Sword of Secrets

by S. M. Schmitz

  Chapter Fifteen

  I can’t say I ever thought I’d wake up naked next to an actual goddess. Beautiful women who could be goddesses, sure. But when I opened my eyes and saw Freyja lying next to me, beautiful and soft and warm, looking so peaceful nestled beside me in my hotel bed, I didn’t have the reaction I’d have thought I would. Mostly, I just wanted her out of my room before Keira showed up looking for me. We’d missed lunch and it was almost supper time now, and a heavy, sickening feeling settled in my stomach when I realized no one had come looking for either of us. Everyone already knew where we both were.

  I tried to slip out of the bed but her eyes opened, and she wrapped an arm around me. I couldn’t be mad at her though. I remembered telling Keira I was a grown man. I was responsible for my own decisions. But I had never actually planned on sleeping with Freyja. I wasn’t quite sure how we’d ended up here. I could remember everything we’d done, but not why I’d given into her. It didn’t really matter. What difference would it make to Keira? She’d been right about me all along.

  “It’s dinner time, Freyja. Everyone is probably waiting on us.” I tried to move her arm but she wrapped it around me even tighter.

  “We can order room service. Aren’t you tired of them ordering you around?”

  She leaned over to kiss me again but I sat up and moved her arm off me. “I want to go downstairs and get dinner.”

  Freyja sighed and stretched but was clearly in no hurry. She extended her long slender fingers and the light from the lamp next to her caught the gold braided band on her finger. Her pale gray-blue eyes danced as she slid it off her finger and put it in my hand.

  “Why are you giving me your ring?” I asked her.

  Freyja sat up and kissed the side of my face and ran a hand through my messy hair. “Because you earned it.”

  Then she slipped out of my bed and started grabbing her clothes. I scoffed at her. “I’m not a prostitute, Freyja.” I put the ring on the nightstand.

  She smiled down at me as she pulled her jeans on, and part of me wished I had just listened to her and agreed to order room service. Freyja was undeniably magnificent. She must have noticed how I was watching her because she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You can still change your mind.”

  My body had already changed its mind, but my brain wanted to see Keira, to try that whole groveling thing and see if it would work at getting her to forget I’d just spent the whole day in bed with a goddess she’d never trusted to begin with, one she’d tried to warn me about. And I still wanted to know how she fit into the prophecy about my death. I grabbed my pants from the floor and asked Freyja about it again, but she was just as evasive as before.

  I sighed in frustration but no one ever seemed to care when I did that. Freyja didn’t seem to care either. “Is it because she’s a Valkyrie? She’s going to take me to Valhalla or something?”

  Freyja slipped her blouse over her head and shrugged one of those perfect, white shoulders at me. “Maybe. I’m sure if you were to die in battle, you’d be welcomed there. Frey speaks so highly of you already.”

  “Damn it, Freyja, just tell me how Gunnr fit into all of this!”

  Freyja held her fingers out in the light and studied them. “I think I’m going to go back to Asgard for a few days. I left one of my favorite rings at home and I’d like to get it. Why don’t you come with me?”

  I yanked my shirt down and stared at her like she’d just asked me to drown an entire litter of kittens. “No. I don’t want to go there.”

  “Why not? It’s beautiful. Everybody wants to meet you.” Her smile turned sly as she winked at me. “Preferably while you’re still alive.”

  “That’s not funny,” I mumbled.

  Freyja laughed and laced an arm around my waist and kissed me and I had such a hard time remembering why I wanted to go downstairs for supper. Room service would deliver the exact same food, and there was a goddess in my room kissing me. And I could easily have her naked and in my bed again.

  She pulled away from me but stayed close enough that I could smell her, this scent that reminded me of honeysuckle and spring, and asked me again to go with her to Asgard. Her fingers moved under my shirt and teased the skin on my back as she lightly traced her fingertips up my spine and I moaned against her neck and gave in. It was only a couple of days. How bad could this mythical land of gods be for two days? It couldn’t be any worse than Iceland.

  Freyja practically floated to the restaurant as she held onto my hand and as soon as she saw her brother, she announced, “Gavyn and I are going to Asgard for a few days.”

  Frey asked her something, but I was desperately trying to avoid Keira’s eyes as they bore into me. I suddenly became aware that Freyja was still holding my hand. I pulled it free and sat down at the table next to Yngvarr who grinned at me and handed me a menu. “I’ll go with you,” he told me. “I’m glad you decided to go, actually. I want to show you my palace. Where Havard used to live, too.”

  I nodded and pretended to look over the menu but it wasn’t in English. Even if I hadn’t just been trying to avoid Keira’s glare, that look of betrayal and pain that I knew was my fault, I couldn’t have done anything with this menu anyway. But I didn’t see anything that looked like it spelled lutefisk, so I figured I was okay.

  Hunter leaned across the table and pointed to one of the dishes listed in front of me. “Get that one. I had it last night. It’s amazing.”

  “What is it?” I asked. I didn’t care. I was only attempting to distract myself from Keira, but she was studying her own menu now. Something told me she didn’t care what she ordered either.

  “Not sure,” Hunter told me. “But if you don’t ask too many questions, most of what I’ve ordered is good.”

  Tyr glanced up from the drink he’d been sipping on. With a straw. I wondered how many drinks he had in him to make him think sipping on cocktails with a straw was a good idea. “Get the hákarl,” he suggested.

  I scanned the menu for that word but Freyja sat next to me and put a hand over mine then chastised him. “Don’t mess with him. And don’t order that. It’s basically rotten shark.”

  I had to look up from the menu so I could flip Tyr off, but that meant seeing Keira, too, and her eyes lingered on Freyja’s hand before she pushed herself away from the table and mumbled something about having a headache and losing her appetite. And I kinda wanted to order the rotten shark just to punish myself for making her feel that way.

  After dinner, which didn’t contain any rotten shark, Yngvarr pulled me away from the crowd at the table and offered to stay in Frey’s room if I wanted Freyja to come back with me. I immediately shook my head and he gave me the same look I could remember him giving his brother when Havard had insisted he wasn’t taking Arnbjorg back to her family, even though he hadn’t slept with her. Being with Yngvarr brought all of these foreign feelings back, and I found myself wanting to be alone with him so I could talk to him, confide in him as if he were my brother, and hope he had some solution to fix this mess I’d made.

  “If I have another dream, don’t you want to be there?” I asked, because that seemed so much less lame than telling him the truth.

  “Of course, but…” He looked over my shoulder where Freyja was still sitting at the table, laughing at something, and even her laugh carried the seductive qualities she so expertly wielded. But my desire for her had mixed with Havard’s disgust and something that was entirely my own creation: a guilt I didn’t even understand. There was nothing going on between Keira and me. Half the time, she didn’t even seem to like me.

  Yngvarr patted my arm and told Frey we were both tired and going up to our rooms for the night. I know Freyja watched us walk out of the restaurant but I kept my eyes on Havard’s brother and followed him away from that goddess who was doing a better job of messing with my head than all of the other gods combined. Even the dead one I kept dreaming about.

  As soon as we were in our room, I sank on the bed and groaned and
I couldn’t help wondering if Yngvarr would think I were weird if I started pouring my heart out to him, but he noticed the ring on the nightstand first. I had mostly forgotten about it. “Oh,” I said with a yawn. “Freyja gave it to me. Said I earned it.”

  Yngvarr snickered and picked it up. “This is intricate. A skilled metalworker must have made this.”

  I yawned again and reached for the remote. “Yeah, supposedly some dwarf named Brokkr. But I still think they should call him a vertically challenged mythological creature.”

  Yngvarr reached across the space separating the beds and took the remote from me. “You mean she gave you Havard’s ring?” he asked. I wasn’t sure what his tone of voice meant—excitement, sadness, uncertainty.

  “I guess so. You can have it. I’ll trade it for the remote.” I held my hand out but he didn’t give me the damn remote. Twenty-four hours had passed since Ninurta and the other Sumerian gods had stood outside a U.S. Mint in Denver, Colorado, and two school buses full of children had interrupted his plans to destroy another American landmark, to kill more innocent people, all to draw me into his service. I wanted to know what my refusal had caused.

  Yngvarr placed the remote beside him on the bed. “We’ll check in a minute. Why did Freyja give you this ring?”

  I wondered if I could possibly be faster than him and get to the remote before he stopped me. I kept my eyes on it when I answered him. “I told you. She took it off, put it in my hand and told me I earned it. Now give me the remote.”

  “But Freyja doesn’t part with her gold willingly. Why does she think you earned it?”

  I laughed and arched an eyebrow at him and told him it wasn’t my fault he had never been rewarded with a piece of her jewelry after making love to her. He flipped me off then tossed me the remote. “There’s no way you’re a better lover than me.” He sounded like he was pouting. And I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to rub it in.

  “Hey, you’re a war god. That doesn’t translate into sex god, too. Face it. We humans can be our own kind of gods.”

  “Well, you’re not entirely human,” Yngvarr grumbled as he kept pouting at the television.

  I flipped through the channels until I found a newscast then I yawned again as I told him I didn’t have any superpowers outside of the bedroom, so I was human enough. And then I had the sudden fear that I was going to wake up with a snake in my bed, so I warned him not to even think about it. Yngvarr grinned at me and asked me how I felt about spiders. I told him I’d rather take on the whole damn Sumerian pantheon myself.

  He laughed and kicked off his shoes so he could recline on his bed. “Not a chance you’re going into battle without me, little brother.”

  We both fell silent and stared at the television but he was probably paying as little attention to it as I was. No matter how much I wanted to escape it, no matter what he told me to reassure me that I was still me, that I would always be me because Havard was dead and forgotten, something was changing in us both, and he must have sensed that as much as I did.

  “I’m sorry, Gavyn,” he said quietly.

  I fingered the remote and pretended to study the buttons on it just as I’d done in the restaurant with the menu. Sometimes, it seemed as if there weren’t enough objects in the world to keep me distracted anymore. “For what? You can’t help your own reactions any more than I can keep him out of my head.”

  “But I know you must worry that you’re becoming someone else. I shouldn’t be making it worse. I don’t even know why I said that.”

  I exhaled slowly and put the remote down. They were talking about the disaster at the Staples Center. It didn’t seem Ninurta and his fellow gods had decided on their next act of revenge. “For the same reason I didn’t want you to sleep in Frey’s room tonight. Because I wanted to talk to you about Keira and how I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with her, and I don’t even know why I gave in to Freyja. Keira and I got into an argument this morning and at the time, I knew I wasn’t going to do anything with Freyja. I just didn’t like Keira accusing me of being like every other man. Whatever that’s supposed to mean, because my father is one of the best people I’ve ever known and he spent four years taking care of his sick wife.”

  My voice cracked and I stopped rambling. I’d never felt more like an epic loser in my entire life. But unlike Hunter, Yngvarr didn’t tease me about my failure to live up to his idea of masculine standards. “You were lucky to have such good parents. And I know what it’s like to lose a mother you love so much.”

  I swallowed the burning pain in my throat and nodded. Of course he knew what kind of hole was created in our personal universes when the person who had kept it centered disappeared. My father helped me through my own grief, even though it must have been killing him to put on such a brave face every day for my benefit. Havard had been that new axis for his brother, and whether hundreds of years had passed or only a few, when he ripped himself out of Yngvarr’s world without even the memories of the one person he’d relied on and loved above all others, what had he been left with?

  These gods I had been getting to know over the past week were nothing like I’d envisioned gods to be; they were far more like us than I would have ever imagined. “It’s okay, Yngvarr. Wanting your brother back, I mean. I think maybe that god he went to for a curse can make everyone forget memories, but your soul remembers him. Maybe there’s no way to erase that.”

  And I heard myself say it and wondered who the hell was talking about souls. I didn’t believe in souls. I was with my mother when she died, sitting next to her on her bed, with a hospice nurse standing nearby. My father sat on the other side of her and we held her hands as she struggled to take those last breaths. When her body surrendered, she was gone.

  “I think maybe you’re right,” Yngvarr said.

  I yawned again and asked him what I’d been wanting to ask him all evening: how I could possibly make things better with Keira now. Yngvarr put the ring back on the nightstand and sat up. “Keira made her own decisions. It’s obvious that she has feelings for you, but she chose to keep them to herself. She has no right to be angry at you now.”

  I grimaced as I remembered that kiss, that perfect moment, so beautiful and flawless. And I had been the one to pull away from her. I rejected her. Sort of. But it was for all the right reasons. I just never had the chance to explain that to her.

  Yngvarr shook his head at me. “Did she ever give you the chance?”

  “Not really. She avoided me for two days, and then you and Freyja showed up. But I could tell she was bothered by Freyja’s flirting and it must have meant something.”

  “Well, you’re not a prophet. You can’t be expected to read her mind. Besides, Freyja has taken hero lovers before. And she obviously likes you and isn’t playing games like Keira.”

  I smiled at Yngvarr and asked him, “Are you going to defend me no matter what?”

  He smiled back at me. “Of course I am. That’s my job.”

  I didn’t argue with him. I was an only child and, truthfully, I wanted an older brother. I had a vague sense at the time that I should have been having this conversation with Hunter—my best friend, a guy I’d known for fifteen years and who’d always been the one friend and person I trusted more than anyone else—but I also didn’t even want him around to hear any of this. And I wasn’t even sure why I felt that way.

  As the minutes turned into hours, I also allowed myself to hope there would be nothing more on the news from back home than the tragedy that had already unfolded there. But sometime around 11:00, as Yngvarr and I both decided we could turn off the television and go to sleep in the belief that the Sumerians had changed their minds, that hope was shattered. Unlike the other times they’d issued a warning or wanted to make sure I knew this disaster was my doing for not throwing myself into their service, the gods themselves never showed up on our screen.

  The news report simply cut away to a broadcast from home where a reporter stood outside the smoking remnants o
f a building and landscape I knew too well: the Louisiana state capitol building, this once tall monument to Huey P. Long’s ego, was a simmering black stump. My world began to spin around me as the horrifying truth hit me. The Sumerians were in Baton Rouge. Somehow, they’d discovered who I was.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Traveling to Asgard was probably the weirdest part of my entire abduction yet. Maybe it’s because I expected something more… supernatural. But in the morning, Freyja showed up in my room with Keira and announced she was ready to go and they were just going to bring me with them when they returned home. I thought about telling them that was one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard, and coming from me that was really saying something, because bringing me to Asgard with them had been the plan all along. But I really wanted to know why Keira was with Freyja.

  Keira tossed her golden blond hair over her shoulder and I suspected she was trying to look nonchalant about the whole thing, but she wasn’t doing a very good job. “I have to go with you. I was told to protect you and not to leave you, so I don’t have a choice.”

  “Even in Asgard? If some asshole wants to kill me in Asgard, I’m fighting for the wrong side.” I didn’t want Keira to come with us any more than she wanted to tag along.

  She just shrugged and wouldn’t even look at me. Freyja didn’t have the patience for our argument anyway. She grabbed my hand and reiterated that she was ready to leave and that was it. No winged horses or chariots pulled by magical goats. Not even a regular horse to carry me across some wicked cool rainbow bridge. I only blinked and I was no longer standing in my hotel room in Reykjavik, Iceland but outside a massive stone wall that may have also been built to feed some guy’s ego problem. It was the lamest supernatural trip in the history of supernatural trips, not that I’d taken a supernatural trip before, but if I had, it would have definitely been the lamest.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and scowled at Freyja. “That was dumb. I want a proper trip.”