Agnes still thought the whole thing was hilarious. I really hated that woman. “Right one, Belatu-Cadros. Can’t you tell?”
Good God, these people needed better names. I decided to call him Carlos since I could actually pronounce it. “Look, Carlos…” He raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t punch me so I took that as acceptance of his new nickname. “I’ve been trying to tell them they made a mistake for the past hour. Talk some sense into them. Let me and my friend go. We won’t even call the cops. Hell, we can go inside and find a bar and catch the end of the LSU game and have a good laugh about your epic case of mistaken identity.”
Carlos shook his head and pushed me back toward Gunnr. I was beginning to feel like a Ping-Pong ball. “He’s Norse, which means he’s your problem. You take him.” He tapped his huge friend, whose eyes had never left me, on the shoulder and motioned to the airport doors, then called back over his shoulder. “I don’t like the name Carlos. You can call me Cadros though.”
Gunnr pushed me toward the other guy and he caught me with his left hand but shook his head at her. “You were told to deliver him. We’re just here in case the others show up.”
Agnes marched between us, dragging Hunter behind her. “You talk too much. We’re going to miss the plane.” And nobody argued with the old woman. The two younger men just followed her and Gunnr dragged me along, too.
“Gunnr—” I tried to slow her down, but she kept pace with the others.
“It’s Keira,” she corrected.
I sighed and gave up. Turns out, I would take my ex-girlfriend over this any day. “Keir-ah.” I exaggerated her new name as annoyingly as possible, which probably went a long way in proving I really was as stupid as they seemed to think. “Who the hell are these people? I’m still betting on Agnes being a witch.”
Keira loosened her vise of a grip on my arm just a little and I resisted the urge to rub my forearm like the baby I was sure I’d turned into. In my defense, I’d never been abducted and held hostage before. “Agnes isn’t a witch, and she’s actually a pretty decent person once you get to know her. She’s just a little rough around the edges. Cadros is from her pantheon—”
“Her what?” I interrupted. Ahead of us was the ticket counter and I had gleeful visions of TSA agents swooping in to arrest the evildoers who were interrupting college football and maybe even rewarding Hunter and me with an ice-cold beer for surviving our ordeal. I never claimed to have realistic expectations either.
I think Keira rolled her eyes at me but I’m not sure. I was too focused on the ticket counter and looking for any person in a suit with a Taser or gun. Those bastards must have been hiding. “Pantheon, Gavyn.” Keira had that tone of voice like she was talking to the village idiot. Right now, I kinda felt like him.
I tried pulling my arm away from her again, but the only thing I got for my effort was a few more bruises. “I know what a pantheon is, Keira. It’s that building in Greece.” Okay, I was totally just messing with her now, and it worked. She mumbled something in what I assumed was Norwegian and her grip tightened again. I probably grimaced from the pain.
Agnes turned around and scolded us both. “Behave, children.”
She faced the guy behind the ticket counter and flashed her missing-tooth-grin at him. “We need six tickets to Reykjavik, please.”
I twisted my body around so Keira would have to look at me. “Iceland?”
“Sh,” she hissed. Hunter didn’t look nearly as concerned as I felt and that made me want to punch him again.
“Dude,” I whispered, “they want to take us to Iceland.”
All four of our abductors shot me a shut-the-hell-up glare. The guy behind the ticket counter didn’t pay any attention to me. “Connecting flight in Boston. I just need to see your passports, identification, and payment, please.”
Hunter got that smug smile on his face and he just knew we were getting out of this now. Except that old witch reached into her bag and pulled out six blue books and handed them over to the guy behind the ticket counter. “That’s not mine,” I said automatically, and Keira’s fingers dug into my arm again. This time, I did cry out in pain and I didn’t care if that made me a baby. That hurt.
Hunter and I watched in stunned silence as the man behind the counter typed our information in then processed the credit card Agnes had produced from her bag of sorcery tricks. He handed her a stack of freshly printed papers and told her what gate we’d need to go to. There was a flight to Boston leaving in less than an hour then we’d have a four-hour layover waiting for a connecting flight to take us to Iceland.
“Nice trick,” I murmured to Keira, “but you still have to get me through security, and if you think I’m going willingly—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, I told you we should have just knocked him out,” Guy-Whose-Name-I-Still-Didn’t-Know said.
Keira nodded in what I presumed was a combination of regret and agreement. “How was I supposed to know what a pain in the ass he is?”
“I’m not usually a pain in the ass. I just don’t like being kidnapped and hauled off to Iceland. What the hell is even in Iceland?”
Hunter was still being dragged behind Agnes but he managed to slow down long enough to look over his shoulder at me. “You are actually always this big of a pain in the ass, and it’s Iceland. There’s ice. And snow and reindeer and shit.”
“It’s not the North Pole, Hunter.”
Hunter shrugged. “If I find Santa there, I’m not sharing the Nintendo 64 I finally get from him.”
I shook my head in mock disgust. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be too busy playing my GameCube anyway.”
“You got a PlayStation. I got a chemistry set and a complete set of the works of John Locke. Shut up.”
That was actually true. Having a father who was a philosophy professor apparently had its drawbacks. That same Christmas when Hunter and I were both fifteen, his father had also gotten me a copy of a play by Jean-Paul Sartre. It was currently keeping my kitchen table balanced.
We stopped in the security line and Keira finally let go of my arm. Guy-Whose-Name-I-Still-Didn’t-Know stood on my other side and fixed me with a serious gaze that made even my smartass shut up. “Let’s just get to Iceland. You want answers, you’ll get them there. Nobody’s here to hurt you. Believe it or not, we’re trying to keep you alive.”
He pointed to the line ahead of us with his right hand, and for the first time, I noticed it was a prosthetic. I glanced away from it so I wouldn’t seem all weird staring at this dude’s fake hand, but he’d apparently noticed. “I’ve got an iPad in my carry-on. I’ll loan it to you on the plane. You seriously need to read more.”
And he pushed me along through the security line that never even stopped the six odd travelers, two of whom had been abducted by three extremely off-balance characters and one maniacal old witch who still thought the whole damn situation was the funniest thing that had happened to her in her ridiculously long life.
Chapter Three
Whoa, dude.” I nudged Tyr—he’d finally told me his name—and he opened one eye and looked at me. I held his iPad in one hand and I’m pretty sure I was wearing that I’m-the-village-idiot expression again. “This doesn’t even make any sense. Who are the Vanir, and if there’s going to be a freaking war, don’t you think this writer could have told us who they were fighting?”
Tyr closed his eye again. He’d also stubbornly refused to allow me to give him a nickname and insisted I call him Tyr. “It’s mythology, Gavyn. It doesn’t have to make sense. Keep reading. You’re still in the beginning.”
“I know where I am,” I mumbled. I squirmed in my seat but Tyr was freakishly large and taking up more than his fair share of this row of seats on the airplane. I couldn’t even get him to move his arm off my armrest. I tried my luck with Keira instead. “Haven’t found you in here yet.” I held up the iPad like she wouldn’t have known what I was referencing otherwise.
“Keep reading. You’re still in the beginning,” she
repeated.
I narrowed my eyes at her but wisely kept my mouth shut. Instead, I glared across the aisle where Hunter was sandwiched between Agnes and Cadros. Agnes was sound asleep. Hunter shrugged at me. “Want to read some really bad mythology?” I asked him.
“Don’t even think about it,” Tyr muttered, his eyes still closed.
I sighed and fell back into my seat. Including the layover we had in Boston, I’d been with my captors for over six hours now and I was positive I liked them even less, even if they hadn’t done anything to hurt Hunter or me yet. Although they were hauling us off to Iceland, and I was pretty sure that could categorize as abuse in some form. I glanced at Keira again. “Why Iceland? Why aren’t we going to Asgard?” I waved the iPad at her to show her I had read some of this shit. If ten pages counted.
Keira snickered. “You think we’d take you there?”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but it sounded like an insult. “Hey, I’m worthy of crossing over this rainbow bridge.”
Tyr snorted but kept his eyes closed. This guy was really getting on my nerves. Keira flipped the iPad back on since the screen had gone dark. “Read more, talk less. You’re a lot less annoying when you’re reading.”
I begrudgingly went back to reading but hadn’t made it far before I stopped again. “You know,” I said and both Tyr and Keira sighed with complete frustration, “your god’s kind of an asshole.”
Tyr almost smiled. “Which one?”
“Odin. He made this deal and now he’s totally trying to squelch on the bet!”
“He’s been known to do that. Keep reading,” Tyr ordered. He scratched his nose with his good hand then tried to go back to sleep. I had the sudden idea that if I could annoy the hell out of them both, they’d at least let me sit next to Hunter.
“And ew! Are you kidding me? Loki transformed into a horse to mate with another horse then gave birth to some freak of a horse?” I watched Tyr carefully to see if I was annoying him enough yet.
His nose twitched again and he finally opened his eyes and glared across the aisle. “Stop pretending to sleep, you old hag.”
Hunter nudged Agnes gently. “I think he’s talking to you.”
Agnes continued to pretend to sleep. Tyr looked at Cadros. “Switch places with me.”
Cadros shook his head. “No way. We’re just allies. He’s your problem.”
“Here’s an idea,” I began to suggest, but Keira wouldn’t even let me finish.
“No,” she interrupted. “Read the damn book and shut up.”
“You should hear me out,” I protested. “Not all of my ideas are stupid.”
I could hear Hunter laughing at me from across the aisle. I leaned over Tyr’s large body and flipped him off. It didn’t seem like anyone was moving, so I went back to reading because what else could I do? I’d made it about a third of the way through the book on Tyr’s iPad when I muttered, “Holy shit,” and glanced at Tyr’s fake right hand. Tyr had fallen asleep, but Keira was watching me.
“You’ll never meet anyone as brave,” she told me in a low voice, careful not to wake him.
I scanned the screen again and shook my head. “None of this is real,” I insisted.
Keira just shrugged. “Some of it is. Some isn’t.”
I exhaled slowly and shut the iPad off. I’d had enough of their myths. “Look, the guy could’ve lost a hand in combat or some freak fishing accident and thought taking a god’s name would make him seem really badass. That doesn’t make him a god. I don’t even believe in gods. Any of them.”
Keira was still watching me. “You don’t have to believe in them for them to exist, Gavyn. And whether you like it or not, you’re tied to us, which is why we’re here. If the Sumerians had stayed silent like they were supposed to, you could’ve gone on with your life… what the hell are you doing with your life?”
“Hey,” I snapped. “I’ve got a father. I don’t need your lectures, too.”
Keira rolled her eyes and took the iPad from me. “You have no idea how much potential you’re wasting, Gavyn.”
I crossed my arms defiantly and probably pouted a little when I grumbled, “Great. Now you sound like my father and my mother.”
Keira looked up from the iPad and offered what was almost an apologetic smile. “Sorry. About your mother. It’s her side of your family that ties you to us, you know.”
This again. I was beginning to wonder if she didn’t mean she was going to literally tie me to them at some point. I was betting on Agnes trying it first. “You mean the blond hair?” I asked. And yeah, I was just being a smartass, but I had apparently proved to be quite adept at playing the village idiot.
“Yes, Gavyn,” Keira retorted, “as we speak, we’re out rounding up every man and woman with any hint of Nordic features in their genealogy.”
I nodded along with her, because really, that was the first thing she’d said that made sense. “Hunter is British. Actually, I don’t know what that makes him, but he has dark brown hair. You should’ve left him in Baton Rouge. This is totally going to screw up your army of Nordic soldiers.”
“Hunter isn’t a hero. Getting him to come along kept you from fighting back. We’re not stupid, Gavyn.”
I wasn’t convinced of that at all. I mean, she kept claiming I was a hero and, honestly, I probably wouldn’t have saved a drowning kitten unless it were halftime. And I was sober enough. And it wouldn’t hurt if there were hot women around to appreciate the fact I was saving a drowning kitten. Come to think of it, I wasn’t actually sure kittens could drown.
I turned to look at Keira. “Can kittens drown?”
She set the iPad down and just stared at me. I heard Hunter laughing from across the aisle again. He must’ve woken up Agnes because I also heard a thunk and Hunter exclaiming, “Ow!”
I pointed to the iPad in her lap. “Kittens. You know what those are, right? Don’t they have them in Asgard?”
Keira leaned over me and hissed, “Badb, Father must have made a mistake. He’s punishing me for something and sent me after this fool.”
Agnes shook with laughter, which woke up Tyr. He looked at the old woman then at Keira and finally at me. “You stopped reading.”
“Yeah, well, you stuck your hand in a wolf’s mouth.” I’m pretty sure that ranked in my top-three-dumbest-things-I’ve-ever-said list. And I did have a list for that.
But Tyr just nodded. “No one else was going to do it. You’ll see, Gavyn. Gods may have a lot of power, but that doesn’t always make them courageous or noble or brave. We’ve always needed the heroes to work with us to make up for our shortcomings.”
Keira tried to hand me the iPad but I wouldn’t even look at her. She hadn’t looked up the possibility of kittens drowning. She could hold that damn thing until she did. Besides, Tyr was finally talking to me rather than just ordering me to do something. Sure, Keira may have been heading that way before my kitten comment, but I was still pissed at her for that whole emasculating me thing back at my apartment. And at the airport. And pretty much every moment since then.
“Wait, so heroes, like in Greek heroes? Like Hercules and Perseus?” I asked.
Tyr nodded again. “Heracles, actually. Hercules is a Latin name. But yes.”
I tried to remember anything from a college history or English class, but there were so many parties… so many beer bongs. “All right. Heracles. Wasn’t his father Zeus?”
Keira tried to hand me the iPad again, but I ignored her again. Tyr bit his lip as he tried not to smile at us. “Yes, Zeus and Alcmene. And before you ask, Perseus was also the son of Zeus and a mortal woman called Danae.”
“So… what you’re telling me is that Zeus got around.”
Tyr snorted and shrugged a shoulder at me. “You have no idea. I don’t think the Greeks knew the half of it.”
“Then where’s Zeus and his gods and all of his heroes?” I asked. Seemed to me such a horny god wouldn’t just disappear all of a sudden.
“Olympu
s, probably. We don’t worry much about the Greeks. They’ve never been that interested in the outside world. When people stopped believing in them, they were just content to hang out on their own. Not everyone has taken it so well.”
“Like the Sumerians,” I guessed. Honestly, I couldn’t have found Sumer on a map of the ancient world. I was pretty sure it didn’t exist anymore anyway.
But Tyr shook his head. “Lots of us. What’s going on with the Sumerians is different.”
“Tyr,” Keira warned, “you should wait until we’re in Reykjavik. This isn’t the kind of conversation you want overheard.”
Tyr actually agreed with her and closed his eyes again to go back to sleep. And once that guy fell asleep, there was no way I was getting him awake again. I twisted around in my seat and grabbed the iPad out of Keira’s hands. “Killjoy.”
I went back to reading the compilation of Norse myths Tyr had downloaded for me, and after another hour of reading, I nudged Keira with my elbow. “Hey, I finally found the Valkyries. But you’re still not in here. Unless your real name is Battle Axe, which would explain the whole Gunnr thing.”
Keira narrowed her eyes and gave me that same expression from before, like she was trying to comprehend how any man could be so stupid. I just grinned at her and shrugged. “I can call you Battle Axe from now on if you’d prefer. That seems pretty fitting, actually.”
“Gavyn,” she sighed, “what will it take to get you to shut up?”
Finally.
I nodded across the aisle. “Let me sit over there with Hunter. Agnes doesn’t say much anyway. All the peace and quiet you could want.”
Keira rolled her eyes at me and looked out the window again. “You don’t read very well. It says Axe Time, not Battle Axe.”
I glanced down at the screen again and found the passage. “Huh. Well, that’s even worse than Gunnr.”
I heard Tyr snort but when I looked up at him, he kept his eyes closed as if he were still sleeping. Coward.
Sword of Secrets Page 3