by Adam Ingle
When she was done with her contortions, she stood and smiled at him. It was a smile of both love and sadness. He had gone through Hades for her without the slightest explanation. Now the man that stood before her hardly looked like the one she had come to know. He was haggard and sickly. He was pale and covered in mud. His clothing was soaked and torn and despite his best efforts not to, he shivered uncontrollably. It was only then that she realized her nakedness, and with a soft whisper a black gown seemed to shed from her skin to cover her. It did nothing to dampen her sexuality.
She walked over to the shepherd and caressed his face, paying no attention to the grime and mud that clung there. With another whisper his muddy rags fell to the ground and were replaced by a thick woolen sweater and heavy cotton pants. The rain streaked down them like they would a duck’s well-oiled back and ran into puddles on the ground. The shepherd felt true warmth, inside and out, for the first time since they had left.
“We're here,” said Persephone softly.
The softness disappeared suddenly and she turned toward the chasm, shouting with an authority the shepherd had never heard before.
“Heimdall! Show yourself,” she commanded.
Her voice echoed, and then there was silence. A swift wind picked up and sent the steam swirling into sinister spirals. The earth shook from somewhere deep, and then there was the sound of stone grinding on stone. Finally a figure appeared. It rode on a piece of multi-colored stone up through the steam. The stone was various shades of gray, black, dark brown, and green, with a single band of shiny red all sandwiched together like Paleolithic plywood. It was what one could imagine the droll and dour Vikings of a thousand years ago might have called a rainbow.
Standing at the helm of that extending stone bridge was a tall and bulky man in iron and leather armor burnished and etched by years of battle followed by years of disuse. Standing out starkly against the darkly weathered armor was skin so white it was far beyond pale, like alabaster. Long hair billowed behind him, and a braided beard reached to mid-chest, so white it could’ve been spider silk. This was Heimdall—the White God.
As Bifrost, the stone bridge that linked Asgard with Midgard, moved closer, the god squinted his eyes and both the shepherd and Persephone felt they were being scrutinized in a way they had never been before. The god shifted uncomfortably and touched an intricately detailed horn strung at his side. His thumb rubbed over what looked like an etching of a jester and a wolf, as if remembering or dreading something. Then he shook off the emotion or memory, literally shaking his head, and put his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Persephone,” said Heimdall as the bridge came to a stop directly in front of her. He spoke in tones far older and more Germanic than even the shepherd’s Icelandic accent. “Where is your master? I hear him not, and see not his baleful visage.”
Persephone sighed. “I fear he is not far behind, and I beg asylum for my companion and I.”
There was a long pause as Heimdall appeared to be contemplating the possibility. Again his hand went to the horn at his side. Finally he laughed, more to himself, like someone who couldn’t believe what he was about to say.
“That decision is not mine to make, but if you wish to plead your case to the Allfather, then I grant you both passage to Asgard.”
Heimdall sighed and lead them across the bridge. As Bifrost bridge pulled back into the steam and out of sight, there was a flash of lightning and a loud crack of thunder and up from the ground rose a man of slight build and angular features. He was olive skinned with solid black, almond-shaped eyes. There was no hair at all on his head; not on top, on his chin, or even above his eyes. He had long, slender fingers, which he had a habit of tapping randomly against each other as he was thinking. He wore a long, black robe that was tailored closely to his physique but flared out and pooled at his feet like ink.
The man walked toward the edge of the chasm and knelt down to put one of his long-fingered hands just a hair off the ground. He smiled and the edges of his thin, harsh mouth curled up. He pinched up a bit of dirt and sniffed it, then sprinkled it into the wind. The smile turned into a full grin, revealing two rows of pearly and perfectly aligned teeth.
“Persephone,” he said in a slithery whisper, drawing out the S so much that his tongue poked out briefly from his mouth, as if he were tasting the air.
They had been driving for almost an hour in complete silence. Magnus had asked where they were heading, and all Sir Regi had said was “inland.” Since then there had been glances between Magnus and Fenrir, Marcus and Stephanie, Leviticus and Mestoph, and between Father Mike and everyone else. No one would meet his eyes, though they all had their own reasons for avoiding talking to him. Only Sir Regi seemed oblivious or impervious to the awkward staring cliques that had formed around him.
Mestoph and Leviticus weren’t just staring intently at each other; they were deep in a hypnomancy argument.
“We've got to get rid of that priest!” said Mestoph.
Leviticus shrugged. He agreed, but as he had been stating over and over for the last half hour, there was no clean and easy way of doing it.
“We could kill him,” suggested Mestoph, somewhat sheepishly.
“You're right. We could. But we're not. Too many innocent people have already died for this.”
Mestoph pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes briefly, and sighed. Somewhere close to a hundred people had died on that flight. Despite the fact that he and Mestoph hadn’t been the ones who had fired the rocket, hired the mercenaries, or given the order to take them down at any cost—one which even Leviticus had agreed was hard to believe God or Satan would have been able to justify—Leviticus blamed himself. He believed deep in his heart, or whatever he had, that they had died because of him.
“Don't start that again,” said Mestoph.
“Start what? Feeling guilty for all the shit we've caused? The plan was to bring things to the edge of catastrophe. Our catastrophe has gone AWOL, and another one happened in its place.”
Mestoph rolled his eyes and sighed. “Come on. A plane crash is not a catastrophe,” he said, but he regretted it even as the words came out, even before he saw the horrified look on Leviticus’s face.
It had been a catastrophe. Even he had to admit that. It had once been his job, his pleasure even, to arrange catastrophes of just this sort. But spending time around Marcus and Stephanie had given him an insight into the human condition that he had never experienced. Leviticus didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.
“When it comes time to act, we can't have him hanging around. The second he finds out you're and Angel—or, God forbid, that I'm a Demon—it's all over. He's gonna pull some Super Pope powers on us, and then we're toast. It's bad enough that Stephanie knows.”
“Stephanie knows what?”
“That I'm a Demon,” said Mestoph as if Leviticus should have known exactly what he was talking about, not realizing he hadn't told Leviticus about it before the rebels attacked.
“How the Hell did she find out?”
“I told her.”
“Why?” said Leviticus, throwing his hands up in agitation.
“Well, she already knew...mostly. She was OK with it.”
“OK? She was OK with it? You tell her you're an elder Demon from deepest pits of Hell who used to revel in the pain and suffering of humans, and she's OK with it?” asked Leviticus, his voice getting higher and higher pitched as his frustration peaked.
“I never reveled! I might have gotten some pleasure out of it on occasion, but I never reveled. And I didn't say it like that. She said 'You're not an Angel are you?' and I said 'No' and that was pretty much it.”
Leviticus just shook his head in disbelief. Nothing was ever simple when Mestoph was involved. Not that it was simple when he was involved either. To get there they had told so many lies that they could no longer talk openly in front of anyone. Their plan had fallen to shit, and then their shitty plan ha
d fallen to shit. Now they were stuck in Iceland with two humans who thought they were trying to save the world, two Neo Vikings who thought they were trying to save the world for all Viking-kind, and a priest who thought they were the key to him fulfilling his Godly calling. This priest was just one problem too many with one solution too few. He couldn't let Mestoph kill him; it just wasn't right. Although their moral compass had spun far from pointing in the direction of the righteous, killing a priest was too much.
“We'll just have to put up with Father Mike until we find an opportunity to ditch him,” said Leviticus.
“Well until then, what are we supposed to do? This Vanir gig is only going to work as long as these barbarians don’t realize we have no idea where we're going or what we're looking for. Then I don't think they're going to be quite so friendly.”
“Just keep our heads down and make it up as we go along,” said Leviticus.
Chapter 14
The Punishment Due
Stephanie wasn't sure when it had happened, but she had managed to fall asleep despite all that had been running through her mind. All those worries and thoughts seeped away as she slipped into deep sleep, and suddenly a fog cleared, literally and figuratively.
As the fog receded, she saw a wide chasm, which separated her from something that she somehow knew was important. The fog seemed to be sucked down into the depths, revealing an impossibly tall mountain on the other side. It rose almost perfectly vertically, with jagged, snarling crags of rock jutting out at random intervals and angles. Somewhere near the top it all became deliberately sheer, and a fort was carved out of the peak. It was dark and looked dead, if an enormous lump of carved rock could have ever been alive.
Climbing up the side of the mountain were three...well, they could only described as monsters. Even given the large scale of the mountain, these monsters were unbelievably large. They were mostly humanoid in shape and proportion, though their arms were longer than a normal human’s and they happened to be on fire. Beneath the flames they appeared to be made of some charred, petrified wood. The lead monster was having a hard time climbing because it kept obliterating the boulders and crags that it found for hand and footholds.
Standing on the shoulder of the lead beast was a dark figure, protected from the flames by a shimmering globe of energy. He was tall and pale with inky tattoos that writhed beneath the skin of his bald head. The dark figure was screaming something that Stephanie couldn't quite make out. She couldn't tell if it was muffled by the distance or if it was a different language all together. The tattoos on his scalp seemed to slither down the back of his neck and disappear underneath the long, flowing black robes. Moments later, the tattoos reappeared on his hands and seemed to swarm around his fingertips. He screamed again, his voice amplified unnaturally, and this time clearly speaking another language. Blue light pooled at the end of each hand and grew into brilliantly bright balls of energy that he then threw toward the fortress at the top of the mountain.
The balls of light moved up, seemingly in slow motion, and then slammed into a minaret at the nearest corner of the fort. There was a thunderous crash, and then the stone cracked and the fortification sheared away. It rained down on the man and the flaming giants. The pieces that should have hit him bounced off a shield of blue energy. When pieces hit the lead giant, they merely shattered and fell further below, leaving the giant completely unscathed.
A muscular figure stepped to the edge of the hole and surveyed the situation. In the figure’s hand was a large war hammer that looked like it should have been far too heavy to wield. The figure raised the hammer high above him, shouting, and a bolt of lightning shot down and hit it. Then he reared back and tossed the hammer down. It hit one of the secondary giants on the shoulder, and there was a bright light on impact. As the light faded, Stephanie could see one of the giant’s arms falling to the ground while the hammer boomeranged around and returned to its owner.
Stephanie watched the unfolding battle from her oddly clear and precise vantage at the edge of the chasm. The giants made steady progress as the dark figure continued to throw balls of energy up and the hammer-wielding figure threw his hammer down. Stephanie didn't notice until there was a slight lull in the fighting that her grandmother was standing just a few paces away. Once Grams had her attention, she pointed over the chasm to a single, impossibly large oak tree that grew out of a crack in the rocks near the base of the mountain.
The tree had a large hollow in its broad trunk, and two pairs of eyes stared out of that crack at Stephanie. With the kind of certainty that only comes in dreams, she knew that one of those pairs of eyes were her own. Then there was a flash so bright that it hurt her head, followed by a rumbling that made her lose her balance, and she began sliding toward the edge of the chasm. As she began to fall, she startled awake, finding herself still in the SUV lying against Marcus, his arm around her protectively. She looked up to see him staring down at her, concern in his eyes.
“You were having a nightmare,” he said.
She just nodded; she wasn't sure it was a dream worth explaining. It could have meant anything—or nothing. She leaned in closer to him and tried to relax, though didn’t allow herself to go back to sleep.
They drove for another hour or so down what Magnuson called the Sprengisandur highland road before they came to a small village just north of the Vatnsfell Power Station. It was comprised of a gas station, some small houses, and the god-awful stench of something rotting.
“What is that?” asked Leviticus.
“Hakarl,” said Magnus. “It's fermented shark. Icelandic delicacy. There's a ranch a few miles down the road from here that cures it.”
“A few miles? God, I'd hate to live next to them,” said Leviticus.
Mestoph looked at everyone, their noses curled and their faces scrunched at the offensive smelled, and shrugged. “I can't smell anything,” he said.
“Too much fire and brimstone,” said Sir Regi.
Stephanie and Leviticus shot Sir Regi a glance that could've killed, to which he just shrugged in an odd doggy fashion. Father Mike was also looking at Sir Regi, but they hoped it was just the residual shock at the revelation of a talking dog. The priest glanced at everyone else as he walked past them to go inside the gas station to check for a bathroom. Leviticus gave the dog a little kick, to which he yelped disproportionately loud, hopped out of the SUV and ambled to the rear with a dejected air about him. Then he pissed on one of the tires.
Magnus and Fenrir went into the gas station to check out their food selection and pay for gas. When they were out of earshot, Marcus, Stephanie, Leviticus, and Mestoph all looked at each other and spoke in near unison.
“We've got to get rid of Father Mike.”
“I don't trust him,” said Marcus, somewhat defensively.
“No. No. Neither do I,” added Mestoph.
“I think he knows more than he's letting on. He wasn't as surprised as he should've been about anything that has happened so far,” said Marcus.
The others looked a bit confused, since that wasn't the angle they were thinking. They were more afraid of him finding out too much, not already knowing too much. Marcus continued, explaining that throughout the events of the last two days, the Father had been remarkably calm and far too interested in them even before they crashed.
“What do you mean before the crash?” asked Stephanie.
“He changed seats to be directly behind after we took off. He saw the RPG at the same time you did, and while you tried to warn everyone, he just sat there calm as a Hindu cow. He immediately gravitated toward us after the crash. And now he's insinuated himself into our group and is tagging along with us despite not having any logical reason to do so.”
“Are you sure? You have to be absolutely sure,” said Mestoph, like he was talk to a child whom he suspected was exaggerating the truth.
“Actually, now that you mention it, I saw him changing seats too,” said Sir Regi. “I just thou
ght he wanted a window seat. But Marcus is right, he was cool as a fucking cucumber the whole time. Like he knew he was going to make it.”
“I never saw him praying or anything during the crash,” said Stephanie.
“Shit,” said Mestoph.
“Shit, what?” asked Stephanie.
“He's FI,” said Leviticus. Mestoph nodded in agreement.
“Who's FI?” asked Father Mike, who had snuck up on them from the other side of the SUV. He had a gun with a silencer held in close to his body that was pointed at the group in general. Mestoph made to grab for the .40 he had stashed in the back of his waistband but stopped when Father Mike raised the gun to a steady, two-handed stance and aimed directly at him.
“Uh-uh, my fiery friend,” he said. Father Mike moved wide around the group until he was behind Mestoph. “Pull that thing out and then drop it. Then kick it behind you,” said Father Mike.
Mestoph looked behind him to see if he could possibly kick Father Mike, or at least kick up a face full of dirt, but the padre had given the Demon a wide berth. Resigned to the fact that now was not the time to act, he slowly pulled the gun from his waistband of his pants and let it fall to the ground. Mestoph had a brief bullshit hope that it would fall, go off, and take out Father Mike with an increasingly implausible series of ricochets that would land the bullet straight between his eyes.
The gun fell with a thud and a clatter but a distinct lack of magic bullet firing. He kicked the gun backwards as hard as he could. The groan from Father Mike told him that he had succeeded in sliding it underneath the SUV. Mestoph was rewarded with a quick, but mostly harmless, smack to the back of the head.
“Smartass,” said Father Mike.
He then moved behind Leviticus, sticking the gun roughly into the small of the Angel’s back, and then patted him down through his robes but found nothing. He didn’t bother searching the others, confident that they would have tried to make a move if they were armed. He nodded to himself and smiled.
