Page 3 of You Can't Fight Lightning
I could swear I heard silvery laughter as the mist disappeared.
I turned from the only home I’d ever known and walked away, leaving Olympus behind me.
Chapter Two
Z
Present Day
Ichecked my bike again, trying not to hear Hera’s words in my ears. All I wanted was to get going, get started on my trip. But Hera’s words, like serpents, slithered into not just my ears, but my brain, and refused to leave. As was always the case with my wife.
Ex-wife, I corrected myself. We’d broken our bond. It was time. Gods, it was beyond time for that bond to be broken.
That didn’t stop her words from yesterday from taking up residence in the depths of my being.
Damn her.
When I’d told her my plans to finally venture out in this new land solo, her laughter tinkled in the air around me in response.
Mocking me, I thought.
But her eyes weren’t narrowed, her hands weren’t on her hips, and her expression was… kind.
Something I definitely wasn’t used to with Hera.
“I mean it, Z. I’m really interested. What are you going to do? Now that we’re all off to do stuff, do our own thing, all going in different directions, you’re going to be alone. You’veneverbeen alone. You’ve never had to be.” Crossing her arms, she looked me over. “I don’t know that you even know how to be alone, Zeu—I mean,Z. And you’ve been hiding out here, pretending to manage all this even though the club basically runs itself—”
She stopped talking when I glared at her. Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance.
It still felt odd hearing her call me Z. We’d all discussed taking on different names once we left Olympus. I couldn’t think of anything I liked more than my own name, as it was. I’d been Zeus for millennia. Why in the name of all Olympus would I want to be anyone else? After a great deal of discussion with my fellow gods about keeping a low profile, I said I’d be ‘Z’ and left it at that.
Just as when we’d jokingly hung aClosed for Businesssign on the gates of Olympus, it was time for us—okay, time forme—to adapt, to fit in with the new destiny we’d chosen for ourselves. It had been a year since we’d left.
I had to admit, once I got past my shock at the changes we were making, I started to remember the various aspects of human life I enjoyed. Their love of their children. Dogs. Their ability to be randomly and overwhelmingly kind when it was least expected. Their intensity. Their love.
And in this day and age, their machines. I found I loved the human motorcycles with a passion that surprised even me. I looked at them constantly. It came to me then—a motorcycle club was the perfect place to hide out. I’d taken the time, after we left Olympus, to check out human motorcycle clubs. We could be odd, or a little different, and it would be chalked up to being part of a biker club.
Perfect.
For all their desire to be like humans, I knew my family. The urge to ‘be like everyone else’ would only last for so long. Then their natural selves would take over, and everyone would want to be special, unique, different. It was who we were.
Then they would need a place to retreat to.
I’d located a place called Seattle that was close to a Mount Olympus. Even as humans no longer appreciated us, they used their history with us. They remembered us, their roots.
Using our stock of assets, we bought a building in downtown Seattle and named it The Gods of Thunder Motorcycle Club. Within the week, I’d discovered that our neighbors weren’t all that keen on having a motorcycle club in the middle of their block. Hera, Hermes, and Aphrodite, known as Addie, went to visit each and every one of our neighbors in what could only be called a campaign of charm. By the time they finished the neighborhood goodwill tour, our neighbors were ready to throw us a parade. Probably half of them wanted Addie, which was par for the course.
At my insistence, because I was thinking of the future, when we’d want to be reminded of where we came from, we’d stocked the bar with shades of home. No one other than gods were welcome. Not our children, not the heroes—no one else. This was just for us.
Humans didn’t believe in us anymore. I hadn’t wanted to believe it, but after a year of living here, of being part of the human world, I had to accept it. Not as anything other than a myth, something to be talked about as though it wasn’t a real thing.
No, it was all about the one guy up in the sky, that one guy with a bunch of different names. Did anyone care that we’d been here first, looking out for humans? Enhancing the lives of those who were deserving? All the work we’d done, all the care we’d expended—it meant nothing.
For the first time ever, I couldn’t brush it off. I’d always felt that we were necessary, that humans needed us, no matter what their thoughts on the gods of Mount Olympus were. But no more. No, now I was ready for something else, even if I wasn’t as angry as I’d been before.
It was time for the gods to stop being the gods of anyone other than their own destinies.
Nyx had been right, I thought as I remembered our conversation last year. We could adapt.
