by T. G. Ayer
We circled Yuri's van. I stepped closer and peered in through the greasy windows only to find it empty of our friendly neighborhood Interpol agent. Seemed he'd gone off somewhere without inviting us. Edrik gave me a questioning glance as we left the empty van, and I shrugged. I hadn't yet formulated a guess as to what the agent was up to.
We walked up the road until we reached a small clearing. I faced Siri and nodded, then backed away a few paces. Like me, she was cloaked in glamor that would hide her from all eyes. Slowly, golden sparks swirled as her human form disintegrated and the dragon came forth. Siri grew larger and larger until she reached her full size. She leaned forward and bent one knee, allowing Enya and Edrik to scramble up her back.
Once they were safely up, I shucked out my wings, dusting them free behind me. A few red feathers floated back and forth in little half circles until they landed on the gravel. I rose into the air, and Siri followed, giving me a toothy dragon grin. We headed for the manor, the moon shining down on us, bright and white.
From our height, we could see the land undulating in valleys and hills. Despite the moonlight, the night shadowed the finer details, but I still enjoyed a view that was as original as it could ever get. How many people could say they got to take a ride on the back of a beautiful golden dragon on a regular basis?
We descended slowly and came down in a clearing a few yards away from the house. Siri landed and let her passengers off before transforming back into her human self. We ducked down behind a stand of scraggly trees and studied the house.
The old building would have been magnificent in its heyday, built in the old manor style. It even had a few turrets that added character. Now in the early hours of the morning, the house looked silent. Nothing stirred outside, which confirmed they didn't have guards on the outside perimeter.
I glanced at Enya. "Ready?" I asked softly, and her eyes sparkled with excitement. "Wait here for me. I'll fly around and find a good entrance. Then I'll come get you. Aimee was saying you can send a stream of heat directly at a specific point?"
She nodded, her cheeks going pink. "Yes, I just learned how to do that. It was pretty amazing." She seemed happy and quite impressed at her newfound talent.
She wasn't the only one impressed. "Right. So I need you to direct your heat at a lock. You know the part that goes from the door into the side panel? I'm not sure what they're called."
Enya smiled. "Yeah, the thingy that goes into the whatsit. I know exactly what you're talking about." She giggled and I wanted to giggle too. Only we were working, so levity had to wait.
I patted her shoulder, warned everyone to stay down and out of sight, then launched into the air and glided around the house toward the back yard. The place was rundown, with broken planters scattered across what must have once been a bright-green lawn. The property was bordered by lines of skinny, dying trees.
From the front of the house, I'd seen the main entrance. It had a fairly deep porch that was steeped in shadow, hidden from the glare of moonlight by a long overhanging roof. But it looked a bit too direct for me. I preferred a more secluded way in, so I drew around the house and hovered, taking my time studying the house from end to end. My wings flapped strongly at my back, keeping me steady.
Then I saw something that looked like it could work. I tilted forward, then sped closer to a balcony that sat on the second floor to the far right of the building. The balcony was wide with double cottage pane doors.
It would do.
I flew back to the team and landed smoothly on the ground. It had taken me a while to master this whole flying and landing thing. Now I could land and ease into a walk and it looked effortless.
I hurried to the team and crouched down. "Edrik, come around the back. There's a balcony on the right, first floor. Meet me there." He nodded, and I turned to Enya. "You ready?" I asked.
"As I'll ever be," she said, and we both got to our feet together. She'd stayed beneath the cloak the entire time, even keeping the hood up to hide her face. Now she looked up at me from beneath the cowl, and I was struck by what the moonlight did to her face. Her pale skin was now transformed and looked more like stone than real skin. The dark veins that crawled across the skin resembled cracks. The girl could pass for a very beautiful stone statue.
I pushed my thoughts away and grabbed her around her waist, surging upward. I had to thrust harder to compensate for the added weight, but I soon found that Enya was as light as she was fragile.
I glided down to the balcony and landed softly in front of the double doors. Enya shuffled beneath the cloak and moved to the lock. I watched as she bent closer and pointed the fingers of her right hand at the lock. The handle of the door began to glow as Enya aimed her heat and tried to focus it to a more specific location. I watched, amazed as her hand began to shrivel and her skin took on the look of white-hot coals.
She was so silent I almost pushed back the hood to check she was still with me. Then she adjusted her position and must have changed the direction of the heat to achieve a better focus because the handle now cooled, losing the red tinge. I squinted at the gap between the two doors and was certain I could see the glow of hot metal. When the door shuddered slightly, I knew she'd managed to melt the catch.
Then she straightened and glanced up at me, her expression saying, Job done. I pulled the hood over her eyes and grabbed her around the waist. Spreading my wings, I lifted off, then glided around the house, heading back to leave Enya with Siri.
By the time I returned, Edrik had made his way to the dead garden below the balcony. I was about to lower myself and give him a lift up when he backed away a few steps, then took a running leap. For a wolf, he moved like a monkey. Super fast and light on his feet. He sprinted, running at the wall, then planted a foot on it to boost himself up to the balcony. He grabbed onto the balustrade and used the momentum of his jump to swing himself up and over, landing in front of the doors in silence.
Well, okay then.
He didn't need my help at all. I headed to the balcony, landing softly beside him seconds before realizing creeping up on an unsuspecting werewolf was bad for my health. But he just looked over his shoulder at me as if expecting me to be there. I raised an eyebrow, then moved around him to open the door slowly. It glided inward without making a sound. Odd for a house that had been abandoned for years.
We slipped inside and I pulled my night-vision goggles over my eyes. I bent my head to my microphone. "You getting this, Derek?" His voice crackled in my ears as he confirmed. He'd attached a camera to the front of my jacket and provided us all with the requisite earwigs and microphones. I was more than thankful I didn't get those annoying contact lens cameras, but I suspected adding goggles would have messed up the quality of the recording.
I stood still, my back to the wall as I stared at the opposite wall. The room was empty, cobwebs thick in the corners. The moon streamed in through the open windows, lighting a path all the way to the open door that led into the passage.
Through the wall, I could just make out a faint outline of orange and purple. A live one probably two rooms away. I whispered into my microphone, knowing Edrik would hear as well. I headed to the door and pointed left, and Edrik nodded. He'd take the right. I slipped into the hall and glided down the corridor, looking left and right and coming up empty. All the doors were open, revealing rooms that were filled with makeshift tables with stacks of bricks supporting long pieces of wood. There were ragged holes in the walls between many of the rooms, making the open spaces larger.
I frowned. What the hell was going in this old house? And that was when I walked into the room containing guns. Every size and shape imaginable. And one end of the room seemed to be designated as some sort of laboratory or experimental operation, with beakers and microscopes and big strange machines.
I knew Derek would be getting it all on tape, so I passed through, heading toward the orange splodge. I neared the door and waited outside the room, only daring to peer inside. A frost giant stood at the wind
ow, staring out.
My heart thudded so hard I almost felt it in my throat. Thank goodness we had glamor or this oaf would have seen us. I slipped past and left him to his watch, hoping the girls didn't do anything to draw his attention.
Down the hall and to the right, another orange smudge glowed. I slid forward, fingers touching the wall, and I tried to control my breathing. Here, another frost giant paced the room. His face was pale and rugged and not in the least friendly. What did girl frost giants looked like anyway? I'd never seen one before.
I shook my head and reminded myself to focus instead of thinking ridiculous and irrelevant thoughts.
At the end of the hall, I reached a landing that led down toward the stairs. The balustrade curved around the stairwell, leading right and down the hall. I was about to head right when I caught a hint of orange straight ahead. Just at the top of the landing was a set of double doors. It must have once been a main bedroom or an upstairs living room.
As I got closer, the smudge grew large. It moved first to the left then right. Whispers of a voice reached me through the door.
"He won't win this time. He just won't. I won't let him."
"I am simply telling you what I see." A woman's voice, musical, but not happy at all. "No matter how may times you try to change fate, fate itself will find a way back to what is meant to be."
"But the prophecy. I don't understand why the original prophecy isn't coming to pass?" Loki snapped. He sounded frustrated and angry.
"Perhaps they interpreted it incorrectly all those years ago. Or perhaps people heard only what they wanted to hear," came the woman's voice. I detected a trace of satisfaction in her tone that made me smile. She certainly wasn't happy to be working with our favorite god.
"I gave you his blood, just as you asked," Loki growled. "You made me bring him to you and bleed him almost dry. And the spell didn't work. Are you playing games with me, woman?"
"I assure you I am not. I am doing what I can. I don't have much choice, do I?" He didn't answer, just sucked in another angry breath. "If it makes you feel better, your brother will recover as soon as his body replenishes the lost blood. I only bled him. I didn't kill him."
Brother? Did she mean Thor? Chills ran up and down my spine.
Loki growled. "He is not my brother."
"Then why are you so upset that he is weakened?" asked the woman. She certainly had guts.
Loki didn't answer. Footsteps hurried toward the door, and I had no place to hide. I stood, still praying he wouldn't see through my glamor. But I needn't have worried. Loki threw the doors open and stormed across the threshold, moving past me so fast the feathers on my wings fluttered.
When he stopped in his tracks, I held my breath and tried to temper my heartbeat. He tilted his head toward me, as if listening harder. Perhaps he'd heard me take a breath. Or had he heard the flutter of my wings? Whatever it was, I didn't plan on asking him. I remained still and waited as he waited, frozen to the spot and staring at nothing.
Then he shook his head and headed down the hall, taking the right turn I'd originally planned to take. I followed slowly, tiptoeing behind him, not daring to fly for fear he'd hear the flap of wings and feather.
My foot struck a loose floorboard and it squeaked so loudly I just about died on the spot, but Loki didn't even turn a hair. He entered the first room on the left, leaving the door wide open. I stood on the threshold, my heart frozen in my chest as I watched him stand beside the bed and stare down at the still form of Thor.
I'd found Thor.
My ears rang with shock. What impossible luck that we found him here with Loki. He'd been with Loki all along. It made our mission that much harder, but saving Thor was now as important as stealing the virus. If not more important.
I shifted away from the room. The sight of Loki's tight and angry features as he stared down at his unconscious brother did strange things to my insides. I had to admit that I'd seen a depth of emotion in his eyes as he stared at Thor. The proof that Loki loved his brother was right there in front of my eyes, and I wasn't sure I liked bearing witness to it. Knowing he had a heart made him seem more human in a way, and I didn't like to think of him that way.
Loki was cruel. Loki was harsh. Loki was the Trickster. He was not supposed to be a loving brother. Not after what he did to his own father. He'd taken Odin from us, stuck him in some strange dimension to keep him from helping us with this war with Loki.
But even that, I had to admit, seemed to confirm Loki had a heart. Because if he didn't care, he'd have just killed Odin and been done with it.
Damn it.
I didn't like this new knowledge. It churned my gut and made me want to scream and yell at him. Was this the way his family had felt about him all through his lifetime? A combination of love and frustration, annoyance and anger?
I wanted to walk back into that room and shake some sense into him. Instead, I studied the rest of the floor with the heat sensors, confirmed it was empty, then floated to the ground floor and made a full sweep.
I found one more frost giant and heard Edrik confirm one more on the other end of the ground floor. So Yuri was wrong. The count was four frost giants, two gods, and an unknown woman.
Our surveillance was done and I wasn't about to push my luck. When I turned to head back upstairs, I saw Edrik coming down the hall. I pointed at the upper floor and his head bobbed in agreement before he followed closely. We left the building without incident, pushing the balcony door closed. I flew back to the girls while Edrik did his wolf-monkey thing and leaped off the balcony as if he had his own wings attached to his back.
We returned to the boarding house, bearing information I hadn't even thought possible.
We'd found Loki and Thor. And Loki was trying to change fate.
I only hoped that whatever he'd done hadn't had any kind of lasting effect on the rest of our lives.
Yuri still wasn't back when we returned to Maria's, but he was the last person I was concerned with. When dealing with gods and frost giants and mystery fortune tellers, what did one human matter?
Derek created a 3-D image of the house and the locations of the Jotunn I'd seen. Naturally, we wouldn't expect them to still be there when we decided to enter, but at least we knew they were watching the grounds outside the house.
As soon as we got back, we gathered our things and the whole team got ready to move out. We left silently, Siri transporting Enya, Aidan, and Aimee to the field alongside the house.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The night seemed to have grown darker, the moon hunched lower on the horizon. It gave off an eerie, misty light that made everything it touched seem ominous and ghostly.
I gave everyone their locations, sending Aidan and Enya to the north corner, Aimee to the east. Joshua and Siri watched the south corner, with Edrik alone at the west end. I planned to join him soon, but for now I pulled on the night-vision glasses and flew upward to hover over the manor house roof for a while. I could see five heat signatures, which I assumed to be the two gods, the two frost giants, and the mysterious woman.
I lowered myself to the roof and found an even spot near one of the chimneys. There I rifled through my bag and retrieved the bottle of Norn water. I pulled Gungnir from my back and coated the tip of the spear with the water. The gold glistened as if I'd rubbed it with an oil, yet the water looked like plain old water to me.
No time to waste trying to unravel the mystery.
I slipped the spear back into the harness at my back, then fished inside the bag for a box of bullets. I dipped each of the bullets in the box into the water, then used one of the knives strapped to my thigh to cut a large cross on the lid. I would need to identify the box in a hurry.
Pulling the Glock from the holster on my right thigh, I proceeded to load the anointed bullets into the empty chambers. The other gun I filled with normal bullets, knowing they wouldn't do much more than slow either god or frost giant.
An hour later, I spoke into my microphone. "I'
m going in for Thor. If anything happens or I give the word, enter the building and eliminate all targets. Remember, we need the virus, so check the upper level room that has the chemistry setup. I'll take Thor straight to Asgard and come right back, so I will be gone for a little while. Be careful and keep your eyes open at all times."
When I fell silent, I heard a whispered chorus of copy-that's and will-do's. Satisfied that everyone knew their roles, I closed the bag, returned the gun to its holster, and surged into the air. With the goggles still on, I made one more sweep of the house, watching the two frost giants pace the floor. Thor remained unmoving in his bed, while Loki was seated in his room, his upper body hunched over.
The woman had also taken to her bed, but she tossed and turned and was definitely not asleep.
I flew around the house and landed on the balcony we'd used a few hours ago. The door was unlocked, with no sign that the jimmied door had been discovered.
Once inside, I pushed the door back into its closed position and sent up a silent thank you for water-swollen doors. I could see now how the damaged door fit snugly against the other one instead of swinging free.
I slipped out of the room, eyes moving back and forth, watching through the walls for the manor's occupants. Again, I ignored the Jotunn and this time headed straight for Thor's room. The handle was cool to touch, and I held my breath as I turned it to open the door.
The knob moved silently, and I let out a soft breath as I pushed the door open and slipped inside as quickly as I could. Without a sound, I moved toward the window, crossed the path of pale moonlight, and pressed against the wall in the shadows.
Removing my goggles, I let it fall around my neck. From my hiding place, I watched Thor, his chest barely moving, his breathing shallow. Fear rippled through me like an icy wave. What had the woman done to him? He slept soundly, unaware that I watched him, filled with fear.
I reached for Gungnir and released it from its holster. It never failed to impress me that a solid piece of five-foot-long metal could be shortened to no more than a foot's length. The magic of the Dwarfs was definitely impressive.
