Tyr

by JC Andrijeski

  “Sure,” she said, shrugging, wrapping the blankets around her tighter. “Okay. Let’s talk ground rules.”

  Even as she said it, the ramp thumped down on the tarmac.

  Tyr revved the engine, and threw the car into gear.

  The McLaren’s nose tipped down towards the ramp, and they drove out into the snow, the God of War aiming the car smoothly for the tarmac, then hanging a right towards the one building that made up the private airport.

  Wrapping herself deeper in the blanket, Marion shivered.

  10

  Christmas

  Tyr’s ground rules were pretty simple.

  From Marion’s perspective, they were Kidnapping 101.

  She wasn’t to tell anyone who she was.

  Tyr wanted her to hide her face as best she could, and let him do most of the talking and interacting until they reached D.C. He wanted her to avoid surveillance cameras whenever possible. He wanted her to not leave the car unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Marion nodded to all of this, pretending it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

  It helped that all of it was reasonable… from Tyr’s perspective.

  Meaning from the perspective of someone who didn’t want the world to know he’d kidnapped the daughter of the President of the United States.

  Marion nodded along with all of it, but spent most of her time looking out the window, watching the scenery flash by as Tyr took them swiftly down the interstate.

  She’d spent a fair bit of time in New York state, growing up.

  Her mother loved New York City, having lived and gone to school there before Marion and her sister were born. Marion’s sister, Elizabeth, who everyone called “Lizzy,” loved New York too. She and Marion even talked about getting an apartment there at some point, maybe after dad finished up his stint in the White House, assuming he won the election.

  All of that hurt to think about now.

  Hell, it hurt to be back in the United States.

  It hadn’t fully hit her just how much her not wanting to be in her home country had to do with avoiding her feelings about her mom and sister.

  Now that she was back, it was like their ghosts rushed up to meet her.

  Every memory, every plan they’d made that got thwarted, ripped out by its roots when they died, seemed to vie for attention in Marion’s mind, wanting her to remember every single one. She remembered the last week before they died, making plans for Christmas. She remembered talking to her mom about going to Europe, silly jokes about how they might redecorate parts of the White House, none of them really believing Dad would win, even as none of them could fathom how he’d lose.

  It shouldn’t hurt so much, being here.

  Her mom and her sister were dead, no matter where Marion was.

  It did hurt, though.

  Somehow, being here made it feel like they’d only died yesterday.

  Tyr didn’t stop the car until they were nearing the outskirts of New York City.

  By then, it had to be close to midday.

  By then, Marion would have done just about anything for a distraction.

  He pulled over in a smallish town maybe forty miles north of the city, sliding into a parking space in front of a clothing store on the corner of an old-fashioned-looking downtown street. The bright orange sportscar, which likely cost three times what her mother and father paid for their first house in California, looked ridiculous on the mostly-brick street covered in Christmas wreathes, tinsel, and American flags.

  The town looked like Main Street, USA.

  The McLaren was like a bizarre, futuristic time machine.

  “Where are we?” she said, stretching a little in the curved leather seat and glancing at Tyr. “Why are we stopping?”

  Leaning over the steering wheel, he glanced up and down the street. Christmas shoppers lined the sidewalks on both sides, chatting to one another, drinking hot chocolate in the crisp air, weighed down with bags and boxes.

  Marion smiled in spite of herself, watching him look.

  “You look like you’re staring at zoo animals,” she remarked.

  He glanced at her, his dark eyes still as glass.

  “Human holidays fascinate me.” He motioned up and down the street with one of those long-fingered hands. “All of… this.”

  Marion followed his eyes to the Christmas decorations, smiling faintly in spite of herself, her head cocked in puzzlement.

  “So what’s the verdict?” she said after another pause.

  He looked at her a second time. Instead of answering, he glanced down her body, his stare lingering on the gold shoes at the end of her bare, stocking-less legs.

  Watching him look, it crossed Marion’s mind that maybe she was going about this all wrong. Maybe dealing with this guy could be a lot more simple than she’d been thinking.

  Leaning over from her side of the front seat, she laid a hand on his thigh.

  She felt him flinch, right before he turned.

  The muscles in his leg tensed, but he didn’t move away.

  Without looking up at his face, she massaged his thigh, exploring him through the dark pants he wore, tracing the muscles there. From what she could tell, his leg pretty much was solid muscle, and hard as molded metal. Exploring those lines for a few seconds more, she slid her hand to his inner thigh, and felt something in him change again.

  His skin grew warm, even through the clothes.

  Briefly, it felt like something inside him had caught on fire.

  Without thought, she raised her hand to his chest.

  The shirt he wore was thin, despite the weather, conforming to his broad shoulders, straining against the dense muscles of his chest and arms. She ran her hand over those same muscles, feeling them move and shift under her palm, but again, he didn’t try to evade her, and she felt that heat under his skin intensify.

  He didn’t change positions as she did it.

  He didn’t seem to breathe.

  After a few seconds where she caressed him, stroking the bare skin of his neck, sliding her hand down the thin shirt, realizing just how warm he was despite the chill outside…

  …she finally raised her eyes to his.

  His dark eyes met hers.

  They didn’t move, but she swore that heat she’d seen in them earlier––that coal-like, black and red fire––now swallowed most of his irises and pupils.

  His eyes drifted down to her lips.

  Then slowly rose back to hers.

  “We don’t really have time for this now,” he told her.

  Marion sucked in a breath. She held his gaze, feeling lost there again, lost in those strange eyes, that inhumanly perfect face. Unable to pull her gaze off his, she swallowed, in spite of herself, in spite of why she’d told herself she was doing this. She fought a sudden urge to put her hand somewhere else, to massage his cock, see what that part of his body thought of how much time they had, to find out if she was affecting him the way he was affecting her.

  He seemed to see her eyes flicker down in the direction of his lap.

  “We don’t have time for this right now, Marion,” he repeated.

  That time, she firmed her jaw, raising her eyes back to his.

  “Then why did you stop?” she said, holding his gaze with an effort, studying those deep black eyes. “Why are we here, Tyr?”

  There was a pause.

  Then he looked down.

  His gaze drifted over her once more, focusing on her legs, sliding slowly back up her body. She watched him linger where the gold dress ended, just covering where her legs met by her crotch. His eyes paused again on her breasts straining against the gold material.

  “You need clothes, Marion,” he said.

  Her hand wrapped around his inner thigh, and she felt that heat on him intensify.

  “…Weather-appropriate clothes,” he added, blunt.

  She stared at him for a blink.

  Some part of her wanted to laugh.

  Some part of
her was almost embarrassed.

  At the same time, she could hear her heart pounding in her chest, her breath coming in shorter pants. She grew more aware of the part of her that wanted to keep touching him, to see if that strange control of his would break if she put her hands on him for real.

  He still hadn’t moved away from her.

  “We don’t have time for this, Marion,” he said.

  His voice was softer that time.

  He reached down for his own thigh. Pulling gently at her wrist, he lifted her hand up and off where she’d been massaging the muscle there. He moved it over to her side of the car, placing it carefully and precisely in her lap.

  Feeling her cheeks warm, Marion nodded.

  Taking a faltering breath, she forced her eyes off him a beat later, fighting to focus on the snowy street outside the car.

  Her face burned hotter as she swallowed, watching a woman bundled up in a bright yellow ski jacket and her two kids walk down the street. They stopped a few times, sipping steaming paper cups in their hands and pointing at warm windows filled with Christmas decorations and brightly-painted signs. For a few seconds, she almost saw it the way Tyr did, with all the decorations, the people carrying bags and wrapped parcels.

  More families walked by them, looking equally relaxed and happy.

  Marion wondered if one of them would help her, if she screamed.

  She wondered if any of them would shield her, if she tried to get away from Tyr.

  The thought made her feel faintly sick.

  It occurred to her that she wasn’t sure she wanted to get away from him.

  It occurred to her that some part of her still wanted to believe him.

  At the very least, she wanted to believe he was on her side.

  Even if he was crazy.

  For those reasons, and about a hundred others, it was strange as hell to be sitting next to him in the ridiculously expensive sportscar, looking out over a quaint American street during the pre-Christmas shopping rush. It didn’t help with her family grief to see Christmas decorations in all the windows, Christmas bows and colored lights and flying reindeer strung between the buildings and wrapped around the trees planted down the sidewalks.

  It was also not at all how she thought she’d be spending Christmas this year.

  She’d planned on her holidays being as un-Christmassy as she could possibly make them.

  Given that Christmas had been her mom’s favorite holiday, Marion more or less decided to take the year off, to hang out on the beach with people she barely knew, who wouldn’t ask her anything deep, or care if she answered.

  Instead, she was back in the States, with Tyr.

  Instead, she was thinking about her mom, her sister, and the fact that she wasn’t all that far from her father, in Washington D.C.

  Maybe that should have relieved her, in that Tyr did appear to be taking her where he said he would. He was definitely driving them in the direction of the United States’ capital. Not only that, if she managed to get away, she had some place to go, a place she might actually be able to reach on her own, now that she was back on familiar ground.

  None of that did reassure her, though.

  Instead, it made her nervous.

  It made her wonder if she was bringing danger to her father, instead of helping him.

  Like it wasn’t bad enough to get her photo splashed all over the tabloids.

  Now, according to Tyr––again, assuming he wasn’t completely nuts––she might be the reason her father was forced to make a horrible choice that could lead the country, possibly the world, into a devastating war.

  Thinking about her dad, remembering the last conversation they’d had on the phone, how kind he’d been… and what a brat she’d been… made her nausea worsen.

  Somehow, being back here, on American soil, brought her family, and her dad, into sharp relief, making them real in a way she hadn’t let herself feel in months.

  She shouldn’t have left him.

  She never should have left him, after Mom died.

  Wiping her face with a hand, fighting to push all of it out of her mind, Marion glanced at Tyr.

  He was watching her. His stunning, near-black eyes held a denser emotion than anything she’d seen in him until then.

  If she didn’t know better, she might have thought he knew what she’d been thinking about just then.

  But that would make her as crazy as he was.

  “Come on,” she said, shouldering off the blankets and writhing out from under them. The wool coat was still around her, and now she buttoned it up, fastening the plastic buttons up to her throat. “We should get going, like you said.”

  Without waiting for him to answer, she snapped the door latch, and watched the McLaren’s door slowly rise up in front of her.

  11

  Something Really Wrong

  Clutching the collar of the black, wool coat to her throat, Marion looked around at the racks filled with winter clothes, trying to make up her mind.

  They were inside the small shop, the same one Tyr parked in front of. She could barely see the McLaren through the half-fogged windows, despite it being broad daylight. Even then, she only made out the outline because it was the color of an electric pumpkin.

  Centralized heat blasted inside the shop, but she was still cold.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in snow.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this cold.

  Just about all her wanderings of the past year had been tropical. She’d followed the beachy crowd from trendy locale to trendy locale, following the season from one hip watering hole to the next, avoiding the change of seasons entirely.

  She glanced at Tyr, and saw him staring at a female-shaped mannikin wearing gold ski pants and a tasseled knit hat, a ski pole perched jauntily on one shoulder.

  A shopkeeper approached Marion then, sing-songing a cheerful Merry Christmas! before she beamed first at Marion, then glanced over her shoulder at Tyr.

  “You two are together?” she said.

  Marion hesitated, then nodded. “We only really need clothes for me.”

  “Are you looking for something in particular?” the shopkeeper asked brightly.

  Sighing, Marion unbuttoned the front of the black wool coat. Even though she’d made a point of standing right under the heating vent while she looked around, she shivered uncontrollably once her thin dress and bare legs were exposed.

  When Tyr approached, his dark eyes gauging the female shopkeeper warily, Marion shouldered the coat the rest of the way off, handing it to him without a word.

  Tyr took it from her hands, standing like a sentry beside her.

  Or maybe more like a bodyguard.

  Or a kidnapper.

  “I need pretty much everything,” Marion told the clerk, glancing down at herself meaningfully. “Like… everything. Socks. Underwear. Shoes. Pants. Everything.”

  The shopkeeper’s jaw dropped as she glanced down Marion, taking in the nearly-sheer, micro-mini gold dress, the lack of stockings, the thin shoes, lack of bra. Marion saw the clerk’s eyes focus on the spots of blood across the front of the low-cut draping of fabric, the rips and tears at the seams and hem in several places, the black smudges of dirt and whatever else.

  Remembering she’d been dragged across the floor of that St. Barts club, Marion wondered what the back of the dress looked like.

  “Oh… my,” the woman stammered. “Yes. I see you do need everything.”

  She looked between Tyr and Marion.

  Something in her expression seemed to indicate she was putting two and two together and coming up with a blinking neon sign in multi-colored Christmas lights.

  That sign likely stretched roughly eight stories high.

  “…Oh. Okay. Yes.”

  The woman’s voice strengthened.

  “Come with me, dearie,” the sixty-something black woman said, hooking her arm into Marion’s. Her brown eyes met Marion’s sharply,
right before they flickered away. “We need to get you into something warm, pronto. Before you catch your death…”

  Marion caught the meaningful note in the woman’s voice, even as the store clerk aimed her beaming smile at Tyr, her eyes now deceptively blank.

  Instantly, Marion’s adrenaline shot up.

  The shopkeeper was trying to get her alone.

  Clearly, she thought Tyr had been the one to rough her up, and wanted to get Marion alone, likely in a back room, likely so she could question her, and probably call the police, or maybe refer her to the local woman’s shelter.

  Like she had in the car, Marion found herself hesitating.

  Then she found herself wondering why she was hesitating.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  Was it really that easy to snow her into a cheap form of Stockholm Syndrome? Because nothing this guy told her was even remotely credible. He might have helped her out on St. Barts… or, for all she knew, he might work with those guys, and the whole thing might have been a set up.

  Tyr might be the one blackmailing her father.

  Hell, she had no idea who he even was.

  Or if Tyr was his real name.

  All she had was that crazy story he told her.

  That, and the fact that he had a discernible accent. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything of course, apart from English clearly not being his first language, which was true of a good chunk of American citizens.

  On the other hand, it made the possibility that he could be working for some foreign power semi-credible, at least.

  All of that went through Marion’s mind in a series of blinks.

  Then she nodded, smiling at the store clerk.

  “Thank you. That would be great.”

  Without glancing at Tyr, Marion started to walk with the older woman, following her towards the back end of the store.

  “I would love to get some jeans,” she added, making her voice as bright as the clerk’s. “And the fluffiest sweater you have.”

  The clerk laughed.