by Raythe Reign
Cam would love it here. He would have to paint every aspect of it. I can see how some of his statues would fit in this place as well.
But the moment he thought of Cameron two warring emotions awakened within him. The first was shame. He had violated his brother. His beloved Cameron. What was worse was that he could still feel Cameron’s mouth on his, he could still taste his brother on his tongue, and he longed to feel and taste him again. He put his head in his hands for a moment and scrubbed his face.
What does it say about me that I STILL want him even MORE now that I know who he is?
But it was the second emotion that had him lowering his hands, turning away from the beguiling view and heading towards the double doors. He needed to find out what Thor and Odin had to tell him then he should try to return to Earth though he had no idea how to do that. He had no idea how he had gotten here in the first place. How he had activated the Bifrost. All was a blank.
I just had been trying to get away from what I had done. But that was wrong of me. I left Cam alone to face the news that I still exist and the consequences of what we had just done together. What must he be thinking and feeling now? Last time I left him against my will. This time … it was my choice. I must get back to him.
Liam pushed the double doors open and before him was another circular room, but this one was sheathed in pale marble. Like the spokes of a wheel, more doors like the ones to the bedroom Liam had been resting in dotted the walls. He expected to see Thor and Odin waiting for him there, but instead there was a woman with hair the color of straw and Thor’s startling blue eyes. Liam found himself bowing.
“You must be Frigg,” Liam said still looking at the floor. In the myths, Frigg was Odin’s wife and Thor’s mother. It appeared that this was true as well. She also was said to have the gift of foretelling.
She let out a delighted laugh. “And you are Liam. I feel we know one another so well! I have watched you grow up and become the fierce Valkyrie you are now. But I forget I am a stranger to you. But please rise! I want no such formality between us.”
Liam rose with a grateful smile and looked upon the goddess. Frigg’s long blond hair brushed the waist of her aquamarine slip dress with gold ornaments that tinkled softly as she moved to clasp his hands in her dainty ones. Her skin was as pale and cool as cream.
“It is an honor to meet you,” he said.
“And you. I wanted to speak with you alone for a bit before we rejoined the Allfather and Thor. I sent them on ahead to the feasting hall to make sure there was food and drink aplenty for you there.” She laughed indulgently as she added, “I believe that they were so excited to meet you that they forgot their manners entirely.”
“They were more than kind, but …” Liam worried his inner cheek as he tried to find a way to say that he had to leave as soon as possible, that he had no time for feasting, without being rude.
“I know what you will say: you must go to Cameron! You cannot waste a moment on indulgence in food and drink!”
“I was,” he admitted with a sheepish smile.
“This time is not wasted. The sustenance you take in here will increase your strength when you return,” she assured him, staring up at him with those intense blue eyes that seemed to see more than just the outside of him. “And there is so much to tell you. We might as well fill our bodies as well as our minds.”
“I see. I will not object then to any such feast.”
She looped her arm through his and they walked through the doors opposite the bedroom he had emerged from. This doorway led into a hallway that ran along the outside of the city. Through the arched openings to Liam’s left he could see dozens of other islands, filled with the delicate white stone towers, floating on top of the lake. It was a dazzling sight that hardly looked real.
“What did you wish to speak to me about?” Liam asked after finally dragging his gaze away from the fantastic structures.
“How much do you know about us? About the Aesir?” she asked.
“I know some things such as that the Aesir are the pantheon of Gods in the Norse religion. Odin, you, Thor, Baldr and Tyr are the highest of all the gods. I’m just not sure how much of what I know is true. I tried to stay away from reading a lot of the mythology to be honest,” Liam explained. “I didn’t want my expectations to color what I … I felt or sensed is a better word, I guess, to be true.”
“Even though you found yourself an immortal Valkyrie living in Valhalla and you heard Odin himself in your mind you doubted the old tales?” Her blue eyes were full of mischief.
“Touche. But that was … real. Confirmed, if you will.” Liam struggled to explain his thoughts on the rest of the mythology that he had read. “The rest seems fanciful and, clearly, can’t be true. If Ragnarock had happened then all of you would be dead or in Helheim at best, but not here.”
Ragnarock was essentially the Norse version of the end of days. In it, Odin, Thor and many of the other gods were killed in a battle against Loki, his children and other giants. The world was then submerged in water before resurfacing and two humans appearing to repopulate it.
She nodded. “You are correct. The old tales are just stories. Truth, lies, exaggerations, and misinterpretations are rampant in them.”
“So what is the truth?”
“To tell you that would take lifetimes.” Her laughter was musical. “But I can tell you what you need to know for now to aid you against the Gash.”
“The Gash is in none of the myths.” He looked down at her as he said that and he saw a shadow cross her lovely face.
“No, it is not.” She let out a breath. “But it is real. All too real.”
“What is the Gash? What connection does it have to the Aesir? Why are you trapped here by it?” The questions poured out of Liam as they passed under an arched doorway that led back inside the city. Liam smelled the delicious, rich scents of roasting beef and chicken. There was laughter and eager conversation up ahead. It sounded rather like a party or a feast. The temperature rose as well and Liam caught a glimpse of roaring fires before Frigg stopped and turned to him.
“The Gash came from the darkness between the realms,” she said, her face looking drawn in the dimmer light of this hall. “It’s twin purposes are to corrupt and then to destroy. We, the Aesir, were able to trap the Gash on Midgard. We intended to destroy it there, but then we lost our ability to leave Asgard. The Bifrost became closed to us.”
“But I managed to use it. Thor and Odin said so!”
She closed one of her hands over his forearm. Her gaze was intent. There were no smiles wreathing her lips. “You did. You were able to because of another aspect of your bloodline.”
“What aspect?” Liam tensed as he remembered how Thor and Odin had spoken of another influence on him.
Her voice was cast so low that when she spoke next Liam wasn’t sure he heard her correctly, but what he thought she said was, “Genius and madness. Magic and mayhem. These are the gifts and terrors that Loki’s blood brings to you.”
CHAPTER SIX: THE DESERT KILLER KIND
As he swam back to full consciousness, Cameron’s head began to pound. But that wasn’t surprising. He had polished off a bottle of tequila, a case of beer and he seemed to remember some vodka in there as well, but his memories were hazy and disjointed.
Liam. Thinking that name now was tinged with excitement and … despair? Liam is … alive? No. Transformed? Perhaps. How else to explain the wings? How else to explain in ten years he hasn’t changed? How else to explain seeing his dead body in a coffin? Liam is back. Back ...but he flew away. Away from me. Away from what I wanted of him, of what we had done ...
The headache was nothing compared to the pain in his chest at that moment. But confusion curled in his brain like a cat in a box. Liam had wanted him. That was clear. Yet at the end, with desire still apparent in his eyes and cock, his brother had … had fled.
And he had angel’s wings. Valkyrie’s wings. It’s so insane. Perhaps I dreamed it. Perh
aps I started drinking way before “Liam” showed up and he was a figment of Bacchus. The drumming of agony in his head reminded him just how much he had drunk the night before. More than enough to conjure a phantom brother. No, that’s not what happened! I wasn’t drunk when he came into the bar or when he came up here. I know it. But …
His brain fuzzed again. To have Liam back? That was too much to hope for. To have Liam flee from him? That hurt more than Hell.
He hadn’t opened his eyes yet, but he swore that he could see sunlight streaming through the large windows through his closed eyelids. He scrunched them shut tighter. An ice pick of pain stabbed into the center of his forehead because of that movement and he groaned.
He pulled up the one piece of clothing he wore over his face to block the light instead. It was the jacket that Liam had left there the night before. He had found it lying over the back of the couch where Liam had left it before he went away – flew away, he FLEW away.
The jacket. It’s real. So there was a real person here last night. A real man.
The scent of leather and Liam’s personal scent, oranges and spice, flowed over him and he took in deep breaths of it. His brother’s scent eased the thumping pain in his head and heart.
Real. He’s real. He was with me. He will come back. He WILL come back.
Only then did he hear the creak of a person moving over the apartment’s floor, which was undoubtedly what had woken him in the first place.
He rocketed up in the bed, eyelids flying open as he cried out, “LIAM?”
But it was not Liam who stood before the canvas that now contained a portrait. He had painted his brother with feverish, drunken intensity sometime the night before. The painting showed his brother, naked, but with wings and surrounded by a rainbow on fire. Where he got the idea of a rainbow aflame wasn’t clear to him, but the image had been so strong that he had to paint it. He hadn’t just used his brushes, but his fingers, even his palms. The whole of his hands had been used, which lead to a sense of movement in the portrait that the brushes alone couldn’t have created. Even now he could feel the dry paint cracking as he curled his hands into fists. He hadn’t cleaned himself up before collapsing onto the bed.
That wasn’t the only piece of art he had created in the night either. There was more than just paint on his hands. He had chipped the dry block of clay into a rough sculpture of a miraculous city with soaring towers, thin as spider web bridges connecting them, minarets, spires and palaces. It was not a place he had ever seen, not even dreamed of, but his hands had created it as if on their own. All he knew was that this place, this glorious impossible city, was where Liam now was. Unreachable.
But he still exists. And he can come back from this place. He WILL come back to me. I know it.
But Liam was not there now. It wasn’t his brother who was crouching down and examining the city sculpture. It was Sigurd, Fenrir’s owner. His hair, which hung in loose waves to his shoulders, was the color of burnished bronze with lighter highlights of pure gold. His eyes were gold, too, such a strange, unnatural color that Cameron had thought they must be contacts. But they weren’t. They were natural to him. It wasn’t just their color though that made Sigurd’s eyes both arresting and disturbing. When Sigurd looked at a person it was always as if he were peeling back the layers of their soul to see the very core of them. A faint smile was always on his lips as if he found everything – even horrors – amusing on some level.
Sigurd was incredibly beautiful, but alien, too. At times, Cameron half believed that Sigurd was a different species. They’d had sex once. A wild night where Cameron had experienced too many orgasms to count. His body had actually hurt for days afterwards and he hadn’t wanted to be touched sexually for a month, because he was so sated. That night had never been repeated. Not because Cameron would have objected to it necessarily, though there could never be romantic love between them – his heart was forever Liam’s — but because Sigurd said they shouldn’t.
“It would dangerous,” Sigurd had whispered against the bare skin at the base of Cameron’s spine.
Cameron was lying on his front, completely nude, his body exhausted from their last coupling. Sigurd was sitting up, languidly kissing along Cameron’s spine, his hands shifting over Cameron’s ribs and back.
“Why would doing this again be dangerous?” Cameron murmured into the pillow. “Unless we can die from too much sex.”
He almost felt like he could die from it. Nearly all his strength was drained away. He could have easily fallen into the deepest, blackest of sleeps. A sleep that might have drifted too deep to be recovered from. His soul might just pull loose of his body and then ...
And then I would be with Liam.
Sigurd trailed his fingers over Cameron’s back, creating invisible letters as if writing something on Cameron’s skin. “It is dangerous, because I can become … obsessed. I think I could become very obsessed with you. I already have … well, you are very much a part of my existence already. Best to not make you more of it.”
Cameron frowned even as his eyes remained shut, so exhausted from their lovemaking, yet worrying that his body would never get to experience this exhaustion again. “And that would be bad?”
A huff of laughter against his skin as Sigurd continued to paint strange words on his back. “Oh, yes, very bad. You must trust me on this. People do not survive my obsessions. And besides …” He let out another huff of laughter and then in a conspiratorial whisper, though they were alone in Cameron’s apartment, said, “You have your own obsession though, don’t you, Cameron? Your Liam.”
He had never told Sigurd about his particular kink for his brother — he kept that deep in his heart, not trusting anyone with it — but Sigurd had known what Liam looked like, Cameron having shown him a picture. Somehow, he must have intuited what drew Cameron to certain men and not to others. Cameron’s cheeks burned, but he didn’t deny it. Lying to Sigurd was almost impossible. And he found that he didn’t want to. To share this forbidden desire with someone who wouldn’t immediately condemn him and call him a pervert or worse would be freeing.
“He was … Liam was …” Cameron began but couldn’t speak of his brother. “Everything to me.”
“Liam is. For you, Liam always is, isn’t he?” Sigurd kept writing on his back.
“Yes,” Cameron confessed and squeezed his eyes tighter shut. A few tears came out that he hadn’t known had been building. “Yes, he is.”
“And that is why we must make tonight the only night between us … at least for awhile,” Sigurd responded.
“Because I’m in love with Liam?” Cameron craned his neck to look over his shoulder at the bar owner.
“Because I can never fully have you and that would ensure your destruction if I became obsessed,” Sigurd answered.
Cameron almost laughed as if this were a dark joke that Sigurd was saying. After all, who said things like that? Who really meant them? But he didn’t laugh. He sensed the truth in Sigurd’s words. That was part of the strangeness of Sigurd. He would tell the truth, but few believed him, because the truth was so very … terrible sometimes. Yet he always said it.
Sigurd fingers finally stilled in their writing.
“What were you writing on me?” Cameron asked.
There was a long pause and finally Sigurd answered, “The story of your life. That’s all.”
“My life so far? Or what’s to come?” There was a prickling sensation down Cameron’s spine.
“Both.”
“My life is that interesting?” Cameron tried to make his voice light.
“Oh, yes, yes, it is,” Sigurd answered and Cameron shivered at something in his voice.
Being interesting to Sigurd might not be the best thing.
That night between them had happened two months ago. Sigurd had been in and out of the bar since, flirting with Cameron, but they had not gone to bed together again.
And now that Liam’s back … Cameron couldn’t even finish the ending of
that thought. If he wasn’t crazy, if last night really happened, his brother had fled from him, horrified at what they had done. But surely if he’s an angel or – or Valkyrie he knew it was me all along, right? Surely, he was watching over me? Saw me grow up and all that?
But he had this sneaking suspicion that Liam had no idea it was him and when he had figured it out he had fled. That was why Cameron had drunk so much that he had lost himself in alcohol’s embrace. But he couldn’t deal with any of that now. He had to deal with Fenrir’s owner in his apartment and his pounding head.
“Sigurd?” Cameron asked, his voice raw.
“You had quite some night,” Sigurd responded without turning around towards him. He continued to study the sculpture. One of his hands ran lightly over one of the towers as if with longing.
“Uhm, yeah, don’t worry though. I had my bender after the bar closed. And I’ll pay you back for the booze.” Cameron had shifted as he spoke and an empty tequila bottle had rolled off the bed and hit the floor with a clink-clank sound. He winced at the noise as it hurt his head. The wincing hurt his head more. He wondered where the Hell the aspirin was.
Sigurd waved away the re-payment. “No need. We are family, after all.”
Sigurd always said that. They were family. Cameron thought he meant it in the way people speak about their closest friends being their family, but Sigurd had said it the first day they had met. They were not close then, but Sigurd had called him family.
Cameron had come into Fenrir on its opening day after getting into a blowout fight with his mother. She had once again been pressuring him about his art, about going to college, about making a life for himself instead of just wasting himself in this desert city.
“Only one of my sons is dead, Cameron! Don’t make me mourn two!” she had shouted as him as he had stormed out of their house.