None of us are the people we used to be. But that’s okay, and change is good. I should know, I made my fortune on it.
When Sig’s snores start to rattle the windows, I slip off the bed and out onto the balcony. There, beneath the moon’s wide, silver eye, I lose my human skin and unfurl my wings.
It feels like coming home. Shedding Lain’s too-tight, too-fragile body for something bigger, broader, more monstrous. Seven feet tall, with curving horns and stitched-shut lips. Mottled-dark skin and feathers that shimmer like flame or float like ash, and finished off with a tail and claws and blank-blind eyes that glow a dim and poisonous green.
This is me, my jötunn skin. Monsters and giants, enemies of the gods, first children of the Tree, elemental and eternal.
Wind ruffling through my feathers—on my head, my arms, my legs, my tail—I hop up onto the railing.
Then I fall.
Then spread my wings, and fly.
I’m better at this than I was the first time I tried it, though I’m still not much of an acrobat in the air. My body’s too heavy and my tail’s too long, but that’s what the feathers on my limbs are for, to compensate. To steer and turn. It doesn’t quite come naturally, not yet, and I have to will myself to hold my wings out steady, to not flap, to trust the currents in the air.
That’s the other thing I did wrong, that first night: too much goddamn flapping. Because that’s how flying works, right? Birds flap, up they go.
Did you know different birds have different ways of flying? Because, hell, I didn’t. Not until Sig bought me a book on prehistoric birds. (It’s the tail, it makes me look like a fucking archaeopteryx, that and the little wing claws, whose main purpose seems to be making sarcastic “air quotes” in conversation.) The gift was a joke, but the introduction had a whole section on the evolution of bird flight and, go figure. Turns out that by length and breadth and feather, my wings just aren’t the flapping sort. They’re the soaring sort.
So this is how I relearned to fly, by reading a book on fucking dinosaurs, then jumping off high buildings. It works, more or less. I haven’t hit the ground yet. Much.
Flight is freedom. The wind in my feathers, Pandemonium a glittering galaxy that sprawls beneath. The dark abyss of the lake, the spiderweb lines of the roads. The dim glowing backdrop from the houses. My city, my power. And, at the center of it all, the bright and glowing sun of the Lokabrenna building, the axle around which the gyre turns.
How could I ever leave this place?
Nostalgia is one thing, but the truth of it is that I’m not gonna be the next goddamn king of Ásgarðr, Allfather v2.0. That was Baldr’s destiny, the fate given to him by his father. The one I abandoned when I decided to eat Loki’s heart and take his road instead.
And a Loki can’t be king of Ásgarðr. Even when he was—after Ragnarøkkr, when things got Complicated—he wasn’t really. He thought he was Baldr. Everyone thought he was Baldr. That’s how he ruled, under a usurped name.
And he fucked it up. Big-time.
He doesn’t like me disturbing the memories, so I try not to. But I get flashes, every now and then. Some things he shows me, that dark and binding thread that lurks somewhere deep within my psyche. Old me, Loki v1.0. I may have stolen his name, but he isn’t gone. And he doesn’t like me much.
I don’t take it personally. Honestly, I don’t think he likes anyone much, except maybe his wife. I feel him stir sometimes when Sig’s around. Not in response to Sigmund himself, but to the frozen core of the goddess underneath.
I feel her move, as well. The first time I saw Sigmund, that part of him was buried. Distant. Dormant. Now it isn’t. She unnerves him, I think. She’s not quite him except in every way she is, and she can take his body when she needs it: can speak with his mouth and touch with his hands. Sigyn is terrifying and she’s ruthless—that I do remember—but she’s kind, too, and gentle. She has such honor and compassion in her, such strength and determination. Enough to reweave the very Wyrd itself.
That’s why she won’t harm Sigmund. He’s her creation, the vessel of her rebirth. She’ll drag him through the fire when he falters, but will stand aside to let him take the final step with his own will. She loves him.
She loves Loki, too. Her capricious, bitter husband.
Me, I’m not so sure of. At the moment I’m just hoping that if I’m kind to Sigmund, if I honor Loki’s legacy, then Sigyn will get her happy ending and won’t re-erase all of existence to try it for a third time.
It’s not the worst destiny I could be facing.
Even if I am still terrible at landings.
It’s the tail, again. It’s the wrong shape to slow me down enough to make the process something elegant and gentle. The feathers on my thighs and butt do their best, but I still mostly “land” by falling. Tonight, it’s onto the outstretched arm of a streetlight. They’re bigger up here than they look from the ground, but the whole structure still sways when I slam into it.
“Unnghf!”
My gut takes most of the impact, all four claws scrambling to find a perch. I manage to pull myself up, sitting hunched above the street like some flaming hipster gargoyle, tail trailing down below.
The pole is still swaying when I pull the momory of a cigarette out of the nothingspace—no clothes in jötunn form means no pockets, and I really should look into that—light it with a thought, then get down to the business of sating my nicotine addiction.
I’m trying to quit. I’ve been trying to quit for thirtysomething years, but this time I’m really trying. For Sig’s sake, because he’s a nonsmoker, and for mine, because he won’t make out with me if I stink of cigarettes. Motivation’s ninety percent of the way, but this is the rest of it: an indulgence, every now and then. Somewhere that won’t give Sigmund cancer.
In all honesty, I’m not completely sure where I am. Between Haven and West Hazel, I think, but these are the new suburbs, and I stopped paying close attention to Panda’s town planning sometime circa 1980. It’s a growth market out here. Mostly young families pushed to the outer reaches by rising prices in the center, by the gentrification that sees cheap flats torn down and replaced by million-dollar duplexes.
LB makes millionaires. That’s what we’re renowned for, being the employer of choice for any kid with a half-baked idea and a Swiss bank account already reserved in his name. Land a decent job at one of LB’s subsidiaries and it’s a one-way ticket to the nerderati. For a mansion in Aldershot and an elevator down to a cellar, stacked with vintage Grange.
For everyone else, it means a rising cost of living, an hour commute, and not a single free medical clinic between here and Melbourne.
Meanwhile, a bunch of millionaire twentysomethings sit around on bean bags, patting themselves on the back for synergizing crowdsourced phone apps to solve every problem faced by the young and privileged.
Welcome to the New World Order.
Somewhere beneath the streetlight’s orange glow, a lone Toyota hurtles down the freeway. Fleeing from brushed chrome and glass and dreams of progress. Back toward the comfortably numb plush suburbia of home.
It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard all night.
So I finish my cigarette (immolating the butt into ash, Sig hates it when I litter), open my wings, and let the wind carry me home.
Sigmund is still asleep when I slip back through the balcony doors and into the apartment. I watch him for a while, but his mind is still and dark, undisturbed by dreams of blood and murder. I hope it stays that way, and I kiss his shoulder lightly—he huffs, turns over into his pillow, but doesn’t wake—before I make my way down the stairs and into the living room.
The apartment is two floors of clean, modern, open-plan hipster paradise. Three bedrooms up top, one and a half bathrooms, plus one big combined kitchen-dining-living area. Everything is white and beige, accented in wood and stone, with soft-close cupboards hidden in wall panels and a tiny indoor garden-slash-water-feature tucked beneath the glass-floored staircase.
It also has extra-high ceilings. For someone seven feet tall and horned, that’s an important feature.
I head toward the front door, pressing my hand against the adjacent wall. The façade springs away, revealing a coat cupboard hidden behind it. True to form, it’s full of coats. Mostly Lain’s, but a few of Sig’s and at least one of Travis’s, too. And, behind them all—tucked against the boots and umbrellas—is a spear.
Once upon a time, an idiot thief cut off a sleeping woman’s hair. A metaphor, of some description, and far more metaphorical than the anger of said woman’s husband. So, in repatriation for his crime, our idiot thief agreed to get the woman some new locks, ones made from pure gold. In order to do this, without payment, he set two groups of dwarfen craftsmen in a competition against each other, to see who could produce the greatest treasure.
This is where the spear, Gungnir, comes from. It was taken by the idiot thief’s adopted brother. Odin, king of the northern gods.
There were other treasures, too. Even the idiot thief got his own, after a fashion. It’s called Vartari.
The leather stitches in my lips.
Vartari’s still there, in my jötunn skin—Lain and Travis just have scars—but at least it doesn’t keep my mouth shut anymore.
That’s probably a metaphor, too. Of some sort.
Gungnir probably is as well. The thing is a six-foot broomstick with a foot-and-a-half-long dragon tooth tied to the top, and there is no war in all the Realms that it can’t start. That used to be Odin’s game, back when we were all young and stupid. He’d find two groups of mortals, getting along mostly okay, then he’d throw Gungnir over their heads. Then we’d all laugh over how petty and violent mortals were, then send in the valkyrjur to pick the corpses clean. That was the old days, before Odin’s star began to wane and the mortals, tired of cruelty and of infighting, swapped out the blood eagle for the hammer, the war of Gungnir for the war of Mjölnir, the war of Thor against the giants. Against the Other.
Maybe mortals get the gods that they deserve.
I pick up Gungnir. I don’t like touching it. Odin’s stolen magic seeps out of the wood, makes it stink of pain and rotting flesh. But Odin is dead, and I’m not, and this is my legacy. Not the legacy the old bastard was hoping for, but maybe gods get the things we deserve, too.
I leave the apartment and take the elevator.
The doors open again on floor seven, revealing a young couple saying their good-byes just inside the landing. When they step into the elevator, their eyes fall on the spot where I’m standing, leaning against the mirror, spear in one hand. My wings are gone, but the rest of me is still me—horns and scars and tattoos and all—and for that one single breath, the mortals see it.
Then they look away and let the doors slide shut.
This is what it means to be a god, to be Wyrdborn, to be woven from the stuff of hopes and dreams and fears. I could make the kids see me. Could grab them, scream at them, shove my Wyrd down their throats until they choke.
I could, but I won’t. Wyrdtouched are too much of a handful. I already have Sig and his father and his friends to deal with. I don’t need to go adding random strangers to the pile as well.
Wyrdtouched mortals are dangerous, even more than gods. We’re powerful, but predictable. Have well-worn rails we rattle down for all eternity. But mortals? Mortals have imagination. They do things, unpredictable things. And they kill their gods, always. Something about the human condition.
The couple gets off on the ground floor. Tonight, he’ll dream of endless flames. Tomorrow, she’ll look down to find she’s spent a whole meeting doodling a pair of grinning, stitched-shut lips. Then they’ll both laugh, forget, and move on. That’s the way the game is played.
I step out of the elevator two floors later, down in the car park. My car is here, nestled next to Sigmund’s ancient Magna. I throw Gungnir into the backseat, then hop into the front.
I really shouldn’t fit. I don’t in mortal cars, not with the feet and the tail. But my car, like myself, isn’t mortal, and, somehow, the system works.
Then I drive out of the building.
It’ll be a while before I return.
I head back into the city, slightly west of center, toward the uni. Pandemonium University—locally known as PU, pronounced as per the expression of revulsion—is a sprawling modern campus nestled on the banks of Panda’s artificial lake, Lake Cameron, named after yours truly.
Just off campus, where the lake narrows back into the river it was carved from, is a bridge. Technically, the bridge has no name and is simply an extension of the road known as the Byway, the main artery that runs along Panda’s length.
Locally, however, the bridge is called the Rainbow Bridge. Named after the university students, who maintain a tradition of throwing colorful powdered chalk across the blacktop, of yarnbombing the railings and spray-painting bright murals on the concrete pillars. The hippie kids started it, back in the 1960s and ’70s, and for years it drove the local council nuts trying to clean up the “damage.” By the late ’80s, however, public opinion on the bridge changed. A new generation of kids was still creeping out at night with their neon legwarmers and Hypercolor T-shirts, but this time they were “warring” against a council that was becoming increasingly stacked with the grown-up balding versions of the people who’d thrown the first handfuls of chalk. Thus was the Rainbow Bridge turned from antiestablishment rallying point into a quaint local tourist attraction. Forty years later, kids still sneak out to bring color to morning commuters. The only difference is now sometimes adults join them.
There’s power in symbols, especially for a god. At the end of the day, a walking symbol is all we really are.
I feel the car aching to gallop as we approach the bridge. There’s no one around, not tonight, and so I let it; taking my hands off the wheel and my claws off the pedals, leaning back in the seat and feeling the wind tear through my feathers and howl on my horns.
The dials on the dash begin to climb, well over the speed limit, straining clockwise into three digits. Beneath the wheels, mad splashes of chalk seem to shimmer in the moonlight, blending with paint and yarn into one long multicolored slash into the night.
Once upon a time, mortals looked up at a rainbow and imagined a bridge, spanning between the heaven and the earth. A path the gods could walk to descend into the world, one mortals could never reach.
The Byway isn’t a rainbow in the conventional sense—and thousands of mortals drive and walk and cycle its length every day—but sometimes allegory is even better than reality.
Engine roaring in my ears, wind whipping through my feathers, and the pit of my stomach lurching as the car begins to rise.
Tonight, we ride the true Rainbow Bridge—the Bifröst, the Asbrú, the bridge of the gods—that winds between the branches of the great tree Yggdrasill and ends up at Ásgarðr’s gates. I haven’t been up here in a long time, not since well before Ragnarøkkr. Back then, the bridge was beautiful: a burning riot of color and chaos, large enough for a hundred men to walk abreast, the roar of the Rivers Körmt and Örmt churning far beneath. Nowadays, it’s . . . less like that. Shattered by the ravages of war, treacherous and broken, blocked by pits and rubble that no mortal car could ever hope to cross.
Fortunately, my “car” is about as mortal as I am, and the higher we climb the more the rumble of its engine sounds like the galloping of hooves.
The journey doesn’t take that long. It’s much shorter than I remember, given the last time I was here I was walking, not driving at odometer-cracking speeds. Soon, through the leaves and past the rubble, I see the crumbling façade of a building. This is, or was, Himinbjörg, the hall of Heimdallr, supposed watchman of the gods. On paper, his job was protecting Ásgarðr from sneak
attack by its enemies. In practice, the guy was mostly rolling around on the stone, drunk out of his fucking skull.
Heimdallr never liked me much, and the feeling was mutual. By the books, we were supposed to do the double KO thing come the Ragnarøkkr. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and when things were over, it was my wife’s belly his sword split open, her cold, dead fingers wound in the hair of his severed head.
So I can’t say seeing his hall in ruins leaves me with any great sense of regret.
Seeing the figures standing in front of it, however, does.
Ásgarðr, it seems, has sent a welcome committee. And now the show is on.
Chapter 2
The only thing worse than waking up was staying asleep.
Sigmund’s head hurt. His head hurt, and his eyes burned, and his throat tasted like sour wine and rotten foie gras. Lying in someone else’s bed in someone else’s house, and he was pretty sure the room was spinning. Spinning and shrieking, a klaxon saw blade that dragged between his ears until his hand, flailing outward in the darkness, found the vibrating glass brick of his phone and somehow managed to fumble the slider across to “off.”
Then silence. Utter, abject silence.
Not the murmur of the television or the hiss of the shower, not the clatter of the kitchen or the hum of Dad’s electric razor. Just nothing, an empty, soulless void. Because this wasn’t home, this strange, too-big bed in this strange, too-dark room. This was Lain’s place, Lain’s apartment. Some huge sterile nest perched atop a glass-and-steel pillar in the heart of Pandemonium, filled with too-hip furniture shipped in straight from New York, hand-chosen to present an image, a persona. The shell in a perfectly executed three-card monte of seduction, one with Sigmund at its heart.
It was a nice apartment, but it was a con. The same con as Lain himself, crafted from a CEO’s money and a god’s single-minded cunning.
Stormbringer Page 3