Illusion

by C. L. Roman

  Jotun stretched his neck one way and then the other, settling Hamar more securely at his hip, and walked through the portal. On the other side a forest stretched in all directions and when he looked over his shoulder his eyes widened. The arch was gone and nothing stood behind him but more trees.

  Freya's words echoed back to him; we must move forward if we are to succeed. He took a deep breath and focused on finding Surt.

  "Please," he murmured. "Before he gets to Conroy." He stepped into the Shift and felt its cold bite through his tunic. The lights approached, zooming toward him as if hurled by an unseen hand. His heart thudded, carving depth from each breath he took, but he stood still, waiting.

  "Choose," the voice said. He raised the image of the place and time he wanted, holding it in his mind as the lights edged closer and his breathing became light gasps.

  "Choose." The word assaulted him, threatening to drive him to his knees, but instead, he focused on a single point in the wall of light and stepped...

  He emerged with asphalt under his feet. A blare of car-horns had him leaping back onto the sidewalk. The half-light of dusk in New York settled around him along with the smell of a hot dog vendor's cart and the shrill cries of a city gearing up for the night. He stared up at the familiar facade of the hotel he and Surt had called home for so many days. He shrugged. It was a good a place to start his search as any.

  Advancing on the entrance, Jotun shoved open the revolving door and walked through the lobby. The clerk at the front desk waved frantic hands in his direction but he ignored her and headed for the elevator.

  "Mr. Tun, Mr. Tun, please, there have been complaints..." The clerk flapped up beside him, her heels clattering on the tile floor.

  "I've been away on business," he said. He cut her a sidelong glance and offered a grim smile. "But don't worry. We'll be checking out today."

  "Oh dear, but the police said..."

  He stopped and turned to face her. "The police?" One brow lifted in inquiry.

  "Well yes, the scream was quite loud and then it stopped so abruptly...we thought it best to call them."

  The woman was left gaping into spark-filled space as Jotun decided there wasn't time for the elevator. He stepped out of the Shift into the hallway outside his room. The door was locked. He gripped the handle hard and twisted. Hearing the mechanism snap, he shoved the door open, drawing Hamar in the same motion. The room stank of blood, the air itself supercharged with violence. Red gore smeared the floor, the walls. The television, its screen smashed in, lay on its side on the counter. Fragments of broken furniture littered the rooms. The window was a jagged, open hole, curtains shifting in the fitful evening breeze.

  Jotun moved toward the half-open bedroom door and pushed at it with his knuckles. Something kept it from swinging freely and he pushed harder. A rough, scraping of cloth on cloth broke the silence and a pale arm flopped into the space between door and frame. Jotun swallowed and gently opened the door the rest of the way. She couldn't have been much more than seventeen, her red-gold curls spilling around a snow kissed face. Her body was naked, covered in red-rimmed bites and gashes.

  The girl on the bed might have been her twin, red-haired and pale, her blue eyes staring in endless horror. Both were bloodless, neither was breathing.

  Bile rolled in his gut. Surt has chosen these deliberately, he was sure, for their resemblance to Gwyneth.

  He's warning me. Jotun inhaled sharply, filling his lungs and then pushing the air out hard. I'll take the warning, but not as he means it.

  Hearing the stomp of running feet in the hall, he moved swiftly back into the living area and leapt to the window sill. Without pausing to consider, he vaulted into the air, his wings springing free, arresting his fall. Flying, he turned the possibilities over in his mind. Surt would want to go after Conroy, but he wouldn't know where he was. Conroy's family?

  He wheeled sharply and shot northward, slicing through the Shift so fast that he wasn't even aware of its greater darkness before emerging into the Maryland night. The farm below looked peaceful...and abandoned. No dog barked as he alighted, no lights shone even though the evening was still young. A quick examination revealed none of the violence he had found in the hotel room. Something loosened in his chest. There was no odor of demon here, only the dusty staleness of an empty house.

  Standing in Caroline Conroy's living room he resisted his next move for several moments before his jaw tightened with its inevitability. Going to the hospital where he had left Michael Conroy was risky. Every time Jotun traveled the Shift, his trail became brighter, easier to detect and follow.

  A slow grin lit Jotun's face. Maybe an easy trail wasn't such a bad thing. He stepped into the Shift, exiting a step later into the parking lot of the hospital where Conroy should still be recovering. The half-full lot was quiet and he watched as two cars pulled out. The small medical facility was brightly lit, but comparatively peaceful, given its function.

  Jotun shrugged his wings out of sight and walked through the front doors. At the reception desk, he paused. "Can you tell me Commander Conroy's condition?" he asked the pretty, dark-eyed nurse.

  She checked her computer and her brows rose. "Are you a relative? We can't share information about our patients with unauthorized persons."

  Jotun allowed his surprise to show. "I brought him in..." he hesitated. "He was badly injured in an — accident. Tall guy, dark hair, military looking."

  She pursed her lips. "If his condition was severe, he might be in the intensive care ward on the second floor. Let me get the charge nurse. Maybe he can help you."

  From the corner of his eye, Jotun saw a shadow slide along the corridor, moving with unnatural speed down the hall. He smiled at the nurse and waited an instant for her to turn away before following the shadow.

  The brightly lit corridor ran along the outside wall of the hospital, ending in a ninety degree turn some fifty yards away. The right wall was lined with exam and treatment rooms, but the dark figure ignored these, slipping along the white tiled floor like a moveable stain. A nurse and doctor exited one of the rooms, talking in quiet tones, and the shadow shot up the wall and through the ceiling.

  Jotun waited until the medics were safely behind him before he shifted to the floor above, exiting into a supply closet. He eased the door open a crack and surveyed the area.

  Personnel hurried up and down the hall, clothed either in white coats or colorful scrubs. Monitors beeped and a faint tang of alcohol and antiseptic permeated the air. A tall man in street clothes would stand out like a blood stain on a summer suit. He closed the door and altered his form, transforming his loose tunic and pants into dark blue scrubs.

  He held Hamar in front of him, frowning. In a few seconds he walked out of the closet as a short, Hispanic orderly with a rather large stethoscope hanging around his neck. Striding down the hall, he glanced into each room for his quarry. The shadow was nowhere in sight.

  The ward was set up in a square with a circular desk in the middle. The wings of the desk formed almost a full circle, stopping short of joining at the bottom to provide an entry point. From that area, a single person could see many of the rooms without getting up, simply by turning in their seat. The exceptions were the rooms past each corner of the square.

  Three computer consoles were spaced evenly along the curving counter top. Two were empty, but the one across from the entrance was occupied by a nurse entering data, her back to him. Jotun paused in hall as footsteps echoed from the opposite corridor.

  A plump, middle-aged doctor approached the desk with a clipboard in her hands. "Amanda," she said. "Have the results come back on Conroy and Adams?"

  Jotun's nostrils flared.

  The nurse at the desk looked up from her computer. "Hi Dr. Myers. Let me check." She performed some complex wizardry on the keyboard and the screen lit up, screens passing in and out of visibility as she clicked through them with dizzying speed. Finally it settled on a single spreadsheet. "The toxicology on Adams came back
but we are still waiting on the MRI for Conroy." She hit the print key and gave the doctor a curious look. "You know Dr. Croft isn't going to like you checking up on his patients. What happened? Has the patient regained consciousness?"

  "Not that I know of. But I have a special interest in our Commander Conroy." Dr. Myers' green eyes crinkled in a friendly smile as she accepted a print out from Amanda. "Don't worry, Croft will never even know I was there. Conroy's still in room..."

  "Fourteen, yes."

  "Thanks Amanda." The doctor placed a playful finger on her lips and sauntered away.

  Jotun waited until the nurse returned to her task and slipped past the desk, walking head down with a purposeful gait, following the faint but familiar stench of demon.

  The trail led away from the desk and around the corner. The doctor pushed the door to room fourteen open and passed through with Jotun right behind her. It was a single patient room and Conroy lay in the bed, his face colorless beneath the bruises. A heart monitor and IV bag stood by the bed on one side, a small table with water and a phone on the other. Jotun pulled the stethoscope from his neck and it transformed in his hand even as his body took on its normal size and shape.

  "He will never give you what you want, Surt. Give up now or I will destroy you."

  The white-coated figure froze in place and began a slow turn, the flesh beneath the clothes rippling, growing. The demon was taller, leaner, his body lithe and athletic in a black leather duster and jeans. He was grinning as he turned to face Jotun "What a wonderfully dramatic line. If I were Surt, it would almost certainly have worked. But as you can see, I'm not."

  "Molek." Jotun glanced at Conroy, still sleeping. "This is not your fight. Surt —"

  "Has been dealt with." The demon wandered to the window and looked out. "It may not be, as you say, my fight. However, he irritated the Master and when the Lucifer speaks..." He looked at Jotun and smiled wryly. "Well, it's generally best to listen."

  "So, Lucky ordered Surt destroyed?" Jotun wandered to Conroy's bedside.

  Molek grimaced at the nickname. "I wish you wouldn't call him that. He finds it so irritating."

  Jotun suppressed a smile. "Not one of my major concerns. Why would he kill Surt?"

  "Surt got too demanding, and he was loud. One of our best tools in this world is the capacity of humans to ignore what they don't wish to see. Surt was making it impossible for them to remain oblivious. And he wasn't happy with teasing the usual cranks and crazies. He was trying to coerce people with actual power." Molek looked at his nails, burnished them against his silk shirt and examined them again. Apparently satisfied, he leveled a pointed glance at Jotun. "He was a threat to the Master's plans, so he had to be neutralized. You would do well to take note."

  Ignoring the threat, Jotun rolled his shoulders and settled Hamar's hilt more comfortably into his grip. "And what of Conroy?"

  "Well, he knows what Surt was. That knowledge alone, in such reliable hands, represents a risk. We try to avoid those."

  "Meaning you are here to kill him." It wasn't a question.

  "I prefer not to put things so crassly, but essentially, you are correct. You really should step aside."

  "You know I can't do that."

  Molek's lip curled. "Of course you can. There's always a choice. Otherwise what would be the point?"

  "I won't do that," Jotun amended.

  "Fine." Molek's sword was in his fist, a line of frigid black steel arcing toward Jotun's neck before the demon finished speaking. The angel parried and Hamar shrieked with rage as steel met steel. They shoved away from each other and Molek brought his sword around, carving a trail of red along Jotun's thigh. Dancing back, the angel came up short against the wall and twisted aside as Molek moved in close to thrust at his chest. Left with no room to swing Hamar, Jotun doubled up his fist and punched Molek in the teeth. The demon stumbled back, spitting blood.

  "It seems you've learned a thing or two since we last met." Molek swiped the air with his sword and Jotun watched a dagger appear in Molek's left hand. "But you'll never know more than I do," he said. The demon leapt, blade out-thrust. The angel slapped it aside only to feel the sharp bite of steel rip into his shoulder. He slammed his head into Molek's and the demon staggered, momentarily stunned, his weapons slipping from his fingers.

  Jotun brought Hamar down, point aimed at Molek's throat. The demon wrenched sideways as he straightened. Completing the turn, he drove a fist into Jotun's ribs, slamming him into the monitor. The machine toppled over and keened a warning. Molek snapped his fingers and the sword and dagger merged back into one. He beckoned and it was in his hand.

  Outside, they could hear urgent voices calling instructions and the pounding of feet along the corridor.

  "This is so tedious!" Molek muttered. His fist clenched and then sprang open, a ball of hellfire in his palm. The semi-liquid bubble hit the lock and burst, spreading in a bright, thin line along the edges of the door, melting the frame and sealing the entrance. He pointed at the unconscious man. "You cannot protect him forever."

  Jotun drove Hamar at Molek's gut, forcing him back and put himself between Conroy and the demon once more. "I can protect him now, today. I'll worry about tomorrow when it gets here."

  Fists pounded on the door. A voice outside shouted "Stan, get the jaws out of your rig."

  Molek rolled his eyes. "Very well then. Worry about this..." he said and thrust out his hand. Another bubble tumbled from his fingers onto the foot of Conroy's bed. A third fireball narrowly missed Jotun's head as the angel scooped the Commander from the burning sheets. Fire alarms screamed and water cascaded from the sprinklers in the ceiling. Jotun stepped into the Shift, and out again, into the hall, surrounded by chaos, but hoping for a momentary respite. If Molek was trying to avoid publicity, witnesses might deter him.

  Jotun stared down into the commander's pale face, surprised to find brown eyes looking back at him. "Thank you," the man whispered, and his eyes drifted shut again. A splintering crash shook the corridor as the door was finally pried open. Men shouted and people raced back and forth with fire-extinguishers. A gurney rolled up and Jotun laid his burden upon it, allowing scrub clad attendants to treat Conroy.

  He pushed through the crowd and poked his head into the destroyed room, but it was empty and no hint of demon detectable over the smell of burning linens. Neither was there any sign lingering in the hallways or around the people attending the Commander.

  "Dude, that was amazing. How did you get him out of there?" A man gripped Jotun's arm. Jotun didn't answer and the man pulled at him, trying to lead him to a chair. "You look a little shocky. Here, take a seat, you better let me sew those up."

  "I don't need treatment. The blood is..." He trailed off, brushing away the blood on his skin. Underneath a silver white scar had formed, but there was no wound to treat.

  "Oh, it’s not yours." The man's relief was clear. The confusion colored his expression. "Then where...?" He looked over his shoulder at the uproar, and when he looked back Jotun was gone.

  Jotun traveled the Shift this time without fear. He brought Gwyneth's face to mind, traced the curves and valleys of her features, drank in the memory of her and when the voice required his choice, he did not hesitate, stepping out of darkness into a sun-blessed meadow.

  The arch stood in solitary peace, waiting for him to pass through and he did, without thought or hesitation. Retracing the same path he had taken on his first arrival, Jotun found himself before a sheer rise with a black door set into the cliff face. No one answered his knock, so he took several steps back and vaulted into the air. From the higher vantage he saw that Sessrumnir was far larger than he had first supposed. People moved back and forth between the buildings, carrying bundles, running after children. The wooden palisade enclosed a scattering of structures, numerous cottages, a smithy and kitchen among them.

  In the center of the cleared circle rose an enormous lodge, easily the equal of a New York high-rise, should one have been laid on its s
ide. A wide half circle of steps led up to a porch which in turn gave access to massive double doors, rune carved and black with age. A portico sheltered the entrance and as Jotun watched, a familiar figure sprinted up the stairs.

  Jotun dropped into the yard, folding his wings away and ignoring the surprised glances of the occupants. "Loki," he yelled, and the man at the doors stopped tugging on the handle and stiffened. With slow, reluctant movements, he turned around.

  "Jotun, you have returned more quickly than I expected. Gwyneth is in the meadow."

  "I will see her in a few moments. Right now I have some questions and, happily, the time to hear you answer them." He bounded up the steps and threw an arm around Loki's shoulders before the fallen angel could retreat.

  Loki's mouth tightened, then relaxed into resignation. "Of course. What would you like to know?"

  Tall trees and wildflowers dotted the banks of a wide, gentle stream and a woman lay back on a blanket with her eyes closed against the sunlight, letting the wind tease the ends of her hair.

  Jotun approached, letting his shadow fall across her, content to look at her peaceful features until her eyes fluttered open of their own accord.

  She smiled at him. "Jotun."

  "Gwyneth. You are well?"

  "I am," she said, and reached her hands up to him. "What about you?"

  He sat next to her and pulled her close. "I am well, I think. I know everything now."

  She gave him a wary look. "Everything?"

  "I remember everything that happened to me. And I made Loki tell me a good portion of what happened to you. He has much to answer for."

  She shook her head. "He was trying to save his children. I might have done the same if I thought it was the only way."