She let out a short laugh.
“Your brother?” She snorted. “Which brother is that? Thor, God of Thunder?”
He gave her a level stare.
“You’ve got to be kidding––” she began.
“And yet I am not,” he cut in. “You must learn to distinguish the difference with me, Lia Winchester. If we are to make this partnership work.”
She stared at him, feeling a flicker of unease when she realized she almost believed him.
At any rate, he believed it.
His eyes told her Loki was dead serious.
“A partnership?” She leaned back, removing her arms most of the way off his neck. “I assumed once you got your ring back, and amused yourself breaking out Maia or whatever… that I’d never see you again.”
“And yet I am telling you, and have told you repeatedly now, that I could use your help.”
“How?” She frowned, feeling some of the sex haze starting to dissipate. “If you are who you say you are… which I’m not saying I believe remotely, by the way… what possible help could I be to you?”
“Do you have any idea how long it’s been since someone has successfully pick-pocketed me, little elf? Do you have any idea how long it’s been since anyone, human or god, has given me the slip?”
She frowned. “How long?”
“Never,” he said, his voice hardening. “Never. Not my brother… not even my father. Not even the real elves, though they have certainly tried their share of pranks.”
Lia continued to frown at him, not hiding her skepticism.
He wasn’t exactly letting off alarm bells in terms of lying this time, either, but every word he said made no sense to her logical mind.
“You see?” he declared, aiming a finger at her. “That! That is what I am talking about! You know when I am lying. You know when I am telling the truth. Even when your logical mind tells you otherwise, you still know. You have instincts I don’t fully understand, Lia Winchester, along with a skill set I can undoubtedly put to good use.”
Still studying her eyes, his green ones narrowed when he added,
“You don’t seem to have yet realized something about me, Lia dearest. If you had been the vast majority of humans, I would have taken the ring off you within seconds of catching up to you on that plane. I may still have defiled you… you are quite a tempting little plum, and I would have done it just for sport. But I would have left immediately after expelling my seed. I would have perhaps humiliated you a bit in the process for the thievery, perhaps leaving you without clothes when I lifted the glamour, but I likely would have exited the plane before it got off the ground in Kathmandu.”
Loki’s jaw hardened as he watched her think about this.
“I certainly wouldn’t be traveling to Los Angeles with you,” he went on, his voice a touch harder. “I would not risk encountering my brother. I would not risk exposing myself further by rescuing your sister. Certainly not to help someone who stole from me––”
She waved him off, frowning.
“So what are you saying?” she said. “You want to hire me? Is there some job you need done? Will I owe you for getting Maia away from Gregor?”
He stared at her, and she swore she saw bewilderment in his eyes that time.
“Because I’ll do it,” Lia added, still watching those pale irises. “Of course I’ll do it. I’ll help you out any way you want. If you get my sister out of there, and get us both away clean from Gregor, so she can have an actual life… free of those bastards… I’ll help you pull whatever jobs you want. Even against ‘Thor the Thunder God.’”
Lia smirked a little at that last; she couldn’t help it.
Loki blinked, looking away as he seemed to think about her words.
Then he looked up at her, aiming that harder scrutiny at her face.
“Deal,” he said, holding out a hand. “That is how you humans decide such things. Correct? You make ‘deals’ once you have agreed upon a basic set of arrangements between one another?”
“How do gods do it?” she said, hiding another smile.
“It is similar.” Loki’s eyes remained serious as they met hers. “Only I believe I can actually trust your word more, Lia Winchester. I think you would suck my cock every day until the day you died, if it would save your sister.”
She snorted at that, rolling her eyes.
Even so, she felt a flicker of bewilderment, what verged on unease.
How did he know so much about her?
Why was he suddenly playing things so serious with her, after everything he’d done at the airport and on both planes? She continued to watch him, studying his eyes, sure he must be messing with her, even though her internal radar failed to give off a warning ping.
Despite the intensity she sensed below, Loki appeared almost calm now.
Even more strangely perhaps, despite all his previous smiling and winking, his eyes grew clear, containing a seriousness that verged on outright sincerity.
Loki now looked at her with a disarming openness, as if waiting for her reaction to him as this––someone able to be transparent––versus the vaguely threatening, openly smirky, deeply perverted, and unapologetically crass Loki of before.
She smiled wider, nudging him with her arms.
He didn’t smile back.
He continued to look at her, that unnerving openness reflected in his light-filled eyes.
7
Disembarking
“No, no, darling girl. Let them pass.”
Lia lowered herself back to her seat, looking over at him.
Loki continued to watch people walk by, scanning face after face as he motioned with his jaw towards the back of the plane, giving her a sideways glance.
“We go out a different way, my precious,” he told her.
She still wore the semi-indecent dress.
She still had no underwear on.
Unlike before, however, her long, dyed-green leather coat was wrapped around her shoulders, and it covered most of her, halfway down her calves to her bare feet. Loki told her to leave off on putting on her boots, at least until they were off the airplane. His instructions puzzled her, especially after she asked him why.
Loki had given her a faint smile, his eyes shrewd as he looked her over. “I’d prefer not to be kicked in the head with one or both of your boots, love… if it’s all the same to you.”
When Lia frowned, opening her mouth to ask him what the hell that meant, Loki held a finger to his lips, eyes warning as he continued to watch the other passengers collect their belongings and ready to leave the plane.
Sighing a bit, Lia let it go.
She also didn’t put on her boots.
She stuffed them in her satchel instead, along with her T-shirt, jeans, socks, and laptop, which Loki also insisted on carrying for some reason. Her satchel also held the data stick with the intel she’d pulled for Gregor at the embassy building in Kathmandu, her change of clothes from traveling, a gold figurine she lifted from the market, various watches, wallets, rings, and necklaces she’d pickpocketed before she’d encountered Loki, and her own passport, California driver’s license, and wallet.
It felt strange to hand all that over to him, but some part of her did it without question, without anything other than a purely-habitual flicker of unease. She watched him throw the strap over his neck and shoulder, the leather satchel bulging at his side, while Lia herself sat there with no shoes, the thin dress, and only the long leather coat to really cover her.
She associated the satchel so much with being a thief.
For the same reason, just handing it to him bonded her to Loki in a way more intimate than sex, connecting them on a deeper level, one she couldn’t fully explain to herself.
Following Loki’s eyes, copying his silent watchfulness, Lia sat next to him in their assigned seats as the rest of the passengers filed off the plane in the direction of the cockpit.
All of them looked like they were relieved to be on the g
round again.
Faces flushed, skin dented in places from seat cushions, pillows, and rumpled blankets, they appeared bleary-eyed and mostly half-asleep. They lugged suitcases, backpacks, purses, small children, bags of souvenirs, even a little dog in a cloth case.
Loki was dressed again.
Lia still found him distracting as he propped his boot on the back of the chair in front of him, his shirt open at the top along with his leather coat, still somehow looking like a pirate with his long hair and the silver pendant around his neck, and the silver rings.
They sat there, more or less silent, until everyone had left the plane.
Then Loki nudged her, indicating that she should walk towards the airplane’s tail.
“I’ve glamoured us,” he commented. “They won’t see us. But try not to walk into any flight attendants as we walk by, pet. It tends to confuse the illusion a bit.”
“Why can’t you just make us look like someone else?” she murmured, leaning towards his ear. “To get off the plane, I mean. Why not just make us look like old Thai women? Or stewardesses? Or the pilots?”
Loki smiled at her, winking as he continued to make his way down the aisle.
Both of them paused, inserting themselves into seat rows to let two airline attendants pass by on their way towards the front of the plane.
“Clever girl,” Loki said next. “I’m glad to see you are catching on to my bag of tricks. Sadly, however, glamours do not work on my brother. He will see right through them. He may not recognize you, my darling, but he certainly will know me. That would be true no matter what form I took. Even in a crowd like this, he would pick me out easily.”
Loki scowled as he said it, as if he resented the idea.
Really, more as if the whole notion of his brother recognizing him so easily offended him at a soul-level.
“Why does your brother want you, anyway?” Lia said.
She spoke quietly, glancing around them.
She knew it might not be necessary with the glamour, but it was hard to remember that the people she could see and hear couldn’t see or hear her.
“All for some ring?” she added, walking fast to keep up with Loki’s longer strides. “What’s the deal with that ring anyway? Why is it so important to you?”
“It is complicated, dearest girl, but suffice it to say: it’s a magical artifact, I stole it, and my brother wants it back.”
“So why not just give it to him?” She frowned, loping a bit faster to stay directly behind him. “Is it really worth all this trouble?”
“It might be.” He glanced back at her, arching one of his dark eyebrows. “I did go to a fair amount of trouble to steal it. One might assume I had a reason for that, apart from annoying my brother… as fun as that can be.”
“But you won’t tell me what the reason is?” she persisted.
He sighed, as if her questions were exhausting him.
Or perhaps because he realized it would be easier to just tell her the truth.
In any case, in the end, that’s what he did.
“I’m a bit concerned you might take this the wrong way,” he said, giving her another over-the-shoulder glance. “But I felt compelled to take it, so that I could take over your world. More accurately, perhaps, I wish to wrest control of your world away from my father, who I believe is mismanaging it terribly.”
Lia frowned, following behind him silently for a few seconds.
Then she burst out in an involuntary laugh.
“Did you just say you need the ring to conquer Earth? As in my Earth?”
Loki gave her a faint smile, shrugging.
“That’s how my brother would term it, certainly. I see it rather differently. Well. It is semantics, perhaps. But I think my brother would misrepresent my intentions and methods wildly. He has a tendency to be a bit hysterical––”
“This is Thor we’re talking, right?” she said, smiling in spite of herself. “Thor, the God of Thunder. He’s the hysterical one?”
“This surprises you? I mean, come on. His gift is thunder and lightning. Loud noises. Big, crashing lights. Of course he’s going to be a drama queen.”
Lia burst out in another laugh, unable to help herself, and Loki glanced back at her with a genuine-looking smile.
“You are quite adorable when you laugh,” he remarked, reaching behind him to catch hold of her hand, squeezing it in his. “I may have to ravish you again, when we get somewhere that isn’t likely to end in one or both of us being caught and dismembered… or, sadly more likely in my case… sent to a cell beneath the palace grounds on Asgard.”
Loki led her all the way to the rear of the plane, looking past the curtain to make sure no more cabin crew remained on that part of the aircraft. Lia could already hear the cleaning crew and maintenance team going through the cabin from the front end of the plane, likely to get it stocked and ready for the next flight.
“Come on, elf,” Loki said, beckoning for her to join him behind the curtain.
Lia jerked her head and eyes back towards him, then followed him into the small galley area at the rear of the plane.
Once she was inside, he yanked the curtain closed behind her.
She watched him walk over to the rear, oval, exit door.
Loki examined the door’s locking mechanism for a total of two seconds, then grabbed hold of the lever and threw it down, swinging the door outwards to smack against the outside the plane.
Lia watched, gaping, as he immediately stepped out of the tail end of the plane.
He disappeared from view, falling straight down with her satchel gripped tightly in one muscular hand, and Lia ran for the opening. Reaching it, she gripped the metal edges of the oval doorway, poking her head out to peer down at him.
Loki stood directly under the door, gazing up at her.
From the look of him, he’d landed easily on his feet.
He still gripped her satchel in one hand, at his right hip.
“God,” she muttered under her breath. “He’s a god, Lia. He can mesmerize people. Apparently he can also jump thirty feet and land like a cat…”
She watched Loki glance around the tarmac where he’d landed, still directly below the opening in the tail of the plane. A few seconds later, he looked up at her again. When she only stood there, he let go of her satchel at his hip.
He held up his hands and arms, beckoning with his fingers.
“Come, little one,” he called up. “I think I’ve found us a route to the street, but we should hurry. There’s some chance my brother could try to intercept us out here.”
“I’m not jumping down there!” she snapped. “Are you insane?”
“You are jumping,” he said calmly. “Unless you wish to meet my brother and your mafia friends, who are undoubtedly waiting for us right now, at the end of that jetway.”
Frowning up at her when Lia only stood there, gripping her coat in one hand and the doorway with the other, Loki exhaled impatiently.
“Come, come,” the god said. “I will catch you. I thought that was implied, with my holding my hands up… as if I were about to catch you.”
“You can’t catch me!”
He rolled his eyes. “I assure you, I can catch you, and quite easily. Jump now, little elf. Or we will never get to your sister in time. My brother will likely go there next, if he figures out who you are, and that you are with me. Unlike your mafia friends, he may not simply assume we switched planes in Bangkok… although I did my best to leave a confusing trail back at the airport there, buying multiple tickets and so forth.”
Lia stared down at him, still fighting disbelief.
She couldn’t really trust him to catch her, could she?
At the end of a thirty-foot drop?
Then she thought about Maia.
If Gregor thought she’d double-crossed him, God only knew what he’d do to Maia, or where he might take her.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes.
Not letting herself think abou
t how insane this was, what she was doing, or who she was letting herself trust, she threw herself out the open doorway. When she hit the warm air of Los Angeles, and gravity caught hold of her, she let out a strangled yelp.
It seemed like she fell, dropping like a stone, her heart lodged somewhere in her throat, for only a fraction of a second––
––when strong arms caught her, gripping her with hands made of iron, cradling her against an equally dense chest. The force of her landing made all of her breath leave her lungs in a shocked whoosh––
But it didn’t hurt.
Somehow, despite the muscle on his arms, nothing about him hurt, either.
Gasping, Lia opened her eyes, staring up at that familiar face as he placed her back down on her feet, grinning at her.
“Light as a leaf, my dear,” he said, bending down and kissing her cheek. “Of course, now you’ve got me all hot and bothered again, since I could see all the way up that naughty dress of yours as you fell.”
Winking, he took her hand as she tugged the dress down her thighs as far as it would go. She stumbled after him, still barefoot, when he began to walk. Tying back her hair with a hair-band she found in her coat pocket as she walked, she picked her steps carefully as he led her on a zig-zagging route under the plane.
He managed to sneak them past the baggage handlers tossing luggage out a lower access point in the middle of the fuselage, taking them around and back until they were under the jetway, and presumably invisible from the airport windows.
Loki had them follow that all the way under the concourse itself, and into a maintenance area filled with loading and emergency vehicles. Lia followed him, watching him grip her satchel at his waist. She buttoned up her long coat so she wouldn’t feel completely naked, running fast on bare feet across the asphalt as Loki led them out of the airport and towards the street.
Loki Page 6
