"Coooool. Can you teach me?"
"Maybe. It depends."
"On what?" Michael asked.
Lips curved in a secretive smile, Loki glanced over at the boy. "On you."
"You sound like a damn fortune cookie," Michael grumbled in a near perfect imitation of what little boy Jake must've sounded like.
Clutching his sides, Loki chortled and fell over and succumbed to a paroxysm of laughter. Michael stared in bewilderment, but then a giggle erupted from the boy. Not just one but a fit. Lolling on their backs, they laughed themselves weak.
"Where'd you go the other day? Was that magic?"
Pleased with the prospect of an attentive audience, the Trickster chose to indulge the questions. "I turned into a bird and then a bee until a willow flycatcher tried to eat me, so I—"
"What's a willow flycatcher?" Michael interrupted.
"A bird." He opened his mouth to continue the story.
"But it's called a flycatcher. Why would a flycatcher wanna eat a bee?"
Exasperated, Loki cocked his head. "Do you want to hear the story or not?"
"Yeah. I do." Michael nodded with enthusiasm. "Yes."
"Then shush." Loki waited to confirm the child's silence, and then resumed his tale. "And so I became a cat."
A short pause followed. Finally, Michael cleared his throat. "And?"
"And what?"
"What happened next? Did you eat the flycatcher?" Michael threw up jazz fingers of impatience, like ten small exclamation points.
"Nah, after all that I was tired so I took a cat nap." Tongue in cheek, Loki rolled his head to the side and observed the lineup of avian silhouettes alighted across the top of the swing set. He counted three sets of three—ravens to the nine.
Nine—a number of power.
"That's a stupid story." Michael fell to pouting, but his own irrepressible nature proved his undoing. His sullen brooding didn't last even a minute before he cracked. In a plaintive voice, he said, "I'd like to learn magic."
A smile tugged at the corners of Loki's mouth. "Okay, I'll teach you a trick so long as it's reasonable."
"What's reasonable?"
"Reasonable—something not too big. For instance, I could teach you to fly but not to become a fly." Loki wiggled his fingers, waving at the ravens.
"You could teach me to fly?" Awed, Michael gaped at the Trickster.
"Sure. Flying is easy. All it takes is a magic feather and faith." Technically, the magic feather was optional but even Dumbo had required a crutch the first few times. "So what is it, kid? One super power—you gotta choose."
"Gee, that's tough. I don't know." Michael chewed on red licorice while he thought on the matter.
Loki waited, bursting with impatience, and squished the temptation to badger. Frankly, the boy's answer interested him a great deal. Just the fact that Michael gave the matter such thorough consideration struck the Trickster as unusual. He expected children to make easy and obvious decisions.
"Okay, I know what I want." Michael nodded to himself, confirming his choice in his head before speaking it aloud.
"Yeah?" Loki prompted, damn near ready to burst into a cat, so compelling was his curiosity.
The boy took a deep breath. "I want to not be afraid anymore—of anything."
He triple-blinked. "Fearless is a super power?"
"My dad's not afraid of anything. I want to be like him."
"You want to be like Jake?" Oh, now there was irony to be savored.
"Yeah, that's what I want." Michael's resolution solidified, growing palpable.
"Okay, I can do that, but I don't do favors for free. You'll have to trade for it."
"Trade for what?" The boy's brow pinched. He glanced down, chewing his lower lip. "My stomach hurts."
"Nerves," Loki deduced authoritatively. He thrust a lollypop toward the boy. "Here. Sugar will make you feel better."
"What do you want to trade for? I don't have anything." Misery on his face, Michael accepted the sucker. The aura of worry about him intensified.
The Trickster shifted, uncomfortable in his own skin. Weird. Usually, he savored the moment when his mark succumbed to anxiety and second-guessing, but the boy's discomfort brought him no pleasure. Rather, a sickness of guilt swirled in his gut and it wasn't the copious amount of candy he'd consumed either. He'd once subsisted on nothing but jelly beans and marshmallow chicks for an entire month just to win a bet. A pound of processed sugar was child's play.
"Information," Loki said, but his answer elicited nothing more from the kid than a blank stare. "Tell me about your monster—the one from your nightmares."
"I don't want to talk about that." Color drained from the boy's face, and fear soured his scent. A tremor swept the youngster's body. Pulling away, Michael tucked his knees against his chest and wrapped his arms about his drawn legs.
"Talking about what scares you takes away its power to scare you," Loki employed a cajoling tone but the boy shook his head. When Michael remained stubbornly silent, the Trickster extended a tendril of power, eavesdropping on the boy's thoughts.
A jolt of pure terror slammed through Loki, and he glimpsed something enormous and malevolent lurking in the basement of Michael's psyche. No clear images, only bits and pieces, flashes—burning red eyes and black fur, horns and hooves. A musty odor and the sickening scent of blood. Something familiar about the beast nagged at him so he delved deeper, taking care to ensure his spying left the child unharmed. It took a moment but then a sad little Christmas tree appeared in the mish-mash.
"Ahhh." Loki snapped his fingers. Krampus—one of Loki's descendants via his daughter, Hel. An unpleasant creature with unsavory appetites, but then most monsters failed the Niceness check.
A stifled sob tore from the child, and his conscience drop kicked Loki's gut. "Hey, don't cry. Please? I'm sorry I asked. Forget about it, okay—"
"I don't— I don't— I don't—"
"Take it easy, kid." Panic seized Loki. Uncertainly, he patted Michael's back in a clichéd there-there fashion. While he'd been a parent countless times over, his offspring tended to be terribly resilient, not to mention downright scary.
The boy stiffened and nosily inhaled snot and tears. Making a concentrated effort, he said, "That's the trouble. I can't remember her and I want to. I can't see her no matter how hard I try—"
"Her?" Loki seized on the word. By itself, the pronoun didn't make much sense but he had limited access to Michael's thoughts, and thus shared the child's profound sorrow and loss. The boy's heart longed for the person who'd loved and cared for him his entire life.
"My mom." Tears squeezed past the boy's tightly-shut eyes. "I've tried and tried but I can't remember her face or her voice or anything." His hands opened and closed. "Nothing."
"You don't have a photo of her?" Sympathy ate at Loki's insides like a cancer. The fun had gone out of the adventure. Damnation, but he'd miscalculated, and in a truly epic fashion. He'd been wrong-headed thinking the boy could be manipulated to his advantage or used to gain leverage over Jake.
In that moment, Loki's self-disgust exceeded even his monumental ego.
Michael's tears coursed down his cheek. Snot ran from his nose over his upper lip. He gave a hard shake of his head.
Mildly disgusted, Loki fished Kleenex out of his red knapsack. He ripped open the package and thrust a fistful of tissue into the boy's hands. "Here. Blow your nose."
While the kid snorted snot, nosily, Loki tumbled into a hasty conclusion—responsibility for the boy's trauma was pretty much his fault any way he looked at it. Guilt didn't sit well with him. It made him itchy and nauseated, and intolerably uncomfortable. Impulsively, he decided to fix the child.
"Michael, you don't remember your mom because of the monster?"
"I can't see her face or hear her voice in my head..." Swinging his arm, Michael threw the wad of used tissue through the bars of the rocket cone. This time, the trash followed its natural course and plummeted to the ground because
the Trickster's attention was focused on the twisting, turning passages of the boy's subconscious.
"You haven't forgotten your mother. The trauma you experienced has blocked her from your memory." Loki wasn't a healer but he was a thief. Circling the ordeal, he set to studying it to determine the correct approach. He had a crystal clear view of the traumatic experience which had happened last Christmas, just six months ago. No wonder the poor kid was such a mess. "Tell me what happened so I can figure out how to help."
"The monster hurt my mom to punish me," Michel said, slow and reluctant in his confession. "I was bad. I stole a fire engine—"
"The Matchbox?" Loki hissed, unable to constrain his anger. All this over a fucking 99 cent toy...
The boy plowed forward with his confession. Words poured forth as if once started, he was unable to stop. "It hurt her and took me to a dark place that smelled bad. There were other kids there too. A girl—her name was Margaret—and a boy but I don't know his name. It drowned them. And there was a girl Crystal and a baby who didn't talk. The monster took all of us because we were bad. It was going kill me next."
"Jake killed the monster?" Loki surmised without the benefit of telepathy. The foregone conclusion was obvious.
"Victoria," Michael said, jerking his head to the side. "She came first and fought it and tried to help us. Jake got there later."
"That I'd have loved to see," Loki said with so much irony the metallic tang coated his tongue. He had a firm grasp of the remembrance now. "Do you want your memories of your mother back?"
"Yes, more than anything." A true survivor, the boy backed up the assertion with an adamant tone and a remarkably strong will.
Loki's eyes narrowed in shrewd consideration. "Do you want to remember what happened but without the fear?"
"You can do that?" Michael stared with wary, red-rimmed eyes, and although he didn't voice his preference aloud, the thought ran quicksilver through the boy's mind.
"I'm magic." Loki's voice resonated as he concentrated on hollowing out his insides to make room for the child's monstrous misery. He laid cool fingers on the back of the Michael's feverishly hot neck. Reflexively, he lowered his body temperature even farther so his hand grew ice-cold.
"That's what I want," Michael whispered.
A raucous ruckus arose from the unkindness of ravens as they signaled the approach of their master. Time grew short and yet his work required precision. Perspiration beads proliferated on Loki's brow, stung his eyes, and dripped onto his cheeks.
Swiping his lips with his tongue, Loki tasted the salt of his sweat. He concentrated until his magic acquired a deep, narrow focus. With a deft touch, the Trickster swiped the boy's fear. Acquiring the emotion without taking memory of what had caused it challenged even his considerable skill as a thief but he managed. A huge lump of terror passed down his throat and settled in his gullet, an unsavory meal he'd be long in digesting.
He hesitated, on the verge of withdrawing then and calling it even-steven, but something niggled at the sense of decency he would have flat-out denied having if called on it. Nothing ever boiled down to just one feeling, especially not the sort of ordeal Michael had endured.
Shaking from head to toe, Loki reached further. Michael suffered from PTSD. With an effort, Loki pulled the nausea into himself. He removed only the memories of pain associated with the trauma—scrapes, bruises, cramped muscles, suffocating heat, cold steel. Like an anaconda swallowing a bison, the Trickster stretched and strained to internalize the child's agony; his entire being twitched and writhed. He left behind a recollection stripped clean and sanitized.
The boy exhaled a long, slow sigh and breathed easier.
"You're not afraid anymore," Loki murmured. "From now on there's a special place inside you where fear doesn't exist. If you need to not be afraid then say—No fear. Envision the safe place."
"No fear," Michael parroted. The boy's soul shone brighter, twinkling like a wishing star. He retained sorrow and self-blame, especially with regard to his mother's death, but nothing approaching the affliction Loki had removed.
Loki almost swallowed the youngster's guilt as well even though the burden would've left him too bloated to escape. He considered the act of kindness, of self-sacrifice, and came this close to absorbing that enormous emotion too. His sense of self-preservation proved too strong.
Ravens screamed.
"Get the hell away from my son." Jake Barrett descended larger than life, an avenging force come to his son's defense. A burning blade sliced through the steel bars that formed a protective cage about the rocket ship's cone.
"Sorry, kid. Gotta fly." The heat seared the hairs on the back of Loki's neck. Flinging out his arms, he burst into a cloud of gnats. The dagger cut a wide swath through the swarm before it struck the fiberglass platform.
Loki's agonized shriek echoed for miles. Hundreds of gnats perished but thousands survived, and so the Trickster endured but just barely. Clinging to his existence with his remaining strength, he scattered his particles even farther and shape changed into pollen spores, sinking his essence into particulates carried on the hot desert wind.
Chapter Ten
Sessrúmnir, Freya's hall in Fólkvangr
Freya's breathe rasped, incalculably loud in the quiet of the catio. She wanted to scream, to hurl insults. To call Arik a hateful liar. However, the truth had weight and mass, and possessed inescapable inertia. It crushed her. Her defense remained a justification that sounded weak even to her.
Anger swept her, swift and sure. The goddess leveled an accusing stare at the man she'd thought she'd known, at least on some level. Now, she perceived how she'd fallen into his trap—a complete stranger. "I won't apologize for my actions or justify them to you! How do you know all this? Who told you?"
Arik shrugged. "I know. Does the how and why of it matter?"
"Yes, it matters. Tell me where you learned these terrible secrets that have burdened my soul," Freya commanded with the resonance of divinity in her voice. “I haven't spoken of my doubt to anyone—not a single word. Yet, you are privy to the worst fears of my heart."
When Arik refused to answer her question, Freya's determination underwent a transformation to diamond-hardness. She marched straight up to him, fists clenched, ramping up for battle. He slid to his feet, brushing thick clumps of tiger fur from his jacket.
"Tell me." She seized his lapel.
Arik smiled, wide and hungry, a ravenous wolf. "I know the same way I know that you held back a piece of the unbreakable ribbon that imprisons Fenrir. You had it made into Vanadium, the only weapon that can cut the binding."
Freya stopped breathing; horrified realization dawned. Her hand rose to her heart—no.
"Although, I'll grant: that one's a gimme." He kept speaking, damning her and himself with each word. “No one but you, Freya, would be vain enough or dumb enough to name the weapon that'll bring about Odin's death after yourself."
It couldn't be. Couldn't.
She mouthed a denial—"No."
"I have all your secrets, doll." The smug bastard dropped a wink. "I know you're diverting all the souls of wolf shifters to your hall—in violation of the agreed fifty-fifty split you have with Odin. Just like you know who I am."
"No!" She stared at him, unable to rip her gaze from his face.
"Say my name."
"Loki."
Phoenix, Arizona
The magical dagger vanished from Jake's hand, and reappeared on his forearm as a tattoo at the center of massive burn scars. The nasty stench of melted plastic permeated the air, potent enough to curl his nostrils and curdle his stomach. Waving his arms to clear the air, he leaned into the rocket's cone, taking care to avoid the red-hot ends of the severed rebar cage.
Michael sat on the platform with his knees drawn to his small chest. His arms wrapped about his knees, and his head bent while he cried. His sobs were great and piteous, torn from the depths of despair, a child suffering. Otherwise, he appeared to be physically un
harmed.
"Michael? Are you okay?" He bent and placed his palm on the boy's slender back. Worry sickened him, anxiety that manifested physically from the cramped muscles of his shoulders to sharp knots in his abdomen.
"Jake?" Michael's voice quavered as he lifted his face to look up. Tear tracks streaked the youngster's face—a naked sorrow that hurt to look upon. The boy grabbed hold of his guardian's bicep and scrambled to his feet.
The boy's suffering injured Jake, and he ached for his son's anguish. Loki was slime, using an innocent child in his twisted games. Loki would pay, but later. For now, Michael needed a father to offer comfort.
Jake gentled his voice. "I'm here, Champ. It's going to be okay. Let's get you down from here. Can you stand up for me?"
"Sure." Michael wiped his eyes with both hands, leaving dirty streaks on his cheeks. Then he turned his face into his sleeve, smearing snot on the cotton.
He conducted another subtle once over, double checking to ensure the boy wasn't suffering a physical injury. When Jake sank down, something crunched beneath his knee. He glanced down and discovered an odd curiosity in the form of an open box of Kleenex.
"Here, use these." He offered the boy the all-too-convenient box of tissues. Its presence struck him as incongruent, especially since the rest of Loki's artifacts, including the bright red backpack, had vanished along with the Trickster. The discrepancy bugged him.
"Thanks." Michael grabbed a wad and blew, and then wiped off his face. He glanced down toward a trash can and his hand moved in a subconscious gesture as if he intended to try for the impossible throw.
"Let's get down from here." Jake scooped Michael up and held him with one arm, snagging the boy's blue backpack as well. He surveyed the damage he'd caused to the play structure with regret but it couldn't be helped. Once he found the time and opportunity, he'd look into having it repaired. The top of the rocket was about twenty feet high, a short though challenging climb with only one free hand.
Wolf's Cross: Book 4 (Loki's Wolves) Page 13
