But Reid… I look back at him. He lies in a pool of blood, his skin pale. My only comfort is that he seems to have passed out from the pain.
And then his eyes flutter open.
I kneel down beside him. “It’s okay. We’ll make you better. We’ll--”
“Then do we have a deal?” Odin says, his deep voice unnerving as it booms from Wilder’s mouth.
“Don’t,” Reid rasps. “I won’t die from this. I can’t die. But we could lose Wilder.”
Tears fill my eyes. What he says logically makes sense, but can I really leave him to suffer? To wait and see what happens when a human with a god inside of him bleeds out?
I comb my fingers through his hair and lean forward, kissing his cold forehead.
“You can help Wilder push him back, but he has to want to,” he whispers raspily.
“What?” I ask, shocked. Did I hear him right? “He wants to control Odin…”
“Does he?” Reid asks, then winces and squeezes his eyes closed.
“Izzy?” Aiden says my name. In his hand, he holds Thor’s hammer, and it glows in his fist. Anger radiates from him. But I can see it in his eyes; he doesn’t know what to do.
Van stands beside him, his sword in his hand. I can feel the rage beneath his skin as he squares off with Odin, but I also know he isn’t sure what to do. Revenge he understands, but how does one fight their own friend?
I kiss Reid one last time and stand. I feel my powers wash over me, and I sense myself shifting, but into what I don’t know. Within seconds, I stand as tall as Odin. My body feels like my own, only a massive version of itself.
“We want our Noah Wilder back,” I say.
Odin laughs. “Your human is naught but a squeaky voice inside the body that is now mine.”
I need to know Odin’s weaknesses. I need to know who he is.
Reaching inside myself, I do something I’ve never done before: I search for Loki. Not just Loki, but his thoughts and experience. I sense that he doesn’t expect my invasion, because I feel his shock, and then I’m inside of him.
Odin is the god of wisdom, healing, and the summer sun. The god is not evil. He is simply…a god. He believes he deserves to run Wilder’s body. He feels that the earth has suffered without him here. That we need his wisdom and his healing.
And if he wasn’t an arrogant god, it might be true. But his wisdom wasn’t always correct. It favored the gods. It was seeded in his deep belief that mankind was here to serve him. Odin was a smart god, but even he could be tricked by Loki.
I look to Aiden and Van. “Do either of you know why Wilder would want to hide in a god? Do either of you know why he wouldn’t think he was enough to handle this?”
It honestly surprised me. He’d been the star of two teams at school. He’d been a popular jock from a good family. What skeletons could he possibly have that would make it so he’d let the god take over?
“I see what you’re doing,” Odin begins slowly. “And it will not work. As much as I do not want to fight all of you, I will. If we cannot come to an agreement, which would be far wiser.”
Van lowers his sword. “Wilder…are you kidding me? You let this happen. Come on, man, I thought you were over that. I thought you’d made peace with it.”
A chill rolls down my spine. “With what?”
Van doesn’t look at me. Instead his gaze is locked on Odin’s. “I know you felt like it was your fault, but none of it was.”
“Van?”
Something changes in Odin’s eyes. For a second, I swear I see Wilder. I want to know everything about Wilder. I want to know what could’ve led him to this. But I feel my gigantic body shrink, and then I kneel down beside Reid, take my jacket off, and try to staunch his bleeding. The whole time, my ears strain to hear the conversation.
“I guess if you’re too scared to come out and talk,” Van continues, “then we’re all going to talk about this once and for all.”
“No,” Odin says, but there’s an edge to the word, almost a desperation.
Van draws himself up taller. He radiates confidence, but I can see uncertainty in his gaze. “Everyone thinks Wilder’s dad is such a great guy. Everyone sees him as a rockstar dad, a great business man, and an excellent husband--”
“No,” Odin says again, but this time he almost sounds like Wilder.
“But Wilder’s dad is a jackass, an abuser, a control freak, and a monster.”
“Everyone thinks he’s great. I’m lucky to have him,” Wilder begins.
“Your dad hits your mom and then says it’s her fault. He makes you feel like shit if you aren’t perfect all the time. You don’t even like sports. You went into them because he made you, and you got so good because he beat the shit out of you if you weren’t the best.”
“It was my fault. He was a good dad. He was just trying to get me to be the best version of myself. He wanted me to be better than he was…”
“You don’t believe any of that,” Van says, and there’s hurt in his voice. “He’s just told you it so many times that you’ve learned to say it. But just because someone says something enough doesn’t make it true.”
Suddenly, Wilder puts his face in his hands. “How am I supposed to be a god? Especially a god of wisdom and healing. I couldn’t even keep my mom safe. I was never good enough for my dad.”
Van moves closer to him, his sword still in his hand. With one arm, he wraps it around Wilder in a rare moment of openness. I barely hear his muffled words, but I do. “We’re all fucked up, Wilder, but that’s why we can do this. Because we’re never going to think we’re all-powerful and perfect like the fucking gods. We know what it’s like to be flawed and human. So you need to come back, man, you need to push the god back deep down inside of you and know you’re enough.”
A sob catches in my throat. Of course Wilder’s enough. How could he ever think otherwise?
“Wilder, push him back…”
I watch Wilder’s massive muscles start to shrink. Slowly, one second after the next, he starts to look like Noah again.
His spear drops to the ground. “I fucked up. I didn’t even realize I’d done it. I didn’t even know it was me, but I also didn’t want to fight for this.”
Van draws back and looks him dead in the eye. “All of us feel that way, but you can never do that again. You hear me? We need you. Without you, I’d snap, man, I mean really snap. It’s not easy for me to choose to be a decent person every day, and now that I’ve got all this power….”
There’s something raw and honest in his confession, and Wilder responds to it.
Wilder blinks away the moisture in his eyes. “Okay.”
And then his gaze slides to Reid. He moves toward him with stiff muscles and crumbles onto the ground beside him.
“The god wants me to let him take over again to save him.” I almost tell him no, but he continues. “But I don’t need him anymore for this.”
Placing a hand on Reid’s chest, he closes his eyes.
For a minute nothing happens, and then his hand begins to glow. Wilder’s face is intense, almost pained, but Reid’s body begins to knit itself back together. When Wilder sags, and the light fades from his hand, there are no traces that Reid was ever hurt.