Loki's Gambit, page 99
part #1 of I Bring the Fire Series
Skin heating, Amy shouts, “The perception will be that you see women as objects, as conquests, as less than human!”
Bohdi’s eyes widen. “Really?” He slips the underwear hastily back into his pocket.
Amy vaguely registers the look of obliviousness on his face. But she’s furious. And maybe Loki’s flashbacks are gnawing at her. “It is threatening! You don’t get it. You don’t know what it’s like to be surrounded by people who are stronger than you, who see you as a sexual object, as not one of them, as a lesser being…” She remembers Odin, This is what women are made for. In the United States, they’ve moved so far from that, but she feels like maybe there is a precipice, and with one wrong step, society could fall back over the edge.
Stopping in his tracks, Bohdi’s jaw goes hard, and he pulls his lighter out of his pocket. “Yes, as a skinny under-represented minority in the Marine Corps, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Amy’s feet and her thoughts stumble to a stop. She feels the sickening sensation of being in the wrong; it wraps around her insides and cuts off her ability to breathe. Hadn’t she once read that most victims of sexual assault in the military are male? Before she’s recovered herself, Bohdi is already walking away.
Running to catch up, Amy stammers, “I’m sorry.”
He waves the hand with the lighter and doesn’t meet her eyes. “It’s okay.”
Half jogging to keep up, Amy says, “No, really, I’m…”
Swiveling to face her, Bohdi says, “Just drop it…” His hands fist and his lips curl dangerously. She opens her mouth to speak, but Bohdi cuts her off again. “It’s okay. I beat the living shit out of them. And that’s all I want to say about it.”
With a dismissive shake of his head, he turns and begins to walk again.
Limbs heavy, Amy, looks up at the sky. It’s getting darker. She squints. And the darkness is not because of smoke. Night is coming.
Chapter Twelve
The alley is lit by dull orange streetlights. The dive bar Nat brought Bohdi to has cheap beer, and amazing mojitos, but the bathroom makes him gag before he’s even entered…so he slips out the back door—the alley it is. He’s just finished up when he hears familiar voices. A group of three guys turns around the corner. He hears someone say something about, “You sure that shit you got will keep this from showing up on a piss test?”
There’s a laugh, and a “Yeah, man. Trust me. It’s taken care of.”
Not acknowledging them, Bohdi turns to the door. His hand finds the doorknob, he turns it, pulls—and it doesn’t budge. Bohdi turns his head. That is a mistake.
“Hey,” says one of the silhouetted shadows at the mouth of the alley. “Don’t I know you?”
Bohdi reaches into his pocket for his knife, hoping to jimmy the lock. His pocket is empty.
Three silhouetted forms come closer, floating in a cloud of strange, acrid-smelling smoke. “Bohdi Patel,” says the largest, and then laughs. The laugh is familiar. What isn’t familiar is the way Gonzalez is tapping his hand on his thigh in an uneven staccato rhythm, head bobbing not quite in sync. Every muscle in Bohdi’s body tenses.
Bohdi’s met a few men in the Corps who prefer men. They’ve come out to him quietly, maybe hopefully. But when he’d expressed no interest they hadn’t pressed. Tyrone Gonzalez isn’t one of those men.
Tyrone Gonzalez will tell you he “Ain’t no fag.” He’ll also tell you, that if there aren’t any women around, fucking a man up the ass is “acceptable.” He’s said Bohdi has “pretty eyes,” and “skinny little girl hips.”
Straightening his shoulders, Bohdi gives a curt nod and tries to maneuver between Tyrone and his buddies. Tyrone’s hand shoots out and stops him. “What’s your hurry? I haven’t seen you in a while…What’s your MOS?” says Tyrone, using the slang for the schooling all Marines get after infantry training.
Throwing Tyrone’s hand off of his shoulder, Bohdi says, “EOD.”
Tyrone laughs and briefly turns to his friends. “See, smart and pretty.”
Bohdi takes the opportunity to try and walk away again. But Tyrone physically steps between him and the exit to the alley. One of Tyrone’s buddies steps forward, the other hangs back.
Bohdi holds his ground, afraid if he takes a step back, he’ll literally wind up against the wall. Tyrone’s hand comes back to his shoulder. He squeezes hard enough for it to hurt. Bohdi’s mind spins. Tyrone’s about his height, but he’s broader and it’s all lean meat. They were in boot camp together. Bohdi’s seen him fight. His eyes slide to Tyrone’s companions. The one cornering him is only slightly leaner.
Tyrone snaps Bohdi’s attention back to him with a laugh. “You’re still as pretty as I remember. Look at those eyes!” He brings his hand up to briefly touch Bohdi’s cheek.
Bohdi’s lip curls. Not flinching away, he bats his eyelashes. “Really, you think so?”
Tyrone’s eyes widen. Turning to his buddy, he says, “See, I knew it.”
Bohdi leans back, and Tyrone turns his head again—
And Bohdi is frozen in place. He can’t move. He feels like his lungs are choked. Tyrone laughs and…
Bohdi wakes up to darkness and coughs out a lungful of smoke. For a moment, he has no idea where he is. He’s back in the alley unable to move.
He brings a hand to his face. Something hard and rough bites through the back of his shirt. The ground is uneven, and slightly soft. No, he’s in Nornheim, sitting with his back to a tree. And back in that alley, he hadn’t been frozen. He’d head-butted Tyrone hard enough to break his nose, then stepped back and dropped into a crouch just in time to dodge the fist that Tyrone had aimed at his head. Tyrone had driven his hand into a brick wall. On the ground, Bohdi had found a glass bottle.
Bohdi’s breathing comes fast and quick, smoke tickling on the way down.
He doesn’t remember the sequence of events after that. He remembers the third guy screaming, “I don’t want no trouble, I don’t want no trouble!” He remembers the glass bottle shattering and driving the sharp end of it into the face of Tyrone’s buddy. He doesn’t remember when he knocked Tyrone to the ground. He doesn’t remember if his foot connected with Tyrone’s head, but he remembers winding up to kick it. He remembers Nat screaming, light streaming from the bar’s back door, and then Nat, her girlfriend, and some other guys dragging Bohdi off Tyrone.
Bohdi shakes in the darkness and stifles a cough. It’s the first time he’s had a nightmare about the actual attack. He’s only had nightmares about being convicted and sent to prison.
He puts his head between his hands. Steve is the only person who knows about it. He feels a flare of indignation in his gut. He hates Amy for making him bring it up—making him remember. Lifting his eyes, he watches a glowing ember waft by. He hears a snapping sound, like flags in a strong breeze. He sits up straighter, the nightmare of the dream giving way to the nightmare of reality. He was supposed to be on watch. He looks through the brush and can see the forest fire’s orange light. It’s much too close.
Turning, he finds Amy leaning on the tree trunk beside him. “Amy, wake up!” he whispers.
She sits up with a start.
“We have to go,” he says, finding his branch in the darkness.
She doesn’t ask questions.
Nornheim’s three moons are obscured by tree limbs and smoke. The light from the fire is behind them, and they stumble together in their own shadows and the shadows of the trees. When they’d chosen a spot to rest and hide, they’d moved off the main trail away from the river.
Leaning close, Amy whispers, “Do you think we should use our—”
A screech rises above the crackling of the fire and the rush of leaves; it makes every hair on Bohdi’s body stand on end. He feels Amy’s hand on his side. “Adze,” she whispers.
Shivering, Bohdi remembers the murderous, sexless creature that seemed incapable of feeling pain.
And then another sound reverberates through the darkness. Deep and hoarse, it sounds a little like the lowing of a cow. Without seeing the animal, or even knowing what it is, Bohdi knows it is a cry of anguish. The screams of the adze intensify; the sound of hooves, and more cries of pain and fear, rise in the night.
Above their heads, Bohdi hears branches crack. There are furious snarls, and a writhing thing with two sets of wings, four arms and four legs, tumbles through the branches, lands about twenty feet from them, and rolls, hissing and spitting through the underbrush.
Bohdi’s suddenly gripped by the shoulder and yanked behind a tree.
“What…?” says Bohdi, craning his head to look around the tree.
The hissing, spitting, rolling thing comes to a halt. A gust of wind whips through the trees, and there is a sudden bright burst of moonlight on the ground where two adze, hands at each others throats, wings ripped liked tattered sails, lie motionless, staring up at Amy and Bohdi with glowing eyes.
“Oops,” says Bohdi.
The adze slip from their murderous embrace, and clamber to their feet with hair-raising screeches.
“Run!” says Amy, tugging again on his shoulder.
Bohdi hesitates, hand tightening on his club, considering the odds of beating two adze in a fight.
From the air come more screams.
“Running’s good,” says Bohdi, turning in Amy’s direction.
He outpaces her in only a few strides. He wants to speed up, but that would mean leaving Amy, and some instinct as strong as the will to survive makes him slow down. Cursing, he grabs Amy’s wrist and pulls her faster through the trees.
Twisting roots and rocks jut from the ground as it rises beneath their feet. Bohdi feels the muscles in the front of his legs start to burn as they stumble and crash uphill. He hears snarls behind them. Turning his head, he sees an adze twisting and hissing, its enormous wings caught in some low hanging branches.
Looking ahead, Bohdi sees some smaller trees growing very close together. He drags Amy in that direction, just managing to dodge an adze swerving out of nowhere inches from their heels.
Bohdi yanks Amy sideways through a narrow gap in the trunks, and pulls her into a sprint. A few seconds later, he hears a frustrated screech, and then a snarl. Glancing back, he sees two adze, one pinned between the tree trunks, another trying to claw its way over the first.
If he wasn’t so busy being terrified for his life, he’d have laughed. Beside him, Amy looks too. Their eyes meet. Amy points to a narrow gap between two bushes, and they dart in that direction. Seconds after passing through the gap, they hear more frustrated snarls and hisses. They keep running without looking back.
When the only sound Bohdi can hear is the mad thumping of his heart and his own panting, they finally slow. Dropping Amy’s hand, Bohdi bends over. “I think we lost them,” he pants and looks eastward. Is that his imagination, or is it getting lighter?
Amy puts her hands on her knees and gasps. “I think I hear the river.”
He’s about to say no, when he hears the sound of water on rocks. Before Bohdi can answer, she moves toward a gap in the trees. “Oh…” he hears her say.
Bohdi catches up to her and gazes over her shoulder. “Oh,” he echoes, looking over her shoulder. In front of them there is a patch of barren rock leading to empty air. A few scraggly bushes grow in a shallow indentation right near the edge.
Amy goes forward in a crouch. And Bohdi follows. They kneel down together at the rock’s gravelly edge and look down.
The outcropping they’re on marks a bend in the river. Beneath them is a sheer slope that turns into a cliff just a few meters below. From there, it is a fifty-foot drop to where the river seethes and churns.
He looks eastward. The sky is definitely getting lighter. He feels a flush of relief that dies instantly when a distant scream echoes in his ears. He’s just about to suggest they head back to the trees, when Amy says, “Look!”
He follows her gaze upriver. At first, Bohdi thinks he is seeing a giant wave with a dark cloud floating above it and fanning out in a wide circle over the banks.
“Adze must not be able to swim,” Amy says.
Squinting, Bohdi peers at the approaching cloud. And then every muscle in his body tenses. What he took for a wave are elk-like animals, with four long, twisted horns, swimming downstream. The black cloud is the adze hovering above them. Here and there, one of the elk-creatures stumbles onto the bank and is immediately set upon by the swarm—they sink their teeth into the animals while they’re still thrashing…but other times, an adze drops into the water and doesn’t emerge.
“The herd jumped into the water to escape the swarm…” Amy says, voice drifting off.
Bohdi blinks at the fast approaching cloud of adze, haloed by the glow of the forest fire. Grabbing Amy’s shoulder, he says, “Get back.”
They start toward the forest, but the swarm is closing in too fast. “Under the bushes!” Amy whispers. Bohdi doesn’t answer, just turns with her and dives beneath the low hanging branches, brambles biting his skin and tugging at his hair and clothes. Moments later, the cries of adze ring above their heads and the frantic lowing of the elk creatures echoes from the canyon below. Pressing his face and the smoldering head of the branch into the dirt, Bohdi swears the flapping of the adze wings stirs the branches above their heads.
They lie there for what seems like hours but is probably only minutes. At last, the sound of the adze cries grow fainter.
“I don’t think they saw us,” Amy says.
A breeze from the north ruffles Bohdi’s hair. It smells like smoke. Lifting his head, he follows the swarm’s path. They’re now downwind. “We better go,” he whispers.
“Yeah.”
They’ve just clambered out when Bohdi hears a hiss from the trees. Looking behind them, he sees a single adze emerging from the forest, moonlight glinting on its bald head, ripped wings, and long, glinting teeth.
Raising his branch, much smaller than it was before, Bohdi shouts to Amy. “Stand back.”
The adze bares razor-sharp teeth and snarls.
There is a sound of rocks sliding behind Bohdi, and Amy screams.
Bohdi turns his head…to see empty air. “Amy!” he shouts.
“I’m here!” she calls.
The sound of claws on rock behind him is all the warning Bohdi gets. With a cry, he swings his body and the branch around. The adze is charging him, head lowered. With a snarl, Bohdi bludgeons it neatly on the side of the head. The creature drops sideways with the sound of crushing bone. Without another look, Bohdi runs in the direction where Amy stood moments before. Gazing down, Bohdi feels his heart sink. Amy is a few meters down the incline, Mr. Squeakers clinging to her hair. She’s grabbed hold of a twisted little sapling growing on the steep slope. As he watches, her weight is causing the sapling’s roots to slowly tear loose from their tenuous hold in the rock face.
“Hang on!” He cries, seeing a barely-there path winding down to where she is. “I’m coming.”
She stammers. “I don’t know if…”
Bohdi is already scampering down the slope, rocks and dirt sliding in his wake.
“The swarm!” she says.
Bohdi doesn’t answer. He’s almost to her…
The twisted tree she clings to drops lower, its roots jutting out of the slope face. The path Bohdi is taking melts in a small avalanche before his eyes. Amy gives a yelp and drops a few feet with the sapling. Her feet dangle in open air.
Casting aside the branch he’s carrying, Bohdi flops down on his stomach. Slithering forward, he puts his weight on the tree’s roots, hoping he can keep it from slipping further.
“They’re coming this way!” Amy shouts.
Bohdi reaches forward and grabs her wrist.
Above his head, he hears a gurgling snarl.
Bohdi looks up to see an adze, one side of its face covered in dirt, the other side weird and lopsided, leering down at him. The one he hit? Shit. That had seemed too easy. Another adze’s face emerges by the first. Oh fuck.
The sapling slips, its roots coming further upended, and digging into his ribs. Amy’s hand slips, he grabs her wrist more firmly. And then the sapling, almost like a living thing, slithers from beneath him, slipping through the soft earth and into the river below. Grabbing hold of what is left of its root system, Bohdi just manages to keep Amy from sliding down with it.
“Let go!” she screams.
“No!” he snarls. She wouldn’t let him go, how dare she ask him to?
“We have to fall!” Amy screams. “The swarm is coming!”
Bohdi gasps and looks in the direction the adze had flown. The cloud of adze is coming back in their direction fast; their blood curdling cries suddenly a chorus in his ears. They’re so close he thinks he can see the whites of their eyes… How had he not heard?
Rocks slide down from above him. He looks up to see the hissing adze above begin to make their way down the slope, teeth bared and glowing dimly in the early morning light.
“Let go!” Amy screams again.
One of the adze above them lifts its wings and takes to the air, circling in a wide loop just a few meters above their heads.
Bohdi looks down at the turbulent river.
Amy shouts. “It’s the only way!”
She’s right. They might even survive the fall. Bohdi lets go of the roots he’s clinging to. But not Amy’s wrist. There is an angry shout from the adze above them, and louder screams from the swarm.
His eyes meet Amy’s. He’s falling with her, again. He feels the air whip around him, stirred by adze wings, and then there is the shock of hitting water, and he sinks into cold and darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
Amy’s mind is blank, all thoughts stolen from her by the shock of plunging beneath the river’s cold dark surface. And then she is carried away in the blackness. Her eardrums feel like they will burst, and she can’t decide what way is up. Panic rises in her as turbulent as the tide. Just as she thinks her lungs will explode, her feet connect with something solid, and she kicks. A moment later, she explodes through the surface, gasping, sinking, spinning around, and rising again with the current. Coughing and sputtering, Amy treads water. Her clothes are dragging her down, but she’s afraid to stop the furious pumping of her limbs even for a moment. The shoreline is sweeping past her fast, and rushing water deafens her. Upriver, where she fell, adze are swooping down to the river’s surface and pulling up, she can’t hear their cries, but the looks on their faces are furious.
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