Loki's Gambit, page 84
part #1 of I Bring the Fire Series
Beside her, Beatrice protests. “They’re warts, not spots.”
They turn a corner and Gerðr’s rooms come into view. “They are not warts,” says Amy, frowning at her grandmother’s prejudice. Poor toads.
But Beatrice doesn’t answer her. Instead, she puts a hand on Amy’s arm. “Amy, there should be guards here.”
Staring down the empty hallway, Amy feels her heart sink. Poop. Another delay. “Huh. Yeah, I’ll have to call someone to open the doors for us.”
“Call security. Now,” Beatrice says, stepping in front of Amy.
Holding her coffee in one hand, Amy fumbles for her phone with the other and finds Mr. Squeakers instead. “I think maybe I…”
There is the creaking of hinges down the hall. Amy lifts her head to see the door to Gerðr’s room swinging open. Skírnir steps out, Gerðr slung over his shoulder. A magic detector in Amy’s pocket begins to chirp and Skírnir and Gerðr begin to flicker into invisibility.
Amy’s gasps. No. If they become invisible, Gerðr—
She stops thinking. Dropping her coffee, she pulls Mr. Squeakers from her pocket. In front of her, Beatrice shouts, “Stop!” With too much grace and speed for a woman her age, Beatrice opens the umbrella and holds it in front of them like a shield.
Against all possible logic—or magic—the flickering around Skírnir and Gerðr does stop. Amy’s jaw drops. Mr. Squeakers gives a tentative squeak and Skírnir’s eyes fly wide.
“What enchantment is this?” the mage demands.
Before Amy can fully process the question, Beatrice whips out a handgun from her pocket.
“Put her down!” Beatrice snarls. Amy’s eyes nearly pop from her head. Beatrice has a handgun?
Letting Gerðr slide from his back into a careless heap, Skírnir’s lips curl in a sneer. “Out of the way, old woman.”
“No, Grandma…” Amy says.
But the words aren’t even fully out of her mouth before Skírnir lifts his wand. Beatrice drops the umbrella and wraps both hands around the handgun. There is the blast of a gunshot and then the sound of a bullet ricocheting off of metal.
Skírnir laughs, and an orb of something orange and molten-looking begins to form at the end of the wand. There is a ring of gunshot, and Amy barely sees the orb shoot off the tip of the wand a second later—she’s already being tackled to the floor by Beatrice.
Heat flashes over Amy’s back and legs, and she turns to see molten goo smoldering on the carpet just past her feet.
Beatrice is on top of her, pressing her into the ground. In front of her, all Amy can see is the open umbrella. Mr. Squeakers is hissing in her hand.
Beyond the flimsy shield of garish pink and flowers, Skírnir says, “You will pay for this.”
Chapter Three
Bohdi hears the sound of a gunshot and Skírnir’s laughter. He races in the direction of the sound without thinking, his hand going to his knife, the only weapon he has. He turns one corner, and then another and arrives just in time to see Amy and Beatrice huddled behind Beatrice’s umbrella. Something molten and glowing is smoldering in the carpet just beyond their feet.
“You will pay for this,” Skírnir says.
Bohdi lifts his eyes to see Skírnir raising his wand beyond the two women on the floor. The magician is standing over the crumpled body of Gerðr.
Without thinking, Bohdi flips open his blade and prepares to throw it. Before it leaves his fingers, Skírnir sways on his feet, his gaze going somewhere off into the distance.
It’s only then that Bohdi sees the dark circle of a bullet wound square in the center of Skírnir’s forehead and the thin trail of blood trickling down one side of his nose. For an instant, his eyes meet Bohdi’s. He looks—confused. And then he falls to his knees, wavers, then falls face-first onto the floor.
Beatrice lifts her head in the magician’s direction. “First shot was a warning,” she grumbles.
Behind Bohdi comes the sound of footsteps. He snaps his knife shut, slips it into his pocket, and backs around the corner, just as agents rush past him. He sees his buddy Marion with them, she gives him a barely perceptible nod, but then rushes down the hall.
Bohdi turns to see Steve and Thor walking shoulder to shoulder.
Scowling, Steve says, “What happened!”
Bohdi shrugs and shakes his head, still a bit in shock. “Beatrice shot Skírnir?”
“Skírnir is still in the cafeteria…” says Steve, his voice trailing off. Pulling out his phone, Steve calls someone while barreling past Bohdi with Thor a step behind. Bohdi hears shouts beyond them, and then Thor’s voice. “What treachery is this?”
Without really thinking about it, Bohdi backs into the dead-end hallway. As he watches the agents race past, he has a revelation. Thor needed Skírnir to open World Gates.
His heart starts to beat fast. Despite Steve’s words to the contrary, humans do have a working theory about how to open World Gates…He takes a ragged breath, remembering what Amy said. The Norns will tell you anything, in exchange for an object of power or an impossible task.
Turning, he takes a few more steps down the hallway. Fingers shaking, Bohdi touches his back pocket where his wallet with the picture of his maybe-parents is.
The FBI has an ongoing investigation into Bohdi’s past. But so far, they don’t even know his real name—and the people in the picture, his maybe, probably, parents—their identities are even farther off. Ruth has told him how much she and Henry worried about Steve when he was in Afghanistan…how they still worry about him every single day.
Do the man and woman in the picture worry about Bohdi?
He hears Thor shout, “The old woman killed a loyal subject of Asgard!”
Bohdi’s attention snaps to the present as Steve roars back, “That loyal subject was trying to kidnap one of our own!”
Thor shouts again. There is the sound of something hitting a wall hard. Above Bohdi, some plaster falls to the floor, and then he hears Thor’s footsteps thundering closer. The giant man passes the hallway that Bohdi is in without even glancing up, hammer gripped tightly in his hand.
Bohdi blinks at the hammer. He remembers Amy holding Laevithin, Loki’s magical sword, two years before in a broken cage of Promethean wire. An instant later, she had vanished into another dimension.
Bohdi hesitates only a second more before racing after Thor.
Thor is past security and out the revolving doors before Bohdi catches up to him. Police are redirecting cars and foot traffic away from the sidewalks and street surrounding Thor’s chariot. Even though it’s Chicago, and nearly noon, Thor and Bohdi are oddly alone. If Bohdi is quiet, and Thor doesn’t get too close to the agents guarding his chariot, they won’t be overheard.
Sprinting forward, Bohdi grabs hold of one of Thor’s forearms. “Wait!” he shouts.
Thor’s response is instantaneous. Whipping his body around he wraps a huge hand around Bohdi’s neck and raises his hammer over Bohdi’s head.
The ADUO agents by the chariot start to move in their direction, but Bohdi waves a hand. They slow but do not stop completely.
“What do you want?” Thor snarls, the hand around Bohdi’s neck tightening a fraction.
Bohdi grins, even though the pressure on his windpipe is making his eyes water. “To help you!”
Thor snarls.
“I know where the Norn…gate…is,” Bohdi grinds out.
Thor releases his neck, and gasping for air, Bohdi turns to the guards, smiles, and waves. They stop, though their leader’s scowl is visible over his sunglasses.
Leaning forward, Bohdi whispers, “And I can take you to Nornheim myself.”
“You’re lying!” says Thor.
Actually, Bohdi is just maybe over promising. ADUO’s research is mostly theoretical.
“No,” Bohdi says. He lowers his voice to a barely audible whisper. “Here’s how….”
When he’s done, Thor nods his head, though his eyes are narrowed. The agents are still far enough away that they can’t have heard, but their eyes are fixed on Bohdi and the Viking.
Giving them a smile, Bohdi takes a pen out of his pocket and a battered business card from his wallet. Thrusting them into Thor’s hand, Bohdi shouts at the ADUO agents. “Just asking the big guy for his autograph!”
They’re a little too far away to hear—but Bohdi thinks he sees a guy’s nostrils flare in a snort.
Chapter Four
Even though she’s wearing a thick fleece sweater under her lab coat, Amy shivers. She’s in the magical creature morgue in ADUO’s basement.
The room is white walled and has steel operating tables. It would almost look like a human morgue except that the operating tables are elephant sized. A single troll cadaver covered by an enormous swath of fabric lies on a table at the center of the room. She shivers again, not because the morgue creeps her out; it’s just really cold.
Putting a hand in the pocket of her lab coat, Amy idly rubs her thumb between Mr. Squeakers’ ears. The little mouse makes a tiny sigh and curls into a tighter ball in her pocket, apparently untroubled by the nearly overpowering smell of formaldehyde in the room.
Brow furrowing, Amy remembers Beatrice’s words as her grandmother followed Steve and Laura Stodgill into Steve’s office.
“Don’t worry, dear, Steve is very competent at these things. He’ll get me off the hook,” Beatrice had said.
“It’s a good thing we were already in the process of getting you authorized to carry a weapon on premises,” Steve grumbled.
“You were?” Amy said. Her grandmother hadn’t told her that. Her grandmother hadn’t even told her that she could fire a gun—let alone fire a gun so well.
Steve, Laura, and Beatrice had all stared at Amy. She'd felt her face flush as she realized she was missing something. Patting her arm, Beatrice leaned forward and whispered, “I think that’s the story we’re going with.”
“Beatrice, shut the door!” Steve shouted.
With an apologetic look, Beatrice had shut the door, but not before Amy heard Steve grumble. “You’re going to help me deal with the blizzard of paperwork this is going to cause.”
Amy had found herself staring at Steve’s door, still shaken by the sight of Skírnir planted face-first in a puddle of his own blood, Gerðr’s guards in a bleeding heap just inside the giantess’s cell door, and Gerðr herself, concussed and barely conscious, being carried away on a stretcher by ADUO’s paramedics.
But it was what she signed up for when she chose to come back to Chicago. So she’d taken a deep breath and come to her lab.
Now in front of the covered cadaver, her nose wrinkles at the smell of chemical preservatives. The only good thing about the morning was that Odin’s plans to contact the Norns had been delayed.
Bowing her head she tightens her ponytail. Maybe Steve can convince Gerðr to open the gate to Nornheim for them? If ADUO could get to the Nornheim first…if they could find the Norns….
Hoping for some clue that could help, she closes her eyes and picks up the strand of memory she’d seen before.
In an impossibly short time, Odin, Sleipnir, and the Einherjar are standing in the shadow of the cavern formed by the enormous column’s roots. The ceiling of the cavern is at least as high as seven men, the mouth at the base more than thirty paces wide. They have too few men to defend the place adequately, and yet it’s the most defensible position they’ve seen.
Odin pulls Sleipnir to a halt and Loki has weight again. Dismounting, Odin barks at the two Einherjar closest to him. “You two with me.” Gesturing toward the rest of the men, he says, “Prepare for the adze attack!” Loki looks behind and sees the shadows in the sky. They look to be in the same position they were before, but now they’re closing fast.
Loki prepares to dismount from Sleipnir. “Can I help you make the gate, Allfather?” he asks. To see a World Gate created, not just opened, might make all this terror worthwhile.
But Odin holds up a hand. “Your talents are not in this, Loki.”
Loki stills on Sleipnir’s back. Odin comes and lays a hand on top of Loki’s own. “Help the Einherjar, but stay on Sleipnir—I’ve gone through too much to lose you again.”
Blinking, Loki nods, tightening his hands in the animal’s mane. Odin murmurs a word to Sleipnir, and the great animal turns back toward the warriors.
As they stride away, lights flickering in the great column catch Loki’s eye. Whispering for Sleipnir to halt, he turns to look. The column’s surface shimmers, and Loki begins to see shapes forming, as though reflected in a milky mirror. Before his eyes, the shapes coalesce into a scene: an infant with pale, nearly translucent Jotunn skin and a shock of bright orange hair, lying in a smoldering pile of rubble. Loki’s mouth gapes. The picture is so life like…An Aesir man who looks vaguely familiar, with wide green eyes, approaches the infant and—
“Loki!” barks Odin, so forcefully Loki jumps in the saddle. Turning, he meets the king’s gaze. In his deepest, most commanding tone, Odin says, “Do not look at the pictures in the column. You’ll drive yourself mad.”
Loki nods, and faces forward again. Behind him, he hears Odin start to chant. He swallows. The images in the column are so bright in his mind. He tries not to look, but finds himself turning his head to see the babe and the familiar yet unfamiliar man again…
Before his eyes have a chance to focus, Sleipnir sidesteps so quickly, Loki almost loses his seat. “Whoa, boy,” says Loki. Wondering what has the great animal spooked, he looks beyond the cavern in the direction they came from. His breath catches in his throat and his body goes cold. The swarm of adze is so close, he can see moonlight glinting on their bald heads, the talons at the ends of their long spindly fingers, and the whole of their hairless, weirdly sexless bodies.
The Einherjar fan out at the mouth of the cavern. For the first time, Loki notices many don’t have swords, shields, or bows and arrows. They must have lost them in the battle in the tent. Some have found long sticks in the underbrush around the column and in the cavern, others are merely brandishing their knives. None of them wavers or shows any sign of fear. They simply stand watchful and waiting, gazing up into the night. It makes Loki’s urge to slip beneath Sleipnir and hide just that much more cowardly.
The Einherjar that had identified the adze turns to Loki and pushes a tree branch half as long as Loki and nearly as thick as his forearm into his hands. “Do you think you can set them on fire?” the warrior asks, eyes flicking to the swarm.
Loki nervously eyes the distance between the adze and the pitiful band of Einherjar. The swarm can’t be more than five hundred paces away. He’s so frightened, his legs are vice-like on Sleipnir’s sides, making the great horse paw the earth nervously. He’s never set anything on fire from so far away. He doesn’t have the courage—or even the voice—to admit that to the Einherjar. He just stares wide eyed at the approaching shadows.
From the swarm, one of the adze gives a blood-curdling cry that makes the hair on the back of Loki’s neck stand on end. The cry is echoed by the others in the swarm, and as one, they begin to glide to the ground. Loki’s vision blurs with fear, and a little bleep comes from his mouth; simultaneously, a few dozen of the adze’s wings burst into flame. Those adze drop like stones, but the sky remains thick with their twisting, pale, hairless bodies.
Still, the Einherjar give a cheer. And the one closest to Loki says, “Well done!” Raising his voice, he shouts to the others. “They cannot hover! They are weak flyers, and they will land and then attack. Their strength is in numbers only!”
Looking up at the hundreds of swirling, shrieking, shapes, Loki isn’t comforted by that information.
While most of the swarm coast overhead just outside the cavern, a dozen adze hurtle to the ground. Raising their weapons, the Einherjar easily evade the clumsy bombardment. The warriors lash out with their knives and makeshift staves, but the creatures keep coming.
Loki raises the branch in his hands as an adze lands to Sleipnir’s right. With a cry, Loki aims the butt end of the branch at the creature’s face. There is the sharp crunch of bone and the sickening squish of pulverizing flesh. The adze drops quickly, but another falls from the sky to take its place, one of its brothers landing to Loki’s right, and then another and another all around.
Some instinct in Loki’s mind kicks in. He doesn’t think; he just acts. Snarling, guiding Sleipnir with his legs, he urges the mighty animal to pivot on his hind legs. The turning, rearing animal bowls over the adze that wind up in the path of its withers, and strikes at them with its four forward hooves. The ones the horse doesn’t hit, Loki dispatches the same way he did the first, his staff sliding left and right, a shout of rage rising from his lips.
Loki’s blows land every time, and a dim part of his mind wonders at how easy it is. Whatever sliver of triumph he feels evaporates as he looks up. The adze keep coming, and even though they fight without finesse—and aren’t agile enough for true aerial assaults—there are too many of them.
Before Loki’s eyes, one of the swarm manages to drop from the sky directly upon the back of the dark-skinned Einherjar who had praised Loki moments ago. Loki brings his staff over the creature’s head even as it sinks its teeth into the Einherjar’s neck. The staff hits home, the adze falls—but although the warrior’s wound is minor, the man wobbles on his feet, and then crumples—his body disappearing as adze pile upon him and each other with frenzied shrieks.
Loki doesn’t have time to be horrified. More of the swarm is landing, slipping between the warriors, behind and in front of them. Loki pummels with his staff in every direction at the same time he tries to guide Sleipnir like a battering ram into the fray.
“To me!” shouts Odin above the sound of the shrieking swarm.
Loki turns to see Odin, silhouetted by a circle of light just large enough for Sleipnir to slip through. The Allfather is swinging his sword, but his movements are wild and there is no energy behind his strikes. He looks like he has been fighting for hours, not just minutes. Two Einherjar are beside him, guarding his flanks, but they fall even as Loki watches.
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