He spent a week at the house, refusing to leave the property at all, though she'd banned him from her side as she slept. Finally, at her insistence, he began returning to the lab during the day, checking on the progress reports his vectors would phone in. It was then that the woman he'd chosen to carry the Arcane virus dialed in, asking him how long it would take for the virus to work its changes on her.
He hadn't known the answer, but arranged for her to meet with Thorne to have her tested. The immortal mage, despite his misgivings about Loki's project in the first place, agreed to meet and test her. She begged Loki to come along so he'd agreed.
Thorne administered the test and discovered, to Maureen's delight, that the virus had indeed wrought the changes for which she'd hoped. Before too long they were lost in conversation and barely noticed when Loki took his leave.
He returned home that evening to discover Renee pacing the living room floor, the stereo blasting a Bach concerto at maximum volume. She seemed frantic and he felt a cold fist knot in his stomach as he walked into the room.
"What's wrong?” he asked, taking her hands.
"The thirst is back,” she told him. “It's like a fire in my brain."
He'd been afraid of that. Had her first taste of blood not been as potent as his, she would've probably had to feed every night, though he hoped she'd not have to kill to do it. He explained his theory and suggested they try it out.
"You want me to what? Hunt down some poor innocent shmuck? Are you kidding me?"
He shook his head. “I think it's absolutely necessary to see if you can control yourself or if the thirst will drive you to take a life. Another thing that concerns me is that I know the virus is still active in your body—will it transfer? And, if it does, what requirements would it have to do so? Your blood, your saliva?"
"Dammit, Loki! This is my life we're talking about, not one of your experiments! I can't go out and play with someone—hope I don't kill them by accident, or, worse, turn them into this thing I am!"
"You can feed off me, of course. We know I can't catch it. But assuming I—or another willing immortal—isn't nearby when the thirst strikes like it is now, wouldn't it be better to know what you can and cannot safely do?"
"I guess if you put it that way I don't have much of a choice. I have no idea how to go about this. I'm going to need any suggestion you can come up with."
"Of course,” he said. “Let me bring the car around."
* * * *
Malice slowly cruised his stolen car past the mall, eying the strange festival there with great curiosity. He saw many strange contraptions, bright, flashing lights, and a burgeoning throng of mortals blissfully unaware of their danger. The perfect place to sow a little chaos, he decided.
He parked the car and jumped out, making his way to one of the access points. He strolled down a large thoroughfare, noting with some interest the games displayed and verbally advertised by the mortals attending them.
"Come try your luck! Get a ring on a bottle, get a prize!"
A casual inspection told Malice that this whole affair had very little to do with what humans might consider luck. Some games required a modicum of skill, but those that weren't skewed hopelessly in favor of the house would be child's play to even a mortal of average intelligence. He strolled past, finally, bored with the whole thing.
Then he caught sight of the rides. Garishly painted and elaborately crafted mechanisms that threw you up in the air, or twirled you around in a circle, or spun you like a top. Intrigued, he moved closer, to the very edge of the white metal fences dividing the common thread of mortals from the secret workings of the machines.
A veritable treasure trove of pain and despair, he realized, nearly clapping his hands together with glee. The mortals actually brought their precious children here and subjected them to this madness? Why, some of the buckets attached to those spinning wheels were held on by nothing more than a small sliver of metal in the shape of a key.
He looked around, quickly calculating trajectory and velocity with all the speed of his superhuman brain. Death wasn't specifically his goal. Any moron could kill. Malice was an artiste, a connoisseur of suffering. He wanted blood, pain, and despair. Death could bring these things, but maiming was a great deal more fun.
He reached out with his talent, whispering to one of those metal linchpins, and it responded.
* * * *
The empty bucket on the Scrambler gave a screeching cry and broke free, hurtling through the air and just barely catching a young girl with its leading edge before flying on to embed itself in the windshield of a nearby vehicle. The velocity was so great, and the angle so oblique, that it sheered through the child's right forearm without even slowing. The child's parents, standing scant feet away, were showered with her blood as she collapsed to the pavement, screaming.
Malice chuckled to himself and reached out with his other talent, using his TK to pinch off the flow of blood to prevent the child from bleeding to death. A little fine manipulation and he quickly cauterized the wound. Not out of any interest in the child's well-being, but because the trauma would last all that much longer if she were to live.
He caught himself whistling a tune from his homeworld as he strode the other direction, away from the frantically rushing mortals and the pandemonium he'd released.
Now what else? That was fun, but not nearly enough to satiate his hunger for pain. His gaze latched onto yet another ride, this one much cruder of design. It looked like a house, but one made by a drunkard, with all crazy angles and shifting platforms. How delightful!
He walked around to peer in the two doors, one obviously meant as an entrance, the other just as obviously an exit. He caught a glimpse of mirrors within, shaped in such a way that they altered the reflection of those standing in front of them into something barely recognizable.
He reached in with his mind, both weakening and heating those mirrors at the same time. It only took a couple of seconds before they exploded in a fury of flying glass shards. One woman, accompanying her small, frightened child, was literally torn to pieces before his young, impressionable eyes.
In a split second, the fun house became a bloodbath. Malice, quite pleased with himself, walked away humming a tune he'd heard on the radio on the way here. What a fine day this had turned out to be.
* * * *
Athena's cell phone rang. Glancing around the office to see if anyone was watching, she hurriedly answered it. “What?” she asked in a near whisper.
"Athena. Deryk Shea here. I need you and Sif—or just you, if Sif isn't available—to go check something out for me. Right now."
"What? Deryk, I'm at work."
"Work? Where do you work? You know, I've never asked what you do, anyway. What do you do?"
"I work for an insurance company, Deryk. I'm an actuary."
"You're a what? Never mind. You quit."
"Excuse me? Don't you think that should be my decision?"
"Well, setting aside the fact that there's something just slightly sick about an immortal calculating the likelihood of death and dismemberment for poor unsuspecting mortals, we are now officially on a war footing. If you remember the Pact, that puts me—you remember me, Captain Deryk Shea of the Atlanean Military Command—in charge. Besides, if you're going to work for an insurance company, I'd rather it be one that I own."
"You own an insurance company?"
"I own several."
"Isn't there something slightly sick about that?"
"Absolutely not. People need insurance. It's a public service. Anyway—get your ass out of there and down here. I'll put you on the payroll of one of my companies as an investigator. We just had a big mess go down at a carnival we insure that was set up at the mall. Something stinks to high heaven and I need someone I can trust to look into it."
The way Shea operated, he couldn't order her around outside of his dojo as the Kazai, so he pulled rank as the de-facto commander of what was left of Atlanea's armed forces. Added
to that, he wanted to hire her so she'd have to listen to him anyway. No wonder he's a bloody industrial giant, she thought wildly. He covers more angles than a polygon.
"Damn, Deryk. I want two hundred thousand dollars a year salary—pro-rated for this January."
"Done."
That left her holding her tongue between her teeth. She hadn't expected him to agree so fast to a salary she considered way over the top. “Full medical? All paid?"
"That comes standard,” he answered. “Plus two weeks paid vacation the first year and a company car for the investigator's position."
"Hell, how can I say no to that?"
"You can't."
"Deryk, you give new meaning to the phrase ‘an offer you can't refuse'."
"We aim to please. Now get your ass over to the carnival!"
"I'm going, I'm going.” She disconnected the call and gathered up her most vital possessions, stuffing them in her purse until the damn thing was bristling like an annoyed hedgehog. You know, if you think about it, she told herself, this couldn't come at a better time. One of the women in the office she absolutely despised, a tyrant in the making, had just been promoted above her. She couldn't begin to guess why, but now it didn't really matter.
She walked up to Fran's office door—open door policy my ass—and walked in without knocking. Her so-called superior was sitting behind her desk, a portable television currently running an episode of some daytime drama in front of her, casually filing her nails.
Un-freakin'-believable. “Fran. You sow. Just thought you'd want to know. I quit."
The short, dumpy woman's face flushed as red as a baboon's ass. She grasped for something to say for a few seconds, then gasped “go ahead, you witch. I'll see to it you never work in this business again."
"Oh, probably not,” Athena snapped back. “You see, I just got a call from Mr. Deryk Shea himself. He wants me to head an investigative team for one of his insurance companies. Comes with a two hundred grand a year salary and a company car. So you can just stuff your indignant attitude, your contraband television, and your backstabbing, ‘I'll do anything to get a promotion I don't deserve,’ worthless hide straight down the nearest toilet.
"Have a nice day.” She slammed the door and walked away, past the rows of her co-workers, who were all staring at her as if she'd grown another head. “If any of you have the brains of a ping-pong ball, you'd be looking into how to pry her lazy ass out of that office and slip in there yourself. I'd say she was worthless as tits on a boar, but, hey, that might be overestimating her.
"Good luck, all.” With a wink, she vanished into the outer hallway. I can't believe how good that felt. I should've done that a long time ago.
By the time she reached her car, she'd sobered, remembering more of what he'd said on the telephone. She quickly dialed him back and found out what insurance company she was now working for and arranged to run by the office long enough to pick up some identification. It wouldn't do to show up out of the blue without any way to prove she was who she said she was.
I've danced to the tune. Now it's time to pay the price. Why do I get the feeling this is going to be very, very bad?
Maybe because Deryk wouldn't have called me in if it wasn't.
It had always been one of the crowning ironies of her existence that she would generally accept whatever someone chose to hand her. Here she was, immortal, nearly invincible, as such things went, and capable of looking like just about anyone she chose, and she allowed some yahoo like Fran to get promoted above her?
Something about that struck her as seriously messed up. Maybe Sif was right when she accused me of being a born follower. I'm a bloody immortal and yet I've never really stood up for myself. What the hell's wrong with me?
* * * *
"Say, Johnny,” said the nappy-haired meth-head who usually stood around outside the stairs leading up to Gitano's apartment, “who's that hot redhead you sent up to your crib this afternoon? No offense, homeboy, but I'd like to get a piece of that hooch, if you know what I mean ... Ack! I didn't mean anything by it, Johnny!"
Gitano let go of his collar and let him slump to the ground at his feet. “A redhead? In my place this afternoon? What the fuck?” He brushed off the meth-head's jacket, though it was mostly wasted effort. Nothing short of a steam-press could've made that jacket look anything but raggedy. “Sorry about that, man. Hope I didn't hurt you too much."
"Nah, I'm coo. That ho must have you all in a knot if just mentioning her does that to you."
"You could say that,” Gitano replied. Why did she come back? He didn't like the sound of that at all. Maybe she planted a bomb in my ... nah, that's crazy. Pussy like that don't know how to make bombs.
He thought about it all the way up the stairs. To be safe I'd better just dump out everything I've got open. She probably laced something with poison. Or planted something really bad and called the cops. Or...
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Why did I have to hit her? Johnny, you stupid bastard. You don't go hitting women who look like that. Stupid! No telling what she might be brewing up.
He tore his apartment apart, looking for anything that might come back to haunt him. He flushed the contents of his fridge, the open boxes of cereal in his cupboard, and even the bottle of ibuprofen he had sitting in his medicine chest. No point in taking chances, he decided.
The weirdest thing was the only thing out of place, near as he could tell, was that his hairbrush was missing. He didn't know why she'd want that, of all things, but it was the only possible explanation for it being MIA.
Women are just weird, he thought, throwing himself down on the battered hide-a-bed. Even the pretty ones. Hell, especially the pretty ones.
Five
Athena parked the brand new blue Cavalier in the closest available space and walked toward the carnival, quickly picking up on the tension in the air. Aid crews were all over the place, and the site literally crawled with uniformed cops.
She was stopped by one—a young blond kid with only the beginnings of the trademark cop mustache. She flashed him her ID and he let her pass. She smothered a grin of mixed relief and a kind of satisfaction as she realized what kind of power this actually gave her.
She wasn't about to waste time talking to the police investigators quite yet. Their reports would keep, but the chance of losing something vital from one of the witnesses grew with each passing moment. She began to prowl the edges of the crowd, watching for anyone who looked somehow out of place.
It didn't take her long. One guy, a long-haired fellow with a well-trimmed goatee and a jagged scar under his right eye, seemed to be far more nervous than one might expect even at a scene like this one. He edged away from the cops every time they looked like they were heading his direction. Now that might just have been a personal issue, but Athena had a feeling that, irregardless of any specific concerns about talking with the police, he knew something he wasn't quite ready to share.
She moved up close to him, pulled out her identification, and waved it in his face. “I'm not a cop,” she told him, sensing he was ready to bolt. “I'm not interested in busting you, if that's what you're worried about."
This statement seemed to calm him a great deal. He heaved a sigh of what had to be relief. “Man, I can't tell you how glad to see you."
That took her by surprise. “How so?"
"I don't want to talk to the cops, man, but I saw something I just don't understand. I felt like I had to tell someone, or else I'd've been long gone by now."
"Okay. Mind if I ask your name?"
He glanced around; assured himself they weren't being paid any attention whatsoever. “Name's Stone. Ian Stone. People usually just call me Stone."
"Okay, Stone. So what did you see?"
"It was freaky. I was walking across the midway and this guy—dressed in some kind of expensive silk suit—walked right in front of me, staring at the scrambler like it was a naked lady or something. No offense, but that's exactly how he was staring. Like it was the m
ost interesting thing he'd ever seen. A minute later the damn thing let out a ‘pop’ and one of the tubs flew off, took a little girl's arm clean off.
"I watched this dude and he got close enough to get a good look at the little girl, then turned around and walked away again. I swear he was whistling. He gave me the total creeps, but I felt like I had to follow him. I can't explain it, just that—hell, I don't know. I thought it was important somehow."
"I think I understand. Go on."
"Well ... he walked over to where the funhouse is,” he continued, pointing up the midway, “and kinda crept around the thing. Well, not like he was creeping, really. Just like he was trying to get a look inside without attracting too much attention.
"Then, bigger than shit, all hell seemed to explode inside the funhouse. People were screaming and then everyone came rushing out, all covered in blood. That guy—that weird fuck in the gray silk suit—was walking away again, singing to himself. Like he was happy or something."
Athena couldn't mistake the chill that went down her spine. This was big, whatever it was. It wasn't a couple freak accidents; it had been somehow arranged. “Can you describe this guy?"
Stone shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Like I said, gray silk suit. A blue tie. Short, dark hair, combed so it sat perfectly on his head—” He snorted. “—I'd give anything to know how he did that. Anyway, he almost didn't look like a dude at all. If he'd've been a woman, I would've said he was pretty. Androgynous, if you know what I mean."
"Yeah, I do. It's not much, but I'll bet it's more than the cops have gotten. You've been a big help, Stone."
He smiled shyly. “I only wish I could've done more. I've seen some strange shit in my time, but this beats it all. I don't know how, but I'm sure that guy did it. Like he messed with it with his mind or something, like he's some kind of telekinetic maybe."
Athena pursed her lips, regarding Stone for a long moment. “What do you do, Stone?"
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