"Do?"
"Yeah, for work."
He pinched his face up and shrugged. “A little of this, a little of that. I do some carnie work when they're around, otherwise I get by with temporary labor until winter hits, then I draw unemployment."
"You don't seem stupid, Stone. Sounds like an awfully hard life to choose."
"I don't like taking orders,” he said. “Don't follow directions too well. Hard for me to hold onto a regular job."
She nodded thoughtfully. “What about school? How'd you do in school?"
He frowned. “What does this have to do with what happened—with what I told you?"
"Nothing, really,” she admitted. “But you strike me as remarkably observant, and open-minded enough to see something I'm willing to bet no one else did. Not someone I think needs to be digging ditches and lumping semis for a living."
He didn't quite know how to take that. “Thanks, I guess. Well, I did okay in school, when I went. Like I said, I don't follow directions too well, but I learn quick. Read a lot—don't even matter what. I just like to learn things."
"That's how you found out about telekinesis?"
"Actually that came from an old comic book series I used to read,” he admitted with a wry grin. “But, yeah. I've read about telekinesis in more than one book."
"Believe it or not, Stone, I might have a job offer for you. I want to take you to meet my boss first, though."
"Sounds good to me. As I always say, I'll do just about anything as long as it's legal."
"Not a bad attitude,” she said. “C'mon, let's get out of here before we attract cops."
"You don't have to say that again."
* * * *
"I send you to investigate this incident and you bring me back him?” Shea glared at her over the stack of papers on his desk, looking distinctly displeased. “Are you kidding me?"
"I'll tell you this much, Deryk. The only thing there is to learn about this whole thing that you won't find out from the evening news will come straight from him. I believe he has a very good idea what happened at that carnival today, and he has enough sense not to tell just anyone about it. He didn't want to tell the cops or the reporters—he waited for me. Well, not specifically for me, or, at least, I don't think so, but you get my meaning."
"I suppose I do,” Shea grumbled. “Okay. Send him in, but I want you to wait outside in the hall. I won't have you coaching him."
"What makes you think I would? Deryk, you're alternately the most optimistic, generous person and the most suspicious, cynical person I've ever met. It's really symptomatic of serious psychological issues, you realize."
"Oh, shut up and get the hell out. Send this Stone character in so I can get a line on him. Go!"
She ducked into the hallway and smiled at Stone. He responded with a tentative one of his own. “He's ready to see you. And calm down. He's not nearly as tough as he likes everyone to think. Under that hard, icy exterior there's a decent guy. If you can chip away long enough to find it."
They both laughed, though his laugh came out a little forced. “Aren't you coming?"
"Nope. I'm waiting out here. But I'll be with you in spirit.” Not literally. Even if I could do it, I've got the feeling Deryk would know, and then it's for sure excrement would hit the rotating air circulation device.
Stone grasped the knob, turned it, and walked into Shea's office.
* * * *
Loki keyed in his security code and waited for the outer door to open. He nearly jumped straight out of his skin when Athena's voice sounded directly behind him. “It's about time you came back,” she said. “You haven't been here for days."
He glanced over his shoulder slightly surprised that Sif wasn't with her. “Where's your blond shadow?” he asked. “And, for your information, I've been here a number of times. All of my projects are up and running—there hasn't been much need for me to hang around the lab. I do have other things to do, you know."
He stepped into the inner chamber and waited for her to follow. The outer door closed and he began the sequence to cycle the inner portal. Athena looked better than she had in a long time, he noted. More sure of herself, somehow. Maybe not having Sif around was a good thing.
"I don't know where Sif has disappeared to,” she told him with the barest hint of a shrug. “I've been too busy to notice."
"Oh?” The inner door opened and they stepped into the hallway beyond together. “Anything I should know about?"
She regarded him with a strange, unreadable expression, then nodded, as if assuring herself of something. “I got a new job."
He shook his head. “I'll never understand why so many of you insist on playing at being mortal—working for mortal companies, making rich mortals even richer than they already are. I earned my own fortune a long time ago and have long since abandoned any need to work for a living."
She bent a slightly amused smile in his direction. “I've never felt any particular need to be wealthy, Loki. I like earning a living—it connects me to the mortal world in a way that having money never could."
He grunted something noncommittal. I'd rather bathe in napalm than take orders from a human boss. Ah, well. To each his—or her—own. “So what's this new job?"
"I'm working for Deryk as an insurance investigator."
He stifled the urge to laugh. “So you've climbed right into his pocket again, have you?"
"That's a hell of a way to put it,” she growled. “But, yeah, I guess you could say that. It came with a sizable increase in salary and a company car, so I guess it was worth it. A lot more interesting than what I was doing, anyway."
"That's good. What were you doing, anyway?"
"Working as an insurance actuary,” she replied, a slight note of hesitation in her voice.
And no wonder. “Isn't that slightly twisted? I mean, an immortal calculating human—"
"—Don't go there, Loki,” she warned him. “I already heard that from Deryk."
He felt like biting his tongue. Not because he'd somehow offended her, but because he'd unexpectedly echoed Deryk Shea. It wasn't as though he actually hated the man, but Shea was so upright it made Loki's teeth hurt just thinking about it. The fact that they would agree on anything got under his skin.
Looking deeper into Athena's eyes he saw something almost haunted he'd missed on first pass. Like she'd seen something pretty horrible and wanted to talk about it, but didn't know how to bring it up.
They'd never been confidantes, after all. Hell, he'd barely exchanged two words with her before all this began. But she obviously needed to talk to someone and, for all his power and influence, the last thing one could say about Deryk Shea was that he had a sympathetic ear.
He tried to walk passed the lab where he'd kept Renee, but Athena stopped in front of the closed door. “How's your patient?” she asked. “I tried to get in there to look in on her the last time I was here, but I don't have the codes for this particular door. That wasn't nice of you, by the way."
He felt his face go stony. “She died.” The truth, if not necessarily the whole truth.
She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. He was surprised to feel calluses that hadn't been there the last time she'd touched him. “I'm sorry, Loki."
This display of concern touched him, even though misplaced. He almost blurted out the truth on the spot, but managed to stop himself in time. She'd know the truth sooner or later. He'd prefer later, but knew the schedule wasn't entirely his to dictate. The universe would unfold as it was meant to.
He flinched inwardly. The last thing he was, usually, was philosophical. Renee was starting to affect him deeper than he'd realized. “My sin, my penance,” he sighed. “Something's bothering you, too. What is it?"
"I don't know if you watch the news,” she said, “but Deryk sent me out to check out that carnival where those accidents happened the other day. Only they weren't accidents. I ran into a witness who spotted someone we think caused those so-called accidents. That gave
me information that neither the police nor the media managed to get."
He nodded slowly. It wouldn't be the first time immortals ended up knowing the truth about a situation without the rest of the world catching on. “I think I heard something about it. I don't watch the news—I can't stand all that sensationalist crap."
She didn't look surprised by this revelation. “Well, anyway, this witness identified a single guy on the scene, someone who apparently seemed quite pleased by the sheer horror he'd either witnessed or caused. I had him describe the man for a sketch artist in Deryk's employ and we're on the look-out for him now."
"I see. You have a copy of this sketch?"
She nodded, reaching into her purse and pulling out a folded piece of paper. She handed it over. He opened it, scanned it for a moment, then folded it back up. “You mind if I keep this?"
"No. Go ahead. Be very careful with this one, Loki. I've got a feeling he's serious trouble."
"Careful's my middle name,” he responded, without thinking.
That touched off a brittle laugh. “Yours? Loki, I know full well that the Native Americans call you Coyote, and what that represents to them. Not only is ‘careful’ not your middle name, you don't even have a passing acquaintance with the term."
He could only shrug. How did she get to know him so well? “Fine. I'll watch my back as long as you watch yours."
"Oh, I plan on it,” she said. “Deryk has me heading up his investigative team, as I said earlier. It's only a team of two for the moment, but hopefully that'll give me someone to help keep my back from sprouting knives."
"Anyone I would know?"
She shook her head. “Nope. It's a mortal—in fact, it's the mortal who gave us that description. Deryk says he's some kind of sensitive. He picked out what was really going on when the rest of the onlookers were completely clueless."
A mortal? Sensitive or not, she needs another one of our kind to protect her. Even Sif—wherever that bitch went—would be a better choice than some poor slob of a human. “See if you can get another immortal assigned to you, Athena. I don't know about you, but I know I'd feel a lot better about it."
"Loki,” she said with a wry smile, “if I didn't know better, I'd say you were worried about me."
He peered at her through narrowed lids. “Okay, yeah. I'll admit it. There aren't a lot of immortals I can abide being around. I'd hate to see something happen to you."
"Uh, Loki. I'm an immortal. What do you think's the worst that could happen?"
"You've got to be kidding me. Immortal doesn't mean invincible. Who knows what kind of tricks the Enemy's come up with this time? I know we were all hoping that it didn't know we existed, but I'm not sure that's a good bet. We don't even know if the two hundred of us who escaped on the Mythrender were the only ones so changed by Thanatos. The Enemy could have captured any number of our kind, and had eons to study them."
Athena stared back at him. “Ohmygod,” she breathed. “I don't think any of us have even thought of that. When did you come up with that idea?"
"It's been rattling around in the back of my head for a while,” he admitted. “I personally think it's pretty likely that the Enemy has its own immortals working for it now. It would be stupid not to at least try to figure out what Thanatos did to us—and, with enough time, come up with a way to reproduce it. Probably with improvements."
She looked stricken, almost to the point of panic. “What if that's what that guy is, Loki? How can we stop him?"
"By whatever means we have,” he answered. “We can't do anything else. What you, and a lot of immortals, seem to forget is that we're not un-killable. It's just very goddam difficult. Destruction of all of the brain tissue—which is, after all, hidden under about an inch of super-dense, super strong bone—will do it quite handily. I'm willing to bet there are other ways we haven't even considered yet."
A phone rang somewhere down the hall. “If you'll excuse me. I need to get this."
She nodded, leaning against one of the corridor walls as if for support. He'd freaked her out, but, in this case, maybe that was a good thing. Assuming things that weren't true just because you wanted them to be was a good way to land in hotter water than even they could handle. Now at least she's thinking about our vulnerabilities—how to protect herself and how to exploit them if we run into any of our kind who are serving the Enemy.
He caught the phone on the third ring. “Loki."
"Loki, it's Renee. You know the mortal we kidnapped, the one I drained almost all the way dry? It happened—he's like me now."
"Damn!” They'd cruised for a killer—someone who deserved as bad a fate as they could arrange—and found him early that morning. As a test she'd drained him to the point of death and they took him back to Loki's, locking him in a cellar room he'd designed especially for holding unwanted guests. He wasn't sure why he'd done so when he'd had the place built, but it sure came in handy now. “Is he still secure?"
"He's behind that cellar door, screaming and wailing like nothing I've ever heard, but, yes, I believe he's secure."
"Good. It wouldn't do to have him escape. Stay put and I'll be home as soon as I can.” He hung up.
He found Athena pretty much where he'd left her. He deliberately calmed himself. If she sensed anything resembling an emergency he'd never get rid of her. And this was something he was definitely not willing to share at the moment. “I've got a few things I need to take care of. It was really good to see you. Here—here's my cell phone number. Feel free to call me any time.” He pressed a scrap of paper into her hand. “I'll probably be around tomorrow if you feel like swinging by."
She nodded, still looking a little numb around the edges. It was tough seeing her like this, but maybe it was for the best. She was too distracted to notice how tense he was. He left her standing there.
I guess now we find out what will kill a vampire.
* * * *
Malice noticed the flashing lights behind him and gave himself a wide grin of pleasure. He knew what they meant from time he'd spent in front of the humans’ television set. He'd moved into a well-stocked household, killing most of the occupants and neatly disposing of the bodies by causing them to rapidly decompose in a pit he'd dug in the backyard. By the time he was through not even skeletons remained.
He'd picked up this car in much the same way—though he hadn't bothered to do anything but snuff the owner's life force with a telekinetic tweak of his heart muscle. He'd left him lying by the side of the road as he drove off. A little sloppy, perhaps, but he'd been hoping that he'd be initiating just this sort of encounter. He wanted to test himself against this world's armed peace officers.
He pulled to the side of the road at a point where the cop would have plenty of room to exit his vehicle and approach on foot. A second glance in the rear-view revealed that another car had joined the first before the officer had even turned off his engine. Oh, how interesting. This provided even more opportunity to sow chaos and confusion.
He waited there, whistling to himself, as three cops edged up on the back of his vehicle, all with their weapons drawn. He leaned back in his seat, completely at ease, while the first cop on the scene stopped about six feet back from the driver's door.
"Sir. Please roll down your window and place your hands out where I can see them,” the cop instructed.
Malice did so, watching the second officer come up directly behind the vehicle, his weapon trained through the rear window at his head. He delicately reached out with his telekinetic power and wrapped his mind around that second cop's hand and weapon. He craned his head just a little farther in order to see the third officer slipping up the other side of the vehicle.
The moment that third cop entered the blind spot between him and where Malice sat inside the car, Malice tugged at the web of force he'd wound around the second cop's weapon hand, swiftly shifting it in the direction of the one now standing outside the driver's side window. “Don't even think of mov—"
He forced
the trigger back on the second cop's weapon. The 9mm slug left the barrel of the gun and struck the first cop just behind the ear. Within a spray of blood, bone, and gray matter, the cop was hurled out into the street in front of a passing car. Brakes squealed but not in time. Malice giggled as he heard the thud of the vehicle hitting the cop's falling body.
Time to have a little fun, he told himself. He sent a command to the molecules in the car's hard top, causing them to split away as he launched himself skyward. He landed on what was left of the car's roof, gleefully noting the look of shock on the second cop's face as he stared in sheer horror at his partner's mangled corpse.
Malice didn't give him much opportunity to record the scene in his mind's eye. He hurled himself at the third cop, sliding down the edge of the car and driving his palm into the side of the cop's face. The sound of the man's neck breaking was as loud as another pistol shot in the sudden silence.
He retained his telekinetic hold on the remaining officer's arm and weapon, causing him to fire randomly into the sides of passing vehicles. By this time Malice was literally cackling with the sheer joy of causing such death and destruction.
"That's quite enough of that,” he heard, as, inexplicably, his telekinetic grasp on the surviving cop suddenly dissipated. Not ten feet away, approaching from the adjacent parking lot, he spotted a slim, bald, black man dressed in a suit nearly as nice as his own.
Something yanked his feet out from under him, slamming his head into the side of the car with enough force to daze him for a split second. He pushed himself back up, his inner awareness revealing something he could have figured out without it. This interloper was an immortal, and no slouch in the telekinetic department himself.
He sketched a mocking bow, still grinning. “Malice, at your service."
"I hardly think so,” the other replied, in an accent he recognized as belonging to a nation halfway around the world. England, he thought it was called. “My name, if you must know, is Sir Edward Bladesworth. I'll be killing you today, if you don't mind."
"Ah,” Malice answered cheerfully, “but I do mind.” He snapped his fingers and manifested a slender blade formed of the very molecules of the air itself. He flourished it dramatically and grinned even wider.
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