Chapter 30
Yelena stood in front of the row of magazines and newspapers, one of the magazines open in her hands as she stared down at the inside, her eyes running along words but not taking them in. Her focus was on her surroundings, merely waiting for the avatar to appear.
Yelena picks her way through the magazines slowly, feeling less and less confident with each one she idly flicks through. The avatar had looked so normal that Yelena hadn’t expected anything the last time they met. She was wearing sweatpants and her hair was falling out of a bun, but Yelena had let herself be fooled by the appearance.
The woman that steps up next to her this time was in business casual, a freshly pressed blouse with a deep gray pencil skirt. “How I have missed you, my dear.” She comments, plucking a newspaper from the rack and unfolding it. “So glad to see you here.”
“I’ve been looking for you,” Yelena turned the page of her magazine. “You’ve kept me waiting.” She glanced at her. “That’s rude, you know.”
The woman lets out a chuckle. “I suppose that is. You’ll have to let me make it up to you.” She folded the newspaper back up neatly, slinging her arm around Yelena’s shoulders just as she did the previous time. “Still just the same baby.” She pinched Yelena’s cheek.
“You know who I am but I still haven’t heard a name from you. That’s also very rude,” Yelena commented, closing the magazine and swatting at the woman’s hand with it.
The woman smiles at her, patting her cheek like a child. “You may call me Nour.” She said. Yelena stood still and let the woman get handsy with her like she was a young child. “Now, I do believe that we have a reservation.”
Yelena can tell by the way Nour holds herself that she is not an expert assassin, she was not raised in violence and bloodshed. Nour thought herself powerful and infallible. Yelena suspected that she thought her status as an avatar made her higher than anyone and with her God's support then she was able to do whatever she would like.
Nour leads Yelena outside and Yelena followed obediently, glancing at where Layla was blending in only to not see the head of frizzy brown hair. She had expected Nour to take her out back and try to stab her again but instead, the woman walks them down the sidewalk. Yelena lets herself be led, unaware of the secondary location they were going to but prepared nevertheless.
“So,” Yelena started, wondering just how far she could push before she got under the woman’s skin. “You know me but I don’t know of you. How long have you been an avatar?”
Nour raised an eyebrow at her as if she couldn’t believe that audacity Yelena had for making small talk while kinda being abducted. Even if it wasn’t really an abduction and the only reason Yelena hadn’t made the final kill was that she had to wait for the next full moon.
“I just didn’t know that your patron had an avatar,” Yelena continued. “I mean, what use are you to him if he can kill me himself in just my sleep? He didn’t even have to lift a finger. What does he need you for?”
Nour clenched her jaw and Yelena spots her opening. “I mean, my patron doesn’t do anything himself, he uses me to do it for him. I am his to use and serve until my final death.” Yelena focused on the road, ensuring that she memorized where they were going. “He will dispose of me when I am no longer useful, just as all Gods do.”
The woman lets out a laugh, a little too high to be genuine. “Not mine.” She denied, her fingernails digging into Yelena’s shoulders.
“Is that what he told you?” Yelena inquired, peering up at Nour with a sympathetic smile. “You must be very new at this then.” She knows that some Gods can be cold and cruel. Khonshu was not but Yelena needed to keep Nour second-guessing just long enough to be able to strike her while she was weak. “Do you think that they actually care about us avatars?”
“Yours must if he brought you back from the dead,” Nour spoke as they reached a very nice hotel. Yelena braces herself for a fight behind closed doors, hating that she wouldn’t be able to use her gun in the enclosed space. “He protects you. He keeps you immortal.”
“Everything was for his own benefit. I was already trained, I do his bidding without a fight, I will do whatever he wants without a question. He doesn’t want to go through the trouble of finding and training another one,” Yelena doesn’t really mean her words, she knows that Khonshu really did want her. He chose her, even if it was only because she came to him first.
Nour leads her into the elevator, pressing the button for the sixteenth floor. “He must like them young.” She merely comments and Yelena blinks at the odd statement, glancing up at the woman standing next to her in the elevator.
“Despite my looks, I am not a child,” Yelena commented, ensuring to keep her usual frustration and anger from her tone.
“But you are,” The woman hummed, glancing down at her with a sympathetic smile as if Yelena really was a young innocent child. “You do not know much about human bodies, do you, little one?”
Yelena bristled at the name. Only Natasha would ever be able to call her that. “I know enough.” She grunts.
“The child that never ages, that is what my God called you,” Nour pushed Yelena out of the elevator when the doors opened, guiding her down the hallway. “Do you know what my profession is?”
“What?” Yelena indulges her, watching as they stop in front of the door at the very far end of the hallway.
Nour hummed, sliding a keycard through the slot and pushing open the door. “I have dealt with plenty of brats like you.” She doesn’t go further into it. “Do you know what you all have in common?” Nour pushed Yelena through the door and into the immaculately clean hotel room.
“What?” Yelena irritably questioned again, feeling out of place standing in the very fancy and very expensive hotel room. She’s been in one many times before but almost always it was to seduce and kill. A cold feeling creeps through her as she hears Nour lock the door.
“You are all impulsive. You don’t think things through. You are immature and childish. You crave acceptance and you long to fit in,” Nour moved behind her, wrapping her arms around Yelena’s waist to pull her body flush against hers. “You so desperately want approval.”
Yelena tries not to get lost in her head. She expects to hear Khonshu ordering her to snap out of it or to grab her wrist and tug her forward just enough to break the hold for Yelena to retaliate. But he’s not here and Yelena is frozen in place.
“Your God does not give you what you need,” Nour continued, swaying side to side and forcing Yelena’s body to rock with her. “My God cherishes me just as yours should be.” Nour’s lips brush against Yelena’s ear. “You are a gift to them.”
Yelena focuses on forcing herself to breathe. “I do not need to be cherished.” She manages to calmly reply. “I live to serve my God and nothing more.”
“My God would cherish you,” Nour whispered, her lips pressing against Yelena’s cheek. “He would give you whatever you needed. He would never, ever dare to leave you alone and vulnerable like your God.”
“Your God has you,” Yelena finally pushed herself forward further into the room and Nour lets her go.
“He can have both of us. As soon as your God is taken care of, you would be his too. You could serve him and he would treasure you the way that you deserve,” Nour stepped further into the room and toward Yelena again. “I do not have to kill you. Not if you can be a good girl.”
Yelena takes a carefully measured breath. “Gods do not inherit other avatars when they kill.” But she doesn’t know if that was the truth. Tawaret promised to take her in but what if she didn’t get the chance? Could Apep claim her as a prize like she was an object to be won?
Nour clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Don’t they?” She gives Yelena a condescending smile. “Do not look so tense, little one. Me killing you is all water under the bridge. These sheets are much too nice to stain with blood.”
“Do not call me ‘little one’,” Yelena said sharply because if Nour wanted to play nice then Yelena would see just how far that niceness would extend.
“Of course. My apologies,” Nour sits at the small desk tucked in the corner, pulling out a small stack of papers.
“If you did not bring me here to kill me then why?” Yelena had to admit that she didn’t expect the turn of events. She had been ready for a fight, the gun is still pressed against her thigh in its holster. “Will your God not get angry that you have disobeyed him?”
“Not when I bring him the child that never ages,” Nour’s lips quirk up in a grin. “You are a valuable tool. You are either with us or against us and if you are against us then…” She waves her hand. “You know what happens.”
“I will not betray my God,” Yelena states, and the woman laughed as if she didn’t believe a word out of Yelena’s mouth. “You have yet to stand in front of the council. You do not understand how avatars and Gods work. Avatars do their God's bidding, not the other way around.” She folds her arms, watching the woman.
“You will see. When your God is dead and you are ours then we will cherish you, show you what could need. You are a child. Mentally, emotionally, physically…” She flips through the papers in front of her. “Perhaps chronologically you are…” She paused, glancing at Yelena.
“Twenty.” Yelena supplies because they both knew that.
“Right. Twenty,” She holds up one of the pieces of paper. “This is you, yes?”
Yelena stared down at the grainy image on the page, easily able to recognize the uniform she was wearing. However, she shook her head. “No.” She glanced back up at Nour because two people could play that game.
“No?” Nour arched an eyebrow, holding the grainy image up right next to Yelena’s face as if it was a mugshot and not a grainy image of the back of her as she walked through a subway station.
“That’s Khonshu,” Yelena answered only for Nour to stand and abruptly slap a hand over her mouth. Yelena resisted the urge to bite it merely because it wasn’t meant to strangle but only to muffle.
“Do not speak his name here.” Nour hissed at her. Yelena swatted her hand off and Nour lets her.
For a moment, Nour isn’t an enemy trying to kill her but a woman drunk on the power of what being an avatar means. It isn’t her fault that her God had lied to her. Nour was only doing what her God had asked, just as Yelena was. Their war was not with each other.
“I will not join you or your God,” Yelena finally said before Nour got any twisted idea in her mind that there was even a chance.
“Perhaps. I’ll change your mind,” Nour commented before holding out the stack of papers. “I see you. Just a scared child looking to be loved and accepted. A child needs to be looked after. Nurtured. Guided.”
Yelena raised an eyebrow, hating just how small Nour was making her feel with each comment about her age. “And you are the person to do that? You killed me.”
“Water under the bridge,” Nour reminded her and Yelena finally reached out to take the papers. “Think about it, sweetie.”
Yelena peered down at the papers. She only gets a glimpse of the top one before she peered back up at Nour. “May I go then?” She doesn’t want a shootout and she can’t kill her just yet. Nour smiled and gestured toward the door. Yelena dares to turn her back, just waiting for an excuse to fight as she moved toward the door.
Nour lets her leave.
Yelena stops just outside of the hotel and frisked herself for bugs, listening devices, and trackers. Nour didn’t seem smart enough to know how to utilize them but she could never be too careful. She tucked the stack of papers away to look at later.
She then turned on her foot and went back to the first location. She had to find Layla and figure out where exactly she had gone.
Yelena catches a glimpse of her reflection in a shop window as she passes by. She paused, raised her hand up, and rubbed the lipstick mark off of her cheek. Nour was a fool for trying to play on Yelena’s youthful features. Yelena had everything she already needed in Khonshu.
And now, with her God's untimely disappearance, she had Layla.
And soon, if Layla keeps her vow, Yelena will have Natasha.
That was enough.