Valkyrie

by Raythe Reign

  Dammit.

  “God, Mom must be out of her mind.” Cameron got to his feet. “She depends upon Juan. They’re friends, Liam. We have to get to her.”

  “She accompanied him to the hospital. I believe they were insisting she get checked out herself,” Lihua said.

  Liam got off the couch as Cameron tugged on his arm to urge him to up. He wanted to go to the hospital immediately. Liam though thought of what Loki had said about their mother having gifts that would let her see him. Now that wouldn’t be such a good thing.

  “We took out the father, but the Gash just jumped to the mother and took off,” Lihua explained.

  “The Gash isn’t going to leave Holten. Even if we hunt down the mother it will just switch to another person in the area,” Liam said and a feeling of despair went through him. “We need another plan.”

  “What about Loki?” Elda asked. “Weren’t you going to speak to him about his terms for opening the Bifrost?”

  “We’re working on that,” Cameron answered her. “Can we capture the Gash? Maybe imprison it so it can’t jump into another body until we get things sorted with Loki?”

  “We can capture the person it’s inhabiting, but keeping the Gash in that form?” Nafari shrugged. “Never seen that done. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible though.”

  Lihua sat down cross legged on the floor. “I’ll start tracking it again.”

  “And you, Liam? Are you going to stay and help us?” Elda asked quietly.

  Cameron’s hand on his arm tightened. “We’re going to go see our mom. Maybe she has some information.”

  “She’s a warrior, but she’s in a great deal of denial. Unlike the two of you, she doesn’t care to see what is really out there,” Elda said.

  “Maybe that is going to change,” Liam said. “But even if she ignores all the supernatural stuff, she’s smart and perceptive. She might know something.”

  “And we need to make sure she’s okay,” Cameron reminded them all.

  “I will go with you,” Nafari said, stepping into the standoff that was developing. “Elda, perhaps you can think of places we could imprison the Gash until we work this out with Loki.”

  Elda stared hard at Cameron who stared hard back at her as if daring her to try to order Liam to choose between her and his family. Finally, Elda looked away.

  “Fine. Do that. But be back soon,” Elda said and crossed her arms over her chest. “We have work to do.”

  Liam shot Nafari a grateful look. The big man nodded back with a slight smile.

  “Come on, you guys.” Cameron firmly pulled Liam to the stairwell with Nafari trailing after them. “Let’s go see Mom.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: SHADOWS OF THE PAST

  Cameron hated hospitals. It was the smell and the white, harsh lights. It was something about how the doctors and nurses seemed untouched by the pain they saw day in and day out. He knew that they had to have emotional distance to do their jobs and do them well. But he always felt there was an “us” against “them” mentality underneath it all. The doctors and nurses were “us” and the patients were “them” and there was always this sense that the “us” were perfect while the “them” were broken. It was unfair, he knew. But Cameron also knew he would always feel like a “them”.

  This sense of “themness” started from the time that he and Liam had gone to see their father after he had been shot. He was brain dead. Not coming back. The machines were the only things keeping his body “alive” but it was an aliveness that was like a bicycle whose rider was long gone but the wheels kept spinning slower and slower.

  Their father had been hooked up to so many machines that it was hard to see him beneath all the tubes, electrodes and bandages. Cameron had known his father wasn’t in that body the moment he saw it. The doctor had been a man with hair graying at the temples and spectacles that lent him a professorish cast. He had held their mother’s hands when he had told her the news that her husband could never come back. She’d pulled her hands from his and said she understood. And within fifteen minutes she’d had the machines removed.

  Liam and Cameron had held one of their father’s hands while she had held the other as the empty body had finally stopped spinning its wheels Her face had been empty. She had not cried. That had made Cameron want to scream at her. Why wasn’t she sad? Why wasn’t she angry? Why was she like a block of ice? Liam had wrapped Cameron in his arms then and Cameron had screamed his rage and pain against his brother’s broad chest until the anger turned to wracking sobs and tears had stained Liam’s t-shirt.

  And then there had been the last time that Cameron had come to a hospital. He had run to the morgue where Liam’s body was being kept after the attack. He’d actually raced to the hospital in bare feet after sneaking out of his house in his pajamas. He’d been convinced that Liam wasn’t really dead.

  He’d imagined his brother waking up in the morgue’s refrigerator. He’d be cold and bewildered. He might even suffocate if he was in one of those little cold lockers like they showed on television and in the movies. So he’d gone to the hospital and tried to get to Liam. He was caught by one of the orderlies. He’d screamed and kicked and flailed so hard that, finally, they had let him see Liam’s body again, proving to him that his beloved older brother was dead. He’d collapsed on the morgue’s cool, sterile floor, eyes flooding with tears, body wracked with sobs. But there was no one there to let him pour his grief into. When his mother had come to him, she hadn’t touched him. She had sat on her haunches before him, and let him weep, but nothing else.

  Maybe that had been the moment when Cameron had started to hate her as much as loved her.

  Cameron knew then that there had been talk about him being institutionalized after that. The “us” had determined that his grief was too great. It was not “normal”. He was one of “them” and needed to be put away. For once, his mother had not bowed to what was “normal” and had protected him instead. She had stayed up for nights on end with him as he’d grieved. Finally, when he saw even her iron constitution was breaking down he had swallowed what he felt and hid it away. Because he’d known that his mother might falter and might decided “normal” was necessary. It would give her a good night’s sleep anyways.

  And now I’m back here.

  The three of them had ridden over on two motorcycles. Nafari’s cycle was a chrome and obsidian monster while Cameron had snugged behind Liam on his leaner though throaty Valkyrie. As they parked in the hospital’s parking lot, Cameron swore that he could already smell the antiseptic. While he thought he was hiding his discomfort as soon as Liam had turned off the key to the ignition he’d swung his head around to speak to him.

  “Are you all right, Cam? No after effects from — from the magic?” Liam asked.

  Just hearing Liam’s voice calmed Cameron down. “No, arms still the right color.” He pushed the sleeves of Liam’s jacket up that he’d borrowed to show his big brother the normal flesh color rather than that strange, magnetic blue. “It’s just jitters about hospitals. There are a lot of places I haven’t gone since you died. This is one of them.”

  Immediately, Liam’s expression went tender and sad. “I’m sorry, Cam.”

  Cameron swung his leg off the bike and stood up. “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for dying. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I should have come back sooner. I should have —”

  Cameron pressed a few fingers to Liam’s lips, silencing him. “I won’t say you’re wrong about that, but … you wouldn’t have been able to see me as the man I am now if you’d watched me grow up. It would have been so much harder to get you to love me.”

  “Never.” Liam’s eyes were like banked fires.

  They leaned towards one another for a kiss. Nafari cleared his throat, which had them jumping apart like scalded cats. Cameron was about to turn icy eyes upon his brother’s best friend when Liam surprised him by grasping his face and completing the soft kiss.

  “Are we going in?” Nafa
ri asked coldly. His large arms were crossed over his chest and he was looking at them with a shadowed expression, but Cameron couldn’t have cared less. Because Liam had chosen right then and there.

  I don’t want Liam to lose Nafari, but we’re together. Nafari has to understand that. And if he can’t understand that ...

  Liam put the kickstand down and dismounted the bike. “What exactly was the matter with Juan?”

  “He was unconscious, face down on the basement floor. Not sure what had happened to him, but I tasted death in the air,” Nafari said with a grunt as the three of them headed through the hospital’s entrance.

  As they approached the information desk, Cameron asked, “Do Valkyrie have any special powers to convince people to do what they want?”

  “We don’t. Elda has some,” Liam answered. “We can just make people forget us.”

  “Right then, I’ll find out where Mom and Juan are,” Cameron said.

  “They’ll just tell you?” Nafari’s sculpted eyebrows rose.

  Liam chuckled. “They will. Cam has a way about him. Just watch.”

  Cameron headed over to the information desk where an elderly woman sat. She wore half moon glasses that had a chain that looped around her neck so she wouldn’t lose them. She sat up straighter as he approached. Her expression was welcoming, but he knew it would become guarded if he asked for the location of a patient he wasn’t related to. Cameron flashed her a smile and he could almost feel her opening up to him.

  I wonder if this is magic. I wonder if all this time when I was able to convince people to calm down at the bar and not fight I was actually using magic in some way. Huh. Weird thought.

  Cameron consciously willed this bespectacled woman to give him the information he wanted. She would be happy to give him anything he asked for. He thought he saw her eyes take on an almost glazed look.

  “Hello,” he said brightly.

  She gazed at him blankly for long moments and a trickle of unease went through him. Had he melted her mind or something? He had no idea how his magic really worked. What if he’d done it wrong and harmed her?

  But then she seemed to snap out of her trance and gave him an uncertain smile before saying, “Yes, how may I help you?”

  Cameron flashed her another winning grin and willed her to help him as he asked, “I’m looking for Sheriff Mary Blake. She’s my mother. What room is she in?”

  The woman again went a little misty but finally tapped his mother’s name into the computer system. She frowned and looked rather upset as she said, “Oh, dear, I don’t see her in our system. Are you sure she’s a patient here?”

  He had been afraid of this. Mom probably would not have checked in. She would have had the emergency staff check her out and then she would have stayed by Juan’s side. But he wasn’t family of Juan’s and this nice old lady wasn’t supposed to tell him anything about people not related to him.

  “What about Deputy Juan Munoz? My mother came into the hospital with him. Both of them were injured. Could you tell me where he is?” Cameron asked.

  “Are you a relative of Deputy Munoz?” she asked almost hopefully.

  “No, but my mother is undoubtedly with him,” he said. “And she’s who I’m looking for.”

  He saw the faint frown lines appear between her eyes as she opened her mouth to tell him - in the politest terms possible, he was sure - that she couldn’t release information about Deputy Munoz to him. He pushed the thought again at her that she really wanted to help him. Her mouth closed and when it reopened she said something quite different than she had, at first, intended.

  “I could page your mother,” she offered.

  “I don’t want to have her pulled away from her deputy. It would be much better if you’d just tell me where he is,” Cameron said and smiled brilliantly again.

  He felt her resistance give and it was only then that he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have done this. But he’d done it and there it was. With that tentative smile, she said, “Yes, yes, of course.”

  With the room number in hand he went over to Liam and Nafari. Liam looked almost smug as Nafari appeared surprised at his success.

  “She looked bewitched a time or two when you spoke to her. I saw something like that in Africa,” Nafari said. “A witch doctor. Controlled a whole village like that.”

  “Oh? Sounds handy,” Cameron remarked dryly.

  “Perhaps it was, but dangerous, too. He had to be put down,” Nafari answered coolly.

  “Nafari,” Liam said with a repressive look.

  Nafari held up his hands as if to say he meant nothing by it. But Cameron felt the dark looks that his brother’s best friend was giving him.

  He thinks I’m a bad influence.

  “Juan is no longer in the ER. They’ve moved him to the critical care ward. Room 257,” Cameron said. “Shall we?”

  He didn’t wait to see if the other two followed him. He knew that Liam would. He was sure that Nafari would as well so long as Liam did. His brother dropped back and he heard Liam muttering something to his best friend. Cameron was amazed when the murmuring suddenly became very clear, it just sort of clicked in. More magic?

  “... what’s wrong, Nafari?” Liam asked. “Why are you acting as if my brother is the enemy?”

  “Why are you kissing your brother like he is your lover?” Nafari whispered back.

  Cameron’s heart thudded heavily in his chest. This was yet another test for them. Could Liam handle the approbation? Cameron didn’t care what other people thought. He never had. But Liam had always been liked.

  He heard Liam let out a breath. “Because I love him.”

  A small quiver went through Cameron. I love you, too, Liam.

  “He is your brother,” Nafari pointed out as if Liam didn’t know.

  “Yes,” was all Liam said in response and Cameron felt like cheering. His brother was not trying to defend or deny what they were doing. He stated it as a fact.

  “This love is not as it should be, my friend,” Nafari’s voice was cast low.

  “Love is love, Nafari. We’re hurting no one,” Liam responded just as low, but without any heat.

  Cameron’s breath caught in his chest. Liam felt just as he did! He knew that this conversation was hard on his brother and he would do almost anything to make it end. The one thing he wouldn’t do though was give Liam up romantically so that they could have love “as it should be” in Nafari’s eyes.

  If Mom were to ever actually see Liam as our Liam her reaction would make Nafari’s look tame. She’d probably want to shoot me. I would be the corrupter of her fair son.

  There wasn’t time for them to say more because they’d reached the elevator. Cameron stabbed the button. The doors immediately whooshed open and the three of them stepped inside. Liam hit the button for the second floor. Then he reached over and threaded the fingers with Cameron’s.

  “It’ll be okay, Cam. Mom’s tough,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know but she and Juan have really grown close since you … died,” Cameron explained.

  “Romantically close?” Liam asked, interest in his voice.

  “No, Mom’s too busy working to actually have a life,” Cameron remarked. “But best friends for sure. If he doesn’t make it …”

  “Our mother eats sorrow for breakfast,” Liam said to Nafari.

  “And lunch and dinner and for an after dinner drink,” Cameron muttered as the doors opened and they stepped out into the corridor.

  “I’m going to make it so your mother cannot see me. We met in the basement of the parents’ home. She will have questions of me,” Nafari said.

  “So she literally won’t see you?” Cameron asked.

  “Yeah, she’ll just look past him,” Liam explained.

  “What about you, Liam? She knows that you’re with Nafari, Elda and Lihua —”

  “That’s true. I should make myself invisible to her as well,” Liam said regretfully.

  Cameron nodded. “Makes sense.”r />
  They started back down the hallway. Another one of the things that Cameron always hated about hospitals was the mixture of cleanliness and yet a sense of deep dirt. The floors shone and squeaked underfoot as they walked down them, because they were so clean but he swore that the odors of blood, vomit and antiseptic rose up in a haze. The walls, painted a cheery yellow showed the scuffs and dings of the beds that moved the patients about. The lighting was stark in some places and too dim in others as they tried to give the nurses’ station enough light so they could read, but not enough light to disturb the patient rooms. It gave the hospital corridor a sepulchral feel.

  Cameron immediately felt his mother’s presence. It seemed like Liam did the same as both their heads lifted and turned towards their mother, still dressed in her sheriff’s uniform, leaning against the curse of the nurse’s station. There was a deep bruise on her forehead and a scrape along her jaw. There were nicks and cuts on her knuckles and more bruises on her forearms. She’d rolled the cuffs of her shirt to her elbows, which was unusual for her. Her uniform was normally crisp and neat, but not now. It looked like she had wrestled with someone and lost.

  “Mom!” Cameron called and rushed towards her, pulling Liam behind him. He could feel his brother’s distress through their clasped hands.

  Mary Blake lifted her head and turned towards him. Not them. Him. She didn’t see Liam or Nafari. The other side of her face was even more cut up compared to the side he had seen before and he winced. The two of them stopped in front of her. Liam - if she had known who he was - would have embraced their mother. He would have clucked over her injuries. He would have forced her to stay overnight at the hospital. But Liam was “Liam the biker” not “Liam her son” and he had made his presence invisible so he stood there awkwardly beside Cameron.

  Cameron had never been one to fuss over their mother. But he could feel his older brother’s need to care for her and the only way he could do that was through Cameron. So Cameron did what he normally never would have. He gently drew his mother into his arms. He felt Liam relax and love them both with looks instead of touches.