Chapter Seven
Millie
He’d been right. It did look like he was having a seizure. I’d had a friend in high school who had them. It resembled an absence seizure the most, though, it lasted for much longer. When he’d left his body or whatever he’d been doing, he suddenly slumped onto me, like a puppet with its strings cut. And he’d remained like that for five minutes, staring into space, his gaze glassy and unfocused.
So, I knew something was wrong when he began to buck, seizing like an actual epileptic. He flopped onto the ground and began to shake hard. It wasn’t a real seizure, he’d explained. So I had no idea what was happening to him. I was frozen to my seat, wondering if I should dart up the stairs. Why hadn’t we just taken them? There’d been no sign on the door that I could see. He’d even pushed the door to reveal an empty stairwell. This spirit quest of his had been a bad idea.
Did I leave him? I was sure there was nothing I could do to stop whatever attack he was having at the moment except to eliminate its source. But how could I do that? I was pretty sure there were things that could attack him in the spirit world that I couldn’t see. Still, I had to try.
I ran, calling back to the nurse that emerged from one of the rooms that my friend needed medical attention, and I was going to get further medical help. And then I pelted down the hallway to the stairwell. I hit the stairs two at a time when I reached it, going up, rather than down. I knew what direction he’d be headed if he’d been trying to scope out room 404 and had run into trouble.
I didn’t stop when I reached the top of the stairs. I burst out of the door noisily, and it drew the attention of the lone man in the hallway. He tilted his head back a little so he could see me, his long red hair flopping into his face. If I’d had more time, I might have spared a thought for how pretty his face looked, despite an assortment of scars on its surface. But I didn’t have time for that, and I barreled down the hallway toward him.
Just beyond there was a heat haze, and I knew with certainty that it had to be Jay standing there, being attacked by…something. The man jerked one hand in my direction, as if waving away an irksome fly.
For an instant I felt like a fly trapped in amber. The air tried to thicken and congeal around me, stalling my progress down the hall. But even as the enchantment over me, it met resistance. Sparks crackled off of me, and my skin glowed the same red-gold it had when I’d visited Hel.
That caught his attention. The heat haze seemed to disappear as he turned his full attention to me, his verdant eyes going wide at the sight of me, bearing down on him like a comet. I’d love to say that I thought it through, that I’d planned what I did next as a daring act of heroism to save Jay’s life and distract the bad guy. But that would be a lie. The only thing that was going through my mind is that he was hurting Jay and that no one was going to hurt Jay. Not while I was around to stop it.
With a loud cry, I flung my body into the man’s middle and sent us both toppling to the floor. He was spare, and had more limbs than torso. We were similar in that way. In other ways, too, I noted. His hair was similar shade red as my own, and his fingers were long and tapered. He had a nice, angular face.
I punched him in the pointy nose. To my surprise, he punched me right back.
And that was how Jay found us, a few minutes later, leaning against opposite walls, each clutching our noses and glaring at each other. Jay skidded to a stop a few feet away, looking puzzled.
“You’re okay,” he said, looking me over.
“He hit me,” my voice came out thick and nasally.
“You hit me first,” he countered.
“You were attacking my fiancé,” I stumbled over the last word. It was difficult to remember what we were supposed to be to each other. I had only just managed to stop myself from calling him “my boyfriend”. I was sure that would have gone over well.
“He’s trying to steal away my mark,” he said, sounding just as annoyed as I did. “Freya set me to guard Idun. She didn’t say she was going to send you to come get her.”
Why would she? I’d never even met the lady. From what, I’d gathered Freya was a goddess, the mastermind of this scheme to keep the Gods mortal. Why would she have her guard-dog step aside for a short, skinny mechanic? But that really was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? How had I ended up in the middle of this mess? Why were my father and his friend in on the scheme?
It really was a shame I’d never gotten good at poker. Sammy always took my chips when we played, because I never mastered the bluff. I’d need the best poker face in the world to pull the wool over the eyes of this guy, who I could safely assume was a God at this point.
“But I’m here now. So you should let me through.”
He cackled. It sounded dry and brittle, like wood crackling in a fireplace. “Ah, that’s good. Do another. I’ve been starved for entertainment, camping in this dull place.”
“I mean it,” I said, grinding my back teeth in frustration. “Let us through. We need Idun.”
The amusement was gone as quickly as it came, and his face settled into hard lines. It made him look a lot older than I’d originally thought. Closer to forty than thirty, at least in physical age. There was the grief of ages in his green eyes as they stared at me.
“And for what purpose? You’re going to drag her back there and force her to peddle the apples to one or both sides. The Gods will return to their former glory and then the war will be upgraded from messy and pointless to catastrophic and completely asinine.”
“If we can return her to the Aesir and Vanir then maybe—”
“You think they’ll stop?” He laughed that dry, crackling laugh again, though this time it sounded bitter. “Dear girl, they are never going to stop. They’ll keep fighting each other over trivial things until they stop. The only way we stop the fighting is to allow the Gods to die off, as they should.”
“But three races of shapeshifter will die out!” I cried. Jay and Chance had explained it to me in the car. It wasn’t just a religious war for most. It was a matter of survival. It wouldn’t happen immediately, but as the Norse pantheon faded, their members dying off as war or age plucked them from existence, their legacy would die too. The ber-serkr and Ulfhednar, or bear and wolf shifters, would be directly affected. Generations would pass and the animal would go weaker, the offspring less capable of holding onto the traditions until all that was left was humans, or something approximating one.
“Chance told me that living without the bear is agony for a shifter. There will be a generation of lost people, wandering and in pain with no hope for a cure. What on earth could be worth all of that? What does Freya think is worth committing genocide by proxy for?”
The god raised a thin, slanting brow at me. “You really don’t understand, do you?”
“I understand that if you don’t get out of my way, I’m going to sock you in the nose again. And this, time I’m going to break it.”
“Threats of bodily harm are less intimidating when you’ve had your mouth stitched closed by angry dwarves or spent a lifetime with a snake dripping venom on your face,” he muttered, but he moved out of my way. “Go on then. But I’m telling you, you’ll be happier if you leave her where she is. You don’t want to follow the path it will lead you down.”
I didn’t pay any attention to what he was saying. I strode toward the door, reaching for the knob. Jay tried to warn me, but too late. I let out a half shriek of pain when my hand touched the metal. It felt white hot, like I’d stuck my hand directly onto a stove top. I pulled my hand away quickly, and found my palm blistered.
“Oops.” The word was robbed of any meaning by the impish smile that crossed his face. Bastard. “I might have forgotten to mention that the door is heavily warded. Allow me a moment to disarm them.”
I took a step back, resisting the urge to give him a swift kick in his divine behind. He seemed to get a laugh out of watching people suffer. After all, suffering was the essence of comedy—as long as you weren’t the one going through the pain. This asshole must be Loki. Jay took my hand, examining it.
“That’s really strange,” he said. “Usually magic like this is ambivalent to humans. Doesn’t help, doesn’t harm. You sure you’re a hundred percent human?”
“Pretty sure,” I muttered. If mom had been a were-animal, surely, I’d show signs of that by now.
Loki stepped back from the door with a flourish, smiling that impish smile the whole time. I didn’t trust him at my back. I was sure he might attack us again. But what choice did we have? Idun was definitely here, and the Vanir needed Idun back in the worst way. So, we entered the room warily, standing rigidly beside each other in case something tried to attack us.
The hotel theme seemed to bleed over into the rooms, as well. There was a full sized bed pressed against one wall, and a nightstand nearby. The room had one large window, and the floral drapes were drawn shut, so the room was in semi-darkness. One half of the room looked lived in. The bookshelf was full to bursting with titles on every subject that Loki could get his hands on. The rocker beside it was surrounded by still more books and a blanket that he must have thrown off when we arrived. The other half of the room was dusty. The bed was made neatly, the nightstand was clear of everything but a glass of water and a Dixie cup that had probably held pills.
The woman on the bed was so small that I overlooked her at first. It looked like I’d be able to carry her, and that was saying something. It seemed like someone had put a see-through garbage bag over her head. Whatever it was warped her features, but not enough that I couldn’t tell there was something beneath the haze. As I peered closer, I saw that she was quite young-looking—way too young to be in a place like this. If it weren’t for the subtle curves of her hips and bust I would have actually thought she was a child. Her dark hair fell into her face and she stared absently down at her hands, folded into her lap.
“They’re coming,” she muttered. “They’re coming, they’re coming.”
“You’ll have to forgive her,” he said with a shrug. “She’s been a bit batty of late.”
“Is it Freya’s spell?” Jay asked, frowning at the tiny goddess. She didn’t look well at all. If Loki had been sent here to take care of her, he was doing a piss poor job of it.
“No, I think it’s the mix of her apples and the Clonazepam,” Loki said, waving a hand airily at the fruit basket that balanced on top of the bookshelf. “They’re something of a stimulant, I discovered. Apparently, it confuses the body when you mix uppers and downers. Oh, well, she’ll shake it off in a day or two.”
My mouth popped open. I’d seen one too many high school kids O.D. that way to be okay with him spouting that so cavalierly. “You could have killed her.”
“The apples balance it all out in the end. Don’t worry.”
Jay crossed the room, putting himself between Loki and the befuddled Idun. I wasn’t sure if she was even aware we were here. She just kept looking at her hands, muttering to herself that someone was coming. He got an arm under her bony shoulders and another beneath her legs. He scooped her off the bed as if she weighed no more than a puppy.
“Let’s get you out of here,” he said quietly.
Loki grabbed the basket of apples before I could. “We’ll need those, too,” I insisted.
“They’re coming with me,” he said with a smile. “Call it an insurance policy.”
“Who’s to say that you won’t sell these to the Aesir to save your skinny ass?” I demanded. Black fury contorted his pretty face and it was back again, that bitter, cynical man that hid behind the boyish face.
“I’ll see this whole world burn before I deliver these to Asgard. You do what you will, but I am never going back. Ever.”
Well, if we had to have a trickster God riding along, at least we knew this one had a major hate-on for our enemy. He and I followed Jay down the stairs at a slower pace, keeping in step with each other.
“It would really help if you’d tell us exactly why Freya wanted to kill all the Norse gods,” I said in an undertone. “It might go a long way in helping us trust you.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “And why would I want your trust? Trust is fickle, and too easily broken.”
“What do you want?” I asked, getting frustrated. It was hard to learn anything about this man besides what I could infer from his appearance in pop culture. He thought about it, as we tromped down the stairs to the first floor.
“A promise,” he finally said, pulling me to a halt before we could reach the front desk. Up ahead I could hear a commotion, and made out the nurse’s stern objections to checking my “aunt” out at such short notice and without proper authorization.
“What sort of promise?”
“You will do what is in your power to see that myself and my children are treated fairly, if you win. My grandsons were slaughtered not even a month ago, for Aesir entertainment. My son lies in chains, waiting for Ragnarok. And my daughter was forever denied a lover from their oh-so-perfect clan.”
“And what power do I have to fix any of that?” I asked.
“Swear it.”
What did I have to lose? If I couldn’t accomplish it after giving it the old college try, he couldn’t be mad. I was only human. “Fine. I swear it.”
“Blood oath.”
I heaved a sigh. “Look, I’ve bled enough for one day. Can we swear a blood oath when I have something sanitary to cut my thumb with?”
He shrugged. “Before we reach Virginia.”
“How do you know we’re headed to Virginia?”
“Perhaps because the conflict has taken place almost exclusively in the Blue Ridge Mountain Range and around Roanoke in particular?”
Oh. Well, now I just felt stupid. “Right. We’ll do it tonight. With any luck I can actually shower tonight.”
A lascivious little smile crept onto his thin mouth. “Now, that I would like to see.”
I bristled. “I don’t date creeps like you.”
“But you’re willing to marry a broken bear. How interesting.”
“Broken?”
“Beyond repair, maybe,” Loki said happily as we continued up the hallway. “You are not his first, and not even his most treasured. You will always live in the shadow of the love that came before.”
Though I’d known all that, it still cut me to the core to hear him put it like that. I’d sort of come to like Jay over the last day or two. I might even be in love with him. But Loki was right. There was no way I could live up to the mate, the truest of true loves he’d found in Val. I was like a print of a priceless piece of art. No matter how nice I looked to him, I was still pretty shabby looking compared to the glory of the original.
“Let’s go,” I muttered. I wanted to sit as far away from him as I could in our stolen car.
Loki propped his elbow on the counter when we reached the front desk and casually blew fine, orange dust off his palm. The dust, which hadn’t been there a moment before, fluttered down onto the poor woman’s head. She looked dazed and confused.
“And I was saying…” she mumbled.
“To have a nice day,” Loki finished for her, beaming. “Thank you so much for your help, Miss.”
“Um…yeah. Nice day. See you,” she murmured as we passed by.
I pushed Chance and Lucy out the door before anyone could protest. I wasn’t sure how long Loki’s magic pixie dust solution was going to hold, and we probably needed to put some distance between ourselves and this place before someone discovered that Idun was missing. How many felonies were we up to now? We’d evaded police, were probably wanted for the two murders that the dwarf had committed, kidnapped a person and were planning to take her across state lines. If we got caught at this rate, we were all going away for a very long time.
The sun was beginning its decent to the western horizon. It wasn’t even nightfall, and already I was tired. The sleepless night we’d spent in the rest stop and diner had really thrown off my circadian rhythm. When we reached our stolen wheels I was going to curl up with my batty “aunt” and fall asleep again.
Or at least that had been the plan. I spotted the knife flying in our direction before anyone else. It took me a moment to recognize the cutlery as one of the bloodied pieces from the diner, and then another to realize that it was zipping straight for Loki.
Loki, who was the only able-bodied God in our group. Loki, who apparently had bad blood with the dwarves. Loki, who had strode to the front of the procession to needle Chance, who looked extremely irritated by his presence here. Loki, who carried Idun’s apples in the basket swinging from his arm.
Loki, who’d asked that I make sure that his family was protected from the Aesir, and presumably their allies.
I didn’t think. I only acted. I ran forward, a sound escaping my throat. Maybe it was a warning. Maybe it was a scream, I wasn’t sure. Before anyone had a chance to do more than look my direction, I’d shoved my body in front of Loki’s, arms outstretched, knocking him backwards into Chance.
And then a steak knife lodged itself up to the hilt in my heart.