by C. Gockel
Amy snorts and covers her sooty face with an even dirtier hand. Doesn’t he know anything medical related? I’m going to die of smoke inhalation long before I burn to death.
Loki tilts his head. “Charming, very charming!” he snaps, but his voice has taken on a hint of desperation. He destroys everything beautiful...
In his condo Loki’s chest feels tight; he stumbles backwards from the window. If it was him trapped in the hall, he’d use the In-Between, but it’s exhausting and dangerous just for himself in ideal situations, which the elven inferno definitely is not. He’s never used it on another, they’d both most likely die.
In the burning building there is a loud groan, and the floor beneath Amy drops.
In his living room Loki doesn’t pause to think. He steps into the In-Between.
x x x x
Loki vanishes from sight, the floor beneath Amy drops, and for an instant and an eternity she is suspended in mid-air. It is like that moment at the top of the hill of a roller coaster ride and the car plunges so fast beneath you that your body can’t keep up.
She opens her mouth for a last gasp of air...and meets Loki’s eyes going from black to blue gray beneath her. She expects to crash through him, but instead she crashes into him. Heat buffets her face, she catches sight of white hot flames below, and they’re falling.
And then there is nothing. No Loki, no light, no heat—no, Loki is there, she feels him underneath—in front—beside her—arms tightening around her waist. There is no up or down and she feels all the breath rush out of her.
Her lungs scream in agony, her body doesn’t have a chance to shiver. And then, for a moment she can’t feel anything anymore, she is beyond pain, or cold, or fear. She thinks she sees light, thinks she hears something. Beatrice’s voice maybe? You can’t leave yet, Amy...
She wants to say that she wants to stay here, to follow Beatrice’s voice, but before the words can form she is falling again, Loki beneath her. There is up and down once more, and light so bright it is blinding. She glimpses gray sky and they’re falling into clouds. They collide with something and Loki’s body bounces, snapping Amy’s jaw shut on the impact, just catching the edge of her tongue. Gasping, Amy sucks in a breath and thinks she can feel the cells that line her lungs rejoicing, the taste of air is so sweet. She blinks. They’re not in clouds, they’re on a bed with white linens, in a huge room with floor to ceiling windows, furnished with only a bed and a nightstand. Her head is on Loki’s chest; he’s wearing the pink LGBT shirt with the upside down rainbow triangle he calls his “Bifrost shirt.” A shadow above them makes her look up with a gasp....it’s Loki’s sword in a black scabbard hanging above the bed on the wall.
“Amy?”
Amy shifts her gaze downwards. Gasping for breath, and in shock she can’t respond.
Loki is looking at her, his mouth open, his eyes wide, his skin going from mottled blue to pale peach. He puts his hands to the sides of her head. Flexing his fingers as though checking to see that she is real, he says, “You’re alive?”
Blinking, Amy nods. He closes his eyes and smiles, a genuine smile, not one of his twisted smirks. “Welcome to my home,” he whispers. Lifting his head he bumps his forehead against hers, and then his head drops, his hands fall, and his eyelids droop.
“Loki!” Amy yells, scrambling to her knees on top of him and shaking his shoulders. “Loki!”
He blinks his eyes and mumbles. “So tired...twice...so hungry...need to sleep.”
Her eyes widen. She’s straddling his chest and he hasn’t made a single inappropriate comment. Terrified, she shakes his shoulders. “Are you going to be alright?” she says, leaning in close and biting her lip.
He nods but doesn’t open his eyes. His body trembles as his muscles relax. His head lolls to the side.
Going cold, Amy straightens and puts a hand to her face. She can’t take him to the hospital. Jameson is after him; she just has to trust that he’s done this before and he’ll get better. She idly pushes her purse up her shoulder. She hadn’t even realized it was still on her arm. She freezes. Her phone! They can track her by satellite.
With shaking hands she opens her purse. Her wallet is inside, her keys, and her new birth control pills. But her phone is gone. Remembering dropping it on the floor after her unsuccessful phone call, she heaves a sigh of relief.
...and catches a whiff of herself. Her hair and her clothes smell like burnt chemicals. She remembers how 9/11 victims suffered from strange ailments after the attack, brought on by the cocktail of exotic burnt compounds in the building materials they inhaled. She suddenly has a very strong urge to take a shower.
She looks down at Loki. His hair is ginger, his skin pale and wan. She has a responsibility to him first. His chest seems very still. Amy scampers off of him, and he heaves in a huge breath of air, his eyes spring open, and he coughs.
“Amy...” he mumbles. “Strangest dream. I was suffocating under a giant rabbit.”
Amy’s lips twitch. She’d been sitting on his chest, evidently cutting off his oxygen supply. Good one, would-be-animal-doctor-girl. Silently incriminating herself, she gently pushes his bangs back from his eyes. His hair is coarse and thick. “Are you sure you’ll be alright?” she asks again.
Nodding, he whispers. “Never did that with two people. Almost killed us both. Need to sleep.” He takes a deep breath of air, his nose wrinkles, and he winces.
Smiling bitterly, she says, “That’s me. I smell like cancer. I want to take a shower, but I don’t know if I should leave you alone.”
Loki shakes his head, eyes closed. “You can’t take a shower.”
Heart catching, Amy brushes her hand softly down his cheek, and leans closer. She’s about to whisper, “What can I do?” when Loki, eyes still closed, lets out a whine. “Not while I’m too weak to spy on you.”
Amy sits up and pulls her hand away. She sighs. “I think you’ll be fine.”
One of Loki’s eyes opens, and then the other, and he smiles again. It’s innocent, filled with wonder, and it’s breathtaking.
“What?” Amy asks.
“I rescued you.” The smile gets impossibly wider and he shrugs, and looks away. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done something so unequivocally...” He huffs a laugh. “...Good.”
Some butterflies do a mad dance in her stomach. “Oh, Loki,” says Amy, almost reaching up to put a hand through his bangs again.
Covering his eyes, he nods and sighs almost shyly. “Not since I helped kill Baldur.”
“Oh,” Amy says, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. Yes, Thor did say Baldur deserved it, but it doesn’t stop the chill that Amy feels. Loki doesn’t operate by an Earthly moral code. Thinking of the civilians Thor said he killed in Asgard, she shivers and wraps her arms around herself.
Loki sighs again and closes his eyes. His muscles relax in a wave, and he’s almost instantly asleep, the smile still on his face.
Loki saved her, that is the only thing she knows for sure. Standing up and taking a deep breath, she goes to find the shower.
x x x x
When Loki returned to court from Niflheim, the plague and its victims were already nearly forgotten. Instead there were other rumors.
“Baldur has dreams of his impending death,” Thor says, over a mug of ale. His brows draw together, and he takes another swig from his mug. They are in Loki, Sigyn, Valli and Nari’s home—still called Anganboða,’s Hall. Sigyn and Loki are loathe to call it anything else. It is late, the boys are asleep. Sigyn is with them, a smaller mug of her own in front of her.
Sigyn’s gaze becomes hard, but she says nothing.
“Good,” says Loki.
Thor scratches his great mane, and then shakes his head. “But it doesn’t matter. The gossips in court say the queen has begged every creature, every plant, and every rock and mineral in all the Nine Realms not to hurt him and they’ve all given their oath to comply. No weapon can penetrate his skin.”
Huffing, Sigyn says, �
�That is ridiculous.”
Thor looks up, eyes wide. “But...”
Tilting his head, Loki says, “Since when have plants, let alone rocks and minerals, been ones to make oaths?”
Looking down at his ale, Thor says, “Aye. It sounded strange to me. But Baldur ordered Tyr to throw an iron battle axe at him. It bounced off without leaving a scratch.” He shrugs and drains his mug.
“Well, maybe he should test those oaths,” Loki says. “Perhaps at the training grounds tomorrow we can all take turns throwing things at him?”
Thor beams. “That sounds like fun!”
Beside Loki, Sigyn straightens and her face darkens. Later, as Thor is leaving, Loki puts his arm around her hip and leans down to nip her ear. He’s warm with liquor, cold with the memory of Helen, and he suddenly wants more babies, just to show he is still fighting. Sigyn pulls out of his embrace. Pointing a finger at him, she says, “Odin is setting you up, Loki! You’ll take care of his problem, and then he’ll thank you with torture and banish our children to Midgard or worse!”
“Baldur needs to die!” Loki hisses. Sigyn is the only person he’s told about Odin’s spectral visit to Niflheim. He feels his skin heat and sting at her betrayal—she of all people should understand.
“Yes!” Sigyn says, her lips curling into a snarl. She closes her eyes. “I worry every time Nari or Valli go near Baldur that he’ll...” she shakes her head unable to finish. Loki remembers Sigyn emerging from Baldur’s chambers so long ago, her face dazed, confused and hurt. Woman or child, boy or girl, Baldur has no inhibitions about using his glamour to charm, seduce, and betray.
He lets out a breath and his fists tighten at his powerlessness. “What would you have me do?” he says through clenched teeth.
“Do the same as Odin, find someone else to do your dirty work,” says Sigyn.
Loki runs his tongue over his teeth. It’s not what he wants; Loki wants to douse Baldur in fire even if it means his own death. He wants the world to see the Golden Prince burn. But Sigyn is right. If Loki kills Baldur, Loki’s family will face banishment—or worse. Sigyn isn’t Aggie, but he does love her; and his boys are monsters, but he does love them with an intensity that borders on madness. He looks away and says nothing.
As it turns out, half of the deed is accomplished by someone else the next day. Thor suggests to the court that they attempt to test the spell protecting Baldur by throwing weapons of various materials and designs at him. In arrogance and vanity, Baldur accepts gamely. It becomes the favorite sport of the court. Unfortunately, just as Thor suggested, nothing seems to work.
Loki does not partake of the sport himself. Instead, he takes to studying the mechanisms of the spell. Some of the more learned at court speculate that Frigga has surrounded Baldur with an invisible layer of magical armor—but Loki doubts that. A layer of magical armor would inhibit sensations from reaching Baldur, and he doubts very much that Baldur, ever the ‘sensualist,’ would be willing to part with that. It takes many months, but Loki eventually discovers she has woven her magic into Baldur’s skin. He can feel pleasurable sensations, but heat too hot will be siphoned by magic into realms unseen as well as the atoms and molecules of points too sharp. The force of impact of such implements meets the same fate.
It is a beautiful, infuriating, lovingly crafted piece of work. And in all the days that the warriors make sport of throwing objects at Baldur nothing penetrates his skin...Instead it is Sigyn that discovers the weakness.
“Remember that small plant that you brought from Midgard, Loki? The one that grows in trees?” she says one evening. The boys are screaming in the other room. Normally, he would go back, rough house with them, and Sigyn would come in and harangue him for ‘inciting them to riot’. But Loki has had a long day listening to the dronings of Odin and the dwarven envoys from the new Svartalfheim mercantilist faction and he is in the mood to kill someone. He grits his teeth. He is not in the mood to talk, or listen. He wants to turn off his ears and mouth and drink. He grunts in response and heads to the cupboard.
Not taking the hint, Sigyn says, “Frigga touched it, and her skin developed a rash.”
Popping the cork out of the bottle of ale with his teeth, Loki says, “And this concerns me because?” In the other room he hears a crash.
Sigyn scowls. “Because she seems to be intolerant to the substance...I’ve heard of similar things among the Vanir, and the dwarfs...but not among the Aesir. I thought yearly feasting on Idunn’s apples inoculated us.” She tilts her head. “But it’s a new species to Asgard. Perhaps Idunn hasn’t added it to her apples’ magic—”
“Too bad for Frigga,” says Loki, tipping back his ale.
“Loki, such conditions are inheritable!” says Sigyn.
Putting down his drink, Loki stares at her.
Sigyn’s eyes narrow. “And in the proper dosages can be deadly.”
Later that evening he is sitting with a mistletoe branch on the kitchen table. The plant has thin flimsy branches, too weak to be a weapon. Loki taps his chin. “Perhaps if I rub the bark and leaves along a sword or a knife the essence will be enough to break the spell and allow me to drive a blade through his hide.”
From where she is mending, Sigyn says sharply, “You will do no such thing.”
Loki glares at her, but she doesn’t even look up. “Find a way to kill him without it being traced to you,” she says, pushing a thread through a needle. “Or Odin will not get a chance to punish you because I will kill you myself.”
The coldness in her voice makes Loki pause.
“It is no victory if all your children are dead.” Raising her eyes, she says, “I want you to be victorious.”
The side of Loki’s lip quirks. He looks down at the mistletoe branch and his thoughts start racing. “First I’ll need to see if Frigga’s weakness is also Baldur’s.”
Sigyn hums in agreement.
From the mistletoe, Loki crafts a small, lightweight, inconspicuous dart. The next day, he tosses it in the pile of weapons the warriors will fling at Baldur. It’s just his luck that the person who picks up the dart happens to be the nearly blind Hödur. Loki makes himself invisible and tries to steer Hödur’s aim in the right direction, but still the dart just barely grazes Baldur’s arm. And then Tyr heaves a dwarven dagger directly at Baldur’s forehead. As the dagger falls harmlessly, Baldur and all those assembled laugh, but Loki can’t help but notice Baldur scratching at his arm where the dart passed, the skin there mottled and red.
He leaves in glee to tell Sigyn. His glee ends quickly when he returns to where the mistletoe grows to find that the tree it grew in has been cut to the ground.
He stares at the stump, his hands curling into fists. To get more mistletoe he’d need to go to Midgard. But access to Midgard is restricted—to all but the occasional receiver of prayers. Of late, that has only been Baldur.
For months, Loki can only watch helplessly as Baldur’s behavior becomes more brazen and bold. And then, prayers come to Loki. Typical of Loki’s luck, they come at the best and worst of all possible times.
Chapter 4
The tunnel beyond the emergency lighting of ADUO’s basement level has gone dark. The bullets have stopped. Steve’s knee is sore and cold where he half kneels between the giant Asgardian beside him and the wall.
Thor sends a burst of lightning northward, and Steve raises his gun and fires in the direction of some darting shadows. Spinning, Thor does the same in a southerly direction and Brett and Bryant fire, too.
Over his headset, set to the secure channel, a voice cracks. “They’re sending arrows with green flame in this direction!”
There are screams southward where Cera is and then someone shouts, “There is a wall of green flame around the Promethean Sphere!”
Steve’s about to order Brett, Bryant and Thor to race in the direction of the sphere, but then more gunfire rings in his ears, fast and insistent. A bullet lands in the corner of the wall by Steve and a piece of debris hits his face with a
sharp sting. “Hold your position!” he shouts.
There is more screaming from the direction of the Promethean sphere. His headset crackles with, “The fire is turning blue...now white!”
For a few minutes there is nothing but gunfire and Thor releasing lightning blasts down the narrow tunnels, and then everything is suddenly silent.
Steve’s headset crackles to life. “What’s happening?”
“The sphere is secure!”
“They’re retreating!”
Steve sees nothing but hears running footsteps behind and in front of him.
Thor bellows, “Leave the ones that are north of us, try to grab the ones trying to escape past us from the south!”
The wisdom of it hits Steve instantly. To the south is Cera, and more agents. To the north are just more tunnels—they have no real chance of catching them, but they might be able to corner some between themselves and Cera and haul them in for questioning. Gunfire comes from behind and in front. Steve turns; he sees nothing beyond the few feet of space he stands in, but shouts rise around him, echoing in a strange language.
Suddenly, out of the blackness come shadows. Brett fires and one of the shadows buckles at the knees. Another raises a gun but Thor’s hammer is there. Still another shape tries to bolt past the large golden man, but Steve catches it by the collar. Pinning with too much ease what turns out to be a man of light build and moderate height, Steve grits his teeth. He’s amped with anger from this pointless attack, and the thought of men down that they haven’t even begun to count. He shoves the man against the wall so hard he hears the clack of teeth. Taking a breath, Steve wills his temper to cool. And then he catches his breath. The man’s skin is caucasian with a long scar across his cheek that is rapidly fading, his eyes are brown, his hair is golden...but what draws Steve’s attention are his ears. They’re growing upward, forming delicate points.
Behind Steve comes the sound of more scuffling, and a loud bellow by Thor. “We have them!”