by Ben Zackheim
I got control of my temper, and held out my palms. If I’d had a white handkerchief on me I would have waved it. “Listen, Thor. Buddy…”
“You stole my manhood and used it to destroy Mjölnir.”
“Now hold on a second. First of all, that wasn’t me! Second…”
A sound like thunder rolled around us. Everyone widened their stances to stay on their feet as the cobblestones shook.
I waited for the lightning to hit me in the face. Or maybe he’d go for the dick first. That was a petty, vengeful god thing to do. The thunder roared again and shattered windows all around us. We ducked and covered our eyes.
I remember thinking, where’s the pain? Where’s the endless agony of death by pissed-off god?
I opened my eyes, and looked up at the dickless wonder’s face.
Thor was laughing.
Chapter 39
We were drinking ale together before I knew what hit me.
Thor had a drink on top of each dwarf’s head. They looked like cats getting a bath. I kind of felt bad for them. I wasn’t sure what they’d done to deserve this kind of treatment. The myths always made them out to be powerful and respected.
“Your boldness is worthy of Asgard, Kane Arkwright,” Thor said.
“I’ve heard that before,” I said, basking in the attention. Rebel rolled her eyes. “But I have to give credit to Rebel, too. She was right there with me.”
“Your efforts are worthy of a man, woman!” Thor yelled in his high voice. He chugged down a full mug and slammed it on the table.
Tabitha had her face in her hands. I held my breath.
“Did I say something wrong?” Thor asked, looking around the table.
All eyes dropped on Rebel, who had already killed the thunder god seven different ways in her imagination.
I tried to break the friction. “I think Rebel just…”
“I can fucking explain myself, Arkwright,” my partner hissed. She looked up at the thunder god, took a deep breath and said, “It’s nothing, Thor. Kane and I were trying to secure your hammer, though. We didn’t want to destroy it.”
“Bah! Good riddance to the thing. That and my cock, for that matter!” he yelled and laughed. The laugh was booming low, while his voice kept sounding like a toddler’s talking toy.
“It’s good to see you laugh again, Thor,” Tabitha said.
Thor sighed, and leaned back on his chair. It creaked under the weight. The dwarves scrambled to put his ale down on the table, and repair it in real-time. They hammered and adjusted the thing as Thor started talking. “When you hit rock bottom, you have nowhere to go but up. Especially when you’re a god. Am I right, Isis?”
“You are right.”
“How is my boy?”
“Hakkar is well. He’s running Set’s army.” I glanced at her and tried to measure whether she knew that Hakkar was betraying Set by helping us once in a while.
“Oh, that whole Midgard thing. Who’s winning?” Thor burped. He clearly didn’t care about the machinations of our mortal coil.
“No one is winning,” Tabitha said. I decided to let her talk. Maybe she’d reveal something. But she was too clever to fall into that trap. She zipped up, and smiled at me.
“You two have a thing going?” Thor asked me and Tabitha.
“I wish,” she said.
“He drank her blood,” Rebel said.
“Ah, yes. I hear that can cause all kinds of hilarity. Tell me, have you two made a child? Perhaps we could pair them up with Hakkar. That boy needs a woman, or a man, or whatever he’s into.”
“First of all, no,” I said. “Second, wouldn’t that be setting up brother and sister?”
Thor looked at me as if to say, “Of course it would be setting up brother and sister,” before he actually said, “Of course it would be setting up brother and sister!”
“Fuck,” Rebel said, choking on her ale. She managed to yell, “You gods are messed up!” as she hacked spirits out of her lungs. Thor thought this was hilarious, and knocked all the glasses off the tables with his laugh. The small pause in the conversation was my first chance to get down to business.
“Listen, Thor…”
“Uh-oh,” the thunder god said.
“What, uh-oh?”
“I know that tone, mortal. I’ve been around long enough to know when someone’s about to ask me to do something for them. But I can tell you this. Whatever it is you want, the payment is her.” His massive thumb angled toward Rebel.
“Don’t even think about it, pimp man,” my partner said to me.
“Me? I didn’t say anything!”
“You’ve been trying to whore me out since we got here, asshole.”
“It is a theme, I’ll give you that.”
“You don’t even have a prick, you dick,” she said to Thor, who spit out his ale and started up a new bellowing laugh.
“That’s about to change, is it not, Isis? That is why you’re here. No games now.”
“It is, Thor.”
“Which means the gods want me to do something for them, too. Perhaps I should play you two off of each other. See who has the highest bid.”
Tabitha was quiet. He’d read her well. There was more going on between them than I knew. She needed him enough to give him back his member. I needed him enough to give him everything short of my partner.
“You first,” Thor said. His eyes had dropped, and he looked at me with a bored expression.
“I need the scroll piece.”
“What scroll piece?”
“The one that Feifei guarded in the temple.”
“Who’s Feifei and which temple?”
“Shit.”
“Your turn, Isis,” Thor said. He’d moved on from me. I’d failed to impress him with my adventure.
I leaned forward and got in his field of vision. “Wait a second. Feifei said that she and another woman, a witch maybe, fell in love with the thunder god with the hammer and they guarded the temple together. The scroll piece was hidden there.”
“Mortal, I have no fuckin’ clue what you’re talking about.”
“You’re the thunder…” It hit me like a ball of fire in the gut. I leaned back in my chair, and moaned.
“What is it, Kane?” Rebel asked.
“The Japanese have a thunder god.”
“Raijin?” Thor asked, smiling. “Good luck getting anything out of that asshole. HA! His hammer is quite strong, though. I’ll give him that.”
“He might have a relic that could save all of humanity,” I said. It sounded dramatic. I knew that. But it was true, too.
He shook his head. “You’re on your own, Kane Arkwright. Not interested. Good luck to you. Isis, what say you and I go upstairs and talk about the return of the only true man in any realm?”
“That sounds like fun,” she said.
I saw that the smelly drunk guy was ready to follow his master anywhere. I had one chance to get out of there with something useful.
“Let me keep him,” I said, pointing to the drunk. His wide-brimmed hat still hid his face from us. It also prevented him from seeing very well. He stumbled toward us.
“No, master! Don’t leave me with him! He’ll kill me!”
“Loki is your master, peon. You go with them. My gift to you for an amusing afternoon. Well played, mortals.”
“Thank you, Thor. Come on.” I grabbed the drunk and dragged him past the inn keeper. “We need a room and a bath.”
“Right away, sir. There is a bath drawn for a former client in the room at the top of the stairs.”
“Former?”
“This man’s smell has chased away all of my customers.”
I pulled him up the stairs and shoved him into the room.
“Wash up. Make it fast. We’re going to pay a visit to your master when you’re cleaned up.”
He turned his back to me, and pulled at his hat until it peeled off his hair with a gross crackling sound. The huge thing stuck and hung from his locks as he
moved on to the shirt. He was slow, clumsy, and still under the influence of Bertha’s ale.
I felt bad for him. He was pitiful.
I stepped toward him to help.
He turned around to face me, and my world changed forever.
Chapter 40
The man looked just like me.
My memory had been fading for weeks, but seeing his face made me remember the photograph of my father from the vampire lair in New York City. It was a memorable picture of him hanging out with a few mob bosses and their soldiers.
I looked like my father? I couldn’t remember anymore. My brain tried to comprehend the moment.
“Holy fucking Thor,” Rebel said from the room’s open door.
The guy’s eyes were different than mine. I still had the one silver eye from the injury in Peru. Another gift from the Excalibur mission.
Then I remembered the boy. The boy whose body I had taken over.
“Kane, what the hell is going on?” Rebel asked. She grabbed my hand, and clenched it. Hard.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe he can tell us.”
The stranger shoved his hat back on his head, and stood up straight. He was putting on a brave face, looking at us as if we were annoying him. But I could tell he was terrified. His brain was processing the thousands of lies he could tell. His eyes darted back and forth, sometimes meeting our glares, and sometimes taking in the decor. I knew that expression. It had become familiar over the years of dealing with lying, self-preserving assholes who would sell their kids for a song if the pay was high enough.
I marched up to him and clenched his vest in my fist.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I couldn’t shake the odd feeling of asking myself a question. It was like looking in the mirror.
“I’m nobody,” he said. His voice carried a sadness to it that hauled a crapload of information along with it. One, this guy thought he was a nobody. Two, he actually was a nobody. I could see it in the way he held himself. The cringing shoulders and wandering stare. Three, he was tied up in my life in a way that I was not ready to hear.
He managed to speak through his fear. “I sing and pass on stories that move the soul.”
“You’re a bard,” I said. I noticed the long, thin leather pouch wrapped around a shoulder. A flute.
“Please let me go. I have a charge who pays enough to feed me for two moons.”
“No interest in why you look so much like my friend here?” Rebel asked.
He sat down on a stool and looked at me, and then back at her. “No. Many people look alike.”
“We’re identical.”
“I have a bit more mass if you ask me,” he said, slapping one of his arms.
“We didn’t ask you. To answer your question, no. We’re not letting you go until we find out what’s going on here.”
“Maybe we’re related! I don’t know. Cousins maybe.”
“Maybe. Who’s your patron?” That made him nervous. He glanced away, and shrugged. “It’s Loki,” I said. His eyes went wide. Bingo. “You work for him.”
“As I told you in Odin’s Ass, I entertain him when he calls on me. He is fond of my poetry.”
“Poetry? That doesn’t sound like Loki.”
“The gods have varied tastes.”
Rebel crouched down to be face-to-face with the bard. “What’s your name?”
He scooted back a few inches, as if that would do him any good. I could tell he felt trapped. His body language went from tense to relaxed and contrite.
He gave up.
Rebel sure did know how to make people cave.
“Samuel,” he said. “Samuel of Druhill.”
“Samuel of Druhill,” Rebel said. “You have one chance to tell us the truth. One chance. You mess up this moment and nothing will ever be the same for you. Ever again.”
That left a lot to the imagination. I knew she wouldn’t kill him. But she’d have no problem removing body parts that most of us couldn’t live without.
“Okay,” he said meekly. “What do you want from me?”
Rebel got in his face. “I want you to drop the bullshit and tell us why you look so much like Kane.”
“Kane? Kane Arkwright?” Samuel’s eyes went even wider.
“Yeah,” I said. “You know me?”
He backed away from us. His mouth opened and closed. He began to shake his head.
He moved to the window.
He was making a break for it.
“Stop, Samuel. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Please. You don’t understand. I can’t be seen with you. The hat. The hat is part of the deal. Must hide. I must hide!”
He ran for the window and smashed through it.
Chapter 41
A huge boom shook the whole town.
It was impossible to know where it came from. It felt like it was all around us. As if the ground itself was angry. I glanced around for a sign of what we were up against. A cloud of dust fell from the cliffs over the village and castle. Massive boulders rolled down the mountain toward the pub. Everyone in Loki’s kingdom was about to go full pancake.
We watched as the rocks got to within a few feet of the rooftops, and then splintered into millions of pieces. The missiles were hitting a shield of some kind.
“Pandora!” Rebel yelled over the deafening sound of shattering stone.
I remembered what the bartender had said about Pandora’s protection racket. Her little insurance plan included safety from the battle of the mountains.
I thought Midgard was nuts. Midgard was eccentric. Asgard was nuts.
Feeling safer, I looked up to the mountaintops and marveled at the massive stones being thrown across the wide chasm where the town sat. Unseen forces were tearing apart massive chunks of the ranges, and turning them into weapons.
It was the most futile and impressive thing I’d ever seen, and I’d seen a lot. Unfortunately, it was so impressive that I lost my focus.
Samuel of Druhill had become Samuel of Where-the-Fuck-Did-He-Go? I poked my head out through the broken window and looked for him. He was gone. And so was my partner.
I ran down the stairs. The innkeeper was busy putting his place back together. “Did you see the red-haired woman run through here?”
“She flew out the front door like the wind.”
Apparently, her magic was back.
The streets were empty of people, and packed with debris from the mountains’ attack. I looked straight up. Rebel was directly above. She surveyed the town, no doubt looking for Pandora.
“Did you lose Samuel?” I yelled up to her.
“No, you did!”
“Get down here, Rebel. Whatever business you have with your teacher can wait until we’re back home.”
“Screw off, Kane.”
“We don’t need another headache, partner. Come on. We have a full fucking agenda already! Looking for that witch won’t help us!”
Rebel swooped down, and hovered over my head. She wanted to be sure I was looking up to her, and she was looking down on me. “You don’t know that. Pandora is powerful. She could clean this whole mess up, and maybe even answer some questions.”
“Oh, like she’s done so many times before? When’s the last time she gave us anything? She’s helping us in Brazil right now. Wait until we get home and then you can go talk to her. You can help her there.”
Rebel turned in a circle, searching for a sign of her mentor.
“It’s a spell, Rebel. Pandora’s not here. She probably cast it a long time ago.”
Her chin dropped, and she rubbed her face. She knew I was right. “Damn it, Kane. That bitch is going to be the death of me. She snaps her fingers, and I’m there. But whenever I get the guts to face her, she disappears. She’s always just out of reach. Like she’s taunting me.” Rebel landed softly on the cobblestones.
“That’s her way,” a man’s voice said from behind us. I knew who it was before I turned. So did Rebel.
�
��Skyler, what the fuck are you up to now?” Rebel asked for me.
“Hello to you, too, student.”
“I’m not your student anymore. I graduated to Pandora.” From the look of it, Rebel was at her breaking point with Skyler, at long last. I’d been ready to knock him upside the head for years, but she’d always defended him. I guess joining up with Loki had changed her mind about him.
The old man held out his hands as if we were attacking him. “So now I have both of you on my ass. Is that right?”
“What do you want, Skyler?”
“A little respect would be good.”
Rebel laughed with zero joy. “Respect? Why the hell do you deserve respect? Because you chose a side that survived the apocalypse? Because you’d bow down to a teenage god of tricks and mischief? Maybe the whole betraying humanity is worth our respect?”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“I didn’t put it like that!” Rebel yelled. “You did. You did all of that. And now you sneak up behind us and badmouth a woman who’s worth a million of you.”
“Now you’re just being nasty,” Skyler said. He had that expression on his face. Rebel and I had seen it before. It was as if his soul was sucked out through his ears, and we were looking at a cold shell of a man. A man who would do anything to win an argument. Even if it meant killing everyone in the room.
Rebel marched up to him. He didn’t move. That took some serious guts. Or he knew something we didn’t. “Yeah, I am being nasty. I learned from the best.”
“Rebel,” I said. I had a bad feeling growing in me, and it wasn’t the crappy ale.
“Tell your pubescent lord that we’re here and we want to talk to his punk ass. You hear me?”
“Rebel!” I yelled.
“What?” she yelled back.
“Enough. This isn’t doing anyone any good. I mean, I know how fun it is to let loose on the little prick, but…”
I didn’t get another word out. My body went stiff. It was the spell of choice around Asgard, I guessed. Rebel and I fell to the street with a loud thud. Like cardboard cutouts blown over in the breeze.
“You two are in deep shit,” Skyler said. He snapped his fingers, and we floated behind him as he walked up the wide path to Loki’s castle.