“You made them see something that wasn’t there?” she clarified, frowning. “How does that work? You get into their minds somehow? How would that fool a camera?”
“I cannot glamour people,” he said, frowning back at her. “Glamours, illusions, mind confusion… those are my brother Loki’s gifts. But I can do other things. I can make myself… different. Inconspicuous, if I so desire. I can change my eye color, the contours of my face, my general appearance. Even my size.”
“How is that different from what your brother, Loki, does?” Marion said.
“What I do is not a glamour,” Tyr said. “It is an actual, physical change. Therefore, cameras pick up the exact same image as human witnesses. There is no confusion in the minds of humans. They simply see me as I am. It is I who changes.”
There was a silence.
Then Marion frowned, looking away from him.
Tyr’s voice contained a harder edge.
“I do not do this simply to deceive people,” he added. “My brother is a Trickster God… I am not. Our gifts are suited to our function in the world. My ability to change form serves a purpose, just as Loki’s glamours do for him. For me, the ability to change my appearance isn’t so that I can deceive people, per se. It is so I can operate freely in the world… so I can do my job without being noticed or recognized.”
“Recognized?” She frowned. “I don’t think most people would recognize you, Tyr.”
He shook his head, once.
“Not recognized as myself. That is not what I mean, Marion.”
Exhaling, he rested his hands on his hips.
Watching him, she grew acutely aware of his lack of a shirt.
“I am aware I am not a well-known god on your world,” he said, exhaling again. “I do not expect anyone to recognize me here. That is part of my function, too.”
Something in the words sounded borderline embarrassed that time.
Marion might have found it funny, but Tyr seemed genuinely agitated.
“Truthfully, I prefer this,” he admitted. “It has certainly never bothered me before. But I confess, I am finding it slightly frustrating now. With you.”
Marion frowned.
She opened her mouth to speak, but Tyr held up a hand.
“I am not worried I would be identified the way my brother, Thor… or my brother, Loki, for that matter… would be identified or recognized by those of your world.”
Exhaling again, he went on in that frustrated-sounding voice.
“Normally, it is history books that concern me. Photos. Paintings. Now video and other means of image capture. These have grown increasingly bothersome.”
At her blank look, Tyr’s voice grew more explanatory.
“There are times when I must be present for large, important events, Marion,” he said. “Historical events. The type of events that tend to be documented. Even hundreds of years ago, there were painters and artists who attended to such things. Now they are photographed. And video-taped. And recorded. Now, far more than in centuries past, everyone is a documentarian. It is not only professionals who capture such things. It is surveillance cameras. Drones. Anyone with a modern phone. Anyone with an iPad.”
Sighing again, he combed a hand through his thick, black hair.
Again, Marion found herself overly aware of every detail of the gesture, every line of muscle when he raised his arm, the expression on his angular face.
“It is worse now, of course, but this has always been an issue to a degree. I alter my appearance… physically, that is… to keep from being compared across generations. I did not want my true image to be recorded, to show up across various occurrences in human history.”
Marion stared at him.
She understood what he was saying now.
Tyr didn’t want some unusually-observant historian noticing the same guy had been alive and visiting Earth for hundreds, possibly even thousands of years.
He was saying he was immortal.
He was saying he was an immortal shapeshifter.
With wings.
Marion fought with what to say to that.
In the end, she looked back at the shower, sticking her hand under the water to check the temperature. She pulled a few nobs on the tile wall, getting the various jets to turn on, including the sunflower-shaped showerhead in the center.
When she slowly straightened, wincing at the pain in her leg, Tyr took a step in her direction, leaving the opening at the door.
Then, as if thinking better of it, he stepped back.
He stood in the doorway, looking at her from across the long bathroom with its two sinks, its jacuzzi bathtub against the wall, its pale blue rug.
She could feel his eyes on her.
“Do you need help?” he said, gruff.
She turned to look at him, only to find him looking at her, his eyes scanning over her body, focusing on different parts of her ripped, soaked, and blood-stained clothes.
She met his gaze when his returned to her face.
“…Undressing,” he finished, clearing his throat.
He motioned vaguely towards her.
“You’re hurt,” he clarified. “I would help. With the clothes. With the cleaning.” He cleared his throat again. “…with bandages.”
She watched his complexion darken, right before he shrugged.
“Or you could do it,” he finished.
She might have found his strange, awkward, clearly embarrassed speech funny on anyone else. She might have teased them, or laughed… or at least smiled.
She might have found it charming at least, or sweet.
Somehow, she found herself struggling with how to answer him instead, fighting reactions to his presence, his voice, his physicality––pretty much everything about him. All of those things made it difficult to take anything he did or said lightly.
Some part of her was seriously tempted to say yes.
At the same time, she felt strange about doing it.
It felt like she’d be asking him for something, and she felt strange about asking him for anything right then, after he’d just saved her life.
She felt strange asking him for that, in particular.
Asking him to stay here, with her, while she undressed and showered, wouldn’t just be casual flirting, not anymore. She’d more or less be asking him for sex, and despite what she’d done with him––or really, to him––in the car earlier, she wasn’t sure she should be doing that.
She wasn’t sure she should do that to herself, much less to him, not until she’d wrapped her mind a little more concretely around everything.
As it was, she had practically no mooring left.
Given everything that happened over the past few hours, she wasn’t sure she could trust anything about how she saw him, or how she felt.
He’d saved her life. More than once.
Clearly, that was confusing things.
Yet, with everything that she’d seen, him saving her life was the least of it.
She’d seen him with wings, right?
He’d flown.
He’d actually flown her here, to some fancy hotel in downtown Washington D.C. That was after he’d busted through the dented door of an insanely expensive sports car, either using his wings, his arms, or some combination of the two.
Which brought her back around to the beginning of this logic circle.
Tyr was a shapeshifter.
Who flew.
It didn’t help that something about him created an insane, totally irrational, mind-altering, unbelievably intense want in her––a want that didn’t feel remotely within her control. There was nothing reasonable, logical, or explainable about that want. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced or felt around a man before.
It wasn’t like anything she’d experienced with anyone before, period.
Marion didn’t fully realize she was just standing there, silent, as she thought all of that.
She didn’t fully realize she hadn’t m
oved, or said anything.
It kind of blew past her that she’d never answered his question, either––meaning, his question about whether or not she needed his help getting undressed––not until Tyr suddenly moved in her direction.
She turned when he moved.
She wasn’t afraid. Truthfully, she was relieved.
She remained exactly where she was, the shower door propped open by her arm and shoulder, watching him approach.
He was all the way across the room.
Then he wasn’t.
Then he was standing over her, those dark eyes seeming to look through her.
His mouth hardened as she stared up at him.
He didn’t look angry, or annoyed.
She could almost see him thinking, too.
Something about that brought a tremendous relief.
She wanted him to decide this. She wanted him to tell her what was happening between them, how she was supposed to make sense of all this.
More than anything, Marion wanted Tyr to tell her whether or not it was okay. She wanted to know if it was all right for her to want what she so desperately wanted from him. She wanted him to explain to her why everything about him pulled on her so intensely. She wanted to know if it pulled on him just as much, if he wanted it like she did.
She wanted to know why it wiped everything else out of her mind, including her mother and sister, which nothing, up until now, could even touch.
She wanted him to tell her not to feel guilty about that.
She wanted him to tell her it was okay.
She wanted to know if she could just let herself fall––if he’d catch her in this, like he’d caught her when she unhooked the seatbelt in the McLaren.
She wanted him to tell her if she could finally let go.
16
Surprise Me
With all the thoughts swirling around her head as he stood over her, Marion really had no idea what he would say.
As usual, he didn’t say even remotely what she might have guessed he’d say.
He looked down at her with those dark eyes.
Then those eyes shifted away.
His complexion seemed to darken too, right before he cleared his throat.
“I have… thoughts,” he said, gruff. “I would like us to talk. But I’m not sure the best way to do that is with one of us naked. Or both of us. As pleasant as that might be.”
Marion blinked.
Tyr’s dark eyes met hers.
The intensity she saw there grew.
“Perhaps, if you don’t need my help,” he added, just as gruff. “I could go get clothes for us. Dry clothes. And some food. When you finish in here, we could talk. Clothed. At least at first. We could be clothed in the beginning. During the talking.”
Marion felt her own cheeks warm.
She wasn’t normally a tongue-tied person, but she found herself struggling to speak to the tall man covered in faintly glowing tattoos, his dark, longish hair framing his angular face.
“You might want a shower,” she blurted. “After, I mean. After me.”
As soon as she said it, she felt her face grow hotter.
“…I just mean,” she added. “If you can find us clothes, I can find us food. And maybe deal with the clothes we’re wearing now. They have to have a cleaning service here. Or something. You can shower. I’ll take care of those things.”
Tyr frowned, looking away to think about this.
Then he nodded slowly.
“I’m not sure we should avail ourselves of the cleaning service,” he said. “Not right away. I don’t think either of us should interact with people apart from one another until we’ve had time to talk about how to reach your father.”
Thinking about that, feeling her more logical, strategic mind click back into gear, Marion nodded, more decisively that time.
“You’re right,” she said. “I guess we should just toss them in bags for now. Or even take them down to the dumpster. I feel a little bad. That woman… at the store. She was kind. But I think we likely need to just get rid of them.”
Realizing she was overthinking what amounted to a trivial detail, given what they were facing, she looked up at him, embarrassed.
Tyr didn’t look remotely annoyed, or judgmental.
Instead, he caressed her jaw lightly with his fingers, running his other hand down her neck and shoulder as if holding up her head to explore her skin. Marion closed her eyes without thought, leaning into him.
When he spoke, his words surprised her.
But then, his words almost always surprised her.
“You are a kind person,” he said. “You are a sweet, kind person, Marion. But I think it’s okay. I think the shop-keep would understand.”
Marion’s eyes opened.
She didn’t look at him, but stared down at his bare chest with its intricate, esoteric-looking tattoos in faintly-glowing blue and green.
Kind? Sweet?
Had he really just called her those things?
Marion honestly couldn’t remember the last time anyone called her those things, or anything remotely like those things.
Decadent. Irresponsible. Callous.
Cold. Embarrassing. Spoiled.
Lacking in moral character. Lacking in judgment.
Oversexed.
Probably an addict or an alcoholic.
She’d heard all of those things, especially in the tabloids.
But kind? Sweet?
She looked up at him, but saw no hint of amusement in his eyes.
Instead, he caressed her face again, right before he took a step back.
“I will do as you advised, and wait on ordering food,” he said, inclining his head politely. “Call for me, if you need help. I will hear you. I will be in the other room, trying to acquire clothing for the two of us. Do you have any requests, in terms of clothing?”
She thought about that.
Then, her cheeks still warm from his touch and his words, she shrugged, smiling faintly.
“Surprise me,” she said.
Getting undressed was hard.
Hard enough, Marion turned off the shower, realizing it would take some time.
Peeling off clothes stuck to wounds, soaking wet, heavy with water and blood, burned in some places. It was slow, painful, annoying, awkward, and by the end of it, it made her want to cry. She got the sweater off easily enough, but the bra stuck to a cut on her back.
Getting the jeans off was a new kind of torture.
Even taking off her boots and socks hurt.
A piece of metal cut into part of the hiking boot, leaving her sock and part of the shoe stuck in the cut.
The worst was her thigh, where she’d been sliced by something sharp, probably something metal. She had little bits of glass and plastic embedded in her neck, arms, hands, shoulders, and face.
She did her best to use her fingernails as tweezers to get most of them out.
In the end, she called Tyr and asked him to get her some actual tweezers from downstairs.
He did her one better, getting a whole first aid kit and a bathroom kit from a small shop on the lobby floor, complete with tweezers, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, comb, a tube of disinfectant cream, disinfectant spray, bandages, tape, gauze. He got her shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel, even though the hotel already supplied several small bottles of each.
Without her asking, he stayed to help remove the rest of the glass from her skin.
She was forced to ask when she touched her head, and realized she had pieces of glass embedded in her scalp, along with the side of her neck and back, where she couldn’t see.
In the end, he sat on the bathroom counter, with her sandwiched between his legs––Marion wearing only her underwear at that point, and Tyr still in the black suit pants and shirtless, wearing dress shoes and a watch that was probably badly damaged by water.
It took him roughly a half-hour to get all the bits of glass off her.
Then he left, and Mar
ion took a shower, which was both painful and positively glorious.
By the time she got out, the whole bathroom was steam, and she felt vaguely guilty for how long she’d been in there, even as a part of her felt tired, realizing now that she’d have to use a lot of disinfectant on the hundreds of cuts all over her body, and probably bandage up the worst of them.
First, though, she needed to free up the bathroom for Tyr, and likely help him by picking all the glass out of his skin.
Wrapping a towel around herself, she poked her head out into the hotel bedroom.
It was empty.
She ventured out of the bathroom cautiously.
As she looked around, she caught sight of a note on the bedspread, which was a new one, she noticed, not the one she’d dragged off the bed and onto the floor.
She walked closer and saw the top of the bedspread turned down. Seeing the pale gold sheets there, she realized the bed had been changed entirely, and the old bedding and bedspread were gone.
“Busy little god,” she muttered, picking up the note.
She read the words there, which were brief, and to the point.
I’ll be back soon.
I told them to leave the clothes on the table.
Order food if you’re ready.
Marion looked around.
Other than two small end tables on either side of the king-sized bed, she saw only a low coffee table in front of a small couch of gold-dyed leather.
Then she noticed the sliding wooden doors.
For the first time, it occurred to her that she’d only seen a small part of the hotel suite.
Walking to the doors, she pushed them apart.
Marion found herself facing a large room––much larger than she’d expected.
Bay windows formed most of the wall to her left.
A textured wall stood between those larger windows and a sliding glass door, flanked by sheer curtains someone had opened, along with curtains of a darker, heavier material. Through the main window, she could see snow falling past the small balcony, and a view of the Washington Monument, the mall, and the Lincoln Memorial in the distance, all lit up and shadowed by flurries of falling snow.
A flat-screen television covered a section of wall not far from the sliding glass door, situated above a gas fireplace in white stone, and next to a pale blue, modern-looking leather sectional sofa with a glass coffee table and two standing lamps.
Tyr Page 12
