LOKI WALKED PAST the make-shift security station that stood watch over the Barrier containment tank, newly housed inside a military ground-transport vehicle. Pushing through the organic flaps that denoted the edge of the outer construct, he left through the doorway cut in the organic wall that acted as a buffer from the apartment complex lobby.
He nearly ran into the Bridge as he did it.
She seemed to look through him in those first few seconds they faced one another.
Then her light green irises clicked into focus. She frowned, and Loki couldn’t help noticing how much the expression reminded him of similar looks he’d gotten from the Sword.
“Loki,” she said, her voice crisp. “You’re still here.”
Loki hesitated, looking past her briefly. Then he nodded, reluctant.
“Yes, Esteemed Sister.”
He fought with what else to say, even as he saw her eyes narrow. He could almost feel her scanning his light, although he imagined it might be in his head.
In any case, her messaging was clear.
She knew. She knew, and she wasn’t having it.
When she didn’t break the silence for another few seconds, Loki nodded again, more decisively.
“Yes, Esteemed Sister.” He made his voice more formal, executing a short bow, his hand in the respectful sign of the Bridge. “I will remedy that tonight.”
The harder look in her eyes relaxed.
“Good.” She seemed about to walk past him, then hesitated.
She startled him, reaching out and laying a hand on his bare arm. Loki had been about to continue walking forward, but he froze, meeting her gaze.
“Tell Gina I’m sorry,” she said, quieter. She gave her head a sideways tilt, a seer’s apology. “I don’t like sending you, Loks. I really don’t. But we don’t have any choice. We’re all going to have to do things we don’t like right now. All of us. Do you understand?”
Looking at her, Loki exhaled.
Feeling something in his chest relax, along with a flicker of warmth for the Bridge herself, he nodded. “Of course, Esteemed Bridge.”
“I really am sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, and meant it. “Thank you, Esteemed Bridge,” he added and meant that, too.
She gave another seer’s nod, a single, sharp jerk of her head. Then she disappeared through the organic flaps, entering the security station Loki had just left.
Taking a deep breath, he let it out seconds later. Frowning as he thought over the Bridge’s words, even as a firmer resolution made itself felt in his light, he turned on his heel, walking with determined steps towards the lobby of the apartment building.
He pushed his way through the glass doors, and––
The daughter ambushed him on the other side.
She must have been waiting for him there. Either way, she stepped out at him, barring his way the instant he emerged from the relative brightness of the outside to the dimmer gold and red hues of the once-opulent building lobby.
“You!” she said, her voice openly accusatory. “I want to talk to you.”
Loki felt his light reconfigure into a shield, even though the girl in front of him was slight, a bare sixteen years in age, and human.
Behind him, he heard a suppressed laugh.
He turned, spotting a group of infiltrators walking in the glass doors on his other side, including many Loki knew. Raddi walked in directly behind him, clapping him on the back as he passed with another barely suppressed guffaw.
Good luck, brother, the younger seer whispered in his mind. That’s what you get for going after jailbait human tail.
She is not jailbait.
What is she, thirty-five? At most?
That is full adulthood for a human, and you know it, Loki sent back, gritting his teeth. She has an adolescent child of her own, for the love of the gods!
Whatever you say, brother, Raddi joked. I bet Dante thinks her mom’s too young for you, too.
I highly doubt that is her complaint, Loki retorted.
Raddi grinned. Well, I’m positive if you just explain to her how it really went down––how you met her mother when she was half-naked, tied up and being kept as a sex slave, and how seeing her like that brought up an overwhelming urge in your light to fuck her senseless––Dante won’t mind a bit, brother––
Loki shut the other seer out of his mind before he could go on.
He didn’t manage it before he heard the giggles of Chinja and Starlen on his other side, though, or before he caught Jax grinning at him from the opposite end of the lobby where he stood with Declan.
Loki didn’t want to hear the rest, not with his light still swimming with reactions to the Bridge’s words, and the teenaged daughter glaring up at him, tapping her foot as she waited for him to deal with her.
Truthfully, though, Raddi’s words stung.
That was maybe in part because the seer’s jabs skirted awfully close to some of his own misgivings around what he’d done in the field that day, as well as his lingering guilt at how he’d reacted when they’d first found Gina. It didn’t help that he’d intended to go visit her at that very moment, and had in fact intended to do more than simply talk.
Even now, as his eyes studied the face of Dante warily, his light looked for her mother’s obsessively inside the construct.
He’d let all of this go for too long.
He’d been trying to do the right thing, but that felt misguided now, too.
Anale’s words echoed in his mind, as well.
You are well and truly fucked, my brother, the infiltrator said smugly when they landed back at the carrier after he’d first brought Gina back. Just wait until her daughter finds out. She’s going to rip you a new one, brother, then stomp on your cock. That’s if she doesn’t just sic Vikram and the Sword on you for fun.
The Sword and Vikram had been surprisingly understanding.
Dante had not.
Even now, after the teenaged human directed the other seers to conduct multiple scans on her mother’s light to ensure no wrongdoing had occurred, Dante still seemed to view Loki as a kind of sex-drunk pervert who intended to not only break her mother’s heart, but to possibly wound her physically in the process.
Dante didn’t know much about seer sexuality or physiology, but apparently someone had told her enough that she had concerns.
Serious, serious concerns.
The situation would have been far different of course, if things hadn’t been mutual between Gina and himself. Loki knew the limits of his own ability for self-deception. He could say with some confidence that he would have left Gina entirely alone if she had not wanted him.
He would have found some way to make that permanent, too, possibly with the help of other seers to banish her from his light––or at least to keep her safe from any temptations he might have to pull on her, or try to turn her head towards him.
Truthfully, he probably would have requested a reassignment.
China perhaps.
Possibly North America.
Yet almost from the start, Gina had been as transfixed with his light as he’d been with hers. Moreover, Gina didn’t mind that he was seer, even after he got drunk enough with desire to confess his age to her. He knew such a number probably felt more abstract to her than anything, given how he wore his age compared to a human, but still, it demonstrated she wasn’t as turned off by their differences as he had feared.
She wanted to have intercourse with him.
She’d asked him for it, outright.
She’d asked him many, many times now.
She said she trusted him. She said she thought he was a good man––a good seer, anyway, she’d laughed, blushing, which made his pain worse, unbearably worse, even apart from her actual words. Her unearned and complete trust in him only made his own feelings more intense.
Even so, he had restrained himself.
He’d restrained himself despite Gina’s wishes. He’d restrained
himself in the hopes that Dante might grow accustomed to the idea before he lost himself in the physical side of his pull towards her mother.
So far, however, Dante had not softened towards him in the slightest.
And yes, it still bothered him.
When Loki told Gina why he wanted to wait, she had only thrown her hands up in exasperation, although Loki could tell his concern touched her, too.
Gina thought Dante was simply “being a teenager.” She argued that her daughter would not get used to their new relationship until they acted like the adults and didn’t succumb to her “bullshit psychological blackmail,” as Gina put it.
Gina further said, with somewhat more warmth in her voice, that Dante had been protective of her since her father left.
Gina also explained (with somewhat more embarrassment), that given some of the things Dante witnessed while growing up with a young, single mother in a not-great part of Queens, her daughter likely genuinely feared that Gina didn’t have the best taste when it came to picking men. With good reason, Gina implied.
Loki didn’t probe that unspoken commentary too deeply, given the intense feelings it evoked in him.
Nor did he want to think about it now.
He continued to walk towards his lover’s daughter as he thought all of these things, his body tensing the closer he got to her.
She had been waiting for him.
He was sure of it now. He could feel it on her light.
She had been standing here, turning over aggressive words to yell at him once he emerged from that security station. What he couldn’t decide was why.
She had to know he was due to leave Bangkok soon.
Dante did tech support for all major missions now, including those tracking Shadow’s network, so of course she would know. She would further know that he would be on assignment for months and out of reach of Gina during that time.
What could she possibly have to say to him, given that?
He didn’t have to wonder for long.
“I suppose you’re going to see my mom now?” Dante hissed once he was close enough. “You get your papers to roll, so it’s off to guilt her into getting you off before you go?”
Loki blinked, startled.
Then he flushed.
“Did you ask the Bridge for this?” Dante snapped. “Looking for a way out, now that shit got serious… ‘Loks’?”
Loki glanced down, saw her small, white hands clenched into fists.
“…I guess you’re probably done with her anyway, right?” Dante stepped closer to him and he backed off. “Is that it? Huh, ice-blood? You bored? Is that what this ‘mission’ is really about? You want some new human tail to hunt?”
Loki felt his face warm even more.
Truthfully, her initial accusations weren’t all that far off from what he’d been thinking. Well, assuming he understood them correctly. The last few things she’d said just confused him, and made him wonder if Dante was accusing him of fixating on her mother or of simply being some kind of predator of human women more generally.
“Well?” she hissed. “Which is it? You on a suicide run, hoss? Or you just making a fast run out of a domestic bliss kind of thing?”
Loki’s frown deepened.
As he looked at the teenaged human, her mother’s words came back to him. Once they had, he saw the fear in Dante’s eyes, maybe for the first time.
Her looks confused him, too, he was forced to admit. If Dante had been a seer, she would have been approximately thirty or thirty-five years old.
He reminded himself that the relationship with Gina was consensual. Even Dante must know that by now. If he had been lying to himself on that particular point, through delusion or whatever else, someone would have pulled him aside. He would have gotten a stern talking to by someone, if not more than that.
Vikram, most certainly.
Likely the Sword.
Definitely the Bridge.
But all Loki had felt off Vikram was amusement––and a small tinge of jealousy, once he tasted the edges of Gina’s light.
But thinking about that only got Loki’s blood up more.
“We will talk,” Loki said, focusing sternly on Dante’s face. He made the decision even as he said it. “We will talk now… and settle this thing, cousin.”
He walked towards her, reaching for her arm, but she jerked it away, raising her voice.
“Keep your fucking hands off me, asshole!”
Loki felt seers looking their way and stepped back.
Within seconds, he felt flickers of their light around the two of them as they made sure he hadn’t done anything inappropriate. Satisfied that he had not, they withdrew, but he felt a number of them lingering still in the nearby space.
Have caution, brother, Vikram advised him. She is only a child.
I know, Loki shot back, speaking more from emotion than logic. I think I have had a bit too much caution under the circumstances already, brother.
Vikram surprised him, smiling from behind the Barrier. We have all been thinking that, brother. For weeks, if you want the truth. Do not let her bully you. She is used to being able to push others around. Even seers.
Thinking about that, Loki sighed.
He also agreed with Vikram’s words.
You are right, he sent. I have been a fool.
He felt a sharper pulse of amusement from Raddi.
We commend your restraint, Raddi grinned at him in the Barrier space. But yes. You have been a fucking idiot, brother. Any one of us would have slept with your foxy girlfriend by now. Hell, we would probably be sleeping with her at this very moment. And yes, we heard her ask you for it… you lucky bastard.
Loki felt his face warm again, but did not answer.
Shifting his attention back towards the human girl, he was about to try and speak to her again, when he noticed she had her arm and hand held at a strange angle.
He couldn’t quite wrap his head around what it meant…
…when she punched him in the face.
“Di’lanlente a’ guete!” he cursed, taking a step back. He switched to English. “What in all the lowest hells––”
“Fucker!” she spat. “It wasn’t enough to drag her into your bed? You had to wine and dine and ditch her, too? Lowlife piece of shit!”
Still staring at her in shock, Loki raised a hand to his cheek, where the skin and bone throbbed in pain. He fought to think, to understand the fury in her eyes.
Her words made no sense to him whatsoever.
“Cousin!” he said, breathing hard. His voice grew openly wounded. “Do you really think that is an appropriate response to our disagreement?”
But she was already shaking her head, her eyes murderous.
“Don’t fucking read me without my permission!” she snapped, glaring at him. “You all think I’m stupid! You think I don’t notice when you pull your iceblood crap!”
She motioned at his head angrily with one hand, her teeth gritted.
“…If I wanted you poking around inside my head, or giving me some iceblood-induced lobotomy, I’d tell you! Got it, Holmes?”
Feeling his confusion clear slightly, Loki held up both hands in a peace gesture.
“I did not do this, cousin!” he protested.
Dante took a step forward and he took one back, nearly stumbling.
As he did, he could feel and hear the amusement in the Barrier space around him. He didn’t dare join them there, however, fearful that Dante would punch him again.
“I assure you, young cousin,” he repeated, still holding up his hands. “I was not doing any of those things. I was in the Barrier, but only to communicate with them…”
Loki motioned to where Vikram, Raddi, Yumi and Anale clustered in a small but very conspicuous group by the elevators, grinning at them as they watched the show.
“…I was reassuring my brothers and sisters of my intentions,” Loki added. “They spoke to me in my mind, and I responded. It would look the same to your e
yes. Do you understand?”
At her skeptical look, Loki burst out with an angrier stream of words.
“Do you really think I would read you for no reason, cousin, when you’d just told me you intended to talk to me about something? Why for the love of the gods below would I not simply wait to see what you said, first?”
Dante stared up at him, her eyes momentarily confused.
Then he saw her thinking about his words. Her gaze slid past him to where most of the seers had resumed their conversations. Loki followed her eyes, just in time to see Vikram and Raddi disappear through an elevator doorway.
“Would they just leave you, cousin, if I was a danger to you?” Loki retorted.
Slowly, she lowered her fists back to her sides. Her eyes flickered to his cheek, which likely now held a mark from her hand.
Loki watched as Dante’s complexion darkened.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. She clenched her hands at her sides. “You can’t exactly blame me, you know. It’s not like I’m not totally outnumbered here.”
Loki waved away her words––although, since his jaw still ached from the hit, his dismissal was more out of politeness than true feeling. Even so, his infiltrator’s mind didn’t shut off entirely. He found himself thinking she had some fighting ability, if that punch was any indication. He hoped Vik and the others had been giving her training.
As he thought it, he looked down to her knuckles and saw they had swollen.
“Are you all right?” he said, unthinking.
She let out a snort. “Don’t act like you shook that one off so easy, Holmes.”
Loki made a negative gesture. “I am not,” he said. “It hurt. It will continue to hurt for several days. I am wondering, though… did you break your hand?”
She looked down at it, wincing. She held it strangely now, Loki saw.
“Maybe,” she admitted.
“Should we go to the fifth floor infirmary?” he said.
Realizing it wasn’t really a question he should be asking her, given her age, he made up his mind, motioning with his head towards the stairs.
“Come,” he said. “We will go now.”
“Go to hell,” she said, backing off.
Glaring at her, he shook his head.
His jaw clenched, even as something rose in his light. He found himself turning over what Vikram said about her bullying him and what Gina herself said, implying the same. He couldn’t avoid the obvious truth of their words, now that it stared him in the face. He also couldn’t help realizing just how much he’d let Dante manipulate his guilt over the past weeks.
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