Liesmith

by Alis Franklin

  I’ve seen cities die. Seen their industry move offshore, seen their people drift away and their houses empty and their stores close. Seen the rotting husks they leave behind.

  Killing Hel was one thing. She’s the goddess of death, and I doubt it’ll slow her down for long. But killing Pandemonium? You’re talking about destroying the lives of over a quarter of million humans. And LB won’t recover—after all this time, it is the city—which is going to totally throw out the entire technology sector for a good decade or so.

  This, incidentally, is why gods aren’t supposed to meddle around in the mortal world. It’s considered déclassé when it goes wrong. And it always, always goes wrong. Badly.

  Shit.

  I hate this. I have no fucking clue what the fuck I’m supposed to do, and there are two people downstairs—and a whole crap-ton more outside—waiting for me to be the Big Damn Hero and save the fucking day.

  If my brother were here, he’d know what to do.

  Fuck, who am I kidding? His plan would probably involve beating me into fixing it for him.

  Fuck my brother. Fuck him in his dead-rotting eye socket.

  The last of Hel’s ashes slip between my claws and I stand up, put on my game face, and head back into the den.

  Sigmund and David are still whisper fighting, but they shut up when I storm into the room.

  “Pack your shit up, kids,” I say before either can speak. “I’ve gotta take you somewhere safe.”

  “Now wait just one second—”

  “Shut it, Sussman.” I point at David as I say it, but the thing that makes him take a step back is when I put Travis into the words. He sees it, just for an eye blink, and he knows. “You don’t get a say. This isn’t a democracy, this is the fucking end of the fucking world we’re talking about, and you are going to shut the fuck up and do what I fucking say, understood?”

  David’s response is Pavlovian. “Yes, sir!” he says, straightening up and trying to look professional, even if he’s still barefoot and wearing a slightly singed novelty apron.

  “Dad—”

  “No. We should listen. This…this is beyond us. The only thing I want now is to keep you safe.” David turns to his son, lays a fatherly hand on his shoulder. The gesture shouldn’t make me wince, but it does. Fuck you, brother. Fuck you right in your fucking hat.

  Sigmund glances at me, then back at his father. He’s not happy, and I am so sleeping on the couch tonight. Or would be. If I slept. And assuming we don’t all die horribly in the next few hours.

  After a moment, Sigmund nods. “Okay, Dad.”

  “That’s my boy.” David slaps his son on the back, then turns to me. He manages to meet my eyes. Just. “Keep my son safe and I’ll do whatever you say.” His fingers tighten around the fire poker, though, and there’s a threat there.

  I nod. “Get whatever you need from upstairs. We leave in five.”

  “Where?” Sigmund asks, though he already knows the answer.

  “LB. If you’re going to be safe anywhere, it’s there.”

  He nods, and David lays a hand on his back. “Come on, Sig.”

  They file past me, David first—making sure not to get too close—then Sigmund. As he passes, I say, “I’m sorry it turned out like this.”

  He stops, but doesn’t look up. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, me too.” Then he vanishes up the stairs after his father.

  The thump that follows is me slamming my fist into the too-damp hallway wall. The impact leaves a hole in the plaster, revealing a fleshy, pulsing mass beneath. The Bleed is getting deeper. We need to get out of here.

  When I walk up the stairs, I can hear something shuffling underneath. I still don’t think it’s dangerous, but I don’t want to stick around here any longer than I have to on the off chance that I end up finding out.

  David is the first to emerge from his room. He’s got shoes and a jacket, and is clutching a photo of his wife and son. Before I can compliment him on his minimalist choice of travel attire he says, “I have a gun. In the study. I’ll just…” He makes an abortive gesture, and when I don’t complain he half jogs the few feet over to the study door. The closed study door.

  The closed study door with the thing behind it.

  “No!” I move fast. One second I’m leaning against the wall in the landing, the next I’ve grabbed David’s hand, a hairbreadth from the door handle. He jerks back, startled, and when he rips his hand out of mine, my claws catch on his flesh, not quite hard enough to draw blood. It surprises him, though, and he cries out and stumbles backward into the wall, clutching his hand, heart hammering, radiating enough fear to send the paint peeling.

  That’s not good. So I take a step back, hands up, trying to look as nonthreatening as a seven-foot feathered guy with horns ever can. “Sorry,” I say, just as Sigmund pokes his head out of his room.

  “Dad?” he asks, giving me his best Glare of Death. I shrink farther back against the wall and try and look innocent. I’m pretty sure I fail.

  “I-it’s okay, son.” David almost manages to keep his voice steady as he straightens up, still rubbing his injured hand, even as he tries not to. “I was just about to get the gun out of the study.”

  Sigmund looks at his dad, then me, then the closed study door. Then he says, “What’s behind the door?” He’s very pointedly looking at me when he says it.

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  “But there is something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can it hurt you?”

  I have to think a second before answering. Hurt is such a subjective word. “Probably not,” I say.

  Sigmund nods, expression hard and tight. “Dad keeps the gun in a safe in the bottom drawer—”

  “Sigmund!” David is horrified that his son knows this, but Sigmund ignores him.

  “—and a box of ammo in the filing cabinet. They’re both locked, but I’m sure that won’t stop you.” His expression dares me to refuse, to challenge him. And I want to, oh how I do, but I don’t. Because he’s Sigmund, and I owe him.

  “Yeah,” I say instead. “Yeah, okay. Give me a minute.”

  I gesture for David to stand back and he does so, retreating down the hallway to be near his son. When they’re safe—for whatever arbitrary value of “safe” we’re working on—I open the door.

  Inside, the room is black. And by that I don’t mean dark; it’s like there’s a wall of solid nothing just beyond the jamb. I exhale slowly, mostly out of habit, and step forward.

  As I do, I hear Sigmund’s voice, stripped of the confidence it held just moments ago, say, “Lain, wait!” But I’m already gone, plunged into the silent void inside the study. And after that, there’s nothing, no sound, no light. Just a cloying, damp warmth, and the air feels thick somehow. Thick and close and before I can scream, before I can turn and run because tooclosetoodarkohfuckimtrappedcantmovei—

  Before any of that, the door slams shut behind me and I’m alone.

  Well, almost alone.

  It takes me a while before I can make myself move again, swallowing down the panic and remembering that it’s okay. I’m not trapped, not held down, not helpless. It’s just dark. Dark and gross, but that’s par for the Helbleed, and Sigmund and David are outside waiting, my brother and his ilk are long dead, I’m still alive, and there’s nothing in here that can hurt me. Much.

  I still can’t see a fucking thing. And honestly, I’m not sure if this is because it’s actually dark, or because of some failure in the Wyrdsight. It’s good at compensating, but it needs a narrative in the first place and this room is coming up blank. Except for that thing, of course, but its input isn’t helpful. So I’m blind. More or less.

  Great.

  I take a step forward, then another. The floor feels wet and tacky under my claws and I’m glad I can’t tell what it actually is. I’m just going to pretend carpet. Wet, squelchy carpet.

  I find the desk mostly by running into it. It’s in the center of the room, facing the doo
r. A real old-fashioned oak Hemingway contraption. Lynne bought it for David shortly before Sigmund was born, back when David had dreams of reaching the LB executive. It has some good memories—and one really good memory, about nine months before Sigmund was born, that I could absolutely have died without ever knowing, fuck you very much Wyrdsight, you useless fucking piece of meta—but they’re very far away, buried deep under twenty years of loneliness and doubt and misery and failure.

  There’s a lot of pain in this desk. No wonder it’s a magnet for the Bleed.

  I inch my way around it, keeping my hands on the edge and trying not to brush up against the room’s other occupant. I don’t think it moves toward me, but it does writhe occasionally, and the sound it makes when it does is wet and breathy and really, really not something I want to think about. I’m not sure where it is, exactly. Sometimes the noise comes from the back of the room, sometimes from the ceiling. But it’s not at the desk, so I stick close.

  The desk has one shallow central drawer and three larger drawers down each side. Sigmund neglected to mention which side I should be investigating, so I try the left. It’s always the left. It’s also always locked, but barely, and I wrench the aluminum latch out of its socket without difficulty.

  Damnit. It’s not the left, and by the time I’ve realized that, my hand is gooey and the room stinks like rotting dreams.

  The lock on the right-hand side is no more secure, though the safe inside is. It’s an electronic lock, and I punch numbers on the keypad at random, then try the handle.

  Here’s the thing about being a god: There’s no middle ground. When you open the cupboard, either everything falls (humorously) onto your head, or the thing you’re looking for is right there in front of you. Either the door is open and the room is empty, or there’s a dozen guys with guns standing behind, waiting for you to pick the lock. There’s no such thing as mild inconvenience. Either the narrative flows or it doesn’t.

  The safe opens.

  Inside, my fingers close around the handle of a small-caliber pistol, as promised. Guns are something that happened in that time I wasn’t paying attention and are honestly kind of petty when you have the ability to throw fireballs with your mind, so I have to admit to a kind of broad-spectrum ignorance as to their function. Sigmund mentioned bullets being in the filing cabinet, but I’ve got no idea where that might be, and fumbling around in the dark trying not to run into the Thing I Can’t See isn’t exactly my idea of fun.

  Besides, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not really sure I want the humans carrying firearms in the first place. David’s excuse for the weapon was taking up target shooting as a kind of therapy after Lynne’s death.

  The real reason? Well. It didn’t happen. Because Sigmund.

  And why am I in here again? Oh, right. Because I’m a sucker, that’s why.

  Well, fuck that shit. I’ve done Sigmund’s dare and it’s not my fault I can’t get to the filing cabinet. He’ll just have to deal. This is good enough.

  Getting out of the room is much easier than getting in. I vault over the desk—the tips of my horns brush up against something soft on the ceiling but I try to ignore it—and take the two strides back to the door. The handle turns easily, and the Wyrdsight explodes back into something useful as I step out into the corridor saying, “Got the gun, but no-go on the amm—”

  Then cut myself off. Because there’s no one here.

  No one at all.

  Fuck.

  LOKI

  Unsown then

  the fields will grow,

  evil be amended;

  Baldr is coming.

  —“Völuspá,” stanza 62

  SIXTEEN

  The night started out awesome: ice cream, video games, nail polish, and Em. A real girls’ night in, doing girly things, to make up for all the time Em had been spending recently with that guy she’d met online. LambChop, or whatever his real name was.

  It was just at the pinkest part of dusk, and Wayne was in the kitchen, fetching food while Em lounged around on the couch, newly painted toenails up in a foam thingie. They were a good hour into their main activity for the night, replaying Remnant World 2: Red August without saving (or dying) in order to unlock the final costume. It was about three hours of gameplay, if they took the short route (which they would). Em was working through the “normal day” intro scenes, up until the opening of the August Room, after which she would hand the controller over to Wayne and spend most of the rest of the evening hiding behind a pillow.

  It was that sort of game.

  Wayne was adding choc chips to their ice cream when she heard, “Wayne! Cutscene!”

  She hurried back into the lounge room with the bowls, just in time to watch Carol rip the red tape off the August Room door. Wayne had played RW2 at least five times already, and the scene was still creepy as hell. Watching Carol walk into the featureless corridor, Wayne silently chanting Go back go back Carol go back as the latter vanished farther and farther into the blackness, knowing what she’d find on the other side, the room full of—

  The lights flickered.

  Distracted from the screen, Wayne looked up at the ceiling before sharing a glance with Em. They weren’t that far along, but…

  “Is it still raining outside?”

  “Nah, I think it’s cleared,” Wayne said. On the screen, Carol came to the end of the Black Hall and opened the First Door.

  Em opened her mouth to reply, but it was about then that every single light in the house went dark.

  “Uh…”

  The click-whirr of the Inferno and the TV restarting happened first, then all the lights flickering back to life.

  “Aurgh!”

  They both curled up, covering their ears against the roar of static coming from the TV. Em lunged for the controller and started dialing down the volume. The little bar on the screen was filled all the way to the right, which was totally not how they’d left it.

  Also, why was their digital TV playing static? And why wasn’t the Inferno coming back online?

  “What the fucking Christ was that?” Em said as soon as they could hear themselves think above the white-noise roar.

  Wayne had scooted in front of the TV and was poking at the console. The lights were all on, but it didn’t seem to be spinning the disc.

  The TV flickered as Em tried cycling through the channels: a flash of blackness followed by another burst of static, over and over again.

  “What the hell…?”

  “Is it fried?” Wayne peered at the TV screen.

  “Something like that.” Em sounded thoughtful. “I can’t see how, though. Every channel is dead.”

  “Yeah. Inferno’s gone too…” Wayne stood up. Whatever was wrong with the thing, poking at it wasn’t going to help.

  “Hell of a thing to happen, tonight of all nights.”

  “Creepy,” Wayne agreed, just as the lights flickered again. Em flinched, but Wayne pretended not to notice.

  “We should check the other TV.” Em tapped her toenails, checking whether the polish had set. Then she pulled out the separators. “See whether it’s just the one in here that’s screwed.”

  The second TV was in Em’s room. A tiny, ancient CRT she’d been lugging around since high school and kept in memory of the epic battle she’d waged with her parents over being allowed to have it in the first place. Wayne thought that probably made it the most cost-to-viewing-hours effective TV in the history of time, even if the picture was crap and the tiny mono speaker made everyone sound like they were Skyping on 3G in a thunderstorm. Still, it worked. Usually.

  Not tonight.

  “Damn.” Em was flicking through channels, using the buttons on the front, scowling as channel after channel of static appeared. “Maybe something’s taken out the broadcast towers?”

  “Why would that break the Inferno?” A thought occurred, and Wayne shook Em’s computer to life with the mouse. Or tried to, anyway. “Computer’s dead, too.”

  “W
hat! No way!” Em’s computer meant more to her than all the TVs and consoles in the house combined, and Wayne found herself shouldered aside as Em went through the motions of flicking switches on and off and trying to reboot. She got the disks whirring up, but the pained beeping from the motherboard made her pull the plug.

  “That’s no good…”

  “Sounds like the RAM,” Wayne said. Of all the things that could be wrong, it’d be the least worst.

  “This is seriously weird, man.” Wayne could all but see the churning gears reflected in Em’s glasses. “It’s like some massive EMP pulse fried everything.”

  Wayne decided not to point out the redundancy. “I don’t think that sort of thing really happens.”

  “Me either, but do you have a better theory?”

  Wayne did, sort of, but she wasn’t about to tell Em about it. Not just yet. Instead, she said, “Better go see if my stuff is dead, too.”

  Wayne’s room was next down the hall, not far at all, and her door was closed. She put her hand on the handle and—

  Thump.

  Em jumped. “What the hell was that?”

  It’d come from Wayne’s room. “Something falling off the shelf, maybe?” She had a bunch of action figures that were a bit unstable, and the slightest jiggle in the floor could send them tumbling. Except…

  Except it hadn’t sounded like action figures. Too heavy. And almost…wet.

  But Em was wide eyed and skittish, because the creepy stuff got to her. Em knew it was irrational, but that didn’t help much, when it was dark and things went bump. So Wayne said, “It’s probably nothing.”

  She opened the door.

  And it was true, what she’d said. It was probably nothing. It almost always was, after all: every bump in the night, every unidentified noise. Just nothing. Just normal sounds, taken out of context.

  Wayne’s room was set in shadow, the only light spilling in from the hallway, their silhouettes casting long streaks across the carpet. There was something on the floor, a Final Fantasy statue Wayne had bought years ago. It must’ve been what had made the noise. Just nothing, except…