The Morrigan: Damaged Deities (2 page)

Morrie gave her a smirk.

“See you later, fellas,” she nodded at Nick and Flannery.  Both offered sweet smiles and a tip of their hats.

“Bye-bye, Morrie,” Flannery said.

As she turned to leave, the truck driver beside her put his hand on her hip, its size dwarfing her small frame.  Morrie frowned.

“Hold on there a second, honey,” he said, smiling a broken-toothed grin.  “Morrie’s your name?”

“Well
honey
certainly isn’t,” she grated.

“That short for somethin’?”  He held firm despite Morrie’s attempts to push him away.  The space between stools was small, even for her and he had her trapped. “Like, taste so good, I want
some Morrie
?”

He laughed, throaty and loud. 

Searching the diner for support, he found none in the stony expressions of the locals.

“No,” she retorted and sighed loudly. 

The others at the counter watched her with eyebrows raised—not from concern, but interest.  They knew what would happen next. 

Since Morrie moved to town a little over a year ago, there’d been a few attempts by the cocky cowboys and ignorant rednecks to woo the new girl. But Morrie put them in their place with her quick fists and powerful knees and earned a reputation among the locals as a bit of a hellion and possibly a shrew.

She had always been a fighter; it had been one of the purposes for which she came to be.  And being a goddess, she had a speed and strength that paled the humans’.  Something she had learned long ago to keep under control lest she risk discovery.

So though the town didn’t know what she really was, they still knew better than to be concerned for her. 

The truck driver, now…well, ignorance was not always bliss.

“What kinda parents name a kid something like that?” the truck driver continued, his greasy face creased.  His fingers dug a little too hard into her hip, daring to spread across the area they covered. “Were they hippies or foreigners?”

“None of your business.” She folded her arms across her chest and lifted her chin. “Now, are you gonna take your fat paw off me?”

The trucker laughed and started to ask, “And if I don’t—?” but was cut off by the sudden and powerful fist Morrie brought down onto his cock like a hammer. 

Reflexes and pain withdrew the trucker’s arm.  Bent over the counter, a high-pitched keening preceded wet, broken coughing.  

Morrie pushed past him and sauntered away, fighting a grin at the laughs and cheers of the diners behind her.  Some even applauded.

Big Mike stood at the front of the restaurant holding the door open for her, smiling at the still red and blustering truck driver.  Even caring, over-protective Big Mike knew Morrie could take care of herself. 

The door’s jingle bells jangled from the handle as he let it swing shut behind them.

Outside it was unusually warm for early October.

It was the kind of weather that could mean tornadoes—an unwelcomed guest for her horses.  Morrie wouldn’t use her magic to see any coming trouble—she knew the repercussions even a slip of the supernatural could bring.  Instead she focused her heightened senses on the elements, that current of climate around her, but found nothing to worry about.

“They always underestimate ya, don’t they?” Big Mike asked Morrie as they walked to his Duelie in the parking lot, their boots crunching against the gravel.  His hazel eyes glinted in the sun.

 “They do,” she agreed, indifferent as always. 

Because they always did and always had, even when she took to the ancient battlefields and cleaned them of carrion, rewarding those few acts of valor with the gift of immortality.  Even then the dying would look on her in disbelief.  As the last, few brave men clung to life to fight a little longer, doubtlessly still hopeful for victory, she would stand over them in her leather skirts and breastplate, blood splattered on her boots and her eyes aflame with excitement and power and still they doubted.  Still they thought her an angel. 

Silly, little fools.

“It’s on account of you looking like some pageant princess,” he answered, sliding onto the cracked leather driver seat as she climbed up into the passenger side.  “You could go out for Miss Oklahoma if you wanted to, you’re so pretty.”

“I’m hardly the pageant type,” she replied, but Big Mike just kept talking.  He always did.

“Maybe it’s because you’re just a lil’ thing.”

As soon as he turned the key in the ignition, he leaned over and twisted the A/C dial, cranking it to full blast.  Hot air hit Morrie like a dog’s pant, taking its sweet ass time to cool.

“I suppose that’s why.” She rested her elbow on the window, looking out. 

“But big things come in lil’ packages, right?”

It never seemed to matter what shape or form she took.  The human mind was filled with suspicion and disbelief, right up to the very end. 

Morrie watched the diner pull away as they left the parking lot while Big Mike continued to make comparisons to dynamite and honey badgers.  Big Mike had a thing for rambling on sometimes, which seemed to work well for their friendship—if you could call it that—since Morrie was often quiet. 

After meeting him her first day of work, she’d had concerns.  She worried he would expect conversation—the whole “getting to know you” thing.  But after days of feeding and cleaning the horses, riding the ranch, and even birthing the new foals together, Morrie’s worries were eased when she quickly learned that Big Mike just liked to talk and didn’t seem to mind when she wouldn’t always talk back. 

“Think that mare’s gonna let you bridle her today?”

Morrie smiled and turned to him. 

Horses were the one subject that could capture her attention.  In her days of retirement from the adventurous life of a sword-wielding immortal, it was what she found pleasure in.

“She just needs a gentle hand, Big Mike,” Morrie replied.  She looked back out the window at the passing town, ceding to open fields and ranch-style homes set far away from the road. “That’s all any girl needs; a gentle hand.  And if that doesn’t work, a hard slap on the ass.”

C
HAPTER
T
WO

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another murder down by the loch.

It had gotten to the point where Kamden no longer wanted to take the
Post
.  In fact, he had considered every morning cancelling his subscription, but that would require sending Lorna down to the village to make the request and honestly, he did still need to know these things.

The crumpled front page showed the grisly black and white image of the reedy overgrowth shrouded by trees with the distinct shape of a covered body. 

It had happened on his property, again.  He would be questioned about it, again.  Though again cleared because once more, he had nothing to do with it, no evidence to suggest so.  There had been no one to blame.  There never was.  

The victim was normally some intoxicated kid out with a group of friends or a randy couple trying to shag at what they probably thought was a romantic spot. The loch was weedy and constantly covered in mist and so the deaths always appeared natural.

But Kamden knew better.  

When one unfortunate soul had been left alive long ago, he had rambled madly about a horse—wild and sleek with red, blazing eyes.  He swore through piss and tears that the impossibly large steed rose out of the loch snorting fire and kicking hooves made of steel.  With unfathomable speed he would run someone down and drag them, kicking, screaming and clutching at the earth until their nails ripped off, into the loch. 

The legend spread and became like a ghost story in town.

But some legends were true.

“Damn it, Kade,” Kamden muttered, dropping the newspaper on the table as he looked out on the marshy lands of the Scottish estate that had been in his family for countless generations, since the country had belonged to the Highland warriors.  Ancestors long dead had fought and died to protect this land and now it seemed threatened from within. 

He was too young to have to deal with this kind of shite.  Curses tended to age you, though.

Burdened by worries few could understand, Kamden turned from the breathtaking view and poured himself a dreg of whiskey, settling into his armchair by the fire.   

The drink wasn’t a proper breakfast, but Kamden no longer cared.  Proper had died with the rest of his family.

The knock at his door was faint, followed by a head peering into the room.

“Maister MacLeod, sairrr, a wuid?” Lorna asked with her soft, thickly accented voice. 

She had been his personal assistant and head of household for decades and still addressed him properly no matter how many times he insisted she call him Kamden.

“Aye,” he grunted, waving her in before scratching the stubble on his chin and raking a hand through his dark hair.  He would a need a cut soon.

Silently as always, she entered the room clutching a laptop.  She sat in the chair opposite him, her back straight. 

The fireplace crackled in her silence. 

Her gaze roaming the table beside Kamden, flicking across family photos, she nodded towards one in particular.

“Is there nae way tae call the maister home?” Frown lines deepened on her weathered brow. “It’s been too long noo.”

With a heavy sigh, Kamden sunk deeper into his chair and stared at the photo—a young lad that looked a bit like him, but with lighter hair and darker eyes, smiling and carefree.  It was an old photo—from before the accident.  Its subject was much changed now.

“There’s only one thing that can draw him out,” Kamden answered her. “And given how long it’s been, I doubt that will even happen now.”

Lorna shook her head and sat silent for a while in thought.  Finally she turned away from the photo and gave her attention back to him.

“Abit ‘at cuddie problem ye hae?” she asked.

“Whit abit—,” he stopped himself from dropping into a thicker brogue around her and repeated more clearly, “What about the horse?”

“Ah hink Ah foond a solution.”  To his frown, she opened up the laptop and turned it around on her knees, facing him.  “Lass’ name is Morrie Brandon.”

A video played with grainy quality of a young, wee lass in Western wear like an American cowboy standing in the middle of a dirt corral.  A blonde, angry stud reared its front legs at her. 

The horse looked wild, untamed and possibly touched with madness—Kamden would have had him put down the way he charged and snapped at the onlookers on the other side of the fence.

Yet to grasp why Lorna felt the need to share the video with him, Kamden watched with bored, hooded eyes. 

The young woman in the corral looked unaffected, unmoved and unafraid while the horse bucked wildly.  She instead inched closer to the great beast, one hand outstretched, seeming to mutter soft words. 

But then the girl began to close the gap, despite the great beast’s attempts to pummel her.  A couple of times his great hoofs came down dangerously close to her, whipped near her face as he spun, like a typhoon beside a kitten.

Still she spoke to the beast. Kamden could see her lips barely moving.  And that typhoon began to slow.  

Kamden’s eyes grew wider when soon she had the horse’s muzzle in her palm, the other hand stroking his neck.  A few more soft reassurances and the girl had mounted the beast’s back.

It would have taken weeks, possibly months to break a beast as mad as that stud and that was only if breaking him at all were possible.  By the way the horse had looked at first, he seemed infected, lost.  But in moments, this wee girl had him cantering around the corral like a prized show pony.

Kamden looked up at Lorna, unspoken questions in his eyes.