Runed

by Kendall Grey

  My killer turns to me, flexes his plump biceps, and says, “It took us six hours, thirty-two minutes, and forty seconds to kill each other last time.”

  Anger boils within my stomach and pushes upward, its contents under pressure. “You mean, to take each other out at Ragnarok. Say the word. Say it loudly so all may hear and remember what Loki did that fateful day when the world went dark.”

  Heimdall’s eyes melt into liquid copper, darkening from their usual yellow.

  “Say the word,” I order through clenched, bared teeth, locking my eyes onto his and refusing to break the mutual line of sight.

  “Chicken shite,” I snarl, then look to the bird tucked under my arm. “No offense, Huginn.”

  “Some taken,” he replies with a cluck.

  “Always looking for trouble, aren’t you, Loki?” Heimdall says. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  My turn to crack the wry smile. I lift Huginn gently and pass him over to Gunnar Magnusson. “Hold my chicken.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The instant Heimdall opens the door to the ballroom, I know exactly where Laguz is. My body pinpoints its presence in the darkened back of the room, past where workers are busy setting up refreshments. The vibrations pounding through the air between Laguz and me have reached a near painful level.

  Hang on just a little longer, I tell it.

  Gunnar Magnusson insisted on accompanying me to the ballroom, but now I regret it. I don’t want him to get hurt.

  “Loki, you can’t fight this guy.” Gunnar Magnusson juts his chin toward Heimdall, who waits with folded arms, feet shoulder-width apart, sharpened sword swinging from his hip. “He’ll cut you in half with that thing.”

  “I’m not worried, but if you are, then wait for me outside,” I say, shaking out my arms. “I got this.”

  I flit left and right on the balls of my feet, jabbing the air with quick punches. These heels might be a bit of a problem, but I can use the height. I was a lot taller last time Heimdall and I fought.

  Gunnar Magnusson sighs heavily. “I’m trying to talk some sense into you. Why don’t you ever listen?”

  I turn on him. “I don’t need sense. I’m Loki. Now, if you want to help me, take Huginn someplace safe. And make sure he keeps his eyes closed. I don’t want Odin spying on us anymore.”

  Gunnar Magnusson huffs. “You’re insane. You know that? Crazyballs.” He’s kinda cute when he’s mad.

  I grin. “You don’t know the half of it.” Then I turn to Heimdall. “Ready for your arse-kicking, Goldie?”

  He lifts his chin.

  I wind up my arm and fly at him.

  Not having many expectations for success with this body, I’m surprised I hit him as hard as I do, clocking him right in the face with my tiny balled fist. The shock sends him stumbling, but he rights himself quickly and resets his sights on me.

  Damn, he has a hard head. I yowl at the shooting pain in my wrist and the blood pooling in the tiny tears in my knuckles. I don’t remember throwing punches ever being so counterintuitive. Curse this mortal human body.

  I grit my teeth as Heimdall lunges at me, his lightning-quick muscles fueled by revenge. When he punches me back, I don’t even have to act like it hurts. It damn near kills.

  But his hit achieves my goal. He got the workers’ attention. Several of the big men who are setting up chairs around the tables stop moving their loads and turn to watch. I make a show of grabbing my cheek in dramatic fashion. I scream. I stumble on my too-high heels. My tears are only slightly forced.

  “I can’t believe you punched me!” I cry. “I’m an innocent woman. You’ll pay for that, Heimdall.”

  “Loki!” Gunnar Magnusson shouts from near the door. “Are you okay?”

  “No!” I cry some more.

  Heimdall shoots his confused gaze around the room as if seeking an ally.

  Some of the workers seem to think our run-in is a dramatization from Asgard Awakening and laugh at our folly, but I can tell by the pinched looks of concern on a few faces not everyone’s impressed with Heimdall’s treatment of me. Four of them run to the door. I overhear one say something about getting help as he rushes out.

  Excellent.

  With Laguz so close, feeding me its energy, I’m suddenly awash with all kinds of ideas about how to handle Mr. Heimdall. Who knew even being in the same room with my old hunk of pelvis would be so uplifting? Not this god. Goddess. Human masquerading as a deity. Whatever.

  I glance down at my aching, wobbly feet and decide to wipe out two problems in a single kick. The boots come off, one in each hand. I flip them in sync, catching both by the leg shafts as Heimdall cautiously prepares for his next attack, gripping the hilt of his sword. He draws it halfway out of its gem-encrusted scabbard, but I don’t give him time to finish.

  I launch at him again, this time wielding boot heels as my weapons. Channeling Laguz’s power from the other side of the room, I aim them at Heimdall’s most prized possessions: his eyes.

  See, Heimdall’s gifts are his sight and his hearing. He can see and hear into any corner of the world in a blink, and he reports the information he gathers to Allfather.

  Not anymore, sucker.

  Laguz’s intuition guides my hands with razor-sharp accuracy. Midspring, I slam the heels down in a powerful arc, angling my body away from the sword rising to meet me. Time slows, giving me the millisecond I need to adjust my trajectory.

  Heimdall isn’t so lucky.

  In his hurry to chop me in half, he leans forward an inch too close, making my job easier. The boot heels crash into his golden eyes, exploding them like egg yolks. Heimdall screams like a child, thrashing wildly with his sword in one hand, the other clutching at the boots hanging from the socket holes. I back up to admire my handiwork.

  Yep. Heimdall now has a pair of black, spiked-heel boots for eyes. It’s delightfully terrifying.

  I point at him, though he can’t see me through the patent leather and agony. “That’s for Ragnarok. Now where’s—”

  “Odin!” Huginn shrieks from Gunnar Magnusson’s arms.

  From the darkness in the depths of the exhibition, Laguz’s vibrations ramp up to hard-core rattling as a figure steps into the ballroom. I sense the presence of a god, and for a split second, I am afraid.

  This is no weakened Heimdall, running at half battery power, swinging a sword around blindly. This is the father of the gods. This is a magnitude 9.8 on the Richter scale. This is Allfather lit up by a nuclear power plant in the center of his gut.

  Odin in all his grandeur stands at the door, dressed in an expensive, tailored dark gray suit, leaning on a cane, which is no cane at all, but a spear disguised as such. He’s a thirty-something-year-old man with beautiful skin the color of a young brown calf and one blue eye as vibrant as sea ice. The other is, I presume, still lying in the bottom of Mímir’s well, its empty socket concealed by a black patch hooked around Odin’s ear. Odin looks nothing like the man I once called brother, but I don’t look like his brother anymore either.

  “Allfather,” I say, “how nice of you to join us. I was just reminding Heimdall here about that time when I floated in on a ship made of dead men’s fingernails and killed him. What was that called? Oh, yeah. Ragnarok.”

  Heimdall falls to his knees, jabbing the heels of his palms against his furiously leaking eyeholes. At least he pulled the boots out, though, he’s making quite a mess on this fancy carpet.

  Breathless, Heimdall bellows, “Odin, I tried to stop him, but without my full powers—”

  “That’s her,” I correct, shining my nails on the small strip of satin covering my right breast. “You tried to stop her. Sexist pig.”

  Odin lifts a hand that Heimdall can’t see. “Save it.” His voice is softer than the old one, but it carries the same weight of supreme power.

  Speaking of power, Laguz is shaking so hard now, all ears in the room turn toward it.

  This is the point where I’d normally crank the Van Halen up to el
even and give the ensuing chaos everything I’ve got. However, there’s the small matter of how such actions would be received in this time and place.

  Based on what I’ve gleaned so far in the handful of days I’ve breathed the air of the twenty-first century, I get the impression the modern world has largely forsaken its old gods. At least the pagan ones like Odin and Heimdall and me. I’m not sure how well we’d go over if we were exposed for what we truly are.

  On the other hand, we’re standing in the middle of an Asgard Awakening convention full of geeks who love theatrics, and I’m about to receive a major level-up from the rune Odin stole that infuses me with the very essence of Trickster Loki.

  To brag or not to brag?

  Screw it. The world is no longer a baby. It can handle this shite.

  “Gunnar Magnusson,” I call. “Open the doors. Let the party begin.”

  “No,” Odin says. His voice rumbles through the vast room like thunder. It carries the will of a god. It shall not be ignored by mortals.

  Gunnar Magnusson ignores it anyway and opens the door. “Costume party is starting early,” he yells into the hallway. Huginn runs excitedly in place in the crook of his arm. People flood the entry, pushing to get inside, whistling and screaming their excitement.

  Odin’s eye narrows on me. All I can do is laugh. Gunnar Magnusson is immune to Odin’s orders. Ha! Brilliant.

  The people working near a bank of computers against the opposite wall flip some switches, and colored lights bathe the room in rainbows. The vivid colors remind me of—

  Bifrost. The Rainbow Bridge.

  Fond memories of the fire giants raiding Asgard, leaping off the broken Rainbow Bridge to the tune of Heimdall’s desperate blows into his precious Gjallarhorn accost my mind.

  Too little, too late, Heimdall. Then and now.

  Low-level music without lyrics hugs the floor, bouncing between speakers, darting among feet. It channels Laguz’s power to me on a repeating loop from the back of the room. The energy thrills me with wild ripples zapping the arches of my feet and bursting upward like shooting stars inside me.

  Oh, Hel-freaking-yes.

  Odin storms toward me, yet it seems like his body hardly makes an effort. One second, he’s a small figure many feet away; the next he’s stealing my breath with his closeness.

  “Leave this place, Loki. You do not want to face me. I’m not so brittle as Heimdall.”

  “Because you refused to give him his immortality rune too? To keep him weak and meek and wrapped around your bony pinky?” I ask innocently. “Hardly fair, brother.”

  “What’s not fair is you getting a second chance after the hell you put the world through last time,” Odin replies, his bottom lip quivering with barely contained rage. “You were supposed to sleep forever.”

  My ears prick up. “So, neither you nor your lackey bird Muninn was to blame for waking me from eternal slumber in a snow tomb in the middle of nowhere?”

  “I can assure you I did not wake you. Why would I? You’re nothing but a blight on a perfect world. If you think I’d want to share gas-guzzling fast cars, great television, instant messaging, and Thai food with the likes of you, you’re madder than I thought.”

  So, Muninn being there when I came to wasn’t part of Odin’s plan. He must’ve been either scouting for Odin or checking the security of my tomb when I opened my eyes. Since he’s the physical embodiment of Memory, his presence must’ve triggered memories of my former life as a god.

  But someone intentionally roused me.

  Wake, Trickster.

  If it wasn’t Odin, then who?

  The shaking from the exhibit yanks my head toward the back of the room. Laguz has my full attention.

  Loki, the rune calls through the floor, into my feet, up my legs and vitals, into the very core of my soul. LOKI!

  As more Midgardians pour in, they fill the space between me and Laguz. I need a clear path to my destiny. That, or it’ll forge its own path, which will be even messier than the whole Heimdall-boot business.

  “I suggest we take this outside.” Odin is keenly aware of the many innocents who are going to become sacrifices if they stick around.

  “No, dear Allfather, I prefer to keep it right here,” I say. My body is a tuning fork, set to the same pitch as Laguz. Together, we vibrate, barely out of sync, each cycle faster than the last until one of us catches up with the other and—

  I thrust open my hand like an exploding star, reaching for the ceiling, stretching as tall as this body will allow. Sucking the power from the air between us, I toss my head back and shout at the top of my lungs, “Let’s bone!”

  The guy manning the music yells into his microphone, “Ballroom blitz!” and a song of the same name shreds and thumps the speakers.

  The glass surrounding the case trapping Laguz shatters in an explosion of a million shards, and my beloved rune flies from the darkness into my hand like an arrow from a bow. The moment the bone hits my flesh, it cuts through, embedding into the thick whorls on my palms, and surges through my arm, chest, and down to the empty hole in my pelvis where it melds into its proper place.

  Home at last.

  Too late, Odin grabs at air, unable to stop the rune. If he or anyone else had touched it, Laguz would’ve shot through his hand. Not even a god can prevent a rune from returning to its rightful place when it’s within close range of its master.

  I smile at him as the music swells around us. Heimdall stumbles toward us, both hands in front of him. He can’t see, but his ears are working just fine. Damn it.

  And by the way, you can stop looking at me like that. His eyes will grow back. He’s a god, and those golden globes are two of his runes, Judgy McJudgepants.

  “My lord, I am here to serve you,” Heimdall the sycophant says. Twin rivulets of red stream down his face.

  Funny that the people around us think the blood is part of his costume. “So real,” someone says as she passes, pointing at Heimdall. Her friend nods and gives blind Heimdall two thumbs up.

  Odin leans on his cane, studying me with derision while speaking to Heimdall out of the corner of his mouth. “If you want to serve, then get at it. I need some space away from these Midgardian kittens.”

  “As you wish, Allfather,” Heimdall says with a bow of his head. He slams the tip of his sword into the carpet.

  The room spins into a mélange of too many sights and sounds to register at once. First, the colored lights blur into a giant rainbow arching over the people’s heads. The music speeds up to a tinny, high-pitched mess of sound that loses its melody and falls prey to cacophony. I grit my teeth to weather the nauseating sensation of being spun out by centrifugal force. Everything blends into indecipherable, extradimensional muck.

  Then it stops as fast as it started.

  Odin, Heimdall, and I stand on the Bifrost, a bevy of soothing reds, oranges, and yellows pulsing under my booted feet.

  Hold up. I left my boots buried in Heimdall’s face. I certainly didn’t put those nasty things back on.

  Looking down, I take in my clothing and rejoice.

  I am once again Loki the male trickster if the copious bulge in my breeches has anything to say about it. I smooth my hands down my front, reveling in the feel of black leather pulled tightly over a flat, muscled chest. My beard shines a defiant red, as do my locks blowing on the gentle, cold breeze.

  Odin is as he was too. A tall, wizened old man with one eye and a spear. Above him, aurora borealis quietly churns red, pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple in the deep, moonless night of Asgardian winter.

  “Home,” I breathe. A tingle chases the excitement down my spine.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” Heimdall interjects, golden eyes beaming light.

  I turn to him. “Well, miracles never cease. Your runes got you all tidied up in the eye region, I see. Sorry, not sorry, about that unpleasantness, but you must understand I—”

  Heimdall strikes me with an unexpected uppercut to the jaw, loo
sening a couple molars in the process.

  Deserved, I’ll grant him.

  When I rub the spot on my chin, I’m surprised to find it doesn’t hurt as much as the hit he gave me in the ballroom did. We seem to be full-bodied gods here. Wherever here is.

  Because it’s not really Asgard, is it? Can’t be. Asgard is long gone. But maybe we’re somewhere between the old and new times and places. Odin spent centuries gathering wisdom, stockpiling it in the annals of his ancient mind for future reference. It’s possible that wisdom brought us here—with a little help from Heimdall, who probably sees better than the old goat in the dark.

  When he has both eyes intact, that is.

  I digress.

  Heimdall saunters away from Odin and me and positions himself near the end of the Rainbow Bridge where he stands guard. Against what, I’m not sure, but Odin stalled time, so it’s not farfetched to assume Heimdall can guard it.

  “I want you gone,” Odin says. He throws out a hand. A bolt of jagged lightning shrieks out of his fingers, heading right for me.

  Back to full power, Laguz imbues me with all the intuition I need to anticipate the electricity’s trajectory. I easily somersault out of its path and await the next barrage with a grin.

  I pat my hip. Oh, how I’ve missed you, beautiful Laguz.

  And I you, it sings.

  I wiggle my fingers at my sides, thrilling at the divine authority rippling through them. I’m not nearly as strong as Odin, but I’m quick enough to evade his attacks and, if nothing else, wear down his patience. I’ve always been good at eroding composure, even in those with more fortitude than most.

  Laguz feeds my mind with a steady flow of creative fire. Damn, I feel good.

  Odin lobs another volley of lightning at me. This time, I barely jerk to get out of its way. I laugh. “You’ll have to try much harder than that, old man.”

  Despite his dead-on aim, I sense Odin isn’t trying to kill me, just scare me. He said he wanted me gone, not dead.