Chapter Three
Millie
I woke up feeling like a railroad spike had been driven through my skull. From what I could gather from numerous talks with Lucy and Brandy, afterglow wasn’t supposed to feel like that.
I tried to lift my head, and I abruptly choked on bile. I barely had time to turn my head before I vomited noisily onto the ground. The air was too hot, baking my lungs as I desperately tried to draw a breath. And there was a huge weight on top of me, compressing my rib cage.
It was sweaty and still breathing. Jay. As soon as I was able to put that puzzle piece into place my disoriented brain had less trouble reassembling the sequence of events. I’d gone over to Jay’s garage to talk some sense into him. He’d gotten angry with me. I’d gotten angry with him and had been about to storm out when he kissed me. And it got hazy from there. I just remembered a haze of want and what had felt like a full body ache. His kiss had been narcotic, addictive, and I’d just remembered wanting more.
And then the garage had exploded. Oh, God, the building had blown up. He’d grabbed me just before and hoisted me up. He’d gotten as far as the back door before the whole place went up in flames. The fact that he was still breathing was the only thing not sending me into a panic.
“Jay?” I rasped, my voice barely audible over the roar of flame, and the secondary explosions. Gas tanks going up, I supposed. There had been at least four vehicles in the garage when the fire started.
I managed to squirm my way out from under him. We’d landed somewhere outside of his little house, thankfully, which was why my lungs weren’t so much cooked meat at the moment. That didn’t mean we were out of danger. The smoke would kill us just as effectively as the heat. And the culprits were no doubt still out there, waiting to pick off anyone who had somehow survived the attack.
I rolled over onto my side, still fighting back nausea and shook his shoulder. “Jay. Come on, get up.”
He lay face down in the dirt, his caramel skin smudged with soot and an even darker liquid that I couldn’t identify in the pitch black. I reached out tentatively to touch its source, in the center of his back. A twisted shard of metal about the size of my fist was jutting out of his back. The slippery substance on my fingers must be blood. There were several more of the imbedded objects all up and down his back. He must have shielded me from the blast.
My stomach tried to heave up its most recent meal and failed. There was nothing left to give. What did I do? I had to get us out of here, but anything I did to move him was certain to be noisy and attract attention.
His eyes fluttered and finally opened, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Thank God,” I muttered. “Don’t move. There’s shrapnel in your back.”
“No choice, we’ve got to move or we’ll die.” He grunted, and somehow managed to push himself to his feet. Damn. I sort of envied him the pain tolerance. He extended a hand to me.
“Where do we go?” I asked, taking the proffered hand. I climbed to my feet and almost immediately staggered, sickening pain shooting up my leg. I risked a glance down and found that I had not gotten away entirely unscathed. There was a shard of glass imbedded halfway up my calf. I knew better than to remove an imbedded object but I stooped and yanked the glass out of my leg, cutting my hands to ribbons in the process. It was going to be hard enough to get away without a limp slowing me down.
“Anywhere but here,” he replied tersely. We each got an arm around the other and began to hobble in the opposite direction, away from the burning building.
We finally agreed to make our way around and see if my motorbike had survived the explosion. I’d parked a fair distance away and was pretty confident that it would at least be drivable until I could get us to a hospital. Just as we hobbled past the mail box, shapes began to emerge from the burning building. Jay pulled me so hard to the ground that my arm nearly came out of its socket.
A creature stepped from the flame and onto the driveway not fifteen feet away from where we lay. It was short, and had knobbly hands and knees. Despite this, it moved quickly and jerkily in a fashion reminded me strongly of a spider. More shapes emerged behind it, and somehow none of the hairy little creatures were on fire.
The closest, who had a nose that looked like a mashed banana, addressed the first.
“We did not find the bear inside the primitive human workshop,” it wheezed. Apparently Mr. Knobbly-Knees was the leader. But more frightening was the realization of how close they’d come to killing Jay. If he’d been working in the garage when the explosion had happened… I shuddered. I hadn’t liked Jay Hanlon much at first, but I hadn’t ever wanted him dead.
Evidently, someone did.
“Spread out,” the leader barked. “I want that bear’s skin before dawn. If he sneaks off to warn the Vanir it will ruin everything.”
I wasn’t quite sure what they were saying, but the words seemingly meant more to him than they did to me.
“Millie, I need you to listen,” he hissed, pulling me close and stuffing the clothing he was still somehow holding into my hands. The jeans had been singed so badly they were pretty much shorts, but it was better than going naked from the waist down. I pulled them on as he spoke.
“Those are dwarves,” he continued, jerking his head in the direction of the stubby little monsters that had blown up his garage. “They’re fast, they’re strong, and they are vicious. I need you to run. Get your motorcycle and leave. Don’t look back.”
“I’m not leaving you-”
“If they find us here, we’ll both die. If you just listen, there’s a chance.” He swallowed thickly before he continued, “I have a pair of contacts I was supposed to meet with tomorrow morning. Chance Kassower and his wife. I need you to tell them what happened here, okay? They need to know that Svartalfheim has joined the Aesir, if they don’t already. Can you remember that?”
“Svartalfheim. Aesir. Got it,” I mumbled. This was all too much. First my blackout and now this. I was beginning to feel like I might be on a really bad acid trip. At least that would explain how everything had flipped on its head from where it had been only a few minutes ago.
“Get ready,” he hissed. I followed his gaze and saw mashed banana nose walking his eerie spider walk toward us. At his pace, he’d reach us in only a minute or two. I got my feet beneath me. My right leg didn’t want to cooperate. I wondered deliriously if Lucy had felt this helpless since her accident. I wasn’t sure how long or how far I’d be able to run.
My muscles were coiled and ready to spring when he gave me the word. But I never did get the chance to run. A very familiar vehicle came screaming up the highway, slamming to a halt in the driveway, feet away from where we’d hidden.
Sammy Pullman, of all people, stepped out of my dad’s van, a flashlight in one hand and a loaded shotgun in the other. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked stone-cold sober. The flashlight beam found us on its third sweep and a look of profound relief flitted across his features. They hardened back into the steely no-nonsense mask of a cop when he spotted the nearest dwarf. He clicked the flashlight off and stuffed it into his back pocket, bringing the shotgun to bear.
“Get in the van,” he ordered, and there was no room for argument in his tone. I scrambled to my feet, pulling Jay alongside me. He could just forget those dreams of martyrdom. He was going to survive, damn it, and tell me exactly what I’d missed when I’d had the pleasure blackout.
The van smelled like smoke, but it was the familiar, comforting scent of a pipe, instead of the ashy stuff I’d been breathing in for the last six minutes. My father was waiting for me, and his expression was about as cold as Sammy’s. I flinched as a shotgun blast split the night air and one of the creatures outside shrieked in pain.
“What did I tell you?” he barked. “Dangerous!”
“I didn’t know the building was going to blow up!” I said. This was insane. Why was I arguing? He had every right to be angry. I’d gone out and it had nearly gotten me killed. Parental paranoia had a place, I supposed.
In the distance, I could hear the wail of sirens. I thought it might be the fire department, until my father glanced nervously at the road behind him.
“Sammy, we’ve got incoming!” He shouted out the window. If I squinted, I could see blue and red lights further up the road.
Sammy lost one last round in the direction of an oncoming dwarf and then sprinted back toward the car. Instead of diving for the door as I had expected, he vaulted, landing heavily on the roof of the van. As if that had been the unspoken signal he’d been waiting for, my dad hit the accelerator and we flew backwards out of the driveway and back onto the highway. I waited for Sammy to go tumbling off as we shot down the highway at record speeds. But as far as I could tell he was balancing on the roof.
“What’s going on?” I had to shout over the roar of the engine. “Why are the cops after you?”
“I might have blown through a few stop signs on my way over,” he said. “The point is you should have listened to me. If you’d been at home in bed, we wouldn’t have to run now.”
“We don’t have to run now!” I protested, glancing backwards. The cops were still a fair distance behind us, but I was sure they wouldn’t stay there forever. If Dad let the chase go on any longer, there were sure to be road blocks and spike strips in our future.
“I’m not letting them take you,” he practically growled. An impressive accomplishment because as far as I knew, he was as human as I was. “We sacrificed too much to keep you safe to let you fall into their hands now.”
“Into the hands of the cops?” He wasn’t making any sense. I glanced over at Jay. He didn’t seem to understand much about the situation either.
“We’re getting you to a safe place and then I’m going to have words with your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I protested.
“He’s something,” my father grumbled. “He touched you. He’s set things in motion that we can’t control. I think he deserves a beating for that.”
“He saved my life,” I snapped. “And he needs a hospital. He’s got shrapnel in his back.”
“No hospitals,” he grunted. “Not until you’re safe.”
I leaned back in my seat. I could feel my heart pounded in my ears and I was beginning to feel sick again. We reeked of blood and smoke. There was no point talking to him when he got belligerent like this. I thought maybe despite all the chaos I’d be able to sleep away the nausea, but the shotgun sounded from on top of the car, startling me into lucidity.
I stared out of the back windshield of the van and saw that somehow the cop cars had gained on us; despite the fact that dad’s speedometer read one hundred miles per hour and was still steadily climbing. Something crouched on top of the closest one, and I saw to my horror it was one of the dwarves. It had its hand pressed into the metal and glowing red cracks spread outward through the frame where it had made contact.
“What’s it doing?” I whispered.
It was Jay who answered, not my father, “The dwarves of Svartalfheim are craftsmen and blacksmiths. If it is forged from metal, they can control it.”
I gaped, “So you’re saying…”
“They’re driving them around like remote controlled cars, yeah,” Jay finished. “And they’ll have no qualms about ramming us.”
My throat constricted and I suddenly found it a lot harder to breathe as that terrifying realization sunk in. Anything metal. If they got in range, they could make guns shoot their owners. They could hijack cars, planes, and boats. They could topple buildings and destroy cities. Jay had said they weren’t above doing exactly that.
And right now, they were going to stop at nothing to kill us.
The shotgun fired again, and the dwarf on the nearest car toppled off his perch. I wasn’t sure if the shot had been fatal, but I secretly hoped so. The car it had been controlling swerved off the road and rolled several times as the panicked driver tried to regain control.
“Where are we going?” I demanded.
“Jotunheim,” he said curtly.
“Gazuntite,” I muttered.
“It’s a place,” Jay explained. Odd that this man that I’d been so irritated with not an hour before was being more helpful than my own father. “One of the nine worlds on Yggdrasil’s branches. The last I knew the only location that corresponds to it in the U.S. is in Norfolk, Virginia.”
I glanced into the front seat. My father’s face was set in lines of stress, but he said nothing. I took that as assent.
“We’re going to Virginia?” I asked, sure my mouth was hanging open. “We can’t just run to Virginia, Dad! We’re going to be on the news, at this rate. America’s most wanted. They’ll put our faces on every TV screen from here to Norfolk. We’ll attract even more attention doing it this way.”
“For once can you just do what you’re told?” He shouted back at me. “You’re so stubborn, just like your mother and it got her killed. I am not letting that happen to you. Sit your ass down Mildred Leann Allbarn!”
I leaned back into my chair once more, stunned by this piece of information. She hadn’t run off, as he’d always claimed. She hadn’t left for another man or abandoned us. She’d died. How? When? Why? A million questions buzzed around in my head but now wasn’t the time to ask them, clearly.
“What’s Jotunheim?” I muttered to Jay. “Why is he taking me there?”
He shrugged. “They’re more colloquially known as frost giants, and they’re one of several worlds that associate with the Aesir and Vanir who are currently at war. The last I knew, they were an undeclared nation. Maybe they’ve finally declared themselves.”
But if that were true, why take me there? What good was a backwater mechanic to a sovereign nation that probably didn’t drive cars? And how the hell did dad know who these people were anyway? He had always been pretty ambivalent to anything but cars and beer.
“They’re gaining on us!” Sammy’s voice was faint but audible. That in itself was amazing, considering the speed at which we were going and the thunderous sound of the shotgun.
And that wasn’t all. Ahead of us, I could see more lights. I’d been right. They were going to block the road.
“Detour!” he shouted up to Sammy, just before he veered off the road completely. The car was airborne for five seconds, before we crashed to earth, landing in a nearby cornfield. The stalks snapping sounded like small fireworks going off all around us, adding to the general din. How the hell was Sammy staying on top of the van?
Three of the cars veered off the road to follow us, each with a dwarf astride it. One of them was close enough for me to spot Officer Irwin, Brandy’s father, clutching the wheel for dear life, his eyes bugging halfway out of his skull. How terrifying must it be for the police inside the cars? How frightening to punch the break, turn the wheel, or attempt to unlock the doors and bail and find that you can’t do any of it?
“We need to slow down,” Jay called, pointing at the hill ahead of us. This was a little further into the boonies than I usually travelled, but Jay would be more familiar with the town than I was. I followed his gaze and saw what he meant. Up ahead, at the crest of the hill, there was yet another highway, and it looked packed. Orange cones cordoned off half the road and a flashing neon sign warned all cars to keep in the left lane.
Instead of responding, my father pressed the accelerator to the floor and we rocketed up the hill. A scream got caught somewhere between my ribcage and throat, and Jay shot out a strong arm to keep me from flying forward out of the windshield.
“We’re going to crash!” I finally managed to shout.
“No.” He said, more calmly than the situation warranted in my opinion. I didn’t know this hardened, cynical man. I didn’t see my father in him anywhere at all. I missed the heartbroken romantic with a vengeance. “I’m going to crash. You are going to jump.”
“Jump? Jump where?” Jay asked.
At the same time, I said, “You can’t crash!”
“On the count of three,” he said, eyes narrowing as he approached the concrete barrier that blocked off the freeway.
“No!” I thrashed as Jay got his big, burly arms around me. “No, I’m not leaving you! You can’t do this!”
“One,” my father ground out. Jay freed one arm to release me from the restraining force of my seatbelt.
“Two.” Jay got a hand on the door handle somehow, despite the fact I was writhing desperately, trying to escape.
“Three.”
Jay yanked the door open and threw us both into the night air. We were free-falling, tumbling through the air at a terrific speed. I could feel him begin to change, his bones warping, popping and grinding as his body tried to assume a new shape. I was afraid if we impacted the ground when his bones were in such a malleable state they’d shatter. The sensation of fur growing out of his arms was faintly ticklish.
The change seemed to be coming slowly, for some reason. It wasn’t at all like I’d seen on television. Some shifters could assume their shape almost immediately. For born shifters like Jay, it should have been easy. But something was apparently wrong. He was only part of the way to bear when we hit the ground, and the force of our descent tore furrows into the ground and knocked over the corn stalks all around us.
The impact jarred my bones, setting my stomach rolling again. I bit my tongue and tasted blood. But Jay’s body had shielded me from the worst of it. If his moan of pain was anything to go by, the shrapnel had driven even further into his back with the force of hitting the ground. I needed to get him somewhere safe so we could remove the metal from his back. At this rate it would get infected and I’d have a dying were-bear on my hands.
My father’s van impacted with the concrete divider. A shower of sparks erupted where the metal made contact and the frame crumpled upward like a crushed tin can. Jay clapped a grossly misshapen hand over my mouth, stopping my scream. He pressed his lips to the shell of my ears and his voice, usually quite an attractive sound—picture honey sliding over a spoon and you’ll get an idea of the texture of that man’s voice—came out distorted, like it had been put through some terrifying voice filter.
“If you scream, they find us,” he growled into my ear. “And if they find us, we’ll die. Do you want his sacrifice to be in vain?”
I wanted to smack his hand away and tell him it was none of his business. He didn’t know my dad, or what he’d want. His business had been putting ours in jeopardy, which is why I’d been there in the first place. If I hadn’t been there, I would be safe in bed and so would my father. He wouldn’t be—
“Come on.” He rolled me off him and onto the hard packed earth. I followed him through the stocks, straining my ears to hear anything from my father or Sammy. I heard the wail of a siren cut off and another tremendous thump as metal impacted the barricade. The city was going to have a hard time cleaning that road up, at this rate. I heard a shotgun click on empty and the triumphant cry of a dwarf as we crawled between the rows.
“Where are we going?” I whispered. It was difficult to speak past the unshed lump of tears in my throat.
“Jim and Nancy’s diner first,” he whispered back. “And after that I’m going to finish what your father started.”
“Crashing pointlessly into a wall?” I asked hollowly. What was left if he was gone? How could I return home, ever? The place was empty of purpose without him there.
He turned around, and I saw that his face had taken on its normal, excessively handsome human guise. He caught my chin in one of his large hands and leaned his face close to mine. His dark eyes bored into mine with such intensity I wanted to look away.
“Don’t ever believe you’re not worth dying for,” he said earnestly. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and for a moment I thought he’d kiss me, right then and there. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted the narcotic thrill of his kiss to ease the ache that was rapidly spreading through my chest.
Instead he took my head and together we shuffled our way through the cornstalks as quietly as we could. There was less traffic further up the road, and we were able to dart across the freeway unseen. It was hell on my injured leg to keep walking, and if I thought my injury was bad it was probably nothing to how Jay felt.
“We need to get you to the hospital,” I panted. His back was slick with blood, I knew shifters were more durable than us mere mortals, but these injuries were nothing to play around with. It didn’t matter how much stronger he was than me, in his human form at least he had as much blood as any of the rest of us. Losing enough of it would kill him.
“No hospitals,” he grunted. “If the dwarves catch up to us, the last place we need to be is in a building at capacity with people.”
“Then why are we going to a diner?” I demanded.
“Because my contacts will be there. My phone is so much scrap metal at the garage and I don’t have the number memorized. If we have any chance of getting a lift out of here we’re going to need his help.”
“We can’t get help if you die,” I argued. “What do you expect us to do in the meantime, pray the bleeding stops?”
He shook his head wearily. He pointed up the road where the lights of a rest stop were faintly visible. One lonely car loitered in the parking lot, but the place looked otherwise empty.
“I have a plan. Just get me to the restrooms in there so we can take these damn things out in private.”
It felt like running a mile, but we finally hobbled our way up to the rest stop. The doors swished open and a blast of cool hit us. It sent unpleasant goosebumps up and down my arms after so much exposure to heat. We shuffled quickly past the tiny little gift shop full of maps and trinkets designed to attract the eye of tourists. The last thing I wanted to do was attract more attention. If the woman behind the counter called the cops, there was no telling what they’d do with us.
He leaned heavily against the wall in the bathroom, his breath coming in pants. He tried his best to slide down the wall and to the ground. It proved impossible with shrapnel in his back and he fell hard on his ass, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. I knelt beside him, my hands fluttering over his body, unsure of where was safe to touch.
“Get the shrapnel out,” he wheezed, hunching at the waist so that I could get a clear shot at his back. It was difficult work, as my own hands were still bleeding from the cut I’d given myself back at his garage, but I did it. In the end I pulled five twisted pieces of metal from his back. Blood had immediately begun to well in the wake of their removal. I was getting concerned with the amount of gore splattered on the walls and floor of the restroom. His eyes were clenched shut and his face was screwed up in pain. I couldn’t get an accurate measure of just how deep the shit we’d landed in was.
“Now what?” I demanded.
“Now I’m going to have to ask for a favor.”
“What sort of favor?”
He opened his eyes a fraction and I could swear the look on his face was…guilty.
“Fuck me.”
My mouth popped open. “What?”
“I can’t explain right now,” he said. “But would you believe me if I said that sex could save my life?”
“It sort of sounds like a con,” I admitted. “And I think you need what little blood you have left.”
He groaned. “If you want to get the woman behind the counter to call 911, be my guest, but I’m not sure we can afford the detour.”
He had a point. These were serious injuries, the kind the doctor would have to report to the police by law. If the police got involved and identified us as a part of the chase, we could be arrested and I’d probably spend the night in jail. I wouldn’t find out if my father or Sammy had survived the crash, and what was worse, the dwarves could find us at either location and there would be no place to run.
What was a little sexcapade to that? So what if it was my first time? It was better than being in jail.
I considered him carefully, wondering how I ought to proceed. I’d heard that missionary was the best for losing your virginity. I’d gotten overly graphic descriptions of what it had been like for Brandy to lose hers in Billy “the willy” Patterson’s truck. An eight inch penis and cowgirl-style didn’t mix very well, apparently. From what I’d felt earlier, Jay had to be at least that big, if not bigger.
But right now it looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over.
“Lay back,” I said, echoing his words from earlier in the evening. He slumped to the floor more than anything else. I was afraid he was going to pass out.
“I need you to focus or this isn’t going to work,” I said, getting a grip on the hem of my shirt. The long-sleeved green shirt had been a present from Lucy, and I was sort of sad it was ruined. I pulled it over my head quickly. Thankfully, I didn’t have to struggle with a bra. One of the advantages I’d always had over Lucy and her enormous boobs was that unless I was attending church, a bra wasn’t strictly necessary.
His eyes focused finally and he lifted a hand weakly to my chest. I was grateful to see that other bits of him were stirring as well. I shimmied out of the shorts. There was no belt to struggle with this time, thank god, and I knelt over him once more, struggling to push his jeans down to his knees. I swallowed nervously when his erection sprang free. Yeah, this wasn’t going to be particularly pleasant for me. But if it saved his life, it was worth a little pain, right?
I straddled his chest. I wished I had been conscious of everything that he’d done the first time. Hell, I just wished I had a first time to compare this to, so I wouldn’t be so anxious. The bathroom floor was cold, and goosebumps had every hair on my body standing on end. Jay plucked at one of my nipples and I bit back a groan of pleasure. I guided his shaft between my legs and clenched my eyes shut. And slowly, I lowered myself onto him.
It felt like a pinch, more than the ripping I’d been afraid of. The discomfort made me pause when his thick, full cock was fully inside of me. Jay let out a breathy sound and arched his hips up into mine.
“So tight,” he groaned.
I braced my hands on his broad chest and began to roll my hips experimentally. As I did, the friction sparked something delicious inside of me. My clit began a steady throbbing ache as I grew used to the sensation of him inside of me.
A familiar, tingling sensation began in the back of my skull. The last time I’d felt it, I’d passed out and presumably had an orgasm. I was pretty sure that was a sign of a heart problem or a stroke, but I didn’t really have the time or opportunity to examine that now. My hips seemed to find a rhythm of their own accord and soon I was riding him.
It was bliss. His skin against mine, the musky male scent of him filling my senses, his cock filling me up. For the first time in my life I felt like the most beautiful thing in the world. There was no self-conscious peering down my shirt, comparing my skinny body to Lucy’s full, womanly one. Right here, right now, I was a woman, and a damned desirable one at that. It was like a warm, golden glow was filling me up.
Wait. I really was glowing. I stared down at my hands, even as my hips continued to slap against his, as the pleasure peaked higher and stole my breath. Static seemed to spring between my fingertips. On some instinct I pressed my hand to his chest. He thrust upward hard with a gasp, and the curls of golden electricity flowed from my fingers through his shirt and presumably inside of him.
He bucked beneath me, another loud moan issuing from his mouth. His eyes rolled back into his head and his jaw went slack. He was utterly still and for a full minute he didn’t move. I wondered if I’d just killed him.
I climbed off of him, beginning to panic. I was in a public rest stop, covered in blood with an unconscious, possibly dead man and I had no clothes on. And he’d possibly come inside of me. But that was a worry for another time. What the hell had I just done? And how had I done it without knowing I could do it?
“Jay?” I asked tentatively. I might have shouted, if that wouldn’t have brought the lady in the shop running. I shook his shoulder. “Jay, come on. You need to wake up. We have to go, remember? Your contact? Chase or something?”
“Chance,” he grumbled and cracked open one eye. “Don’t call him Chase. It annoys him. And he’s a lawman, so he knows all sorts of neat ways to kick our asses.”
Were-bear police? Well that was kind of interesting. “I’ll keep that in mind. But we need to go. Can you sit up?”
He flexed different parts of his body experimentally and frowned. “Yeah, I can. That’s really weird.”
“What is? I thought that’s what the whole thing was about?”
“I thought it would stop the bleeding. Our healing factor is good on its own and add in sex and it can heal minor to moderate injury. But this almost feels like…” He stood easily and crossed over to the bathroom mirror, lifting his shirt as he went. I got a tantalizing glimpse of hard abs and chiseled pectorals before he turned around. He had to crane his neck to see what I had the moment he turned his back.
“There is no injury at all,” he finished. He met my gaze, his brow furrowed in confusion. “How did you do that?”
It was a good question. I wished I knew.