by B. C. James
“Ow!” Freya exclaimed and thrashed her head in an effort to dislodge the critter.
Not only did it refuse to let go, it seemed to get heavier. So heavy in fact that she could no longer move it from its spot. It seemed to give her a little buggy smile, and Freya could swear it winked at her. The scorpion then started to morph and grow. Before she knew it, a full sized man was kneeling in front of her with a death grip her on nostril.
“Got your nose!” Loki said with the sort of smile that could have charmed a couple of nuns into an enthusiastic threesome.
He picked Freya up off the ground, propped her up against a rock, and plopped down beside her. “Welcome to Jurassic Park!”
“Whuuuuu….” Freya’s brain had not quite caught up with the situation.
“Okay, Beautiful, it’s not Jurassic Park. We are currently in the desert surrounding the place known as Area 51. If you’re into aliens, this place is really cool, and much more interesting than some old dinosaurs. If you survive the ceremony, I’ll have some of the guys load you into the back of a pickup and we’ll take you on a tour before we bury you.”
With that, Loki got up, patted her on the top of the head, pushed her back down to the sand, and went off to greet a group of people who were just coming out of the shadows and into range of the light from the fire.
Chapter 32
Fenris walked out of the darkness with Idun. Most traces of his Brock identity seemed to be deliberately scrubbed away. The only resemblance to the yuppie who picked Freya up in his Challenger was that he was still in full biped mode. Not that he appeared as a normal human. He looked like a werewolf who got stuck in the middle of the transformation. Many of his features were seemingly manlike, but he was covered in dark fur and his hair was long enough to make into a ridiculous, intentionally spiked Mohawk. He wore baggy jeans, and the wallet in his back pocket attached to his belt with a chain. A vintage Never Mind the Bollocks T-shirt was stretched tight across his massive chest and shoulders and hung loosely at his waist. A piece of it was tucked in at his belt buckle.
Werewolves are not often known for their keen fashion sense, but at this moment Fenris was an electrolysis appointment away from being a cover model for an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.
Idun was dressed in a simple and tasteful white frock with a black Coach handbag. Apparently, nobody had mentioned that a field trip to the desert was on the agenda when she chose her outfit for the evening. The dress was cut a bit lower then she seemed comfortable wearing.
Her discomfort may have had less to do with how much bosom she was showing and more about who she was with. Her emotions didn’t show openly on her face. Cracking her aristocratic mask, the one that seemed to become part of her persona the day she was accepted into the elite Beverly Hills social circle, seemed unlikely. But there was a certain aura in the way she carried herself that screamed, “I am NOT with stupid”. Had she been wearing the T-shirt that verbalized this unspoken message, the finger would have pointed squarely at Fenris.
Loki met them as they approached. He grabbed his son and locked him in a bear hug.
“That’s my boy! I tell you to fetch me a goddess and damned if you didn’t fetch me a goddess. The impressive part is that you had to fight through a dragon and deal with a surprise resurrection from the underworld. I guess I’m going to have to have a word with your sister about letting Baldr get away from Hel to begin with, but you did a hell of job, son! A hell of job!”
“Thanks, Dad,” Fenris said unenthusiastically.
“Awwwww, what’s the matter bubba? You look like you have a frown that’s desperately in need of being turned upside down.”
“It’s nothing, Dad, it’s just been a long couple of days. So, how’s Mom?”
“Still dead!” Loki said as he gave his son a thumbs-up.
“It’s complete rubbish you know.” Idun had been watching the touching father and son reunion and decided it was time to rain on the parade. She was still angry about what she saw and heard happen between Freya and Fenris on the security tape from the seaweed wrap room of her spa. “That bit about him being tired is a lie. Fenris isn’t tired, he’s sad. And in more ways than one.”
Loki moved away from his son to address Idun. He took her hand and greeted her with a kiss to the goddess’s cheek.
Freya had been watching as best she could from her position on the ground and noticed how Idun pulled away slightly from Loki. The Goddess of Youth hid well the look of revulsion on her face but could not contain it completely. Whatever game was being played, it was pretty clear that Idun was not one of the pieces from Loki’s side of the board.
Idun was caught a little flat-footed by Loki’s enthusiastic greeting. She gave him what could only be described as a small curtsey.
“Loki, it’s…a pleasure.” She almost choked on the words. There were precious few things that all the gods agreed upon. They could invent a thousand reasons to have petty squabbles with one another. Aegir, the God of the Sea, and Vör, the Goddess of Wisdom, accidently destroyed the island of Krakatoa during a disagreement about the value of top tenors in a band of singing Gregorian monks. On only one topic were they all of one mind. Every one of them hated Loki.
Loki grinned at her. He was the God of Lies and as such had perfected a number of different smiles to go with his falsehoods. The one he flashed at Idun would have allowed Loki to sell Rush Limbaugh stock in MSNBC and get a thank you cookie basket from him to boot.
“Just settle down, missy, take a couple deep breaths…” He eyed her breasts and winked, “Heaving ones if you don’t mind. Then tell me all about what misunderstanding has you all hot under the collar. Oh, and here, have a pen.” He stuffed one of his corporate pens down her cleavage as an afterthought.
Idun removed the offending object as if Loki had just stuffed a dead vole down her dress.
“Your son,” she started while adjusting her clothing and trying to recapture her dignity, “did his best to betray us.”
“Us???” Loki laughed at the word. He grabbed one of the hooded minions that was rushing by and put his arm around the startled man. “Can you believe she actually said ‘us’?” He pointed and laughed at Idun. He poked the confused guy in his ribs and nodded at him until the guy lifted his arm, pointed, and flung a few bewildered laughs in Idun’s direction as well.
The laughter continued for about fifteen seconds. Loki suddenly stopped laughing, grabbed the man’s head and twisted it until the sharp snap of his spine rang out into the night. The hooded man crumpled in a heap at Loki’s feet.
“Idun, there is no us! You work for Odin. For the life of me I can’t figure out why. He’s about as much fun as a barbed wire catheter. The only reason I am even tolerating you here is because your boss and I have a bit of a truce going.” Loki conspicuously leaned around her to see if the back looked as good as the front did. His gaze was drawn to how the silk of her dress fell over her hips. For a moment he was hypnotized by thoughts of hills and valleys and how he should really spend more time appreciating what nature had to offer.
“Okay, you bring a few other assets to the party,” he said as he raised an eyebrow and then met Idun eye to eye, “but if not for those couple of things, you would be a Jane Doe at the bottom of a mountain lake somewhere, so tread lightly with your words.”
“Fine.” Idun did her best to keep any hint of defiance out of her voice. She was in no position to put herself on Loki’s bad side. Despite this, the word still came out with a hard edge that she hoped he didn’t notice. “While it’s true Fenris took down Baldr, he turned on us as soon as the Valkyrie raided my place to take the prisoners. I had managed to immobilize Freya without a struggle and as soon as it was time to hand her over to Odin, your son ran downstairs to warn her. He even offered to run away with her. Now he is mooning over what might have been if she had said yes and lamenting that she didn’t. I think Odin will take great comfort in the fact that the wild and vicious wolf that is prophesied to kill him has turned out
to be nothing more than a love-struck pup that can be brought low from something as silly as a schoolboy crush. He may as well give up ruling beside you Loki and instead go cry on the Dr. Phil show.”
Once she got rolling, Idun went from just stating the facts to editorializing on the situation and openly insulted Loki’s son. Fenris didn’t seem to notice or care, but the intensely angry look that Loki shot her made it clear that she had crossed a line. He may have been a complete asshole, but Loki was also a father. Like most dads, nobody was allowed to speak ill of his kids except him.
Loki threw his arm around Fenris’ shoulders. “Okay, son, tell me the truth, did you really offer to run away with Freya?”
Fenris looked down at the dead minion whose neck his dad snapped either just for fun or to make some sort of point. Knowing Loki, it was probably both. He looked back into the eyes of his father and just nodded.
Loki squeezed him tighter, “That’s my boy! A chip off the old block! Taking a run at Freya! That’s the big leagues. I’m so proud!” Loki said, as he wiped away an imaginary tear.
Idun’s jaw dropped. It took her a moment to remember how to make words come out of her mouth. “But he tried to betray us…I mean you…well everyone. Had she gone away with him, we all would have lost.”
“Hey, my son isn’t a turncoat, he’s just horny. He would have eventually brought her back to me when he was done with her. Wouldn’t you, kiddo?”
Fenris shrugged a little, but a small smile had returned to his face.
“By the way son, you have your old man’s taste. There was a time when I would have drowned my own mother in acid if I thought it would have gotten Freya to even smile in my direction. It’s a sickness really and believe me that girl knows how to make the most of the disease. Okay, you were gonna stab us all in the back so you could get your freak on with Freya. At least that makes you interesting! Your sister is down there in Hel, ruling the dead and going through some weird emo phase. I only hear from her when she is out of black nail polish and needs someone to go to CVS for her…and your brother is a complete stick in the mud. The last I heard from Jormungand was that he tried to eat Detroit and then disappeared. But you, I can relate to.”
Loki put his hand up for a high-five. Fenris hesitated for a moment, and then slapped his dad’s hand.
“Okay son, the topic is closed; nobody will speak of it again.”
Idun opened her mouth to say something. Loki looked at her and mouthed the word “nobody.”
Loki handed Fenris something that looked like an asthma inhaler. “Freya’s still looking a little rough, and as our resident hooker, she has one client left to service. And believe me, he won’t be happy if she looks like she’s been dating Steve Austin. A couple squirts of this will fix her right up.”
Idun rolled her eyes and produced an apple from out of her purse. “Just give her this. It’ll put her right in no time.”
Loki snatched the apple from her hand and took a big bite from it himself. “You see, the problem with this thing here is that it’s now obsolete.” He accidently sprayed her with little pieces of chewed up apple as he violated the social guideline that suggests people shouldn’t talk with their mouths full. Idun suspected that it was not an accident. “I gave a few of your apples to the guys in my company’s lab a few years ago. Just recently, they came back with an inhaler that they claim will cure anything from AIDS to male pattern baldness. Once they isolated the elements and figured out how to synthesis them, we discovered we could produce these babies without even having to use the apples. Too bad it couldn’t cure the damage from the car crash that killed all of them, but ‘accidents’ do happen!”
Loki couldn’t have looked any more smug if he tried. He continued. “Once I start selling a watered-down version of the inhaler to the masses, Cathay is going to put the pharmaceutical industry out of business, along with Oil of Olay and every company that makes a version of the little blue pill. So, what do you think? We were going to do the whole FDA thing and sell it from pharmacies, but after giving it some thought I figured nothing beats the homey charm of an infomercial.”
Idun was speechless. Her precious apples had been debased, their vital elements isolated, synthesized, and turned into something that would be sold on late night television; probably by Ron Popeil, Suzanne Somers, or Hulk Hogan. She felt immediately violated and became physically ill at this perversion of her life’s work. There was also a pending sense of dread as she looked into Loki’s eyes and knew that he knew that she was now redundant. Her ability to cultivate the apples was the only thing that made her existence valuable. That was now gone.
“So, toots, I guess you now know how the Smith Corona people felt when Steve Jobs hit the market with his Lisa computer. Now that my inhaler has sent little Idun Appleseed out to pasture why the hell do I still need you hanging around?”
Idun could feel herself sweating in a most unladylike manner. She watched as Loki pulled a meat cleaver from the inside pocket of his sport coat and started running his thumb back and forth across the business end of the blade. Idun wasn’t sure but believed if she had gotten a good look at the handle, it would have the word Ginsu stamped on it. This was exactly why she rarely involved herself in the politics of other gods; it usually ended up in some sort of dismemberment, not usually by a mail-order meat clever, but dismemberment, nonetheless.
While her mind searched for an answer that would not result in her being chopped up into pâté and fed to the desert scavengers, the tension was broken by deep, resonant voice from behind her.
“She stays because it is my will that she stays!”
Odin walked out of the darkness of the desert into the light of the makeshift camp. It didn’t seem like his voice filled the night, rather it seemed as if the night air got out of the way when he spoke. Odin, the King of the Aesir, was here. He was flanked by his faithful lapdog, Simmons and what looked like an entire regiment of Valkyrie.
“I was wondering when you would show up.” Loki managed a smile, but it didn’t completely hide the disappointment he felt as he slipped the cleaver back into his jacket.
“Another day perhaps, sweetheart,” he said as he winked at Idun.
Chapter 33
Odin looked angrily at Loki and watched as he stuck the cleaver back under his coat. The look was so full of utter contempt that Loki could not ignore it.
Putting his hands up in an almost defensive position, he addressed Odin’s unspoken accusation. “Honestly, Odin, it’s not what it looks like.”
“I think it looks like you were going to kill her,” Odin said flatly and not without a hint of menace in his voice.
“Oh,” replied Loki, “then it’s totally what it looked like.”
Freya watched the interaction between the two gods. If anyone were to ask either of them about where they stood on the concept of good and evil, they would agree that they were from different extremes of the morality pendulum. Loki saw himself as a playful despot, an agent of violent, sometimes random, chaos. He was a flesh-eating virus in a baby pool, a Snickers bar wrapped in a Milky Way wrapper and given to a child with a peanut allergy.
Odin, on the other hand, believed in his own superiority; that everything in the universe would be much better if everyone just did everything his way. A world where Odin was the final word was in the best interests of both gods and man. If he had to do some really mean and nasty things on the way to this Utopia, so be it. The end justified the means.
Ultimately, there really wasn’t much difference between the two. Both of them were selfish, violent, and would likely fit the definition of evil for everyone whose wallet didn’t contain an ACLU card. Whatever was going on between them, and their obviously shaky alliance, it was bound to result in lots of people getting hurt and/or killed. Freya was fairly concerned that she might be included in the body count.
It didn’t escape Freya’s notice that she had been separated from Thor and Baldr and was the only one lying bound in the desert sand nea
r some weird looking machinery and what appeared to be a sacrificial table. The sheer amount of terror she was feeling turned the simple act of bladder control into a triumph of the human spirit.
Despite her anxiety, she found the idea of Loki and Odin trying to work together entertaining. It was like if Hitler and Stalin went in together to run a quaint little Bed and Breakfast.
Fenris walked up to her. He didn’t speak to Freya or repeat his previous offer to help her escape and run away with him. She got the impression that he was the kind of creature whom you get only one chance to reject. Since she had already spurned his advances, Freya suspected that she had moved from being an object of his desire to being just one more thing he would cover in BBQ sauce and serve with French Fries.
Fenris got down on one knee, grabbed Freya by the hair and lifted her head off the ground. He examined the part of her skull where he had punched her during the fracas at Idun’s spa. The wolf/man/demigod had quite literally caved in her cranium with one punch. Freya just assumed that she had survived only because Idun had gotten some of the healing apples into her before her brain slid out of the fist shaped hole in her head.
He pawed at the area where there was once a fatal injury and seemed satisfied that it had healed completely. Freya looked into his eyes, and for just a moment she caught a hint of sadness in them. His hand gently touched the once wounded part of her head and caressed it.
Whether she was right or wrong, she could have sworn that the sadness was tempered with remorse for what he had previously done to her. It was there for a moment, but whatever tender feelings had momentarily gripped Fenris quickly disappeared into an emotional whirlpool of anger and transferred into feelings of betrayal. If Fenris was anything like his dad, that meant that he was very much of a “if you’re not with me, you’re against me” kind of guy.
