Valhalla

by Jennifer Willis

Thor could feel the steam pouring out of his ears. Sitting on the floor just outside the principal’s office at Pine Grove High School, he imagined himself as some unfortunate fool in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, crouched as he was next to the industrial-size photocopier, parts scattered across the low-pile carpet, the gray trousers of his uniform covered in toner. Like Wile E. Coyote trying to assemble a bomb from a kit he’d ordered from Acme, except that the coyote always managed to get all the pieces to fit together—right before the explosion went off in his face.

  He cursed in unintelligible syllables under his breath. The toner cartridge had come apart in his meaty hands, again. Just as other cartridges had done every day this week, and twice already this morning. Whether he was too strong or simply too impatient for such menial work didn’t matter. He sucked at it.

  Thor pitched the broken cartridge into his canvas utility bag and wiped his hands on his shirt—streaking black stripes across the white polyester fabric—then chanced a glance through the open door into the principal’s office. Just his luck. Sitting behind his desk and grimacing at each sip of coffee, the principal was watching Thor’s every move. The old man glared at him with his one good eye, then sighed in disappointment.

  The glaring Thor could take. As the god of thunder and war, he reveled in heroic conflict, and a little skirmish or personal clash here and there was just good fun. But seeing the displeasure on the face of the school principal—who happened to be his father, Odin, Chief of the Gods—raised his blood pressure considerably.

  Thor frowned at the broken cartridge in his utility bag, then glanced back at Odin and attempted a meek shrug—not an easy maneuver for a Norse god whose build made NFL linebackers look like ballerinas.

  Behind his battered desk, Odin rolled his one eye and shook his head.

  Before pulling out a new toner cartridge, Thor took a deep breath. He tried to remember the relaxation technique his mother had taught him to help keep his frustration in check. Even centuries removed from his last great battle, Thor was hardly a model of patience or calm.

  The others had gradually found ways to earn a living. Bragi, the divine bard, was an online news editor and columnist. Thor’s mother, Frigga, grew herbs and flowers and baked organic treats for sale in stores across the state. Heimdall had adapted best, falling easily into a job as a forest ranger—giving him a perfect excuse to hang out in the woods every night, first looking after the old Yggdrasil, and now hunting for the new one.

  But getting and keeping a job had not come easily to Thor.

  He’d tried his luck as an auto mechanic, a Walmart janitor, a baggage handler and a parking lot attendant, but he always managed to cause more damage than he prevented. Working on a time clock was a foreign concept, and man-made tools felt like children’s toys in his hands. His temper grew shorter by the hour, and he invariably got fired, usually in a matter of days. His record was a seventeen-minute stint as a warehouse worker at Jake’s Super Discount—taking orders from a pimple-faced manager barely out of high school had Thor so steamed he drove a forklift directly into a new shipment of diapers and canned beans.

  He lasted longest as a strip club bouncer—nearly two months—before he stepped into a brawl and single-handedly sent three patrons, two bartenders and a waitress to the hospital. At least he hadn’t minded being surrounded by naked women while it lasted.

  Thor squinted his eyes closed and struggled to relax, knowing full well he was working at cross-purposes with himself. It wasn’t in his nature to be calm—tranquility was a far cry from what he was created for. But he’d burned through six jobs in just the past two years—with long periods of unemployment in between—and he needed to keep his cool.

  He opened his eyes and reached for a fresh toner cartridge. Weighing the plastic carefully in his hands, he chanced a furtive glance into the office to make sure Odin wasn’t watching, then delicately grasped the cartridge’s protective tape between his fingertips and peeled it back as slowly as he could manage.

  “Just think of it as an egg,” he mumbled.

  That did it. He could feel Odin’s watchful eye on him again. Still balancing the cartridge in his hands, Thor gritted his teeth as his face and neck flushed red.

  Don’t break it. Don’t break it. Don’t break it. Thor chanted silently. You’re not the god of chaos. Thor cracked a smile, remembering some of Loki’s misfortunes.

  If Thor was having difficulty adjusting to the life of an ordinary guy, Loki had it worse. The god of mischief and mayhem had practically gone underground.

  Loki was the only one of the old gods who had any power left, though he had no control over it—and modern technology was no match for the god of entropy. It had started with a few blown light bulbs and burnt up sewing machines, but quickly escalated over the ensuing decades. It was entirely possible Loki had been responsible for the 1963 Chicago blackout, and even the mild-mannered nature god Freyr had nearly blown a gasket at his own Super Bowl party: as soon as Loki got within five yards of Freyr’s state-of-the-art, 50-inch flat-screen TV, the display shorted out with a tiny “pop” and a puff of smoke—three minutes before kick-off.

  Thor dragged himself across the carpet and paused on his knees before the photocopier. He felt like a ridiculous supplicant with his humble offering of toner, worshipping at a mechanical altar.

  “Peace,” Thor whispered to himself, eyes half-closed and head bowed. An odd mantra for the god of thunder and lightning, but it got the job done. “Shanti.” Freya had taught him the Sanskrit word, and he liked the feel of it on his tongue—though he would have preferred a streak of old Viking curses.

  “Principal Wyatt?”

  Thor looked up, startled to find the not-unattractive, red-haired office secretary hovering over him as she leaned into Odin’s office. He fumbled the cartridge and nearly lost his grip on it, but caught it just before it hit the carpet and sprayed more black toner dust across the floor.

  The wheels of Odin’s office chair squeaked as he turned to face her.

  “Jeanine,” came the Chief God’s grumbled reply as he knocked back a couple of aspirin with a gulp of coffee from a Portland State University mug—a gag gift from his wife. Odin glared at the university’s mascot emblazoned on the side—Victor E. Viking, carrying a football—then slammed the mug down on top of his desk. Hard. Black coffee sloshed over the rim and onto the piles of work orders, permission slips, and other documents awaiting his review and signature.

  Jeanine jumped back, nearly stumbling over Thor still crouched on the floor.

  Embarrassed, she held a hand to her chest and glanced down at Thor. “I, I’m so sorry,” she stammered.

  Thor just smiled and nodded.

  “Jeanine,” Odin called her again.

  She recovered herself and stepped tentatively into his office. “Yes, these are the phone messages that came in overnight for you . . . ?” She held a collection of pink papers out to him.

  Odin lifted himself from behind the desk and lumbered across the floor toward her. Jeanine held the papers as far away from herself as possible and tried—unsuccessfully—to keep from wincing as he approached.

  Odin stopped in front of her. With a gracious dip of the head, he gently took the papers from her outstretched hand. “Thank you, Jeanine.”

  He tried to smile at her, but as soon as his eye met hers, she stifled a high-pitched squeak and dashed back to her desk, narrowly skirting Thor’s hulking form on the way. Odin sighed and shook his head. He stepped to the doorway and stood over his son, watching him.

  Thor ignored his father, or pretended to. He closed his eyes, took another deep breath, and gingerly slipped the toner cartridge into place inside the copy machine. His eyes popped open in an immediate frown when the cartridge didn’t click into position, but instead of hammering it into place with his fist—as he sorely wanted to do—Thor visualized a cool waterfall gently pouring restorative waters over his head and down his back. He reached deeper into the machine and gently pressed down on
the cartridge, smiling in satisfaction and relief when he heard the familiar sound of the plastic snapping into place.

  “There now,” he said for Odin’s benefit as he leaned back from the photocopier. “Piece of cake.”

  Thor nodded triumphantly up at his father, but then his face fell as he surveyed the litter of copier parts strewn about him on all sides—parts he’d unceremoniously ripped out of the machine trying to get to the malfunctioning toner cartridge in the first place.

  Swallowing a chuckle, Odin rested against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Piece of cake, was it?”

  “Bloody, godless hell.” Kneeling on the floor, Thor pressed his palms against his thighs, jaw clenched. What he wouldn’t have given for a thunderbolt—one big enough to obliterate all photocopier machines across the globe, any factories that might manufacture more of them, and the person or persons responsible for their invention in the first place. Was that too much to ask?

  He doubted anyone, anywhere, really needed 150 collated copies of anything, anyway.

  Thor picked up a small, odd-shaped plastic part in his toner-smeared fingers and rotated it first left, then right. He had no idea what it was or where it was supposed to go. He’d have to consult the manual—a massive, six-inch, three-ring binder packed full of enough useless diagrams and minuscule print to make the old god’s head hurt.

  He hated having to consult the manual.

  “I used to command entire armies, and the very storms in the sky . . .” Thor growled quietly to his father.

  “We’ve all had to make adjustments, son.” Odin shifted his position against the doorjamb and started reading the telephone messages. The creases in his broad brow deepened as he sighed.

  “Here we go. The mother of one of my ninth graders called about her son’s daily homework load.” He leaned down and spoke in low tones to his son, still hunched over on the carpet. “Seems he gets restless after forty minutes and needs to blow off steam by playing more video games.”

  Odin shuffled the papers in his hand. “And here the father of one of our less promising football players is complaining about his son being cut from the team.”

  Thor chuckled. “Well, if he’s off the team and has all that extra time on his hands, he’s welcome to my job.”

  Odin stared down at him. Thor stopped laughing. He shrugged and hefted the vinyl tome of torture that masqueraded as a repair manual out of his utility bag—and caught sight of Jeanine checking out his butt. He grinned at her, but she immediately bristled and pivoted her chair toward her computer terminal. Thor could see the back of her neck flush pink.

  Odin read the next telephone message. “Even better. Pastor Brown has called again from True Shepherd Church next door.”

  Thor paused before opening the manual. “Trouble again in the cemetery and parking lot?” He really didn’t care about Pastor Brown or the church, but he’d happily talk to a mouse about stale cheese if it meant putting off consulting the manual a few minutes longer.

  “Mmm.” Odin’s frown deepened as he read further. “Sending those students over to pick up litter during Saturday detention wasn’t enough of a deterrent, it seems. The fast-food wrappers and discarded soda bottles have escalated to beer cans and condoms in the hedges, and graffiti on the headstones.”

  The bell rang in the hallway beyond the outer office.

  “First period.” Odin offered his a son a wry smile, nodding toward the repair manual. “Better finish up. Lots of copying to do today.”

  A loud blast of music erupted from the parking lot outside Odin’s office window. Balling up the telephone messages in his fist, Odin turned on his heel, strode across the office floor and threw open the window.

  “Mr. Jamieson!” Odin bellowed.

  Thor glanced down at the massive volume in his lap. Wasting hours on end thumbing through repair manuals written in unintelligible techno-ese would make even a Valkyrie cry—and not in a good way. He slid the binder onto the carpet and got up to join his father at the window.

  Two stories below in the parking lot, a trio of students lingered around a beat-up Mustang. One scrawny dark-haired kid in frayed jeans danced by the open driver’s side door, while an overdeveloped girl with stringy hair and a hefty boy with stains on his shirt stood by and laughed. The driving bass from the car stereo reverberated off the surrounding buildings. The larger boy had the stub of something in his mouth and was raising a lighter to it. Odin grimaced, lifting the worn leather eye patch slightly off his cheek, and growled deep in his throat.

  “Mr. Jamieson! I’m speaking to you!” Odin called down again to the skinny boy. The heads of all three kids swiveled up to look at their principal in the window. The second boy quickly pulled the remains of the joint from his lips and shoved it and the lighter into his back pocket.

  Thor moved away from the window to hide his smile.

  “I know you wouldn’t want to be late to Mrs. Holbert’s English class.” Odin raised his eyebrows.

  The kid smiled sheepishly. “No, sir. I guess not.” He leaned inside the car and snapped off the radio, then reached for his backpack resting against the front wheel. He and his friends shuffled off with obligatory glances in Odin’s direction.

  Odin’s single eye narrowed as he watched the three head toward the school’s main entrance. Once they were satisfactorily out of sight, he turned to look at his desk—and the unfinished paperwork stacked in two meandering piles on top of it. He sighed and faced his son.

  Thor lifted his eyebrows expectantly. After the display in the parking lot below, Thor imagined his father would send him to deal with the unruly, disobedient children. Knock their heads together or tie them down to their desks. Or maybe there was another crisis—a forest fire, a flash flood, a small village being harassed by a troll—that required his immediate attention. Anything to give him a reprieve from the photocopier hell that awaited in the outer office.

  Odin clapped a strong hand on Thor’s shoulder, and gestured toward the reception area beyond the office door.

  “That copier isn’t going to put itself back together, you know.”

  Thor’s spirits sank. He lumbered toward the door, dreading his return to the machine he’d eviscerated, and nearly collided with Jeanine—again—as she stuck her head in. Startled, she staggered backward and held a hand to her chest. Thor forced a pleasantly apologetic expression onto his face. His mother had warned him against needlessly upsetting or frightening the humans, particularly the ones who could get him fired.

  Jeanine avoided eye contact and cleared her throat. “Principal Wyatt?”

  “Yes,” he groaned back, lowering himself into his office chair behind the desk.

  “Kyle Mackey and Trevor Chase are here to see you. Again.” The resignation in her voice almost made Odin smile.

  “Ah, the Hooligans are up to their tricks again.” He nodded to Jeanine.

  She glanced quickly between Odin and Thor—who had the same fair skin, broad shoulders, square jaw, and thick muscles as his father, but on a larger scale—and then fled the room.

  Thor glanced at Odin. “The Hooligans?” He stepped away from the door and hovered over his father’s decrepit desk.

  Odin crossed his arms over his chest and nearly laughed as he shook his head. “These boys have been in and out of this office, probably every other week since the beginning of the semester.”

  Thor leaned forward on the desk. It creaked under his weight. He was large to begin with—colossal, he used to be described; they called it “big-boned” these days. The truth was he wasn’t getting enough exercise. He’d risen up in a time when men filled their days hunting and making war. Now he spent half of every day behind the wheel of a car, and the rest of his time sitting on the carpet doing his best not to destroy yet another photocopier.

  Thor looked down at his father and was grateful he at least didn’t have to sit behind a desk from 7:30 to 4.

  “You got a soft spot for them, eh
?”

  Odin looked down. “Maybe.” He was silent a long moment.

  Thor glanced through the open doorway, trying to catch a glimpse of the trouble-makers. “What sorts of things do they do?”

  Odin pursed his lips and thought quietly. “It’s not like the old days,” he responded in hushed tones. “You can’t just crack their skulls and then let them sort themselves out. The same boyish behavior Vikings encouraged—pranks, petty theft, vandalism—that all has to be punished now.” He gestured toward the open door. “These two can’t seem to ever do anything right.”

  Thor snorted. “And so they’ve got the Chief of the Gods meting out their punishment!”

  Odin looked sharply at Thor, who immediately lowered his voice. “Sorry. It just struck me funny.” He cleared his throat and looked hard at his father. “It just seems that even on your best day, those kids would be in serious trouble.”

  Odin reached for his coffee mug, then thought better of it. Thor looked at the PSU Vikings football logo and smiled.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually using that thing. Kids in shoulder pads and shin guards calling themselves Vikings?”

  Odin offered a wry smile. “One day, this mug is going to have a serious accident.”

  Thor chuckled. “Yeah, and maybe the XXL Portland State sweatshirt Frigga gave me might get shredded in the wash. Unfortunately.”

  He shoved his big hands into his trouser pockets and tried to remember where he’d stashed the Vikings sweatshirt his mother had foisted onto him a few years back. Maybe he could accidentally-on-purpose mistake it for a drop cloth or cleaning rag on his next repair assignment. It would be a shame if large amounts of black toner got inextricably ground into the fabric, obliterating the logo.

  Odin sighed. “Your mother means well. She’s just trying to help us acclimate.”

  Thor rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, as they say . . . Whatever.”

  Odin scratched an itch at the corner of his empty eye socket, then readjusted the patch over his right eye and grinned. “There’s a rumor in the halls here that I used to be a pirate off the coast of Portugal. Raiding cruise ships, running contraband, searching for sunken treasure.”

  Thor threw back his head and laughed heartily. Last year, the story had been that Odin had lost an eye while on a mission in Central America as a mercenary soldier. Thor had rather enjoyed that one, but not as much as Odin loved the scuttlebutt that had him parachuting into an active volcano in the South Pacific to save the 1997 prom queen from being sacrificed to the lava gods by cannibals.

  “Next year, I’ll get the grapevine buzzing that I got my eye knocked out in an ultimate fighting match in a Cambodian POW camp.”

  Thor was about to laugh again, then stopped short as he watched his father labor to get up from behind his desk. The Chief God was fast becoming an old man, and he grunted quietly with the effort. Thor saw it every morning in the mirror, with a few more gray hairs streaking his own dark blond mane. He told himself it was the stress of hunting for the Yggdrasil, and that once the new World Tree was located, all would be well again. Their strength and vitality would be restored.

  But looking at his father’s nearly pure-silver sideburns and wrinkled brow, Thor wasn’t so sure anymore. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t noticed Odin’s creaking knees and popping spine. These past decades especially, Odin’s posture was more stooped, his gait slowing.

  Odin rested his fists on the desk’s surface and paused to catch his breath. “Son, I’m getting too old for this.” He looked again at the piles of paper on his desk. “For this job, for living among mortals.” Odin paused and exhaled slowly. “Maybe even for preserving the Yggdrasil.”

  Thor’s expression turned grim. He patted his own thickening waist self-consciously, then rested a firm hand on his father’s shoulder. “We’ll find the Tree. And then when Iduna’s apples come into season . . .”

  Odin cut him off with a wave of his hand. “We’re getting old. It is uncertain whether the Tree or the apples can stop that, now.”

  Straightening his spine, Odin forcefully pushed the rolling chair away from him, and it slammed back into the wall behind his desk. He smiled at the crack of metal and plastic against the cement blocks.

  “Waning powers or not,” Thor nodded appreciatively, “you can still throw your weight around.”

  Odin chuckled as he stepped passed his son and crossed the office floor in a few large strides. He stopped in the doorway, with just a hint of a raised brow over his one good eye, and looked down on the Hooligans seated against the wall in the outer office. Dressed in metal band t-shirts and oversize blue jeans, their expressions appeared somewhere between affected cynicism and what you might expect from a teenager facing a firing squad.

  Odin took a deep breath and leaned against the doorjamb. “Boys.”

  The two looked up at him from beneath lowered brows. Odin glanced down at the photocopier parts still littering the carpet just outside his door, and smirked back at Thor.

  Thor offered an obligatory shrug and noisily shuffled past his father to resume his duties to the office equipment. He growled as he knelt back down on the floor and caught sight of the repair manual.

  “Boys, I’m not even going to ask.” Odin stepped around Thor and his collection of photocopier parts and stood beside his secretary’s desk. He tilted his head toward her, never taking his bloodshot eye off the boys. “Call in their parents. We’ll sit down together and sort this out.”

  There was a soft groan as the boys sank down into their chairs. Odin rubbed a hand across his whiskered face to hide his smile. Calling the parents was frequently the worst possible punishment.

  “Miss Metcalf, please show these young men into the conference room, until their parents get here.”

  “Yes, Principal Wyatt.” Jeanine got up from her desk and gestured toward a side door. The boys made no move to comply, until Odin gave them a hard, questioning look. He only had one eye, but it was sharp. Kyle shrugged and got up from the metal chair. Trevor followed. The boys dragged their bookbags across the beige carpet, passing the secretary’s desk. Trevor offered a weak attempt at a smile.

  Thor crouched on the floor, flipping through the manual with such frustrated force that he nearly ripped the laminated pages out of the binder. He muttered a new string of ancient curses under his breath.

  The conference room door clicked closed. Odin detected a familiar rumble in his midsection and felt for coins in his trouser pocket. He stepped over to Thor, grabbed the collar of his gray uniform shirt, and yanked him upward to his feet.

  “Let me buy you a soda, son.”

  Dropping the three-ring binder unceremoniously to the floor, Thor frowned at his father. “I thought you hated that diet stuff.”

  A wide grin lit up Odin’s gruff face. “I do.”

  Thor sighed and shook his head. “Frigga’s going to kill you.”

  Odin put an arm around his son’s broad back. “What your mother doesn’t know . . .” He pulled Thor with him toward the school’s main hallway. “I can’t take any more of that cheap coffee. I’ve had three cups already this morning, and it still tastes like something between roof tar and lava ash.”

  Thor grimaced. “First sip is always the worst. Makes my teeth feel fuzzy.” He paused in the doorway to the mostly empty hallway. “I don’t know that sugar water is all that better.”

  “Whatever it takes to get through the day.” Odin closed the door to the principal’s office behind him.

  Thor turned to follow his father down the hallway. “One day after another, one bloody boring year after the next.”

  Odin glanced back. “What was that?”

  Thor shook his head.

  A pair of students dashed down the hallway, running full-speed toward classes they were already late for, then skidded to a stop when they caught sight of the principal. Odin just nodded at them and passed by silently. Several others meandered slowly toward the music room or library, pretending not to
notice Odin, but giving him a wide berth nonetheless.

  Odin and Thor turned to descend a double staircase to the basement.

  “What’s down here?” Thor asked.

  “Science labs and vending machines.” They reached the bottom of the stairs, and Odin led Thor down another long hallway.

  “You keep the food next to the labs?” Thor held up his hand in surrender. “Never mind. Don’t think I really want to know.”

  They stopped in front of a bank of vending machines. Odin pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket. He pretended to survey the rows of carbonated sugar water and stale cookies.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a leg of lamb roasted on an open spit, a steaming bowl of fish stew, a hunk of hearty bread, and a heavy stein overflowing with dark mead,” he grumbled.

  “Outside Frigga’s kitchen, I think we’re stuck with canned cola and plastic-wrapped cakes.” Thor’s stomach churned. Looking at the Jujubes, cheese-flavored crackers, and chocolate-coated candy bars behind the glass gave him a sour feeling in his stomach.

  “These people,” Odin grumbled, “have no idea how to eat.”

  Thor nodded in silent agreement. Everywhere he drove for his repair calls, his senses were assaulted by the smell of hot frying oil and the neon signs of one fast-food operation after another. Even on the grocery store shelves, nearly everything that passed as food was pre-packed for “freshness,” frozen, or processed to within an inch of its original nutritional value.

  No wonder modern humans were weak, Thor concluded. Chubby, limp adults who lacked the strength to so much as lift a broadsword, and children prone to bouts of depression and uncontrolled tempers. So many lives waning under fluorescent lights and in front of televisions.

  Odin slipped a few coins into the slot and watched the silver screws behind the glass go to work loosening a bag of pretzels. The bag dropped with a salty thud. Odin sighed.

  Thor knew instantly what Odin was thinking. They were living among people who had no knowledge of the land, strangers to the very ground they walked on—probably because they’d paved nearly every last square of it. Too much mindless entertainment, not enough ritual bonfires. Too little time exercising bodies and brains. In his prime, Odin would have crushed such a people as easily as flattening an ant beneath his boot.

  But now he was one of them. Odin, Thor, and the rest of the clan drove alongside them on highways, picked apples and potatoes from the same produce bins, and worked in the same offices.

  “And now I’m repairing their photocopiers, and you’re overseeing the education and discipline of their children,” Thor lamented.

  “Discipline.” Odin snorted as he tore open the bag and shoved a few pretzels into his mouth. “What those boys upstairs need is a sound hide-thrashing, followed by a week-long hunt with their fathers. Or a season on a fishing vessel. Make men out of them.” He offered the open bag to his son. Thor waved him off.

  Odin stepped to the left, fished a worn dollar bill from his pocket and began the usual battle of trying to get the machine to accept his paper currency. He presented the bill. The machine spit it back out. He held the dollar against his chest, smoothed out the creases and tried again. Same result. Stupid western technology, didn’t know its own currency.

  “You mother-disgracing sow of a servant,” he cursed. “You should be so lucky to serve the Chief of the Gods.”

  The lights on the display wavered, and his dollar was accepted: “Credit: 1.00.” Beneath his graying beard, a smile played on Odin’s lips. A postured threat often went a long way with such machines. Thor wished he had the same luck with photocopiers. Odin punched a button and claimed the cola can the machine dropped into the plastic tray.

  He repeated the process with a second dollar, then stepped aside and gave Thor his choice of illuminated buttons. Thor closed his eyes and hit a button at random. A can of orange-flavored soda dropped to the tray. Thor smiled. The orange ones usually weren’t so bad.

  “Not a word to your mother.” Odin cracked open his cola and took a long sip. “Better than coffee. A far cry from mead.” He gazed down the hallway at the informal student lounge area. Alone in the alcove crammed with a vinyl love seat and a few chairs sat David McAllister with a textbook balanced on one knee, an open notebook on the other and his book bag on the floor between his feet.

  “Mr. McAllister.” Odin pursed his lips and strode toward the fifteen-year-old sophomore.

  Thor took note of the library books stacked up on the seat beside the boy and made a face. Another nerd. These modern humans produced few offspring with the potential to be real warriors.

  The slight teenager barely glanced up from his work, the vinyl squeaking as he shifted his weight. “Hey, Principal Wyatt.” He scribbled in his notebook, then rested his pencil on his thigh.

  “Last minute homework?” Odin took another sip of cola and swallowed a burp. That had been a difficult trick for the gods to learn, after centuries of celebratory, manly belching at the banquet table. To so-called evolved humans, normal bodily functions were more an embarrassment than a source of pride.

  The corner of David’s mouth ticked upward, then immediately settled into meek apology. “Umm, no . . . Just getting in some extra practice before the math contest this Saturday.”

  Odin glanced meaningfully over his shoulder at his son. Mathematics made for stronger weapons, accurate navigation, and abundant crops. Mathematics built longboats and space shuttles. He turned back to David. “Good job, son. You make us proud, eh?”

  Another smile-like spasm played on David’s mouth, and the teenager bent down again over his notebook, where he’d drawn a pair of contiguous triangles inside a circle. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled as he tapped his pencil against the paper and bobbed his head, silently running through the rules of geometry.

  Odin watched him a moment more and began to turn away, then stopped dead in his tracks.

  The hair on the back of Thor’s neck stood on end as he saw the sudden, quiet alarm in his father’s frame.

  Then he felt it, too.

  An invisible chill flew toward them from the far end of the hallway. Thor felt the wave of cold tear through his skin as though he were standing naked in a blizzard. He immediately reached for the wall to steady himself and gasped for air, reeling from the shock of bitterness that shivered down his spine. Blinking hard, Thor regained his balance and realized the moisture in his nose had condensed.

  Sniffling and trying to catch his breath, he looked at his father a few yards away, rocking on his feet and struggling to regain his own equilibrium. Thor pushed away from the wall and was about to say something to Odin when his gaze was drawn instead to David, suddenly sitting up straight on the love seat. The teenager stared ahead blankly. His books slid off his lap onto the floor with a thud that echoed off the concrete walls.

  There was something markedly different about the boy’s eyes.

  Thor inhaled sharply. The fire that ignited the boy’s bony frame was unmistakable. Thor knew that peculiar set of the shoulders and the rapid breathing characteristic of the warrior called to battle. David’s eyes came alive, glinting with a dark madness none of the gods had seen in centuries.

  Berserker.

  Thor felt adrenaline pour into his system as the boy stood up, his young eyes deepening as he stared down first Thor, then Odin.

  “I think you need to settle down, son,” Odin stammered, surprised by the unexpected awakening. He glanced back at his son, who shook his head in incredulity.

  “If this is some kind of joke . . . There’s going to be hell to pay at the Lodge,” Odin grumbled at him.

  Thor took a bold step forward. “Shut him down. We have to stop him before the Berserker fully takes hold.”

  Planting his broad feet, Odin cleared his throat and stared hard at the new warrior standing before him. “This is not the time. You are not a Berserker, and there is no battle to be fought. Sit down, now. And forget.”

  David blinked at hi
m with a confused frown. Then there was a flicker of a smirk, darker and more sinister than the boy’s shy smile just moments earlier. Refusing to back down, he squared his shoulders and bared his teeth in the wide, vicious grin of a crazed predator.

  Thor saw a shudder run across his father’s shoulders. He stepped in front of Odin to face off against the insubordinate boy.

  “You will obey your gods!” he bellowed, no longer caring whether anyone in the surrounding classrooms or stairwells might hear him.

  David considered Thor’s demand for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed.

  It was the closest Thor had ever come to soiling his clothes.

  Transformed into something more primal and single-minded, the new warrior that had been a studious schoolboy walked past his principal and the photocopier repairman, leaving his books behind as he headed toward the fire door. With an angry, blood-chilling howl, David slammed the lever and threw the door open wide, not so much as slowing when the alarms began to sound.

  Odin and Thor stared after him.

  “Holy . . .” Thor whistled through clenched teeth.

  Odin shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no mistaking it. We’ve just witnessed an awakening.”

  With fire alarms blaring overhead, students poured out of their classrooms and labs into the hallway. A particularly nervous science teacher, barely out of school himself, raced toward the principal’s side.

  “Principal Wyatt?!” he screeched. “What is it? What should we do?”

  Odin just blinked at him. After a long moment, he seemed to remember his surroundings and took the teacher by the elbow. “It’s nothing. Just a false alarm. One of the sophomores opened a fire door.”

  Visible relief washed over the young teacher. He nodded at Odin, then went to work corralling the students who were buzzing about in the hallway in a state of excitement that bordered on panic.

  Standing apart from the throngs of teenagers and teachers, Thor broke into a cold sweat. He leaned down to Odin and spoke sharply over the din of the alarms and the squealing students. “I didn’t call any warriors. I’ll go out on a limb and guess you didn’t, either.”

  Odin’s mouth tightened into a hard, angry line. More than anger, though, Thor knew his father was scared—because he was, too.

  “Berserker,” Thor whispered hoarsely, barely audible over the repeating alarms. He watched the students file back into their classrooms, then looked down the hall again at the fire door David had thrown open.

  A Berserker that Odin hadn’t called. A Berserker who laughs in the face of his gods.

  Thor felt the blood in his veins turn to ice.