“A blood sample won’t solve this, Morgane. Nice play if it would’ve worked. Except…” Loki paused, considering. “If you were a halfling, or even a hybrid, you’d know that. So you’re either really smart or really stupid.”
“How about we go with stupid, just for tonight?” Sighing, she straightened and felt her neck crack, but at least she didn’t pass out from pain. But her pants were stiff with dried blood, and her bones ached. “Look. I’m exhausted. I need to get home before I fall over, and you want me out of your hair. It seems we all want the same thing here.” For a long moment, the three of them only stared at each other.
Finally Loki nodded stone-faced, never taking his eyes from her as he ordered Mir, “You heard the lady. Fix her up.”
Mir hefted himself off the gurney, admonition in his eyes. “And then what?”
“She wants to go home, we take her home.” Loki stepped forward and steadied her as she maneuvered around the narrow gurney. “Lie still and let him sew up your back. Even though he‘s an asshole, he’s good at what he does.”
Yeah, she thought, I’ll bet he is.
Loki raised the shirt over her shoulders, and she felt a phantom trail of heat again as he traced one of the scars on her back while Mir pulled supplies down. “You should have been able to heal yourself quickly, without this many scars.” The light, clever play of those fingers over her skin, bumping over the ridges of scarring, left her shivering, unable to concentrate.
“Heal without scars? Now that would be a neat trick, I suppose.” Narrowing her eyes at him, she carefully chose her next words, thinking of everything that had been said between them. Nothing meant what she thought it meant. Not here. Not with these two. “I’m a plain old human being, and whatever poison those monsters have in their claws tears me up for at least two full days until I’m better. So if you’ve got any more of that stuff you poured down my throat, I’d take it.” Morgane caught the sound of instruments hitting a metal tray and tried not to imagine sharp, pointy things. “You are going to numb me up first, right?”
“Yeah, sure, sweetheart, I’ll…” The snarl coming out of Loki’s mouth shut him up quick. “I’ll numb you up so you don’t feel a thing.” The quick, sharp pinch was followed by wonderful, blissful nothingness. All in all, Morgane thought, bracing her chin on her hands, tonight wasn’t turning out half bad. She’d survived what had appeared to be an impending massacre. And after all this time alone, she’d found someone else who saw those monsters too. The thought made her eyes burn.
She wasn’t crazy. Not totally, at least. Nor was she alone on the streets of Chicago. Others fought the same battle she fought. Maybe for the same reasons. “Hey, how many of you are there? Do you guys go out every night and fight?”
The only sound that greeted her questions was the clinking of the tools as Mir got to work, but Loki sat down in front of her so they were eye to eye and covered her hands with his. “This shouldn’t take him long to stitch you up. So you’ve really been hunting those things for two years?”
“Yeah, about two years.” It seemed like so much longer. “I came to kill them. I want to kill them all.” The words spewed out while her fingers clenched desperately against Loki’s, the terrible weight of what she was doing threatening to crush her. “They stole my family away from me. I’m here to pay them back. And I’ll keep going until I’m finished. One way or another.” The clinking of instruments stopped.
“Family? Did you say the Grim killed your family?”
Ah, she thought, so the things have a name?
“Yeah. We were visiting, doing the touristy thing and missed our train back to the hotel. Got caught out after dark and couldn’t find a cab. We were walking, my mom, my sister, and me. My dad had been killed a few months before, and I suppose the trip was…to help us heal, like the therapist said. No one else survived except me. Well, technically. Because actually, I died too. For a few minutes, at least, on the ride back to the hospital. And once on the operating table when they were putting me back together.”
And now came the weird part.
“It was after that night I started seeing the demons everywhere.”
In that moment, she was only aware of her hand, wrapped up in Loki’s bigger, calloused one. It had been two years since anyone had touched her. So long since she’d felt the warm press of skin against her own. The touch of a man. “And that didn’t freak you out? Seeing them for the first time?” His searching words shook her out of her reverie.
“Of course it freaked me out. The whole thing freaked me out,” she snapped, recoiling from the memory of that night as it echoed inside her.
But when his fingers tightened on hers, she glanced up. His eyes seeming to say, I’m sorry.
Morgane couldn’t acknowledge what he was offering, not without breaking down in tears, so instead, she explained softly, “How do you think it felt, when I was the only one who knew what really happened to my mom and sister? It’s like nobody else is even aware they exist. We never even saw them coming, and my mom, well, when they grabbed her, she just started screaming, and then she disappeared. Then my sister was gone, into the darkness. One second, we were walking. The next? They were being dragged backward into an alleyway. They might have grabbed mom or Ava first, I’m not really sure. Mom was screaming for us to run, to get away…” Morgane stopped, bile rising in her throat. “When mom’s screaming stopped, that’s when they came for me.”
Even though she’d told no one the actual details of that night, each second was etched into her brain, carved in screams and blood. Engraved permanently from seven hundred nights of replaying it in her head, over and over again.
“After mom stopped screaming, I felt something grab onto me, and one of them gouged me in the stomach. Then things get a bit blurry. I felt… I felt something push me, almost throw me out of the alley and straight into a group of people. I expected the monsters to come out and finish the job, but they never did. Then the street filled up with cops and EMS and flashing lights. During the ambulance ride, they said they lost me. Of the twenty-minute drive, I was alive for three. They had to sew me back up, and lost me again on the table. At the hospital, the cops interviewed me and later, back in Pennsylvania, they asked me more questions. After that, they never contacted me again. I suppose they gave up.” She loosened up on Loki’s hand. “There was nothing for me in Pittsburgh. I had no family left.”
Now came the really hard part.
“So I liquidated everything. Sold the house, the cars, cashed in all of their life insurance policies. Everything. And flew here, after deciding I needed to figure out what happened to my sister, my mom. To me. And the monsters were just…right there. All over this city. Day and night. Especially at night. Big, black spiders crawling everywhere, on the buildings, in the shadows, under the bridges.
“It took me awhile to realize they’re in every city, everywhere in the world.” Her eyes lingered on his face for a moment. “I started paying attention to the news and the papers, stories on the Internet. Do you know how many people disappear every day in this country? Thousands. Most of those disappearances are just written off. Chalked up to runaways and unsolved cases.”
Morgane drew in a shallow, unsteady breath. “Anyway. The social worker told me that night would be the first thing I thought of every day…until the day it became the second thing. I guess I’m still waiting for that day to come.” She scanned the sterile surroundings.
“So that’s my story. Now it’s your turn. Where am I? What is this place? And who are you guys? Who do you work for? The government?”
Loki caught Mir’s eye. Mir shot her a hard look then shook his head emphatically. “You’re not in a position to be asking the questions right now, Miss Burke. Let’s stick to who you are and why you’re here.”
“What was the date, Morgane?” Loki asked instead, crushing her hand so hard she felt the bones whine. “The date of the attack?”
Without hesitation she gave him the date. “September tw
enty-second, 2018.” She drew in an unsteady breath. “Twenty after midnight, at the corner of East 16th and Wabash.”
He let go of her hand. “I’ll be right back, Doc, you be damn careful with those stitches.”
5
For long moments, Morgane let Mir work in silence. Maybe she wasn’t in a position to be asking questions. But she sure had a lot of them. When the final tool hit the tray, Mir leaned back, rubbing his temples.
He made quick work of the debris, dumping everything into an autoclave, spinning the dial, keeping his back to her. Probably hoping she would simply disappear. “Thank you,” Morgane murmured quietly before adding, “Will you take them out in three days for me?”
She managed a small smile when he grunted in response. “You know, you don’t need to act like a hard ass for me to know you’re tough.” She heard another low, huffy grunt. “Just sayin’.”
His shoulders stiffening, Mir kept his voice low, sounding almost ashamed. “I would’ve fed you to the Grim if it’d been left up to me.”
“Yeah, I know, which is why I’m thanking you for helping me tonight.” Her curiosity sparked, she asked, “So you call those things Grim?”
“Yeah, our nickname for the little bastards. And I didn’t do this for you. And don’t thank me yet. You’re in deep trouble and things could get worse. If it does turn out you’re human, Loki’ll need to go to the wall for you, which I wouldn’t count on, and if you aren’t? Well, you’ve still got Odin to deal with, and he’s a meaner son of a bitch than I am.” His voice was icy. But still, not as cold as it had been.
“Why? Why am I the one in trouble? I didn’t do anything,” she groused. “It’s not like I asked you to bring me back here.”
Part of her wanted to take Mir by the shoulders and scream at him to tell her who they were. What they were. Why was it so important she was human? What did that even mean?
Still, two years ago, monsters hadn’t existed in her world. Two years ago, she’d been a kid going to college with an older sister who bossed her around and a mother working two jobs. Two years ago, tonight would have decimated her.
Right now?
She’d trained and fought for two years to develop the skills to kill these things. Kickboxing classes, self-defense, krav maga, jiujitsu. Developed her own tech to cut through their tough hides, combat their teeth, their claws. She was a survivor, which meant she’d do whatever she had to do to escape her current situation alive. Even if survival meant playing by their rules. The same calm she fought with would be essential tonight. This was simply war of a different sort. And these two men?
For all she knew, they were monsters cloaked in prettier skin.
“You’d be dead already if Loki hadn’t brought you here. There was enough venom in your body to kill you in less than an hour.” Mir continued as he turned, drying his hands, his blue eyes shrewd, “He decided to bring you here because he thought you could help us solve a mystery. Which you did, if your story checks out. We’ll see. Personally, I don’t care one way or another.” But his gaze lingered on her tattered back for another moment.
As they considered each other, Morgane got her first clear look at the man. He wasn’t as tall as Loki, but he was bulkier, broader through the shoulders with a square jaw, shrewd, clear eyes, and red-blonde hair cut in a military fade. Where Loki burned hot, Mir was coolly calculating, armed with a thousand-yard stare.
As if sensing where her thoughts had gone, he abruptly asked, “Tell me. How did you kill your first one?”
Morgane couldn’t help the small smile that crept across her face. “It was sloppy. And ugly. I bought a gun, which I assumed would be a guarantee of success.”
A reluctant, answering smile crinkled the outer edges of his blue eyes. “I can almost picture it.”
“Jeez, I hope not.” Morgane shuddered. “It was a complete disaster. The bullets bounced off that thick hide, and once I had exhausted both clips, the thing came after me. Nothing but teeth and claws. I’d never seen anything so terrible.” Her tone turned thoughtful. “Thank God there was only one that first night, or my reign of vengeance would have been short and sweet. I should have known better, but you know what they say. Anyhow, I had a bowie knife stashed in my boot and finally took the creature down. That’s the night I found out about the venom. And learned how sick I could get without actually dying.”
“But you learned.”
Morgane inclined her head. “Yes, I have. A lot of things over these last few years.”
“The scars on your body indicate otherwise.”
Still, his scrutiny and his doubt forced something inside her to explain. “Most of these are old. From back when I started. After that first night, I figured I’d have to train hard if I was going to survive. Kickboxing and basic self-defense classes to start, then I signed up for Jui Jitsu lessons from the place over on the west side.”
His eyebrows rose a bit. “I heard that guy’s a hard ass.”
Morgane rolled her shoulders forward, stopped when she felt the stitches pull. “He is. But it was the weaponry that gave me the hardest time. I finally found a bladesmith who made me what I wanted. We started with carbon steel swords, but ended up with titanium.”
Mir’s gaze didn’t waver from hers as Morgane shrugged before explaining, “My sister was always the pretty one. And since the family already had one fairy princess, I had to be the tough one.”
Mir stared at her contemplatively. “Well, you’re no princess, sweetheart, but you could be a queen.”
“What? A queen of swords?” Morgane shook her head, a wry smile on her face. “A lot of good it’s done me. They’re still out there every night, you know. More than ever, it seems. And if I don’t…”
The door flew open with a sharp bang, and Loki strode in, gave Mir a pointed look and nodded toward the hall. Dismissed, Mir cursed, slamming the door behind him. Leaving her closed in with Loki. It took every ounce of her will to keep herself steady as she stared him down, a million crazy scenarios flashing through her head. Instead she settled for asking him, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yeah. The information was there, exactly like you said. Even with all the loose ends, they dropped the investigation.” Loki pushed his long hair away from his face before turning those electric eyes on her, with an expression so intense it burned straight through to her core. Heat bloomed, an edgy sort of pleasure jolting through her, and she squirmed, pressing her legs together.
It figured. After all these years, she’d run into the one guy who sparked a response, and he was on another team. Which team, she couldn’t be sure, but it wasn’t hers.
Pushing the feeling down, she focused instead on the faces of all the cops she talked to over those months. “Well, to be fair, they didn’t have much information. I couldn’t exactly tell them shadows came and took my sister and mom. So I said I saw nothing. Something they probably hear a hundred times a day.”
Helplessly, she shrugged. “What else are we humans supposed to tell them? That we’re seeing black, fanged monsters everywhere? The hospitals would be full.”
In truth, it had pissed her off. At first. Before she understood they were only doing the best they could. “I didn’t blame them. It made me feel sorry for the job they had.” And still, that intense, knowing gaze settled on her, heavier and heavier.
“So what now?” Morgane pulled on the shirt, his shirt, covering the scars, her skin, and the patchwork job Mir had completed on her body. Rubbing her neck, she noted the pain was gone and should be for another four hours. Enough time to get herself home if they planned on letting her out of here. “You gonna let me go?” She breathed, hopefully.
“They took your mom and sister?”
“Yeah, they did. They only found blood at the scene…” Her voice trailed off. “Weren’t the details in the report?”
“Maybe. I didn’t read the whole thing, only enough to verify your story.” He tore his gaze away as if he couldn’t stand to face her. “The
y don’t usually take humans, Morgane, they usually…” He paused, then studied her again. “You know what, never mind. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll take you back to your apartment, and after that…” She flicked her eyes up to him, just in time to see him squeeze his shut. “It’d be best if we never saw each other again. And I’m going to have to… By tomorrow morning, you’re not going to remember much about tonight.”
“I’m pretty good at keeping secrets. I haven’t told anyone but you what I’m doing here every night, and I wouldn’t have said anything tonight if you two hadn’t forced me into it. Besides, I’m not a complete idiot. I know you‘re military or CIA. Or something. And I know I’m damn lucky I’m walking out of here tonight. You’d better believe I appreciate what you did for me, Loki.” His name came softer than she’d meant it to.
But she knew he was right about one thing. They never would see each other again.
Whatever Loki was, whatever they were, they existed in a different world, just as she did. Living off the grid. Invisible to the outside world. This place was a stronghold, and these men were soldiers of some kind. Soldiers capable of seeing those things, she reminded herself. They were hunting those things, like her. The smartest thing to do would be keep her mouth shut and go home. Cut her losses for the night.
“So…Loki… What kind of name is that? Is it your last name? A nickname?”
“It’s my only name. And it’s one you need to forget awfully damn quick.” As he leaned in, she drank in every single detail from the sheer breadth of him, the way his muscles bunched beneath the thin t-shirt pulled tight across his chest, the fall of ebony hair, the brightness of those blue eyes, as if she might drown inside them. And God, the smell of him, he smelled divine.
Drifting closer, Morgane sensed the heat rolling off him. “Easier said than done, I’m afraid,” she murmured, running a hand over his shoulder, down over his chest, while her breathing turned ragged. Neither of them budged an inch, his face hovering so close to hers, she could practically reach out and…
The Banished Gods Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 4