Subversion, page 3
“I can’t—” The words clogged my throat, the room spun, and a merciful blackness engulfed my mind.
My world swam back into view from a new angle. One that looked like a ceiling as I pried one eye open. Instinct born of years of training kicked in, and I did as much of a check of my surroundings as I could without giving away that I was on full alert. My head rested against something harder than a pillow but softer than the floor, and was slightly elevated above the rest of my body.
The textures pressing into my skin said I was still in Frey’s bathrobe, but a soft plush brushed my hand. Upholstery? And the fingers tracing along my scalp and running through my hair were strong but gentle.
“Welcome back, Duckie.” Fen’s greeting was a blend of concern and relief.
And apparently they knew I was awake. I opened my eyes and confirmed that yup, my head was on his leg and I was lying on the couch. What happened? The cliché question stuck in my throat. I could see Artura a few feet away, and I wasn’t giving her the satisfaction. “Thanks.”
“I didn’t know that would happen, I’m sorry.” She sounded contrite.
I wasn’t buying it. “Uh-huh.” Whatever that was. Some horrible ancient-being mind trick.
“I understand Dahlia is something special,” Fen said. “But you’re going to tell me out of the billions of people in the world, who have come and gone throughout history, that she just happens to be the first one of you to appear since humanity came into existence?”
Plus there was that whole I’m a wimpy mortal deal I had going on.
“She’s not the first of our children, no.” Artura kept her distance, her hands clasped in front of her. Not reassuring given how quickly she’d moved before. “We learned eons ago that we can bear human children. None of them have been like us. There have always only been the three of us, and now that Skuld is gone, the visions say Dahlia will take her place.”
The words snagged on my thoughts. “Wait. Back up.” I sat, my fear replaced with a creeping anger. “Did you raise any of those kids?”
“No.” Artura looked at me as if the question was unnecessary.
The fuck? “So, you’re these three ancient beings who think you can see the future of all of humanity—”
“Only some of the more crucial highlights,” she cut me off.
I glared. “And you realize one day, thousands of years ago, oh, hey, we can have babies. And your next step is to just fuck around at random times and I’m assuming, what, just leave them somewhere?” Did they really just dump all of them, supposedly my actual siblings, into whatever system did or didn’t exist at the time?
“We’ve made sure they all had other lives.” Artura’s reply didn’t fill me with confidence.
“Lives like mine? Foster care until some random fucking god decided I might be good enough to kill for their cause? And now you walk in here with some you’re the chosen one crap?” Now that I was talking, the anger flowed. “You’re a dragon, Dahlia. Fuck that Harry Potter, Bilbo Baggins bullshit. When TOM took me in, they fed me a similar line. You can be a hero. You can save the world.”
“We don’t have the power to save the world,” Artura said.
Was she fucking serious? I was on my feet before logic caught up with me, stalking forward until I was nose to nose with Artura. “One—I think you’re full of shit. I’m not a fucking dragon. I’m an orphan who’s sick of self-righteous immortals. And speaking of sick of, I’ve had it up to here”—I waved my hand over my head—“with prophecies and inaction and doing things just because someone who can blink from place to place said to do them. So you can just fuck off with whatever this is.”
Fear and reality caught up to me as the words finished tumbling past my lips. Did I just tell off a dragon? Would she claw my heart out now? Tear NEON apart?
“Please Dahlia, if you would just hear me out.” Artura never raised her voice.
So much bullshit. “No. I won’t.” My insides were jelly and adrenaline and terror, but I wasn’t backing down.
“If she’s not interested, you need to leave.” Fen stood next to me, hand on my shoulder.
“Dahlia.” Frey’s tone was sharp.
Artura gave me another glance. “It’s all right. If she doesn’t want to listen, then now’s not the time to talk.” She turned and walked from the room, closing the apartment door softly behind her.
The moment I heard the latch click, fury drained away, taking my strength with it. I sank to my knees in the middle of the living room. What the fuck was that?
FIVE
FENRIR
For the second time tonight, I scooped Dahlia up and set her on the couch. At least she was conscious this time, though her blank stare and the faint scowl frozen on her face made me wonder if she was in shock.
I understood where both she and Frey were coming from, the two different attitudes toward Artura. Frey was as much a believer in the ancient ones as his followers were in him. It didn’t matter how far the curtain had been pulled back, revealing that Urd and Artura had tossed their words into the world and then stepped back and let the gods tear themselves apart over them. Habits like deference and respect for certain individuals were hard to break.
Like Dahlia, I had a less than stellar opinion of most gods, thanks largely to my lineage. That meant what I needed to say to her was out of concern for her having the truth, and not because I felt she should bow to anyone, including Artura. “Maybe you should’ve heard her out.”
Dahlia blinked away the thousand yard stare and stared at me. “Why?” Her question was flat. “Because she might be family? I’ll reach out to her if you’re going to call your daddy and tell him you want to reconcile.”
I raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t too badly shaken if her sarcasm was still intact. Loki was my father, Hel my sister, and I’d spent centuries distancing myself from them and their justifications for who and why they killed. “Because if what she said is true, you may need her insight.”
And because I knew what it was like to not have control over one’s other form. To lose myself so completely--
“She’s got more knowledge than all of us. She came to you in peace and respect,” Frey said.
Dahlia flopped into the cushions with a huff. “She dumped me on a doorstep—”
“Skuld did that.” Frey’s voice hardened. “And you already knew Skuld was an asshole.”
She fixed her glare on him. “I’m not a dragon. Believe me, I love the idea. Not only is that the ultimate in immortality, but… a fucking dragon. Wow.” She tugged open her robe to expose her hip, and the darkening marks shaped like fingertips I’d left on her hip. “When was the last time you had a simple bruise stick around for more than a second?”
“I haven’t eaten all day. Do you get delivery up here? The kitchen’s still open downstairs, isn’t I? I’m famished.” Dahlia pulled the robe closed again and stood.
The jarring change in subject meant Dahlia didn’t want to talk about this anymore. If the situation were any other one of hundreds of thousands of options, I’d let her get away with it. There was no reasonable explanation for Artura’s visit beyond the truth, and an inexperienced being wielding magic was one of the most dangerous forces on the planet. I knew from a personal experience that made me ache when I touched the edges of the memory. I couldn’t imagine being a dragon lessened that risk.
The conversation wasn’t over, but it wouldn’t start again if Dahlia shut down. She needed to be guided back to the subject and kept close in the meantime.
“I brought your bag up.” I nodded to the messenger bag near the door. “If you want to put on your own clothes, we’ll make some food.”
“Yeah, okay.” She grabbed her purse and headed into the bedroom.
I remembered when Frey gave her that bag. I’d rarely seen someone so excited over something so simple. It was charmed to be able to hold most anything, and she called it her own personal bag of holding. She always carried extra clothes, her laptop, and other necessities.
When she was gone, I let my shoulders slump and turned to Frey. The past called for my attention, carried on my concern for her, and I couldn’t find the words to express the gnawing inside.
Frey rested interlocked fingers at the back of my neck, and rested his forehead against mine.
The familiar tenderness was soothing. “We have to change her mind,” I murmured as I wrapped my arms around his waist.
He brushed his lips over mine. “We will.”
We stood wrapped in each other while I absorbed his calm.
“When you told Dahlia we’ll make you dinner…” Frey trailed off.
I pulled away with a grin. “I meant you. Yes.”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head, his smile intact. “At least start the coffee. We might need it.”
“That’s fair.” I waited for him to turn away, gave his ass a playful swat, and followed him into the kitchen.
We worked in comfortable silence, working with and around each other with practiced ease. Some people were surprised to find out we were in a committed relationship. After being together for hundreds of years, the possessive need to mark my territory by always being affectionate in public had become something deeper and more private.
I didn’t care if Frey fucked around. Even if he weren’t a god of fertility, I wouldn’t have an issue with it, though it didn’t hurt that I frequently joined in. I cared that he was mine, from now until the end of eternity.
“Where should we eat?” Frey asked as we finished preparing plates.
“The sun’s about to come up in Milan.”
He smiled softly. “Done.”
I pushed open what looked like a pantry door, to a balcony that sat two stories up, looking out over Italy in the pre-dawn light.
While Frey could create a door to most anywhere on the planet, as long as the place wasn’t blocked by a different magic, it worked best if the portal was to a familiar place. We owned property dotted in various places, and this was always one of my favorites at sunrise.
Dahlia joined us, offering a smile though the distant, not-quite-here stare was back. “Thank you,” she said softly, and she took a seat. She tugged a smaller chunk of turkey from her sandwich, and pulled off tiny pieces to nibble on.
“It was good seeing you on stage tonight.” Frey’s tone was conversational.
Dahlia glanced up, then returned her attention to picking at her food. “It was good being on stage.”
“Is that why we got to see you? Minato called?” My concerns from earlier trickled back. The ones I’d pushed aside in lieu of more blatant news.
Dahlia shook her head. “She asked for a favor once I got here, because her dance partner called in, and I can’t tell her no. But it was a nice distraction.”
Her dance partner? Definitely suspicious.
Dahlia picked up half her sandwich, and set it down again with a sigh. “Bragi found us. A few weeks ago when we were apartment hunting. He made it clear we couldn’t hide.” She poured large quantities of sugar into her coffee, followed by almost as much cream, and fixed her gaze on her spoon as she stirred.
Bragi was one of the gods who ran TOM. A bard and god of music who had become more concerned with his immortality than his believers as time went on. Like most of the gods who sat on the TOM board of directors. It was my understanding Magnus had been close to him at one time, but not anymore.
There was more to Dahlia’s story. The same thing she held back when she got to the club.
Frey and I ate, to give her time to fill in the blanks if she wanted. She sipped her coffee. Nibbled her sandwich. Back to the coffee. “I think they’re looking for someone outside of TOM to eliminate me. I say think because I’m certain I was meant to see the note, so I don’t know how much of it was real. It was searchable by my name, and it was poorly encrypted. Enough to keep some skriddie out, but it took me about two seconds to crack. Because the password was Duckie.” She finished by dragging in a long breath.
A chill ran through me. I called her Duckie because everything seemed to roll off her, like water off a duck’s back, and while the nickname wasn’t a secret, as far as I knew no one else used it. Which brought me back to my concerns about Minato or someone else inside the club having less than innocent plans around Dahlia.
“I don’t know where to hide.” Dahlia looked sad. Scared. Frustrated.
“Here. Always. I meant that,” Frey said.
And I agreed but, “Maybe hiding isn’t the answer.”
“Do you want her to wave a flag and say here I am, come and get me?” It didn’t sound great when Frey put it that way.
But that was my plan. “More or less.”
Dahlia’s head shot up, she met my gaze, and some of the lines around her eyes vanished. “Because if I keep running, I’ll always be wondering where they’re going to find me.”
Smart girl.
“But if you stand your ground, you know exactly where they’ll be looking, and that gives you the advantage.”
Frey raised an eyebrow. “What are you going to do?”
“Dance,” I said.
He shook his head, and focused on Dahlia. “You looked good on stage tonight, and I’d love to have you up there, but I can also put you someplace no one will find you.”
Dahlia turned her attention from me to Frey. “That’s reassuring, but also sounds kind of sucky,” she said. “I only have so many years ahead of me. I’d like to not spend any more of them cowering because of TOM. But are you talking, we hang a sign on the front door that says Dahlia’s dancing at NEON?”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
Her frown was back. “What if Artura is right and I’m one of them? A new fate? I don’t want to be like them. What if I already am and I don’t know it?”
Welcome to Tangents-R-Us—population Dahlia. I wasn’t complaining. Both conversations needed to be had.
“You can call her back. See if she’ll still talk.” Frey’s tone was kind but firm.
She shook her head so hard I wondered if it might pop off. “Nope, nope, and one-million percent nope.” She turned wide eyes on me. “You could teach me, right?”
I wouldn’t be able to ignore my own past, my own mistakes, much longer if she kept down this path. But her safety, the world’s safety, was more important than my comfort. “How to be a dragon? No.”
“How to see if it’s true that I am one. Or whatever. I mean, they summon their forms like you do. They can be different sizes, the way you can.”
“ It may look similar, but there’s no way for me to say it’s the same. A berserker’s change doesn’t work the same way mine does. I was born with the knowledge. I knew how to change before I knew how to walk. It’s all instinct.”
I dragged in a deep breath. “But you do need to learn. If you can’t control it, especially if you lose yourself when you shift… It’s hard to come back from that.” I still had dreams about being trapped inside my wolf. About how close I’d come to surrendering any humanity I had and just devouring anything in my path, even if it meant the world burned.
SIX
FREYR
Racks of costumes stretched out in front of us, offering a vast assortment of lace, satin, and leather. Some of the dancers made their own outfits, but I had plenty on hand as well. I wandered up one row and down the next, Dahlia by my side and Fen standing watch.
“Do you have a preference?” I asked.
“Black?”
I glanced at her Hackers Do It with Their Fingers T-shirt, and the way it bled into a matching black skirt over even blacker leggings. If I could blend that look with the burlesque theme, it’d be fascinating to see her dance in it.
“How about, tell me if anything grabs your attention,” I said.
It had been late when we pointed Dahlia toward the guest room and told her to get some sleep last night. Letting her stay here—keeping her here—was for her safety and everyone else’s. If she shifted, it might wreck the house, but I’d be close enough to take her someplace remote to deal with it.
I hoped. Skuld had the ability to keep people from phasing in and out of places, but I was operating on the assumption and hope that was a learned skill and not something she’d invoke at random.
“This is pretty.” She was holding up an all black dress trimmed with violet
I didn’t like the idea of her doing this—dancing as a way to draw out her foes, telling Artura off, or ignoring her potential heritage—but I understood the whys behind all three. And if this was the path we were on, if we were putting her name on our club, she was going to be the best headliner we’d ever had.
The dress Dahlia had was attractive, but it wasn’t unique. “All of it or just bits? Pick out what you like, we’re having you something custom made.” If I stared long enough, something would inspire me. Something unique to her.
After she’d retired to her room last night, Fen and I headed to bed too. A lot of immortals could forgo sleep for days if needed, and we could as well. But I was a big fan of shedding everything and wrapping ourselves in each other and blankets, and replenishing our bodies and souls.
This news was gnawing at him. The pain of the past was reflected in his eyes.
It was still there this morning, as he watched us, watched the world around us, and was on high alert for anything.
“I can’t believe I’m getting my own personal cosplay tailor.” Dahlia dove back into the racks, enthusiasm radiating from her.
The outfit would determine the dance, though I was already running through those possibilities as well. After long enough I lost track of time, we had a short stack of dresses, with her favorite piece from each, draped over chairs near Fen.
“Strip.” His voice was growly. He did that so well.
Dahlia smirked. “Yes, that’s part of the show.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you can try on the outfit.”
“Yes, sir.” Her sass was tangible.
