Rig exposed a stretch of skin above his wrist. The thin, twisting designs that were there already each had their purpose and he sought out a particular one now. He used the splinter to trace over a twisting, vine pattern and from it there came a well of blood, which he allowed to fall to the ground while he incanted a few words into the night air.
After some moments and a good amount of spilled blood, he lowered the sleeve back over the bleeding mark, put the splinter in its pocket and departed, following the same path he’d taken upon his arrival.
As he passed over the land, his smooth strides caused the end of the black coat to billow out behind him dramatically. From the pool of blood he’d left behind, tracing each footstep he took, the poisoned soil began at once to heal and that healing spread throughout the graveyard long after he and the blood were gone.
The sound of a motorcycle engine growled in the night and then faded into silence in the distance.
Chapter Two
New York City, New York, Three years later
It might have marked her as a tourist, save for the obvious detail of it being an extremely expensive professional camera. There was no mistaking, even for a layman, that it was top of the line. She carried it as if it were an extension of her, not as if it were a mere tool or accessory slung around her neck. She cradled it like fine china in her hands.
The well-worn leather satchel hanging at her hip looked more like a gunslinger’s saddlebag than a camera bag, but it was full of over twenty thousand dollars in cutting edge equipment.
No one would have realized any of this, however.
They would have been too busy staring at her scars.
Ah, well, let them stare. Shyla had hacked off most of her hair a couple of weeks ago in a rebellious attempt to prove to herself that she no longer gave a rat’s ass how uncomfortable her disfigurement made people feel. Those long, waving tresses had, for many years, been her one source of vainglorious pride. Now, well, all that had been cut away and styled in a deceptively flirty bob and her point had been proven. Mostly.
Plus she saved a mint on hair care products these days, so, win.
The camera was such a familiar weight slung around her neck that she would have felt naked without it. Out of some unnamed, inherent need, her hands were always caressing the body casing or stroking the buttons. She fingered the stabilizing cord, wrapped in a tight coil dangling from the screw inserted into the tripod mount.
It was an old school trick, that cord, quick and low tech—a makeshift tripod for a photojournalist who had little time to set up for a steady shot. All a PJ had to do was pull the knot on the cord, let the length fall to the ground, step on the end, pull the camera up to eye level, drawing the cord taught and viola you had a steady shot. Click.
Pulitzer material.
Well, once, but that was years ago. Right now Shyla was kicking it in New York City, the hub of Western civilization. The sights and sounds of the city roared around her, none of it inspiring. More like depressing.
This place was full of human energy but it was the dirt and grit on everything that caught her keen eye more than anything. Piles of garbage waited on every corner for sanitation pick up. Such waste. It was everywhere. A part of life here. Worse, no one seemed to notice or care that they lived amid the glut and filth of their own discarded largesse.
After living among the refugees of wars and secluded tribal peoples of the world, Shyla realized she might be a bit jaded against the First World.
Bored with the confines of the crowd surround her, with the stained and decayed edges of the city, Shyla switched her attention to her camera, checking the battery life. Pouring over the contents of the memory card, watching the photos flicker by on the display screen, Shyla still walked and moved with ease amongst the flow of New York City’s pedestrian traffic.
Shyla, a natural chameleon in any environment, didn’t even have to look up to know when to stop at the crosswalks or make a turn toward her destination. She was as at home here as she was in the forests of the Congo, or deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.
There were dozens of people in front of her, a wall of business suits, tourists and haute couture. When they slowed or sped up their pace, Shyla followed suit. She didn’t worry too much about anyone knocking her around while focused on her photos, even in a crowded space like this people naturally kept a distance from her. They always had—even before the scars. She might be small but she was built sturdy, with lean, firm muscles and it made her seem bigger than she was.
Even in the most far-flung wilds of the earth people avoided entering her personal space uninvited. So when the man in the blue suit stumbled and bumped against Shyla’s arm, it wasn’t weird to her that he was unsettled enough to turn her way and mutter an apology—jaded city dweller though he was.
Shyla, more out of habitual good manners than any real concern for his feelings, looked up at him and said, “No problem.” Her lips quirked in a natural, cocksure grin.
The interaction should have ended at that. But the man saw her face, tilted up, as it was when she’d replied. His eyes tripped over the puckered flesh, the rough and shiny redness gracing her cheek and jaw.
His pupils widened like a camera lens. His gasp was cut short in his throat and the sneer of disgust he worked to hide was all too apparent to Shyla.
She felt her grin fade. Damn it.
Shyla hated the discolorations that ran down the left side of her face as much as others hated seeing them. But she had come by those wounds trying to save the life of a friend—there was no shame in that, only in her failure to save him.
This douche should be the one to feel ashamed for being rude.
Her wicked juices bubbled to the surface. Shyla couldn’t resist rubbing this guy’s face in his social faux pas. It wasn’t all that mature, but it eased her wounded pride a little to do it. She held his gaze captive with hers, trapping and holding him.
“My ex-husband was a welder.” Letting the camera dangle around her neck, Shyla held up her hands so that the large, bell sleeves of her jacket fell back, exposing the scars on her arms as well. “A meaner drunk there never was,” she proclaimed with a dramatic catch in her voice.
Impossibly, the man’s eyes grew wider and his face blanched. His face closed off, a stiff mask that discouraged her from any further elaborations on her hardships. Shyla laughed silently to herself, but she could sense the corner of her eyes crinkling and knew the man saw a twinkle in her eye that she could not suppress.
How perplexed this poor guy must be, seeing the black glee in her eyes!
The man in the blue suit looked away from her so fast that she wondered if he got a head rush when he did it. Once he’d dismissed her, Shyla let the incident go, her bruised ego now placated by the entertaining reaction she’d drawn from him. Such was life. Her skin was growing thicker by the day.
Once again, she cupped her hands around her precious camera and commenced flipping through the images on her memory card. There were thousands of pictures waiting for her perusal; a few would be lucky enough to one day reach publications around the globe.
Blue Suit left her markedly wide field of vision as he marched away in the crowd, clearly eager to put some distance between them.
Up ahead there was a belch of diesel from the street. Mutterings from the people in front of her. Irritable rants about rudeness and unnecessary hurry. Someone barked, “Watch where you’re going buddy!”
There was the violent screaming of tires on asphalt. Appalled cries from the mouths in the crowd. A dull thump and scuttling crunch. Screams rent the air.
Shyla looked through the mad press of bodies in front of her and, as if they’d heard her desperate plea for an unimpeded view, they parted and let her see what had caused the commotion…
Blue Suit lay crumpled on the asphalt in a spreading pool of blood. He’d been thrown several feet ahead by the impact of the two-ton city bus that had struck him down.
The world around her tilted and
time froze. Nausea and chills washed over her from scalp to toes, like a bucket of ice water dumped on her from above. No time to think. Instinct took over. Three running steps and she was at the man’s side, crouching on her knees, one hand reaching automatically for her camera, the other for him.
A bubble of blood escaped Blue Suit’s lips. It splattered like mist around his mouth when it broke. In her eyes the colors of the world grayed out, so that only those fine crimson drops retained any hue. Without knowing it, Shyla’s finger was depressing the camera’s shutter button so that the lens shutter closed and opened over and over again. Clickclickclick. A nasty, wet rattle came from deep within Blue Suit’s chest and vermillion foam oozed from his blunt nose. Those wide eyes—their color stolen as the world’s had been—gazed unseeing into the sky.
The body shook twice and then lay still. Click. Like a heartbeat, the shutter counted out the last seconds of Blue Suit’s life. Clickclickclick. The eyes filmed over, a glaze like watered milk. Click.
Shyla reached for the pulse in his neck. Nothing. Click. Blue Suit’s time was up.
Realizing she was on her knees in the street, Shyla looked up at the myriad faces surrounding her, all drab in the colorless world. Without hesitation she assumed her role as an experienced field agent, someone who had witnessed many violent ends. “Move back, give us some room. Somebody call an ambulance—”
The command wasn’t necessary—two uniformed policemen had pierced the throng and were at her side. Click. They would take it from here, she was assured by one of the young, clean cut men, while the other radioed in for ambulatory assistance. Her hand, independent of her will, raised the camera. Click—it surreptitiously stole the policeman’s image mid-action.
Shaken inside, but exuding a façade of professional composure, Shyla rose on steady feet.
Blue Suit moved. He looked right at her. His eyes were murky with death, but now exuded some faint, strange shade of blue in the ashen world. A touch of frost in death. They moved like jellied eels in the sockets, searching her face.
“I see you…”
Starting backward, the horrific, alien voice sliced a line down her spine, Shyla almost ended up getting creamed by a passing truck in another lane before she regained her native balance.
Color saturated her vision with a flash of brilliance.
A horn honked in protest of her near miss—no one behind the wheel even noticed that a man lay dead in the street. Dead? Shyla’s eyes flew over Blue Suit’s corpse. Yes he was definitely dead. His still face and sightless, glazed brown eyes attested to that. The spray of blood about his pale lips was appalling. That crust of blood at the crease of his nose, too vivid. Those details were real, but the words he’d spoken at the end…
He’d been dead before that. Hadn’t he?
Of course. She’d searched for a pulse but had found nothing.
Shyla had been witness to strange things. Still, this unsettled her more than anything in recent memory.
The younger police officer leaned down, entering her field of vision, breaking some spell that had begun to cloud her senses. He reached for the man’s pulse himself, clearly more out of habit and training than any doubt that Blue Suit wasn’t just a lifeless corpse. Shyla watched him like a hawk. Nothing appeared amiss.
It burned, but she had to ask the officer. She had to know. “Did you hear him say anything?”
The officer looked up. “I’m sorry, ma’am, you need to get back.” He’d neither heard, nor cared about the question. He was all business now, turning to inform his partner of the man’s condition, who then radioed in the details.
Shyla backed up. “Yeah.” The word exploded on a terse breath held tight in her lungs. She looked around, taking in every detail of the surroundings for later reporting, and the world crawled back to a state of normality.
The light had changed and people were crossing the wide, expansive street, erasing the drama of a tragic death from their collective minds in a way only urban survivalists could. Before she could be detained, before her camera was noticed and further inconveniences arose, Shyla turned on her heel and merged into the crowd, leaving the scene behind and merging into the camouflage of the crowd.
Blue Suit’s words bounced off the corners of her mind, haunting.
Tracking every step.
I see you.
Chapter Three
Budapest, Hungary
Rig threw back his head arching over the woman beneath him, the upward thrust of his hips lifting hers from the mattress. His eyes opened wide. Every nerve came alive with a heightened awareness that had nothing to do with carnal pleasure. His blood was singing, not with the thrill of a good sport fucking, but from the call of the otherworldly.
His preternaturally gifted sight fell at once to the microscopic spaces between the atoms that made up the barriers between him and his prey. His vision flew across the Earth itself. From this nameless woman’s apartment along the Danube, all the way across the ocean, to the good ole U.S. of A, he sought and found the thing that called to him from the dark, forbidden spaces of the universe.
At last Rig’s vision landed upon a crowd of swarming, agitated people in New York City, along the length of a street near Times Square. He sensed the push of the Enemy as it entered Midjungards, its power great and malevolent. It had succeeded in rousing him during sex—this was no small, secondary god—this was a powerful force.
His suspicions proved true when, from thousands of miles away, he heard it speak.
I see you…
That dreaded voice. That vile and goading tone. How well Rig knew it. Any Aesir would recognize the owner of that voice, no matter what vessel he chose to speak through. Rig might be on the mortal plane, but he was still of the House of Odin and the evil of the Enemy incensed him, stoking the coals of his rage until they burned in him like a fever, heating the woman beneath him, making her moan.
“Damned, bloody Illusionist,” He growled around clenched teeth, hands fisting in the bedclothes at either side of his forgotten lover’s head.
“What’d you say baby?” Her words were husky and love-drunk as she wrapped her silken limbs around him. She was oblivious to the danger that lurked beneath his flesh.
Or perhaps it was this unseen threat, hovering between them that heightened her arousal. He suspected it is one of the things that made him so appealing to women—and men. The air of danger that forever hovered about him was as irresistible to some as his jewel blue eyes and jet-black hair.
Rig was a man of heady appetites, using every advantage he had to pleasure his partner and thus himself, but he was no longer interested in carnal lust.
He was filled with bloodlust.
I see you…
Malevolent words spat out from the lips of a dead man laying at the booted feet of a woman half a world away—they were an affront to Rig on every level. That voice had no business here in the world of mortal men. If Skrymir, Master of Illusions, the strongest and most cunning of the Giants had taken a human vessel for more than its voice, say to walk around Midjungards and cause trouble…
He had to make sure this was not the case.
Rig rolled off the woman—he’d already forgotten her name—and reached for his discarded clothing. The poor, rejected woman was right to snarl at him and question his abrupt change in behavior, but he tuned her out, still listening to the crowd in New York City for any further developments.
“Did you hear him say anything?” Rig’s preternatural ears picked up the words from the very feminine, enchanting voice. He froze just as he was pulling on his coat.
This was unexpected. So a mortal had heard the Enemy speak.
Her voice seeped inside him. It lingered, a ghost that moved beneath his skin.
She is chosen. Hermod’s words, from three years ago, came back to him with crystal clarity.
He whipped around, casting his vision back once again to the city, seeking her. Rig had to see her face. It had nothing to do with Hermod’s instruc
tion and everything to do with his heart choking him, robbing him of breath. The world’s rotation hinged on seeing her…
The press of the crowd obscured his vision. She had disappeared from view. Rig was stunned. For the first time as the gods’ Watchman, his eyes failed him.
Hermod would never let him live this down if he learned of it. Rig had to get to New York as soon as he could—for more than the obvious reason to investigate the Enemy’s presence here on the mortal plane.
Rig must put his gaze on this woman. The desire to see her was a fever in him, quickening his blood and breath.
She’d eluded him. Who did that?
No one.
He’d been seeking the elusive ‘chosen one’ for three years—a blink in time for one so long lived as he, but still frustrating. He’d followed every vague clue left to him by the gods, traipsing across the globe, only to find nothing but disappointment and frustration.
Now, from across an ocean comes this feminine, haunting voice.
She was the foretold daughter of the mountain. He knew it.
Grabbing his remaining possessions, he left the bedroom and the woman’s now angry epithets without a backward glance or word. Once down the long, winding stairs and outside the brick apartment building, breathing in the crisp air, he was already on the phone ordering a ticket for the next available flight out of the country while lighting a kretek cigarette.
Taking a long draw on the kretek, savoring the sweet, spicy flavor of the clove on the tip of his tongue, he smiled as the wicked thrill of an impending adventure danced through his taut frame.
He hailed a passing cab and crawled in—ignoring the driver’s insistent motion toward the non-smoking sign on the separation glass, smoothly slipping a twenty-thousand Forint spot through the payment slot in the window to make him shut the hell up. Rig was on his way. She would not escape him this time.
***
Shyla walked into her publisher’s headquarters, ignoring the stares. However, by the time she’d entered the elevator and pressed the button for the nineteenth floor, she was getting a little irritated by all the gasping and whispers—it seemed a tad out of hand, even among these sheltered desk workers.
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