by B. C. James
“No Freya, we have to go…now! Look, I like you…a lot. We can run away, just you and me…and avoid all the coming trouble. Who knows, we could settle down somewhere, have a little pack of pups, it would be heaven!”
“There is no time for this, Brock! We have to get up there right now or it will be too late for any of us. I can’t leave without them…I won’t leave without them!”
The panic melted from Brock’s face. His wild eyes became stoic and knowing while the near hyperventilated breathing became slow and steady.
“This was a one-time offer sweetheart, and you said no.” He turned his back to her. “I would have run away with you. Hell, I have dreamed of running away with you ever since I was just a whelp. I gave you a chance and you said no. We are now done.”
“What the hell are you talking about Brock, get me out of this wrap and stop saying stupid things. C’mon, we’re in real trouble here.”
“No, my dear, you’re in real trouble. That atomizer that’s been blowing close to your head? It was spewing Tetrodotoxin. Yeah, I know, it’s a big word. Had me puzzled until Idun explained that it was some sort of venom from a puffer fish. She’s done a few things to it, but pretty soon, you will be paralyzed by it. And the mud, I’ll bet it feels funny. She laced that with the sort of numbing gel that dentists use. That seemed unnecessary to me, but I think she did that just for fun.”
“Why, you son of a bitch!” Freya strained against the wrap and the effects of the toxins as she said this. It was clear that she was not wrapped up in the normal sort of gauze that a spa would use for this sort of treatment, but rather something that had the strength of a high quality nylon rope. Even so, it began to tear as her anger started to overcome the effects of the drugs.
“That’s a good guess Freya! Actually, I’m the son of a giantess, but I do understand your confusion.” While speaking these words, Brock began to change. Chestnut colored hair started to sprout from his body as his muscles doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled in size. His feet elongated until the place where his toes had been had become severe looking paws with black claws. His heels were now where a backward knee would be. Brock’s nose elongated into a snout with teeth that would have caused a saber-toothed cat to submissively urinate at the sight of him. Deep set red eyes and a black mane made this eight-foot nightmare from a Wolfen sequel look even more menacing.
A panic-fueled adrenalin rush gave Freya the strength to tear through the gauze, but the drugs were affecting her. She stood before the monster, fists up, but swaying on her feet.
“Fenris!” was the only word she could get out.
“Damn skippy!” His voice was deep, throaty, and as smooth as a Georgia dirt road. Hearing the animal speak was like listening to the lead singer from Crowbar try to recite Shakespeare. “The Son of Loki and the giantess Angrboða at your service. Poor little goddess, did it ever occur to you that I might be the source for all those werewolf legends they make such great movies about? Hey, we could be acting out one now! An American Werewolf in Los Angeles! Hmmm…no, somehow that feels redundant or derivative, or something that would make it a box office failure, oh well. We’ll think of something.”
She took a weak punch at him. Her limbs were beginning to feel heavy as the neurotoxin worked its mischief against her body.
Fenris let the punch hit him in the stomach and just laughed at her.
“Where did you learn to throw a punch? The Jersey Shore? I would add insult to injury, but it’s so much more fun to add injury to injury.”
The strike was so fast that only a formula that starts with E=M could have measured the actual speed and force. The wolf felt a part of her skull collapse under his inhuman fist. Fenris wasn’t really concerned with the damage he did to Freya. As long as she wasn’t dead, Idun could simply pump some apples into her, enema style, and everything would be right as rain when they delivered her to Odin and Loki.
He scooped her up and started to carry her upstairs.
“Stupid woman,” he said with the unique kind of contempt that only grows in the soil of unrequited love, “Did you ever realize that you were the real target? Thor and Baldr were just petty little annoyances that will be easily brushed aside. We have big plans for you!”
Chapter 31
Freya tried to open her eyes but wasn’t getting much cooperation from them. Not that she was under any illusion that she would see anything worth looking at, but she was curious about exactly how much trouble she was in.
The last thing her memory registered was that she was enjoying a seaweed wrap in what appeared to be her first good day in a while. But that was shot completely to hell. The cute and quirky guy she was traveling with turned out be Loki’s son, Fenris.
A day or so ago, he was just Brock, attempting to pick her up in a Challenger. The last thing she knew about Fenris before the spa was that he was chained to a rock for all eternity, punishment for the crime of scaring the bejeezus out of the gods. She also knew him as a wolf the size of a Burger King Restaurant, including the kid’s fun zone. The fact that he was also a werewolf caught her completely off guard.
It was unsettling to think that he could appear as a man, a dinosaur sized canis lupus, or any combination of those two things in between. As she thought about it, it tragically made sense…his father was a shape shifter. So why shouldn’t that trait be handed down from father to son like blue eyes, red hair, or misogyny?
For the moment, Freya’s eyes were still trying to decide whether or not they wanted to open or if they were going to keep operating under the ignorance is bliss theory. But she didn’t really need her sight to know that she was not in a comfortable place.
She was wrapped in a sheet with her feet bound and her hands tied behind her back. She was lying with her face against the ground and sand almost up to her nostrils. It was also cold. As a frigid breeze blew up the thin sheet Freya wore, her eyes sprung open. She cursed under her breath. There were a lot of reasons that she stopped hanging out in the Scandinavian lands and almost all of them had to do with the cold. Even living in New York, where the winters were about as pleasant as swallowing a pinecone, she could handle the season on her own terms and wait it out until spring in her luxury apartment.
Lying out in the open, at the mercy of any malevolent breeze was not what she considered a good time. If this was the beginning of some sort of torture scenario, whoever was behind it was off to a good start.
Freya spit some sand out of her mouth and for the first time got a good look at her situation. It was nighttime. With the light of the moon, she could see the dark shapes of tall cactus growing nearby. Not far from her face were a few smaller versions of the plant. The sand, cacti, and cold night made it pretty clear that she was in the desert.
Because Freya had started her day in California, she guessed that she now was lying specifically somewhere in the Mojave Desert. Now that she had narrowed her location down to an area more than twice the size of Belgium, she was tempted to say, “now for my next trick.” She stifled this urge and continued to look around.
About fifteen yards from her was what looked like a large circle, maybe ten feet in diameter, filled with coals. A couple of guys in black cloaks were pouring something on them. If she were to hazard a guess, hers would be that they were squirting lighter fluid. The bottles resembled the ones weekend warriors used when trying to “rough it” with a Weber grill and some Meijer’s charcoal. She also saw a table sitting in the middle of circle of coals. It wasn’t the sort of table that most people would eat off of or play Euchre on. It was an imposing table and made of ancient stone. This one looked to be something that evil white queens would happily sacrifice uppity lions on.
The cloaked figures stopped baptizing the coals with accelerant. An ancient looking woman in a white robe and tall pointy hat came out and started chanting over the circle. Freya had never seen her before. While she was dressed in a manner that hinted her shopping was done at whatever Goodwill outlet David Duke or Robert Byrd donated
their old clothes to, Freya knew better than to joke at the woman’s expense, even in her own head. It was clear the old lady was a Vísendakona, a witch.
While modern stories and movies represented witches as benevolent protectors of humanity, nothing was farther from the truth. Most witches resembled the one portrayed in Hansel and Gretel. Never was a Vísendakona happier than when they making other creatures miserable. By the looks of this woman, she was very happy indeed.
After several moments of chanting, nothing happened. The woman chanted again, more angrily this time. Freya didn’t know exactly what she was saying but caught the word dóiteán. In the Gaelic tongue this was the word someone would use for “big fire” or “inferno.”
At the end of the chant, a whole lot of nothing continued to happen. The witch cursed in very clear English. She grabbed one of the cloaked figures that had anointed the coals, ripped off his hood, pulled a knife from inside her sleeve, and sliced the man’s throat over the briquettes. He struggled mightily as he bled out. A septuagenarian such as herself, barely taller than the average hobbit, should have been knocked on her ancient keister by a healthy young man in the insane panic of death throes, but she held him steady as a rock until his thrashing came to an end and his blood was emptied into the circle.
She cast his body aside and chanted again. Her efforts were literally greeted by nothing more than the rhythmic chirping of crickets.
She swore and spit upon the coals to emphasize her contempt for their lack of cooperation. The witch then pulled a lighter out of her cloak, flicked it, and tossed it into the circle. Flames shot up and quickly filled the entire area, surrounding the table in a circular curtain of fire.
There was some satisfaction in the witch’s eyes at the size of the blaze. It was mingled with the annoyance that she couldn’t raise the flames without the help of something she got for free with the purchase of a box of duty-free Cohibas at the airport.
She wiggled her fingers in the direction of the fire and once again spoke in Gaelic. The flames exploded into an inferno. A wave of heat rolled over Freya. This was not at all similar to the normal or natural sensation that one may feel when standing too close to a bonfire. The heat that came off these flames was acidic and intrusive. It was as if the fire itself wanted to violate her in ways that she would prefer not to think about.
Despite the heat, Freya began to shiver uncontrollably. Within the sweltering envelope that poured forth from the circle, Freya could feel raw desire and primal hate in the flames. The fact that it all seemed to be focused on her chilled the Goddess of Love to her very soul.
The old witch shuffled away from the fire. The blaze coming from the circle of coals lit the area and Freya could now see, as clear as day, what was previously cloaked in shadow. There were more hooded figures running around a makeshift compound that included trailers and a number of vehicles—mostly jeeps, vans, SUVs, and a few backhoes.
Many of them were tending to something that looked like a high-tech sarcophagus. They were pushing buttons and hooking up hoses to a generator. Freya couldn’t even begin to guess what that piece of equipment was for.
The witch ran her gnarled hands along the contours of the box and smiled. This was unsettling for anyone who saw it. If this woman was happy, then no good could come from whatever that thing was.
She drew a shape in the sand with her dagger. To most people it would have looked like a swastika with only three spokes, but those familiar with bronze and Stone Age imagery would have recognized it as a Triskele. This symbol represents aspects of the natural world. The fact that everything going on seemed so completely unnatural made the symbol almost ironic.
The witch then slashed her left wrist and let the blood spill at the center point where the three arms of the Triskele converged. She took a few sniffs of the air, shuffled her feet, scowled, and walked away. She drew another one several feet away and repeated the action. She performed this act five or six times. She was woozy from blood loss by the sixth time, but after taking a few whiffs of the air she grinned instead of frowned.
The woman waddled off a few feet and spread her arms to the air, nearly falling over. One of the cloaked minions scurrying around the grounds managed to catch her before she could tip completely over and tumble to the soil. He started to fuss with the deep cut in her wrist, but she just slapped at his hands and attempted to shoo him away.
Instead, he kept a hand on her back to steady the elder as she once again raised her hands in the air. Her ancient voice recited an invocation in a surprisingly clear tone.
Freya didn’t recognize the language. Whatever strange tongue the ancient spell caster was using to weave her magic was more effective this time than when she attempted to use Gaelic to light the coals. As the last throaty words were hurled into the night air, an object spontaneously shimmered into existence.
At first blush, one would be tempted to simply label it a tree trunk. The only problem with that observation was that this tree trunk was at least as wide as the Hoover Dam. It also lacked the simple up and down nature of the average elm or oak. Instead it was bent into a twisted shape that would draws gasps of admiration from any highly skilled roller coaster designer.
The tree-like object reached down from so high in the night sky that no point of origin could be seen. It just seemed to fade into the starry heavens and become part of the celestial backdrop.
Where it met the Earth, it didn’t appear to go down into the ground like the bit from an oil drill but seemed to pass right through the ground. It had the strange look of a ghost putting its arm through a floor. There was no sense that the ground was disturbed by, or even aware of, the object.
Freya was at first confused by what she saw. She expected to see a giant bounding down from the thing like it was a fictional beanstalk. Suddenly it came to her what she was staring at. This wasn’t a mythical beanstalk or a tree. At least it wasn’t the trunk of a tree. She was seeing one of the tendrils, the secondary root, that branched off from the main root of Yggdrasil. This was what connected the Earth to the World Tree itself.
The witch hadn’t exactly conjured the root into existence. Due to the pan-dimensional nature of the tree, the root had always been there. This little encampment, with its big stone table and weird sarcophagus had obviously been erected at the approximate location where they believed the root was. A former client of Freya’s had once tried to explain quantum physics to her. Now she wished she had paid more attention.
What she did retain was that someone could walk around, and through, an object that shared the same geographical location of a person but occupied different dimensional space. What the witch managed to do was isolate the root in the earth’s dimensional reality. While the root had probably been here since the beginning of time, the spell made it visible and real to the perceptions of those who were earthbound.
The pronoun “they” kept popping up in Freya’s head as she watched the activity around her. She wondered who exactly “they” were, but she strongly suspected this particular little jamboree had its origins somewhere in Odin’s corporate checkbook.
Fenris had hinted this to her when he said that Idun had Odin on speed dial, but his presence didn’t fit. The wolf as part of the equation was indeed odd. In the prophecies Fenris is fated to kill Odin. It is unlikely that Odin would have any dealings with the monster that is earmarked to end his life. That would be like Caesar and Brutus putting aside their differences to play on the same softball team.
The witch finally allowed one of the cloaked minions to bind the cuts in her wrist. Once that was tended to, she walked to the root, put her ear to it and started tapping on it. After a few minutes of tapping, she smiled a near toothless smile and nodded approvingly. She had apparently gotten the result she was looking for. She put her finger under the bandage on her wrist and smeared a marking in blood onto the outside of the root at the place where she last tapped. She motioned to one of the assistants with a crooked old finger. He brought a power drill
with an extremely long bit and drilled at the spot that was marked with the sorceress’ blood.
While one man drilled, a dozen others positioned the sarcophagus close to the location that the hole was being made. After drilling nearly the entire length of the bit, the cloaked assistant pulled the drill from the deep hole. Freya could see a golden glint of sap shining off from the business end of the drill. The men nodded enthusiastically to one other. The bit was replaced with a thick auger drill bit, and he went back to work on the root.
With the hole in the root was enlarged, and the sap flowing freely, a metal spigot was hammered into the hole. This would be a charming sight if it was winter in New Hampshire and the guys with the spigot were your friendly neighborhood maple syrup producers. Guys in cloaks tapping the world tree for sap could only mean some deeply disturbing things were on the horizon.
They unrolled a length of white, plastic hose from the sarcophagus to the tree and attached it to the spigot. Once they had inspected the seal and were reasonably sure none of the precious liquid would be lost to a careless leak at the contact point, they turned the flow of sap on. As the hooded minions walked away, one high-fived the other.
The group of hooded figures, guided by a strange witch, using power tools on a celestial tree to fill a high-tech coffin with extremely powerful sap would qualify as bizarre by just about anyone’s standards. Things got even more weird and confusing as Freya experienced a surreal moment of recognition when she saw an artifact sitting on a small pedestal near the table. It was something she thought she would never see again. The object she was looking at was Mjölnir, Thor’s hammer.
A plethora of questions started to bounce around in her brain. The mental gymnastics of trying to figure out just what the hell was going on were interrupted by a large black scorpion that scurried into her line of sight. She blew at the arachnid in hopes of driving it away. Instead of leaving, the animal directed its focus onto her, scampering up to her face. Freya stared at the scorpion, nearly cross-eyed, as she fixated on it and wondered what it was going to do. Without warning, it shot a pincher out towards her and clamped onto her left nostril.
