by B. C. James
Simmons opened the lid to the box and Surt put the used condom in it. Even he seemed a little grossed out by the idea of touching it. A broad smile came to Odin’s usually stoic face. The day started with him being one used prophylactic away from victory. The sound of Simmons closing the lid to the box was the sweet sound of the Allfather’s triumph over his adversaries.
He motioned over to where the sarcophagus was and a couple of the hooded, robed figures each removed their outer raiment. Under it, they wore lab coats and began to work furiously on the high-tech coffin. They busied themselves checking gauges, hooking up cables, and making sure there was a healthy flow of sap from Yggdrasil to the casket.
Odin’s smile disappeared when Simmons didn’t walk towards him to offer up the box. His joy turned to shock when his faithful, if oft abused, assistant walked over to Loki and handed it to him instead.
“Odin, I don’t know why you would want something like this,” Loki said with legitimate bewilderment in his voice, “but if you want something this badly, there is no way that it can be good for me. So, no offense, but I had to make sure you never got your hands on it.” Loki opened the box and scowled. “If you manage to survive the next few hours, I strongly suggest you get some help. Although I think this goes way beyond anything even Dr. Drew could deal with.”
Odin moved his gaze from Loki to Simmons. Telling the man he was fired somehow seemed like a weak and anticlimactic response to this level of betrayal.
Simmons stared back and him, and with pain and hate in his eyes. “You never respected me. I did everything for you, and you just treated me like crap. I am not just something you scrape off your shoe. I’m a person with real goals and dreams. I deserve to be treated with dignity!”
“Shut up, Carl.” Loki hated it when people whined about how much respect they deserved. If someone was truly deserving of respect, they certainly wouldn’t need to cry about it.
“You see Odin…see…he called me Carl! Did you hear that, he used my first name! Carl!”
Loki just rolled his eyes and seriously considering the benefits of simply killing the man. The last thing he needed was a lackey with self-esteem issues. He already had a competent executive assistant; he just couldn’t see Carl Simmons and Holly Ann sharing the same office space.
The look on Odin’s face hardened as the Valkyrie gathered behind him along with the small army of hooded mercenaries that he brought along to the party.
Loki looked over the assembly with some amusement. “Before we get to the obligatory threats and promises to wipe each from the face of the planet, just who the hell are all these guys? You have them dressed like cheesy villains from the old Batman television series. Which I like. Some of my friends have the same fashion sense. But I swear, I keep thinking I’m going to lift one of their hoods and find Adam West staring back at me.”
Odin responded with a slightly haughty look. “Did I ever mention that the prison system is a hotbed of people who worship me? Getting a small army together of loyal felons wasn’t really all that difficult.”
“Well, isn’t that special?” Loki turned his attention to Surt. “So, are you in?”
The demon looked at the table where the shattered remains of Freya were lying on the slab and gasping for breath like a fish out of water. “As soon as you sacrifice her to me, I am.” Surt looked at the legion of dark creatures either perched around the camp or flying in circular patterns above them. “They will be too.”
Odin stroked his beard. This was an unconscious action he often did when he was trying to put a deal together in his head. “So, Surt,” Odin pondered aloud, “If I sacrificed her instead, would that be enough to lure you over to my side of the disagreement?”
Surt started to walk away from the table, he saw where this conversation was going. One way or another, there was going to be a fairly vicious fight in the general area of Freya. He recognized that he could play one of the gods against the other and secure the best offer for himself, but he didn’t particularly care for Odin. Plus, he and Loki already had a pre-existing agreement. He may have been evil, but he wasn’t willing to open up the whole argument about whether or not verbal agreements were legally actionable. Loki seemed like the type who wouldn’t be shy about dragging him into court.
“No, Odin, there will be no deal between us. First of all, Loki has already sacrificed several thousand people as a down payment. You would probably have to blow up the Chrysler Building to catch up. Sacrificing a goddess is fundamentally his final balloon payment to get my services. Also, I find you tedious and annoying. If I am going to work with either of you, on a personal level, I prefer Loki.”
Odin didn’t betray anything with a reaction to Surt’s words. He just nodded and continued to behave as if this were a negotiation.
“Okay, so I can’t get you to work with me. But if he doesn’t make that final goddess sacrifice, then you won’t be working with him either. Correct?”
Surt nodded. “Until he makes the sacrifice, I’m just going to sit back on this boulder and enjoy the show.” He dusted the dirt from the top of a very large rock and sat down.
Loki began to strip to the waist and turned towards Odin. “So, that’s how it’s going to be, is it Odin? You, Apple Annie over there, your gaggle of sluts, and some rejects from the prison system against me, Fenris, and your former flunky. I still think we have you outnumbered…”
To the naked eye, Loki appeared to be stripping down for battle; in the background, however, Simmons opened his brief case and pulled out a rectangular bag filled with liquid. There was a tube attached to the bottom of it. Odin quickly identified this as the sort of bag that is used to either collect blood or give a transfusion. Loki shoved the needle into his arm and squeezed the bag, forcing the dark liquid into his own veins.
“You’re going to love this, Odin. While I think the three of us are more than a match for you,” He took a quick look at Simmons, “okay, two and a half. I arranged a couple of party favors that you simply won’t believe.”
A strange rotting smell wafted across the camp as a small hooded figure came out of the darkness and stood by Loki’s side. She pulled her hood down to reveal a face of such exquisite beauty it could have calmed the roughest sea and inspired a new generation of Greeks to sack the city of Troy. Her hair, while deep raven in color and visibly shined as if made of black diamonds.
Her robes dropped to the ground and she wore the style of unrealistic armor that only Xena: Warrior Princess found appealing. It was burnt umber in a color and matched her makeup flawlessly. All in all, it was a striking contrast to the woman’s snow-white skin. From the waist up she looked like a goth swimsuit model. It was from the waist down that things got disturbing. Her legs, and presumably everything else, looked as if they had been rotting in the ground since before the disco era.
Odin recognized the half-corpse woman immediately. This was Loki’s daughter, Hela. She was the ruler of Hel and person in charge of the majority of the dead.
“You remember your uncle Odin, don’t you Hela? Wave ‘hello’ to the nice man!”
Hela neither waved nor spoke a word. She just stood there wearing a bored expression on her face and the scent of age-old decomposition. Odin sniffed the air a few more times. The smell of rotting meat was getting much stronger and there was no way that it was all coming from her.
Moans came from out of the darkness. It was joined by the sound of a thousand heavy feet scrapping or running along the desert floor. They started to emerge into the light of the camp. Hela had brought an army of undead with her. Some were clad in armor and carried weapons while many others just wore suits, jeans, dresses, rags, nothing at all, or whatever happened to be on their bodies when their lives ended. To the casual observer it may have looked like an episode of The Walking Dead was being filmed at this little strip of the Nevada desert.
The Valkyrie were starting to act nervous. Every one of the undead shuffling around at the other side of the camp had been escorted to
Hel by one of them. It was pretty clear by the looks on their dead faces that they hadn’t appreciated it.
A couple of the felons who were working for Odin stepped forward and pulled guns from under their robes. Before they could fire a single shot, rotting hands popped up from under the sand and pulled them under. Their short screams were quickly stifled as they sank beneath the ground. Large pools of blood soon bubbled up and formed red puddles in the arid soil where the men once stood.
Loki was looking towards Odin and letting a second bag of blood fill his veins. “Just give me a few seconds, Odin and we can do this thing. Man, my blood pressure is going to be off the charts tomorrow.” He looked at his daughter Hela. “Maybe I should have cut another artery to let some of mine out while I filled up? Ah well, what do I know, I’m not a doctor. Live and learn.”
The tension had grown as each side was moments away from rushing each other. Odin had instructed his troops that the goal was to grab Freya and get her away from Loki. Loki had made it clear to his people that their job was to get Freya to him and kill as many of Odin’s folks as they could in the meantime. Surt was sitting on his boulder, surrounded by minor demons, wishing he had some popcorn.
Just as all sorts of violence was about to commence at the sacrificial table, dark clouds gathered above. Typically, when fast moving storms steamroll their way through the sky, the coming tempest is described as rolling-in. On this night, such an explanation would be inaccurate. The storm clouds seemed to just appear out of a clear, starlit sky, eclipsing all celestial light. Within moments, not a star was visible for miles around them.
Lightning began to viciously arc from cloud to cloud. The electric light show in the sky was accompanied by the percussion of loud thunderclaps. It wasn’t a sound that could simply be heard, it was felt as well. Some of those on Odin’s side held their jaws after each booming assault just to keep their teeth from rattling. A few of Hela’s zombies simply fell apart as the thunder sent violent shockwaves through the air.
The wind picked up and began to blow, sending loose materials flying across the encampment. Those who were not vigilant found themselves on the wrong end of the wind-powered shrapnel. Idun was picked up by the gale and tossed into a group of Hela’s undead, causing them to tumble over. They awkwardly regained their footing and tried to stand against a wind that felt almost alive and angry. Idun noticed that the re-animated dead were not recognizing her as an enemy, in fact, they barely noticed she was there. She took advantage of this opportunity, and subtly used the zombie warriors as unwitting human shields against an assault of a seemingly sentient gale.
Dust devils erupted from the sand and began to turn over a number of large objects in their path. Two women sprinted at full speed from a trailer. They were dressed in the biker leather and armor immediately identifiable as Valkyrie formal wear. One ran from the trailer so quickly that she tripped on her way down the stairs and fell hard to desert floor. The other woman helped her back to her feet and they continued running. Odin recognized the dark haired woman as Belle and began to have a sinking feeling about what she was doing in that particular trailer.
A beam of laser light punched a hole in the trailer’s wall, and Baldr leapt out of the improvised door. He too sprinted in the same direction as the Valkyrie leader and her partner.
Dozens of lightning forks burst through trailer walls, killing some of Odin’s followers and incinerating a number of zombies. The killing bolts were accompanied by crashes of thunder that could put any sonic boom to shame. A roar of unrestrained rage exploded from inside the trailer. The sound was neither animal nor human but more like a hurricane with a voice box.
Consciousness returned to Freya in the midst of the storm. A small smile came to her face as she took in the chaos.
“He’s baaaaack,” she said in a child-like, sing-song manner that she remembered from an old horror movie. It didn’t matter that nobody was close enough to hear her, especially over the din of the rising tempest. Just the words alone made her feel better.
Without warning, the trailer exploded, sending shards of lightning-heated metal in every direction. Standing in the shallow crater where the doublewide once existed appeared a fully healed and apoplectic Thunder God. His eyes glowed red with energy and the rising wind whipped his crimson mane into a violent tangle. The rage on his face said more than any words could. He knew exactly what had been done to him and exactly who was behind it. Someone was going to die for it; probably a lot of someone’s.
“Uh oh,” were the only words either Odin’s or Loki’s mind could muster.
Chapter 36
Thor stood in the crater and looked over the groups of humans and gods that were scattered across the site. He was breathing as heavy as somebody who had just broken the course record for the Tough Mudder.
The large gasping breaths were not because he was exhausted or physically taxed; he was simply so furious that it took his breath away. The weather around him subliminally bent to his mood, as lightning strike after lightning strike assaulted the ground, decimating the ranks of both hooded lackeys and the undead.
About twenty yards in front of him was Loki. He looked like he was receiving a blood transfusion. Thor was well aware that it was his father, Odin, who was responsible for torturing him. He also knew that it was his dear ol’ dad, not Loki, who had run a spear tipped with dragon venom through him. Despite knowing that it was the Allfather who authored his recent string of miseries, Thor suspected Loki’s nearly invisible fingerprints were contributing factors as well.
The Thunder God may have been restricted in physical ways over the last few days, but he had also been completely aware of everything that was going on around him. Thor identified Loki’s nearly imperceptible influence back when Freya and Baldr were shoving him into the back seat of Fenris’ Challenger.
The wolf had fooled Freya into thinking he was just a normal guy, one more love-struck admirer of the Goddess of Love. With the same keen senses that made Thor an all-star defensive player on the football field and the scourge of the race of giants, he had picked up on the presence of Loki’s kin instantly, even if he was too incapacitated to sound a warning.
Thor was to the race of giants what a mongoose is to snakes. Killing giants was woven into his DNA, so he knew them well. How they looked, how they thought, even how they smelled. Even back when Odin and Loki were the best of friends, Thor never quite warmed up to him simply because the roots of his family tree reached back into Jotunheim.
His ability to change shapes and appear in a more normal form made it easy for the rest of the Aesir to forget what he was and accept him into their society, but not Thor. He never trusted him. It was those same backwater genetics that were passed down to Loki’s children, and Thor instantly knew exactly who and what Brock really was. The creature’s pedigree was woven into his very scent. All the Brute cologne in the world couldn’t hide it.
Loki and Fenris were not the only threat he presumed he would be facing on the sands this night. To Thor’s left were the Valkyrie and whatever henchmen and cannon fodder Odin had dredged up for the evening’s festivities. The Valkyrie had their weapons drawn but were retreating toward a tall woman with dark hair.
Thor recognized her. She had been with them when they were attacked at the stadium. He presumed she was their current leader. Thor wondered how long her tenure as head of the Valkyrie would last. They tended to go through leaders with the same speed and brutality as third world dictatorships where opium is the number one export. Chances were good that he would have to deal with them as well.
Thor took quick stock of the remaining threats as he put together his plan. Hela, Loki’s daughter, was standing near her dad along with a force that looked like a 28 Days Later after-party. Idun was skulking around with the zombies, clutching her purse, and trying not to be noticed. Surt was reclining on a boulder near the table where Freya’s inert body was chained.
Thor’s blood ran cold when he called up the memory of Freya�
�s screams as she had been raped by that demon. There was nothing that Freya had done in her life that said she deserved that sort of punishment. The Godess of Love had also done her best to keep him safe over the past few days. Despite their rocky past, he owed her.
It would be silly to say that he wanted to protect her…that ship had sailed. The pain and damage she had already gone through was probably worse than anything else that could be done to her body. Just looking at her said this was true. Even so, something in his bones told him that as bad as the rape had been, there were bigger horrors in store for her if she wasn’t saved.
Something about how Surt was smugly sitting by her was unsettling. He had the air of a hawk, hunched over its prey with its wings spread. He didn’t just want to get her out of here to settle a debt; there was something about failing and leaving her to an unknown but cruel fate that made his heart sink. This was odd, as Thor didn’t think he was capable of feeling anything like that for anyone again. He had gone for so in a flavorless, emotionless haze that empathy and feeling heartsick for someone else took him by surprise.
The storm that had been whipped up by his anger caused a fair amount of chaos and bought Thor more time to think before acting. He had identified nearly every threat, but his father seemed conspicuously absent from site. After the first few bolts of lightning hit the ground, Odin had disappeared.
He didn’t have a lot of time, as he guessed it was only a matter of moments before someone made the suicidal decision to come at him. Thor took a last look around for Odin when something caught his eye. There it was on a pedestal, waiting for him. Mjölnir!
A long time ago, he had thrown the hammer away as a grief-stricken response over the death of his wife, Sif. Thor had no idea why it was here, nor did he really care at the moment. Seeing it sitting on that pedestal was like seeing a missing part of his own soul presented to him on a silver platter. It hadn’t hit him until just this moment how empty he had felt without it.
