by Jamie Wyman
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Also by Jamie Wyman
Unveiled
Book 2 of Etudes in C#
by
Jamie Wyman
Pajamazon Wordworks
Phoenix, AZ USA
www.jamiewyman.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Jamie Wyman.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights or permissions please contact the author.
First Edition November 2014
Edited by Danielle Poiesz and Double Vision Editorial
Cover design by Nathalia Suellen
ISBN 978-0-9903925-1-4
ISBN 978-0-9903925-0-7 (ebook)
Printed in the United States of America
This one is for Nicki.
Muse, sister, co-conspirator.
I miss you.
-j.
Chapter One
“Citizen Erased”
I’m sitting in the middle of a large, green-felted oval…something, and I’m anything but comfortable. The light shines too brightly, and I’m surrounded by what appear to be shells. The chitinous husks of insects, perhaps? These shells slide against one another with hollow, flat sounds and dig at my backside as I shift my weight. I put down a hand to steady myself and find that I am squatting atop a mountain of poker chips. Some appear to be made of leather. Some are bone. Still others resemble glacier ice etched with runes. Most, though, are black as sin with a golden apple winking at me from the center. I’d guess that hundreds, possibly thousands of chips form this pile. As I pass my fingers over the tokens, they cascade over one another like the coins in a dragon’s horde.
The billion-watt bulb overhead blazes, obscuring the finer details of anything more than an arm’s reach away. And yet, I know exactly where I am.
A house in a neighborhood well off the Strip, where the stakes are higher than any you’d find on Las Vegas Boulevard. Eris’s house.
And that’s how I know this is a dream.
Not because I have some quibble with being in the home of a Greek deity, but because I know the bitch doesn’t live here anymore. I watched her leave, having been run out of town a destitute wreck with little more than some furniture and a sour expression.
And Marius.
From beyond the nimbus of silvery light, Eris’s voice rasps with anger and impatience. “Miss Sharp.”
Those two words trigger something in me—a mixture of hollow shame and fiery rage. I’ve been here before. Not just in this house but in this position. Okay, maybe not literally, but figuratively. I’m a bet on a table with Eris glowering at me.
But things are different this time.
“Well, Catherine,” she asks pointedly. “Do you have the chips?”
I peer through the too-bright haze and find her golden eyes glittering maliciously. The rest of her features come into focus, a series of pale crags and jagged edges. The face of Eris, the avatar of Discord.
“Do you have the chips?” she demands again.
“Trying to get me to replay the game you’ve already lost?” I ask the dream. I should wake up but whatever anchor keeps me in this place holds fast. We remain at the table in some mocking tableau of actual events long since resolved.
“Do you have the chips, Catherine?”
Fine. If that’s how it’s going to be, I’ll play along. I shake my head. “Nope. And I don’t need them.”
Eris crosses one bony knee over the other and rests her elbows on the edge of the table. She takes her sweet time flipping open a Zippo, breathing a cigar to life. Exhaling a blue, wispy ring, she asks, “Are you quite certain?”
“I don’t answer to you anymore. You don’t own me.”
As the goddess chuckles mirthlessly, smoke seeps from her nose and mouth, further obscuring my vision.
“Who does own you, Cat?” a new voice asks.
The mist parts, and I see a broad-shouldered blond man. In one hand he holds a deck of cards. His arctic-blue eyes meet mine with a weight of honesty. Perhaps pity, too.
Gazing down to my left forearm, I see the rune: the letter F with its stems on the diagonal, the Norse symbol ansuz gives off a glow the same color as a midwinter sky. To the untrained eye, the rune is little more than a tattoo, but to me—and any who roam in the circles I do—it is more. The mark is a brand. My brand.
I am cattle. Bargained and lost by Eris in a single game of poker some eight months ago.
The old anger rises in me, and without answering the Dealer, I pop up from the table. “I don’t have to play this game. We’re done,” I spit at the goddess. “I’m done. With games. With you. My soul might not be mine, but this is my dream. And I say we’re finished.”
I turn to leave only to find myself face-to-surly-face with a satyr. The point of his sword—not nearly as wicked as the blade of his stare—whispers against my belly. Marius glares at me from behind waves of his glossy black hair. Locks have come undone from his ponytail as if he’s just emerged from a fight or…or more adventurous sport. No, it’s not sex. It can’t be, I remind myself. Marius and sex are mutually exclusive and have been for centuries.
Marius emits anger in hot, bitter waves. “Do I have your attention?” he asks with a simmer.
Though I know on some level that he cannot be standing there—he left town along with Eris—the bottom of my world drops out, and I’m left with a hollow pit where my stomach should be. The dream swallows me, and the only reality I know is the accusation in Marius’s leaf-green eyes.
I try to say his name, but those syllables are the hardest to utter. Guilt crawls over my skin in hot, prickling swarms. With no hint of his signature smirk behind the moustache and goatee, Marius fixes me with a malignant stare.
“Catherine, I do believe we have unfinished business, you and I.”
“I tried,” I mutter, the excuse as weak as my voice. “I did my best.”
“Your best wasn’t good enough,” Marius growls.
I jump back from his ire, but he advances. The sword disappears into the ether, and he grips my arms with both hands.
“Enlighten me, Catherine. Why did I risk my neck for you only to come away empty as ever?”
“I don’t know how to fix you, Marius. When I tried…”
“You promised!” Marius’s grasp boils through my shirt, his eyes glow a brighter green, an
d small, yellowing horns sprout from his head. As he loses control of his emotions, so too does he shed his glamour. “Tell me,” the satyr roars, “why I fulfilled my part of the bargain and you have yet to honor a damn thing between us!”
“Hera wouldn’t let me!” I break free of Marius’s hold. My own shame combusts, and all I am left with is impotent rage. “I tried, Marius. I wanted to free you from Eris, from your curse, but Hera stopped me! She refuses to let you loose.”
Marius deflates, his shoulders sagging forward. “So that’s it, then? You won’t even try?”
“I did!”
“Try harder! Try again!”
I want to slug him—a normal occurrence where Marius is concerned. But I also want to hold him, comfort him. I reach out, uncertain which of these things will actually happen. As my fingers graze his hand, Marius’s pliant, warm flesh morphs into glittering, lifeless diamond.
I gasp and draw away. The world mists over, snowflakes tumble from my eyelashes, and my breath comes out in crystalline clouds.
“The hell is going on?” I ask no one in particular.
“You turned off your phone, Cat.”
I roll my eyes at the sound of his voice. “Seriously?”
Casual as ever, Loki—yes, that Loki—manifests in a veil of icy shadows. Only his gas-flame-blue eyes solidify in the frost.
“I had to get in touch with you somehow,” he replies coolly, as if it explains everything. “Or would you prefer I come to your home and knock down your door?”
“I can’t have a night off?”
“Not tonight,” Loki says with a hint of sympathy.
“Wait, are you actually here? In my dream?”
Loki’s eyes close, and the eddies that form his body give the impression of a nod.
Though I’m clothed in this place, I wrap my arms around my chest as if I am naked and embarrassed. In a way, I am. Loki is in my dreams, watching memories. Or the warped, funhouse-mirror versions of them, I guess. That moment with Marius—in life—had been one of our most intimate encounters. We’d had scant moments alone after Loki won the poker game, a time when I had tried to fulfill a promise and failed miserably. But the satyr had been laid bare then. That was our moment. The last one we’d shared before Eris took him away. For Loki to eavesdrop on such a clandestine time…
“How long have you been here?”
“Long enough,” he purrs.
I catch a flash of teeth as the god smiles, then he is gone. The clouds around me—buffeted by an unseen, frigid wind—swirl, and Loki’s misty form materializes behind me.
I’m not in the mood. Loki has violated the most taboo law in Cat Sharp Land. Deity or otherwise, that’s not kosher here.
“You’ve just been hanging out in my head?” I snarl through my teeth. “We had a deal! You might own my soul, but you stay out of my fucking head!”
“I wouldn’t have to get into your head if you didn’t turn off your damn phone. Chop-chop, Cat. I have need of you.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I mentally curse the inconsiderate nature of Trickster gods. Already weary and dreading the answer, I ask, “What is it?”
“Get in your car, head out to the Strip. Drive south until you can see the Milky Way and meet me at the intersection of reality and Asgard.”
I blink at the specter. “I don’t think I can plug that into a GPS, man.”
“Shouldn’t take you more than an hour to get here,” the god says, ignoring me. “Thirty minutes or less and your soul is free.”
I brighten, suddenly hopeful. “Really?”
He chuffs a laugh. “No, not really. I just like to see the optimism on your face. It suits you.”
I murmur something under my breath that might rhyme with fuck off, but otherwise keep my opinions to myself. “Fine. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Good. And no dallying with the satyr,” he says with a lascivious wink. “It’s time to wake up, Cat.”
And I do.
…
Along a lonely strip of Interstate 15, far from the crush of people and the tight onslaught of Las Vegas Boulevard, the land rolled in waves of dusty earth. The weak wash of my headlights showed little more than neglected highway and fading lane markers. Riding in my little car felt more like floating at the bottom of an abyss. Disconnection and absolute darkness pressed on the windows, cloying, threatening to tear in and suffocate me. Out beyond the veil of night, predators and primordial fears lurked, all surely eager to devour Red Riding Hood. I should’ve turned around. I should never have left the safety of my little life. However, some consequences you just can’t wriggle your way out of. I drove straight toward the Big Bad Wolf.
Most of an hour past McCarran Airport, I started to question if the god had actually summoned me, or if I’d just believed a very vivid dream. Even as I wondered this, Loki’s brand on my arm gave an icy pulse.
“All right,” I said to my empty car. “Maybe a clue, then? Something to make sure I haven’t missed you?”
On cue, a pair of headlights burst to life on the side of the road.
“Thanks.”
My tires crunched on gravel and packed dirt as I pulled off onto the shoulder. I shut off my engine, but I left my headlights on.
Loki, leaning against the grill of a behemoth tow rig, waved lazily with two fingers. The truck’s high beams gave his already pale flesh a cold, bluish tinge and his eyes an eerie glow.
After a decade of dealing with the more sinister faces of the divine, I’d grown used to the gut-twisting nervousness evoked by meeting with my boss. He kept his immortal nature under wraps at the day job, playing the role of the high-stress CEO of a third-party tech support company. His idea of Dress Down Friday would be a well-pressed suit off the rack rather than a custom-tailored Armani. Off the clock, however, he preferred faded jeans and T-shirts. Even that night, with the temperature dropping into the forties, Loki sported a pair of flip-flops. His strawberry-blond hair mimicked fire in its typical arrangement of unruly spikes.
Glaring at him, I slammed my car door. “Please tell me you didn’t drag me out of bed at oh-fuck-thirty on a Friday night and make me drive out to the middle of nowhere because you have car trouble.”
The cherry of his cigarette flared and dimmed as he took a drag, his stare hard and serious. Twin plumes of smoke blasted from his nostrils, and he tossed the butt to the ground. He took his eyes off me only long enough to grind the cig into the dirt with the tip of his sandal.
“You’re late, Cat.”
“See previous statement.”
Loki pushed away from the grill and rolled a shoulder. “Come on,” he said, shuffling around to the back of the truck.
As I followed him, the scents of gasoline, grease, and metal blended with a perfume of sandalwood and flowers. Lilacs, perhaps?
“Did you have a hot date?” I asked. “Is that incense?”
“Not quite.”
Unease poured into my stomach like sluggish, cold cement. Though he could be secretive, Loki was usually more verbose. Even when scheming, plotting, or just watching others like a divine voyeur, the Norse trickster carried himself with a gregarious levity that seeped into the air around him. That night, however, Loki’s metaphorical aura radiated weariness and…something heavier that I couldn’t quite place.
I rounded the back of the truck and drew up next to the god. “Okay,” I said, filling that awkward, charged silence. “I’m here. Now what?”
He barked something in a guttural language.
“When did you pick up the Dark Tongue of Mordor?” I asked playfully.
A glacial light flared from his palm. The floating orb illuminated the grisly sight of a corpse stretched out on the wheel lift of the truck.
I didn’t know where to start cataloging the horror as my eyes flashed over the scene. A pair of willowy, pale arms stretched out at either side of her lean body. Blood marred the tender flesh of her wrists, and sweat-soaked tangles of wheat-blond hair were matted in
crimson knots. With her mouth agape in a slack scream, her milky eyes stared at me with fury and terror that wormed into my guts and writhed there.
I doubled over and puked.
When my stomach settled and I stopped retching, I wiped my mouth and opened my eyes to find that I’d been vomiting into a bucket.
Loki drew it away without judgment or any particular interest. “Figured you’d need it,” he said idly.
I nodded and pulled my leather jacket tight around me. Teeth chattering, I quaked with shivers that had little to do with the cold. Sadness slipped over me like a slimy shroud as I turned my back to the girl’s body. Hollow, disgusted, and horrified, I choked back the screams fighting to leap out of my throat and into the night.
“Please tell me you didn’t do this,” I said, my voice thick and raw.
Loki regarded me silently, squinting with some mixture of incredulity and amusement. “And what would you do if I did? Walk away? Punch me? Avenge her?”
“Did you do this?” I pressed.
“The correct answer is, ‘Nothing, Loki, steward of my soul.’” He put on a falsetto impression of my voice. “‘It is not my place to question your divine charge, but to obey.’”
“You may own my soul, but I have free will. We’ve discussed this. If I have to belong to anyone, I get to say when I jump. I won’t help you hide bodies or anything like that. If you did this, I will walk, Loki, and so help me, I’ll find a way out of our arrangement that ends with you paying for this.”
I stuck out my chin and straightened my shoulders, punctuating what we both knew to be an idle threat. I had no muscle, but if I gave Loki an inch he would take a light-year.
“For fucksake, Cat. Were you this difficult with Eris?”
Despite myself, I grinned. “I’ve learned a bit over the years of dealing with your kind.”
“Good. Then learn this…” Loki leaned in, closing the gap between his height and my lack thereof. Sneering at me, eyes glistening with vulpine delight, he whispered, “If I end someone, there will be no body to hide when I am through.”
My eyebrows climbed, and my blood ran cold. The not-so-veiled threat rang loud and clear. Even through my thick skull.