by Raythe Reign
“Even if we were willing to help you go destroy another realm,” Liam said tightly. “We cannot bring Odin here.”
“No, but Loki can,” the Gash said. “Odin is necessary. Only he can unlock the other realms for me. Loki only controls the connection between Midgard and Asgard. It’s Odin I need and Odin I must have here.”
“Odin won’t help you!” Cameron scoffed.
“He won’t,” Liam agreed.
The Gash’s mouth opened, a black maw in that skinny, ill face, and, at first, seemed to be making absolutely no sound. He thought maybe the child was having a fit. But then he realized that it was silent laughter.
Liam shifted uneasily. “Why do you find that funny? Odin is honorable —”
“Oh, you are like Thor if you believe that!” the Gash chortled.
Liam’s heart thumped dully. Odin had let the Gash into Midgard in the first place in the pursuit of knowledge. He was known for desiring knowledge above all things. What if the Gash could offer him something that would trigger that overriding needto know.
As if sensing the trajectory of his thoughts, the Gash nodded and smiled. “I have many secrets that old One-Eye would give his other eye to know. He’ll help me.”
“So you’re trying to lure Loki here,” Cameron said quietly. “And you’re going to do what? Trade us to him for letting Odin down here?”
The Gash pressed a grubby child’s finger to it’s nose. “Exactly.”
“Loki won’t do it. He won’t bring Odin back here.” Cameron shook his head and he was clearly trying to look certain of that, but Liam could read in his little brother’s face that Cameron thought the opposite.
“Though I find emotions like love and caring foolish and illogical, I know them when I see them,” the Gash said. “Loki will do what I want, too. Everyone will do so in the end.”
“Why don’t you just go back to where you came from?” Liam asked.
“Because if this place is no fun that place is the absolute dumps.” The Gash tossed the boy’s head and it impacted the side of the refrigerator with a solid thud. Liam winced in empathy. “I’ll never return there.”
A loaded silence fell as each side evaluated what the other had on them.
“You’re assuming we won’t act because of the possible death of one man.” Cameron tipped his head towards the doctor who whimpered.
Liam sent Cameron a worried look. The way the magic swirled around his brother and nipped at the little girl’s flesh concerned him. Surely, Cameron wouldn’t condemn this doctor to death.
But it would be to save other realms from the Gash. One life for many. At least the Valkyrie are on Earth, but who knows if there is anyone in those others places that could stop it. The Gash would likely lock whatever realm it goes to against the Aesir. So many more would suffer.
“This man? This man is already dead.” The Gash sliced the doctor’s throat.
“No!” Liam cried out.
A burst of electricity left his fingers. The electricity arced in two different directions. He heard Cameron hiss and let the girl go when it struck her. As he blinked to clear his vision from the strobing white light of the lightning, he saw that the girl was lying, motionless on the ground, and the boy was slumped on top of the dead doctor’s body. The doctor’s eyes were still open, staring back at him reproachfully. Blood formed an ever expanding lake around the doctor’s head. Liam snapped out of his frozen state as he saw that blood.
“Help me get the boy out!” he shouted at Cameron.
His little brother had crouched down beside the girl and was checking her pulse. “She’s okay.”
“They both will be, but if the boy wakes up on top of a dead body in a morgue refrigerator …” Liam let the sentence hang.
There was a sliding tray that the man and boy were on. Liam grabbed the edge of it and pulled. There was resistance, because, unlike corpses, the two bodies in the refrigerator were not lying neatly on their backs, arms at their sides. The man’s one shoulder was wedged against the side and the boy’s arm appeared caught on something. Cameron reached inside to move them.
“You pull while I adjust them, okay?” Cameron suggested.
Liam kissed his brother’s forehead. “I’m so damned glad that you’re here.”
“Me, too, though that lightning thing seems better than my frost at taking out the Gash,” Cameron grinned. “Wish mine worked like ice magic in the movies.”
“Maybe it does if you just will it to,” he said.
“I’ll have to try that out sometime.” Cameron kissed him back.
The kiss was short and sweet. Now was not the time for anything more, but Liam was suddenly determined to ensure that there was time for just him and his brother. But knowing that more pressing matters awaited them at that moment, Liam turned back to the task at hand. He pulled on the tray while Cameron pushed and prodded the bodies. Inch by inch they were able to extract the tray.
The boy was starting to come back from unconsciousness just as Cameron lifted him off of the dead doctor’s chest. Liam slammed the body of the doctor back inside and closed the door. He was sorry that he had to treat the doctor’s body with such little ceremony, but he didn’t want to have the little boy or girl see it when they regained consciousness. The boy moaned in Cameron’s arms, which were no longer blue. Liam went to the girl whose head was rising up groggily. He gently lifted her up in his arms as well.
“Where — where are we?” the little girl asked, rubbing her eyes.
“It’s dark here and smells bad,” the boy added. Liam saw that he was clutching at Cameron’s shirt.
“Yeah, we’re going to get out of here into the fresh air,” Cameron promised him.
Liam frowned then. Why had the Gash killed the doctor when it wanted to hold him and Cameron ransom in here? Was it thinking that he and Cameron were stuck here, because of the children outside? The lightning did not work as well away from the sky, but he could feel it building in him again. And Cameron’s frost power could likely be used against them, too. Not to mention that Nafari and the other Valkyrie would come looking for them as well as his mother. Like Cameron, his mother acted for the common good and sometimes that involved sacrifices. He was pretty sure that if she believed them to be in danger she would kill to get them out, even if it was children. Considering all of that, why did the Gash taken away the one thing - the doctor - that was keeping all the chess pieces in the same place?
“It’s quiet,” Cameron said, and he was frowning, too.
The thundering of children’s hands against the doors, which had become like background noise, had stopped and he wasn’t sure when.
“You’re right,” he remarked.
“What happened to the other kids?” Cameron asked. “I don’t hear them out there.”
“Maybe the Gash sent them away,” Liam said.
Maybe he’s had them leave the hospital, spread out into the city, to cause more mischief.
That was when Liam heard a crackling sound and saw a golden, flickering light between, above and beneath the two morgue doors that he had braced shut. Half the lights in the morgue had shut off and the ones remaining were dim, but there was enough light to see the puffy, white smoke that was suddenly spiraling its way inside the morgue.
“It smells like a campfire,” the girl said and scrunched up her nose. “But funny … not a good fire.”
Liam turned to face Cameron. He saw understanding in his brother’s eyes. The Gash had set a fire on the other side of the morgue doors. It had kept them occupied while the kids had piled up who knew what and then set it ablaze. This was how it was going to get Loki to come. The Gash believed that they wouldn’t be able to escape the morgue, powers or no.
“I think you need to test out whether your frost powers can do more than just chill on touch,” Liam said.
Cameron nodded and looked at the boy in his arms. He couldn’t reach for his magic with her there. “What about the fire extinguisher? Oh …”
Liam looked over to where the red extinguisher should have been hooked to the wall and suddenly understood what was causing his brother’s consternation. There was the plate to hold it, but no extinguisher. More smoke, dark smoke, was now gushing underneath and between the doors. The back of his throat was tickling and the girl in his arms started to cough. Alarm filled Liam. They had to get out of here and the doors looked to be the only exit so they had to stop that fire.
“Let’s get the kids away from the smoke into the office,” Liam suggested and hurriedly carried the boy over to the room. He grabbed a face mask and handed it to the child who took it uncertainly.
“Is there a fire? Can’t we get out?” the little boy asked.
His face was so different now without the Gash animating it with that vile intelligence. The boy’s eyes were a warm brown and he seemed utterly gentle. Liam prayed that nothing about the child had been affected by having the Gash’s presence inside of him.
“It’s going to be fine. Just put the mask on and stay here. Cam and I will be right back to get you,” Liam promised.
He gave what he hoped would be a comforting smile, but it felt like he had a too tight mask on. He had said the same sort of thing to the doctor and he was dead. He squeezed the boy’s slender shoulders and stood up. He turned and saw that Cameron had given the little girl a mask, too, and was saying something similar to her. Their eyes met once more. Cameron’s arms flared a bright blue.
“Your arms!” the little girl cried.
“What’s wrong with them? Are you sick, too?” the little boy asked.
“They’re pretty! He can’t be sick!” the little girl protested, but then she started to cough hard.
The smoke had crawled across the ceiling and was now filling this room, too.
“Put your masks on and stay here,” Liam ordered.
He and Cameron then left the office and shut the door behind them, hoping it would spare the children from some of the smoke. Liam’s eyes began to water painfully and he was coughing so hard that his lungs hurt. Cameron was doing the same.
The smoke obscured much of the weak light the ceiling fixtures were giving off. There was a snapping, crackling sound and the lights flared then went out altogether. It was completely dark except for the golden glow of the raging fire that licked the metal doors leading into the morgue and Cameron’s arms. They were glowing in the dark. Liam heard the kids give out cries of fear at the lights going out. He shook off the awe at what he was seeing and called out to them.
“It’s okay! Just stay where you are!” The last part was mostly made unintelligible by a round of coughing. “We’ve got to get to the doors, Cam. Maybe I can use the lightning to blast them open and you use frost to put out the fire!”
He didn’t know if Cameron had heard him. His little brother was coughing so hard at that point that if he had said anything Liam wouldn’t have been able to understand it. He just had to hope that Cameron followed his lead. He grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled it up over his nose and mouth as he moved towards the flames. They were so high! He imagined that they were licking the ceiling outside of the morgue by now.
He knew nothing of fire except what he had seen in a few movies. He wasn’t sure, for instance, if opening the doors would be a good thing. Would it allow more air to feed the fire? Wasn’t there something called a back draft? Would a fireball form and barrel into the room? That sounded absurd but he seemed to remember it had happened in some movie or another.
His lung ached terribly and his eyes were tearing so much that all he could see was a smear of gold ahead of him and another smear of blue to his right, which had to be Cameron. Liam raised his hands. He focused the energy within him to blow the morgue doors off their hinges. He wasn’t going to bother trying to take the mop handle out because he couldn’t get any nearer to the doors anyways. The smoke was too thick. The fire too hot already.
That was when he heard a crackling sound above him. He looked up just as he saw one of the light fixtures falling down on top of him. The fire hadn’t been stopped by the morgue doors, he realized in the second it took the heavy light fixture to fall. It had lit the ceiling tiles on fire and then flowed over the morgue doors, racing along the ceiling until it had weakened the fixture, which was falling on his head.
In that moment of knowledge and the falling of the fixture, Liam saw a rainbow. The firelight was hitting the metal edge of one of the morgue tables and somehow he saw a rainbow. Even as he heard the squealing of the fixture falling and his brother’s shout of warning, Liam dove towards the rainbow. It was only a few inches long and, logically, he should have dove away from it. He would bash his head into the table by doing this, but he did it anyways.
He didn’t bash his head.
Between one moment and the next, he went from the darkness and fire and smoke to another dimly lit room where fire crackled, but it was contained in a fire pit. He smelled the scent of roasting meat and not foul chemicals. He heard cries of his name, but not in his brother’s voice, but in Aesir voices. Thor’s voice was louder than the others.
“LIAM!”
Liam looked up and met Thor’s blue eyes. He knew then what had happened. He had used the Bifrost again to come to Asgard. But he had left Cameron and the children back in that deathly morgue. He knew that while he might be able to return and bring Cameron here, that he couldn’t bring the children. They didn’t have Loki’s gifts and would die on the journey. He knew that if he went back himself that the fire had spread too far for him and Cameron to stop it. He knew that they didn’t have the knowledge to get out of that room with their powers yet, but he was pretty certain that Thor could. And he knew that Thor thought the same thing.
If I can bring Cameron here then I can bring Thor back with me.
He stuck out his hand to the Thunder God. “Want to do something crazy?”
Thor grasped his hand before he had finished the sentence. “Do it! Take me to Midgard!”
Liam saw the rainbow’s reflection in a piece of silverware on the table. He leaped for it while gripping Thor’s hand as tightly as possible. There was a sense of falling and then he was back in smoky darkness. The heat was unbearable. He couldn’t see a damned thing. But he could still feel Thor’s hand in his.
Then he could see lightning limning Mjolnir. Thor was holding his hammer above his head. There was a boom as lightning streamed from the hammer and impacted the ceiling. The ceiling disappeared and a large hole was revealed. Light streamed down from the floor above.
“CAM!” Liam shouted and looked around.
“I couldn’t find you! God, I thought … I thought I lost you!” Cameron cried and he sounded so forlorn that Liam’s heart nearly dropped into his feet.
His brother was just a few feet from him and soon that distance was reduced to nothing as Cameron fell into his arms. He hugged Cameron fiercely against him. Thor had released his hand and had hurried over to the office where the children were. He returned in seconds with a child tucked under each arm. His long flowing red cloak spread out behind him like wings when he moved.
“Come, Liam, Cameron, we must get out of here,” Thor rumbled. The Thunder God made a mighty leap and he was on the first floor above them.
Liam’s wings unfurled and he flew himself and Cameron up out of the morgue. Cameron sagged against him as they looked down into the pit below. It reminded Liam of one of the sulfurous pits of Hell.
“Guess the Gash took out the fire suppression system, too, down there,” Cameron remarked. “I wonder if it was planning this for awhile. But Loki didn’t come to save us.”
“Maybe he couldn’t get to us until the Gash let him in,” Liam suggested as he stroked Cameron’s back. He saw that there were soot marks, staining Cameron’s pale cheeks. They both would need long, hot showers to wash the scent of fire off of them.
“You don’t think he just decided to abandon us?” Cameron’s voice was tinged with hurt.
“No, I don’t think so. He’ll have an
explanation.”
“But will it be the one you wish to hear?” Thor asked. “His answers and explanations are never easy.”
Thor, who had gently put down the children, straightened and turned towards them. The children were still staring up at him like they truly realized that they were seeing a god, but Liam wondered if they thought Thor was Chris Hemsworth. Movie stars were the equivalent of gods in the modern world anyways. Both of their eyes were shining in awe. They were clutching one another and their mouths were open.
“Whoa! You’re so cool!” the boy said.
“Your hammer is neat!” the girl said.
Thor smiled down at them both. “I am Thor and this is Mjolnir. I and my hammer will protect you against the darkness.”
“Awesome!” both children repeated in unison.
The sound of sirens filled the air and Liam guessed that the fire department had arrived and who knew how many deputies.
“We can’t be found here,” Liam said quietly.
“Then you’d best come back to my place,” Loki drawled from behind them.
All of them jerked towards the voice. Loki was leaning against the wall. His strange gold eyes were fixed on Thor as if he couldn’t quite believe the Thunder God was really there.
“Loki,” Thor said, his voice both angry and husky at the same time.
Loki’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment and he smiled, a wild smile. “Wait to lecture me when we get out of here, Thor. I want to enjoy it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: FIRE AND WATER
“Did you buy popcorn?” Cameron shouted in Liam’s ear as they raced down the highway to Fenrir on his big brother’s motorcycle.
“What?” Liam asked, laughter in his voice. He obviously could hear Cameron, but he didn’t understand the question.
“I think the confrontation between Thor and Loki is going to be epic. Hence popcorn,” Cameron explained.
He hugged Liam’s waist tighter and rested his cheek against his big brother’s broad back. Liam smelled of smoke and melted plastic, but he didn’t care. They were out of that fire pit and they were together. They’d even saved some of the kids. Not that the hospital confrontation had been a “win”. Far from it. Nafari had filled them in on the fact that over half a dozen hospital personnel were dead and a bunch of the kids from the cancer ward were missing when they’d met up with him in the hospital’s back parking lot.