I Bring the Fire Part IV: Fates: The Hunt for Loki Is On

by C. Gockel

  The woman who had so tenderly and loyally cared for Loki for two hundred years had become ferocious—mentally and physically. How could Loki not adore her? How could he not fall in love with her all over again?

  Also, with the boys out of the house, the sex that had been good before had become fantastic.

  “Just make sure Sigyn doesn’t find out,” Odin suggested. Leaning closer to Loki, with a slight sneer on his face, he added, “Believe me, Freyja isn’t likely to croon about your activities now that she has Ord.” Odin’s expression had gone dark. “Her relationship with him and the birth of their daughters has only increased her respectability. Now people see her as having more important concerns than laying men or slaying them.”

  Loki snaps his fingers once again. Flames bite his skin again, jolting him from the memory. In front of him, Ord himself comes striding through the mist. Ord was only half grown when Loki went to the cave, but he’s grown into a man who is generically handsome—tall, broad of shoulder, blond, blue eyed, with a square jaw. He is fierce and respected on the battlefield, earning the respect of all the warriors. Off the battlefield, he is humble, funny without being offensive, genial, kind to children, courtly with women, and overall quite popular.

  Loki dislikes him on principle. With a nod in Ord’s direction, he graces the soon-to-be-cuckolded man with a smirk.

  Ord stops short. But instead of hurling the expected insult, he offers his hand in Loki’s direction. Dipping his chin, Ord says almost shyly, “Loki, Thor has told me about your quest to find Gungnir, and of the humans you saved from trolls and kappa.” He shakes his head almost apologetically. “I am sorry to have been too young to join you.”

  Somewhat in shock, Loki takes the proffered hand. Ord shakes it warmly and puts his other hand on Loki’s shoulder. “I look forward to fighting beside you someday. Thor has told me many times of your cunning.”

  Surprisingly, Loki detects no lie.

  Odin has said that, besides the magic necklace, Ord is Freyja’s greatest asset in her quest for political power. For the first time, Loki understands why. Ord’s likeability is infuriating.

  Loki smiles as genuinely as he can. Smiling back as though Loki has just bestowed upon him a great honor, Ord gives Loki a thump on the shoulder, and with a reverent nod, walks away.

  Loki’s nostrils flare in annoyance as soon as Ord is out of sight. For all his niceness, the other man has made Loki’s quest too easy. When he approaches Freyja, shooting arrows with machine-like precision into a distant target, Loki knows exactly what to say.

  As she nocks an arrow in her bow, Loki smiles. “I just met your husband. He is quite charming.”

  Freyja is rarely the same woman twice. She changes her appearance to suit her and her lovers’ fancies—it’s a skill she had even before coming into the possession of the dwarven magical necklace. Today she is wearing the guise of a blonde, blue-eyed Aesir beauty. At Loki’s words, she smiles triumphantly and lets her arrow fly into the target.

  As she nocks another arrow, Loki slips up behind her and whispers in her ear. “But such a shame that he doesn’t know how depraved you can be. He doesn’t know how to punish you, does he?”

  Freyja trembles, and the arrow flies wide.

  “What do you want, Loki?” Freyja whispers.

  “To help you, of course,” Loki says.

  Turning to face him, Freyja licks her wide pink lips, and Loki knows he’s won, and he hates her for it. He hates the whole situation—Nari and Valli at Odin’s mercy, Odin’s machinations, the jeopardy he’s putting his relationship with Sigyn in.

  He doesn’t really want to have sex with Freyja, but he finds he really wants to hurt her, more than he ever had in any of their games before.

  For a few heartbeats, she says nothing, and then she whispers. “Meet me at my home in an hour.” Pulling another arrow from her quiver with shaky hands, she returns her gaze to the target. She lets the arrow fly…and her aim once more is true.

  x x x x

  “So,” Bohdi says, walking down the trail beside Amy. “Freyja, the kick-ass Goddess of War—”

  “And Love and Beauty,” Amy supplies, scowling a little at him for interrupting.

  “—was a bit of a masochist and maybe into a bit of humiliation?” Bohdi says. Waving the branch in his hand, he says, “Kind of fits my theory that the high-powered people like that sort of thing.” Pulling the thong out of his pocket, he swings it around his finger. “Frieda was a beautiful, high-powered, lawyer type. She’d be extra humiliated if she knew everyone knew that she slept with lowly minion me.”

  “You still shouldn’t be throwing underwear around!” Amy snaps.

  Bohdi blinks at her. His face is the picture of befuddlement. Amy feels her skin heat.

  “It creates a hostile work environment!”

  Bohdi purses his lips and looks to the side. “Technically, I wasn’t at work when I—”

  Ignoring the semantics, Amy puts her hands on her hips. “Even if you didn’t take it as a trophy—even if you just stole it—”

  Drawing his head back, Bohdi holds up the slip of fabric. “It wasn’t stealing, I worked for this. Smacking a woman’s ass until you think your hand will bleed is—”

  Skin heating, Amy shouts, “The perception will be that you see women as objects, as conquests, as less than human!”

  Bohdi’s eyes widen. “Really?” He slips the underwear hastily back into his pocket.

  Amy vaguely registers the look of obliviousness on his face. But she’s furious. And maybe Loki’s flashbacks are gnawing at her. “It is threatening! You don’t get it. You don’t know what it’s like to be surrounded by people who are stronger than you, who see you as a sexual object, as not one of them, as a lesser being…” She remembers Odin, This is what women are made for. In the United States, they’ve moved so far from that, but she feels like maybe there is a precipice, and with one wrong step, society could fall back over the edge.

  Stopping in his tracks, Bohdi’s jaw goes hard, and he pulls his lighter out of his pocket. “Yes, as a skinny under-represented minority in the Marine Corps, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  Amy’s feet and her thoughts stumble to a stop. She feels the sickening sensation of being in the wrong; it wraps around her insides and cuts off her ability to breathe. Hadn’t she once read that most victims of sexual assault in the military are male? Before she’s recovered herself, Bohdi is already walking away.

  Running to catch up, Amy stammers, “I’m sorry.”

  He waves the hand with the lighter and doesn’t meet her eyes. “It’s okay.”

  Half jogging to keep up, Amy says, “No, really, I’m…”

  Swiveling to face her, Bohdi says, “Just drop it…” His hands fist and his lips curl dangerously. She opens her mouth to speak, but Bohdi cuts her off again. “It’s okay. I beat the living shit out of them. And that’s all I want to say about it.”

  With a dismissive shake of his head, he turns and begins to walk again.

  Limbs heavy, Amy, looks up at the sky. It’s getting darker. She squints. And the darkness is not because of smoke. Night is coming.

  Chapter 12

  The alley is lit by dull orange streetlights. The dive bar Nat brought Bohdi to has cheap beer, and amazing mojitos, but the bathroom makes him gag before he’s even entered…so he slips out the back door—the alley it is. He’s just finished up when he hears familiar voices. A group of three guys turns around the corner. He hears someone say something about, “You sure that shit you got will keep this from showing up on a piss test?”

  There’s a laugh, and a “Yeah, man. Trust me. It’s taken care of.”

  Not acknowledging them, Bohdi turns to the door. His hand finds the doorknob, he turns it, pulls—and it doesn’t budge. Bohdi turns his head. That is a mistake.

  “Hey,” says one of the silhouetted shadows at the mouth of the alley. “Don’t I know you?”

  Bohdi reaches into his pocket for his knife,
hoping to jimmy the lock. His pocket is empty.

  Three silhouetted forms come closer, floating in a cloud of strange, acrid-smelling smoke. “Bohdi Patel,” says the largest, and then laughs. The laugh is familiar. What isn’t familiar is the way Gonzalez is tapping his hand on his thigh in an uneven staccato rhythm, head bobbing not quite in sync. Every muscle in Bohdi’s body tenses.

  Bohdi’s met a few men in the Corps who prefer men. They’ve come out to him quietly, maybe hopefully. But when he’d expressed no interest they hadn’t pressed. Tyrone Gonzalez isn’t one of those men.

  Tyrone Gonzalez will tell you he “Ain’t no fag.” He’ll also tell you, that if there aren’t any women around, fucking a man up the ass is “acceptable.” He’s said Bohdi has “pretty eyes,” and “skinny little girl hips.”

  Straightening his shoulders, Bohdi gives a curt nod and tries to maneuver between Tyrone and his buddies. Tyrone’s hand shoots out and stops him. “What’s your hurry? I haven’t seen you in a while…What’s your MOS?” says Tyrone, using the slang for the schooling all Marines get after infantry training.

  Throwing Tyrone’s hand off of his shoulder, Bohdi says, “EOD.”

  Tyrone laughs and briefly turns to his friends. “See, smart and pretty.”

  Bohdi takes the opportunity to try and walk away again. But Tyrone physically steps between him and the exit to the alley. One of Tyrone’s buddies steps forward, the other hangs back.

  Bohdi holds his ground, afraid if he takes a step back, he’ll literally wind up against the wall. Tyrone’s hand comes back to his shoulder. He squeezes hard enough for it to hurt. Bohdi’s mind spins. Tyrone’s about his height, but he’s broader and it’s all lean meat. They were in boot camp together. Bohdi’s seen him fight. His eyes slide to Tyrone’s companions. The one cornering him is only slightly leaner.

  Tyrone snaps Bohdi’s attention back to him with a laugh. “You’re still as pretty as I remember. Look at those eyes!” He brings his hand up to briefly touch Bohdi’s cheek.

  Bohdi’s lip curls. Not flinching away, he bats his eyelashes. “Really, you think so?”

  Tyrone’s eyes widen. Turning to his buddy, he says, “See, I knew it.”

  Bohdi leans back, and Tyrone turns his head again—

  And Bohdi is frozen in place. He can’t move. He feels like his lungs are choked. Tyrone laughs and…

  Bohdi wakes up to darkness and coughs out a lungful of smoke. For a moment, he has no idea where he is. He’s back in the alley unable to move.

  He brings a hand to his face. Something hard and rough bites through the back of his shirt. The ground is uneven, and slightly soft. No, he’s in Nornheim, sitting with his back to a tree. And back in that alley, he hadn’t been frozen. He’d head-butted Tyrone hard enough to break his nose, then stepped back and dropped into a crouch just in time to dodge the fist that Tyrone had aimed at his head. Tyrone had driven his hand into a brick wall. On the ground, Bohdi had found a glass bottle.

  Bohdi’s breathing comes fast and quick, smoke tickling on the way down.

  He doesn’t remember the sequence of events after that. He remembers the third guy screaming, “I don’t want no trouble, I don’t want no trouble!” He remembers the glass bottle shattering and driving the sharp end of it into the face of Tyrone’s buddy. He doesn’t remember when he knocked Tyrone to the ground. He doesn’t remember if his foot connected with Tyrone’s head, but he remembers winding up to kick it. He remembers Nat screaming, light streaming from the bar’s back door, and then Nat, her girlfriend, and some other guys dragging Bohdi off Tyrone.

  Bohdi shakes in the darkness and stifles a cough. It’s the first time he’s had a nightmare about the actual attack. He’s only had nightmares about being convicted and sent to prison.

  He puts his head between his hands. Steve is the only person who knows about it. He feels a flare of indignation in his gut. He hates Amy for making him bring it up—making him remember. Lifting his eyes, he watches a glowing ember waft by. He hears a snapping sound, like flags in a strong breeze. He sits up straighter, the nightmare of the dream giving way to the nightmare of reality. He was supposed to be on watch. He looks through the brush and can see the forest fire’s orange light. It’s much too close.

  Turning, he finds Amy leaning on the tree trunk beside him. “Amy, wake up!” he whispers.

  She sits up with a start.

  “We have to go,” he says, finding his branch in the darkness.

  She doesn’t ask questions.

  Nornheim’s three moons are obscured by tree limbs and smoke. The light from the fire is behind them, and they stumble together in their own shadows and the shadows of the trees. When they’d chosen a spot to rest and hide, they’d moved off the main trail away from the river.

  Leaning close, Amy whispers, “Do you think we should use our—”

  A screech rises above the crackling of the fire and the rush of leaves; it makes every hair on Bohdi’s body stand on end. He feels Amy’s hand on his side. “Adze,” she whispers.

  Shivering, Bohdi remembers the murderous, sexless creature that seemed incapable of feeling pain.

  And then another sound reverberates through the darkness. Deep and hoarse, it sounds a little like the lowing of a cow. Without seeing the animal, or even knowing what it is, Bohdi knows it is a cry of anguish. The screams of the adze intensify; the sound of hooves, and more cries of pain and fear, rise in the night.

  Above their heads, Bohdi hears branches crack. There are furious snarls, and a writhing thing with two sets of wings, four arms and four legs, tumbles through the branches, lands about twenty feet from them, and rolls, hissing and spitting through the underbrush.

  Bohdi’s suddenly gripped by the shoulder and yanked behind a tree.

  “What…?” says Bohdi, craning his head to look around the tree.

  The hissing, spitting, rolling thing comes to a halt. A gust of wind whips through the trees, and there is a sudden bright burst of moonlight on the ground where two adze, hands at each others throats, wings ripped liked tattered sails, lie motionless, staring up at Amy and Bohdi with glowing eyes.

  “Oops,” says Bohdi.

  The adze slip from their murderous embrace, and clamber to their feet with hair-raising screeches.

  “Run!” says Amy, tugging again on his shoulder.

  Bohdi hesitates, hand tightening on his club, considering the odds of beating two adze in a fight.

  From the air come more screams.

  “Running’s good,” says Bohdi, turning in Amy’s direction.

  He outpaces her in only a few strides. He wants to speed up, but that would mean leaving Amy, and some instinct as strong as the will to survive makes him slow down. Cursing, he grabs Amy’s wrist and pulls her faster through the trees.

  Twisting roots and rocks jut from the ground as it rises beneath their feet. Bohdi feels the muscles in the front of his legs start to burn as they stumble and crash uphill. He hears snarls behind them. Turning his head, he sees an adze twisting and hissing, its enormous wings caught in some low hanging branches.

  Looking ahead, Bohdi sees some smaller trees growing very close together. He drags Amy in that direction, just managing to dodge an adze swerving out of nowhere inches from their heels.

  Bohdi yanks Amy sideways through a narrow gap in the trunks, and pulls her into a sprint. A few seconds later, he hears a frustrated screech, and then a snarl. Glancing back, he sees two adze, one pinned between the tree trunks, another trying to claw its way over the first.

  If he wasn’t so busy being terrified for his life, he’d have laughed. Beside him, Amy looks too. Their eyes meet. Amy points to a narrow gap between two bushes, and they dart in that direction. Seconds after passing through the gap, they hear more frustrated snarls and hisses. They keep running without looking back.

  When the only sound Bohdi can hear is the mad thumping of his heart and his own panting, they finally slow. Dropping Amy’s hand, Bohdi bends over. “I think we
lost them,” he pants and looks eastward. Is that his imagination, or is it getting lighter?

  Amy puts her hands on her knees and gasps. “I think I hear the river.”

  He’s about to say no, when he hears the sound of water on rocks. Before Bohdi can answer, she moves toward a gap in the trees. “Oh…” he hears her say.

  Bohdi catches up to her and gazes over her shoulder. “Oh,” he echoes, looking over her shoulder. In front of them there is a patch of barren rock leading to empty air. A few scraggly bushes grow in a shallow indentation right near the edge.

  Amy goes forward in a crouch. And Bohdi follows. They kneel down together at the rock’s gravelly edge and look down.

  The outcropping they’re on marks a bend in the river. Beneath them is a sheer slope that turns into a cliff just a few meters below. From there, it is a fifty-foot drop to where the river seethes and churns.

  He looks eastward. The sky is definitely getting lighter. He feels a flush of relief that dies instantly when a distant scream echoes in his ears. He’s just about to suggest they head back to the trees, when Amy says, “Look!”

  He follows her gaze upriver. At first, Bohdi thinks he is seeing a giant wave with a dark cloud floating above it and fanning out in a wide circle over the banks.

  “Adze must not be able to swim,” Amy says.

  Squinting, Bohdi peers at the approaching cloud. And then every muscle in his body tenses. What he took for a wave are elk-like animals, with four long, twisted horns, swimming downstream. The black cloud is the adze hovering above them. Here and there, one of the elk-creatures stumbles onto the bank and is immediately set upon by the swarm—they sink their teeth into the animals while they’re still thrashing…but other times, an adze drops into the water and doesn’t emerge.