Like a phone book from 2007 and a broken mirror in a closet."
"Oh, that one!" I blushed, it had been too heavy for me to carry down to the trash room, and I had planned to ask my brother or someone to help me with it, but then I had forgotten all about it. Now I could probably have moved it on my own, using my divine powers – if I had remembered the thing that was."

"So that was the hard work," Deimos said. "Now let's start with the fine tuning. As in where do you want everything."
"Look, she's got all those Kung Fu movies," Palioxis insisted.
"Haven't we covered that now?" I sighed and the coloured goddess laughed.
"I was in one of these films," Phobos said and took out one I hadn't watched in ages. Some kind of Korean dystopian thing.
"You were?" I turned to him, actually interested.
"Yeah, as a fighter stunt man for the bad guy. It was actually really fun. You should try it one day."
"He's lying," Deimos said. "He had to be beaten to pulp in the end, and he hated it."
"But he's a god, what's the problem?" I asked.
"Self-confidence," Palioxis said. "A god might be invulnerable to everything from AIDS to nukes, but their pride is a really tender spot."
"Oh, speak for yourself, little sister," Deimos returned and then they started to discuss something which had happened during the French revolution, which I couldn't care less about, so I walked over to where Hekate was going through my clothes.

"Let's put them in my walk-in closet, shall we?" I suggested. "Or at least some of it. There's a lot of stuff which now are... well, let's just say they belong to my former life and then leave it there."
"I know the feeling," Hekate smiled and then we started to sort through my stuff. At the same time Madonna's 4 Minutes started to sound trough the room, and the sound made me double take, since it was absolutely fantastic. Now, that couldn't be my old boom box, could it? (Come to think of it, I hadn't seen the thing.)
"Seems like Phobos found the right buttons to the surround system," Palioxis said as she began to stack my shoes.
"I have a surround system?" I turned to Ares' daughter. "I had no clue! I've read about those, they are fantastic! As I can hear now."
"You sure have," Proioxis replied. "There's even speakers in the bathroom. And there's a remote in there as well."
"Oh my! Flashy," was the only thing I could think of saying and Hekate laughed.
"Better get used to your life being flashy from now on. Both work vise and during your spare time."
"I'm still working on it," I said and threw a beige blouse in the 'to trash' heap. Then I looked up: "I better donate all those boring clothes, after all it's not that environmentally sound to trash all those things."

The next moment I had to go and inspect the dojo. The sons of Ares had bought me some new dumbbells as moving in gift, weights I had hardly been able to move earlier. Now they had put them, my treadmill and my box ball in my new dojo. Deimos was talking about me getting a certain floor mat and Phobos made sure the box ball was fastened firmly in the ceiling, using the right kind of magic.
"Now you're not going to slam this one down the first things you do," he promised me, and I remembered having told about what I had done to it earlier, destroying the ceiling in my old flat.
"What did you do with my old boom box?" I asked Deimos as Madonna was traded in for The Dignity of Labour in the living room, new tunes coming from the ceiling-mounted speakers in the dojo.

"Oh, that one," Deimos grinned. "Piece of junk, did you really want that after all?"
"No," I had to admit with a shrug. "It was after all ancient. This sounds so much better. But how come you moved the TV and not the boom box."
"Because you had no TV here, hun," the god of terror said and tried my box ball. "And who am I to tell that tonight is not the night of your favourite soap?"
"Ha-ha, you got me there, how did you know I was a Simpson fan?"
"Your DVD shelf," Phobos replied.
"Touché!" I grinned.

"Talking about touché, where are your swords?" he then asked.
"Oh, they are already here, since I didn't dare to keep them in my old flat, what if someone had seen them? I have them in the closet over there," I nodded my head over to a small wardrobe at the end of the dojo. It was there I had decided to hide away swords and fire arms and the likes. I was just going to need a better lock on that door. When I mentioned that, Phobos promised to fix it. Thus I wouldn't be needing any ordinary lock smith.
"Perfect," I smiled. "You guys do think of everything after all."
"You know we've done this before," Phobos replied. "A few times."
"To put it mildly," Deimos said and was hand standing on the floor.
"Should've known," I replied as I knit my hands on my back, while walking over to the other end of the dojo, looking out over another magnificent Manhattan view, facing northwards this time, although it was partly shaded by the rest of the building and some windows belonging to the neighbor. They were mirror windows, thus not see through, and I hoped mine were the same. I decided to find out later, a little flight would assure me of that. (Imagine how natural those thoughts came to me now...)

Then Xantos and Palioxis were helping me in the bedroom, the latter having quite a few ideas about interior decoration and the former using a combination of levitation work and heavy lifting to move all my things into position. I had already decided to get a larger bed and a real vanity desk with a large mirror, but my old stuff had to do for the time being.

I explained to the twins why I didn't use curtains (I loved the light and didn't really have anything to hide. Nothing that not mirror glass and magic could handle any way), I fingered everything in the bathroom and managed to get myself wet and I inspected the kitchen where Hekate and Proioxis had taken care of most things. After that we hung up the few things I had to hang on the wall, and when I questioned the idea of bringing my old half-dead potted palm, Hekate had used her magic reviving that one, and now it was as good as new.

At that time the day was nearing its end, the sun was setting behind the houses in the west and the shadows were getting long. Naturally all of us realized that we were quite hungry.
"Pizza!" Deimos called out.
"Yay, pizza," his brother chimed in and they were high-ten'ing in my living room, jumping up and down, and their sisters were cheering in as well although Hekate was rolling her eyes.
"Why pizza?" I asked in surprise and Xantos was laughing at that.
"You know how Ares hates pizza."
"Yeah, sort of. But that hasn't stop anyone else from having pizza whenever they want, right?"
"No, but the children of our mighty god of war has made a thing out of having pizza whenever they gather and their dad is not around. Playing the disobedient posse!"

I laughed and hid my face in my hands. Immortal gods! Sometimes they were just a tad too much!

"Okay, okay, okay, okaaaay!" I called out, aimed at Ares' children, as Hekate was laughing out loud next to me. "Order pizzas then! But they should be good ones! And make sure we get some wine as well. I don't have any, and I'm not drinking water or tea."

"Bien Sure, Madame," Deimos replied and produced a phone, and the next moment he was talking on someone on the other end. It seemed he knew what everyone wanted, save for me which he had to ask. Meanwhile Xantos beamed in some wine from his apparently exquisite storage and the twins were setting the table. About 30 minutes later the delivery boy arrived with a pile of steaming hot and absolutely delicious pizzas. So that evening we cramped up seven people around my little kitchen table, eating pizza and drinking red wine, and I realized that among other things I had to get a new, larger meal table. Preferably one of the kind my parents had, which you could fold out when you got even more guests.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

I had strange dreams that night, dreams about Titans and gods, dreams about ancient wars and futuristic ones. Strange repetitions of acts of terrors like 9/11 and images of those beings I had seen which were being kept at the Area 51. Those were not aliens – well, not aliens in that sense that they were from outer space, but they were of a kind of specie living in a parallel universe next to us. The Olympians referred to them as daemons, and they fed on strong emotions from other sentient beings. They were not really dangerous, physically, that was, because they couldn't do that much harm, even if they had horrid-looking fangs and claws added to a really repulsive appearance. As a matter of fact they weren't strong, what they could do was bite or scratch a little, perhaps pass on some bacteria. But most of the bacteria they carried was from their own universe and thus harmless since they weren't genetically compatible with our bodies.

Still these were dreams which spooked me from time to time. Hekate had told me they would pass, that it was just my brain processing all this new information, like a computer hard drive defragmenting itself during inactivity. When I got used to all this, these dreams would fade and then turn into more useful renderings, like problem processing and solving. Then I would instead wake up with answers to my problems, since my brain had been processing useful information during the night. That was noting strange, I had to admit. Even as a mortal my mind had done these things. Sometimes, during my cop years, when I was stuck with a seemingly impossible delinquent, my mind would work on it during the night, and in my dreams I could get hints at overlooked information in a case. And voilà – (or eureka as my new friends said) – I would reach a solution, or at least get a few steps closer to a solution.

But as my eyes blinked up that morning I was surprised at the direction and the brightness of the light – was I still dreaming? No, I was in my new home, it hit me. I also realized, there was something which had woken me up. Not the phone, it laid dark and silent on the bed table. The doorbell perhaps? I hadn't learned to recognize that sound yet. However I became aware of a presence on the other side of the front door, a familiar one. Ares! For some reason that made me so incredibly happy, a stupid grin appearing on my face – a reaction which surprised me. What was happening? I wasn't really falling in love with the god of war, was I?

"Get real, Aidra," I told myself as I stood up from the bed and swept a dressing gown around my nowadays surprisingly fit body. "He's a good friend, that's all. Al right, he's incredibly handsome and sexy, but he's more than 3000 years old and I'm not even 40. We have very little in common and he has probably been having tens of thousands affairs with women like me, so I better not get any ideas. After all he do have this army of kids."

Then I slipped out of the room, across the hallway, where there still were some things which hadn't found their place in my new life, and over to the door, letting Ares in. He was taking me in his arms immediately, banishing all doubt I might have had regarding my feelings for him. Because as I curled up in that warmth, breathed in the fragrances of his aftershave, leather jacket and a faint trace of coffee – and most of all his own musky flavour and rested my chin on the somewhat rough texture of his fleece hoodie, I felt like there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
"Thank you so much, Ares," my voice was newly awakened and sounded husky. "I love this place, and yesterday Kat, Xant and all your kids spilled in here and started fixing this place up. Wonderful people, moved all my things."
"I know, Dei told me yesterday. You ate pizza, right."

I giggled at that.
"He told that too."
"No, I just guessed." Ares let go of me and regarded me from a few inches instead, cupping my cheek in his hand. "Now, what I really want to do is seducing you here and now, just the look on your face, so sultry and sweet, but Aidra, we have work to do."
"Urgh, fencing! Can't it wait another day."
"You know it can't."
"I can at least eat a bit first? I haven't even had coffee."
"Overslept."
"You might say that," I rubbed a knuckle across my right eye and brow and made a face.
"Sure, do a quickie in the bathroom then, I think I can figure out how to operate your coffee machine without blowing it up."
"Don't you dare doing that," I teased him and wavered my finger in front of his face and he grabbed it and kissed it swiftly before letting me go.

So I rushed into the bathroom, used the toiled and splashed some water in my face before changing into exercise clothes. There was no idea taking a shower as I knew that I would be soaking in sweat within an hour anyhow. For what time in order I do not know, did I regard my nowadays youthful face, wondering why all this was happening to little me. Faith had turned me into a goddess and now it had thrown me in the arms of the most wonderful, delightful and handsome man too. A man who was THE god of war. I guess I just had to get used to it.