Tyr

by JC Andrijeski

  Then he closed his mouth, focusing back on the road.

  “Let me guess,” Marion said, frowning. “It’s complicated.”

  “Or very simple,” he said, faintly exasperated now. “I know you aren’t being deliberately stubborn about this. I know you aren’t fighting me intentionally. But I’ve answered these questions already, Marion. You already know what I am.”

  Her frown deepened.

  She knew what he meant.

  He was talking about the god thing.

  “So why not just say it outright?” she said.

  “I did not wish to be inconsiderate.”

  “Inconsiderate?” She snorted a half-laugh. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  His black eyes focused on the highway, on the maze of cars spread out in front of him under a shockingly blue sky.

  When she didn’t speak, or go back to eating her cheeseburger, Tyr added,

  “I assumed you would come to this conclusion on your own. Consciously, that is, when you were ready. I’ve already told you enough… and frankly, you’ve already said enough… that I know you have received adequate information from me on this topic already. You may be resisting that information, and any conclusions you’ve already drawn from it, but you know exactly who and what I am, Marion.”

  Glancing at her, the sunlight flashing in his dark eyes, he added grimly,

  “You may prefer to treat it as a joke for now, or to otherwise pretend it’s not real. But that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of understanding the truth. At this stage, I don’t believe any additional assistance from me is likely to prove useful. It’s better if we continue to talk around who and what I am… particularly if you’re willing to accept help from me. Really, I’m just trying to keep you alive. I don’t need you to believe me. I just need you to trust me enough that I can keep the Syndicate from kidnapping or killing you.”

  Marion frowned.

  Turning over the words of his speech, she honestly couldn’t decide what she believed.

  She couldn’t decide if his words were meant as an insult or not, either.

  Picking up the cheeseburger, she took a few more bites, chewing and swallowing each one as she stared out the window at the oncoming traffic heading north, presumably out of New York City for the most part, but also leaving New Jersey.

  After a few more seconds of eating and staring, she decided he likely didn’t mean his words as an insult.

  That didn’t exactly make them a compliment, either.

  Marion more got the impression he didn’t mean anything by them at all.

  From Tyr’s perspective, he was simply making a bald statement of fact.

  Pushing the weirdness of gods and superhuman hearing out of her mind, she took a few more bites of the cheeseburger, chewing slowly while she thought. Like Tyr said, the how of things didn’t really matter, not if she trusted him to get her out of this alive.

  If she believed him on that part of things, the rest didn’t matter.

  Not now.

  For the same reason, she might as well take him at his word.

  She could just assume he was telling the truth, that he really could hear the guy on the other end of the phone. Assuming Tyr was right about that, that it was one of the people from the surveillance videos, someone who worked for Secretary of State, Roy Taggert, that meant the Syndicate was definitely following them to D.C.

  That meant they knew roughly where Marion was.

  Okay, she could do that.

  She could suspend disbelief enough to go there.

  Taking the last bite of her cheeseburger, she crumpled up the greasy wrapping and stuffed it in the bag along with the empty ketchup packets and the paper that held her fries. She glanced at Tyr to find he was still eating his own burger.

  Folding her arms in the thick, cable knit sweater, Marion sank into the McLaren’s comfortable seat, and thought for a moment more.

  If Tyr was correct, if the man on the phone was working for Taggert, then Taggert had access to the private phone line her dad set up for emergencies.

  That maybe shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did surprise her.

  If Taggert could hack those lines, he might have people inside the Secret Service.

  It also begged a bunch of other questions.

  Like, how had he known it was Marion calling?

  She hadn’t spoken a single word. She’d been using the shop clerk’s phone, not her own. Her own phone was still on St. Barts somewhere, maybe in that hallway by the dressing room in the exclusive Pirate Club.

  The only thing that made sense was the phone line itself.

  Her dad told her it was an emergency number, for use only in dire, life-or-death emergencies. He told her never to share that number, not with anyone, for any reason.

  Maybe no one had that exact number but her, Marion.

  The more she considered that possibility, the more sense it made. Given who her father was, they likely viewed her as a vulnerability. They would have given her a dedicated line. They probably had dedicated lines for more than just her.

  “Do you think they have people all over the White House?” Marion said, frowning, thinking aloud. “Taggart? The Syndicate more generally?”

  Tyr gave her a grim look. “I don’t know. I would guess yes.”

  Marion felt her jaw harden.

  “We need to get to D.C.,” she said. “If you’re right, my dad has to be in danger.”

  Tyr handed her his own fast food bag, stuffing in the cheeseburger wrapper once he’d finished his food. Marion put his bag in hers and crumpled them up together, putting the trash down on the floor by her feet. She frowned as she turned her head, watching the strange man with the dark eyes as he drove.

  “You’ll need to talk to him, Tyr,” she said seriously. “My dad. You’ll need to talk to him, and show him everything you showed me. I don’t mean the god stuff, but they’ll want to see all of Lia’s files. They’ll want to know who she is. They’ll want to know about Gregor, and how she got those materials. They’ll want to talk to her, and your brother. Are you and your family okay with that? With talking to my dad’s people? With talking to the Secret Service and F.B.I. and whoever else?”

  He looked at her.

  After a pause where he only studied her eyes, he seemed to come to his own conclusion about where her mind was at with everything.

  He nodded, once, his dark eyes glowing with that deep red flame.

  “We are not there yet,” he said, his voice grim. “Truthfully, that part worries me least. I am far more concerned about getting you to your father safely. I worry it will be dangerous for you,” he added, glancing at her. “…To take you to the White House. I will obviously stay with you through this. But we cannot know what this Syndicate might do, if they feel cornered. If they realize we intend to expose them.”

  Glancing at her again, he frowned.

  “I fear we don’t really have good choices, Marion. Not one hundred percent safe ones. I could take you to my brother, Thor. I could ask him and his wife to hide you, until I’ve spoken with your father myself.”

  Marion felt herself stiffen.

  “I don’t want you to do that,” she said.

  “It would be safer for you.”

  “I don’t care.” She folded her arms, giving him a hard look. “We’re not doing that.”

  Tyr hesitated, then nodded. Gripping the steering wheel, he made a vague, concessionary gesture with one hand.

  “I don’t want to do that, either,” he confessed.

  He didn’t explain what he meant by that.

  Marion didn’t ask.

  13

  Date

  Tyr drove fast.

  Even through New York City, and the outskirts of Philadelphia and Baltimore, Tyr drove the McLaren like it was an extension of his arms and feet, moving gracefully around cars, trucks, buses, vans, motorcycles, trailers, like water flowing around rocks in a stream.

  It helped that traffic was
relatively light. More people seemed to be leaving the urban sprawl of Northeastern cities, rather than driving towards it.

  They didn’t talk much after they finished eating.

  Even so, something about the silence felt strangely compatible.

  Marion found it easy to be with him.

  She even found it comforting.

  Even knowing people might be trying to kidnap and/or kill her right now, she felt oddly safe with him, too. Something about that struck her as almost unnerving, just how at ease she felt with this total stranger, particularly given the crazy things he’d told her.

  It also crossed her mind that Tyr would likely disappear once he’d delivered her to her dad. Once the F.B.I., Secret Service, and whoever else cleared him––assuming they did clear him, and he was more or less telling the truth––Marion would probably never see him again.

  Something about that made her deeply uncomfortable.

  It also made her incredibly sad.

  She couldn’t really explain that to herself, either.

  Truthfully, she didn’t even like thinking about it.

  Something about him, about the thought of him disappearing back into whatever strange place from which he’d come, hit at the hole that had lived in her heart since her mother and sister died. The last thing she needed was to try and fill that hole with some stranger––to get emotionally dependent on a guy she’d only just met, who was obviously weird, who she barely knew––but there it was.

  She did feel uncomfortably bound to him.

  Really, she should be reserving judgment about him totally until he actually brought her where he said he’d bring her.

  She didn’t really doubt him, though.

  She knew she didn’t.

  That probably should have weirded her out more than it did.

  Some doubt must have lingered, though, because seeing the signs leading them into the outskirts of Washington D.C. relaxed that last, vibrating tension in her mind. Watching the numbers count down as they got closer and closer to the nation’s capital, she found herself watching him more often, wondering about him, studying his profile as he drove.

  They’d been driving for hours now.

  The sun had just disappeared below the horizon to her right.

  It weirded her out, how quickly the sky was darkening. That was another thing she’d avoided, living the expat life. In the places she’d been staying over the past eight or so months, she’d never dealt with it getting pitch dark out before five-thirty or six p.m.

  “You really are a quiet person,” she said, as they were entering the city limits. “Or should I take this personally?”

  He looked at her. His dark eyes widened perceptibly, as if she’d startled him.

  “No,” he said at once. “You should not. Take it personally.”

  She smiled faintly. “Okay.”

  “Are you?” he said. “Taking it personally?”

  Folding her arms and hugging the thick sweater to her chest, she thought about the question seriously for a few seconds, then shook her head.

  “Not really,” she said. “I mean, no. I don’t take it personally. I know this is some kind of job to you. I still have no idea who you work for, but it’s pretty clear by the way you’re acting that this is work. So how can I take that personally? It’s not about me at all.”

  He glanced at her.

  Then, looking away, back at the road, he frowned.

  “It is not only work,” he said.

  She looked over, laughing. “What do you mean? What’s not work about it?”

  He shrugged, his expression calm.

  For maybe the first time, apart from when she had her hand on him, she was positive she glimpsed something beneath that calm. She couldn’t have said exactly what it was she saw, but there was feeling there, something he didn’t seem to be hiding so much as unsure how to express.

  “I like you,” he said simply.

  She blinked. “You like me?”

  “Yes,” he said, matter-of-fact. “That makes it not only work. I do not wish to see anything bad happen to you.” He looked over at her. “Before I went to St. Barts, I saw you more as an object. A form of leverage. Something I wished to keep out of the hands of bad actors. I saw you purely as a risk vector.”

  Her lips pursed. “A… risk vector. Wow.”

  “In a way. Yes. I did see you that way.”

  Pausing, he added,

  “Now, I find myself angry at the thought of anyone trying to hurt you. As in you. You, personally. Not an object. Not a risk vector… Marion.”

  Marion felt her cheeks warm.

  It hit her again that it wasn’t his words so much as what she felt behind them. She sensed an openness of some kind, even a kind of vulnerability. Strangely, he seemed almost unsure what to do with that openness himself.

  He cleared his throat, shrugging as he lifted a hand off the McLaren’s steering wheel.

  “Perhaps we could… do something,” he said, making a vague, graceful gesture in the air. “After this. Once it is resolved.”

  “Do something?” Marion looked over at him, puzzled. When he didn’t go on, she arched an eyebrow, refolding her arms. “Like what?”

  “Food?” He glanced over, his eyes flickering down her body. “Swimming. Perhaps horses? I am fond of horses. We could go riding. If you are not adverse.”

  She felt her cheeks warm a second time, but smiled.

  “Are you asking me out?” she said, half-amused, half-bewildered. “On a date?”

  There was a silence.

  Then he looked at her, his dark eyes serious.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She returned his stare, lost once more in those dark, volcanic-stone eyes, the stern beauty of his face, the strange transparency of his expression.

  She opened her mouth, about to answer him––

  ––when a car slammed into them on the driver’s side.

  Marion saw it coming.

  She saw the silver grill, the looming shadow, the headlights approach at a terrifying speed, but all too quickly to make a sound. The dark shape with the halogen lights came out of nowhere, accelerating as it approached.

  She didn’t have time to brace herself.

  She didn’t have time to even finish opening her mouth.

  She saw the rush of chrome grill, a flash of light, looming darkness––

  ––then impact.

  It threw her back.

  She slammed back and sideways in her seatbelt, thrown into the car’s door, her arms unfolding and slamming outward as the McLaren got hit.

  The car’s nose slammed to the right, pushed into a hard spin.

  She thought of Tyr, of the man on the same side of the car where the impact occurred, but the car was spinning so fast in those first seconds, Marion couldn’t see anything but a blur of light and dark. Her scream caught in her lungs and throat, glass flying around the inside of the car, nicking her face and neck and shoulders.

  The car hit into something again, from the opposite side.

  That time, the whole thing flipped.

  Marion screamed.

  It flipped once, twice… half a turn.

  When it finally stopped, it took her seconds to orient herself.

  Marion found herself gasping for breath.

  She stared down at darkness, seeing glimpses of broken glass and pavement below where she hung. Her head throbbed; she had no idea which side of the car she was looking at.

  Then movement happened fast inside the vehicle.

  Something jumped at her––no, flew at her.

  It seemed to leap up from the darkest part of the car, where she’d seen the shards of broken glass, the faint outline of the car’s frame.

  The car got hit again, spinning it backwards.

  She gasped, immediately in pain.

  The pressure in her lungs and around her ribs sharply worsened.

  Then something was holding her, and the pain lessened again.

&nb
sp; She couldn’t see a damned thing.

  The glass was no longer hitting her from all sides, but she could hear more things breaking. She heard the crunch and screech of metal. The sounds were muffled now, as the car continued to spin, almost like everything happened from further away. She still half-hung from the McLaren’s leather seat, cocooned in darkness… it wasn’t until she looked up that she saw a pair of dark, faintly-glowing eyes staring down at her.

  It took her a few seconds more to make out the rest of him.

  Then, all of a sudden, the vague outlines, contours, and shadows clicked into place. She saw him, his angular face hovering only a few inches away from hers.

  His dark, oddly-glowing eyes watched hers.

  His nearness didn’t alarm her.

  Rather, it brought up something she’d been repressing since she first saw him––since she first noticed him sitting there, in that bar on St. Barts.

  A kind of longing, pulling, compulsive feeling rose in her gut and chest, making it hard to breathe as she watched him look at her. She fought with a sharp desire to wrap her arms around him. Inexplicably, insanely, she remembered him asking her out right before the car got hit.

  He wanted to take her horseback riding.

  He’d asked her out on a date.

  She really, really wanted to go on that date.

  Hell, there were a lot of things she wanted to do with him… and, frankly, to him.

  She studied his face, thinking about all of that in the silence.

  She studied his face, and wondered if she was dead.

  Then she realized he was bare-chested.

  Her eyes had begun to adjust to the dark, to the lack of lights from the dash, the lack of lights visible outside the car. She found herself staring down at that muscular chest, the dark lines and shadows, and wished she could see him better. What she could see in that darkness didn’t lessen that dull, pulling, longing feeling in her gut and chest.

  “You’re beautiful,” she told him.

  Again, not the most logical timing to say that kind of thing.

  She saw his eyes flinch, right before his gaze narrowed.

  That glowing, burning red light that lived inside his dark pupils and irises grew brighter, turning into a desert flame. He never took his eyes off her face, but she felt something in their expression change.