“Are you the bastard who took my clothes?” Her voice came out low and husky, as though she had been screaming for hours.
Those blue eyes shuttered tightly. “They call me Loki. And we had no choice, we needed to determine how badly you were injured.”
A gravelly voice mocked him from somewhere off to her left. “Oh, but you don’t have to call him Loki. You can call him a traitor or a betrayer or an asshole, or anything else you want….”
She heard a deep grunt, followed by silence, but she hurt too much to care. Besides, she was busy worrying why she had no shirt. Along with where she was and how she had gotten here. Wherever here was.
Loki’s face turned cold. “Shut the fuck up, Mir.”
Okay. Loki and Mir. Names. Names were a good thing.
A shirt, however, would be so much better.
“Yeah, he hates me giving him shit.” The owner of the gravelly voice stepped into view. Not exactly handsome, but he was tall and muscular with a rugged face topped off by close-shorn, reddish blonde hair, and a look that clearly said, Don’t fuck with me. Ever. In about every language known to man. Half listening as the red-haired guy Mir rambled on, Morgane’s eyes drifted back to the black-haired dude—Loki—and wrapped her hands around her chest. Damn. What she wouldn’t give for clothing right about now.
Mir waved a hand in the air. “But enough about us. You wanna know what I hate? I hate it when I come across something I can’t explain. Because for me, everything’s gotta make sense, otherwise, it means someone’s lying.” Effortlessly, Mir lifted her up and rolled her away from him. And pushed his finger into her back. Right where the creature had clawed her. A hiss of pain escaped. He rolled her backwards until she faced him again, her shredded back landing against something metal. Cold.
“You wanna tell us who the hell you are, sweetheart? ’Cause if you really were human, you’d be dead in that alley or in a demon’s stomach right now.”
Pushing him back, Loki stepped in between them, blocking her view. “Get your damn hands off her, Mir. I brought the girl here, I’m the one who…”
“Yeah, you are,” Mir rasped. “Now this situation has to play out. You broke the rules, Loki. There’s a price for that. If she’s lying about who she is or what she is, you know what Odin will do with her?” A knot of fear grew in her stomach as she watched Loki nod in response. “Then let’s figure this out now, my brother, when there’s a possibility we can salvage this whole fucking debacle. Before things really get ugly.”
While they argued, Morgane sized them up. Mir’s haircut and square jaw. Military, most likely, judging from this fancy schmancy infirmary. Everything in its glittering, sterile white place with glossy cabinets and so much stainless it looked like a city morgue. And whatever liquid they had poured down her throat was helping. The venom was wearing off, the shaking had almost stopped, and aside from the fresh pain of the wounds, she didn’t feel like she was going to die right away.
What she didn’t remember was how she’d gotten here.
But something told her not to lie, or at least, lie as little as possible. She cut into the middle of their argument. “Hey. My name’s Morgane, Morgane Burke.” They waited. More. They wanted more. “I was walking to the station from the club, trying to catch the three fifty south. And…” She let the tears well up in her eyes, waiting until they spilled down her cheeks before she continued, “I don’t know…suddenly…these… These things just came out of nowhere…and…and…”
The two looked at each other and the one with the red hair, Mir, shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that, sweetheart. I got news for you. If you really were human, you wouldn’t even be able to see those things. Which means you can’t be human. Which means, you won’t walk out of here alive. Unless you start telling the truth.”
Shit, shit, shit. She knew no one could see those things. She’d screwed up already. Blinking, she turned to Loki for help, but he simply stared at her as if begging her to tell Mir something. Anything. Mir continued, hooking a thumb at Loki. “See, I’m fucking pissed because this asshole broke house rules, and I’m just stupid enough to let myself get caught up in this whole mess. And…” He pulled her up to a sitting position and gripped her face with a vise-like hand. “My patience is wearing thin…”
Suddenly the pressure vanished because Loki had Mir shoved up against the wall. For reasons unknown, everything inside her went taut. Loose and tight at the same time, and she couldn’t have ripped her eyes away from Loki if she had to.
“You will keep your fucking hands off her, my man. Understand?” When Mir clawed and growled like a grizzly, Loki just hoisted him up higher, growling right back, teeth bared like a wolf. But seeing the two of them at odds… Something inside her just gave out.
They must have seen the scars, so they already knew she was lying about what happened. If they picked her up out of that alleyway, for God’s sake, they already knew too much. And besides…
Wait, a part of her whispered hopefully, can they see those things too?
“Stop this. Put him down and stop fighting.” Her command came out as more of a tired whisper, but Loki removed his hands. Mir slid down the wall, landing on his feet. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lie. It’s only… I’ve never told anyone why I‘m really here.”
“We’re all ears, sweetheart.” Rubbing his neck, Mir pegged her with a calculating, guarded stare and waited.
“Can I have my shirt back, first? This will be hard enough to do without…well…” Her throat closed up, her eyes burning, the air running cool fingers over her skin. For someone who’d taken damn good care of herself for the last two years, considering how she spent her nights, she felt pretty vulnerable.
And way too naked.
“There wasn‘t much left of your shirt.” Loki explained apologetically, pulling off his own, a soft pullover at least twice her size. He bundled the sleeves up like she was little and pushed it over her head, helped her feed her good arm through the sleeve. “Doc’s gonna patch you up in a sec, Morgane. But first, you have to tell us who you really are. The guys here, they get awfully nervous around strangers. So… What’s your real name? We know you can’t be human, so tell us what you are and what city or territory you’re from. Then you’ll be on your way back home.”
Her head whipped from one to the other. “Not human? You’re joking, right?”
Mir waved his hand in the air, dismissing her. “See what I mean?” He snorted. “Never going to get the truth out of her since she’s nothing but a devious witch.”
Now that pissed her off.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about…but I can explain why I’m here, where I came from, and exactly what I do with my nights. And why.” She cleared her throat. “But it won‘t matter because you won’t believe me.” Holding Loki’s eyes, praying that out of the two men, he might, the words tumbled out. “I’ve been living in Chicago for a little over two years now. I moved here from Pennsylvania, from around Pittsburgh.” She pulled, not without great effort, the AMX card out of her back pocket, emblazoned Morgane E. Burke on the front and handed it over to Loki. “I’ve got my Illinois driver’s license with me, and my old Pennsylvania one back at my apartment, if you want to look at that too.”
Helplessness made her fumble her words, balking. “I came here to kill something.” While Loki perched next to Mir on the table across from hers, her eyes skated from one to the other. “Something no one else can see.” Finally, they looked at each other. Nodded.
“You’re not the only one, Morgane. We see the creatures too. The more important question is, how can you?” Loki’s words stole her breath away.
“Wait, you see them too?” Relief shot through her so fast it left her reeling. “You really can?” Oh my God. Someone else sees them. It’s not only me.
“All this time, all these years, and I thought I might be going crazy,” she whispered almost to herself, wrapping shaking fingers around the edges of the table, squeezi
ng to feel the hard metal, to remind herself this was real. “Who are you guys? What are those things? And how can you see them too? How is that even possible, when all this time, I thought I was the only one?”
Loki asked her again, his voice slightly more forceful, “We can’t answer your questions until you answer ours. Now. Tell us who you are and what you’re doing here?”
“I’m not sure what you want me to say. I’m living in the city, on the south side. I’m a United States citizen, for chrissakes. And as far as I know, Chicago’s still part of the USA, and I have just as much right to be here as anybody.” As her temper flared, it occurred to her the burning stuff must be magic because she felt good. Better than good.
Still, they waited. She pinched her nose before she went on, explaining everything as slowly and concisely as she could manage. “My name is Morgane Elaine Burke. I was born in1994. In Pittsburgh. I came to this city to kill those things, and I’ve been killing them ever since.” Her eyes skated between Loki to Mir. “Except the nights I’m injured, when I’m forced to recuperate and heal.”
Mir rolled his eyes.
Morgane’s temper sprang up, and then cooled as she weighed her options. “All right then, what should I say? What will it take to get you off my back?”
Mir leaned in close. “My problem is this. Normal humans can’t kill those things. Humans can’t even detect them. Which means, since you can see them, you aren’t human. And according to you, you’ve been killing them for a while now. Which means you’re lying about everything. Do you see my problem?”
Well, no she didn’t, actually. “You truly need convincing that I’m…human? Wow.” She looked around, scanned the tables, the cabinets, the trays before settling on a solution. “Okay, how about this? We’re in some kind of hospital, right?” She pulled back the oversized sleeve, offered her arm. Take a blood sample then.” Loki hid a grin before shaking his head. She shot him a glare. “What’s so funny?”
“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 the
y 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?”
Queen of Swords: The Banished Gods: Book One (The Banished Gods Series 1) Page 4