by C. Gockel
Bohdi thinks that, super-villainy aside, maybe Loki just had good taste.
The piece of wood Amy was prodding settles with a creak and a bang. Bohdi snaps out of his reverie.
Slipping her hands into her pockets, Amy says, “Well, the Norns know everything that has happened and is happening…and people go to them with questions in exchange for an item of power or a heroic deed…”
Bohdi jerks so quickly, he nearly bangs his head on the top of the vent. His hand starts to slip toward his wallet.
“Any idea what sort of question Odin would find so important that he’d send his son?” says Steve.
“No, I…” Amy’s eyes grow wide. “I think Odin’s still looking for Loki.”
Bohdi’s body stills. Loki is dead. That’s ADUO’s official pronouncement, and Steve’s said it and…
Steve’s eyes widen a fraction. “I think you’re right.”
Bohdi’s body goes cold.
Putting his hand to his chin, Steve says, “But if the Norns and Asgard are not on speaking terms, how does Thor expect to pry any information from them?”
Shrugging, Amy rolls on her feet. And then she says in a small voice, “What about the gate to Nornheim in Loki’s old apartment?”
What? Bohdi leans forward in the duct. How in all his online snooping and offline eavesdropping does he not know there is a World Gate in Loki’s apartment?
Steve waves a hand. “Loki’s apartment is cordoned off and constantly monitored. To get in, you’d need to get past armed guards, fingerprint and retina scans, and a door that would put most bank vaults to shame.”
Bohdi shakes his head but doesn’t sigh. There is a way into Loki’s apartment. But when Bohdi pointed it out, ADUO had deemed it “too preposterous to occur” and “too expensive” to fix.
In a light tone, Steve says to Amy, “How did you know Odin can open World Gates?”
“Oh.” Amy shifts from one foot to another. She gives Steve a small smile, meets his eyes, and says, “Loki told me.”
A sneeze wracks Bohdi’s body before he can contain it.
Steve looks toward the vent. “Damn mice!”
Amy eyes the air vent. “Sounds more like a rat.”
Well that… Bohdi draws back and bangs his head on the corner of the duct and the wall.
Steve snorts. “I think you just insulted it.”
And then Steve looks back to Amy. “Exciting first day back?”
As Bohdi massages his head, he hears Amy say, “Thor…Skírnir…the thong.”
Steve sighs. “Oh, Bohdi is all right.”
Still massaging his head, Bohdi frowns. Can’t Steve say he’s a little better than “all right”?
“Any idea why Loki stole his memories?” Amy asks.
Bohdi opens both eyes to see Steve stop in his tracks by the door. “The only thing that comes to mind is Bohdi flipping Loki off right before it happened.”
Bohdi’s breath catches in his throat. Steve never told him that. That sounds almost…heroic.
Amy rolls her eyes. “So he’s always been kind of an ass, then?”
With an indignant huff, Bohdi pulls back so quickly his head bangs against the metal ductwork.
x x x x
Amy stands at the coffee dispenser in the cafeteria, finally getting the cup she’d said she’d get after the thong incident.
Beatrice is beside her, umbrella swinging on her arm, eyeing the table where Thor, Skírnir, Steve, and a few other agents sit surrounded by armed guards. Magic detectors are beeping faintly, picking up on Thor’s hammer and Skírnir’s wand.
Skírnir’s not eating, just picking at some food with a plastic fork.
Shaking her head, Amy turns toward the door and whispers to Beatrice. “Steve asked me to talk to Gerðr before I dissect my troll’s anterior cruciate ligament.”
“I’ll come with you,” says Beatrice as they step into the hallway. Amy feels a bright light of pride. “You’ve never been interested in my dissections before! It’s so exciting, I’m working with a veterinarian in Indonesia and we’re comparing the knees of trolls to orangutans and—”
“I meant I’d go with you to visit Gerðr,” says Beatrice. Her grandmother pats her arm. “Not that dissecting a troll doesn’t sound…” Beatrice swallows audibly. “…lovely.”
Amy does not pout at Beatrice’s lack of enthusiasm. At least not very much.
It will be nice to have some company when visiting Gerðr. It’s not that Amy doesn’t have sympathy for the giantess—Gerðr’s been branded a terrorist, even though, when she attacked humans, she was being controlled by Cera. And now Gerðr is trapped here on Earth as a prisoner of ADUO without a way to go home—at least that they know of.
Nonetheless, Amy doesn’t like Gerðr. The giantess is fond of calling humans “the magically retarded worms of the World Tree.” Unfortunately, Amy speaks Frost Giant—courtesy of Loki. Gerðr’s rooms are lined with Promethean Wire, and within them, Gerðr can’t use magic to translate English. Amy is the best worm to visit and talk to the cranky giantess. She sighs.
Beside her, Beatrice says, “So much excitement today. Aren’t you glad you came back to Chicago?”
Amy raises her head at the question. A movement in a dead-end hallway to her left catches her eye. She glances in that direction and sees Bohdi there. His eyebrows go up in surprise. Is it her imagination, or does he look vaguely guilty?
“Amy?” says Beatrice.
Amy blinks. How had Beatrice forgotten the excitement in Oklahoma? “Grandma, Oklahoma was exciting—I discovered a new species of toad in my backyard.”
“Yes, dear, you’ve told me,” Beatrice says, patting her on the arm.
“Bufo laugauz is such a cutie, too,” says Amy wistfully. “…with his black skin and cute little yellow spots.” She named the toad after a version of Laugauz, Loki’s Fire Giant incarnation.
Beside her, Beatrice protests. “They’re warts, not spots.”
They turn a corner and Gerðr’s rooms come into view. “They are not warts,” says Amy, frowning at her grandmother’s prejudice. Poor toads.
But Beatrice doesn’t answer her. Instead, she puts a hand on Amy’s arm. “Amy, there should be guards here.”
Staring down the empty hallway, Amy feels her heart sink. Poop. Another delay. “Huh. Yeah, I’ll have to call someone to open the doors for us.”
“Call security. Now,” Beatrice says, stepping in front of Amy.
Holding her coffee in one hand, Amy fumbles for her phone with the other and finds Mr. Squeakers instead. “I think maybe I…”
There is the creaking of hinges down the hall. Amy lifts her head to see the door to Gerðr’s room swinging open. Skírnir steps out, Gerðr slung over his shoulder. A magic detector in Amy’s pocket begins to chirp and Skírnir and Gerðr begin to flicker into invisibility.
Amy’s gasps. No. If they become invisible, Gerðr—
She stops thinking. Dropping her coffee, she pulls Mr. Squeakers from her pocket. In front of her, Beatrice shouts, “Stop!” With too much grace and speed for a woman her age, Beatrice opens the umbrella and holds it in front of them like a shield.
Against all possible logic—or magic—the flickering around Skírnir and Gerðr does stop. Amy’s jaw drops. Mr. Squeakers gives a tentative squeak and Skírnir’s eyes fly wide.
“What enchantment is this?” the mage demands.
Before Amy can fully process the question, Beatrice whips out a handgun from her pocket.
“Put her down!” Beatrice snarls. Amy’s eyes nearly pop from her head. Beatrice has a handgun?
Letting Gerðr slide from his back into a careless heap, Skírnir’s lips curl in a sneer. “Out of the way, old woman.”
“No, Grandma…” Amy says.
But the words aren’t even fully out of her mouth before Skírnir lifts his wand. Beatrice drops the umbrella and wraps both hands around the handgun. There is the blast of a gunshot and then the sound of a bullet ricocheting off of metal
.
Skírnir laughs, and an orb of something orange and molten-looking begins to form at the end of the wand. There is a ring of gunshot, and Amy barely sees the orb shoot off the tip of the wand a second later—she’s already being tackled to the floor by Beatrice.
Heat flashes over Amy’s back and legs, and she turns to see molten goo smoldering on the carpet just past her feet.
Beatrice is on top of her, pressing her into the ground. In front of her, all Amy can see is the open umbrella. Mr. Squeakers is hissing in her hand.
Beyond the flimsy shield of garish pink and flowers, Skírnir says, “You will pay for this.”
Chapter 3
Bohdi hears the sound of a gunshot and Skírnir’s laughter. He races in the direction of the sound without thinking, his hand going to his knife, the only weapon he has. He turns one corner, and then another and arrives just in time to see Amy and Beatrice huddled behind Beatrice’s umbrella. Something molten and glowing is smoldering in the carpet just beyond their feet.
“You will pay for this,” Skírnir says.
Bohdi lifts his eyes to see Skírnir raising his wand beyond the two women on the floor. The magician is standing over the crumpled body of Gerðr.
Without thinking, Bohdi flips open his blade and prepares to throw it. Before it leaves his fingers, Skírnir sways on his feet, his gaze going somewhere off into the distance.
It’s only then that Bohdi sees the dark circle of a bullet wound square in the center of Skírnir’s forehead and the thin trail of blood trickling down one side of his nose. For an instant, his eyes meet Bohdi’s. He looks—confused. And then he falls to his knees, wavers, then falls face-first onto the floor.
Beatrice lifts her head in the magician’s direction. “First shot was a warning,” she grumbles.
Behind Bohdi comes the sound of footsteps. He snaps his knife shut, slips it into his pocket, and backs around the corner, just as agents rush past him. He sees his buddy Marion with them, she gives him a barely perceptible nod, but then rushes down the hall.
Bohdi turns to see Steve and Thor walking shoulder to shoulder.
Scowling, Steve says, “What happened!”
Bohdi shrugs and shakes his head, still a bit in shock. “Beatrice shot Skírnir?”
“Skírnir is still in the cafeteria…” says Steve, his voice trailing off. Pulling out his phone, Steve calls someone while barreling past Bohdi with Thor a step behind. Bohdi hears shouts beyond them, and then Thor’s voice. “What treachery is this?”
Without really thinking about it, Bohdi backs into the dead-end hallway. As he watches the agents race past, he has a revelation. Thor needed Skírnir to open World Gates.
His heart starts to beat fast. Despite Steve’s words to the contrary, humans do have a working theory about how to open World Gates…He takes a ragged breath, remembering what Amy said. The Norns will tell you anything, in exchange for an object of power or an impossible task.
Turning, he takes a few more steps down the hallway. Fingers shaking, Bohdi touches his back pocket where his wallet with the picture of his maybe-parents is.
The FBI has an ongoing investigation into Bohdi’s past. But so far, they don’t even know his real name—and the people in the picture, his maybe, probably, parents—their identities are even farther off. Ruth has told him how much she and Henry worried about Steve when he was in Afghanistan…how they still worry about him every single day.
Do the man and woman in the picture worry about Bohdi?
He hears Thor shout, “The old woman killed a loyal subject of Asgard!”
Bohdi’s attention snaps to the present as Steve roars back, “That loyal subject was trying to kidnap one of our own!”
Thor shouts again. There is the sound of something hitting a wall hard. Above Bohdi, some plaster falls to the floor, and then he hears Thor’s footsteps thundering closer. The giant man passes the hallway that Bohdi is in without even glancing up, hammer gripped tightly in his hand.
Bohdi blinks at the hammer. He remembers Amy holding Laevithin, Loki’s magical sword, two years before in a broken cage of Promethean wire. An instant later, she had vanished into another dimension.
Bohdi hesitates only a second more before racing after Thor.
x x x x
Thor is past security and out the revolving doors before Bohdi catches up to him. Police are redirecting cars and foot traffic away from the sidewalks and street surrounding Thor’s chariot. Even though it’s Chicago, and nearly noon, Thor and Bohdi are oddly alone. If Bohdi is quiet, and Thor doesn’t get too close to the agents guarding his chariot, they won’t be overheard.
Sprinting forward, Bohdi grabs hold of one of Thor’s forearms. “Wait!” he shouts.
Thor’s response is instantaneous. Whipping his body around he wraps a huge hand around Bohdi’s neck and raises his hammer over Bohdi’s head.
The ADUO agents by the chariot start to move in their direction, but Bohdi waves a hand. They slow but do not stop completely.
“What do you want?” Thor snarls, the hand around Bohdi’s neck tightening a fraction.
Bohdi grins, even though the pressure on his windpipe is making his eyes water. “To help you!”
Thor snarls.
“I know where the Norn…gate…is,” Bohdi grinds out.
Thor releases his neck, and gasping for air, Bohdi turns to the guards, smiles, and waves. They stop, though their leader’s scowl is visible over his sunglasses.
Leaning forward, Bohdi whispers, “And I can take you to Nornheim myself.”
“You’re lying!” says Thor.
Actually, Bohdi is just maybe over promising. ADUO’s research is mostly theoretical.
“No,” Bohdi says. He lowers his voice to a barely audible whisper. “Here’s how….”
When he’s done, Thor nods his head, though his eyes are narrowed. The agents are still far enough away that they can’t have heard, but their eyes are fixed on Bohdi and the Viking.
Giving them a smile, Bohdi takes a pen out of his pocket and a battered business card from his wallet. Thrusting them into Thor’s hand, Bohdi shouts at the ADUO agents. “Just asking the big guy for his autograph!”
They’re a little too far away to hear—but Bohdi thinks he sees a guy’s nostrils flare in a snort.
Chapter 4
Even though she’s wearing a thick fleece sweater under her lab coat, Amy shivers. She’s in the magical creature morgue in ADUO’s basement.
The room is white walled and has steel operating tables. It would almost look like a human morgue except that the operating tables are elephant sized. A single troll cadaver covered by an enormous swath of fabric lies on a table at the center of the room. She shivers again, not because the morgue creeps her out; it’s just really cold.
Putting a hand in the pocket of her lab coat, Amy idly rubs her thumb between Mr. Squeakers’ ears. The little mouse makes a tiny sigh and curls into a tighter ball in her pocket, apparently untroubled by the nearly overpowering smell of formaldehyde in the room.
Brow furrowing, Amy remembers Beatrice’s words as her grandmother followed Steve and Laura Stodgill into Steve’s office.
“Don’t worry, dear, Steve is very competent at these things. He’ll get me off the hook,” Beatrice had said.
“It’s a good thing we were already in the process of getting you authorized to carry a weapon on premises,” Steve grumbled.
“You were?” Amy said. Her grandmother hadn’t told her that. Her grandmother hadn’t even told her that she could fire a gun—let alone fire a gun so well.
Steve, Laura, and Beatrice had all stared at Amy. She'd felt her face flush as she realized she was missing something. Patting her arm, Beatrice leaned forward and whispered, “I think that’s the story we’re going with.”
“Beatrice, shut the door!” Steve shouted.
With an apologetic look, Beatrice had shut the door, but not before Amy heard Steve grumble. “You’re going to help me deal with the bliz
zard of paperwork this is going to cause.”
Amy had found herself staring at Steve’s door, still shaken by the sight of Skírnir planted face-first in a puddle of his own blood, Gerðr’s guards in a bleeding heap just inside the giantess’s cell door, and Gerðr herself, concussed and barely conscious, being carried away on a stretcher by ADUO’s paramedics.
But it was what she signed up for when she chose to come back to Chicago. So she’d taken a deep breath and come to her lab.
Now in front of the covered cadaver, her nose wrinkles at the smell of chemical preservatives. The only good thing about the morning was that Odin’s plans to contact the Norns had been delayed.
Bowing her head she tightens her ponytail. Maybe Steve can convince Gerðr to open the gate to Nornheim for them? If ADUO could get to the Nornheim first…if they could find the Norns….
Hoping for some clue that could help, she closes her eyes and picks up the strand of memory she’d seen before.
x x x x
In an impossibly short time, Odin, Sleipnir, and the Einherjar are standing in the shadow of the cavern formed by the enormous column’s roots. The ceiling of the cavern is at least as high as seven men, the mouth at the base more than thirty paces wide. They have too few men to defend the place adequately, and yet it’s the most defensible position they’ve seen.
Odin pulls Sleipnir to a halt and Loki has weight again. Dismounting, Odin barks at the two Einherjar closest to him. “You two with me.” Gesturing toward the rest of the men, he says, “Prepare for the adze attack!” Loki looks behind and sees the shadows in the sky. They look to be in the same position they were before, but now they’re closing fast.
Loki prepares to dismount from Sleipnir. “Can I help you make the gate, Allfather?” he asks. To see a World Gate created, not just opened, might make all this terror worthwhile.
But Odin holds up a hand. “Your talents are not in this, Loki.”
Loki stills on Sleipnir’s back. Odin comes and lays a hand on top of Loki’s own. “Help the Einherjar, but stay on Sleipnir—I’ve gone through too much to lose you again.”
