They wagged their tails and tilted their heads to opposite sides.
I walked out of the woods and skirted around to the front of the house. It was early morning, so there wasn’t much activity in the cul-de-sac. The slowthar of several people meshed and intertwined on the driveway and front walk, and I recognized that one of them was Sig’s without thinking about it. Another was Jane’s. At the same time, though, something felt off.
None of the slowthar were mine.
The planting beds were different, and someone had added a flagstone walk between the driveway and the front porch. I walked up, bold and brash, and rang the bell.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting Sig to answer the door. A taller and more filled out version of Sig. An older Sig.
“Can I help you?” he asked in an adult-sounding voice.
“Uh… Yes. Er, is your father home?”
He looked me over with a critical eye. “Excuse me for being blunt, but are you a salesman?”
“No.”
“Political activist? Missionary?”
“No, neither of those.”
“Hmm,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame. “Maybe you should tell me what you really want.”
“I need to speak with your father. That’s all.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
I had to hide a grin. His voice sounded like a good imitation of what I called my Cop-voice. I glanced around, peering past him into the house. “I…”
“No, I don’t think so,” he repeated. “You should move on. My dad was with the NYSP, and you’d better believe we still have friends there. You know, at the barracks over by the library.”
I nodded. “Yes. I’m not here to cause trouble, S—” I bit off his name, but by the way his eyes sharped on mine, he knew what I’d been about to say.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“No, we’ve never met.” ‘Was’ he’d said. My dad was with the NYSP. A chill ran down my spine. Even so, the curse Hel laid on me had disabled me and ruined my career with the same agency. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble. Sorry to have bothered you.” I turned and walked back down the walk.
Sig watched me go, his face flinty, eyes sharp.
When I reached the driveway, he turned and went back inside, closing the door with a thump. I waited a moment, then walked to the other side of the drive where I couldn’t be seen from any of the windows along the front of the house.
I walked back toward the house and alongside the garage to where there were two windows. Inside the garage was a dust-covered truck that appeared not to have moved in ages, but it wasn’t my truck. It was the wrong color.
I turned and walked back to the street and headed up the block. Once I turned the corner, I snaked through one of the neighbor’s yards and into the woods. I made my way back to the others, letting the image of Krowkr slough from my body.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jane the second she could see my face.
“Turns out that in this klith, your butt is that big.”
She paled a little, but both Keri and Fretyi’s ears perked up, and they came to their feet, staring into the woods behind me with their ears perked and twitching.
“Oh, no,” I murmured.
“Dad?” The bigger, older version of our son burst into the clearing, his eyes wide with shock. “Is that really you?”
My back was to him. Too late for a disguise, I thought.
Jane’s eyes were wide, and she took a step toward the boy.
“Mom? What are you doing here? You said you had a meeting at work?”
Her mouth opened, then closed, and she shook her head.
“Dad?” he asked again, his voice plaintive.
I sighed and turned to face him.
“Where have you been?” He was suddenly furious, and tears streamed down his cheeks.
“Listen, Sig—”
“Sig? Why are you calling me Sig? No one has called me Sig since I was eight! Have you forgotten?”
I glanced at Jane sidelong, but she only shook her head, her eyes glued to the boy’s face. “What should I call you?”
“Has it been so long you’ve forgotten my name?”
How could I have missed that before? How could I have missed that little fact in his slowth? Then again, I hadn’t given it more than a cursory glance. I fought to keep the sigh in but failed. “There’s something I have to explain.”
“More than one thing!” he snapped.
“Lad,” said Althyof, gently. “This isn’t your father.”
The boy’s gaze zipped to the Tverkr’s strangely shaped body, then to Yowtgayrr, then to me, then to Jane. “Get away from them, Mom.”
“Listen,” she said. “Just listen for a second.”
His gaze slipped back to Althyof. “Why did you say he isn’t my father?”
The Tverkr shrugged. “Because he isn’t. He has a son that looks exactly like you, although younger by a few years. His son is named Sigurd.”
His eyes traveled the group, pausing on our arms and armor, tracking to the pistol belt Prokkr had designed for me, up to my face, lingering on my empty left eye socket, to the floppy hat, back to Jane, and then down at Keri and Fretyi, where his gaze froze. The pups stood wagging their tails, heads cocked to the side. Keri yipped at him and took a step forward. “What are those?” the boy demanded.
“Those are varkr puppies. They are very fond of my son,” I said with a calmness I didn’t feel.
“I’m your son!” His eyes snapped up to mine, filled with confusion and anger.
“No,” I said. “I’m not your father, though I must look an awful lot like the man.”
He shook his head and turned to Jane. “Why’s he doing this, Mom?”
Tears filled Jane’s eyes. “Your mother is at work. This isn’t a trick. This isn’t a lie. We are not who you think we are.”
“Well, who the fuh—who are you?” he demanded.
“My name is Hank Jensen, and this is my wife, Jane.”
“Hank? Jensen?” The boy turned to Jane. “Jane? That’s mom’s middle name, and you never went by Hank. You used your middle name: Sigurd. Our middle name.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He smiled sourly. “My name is Henry. Henry Sigurd Vasvik.”
I nodded. “That’s the name of the town my paternal great-grandfather came from. Vasvik, Norway.”
“Norway? Don’t you mean Daneland?”
I shook my head. “Not where I’m from. When Napoleon suffered defeat, the Congress of Vienna dictated the Dano-Norwegian union.”
“When was Emperor Bonaparte defeated?”
“Early eighteen-hundreds.”
Henry shook his head. “No. The Danes defeated the Prussians that year, and Napoleon drove the British out of France.”
“Not where I’m from,” I said again.
“You keep saying that! This is where you are from!” He swept his arms wide. “You know…Penfield, New Avignon!”
“New Avignon,” Jane mused. “France.”
I smiled. “In my home, Penfield is in a state called New York. The British settled the whole area.”
“The British?” he scoffed. “Emperor Bonaparte ended their aspirations of colonization in 1823 when he drove King George into the North Sea.”
I shook my head. “So much is different, yet so much is the same,” I said, staring at Henry.
“What year is it?” Jane asked.
“What year…” Henry let a breath gust out of him. “Has everyone gone insane?”
“We left our home in 2017,” I said.
“2017? You disappeared in 2010 while you were working on a case. Your partner, Jack, was—”
“Is Jax alive?” I blurted.
Jane rested her hand on my arm. “Not Jax. He said Jack.”
Henry watched the exchange through narrowed eyelids. “It’s November 12th, 2020,” he said at last. He stared me in t
he eye. “Do you know where my father is?”
“I’m sorry, Henry, but I don’t.”
“Maybe the same people that…that did whatever they did to you, did the same thing to him.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “In 2010, I worked a serial case. The perps were cannibals, and…and more than that. They were… This will sound crazy, okay, but it’s true.”
“Yeah, because the rest of it sounds so sane.”
“Got me there. The perps were the people that inspired the Loki and Hel mythologies in Norse sagas. We’ve spent the last year fighting them in Osgarthr, and—”
“Yeah, you were right. It sounds crazy.”
I nodded, smiling. “It does. Hel cursed me back in 2010, and the curse disabled me while they made their getaway. In 2017, they came back and kidnapped Jane here, and our son—”
“On Halloween.”
“—on Halloween.” I glanced at Jane and winked. “You owe me a coke.” I turned back to Henry. “They left me a message that I had to follow them, and I did.”
“They could’ve tricked my dad into doing the same thing.”
I shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, but I doubt it was the same people.”
“Maybe not. Maybe it was my universe’s version of Hel and Loki.”
“Your universe?”
“Hey,” he said. “I read science fiction as much as the next guy.”
I scratched my head and shrugged. “I don’t know the answer, this is the first time I’ve seen…well, doubles of people. I’ve never given the possibility of multiple versions of Hel or Luka any thought.”
“And none of it matters,” said Jane. “Henry, look at me.”
He turned his gaze to her. “You could be our son, and we could be your parents, and if we were, we would love you to the ends of the earth, same as your real parents do. But we are not your parents. And we have to leave, never to return.”
His eyes found mine, and they filled with tears. “But…”
“Listen, Henry. Your dad would want you to take care of your mother, to always do your best, and to live an honorable life. He’d want you to succeed, to fall in love with a pretty girl or handsome guy, settle down, and have a family. He’d want you to go on with living your life.”
“How…how do you know? You’re not him.”
“No, I’m not him, but those are things I want for Sig. And if I were your dad, and something happened to me, that’s what I would want for you.” He sobbed, standing there looking forlorn, and my heart broke for him. “It’s okay, Henry,” I said. “It’s okay to grieve for your dad, and there’s hope—as long as there is no body, there is hope that he’s still alive.”
“After all this time?” He sniffled and rubbed a hand across his eyes. “If you were a trooper, same as my dad, you know the probabilities of that.”
“Yes, even after all this time,” I said firmly. “We met a guy a few days ago who was taken from the 1790s. Over there, we live a long time, and since your dad and I may share the same genes, it could be true for him as well.”
“Okay. I want to go with you.”
I shook my head. “Think about what I said to you, Sig—”
“Henry.”
“—and consider your mother. What would she think?”
“I could call her. I could get her to come home, and she could go with us!”
“Henry, if I knew where your father was, I’d go get him and bring him to you, but—”
“Henry,” said Jane. “Your place is here, with your mother.”
“Would you say that if I were your son and I could bring this guy back to you?” he asked, hooking his thumb at me.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “This guy can take care of himself. Were you grown, maybe I’d answer differently, but you aren’t.”
His face reddened. “Can you stop me from following you?”
“Yes, I can,” I said. “But I wouldn’t want to. I’d rather convince you to stay.”
He shook his head and wouldn’t meet my eye.
“I know you miss him, Henry. You want to save him, to rescue him, but believe me when I say you are out of your depth here. I’m out of my depth, but I have no choice, I’m already in it up to my neck. I’ll make you a deal, though: if you stay here, help your mom, and do all those things your dad would want you to do, if I can find him, I will bring your dad home to you. Deal?”
“That sounds like something he would say.”
“Yeah, well… Great minds and all that.”
He glanced at the others before meeting my eye. “How long?”
I lifted my shoulders and let them fall. “How long for what?”
“How long do I have to wait? Before I can go looking myself?”
“There’s no way you’ll be—”
“Until we come back,” said Jane. “I don’t know how long it will be, but Hank here seems to be able to do some pretty fireworks with the preer now. Once we’ve finished what we have to do, if we haven’t already come across your father, we will look into his disappearance and come back to tell you what we’ve found.”
I looked at her askance, eyebrows arched. She nodded, but at Henry, not at me.
“You can believe me, Henry, same as you would trust your own mom.”
“Okay,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Then it’s time to head back home,” I said. “I hope our son is as level-headed as you are when he reaches seventeen.”
He nodded and turned but didn’t walk away. Instead, he spun back and rushed over to envelop me in a huge hug. After the initial shock, I hugged him back.
Hard, the way Sig always wanted to be hugged.
As we stood there hugging one another, golden runes skittered across my vision, and that strange, yet familiar, voice spoke in my head again. I knew what I had to do.
When he stepped back, tears streaming down his face, I held him by the shoulders. “Want to see a magic trick?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying for a smile, coming up with a grimace, instead.
I lifted my hand and put my index finger in the center of his forehead. “Svepn,” I said, and he sagged into my arms.
“What are you doing?” demanded Jane.
“I can make him forget us.”
“Steal his memory?”
I shrugged. “Yes. Isn’t it better that way?”
“I…” She shook her head and made a helpless gesture. “Were you going to do this no matter what he said?”
“Isn’t it for the best? But no, I just remembered the triblinkr for this.”
“Isn’t that convenient… Is what you want to do to him any different than what the Great Old Ones and Kuhntul have been doing to you?”
That barb sank home, and something turned over in my guts. “He doesn’t deserve to live his life wondering when we will come back. What if we never can? What if I can’t find our way back here?”
“For his own good, is it? Bet the Great Old Ones say the same thing about you.” She released her breath in a gust and looked down at Henry’s sleeping face. “Just do it,” she said and turned away, “but leave him some of the hope.”
“If I might?” said Yowtgayrr.
I nodded.
“A dream might offer hope, and yet not interfere with the young man’s life.”
“Do it that way,” mumbled Jane in a teary voice.
And I did, though it felt as if I was betraying Sig every second it took to complete the job.
Twenty-one
We traipsed back to the proo, no one speaking. I tried to keep my mind occupied by looking at all the psychic tracks—the slowthar—that romped through the woods. Most of them were teenagers in search of the perfect make-out spot.
“Do you see him?” asked Althyof.
“Who? Henry?”
“No, Luka.”
I lifted my gaze and peered into the distance, turning a full circle. “No, but that means nothing. Maybe distance is a factor. It could be that in the years since—”
“The boy’s pain is deep. It’s a tragedy to lose a father so early in life,” said Althyof.
“But…”
“But we have a job to do. Is it sad? Yes. Do I empathize with the lad? Yes, I do. Is there anything I can do for him? No.”
Jane looked behind us wistfully.
“He has his own you,” I whispered to her.
“Yeah,” she breathed. “Doesn’t help much, does it?”
I shook my head. “Not at all.”
“We’ve lost Luka, haven’t we?”
“He’s lost us,” I said, with a shake of my head. “If I can track him in any given klith, I should be able to track him between, right?” I looked at Althyof and Yowtgayrr in turn, but both Tverkr and Alf shrugged.
“You can try,” said Jane.
“What if more than one of him exists in the multiverse? Or what if I can’t distinguish between the timeline versions of him?”
“Then the search will be a long one,” said Yowtgayrr with a subtle grin.
“We should go back to Niflhaymr, the last place we know the right Luka has been.”
Jane waved her hand at the proo. “Do your thing. But make sure you move this proo when you’re done. I don’t want Henry waking up and stumbling across it.”
I reached for the proo’s hook, as Bikkir called the knobby projection, and fixed the room containing the proo we’d used in Vefsterkur’s hall in my mind, and this time, I included the image of us leaving moments before. If these damn things can bend time, I’ve got to learn how to use that feature. When the psychic disturbance that went with moving the proo had subsided, I nodded at the others and touched the proo’s surface.
Again, there was no sense of travel time. That’s another thing I need to work out, I thought. I need the ability to contact the Great Old Ones when I need to, not just when they want me.
The room was as we’d left it, and I even detected Jane’s scent in the cold air. I stepped away from the proo and took a moment to move the other end of the proo back to the beach near Roanoke. I examined the slowthar that covered the floor like a psychedelic carpet.
My slowth was easy to pick out, as was Jane’s, but when I looked at another person’s slowth, I had to fight the urge to follow the memories floating in them. It felt…well, it felt like an invasion of privacy, but more than that, the power of it…the power of sifting through someone’s mind had a certain…addictive…appeal.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 116