“You . . . you ad-adm—”
Everything hinged on playing her role the right way. “Admit that I saw her current lonely state, and thought of you? I don’t deny it at all! Most men would be thanking me right now for the opportunity of a lifetime.” She shifted herself away from her duplicate carefully, masking every sound, and had her image cross her arms over her chest. Lie with the truth. Now there’s a trick. “I take it she told you?”
Brandr turned on her duplicate, and Regin hastily wrapped tactile sensations into her illusory weave as his hands caught its shoulders. Let her double’s eyes widen. “Y-you d-d-don’t h-have the r-r-right t-to inter . . . interfere,” he managed to force the words out. “M-my life. Mine.”
“Gods. That’s what you’re angry about? Brandr, I found you a woman you wouldn’t even have to talk to out loud, if you didn’t want to. She’s a very powerful spirit. And a creature of healing. She might even be able to help you, in the long run.” She forced a smile to her double’s lips, while backing up to the window now, herself. Spreading illusion over it, so that it looked closed, while in reality, she’d started working it open. Gods, what a mess. I have to be able to stay here, and work with the harpies. Technically, I could go to Alexandria. There are harpy refugees there, too. I would be obeying Loki’s command by aiding them. She wasn’t afraid of Brandr. She just didn’t think she could face up to any more mistakes in this lifetime, and the thought of retreating only chafed a little. Loki’s children understood the value of a tactical retreat. Though gods know, now that Loki’s returned, he might find me in Alexandria, seize me by the scruff of my neck, and return me here. The thought alone made her shoulders sag. Though why he would care where I follow his orders, so long as I do, is beyond me.
Brandr glared down at her double now. “Wh-what are y-you n-now, her, her p-pander? T-talking her up—”
Her voice held razory edges as she retorted, “While you doubtless have far more experience with panders than I do,” and now, she forced herself to calm, and shifted into harmonies that caressed his mind and spirit. Reached down into his soul, and poured balm over the wounds. A siren’s greatest gift was her voice. “You are mistaken. I only thought the two of you might hit it off, or she might at least know someone who might suit you—”
He could see defiance and a little fear in her eyes; the fear didn’t make him feel good, but he also knew it was a lie. Reginleif knew he would never harm someone who wasn’t actively fighting him. Every sense was hyper-acute at the moment, adrenaline precursors flooding through his veins, and he felt just a hint of cooler air for a moment, drifting across his skin. Reginleif had trained him, some eighty years ago, to look for the cues that an illusionist couldn’t control. Air movement. Something moved past me, or there’s an open window. The figure in front of me is an illusion. He released her shoulders and lunged directly for the window, thought-fast, and grabbed hold of flesh and feathers that couldn’t quite move with the speed of a valkyrie. He glared down at her as the illusion leached away, leaving Lorelei staring up at him, her expression startled. “Brandr, let go of me.”
Command in her siren’s voice now, implacable. Brandr gritted his teeth against the compulsion to obey. He resisted long enough to make it clear that he could, and then stepped back, taking his hands away, respecting her request. “Wh-why lie?” he demanded, gesturing to where he’d been facing her double, moments ago. “Why, L-lore? Y-you know I w-won’t . . . .”
“I know you won’t hurt a noncombatant. I didn’t wish to risk that the line might be . . . blurred for you in my case.” Little whispers and caresses of sound, running alongside the actual words. “You don’t deserve that kind of guilt.”
Like you feel, perhaps? This apartment is a cell. There’s nothing in it. The poverty of it infuriated him, somehow. But he wasn’t sure if the apartment itself was real. He needed one real thing. Just one. So his head would stop spinning. “St-stop tr-trying t-to c-con-control me.”
She’d stopped moving. Just a shadow among other shadows at the moment. “I’m not.” Her voice held such aching regret that it hurt to hear. “I have done much that I regret. Lied, deceived, killed. But I do not seek to control or beguile you in any way. That I swear.” She sighed. “I just wanted to see you . . . happy.”
“And th-then wh-what?”
The blank stare she gave him as he stepped forwards was almost amusing, in a way. “Then you’d be happy. It would be an end of itself.”
“And th-then wh-what? V-vanish, y-your g-good d-deed done? G-get a g-gold st-star?”
“Be happy for you.” Her voice held regret again. “Work with you, for as long as you’re assigned here, and for so long as I remain with the refugees.”
“Y-your s-sacrif-fice is n-noted.”
Finally, a flare of temper from her, from behind Lorelei’s mask. Acerbic wit, sharp and very familiar. “It’s hardly a sacrifice to put someone else on the altar of your bad temper, Brandr Ilfetu.” She poked his arm with one taloned finger. “Perhaps Lassair was correct to avoid that perilous fate, because Hel knows I don’t even think you know why you’re currently angry—”
Brandr leaned forwards and caught Lorelei’s face in one hand, lifted her chin, and kissed her. He could feel the texture of the scarred skin of her cheek against his fingertips, smooth, then rough, then smooth again. It felt real enough. So did her lips under his. Smells. Tastes. Textures. The very surprised inhalation, the way every muscle in her body went rigid for a moment. “St-stop t-t-talking,” he managed, against her ear. “Pl-please.”
She shook her head, faintly, and wordlessly, as he leaned in to kiss her again. He was certain he could feel her lips soften under his. Could feel her muscles start to yield, and then she locked up again. “Brandr. I . . . can’t. I’ll . . . .”
“What?”
For once, she was the one left with the impossibility of words. I can’t meet Vidarr and Ima’s eyes when I’m myself. Lorelei can, but Lorelei is a lie. All I can give you is a lie. Which you will despise when you realize it . . . and that’s a when, not an if. You’re too intelligent not to figure it out, eventually. You suspect already, I think. So what can I give you besides the lie? I could just resort to the truth. All the poets say it sets people free, in spite of all evidence to the contrary . . . .
“I’m not who you think I am.” The words dragged out of her as if shackled to leg-weights. “When you know . . . when you understand . . . .” She braced herself against the wall, and looked up at him. “I’m R—”
He leaned down and stole the name off her lips, kissing her firmly, and in spite of everything, she started to respond. I can’t. I can’t . . . .
“You c-can’t w-what? B-be happy? C-can’t l-live?” Brandr looked down at her once more. He’d heard the words, but hadn’t quite registered them as mind-speech yet. “Even p-prisoners are p-paroled. Even g-galley sl-slaves . . . could be fr-freed.” He kissed her again, tasting her with his tongue, and pulled her tightly to him, lifting her up so that her legs dangled freely, her feet in the vicinity of his kneecaps. She felt astoundingly good against him. She was average height for a mortal woman, or short for a valkyrie, but she was light. The wings had a total wingspan of about fifteen feet, unfurled, which added to her mass, but her bones, like those of most harpies, were hollow. “D-don’t p-punish m-me b-because you’re so b-busy p-punishing yourself.”
Taste of warm tears on her face, which he kissed away, and carried her over to her dreary pallet. He was ninety-nine percent sure that behind the face and mannerisms of Lorelei, was the mind and spirit of Reginleif. Whom reason and rationality told him he should not trust, but his heart and memory wished he could. Either way, her Name was Shadowweaver. He’d stumble if he tried to give her Name voice, but blessedly, here in the dark, he didn’t actually need to use words to speak. His lips and tongue could use a more silent form of communication.
Feeling her muscles loosen, relax. Turn fluid under his fingers. He settled her down on the mattress, and kn
elt on the floor beside her; elevating her like that didn’t quite deal with the disparity in their heights, but it was a start. His fingers found the cool skin of her flanks, left bare by her light halter top, and skimmed up and down for a moment, exploring her back. The alien sensation of the bones that made up her wings, the sigh-soft fineness of the feathers there. He touched, he explored, his hands as careful as if she were made of fine crystal. Stoked back to her ribs, and then slipped forwards again to cradle her face as he kissed her, trying to tell her, without words, that he’d take happiness where he could find it, and that there was nothing worth having in life, that was gotten without a fight.
He leaned back to give her space, opportunity to object, and carefully pulled at the strings around her neck. He could feel her shiver a little as the thin garment fell away, but she didn’t resist, or tell him to stop. She wore nothing beneath it, and Brandr inhaled at the sight of her in the dim light filtering in from the street outside. He remembered Reginleif as slender, like a knife or a whip. Whatever had transformed her into a siren hadn’t added an ounce of flesh. Her breasts were small, but perfect, and he cupped them in his hands, gently, as she sat at the edge of her mattress. Kissed his way down from neck to breasts, looking up for permission each time he descended a little further. Little gasps from her as he did so, each whispering with the incipient harmonics of her siren voice.
Adrenaline had faded, leaving only desire, but that, too, was something that he was well-accustomed to controlling. Brandr pulled back, and unwilling to break whatever spell this was with words, put his hands gently on her shoulders, and pushed back. He wasn’t sure if she could lie on her wings. She allowed herself to recline on the mattress, but he didn’t put his weight on her. Her own mass on her wings might be acceptable, but he knew that he weighed in excess of four hundred pounds, all muscle. He wouldn’t have been a comfortable covering for her, even if she hadn’t had the delicate wing structures. Instead, he leaned away, kissed his way down her belly, and worked his way down to the lacings of her jeans, and began to untie those, too.
Her hand touched his hair then, lightly, and he looked up. Exhaled. “If this is an il-illusion . . . it’s . . . a g-good one.” He hated the sound of his own voice. Doubt seeped in with it. “Y-you’re . . . actually s-sitting s-somewhere over th-there,” he waved to the other side of the room, vaguely, and pillowed his head on her thigh for a moment, “w-watching.” Probably looking bored. Or worse, pitying. He swallowed, doubt filling him. “S-something else f-for m-my own g-good?”
Lorelei lurched upright, putting her hands on his shoulders. “Brandr, no one except a god can do a five-sense illusion. Not without a team of seiðkonur . . . .”
“N-not a f-figm-ment. D-d—”
“Delusion. No. I’m not creating this inside your head. I swear, Brandr, by whatever god you name.” Her fingers moved now, stroking his hair and face. “I just . . . haven’t. Not in a very long time.” Joris had died in 1965, after five years of a wasting illness that Hel had inflicted on him. Regin’s punishment for failing the goddess had been watching her husband’s cruelly drawn-out death. Joris had even asked the doctors to assist him in committing suicide. But their fatal drugs hadn’t worked. Hel had ensured that.
But even before then, intimacy had been sporadic at best. If Regin could put a number to it, she’d have said that she hadn’t had sex in . . . thirty-three years. Maybe as long as thirty-six. She wasn’t entirely sure that this was a good idea, but perhaps she could help Brandr without hurting him again. But the fear in her continued to seethe, the cold knowledge that said This cannot end well. “It’s not a figment or a hallucination. Everything here . . . is real.” She swallowed. Other than who you think I am.
“You h-haven’t . . . s-since your b-body was ch-changed?”
“Since before that. My husband was sick for a long time before he died.”
Reassured, Brandr eased her back again, pulled her pants down, and reached over, fumbling for the light switch . . . and felt his eyebrows rise. “M-must b-be r-real,” he murmured, gently stroking what he’d uncovered. “D-don’t th-think your m-mind’s d-dirty enough t-to have th-thought of th-this.” Instead of hair between her legs, there was soft black down, as delicate and fine as he might have found on a fresh-hatched chick. Black as her hair and wings, it was so soft he almost couldn’t feel it against his calloused finger-tips.
“I can’t shave feathers,” Lorelei told him, her voice edging up in pitch, sounding nervous. “And plucking them hurts like a thumbnail being bent back.”
He chuckled, and spread her further apart. And blinked again. Her inner folds were a little different than he’d seen before. The nubbin of her clitoris, he could lap and nuzzle at, and there was her opening, gaping a little wider for him now, but . . . nothing else, no other bumps or holes to slow his tongue as he slid from one place to the other. “Y-you don’t urinate anymore?”
“More like a bird now. All excrement types come out the cloaca—oh!” Her voice hitched up in pitch a little further, as her fingers closed in his hair. Brandr chuckled and slid her further along the mattress, so he could lie down himself now, half on, half off the pallet, nuzzling, licking. Sucking gently at her most sensitive place, before sliding a finger into her opening, and feeling her hips buck in surprise. Her voice began to climb the walls, the shivering harmonics twining over themselves with each gasp, each moan. He hadn’t had a chance to do this in years, himself, and it was something he enjoyed. He loved listening to her voice, feeling the tension in her body build, even though she was clearly fighting it . . . but not him. She wasn’t fighting him at all. She’d made it clear that she was willing. But she was resisting the pleasure, probably because she thought she shouldn’t feel anything. Brandr slid a second finger up into her, found the right spot, and increased his tempo, until she couldn’t fight it anymore. She started to sing, her cries echoing off the walls, two and three notes at a time, and her voice vibrated in his sternum and in his very balls, and he groaned at the sensation. Her back arched, and her wings extended as her wings and body spasmed in pleasure. Her wings hit the kitchen counter, knocking a plate to the floor, where it shattered. Sent the stool there flying, and toppled both her bedside lamp and unsteady bookshelf.
The walls of her apartment complex were damned near paper-thin. He was dimly aware of the sound, on the other side of the wall, of another couple’s passion, the unmistakable creak of bed-springs in a familiar rhythm. He could hear glass shattering somewhere behind him. A car alarm started to go off as he felt her entire body go limp. Hot fluids poured over his hand and dampened his beard, and someone upstairs pounded in protest on the ceiling overhead, but Brandr didn’t care. “Again?” he asked her.
Lorelei pointed, urgently, towards the window, and when Brandr lifted his head enough to look, he realized that the glass there had shattered, probably from the oscillations in the pitch of her last cry. Deal with it later, he thought, and grabbed the pillow from the mattress and handed it to her, grinning, before lowering his head once more. Her siren-song might be a little addictive, he decided, as her voice rose once more, bitter and sweet at once, the sound of her surrender and pleasure. After the fourth or fifth time he’d made her cry out that way, he pulled away, kissing the inside of her thigh gently. She was open for him, ready for him, and it was killing him to stop right now . . . but he’d walked in here angry with her. And Lorelei, or Reginleif, or whoever she actually was, had some crazy idea that she needed to make amends to him. He wasn’t going to let her turn this into . . . recompense. Not a pity-fuck, and not restitution. He’d only accept this, whatever it was, if it was what they both damned well wanted. “See y-you in the m-morning,” he told her, pulling away reluctantly. He was still fully dressed, and, unfortunately, hard as a damned rock. Looking down at her, naked and relaxed, her wings unfurled, her red eyes blank and vague from the pleasure that he’d just given her, it was all he could do to just kiss the palm of her hand, and stand. “No il-lusions. N-no h-hi
ding. W-will j-just have t-to f-find you, then. S-somehow.”
Lorelei felt the weight release from the mattress springs, and the whisper of air over her body as he stood, but it took her a moment to react. “Wait. Where are you going?” She sat up, finding a corner of the sheet to hold in reflexive uncertainty. “Brandr! You didn’t . . . we didn’t . . . .”
He’d crossed the tiny apartment in three strides, but her voice had caught and held him at the door. She could see the tension in the line of his shoulders, the speed with which his head snapped back to look at her. Veil senses flooded in, showing her that his entire form was gray, a roiling cloud with a burning heart, like the cold disc of the sun seen through fog . . . but there were fracture lines all through him. Where he’d been broken, and knitted back together again.
“Th-that w-was for y-you,” he told her, after a moment. “D-don’t w-want you to th-think you have to. N-not a b-bargain.” He exhaled, clearly irritated with himself. “G-giving you sp-space s-so you c-can de-decide wh-what y-you w-want.”
Reginleif hesitated, but Lorelei—who was, in truth, just another part of Reginleif, herself—leaped forwards. Female harpies and sirens were far more aggressive than their males. The social disruption was intense, as men who remembered being human, and part of a male-dominant culture, found themselves, if not gelded, at least seen as less necessary by their female counterparts. Female harpies were every bit as strong, if not stronger than their males, a question of muscle density, not size They were faster in the air and much more mobile—there was not a single male harpy in the landsknechten so far, Lorelei knew. Females had a month or two of gestation, and then laid eggs . . . which could, in this modern era, be marked with a family’s name and an identification code, and left in an incubator at a hospital. Male harpies, however, had found an instinctive concern, bordering on obsession, with the eggs. These were their genetic legacy. And given that the women weren’t necessarily tied to the eggs, the males felt impelled to protect the eggs when the females weren’t available.
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